Ex-Simpsons Composer Alf Clausen Files Wrongful Termination Suit

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Alf Clausen, the longtime composer for The Simpsons who was fired from the show in 2017, filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against Fox and the show, claiming he was dismissed because of his age, Variety reports.

Clausen joined The Simpsons during its second season and worked on the show for 27 years. When he was let go in 2017, he said he received a call from Simpsons producer Richard Sakai, who said the show was seeking a different kind of music.

In his new lawsuit, filed Monday, Clausen countered, saying, This reason was pretextual and false. Instead, Plaintiffs unlawful termination was due to perceived disability and age. The new suit names Fox, James L. Brooks Gracie Films and The Simpsons new corporate owner, Disney, as defendants.

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A representative forThe Simpsonsdeclined to comment. A representative forFox did not immediately return Rolling Stones request for comment.

After Clausen was fired, The Simpsons replaced him with the music production company Bleeding Fingers Music, which was founded by Hans Zimmer, Russell Emanuel and Steve Kofsky. The suit alleges that Clausens replacement was substantially younger in age [and] was not only paid less, but was not disabled. The suit does not identify Clausens disability.

A lawyer for Clausen did not immediately return Rolling Stones request for comment.

At the time of Clausens firing, there was some speculation that the move was part of ongoing cost-cutting measures at The Simpsons, even though the show continues to rake in massive profits. The composers overhead was particularly high because he scored every episode with a 35-piece orchestra. While that was the set-up Simpsons creator Matt Groening wanted from the start, the cost of musicians, studios, orchestrations and other expenses could run into the millions per year.

During his tenure, Clausen handled background music and cues, contributed to an array of classic Simpsons songs and earned 23 Emmy nominations, winning two. At the start of Season Three, he also re-arranged Danny Elfmans famous Simpsons theme song.

GLOW Season 3: A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action, Please

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This post contains full spoilers for GLOW Season Three, which Netflix released on Friday.

In the closing moments of GLOWs third season, Britney Youngs Carmen announces plans to leave the show-within-the-show because, she says, I want to wrestle, and I cant do that here anymore.

Carmens in a unique position among the Netflix dramedys main characters. Almost everyone else fell into wrestling by accident, or for lack of a better option, where Carmen grew up in the wrestling world and loves it for its own sake. Even money man Bash (Chris Lowell), while a wrestling fan, has diversified his interests by this point in the series, and looks at GLOW as one small part of his larger showbiz empire. So it makes sense that Carmen, of all the regulars, would be most apt to make a meta comment about how little wrestling there is in this season of a show about wrestling.

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Over the course of a 10-episode season, only three episodes feature any significant action inside the squared circle: the premiere (Up, Up, Up), which establishes how the former cable-access show translates into a Las Vegas casino revue; the fifth episode (Freaky Tuesday), where all the women swap characters for the night; and the finale (A Very GLOW Christmas), in which Carmen convinces Ruth (Alison Brie) to perform a version of A Christmas Carol where Ruths wrestling alter ego Zoya the Destroya is Scrooge.

In several ways, it makes a lot of sense that Season Three largely back-burners the wrestling. Doing GLOW as a stage show for tourists means that it will be the same thing every night, and theres no point dramatizing that except on occasions like Freaky Tuesday, where things go differently. (And it turns out that Betty Gilpin can do a terrible Russian accent almost as amusing as Bries.) And by the end of Season Two, GLOW had arguably pushed the wrestling angle as hard as it could. Not only had all of the actresses become technically skilled in the ring, but that season devoted an entire, marvelously silly episode to showing us an installment of the Bash-produced show from beginning to end.

Perhaps most importantly, the wrestling sequences take up a lot of real estate on a show with a big ensemble an ensemble that it was clearly determined to service more thoroughly this year than in the past. By acknowledging early on that the Vegas show would be the same from night to night, Season Three gave itself more room (*) to dig deeper into nearly every character. (The two hairdressers were still mostly comic relief, but even they played a more dramatic role as Sunita Manis Arthie anxiously took a step out of the closet.)

