LIFESTYLE

One of the great joys of the Fast and the Furious franchise has been watching the filmmakers top themselves in each entry with car-driven action. The Fate of the Furious goes as far as having the good guys take on a Russian submarine so they can stop World War III. With two more films already announced, the question now can only be: What on Earth will Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson and the rest of the cast do in the ninth film? Now that you’ve seen The Fate of the Furious, you know a couple of big new developments: First, Dominic Toretto is a father, from his now-ill-fated relationship with DSS agent Elena Neves (Elsa Pataky). Second, and perhaps more importantly: Charlize Theron’s nefarious hacker Cipher avoided capture or death at the end of the eighth film. It’s hard to imagine Theron not returning in a future entry to cause some kind of trouble for Dom and his family. The easy joke is to say, “Well, now they have to go to outer space.” Even series screenwriter Chris Morgan acknowledged

There is no one definitive strategy to being productive, and it may take a little trial and error to find what works best for you. But if you’ve resolved to make 2017 the year you finally slay your to-do list every day, it can help to find out what’s worked for some of the most productive people. In that spirit, we turned to some of our top experts and contributors to find out what approaches keep them productive all year long, in the hopes that a few of these can help you do the same in the year ahead. 1. PLAN TOMORROW TONIGHT The early bird only catches the worm if it plans the night before, says PR strategist Christina Nicholson. “By filling out my specific planner the night before, I don’t feel rushed or like I have to get to something right away,” an approach that some time-management experts endorse. Simply having a battle plan is like waking up to find your work already started. Right away, Nicholson finds, the start of her day has “already been scheduled for me”–by her.Simply h

Famed stand-up comedian and actor Don Rickles, who died April 6 at age 90, cultivated a curmudgeonly persona for decades and was celebrated for his caustic cracks. Known as the "insult comic," his pointed put-downs spared no one, not even celebrities many other comedians would consider off-limits. Before he became famous, Rickles was onstage at a Miami Beach club in the 1950s, when superstar Frank Sinatra entered the room. Rickles called out to him from the stage, "Make yourself comfortable, Frank. Hit somebody," the Los Angeles Times reported. Somehow, Rickles successfully parlayed his barbed insults into jokes — garnering guffaws even from the notoriously grumpy Sinatra, according to the LA Times — and launched a career that spanned more than half a century. But what made his insults seem funny, rather than merely, well, insulting? [Smile Secrets: 5 Things Your Grin Says About You] The success of Rickles' insult comedy may be explained by a humor th

If you've ever had a partner who flirted with other people right in front of you, chatted up attractive strangers and tried to make you feel like you couldn't measure up, well, maybe you were dating a narcissist. And maybe they were doing it on purpose. New research suggests that people who have a high level of narcissistic traits strategically induce jealousy in their mates as a way to meet certain goals: Control, in some cases, or a boost in their self-esteem. "There is some element of normality to narcissists, in that they pursue goals much like everyone else does," said study author Gregory Tortoriello, a psychologist at the University of Alabama. "We're just finding that it's to a slightly greater degree." [The 10 Most Controversial Psychiatric Disorders] Unraveling narcissism Psychological research suggests that narcissistic personalities fall into two categories. The first is grandiose narcissism, marked by entitlement, extroversion and high s

Sony Pictures is close to a deal with bestselling author Michael Lewis to bring his latest book, a Wall Street drama and detective story, to the silver screen. “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt,” recounts how a group of misfit stock brokers and techies worked to expose, and then fight back, against the tactics of high-frequency traders, or HFTs. The HFTs were able to exploit computer technology and millisecond advantages to make huge profits at the expense of regular investors. Scott Rudin will produce the film, along with Eli Bush, according to Deadline and Variety. Lewis also wrote the books on which the films "The Blind Side" and "Moneyball" were based. Both films were nominated for best picture. “Hollywood loves Lewis, who specializes in taking complex subjects and breaking them down in most relatable ways by telling the stories through the perspective of intriguing characters,” Deadline wrote. “Flash Boys” was released March 31 by publisher W.W. Norton. The fol

"This is the day when lives change, fates are decided, dynasties born," Berman intones. If you are expecting a plot that deals with locker room harassment and the life-changing effects of concussions, you have come to the wrong place. Berman is not the only real-life figure playing himself: "Draft Day's" cast includes more than two dozen of these folks, including legendary players like Jim Brown and even Commissioner Roger Goodell himself. And the film features enough lovingly burnished in-flight photography of NFL stadiums to occupy a six-person aerial unit, including four pilots. The team names and stadiums may be real in "Draft Day," but the characters who work for them are all fictitious, starting with Costner in his most successful big-screen role since his portrayal of "Devil" Anse Hatfield in TV's feud-centric "Hatfields and McCoys" revived his career. Costner is not the athlete he played in "Bull Durham" and &q

