On Tuesday, an SEC filing submitted to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission by Take-Two Interactive revealed that Dan Houser, the co-founder of Rockstar Games, is set to leave the company. A statement by Take-Two confirmed that following an extended break commencing in the spring of 2019, Houser’s last day with Rockstar will be on 11 March, 2020. Rockstar was established as the successor to BMG Interactive in 1998, when the executives Sam Houser, Dan Houser, Terry Donovan, and Jamie King took control of the assets and intellectual properties previously acquired by Take-Two Interactive. Those properties included Grand Theft Auto, then a blood-spattering top-down street chaser. Under the auspices of Rockstar Games, the series made the transition to three dimensions, and its increasingly elaborate and realistic depictions of criminal grime and enterprise in cities closely modelled on New York, Miami, and LA have seen it sell in excess of 300 million copies. The latest iteration in the series, Grand Theft Auto V, has alone managed to shift 120 million units worldwide, placing it third on the list of the all-time best-selling video games.
Dan Houser has served as a lead writer on every iteration of Grand Theft Auto since Grand Theft Auto 2 back in 1999, on the high school coming-of-age Bully, and on both the first and second installments of the open-world Western epic Red Dead Redemption. His production credits also include work on the neo-noir detective game L.A. Noire and the Max Payne series of third-person shooters. Sam Houser will remain as Rockstar’s president. Dan, who officially served as Rockstar’s creative director and vice president, most recently wrote and produced for Red Dead Redemption 2, which was released in October 2018. Incorporating 300,000 spoken lines and a story script of over 2,000 pages, in an interview with GQ around the time of the game’s release, Dan spoke of 100-hour working weeks, historical research, and the pitfalls of writing for Grand Theft Auto in a time of ‘intense liberal progression and intense conservatism’.
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A heady week for the Swedish pole vaulting starlet Armand Duplantis began on Tuesday at the indoor athletics meet in Dusseldorf, where the twenty year old came tantalisingly close to a new world record. After an early stumble, a massive clearance at 5.80 metres was followed by a world lead of 5.90, a meeting record at 5.95, and then on his second attempt a fifth career clearance at 6.00 metres. With the event already won, Duplantis raised the bar to 6.17 metres, one centimetre higher than the world record set by Renaud Lavillenie six years ago in Donetsk. Duplantis fell agonisingly short, his best effort coming on the second of three attempts when a nudge from his knee on the way up and a ragged arm as he vaulted the bar were enough to dislodge it from its pegs, even though Duplantis had the height scaled and measured.
Duplantis was not to be deterred for long. By Saturday world athletics had moved to the indoor arena in Toruń, for the Orlen Copernicus Cup in Poland. Without two-time world champion Sam Kendricks to spur him on, the event turned into an exhibition for Duplantis, who breezed past the opposition at 5.52 before first-time clearances at 5.72, 5.92, and again at 6.01 metres. Again he raised the bar to a world record height of 6.17 metres, and again he came desperately close, this time knocking the bar with his right knee on his first effort. Subsequently Duplantis said that this first attempt gave him hope, as he thought to himself, ‘Yeah, I just need two more attempts at this and I got it’. In fact he only needed one more attempt, as on his second vault at the height the bar stayed aloft and he claimed a new world record. Duplantis said:
‘I got to pick my heights. For this kind of situation where I could pick my heights and do whatever I wanted, and when I was ready to just put it up to 6.17, it played well. How do you explain a dream that’s been a dream since you were three years old? It’s a big dream, too. It’s not a little dream. And it’s a whole process building up to that moment. I can’t really get my head around it.’
The pole vault is the only event that does not distinguish between indoors and outdoors, as since 2000 an IAAF rule has stipulated that world records in the event can be set in facilities ‘with or without roof’, because they are not subject to outdoor track and field specifications. Duplantis, who holds dual nationality, representing his mother’s home country of Sweden while born in the United States, will be one of the favourites heading into this summer’s Tokyo Olympics. In other athletics news over the past week, in Dusseldorf Beatrice Chepkoech broke her own Kenyan national indoor 1500 metres record, Selemon Baraga stormed past Bethwel Birgen to set a meeting record in the 3000 metres, and Christina Clemens edged a strong field in the 60 metre hurdles. In Toruń, Gudaf Tsegay moved to seventh on the all-time list with a run of 4:00.09 in the 1500 metres, Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk extended her world lead in the long jump, and Justyna Święty-Ersetic turned the tables on Lisanne De Witte in the 400 metres. Meanwhile Elle Purrier was busy setting an American record for the indoor mile at the Millrose Games in New York City. Her time of 4:16.85 was the second-fastest ever indoor mile, as she surprised Konstanze Klosterhalfen, Jemma Reekie and Gabriela DeBues-Stafford, who set German, British, and Canadian records respectively.
