Once again, the American Film Institute has made its picks for the year’s best in TV and film, and among this year’s honorees are Emmy winners Ted Lasso and Succession on the TV side, and the films Dune, and The Power of the Dog, and Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story.
Each year, the organization singles out 10 entries for both the big and small screens, and a number of “special” honorees. Each of the 10 movies and 10 TV shows chosen, have been, “deemed culturally and artistically representative of this year’s most significant achievements in the art of the moving image.”
In addition, the AFI chose a handful of works, Kenneth Branagh‘s Belfast, and Netflix’s smash Squid Game for its yearly Special Award, “designated for works of excellence that fall outside of the Institute’s criteria of American film and television.”
The honorees will be celebrated at a private reception on January 7, 2022. On January 8, the AFI Movie Club will showcase them, along with new content exclusive to AFI.com.
Here are the 2021 AFI AWARDS Honorees:
AFI MOVIES OF THE YEAR
Coda Don’t Look Up Dune King Richard Licorice Pizza Nightmare Alley The Power of the Dog Tick Tick Boom The Tragedy of Macbeth West Side Story
AFI TELEVISION PROGRAMS OF THE YEAR
Hacks Maid Mare of Easttown Reservation Dogs Schimgadoon! Succession Ted Lasso The Underground Railroad WandaVision The White Lotus
AFI SPECIAL AWARD
Belfast Squid Game Summer of Soul(…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
This New Year’s Eve, Fox is rounding up some memorable musical performances from throughout the year.
Fox’s New Year’s Eve Toast & Roast 2022 will feature pre-taped performances from Maroon 5, Pink, Imagine Dragons and more. Eighties rocker Billy Idol, who appeared on Miley Cyrus‘ album Plastic Hearts, is also performing on the show. As previously reported, Miley is hosting her own New Year’s Eve show over on NBC with Pete Davidson.
Ken Jeong and Joel McHale will be hosting Fox’s special live from Times Square, along with special correspondent Kelly Osbourne.
Fox’s New Year’s Eve Toast & Roast 2022 airs live Friday, December 31, beginning at 8 p.m. ET.
Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, and Jamie Foxx, who played Spider-Man villains in three different films — respectively, 2002’s Spider-Man, 2004’s Spider-Man 2, and 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 — have reunited for a new promotional spot for Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Dafoe reprises his role of Norman Osborn/Green Goblin; Molina returns as Dr. Otto Octavius/Doc Ock, and Foxx comes back as Maxwell Dillon/Electro — and unfortunately for Tom Holland‘s Spidey, a rip in the Multiverse sends them all into his reality.
“We got another chance to stir things up,” Foxx says.
“Doc Ock picks up where he left off,” Molina says. “He’s looking for revenge.”
Dafoe offers, “Goblin believes in a world of losers and winners, power is all that matters.”
Foxx says of his lightning-throwing character, “Electro is like, ‘The world did me wrong. And now I got this energy, I’m about to go get mine.'”
What no promotional spot will confirm, however, is persistent rumors that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield will also return to lend Holland’s Spidey a hand in beating their movies’ baddies.
Spider-Man: No Way Home, a co-production of Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios, swings into theaters December 17.
Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
Amy Sussman/Getty Images for the Critics Choice Association
Halle Berry received the Career Achievement award Monday night at the Celebration of Black Cinema and Television in Los Angeles, and the 55-year-old actress was honored to be surrounded by accomplished Black professionals at the Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel.
“To be in this room with so many of my peers and so many beautiful people of color just fills me up,” Berry said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “When I started 30 years ago there weren’t rooms like this where I could go and feel affirmed, esteemed. I was often alone; I was one of only a few Black people in the room searching to find my value and searching for my worth.”
Other winners included Ava DuVernay – Melvin Van Peebles Trailblazer Award; Anthony Anderson – Producers Award; Barry Jenkins – Director Award for Television, and Danielle Brooks – Actress Award for Television.
In other news, Saturday Night Live star Kenan Thompson announced he’s formed a production company, Artists for Artists, and his first project is with Mike Tyson, Deadline reports. The famed boxer, his wife Kiki Tyson, and his brother-in-law Azim Spicer, will produce Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth Part 2, a live stage tour, written by Kiki, that is a follow up to Tyson’s 2013 one-man show and HBO special.
