The members of the 1980s boy band New Edition – Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, Bobby Brown, Ronnie DeVoe, Johnny Gill, and Ralph Tresvant – just received their star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame today and proved that they in fact can ‘Stand the Rain’.
The post 80s Supergroup New Edition Get Their Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame appeared first on The WOW Report.
In a special “Skin Wars” panel from RuPaul’s DragCon 2016 drag queens MILK, Alyssa Edwards, Laganja Estranja and Yara Sofia join Skin Wars judge Robin Slonina and season 3 contestant Michael Mejia on everything behind the scenes form the iconic drag themed episodes!
C’MON Skin Wars let’s get SICKENING!
The post MILK, Laganja Estranja, Yara Sofia and Alyssa Edwards “Skin Wars” Panel @ RuPaul’s DragCon appeared first on The WOW Report.
Sometimes actor and full-time fly motherf***er, Shia LaBeouf, is known for being passionate. I mean, who could ever forget his flawless video where he shouts (literally), “DO IT” over and over again? And you know what, I did do it. At Saturday’s historic Women’s March on Washington, LaBeouf held a lifestream Anti-Trump protest “He Will Not Divide Us” and a white supremacist yelled “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” Do you think LaBeouf gave it to him? If you answered “Hell Yeah,” than you are correct.
Watch his epic take-down here:
White supremacist yells into the camera and Shia LaBeouf shuts him down. This has been a very interesting live stream. #HeWillNotDivideUs pic.twitter.com/CqY9pLobWi
— #HeWillNotDivideUs (@HWNDUS) January 23, 2017
This post is approved by:
The post WATCH NOW: Shia LaBeouf Isn’t Here For White Supremacy At His Anti-Trump Livestream appeared first on The WOW Report.
LGBTQIA icon Miley Cyrus is known for speaking out on human rights, resource access, animal rights, and social injustices, so it was no surprise when we saw her killing it at the Women’s March in Los Angeles this past Saturday, January 21st. Here’s five times she literally SLAYED it at the Anti-Trump protest.
Check it out:
5) She started the LA March at Pershing Square alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.
Um…can you say #SquadGoals?
4) Her signage was cute AF.
She didn’t rock one, but two different signs in support of Planned Parenthood.
3) Her whole staff from Happy Hippie came (which shows she hires people who give a f***).
4) This picture of her and Jamie Lee Curtis is rad.
5) Her speech was powerful and proved that her ideologies are bigger than her stellar star persona:
Follow her Instagram to see all the major moments from the Women’s March LA.
The post 5 Times Miley Cyrus Killed It At The Women’s March In Los Angeles appeared first on The WOW Report.
Katie Couric stopped by the Ellen Degeneres show to discuss Gender Revolution; National Geographic‘s and World of Wonder Production’s moving collaboration about gender and identity. It premieres on February 6th at 9PM E.T. Highlighting the triumphs, struggles, and journeys of intersex, trans, and gender non-conforming, this documentary will reveal and relate the human condition: that we all want equal rights. Yesterday, Entertainment Weekly released a teaser trailer and today, they’ve released an extended version.
Check out their enlightening discussion:
Check out the trailer here:
The post #GenderRevolution: Katie Couric Visits The Ellen Show To Discuss Her Compelling Gender & Identity Documentary appeared first on The WOW Report.
RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 7 alum, Pearl, is known for beating a flawless mug. (Who could ever forget her entrance look with the painted on neck beard?!) She teamed up with Elle Magazine for their ABOUT FACE campaign where she shared why make-up is important to her and how it continues to bring beauty into her life.
Check it out:
The post Pearl: “Make-Up Brings People And Love Into My Life.” appeared first on The WOW Report.
Supermodel Hanne Gaby Odiele from Kortrijk, Belgium told USA Today in an exclusive video that she was born intersex and wants to “break the taboo.”
Hanne revealed to USA Today that she “was born with an intersex trait known as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) in which a woman has XY chromosomes more typically found in men. She also had internal, undescended testes, and her parents were told that if she did not have her testicles removed ‘I might develop cancer and I would not develop as a normal, female girl.'”
She said:
It is very important to me in my life right now to break the taboo. At this point, in this day and age, it should be perfectly all right to talk about this. I am proud to be intersex, but very angry that these surgeries are still happening.
