Social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate expected in Miami court

MIAMI (AP) — Influencer brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate are scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate in Miami on Monday after they were arrested to face rape and sex trafficking charges in the United Kingdom.

The Tates are being held in federal detention following their arrest on Saturday. In the coming weeks, a U.S. district judge will consider whether they meet the conditions for extradition.

An attorney for the brothers, Joseph McBride, blasted the latest charges as “filth and slander.” On Sunday, McBride said he was confident the extradition request would be denied.

Prosecutors in Britain said the new charges relate to four further victims and were brought after authorities received evidence from Bedfordshire Police in southeastern England. The charges that span alleged incidents between 2010 and 2017 include rape, assault, trafficking and offenses relating to “indecent images of a child and extreme pornography.”

Fringe reviews #16: I need an extra show

Filthy Fakespeare, Just You and Me, The Review, Serious Comedy, This Is, You Are Happy, Real Grilfriend, Push Your Wheelchair

Fringe reviews #15: Button-mashing mayhem

Babel, Chase Padgett, Dirk Darrow, The Glass Between Us, K-Tel Demon Hunters, Mr. Richard, Penny Ashton, Grant Canyon, Rocky Horror Show, Wisecracks for Weirdos

Shakira, Madonna and many Muppets take the World Cup stage, along with BTS and Bieber

Madonna, Justin Bieber, BTS and Shakira each brought a bit of one of their hits to the World Cup's first halftime show in a whirlwind performance Sunday that also squeezed in Burna Boy, Ted Lasso and many Muppets.

The show at what's otherwise known as MetLife Stadium, outside New York, was an attempt to bring Super Bowl vibes to the World Cup, but the 11-minute performance was considerably more packed than the usual one-headliner, 13-minute American football counterpart. Each headliner here spent about two minutes performing.

Madonna opened the show with her 2000 dance-pop hit “Music,” joined by star Brazilian soccer players of yesteryear, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho. It started with an apparently prerecorded piece in a roller rink before she rode into the stadium on a dune buggy, singing, “Music, makes the people come together.”

Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel led an orchestra through the White Stripes’ sports anthem “Seven Nation Army,” while the Muppets house band — including drummer Animal in lieu of Meg White — provided furry shakes in the background.

Fringe reviews #14: You’ve earned extra lives

World Peace Through Humour, Emil Amok, Erika MacDonald, Evie & Alfie, The Late, Great Mormon Drag Queen, Mennonite Metamorphosis, Panic A Live Radio Musical, Qualia, Solovela, Your Boring Story

Fringe reviews #13: Achievement unlocked, levelling up

Black Fish, East of Berlin, Green Grab, Rowena Riddle, On Tidy Endings, Saving the Station, The Taming of the Shrew, Nat King Cole, Where We Fly From Hospital Beds

Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ storms the box office with a $264.1 million global debut

NEW YORK (AP) — Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” launched with an estimated $124.5 million in domestic ticket sales and another $139.6 million from overseas, notching an even better debut than “Oppenheimer” and marking the filmmaker’s best opening since 2012’s “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Nolan flexed his singular box-office might with a global debut unlike any other. Few filmmakers alive could pull off a starry, big-budget adaptation of Homer’s epic poem. But in a Hollywood where intellectual property rights rule most hits, Nolan turned one of the world’s oldest works of literature into an unlikely summer blockbuster.

The Universal production was no small gamble on Nolan, coming off the 2023 best picture-winning “Oppenheimer.” With a production budget of $250 million, it’s among the most expensive R-rated movies ever made. Universal is spending some $125 million to market it.

But no behind-the-camera name turns out audiences more than Nolan's. So great was the hype on “The Odyssey” that IMAX put tickets on sale for some 70 mm showtimes a full year in advance. To satisfy the extraordinary demand for Nolan's preferred format, IMAX 70 mm, some theaters added midnight and 3 a.m. screenings — and sold them out.

Not Greek to them. Scholars question Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’

NEW YORK (AP) — For Greek translator Emily Wilson, the release of director Christopher Nolan's “The Odyssey” has been gratifying in various ways. Her acclaimed 2017 edition of Homer's epic has reached the top 5 on Amazon.com, leading a wave of similar books boosted by the movie. Nolan has even cited her translation, notably the opening line “Tell me about a complicated man,” as inspiration.

But the film itself, which brought in more than $260 million worldwide during its opening weekend and has received raves from many critics, left her unsatisfied.

“I want to celebrate the fact that so many more people are aware of 'The Odyssey' and were brought back to the poem,” she told The Associated Press. “But at the same time, I had the sense that Christopher Nolan was trying to pack everything in while missing themes that were essential to the poem.”

