Rent The Runway Expands Its Initial Public Offering

Rent the Runway has expanded its initial public offering raising 357 million dollars. The company sold 17 million shares Tuesday for 21 dollars each after marketing 15 million shares for 18 to 21 dollars. The news was reported by Bloomberg.

This puts Rent the Runway’s market value at 1.3 billion dollars based on the outstanding shares listed in its filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Between employee stock options and similar holdings, the company’s estimated diluted value is 1.5 billion dollars. This is an increase from the 870-million-dollar valuation after an April funding round.

Like most apparel companies, Rent the Runway was deeply impacted by the pandemic. The company saw a net loss of 85 million to 80 million dollars for the six months ended July 31. While the company’s revenue took a hit, their subscription numbers have increased, now counting 112,000 active subscribers.

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The 'Dune' Movie Succeeds While Others Fail

Frank Herbert’s novel “Dune” — with its frustrating mixture of space bureaucracy, mystical lore and pulse-pounding, monster-fighting action — is a hard book to adapt. Its power depends heavily on the reader’s willingness to put up with half a novel of humdrum pulp sci-fi action and world-building. The reason the book’s fans power through that uninspired first half has to do with its incredibly weird and eccentric second half, which upends all its space opera tropes and instead draws heavily on traditions of nomadic life in the Arabian Peninsula and other regions that fascinated Herbert. (One heroic clan, the Fremen, are explicitly holy warriors; there are lots of references in the book and its sequels to a cataclysmic war called the Butlerian Jihad.) The novel’s daring remains undimmed today, even though it has inspired dozens of adaptors, official and unofficial, including George Lucas, David Lynch and French comics genius Moebius. At one point, Alejandro Jodorowsky had cast Salvador Dalí as the emperor. There’s an entire movie, “Jodorowsky’s Dune,” about how he never got to shoot his version.

Director Denis Villeneuve has chosen to adapt only the mechanical first half of the book into “Dune: Part 1,” a risky move as it requires Villeneuve to build some visual eccentricity of his own to push the story along. It’s a sci-fi movie on a big-ticket blockbuster scale akin to the lengthy two-part finale of Marvel’s “Avengers” movies, but here Villeneuve manages to make something that is grand in terms other than sheer length and plot complication. His gigantic spaceships, which are the size and shape of floating brutalist buildings, stagger us. The planet Arrakis — Dune itself — is both intensely barren and hostile and seems full of deep lore. While these special effects suggest a giant world, his minimalist exposition lets us fill in many of the gaps for ourselves. We’re left to wonder, not just observe. It’s a feeling I’ve missed.

At the center of all this is Chalamet’s Paul, a casting choice that confused me until I saw how huge and hostile Villeneuve had made everything and what a stark counterpoint he had in this skinny, doe-eyed, prettily unkempt actor. Paul has to grow into his role as leader of men, and Chalamet is callow and boyish; it’s hard to imagine him acquiring any of the gravitas that Isaac radiates as his father. Watching the film, I realized that this is Villeneuve's point. Paul has leadership thrust upon him; he is deliberately small and childlike in the face of indifferent forces that can tear him apart with a whisper. His closeness to his mother, Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) emphasizes how small he is, but when he is initiated into her order of shadowy psychics, we begin to see how his perceived weaknesses will become strengths. And when, at the end of the film, he has to fight a duel to the death, Villeneuve makes us regret the end of Paul’s innocence in a way he couldn’t have with a cockier performer.

Lynch’s “Dune” adaptation from 1984 is both unwatchably clunky in its pacing and a kind of surrealist almost-masterpiece. Lynch was given a huge budget (in contrast to his smaller, better-regarded films from that era), and Lynch fans may find it fascinating to watch what, exactly, an avant-garde director does with all that cash and a sci-fi novel. It’s a movie that both begs to be remade and one that sets the bar impossibly high.

Villeneuve has opted out of that challenge. His “Dune” is perfectly his own, and when its pace is leisurely, it’s with intention and consummate craftsmanship. Perversely, Warner Bros. has said publicly that Villeneuve will only be allowed to finish the project if the movie performs well, including on HBO Max. Perhaps it will. But its scope and scale are the kind of big-screen experience I thought existed only in memory. And its subject, the forces of history brought to bear on one struggling person, is powerful in direct proportion to the size of the screen you’re watching it on.

