Entertainment

Characters Disappearing Review: An Evocative Vision of 1970s Chinatown

Published

16 hours ago

July 21, 2026

Towards the end of Connor Sen Warnick’s debut “Characters Disappearing,” members of the I Wor Kuen, a radical Marxist Chinese-American group operating in New York’s Chinatown in the 1970s, convene for a film screening. Mei (Yuka Murakami) is projecting a 16mm print of “The East is Red” (1965) on a bedsheet for her fellow radicals seated on fold-out chairs on an outdoor basketball court. Shot in 2022 but set in the 1970s, the warmth of Mei’s projector light contrasts with the white LED lights from passing cars, a temporally porous mise-en-scène that Warnick exploits throughout his film.

This is not the only present-tense intrusion into Warnick’s period piece, which follows twenty-something cousins Mei and Chris (played by Warnick) in 1970s Chinatown. The little-interrogated and yet underlying tension of every period film — the suspension of our temporal bearings — is essential to his project. Shot during the pandemic, modern cars, Patagonia jackets, and N95 masks dot Warnick’s midcentury tableau. If at first this may seem the result of budget limitations, these anachronisms become special effects in Warnick’s hands, as he depicts a past haunted by its future as well as a future not yet done with its past, particularly in light of the anti-Asian violence on the rise in Pandemic-era New York.

Though the film does feature the site-specific bogeymen associated with the radical politics of the era (organized crime, federal agents), it focuses more on the listless millings about of the two cousins in their artist-activist milieu. Mei searches for community and purpose with the I Wor Kuen while Chris withdraws from daily life into increasingly Spartan spiritual practices. She ponders a move to California and the gravity of her relationship with Leonard (Dylan Breaux), a Black man whose devotion (to the cause and to Mei) remains uncertain; he fasts in pursuit of longevity. If paranoia is on the breeze, so too is a sense of post-teenage stasis that seems to hang in the Chinatown air, caught between youth and adulthood, an immigrant past and a gentrified future.

Warnick wears his influences on his sleeve in “Characters Disappearing,” and he cribs less from Alan J. Pakula than from slow cinema and its antecedents: Tsai Ming-Liang, Edward Yang, Robert Bresson. Warnick’s characters, per Bresson, speak their lines mechanically. His camera rarely moves, favoring glacial pans when it does, and his editing metronome is molasses-slow, allowing the audience to live a while in the buzzing grain of his 16mm. It’s a style studied in its restraint, but well suited to the heady brew of resignation and urgency swirling around his characters, who keep one eye on the ominous men in black and another on the horizon line. “Maybe I’ll never leave New York,” Mei says to an art school friend at one point, her words landing as literal in this timeless world. Everything and nothing disappears, and Warnick’s narrative is pitched down the middle of these two extremes.

Though distinct from Mei in his disengagement from political struggle, Chris too grapples with these questions of forever and never. He tells a lover that he was born with extreme pigeon-toeing, with his feet twisted inward almost to the point of being upside-down and the implications for his subsequent struggles to gain a foothold in reality are almost too clear. His grandfather, Gong Gong, he learns, was the son of a powerful military general in China, who was friends with the real life Li Ching-Yuen, an herbalist who lived in the mountains and claimed to live to 250 years, dying only in 1993. Chris becomes engrossed with his grandfather’s book on the subject, “An Authentic and True Record of a 250-Year-Old Man,” and its teachings on the science of longevity. So begins his fasting, self-enforced isolation, and slow withdrawal from material life.

Warnick has pointed out in interviews that Li Ching-Yuen would likely still have been alive at the time his film is set, the inverse of the clean energy city buses rolling through his mid-70s Chinatown. In the director’s patient hands this mish-mashed sense of eternity feels not merely plausible but inevitable. Watching “Characters Disappearing,” one feels the absurdity of stopping traffic for a film shoot, of re-dressing a neighborhood in costume to keep the present out. History is something that is felt rather than told. One emerges from the film with little more knowledge about the I Wor Kuen than one entered with. Rather than a political program, we see faces that seem to age before our eyes, cramped apartments, doors, windows, and fish tanks forming frames within frames within frames, all the tiny wrinkles that imbricate spaces and times, reflecting a postmodern complexity that is rendered simple, tactile, and ageless.

