Guillermo Del Toro‘s Pinocchio is not the family friendly animated film you grew up on. His stop-motion take, out now on Netflix, explores a lot of adult themes in unique ways, including the relationship between fathers and sons and fascism.
He thinks it makes perfect sense, telling ABC Audio, “I think we understood from the beginning that there was a tale told about paternity and different forms of father and son stories. It was religious, partially because of the relationship of Pinocchio to an image of Jesus, and the story of Jesus and his father, the story of Geppetto and Pinocchio, different fathers in the film with different sons. And the most pernicious, caustic form of paternalism, if you would, is the totalitarianism of fascism.”
Del Toro sees a lot of parallels between the WWII Italian fascism of the film, and today.
“One of the things that we wanted to say is disobedience is a virtue in times like this. And for disobedience to have risks, then you have to place it in a historical time where it has consequences,” he explains. “You know, Pinocchio is tempted by the sort of pageantry of show business and by the fear of totalitarian thought.”
The Oscar-winning director says there are a lot of parallels to his own life, particularly, “My relationship with my father and my relationship as a father, both, you know? And the things where you fail or were failed to.”
He goes on to say that “there is no movie worth making where something doesn’t hurt.”
“It doesn’t matter if is this film or Nightmare Alley or Pan’s Labyrinth or Shape of Water, you have to talk about things that are somewhat painful for you or somewhat urgent.”
In 2011, Scott Weiland released a holiday album called The Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Over a decade later — and seven years after the Stone Temple Pilots frontman’s death in 2015 — the compilation has received the deluxe reissue treatment, complete with previously unreleased recordings.
Speaking with ABC Audio, Weiland’s daughter Lucy shares that she thinks the reissue would’ve been “very exciting” for her father.
“My dad absolutely loved Christmas,” Lucy shares. “That was his favorite holiday. It was always a big thing for our family.”
Aside from its stylistic sonic departure from his work with STP and Velvet Revolver, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year showcases a uniquely earnest and sincere aspect of Scott’s voice.
“I feel like he really put his heart and soul into it, just because it’s something that we all loved,” Lucy says.
For Lucy, listening to The Most Wonderful Time of the Year can be “a little bit hard,” especially since Scott passed away in early December, but it still brings her “a lot of comfort.”
“We like to listen to the album mainly on Christmas morning, ’cause that’s when we would be spending time with him,” Lucy says. “It just kinda feels like he’s there with us when we are listening to it on Christmas, as if he’s opening presents with us and celebrating the day with us.”
Upon the announcement of the reissue, a press release described it as the “first posthumous music to be released from the Weiland vault,” and Lucy confirms that there’s more material to come.
“There’s definitely some exciting stuff coming within the next year,” Lucy affirms. “I think that’s something that the fans should definitely keep their eye out for.”
The reissue of The Most Wonderful Time of the Year is out now.
Diddy is a daddy again. The rapper and music mogul announced on Saturday that he welcomed his seventh child, a girl named Love Sean Combs.
“I’m so blessed to welcome my baby girl Love Sean Combs to the world,” Diddy wrote on his Instagram Story, adding, “Mama Combs, Quincy, Justin Christian, D’Lila, Jessie and myself all love you so much! God is the Greatest!”
He did not reveal the identity of the baby’s mother.
Diddy, 53, shares four children with the late Kim Porter: adopted son Quincy, 31; Christian, 24; and 15-year-old twin daughters Jessie and D’Lila. He also has a son Justin, 28, with Misa Hylton, and a daughter Chance, 16, with Sarah Chapman.
Diddy’s latest bundle of joy shares his name – his birth name is Sean Combs, but he legally changed his name to Love in 2021.
Jax‘s song “Victoria’s Secret,” which skewers the pressure society places on women to conform to a certain body type, is a huge hit. And while people keep on asking her how she’s going to follow it up, she says she could literally quit right now and be perfectly happy.
That’s because, thanks to the success of “Victoria’s Secret,” Jax got to perform at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Friday night, and for the New Jersey-born singer, it was the greatest night of her life.
“I keep getting that question, like, ‘Hey, what’s next?’ And I feel like I just peaked!” she told ABC Audio backstage. “I just played the Garden and I had people singing the song that I wrote in a tiny little room.”
But still, she must have goals, right? “I dunno…I’d like to meet more people,” she said. “I’d like to go on tour. And I have lots of other songs…so I hope that people keep listening.”
“And if not, whatever!” she laughed. “‘Cause this is really freakin’ cool!”
On the personal side, Jax said she’s touched at the way “Victoria’s Secret” has helped people love themselves for who they are. Looking at her TikTok feed, she says she sees “every different shape and body type in the entire world…singing my songs and healing together…and making fun of the system.”
