This is a much more trivial thing, but part of how Roman Polanski has avoided prison for so long is because people cared more about getting to see films he has done than about the damage he has done. Although an individual not going to see a film is going to have a negligible impact I can certainly understand why…

I kind of have limited sympathy for McCarthy since her cult of dimwitted troglodytes were taken in by an actual (now former) doctor, Andrew Wakefield. They just weren’t smart enough to follow up on him and find his conflicts of interest, the flaws in his study etc. That’s still a problem if a celebrity amplifies a bad…

I’m just imagining how much better twitter would be if you had to pass an intelligence and education test before being allowed to tweet. If the tests revealed you were a total moron, your stupidity would only be visible to friends and family...

But what makes them qualified to speak? One of the smarter things I’ve heard said by a celebrity was by George Clooney years ago, and it was something to the effect of “We should move away from fossil fuels because every regime that produces them is generally bad” - that kind of thing for me is reasonable because it’s…

That’s the thing the OP gets wrong in talking about being silently anti-vax. She was publicly tweeting.

It wasn’t quiet, it was anti-vax tweets. I think in general we should stop celebrities talking about anything outside of their exact skill set, it just seems odd that we tell people to not listen to Jenny McCarthy because she is as bright as a broken lightbulb, while at the same time ask people to listen to people…

Yeah, my guess for 2 was along similar lines, but I think Depp is being backed because they see it as a test case for their awfulness and it was the first one they could get behind, rather than something inherent in him

I can give you some depressing speculation on each point

1. The trial apparently shows that women lie. It’s validation for incels. Just ignore that Depp already lost a defamation trial in a more reputable legal system that is actually more friendly to people making defamation claims.

2. Mix of convenience (if my incel…

I’d go further than that and say it needed the whole cast. Not just Will and Elizabeth, you also had Norrington as the straight laced navy commander, Barbossa as the more dangerous pirate, the Governor of the islands - between those extra perspectives it hid that Sparrow was essentially failing his way to success in a…

I think the best thing to do with the Pirates franchise would be to do a remake of Blackbeard’s Ghost but with Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa as a way to cap off the series. They were already feeling tired by the second film and yet they’ve proceeded to beat their way through the dead horse until they’re actually hitting…

To my mind, he should have become a proper villain in any kind of sequel, not this sort of vaguely ineffectual Jar Jar Binks in pirate costume. It would be interesting to see a film about pirates where they aren’t these romanticised rogues, but were properly vicious, or at least self-interested to the point where they…

I’d say the Marvel movies generally hover around the 6-8 out of 10 mark. never brilliant, just functional enough pop corn films to check your brain out for a few ours. Sort of like if Michael Bay had an at least moderate understanding of characters...

Oddly, I can think of a few at least semi commercial projects she could get involved in. There was a group of Wrens in the second world war (Women’s Royal Navy service) who helped to work out the U-boat tactics by playing games in a room in Liverpool, and would then train Navy commanders. You’d think that could likely…

There is an interesting interview with a real adult film star who is in this film who has a pretty interesting take on it. Evelyn Claire said that some of the criticisms are necessary in terms of the way some sets behaved when Ninja was researching the film, but arguably it is already dated. That’s going to be an…

I don’t think you can be a friend of a film critic and an actor and be too precious about any negative reviews. I can’t remember where I read it (I want to say The Metro, a free paper for UK commuters if you’re not from the UK), but I’m pretty sure he has this more grounded view of acting than some of the heavily…

I find it hard to hate U2. They’ve inspired the catchy and caustic Army Of Bono by Clutch, and their Star Stories episode in Channel 4 in the UK had some amazing lines of dialogue, like the Pope’s “I want to be bored ****less”

Isaacs has such a fun career, he seems to be one of those actors like John Hurt that has no qualms about taking on odd films because they’ll be a bit different. He was fantastic in Death Of Stalin

One of my favourite WW2 non-fiction books is Dynamo: Defending The Honour Of Kiev*, detailing the story of the football team formed in Kyiv under Nazi occupation. It loosely inspired the awful Escape to Victory (Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, Pele...) but if done right, I think it could be a really interesting…

If you want really wacky, the book Double Cross* features Agent Garbo, everything about his story is just nuts, starting with the fact that he tried to volunteer to join the British spies and they turned him down! You can kind of understand why - in a role that involves discretion, walking in to the embassy and…

I hate that I’m giving you a star for that information, it seems an unfair exchange for something so depressing!