Entertainment
A Week of Outfits: Laura Tully
“To me, a good outfit is one I don’t have to think about too much,” says Laura Tully, a personal wardrobe stylist who lives in Boise, Idaho, with her husband and three kids. Her ethos — for herself and her clients — is that your wardrobe should serve your life right now. “Style is about caring for yourself in the season you’re in,” she says, “not chasing the hope that one day you’ll be this person or that person.” Here, Laura shares five outfits she wore in a week…
Jacket: H&M. T-shirt: Leset. Jeans: Citizens of Humanity. Belt: Old Navy. Sneakers: Reebok. Baseball cap: Clare V. Earrings: Gorjana.
“I have tried a million white T-shirts, and Leset is by far my favorite. They’re slightly cropped, but I’m 5’9 and I can still raise the roof in these tees without worrying about my bra showing. What I love is that they always come through the wash in good condition and still looking white.”
“I know people love accessories, and so do I, but dressing yourself is like cooking, where sometimes a really good meal has just five ingredients. This barn jacket is like a chunk of really good Parm that you keep in the fridge and use over and over until it’s down to a tiny nub.”
Blazer: Eaves. Jeans: Citizens of Humanity. Shoes: similar.
“I wear this outfit to work meetings. The jeans are super comfortable, which is important to me. I have a three-year-old daughter, a six-year-old son, and a twenty-year-old stepdaughter. I work in and out of the house, and one day I’m crushing it, and the next day I’m like, ‘That could’ve gone better.’ So, I want clothes that don’t require management, because I’m already managing plenty of other things.”
“I’m also really practical when it comes to makeup. I stick to two lip colors: MAC lip pencil in Chicory, which is a warm nutmeg, and if I want more depth, I’ll layer it with the Ilia crayon in Gala, a hydrating dark rose.”
Denim shirt: Madewell, similar. Dress: Bardot, similar.
“For date nights, this dress initially felt a little bit out of the box, since I don’t wear a lot of prints. But now I wear it everywhere! It also has pockets, which I think is just proper math when it comes to skirts and dresses.”
“I grew up in Jamaica. My dad was a shoemaker, and my mom had several jobs, including seamstress work. We had very little means, but my parents instilled in me the idea that, regardless of money, you can be intentional about the clothes that you put on your body. And that can be just as important as the words that come out of your mouth.”
Jacket: Anine Bing, similar. Shirt: Ralph Lauren. Jeans: Citizens of Humanity. Sneakers: Reebok. Earrings: Gorjana.
“I’m in jeans 90% of the time, and I like cuffing or creasing them so it doesn’t feel like I’m wearing the same thing over and over. The key is having denim with a good amount of weight. The higher the cotton percentage, the easier it is to make it look sharp.”
“With my ‘professional’ jeans, I take them to the dry cleaner for what’s called a wet press or cowboy press, which is basically super-heavy starching. Then I bring them home, cuff them, and put a book on top of them for a day. After that, I can wear them for weeks, and they’ll still look crisp and polished.”
Top: H&M, similar. Skirt: Rails. Purse: Saint Laurent. Sneakers: Converse.
“Cute sneakers are my love language. They’re comfy, of course, and sneakers can decompress an outfit, in a good way, you know? When you feel like, ‘This work outfit may be too stuffy,’ throwing on cute sneaks adds something personable that invites other people to let their guard down.”
“Before kids, I had this vision of myself as having it all together. And I hear it all the time from other moms: ‘I just want to feel pulled together.’ I think that phrase can sometimes translate to this ideal Pinterest-board version of your life, and that’s not really going to serve you. You’re always going to feel like, ‘Ugh, I’m not there yet.’ My approach with style is, ‘What’s going on here? What do we need now?’”
Thank you so much, Laura!
P.S. More weeks of outfits, including a New England grandmother and an afrofuturist in Detroit.
(Photos by Maggie Grace for Cup of Jo.)
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Entertainment
The Channing Tatum Action Movie That Blew Away The Competition
By Phillip Moyer
| Updated
White House Down stars Channing Tatum as Marine Corps veteran John Cale, who is working as a Capitol Police officer who applied for a job in the Secret Service before getting rejected as unqualified. However, after a paramilitary group seizes the White House, it’s up to Cale to save the president and stop the terrorists from starting a nuclear war.