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On Wednesday Michael Douglas and his brothers announced the death of their father, the screen icon Kirk Douglas. One of the last remaining film stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood, renowned for his steely blue eyes, cleft chin, and fiery performances, Douglas was 103 years old and died in Los Angeles. Born Issur Danielovitch in the city of Amsterdam, New York to Jewish immigrant parents from Russia, Douglas’s childhood was characterised by abject poverty. In his 1988 autobiography The Ragman’s Son, he recounted the hardships he and his six sisters endured growing up, suffering physical abuse at the hands of their alcoholic father, who worked as a ragman, selling scrap junk and pieces of metal. Douglas put himself through St. Lawrence University, then received an acting scholarship from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, before legally changing his name to Kirk Douglas and enrolling in 1941 in the United States Navy.
After the war, Douglas made his film debut in 1946, playing opposite Barbara Stanywck in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. His breakthrough came in 1949, when he starred as an unscrupulous boxer in the noirish sports drama Champion, a role which brought him his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Further Oscar nominations came for his roles opposite Lana Turner in Vincente Minnelli’s melodrama The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), and as Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956). In 1955, spurred on by his friend, antagonist, and frequent collaborator Burt Lancaster, Douglas established Bryna Productions, and worked with the critically acclaimed but relatively unknown director Stanley Kubrick on the anti-war film Paths of Glory (1957). Three years later, the epic historical drama Spartacus sealed Douglas’s legacy. Working again with Kubrick after a rift with Anthony Mann, as the star and a producer of the film Douglas made public the decision to hire the screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, at the time blacklisted as one of the Hollywood Ten. A decisive move into politics for Douglas, Trumbo’s screenplay credit for Spartucus marked a key moment in the end of McCarthyism.
Douglas combined grimy character parts in Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (1951) and William Wyler’s Detective Story (1951) with widescreen Westerns like Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) and Lonely Are the Brave (1962), which remained a personal favourite. An early musical Young Man with a Horn (1950) saw him play alongside his childhood friend Lauren Bacall, while his partnership with Burt Lancaster stretched through the political thriller Seven Days in May (1964) and the comedy Tough Guys (1986), which played off the duo’s longstanding reputation. On the stage, Douglas starred in the 1963 Broadway adaptation of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, retaining the film rights for more than a decade before passing the project over to his son Michael Douglas. For his extensive work travelling the globe as a goodwill ambassador, in 1981 Douglas received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1991 he survived a plane crash, and in early 1996 he suffered a debilitating stroke, although a few months later he was able to accept an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement. A devout Jew later in life, he continued to engage in writing and philanthropic pursuits, and leaves behind his wife of sixty-five years Anne Buydens.
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Ireland went to the polls on Saturday, as the country held a closely contested general election. The first election on a weekend since 1918 was called by the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, on 14 January, as the minority government led by Fine Gael since the last election in 2016 faced dwindling support from independents and a vanishing confidence and supply agreement with Fianna Fáil, traditionally Fine Gael’s main opposition. Since the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922, elections in Ireland have used the single transferable vote form of proportional representation, but the country has still functioned broadly as a two-party system: since 1937 and full independence, power has shifted between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, with Fianna Fáil usually in the ascendancy and Fine Gael having to rely on Labour Party support to form governments. Both political parties of the centre, Fianna Fáil is more traditionally conservative and economically interventionist, while Fine Gael characterises itself as progressive and values free enterprise and market liberalism. The order shifted in 2011, when in the wake of the Irish financial crisis Fianna Fáil fell to third place in the polls, behind Fine Gael and Labour for the first time in its history. By 2016 it had recovered enough ground to challenge Fine Gael, ultimately entering into an unprecedented confidence and supply arrangement.
The short campaign period from the middle of January until Saturday’s vote left little time for new political developments. Instead voters headed to the polls weighing Fine Gael’s progressive achievements in the form of legalising abortion and same-sex marriage, its economic stewardship, and Varadkar’s firm stance amid Brexit negotiations against an enveloping housing crisis, the party’s patchy record on health and the environment, and fatigue after almost ten years of Fine Gael government. Hoping to get back into the winning habit, Fianna Fáil were promising substantial spending increases and housing schemes including savings incentives, help-to-buy, and affordable rentals. The Green Party, successful in recent European and local council elections, had put environmental policies firmly on the agenda. Meanwhile support surged for Sinn Féin, a left-wing party historically associated with the Provisional Irish Republican Army, whose longtime leader Gerry Adams stepped down in early 2018 and was replaced by Mary Lou McDonald. Sinn Féin pledged to shift the tax burden, with billions of euros in tax cuts for workers and property owners, while pledging a committee to examine the future of a united Ireland.
With the outcome too close to call and the major parties ruling out the formation of coalition governments, as the votes came in and exit poll data emerged on Saturday night, the picture appeared to show dramatic gains for Sinn Féin and a three-way tie reshaping the nature of Irish politics. Counting commenced in earnest on Sunday, and was scheduled to stretch on late into Monday night. Some of the early commentary focused on demographic shifts, with the young voting in large numbers for Sinn Féin while Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael remained bastions of pensioners, plus many new citizens among the cohort of first-time voters. The first results announced on Sunday evening showed Sinn Féin ahead on first-preference votes, but the likelihood of a hung Dáil Éireann with no party ready to command a majority. Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald described ‘something of a revolution in the ballot box’, while the incumbent taoiseach and Fina Gael leader Leo Varadkar suggested it would prove ‘challenging’ to form a government.
