Important news for ALL HUMANS WITH FEELINGS: Paul Feig tweeted a picture earlier today of the four women who will star in his all-female Ghostbusters remake, and after months of speculation and dream casts, here they are: Melissa McCarthy has officially signed on, while Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones are apparently in final talks. Talk about a fucking dream cast, you guys. These aren’t the lady Ghostbusters we need. These are the lady Ghostbusters we deserve.
It’s been a WEEK, guys. Let’s get down to business.
–Comedy Central will be ROASTING JUSTIN BIEBER, which almost seems like shooting fish in a barrel, because every comedian has at least four back-pocket jokes about him already. That’s not to say this won’t be amazing. It’ll probably be amazing.
-Lea Michele told Jimmy Kimmel that she barfed everywhere while singing “Let it Go” for the Glee season premiere (perfectly demonstrating how the general public now feels about both Glee and “Let it Go”), and that, more importantly, there’s a slow-motion video of it. I think Ryan Murphy should probably reconsider Glee series finale and just show that video, on a loop, for an hour.
-Speaking of Glee (ugh), one of their baby stars, Melissa Benoit, has been cast as Supergirl for a new CBS series. I don’t know who that is and didn’t know Supergirl was happening, and reading slash reporting this news has aged me by five years.
-Do you want to watch TWO WHOLE SECONDS of footage from Game of Thrones‘ fifth season? Here you go.
–Rooney Mara and Tatiana Maslany are screen-testing for the new Star Wars series, which is so extremely exciting on about 25 different levels. Hopefully there will be like, 80 Tatiana Maslanys.
-More good things! NBC has greenlit a new series called Apocalypse, and so far, it will star Rob Lowe, Megan Mullally, and Jenna Fischer. Can’t argue with THAT.
-And speaking of TV shows you cannot possibly argue with, please enjoy this trailer for the inevitably amazing Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
-This ICYMI is so full of the best things. NPR Music got the Broad City and Sleater-Kinney laydeez together for an interview, and it was predictably magical.
-Somebody at Saturday Night Live made the amazing decision to pair J.K. Simmons and D’Angelo as the host and musical guest for January 31.
-On his second show ever, Larry Wilmore went bold and declared that Cosby definitely did it. Is Larry Wilmore married? Does he want to marry me, maybe?
-We had to get to SOMETHING stupid in this ICYMI because it was way too happy, so here it is. Many moons ago, when Ben and I had just started this blog, I wrote a piece about how impossible it was going to be to adapt actual garbage book Fifty Shades of Grey into a garbage movie – but, specifically, I wrote about The Tampon Scene. (I am not explaining this again. Look it up.) Anyway, they’re cutting it from the movie, which is… I mean, it makes sense, but I don’t know what they’re gonna fill this movie with if they’re cutting all the gross sex scenes. Now when I get drunk and go see it, I’m just gonna fall asleep!
That’s all for this week. More Oscar stuff soon! Probably!
Well. This season of American Horror Story is over, the freak show is closed for business, and I AM FUCKING THRILLED. I’ve waited for this day for so long, so let’s not waste any time, but I’m sure you can imagine that I basically hated everything that happened in that episode. Well, you would be wrong about that one…
As we come closer to the Academy Awards on February 22nd, we’ll be posting short profiles of each Best Picture nominee, attempting, in our own ways, to not only sum up what the movie is about, but why we believe it scored one of the eight coveted nominations, and why it could possibly take home the big prize come Oscar night. Enjoy!
When looking at the Best Picture nominees this year, the one outlier among the eight is Clint Eastwood’s latest, American Sniper. American Sniper is a lot of things; it’s the highest-grossing movie of the Best Picture nominees. It’s the movie that broke the record for largest opening weekend in January. It’s the second film that Clint Eastwood directed in 2014 (the first was the critical and commercial disappointment Jersey Boys). But finally, American Sniper is, in my humble opinion, the only one of the eight nominees that is objectively a bad movie. And a dangerous one at that.
It’s the first ICYMI of 2015, and George DOES NOT CARE. That’s fine. We’ll soldier on anyway.
