BBC Culture's film critics reveal who they think will be up for awards

November 23, 2024 – January 18, 2025

November 23, 2024 – January 18, 2025

The scarring childhood of the star of Batman and The Emperor's New Groove

President Joe Biden has issued a flurry of pardons during his final days in office, beginning with his grant of clemency to his son Hunter and continuing with a mid-December announcement that he had pardoned or commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 Americans. This week, Biden told reporters that he was still considering issuing preemptive pardons for high-profile Trump critics before the end of his term. Donald Trump, too, has indicated that he’ll make liberal use of pardons, saying he’ll grant clemency to January 6 insurrectionists on his first day in office.

As this week’s episode of Reveal makes clear, debates over the presidential power of pardon are nothing new. Today’s show features audio from an interview with Gerald Ford, aired for the first time by Reveal in 2019, in which the former president discussed his 1974 decision to pardon Richard Nixon. “I had a visceral feeling that the public animosity to Mr. Nixon was so great that there would be a lack of understanding, and the truth is that’s the way it turned out,” Ford said. “The public and many leaders, including dear friends, didn’t understand it at the time.”

Also on this week’s episode, Reveal reports on the thousands of Americans who have been waiting for a presidential pardon for years in the aftermath of the war on drugs. Listen to the show here:

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This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2019.

Monday through Friday, Today in Books highlights news from around the world of books and reading. In this weekend edition, enjoy a look at the stories we covered in-house.

New Mexico Becomes Fourth State to Introduce Anti-Book Ban Bill for 2025: Here’s What They Are (& What You Can Do To Help Pass Them)

Jenna Bush Hager and Random House Publishing Group Partner to Publish Emerging Writers

Former New York City mayor and Trump hanger-on Rudy Giuliani was found in contempt of court on Friday—for the second time in a week. Giuliani faces two different federal lawsuits against him stemming from his comments about a pair of Georgia elections workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, whom he falsely accused of helping rig the 2020 election. He has now been found in contempt of court in both cases and faces additional fines—on top of the $148 million he already owes the two women.

Shortly after the 2020 election, Giuliani falsely said that video footage of the Atlanta vote-counting site where Freeman and Moss—a mother and daughter employed as temporary election officials—were working showed the two women manipulating votes. The lies were later repeated by Donald Trump and spread around the Internet, leading to harassment and death threats against the pair. Freeman and Moss sued Giulani for defamation, and in 2023 a jury voted that he owed them $148 million in damages. Creditors later filed a second lawsuit against Giuliani for failing to cooperate in turning over the assets he owes.

On Monday, Giuliani was found in contempt of court in that second case, based in New York City, where the judge found that while Giuliani had turned over some assets, he had not been forthcoming with important paperwork needed to evaluate what other assets he must relinquish. The judge in that case ruled that Giuliani had “willfully violated a clear and unambiguous order of this court” when he “blew past” a December 20 deadline to provide certain paperwork.

On Friday, Beryl A. Howell, the Washington, D.C., judge in the original defamation case, found Giuliani in contempt because he has continued to defame Freeman and Moss, repeating lies about them even after he lost the original case. In May, Giuliani signed an agreement in which he said he agreed to stop repeating the falsehoods—a promise which he then broke in November with comments he made on his podcast.

As fires raged across Los Angeles this week, due to the ongoing Palisades, Eaton, and Hurst fires, numerous artists, collectors, and arts professionals have reported losing their homes and art collections in the affected areas. While it is still too early to truly assess the damage, art insurers and conservators told ARTnews that they expect it to be extensive.

“This is going to be substantial and possibly one of the most impactful art losses ever in America,” Simon de Burgh Codrington, fine arts insurance specialist and managing director at Risk Strategies, told ARTnews in a phone interview. The devastating losses, de Burgh Codrington added, are expected “to be much more impactful than Sandy was to the art world.”

Similarly, Christopher Wise, vice president of Risk Strategies, told ARTnews, “There are huge amounts of fine art value under threat at the current moment. Many, many billions of fine art.”

While Risk Strategies insures “many collectors, museums, galleries, artists, and warehouses throughout Los Angeles,” according to Wise, many have already moved artworks into safer locations following evacuation offers. Still, he said, the “destruction is devastating.”

“Our hearts break to hear of the scale of the losses,” Wise said. “We have also been actively reaching out to try and help … As the fires continue to expand and new areas are affected, we continue to communicate and act vigilantly on behalf of our clients.

In a late-term legislative move, President Joe Biden signed the EXPLORE Act, whose name is short for the Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences Act. The law reforms existing rules that restrict film and photography in national parks.

A part of the law, the FILM Act, will also address long-running concerns about burdensome permit requirements for filmmakers and photographers seeking to take footage in the parks.

Under the old standards, permits were mandatory and could be denied for various reasons that some detractors saw as inconsistent. The process was challenged in a lawsuit in December 2024 by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the National Press Photographers Association, and videographers Alexander Rienzie and Connor Burkesmith. The groups claimed the government’s restriction as unlawful, arguing the procedure violated First Amendment rights.

The new law takes away permit requirements for small groups carrying out photography on national park land. Fewer than six people are now allowed to shoot footage of the parks, provided they abide by regulations by avoiding disruptions to the habitats native to these lands. Sets and staging equipment are still not permitted under the new law, which stipulated that commercial producers with larger-scale operations still require permits.

In a statement, FIRE Chief Counsel Bob Corn-Revere approved of the permit reform, saying, “This new law allows filmmakers to share the beauty and stories of our national parks without facing jail or fines for how they use the footage.”