Monthly Archives

November 2021

Halle Berry’s a Fighter

 

halle berry in a cutout white bathing suit on the cover of womens health

Halle Berry covers Women’s Health to promote Bruised and talks about stepping into the ring to fight and stepping behind camera to direct. “When I realized I couldn’t find a director who saw this story like I saw it, I had a moment of reckoning. I finally realized that at this point in my life, I was ready. I had to take control. I said, ‘Okay, I’m going to work harder than I’ve ever worked.’ ”

Gugu Mbatha-Raw covers Variety UK and discusses the “illusion” of diversity on TV: “It’s very diverse in front of the camera, and people accept that…When you look at camera operators, sound engineers and everyone behind the scenes, it’s a very different picture.”

-Five years after it happened, 12 people have been charged for robbing Kim Kardashian at gunpoint in a Paris hotel room.

-The original cast of Saved By the Bell appeared in the reboot for a scene honouring Screech (the late Dustin Diamond). Why are they all so … shiny?

-Speaking of the Saved By the Bell reboot — they’re doing a tribute to Showgirls?!

Zoë Kravitz is talking up The Batman costar Robert Pattinson in her new interview with Variety. “Rob is perfect for this role. He was incredible. His transformation was out of this world.”

-There’s something wonderful about the random collection of celebs who attended Danny DeVito’s bday party.

Prince William is once again criticizing population growth in Africa, blaming it for destroying wildlife on the continent (which is pretty rich coming from someone who’s expecting his third child).

-Meanwhile, BBC’s new documentary, The Princes and the Press, claims he has been reaching out to the tabloid press to build a better relationship and influence their stories.

-Amid rumours about her health, Prince Charles insists the Queen is “alright,” adding “Once you get to 95, it’s not quite as easy as it used to be. It’s bad enough at 73.”

-This Is Us’ main adult cast fought for — and got — $2 million cash bonuses for the final season.

Benedict Cumberbatch talked about The Power of the Dog’s themes of toxic masculinity, saying “We need to fix the behaviour of men. You have to kind of lift the lid on the engine a little bit.”

Louis C.K. and Dave Chappelle were both nominated for Grammys. Being cancelled seems real rough.

-The annual Book Concierge from NPR is always worth browsing through for good recommendations. (Though it breaks my heart to see some of my fave books from this year are blurbed by Petra Mayer, the late great NPR book editor.)

-Disney’s Encanto is getting rave reviews.

-Speaking of raves, I don’t watch The Great British Baking Show, but people are going nuts about the semifinal episode.

-Star Trek Discovery has left Netflix, much to fans’ disappointment.

-Speaking of Star Trek Discovery, star Sonequa Martin-Green paid tribute to Whoopi Goldberg on The View. “I am your accomplishment and I thank you.”

-This is a cute TikTok tie-in to the new Spider-Man movie.

-Meanwhile, here’s the latest Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer.

Jennifer Lawrence Eases Back Into the Spotlight

jennifer lawrence vanity fair

Jennifer Lawrence covers Vanity Fair and talks about stepping away three years ago. “I was not pumping out the quality that I should have. I just think everybody had gotten sick of me. I’d gotten sick of me. It had just gotten to a point where I couldn’t do anything right. If I walked a red carpet, it was, ‘Why didn’t she run?’ ” Since she’s been gone, she’s married art gallery director Cooke Maroney and is expecting her first child, and seems hesitant to jump back into the spotlight. “I’m so nervous. I haven’t spoken to the world in forever. And to come back now, when I have all of these new accessories added to my life that I obviously want to protect.”

Andrew Garfield covers GQ to promote tick, tick…BOOM! (Have you watched it yet? It’s on Netflix and it’s great. I’m not even that much of a Broadway head and the “Sunday Brunch” cameos blew me away.)  In the article, he goes deep about the recent loss of his mother. “A lot’s changed since then. Like losing my mum, and my psyche being totally rearranged by that. And life taking on a completely different hue and texture…tasting things differently. Hearing. Smell. It’s all different.”

