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As we're ramping up to the holiday season, things can get a little hectic observing all of the festivities. And while you're lighting the turkey on fire, decorating the tree with kente, and wishing the people you're trampling at Best Buy "Happy Wintermas," it's easy to lose track of the true spirit of the holidays. We're here to give thanks to and celebrate the birthday of a very special person. We're talking, of course, about Danny DeVito.

Wikimedia CommonsHe sees you when you're sleeping.

Finally, we'll be able to properly observe and celebrate the birth of our grumpiest, shadiest of prophets. Last April, the fragrant state of New Jersey declared this November 17, 2018 the first official Danny DeVito Day, in honor of its most famous native son (suck it, Springsteen). And how does the Penguin feel about this gift? Mixed. "Of course, they first told me I could have a beach. Yeah, but they reneged," he said in an interview, which might be the most New Jersey response ever to getting a day named after you.

But it's still looking to be a great day, with celebrations led by New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and a great wave of pride coming over his hometown of Neptune Township. But people all over the world have been getting into the (ornery) spirit, presumably donning their boiled denim and apparently putting up their creepy DeVito shrines.

Now, outside of New Jersey, not a lot of places do the big traditional DeVito Day parades, where giant balloon Schwarzeneggers float through the sky and actors throw big wicker dolls of mommas off trains. But you can still get into the spirit with a more modern, intimate DeVito Day celebration: monster condoms hanging from the mantelpiece, one-sided debates on gun control, children playing Nightcrawlers (privately) while the adults feast on rum ham (or if you observe a religion that doesn't allow pork, crow's eggs marinated in Wolf Cola). Of course, don't forget to leave one seat on the couch empty, to symbolize the hope that the Trash Man will climb out of the cushions and scare the children into being good for a whole year.

Then, after the feast, everyone can whip out their favorite toe knife to open the many tiny presents -- because on Danny DeVito Day, good things come in small packages.

For more weirdness and his personal recipe for milk steak, you can follow Cedric on Twitter.

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We couldn't check the edit history, but we assume the original caption was "Napping in the yard."

And finally, one model, taking advantage of the fact that Malibu was trending as a geotag, simply posted a pinup shot. Hey, "Malibu" and "hot" were showing great metrics; surely no further investigation was needed.

Sarah Shahi is not staying away from the small screen for too long. 

The popular actress has landed a recurring role on ABC's The Rookie, reports TV Line. 

Shahi will play Jessica Russo, a "smart and intense rock star FBI agent"  who has "a subversive sense of humor."

Sarah most recently fronted Reverie on NBC, but the drama was canceled a few months back after a low-rated freshman run. 

Shahi is probably most well-known for her series regular role on Person of Interest, but she has also appeared on other well-known series like Chicago Fire, The L Word, and Alias.

Related: Reverie Canceled at NBC

The Rookie has been a moderate performer for ABC since its debut in October. It launched with a 1.0 rating in the demo but logged a series low 0.6 rating for its midseason premiere earlier this week. 

Despite the soft ratings, ABC is keeping the series around for the duration of the season. The network ordered seven additional episodes, bringing The Rookie Season 1 to 20 episodes. 

Still, the series is a marginal improvement in the demo over what Kevin (Probably) Saves the World was doing last season. 

Related: The Rookie Season 1 Episode 9 Review: Standoff

Nathan Fillion who fronts the series is also a well-liked star at ABC. Whether the network will keep the series around for the 2019-2020 season is another story. 

Being the second lowest-rated drama on the network is not a good measure of success, but its future will likely hinge on how its midseason dramas perform. 

Looking ahead, The Rookie Season 1 Episode 10 will air Tuesday at 10/9c. 

What are your thoughts on this news, TV Fanatics?

Hit the comments below. 

Remember you can watch The Rookie online right here via TV Fanatic. 

Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.

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Press conference for Biennale College Cinema and VR.

DB here:

As happened last year, I was invited to participate in the Biennale College Cinema Panel. This was the seventh year of the program, which supports the making of low-budget feature films by young people. Proposals, numbering in the hundreds, are reviewed, and out of those several projects are developed in workshops. After development, three projects are chosen for funding, to the tune of 150,000 euros each. You can read details of the program here.

It’s remarkable how much these filmmakers manage to do on this budget. Both last year and this year, I was impressed by the ambition and panache displayed in the films. None of the directors or producers are novices; many have extensive experience in media. Still, to make a feature is a massive accomplishment, and the flair and professionalism on display in the trio of films was heartening.

