The Emmy nominations are coming at 11:30am. Keep refreshing here for the full list (which takes a bit to pull together).
Many popular shows simply didn’t have seasons this past year because of the pandemic. But there are plenty that did. HBO is going to clean up with “Hacks” and “Mare of Easttown,” Netflix has “The Crown.” Who will be snubbed?
Stay tuned…
Revenge is a dish best served cold.
And so Harvey Weinstein’s ex-wife, Georgina Chapman, hired a gourmet chef for this order.
For years, Chapman attended the Cannes Film Festival as the wife of Harvey Weinstein, walking the red carpet and attending the most glamorous parties with the movie mogul. Her husband even persuaded his various female stars to wear Chapman’s Marchesa gowns for publicity.
But then it turned out Harvey was living a double or triple life. He is now in prison for 23 years after being convicted in New York in 2020 of rape and criminal sexual assault. She got primary custody of their two small children and a settlement of around $20 million.
That wasn’t enough to assuage Chapman, evidently. How could she really stick it to Weinstein, in prison, reportedly with deteriorating sight and all alone? Why not go to the Cannes Film Festival with a movie star? And kiss him on the red carpet?
The Daily Mail reports that’s exactly what Chapman did yesterday with actor Adrien Brody, who appears in Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch.” Getty Images captured the lovers stopping for the cameras and making quite a scene on the red carpet, unnecessarily, but just enough to send poor Harvey a message behind bars.
Poor taste? I’d say so. When Chapman married Weinstein she had no business and no money. He may have done terrible things, but he also put her on the map and gave her a lavish lifestyle. Living well would have been the best revenge. Just appearing on the red carpet with Brody would have been enough of a stab to the heart. The kiss was a painful turn of the knife through the rest of the organs.
Brody, as I reported exclusively earlier this summer, will appear in HBO’s “Succession” this coming season, his first foray into American television.
What is love? That is one of life’s eternal questions, and one that, that Spanish filmmaker Alberto Mielgo tries to answer in his signature creative way with his much heralded animated short film “The Windshield Wiper,” which is a part of the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes.
Mielgo has a wildly impressive resume. He’s a director, animator, musical and art director, designer and more; his work is well regarded in the industry. Among his projects: “Tron: Uprising,” “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” “Love, Death and Robots,” and numerous others.
“Windshield Wiper” also boasts Barry Jenkins’ production company Pastel as a producer. The film is a passion project for Mielgo, it’s his “very personal and particular vision on love and relationships.” The film starts with an older man, thoughtfully and wistfully, smoking a cigarette in a café and asking this age old question of What is love? Through vignettes, the man traverses an existential journey to try and find the elusive answer.
The animation is off the charts amazing, truly visionary, but alas, not for the kiddies. Mielgo does not shy away from adult themes. Mielgo has said that,“I wanted to bring an adult them to animation that isn’t a video game either, and that’s not something we see in animation very often.” He has wildly succeeded, bringing a tortured view of what love is and is not. No wonder that Mielgo says he was inspired by David Lynch’s filmmaking style. Mielgo’s artistry, craftmanship and talent are not to be denied.
Watch the trailer for “Windshield Wiper” here:
The Windshield Wiper / TRAILER 2021 from alberto mielgo on Vimeo.
Sharon Stone is doing a solid for amFAR this Friday. She’s returning to host their downsized Cannes dinner on Friday despite being treated like dirt by them for years.
The reason amFAR desperately needs her back: their finances are in decline. As I told you last week, amFAR salaries and expenses are up, but income is down.
This year, amFAR’s other problem is that their venue was changed from the glamorous Hotel du Cap Eden Roc to a local estate operated by the city of Antibes. They had to rent the location, which was only available on the undesirable date of this Friday. By then all the big stars who’ve been on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival will have left the area.
So amFAR is flying in — at a great expense– a bunch of celebs including Alicia Keys for entertainment. And Sharon. And “Mrs. Maisel” star Rachel Brosnahan.
Sharon will host the night, but the guest list is limited to just 400 people because of French restrictions for COVID. She’s being damned nice to do it considering how badly amFAR has treated her after years of Stone raising millions and millions for them.
Say goodbye to Kyle and Summer, aka Skyle.
The actors who play the central young romantic characters on CBS’s “The Young and the Restless” are out after not being able re-renegotiate contracts.
Michael Mealor, who’s been on the show for three years, and Hunter King, who’d been there since 2012, have left the show. The 48 year old soap will recast, no doubt, as these are core characters.
King for a time alternated on CBS’s sitcom “Life in Pieces,” in a deal she made with CBS. Now she’s leaving to do a pilot for ABC that sounds “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” meets “The King and I” about a 19th century schoolteacher who goes from a big city to the country. King’s sister is indie favorite actress Joey King.
Mealor wrote on Twitter:
Where Mealor is going is unknown, although there’s so much prime time and streaming work right now, he’s bound to pick up something. Otherwise, he’ll join the decades of dudes who thought they’d leave soaps and become stars, only to vanish. We’ll see.
Listen to this! Carlos Santana plays a blistering guitar on Diane Warren’s “She’s Fire,” with a vocal from G-Eazy that just hit YouTube.
Songwriter extraordinaire Warren is coming with an album of her songs by a host of guest stars later next month. The album is called “The Cave Sessions, Volume 1.” The other artists include John Legend, Celine Dion, Ty Dolla $ign, LP and Darius Rucker.
We’re usually squawking away here about Diane Warren’s 12 Oscar nominations. But she’s written dozens of top 10 hits and number 1 hits like “If I Could Turn Back Time” and “Rhythm of the Night.”
Now comes “She’s Fire” and it’s on fire!
