A record number of Latino-led movies are inducted to the National Film Registry

Arts & Culture, Film & TV

In a record, five of the 25 movies inducted this year into the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress feature prominent Latino lead actors and storylines.These are “Spy Kids,” “Up in Smoke,” “Mi Familia,” “American Me” and “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” the Library of Congress announced on Tuesday. It’s the most inductions of this kind in a given year, according to Rep. Joaquín Castro, D-Texas, who’s been working to increase the number of Latino films chosen for preservation.In a statement, Castro said the films “tell complex and sometimes difficult stories, featuring Latinos as heroes and villains, hard-working immigrants and goofballs, space travelers and so much more. Together, these films represent a unique cross-section of Latino contributions to American cinema and showcase the talent Latinos bring to the screen.”Clockwise from top left, Carla Gugino, Antonio Banderas, Alexa PeñaVega and Daryl Sabara in “Spy Kids.”Alamy Castro had included all of the films, except for “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” in the annual nominations list he submits to the National Film Registry. In 2021, when he was chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Castro successfully advocated to add late singer Selena Quintanilla’s 1997 biopic “Selena” to the registry. Since then, he’s nominated dozens of films in an effort to increase and improve Latino representation in media and entertainment.Latinos have accounted for 6% to 7% of main cast and lead roles on television and film over the past few years amid chronic Latino underrepresentation in media.Castro celebrated the movies’ induction and expressed how pleased he was that the National Film Preservation Board chose to add the 1982 “Star Trek” sequel, since it features the late trailblazing Latino actor Ricardo Montalbán.’Spy Kids’Director Robert Rodríguez is known for incorporating his Mexican American upbringing in Texas into many of his films — and his 2001 movie “Spy Kids” was one of them.In an interview with NBC News in 2020, Rodríguez said he drew from his “experiences growing up in a family of 10 kids” to make “Spy Kids.” As a child, he remembered fantasizing about all of them being secret spies.The delightful action-fantasy film follows young siblings Juni and Carmen Cortez as they discover their parents are secret spies, and they themselves become spies as well. The brother-and-sister duo played by actors Daryl Sabara and Alexa PeñaVega, who is Colombian American, are half-Latino.This allowed Rodríguez to weave in elements of Hispanic culture and values to create an universally entertaining story that authentically showcased Latino heritage. But achieving that was not an easy task.“It was so difficult to get ‘Spy Kids’ made with Latin leads because there weren’t enough writers who were creating roles like that,” Rodríguez recalled. “You don’t have to be British to enjoy James Bond. By making these characters very specific, they become very universal. That was my argument and that’s what got ‘Spy Kids’ made.”Rodríguez enlisted Spanish actor Antonio Banderas to play the father of Juni and Carmen, secret spy Gregorio Cortez. The name is a nod to the character’s Hispanic heritage since it’s based on the 1982 film “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez,” which is centered on a folkloric figure from a popular early 1900s Mexican corrido, or ballad. “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez” film was actually inducted into the National Film Registry in 2022, thanks, in part, to Castro’s efforts.“Spy Kids” marks the second time Rodríguez had one of his movies included in the National Film Registry. The first was his 1992 debut feature film “El Mariachi.”Other recognizable Latino stars in “Spy Kids” are Danny Trejo and Cheech Marin, among others.