I was lucky to join a team of pros. Under the direction of Peter Cowie and Savina Neirotti, our group included Glenn Kenny, Mick LaSalle, Michael Phillips, Chris Vognar, and Stephanie Zacharek. Our task was, refreshingly, not to award prizes but simply to offer responses to the finished works. All these writers are steeped in modern and classic cinema, and they’re eager to share their experience with new talent.

One theme that emerged from our public session was the idea that all three films emphasized the slow revelation of character over rapid, audience-engaging plots. Very much in the tradition of European “art cinema,” they aim to entice us with intriguing, sometimes mysterious and contradictory individuals. We watch those individuals confront situations in which their personalities can be revealed or can undergo change. So the filmmaker’s problem becomes: How to create drama out of character?

Into the woods

The most mythlike film was Yuva, by Emre Yeksan of Turkey. We’re plunged into a lush forest landscape, and in extreme long shot we glimpse a shaggy figure bearing a carcass (pig? dog?) into an opening guarded by fallen branches. Is it a shelter, or a passageway to another realm? Both, as it turns out.

Without the familiar signposts–no backstory, no titles identifying time or place–and confronting a wordless protagonist, we’re obliged to pay attention to details of what we see and hear. As in many character-centered films, dramatic buildup is replaced by details of daily routines. In this case, our protagonist Veysel explores the forest, finds a stricken bird he tries to revive, and–now traditional drama starts–spies uniformed guards on patrol.

Another film would have started by showing logging companies slashing their way through the forest, immediately establishing a conflict. Here, we’re given the guards, the whine of a woodchipper offscreen, the thrashing of helicopters above, and anonymous hands painting red X’s on trees to be felled. We have to conjure up a drama out of fragments. Even the closer shots tend to keep the landscape on our minds, not least in hallucinatory images.

As the film goes on, we see Veysel slapping mud over the red crosses while evading the patrols. We meet new characters: a stricken woman Veysel carries to the secret shelter, and his brother Hasan, who has come to take him away because the mysterious patrolmen say “they’ll kill you if you don’t leave.” So suspense eventually emerges, but always subordinate to the concrete spectacle of mysterious behavior on the part of our protagonist. The climactic revelation of where that burrow leads pushes the film to a more mystical level. Yuva‘s enigmas of characterization are in the service of broader themes about sanctuary and rebirth.

Born in a cemetery

If Yuva is a landscape-based film, Deva, by Hungarian director Petra Szöcs, is more of a portrait. True, the title refers to the town in Romania where the action occurs, but it concentrates on Kato, a teenager with albinism who is adjusting to life in an orphanage.

Again, character emerges from routines. On her “free day,” Kato shops and smokes and experiments with harsh makeup. She also surprises us. “I was born in a cemetery.” “I killed a boy because he mocked me.” We assume she’s displaying bravado, but either way she engages us as a person before any highly dramatic action is launched.

Still, a plot does develop, centering on Kato’s relationships with her caregivers, infused by her belief in her magical powers. When the attractive and sympathetic Bogi joins the orphanage staff, Kato is drawn to her, and Bogi befriends her–to the point of allowing an indiscretion that will jeopardize their relationship and Bogi’s job. Kato also helps mastermind a piece of mischief that will discredit Anna, a less popular teacher.

Yuva favors distant shots and long takes, but in Deva, Szöcs relies on tight framings and layers of depth (often out of focus) to fragment her scenes. Faces and dialogue are often kept offscreen, the better to concentrate on Kato’s fascinating face and gestures.

Deva‘s laconic style itself becomes a source of curiosity for us, as bits of connective tissue are left out and we’re obliged to appraise the changes in Kato’s character. Our curiosity is enhanced by the performance of Csengelle Nagy as Kato, which is riveting in its sobriety and contrasts with the warm and extroverted Boglárka Komán in the role of Bogi. Again, narrative engagement emerges from the mysteries of personality rather than the pressures of an external situation.

On ice

I know it sounds too neat, but to some extent the landscape and portrait impulses find a balance in Zen in the Ice Rift, directed by Margherita Ferri. The action takes place in the majestic, somewhat menacing Italian Apennines, where Maia, nicknamed Zen, lives with her mother. As the only girl on the ice hockey team, Zen is mocked as a lesbian, and she has become hardened to the bullying she encounters. With her butch-flip hairdo and perpetual frown, she has a hair-trigger temper and all but begs people to fight with her.

