Category: Entertainment News Feed

LONDON (AP) — American actor Dustin Hoffman and cricket great Sachin Tendulkar were among the celebrities at Wimbledon on Friday to watch defending champion Jannik Sinner play Novak Djokovic on Centre Court.

British actors Benedict Cumberbatch, Hugh Laurie and Damian Lewis watched from the Royal Box, as did fashion designer Tom Ford and Anna Wintour.

Tendulkar, considered one of the greatest cricketers ever, retired in 2013 after playing in his 200th test match. Wimbledon called him “ cricket royalty.” Another former cricket star, Brian Lara of the West Indies, was also in the Royal Box, an area reserved for special guests invited by the All England Club.

Netherlands defender and Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk was also a guest. The Dutch were eliminated at the World Cup in the round of 32.

The 88-year-old Hoffman wasn’t in the Royal Box, though he was a guest there in 2024.

Earlier on Centre Court, Alexander Zverev advanced to Sunday’s final by beating British wild card Arthur Fery.

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AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis

MIAMI (AP) — Ashleigh Hallam teaches English as a second language at her local library in Indiana. Soccer is now teaching her Spanish as a second language.

For her, this World Cup couldn’t make more sense.

Hallam is among a sizable number of English-speaking people in the U.S. who are doing something these days that might be considered a bit surprising: They’re watching broadcasts of World Cup matches in Spanish on Telemundo, even though they have little idea — or in some cases, no idea — what the announcers are saying.

“I can’t really understand everything they’re saying on Telemundo because they’re speaking in Spanish,” Hallam said. “But you understand what’s going on.”

The math is simple. Census figures show that about 20% of the U.S. is Hispanic, yet Telemundo points to Nielsen ratings to show that roughly half the World Cup viewers in the U.S. have watched at least some portion of some matches in Spanish. Every match of the tournament has been available for U.S. viewers in English on Fox or FS1, on Telemundo or Universo in Spanish, and there are streaming options such as Fox One or Peacock.

Among the reasons commonly cited by viewers who spoke with The Associated Press in recent days: A fascination with famed broadcaster Andrés Cantor’s “¡goooooool!” call. Telemundo doesn’t cut away for commercials (as Fox does) during the much-maligned hydration breaks. The broadcasts, some simply find, are more entertaining. And in other cases, it’s a cost-based decision: Peacock, which includes Telemundo, is lower-priced than Fox One.

Soccer as a global language, transcending a limited vocabulary

Jackson Braunius is a Michigan native who watched a U.S. game last week from a bar seat at a steakhouse in Miami Lakes, Florida. He said he speaks almost no Spanish — “I know ‘cerveza,’” he said, tapping his beer glass — but didn’t mind watching on Telemundo whatsoever.

“I figured out the science here,” Braunius said. “When they’re not talking too loud, nothing is happening. When they get loud, there’s a chance. When they get real loud, it’s probably going to be a goal.”

Comedian Trevor Noah has been hosting World Cup watch parties on YouTube. He’s made the switch to Spanish-language feeds, and the hydration break issue was a huge part of that decision.

“We’re seeing the players on the pitch discussing what’s happening. You see which coach is more stressed. Some players are tapping each other on the back. This is part of the game,” Noah said on one of his YouTube streams. “I feel like when you cut to ads, you lose this — you lose the stress, you lose the joy, the anticipation. So, shout out again, Telemundo: Really, really amazing coverage.”

Telemundo is hearing the praise, and has thanked English-speakers — as well as Noah directly — for lauding its coverage.

The good news for everyone is this: There seems to be more than enough viewers to go around right now. And the success of this tournament could lead to a bidding war for the 2030 World Cup, with some reporting the rights for English-speaking and Spanish-speaking television will be packaged together in that deal. That wasn’t the case for this World Cup.

Fox Sports said that Monday night’s Belgium-U.S. match saw a peak viewership total of around 41 million at one point, making it the “most-watched soccer telecast in U.S. history,” the network said. In other words, the final U.S. game in this World Cup had more viewers than anything in this country since the Super Bowl — with at least 45 million viewers, on average, between Fox (33 million) and Telemundo (an estimated 12 million). The most recent Super Bowl drew an average of about 125 million viewers, according to Nielsen data.

Anglophones become hooked on Telemundo

William Kennedy of Miami is married to a Colombian woman, whose native language is Spanish. He says he knows only enough Spanish to be able to order meals in restaurants. And yet, he finds himself often watching World Cup matches on Telemundo.

If Colombia was on, the Kennedy house was watching Telemundo. If Colombia — which was ousted in penalty kicks by Switzerland on Tuesday — isn’t on, Kennedy finds himself usually making his way to Telemundo anyway.

“When the American commentators are doing the game, I don’t know what game they’re watching. I just don’t,” Kennedy said. “I’d rather get the excitement in Spanish because essentially what happens is they’re talking, and then they’re talking really, really fast, and then they’re getting loud and your brain is just like, ‘Oh, something’s happening — even if I don’t know what’s happening.’”