“Spy Kids” and “Up in Smoke” are Marin’s first films on the registry. ‘Up in Smoke’Tommy Chong, left, and Cheech Marin in “Up in Smoke.”ParamountReleased in 1978, “Up in Smoke” was an unexpected smash hit that arguably established the “stoner” genre of film. Marin and actor-comedian Tommy Chong reworked many of their comedy routines to please audiences with goofy, and at times, stupid humor — creating a counterculture film classic watched to this day. “The level of improv that we brought to those movies is what gave it a spontaneity,” Marin told the Library of Congress in an interview. “And that’s why people thought they were happening for the first time. Because in many instances, it was happening for the first time.”’Mi Familia’From left, Constance Marie, Edward James Olmos, Elpidia Carillo, Jenny Gago, Jimmy Smits, Lupe Ontiveros, Enrique Castillo and Eduardo Lopez Rojas in “Mi Familia.”Warner Bros. This is director Gregory Nava’s third movie inducted to the registry.All three of them — “Selena,” “El Norte” and “Mi Familia” — are renowned explorations of the U.S. Latino experience.Nava’s 1995 film “Mi Familia” takes viewers on an deeply emotional ride as they follow the story of a multigenerational Mexican-American family in the U.S., narrated by a second-generation immigrant.“Their story is told in images of startling beauty and great overflowing energy; it is rare to hear so much laughter from an audience that is also sometimes moved to tears,” film critic Roger Ebert wrote at the time, according to the Library of Congress. “This is the great American story, told again and again, of how our families came to this land and tried to make it better for their children.” The film features an all-star cast of Latino actors that includes Jimmy Smits, Esai Morales, Jennifer Lopez, Constance Marie, Jacob Vargas, Benito Martinez and Edward James Olmos.There are eight films in the registry that feature Olmos as an actor, including “Selena, “Mi Familia” and “American Me.”‘American Me’Edward James Olmos, center, in “American Me.”NBC UniversalThe 1992 film stars Olmos as a fictional Mexican mafia leader as he goes in and out of prison, portraying the dark and brutal realities of Chicano gang life in Los Angeles. “American Me” was also Olmos’ directorial debut.The film’s depiction of violence and abuse can sometimes be hard to watch. But Olmos’ choice to loosely base the movie on a real-life story helps bring to reality truths about who controls the drug traffic in prison and on the streets.“I went for stories that weren’t going to be told by anybody else. Originally, no one wanted to do ‘American Me,’ but I knew it had to be told” Olmos told the Library of Congress in an interview.The movie was also produced by Jewish-Mexican film producer Lou Adler, who also produced “Up in Smoke.” Adler has several other films previously added to the registry, such as “Monterey Pop” and “Rocky Horror Picture Show.”’Star Trek II’Ricardo Montalban, left, and Judson Scott in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”Paramount / Courtesy Everett CollectionOne of the selections with strong public nominations this year was “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” featuring Mexican American actor Ricardo Montalbán as Khan Noonien Singh, the main antagonist in the film.The movie is widely considered the best of the six original-cast Star Trek theatrical films, with the epic battle between Khan and main character Kirk engrained in the memories of countless fans of the science fiction franchise.In addition to his work as an actor, Montalbán fiercely advocated for more and improved Latino representation on TV and films, even founding  the advocacy group Nosotros in 1969 to promote more positive depictions of Latinos in the entertainment industry.‘A collective effort’ to preserve movie heritageThere are now 30 Latino films on the National Film Registry, according to the Library of Congress, about 3.3% of the 900 movies preserved at the registry. Latinos currently represent close to 20% of the nation’s population.“This is a collective effort in the film community to preserve our cinematic heritage,” librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said in a statement. “Films reflect our nation’s history and culture and must be preserved in our national library for generations to come.”While not included as one of the 30 Latino films on the National Film Registry, the Library of Congress also inducted the 2007 film “No Country for Old Men” starring Javier Bardem, who, like Antonio Banderas, hails from Spain. The word “Hispanic,” which emerged in the 1960s, accounts for people who can trace their roots to Spain or Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America or the Caribbean. The word “Latino” emerged three decades later to include other Latin American countries where Spanish is not the dominant language, such as Brazil.“No Country for Old Men” is based on a novel by author Cormac McCarthy that follows a hunter who stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong and over $2 million in cash near the Rio Grande.This film also received strong support from the public to have it inducted into the National Film Registry, the Library of Congress said.