One screenplay stratagem for gaining audience sympathy is to have your protagonist treated unfairly. This happens early on, when Zen is slammed by a player on the ice. She reacts by firing at her loitering teammates with a BB pistol. They get payback by locking her neck to a railing. Voilà: a sympathetic but imperfect protagonist, someone we can watch with keen interest as she must make decisions, bad or good.

Those decisions include accepting overtures of intimacy from Vanessa, the prototype of the beautiful, popular teenager. Zen’s sexual identity, confused from the outset, becomes the focus of the drama. This process develops in unexpected directions and leads to a climax that exhibits how teenagers’ use of social media can take bullying to a brutal level.

When Zen’s coach tells her at the beginning that she had a chance to try out for the national woman’s hockey team, I briefly thought we were going to get a sports film, in which the protagonist undergoes the rigors of training and the test of competition. No such thing. The focus is on Zen’s place in the world of teenagers. Her hockey talent is one part of her personality, not the source of goals and conflicts and ultimate triumphs, let alone “life lessons.”

Yet the sports element isn’t gratuitous. Ice becomes a metaphor in the course of the film, as insert shots show glaciers cracking while Zen is forced to confront her still-developing identity. At the end, when she takes to the rink in a burst of solitary confidence, we realize that her defiance hasn’t diminished. Zen in the Ice Rift shows how the drama of character can unfold in both a social setting and the larger milieu.

In addition to the feature films at the Biennale College, there were four Virtual Reality projects associated with the program. The three I saw  explored aspects of VR as a medium: awkward intimacy in Metro Veinte, the sense of sinister enclosure in Elegy (aka VRtigo), and the possibility of sampling an eerie landscape in Flood Plain, which extends the narrative situation and imagery of Yuva. At the same time, I thought that they would have made interesting films–which probably indicates that I see rather close affinities between VR and cinema.

Major differences, of course, include VR’s absence of a frame and the possibility of self-willed exploration. As members of our panel suggested, VR creators will need to find ways to motivate the presence of an onlooker in the virtual space, and, if storytelling is the goal of a project, to guide the viewer to salient elements. Narrative, we’ve known since forever, depends on controlling attention.

As ever, thanks to Paolo Baratta, Alberto Barbera, Peter Cowie, Michela Lazzarin, and all their colleagues for their warm welcome to this year’s Biennale. Thanks also to my colleagues on the panel for lively movie talk throughout our stay.

Last year’s College visit is discussed here, and my earlier journey into VR here.

Make the world go away: Venice Biennale VR theatre at Lazzaretto Vecchio.

Last Modified: Friday | September 7, 2018 @ 13:24    open printable version

This entry was posted on Friday | September 7, 2018 at 8:59 am and is filed under Festivals: Venice, Film comments, Virtual Reality. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Press conference for Biennale College Cinema and VR.

DB here:

As happened last year, I was invited to participate in the Biennale College Cinema Panel. This was the seventh year of the program, which supports the making of low-budget feature films by young people. Proposals, numbering in the hundreds, are reviewed, and out of those several projects are developed in workshops. After development, three projects are chosen for funding, to the tune of 150,000 euros each. You can read details of the program here.

It’s remarkable how much these filmmakers manage to do on this budget. Both last year and this year, I was impressed by the ambition and panache displayed in the films. None of the directors or producers are novices; many have extensive experience in media. Still, to make a feature is a massive accomplishment, and the flair and professionalism on display in the trio of films was heartening.

I was lucky to join a team of pros. Under the direction of Peter Cowie and Savina Neirotti, our group included Glenn Kenny, Mick LaSalle, Michael Phillips, Chris Vognar, and Stephanie Zacharek. Our task was, refreshingly, not to award prizes but simply to offer responses to the finished works. All these writers are steeped in modern and classic cinema, and they’re eager to share their experience with new talent.

One theme that emerged from our public session was the idea that all three films emphasized the slow revelation of character over rapid, audience-engaging plots. Very much in the tradition of European “art cinema,” they aim to entice us with intriguing, sometimes mysterious and contradictory individuals. We watch those individuals confront situations in which their personalities can be revealed or can undergo change. So the filmmaker’s problem becomes: How to create drama out of character?

