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The Oscars are less than a month away, but before Hollywoods biggest night, the folks across the pond have their turn to celebrate. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards (BAFTAs) will take place on Sunday, February 16, at Londons Royal Festival Hall. Historically viewed as a strong predictor of the Oscars, the BAFTAs just might offer a sneak peak of whats to comeespecially in this unconventional year full of controversies, disasters, and shifting front-runners. Heres everything you should know and how to tune in. What does Prince William have to do with it? As part of his royal duties, the prince of Wales is the president of BAFTA. He and his wife, Kate Middleton, often attend the big event looking quite stunning. It was announced on Tuesday that neither will attend this year. Instead, William prerecorded a special video message. Last year, he attended solo because of Kates cancer treatments. She is back to public-facing royal duties but still has a reduced schedule. Who is hosting the 2025 BAFTA awards? Just because the Windsors will not be present, that doesnt mean other celebrities wont abound. David Tennant will host for the second year in a row. The boy band Take That will perform their hit song Greatest Day, which was used in the opening scene of best film contender Anora. Jeff Goldblum, who played the Wizard of Oz in Wicked, will tickle the ivories during the always-moving In Memoriam segment. Who are some of the standout nominees? Lets not forget the nominees, although not all will attend. After offensive tweets were brought to light, Emilia Pérez actress Karla Sofía Gascón is not expected to be present. She is the first openly transgender actress to be nominated for a BAFTA. Last week she issued a statement saying that she hopes her work can speak for itself. My silence will allow the film to be appreciated for what it is, concluding: I sincerely apologize to everyone who has been hurt along the way. Despite the controversy, the show must go on and there is plenty of spotlight for the year’s biggest contenders. Edward Bergers Vatican thriller Conclave reigns supreme here with 12 nominations. Jacques Audiards musical offering Emilia Pérez is a close second with 11, while Brady Corbets immigrant story The Brutalist, with nine nominations, is nothing to scoff at. Timothée Chalamet will be doing double duty, representing both Dune: Part Two and the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. Check out the full list of nominees on the BAFTA website. Beyond the competitive categories, Warwick Davis will be honored with the BAFTA fellowship. This lifetime achievement award celebrates his impressive body of work in films such as Star Wars, Willow, and Harry Potter. How can I watch or stream the 2025 BAFTA awards? If you live in the UK, tune into BBC One or stream it on iPlayer at 7 p.m. local time. For those of us in the United States, BritBox has the exclusive streaming rights and the ceremony begins at 2 p.m. ET. You can sign up directly with the streaming service and even take advantage of a seven-day free trial. If you have an Amazon Prime account, you can also catch the action by adding BritBox to your subscription. There’s a free trial option here as well. Whatever way you decide to watch, a pot of tea and some biscuits would be excellent refreshment choicesor a gin and tonic depending on your mood.
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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. U.S. single-family home prices, as measured by the Freddie Mac House Price Index (which uses the repeat-sales methodology), rose 3.9% in the calendar year 2024. During that same timeframe, overall U.S. consumer prices rose 2.9%. Among the 384 metro-area housing markets that the Freddie Mac House Price Index tracks dating back to 1975, these are the 10 metros that saw the biggest year-over-year home price increase in 2024: Kingston, New York: +13.5% Springfield, Ohio: +11.8% Glens Falls, New York: +11.7% Binghamton, New York: +11.5% Cumberland, Marylandd-West Virginia: +11.4% Syracuse, New York: +10.9% Utica-Rome, New York: +10.5% Atlantic City-Hammonton, New Jersey: +10.5% Jacksonville, North Carolina: +10.3% Vineland-Bridgeton, New Jersey: +10.3% Among those same 384 metro-area housing markets, these 10 metros saw the biggest year-over-year home price decline in 2024: Punta Gorda, Florida: -8.6% Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Florida: -7.6% North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, Florida: -4.7% Homosassa Springs, Florida: -3.3% Sebastian-Vero Beach, Florida: -3.2% Lakeland-Winter Haven, Florida: -2.7% Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, Texas: -2.5% San Antonio-New Braunfels, Texas: -2.3% Ocala, Florida: -1.9% Crestview-Fort Walton Beach-Destin, Florida: -1.8% !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r
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When he first gathered his newly assembled team to write the 1975 premiere episode of Saturday Night Live (then called, NBC’s Saturday Night), creator Lorne Michaels started with a simple credo: Lets make each other laugh, and if we do, well put it on television and maybe other people will find it funny. So many other people ended up finding it funny that SNL grew into a singular cultural phenomenonone that remains on the air, and relevant, 50 years later. Over the course of making high-wire-act TV each week for a half-century, however, Michaels’s ideas about how to wrangle talent gradually evolved far beyond that initial make-each-other-laugh principle. He has such a unique and honed management philosophy, says Susan Morrison, author of the forthcoming biography, Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live. As I was writing it, some days Id feel like, Wow, this could be published by the Harvard Business School. Susan Morrison (right) [Images: courtesy Random House] Morrisons book, out in stores February 18, paints the richest portrait to date of how Michaels created SNL, how SNL created a mythology around Michaels, and how much of that is accurate. It also takes readers deep inside the trenches of a typical week at SNL, stemming from the authors time embedded with the show in 2018, her many conversations with generations of superstar writers and performers molded by it, and in excess of 50 interviews with Michaels himself. What emerges is an ultimately flattering, though non-hagiographic depiction of a leader who inspires a reverence among his acolytes that can border on pathological. (As the book recounts, former cast member Andy Samberg and former writer John Mulaney both separately tried to find out what kind of