Dreading Christmas and/or Hanukkah? Have we got the books for you!

Arts & Culture, Books

Forget “Die Hard”; “Eyes Wide Shut” is a Christmas movie.Sarah Clegg makes this claim for Stanley Kubrick’s last picture in one of the chatty, humorous footnotes in her chatty, humorous “The Dead of Winter: Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures.” In this slim, seasonal gift book, Clegg takes readers on a tour of some of the darker traditions of Christmases past and present.The case for “Eyes Wide Shut”’s place in the holiday film pantheon goes like this: The movie is “based on a book — ‘Dream Story’ — that was set in Vienna during Carnival, but Kubrick transposed the action to a New York Christmas, turning it into an unsettling otherworld of glimmering fairy lights.”This line-blurring between Christmas and Carnival is a recurring theme in Clegg’s book. She takes us to a time before the Victorians tamed the holiday, when “[t]he chaos, the costumes, the flipping of the social order and the wild, hierarchy-shredding freedom of Carnival were all initially associated with Christmas, before they spilled forwards from midwinter to January and February.”In other words: less mistletoe, more masks and mischief.“For most of the last two thousand years,” Clegg writes, “the days we now call Christmas were a time when you elected false kings, when you turned the world on its head and the previously impermissible was suddenly allowed.”Clegg connects these revels back to the Roman feasts of Saturnalia and the administrative holiday of “Kalends” in which the enslaved could — for a night and up to a point — order around their masters and the social order was otherwise upended by masks, cross-dressing, and other costuming so you couldn’t quite tell who was who.Some 1,300 years later, one of the social conventions that was still being upended was the one that holds you shouldn’t show up at a neighbor’s house and insist on being provisioned. This is the practice of “guising,” a fascinating “tradition of going house to house dressed as monsters” and demanding food, drink, or money from the householders. A dutiful historian, Clegg is careful to tell us this was not a Roman practice, and may date to some pre-Christian European beliefs, but we simply don’t know.What we do know is that there are echoes of guising in today’s Christmas carols (the line “we won’t go until we’ve got some” from “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”), as well as in trick-or-treating on Halloween.One of the great things in Clegg’s celebration of this “joyous confusion of folklore” is her diligent historiography. We know about some of these earliest practices only because of bishops or other officious clergy harrumphing officiously about what their parishioners were doing. Boston’s own killjoy, Increase Mather, complained that folks spent Christmas “in playing at cards, in reveling, in excess of wine, in mad mirth.”If we lament the loss of much of the holiday’s lubricated libidinousness, perhaps we can take solace in the reduction of its severity toward spoiled children. On St. Lucy’s Night (Dec. 13), if you are working when you should be celebrating the patron saint, or if you’ve failed to leave out proper offerings, Lucy brings “disorder, bad luck, and death.” As for misbehaved children, “she’ll gut them, pull out their organs, stuff them full of straw and sew them back up again.”Coal seems like a pretty good compromise.However, if holiday violence is your thing, then “Eight Very Bad Nights: A Collection of Hanukkah Noir” delivers. Edited by Tod Goldberg, this collection of 11 short stories from Goldberg and 10 other writers showcases plots, protagonists, and tones that vary wildly, which is another way of saying there’s something for everyone.Several stories involve some bad actor going back for one last job for some reason — her husband needs pain meds (J.R. Angelella’s “Mi Shebeirach”), he needs money for presents (Gabino Iglesias’s “Lighting the Remora”), or he’s just out of prison and he needs money to get out of town and seek a better life (Nikki Dolson’s “Come Let Us Kiss and Part”). Others might be broadly categorized as domestic disputes that get out of hand (Stefanie Leder’s “Not a Dinner Party Person,” James D.F. Hannah’s “Twenty Centuries”; Liska Jacobs’s “Dead Weight”).The common thread is Hanukkah, which sometimes is happening only in the background. The fun is in the details.In Lee Goldberg’s “If I were a Rich Man,” the Jack Reacher novel in the “hero’s” trunk is a clue. He’s a louche and sexy unrepentant ex-con who decides it’s time for another job. He buys a new outfit, throws the old one away, and embarks on a quest to cajole hidden diamonds out of a former fellow inmate who is wasting away in a Merced, Calif., retirement home. Along the way, the hero dispatches his rival for the diamonds and turns the tables on a duo who try to blackmail him with a sex tape.In “The Demo,” music writer Jim Ruland weaves the satisfying tale of a murdered record-label executive whom everyone had reason to kill.David L. Ulin’s “Shamash” is the affecting story of the 62-year-old wayward son of assimilated, Christmas-celebrating Jews, who now lives with his dying, near-comatose father. The story’s “action” takes place mostly in the man’s head as he waits things out: walking in Manhattan’s “thin and dissolute solstice light,” reflecting on his parents and “the shanda of their insufficient love.” His “forays into Judaism” having been “impressionistic, vestigial,” he nevertheless brings his grandmother’s menorah up from the basement, lighting it in silent rebuke to the man who isn’t really there. It’s left to the reader to decide whether the pillow is mercy or vengeance.Finally, in Tod Goldberg’s title story, Jack Katz is the erstwhile Jackson Storm, a disgraced Palm Springs weatherman who has inherited the helm of his late father’s failing furniture empire. On the first night of Hanukkah — which anyway he’d always viewed as “more of a measuring error than a miracle” — Katz finds himself unable to make payroll. He gives the company the whole holiday off and embarks on the titular “Eight Very Bad Nights” in which he hilariously and harrowingly tries to shake down one of the gangsters who hasn’t ever paid the company.Whichever holiday you’re celebrating, or not celebrating, there are worse ways to avoid the family than curling up with one (or both!) of these titles. Each book treats its respective holiday with welcome irreverence, without losing sight of the darkness that can lie at the heart of any human endeavor.THE DEAD OF WINTER: Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas CreaturesBy Sarah CleggAlgonquin Books, 208 pages, $22EIGHT VERY BAD NIGHTS: A Collection of Hanukkah NoirEdited by Tod GoldbergSoho Crime, 304 pages, $27.95Sebastian Stockman is a teaching professor in English at Northeastern University. He writes A Saturday Letter at sebastianstockman.substack.com.

