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The Beatles landed in New York City in February 1964 — their first time setting foot on the American soil that they’d spent their lives dreaming about in Liverpool. Even as the plane was landing, they were wondering out loud why the U.S. would care about an English rock & roll band. But when they played The Ed Sullivan Show, for a TV audience of 73 million viewers, they did more than just invade America. They founded a new kind of daydream nation: the United States of Beatlemania.

The excellent new doc...

If there’s any chapter of the Beatles’ saga that Beatles fans the world over feel they know in their bones, it’s the early months of 1964, when the Beatles first came to America — a happening that shook the world, and that changed it profoundly. “Beatles ’64” is a documentary that chronicles the three weeks the Beatles spent in the U.S. starting in February of that year. They came to New York to perform on “The Ed Sullivan Show” (their first appearance on the show was Feb. 9). They then took a train to Washington, D.C., to give a concert at the Washington Coliseum, then flew to Miami Beach, where they did their second “Ed Sullivan” appearance.

“Beatles ’64” opens with an extended sequence devoted to the early-’60s reign of John F. Kennedy — because, as has been noted so often, JFK was assassinated just a little over two months before their arrival,...

Turn a true auteur like Alfonso Cuarn loose on his first major TV project, and its no surprise audiences are eating up his Apple TV+ series Disclaimer. A slow burn of a show combining mystery, psychological thrills, and a complicated narrative, the five-time Oscar-winning director keeps ratcheting up the secrets and lies throughout. Disclaimer's all-star cast includes Cate Blanchett as journalist Catherine Ravenscroft, who learns shes the lead character in a new book that somehow exposes the darkest deed of her past.

As highlighted in the reviews for Disclaimer, the show plays with viewer expectations throughout, mixing truth and perception into a time-hopping story that doesnt reveal all of its cards until its final episode. Disclaimer cleverly dices up how personal biases, murky pasts, and even the modern media landscape shape how people view their own reality. Once audiences have digested all of Disclaimer's seven episodes and its shocking end,...

Spoilers for "The Boys" season 4 follow.

Annie January (Erin Moriarty) has been having an identity crisis this season on "The Boys." She shed her supe persona Starlight and is trying to change the world as just an activist. So far, she's unsure if that's enough.

This crisis just got a whole lot worse in the latest "The Boys" season 4 episode: "The Insider." Earlier in the episode, the Boys run into a terrified woman that turns out to be a shapeshifter; she "absorbs" someone's appearance by touching them and, when taking on her new face, has to tear off her old skin. ("The Boys" season 4 trailer included a shot of her doing just that — now we have the context for it.)

Prime Video

The episode's closing twist is that this shapeshifter (who is definitely up to no good) has replaced Annie. She's keeping the real one chained up while she (as...

Few fictional characters conjure up as strong a mental image with just a mention of their name as the captains of the beloved "Star Trek" universe. Mention the word "Picard," and it's impossible not to think of Patrick Stewart's cerebral, near-Shakespearean leader, who oversaw years' worth of chaos and adventure in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and its sequel series. The name "Captain Kirk" conjures up images of William Shatner in full hammy hero mode, sitting in his captain's chair or in the middle of the action — wearing an artfully torn uniform.

Every "Trek" captain conjures up these strong associations, but "Star Trek: Voyager" nearly ran into a problem with its captain's name when it turned out the original option was already taken. According to the book "Captains' Logs Supplemental" by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman, which was published during that show's '90s run, Kathryn Janeway almost had a different name: Elizabeth.

Esteemed cinematographer Benoît Delhomme’s credits have included a conspicuous number of thoughtful, visually sumptuous period pieces, such as The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Theory of Everything and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, as well as a few films made to promote fashion brands like Balmain, Dior and Chanel. In a way, that résumé partially explains why he might have been inclined to make his directorial debut with Mothers’ Instinct, for which he also serves as the Dp.

This pulpy, psychologically shallow and yet beautifully shot period thriller is all about two soignée suburban housewives — played by Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway — who spend the film’s 96 minutes suffering, scheming and losing their minds while wearing immaculate vintage-inspired costumes. Ultimately, the characters’ motivations, like their titular instinct, are weakly delineated, but viewers are well-advised not to worry their pretty little heads about any of that and just concentrate on the pantsuits.

A remake of a 2018 Belgian film,...

How To Come Alive With Norman Mailer director Jeff Zimbalist: “I lament that in some ways the film is a nostalgia piece for that bygone era. But never saying that Mailer himself is a role model.”