Hallam — who finds the World Cup has been a great way to bond further with her Spanish-speaking students — only became a big soccer fan a few years ago, when her daughter decided she wanted to play in a recreational league for elementary kids. The league needed coaches, so Hallam literally checked out a “coaching for dummies” book and began teaching herself the game.

She kept coaching her daughter all the way through high school. Now, she’s hooked on soccer and hooked on Spanish-speaking broadcasts — and plans to keep watching, even when the World Cup ends.

“It’s just very comforting,” Hallam said. “We’re really enjoyed it and I hope we get to continue. The next World Cup, we’re going to watch it just like this.”

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Lamy reported from Indianapolis.

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See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here

GURDASPUR, India (AP) — As dusk settled over Gurdaspur’s fields, villagers gathered in the courtyard of a Sikh temple to watch a movie that has been blocked by Indian officials.

“Satluj” tells the true tale of a human rights activist who investigated thousands of disappearances and extrajudicial killings during a government crackdown on a separatist insurgency in India’s Punjab state in the 1980s and early 1990s.

At the screening in Gurdaspur, elderly survivors of the insurgency sat beside teenagers born years after it ended. When the screen flickered to life and “Satluj” movie began, the crowd fell silent.

Originally titled “Punjab 95,” the movie was stalled for three years after India’s censor board demanded more than 120 cuts. After failing to secure a theatrical release, it debuted on the ZEE5 streaming platform last week, but was removed in India two days later.

The takedown had an unintended consequence.

Across villages in Punjab, Sikh organizations, local activists and residents have begun organizing community screenings using copies that have circulated online. The screenings have transformed Sikh temple compounds and village halls into makeshift cinemas where audiences watch not just a film but a retelling of memories of one of India’s bloodiest internal conflicts.

Spotlight on Punjab’s insurgency

“Satluj” draws on the life of rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, whose investigation into alleged extrajudicial killings exposed one of the darkest episodes of Punjab’s insurgency. The conflict pitted Sikh militant groups seeking an independent Khalistan against Indian security forces and claimed thousands of civilian, militant and police lives.

During the insurgency, rights groups documented allegations of enforced disappearances, custodial killings and secret cremations. Khalra’s investigation alleged that thousands of people who had disappeared were cremated anonymously by police without informing their families or maintaining official records.

Khalra was abducted in 1995 and later killed. Several police officers were convicted in connection with his murder.

Although the insurgency was crushed and support for Khalistan waned within Punjab, the Indian government continues to view separatist sentiment as a national security concern. It has not publicly explained why the film was removed, but officials told local media they ordered it taken down on security grounds.

Local organized screenings

The public screenings take shape through grassroots cooperation. Residents arrange for projectors, audio speakers and power generators, Sikh temples and village community spaces become open-air theaters for an evening, and volunteers spread the word from one household to the next.

Inderjeet Singh Bains, who helps coordinate screenings in Gurdaspur district, said the initiative aimed to create spaces where people can watch together and reflect on a period of Punjab’s history that continues to resonate across generations.

“When we screen the film, we see our elders and mothers, many of them 60 or 70 years old, crying because they have lost their sons. Our people have endured immense suffering,” Bains said.

Gurmukh Singh, who attended a screening, said the film gave voice to stories the young in Punjab had heard only in fragments. For families in his village, he said, the insurgency was not history but lived experience, with many losing loved ones in the violence.

“After watching the movie, there is a feeling of the grief our earlier generations had to bear,” Singh said.

Movie fuels censorship debate

The takedown of “Satluj” has reopened a debate over artistic freedom in India, where films have increasingly run into censorship battles under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government. Critics have said such cases have become more frequent and accuse Modi’s government of promoting films that align with its nationalist narrative.

“Everything happened right before our eyes, so what is there to oppose? The truth is coming to light, and people should be allowed to see it,” said Balwinder Singh, a Sikh religious leader.

The government says movie certification decisions are made independently under the law.

In a statement, ZEE5 said the film would no longer be available for viewing in India “in light of current developments.” It added that it would explore “every appropriate avenue through due process” to restore it.

Audiences revisit painful memories

Diljit Dosanjh, the lead actor who plays Khalra, said he was unconcerned about whether the film remained online because once audiences had seen it, “it cannot be erased.”

That sentiment appears to be playing out in Punjab’s villages.

Inside the temple compound in Gurdaspur, the audience watched scenes of police killings, crackdowns and families searching for answers. Afterwards, many lingered in conversation, comparing the film with the real-life memories they had carried for decades.

Pawan Deep Kaur described the film as a heartbreaking portrayal of the suffering endured by the older generation.

“It made us cry endlessly,” she said.

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Saaliq reported from New Delhi.

NEW YORK (AP) — Christopher Nolan has never been afraid to dream a little bigger. It’s almost a calling. With every film, he’s pushed himself and the medium further — playing with form, storytelling, visuals and audience expectations to create lasting cinematic spectacles. A student of Hollywood history, the Oscar-winner is always looking to fill gaps in cinematic culture and show audiences something they haven’t seen before: “The Odyssey,” he realized, was a massive one.

