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June 12, 2023

Stephani & Michael’s Lareau Farm Inn Wedding at American Flatbread in Waitsfield, Vermont

Earlier this month, Stephani and Michael celebrated their one-year anniversary. Their wedding at Lareau Farm Inn in Waitsfield was incredible. Looking back at these photos, I remember what a beautiful fall wedding they had, complete with pumpkins, fall floral designs and an outstanding bridal party champagne spray. Their guests ate American Flatbread pizza and drank beer around the fire pit. Stephani and Michael chose my photography and video combo package, which meant we captured every special moment of their day. Afterwards, I produced and edited two films for them, using footage captured by Shawn Cimonetti. All the photos below were shot by Cat, but Andrea DiMedio did a fantastic job as the second photographer. Check out their wedding photos and films below!

Movie Highlights

Full Length Film

Venue: Lareau Farm Inn (American Flatbread) in Waitsfield, Vermont
Photographer: Cat Cutillo
Second Photographer: Andrea DiMedio
Videographer: Shawn Cimonetti
Video Editor & Producer: Cat Cutillo
Hair & Makeup: Blushing Brides
Flowers: Petals Floral Design
Cake designer: The Goose Chase Cake Design
Music: Supersounds Entertainment
Ring designer: Descar Jewelry Design
Wedding Dress designer: dress from Enzoani; veil from Vows
Bridemaid dresses designer: Azazie
Grooms and groomsmen attire: 125 Bridal

The post Stephani & Michael’s Lareau Farm Inn Wedding at American Flatbread in Waitsfield, Vermont appeared first on Cat Cutillo Photography & Video.

May 28, 2023

5 must-watch movies & TV shows streaming right now

Stream

The best of what’s new streaming on Netflix, Hulu, Max, Disney Plus, and more.

Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne in “Platonic.” AppleTV+

Welcome to Boston.com’s weekly streaming guide. Each week, we recommend five must-watch movies and TV shows available on streaming platforms like Netflix, upstream, Amazon Prime, Disney+, MaxPeacock, Paramount+, and more.

Many recommendations are for new shows, while others are for under-the-radar releases you might have missed or classics that are about to depart a streaming service at the end of the month.

Have a new favorite movie or show you think we should know about? Let us know in the comments, or email [email protected]. Looking for even more great streaming options? Check out our previous editions must-watch list here.

Movies

“Champions”

For decades, sibling directing duo (and Rhode Island natives) Peter and Bobby Farrelly have championed actors with intellectual disabilities, writing roles that allowed audiences to see them as individual human beings and not merely vessels for inspiration. “Champions,” the newest film from Bobby Farrelly, continues that lifelong commitment. After a taciturn college basketball coach (Woody Harrelson) gets a drunk driving conviction, he’s sentenced to community service overseeing a Special Olympics basketball team. The film’s plot is pretty straightforward, but the young cast — in particular Madison Tevlin as the brassy Consentino, the sole female on the team — adds enough funny moments to make “Champions” a worthwhile watch.

How to watch: “Champions” is streaming on Peacock.

“Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves”

You don’t need to know a single thing about the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons to appreciate this surprisingly funny fantasy adventure, which stars Chris Pine as the overconfident leader of a ragtag group of thieves with magical abilities. (Except for him, he’s just a “good planner.”) After being betrayed by one of their former crew members (played with hilarious pomp by Hugh Grant), the team must head on a quest to save the world. Thanks for writing and directing by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, the pair behind the 2018’s action-comedy hit “Game Night,” “Dungeons and Dragons” is a whole lot of fun, making the most of Pine, Grant, Michelle Rodriguez, and a small but memorable performance from Rege-Jean Page (“Bridgerton”).

How to watch: “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” is streaming on Paramount+.

