The answer to the last one was that the blackout played a bigger role in the stage musical—in it, the blackout led to concerns about looting (especially for Usnavi), so there’s a much greater sense of danger at that point. The movie decided not to include those scenes because they felt much more political in the…

I like popcorn flicks, but most of the MCU aren’t even particularly well-executed popcorn flicks. I was just watching the trailer for Black Widow and thinking about how ugly and visually incohesive most of it was. There were just so many missed opportunities to make it visually interesting or spectacular, even though…

WADA only bans marijuana on race days. My understanding is that they don’t randomly drug test for it, just at competitions (which is where Sha’carri failed hers). And their limit is pretty high, much higher than most workplace drug tests—you basically either need to be a daily smoker or need to have smoked within a…

The WADA limit for weed is pretty high (pun unintended)—150 ng/mL—so it’s several times higher than most workplace drug tests. So you pretty much have to either be a daily smoker or get caught within a day or two of when you smoked in order to fail it.

If it helps, the banjo was invented by black people.

It’s already happened, and barely made the news here. Lots of unmarked graves were found at Chemawa in 2016, for example. Deb Haaland just authorized an investigation that include scanning for unmarked graves, so I’ll bet we’ll see more. It will probably be more high-profile news this time around.

A lot of artists in that range make most of their money from endorsements and merchandising—see, for example, Jessica Simpson, who made almost no money from actual music, but managed to parlay that name recognition into many successful product lines that made her millions. Britney obviously hasn’t been in demand for…

I don’t think MC Hammer was ever worth $500 million, was he? I just googled and the highest number I found was that he managed to blow through $70 million in a few years when he was at his peak fame, which is definitely a lot, but not $500 million.

The interesting part is that the New York Times article notes that she can! But hadn’t. (In today’s hearing, she said that she didn’t know she was allowed to until recently.)

It’s gotten better in some ways. The fact that Chrissy Teigen’s bullying of Courtney Stodden is now getting pushback is one example of how it’s changed—that kind of thing was (unfortunately) extremely normalized at the time. That’s why it’s taken almost ten years to catch up to her, even though she was already a…

Daphne Rubin-Vega’s mom is a black Latina and her dad is white.

Vanessa’s nationality isn’t specified in either the Broadway musical or the movie, as far as I remember. (Definitely Latina, but nothing more specific than that.) Usnavi and his family are explicitly Dominican, Nina’s family and (I think) Daniela are Puerto Rican, Paula is Cuban, and Benny is African-American.

Honestly, I think her experiences in film are a huge part of why she’s reacting the way she did. She spent a huge portion of her career in black-, brown- and even yellowface, being forced to take smaller parts than she deserved, because the big ones weren’t getting made. Miranda has done a lot of work to make it so…

I actually included it in the original post, but Kinja’s messing up links lately, so I took it out. Hopefully this works:

Costello has a long history of racism, design theft, and general unprofessionalism (also, now sexual harassment!), and he’s now trying to whitewash his rep by throwing Teigen under the bus. (I don’t know if the screenshot he referenced was faked or not, but it’s by no means the only time he was accused of using racial…

You’re conflating two separate concepts here. “White passing” just means that when somebody looks at her, there’s a reasonable chance they think she’s white. “Passing for white” means they’re actively covering up their heritage and pretending to be white. They’re different things. Nobody accused her of doing the…

Yeah, Collins has said exactly what her inspirations were—gladiator arenas, the Iraq War, reality TV and television marketing—and all of those influences are obvious in the work. Aside from the central premise, there are very few similarities between Battle Royale and Hunger Games, so if it was an influence, it was…

She talked a bit about stepping back for a while and working less on purpose, and she also filmed a couple things pre-pandemic that were delayed in coming out, but will this year or next. One’s opposite DiCaprio--so I think her career’s fine and she’ll be back. Just on pause for now.

It feels like there are dueling narratives here and one has overtaken the other. The first, which is definitely true, is that Hill was a victim of revenge porn and other abuse from her former partner. The second, which seems to have gotten lost beneath the weight of the first narrative, is that Hill was accused of…

Counterpoint: every time a Chloe Zhao makes a movie like this, she gains the name recognition, prestige and connections to make three more movies like she wants to make—and often the money and sway to fund other people’s films that she’d like to see get made. Judas and the Black Messiah exists because Ryan Coogler…