Into the woods

The most mythlike film was Yuva, by Emre Yeksan of Turkey. We’re plunged into a lush forest landscape, and in extreme long shot we glimpse a shaggy figure bearing a carcass (pig? dog?) into an opening guarded by fallen branches. Is it a shelter, or a passageway to another realm? Both, as it turns out.

Without the familiar signposts–no backstory, no titles identifying time or place–and confronting a wordless protagonist, we’re obliged to pay attention to details of what we see and hear. As in many character-centered films, dramatic buildup is replaced by details of daily routines. In this case, our protagonist Veysel explores the forest, finds a stricken bird he tries to revive, and–now traditional drama starts–spies uniformed guards on patrol.

Another film would have started by showing logging companies slashing their way through the forest, immediately establishing a conflict. Here, we’re given the guards, the whine of a woodchipper offscreen, the thrashing of helicopters above, and anonymous hands painting red X’s on trees to be felled. We have to conjure up a drama out of fragments. Even the closer shots tend to keep the landscape on our minds, not least in hallucinatory images.

As the film goes on, we see Veysel slapping mud over the red crosses while evading the patrols. We meet new characters: a stricken woman Veysel carries to the secret shelter, and his brother Hasan, who has come to take him away because the mysterious patrolmen say “they’ll kill you if you don’t leave.” So suspense eventually emerges, but always subordinate to the concrete spectacle of mysterious behavior on the part of our protagonist. The climactic revelation of where that burrow leads pushes the film to a more mystical level. Yuva‘s enigmas of characterization are in the service of broader themes about sanctuary and rebirth.

Born in a cemetery

If Yuva is a landscape-based film, Deva, by Hungarian director Petra Szöcs, is more of a portrait. True, the title refers to the town in Romania where the action occurs, but it concentrates on Kato, a teenager with albinism who is adjusting to life in an orphanage.

Again, character emerges from routines. On her “free day,” Kato shops and smokes and experiments with harsh makeup. She also surprises us. “I was born in a cemetery.” “I killed a boy because he mocked me.” We assume she’s displaying bravado, but either way she engages us as a person before any highly dramatic action is launched.

Still, a plot does develop, centering on Kato’s relationships with her caregivers, infused by her belief in her magical powers. When the attractive and sympathetic Bogi joins the orphanage staff, Kato is drawn to her, and Bogi befriends her–to the point of allowing an indiscretion that will jeopardize their relationship and Bogi’s job. Kato also helps mastermind a piece of mischief that will discredit Anna, a less popular teacher.

Yuva favors distant shots and long takes, but in Deva, Szöcs relies on tight framings and layers of depth (often out of focus) to fragment her scenes. Faces and dialogue are often kept offscreen, the better to concentrate on Kato’s fascinating face and gestures.

Deva‘s laconic style itself becomes a source of curiosity for us, as bits of connective tissue are left out and we’re obliged to appraise the changes in Kato’s character. Our curiosity is enhanced by the performance of Csengelle Nagy as Kato, which is riveting in its sobriety and contrasts with the warm and extroverted Boglárka Komán in the role of Bogi. Again, narrative engagement emerges from the mysteries of personality rather than the pressures of an external situation.

On ice

I know it sounds too neat, but to some extent the landscape and portrait impulses find a balance in Zen in the Ice Rift, directed by Margherita Ferri. The action takes place in the majestic, somewhat menacing Italian Apennines, where Maia, nicknamed Zen, lives with her mother. As the only girl on the ice hockey team, Zen is mocked as a lesbian, and she has become hardened to the bullying she encounters. With her butch-flip hairdo and perpetual frown, she has a hair-trigger temper and all but begs people to fight with her.

One screenplay stratagem for gaining audience sympathy is to have your protagonist treated unfairly. This happens early on, when Zen is slammed by a player on the ice. She reacts by firing at her loitering teammates with a BB pistol. They get payback by locking her neck to a railing. Voilà: a sympathetic but imperfect protagonist, someone we can watch with keen interest as she must make decisions, bad or good.

Those decisions include accepting overtures of intimacy from Vanessa, the prototype of the beautiful, popular teenager. Zen’s sexual identity, confused from the outset, becomes the focus of the drama. This process develops in unexpected directions and leads to a climax that exhibits how teenagers’ use of social media can take bullying to a brutal level.

