Streamers Are the New Kids As streaming shifts its focus from subscribers to advertisers, linear television can no longer claim the upfronts as their exclusive domain. On Monday, NBCUniversal touted Peacock’s ad-supported options. That afternoon, Fox gave plenty of oxygen to its FAST platform Tubi. Then it was Disney’s turn, which has an AVOD offering on Hulu as well as an upcoming cheaper Disney+ tier with commercials, along with the usual suspects of ABC, ESPN, FX, and Freeform....

“Believe it or not, I’ve written a play version of [‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’],” Tarantino said. “I wanted to write a play, and stuff that’s not in the book…I wanted it to exist as a play. And again, I’m able to explore stuff that’s not in the [movie]. The play deals with Italy.” Tarantino wrote the stage play adaptation in the “six or seven months” after he wrote the first draft of the movie....

The “You Belong With Me” singer asked “Twilight: New Moon” director Chris Weitz to appear in the 2009 film as an extra. Weitz, however, turned her down, saying that Swift’s superstar presence would be distracting in the franchise installment starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. “The craziest one of all those was to hear that Taylor Swift was a huge Twi-hard, and actually Taylor Swift and I had the same agent at the time and he said, ‘Taylor would like to be in this movie — not because of you, but she’s a Twi-hard,’” Weitz revealed during “The Twilight Effect with Ashley Greene and Melanie Howe” podcast....

Tucked inside these stories of triumph, there is also heartbreak, as no list of 2020’s best performances would be considered close to complete without reflecting back on the late Chadwick Boseman’s final on-screen performance, already an iconic last hurrah. As always, there were also plenty of exciting breakthrough performances this year, as we’ve already documented in a stacked list of rising stars of screens both large and small. And these best-of-the-bunch highlights of the year strike a similar balance: the best leading men onscreen this year either pushed their familiar talents in fresh directions, or took the glimmer of talent visible from previous work and transformed it into a higher plane of creative expression....

Aretha Franklin was the kind of shooting star that sprints through the atmosphere only once in a lifetime. Born on March 25, 1942, the talented singer-songwriter honed her craft in church, and became an icon whose music will continue to inspire legions of recording artists for generations to come. In a career of more than 60 years, the Queen of Soul sold over 75 million records, won 18 Grammys, became the first female Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and amassed a collection of legendary hits soundtracking our lives with timeless anthems such as “Respect,” “Do Right Woman,” and “Rock Steady....

While American audiences are now certainly aware of Kazakhstan, its actual culture and history remain a mystery to most. Although Kazakhstani artists have been making movies since the 1930s, most of those efforts were Soviet propaganda until the past 30 years. Since it achieved independence from the USSR in 1991, the country has managed to develop a small-but-substantial film industry. Much of Kazakh cinema focuses on epic stories that honor their ancient past or their complex relationship with the Soviet Union and, later, Russia....

As is the proper attitude toward anyone with an overly curated social media presence, it turns out fans were right to be leery of Stormfront. While the writing was on the wall since Season 2 first premiered, “The Boys” has dropped bombshell after bombshell about the newest member of its corporate-sponsored, morally bankrupt superhero team, The Seven. First, she appears as if from nowhere, already approved by the powers that be (namely Vought CEO Stan Edgar, played by Giancarlo Esposito) to join the most exclusive club on the planet....