Newsletter Wednesday, January 24, 2018

[LaineyGossip.com - Calling all smuthounds!] Wednesday, January 24, 2018 [Intro for January 24, 2018]( [Tiffany Haddish on Drunk History ](Dear Gossips, Please tell me you’ve seen Tiffany Haddish’s episode of Drunk History. It aired last night. If you haven’t, your morning is about to be as delightful as it was yesterday when Tiffany announced the Oscar nominees. I lost my mind at her assessment of Hitler’s art skills. “Because he couldn’t stay in the lines.” Please also read Drunk History’s [Derek Waters’s interview with Vulture]( about working with Tiffany. My favourite detail is that when he originally approached her to do it, she pitched the history of the weave, that’s the story she wanted to tell. The history of the weave! I think we all need this story to be told. Derek says they couldn’t make it happen. What will it take to make that happen? Once again though, this is great timing for Tiffany, to have her episode of Drunk History air on the day she was front and centre for the Academy. If you know her background, timing wasn’t always in Tiffany’s favour. This, as they say, is how work meets opportunity. You know that Groupon story that Tiffany told about taking Will and Jada Pinkett Smith on the [swamp tour]( That interview landed Tiffany a Groupon partnership. And it was on Kimmel. And Kimmel is hosting the Oscars. You think Kimmel will work Tiffany into the evening somehow? Yours in gossip, Lainey [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 1:59 PM [Gerard Butler in Den of Thieves]( [Gerard Butler on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen and 50 Cent, January 17, 2018]( I’m so disappointed. Here I was, hoping Den of Thieves would be a spiritual sequel to Gerard Butler’s last dumb-sh*t movie, [Geostorm](, but instead it’s a bloated bummer. Den of Thieves is, surprisingly, not completely awful, but it’s so f*cking long it becomes intolerable, and ultimately buckles under its own weight. It’s a blatant Michael Mann knock-off, homaging Heat to the point of borderline plagiarism, and its complicated heist plot has shades of films like Inside Man and The Usual Suspects. Unfortunately, just as Thieves can’t hold up, neither does the heist. If you’re making a heist movie, the heist better be clear, articulated, and, if not realistic, then at least sensible. All the moving parts better track, and you shouldn’t be left wondering how any aspect of the plan came together. Part of what makes Heat one of the all-time great crime dramas is the heist, but Den of Thieves’ heist is a little wonky. It starts off strong, though. [Gerard Butler]( stars as “Big” Nick Flanagan, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy who bends the rules so far everyone he arrests must get off on a technicality for coerced confessions or police brutality or similar. He has a long-simmering grudge with bank robber Merrimen (Pablo Schreiber, American Gods), who, in a totally random character detail, was a football star at Nick’s rival high school. That’s right, they were both football stars at rival high schools, and now they’re locked in a cops-and-robbers duel. The homoeroticism in Thieves isn’t latent so much as dripping from every frame. Big Nick’s latest run-in with Merrimen comes after Merrimen’s crew leaves several people dead following an armored truck robbery. Why Merrimen would want an empty armored truck he doesn’t know, so he tracks down Donnie ([O’Shea Jackson, Jr.](, once again a STAND OUT), Merrimen’s getaway driver and most recent hire. Big Nick and his squad then torture Donnie for info on Merrimen’s plans as if this won’t have any legal ramifications at all. And then begins to unfold a complicated heist that has an Inside Man hook and a decent-ish twist ending. If it was just about the heist, Den of Thieves would probably be pretty good. But it’s not, because we get side-tracked with Big Nick’s personal life, which is a predictable mess. He can’t stop f*cking strippers so his wife leaves him, and then he crashes his daughter’s school day in an attempt to see her—shades of True Detective. The impulse to fill in Big Nick’s character isn’t bad, necessarily, it’s just not executed well. The stress of his personal life collapsing ceases to matter because his family disappears from the film and that entire thread is just cut, left to dangle. If you’re going to include that kind of thing in a crime drama, then it needs to have some payoff down the line—like Baby and Debora’s mad run for the state line in Baby Driver—but there is no payoff to Nick’s family storyline. It’s just some depressing sh*t that happens for a while, then has no bearing on anything. And since Den of Thieves is way too long at two hours and twenty minutes, this subplot becomes obvious