Newsletter Wednesday, August 31, 2016

[LaineyGossip.com - Calling all smuthounds!] Wednesday, August 31, 2016 [Intro for August 31, 2016] [Rihanna and Drake ] Dear Gossips, Since last Monday I've been dealing with some kind of eye stye. It got worse then better and actually popped while I was on live TV last Tuesday and, after the initial alarm - blurry vision - I got really excited because I love gross sh-t and it was all I could talk about, like show and tell. Literally a stank eye. My friend Dylan even took a picture of it ([you can see it here]) because he loves gross sh-t too. A mistake. Bad luck. Because it never completely went away and has worsened again overnight and now I can barely open it. Which means I can't blog. Am compressing etc but I have to get it checked out. Hoping it'll pop itself again and this time I won't be so stupid and practically celebrate it and it'll finally f-ck off for good. I'm sorry for the interruption to our gossip schedule. Because Rihanna was with Drake at his show in Miami last night. And check them out at the after-party. The way she's touching his face. !!!!!!!!!!! Rihanna and Drake partying in Miami last night [pic.twitter.com/BQcGKASQuy] — Rihanna News (@TeamOfRihanna) [August 31, 2016] And here she is dancing during his performance: [#PressPlay: #Rihanna supporting #Drake at his show tonight via @Dana_mayy] A video posted by The Shade Room (@theshaderoom) on Aug 30, 2016 at 8:31pm PDT While I can't write today, please enjoy new posts from Sarah, Kathleen, and Joanna. This was hubris, entirely my fault, and I hope to make it up to you tomorrow. Yours in gossip, Lainey [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 1:00 PM [Into the Matrix of Jaden and Willow] [Jaden and Willow Smith cover Interview Magazine] It's like Jaden and Willow Smith knew I was having a sh-tty week. It's like they collectively decided to pose for an UNREAL post-apocalyptic photo spread and take part in a new joint feature in [Interview magazine] as a gift, specifically for me. It's Jaden and Willow in all of their Smithian weirdo glory in a conversation with Pharrell. Willow, Jaden and PHARRELL. You don't understand how much I needed this. The interview starts with Pharrell asking Willow what's on her mind. This is how she responds: “This morning actually was pretty intense because I was thinking about the world and my place in the world, things that I have made or want to make. I was thinking about all the things that I could do that I don't do. But, you know, I was just thinking about the world and everything. “ It is probably exhausting being Willow’s best friend but I’ll take the job anyway. This answer sets the tone for one of my favourite conversations I have ever read. I laughed out loud multiple times. I’m not sure that’s what Jaden and Willow were going for but I’d like to think I’m laughing with them, not at their “matrix of seeming contradictions.” That’s a direct quote from the feature’s intro that pretty much sums up the Smiths. It’s easy to laugh when Jaden jokes that Willow has always been better than him at everything. Or when Willow recalls a fan walking up to her on the street and asking, “Is this real life?” and Willow, with the utmost sincerity, tells her, “No.” It wasn’t me but damn, I wish it was. And just when I thought my obsession with Willow couldn’t get unhealthier, she goes and reveals that she loves Buffy The Vampire Slayer. It’s completely normal that I want to be best friends with a 15 year old, right? When Pharrell asks Willow and Jaden where they see themselves in 10 years, it sounds like they both want to be retired. In 10 years, Willow will be 25 and Jaden will be 28. It may be absurd but it’s a part of the conversation I love so much, I have to copy in its entirety so you can appreciate it for yourself. PHARRELL: Where do you see yourself in ten years? JADEN: Gone. WILLOW: [laughs] Did you just say, "God"? JADEN: I said, "Gone!" WILLOW: I feel that. I see myself in the mountains somewhere in a tent cooking a squirrel. [laughs] JADEN: Not a squirrel, Willow! Why!? Why a squirrel? WILLOW: I don't know! Because that's probably going to be the only food I have. JADEN: Nah, you're going to be a vegetarian. You'll be surviving off grass in the morning. WILLOW: Hopefully. Yeah, bro! I want to retreat back to living off the land and just being in nature, experiencing life in the most pure, natural way possible. It’s hilarious. It’s also fascinating that two millennials are daydreaming about a future with, in Willow’s case, no technology and in Jaden’s, no notoriety. This is coming from two