(*) As a streaming show without commercials or time slots, GLOW can technically be any length it wants, and nearly every episode this year was 30-plus minutes, with several clocking in near or even over 40. But thats also pushing the outer limits of what tends to work in a TV comedy episode even for a series meant to be binged so something had to go. In this case, it was the wrestling.

Like Ruth and Debbie, GLOW itself has always looked on the wrestling as a means to an end. For the show, it was the chance to explore the ambitions and bonds among a group of misfits at a very tacky moment in our pop cultural history. Having long since established how the wrestling works, Season Three looked more at what made everybody tick.

Bashs green-card marriage to Rhonda (Kate Nash), for instance, allowed the creative team to more directly address Bashs own stay deep inside the closet, which had only been touched on briefly in previous seasons. This is tricky dramatic territory, but Lowell, Nash, and the writers navigated it with grace throughout culminating in an unexpected threesome between the sexually incompatible spouses and the male prostitute Rhonda had hired in the mistaken belief that she could make Bash jealous. Most of that sequence was dialogue-free, with the actors expressions and movements explaining everything about this impromptu renegotiation of the marriage.

There was also good material for Sheila the She-Wolf (Gayle Rankin) and Tamm (Kia Stevens) as they opted to make like Ruth and get serious about acting; for Debbie as she asserted herself as a producer and fell into a brief romance with older businessman Tex (Halt and Catch Fires always-charming Toby Huss); for the awkward romance between Arthie and Yolanda (Shakira Barrera), who had no interest in hiding her own identity; for GLOW director Sam (Marc Maron) to make peace with the fact that daughter Justine (Britt Baron) was a better writer than him; and for Cherry (Sydelle Noel) to debate whether to sacrifice her career to have a baby with husband Keith (Bashir Salahuddin). Nothing revolutionary, but all the stories were effectively told. The season also did a nice job with its two major new additions: Geena Davis as the former showgirl who owns the casino, and Kevin Cahoon as Bobby, a drag queen who becomes close with Sheila.

The monotonous, backgrounded nature of the wrestling fit into the seasons themes. Vegas offered both GLOW and its performers a chance to reinvent themselves. Nearly all took it, and discovered new facets of their work and/or personal lives. The only exceptions: Carmen, who just wanted to wrestle; and Ruth, who found herself plateauing while all her friends were blossoming. (Even Sam couldnt cast her in the studio movie he was making, because screenwriter Justine objected, and Sam chose his daughter over his would-be girlfriend.)

So in terms of plot, character, and theme, it made sense that we didnt spend much time watching Zoya, Liberty Belle, Machu Picchu, and the rest of the womens wrestling characters. But I have to admit that by the time Carmen voiced her objections to Ruth and Debbie, Id started to agree with her.

While the Vegas setting hemmed in the creative team regarding how much the show-within-the-show could change each time we saw it, its also not coincidental that Freaky Tuesday and A Very GLOW Christmas were among the seasons most effective episodes for both laughs and character development. GLOW just feels livelier, and truer to itself, when were spending at least a few minutes each episode on the work thats brought these misfits together. And in seasons past, the show deftly used the wrestling not only to provide narrative structure, but to help advance character arcs. There was some of that in Season Three Jackie Tohns Melrose does a racist Asian accent while swapping roles with Ellen Wongs Jenny in Freaky Tuesday, kicking off a very potent storyline for two of the shows back-benchers but not as much as there could have been. Its a big deal late in the season, for instance, when Sheila encounters a real wolf during a desert camping trip and, realizing that shes been faking it all these years, ashamedly burns her wig and other bits of lupine cosplay. But the only time afterward that we see her in the ring, its for the Christmas Carol spoof, which means we have no idea what kind of character she winds up playing the rest of the time or whether she feels enough of an actress now to separate the She-Wolf from Sheila and use the former for work purposes.

GLOW doesnt always need wrestling to move things along and hit important emotional beats. The seasons penultimate episode (The Libertines) takes place at an AIDS benefit cabaret that Bobby invites the women to, and those performances effectively take on the role the wrestling scenes so often play in underlining story and character and theme. (Its at the cabaret, for instance, that Sheila gets major validation for her acting, while Arthie is inspired to embrace her truth after homophobes vandalize the event.) But some kind of performance is helpful, and Season Three could have used some similar substitutions throughout.

