Month: November 2026

If you’ve seen ER and The Pitt, you probably know that they have two things in common: they’re terrific shows… and they’re about doctors. Beyond that, they’re clearly different in their characters, their plots, their style and, above all, their tone. However, in the United States that seemed to be enough to spark a lawsuit that could end in some pretty absurd financial consequences for the HBO Max series.

An expedited trial

Michael Crichton’s widow, the showrunner of ER, filed the lawsuit in August 2024, months before The Pitt had even premiered, and it’s now, two seasons later, that it is reaching a conclusion: “There are clear and numerous similarities between The Pitt and ER, such as the setting of an emergency room, the fast pace, the medical chatter, the graphic depictions of injuries and a young, incompetent doctor fresh out of medical school”.

And that’s it. Enough, apparently, to have a prima facie case, and now the final outcome will depend on a trial to determine whether The Pitt really is a derivative work of ER or not. Sarah Crichton, the widow, though, is very grateful: “I look forward to seeing our case, which affects writers, creators and their families, presented to a jury”.

Meanwhile, the team behind The Pitt is preparing to launch its season 3 amid all kinds of awards, several Emmy wins and a streak that seems set to continue for a long time. So, all signs point to them brushing off the lawsuit and making it go nowhere.

A few years ago, Russell Brand was everywhere. Not just with his stand-up show, but also because of Rock of Ages, Despicable Me, or the series Ballers. In 2023, the actor played his last role, in the film Under the Boardwalk, and since then everything we’ve known about him hasn’t exactly been encouraging. Quite the opposite: Brand was accused of rape and sexual harassment that same year, and now we finally know the verdict. He is, indeed, guilty.

Russell found guilty

Of the 7 charges he was facing, he was found not guilty of 3 (for lack of evidence) and guilty of 4: three sexual assaults and one rape. The judge has made it clear that he’ll end up in prison one way or another, but, although the length of the sentence still isn’t known, one thing is clear: they were right and he deserves to rot in prison.

“You have been convicted of several offenses, including rape. I believe that, therefore, I have to keep you in custody because the temptation to avoid returning to court to be sentenced would be too great”, the judge stated. No one in Hollywood will miss him, honestly.

Apparently, Brand gave a thumbs-up, saying “I’m fine” while they were taking him back to the holding cells. No one knows how long he’ll be sentenced for, but it seems clear that, at the very least, it will be several decades, or even for life. So the film world can start forgetting about him. Luckily.

The internet blew up when it became known that Aslan, the lion from The Chronicles of Narnia, would be played by Meryl Streep. Everyone started tearing their hair out and demanding explanations from Greta Gerwig, the director of the new version, while wishing Liam Neeson were back, who voiced him in the previous films. To no one’s surprise, the actor couldn’t care less about the controversy and thinks it’s all wonderful.

Meryl, a lioness

In fact, when he was asked about it in a recent interview, Neeson replied with a terse “Sorry, I had no idea”. And if he couldn’t care less, the rest of us shouldn’t care at all either. “Meryl is playing Jesus Christ? Well, if you’re going to make Christ a woman, nobody better than Meryl”, he added. Because, in general, nobody better than Meryl.

Of course, there’s a reason Gerwig chose Streep over other options: “I wanted someone who could communicate depth and pathos as well as joy and delight. I wanted someone over 70, so there’d be wisdom and experience, but who also had the capacity for wonder, like a child. And also be one of the best actors in history. The list isn’t that long”.

On February 12 we’ll get our answer with a film that, rumor has it, hasn’t been liked quite as much as it should have within Netflix itself. Of course, it won’t be because they haven’t given it a chance: it will have a six-week theatrical run, which is unusual for Netflix, and it’s the streamer’s pivot (possibly permanent) toward theatrical releases. Whether it will last or not, that’s still to be seen.

Maybe if I mention Eddie Marsan to you he doesn’t ring a bell, but the truth is that he’s going to become one of your favorite actors of the year, when you see him raising hell playing Thráin, the elder brother of King Durin IV in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. In the dwarven Game of Thrones the series is setting up for season 3, he’s got every chance to be one of the favorites to take the crown… And the funny thing is this isn’t the first time he’s crossed paths with the saga.

2,000 ears to rule them all

Because it turns out Marsan is married to Janine Schneider-Marsan, one of the makeup artists on the original trilogy, as he himself says: “I was shooting Gangs of New York and I flew out to see her in New Zealand, where we’d spend some time together. And she kept going for years afterward to do the sequels and do pickup shoots. So it was part of the start of our marriage for three or four years”.

