The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will not take up the sexual assault case against comedian Bill Cosby, leaving in place a decision by Pennsylvania's highest court to throw out his conviction and set him free from prison.
The high court declined prosecutors' request to hear the case and reinstate Cosby's conviction. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court last year threw out Cosby's conviction, saying the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.
As is typical, the Supreme Court did not say anything in rejecting the case. The case was included in a long list of cases the court said Monday it would not hear.
The 84-year-old Cosby became the first celebrity convicted of sexual assault in the #MeToo era when a jury in 2018 found him guilty of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand in 2004. A jury had previously deadlocked in Cosby's case, resulting in a mistrial in 2017.
Cosby spent nearly three years in prison before Pennsylvania’s high court ordered his release.
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission. Constand has done so.
Elizabeth, who is also the Queen of Canada, met with Trudeau at Windsor Castle, where she has stayed since the outbreak of the pandemic. Trudeau was in the United Kingdom for talks on the Ukraine war with Prime Minister Boris Johnson and their Dutch counterpart, Mark Rutte.
The queen has a firm attachment to Canada, a nation she has visited more than 20 times.
The pair have known each other for some time. Trudeau met the monarch several times as a child because his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was one of Canada’s longest-serving prime ministers.
Pictures from the engagement show Trudeau warmly embracing Elizabeth’s hand in both of his. They both smile warmly.
The palace’s Feb. 20 announcement that Elizabeth had tested positive for COVID-19 prompted concern about the 95-year-old monarch.
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II receives Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during an audience at Windsor Castle in England on March 7. Steve Parsons/Pool via AP
The palace has declined to offer day-to day commentary on the monarch’s health, citing her right to privacy. But palace officials have said that Elizabeth has been fully vaccinated including a booster shot.
If you stick around for the end credits in The Batman, you won’t get to see any extra footage, but there actually IS a bonus scene available.
At the very end of the credits roll, the word “goodbye” shows up on the screen followed by the URL for www.rataalada.com.
The website was featured in the movie as a device for the Riddler to cause his mayhem and now Warner Bros. has created a replica version for fans to browse. If you answer questions correctly, the website will lead you to the bonus scene.
Click inside to find out how to watch the scene…
When people started visiting the website on March 2, following the first fan screenings of the movie, three riddles popped up.
RIDDLE 1: Fear he who hides behind one. ANSWER: A mask.
RIDDLE 2: What was new, is new again. Rebirth. Restoration. Reformation. ANSWER: Renewal.
RIDDLE 3: I am first a fraud or a trick. Or perhaps a blend of the two. That’s up to your misinterpretation. ANSWER: Confusion.
After answering the riddles correctly, fans were given a password protected zipfile, which was named, “What_Am_I.” The password was “promise.”
A video was inside the zipfile and it included a Thomas Wayne campaign video from the 2001 election. In the video, he says, “Instilled in both of us that giving back is not just an obligation, it’s a passion. That is our family’s legacy.”
The Riddler edited the video to include heavy breathing and words overlaid on them, “HUSH!” and “THE TRUTH ABOUT GOTHAM!”
LOS ANGELES -- Mitchell Ryan, who played a villainous general in the first "Lethal Weapon" movie, a ruthless businessman on TV's "Santa Barbara" and had character roles on the soap opera "Dark Shadows" and the 1990s sitcom "Dharma & Greg," died Friday. He was 88.
Ryan died of congestive heart failure at his Los Angeles home, his stepdaughter, Denise Freed, told the Hollywood Reporter.
Rugged, granite-jawed and sporting a sleek mane of hair, Ryan was instantly recognizable on TV and the big screen. His career spanned more than a half-century, beginning with an uncredited role in the 1958 Robert Mitchum film "Thunder Road."
He was a general-turned heroin smuggler in "Lethal Weapon," police officer in "Magnum Force" and "Electra Glide in Blue," and the conniving, murderous Las Vegas businessman Anthony Tonell in the nighttime TV soap opera "Santa Barbara."
In the 1990s, he had a long-running role as Greg's wealthy, eccentric and boozy father on "Dharma & Greg."
Ryan played Burke Devlin on the cult 1960s soap opera "Dark Shadows" for one season but he was fired because of his alcoholism.
Ryan acknowledged his drinking issues in his 2021 autobiography, "Fall of a Sparrow."
"I'm blessed that, 30 years a drunk, I've managed to live a working actor's life to be envied. And I've lived a great deal of real life while I was at it," he wrote. "Sober for the next 30 years, I'm told that I've come out of it all a good and useful human being."
Ryan had roles on many TV shows and in movies ranging from "High Plains Drifter" with Clint Eastwood to "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers."
He also performed in the theater, including Broadway appearances in "Wait Until Dark," "Medea" and "The Price."