In the second instalment with Jeff Zimbalist on How To Come Alive With Norman Mailer (co-written with Victoria Marquette and a highlight of the 14th edition of Doc NYC) we discuss a bygone era where opposite sides were coming together in debates, such as the infamous 1971 Town Hall event in New York City: A Dialogue on Women’s Liberation with Germaine Greer, Betty Friedan, Susan Sontag, Jill Johnston, Diana Trilling, Cynthia Ozick, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Jacqueline Ceballos, where Mailer was taught a lesson or two (seen from Chris Hegedus and Da Pennebaker’s Town Bloody Hall documentary), and the Gore Vidal Norman Mailer showdown on The Dick Cavett Show.

Jeff Zimbalist on Norman Mailer: “He’s incredibly prophetic.

"It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I’ except the voice inside herself." That's a passage from chapter 14 of the legendary book The Feminine Mystique, by the great feminist Betty Friedan. It's a sentiment that, when it was published in 1963, was meant to reflect on women in marriage and relationships whose identities dissolved into their husbands'.

However, the quote is also applicable to actors, and is perhaps the best encapsulation of director Todd Haynes' so-called 'suburban cinema,' a series of films starring Julianne Moore as a suburban wife questioning her own identity and existence. While extremely different movies, Haynes' and Moore's films Safe, Far from Heaven, and now...

Lessons in Chemistry is a drama miniseries developed for television by Lee Eisenberg. Based on a novel of the same name by Bonnie Garmus, the Apple TV+ series is set in 1960s America and it revolves around Elizabeth Zott, who has always dreamed of being a scientist but because of the patriarchal society she is denied her dream. That’s when he accepts a job on a TV cooking show and teaches the housewives of the nation way more than recipes. Lessons in Chemistry stars Brie Larson in the lead role with Lewis Pullman, Stephanie Koenig, Kevin Bussman, Aja Naomi King, and Thomas Mann starring in supporting roles. So, if you loved the Apple TV+ series here are some similar shows you could watch next.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Prime Video) Credit – Prime Video

Synopsis: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel from renowned creator Amy Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls) and Executive Producer Daniel Palladino...

“Priscilla” premiered at the 2023 Venice Film Festival on Monday, September 4. Written and directed by Oscar winner Sofia Coppola – who won for her original screenplay of “Lost in Translation” in 2004 – it’s her first film since “On the Rocks” in 2020. The A24 release “Priscilla” is adapted from Priscilla Beaulieu Presley’s acclaimed 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me,” recounting her tumultuous relationship with Elvis Presley from the age of 14 when the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll was at the height of his fame. It’s described, “Through Priscilla’s eyes, Coppola tells the unseen side of a great American myth in Elvis and Priscilla’s long courtship and turbulent marriage, from a German army base to his dream-world estate at Graceland.” As such, it is said to paint a far more nuanced and complex/negative portrayal of Elvis than did last year’s Baz Luhrmann biopic.

The film stars Cailee Spaeny, who had...

Based on Priscilla Presley’s memoir, the film shows how a naive schoolgirl became trapped behind the gates of Graceland in a bizarrely co-dependent relationship

Child bride, infant sacrifice, bobbysoxer concubine: Priscilla Presley, wife of Elvis, is all these in Sofia Coppola’s eerily gripping, queasily claustrophobic portrait of marital loneliness, trapped behind the kitschy prison gates of Graceland while the King is away on tour, or shooting movies with glamorous worldly female co-stars and a creepily subservient male entourage. Priscilla becomes Memphis’s very own Lady Diana, with Ann-Margret or Nancy Sinatra in the Camilla Parker-Bowles role.

The film is based on Elvis and Me, Priscilla’s 1985 memoir of the marriage, and demonstrates Coppola’s characteristically sisterly and non-judgmental intimacy with her heroine. The details, the atmosphere of Priscilla’s bizarre married life, its stretches of boredom and silence; all seem very real. As an insider account, this is...

Once Upon a One More Time will play its final Broadway performance Sept. 3.

The musical, which features the songs of Britney Spears and a storyline about fairytale princesses in search of enlightenment, began preview performances at the Marquis Theatre on May 13 and opened June 22. Spears approved the musical and suggested its initial themes. She also signed an underlying rights agreement with the show, which was notably one of the first deals Spears signed since a judge terminated her conservatorship.

The closing notice comes as the musical failed to catch on with critics and with Broadway audiences, with the show reporting capacities in the 50 percent range for the past seven weeks. In the last publicly reported week of grosses, ended Aug. 13, the musical grossed its lowest eight-performance week yet, bringing in $512,008.

Producers James. L Nederlander and Hunter Arnold said there are currently plans underway for a national tour and international productions of the show,...

It’s a story about girlhood idols clad in their iconic looks, living in a faraway land. There’s a handsome guy, but the ladies realize he’s sort of beside the point. One woman ponders: Isn’t there more to life? A godmother figure explains that our protagonist must fix things in her old world before a new happily ever after, one that looks far different than what she thought she wanted.