A closing shot of fog rising off of a city park in the very early morning, the sun not yet having risen to the critical point when they turn the streetlights off, would have been a perfect place to end the film — a tidy and found summation of the cross-contamination of past and present. “Characters Disappearing” being a slightly academic exercise, the film does not end here, but rather with a direct citation of the final scene from Tsai Ming-Liang’s “What Time Is It There?” (2001). Still, we don’t suffer for a surplus of inheritors to Tsai’s nuanced approach to temporality in contemporary cinema, and the restraint demonstrated throughout “Characters Disappearing” sets Warnick well apart from his peers.

Grade: B+

Lunette Films will release “Characters Disappearing” at the Roxy Theater in New York City on Saturday, July 25.

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Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy In Donald Trump’s America: Analysis

Published

5 minutes ago

July 22, 2026

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UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy was widely expected to change jobs when her good friend Andy Burnham became Prime Minister this week, but she has remained in post and is now comfortably the longest-serving in that role for well over 10 years.

Now, a set of decisions that Nandy is due to make over the coming months could make her one of the most consequential Culture Secretaries in recent memory… in America that is.

This trio of major calls that loom over Nandy could end up upsetting or possibly ingratiating virtually all the major U.S. studios, streamers and tech giants, coming at a time when Burnham will be attempting to keep relations with Donald Trump rosy after the solid work put in by his predecessor Keir Starmer.

First up, it was just before UK Parliament broke for recess and just before Burnham became PM that Nandy left the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) $110B mega-merger unread.

She had initially said she was “minded to intervene” in the deal on media plurality grounds but failed to provide an update in time. David Ellison and co will now have to wait until September 1 at the very earliest to discover if the deal will be either probed or greenlit by British regulators.

This, as a reminder, could be an incredibly costly Nandy intervention, because the agreement has a “ticking fee” commitment to WBD shareholders of 25 cents a share — roughly $650 million — for every quarter its takeover does not finalize beyond Q3.

Ellison attempted to charm Nandy back in Jan during a much-publicized trip to Europe but any charm will dissipate if she causes his beloved deal to run into the “ticking fee” period. In the U.S., of course, he continues to hit stumbling blocks and the merger is currently on pause in response to a lawsuit from a dozen states.

With the Paramount-WBD deal firmly remaining in the spotlight, WBD’s previous suitor Netflix will be fuming if Nandy pushes on with a controversial plan for the BBC licence fee to expand to subscribers to streamers like Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video.

The BBC has floated the plan in a desperate bid to generate more from the £180 ($240) annual fee. It has repeatedly stressed that while 94% of the UK population use its services every month, fewer than 80% pay the £180, leading to a loss of hundreds of millions of pounds per year.

Without a great deal of info about how it would actually work in practice, Nandy recently signaled that she is behind the proposal that would see people who watch non-live content on streamers forced to pay the licence fee, and would even task streamers with helping collect the charge.

The Motion Picture Association, which represents big streamers and studios, had already pushed back, saying the plan will have a “downstream impact on viewers and their viewing experience,” yet this doesn’t appear to have halted Nandy. She says she has had conversations with the streamers over various ideas and continues to point out that the government will never bring in a streamer levy, an idea taken up by several other nations that would force the SVoDs to pay a small amount of their UK subscription revenue to a cultural fund for British content.

Netflix in particular is already on the European regulatory warpath. It has bristled frequently at other nations that force the streamer into local content quotas and funding obligations but has regularly praised the UK for leaving it free to do what it wants in the nation that birthed Adolescence and Baby Reindeer. Forcing its subscribers into effectively funding a rival would surely go against this grain.

And then there is the tech giants. In amongst everything else, the UK is going ahead with a full social media ban for under-16s while also drawing up legislation that would require YouTube and TikTok to carry public service content prominently, which could prove quite the algorithmic headache for these tech behemoths.

This idea was first floated at the RTS Convention by, you guessed it, Lisa Nandy, who said it will be “vital in the fierce battle against mis and disinformation.”

Had Nandy been removed from her post earlier this week, it is impossible to tell if her successor would have changed tack on any of these three crucial upcoming decisions.

But as it stands, she appears keen to follow through, and the American entertainment and tech giants that would be impacted would be numerous. Many of these companies have got closer and closer to Trump during his second presidency, some relying on his or his allies’ say-so to force through various deals.

In their first-ever call during his first few hours as PM, Burnham invited Trump to his home city of Manchester, which also happens to be where Nandy is from. Were Trump to take up this offer, the Culture Sec may fancy making herself scarce.

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Apple TV Seeking Head of Local Language Scripted For Jay Hunt’s Team

Published

29 minutes ago

July 22, 2026

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EXCLUSIVE: Apple TV is seeking a head of local language scripted projects.

