Browsing Tag

Rian Johnson

Who’s On Team Taylor?

-The Taylor Swift drama kicked into high gear over the long weekend. Swift has never owned her masters and her old music label just sold them to Justin Bieber‘s manager Scooter Braun, much to Swift’s chagrin. Now you’d think Swift would come off completely sympathetic here, since labels controlling artists’ original recordings is a ridiculous predatory relic of the music industry (remember when Prince wrote “slave” on his face and changed his name to a symbol? Or when Paul McCartney lost the rights to The Beatles’ catalog to Michael Jackson?). But Swift muddied the waters with her rebuttal by 1) saying she didn’t know about the sale (which seems unlikely, since her dad is on the label’s board and the head of the label says he texted her the night before the story broke), 2) bringing up all the Kanye West past drama and 3) using Tumblr, of all platforms, to make a statement. I get that a lot of her fans are still on it but this should have been positioned as a business story, not a fandom rallying cry. And now there’s talk that she’s liking anti-Bieber posts that have nothing to do with music rights. Remember when Swift used to be the best at controlling the message? Nowadays, even when she’s in the right (and she’s CLEARLY in the right on the masters issue) it’s not always easy to root for her. The fact that people are actually defending archaic music industry practices over her is a pretty stark sign of how far she’s fallen.

-Celebs are taking sides, with Justin Bieber, Demi Lovato and Sia defending Braun, and Halsey, Camila Cabello, Iggy Izalea, Cara Delevingne, Haim, and Brandon Urie on Team Swift.

Miley Cyrus just dropped a NSFW music video filled with messages like “feminist AF,” “virginity is a social construct,” and “my body my rules.”

-“Old Town Road” rapper Lil Nas X came out as gay over the weekend with his latest song, tweeting: “Deadass thought i made it obvious.”

Joshua Jackson was spotted looking cozy this weekend with Jodie Turner-Smith (who he also posted a sweet IG story with). But I thought he was spotted kissing another girl in a parking garage a couple of weeks ago?

Lindsay Lohan celebrated turning 33 by getting naked on Instagram. As you do.

-Wow. Kim Kardashian actually agreed to change her shapewear line’s name.

Dan Levy‘s goodbye post to Schitt’s Creek is so soft.

-It looks like James Franco might be getting pulled into the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp saga.

-I never thought I’d push for Harry Styles to play Elvis, but I’ll take him over Ansel Elgort or Miles Teller.

Louis Tomlinson wasn’t thrilled about that fanfiction scene in HBO’s Euphoria, in which a character read her fanfic about him and Harry Styles relieving stage-fright tensions through oral sex (which was accompanied by an animated depiction). He responded to fan’s tweets about it “I can categorically say that I was not contacted nor did I approve it.”

-It also seems like someone at HBO pretended to be a teen to infiltrate the fanfic community, which is gross.

Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston keep teasing a new project, which is presumably the Breaking Bad movie.

-It’s amazing how charming Jake Gyllenhaal can be when he wants to be. (Full video is here.)

-This is a great profile on Linda Cardellini, who just keeps steadily, quietly doing good work.

-Enlisted is now streaming on Crackle. I wish it was Netflix, but it’s a start!

-The reviews for the new season of Stranger Things are very strong (though I’m a little concerned that there seems to be critical rumblings that Hopper has turned into a jerk).

-Here’s the first trailer Mindy Kaling’s adaptation of Four Weddings and a Funeral. It looks charming. I am charmed.

-There are so many articles lately about the summer box office meltdown. But Late Night and Booksmart should never have been summer releases, and Men In Black and Dark Phoenix were obviously re-written messes. This doesn’t seem confusing.

-Sadness: Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss has announced she’s leaving the band.

-A new Aziz Ansari stand-up special directed by Spike Jonze is coming to Netflix this month. Anyone wanna bet that he doesn’t even reference why he went away?

-Cult favorite TV show Wynonna Earp is back on track for a summer 2020 return after the studio’s funding woes nearly derailed the Syfy drama.

-I like this Big Little Lies theory.

-The trailer for Rian Johnson‘s murder mystery Knives Out has dropped, featuring a stacked cast that includes Chris Evans, Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Michael Shannon and LaKeith Stanfield.

Cardi B Is Delightful on The Tonight Show

Cardi B explaining how she got her name is adorable. She keeps making weird little sounds that Jimmy Fallon clearly doesn’t know how to respond to. Someone on Twitter suggested she star in a remake of The Nanny and now that’s all I want.

Katy Perry’s alleged stalker was arrested after rushing the stage last night at her concert. “I will do whatever it takes to be with Katy Perry,” he reportedly told a cop.

-Nothing makes me happier than the glee that Twitter is feeling over the bad reviews of Max Landis’s Bright on Netflix. I still can’t believe Netflix spent $90 million on this thing…

Rian Johnson very nicely responded to fan question about how “polarizing” The Last Jedi is by tweeting “The goal is never to divide or make people upset, but I do think the conversations that are happening were going to have to happen at some point if sw is going to grow, move forward and stay vital.”

-I don’t believe that Robert Pattinson and Emma Watson are dating because a) the source is In Touch Weekly and b) I don’t want them to.

Jennifer Lawrence and Darren Aronofsky are spending time together and “seeing what happens.”

-This is fascinating: what should the next Bechdel test look like?

-A lifelong Taylor Swift fan shared a story about Swift helping her out once she found out she was pregnant and homeless.

Beyonce is perfect at everything, including the electric slide.

Princess Michael has conceded that maybe she shouldn’t have worn that wildly racist broach to Meghan Markle‘s lunch.

-Royal watchers are predicting Harry & Meghan’s wedding will be “brought down a notch or two from William and Kate’s.” No! I want all the notches!

-In a new essay for EW, Olivia Munn responded to Woody Allen‘s “witch hunt” claim by saying “The possibility of an overcorrection is much less worrisome than all of the injustices that led us to this moment.”

-I really like this piece on why Matt Damon should think before he speaks again.

-The fact that so many of the men outed as sexual predators have issued non-apologies is no coincidence.

-Oof, the Overboard trailer with Anna Faris looks bad. How could they screw this up? And this is coming from someone who loves cheesy movies (as evidenced by the fact that I went to a 10pm screening of Pitch Perfect 3 yesterday and kinda liked it).