bloat. The whole movie starts to slide in act three. Besides the weariness that sets in as story bloat becomes a grating problem, the characters stop acting like people and start acting like characters in a movie. Big Nick confronts Merrimen at a restaurant, causing a scene for the sole purpose of planting doubt about Donnie, except Donnie’s like, “I didn’t say anything,” and then everyone’s cool, so what was the point of that entire scene? Like with Nick’s family, there’s no payoff. It’s stuff like this that wears down Thieves. Crime dramas can be long, Michael Mann is proof positive, but everything has to track. As Den of Thieves trucks on, actions stop lining up and there are more and more dangling threads. And the heist isn’t as tightly plotted as it should be, which is borderline criminal in a movie like this. A little more tightening of the script and Den of Thieves could have been onto something. It wants to be a modern-noir crime drama in the vein of Michael Mann, but though director Christian Gudegast—taking up the camera after writing such movies as London Has Fallen and A Man Apart—has the chops to approximate Mann, he does not have the style to do something interesting with his homage. (It really makes you appreciate how unique Mann is.) Shorter and sillier and Den of Thieves could have been a fun heist flick like Point Break. Better plotted and more thought out and it really could have been a worthy Mann tribute. As is, it’s an okay shoot-’em-up that is knee-capped by its overindulgent run time. [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 8:02 PM [Smutty Social Media, January 24, 2018]( [Diane Kruger attends the Giorgio Armani Prive Haute Couture Spring Summer 2018 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on January 23, 2018 in Paris, France](Gigi and Bella’s mom’s new reality show, Making a Model with Yolanda Hadid, starts this week, so she’s been talking about how she prepared three children for the business. One rule was not letting them work full-time until they were 18. Another is telling them that “[there are a million girls out there who are as beautiful as you and deserve success as much as you do](.” I’ve also watched Growing Up Supermodel (seriously it’s beyond trash) and many of those kids are constantly told how special and worthy they are, how a modeling career is inevitable because they grew up in and around the right city with the right people. Maybe Yolanda should be coaching those parents. [A post shared by YOLANDA (@yolanda.hadid)]( on Jan 14, 2018 at 9:54am PST Jesse Williams and his wife continue to hash out their custody issues, including a problem with him introducing his children to his new girlfriend (Minka Kelly, or someone else?) and him bringing cupcakes to school on his daughter’s birthday, a no-no. My sons’ school has the same policy – no in-class birthday party or treats (which is fine by me, I don’t need to pretend to have baked cupcakes). But if I can dig deeper a bit, I think the issue here isn’t that he brought the cupcakes, it’s that he didn’t know enough about his daughter’s class not to bring the cupcakes, [you know](? [A post shared by jesse Williams (@ijessewilliams)]( on Jan 22, 2018 at 8:27am PST I dislike “ring watch” almost as much as bump watch but apparently Kate Hudson is wearing one on that finger. Looking at her history, she and Chris Robinson moved in together after just a few days and were married within a year. She and Matthew Bellamy were engaged for a few years but never married. So she’s had short and long engagement periods – I wonder which she prefers? [A post shared by Kate Hudson (@katehudson)]( on Jan 24, 2018 at 9:04am PST As Lainey has said, Diane and Norman are [basically official](. But I wonder if his fandom, which can be very “passionate,” is holding her back. The comments on her Instagram are starting to get messy and I don’t think it’s Diane Kruger or Joshua Jackson stans doing it. [A post shared by Diane Kruger (@dianekruger)]( on Jan 23, 2018 at 11:57pm PST Comedian Megan Amram (who is the best on Twitter) has a friend who worked on The Snowman. I wish I could [get one for Sarah](. LOOK WHAT SHE GAVE ME [pic.twitter.com/36i66fhh1c]( — Megan Amram (@meganamram) [January 24, 2018]( In the Peele/Peretti household, the Oscar nomination and their baby sleeping through the night are equally exciting right now. Right now I’m just thinking about everyone who bought a ticket and told someone else to. You did this. Thank you. ✊🏾 — Jordan Peele (@JordanPeele) [January 23, 2018]( AND OUR BABY SLEPT THRU THE NITE W NO MILK‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️😩💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖 — Chelsea Peretti (@chelseaperetti) [January 23, 2018]( This baby meth-making suit is