English Entertainment
Star World’s new show focusses on the meaning of life
MUMBAI: Star World will air a new show According to Bex every Saturday at 10 pm from 5 November 2005.
The show’s main protagonist is Bex Atwell. A typical single woman in her late twenties with a typical office secretary job. Like all other typical office ladies, she aspires to something. well, not so typical – like the perfect job and the perfect man. But in her not-so-ideal life, it is all, very typically, out
Jessica Stevenson plays Bex, a girl who lives in an “almost” world – she’s almost in a relationship, almost in a good job. Her so-so life is dominated by the multiple “almostmen” around her – her smarmy boss, Charles, who fails to grasp the concept of monogamy and her on/off boyfriend Ryan (Oliver Chris) who treats ambition and a steady job as twin repulsive bugbears, much to Bex’s chagrin. Then there’s her womanising father, Jack (Clive Russell), who has passed through middle-age and emerged the other side as a juvenile teenager.
Bex, despite being smart and sassy, is still clueless as to the machinations of the male of the species. However, she still has to figure out what men are all about and why women even give a toss. But it seems the more she learns about men and relationships, the more infuriating they become. She does, however, get some help from her cynical pal Chris (Raquel Cassidy) and her loopy work colleague Jan (Zita Sattar).
The channel says that According To Bex comes with a good pedigree. Creator Fred Barron has written for shows like The Larry Sanders Show and Caroline In The City. The show has been shot in an almost stream of consciousness style with the storyline constantly interrupted by Bex’s flights of fantasies, camera monologues and random soundbites from supposed ‘people-in-the-street’ offering unsolicited opinions on how Miss Almost should handle her problems
English Entertainment
Ellison takes his Paramount-Warner Bros case straight to theater owners
The Skydance chief goes to CinemaCon with promises and a skeptical crowd waiting
CALIFORNIA: David Ellison strode into a room packed with thousands of cinema owners and executives at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Thursday and did something rather bold: he looked them in the eye and asked them to trust him.
The chief executive of Paramount Skydance vowed that his company would release a minimum of 30 films a year if regulators greenlight its proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, a deal that has made theater owners deeply, and loudly, nervous.
“I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word,” Ellison told the crowd. “Once we combine with Warner Bros, we are going to make a minimum of 30 films annually across both studios.”
It was a confident pitch. Whether it landed is another matter. Cinema operators have already called on regulators to block the deal, and scepticism in the room was hardly concealed.
Ellison pushed back by pointing to recent form. Paramount, born from the merger of Paramount Global and Skydance Media last August, plans to release 15 films this year, nearly double the eight it put out in 2025. Progress, he argued, was already underway.
He also threw theater owners a bone they have long been chasing: all films, he pledged, would run exclusively in cinemas for a minimum of 45 days, drawing applause from a crowd that has spent years fighting for exactly that commitment across the industry.
“People can speculate all they want,” Ellison said, “but I am standing here today telling you personally that you can count on our complete commitment. And we’ll show you we mean it.”
Fine words. The regulators, however, will have the last one.