I’m not talking about Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” These are the story beats of a new Broadway musical, “Once Upon a One More Time” in which fairy-tale princesses Cinderella, Snow White, and more discover Betty Friedan and attempt to break free of the stories they’ve been assigned — all set to the music of Britney Spears.

Written by Jon Hartmere, the “Barbie” parallells are uncanny. Cinderella runs away from the land she knows, and meets a...

It’s tough to sell a decades-old doll and actively make you question why you’d still buy a toy that comes with so much baggage. (Metaphorically speaking, of course — literal baggage sold separately.) The makers of Barbie know this. They know that you know that it’s an attempt by Mattel to turn their flagship blonde bombshell into a bona fide intellectual property, coming to a multiplex near you courtesy of Warner Bros. And they’re also well aware that the announcement that Greta Gerwig would be co-writing and...

In Once Upon a One More Time, classic fairy tale princesses meet the catalog of the princess of pop: Britney Spears.

The musical, nearly a decade in the making and supported by the icon herself, opened on Broadway in June, reintroducing the library of one of music’s most influential and enduring pop artist’s to the masses while also giving Spears fans something to scream, shout and let it all out about experiencing something live and in-person for the first time in years.

Arriving on Broadway alongside several other feminist tales like Six and & Juliet, and ahead of the premiere of Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie’s Barbie movie, Once Upon a One More Time signals that stories about women taking back control of their narratives are very much in. It’s a fitting message for a musical with the blessing of a singer who won her freedom from...

It’s Britney, bitch.

Or at least, it’s a Broadway musical based on songs from the pop star’s catalog.

Entitled Once Upon a One More Time, the musical — which opened at Broadway’s Marquis Theatre on Thursday — is set to Spears’ hit songs, including “Crazy” and “Circus.” The story itself, however, is not about her own life, despite fans who may see parallels between the pop icon and the musical’s cast of fairytale characters.

The plot of the two-act show featuring more than 20 of Spears’ hits follows Cinderella and other well-known storybook princesses as they try to break free from their presumed “happily ever after” narratives in search of their own empowerment. (A clandestinely acquired copy of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique plays a key role in this.)

“In that sense, it really feels a bit kismet that it’s tracking what she’s going through,...

Former American Idol contestant Justin Guarini and actress Briga Heelan attend the opening night of their Broadway musical Once Upon A One More Time.

Guarini, who plays Prince Charming, attended the premiere wearing a sheer black top layered with a black and white suit by Atelier Cillian. Heelan acts as Cinderella in the play and wore a sheer low off-shoulder white dress.

The musical, which follows a group of fairytale princesses living in a world based on Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, consists of songs by Pop Princess Britney Spears.

Once Upon A One More Time is now playing at the Marquis Theatre. Get tickets now!

The post Justin Guarini & Briga Heelan Attend Premiere Of ‘Once Upon A One More Time’ appeared first on uInterview.

Hit me, Britney, one more time? In 2005, the Lady of the Lake in Monty Python’s Spamalot lamented, “I’m constantly replaced by Britney Spears.” These days, a lot of composers trying to get their scores onto Broadway stages could sing the same lyric: Spears’s music burst onto Broadway in Moulin Rouge in 2019 (“Toxic” appears in a mashup alongside Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”) and five of her songs appear in the jukebox musical & Juliet, including “…Baby One More Time,” “Oops!…I Did It Again,” and “Stronger.”

All four of those songs feature in the first all-Britney musical, Once Upon a One More Time, a frivolously delightful entry into the jukebox genre. Even though recent Broadway seasons have brought pro forma biographical musicals like Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, Mj, and A Beautiful Noise, there’s been far greater pleasure in shows like Moulin Rouge, & Juliet, and the delirious...

Bad Cinderella could have been the poison apple that killed off revisionist fairy tales once and for all, but Britney Spears and Once Upon A One More Time, the new Broadway musical opening tonight that brims with her hits and high spirits, has come along to deliver a happy ever after that’s as unexpected as it is enchanting. Smart, funny, splendid to look at and all with a beat you can dance to, this tribute to the Brothers Grimm, the sisters of the Second Wave and, not least, the indomitable Ms. Spears, is a delight.

Husband and wife director & choreographers Keone & Mari Madrid have collaborated with book writer Jon Hartmere to come up with a technicolor confection that’s clever enough to play dumb once in a while, giddy enough to make a few points along the way and so winningly performed it seems a collection of beauties, princesses,...

Your first thought after seeing Bad Cinderella, the latest musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, is, well, she isn’t that bad. For better and worse.