Good for you, Hanne Gaby Odiele! Read the full article from USA Today.
The post LGBTQI: Model Hanne Gaby Odiele Wants to ‘Break the Taboo’ and Reveals She is Intersex appeared first on The WOW Report.
Courtney Act, Season 6 finalist of RuPaul’s Drag Race, is back on the beat as political correspondent for Australian pop culture site Junkee. Check her out on The American Act series where she interviews supporters and protesters of Donald Trump at the Inauguration about Planned Parenthood and Trump’s tweets… and activists for women’s rights, climate change, and LGBTQ rights at the Women’s March…you just might be surprised at who some of these people are, and what they had to say.
The post Watch Courtney Act Interview Peeps at Trump Inauguration vs Women’s March on Washington appeared first on The WOW Report.
Lifetime has released the first trailer for Britney Ever After, their take on the life and times of the one and only Ms. Britney Spears. Not sure what I think of it, but of course I’ll be watching when it premieres on the channel on FebRUary 18!
The post Watch the First Trailer for Lifetime’s ‘Britney Ever After’! appeared first on The WOW Report.
Savannah’s Reflection:
Friday January 20th and frankly the night before, were not good days for me. I felt numb, depressed, and angered as the days’ headlines rolled along. I tried to get to bed early since I knew I would be marching the next morning, but my sleep was spotty and I couldn’t shut off the terror in my mind.
The Los Angeles Women’s March was the first time in long time I have not only felt at peace of mind, but physically felt myself become a beacon of hope. A solid team of WOW members met up near work to travel downtown to the start of the march so that we could protest as a team. We quickly discovered that all the trains were overpacked, so we all hopped into separate ubers to reconvene.
As we arrived in downtown we met up at the historic Walt Disney Concert Hall to buddy up and venture into the feminine abyss. The march simply put, was an amazing historical event that I will never forget. I’m a lesbian who went to an all-girl Catholic high school, so being around lots of women isn’t new to me, but this march felt different. I kept exclaiming to my friend, “I’ve never been surrounded by so many women before”, and while that may not be succinct statement, what I really was trying to say, was that I had never been in a safe space where I had been around so many DIVERSE and DIFFERENT women.
Women from all wakes of life marched around me as I began to feel the most secure and encouraged then I have in a long time. With LA’s sister march being the most colossal, I felt a sense of pride and privilege. This march reminded me that one, I am very lucky to be living in an area with so many like-minded people who understand the implications of this election. The second realization, was that LA lives in a bubble. While there were 750,000 people marching for Women’s rights in LA that enormous number was not replicated in Middle America, and that’s something we all need to be aware of.
If 750,000 people can march in solidarity for a honorable cause, there’s no doubt in my mind that we can’t use that figure of people to guide influence into areas of ignorance.
[Photos by Dominic Wendel]
Jake’s Reflections:
The combination of blasting “Formation” on repeat from your Toyota Corolla with a Venti in one hand, and the other steering the wheel to the Women’s March is the most giddy sensation I’ve felt in a long time I’ve had since pre-2016. Part adrenaline, part sleep deprivation, there’s a lot of planning that goes into a protest: which color beret should I don? Will my cordless rechargeable phone battery last for more than two hours? How many water bottles is too many? And in the end, like life, nothing went the way I planned it (and I wouldn’t want it to have been any other way!)
I organized a large group of WOWers to meet in Hollywood and the setting felt much like in the first chapter of Harry Potter & The Sorceror’s Stone. You know, when the wizarding world is partying over the victory of Voldemort? Only instead of emerald robes in the non-wizarding world, you could spot who were magic folk by all the fabulous protest posters. We had to ditch the whole subway thing because in retrospect, the public transportation in Los Angeles isn’t equipped for three quarters of a million people going back and forth from 9AM-5PM in one day. Once we got our uber close enough, we started to see more wizards with posters and told our driver we’d walk the rest of the way.
