BetterForgotten

Great article from Josh Ackley at OUT. Parts that resonated with me and my own experiences with her: “For a lot of us, Madonna has never simply been a pop star, she has been a figure we associate with permission, with defiance, with the refusal to shrink when shrinking is what the culture is asking for.” “That is why this announcement lands the way it does now. Not because people are waiting for a soundtrack, not because nostalgia is powerful, but because for many of us Madonna has been tied, across different moments in our lives, to the experience of being given permission when the world was asking us to disappear. She has been tied to survival, not in a dramatic or abstract sense, but in the daily sense of pushing through environments that were not built to accept us, of finding something to look up to when there was very little around us that reflected who we were. There is also something else that is easy to forget if you reduce her to iconography or legacy, which is that Madonna is fun. Not in a trivial way, not as an escape from seriousness, but as a refusal to let seriousness become a cage. The joy, the sexuality, the humor, the excess, the theatricality, all of it has always been part of the same project as the defiance, part of the same insistence that life should not be reduced to something narrow or disciplined into something manageable for other people’s comfort. So when she clears the slate and signals that something new is coming, something that reaches back to one of the last moments the world felt this tightly wound, people react. They stop. They pay attention. Because for those of us who have lived through her at different stages, who have needed what she offered at different points in our lives, it does not feel like a routine album cycle. It feels like the return of a force that has, more than once, made it possible to keep going.”

Preview (apparently full song drops on Friday)

Her first summer release since True Blue in 1986 - almost 40 years ago exactly in fact (TB was released on June 30th).

July 3rd release date! https://x.com/Madonna/status/2044402249976447164?s=20 Available for pre-order in various formats on her official website as well: https://www.madonna.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoqIim6Esfgi13C13_QnAwaWZSXIrxqIE8c0X7qJx8RNm-4_2N5V

Every time Anastasia pops up, I’m like, “Ooh, look! It’s budget Jasmine Guy!”

TCS was already running out of steam when she joined, but I generally found Cousin Pam unbearable and it was clear Erika Alexander was still learning how to act on TV/sitcoms. I guess that’s why her turn as Maxine Shaw in Living Single was such a revelation to me - If I had only seen her as Pam, I wouldn’t have known she had it in her, lol. Living Single, of course, was created by Yvette Lee Bowser, who got her start on ADW and so many of the cast made guest appearances.

I’m kind of most interested in seeing what they do with Freddie in her guest appearance - is she the more polished lawyer (in training at that point) from the last season, or more so in line with Cree’s irreverent, free-spirited real life persona (she’s f.ucking hilarious in interviews to this day). The more I think back on it, they had really run out of ideas for the longtime characters by season 6 and the new characters weren’t all that good or interesting. The premise of the show could always live on, but they didn’t have the characters to support that type of reinvention back then (nor was NBC interested when ratings started to decline sharply).

Take with a grain of salt (but many of his leaks and sources have proven to be accurate in the past), but John Rocha is blaming SMG and saying she was problematic during the development and accusing her and her people of trying to smear Chole Zhao.

This will be the gift that keeps giving…

First trailer released today:

From what most industry sources have said, it was also a troubled pilot with tonal issues, and even in reworked form, it wasn’t deemed good enough by the suits at Hulu. That coupled with execs who aren’t a fan of the IP likely sealed its fate. It is being touted that there is still interest in exploring the IP in the future, but I would have to guess it would be without involvement from SMG and Chloe Zhao.

Robert Meyer Burnett said on John Campea’s show that he read the pilot script and that it just wasn’t very good… (that and SMG only appears in the last page of the script). Campea himself says he heard the pilot Zhao turned in was not at all what Hulu execs were expecting tonally, at least, and they decided not to move forward.

Because he was mentioned, congrats to Michael B. Jordan on his fist Oscar nomination and for Sinners being the most nominated film of the year. He’s gotten far, mainly being Ryan Coogler’s muse, but on his own merits as well.

Michael B. Jordan just starred in one of last year's biggest box office hits, and is a likely candidate for an Oscar nomination this year. He's not going to do Lifetime anytime soon, lol.

Aw, may be RIP. I’ll always have a special place in my heart for the OG Slaters as well. Derek wasn’t the greatest actor, but he was always present and had great chemistry with actors who made up his on-screen family. The early Slater years were lightening in a bottle, the likes of which we have rarely ever seen with newly introduced characters and families since.

That’s nice. MVJ was one of the very few scriptwriters that Geary respected. She wrote the rape confession monologue that Luke had with Lucky and it was one of the rare times that Geary didn’t change a word and acted out what was on the page.

This is sad, and I will choose to remember Geary for the electrifying performer he could be instead of what he purposely turned Luke into in his latter years on the show. That said, and I know he was getting older, but he did often look quite frail whenever I saw recent pics of him with his husband. Whatever it was, I hope he went peacefully. May he RIP.

This show is garbage, but Lucas Adams is doing well as Noah and feels believable as Sharon and Nick’s son. Griffith will probably sideline him soon enough, but I always thought DAYS never knew how to use him and hope this works out for him.

Accidentally posted in this thread, but meant for the Directors and Writers thread, lol

Jill is in the booth, supervising feedback for the overall production. In the ‘Thriller’ Halloween dance video that Courtney Hope and Melissa Claire Egan originally posted on IG, they quickly took a look at the producer’s booth where Jill was in (with longer than usual hair) with someone else. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQUVQl7iXMY/?igsh=MTAyaGI4N3F6c2R3eA==

Hell, soaps need to get back to characters before any of this.