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The 2026 John Lewis Christmas advert has arrived to a familiar mix of fanfare and fault-finding, with the soundtrack winning warm words from a Rolling Stone while the story on screen has left some viewers cold.

A glamorous grandmother and a cost of living backlash

The film stars Dame Kristin Scott Thomas as a grandmother searching for the perfect gifts for her grandchildren. According to The Standard, it also features a pull-along wooden dog voiced by comedian Paul Whitehouse. The Independent reports that the grandmother’s opulent surroundings have led some critics to call the ad tone deaf during a cost of living crisis. Its writer Katie Rosseinsky argued that the glossy portrayal fails to reflect the financial pressures facing families this festive season.

Parents have taken issue with the children. Users on Mumsnet described the grandchildren as ungrateful and rude, and headlines about “ungrateful kids” and a “glamour gran” show how quickly that line of criticism has spread.

Industry verdict: funny and well cast, but less moving

Not every assessment is negative. Analysts at Kantar praised the humour and the casting, though they noted the film lacks the emotive punch of earlier campaigns. That is a notable caveat for a series that has built its reputation on tugging at heartstrings. The sources do not include viewing figures or polling, so how far the criticism reflects the wider public remains unclear. What they do show is a split between those who enjoy the comedy and those who find the setting out of touch.

Sam Fender’s Rolling Stones cover earns Jagger’s approval

The music has had a far smoother ride. Sam Fender covers the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, and Mick Jagger has endorsed the result. “I’m a fan of Sam’s work, so I was pleased to hear he was covering one of my songs,” he said. “I think he’s done a great job with it.”

Rolling Stone noted that the cover runs only about half as long as the original, but still delivers a horn section, a full choir and a tone of disappointment tempered by acceptance. Fender recorded it in Tyneside with bandmates Joe Atkinson and Dean Thompson. The choir comes from his old school, John Spence Community High School, and the brass from the Easington Colliery Band. He called it “a privilege to rework such an iconic song by such a legendary band.”

The Standard notes that Fender, 32, arrives on a high. He won the 2025 Mercury Prize for People Watching, and his duet with Olivia Dean, “Rein Me In”, spent a record 23 weeks at number one, according to the paper.

Charity links and a physical release

The cover is being released on 7-inch vinyl and CD, backed with Fender’s 2020 version of Lindisfarne’s “Winter Song”, which gets its first physical release. NME reports that net profits from singles sold through Fender’s official store will go to Teenage Cancer Trust. John Lewis profits from records sold in its stores will go to Action for Children, which supports people who have grown up in care.

The charity element may soften some of the criticism, but it is unlikely to settle the argument over the film itself. The annual John Lewis Christmas advert has long been a headline-grabbing event, and this year’s is being judged on two fronts. Its music has been widely praised, while its portrayal of a wealthy family has sparked debate. Last year’s film used a Labrinth reworking of “Where Love Lives”, and this year’s advert is likely to be remembered as much for the argument it has started as for the song.

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Andrew Scott’s Elsinore has taken an early lead at the British independent film awards, picking up 12 nominations ahead of a ceremony at London’s Roundhouse on 6 December. The drama, directed by Simon Stone, casts Scott as actor Ian Charleson, who was preparing to play Hamlet at the National Theatre in the last months of his life while seriously ill with Aids. Charleson died in 1990.

How Elsinore dominates the nominations

Elsinore’s nominations include best British independent film, best director for Stone, best screenplay for Stephen Beresford, best lead performance for Scott and best supporting performance for Billie Piper. It is also shortlisted across the craft categories: casting, cinematography, costume design, editing, make-up and hair design, original music and production design. Olivia Colman and Johnny Flynn also appear in the cast.

The film’s reception has been strong. The Guardian’s review called it “a devastating movie”, and Variety describes it as the film to beat this year. Scott is already being talked about as a contender in the Oscars best actor race. The Guardian notes he would be the first out gay actor to win the award.

The rest of the field

Clio Barnard’s I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning is second with eight nominations, including best British independent film, best director, best screenplay for Enda Walsh and best ensemble performance. It stars Anthony Boyle, Joe Cole, Jay Lycurgo, Daryl McCormack and Lola Petticrew as five childhood friends confronting unfulfilled dreams against the backdrop of the UK housing crisis.