actually very cute. [A post shared by Aaron Paul (@glassofwhiskey)]( on Jan 23, 2018 at 8:21pm PST More POC reporters are speaking up about being denied spaces and opportunities on the red carpet. And it’s not necessarily where the outlet is based – some say that a white reporter from a Chinese outlet has a better chance at getting an interview than a Chinese interviewer from an America-based outlet. This I think falls on the studios and their publicists – and it’s somewhere celebrities can make a huge impact by both recognizing it and being aware of who they stop for on the press line. Yong Chavez, a California-based reporter, was denied a spot at The Assassination of Gianna Versace premiere and Darren Criss stepped in to email the publicist. (And this isn’t just about international outlets – Jaleesa Lasha asked Sterling K. Brown about the press room at the SAGs. Not everyone is Sterling K. Brown – some actors would not have appreciated or wanted to answer in their winning moment, but he gave a thoughtful and honest answer.) When I told [#DarrenCriss]( that I couldn’t cover/was declined creds to premiere of ACS:Versace w/c stars & tells struggles of a Fil-Am family seldom seen on TV, he took my phone & emailed the publicists. [#speechless]( [#PinoyPride]( [@AsiansInHollywd]( [@CAPEUSA]( [pic.twitter.com/wreyde0oJn]( — Yong Chavez (@yongchavezLA) [January 8, 2018]( I will no longer be silent about the lack of opportunities given to black journalists, in comparison to our white counterparts. Thank you [@SterlingKBrown]( for your transparency. I am proud that I could bring this issue to your attention. [#SAGAwards]( — Jaleesa Lashay (JA) (@JaleesaLashay) [January 22, 2018]( [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 7:02 PM [Yara & Chanel]( [Yara Shahidi attends the Chanel Haute Couture Spring Summer 2018 show as part of Paris Fashion Week January 23, 2018 in Paris, France](It’s Paris Fashion Week right now. Chanel presented yesterday. And Yara Shahidi was there, wearing Chanel, of course, and pair of plastic boots which look great on her but that’s because she’s Yara. These are not boots for everyone, Karl. Speaking of Karl, Yara is obviously on his radar. Understandable if you’ve ever watched an episode of black-ish and now grown-ish. Her wardrobe on grown-ish is my life. Yara’s worn Chanel a few times at events here and there and now she’s invited to the show. Does that mean she could be repping Chanel a lot more? Well. Here’s what I don’t understand. Where is [Yara](’s photo with [Karl](? Karl posed with this Who? and not Yara? [A post shared by Rita Ora (@ritaora)]( on Jan 23, 2018 at 2:35am PST Am also attaching shots from the Chanel runway. The big finale wedding dress this year was a wedding tuxedo. I f-cking love it. As mentioned the other day in [What Else](, I’m currently looking for a fancy ass tuxedo for an upcoming event. This Chanel will never happen for me, but it’s my dream. Another notable – long shorts. //photos.laineygossip.com/embeds/chanel-three-24jan18.jpg Shorts like this have been around a long time. But you know what they remind me of? Jennifer Aniston in The Breakup era. She wore them all the time with wedges. I think I might be into these shorts for summer but they have to be a side or back zip. With a pair of sneakers. You? [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 5:21 PM [#CMBYN in Rome]( [Timothee Chalamet, Luca Guadagnino, Armie Hammer promote Call Me By Your Name in Rome, January 24, 2018](Call Me By Your Name premiered a year ago, an entire year ago, at Sundance to great acclaim and immediate Oscar talk. The film, however, steadily lost momentum through the fall and yesterday ended up with four Oscar nominations in total: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Song. I mean, sure, those are big nominations. And a Best Picture nomination is an achievement. But that’s the win for CMBYN this year – the Best Picture nomination. Without more nominations in other categories, including director, it isn’t a real contender, and it used to be. Which is why the film is being including on the “snub” list in the post-nomination assessment roundup. Many fans are upset that Armie Hammer wasn’t included among the Best Supporting Actor nominees with the Academy deciding to go instead with Woody Harrelson who hadn’t been at the top of very many predictor lists. Armie though? Really? If it’s anyone from CMBYN who was snubbed it was Michael Stuhlbarg. Not that Armie didn’t do great work, the best work of his career, but Michael Stuhlbarg, OMG, the soul of the entire film is in his monologue at the end. THAT to me was the heartbreak omission yesterday. That said, Michael Stuhlbarg did not campaign. I can’t even remember seeing him at any award season events (this