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    Liam Neeson Shows Up at NY Movie Theater to Introduce 'The Marksman'

    Open Road Films

    The ‘Taken’ actor attends the screening of his new film at AMC Lincoln Square in the Big Apple as movie theaters start to open for the first time in almost a year.

    Mar 7, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Liam Neeson will personally welcome cinema-goers back to New York theatres on Friday night (05Mar21).
    The actor’s film “The Marksman” will be among the new releases hitting the Big Apple’s big screens as theatres re-open, after the pandemic lockdown, for the first time in almost a year.
    Neeson, who has received his first vaccination shot, will introduce his new action movie at AMC Lincoln Square, and tells The Hollywood Reporter, “This is one for the diary. It will be nice to welcome people.”
    “I think going to the cinema is a bit of a sacred experience. I’ve felt that way since I was a kid.”

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    AMC bosses are opening all 13 of their New York City locations.
    Cinema capacities will be limited to 25 per cent, or no more than 50 people per theatre. Some cinemas in California have also been given the OK to re-open, while Los Angeles film fans are hoping theatres in the city will open in the next few weeks.
    Studios turned to streaming platforms following multiple delays because of the coronavirus crisis, but some directors were not happy with the move.
    Last year, Christopher Nolan and James Gunn ripped Warner Brothers over their deal with HBO Max. The studio was slammed for not consulting the filmmakers and stars when they decided to release their entire 2021 movies such as “The Suicide Squad”, “Dune”, “Godzilla vs. Kong” and “The Matrix 4” directly on the streaming service.
    Meanwhile, Martin Scorsese wrote in an essay last month that streaming movies had a negative impact on cinema, which he claimed was being “systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned, and reduced to its lowest common denominator, ‘content.’ ”

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    Eddie Murphy Says His Idea for 'Coming to America 3' Will Work When He Turns 75

    Amazon Prime Video

    The former ‘Saturday Night Life’ regular has already had an idea for the third movie shortly after the second ‘Coming to America’ installment was released.

    Mar 7, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Eddie Murphy has plans for “Coming to America 3” – but his idea won’t work until he turns 75.
    The star, whose sequel to 1988 cult comedy “Coming to America”, was released on Friday (05Mar20), never planned to make a second film in the series, but now he’s thinking about a third film, but fans will have to wait a while.
    “We never thought we were going to do a (Coming to America) sequel…,” he tells “Live with Kelly and Ryan”. “Of all the movies that I’ve done, Coming To America became a kind of cult movie and they show it all the time on TV. It’s always on and at Halloween some people get dressed up as characters from the movie.”

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    He can’t believe there’s even a restaurant in Los Angeles that “turns itself into a McDowell’s at Halloween” – a tribute to the funny McDonald’s knock-off burger chain that appears in the film.
    “They have, like, sexual chocolate milkshakes on their menu, so this movie is like a cult picture. It was maybe 25 years in, I thought, ‘If I could figure out a way to connect these dots, there’s an audience for a sequel…’ – and here we are.”
    Eddie, who turns 60 next month (Apr21), has already mapped out the next sequel, and while it may not take 33 years to make the next follow-up, it won’t be arriving any time soon.
    “There’s an idea for a Coming to America 3 that I have, but it doesn’t happen for 16 years,” he smiles. “I have to be 75 to do it. And not make me up like (I look) 75, but really be 75.”

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    Billy Eichner Over the Moon to Announce He Pens and Stars in First Major Gay Rom-Com

    WENN

    The ‘Parks and Recreation’ actor is working on a big-screen project called ‘Bros’, the first rom-com with two gay leads ever produced by a major Hollywood studio.