of the most famous kids born of the Instagram Star era. They talk about their generation’s obsession with their phones and social media. According to Willow, she and Jaden want to, “utilize social media to elevate the consciousness of those people who feel like all they want from social media is to be famous.” We can make fun of them but this is actually a very grounded and self-aware sentiment coming from a 15 year-old. Let’s ignore that she actually said “elevate the consciousness” though. Of course, Willow and Jaden talk about their parents Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith. They both cite their parents as their biggest inspirations and the reason they both want to make a positive change in the world. Willow breaks it down like this: “What my parents have given to me is not anything that has to do with money or success or anything that society says people should be focusing on—it's something spiritual that only certain people can grasp and accept. And that's how I act and move in the world today.” I won’t pretend I can grasp or accept anything the enlightened beings in the Smith family choose to share with us mere mortals but I can understand the best piece of advice Willow says she ever received from her mom: "Do you, boo boo." Please keep doing you Willow, boo. And Jaden too. I’ll shut up now so you can just stare at the pretty pictures. [Click here] to see. [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 4:49 PM [Watching Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander fall in love] [Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender ] [Michael Fassbender] and [Alicia Vikander] will walk their first red carpet together tomorrow at the worldwide premiere of The Light Between Oceans at the Venice Film Festival (the premiere of Steve Jobs at NYFF last October [does not necessarily count]). It's interesting too, because this is the movie that brought them together as a couple, and it hits theatres in North America the day after its European debut. But, it's not a great release date. It's one of the most low-key box office weekends of the year, though clearly, Touchstone is going for prestige here over cash. Each The Light Between Oceans promo I've seen touts Alicia and Rachel Weisz as "Academy Award winners" and Michael as an "Academy Award nominee." And if they're going for prestige, there's a chance it could work for the film, as it's following the same release pattern as [The Constant Gardener], which won Rachel her Oscar in 2006. And much like The Constant Gardener, this movie delivers. The Light Between Oceans is Blue Valentine at sea - emotionally devastating, and full of scenes that will completely cut you in half. When I saw it last month, I feared that other critics might view it as a piece of over-the-top emotional schlock, or as an A-List Lifetime movie when it's anything but. While the source material is definitely on the soapy side, Michael, Alicia and Rachel are all in top form. Michael plays Tom, a WWI veteran who relocates to rural Australia to manage a lighthouse on a remote island. He’s given fair warning about the isolation he’s about to face, but in his mind, living alone on an island is the best way to face the demons he saw on the battlefield. He soon meets Isabel (Alicia) by the mainland. Like Tom, she also lost her brothers in the war and is desperate to establish some new roots. When Tom heads back to the island, they use love letters to woo each other and soon, they tie the knot in order to grant her permission to move there with him. Once they’re together, the two take long, The Bachelor-esque walks by the beach with the lighthouse in the background, but the loneliness never gets to them. Instead, they’re blinded by the euphoria of love – there are several romantic montages, including a charming scene where Isabel shaves Tom’s moustache. Early on, Isabel says “you’re still a mother or father even if you no longer have a child,” words which foreshadow what’s about to happen. After the wedding, the couple faces two bouts of infertility and miscarriages. Isabel feels so mortified and embarrassed, and becomes a shell of her former self. Tom and Isabel try to get back to their normal routines, yet remain haunted by these ghosts of their past. So, a few days later, when a dead man and a baby wash ashore, Isabel asks her husband if they can temporarily raise the baby as their own. Of course, she later pleads with him to let them raise her permanently. Despite his own reservations — both professional and ethical — he gives in to his wife’s desires, and they recapture that