Dreading Christmas and/or Hanukkah? Have we got the books for you!

Arts & Culture, Books

Forget “Die Hard”; “Eyes Wide Shut” is a Christmas movie.Sarah Clegg makes this claim for Stanley Kubrick’s last picture in one of the chatty, humorous footnotes in her chatty, humorous “The Dead of Winter: Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures.” In this slim, seasonal gift book, Clegg takes readers on a tour of some of the darker traditions of Christmases past and present.The case for “Eyes Wide Shut”’s place in the holiday film pantheon goes like this: The movie is “based on a book — ‘Dream Story’ — that was set in Vienna during Carnival, but Kubrick transposed the action to a New York Christmas, turning it into an unsettling otherworld of glimmering fairy lights.”This line-blurring between Christmas and Carnival is a recurring theme in Clegg’s book. She takes us to a time before the Victorians tamed the holiday, when “[t]he chaos, the costumes, the flipping of the social order and the wild, hierarchy-shredding freedom of Carnival were all initially associated with Christmas, before they spilled forwards from midwinter to January and February.”In other words: less mistletoe, more masks and mischief.“For most of the last two thousand years,” Clegg writes, “the days we now call Christmas were a time when you elected false kings, when you turned the world on its head and the previously impermissible was suddenly allowed.”Clegg connects these revels back to the Roman feasts of Saturnalia and the administrative holiday of “Kalends” in which the enslaved could — for a night and up to a point — order around their masters and the social order was otherwise upended by masks, cross-dressing, and other costuming so you couldn’t quite tell who was who.Some 1,300 years later, one of the social conventions that was still being upended was the one that holds you shouldn’t show up at a neighbor’s house and insist on being provisioned. This is the practice of “guising,” a fascinating “tradition of going house to house dressed as monsters” and demanding food, drink, or money from the householders. A dutiful historian, Clegg is careful to tell us this was not a Roman practice, and may date to some pre-Christian European beliefs, but we simply don’t know.What we do know is that there are echoes of guising in today’s Christmas carols (the line “we won’t go until we’ve got some” from “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”), as well as in trick-or-treating on Halloween.One of the great things in Clegg’s celebration of this “joyous confusion of folklore” is her diligent historiography. We know about some of these earliest practices only because of bishops or other officious clergy harrumphing officiously about what their parishioners were doing. Boston’s own killjoy, Increase Mather, complained that folks spent Christmas “in playing at cards, in reveling, in excess of wine, in mad mirth.”If we lament the loss of much of the holiday’s lubricated libidinousness, perhaps we can take solace in the reduction of its severity toward spoiled children. On St. Lucy’s Night (Dec. 13), if you are working when you should be celebrating the patron saint, or if you’ve failed to leave out proper offerings, Lucy brings “disorder, bad luck, and death.” As for misbehaved children, “she’ll gut them, pull out their organs, stuff them full of straw and sew them back up again.”Coal seems like a pretty good compromise.However, if holiday violence is your thing, then “Eight Very Bad Nights: A Collection of Hanukkah Noir” delivers. Edited by Tod Goldberg, this collection of 11 short stories from Goldberg and 10 other writers showcases plots, protagonists, and