LOS ANGELES — A child was among four people killed Wednesday in a shooting at a Southern California office building that left a fifth victim and the gunman critically wounded, police said.
The violence in the city of Orange southeast of Los Angeles was the nation’s third mass shooting in just over two weeks.
When police arrived at the two-story structure around 5:30 p.m. shots were being fired, Orange Police Lt. Jennifer Amat said. Officers opened fire and the suspect was taken to a hospital, Amat said.
It’s unclear if the suspect suffered a self-inflicted wound or was shot by police. Police provided no details on the victims other than to say one was a child and a woman was critically wounded.
In a tweet, Gov. Gavin Newsom called the killings “horrifying and heartbreaking.”
“Our hearts are with the families impacted by this terrible tragedy tonight,” he wrote.
U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, a California Democrat whose district includes the city of Orange, said on Twitter that she was “deeply saddened.”
Amat had no information about what may have prompted the attack. She said the shooting occurred on both levels of the building. Signs outside indicated a handful of businesses were located there, including an insurance office, a financial consulting firm, a legal services business and a phone repair store.
People gathered outside the building after the shooting hoping to get word about loved ones.
Paul Tovar told KTLA-TV that his brother owns a business there, Unified Homes, a mobile home broker. “He’s not answering his phone, neither’s my niece,” Tovar said. “I’m pretty scared and worried … right now I’m just praying really hard.”
Charlie Espinoza also was outside the building and told The Orange County Register that he couldn’t reach his fiancé, who works for a medical billing company.
Cody Lev, who lives across the street from the office building, told the newspaper he heard three loud pops that were spaced out, then three more. There was silence, then he heard numerous shots, followed by sirens and then more shots.
A Facebook livestream posted by a resident who lives near the office appeared to show officers carrying a motionless person from the building and officers providing aid to another person.
The killings follow a mass shooting at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, last week that left 10 dead. A week before that six Asian women were among eight people killed in three Atlanta-area spas.
The city of Orange is about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Los Angeles and home to about 140,000 people. Amat said the shooting was the worst in the city since December 1997, when a gunman armed with an assault rifle attacked a California Department of Transportation maintenance yard.
Arturo Reyes Torres, 41, an equipment operator who had been fired six weeks earlier, killed four people and wounded others, including a police officer, before police killed him.
HONG KONG — Seven Hong Kong pro-democracy advocates were convicted Thursday on charges of organizing and participating in an unlawful assembly during massive anti-government protests in 2019 that triggered a crackdown on dissent.
The seven include media tycoon and founder of the Apple Daily tabloid Jimmy Lai, as well as 82-year-old Martin Lee, a veteran of the city’s democracy movement. Lai had already been held without bail on other charges related to his pro-democracy activities.
They were convicted for their involvement in a protest held on Aug. 18, 2019. Organizers said that 1.7 million people marched that day in opposition to a proposed bill that would have allowed suspects to be extradited to mainland China for trial.
The activists, apart from those who have been remanded in custody on other charges, were granted bail on condition they do not leave Hong Kong and must hand in all their travel documents.
They will next appear in court on April 16, where mitigation pleas will be heard before sentences are handed down. Taking part in an unlawful assembly or a riot in Hong Kong can result in a maximum sentence of up to 10 years imprisonment for serious offenses.
Ahead of the trial, supporters and some of the defendants gathered outside the court, shouting “Oppose political persecution” and “Five demands, not one less,” in reference to demands by democracy supporters that include amnesty for those arrested in the protests as well as universal suffrage in the semi-autonomous territory.
“So on this day, in a very difficult situation in Hong Kong, political retaliation is on us,” Lee Cheuk-yan, one of the defendants, said ahead of the court session.
“We will still march on no matter what lies in the future. We believe in the people of Hong Kong, in our brothers and sisters in our struggle, and the victory is ours if the people of Hong Kong are persistent,” he said.
Previously, two other defendants — former pro-democracy lawmakers Au Nok-hin and Leung Yiu-chung — had pleaded guilty to organizing and taking part in an unauthorized assembly.
Hong Kong was rocked by months of protests in the second half of 2019, sparked by the extradition bill. The bill was eventually withdrawn, but the protests expanded to include full democracy and other demands and at times descended into violence between demonstrators and police.
In the aftermath of the protests, Beijing took a tough stance on dissent, imposing a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong and approving electoral reforms that would reduce public participation in elections and exclude critics from running for the city’s legislature.
China had pledged to allow the city to retain freedoms not permitted elsewhere in the country for 50 years when it took Hong Kong back from Britain in 1997, but its recent steps are seen as a betrayal.
