Modern Beauty Trends: In: Sarah Jessica Parker’s Second Try at Divorce

Friday, January 12, 2018

In: Sarah Jessica Parker’s Second Try at Divorce | Out: Spielberg

What to watch this weekend, plus what to watch for during the best director race.
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“I found that everytime I asked permission the answer was ‘no,’ so I had to make my own ‘yeses.’” – Issa Rae

Paddington Bear, Apparently

Liam Neeson’s Last Action-Hero Flick

If you’re on the East Coast, perhaps you might want to take advantage of the (relative) warmth this weekend after the deep freeze that started 2018. On the other hand, it is a three-day weekend for many, and it’s still not objectively warm, so, as always, consider the movies. Oscars race–wise, the biggest news is that the Spielberg-Hanks-Streep dream team-up The Post finally goes nationwide. Meanwhile, family flick Paddington 2 has wowed critics. It currently has a 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and unlike the original, this doesn’t even have Nicole Kidman. And 65-year-old Liam Neeson has said he’ll no longer make action films, so The Commuter may be his last. He stars as a regular Joe who gets caught up in some sort of train-based mystery. Unfortunately, critics aren’t that hot on it. Critics have not yet, however, been able to see or weigh in on Proud Mary, which stars Taraji P. Henson as a Boston mob hitwoman who suddenly starts to rethink her life. The lack of early reviews is leaving us in agony. By no means do we expect it to be a masterpiece, but we do hope it’s at least as entertaining as a movie that stars Taraji P. Henson as a hitwoman deserves to be. We did love the trailer, after all.

The Return of David Letterman (and Free Amazon)

The Freeze

This weekend marks something of a dual return to television for both David Letterman and Barack Obama. Yes, the 44th president is the first guest on Letterman’s new monthly Netflix chat show, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, which will incidentally serve as Obama’s first televised sit-down interview since leaving office. In the only clip we’ve seen, the pair discuss dad-worthy dance moves, but there’s a good chance Letterman may go deeper. “I think it's gonna be great and it'll probably be the last thing I do, so I want it to be great,” Letterman has said of the show. Looking for something more scripted? Well, Amazon will celebrate the surprising Golden Globe wins of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel this weekend by streaming the series for free. Meanwhile, on Sunday, HBO returns with two second-season comedies that didn’t quite set the world on fire the first time around, but found enough of an audience to warrant renewal. According to the few early critic appraisals, both Sarah Jessica Parker’s Divorce and Pete Holmes’s Crashing do manage to improve enough to prove they were worth of that second season.

Greta Gerwig and Jordan Peele

Spielberg?

Not only were the best director nominees at the Golden Globes all male, as Natalie Portman pointed out, they were also lacking in black directors as well. Which is odd considering two of the year’s most beloved films, Lady Bird and Get Out, were directed by Greta Gerwig and Jordan Peele. Well, the Directors Guild Awards has righted the wrong. Both Gerwig and Peele are nominated alongside The Shape of Water’s Guillermo del Toro, Dunkirk’s Christopher Nolan, and Three Billboards’s Martin McDonagh. This is particularly important as it’s the directors branch of the Academy that picks the Oscar nominees in the category, and those voters are largely all members of the DGA. So, the DGA nominations are seen as an important Oscars precursor. Of course, this could lead to none other than Steven Spielberg being one of the odd men out, but he kind of predicted it. In fact, he thinks the Oscars could even nominate more than one female director.

Olivia Jade and Bella Giannulli

@OliviaJade and @Bella

You may know Lori Loughlin best as Mary-Kate and Ashley’s fictional Full House aunt, but she has two fashion-obsessed daughters of her own in real life (their dad is Mossimo Giannulli, who, yes, founded the Target-backed fashion line Mossimo). Between them, Bella and Olivia have racked up almost a million followers. Find out what makes them so popular here.