tones that vary wildly, which is another way of saying there’s something for everyone.Several stories involve some bad actor going back for one last job for some reason — her husband needs pain meds (J.R. Angelella’s “Mi Shebeirach”), he needs money for presents (Gabino Iglesias’s “Lighting the Remora”), or he’s just out of prison and he needs money to get out of town and seek a better life (Nikki Dolson’s “Come Let Us Kiss and Part”). Others might be broadly categorized as domestic disputes that get out of hand (Stefanie Leder’s “Not a Dinner Party Person,” James D.F. Hannah’s “Twenty Centuries”; Liska Jacobs’s “Dead Weight”).The common thread is Hanukkah, which sometimes is happening only in the background. The fun is in the details.In Lee Goldberg’s “If I were a Rich Man,” the Jack Reacher novel in the “hero’s” trunk is a clue. He’s a louche and sexy unrepentant ex-con who decides it’s time for another job. He buys a new outfit, throws the old one away, and embarks on a quest to cajole hidden diamonds out of a former fellow inmate who is wasting away in a Merced, Calif., retirement home. Along the way, the hero dispatches his rival for the diamonds and turns the tables on a duo who try to blackmail him with a sex tape.In “The Demo,” music writer Jim Ruland weaves the satisfying tale of a murdered record-label executive whom everyone had reason to kill.David L. Ulin’s “Shamash” is the affecting story of the 62-year-old wayward son of assimilated, Christmas-celebrating Jews, who now lives with his dying, near-comatose father. The story’s “action” takes place mostly in the man’s head as he waits things out: walking in Manhattan’s “thin and dissolute solstice light,” reflecting on his parents and “the shanda of their insufficient love.” His “forays into Judaism” having been “impressionistic, vestigial,” he nevertheless brings his grandmother’s menorah up from the basement, lighting it in silent rebuke to the man who isn’t really there. It’s left to the reader to decide whether the pillow is mercy or vengeance.Finally, in Tod Goldberg’s title story, Jack Katz is the erstwhile Jackson Storm, a disgraced Palm Springs weatherman who has inherited the helm of his late father’s failing furniture empire. On the first night of Hanukkah — which anyway he’d always viewed as “more of a measuring error than a miracle” — Katz finds himself unable to make payroll. He gives the company the whole holiday off and embarks on the titular “Eight Very Bad Nights” in which he hilariously and harrowingly tries to shake down one of the gangsters who hasn’t ever paid the company.Whichever holiday you’re celebrating, or not celebrating, there are worse ways to avoid the family than curling up with one (or both!) of these titles. Each book treats its respective holiday with welcome irreverence, without losing sight of the darkness that can lie at the heart of any human endeavor.THE DEAD OF WINTER: Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas CreaturesBy Sarah CleggAlgonquin Books, 208 pages, $22EIGHT VERY BAD NIGHTS: A Collection of Hanukkah NoirEdited by Tod GoldbergSoho Crime, 304 pages, $27.95Sebastian Stockman is a teaching professor in English at Northeastern University. He writes A Saturday Letter at sebastianstockman.substack.com.

Science news briefs

Science and Health

Gene editing promises to open floodgates for canola traits

Canola growers can expect a bunch of new seed traits to hit the market in coming years as gene-editing technology takes off, says an industry official.

Cibus is one company doing a lot of work on that front and is expected to commercialize three new traits in Canada before the end of this decade.