While not seen as a bad movie, per se, White House Down wasn’t warmly received by critics when it was released in 2013, leaving the film with a 52 percent Tomatometer rating. The film, directed by Independence Day and Moonfall director Roland Emmerich, was praised for the chemistry between Channing Tatum and co-stars Jamie Foxx and Maggie Gyllenhaal, but derided for its overuse of action movie tropes.
Some critics noted the level of self-awareness the movie had, leading them to consider White House Down a parody rather than a straightforward action thriller.
A Box Office Disappointment
Audiences seemed to enjoy the White House Down, with CinemaScore giving the film an A- audience rating. However, those who took to the internet to share their reviews were similarly lukewarm towards the film, as demonstrated by the film’s 62 percent Popcornmeter score.
Regardless of how audiences felt about White House Down, the movie ended up with disappointing box office returns. The film made $205 million worldwide and only $73 million domestically. With a production budget of $150 million, these numbers were probably not enough for the film to break even after marketing and distribution costs are taken into consideration.
Another Film Hurt White House Down’s Chance Of Box Office Success
One thing that probably didn’t help White House Down was the fact that it was released three months after Olympus Has Fallen; another movie about a terrorist attack on the White House. Olympus Has Fallen starred Gerald Butler as a secret service agent tasked with rescuing President Benjamen Asher (played by Aaron Eckhart) after North Korean terrorists take over the White House.
When raw numbers are taken into account Olympus Has Fallen actually performed slightly worse than White House Down. While both films received an A- CinemaScore, Olympus Has Fallen received a 49 percent Tomatometer score and made $170 million at the box office. However, Olympus Has Fallen only cost $70 million to make, making the less-watched film yield a higher financial return.
While White House Down quitely left theaters, never to be heard from again, Olympus has Fallen spawned two sequels, London Has Fallen (2016) and Angel Has Fallen (2019). Neither sequel ended up selling more tickets than White House Down, but each sequel in the Has Fallen film series cost less to produce than the previous film making each entry into the series a box office success.
Channing Tatum’s Career After White House Down
Channing Tatum went on to receive top billing in a wide variety of films after the moderate failure of White House Down.
This includes reprising the role of the undercover cop Jekno in 22 Jump Street, the villainous Jody Domergue in Quentin Tarantinos The Hateful Eight, and the American spy Tequila in Kingsman: The Golden Circle. He also reprised the role of the male stripper Mike Lane in the sequels Magic Mike XXL and Magic Mike’s Last Dance.
Magic Mike’s Last Dance, coincidentally enough, is another poorly-performing movie that has proved its staying power on streaming. The film only made $57 million off of a $45 million budget. However, after being released on Max, the conclusion of Channing Tatum’s stripper trilogy spent several days in the streaming service’s top three films.
While it’s probably far too late for a White House Down sequel to ever materialize, it remains to be seen whether the recent surge in White House Down’s popularity on streaming will lead to Channing Tatum being given more lead roles in straightforward action films.
White House Down is streaming on Paramount+.
Entertainment
Metas VR Metaverse takes one more step into the grave
When Facebook changed its name to Meta a few years ago, the idea was that the VR metaverse would become a huge pillar for the company. I think we can safely say that’s not going to happen.
On its community forums, Meta confirmed that Horizon Worlds, the flagship “hanging out and doing work meetings in VR” app for Quest headsets, will no longer be available in VR after June 15. It’s not going away entirely, as Meta recently reoriented its metaverse efforts toward a Horizon Worlds mobile app. But Mark Zuckerberg’s COVID-era dream of people spending huge portions of their days wearing VR headsets and messing around in Horizon Worlds seems to be dead.
In fairness to Meta, the multi-platform approach to Horizon Worlds isn’t new. It’s been available on mobile and desktop since 2023, and it must be successful enough in the mobile format for Meta to keep supporting and building upon that version of the Horizon Worlds metaverse. But when it was supposed to be a VR system seller, Horizon Worlds was often the subject of mockery online for its underwhelming visual quality, initial lack of legs for avatars, and its reputation as a virtual ghost town.
