There are plenty of ways to honor mom, but if you want to really stand out without emptying your wallet, we've got you covered.

After weeks of high-budget lurid pink publicity, it’s easy to forget that Barbie director Greta Gerwig is the indie writer and producer behind Frances Ha, Little Women and Lady Bird. Now, Gerwig has revealed the films that inspired the candy coloured sensation. One of the most prominent influences is The Wizard of Oz, the 1939 Judy Garland classic which a US Library of Congress exhibition described as “America's greatest and best-loved home-grown fairytale”. Gerwig said during her interview with Letterboxd it is an “extraordinary, beloved” movie. “It does something which I wanted to emulate which is these incredible sound stages and these painted skies, and this sense of authentically artificial, which I think is very beautiful and emotional. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “In our movie we have the pink brick road instead of the yellow brick road … and we executed it like they would have done in the 30s and 40s.” However, another important influence is a less obvious one: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a 1964 musical romantic drama film written and directed by French movie icon Jacques Demy. Greta Gerwig’s Official Barbie Watchlist www.youtube.com The film centres around two young lovers in the French city of Cherbourg, separated by war. It is entirely sung-through, similar to a musical or an opera. Gerwig said she “loved the use of colour” in the film. “The surrealness of the colour was a big part of it”, she added, saying that Barbie’s use of “five different shades of pink or red in one shot and not have it overwhelm anything” was influenced by the film. Other films on the list of influences include Saturday Night Fever, The Truman Show and The Godfather (yep, you read that right). Of Saturday Night Fever, she said: “I always had a sense of wanting this to be a movie with an amazing soundtrack. “Saturday Night Fever obviously has this incredible soundtrack by The Bee Gees. I had watched a documentary about them and was so touched by The Bee Gees and Barbie seemed so disco to me. Actually in her heart. Because Barbie and disco are a little bit dorky, in the best way. “It had that quality and Saturday Night Fever was a kind of movie that was driven by music but was not a musical.” The whole list is as follows: The Wizard of Oz The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Saturday Night Fever The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart The Godfather Grease 2001: A Space Odyssey The Truman Show The Young Girls of Rochefort Oklahoma! Model Shop An American in Paris Singin' in the Rain The Red Shoes A Matter of Life and Death All That Jazz Heaven Can Wait Women on the Verge of a Nervous BreakDown His Girl Friday The Philadelphia Story Gold Diggers of 1935 Twentieth Century The Ladies Man Rear Window And the Ship Sails On Wings of Desire The Earrings of Madame de… Close Encounters of the Third Kind Modern Times Pee-wee’s Big Adventure Mon Oncle PlayTime Splash Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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Matthew Perry’s character from Friends, Chandler Bing, was so beloved by millions that the actor will forever be associated with him and his hilarious one liners. But Perry, who died on 28 October in Los Angeles, wasn’t just a one-trick pony. He was in dozens of films, TV shows and even stage productions that show his legacy is far richer and more varied than just being remembered for the famous sitcom. Here are a couple of his lesser known works, in celebration of Perry's life and career. She’s Out Of Control (1989) Chandler wasn’t even a glint in Perry’s eye when he appeared in Stan Dragoti’s 1989 indie comedy She’s Out Of Control. The coming of age comedy starring Tony Danza and Catherine Hicks is about a father coming to terms with his daughter growing up. A twenty-year-old Perry played Timothy, one of the daughter’s several boyfriends in the film. Unfortunately, it didn’t go down well with the critics. One reviewer wrote: “I became so depressed I actually thought about quitting my job as a film critic.” But 34 years later, the film has a certain charm and certainly carries a few laughs. For diehard fans of Friends it is required viewing. Matthew Perry in She's Out of Control (1989) www.youtube.com The Odd Couple (2015-17) Perry executive produced The Odd Couple, a sitcom based on the 1965 play written by Neil Simon. He also starred in it as the slovenly Oscar Madison, acting opposite Thomas Lennon playing the obsessively tidy Felix Unger. In fact, Perry had been pushing for a version of the show to be made since the late noughties, hoping for a launch in 2010. However, executives passed on it, and Perry was forced to shop it around. Eventually, it got picked up in 2013, and Perry got his show. It ran for 38 episodes across three seasons, marking