All Nolan films are epics in their own ways. But for “The Odyssey,” he knew he had to do something fitting of the Homeric poem and its foundational place in Western culture, something worthy of the biggest screens and the resources it would require. The goal was to make something accessible and realistic, which meant going to far flung locations, using real ships on real seas, and taking audiences into the cave with the Cyclops, inside the Trojan Horse and to the bleak expanse of Hades. Opening in theaters worldwide on July 17, it’s also the first feature to be shot entirely on IMAX film.

“We all know the title, we all know what it means, we know what it promises and hopefully for the audience coming to see the film, they’ll feel we made good on that promise because that’s the fun of ‘The Odyssey,’” Nolan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “It’s the ultimate adventure story.”

“This is going to be really hard”

The journey would require a deep dive into Greek mythology, Bronze Age scholarship and many translations, a monthslong scouting expedition and a 91-day shoot spanning six months and six countries during which the cast and crew endured all manner of challenging weather, landscapes and the treachery of the open seas.

“The Odyssey” was an epic undertaking — the hardest film anyone involved had ever made. Matt Damon, who stars as Odysseus, said that Nolan warned him as much before they started filming.

“He told me it was going to be hard, which I kind of, I blew off at first. I’m like, ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s going to be hard. And he said ‘no, no, this is going to be really hard,’” Damon said. “He did not disappoint.”

That was by design.

“I mean, it’s ‘The Odyssey,’” Nolan said. “This should be a difficult film to make, and it was.”

Unlike Odysseus’s extended journey home, the production was also efficient: They finished nine days early.

Making ‘The Odyssey’ relatable, and rejecting Hollywood tropes

When Hollywood movies take on the ancient world, they often fall back on familiar tropes — using accents, elevated language, 19th century orchestral scores and neoclassical touchstones to convey antiquity. Nolan wanted to do something different and found inspiration in the text of the poem, in which he observed an earthy sensibility that stood in contrast to the grandeur of the story.

“You want to question people’s assumptions about how things should be portrayed in movies and what those are based on,” Nolan said. “There’s a challenge to that and a risk to that.”

That meant making some bold choices, including colloquial language, American accents, and blending elements from various stories, including “The Iliad,” “The Aeneid” and “Agamemnon,” to give the audience more clarity. His Trojan Horse, which he’s been thinking about since he was briefly attached to direct “Troy” over 20 years ago, does not have wheels.

For the score, he challenged composer Ludwig Göransson to use bronze gongs, aulos and the lyre to create a new kind of soundscape, and to come up with a four-note theme where the last would be the pluck of a bow.

And paramount to this story of homecoming and coming-of-age, his characters needed to be relatable.

“The movie has so much scale,” said Tom Holland, who plays Odysseus’s son Telemachus. “There are times where it feels like you’re on this kind of action-adventure roller coaster, but he doesn’t sacrifice any of the heart and the intimacy between our characters.”

Among the large ensemble cast are many famous names: Anne Hathaway is Odysseus’s wife Penelope, Zendaya is the goddess Athena, Charlize Theron is the nymph Calypso and Lupita Nyong’o is Helen, and her twin sister.

Robert Pattinson, Nolan said, is “unleashing his inner Alan Rickman” as the villainous suitor Antinous.

“He’s continually saying to Telemachus, ‘I’m going to be your stepdad, I’ll be your daddy,’” Nolan said. “It was such a fascinatingly creepy and amusing basis for villainy.”

Leading the charge was Damon, an actor Nolan knew he liked working with after “Interstellar” and “Oppenheimer. ”

“You need somebody who will take the audience on this journey,” Nolan said. “With Matt, he’s able to combine that iconic sort of superhero thing with a very, very emotionally accessible and comprehensible person.”

Finding the real; Grounding the fantastical

The film begins with the words “a time of apparent magic,” a promise of what’s to come in this mythical world of gods, monsters, superstitions and natural phenomena. The pursuit of the real led them all over the world. Troy was constructed in Morocco, the cave of the Cyclops was found in foothills of Greece, Iceland’s black sands, shot in the midnight sun, are used for Hades and the island of Favignana, near Sicily, played Ithaca, where much of the cast and crew hiked 45 minutes every day before work to reach a 15th-century castle, 1,030 feet (313.9 meters) above sea level.

On the seas, they used a real ship, the Draken, a reconstruction of a 1,000-year-old Viking ship that production modified slightly to make it look more of the Mycenaean era. The actors learned to row. The ship’s crew played extras.

But Nolan’s love of in-camera effects doesn’t mean he rejects other kinds. “Tenet,” “Interstellar” and “Inception” all won Oscars for visual effects, after all. And in “The Odyssey” there are things that can’t be found in the natural world, from the six-headed Scylla to the Cyclops, the design of which was inspired by the Francisco Goya painting “Saturn Devouring His Son.” Bill Irwin, who brought the robots to life in “Interstellar,” delivered the performance.

“We knew we were going to need every trick in the book, from animatronics to puppetry to computer graphics,” Nolan said. “But I knew I needed a performer … He doesn’t treat the Cyclops as just a monster.”

What it adds up to is something that, miraculously for a 3,000-year-old tale, feels fresh.

“Chris has created something that’s totally new,” said Hathaway. “That’s a remarkable achievement.”