Documentary lovers have plenty to peruse in titles coming to Netflix in April 2021, from Worn Stories, a series featuring the stories of people’s most meaningful items of clothing, to a new David Attenborough series, Life in Color With David Attenborough, that looks at the relationships different animals have to color.
Fictional stories are also coming to the streaming service in April, including Thunder Force, which sees Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer playing reunited childhood best friends in an action movie, the seriesWhy Are You Like This, which follows three twenty-somethings in Melbourne, and the horror movieThings Seen & Heard, which delves into the dark secrets that emerge after a couple moves to a small town from Manhattan.
Here’s what’s new on Netflix this month—and everything set to leave the streaming platform.
Here are the Netflix originals coming in April 2021
Available April 1
Magical Andes: season 2
Prank Encounters: season 2
Tersanjung the Movie
Worn Stories
Available April 2
Concrete Cowboy
Just Say Yes
Madame Claude
The Serpent
Sky High
Available April 5
Family Reunion: Part 3
Available April 6
The Last Kids on Earth: Happy Apocalypse to You
Available April 7
The Big Day: Collection 2
Dolly Parton: A MusiCares Tribute
Snabba Cash
This Is A Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist
The Wedding Coach
Available April 8
The Way of the Househusband
Available April 9
Have You Ever Seen Fireflies?
Night in Paradise
Thunder Force
Available April 12
New Gods: Nezha Reborn
Available April 13
Mighty Express: season 3
My Love: Six Stories of True Love
Available April 14
Dad Stop Embarrassing Me!
The Circle: season 2
Law School
The Soul
Why Did You Kill Me?
Available April 15
Ride or Die
Available April 16
Arlo the Alligator Boy
Ajeeb Daastaans
Fast & Furious Spy Racers: season 4: Mexico
Into the Beat
Why Are You Like This
Available April 18
Luis Miguel – The Series: season 2
Available April 20
Izzy’s Koala World: season 2
Available April 21
Zero
Available April 22
Life in Color with David Attenborough
Stowaway
Available April 23
Shadow and Bone
Tell Me When
Available April 27
Go! Go! Cory Carson: season 4
Available April 28
Sexify
Headspace Guide to Sleep
Available April 29
Things Heard & Seen
Yasuke
Available April 30
The Innocent
The Mitchells vs. The Machines
Pet Stars
The Unremarkable Juanquini: season 2
Here are the TV shows and movies coming to Netflix in April 2021
Available April 1
2012
Cop Out
Friends with Benefits
Insidious
Legally Blonde
Leprechaun
The Pianist
The Possession
Secrets of Great British Castles: season 1
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family
White Boy
Yes Man
Available April 3
Escape from Planet Earth
Available April 4
What Lies Below
Available April 5
Coded Bias
Available April 10
The Stand-In
Available April 11
Diana: The Interview that Shook the World
Available April 12
Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn: seasons 1-4
Available April 13
The Baker and the Beauty: season 1
Available April 15
Dark City Beneath the Beat
The Master
Available April 16
Crimson Peak
Rush
Synchronic
The Zookeeper’s Wife
Available April 19
Miss Sloane
PJ Masks: season 3
Available April 23
Heroes: Silence and Rock & Roll
Available April 27
August: Osage County
Battle of Los Angeles
Here’s what’s leaving Netflix in April 2021
Leaving April 2
Honey: Rise Up and Dance
Leaving April 4
Backfire
Leaving April 11
Time Trap
Leaving April 12
Married at First Sight: season 9
Surviving R. Kelly Part II: The Reckoning: season 1
Leaving April 13
Antidote
Leaving April 14
Eddie Murphy: Delirious
The New Romantic
Once Upon a Time in London
Thor: Tales of Asgard
Leaving April 15
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant
Leaving April 19
Carol
The Vatican Tapes
Leaving April 20
The Last Resort
Leaving April 21
The Great British Baking Show: Masterclass: seasons 1-3
COVID-19 was the third-most-common cause of death in the U.S. in 2020, contributing to more than 375,000 deaths, and a 16% increase in the national death rate, according to provisional data published today by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
All told, more than 3.3 million people in the U.S. died in 2020, for a rate of about 829 deaths per 100,000 people. That’s up from about 715 deaths per 100,000 people in 2019.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a clear culprit. The weeks ending April 11 and December 26 were the deadliest for the U.S. last year, coinciding with two major COVID-19 surges.
The virus was listed as an underlying or contributing cause of death for more than 377,000 people in the U.S. in 2020—which is likely an underestimate, if anything, since testing was hard to come by in the spring of 2020. Only heart disease and cancer killed more Americans in 2020. Meanwhile, suicide was pushed out of the top 10 causes of death; unintentional injury, stroke, lower respiratory disease, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, influenza/pneumonia and kidney disease rounded out the list.
