Category: Новини

After so many years — and episode re-watches — could there BE anything left to learn about “Friends”?As the highly-anticipated, almost two-hour reunion special for HBO Max shows (and with apologies to Matthew Perry for continuing to borrow his lines), “Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes.”One thing that we didn’t need to learn (because we already knew it) was just how truly there these six characters were for the audience.In the 1990s and early-aughts, the cast of “Friends” provided hours of joy — first just on Thursday nights when new episodes aired, but soon enough five nights a week in syndication. Within the past decade, diehard and casual fans alike could spend any time of any day with Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Perry and David Schwimmer, as the show became available on streaming services. This sextet has helped their audience get through so much, now including the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did “Friends” see a spike in viewership in the earliest lockdown days according to Nielsen, but also, just before the world fully reopens, they gathered together to shoot “Friends: The Reunion.””It was life-changing, not only for us but for whoever watched it, and that’s just such a great feeling,” Cox said of her experience on “Friends.”Within the special, they reminisced over their time working together while walking around recreated versions of Joey and Chandler’s apartment, Monica and Rachel’s (turned Monica and Chandler’s) apartment and the Central Perk coffeehouse, as well as while sitting down on the ironic orange couch for an outdoors interview with “The Late Late Show’s” James Corden.They performed scene readings from “The One Where Ross Finds Out,” “The One Where Everybody Finds Out” and the Season 4 premiere, “The One With The Jellyfish.” They also took part in a trivia game, designed and shot identically to the one in “The One With The Embryos.”In doing all of these things, they revealed behind-the-scenes tidbits and showed off special relationship dynamics that expanded even the biggest fan’s knowledge of their favorite show. The one thing they did NOT do was dance in a fountain.Here are 18 things learned from “Friends: The Reunion.”The one where Ross and Rachel were on a break!
Corden asked the six stars to reveal whose side of that infamous argument they fell on, and they all agreed that Ross and Rachel were on a break when he slept with Chloe (Angela Featherstone). Admittedly, they all had different levels of enthusiasm about that belief, but the authorities have spoken, so debate no more!The one with the crush
Borrowing a question that Janice (Maggie Wheeler) once posed to the six characters, Corden asked the six actors who became romantically involved with each other while filming. “The first season I had a major crush on Jen,” Schwimmer admitted. “It was reciprocal,” she shared. But, he went on, “It was like two ships passing because one of us was always in a relationship and we never crossed that boundary. We respected that.” LeBlanc piped up with a fake cough and a “Bullshit,” which sent the audience into wild applause. But he was joking, and Aniston clarified that she once told Schwimmer, “It’s going to be such a bummer if the first time you and I kiss is on national television.” But, “sure enough, the first time we kissed was in that coffee shop. So we just channeled all of our adoration and love for each other into Ross and Rachel.”The one where Ross and Rachel almost didn’t end up together
“Friends” co-creator David Crane, who was sitting in the COVID-safe audience during Corden’s interview and gave in an off-site interview for the special, shared that in working on the final season, the writers’ room did consider more ambivalent endings about the status of Ross and Rachel. But ultimately love won out definitively because, “People have been waiting 10 years to see this couple get together, we’ve got to give them what they want, we just have to find a way to do it so the journey is unexpected.”The one without a movie
For anyone holding out hope that the experience these actors had coming together for only the second time since “Friends” wrapped in 2004 would spark interest in more, we’re sorry to burst your bubble, but that is not going to happen. “That’s all up to Marta and David,” Kudrow said. “I once heard them say, and I completely agree, that they ended the show very nicely, everyone’s lives are very nice, and they would have to unravel all of those good things in order for there to be stories. And I don’t want anyone’s lives to be unraveled.” Kudrow also added, “At my age, saying like, ‘Floopy’ — stop. You have to grow up.” Aniston took things farther and said they probably wouldn’t even do another reunion like this.The one with where they are now
