George R.R. Martin took to his personal blog to announce that the prequel series “House of the Dragon” has completed filming its first season, and the author had nothing but praise for the episodes he has seen. “I have seen rough cuts of a few of them, and I’m loving them,” Martin wrote. “Of course, a lot more work needs to be done. Special effects, color timing, score, all the post-production work....
Where did that idea come from, and how did it get here? It just seemed to show up one day, as if someone had incepted it into the deepest layer of her mind. But it’s real. It has to be. “You can’t fake a thought,” Jake once told her, and this one is exploding behind her eyes like a fireworks display that only she can see even though it tinges everything she looks at....
This is the story of a New York City block that’s on the brink of disappearing, and it naturally carries an extra charge now that its medium is as delicate as its message. Then again, the threat of commercialized self-erasure has been cooked into Miranda’s anti-gentrification lament since he wrote the first drafts of it as an undergrad at Wesleyan. A full-throated celebration of the diverse Latinx community that’s been the lifeblood of Washington Heights since the white flight of the 1960s, “In the Heights” paved the way for “Hamilton” by transposing hip-hop, salsa, merengue, and other decidedly non-white sounds into a cadence that would appeal to Broadway audiences....
Clarkson wrote a column for The Sun referencing a “Game of Thrones”-esque fate for Meghan Markle in his fantasies. “At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowd chants ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her,” Clarkson wrote of Markle. “The Grand Tour” host compared Markle to Scotland’s First Minister Nicole Sturgeon and serial killer Rose West....
In 2014, he confessed during an Esquire profile that while he didn’t hate doing press, he certainly doesn’t like it, likening himself to “a bratty kid who doesn’t want to take a shower.” Phoenix’s discomfort with the process has become so tied to his persona that he even spoofed it himself with a prankish appearance on “Late Night With David Letterman,” in a bit that ended up being part of the mockumentary “I’m Still Here....
One of the loudest voices against the casting has been “Encanto” star John Leguizamo, who took to Instagram to slam the casting decision. “How is this still going on?” Leguizamo wrote. “How is Hollywood excluding us but stealing our narratives as well? No more appropriation Hollywood and streamers! Boycott! This F’d up! Plus seriously difficult story to tell without aggrandizement, which would b wrong! I don’t got a prob with Franco but he ain’t Latino!...
The “Hairspray” writer/director joked to The New York Times that the next generation of filmmakers is content with larger-scale productions without the same texture as Waters’ DIY films. “They want to go to a mall. They want to sit in stadium seating. They want special effects,” Waters said. “To me, cheesy special effects are much more fun than these new ones.” For “Pink Flamingos” auteur Waters, cancel culture is part of the censorship that even his own films were subject to....
