Gawker - Father, Son, House of Jubbly

Our Maj has a youthful spirit

In a bombshell interview with famed British photographer David Bailey on Monday, the Telegraph revealed that somebody other than me has called the Queen of England “girl.” When Lilibet Sr. sat for a portrait in 2014, Bailey asked the queen if “the jewels” were real, presumably referring to her royal breasts. Bailey said, “‘I bet that cost a few bobs, girl.’” “Bobs,” as I have come to understand it, is a British slang word for shillings, 20 of which made a pound.

When interviewer Lucy Davies asked Bailey if he really called Her Maj “girl,” he stood by it. “It just came out. I call everyone ‘girl’. But she was girlish. Made a real effort. We had a laugh. Beautiful skin, the Queen.” I don’t doubt it – how else could she have charmed her subjects for 70 long years, influencing the likes of Sir Winston Churchill and the Platinum Jubbly Pudding Competition judges?

Our girl is back and she has learned things over the pandemic

I am ambivalent about WeCrashed, the new Apple TV+ show about the rise and fall of WeWork. On the one hand, I don’t know that I need to see a show about something I have read 1,002 stories about over the last few years. On the other hand, it is responsible for Anne Hathaway’s first press tour in what feels like decades, and that is a gift.

Hathaway is playing Rebekah Neumann, the wife of WeWork CEO Adam Neumann and a certified weirdo in her own right (did you know she double majored in Buddhism and business at Cornell?). Jared Leto, who stars as Adam, hasn’t done a lick of press for the show, leaving the majority of the work to Hathaway. Fine by me.

Last night, the Devil Wears Prada star was on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert wearing a gorgeous Christopher John Rogers jumpsuit and doing a pitch perfect impression of Lady Gaga in House of Gucci (at 8:35 in the clip below).

According to 'Teen Vogue,' it actually does not matter

Every year, Teen Vogue releases its Young Hollywood package, in which up-and-coming stars with good publicists get to be profiled for being young and hot (physically and metaphorically). This year, the group of rising talent consists of Caleb McLaughlin, Sydney Sweeney, Xolo Maridueña, Patti Harrison, Karena Evans, Devery Jacobs, Morgan Cooper, and Nik Dodani. That is seven actors and one music video director, for those keeping score at home. These are occupations that could be broadly but aptly described as “artists.”

However, feeling beholden to the parlance of the time, Teen Vogue has decided that this is actually a group of “creators,” a word that has a very specific meaning on the internet and a completely amorphous one in the real world. In the package’s introductory article, these eight people are referred to as “creators” three different times. They are creators who “approach their work with heart, vision, and an eye toward representation and justice for their generation and all who will come after.” Creators who “are daring to think about Hollywood differently, challenging the old ways at every turn.” Creators who “at one point or another, found their talents discounted, their dreams challenged, and confidence shaken.”

While “creator” may have once referred to a writer or a painter or an inventor or maybe God, it now most commonly describes people who create videos. People who have enough followers to monetize their TikTok videos through the “Creator Fund” are creators. YouTubers who land six-figure brand deals are creators. Vloggers and cat owners and 20-year-olds who hold up a microphone to strangers on the street and ask “What’s your favorite song?” are creators.

What makes a film Soderberghian? It’s fun

Steven Soderbergh puts out so many movies, so breathlessly, that it can be hard to keep up with his pace. Last year, there was the star-studded No Sudden Move, which he shot and directed; the year before, there was Let Them All Talk, starring Meryl Streep on a cruise ship; this year, so far, there is Kimi, a tight pandemic-era thriller starring Zoë Kravitz, which came out on HBO Max early last month.

I've had a nearly unshakeable resistance to onscreen representations of the pandemic — people wearing face masks, trite jokes about Zoom — maybe because it's too soon; most likely because it's so corny. But if Soderbergh is making it, I'm watching it, and Kimi is good. Rather than fall into the trap of making the story about the pandemic, life with COVID becomes part of a set of circumstances for Kravitz's Angela, an agoraphobic data analyst. Her job is to listen to and correct the responses of Kimi — a voice-activated device competing with Alexa and Siri — to problematic commands. It's hard for Angela to leave her industrial Seattle loft, and for the most part she doesn't really have to, until she hears something concerning on one of Kimi's streams: a woman in trouble. The film unravels on a steady course, with a murder plot, an evil CEO, and a heroine overcoming her fears to do right by the world.

With a special appearance from Uncle.

Will Actor Brother ever know the horrors of war? It feels safe to assume that he won’t, although I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of him getting cast in a Ron Howard war movie. Still, he is surrounded by veterans, and he is learning about their ways. As much as This Is Us is a show about the Vietnam War, we must also remember it is a show about the Iraq War. It is also a show about Mother. Let’s see if she died.

HAS MOTHER DIED?

Not yet.

IS SISTER WELL?

Sister wasn’t really in this one, nor was Councilman Brother.