The musical, energetically directed by Laurence Connor, opens on Broadway tonight with quite a reputation: We’ve heard it was lambasted by critics in London (it wasn’t). That Andrew Lloyd Webber himself trashed it (he didn’t).

The truth: Bad Cinderella, known as plain old Cinderella during an abbreviated London run that had the dreadful timing to coincide with the Covid pandemic (that was Lloyd Webber’s point when he lamented opening the show then), is a musical that upends and modernizes the age-old tale with an irreverent, knowing tone meant to smirk away the old lessons and replace them with new ones – with morals, as in the moral of the story, that more closely aligned with today’s thinking.

What, you’ve seen this before,...

James Adolphus’ new HBO documentary Being Mary Tyler Moore begins with an awkward 1966 interview of Moore by producer and talk show host David Susskind.

As Susskind rambles about how Laura Petrie, Moore’s character from The Dick Van Dyke Show, was a “strained idealization” of the American housewife, Moore sits with a big, clearly forced smile, before she finally breaks and launches into a celebration of Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique.

I’m rather sick of “Being” in the title for both documentaries and scripted stories — as if claiming to capture the essence of a person is shorthand for profundity — but Being Mary Tyler Moore is definitely invested in this sort of clash between superficial appearances and actual “being” when it comes to one of the most beloved and decorated women in TV history.

The documentary doesn’t always provide definitive answers on who Mary Tyler Moore was, but...

“Mary’s an easy person to fall in love with,” says the filmmaker James Adolphus, who has spent the past three years making a documentary about Hollywood icon Mary Tyler Moore.

In Being Mary Tyler Moore, which HBO will release in May after a March 13 premiere at SXSW, Adolphus documents Moore’s career, interweaving professional highlights like the Dick Van Dyke Show and the Mary Tyler Moore Show, with inclusions from an extensive personal archive. The goal is to show Moore’s impact entertainment and on generations of women. One of those women is the documentary’s producer, Lena Waithe.

After Moore passed in 2017, Adolphus says, her husband Robert Levine was tasked with keeping the star’s legacy but was unsure how to go about it. There were offers from other filmmakers to tell Moore’s life story but he was unconvinced until reading a Vanity Fair 2018 cover story...

Broadway is about to get a big dose of Britney.

On Friday, it was announced that a brand new jukebox musical is hitting the Broadway stage next summer, scored entirely by Britney Spears’ hit songs.

Read More: Elton John Wants To Record Another Song With Britney Spears In Person

Titled Once Upon a One More Time, the musical will start preview performances on May 13, with the official opening scheduled for June 22, 2023 at the Marquis Theatre.

First announced back in 2019, the musical is written by Jon Hartmere and and directed/choreographed by “World of Dance” stars Keone and Mari Madrid.

According to People, the play tells the story of a group of fairy tale princesses — Cinderella, Snow White and the Little Mermaid — who gather for a book club and end up reading Betty Friedan’s feminist classic The Feminine Mystique given to them by “a rogue fairy godmother.”

Read More: Paris Hilton...

(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)

The Series: "The Dick Van Dyke Show"

Where You Can Stream It: Peacock, TubiTV, Freevee, Crackle

The Pitch: Carl Reiner's classic 1960s sitcom taps a comedy vein that's still familiar today. In it, TV comedy writer Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke) juggles a chaotic work life spent writing jokes for a variety show with a chaotic home life with his gorgeous wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) and cute, precocious young son Ritchie (Larry Matthews). It's a type of still-popular sitcom premise — a hybrid family comedy and show biz meta-comedy — that "The Dick Van Dyke Show" pioneered across its five seasons, and that's not the only way it broke ground.

While hyper-traditional in many ways (married Rob and Laura famously slept...

"Don't Worry Darling" has earned endless media attention throughout its production and promotional tour. While there was a lot of excitement around the feminist themes the film aimed to address, it also garnered skepticism amid behind-the-scenes drama involving director Olivia Wilde and its stars. In an interview with Vogue, Wilde described the film as "'The Feminine Mystique' on acid." "The Feminine Mystique" is a book by Betty Friedan published in 1963 that outlines the dissatisfaction of American women and was credited for inspiring a new wave of feminism at the time. With "Don't Worry Darling," Wilde drew inspiration from the book and, as she told Vogue, aimed to question, "What are you willing to sacrifice in order to do what's right? If you really think about it, are you willing to blow up the system that serves you?"

Now that the movie is officially out, the biggest question from both audiences...

