RPDR All Stars 3: E2 - Divas Live!

by Chris Feil

After a phenomenal premiere last week, RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars retuned with a nod to it’s new VH1 home for a lipsync tribute to VH1 Divas Live.

For the children who may not remember this landmark televised event of living legends sharing a stage and its subsequent installments, this was the thunderdome of vocal runs and balladry. Some helpful context: last week Aja’s jawdropping performance snuck up on formiddable competition and Céline-d a stage of Aretha’s and Mariah’s. Morgan McMichaels was Carole King and didn’t stick around. Valentina Whitney Houston-d because everyone wondered why she wasn’t there.

Seriously VH1, it’s the 20th Anniversary of the first Divas Live. Be good to us and start a revival. And true to Divas Live, this episode delivered as much on personality as it did performance.

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RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars: S3E1 - Queens with Variety

by Chris Feil

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars is back! Wheels are apparently in this season (thank you, Trixie Mattel and Aja), so I’m rolling into the workroom on my Rascal scooter to once again go deeper into Drag Race than Sasha Velour goes into a gay history lesson.

This season some of our All Stars have had mega success after their season, like Milk’s ad campaigns and Shangela and Trixie’s growing television careers. There’s also favorites who were denied a top 3 spot like Kennedy Davenport, Chi Chi DeVayne, and BenDeLaCreme. Throw in Brooklyn goofballs Thorgy Thor and Aja and respected S2 pro Morgan McMichaels. Oh yeah, and one more significant addition.

Since we got the queens’ first workroom looks out of the way, we’ll skip right onto the big news of the mysterious 10th queen in the competition...

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RuPaul's All Stars Enter the Workroom!

Chris here, champing at the bit to just get RuPaul's Drag Race All Star-ted, already! We are only a week away from a new season of mega-wattage lipsyncs and high stakes before another queen joins previous All Stars winners Alaska Thunderfuck and Chad Michaels in the Drag Race Hall of Fame. We still have no sign of the mystery tenth queen, so we can expect the show to save her for a big reveal as it did last season with the return of Cucu. However, we can expect a slew of guest stars including Titus Burgess, Vanessa Williams, Kristen Chenoweth, and, catch this, Nancy Pelosi!

And to aid our speculation on the eventual winner before the premiere, we've gotten a glimpse at the first looks as the queens enter the workroom. Since we're Drag Race obsessed, let's rundown the best first impressions and rank the looks:

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Links

Village Voice Bilge Elbiri on a film review that changed his live (J Hoberman's 1992 piece on Orson Welles' Othello) - lovely personal piece
Nick Davis Chicago film festival jury picks and his own precise takes on the movies screened including high profile gems like Call Me By Your Name, and several foreign film Oscar submissions
Esquire Bryan Cranston must be seeking to sabotage his Oscar hopes this year with this admission that he's rooting for Trump to succeed
Huffington Post talks to Melissa Leo about Novitiate and becoming a gay icon with those "Consider..." ads

Another Mag amazing photos of the well decorated sets of Call Me By Your Name
EW Moulin Rouge!'s stage musical adaptation sets its debut for next summer in Boston. Which means we're probably looking at a Broadway transfer and contention for the June 2019 Tonys.
SBS an amazing interview with Katya and Trixie whose new series The Trixie & Katya Show starts real soon
Vanity Fair sits down with still-rising Tessa Thompson about her stereotype defying career
Esquire jumps on the "give I, Tonya Oscars" bandwagon. I tell you what dear readers, the ease with which this movie is getting people excited when I though it was genuinely not good (mockumentary stale, politically problematic, and cheap-looking) is going to make this Oscar season a loooong one for me (sigh). Ah well. You can't love everything... or every Oscar season. 

RuPaul's Next Batch of All Stars!

Chris here. Last night the lineup was revealed for the third season of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars in a big casting extravaganza like Drag Race used to do in the old days. These casting specials really should be required for each season because we get to spend solo time with each queen that the workroom can't afford. And for an All Stars season it allows the newer viewers an opportunity to get to know queens from early seasons. But onto the queens - this year's lineup is also stocked full of "eliminated too soon" queens to go with the fan favorites:

• Aja (Season 9)
• BenDeLaDreme (Season 6)
• Chi Chi Devayne (Season 8)
• Kennedy Davenport (Season 7)
• Milk (Season 6)
• Morgan McMichaels (Season 2)
• Shangela (Season 2 and 3)
• Thorgy Thor (Season 8)
• Trixie Mattel (Season 7)

But wait, there's more! In typical teasing Ru fashion, one queen has yet to be revealed. Whether she will be announced later or saved for the show itself remains to be seen. However with such a build up, its safe to say it's a major competitor. Could it be a shocking game changer like Willam or a cult favorite like Stacy Layne Matthews?

We'll have to wait and see when the new season arrives sometime this winter. This set of queens is on the scrappier side, so we can expect a fight to the top. I'm not ready to name a personal favorite until we see what happens, but current top 3 would be Kennedy, DeLa, and Trixie. I'm already seeing lots of passion for Chi Chi on Twitter, but tell us in the comments: who are you rooting for? (And for the love of RuPaul: let's keep the spoilers out of the comments this go around, readers!)