is why I thought he might be like the Mark Rylance of this year) while [Armie Hammer]( was out here pressing as hard as possible. There were stumbles, however, for Armie along the way. [Quitting Twitter]( after getting pissy over Anne Helen Petersen’s article [about him in Buzzfeed]( was not a good look. She interrogated his privilege, he packed up his toys. So… he essentially made her point. And that happened after his interview with [The Hollywood Reporter](, also not a good look. I’m not talking about his Casey Affleck comments either. I’m talking about the whole tone of the piece, which read to me like he was sighing over and over again about being the victim of bad timing and bad luck. Perhaps that didn’t go over very well with people in Hollywood and we already know that so many of them read THR. Armie is with [Timothee Chalamet]( and Luca Guadagnino in Rome today as, a year later, they’re still promoting the film. Timothee yesterday became the youngest in something like 80 years to be nominated for Best Actor. This was his statement upon learning the news: “Wow, what an incredible morning. I’m a bit in shock. The feeling of gratitude I have at the moment has less to do with individual achievement and more with the appreciation for the artists past honored in this category and all of the nominees of this year. I am in awe of the pedigree of the Academy. I am truly honored. I’ve been traveling with Armie Hammer the last twelve hours. We land in two hours and we will be back in Italy together for the first time in a year and a half. Tonight we’re getting dinner with Luca Guadagnino. Without Luca’s true mastery and vision, and without Armie’s trust and guidance, without the public arts funding that made my high school education at LaGuardia possible, I wouldn’t be in this position. Thank you to those that made this possible, and the Academy, for this recognition.” Very smart. I especially like the shout-out to his high school and the mention of public arts funding. Maybe I’m biased though because I love Elio/Timmy so much. Have you seen it yet?!? [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 4:10 PM [Denzel pays it forward]( [Denzel Washington at The 75th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 7, 2018 in Beverly Hills, California](Denzel Washington got nominated for his eighth Oscar yesterday. The conversation surrounding Denzel’s EIGHTH Oscar nom has largely been about whether or not he was only nominated [to replace James Franco](. As Lainey wrote yesterday, even if this did have something to do with Denzel’s inclusion, who cares? It’s not like Denzel Washington doesn’t deserve Oscar noms. Roman J Israel Esquire may not be a great movie but neither was Into The Woods. As [I tweeted yesterday](, if Meryl Streep can be nominated every time she breathes in a film, SO CAN DENZEL WASHINGTON. Denzel Washington deserves to be in the same league as Marlon Brando, Jack Lemmon, Peter O’Toole and Al Pacino, the only other actors to have been nominated for Academy Awards eight times. I’m never going to complain when I see Denzel’s name on the ballot, especially when he’s been ROBBED so many times (Malcolm X, Hurricane, Fences, Remember the Titans – I’m only half kidding about the last one). Plus, if the #MeToo movement had happened last year, Denzel would have won Best Actor over Casey Affleck. Put some goddamn respect on [Denzel Washington](’s name. One of the many things I love about Denzel is that he pays it forward. As Frances McDormand put it, young actors need doorstops too. Denzel (and Phylicia Rashad!) gifted [Susan Kelechi Watson](, aka my girl Beth on This is Us, with her very own proverbial doorstop by paying for her to go to Oxford University to study Shakespeare for the summer when she was a college student at Howard. Susan Kelechi Watson told this story on Live with Kelly and Ryan and I watched the clip a few hours after ranting about why Denzel deserves his Oscar nom. What struck me the most about Susan’s adorable story is how serendipitous it is that this came out yesterday, the same day everyone was quoting Viola Davis on Twitter. "The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity." Viola said that in her acceptance speech [at the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards](. It came up because while there was a lot to celebrate yesterday in terms of [diversity and opportunity](, there is clearly still a lot more work to do. That work involves creating a system that gives opportunities to people who look like Susan Kelechi Watson. Would Denzel have been able to afford to send ten students from a historically black college to London on scholarship to study Shakespeare if he wasn’t, Denzel “First, Only Different, on his way to becoming an 8-time Oscar