Dejana

I watched one of those Hallmark movies Meghan made: her ex was marrying her best friend in a July 4th themed wedding and her parents had a fireworks company struggling in sales. Two white actors played her parents. Maybe there were lines about her definitely being their biological child that I missed, but it really wasn't that kind of movie. So anyone could think she was supposed to be white, or not, and that she was adopted or there was a step-parent situation that a mid-2010s Hallmark movie wasn't going to get into. Now, if they were making that movie in 2021, hopefully, the casting is more diverse.

Bobby Bones hosting the show would be a terrible idea, but when has that ever stopped TPTB? He's probably telling the truth about the concept being on the table.

It's confusing because many of the classic MGM titles were sold decades ago and the rights are with Warner Bros. To bring up The Wizard of Oz or Singin' in the Rain in the context of the Amazon deal wouldn't be an accurate representation of it. Shark Tank episodes would be very valuable to a streaming service at the moment (hours upon hours of unserialized content), but seeing it held up as a flagship property of MGM is strange.

I think it depends. The story goes that a different person was going to be the wife/mom in A Quiet Place until Emily Blunt read the script and asked John Krasinski to cast her. The difference is that she was critically acclaimed before they ever got involved and was well established by 2018. So, Emily Blunt having a starring role in a movie seemed perfectly reasonable to the general public, even if she was married to the director in this case. A couple of the "Space Race" movies that I like each feature the director's wife in a small role: Kevin Costner's secretary in Hidden Figures is played by Kimberly Quinn, and Olivia Hamilton plays one of the astronaut wives in First Man. They weren't major characters at all, but were more than cameos, yet they were competent enough not to generate much outcry about nepotism. I think that's mostly where This Is Us fans were with Madison at first, though even when she was merely Kate's overly perky friend in a handful of episodes, you did see some complaints here (and elsewhere) about her real-life ties to the showrunner. IMO the writing for Madison wasn't designed to make her likeable at first, and she didn't get tons of airtime to redeem herself with fans before being revealed as Kevin's hookup/mother of his children/fiancée. I think a lot of those issues would have been there even if it weren't Caitlin Thompson in the role. You had fans who didn’t like the character's introduction and wondered why she would want to maintain a friendship, when Kate was so mean to her. To the ardent Kevin/Sophie fans, Madison got in the way of their ship. OTOH, the character always made sense as someone Kevin would get involved with eventually. She was always "there" for some reason, and on a show with a limited number of characters, of course Kevin ends up with another one of his sister's friends (in real life, a famous guy with his looks would have seemingly endless dating options). Maybe Dan Fogelman was only ever resistant to the idea because he didn't want his wife doing love scenes right under his nose with a hot actor. He might have written Madison a bit differently all along, and in a way that was more palatable to fans, if that hangup wasn't in the back of his mind, or someone else played Madison. Kevin and Madison don't seem madly in love and that's what comes across onscreen. Is that because the actors are doing their jobs, or are the writers working around a lack of onscreen chemistry? I think it is the former, but the showrunner's relatively obscure actress wife being given a prominent role here muddles the issue somewhat.

Tessa Thompson is having a great time Down Under:

Overboard with a Christmas twist? I guess there have been worse holiday movie premises...

There are more photos and some video online. I wonder what the rest of the cast is thinking, or if they'd already picked up on a vibe...

Lil Nas X tweeting during the show:

Another trailer:

FYI, if anyone recalls the infamous Best Picture mix-up, Marc Platt gave the second acceptance speech: in between the one who eventually announced Moonlight as the actual winner, and the "We lost, by the way" guy. It isn't like Ben doesn't have the talent, but it would've been pretty tough for Dad to tell his son that he was over the hill (so to speak) and the movie was going in a different direction, even if he sucked. If the plot goes the way the trailer and (overly detailed) Wikipedia entry, an actor who still came across like a 17 year old would make the character's actions slightly easier to tolerate as a viewer. Still wrong, but teenagers display poor judgment all the time. * Hollywood’s geriatric onscreen teenagers have been the butt of jokes for decades. For the most part it's nothing personal, though I understand how the role means a lot to Ben.

It's so specific! He hasn't been in daytime TV for years. It's like Rod Stewart and blonde models, except Justin only has eyes for brunette soap actresses. * Even before the articles alleging that Melinda Gates was alarmed by Bill's ties to Epstein and that there were affairs/unwanted advances with other women, that annual vacation with his ex-girlfriend would have been a big red flag for many:

Wedding News: They got engaged last December and started dating in January 2020. * They were on The Young and the Restless together (Chrishell Stause, too, I think). It's Justin's third marriage.

Does this even count as a blind item? It's not "insider knowledge" so much as "speculation based on a social media post": For the record, the Clarence House birthday tweets for William's kids haven't always included photos/mentions of Kate, either.

Didn't really watch the Oscars and totally missed this new celebrity couple: I guess there's no reason why these people wouldn't all run in the same circles, but it also kind of feels like a Celebrity News Generator spat out three random names?

John Mulaney is reportedly dating Olivia Munn:

Blue Ivy is a Grammy winner. Jennifer Lopez had her daughter sing in her halftime show. It's interesting to see the range of feelings that celebrities have about their children being in the spotlight.

