Modern Beauty Trends: In: Reese Witherspoon, Queen of TV

Friday, January 26, 2018

In: Reese Witherspoon, Queen of TV | Out: Trump Art

Donald Trump gets trolled by the art world. Christian Bale moseys into cinemas.
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“People always ask me, 'Were you funny as a child?' Well, no, I was an accountant.” — Ellen DeGeneres

Christian Bale’s Not-Quite-Oscar-Nominated Latest Turn

TV, This Weekend

The Oscar nominations came out Tuesday and you’ll notice that the film Hostiles is nowhere to be found. Even though the Christian Bale–starring Western once had Academy hopes and maintained a release schedule like it would be nominated. It premiered at the prestigious Telluride Film Festival, slipped into limited release in late December for eligibility reasons, and finally goes nationwide this weekend. It received better-than-average reviews, with particular praise for the cast’s performances and the stunning visuals, but some felt the narrative, like the film’s Oscar hopes, just misses coming together in a satisfying way. That being said, if you like Westerns or Bale, you could do worse. Also dropping into theaters this weekend is Maze Runner: The Death Cure, the latest in a sci-fi franchise aimed directly at the teens. Critics don’t like it, but it’s not as if many teens are reading the back pages of The New Yorker, anyway. In limited release, Please Stand By, featuring Dakota Fanning as a Star Trek–obsessed girl with autism, hits select theaters, but critics aren’t exactly raving. For deep cinema nerds, the animated Chinese dark comedy Have a Nice Day hits our shores, and the critics are wild about it. It’s something of a modern-day Robin Hood, except the hero steals from the rich so his girlfriend can get plastic surgery. As for television action this weekend, there isn’t that much to look forward to, aside from the return of Netflix’s pleasant One Day at a Time reboot. But the Grammys do air on CBS, at 8 p.m. on Sunday.

Paramount Network and Apple TV

Your Free Time

It’s actually sort of perplexing that there’s not more new and notable TV this weekend, considering how much damn TV there is. Every day seems to bring with it news of a new television network or streaming service. Indeed, Paramount Network just launched last week from the ashes of the former Spike TV (R.I.P. “first” network for men). Its first headliner, Waco (which seemed like it was advertised on every highbrow podcast we listen to), arrived on Wednesday, but it was met with critical “meh”s. Don’t worry, though, because the channel has more in store, including the curious reboot of Heathers and American Woman, a comedy based on the life of Real Housewives star Kyle Richards, which is set to star Alicia Silverstone. Like Hulu and Netflix before it, Paramount is attempting to dip into the Margaret Atwood adaptation well. The channel is bidding on production rights for The Handmaid's Tale author’s trilogy MaddAddam. (HBO once tried to adapt it with Darren Aronofsky on board, but it never came together.) Meanwhile, Apple TV (or whatever it is we end up calling Apple’s Netflix competitor) continues its massive original-content acquisition quest by picking up a TV series from La La Land director Damien Chazelle. There are no details beyond that, but Apple is just throwing money at Hollywood right now. It’s already announced three Reese Witherspoon–produced shows in various stages of commitment (one starring Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston, another starring Octavia Spencer, and a third starring Kristen Wiig), as well as a reboot of Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories. Unfortunately, none of these networks has commissioned a way to add more hours into our days so we can actually watch all of this.

Gold Toilets

Van Goghs for the Trumps

There have always been jokes and rumors that President Donald Trump owns a solid-gold toilet. As it turns out, that’s…inaccurate reportage (sorry, we’re sick of the president’s preferred term). Though a museum would be very happy to supply Trump with a golden commode if he should want one. The Guggenheim in New York was recently contacted by the White House with a request to borrow Vincent Van Gogh’s Landscape With Snow for use in the Trumps’s private living quarters. The museum denied the request, but it did offer an alternative: an 18-karat gold toilet, which, yes, it does happen to have in its collection. The work is by the art world’s favorite joker Maurizio Cattelan and was installed at the Guggenheim in 2016 as an “interactive display,” which is a nice way of saying that it was installed in one of the museum’s actual bathrooms and you could actually use it. With the exhibit over, Cattelan agreed with the museum that a loan to Trump would be the perfect next step. When contacted by The Washington Post and asked why he’d offered it to the Trumps, Cattelan replied, “What’s the point of our life? Everything seems absurd until we die and then it makes sense.” Oh, and the name of his piece? “America.” In less-pointed museum news, here is Michelangelo (the Ninja Turtle) visiting an installation of work by Michelangelo (the Renaissance artist) at the Met.

Cameron Robbie

@CameronRobbie

Does it surprise anyone that Margot Robbie has very attractive people in her family? The Internet is already in love with her younger brother, Cameron. Find some of his greatest Instagram hits here.