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Read Also

Producers want better fire evacuation policies
REGINA — Cattle producers described the stress of evacuating cattle during a forest fire in recent testimony at the Senate…

Other stories in the Canola Yearbook 2024:

The first one to market will be its pod-shatter resistance trait, which has been extensively field tested and placed into germplasm provided by a variety of seed companies.

The trait could be commercialized as early as next year in the United States, said Norm Sissons, senior vice-president of seeds and traits with Cibus.

It will take a little longer to arrive in Canada due to the country’s variety registration system.

Jury still out on public acceptance of gene editing

WINNIPEG — “Uncertain” is a good way to describes how China, India and other food importing nations could respond to gene edited crops from Canada.

Globally, the regulatory situation looks hopeful, said Krista Thomas, vice-president of trade policy and seed innovation with the Canada Grains Council.

But in many cases the regulations for gene edited plants are untested.

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“Most countries that have put in place rules … for gene-edited products have confirmed that (they) are not GMOs,” said Thomas, who spoke at a plant technology conference in England in late May.

“(But) some of our key export markets still have some uncertainty attached to them.”

Gene editing is a relatively new technology that allows scientists to precisely cut and delete sections of DNA.

Canada has decided that gene edited crops will be regulated more like conventional plant breeding, provided the plant doesn’t contain foreign DNA.

Man. canola oil researcher enters agricultural hall of fame

Michael Eskin’s long career as a canola researcher has landed him a spot in the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame.

“I’ve been very lucky,” he said. “I’m originally from England, and I came to Canada in ’68, to the University of Manitoba. It was being at the right time, at the right place.”

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Eskin, along with forage crop researcher Bruce Coulman, former Semex chief executive officer Paul Larmer and entomologist Charles Vincent, will be formally inducted Nov. 2 at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto.

“We are thrilled to honour their accomplishments in advancing cattle genetics, forage breeding, sustainable insect management and Canadian canola oil,” said Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame chair Phil Boyd in a release. “As a key part of each of their professional careers, they have mentored future leaders — an equally vital contribution for the long-term sustainability of Canadian agriculture.”

The induction comes hot on the heels of Eskin’s welcome into the Manitoba Agricultural Hall of Fame last year, where he was praised for his years of mentorship and “pivotal role in transforming canola into the country’s most profitable food crop.”

Researchers work to narrow canola’s protein gap

The North American market for swine feed is worth US$17 to $27 billion, or possibly more. There are dozens of reports that estimate the size of the market, so it’s hard to nail down the exact number.
Canola crush capacity is expected to grow by 5.7 million tonnes over the next few years, a 50 percent increase over today’s levels, according to the Canadian Oilseed Processors Association. | File photo

Regardless, it’s big.

Corteva Agriscience is planning to tap into that market with a new type of canola that could be more competitive with soybean meal.

“The mono-gastric (feed) market in North America is exceptionally large, and right now, canola meal doesn’t trade into that,” said Tyler Groeneveld, North America director of grains and oils for Corteva.

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Canola meal is not competitive because it contains too much fibre and insufficient protein for poultry and swine. The Canola Council of Canada says canola meal is around 37 per cent protein, at 12 per cent moisture.

“Soybean meal would trade up around 49 per cent,” Groeneveld said.

The protein gap has constrained sales and market opportunities for canola meal.

‘Wolfpack’ bacteria could help control blackleg

Paul Holloway’s small lab at the University of Winnipeg isn’t cluttered, but it is busy.
Paul Holloway, a University of Winnipeg microbiologist, is studying a unique microbe called myxobacteria. Sometimes called wolfpack bacteria, they attack other bacteria and fungi in a swarm. | Robert Arnason photo

On one counter there are microscopes, square plastic containers with blue lids and about eight flasks that contain a yellow-orange liquid.

On the opposite counter, petri dishes are stacked about 15 dishes high. Each dish is approximately 10 centimetres in diameter and two cm in height.

Inside those petri dishes are bacteria collected from soil in Mississippi — but not any ordinary bacteria.

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These microbes are myxobacteria (pronounced mixxo), which are sometimes called “wolfpack” bacteria.

“They are predators. They are predators of (other) bacteria. But they also seem to go after fungi,” said Holloway, a microbiologist at the University of Winnipeg.