deodorant Michaels uses so they could use it too.) Though a lot of what makes Lorne Michaels himself is specific to the niche field of televised live-sketch comedy, some of his tactics for managing creative people have much broader applicability. Mix peanut butter and chocolate The sprawling list of all-time comedy legends that Michaels plucked from obscurity and cast on SNL includes Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig, Adam Sandler, and Chris Rock. Beyond his keen eye for talent, though, Michaels also has a nuanced sense for talent-configurations. The book describes how the creator put Harvard Lampoon writer Jim Downey in a shared office with Second City improv maestro Bill Murray in 1977an intentional collision of high-brow and blue collar. The two writers brought contrasting ingredients to the table, like peanut butter and chocolate, and Michaels recognized the potency of blending them together. Its something he still does when bringing in new blood each year, even if he no longer assigns office mates. Although Michaels has been accused over the years of not diversifying the staff enoughcast members Kenan Thompson and Jay Pharoah publicly refused to play any more Black women back in 2013, when SNL hadnt had a Black female in the cast for six yearsthe show these days more closely resembles the diverse makeup of its audience. He’s always thinking about creating a really varied writing staff, Morrison says. Hes definitely on guard against the show being too coastal. He loves it when someone’s from Nebraska or Cincinnati or New Mexico. Give people ownership of their work One of the reasons so many of the shows writers such as Fey and the team of Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider go on to become showrunners after SNL, according to Morrison, is because of the free rein Michaels gives them. Writers dont just conceive and pen sketchesthey also produce and direct them, getting a huge say in everything from set decoration to costumes. All this leeway comes from Michaels’s own experience as a comedy writer on sketch series, such as The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show, in 1968, when he wished he’d had more freedom. Even when Michaels does weigh in on decisions throughout the development of a sketch, as the book describes, he often does so in a way that still keeps the writer in the drivers seat. Being in the room during all those meetings, you could see there’s some jujitsu going on, Morrison says. Hell rarely give a hard note, like, You have to change the ending. Hell just maybe give enough clues so that a writer will make a change but will feel ownership of it. Figure out what people need and be that for them A lot of big personalities and even bigger egos have been part of the SNL team over the years, and theres no one-size-fits-all management strategy Michaels could deploy with them all. Instead, as the book details, Michaels became a student of how creative people respond to various approaches. By supervising hundreds of the kinds of people over the years that former cast member Mark McKinney refers to as broken comedy toys, Michaels learned to act as father figure, CEO, and all points in betweendepending on the person. He manages them sometimes one-on-one, and sort of gives people what he thinks they need, Morrison says. “[Bill] Hader would describe when he came back to host, feeling kind of rigid with anxiety, and Lorne coming in and just barking at him, like, Shut the fuck up, get out there and do it. You know what you’re doing. But then Molly Shannon talked about a completely different approach from Lorne, where hes just kind of warmly reassuring her with his eyes. Its no wonder every year on Fathers Day, Michaels reportedly receives messages from dozens of surrogate sons, including Pete Davidson. The power of “rolling decisions” Any sketch that makes it to air on SNL has survived a comedy gauntlet that claimed countless other victims. The sketch has to get through the initial pitch meeting on Monday; the all-night writing session on Tuesday; the development process Wednesday through Friday, during which many more sketches are fleshed out than could possibly fit into one 60- to 70-minute episode; and finally, it has to make it past dress rehearsal on Saturday night, a few hours before airtime. Lorne (the book) reveals, in exacting depth, just how many decisions are involved within each sketch, beyond the more macro-level decisions of which skeches will actually make it to air and in which order. Michaels keeps every possibility on the bubble for as long as possible, a habit he describes as making rolling decisionsthe opposite of snap decisions. He just likes to keep all his options open, Morrison says. He’s not good at making decisions until he has to, but also I think he feels its really great creative ferment. The competition up to the last minute probably keeps everybody going. I mean, the emotional and creative vibe in that building between Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, it’s like the Hunger Games. Creating a culture of resiliency A good compromise, as the saying goes, is when both sides are unhappy. At SNL, however, just about every writer and cast member is a little unhappy each week. Its something Michaels learned, according to the book, after the very first episode in 1975. Writer Michael ODonoghue was upset that one of his sketches got cut, filmmaker Albert Brooks was annoyed that Michaels chose a different short film of his rather than the one Brooks had intended for the premiere, and future senator Al Franken was disappointed in the corny tone of another sketch. That first episodes equal-opportunity unhappiness set the standard for the decades that followed. But it probably takes a bit of the sting out of each persons disappointment to know that everyone else is also disappointed to some degree. It might also serve as motivation to make next weeks victories outweigh the defeats. And Michaels takes care to celebrate the major victories with his team, so they can be confident that theyre appreciated. I remember Hader telling me that the night he debuted [much-celebrated character] Stefon, one of Lorne’s assistants summoned him over to come and sit next to Lorne at the party after the show, Morrison says. So, you’re in when that happens. The creators status as a legendary gift giver probably also helps demonstrate that appreciation. Working for Lorne Michaels, as described in Morrisons book, seems nearly as agonizing as it does rewarding. If it were easier, though, there would probably be more sketch comedy shows that endure for half a century. Instead, theres only one. Isnt that special?
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