Kudrow may have crushed many people’s dreams about actually seeing where the characters would be at this place in time, but she said she imagines Phoebe is still married to Mike (Paul Rudd), with kids, living in Connecticut. “I think she was probably the advocate for her kids…and all of the other kids who were a little different, creating the arts program,” she said. Aniston said Ross and Rachel got married and had some kids, and Ross still “played with bones.” Cox said she believed that because Monica is so competitive, she would still be “in charge of the bake sale in elementary school,” even though her and Chandler’s kids would be out of school by now. “She’s just got to keep things going, PTA. And you are still making me laugh every day,” she said to Perry. “Just wanted to make sure I factored in somewhere,” he replied. And Joey? “I think he probably opened a sandwich shop on Venice Beach,” LeBlanc said.The one where the audience inspired Monica and Chandler’s relationship
The audience reaction was so loud — and long — at the reveal that Chandler and Monica slept together in “The One With Ross’ Wedding Part 2,” it made the writers re-think plans for that storyline. Originally, Crane said, it was going to be a “brief thing where we had fun with it afterward, ‘What did we do?'” Since that episode was the fourth season finale, the writers and producers had time to reflect on the reaction, and ultimately expanded it from being “just one night in London,” as Crane said it was originally meant to be. This opened up a wealth of stories, from dating in secret, to having multiple characters find out about the relationship at different times, to eventually getting engaged, married and adopting twins.The one with the grudge against MarcelWhen asked what part of the show the cast members did not enjoy, poor Marcel came to mind immediately. Cox clarified that this was because “the monkey scared me,” but Schwimmer had some serious complaints. “The monkey didn’t do its job right,” he said. Marcel (real name: Katie) was a trained working capuchin, of course, but Schwimmer noted there would be choreographed bits the human actors worked out that didn’t perfectly align with the monkey’s own timing to hit his mark, “so we’d have to reset, we’d have to go again, because the monkey didn’t get it right. This kept happening over and over.” But he didn’t stop there: Schwimmer also remembered how Marcel would be fed live grubs while sitting on his shoulder. “I’d have monkey grubby hands all over. It was just time for Marcel to [expletive] off.” (The irony is that the producers shared a story about how Schwimmer had such a bad time doing a previous TV show he had quit this side of the biz to only focus on theater and in order to get him to agree to do “Friends,” they had to swear up and down it would be different. And it was different, but not always better for him, judging by his still-palpable anger about the monkey all these decades later.)The one with missing set pieces
As detail-oriented as the production design team and art department were in rebuilding the sets for this special reunion, they could not replace every item exactly. Cox pointed out that the cookie jar in Monica’s kitchen was different because the “original cookie jar is at Lisa Kudrow’s house.” Additionally, Aniston shared she took a mug from the original set and LeBlanc took the foosball from that iconic table. While those items are small enough that the casual viewer would never know, “Friends” fans have been re-watching the old episodes for years in anticipation of a reunion like this and certainly would have freeze-framed moments in the kitchen to call out that cookie jar, if nothing else, had Cox not said something.The one with the beam
The beam should have been the seventh billed in the “Friends” reunion, as almost every cast member called it out when stepping onto the set of Monica’s apartment. In early episodes (and others that James Burrows directed), there was a wooden archway that separated the kitchen and living room sets on that part of the soundstage. It provided a convenient piece of story in Season 3’s “The One with the Giant Poking Device” when Monica banged her nephew’s head into it, but it limited camera angles and interfered with lighting, so it was usually absent, wreaking havoc with continuity and raising questions about just how much work a renter could do on a New York City apartment. It was restored in all of its nostalgic glory for the reunion special, truly bringing the experience full-circle.The one with Courteney Cox’s cheat sheets