One of the year's most anticipated releases, “The Odyssey” stars Matt Damon as the returning warrior Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as his wife, Penelope, and Tom Holland as their son, Telemachus. Reviewers have praised the acting and the narrative drive, the grand scale of a movie shot entirely on IMAX film and how it weds the sensibilities of ancient Greece and the modern world, at least as Nolan perceives it.

Fringe reviews #12: Game over? Not even close

52 STORIES 

Dave Morris

Théâtre Cercle Molière (Venue 3), to July 26

👾👾👾👾 ½

Fringe reviews #11: Our princess is in another theatre

'80s Commercials, Alexander Mantia's Zucchini Club, The Ballad of Isobel Gunn, Fission, Flunked, Fringe Family Fun Show, One More Time, A Savage Love Story, Story Story Lie, The (Un)Official (Un)Researched History, Unresolved.

Fringe reviews #10: Ready Player One

Andrew Silverwood, Bullheaded, Captain Ted, Eleanor's Story, Eleven Please, Finding Rem Lezar, Hayden Maines, Jimmy Hogg, Jon Bennett, Now Don't Get Upset.

Fringe reviews #9: Farming for fringe gold

Celine & Cher, The Commensality Project, Couch Surfers, False Profits, Martin Dockerty, The Game of Bluff, How Much Can you Change, Human$, The Mistress of Wholesome, Winnipeg is a Lie.

Pop culture’s ‘reverent irreverence’: How artists blur irony, sincerity and religion

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Indie musician Alex Cameron is known for his transgressive lyrics. So when he started singing passionately about Jesus during his concert in a trendy Los Angeles neighborhood, the crowd seemed unsure if he expected them to laugh or worship.

“Jesus never had no porno / Jesus never had cocaine / Jesus never had Ibiza / He never even went to Spain,” the Australian singer-songwriter crooned, prompting sporadic chuckles across the venue.

This mix of the absurd and sincere reflects a kind of artistic engagement with existential questions that is increasingly resonating with people, many of whom are disconnected from organized religion. Some scholars even have a name for it: “reverent irreverence.”

When Cameron reached the chorus, the laughter stopped. “But every time he spoke / The people gathered round / When he washed their feet / The demons all came out / So when’s he gonna come again?" he sang over a wistful electric guitar.

Reimagined Little House still shot through with the truth

In 1974, NBC had to issue a press release explaining why Michael Landon, starring as Charles (Pa) Ingalls on the new show Little House on the Prairie, didn’t have a beard.

Fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved Little House books, on which the series was based, objected to Landon’s clean-shaven face. The real Charles Ingalls famously had a beard (a wild one, at that), and Pa certainly has a beard on the page, as illustrated by Garth Williams.

My point is: Lauraheads have always had their bugbears when it comes to adaptations.

Netflix’s new Little House on the Prairie, which dropped on July 9, is no exception. Among the criticisms I have seen: Mary (Skywalker Hughes) isn’t blond. Jack the dog isn’t a bulldog. Laura (Alice Halsey) wouldn’t have a slingshot and she wouldn’t wear a boy’s hat. And she wouldn’t have an Osage pal named Good Eagle (Wren Zhawenim Gotts).

Exploration of Stein’s time in Paris proves wildly entertaining, defying classification

Deborah Levy is one of England’s most versatile writers. She has written highly praised novels, plays staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company and broadcast on the BBC, published works of poetry and short stories as well as three volumes of autobiography. Her last book was 2024’s The Position of Spoons, an unusual collection of essays, reviews and observations.

Her latest could be seen as a perfect follow-up. It takes a close look at the world of American writer Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), who moved to Paris in 1903 and gained fame for curating modern art and producing written works that were capped off by The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. (For that book, Stein wrote about herself in the voice of her partner, Alice, her lover and companion, to free up her own voice. She actually hand-wrote it at night and left the pages for Alice to gather together in the morning.)

Is Levy’s new book a non-fiction account of Stein’s life? No — Levy has subtitled it A Fiction. Readers will see right away that the book is written from the point of view of a nameless narrator who goes to Paris in 2024, hoping to learn all about Stein’s life but also getting to know contemporary Parisians. In other words, Levy has chosen to freshen up a narrative on the life of Stein with a present-day biographer’s settling into the surroundings that her subject left behind.

Stein gained fans through her simple but complex passages with a minimum of punctuation. An example: “They ask me to tell why an author like myself can become popular. It is very easy everybody keeps saying and writing what anybody feels that they are understanding and so they get tired of that, anybody can get tired of anything everybody can get tired of something and so they do not know it but they get tired of feeling they are understanding and so they take pleasure in having something that they feel they are not understanding.”