Author: LATimes

David Seidler, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of the acclaimed 2010 drama “The King’s Speech,” has died. He was 86.Seidler’s manager, Jeff Aghassi, told The Times that Seidler died Saturday while fly-fishing in New Zealand. No specific cause of death was given, but Aghassi said, “David was in the place he loved most in the world — New Zealand — doing what gave him the greatest peace, which was fly-fishing. If given the chance, it is exactly as he would have scripted it.” “The King’s Speech” writer David Seidler, left, and director Tom Hooper onstage at the 83rd Academy Awards at the…

Since booking her breakout role in The CW drama “Riverdale” in 2017, Camila Mendes has skyrocketed to fame as one the most prominent Brazilian American stars in Hollywood. Yet, despite building on her success with acclaimed projects such as Netflix’s “Do Revenge” and Hulu’s “Palm Springs,” the actor says she has yet to receive a single script calling for a Brazilian role. “I get asked to play everything under the sun, every different kind of Latina, except Brazilian,” she says.That’s what drew her to her latest project, “Música,” a coming-of-age musical rom-com directed by and starring Rudy Mancuso that premiered…

The pillows are fluffed, the cocktails are mixed, the enchiladas are warming in the oven. Ilana and Enrique Gomez have done everything to ready their Pasadena mansion for the arrival of their daughter’s boyfriend. But nothing could prepare them for who the person at their front door turns out to be.In Gloria Calderón Kellett’s new play “One of the Good Ones,” this scenario leads to frank conversation, unfolding in real time, about unconscious biases, intergenerational expectations and who gets to claim Latino and American identity. (Between spit takes, hot flashes and swings at a very full piñata, that is.)“It’s ‘Guess…

In 1988, the BBC television series “That’s Life!” aired a program on Nicholas Winton, a former stockbroker who helped to save 669 children from the Nazis in the months leading up to World War II and the Holocaust. As seen in the episode, the producers of the show surprised Winton by seating him in the audience next to several now-adult survivors of the Kindertransport. Years later, Iain Canning, the Oscar-winning producer of “The King’s Speech,” rediscovered the popular clip and wondered about the story behind it. “It was such a stoic, emotional moment,” Canning tells The Times. “I just felt…

A trio of climate change protesters disrupted a Broadway preview of “An Enemy of the People” on Thursday night in what some audience members — including critics — initially thought was a scripted moment. The disruption came during an immersive town hall scene in which the play’s protagonist, Thomas Stockmann (“Succession” alum Jeremy Strong), attempts to alert his fellow citizens to a deadly bacteria contaminating the resort town’s spa water. Strong and other onstage actors speak to audience members as though they are townspeople attending the forum.As one of the play’s characters offered an objection, the first protester, Nate Smith…

The Los Angeles Fire Department knocked down a greater alarm structure fire in Studio City on Friday morning at a hillside home belonging to actor-model Cara Delevingne.“My heart is broken today … I cannot believe it. Life can change in a blink of an eye. So cherish what you have,” Delevingne wrote Friday on Instagram Stories, sharing a picture of two fluffy cats, as well as footage from the emergency response scene. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all the firefighters and people that have showed up to help,” the “Only Murders in the Building” star added,…

Oprah Winfrey has revealed why she left her nearly 10-year post as a WeightWatchers board member last month. Her resignation was motivated by her work on an upcoming TV special on the rise of prescription weight-loss drugs, she said during a Thursday appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”“An Oprah Special: Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution” airs Monday on ABC and streams the next day on Hulu. During the broadcast, filmed in front of a live studio audience, the 70-year-old media mogul will sit down with medical experts and patients to discuss prescription weight-loss drugs, including Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy.…

A soulful silliness pervades the rootin’, tootin’ live-action cartoon “Hundreds of Beavers” from Milwaukee filmmakers Mike Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, merry pranksters who deploy a gleefully inventive lo-fi madness to their gag-stuffed wilderness comedy. Pitting a lovestruck fur trapper against a bucktoothed horde, this underground festival hit is a feverish fit of creative buffoonery — you haven’t experienced anything remotely like it.Even though its influences are prominent — classic two-reel silent shorts, vintage berserk animation, even something like “Caddyshack” — the artful insanity on display is very much its own. All is ingeniously filtered through a modern comic…

Michael Keaton doesn’t have to prove anything as a movie star, accomplished actor and laugh-getter. His ready-made Batman glare at last weekend’s Oscars was meme-worthy, easily upstaging a meager bit by co-presenters Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. In front of a camera, Keaton has always been easy to follow into whatever high-concept or realistic milieu needs his steady, authentic charisma.Something about playing weary hit men, however, attracts him as a director. A decade and a half after Keaton made his debut behind the camera with “The Merry Gentleman,” in which he also starred as a contract killer given a crack…

With home insurers scaling back coverage in the state, enrollment is surging in California’s backstop insurance plan — as is the plan’s risk of sustaining losses that it can’t cover. Victoria Roach, president of the FAIR Plan Assn., told lawmakers this week that property owners even in areas with low wildfire risk were finding it difficult to keep their homes insured as companies increased rates, limit coverage or left areas susceptible to natural disasters amid climate change. That has prompted thousands of Californians to purchase coverage through the state insurer as a last resort. Funded by the insurers doing business…