“Me Time,” a slapdash comedy by writer-director John Hamburg, stars Kevin Hart as Sonny Fisher, a stay-at-home parent suffering from what Betty Friedan labeled “the problem with no name.” Sonny feels lonely and out-of-step around adults with concerns more grown-up than his fixation on minivan technology, elementary school talent shows and a proposal to include plant-based milks in the cafeteria. His wife Maya (Regina Hall), a high-powered architect, proposes that he press pause on his domestic responsibilities to reconnect with his own inner needs. She’ll take their two kids Dash and Ava (Che Tafari and Amentii Sledge) over spring break if he’ll agree to attend the 44th birthday blowout extravaganza of his childhood best friend Huck (Mark Wahlberg), a footloose, Peter Pan-esque party boy whose company isn’t much more mature.

This is a tale about male friendship with very little believable onscreen bonding. Hamburg’s basic gag...

Welcome to our weekly column Can’t Miss Episode of the Week! Every Saturday we’ll be spotlighting a different episode of television from that week that we thought was exceptional and a must-see. Check back to see if your favorite show got the nod — or to learn about a new one! Spoilers ahead. The first couple of episodes of HBO Max’s Julia were a little slow, a little boring, but since then, the series about Julia Child’s creation of her iconic cooking show The French Chef, has become the delightful, wholesome presence many of us are looking for on our television screens. This is never more true than with the season 1 finale, which aired on May 5. There have been endless challenges to making season 1 of The French Chef, but none more so than the iconic Feminine Mystique author Betty Friedan’s (Tracee Chimo Pallero) harsh words last episode.

Spoiler Alert: Do not read if you haven’t watched “Chocolate Souffle,” the Season 1 finale of “Julia,” now streaming on HBO Max.

Season 1 of “Julia” on HBO Max ends on a cozy scene of domesticity emblematic of the show itself: After a series finale in which main character Julia Child (played by actor Sarah Lancashire) suffers a crisis of confidence and backs out of her popular cooking show “The French Chef,” she is ultimately convinced to return to the show by her husband Paul (David Hyde Pierce). Once a snob who tried to forbid Julia from participating in public television, Paul has since gone through a transformative arc, learning how to support his wife while still being his own person. Apologizing for his past behavior, Paul affirms his love for Julia and makes it clear to her how important her work on television really is.

With Julia and Paul’s relationship stronger than ever,...

On the surface, a show like Showtime’s “The First Lady” has potential. As we’ve heard time and again behind every great man is a great woman, so why not tell that story through the most powerful men in America? But it requires a sense of delicacy.

Every president has had their successes and failures, but it’s far too easy to cast these women as just moral arbiters of the creator’s own perception of said president’s accomplishments or misjudgments. Director Susanne Bier’s anthology falls into this category.

The series blends the stories of three First Ladies: Eleanor Roosevelt (Gillian Anderson), Betty Ford (Michelle Pfeiffer), and Michelle Obama (Viola Davis). Each woman navigates issues, both personal and professional, as they enter into the ill-defined job that comes of being married to a man voted president.

It’s that question that is at the heart, and lays unanswered,...

The first thing you need to do whilst watching HBO Max’s “Julia” is to get all other versions of Julia Child out of your head. That proves easier than might be expected, given such enduring depictions as Meryl Streep’s lauded turn in Nora Ephron’s “Julie and Julia” (2009) or, most cartoonishly, Dan Aykroyd’s “Saturday Night Live” performance of Child as a careening agent of chaos who constantly bleeds out like a geyser. In its early offings, “Julia” acts as a deliberate counterpoint to those larger-than-life portrayals, bringing Julia back down to earth as a flesh and blood human woman, played with empathetic precision by Sarah Lancashire. She’s still the life of the party, but she’s also prone to the adrenaline crash after the food’s gone and the guests leave.

This isn’t to say that “Julia” is so grim. In fact, it’s very...

Julia Child is having quite the resurgence this year. HBO Max’s new limited series, “Julia,” is the third program aimed at the legendary American-born chef who brought French cuisine to the masses, joining Julie Cohen and Betsy West’s documentary released last year and Food Network’s “Julia Child Challenge.” It’s not clear exactly why Child is capturing audiences’ interests at the moment — perhaps it’s fueled, in part, by us spending two years in our homes realizing we can’t cook. But either way, it’s a great way to appreciate the majesty of food, especially when it looks so good on-screen.

Created by “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” producer Daniel Goldfarb, “Julia” is a light and charming examination of Child’s rise to fame. We meet Julia (British actress Sarah Lancashire) at a crossroads with her husband, Paul (David Hyde Pierce). Despite their deep love for each other,...

News arrived September 21 that Kathryn Hahn is set to play Joan Rivers in an upcoming Showtime limited series. While fans rejoiced for the “WandaVision” Emmy nominee on social media, Sarah Silverman said on the most recent episode of her self-titled podcast (via Page Six) that Hahn’s casting is only the latest example of Hollywood’s “Jewface” problem. Silverman is referring to the practice of casting non-Jews in Jewish roles.

