Easter

New Comedy ‘Easter Sunday’ Celebrates Filipino-American Life

The new comedy “Easter Sunday” is purposefully out in theaters now, filled with Easter eggs meant to reach and celebrate a Filipino audience.

Career, faith and complicated family dynamics are just a few themes in the new comedy “Easter Sunday,” set in Daly City, California — the real life home to 32,000 Filipinos.

It’s written by Ken Cheng and loosely based on the life of Cheng and Filipino- American comedian Jo Koy.

“A lot of times our stories, especially when we’re talking about immigrants, focus on what I call the noble struggle of immigration, and we never get to relish in the joy and happiness and the laughter and the comedy of that experience,” Cheng said.

The film gives nods to classics like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Friday.”

“A one-day movie in which a variety of hijinks and subplots sort of converge into a dramatic moment at the end of the movie,” Cheng said.

The movie is filled with little things — or Easter eggs — meant to reach and celebrate a Filipino audience.

“All the food that’s included in the movie are literally written verbatim in the screenplay,” Cheng said. “It’s like, this is the dish you should be cooking here… She’s offering a dessert, and the dessert should be this, Polvoron.”

A recurring struggle in the film is its central character’s difficulty navigating stereotypes in Hollywood.

According to a study from CAPE and the Geena Davis Institute, about a third of API characters — 35.2% — embody at least one common API trope or stereotype such as the “Martial Artist,” the “Model Minority” or the “Exotic Woman.”

NEWSY’S AMBER STRONG: How did you figure out how to make this movie that celebrated Filipino culture without making fun of Filipino culture? Does that make sense?

KEN CHENG: It does make sense. For me, the priority is I think that it’s a natural byproduct of allowing characters to just be human on screen. That makes sense if you are able to express these characters humanity. I don’t see how you would laugh at them.

There was brief talk about moving Easter Sunday and its all star cast of AAPI actors to streaming due to COVID-19, but filmmakers tell Newsy they and Koy had their hopes set on something bigger.

“These are people we do not see on the big screen often, if ever, and it was really important to him and really important to us as producers involved, and to the studio frankly, that that we get to present this movie the way we intended to,” Cheng said.

In a movie titled “Easter Sunday,” there are obviously themes of faith.

According to Harvard Divinity School, 90% of people in the Philippines are Christian, with the majority Catholic.

“We can all debate about the origins of why Catholicism specifically played such an important role as a byproduct of colonialism in the Philippines, but it is undeniably such a large part of the Filipino and Filipino American specifically experience,” Cheng said.

The topic of faith becoming more prevalent in shows with AAPI leads, like “Ms. Marvel” airing on Disney+, relies heavily on Islamic traditions. There’s also the Kim family in the CBC show “Kim’s Convenience,” which features numerous plots centered around the Korean Family’s Christian faith.

“Church is, frankly, one of the central hubs of the community in which people find community, especially newly arrived immigrants who don’t know anybody else in this country,” Cheng said. “That’s where they go to find their countrymen there, find solidarity and sort of a sense of collective belonging.”

“Easter Sunday” is now playing, purposely, in theaters only.

: newsy.com

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‘Bullet Train’ Pulls $30.1M In 2022’s Last Summer Blockbuster

The debut was solid but unspectacular for a movie that cost $90 million to make and was propelled by Pitt’s substantial star power.

The stylized action romp “Bullet Train,” starring Brad Pitt, arrived with a $30.1 million opening weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday, as the last big movie of Hollywood’s summer recovery landed in theaters.

The “Bullet Train” debut for Sony Pictures was solid but unspectacular for a movie that cost $90 million to make and was propelled by Pitt’s substantial star power. Even if it holds well in coming weeks, movie theaters have no major studio releases on the horizon for the rest of August, and few sure things to look forward to in early fall.

While late summer is always a quiet period in theaters, it will be especially so this year — and likely to sap some of the momentum stirred by “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Jurassic World: Dominion,” “Minions: The Rise of Gru” and others. After a comeback season that pushed the box office close to pre-pandemic levels, it’s about to get pretty quiet in cinemas.

