Film
Armie Hammer Exits Jennifer Lopez Film Shotgun Wedding Amid Social Media Controversy
Over the weekend Armie Hammer found himself embroiled in controversy after an anonymous Instagram user posted explicit messages that appeared to show him fantasizing about various acts of sexual depravity. The 34-year-old act has yet to comprehensively address the accusations, but today he did announce his departure from the upcoming Lionsgate film Shotgun Wedding , and he also released a brief statement on the developing scandal. The validity of the Instagram messages have yet to be confirmed, but under the account name House of Effie, a woman posted screenshots of disturbing DMs that she claimed Hammer had sent her over the last few years. The sexually graphic screengrabs show a user who appears to be Hammer talking about his “slave” kink, cannibalism, and other forms of violent sex...
Synchronic Splices Together Sci-Fi, Heart, and Humor For One Hell of a Potion: Review
This review was originally part of our coverage of the 2020 Beyond Film Festival. The Pitch: Paramedics Dennis (Jamie Dornan) and Steve (Anthony Mackie) work together in the same ambulance and are also longtime best friends. Running the Garden District route in New Orleans, the two run into a string of incidents linked to a new synthetic designer drug, Synchronic, which is having preternatural effects on users. When a one-two punch of personal tragedy afflicts the friends, their lives are thrown into turmoil as they become inextricably linked to the dangerous narcotic. The Best Time Travel Stories Are Not About Time Travel: Time travel in film is usually best used when it’s a plot device but not the coda of the movie. Genre vets Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson are magicians here, using th...
Andra Day Refuses to Be Silenced in First Trailer for The United States vs. Billie Holiday: Watch
Andra Day in The United States vs. Billie Holiday trailer Billie Holiday’s fame in the ’30s and ’40s threatened the very fabric of racist white America. But it was her popular recording of “Strange Fruit”, a song protesting the lynching of Black people, that officially made Holiday an enemy of the country. In an effort to discredit and silence her, the Federal Department of Narcotics targeted Holiday relentlessly, knowing she’d had a history of drug abuse. That’s the haunting premise of The United States vs. Billie Holiday, a new Hulu biopic from director Lee Daniels (Precious) written by Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks. The legendary jazz singer is played by real-life Grammy nominee Andra Day, who embodies Holiday’s brazen outspokenness and magnetism in equal measure, as seen in to...
Chadwick Boseman’s Wife Simone Gives Tearful Tribute at Gotham Awards: “Keep Shining Your Light On Us”
At Monday’s Gotham Awards, Simone Ledwick Boseman accepted an award on behalf of her late husband Chadwick Boseman. Via EW, she offered a tearful tribute honoring “the most honest person I’ve ever met.” Boseman had been nominated for Best Actor for his performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and while Riz Ahmed eventually won for Sound of Metal, Boseman received a posthumous Actor Tribute. His widow made a virtual appearance, offering one of the most emotionally raw speeches of this or any other award ceremony. “He was the most honest person I’ve ever met,” she said, “because he didn’t just stop at speaking the truth, he actively searched for it: In himself, in those around him and in the moment, The truth can be a very easy thing for the self to avoid, but if one does...
Bruce Willis Booted from LA Pharmacy for Refusing to Wear Mask
Live free… or die hard in the ICU: Bruce Willis, he of the Die Hard franchise, was asked to leave a Los Angeles pharmacy after refusing to abide by the city’s strict mask guidelines. Page Six reports Willis was shopping at a Rite Aid in LA, the current epicenter of the pandemic in the US, when some of his fellow patrons became upset that he wasn’t wearing a mask. They complained to the store’s workers, who asked Willis to follow guidelines and cover his face. Despite having a bandana around his neck that he easily could have just pulled up, the actor refused, and was asked to leave. Apparently, Willis left without much of a disagreement, but also without making his purchase. Editors’ Picks Willis had spent the early part of the pandemic quarantined in Idaho with his ex-wife, Demi Moo...
Paul McCartney’s Daughter Mary McCartney to Direct Abbey Road Documentary
In 1931, the Gramophone Company opened a studio in a Georgian townhouse on London’s Abbey Road. Nine decades later and Abbey Road Studios has become perhaps the most famous recording studio. Now, Mary McCartney, daughter of Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney, is planning to tell the studio’s story with a new documentary titled, If These Walls Could Sing. For many people, the significance of Abbey Road has everything to do with Abbey Road, the 11th studio album by The Beatles. But the former EMI Recording Studios has a rich place in much more of Britain’s musical history, from 1930s sessions with the London Symphony Orchestra through the first digital recording ever made in the UK to its place today as a historical landmark. If These Walls Could Sing will be the first time a documentar...
