All posts tagged: characters

How Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping cast stacks up against original as new characters announced

How Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping cast stacks up against original as new characters announced

Published by skeptic

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter The new Hunger Games prequel has found its President Snow, and he’s no stranger to playing villains. Ralph Fiennes, who portrayed Lord Voldemort in the original Harry Potter film series, has joined the cast of the much-anticipated adaptation of Suzanne Collins’s novel, Sunrise on the Reaping. He has been cast as President Coriolanus Snow, a role famously first played by the late Donald Sutherland in the original franchise. The Hunger Games franchise is based on Collins’s bestselling series of dystopian novels. The original film series starred Jennifer Lawrence as 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who became a participant in the 74th Hunger Games — a brutal event designed to suppress rebellion in the districts surrounding the oppressive Capitol. The twisted contest forces each district to send a boy and a girl, chosen by lottery, to compete in a deadly televised battle until only …

How Chinese Characters Work: The Evolution of a Three-Millennia-Old Writing System

How Chinese Characters Work: The Evolution of a Three-Millennia-Old Writing System

Published by José

Con­trary to some­what pop­u­lar belief, Chi­nese char­ac­ters aren’t just lit­tle pic­tures. In fact, most of them aren’t pic­tures at all. The very old­est, whose evo­lu­tion can be traced back to the “ora­cle bone” script of thir­teenth cen­tu­ry BC etched direct­ly onto the remains of tur­tles and oxen, do bear traces of their pic­to­graph ances­tors. But most Chi­nese char­ac­ters, or hanzi, are logo­graph­ic, which means that each one rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent mor­pheme, or dis­tinct unit of lan­guage: a word, or a sin­gle part of a word that has no inde­pen­dent mean­ing. Nobody knows for sure how many hanzi exist, but near­ly 100,000 have been doc­u­ment­ed so far. Not that you need to learn all of them to attain lit­er­a­cy: for that, a mere 3,000 to 5,000 will do. While it’s tech­ni­cal­ly pos­si­ble to mem­o­rize that many char­ac­ters by rote, you’d do bet­ter to begin by famil­iar­iz­ing your­self with their basic nature and struc­ture — and in so doing, you’ll nat­u­ral­ly learn more than a lit­tle about their long his­to­ry. The TED-Ed les­son at the top of the …

New Analysis Shows Book Bans Target Books With Non-White, Queer, and Disabled Characters

New Analysis Shows Book Bans Target Books With Non-White, Queer, and Disabled Characters

Published by skeptic

PEN America has released a new analysis of book bans, Cover to Cover, and it really makes clear the purpose of book banning—which, surprise surprise, is not what book banners say it is. For one, in the more than 10,000 book ban instances that PEN America looked at—which span across genres, fictional and nonfictional books, and even picture books— 36% involved books that featured fictional or real people of color. They also found that of the banned history and biography titles, 44% were centered around people of color, and 26% of banned books within the same category were about Black people, specifically. This, in addition to other facts, led them to the conclusion that the current deluge of book bans we’ve been seeing these past few years is based around white supremacist ideology. Books centering on the LGBTQ+ community are also being targeted. We’ve known this for a while, of course, but this new analysis gives us some new data to work with. Last year, 29% of all banned titles included LGBTQ+ characters or themes, …

Beloved Chicago PD character’s fate hangs in the balance in first look at One Chicago crossover

Beloved Chicago PD character’s fate hangs in the balance in first look at One Chicago crossover

Published by skeptic

The upcoming One Chicago crossover threatens to put our favorite first responders in jeopardy – and none more so than Sergeant Trudy Platt (Amy Morton) who is shown falling and being wheeled into surgery in the first teaser trailer. NBC shows Chicago Med, Fire and PD will come together for the first crossover in five years with the teams focusing on a possible gas explosion leaving over 50 victims in need of help. © NBCAmy Morton as Trudy Platt in Chicago PD It is unclear how Trudy – who is married to firefighter Mouch – has ended up unconscious and in need of medical attention, but the trailer, revealed by People, shows Dr. Mitch Ripley (Luke Mitchell) calling out, “she’s crashing,” as Mouch (Christian Stolte) looks on in tears. The trailer also reveals Lieutenant Stella Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) may be in trouble as she is below ground helping people off the L train when Battalion Chief Dom Pascal (Dermot Mulroney) calls on her to “evacuate immediately” as the tunnel begins to collapse. Christian Stolte as Mouch in Chicago Fire …

Individuals with dark traits have a heightened connection to certain types of fictional characters

Individuals with dark traits have a heightened connection to certain types of fictional characters

Published by José

A new study published in Psychology of Popular Media sheds light on why some people are drawn to morally ambiguous fictional characters, such as villains and antiheroes. The research suggests that antagonistic personality traits like Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism—collectively known as Dark Tetrad traits—are associated with admiring and identifying with these types of characters. This association appears to reflect how individuals view their own values, motivations, and personalities in relation to these fictional figures. Fictional heroes, antiheroes, and villains play a central role in popular media, captivating audiences with their moral clarity, ambiguity, or outright malice. Previous studies have established that people are often drawn to characters who share traits with themselves, but much of this research has focused narrowly on single types of characters or excluded key personality traits like everyday sadism. This study sought to expand on that foundation. “Fiction is a big part of a lot of people’s lives, and a lot of people have pretty personal relationships with their favorite fictional characters. What draws certain individuals to certain characters?” …

