The only good things to come of Suicide Squad is Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn and Viola Davis as Amanda Waller. We can—and probably will—pretend like the rest of that mess never happened, but Harley Quinn and Amanda Waller can stick around for the DC Extended Universe Mark II. There’s no word yet o…

As we discussed yesterday, People Magazine had an interesting little gossip item from the start of the Sundance Film Festival. Both Michael B. Jordan and Kiki Layne were at Sundance to promote separate projects, but they reportedly spent some time together at the film festival and people noticed. I hoped it was an authentic match because they’re both hot and their coupling would be great for both of their careers and images. I was glad that many of you saw it the same way I did, that MBJ and Kiki were both likely playing an angle, and that Kiki came to play and good for her. So give her some applause for this Page Six item too:

Stars of two Oscar-nominated films were seen “canoodling to the max” behind the scenes at Sundance on Friday, ahead of the awards. Sources told Page Six that “Black Panther” star Michael B. Jordan and “If Beale Street Could Talk” actress Kiki Layne arrived separately — “within 10 minutes of each other” — to Tao’s Park City, Utah, pop-up club before getting cozy together.

A source said: “They were put at separate VIP tables, but Kiki quickly made her way over to Michael’s table. And they seriously never left each other’s side. Canoodling to the max.”

The source added, “She would have her hand on the back of his head rubbing it as he whispered in her ear and [he] kept kissing her cheek.”

Even though “it was clear to everyone in the room that they were together,” the source surmised, we hear that the stars’ entourages were “protective about them not taking a photo together.” They exited at the same time.

[From Page Six]

Who amongst us has not gone to a pop-up nightclub at the Sundance Film Festival and canoodled with Michael B. Jordan in full view of witnesses, People Magazine and Page Six? It’s almost like they WANTED to be seen together, I’ll tell you. Again, I don’t hate it. MBJ has a reputation for only liking Beckys, and Kiki is trying to become a household name. This helps them both.

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

Photos courtesy of Getty, Backgrid.

I would love to read an in-depth article about how social-media sponsorships work for the rich and famous. I want to know how various “Instagram models” are approached for sponsorships, and whether there are agents and managers who now specialize in those kinds of business deals and negotiations. Like, I think Kendall Jenner is an idiot, but would she have accepted $250K to promote the Fyre festival on her own? Of course not – she has people. Her mom is her manager. She has an agent and probably a business manager and other assorted people who handle those negotiations and deals. The truth is, a lot of behind-the-scenes people did their clients dirty with the Fyre festival, and now their clients’ names are still in the press for an awful reason.

The disaster that was Fyre Festival continues to go down in flames. Agencies that represent Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Hailey Baldwin, Elsa Hosk and other models will be subpoenaed as part of Fyre’s bankruptcy filing, according to court documents obtained by E! News. Fyre Festival’s bankruptcy trustee Gregory Messer filed an ex-parte order in bankruptcy court to examine a number of agencies and it was approved on Monday.

There’s currently an investigation underway to uncover what happened to $26 million that Fyre Festival’s founder Billy McFarland raised by investors. According to Billboard, Messer is looking into $5.3 million in payments in this latest subpoena. The grand total of payments being investigated thus far from the number of orders equals $11.3 million.

According to the court filing, Messer is now turning to IMG Models, DNA Model Management and Kendall Jenner Inc. for some answers about McFarland’s payments to their agencies in relation to their appearance in the festival’s promotional video. IMG represents Baldwin, Hosk and Hadid while DNA has Emily Ratajkowski. Billboard says McFarland paid IMG $1.2 million over a span of four months spanning from November 2016 until February 2017. In January 2017, the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star apparently received $250,000 for her role in promotion Fyre Festival. Similarly, DNA Model Management got $299,000 in March 2017.

Daily Mail reports that Jenner promoted Fyre on Instagram beforehand and said in a now-deleted post that her “G.O.O.D. Music Family” would be headlining the show. Kanye West founded the G.O.O.D. Music record label in 2004. At the time, Jenner received a warning from the Federal Trade Commission because she did not make clear that it was an ad and sponsored post.

[From E! News]

Well, at least they’re all in it together. It’s not just Kendall out there, promoting shady fraud festivals. Fyre Festival used the same methods that many companies use: they went through the models’ management and agencies and used them as “models for hire,” on ad campaigns exclusively for social media. Of course, it’s not a good look for any of them. But I can’t help but be curious about how all of this worked behind the scenes contractually, and whether people at these various agencies are going to end up losing their jobs too.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Annette Bening has not yet won an Oscar. Sure, she’s been nominated four times, but that statue has yet to be engraved with her name. To many, it’s most definitely “too early” to tell, but for a few hours yesterday, Annette’s latest film The Report was the biggest sale at Sundance, going to Amazon f…

I know these posts don’t get many comments, but I think this is an important conversation and I like to talk about it. Cobie Smulders is doing the press circuit for Friends from College, a Netflix series that is getting mixed reviews. She’s good at selling it though and I’m enjoying her interviews. Cobie, 36, had ovarian cancer at the age of 25. She first talked about it in 2015, which was several years post recovery. She gave some more interviews about it last fall when she got a pharmaceutical endorsement deal for a prohibitively expensive treatment drug. (I have mixed feelings about that and talked about it here.) The good news is that she’s been cancer free for 10 years and met her goal of having kids. She and her husband, SNL’s Taran Killam, have two daughters aged 9 and 3.