Ashley Walters’ feature directorial debut Animol has seven nominations. It follows two teenagers inside a young offender institution and also stars Stephen Graham and Sharon Duncan-Brewster. Walters is up for the Douglas Hickox Award for best debut director, and Tut Nyuot is nominated for lead performance.

Welsh-language film Effi o Blaenau and Queen at Sea each have six nominations, both including best British independent film. Mike Leigh’s Tender Loving Care, which he has said is “most likely” his last film, has four, including best director. Among the debut features, Extra Geography, Straight Circle and Florid have five each, according to Variety.

A distinctive acting race

The British independent film awards use non-gendered acting categories, which makes for an unusual lead performance contest. Scott and Nyuot are up against Juliette Binoche for Queen at Sea, Erin Doherty for Faith, Leisa Gwenllian for Effi o Blaenau and Jonathan Jules for Florid. Variety notes that Doherty and Jules are both nominated for their first lead roles.

The supporting category is just as crowded. Piper is joined by Claire Foy for Ink, Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay for Queen at Sea, Sekou Diaby for Animol and Bill Pullman for Everybody Digs Bill Evans. The documentary shortlist is All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea, Everybody to Kenmure Street, One in a Million, Something Familiar and We, the Hated.

Cinema of the year and what comes next

The awards also honour exhibitors. The cinema of the year prize was won in its inaugural year in 2025 by the Magic Lantern Cinema in Tywyn, Wales. This year’s shortlist includes Abbeygate Cinema in Bury St Edmunds, Campus West in Welwyn Garden City, the Hippodrome in Bo’ness and the Ultimate Picture Palace in Oxford. The Guardian reports that the Oxford venue is threatened with closure by its landlord, Oriel College.

Winners will be revealed in two stages. Craft category winners will be announced on the awards’ social media channels on 24 November, and the remaining prizes will be presented at the Roundhouse on 6 December. The nominations were announced by previous winners Jay Lycurgo and Posy Sterling.

Sources differ slightly on Elsinore’s festival debut. The Guardian cites a September premiere at Telluride, while other outlets say it opened the BFI London Film Festival. Either way, the film has gone from festival debut to the front of the British independent film awards race.

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File photo: Andrew Scott 2025.jpg by Raph_PH, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Steve Ellis, the singer whose voice carried Love Affair’s Everlasting Love to the top of the UK charts, has died at the age of 76. An announcement on his official social media accounts said he “peacefully left the world” on the evening of Friday 30 October, surrounded by loved ones, following complications from a chronic illness.

A teenage singer with a hit for the ages

Born in Edgware, north-west London, in 1950, Ellis was a teenager when he started his first group, the Soul Survivors, at 15. His musical education came partly from home, where his mother bought him Ray Charles records, and partly from the stage. Seeing James Brown perform live was a turning point. “He blew our socks off, he was phenomenal. I thought, that’s how a singer has to be, so I started doing gymnastics,” Ellis told the Express in 2021.

The group reportedly cut its teeth at weddings, youth clubs and bar mitzvahs, sometimes pretending to have been booked. As it grew it graduated to soul clubs in cities such as Manchester and Stoke. By the mid-1960s it had become Love Affair, with Rex Brayley, Mick Jackson, Lynton Guest and Maurice Bacon alongside Ellis, and had signed to Decca.

The start was rocky. Debut single She Smiled Sweetly, a cover released within weeks of the Rolling Stones’ own version, flopped. The follow-up, another cover, changed everything. Everlasting Love had been recorded earlier by the American singer Robert Knight, but Ellis’s version, reportedly sung when he was 17 and squeezed in between shifts on a building site, spent two weeks at number one in the UK.

The sources differ on exactly when the song hit the top. The Guardian places its chart-topping run in 1968, while the Independent and the Standard point to 1967. All agree on the outcome: a record that has outlasted nearly every rival version. Carl Carlton’s take reached the US top ten in 1974, yet the Love Affair recording remains the most streamed and a fixture at weddings. It has also turned up on screen, including in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast.

Beyond the hits, a long second act

Love Affair followed up with Rainbow Valley, which spent 11 weeks in the Top 40, then A Day Without Love and Bringing On Back the Good Times, giving them four Top 10 hits in total. But the fame came with friction. Ellis said the band wanted to move towards progressive rock, while he had “always been a soul-boy”, and that the noise of screaming fans meant the group could barely hear themselves play. He left at the end of the 1960s, according to the Independent.

