The Daily Beast Latest Articles
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Opinion: ‘Good-Natured’ Trump Trial Lawyer Is Turning Into His Accomplice Mark Peterson - Pool / Getty Images All through the hush-money trial, Donald Trump has excoriated Judge Juan Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as corrupt thugs.So, you might assume that Trump will blame them and not the lead defense attorney Todd Blanche if the case ends in a conviction.But Trump has his own logic. He repeatedly leveled the same insults at Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Erdogan and New York State Attorney General Leticia James during the civil fraud case that led to a $464 million judgment against him. And yet he was quick to blame his defense attorney in that case, Susan Necheles.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Special Counsel Seeks Gag Order Over Trump’s ‘Locked & Loaded’ Claim Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images Prosecutors in Donald Trump’s classified documents case have asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to impose a gag order on the indicted former president after he falsely told his supporters that federal agents were prepared to kill him.Trump’s false accusation—that FBI agents were “authorized to shoot me” and were “locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger” when they executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022—was propagated by many Republicans. The FBI, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and several reporters noted that that was a misrepresentation of a basic policy statement, with the same language having been in effect when the agency searched Biden’s Delaware home for classified documents.Prosecutors urged Cannon to bar Trump from making public statements that “pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Nepo Baby of the Week: Demi Moore’s ‘Gremlin Dog’ Stuns Cannes Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesNepo babies are a dime a dozen at the Cannes Film Festival, but this week, one of them has really stood out from the pack. Her name is Pilaf Moore. Perhaps you’ve heard of her? The daughter of Demi Moore, whom The Cut once described as having “all the hallmarks of an ‘It’ girl,” has been stealing attention left and right as she accompanies her mother at press events for her spicy new film The Substance. The breathless exaltations have been rolling in from stunned onlookers and even Vogue, which praised the Moores as “the beauty stars of Cannes.”At this point, Demi and Pilaf have clearly won Best in Show—which makes sense, given that Pilaf is not a human baby but a tiny chihuahua.Not since Paris Hilton and the 2000s purse dog trend have we seen such a high-profile pooch. Pilaf has been making headlines since last year, and, given her immaculate performance at Cannes, her star only seems destined to climb higher and higher. This girl can do anything: rock a lobster costume, stage a casual hang with the girls, and even make an Elizabethan collar look cool. Apparently, Moore’s nickname for her is “Pilaf the Little Mouse,” which is just cute enough for me to stop wondering how much inbreeding it took to produce a dog that looks like this.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Vivek Ramaswamy Repeatedly Gets Booed by Libertarians for Mentioning Trump David Dee Delgado/Getty Images Vivek Ramaswamy was met with a wave of boos at the Libertarian National Convention on Friday for mentioning Donald Trump on the eve of the former president’s speech there. The failed Republican presidential candidate was speaking at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C., when he got a distinctly negative reaction from the audience for mentioning Trump, whose planned speech on Saturday has led to calls for protest among libertarians. Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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‘Right in the Butt’: Dirty ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Fail Belongs in Hall of Fame Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images and ABCThis week:Game Show Fails Are the Best FailsApologies if, at around 7:45 p.m. Thursday night, you heard a faint high pitch noise that lasted for a full minute. That was me shrieking while watching Wheel of Fortune and witnessing a Greatest of All Time inappropriate answer to a clue.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Louisiana Passes Law Classifying Abortion Pills as ‘Controlled Dangerous Substances’ Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty ImagesLouisiana’s governor signed a bill into law Friday that classifies two abortion-inducing drugs as “controlled dangerous substances.”Republican Governor Jeff Landry announced the new law in a post on X. “Requiring an abortion inducing drug to be obtained with a prescription and criminalizing the use of an abortion drug on an unsuspecting mother is nothing short of common sense,” he wrote. “This bill protects women across Louisiana and I was proud to sign this bill into law today.”He also thanked state Sen. Thomas Pressly, who is largely responsible for the bill, which nearly 270 Louisiana health-care professionals urged against.