The season ends with Debbie having helped Bash buy a local TV network out from under Tex, with the plan to revive GLOW as a television property (with new characters, because their old station owns the rights to Zoya, et. al), and with Ruth replacing Sam as director. But Carmen has already split for other opportunities, and Ruth doesnt want to give up her acting dream, even if, as Debbie bluntly puts it, it would have happened for her by now if it was going to.

Its a promising set-up for a potential fourth season, but fourth seasons on Netflix are becoming an increasingly rare proposition. The streaming giant has apparently embraced the idea that it can cancel shows, and that its subscribers would rather start something new after a few seasons. (Never mind that long-running shows like The Office and Friends are apparently among the most popular titles in the entire Netflix library.) It wouldnt surprise me if theres a fourth season of GLOW, but nor would it shock me to see it join the recent ranks of Tuca & Bertie and The OA, among many others, to get a shorter-than-planned run.

This was still a fine season of TV, and the best showcase yet for many members of the cast. And if GLOW manages to break the recent cancellation trend and come back for a season where Debbie and Bash are mounting a new wrestling TV show, then we can look on Season Three as an admirable and mostly successful experiment. But if the last we see of these characters is Debbie and Ruths awkward airport goodbye, then among the disappointments will be the fact that GLOWs unplanned farewell season mostly sidestepped the arena where so many of its memorable moments once took place.

High School Politics Hit Insane Heights in New Trailer for The Politician

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Ben Platt plays a teenager obsessed with becoming President of the United States in the riotous first trailer for Ryan Murphys new high school comedy, The Politician, out September 27th on Netflix.

In the new eight-episode series, Platt plays the preppy and wealthy Payton, whos convinced his dreams of occupying the White House will only be realized if he first becomes Student Body President of San Sebastian High. Unfortunately for Payton, the other students (and teachers, and parents) of San Sebastian are just as ruthless and willing to play dirty as he is, even going as far as to concoct a murder plan.

And while this may just be an election for Student Body President, The Politician is also a Ryan Murphy show, and the trailer teases plenty of on-the-nose political satire. She cant vote without a student ID, one high school poll watcher deadpans. Otherwise theyd bus in a bunch of kids from other schools to vote illegally.

The Politician also stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Lange, Zoey Deutch, Lucy Boynton, Julia Schlaepfer, Laura Dreyfuss, Rahne Jones, Theo Germaine, David Corenswet, Bob Balaban and Benjamin Barrett. Ryan Murphy co-created, co-wrote, co-directed and executive produced the show with Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan; all three previously collaborated on Glee.

A Peasant Farmer Resists Nazi Germany in Terrence Malicks A Hidden Life Trailer

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An Austrian farmer refuses to fight for the Nazis in World War II in the tense new trailer for Terrence Malicks upcoming film,A Hidden Life, which opens December 13th

A Hidden Life is based on real events and stars August Diehl as Franz Jgersttter, an Austrian peasant farmer and devout Catholic whos unnerved by the rise of the Third Reich and refuses to serve in the army. Whats happened to our country? he wonders in the trailer. Were killing innocent people, raiding other countries, preying on the weak. If our leaders, if theyre evil, what does one do?

The Nazis ultimately charge Jgersttter with treason but faced with the threat of execution, he keeps his resolve through his wife Fani (Valerie Pachner) and their children. The trailer for A Hidden Lifefeatures some of Malicks famously breathtaking cinematography, both in its jarring handheld close-ups of human conflict and in its sweeping wide shots of the Austrian countryside.

In addition to Diehl and Pachner, A Hidden Life also stars the late Michael Nyqvist and Bruno Ganz, both in their final performances. The film premiered in May at the Cannes Film Festival to positive reception.

See Dave Chappelle Roam a Desert-Like Landscape in New Trailer for Netflix Special

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Dave Chappelle roams a desert-like landscape in the new trailer for Sticks & Stones, the comedians fifth Netflix stand-up special that airs on August 26th.

