Links: Wicked delays, Jennifer's campaign, Disney streaming

• Deadline Stephen Daldry is leaving Wicked. Universal wanted to work faster than Daldry was willing but losing a director will slow them down anyway so why not meet his schedule? 
• Variety The Avengers acting heroes want you to Vote Blue this election
• EW Jennifer Hudson fires up her second Oscar campaign (for Aretha Franklin biopic Respect) with an EW Cover and profile

Jeff Bridges cancer reveal, Disney news, Noah Jupe confession, Dirty Dancing tribute, Sigourney's Avatar training, and more after the jump...

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How Mulan got the Rey Palpatine Treatment

by Ginny O'Keefe

After I watched Mulan (2020), the lackluster live-action remake of the beloved 1998 animated movie, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the bitterness and anger I felt after watching The Rise of Skywalker back in December. The feelings of disappointment and resentment were incredibly familiar, all stemming from the fact that both Mulan (2020) and The Rise of Skywalker (2019) refute the idea that a hero can be anyone and come from anywhere. This is where both films ultimately fail their two female leads. 

In the original animated film, Mulan is an ordinary girl who feels incredibly out of place and cannot seem to do right by her family or the deeply ingrained misogynistic society that surrounds her. She has no fighting skills, no hunger for war, no royal heritage, no outstanding measure of beauty. She has nothing that could suggest she is “special” besides her brave and kind heart...

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Shelley Winters @ 100: Pete's Dragon (1977)

Concluding our Shelley Winter's Centennial party, here's new contributor Baby Clyde...

My film obsession started around the age of 12 when I somehow acquired my first "Encyclopedia of Movie Stars". It changed my life. I spent literally hours pouring over it, utterly entranced by the legends of the Golden Age of Hollywood. I remember it introduced me to the likes of Luise Rainier and John Garfield who I had never heard of before, but mostly I remember being totally confused by the entry on Shelley Winters.

Who was the glamourous woman who had been a sex bomb and serious actress before going on to win two Oscars and how was she in any way related to the harridan who had been the stuff of my childhood nightmares? Whilst I understood that actors played different roles, I don’t think I’d quite grasped at that point just how different they could be and how the same woman could go from this...

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Charlink

• Boy Culture "A Star is Bored" a new novel from Carrie Fisher's former assistant
• Vanity Fair interesting piece on the new "primacy of the face" due to scial media - we're all disembodied talking heads now
• My New Plaid Pants it's Charlize Theron's birthday today. What are your favourite of her films?
• The Guardian Diego Luna talks about his new show Pan Y Circo
• IndieWire investigates what moviegoing is like in China now 
• The Guardian Dirty Dancing is getting an official sequel 33 years later and Jennifer Grey is returning 
• After Ellen, a lesbian site which is of course named after Ellen DeGeneres discusses the allegations against the famous comedian and her management team about the toxic work environment on her show
• Cartoon Brew Disney posts a quarterly loss for the first time in ages. Maybe this is behind the Mulan decision - quick money?
• ...TFE The Mulan streaming release news icymi
• Coming Soon trailer for Judas and the Black Messiah, a new Black Panther reelated biopic starring Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield
• Broadway World Club Cumming, the nightclub owned by Alan Cumming, is going to start offering virtual variety shows -- it's such a fun club here in NYC. Stay tuned for the guest list

Exit Video
Lily Wachowski talks about recent discussions of the trans allegory nature of The Matrix...

Mulan for $29.99

by Nathaniel R

The Mouse House is tired of waiting for movie theaters to open. They've announced that Mulan will be going direct to Disney+ for Labor Day Weekend. It will also be in movie theaters that weekend in some regions. The catch is that it won't be free on the streaming service that you already pay for. It will cost $29.99 to watch (for an undisclosed length of time). This is bad news for those of us who love to go to movies and watch epic things on big screens in dark cavernous rooms with strangers and hate the motion smoothing on modern televisions. It's good news for parents (at least at this shut-in moment in history) who would likely spend more than $30 to take their kids out to this movie in a normal year. 

Given that Mulan cost hundreds of millions to make and Disney's "event" movies normally make $1 billion plus at the theatrical box office globally they'll need a lot of $29.99 purchases to reach that number. What do you make of this news? End times (as some exhibitors think) or just a minor shifting of the sands?