Saturday, February 4, 2017 at 9:00AM It's time for a quick collection of amusing or interesting tweets of the week, some gallows humor too because that's how things are now. After the jump Kong Skull Island, Ashton Sanders from Moonlight, JK Rowling being the best, and more...
this picture of dev patel is so HD you can zoom in and literally see the flaws he doesn't have pic.twitter.com/i5q9VBIJMl
— loise (@mahershalaaIi) January 30, 2017
Thursday, February 2, 2017 at 12:15PM by Deborah Lipp
It’s possible that The Man in the High Castle was born to drive us all insane. It’s possible that Philip K. Dick dropped a lot of acid, looked into the future, saw our current political situation, and sent The Man in the High Castle to try to save us. It’s also possible I have been watching too much cable news.
The Man in the High Castle is the second-best show on Amazon Prime. Based on the 1962 novel by renowned mind-bender (and acid-dropper) Philip K. Dick (who brought us Blade Runner and Total Recall), the show depicts an alternate history, in which Germany and Japan won World War II, and divided the US between themselves. Our characters take us inside both the Japanese and German regimes, as well as inside the resistance movement operating against each.
I am watching a TV show about resistance movements. My Facebook feed says “resist”. The “RESIST” sign in Washington Square Park, protesting on behalf of Muslim immigrants, glowed in the dark. Resist...
Tuesday, January 31, 2017 at 8:00AM As we've previously noted briefly, the leading actress of The Salesman was not coming to the Oscars in protest of T****'s unconstitutional and immoral ban on Muslims entering the US. Now the great Iranian director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) will not be attending the Oscars either. The ban has created chaos around the world and the awards show plans of filmmakers is, of course, low on the totem pole of injustices. But still, this sucks. When I spoke with Farhadi about The Salesman in December, he spoke fondly of the Oscar experience and how international it felt, sharing the experience with the other nominees.
Farhadi released a beautifully articulate damning statement which reads in part:
Hardliners, despite their nationalities, political arguments and wars, regard and understand the world in very much the same way. In order to understand the world, they have no choice but to regard it via an “us and them” mentality, which they use to create a fearful image of “them” and inflict fear in the people of their own countries.
This is not just limited to the United States; in my country hardliners are the same. For years on both sides of the ocean, groups of hardliners have tried to present to their people unrealistic and fearful images of various nations and cultures in order to turn their differences into disagreements, their disagreements into enmities and their enmities into fears. Instilling fear in the people is an important tool used to justify extremist and fanatic behavior by narrow-minded individuals.
Speaking truth to power. Every word of that is exactly right.
Monday, January 30, 2017 at 12:35PM Two handfuls of moments from last night's SAG Awards have stuck with me. How about you?
All Politics Are Personal
Julia Louis-Dreyfus early win and a speech that got political, her father being an immigrant, set the tone and politics never went away. It was there in every speech, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes poignantly. People who scream "no more politics" are always forgetting that all politics are personal. The laws that are made, the character of the country we live in, the rights we enjoy or can't, the laws that goven our workplaces, the type of healthcare we get, the size of the paycheck. All of these things affect every single person personally whether they see that it connects to D.C. or not. If there was any doubt that Mahershala Ali was going to win the Oscar next month for his terrific work in Moonlight (and also, yes, as a symbolic win for the film itself which often happens in the supporting categories) it surely vanished last night. Ali was deeply touched at the prize, humble, but also upset given T***'s unconstitutional Muslim ban. He brought up his own conversion to Islam and the initial conflict it raised with his mother. Touchingly he revealed that they're both long since over the conflict since. A bonus of Ali winning is we got to see shots of the Moonlight table and they unfortunately didn't get another chance to shine.
Lily Tomlin, Denzel Washington, Winona Ryder and more after the jump...
Sunday, January 29, 2017 at 2:30PM 
La La Land may officially be unbeatable, 28 days from now when the envelopes are opened on Hollywood's High Holy Night. It's currently the top grossing Best Picture nominee this year (though Hidden Figures is right on its tail) and last night it took the Producers Guild prize for feature film. That award doesn't always correlate to the Best Picture prize but it does more often than not. The musical also won the ACE Eddie Award. The momentum is there for La La Land to at least do a mini-sweep of the Oscars. The question is "how many trophies can it win?"
Full list of prizes from the Editors and Producers Guild as well as pretty gowns from the attending actresses after the jump...
