At the onset of another week under coronavirus, the World Health Organization encouraged ‘extreme vigilance’ as countries continued to ease lockdown measures. Japan lifted its state of emergency across 39 of 47 prefectures, and as cases continued to fall the remaining prefectures including Osaka, Hyogo, Kyoto, and the capital Tokyo also began loosening business restrictions. Cases linked to one infected clubber in the Seoul district of Itaewon caused a surge in South Korea, but by the weekend the country’s stringent programme of testing and tracing had managed to control the outbreak. China went a full month without deaths from the virus, remaining on guard amid fresh clusters in Wuhan and the northeast cities of Shulan, Jilin, and Shenyang. Fluctuating daily figures in Singapore took total cases beyond 28,000 by the end of the week, but limited community infection and record hospital discharges made for a brighter outlook as the country glanced towards life after circuit-breaker mode. Cambodia’s last coronavirus patient recovered and left hospital, and declining cases prompted reopenings in Thailand and Malaysia, but fatalities stretched past 1,000 in Indonesia as residents were encouraged to get back to work.
Cases were spiralling in India and surpassed 85,000 by the weekend, but the country still prepared to move into the fourth phase of lockdown from Monday, with most shops and markets allowed to reopen while an evening curfew and some containment zones remain. Infections were also spiking in Pakistan even as the country eased measures and resumed air travel. Bangladesh reported the first case inside its crowded Rohingya refugee camps, infections soared in war-torn Afghanistan, and Yemen declared the port city and temporary capital of Aden ‘infested’. Mosques reopened in Iran, but by the end of the week cases were on the rise across much of the Middle East, in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, though Dubai reopened parks in a bid to boost recreational activities. Lebanon announced a four-day shutdown following a sudden spike, and Saudi Arabia and Egypt announced curfews ahead of the Eid holiday. Madagascar recorded its first death, and the first reported case in Lesotho meant that COVID-19 had now spread across the extent of Africa, as Benin and Burundi headed for the polls and Nigeria emerged as a regional hotspot.
Israel reported a high number of cases among ultra-orthodox communities even as the pace of the virus slowed and crowds flocked to beaches, then on Sunday a power-sharing agreement between prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz finally gave the country a new government after eighteen months of stasis. Surging cases across Russia took the country second on the list for global infections, but Vladimir Putin still brought the country’s non-working period to a close. Although cases passed 280,000 by Sunday and doubts remained over remote voting and the ostensibly low mortality rate, still the declining rate of infection saw the capital Moscow ease up. Turkey’s ‘normalisation plan’ commenced with the opening of barbershops and malls, but creeping cases brought a subtle tightening of restrictions around distancing and face masks. Greece also entered a second phase with the lifting of lockdown restrictions. Meanwhile the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania opened shared borders, creating Europe’s first travel bubble.
Across the continent the pace of the virus was slowing and in the broadest outlines life hesitantly resumed. Deaths in Spain were down at the start of a week of easing restrictions, and though the tally surpassed 27,000, Pedro Sánchez looked to extend the state of alarm, and Madrid and Barcelona remained badly affected, by the weekend daily fatalities across the country had dropped below 100 for the first time in two months. Deaths in France swept past 28,000 after a spike in the care home figures, but steadily declining hospitalisations saw the country restore businesses, coffeeshops, and schools for the first time in eight weeks. Italy made haste to reopen cafes and restaurants as the death toll crept towards 32,000, and despite a fluctuating infection rate, Germany joined Austria, the Netherlands, and Belgium as countries experimented with various forms of opening up. Iceland continued to entice international filmmakers, but while Italy pressed ahead for the sake of tourism, most borders within Europe would not reopen until the middle of June, prompting advice around domestic travel and denizens of sunnier climes to make a dash for the beach. Sand wasn’t the only lure and solace, as the Bundesliga kick-started behind closed doors in Germany, while progress in China meant the partial reopening of Shanghai Disneyland. No such luck for the ATP and WTA tennis tours.
