In Mad Mabel, Sally Hepworth hands the microphone to Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick: eighty-one, six feet tall, and once the youngest murderer in Australian history. When a nosy seven-year-old and a true-crime podcast drag her secrets into the open, the past she has buried for sixty-six years finally wants its turn to speak. The post Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth appeared first on The Bookish Elf. Source link
Any time a Democrat comes along who dares to fight back, the Republican outrage machine goes to work. Political toughness becomes “divisiveness” and governing is made scandalous. That’s exactly what is happening right now to Abigail Spanberger. A former CIA officer who flipped a swing House district in northern Virginia twice, Spanberger has now been governor of the commonwealth for roughly four months. She is the first woman to hold that office after winning in November with 57% of the vote, the highest share for any Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Virginia since Albertis Harrison in 1961. She gave the Democratic Party’s response to Donald Trump’s State of the Union address in February. And now the spin machine has kicked into overdrive. Led by Fox News, which published 11 stories critical of Spanberger in the past week, the right has unleashed its full media arsenal on the Democrat. The central charge is that the governor, after campaigning as a moderate, has quickly revealed herself to be a tax-and-spend liberal and a radical ideologue. “She campaigned as …
In 1961, William F. Buckley Jr. had a problem. The preeminent intellectual of the conservative movement was being outflanked to his right by the John Birch Society. Founded just three years earlier, the group had grown to tens of thousands of members, fueled by its claim that Communists had infiltrated the highest levels of the U.S. government. Buckley reportedly complained at the time that he was incessantly asked about the organization. By 1962, Buckley had had enough. In what conservatives have since heralded as a principled maneuver, Buckley used the pages of his magazine, National Review, to excoriate Robert Welch, the society’s leader, as a ham-fisted operator who was unable to understand nuance, who was incapable of leading a proper right-wing movement, and who “anathematizes all who disagree with him.” Buckley’s diatribe is credited with limiting the influence of the Birchers, as they were known, in mainstream politics. Buckley’s fight has been replicated by high-brow conservatives in other eras when they believe that the conspiratorially minded among their brethren have gone too far and risk …
Jon Hamm has never been one to shy away from reinvention. More than a decade after Mad Men cemented his place as one of television’s most magnetic leading men, the 55-year-old actor is enjoying life that feels not only expansive, but deeply fulfilling, and, perhaps surprisingly, he credits that sense of contentment to getting older. After Mad Men wrapped in 2015, Jon seamlessly transitioned into a string of standout roles, from Fargo’s chilling sheriff to the charismatic tech billionaire opposite Jennifer Aniston in The Morning Show, and even a brilliantly self-aware turn as “Jon Hamm” in Curb Your Enthusiasm. Now, he’s back on our screens in Your Friends & Neighbors, with season two premiering April 3 on Apple TV, where he plays disgraced hedge fund manager Andrew “Coop” Cooper, a man quietly unravelling behind the glossy façade of suburban wealth. © Getty ImagesAt 55 Jon is loving life Yet while his on-screen characters often wrestle with dissatisfaction beneath success, Jon himself seems to have reached a far more peaceful place. “If you’ve made it this far, …
RoseMarie Terenzio has many fond memories of John F. Kennedy Jr.: the green velvet Gucci suit he wore to a company Christmas party; how he’d run Kiehl’s Silk Groom through his enviable mane and toss on a hat to flatten his hair; or the way, if designers sent him suits or ties, he’d often gift them to guys in the office. “He liked to look nice and dress nice,” says Terenzio, who was Kennedy Jr.’s assistant from 1994 until his death in 1999 and the author of JFK Jr.: An Intimate Oral Biography. “He liked nice suits, but he wasn’t someone who needed 20. He always felt like if he had some sort of privilege, he would share it.” JFK Jr. is back in the spotlight, some 27 years after his and his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s tragic deaths, thanks to the Ryan Murphy-produced FX series Love Story, the most-watched limited series on Hulu and Disney+ to date, which concluded its nine-episode run last night. While Bessette Kennedy—or CBK, as she is often called—is an …
Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Jimmy Kimmel took aim at Donald Trump while presenting an award at the 2026 Oscars. Kimmel kicked his rivalry with the U.S. president back into gear when announcing the winner for Best Documentary Feature – poking fun at Melania Trump’s critically maligned documentary released earlier this year. “Oh man, is he gonna be made his wife wasn’t nominated for this,” Kimmel said without specifically name-checking Trump. A documentary about the First Lady was released in January and, despite struggling to sell tickets ahead of time, it surpassed expectations, grossing $7 million on its opening weekend. open image in gallery Jimmy Kimmel was up to his old Trump-mocking ways at the Oscars as he present the award for Best Documentary Short Film (Getty Images) Kimmel previously commented on the takings, saying on his show:“Speaking of rigged outcomes, the Melania documentary. A lot of …
Film is personal. When we watch a movie we love, we want to see it get the respect we feel it deserves. And when that movie is up for an Oscar, the prestige factor augments our hope and anticipation. But choosing which film to award is about more than just merit. The Oscars are a celebration of film, but they’re also a competition — an election, really. Studios and artists campaign for votes like politicians. Glitzy Los Angeles luncheons and star-studded parties are as much about hob-nobbing with Academy members as they are keeping films part of the larger conversation in the weeks before and during voting. If you’re Melissa Leo, you might even take out your own for-your-consideration ad to remind voters of your prowess. Or, if you’re Timothée Chalamet, you’ll go the “all press is good press” route, remaining the name on everyone’s lips by talking so much that you don’t realize you’ve been speaking with your foot in your mouth. Last week, a small section of CNN and Variety’s February town hall …
On Saturday afternoon, Austin Tucker Martin, a 21-year-old golf course groundskeeper and illustrator, left his home in North Carolina and began a 10-hour drive south to president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. Early Sunday morning, Martin reportedly walked into Mar-a-Lago with a shotgun and a can of fuel; he was then shot and killed by Secret Service agents and officers from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office. Martin was, according to friends, a vocal Trump supporter. His cousin told the Associated Press, “We are big Trump supporters, all of us”—though they added that Martin rarely discussed politics. Law enforcement have not speculated on Martin’s motive, but a few days before the incident, Martin reportedly texted a coworker: “I don’t know if you read up on the Epstein Files, but evil is real and unmistakable,” according to texts obtained by TMZ. “The best people like you and I can do is use what little influence we have. Tell other people about what you hear about the Epstein files and what the government is …
Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter After you make a hit like Derry Girls, what then? Lisa McGee’s Channel 4 comedy, which charted the lives of a gang of gobby girls and one wee English fella at a convent school during the Troubles, aired from 2018 to 2022 and became the most-watched series in Northern Ireland since records began. But it travelled, too. Martin Scorsese is among its famous fans – “Those nuns!” he marvelled. It made stars of the cast, from Nicola Coughlan to Siobhan McSweeney. And its final season won three Baftas and an Emmy – with the very last episode, about the Good Friday Agreement, praised for teaching English viewers more about that moment in history than any lesson ever did. Following that, you’d surely be feeling under a bit of pressure when writing your next show. How do you match it? But the …
When a startup announced plans last fall to recreate lost footage from Orson Welles’ classic film “The Magnificent Ambersons” using generative AI, I was skeptical. More than that, I was baffled why anyone would spend time and money on something that seemed guaranteed to outrage cinephiles while offering negligible commercial value. This week, an in-depth profile by the New Yorker’s Michael Schulman provides more details about the project. If nothing else, it helps explain why the startup Fable and its founder Edward Saatchi are pursuing it: It seems to come from a genuine love of Welles and his work. Saatchi (whose father was a founder of advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi) recalled a childhood of watching films in a private screening room with his “movie mad” parents. He said he first saw “Ambersons” when he was twelve. The profile also explains why “Ambersons,” while much less famous than Welles’ first film “Citizen Kane,” remains so tantalizing — Welles himself claimed it was a “much better picture” than “Kane,” but after a disastrous preview screening, the …