Locked Down Masks Up for a Charming Enough Romantic Caper: Review
The Pitch: At the outset of COVID-19 lockdown in London, Linda (Anne Hathaway) and her longtime partner Paxton (Chiwetel Ejiofor) have broken up. Unfortunately, they’re still quarantined together, and they’re both experiencing career crises — hers over a heartless but lucrative corporate job, his over what he sees as dead-end prospects. Their various neuroses come together when they’re presented with an unusual opportunity to pull off a daring heist. COVID: The Movie: Locked Down is the second big-studio-style movie conceived, produced, and released entirely during the pandemic, after last year’s woeful Songbird. Screenwriter Steven Knight wrote it in the fall; director Doug Liman shot it in the fall; and now it’s hitting HBO Max just months after principal photography wrapped. Though some...
Darren Aronofsky to Direct Brendan Fraser in New A24 Film The Whale
Brendan Fraser is once again set to play the role of a social recluse. As Discussing Film reports, the 52-year-old Blast from the Past actor has been tapped to star in The Whale, director Darren Aronofsky’s new film for A24. The Whale tells the story of a morbidly obese middle-aged man named Charlie (Fraser) and his efforts to rebuild a relationship with his teenage daughter. The father and daughter initially grew apart after Charlie chose to walk out on his family in order to pursue a gay lover. That partner eventually died, and Charlie sought comfort in food. Due to his compulsive eating, he eventually grew to weigh 600 pounds. The film is based on a play by Samuel D. Hunter. Also titled The Whale, since debuting Off-Broadway in 2012, the production has earned both the prestigious Drama ...
Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem to Play Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in New Movie
Nearly 70 years after it went off the air, I Love Lucy is coming to the big screen. A new feature film about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz is in the works from Aaron Sorkin, and he plans to cast none other than Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem as the iconic TV couple. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the two are in talks to play the beloved I Love Lucy creators and stars. The movie, titled Being the Ricardos, will be written and directed by Sorkin. Amazon Studios is onboard and production will be overseen by Escape Artists’ Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, and Steve Tisch. Being the Ricardos reportedly takes place during one production week of I Love Lucy. When things get unexpectedly hectic on set, Lucy and Desi are faced with two simultaneous problems: a crisis “that could end their c...
Regina King’s One Night in Miami Is a Quiet and Powerful Meditation on Race: Review
This review was originally part of our coverage of the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. The Pitch: On the night of Cassius Clay’s (Eli Goree) historic win over Sonny Liston in 1964, the man who would become Muhammad Ali gathers his friends — Muslim Brotherhood activist Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), football player Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) and singer Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) — to celebrate, debate, and plan for a new world. Play It Again, Sam: Based on real events, Kemp Powers’ 2013 play is a speculative consideration of what happened when the four African American icons gathered together for one night in 1964. Historically, this is the year that Cooke would be murdered; Malcolm X would be assassinated the following year in 1965. Expanding upon his original source material, Powe...
Arnold Schwarzenegger Gives Rousing Speech Defending Democracy While Holding Sword: Watch
Arnold Schwarzenegger has lived a long and varied life. The first superstar bodybuilder transitioned into a career as one of the biggest movie stars in history, and he followed that up with two terms as the 38th Governor of California. In a video posted to Twitter on January 10th, Ahnald brought all of his considerable talents to bear on America’s wavering democracy, and he did it with historical analogies, deeply personal stories, and of course, an enormous broadsword. Schwarzenegger began by framing himself as “an immigrant to this country,” a man raised in Austria in the shadow of Nazi rule. “I’m very aware of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, It was a night of rampage against the Jews carried out in 1938 by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys,” he said, before turning his ...
Sacha Baron Cohen Calls Trump’s Twitter Ban “The Most Important Moment in the History of Social Media”
It should’ve happened years ago, but Donald Trump was finally permanently suspended from his Twitter account on Friday. After using the platform to incite an attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, the MAGA leader was also temporarily blocked from accessing Facebook and Instagram until at least the end of his presidency, and Borat actor Sacha Baron Cohen couldn’t be more excited. “This is the most important moment in the history of social media,” he tweeted on Friday evening. “The world’s largest platforms have banned the world’s biggest purveyor of lies, conspiracies and hate. To every Facebook and Twitter employee, user and advocate who fought for this—the entire world thanks you!” Cohen’s investment in the censorship of Trump didn’t start yesterday. The 49-year-old comedian has...