This Adobe Tool Animates Characters Using Your Voice (No Experience Needed)

This Adobe Tool Animates Characters Using Your Voice (No Experience Needed)

Published by skeptic

Key Takeaways Adobe Express offers Animate From Audio for character animation using voice in real-time. Choose from 200 characters, 100 backgrounds, and 6 aspect ratios for unique animations. Record or upload an audio file, preview, trim, and download your character animation easily. Have you ever wished you could bring a drawing to life, but don’t have a degree in animation? Thanks to this nifty Adobe tool, you can animate characters using just your voice—no experience required. Let me show you how. How I Create Character Animations Using Adobe Express Animating your graphics, text, and images in the Adobe Express editor is pretty simple thanks to the Animation feature. But this isn’t the only animation tool that Adobe Express has to offer. Enter Animate From Audio, a free Adobe Express tool that lets you animate pre-drawn characters in real-time using just your voice—or any audio really. Every time the program picks up an audio signal, it animates the character along one of the pre-drawn paths. There are over 200 characters you can choose from, and all …

Nicholas Galitzine Says He Feels ‘Guilt’ For Portraying Multiple Queer Characters

Nicholas Galitzine Says He Feels ‘Guilt’ For Portraying Multiple Queer Characters

Published by skeptic

After rising to fame by playing queer characters in the rom-com Red, White & Royal Blue and the drama miniseries Mary & George, Nicholas Galitzine is clearing the air about his own sexuality. “I identify as a straight man,” Nicholas said in a new British GQ interview published on Wednesday. “But I have been a part of some incredible queer stories.” The British actor admitted he felt torn about taking on so many LGBTQ+ roles because of his heterosexuality. “I felt a sense of uncertainty sometimes about whether I’m taking up someone’s space, and perhaps guilt,” he explained. “At the same time, I see those characters as not solely their sexuality.” Nicholas with co-star Taylor Zakhar Perez in Red, White And Royal Blue Jonathan Prime/Prime Video The Idea of You star went on to clarify that the characters he plays on screen are totally separate from who he is off the clock, adding: “I am Nick, and I’m not my role.” Speaking with HuffPost UK, the English actor explained the “plethora of reasons” why he …

Baby Reindeer star reveals deleted scene that gives ‘closure’ to characters

Baby Reindeer star reveals deleted scene that gives ‘closure’ to characters

Published by Sam

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Actor Nava Mau has described a deleted scene that was cut out of the recent Netflix miniseries Baby Reindeer. In the hit Netflix drama, Mau plays Teri, a trans woman who begins dating the series’ main character Donny, played by the show’s creator Richard Gadd. Baby Reindeer is based on Gadd’s real-life experiences, and explores his traumatic years-long experiences with a stalker (played by Jessica Gunning), as well as his history as a victim of sexual abuse. After a turbulent romance, Teri and Donny ultimately break up in the series, and Teri is fleetingly seen dating someone else. Speaking to GQ, Mau revealed that they had actually shot a scene that would have taken place after the events of the show, and would have provided “closure” for the arc of Donny and Teri’s relationship. “There actually was one more piece of Teri and Donny’s relationship in the script, …

‘Gissa job!’ How Bernard Hill created one of TV’s most tragic and unforgettable characters | Television

‘Gissa job!’ How Bernard Hill created one of TV’s most tragic and unforgettable characters | Television

Published by skeptic

Some time in 1980, on the first sheet of a script that would eventually run to 221 pages, Alan Bleasdale typed the line: We see Yosser with his three children. He is leaning forward. When the jobcentre clerk explains he is “afraid” he can’t do anything, the pale-faced, dark-moustached man snaps: “Afraid? Y’ll be terrified in a minute. [Leans in.] Now sort me soddin’ Giro check out before I knock y’into the disability department.” Anyone who has watched Boys from the Blackstuff immediately hears the mellifluously menacing voice of Bernard Hill and sees the tall broad frame that was often angled forward. Bleasdale’s frequent specification that Yosser was “leaning in” warned that the unemployed road layer was about to head-butt a person, wall or church, as he indelibly did in scenes from the series. That Hill, who died yesterday aged 79, was able to turn this dialogue and action into one of the most memorable characters in British TV history was due to his strong face and acting brain, but also the two layers of …

Ryan Gosling and Mikey Day reprise viral Beavis and Butt-Head characters at Fall Guy premiere

Ryan Gosling and Mikey Day reprise viral Beavis and Butt-Head characters at Fall Guy premiere

Published by skeptic

Ryan Gosling and Mikey Day aren’t done playing Beavis and Butt-Head yet – the pair appeared as the characters at the premiere of Gosling’s latest film. Gosling, who stars in The Fall Guy opposite Emily Blunt, walked the carpet twice on Tuesday (Apr 30) during the Los Angeles premiere. He looked dapper for his first appearance in a mint green suit and shirt, but donned a blonde pompadour wig and “Death Rock” T-shirt for a second appearance as Beavis with Day’s buck-toothed Butt-Head. The animated characters, known for their stupid antics, ridiculous laughs and crass jokes, were a mainstay in the 1990s on MTV. Gosling and Day debuted their live-action take on the animated characters on Saturday Night Live last month, causing cast member Heidi Gardner and several other performers to break into laughter during the sketch. The bit, with Beavis and Butthead sitting in the audience of a panel discussion about artificial intelligence, has been viewed more than 13 million times on YouTube. Gosling and Day posed on the carpet in character, including with Fall …