Narrated by Morgan Freeman, the one-minute clip features Chappelle sauntering the salt flat, eventually coming across a white backdrop. He sits on a stool with a microphone as the camera zooms in. How did we get here, I wonder? Freeman asks. I dont mean that metaphorically; Im really asking. How did Dave get here? I mean, what the fuck is this? Ah, what do I know? Im just Morgan Freeman.

The special, detailed as a provocative perspective on the tidal wave of celebrity scandals, the opioid crisis, and more is the comedians fifth standup special in two years. He previously starred in Deep in the Heart of Texas: Dave Chappelle Live at Austin City Limits, The Age of Spin: Dave Chappelle Live at the Hollywood Palladium, Dave Chappelle: Equanimity and Dave Chappelle: The Bird Revelation.

On October 27th, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will award Chappelle with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor; the comedian already has two Grammys and two Emmys under his belt. Earlier this year, Chappelle joined Will Smith for an episode of Will Smiths Bucket List, where he gave the actor advice on how to do stand-up.

Everyone Is a Murder Suspect in Final 13 Reasons Why Season 3 Trailer

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Netflix released the final trailer for13 Reasons Whys Season 3 on Wednesday, before the new season premieres August 23rd on the streaming platform.

The new trailer gives more insight into the Homecoming death of Bryce Walker, the driving force behind this season at Liberty High. Everyone is a suspect, as nearly everyone at the high school had a reason to kill Bryce. But which one of them is truly capable of murder?

Everyone has their reasons The secrets at Liberty High run deep, and in the aftermath of the Homecoming game all of the friends have something to hide. As the mystery of his death engulfs the town, there are numerous suspects in focus, reads the Season 3 synopsis.

Season 3 sees much of the13 Reasons Why cast reprising their roles:Dylan Minnette, Brandon Flynn, Justin Prentice, Alisha Boe, Christian Navarro, Miles Heizer, Devin Druid, Ross Butler, Timothy Granaderos, Anne Winters, Steven Weber, Brenda Strong and Amy Hargreaves. The season introduces new cast members Grace Saif (as new girl Ani), Bex Taylor Klaus and Tyler Barnhardt.

See Sylvester Stallone Blow People Up in New Rambo: Last Blood Trailer

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Sylvester Stallone readies himself for revenge with knives, machine guns and landmines in the new trailer for Rambo: Last Blood, the actors first Rambo movie in 11 years. Most of the action seems to take place on Rambos farm-like compound, where hes protecting his niece. All shes got is me, he says, between shots of him cocking a semiautomatic rifle and building a device that punctures tires. Throughout the clip, scenes from previous Rambo movies starting with 1982s First Blood flicker between fireballs.

Elsewhere in the trailer, there are scenes of soldiers marching through fire to Rambos barn and the Vietnam vet blasting baddies in some sort of underground tunnel system (the existence of which really ought to be explained in the movie, because its doubtful most farms need tunnels). Im gonna tear you apart, Rambo mumbles at one point, stretching an arrow out on his bow.

The film, which will hit theaters on September 20th, also features Paz Vega, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, and Adrianna Barraza, among others. Filmmaker Adrian Grunberg, whose credits include working as the assistant director on Narcos and Jack Reacher, helmed the picture. Stallone, who directed 2008s Rambo, cowrote the screenplay with Matthew Cirulnick, who, incidentally, has a writing credit on Eminems The Slim Shady Show cartoon.

The film studio, Lionsgate, is billing Last Bloodas a final mission for the character. A previous trailer for the film, which is the fifth in the Rambo series, featured Lil Nas Xs Old Town Road on the soundtrack.

The Nightingale Review: Aussie Revenge Tale Pulls No Punches

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Its instructive to point out that The Nightingale is not for the faint of heart. Theres horrific violence abound; at one point early on, a rapist violates his victim while her baby screams in his ear. But in no way is this powerhouse another treatment of male violence filtered through an exploitaive male gaze. In her second film, after 2014s haunting The Babadook, Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent creates a womans revenge tale fueled by a righteous anger at the evil men do. Theres not a whit of audience coddling. Youve been warned.

