Daily Beast

Noam Galai/Getty ImagesLast summer Megyn Kelly declared her yearslong feud with Donald Trump to now be water “under the bridge.” At a rally Saturday night, Trump seemed to beg to differ.While campaigning in Rome, Georgia, Trump reminisced about the first GOP presidential debate back in 2015, riffing on how he wanted to be placed center-stage among the candidates and how the program opened with then-Fox News host Megyn Kelly asking him a pointed question about his treatment of women.“Megyn Kelly. May she rest in peace,” Trump quipped to audible laughter, before taking a jab at her recent career pivot to right-wing media: “She’s sort of making a career by pretending she likes me.” Read more at The Daily Beast.

Prince of Wales/Kensington Palace/Handout via ReutersKate breaks cover for Mother’s DayKate Middleton dramatically issued a statement accompanied by a new photograph Sunday, to mark U.K. Mother’s Day. Princess Kate, 42, beamed in a new photograph surrounded by her three children, Prince George, Prince Louis, and Princess Charlotte. The picture was taken by her husband, Prince William.The photograph, which an official source told The Daily Beast was taken in Windsor in recent days, was released on social media channels Sunday morning with a message that read; “Thank you for your kind wishes and continued support over the last two months. Wishing everyone a Happy Mother’s Day, C.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

SXSWIt’s hard to believe the Y2K scare was a quarter of a century ago. And yet, here we are, decades later, totally unaffected and unharmed by the far reaches of technology! (Kidding—AI needs to go.) But what if it had been a real and dangerous threat, and humans faced apocalypse as soon as the clock struck midnight on Jan. 1, 2000? They’d throw on a George Michael track and pray for the nerdiest hacker to come through and save the day, that’s what.With the ’90s wit of Freaks and Geeks and the gallows humor of Shaun of the Dead, Kyle Mooney’s directorial debut Y2K nearly has what it takes to be the next great teen horror comedy. The film’s dawn of the new millennium references—from AOL dial-up crackles to the “Macarena” dance—are absolutely riotous. But a lack of intriguing characters and failure to follow through on a great concept for a horror story leave Y2K, which premiered at this year’s SXSW Film Festival, with major software bugs.It’s New Year’s Eve, and besties/total losers Eli (Jaeden Martell) and Danny (Julian Dennison) have no solid plans to ring in the millennium. Danny’s best idea: “sit around and talk about who you wanna fuck from school,” he pitches over AIM. While Eli giggles over raunchy messages from Danny, he also IMs roxygirl (a shopgirl knockoff), a.k.a Laura (Rachel Zegler), the most popular girl at school. Eli, who is super anxious and too unsure of himself to ever get a word out, has befriended Laura in AP Computer Science. She’s a tech whiz. Eli is constantly stunned by her presence.Read more at The Daily Beast.