Odyssey-fever

Nolan productions always inspire a certain amount of hysteria, but excitement for “The Odyssey” reached a fever pitch. Initial screenings for the 70 mm IMAX showings — his favorite format — sold out in under an hour a year in advance. When all showtimes went on sale last month, ticketing sites crashed. High profile locations like the AMC Lincoln Square in New York and AMC CityWalk in Los Angeles are virtually sold out for weeks, and scalpers on eBay are attempting to sell tickets for more than $500. But the 70 mm IMAX screens account for only about 32 theaters out of thousands in North America — there are other ways to see the film, including 70 mm, digital IMAX and other large format presentations.

For Nolan, the audience is the north star; Entertaining is a responsibility he takes seriously. In fact, he said, a film isn’t really done until it reaches the audience: They’re the ones who finish the piece.

“The audience tells you what it is,” Nolan said. “And that means that for us, this is an exciting moment, but a very frightening moment, because it’s real. There’s nothing to hide behind. We made this film for a theatrical audience, and it goes out in the world as that. And we’ll see what the world makes of it.”

Celebrities across the entertainment industry mourned the death of Bonnie Tyler at age 75, expressing affection and admiration for the gravelly voiced, Grammy-nominated Welsh pop star.

The singer, best-known for her chart-topping power ballad “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” died unexpectedly in a hospital in Portugal where she was being treated for an illness, her family said Thursday. She was hospitalized in May in Faro, where she had a home, for emergency intestinal surgery. She had been placed in an induced coma for a period but was reportedly improving last month.

Some notable reaction:

Catherine Zeta-Jones

“My heart is broken with the news that our dearest Bonnie Tyler has passed away. Bonnie was married to my cousin and has been such a part of my life. We are photographed here together the night before my wedding. So sang and rocked it at my wedding. An extraordinary woman with vocals to match. A one of kind artist, who so easily could have been a comedian because she was one of the funniest people I ever met. Thank you Bonnie for the joy you brought so many. Sleep tight beautiful lady. We shall forever ‘Keep A Welcome In The Hillsides’ of Wales for you. Sending my love to Robert and the family. God Bless” — on Instagram

Rod Stewart

“We shared similar styles of vocalizing. She was a good pal, a true soul stirrer. I sing ‘It’s A Heartache’ every night on tour. I’ll miss you darling Bonnie.” — on Instagram

Bryan Adams

“Dear Bonnie Tyler passed today, she had such a great voice and I’ll always be grateful of her beautiful version of Straight From The Heart. Thanks Bonnie. RIP” — on X

Katrina Leskanich of Katrina and the Waves

“I’m so sad for Robert, Bonnie’s extended family and the whole world who loved Bonnie Tyler. She was incredibly fun to tour with, always laughing, warm hearted and effervescent. There will never be a voice so instantly recognisable and distinctive. She will be so missed but like Bonnie, her iconic sons will be in our hearts forever.” — on Instagram

Kevin Bacon

“One of the great voices of rock. … I could not imagine chicken racing a tractor to any other song. RIP” — in a statement to Entertainment Weekly, referencing the use of Tyler’s “Holding Out For a Hero” in his iconic 1984 film, “Footloose”

Tony Hadley

“So sad to hear about Bonnie Tyler. She was an incredible woman, so kind and friendly to me as a young artist. Over the years, we met several times and she was always the same Bonnie. Her voice was truly amazing and standing next to her you really got to feel her power. A beautiful legend. My sincere condolences to her lovely husband Bob, her family and her wonderful band at this very sad time.” — on Instagram

Sir Cliff Richard

“Another wonderful friend gone too soon. Bonnie’s infectious zest for life entertained so many around the world, and to be a good friend to all, including me. It is shocking news to wake up to you this morning and I send my love to her family at this very sad time. RIP Bonnie…. Cliff xx” — on Facebook

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — More than 800 pounds of peanut butter — enough for around 15,000 sandwiches — has been spread across the floor of a museum in the Netherlands in tribute to Dutch artist Wim T. Schippers, who died last month.

The conceptual artist, who died at the age of 83, first created the Pindakaasvloer, or peanut butter floor, in 1969. The work was unveiled on Thursday at the Depot offshoot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam for a two-month show.

Schippers was a beloved non-conformist character in the Netherlands, where he also voiced Ernie and Kermit the Frog in the Dutch version of “Sesame Street,” and created absurdist and silly works that challenged conventional ideas about the meaning of art.

“Isn’t it fantastic that we are all standing here looking at peanut butter?” Schippers told journalists gathered at the Central Museum in Utrecht in 1997 where Pindakaasvloer was on display for the second time.

Schippers created the work as part of a Floor Covering Series, which also included floors covered with glass shards and salt.

The aroma, redolent of breakfasts and lunch boxes, is what lingers with many who experience the work first hand. Museum staff directed visitors for the opening to “follow the smell” which was wafting by the ticket counter, three floors below where the artwork is laid out.

“The thing I remember is the smell,” Mieke Weismann told The Associated Press. The food photographer and writer saw the 1997 exhibition as a teenager.

The art installation may not be for everybody. A sign at the museum’s entrance warns visitors with peanut allergies that they might not want to enter the space.