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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RFK Jr. Desperately Wants in on the Brain Worm Jokes Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesRobert F. Kennedy Jr. wants everyone to know he’s in on the jokes about his brain worm.At the Libertarian National Convention on Friday, the struggling presidential candidate included a punchline about the dead worm that doctors discovered in his brain, during one of his classic speeches about the COVID-19 pandemic.“Again and again, they’ve cited some pretext to suspend and volunteer, and violate our constitutional rights. There is always a reason why right now the rights are an inconvenience that we can’t afford. It was the red scare in the 1920s. It was John McCarthy in the 1950s. It was civil rights protests and Vietnam war protesters in the 1960s. It was the war on drugs in the 1970s. It was the war on terror after 2001. And most recently, it was the COVID pandemic,” he said.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Trumpworld Claims 25,000 People Attended His Rally. Aerial Shots Show Otherwise. ABC7 via YouTubeTrumpworld is once again splintering from reality. This time, the diversion relates to counting—specifically, how many people attended Donald Trump’s rally in the Bronx on Thursday.Trump, who has long obsessed over the size of crowds at his events, shared an article from Right Side Broadcasting Network to his Truth Social account that quoted the Trump campaign as saying 25,000 people attended the “electrifying” event. The New York Times reported that Trump’s team had acquired a permit for an event for 3,500 people. “The sheer numbers show the great enthusiasm that President Trump has gained among voters in even the bluest areas of the United States,” the Right-Side Broadcasting Network article crowed.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Trump’s Apparent VP Contender Proudly Flies Jan. 6-Linked Flag Anna Moneymaker/GettySen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who is reportedly a top contender for Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, has jumped on the bandwagon of flying the Christian nationalist “Appeal To Heaven” flag.Cotton proudly announced on social media that he had installed the flag outside his Senate office. “I stand with George Washington and Martha-Ann Alito over pearl-clutching libs at the New York Times and Democrats in Congress,” he wrote.While Cotton correctly identified the flag’s Revolutionary War origins, it was more recently co-opted by religious pro-Trump insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol. According to a New York Times report this week, it was seen last summer hanging outside conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s vacation house, a decidedly controversial piece of decor for a supposedly apolitical judge who ruled that Trump could not be removed from the 2024 ballot for fomenting an insurrection.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Justice Alito’s Beach Home Neighbors Sound Off on That Jan. 6 Flag Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyAbout 45 minutes past the Garden State Parkway’s Judy Blume Service Area, itself precisely 24 miles southeast of the Jon Bon Jovi Service Area, the original Ron Jon Surf Shop appears, like a Jersey Shore apparition, just off Route 72.Roughly 15 minutes down Ocean County Road 607, beyond Boulevard Clams and Lenny & John’s Subs—if you pass Mustache Bill’s Diner, you’ve gone too far—sits an unremarkable beach house on a cul-de-sac by Barnegat Bay.What set it apart from the others on the Thursday before the Memorial Day weekend was the federal agent sitting outside in an unmarked Ford Taurus with dark tinted windows and U.S. government plates. Because the four-bedroom, three-bathroom Long Beach Island property is where the New Jersey-born-and-raised Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and his wife Martha spend their summers.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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The Complicated Legacy of Morgan Spurlock’s ‘Super Size Me’ Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Roadside Attractions and Getty ImagesMorgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me documentary hit the cultural lexicon with fervor. Spurlock, who died this week at age 53, experienced massive success on the heels of the 2004 film, which would end up grossing $22 million on a $65,000 budget. Super Size Me became such a cultural juggernaut that it was regularly shown to students at school, with Spurlock and team releasing an edited version of the film just for that purpose after it was nominated for an Oscar.The impact of watching Spurlock eat nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days, along with the purported health effects of doing so, sparked a wave of criticism of McDonald’s and fast food in general. However, 20 years later, the fast food industry is doing better than ever—and the health claims the doc makes have been called into question.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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The Real Reason Texas Judge ‘Vanished’ After Haunting Trial Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/FacebookKelli Johnson, a Texas district court judge who has not been seen since the beginning of the month is not “missing,” her brother told The Daily Beast—she is out on medical leave.The rumors about Harris County Judge Johnson began swirling earlier this week, when local news station ABC13 reported had been mysteriously “absent” from her post at the 178th Criminal Court since May 1. Coworkers told the outlet she was exhibiting “manic” behavior before she disappeared and was a “danger to herself and to the community.”But Clay Johnson, the judge’s brother and a local attorney, told The Daily Beast his sister was “fine” and that her family and wife are in “daily contact with her.