Browsing Tag

Dwayne Johnson

The Stars Arrive in Venice

-God, I didn’t realize how much I missed red carpets until celebrities started turning out in Venice. Gowns are back! Kristen Stewart is wearing white leather pants! Kirsten Dunst is crushing a series of blazers! Put it all in my eyeballs!

Jennifer Aniston is working on a new beauty brand.

Britney Spears’ lawyer is accusing her father of trying to “extort” $2 million in payments in exchange for stepping down.

Lil Nas X did a pregnancy photo shoot for his new album. Gah, I love him.

Kanye West is sparking cheating rumors with his song “Hurricane,” about his marriage to Kim Kardashian.

-This is a good piece on how Kanye has been exhausting his own fandom for years. “At some point in the past decade—when, exactly, depends on your own taste and patience—Kanye West stopped earning your admiration with his music and started demanding it with everything but.”

-Ted Lasso’s Brett Goldstein hilariously offered “proof” that he’s a real human man.

-Bridgerton’s Regé-Jean Page attended the GQ Men of the Year party with his girlfriend, Emily Brown.

The Accountant 2 is in the works, with Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal reportedly attached. I’m gonna need Anna Kendrick to come back before I care.

-Dickinson will return for its third and final season this fall on Apple TV+. 3 seasons was always the plan, according to creator Alena Smith.

-Here’s the trailer for the final season of Insecure, coming Oct 24.

-It’ll be very interesting to see if Hollywood boycotts Texas because of their insane abortion ban.

Taylor Swift wasn’t joking when she said her Tiktok would be mostly cat videos.

Olivia Rodrigo reportedly lost out on about $1 million in royalties after giving songwriting credits to Paramore and Taylor Swift.

-Check out all of the first trailer from Amazon’s fantasy adaptation, Wheel of Time. This trailer doesn’t do much for me, but people seem to love these books.

Patty Jenkins is getting some heat for saying “all of the films that streaming services are putting out, I’m sorry, they look like fake movies to me…I don’t hear about them, I don’t read about them. It’s not working as a model for establishing legendary greatness.” I mean, I don’t think most streaming movies have moved beyond generic-looking action (see the below trailer), but streaming is where the film world is going so, I don’t know, maybe try to make one that’s better?

Ryan Reynolds and Dwayne Johnson team up against Gal Gadot in the first trailer for Netflix’s Red Notice.

The Rock is Pro Showers

Dwayne Johnson is not joining the non-bathing celeb cult. He says he showers three times a day because he usually works out twice and then goes to work.

-Here we go: a woman named Virginia Giuffre is suing Prince Andrew. She says Jeffrey Epstein forced her to have sex with the royal three times between 1999 and 2002, when she was underage. “I am holding Prince Andrew accountable for what he did to me.”

-A judge has denied a request from Britney Spears’ attorney to expedite her next hearing regarding the suspension and removal of the singer’s father from her conservatorship. The hearing date will remain Sept. 29.

Dev Patel discussed his acting career in an interview with The Guardian, and talked about how he expected to be offered more roles after his success in Slumdog Millionaire — but it didn’t happen. “I was dating my co-star at the time, Freida [Pinto], and she went on to do all of these amazing things. But in a way, she, too, was being type-cast, as this exotic beauty next to all these Caucasian leading men.”

Kanye West has delayed his Donda album twice – leading some to think he’s setting up a release-date battle with Drake. Or maybe it’s just because — like past releases — someone will have to pry it from his grip and convince him to finally release it.

-Yet more proof that “getting cancelled” is not actually a thing: Johnny Depp will receive the San Sebastian Film Festival’s top honour.

-This a good piece on how Ted Lasso seems almost determined to remain unsexy, and yet it’s expertly attuned to the romantic and the sentimental. “You don’t discuss what the show is about but, rather, how it feels to watch it.”

-Meanwhile, poor Harry Styles can’t grow a mustache without being compared to Jason Sudeikis.

Catherine Zeta-Jones will play Morticia in Netflix’s Wednesday Addams series.

Renee Zellweger is dating a reality star, which leads to hanging out with other reality stars, granting them an instant level up.

-30 Rock is back on US Netflix, and the episodes featuring blackface have been omitted (though they don’t make that clear).

-In a memo to staff, Jeopardy! EP (and possible new host) Mike Richards addressed the pregnancy discrimination lawsuits filed against him when he was at the Price Is Right. They still can’t be going ahead with this guy, right?

-Sorry Beyonce. Even you can’t make me want to wear denim chaps.

-There’s lots of chatter about how DC’s The Suicide Squad “underperformed” this weekend at the box office by earning $26.5 million. I don’t really get how people are seeing this as a failure when a) it was simultaneously released on HBO Max, b) the fourth wave of Covid is scaring people away from theatres again, and c) the entire industry has changed and we can’t still be measuring success using the old goalposts.