He fronted other projects, including the band Ellis, whose debut album was produced by Roger Daltrey, and Widowmaker, and released solo albums such as The Last Angry Man in 1977 and Basement Days in 1983. Commercial success on the scale of Love Affair’s never returned. The Mirror reports that audiences at his university shows wanted little beyond Everlasting Love, a song he described as both a “blessing and a curse”. It also reports that he stepped away from music for a time and worked as a docker after an accident in which he broke both feet, before a friend persuaded him to start gigging again.

The final chapter was a productive one. His 2008 album Best of Days reunited him with Daltrey and began a lasting partnership with Paul Weller, who featured on two tracks, including a live acoustic Everlasting Love. Weller co-wrote and co-produced 2018’s Boom! Bang! Twang!, and the two shared a song in 2022, Just to Simplify. Ellis’s latest record, Baby Faced Assassin, came out in September and includes three more songs created with Weller.

Tributes from friends and fellow musicians

Weller wrote in a social media post: “God bless ya Stevie safe travels everlasting love for sure.” Blues musician Norman Beaker, who played on a track of the new album, called Ellis “a good friend and a great voice” and “a legend with the mod movement”. Kent festival company BCM Entertainments said he “always brought something special to our events”.

The Independent reports that songwriter David Courtney first announced the death before it was confirmed on Ellis’s Facebook page. The family’s message invited fans to leave memories and condolences in the comments, and signed off with the title of the song that defined him: “Everlasting Love.”

For a singer who said that having such a record at 17 had “served me very well”, it is a fitting epitaph. Steve Ellis recorded a teenage vocal that is still sung at weddings nearly six decades later, and he was making new music with one of Britain’s most respected songwriters only weeks before he died.

File photo: Steve Ellis performing in 2022.jpg by Spartacus103uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Kennedy Center Honors named its 49th class on Monday: singer-songwriter Paul Anka, composer David Foster, actor Andy Garcia, playwright David Mamet and country singer Barbara Mandrell. The December 7 gala will be the first held away from the Kennedy Center itself, at Washington’s Capital One Arena.

The lineup spans pop, Broadway, film, theater and country. The announcement also lands in the middle of one of the most turbulent periods in the institution’s history.

Who Is Being Honored

Anka has been a hitmaker for nearly seven decades. He broke through at 15 with “Diana” in 1957, wrote “My Way” for Frank Sinatra, and composed the theme for “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.” He also released a new album, “Inspirations of Life and Love,” this year.

Foster arrives with 16 Grammy Awards, an Emmy, a Golden Globe and three Oscar nominations. Variety notes he helped launch the careers of Celine Dion and Michael Bublé. His songwriting credits include “The Prayer,” “After the Love Has Gone” and “I Have Nothing.” More recently he composed the Broadway musical “Boop!”, which is headed for a national tour.

Garcia earned an Oscar nomination for “The Godfather: Part III” and had a breakout role in “The Untouchables.” This year he wrote, directed and starred in “Diamond,” which premiered at Cannes.

Mamet won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for “Glengarry Glen Ross” and received Oscar nominations for the screenplays of “The Verdict” and “Wag the Dog.” The Independent describes him as a known supporter of President Donald Trump.

Mandrell, a multi-instrumentalist, won the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year award twice. Her hits include “Sleeping Single in a Double Bed” and “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.” She retired in 1997 and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2009. She is also the only woman in the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame.

A Ceremony Without Its Home

The move to Capital One Arena follows a fight over the building’s future. The board, which Trump chairs, voted in December 2025 to add his name to the center. In May a federal judge ruled that only Congress can rename it, and the name came down in June. After a judge blocked a second attempt in September, the board voted to close the center, citing structural deterioration.

Trump has said renovations will not proceed unless his name returns. He has also warned the complex could be “ripped down.” A federal judge ruled September 17 that the administration must give the court 30 days’ notice before any demolition or physical changes. The Independent reports the proposed project is a two-year, $257 million renovation. It also reports that Ohio Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty has sued to challenge the closure. Members of the National Symphony Orchestra have reportedly kept rehearsing inside the shuttered building.

Open Questions for the Broadcast

Several basics are still unsettled. No host has been announced. Trump hosted last year’s show, which honored Sylvester Stallone, George Strait, Michael Crawford, Gloria Gaynor and KISS. No network has been named either. CBS aired the event from 1978, but its rights deal expired last year.

