By JAKE COYLE

“Give us a clock tick” is an expression uttered several times in “Wicked: For Good.” But Jon M. Chu’s two-part musical has asked for quite a bit more than that.

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Together, the two halves of this “Wicked” adaptation have run 297 minutes, which, more than the threat of lions and tigers and bears, is enough to make any moviegoer not entirely bewitched by the “Wizard of Oz” revision breathe a sigh of “Oh, my.”

So it’s a lot of clock ticks, quite a few more than the stage musical, which had roughly half the runtime. But “Wicked” has always been a spectacle of scale: power ballads and sprawling sets, all in retina-testing technicolor. Muchness is part of the point of “Wicked,” a song-and-dance assault of allegory and anthems relayed with an earnestness that you might call endearing if you’re good or tiresome if you’re, well, you know.

For anyone in the former camp who somehow felt last year’s part one wasn’t enough, “For Good” will probably be a very welcoming second helping. Since these films were shot at the same time, much of the tone and tenor of the first chapter continues in “For Good.” There’s more Cynthia Erivo, more Ariana Grande and more soaring soliloquies. For most “Wicked” fans, more is good.

But for those of us who felt — what’s a non-wicked way to say this? — mildly waterboarded, in pink and green, by “Wicked,” “For Good” doesn’t offer much relief. There is, to be sure, great talent on display in these films, particularly in the case of Erivo. But “For Good,” like its predecessor, often feels more like a Production than a movie, with characters shuffled on and offstage with Oz-like orchestration.

That may be an unavoidable aspect of a pop amalgamation like “Wicked.” This is a big-screen adaptation of a 2003 stage musical (Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz) based on a 1995 book (Gregory Maguire) inspired by a 1939 movie (Victor Fleming and company) and the original 1900 “The Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum. More than a century of American entertainment is packed inside “Wicked.”

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Cynthia Erivo, left, and Jonathan Bailey in a scene from “Wicked for Good..” (Universal Pictures via AP)

So, yes, “The Wizard of Oz” is basically history at this point. And that was much of the wit of Maguire’s book, which took Baum’s Oz and imagined that all of its apparent dichotomies — the vilified Wicked Witch of the West, the perfect Glinda the Good Witch, the powerful Wizard — were mere propaganda. If history is a set of falsehoods agreed upon, then Oz, too, is a lie.

Those political metaphors move to the forefront in “For Good.” Having spent much of part one filling in the backstory of Elphaba (Erivo) and Glinda (Grande) as classmates at Shiz University, the second chapter finds Oz in an increasingly agitated state. Elphaba, demonized as the Wicked Witch of the West, is now living in exile.

“Shield your children,” trumpets the government messaging. “Trust no animals!”

While the Yellow Brick Road is laid down, like railroad tracks on the frontier in an industrial haze, the hunt for Elphaba ratchets up. A travel ban is put in effect for animals and Munchkins, alike. Oz, it’s said, is “a place that seems to be devolving.”

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Jonathan Bailey, left, and Ariana Grande in a scene from “Wicked for Good..” (Universal Pictures via AP)

No one above the age of 10 will fail to miss the target of these references. “Wicked: For Good” isn’t shy about them, and that frankness — and the movie’s ardent belief in empathy and multiculturalism — is both the film’s most stirring and most heavy-handed trait. Each iteration of “Wicked” has come with its own political relevancy. Maguire, himself, was influenced by the drumbeat leading up the Gulf War. “For Good” may be the most pointed and timely interpretation yet. Some of that is woven into the play, and some of it is expanded upon in Holzman’s and Dana Fox’s script, which pads the second act with a little more minor character development and a pair of new songs.

The catchiest tunes (“Popular,” Defying Gravity”) are in the rearview, though. Instead, “Wicked: For Good” is all storm clouds and rebellion, as Elphaba mounts a resistance to the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). Characters like Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), captain of the Wizard’s guard, are forced to pick a side.

Considering the source material of the 1939 classic — old Hollywood at the very height of its powers — you would think Oz would come through clearly as a setting, only seen from a different perspective. But despite Chu’s energetic handling of earlier films like “In the Heights” and “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Wicked: For Good” struggles to really orient us in a place. When Dorothy and Toto drop in (they’re seen only from afar), you almost yearn for the clear pathway they begin skipping down.

Instead, “Wicked: For Good,” rather than conjuring Oz anew, always feels like it’s jumping from one set piece to another. Maybe this is a silly gripe for a fantasyland. (“I don’t have any idea where the offices of the Lollipop Guild are!”) But I rarely found myself lifted into a movie world, but rather sat watching it — sometimes with admiration, rarely with delight — from the mezzanine. The rub of going for maximum effect all the time is that the actors never have a chance to simply be.