Stephen Colbert's "Colbert Report" has never been the most comfortable place for Hollywood stars to promote their movies, given the somewhat niche audience and Colbert's own purposefully bombastic, playfully antagonistic persona. But now that Colbert is stepping up to succeed David Letterman as the host of "The Late Show" in 2015 and dropping his conservative blowhard character, audiences could see a different side of him. Time will tell how Colbert gets along with Hollywood's A-list stars in his new role, and how much of his trademark quirk carries over, but it will certainly be an adjustment both for him and the studios that want their stars on the show. In the meantime, here's a look at how Colbert has handled some memorable movie guests in the past. Darren Aronofsky Colbert regularly welcomes directors on his show, with recent guests including Alexander Payne, Errol Morris and Godfrey Reggio. Last month, Darren Aronofsky stopped by to promote his

China Film Co. Ltd., the largest film distributor in China, has invested in two forthcoming movies from Legendary Entertainment, the Burbank-based film finance and production company. Legendary East, an affiliated company of Legendary Entertainment, said on Monday afternoon that China Film Co. made "an over eight figure equity investment" in the films "Seventh Son" and "Warcraft." If the pictures are approved for release in China, China Film Co. will distribute them there. Universal Pictures, with whom Legendary Entertainment has a distribution and marketing pact, will release the movies in the U.S.; "Seventh Son" is slated to come out Feb. 6, 2015, and "Warcraft" on March 11, 2016. Legendary Entertainment's credits include the "Dark Knight" and "Hangover" trilogies, and last summer's "Man of Steel." Legendary East, which has offices in Beijing and Hong Kong, was formed in 2011. Legendary East and C

Considered deeply uncool at one point, music from animated movies is back — and singing along is now not only OK for kids, it's something adults record themselves doing on their phones and share on YouTube. The boom in popular songs from animated movies comes after a long fallow period when the form yielded few hits in the music world, despite box-office juggernauts like the "Toy Story," "Shrek" and "Ice Age" franchises. Though all incorporated music in their films, it was rarely the kind that had come to define the genre at Disney Animation in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it was making music-driven hits like "The Lion King," "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Little Mermaid." "You had this shift ... where there were very successful animated movies but their soundtracks weren't," said Ken Bunt, president of Disney Music Group. "Their scores were important, but they weren't musicals and the music

Over a 20-year career making stylized, often genre-tinged films, Danny Boyle has been known to look at a well-worn area in new and dynamic ways. With a potential Steve Jobs movie, he could be taking on a worthy subject. The British auteur is in talks to helm Sony Pictures' much-buzzed, sometimes-bumpy Jobs biopic that "The Social Network" scribe Aaron Sorkin has adapted from Walter Isaacson's comprehensive biography, The Times has confirmed. Boyle would replace David Fincher, the "Social Network" director who appears to have moved off the project. According to the Hollywood Reporter, which first reported the Boyle news, the director has also approached Leonardo DiCaprio, whom he directed in "The Beach," to portray Jobs. Unlike a traditional biopic, the Sorkin script is said to look at a few key moments in the iconoclast's career rather than a more cradle-to-grave approach. A Sony Pictures spokesman declined to comment on any director or actor t

Authorized biopics are rarely the most juicy or revealing films. But what happens in the opposite instance, when‎ the family of your subject actively doesn't want a movie and is willing and eager to share that sentiment with the world? That's the situation that James Ponsoldt's "The End of the Tour," a look at the late acclaimed writer David Foster Wallace starring Jason Segel, finds itself in. Ponsoldt's movie, based on reporting from magazine writer and novelist David Lipsky, recently finished shooting and is about to enter the editing room. But a statement from Wallace's family‎ makes it clear they aren't happy with any of that. The estate's objection, the statement said, is that family members were not brought into the process and that Lipsky's material was never intended nor approved for film adaptat “The David Foster Wallace Literary Trust, David's family, and David's longtime publisher Little, Brown and Company wish to make it cl

Clint Eastwood's latest movie, "American Sniper," kicked off with a bang in Los Angeles County this week. The Warner Bros. film, which stars Bradley Cooper as a Navy SEAL who recounts his military exploits, began 10 days of filming Monday in an Afghan village set at the Blue Cloud Movie Ranch in the Santa Clarita area. The scenes involved "simulated warfare sequences with full load automatic gunfire, explosions, squibs, bullet hits, smoke, burning debris," according to a county film permit. The movie is the latest in a flurry of feature films with small to mid-size budgets shooting in L.A. with the benefit of state film tax credits. ON LOCATION: Where the cameras roll Other state-qualified projects that filmed in L.A. this year have included the Warner Bros. films "Entourage" and "Horrible Bosses 2," helping to fuel a 24% increase in location film shoots in the first quarter of the year, according to a recent report from FilmL.A. Inc., which

Fran Kranz in Joss Whedon's movie "Much Ado About Nothing." (Elsa William Shakespeare, whose 450th birthday is being celebrated around the world Wednesday, never seems to go out of vogue for movie directors eager to put their own spin on his classic texts. Most of Shakespeare's plays have been adapted for the big screen multiple times over, ranging from faithful (Laurence Olivier's "Hamlet") to wildly unconventional (Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo + Juliet"). Because Shakespeare's plays exist in the public domain, adapting them for the movies is an economical way of co-opting some literary prestige. In the past 20 years or so, the unconventional appears to have outnumbered the faithful. Ian McKellen's "Richard III" took place in a Third Reich-style regime; Julie Taymor set "Titus Andronicus" in a postmodern mashup of ancient Rome and present day; and Kenneth Branagh adapted "Love's Labour's Lost" as an o

