Your Entertainment Headlines At A Glance
Ash Mayfair’s painterly Vietnamese drama “The Third Wife” draws us in to a cloistered world of 18th century rural polygamy and suppressed desire that puts a filmic premium on every instance of touch, be it tolerated, welcome or feared. In a remote,…
Tarantino has gone viral for his response to a question at a Cannes press conference about Margot Robbie’s limited dialogue in his new movie.
There were plenty of hard questions Quentin Tarantino could have faced as he greeted reporters for the first time following the Cannes premiere of “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.” Did he change his approach to on-set safety after Uma Thurman alle…
Florence Pugh and James Norton gushed over their “Little Women” co-stars Timothée Chalamet and Emma Watson while at the Cannes Film Festival. The actors spoke to Variety‘s Marc Malkin on the red carpet at the Chopard Trophy Awards, wh…
According to Deadline, The Help director Tate Taylor has put together a dynamite cast for his upcoming “comedy-drama” Breaking News In Yuba County. For starters, it will star Allison Janney as a woman catches her husband cheating her, at which point he…
“Downton Abbey” actress Victoria Emslie announced the launch of Primetime, a new database which “spotlights women from all over the world working above the line and below the line in film” at Cannes on Monday as part of an ongoi…
Leyna Bloom, who stars in Un Certain Regard selection “Port Authority,” sat down in Cannes Monday to talk about what it means to her to be the first trans actress of color starring in a festival selection. At the Variety and Kering talk mod…
Dutch actress Sand Van Roy made a statement at the Cannes Film Festival with body art. Van Roy sued French director Luc Besson for rape in 2018 but the case was ultimately dropped by prosecutors. The actress, who had a starring role in Besson’s Valeria…
The theme on the red carpet at the 78th annual Peabody Awards? Empowering women. On Saturday, Peabody winners gathered at Cipriani Wall Street, and one of the hot topics on everyone’s mind was the wave of female empowerment spreading across the i…
Women are making strides toward parity in the film business but there’s much more progress to be made, panelists at the Variety-Kering Women in Motion talk said Saturday. While women are gaining more visibility on-screen — 40% of movies were led …
Self-help coach Tony Robbins denied a BuzzFeed News report Friday that he sexually harassed five women in the 1990s and early 2000s, saying the story was an “inaccurate, agenda-driven” report that was “pierced with falsehoods.”
BuzzFeed reported that two former female employees of Robbins signed sworn statements saying “he had sexually harassed them by repeatedly pursuing them after they made clear they weren’t interested.” Another two women who worked for Robbins, according to BuzzFeed, said the motivational speaker “expected them to work alone with him when he was naked in his hotel room or in the shower.” A fifth woman said Robbins fired her after they had a consensual sexual relationship.
In a Medium blog post published soon after BuzzFeed’s report, Robbins said BuzzFeed’s yearlong investigation was carried out with “malicious intent.” Robbins said BuzzFeed refused to meet in-person, despite Robbins wanting to share “key evidence” that would contradict the report. “Your claims range from indistinct to ridiculous,” Robbins said.
BuzzFeed said Robbins also created a “highly sexualized environment” in which his followers were told to “touch themselves intimately and simulate orgasms.” The website also reported that secret recordings and transcripts revealed he had “unleashed expletive-laden tirades” on survivors of rape and domestic violence.
“She’s f—ing using all this stuff to try and control men,” Robbins said after one woman said she’d been raped, according to BuzzFeed.
BuzzFeed said that in 2018, Robbins said a different woman was “lying” about her husband being physically abusive, and asked: “Does he put up with you when you’ve been a crazy bitch?” But BuzzFeed also said that the woman told BuzzFeed News that talking with Robbins was a positive experience and that she was grateful for his advice not to be a victim. She told BuzzFeed that the advice had helped her leave the relationship.
Robbins said BuzzFeed intentionally took his seminars “out of context,” and provided video testimony from fans supporting his approach.
He said on Medium: “We have evidence to prove that your reporters rejected and otherwise ignored factual accounts from several individuals you contacted. In some cases, those individuals were even harassed and lied to when their accounts did not align with Buzzfeed’s predetermined thesis.”
In a letter that his attorneys sent to BuzzFeed, Robbins “vehemently denied” engaging in any inappropriate sexual behavior and said that he was “never intentionally naked” in front of his staff.
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“Let me be clear, while my open-classroom therapeutic methods are not for everyone, and while I am on my best day still only an imperfect human being,” Robbins said in his Medium post. “I have never behaved in the reckless, irresponsible, or malicious manner intimated by false, unfounded, and incendiary allegations suggested by BuzzFeed story-tellers.”