However, she revealed that one of the “really crazy” side effects of her song’s success has been having “girl dads” ask her for advice.
“Dads…reach out to me and they’re like, ‘Hey, my daughter’s turning into a teenager. And…there’s some awkward conversations I don’t know how to address. And it’s weird for me,'” she laughs. “So, like, that side of things, I feel really cool about!”
Christmas is a time for peace and togetherness, and the Australian brother duo for KING & COUNTRY are encouraging both those things with their holiday music and tour.
Joel and Luke Smallbone are currently on the road performing songs from their album A Drummer Boy Christmas, including their latest hit “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” and they’re finding that their Christmas music has earned them many brand-new fans.
“I think that roughly two-thirds of the Christmas show [audience] usually are people who have never seen us before,” Luke tells ABC Audio. He explains, “Christmas music is universal to people, and I think that’s a special thing.”
You can see that in action Monday night, when the group stars in CMT Crossroads Christmas, where they’ll be performing holiday songs with a diverse group of artists, including country star Breland, This Is Us star Chrissy Metz and Christian singer Natalie Grant.
“It was just like,….all different walks of life, different genres, different ethnicities, but we’re all able to come together,” Joel says of the special. “That’s the magic of Christmas, right?”
Coming together is also the message of “Do You Hear What I Hear?” The third verse says, “Pray for peace, people, everywhere,” which Joel says is particularly important this year, given world events.
“This year we’ve taken a moment of silence for Eastern Europe and Ukraine,” he notes. “I think it’s a part of what we feel is our work as musicians…there’s a level of peace that we’re trying to create.”
“That’s why we have to have Christmas every year,” he adds. “I’d be frightened to think of what the world would be like without that stake in the ground — every December, going, “There is joy, there is peace, there is love. And it can overcome so much.”
Peter Frampton recently finished up the 2022 dates of his farewell tour, after announcing a few years ago that he’ll be retiring from the road due to a degenerative muscle condition. He sat with Guitar World for a wide-ranging interview about his career, in which he discusses his struggles with his ’70s-era fame, and how David Bowie saved his career.
After 1976’s Frampton Comes Alive made him one of the world’s biggest stars, Frampton says that after the follow-up, 1977’s I’m In You, “I could feel it slipping away…I started to lose a lot of audience…I felt like I was in a sinking ship.” As the ’80s arrived, Frampton admits he wasn’t making his best work, and he wasn’t having much commercial success, either. But in 1986, things turned around for him — and he gives the credit to Bowie, his old schoolmate.
“I did a record for Atlantic called Premonition,” he tells Guitar World. “It still wasn’t a great record…but that’s the album David Bowie listened to…he said, ‘Can you come and play some guitar for me?’”
Frampton ended up playing on Bowie’s 1987 album Never Let Me Down, and then joined him on his Glass Spider tour.
“He could have chosen anybody…but he chose me. I can never thank him enough for that,” admits Frampton. Rather than missing the spotlight, he says being a sideman is his “comfy chair,” explaining, “I’ve always been more comfortable playing guitar, not singing.”
He notes, “David inviting me to do the album and tour changed my credibility; I got my credibility back that I felt I’d lost when I’m In You came out. I’m a musician first and foremost. David gave me back that credibility to continue and bring people back to me.”
Cher and Georgia Holt in 2013; Margaret Norton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images
On Friday, Chertweeted that her heart was breaking for her “beloved friend, sister” Tina Turner, whose son Ronnie passed away at age 62. But on Saturday, Cher found herself mourning a loss: Her beloved mother, Georgia Holt, had passed away at age 96.
“Mom is gone,” the legendary entertainer tweeted. No details were provided, but back in September, Cher had tweeted that her mother had been in the hospital with pneumonia.
Holt, a singer, actress and model born Jackie Jean Crouch, had appeared in classic TV shows like The Adventures of Ozzieand Harriet and I Love Lucy, as well as movies like 1950’s A Life of Her Own and 1951’s Father’s Little Dividend.
She was married and divorced a total of six times in her life, including to Cher’s father, John Sarkisian, who she was married to from 1946 to 1947. They remarried in 1965, but divorced in 1966. She was in a relationship from 1976 until her death with Craig Spencer.
A singer since childhood, Holt recorded a country album, Honky Tonk Woman, in 1980. Featuring a duet with Cher, it wasn’t released until 2013. That same year, she was the subject of a Lifetime documentary called Dear Mom, Love Cher.
In addition to Cher, Holt is survived by her other daughter, Georganne LaPiere, and her two grandchildren: Cher’s children Chaz Bono and Elijah Blue Allman.
Willie J. Allen Jr./Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — A couple of months ago, the mpox outbreak seemed poised to overwhelm the United States. Cases were, in some instances, doubling every week with no signs of slowing down.
