Demi Lovato's highly-anticipated Youtube Original docuseries, Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil, directed by Michael D. Ratner, premiered its first two out of four episodes on March 23. The show focuses on sit-down interviews with Lovato, her family, and her closest friends, all of whom open up about her near-fatal drug overdose in July 2018.…
FILM + TV
As the world begins to settle back in and make up for the year of lost time caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we are finally beginning to see the promised rescheduling of many prominent events that we never thought could be canceled until now. France's renowned film festival, Cannes Film Festival, has officially announced their…
In the early hours of March 18, 1990, two men dressed in police uniforms pushed the buzzer of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Only 81 minutes later, the two thieves walked out of Gardner's museum with $500 million worth of works of art, committing the single largest property theft in the world –…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8HyyDEqhEg Awards season is in full swing and the Academy Awards, with a live stream of Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas, announced the highly-anticipated nominations for their 93rd show. Not letting the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic get them down, the Oscars will take place on April 25, nearly two months after its original date of Feb.…
Let’s address the elephant in the room first, and for once we aren’t talking about the pandemic. The Grammys have always, and particularly in the last few years, been riddled with issues relating to racism, bribery, an out-of-touch academy, and an unspoken pay-to-play structure that deeply disadvantages many artists without the proper connections. Complaints and…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kj8UPnZfPc The sunny and warm California backdrop for the Oprah Winfrey interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry didn't prepare viewers for the darkness of some of the revelations made by the couple. "CBS Presents Oprah with Meghan and Harry," the first interview of the pair since stepping down from their royal duties, aired on…
When Lauren Patel attended an open call for Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, she thought she was just going for some early career audition experience. Little did she realize she had just walked into the room that would award her with her screen acting debut, and on the big screen no less. With limited acting experience…
Unsurprisingly, the 78th Golden Globe Awards looked a bit different this year striped of the usual extravagance and free-wheeling party surrounding the ceremony. On Feb. 28, the Globes tried to weather both recent accusations of the Hollywood Foreign Press' lack of inclusivity and diversity following an investigation by the Los Angeles Times, and technological glitches.…
In light of the New York Times’ latest documentary, Framing Britney, released on Feb. 5, 2021, a deepening conversation regarding conservatorship abuse has been reintroduced to the public eye, bringing awareness to pop star Britney Spears’ 13 yearlong conservatorship and a call to end it. Britney Spears rose to fame at a young age, almost…
https://youtu.be/BEo0Slg5R-Y “As I get better talking to the camera, I become a worse person,” says John Lurie in one of his frequent comments of reluctant self-awareness and low key self-deprecation. “I crashed seven drones,” he tells us at another point. “Any idiot can fly a drone.” Indeed, doomed drone footage opens each offbeat episode of…
With the announcement of the 2021 Golden Globes nominations, the largely predictable round of backlash surrounding the Academy’s choices has officially begun. Awards season is all well and good for us pop culture junkies, but over the last couple of years it has become increasingly apparent just how behind the times the committees that select…
The COVID-19 pandemic may not be over yet, but with the vaccine rollout officially underway, we can at least be permitted to feel a quiet creeping hope for the year to come. With the novel coronavirus changing the movie industry as we know it in 2020, the biggest blockbuster films on everyone’s radar have been…
For stage actor Martins Imhangbe, the realm of television is a whole new world. Branching out from his past roles on the stage like in Death of a Salesman and The Tragedy of King Richard II, Imhangbe is making his small screen debut this year in the highly anticipated Shonda Rhimes creation Bridgerton. The show,…
Netflix has a bit of a problem. When the streaming service first entered the world of original content in the early 2010’s with shows like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, they quickly established themselves as synonymous with the notion of “quality television” (we don’t need to talk about Hemlock Grove). Like…
https://youtu.be/aSfX-nrg-lI Mank is a phenomenal piece of cinema, but it is not a very entertaining movie. What David Fincher has achieved is a sweeping parlor trick that satirizes the majesty of Hollywood’s Golden Age, captured at a moment when the industry was clawing its way out of the Great Depression. The film’s production and its…
Up and coming actress, yoga teacher and avid mental health advocate Michelle Nunez is keeping busier than ever as as ‘Zane’ in BET’s “Ruthless”. Directed by Tyler Perry, the series is a spinoff of the hit series “The Oval”, where she plays "the most intricate character" she's co-created. When she's not gracing the camera, Nunez…
Artist Sarah Maple is not prosaic. As a multi-disciplinary artist, her sarcastic hyperbolized works are multifaceted, versatile, and controversial. From stand-up comedies, paintings, sculptures, mixed media and more, her works intertwine and connect within their comedic niche, being unequivocally and distinguishably Maple's. Her newest venture, Sarah Maple’s Nazi Sexy Shark Show, is in front of a…
At the age of 90, actor Sir Sean Connery passed away in his sleep at his home in Nassau in the Bahamas. According to his son, Jason Connery, he had been “unwell for some time,” while his now-widow Micheline Roquebrune revealed on Sunday his late-in-life battle against dementia. According to her in a statement to the…
Despite the pandemic, actor Paapa Essiedu has had quite a prolific year. Right off the heels of the critically acclaimed I May Destroy You, on which he played the understated yet complex Kwame, Essiedu is on our screens again, this time in a completely different role. Diving into the seedy underbelly of London, Essiedu's newest…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JaGmaiKRLA During a 2017 interview with Berlinale Talents, 40-year-old writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, The Bad Batch) described the year after she had graduated from UCLA as disempowering. Amirpour was married at the time (i.e., 2009). She had written a script. She had landed an agent and a manager, both…