As we waited for the official start of the march (which was lead by Jamie Lee Curtis, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Miley Cyrus), I remember a sense of sereneness pour over me as I saw all walks of life: women of color, children, LGBTQIA, men, friends I hadn’t seen in awhile, co-workers, dogs even, with all their colorful t-shirts and beautiful posters. I just inhaled and exhaled and was reminded that the America I believe in, was submerged all around me behind my wildest dreams and expectations for the day and for my future, and it’s more comfort than I’ve felt since November Eighth.
I ran into four separate groups of friends though out the march and every stranger I encountered became a new symbol of love, compassion, and friendship because the energy and optimism radiating from them made me just want to give it back ten times as much. I saw Ricki Lake (she looks amazing) and Rumor Willis taking selfies with people in costumes. After an excruciating long wait on the train platform back (even the train conductor said he was proud of all of us) the positive vibes kept coming. My group of friends and I went to the furthest stop on the red line (North Hollywood) and every person at every restaurant, bar, and cafe had been at the March, so it was like Part Two of the resistance party where we were met from hugs, compliments, and extra margaritas from bar patrons alike.
My take away from the day is to infuse that sense of pride, understanding, and openness in my every day life and apply it to my civic duty, my responsibility to continue to create change, and rebuild my soul and remind others that they can too, after November Eighth.
[Photos by Angel Alzona]
The post Reflections from the LA Women’s March appeared first on The WOW Report.
Are you ready to rehash the grit, gore and glory of one of the most famed Olympic scandals (Not to mention the crowbar at Nationals in 1994) of the 1990s? Director Craig Gillespie is.
Insert the upcoming bio-pic I, Tonya featuring Margot Robbie who has ditched her pigtails and hotpants for a good ‘ole pair of 90s Jordache Jean’s realness to portray the triple axel queen, Tonya Harding.
First images of Margot Robbie on the set of 'I, Tonya'! pic.twitter.com/Kue1tYovpl
— best of margot (@badpostmargots) January 16, 2017
Margot Robbie and actor Sebastian Stan on the set of 'I, Tonya' ❤️ pic.twitter.com/v26pzMXUPn
— best of margot (@badpostmargots) January 23, 2017
As the cast continues to grow (Caitlin Carver as Harding’s American rival Nancy Kerrigan), we continue to scream in delight, especially for the queen of all queens Allison Janney to play Tonya’s mother.
but can Margot Robbie nail a triple axel? We’ll have to wait and see.
The post As the Cast of “I, Tonya” Grows, We All Scream for Ice Queens. appeared first on The WOW Report.
Aaron Neville
Daniel Auteuil
Ed Helms
Frankie Grande
Gennifer Flowers
Jade Ewen
Jerry Maren
Jools Holland
Kenya Moore
Kristen Schaal
Kyle Brandt
Mary Lou Retton
Matthew Lillard
Mischa Barton
Nasstassja Kinski
Neil Diamond
Nicole Lenz
Tatyana Ali
Yakov Smirnoff
The post January 24th: It’s YOUR Birthday, Bitch! appeared first on The WOW Report.
January 24, 76- Hadrian
He was a bigot and he built a huge wall, but he was gay and he loved his men. He was born Publius Aelius Hadrianus in Italica, in what is now Spain. When he 41-years-old he became, the third of the Five Good Roman Emperors, after the death of Trajan who was his cousin.
His reign was marked by a time of relative peace, except for that darn second Roman-Jewish War, after which he became violently Anti-Semitic. Even without constantly being at war, Hadrain was able to extend the Roman Empire from North Africa to Northern England, Portugal to Persia.
There is a wall that bears his name at the border of Scotland and England, made to keep out those immigrants. Hadrian oversaw several colossal building projects in his lifetime, including The Pantheon, which he rebuilt after a fire destroyed the original, and what was once the largest temple in Roma, The Temple Of Venus. He was a real job creator.
He traveled all over the known world, but he rarely saw his wife. It was okay though, he much preferred the culture of Athens instead of Rome, embracing a love of young men. His greatest love was Antinous, whom he met as a 14 year old in Turkey. After Antinous drowned in the River Nile at 19-years-old, Hadrian’s tributes to him included having him deified, founding a city near where the boy drowned and naming it Antinopolis, commissioning 2,000 naked or partially clothed statues of the beautiful teenager for display throughout the empire, building a temple to him at his swanky palace in Tivoli, and put Antonous’ likeness on money, the only non-Roman Emperor ever honored with his face on a coin.
