-I love this EW spread on Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss, who discuss their new Matrix movie and their 20-plus years of friendship. “We’ve been through this experience together as partners. The only way I can describe it is like a soul friendship.”
-The Gotham Awards were last night, giving us a better idea of what’s shaping up to have Oscar buzz. Maggie Gyllenhaalwon three awards for her directorial debut, The Lost Daughter, as did Apple’s CODA.
-Love is dead. Hamilton’s Anthony Ramos and Jasmine Cephas Jones have broken up after 6 years together, and it sounds like it might be messy.
-Speaking of messy splits, Aaron Carter and fiancée Melanie Martinhave broken up a week after their son’s birth, with him tweeting “I was deceived and lied to. I can’t believe she betrayed [me] this way.”
-Bruised must be doing well on Netflix: Halle Berry just struck a multi-picture deal with the streamer.
-Kevin Can F**k Himself will come to an end with its second season. It’s too bad — it felt like the show was finding itself at the end of last season.
–Britney Spears is really happy about lighting candles. Whatever works!
-This is perfect casting: Nic Cage is making his big studio return, signing on to play Dracula opposite Nicholas Hoult‘s Renfield in Universal’s new monster movie.
-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.
–Harry Styles covers the winter issue of Dazed and the photo shoot is worth a look. He talks about branching out into acting (“You’re trying to remove a lot of yourself and key into someone else. On the most basic level, it’s like being a kid and you’re playing pretend. I am not a very confrontational person, I think I’m pretty chill, so then when you have a character who is like that, it’s fun to explore”), and his new line of beauty products (“It’s starting with nail polish, because that was kind of the birth of what it was for. Me seeing a colour on a flower or a wallpaper or something and thinking, ‘Oh, I wanna put that on my nails.’ It was a fun little project, but during the pandemic, and when we eventually named it Pleasing, it felt like it was so much more than nail polish”).
-It’s Taylor Swift‘s world; we’re just living in it. On Friday night, she debuted her short film for “All Too Well” starring Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink and Teen Wolf’s Dylan O’Brien, and on SNL she performed an epic 10-minute version of the song with the film playing behind her. Then today, she dropped the music video for “I Bet You Think About Me“, which marks Blake Lively‘s directorial debut and stars (for some reason) Miles Teller.
–Jake Gyllenhaal was spotted out with his sister Maggie this weekend, so Taylor fans are letting him live (barely).
-Is Shia LaBeouf about to become a father? Following allegations of abuse levelled against him by ex-girlfriend FKA twigs, he reportedly got back with his ex-wife, actress Mia Goth. And now it looks like they’re expecting.
–Kristen Stewart is developing a gay ghost-hunting reality show with a friend, which she has described as “a paranormal romp in a queer space,” with elevated aesthetics. This sounds like the reality TV version of her film Personal Shopper and I’m in.
-From divorce to weight loss, Adele didn’t hold back details in her tell-all interview with Oprah last night on CBS.
-There were a ton of celebs in Adele‘s hand-picked audience, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Drake, Selena Gomez, Tracee Ellis Ross, Ava DuVernay, Gayle King, Childish Gambino, Kris Jenner, Ellen DeGeneres, Nicole Richie, Seth Rogan, Tyler Perry, Aaron Paul and James Corden.
-Meanwhile, I don’t usually like public proposals but the one during her special was great, especially because the woman’s shock extended when she was told to sit down and they put her next to Lizzo and then Melissa McCarthy handed her a drink.
-Last week’s Disney+ Day was a mess. The biggest miss is how they put most of the trailers behind a paywall so they couldn’t be shared on social. (Also, the fact that they forgot to untag all the previously mentioned celebs in their Twitter thread made my social media manager heart hurt.) But some trailers have started to trickle out, including Oscar Isaac doing an awful accent in Moon Knight, and Iman Vellani making her debut as Ms. Marvel.
–Serena and Venus Williams brought the drama to the premiere of King Richard (which I saw this weekend and am still undecided on.)
–Lin-Manuel Miranda is promoting Tick Tick Boom (which I also saw this weekend and loved) and says he’s not worriedabout so-called “cancel culture.” “Once something has success, you’re not the underdog trying to make it happen anymore. You have to graduate past the mindset of, like, it’s a miracle I got something on the stage. Because now that is expected of me. And people go, ‘Yeah, but what about this? And what about this?’ And that’s fair! I do that with art I find lacking…It’s not cancellation. That’s having opinions. So I try to take it in that spirit.”
-Here’s the trailer for Silent Night, starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode. I saw this at TIFF and it straddles a really hard line between dark comedy and massively depressing doomsday drama.