This will not come as knewz to anyone. Rupert Murdoch’s www.knewz.com has folded, closed up shop after less than 2 years.
You may not have known about knewz. If you snoozed, you…well, you know what I mean. This was the second attempt to launch a news website apart from the New York Post and other News Corp. sites that would be tabloidy and traffic in made up news. It was designed as a “news aggregator,” meant to take on the Drudge Report, the sixth highest ranked news site on the internet. Knewz.com was ranked number 7,425 on Alexa.com among all US websites.
The first was a right wing leaning site called Heatstreet.com. That site, before it also expired after a short run, had trouble with its url because it shared a name with a tattoo and piercing parlor in South Carolina. Knewz had an issue because some might have confused with a polka band of the same name from Buffalo, New York.
Both Heatstreet and Knewz were run by News Corp’s online wunderkind, Noah Kotch. He’s now run two spectacular failures for the company. What’s next is anyone’s guess: editor of the Wall Street Journal?
All that’s left of Knewz.com is this farewell on their landing page: “We started Knewz as an experiment in news aggregation because we wanted to gather a diverse range of quality journalism, to highlight all sides of every story and to protect and project provenance. We certainly had provenance, but not profits, and so we bid Knewz farewell. Thank you to the millions of Knewz users who saw the value of the service and supported our mission.”
Here’s a musical farewell, polka style
UPDATE There was a 15 minute total standing ovation apparently. Originally it was said to be 9 minutes, but it went on and on according to my spies.
The French Dispatch has finally arrived in Cannes, a year late.
Director Wes Anderson brought an all star cast to the Croisette tonight but refused to give a press conference. The word is he was avoiding questions about his long time producer Scott Rudin, who has been made a pariah on Broadway for having a toxic work environment.
Todd McCarthy reviewed “The French Dispatch” for Deadline.com calling the director “the king of twee.” McCarthy writes: This is Anderson in full flower, one that only grows in a rarified altitude… this is a film about and for The New Yorker constituency. If Anthony Lane doesn’t like it, there will be a price to pay. Searchlight Pictures probably shouldn’t even bother to release it in the red states, except maybe in Austin.”
#TheFrenchDispatch cast strikes a pose at the top of the #Cannes steps. pic.twitter.com/2LCnHs3lrQ
— Variety (@Variety) July 12, 2021
Co-star Timothee Chalamet wore a designer suit that made him look like the Tin Man. The suit has gotten more attention on line than the movie.
Disney (Fox) Searchlight brought a lot of people for this premiere, so they spent some big bucks. Bill Murray, Benicio del Toro, Tilda Swinton, Chalamet, etc are all four star travelers. Plus I’m sure there’s a big fancy dinner after the screening.
Frances McDormand did not attend. Apparently, there’s a sex scene between her and Chalamet that has set jaws dropping and tongues wagging. Not for the faint of heart.
Keep refreshing…
Wes Anderson thanks the #Cannes2021 crowd after ‘The French Dispatch’ receives rapturous applause for nine minutes. pic.twitter.com/I5UC7Eq4HS
— Ramin Setoodeh (@RaminSetoodeh) July 12, 2021
I am not a BTS expert. But I know when fans aren’t excited or motivated.
That seems to be the case with the latest single dropped for summer by the KPop Korean boy band.
Their “Permission to Dance” has been denied. The single is number 1 right now on iTunes after a Friday release. But according to Buzz Angle/Alpha Data, total sales through Saturday night were just under 70,000 copies. Most of that came from streaming.
That’s an anemic number compared to BTS’s “Butter,” released two months ago. “Butter” is up around 900,000 plus in sales, a fifth of that from paid downloads and CD singles. “Butter” was a massive hit and still is. But “Permission to Dance” has been snubbed by the hardcore BTS corps.
Is it just overload after “Butter” was spread over everything in its path? Or has BTS changed sounds with “Permission” only to alienate fans? The latter is likely as the group– now owned by marital scandal plagued Scooter Braun — is being accused of going mainstream for Western marketing purposes.
“Permission to Dance,” unlike past BTS singles, is written by Ed Sheeran, Steve Mac, Johnny McDaid, and Jenna Andrews. That’s a very generic pop committee. It could have been recorded by a dozen different acts, which is very much the case these days with a lot of songs. They’re auctioned off to the highest bidder. So BTS won the auction but lost the audience.
What’s very telling is that right now there’s no sign of BTS on the Z100 playlist or bestsellers. The biggest pop station in the country, owned by I Heart Radio, is devoid of all BTS mention. And the singles chart, which is usually ballot-stuffed by BTS fans, is remarkably quiet. We’ll keep an eye on this change in BTS fan devotion.
Scarlett Johansson might reconsider making another “Black Widow” movie.
Disney was unusually forthcoming with its box office report today for the Marvel movie.
They released the info that “Black Widow” made $60 million on Disney Plus, where subscribers had to pay $30 extra to see it on the service. That’s two million people who checked it out from home.
At the box office, “Black Widow” made another $80 million. That brings the US domestic number to $140 million. Wow.
The Disney Plus number is important because so far the studio has not told us what its other releases have done based on the extra fee. None of the studios have fessed up their streaming numbers. But Disney must be pretty thrilled with that $60 million.
Add international box office, the grand total for the weekend was $215 million. Disney-Marvel broke even and made some dough in their first weekend. From here on, it’s gravy. Of course, “Black Widow” jumps forward at the very end with a post-credits scene that falls in the timeline after “Avengers Endgame.”
But the writers can always cook up another story for Natasha. Fans will go along with anything they can imagine. Scarlett, however, may not want to jump around anymore after playing Natasha in many films. We’ll see…