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‘Babygirl’ Director Says Milk Scene Really Happened to Her: ‘Famous’ Belgian Actor Sent Her a Glass at a Bar and ‘He Was at Least 15 Years Younger’

One of the standout moments in Halina Reijn’s erotic thriller “Babygirl” finds Nicole Kidman’s Romy being sent a glass of milk from the young intern she’s having an affair with while they’re separately at the same bar. Romy accepts the challenge and finishes the entire glass in one sip. Later on, the intern leaves the […]

10 People to Watch in Wealth Management in 2025

For wealth management professionals, 2024 was a busy year. M&A activity among registered investment advisors set a record. Paul Atkins, nominee to serve as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission: Wealth management professionals can expect big changes under President-elect Trump’s pick to lead the SEC.

How ‘Nosferatu’ Drove a Stake Through Box Office Expectations With Huge $40 Million Christmas Debut

Talk about having some bite. “Nosferatu” drove a stake through box office expectations, delivering a hauntingly good $21.6 million over the traditional weekend and $40.8 million since debuting on Christmas Day. Those receipts sent box office analysts everywhere reaching for the vampire puns (apologies, apologies) in an effort to explain the bloody fantastic results for […]

Will Ferrell Dresses Up as Buddy the Elf With a Cigarette, Tells Reporter ‘It Was a Tough Holiday Season’

Buddy the Elf is back…although not like anyone could imagine. Will Ferrell unexpectedly dressed up as his iconic character from Jon Favreau’s 2003 Christmas comedy “Elf” while attending the Dec. 29 hockey game between the Los Angeles Kings and Philadelphia Flyers. Only this iteration of Buddy was looking quite disheveled with five o’clock shadow and […]

‘Fairy Queen,’ Inspired by Oscar-Shortlisted ‘Paris 70,’ in Prep at Spain’s Morena, A Contracorriente and France’s Noodles (EXCLUSIVE) 

Leading Spanish production house Morena Films is teaming with A Contracorriente Films, one of Spain’s top indie distributors, and “The Beasts” French co-producer Noodle Productions to produce “Fairy Queen” (“Reina de las Hadas,” “Reina de les fades” in Catalan), a feature inspired by “Paris 70” which was shortlisted on Dec. 17 for the 97th Oscars. […]

Spain 2024 Box Office: Despite ‘Inside Out 2,’ Revenues Dip 2%, Admissions Slip 5% Hit by Hollywood Strikes 

Hit by last year’s Hollywood’s strikes, total box office in 2024 in Spain dipped 2% compared to 2023, breaking three consecutive years of recovery over 2021-23, Comscore Movies Spain announced Monday. At 71 million admissions, attendance edged down 5% compared to last year. At €477 million ($496.1 million), total box office in Spain was 29% […]

Ten cool science stories we almost missed

There is rarely time to write about every cool science paper that comes our way; many worthy candidates sadly fall through the cracks over the course of the year. But as 2024 comes to a close, we've gathered ten of our favorite such papers at the intersection of science and culture as a special treat, covering a broad range of topics: from reenacting Bronze Age spear combat and applying network theory to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, to Spider-Man inspired web-slinging tech and a mathematical connection between a turbulent phase transition and your morning cup of coffee. Enjoy!

Reenacting Bronze Age spear combat

Experiment with experienced fighters who spar freely using different styles. An experiment with experienced fighters who spar freely using different styles. Credit: Valerio Gentile/CC BY

The European Bronze Age saw the rise of institutionalized warfare, evidenced by the many spearheads and similar weaponry archaeologists have unearthed. But how might these artifacts be used in actual combat? Dutch researchers decided to find out by constructing replicas of Bronze Age shields and spears and using them in realistic combat scenarios. They described their findings in an October paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

There have been a couple of prior experimental studies on bronze spears, but per Valerio Gentile (now at the University of Gottingen) and coauthors, practical research to date has been quite narrow in scope, focusing on throwing weapons against static shields. Coauthors C.J. van Dijk of the National Military Museum in the Netherlands and independent researcher O. Ter Mors each had more than a decade of experience teaching traditional martial arts, specializing in medieval polearms and one-handed weapons. So they were ideal candidates for testing the replica spears and shields.

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© APS/Carin Cain

A Cold War mystery: Why did Jimmy Carter save the space shuttle?

We’d been chatting for the better part of two hours when Chris Kraft’s eyes suddenly brightened. “Hey,” he said, “Here’s a story I’ll bet you never heard.” Kraft, the man who had written flight rules for NASA at the dawn of US spaceflight and supervised the Apollo program, had invited me to his home south of Houston for one of our periodic talks about space policy and space history. As we sat in recliners upstairs, in a den overlooking the Bay Oaks Country Club, Kraft told me about a time the space shuttle almost got canceled.

It was the late 1970s, when Kraft directed the Johnson Space Center, the home of the space shuttle program. At the time, the winged vehicle had progressed deep into a development phase that started in 1971. Because the program had not received enough money to cover development costs, some aspects of the vehicle (such as its thermal protective tiles) were delayed into future budget cycles. In another budget trick, NASA committed $158 million in fiscal year 1979 funds for work done during the previous fiscal year.

This could not go on, and according to Kraft the situation boiled over during a 1978 meeting in a large conference floor on the 9th floor of Building 1, the Houston center’s headquarters. All the program managers and other center directors gathered there along with NASA’s top leadership. That meeting included Administrator Robert Frosch, a physicist President Carter had appointed a year earlier.

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When does your brain think something is worth the wait?

Whether it’s braving the long line at a trendy new restaurant or hanging on just a few minutes longer to see if there’s a post-credits scene after a movie, the decision to persevere or ditch it depends on specific regions of our brains.

Waiting is not always about self-control. Deciding to wait (or not to wait) also involves gauging the value of the potential reward. In an experiment that investigated wait times among people with lesions in the frontal cortex of the brain, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Joe Kable and his research team found that subjects with damage to certain regions of the prefrontal cortex were less likely to wait things out.

“[Our] findings suggest that regions of the frontal cortex make computationally distinct contributions to adaptive persistence,” he and his team said in a study recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

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Michael Moore Boards Palestinian Oscar Entry ‘From Ground Zero’ as Executive Producer: ‘It’s an Honor to Stand in Solidarity’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Michael Moore has joined the production team of “From Ground Zero” — the recently shortlisted Palestinian entry for the 97th Academy Awards’ best international film category — as executive producer. A collection of shorts made by 22 Palestinian filmmakers living through war in present day Gaza, “From Ground Zero” blends animation, documentary and fiction to “capture the […]

Korea Box Office: ‘Harbin’ Commands Over Half of Weekend’s Total as ‘Mufasa’ Takes Third Place

Woo Min-ho’s historical drama “Harbin” stormed to the top of the South Korean box office for the weekend of Dec. 27-29. The film, set in 1909, follows Korean independence activists plotting the assassination of Japan’s Prime Minister during their quest for independence. Starring Hyun Bin, Park Jeong-min and Jeon Yeo-been, “Harbin” earned $5.9 million over […]

Beta Fiction, Spain’s No. 1 Independent Distributor in 2024, Sets New Films by ‘El 47’s’ Marcel Barrena and ‘House on Fire’s’ Dani de la Orden (EXCLUSIVE)

Beta Fiction Spain, the No. 1 independent distributor in the country this year thanks to a barn-storming €8.0 million ($8.3 million) box office gross from Arantxa Echevarría’s “Undercover,” is set to produce new films from Marcel Barrena and Dani de la Orden, directors of two other big 2024 Spanish breakouts: “El 47” and “A House […]

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