Antinous
The Cult Of Antinous was extremely popular with a certain kind of guy throughout the Roman Empire and it flourished until it was condemned for being based on an “immoral relationship” and suppressed by the new Catholic Church. Hadrian had no children, but in his final year, he adopted a 51-year-old muscle daddy and renamed him Antoninus Pius, just so he could have an heir.
Hadrian inherited the Roman Empire at its apex, when it prospered on a policy of endless expansion and conquests.
The first thing he did, within hours of his coronation, was to withdraw Roman troops from Mesopotamia (now Iraq), and fortify the Empire’s boundaries by building that huge wall in Northern England and others too, one in the Danube Valley and one along the Rhine.
Hadrian was no ordinary emperor; he was openly gay. His boyfriend, Antinous, accompanied him on his journeys around the Empire. There are still many artifacts to tell their story, including a poem written on papyrus, featuring the two men hunting together, and new finds of memorials to him at Hadrian’s penthouse in Tivoli.
It was not uncommon in that era for a powerful man to have a male lover and a wife. He had to marry; he had a politically arranged marriage to Sabina, who was his great-niece, just so he could set up his succession. But, it was a loveless marriage and it produced no children. Hadrian was unique because he made his love “official” in a way that no other Emperor ever had; he publicly deified him.
Hadrian’s gayness was by no means the only unusual aspect of his reign. The decision to pull his troops out of Mesopotamia was frowned upon in an Empire that had built its might on an aggressive foreign policy, but Hadrian’s charisma and classic Roman good-looks won over the citizens. There were similarities between second-century Mesopotamia and present-day Iraq, with the Roman occupiers finding themselves in a hotbed of violence, resistance and religious extremism. It had just been conquered by his predecessor and there was a lot of guerrilla warfare, which is eerily just like today. Hadrian was a very experienced military leader, but he was very cultured and he had a Greek identity that set him apart from most Romans.
He was known as “The People’s King”. He traveled with his troops and ate the same rations. Among his legacies, he laid the foundations of the Byzantine Empire and he changed the name of Judea to Palestine. But, at times, Hadrian’s Rome had to play the role of violent occupier. During the suppression of a Jewish rebellion in Judea, Roman warriors were dispatched to take control of the region, killing 600,000 Jews. It is possible that as a punishment, he changed the name of Judea to Palestine.
A bronze head of Hadrian was discovered in the Thames in 1834, and in 2008, the British Museum allowed it travel to both ends of Hadrian’s Wall as part of a special exhibit. The head comes from a statue that was erected in a public square in London 122 AD to commemorate Hadrian’s first visit to Britain.
Antinopolis was a beautiful city named for a beautiful young man. It was filled with white marble temples, monuments and streets laid out on a grid pattern and adorned with hundreds of images of Antinous, now a god. A giant arch welcomed travelers arriving by boat at the marble docks. Broad streets with expensive boutiques and sumptuous condos led to a central intersection, where a colossal gilded statue of Antinous “coming forth” towered above the square. A north-south boulevard was matched by another going east-west which ran the length of the city, linking the Tomb of Antinous at one end with the Boylesque Theater at the other. Outside the city walls, on a dusty plain with an enormous Hippodrome that dominated the view.
Hadrian directed that cities throughout the Empire would hold festivals and games to commemorate Antinous. In addition to the statues and busts of Antinous (more than 100 still survive), countless reliefs, medals, cameos and gems were crafted to honor Hadrian’s young lover. Private shrines dedicated to Antinous sprang from Britain to North Africa. Priests of Antinous were appointed to perform the ceremonies that would perpetuate his memory for all eternity.
The competitors in the Antonous Games were young men called Ephebes. The festivals included swimming and boat races in the Nile, but the Antinous Games were unique because they included competition in the Arts also. The big winner was consecrated as the living embodiment of Antinous and given special Antinopolis citizenship, with an all-expenses-paid-for-life adoration. He worshiped in the temple as the representative of Antinous, the essence of youth and masculinity. This image of Antinous was the last great ancient type of young male perfection, and his cult lasted for several hundred years, well into the Christian era.
