Emma Watson is officially Prada Beauty's new face pic.twitter.com/SNywjXUQ5u
— ✨ (@daiIywatson) August 18, 2022
–Emma Watson is back to short hair, which means she’s back to making me want to cut mine all off.
–Britney Spears and Elton John‘s reworking of “Tiny Dancer” now won’t come out until next Friday (even though it’s already been leaked).
-The reviews for HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon have finally hit, and most say it’s overall pretty good — or at least good enough. Critics say it’s more narratively focused than GoT, that it’s a worthy successor (even if it can’t match GoT’s highs), and that it doesn’t feel necessary but it’s fun — eventually.
-No doubt trying to grab the last bit of attention from genre fans before we all get distracted by dragons, Netflix just dropped a two-part bonus episode of The Sandman telling two beloved tales from the comics: “Calliope” starring Derek Jacobi and Arthur Darville, and the animated “A Dream of a Thousand Cats” starring the voices of James McAvoy, David Tennant, Michael Sheen and Sandra Oh.
-HBO Max is removing 36 titles (20 of which are originals) to save on taxes and so they don’t have to pay the creative teams residuals. I can’t believe the streamer that was positioned as the strongest just a few months ago has suddenly turned into such a mess.
–John Corbett is set to reprise his role as Aidan in the next season of the Sex and the City sequel, And Just Like That.
-Ohhhh, this is intriguing: there’s an Ally McBeal sequel in the works, with a young Black lawyer in the lead and Calista Flockhart possibly returning.
-Schitt’s Creek star and co-creator Dan Levy has joined the cast of Sex Education for season four.
–Jonah Hill released an open letter in which he announced that he will no longer promote his own movies for the foreseeable future in order to continue working on his mental health.
-This is a great interview with Chloe Sevigny as she looks back at her biggest roles.
–Amandla Stenberg talked about sliding into a movie critic’s DMs to criticize her review, saying “I thought my DM was funny. I did not mean to harass you. I do not wish you any harm. You are allowed to have your criticism on my work and I’m allowed to have my criticisms of your work.”
-Now that Better Call Saul is over, there’s a debate about whether it was better than Breaking Bad. Personally, I’d still go with BB, which I found to be an overall more gripping and entertaining show (the early days of BCS were a slog), but thematically I give the point to BCS because I think it’s a more hopeful show. Sure, Walter White ended up exonerating Skylar and saving Jesse in the finale, but he didn’t set out to do that. He ended that show still in full Heisenberg mode, learning no lessons and earning no redemption. Saul, on the other hand, proved that people can change (a repeated theme in the end) and let go of the Saul/Slippin’ Jimmy personas to fully embrace being James McGill, a person who was willing to make a real sacrifice for love.
-Meanwhile, this article recounts Bob Odenkirk‘s heart attack on set, which happened when he was on break with costars and housemates Rhea Seehorn and Patrick Fabian. Said Fabian, “We watched him collapse, we watched him turn blue, we watched him go away and we watched him come back, all in a span of about 25 minutes. And as the ambulance pulled away with Bob, all I could think of is how thin the notion of making a TV show seemed, and how grateful I was that in between scenes, instead of going to our trailers, we hang out with one another.”
–Elijah Wood has joined the cast of Yellowjackets. It’s an Ice Storm reunion!
-This clip of Viola Davis training for The Woman King makes me want to go to the gym more.
-HBO has ordered season two of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal. That show makes me so uncomfortable but yay for weird stuff getting renewed.
–Queen Latifah and Chris Bridges‘ family road trip turns into a fight for their lives when they witness a murder in the trailer for Netflix’s End of the Road.