    Mar 7, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Billy Eichner’s movie “Bros” will be the first major studio rom-com with two gay male leads.
    “The Lion King” star is co-writing the upcoming movie for Universal, which is slated for release on 12 August, 2022, and is set to be the first gay romantic comedy ever produced by a major Hollywood studio.
    He gushed on social media, “I’M MAKING A MOVIE!!!! Coming to a theatre near you Aug 12, 2022! In shocking news, BROS will be the first rom com about gay men ever produced by a major studio and, apparently, I’m the first openly gay man to ever write and star in their own studio film. Only took 100 years! THANKS HOLLYWOOD!!! (sic)”
    Eichner will star as one half of the gay couple and is co-writing the screenplay alongside director Nicholas Stoller.
    What’s more, he is also producing along with Stoller, Judd Apatow, and Joshua Church.

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    The “What Happens in Vegas” star previously admitted he was determined to get “as many openly LGBT actors as possible” to star in the project, in both “gay roles” and “straight roles.”
    The movie star said before “Bros” was unveiled, “I look forward to making that movie and finding as many openly LGBT actors as possible in gay roles, in straight roles. We not only need to start supporting LGBT actors theoretically, but we actually need to start casting them as well.”
    “In a perfect world, gay actors can play gay roles and gay actors can play straight roles, and straight actors can play straight roles and play gay roles, and we’re all mixing and matching because part of the fun and the challenge of being an actor or an actress is to play someone who you’re not. We can do it all.”
    The 42-year-old comedic actor admitted that while straight actors often receive praise for their work playing LGBT characters, it “rarely” happens in the reverse – which he wants to see change.
    He added, “I think people really love the spectacle of a straight actor ‘playing gay’. You so, so rarely see it work in the reverse. It’s such an uneven ratio right now, and that is what I’m determined to fix.”

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    'Promising Young Woman' Leads Winners at 2021 Hollywood Critics Association Awards

    Focus Features

    The black comedy directed by Emerald Fennell and fronted by Carey Mulligan wins big at this year’s Hollywood Critics Association Awards by taking home multiple gongs.

    Mar 7, 2021
    AceShowbiz – “Promising Young Woman” was the big winner at the 2021 Hollywood Critics Association Awards.
    Emerald Fennell’s black comedy starring Carey Mulligan as Cassie Thomas dominated the evening, scoring multiple accolades, including Best Picture and Best Actress for the 35-year-old star.
    Accepting her awards via video call, Carey said, “This opportunity was really the chance of a lifetime and I’m so grateful to her.”
    The director and screenwriter also won Best Original Screenplay, Best First Feature, and Filmmaker on the Rise.
    Emerald, also 35, said of the former honour, “It just seems completely extraordinary that this script that was in my head for years and years listening to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears until everything was a pink, sparkly blur, for it to have come all of the way to Hollywood and to be awarded this unbelievable honour is truly extraordinary.”
    The thriller follows a young woman, traumatised by a tragic event in her past, who seeks out vengeance against those who crossed her path.

      See also…

    The likes of “Nomadland”, “Sound of Metal”, “Da 5 Bloods”, “The Invisible Man”, “Birds of Prey”, and “Minari” were also honoured during the virtual ceremony on Friday night (05Mar21).
    A number of special honours were also handed out, including the Trailblazer Award, which was handed to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who was recognised for speaking out on “important topics and advocating for change.” A clip was played showing the “Jumanji” star’s efforts to support the Black Lives Matter movement and highlighting his charity work.
    Moved by the video, he said, “My friends, whom I have known and grown with, all of you over the years as we have gone down this road – and what a privilege it has been and what an honour it has been to receive this honour from you guys.”
    Elsewhere, Zack Snynder took home the Valiant Award, and the Impact Award went to “Judas and the Black Messiah”.
    The latter follows the story of Black Panther Party head Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) and FBI infiltrator William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield).
    HCA Founder Scott Menzel said in a statement, “While 2020 was a year of much difficulty for many around the world, we are forever grateful to the filmmakers, storytellers, and studios who went above and beyond to find new ways to release their films to audiences. The films that the members of the Hollywood Critics Association nominated were amongst some of the most diverse and inclusive stories that we’ve seen on-screen in quite some time. Our mission has always been to highlight all voices and I believe it is reflective in our winners tonight. Congrats to all.”

