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That’s the word from Damar Hamlin, looking pretty good and sitting upright as his team, the Buffalo Bills, start a new game today.
Hamlin suffered a heart attack on the field last week in Cincinnatti when the Bills played the Bengals. Quick thinking on the part of the medical staff saved his life. Thank goodness it looks like he’s on his way back.
The Bills are in a hot game right now with New England Patriots. I’m sure Hamlin is sending intense vibes for a win!
The big movie of the weekend had nothing to do with Oscars or other awards.
It was “M3GAN,” a horror film that scored $30 million in its opening weekend.
The name “Megan” is certainly in the news right now, and you know what i’m talking about. Is it a coincidence? (Are there coincidences?) With Prince Harry’s book all over the internet for the last week, the timing couldn’t be better, right?
So who is this Meg3n? She’s a robot toy who bonds to the child she’s assigned to, and causes unbelievable mayhem. Look for this Meg3n — like the real life one– to be with us for a long time. She’s lucky Chuckie– there will be sequels into the next two decades. You can only imagine the logos– M4GAN, M5GAN, and so on…
Today is the last day for the Cinepolis Theater on West 23rd St in Chelsea. For a long time the multiplex was a Cineplex Odeon establishment. Then eight years ago it was taken over by Cinepolis. Now it’s gone.
A post on the website reads: “Dear valued guests, We regret to inform you that Cinepolis Chelsea will be permanently closing on January 8, 2023. Tickets and gift cards may be subject to refunds. Please visit cinepolisusa.com/contact-us to submit a request for review. Our customer service team will reach out as soon as possible. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this has caused. Cinepolis has loved being part of the Chelsea community over the last 6 years, and we will miss sharing the big screen with you.”
There are a handful of multiplexes left in Manhattan, and now none in Chelsea or the West Side of Manhattan from 42nd St. down to Battery Park. We’ve lost so many theaters in the last five years thanks to streaming. Digital is doing to movies what it did to the music and book businesses. This is why New York is so quiet at night outside of Times Square. Why leave the house? Last night I walked by a formerly popular pizza palace and it was empty at 6:30pm. Where was everyone, I aske the owner? “Deliveries,” he answered, pointing to Door Dash carts.
The owner of Tesla is promising several updates to his Twitter platform next month. Most users aren’t pleased.
The biggest change would be ‘long form’ Twitter, rumored to mean posts lasting 4,000 words. Even 4,000 characters would be too much. Twitter originally allowed just 140 characters. The Tweet was all about clever brevity. Then it was increased to 280 characters.
But four thousand anything is contrary to the whole purpose of the site, critics are warning.
Musk identifies a couple of other improvements. But if he’s really going after long form there had definitely better be an Edit button. For the writers and the readers alike.
Easy swipe right/left to move between recommended vs followed tweets rolls out later this week.
First part of a much larger UI overhaul.
Bookmark button (de facto silent like) on Tweet details rolls out a week later.
The Golden Globes really wanted a clip of the two biggest Black stars they could find from their red carpet archive– Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman. Why? This year they’re trying to show their diversity after it was discovered they had no Black members in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Unfortunately, in order to get Denzel and Morgan (aka the voice of God) they had to include yours truly as well. Yes, in the promo commercial running the last few weeks and all this weekend on NBC, you will see right at the star a large white head in the same clip. Apparently we were passing ships on the red carpet three or four years ago.
No, this did not merit me an invite to this year’s much diminished Globes. And I have no royalty check from NBC or Dick Clark Productions. I’m not even getting a swag bag!
But I am honored to be in the same video as Denzel, Morgan and everyone else in that commercial. Like me, I doubt most of those people will be on hand. The Globes air Tuesday night on NBC.
The global success of “RRR” or “Rise, Roar, Revolt,” has caught director S.S. Rajamouli by surprise he told me at the reception following a screening Thursday night at the Whitby Hotel on 56th Street. “But it’s a wonderful surprise,” he added.