blissful love they held since their meet-cute. Years later, Tom confirms what he had longed feared while on a trip to town, that the child actually belongs to another family. Naturally, it’s to Hannah (Rachel), part of one of the wealthiest families in town. Now, it becomes a dance – how long can Tom and Isabel maintain this idyllic life, and lie? She’s at peace with it, but the guilt eats away at him, especially after several encounters with Hannah. It’s a very heavy movie, with one too many emotional climaxes to be truly effective – especially at the end – but the performances and filmmaking buoy the movie. This could have gone horribly awry if left in less capable hands, but writer-director Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines) still retains his title as the master of searing, and often hard-to-watch relationship dramas. The acting is so believable – even the child is fantastic! Alicia spends most of the movie crying, as does Michael, and watching them fall in love is intoxicating. Like Lainey mentioned last month, [I got to cover this press junket for etalk]. The two did their interviews together, and we were warned ahead of time not to ask “personal questions.” Makes sense, the two have kept their love pretty private, especially during the Oscar campaign earlier this year, so as not to distract from their individual campaigns or the merits of their performances, which I wrote about [over] and [over] as being the [best of the year]. So, I asked about the love letters they wrote to each other in the film, and what they enjoyed most about revisiting that type of romantic correspondence, and how much fun they were to write. Though they lamented that "nobody writes anymore," apparently Derek told Alicia that her handwriting was not “romantic enough,” so she got extremely embarrassed. That's what they're laughing about for the first 40 seconds of my interview, and that’s what led to them holding hands just a few feet away from me. As I told Lainey at the time, once this happened, I floated out of the room, but still had to make sure I got what I needed from the remaining four minutes of the interview. They also credit Derek with bringing them closer together, saying that they bonded over his long takes and how he “never called cut.” Needless to say, my observation was that they really love each other. They were in great spirits, never seemed bored or agitated, looked at each other adoringly while the other spoke and seemed very engaged with each other. I was already [a believer in their love], but watching this movie and seeing them together made it more real. I’m rooting for them, and I’m rooting for this movie. Hopefully enough people see it, and appreciate the commitment Tom, Alicia and Rachel bring to this story. Check out [the interview here]. [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 3:49 PM [Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins] [Meryl Streep attends TimesTalks to discuss 'Florence Foster Jenkins' at TheTimesCenter on August 11, 2016 in New York City] The catch-up continues with Meryl Streep’s latest Oscar vehicle, Florence Foster Jenkins. I want to sh*t on this movie for being too saccharine and unevenly balanced between its two leads, but this movie is explicitly about NOT sh*itting on people who are trying really hard, even if they fall short in the end. (Spoiler Alert: I’m going to sh*t on it anyway.) [Meryl Streep] stars as Florence Foster Jenkins, a real life eccentric who fancied herself a singer but who was a really, really, REALLY bad singer. ([Proof.]) [Hugh Grant] stars as her common-law husband, St. Clair Bayfield, a failed actor who took over as Flo-Fo’s manager and protector as her health, and possibly sanity, waned in her later years. The daughter of wealthy Philadelphians, and an actual piano prodigy, Florence Foster Jenkins contracted syphilis from her first husband, whom she promptly left upon discovering her infection. The marriage was never officially dissolved, though, so she shacked up illicitly with Bayfield, and made her living teaching piano—even though her hands were ruined, by accident or, more likely, syphilis—until her father died and she inherited a ton of money. Because of her illness, she and Bayfield couldn’t consummate, and he kept a separate apartment where he met mistresses (represented in the film by Rebecca Ferguson). Jenkins was a real patron of the arts, but also insisted on being a star, and her money allowed her to make records and rent concert halls—including Carnegie—and lest you think ironic enjoyment of bad entertainment is new, it’s said