However, the outbreak has taken a dramatic turn in the right direction.
The average number of daily cases has fallen to six, as of Dec. 7, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What’s more, the Biden administration announced last week it would let the emergency declaration expire in January.
Public health experts told ABC News that the combination of people changing their behaviors and a strong vaccination campaign helped beat back the disease.
“This really, I think, is a good success story of patients, and really the general public, taking steps to protect themselves,” Dr. Dana Mazo, an infectious diseases specialist and clinical associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone Health, told ABC News. “For patients, hearing what the data is, hearing what the recommendations were and really doing what they could to protect themselves and their communities.”
Vaccine rollout
Currently, the JYNNEOS vaccine, a two-dose vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration to prevent smallpox and mpox, is the only vaccine being used in the U.S.
Data from Africa has shown two doses of JYNNEOS are at least 85% effective in preventing mpox infection.
To increase the number of JYNNEOS doses available, the FDA authorized a proven strategy in August to inject the vaccine intradermally, just below the first layer of skin, rather than subcutaneously, or under all the layers of skin.
This allows one vial of vaccine to be given out as five separate doses rather than a single dose.
Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told ABC News that during the early weeks of the outbreak, there were concerns around vaccine supply, so only those with limited or suspected exposures were recommended for vaccination.
“But then as the supply was expanded through the intradermal dosing, it became more feasible, especially in those cities where there were the highest numbers, to broaden vaccination to people potentially at risk, and even without known exposures or suspected exposures,” he said. “And I think that did play an important role.”
As of Dec. 6, more than 1.1 million doses of the vaccine have been administered in the U.S., CDC data shows.
Public changing their behaviors
The experts said another reason for the decline is that Americans who were the most at-risk changed their behaviors.
“The most important [factor] was really effective messaging by public health authorities in close collaboration with affected communities, to help educate people about mpox in a way that wasn’t stigmatizing,” said Kuritzkes.
He continued, “And in order for people to be able to both recognize the signs and symptoms of infection, and then not only get treatment for themselves, but take appropriate measures to prevent transmission to others, but also ways in which people if not yet exposed and not yet infected, could minimize their chances of becoming infected with mpox.”
The outbreak has primarily been concentrated in men who have sex with men, a group that includes people who identify as gay, bisexual, transgender and nonbinary, although health officials have said anyone — regardless of sexual orientation — is at risk if they have direct contact with an infected patient.
But this group listened to doctors’ advice on how to lower their risk and followed suit, experts said.
A joint survey from the CDC, Emory University and Johns Hopkins University found about one-half of gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men reduced their number of sexual partners, one-time anonymous partners, and reduced use of dating apps.
“So really, people responded to the data that was coming out saying that this bulk of the transmission is from casual sexual encounters, and really changed their behavior,” Mazo said.
Not taking foot off the gas
Experts told ABC News even if the number of cases has substantially declined, it doesn’t mean that the threat of mpox has been eliminated.
“I would be cautious about claiming victory, I think it would mean that we were really successful in bringing this epidemic to a close, but we need to remain vigilant,” Kuritzkes said.
They also encourage Americans to get vaccinated against mpox if they are at risk.
Although the disease does not spread through airborne droplets but rather from close, personal, often skin-to-skin interactions, including hugging, touching and prolonged face-to-face contact, the risk is still higher as Americans gather together for the holidays.
Vaccination “is still important, especially because we will see what happens, in the wintertime, when people perhaps are going to be inside more and sort of sharing spaces, again, holiday parties, other things,” Mazo said. “I would still recommend to my patients who are at risk to consider vaccination and discuss vaccination with them, because it would be the best way to protect themselves.”
(LOS ANGELES) — Like many industries, graduate student workers at colleges and universities around the country are demanding better pay and living conditions from their employers as inflation and high costs, especially rent, drive them to the breaking point.
Graduate student workers throughout the industry are saying their pay is unlivable, failing to meet or catch up with inflation and soaring costs.
Leading into the pandemic, workers in academia, including graduate students and student researchers, felt their pay and benefits from colleges and universities did not match the cost of living, Rachael Kuintzle, a PhD candidate at CalTech University and co-founder of the Graduate Student Action Network, told ABC News.
This is an issue that was exacerbated by skyrocketing inflation and housing costs that have taken a “quantum leap,” Nelson Lichtenstein, the director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told ABC News.
The most common salary for student workers at the University of California is $24,000 per year, according to Neal Sweeny. Sweeny is the president of UAW 5810, a union representing over 11,000 Postdoctoral Scholars and Academic Researchers at the University of California and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Sweeny said pay was a crisis even before inflation hit. The majority of student workers pay more than 30% of their salary toward rent. He said universities are not addressing this mismatch between pay and costs with enough urgency.