That matters because the 2025 telecast drew its smallest audience ever. The Independent puts the drop at 35 percent from the year before. Variety also points out that this year’s announcement came unusually late. Honorees are typically revealed between July and September, and this one arrived in November.

In a statement, Trump said the honorees are “amazing artists whose lifelong work has shaped American culture and inspired generations of audiences.” He added that the class continues “a tradition that has defined the Center for nearly 50 years.”

The artists themselves are widely admired and span genres. Whether the Kennedy Center Honors can keep its traditional prestige, without its usual venue, a confirmed broadcaster or a settled legal fight, is the larger question as December 7 approaches.

File photo: John F. Kennedy Center and Watergate Complex – DC Aerial.jpg by OhanaSurf, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Martha Stewart apology that finally arrived on Sunday came only after a first attempt at damage control made matters worse. The 85-year-old lifestyle mogul admitted she had “really screwed up” by dressing as a homeless person for Halloween, a costume that drew swift condemnation online.

What happened with the costume

On Saturday, 31 October, a photo appeared on Stewart’s Instagram showing her in torn clothes with dirt smudged on her face, holding a sign that read “I AM HUNGRY HELP ME!!” The caption read: “My QVC candles are perfect for Halloween!!!” According to the Evening Standard, the image appeared to have been included by accident in a carousel of posts promoting her candle collection on the shopping channel. That detail is the outlet’s reading of events, not something Stewart has confirmed. The post has since been deleted.

Whatever the cause, the pairing of a poverty costume with a product plug was hard to ignore. Users pushed back almost immediately. “Poverty isn’t a costume,” wrote one. Another asked who Stewart expected to find the joke funny, and answered their own question with: “Billionaires?” PR specialist Molly McPherson summed up the confusion in a post of her own, asking whether the look was “insulting? Demeaning? Confusing? All of the above.”

A first statement that missed the mark

Stewart’s initial response on Sunday said she was “distressed” that the costume had offended people. She said it had been meant to raise awareness of homelessness and that offense was “never my intention.” She also described homelessness as one of America’s greatest ongoing crises and said she had spent significant time and effort supporting charities that tackle it.

Many readers were not persuaded. The statement defended her motives without apologising, and some critics argued that someone with her wealth has better ways to raise awareness. “You have enough money to raise awareness without turning homelessness into a Halloween costume,” one person wrote. Another suggested she could have funded a soup kitchen or donated to a women’s shelter instead.

The fuller apology

A second statement followed. “It’s hard to admit when you’ve really screwed up,” Stewart wrote. “My earlier statement didn’t go far enough. I know many people are suffering economically. Wearing a costume like I did was insensitive and not funny. I am very sorry.”

The Martha Stewart apology is notable for what it drops. The talk of awareness is gone, and so is any suggestion that the offense lay in how people reacted rather than in the costume itself. Crisis communications often turn on that distinction: an apology tends to land better when it names the harm directly than when it explains the intent behind it.

Why the backlash cut deep

The reaction was sharpened by the scale of the problem Stewart was seen to be mocking. The Evening Standard noted that official figures put the number of homeless people in the United States at no fewer than 770,000. Against that, a billionaire-turned-brand-mogul posing with a “hungry” sign to sell candles struck many as tone deaf.

Stewart is also a public figure with a long history of reinvention. She built a catering business in the 1970s and became a household name in the 1990s with Martha Stewart Living. She was sentenced to five months in prison in 2004 after being found guilty on charges linked to an insider trading scandal. She then rebuilt her brand through television, food products and a series with her friend Snoop Dogg. In 2015 she sold her media company for more than $350m. A reputation that survived a prison term is unlikely to be ended by a deleted Instagram post, but the episode shows how quickly a promotional misstep can turn into a public reckoning.

For now, Stewart’s message is clear, even if it took two attempts: she says the costume was a mistake, and she has said sorry.

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File photo: Martha Stewart 2011 Shankbone.JPG by David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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The first Strictly triple dance-off in the show’s history ended with Emmerdale actor Lawrence Robb and his professional partner Jowita Przystal leaving the competition on Sunday, after the judges voted them out.

Robb and Przystal landed in the bottom three alongside House of the Dragon actress Bethany Antonia and partner Nancy Xu, and actress Jaime Winstone and partner Carlos Gu. All three couples had ended up there through the combination of judges’ scores and public votes. Each danced their Halloween-week routine again: Antonia and Xu their jive, Winstone and Gu their salsa, and Robb and Przystal their tango to Ghostbusters.