Cole Porter used to attend her performances religiously and struggle not to laugh throughout. There is an unflinching movie to be made about Jenkins, examining the connection between her privilege, sickness, and ill-conceived singing career—this is not that movie. As directed by Stephen Frears and written by British TV scribe Nicholas Martin, FFJ is more interested in chastising critics for chastising those who try and fail, and also in garnering Meryl Streep her twentieth Oscar nomination—which is practically inevitable. A decent campaign could probably get Hugh Grant a nod, too. And Best Picture, why not? This is such a weak f*cking year, and FFJ is exactly the kind of toothless period piece that benefits in such conditions. To be fair though, there’s a lot of good stuff in FFJ. Streep is as fine as ever as Flo-Fo, singing with sh*tty gusto, and playing her as a lovably dotty older woman, whose politely ignored illness is really starting to ravage her system. Grant is also very good as Bayfield, a man comfortable with his keptness, and who has genuine affection for his oddball wife, even though his entire life revolves around protecting her from harsh reality. (Again, hard to ignore the insulating quality of wealth, especially when contrasted with the World War II reality outside their Belle Epoque apartment.) It’s just that this movie wants to have it both ways. The performance scenes are staged for laughs, with Flo-Fo’s accompanist, Cosme McMoon (Simon Helberg, showing a hell of a lot more ability than The Big Bang Theory ever utilizes), comically grimacing and mugging as she butchers aria after aria. The viewer is invited to enjoy the comedic spectacle of this kooky old bat singing horribly in public. But then the audience within the film—and the viewer outside it, by extension—is chastised for daring to laugh in the face of such earnest suckitude. It’s easy to see Flo-Fo as the spiritual godmother of all those hopeless American Idol auditions, but we’re not made to feel guilty for laughing at those. We are made to feel bad about laughing at Flo-Fo, even after the film has set us up to laugh. The whole movie feels like a trick question. I don’t really know what the moral of the story is, because Flo-Fo’s dream is only made possible through her extravagant wealth and excessive coddling. It’s supposed to be inspirational, I suppose, but again, what part of “you can do anything if you’re rich enough” is meant to inspire? More than anything, Florence Foster Jenkins feels like Baby Boomer version of “everybody gets a participation trophy”. [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 2:55 PM [Miles Teller and Jonah Hill in War Dogs] [War Dogs movie review ] Playing a little catch up as we close out August, starting with Todd Phillips’ latest bro-nightmare movie, War Dogs. For a director known for comedies—namely The Hangover trilogy, but also Road Trip, Old School, and Due Date, among others—Phillips doesn’t seem to like directing comedies. He got successful making movies about unpleasant people doing unpleasant things, but his late work has been unpleasant, too, in and of itself—it kind of feels like we’re being punished for going to see his movies in the first place. War Dogs is the latest in his hate-watch catalog, and it’s a particularly ugly example of the Phillips phenomenon. Based on a Rolling Stone article, and subsequent book, by Guy Lawson, War Dogs tells the improbably true story of how a couple twenty-something meatheads from Miami gamed the no-bid contract system then-Vice President Dick Cheney put into place to award government contracts. As if you needed any proof that was a terrible f*cking plan from the beginning, here come these two assholes to prove just how easy it was. [Miles Teller] stars as David Packouz, a seemingly nice stoner stuck in a dead-end, degrading job, with a baby on the way and no way to support her. Enter his childhood friend Efraim Diveroli ([Jonah Hill]), an obvious sociopath and con man with a plan to get rich selling guns through the new no-bid system. There are a lot of problems with War Dogs, but the performances aren’t among them. Teller is always watchable, and even though David is a bit of a wet noodle, and makes for the most gullible narrator in the history of ever, Teller’s charm keeps him interesting enough. But Hill is the real standout, going in literal guns blazing as Efraim. Hill does not shy away from Efraim’s excess or his patheticness, and he embraces Efraim’s slimy amorality and turns him into what should be one of the great cinematic scumbags, alongside Tony Montana and Jimmy