Cases remained low in Norway, which still warily eyed travel, and Denmark recorded zero deaths for the first time since March, but Sweden’s relatively lax approach proved a constant topic of discussion, as the death toll climbed and the country focused on the crisis in care homes. Deaths in the United Kingdom slowed as they passed 34,000, with suggestions that the true tally was much higher as confusion and conflict reigned around distancing measures and the reopening of schools. More than half of the coronavirus cases in Canada were now resolved or recovered. And as the country maintained closed borders with its nearest neighbours, care home deaths and unreported fatalities were also under the spotlight in the United States, where scientists issued words of warning as states hurried to open up.
California, Texas, Oregon, parts of Maryland and Virginia, and five regions of New York were among those to substantially ease restrictions, reopening everything from parks and trails to shops and restaurants, usually by way of curbside pickup. New Jersey lagged only behind New York as fatalities surpassed 10,000, but the state could at least look forward to sea and sand by Memorial Day weekend, cutting New York City out of the loop as the metropolis remained shut. A visit from the president wrought division in Pennsylvania. The push and pull in Texas, where governor Greg Abbott announced plans to reopen offices and gyms even as the state reported record cases on Saturday, prompted clashes between local officials and the state’s attorney general, while the supreme court in Wisconsin became the first to overturn a governor’s emergency orders, encouraging a run on bars while state policy suffered a patchwork effect.
Latin America had emerged rapidly as the global COVID-19 hotspot. At the beginning of the week every day in Brazil brought a grim new record, and by the close of business on Friday as cases soared past 200,000, president Jair Bolsonaro had lost his second health minister in less than a month. By Sunday total cases had raced past 230,000, placing Brazil fourth for infections behind the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom, with fatalities in excess of 15,000 as the country remained Latin America’s hardest-hit. Infections also continued to spike in Mexico, which faced accusations of underreporting, as just like in the United States and parts of Europe the country emphasised the automotive industry in the chase for financial output. Meanwhile Sebastián Piñera in Chile warned that the worst of the outbreak was yet to come.
Concern for children and migrants spanned continents. Studies highlighted the coronavirus as a direct line of attack and indicated the relationship with a rare inflammatory syndrome, which was increasingly impacting children in New York and New Jersey, from Italy to Britain and France. While the bulk of Singapore’s infections were occurring in migrant worker dormitories, human rights groups condemned the treatment of migrants in transit zones and refugee camps in Hungary and Greece. The European Parliament pressed for sanctions against Hungary owing to emergency measures which effectively allow prime minister Viktor Orbán to rule by decree. The United Nations cautioned of a mental health crisis amid lockdowns and distancing measures and economic uncertainty, while the World Health Organization made sure to boost everybody’s morale by warning that COVID-19 ‘may never go away’.
Job losses beset South Korea and Australia, even as pubs and beaches reopened in the Northern Territory and New South Wales. Recessions loomed for Germany and the United Kingdom, as Italy finally agreed a long-awaited stimulus package. Falling revenues led to steep budget cuts in California, and jobless claims over the course of the crisis in the United States stretched past 36.5 million, though weekly figures were down. Democrats in the House of Representatives responded to the turmoil by passing a $3 trillion relief bill with no future in the Senate. The White House was busy instead unveiling ‘Operation Warp Speed’, pressing ahead with vaccine development, while France baulked at the notion that the French drug company Sanofi would prioritise the American market. There were faint indications that the White House might restore partial funding to the WHO, as the administration’s response was criticised by former president Barack Obama. So a week of climbing cases, partial reopenings, and inevitable rancour, but to end on a bright note, the shutdown has encouraged miles of pedestrianised streets and bike lanes in New York City, which set a record 58 consecutive days without a pedestrian death.