Set in the harsh 1825 Tasmanian Outback, the film stars Aisling Franciosi the Italian-Irish actress best known as Game of Thrones Lyanna Stark as Clare, a 21-year-old Irish convict. Shes been sent to this remote penal colony of Van Diemens Land and enslaved by Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin), a British officer and boot-and-polish sadist. His slow rise in the ranks is a consistent sore point. So he takes out his frustration by brutalizing those in his charge, from underlings to prisoners. That most definitely includes Claire.

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At first, Hawkins is content to make the young woman his personal songbird, given that Clare sings like a nightingale while she serves him food and drink. And then the screaming starts. Claflin, the blond dreamboat Finnick Odair in The Hunger Games series, plays this colonial monster without dropping his charm and good looks, which makes him doubly scary. Its a bold gamble of a performance that pays off. Hawkins wears a surface sanity in public; he desperately wants that promotion. And its Clares hope that the pressure will persuade him to set her free, along with her husband Aidan (Michael Sheasby), a fellow convict, and their infant daughter.

When her dream of liberation is brutally squashed, Clare vows revenge. Thats when Kent and the splendid cinematographer Radek Ladczuk (shooting in the square-shaped, old-school Academy ratio) build a historical story of vengeance that shakes you to your core. The Nightingale extends from the tale of one woman in pursuit of a male predator to a broad condemnation of a system that exploits women and the indigenous people of Tasmania, all the while detailing how their world becomes one.

Clare chases Hawkins into the wilderness on her husbands unsteady horse, her trauma often reducing her to a fevered dream state that tests her survival at every turn. As a guide, she hires an Aboriginal tracker, Billy (a superb Baykali Ganambarr), who is reluctant to work for this half-crazed, racist woman who is likely to get him killed. Ganambarr, a dancer in an extraordinary acting breakthrough, builds a character whose grudge against the British begins to match Clares own. Watching the mutual hostility between these two antagonists soften into a fragile bond gives the film a fierce hold on viewers, and Kent never loses sight of the psychological wounds that fester underneath Clares odyssey. Its a shame that she diffuses the force of her storytelling with too many false endings. But as a devastating deconstruction of the complex nature of one womans retribution, The Nightingale is peerless.

Best TV to See in September 2019: Country Music Doc, The Deuce, Walton Goggins in The Unicorn

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Remember when September was the big month for new TV programming? (Gather round, children, and let Grandpa tell you about the days when there were only three networks!) Yes, the traditional pilot season is once upon us, which means laugh-tracked comedies, curious cop shows and Lost-like mysteries are once again upon us. Also on deck: Ken Burns delves into an august tradition of American music; a documentary looks at an icons impact on sport and culture; and an under-seen triumph returns to HBO with meticulous period recreations intact. Here are the sitcoms, procedurals, and other future Ill-binge-this-once-its-on-a-streaming-service favorites hitting the tube this month.

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American Horror Story: 1984 (FX, Sep. 18th)
Jocks in crop-tops, hair several stories high, New Wave synth music on the soundtrack it must be the Eighties on Ryan Murphys unstoppable horror anthology. He pays homage to cabin-in-the-woods slasher movies with the latest season, with the summer camp setting specifying the pool of references to Sleepaway Camp and its ilk. A cast of unsuspecting, nubile teens, including Murphy regulars Emma Roberts and Billie Lourd (along with Ryan TV newcomers DeRon Horton and Olympic skier-turned-actor Gus Kenworthy), will get hacked to bits by a masked assailant, but this being American Horror Story, there has to be more to it than that. Though taut midriffs and intermittent stabbings is, to be fair, plenty.

Country Music (PBS, Sep. 15th)
Americas preeminent longform-doc historian covered jazz in 2001; now Kens Burns is turning his sights on the other purely American genre of music. Country gets the full Burns approach with a top-to-bottom account of its formation, its social import, and its legacy in the present day. With an avalanche of rare preserved footage, exhaustive research, and color commentary from such luminaries as Garth Brooks, Loretta Lynn, and Willie Nelson, Burns has accomplished another herculean feat of posterity-building. He establishes a public record of all that his chosen topic means to the people at its center joy, heartbreak, hope, and everything in between.

