New Nicole Kidman photoshoot just dropped!

by Nathaniel R

The occasion is the third issue of something called Perfect magazine founded by British creative director Katie Grand and the photographer is the brilliant self-taught Taiwan-based photographer Zhong Lin (seriously check out her work, arresting and gorgeous!). A few more images after the jump...

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SoCal Journalism Nominees 2022

by Nathaniel R

Congratulations to the journalists, critics, and cultural commentators nominated for the 64th annual SoCal Journalism Awards (mostly for articles from 2021). The winners will be announced on June 25th. You probably read some of the people! There are dozens upon dozens upon dozens of categories covering all fields, but we thought you might like seeing some that are related to screen entertainment. So after the jump, seven of those categories...

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The Link Stuff

• Salon remembers the 'gentlemanly gruffness' of Fred Ward (Tremors, The Right Stuff), who has passed away at 79. We will remember him best from Henry & June, Big Business, and Short Cuts. 
• IndieWire interesting report on how the streamers are all doing. It was a rough quarter given the expensive (to streamers and viewers) content wars but HBOMax is holding steady and AppleTV got an enormous boost from CODA's Best Picture Oscar win.
• Harvard Film Archives posters of queer movies over the decades from multiple countries

Character actor James Hong, Stephen King adaptations, a royal role for Christopher Walken, smoking hot silent film stars, and more after the jump...

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Regina King directs Viola Davis

Regina King directed a photo-essay for W magazine called "Black Americana" starring Viola Davis and her family. The photographer is Andre D. Wagner. It's just beautiful. Check it out. 

Curio: Viola and "Firsts" on Vanity Fair Covers

For this week's Curio let's talk the history of magazine covers rather than fan art.

Isn't the new Vanity Fair cover a beauty?! Viola Davis's profile has gotten a lot of attention but so has the fact that this is the first cover in VF's history to be shot by a black photographer. The name of that very talented man is Dario Calmese and he's previously shot George MacKay and Billy Porter for the magazine.

There's a lot of outrage online: how can this be the first after 100 years? Because we grew up as magazine junkies (before the internet *gasp*) this factoid is interesting and indeed outrageous but also a bit misleading. We'll talk about that in a hot second but first let's focus on the beauty and power of VIOLA DAVIS who we're so proud to have been stanning right here since 2002 when we gave her a gold medal in our annual awards six years before the world at large caught on. Our awards were only celebrating their 3rd birthday then.

How time flies. Now she's a superstar and who is more deserving? No one...

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