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The actor and comedian Jerry Stiller, famous as one half of the comedy duo Stiller and Meara before a late-career resurgence indelibly cast him as Frank Costanza in Seinfeld, died on Monday at the age of 92. Born into a Jewish family in Brooklyn, Stiller served in the United States army at the tail-end of the Second World War, then studied drama at Syracuse University and the HB Studio before graduating to summer stock. In 1954 he played at the Phoenix Theatre in John Houseman’s production of Coriolanus, alongside Gene Saks and Jack Klugman, and in The Golden Apple, a musical adaptation of the Iliad and Odyssey which carried over to Broadway. At the same time Stiller met and married Anne Meara, an aspiring actress. Together they turned towards comedy, joining the Chicago improvisational troupe The Compass Players, which later became Second City. Honing their act back in the clubs of New York, making light of their shared domesticity, split heritage, and physical contrasts, Stiller and Meara became one of the standout comic pairings of the 1960s, making dozens of appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show.
When their live act threatened to imperil their marriage, Stiller and Meara stopped performing but made sporadic returns via commercials for Blue Nun wine and syndicated radio shorts. While Meara established herself on television, Stiller broke through on film. In 1974 he played opposite Walter Matthau in the critically acclaimed thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, as Rico Patrone, a lieutenant in the New York City Transit Authority, helping to ground proceedings amid the hostage wrangling and departmental gnashing of teeth. The following year he reprised his stage role in the film version of Terrence McNally’s bathhouse farce The Ritz. Stiller tried his hand at situational comedy in the short-lived Joe and Sons, guest-starred alongside his wife in Rhoda, and appeared in several episodes of The Love Boat and Archie Bunker’s Place. In 1988 he had a memorable role opposite Divine in the John Waters comedy Hairspray. But by the early 1990s he was having to content himself with cameos in crime dramas and police procedurals like Murder, She Wrote and Law & Order, before in their fifth season the hit sitcom Seinfeld called.
Like the exhaust of a broken-down automobile which reveals itself as the mouth of a volcano, as Frank Costanza on Seinfeld Jerry Stiller sputtered then erupted with impossible force. Whether engaging in shouting matches with his wife Estelle, hatching schemes with Kramer, or berating his-long suffering son George, Frank Costanza provided the later seasons of Seinfeld with some of their most celebrated moments, telling war stories, planning a move to Del Boca Vista, or despairingly yelling ‘Serenity now!’. Stiller parlayed the role into more success on The King of Queens, where as part of the main cast over nine seasons he played another agitable father, more crafty and less likely to combust. He played in several movies under the direction of his son Ben Stiller, including Zoolander and a remake of The Heartbreak Kid, while in 2007 he and Anne shared a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His death from natural causes was announced by Ben, with co-stars Jason Alexander, Michael Richards, Kevin James, and Leah Remini leading the tributes.
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Whether dubbed ‘the first popular surrealist’ or ‘Jimmy Stewart from Mars’, crafting sawmill fantasias and Hollywood dystopias in works from Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet to Inland Empire and Mulholland Drive, David Lynch has always stood at the crossroads, an uncanny blend of the old and the new. Yet in the early 2000s he offered a pioneering vision of the internet: a self-designed website where subscribers could watch original series like Dumbland and Rabbits, or a daily localised weather report. It’s a decade since Lynch last recorded the weather in the environs about his Los Angeles home, but this week he started a YouTube channel and resumed the practise: succour at a time of shutdown and something for his fans to chew on, showing us in Hollywood at least the temperature’s warm.
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Following an interview with Screen Daily, Cannes Film Festival and its director Thierry Frémaux confirmed that there are no plans to hold a physical edition of the festival in 2020. The 73rd annual Cannes Film Festival was scheduled to take place between 12-23 May, with Spike Lee announced as president of the jury. Instead coronavirus caused the festival to be postponed twice, as the pandemic gripped France and the Palais des Festivals, the main exhibition venue for Cannes, was turned into a makeshift homeless shelter. In place of the usual spring sun, chartered yachts, blockbuster names, and red carpets, Cannes hopes to support the movie industry through a presence at other festivals in the fall, collaborating to present films in partnership with Venice. In the meantime Cannes will announce an Official Selection of sorts, without the usual prestige categories of In Competition, Un Certain Regard, and Out of Competition, compiling a list of films scheduled for theatrical release between now and next spring which will be given a Cannes 2020 stamp of approval.