Hadrian and Antinous Together Forever
Hadrian died in the year 138 AD, taken by a broken heart at 62-year-old. In 218 AD, the Roman Emperor Elagabalus married a man named Zoticus, a hot jock from Smyrna, in a lavish public ceremony in Rome, amid much public celebration.
When the Empire was ultimately overrun by Muslims, the city was abandoned and vanished from history. When the ruins of were discovered in 1798 by Napoleon’s team of archaeologists, 1,500 statues of Antinous were discovered. They found over half a million jars containing offerings to his shrine. Unfortunately, the ruins of Antinopolis were lost in the early 19th century when an Egyptian construction company ground most of the city’s remaining pillars for cement.
However, the story of Hadrian and Antinous was inadvertently preserved by the Catholic Church in the Vatican’s documents denouncing paganism. The beautiful sculptures and images of Antinous were carefully buried underground by their fans to protect them from destruction. Hundreds of years later, the statues were unearthed and hailed as magnificent treasures. Some are currently displayed in the Vatican, Louvre, The British Museum and Fitzwilliam and Altes Museum in Berlin.
Frederick The Great Of Prussia, whose gayness failed to be eliminated by harsh treatment by his father, copied Hadrian’s palace at Tivoli when he built his own villa, the Sans Souci. Frederick used busts of Antinous as a subtle code for his own gay desires.
Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli is now a landfill, although there is a campaign through the United Nations’ UNESCO to preserve the ruins. Today not much remains of Antinopolis. It is now called El Sheikh Ibada, a small mud village surrounded by crumbled ruins of what was once a beautiful city of gay worship. There is a Church of The Sacred Cultus of Antinous in Hollywood, and a gay strip club in Fort Lauderdale, Hadrian’s.
The post #BornThisDay: Roman Emperor, Hadrian appeared first on The WOW Report.
I’ll admit, I didn’t watch. Seeing Triumph the Insult Comic Dog at the inaugural is the only thing that could make me stomach this day or this crowd. As he said,
“Yes, if a Walmart could vomit, this is what you’d get…
There is increased security and police all over. It takes a lot of people to make sure Melania doesn’t run away.“
Conan O’Brien just unleashed him in D.C. to poop all over the new administration and Trump‘s supporters.
Watch.
The post #InaugUrination17: Triumph Makes Trump’s Travesty in D.C. Into a Big Joke! Watch appeared first on The WOW Report.
/>So, you know what net neutrality is? Net neutrality is the idea that all web traffic, no matter from which sites, must be treated equally by internet service providers like Verizon and AT&T.
Because Trump had supposedly gotten rid of the White House call center yesterday and he continues to manipulate the truth on the daily, last night I was speculating that net neutrality was in his crosshairs.
Today, I see that reports are saying that Trump’s pick for Chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, is a disastrous force against a free and inexpensive internet. He is against net neutrality.
Internet providers could put certain sites in “fast lanes” and “slow lanes.” Sites that pay fees to these providers will be slotted into the fast lane, while sites that can’t afford to pay will be slow to access and hard to load.
Pai will be in a position at the FCC to get rid of net neutrality, with rich corporate telecom companies being the only ones who will benefit. This would be not so good, to put it mildly.
Consumer advocate expert Harold Feld says,
“First off, the web could get more expensive. Websites would probably pass on to consumers the costs of paying for high-speed access.
It could become difficult to view certain websites owned by companies that can’t afford to pay for access to an internet fast last. Consumers may start choosing their internet providers based on which websites they like to visit.”
Trump campaigned on wanting to help the average working class American get ahead. But abolishing net neutrality will hurt the working class while simultaneously giving boatloads of cash to powerful corporations – you know, the “Swamp” that Trump wanted to drain.
The companies that want to overturn net neutrality? IBM, Cisco, Verizon, Nokia, and AT&T. These BIG corporations give BIG political donations to Republicans, and now they want the return on their investment.
What was Pai’s old job? He used to be a lawyer for Verizon, so you know he’s going to give them what they want by getting rid of net neutrality, if he can.
Bad news, kids. Very bad news for the internet and where we meet up. (via Learn Progress)
The post #NetNeutrality: If Trump’s New FCC Head Gets His Way, Your Internet Freedom Will Disappear… appeared first on The WOW Report.