Logically enough, death rates were highest among adults 85 or older and lowest among kids ages five to 14. While that was true across causes of death, COVID-19 certainly contributed to that gap. The CDC estimates that COVID-19 death rates are 7,900 times higher among adults older than 85 than they are among kids ages 5 to 17. Death rates were also higher among men than women, again consistent with COVID-19 trends.
Death rates varied widely across racial and ethnic groups, too. Overall death rates were highest among Black and American Indian/Alaska Native people, while COVID-19 death rates were highest among American Indian/Alaska Native and Hispanic people.
Though these figures are provisional and may change somewhat as the CDC’s data are finalized, they paint a stark picture. Last year marks the first since 2017 that the national death rate rose. It’s too soon to say whether the trend will continue in 2021, but COVID-19 remains a major cause of death both in the U.S. and globally. More than 550,000 coronavirus-related deaths have been reported in the U.S. since the pandemic began, and the virus continues to kill hundreds of people in the U.S. each day.
It’s the last news anyone wants to hear: one year after the United States was slammed with its first wave of COVID-19—which was followed by even worse second and third waves—public health experts are worried that the country is headed for a fourth major spike. During a White House coronavirus briefing on Monday, Rochelle Walensky, the new director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, begged Americans to keep following public health guidelines amid small but alarming upticks in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. “Right now, I’m scared,” she said.
Other scientists tracking the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. agree that there’s plenty to be worried about. Cases are rising in the Northeast, Midwest and elsewhere. At the same time, many governors are relaxing measures intended to limit the spread of the virus, such as mask mandates and caps on restaurant capacity. Furthermore, as vaccinations continue across the country, some people are getting more cavalier about mask wearing and social distancing, even though most Americans still haven’t been inoculated. We’re also in the middle of Passover and approaching Easter, and celebratory gatherings could result in further spread.
However, even if we’re in the early days of a fourth wave, there’s good reason to think this one might be less disastrous than the previous three. Dr. Mark Roberts, director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Public Health Dynamics lab, points to the relatively small uptick in deaths as a sign that prioritizing high-risk people for vaccination may be resulting in fewer fatalities even as cases increase (though deaths are a lagging indicator, so it may be too early to tell if this is truly the case). He adds that immunity from exposure among people who previously contracted the virus is likely working in conjunction with mass vaccination to limit viral spread. Of course, if there’s another wave, many people may get sick or worse regardless, and even a minor case of COVID-19 can result in long-lasting complications.
It’s still too soon to tell whether what we’re seeing in the data will end up being a blip or a bomb, says Justin Lessler, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. As Lessler points out, the U.S. is in a race to vaccinate huge numbers of people as quickly as possible before more contagious or deadly variants of the virus proliferate, and as states roll back mitigation measures. Unvaccinated people may be at particularly high risk over the coming weeks, especially as vaccinated people begin to resume more normal lives, increasing everyone’s temptation to throw caution to the wind regardless of their inoculation status.
“This is leading to huge uncertainty in how things are going to unfold in the coming weeks and months,” Lessler says. “I would be surprised if we don’t see at least one state with a significant resurgence, though I doubt it will happen everywhere.”
What does all this mean for you and me? A fourth surge in cases may be imminent, but the toll of this spike could be blunted by mass vaccination—especially as states across the country continue opening vaccine eligibility to broad swaths of the population. Either way, the public health guidance remains the same. “If individuals and communities continue to exercise caution, we can prevent a major surge,” says Lauren Ancel Meyers, director of the University of Texas at Austin’s COVID-19 Modeling Consortium. “This means wearing face masks, taking sensible precautions—particularly around unvaccinated people—and isolating if we have symptoms or believe we may have been exposed to the virus.” While no one person can stop COVID-19 from surging again, you can still take steps to protect yourself and the people around you.
This story originally appeared in The Coronavirus Brief, TIME’s daily COVID-19 newsletter. You can sign up here.
This year, lawmakers have thrust trans youth into the center of the culture wars. In the midst of a pandemic, when economic and health concerns are urgent, legislators in at least 28 states have introduced a record number of bills that would restrict the rights of trans people.
This new wave of legislation and executive actions arrives in the months after several prominent women who identify as feminists, including J.K. Rowling, said or implied that trans activism undermines the women’s movement and repeated what LGBTQ+ advocates say is the toxic misperception that trans women pose a threat to the safety of cis women.