Finally, Kandi Burruss and Kelly Price have joined the cast of the dating dramedy, A La Carte, which will debut in spring 2022 on AllBlk, according to Deadline.
(SAN JOSE, Calif.) — Elizabeth Holmes finished her testimony on Wednesday and her defense team rested their case in her criminal fraud trial.
All that’s left now are closing arguments. Then the jury will begin its deliberations.
For the jury to convict Holmes, the founder of the now defunct blood-testing startup Theranos, prosecutors must prove she knowingly misled investors about her company’s technology — a key element in the 11 fraud charges she faces.
Holmes could be sentenced to decades in prison if convicted. The 37-year-old has pleaded not guilty.
As both sides prepare for the last leg of the trial, here’s a look at some of what we’ve learned from the former Theranos CEO.
The buck stopped with her
Throughout the trial, Holmes’ team has suggested that her coworkers — namely the lab directors and her ex-boyfriend and former company COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani — were responsible for certain aspects of the company.
But prosecutors got Holmes to acknowledge that when it came to making decisions at Theranos, the buck stopped with her.
“But, ultimately all roads, as the CEO, lead to you?” U.S. Attorney Robert Leach asked Holmes on day five of her testimony.
“Yes,” Holmes said.
“And is it fair [to say] that the buck stops with you?” Leach continued.
“I felt that,” she replied.
On redirect, Holmes told her attorney Kevin Downey that she felt the buck stopped with her, but said she was not aware of all the decisions that were made at the company.
Relationship with Sunny Balwani
Holmes held back tears during her last day of direct examination as she told jurors that Balwani had repeatedly abused her during their near decade-long relationship. Balwani, her co-defendant in the case, had his trial severed from Holmes earlier this year after learning of the abuse allegations. He has denied those allegations.
On cross examination, Leach sought to poke holes in Holmes’ narrative. He said the couple had texted each other the word “love” at least 594 times in the more than 12,000 messages they exchanged.
“Was just thinking about you and meditating on my tigress,” Balwani texted Holmes in 2015, a message she read aloud in court at Leach’s behest, fighting back tears as she spoke.
Trade secrets
The government called investors to the stand and asked if they knew Theranos used third-party machines to conduct their blood testing. None of the former shareholders testified they did. But many of them said they were sold on the smaller blood-testing device Holmes had coined the “Edison” or the “miniLab.”
Holmes admitted on direct examination her “3.5” device could never run more than 12 clinical tests. Many of the company’s tests offered to patients at Theranos Wellness Centers in Walgreens stores were run on modified third-party machines, she said.
Asked why Holmes never shared that information with her investors, or even Walgreens, she chalked it up to trade secrets.
If Theranos’ proprietary info got out, “the big medical device companies like Siemens could easily reproduce what we had done,” Holmes testified. “They had more engineers than we did and a lot more resources.”
On cross examination, Leach barely broached the topic. But he did get Holmes to admit that it would be wrong if Theranos told investors that the company was not using modified third-party devices.
Holmes said she informed the FDA, her board of directors and the federal lab regulator, CMS, that she was running tests on third-party devices because, unlike the investors, they could assure protection of her intellectual property. Although, during the cross-examination, Leach pointed out that Gen. James Mattis, a then-Theranos board member, testified he was unaware of the modified third-party devices.
Altered documents
Prosecutors have repeatedly suggested Holmes doctored documents while she was running Theranos. In her testimony, Holmes owned up to — but reframed — some of those allegations.
On her second day of direct examination, she said she placed the logos of two pharmaceutical companies on blood-testing validation reports. She acknowledged she did this without the drugmakers’ permission and before she sent them to Walgreens.
“I wish I had done it differently,” she said on the stand Nov. 23 while being questioned by her attorney.
Leach later used that very same phrase six times on Nov. 30, the first day of his cross examination.
“Is that another thing you wish you had done differently?” he asked Holmes.
“One hundred percent,” she replied before later saying, “There are many things I wish I did differently.”
Leach also pointed to a third altered pharma report, which had been originally created by the drugmaker, GlaxoSmithKline, after the company evaluated Theranos’ technology. Like the other reports, the changes Holmes said she made to this document included the company’s logo.
Downey characterized the issue of doctoring documents as a “sideshow” on Tuesday, suggesting that Holmes did not conceal the reports because two of the three altered versions were sent directly to the drugmakers.