This morning, the Academy released its list of Oscar nominees for 2017, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel on February 26.
La La Land took the expected lead with 14 nominations, which ties it for the most Oscar nods ever. Best picture included nine nominees like the box-office hit Hidden Figures, which is the story of black women who worked at NASA, received multiple nominations including in best picture and best adapted screenplay.
My picks for winners? La La Land will more or less sweep, unless that backlash really sets in. But Casey Affleck might beat out Ryan Gosling for Best Actor and Natalie Portman might surprise us all. Viola Davis with nab Best Supporting Actress and Mahershala Ali just might take Best Supporting Actor home.
Here’s a list of the major nominees. For a full list, go here.
Best Picture
“Arrival”
“Hacksaw Ridge”
“La La Land”
“Hidden Figures”
“Lion”
“Manchester by the Sea”
“Hell or High Water”
“Moonlight”
“Fences”
Best Actor
Casey Affleck – “Manchester by the Sea”
Andrew Garfield – “Hacksaw Ridge”
Ryan Gosling – “La La Land”
Viggo Mortensen – “Captain Fantastic”
Denzel Washington – “Fences”
Best Actress
Isabelle Huppert – “Elle”
Ruth Negga – “Loving”
Natalie Portman – “Jackie”
Emma Stone – “La La Land”
Meryl Streep – “Florence Foster Jenkins”
Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Mahershala Ali – “Moonlight”
Lucas Hedges – “Manchester by the Sea”
Jeff Bridges – “Hell or High Water”
Dev Patel – “Lion”
Michael Shannon – “Nocturnal Animals”
Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Viola Davis – “Fences”
Naomie Harris – “Moonlight”
Nicole Kidman – “Lion”
Octavia Spencer – “Hidden Figures”
Michelle Williams – “Manchester by the Sea”
No nomination for Amy Adams in “Arrival”
Cinematography
“Arrival”
“La La Land”
“Lion”
“Moonlight”
“Silence”
Documentary Feature
“Fire at Sea”
“I Am Not Your Negro”
“Life Animated”
“13th”
“O.J.: Made in America”
Directing
“Arrival”
“Hacksaw Ridge”
“La La Land”
“Manchester by the Sea”
“Moonlight”
Production Design
“Arrival”
“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”
“Hail, Caesar!”
“La La Land”
“Passengers”
Visual Effects
“Deepwater Horizon”
“Doctor Strange”
“The Jungle Book”
“Kubo and the Two Strings”
“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”
Costume Design
“Allied”
“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”
“Jackie”
“La La Land”
“Florence Foster Jenkins”
Animated Feature
“Kubo and the Two Strings”
“Moana”
“My Life as a Zucchini”
“The Red Turtle”
“Zootopia”
Original Song
Audition (The Fools Who Dream) – “La La Land”
Can’t Stop the Feeling – “Trolls”
City of Stars – “La La Land”
The Empty Chair – “Jim: The James Foley Story”
How Far I’ll Go – “Moana”
The post #Oscars17: And the Nominees Are… appeared first on The WOW Report.
In a new in-deth interview in Rolling Stone, Michael Jackson‘s daughter Paris get personal and opens up about her famous Dad…
Paris blames Dr. Conrad Murray – who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in her father’s death – for the dependency on the anesthetic drug propofol that led to it. She calls him “the ‘doctor,'” with satirical air quotes. But she has darker suspicions about her father’s death.
“He would drop hints about people being out to get him,” she says.
“And at some point he was like, ‘They’re gonna kill me one day.’j” (Lisa Marie Presley told Oprah Winfrey of a similar conversation with Michael, who expressed fears that unnamed parties were targeting him to get at his half of the Sony/ATV music-publishing catalog, worth hundreds of millions.)
Paris is convinced that her dad was, somehow, murdered. “Absolutely,” she says.
“Because it’s obvious. All arrows point to that. It sounds like a total conspiracy theory and it sounds like bullshit, but all real fans and everybody in the family knows it. It was a setup. It was bullshit.”But who would have wanted Michael Jackson dead? Paris pauses for several seconds, maybe considering a specific answer, but just says, “A lot of people.” Paris wants revenge, or at least justice. “Of course,” she says, eyes glowing.
