Browsing Tag

Jessica Chastain

Jessica Simpson Buys Back Her Name

jessica simpson bloomberg

-Bloomberg’s latest cover story is about how Jessica Simpson’s billion-dollar fashion brand fell into the hands of the wrong company, and her expensive two-year battle to get it back that involved getting a loan, going to bankruptcy court, and considering borrowing against her mortgage.

–Denzel Washington says he doesn’t even remember clashing with Ellen Pompeo on the Grey’s Anatomy set, which is a delicious burn.

–Kayne West’s new girlfriend Julia Fox once did a Paper Magazine photoshoot with Pete Davidson, who is Kim Kardashian‘s new boyfriend. Conspiracy theories abound.

–Billie Eilish and Kanye West are reportedly slated to headline Coachella on Saturday and Sunday night, respectively.

–Nicolas Cage and his wife are expecting a baby.

-No disrespect to West Side Story’s Ariana Debose but she’s not even the lead of that movie and yet she’s hosting SNL next weekend. This seems to be more about Omnicron than her, but yay for Broadway fans.

-Yikes. Production on Star Trek: Picard has been shut down since Monday after more than 50 people(!) tested positive for covid.

–Jessica Chastain was on Ellen’s show and told a story about the time she threw a party and her grandmother sat on Bradley Cooper’s lap. “He looked horrified, actually. He had never met her. He didn’t know who she was. I saw it kinda happening in slow motion where I was like, ‘No!’ I just started going, ‘It’s my grandma! It’s my grandma!’ Then he was like, ‘Okay. Hi, Grandma.”

-I really liked this article on all the literary allusions and alliterations in The Lost Daughter.

–Jason Bateman and Laura Linney fight personal demons in the season 4 trailer of Ozark.

–Tom Holland says he once pitched Sony on an origin film in which he plays a young James Bond. “It didn’t really make sense. It didn’t work. It was the dream of a young kid, and I don’t think the Bond estate were particularly interested.”

-Sopranos star Michael Imperioli will lead season two of The White Lotus.

–Joyce Carol Oates is always a wild follow on Twitter, but yesterday was even more wild than usual.

–Britney Spears is back to posting nudes on Instagram and we all have to be ok with it because she’s allowed to do whatever the hell she wants. (Her earlier post about how excited she was to go to a restaurant and how she hadn’t had a glass of wine in 13 years kind of broke my heart.)

-Search Party returns tomorrow for its final season and I can’t wait.

-There was a fascinating Vulture article in the fall about how someone in the book industry kept stealing manuscripts, and no one knew who it was. They finally found him! The FBI arrested a young rights coordinator at a major publisher.

–Janet Jackson reflects on stardom and scrutiny in the trailer for her new doc.

–John Cusack stars in the Pursuit trailer. I can’t believe Emile Hirsch is still allowed to be cast in things…

Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint Reunite

Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint in the Harry Potter reunion special
HBO Max

-Perfect for a lazy hangover day, HBO Max’s Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts will drop New Year’s Day. Here’s our first look at Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint.

-HBO Max didn’t send out the first four episodes of the Sex and the City reboot screeners to critics until very late (and didn’t seem to provide clips to talk shows) which is probably not a good sign. The first couple of episodes have now dropped and the reviews aren’t great, with lots of talk about the show’s “disarming new seriousness.”

–Disney has pulled the Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas-starring erotic psychological thriller Deep Water, which was supposed to be released mid-Jan, from its schedule. There’s no word if it’ll be rescheduled.

-Wow, am I confused by Jessica Chastain‘s repeated attempts to “defend” Jeremy Strong from that NY Mag profile. The writer spent months with him (unheard of in this day and age) and the result was a balanced, nuanced profile. Yes, he is clearly a very intense guy but this is an actor who also once said that he tore up one of his only remaining photos of his mother to get into the right mindset for his role in The Judge, so I don’t think he was mischaracterized.

-Meanwhile, this is the best piece I’ve read about all the reactions to that Jeremy Strong profile.

–Travis Scott spoke about the Astroworld tragedy for the first time in interview with Charlamagne Tha God. “I just control what I can on the stage, and then you have the professionals to control what they can in the crowd. It’s just hard because as an artist you want to have the best shows and you want to have the best experiences so you link with professionals to handle that side of it.”

–Olivia Rodrigo has been named Time Magazine’s Entertainer of the Year.

-At his girlfriend’s urging, Jonah Hill used his time on Jimmy Fallon‘s show to talk about climate change.

-HBO Max’s Station Eleven adaptation is getting good reviews (with comparisons to The Leftovers) but man, I just can’t imagine diving into a story about life after a pandemic wipes out most of humanity.

-The first trailer for Guy Ritchie‘s Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre features Jason Statham and Aubrey Plaza’s team trying to pull a job with an a movie star they’re blackmailing, played by Josh Hartnett.

Keanu Reeves Remains Dreamy

Keanu Reeves wears a striped suit on the cover of Esquire

-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.