SXSWNot to be a millennial about this, but millennial comedy (and I mean good millennial comedy) gets a bad rap. That sort of gung-ho, idealistic humor—shared by the last generation raised before babies came out of the womb holding phones in their tiny, wrinkly hands—typically feels out of date the second a punchline drops. Making ageless comedy is tough, especially when the way the entire world operates shifts so quickly during a few years of your lifespan.One of the all-time finest examples of millennial comedy remains Broad City, the brilliantly observational, deceptively tender tale of two New York besties that, aside from a few notable moments here and there, hasn’t aged a day. Half of that timelessness can be credited to its star, Ilana Glazer, who co-created and co-wrote Broad City alongside Abbi Jacobson. During the show’s run, Glazer proved herself a sharp wit when it came to skewering the experience of being a modern woman trying not to be spat out by the world.Now, Glazer is doing it again. But this time, she’s shirking Broad City’s signature messiness for a more refined stab at enduring millennial satire. In Babes, which premiered as part of the headlining slate at SXSW Film Festival, Glazer and co-writer Josh Rabinowitz craft a fiercely funny and affectionate take on the pitfalls of best friendships as those relationships age. While Babes doesn’t seek to reinvent the comedy wheel, Glazer once again excavates the bonds between women to find all of those hysterical intricacies that she is so adept at sending up. With co-star Michelle Buteau and director Pamela Adlon also lending their considerable talents to Glazer and Rabinowitz’s writing, Babes’ benevolent humor skims the great heights of a Nora Ephron film for a modern take on womanhood that feels close to classic on arrival.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Blue Finch Film ReleasingAs a man, I’m going to come out and say that I’m tired of exploring the concept of toxic masculinity in horror and thriller movies. Before the pitchforks pierce my spleen, let me step back from that with a brief caveat: It’s not that the perils of machismo aren’t real, and aren’t an ever-present threat in everyday life. I agree with that wholeheartedly. My complaint stems from filmmakers trying to dissect the minutiae of masculinity’s effects and having no unique vision or concise message to convey.Alex Garland and Ari Aster—listen up, boys. It’s no longer enough to use ostentatious visual style and needlessly shocking gore and violence to communicate the dangers of unrestrained male virility. While Garland’s Men and Aster’s Midsommar (and, arguably, elements of Beau is Afraid) were admirable efforts to anatomize masculinity, the directors ultimately blundered their theses by getting lost in the trappings of what audiences were expecting from them, based on their prior films. Viewers anticipated disturbing images, shocking scares, and menacing characters, and they got them at the expense of any truly original narrative.Jack Clark and Jim Weir, who co-directed the Australian thriller Birdeater—which had its North American premiere at the SXSW festival March 9—are unencumbered by the problems that Aster and Garland fell prey to. For starters, Birdeater is the pair’s feature film debut; the audience has yet to develop preconceived notions over what the movie might feel like. But regardless of its directors’ prior credits, Birdeater blows Men, Midsommar, and any other recent examination of masculinity out of the water. Weir and Clark have crafted an absurdly stylish film that is never content to rest on its ambitious visual scope, burrowing under your skin for an eerie glimpse at how men in their youth form bonds with one another that can slowly spin out of control as time passes.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Netflix/CourtesyIf you’re planning to watch this year’s batch of Oscar-nominated live-action short films, make sure you’ve got a box of tissues nearby. (In one case, you might also want a phone to call your nearest local representative.) This category can serve as a proving ground for budding filmmakers, but it can also become a bit of a frenzy to try and pack as much Meaning™ as possible into 40 minutes or less. This year’s entries to straight for the heart and the jugular; Wes Anderson’s 40-minute Technicolor adaptation of “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” feels almost out of place in a program that otherwise feels intent on sending us all straight to our therapists’ offices.Some of these shorts—like the Samantha Bee-produced abortion tale “Red, White, and Blue” and Canadian director Vincent René-Lortie’s “Invincible”—examine the deeply personal effects of structural injustice. Meanwhile, the David Oyewolo vehicle “The After” and the Danish downer “Knight of Fortune” steep us in the specific grief of men who’ve lost their wives, although only one of them does so effectively. And then, there’s Anderson’s take on Roald Dahl, which will likely please his devotees but might underwhelm everyone else.“The After”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesThere was one question on everyone’s lips this awards season: Is Ryan Gosling going to sing “I’m Just Ken” live at the Oscars? The actor, whose turn as Ken in Barbie earned him several nominations this year, has demurred thus far. While perennial winner Billie Eilish has performed her own Oscar-nominated Barbie ballad live at recent award shows, Gosling has preferred to stay silent and seated—thus depriving us of what could very well be a grandiose, unforgettable live performance. Not even his generous Christmas gift to fans, a holiday remix of Ken’s anthemic showstopper with accompanying music video, could abate our thirst for seeing Gosling don the mink live in the flesh, for once and for all.After months of lead-up, Gosling will grant us our wish: The actor is slated to perform “I’m Just Ken” live during this year’s Academy Awards, which airs March 10. With the song up for Best Original Song—again competing with Eilish’s multiple-award-winning theme—it’s only fair that Gosling gives it the last big push it deserves.But this brings an interesting, newer question to the table. No shade to Dead Man’s Bones, but we know Gosling for his acting more than anything else. Can an actor really hold his own against professional musicians out there in the Original Song arena? Gosling would be far from the first to do so—and, should “I’m Just Ken” win, he wouldn’t even be the first actor-by-trade to sing the song to Oscars victory.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesListen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.After listening to Alabama Sen. Katie Britt’s response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, The New Abnormal team asks the question on everyone’s mind—did the rising Republican star not think it through or was she set up to fail?The New Abnormal co-host Andy Levy quipped that her whispered, over-the-top delivery as she sat in a kitchen is the reason why “there shouldn’t be conservative theater kids.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Andri Tambunan/AFP via Getty ImagesTwo Ohio women discovered that their elderly roommate had died in the home they all shared, but instead of immediately reporting it, they placed his body in a vehicle, propped it up, and drove to a bank where they used his corpse to withdraw money from his bank account, authorities say. The pair is now facing charges of theft and gross abuse of a corpse, according to the Ashtabula Police Department. The women, identified as Loreen Feralo and Karen Casbohm, found 80-year-old Douglas Layman “dead inside his residence where they both had also been residing,” police said. With the help of an unnamed third person, authorities say, “they placed Mr. Layman in the front seat of his car and then drove to the bank where they withdrew an undisclosed amount of money from his account. It is further alleged that Mr. Layman was placed in the vehicle in such a manner that he would be visible to bank staff in order to make the withdrawal.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images and Public DomainIt was a little over two weeks since Mohammad Ali Raihani, 28, a student of engineering at Kabul University, had started a day job to provide for his brother and sister while he studied. On Jan. 6, an explosion ripped through the minibus taking him to the printing press where he worked, killing him and six others.“He studied at night so he could work during the day and support the family. He was our only breadwinner,” his sister Sumaya Raihani told the Daily Beast, choking back tears. “When Mohammad got this job, he was always telling us to study. He promised to buy a bicycle for my younger brother to encourage him to study harder.”Sumaya has been unable to work or go to school herself under the brutal restrictions on women and girls imposed since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021.Read more at The Daily Beast.