Frontrunner emerges in Barbie vs Oppenheimer battle for box office supremacy

The Independent sat down with both Nolan and Cillan Murphy to discuss Oppenheimer.

Read the full interview here.

“It is always too easy to fall for the great man – or great woman – theory of history,” Guy Walters writes in a long read for The Independent.

“But the problem with the great man theory is that it seldom holds water, and nowhere is it more leaky than with Oppenheimer.

“To regard him as the ‘father of the atomic bomb’ is to ignore not only that the Manhattan Project was the result of a historically unprecedented level of teamwork, but also those others who are equally deserving of atomic fatherhood status.”

Appearing on Zoe Ball’s BBC Radio 2 show on Thursday (20 July), Robbie, 33, recalled how she had once pretended to be dead as part of an elaborate prank she played on her adult babysitter.

“We got a new babysitter,” the Wolf of Wall Street star recalled. “I wanted my old babysitter back, Talia, who was like 16 and I thought she was so cool. And then we got this much older lady in and I was just not happy about it.”

Robbie said she then hatched a plan to fake her own death and went to extreme lengths to convince her new babysitter it was real.

That’s the question explored by my colleague Louis Chilton in his comment piece for The Independent.

The 52-year-old filmmaker’s work has long prompted speculation over his political views, from the supposedly pro-conservative Dark Knight to the anti-war messaging of Tenet. Does his nuclear biopic Oppenheimer hold any answers?

Oppenheimer is partially based on the Pulitzer-Prize-winning 2005 biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer written by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin over a period of 25 years.

“Celebrated in 1945 as the ‘father of the atomic bomb,’ nine years later he would become the chief celebrity victim of the McCarthyite maelstrom,” Bird wrote in a recent opinion piece for The New York Times.

The film is the first to properly tackle the scientist and his legacy, which was marred by a controversial 1954 hearing that resulted in his security clearance being revoked.

Read here for the true story behind J Robert Oppenheimer:

Mattel has sparked criticism for “stealth marketing” to children after a new programme gave away free Barbie dolls in schools, a move that health experts are claiming reinforces damaging gender stereotypes.

The toy manufacturer launched the “Barbie School of Friendship” programme this year, in which free Barbie dolls were given to an estimated 150,000 students in 700 schools across the UK to teach social skills.

However, in an investigative piece published in the British Medical Journal on 20 July, many experts have questioned the programme’s potential negative effects of gender stereotyping, as well as companies freely marketing their products in schools.

In a new interview for the Harper’s Bazaar UK Summer issue, Barbie star America Ferrera, 39, discussed Barbie’s progressive but “inelegant” history since its creation in 1959.

Ferrera said that growing up, she was “never a Barbie girl” but there have been “revolutionary” moments in Barbie’s history when Mattel has made subversive statements about womanhood.

Ferrera pointed out that there was no kitchen in the first Barbie Dreamhouse, which freed the doll from expectations of domesticity.

“In the days leading up to the release of the Barbie movie, directed by Greta Gerwig, the film has endured various attacks by right-wing figures, whose issue with the movie lies in what they say is a ‘woke’ and ‘feminist’ agenda,” Nylah Burton writes for The Independent.

“No one has to like the Barbie movie, and I’m sure intelligent criticism of the film’s messaging and quality will emerge. However, attacking it because it doesn’t address ‘any notion of faith of family’ is not only ludicrous but untrue.”

For obvious reasons, some fans are wondering whether Oppenheimer will have a theatrical release in Japan.

The Independent understands that plans for the film’s release have not yet been finalised in all markets. Japan also tends to release later than other markets with Barbie coming out 11 August there.

Barbie is reportedly on track to earn over $150m dollars in its opening weekend. If it achieves this feat, Gerwig will break the record for the biggest domestic opening for a female director in Hollywood history.