TV/Film
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There’s a new villain in town.
Joker: Folie à Deux premiered at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival this week, with stars Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga as well as director Todd Phillips in attendance to celebrate the film, which officially hits theaters on Oct. 4.
Unlike the first Joker film, for which Phoenix won an Oscar for best actor and Hildur Guðnadóttir won for best original score, Joker: Folie à Deux follows Phoenix’s return as Arthur Fleck, a.k.a the Joker, who is now confined in Arkham Asylum. There, he meets Gaga’s Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, and they form a powerfully chaotic bond with the goal of causing mayhem across Gotham City. Unlike the first Joker film, the sequel includes a series of musical numbers, which is where fans see Gaga in her element.
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While critics generally applauded Gaga’s subtle yet conniving Lee, many were actually hoping to see her more in the music-filled film, deeming her “underused.” See what critics had to say about Gaga’s performance in Joker: Folie à Deux below.
“Gaga is smartly low-key, not the Harley Quinn we associate with Margot Robbie, but her own person, dressed down and believably showing affection and connection with Joker and, more important, the man behind the makeup.” – Deadline
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“The casting of Lady Gaga certainly sounded promising, because she’s a great actor, and was put on earth (among other things) to make musicals. But Gaga, who has a lovely unforced presence in Folie à Deux, is drastically underused. Her Lee never quite takes wing.” – Variety
“Lady Gaga brings a sly and manipulative malice to her role: Harley is secretive, smart and genuinely disturbed in a way that Arthur/Joker perhaps isn’t. Is she to be the Lady Macbeth of DC supervillainy?” – The Guardian
“Gaga is a compelling live-wire presence, splitting the difference between affinity and obsession, while endearingly giving Arthur a shot of joy and hope that has him singing ‘When You’re Smiling’ on his way to court.” – The Hollywood Reporter
“Gaga looks as if she’s a Manson girl who’s wandered off the set of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, and plays Harleen with an appealingly feline cruelty.” – The Independent UK
“Phillips’ decision to cast a generational superstar in a role that seems designed to maximize both her supreme talents as a singer and her all-consuming screen presence as an actress just so he can sit her in the background of a courtroom whenever he’s not cutting her musical numbers off at the knees… well, it’s a lot more criminal than anything Arthur Fleck ever does in this movie.” – IndieWire
Lady Gaga already had the ring, but now she’s got the red carpet photos with Michael Polansky to make their engagement official. While at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival to support the premiere of Joker: Folie à Deux, the 38-year-old superstar faced cameras with her fiancé by her side, marking the couple’s red carpet […]
Grotesquerie‘s arrival is less than a month away, and the official trailer for Ryan Murphy‘s upcoming drama series dropped on Wednesday (Sept. 4). In the nearly three-minute clip — which features an introduction from Travis Kelce — Niecy Nash-Betts’ character, Detective Lois Tryon, opens the clip by warning, “Something hellish is here.” She tries to get […]
Kaytranada, Ravyn Lenae and Channel Tres brought serious swagger to The Late Show With Stephen Colbert while performing a two-track medley on Tuesday (Sept. 3).
The night’s musical performance started with Kaytra and a crew of dancers turning up the energy on stage before Lenae delivered her silky vocals on “Pressure,” the opening track from Kaytranada’s June album, Timeless. The dancers then drop it for the camera, before Tres bounds on stage to deliver his own Timeless collab, “Drip Sweat.”
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In a highlight, Kaytra comes out from behind the decks to do a choreographed dance alongside Tres and the dancers, drawing a cheer from the crowd.
The late-night guest spot comes ahead of the 15-date Timeless tour Kaytranada and Tres are embarking on later this month. The run starts in Vancouver, B.C., on Sept. 15, then hits venues across the U.S. and Canada before closing with a Nov. 15 performance at the Desert Air festival in Palm Springs, Calif.
“When the Kaytranada tour offer came it was just like, ‘Wow, this is exactly what I need right now,’ Tres recently told Billboard. “I was excited to go on tour by myself, but then I was like, ‘Nah, Kaytranada and I together on a tour is just going to be the biggest dance party of the year.’”
“[My team and I] are so locked in to capitalize on the things I’ve already done,” he continued. “My routine is better. Me and creative partner, we’ve gotten better. I’m open to learning, but I’m also coming with fire. I’ve been rehearsing, and I’m honing in on things I haven’t before. Even if it’s just a dance move I want to add to my repertoire. I’ve been watching a lot of Broadway shows like The Wiz. Now I’m walking around in the house, but I’m doing it in a Broadway fashion.”
Watch the Late Show performance below:
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There may be singing, dancing and eye-catching numbers in Joker: Folie à Deux, but Lady Gaga wouldn’t call it a musical. While speaking at the Venice International Film Festival Wednesday (Sept. 4) about the upcoming sequel — in which she makes her debut as Harley Quinn opposite Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck — the pop star […]
In Joker: Folie à Deux, Lady Gaga‘s Harley Quinn loves Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck exactly the way he is — ’cause baby, he was born this way.
One month ahead of the premiere of Todd Phillips’ Joker sequel, Warner Brothers dropped a new teaser showcasing how the pop superstar’s character enables the iconic DC Comics villain’s descent into madness. In the 30-second clip, Phoenix cackles while sitting in the back of a police car, standing in the rain at a facility and, at one point, attacking a judge in a courtroom, the volume of his creepy laughter slowly increasing throughout.
“He’s a monster,” an unseen voice says, while another adds, “This is a very disturbed individual.”
But as Joker is swarmed with press and adoring fans, Gaga counters, “He’s not sick! He’s perfect.”
