Monthly Archives

August 2021

Angelina Jolie Breaks Instagram Records

-I wondered if Angelina Jolie‘s decision to join Instagram was tied to her Marvel contract, but sources say she was compelled to join and speak out about what’s happening in Afghanistan. In her first post, she shared a letter she was sent from a teenage Afghan girl.

-Another day, another adorable set of photos of Channing Tatum and Zoe Kravitz hanging out in NYC. Ok, now that it seems like they really are together I want to wrap them in bubblewrap and make everyone leave them alone.

–Kylie Jenner is pregnant — she’s expecting her second child with Travis Scott.

-So, it happened. Mike Richards quit Jeopardy after his first day of taping following Ringer’s explosive report and rumblings that Sony was unimpressed. When I say he quit Jeopardy though, I only mean his new hosting gig. He’s still an executive producer. I can’t imagine what it must be like to work there now (or what the next host will deal with). According to the NYT, staff aired grievances at meeting on Thursday, while Ken Jennings and Buzzy Cohen were not allowed to watch the in-studio taping and were told that Richards was too nervous about their presence.

-Meanwhile, The Ringer’s Claire McNear talked about how her story came together, the response she received, and what she predicts comes next.

–Ryan Reynolds tweeted his support for Levar Burton to take over hosting, bringing up the fan campaign that got him cast as Deadpool.

-The woman who was assaulted by Nicki Minaj’s husband is speaking out and taking new legal action after saying she’s experienced several months of alleged harassment, threats and intimidation from Minaj, her husband and their associates.

-There were some reports this week that Britney Spears had secretly married and divorced her then-fiancé and former agent Jason Trawick in 2012. The speculation surfaced when her conservatorship court filings included an expense of $9,150 for a lawyer “Consultation on Dissolution of Marriage,” but the most likely explanation is that it was a meeting about a prenup.

-Even though Johnny Depp lost his defamation suit in the UK, a Virginia judge has ruled that he can file a separate suit against Amber Heard in the US.

–Lizzo says she stopped wearing deodorant. Celebrities, you continue to have the option to not tell us things! We would never know and everyone could just go on living their lives.

-There’s a bit of a backlash to Ted Lasso happening right now that I find both predictable and exhausting. I agree with both this take and this review — but I just want to keep liking it.

-I’ve never seen this clip of Will Smith talking about how he passed on playing Neo in The Matrix because the Wachowskis’ pitch was awful. “As it turns out, they’re geniuses. But there’s a fine line in a pitch meeting between genius and what I experienced in the meeting.”

–Mindy Kaling says that a lot of what she writes about is informed by a “devastating” remark about her weight that a fellow writer said to her when she was 25 and on The Office.

-Shadow and Bone star Ben Barnes celebrated his 40th birthday by announcing a debut album.

-This is an interesting look at how TV’s shifts toward streaming and fewer episodes is making it harder for writers to train to become showrunners. In network TV days, writers would get to visits the sets and see how showrunners navigated the management side of things, but now most writers rooms are off the payroll before the show has finished production.

-I liked Sydney Sweeney in Euphoria but it wasn’t until The White Lotus that I realized what she could do. She stars in the trailer for the erotic thriller The Voyeurs, coming to Amazon Prime.

Angelina Jolie is Eternal

angelina jolie as her character from the eternals on the cover of EW

–Angelina Jolie and the rest of Marvel’s The Eternals cast are promoting Chloé Zhao’s upcoming film in EW, while a new trailer quietly dropped overnight. Marvel movies are often criticized for their cinematography but this one looks beautiful.

-The assault allegation against Britney Spears leveled against her by a housekeeper seems shady af. Obviously if it’s true, it’s horrible but one can’t help but wonder if this the new strategy against her? Make her seem violent/unstable?

-I’ve been trying not to get my hopes up about those Zoë Kravitz and Channing Tatum dating rumors because it sounds too good to be true, but dammit. This pic has locked my hopes firmly in the UP position.

–Nicole Kidman was able to skip quarantine in Hong Kong to film her upcoming Amazon series, which is generating some backlash.

-Speaking of Kidman, her new show Nine Perfect Strangers has already dropped its first three episodes — and there’s lots of talk about how it compares to the similarly themed The White Lotus. There’s also lot of talk about Kidman’s awful Russian accent.

–Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is expecting her second child with Jason Statham.

-After a recent Gofundme plea alerted the world that Grace Under Fire star Brett Butler was in desperate financial straits and facing eviction, she sat down with THR for this open and candid interview.

-This piece points out Hugh Jackman‘s long-running tendency to play depressed men chasing after a woman lost in space/time.

–Peter Gallagher is bringing his eyebrows to Seattle Grace.

-Variety’s TV salary report is out, with streamers offering larger than normal payouts. Robert Downey Jr. is rumored to have made at least $2 million per episode for A24’s Vietnam War thriller The Sympathizer — making him one of the highest paid TV stars of all time.

–Nine Inch Nails is the latest act to cancel all remaining concerts of the year.

-Never Have I Ever has been renewed for a third season. I still have to watch the second season but it’s a cute show so I’m glad Netflix is not cutting it short like they so often do.

-Upcoming Jeopardy host Mike Richards has apologized for those offensive podcast comments that surfaced yesterday. As others have pointed out, these comments weren’t decades ago. It was 2014, which is not only not that long ago, but also AFTER there were multiple lawsuits during his tenure at the Price Is Right from models claiming discrimination and insensitive comments.