It took two employees of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen several days to spread 40 buckets of peanut butter across a 25-square-meter (270-square-foot) hexagon last week.

“It was a lot of work,” Leon Duenk, one of the two men who installed the artwork, told AP.

The pair used drywall trowels to smear the peanut butter to a thickness of 2 centimeters (0.8 inch).

Prior to his death the museum and Schippers discussed how to recreate the work in the future, producing a 20-point plan that included the requirement to apply the peanut butter “as smoothly and boringly as possible” and that “no one is supposed to stand in, or lie down on the peanut butter.”

Schippers did not specify the size or shape of the work, but he did say it needed to be smooth peanut butter and that he preferred the Dutch peanut butter brand Calvé. The company donated 40 tubs of peanut butter for the work.

Multiple visitors stepped into the sticky artwork when it was on display in 2011. In 1997, the work was “vandalized” when a group of people placed 12 slices of bread and several bags of hagelslag — chocolate sprinkles commonly eaten on bread at breakfast in the Netherlands — on the floor.

“It doesn’t look bad,” Schippers told Dutch newspaper Volkskrant at the time. “The sprinkles have been applied with a sense of proportion and a skillful hand.”

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Associated Press writer Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed.

Brant Taylor walked onto the stage of the Ravinia Festival’s Hunter Pavilion to rehearse for the first time since a $70 million gut renovation and noticed a huge difference.

“I found that in the previous iteration of the shell, I was having to wear protective earplugs quite a lot,” the cellist said. “There was a desire to make the stage clearer and a bit softer for us.”

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s summer home, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of the city, starts its season Saturday night with chief conductor Marin Alsop leading a program with pianist Yunchan Lim and flutist Lizzo. A crowd of up to 12,758 can fill the pavilion and lawn in Highland Park, Illinois.

Venue has hosted music for more than a century

Ravinia opened in 1904 and its first pavilion was built the following year. That one burned down in 1949 and was replaced the following year by a structure used through 2024 with only modest modifications.

A geometric Arts and Crafts style pattern found in the windows of the Martin Theatre, which dates to Ravinia’s opening, inspired the design of the stage ceiling and walls made of rigid foam clad with 3M vinyl. Threshold Acoustics consulted with Taylor and flute and piccolo player Jennifer Gunn.

“The 1950 pavilion is iconic, particularly the roof line,” Ravinia president Jeffrey Haydon said. “And so we want to have audiences return to the renovated pavilion feeling like it’s the new model version of the classic pavilion that they love.”

A total of 335,500 tickets for all events were sold for the 2025 season and 94 programs are scheduled for this summer.

The pavilion’s capacity was lowered from 3,350 to 2,840 as wider seats were installed and made compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. LED lights have lowered the stage temperature, and nine ventilation fans were installed to push hot air through the ceiling.

Alsop also hoped for a cooler sound.

“The amplitude — is that the right word? — of sound on stage can get very, very hot. It’s really loud sometimes and it’s especially loud in the area of the brass,” she said. “One of the big acoustical improvements that I hope they’ve addressed is trying to spread out that.”

Alsop first conducted at Ravinia in 2002 and became chief conductor in 2020. At the first rehearsal Wednesday, she led Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, a work the CSO will perform on July 23. Acoustical panels over the stage were folded up midway through the practice session, softening the brass. Overall sounds were more diffused than before, when there were hot and cold spots.

“Ravinia Festival offers their patrons many different kinds of performances from classical music to big rock bands, recitals, occasionally movie nights with the orchestra playing along,” said Michael Barnes of Lohan Architecture, the design architect for the pavilion renovation. “The stage has to be very flexible in terms of how it is configured for those different kinds of performances. So the stage walls, some of them move.”

Outdoor venues have a more relaxed atmosphere

Haydon, who became Ravinia’s president in 2020, planned the reconstruction with ideas he learned from previous outdoor venues where he worked, including the Aspen Music Festival, the Ojai Music Festival and the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts. A women’s locker room was built for the orchestra along with piano storage, practice rooms, offices and a new music library.

“We actually dug underground,” he said. “We expanded underneath the audience area, and we also dug out the crawl space of the adjoining administrative building to grab more space.”

A private concert was scheduled for this Friday for an audience of construction workers, the design team, elected officials, donors and staff of the festival and the CSO.

Ensconced in auditoriums for much of the year, orchestras experience a different vibe when they head outdoors for the summer.

“It’s more family oriented,” Alsop said. “People come with their picnics and a lot of the musicians bring their families with them to picnic. So I think it’s a much more relaxed and receptive attitude.”

It’s a story with covered wagons and one room schoolhouses, but showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine says the “Little House on the Prairie” remake for Netflix still speaks to today’s American dream.

The show, premiering Thursday and set in the late 1800s, follows the Ingalls family led by Charles and Caroline and their two daughters Mary and Laura — as they settle in the American frontier. It’s adapted from a series of semi-autobiographical books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder about her own family’s pioneer life. In 1974, Michael Landon co-created the TV series based on the books where he played Pa alongside Melissa Gilbert as Laura. It aired for nine seasons. In the new version, Luke Bracey plays Pa and Alice Halsey is Laura.