“It’s definitely going to be quieter, like the calm after the storm,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data firm Comscore. “But that doesn’t mean there’s not going to be great movies out there and perhaps the good will generated by some of those films might be enough to buoy the box office until we get into the blockbuster corridor with ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ and ‘Avatar 2’ down the road. We have to expect that we’re not going to be able to keep up the pace we had this summer.”

As the last big summer movie to leave the station, “Bullet Train” hopes to keep riding for the coming weeks. That would be in line with the playbook of some other original, August-released summer movies like “Free Guy” and “Crazy Rich Asians.” Directed by David Leitch (“Atomic Blonde,” “Deadpool 2”), “Bullet Train” gathers a number of assassins (co-stars include Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry) together on a speeding train running from Tokyo to Kyoto.

As one of the few original would-be summer blockbusters without big-name intellectual property behind it, the R-rated “Bullet Train” might have come into the weekend with more momentum if reviews had been stronger. With a low 54% fresh rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, “Bullet Train” was only slightly better received by audiences, who gave the film a B+ CinemaScore. The film added $32.4 million in overseas box office.

The weekend’s other new wide release, “Easter Sunday,” struggled to catch on. The Universal Pictures comedy, starring comic Jo Koy as an actor attending his family’s Easter Sunday celebration, won praise for its Filipino representation but drew even worse reviews than “Bullet Train.” It opened with $5.3 million in ticket sales.

Instead, “Bullet Train” was trailed by a number of holdovers, including Warner Bros.’ “DC League of Pets.” The animated release grossed $11.2 million in its second week of release.

Jordan Peele’s “Nope,” the Universal sci-fi horror release, continued to perform well, earning $8.5 million in its third weekend. With $98 million in tickets sold, “Nope” will soon surpass $100 million at the domestic box office.

Taika Waititi’s “Thor: Love and Thunder,” for the Walt Disney Co., came in fourth with $7.6 million in its fifth weekend. It’s now up to $316.1 million, making it the highest grossing Thor movie domestically. With $699 million globally, “Love and Thunder” is less likely to catch the $854 million worldwide haul of 2017’s “Thor: Ragnarok.”

In limited release, A24’s “Bodies Bodies Bodies” launched on six screens in New York and Los Angeles with $226,525 in ticket sales, good for a per-screen average of $37,754. The horror comedy about rich 20-somethings at a remote house party, with a cast including Amandla Sternberg, Maria Bakalova and Pete Davidson, expands nationwide on Friday.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Tuesday.

1. “Bullet Train,” $30.1 million.

2. “DC League of Super Pets,” $11.2 million.

3. “Nope,” $8.5 million.

4. “Thor: Love and Thunder,” $7.6 million.

5. “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” $7.1 million.

6. “Top Gun: Maverick,” $7 million.

7. “Where the Crawdads Sing,” $5.7 million.

8. “Easter Sunday,” $5.3 million.

9. “Elvis,” $4 million.

10. “The Black Phone,” $1.5 million.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Scrounging for Hits, Hollywood Goes Back to the Video Game Well

LOS ANGELES — For 28 years, ever since “Super Mario Bros.” arrived in cinemas with the tagline “This Ain’t No Game,” Hollywood has been trying and mostly failing — epically, famously — to turn hit video games into hit movies. For every “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” (2001), which turned Angelina Jolie into an A-list action star, there has been a nonsensical “Max Payne” (2008), an abominable “Prince of Persia” (2010) and a wince-inducing “Warcraft” (2016).

If video games are the comic books of our time, why can’t Hollywood figure out how to mine them accordingly?

It may finally be happening, powered in part by the proliferation of streaming services and their need for intellectual property to exploit. “The need for established, globally appealing I.P. has naturally led to gaming,” Matthew Ball, a venture investor and the former head of strategy for Amazon Studios, wrote last year in an essay titled “7 Reasons Why Gaming I.P. Is Finally Taking Off in Film/TV.”