“There’s this long tradition of non-Jews playing Jews, and not just playing people who happen to be Jewish but people whose Jewishness is their whole being,” Silverman said. “One could argue, for instance, that a Gentile [a non-Jew] playing Joan Rivers correctly would be doing what is actually called ‘Jewface.’”

Silverman continued, “It’s defined as when a non-Jew portrays a Jew with the Jewishness front and center, often with makeup or changing of features, big fake nose, all the New York-y or Yiddish-y inflection.

Exclusive: A slew of stars including Rosanna Arquette, Taye Diggs, Gael Garcia Bernal and Maya Hawke, are to portray famous figures across history in a new podcast series from Playboy and Audio Up.

The two companies are launching Playboy Interview, an audio series that features teleplay-style re-enactments of the most iconic Playboy interview conversations.

Other stars also include Shea Whigham, Michael Shannon, Kevin Corrigan and Gina Gershon.

The series, which is set to debut in September, will see Arquette voice feminist pioneer Betty Friedan, Diggs will portray Muhammad Ali, Garcia Bernal plays Salvador Dali, Shannon is Tennessee Williams, Shea Whigham is John Wayne, Maya Hawke is Helen Gurley Brown, Kevin Corrigan is Frank Sinatra and Gina Gershon is Oriana Fallaci.

The first two episodes will feature “conversations” with Friedan and Ali.

The series is based on the classic Playboy Interview, which started in 1962 with Alex Haley’s conversation with Miles Davis...

Margaret Atwood has always been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Born in Ottawa in 1939, Atwood has been consumed with the specter of a sudden totalitarian takeover, like the one she imagined in her 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, since she was a girl. She watched with trepidation, then, if not necessarily surprise, as Donald Trump was swept into power in 2016. When the TV adaptation of her book debuted on Hulu in the early months of his administration, it was heralded as an allegory for our times. But Atwood sees...

To seriously consider “Roe v. Wade” — that is, writer-directors Cathy Allyn and Nick Loeb’s atrocious anti-abortion propaganda piece and not the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision in favor of abortion rights — it is helpful to remember a 2017 quote by journalist Chuck Todd. “Alternative facts are not facts. They’re falsehoods,” Todd succinctly said when confronting Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway on her use of the term. While the Trump era that Conway’s expression sums up is behind us, “Roe v. Wade” has reportedly been in the works for the past three years, so it’s fair to reflect on the baffling film as a product of that period, when right-wing fabrications were routinely presented as truth.

Targeting politically simpatico viewers and anyone they can convert on the other side of the aisle — while perhaps taking a page out of the former administration’s playbook — Allyn and Loeb present their own...

Nurse Mildred Ratched from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is one of the most-recognized and iconic movie villains of all time. But prior to Net ix’s “Ratched,” the audience only knew her during one distinct slice of her life. When Sarah Paulson set out to shape who the woman was before she worked at a psychiatric facility in Oregon, she had the freedom to play with “some similarities and some things you recognize, but they’re not fully developed; they haven’t settled into her being [and] they have not come to define her,” as she previously told Variety.

Paulson took on the origin story of this well-known figure as she’s “still in the middle of experiencing” those things that will come to define her behavior in “Cuckoo’s Nest” for the new streaming ensemble drama series. It may be daunting for an actor or a casting director to...

Julianne Moore as Gloria Steinem and Bette Midler as Bella Abzug in The Glorias. Courtesy of Ld Entertainment and Roadside Attractions

Three big names of the ’60s -’70s Second Wave feminism were Betty Friedan, author of “The Feminine Mystique,” Germaine Greer, author of “The Female Eunuch,” and Gloria Steinem, journalist, activist and co-founder of Ms Magazine. While all were authors who helped launch that movement, it is Gloria Steinem, photogenic and with a journalist’s precision with words, who was a favorite of the media and has stuck in the public imagination. In The Glorias, Germaine Greer isn’t mentioned and Betty Friedan only in passing, but that is not surprising given that this is a biopic of Gloria Steinem, based on her autobiography “My Life On The Road.”

In fact, this drama from director/writer/producer is Julie Taymor has a lot of references to roads. Taymor was...