Garfield also spoke beautifully to Stephen Colbert about his late mother. (Warning: this video WILL make you tear up.) It’s rare to see such articulately expressed vulnerability on a talk show. “I’m indebted to everyone who’s brought me to this place so that I can honour the most beautiful person that I’ve ever experienced in my life through my art, and use it as a way to heal. Use it as a way to sew up the wounds, ’cause that’s what we do, right? That’s what you do every night, you sew up our wounds.”

-This Oscar promo tour is already wild! In his new memoir, Will Smith says he once developed a “psychosomatic reaction” to orgasms after engaging in “rampant sexual intercourse” to deal with being cheated on by his first girlfriend: “I had sex with so many women, and it was so constitutionally disagreeable to the core of my being, that I developed a psychosomatic reaction to having an orgasm. It would literally make me gag and sometimes even vomit.” How fun for his partners!

-We’re now at the stage of humanity where we’re tracking Pete Davidson’s hickeys

-General Hospital has ousted fan fave Steve Burton. He’s the second star on the ABC sudser to not comply with the production’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Burton, who started the show in 1991, said “I did apply for my medical and religious exemptions, and both of those were denied. Which, you know, hurts. But this is also about personal freedom to me.”

Hailee Steinfeld makes Jeremy Renner so much more tolerable just by sitting next to him. They took Buzzfeed’s quiz about Marvel trivia and he did terribly.

Jay-Z scored three Grammy Awards nominations this year, making him the most nominated individual in Grammys history, a title he previously shared with Quincy Jones.

-Congrats to Freida Pinto, who welcomed her first baby.

-Amid all those Spider-Man rumours, Sandra Bullock insisted to Jimmy Kimmel she has “never been approached by Marvel.” She joked, “Who did they say I was going to be, like his grandmother or something?”

Chrissy Teigen had “eyebrow transplant surgery” which is apparently a thing people do.

-An arbitrator has ruled that Kevin Spacey must pay a House of Cards producer nearly $31 million for sexual misconduct behind the scenes of the political series.

-With Jared Leto‘s performance in House of Gucci getting lots of (not great) attention, this is a good piece on what an actor loses when their prosthetics become the star, and Hollywood’s obsession with making celebs “unrecognizable.”

Matthew McConaughey, whose just keep livin Foundation has raised $7.7 million for Texas storm relief, was named Philanthropist of the Year.

Terra Field, a trans engineer at Netflix who was suspended and then reinstated in October amid outcry around Dave Chappelle’s special, has resigned.

-I watched the finale of The Morning Show because I couldn’t quite look away from the trainwreck it had become. Season one wasn’t great but season two was actually awful. I can’t believe that Jennifer Aniston agreed to it because her character became shrill and hateful. Instead of examining what could have been a fascinating storyline about reckoning with feelings of guilt/enabling when a close male friend is outed as a predator, all her character cared about was how it affected her own reputation. And then Steve Carell‘s character became sympathetic because of…cancel culture? Aniston’s unhinged rant in the finale was pathetic and self-victimizing, but the way Chip kept nodding made me think he (and, by extension, the show) agreed with her. What? Someone save Billy Crudup and Greta Lee from season three.

-The saga of a Toronto-based scammer (maybe?) who got outed on Twitter Spaces is fascinating.

-Netflix is dropping an adaptation of Anxious People on Dec 29. That was maybe the best book I’ve read this year (so far).

Euphoria dropped the first teaser for its second season and a Jan 9 release date.

Keanu Reeves Remains Dreamy

Keanu Reeves wears a striped suit on the cover of Esquire

-My only requirement for a Keanu Reeves profile is that it doesn’t ruin the idea I have of Keanu in my mind (which is, admittedly, a high bar). Luckily, his new Esquire profile certainly doesn’t. I love how he repeatedly laughs off the notion that movie making is hard work (“I mean, ‘hard’? Come on, man. We’re making a movie!”),  and won’t complain when he wakes up feeling crappy and sick during his current routine of travel and constant night shoots (“So? Drink some hot tea with some lemon and honey in it. I don’t know. Slap yourself in the face. Stretch. Concentrate, man”). The part that’s going to get the most play is undoubtedly Sandra Bullock’s story about how he once brought her champagne and truffles because she had offhandedly mentioned never trying them — and when he dropped them off she was painting her nails so he let her paint his, too. All in all, the whole article is worth your time — even though the writer describes the upscale Toronto neighborhood of Yorkville as “bohemian.”

