RPDR S8.1 Donut Come For Me!

We're days late arriving to the conversation about RuPaul's Drag Race Season 8 but donut come for me (heh). There are only so many hours in the day. Watching the "Meet the Queens" teaser I predicted Bob, Kim Chi and Laila for the top three (in a betting pool) and then Laila landed in the bottom two the very first episode. Whoops! There goes a tenner.

Kim Chi, who describes herself as an anime character, did a Cowardly Lion homage (there are always movie references!). More after the jump if you're so inclined... 

Click to read more ...

Bewitched, Bothered, and Be Link-ed

Thrillist Best Movies of 2016. haha. I don't know exactly how this column is going to work but I'm curious to find out
THR an interview with producer Irwin Winkler on Martin Scorsese's Silence and the Creed sequel
Frontier an oral history of "The Golden Girls"
Twitter Why Leo waited until just now to win an Oscar 

Nick Flicks Picks are you following his supporting actress project? The gold numbers reflect full performance reviews
Guardian Fans keep trying to restore Star Wars (1977) because George Lucas doesn't want
Film Mix Tape praises Michelle Visage as RuPaul's Drag Race returns (TONITE. WHEEEE)
Comics Alliance if you want to have yet another superhero's cameo in Batman v Superman spoiled for you, here is the info
Deadline How Mark Rylance won the Oscar without any campaigning
AV Club Disney's next animated feature will be an adaptation of The Nutcracker 
i09 a fan film about Darth Maul, the only good thing to emerge from that second Star Wars trilogy 
Variety an interview with Julian Fellowes on the series finale of Downton Abbey. Good stuff. Between the exits of Mad Men and now Downton, I have so few shows that feel like they're a part of my life (from staying power) left.

Read Only if You've Seen The Witch
If you've already seen The Witch I'd recommend reading these two takes on its most riveting scenes and primarily its divisive ending and the subversive extent of the femininism within the film. Salon's look at Thomasin as a "Final Girl laced into a puritan bodice" is great and a piece at Vague Visages takes a more mixed tack. Angelica Jade Bastién grapples with what she feels is unearned about the film's jawdropping finale:

I love the film, but how feminist can The Witch be if Thomasin remains primarily a cipher? 

RuPaul's Drag Race is Back, Squirrelfriends

The wait is over, chickadees! Rupaul's Drag Race returns for its eighth season on March 7. Also the show is celebrating in centennial fashion: not only has it hit 100 episodes, but now the show has now ushered 100 drag queens to our tv screens

After an underwhelming seventh season that nevertheless brought new fan favorites like Katya, Trixie Mattel, and winner Violet Chachki, our favorite not-so-guilty pleasure is back with a new batch of queens to adore. And the new crew looks promising, from big names like Derrick Barry (the Britney Spears impersonator) to new blood like Naomi Smalls. Expect the hilarious Bob the Drag Queen to give good quote, with Robbie Turner (part of the same Seattle gang as Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme) the frontrunner for the all-important Snatch Game.

The brief glimpse so far is already more enticing than the drab presentation Logo gave the contestants last year - hopefully we have a true return to form.

This season's queens, from left to right:

• Dax Exclamationpoint (Savannah, GA)
• Acid Betty (New York, NY)
• Kim Chi (Chicago, IL)
• Thorgy Thor (Brooklyn, NY)
• Naomi Smalls (Redlands, CA)
• Derrick Barry (Las Vegas, NV)
• Robbie Turner (Seattle, WA)
• Cynthia Lee Fontaine (Austin, TX)
• Naysha Lopez (Chicago, IL)
• Laila McQueen (seated) (Gloucester, NH)
• Chi Chi DeVayne (Shreveport, LA)
• Bob the Drag Queen (New York, NY)

Check out the first look below! Has anyone seen any of these gals live?

Shanté, Link, You Stay.

The Playlist shares what is supposedly the first poster for Silencio -- which makes it look like a lesbian drama -- but it looks incomplete since it's not regular poster size and even looks a little square for the European quad size. Or do my eyes deceive me?
Interview talks to Gal Gadot the new Wonder Woman, with photos by Chris Colls. Let's hope Gal has some screen charisma to go with the beauty since her body type is so teensy-tiny for that Amazon princess.
Vogue and Nicole Kidman are really getting along, huh? Now she's talking about Fashion and Film at the Met. Plus she this bit about her Galliano/Dior at the Oscars that one time...

Madonna came up to me at the after-party saying ‘Best dressed, best dressed!"

 

AV Club comic book artist Annie Wu has created a superhero for all of us "General Dread."  This is, in a word, awesome
Rope of Silicon Miles Ahead to close NYFF this year - will it generate any Oscar heat?
Buzz Feed looks at that controversial doc Open Secret which has had a rough road to theaters
Cosmopolitan gets on the set stories from 5 extras in Magic Mike XXL
Film Stage new trailer and poster for The Assassin starring Shu Qi and Chang Chen
Forbes wonders whether Terminator Genisys and Mad Max Fury Road have been labelled "flop" and "hit" respectively despite the same box office tally and budget. Interesting observations about media power and biases but this ignores a fundamental... when it comes to previous grosses from their own franchises there's no other way to label them. 

icymi
This story is a week old but I hadn't seen it and WTF?!? According to Variety, silent film genius FW Murnau's (Nosferatu, Sunrise) head was stolen from his grave early this month. Creepy!   

...

Cast Them Queens!
RuPaul has announced the second RuPaul's Drag Race: All Stars season. He's even asked that people chime in on twitter with their dream lineups, so I did. Assuming they're only drawing from the three seasons that came after All Stars (though perhaps they'll go older than that) what would your picks be among these queens?  Will it be a coronation for Katya, Adore, Alaska Thunderf**k or someone else entirely? 

FYC: RuPaul's Drag Race for Best Reality Competition

We're almost at the end of our FYCs. Team Experience was asked to share their individual dream picks for Emmy nominations. Here's Manuel ...

I don’t even have to tell you how stale this relatively new Emmy category is (The Amazing Race has won 10 out of 12 times the statuette has been awarded with only 12 shows ever nominated) before I get to vocalize my frustration - if not surprise - at the fact that RuPaul’s Drag Race has even yet to be nominated.

I mean, is that okay?

Drag Race is that rare show that can sport an arched eyebrow that tells you we should take everything in good fun while offering a shoulder to cry on because the struggle is real, y’all. Its greatest strength as a television show is that its sentimentality isn't framed in opposition to its campy exterior or its ironic posturing, it's actually endemic to them. This, of course, wouldn't be possible without RuPaul, who can stage a heart to heart while sharing a tic tac for lunch. It's a show that can take a seeming contradiction ("I want to see the REAL you by having it come out through layers of make up and various wigs and affectations and gif-ready reaction shots") and improbably enough, make it werk.

Even after seven seasons, Drag Race remains a fascinating experiment in reality TV competition which doesn't just explicitly admit the strangeness of its own genre trappings but uses them to create the most cogent oral history of the trials of drag queen herstory since Paris is Burning. Think about it: this season alone dealt with the palliative powers of drag when it comes to dealing with addiction (Katya & Fame), trauma (Pearl, Kennedy), rejection (Jaidynn, Trixie), aging (Tempest, Mrs Kasha Davis), storylines that have become so familiar to the show only because they have become intrinsic to understanding the very nature of drag. That Logo and Ru can accomplish that while giving good gif, well, that's Emmyworthy.

Can I get an Amen up in here?