The Deuce, Season 3 (HBO, Sep. 9th)
David Simon and George Pelecanos porn epic jumps ahead into the Eighties for its final season, when videotape revolutionized the industry by slicing production costs. Rising director Candy (Maggie Gyllenhaal) continues to gain in legitimacy, while sleazeball brothers Vincent and Frankie Martino (James Franco and James Franco, respectively) do the opposite as their business enterprises grow shadier and shadier. Porn starlet Lori (Emily Meade) goes mainstream as a video vixen on the hair metal scene, and the cops launch a new plan to clean up Times Square once and for all at the behest of Mayor Ed Koch. Times change, buildings rise and fall, but the one constant throughout everything: Sex sells.

Diego Maradona (HBO, Sep. 24th)
Diego Maradona has a solid claim to the title of historys greatest soccer player. (Fine, fine, football player.) This documentary goes one step further to posit him as one of the most fascinating figures in all of sport, exposing the agony and ecstasy of an unparalleled talent. From his childhood in the slums of Argentina, to his rise to stardom and the frenzied media spectacle surrounding it, to later-in-life scandals involving cocaine and La Cosa Nostra, its another comprehensive portrait from director Asif Kapadia, i.e. the man behind Senna, the jaw-dropping Formula-One-champ profile, and Amy, the Oscar-winning chronicle of Amy Winehouses life and times. In other words, audiences are expecting a gooooooooooal.

Emergence (ABC, Sep. 24th)
An airplane falls out of the sky and crashes on the Peconic Bay in Long Island. Out from the smithereens crawls a girl (Alexa Skye Swinton) with no memory of who she is or where shes come from. Theres a mystery afoot, probably related to the unexplainable electrical flares and odd lights in the nighttime sky, and local police chief Jo Evans (Fargo breakout Allison Tolman) wants to be the one to unravel it. Trouble is, shes taken a shine to the young survivor and offered her a home, tying some emotional knots into her deductive efforts. Uh-oh.

Prodigal Son (Fox, Sep. 23rd)
What if Hannibal Lecter was your dad? Thats the jumping-off point for this new crime procedural, in which ex-FBI profiler Malcolm Bright (Walking Dead alum Tom Payne) returns to the job when a new serial killer appears to be copycatting the murders Malcolms father (Michael Sheen) committed years earlier. Hell have to confront his mental demons and go face-to-face with his long-estranged, homicidal pop-pop if he wants to solve the case before the killer strikes again. But Malcolm cant shake the sneaking suspicion that his father may somehow be orchestrating all this from behind bars, and more troubling still, that he may be one of the pawns.

Room 104, Season 3 (HBO, Sep. 13th)
Sam Richardson, Luke Wilson, Arturo Castro, Paul F. Tompkins, and June Squibb number among the guests checking in at HBOs anything-goes anthology series this year. The show sticks to its one guiding principle all action takes place within a single suite at a singularly strange hotel but that parameter leaves a lot of space for flights of fantasy. This seasons trailer teases a growhouse FDA bust, multiple openings of the third eye, and at least one encounter with a well-renowned monster. Oh, and lots of bloodshed. The drama appears to be drifting towards the realm of horror, a fittingly unlikely pivot for a show thats thrived on its own unpredictability.

Stumptown (ABC, Sep. 25th)
The title refers to the nickname of Portland, Oregon, the city that down-on-her-luck veteran Dex Parios (Cobie Smulders) calls home. Unemployed and deep in debt, she gets the bright idea to scrape together some scratch as a private eye, using her skills learned from the military to pay the bills and support her brother (Cole Sibus) with Down Syndrome. One lowlife at a time, she cleans up the streets and dispenses sardonic one-liners; the project hasnt strayed far from its graphic novel origins. Shes a far cry from HIMYMs Robin Sparkles, in other words.

Sunnyside (NBC, Sep. 26th)
Kal Penn draws on his background as an entertainer, a political operator, and an Indian-American man for this sitcom about the red tape wrapped around the American dream. The shows creator also leads as Garrett Modi, a former New York City councilman booted from office due to drug charges. (To think: Kumar himself, getting high!) He finds his second act in a group of immigrants preparing to take their citizenship exams; they need help getting a leg up on the test, and he needs to do something meaningful. Do you think theyll end up teaching him as much as he teaches them? Have you ever watched a half-hour television comedy before?