nominee” Washington? Going to Oxford made Susan Kelechi Watson a better actor and gave her an opportunity to shine in a space not typically reserved for her. So, not only is Denzel the Greatest Actor of Our Generation, he’s also partly responsible for giving us Beth Pearson and [President Blue Ivy Carter](� ). THIS is what everyone should be talking about. Also, can we give Denzel an Oscar nom for the way Susan Kelechi Watson says he delivered, “Yeah, you welcome?” [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 3:29 PM [Allison Janney wasn’t sleeping]( [Allison Janney speaks during the Women's March Los Angeles 2018 on January 20, 2018 in Los Angeles, California](It’s tradition on Oscar nomination morning to hear about how the nominees reacted to their nominations. Some release statements and those make headlines. And, over the years, we’ve become accustomed to the story that they were sleeping. That their moms or their agents woke them up. That their phones got them out of bed. This is not how it was for Allison Janney, nominated for Best Supporting Actress for I, Tonya and considered to be the lock in the category seeing as she’s been winning almost everything up to this point. Allison [told PEOPLE]( that: “First of all, I was in bed last night at 9 p.m. to try to get a good night’s sleep, which is just a joke — I didn’t sleep one wink,” Janney joked. “At 5 a.m. my bedroom door flew open and six people came jumping into my bed. I was floored, I had all these people who flew in from New York to be with me. It was just the most special morning to get up and watch the announcement with dear friends and family.” So not only did she not sleep, she watched the nominations live and I appreciate this, I appreciate that, for a change, someone wasn’t sleeping and someone will admit to not being able to sleep. In sports, especially hockey, they’ve bludgeoned the “yeoman’s work” expression to death when describing a certain player type – a consistent player, who isn’t flashy, who makes a solid contribution on every shift and always gets the job done. This is [Allison Janney](. Allison Janney is always, always working. There are never any gaps in her resumé. Actors like Allison Janney are doing the “yeoman’s work” often in supporting roles. She could totally do the same in the lead though, non? Here's Allison at the Women's March and the Producer's Guild Awards with Margot Robbie on the weekend. [Click here for the rest of the photos.]( Posted at 2:56 PM [Jason Momoa can pull off anything]( [Jason Momoa and Lisa Bonet out in New York, January 22, 2018](Our site manager Emily can’t get over Jason Momoa’s bad hat. I emailed her and Lainey that I wanted to write about Jason Momoa today and all Emily could focus on was the hat. It’s a terrible, hideous, revolting hat. That’s not up for debate. I’m with you, Em. BUT Jason Momoa is still doing major things for me in this hideous hat. He wore the hat for two whole segments on Fallon and halfway through the first one I watched, the hat was turning me on. Granted, the hat was full of water which Jason Momoa was pouring all over himself so maybe it wasn’t just the hat. [Jason Momoa](’s entire appearance on The Tonight Show is basically porn. They play a game called Water War in which Jason makes Jimmy Fallon look like a little boy and I’m convinced the point of the game was to get me excited in my pants but it was also a brilliant commercial for Aquaman. Give me two hours of this, please. As the game goes on, Jason just gets wetter and sexier. There is grunting and flexing. I want to flag this as NSFW only because you’re probably going to need a moment with yourself after you watch it. Watch at own risk. The hat ended up being a sexy prop, didn’t it? Just me? Jason Momoa hugged me once and I think about it nightly. Can you tell? In the interview portion of Jason’s Tonight Show appearance, his bad outfit is a bit more overpowering, at first. I didn’t understand what was going on with his paint-splattered pants. The t-shirt is distractingly ugly. Then, 42 seconds into the interview, Jason takes off his hat and nothing else matters. He is also SO excited to be there. It’s really endearing and charming and dear god, this man is attractive. There are some interesting anecdotes in this interview about Jason’s work and how hard it was for him to find work after Game of Thrones because no one thought the dude who played Khal Drogo could speak English but as soon as the hat came off, I found it hard to focus. I started paying attention again when he said, “my wife.” Now, please enjoy some photos of Lisa Bonet and Jason Momoa looking flawless in some very questionable outfits. Hey, when you’re this beautiful, you can pull off anything. 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