In an effort to advocate for, as she puts it, “unapologetically expansive” feminism, trans rights activist Raquel Willis and GLAAD invited cis and trans feminist leaders to sign an open letter, published on Transgender Day of Visibility, declaring their solidarity with the trans women and girls who will be affected, on sports fields and in doctors’ offices, by the new legislation and who are vulnerable to anti-trans violence. Gloria Steinem, Regina King, Selena Gomez, Gabrielle Union, Laverne Cox,Lena Waithe, Ilana Glazer and America Ferrera are among more than 465 celebrities and activists who have signed so far.
The letter also addresses “self-identified feminists who have been promoting damaging and violent ideas about trans people for years.” “Their vitriol is, in fact, not feminist at all,” it states. “True feminists do not wish to limit any woman’s identity or freedom to fully be herself. Allowing transphobic rhetoric to go unchecked also strengthens the legislative efforts of anti-trans politicians—who now cloak their bigotry in language about protecting and supporting women.”
Willis and the other signatories call for a fight against barriers placed on trans women and an inclusive feminist movement that can accommodate “our unique experiences threaded in the larger tapestry of womanhood.” The letter is now open to anyone who wants to sign. Willis spoke to TIME about the letter, why these new laws threaten the safety of trans youth and the essential role that trans women play in the feminist movement.
Astrid Stawiarz—Getty ImagesRaquel Willis speaks on stage during the Out Magazine’s Out100 Event on November 21, 2019 in Long Island City, New York.
What is the impetus for publishing the open letter now?
Right now we are just seeing a massive wave of anti-trans legislation around the country, and the transgender community is only so big. We need those people who consider themselves to be allies to really show up and be more bold and vocal than ever before. In places like Arkansas, Alabama and South Dakota, where a contingent of lawmakers have made it a part of their political platform to try and strip the rights of trans people away from us—particularly transgender youth—this just cannot stand. They are literally targeting children who have been so brave in owning their authenticity. It’s just not right.
We want to build an experience where folks can sign the letter and join the conversation. We know that this is only a fraction of the women, the feminists and the people in general out there who support the trans community. Beyond this conversation, we need people to take action. We need to continue to be holding lawmakers accountable, calling them and making sure that they understand that what they’re doing will have a devastating impact on the lives of trans people and particularly trans youth.
Certain conservative lawmakers have pivoted their rhetoric from bathroom bills to youth sports bills. Do you have any sense as to why blocking trans girls from girls’ sports teams has become such a focus for them?
There’s been this false indoctrination that trans women and girls are a threat. But we’re just like anyone else.Conservatives turned their ire largely away from people within the LGBQ community and started specifically targeting trans people after marriage equality became the law of the land. I think part of their plan of attack is to exploit the ignorance that the general public has about transgender people and our experience.According to a 2017 Pew poll, most Americans say that they don’t know a trans person. That means a lot of times our experience is at the whim of whoever gets their narrative to the general public before we do. Many of these legislators know that there’s a lot of misinformation about gender and its complexity, and they’re trying to wage this war for political favor.
The bills on youth sports focus on trans girls and not so much on trans boys. There’s a lot to unpack there in terms of anti-trans stereotypes and historical sexism. Why do you think the focus is on trans girls specifically?
I think what we’ve often see, even with the bathroom bills, is that while anti-trans efforts target the whole community, they are almost always pinpointed on trans women and trans girls.The lawmakers targeting the trans community say they are protecting women and girls, and they often paint trans women and trans girls as predators with this false notion that we aren’t who we say we are. It’s this old, tired trope.
This is why hearing our stories authentically is so key. A lot of the myths that the general public have about trans women and girls and our experience are based on historic falsehoods. If you look at documentary likeDisclosurethat talks about the ways in which gender-nonconforming and trans people have been depicted onscreen for the last century or so, there’s been this false indoctrination that trans women and girls are a threat. But we’re just like anyone else. And we deserve the same access to our dreams, our passions in life, including sports, and access to health care, like anyone else.
I also wanted to ask about access to health care. For people who don’t know, I would love to clarify what kind of gender-affirming health care trans youth are fighting for and what these bills are proposing.
Often the conversation about health care for trans people in general is based on falsehoods. There is a lot of focus on particularly surgery or irreversible change of the body. Trans-ness is so much more expansive than that idea. Every trans person has a different transition, and not all of it is medical. A large part of it is social, being respected as who you truly are. And many folks don’t opt to change the body and are still perfectly and beautifully and brilliantly trans.
When it comes to trans youth, the fear-mongering is often around this idea that trans youth are overwhelmingly being pushed to have surgeries or have what are considered more invasive procedures. But trans health care is so much more expansive than that limited idea, and if you look at the legislation, [these legislators] know that trans youth are not having these more invasive procedures.