The move comes amid a shuffling of the pack after Morgan Wandell and Oliver Jones exited the streamer, with Europe chief Jay Hunt handed a wider remit.

Apple confirmed the Head of Local Language Scripted is a newly-created London-based role in Hunt’s team.

According to a job ad posted on LinkedIn, the Head of Local Language Scripted will “work closely with experts in market” and the Creative Director of International TV [Hunt] to set strategy and commission content.”

The person is tasked with “defining and executing a comprehensive content strategy for local language scripted series across key international markets” and making “a compelling slate of shows that resonate in multiple markets,” according to the job ad. They will assess scripts for “Apple series potential” and meet with top talent and agents.

Notably, the ad also says the person will need to “navigate regional nuance,” “leveraging a deep understanding of international market dynamics, including regional content quotas and local compliance, to identify whitespace opportunities in highly competitive territories.”

The role is an opportunity for someone to set the direction of a big-budget streamer’s international slate and will likely attract a high caliber of candidate.

Apple TV doesn’t make a huge amount of content outside of the States but under Hunt’s leadership it has delivered some big hits. Hunt’s UK slate includes the likes of Slow Horses, Bad Sisters and Hijack. Outside the UK it has made French fare like the Eva Green-starring Liaison and Gaumont’s The Hunt, Spain’s Women in Blue and Germany’s Where’s Wanda?, the latter two of which soon launch second seasons. Apple also picked up Legendary’s French-Japanese series Drops of God and is a co-producer on big hits like Tehran.

The hire will come following exits in the Apple international team. International development chief Wandell left to launch his own indie while international scripted executive Jones moved to Amazon.

Matt Cherniss, Apple TV’s head of programming, now oversees Wandell’s slate while the highly-rated Hunt’s remit has expanded to all international and local-language original projects.

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BBC Considers Locking iPlayer For Viewers Who Opt Out Of Licence Fee

Published

55 minutes ago

July 22, 2026

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EXCLUSIVE: The BBC has said it is open-minded about closing off iPlayer to British viewers who decline to pay the licence fee.

In an all-staff call on Monday, the BBC’s chief customer officer Kerris Bright said locking down iPlayer could be an “opportunity” in the future as the corporation looks to stem the tide of people opting out of the licence fee.

Bright told colleagues that blocking iPlayer does not currently make sense because it could cause unwelcome friction for viewers who do pay the licence fee, but she said the BBC will keep the idea under review as streaming technology improves.

“iPlayer is the only service really that’s licensable where you could actually decide to put a gate in front of it, but the data today says that actually [there’s] not really the return on investment for doing that,” Bright told employees, per audio obtained by Deadline.

“The vast majority of evasion is not on iPlayer. The vast majority of people that are watching iPlayer are people that are paying their TV licence, and so to put a gate in front of iPlayer, the data today says that you actually would make it a very difficult experience for people that are paying for the licence.”

iPlayer viewers do have to sign into the BBC to watch the streamer. The service also occasionally asks users if they have a licence fee, though it does not require proof. “It’s quite a difficult experience if you have to ask them to find their TV licence to put it into iPlayer,” Bright said.

She continued: “As we go into the future, more of an IPTV world, audiences changing behavior, new ways of creating experiences that maybe aren’t so full of friction for audiences … that might absolutely be an opportunity for us, depending on the funding model.

“The data says today [that] absolutely [it] is not the silver bullet to generating more revenue. There’s probably more cost in it than revenue, but it is something we should absolutely keep looking at because it might be something that you actually would want to do in the future.”

More than half a million people opted out of the licence fee in the BBC’s most recent financial year, contributing to a funding crisis for the British broadcaster.

Some 94% of the UK population use the BBC every month, but fewer than 80% pay the £180 annual licence fee. The BBC is attempting to bridge this gap and can no longer dip into its cash reserves to fund operations.

In comments earlier this month, BBC director general Matt Brittin said: “We can and should be doing as much as possible on [enforcing] licence fee collection under the current model, but it’s yesterday’s model, it’s a busted flush, it’s no longer fit for purpose, and that’s why we need to make the case for the BBC and a shift of the licence fee model.”

The BBC is in talks with the government about a new charter, which will likely lead to funding model changes. The BBC is not being prescriptive about what could replace the licence fee, but thinks the government should reconsider a compulsory household levy, which it previously ruled out.

Another idea under consideration is extending the licence fee to include subscribers to streamers like Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video. The plan has already drawn the ire of the Motion Picture Association, representing U.S. streamers and studios.