Conway. But all that potential is wasted by Phillips’ conflicting messages. He wants this to be condemnatory of the “kill or be killed” economic mentality that ruined our economy, but he also wants us to care whether or not David and Efraim are still friends. (It’s never clear, at any moment, why we should like Efraim at all, let alone hope he has friends.) He wants to excoriate Bush-era policies, but also revel in bros being bros in the Iraqi desert. And, like The Wolf of Wall Street, the economic commentary is compromised by the glut of wealth porn as the boys revel in their fast-made millions. If you want to condemn the actions of hucksters and frauds, then you need to juxtapose the images of their ill-gotten gains with those of the people they’re hurting along the way. Efraim and David are arms dealers, yet they are barely confronted with the reality of what is going on with the war they’re supplying. There’s a token confrontational moment with their reality, but Efraim is such a sociopath he doesn’t blink and David is too invested in still seeming like a good guy despite the war profiteering to pontificate on the cost of war. The one voice of decency in the whole movie is David’s wife, Iz (Ana de Armas, totally stranded by sh*t material), but though she chastises David, she still supports him. It’s a very milquetoast form of condemnation. In the tradition of Scarface, Goodfellas, and The Wolf of Wall Street—so basically, all the classic American Scumbag movies—with a dash of The Big Short thrown in for a falsely moralizing ending, War Dogs is a sweaty, bro-y, barely even sheepish celebration of Bush-era amorality dressed in coke and cash that squanders a brilliant scumbag performance from Jonah Hill. [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 1:56 PM [Nate Parker apologizes] [Nate Parker] We aren’t done talking about Nate Parker. In an exclusive [in-depth interview with Ebony] released over the weekend, Parker addressed, as Ebony calls it, the “growing firestorm surrounding his 1999 rape allegation.” Nate Parker spoke with senior editor Britni Danielle for 25 minutes about consent, toxic masculinity and male privilege. He actually says the words “consent,” “toxic masculinity” and “male privilege” and discusses each issue AT LENGTH. There is so much in this conversation; I’ve re-read it about 15 times. The general takeaway is that this is Nate Parker’s Official Celebrity Apology. And as far as celebrity apologies go, this one is pretty candid. While he still doesn’t admit to raping a woman in his dorm room when he was 19, he openly admits that he had “never thought about consent as a definition” and still has a lot to learn. Not only does he repeatedly check his privilege, he apologizes for putting his own feelings and career over the feelings and life of his alleged victim. He also calls out his arrogance for thinking the rape case and the coverage surrounding it was all about HIM. “I was acting as if I was the victim, and that’s wrong…I didn’t even think for a second about her, not even for a second…You asked me why I wasn’t empathetic? Why didn’t it come off more empathetic? Because I wasn’t being empathetic. Why didn’t it come off more contrite? Because I wasn’t being contrite. Maybe I was being even arrogant.” This admission does not make up for what happened in 1999. This conversation with Britni Danielle is the one Nate Parker should have been having two weeks ago. It’s the apology he should have offered up instead of the smug, entitled, and dismissive comments he gave to [Deadline] and [Variety] and the statement he made on [Facebook]. And there are still serious, inherent problems with the way Nate Parker doesn’t refer to his accuser as a survivor when he talks about other rape survivors. He still refers to the incident as a “threesome.” So this is in no way absolute redemption. And the interview does not change my decision to not see his movie. Nate Parker should have listened to women SOONER and BEFORE he did all the dumb sh-t, yes. But does it mean something that a black man in Parker’s position is saying the things he says in this interview? Here’s how Nate Parker explains his definition of consent in 1999: “If a woman said no, no meant no. If she didn’t say anything and she was open, and she was down, it was like how far can I go? If I touch her breast and she’s down for me to touch her breast, cool. If I touch her lower, and she’s down and she’s not stopping me, cool. I’m going to kiss her or whatever. It was simply if a woman said no or pushed you away that was non-consent.” That answer is infuriating on a