EntertainmentWhile mainstream cinema is slowly changing its portrayal of gender norms, it's nowhere close to what's available online.Tnm StaffThe explosion of content on Over-the-Top (Ott) platforms has meant that there's a wide variety of options when it comes to entertainment. Whatever be the genre or language, viewers are spoilt for choice on online streaming platforms. It's no different when it comes to feminist content. Mainstream cinema in India has largely been disappointing when it comes to the representation of women, mostly conforming to gender norms and patriarchal attitudes. While this is slowly changing, it's still nowhere as close to the kind of content that's available online. Here's a list of web series that will make a feminist viewer happy, and not want to tear their hair out. Churails (Zee5): This show is from Pakistan and is about a motley group of women in Karachi who come together to start a detective agency.

Among the Emmy nominees this year are many actors playing real people — from Uzo Aduba’s portrayal of feminist icon Betty Friedan in FX drama series Mrs. America to Hugh Jackman tackling the disgraced school superintendent Frank Tassone in the HBO movie Bad Education.

And then there’s Jim Parsons, who became the powerful and controversial talent agent Henry Willson — known for being influential in Rock Hudson’s career — in Ryan Murphy’s limited series on Netflix, Hollywood.

While each actor listed portrayed a real person, Dylan McDermott’s performance in Hollywood must also be mentioned as the actor played Ernie West,...

Among the Emmy nominees this year are many actors playing real people — from Uzo Aduba’s portrayal of feminist icon Betty Friedan in FX drama series Mrs. America to Hugh Jackman tackling the disgraced school superintendent Frank Tassone in the HBO movie Bad Education.

And then there’s Jim Parsons, who became the powerful and controversial talent agent Henry Willson — known for being influential in Rock Hudson’s career — in Ryan Murphy’s limited series on Netflix, Hollywood.

While each actor listed portrayed a real person, Dylan McDermott’s performance in Hollywood must also be mentioned as the actor played Ernie West,...

Whoa: This year’s Emmy nominees for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie are all former winners, with a total of 16 Emmys between them. But which one of them deserves to add to that total?

FX on Hulu’s Mrs. America dominates the category, with three of the six nominees coming from the 1970s political biopic. Uzo Aduba — a two-time Emmy winner from her years on Orange Is the New Black — is up for playing Black pioneer Shirley Chisholm. Margo Martindale scored her sixth career nod for playing feminist crusader Bella Abzug, and Tracey Ullman — whose comedy...

When Jim Parsons was cast in Netflix’s limited series “Hollywood” as Henry Willson, the real-life agent best known for shepherding Rock Hudson to mega-stardom, the multiple Emmy-winning actor immediately turned to Google. While he couldn’t find any contemporaneous video of Willson, there were at least plenty of photographs. Looking at them, Parsons was struck with an immediate concern.

“My first thing was, could I look different at all?” he says.

Similar to several other supporting performers now nominated for taking on roles based on real people, however, Parsons’ transformation into Willson was ultimately a subtle one. He utilized understated false teeth, wore color contacts to change his eyes from blue to brown, and changed his hair just slightly to suggest that Willson was wearing a toupee.

“In several different shots, you can see his scalp from the back,” says Parsons. “That being said, a lot of it was...

While the Era battle lines were clearly drawn in “Mrs. America” between “the libbers and anti-libbers” for costume designer Bina Daigeler (“Mulan”), the contradictions inherent in Phyllis Schlafly’s (Emmy-nominated Cate Blanchett) conservative crusade made the FX limit series a lot more interesting. Schlafly was an unfulfilled Illinois housewife with political ambitions, who wielded her media power to fight second-wave feminists to preserve traditional family values.

“Phyllis Schlafly used her strong style in public to create a very strong image for herself and this movement,” Daigeler said. “And she had to be creative in unifying this movement. On her first TV appearance, she was simply dressed with a pale blue sweater, and, I think, she was self-conscious at that moment about how it is to be on television and how much power that is.”

“But she was [smart] enough after this appearance to dress up as a public person,” Daigeler said,...

The cast and creators of the FX on Hulu limited series “Mrs. America” sought to bring the ’70s feminist movement and the fight surrounding the Equal Rights Amendment to the screen through exploring the personal motivations of its key players.

Now with 10 Emmy nominations, the show has struck a chord by revealing little-known truths about the women on both sides of the argument, including Phyllis Schlafly, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Jill Ruckelshaus, Brenda Feigen, Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan.

After a screening of the series’ third episode, “Shirley,” Variety‘s Kate Aurthur discussed the importance of portraying these figures with accuracy and empathy with executive producer Cate Blanchett, who played Schlafly; creator, showrunner and executive producer Dahvi Waller; producer Tanya Barfield, who wrote the episode; Margo Martindale, who played Abzug; Uzo Aduba, who played Chisholm and Tracey Ullman, who played Friedan. (All of whom have been nominated for Emmys.)

Blanchett...

Hugh Jackman in ‘Bad Education’.

