Drag Race RuCap: “Booked & Blessed”

Nick Taylor and Cláudio Alves are watching and recapping RuPaul’s Drag Race season sixteen. This week, it’s time for episode fourteen…

Ronan Farrow has that All Stars glow-up.

CLÁUDIO: Just when we were starting to think the season had turned into a two-way race for the crown between Sapphira and Plane, here comes a new episode to shake things up. After years of top fours and a one-time fiver, RuPaul’s Drag Race has returned to a triadic finale, using this fourteenth chapter to boot its fourth-placer, fragilize one of the frontrunners’ bid, and bolster another contender’s narrative. A well-produced piece of television, this game-changer hour felt like a gift to Nymphia Wind fans everywhere, making it look like she might stand a chance after all. Considering her strange edit, I’m skeptical, but this episode gave me some much-needed hope. Were you similarly enthused, or is this season’s sagging energy getting to you?

NICK: The sagging energy is definitely getting to me. As much as I’ve been eager for this particular queen to get the boot, and as rewarding as this challenge was, I wouldn’t have minded a top four for the sake of wrapping it all up a little sooner...

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Links

Psssst. Oscar voting closed 2 hours ago. Can you believe we're almost there?!

Film School Rejects good god, Warren Beatty is still going to make that Howard Hughes picture and it started shooting today (!!!) Lily Collins, Alden Ehrenreich, The Bening and the rumors go... Jack Nicholson to co-star
IndieWire porn stars pick the Oscars
E Online Jared Leto's mom reacts to going to the Oscars

/Film Sony wants to release a Spider-Man movie every year now. As I've predicted one day film and television will totally merge since tv got way more cinematic and nearly all movies Hollywood wants to fund are basically tv series with huge budgets that franchise their way across decades with new "episodes"
Variety Oscars are always under heat about omissions and hierarchies of the In Memoriam section. A sordid thing for controversy but it's true. People are always upset by something in it
Screener interesting interview with an Academy member on what they really talk about and how they like to vote
Advocate Our friend Nick on Oscar's dotage and the shrinking window of films they consider
Variety the winners of the makeup and hairstyling guild includ The Butler, Prisoners, American Hustle and actual Oscar nominees Bad Grandpa and Dallas Buyers Club. I'm unclear on why the makeup category is the only category that is still less than 5 nominees. It's not like every single film non-animated film that exists doesn't use hair and makeup. 

Oh and it's good to see Anthony Mackie get his own poster for something even if, for all we know, this is another thankless role (albeit an expensively costumed one). Here he is as The Falcon in Captain America: Winter Soldier. Superheroes movies always start packing in the characters in their sequels. This one will be juggling the good captain, the titular villain, Black Widow, Nick Fury and The Falcon. 

small screen
Caryn James on Ronan Farrow's new show on MSNBC
Shadow and Act Viola Davis has a few TV projects in the works (sigh, but good for her) include How to Get Away With Murder for Shonda Rhimes
The Playlist suggests that a tweet from the writer of True Detective means two female detectives next season. The tweet doesn't actually suggest this. It just says that structurally there are only two POV characters and this time they happened to both be men. (My guess? opposite sex partners next year)

and finally...
A huge congratulations to Steve McQueen, John Ridley and Fox Searchlight. Solomon Northup's memoirs "12 Years a Slave" is finally making its way into American high schools. From the press release:

The National School Boards Association is honored to partner with Fox Searchlight Pictures and Penguin Books to ensure that every public high school student in America has the opportunity to stare the stark realities of slavery in the eye through books and film,” said NSBA President David A. Pickler. “We believe that providing America’s public high school students the opportunity to bear witness to such an unrelenting view of the evils of slavery is essential toward ensuring that this history is never forgotten and must never be repeated.”

When I attended the AFI Steve McQueen event late last year, the push to get the book in school was all that McQueen seemed to want to talk about, barely mentioning the acclaim or the Oscars or anything of the sort during his conversation with that evening's moderator.

Post-Globe Thoughts / Linkings

My apartment gets too much sunlight and I have no window blankets. So I can't see the TV during the day so I can't rewatch the Globes so I can't blog more about them until tonight and then who knows if any of us will be in the mood when I can't so maybe I won't and I just don't know anymore. The tragedy of it all!