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With the Independent Spirit Awards – which included a best feature gong for The Farewell, and speeches by turns impassioned and scabrous from Lulu Wang and best actor winner Adam Sandler – serving as a breezy prelude to the weekend’s main event, and all the routine fanfare of the red carpet, the 92nd Academy Awards ceremony took place on Sunday night from the usual environs of the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Sidestepping controversy by once again doing without a host, Chris Rock and Steve Martin nevertheless gave a passable impression, as they opened the show trading one-liners on attendees and current events, following a curtain-raising musical number from Janelle Monáe which called out a lack of diversity in the acting and directing categories. Acclaimed efforts from Greta Gerwig, Lulu Wang, Joanna Hogg, Marielle Heller, Alma Har’el, and Lorene Scafaria were overlooked, leaving the directing category once again without a single female nominee, while of the twenty acting nominations for lead and supporting roles, Cynthia Erivo for the biographical drama Harriet was the only actor of colour.
Erivo shone on the night with a spectacular rendition of ‘Stand Up’ from Harriet towards the climax of the show, amid musical performances that ranged from the incongruous (Eminem) to the sombre (as Billie Eilish covered ‘Yesterday’ for the ceremony’s ‘In Memoriam’ sequence). With a certain circularity to the presenting of awards and guests, as presenters sometimes took the stage only to present other presenters, Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell, and Keanu Reeves and Diane Keaton brought levity to the event while Zazie Beetz, Oscar Isaac, Salma Hayek, and Penélope Cruz provided the glamour. But beyond Rudolph and Wiig’s hilarious turn, as they showcased the full scope of their singing and most dramatic actorly talents, the focus of the 92nd Academy Awards was very much on the victors.
The acting categories followed a pattern stretching back to the Golden Globes at the beginning of January: just like at the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the BAFTAs, Joaquin Phoenix won Best Actor for his role as a flagging comic in Joker, Renée Zellweger won Best Actress for resuscitating Judy Garland in Judy, Brad Pitt claimed his first Academy acting award for his supporting role as a laid-back stunt double in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Laura Dern snatched hold of her first Oscar statuette for her part as a high-powered divorce lawyer in Marriage Story. In an emotional speech, Dern thanked the director Noah Baumbach and paid tribute to her parents Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, before switching up her pink-and-black tassled Armani gown for a classic black dress in time for the Hollywood afterparties, a showcase of apparently effortless sustainability. Brad Pitt was more laconic as he thanked cast and crew, reminisced on his career, and wrapped up his victory speech by dedicating his award to his kids. Meanwhile in their well-meaning but undeniably curious acceptance speeches, Zellweger managed to conjoin the astronauts Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride with tennis icons Venus and Serena Williams, and Phoenix turned a paean to equality and minority rights into a discussion around artificial cow insemination.
Toy Story 4 sauntered ahead of the pack to win Best Animated Feature Film, Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert’s rich portrayal of manufacturing shifts saw American Factory named Best Documentary Feature, and Carol Dysinger and Elena Andreicheva’s Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if you’re a girl), set in Afghanistan, won Best Documentary Short Subject. The Neighbors’ Window by Marshall Curry and Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry and Karen Rupert Toliver came out on top in the live action and animated short categories. Roger Deakins celebrated his fifteenth nomination at the Academy Awards with his second victory as 1917 triumphed for Best Cinematography. And in one of the night’s fondest moments, Joker composer Hildur Guðnadóttir won Best Original Score, becoming the first woman to win the award for a dramatic composition, and the first Icelander ever to win an Oscar. Presenters threw the odd political jab, and beyond red carpet looks from Billy Porter, Florence Pugh, Margot Robbie, and Saoirse Ronan by degrees deluxe and sustainable, there were viral fashion statements from Spike Lee, who adorned the number 24 in tribute to Kobe Bryant, and from Natalie Portman, who wore a Dior cape embroidered with the names of neglected female directors.
The best of the best was yet to come, and while it was prefigured by the SAGs, it was still more than a pleasant surprise when Parasite emerged to dominate the awards ceremony, with Bong Joon-ho and co. winning all of the acclaim for Best International Feature Film, Best Director, and Best Picture. With the award for Best International Film, Bong’s darkly comic depiction of class struggle in Seoul had already become the first South Korean movie to win big at the Oscars. Bigger still was the award for Best Picture, as Parasite became the first non-English language winner of the prize in the Academy’s long and illustrious history. The Best Director nod for Bong was the filling before the icing, and in his acceptance speech he paid tribute to his fellow directors, envisioning a Texas chain saw that might split the award in five parts, while his ode to Martin Scorsese brought the director of The Irishman an impromptu standing ovation. The success of Parasite prompted celebrations in South Korea and beyond, and mostly upbeat perspectives around the futures of the Academy Awards and contemporary cinema. Screens rushed to put Parasite before audiences eager to see the film, but in the meantime Hollywood spent a revelrous night at Vanity Fair and other assorted afterparties.
