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“Gladiator II” actors on preparing for the highly anticipated sequel, movie’s legacy
It’s been almost 25 years since the movie “Gladiator” took the world by storm.
“I saw it in the movie theater when it came out,” said actor Pedro Pascal, who plays the Roman general Marcus Acacius in “Gladiators II.” “I saw it twice.”
In “Gladiator II,” the highly anticipated sequel that comes out on Friday, Rome is led by two emperor brothers. Caracala is played by Joseph Quinn, who was just 6 years old when the original “Gladiator” came out.
“I think there was a legacy from the first film that demanded reverence and respect,” Quinn told “CBS Mornings.”
To prepare for the film and understand his environment better, Quinn spent two weeks wandering around Rome.
“I think it’s just something so humbling about Rome, and inspiring, and the fact that this civilization that was so ahead of its time collapsed, it’s kind of a little haunting,” he said.
For the actors who had fighting roles in the movie, they said training was grueling as not all of it was performed by stunt actors.
Caracala’s co-emperor in the movie is his brother Geta, played by Fred Hechinger, who said he always wanted to work for director Ridley Scott, who also directed the original movie.
“I remember finding out that the same person made all of these different movies that I love. ‘Thelma & Louise’ and ‘Alien’ were made by the same person, and it kind of expanded my sense of what a director can be,” Hechinger said.
Unlike others, Scott will shoot certain sequences from start to finish without cutting. On some movie sets, actors have to react to things off camera that aren’t really happening, but not with Scott.
“The action was all there and it’s all off camera. Normally, under any other circumstance, you would be looking at a tennis ball or two pieces of tape as a cross for your eyeline and imagining what’s happening, but no, Ridley will place that in front of you and have it play,” said Pascal. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. And it’s likely not something I’ll ever experience again.”
“Gladiator II” opens in theaters Nov. 22.
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H&R Block and Intuit drop on a report that Elon Musk’s DOGE may develop a new tax-filing app
H&R Block and Intuit shares dropped on Tuesday after the Washington Post reported that President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is run by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, is looking at developing a free app for people to file their taxes.
The publication cited two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, in reporting that the leaders of the incoming administration’s DOGE discussed the idea of crafting a mobile app to file income tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service.
H&R Block shares tumbled 8.2%, while Intuit shed 5.1% on Tuesday. As the dominant players in tax preparation, H&R Block and Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, generate billions in revenue annually by offering online and in-person services.
The Biden Administration in March rolled out a pilot Direct File program through the IRS in 12 states. It allows qualified taxpayers file directly through a federal portal. Additionally, the IRS provides services through its Free File program for those who made an adjusted gross income of $79,000 or less.
More than 100,000 taxpayers used the new Direct File program to file their taxes this year, which marked the first time the system was in operation, according to the Treasury Department.
The DOGE, which has been directed by Trump to slash government spending and cut federal regulations, criticized the complexity of the U.S tax code in a Nov. 16 post on X, the social media service owned by Musk.
“In 1955, there were less than 1.5 million words in the U.S. Tax Code. Today, there are more than 16 million words,” its X account wrote. “Because of this complexity, Americans collectively spend 6.5 billion hours preparing and filing their taxes each year.”
Intuit and H&R Block also have free filing options.
That said, the Federal Trade Commission earlier in the year barred Intuit from advertising its popular TurboTax product as free when most people have to pay to use it. The FTC in February filed an administrative complaint against H&R Block, alleging it marketed its tax-prep products as free yet deleted the data as a way to pressure them to pay for pricier services. Both companies said they’d appeal.
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Washington — President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he has selected Dr. Mehmet Oz — a celebrity heart surgeon who hosted a daytime television show — to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The agency falls under the Department of Health and Human Services and oversees Medicare, the federal portion of the Medicaid program, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the federal health insurance marketplace. Trump has selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services. Both positions require Senate confirmation.
“America is facing a health care crisis, and there may be no physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to make America healthy again,” Trump said in a statement. “He is an eminent physician, heart surgeon, inventor, and world-class communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades.”
The president-elect said Oz will work with Kennedy, if he is confirmed, “to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake.” He also indicated there may be cuts to CMS, writing that Oz “will also cut waste and fraud within our country’s most expensive government agency, which is a third of our nation’s healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire national budget.”
Oz was defeated by Democratic Sen. John Fetterman in the 2022 Senate race in Pennsylvania after receiving Trump’s endorsement.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