Until then, I devour uneaten party snacks and commence with the linkings...

first a few non-Globes items
EW really thoughtful piece on Armond White and why he was just expelled from the NYFCC 
Critic Wire "Should film critics give out awards?" Of course they should. Awards are just another form of evaluation and needn't be thoughtless. They just shouldn't do it badly, ot to "predict" the Oscar race.
THR Tang Wei falls for a money scam. I hope they find the culprits but the greater crime is the career momentum the Chinese government stole from her post Lust Caution. Can we prosecute that, instead?
Dark Horizons Joseph Gordon-Levitt on the upcoming Sandman adaptation 
The Playlist Martin Scorsese on the campaign trail with Wong Kar Wai for The Grandmaster. I still have no firm read on whether or not that is making it into Best Foreign Film 

today's must read 
W Mag John Waters on staying famous once you've achieved celebrity. It's a pretty great read. Consider this bit:

If you’re really lucky, you might survive a disaster, and that’s a sure way to get your Wikipedia page updated if it’s been dormant for too long. My friend Pauline jokes that if she were in an airplane crash with me and she was the only one to die, the headline would read: air disaster! john waters lives. one dead. 

okay back to the globes
Vanity Fair Bobby Finger's imaginary Globe conversations are super. I love Streep's world domination plot (although hasn't she kind of already accomplished that?)
NY Daily News ok, I need to understand whether or not Nicholas Hoult and Jennifer Lawrence are together. Or are they like Friend with Benefits. Make up your minds!
Variety inside the after parties. Fun(nish) photos of the rich and famous at play
Zimbio more after party pics
TFE I looked back on my Globe predix and was shocked to realize that I did REALLY well (though I generally suck at Globe winner predictions) only missing stuff the mainstream media doesn't care about (but I do) like foreign, screenplay, & both music prizes among the film awards! I even somehow correctly predicted that 12 Years a Slave would only win Best Picture. I guessed HORRIBLY with the TV awards but I've never claimed to know any better there

drawing by Liza Donnellytoday's must see
Liza Donnelly took live-blogging in a fresh direction by live-sketching the Golden Globes. Damn fabulous. 

On That Woody Allen Cecil B DeMille Thing...
Ronan Farrow twitter's favorite fusion of political pundit/celebrity spawn/hot guy, wasn't pleased. Lots of people joined in the Globe-shaming. But really, now. It's so easy to judge from afar but if we are going to deny artists prizes for their work based on their moral character, actual crimes, alleged crimes, grudges people hold against them and the like would we have any prizes at all? I'm not even exaggerating. Prizes for the arts should be about the arts always, and not about someone's character. There's no prize for "Most Nice" or "Best Person" and even if there was, wouldn't showpeople be terrible judges of it? (Including Mia Farrow who is willing to testify on Roman Polanski's behalf but Woody Allen honors are beyond the pale?)
Salon has some issues with it, too, although calling out the Globes for their lack of regular honors to women is relatively speaking, misleading, since they're SO MUCH BETTER ABOUT IT than the Oscars ever have been and only a few sites (like, um, this one you're on right now) take AMPAS to task for it.
Shawn Levy did a post earlier this summer that's especially relevant now, detailing how strong Woody's Oscar history is in terms of directing actors. It's not just strong but it's varied which he gets absolutely no credit for as the article amply illustrates.

Exit Image
Jason at MNPP dubs this Globe after party pic "The Picture That Broke The Internet" and then hedges with a "this could finally be the one to do it" but either way, yes! I mean, at least it broke tumblr. I haven't been on today but I'm quite sure it's dead.

If you somehow squeezed in Tom Hiddleston for a three-way, all the breakings, everywhere.

This awesome image unfortunately reminds that it was a very BRO evening at the Globes with lots of frathouse like back patting going on. This was probably best exemplified by Michael Douglas and Jared Leto's tone deaf acceptance speeches for gay roles (ouch, you really wanna play it like that?) though I think it's unfortunate that McConaughey is getting roped into that conversation because his speech was not offensive and people are stretching ungenerously when they go there, the Leo for Wolf win after that 'supermodel's vagina welcome' (Fey & Poehler, you delight), and a million photos of handsome powerful rich (mostly) white straight guys pointing at the camera, with smug smiles on their faces (lampooned by Melissa McCarthy as Matt Damon on stage in point of fact).

And so on and so on...

Dude.