Connect with us

Published

on

Nicolas Cage, the noted madman actor, resident until recently in the Hollywood version of debtor’s prison, is free at last. As he told GQ last year, the paycheck from his 2022 quasi-comeback movie, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, enabled him to finally retire the multimillions of dollars of debt that he’d accumulated as a citizen of interest to the IRS and had kept him strapped to a Z-movie hamster wheel for more than a decade. Those were the years of Season of the Witch, Drive Angry, and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeancefamously awful movies, especially considering the talent of the Oscar winner whose rsum they defaced. Now, having won back control of his career, Cage said he was determined not to screw it up again. “I’m just going to focus on being extremely selective,” he told GQ. “I would like to make every movie as if it were my last.”

Unfortunately, something seems to have gone wrong. Sympathy for the Devil, Cage’s latest picture, isn’t awful, exactlynot in the bold, nutty manner of Drive Angry or Bangkok Dangerous or any of his earlier misfires. Sympathy is worse, in a wayit’s dull. Even with Cage decked out in an odd magenta-tinged hairpiece and what looks like a burgundy prom jacket, and giving forth with lines like, “Ever since I was a child, I’ve had a stuffy nose,” the movie never comes alive. The story, with its cryptic structure and colorless dialogue, strives to tantalize (and indeed does have a twist), but for the most part it fends off our interest at every turn.

Joel Kinnaman (Rick Flag in the Suicide Squad movies) plays a character identified in the credits as The Driver. As the picture opens, we find him cruising anxiously through the off-the-Strip streets of Las Vegas, on his way to the hospital where his pain-wracked wife is about to give birth. Pulling into a parking garage, he’s startled to suddenly find a stranger climbing into the back seat of his car, brandishing a pistol. This is The Passenger (Nic, of course), and he gets right down to business. “I’m your family emergency now,” he says.

I’m not familiar with the film’s Israeli director, Yuval Adler, or with its screenwriter, Luke Paradise, and I can’t say I’m intent on getting better acquainted. Adler can’t do a lot with a script that parks us claustrophobically in the car to observe these two characters as they cruise along, nattering about this and that and stopping only to shoot a cop or duck into a diner (where the story does open up for a bit). Another problem is Kinnaman, a recessive actor who’s all but swallowed up by Cage’s effortless charisma. (Who else would think to burst without warning into an unrequested rendition of the old disco hit “I Love the Nightlife”?)

As the story trundles along, we begin to realize that The Passenger is weirdly knowledgeable about The Driverhas been watching him, in fact. Now, he says, they’re all going to go to Boulder City, outside of Vegas, where The Passenger’s mother is dying of cancerand where “a very important man is waiting for our arrival, waiting for you,” he tells The Driver. Jesus, what could that mean? “People always say, ‘Don’t assume the worst,'” The Passenger observes. “Why? Sometimes the worst is what you should assume.”

Continue Reading

World

Trump warns Hamas – and claims Israel has agreed to 60-day ceasefire in Gaza

Published

on

By

Trump warns Hamas - and claims Israel has agreed to 60-day ceasefire in Gaza

Analysis: Many unanswered questions remain

In the long Gaza war, this is a significant moment.

For the people of Gaza, for the hostages and their families – this could be the moment it ends. But we have been here before, so many times.

The key question – will Hamas accept what Israel has agreed to: a 60-day ceasefire?

At the weekend, a source at the heart of the negotiations told me: “Both Hamas and Israel are refusing to budge from their position – Hamas wants the ceasefire to last until a permanent agreement is reached. Israel is opposed to this. At this point only President Trump can break this deadlock.”

The source added: “Unless Trump pushes, we are in a stalemate.”

The problem is that the announcement made now by Donald Trump – which is his social-media-summarised version of whatever Israel has actually agreed to – may just amount to Israel’s already-established position.

We don’t know the details and conditions attached to Israel’s proposals.

Would Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza? Totally? Or partially? How many Palestinian prisoners would they agree to release from Israel’s jails? And why only 60 days? Why not a total ceasefire? What are they asking of Hamas in return? We just don’t know the answers to any of these questions, except one.

We do know why Israel wants a 60-day ceasefire, not a permanent one. It’s all about domestic politics.