Cobie was on Busy Tonight, where she talked about the fact that she’s been cancer free for 10 years along with how she was diagnosed. She had insisted that she get an ultrasound after doctors were dismissive of her concerns. If she hadn’t done that, things could have turned out much differently for her.

What I will say to women is to know your body as well as you can. It is a hard disease to diagnose. The symptoms are like bloating, pressure. I was 25 when I got diagnosed. I was like ‘something’s not right.’ I went to doctor and demanded an ultrasound. There’s no way to screen for ovarian cancer. Then they found it. ‘No, no, you’re fine. You’re 25, you’re fine.’

After that she talked about the PSA she did with Tesaro, the company she’s working with. It’s excellent advice to ask for screening and to be your own advocate. Sadly that’s not accessible to everyone, particularly Americans. Last year an urgent care facility sent me to the ER as they suspected I had a kidney infection. I didn’t, I just had a bad reaction to the antibiotic I was on. The final cost, including a follow-up visit to a urologist and additional screening, was almost $3,000. I have silver level health insurance under Obamacare and it’s over $500 a month. Healthcare is irreparably broken in the US. Screening and treatment are often luxuries that people can’t afford.

Here’s Cobie’s interview:

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@cobiesmulders isn’t my friend from college, even though I feel like we would have been friends in college but she is ON @friendsfromcollege AND she’s on @busytonighttv TONIGHT! 11pm on @eentertainment!

A post shared by Busy Philipps (@busyphilipps) on Jan 23, 2019 at 6:17pm PST

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I really like this lady can you tell??? Tune in Tonight at 11|10c #BusyTonight @BusyTonightTV @eentertainment

A post shared by Cobie Smulders (@cobiesmulders) on Jan 23, 2019 at 9:31pm PST

Photos via Instagram and YouTube

Jennifer Lopez covers the February issue of Harper’s Bazaar to promote Second Act, the film which came out just before Christmas. Yeah, I’m not sure about that timing either, but here you go. (Also: she’s promoting her reality show, World of Dance, which makes more sense.)
Jennifer has seemed super-content lately, especially over the past year. While I think Alex Rodriguez is a probably a d-bag, you can’t deny the fact that he makes Jennifer really happy, and that she seems very settled-down right now. This Bazaar piece is full of Jennifer’s positivity and good vibes, and there’s nothing scandalous at all. Some highlights:

Her image versus the reality. “You’re trying to do your best and people are putting you down, or trying to make believe you’re not a nice person, or you’re a diva. I’m always like, ‘Who are you talking about?’”

Implicit bias & believing in yourself: “From early on in my career, I felt like people wanted to put me in a box. You will play these sorts of roles, do this type of thing. Or you will only act. You cannot sing and act at the same time. I felt very confined by that because I knew I was going to do different things. I was at least going to try! I feel very proud that I’ve survived as long as I have in this business. At this point in my life, I’m trying to give myself more credit. It’s hard when people are always telling you that you’re not good at things or saying, ‘Why is she successful?’ You get a lot of that when you’re a successful woman. You don’t get that as much when you’re a man. The thing about people, women especially, is that you can have 12 people telling you you’re amazing, but that one person kind of putting you down, that’s the voice that sticks in your head.”

Imposter syndrome: “I think sometimes people try to make you feel like you’re a fraud. And maybe you’re afraid you’re one too. Then finally you go, ‘Wait, I’m not lying. I’ve been doing this a long time. This is not a mistake. I worked hard to be here.’ And you know what? Congratulations to myself. Not in an arrogant way, by any means. It’s like, ‘You’re doing good, baby. Give yourself a break.’”

Her relationship with A-Rod: “For me, the relationship journey has been very up and down. But it didn’t have to do with anybody else but me—it was about me figuring out me. Until you learn to love yourself, you can’t completely love [someone else] in a way that is pure and true. Once you do that, you can have relationships that are based on love and respect, that are supportive and nourishing. There’s an evolution there that had to happen for me. I feel like I’m in a better place now. I’ve got two amazing kids and a great boyfriend. I don’t have everything figured out, and everything isn’t perfect. But I feel very proud that with all the things I’ve gone through in my personal life, I’m still optimistic and hopeful.”

She does get tired: “Sometimes I get tired. I get tired a lot. But I never think, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ I just think I need a break. I really feel like I have a lot left that I want to do. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to a point where I’ll be satisfied and go, ‘I did it. All of it. I’m done. I got nothing else to say.’ I hope that day never comes.”