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Why Hasn’t J.Lo Denounced Diddy Yet? Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images and ReutersIn the past few weeks alone, everyone from 50 Cent to Charlamagne Tha God to Aubrey O’Day to Chaka Khan's adult daughter has taken the opportunity to speak out against Sean “Diddy” Combs, whose physical abuse of his ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, was caught on recently unearthed surveillance video.Combs, who is at the center of several lawsuits accusing him of sexual misconduct and rape, got sued by a seventh accuser just this week. Former FIT student April Lampros describes harrowing physical and emotional abuse that she allegedly experienced at the hands of the rapper and mogul. And during the fourth and final alleged assault, the suit states, Combs was in “a very public relationship” with Jennifer Lopez.As the charges against Combs continue to stack up, some of his other exes have begun to come forward to denounce his actions, including Ventura. But Lopez has remained conspicuously silent.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Teen Arrested for Bloody Attack on UCLA’s Pro-Palestine Encampment Wally Skalij/Getty ImagesUCLA police on Thursday arrested a pro-Israel counterprotester for his role in the violent April 30 attack on a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus, the first such arrest made in relation to the incident.Edan On, 18, was detained in Beverly Hills and booked on Thursday into the Los Angeles County Jail on suspicion of felony assault with a deadly weapon, according to police and jail records. He was being held on $30,000 bail.On was identified by CNN last week as one of the attackers. He is not a student but a local high school senior, his mother told CNN, though she later denied he was at the protest at all. Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Republican Rep’s Daughter and Son-in-Law Killed in Haiti Gang Attack Rep. Ben Baker/FacebookMissouri State Rep. Ben Baker’s said Friday his “heart is broken in a thousand pieces” after his daughter and son-in-law were taken hostage then later killed by a gang in Haiti.His daughter and son-in-law, Natalie and Davy Lloyd, were among a group of missionaries who were ambushed as they left a church on Thursday, the nonprofit Missions in Haiti Inc. wrote on Facebook.A gang of “3 trucks full of guys,” whisked the group away, the nonprofit wrote in a frantic post on Facebook calling for “urgent prayers.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Bodies of 3 More Israeli Hostages Recovered, Including Shani Louk’s Boyfriend Vladimir Pesnya/GettyThe Israel Defense Forces have recovered the bodies of three more hostages who were abducted by Hamas in Gaza, including the boyfriend of 22-year-old Shani Louk, a hostage whose remains were recovered last week.The bodies of Orion Hernandez Radoux, 30, Hanan Yablonka, 42, and Michel Nisenbaum, 59, were recovered from northern Gaza in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said Friday. Based on “reliable intelligence information in our possession,” the IDF believes the three men were killed during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Hagari wrote on X.Hernandez Radoux, a Mexican-French citizen, was the boyfriend of Louk, whose body was recovered last week in a similar joint operation in Gaza. Louk and Hernandez Radoux were attending the Nova music festival near the border when Hamas attacked, and a sickening image of Louk became a symbol of the brutality of the massacre.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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The Guru Helping Biden Court Nikki Haley’s Voters Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/ReutersWelcome to Trail Mix, your 2024 election sanity guide. See something interesting on the trail? Email me at jake.lahut@thedailybeast.com. To get Trail Mix in your inbox, subscribe here for free.This week, we check in on Nikki Haley voters after her big announcement. Plus a look at what’s going on with President Biden’s Latino polling woes, and some new Kennedy-Shanahan J6 shenanigans.—Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Morgan Spurlock, ‘Super Size Me’ Documentary Director, Dead at 53 Neil Hall/ReutersMorgan Spurlock, the Oscar-nominated director who starred in the documentary Super Size Me, has died, his family announced Friday. He was 53.The filmmaker’s family said in a statement that he “passed away peacefully surrounded by family and friends” on Thursday, according to The Guardian. The statement said his death was caused by complications related to cancer.Spurlock had been receiving chemotherapy earlier this year, Deadline reports. “It was a sad day, as we said goodbye to my brother Morgan,” his brother and documentary collaborator, Craig Spurlock, said. “Morgan gave so much through his art, ideas, and generosity. The world has lost a true creative genius and a special man. I am so proud to have worked together with him.