-Even disregarding his podcast comments, yesterday’s Ringer article clearly lays out how he hustled for the job and stacked the odds in his favour, and is already dismantling the show’s integrity.

–Lee Pace is a ruthless leader in the trailer for Apple’s sci-fi epic Foundation.

Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost Have Baby Boy

–Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost have welcomed a baby boy named Cosmo(!) into the world. It’s her second child, and their first together.

-Congratulations to Outlander’s Caitriona Balfe and Tony McGill who recently welcomed their first child together — despite her fans not knowing she was pregnant.

–Chloe and Halle Bailey cover of Flaunt magazine.

-In THR’s new cover story, Michael Keaton admitted that he got lost when the Morbius filmmakers tried to break down what’s been happening in the MCU and how it makes sense that he’ll play Batman in The Flash thanks to the multiverse. “I’m nodding like I know what the fuck they’re talking about. I go, ‘Uh-huh.’ And I’m thinking, ‘You may as well be explaining quantum physics right now to me. All I know is I just know my guy. And I know the basics.’ So finally, they were looking at me, and they just started laughing. They said, ‘You don’t know what we’re talking about, do you?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t, no idea what you’re talking about.'”

-I don’t know what I’m less surprised by: that Carrie Underwood would like an anti-mask tweet from an extremist voice like Matt W*lsh, or that celebrities still haven’t figured out that we can easily see which tweets they’ve liked.

–Joshua Jackson really wanted to clarify that yes, Jodie Turner-Smith proposed to him first, but that’s not the whole story. “Yes, two proposals. And also for anybody who is freaked out by a woman claiming her own space, shut the fuck up. Good God, you cannot believe the things people were leaving my wife on Instagram. She did it. I said ‘yes.’ We’re happy. That’s it. That’s all you need to know. That has been a real education for me as a white man, truly. The way people get in her comments and the ignorance and ugliness that comes her way is truly shocking. And it has been a necessary, but an unpleasant education in just the way people relate to Black bodies in general, but Black female bodies in specific. It is not okay. We have a long way to go.”

-The Ringer talked to current and former colleagues of new Jeopardy host Mike Richards…and it’s not good! Also, his old podcast jokes have resurfaced online and they are also not good.

-According to The Daily Beast, Queen Elizabeth‘s lawyers wrote to major British newspapers warning them against taking or publishing pictures of the royals at Balmoral the same day that Prince Andrew arrived there. Interesting how they were willing to sic lawyers on the press for negative coverage of him but not Meghan Markle.

–Ant Anstead confirmed that he’s dating Renee Zellweger, saying “Look, everybody knows that Renee and I have become quite close… we kept it secret for a while, and unfortunately some pictures were taken and put out there.”

-Open arguments have begun in R. Kelly’s sex crime trial, and prosecutors said he used “every trick in the predator’s handbook.” Meanwhile, his lawyer seemed flustered in her opening remarks, accidentally saying “the girls” in reference to Kelly’s partners before quickly correcting herself by saying “excuse me, the women,” as well as saying: “You ultimately will have to find Mr. Kelly guilty — excuse me, not guilty.”

–Alyssa Milano and her uncle were involved in a car accident after he suffered a suspected heart attack while driving.

–Phoebe Dynevor has signed on to executive-produce and star in Amazon’s adaptation of Exciting Times and now everyone is wondering what that means for Bridgerton. She’s only in brief scenes in the subsequent books — because that’s how those books work.

-This is an interesting piece on Nicole Kidman the film actor versus Nicole Kidman the TV star, and how she seems to be choosing less interesting roles on the small screen vs the big screen.

-Meanwhile, I had no idea her new show Nine Perfect Strangers had already started airing. There’s too much TV.

-I was clicking on a celebrity-related tweet last week and it went to Gawker, which felt like a time warp. The site is back with an almost-all female staff.

-With Delta bearing down hard on the US, the movie studios are beginning to rethink their release schedule again. The fall film festivals are still rolling on, though.

-Oooh boy. Canadian director Denis Villeneuve said of Dune’s release, “The way it happened, I’m still not happy. Frankly, to watch Dune on a television, the best way I can compare it is to drive a speedboat in your bathtub. For me, it’s ridiculous. It’s a movie that has been made as a tribute to the big-screen experience” Sigh. Look, I get that as a filmmaker, he wants people to see his movies in the best possible presentation — not to mention his profits and ability to make a sequel are probably tied to box office receipts. But others have pointed out the elitism of his comments. Also, we’re in a pandemic! If people are more comfortable watching it on HBO Max, at least they’re watching it. And not to give James Gunn too much credit, but I did like what he had to say recently about movies becoming favourites because they’re re-run on TV, which seems especially true for a film like Dune, which is destined to be a cult fave due to repeated viewings.

-I don’t watch RHONY, but I really liked this interview with Eboni K Williams about getting along with costars like Ramona Singer who have different political views.  “I’m not looking to see if Ramona and I agree on North Korea, or mask bans, or anything like that. I don’t care about that. But I’ve got to see if we align on those basic principles of shared humanity. And if we don’t, that saves me time, and really, Ramona time.”

-Here’s the final trailer for Annette, which seems to have divided critics.