It’s been about 37 years since the Wicked cast began their press tour in support of the new movie adaptation of the Broadway musical. (Which is itself an adaptation of a novel. Which is inspired by a movie. That was based on a book.) But now that it’s finally in theaters, we can all talk about it instead of just speculate about it. The biggest takeaway: It’s so good! Thank goodness! Congratulotions to all involved. I published my proper review earlier this week, which, to stay on theme with the interminable running time of the movie (2 hours and 40 minutes—one of the few legitimate things to complain about) and its endless marketing campaign, is way way too long. But hey, I’m a theater gay and this is the Wicked movie—of course I was going to ramble on overenthusiastically, whether or not people are still paying attention. In any case, read it here . (Give me those precious clicks!) What I wanted to do here instead is offer the CliffsNotes version of the things that, if you happen to be curious about the film, you should know. In other words, what people have been asking me about in the week since I made getting to see the Wicked movie early my entire personality. Yes, Ariana Grande really is perfect as Galinda. (The Galinda/Glinda name is a whole thing. Go ask the closest gay about it.) Because Kristin Chenoweth put such an indelible signature on the character as the original Galinda, it can be easy to simply replicate her flirts, flounces, and flourishes and still get a rousing response. Grande really shows her musical theater bonafides in the way she pays homage to the Galindas before, but very much makes the part her own with a screwball tenacity that adds a bit more sophisticated humor and grit to the part. The film forcefully ends any discussion over whether this needed to be two parts—each act of the musical is a standalone movie—with its “Defying Gravity” finale. Director Jon M. Chu reimagines the roof-shattering number as a nearly 15-minute action sequence. Elphaba and Glinda (no longer with the “Ga”) are chased through the Wizard’s Emerald City castle, attacked by flying monkeys, attempt a hot air balloon heist, and climb up the scaffolding of a belltower, all while singing verses of the song. The battle-cry belt that is the song’s climax is actually interrupted by thrilling sequences of Elphaba zooming through the sky on her broom. There’s a scene of Grande as Glinda staring at Erivo singing as she evades flying monkeys that was so powerful, I got chills. Obviously the movie was going to end after that. You can’t just casually move on to the next scene. Beyond the dazzling visuals, set design, and effects, there were two scenes that really drove home for me how a cinematic adaptation of the musical enriches it. The first was “What Is This Feeling?” which begins with a split-screen of Galinda and Elphaba as they duet, a film trick that amplifies the humor of the song. The second is the Ozdust Ballroom interlude of “Dancing Through Life,” when Elphaba nervously, yet excitedly arrives, thinking she’s going to finally be accepted, only to realize that she was set up to be bullied. Chu takes his time in this scene, with each aching second that passes jackhammering at your heart even more forcefully. Erivo’s more tender, wounded approach to Elphaba really justifies itself in this sequence, matched by a guilt-ridden, heartbroken Grande. All of the viral videos of the actresses breaking down in tears during interviews starts to make sense after you’ve seen how intense their emotional connection is during these scenes. Fellow Ozians, I cried pretty much throughout this entire section of the movie, and I am not ashamed to admit it. And while Grande and Erivo are truly fantastic, I think the biggest buzz from moviegoers after they see this is going to be something along the lines of, “Holy hell, Jonathan Bailey!!!” Forgot whatever twister it was that brought Dorothy Gale and her witch-crushing house to Munchkinland. That’s a drizzly rain cloud compared to the seismic weather event of sexual magnetism and relentless charisma that is Bailey’s performance as Fiyero in this film. It’s not just my embarrassing middle-school-girl-like crush on him that is saying this. It is the kind of, “Oh wow, that is a movie star ” kind of revelation is so exciting and rare. His Fiyero is a self-aware pansexual cad who has giddy chemistry with every living thing he encounters, and whose charm streak is matched by an emotional intelligence we typically don’t afford daffy Prince Charming types. And you can see that he is having an absolute blast through every acrobatic dance step of “Dancing Through Life.” Fans of the stage production will be glad to know that the movie has, to the best of its ability, “fixed” the worst part of the show: Dr. Dillamond, the professor who is also a goat who is being silenced by the government. “Something Bad” is reimagined as a puppet show that turns out to be really eerie and unsettling, making it more vital to the plotline in which Elphaba becomes radicalized. (I am bracing myself for the inevitable thinkpieces about “How the Wicked Movie Is a Timely Rallying Cry Against Fascism.”) Yet there is one thing the movie doesn’t manage to improve. If you’re going to take a bathroom break, I heartily recommend doing it when the Wizard shows up and starts singing “A Sentimental Man.” Apologies to J eff Goldblum , but it’s simply a snooze, arriving unfortunately at the exact time you’re going to pull out your phone and be like “OK, this movie is taking forever already...how much time is left?” I could go on and on. (Who has 45 minutes to talk with me about the staging of “I’m Not That Girl”?) But I think these are the major talking points. If you care to find me to talk more in depth, look to the Western sky find me on social media and let’s dish.888sport free bet 。

