Drag Race RuCap: "LalapaRuza Smackdown Reunited"

Let Bruno's behind bless you with its beauty.

CLÁUDIO ALVES: Like last year, the LalapaRuza Smackdown is a season highlight. The format is simple enough, but it works because it puts drag skills at the forefront while also allowing for a pseudo-reunion that’s more about celebrating artistry in a sisterly way rather than airing out insecurities and the same old mess as before. For season 17, the producers were extra smart, shooting this lip sync extravaganza after most episodes had aired, allowing for growth and the queens’ honest reactions to how they’ve been portrayed and received. If the battles weren’t as spectacular as what we got with Megami, Morphine, and company, the final result was enough to make up for whatever deficiencies the reality TV hour might have had. The right person won, and the entire thing was edited around her journey across three drag duels. So, by the end, you really felt a sense of closure, of victory, of the best that Drag Race can offer.

NICK TAYLOR: It was such a fun episode! You’re not wrong exactly about no one topping last season’s LaLaPaRuZa finale, and nobody brought the drama of a surprise narrative like Megami, but the sheer quality of performance from almost everyone was so delightful to watch. A few of these battles could have been double shantays, which I wouldn’t say about almost any of the season 16 matchups. And fuck, everyone looked great...

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Review: "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody" Is a Lovable Mess

By: Christopher James

No one loves their cliches more than the biopic genre. However, no music biopic has blown through every cliche with such quick and reckless abandon as Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody. That’s not necessarily an insult.

Few pop culture icons loom as large as Whitney Houston, “The Voice,” who holds the record for seven consecutive number one singles atop the Billboard Top 100. By virtue of also being a modern celebrity, most people have some concept of Houston. Thus, the biopic spends less time educating people on who Whitney Houston is. In fact, it’s a crash course through her Wikipedia. Unfortunately, it misses out on her soul and motivation - what drove Whitney Houston from the biggest star in the world to death at 48?

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13 Links

• Tom and Lorenzo Jessica Chastain goes full disco queen at the premiere of The Eyes of Tammy Faye
• Out Very sad about this. HBOMax has cancelled the excellent queer series that you aren't watching Genera+ion. We can only hope its ferociously talented leading man Justice Smith gets another role as good soon. Martha Plimpton the shows other MVP is never lacking for work so we don't worry about her
• Forbes why Chris Nolan chose Universal as he leaves his longtime Warner Bros home

Betty Boop, Simu Liu, Miriam Margolyes, Stephen Sondheim, The Bodyguard, and more after the jump...

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Showbiz History: Linda Blair movies, Kurt Russell's Emmy nod, and Burt Reynolds on a bear-skin rug

8 random things that happened on this day, February 11th, in showbiz history...

Linda Blair made several TV movies in the 1970s post The Exorcist

1975 Sarah T Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic starring fresh Oscar nominee Linda Blair airs on NBC. It was the second of a handful of TV movies she made after The Exorcist that all traded on the dichotomy of her being young and innocent in scary adult situations...

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Soundtracking: Toni Erdmann

by Chris Feil

Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann is one of the decade’s most exacting looks at depression and the human cost of the global corporate mindset. These two thematic points of view ebb and flow in and out of one another in the film as suddenly as the film’s comedy and tragedy do, showing the malaise of how we live today that’s symptomatic of impersonal capitalistic remove. It’s a state of being that is symbiotically personal and societal, desperately funny and deeply sad.

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