Baby and Bump Obsession On ‘Lilibet Diana’ When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle named their son Archie Harrison – no ‘Archibald’, no long strings of historical names nodding to ancestors (or grandparents) – I crowed that they had chosen a name that was overtly about giving Archie his own life, his own path, unencumbered by the albatross of royal By Duana • Jun 07, 2021 10:30 am
Maple Leaf My Unwilling Mar-A-Lago Connection I am often the one crowing that ‘specificity is universal!’ – stories with small and personal details can and will spark something in a larger audience, even if the specifics of their situations are different. I’m really hoping that’s true here. One of the best decisions of my life By Duana • May 04, 2021 01:25 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews West Side Story Trailer VS. In The Heights Trailer I went to the kind of high school where the annual musical was a huge deal involving literally hundreds of students and staff, and where all seven performances filled the 1,200 seat auditorium. Which, aside from being a humbleflex, makes sense – musicals are crowd-pleasers, and people who never attend By Duana • Apr 27, 2021 02:21 pm
Oscars 2021 LaKeith Stanfield: Oscar Best Dressed (Duana) There was no contest. From the moment I saw those shots, there was absolutely no contest. Did you see Lakeith Stanfield last night?! Look, while we’ve all been pointing out that women on the red carpet should be #AskedMore than just what they’re wearing first and only, we By Duana • Apr 26, 2021 01:22 pm
Oscars 2021 Oscar Overall Best – Daniel Kaluuya Well, it’s been a few hours and no sleep – time for me to contradict myself. Remember when I said I wish there were more people who were just entertaining presences, whether they were Oscar contenders or not? Maybe even people who were overtly *not* nominees, just as promises for By Duana • Apr 26, 2021 12:58 pm
Oscars 2021 Glenn Close’s Butt: An Oscar Okay, look. Let’s all say what we already knew – the ‘musical trivia’ sequence in the show was odd, in that they should have been doing crowd-work earlier or more often; 15 minutes before the end of the show seemed like a really strange time to just start making jokes? By Duana • Apr 26, 2021 11:24 am
Oscars 2021 H.E.R. Oscar Triumph & Leslie Odom Jr’s Contender Okay, let’s have it. How did we feel about the musical performances being in the pre-show? Pros & Cons? Cons – it’s still kind of a weird enterprise, isn’t it? The live performance that isn’t a competition – that is, the songs are in competition, but the performances By Duana • Apr 26, 2021 10:37 am
Oscars 2021 Amanda Seyfried Comes To Play This woman is underappreciated. Full stop. I don’t mean as an actress, although possibly that too. But consider this – when you google Mank (after you say “MANK!” to yourself, as is obligatory) do you know what’s listed first under ‘People Also Ask’? “Is Mank Boring?” Imagine that’s By Duana • Apr 26, 2021 09:16 am
Oscars 2021 Carey Mulligan’s Oscar Playbook I have no idea what Carey Mulligan’s feelings are about her awards show season back in 2010 when she was nominated for An Education. She was 100% the new kid, and I don’t know if she was happy to be along for the ride, or thought it was By Duana • Apr 26, 2021 08:27 am
Oscars 2021 Andra Day’s Initial Oscar Outing I think it’s probably for the best that this year went the weird, semi-corporate way that it did. If it had been one of the ‘regular’ Oscar seasons, one of the narratives that would have been pushed loud and long (even more than it was) would have been the By Duana • Apr 26, 2021 07:06 am
Show Your Work Podcast Show Your Work: Amanda Gorman & The Pressures of Perfection The Amanda Gorman spread in the May issue of Vogue, complete with two different covers, is, of course, stunning – not surprising, maybe, based on Gorman’s style (and the fact that she signed with IMG not long after her performance at the Presidential Inauguration launched her into the celebrity stratosphere) By Duana • Apr 15, 2021 02:24 pm
Name Nerd Her Name Is Thandiwe The May issue of British Vogue features an interview with cover star Thandiwe Newton – and the entire piece is framed by that once-omitted ‘w’, and the correct pronunciation, ‘Tan-DI-we’. The explanation in the piece is that it was ‘carelessly missed out’ from her first credit, which seems both overly generous By Duana • Apr 06, 2021 01:18 pm
Style The Golden Globe Triumphs of Regina King It is very late and lazy to be using “what can’t Regina King do?!” as a framework for a piece – I mean, late in the night, but especially late in her recent run of media domination, even if One Night in Miami didn’t get any recognition last night. By Duana • Mar 01, 2021 11:13 am
Golden Globes 2021 Maya & Kenan & Barb & Star & The Hoodie Once we all dispensed with the pretense that the Globes was going to be fun or glamorous or in any way functional, the unintentional joys appeared, mostly in wardrobe form (and yes, it was mostly men who felt entitled to not GAF) but neither Bill Murray’s cabana shirt nor By Duana • Mar 01, 2021 09:09 am
Golden Globes 2021 Amy & Tina: Separate Coasts, Same Rhythm Did you notice that the Globes kept calling them “Amy & Tina”? No last names, because at this point, they don’t need them. Not in showbiz generally, but not at the Golden Globes specifically, where they’ve had essentially a casual residency, shared with Ricky Gervais, over the past By Duana • Mar 01, 2021 07:18 am
Golden Globes 2021 The Golden Globes Didn’t Bother To Make a Television Production What’s the most common critique of the Golden Globes? I mean, the overarching one (not the one that occurred this weekend when it became clear they have zero Black members to the point where they all remember the last person who applied, and was rejected, somewhere in the 2010s. By Duana • Mar 01, 2021 06:47 am
