Industry

Comedy duo Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele have been garnering a cult following for years, first at Chicago’s famed comedy troupe Second City, then as part of the Mad TV ensemble and for the past five years with their own Comedy Central show, Key & Peele. Coming of age in the Obama era, the bi-racial comedians have come to embody the cultural zeitgeist of “post-racial” America with uproarious sketches in which they turn cultural and ethnic stereotypes on their ear.

Writer-director Lorene Scafaria has penned intimate and sweet comedies like Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, which she also directed. She applies her sensibility for the funny and familiar nuances of our times to The Meddler in which Susan Sarandon plays Marnie, a middle aged, newly widowed mother of adult daughter Lori (Rose Byrne).

Ronit Elkabetz, Golden Globe nominee in 2014 for her movie Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, died of cancer, age 51. A leading force in the Israeli cinema, and also an admired and busy actress in France, her sudden passing brought accolades from around the world.

Two years ago Gina Rodriguez’s bright charisma and irrepressible energy won her accolades and a shiny Best Actress Golden Globe as the star of Jane the Virgin, Jennie Snyder Urman’s comedy-telenovela. Down to earth and with one of Hollywood’s brightest smiles, Gina has not stopped making true believers of fans and critics since.

The upcoming Baywatch movie, starring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and Zack Efron, currently shooting on Tybee Island, Savannah, Georgia, where the HFPA recently interviewed the cast, is a reboot of the former TV series made famous by David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson. David Hasselhoff, 63, primarily known for his leading roles in the TV series Knight Rider (from 1975 to 1982) and Baywatch (from 1990 to 2001), has also joined the ranks of the headliner of such shows as The Simple Life, Gene Simmons: Family Jewels, Keeping up with the Kardashians and, of course, I Am Cait.

This season is shaping up as heavily loaded with musical biopics. Marc Abraham’s I Saw The Light with Tom Hiddleston as seminal country crooner Hank Williams, Robert Budreau’s Born to Be Blue forlorn jazzman Chet Baker with Ethan Hawke in the title role and Don Cheadle’s Miles Ahead on jazz trumpeter and iconoclast Miles Davis, amount to an alignment of musical planets to please any fan and that make the music biography this Spring’s dominant trend.

Jazz musicians are in season right now – next week Don Cheadle is coming out with his passion project Miles Ahead, a Miles Davis biopic in which he’s both actor and director.   And right now Canadian director Robert Budreau offers us what he calls “an anti-biography” of another jazz legend, Chet Baker – Born To Be Blue.

When My Big Fat Greek Wedding burst on the scene 13 years ago it became one of the biggest grossing comedies of all time, garnering Golden Globe nominations as Best Comedy or Musical as well as for the young woman who penned and starred in it as Toula Potokalos, an endearingly awkward Chicagoan of Greek descent who fell for and, yes, married “gentile” John Corbett while having to overcome the skepticism of her loud and lovable Greek family. Given the film’s success, there was immediate buzz about a sequel but somehow it never came … until now.

Depending on the point of view – and where you are in your career – playing super popular heroes such as Batman and Superman can be a blessing or a curse. It can launch an actor into the dizzy stratosphere of fame and glory, and it can also mark him for life.

After Man of Steel Zack Snyder dives deeper into DC’s super-mythology with the first installment of the Justice League trilogy. Snyder has delved into the darker hues of superherodom before, notably with The Watchmen.