As in many a thriller, the helpful stranger in "The German Doctor" turns out to be a monster. In this case, he's no run-of-the-mill sadist but Josef Mengele, Auschwitz's Angel of Death, and he finds prime subjects for experimentation in an Argentine family. The drama by Lucía Puenzo, adapting her novel "Wakolda," is a credible imagining of a brief period in Mengele's South American exile. The what-if conceit is intriguing enough not to be undone by increasingly heavy-handed symbolism. Alex Brendemühl imbues the role of the notorious physician with a creepy rectitude, especially in his obsession with 12-year-old Lilith (exceptional newcomer Florencia Bado). When they first meet, the image of his gloved hand around her doll conveys plenty. Using the name Helmut Gregory, he presents himself as a geneticist to the girl's parents (Natalia Oreiro and Diego Peretti) and installs himself in their lakeside hotel, the better to push his growth-hormone treatmen

It sounds contrived, and it is. It sounds like a bit of a stunt, and it is that too. It may even sound boring, but that it is not. In fact, whip-smart filmmaking by writer-director Steven Knight and his team combined with Tom Hardy's mesmerizing acting make the micro-budgeted British independent "Locke" more minute-to-minute involving than this year's more costly extravaganzas. Though a dozen actors are listed in "Locke's" credits, Hardy is the only one who appears on screen in this real-time drama that unfolds inside a moving BMW during the 85 minutes it takes construction foreman Ivan Locke to make a nighttime drive from Birmingham to London. As played by Hardy (best known as the terrifying Bane in "The Dark Knight Rises"), Locke is not only driving, he is engaged in an almost continuous series of hands-free phone conversations as he desperately attempts to keep the various parts of his well-ordered life from collapsing in a total ruin. This

Ever since Walt Disney began turning out feature-length animated films, scholars, theologians and journalists have plumbed the depths of the simple morality tales for deeper religious meanings and messages. Was Snow White's eating of the poison apple an allusion to the Fall in the Garden of Eden? When the puppet maker Geppetto was swallowed by a whale, was that a veiled reference to Jonah in Hebrew Scriptures? Were Jiminy Cricket's initials in "Pinocchio" a hidden reference to Jesus Christ? While we're at it, have the Disney films morphed under the corporate leadership of Michael Eisner from an early reflection of Judeo-Christian religious sensibilities during Disney's life to embrace a wider pantheon of non-Western and pagan beliefs and gods? How do the stories accommodate changing cultural perceptions about race, sexual orientation and gender roles? There has been no end of fascination with what some have called the Gospel According to Walt, and it's lit

Ever since Walt Disney began turning out feature-length animated films, scholars, theologians and journalists have plumbed the depths of the simple morality tales for deeper religious meanings and messages. Was Snow White's eating of the poison apple an allusion to the Fall in the Garden of Eden? When the puppet maker Geppetto was swallowed by a whale, was that a veiled reference to Jonah in Hebrew Scriptures? Were Jiminy Cricket's initials in "Pinocchio" a hidden reference to Jesus Christ? While we're at it, have the Disney films morphed under the corporate leadership of Michael Eisner from an early reflection of Judeo-Christian religious sensibilities during Disney's life to embrace a wider pantheon of non-Western and pagan beliefs and gods? How do the stories accommodate changing cultural perceptions about race, sexual orientation and gender roles? There has been no end of fascination with what some have called the Gospel According to Walt, and it's lit

Director Nick Cassavetes, whose soft touch with romance was behind that classic date movie "The Notebook," is now responsible for the quintessential anti-date movie — "The Other Woman." There is no question whose side he is on in this little bit of rasty business starring Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann and Kate Upton. My advice to guys? Step away from the vehicle, because "The Other Woman" is out of control and intent on running down a certain kind of male. Even if you're not the lying, cheating, thieving type — that would be Mark, a slickster played by "Game of Thrones'" Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, juggling wife, mistress, other mistress and some other ill-gotten gains — there is bound to be collateral damage. The comedy, written by Melissa K. Stack, is essentially a revenge fantasy for any female with unresolved issues over a duplicitous relationship. Actually, it's closer to a dozen revenge fantasies, going back to earlier wish-fulfillers su

Directorial acclaim never comes easy. When it hits, though, the results can be significant not only for the helmer but for cinema itself. We take a look back at the films that propelled some of today’s most celebrated directors to prominence. Steven Spielberg:  The slew of television shows and short films directed by Ohio native Steven Spielberg was just a preview of things to come from a man who has become perhaps the most commercially successful director of all time. His first major directorial effort, "The Sugarland Express" (1974), an adventure comedy featuring Goldie Hawn, amassed enough attention to make Spielberg one to watch. But it was his mega-hit "Jaws" (1975) that garnered him international acclaim. The film cast Roy Scheider in the lead, with Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss costarring. Noted composer John Williams served up the film’s score, which later as judged the sixth greatest score of all time, according to the American