A representative for Robbins did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
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British production company Fulwell 73 is set to produce documentary series “Flying High,” following a season in the lives of the Chelsea soccer club’s women’s team. The fly-on-the-wall series will follow the team through the 2019-20 season and look at …
The Late Late Show with James Corden producer Fulwell73 has scored its latest soccer documentary. The company, which is responsible for Netflix’s Sunderland ‘Til I Die and Manchester United doc Class of ’92, is developing a series with Chelsea FC Women…
When animation guru John Lasseter was ousted from his post at Pixar last year, trailed by a series of allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct, it seemed like a wake-up call for an animation industry that was slowly coming around to its own #MeT…
Laureled abroad and lauded at home, a young generation of women Catalan filmmakers started breaking through two years ago, led by Carla Simon’s 2017 Berlin first-feature winner “Summer 93.” Since then a bevy of female directors have emerged, making int…
Five years after fashion powerhouse Kering launched its initiative to highlight the role of women before and behind the camera, the mission of Women in Motion is as pressing as ever. While the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements have put a spotlight on the …
The organizers of the Cannes Film Festival set out their gender equality credentials, Monday, on the eve of the event getting underway. Festival artistic director Thierry Fremaux had faced questions earlier in the day about the number of female directo…
Female filmmakers and animals will reign in “Queens,” an upcoming National Geographic global series about matriarchal societies in the animal world. The team behind the series is led by women, with Wildstar Films on production duty and Vanessa Berlowit…
For “Wine Country,” Poehler enlisted her very own BFFs, including Maya Rudolph and Paula Pell, to help serve up a comedy about a girls’ trip they’ve actually lived.
R. Crumb would love what director Robert O’Hara has done with Aziza Barnes’ play “BLKS,” which opened Thursday at Off Broadway’s MCC after its 2017 world premiere at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company.
Early in Barnes’ comedy, three young women (Paige Gilbert, Alfie Fuller and Antoinette Crowe-Legacy) get ready to hit the clubs in Brooklyn, circa 2015. The music blasts so we can’t hear what they’re saying, but the body language is unmistakable — and hilarious.
Gilbert and Fuller, especially, sport the kind of full-frame, super-sturdy, ready-for-action bodies that can be threatening to some men but which Crumb worships, fetishizes and immortalizes in his classic comics. Equally fine, Dede Ayite’s Saran wrap costumes and J. Jared Janas’s exaggerated wigs, hair and makeup work to complete the picture of pre-party mayhem. These women aren’t afraid to show their muscle and use it.
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Although fitfully funny, “BLKS” is never again quite this inspired, and that’s because Gilbert and Fuller spend too little time together on stage.
O’Hara’s fiercely kinetic direction clearly suits these two gifted actors whose gangbuster portrayals take no prisoners. Pitted together in the play’s early moments, they stoke each other’s fiery delivery. And they’re also pretty amazing when Barnes separates them to introduce other somewhat less fascinating characters. Imani (Fuller’s character) is so horny she’ll even put up with a rich white girl, spotted at the club, who’s identified in the Playbill as That Bitch on the Couch. Stuck in this thankless role, Marie Botha manages to underplay the character’s cluelessness despite Imani’s ridiculing her race and ravaging her body. Barnes graciously gives That Bitch a couple of good retorts to Imani’s hypersensitivity.
Octavia (Gilbert’s character) is also more than ready to get laid, and in the need for instant gratification, she momentarily puts aside her ill-defined relationship with another woman, Ry (Coral Pena). Octavia demands cunnilingus (a word never spoken in “BLKS”) from not one but two men (the beautifully double-cast Chris Myers).
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In the role of Justin, Myers manages to be this comedy’s most sane, accommodating, all-around nice person. And he’s playing a straight guy! Such a character is a true novelty in today’s woke theater. Especially clever is Justin’s backpack of goodies that holds everything from a sleep mask to Crazy Glue (to repair broken high heels). Myers also manages not to be blown away by Hurricane Paige, although his very ample pecs almost upstage him. Perhaps O’Hara didn’t want the women to sport all the muscle in this show.
O’Hara is less successful with the merely loud Crowe-Legacy and Pena, who mugs her way through “BLKS” without ever hitting a definable character.
Barnes deftly handles her characters’ sexual fluidity, but near the end of “BLKS” she adds a few sentimental touches that even Neil Simon didn’t resort to in his 1960s heyday. (He saved that goop for his 1970s plays and films.) Barnes makes the far graver mistake of leaving her best creation (Imani, as played by Fuller) off stage for most of the play’s second half.
MCC’s new Robert W. Wilson Space is an odd theater. To paraphrase Oscar Hammerstein II, it’s broad where it should be narrow and narrow where it should be broad. Set designer Clint Ramos works a miracle by using that Cinemascope stage to create three rooms of a Bushwick apartment, as well as a club, a public restroom, and a variety of street scenes. Seeing the 100-minute “BLKS” is to tour Brooklyn at night and wake-up wasted. But in a good way.
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