New York summers wouldn’t be complete without a healthy dose of outdoor movies, and Brooklyn Magazine just announced a lineup of screenings that will take place across four iconic locations throughout Brooklyn.

From June through September, you can catch screenings of some of the best movies from the Paramount+ franchise at McCarren Park, Prospect Park’s Long Meadow, Fort Greene Park and, for the first time in the series’ history, Coney Island. 

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The screenings are part of a collaboration between Brooklyn Magazine, Paramount+ and BSE Global. The series will kick off on June 7 in McCarren Park with a screening of the comedy Zoolander starring Ben Stiller. 

For the first time, complimentary popcorn will be provided at each screening on a first-come-first-serve basis with proof of RSVP, which you can access here. Barcode, a plant-based functional beverage, will also serve samples at all events in July and August.

This will also be the first year that screenings will take place at Coney Island. “From landmark independent films like Little Fugitive to classics like The Warriors, Coney Island has long been both the scene and the star of great cinema since movies were invented,” Daniel Murphy, Executive Director at Alliance for Coney Island, said in a statement. “We are thrilled to partner with Paramount+, Rooftop Films, and Brooklyn Magazine to take part in the tradition of outdoor movie screenings for the first time.”

The Brooklyn Nets and New York Liberty will host activations at select screenings that will involve DJs, interactive games, photo opps, giveaways and surprise appearances. 

Here is the full lineup:

McCarren Park

• June 7 – Zoolander
• June 14 – Empire Records
• June 28 – But I’m a Cheerleader

Prospect Park, Long Meadow

• June 26 – Raiders of the Lost Ark
• July 3 – Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
• July 10 – School of Rock
• July 17 – Clueless

Coney Island, Coney Island Beach at West 12th Street

• July 11 – New feature film to be announced
• July 18 – Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
• July 25 – Everything Everywhere All At Once
• Aug. 1 – Love and Basketball
• Aug. 8 – The Warriors

Fort Greene Park

• Aug. 15 – Past Lives
• Aug. 22 – School Daze
• Aug. 29 – Bob Marley: One Love
• Sept. 5 – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

All screenings in the series will happen at sunset, which means times will vary throughout the summer, so make sure to check out Brooklyn Magazine’s website for exact times.

* This article was originally published here

Moving away from the stage adaptations and revivals that seem to have dominated Broadway throughout the past few years, Maybe Happy Ending is a new musical romantic comedy starring Ryan Murphy darling Darren Criss alongside Helen J. Shen, who will make her Broadway debut.

Maybe Happy Ending is set to begin previews at the Belasco Theatre at 111 West 44th Street near Sixth Avenue on September 18 and officially open on October 17. No announcement has yet been made regarding ticket sales. 

Based in Seoul, the show was actually written in both Korean and English. The former version, which debuted back in 2016 at the DaeMyung Culture Factory in Seoul, won six Korean Musical Awards, including one for Best Musical. The English iteration of the production premiered in Atlanta during the 2019-2020 season but had yet to reach New York audiences.

Throughout all previous runs, Maybe Happy Ending was praised for its off-kilter yet fascinating plot.

In the show, Criss plays Oliver, a HelperBot 3, “a robot that has long been retired and considered obsolete,” according to an official synopsis. Living a happy, quiet life in his one-room apartment in Seoul, Oliver eventually mets his fellow HelperBot neighbor Claire (Shen) and the two embark on “a unique friendship, a surprising adventure, and maybe even…love?”

“I am so very happy to be joining the enchanting world of Maybe Happy Ending,” Criss said in an official statement. “I can’t wait for audiences to take part in this wonderfully original theatrical experience, and behold a story from a future that explores one of the most ancient questions of humanity- why love?”

American composer Will Aronson worked on the music for the show, with lyrics by Hue Park and a book by the both of them together. Tony Award winner Michael Arden of Parade and Once on this Island fame will direct the show, which will also feature The Voice’s Dez Duron’s Broadway debut. 

* This article was originally published here

Back in November 2021, when Barbados threw a glittering ceremony to ditch the British monarchy and become a republic, it stirred up a whale of emotions among its regional neighbors, with calls for authorities in nearly every Caribbean Community (Caricom) member state to follow suit.

Broadcast live to the world and attended by Prince Charles, then heir to the British throne, millions of people around the world—Caribbean citizens in particular—watched as the eastern Caribbean island completed what officials had said was the full circle of independence and decolonization as a local ceremonial president replaced then-Queen Elizabeth as the nation’s head of state.

Among those making the loudest noises was Jamaica, with patriots and nationalists bemoaning the fact that the island had not made any concrete steps to dump the British monarchy and then Queen Elizabeth in more than 60 years as an independent nation.

Now, Jamaica’s latest efforts to join fellow Caricom member states Guyana, Trinidad, Barbados, and Dominica as a republic have hit a major snag: The main opposition People’s National Party (PNP) has reminded all and sundry in the past week that it will not vote in parliament to support the move unless and until the governing Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) agrees to a full decolonization process all at once by ditching the British Privy Council at the country’s final court. 

The PNP wants the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to be the island’s apex court. Unless this is done, the PNP will not support any moves to republicanism because it describes ditching the monarchy but not the Privy Council as a half measure that it does not agree with. 

The JLP says the Privy Council will disappear in phase two of the decolonization process, but the PNP has suspicions about this because the JLP has traditionally been steadfast in opposition to the CCJ. It still prefers that white, British, bewigged law lords hear appeal cases from Jamaica despite legal and administrative costs, as well as logistical challenges.

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To become a republic, both parties need to support each other, because the requirements involve a complex web of constitutional moves, including a referendum and a two-thirds majority vote, among other rules.

Late last week, the PNP announced that it had instructed its representatives on the national constitutional reform commission not to sign off on the report about republicanism until the government agrees to its demands to also quit the British court as the nation’s final level of appeal.

“For us to say goodbye to the monarch, we need a consensus—a solid agreement between government and opposition—before the people are asked to decide,” said Legal Affairs Minister Marlene Malahoo Forte over the weekend as Opposition Leader Mark Golding reinforced his party’s opposition to the phased or piecemeal approach to republicanism. “The committee from the outset agreed to work by consensus, knowing that our founding fathers envisioned that attempts to reform the constitution, especially those deeply entrenched provisions, would fail unless the two political parties forming government and opposition sing from the same hymn sheet.”

The post Jamaica’s road to a republic hits a major snag appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here