Kathleen called them “Zomdaya”. Sarah was pushing for “Zendalland”, or something. That would be the proposed portmanteaux for Zendaya and Tom Holland because for a couple of years now, we thought they were dating. Or we really, really hoped they were dating.

Zendaya and Tom kept saying they were…

Last year in my Comic-Con preview, amidst a diminishing film presence in Hall H, I wrote: “…the movie side has totally ceded Sunday to TV. Hell, they’re halfway to ceding Saturday. And Thursday. And at this rate, within five years, probably Friday, too.” Well, it’s been one year, not five, and this …

Yesterday, Lainey posted about the Hemsworth-Pataky family on vacation with the Damons (and many other friends) for Elsa Pataky’s birthday. As we know, these families have vacationed together many times over the last few years. I would love to know how the logistics of this work – are Matt and Lucia…

Here is what I know about the musical Cats: It is about cats. The actors wear leotards and face paint. There is a song called “Memory”. “Memory” is a pretty good song. One cat is called “Rum Tum Tugger”. Everyone says “Rum Tum Tugger” with a completely straight face. There are other cats. I do not k…

Here is what I know about the musical Cats: It is about cats. The actors wear leotards and face paint. There is a song called “Memory”. “Memory” is a pretty good song. One cat is called “Rum Tum Tugger”. Everyone says “Rum Tum Tugger” with a completely straight face. There are other cats. I do not k…

Leonardo DiCaprio and Camila Morrone went out for dinner in LA last night and were photographed holding hands. I can’t believe he didn’t run away and duck into a trash can. Then again, Camila is, still, just 22 years old. They’ve now been together at least a year and a half and we’re still three yea…

Leonardo DiCaprio and Camila Morrone went out for dinner in LA last night and were photographed holding hands. I can’t believe he didn’t run away and duck into a trash can. Then again, Camila is, still, just 22 years old. They’ve now been together at least a year and a half and we’re still three yea…

I’ve liked Harry Styles for a while. Ever since he dumped Taylor Swift, honestly. Remember that drama? It was good – he dumped her while they were on vacation together, and then she tried to real-estate stalk him, and then she devoted a big chunk of 1989 to him, and he still didn’t say one bad word against her publicly. It was a great way to handle all of it. In the years since, Harry went solo musically and he’s been trying his hand at acting. He had a smallish supporting role in Dunkirk, and now… this:

Former One Direction bandmember Harry Styles is in talks for Rob Marshall’s live action take on The Little Mermaid for Disney. Styles is eyeing the role of Prince Eric. Styles was one of the contenders to play Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s movie. He was waiting to see if he landed that role after testing for it, before committing to Little Mermaid.

[From Deadline]

I’m going to patiently sit here and wait for a ton of people to freak out about the fact that Prince Eric should be Danish. That was the argument against casting Halle Bailey as Ariel in The Little Mermaid, right? Because she isn’t DANISH. It’s not that she’s black! It’s that she’s not Danish and The Little Mermaid is all about Danish peeps and Danish mythology and… I’m going to be waiting for a while, right? No one is going to freak out that a British guy will probably play Prince Eric. But I imagine they’ll freak out once they realize that The Little Mermaid is now a fable about interracial romance?!?!? Sorry, that’s CANON now.

Photos courtesy of WENN and Avalon Red.

A few years ago, a Spanish filmmaker called Alice Waddington made a splash on the festival circuit with a short titled Disco Inferno. It seemed to be the calling card of a bright new talent, and anticipation grew to see what Waddington—already a stand-out in the advertising world—would do with a fea…

I haven’t even kept up with all of the drama from the Bond 25 set, but every time I see a new headline, I become more convinced that A) the production is cursed and B) all of the drama will make a very good Vanity Fair article or perhaps even a Hollywood Reporter cover story at some point. Daniel Craig got injured in the first weeks of production, they’ve already had a million mishaps and delays, the production is already over budget and I simply don’t trust the screenwriters or director Cary Fukunaga anymore. But I’m strangely not worried at all at the choice of villain for Bond 25: they hired Rami Malek shortly after he won the Best Actor Oscar this year, and apparently Rami only had one request:

When Rami Malek was asked to play the villain in the ­latest 007 movie he had to think twice before ­accepting the role. Rami wanted a cast-iron guarantee from the film-makers first: he simply wanted an assurance from director Cary Fukunaga that the villain he would play would NOT be a religious fundamentalist or an Arabic-speaking terrorist.

Because Rami’s pride in his Egyptian heritage and culture is, he says “the fabric of who I am”.

“It’s a great character and I’m very excited,” explains Rami. “But that was one thing that I discussed with Cary. I said, ‘We cannot identify him with any act of terrorism reflecting an ideology or a religion. That’s not ­something I would entertain, so if that is why I am your choice then you can count me out’. But that was clearly not his vision. So he’s a very different kind of terrorist. It’s another extremely clever script from the people who have figured out exactly what people want in those movies. But I feel a substantial weight on my shoulders. I mean, Bond is ­something that we all grow up with.”

[From The Daily Mirror]

Rami is a first-generation American, and both of his parents were Egyptian émigrés. Rami was born in LA. Also: Rami and his family are Coptic Orthodox Christians, and they spoke Arabic at home. Which I didn’t know – I didn’t know that Rami speaks Arabic too. I’ve heard him talk about what it means to him to be Egyptian AND American though, and seriously – it was a good call that he cleared that up before he signed on to Bond 25. Weirdly, James Bond films are not really known for the most basic-bitch stereotypes when it comes to villains. I mean, you can still see and feel the thread of British colonialism in Bond movies, especially the older ones, but the villains are rarely “stock Arab terrorist” or “stock IRA dude” or “stock mustache-twirling Russian.”

Photos courtesy of WENN.