lot of levels but does it sum up what a lot of men ignorantly believe when it comes to sex? Probably. A straight, male Hollywood actor is engaging in an honest, uncomfortable and raw conversation about consent. Let’s sit with that for a second. This is what I was hoping for when I wrote about The Birth of a Nation’s [impending press tour]. I hoped Nate Parker would have to answer these tough questions. I hoped he would have to sit across from women who would take him to task on his f-cked up statements. Multiple times in this interview, Nate Parker deflects the conversation from his own feelings to acknowledge how his words and actions have affected survivors of rape. Over and over, he talks about overcoming his privilege and even makes the comparison between black male privilege and white supremacy. “I’m understanding that I’m dealing with a problem, like an addiction. Just like you can be addicted to White Supremacy and all of the benefits, you can be addicted to male privilege and all of the benefits that comes from it. It’s like someone pointing at you and you have a stain on your shirt and you don’t even know it.” Last week, I wrote about how complicated this story has been to unpack, [especially for black women]. I mentioned some of the brilliant black feminist writers who eloquently pointed out the proverbial “stain” on Parker’s shirt. Well, apparently, Nate Parker was reading too. He references the documentary about campus rape, The Hunting Ground. He name checks Roxane Gay’s [New York Times essay], [The Root’s Maiysha Kai] and The Huffington Post’s [Demetia Lucas D’Oyley]. He says he was listening to the black women who used their voices to criticize him. He apologizes for his messed up homophobic comments. He says he is a “work in progress” and is “trying to be better.” Let’s not forget that the man is promoting a movie. He wants to take The Birth of a Nation all the way through awards season to Oscar night in February. So, as much as I hope this interview is genuine and Nate Parker is being real when he says “This is the first step. You will know my commitment by the next few steps,” I’m still skeptical he’s not just saying what he thinks we need to hear in order to go see his movie. I am skeptical that he’s not hoping this is the last conversation he’ll have to have about being an alleged rapist. But if that’s not the case and IF this is the first step in a long tour of contrition and repentance for Nate Parker, where do we go from here? This is where I turn to activist Leslie Mac’s tweets about restorative justice. I believe in the power of restorative justice. I believe in the possibility for those who have wronged other to repent & change. I have to. — Leslie Mac (@LeslieMac) [August 27, 2016] As a Black Women I don't have the luxury or not believing in Restorative Justice AND work towards Black Liberation. They go hand in hand. — Leslie Mac (@LeslieMac) [August 27, 2016] Nate Parker will not go to jail for this alleged rape. He was already acquitted. He has been able to, in his words “not even think for a second” about the incident for 17 years. If Nate Parker has been tried in the court of public opinion and he has been found guilty, what is his sentence? Again, jail is not an option. Do we wish him physical and emotional harm? He’s a father of five. I wouldn’t wish that even if he were childless. So. If he can’t go to jail and he probably won’t disappear forever to never be heard of again, what does justice look like here? Does Nate Parker get banished from the film industry altogether? Does justice come in the form of a film that tanks at the box office because we refuse to watch it? Does this cost him a few Oscars? Is justice served in the fact that for the next few months while Nate Parker promotes this movie, he will continue to have to say the words “consent,” “toxic masculinity” and “male privilege” over and over and over again? It can’t stop at this one interview. This sole interview does not give him a pass to go on and promote his film, business as usual. His next interview should also be with a woman. Instead of being asked about HIS life, he should have to answer questions about HERS. Repeatedly. He should have to confront his actions head on – again and again. AND AGAIN. And even after all of that, in the spirit of restorative justice, does Nate Parker’s career as an actor, director and writer in Hollywood continue? Should it? I don’t know the answers to these questions. What I do know is that we shouldn’t stop asking them. [Click here for the rest of the photos.] Posted at 1:23 PM [Privacy Policy] - [Unsubscribe]