How the judges decided

The format added a twist for the panel. Rather than choosing which couple to save, the judges had to name the one they wanted to eliminate. Shirley Ballas, Anton Du Beke and Craig Revel Horwood all picked Robb and Przystal, which settled the result. Motsi Mabuse’s casting vote was not needed, though she said she would have made the same choice.

The result is slightly surprising on paper. Robb and Przystal scored 26 on the Halloween leaderboard, above Tabby Stoecker and Mark Karmalita and Graeme Hall and Lauren Oakley, who were tied on 25. The sources do not give the public vote breakdown, but the pair’s position suggests viewer support was a factor in their landing in the bottom three.

Who topped the leaderboard

At the other end of the table, Lacey Turner and Vito Coppola led the week with a Charleston to Crazy Stupid Love, with each judge giving them a nine. The reports differ slightly on their total: one lists 36, the other 37. Four nines make 36, which is the figure that fits. John Nellis and Katya Jones followed on 35, with Cach Mercer and Maddie Ingoldsby and Delta Goodrem and Kai Widdrington both on 33.

One notable fall was Stoecker and Karmalita. They had topped the previous week’s scoreboard but dropped to the bottom of this one with their Quickstep to Black Magic.

A one-off twist, and a Halloween cameo

The Strictly triple dance-off appears to be a one-off. The show goes back to the usual two-couple dance-off for the rest of the series, so this week’s three-way contest was a Halloween-week special rather than a permanent change.

The results show stayed on theme. The professional dancers performed a vampire-themed group routine to Dracula by Tame Impala, which was recorded earlier in the year. It was narrated by Sir Ian McKellen, who read from Bram Stoker’s novel at the climax. Becky Hill also performed.

The remaining 10 couples return to BBC One on Saturday 7 November at 6.30pm, with the results show at 7.10pm the following night. After the first Strictly triple dance-off, the competition now enters a stage where every elimination is a straight two-way contest.

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The Halloween box office was a quiet affair in North America, and the film that came out on top was a near-three-hour documentary in its third weekend. A24’s “You Can See Everything,” about Elizabeth Holmes, took the top spot with an estimated $10.6 million. It beat Warner Bros.’ “Clayface” by about $200,000, according to studio estimates released Sunday.

Final numbers arrive Monday, and a photo finish can flip. Still, the estimates point to a modest victory for a film that cost only $7 million to make.

Why the Halloween box office stalled

Total ticket sales for the weekend came to roughly $60 million, according to Rentrak. That ranks among the slowest weekends of 2026, and one estimate suggested it would not climb past $63 million. There were no major new wide releases, and the holiday fell on a Saturday, usually the biggest moviegoing night.

“With costume parties, trick-or-treating and countless other Halloween activities, theaters were facing some pretty stiff competition for people’s time and attention,” said Rentrak’s Paul Dergarabedian. Families tend to choose trick-or-treating over the multiplex when the holiday lands on a weekend.

The weekend was still an improvement on last year’s. The 2025 Halloween frame totaled about $49 million, led by “Regretting You” and “Black Phone 2.” The year as a whole is also running well ahead, with domestic box office up more than 17% from 2025 at nearly $8.5 billion.

A documentary’s unlikely run

“You Can See Everything” has now earned about $63.9 million in North America, and it hasn’t opened internationally yet. This was its first weekend at No. 1. Dergarabedian called that “a rare achievement for any film, let alone a documentary running more than three hours.”

Variety reports that enthusiastic word of mouth and repeat viewings are driving the run, as audiences return to process what the film shows. It is expected to finish as one of the biggest documentaries in decades.

‘Clayface’ and the economics of a smaller superhero film

“Clayface,” an R-rated origin story for the Batman villain, fell 57% in its second weekend. It has made $44.1 million domestically and $83 million worldwide, against a reported $44 million budget. That is lean for DC. Last year’s “Superman” cost $225 million, and July’s “Supergirl” cost $175 million. Variety attributes the lower spending to the film’s darker tone and a title character less famous than DC’s headliners. Bigger bets follow with “Superman: Man of Tomorrow” next summer and “The Batman: Part II” in 2028.

The rest of the top five

Laika’s stop-motion fantasy “Wildwood” held third with $7.5 million, down 39%, for a $25.9 million domestic total. Its $100 million budget makes a theatrical profit unlikely, Variety notes.

