With critics' groups across the country starting to hand out their awards, the Oscar race is officially on. Cinemablend's Sean O'Connell joins us to handicap the major categories. With no clear frontrunner, it's anyone's guess which movie is going to break out before the big night.
In the Best Picture category, it's looking like things are boiling down to a showdown between "The Post" and "Lady Bird." O'Connell weighs the pros and cons of each, noting that he thinks the Steven Spielberg political drama is the best movie of the year. We also consider whether "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" could be the franchise's first Best Picture nominee since the 1977 original, "A New Hope."
Then, we tackle the contenders duking it out in the acting categories. Meryl Streep is looking to win her fourth Oscar for her leading role in "The Post." If anyone can stop her, O'Connell says it will likely be "Lady Bird's" Saoirse Ronan or "I, Tonya's" Margot Robbie. As for the actors, "Darkest Hour's" Gary Oldman is pulling ahead as the one to beat for his portrayal of Winston Churchill.
The markets plunged again on Friday, capping off a wild week on Wall Street. Fears of slowing global growth, exacerbated by U.S.-China tensions, and a weaker-than-anticipated jobs report contributed to the losses. The tech-heavy Cheddar 50 Index, which measures the performance of Cheddar's 50 top companies ー from Apple to GM ー fell 4 percent on Friday.
A gender gap persists in most industries, but among the most glaring examples of the disparity can be found in beverage manufacturing ー a business in which men make up roughly 80 percent of executives. In order to close that gap, Constellation Brands ($STZ) has announced it will invest in female-founded beverage companies, beginning with Austin Cocktails and Vivify Beverages.
Times Square is known as the "crossroads of the world," but tell that to Stacey Cunningham. The CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, the first woman to hold the job in the exchange's 226-year history, said it's at the NYSE where capitalism, economics, politics and "the world at large" converge.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Friday, Dec. 6, 2018.
Los Angeles is taking a strong stance against single-use plastic straws: the local City Council is moving forward with its "Plastic Straws on Request" initiative with an ultimate goal to phase them out completely by 2021. "This has been a long time coming," Mitch O'Farrell, Los Angeles city council member, told Cheddar Thursday. "I wish that the city had acted 10, 15 years ago."
At a moment when public trust in media is at a low ebb and cries of "fake news" are rampant, Consumer Reports has managed to retain the trust of its 6 million consumer members ー and the ear of top CEOs.
Graffiti artist to the stars Darrius "Spraykid" Ford isn't seeking out new celebrity clients. Instead, he's leveraging his success to prop up new and emerging artists. The Chicago-based Ford's favorite medium is graffiti, but he said he's always partial to "layering" different materials.
When Bombas co-founder Randy Goldberg learned that socks were the most-requested item in homeless shelters, he became "obsessed" ー and turned his fixation into a company so he could solve the shortage. Goldberg told Cheddar he launched Bombas to manufacture a durable, yet comfortable sock that shelters could use.
Sarah Michelle Gellar wants to slay the baking industry. The actress formerly known as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and her two partners are the brains behind Foodstirs, a new organic, non-GMO line of baking products that seek to inject some new life into a stale aisle of the grocery store.
At the very least, consignment brand the RealReal has built a prototype for retail paradise in West Hollywood, Calif., for its new brick-and-mortar location. Cheddar's own Alyssa Julya Smith took a tour of the sprawling store, lined wall-to-wall with luxury handbags, clothing, and accessories.
