Updates – Ft McMurray's Homepage

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Just Gave Some Big Updates About Their Royal Exit

Looks like we finally have some news about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s duties since stepping down as senior members of the family.

After scaling back from the royal family in London and moving to Canada back in January—reportedly giving up their HRH titles in the process—the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been enjoying a quiet new life in Vancouver while planning their new ventures and charity organization. However, it looks like some i‘s and t‘s still need to be dotted and crossed with their folks back in the U.K.

According to royal reporter Omid Scobie, Buckingham Palace has released a bit more info on their transition process, which will officially begin on March 31. “The Royal Family and Sussexes have agreed to an initial 12-month review to ensure the arrangement works for all parties,” a source said, per Scobie.

“From April 1, the Sussexes will no longer have an office at Buckingham Palace but will continue to [be] repped in the U.K. through their foundation team,” writes Scobie in a second tweet. “It’s confirmed that the couple will retain their other titles of The Earl & Countess of Dumbarton and The Baron & Baroness Kilkeel.”

Prince Harry will reportedly also maintain his ranks of major, lieutenant commander, and squadron leader. Here’s where things get a little murky. “However, during this 12-month period his honorary military positions will not be used,” Scobie says in another tweet. “No new appointments will be made to fill these roles before the review is completed.”

As for that trip back to London, Prince Harry and Markle are not going to have a whole lot of free time on their hands. The trip will begin with a visit with Bon Jovi at a recording session of his song “Unbroken” with the Invictus Games Choir. Despite reports that Prince William and Middleton will be steering the Royal Foundation toward organizations closer to their own hearts, it seems Prince Harry will not be ignoring his commitment to the games in the near future.

Following that, Meghan and Harry will attend a slew of engagements before joining Queen Elizabeth II and members of the royal family for the Commonwealth Day service on March 9. The day before that, Markle will “mark” International Women’s Day 2020. No word yet on whatever that means.

After their visit, a “palace source” says the couple will be back in the U.K. “regularly.” Good! That gives the two princes plenty of opportunities to start mending that supposed rift.

Source link

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil Review: This Fairy Tale Updates the Disney Princess in Subtle, Powerful Ways

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Disney’s sequel to the 2014 retelling of Sleeping Beauty with Angelina Jolie that’s in theaters now, is sort of strange and dark for a fairy tale. And naturally, that’s what makes it so great. The movie covers a lot of things—motherhood, the loss of innocence, love, hate, immigration, power, magic—without losing focus. The costumes are, and I cannot stress this enough, excellent. And best of all, it honors the most enduring tropes of Disney fairy tales (spoiler: good triumphs over evil) while updating the princess narrative in subtle and powerful ways.

Just look at Aurora’s (Elle Fanning) story. She’s now 21 years old and engaged to Prince Philip. It’s hardly surprising or revolutionary that she’s marrying her first boyfriend, but we then learn they’ve been dating for five years. Five years! Compare that to the “love at first sight, married the next day” plot of, well, just pick a movie. Aurora is no sleepy princess, either. She’s the strong-willed barefoot queen of the Moors, the forest wonderland where magical creatures live, having given her previous castle to “the people.” We stan an egalitarian monarch.

Jaap Buitendijk / Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection

Of course, this will come as no surprise to those who saw the first film, a decidedly feminist reboot of Sleeping Beauty. But Linda Woolverton—the screenwriter behind both Maleficent films and basically your entire childhood (Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, hello!)—tells me that turning a tale of problematic true love on its head was a challenge at first. While writing the first film, she struggled with making the Disney villain sympathetic. “What on Earth happened to this woman that she was that pissed off?” she asked herself. And so, “I had to give her a real reason.”

The answer: She wrote a scene in which Maleficent is drugged by a paramour and wakes to find he’s cut off her wings. “It was…nothing we ever said out loud, but it feels like a date rape,” she tells me. “It’s funny, I worked really closely with Angelina Jolie on the whole script—she was fantastic—and we never actually said date rape. It wasn’t until after that it was like, ‘Oh, huh, that’s what that is.'”

That powerful metaphor in Maleficent’s backstory wasn’t the only twist in the first film, though. You may recall that it’s actually Maleficent herself who breaks the sleeping curse by kissing Aurora on the forehead. (Turns out the unconditional true love of a mother is greater than that of a random paramour’s.) That moment was yet another instance of Woolverton realizing, after the fact, what she had written. “For the first Maleficent, I was talking [in an interview] about the moment when Maleficent wakes Aurora up and gives this speech, and I broke down,” she says. “It was so terrible. I realized that the whole movie was an apology to my daughter for getting a divorce.” She adds, “I didn’t even realize it until that moment that the whole movie was about that.”

Source link