As LeBlanc walked through Monica’s meticulously-recreated kitchen during the special, he paused at the table and pondered aloud whether Cox’s line would still be written on it. Although he sounded like he was kidding at first, he revealed to Aniston, Kudrow and Schwimmer that he caught her doing it once and asked her what it was. “Mind your business,” he recalls her telling him. While he didn’t name what episode this happened during, it would not be a surprise if she did it often. The writers used to rework jokes during the live tapings so much that the show became notorious for its tapings running extremely late. Their bar for quality was so high, they would finesse as much as they could based on the live audience’s reaction on Stage 24 on the Warner Bros. lot, which required the cast members to be quick on their feet to absorb the new material immediately. Cox ended up joining the group as they were reminiscing over her keeping scripts in the sink and she added, “I had so much of my dialog within these apples,” while messing with the bowl on the table.The one where they gambled on Jennifer Aniston
Don’t let Rachel herself know, but Crane referred to the character as “incredibly selfish, self-involved, spoiled.” He noted that, “In the wrong hands, you don’t like Rachel.” This is partially why she was the last character cast. When they found Aniston, they felt she was perfect but she was already committed to a show called “Muddling Through.” They hired her anyway and shot the pilot, as well as a few subsequent episodes, figuring they’d see what show won later. “If CBS would have picked [‘Muddling Through’] up,” Crane recalled, “we would have had to reshoot the first three episodes of ‘Friends.'” Aniston added that she loved “Friends” so much she actually went to her other producers and asked to be released from it. The response? “That show’s not going to make you a star,” she remembered being told.The one with Janice’s laugh
Maggie Wheeler, who played Chandler’s on-again-off-again girlfriend Janice, shared that she created Janice’s iconic laugh (second only to her delivery of, “Oh my god”) because she was acting opposite Perry, who was so funny she knew she would end up laughing in the scene and potentially ruining the take. So she worked a unique laugh into the scene as Janice’s response to Chandler, and the rest is history.The one with Matthew Perry’s confession
Perry revealed to his former cast mates that he often “felt like I was going to die if [the audience] didn’t laugh” at his jokes on tape night. “It’s not healthy, for sure, but I would sometimes say a line and they wouldn’t laugh and I would sweat and just go into convulsions. … I would freak out.” It was something he kept to himself while working on the show, but he said he felt like that “every single night.”The one with technology
Schwimmer, who directed 10 episodes of “Friends” (and two of its spinoff “Joey!”) marveled at the sitcom cameras on the stage today, compared to what they used on “Friends.” These, he noted, could be operated by one person, but back then, each one required three. “It was a huge crew,” he said. ” four cameras, the choreography was incredible.”The one with memory lapses
Much fun was to be had with the fading memories of cast members — but to be fair, they don’t binge their own show. In fact, a few of whom shared they never watch the show at all. “There are seasons I’ve never seen,” said Kudrow, which Perry seconded. Schwimmer said he only recently looked back at some episodes because his daughter has started watching the show. LeBlanc seemed to have the most details teed up and ready to be talked about (somehow he magically even correctly identified Joey’s hand twin just by looking at hands), but even he didn’t remember that the length of Rachel’s letter to Ross was 18 pages… front and back. Perry didn’t remember that by the end of the series, the foosball table had been destroyed; Aniston still thought Chandler’s job was a transponster; Schwimmer didn’t remember the titular plot in “The One With The Ball” (Season 5) even though his character started the challenge of not dropping the ball in the story. Nobody remembered Mr. Heckles’ name — though Kudrow knew the actor who played him was Larry Hankin (who made a surprise guest appearance, in costume) and no one could finish the lyrics to the barbershop quartet’s message from Ross in the third season episode, “The One With All The Jealousy.” Behind-the-scenes details fared better, though: Aniston even remembered what some of her fellow actors were wearing during the first table read.The one with real-life friends as character inspirations
Co-creators Marta Kauffman and Crane have always talked about being inspired by their own lives in New York City in their 20s when creating the show, but here Kauffman revealed that the character of Chandler was even named after one of her friends. (We hope he didn’t take offense when, in the fourth season, Joey listed multiple reasons Chandler is a terrible name when he was trying to get Phoebe to name one of the triplets Joey instead of Chandler.) In this same interview package, Crane shared the one-line pitch for the show as being “about that time in your life when your friends are your family,” which seems both like a perfectly universal show any network would want and also way too broad to be sold on that alone today.The one with the rough audition