“Wicker,” a comedy with Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård, took fourth with $4.1 million, a 28% drop. Its $13.2 million total looks healthy for a Sundance pickup that cost $2.5 million to acquire. “Street Fighter” was fifth with $3.2 million after a 63% decline. It has made $53 million in North America and $91.9 million worldwide, but its $82 million budget and the share of ticket sales theaters keep leave it far from breaking even.

Further down, the Sundance title “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” added more than 1,000 locations and earned $1.9 million for eighth place. Netflix’s World War II film “The Mosquito Bowl” made $455,000 from 349 theaters. Variety also noted that Zach Cregger’s “Resident Evil” reboot has reached $400 million globally.

Taken together, the results show a market that is healthy over the year but sensitive to the calendar. The Halloween box office was held back by the date, and the weekend’s winner was a small documentary rather than a studio tentpole.

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Tovah Feldshuh is drawing a line between disagreement and discord on the set of Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This.” The actress, who plays Bina, the mother of Adam Brody’s Rabbi Noah, says the cast’s split over the Israel-Palestine conflict is real but is not turning into friction at work.

Tovah Feldshuh Separates ‘Tensions’ From ‘Profound Differences’

Feldshuh responded on Threads to a user who claimed “tensions are emerging” on the show. Her reply was pointed: “Tensions are NOT RISING. Profound differences of opinion are.” She asked people not to “conflate the two” and said none of it “will be brought to the set.” She added that she deeply enjoys filming the series and hopes it is “chosen” to continue for a fourth season.

That last line matters because the show has not been renewed. Creator Erin Foster has said she has “more story to tell,” but Netflix has not committed to a Season 4.

How the Disagreement Began

The debate traces back to a September GQ interview in which Brody spoke plainly about the war in Gaza. “Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide,” he said. “Put me down as wanting a free Palestine.” He called the death and misery “awful” and said the situation seemed to be reaching a breaking point. Deadline’s account of the interview adds that he voiced hope that “another administration” could correct policies he believes worsen the crisis.

Foster, who is Jewish and drew on her own relationship with her husband for the show, responded more cautiously. She called the issue “complicated” and said she loves Brody but disagrees with him. She likened the set to “dinner tables around the world where people are having debate and discussion and disagreeing,” and added, “that’s OK.”

Feldshuh’s reaction was much sharper. She told The New York Post that accusing the Jewish people of genocide is “wild” and “right out of Hitler’s playbook,” arguing that it takes the victim and makes the victim the perpetrator. Her Threads post suggests she wants the dispute understood as a clash of convictions, not a breakdown in working relationships.

A Show That Has Steered Clear of Politics

The public argument is striking partly because the series itself has avoided the conflict. “Nobody Wants This” follows Joanne (Kristen Bell), an agnostic podcaster who falls for the progressive Rabbi Noah and starts exploring conversion to Judaism, a choice that unsettles both of their families. Its themes are faith, identity and family expectations, not geopolitics.

Still, a series built on Jewish identity can hardly keep real-world debates at bay once its stars start speaking publicly. The cast’s comments suggest Foster’s “dinner table” comparison is what the production is aiming for: open disagreement without turning the set into a battleground.

Whether that holds will be tested only if Netflix orders more episodes. For now, Tovah Feldshuh is making clear that she wants to return, and that, in her telling, the disagreement stays off the soundstage.

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File photo: Tovah Feldshuh 2016 (cropped).png by Neshamasheli, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Playing a near-indestructible android didn’t spare him from a very human injury. Paul Bettany says he burst about 10 blood vessels in one eye while filming Marvel’s VisionQuest, the result of what he calls some seriously overcooked acting.

What Paul Bettany said about the blood vessels

Bettany shared the story on Jimmy Kimmel Live, as reported by Deadline and Variety. The scene called for him to pretend a device on his head was messing with his brain. “I was just wildly overacting,” he said, “and I blew out about 10 blood vessels in my eye.” His verdict: “It was a lesson in less is more.”

According to Variety, Kimmel then showed the audience a photo of the blood-filled eyeball. Bettany said the redness lasted “like two weeks.” He assumes it “must’ve cost production so much” to remove it with CGI. That is his own guess about how the show handled it, not a confirmed account of the visual effects work.