The Unicorn (CBS, Sep. 26th)
For the record: Series lead Walton Goggins does not portray the snow-white one-horned horse of legend in this new comedy series. Rather, his character Wade is a comparably rare phenomenon in the adult dating world: handsome, a good father, gainfully employed and, after the tragic death of his wife, single. And this sitcom picks up at the point where the widower decides to get back in the game. Yes, he may have caught the eye of every single mom within a ten-mile radius. No, hes not done processing his own grief or figured out how to introduce a new woman to his youngsters. Who doesnt pine for a weekly dose of Walty G. once more?

The Radical Kindness of Steven Universe

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The title character of Steven Universe is an adolescent boy who, over the course of the Cartoon Network series first five seasons, developed the ability to fly, to conjure an impenetrable pink shield out of thin air, to use his saliva to heal injuries short of death (and sometimes beyond), to merge his body with a friends (in an act called fusion) so they can become even stronger as one than they are side-by-side, and more. But his greatest power and the reason the show became so adored that a follow-up film, Steven Universe: The Movie, will air on Labor Day, potentially leading into future seasons is both much simpler and much more remarkable:

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Steven is kind.

The animated series, created by Adventure Time alum Rebecca Sugar, has a complicated mythology involving the Gems, an alien race of women whose leaders, the four Diamonds, want to reshape the universe into something following their very rigid and orderly caste system. Thousands of years ago, we gradually(*) find out, a Gem known as Rose Quartz (Susan Egan) formed a rebellious group called the Crystal Gems to protect life on Earth from being conquered and eradicated by the Diamonds. By the time the series begins in the present day, Rose has sacrificed herself to give birth to half-human son Steven (Zach Callison), who is raised in part by failed rock-star dad Greg (Tom Scharpling) and in part by the three surviving Crystal Gems: the enigmatically cool Garnet (Estelle), uptight Pearl (Deedee Magno Hall), and immature Amethyst (Michaela Dietz). Steven inherited Roses gem, and her powers, but his age and the human half of his DNA make them slow to emerge. So in the shows earliest adventures, Steven is a glorified mascot to the Crystal Gems, along mainly for moral support and the occasional bit of improvised pubescent boy strategy.

(*) Most episodes are 11 minutes long, and Sugar slow-plays a lot of the backstory and major arcs by focusing the start of the series (and each ensuing season) on relatively light-hearted standalone adventures. Its a seasonal structure that classic genre shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars, and The X-Files used so well back in the day, but thats unfortunately gone out of vogue in favor of pure serialization. (When Veronica came back this summer, it told a single, eight-episode story.) As a kids show with extremely nuanced themes, Steven Universe benefits greatly from how much time it lets you marinate in Stevens world before getting to the big topics. But a newcomer wouldnt be blamed for sampling the first few episodes and dismissing it as something much sillier and more superficial than what follows.

But even after he begins mastering his inherited powers, its clear that Stevens greatest asset to the team and the most appealing part of the whole series is his fundamental decency. Its not just that he prefers nonviolent solutions when Garnet or Amethyst would be content to smash the latest monster in their path. Its that his impulse is almost always to empathize and try to help, and to see the best in everyone he meets whether seemingly villainous Gems like the smug Peridot (Shelby Rabara) or humans like shiftless doughnut-shop worker Lars (Matthew Moy). Steven wants to be friends with everyone, and wants everyone to be friends, and more often than not, he succeeds. (Think Leslie Knope, but huskier and less intense.)

Heroes who are intrinsically good can prove intimidating to storytellers who need to generate conflict. Its why most of the attempts to make a post-Christopher Reeve movie about Superman involved making him angstier, or why, before Chris Evans came along, no one believed audiences would want to watch a hero as cornily forthright as Captain America. But when it works and hoo-boy, does it work on Steven Universe, whether youre a wide-eyed kid or a cynical adult the force of their virtue shines so brightly that it can be hard to imagine wanting anything even slightly less sincere.