The night before LeBlanc was set to audition for “Friends,” he told Corden, he was running lines with a friend who said that because the show was about a group of friends hanging out, they should go out drinking. They did, and LeBlanc crashed at his place after, where, after he “got up [to go to the bathroom] too fast, I kind of blacked out, as you do, and fell face-first into the toilet,” he said. “A huge chunk of meat came off my nose.” When he went in the next day, Kauffman asked what happened. “I told the truth and got the job,” he said. What made this story even more special was that executive producer Kevin Bright revealed in an interview package that the role of Joey, in the end, came down to LeBlanc and Louis Mandylor — who went on to play Carl, the guy Joey hired to pretend to be his twin brother to get into a medical science study in the sixth season.The one with an on set injury
Not to make this all about LeBlanc, but the reunion special also revealed how he dislocated his shoulder during the third season of “Friends,” which resulted in him wearing a sling for a few episodes. In “The One Where No One’s Ready,” he had to dive for the chair after Chandler came back into Monica’s apartment fully dressed and vying for the vacated seat. During one take, which the cast watched raw footage of together, LeBlanc landed wrong on his left arm, resulting in production being paused so he could go to the hospital. Although they wrote the sling into a few episodes so everybody could go back to work, they didn’t finish filming this particular episode until LeBlanc’s arm was healed. “What started out the simplest ‘Friends’ episode,” Bright said, “ended up taking the longest amount of time to shoot.” If you’re superstitious, you might say the reason this episode went so wrong was because the cast didn’t do their usual pre-show huddle that night. “It was sort of early on, but then after that we’d say, ‘Do we need to do the huddle?’ And he’d say, ‘Yeah,'” Kudrow said of LeBlanc. 
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While studying at Howard University, young Chadwick Boseman helped lead a student protest against plans to merge his beloved College of Fine Arts into the College of Arts and Sciences.  
He failed in that goal, but 20 years later, the acclaimed actor is being posthumously honored as the namesake of Howard’s newly re-established Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts.  
Boseman, who graduated in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in directing, died in August at 43 of colon cancer. He rose to prominence playing a succession of Black icons in biographical films: Jackie Robinson, singer James Brown and Thurgood Marshall.
The South Carolina native’s portrayal of African superhero Black Panther spawned a thousand memes and its cultural impact launched him to broader stardom. At the time of his death, Boseman’s character was poised to become an anchor of the Marvel Comics movie machine, with multiple sequels planned.  
Howard University President Wayne Frederick said he and Boseman discussed ways of reviving the College of Fine Arts multiple times.  
“It was always important to him,” Frederick told The Associated Press. “His commitment was very strong.”
The announcement comes a few weeks after fellow Howard alum Phylicia Rashad was announced as the fine arts college’s new dean. Boseman and Rashad met during his undergrad years, and Boseman publicly cited her as a mentor.  
Boseman declared his love for the school in a 2018 commencement speech, praising, “the magic of this place. Almost anything can happen here.”  
Boseman’s family said his student protest proved his passion for his alma mater.  
“Chad fought to preserve the College of Fine Arts during his matriculation at Howard and remained dedicated to the fight throughout his career, and he would be overjoyed by this development,” the Boseman family said in a statement.  
Boseman’s widow, Simone Ledward-Boseman, called him “a very proud Bison” and said the naming of the school “brings this part of his story full-circle and ensures that his legacy will continue to inspire young storytellers for years to come.”
Howard Fine Arts alumni include actors Taraji P. Henson, Oscar-nominated cinematographer Bradford Young, and singers Roberta Flack and Jessye Norman, as well as Rashad and her sister, Kennedy Center Honors recipient Debbie Allen.
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Amazon is going Hollywood.
The online shopping giant is buying MGM, the movie and TV studio behind James Bond, “Legally Blonde” and “Shark Tank,” with the hopes of filling its video streaming service with more stuff to watch.
Amazon is paying $8.45 billion for MGM, making it the company’s second-largest acquisition after it bought grocer Whole Foods for nearly $14 billion in 2017.  