A joke about the actor’s own eyesight

Bettany also found some irony in the mishap. “The actor playing Vision is kind of myopic,” he joked, adding that he “can’t see a thing” without his glasses. He said that is “great depending on the actor you’re working with.”

The anecdote fits the show’s premise, which asks Vision to look inward. VisionQuest is set after WandaVision (2021). It follows the character as he communicates with several AI personas embedded in his programming while trying to work out who he is. With a bounty on his head, he goes on the run with a mysterious teen played by Ruaridh Mollica, who may be his reincarnated son.

Where VisionQuest stands now

Variety reports that the eight-episode series debuted on Disney+ on October 14. Deadline says the Season 1 finale airs November 10. Bettany first appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the voice of J.A.R.V.I.S. in the first Iron Man. He then played Vision in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and WandaVision.

James Spader returns as Ultron, and the cast also includes Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, James D’Arcy, Orla Brady and Emily Hampshire. The coverage doesn’t say which episode or scene the injury happened in, so viewers will have to guess whether the brain-device sequence is the one.

The sources don’t say whether Bettany needed any medical treatment beyond waiting for the redness to fade. What they do show is an actor laughing at himself. Paul Bettany’s blood vessels paid the price for a scene he now says would have worked better with a lighter touch.

File photo: Paul Bettany – Los Angeles Comic Con 2025.jpg by Kevin Paul, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Taika Waititi has told critics they are “irrelevant, out of touch, obsolete” and “in the bin” after Klara and the Sun opened to a rotten Rotten Tomatoes score and a box office launch that barely registered. The film had grossed about $1.7 million worldwide at the time of reporting.

The Oscar-winning director posted the broadside on Instagram on Halloween, sharing the film’s poster along with its Rotten Tomatoes audience and critics scores. “I haven’t read a review of anything aimed at me or my peers in almost 15 years. But I do listen to the people,” he wrote. He then urged followers to “spare a thought for those sad lost souls who couldn’t achieve their dreams of becoming artists, and thus became critics,” adding that they were “the same people who also hated Jojo Rabbit.”

What the Klara and the Sun scores show

The gap Waititi highlighted is real, though the exact figures shift depending on the outlet and the hour. Reports put the critics’ score between 26 and 28 percent. The audience score was cited at 78 percent in his post, and Deadline noted it had slipped to 73 percent by its report. IGN put it at 74 percent. Either way, viewers have been far kinder than reviewers.

Deadline’s own review said the director seemed a natural fit for Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel, given his taste for peculiar, cringe-tinged comedy. It concluded that the film “just doesn’t deliver on any of the fronts it promises.” Deadline also reported that the negative notes began with the film’s screening at the BFI London Film Festival this month.

His Jojo Rabbit jab is less clear-cut. IGN pointed out that the 2019 film holds an 81 percent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and drew strong notices, including an 8.5/10 from IGN itself. It is not obvious which negative reaction he means.

A box office launch that barely registered

The commercial picture is harder to spin. Sony reportedly cut the release of Klara and the Sun to roughly 880 North American theaters, down from an anticipated 2,000, according to the sources. The film opened to an estimated $701,000 to $725,000 domestically, depending on the report, and landed outside the top 10. IGN, citing Deadline, said Sony stopped reporting the film’s earnings over the following weekend. Reported budgets range from about $20 million to $40 million.

Some commenters on Deadline’s story blamed thin marketing rather than the reviews, saying they had seen almost no trailers. Others said a film tracking that low would never get a big promotional push. The sources don’t settle that argument, and it’s impossible to say from the numbers alone how much the reviews, the marketing or the material itself drove the result.

The film, and Waititi’s view of AI

The adaptation stars Jenna Ortega as Klara, an “Artificial Friend” bought for a gravely ill teenager, with Amy Adams as the girl’s mother. Waititi’s AI comments at the New York premiere, reported by The Hollywood Reporter, now sit awkwardly beside the public spat. He said AI use in the industry is probably inevitable, but that he wants it used “as a tool, as opposed to a replacement.” He added, “I don’t want to replace humans. I want to work with them.”

Directors pushing back on critics is hardly new, and the audience scores give Waititi some ground to stand on. But with Klara and the Sun struggling to find moviegoers at all, a public attack on reviewers is unlikely to change the box office story. The film is a small-scale test of how far a director’s name and a famous novel can carry a project when both reviews and release plans go wrong.

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File photo: Taika Waititi photo by pouria afkhami (cropped).jpg by Pixoos, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.