There are specific pieces of legislation, like in Alabama, that are targeting simply having access to puberty-blocking treatment. As someone who was a young person who didn’t really have access to either the language or simply the knowledge about what my experience as a trans person could look like, I would have been thrilled to have the option to go on puberty-blocking treatment so that I could not experience some of those devastating effects of what an initial puberty actually turned out to be for me. So when I think about that experience, this is such an attack on the rights of trans youth and their well-being.
This last week was the sixth anniversary of a Black trans man named Blake Brockington, who died by suicide. His story is one in which he rose to visibility after becoming the first openly transgender homecoming king in North Carolina. He received so much hate, particularly online. He was estranged from his family. And we see what those pressures ultimately meant for him. He is no longer here.
And what I don’t think a lot of these anti-trans lawmakers understand is that they are literally putting children’s lives at risk. They are making it so difficult for their families, their guardians, the people in their lives to get access to the information and the support that they may need to safely and healthily and affirmatively raise these children. It’s interesting that so much of the discussion is centered on protecting women and girls because they’re doing just the opposite.
One of the things that the letter mentions is that 2020 was the deadliest year on record for the trans community. I was wondering if you could talk about why that was the case.
Trans people are so crucial in the fight for gender liberation because we literally shatter those restrictive boxes that we’re all placed into.Last year, we had more than 40 murders of trans people, mostly Black and brown trans women. We can’t ignore the devastating impacts of violent rhetoric. When there are lawmakers actively testifying in state legislatures and at the Capitol—if you think of someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene—spouting off misinformation about transgender people, painting us as a threat, that puts us in danger.
You’ve positioned this letter as a letter from feminists. There has been a push by some particularly famous women to exclude trans women from the feminist movement, especially over the last year. Do you think they can be persuaded to be more inclusionary or is this a more permanent split in the feminist movement?
Honestly I would rather put my energy into organizing and working with those women and feminists who have demonstrably showed up to support our community rather than using it to transform a fringe faction of so-called feminists.That is not my work. That’s not my aim. There may be another trans leader or trans person who is interested in doing that work. Just like I wouldn’t go to a white-supremacist group and try and convince them of my humanity—that’s ridiculous to me.
But with this letter it was so important for us to have a dialogue with feminist organizations and particularly prominent women. There haven’t been enough opportunities for people to truly show their support for trans women and girls. There is an anti-trans agenda that supposedly says it’s about protecting women and girls, but that movement is often led by cisgender men. I think it’s important for us as women to come together and say, “Hey, we know the patriarchy is a lie, and we know that bigoted people are trying to turn us against each other to weaken our movement.”
How would you like to see the feminist movement evolve going forward?
When I think about where the feminist movement is now, trans people are so crucial in the fight for gender liberation because we literally shatter those restrictive boxes that we’re all placed into. We talk about this as a trans fight, but in truth it’s a fight for everyone because we are all impacted by gender.
What trans people are fighting for liberates all of the women and girls who are told that they can’t be strong, brilliant, capable leaders and in control of their own destiny. It liberates the men and boys who are told that they can’t have a full emotional experience and they have to move through the world with a mission of domination. It liberates all of us.
And our society is going to catch up. We’re not there yet. That is clear. But I think more and more as we see the younger generation coming up that sees that restrictive ideas of gender are bullsh-t—excuse my French—we are moving towards a more liberated society.
If my memories of 2019 are correct, March tends to be a month of anticipation even in relatively normal times. The snow has melted, but the trees are still bare. The temperature’s rising, but not consistently enough to put your winter coat in storage. All of that nervous early-spring energy is heightened this year, as we wait our turns in the vaccination queue and cross our fingers that the variants won’t halt our progress toward herd immunity. My favorite new TV shows of the month—a detective story set in Northern Ireland, a pulpy Spanish thriller, a mouthwatering kids’ show, a docudrama filled with ecstatic musical numbers and a nostalgic blast from reality TV’s primordial past—probably say a lot about how I’m dealing with that impatience: through the pursuit of big, bright, unapologetically entertaining distractions. Maybe you’d like to do the same?