Sony Pictures Entertainment and its PlayStation-powered sibling, Sony Interactive, are finally working together to turn PlayStation games into mass-appeal movies and television shows. There are 10 game adaptations in the Sony Pictures pipeline, a big leap from practically none in 2018. They include “Uncharted,” a $120 million adventure based on a 14-year-old PlayStation property (more than 40 million copies sold). “Uncharted” stars Tom Holland, the reigning Spider-Man, as Nathan Drake, the treasure hunter at the center of the game franchise. It is scheduled for release in theaters on Feb. 18.

post-apocalyptic game of the same title. Pedro Pascal, “The Mandalorian” himself, is the star, and Craig Mazin, who created the Emmy-winning mini-series “Chernobyl,” is the showrunner. Executive producers include Carolyn Strauss, one of the forces behind “Game of Thrones,” and Neil Druckmann, who led the creation of the Last of Us game.

Sony games like Twisted Metal and Ghost of Tsushima are also getting the TV and film treatment. (Contrary to speculation, one that is not, at least not anytime soon, according to a Sony spokesman: God of War.)

In the past, Sony Pictures and Sony Interactive operated as fiefs, with creative control — it’s mine; no, it’s mine — impeding adaptation efforts. When he took over as Sony’s chief executive in 2018, Kenichiro Yoshida demanded cooperation. The ultimate goal is to make better use of Sony’s online PlayStation Network to bring Sony movies, shows and music directly to consumers. PlayStation Network, introduced in 2006, has more than 114 million monthly active users.

“I have witnessed a radical shift in the nature of cooperation between different parts of the company,” said Sanford Panitch, Sony’s movie president.

Halo,” a series based on the Xbox franchise about a war between humans and an alliance of aliens (more than 80 million copies sold), will arrive on the Paramount+ streaming service early next year; Steven Spielberg is an executive producer. Lionsgate is adapting the Borderlands games (roughly 60 million sold) into a science fiction film starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Buoyed by its success with “The Witcher,” a fantasy series adapted from games and novels, Netflix has shows based on the “Assassin’s Creed,” “Resident Evil,” “Splinter Cell” and “Cuphead” games on the way. Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the duo behind HBO’s “Westworld,” are developing a science-fiction show for Amazon that is based on the Fallout video game franchise.

And Nintendo and Illumination Entertainment, the Universal Pictures studio responsible for the “Despicable Me” franchise, have an animated Mario movie headed to theaters next year — another new collaboration between a game publisher and a film company.

Still, Hollywood’s game adaptation track record is terrible. Why should the coming projects be any different?

For a start, the games themselves have evolved, becoming more intricate and cinematic. “Games have stories that are so much more developed and advanced than they used to be,” Mr. Panitch said.

As Covid-19 vaccinations have picked up and more businesses reopen across the country, Easter weekend saw a resurgence of tourist activity in some cities, perhaps indicating a turning point for the struggling tourism industry.

Chip Rogers, the president and chief operating officer for the American Hotel & Lodging Association, the trade organization for the hospitality industry, said that before last weekend, recovery had been “very regionalized,” with places like Florida and Texas doing well and “cities that thrive on large meetings and conventions like a Chicago, Orlando, Las Vegas” struggling to recover.

“You’re seeing really good pickup over the weekend dates, which have now extended. Traditionally they’re Friday to Sunday, now it’s Thursday to Monday,” he said, referring to the increase in leisure travel. But the lack of business travel means weekday bookings continue to lag. Still, he added, there’s reason for “cautious optimism.”

But travelers, even those who are fully vaccinated, should practice caution while visiting some states, health experts warn. Case numbers are going up in some popular destinations, like Florida, which saw a spike as revelers flocked there during spring break. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends that people continue to wear masks, social distance and frequently wash their hands, even though some local governments have relaxed or lifted these rules.

Mila Miami, a restaurant in Miami Beach, many have traveled from out of state for extended stays — particularly from places like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago — which he said “has enabled the business to pick up customers that we wouldn’t have.”

This influx proved problematic over spring break, when police officers in riot gear used pepper balls to enforce an emergency curfew and disperse revelers ignoring social distancing and mask regulations.

During the weekend of March 28 to April 3, Miami “saw its highest occupancy level since the start of the pandemic, with most hotels reporting upward of 75 percent occupancy levels,” said Suzie Sponder, a spokeswoman for the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau. That’s only a 6.6 percent drop from the same weekend in 2019.

