HANOI, April 8 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Vietnam next week, Senator Jeff Merkley told a news conference in Hanoi on Saturday, as part of Washington's efforts to move diplomatic relations with Hanoi on to a higher level this year.
That's right. Forget Marvel. This is the show to watch if you want a rich, existential look at the interconnectedness of all things. The world of the OA is vast and the way it works follows the most unexpected rules.
Netflix made a mistake by canceling this show. Many fans believed it was a publicity stunt -- there was no way the streamer would stop funding this acclaimed, if expensive, series intended for five seasons, each wildly different in style and setting from the previous.
A statement released by the regulator on Friday said: 'We consider the volume and potentially serious nature of the issues raised within such a short period to be of great concern - especially given RT's compliance history, which has seen the channel fined £200,000 for previous due impartiality breaches.
Surprisingly, the ending of season 2 almost works as a finale for the whole series. Still, Marling and Batmanglij have the real conclusion tucked away somewhere. Let's pray they have a chance to bring season 3 to the screen. Someone please hop dimensions and rescue this show from the realm of canceled TV.
The OA is difficult to describe, because it sews a handful of different genres into its own ethereal plane. The OA is surreal at times. Yet instead of floating images gently knocking against each other, the sci-fi here is delivered with the grounded assuredness of a Christopher Nolan movie. It moves with the same relentless force.
The TV watchdog said RT's licensee, ANO TV Novosti, is 'not fit and proper' to hold a licence amid 29 ongoing investigations into the 'due impartiality of the news and current affairs coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine'.
The network, which has been described as Vladimir Putin's 'personal propaganda tool', was previously fined £200,000 for 'serious and repeated' breaches of impartiality rules over a string of 2018 broadcasts on the Salisbury poisonings and the Syrian war.
Her charity Sarah's Trust has sent three articulated lorries with supplies to Poland, and she travelled to Warsaw where she was welcomed by Mayor Rafał Kazimierz Trzaskowski, to find out 'what more we can do'.
The OA doesn't abide by any strict TV series formula either. The opening credits don't appear until 57 minutes into the show. It was written like an eight-hour film, with a novelistic approach. You don't meet some of the main characters until a third of the way through.
Prairie has scars on her back and experiences traumatic episodes, but won't burden her adopted parents with her story. Instead, she takes to the internet, finding like-minded friends via the medium of YouTube.
Prince Andrew's ex wife, who is grandmother to Princess Eugenie's son August, one and Princess Beatrice's daughter Sienna, born in September said in an Instagram post: 'I have always believed the smile of a child is the most important thing in the world, so to see so many children caught up in this crisis is particularly affecting.'
And season 2 is even better than the first. It becomes a noir detective story set in Silicon Valley, where kids, one of whom is played by Zendaya, are disappearing after competing in a VR game on an app. Shot with a more polished look, season 2 is slightly less bleak than the character drama of season 1. There are even attempts at humor -- Marling is no stranger to comedy, appearing in Community and British series Babylon.
From here, the story functions a little like the mystery in Yellowjackets. We don't know whether Prairie is telling her new friends the truth or not. We don't know whether she truly has supernatural powers. To them, it doesn't entirely matter. She brings unhappy, trapped people together, showing them the same kindness and understanding they've afforded her. Showing them an escape.
Meanwhile, amid the termination of her conservatorship, Spears famously told the court in June that she wanted to 'get married to my boyfriend [Sam] and have a baby' but that the 'conservatorship told me I can't do that.'
Fergie, who recently returned to her online show Story time With Fergie and Friends to show support to the children of Ukraine, was pictured embracing and comforting young people and their families who have escaped the invasion.
The OA comes from longtime creative team Brit Marling (who also stars as Prairie) and Zal Batmanglij. The show feels like the product of buzzing minds excitedly throwing out idea after idea. The OA is as intense as it is dense, exploring the human condition, mortality, the afterlife and… the multiverse.
It glues itself together with realistic, loyal characters bonded by their harrowing shared ordeals. There's even a believable love story, a flicker of warmth amid the creepy science, cryptic puzzles and trippy imagery.