Stevens empathy and his knack for accepting people on their own terms proves essential for a show that presents complex ideas in a manner its young audience will appreciate. Just like Buffy once used monsters as metaphors for adolescence, Steven Universe uses the Gems to talk about a variety of LGBTQ issues (among other things). Pearls unrequited love for Rose and her resentment of both Greg and Steven for taking Rose from her is subtly but clearly established, and is something she and the guys have to work through together. Gems are only meant to fuse with others like them (Ruby with Ruby, Pearl with Pearl), which makes the Crystal Gems habit of fusing with one another an abomination to the more traditional, repressed Gems. Yet Steven is thrilled when he sees Pearl and Amethyst fuse into the giant archer Opal. And when he accidentally fuses with best friend (and mutual crush) Connie (Grace Rolek) into the glamorous, intersex Stevonnie, it becomes a story about the importance of consent, with each of them frequently checking in with the other to be sure they want to stay this way a while longer.

Its a wonderful show for many reasons, but the curiosity and warm-heartedness of Steven is the crucial one.

Steven Universe: The Movie plays less as a sequel to the series so far than a Greatest Hits collection almost a primer for newcomers, even if it wont have the same impact on them that 160 bite-sized episodes of TV had on the veterans.

The movie takes place a few years after the Season Five finale, and early on features a long expository musical number about who everyone is and how they all got happy endings when last they appeared. Then along comes a mysterious new Gem who at times resembles Bugs Bunny at his most anarchic, at others the elastically cheerful Steamboat Willie-era Mickey Mouse. Her attacks give the Crystal Gems a kind of factory reboot that erases all the emotional progress they made during the series, forcing Steven to recreate important moments from their lives to bring them back to normal.

The structure of the movie can make it feel like a rehash of things the fans all know so well. (At one point, Steven even loudly complains that he is once again having to deal with the consequences of something his mother did.) Fortunately, its a rehash accompanied by a soundtrack of terrific original songs (co-written by, among others, Chance the Rapper, Aimee Mann, and Ted Leo) performed by Steven and friends. And if Im following in Stevens footsteps and looking for the best in this follow-up to those five wonderful seasons, Id look at the movie as the start of whatever Sugar wants to do with this world next. If its meant as a conclusion, its fun but inessential. But if its the start of a new phase of an older Stevens universe, then it makes sense to travel down memory lane with frequent musical interludes before pushing onto whatever comes after the happy ending.

The first four Steven Universe seasons are streaming on Hulu, while Season Five is available On Demand. Steven Universe: The Movie premieres September 2nd at 6 p.m. on Cartoon Network.

Martin Scorseses The Irishman to Premiere at New York Film Festival

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Martin Scorseses highly anticipated new film, The Irishman, will have its world premiere at the 2019 New York Film Festival Friday, September 27th, festival organizers announced on Monday.

The Irishman is so many things: rich, funny, troubling, entertaining and, like all great movies, absolutely singular, said NYFF festival director Kent Jones, who previously worked for Scorseses World Cinema Foundation, in a statement. Its the work of masters, made with a command of the art of cinema that Ive seen very rarely in my lifetime, and it plays out at a level of subtlety and human intimacy that truly stunned me. All I can say is that the minute it was over my immediate reaction was that I wanted to watch it all over again.

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Scorsese said of the announcement, Its an incredible honor that The Irishman has been selected as the Opening Night of the New York Film Festival. I greatly admire the bold and visionary selections that the festival presents to audiences year after year. The festival is critical to bringing awareness to cinema from around the world. I am grateful to have the opportunity to premiere my new picture in New York alongside my wonderful cast and crew.

The mob drama stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, and is due to be released on Netflix and in select theaters later this year. Based on the nonfiction book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt, with an adapted screenplay penned by Steven Zaillian (Schindlers List,Gangs of New York,Moneyball), the film uses state-of-the-art anti-aging digital effects to depict De Niro, Pacino and Pescis characters as up to 30 years younger.

The last time a Scorsese film was screened at the New York Film Festival was in 2011, when a work-in-progress version ofHugo premiered as a special surprise for guests.

Festival, VIP and special event passes for this years NYFF, including the screening ofThe Irishman, are on sale now; other individual screening tickets go on sale to the general public on September 8th. The festival runs September 27th through October 13th.