“I definitely do, but it’s a chess game. And I am trying to play the chess game the right way. And that’s all I can say about that right now.”
Michael had his kids wear masks in public, a protective move Paris considered “stupid” but later came to understand. So it made all the more of an impression when a brave little girl spontaneously stepped to the microphone at her dad’s televised memorial service, on July 7th, 2009.
“Ever since I was born. Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine, and I just wanted to say I love him so much.“
For the full interview, check out the latest Rolling Stone here.
(Photos, David LaChapelle; via Rolling Stone)
The post Paris Jackson Says Her Father Michael Was Murdered, “Everybody in the Family Knows It” appeared first on The WOW Report.
The Oscar nominations were announced this morning and the internet is cheering, booing, and falling somewhere in between on all the nods and snubs. New Now Next released their list of “7 Queer Films That Should Have Been Nominated For An Oscar This Year” and HBO and World of Wonder’s “Mapplethrope: Look At The Pictures” made the cut alongside Molly Shannon’s “Other People.”
Check out the full list:
Best Actress: Molly Shannon in “Other People”
![Other People]( "Other People")
Other PeopleSaturday Night Live writer Chris Kelly turned the death of his mother from cancer in a gripping, gut-wrenching and, yes, funny, film about moving back home to take care of an ailing parent. Kelly’s dialog is so natural, you can forget the specter of death is only a few frames away.
SNL veteran Molly Shannon shows amazing depth and subtlty as Joanne, a vivacious and funny wife, mother and schoolteacher fighting the ravages and humiliations of terminal cancer—and coming to grips with the fact that she probably won’t win. Playing someone who is dying—and dying nobly, at that—can easily turn melodramatic—but Shannon works at keeping the character grounded.Standing in for Kelly is Jesse Plemons (Friday Night Lights), who delivers a far more subtle performance than expected—conveying not just loss, but how the real world—family history, professional setbacks, failed relationships—can affect grief.
Best Actors: Geoffrey Couët and François Nambot, “Theo and Hugo”
![theo-and-hugo]( "theo-and-hugo")
Theo and HugoDirectors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (The Adventures of Felix) have earned critical accolades for this tight, slife of gay life about one evening shared between two gay men, but its the actors themselves who do the heavy lifting.
![theo-and-hugo-couet-nambot-02-2]( "theo-and-hugo-couet-nambot-02-2")
Theo and HugoAs the titular characters Couët and Nambot have a lengthly and explicit sex scene that dominates the film’s start, but also carry the emotional weight when an HIV scare sends them to the hospital for testing and through the city for soul-searching.
Comparisons with Andrew Haigh’s Weekend are obvious, but Theo and Hugo has its own unique energy, thanks to the lead’s chemistry, Ducastel and Martineau’s fearlessness and the beautiful Parisian setting.
Best Foreign Film: “Quand on a 17 ans” (“Being 17”)
![quand-on-a-17-ans]( "quand-on-a-17-ans")
Quan on a 17 ansAt 73, French filmmaker André Téchiné still expertly conveys the bliss and torture of young love, teaming up with writer/director Céline Sciamma (Tomboy, Girlhood) on this coming-of-age film about Tom (Corentin Fila), a 17-year old secretly falling for his foster brother, Damien (Kacey Mottet Klein).
When Tom’s adoptive mother falls in, Damien’s doctor mother decides to take the boy in. After an altercation, the teens’ antagonistic relationship gives way to something more passionate.“What elevates the film is not just its beautiful setting in the French Pyrenees,” wrote Washington Post critic Alan Zilberman, “but also how the beautiful mountain exteriors serve as a metaphor for characters’ inner lives.”
Best Animated Short: “The Saint of Dry Creek”
Picture a 1950s farmer calling out his son for being gay, and you probably don’t imagine it being a very loving conversation. But what if that wasn’t the case?
Storycorps animated Patrick Haggerty’s story of growing up the son of a dairy farmer in rural Washington state. As a teen, Haggerty began to realize he was gay, and worked studiously to hide any traces of it. But one day, after performing at a school assembly, he learned that his father could see him much more clearly than he realized.
