• Advocate SNL leaned queer this weekend, pairing Ariana DeBose and Kate McKinnon multiple times during the show. We enjoyed that Sappho skit!
• Vulture reviewing Ariana's episode
• TFE in case you missed it we looked into SNL's history of Oscar-hopeful Hosts
• Cinema Seen yours truly guest starred on Eric Marchen's Canadian movie review tv show
• /Film if you haven't heard, Netflix is raising subscription prices in October
More after jump including New York Times Oscar-like ballots, Yellowjackets mania, Arnauld Desplechin's next picture, and Carole Lombard's final film...
• Notebook an excellent review of Parallel Mothers
• AV Club Winston Duke, so memorable as M'Baku, is getting an expanded role in Black Panther 2 which just resumed production. That's the good news. The bad news is that they haven't recast Shuri so a celebrity anti-vaxxer will still be playing an scientific genius (a terrible message to be sending young kids who idolize superheroes)
• NYT "and the nominees should be..." personal ballots from Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott which differ a lot but lean heavily into Ryusuke Hamaguchi's two movies (Drive My Car and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy), plus Passing and Power of the Dog. Was surprised to see a complete shunning of The Lost Daughter even in Screenplay (since it had so often been showing up with critics while Passing had been mostly ignored)
• Cartoon Brew cartoons which have just become Public Domain like Felix the Cat, and The Adventures of Prince Achmed (the earliest surviving animated feature)
• Variety Melvil Poupaud and Marion Cotillard will headline Arnaud Desplechin's next movie Brother and Sister, while Golshifteh Farahani has signed on as Poupaud's wife.
• AV Club the "Comics Panel" team picks a collective top ten of the year. We love articles like this because though we love the form, it's hard to keep track of what's happening in the crowded but niche world of comic books and webcomics
• Film School Rejects chooses the 15 most interesting new directors of the past year in cinema
• IndieWire regional film festivals are struggling with the lack of enough government grants to keep them running in this fraught pandemic era
• Rick's Reel Life on Carole Lombard's final film To Be Or Not To Be
Let's end with Yellowjackets Mania
We're very into Yellowjackets here at TFE HQ and should have been covering it weekly. Apologies. We'll definitely say more as it will be surely discussed for months leading up to the next Emmy race.
• Rolling Stone did a profile of Melanie Lynskey who deserves the world
• IndieWire looks at the TV landscape of awards. Love this bit about Yellowjacket "don’t say I didn’t warn you if it becomes an apex predator on the awards scene"
• Awards Daily suggestions for Yellowjackets season 2 casting
• AV Club on the queerness of Yellowjackets especially for the gays that lived through the 1990s
• Vox Good piece on the move away from "mystery box" shows on television. Now the answers are right in front of us as in Yellowjackets and Station Eleven