Star Wars fans are just weeks away from the Mandalorian spin-off series The Book of Boba Fett, and to keep them hanging on, Disney+ has released a new teaser.
Truth told, there’s not too much new footage in the sneak peek, but one cool sequence shows the bounty hunter suiting up in his trademark Mandalorian armor — with the help of some pit droids, the little skittish mechanics first seen in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.
Also shown is Temuera Morrison scoping out the Tatooine palace of Jabba the Hutt in a scene apparently set before the events of Mando.
As that series’ second season finale showed, Fett and his fellow hunter, Ming-Na Wen‘s Fennec Shand, take over the palace headquarters of Jabba’s crime syndicate.
“Witness the return of the legend,” a title card reads.
The Book of Boba Fett debuts December 29 on Disney+.
Are you dreaming of a White House Christmas? A new holiday music special, In Performance at the White House: Spirit of the Season, will be airing on PBS later this month.
Camila Cabello, Jonas Brothers, Pentatonix and Norah Jones are among the artists who will be performing on the hour-long special. Each of the performances will take place in historic White House rooms. Viewers will also get an inside look at the White House holiday decor.
Actress Jennifer Garner will host the program, which will also feature special remarks from President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden.
In Performance at the White House: Spirit of the Season will premiere Tuesday, December 21 at 8 p.m. ET on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings.
Sarah Hyland and fiancé Wells Adams woke up on Wednesday to people gushing over their adorable interactions at the People’s Choice Awards, such as Wells adjusting Sarah’s two-piece white Vera Wang dress as they walked the red carpet.
“There was a lot going on in that dress! Things needed to be poofed and fluffed,” Wells told ABC Audio. “If I’m known for anything, it’s my ability to poof and fluff… My gravestone is going to be, like, ‘Really good on red carpets, making sure things are poofed!'”
The two are glad their innocuous exchange brought smiles to so many faces because, as the Bachelorette alum says, “It has been a tough year, but we’re ending it on such a positive and good vibe!”
Another positive vibe is Sarah’s new show, Play-Doh Squished, arriving Friday, December 10, on IMDb TV and Amazon Prime Video.
“It’s so stinking cute. It’s a Play-Doh competition show… It is so freaking cute and is perfect for the holidays for families,” Sarah, who hosts the series, raved. “We have this one little girl in the show. Her name is Dorothy and she’s a star. If you watch it for anything, you watch it for Dorothy.”
Sarah and Wells are also looking forward to hosting their family — and their dogs — for Christmas.
“I think there will be one to three or at least five dogs, if not more at our house,” said the Modern Family alum — and Wells interjected, “And they’ll probably jump up on the table and eat all of our food, which happens every year.”
Speaking of pets, the couple is teaming with Petco for a Facebook Live holiday shopping event to share gift ideas and help find homeless animals their forever family. It airs Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. PT.
Luke Bryan and his wife, Caroline, are celebrating 15 years of marriage today, and the singer celebrated with a social media tribute that showcased the couple’s signature mix of sweetness and humor.
“Happy 15 Anniversary to my love,” Luke wrote alongside a selfie of himself and Caroline in the stands at a football game. “Don’t know how you put up with my goofy a**. I love you to the moon and back.”
Anniversary or no anniversary, both members of the busy couple still have to work: Caroline’s guest hosting on the E! Talk show Daily Pop today, and she replied to Luke’s anniversary message with a joke about their busy schedules.
“Happy 15th!” she commented. “Maybe we’ll see each other at some point today. Love you!”
Earlier this year, the country star couple remembered their first meeting in My Dirt Road Diary, a documentary about Luke’s life and career. They met as college students at Georgia Southern University at a bar called Dingus, and Luke describes the occasion as “love at first sight, college magic.”
They married in 2006, and share two sons, Bo and Tate.
French Montana, Doja Cat and Saweetie combine futuristic elements of The Terminator with the 1979 classic gang film, The Warriors, in their new “Handstand” video which dropped Wednesday.
Set in a post–apocalyptic brawl filled with laser eyes and baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire, the streets are on fire as Doja spits her rhymes while blasting away with her metal machine gun bikini top.
“Handstand” is the latest release from Montana’s fourth studio album, They Got Amnesia, which dropped November 19. In addition to Doja Cat and Saweetie, the 20-track project also features John Legend, Rick Ross,Ty Dolla $ign, and the late Pop Smoke.