Bloodlands (Acorn TV)
Although they officially ended in 1998, the decades of political conflict known as The Troubles cast a long shadow over Ireland and the UK—and particularly the relationships between factions within UK-controlled Northern Ireland—that still hasn’t faded. Bloodlands, a four-part BBC crime drama that broke ratings records in Northern Ireland and has since been renewed for a second season, awakens the ghosts of that sectarian violence. The great James Nesbitt (who British-thriller fans will remember from his harrowing performance in the first season of The Missing) stars as Tom Brannick, a Belfast police detective whose investigation of a car that was pulled out of a lake also dredges up the darkest period of his history. This slow-burning but not overlong mystery contains no wild, subversive stylistic flourishes; it’s just a chilly, thoughtful, well-written and superbly acted story that connects specific, personal grief with the larger understanding that it takes more than a peace treaty to heal the scars of civil war.
Genius: Aretha (Nat Geo)
It is the push of Aretha Franklin’s incandescent talent and tireless ambition, and the pull of her complicated past that animate the third season of National Geographic Channel’s docudrama series Genius and its first to spotlight a woman or person of color. Created by Suzan-Lori Parks, the Pulitzer-winning, MacArthur-anointed playwright who scripted the recent film The United States vs. Billie Holiday, Aretha is an uneven yet largely thoughtful, gripping and visually stunning portrait of a generational talent. Its sensitive, though not hagiographic, narrative illuminates a superstar with a widely beloved body of work but a poorly understood biography and inner life. [Read the full review.]
The Real World Homecoming: New York (Paramount+)
If it seems hyperbolic to mention The Real World in the same breath as Rimbaud, then maybe it’s time to acquaint (or reacquaint) yourself with the show’s groundbreaking first season. A hybrid nighttime soap and social experiment inspired by the explosive 1973 docuseries An American Family, its underlying question was: what if, instead of moving in with friends of the same class, race, gender and level of education, a handful of creative young people in downtown Manhattan had to live with peers from a wide range of backgrounds? The answer turned out to be not just surprisingly complex, but also uniquely absorbing.
As a result, we’re now living—perhaps paradoxically—in a world The Real World: New York helped create, to an extent that its cast never could have predicted. Which makes The Real World Homecoming: New York, a reunion series whose March 4 debut coincides with the launch of ViacomCBS streaming service Paramount+, more than a ’90s nostalgia trip. Revisiting the original season before screening the premiere, I found myself imagining a better, alternate version of reality TV that could’ve emerged from its example, one with fewer bachelors, housewives and narcissists, and more people who did come here to make friends. [Read the full review.]
Sky Rojo (Netflix)
On the opposite end of the crime-drama stylistic spectrum from Bloodlands you’ll find this adrenaline rush from Álex Pina and Esther Martínez Lobato, the duo behind Netflix Spain’s international hit Money Heist. In Sky Rojo, the wickedly addictive genre those creators have named “Latin Pulp” meets the women-get-revenge-on-their-sexist-boss comedy of 9 to 5 and the campy, femme-powered capers of Claws, with additional Thelma & Louise fugitive-road-movie and Breaking Bad desert-noir vibes, as three sex workers go on the run from the club where they’ve essentially been imprisoned. Stories about sex work are hard to get right. Give the characters too much agency, and you can erase some grim realities; allow them too little, and you’ve contributed to the widespread depiction of women (especially disadvantaged ones) as helpless and submissive.
Pino and Lobato aren’t what I’d call careful in this lightning-paced thriller, whose tone vacillates between darkly comic and sincerely tragic. So, of course, think pieces debating its feminist credibility have flown. But for me, what makes Sky Rojo more than a blood-and-lipstick exploitation fest is its commitment to giving its lead characters personalities, desires and depth. Our most frequent narrator is Coral (Verónica Sánchez), a smart, loyal alpha with a drug problem. Pop star Lali Espósito plays Wendy, a secretly tenderhearted spitfire from Argentina. Sweet, naive but determined Gina (Yany Prado) was trafficked from Cuba by a man who promised to set her up as a waitress. Everyone here had some trauma to run from long before the trio was forced to hit the road. But this isn’t any kind of social-realist drama, and it doesn’t make sense to judge it as such. It’s pulp—very good pulp—and its modest achievement is making heroes out of characters too often reduced to window dressing.
Waffles + Mochi (Netflix)
Waffles + Mochi, an adorable kids’ show about food from the Obamas’ Higher Ground Productions, feels like a perfect way to pass the seemingly interminable final weeks of lockdown. But neither the timeliness of its debut nor the prestige of its producers is what makes this an instant classic of children’s television; the magic is all in the imaginative, endlessly flexible premise and its outstanding execution. Just one season in, it’s not an exaggeration to call Waffles the Sesame Street of food TV, or Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat Jr.[Read the full review.]