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Set to hit theaters Oct. 4, Folie à Deux will show Fleck awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. While institutionalized, he meets Quinn, and the pair embark on a chaotic musical journey that leaves viewers wondering what’s real and what’s imagined.
In a full-length trailer posted in July, for instance, the two characters waltz to Frank Sinatra’s “When You’re Smiling” in glamorous outfits before taking the stage of a 1960s-esque variety show, both wearing their signature clown face paint. “I got the sneaking suspicion we’re not giving the people what they want,” Joker says into an old-fashioned microphone in the trailer, to which Quinn replies, “It’s OK, baby — let’s give the people what they want.”
The teaser comes a couple weeks after Gaga dropped “Die With a Smile” with Bruno Mars, her first proper single since 2022’s “Hold My Hand” from the Top Gun: Maverick soundtrack. The duet debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Watch Gaga enable Joker as Harley Quinn below.
While Omar Apollo might be known for stealing hearts through his songs, the singer says that his upcoming role in a new film saw him stealing a scene alongside a former 007. In a new story for Interview Magazine, Apollo interviewed Drew Starkey, his co-star in the upcoming Luca Guadagnino film Queer. At one point, […]
Britney Spears is hinting at her involvement in an upcoming film project — but it’s not her biopic.
On Friday (Aug. 30), the 42-year-old pop superstar shared a cryptic message on social media amid hype that actress Emma Roberts is interested in portraying Spears in the biopic adaptation of the singer’s best-selling memoir, The Woman in Me.
“The project I might be doing isn’t a biopic story … it’s a fictional musical where I play an extremely intelligent character !!!,” Spears wrote on Instagram alongside an illustration of a girl hovering over a pair of cats.
She added, “It’s flattering to be in such good company like Jon Chu !!!”
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Following a bidding war, Universal Pictures reportedly won the rights to adapt the pop princess’ best-selling book into a film. The Woman in Me chronicles Spears’ rise to fame, her relationship with fellow child star Justin Timberlake — which included her getting pregnant and having an abortion during their time together — as well as her life under a highly restrictive 13-year conservancy.
Wicked director Jon M. Chu and Marc Platt are leading the film’s development, according to Variety. Spears also took to X (formerly Twitter) in early August to reveal that she’s been working on a “secret project” with Platt.
“Excited to share with my fans that I’ve been working on a secret project with #MarcPlatt. He’s always made my favorite movies … stay tuned,” Spears wrote.
No casting or timeframe has been announced for the biopic at press time.
In a recent interview with Cosmopolitan, Roberts was asked about headlines in which Spears’ longtime assistant, Felicia Culotta, pitched the Space Cadet actress, 33, as the perfect actress to portray the “…Baby One More Time” hitmaker in the biopic.
“I was like, I love her assistant. I mean, it’s my true dream to play Britney Spears,” Roberts said of Culotta’s TMZ interview, in which she suggested that Emma’s child star roles on Nickelodeon shows such as Unfabulous were a good parallel to Brit’s younger years on The All-New Mickey Mouse Club.
“It’s a rumor, but I hope maybe it’ll come true. I mean, I remember I locked myself in my room and listened to [2003’s] In the Zone and said, ‘I cannot leave this room until I memorize every word,’” Roberts said.
See Spears’ “fictional musical” teaser post on Instagram here.
Olivia Rodrigo and Louis Partridge look smitten with one another in new photos from Venice, Italy, where the couple attended festivities together at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
Fresh off of the second U.S. leg of her Guts Tour, the “Obsessed” singer-songwriter spent the weekend publicly supporting Partridge at the premiere of his upcoming Apple TV+ limited series Disclaimer, an Alfonso Cuarón-directed psychological thriller starring Cate Blanchett.
As The Hollywood Reporter notes, the Venice Film Fest marked Rodrigo and Partridge’s debut as a couple at an “official” event.
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They didn’t do a typical red carpet launch at Palazzo del Cinema for Disclaimer‘s Venice premiere on Thursday (Aug. 30), but together they attended a cocktail reception at the Hotel Excelsior, as a well as a post-screening reception at Palazzina Grassi.
They posed together and were captured in candid moments in select photos that hit the wires from the Venice events, with the actor adorably kissing the top of Rodrigo’s head for one cute photo opp. At another point, Partridge was seen photographing Rodrigo with his own camera.
Eric Charbonneau/Apple TV+ via Getty Images
THR reports Rodrigo was spotted taking a cell phone video of her beau while Disclaimer received a warm, standing ovation at Venice’s Sala Grande cinema. When Partridge took his seat among the show’s cast, he turned to look at Rodrigo; she mimed a sweet kiss in his direction.
Over the weekend Partridge also shared a romantic image from Venice of the couple hand-in-hand, and gazing at one another, via a temporary Instagram Story.
Rumors that Rodrigo and Partridge were dating began to swirl in October 2023, and two months later it seemed the romance was real, thanks to a PDA-filled moment at a gas station. In June, Rodrigo called the Enola Holmes actor “angel boy” in a sweet happy birthday message on Instagram.
Disclaimer, adapted for Apple Studios from the Renée Knight novel of the same name, has Partridge in the role of Jonathan Brigstocke in an ensemble cast featuring Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Lesley Manville, Leila George and Hoyeon. The first two episodes are set for an Oct. 11 release on Apple’s streaming service, followed by new episodes every Friday.
Rodrigo, currently on a short break from her world tour, returns to the Guts stage Sept. 15 in Bangkok.
Charli XCX has officially snagged another second major film role. The “Apple” superstar has been cast in director and writer Gregg Araki’s film, I Want Your Sex, per Variety. She joins the film’s lead actors Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman. Details of Charli’s character are currently unknown to the public. The Brat singer will also […]