"He was a great gift in my life," Kathryn Leigh Scott, who appeared with him in "Dark Shadows," said in a Facebook post. "I cherish my warm memories of his beautiful soul. I'm heartbroken."
Modern dating is banal and dehumanizing. The most common way to do it is via app, where — in much the same way you’d order chicken tenders for delivery — you pick from a bunch of options provided by an algorithm. You know that algorithm is likely to let you down, so you just hope it won’t lead you to certain death. It’s a boring, horrible way to think about people, at odds with the fundamental desire at the heart of dating: to be seen as a complete person by someone interested in you, and you in them. What’s more likely is objectification: Dating apps encourage users to reduce each other down to parts. To meat.
The indie horror movie Fresh takes that familiar metaphor to a particularly literal extreme. The debut film from director Mimi Cave and writer Lauryn Kahn follows Noa (Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones), a young woman in the throes of dating ennui, dating boring, ridiculous men who feel at liberty to comment on her appearance, want to ramble exclusively about their own interests, and then insult her when she isn’t interested in a second date, much less first-date sex.
Steve (the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Winter Soldier, Sebastian Stan) is different. Noa meets him in a grocery store — the first of the film’s many delicious ironies. He’s charming, clever, and not interested in pressuring her for sex. Even though she barely knows him, Noa decides to go on a weekend getaway with Steve after only a few blissful dates. This turns out to be a mistake when Steve drugs her and imprisons her, with the plan to keep her alive and slowly sell her body as meat to extremely wealthy clients who have developed a taste for cannibalism.
Photo: Searchlight Pictures
In spite of that horrific premise, there’s a comedic mean streak to Fresh that keeps it from getting too grotesque or grim — starting with the film’s opening credits, which don’t kick off until 30 minutes into the film, when Steve makes his move. Stan effortlessly pivots from charm to menace in that role, operating in a mode not that dissimilar from Penn Badgley as YOU’s Joe Godlberg, albeit less sympathetic. Steve has been doing this to women for a long time. He’s a fully formed amoral monster, but a charming one who dances as he works and likes to banter with his victim. As Noa’s imprisonment continues, her captivity begins to take on the bizarre cadence of dating.
That dynamic is Fresh at its horrific best: In the moments of ambiguity, when Noa, in a desperate bid for survival, starts to believe Steve is taking his time with her because he likes her, and she encourages him to think she might like him too — even suggesting they should start having dinner together, even if that dinner involves human flesh. Cave juxtaposes these scenes against moments of banal consumption. Other characters having normal, non-cannibal meals are shot with unsettling closeness and deafening sound, emphasizing the rip and tear of consumption, the way one life is masticated into nothing but selfish fuel for another life. Late in the film, Noa and Steve engage in a hypnotic, dreamlike dance that’s played more to the camera than to each other, a scene that could be read as interrogating the viewer’s own form of consumption — will we post a gif of it later? Strip it of its context and use it to fuel our own egos?
Photo: Hulu via Polygon
But there’s a give-and-take in the clever cinematic sleights Cave employs in Fresh’s more entrancing moments. She tangles the horror and peril of dating gone wrong with the understanding that takes place when it goes right. When these two leads bleed together, they believe they’re seeing each other for the first time. Cave takes a light touch with the gore in this film, but she uses it to pointed affect.
Unfortunately, Fresh ditches that ambiguity in favor of an otherwise straightforward survival plot that suffers in its inability to examine its characters too closely. In spite of the film’s more artful moments, Steve remains an uncomplicated villain, and Noa a largely uncomplicated victim. Moments that give the impression that the film may become an uncomfortable, fascinating locked-room drama give way to basic thriller beats where Noa attempts to escape, as her best friend suspects something may be amiss. By the end of Fresh, the film hasn’t done anything more than restating what it made clear at the start: Dating is hell, and women deserve more than to be treated like pieces of meat.
Disney+ is getting a cheaper subscription option that will offer the same content, but with ads included.
Users can therefore choose between the more expensive $7.99 USD subscription or this cheaper version when it arrives in the U.S. in late 2022.
The service will expand internationally in 2023, and while Disney hasn't yet announced a price point, it made the move to let more people access its content and because companies were eager to advertise with them.
Rita Ferro, president of advertising, Disney media, and entertainment distribution, said: "Since its launch, advertisers have been clamouring for the opportunity to be part of Disney+ and not just because there’s a growing demand for more streaming inventory.
"Disney+ with advertising will offer marketers the most premium environment in streaming with our most beloved brands, Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel and National Geographic. I can’t wait to share more with advertisers at the upfront."
Kareem Daniel, chairman of Disney media and entertainment distribution, added: "Expanding access to Disney+ to a broader audience at a lower price point is a win for everyone - consumers, advertisers, and our storytellers.
"Advertisers will be able to reach a wider audience, and our storytellers will be able to share their incredible work with more fans and families."
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