Best Screenplay: Ingrid Jungermann, “Women Who Kill”
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Women Who KillJungermann (The Slope, F to 7th) also directed and starred in this wry comic thriller about a true-crime podcaster who thinks her girlfriend might be a murderer. Exes Morgan (Jungermann) and Jean (Ann Carr), get entangled in drama—and each others lives—when Morgan begins dating mysterious Simone (Sheila Vand).
While skewering the phenomenon that was Serial, it also pokes fun at lesbian relationships, drama queens and the contemporary Brooklyn scene. “It’s Park Slope—there aren’t hate crimes here,” says, one character, “just a lot of intense parenting.”
Best Documentary: “Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures”
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Robert_Mapplethorpe: Look at the PicturesIn 1989, archconservative Jesse Helms advised voters who didn’t believe the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe was obscene to “look at the pictures.” The iconic gay artist died of AIDS-related illness that same year.
More than a quarter-century later, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato revisited the work and legacy of the boundary-pusher with Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures.Coinciding with Mapplethorpe retrospectives at the Getty and LACMA, Look at the Pictures explores Mapplethorpe’s work and the interplay of his personal and professional lives. Friends and colleagues like Mary Boone, Carolina Herrera, Brooke Shields and Debbie Harry are interviewed, as are Mapplethorpe’s older sister, Nancy, and younger brother, Edward, who assisted him on many shoots.
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Linda PosnickOther documentary greats from 2016 include Strike a Pose, a look at the dancers from Madonna’s infamous “Truth or Dare” tour, Southwest of Salem, chronicling the plight of a group of Latina lesbians wrongfully convicted of raping two young girls; and Author: The JT Leroy Story, which peels back the veil on one of publishing’s biggest hoaxes—a fictional trans prostitute turned literary star who entranced Hollywood.
For another look at the judicial system, watch Free CeCe, from executive producer Laverne Cox. In 2011, CeCe McDonald, a transgender woman of color, was charged with second-degree murder after fighting back against an assailant attacking her and her friends.
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Free CeceAccepting a plea bargain of second-degree manslaughter, she spent the next 19 months in a men’s prison, where she was frequently placed in solitary confinement (supposedly for her own protection). Filmmaker Jacqueline Gares (In the Life) chronicles McDonald’s struggle, as well as the day she was released in 2014.
Best Costumes: “Everybody Wants Some!”
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Everybody Wants Some!![Everybody Wants Some!!]( "Everybody Wants Some!!")
Everybody Wants Some!!![Everybody Wants Some!!]( "Everybody Wants Some!!")
Everybody Wants Some!!![Everybody Wants Some!!]( "Everybody Wants Some!!")
Everybody Wants Some!!![Everybody Wants Some!]( "Everybody Wants Some!")
Everybody Wants Some!
Read more here.
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After their beautiful wedding in Aspen in April of last year, Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles stars Josh Altman and Heather Bilyeu are planning for the arrival of their baby girl!
The couple announced they were expecting in September, and they celebrated with a baby shower over the weekend.
Heather told Bravo’s Deep Dish in September after their announcement:
We are so excited about having a baby girl! Our guts just told us BOY. So finding out it was a girl was a complete surprise and and amazing one at that! My mom and I are very close and I was her mini-me — I walked, talked and dressed just like her and I can’t wait to have my own mini-me, my own build-in bestie. Josh is so excited to have a daughter. He is going to spoil her rotten.
Congratulations, guys!!!
The post Baby on Board! MDLLA’s Josh Altman & Heather Bilyeu’s Prepare For Baby Alexis! appeared first on The WOW Report.
Gender Revolution’s Katie Couric recently visited Ellen to discuss her new moving documentary about gender and identity with National Geographic and World of Wonder Productions. She opened up about her marriage to John Molner, who she tied the knot with over two years ago.
Check it out:
The 60-year-old journalist, who is promoting her National Geographic documentary Gender Revolution, made an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, airing on Monday (January 23).
“I feel really lucky because he’s funny and kind and really smart and great company,” Katie said. “You know, you forget how important it is just to enjoy being with the person.”
“You really appreciate it when you enjoy with being with that person. So, I’m really happy,” she added.
The post Katie Couric Discusses Her Marriage To John Molner appeared first on The WOW Report.
