Yesterday, Maria wrote about these photos of Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin crying while riding bikes. These two need to do less. I’m an emotional mess 75% of my life and even I reserve moments like this with my partner for the privacy of our home. I don’t want to make light of a serious situation…

When Angelina Jolie first announced that she and Brad Pitt were over, I called it World War Brange because that’s what it was – the opposite of conscious uncoupling. (How smug-ass do you think Gwyneth Paltrow is right now?) After three months of bloody battle at the end of 2016, Brange agreed to a d…

When Angelina Jolie first announced that she and Brad Pitt were over, I called it World War Brange because that’s what it was – the opposite of conscious uncoupling. (How smug-ass do you think Gwyneth Paltrow is right now?) After three months of bloody battle at the end of 2016, Brange agreed to a d…

I saw this a few days ago and I just forgot to write it up, and for that, I’m sorry, because it’s a really story. Don’t you just love when actors are really involved with the films they’ve done and the characters they’ve betrayed, even to the point where they still have feelings and theories about what was really going on within the story? I’m reminded of Sean Bean still having so many feelings about Game of Thrones even though he had been off the show for several years at that point. Well, Joseph Gordon Levitt still has feelings about one of his most famous movies, 500 Days of Summer.

Admittedly, I haven’t seen the movie in years, but from what I remember, it was a very enjoyable vintage-flavored “love story” between Tom (JGL) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel). I remember thinking that Summer came across as somewhat one-dimensional, almost like that perfect Manic Pixie Dream Girl built just for Tom’s fantasies. The movie is also somewhat famous for being twee, and yet not having a happy ending (Summer moves on and is quite happy with another man). Which brings me to this story. Someone tweeted, just in general and not @ JGL, this statement: “Still haven’t forgiven Zooey Deschanel for what she did to Joseph Gordon-Levitt in 500 Days of Summer.” JGL had something to say:

Watch it again. It’s mostly Tom’s fault. He’s projecting. He’s not listening. He’s selfish. Luckily he grows by the end. https://t.co/lEJ8uXlpJw

— Joseph Gordon-Levitt (@hitRECordJoe) August 6, 2018

Yet another reason to love JGL, huh? Way to kick people in the teeth, those starry-eyed romantics who believed that Tom was the perfect guy and Summer was just a one-dimensional trope. She came across as one-dimensional because that’s how Tom saw her, because he wasn’t interested in seeing the real girl. I love that JGL still has feelings about this!!

Stills from 500 Days of Summer, photo courtesy of WENN.

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Debby Ryan, 25, was a star on The Disney Channel at the same time as Demi Lovato, she was in The Suite Life on Deck from 2008 to 2011 while Demi was on Sonny with A Chance from 2009 to 2011 and the Camp Rock movies. That was almost ten years ago, although it doesn’t seem that long ago to me, and Demi and Debby were just teenagers then. In a new interview with People Live, Debby spoke about the pressure you’re under as a child star and how that kind of scrutiny isn’t easy to explain, even to people who’ve known you for years. I only saw the clip that’s on People’s site and it’s unclear what she’s responding to or if she was asked directly about Demi. It sounds like she was referring to her though. Here’s what she said.

I think before even being a Disney star I was a little girl… and that’s hard to be. I think having a pool party and… wrapping yourself up in a towel while everyone swims at 12 or 13 years old, that’s just personal.

Having [your] body change and then be on magazines… comparisons which [are] so toxic. It can really create a perfect storm of chaos. Forces you to really examine where you find your value, what you think of as pretty or interesting. If you’re bred in a world of chaos, I think sometimes the only way to feel comfortable is to recreate that chaos in your life, which is where a lot of us misstep. I certainly have. It’s a unique experience.

My friends who get it and who have known me since before everything still don’t fully experience always feeling like there [are] eyes on you. [It] can really feel like you are in a horror movie. That is a thing that is hard to communicate.

[From video on People]
I think Debby is trying to say that she feels an affinity with Demi. It sounded deep when she discussed trying to recreate chaos from your childhood. Of course that’s true but I’ve never heard it explained quite like that. Being a child star is something that you can’t even imagine unless you’ve lived it and can mess a person up in ways that we’ve seen end in tragedy. Thank goodness Demi is ok and is reportedly in rehab now.