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The comic actor Fred Willard, a familiar face across television and cinema screens whose talents shone in the mock-documentaries of Christopher Guest, died on Friday aged 86 years old. A graduate of military institutes in Kentucky and Virginia, after serving in the United States Army, Willard’s stage career began when he moved to New York. Forging a successful comedy act with Vic Grecco in the clubs of Greenwich Village, together Willard & Grecco appeared in the leading variety shows of the 1960s, including The Dean Martin Show, The Tonight Show, and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Calling the duo to a halt, Willard debuted on film in the 1967 exploitation drama Teenage Mother, and he performed as part of The Second City in Chicago before forming the Ace Trucking Company, an improvisational sketch comedy group. Comprising Willard alongside George Memmoli, Michael Mislove, Bill Saluga, and Patti Deutsch, by the end of the decade the Ace Trucking Company were regulars on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and This Is Tom Jones.
Willard was a cast member of the short-lived NBC sitcom Sirota’s Court, but his breakthrough as a comic actor came in 1977, when he began starring as the sidekick Jerry Hubbard on the parody talk shows Fernwood 2 Night and America 2-Night. He became a frequent guest star on television and played secondary characters in diverse eighties comedy movies including National Lampoon’s Movie Madness, This Is Spinal Tap, and Roxanne. From 1987 he served as the bartender and host on D.C Follies, where he welcomed a slew of pop-cultural puppet caricatures, and the same year he featured in the comedy Ray’s Male Heterosexual Dance Hall by director Bryan Gordon, which won the Academy Award for best live action short. On Roseanne in 1995 Willard reunited with Martin Mull from Fernwood, playing the part of Scott, who married Mull’s popular recurring character Leon Carp in the episode ‘December Bride’. Leon and Scott were reportedly touted for a spin-off series which never came to fruition, but Willard still guest-starred over the final two seasons of Roseanne in the show’s original run.
From 1996 Willard was ever-present in the mockumentaries of Christopher Guest, prominent amid the amateur dramatics and prestigious dog pageantry of Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. Often on the big screen Willard played variations on the same character, neat and trim with an air of urbanity which contrasted nicely with drunkenness, licentiousness, or haplessness as he embraced the part of the well-meaning buffoon. Willard also featured as the station director Ed Harken in the Anchorman movies and as Pixar’s first live-action character in WALL-E, while lending his voice to the animated films Monster House and Planes: Fire & Rescue. On television he was a regular in the floundering sitcoms Maybe It’s Me and Back to You, faring better in recurring roles on Everybody Loves Raymond, Modern Family, and The Bold and the Beautiful, for which he won a Daytime Emmy Award. One of the first ports of call for comedy sketches on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, from 2018 Willard provided bouts of comic relief on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. News of his death was confirmed by his daughter, Hope Mulbarger, as a long list of colleagues paid tribute.
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The filmmaker Lynn Shelton died at the age of 54 on Friday from a blood disorder. A graduate with a Master of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, Shelton began her career in film as an editor of independent movies before making her directorial debut in 2006 with We Go Way Back, an impressionistic portrayal of a young actress in communion with her own thirteen-year-old spectre. My Effortless Brilliance followed in 2008, before the comedy Humpday in 2009 was awarded at Sundance and commenced a series of collaborations with the Duplass brothers. The naturalistic, offbeat comedy-dramas Your Sister’s Sister, Touchy Feely, and Laggies starred Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Keira Knightley while establishing Shelton at the forefront of the nascent mumblecore genre. Outside In with Edie Falco and Jay Duplass marked a turn into compressed drama, and Sword of Trust in 2019, a character-based comedy helmed by Marc Maron, received equal acclaim, proving Shelton’s final feature. In the meantime she became one of Hollywood’s go-to television directors, with credits for Mad Men, New Girl, Fresh Off the Boat, GLOW, The Morning Show, and most recently Little Fires Everywhere starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington. Her death was mourned by friends and colleagues including Ava DuVernay, Mark Duplass, Witherspoon, and Maron.