This image released by Universal Pictures showsJeff Goldblum, left, and Cynthia Erivo in a scene from “Wicked for Good..” (Universal Pictures via AP)

All the momentum that “Wicked: For Good” does gather is owed significantly to its stars. To a large degree, these movies have been the Erivo-and-Grande show, a grand spectacle of female friendship that rises above all the petty biases and misjudgments to forge a vision of harmony in opposites. It’s a compelling vision, and Chu, as he did in the triumphant “Defying Gravity” culmination of part one, knows how to stick the landing.

Grande is best at the (too few) comic moments, like a brief impression of Margaret Hamilton’s cackle. But it’s Erivo who really elevates the material. Her Elphaba seems to both believe in the hopeful possibility of “Wicked” and fear its impossibility. When she melancholily sings one of the new songs, “No Place Like Home,” Erivo appears to grasp that it’s going to take more than a click of the heels, or tick of the clock, to get there.

“Wicked: For Good,” a Universal Pictures release is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for action/violence, some suggestive material and thematic material. Running time: 137 minutes. Two stars out of four.

By KATIE WORKMAN, Associated Press

This simple recipe is a marriage of two even simpler foods, that add up to one flavorful appetizer, main dish or side. It would be welcome any time from breakfast to lunch to dinner, and also a nice entertaining idea. And it would be a great addition to a Thanksgiving table, a cheery little side dish, or a center of the plate offering for the vegetarians in the house.

Precooked Polenta in Tubes

While you can make polenta from scratch, spread it out to cool, cut it into shapes, that’s awfully time consuming. I prefer to start with packaged cooked polenta. It is available in tubes, sometimes available in the refrigerated section (look near the tofu), and also in the pasta aisle. Many brands don’t need refrigeration until you open them, so check both places. I love Melissa’s shelf-stable organic prepared polenta in tubes, which is available in plain, sundried tomato, and Italian herb. It’s quite the time saver!

This image shows a recipe for pan fried polenta with sauteed mushrooms. (Cheyenne M. Cohen via AP)

This polenta then gets sliced and griddled up in a pan on the stove. The polenta is cooked already, however in order for it to get that nice caramelized exterior on the slices, you’ll want to brown it. A key tip is not to flip the slices too often — let them sit in the skillet for 5 to 7 minutes before turning them, and then let them get completely golden on the other side.

You could also brush the slices with oil and heat them in the oven, or even grill them up if the weather permits. If you want to cook the slices ahead of time, they can be warmed in the oven before topping them with the sauteed mushrooms and serving.

As for the mushrooms, you can go for button mushrooms or cremini, which are very easy to find and affordable. Or if you’re feeling splurgey (or have an experienced mushroom forager in the family!) go for something a bit more exotic, like morels, porcini or oyster mushrooms.

Try another herb instead of the thyme, like sage, rosemary or marjoram.

If you want to make this dish vegan, replace the butter with olive oil. Make sure the variety of polenta you purchase is vegan (many of them are).

Pan Fried Polenta with Sauteed Mushrooms

This image shows a recipe for pan fried polenta with sauteed mushrooms. (Cheyenne M. Cohen via AP)

Serves 6

Ingredients:

1 (1 pound) tube premade polenta

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 pound mushrooms (such as morels, porcini, oyster, or plain button or cremini mushrooms), cleaned and sliced

½ teaspoon minced garlic

1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme

Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Handful chopped fresh parsley for garnish

Directions:

Unwrap the polenta and slice it into ½-inch slices. Line a surface with paper towels.
Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Place as many of the polenta disks into the pan as will fit in a single layer. Cook without moving them, until they turn golden brown and start to crisp up on the bottom, 5 to 7 minutes. Flip the slices with a spatula and continue to cook until the second side is browned and slightly crispy, about another 5 minutes.
Remove the polenta slices to the paper towel lined surface. Repeat with another tablespoon of butter and the remaining polenta slices.
Meanwhile, in another skillet, melt the remaining tablespoon of butter with the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms, garlic, thyme and season with salt and pepper. Sauté for 8 to 10 minutes until the liquid has evaporated and the mushrooms have turned nicely browned.
Spoon the hot sauteed mushrooms over the warm polenta slices, sprinkle over the parsley and serve warm.

Katie Workman writes regularly about food for The Associated Press. She has written two cookbooks focused on family-friendly cooking, “Dinner Solved!” and “The Mom 100 Cookbook.” She blogs at https://themom100.com. She can be reached at Katie@themom100.com.