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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International Court of Justice Orders Israel to Stop Its Offensive in Rafah Now Yves HermanThe International Court of Justice on Friday ordered Israel to halt its military offensive in Rafah, the city in southern Gaza where displaced Palestinians have sought shelter from the conflict. The decision from the court in The Hague followed a request from South Africa’s lawyers last week seeking emergency measures to order Israel to immediately withdraw its forces from the area.Before announcing its decision, the court noted that the situation in Rafah has “deteriorated further” since its last order, and that the humanitarian situation in the city is now “disastrous.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Lady Gaga’s ‘Chromatica Ball’ Film Oozes With Joy and Sweat HBOThe start of the COVID-19 pandemic gave us some of the absolute worst media imaginable. Anne Hathaway’s luxury department store heist movie was mind-numbing, despite all of those words together suggesting something incredible. Judd Apatow’s latest effort left everyone wishing the pandemic had shut down its production. For god sake, Bette motherfucking Midler agreed to be in an HBO original movie called Coastal Elites. It was a time of deep crisis.But what stands as one of the biggest pop-cultural tragedies of that time, at least for my gay ass, was the scrapped promotional rollout for Lady Gaga’s Chromatica. The superstar’s long-awaited sixth album ignited the weary souls of fans when its first single was announced in February 2020, just two weeks before the world shut down. Initially, Gaga planned an expansive album launch, the kind she pioneered for the modern pop singer—and that her own career had not seen since 2013’s hotly contested ARTPOP era. For Chromatica, Gaga had planned a surprise Coachella performance alongside Blackpink, award show performances, a worldwide promo tour, and “lots of other fun surprises” that had to be discarded when it became clear that COVID was very much here to stay. And then, there was the Chromatica Ball, the world tour originally planned for summer 2020 and that had to be delayed so many times, it became a joke among Gaga’s fans.Of all of the what-ifs that remain from the Chromatica era, its tour is not one. The show went ahead in summer 2022, selling out each of its 20 dates. Now, the sweeping production is making its way to your living room, with a high-energy concert film, Gaga Chromatica Ball, debuting on HBO May 25. The film is Gaga’s first professionally recorded concert since 2011’s Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour, which earned the singer raves while her nascent star was quickly rising. Thirteen years later, this new special replicates all of the excitement that swirled around the singer in those early years. It’s an exhilarating watch from start to finish, bolstering an already stellar show with trippy editing and crisp, stylistic filmmaking. The film refines Gaga’s big, offbeat ideas and makes them palatable enough for the average viewer, luring them into Chromatica’s pulsating electropop soundscape. Maintaining that pull for this long is a feat in and of itself, but Gaga Chromatica Ball feels like a victory lap. The movie is a celebration of the singer’s ability to pull herself and her art out of unprecedented global destruction, amplifying the album’s core themes with stunning new resonance.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Travis Kelce Finally Responded to That Divisive Harrison Butker Speech Mark J. Rebilas/USA Today Sports via ReutersTravis Kelce says he didn’t agree with “just about any” of what his Kansas City Chiefs teammate Harrison Butker said during his extremely controversial commencement speech at a Catholic college earlier this month.The backlash was swift and furious to Butker’s speech, in which he took swipes at abortion and Pride Month and emphasized to the young women graduating the importance of being a “homemaker.” He also appeared to invoke the lyrics of Kelce’s girlfriend, Taylor Swift, at one point, saying: “As my teammate’s girlfriend says, ‘Familiarity breeds contempt.’”“I think Pat said it best where he is every bit of a great person and a great teammate,” Kelce said on Friday’s episode of his New Heights podcast, which he hosts alongside his former NFL player brother, Jason Kelce. Travis Kelce was referring to comments made earlier this week by Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, in which he said he judged Butker by “the character he shows every single day, and that’s a good person.”Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Demi Moore Brutally Calls Out Audience Member While Introducing Cher in Cannes Ryan Emberley/amfAR via GettyDemi Moore just really wants everyone to show Cher the respect she deserves.Moore was introducing the legendary singer with a heartfelt tribute on stage in France at a fundraiser gala for AIDS research on Thursday night when she appeared to become frustrated with someone in the audience. “Are you an Emmy winner over there in the back of the room?” she said. “I fucking don’t think so.”The Ghost actress was speaking at the benefit held by amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, at an event that runs annually in parallel to the nearby Cannes Film Festival. Moore opened this year’s event and her introduction to Cher was filmed and posted on X by Ramin Setoodeh, a co-editor in chief of Variety.