Debby is promoting her starring role on Netflix’s Insatiable, which I’ve heard only bad things about. There are calls to pull it for being fat-shaming, and it’s getting bad reviews.

season finale of my life aka disney high reunion celebrating @hayleykiyoko @colesprouse @alysonstoner @ddlovato @debbyryan #20gayteen

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bring your own hot sauce

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photos credit: Instagram and Getty

The answer is yes, The Meg is exactly the movie you think it is. But it is not the movie you want it to be, because it is rated PG-13 which sucks the blood and guts out of what would otherwise be a grade-A sharksploitation flick. The Meg should have been the second coming of late 90s trashterpiece c…

I want to see Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, even though I know I’m going to have to prepare myself for it ahead of time. It’s not going to be the kind of film where you can decide, on a whim, to just run out and see it one afternoon. The subject matter is too heavy and too relevant to where we are in America right now, with the New York Times doing soft-focus profiles of Nazis and Donald Trump not even bothering with the racist dog-whistles, he just comes right out and says racist sh-t now. Which is Spike Lee’s whole point: his film might be set in the 1970s, but all that sh-t is still happening today. It never went away. Spike covers the latest issue of Time Magazine, and it’s a fascinating read – go here for the full piece. Some highlights:

Spike wants America to stop falling for the “okey-doke.” By that he means the tricks—which Lee calls the skulduggery, the shenanigans, the subterfuge and the bamboozlement—that straight, white American men masterfully use to stay in control. Lee is a student of history, and so he understands where these tricks are hiding and what form they might take in the future. He’s obsessed with the okey-doke. And it explains so much of why Lee is the way he is.

Black folks can be part of the okey-doke when they get money too: “People become delusional and think they’re not black anymore because they are accepted—it’s the okey-doke. You can say that now, but they still think you’s a n–ger.”

He never wants to be sanitized: “There’s this thinking that athletes should just run up and down the field, run around the bases, run down the court, play ball and shut the f-ck up. But there’s a history of that not being the case. And the powers that be don’t like that.”

On Trump’s tweets about LeBron: “He has a thing for black athletes. He does not like them brothers making that money.” But it runs even deeper than that. “This stuff is all planned,” he continues. “The sneaky thing is, he tried to start some sh-t between Michael [Jordan] and LeBron. That’s the old divide and conquer.”

The truth: “This brings me to another point. Let’s stop telling lies and teaching young people bullsh-t. The United States of America’s foundation is genocide of native people and slavery! That’s the foundation—the very fiber. No people have been more patriotic than black folks, who shouldn’t be.”

On all of the white people who want to talk to him about sports: “To use football terminology, it’s a classic misdirection play. They’re masters at it,” Lee says. In this context, they refers to everyone from a white man talking about sports to members of the Republican Party to any group of powerful whites. “It’s well-conceived, well-disguised. So we, as a people, as American people, have to really stop going for the okey-doke. We have to be smart and not go for these distractions. And you know they’re calling me every type of n–ger when they do that sh-t.”

The Nazis marching in Charlottesville last year: “I saw this horrific act of homegrown, red, white and blue, cherry-pie terrorism,” Lee says. Part of what Lee found so profound was the death of Heather Heyer. He called her mother Susan Bro, to ask permission to use footage of her death in the film. “What can you really say to anyone who loses her child?” Lee says. Bro told him that there had been criticism of how Heyer, a white woman, had been lionized in the media when the deaths of so many people of color go unnoticed. Lee didn’t care. “I consider her a martyr,” Lee says. “It don’t matter what nobody else says.”

[From Time]

The interview takes place in Martha’s Vineyard, where Spike has a home and where he’s surrounded by lots of white people who seem to be both visably uncomfortable with Spike yelling about genocide and slavery AND fascinated by him because he’s a celebrity. Throughout the interview, various white dudes come up to him and want to talk about the Knicks or just sports in general, and he chats with them, then as soon as they walk away, he sort of projects on them that they’re secretly calling him the n-word. That’s the only thing that bothered me a little bit about this interview – I completely get what he’s saying… except I think he’s guilty of just assuming every white person he encounters is saying terribly racist sh-t about him behind his back. The rest it of it the truth though.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Time.

For our September cover story, @tomhardy took our own @ericsull on a motorcycle tour of his hometown—it ended at the hospital. Link in bio to read the full story. ? @gregwilliamsphotography, styling by @nschneiderstyle. (Suit and shirt by @gucci; vintage tie, stylist’s own.)

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Tom Hardy covers the September issue of Esquire. It was supposed to be a fairly even bro-interview about riding motorcycles around Tom’s old stomping ground. Part of the interview got derailed because as Tom and the Esquire journalist were riding around, they encountered an injured woman, and it was the mum of one of Tom’s oldest friends. Tom turned into a hero, helping the lady get to the hospital, getting all of her tests sorted and helping out his buddy. In between all of that, Tom did answer some questions too. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:

Why he attended Prince Harry & Meghan’s wedding: All he’ll say about why they landed the coveted invite is that “it’s deeply private” and “Harry is a f–king legend.”

