Linkmaids

• 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... 

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Tweetweek. What week even is it?

After the jump more tiny beauties that make you laugh, think, smile, or nod vigorously...

It is our time, finally. https://t.co/zp618qGDJy

— Tilda Swinton (@NotTildaSwinton) May 24, 2020

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Loretta vs. Roz: A Surprise Best Actress Win

Please welcome first time contributor Baby Clyde, weighing in on 1947, the year we're celebrating this week... 

Rosalind & Loretta, friends and Best Actress rivalsSuch a forgone conclusion was the result of the final award at the 20th Academy Awards, that the audience at the back of the Shrine Auditorium had already started filing out as Frederic March rose to announce the Best Actress winner. They soon stopped in their tracks as a huge gasp swept around the room. No one was more surprised than the previous year’s Best Actor champ who is said to have started reading the name of the expected winner, Rosalind Russell for Mourning Becomes Electra, before stopping and declaring that the awards was, in fact, going to rank outsider Loretta Young for the comedic trifle The Farmers Daughter. The next day noted gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, sitting directly behind her, reported that Russell had already started rising from her seat when Young’s name was called, but styled it out beautifully to lead a standing ovation for her good friend...

Loretta swept up to the stage with all the poise and elegance for which she was famous, wearing a voluminous green gown that would still cause a sensation on any red carpet today...

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Review: "The Great" on Hulu

by Cláudio Alves

Most dramatizations of history have a difficult, often unbalanced, relationship with facts. Reality is notoriously devoid of narrative structure, which makes taking departures and creative license into an essential crime. The troubles arise when the parameters of adaptation aren't clear, when fiction dresses itself as truth, and confusion blooms from pretension. Hulu's biographical series about the early years of Catherine the Great in Russia is unencumbered by such issues, sidestepping them with irreverence. At the start of each episode, a title card points out that this miniseries is only occasionally based on things that really happened.

The rest of it is hilarious fantasy, a play on history that turns the rise of Russia's empress and reformer into the stuff of romantic comedy. It's a black-hearted farce that's unafraid and unashamed of being silly…

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Review: The Lovebirds

by Tony Ruggio

Michael Showalter’s follow-up to The Big Sick is both a wonderful showcase for its two stars, the whip-smart Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae, and a disappointing mismash of comedy and murder mystery. Though we know it was originally intended for theatrical release, the film continues a strange, disquieting trend of so-called “Netflix originals” which feel incomplete from a narrative standpoint. 

Their four-year relationship on the skids, Jibran (Nanjiani) and Leilani (Rae) are on the verge of a bad break-up when they’re thrust into the middle of a conspiracy involving one dead bicyclist, a secret cult, and a sketchy self-proclaimed cop with a bushy mustache (Paul Sparks). With police on their tail, potentially marking them for vehicular manslaughter, the bickering couple sneak around New Orleans attempting to solve said mystery and dodge wealthy individuals who want them dead...

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