Category Archives: Apple TV

Can Murdoch’s Tubi repeat its US success as it launches in the UK?

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Ad-funded streamer wades into market with offering it says will appeal to those underserved by rivals

The Wes Anderson classic Moonrise Kingdom, the Channel 4 sitcom Fresh Meat, a reality TV series about adult content creators, some Bollywood hits and a handful of shark flicks: Tubi’s home screen is not short of viewing options, just like the British video-streaming market it waded into this week.

Tubi is taking on the likes of Netflix, Disney+, ITVX and the BBC’s iPlayer with a free, ad-funded service offering 20,000 films and TV episodes, and an ambition of repeating its success in the US, where it has amassed nearly 80 million monthly users. But will it have a similar impact in the UK, where rival platforms are already well established?

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Apple TV+ remake of sci-fi classic Metropolis cancelled due to US writers’ strike

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The $188m eight-part series was to be filmed in Melbourne but has been shelved because of ‘push costs and uncertainty’

The $188m Apple TV+ remake of Fritz Lang’s 1927 sci-fi classic Metropolis has been cancelled.

The major project was in pre-production in Melbourne when NBCUniversal’s Universal Studio Group announced the eight-part series would not go ahead.

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Patricia Arquette: ‘I’ve buried a lot of people I love’

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As she returns to TV in the mind-bending Severance, the actor talks about life in the ‘never-ending emergency’ that is America, why she’ll never find Trump funny, and her need for a low-drama lifestyle

‘How did I feel?” repeats Patricia Arquette, clearly irritated. I have just asked the actor how it felt to land a role in Medium, the supernatural drama series that won her an Emmy – only to be asked to lose weight for the role. Although it happened in 2005, it is still clearly a sore point. “I felt annoyed and crappy. But I feel like it’s been a conversation my whole life. When True Romance came out, some critics said I was too fat or too heavy. I changed channels recently, happened upon True Romance, and thought, ‘Oh my God, look how young I was! I had a beautiful body. What are you talking about?’”

After True Romance, the Tony Scott-directed film in which she played a sex worker who falls in love with Christian Slater’s comic-book nerd, Arquette went on to star in plenty of acclaimed films, from David Lynch’s Lost Highway to Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead. The latter starred Nicolas Cage, who she married in 1995. Their marriage lasted nine months.

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From Hogwarts to inter-galactic space: how Alfred Enoch’s career rocketed

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He gained cult status in Harry Potter, despite not even wanting to audition, then matured in How to Get Away With Murder. What’s the actor doing now? Playing 1,000-year chess in deep space

At the age of 10, Alfred Enoch was cast as Gryffindor student Dean Thomas in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. While it wasn’t the most prominent role, Thomas was one of the few black or Asian characters in the third-highest-grossing film series ever – and this, allied with his boyish good looks, has lent Enoch cult status among Potterheads. “Not to downplay it,” says Enoch, “but I wasn’t an integral character. I’ve expressed that to people and they still say, ‘Yeah, but I saw you and you looked like me.’”

Enoch was cast after catching the Potter team’s eye during a performance at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. However, he’d earlier declined the chance to audition when producers held an open call at his school. “I didn’t go for Harry Potter in the beginning because I couldn’t think of any black characters,” he says.

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Jason Sudeikis: ‘Ted Lasso isn’t a show, it’s a vibe’

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The SNL star turned Hollywood mainstay plays a caring, sharing football coach in the award-winning comedy from Apple TV+ but is he as nice in real life?

How much of Jason Sudeikis is Ted Lasso, and how much of Ted Lasso is Jason Sudeikis? The extraordinarily strong hairline belongs to both, but that’s where the similarities start to swim apart and fuse together: Lasso wears a cheerfully thick moustache with his, while Sudeikis tends towards clean-shaven; since his 2003 start on SNL, Sudeikis has spent the last 18 years making people laugh, while Lasso’s attempts at humour (“Your body is like day-old rice – if it ain’t warmed up properly, something real bad could happen”) often whoosh over the heads of those around him. But they both seemingly spend an unusual amount of thought and care on the lesser-appreciated component parts that make a large organisation (a movie set; a football club) tick.

Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips

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Lisey’s Story review – a swollen snoozefest from Stephen King

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Supernatural silliness, metaphorical monsters, and dread that doesn’t so much as build as never lets up ... not even Julianne Moore’s turn as a grieving wife can save this bloated bore

The advice that a writer should “kill all your darlings” has been variously attributed. William Faulkner, Allan Ginsberg, Oscar Wilde, GK Chesterton and Arthur Quiller-Couch all get a look-in. Stephen King approved the accepted wisdom in his book On Writing. “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings,” he said with the relish one would hope for from a master of horror. “Even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”

Related: Joan Allen: ‘Acting’s like tennis. You bring your game’

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Apple TV 4K 2021 review: faster chip, fancy iPod-like remote

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Future-proofed Apple smart TV upgrade has widest selection of streaming apps but is super pricey

The second-generation Apple TV 4K gets a faster processor and future-proofed specs, but is really all about its new iPod-inspired Siri remote. And it all comes at a price.

Costing £169, the Apple media-streaming box is very much at the top of the market despite being £10 cheaper than its predecessor, with direct competitors priced between £50 and £130. But the Apple TV 4K offers something most others cannot: full integration with all of the iPhone-maker’s services including Siri, iTunes, TV+, Music, Fitness+ and the AirPlay 2 streaming system.

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Trailer released for Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey TV series

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Footage suggests Harry will revisit trauma of his mother’s death in Apple TV+ series on mental health

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex feature in an emotional trailer for Harry’s mental health documentary series with Oprah Winfrey, and footage hints that he will revisit the trauma he experienced after his mother’s death.

The two-minute trailer includes archive film from the 1997 funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, showing Harry, then 12, standing with his head bowed as his mother’s coffin passes by, alongside the Prince of Wales, who then turns to speak to his son.

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Prince Harry appears to criticise way he was raised by his father

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Duke of Sussex also speaks of ‘genetic pain and suffering’ in royal family in new interview in US

The Duke of Sussex has appeared to criticise the way he was raised by Prince Charles, discussing the “genetic pain and suffering” in the royal family and stressing that he wanted to “break the cycle” for his children.

In a wide-ranging 90-minute interview, Prince Harry, who is expecting a daughter with Meghan and is already father to Archie, two, likened life in the royal family to a mix between being in The Truman Show and being in a zoo.

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Tom Hanks on surviving coronavirus: ‘I had crippling body aches, fatigue and couldn’t concentrate’

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The world’s most relatable megastar talks about his Covid-19 experience, his fears for the future, and whether he’s really just so gosh darned nice

“Welcome to the future, Hadley!” Tom Hanks says from my computer screen, as he makes a quick glance to the right of his own to check my name. “Can you remember the last time you felt comfortable running around with other people?” he asks.

I tell him it was probably the last time I saw him, which was when we were at the Academy Awards in February, where he had ratcheted up his fifth Oscar nomination, for his performance as beloved US children’s TV host Fred Rogers, in the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood.

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History remixed: the rise of the anachronistic female lead

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The lives of women from history, from Catherine the Great to Shirley Jackson, are being brought to the screen with a radical focus on character over facts

It is a point in favor of TV’s sprawling proliferation that one gets, in the course of a year, both a lush, serious historical drama starring Helen Mirren as Catherine the Great on HBO, and its tonal opposite, Hulu’s raucous, gleefully brutal The Great, which puts an asterisk right on the title card: “An Occasionally True Story.” The Great, developed by Tony McNamara, the writer of absurd court send-up The Favourite, cares little for the historical accuracy of the 18th-century Russian monarch. Its Catherine (Elle Fanning) arrives in the backward, hedonistic Russian court as a naive 19-year-old bride in 1761. The real Catherine was 35 and a mother by then, but that’s fine – free from the constraints of biography or pedantic seriousness, The Great’s occasional truth delivers, ironically, a more lasting impression of a real, flesh and blood princess – one slowly but determinedly amassing power, enlightened but ambitious to rule.

Related: The Great review – gleefully garish new series from The Favourite writer

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iPhone 11: Apple’s most ambitious bid yet to conquer video and film

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iPhone 11 Pro is being touted as ‘the most advanced and detailed iPhone yet’ with a three-lens ‘pro’ camera system

Apple made its most ambitious pitch yet for the iPhone as a device for professional photographers and videographers at a launch event in Cupertino on Tuesday, underscoring new camera and editing capabilities.

The newly announced iPhone 11 comes in six colors and boasts two cameras and longer battery life. At $699, it is also $50 cheaper than the starting price of the iPhone XR.

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