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Despite New Yorker Investigation, Nurse Lucy Letby Loses Baby Killer Appeal Cheshire Constabulary via GettyA British nurse considered to be one of the U.K.’s most prolific child serial killers in modern times has been refused permission to appeal her convictions over the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of another six.Lucy Letby on Friday lost her latest attempt to seek to overturn the convictions in a decision taken by England and Wales’ Court of Appeal. The 34-year-old was found guilty in August of fatally attacking children in her care at a neonatal unit at a hospital in northwest England between 2015 and 2016.Judge Victoria Sharp said at a brief hearing Friday the court had “decided to refuse leave to appeal on all grounds and refuse all associated applications,” according to the BBC. The judge said a full judgment will be provided at a later date.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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We All Got The Beach Boys Wrong—This Film Gets Them Right Disney+Perhaps no major band has ever been hounded by such a highly prescriptive sense of expectation as the Beach Boys. For millions of listeners, they were a group whose primary function—and job—was to deliver catchy hits of surf and sun, cool cars, and trips to the movies with your “steady.” Because that’s what they had done so well from their very first recordings.The music within the grooves of those early records enveloped the listener in a gold and blue world of warmth, water, wakefulness, the possibility of the new day. The Beach Boys’ music spoke—sang—to joy, with songs that functioned as an open invitation to lend one’s own voice to them, never mind that they featured the harmonies of the gods. You simply felt good listening to the Beach Boys.Then there are those in the know, who realized somewhere along the Beach Boys’ journey that this was music as adventurous as a dream. That idea of the oneiric state—and all the wonder to be sourced therein—is the key theme of directors Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny’s two-hour-long Disney+ documentary, The Beach Boys. It arises again and again, as if these Beach Boys were purveyors of the kind of clarity that originates with mystery, rather than singsong simplicity.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Kate Middleton ‘May Not Appear in Public for Rest of the Year’: Sources Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesThe Princess of Wales will probably “not appear in public for the rest of the year,” and is being “surrounded” by her birth family as she continues a course of preventive chemotherapy having been diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, royal sources and friends of Kate Middleton and Prince William have told The Daily Beast.Kate and her family are expected to spend next week, which is a school holiday, at her and William’s country home on the Sandringham Estate. Her parents, to whom she is close, are thought likely to visit her.William is expected to devote even more time to his family over the next six weeks having been unexpectedly gifted time off after the royal family said they would be stepping back from some engagements to avoid distracting from a snap U.K. general election called this week and due to take place on July 4.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Opinion: The Sad Reality About SCOTUS Justice Samuel Alito’s Flag Revelations Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyListen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito may have been caught, not once but twice, with two different flags outside his homes that tell us exactly what he thinks about this country, but The New Abnormal co-hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie don’t believe the outrage will lead to any substantial change.Reports out of The New York Times this week showed, with pictures included, Alito’s Virginia home proudly displaying an upside-down flag prior to Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration. Then, in 2023, Alito’s New Jersey vacation house was spotted with an “Appeal to Heaven” flag. Though Alito claimed ignorance and lay the blame on his wife, both the flags lead to concerns over the supposedly nonpartisan judge’s ties to the MAGA community and Christian nationalism.