The deal is the latest in the media industry that’s aimed at boosting streaming services to compete against Netflix and Disney+. AT&T and Discovery announced on May 17 that they would combine media companies, creating a powerhouse that includes HGTV, CNN, Food Network and HBO.  
Amazon doesn’t say how many people watch its Prime Video service. But more than 200 million have access to it because they’re signed up for its Prime membership, which gives them faster shipping and other perks. Besides Prime Video, Amazon also has a free streaming service called IMDb TV, where Amazon makes money by playing ads during movies and shows.
Buying MGM would give Amazon access to more films, shows and famous characters, including Rocky, RoboCop and Pink Panther. Amazon will also get a cable channel: Epix, which MGM owns.  
Known for its roaring lion logo, MGM is one of the oldest Hollywood studios, founded in 1924 when films were silent. It has a long list of classics in its library, including “Singin’ in the Rain.”
More recent productions include reality TV staples “Shark Tank” and “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” as well as the upcoming James Bond movie “No Time to Die” and an Aretha Franklin biopic called “Respect.”  
Amazon already has its own studio but has had mixed results. Two of its shows, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and “Fleabag,” won best comedy series Emmys. But many of its films have failed to click with audiences at the box office. Recently, Amazon has been spending on sports and splashy shows. It will stream “Thursday Night Football” next year and is producing a “Lord of the Rings” show, which reportedly cost $450 million for its first season alone.
The deal, which is subject to customary approvals, will make Amazon, already one of the most powerful and valuable companies in the world, even bigger. Regulators around the world are scrutinizing Amazon’s business practices, specifically the way it looks at information from businesses that sell goods on its site and uses it to create its own Amazon-branded products.  
A report by the House Judiciary Committee in October called for a possible breakup of Amazon and others, making it harder for them to buy other businesses and imposing new rules to safeguard competition.
Amazon, founded in 1995 as an online bookstore, has become a $1.6 trillion behemoth that does a little bit of everything. It has a delivery business network that gets orders to people in two days or sooner; sells inhalers and insulin; has a cloud-computing business that powers the apps of Netflix and McDonald’s; and has plans to send more than 3,200 satellites into space to beam internet service to Earth.
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Profile, a film by Timur Bekmambetov about an investigative journalist infiltrating recruitment practices online by the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, is the latest of a series of ‘screenlife’ films, where everything the viewer sees happens on a computer or smartphone screen. VOA’s Penelope Poulou spoke with the filmmaker and the cast.  Camera: Penelope Poulou          Produced by:  Penelope Poulou      
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The Japanese government Tuesday was quick to deny a U.S. warning for Americans to avoid traveling to Japan would have an impact on Olympians wanting to compete in the postponed Tokyo Games. U.S. officials cited a surge in coronavirus cases in Japan caused by virus variants that may even be risks to vaccinated people. They didn’t ban Americans from visiting Japan, but the warnings could affect insurance rates and whether Olympic athletes and other participants decide to join the Games that begin July 23. Most metro areas in Japan are under a state of emergency and expected to remain so through mid-June because of rising serious COVID-19 cases that are putting pressure on the country’s medical care systems. That raises concern about how the country could cope with the arrival of tens of thousands of Olympic participants if its hospitals remain stressed and little of its population is vaccinated. Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told a regular news conference Tuesday that the U.S. warning does not prohibit essential travel and Japan believes the U.S. support for Tokyo’s effort to hold the Olympics is unchanged. “We believe there is no change to the U.S. position supporting the Japanese government’s determination to achieve the Games,” Kato said, adding that Washington has told Tokyo the travel warning is not related to participation of the U.S. Olympic team. The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee said it still anticipates American athletes will be able to safely compete at the Tokyo Games. Fans coming from abroad were banned from the Tokyo Olympics months ago, but athletes, families, sporting officials from around the world and other stakeholders still amount to a mass influx of international travelers. The Japanese public in opinion surveys have expressed opposition to holding the Games out of safety concerns while most people will not be vaccinated. The U.S. warning from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said: “Because of the current situation in Japan even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants and should avoid all travel to Japan.” The State Department’s warning was more blunt. “Do not travel to Japan due to COVID-19,” it said. 