“They will pack together. Myxos actually swarm… It’s called a wolfpack.”

Oscars 2025: ‘Kneecap’ shortlisted for two Academy Awards along with brace of other Irish movies

Arts & Culture, Film & TV

Kneecap has been shortlisted in the Best International Feature Film category and for Best Original Song, while The Apprentice, produced by Irish production company Tailored Films, has been shortlisted in the Best Make Up and Hairstyling Category. Room Taken, a short film funded under Screen Ireland’s flagship Focus Shorts scheme, and directed by TJ O’Grady Peyton, is shortlisted for Best Live Action Short.The range of projects featured across the shortlists represents a significant achievement for Irish film, and a remarkable one for Irish language film in particular. Kneecap is just the second film ever in the Irish language to be shortlisted in the Best International Feature Film category – the first being An Cailín Ciúin in 2022.”We would like to extend our sincere congratulations to the creative teams behind Irish films Kneecap, The Apprentice and short film Room Taken on today’s Academy Awards shortlist announcements,” Désirée Finnegan, Chief Executive of Fís Eireann said.“Comhghairdeas ó chroí libh! This is the second time in history that a film in the Irish language has been shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film – and to have three films shortlisted across various categories is an incredible achievement for Irish cinema,” Ms Finnegan said.Kneecap is one of 15 films shortlisted from 85 countries who submitted to the category. Based on the origin story of the Irish-language rap trio, the film is set in west Belfast in 2019, chronicling how fate brings them together and how they then go on to “change the sound of Irish music forever”.The film received its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January this year, where it became the first Irish-language film to win the Audience Award in the festival’s NEXT strand, and has been released in Irish and international cinemas to critical acclaim.The film is an Irish/UK co-production, produced by Jack Tarling and Trevor Birney for Fine Point Films and Mother Tongues Films, and Patrick O’Neill for Wildcard.Directed by Ali Abassi and written by Gabe Sherman, The Apprentice is a dive into the underbelly of the American empire. It charts a young Donald Trump’s ascent to power through a Faustian deal with the influential right-wing lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn.The film is a Canadian/Irish/Danish co-production. It is produced by Daniel Bekerman for Scythia Films (Canada), Jacob Jarek for Profile Pictures, Ruth Treacy and Julianne Forde for Tailored Films, and Ali Abbasi and Louis Tisné for Film Institute.The third film nominated is Room Taken, a short film written by Michael Whelan, directed by TJ O’Grady and produced by Colmán Mac Cionnaith for Vico Films. It is fully funded by Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland under the agency’s flagship short film scheme, Focus Shorts.It centres on a man, new to Ireland, who experiences homelessness and needs a place to sleep, before secretly taking up residence in the home of an elderly blind woman, which leads to them forming a unique bond.Nominations voting begins on Wednesday, January 8, 2025, and concludes on Sunday, January 12, 2025 and nominations will be announced on Friday, January 17. The 97th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 2, 2025, at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood, Los Angeles.

[Eric Posner] Trump’s pro-corporate populism

2024 Election

The outpouring of joy on social media after the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson suggests that America’s populist moment is evolving into something larger and more significant than just a backlash against the political establishment. If so, it is also becoming something Americans have seen before. In the late 19th century, the People’s Party,…

The Most Popular Movies And Shows On Kanopy In 2024

Arts & Culture, Film & TV

If you have a library card, then there’s a decent chance you (perhaps unknowingly) have access to thousands of movies and shows on a little streaming service known as Kanopy. In order to become a member, your library must partner with the streamer (you can ask your library about partnering if they haven’t already). A cinephile’s best kept secret in an age of saturated media, Kanopy sports an incredible library of both revered classics—from film noirs to giallo, from Italian Neorealism to the French New Wave, from silent films to New Hollywood—and modern independent films from around the world. If you’re interested in becoming a cinephile (or satisfying your current cinephile appetite), then Kanopy is the streaming service for you. And if you’d like a good idea of their offerings, then look no further than Kanopy’s most-watched films of 2024.

