Difficult People S3 E5-6: Golden Toilets, Jane Krakowski, and Gay Get Out

Chris and Spencer are back for more Difficult People! In "Cindarestylox," Marilyn asks Julie to freeze her eggs, Julie indulges in some Botox (to fit on a golden toilet seat, naturally), and Billy teaches an acting class for adolescents. 

CHRIS: The Ramble has been transformed into an outdoor yoga studio?! Is nothing sacred anymore!

SPENCER: And yet that Leather Queen who climbs out of the tree still wages the war against the women! Love that whole bit where people are telling our pal Julie to smile. Now that is real. 

C: So Billy starts teaching acting classes to help pay for his Madonna standup tickets. Strangely, Madonna as a standup comic was a joke that didn't work for me - watch any interview with her and she's an excellent shadestress! She'd make a decent insult comic.

S: Do you remember that one short clip where a fan brought her flowers and she mocked him for it? I mean… the shade is insurmountable, but it is equally hilarious... 

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Vintage '85: Madonna, Stallone, Marty McFly, Golden Girls...

by Nathaniel R 

click on the image to embiggen

1985 is our "Year of the Month", as we work towards the Supporting Actress Smackdown (Sunday October 1st!). We'll be periodically peppering the blog with takes on showbiz from that year. But first a "TOTALLY 80s" overview of the year that was in movies, music, theater, and tv after the jump... 

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OTD: Madonna Mania and a Dangerous Release Date

On this day (Sept 2nd) in showbiz-related history...

31 BC Cleopatra loses the Battle of Actium to Octavian's troops in the final war of the Roman Republic. Liz is very upset but it turns out Dick is still alive and he leaves his men to drown to catch up with her and work on his thigh tan! Not great, Bob.

Madonna mania, September 1st movie releases and more after the jump...

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Link what you made me do

Cartoon Brew it turns out the new animated film Leap is actually a previously internationally released animated film named Ballerina, reworked by the Weinsteins for the US with a new voice cast. The difference: the reviews are terrible this time
Variety Orland Bloom to star in and produce an urban fantasy series called Carnival Row which has humans and mythological species interacting (sounds a smidge like the new Will Smith project Bright)
The Guardian James Cameron interview on Terminator 2. But the part that's getting quoted is his dismissal of Wonder Woman (though he says he enjoyed it)
Variety... but naturally Patty Jenkins has fired back

IndieWire lots of female directors hitting the festivals this year. Here's a list of 20
Nerdist we haven't heard anything about that ill-advised movie remake of The Birds (1963) in a while. But now there's news that another adaptation of the source novella is aiming to be a dramatic BBC miniseries
Mental Floss extensive piece on the costumes of Game of Thrones
Boy Culture Jay Thomas of Mork and Mindy and Murphy Brown fame has died of cancer
/Film casting for the live action version of Teen Titans (which will just be called Titans) has begun with Anna Diop nabbing the Firestar role.
/Film The best recent Asian action movies you probably haven't seen
Like Hacker Movie Pass is suddenly seeing a huge influx of subscribers. You guys I love the service so much. If you don't have it you really should get it. It saves you so much money if you like seeing movies regularly.

OffScreen
The Atlantic interesting piece on Taylor Swift's persona-shifting new single "Look What You Made Me Do"
The Stage Stephen Sondheim on what directors should and shouldn't do when restaging musicals
The New Yorker read this brilliant piece, please... "Louise Linton isn't mad. You're mad."

Exit Video
Ever wonder what it would be like to hang out with Madonna for a whole day on your birthday? Dennis Hensley enlisted his comedienne friend Nadya Ginsburg to play her all day and find out. "C'mon" hit play. Ginsburg is a brilliant Madonna impersonator and proves it again.

Soundtracking: "Evita"

It's Madonna's birthday!! Chris Feil looks back at one of her biggest soundtracks...

By the mid-90s, musicals were all but dead, even though Disney created their own resurgence in animated form. Madonna’s career however was always heading toward reviving it: she constantly reinvented the game for the music video and her Breathless Mahoney songstress was Dick Tracy’s genre flirtation device. With her divisive performance in Evita, she brought the cinematic musical back into the popular culture and delivered a hit soundtrack in the process.

And I should qualify that for emphasis: a hit soundtrack to a quasi-opera about propaganda and Argentine political figures when the popular music landscape highlighted Alanis, Tupac, and The Smashing Pumpkins. Madonna did that in arguably the least accommodating musical or cinematic climate, and perhaps only Madonna could have done it. Like it or not, much of the film’s success (even musically) is thanks to her star power, no matter how indelible Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s score remains.

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