The mere concept of King Kong going up against Godzilla is, as the fancy people say, a false dichotomy. Though many of us may harbor a slight preference for one or the other, there can never be a clear winner or loser because, face it: both are awesome. In fact, the only problem with any enterprise featuring these two most enduring titans is that there is always a necessary but troublesome plot involving people. And humans in these movies—unless being held aloft from a skyscraper-top in a skimpy dress, or trampled beneath a pissed-off reptile’s clumsy, unmanicured toes—are almost always a bore.
They certainly are a plot liability in Godzilla vs. Kong, though it’s not exactly the fault of the actors, who are all perfectly attractive and capable: Rebecca Hall plays brilliant person Ilene Andrews, also known as the Kong Whisperer, for obvious reasons. Alexander Skarsgård is Nathan Lind, a hottie masquerading as a slouchy academic—his specialty is a theory involving something called Hollow Earth, a kind of mirror world beneath the Earth’s surface that may hold secrets to the origins of at least some of moviedom’s favorite monsters. Demián Bechir is Walter Simmons, a slick, ambitious tech giant who is not even as nice as he seems, and he doesn’t seem very nice at all. And Kyle Chandler reprises the role he played in the 2019 Godzilla: King of the Monsters, that of Dr. Mark Russell, a soulful Godzilla stan who nevertheless understands that Godzilla in a bad mood is not a Godzilla you want to be around. (Godzilla vs. Kong, out now on HBO Max, is the fourth film in Legendary Entertainment’s MonsterVerse franchise, co-produced and distributed by Warner Bros., though the plots are all so forgettable that it doesn’t much matter whether you’ve seen the previous films.)
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary PicturesEiza González, Alexander Skarshård, Rebecca Hall and Kaylee Hottle
There are other, younger humans in Godzilla vs. Kong, to further tip the monster-human scale in the wrong direction. Millie Bobby Brown (also returning from King of the Monsters) is Dr. Russell’s teenage daughter, who has become enthralled with the ideas of conspiracy-theory podcaster Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry), an employee of Simmons’ company who knows his boss is up to no good. Kaylee Hottle, as Andrews’ adopted daughter, Jia, gets the best human role in the movie: Jia is deaf—as Hottle is—and she has learned to understand Kong’s thoughts via sign language, a plotline drawn straight from the story of Koko, the late, beloved California gorilla who loved kittens and learned to communicate with humans by signing.
The scenes between the diminutive Jia and her primate friend, who’s about a kazillion times her size, are the movie’s best, at least as far as the ones involving humans go: It’s not just that she can communicate with Kong. She’s also so attuned to his emotions that she can feel the vibration of his heartbeat thrumming through the ground, a lovely poetic flourish. The rest of the Godzilla vs. Kong plot is overly cluttered and instantly forgettable: Simmons enlists Lind’s aid in trekking to Hollow Earth in search of some secret power source, with Kong as a guide. Meanwhile, he’s also perfecting a Godzilla vanquisher in one of his facilities. Meanwhile, Godzilla leaves Florida in a huff and makes his way to Hong Kong, on the way encountering King Kong, who is being transported to a Hollow Earth portal by boat. And so forth.
But, come now: You know you’re really only here for the monsters, squaring off and staring one another down, first at sea and later in the streets of Hong Kong. Director Adam Wingard (Blair Witch, The Guest) makes the most of these moments, fleeting as they are: The Hong Kong fight scenes are particularly gratifying, a melee of orchestrated swiping and tail-swishing that jolt the movie out of its doldrums.
But again, between these two alleged rivals, who can honestly pick a side? Kong is motivated by homesickness, Godzilla by rage—his tiny, alert eyes blink out the message that lives in his heart: Why can’t everyone just leave me alone? Both are misunderstood loners, too big for the modern world. The CGI-created creatures that now populate these movies will never have the pure, stop-motion soul of the miniatures used in earlier films; somehow, especially as filtered through memory, those figures seem more real than real.
Yet the tortured behemoths of Godzilla vs. Kong do have their charms. Kong, his heavy brow bearing all the sorrows of the world, our primate brother in the evolutionary chain, has a few glorious moments here: At one point he floats dreamily into our field of vision on a ship—he is, sadly, sedated and restrained—to the strains of Elvis Presley’s “Loving Arms.” And Godzilla, his disproportionately tiny head filled with bitter thoughts, his spine a row of indignant spikes, just cannot stop himself from angrily stomping through cities. He doesn’t mean to kill people with his atomic breath; they’re just always in the way. Even his addled brain comprehends that only one other creature on Earth understands his true nature. He keeps his friends close and his enemies closer. As in pro wrestling, any fight to the finish is purely for show.
Pfizer-BioNTech says their COVID-19 vaccine is 100% efficacious in protecting adolescents aged 12 to 15 years from COVID-19 disease.