DENVER — As part of a national “moonshot” to cure blindness, researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus will receive as much as $46 million in federal funding over the next five years to pursue a first-of-its-kind full eye transplantation. “What was once a dream — to cure blindness — is potentially within our grasp,” the campus’ chancellor, Don Elliman, said during a press conference Monday morning. The University of Colorado team, led by researcher Dr. Kia Washington, was one of four in the United States that received funding awards from the federal Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health , or ARPA-H. The CU-based group will focus on achieving the first-ever vision-restoring eye transplant by using “novel stem cell and bioelectronic technologies,” according to a news release announcing the funding. Researchers have already successfully completed the transplant procedure — albeit without vision restoration — in rats. Now they’re set to proceed to larger animals, Washington said. A team at New York University performed a full eye transplant on a human patient in November 2023, though the procedure — while successful — did not restore the patient’s vision. Washington said developing a small-animal model, even without vision restoration, was a key milestone in advancing the project. The goal is to fully restore the optic nerve — which carries visual information from the eye to the brain — and to fully connect a patient’s brain with a donor’s eye. The CU team will work on large animals next to advance “optic nerve regenerative strategies,” the school said, as well as to study immunosuppression, which is critical to ensuring that patients’ immune systems don’t reject a donated organ. The goal is to eventually advance to human trials. ARPH-A, created two years ago, will oversee the teams’ work in the coming years. Researchers at 52 institutions nationwide will contribute to the teams. The CU-led group will include researchers from the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University and Johns Hopkins University, as well as from the National Eye Institute . The total funding available for the teams is $125 million, ARPA-H officials said Monday. The money is provided in a contract, not a grant, and ARPA-H officials likened it to a venture capital approach: The four teams will compete alongside each other, and projects showing success or promise will receive full funding over the next five years. The teams may also be combined or lean on each other, depending on their results, Washington said in an interview. The project is ambitious, officials said. But its success could unlock deeper medical advancements. “If you can do this, just think about what you could do for traumatic brain injury, for spinal cord injury,” said ARPA-H’s Dr. Calvin Roberts, an ophthalmologist who will oversee the broader project. “And so those of us who work in the eye, what we love about working in the eye is that it’s just a model for things that are going around elsewhere in the body.” The other teams’ research will include “3-D printed click-lock gel technology with micro-tunneled scaffolds containing stem cell-derived retinal cells,” donor eye procurement and the actual performing of transplant surgeries, according to ARPA-H. The effort to cure blindness, Washington joked, was “biblical” in its enormity — a reference to the Bible story in which Jesus cures a blind man. She and others also likened it to a moonshot, meaning the effort to successfully put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon nearly 50 years ago. If curing blindness is similar to landing on the moon, then the space shuttle has already left the launchpad, Washington said. “We have launched,” she said, “and we are on our trajectory.” ©2024 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at denverpost.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.What should you set your heat to in the winter? Avoid thermostat wars with these tips