“Inception”

As the hype for Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” continues to build, now is a good time to revisit another of the director’s best movies before it disappears from the Netflix library on June 1. Back in 2002, Nolan presented an idea for a horror film to Warner Bros. about “dream stealers” who could infiltrate minds, a la Freddy Krueger. While that would no doubt have been interesting, Nolan eventually landed on the heist film/psychological thriller structure for “Inception,” a genuine cultural phenomenon when it was released in 2010. Building on Nolan’s fascination with time and memory as shown in “Memento, ” the film follows a team of “extractors” (led by Leonardo DiCaprio) who venture inside the mind of a business heir in order to plant the idea of selling his father’s company in his subconscious. Nolan’s plots are always intricate jigsaw puzzles, but he pushed the envelope with “Inception,” inspiring fans to invest in multiple viewings in an attempt to unravel its “dream within a dream within a dream” structure.

How to watch: “Inception” is streaming on Netflix.

tv

“Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai”

HBO Max (actually it’s just “Max” as of May 23) dug into the nostalgia files for this animated prequel to “Gremlins,” the 1984 Joe Dante-directed dark comedy that scarred a generation of young filmgoers with a deceptively fluffy marketing campaign that eventually helped create the PG-13 rating. Showrunner Tze Chun has added some of Dante’s dark humor to the show, but instead focuses on the legend of the Mogwai, a longstanding part of Chinese folklore centuries before Dante got ahold of the material. Featuring a talented voice cast including James Hong, Matthew Rhys, Sandra Oh, and BD Wong, “Gremlins” breathes fresh life into a dormant franchise while taking it in an entirely new direction.

How to watch: “Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai” is streaming on Max.

“Platonic”

The secret sauce that made “Neighbors” and “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” a success was the undeniable chemistry of Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne, playing a married couple who tapped their inner teen in an escalating prank war against neighboring college students. “Platonic,” a new series on Apple TV+, brings the pair together again, albeit in a slightly different configuration. Rogen plays a recently divorced brewmaster going through a midlife crisis, while Byrne plays his former bestie who has since started her own family with a doting husband (Luke Macfarlane). “Platonic” is at its best when Byrne and Rogen are together, even if the on-screen characters bring out the worst in each other.

How to watch: “Platonic” is streaming on Apple TV+.

May 28, 2023

Michael Burry Is Set to Rake in More Than $1 Million in Annual Dividend Income From These 4 Stocks

Michael Burry isn’t exactly known for being a pure dividend investor. Rather, Burry got famous for his bets against the housing market right before the Great Recession, yielding Burry and his funds at the time tremendous profits.

Burry’s call, which very few investors got right, was portrayed in the star-studded film The Big Shorts, where Burry himself was played by Christian Bale. Recently, Burry’s fund Scion Asset Management bought several bank stocks with strong dividend yields in the first quarter of the year that are set to rake in more than $1 million in annual income. Let’s take a look.

Burry bought the dip in bank stocks

Bank stocks have gotten creamed since the failures of several prominent banks in March, and Burry, ever the contrarian, bought the dip in some of the hardest-hit stocks in the sector, including Western Alliance (WAL 0.25%)whose stock has fallen more than 50% since early March.

Burry also purchased shares of several other bank stocks, including New York Community Bancorp (NYCB 1.06%), Huntington Bancshares (HBAN 0.96%)and Wells Fargo (WFC 0.81%). Most of these names have seen their dividend yields rise as their shares have declined.

Data source: YCharts HBAN Dividend Yield

New York Community Bancorp, in particular, is sporting a 6.4% yield, and that’s after shares have risen more than 20% this year. The company benefited from its acquisition of the assets of the failed Signature Bank.

The deal gave New York Community Bancorp significant cash that it could use to pay down higher-cost borrowings, which would improve its margin and earnings throughout the course of the year. While the dividend may have been in some question before the deal, management expressed optimism on the bank’s recent earnings call about the bank’s capital levels and current dividend.

Huntington’s dividend looks solid as well, with a dividend payout ratio of slightly more that 42%, which is right in the middle of its peer group. Furthermore, the bank has a strong deposit base that should be a source of strength as the industry deals with funding pressure.

Finally, Wells Fargo has started to build back its dividend after a huge cut during the beginning of the pandemic, but the bank is in a great capital position, so I think Wells Fargo can continue to raise the dividend if it wants. I’m guessing Burry didn’t think twice about the bank’s dividend when he bought the stock because many believe Wells Fargo is nearing an end to its long-standing regulatory issues, which would be great for the stock.