Sonnenshine says the same frontier spirit from back then is baked into how Americans see themselves, even today.

“This idea of rugged individualism is the cornerstone of American mythos,” Sonnenshine says. “It’s still manifesting in our lives constantly … We’re real go-getters.”

In “Little House,” we see the Ingalls family seeking land and opportunity as they move west. In real life, Sonnenshine says, those settlers often didn’t understand what they were part of.

“There was no CNN or up-to-date newspapers, telling you” what was really happening, she says. “They did not understand the politics of land ownership or these treaties that have been made or these reservations,” she said. In the show, we see Charles begin to grasp the politics at play as the family encounters the Osage Nation and their new neighbors — and keeps some of that to himself. Sonnenshine says “it’s not out of malice, exactly” but because “knowledge did not flow as freely as it does now.”

Writers made keeping key events from originals a priority

As the Ingalls family builds their new life, we’re introduced to various neighbors who help them do it. That includes an Osage family adjusting to their own new way of life as settlers claim parts of their land. Laura strikes up a friendship with an Osage girl, and there’s a mutual respect among Charles and the Osage family patriarch.

“A lot of what this show is about is getting to know people that are not like you, all kinds of different people, because once you get to know people, that’s where all the change happens,” said Sonnenshine.

Mr. Edwards, a fan favorite from the books and series, helps Pa build the family’s cabin. He’s a rugged Civil War veteran with a heart of gold — grieving the loss of his own family, finding a new one in the Ingalls.

Staying true to characters like Edwards and including key events from the source material was a priority for Sonnenshine. She and her writers made a list of “iconic moments” with a checklist to follow. “We just crossed them off as we went along. ‘OK, we’ve found a way to incorporate this’ or ‘Ma gets a chair,’ which is very important, or ‘great Pa builds a door.’” Building a door, says Sonnenshine, is “a whole chapter in a book.”

Trip Friendly, whose father Ed co-created the series with Landon and was an executive producer, controls the overall rights to the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories. He’s an executive producer on the remake, and Sonnenshine says Trip is “very passionate about telling the story of the books.”

Pa is good but not perfect

Landon’s portrayal of Pa made him arguably one of the most popular TV dads in the history of the medium. He was a devoted family man with strong morals and compassion for others.

Bracey had never watched the original which he says was beneficial to creating his own interpretation of the character.

“I didn’t feel that burden,” said Bracey. “The intimidating factor has come after making it. When I’ve told people what I’ve done, and I’ve been told how important it is to them. That’s where it’s got intimidating.”

Bracey said it’s refreshing to play a genuinely good person, who makes mistakes, but is good.

“There’s very few really good people in television and movies. I feel lots of times they have to have a dark secret or a checkered past or whatever,” he said.

Crosby Fitzgerald, who plays Ma, says that goodness is present off-screen too. “Working with Luke is incredible. He actually is like Pa in person. Just really lifted me up all the time. It’s impossible to work on a set like this, especially with this legacy, and not be uplifted by the vibe.”

Sonnenshine says Season 1 is also about Laura learning that neither of her parents are perfect, particularly Pa. She comes to understand that “he does make mistakes and that’s OK.’ And even Charles talks about that. I think that’s a more honest portrayal of fatherhood.”

Second season will add Laura’s rival

Sonnenshine most recently wrote the adaptation for the hit film “The Housemaid” starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried and is writing its sequel. She was also a writer on “The Boys,” which was known for its explicit language and sex and graphic violence. It’s not an exaggeration to say that writing for “Little House,” even on a streaming platform, is different.

“This is the first time I’ve ever written without using any curse words,” said Sonnenshine.

“I’ve usually done, like much darker material. So I always say, well, I’m in my family era right now.”

Filming on the show’s second season is underway. Netflix recently confirmed the addition of another popular character from the originals. Willa Dunn has been cast as Laura’s rival Nellie Oleson, whose father owns the general store.

“She’s here and she’s acting up a storm,” said Sonnenshine. “It’s really fun. People love that character. I think we’re doing a slightly different take on the character, which is also really fun. The book is our sort of touchstone and then building upon that for her and her family has been — it brings a new dynamic to the Ingalls family.”

Bonnie Tyler, the gravelly voiced, Grammy-nominated Welsh pop star whose 1983 chart-topping power ballad “Total Eclipse of the Heart” enchanted succeeding generations with its bombastic charms during solar and lunar eclipses, has died. She was 75.

Tyler died unexpectedly in a hospital in Portugal where she was being treated for an illness, her family said Thursday in a statement on her website. She was hospitalized in May in Faro, where she had a home, for emergency intestinal surgery. She had been placed in an induced coma for a period but was reportedly improving last month and expected to make a good recovery.

“Bonnie’s family and team are heartbroken to announce that Bonnie unexpectedly passed away last night in hospital in Portugal as a result of the illness that she was being treated for,” her family said.

Tyler earned three Grammy nods and in 2013 represented Britain at the Eurovision Song Contest, where she came in 19th. She was honored as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2022 for her services to music by Queen Elizabeth II, thanks mainly to “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which has had more than 1 billion streams, boosted by real eclipses in 2017 and 2024.