By Melba Newsome, KFF Health News

For more than a year, Diane Hunter, now 72, had been experiencing vague symptoms — pain in her spine and hips, nausea, exhaustion, thirst, and frequent urination. Her primary care physician had ruled out diabetes before finally chalking up her ailments to getting older.

But months of intense back pain eventually landed her in the emergency room, where a doctor suggested that Hunter might have multiple myeloma. Hunter’s first question was, “What is that?”

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Multiple myeloma is a cancer that develops in bone marrow plasma cells, crowding out healthy blood cells and damaging the bones. It is one of the most common blood cancers — and the most diagnosed among African Americans. The mortality rate from multiple myeloma also is higher among African American patients than white people, with a number of studies showing that, in addition to disease biology, societal factors such as socioeconomic status and lack of access to health insurance or medical services delay timely diagnoses.

A belated diagnosis is what happened to Hunter, a Black woman in Montgomery, Alabama. She said her primary care doctor dismissed a recommendation from her endocrinologist to refer her to a hematologist after finding high protein counts in her blood. Then, she said, he also refused to order a bone marrow biopsy after the ER doctor suggested she might have multiple myeloma. Fed up, she said, she found a new doctor, got tested, and learned she indeed had the disease.

Monique Hartley-Brown, a multiple myeloma researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said Hunter’s experience is fairly common, particularly among Black patients who live in underserved communities.

“On average, patients see their primary doctor three times before being accurately diagnosed,” Hartley-Brown said. “The delay from symptom onset to diagnosis is even longer for Black Americans. Meanwhile, the disease is wreaking havoc — causing fractures, severe anemia, fatigue, weight loss, kidney problems.”

Black and Hispanic patients are also less likely to receive the newest therapies, according to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, and, when they do, they are more likely to do so later in the course of their disease than white patients. An analysis published in 2022 of racial and ethnic disparities in multiple myeloma drug approval trials submitted to the FDA concluded that Black patients made up only 4% of participants despite being roughly 20% of those living with the disease.

Now, even though significant progress has been made in understanding the biology of multiple myeloma and how to treat it, those racial gaps may grow larger amid federal cuts to cancer research and the backlash against diversity and inclusion efforts. While few multiple myeloma experts were willing to talk on the record about the impact of the funding cutbacks, Michael Andreini, president and CEO of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, has written that cuts to the National Institutes of Health and its National Cancer Institute put future innovations at risk.

“Even before these potential cuts, funding for myeloma lagged behind,” he wrote before the cuts were finalized. “The myeloma specific budget has decreased significantly. Myeloma is almost 2% of all cancers, yet receives less than 1% of the NCI’s budget.”

The disease is already hard to diagnose. Because multiple myeloma is usually diagnosed when a patient is over 65 (African Americans tend to be diagnosed five years younger, on average), common symptoms such as lower back pain and fatigue are often chalked up to just getting older.

Jim Washington of Charlotte, North Carolina, is back golfing after twice undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. With premium health insurance and a concierge doctor, he was able to benefit from the latest treatments both times. (A.M. Stewart for KFF Health News/TNS)

That’s what happened to Jim Washington of Charlotte, North Carolina. He was 61 when excruciating hip pain brought his regular tennis games to a sudden stop.

“I figured I’d done something to injure myself,” Washington said. “But I’d been playing tennis all my life, and this pain was different from anything I’d ever felt before.”

Washington was fortunate to have a concierge doctor and premium health insurance. In quick succession, he underwent X-rays that revealed a lesion on his spine and received a referral to an oncologist, who identified a cancerous tumor. A subsequent biopsy and blood tests confirmed he had multiple myeloma.

Washington had weeks of high-dose chemotherapy, followed by what is known as an autologous stem cell transplant, which used his own stem cells to regrow healthy blood cells in his body. It was a grueling process that ultimately left him with a clean bill of health. For the next several years, his doctors monitored him closely, including conducting an annual bone marrow biopsy.

Before treatment, he said, myeloma had infiltrated 60% of his blood cells. The stem cell transplant brought those levels down to zero. After about five years, however, his multiple myeloma level had crept back up to 10% and required more treatment.

But Washington had closely followed the latest research and believed he had reason to be optimistic. The FDA had approved the first CAR T-cell therapy for multiple myeloma in 2021.