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Counterpoint: ‘Furiosa’ Is an Underwhelming Retread of ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures“Do you have it in you to make it epic?” bellows Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), big-bearded warlord and would-be ruler of the wasteland, in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Writer/director George Miller sure does, crafting his prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road as an even grander vision of post-apocalyptic survival and warfare, complete with gnarly set pieces that roar and rumble with unbridled ferocity. In terms of look, scope, and attitude, this eagerly anticipated follow-up ably matches its predecessor, thereby reconfirming its maker’s status as film’s preeminent virtuoso of V8 chaos and madness, and reestablishing the franchise as Hollywood’s most deliriously deranged.Yet despite its numerous virtues, Furiosa, which hits theaters May 24, is a somewhat underwhelming beast, and that has less to do with execution than concept. Co-scripted by Nico Lathouris, the latest installment in Miller’s long-running saga is the first to go out of its way to not reimagine its material in some novel fashion. From the hyperactive indie grunge of Mad Max to the rugged widescreen splendor of The Road Warrior, the daffy Spielbergian extravagance of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, and the maniacal speed-freak insanity of Mad Max: Fury Road: The writer/director has treated his series as a venue for startling creative experimentation. By doing so, he’s kept it not only fresh, but vital. With Furiosa, however, he chooses to follow the playbook he penned less than a decade ago. Consequently, the results are—for better and worse—only as epic as you’d expect.Furiosa strives for majesty from its biblical opening scene of a young Furiosa (Alyla Browne) picking an apple from a tree, at which point she immediately spies biker-gang intruders in her lush Eden home. Despite exhibiting considerable feistiness, the girl is snatched, instigating a pursuit to reclaim her by her mother (Charlee Fraser), who’s a deft rider and even handier with a sniper rifle. Nonetheless, Furiosa soon winds up the captive of Dementus, a chieftain who wears a white translucent robe that doubles as a cape, and who gives her a teddy bear that once belonged to his children. As vigorously embodied by Hemsworth, the wild Dementus lives up to his name, although his motives—to conquer the wasteland by whatever vicious and underhanded means necessary—are rather mundane, and he pales in comparison to the unforgettably monstrous Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), with whom he quickly finds himself at odds.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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The Chain-Smoking, Jewish Grandma Who Ruled ’70s NYC Porn Greenwhich EntertainmentSurvival often requires boldness, and no one proved that more than Chelly Wilson, a Sephardic Jewish Greek grandmother who became the empress of Times Square pornography during the 1970s. Queen of the Deuce is an affectionate portrait of Chelly as a one-of-a-kind trailblazer who lived life to the fullest, and always on her own iconoclastic terms, all while also providing a vivid snapshot of New York City during its daring and dangerous pre-sanitized era.Directed by Valerie Kontakos with warmth and humor, it’s a documentary that celebrates its subject and the metropolis she loved—and which loved her back in kind—with the very sort of warts-and-all acceptance that Chelly herself showed to everyone in her orbit.A non-fiction biography about “the most un-grandma person that anyone could have,” Queen of the Deuce (in theaters and on Apple TV and Amazon May 24) opens with anecdotes from Chelly’s grandchildren Dina Pomeranz and David Bourla, who have fond if bewildered memories of visiting her as a child at her NYC apartment.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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‘The Fall Guy’: The Best Movie of the Spring Flopped and It’s Your Fault Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Universal PicturesConsidering that one of my greatest joys in life is to smugly shame people, this should be a joyous moment. And yet… I feel so sad. Exasperated. You know that phrase, “I’m not mad, just disappointed?” The bozo who came up with that clearly had made lots of people angry and was trying to make himself feel better about it. No, I want all of you to feel bad because, frankly, you deserve it.Earlier this week, the spectacular Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt action rom-com The Fall Guy was made available for rent and purchase on digital platforms. On the one hand, yay: People will have easier access to what, in my mind, is the best movie of the spring. (Sorry to Challengers! No offense, I Saw the TV Glow!) On the other hand: The should-be blockbuster is available to rent so wildly soon after its release date because not enough people saw it in theaters—and that will have ramifications that reverberate throughout the industry and, more importantly, my life and its happiness.Now that I’ve evolved into my final form as a finger-wagging dad-type, I might as well keep going with the tired phrases: Actions have consequences, people. This is why we can’t have nice things.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com
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Opinion: Trump’s New York Rally Is a Scary Reminder of His Reach Brendan McDermid/ReutersHiring actors who answered a casting call for a $50 gig dubbed, “not a traditional ‘background job,’” was the only way Donald Trump could draw a crowd when he announced his candidacy for president in 2015.“Wow. Woah. That is some group of people. Thousands!” he exclaimed of the two dozen who cheered on cue in the lobby of Trump Tower at the time.But despite the countless lies and incessant hype on crowd figures that followed, Trump really did draw over a thousand–if not exactly thousands–of supporters to a rally on Thursday evening.Read more at The Daily Beast.thedailybeast.com