Dejana

Zendaya and John David Washington have started and wrapped a whole movie during quarantine: More here about all the Covid safety protocols on set. I wonder how many other secret movies have been filming since the pandemic began, especially with big stars. I guess we're going to be getting a lot of movies with small casts and limited sets for the foreseeable future.

If you share riddles and equivocations about your marriage with the public, for years, you can't really be surprised if some people end up believing the extramarital relationship rumors. I mean, people can have whatever sort of marriage that works for them, but it seems like they want to sound "edgy" while also feeling that actual confirmation of an outside relationship is not a good look. Maybe it's their just their PR team doing damage control. This Jada/August Alsina news reminded me of the Will/Margot Robbie speculation back when they were making Focus (also denied, BTW).

I didn't watch Person of Interest, and only saw promos during football or print ads that featured Michael Emerson and Jim Caviezel. I knew Taraji was on the show but figured she had a smaller role than them. Taraji made it clear she was not pleased about being left out of the show's promotional materials. When the show was going off the air, showrunners Greg Plageman and Jonah Nolan were doing finale press and mentioned CBS pressure to center the initial show publicity around the two white guys: Since Taraji's career had really blown up by then, you have to wonder how much of that was CYA from the old show that let her go. On the other hand, it's not like CBS primetime, especially back then, was this bastion of progressivism overall, so it's entirely believable the network wouldn't want a black woman to shine too much.

I saw it on top of the Netflix charts and wondered what in the world it was. Glossy, Stockholm Syndrome porn, it seems... 365 Days is adapted from the first book in a trilogy of Polish novels. They haven't officially been translated but English versions can be found on Wattpad, which sounds about right.

Here's what Cinemark is doing: * These theaters will all be selling concessions and presumably allowing people to consume them, so I didn't understand the outcry about the mask policies. You'll have people with their masks off the entire time because they'll be eating/drinking, or saying they are because they don't want to wear a mask, and how well will the policy be enforced once the lights go down? I'd only consider a drive-in or outdoor showing right now.

It also came up on the show that Olivia (allegedly) had bad breath. I looked up Ben and Jojo's heights: the internet says he's 6'4" and she's just under 5'4".

Since the scheduled new movies from the big studios have been delayed or sent to VOD, many of the open theaters are playing older titles, along with the movies that were playing in March and a few of the new VOD movies. The top-grossing theaters at the moment are all drive-ins, though the numbers aren't all being officially released by the studios. That is weird about Sam's Rotten Tomatoes profile not mentioning Outlander. I've never used the site that way, just looked up different movie titles, so maybe the RT bio is not a priority for his team and he's not in control of what it says. Ford v Ferrari premiered on HBO last Saturday and I really enjoyed Caitriona's role/performance.

I think that when Gabaldon originally wrote Voyager, she had Frank in mind as a cheater. Now, with many more books and years behind her and Frank fans in the fold, she's teasing some sort of retcon: "He wasn't cheating-he was off being a government spy investigating time travelers!" Or something to tie into the larger story, I'll bet.

I read the books first, but as the books went on, it was easier to see Gabaldon's heavy hand in how she painted the "obstacles" to Jamie and Claire. Her writing makes it so that Jamie has to be coerced or cajoled into sex with anyone besides Claire. When he marries another woman, it's under pressure from his sister and false pretenses (he never would have married Laoghaire if he'd known her full role in the trial). Frank seemingly cheats with a string of (younger) women and is a racist, too! A lot of white people born circa 1902* were, granted, but it seemed more like Diana wanted Frank to be really unlikable right before he died, all the better to make Claire more sympathetic and justified for spending years emotionally checked out of a marriage she chose to continue. I think Frank's plan with the gravestone is beyond convoluted but withholding the knowledge that Jamie survived Culloden? The wrong choice but one many men in his shoes would make, if he thought she'd leave forever and take the child with her. The story would be boring if everyone did the right thing. Book Roger reminded me in some ways of "Meathead" from All in the Family: a progressive with some chauvinistic tendencies. The modern book characters generally acted like people born in 1918 or the 1940s, even if they did unconventional things sometimes, while the show wants to smooth them out so they're "relatable" to contemporary viewers. That approach runs into problems when the story says Roger has lingering hangups about Bree being raped, or the modern characters interact with enslaved people and slaveholders without personally doing much to eradicate the institution on a societal level. That would not have been an expectation from a 1990s romantic sci-fi/fantasy novel but the show is being made in a different time. I wonder if people who see the show first go into the books expecting the characters to be more enlightened and are disappointed when that's not the case. *The books allude to a sizable age difference between Frank and Claire, and they married when she was 18. The show completely omitted this dynamic, or any sign that Claire/Frank might have been wrong for each other, even without the time travel.

I follow People Magazine on Twitter and today they had a story about Chuck Wicks in their timeline. I smiled to myself, thinking of the never-ending debates about "celebrity" when it comes to DWTS. He was a "singer" then, but everyone knows he was only cast because he and Julianne Hough were a couple at the time. ABC tapped into the Bachelor franchise for a "star" in its very first season, so that's nothing new, but I do find it a little odd that they're picking Kaitlyn now.

She has actually become a bit of a critical darling since the Twilight era ended, but she's mostly made indie films. Kristen has even won a César Award (the French Oscar equivalent) for Best Supporting Actress. I don't know if I'd say she had the greatest range, and there's also the question of her height. Even if they didn't cast a British person for Diana, they could at least find somebody tall! However, the same director cast Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy, so he's clearly not hung up on the issue.

New time slot: https://people.com/tv/abc-reveals-the-bachelorette-now-airing-on-tuesdays-this-fall/