Daily Beast

Lionsgate“I know what I believe,” says Rebecca Smallbone (Kirrilee Berger), a teenager defending her ability to write and sing pop songs, about halfway through the biopic Unsung Hero.The audience has to more or less take her word for it, because while she will eventually become the Christian pop star Rebecca St. James, Unsung Hero doesn’t focus enough on Rebecca to give anyone a sense of her thoughts or feelings on much of anything. We’re left to assume that she simply shares most of her beliefs with the true subjects of the film: her parents, David and Helen. In the tradition of King Richard, where Will Smith played the cantankerous, determined, high-standards father of Venus and Serena Williams, the next step in biopic evolution apparently involves paying tribute to the parents who figure so prominently in certain success stories. This seems like a particularly appealing tactic for a faith-based movie like Unsung Hero. Call it Fifth Commandment Cinema.Unsung Hero is Fifth Commandment Cinema without the benefit of Will Smith-level charisma to make the stubbornness and screw-ups go down easier. What it lacks in star power, it makes up for in astonishing levels of faux-piety and false modesty: Joel Smallbone, of the Christian musical act For King & Country, co-writes and co-directs a biopic starring himself, playing his dad David. As the movie tells it, David follows his dream as a Christian music promoter and, after taking a bath on an early-'90s Amy Grant tour (blamed vaguely on “the economy”), uproots the family and moves them to the United States to start a new record label with another artist. When they arrive, David learns that the deal has fallen through. Now the family is stranded in Nashville with a six-month visa, no jobs, and plenty of pressure to head back to Australia. David doesn’t want to give up, but he’s also not sure what to do next.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Idris Solomon/ReutersA group of pro-Palestine protesters chased a New York Police Department chief into an NYU campus building on Monday night as the demonstrators demanded that he and other officers released a woman in their custody.Video of the incident shared online shows assistant chief James McCarthy being loudly berated by the protesters as he tries to get inside the NYU Catholic Center. McCarthy struggles and ultimately fails to open a door to the building as shouts of “you fucking fascist” and “fuck you pigs” can be heard from the group surrounding the officers.The protesters also chant “let her go” in reference to a handcuffed woman appearing to be being restrained by one officer in riot gear. When the police take the woman around the building to another entrance, the protesters follow, continuing to demand her release and shouting “free Palestine.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Johannes Eisele/AFP via GettyNew York’s highest court has overturned fallen Hollywood titan Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction.In a 4-3 decision, the appeals court ruled Thursday that Weinstein was tried not only for the crimes he was charged with but also for his past behavior—and that witnesses were allowed to testify about allegations that were not part of the case during the 2020 trial. “Under our system of justice, the accused has a right to be held to account only for the crime charged,” the court said in its ruling. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Yuki Iwamura/GettyDonald Trump on Wednesday described a deadly 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville as a “peanut” compared with the current wave of pro-Palestine demonstrations unfolding on college campuses across America.In a post on his Truth Social platform, the Republican noted that his successor, Joe Biden, had cited the Unite the Right rally in Virginia as among his motives for running for president. One woman was killed and almost 40 other people were hurt when a neo-Nazi rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters at the rally—an event that Trump claimed at the time had been attended by “very fine people on both sides.”“Crooked Joe Biden would say, constantly, that he ran because of Charlottesville,” Trump wrote in his post Wednesday. “Well, if that’s the case, he’s done a really terrible job because Charlottesville is like a ‘peanut’ compared to the riots and anti-Israel protests that are happening all over our Country, RIGHT NOW.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Reuters/Denis SinyakovA Russian court has sentenced two teenagers to hard time for graffiti and anti-war social media posts. Lyubov Lizunova, 16, was sentenced to 3.5 years in a penal colony, while 19-year-old Alexander Snezhkov got 6 years, the court’s press service said Thursday. The two were detained by federal agents in October 2022 for writing “death to the regime” in graffiti in the city of Chita.Since President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has ordered a crackdown on dissent across Russia. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily BeastIf you were a rioter at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, you may have felt the whole world was with you—or the part of the world that supported what you did.President Trump himself had urged you to march to the Capitol Building. A crowd walked alongside you down Pennsylvania Avenue. People chanted with you about attacking Mike Pence, crashed through the police lines with you, helped you to break windows and march through the building.After your arrest, it turned out that you had always been alone. Your mob vanished. You had only your lawyer as companionship at trial. You had no friends as you sat at your sentencing hearing. You alone were imprisoned. You had not won. You were a loser.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Dr. Jeff Gunter For US SenateWhen he launched his campaign for U.S. Senate in Nevada last year, Jeff Gunter presented himself as a gritty frontiersman and a diehard MAGA Republican.Gunter’s opening video depicts him stepping into a Ford F-150 pickup truck—cowboy boots and all—admiring the bucolic western landscape in a burgundy button-down as he talks about his credentials. And in case you had somehow forgotten which state’s Senate seat Gunter is running for in the ad, he’s also sporting a belt buckle with boldface lettering spelling “Nevada.”But despite Gunter’s breezy adoption of a rugged western persona, it appears his brand is more hat than cattle.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty ImagesKHARKIV, Ukraine—After months of infighting on Capitol Hill, President Joe Biden has finally been able to sign off on a huge new $61 billion military aid bill for Ukraine. Delays to the bill, which got bogged down in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, were widely blamed for impacting Kyiv’s ability to defend itself from Russian advances. After its passage last week, some members of the House waved Ukrainian flags while others cheered in celebration that Ukraine will soon receive new weapons ahead of Russia’s expected counteroffensive. Signing it into law at a White House ceremony on Wednesday, Biden promised the arms shipments would begin immediately and hailed what he called “a good day for world peace.”The reaction here, near the front lines of the war, felt very different.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/GettyLast Wednesday, dozens of students skipped class to gather outside a Payson, Utah, middle school for hours and chant, “We the people, not the animals!”—a protest launched over the dramatic accusation that their classmates were running wild as “furries” and attacking other students without consequence.Much of the hysteria, however, has been blown out of proportion.Footage from the scene showed them hoisting signs declaring, “Compelled speech is not free speech,” “We won’t be compelled,” and “We just want to learn.” A fourth sign read, “You can’t ignore us,” with a drawing of an animal print covered with a prohibition sign.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesThe first stages of the trial of the People of New York State vs. Donald J. Trump have been illuminating in a variety of ways. They have made it absolutely clear that this trial is not the legal non-event Republicans and drinkers of conventional wisdom-flavored Kool Aid said it was.It is not a case about “paperwork” or “bookkeeping.” It is not a bland little nothingburger of arcane, hard-to-prove white-collar crime. It is not just the “hush money” or the “porn star” sideshow. It is a case about an alleged attempt by a man running for this country’s highest office to systematically defraud voters and use illegal means to gain an advantage in an election. What is more, it is a case about doing so in an election cycle in which he won the electoral vote by fewer than 80,000 votes. His margin was razor-thin. The lies his friends at the National Enquirer told that were spread by others in the MAGA propaganda machine could well have tipped the balance of the election in his favor.Read more at The Daily Beast.