Kanopy released this list just a few weeks ago, and its sports many great films that offer a decidedly different path for movie night. The streaming service released this list for three different categories: narrative films, television series and documentaries. And for any budding cinephile, or for anyone simply looking for an outside-the-box film, each list is chock-full of cinematic goodies.

Let’s take a list at those three lists now, along with each movie or show’s distributor:

Most-Watched Narrative Films

Past Lives (2023) A24
Jules (2023) Bleecker Street
Anatomy of a Fall (2023) Neon
You Hurt My Feelings (2023) A24
Golda (2023) Bleecker Street
Talk to Me (2022) A24
Dial M for Murder (1954) SGL Entertainment
Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023) Oscilloscope
Possession (1981) Kino Lorber
She Came to Me (2023) Vertical Entertainment

Most-Watched Series

Father Brown: S1 (2013) BBC Studios
Detective Montalbano: S1 (1999) MHz
Father Brown: S3 (2015) BBC Studios
The Forsyte Saga: S1 (2002) PBS
Beyond Paradise: S1 (2023) BBC Studios
Father Brown: S11 (2024) BBC Studios
Father Brown: S5 (2016) BBC Studios
Father Brown: S2 (2014) BBC Studios
Death in Paradise: S1 (2011) BBC Studios
Luther: S1 (2010) BBC Studios

Most-Watched Documentaries

Lynch/Oz (2022) The Criterion Collection
Cats of Malta (2023) Entertainment Squad
Four Daughters (2023) Kino Lorber
Kedi (2016) Oscilloscope Laboratories
I Am Not Your Negro (2016) Kino Lorber
Close to Vermeer (2023) Kino Lorber
Finding the Money (2023) Giant Pictures
The American Buffalo (2023) PBS
The YouTube Effect (2022) Drafthouse Films
God & Country (2024) Oscilloscope Laboratories

On the narrative films list, the choices are outstanding, starting first and foremost with Kanopy’s most-watched film of 2024, the Best Picture nominee Past Lives. An amazing debut feature from Celine Song, this quiet little romantic drama about the diverging paths that life takes us down, and the inevitable regret—even if it’s regret for just one moment, until we realize how beautiful the path we chose really is—for choosing one over the other. The movie uses a love triangle to reflect this journey for its protagonist, a South Korean woman who moved away from her childhood sweetheart at the age of 12 before rekindling the relationship years later after meeting another man.

There other big standouts in the independent arena, including Best Picture nominee Anatomy of a Fall, Jules, You Hurt My Feelings and Golda. We also can’t forget Talk to Me (one of several A24 films available on Kanopy), a high-art horror film that offers a decidedly different mood and feel from the streamer’s regular selection. Then there are several great classics available on that top ten, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder and Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession (which ranks among my favorite horror films ever).

As you can see from the series list, Father Brown dominates, holding five of the ten top spots. An 11-season British period detective series (the show was recently picked up for its twelfth and thirteenth seasons), Father Brown follows a compassionate and shrewd Catholic priest in 1950s England who uses his keen understanding of human nature to solve crimes and uncover secrets in his quaint parish. BBC Worldwide has sold the incredibly successful TV show to 232 different territories, and Kanopy shows the series’ reach extends to a streaming-hungry audience in the United States.

Finally, the documentary list sports some great picks that lie outside your average selection. Three of the movies immediately stand out to me: Lynch/Oz, Four Daughters and Close to Vermeer. If you’re a fan of David Lynch (personally, he is my favorite director), or if you’re simply mystified by the meaning of his movies, then you can’t miss Lynch/Oz, a rather long film essay that ties the director’s work to The Wizard of Oz. Then there’s Four Daughters, an incredible Tunisian meta-documentary that explores the painful void that exists in a home where a mother’s two daughters disappeared. Finally, there’s Close to Vermeer, which is one of the best art documentaries I’ve ever seen. The movie centers on a Johannes Vermeer exhibition that becomes a retrospective on the elusive painter’s career and cultural impact on the art world.
Beyond the movies on these lists, there are countless others to choose from on Kanopy. If you’re looking for a refreshing library of movies and shows to choose from in the new year, then let these selections be your inspiration to finally join the streaming service.