Graduate student workers, especially those living in metropolitan cities, are heavily impacted by inflation, with rents even outpacing inflation, Kuintzle said.
There is also less assurance that graduate students will be able to find tenure-track faculty positions or research positions upon completion of their degree. Pay is not as good as it used to be and there are not that many jobs available, Kuintzle said.
This is also echoed from labor experts who work in academia.
With institutions tight on money, jobs for graduate students have diminished, there are less positions available and universities have been reducing the number of regular tenure-track faculty, Lichtenstein said.
A few years ago, Lichtenstein’s department recognized that there was a big problem with getting jobs for graduate students decided they would cut back on the number of graduate students they admit.
“Well, the Dean came in and said, ‘You can’t do that we need the grad students to staff these big courses.’ Even though the chances of getting good jobs had diminished, nevertheless, we had to keep recruiting grad students, and then they came in to teach these classes,” Lichtenstein said.
Another labor expert agreed that graduate students’ incomes are not a livable wage, facing debt and a world worse off than their parents’. This is what is pushing so many workers toward unions, Kate Bronfenbrenner, a professor at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, told ABC News.
Organizing in higher education is new and universities are not used to bargaining with graduate students and they are not adapting to students’ costs of living, Bronfenbrenner said.
Withth Graduate students and student workers doing the majority of teaching and research at universities, but their pay is not reflecting that Bronfenbrenner said.
Bronfenbrenner also said universities are reacting to labor organizing that way any traditional private sector anti-union corporation does, by “playing hardball.”
The conditions are leaving many wondering why they put up with these working conditions.
“Folks are asking the question ‘why should we tolerate this, not only the wages but the treatment that we endure, the work-life-balance and the abuse that many students endure to get their PhDs. It’s not worth it anymore,” Kuintzle said.
Social media has played a role in the recent surge in worker organization, even evident in unionization of Starbucks workers, experts told ABC News.
Young people are very good at organizing online and employers can no longer keep their wages a secret. Workers across industries are sharing sessions form their successes at other schools more easily using social media, Bronfenbrenner said.
Kuintzle founded the Graduate Student Action Network, a group of graduate students and workers at colleges and universities around the country that was formed in the fallout of Roe v. Wade being overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in June that ended federal protections for abortion rights in the U.S.
Since then, the group has grown to include graduate students from over 60 universities across 34 states and it has become a forum where they discuss common issues, labor organizing and compare what pay and benefits their universities provide. The transfer of information has allowed students able to make changes at their schools give advice to others, according to Kuintzle.
There is also a surge in graduate student and academic workers organizing, with students willing to take more risks, Kuintzle said.
Kuintzle said graduate students at several schools are working to unionize or recently voted to unionize.
Lichtenstein said one solution could be for universities to get more funding from the government, something he sees as doable in the U.S.
This is also an issue that is disproportionately impacting workers from low-income backgrounds or those who do not have a spouse or family members supporting them financially.
Bronfenbrenner warned that the cost of universities not adequately responding will be the quality of education at universities going down. This will also hit women, working class and low income workers the most.
Kuintzle warned that this could be an even bigger issue moving forward if universities and colleges are unable to meet the needs and demands of their workers. Many are even leaving academia all together to work in their industries.
“There are Caltech students who are actively seeking to transfer schools because, among our peer institutions, Caltech has the lowest stipend by far. And I know that is definitely going to start playing a larger role in what programs students are accepting offers at,” Kuintzle said.
(WASHINGTON) — A U.S. helicopter raid killed two members of the Islamic State terrorist group in Syria early Sunday morning local time, U.S. Central Command announced later that day.
Among those killed were Anas, a provincial official in eastern Syria who was involved in the group’s plotting and facilitation operations, according to a statement from Central Command, also known as CENTCOM.
CENTCOM said it appears that no civilians were hurt or killed in the raid.
“ISIS continues to represent a threat to the security and stability of the region. This operation reaffirms CENTCOM’s steadfast commitment to ensuring the group’s enduring defeat,” said Joe Buccino, a CENTCOM spokesperson.
“The death of these ISIS officials will disrupt the terrorist organization’s ability to further plot and carry out destabilizing attacks in the Middle East,” Buccino said.
The Islamic State group is a shell of its former self after losing its self-declared caliphate, spanning parts of Iraq and Syria, around 2017.
Still, U.S. officials say the extremists, which include thousands of fighters scattered across affiliates in Africa, the Middle East, central Asia and elsewhere, remain a threat.
Three Islamic State leaders have been killed, with the fourth, Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi, taking over the group last month after the death of his predecessor.