-Meanwhile, comic book writers and artists are speaking out about their struggles for fair payment at Marvel and DC. “They sent a thank you note and $5,000 – the movie made $1B.”

Cardi B is teasing a new collab with Lizzo that’ll drop on Friday.

-Following his health scare, Bob Odenkirk tweeted, “I’ve had my very own “It’s a wonderful life” week of people insisting I make the world slightly better. Wow! Thank you, I love everyone right now but let’s keep expectations reasonable!”

Taylor Swift and Simone Biles joined forces to tug at our heartstrings.

DaBaby has deleted his Instagram apology, because of course he did.

-This is a great profile on Luke Kirby, who is playing one of the olds in the Gossip Girl reboot. (I’m so glad he’s in a good place. I saw him to a Q&A once for Take This Waltz and it ended with him lying on the stage…)

-The Good Fight is having a flawless season and not enough people are talking about it.

-Here’s our first glimpse of season 4 of Stranger Things, a show I completely forgot existed. I’m glad they shot this soon after the last season so the kids still look like kids.

The Weeknd Talks Darkness and Drugs

weeknd gq cover

The Weeknd covers the Sept issue of GQ and talks about his dark persona (“I am not dark. My art is dark, and I’ve gone through dark times. I’ve used those dark times as inspiration for my art. But I feel like because I’m not dark, I was able to channel it and put it into my music and into my art”), quitting drugs (“Drugs were a crutch. It was me thinking that I needed it. And not doing the work to figure out how not to need it. And I’ve spent the last few years realizing that and thanking God that I don’t need it”), and bingeing The X-Files during the pandemic (“Everyone copied them, bro. Everyone”).

-In her new GQ profile, Olivia Rodrigo says she’s been following the Britney Spears news closely. “I think, as an industry, people are getting better at not taking advantage of and manipulating and bullying young women. But it’s still so apparent, and I witness that too. Not near at the level that Britney has, obviously. I think that’s an important paradigm that I hope that we’ll be able to break in the coming generations. I’ve definitely seen corporate dollars be prioritized over people’s mental health.”

-Meanwhile, Britney Spears’ lawyer has filed to expedite the removal of Jamie Spears as conservator.

Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber‘s charity single “Stuck With U” has helped many, many families of first responders.

Courteney Cox posted an IG video of her playing piano as her 17-year-old daughter Coco sang Adele‘s “Chasing Pavements.”

-This is a fascinating look at how Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson so rarely has an on-screen romance — and why big Hollywood blockbusters have begun to eschew romance plots in general. I always assumed it was a personal preference that some actors have (character actor Neal McDonough won’t kiss anyone who’s not his wife), but it also points to a larger trend towards sexless action heroes. Maybe because Hollywood has gotten criticism for writing women as one-note love interests, it’s just opted to not include them at all instead of writing fully fleshed out love interests. Which sucks.

-Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist may be rescued by Roku! The streamer is eyeing a wrap-up movie.

-The Met Gala is normally held in May but was pushed back this year. Page Six reports that those making the cut for invites include Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez, Emily Ratajkowski, Camila Cabello and Lupita Nyong’o.

-Is South Park still popular? Let’s hope, since its creators just signed a $900 million deal to release 14 movies.

-Jeopardy is reportedly close to picking its new full-time host — and it looks like it’ll be Mike Richards. I really thought it’d be Levar Burton, Ken Jennings or Aaron Rodgers. Richards is a producer on the show and the fact that he’s in late stage negotiations is leading a lot of people, including a contestant during his run, to think this was always in the works and the guest host appearances weren’t ever about auditioning for the gig.

Taylor Swift is teasing a Phoebe Bridgers collab. Yes, please!

-I really like this list of the 40 best musical performances on TV. No one but Prince at the Super Bowl could be number 1, but the one that’s stuck in my brain craw remains TV on the Radio’s Letterman appearance at number 5.

John Corbett and Bo Derek, who’ve been together for 20 years, got married last Christmas.

-I’m so confused about why Kristen Bell had a stylist for her recent road trip.

Ryan Reynolds says wife Blake Lively often does uncredited punch ups on the scripts of his movies.

-With Free Guy getting good reviews (currently 84% fresh), THR profiles director Shawn Levy, who seems to keep his head down and do the work. He currently has 15 projects in development for Netflix.

-I mainline teen movies — the cheesier the better — but He’s All That might be a bridge to far for even me. Luckily, the trailer recaps the entire movie so I don’t even need to watch it.

-Here’s the trailer for the much-delayed new series Y: The Last Man, based on the beloved graphic novel.