Netflix Snips Off Globes: “We’re stopping any activities with your organization until more meaningful changes are made. We know that you have many well-intentioned members who want real change — and that all of us have more work to do to create an equitable and inclusive industry, but Netflix and many of the talent and creators we work with cannot ignore the HFPA’s collective failure to address these crucial issues with urgency and rigor.”

Deadline | May 7, 2021

HFPA: "We hear your concerns about the changes our association needs to make and want to assure you that we are working diligently on all of them. We can assure you that our plan reflects input from our supporters and critics alike, and we truly believe that our plan will drive meaningful reform and inclusion within our Association and in a way that the entire industry can be proud of... We would love to meet with you and your team so we can review the very specific actions that are already in the works. An open dialogue would help to ensure that we are addressing these concerns as quickly as possible.”

LA Times | May 7, 2021

A Hundred Publicists Say To Hollywood Foreign Press Association: Nope, Nope, Not Good Enough; Boycott Will Continue

The Wrap | May 7, 2021

“Lakeith Stanfield moderated a Clubhouse room where people spread hateful conspiracy theories about Jewish people. When he was called out, he avoided responsibility for participating… Stanfield reportedly shrugged off the concern and avoided any responsibility for participating. “He told her, ‘This is probably an emotional kind of room for you, tensions are running high, and I understand this is a very heated room. Then he just kind of danced around it not really saying anything.”

Daily Beast | May 7, 2021

Molly Haskell: "At the start of the pandemic, I went through a zombie phase with Train to Busan and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s genre films. I had somehow never seen Carnival of Souls—it blew my mind. I discovered two stunning films (restored and streamed by MoMA) by the totally unknown French director Louis Valray. I commune with fellow movie lovers with tips and reactions: one recommends Andre de Toth’s Day of the Outlaw, on YouTube; another, George Cukor’s The Model and the Marriage Broker; still another, Japanese noir on Criterion. I have stacks of unread film books and magazines which I’m finally delving into. We all have favorite movie years or decades, often having less to do with the quality of the movies than with our own age and susceptibility, who we were and were about to be, at the time. For someone who formed an early addiction to transactions between grown-up men and women, my favorite theaters will always be the tiny (often underground) boxes on Paris’s Left Bank where my cinema education and my adulthood really began—screens that, in retrospect, seem both smaller and larger than the one in my living room. On the latter I watched all or most of the films of 2020. And I began to think about the idea of spectacle being as much in the beholder’s eye as on the screen. Certainly I felt transported by the ending of Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, when the sorrow and awkwardness of four Danish teachers’ lives is momentarily forgotten and, among the throngs of a crowded dock, Mads Mikkelsen launches into a delirious, gravity-defying dance. I would trade those few minutes of human-size euphoria for all the CGI wizardry of Christopher Nolan."

May 7, 2021

"Greg Marcus, CEO of Marcus Corp., was shocked when Arclight Cinemas and Pacific Theatres went dark. “I happened to notice that. It caught my attention, ‘What? Arclight is not reopening?’ Arclight’s reopening. I’ll take that bet with anybody who wants to bet me on that. Those theaters are so productive nationally that they will reopen. I just don’t know who will control them. We certainly welcome those discussions There’s nothing to report right this second, but we are open and available for discussions."

Yahoo | May 7, 2021

"Michael Che says he knows funny. 'SNL' and his new sketch show suggest otherwise"

LA Times | May 7, 2021

Are Arclight And Cinerama Dome Seeking Suitors Or A Nice, Fat Rent Abatement?

Hollywood Reporter | May 6, 2021

Being Oral With Madonna's Thirty-Year-Old Truth Or Dare

Twitter | May 6, 2021

"Helmut Newton’s photos conveyed such complex sexual tension that the British press dubbed him “the King of Kink.” People speculated about his relationship with models, what his actual wife looked like, what she knew, what she didn’t know, and what there was to know. One of the sexiest photographs he ever took was of June lighting a cigarette at a dinner table, her dress pulled open to expose her breasts. Married for 56 years, citizens of the world, childless, they loved each other."

May 5, 2021

Michael Koresky: "Though beloved by many, James L. Brooks’ domes­tic tragicomedy starring Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger was an untouchable object in my house, spoken of in hushed tones and head-shakes. I actually cannot remember when my mother first showed it to me; it’s one of those movies that’s just always been there. Its title is so iconic at this point that it even seems to have lost its specific and elegant double mean­ing. Terms of Endearment. It’s just… a title. Out of the almost 100 Best Picture Oscar winners, it’s one of the very, very few that one could ever call a “women’s picture,” and the only one in the history of the awards that centers almost exclusively on the relationship between a mother and a daughter—stories of dads, sons, and godfathers are more the speed of traditionally masculinist Hollywood cinema. It’s not an aesthetically difficult film by any measure, yet my mother remembered Terms of Endearment as a challenge, even radical in what she perceived as a betrayal of the audience’s trust. 'We were sitting in the theater laughing so hard, and then…' She trailed off. 'I thought, what is this? We were shocked. We felt like we got punched in the stomach.'"

Slate | May 5, 2021

Martin Scorsese: “We are thrilled to finally start production on Killers of the Flower Moon in Oklahoma. To be able to tell this story on the land where these events took place is incredibly important and critical to allowing us to portray an accurate depiction of the time and people. We’re grateful to Apple, the Oklahoma Film and Music Office and The Osage Nation, especially all our Osage consultants and cultural advisors, as we prepare for this shoot. We’re excited to start working with our local cast and crew to bring this story to life on screen and immortalize a time in American history that should not be forgotten.”

May 5, 2021

"We talked about that in January. It’s our belief — that I think is not unfounded — that actors’ speeches tend to be more dramatic than producers’ speeches. And so we thought it might be fun to mix it up, especially if people didn’t know that was coming. So that was always part of the plan. And then when the nominations came out and there was even the possibility that Chadwick could win posthumously, our feeling was if he were to win and his widow were to speak on his behalf, there would be nowhere to go after that. So we stuck with it. I said if there was even the sliver of a chance that he would win and that his widow would speak, then we were operating under the fact that was the end of the show. So it wasn’t like we assumed it would, but if there was even a possibility that it would happen, then you have to account for that. That would have been such a shattering moment, that to come back after that would have been just impossible."
Soderbergh On Searching For An Ending

LA Times | May 5, 2021

Warner Search For Black Superman

Hollywood Reporter | May 5, 2021

"The Guardian is not the only newspaper to declare that it has a higher purpose than transmitting the day’s events in order to make a profit. But it might be unique in having held on to that sense of purpose for two centuries."
The Grauniad Turns 200

The Guardian | May 4, 2021