The acclaimed Indian director stayed for the entire reception, posing for selfies and talking to anyone who approached. He had just received a standing ovation for his three hour-plus action spectacular, screened for a crowd that probably had never seen a Tollywood film before (including me). The audience stomped, laughed and cheered. “RRR” inspires that kind of reaction. Glorious excess that works. A tiger and wolf collide in an early scene. It gets crazier from there. (The screenplay is by Rajamouli’s 80 year-old father, V. Vijayendra Prasad.)
The movie features two of India’s biggest stars, Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr., as two friends and rivals who clash but reunite to rescue a young kidnapped girl from sadistic British colonialists. It’s a sort of an Indian bromance with lots of spectacular battle scenes. And a fabulous dance sequence, the “Naatu Naatu” scene, where our heroes demonstrate they can dance as well as they fight. They wipe the floor with the racist English toffs who challenge them in a dance off and win over the adoration of the young ladies who soon join them in the exuberant moves. That scene had the audience cheering. Watch “RRR” on a big screen with an audience that surrenders to the over-the-top action scenes.
During the Q&A, Rolling Stone writer David Fear, who turned out to be an amusing moderator, asked: “Can we tell them how many days it took to film this?”
“We shot it for 320 days,” Rajamouli said sheepishly. “I mean, I’m not proud that I shot it for (so long) … I think my producers definitely are not proud that it took so long. I would like to do it much faster, but we don’t have second unit directors and third unit directors in India. So pretty much every sequence, every scene, almost every shot, I had to direct. So because that’s such a big film with such big episodes, I had to shoot one episode, take a break, prepare for the next episode, and shoot it so it is (a long process).”
After three hours viewing time there was not time to dissect even half of the scenes and how the director did them said Fear. But the Naatu Naatu dance scene, a stand out in a movie with so many, the choreography music and editing is so impeccable, how long did it take to choreograph, shoot and get the stars up to speed?
“Both of them are exceptionally good dancers and we had a great song to showcase their dancing skills and we had a beautiful scene that leads up to the dance and so it doesn’t feel like suddenly, a song is coming onto the action (out of nowhere) and it (works) with the narration,” said the director.
“Everything is properly put in. But still, I would give most of the credit of the success of that song for the dance choreographer, Prem Rakshith. He’s my choreographer. He spent almost two months composing for that number. And just for the two (stars), three signature steps or the hook line steps, he composed more than 100 variations.
“And youwouldn’t believe me. He had four sets of assistants, two assistants each and he was composing the steps for 15, 20 steps, 15, 20 variations. And the assistants were having cramps in their legs and pain in the knees. He would take out one couple and bring in another couple and start composing (with them). The third couple or fourth couple had to go to the hospital because (of injuries).
“So he was relentless in getting what he wanted and once the steps were composed, Tarak (aka Rama) and Charan, like I said, they’re great dancers. They didn’t need too much time to practice the steps. They got it quite fast, but they also had to practice a lot because I wanted them to do the steps in exact synch. So they would do the steps and they knew they did it perfectly, and I would say, ‘One more, one more, one more.’ They didn’t understand why I was asking one more. Tarak is the most vocal guy. Charan is a silent guy. He would ask Tarak to,’ Go check why he’s asking for so many takes.’
“Tarak would come and I would play the sequence and showed him at that point that there is (variation in speed). He said, ‘Everything seems perfect.” Then I would replay it back at 1/10th the speed and going slowly, I would say, ‘See?’
“At that point (he was) staring at me and he said, ‘I worked with you 15 years back. In this 15 years, I thought you would be better, but I think you’ve gone crazier.’
The dance sequence involves some funny business with suspenders. How that came about?”
Again the director credited the choreographer.
“He came to my wife, she designed the costumes (Rama Rajamoui). He sat with her, he asked her, ‘What is the costume? I want to see the costume.’ And he took the costume from her and he saw that the costume had suspenders…) Let’s make something with the suspenders. And he composed that dance sequence.”