Doing a superhero movie with Sony: “If the odds are stacked against Sony, that’s not my f–king business. It’s irrelevant.” He burnishes an image of himself as a creative lone wolf, and in the third person no less: “Tom is very mercenary when it comes to work. I cannot give a f–k what the writer, or the director, or Larry in Baltimore thinks about my choices.”

Why he sometimes speaks in the third-person: “Sometimes I talk in the third person because it’s a lot easier to see myself at work as a piece of meat. So when Tommy says he doesn’t give a f–k what you think, it’s only because I give too much of a f–k, and it gets to a point where it stifles me.”

He signed on to a Parachute Regiment training course—but never followed through. “Oh, mate, I did so much backpedaling. The reality is that where I belonged was not there. The last person defending the realm was Mr. Hardy.” He calls the decision to back out “one of my biggest regrets. I wonder what life would’ve been like. I would’ve loved to have served and been useful.”

He became sober in 2003: A 12-step program was “my first port of call…It was hard enough for me to say, ‘I’m an alcoholic.’ But staying stopped is f–king hard.”

Don’t take photos of his kids: “I will pose for you, and photos of me and my wife are fine. But if someone takes a photo of my kids, all bets are off. I will take the camera off you and beat the f–king sh-t out of you.. That’s the one that hurts. My kids didn’t ask for what my job is. There’s something that really upsets me about the imposition of a grown-up world on a child.”

[From Esquire]

Talking in the third person will always seem strange to me and sound “off.” It’s something that the Kellan Lutzes of the world do, not the Tom Hardys. I understand what he’s saying about trying to create some distance because he cares too much, but surely there’s a better way that declaring “Tom Hardy says that Tom DGAF.” And I really need him to tell me how he and Prince Harry know each other.

I didn’t even include the nicest little interlude, where they encounter a father and his small (under 3-years-old) son, and Tom gently asks the boy if he’d like to sit on his motorcycle. The boy is too shy and Tom immediately sees that, so he gently says goodbye to the kid politely. It was very cute.

Good morning, subscribers. Presenting our September ’18 subscribers cover, starring @tomhardy. Hit the link in bio to read the full story now. ? @gregwilliamsphotography, styling by @nschneiderstyle. (Coat and trousers by @giorgioarmani; t-shirt by @armaniexchange)

A post shared by Esquire (@esquire) on Aug 7, 2018 at 6:56am PDT

Covers courtesy of Esquire’s Instagram.

Does Brad Pitt even need lawyers when TMZ is doing all of the heavy lifting in their campaign against Angelina Jolie? Yesterday, TMZ threw a party when Brad’s lawyer “slapped back” at Angelina’s court filing. They painted her as a nasty woman, a liar, a devious bitch, etc. Buried within TMZ’s report was the fact that the bulk of the money Brad says is “child support” is actually a loan. Since then, Angelina’s lawyer slapped back with a detailed and savage statement to People Magazine. TMZ hasn’t said one word about Angelina’s lawyer’s statement, which speaks volumes. Instead, TMZ is running yet another “pity poor Brad” article:

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are at war in their divorce case, but the more immediate struggle is the co-parenting situation that even has a judge issuing a warning to cool it … or else. We’re told Brad has been spending the bulk of his Summer in England — where Angelina and the kids live — so he can see his 6 children. The judge in the divorce case set out a schedule for Brad to visit with his children in London beginning in mid-June for 10 hours a day. The visitation increased last month to 4 consecutive days at a time.

Our sources say Brad and Angelina never interact with each other, and the handoffs are always through nannies and assistants. It’s clear there have been issues over Brad interacting with the kids. The judge in the divorce case already issued an order saying Angelina tried to restrict Brad’s access that the judge believed was “harmful” to the children. The judge even said Brad had a right to call and text the kids whenever he wanted, and Angelina could not monitor the contacts. From what we’re told, things are getting worse, not better, between the two.

[From TMZ]

There’s no new information here. The whole point of this piece is too remind everyone that Angelina Jolie is a Difficult Bitch Who Refuses To Speak To Brad. The only somewhat new information is that according to TMZ, Brad has spent much of the summer in England. I thought he was filming Once Upon a Time In Hollywood in LA this summer? I thought that Brad was throwing massive hissy fits about how the kids would need to travel to see him? You’re telling me that Angelina still has primary custody of the kids and his every interaction with them is still being heavily monitored by the court system? Oh, right. As for Angelina and Brad barely having any interaction… yeah, we knew that too.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

When I write about Insecure, I make a point to focus on Issa and Molly’s friendship and how well the show depicts black female relationships. To me, that is Insecure’s strength. The romantic pairings are secondary but that doesn’t mean I’m not invested. There are many Insecure fans who are invested …