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The Italian glam rock band that won the Eurovision Song Contest returned home Sunday to the adulation of fans, congratulations from the government and so much speculation that the lead singer had snorted cocaine during the show that he vowed to take a drug test.
“We want to shut down the rumors,” Maneskin lead singer Damiano David told reporters at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport as the band arrived home after their victory in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
 
Rumors spread on social media after David was seen bending over a table during the Saturday night live television broadcast. Asked at a post-victory news conference whether he’d snorted cocaine, David said he doesn’t use drugs and that he’d bent over because another band member had broken a glass at their feet.  
Eurovision confirmed that broken glass was found under the table in question, but announced David had offered to take the test, which is scheduled for Monday.
In Italy, the drug claim didn’t mar the praise that poured in Sunday from the Italian establishment for the victory of the rather anti-establishment Maneskin, a glam rock band that got its start busking on Rome’s main shopping drag.
Their win gave Italy a sorely needed boost after a dreadful year as one of the countries worst hit by the coronavirus and will bring next year’s competition back to the place where European song contests began.  
The band was the bookmakers’ favorite going into the Eurovision finale and sealed the win early Sunday with the highest popular vote in the enormously entertaining, and incredibly kitsch, annual song festival.  
“We are out of our minds!” Florence’s Uffizi Galleries tweeted, echoing Maneskin’s winning song lyrics, along with an image of a Caravaggio Medusa and the hashtag #Uffizirock.
Maneskin, Danish for “moonlight” and a tribute to bass player Victoria De Angelis’ Danish ancestry, won with a total of 529 points. France was second while Switzerland, which led after national juries had voted, finished third.
“It is amazing. It is amazing,” band members said as they got off the plane and were met by a gaggle of reporters outside baggage claim.  
De Angelis said the band was shocked at the claims of drug use, which were echoing particularly loudly in runner-up France, where mainstream media prominently reported the suspicions and the country’s foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, was even asked about them on a news show Sunday.  
Le Drian stayed clear on the controversy, saying: “If there is a need to do tests, they’ll do tests.”
De Angelis said the band wants to put the controversy behind them because drug use goes against their ethos and message.  
“We are totally against cocaine and the use of drugs and we would have never done it of course, so we are shocked that many people believe this,” she said.  
The band got its start performing on Via del Corso, the main commercial thoroughfare in downtown Rome. Their scrappy performances in front of a Geox shoe store were a far cry from the over-the-top, flame-throwing extravaganza Saturday night that literally split David’s pants.
David told a news conference this week that starting out on the street was embarrassing, since the group had to contend with other musicians vying for the same prized piece of sidewalk while neighbors complained about the noise.  
“They were always calling the police,” De Angelis said, laughing.
Maneskin’s win was only Italy’s third victory in the contest and the first since Toto Cutugno took the honor in 1990. The victory means Italy will host next year’s competition, with cities bidding for the honor.  
Launched in 1956 to foster unity after World War II, Eurovision evolved over the years from a bland ballad-fest to a campy, feel-good extravaganza. It has grown from seven countries to include more than 40, including non-European nations such as Israel and far-away Australia.  
Legend has it that Eurovision got its inspiration from Italy’s Sanremo Music Festival, which began in 1951 as a post-war effort to boost Italian culture and the economy of the Ligurian coastal city that has housed it ever since.
Perhaps best known for having launched the likes of Andrea Boccelli and one of Italy’s most famous songs “Nel blu, dipinto di blu” — popularly known as “Volare” — the Sanremo festival usually picks Italy’s official selection for the Eurovision contest.  
Maneskin won Sanremo this year with the same song, “Zitti e Buoni” (“Quiet and good”) that it performed Saturday night in Rotterdam.
De Angelis said she hoped that their victory would send a message to future Italian contestants that ballads aren’t the only genre that can win contests.
“We think maybe from now on more bands will have the chance to play what they want and not be influenced by the radios or what the main genre is in Italy,” she said. “They can feel themselves and play rock music too.”
 
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