Ms. Sponder added that the average room rate for the weekend was $282.29, up 25 percent from 2019. And Mr. Rogers, of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, said that revenue, which is still down across the board, is the best indicator of the industry’s recovery, noting that Miami’s strong numbers are the exception rather than the rule.

In the tourism industry, “you still have a lot of folks that are out of work,” he said, “because it’s those large, city center urban hotels that employ the most people, because they have those extensive food and beverage operations that are not working right now. That’s where most job loss is occurring.”

Circa Resort & Casino. “It’s like trying to book a dinner reservation on New Year’s Eve. It’s not something you do the day before.” Spots at the pools at his establishments, which include two other hotels, are booked a month in advance because of reduced capacity limits and social distancing, which he said shows that there is demand for leisure travel. Hotels and other venues in the city are limited to 50 percent capacity.

Though the weekend of Easter is, historically, the second slowest weekend in the city, this year was different because of March Madness, the annual N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments. “Everything was packed to the restricted capacity level,” he said. “On Saturday, all of our venues were filled by 10 a.m. because of Final Four. I think that was the case throughout all of Las Vegas.”

Mr. Stevens said that since the Super Bowl, in February, there have been indications that the tourism industry in Vegas is recovering, adding that his three hotels have been sold out every weekend since. “I’ve never seen booking at the rate of what we’ve seen in the past three months or so. This is the strongest booking that I’ve ever experienced,” he said.

But there continues to be a dip during weekdays because of the lack of conferences or conventions. “What we’re seeing is enormous pent-up demand for leisure travel that while it’s going to take place throughout the entire summer, does not necessarily mean that business travel will follow suit,” he said.

What’s Up? (March 28-April 3)

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Employers added a whopping 916,000 jobs in March, more than doubling February’s employment growth. Many hires were in hospitality and construction, spurred on by the surging pace of vaccinations and a new round of federal aid. (The spring weather didn’t hurt, either.) In other good news, Wall Street hit a record high last week, with the S&P 500 index closing above 4,000 for the first time.

Infrastructure Bonanza

President Biden pitched his proposal for a giant infrastructure package, which he called “the largest American jobs investment since World War II.” It also has a large price tag, costing about $2 trillion over eight years. The plan aims to repair thousands of old bridges, roads and plumbing systems, improving commute times and drinking water. It also includes $100 billion to deliver broadband internet to rural areas that struggle with spotty Wi-Fi. And it will invest heavily in green initiatives like electric cars and more efficient energy grids. But the proposal faces a tricky path through Congress, as Republicans oppose the corporate tax increases that Mr. Biden says would pay for it.

What’s Next? (April 4-10)

Blue Skies Ahead

The airline industry showed some promising signs of life last week. After a year of near-dormancy, domestic vacation bookings are bouncing back. United Airlines is hiring pilots again, starting with those who had conditional job offers before the pandemic or whose start dates were pushed off once travel restrictions set in. Delta Air Lines, the last major holdout in blocking middle seats to ensure space between passengers, will resume middle-seat bookings in May. And finally, the budget carrier Frontier Airlines went public, a sign that it’s anticipating a rebound.

Out of the Mud

After six days of digging and tugging, plus a boost from a full moon, the huge container ship that was lodged in the Suez Canal has been freed, and the waterway is open for business again. But the ripple effect of its blockage will be felt for weeks. The stuck boat prevented as much as $10 billion of cargo a day from moving through the canal, and cost the Egyptian government up to $90 million in lost toll revenue. Who will pay for the damage? A fleet of insurers, government authorities and lawyers are all sorting out who’s financially responsible (probably the stuck ship’s Japanese owner) and how much they’re on the hook for.

Supply, Meet Demand

As the global economy shudders back into gear, demand for fuel is rising. And there was some question of whether oil producers would increase their supply to meet it. If they chose not to, gas could be up to $4 a gallon by this summer — not exactly welcome news for anyone trying to drive to work. But OPEC and its allies put those fears to rest last week when they agreed to gradually increase production over the next three months, which should keep prices steady.

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Scrounging for Hits, Hollywood Goes Back to the Video Game Well

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