‘ETERNALS’ director Chloé Zhao defends comic book movies:
“I do feel it’s important to not write off stories because we don’t consider them high art. The purpose of storytelling for me, humbly, is to create containers for people… to try to process what they need to process. Archetypes are such a great way to do it — and we see them in myths — is because it’s something we all share.”
(Via: @Variety)
Chris Evans Reveals Why He Finally Returned to Marvel
Interviewer: "When you finished Endgame, did you ever think you'd come back? Or did you feel like there was an expiration date?"
Chris Evans: "When we finished Endgame, they took me to dinner and said, 'We'd love to keep doing movies with Steve Rogers.'"
"They showed me a pitch. It was great but it just didn't feel right. I wanted to preserve what we'd already done."
"Over the next eight years, I probably heard at least a dozen different pitches. They were all good, but none of them felt right."
"Then I got a call saying Robert Downey Jr. was talking to Marvel. I thought, 'Uh-oh... what does this mean?'"
"Joe gave me the pitch, Downey was back, and suddenly it just felt right."
"Never say never but I wasn't going to come back just for anything. These characters have earned their place, and you don't want to mess with that."
China planted forests are expanding their leaf area 66 percent faster than comparable natural woodlands. For almost five decades the country has pursued the Great Green Wall one of the largest reforestation efforts on Earth. This vast tree belt along the margins of the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts aims to combat desertification and stabilize the environment.
A recent study using satellite data reveals that these planted areas exhibit distinct growth patterns compared to undisturbed forests. The managed plantations have shown leaf area increases approximately 66 percent quicker than nearby natural stands. Younger trees inherently grow more rapidly and human oversight contributes to this acceleration.
After adjusting for age and site conditions the planted forests still outperformed natural ones by about 4.6 percent. Researchers suspect enhanced sensitivity to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels may play a role though the precise mechanisms require further investigation. These insights could refine models of forest carbon sequestration capacity.
The advantage however is temporary. Growth benefits tend to peak when trees reach 30 to 40 years of age and then decline. While natural forests develop more gradually they sustain carbon storage over longer periods and harbor significantly higher biodiversity.
Planting initiatives therefore offer valuable short term carbon capture but cannot substitute for the conservation of mature ecosystems. The Great Green Wall has raised regional forest cover from roughly 5 percent in 1978 to 14 percent in 2023. It has diminished dust storms and enhanced local air quality.
The project continues to provide important data on forest responses to climate shifts and human intervention.
@PurpGoldLakers I mean, why is it always the front office's problem? Why can't it be Luke who doesn't want to play for the Lakers? I am just curious, why everybody goes directly to blame?
@F1BigData Shouldn't put the driver's name, but just go as "drivers who are not lappee by Mercedes today".... It's the car not the driver, you put Ham or Max in that car, same result
The film has a 10-minute sex scene. The director made the actresses shoot it for 10 straight days. He made them redo a single 30-second street-crossing scene over 100 times before he was finally satisfied. The film won the biggest prize at Cannes for it. Four months later, both actresses said they would never work with him again.
The film is Blue Is the Warmest Color, directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, starring Léa Seydoux (the actress from the last two James Bond films) and Adèle Exarchopoulos. In 2013, Steven Spielberg led the Cannes jury and gave the top prize to all three of them on the same stage, something the festival had never done before.
The shoot was supposed to take two and a half months. It took twice as long. They shot 750 hours of footage to end up with a 3-hour film. After one of those takes, Seydoux laughed. Kechiche picked up his screen monitor and threw it into the street, screaming that he couldn't work under those conditions. For the long sex scene, the actresses wore fake body parts made from molds of their actual bodies.
In May 2013, the French film crew union filed a complaint against the production. Workdays were running 16 hours but logged on timecards as 8. Overtime was unpaid, and multiple labor laws were broken. People had quit mid-shoot. By September, both actresses sat down with a reporter and called the atmosphere a form of harassment. Kechiche fired back with an open letter calling Seydoux an "arrogant, spoiled child" for criticizing him and threatened to take her to court for libel.
The woman who wrote the graphic novel the film was based on, Julie Maroh, had already gone public. She called the sex scenes "porn" and said what was missing on the set was lesbians. By the time the film hit U.S. theaters that fall, none of the three Palme winners were speaking to each other.
In 2017, Kechiche put his Palme d'Or trophy up for auction to fund his next movie. Its 2019 sequel premiered at Cannes with a 13-minute unsimulated oral sex scene. Audiences walked out in groups. Critics gave it a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes. A source claimed the actors had been pressured to drink alcohol to finish. That October, a French actress went to the police and accused Kechiche of sexual assault. Paris prosecutors dropped the case in 2020 for lack of evidence. He denies the allegations.
Hollywood was changing too. By October 2018, HBO required intimacy coordinators on every show with sex or nude scenes, people who protect actors during intimate filming. America's actors union released the first official rules for them in January 2020. The first union contract for intimacy coordinators in U.S. film and television took effect on February 22, 2026, three months ago. The clause Seydoux now writes into every contract, the right to approve which nude scenes stay in the final cut, has become standard practice for most lead actors.