-This is obviously the most important story of all time: esteemed Oscar nominee “Dick Poop” thinks we’re all losers for laughing at that classic, incredible misread by Cheryl Boone Isaacs (if you would like to watch it one million times like I did, here’s the Vine). Maybe we are. Or maybe it’s definitely the funniest thing to EVER happen during the nominee announcement.
-Delightful human being H. Jon Benjamin did an AMA and it was exactly as delightful as you would expect.
-Speaking of delightful things, Melissa McCarthy has teamed up with Paul Feig once again for Spy, which also stars Jason Statham, Jude Law, and McCarthy’s Bridesmaids co-star Rose Byrne, so basically this will be the GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE. (That may come back to bite me in the ass later.) The trailer is red-band, FYI.
-James Cameron has announced that the Avatar sequels (sequels?!) will be delayed until 2017. OH NO. I AM DEVASTATED. THIS IS THE WORST NEWS. (Sarcasm does not always translate well in print.)
-Back to great and hilarious and good things: Broad City has already been renewed for season 3, which is yes; and the Netflix reboot of Wet Hot American Summer added like 400 excellent people to the cast who weren’t in the original movie, including Lake Bell, Josh Charles, Michaela Watkins, and John Slattery (!!!). Comedy nerds! Assemble!!
-One hot guy replaces another: Jake Gyllenhaal may be replacing Tom Hardy, who had to drop out of David Ayer’s Suicide Squad due to scheduling conflicts (specifically, Mad Max and a new Inarritu movie, so that’s fair).
-Ben Affleck, David Fincher and Gillian Flynn will be teaming up to try for an Oscar nomination again (… too soon?) by remaking Strangers on a Train (which will likely be shortened to Strangers.) Hitchcock remakes can be tricky (remember the Vince Vaughn-Gus Van Sant Psycho?) but if anyone can nail this, it’s definitely those three.
-Anna Kendrick and Ryan Reynolds also get creepy in Vulture’s exclusive trailer for The Voices, which will be out in theaters and on VOD at the beginning of next month.
-And, finally – as you know, the Oscar nominations came out yesterday and everyone was collectively furious about most of them. There was ANOTHER set of nominations that came out yesterday, however, that got everything exactly right… The Razzie nominations!! Left Behind, Blended, Transformers: Age of Extinction, and Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas are among the, um, honorees. They’ve also introduced a “Redeemer Award” this year to reward former Razzie winners whose careers have since been looking up – the first ever nominees for this award are Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Keanu Reeves, Kristen Stewart, and Mike Myers.
Well, we’ll be here all month with Oscar coverage, and I’ll be finishing up my AHS recap (ughhhh) this coming Wednesday! Use this long weekend to see as many Best Picture nominees as you can!
N: Well, the Oscar nominations came out today, and as usual, there were enough egregious (EGREGIOUS!) snubs to infuriate everyone. Ben and I have a LOT of thoughts. A lot.
B: I’m gonna get into some serious talk near the end of this, but for now, my goodness, we’ve got quite a lot to talk about with this year’s nominations. It’s almost an endurance test as to how angry the Academy can make us. What’s grinding your gears the most this year, Nina?
This show is so frustrating that I want to put IT in a box and saw it in half. I was trying to remember how this season got started while I was watching last night’s penultimate episode, and I literally could not remember. I think there was a clown? Whatever. I can’t make myself care about any of this anymore. Ryan Murphy has driven me from anger to complete apathy, but I’ll write about this anyway, because goddammit, I finish what I start. (Also, I can make fun of it.)
In which Ben and I gossip about the Golden Globes, the drunkest night of all!*
*After St. Patrick’s Day. And New Years. And the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. So… after most days.
Nina live-blogs the Golden Globes and gives her thoughts on the ridiculousness that is these crazy awards!
(Sorry for the late recap!)
I mean… okay. This episode showed some real promise, which is simultaneously great and extremely irritating, because NOW IS JUST NOT THE TIME, MURPHY. You’ve got two episodes left, you just introduced a character with an entirely new storyline, and the preview for next week had Danny Huston in it. Get your shit together, man.
(Pop) Culturally Informed 