Jim Washington of Charlotte, North Carolina, was fortunate to have a concierge doctor and premium health insurance when he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, as he quickly received the latest treatment options. He has now undergone treatment twice for the blood cancer, which is especially common among Black Americans like him. “The prognosis is very positive, and I’m feeling good about where I am at this point,” he says. (A.M. Stewart for KFF Health News/TNS)

Hartley-Brown said the lack of Black patients in multiple myeloma drug approval trials raises concerns about whether the trial results are equally applicable to the Black population and may help explain why treatment advances have been less effective in Black patients.

She cited multiple causes for the low trial participation rate, including historical distrust of the medical establishment and a lack of available clinical trials. “If you are living in an underserved or underrepresented area, the hospital or community doctor may not have clinical trials available, or that patient may have limitations getting to that location affiliated with the clinical trial,” she said.

Washington, a Black patient, appears to have avoided this trap, having benefited from the latest treatments both times. In January, he began six weeks of chemotherapy with a three-drug combination of Velcade, Darzalex, and dexamethasone before undergoing CAR T-cell therapy.

For that, doctors collected Washington’s T cells, a type of white blood cell, and genetically modified them to better recognize and destroy the cancer cells before reinfusing them into his body. He didn’t require hospitalization post-transplant and could do daily blood draws at home. His energy levels were much higher than during his first treatment.

“I’ve been in a very privileged position,” Washington said. “The prognosis is very positive, and I’m feeling good about where I am at this point.”

Hunter, too, considers herself lucky despite receiving a delayed diagnosis. After her diagnosis in January 2017, she underwent five months of immunotherapy with a three-drug combination (Revlimid, Velcade, and dexamethasone) followed by a successful stem cell transplant and two weeks in the hospital. She has been in remission since July 2017.

Hunter, now a support group co-leader and patient advocate, said that stories like Washington’s and her own provide hope despite the research cuts.

In the eight years since her treatment, she said, she’s seen the thinking around multiple myeloma — long described as a treatable but incurable disease — begin to shift as a growing subset of patients remain disease-free for many years. She said she has even met people living with the disease for 30 years.

“The word ‘cure’ is now being heard,” Hunter said.

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is holding steadier on Wednesday, for now at least, ahead of a couple huge tests for Wall Street.

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The S&P 500 rose 0.2% in early trading, coming off a four-day losing streak, its longest in nearly three months. It’s been shaky recently, not just day to day but also hour to hour, because of worries that stock prices have shot too high and that the Federal Reserve may not deliver as many revitalizing jolts through lower interest rates as expected.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 26 points, or 0.1%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% higher.

Lowe’s helped lead the market and rose 3.7% after the home-improvement retailer reported a stronger profit for the summer than analysts expected. Constellation Energy climbed 3.6% after the U.S. Department of Energy said it’s lending $1 billion to help restart Constellation’s nuclear power plant at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island.

They helped balance against Target, which drifted between small losses and gains after reporting a stronger profit but also weaker revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The retailer hinted that challenges may continue through the critical holiday shopping season.

But Wall Street’s focus remained squarely on Nvidia. Wall Street’s most influential stock climbed 2% to recover some of its loss for the month so far, which topped 10% on Tuesday. Traders are making their final moves before the chip company reports how much profit it made during the summer after trading ends for the day.

Much is riding on it.

Nvidia has grown to become the largest stock on Wall Street and briefly topped $5 trillion in value. That means its stock movements carry more weight on the S&P 500 than any other stock, and it can single-handedly steer the index’s direction some days.

It’s also become a bellwether for the broader frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology, because other companies are using its chips to ramp up their AI efforts. Palantir Technologies is helping customers to use AI, for example, while Amazon, Microsoft and others are pouring investments into AI data centers that will hopefully improve their productivity.

Worries have been rising that all the investment may not produce as much profit for companies as earlier hoped, and critics have been suggesting AI’s spectacular surge is similar to the bubble that enveloped dot-com stocks. That ultimately imploded in 2000 and dragged the S&P 500 down by nearly half.

Traders are also making their final moves ahead of a jobs report coming from the U.S. government on Thursday.

It will show many jobs employers created and destroyed in September, which earlier got delayed because of the government’s shutdown.

The job market has been slowing this year, enough that the Fed has already cut its main interest rate twice. Lower interest rates can give a boost to the economy and to prices for investments, but they also can worsen inflation. Some Fed officials have been hinting that they should take a pause on rate cuts at their next meeting in December, in part because inflation has stubbornly remained above the Fed’s 2% target.

What the Fed does is critical for the market because stock prices ran to records in part because of expectations for continued cuts to rates.

Treasury yields have been swinging in the bond market as traders rejigger their forecasts. The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.10% from 4.12% late Tuesday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed amid mostly modest movements across Europe and Asia.

AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.