By Abid Rahman & Evan Real
Bryan Singer has been accused by four more men of having sex with them when they were underage in a bombshell exposé in the Atlantic published Wednesday.
Over a 12-month investigation, the journalists say they spoke to more that 50 sources, including four men who have never spoken about their experiences with Singer before. One individual claimed that, at the age of 17, he had sex with the director at Singer’s house in 1997. Another claimed that he and Singer had sex the same year in a Beverly Hills mansion when he was just 15. …
By Scott Johnson
Alfonso Cuaron’s uncle was a communist. He also was a meticulous record keeper. Mexico City, where they both lived, was, in early 1971, frequently the site of violent clashes between students and government forces. While visiting him one day in the summer of that year, Cuaron found a startling black-and-white photograph among his uncle’s newspaper clippings. The image showed a terrified young man in a white shirt running, looking back over his shoulder at a group of men chasing him with a bamboo stick. From above, several frightened onlookers watched from the windows of a furniture store.
“He’s unsure how this is going to end,” Cuaron recalls of the man in the image. …
By Seth Abramovitch
He arrives exactly on schedule, not a minute early, not a minute late, and comes dressed in character: Armani cashmere shirt, translucent Alain Mikli eyeglasses and, of course, a Kangol cap. There are no formalities, no handshakes, no, “Hi, nice to meet you, I’m Samuel L. Jackson.” …
By Daniel Fienberg
Four score and 15 minutes ago*, give or take, The Americans won the Golden Globe for best television series drama, easily the highest-profile non-critics award it has won in its acclaimed six seasons.
It was a wonderful moment for one of the best and most frequently overlooked shows of the Peak TV era.
It also came only 30 minutes into a Golden Globes telecast that ran a solid 20 minutes over its allotted three-hour running time. If you were planning the run-of-show for your awards telecast in this moment — in which the Jim Carreys and Julia Robertses are doing television; in which movie award winners Olivia Colman, Regina King and Rami Malek are all much more established on the small screen than big — why would you put possibly your biggest TV award of the evening before TV supporting actor categories, comedy series categories and nearly every movie-related category big and small? …
By Bryn Elise Sandberg
Andy Samberg is sitting on a couch in a room on the Universal lot when Sandra Oh walks in with a cup of soup. There’s a perfectly fine chair across from him, but instead, Oh settles on the sofa, throwing her feet up on his lap, and declaring, “I’m in our dynamic already.” It’s the first time the pair — who are more mutually admiring colleagues than showbiz pals — have been together since signing on to host the Golden Globe Awards on Jan. 6 on NBC. Samberg, a longtime member of the NBCUniversal family (the SNL alum’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine, dropped by Fox, relaunches on NBC four days later) with a steady track record of hosting gigs, was an obvious choice. Oh was the one packing the shock value, which is exactly what NBC Entertainment co-chairmen George Cheeks and Paul Telegdy and producer Dick Clark Productions (which shares a parent company with THR) were after in the first year of NBC’s new eight-year deal to telecast the Globes, seen in 2018 by 19 million people. With hopes of conjuring a hit one-two punch à la Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, the execs recalled Samberg and Oh’s turn at the Emmys. “We thought, ‘What a coup it’d be to get them,’ “ says Cheeks. “And then the stars aligned, and we feel like we’ve won the lottery.” Despite being utterly exhausted on this warm mid-December morning — Oh, 47, has just flown in from London, where she shoots BBC America’s Killing Eve (for which she’s up for a best actress Globe), and Samberg, 40, just broke from filming Brooklyn (for which he won a 2014 Globe) — the co-hosts jump into a lively dialogue, edited here for length and clarity, about how to make Hollywood laugh in 2019 and the one thing they won’t do onstage. With a few nudges from THR, they also delved into touchier topics, from the ghosts of social media past to the Trump quotient viewers can expect on the Globes telecast (hint: It’s low). …
By Rebecca Keegan
One of the defining moments in Emily Blunt and John Krasinski’s marriage happened unexpectedly during a cross-country flight in early 2017. Krasinski was on his way to meet with executives at Paramount about a script he had co-written and hoped to direct and star in — the high-concept thriller A Quiet Place. Blunt was immersed in preparations for a daunting new acting project, as the magical nanny in Disney’s sequel to one of its most beloved films, Mary Poppins. …
By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Top Chef always challenges its contestants to take some diner comfort food like mac ’n’ cheese and create an elevated version that pays homage to the original. That’s what’s happening today with the blaxploitation films of the 1970s. Originally, these films — such as Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Shaft, Super Fly, Trouble Man and Cleopatra Jones — were cheaply made action genre movies featuring well-dressed black protagonists with a badass attitude and kickass fighting skills. Both attitude and fists were aimed at the villainous rich white “honkies” and smarmy black “jive turkeys” who made their fortunes off the backs of the black community. It was an obvious metaphor for standing up to the systemic oppression of blacks. …
By Pete Keeley
It’s downright odd that it took until 2018 for someone to make a rom-com revolving around Dolly Parton’s unmatched catalog of empowerment bops, but here we are and here Dumplin’ is.
Based on the 2015 YA novel by Texas-based author Julie Murphy, the film, which bowed on Netflix on Dec. 7, tells the story of Willowdean Dickson, the overweight daughter of a former pageant winner slash current pageant host, who signs up for her mom’s local pageant. …
By Max Geschwind
Tessa Thompson is on a tear.
The 35-year-old actress has had a banner 2018 thus far thanks to back-to-back projects on screens small (HBO’s Westworld) and big (Creed II, Annihilation and Sorry to Bother You). She’s adding a side hustle with a quick trip to Art Basel in Miami (Dec. 6–8) where she hopes to meet and engage with visual art and emerging artists in partnership with Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series.
Ahead of the trip, The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Thompson to talk about socio-political film projects, family and goofing off with Chris Hemsworth on the upcoming Men in Black film. …
By Stephen Galloway
Long forgotten in the kerfuffle that ended the 2017 Oscars, when La La Land’s victory was snatched from its jaws and handed to Moonlight, were Jimmy Kimmel’s tossed-aside words: “I don’t know what happened. I blame myself for this. … I knew I would screw this show up, I really did.”
Perhaps he was joking. …
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