In fact, since she did the makeup for Orlando Bloom and Liv Tyler, she couldn’t help taking the work home with her. Literally: “In our old house, in the attic, we had about 2,000 pairs of Orlando Bloom ears”. And if you’re wondering how you live with that many ears, the actor himself has an answer: “I was this close to taking them to the set of The Rings of Power to see if they wanted them! But they were already part of our family”. Literally, a house with ears everywhere.

The actor makes it clear that he was already watching the series, and that he adored the end of season 2. “I thought it was incredible. And then they come to me and say, ‘Would you like to play Peter Mullan’s son?’. And two things were going on. I wanted to do it because I thought the series was brilliant, the script was great, the direction too, and the action. But also so I could piss Peter off and say I was going to play his son”. Ah, pissing off your friends: the reason you do everything in life.

There are games that transcend their time. No matter what one thinks of them, whether one likes them more or less, they go beyond their era. They define what videogames will be beyond what videogames are doing at the time and, in hindsight, they seem grandiose. Almost prophetic. They invent other ways of playing, of seeing the medium, and they become masterpieces, precisely, because of how they do things that today seem normal, but at the time were not.

Obviously, there aren’t many of these games. And not all of them are obvious. One of the most obvious is Super Mario 64: a game without which 3D platformers, or 3D games in general, that came after it wouldn’t be understood. One of the least obvious is Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain: a game that has shaped a way of interacting with the environment and the tools at your disposal that even today we still don’t fully grasp. But if one game is obvious, yet we’re not always aware of it, it’s The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

A game that is already absolutely modern

Originally released in 1998 for Nintendo 64, the game was revolutionary from its very first minute. Widely considered the best game ever made, a masterpiece even even by the series’ and Nintendo’s standards, and receiving astonishing critical acclaim and public enthusiasm, it was a game received as a triumph. And rightly so. Especially in hindsight.

Everything about it feels modern. At least, in its most relevant aspects. There are obvious limitations in the graphics and in the controls, but not in the design. Although the dungeons translate what the franchise’s 2D games were doing into a 3D framework, this translation felt natural. The fact that there were different heights gave more layers of depth to the design, but it was still essentially the same kind of game. And that’s what they sought to emphasize. And they took advantage of it in another field: playing with what is specific to 3D.

Moving across open terrain, the danger of falling, and the very immersion offered by more realistic graphics (at least, by the standards of the time) in adding the missing dimension needed to resemble reality, makes the game feel more believable. It still had the spirit of the classics, but it knew exactly what to add to make them feel deeper and more lived-in. And for a 1998 game, neither did the camera betray us nor did the movement feel rough or clumsy, which was an achievement in itself.

Its achievement was carrying everything they had learned in 2D over into 3D without anything being lost along the way. Or with as little being lost as possible. And taking advantage of everything 3D offered: cutscenes, stronger audiovisual storytelling, and greater realism. And that made it revolutionary.

A game you have to be faithful to

In that sense, what can a remake contribute to a game that is, literally, the game that showed what 3D should add when, in gameplay terms, the most important aspects can carry over almost entirely from what they were already doing in 2D? On paper, it can’t contribute anything. Except one thing. It can bring a new version of the classic to a new generation. And that’s exactly what Nintendo has done. But they’ve done it in the only way that isn’t an insult to it: recognizing that its choices weren’t flaws to be fixed, but decisions they wouldn’t make today.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake is essentially the same game. It can be beaten from beginning to end with guides from 1998. Its most substantial changes are in graphical terms, now explicitly inspired by puppets, and in some minor aspects, like the introduction of a jump button, but not in any way that changes the game. Because it doesn’t need it. Its design is immortal. And that’s what they wanted to preserve in the game.

Everything in the game is still there. As we remember it. But passed through a filter to be kind to the standards of 2026. Now everything is more detailed, polished, and powerful: the dialogues are more elaborate, the animations and the textures more refined. And the player has to take fewer extra steps. There’s no need to go into the menu so much to perform actions: there are quick-action shortcuts. Does that make this version better? No. It makes it an updated version for a different audience with different standards. Especially because the foundation remains the same.

That’s how remarkable it is. Not a comma has changed in almost 30 years and it remains a masterpiece. How is that possible? Because Nintendo had already refined the Zelda formula with 2D and did nothing more than bring it into 3D, and what Ocarina of Time did was give shape to the possibilities of cinematic presentation. That’s something recent entries, like Breath of the Wild, have exploited at the cost of losing part of their essence: the prodigious mechanical design of games like Ocarina of Time, if we’re talking about 3D, or A Link to the Past, if we’re talking about 2D. And Nintendo itself has decided that it’s time we remember that The Legend of Zelda doesn’t live on that excellent cinematic presentation alone.