Vol. 28
No. 28
Pick Hits
At The Movies
Space Jam: An New Legacy
Superstar LeBron James and his young son,
Dom, get trapped in digital space by a rogue AI. To get
home safely, LeBron teams up with Bugs Bunny,
Daffy Duck and the rest of the Looney
Tunes gang for a high-stakes basketball game
against the AI's digitized champions of the court, a
powered-up roster called the Goon Squad. It's Tunes
versus Goons in the highest stakes challenge of his
life, that will redefine LeBron's bond with his son and
shine a light on the power of being yourself.
Stream This
Summer Of Soul (Hulu)
Part music film, part historical record created
around an epic event that celebrated Black history,
culture and fashion. Over the course of six weeks in the
summer of 1969, just one hundred miles south of
Woodstock, The Harlem Cultural Festival was
filmed in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park).
The footage was never seen and largely forgotten until
now. Summer of soul shines a light on the importance of
history to our spiritual well being and stands as a
testament to the healing power of music during times of
unrest, both past and present. The feature includes
never before seen concert performances by Stevie
Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly and the
Family Stone, Gladys Knight and the Pips,
Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, The 5th
Dimension and more.
Stream This Too
Sex/Life (Netflix)
A suburban wife and mother takes a fantasy charged trip
down memory lane that sets her present on a collision
course with her wild child past. This series explores a
topic that is usually considered a taboo, married
women's desires. Netflix already has a lot of other
series which shows married women finding passion in
another guy. But this one feels like a more realistic
depiction of it. An apologetic woman who knows what she
wants. I mean the trailer on YouTube is filled with
comments blaming the lead lady for promoting cheating
and adultery and being a threat to traditional values.
The Buzz...
For Disney, the wait definitely turned out to be worth it as its long
delayed Marvel tentpole Black Widow came storming out of
the gate with a huge $80 million opening at the North American box office,
smashing the previous pandemic-era record set by F9: The Fast Saga just
three weeks ago. While the Scarlett Johansson superhero epic also
cleaned up overseas, perhaps the second biggest surprise of the weekend was that
the secretive studio revealed that Black Widow tacked on another $60 million in
Premier Access rentals through its Disney Plus
streaming service.
Actress Taylour Paige spent a month perfecting her pole dancing
moves by working in a strip club in preparation for her lead role in new movie
Zola. The film is based on a viral Twitter thread posted online by
Detroit, Michigan waitress and former exotic dancer A’Ziah ‘Zola’ Wells
back in 2015, when she embarked on a wild road trip to Florida with a woman she
barely knew, her boyfriend, and a man who turned out to be the lady’s pimp.
Spencer, Pablo Larraín’s highly anticipated drama starring
Kristen Stewart as Lady Diana, will world premiere
in competition at the Venice Film Festival. Written by Peaky
Blinders creator Steven Knight, the film centers on a weekend
in the early 1990s when Diana decided to separate from Prince Charles
amid rumours of affairs.
Margot Robbie announced in a new interview that she’s taking a
break from Harley Quinn and the DC film universe after the
back-to-back productions of Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey and
James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. The actress currently does
not have any DC films lined up for the future.
Vertical Entertainment has signed a deal with Mister
Smith Entertainment for North American distribution rights to
romantic comedy The Hating Game, which stars Pretty
Little Liars actor Lucy Hale and Austin
Stowell, who also appeared with her in Fantasy Island.
CBS is calling on a familiar face to host television’s biggest night:
The Neighborhood star Cedric the Entertainer has
been tapped to emcee the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards in September.
Paramount Plus announced that the live action musical The J
Team will premiere on Sept. 3. The 90 minute feature-length film follows a
young girl named JoJo (Siwa) whose life is turned upside down when her
beloved dance coach Val (Laura Soltis) decides to retire and is
replaced by a sparkle hating instructor named Poppy (Tisha Campbell-Martin).
Almost two years after the Season 4 finale of Animal Kingdom , the
criminally addictive TNT drama came back with a vengeance Sunday night, teeing
up a Season 5 premiere that left three characters dead and ushered in what might
just be a whole new Pope.
The Backstreet Boys are hitting The Strip. The beloved boy band
are returning to Las Vegas for the winter season for some Christmas fun in Sin
City. It was announced on Monday that the group will be ringing in the holiday
season with A Very Backstreet Christmas Party.
Eddie Murphy’s son is dating Martin Lawrence’s
daughter. The Boomerang co-stars’ offspring, Eric Murphy
and Jasmin Lawrence, confirmed they are a couple in a selection of
sweet images of themselves together which were shared to Instagram.