• Variety The Venice Film Festival will commence (not cancelling) on September 2nd
• IndieWire does some myth-busting by looking back at an historic movie weekend in 1977, when both Smokey and the Bandit and Star Wars opened
• Variety on how Carole Lombard becamse the first Hollywood casualty of WW II
After the jump including the first drag queen Emmy nominee, fight challenge, Michel Piccoli RIP, no Bridesmaids sequel, trivia and Brokeback reminiscences with Oscar pundits, Diva, and more...
• MUBI Notebook celebrates Michel Piccoli (1925-2020). Do you have a favourite role of his? I remember him most from Belle de Jour (1967) and La Belle Noiseuse (1991)
• IndieWire Disney+ "Out," a short film, is Pixar's first gay anything. It's wonderful except for the completely silly superfluous framing device
• The Guardian "my favourite film aged 12: Diva" (I was a bit older when I finally saw Diva but I loved it as a teenager, too)
• Out We already shared brief thoughts on the daytime Emmy noms but did you know that Willam is the first drag queen ever nominated for an acting Emmy?
• AV Club the original screenplay of the film Yesterday was a lot different before Richard Curtis rewrote and took the sole credit.
• Reunited Apart have you seen Josh Gad's YouTube show which reunites casts of 80s movies? They've done The Goonies and Back to the Future. Next up (tomorrow) is Splash.
• The Guardian CAA has signed "virtual" actor Miquela
• IndieWire Paul Feig, apparently one of the last sensible people in Hollywood, explains why we dont need a Bridesmaids sequel
• Broadway Blog Broadway On Demand will host a huge celebration of Broadway in the place of the Tony Awards this year since CBS can't even be bothered to do that opting for a Grease sing-a-long instead.
Ouch!
How did we miss this "fight challenge video" with so many famous actresses 3 weeks back? Here it is. LOVE Daryl Hannah's cameo and of course Juliette Lewis, Julia Butters, Cameron Diaz, Rosario Dawson, Florence Pugh and many more are great fun, too.
The AV Club has alerted us that Laika responded with their own version of the "fightchallenge" on TikTok
Exit Video. Indie Pundits Trivia Night Part Two
If you have two and a half hours.
Please note: This is not to be confused with Michael Cusumano's Trivia Night, sponsored by TFE, which is an actual trivia contest that anyone attending can win.) In this more free-form irregular sorta-trivia-focused nite in which the biggest "indie" Oscar sites (i.e. anything not an offshoot of the major publications) get together to get tested on their Oscar trivia and also answer general questions. We did it again this Saturday (embedded above) and this time I won the trivia round (!!!) before the general discussion. The second half ended up being mostly a discussion of that sad 2005 Oscar season in which Brokeback lost. Erik Anderson (Awards Watch) speaks emotionally about that experience and there's also a kind Sasha Stone (Awards Daily) shoutout to an article I wrote that season which Marshall Flores (Awards Daily) actually quotes referring to the night "Black Sunday" (which was what I dubbed the night in that now infamous article which was a breakthrough for TFE in terms of the profile and popularity of the site). Anyway this was a fun night Saturday night even if it unexpectedly focused on a very unpleasant memory from (gulp) 14 and a half years ago!