-The splits keep coming: Kaia Gerber and Jacob Elordi have reportedly split after a year of dating, and Batsheva Haart and Ben Weinstein of Netflix’s My Unorthodox Life have broken up after nine years of marriage.  As Jezebel says, the end of the pandemic cuffing season for famous people is here.

-Bucking the trend are Jaden Smith and Phoebe Dynevor, who may be dating. The age difference seems big but she’s actually only 3 years older.

Adele hosted another televised special — this time in the UK, and the audience was even more celeb-packed than the US one. Stars in the crowd included Idris Elba, Emma Thompson, Hannah Waddingham, Emma Watson, Bryan Cranston, Mel B, Naomi Campbell, Josh Gad, Samuel L Jackson and Richard E Grant.

-My favourite part was when Emma Thompson was urging everyone around her to get up and dance. I have been that person at concerts…

-Another great moment was when Adele’s former English teacher surprised her.

Britney Spears praised Lady Gaga for speaking out on her behalf and chided Christina Aguilera for refusing to do the same. Everyone’s blaming Xtina’s publicist, but look at her face before he even jumps in — this was clearly a “no-go” topic.

Taylor Swift has topped both the Billboard 200 album chart and the Hot 100 singles chart. Say what you will, but she’s managed to dominate the charts with songs that are a decade old.

-Meanwhile, there’s renewed chatter that Jake Gyllenhaal runs the Instagram account of a cat named Ms. FluffleStiltskin, who has started scolding about cyberbullying.

-This is neat: Jane Campion used a Jungian dream coach – who is also Sandra Oh‘s mentor – to put the unconscious on screen in The Power of the Dog.

Ridley Scott is blaming The Last Duel bombing at the box office on apathetic millennials. “What it boils down to [are] the audiences who were brought up on cell phones. The millennian, [who] do not ever want to be taught anything unless you told it on the cell phone. This is a broad stroke, but I think we’re dealing with it right now with Facebook. This is a misdirection that has happened where it’s given the wrong kind of confidence to this latest generation, I think.” There’s a few reasons I didn’t see it in theatres, and they had nothing do with age: the marketing and trailers were abysmal, Matt Damon was promoted much more than Adam Driver and Jodie Comer, I’m still not back to my full in-person theatre-going schedule, AND I had zero desire to watch the same sexual assault repeatedly play out from different perspectives. But go off, I guess.

-For non-ridiculous director talk, here’s Paul Thomas Anderson eating vegan Mexican food and chatting with the NYT.

Kristen Stewart, Jessica Chastain, Tessa Thompson, Kirsten Dunst, Jennifer Hudson and Emilia Jones open up about their respective films already gathering Oscar buzz in THR’s first roundtable of the awards season.

Oscars’ best-actor category is shaping up to be this year’s stiffest competition, with Will Smith, Andrew Garfield, Leonardo DiCaprio, Benedict Cumberbatch, Joaquin Phoenix, Bradley Cooper and Mahershala Ali all being bandied about already.

Jason Reitman’s reboot of the Ghostbusters franchise made a respectable $44 million from 4,315 theaters this weekend.

Eddie Redmayne is courting controversy yet again by playing the Emcee in Cabaret — a character that is often played by LGBT actors. While he admits past mistakes (“I made The Danish Girl with the best intentions, but I think it was a mistake”), he says of his new role “Of all the characters I’ve ever read, this one defies pigeonholing. I would ask people to come and see it before casting judgment.”

-We Are Lady Parts has (finally) been renewed for a second season at Peacock. The first 6-episode season was a blast.

-This is a really good example of how dark and grimy TV looks nowadays. It’s everywhere!

-Three autistic roommates try to conquer their fears in the trailer for As We See It, from This Is Us creator Jason Katims.

-Here’s the trailer for Shonda Rhimes‘ latest Netflix show, Inventing Anna, starring Julia Garner as a grifter who infiltrated the NYC socialite scene.