The song spent four weeks at No. 1, and when Stereogum reevaluated it in 2020, the music outlet declared it an “extinction-level event rendered in musical form.”

“It’s pop music as heart-pounding, chest-thumping, blood-gargling, heavens-falling passion explosion. It’s sheer spectacle. It’s fireworks and lasers and lightning and thunder. It soars and swoops and barrel-rolls,” the site said.

The song has never really gone away: it was covered by the English singer Nicki French in 1995, and the band Westlife in 2006. Cate Blanchett sang it while hitting Billy Bob Thornton with her car in 2001’s “Bandits,” it appeared in a wedding scene in 2003’s “Old School” and One Direction sang it in 2010 on a U.K. version of “The X Factor.”

Early life

Tyler was born — as Gaynor Hopkins — a coal miner’s daughter in public housing with an outside toilet in Skewen, Wales, about 7 miles (11 kilometers) outside Swansea. She grew up with three sisters and two brothers.

She adored the Beatles and her first album was “A Hard Day’s Night.” The first song she bought, at 13, was “Hippy Hippy Shake” by the Swinging Blue Jeans and she watched “Top of the Pops” religiously, according to her memoir, “Straight From the Heart.”

She would record “Top of the Pops” on a reel-to-reel two-track recorder and write down the lyrics of songs she loved. Her favorites were by Janis Joplin, Nina Simone, Tina Turner, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding.

“I used to sing them into my hairbrush for hours and hours, and that’s how it all started for me. I fell in love with singing just from doing that. Looking back, even then my voice had a husky tone to it, but I didn’t think much of it. I thought everyone’s voices were different from each other’s,” she wrote.

In 1976 she had to have surgery to remove nodules on her throat, leaving her with that trademark vocal sound. Changing her name to Sherene Davis, she was fronting a soul band when she was discovered by talent scout Roger Bell, who brought her to London for demo sessions. Then she waited for a label until RCA said it was interested.

Under her new RCA-sanctioned name Bonnie Tyler, her debut album “The World Starts Tonight” in 1977 contained her first chart hit, “Lost in France,” and she was nominated for a breakthrough artists award at the Brit Awards. She then had a No. 3 hit in 1978 with “It’s a Heartache,” but soon drifted. She then signed with Sony and saw Meat Loaf perform “Bat Out of Hell” on the BBC. Impressed, she requested to work with Meat Loaf songwriter and producer Jim Steinman.

‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’

Steinman introduced her to his song “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which would become the debut single for her fifth studio album, “Faster Than the Speed of Night.” He borrowed one of the song’s lyrics — “Turn around, bright eyes” — from his 1969 musical “The Dream Engine,” written when he was a student at Massachusetts’ Amherst College. He told her the song was from a prospective musical version of “Nosferatu.”

“Jim liked to put down a basic rhythm track, do nine takes of the song, choose the best one and then put the kitchen sink on there, like Phil Spector used to,” Tyler told The Guardian in 2023. “He gave me a cassette to listen to in my hotel and we both preferred take two.”

Featuring E Street Band members Roy Bittan on piano and Max Weinberg on drums, “Total Eclipse” is a rumination on lost love: “Once upon a time there was light in my life/But now there’s only love in the dark,” she sings.

The video, a staple of early-days MTV, was shot in a frightening gothic former asylum in Surrey, where the guard dogs apparently wouldn’t set foot in the rooms downstairs where they used to give people electric shock treatment. The visuals included slow-motion tossed doves, candles, dancing ninjas, dancing greasers, Tyler in frighteningly big shoulder pads, fencers, gymnasts, wind machines and shirtless boys wearing swim goggles being doused with water.

“Faster Than the Speed of Night” earned a Grammy nomination for best rock vocal performance — losing to Pat Benatar’s “Love Is a Battlefield” — and Tyler got another nod for “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in the best pop vocal performance category, losing to Irene Cara’s “Flashdance — What a Feeling.”

After the ‘Eclipse’

Tyler never reached such dizzying heights again but stayed current with such movie soundtrack singles as “Holding Out For a Hero” — from 1984’s “Footloose” — and “Here She Comes” from “Metropolis” also in 1984.

Her 2019 disc “Between the Earth and the Stars” featured duets with Rod Stewart, Cliff Richard and Status Quo’s Francis Rossi, and she ended that year performing a Vatican Christmas concert before Pope Francis.

In 2013, she switched gears to make a country-flavored record in Nashville, “Rocks and Honey,” which included the Vince Gill duet “What You Need From Me” and a little ballad called “Believe in Me,” written by American songwriter Desmond Child and British songwriters Lauren Christy and Christopher Braide. “Believe in Me” was picked to represent the United Kingdom at that year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Sweden.

“It was an absolutely wonderful atmosphere there,” she told the San Francisco Examiner in 2023. “I was being interviewed every 15, 20 minutes, and when I walked out onstage behind the British flag, I thought the roof was going to come off! It was awesome, just awesome!”

In 2017, she joined Joe Jonas’ band DNCE for a performance on the cruise ship Oasis of the Seas as part of a “Total Eclipse Cruise.” When the moon passed in front of the sun, they played “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

Tyler was married to property developer and former Olympic judo competitor Robert Sullivan.

