Award Season Campaigning Michael Shannon’s work pays off As you know, I love Nocturnal Animals and am perpetually salty that it’s not getting enough attention this award season. It only got one Oscar nomination, although at least the Academy got this right: Michael Shannon was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. I’m still stung that the film By Sarah • Jan 24, 2017 01:44 pm
Award Season Campaigning The Icon and The Ingenue The most competitive category at the Oscars this year is Best Actress. It’s been this way since last fall. For several months, the race was defined as Emma Stone versus Natalie Portman. Back in November I wrote about their competition, and that despite Portman’s excellent work in Jackie, By Sarah • Jan 24, 2017 12:10 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews DC wants Tom Cruise because they have no imagination Friday The Wrap published an alleged short list of actors wanted by Warner Brothers/DC to play the Green Lantern, the character that almost wrecked Ryan Reynolds’ career. That list includes Reynolds—who is probably praying they decide to start over from scratch—as well as Jake Gyllenhaal, Bradley Cooper, By Sarah • Jan 23, 2017 01:29 pm
TV Updates Aziz Ansari delivered on SNL After a terrible episode with Felicity Jones, Saturday Night Live rebounded on a make-or-break weekend with Aziz Ansari hosting. A show that strives for topicality and cultural relevance CANNOT f*ck up not only an inauguration weekend, but the most divisive inauguration in recent memory, one that included an inauguration By Sarah • Jan 23, 2017 09:07 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Monster Trucks is a disaster at every turn Last fall Viacom took a $115 million write-down for an unnamed Paramount movie, but everyone made the leap that Movie X was Monster Trucks, the long-delayed would-be kiddie franchise meant to sell toys. Paramount has the rights to Transformers, but they have to share those profits, including merchandising, with toy By Sarah • Jan 20, 2017 01:16 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews James McAvoy is tremendous in Split Following The Visit, M. Night Shyamalan continues his return to form with Split. It’s his second collaboration with Blumhouse Pictures, and where in The Visit there is discernable friction between Shyamalan’s impulse to go big and Blumhouse’s frugal, lo-fi approach to filmmaking, in Split there is no By Sarah • Jan 20, 2017 10:29 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Cressida Bonas in a movie The Bye Bye Man, alternatively, “I Sat Through The Bye Bye Man So You Don’t Have To”. And I did it mostly because The Bye Bye Man is Cressida Bonas’ feature film debut as an actress. You might remember Bonas as Prince Harry’s ex, and you will never By Sarah • Jan 19, 2017 03:13 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Wolverine and Little Wolverine A new trailer for Logan has arrived, and while it’s not a perfect little film like the first one, it does confirm what the first trailer only hinted at—the little girl, Laura, is in fact X-23, the Logan clone who is currently serving as the comic book version By Sarah • Jan 19, 2017 01:23 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Sebastian Stan’s tragic ’stache We just saw Margot Robbie in costume as Tonya Harding the other day, and now it’s Sebastian Stan’s turn to show off his Jeff Gillooly look. Spoiler alert: It’s f*cking tragic. It’s so tragic a friend asked me if it was affecting my crush. (No, By Sarah • Jan 19, 2017 10:48 am
TV Updates Sign me up for the Santa Clarita Diet Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant turned up at the Golden Globes to support their upcoming Netflix comedy, Santa Clarita Diet, and now there is a trailer and I am 100% on board with this. First and foremost and most importantly and chiefly, I MISS TIMOTHY OLYPHANT AND AM GLAD TO By Sarah • Jan 18, 2017 10:32 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Sundance 2017: 10 To Watch Last year, two of the biggest films coming out of Sundance were Manchester by the Sea and Birth of a Nation. Both bagged huge distribution deals at the festival, and both were early tips for Oscar hopefuls. Manchester has stayed in it all year, and is sure to be a By Sarah • Jan 18, 2017 09:47 am
Boy Sh-t Boy Sh*t: Sherlock Edition Sherlock series four ended over the weekend, and maybe the whole show ended, too, as there is no guarantee of a return any time soon. Sherlock has always been a series of long hiatuses, but as its stars, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, have gotten more and more famous, it By Sarah • Jan 17, 2017 01:00 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Margot Robbie going for gold When I first wrote about Margot Robbie starring as Tonya Harding in I, Tonya, I said this: “…they can use prosthetics and makeup to plain her up—a blatant Oscar ploy, by the way”. And now there are set photos of Robbie in character as Tonya Harding and they have By Sarah • Jan 17, 2017 11:30 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Ben Affleck in Live By Night Unlike The Accountant, which is dumb in a coked-up Eighties action movie way, Live By Night is dumb in a self-important Oscar bait kind of way. Ben Affleck tries to make a movie that both pays homage to classic gangster films—The Godfather but for the Irish mob except that By Sarah • Jan 16, 2017 03:02 pm
TV Updates Sherlock: In the end, none of it matters Sherlock Season 4, Episode 3 recap SPOILERS After a middle episode that introduced a completely unjustified third Holmes sibling, Sherlock series four concludes with whack-a-mole plot and a wholly unnecessary retconning of the entire Moriarty arc of the first two—and still best—seasons. “The Final Problem” is also hopefully By Sarah • Jan 16, 2017 08:43 am
Blake Lively Cherokee Princess Blake Lively L’Oreal is running an ad for foundation that includes people from all over the world announcing their heritage, such as “I’m 100% Kenyan” (model Giannina Oteto), and “I’m Eastern European” (transgender model and activist Hari Nef), and featuring such interesting people as Cipriana Quann, Xiao Wen Ju, By Sarah • Jan 13, 2017 12:56 pm
