Meet Joe Link

good morning!

• /Film amazing story behind that funny "he's a friend from work" line in the forthcoming Thor: Ragnarok
• Variety talks to five members of the HFPA, aka the foreign press who vote on the Golden Globes
• Interview fun Q&A with Kathy Bates using ol' Andy Warhol questions. She reveals that she's a huge fan of Asghar Farhadi (yes!) and, uh, Meet Joe Black (noooo!)
• BuzzFeed Charlize Theron is a "broad" - how the actress charted her own course, while cashing in on her considerable beauty

• Financial Time amazing sit down with Isabelle Huppert who gives great quote over a 12 course meal
• Vanity Fair Lindsay Lohan's new publicist and how he's changing the conversation about her (as she works towards a comeback)
• Variety Broad Green Pictures, which started off strong with the hit A Walk In the Woods, is laying employees off. Uhoh
• Head Over Feels has a really fun alternative Emmys (and other categories) you can vote on
• Awards Daily on the Emmy's most competitive race: Outstanding Drama Series
• IndieWire Angelina Jolie upset that people have misinterpreted a casting exercize she used to choose child actors for auditions for her new film First They Killed My Father

Off Screen
• The Independent if you're in the UK this summer, snag tickets to see Tom Hiddleston as Hamlet for a limited fund-raising stage production in a tiny theater (160 seats only!) helmed by Kenneth Branagh himself (you may recall that Branagh already did a Hamlet movie in 1996 that was four hours long and nominated for four Oscars.
• Modern Love Actor Andrew Rannells on a night of casual sex that coincided with a family tragedy
• NPR the 150 greatest albums made by woman. This is an awesome list. Must listen to the ones I don't know
• Onion "Twitter Introduces Red X Mark To Verify Users It’s Okay To Harass"
• Cosmopolitan repainted Barbies as RuPaul's Drag Race queens. The Valentina and Trixie Mattel's are amazing
• Theater Mania last block of tickets on sale for Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly! (through January)
• Playbill the original stars of Kinky Boots (Stark Sands and Billy Porter) will return to the show in late September (hmmm, does this mean a closing date soon?). Since I've already seen the show twice, I'll skip... unless they can also lure awesome Annaleigh Ashford back in which case, I am there with bells (and heels) on.
• Gothamist the legendary Algonquin Hotel in NYC is getting a new cat-in-chief. This one's a ginger rescue.

And This Just In...
Jessica Chastain will be playing Empress Lilandra of the Shi'ar in X-Men Dark Phoenix. A kind of Catwoman to Xavier's Batman if you will (at least in the comics) because she's not exactly evil but not a hero either... and in this here classic storyline -- which I have little hope they can pull off in the movie but was so damn awesome back in the day in the comicbooks -- Lilandra was in direct conflict with her lover Xavier. So it's a mini The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her reunion as Jessica reminded with this cute photo of her and her former and now future co-star...

Hey @jamesmcavoyrealdeal you ready for me up in Montreal? Im gonna make you cry so hard 😈 #xmen @simondavidkinberg

A post shared by Jessica Chastain (@jessicachastain) on Aug 1, 2017 at 3:29pm PDT

Tweetweek

Wanting movies to be projected on a screen in public, as they have been since their inception, is now the height of arrogance. Got it.

— Scott Tobias (@scott_tobias) July 20, 2017

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The Winner of RuPaul's Drag Race Season 9 Is...

Chris here. The ninth season of RuPaul's Drag Race came to a close last night with the series's most dramatic conclusion ever. At last week's reunion, Mama Ru teased that a sudden death lipsync battle would crown America's Next Drag Superstar from our beloved top four. This curveball was another shakeup from the show's formula, and feels like how the winner should have been chosen all along. While past seasons' crownings have been dull slogs to awarding an obvious winner, this kept the competition alive until the very second - and gave us two all-time great lipsync performances from the ultimate champion.

Trinity Taylor was the randomly selected first queen and chose Peppermint as her opponent, pitting a potential frontrunner against underdog lipsync assassin. But that meant leaving besties Sasha Velour and Shea Couleé to duke it out...

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RuPaul's Drag Race - Season 9 Reunion

Chris here, with a quick RuPaul's Drag Race check-in! By now I'm sure you've seen our Mama Ru is on the cover of Entertainment Weekly! If you wanted some bonafide proof that the cult show is now firmly in the mainstream, look no further. And don't forget that this season was actually still produced by Logo before the move to VH1 - expect season ten and the inevitable All Stars 3 to be huge.

This was was the reunion before next week's finale crowning, and each of the queens were in peak gorgeousness. But honey did this rehash make up for every single complaint that contestants about a lack of shade over the entire season. While most Drag Race reunions have been forgettable in later seasons (remember the unfiltered days of Tammie Brown daring to shade Ru herself?), this one ended with a bang.

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Soundtracking: "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert"

It's Pride month, so this week's installment of Chris Feil's column on music in the movies celebrates a gay classic...

I’m guessing that there’s a good amount of crossover between your Pride playlist and the soundtrack for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. If not, get out. The song choices are veritable staples of the gay experience, a disco-inflected factory of delight.

Priscilla is one of the quintessential disco soundtracks. While younger generations may draw from more recent pop icons, disco has been an expression of queer pleasure that has lingered for decades as an integral part of gay pop culture...

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