[From Harper’s Bazaar]

I think that sort of “congratulations to myself” is healthy, and more women *should* give themselves a break and acknowledge that they’ve survived and thrived in environments which were rarely built for them. Jennifer Lopez isn’t the best singer/dancer/actress, but she worked hard and hustled and she deserves to be where she is because she figured it out, and she should congratulate herself. And it’s notable because everything she says is right, and that we don’t ask WHY men are successful, we just take their success at face value.

Covers courtesy of Harper’s Bazaar.

Deadline reported yesterday that Angelina Jolie is “finalising a deal to star” in Those Who Wish Me Dead, Taylor Sheridan’s next film. He also wrote the screenplay adapted from Michael Koryta’s novel. This is newsworthy not just because it’s Angelina but the combination of her fame and this particul…

As you’ve probably guessed by now, I prefer to ignore Rob Kardashian and Blac Chyna’s drama. I know there are always melodramatic headlines about their “custody war” for Dream Kardashian, and I’m sure those headlines generate a lot of clicks for TMZ. But my sense is that most people really don’t care? Maybe I’m wrong. Which is why I periodically check in on Rob and Chyna whenever they seem to be particularly EXTRA. That’s been happening for more than a week – two weekends ago, somebody called the cops on Chyna and claimed she was drunk and neglecting Dream. Then Rob got really mad this weekend (mad enough to call TMZ) when he was supposed to drop off Dream, per their custody schedule, only to find that Chyna had flown off to Hawaii with her boyfriend. Chyna claims the nannies could have taken care of Dream and that Rob is just mad because she has a new boyfriend. Well, Chyna and the new boyfriend were in Hawaii… and they got into it. And the cops were called.

It’s trouble in paradise for Blac Chyna. PEOPLE confirms that officers and paramedics responded to the Ritz-Carlton Residences in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Monday morning after police were called following a fight between Chyna, 30, and artist Kid Buu in a hotel suite.

“Someone from their group called 911. Hotel security escorted police officers and paramedics to a suite, where Blac Chyna was with a group of people,” the source says. “It was more of a ‘he said, she said’ situation. They both had complaints to the police, but in the end no one was arrested or taken to the hospital.” According to the source, Chyna and Kid Buu, 30, “were both intoxicated.”

“Again, this is not a typical incident at the hotel,” says the source. “In fact, this behavior is 100% unacceptable.”

The Honolulu Police Department confirmed that an incident is currently under investigation.

“Shortly before 9 a.m. today, a female visitor staying in Waikiki reported being assaulted by a male acquaintance. The victim reported that she and the suspect had been involved in an argument several hours earlier, and the argument had escalated to a physical confrontation,” a media liaison officer said in a statement to PEOPLE. “The male left the area after the confrontation and has not been located. This incident has been classified as abuse of a household member.The investigation is continuing, and no further information is being released at this time.”

[From People]

I really hate it when cops think that they either have to arrest everybody or nobody. If someone called the police (in a Hawaiian paradise, on vacation!) and said that there was some kind of physical assault on a woman, the cops should have taken it more seriously than “oh well, it’s just he-said, she-said.” Sorry, that just pisses me off. But yeah, I think Chyna is going through something – two incidents within nine days where the cops were called. Drunk, violent and disorderly to the point where someone in her own entourage was worried? I know some of this is just for attention and to shove it in Rob’s face. But another part of me is like “damn, Chyna, you might need some help.”

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

Kelly! Congratulations on your early Oscar with love from Ciaran who requested Steve Carell for you and told me not to ask. Girl, I don’t even want to know but people are thirsting for him now so, if that’s you, you’re not alone.

The midwest, mid-Atlantic and pretty much the entire East Coast is going to be painfully cold this week. For the past few years, we’ve had to deal with a reoccurring “polar vortex” which give us below-freezing temperatures for days and sometimes weeks on end. This week isn’t a polar vortex from the North though, it’s just our new normal of much, much colder winters than we’ve had in years previously. This is very simple, elementary-school-level of global warming: weather is more extreme on both ends. Summers are hotter, winters are colder, and hurricanes and tornadoes are much more deadly and destructive.

Unfortunately, Emperor Dinosaur Butt doesn’t understand that elementary-school-level science. He honestly thinks that because it gets cold in winter, global warming doesn’t exist. Snow = no global warming, in Bigly’s mind. Or should I say “global waming.”

That tweet has already been up for more than 12 hours. No one quickly took it down and replaced it with the word “warming” spelled correctly. This is our government, peeps. The president/emperor is an idiot who can’t spell “warming” and doesn’t has a first-grader’s grasp of science.

Speaking of lack of fundamental education, Trump also tweeted this yesterday.

Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible. Starting to make a turn back? Great!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2019

If you want to send your kids to private, religious schools, go ahead. Go crazy with your Bible study and what have you. But if your state tries to introduce Bible Literacy classes in public schools, you better f–king riot and call the ACLU. Stop this mess. Also: the fact that the Evangelicals still have f–k all to say about a thrice-married adulterer, cheater, con man and hate-filled bigot just shows you how much all of modern evangelical Christianity is just a f–king scam.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red.