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Chandrababu Naidu is back in the driver’s seat and he’s stepping on the gas. The longest-serving chief minister of Andhra Pradesh—including a 9-year stint from 1995 to 2004 at the helm of the undivided state—is now on his fourth term. In October, Naidu made national headlines when he publicly accused his predecessor Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy (better known as YSR) of permitting the use of ghee adulterated with animal fat to make the famous Tirumala laddus. Done with that bit of ‘political drama’, Naidu’s now back to his old self, that of a CEO-type leader, bidding to reprise his role as the architect of a high-tech Hyderabad to rival Bengaluru. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief presented a budget of Rs 30 lakh crore with a slew of ambitious plans to make AP a global economic and tech hub with massive infusions of money and technology in several industrial sectors. Setting an ambitious 15 per cent annual growth rate and a target of 20 lakh jobs in the next five years, Naidu said the state would invest in its youth to set the tone. He announced a clutch of new industrial parks, huge investments in agrobased food-processing sectors and innovation hubs to achieve his goal of making AP a global manufacturing hub. The centrepiece of Naidu’s tech vision is the creation of a ‘drone city’ in Orvakal in Kurnool district spread over 300 acres. Announced last month at the Amaravati Drone Summit 2024 in Mangalagiri, it envisages an investment of Rs 1,000 crore, the generation of 40,000 jobs and the churning out of 25,000 skilled drone pilots. With a 20 per cent subsidy on investments and a Rs 500 crore allocation for the rollout, it is also an attempt to lure over a 100 drone companies to the state. Andhra Pradesh will be competing with the neighbouring states of Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, all of whom have drone ambitions. The Andhra Pradesh Drone Policy 4.0 (2024–29) aims to transform the state into the country’s primary destination for drone technology, said AP Drone Corporation CMD K. Dinesh Kumar. The drone market is estimated to grow rapidly over the next 5 years (one estimate puts it at 17 per cent annually), fuelled by galloping demand from diverse sectors like agriculture, defence and e-commerce. With a shift from military use to commercial applications in agriculture (crop assessment), urban planning for smart city interventions and healthcare (medical supplies delivery), the government is also looking at ways to include drones in the delivery of government services and seeks to appoint special ‘drone innovation officers’ in government departments. Andhra Pradesh already has a record of delivering public services such as monthly payments to older women and rations at people’s doorsteps. It will be interesting to see how drones could up this game. Seaplane tourism takes off A De Havilland Twin Otter Series 400 seaplane is the centrepiece of a new tourist attraction that the state is touting. It made its inaugural flight on 9 November, taking off from Punnami Ghat (near Prakasam Barrage) in Vijayawada for a short hop to Srisailam in Nandyal district. CM Chandrababu Naidu, who travelled on the flight, said seaplane tourism offered an innovative way to promote tourism in the state. It was, he said, essential to harness technology to promote growth, adding it would also improve local connectivity and supplement existing air services. According to the state tourism minister, the test run was a demonstration of the feasibility of seaplane flights as a method to showcase picturesque locations in the state including Araku Valley, Lambasinghi, Rushikonda, Kakinada and the temple town of Tirumala. Laddus, anyone? Coming in from the cold A long-time member of the banned CPI(Maoist) group has surrendered to the police after more than three decades on the run. Kodi Manjula, a.k.a. Nirmala, was a Dandakaranya special committee member of the group. The 46-year-old gave herself up to the Warangal commissioner of police, Amber Kishore Jha. The Rs 20 lakh reward for her capture was handed over by cheque towards her rehabilitation. Manjula had joined the People’s War Group (a forerunner of the Maoist party) after her brother and a close relative, both Naxalites, were killed in police action. She was reportedly involved in several Maoist operations, including the 2013 attack on a convoy of the Indian National Congress in Darbha valley, Chhattisgarh. Among the 27 people killed was Congress leader V.C. Shukla. Manjula’s surrender is symptomatic of the waning of the Maoist movement in the central Indian jungles of Bastar, following a crackdown by successive state and central governments. A pale shadow of itself, it has lost considerable ground in Andhra Pradesh, which had nurtured the revolutionary movement in its early stages. Sustained police action, combined with substantial reform measures, led to operations being shifted to Odisha and Chhattisgarh. Vizag to see Singapore-style Marina Bay Sands facility The demolition of the Taj group’s iconic Gateway hotel on Beach Road, Visakhapatnam has been received with mixed feelings by locals. Originally the Sea Pearl hotel dating back to 1988, the Gateway, which opened in 2018, quickly became a city landmark with its vintage charm. Varun Hospitality, which now owns the prime property, announced its plans to come up with a new mixed-use facility along the lines of Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands. The proposed structure includes a deluxe hotel with 374 sea-facing rooms and a rooftop replete with bars, restaurants, swimming pool and helipad. The project which claims to minimise its carbon footprint with advanced green technologies such as double-glazed windows, is estimated to cost Rs 500 crores and is expected to be finished by 2028. Follow us on: Facebook , Twitter , Google News , Instagram Join our official telegram channel ( @nationalherald ) and stay updated with the latest headlines