People Magazine has Pink on its latest cover and she discusses being pitted against other pop stars early in her career: This being the Pink who sang "Stupid Girls" and starred its video, which takes direct shots at Jessica Simpson and Fergie, among other celebrities (and also casually depicts an eating disorder): But that was the sentiment in the aughts and into the 2010s: certain young women in the public eye were vacuous airheads and/or overly sexual, they were setting bad examples for impressionable girls, so dish out all the scorn and contempt on those "bimbos" that you want. They're probably too stupid or oblivious to notice the criticisms, anyway! Considering what they might have gone through in life that led them to that point, the people who could be exploiting them, and the systems validating the status quo? Nah. There was also a cachet to being an internet/social media edgelord and you got validation for dunking on someone. A lot of comments praised as snark at the time crossed the line into bullying. Obviously, death threats were never okay, though some would try to write off such comments to a public figure as a "joke". People can dwell in their snarky disdain of a celebrity, it can turn to loathing and hatred, and you stop seeing the target of your wrath as an actual human being. Now, there is much more of a sense that the "online you" is still you, and that there's a responsibility for the things you say. Not that people aren't still vile on the internet, but there are more calls for accountability about it.

I don't think Bennifer 2.0 is totally PR, though. Sure, her camp is likely feeding quotes to People or US Weekly (and maybe his, too), but Ben and Jennifer have had a mutual admiration society going on for years and they've been very open about staying in touch, post-breakup. They're both free now, and they've always had a lot of love for each other. But yes, by letting the paps in on the reunion, she cuts off all the "JLo: Sad & Alone After A-Rod CHEATS With Women Half Her Age" stories. A-Rod gets to see that she's not at home crying over him. With Bennifer the sequel, Ben turns the page from being a sad, middle-aged man dumped by a "sexy" younger actress whose career is on the upswing. Last week's stories about his celebrity dating app fail? Already old news. Celebrities are different, but exposing yourself and your kids to increased paparazzi attention like this for a relationship where you aren't even getting any? I really don't buy that Ben or JLo need publicity that badly right now. Who knows, maybe they've wanted to hook up again for years, but the Bennifer stigma scared them off until now...

They are: The Last Duel, which comes out later this year. They star in it along with Adam Driver and Jodie Comer and talked about working on it last year: It's the first movie they've written and starred in together since Good Will Hunting. Starting up the PR early, I suppose... /s IMO, they probably get along fine, but are middle aged men with their own careers and growing/teenage kids. Plus, Ben is living the bachelor life, so he and Matt aren't photographed hanging out all the time like they used to. Not great blind item fodder, I know...

Matt Damon got asked about the Bennifer reunion and ultimately said nice things, at least... My memory of Bennifer 1.0 was of Matt not being a fan, but I wasn't really sure if that was the reality or the gossip world's spin on things--you know, Boston Ben going out with a New York Diva, so his hometown friends couldn’t possibly like her. Though it wouldn't surprise me if Matt actually viewed Bennifer as a bad time in his friend's life... Post-breakup, Ben and J-Lo have consistently had glowing things to say about each other and talked about keeping in touch, so a reunion isn't a total shock. Also, online dating didn't go so well for Ben. At least Bennifer is "age-appropriate"‽

Asia Kate Dillon from the TV show Billions is non-binary and they've submitted in Actor categories before, as the term can be used in a gender-neutral way. They've implored the SAG Awards to drop their gender-specific categories (SAG has used "Female Actor" from the start to avoid saying "actress", and also their trophy is called an "Actor"). I guess the Oscar bylaws probably say that Best Actor/Supporting Actor are specifically are for men, but it would be a bad look for the Academy to disqualify someone from a nomination based on gender. The Oscars have changed up their categories throughout the years and would probably come up with additional acting awards (Best Voice/Motion Capture Performance, Best Film Debut, etc), if they ever drop the gender designations. LaKeith Stanfield was campaigned as a lead by Warner Bros, but Academy members voted for him in supporting anyway. It's suspected that Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith got votes in both categories but were stronger in the Best Supporting Actor category. At least there's a rule against the same performance getting nominated in multiple categories (though only after it happened with Barry Fitzgerald for Going My Way). The SAG Awards make potential nominees submit in a specific category and voters can't deviate from that. The Golden Globes can reject a categorization from an actor/movie and place them where they want: they nixed Rooney Mara and Alicia Vikander in Best Supporting Actress for Carol and The Danish Girl, respectively, but did go along with Kate Winslet in Supporting Actress for The Reader.

Did Dean's biological father walk out, or was he killed in the First Wizarding War‽ His mom was a Muggle; she wouldn't have known what was going on or that he was in danger. I agree that the books don't really present Muggle/Wizard romances going well. The books initially describe McGonagall as having black hair but then JKR said she was 70 in a chat or something. She's still much younger than Dumbledore, but wizards have longer life spans. Most of the adult characters were aged up from the books. If the Marauders are 30-35 years older than the kids, then characters who were their teachers (like McGonagall) have to be a generation older than the Marauders.

Other groups have moved in that direction and it hasn't worked out like that. Of course, when you have a couple dozen critics all meeting up and talking it out, they can arrange it so that the winners are balanced with respect to race/gender/sexuality/etc. Left up to thousands of individual Oscar voters... There might be a bias towards male roles among the voters, but if you had one woman vs four men in a Best Lead Performance category, it might end up favoring her in the end. I don't see the Oscars going this way any time soon, as a situation where significantly more men got nominated in the acting categories would be a PR nightmare for the Academy. They have enough of those as it is! * The 25th Oscars, though filmed footage and radio broadcasts exist from earlier ceremonies.

Oops! Though two Best Actor awards that year would have made a lot of people happier. Whenever the acting awards at the Oscars go gender-neutral, they can just split the categories between biopic and non-biopic performances and still have the four awards that way...