Mashable Light Speed
Of course, as of right now, that doesn’t mean Meta is giving up on VR. When it announced that Horizon was going mobile earlier this year, Meta reaffirmed its commitment to VR as a format.
“We have a robust roadmap of future VR headsets that will be tailored to different audience segments as the market grows and matures,” Meta said in a press release. “And Meta remains the single biggest investor in the VR industry. Why? Because we believe in VR as a critical technology on the path to the next computing platform.”
The enduring popularity of things like VRChat signals that there is a market for these sorts of virtual hangout spaces, but Zuckerberg’s specific vision of the metaverse just never really took off as intended. At least we got a few memes out of it.
Entertainment
Shocking, Unrated Horror Flick No One Saw Will Destroy Your Suburban Dreams
By Robert Scucci
| Published
I was having a really good day before I fired up 2009’s Morris County, a three-part horror anthology written and directed by Matthew Garrett about the darkness hiding just beneath the idyllic sheen of modern suburbia. I didn’t know what to expect going into this low-budget romp through the neighborhood, but I figured it would carry the same “everybody has skeletons in their closet” messaging that most films like this do. American Beauty, The Burbs, Happiness, and countless other films have played with this motif with wildly different results, so I went into Morris County with an open mind.
For a film that looks like it was shot for less than $500 (budget information is not publicly available), Morris County still manages to get under your skin and make you want to take a long shower when it’s over. I live in a pretty modern apartment, but still found that I couldn’t get the water hot enough to shock the final sequence out of my brain.
While I can’t say this is the most groundbreaking film of all time, it works with what it has and proves genuinely upsetting on more than one occasion.
Three Stories From The Same Neighborhood
Morris County has a structure that feels deliberate, though it may be coincidental. The first story focuses on a teenage girl named Ellie (Darcy Miller) who has clearly lost her way. She’s shut out her parents and taken to drinking and drugging. It’s implied that she regularly trades sexual favors with the liquor store employees so she can buy booze as a minor. Ellie meets her friends in the woods, and they party like teens do.
She’s not yet fully aware of how her behavior will catch up with her, but she soon finds out and has to make peace with herself when she realizes how far gone she actually is.
Chapter two moves away from teenage chaos and into adult misery. This section focuses on Noah (Albie Selznick), a Jewish man struggling to reconcile his latent homosexuality with his faith. Making matters worse is his wife’s affair, which she thinks she’s successfully concealing even though he’s fully aware of it.
He takes solo trips to the adult video store and attempts to hook up with male suitors, which lands him in more trouble than he anticipated. Broken, miserable, and convinced he’s stepping further away from God’s light, Noah finds himself staring down his family, the bottom of a bottle, and the barrel of a gun. It plays out exactly how you’d expect.
Now that Morris County has progressed through middle age, the final story moves into the golden years through the eyes of Iris (Alice Cannon). Forced into early retirement because of her age, Iris suddenly feels lost without the routine she followed for her entire adult life.
On her first day of retirement, her husband Elmer (Erik Frandsen) dies while watching TV on the couch. In her profound state of grief, Iris decides to live with Elmer’s rotting corpse and go about her daily routine as if nothing has changed. The first few days are manageable, but as Elmer continues to decompose, it becomes painfully clear that the romance and sense of fulfillment Iris is chasing is just as dead as her husband.
A Horrifying Glimpse At Humanity
While its production values leave quite a bit to be desired, Morris County ultimately does everything it sets out to accomplish. It moves through three phases of life, each one more disturbing than the last, highlighting the uncomfortable truth that growing up, growing old, and dying are rarely graceful experiences.
Everybody is fighting a silent battle, and every so often those battles boil over in the ugliest ways imaginable. From an isolated and angsty teenager barreling through life on hard mode to an elderly woman who refuses to let go of her past and plan her next steps, the film has no trouble getting its point across.
Behind the picket fences and locked front doors, silent suffering hides in the most unassuming places. When people build walls around themselves and let their demons consume them from the inside out, you get exactly what Morris County is showing you.
As of this writing, Morris County is streaming for free on Tubi.
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