Perry’s longest-running TV show behind Friends. The Odd Couple Episode 1 01 Pilot Sneak Peek 3 www.youtube.com The End Of Longing (2016) Perry’s stage career wasn’t as extensive as his film and TV appearances, but he still found time to write his own play. The End Of Longing was a dark comedy, starring Perry as an alcoholic named Jack, and was performed both on Broadway and on the West End. Referencing his own struggles with addiction, Perry later wrote that the play was “sort of an exaggerated form of myself” but that it was not an autobiographical part. While it got mixed reviews, one critic said: “The writing is wired, raw, politically incorrect and very funny [...] Perry's a novice playwright, but one of great promise.” Matthew Perry on His Play 'The End of Longing' www.youtube.com The Whole Nine Yards (2000) Being at the peak of his Friends fame didn’t stop Perry from appearing in The Whole Nine Yards, a crime comedy starring Bruce Willis. Perry plays Oz, a mild-mannered dentist who travels to Chicago to inform a mob boss about the whereabouts of his new neighbour, a former hitman with a price on his head. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote: “A subtle but unmistakable aura of jolliness sneaks from the screen during The Whole Nine Yards, and eventually we suspect that the actors are barely suppressing giggles. “This is the kind of standard material everyone could do in lockstep, but you sense inner smiles, and you suspect the actors are enjoying themselves.” It’s a romp, and well worth a watch. The Whole Nine Yards (2000) Official Trailer - Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry Movie HD www.youtube.com Serving Sara (2002) Perry didn’t do quite so well in Serving Sara, the romcom starring him and Elizabeth Hurley. The film follows a server given the assignment to serve a British socialite with divorce papers. However, he is bribed to serve her husband instead so that she can get a big divorce payout – and all manner of chaos ensues. Sadly, the film was thoroughly panned and didn’t do well at the box office, where it grossed only $5.8m on opening weekend. Check out the trailer and judge for yourself. Serving Sara Trailer www.youtube.com Scrubs (2004) And finally, from one era-defining sitcom to another, Perry went from Friends to a guest appearance in Scrubs. The medical comedy, which starred Zach Braff, went on for nine seasons through the noughties, and became one of the best-loved shows of its era. Perry played an air traffic controller, Murray. See a clip of Perry and Braff, the comic duo you didn’t know you needed, here. Scrubs - Matthew Perry In Scrubs - Aeroplane www.youtube.com Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

Elon Musk has been told Taiwan is “not for sale” by the island’s foreign minister after the tech mogul said Taiwan was an integral part of China. Speaking to the All-In Summit in Los Angeles uploaded to YouTube this week, Musk attracted criticism when he said: “Their [Beijing’s] policy has been to reunite Taiwan with China. From their standpoint, maybe it is analogous to Hawaii or something like that, like an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China mostly because … the US Pacific Fleet has stopped any sort of reunification effort by force,” he said. Taiwan foreign minister Joseph Wu, posted on Twitter/X in response, saying that he hoped Musk could ask China to “open @X to its people“. China blocks X, along with other major western social media like Facebook. "Perhaps he thinks banning it is a good policy, like turning off @Starlink to thwart Ukraine’s counterstrike against Russia,” Wu added, referring to Musk’s refusing a Ukrainian request to activate his Starlink satellite network in Crimea’s port city of Sevastopol last year to aid an attack on Russia’s fleet there. “Listen up, Taiwan is not part of the PRC & certainly not for sale!” Wu said, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China. This is not the first time Musk has annoyed Taiwan, which Xi Jinping wants to annex, claiming it is a province of China. Last October, he suggested that tensions between China and Taiwan could be resolved by handing over some control of Taiwan to Beijing. Meanwhile, this week has seen the largest scale Chinese military activity near Taiwan since major drills in April. On Thursday Taiwan’s defence ministry said it had detected 68 aircraft and 10 ships around Taiwan in the previous 24 hours, including 40 aerial crossings of the median line, prompting rumours of suspected military exercises, which have not been announced by China. Meanwhile, on Wednesday Chen Binhua, a spokesperson for Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, accused the US and Taiwan of collusion to strengthen Taiwan’s defense capabilities. Maybe Musk should stay out of international relations and stick to Twitter/X. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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