Fear quipped, “I’m pretty sure that that sequence single-handedly saved the suspender industry. I’m sure sales have gone up 300%.”
The pop chart week has concluded and SZA is still at number 1 with her album, “SOS.”
The funny part is that “SOS” sold only 770 copies in CDs, LPs, and paid downloads. But with streaming the numbers topped up to 123,000.
Number 2 is Taylor Swift’s “Midnights.” This past week came to 63,000 in physical copies. It had an equal amount in streaming, coming to around 113,000.
In terms of physical sales, Swift still comes out on top.
Very few physical albums sold the week, with the exception of Harry Styles, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” and Olivia Rodrigo. BTS singer RM sold a total 17,286 including 14,602 physical. BTS is not a bigger seller in the US but they do get a lot of hype.
The word in Los Angeles is that she’s eyeing a date this summer at SoFi Stadium according to sources in the touring world.
This could be part of a national tour, which would make sense. “Renaissance” has been a big seller all year and is nominated for several Grammy awards including Album of the Year. Beyonce hasn’t toured in several years, and at 41, she may be considering the punishing nature of the business– best to get this done now while she can.
How much notice will she give? Beyonce could announce a whole tour for sale with a week’s notice and sell out the whole thing. Of course, Ticketmaster won’t want the same problems it had with Taylor Swift’s tour. But you get the point.
Well, the Golden Globes are back on Tuesday night next week.
They were yanked from NBC last year when it was discovered that the Hollywood Foreign Press, already considered a joke by 200 publicists, had no Black members.
The group resisted any change for a long time even as their gravy train was threatened with extinction. So they added 103 voters, not members, just 103 people who could vote ballots but have no rights, get no money from the big pot, not even a gift bag.
I’ve been touch with several of those new voters. Of the 103, about 12 are actually Black. The rest are from Europeor South America. You may call them people of color in today’s lingo, but not actually Black.
Of that group, they are in agreement: they’ve had little contact with the HFPA in Los Angeles, and are not coming to the show on Tuesday. They have no way of getting there and the HFPA offered them nothing. The HFPA could afford to fly them all in, folks. On their 2020 Form 990 for the IRS they claimed $72 million in assets. That’s Seventy Two Million Dollars.
Not all the new voters are journalists. One of them, in Ghana, writes about art for artNews, and a little bit about music. I can find no credits for articles about movies or TV. Nada. One is an Italian actor and presenter who says he works the red carpet at Cannes. One describes himself as “an analytical guy who loves cinema and rock music…I’m shy but confident, a dreamer but realistic.” Is this a dating site?
So don’t expect much in the way of change on Tuesday night. It will be interesting to see if any of the 103 new voters has any impact on the outcome, or if the Globes winners will follow past trends. Don’t forget, even with all the new voters the group was unable nominate Danielle Deadwyler of “Till” for Best Actress.
After that anemic list of presenters from the Golden Globes this week, the Critics Choice Awards — January 15th on the CW Network — have outgunned them with celebrities.
Big names include Michelle Pfeiffer, who will take the stage to honor Jeff Bridges with the Lifetime Achievement Award, while Kate Hudson will present the SeeHer Award to Janelle Monáe.
Additional presenters include Benjamin Bratt,Quinta Brunson, Cedric the Entertainer, Misha Collins, Claire Danes, Phoebe Dynevor, Ayo Edebiri, Eve Hewson, Jude Hill, Tyler Hoechlin, Sharon Horgan, Sarah Hyland, Troy Kotsur, Diego Luna, Natasha Lyonne, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Aubrey Plaza, Jean Smart, Anya Taylor-Joy, Miles Teller, Elizabeth Tulloch, Kerry Washington, Jeremy Allen White, and more.
The public feeling about the Globes is palpable. There dozens of articles asking why they’re back at all. Meantime, even BAFTA — the British Academy — has moved its all star afternoon tea to the day before the CCAs instead of the Globes. That’s a big deal. And the American Film Institute has moved its nominees lunch also to the CCA weekend, bypassing association with the Globes.