A nice recurring stream of revenue

To calculate each of these banks’ annual dividend income, I annualized each bank’s quarterly dividend and multiplied it by the number of shares Scion purchased:

New York Community Bancorp – 850,000 x 0.68 = $578,000

Huntington Bancshares -184,900 x 0.60 = $110,940

Western Alliance – 125,000 x 1.44 = $180,000

Wells Fargo – 125,000 x 1.20 = $150,000

The total amount of dividend income Burry will receive from these four stocks each year is nearly $1.02 million. Bank stocks are known for having solid dividends, and the sell-off in the sector has also presented a lot of opportunities in my view, so I think Burry and Scion are poised to see some nice growth from many of these stocks while also generating solid passive income along the way.

Wells Fargo is an advertising partner of The Ascent, a Motley Fool company. Bram Berkowitz has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Western Alliance Bancorporation. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

April 18, 2023

Star Wars Reborn: A Guide To All The New Movies and TV Shows

the Star Wars landscape had begun to look as desolate as a Tatooine panorama, with only a handful of upcoming TV shows and no new movies on the horizon. That changed at the annual Star Wars Celebration fan event in London on Friday when a slate of new projects was finally revealed, filling the Lucasfilm pipeline for the next few years.

Among the projects: Daisy Ridley plans to return as the heroic Rey in a new film that follows her desert scavenger turned Jedi Master more than a decade after the end of the last previous film, 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker. There was also a new trailer for the Dawson’s Rosary series, Ahsoka, and a director breakdown for the upcoming Jude Law series, Skeleton Crew, that includes an episode helmeted by Everything Everywhere All At Once Oscar winners The Daniels.

Here’s a guide to everything causing a disturbance in the Force:

Three New Films

Don’t call it a trilogy. The three new films announced by Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy are as far apart from each other in the galactic chronology as it is possible to get.

Untitled James Mangold Epic —The director of Ford v. Ferrari has lately been in the Lucasfilm stable finishing Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but he will next join the Star Wars universe with a film that Kennedy described as an origin story for the Force itself. “Jim is going to take us into the deep past, telling the tale of the first Jedi to wield the Force and harness its liberating power in a time of chaos and oppression,”Kennedy said.

Mangold characterized it as “the dawning of the Force” and compared it to a type of vast historical drama harkening back to Hollywood’s yesteryear. “I was thinking about what kind of genre film is within Star Wars that I’d like to make, and I thought of a kind of Biblical epic, like The Ten Commandments,” he said. “Where did the Force come from? When did we discover it? When did we learn how to use it?”

He said he developed the story with Lucasfilm’s in-house “canon-ites and brilliant historians of the Star Wars timeline.” Reaching over to touch the dome of an R2-D2 droid that sat on stage, Mangold said his film would be set, ”25,000 years before this guy made his appearance.”

Untitled Mandalorian-Era Movie—Mando and Baby Yoda seemed to be headed to the big screen. Dave Filonithe Lucasfilm creative executive who helped direct The Clone Wars series with George Lucas and more recently created the Rebels animated series and the upcoming Ahsoka live-action show, will direct a new film set in The Mandalorians era that he helped establish with Jon Favreau.

Kennedy said the film is “expanding upon our present,” since The Mandalorians is the current flagship of Lucasfilm. But the story is actually in what would be considered the past, since it is set after the fall of the Empire in Return of the Jedi and decades before the events of The Force Awakens. Kennedy said this film will show how loyalists to the Empire clash with the new government trying to rebuild the galaxy after the civil war in the original Star Wars trilogy.

“Dave Filoni will orchestrate the escalating war between the Imperial remnant and the fledgling New Republic. Alongside producer Jon Favreau, they’ll bring together many of the threads of our series in a cinematic event that we’ve been promising you,” she said.

Filoni told the crowd the movie would bridge The Mandalorians era of this post-war universe, which includes the upcoming Ahsoka show, and the sequel trilogy of The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. It will also incorporate elements of what’s known as the Expanded Universe, the array of books and other stories from the 1990s and 2000s that kept the Star Wars stories going when no films or TV shows were being made.