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Associated Press writer Brian Melley in London contributed to this report.

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This story has been corrected to reflect that Tyler was honored by Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, not 2023.

PARIS (AP) — Demi Moore and Cynthia Erivo were among celebrities who took their seats in a sweltering university courtyard for the most anticipated show of Paris couture week: Designer Pierpaolo Piccioli’s debut for Balenciaga.

In his first Balenciaga couture show — and the fashion house’s biggest statement since it revived its haute couture line in 2020 — Piccioli sent out ballooning gowns and hooded feather cocoons on Wednesday, then closed with model Gigi Hadid engulfed in rooster feathers.

For his bow, he walked out flanked by his entire atelier in white coats, to a standing ovation.

The debut capped a four-day season ending Thursday that came down to three things: flesh, fantasy and the machine.

Across 30 houses, five showing for the first time, designers bared the body and made it vanish, fled into make-believe as a heat wave gripped the city, and reached for particle accelerators and lab-grown silk while insisting couture still belongs to the human hand.

Couture — handmade, made-to-measure clothing that can cost as much as a house and reaches only a few hundred clients worldwide — is the industry’s laboratory and its loudest advertisement, a halo for the perfumes, handbags and ready-to-wear that pay the bills.

It matters more than usual this year: Luxury is clawing out of a two-year slump, and major houses are betting on newly installed designers — Piccioli, Jonathan Anderson at Dior, Matthieu Blazy at Chanel and Silvana Armani at Armani Privé — to re-energize it.

Cate Blanchett opened the celebrity run at Armani Privé, while Pedro Pascal and Tilda Swinton sat front row at Chanel.

Bodies are covered, armored or erased

The first question was what couture could do to the figure: expose it, armor it, inflate it or make it disappear.

Silvana Armani, showing her second Armani Privé collection since her uncle Giorgio died last September, titled the show “Boudoir” but sidestepped the obvious.

Rather than join the sheer-everything trend, she played cover against reveal: embroidered teddies under tuxedo jackets, a bomber unzipping from the hem to expose a strip of midriff, animal prints muted until they read as texture.

At 57 looks — about half the founder’s usual count — it was the week’s most restrained take on skin. Blanchett signaled it on arrival, in a plunging velvet suit beside Lou Doillon, Rosamund Pike and Anna Wintour.

Daniel Roseberry pushed further at Schiaparelli at the Petit Palais under the title “The Call of the Void.”

He treated flesh as raw material: corsets molded into lifelike torsos, silicone gills up a bare back, a latex jacket rigged with inflating tentacles.

The techniques came from a workshop that makes lifelike silicone infants for films barred from using real newborns.

Models walked a runway where even the prettiest look, a prom dress beaded in putty-pink pearls, carried an edge of menace.

Piccioli and Iris van Herpen went furthest, erasing the body outright.

At Balenciaga, it meant 3D body scans to build new mannequins, leather and cashmere molded by hand, volume inflated until the wearer became pure outline, from balloon-hemmed gazar to a strapless gown carrying 24,150 shreds of gazar.

Van Herpen dissolved the figure into some 30,000 hand-blown glass beads on sheer tulle.

Fairy tales in a heat wave

The second fixation was make-believe. The shows unfolded against a Middle East conflict, jittery markets and the heat wave outside.

Elie Saab staged a masked ball, drawing on Truman Capote’s 1966 black-and-white bash and the old-Hollywood glamour of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

As luxury shoppers drift toward casual clothes, Saab pushed the other way with velvet corseted gowns, New Look waists, and tuxedos and capes cut for women as well as men, part of a menswear line the house is expanding.

Zuhair Murad took fantasy into a darker garden, with velvet roses, night larks, butterflies and feathered capes moving through deep green, burgundy and black.

Stéphane Rolland turned the mood to mourning.

He staged his show at the Olympia, the Paris hall where Dalida performed, and dressed the collection almost entirely in white in tribute to the singer nearly four decades after her death — satin macramé, ostrich feathers, agate and diamonds.

At Chanel, Blazy turned the Grand Palais into a fairy tale: beanstalks rising through the floor, heels shaped like pea pods and golden eggs.

At Dior, Anderson built a sculptural fantasy around American artist Lynda Benglis: crushed pleated hats, sheer tasseled fans and a wedding-gown finale trailing feathery fronds.

Hand versus machine

The third preoccupation was technology — and what survives of the handmade in an era when software can generate any image.

Schiaparelli made the case in the materials themselves: baked fish scales, pools of paint set into sheets and silicone shaped by hand, a collection that read as an argument for the made-by-hand against the machine-made.

Van Herpen went literal. She sent a dress through a particle accelerator, froze it and planned for the model to discharge lightning on the runway.

The charge escaped early, burning branching channels through the fabric before the show.

Balenciaga paired lab-grown Amsilk silk, which the house says is stronger than steel, with its all-human, white-coated bow to end the show.

By Thursday, the pattern was clear: couture in 2026 wanted the impossible — a body without a body, fantasy with commercial purpose, and machines that still bowed to the hand.