On March 31, the companies released a statement summarizing the results of their study of the safety and efficacy of their vaccine, which is already authorized in the U.S. and elsewhere for use in adults 16 years or older, in this younger age group. The results have been highly anticipated as state and local leaders—not to mention parents—are to keen send teens back to in-person school; this study suggests a path towards a return to pre-pandemic learning conditions, in which students won’t spread COVID-19 in the classroom.
The trial involved 2,260 adolescents 12 to 15 years old, who were randomly assigned to get two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine or two doses of placebo. During the study, which began earlier this year, 18 teens developed COVID-19, all of them in the placebo group. The researchers found that the levels of virus-fighting antibodies generated by those getting the vaccine were considerably higher than levels among those receiving the placebo.
“We share the urgency to expand use of our vaccine to additional populations and are encouraged by the clinical trial data from adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in the statement. Based on the new data, the companies plan to ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to expand emergency use authorization for the vaccine to include 12- to 15-year-olds.
Even more encouraging the antibody levels exceeded the levels of those in the 16-25 year old age group in the original adult trial of the shots. And the researchers found no significant side effects from the vaccine among the teens, although they will continue to monitor them for long term efficacy of the shot as well as side effects for two years.
Those data will ultimately help to enhance understanding of how COVID-19 affects children. So far, experts say children don’t seem to be affected by the virus as severely as older adults, although protecting them from symptoms of the disease is critical, not least as an additional way to curb spread of the virus. In a recent study of adults published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, scientists found that the mRNA-based vaccine not only protects against symptoms of the disease, but can ward off infection with the virus in the first place. The adolescent study wasn’t designed to confirm this in the younger population as well, but given younger people’s more responsive immune systems, it’s likely they might benefit from the same protection from infection. That would mean vaccinated students are far less likely to spread the virus in a school setting because they’re less likely to get infected to begin with.
THEM, a new series following a Black family that moves to Los Angeles in the 1950s, promises to thrill audiences in April 2021 when it lands on Amazon Prime Video. Also coming to the streaming platform in April is Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse, starring Michael B. Jordan as a Navy SEAL seeking to avenge the murder of his pregnant wife when he stumbles on an international conspiracy.
A collection of classic and beloved comedies are also streaming on Amazon Prime Video in April 2021, including My Cousin Vinny, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Here are all the series and movies available on Amazon Prime Video this month.
Here are the new Amazon Prime Video originals in April 2021
Available April 9
THEM
Available April 30
Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse
Here are the movies streaming on Amazon PrimeVideoin April 2021
Available April 1
A Hologram For The King
Anna Karenina
Art of Falling in Love
A Simple Plan
Because I Said So
Bob Roberts
Brüno
Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter
Chato’s Land
Cheech & Chong’s Still Smokin’
Cohen And Tate
Devil In A Blue Dress
Did You Hear About The Morgans?
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Evan Almighty
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Four Weddings And A Funeral
Frankie & Alice
Girl With A Pearl Earring
Gunfighters Of Abilene
Hancock
Head Of State
How To Train Your Dragon
Inception
Johnny English
Lady In ACage
Larry Crowne
League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Lords Of Dogtown
Love in Harmony Valley
Madea’s Big Happy Family
Madea Goes To Jail
Mad Max
Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World
Men Of HonorMilk
Minority Report
Monster’s Ball
Moonrise Kingdom
Motel Hell
My Cousin Vinny
New In Town
Open Range
Platoon
Shaft
Shooter
Sleeping With The Enemy
Smiley Face Killers
So I Married An Axe Murderer
That Thing You Do!
The Abyss
The Dead Zone
The Devil’s Double
The Gift
The Happening
The Hunting Party
The Lincoln Lawyer
The Man Who Could Cheat Death
The Pawnbroker
The Program
The Replacement Killers
The Skull
The Sum Of All Fears
Untraceable
Valerie
Waiting To Exhale
What About Bob?
Available April2
Unhinged
Available April 3
Blair Witch
April 7
Girl From Monaco
High-Rise
Pulse
Ragnarok
The Answer Man
The Priest
Trollhunter
Available April 12
Paranormal Activity 4
Spontaneous
AvailableApril 14
Burden
Cézanne Et Moi
Terror’s Advocate
Available April 16
Somewhere
Wander
Available April 21
Merantau
Muay ThaiGiant
The Hero Of Color City
Venus And Serena
April 26
The Artist
April 28
Arrival
Barry Munday
Harlem Aria
Kiltro
The Commune
The Warlords
Here are the TV shows streaming on Amazon Prime Video in April 2021
