The support between the Black Panther and Wrinkle in Time families gives me life.
In case anyone hadn’t seen:
[image description: a tweet from Ava DuVernay, featuring a picture of a billboard with Black Panther on one side and Wrinkle in Time on the other, saying “We edited our films across the hall from each other for 8 months. We talked in our edit bays, on walks around the lot. About our films, our dreams. Tonight, his comes true. On my way to the #BlackPanther premiere with a full heart for my fam, director extraordinaire #RyanCoogler!” ]
No coverage of Solo: A Star Wars Story would be complete without asking on the film’s turmoulous director issues, and Entertainment Weekly does go there, with the usual vague and polite responses from Kathleen Kennedy and Ron Howard on the issue of original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller.
“He had intended to just kind of stop by and say hi, and he stayed five hours,” [Kathleen] Kennedy says. “There’s even one little moment in a scene that — I can’t tell you what, sorry — but in the scene on the Millennium Falcon where George said, ‘Why doesn’t Han just do this.’”
In other words, George Lucas helped direct a small part of Solo.
“It actually is a funny little bit that will probably get a laugh,” Kennedy says. “And Ron happened to be by the monitor and not inside the Falcon and he goes, ‘Oh that’s a great idea,’ and ran in and said, ‘George wants us to do this.’ So that was pretty cool. I think George felt pretty great about that. He could revisit these characters, and I think he felt so comfortable, obviously with Ron being there, that it was just fun for him.”
“I have a story, and you guys are gonna be the first to hear it,” said Spencer to a panel on Women Breaking Barriers at the Sundance Film Festival. Fifteen months ago, Chastain approached her about doing a movie together. (The two have been good friends since they both starred in “The Help”).
“She wants to do comedies, and I wanna break out of period pieces,” she said as the crowd chuckled. “I love ’em! They’ve been kind to me! But I kinda wanna play someone who resembles me in some fashion.”
When the subject of pay equity between men and women came up, Spencer agreed wholeheartedly: “We were dropping F-bombs and getting it all out there. And then I said, ‘But here’s the thing, women of color on that spectrum, we make far less than white women. So, if we’re gonna have that conversation about pay equity, we gotta bring the women of color to the table.’ And I told her my story, and we talked numbers, and she was quiet, and she said she had no idea that that’s what it was like for women of color.”
Spencer paused as she choked up. “These are happy tears!” she assured the crowd. “I love that woman, because she’s walking the walk and she’s actually talking the talk. She said, ‘Octavia, we’re gonna get you paid on this film. You and I are gonna be tied together. We’re gonna be favored nations, and we’re gonna make the same thing.’ Fast forward to last week, we’re making five times what we asked for.”
A friend of mine on Facebook was able to attend the Last Jedi premiere in Los Angeles last night with some friends of his from the Rebel Legion and the 501st, all in costume, including a young woman who was dressed as Rose Tico. Kelly Marie Tran saw her while she was walking the red carpet, and this was her reaction to seeing someone dressed as Rose. According to my friend, there were tears all around and it was a very emotional moment. Representation matters, you guys, and it is so important. These photos made me emotional just seeing them, and I was given permission to share them with the rest of you here.
“When I was visualizing the scene, it didn’t look quite as heroic as I intended it to be. So then I put the Poppins line in Peter Quill’s mouth. And Yondu, of course, not knowing the name Mary or Poppins, might think he’s sort of a Lee Marvin type, and he owns it.”– James Gunn