If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to agree now to a permanent ceasefire, the extreme right-wingers in his coalition would collapse his government.

Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have both been clear about their desire for the war to continue. They hold the balance of power in Mr Netanyahu’s coalition.

If Mr Netanyahu instead agrees to just 60 days – which domestically he can sell as just a pause – then that may placate the extreme right-wingers for a few weeks until the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, is adjourned for the summer.

It is also no coincidence that the US president has called for Mr Netanyahu’s corruption trial to be scrapped.

Without the prospect of jail, Mr Netanyahu might be more willing to quit the war safe in the knowledge that focus will not shift immediately to his own political and legal vulnerability.

Continue Reading

UK

The PM faced down his party on welfare and lost. I suspect things may only get worse

Published

on

By

The PM faced down his party on welfare and lost. I suspect things may only get worse

So much for an end to chaos and sticking plaster politics.

Yesterday, Sir Keir Starmer abandoned his flagship welfare reforms at the eleventh hour – hectic scenes in the House of Commons that left onlookers aghast.

Facing possible defeat on his welfare bill, the PM folded in a last-minute climbdown to save his skin.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Welfare bill passes second reading

The decision was so rushed that some government insiders didn’t even know it was coming – as the deputy PM, deployed as a negotiator, scrambled to save the bill or how much it would cost.

“Too early to answer, it’s moved at a really fast pace,” said one.

The changes were enough to whittle back the rebellion to 49 MPs as the prime minister prevailed, but this was a pyrrhic victory.

Sir Keir lost the argument with his own backbenchers over his flagship welfare reforms, as they roundly rejected his proposed cuts to disability benefits for existing claimants or future ones, without a proper review of the entire personal independence payment (PIP) system first.

PM wins key welfare vote – follow latest

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Welfare bill blows ‘black hole’ in chancellor’s accounts

That in turn has blown a hole in the public finances, as billions of planned welfare savings are shelved.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves now faces the prospect of having to find £5bn.

As for the politics, the prime minister has – to use a war analogy – spilled an awful lot of blood for little reward.

He has faced down his MPs and he has lost.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

‘Lessons to learn’, says Kendall

They will be emboldened from this and – as some of those close to him admit – will find it even harder to govern.

After the vote, in central lobby, MPs were already saying that the government should regard this as a reset moment for relations between No 10 and the party.

The prime minister always said during the election that he would put country first and party second – and yet, less than a year into office, he finds himself pinned back by his party and blocked from making what he sees are necessary reforms.

I suspect it will only get worse. When I asked two of the rebel MPs how they expected the government to cover off the losses in welfare savings, Rachael Maskell, a leading rebel, suggested the government introduce welfare taxes.

Meanwhile, Work and Pensions Select Committee chair Debbie Abrahams told me “fiscal rules are not natural laws” – suggesting the chancellor could perhaps borrow more to fund public spending.

Read more:
How did your MP vote?
Welfare cuts branded ‘Dickensian’

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Should the govt slash the welfare budget?

These of course are both things that Ms Reeves has ruled out.

But the lesson MPs will take from this climbdown is that – if they push hard in enough and in big enough numbers – the government will give ground.

The fallout for now is that any serious cuts to welfare – something the PM says is absolutely necessary – are stalled for the time being, with the Stephen Timms review into PIP not reporting back until November 2026.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Tearful MP urges govt to reconsider

Had the government done this differently and reviewed the system before trying to impose the cuts – a process only done ahead of the Spring Statement in order to help the chancellor fix her fiscal black hole – they may have had more success.

Those close to the PM say he wants to deliver on the mandate the country gave him in last year’s election, and point out that Sir Keir Starmer is often underestimated – first as party leader and now as prime minister.

But on this occasion, he underestimated his own MPs.

His job was already difficult enough – and after this it will be even harder still.

If he can’t govern his party, he can’t deliver change he promised.

Continue Reading

Politics

US sanctions crypto wallet tied to ransomware, infostealer host

Published

on

By

US sanctions crypto wallet tied to ransomware, infostealer host

US sanctions crypto wallet tied to ransomware, infostealer host

The US Treasury has sanctioned a crypto wallet containing $350,000 tied to the alleged cybercrime hosting service Aeza Group.

Continue Reading

Trending