A raft of Aussies have been nominated for Emmy Awards this year, including Hugh Jackman, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Sarah Snook, Hannah Gadsby, writer Tony McNamara and cinematographer Greig Fraser.

For the second year running, Gadsby earned two nods, with her Netflix stand-up special Douglas nominated for Outstanding Variety Special and Writing for a Variety Special. Gadsby won the same writing category last year with her special Nanette.

Jackman has been recognised for his portrayal of corrupt school superintendent Frank Tassone in HBO film Bad Education, earning a nod for Outstanding Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. He will compete against Jeremy Pope (Hollywood), Mark Ruffalo (I Know This Much Is True), Paul Mescal (Normal People) and Jeremy Irons (Watchman).

Blanchett has been nominated for Outstanding Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her performance as Phyllis Schlafly in FX’s Mrs. America,...

When it comes to long-shot predictions in the Movie/Limited Series categories at this year’s Emmys, Tony Ruiz has erred on the side of caution with many of his picks. However, he does believe that Chris Evans will score a Best Actor nomination for “Defending Jacob” at the expense of one of the strongest contenders: Hugh Jackman in “Bad Education.” “I think it might have more visibility but I think there’s just this kind of block against a TV movie,” explains Ruiz in our recent slugfest alongside myself, Riley Chow and Rob Licuria. He continues to say that it’s “mainly because you have a two-hour time frame versus a 7-9 hour time frame.”

SEEChris Evans Interview: ‘Defending Jacob’

Licuria is much more adventurous in his predictions including a huge long-shot prediction in the Supporting Actress category for Eve Lindley for AMC’s, “Dispatches from Elsewhere.” “It’s...

“Mrs. America” tells a true story of feminist history from both sides of the political divide. The FX on Hulu limited series explores the fight over the Equal Rights Amendment from the point of view of Phyllis Schlafly (played by two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett), an anti-feminist Republican who helped to stop it from being ratified into the Us Constitution. But will it get the votes it needs to pass at the Emmys? Scroll down for our exclusive video interviews with top awards contenders from the show.

In addition to movie star Blanchett in a rare TV role, the series features a number of longtime awards favorites playing recognizable historical figures. Two-time Emmy champ Uzo Aduba plays feminist politician Shirley Chisholm. Emmy nominee Rose Byrne plays activist Gloria Steinem. Emmy nominee Elizabeth Banks plays Republican feminist Jill Ruckelshaus. Three-time Emmy winner Margo Martindale plays Us congresswoman Bella Abzug. And six-time...

“We were in a very intense post on Captain Marvel and had no interest in reading or committing to doing anything at that particular moment,” Mrs. America executive producer and director Ryan Fleck said about how he boarded the Dahvi Waller-created limited series with his directing partner Anna Boden.

The series tells about the revolutionary divide over the Equal Rights Amendment during the 1970s between conservative Phyllis Schlafly (Cate Blanchett) and liberal pro-choice and Ms. magazine co-founder Gloria Steinem (Rose Byrne) and her peers Shirley Chisholm (Uzo Aduba), Brenda Feigen-Fasteau (Ari Graynor), Bella Azbug (Margo Martindale) and Betty Friedan (Tracey Ullman) who sought to provide working women with more rights, equal pay and more say over their bodies.

You can listen more to our conversation with Fleck and Boden here:

What changed the duo’s mind to board Mrs. America?

Says Fleck, “When you get that email that says: FX show,...

Dahvi Waller says she felt like she was rolling a massive boulder up a hill when she started her research for the FX on Hulu limited series “Mrs. America.”

She had to figure out how she was going to tell the politically, racially and socially complex story of the Equal Rights Amendment and the women who fought both for and against it — over almost a decade.

And Waller was far from the only writer who had to contend with this problem, as a large chunk of the season’s biggest limited series and TV movies, including Showtime’s “The Loudest Voice,” Netflix’s “Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker” and Lifetime’s “Patsy & Loretta,” set their stories over lengthy time frames and involved many real-life figures.

Waller says she sat in a room with a research assistant for two whole years before she felt...

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

As far as movies about shattered states of masculinity go, you can’t get any more raw, personal, or up-close than John Cassavetes’ 1970 “Husbands.” The filmmaker’s meandering, laidback style is well-suited to this chamber dramedy led by Cassavetes and his pals Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara. While storytelling in 2020 is pivoting fiercely away from tales of white, straight male egos, it’s fascinating to look back at “Husbands” as a cracked reflection of the times.

In 1971, feminist author and activist Betty Friedan wrote an editorial for The New York Times hailing “Husbands” as “the strongest statement of the case for women’s liberation I have yet seen on stage or screen,” and that the film tackled “the alienation, loneliness, [and] un-met need...