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'The Electric Company' Used Comedy To Boost Reading Skills 50 Years Ago

When The Electric Company debuted in October 1971, television hadn't seen anything quite like it. Psychedelic graphics, wildly creative animation, mod outfits, over-the-top characters, and sketch comedy all functioned to serve the same goal: teaching kids to read.

Brought to you by the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) – the same producers behind Sesame Street, which debuted in 1969 – The Electric Company won two Emmys, aired on more than 250 public TV stations, and became a teaching tool in thousands of classrooms nationwide.

The show's cast included Academy Award winner Rita Moreno, Bill Cosby, and a then-unknown Morgan Freeman. Guest stars included Mel Brooks, Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, and Joan Rivers. The teen pop band Short Circus (get it?) included the future star, Irene Cara. The comedy writers were among the best in the business, and later went on to work on hit TV shows including MASH and Everybody Loves Raymond.

So, with all that going for it, why did The Electric Company run out of juice? The answer shines a light on the fate of many a public media endeavor where making money is as important as the mission statement.

The Electric Company's target audience was elementary school students who were too old for Sesame Street but still needed help learning to read. According to a report by CTW, "Government estimates showed that illiteracy was a problem for as many as one out of ten Americans," and that "Millions more" were "described as 'functional illiterates.'" The late Joan Ganz Cooney, CTW's president, explained that a project to help older children with reading was "requested by the U.S. Office of Education, whose 'Right to Read' campaign sought to achieve universal literacy in the 1970s."

"What we needed to worry about were the people falling behind," remembers TV writer and producer Samuel Gibbon who was pulled off his job on Sesame Street to oversee The Electric Company. "If you're falling behind in the second and third grade, your prognosis is not wonderful, so we tried to correct that problem at its origins."

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James Michael Tyler Of 'Friends'Dies At 59

James Michael Tyler at a pop-up celebration of the 20th anniversary of "Friends" in New York City on Sept. 16, 2014.Paul Zimmerman / Getty Images file

"Michael loved live music, cheering on his Clemson Tigers, and would often find himself in fun and unplanned adventures," his manager said.

James Michael Tyler, the actor best known for his role as Gunther, the general manager of the Central Perk coffee shop on “Friends,” died Sunday of cancer, his manager said. He was 59.

Tyler, who was diagnosed with an advanced form of prostate cancer in September 2018, became an advocate for others with the disease, his manager, Toni Benson, said in a statement.

"Michael loved live music, cheering on his Clemson Tigers, and would often find himself in fun and unplanned adventures," Benson said. "If you met him once you made a friend for life."

Tyler's "Friends" costars paid tribute to the actor late Sunday on social media.

"The size of gratitude you brought into the room and showed every day on set is the size of the gratitude I hold for having known you," wrote actor Courteney Cox, who played Monica on the show.

"We had a lot of laughs buddy. You will be missed," said her co-star Matt Le Blanc, who played Joey.

"Thank you for being there for us all," added Lisa Kudrow, who played Phoebe.

Tyler was initially intended to play an extra on "Friends," but his "unique spirit" got him promoted to a named character, the hit show's co-creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane said in a tribute on Sunday to the "genuinely kind, sweet man."

In "Friends," Tyler played Gunther, who makes the gang coffee every day while nursing an unrequited crush on Rachel, played by Jennifer Aniston. He also appeared in "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" and other TV movies and shows.

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BLACKPINK's Lisa Breaks 2 Guinness World Records

Lisa made her solo debut with a smash!

The BLACKPINK member broke two Guinness World Records with her solo debut track "LALISA."

According to the Guinness World Records, "LALISA" now holds the title of most-viewed YouTube music video by a solo artist in 24 hours with 73.6 million views.

It is also the most-viewed YouTube music video in 24 hours by a solo K-pop artist, a record previously held by fellow BLACKPINK member Rosé.

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