When Zen’s coach tells her at the beginning that she had a chance to try out for the national woman’s hockey team, I briefly thought we were going to get a sports film, in which the protagonist undergoes the rigors of training and the test of competition. No such thing. The focus is on Zen’s place in the world of teenagers. Her hockey talent is one part of her personality, not the source of goals and conflicts and ultimate triumphs, let alone “life lessons.”

Yet the sports element isn’t gratuitous. Ice becomes a metaphor in the course of the film, as insert shots show glaciers cracking while Zen is forced to confront her still-developing identity. At the end, when she takes to the rink in a burst of solitary confidence, we realize that her defiance hasn’t diminished. Zen in the Ice Rift shows how the drama of character can unfold in both a social setting and the larger milieu.

In addition to the feature films at the Biennale College, there were four Virtual Reality projects associated with the program. The three I saw  explored aspects of VR as a medium: awkward intimacy in Metro Veinte, the sense of sinister enclosure in Elegy (aka VRtigo), and the possibility of sampling an eerie landscape in Flood Plain, which extends the narrative situation and imagery of Yuva. At the same time, I thought that they would have made interesting films–which probably indicates that I see rather close affinities between VR and cinema.

Major differences, of course, include VR’s absence of a frame and the possibility of self-willed exploration. As members of our panel suggested, VR creators will need to find ways to motivate the presence of an onlooker in the virtual space, and, if storytelling is the goal of a project, to guide the viewer to salient elements. Narrative, we’ve known since forever, depends on controlling attention.

As ever, thanks to Paolo Baratta, Alberto Barbera, Peter Cowie, Michela Lazzarin, and all their colleagues for their warm welcome to this year’s Biennale. Thanks also to my colleagues on the panel for lively movie talk throughout our stay.

Last year’s College visit is discussed here, and my earlier journey into VR here.

Make the world go away: Venice Biennale VR theatre at Lazzaretto Vecchio.

Last Modified: Friday | September 7, 2018 @ 13:24    open printable version

This entry was posted on Friday | September 7, 2018 at 8:59 am and is filed under Festivals: Venice, Film comments, Virtual Reality. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Pete Davidson has spoken out for the first time on his split with fiancée Ariana Grande. 

Earlier this week, the comedian canceled a performance at Philadelphia’s Temple University, but the Saturday Night Live star appeared as scheduled at the Judd & Pete For America -- A Benefit to Swing Left event Saturday night in Los Angeles at Largo at the Coronet.

Judd Apatow opened the show with a solo stand-up set, then brought out Tig Notaro, followed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers co-founder Benmont Tench, who, for his final song, delivered a rendition of “American Girl.”

“Who the f--k wants to follow that?” Davidson, the next act, asked the 280-seat crowd. “Am I not going through enough that I have to f---ing follow that?”

Davidson and Grande broke up last weekend. Their engagement first made headlines in mid-June, a few weeks into their relationship.

Davidson further addressed his breakup, saying, “Well, as you can tell, I don’t want to be here. There’s a lot going on. Anybody have any open rooms? Anybody looking for a roommate?”

“I’ve been covering a bunch of tattoos, that’s fun. I’m f---ing 0-for-2 in the tattoo department," Davidson continued. "Yeah, I’m afraid to get my mom tattooed on me because she’d leave.”

The two-and-a-half hour fundraiser wrapped following additional stand-up from Pete Holmes (Apatow executives produces and sometimes directs his HBO series, Crashing), plus a piano-side cover of “When You Wish Upon a Star” by recent Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story Emmy winner Darren Criss.

This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.

Silicon Valley star Zach Woods is making tracks to Avenue 5, HBO’s sci-fi comedy pilot from Veep creator Armando Iannucci.

The potential series, which the cabler describes as a futuristic satire set mostly in space, stars Hugh Laurie as the captain of the intergalactic cruise ship Avenue 5. Woods will play the series-regular role of Matt Spencer, Avenue 5’s head of Customer Relations. Despite being a nihilist, Matt is a nice guy who can’t wait to get to the end of his final cruise before promotion to a more senior role on Earth. He has a performance background, but gave up trying to make it as an entertainer years ago.

Avenue 5‘s ensemble also includes Rebecca Front (Humans) and Suzy Nakamura (Dr. Ken). HBO ordered a pilot as well as several back-up scripts in September.

Woods’ casting comes three months after TVLine reported that production on Silicon Valley‘s sixth (and possibly final) season — which will include Woods — has been delayed until Summer 2019, a move that will likely keep the series off the air until 2020.