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    Chloé Zhao, ‘Nomadland’ Director, Encounters a Backlash in China

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonGolden Globes: What HappenedBest and Worst MomentsWinners ListStream the WinnersRed Carpet ReviewAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn China, a Backlash Against the Chinese-Born Director of ‘Nomadland’Days after winning a Golden Globe for the film, Chloé Zhao was pilloried online for past remarks about China.Chloé Zhao, the director of “Nomadland,” at the drive-in premiere of the film last year in Pasadena, Calif., last year.Credit…Amy Sussman/Getty ImagesAmy Qin and March 6, 2021, 9:13 a.m. ETWhen Chloé Zhao won the Golden Globe for best director for her film “Nomadland” last Sunday, becoming the first Asian woman to receive that prize, Chinese state news outlets were jubilant. “The Pride of China!” read one headline, referring to Ms. Zhao, who was born in Beijing.But the mood quickly shifted. Chinese online sleuths dug up a 2013 interview with an American film magazine in which Ms. Zhao criticized her native country, calling it a place “where there are lies everywhere.” And they zeroed in on another, more recent interview with an Australian website in which Ms. Zhao, who received much of her education in the United States and now lives there, was quoted as saying: “The U.S. is now my country, ultimately.”The Australian site later added a note saying that it had misquoted Ms. Zhao, and that she had actually said “not my country.” But the damage was done.Chinese nationalists pounced online. What was her nationality, they wanted to know. Was she Chinese or American? Why should China celebrate her success if she’s American?Even a research center overseen by the government-affiliated Chinese Academy of Social Sciences weighed in. “Don’t be in such a hurry to praise Chloé Zhao,” read a social media post by the academy’s State Cultural Security and Ideology Building Center. “Look at her real attitude toward China.”On Friday, censors barged in. Searches in Chinese for the hashtags “#Nomadland” and “#NomadlandReleaseDate” were suddenly blocked on Weibo, a popular social media platform, and Chinese-language promotional material vanished as well. References to the film’s scheduled April 23 release in China were removed from prominent movie websites.It was not a complete blackout. Numerous stories about the movie were still online as of Saturday. And so far, there have been no reports that the film’s China release was in jeopardy. (China’s National Arthouse Alliance of Cinemas, which will oversee the theatrical release, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Searchlight Pictures, the Hollywood studio behind “Nomadland.”)But the online censorship was the latest reminder of the power of rising nationalist sentiment in China and the increasingly complex political minefield that companies must navigate there.Ms. Zhao, left, and the actress Frances McDormand, center, on the set of “Nomadland.”Credit…Courtesy Of Searchlight Pictures, via Associated PressFor years, the central government was the only major gatekeeper for films in China, determining which foreign movies got the official stamp of approval and, ultimately, access to the country’s booming box office. Now, more and more, China’s online patriots can also influence the fate of a film or a company.In many cases, winning over — or at least not offending — those patriots, sometimes derogatorily referred to as “little pinks,” has become another crucial consideration for companies seeking to enter the Chinese market.“There is much more space to punch figures like Chloé Zhao,” said Aynne Kokas, the author of “Hollywood Made in China.”The backlash against “Nomadland” was somewhat unexpected. Aside from Ms. Zhao, the film, which stars Frances McDormand in a sensitive portrait of the lives of itinerant Americans, has little if any connection to China. Though it is said to be a strong contender for the Academy Awards, it was not expected to bring in big Chinese audiences, given its limited theatrical release and its slow pacing.Awards Season More

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    Seth Rogen on Pot, Pottery and Ted Cruz

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySeth Rogen Is All Fired UpWe already knew about the weed and the tweeting, but when did Hollywood’s most affable schlub get so into ceramics?Mr. Rogen at the offices of Houseplant, his cannabis company, in West Hollywood.Credit…Ryan Lowry for The New York TimesMarch 6, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETSeth Rogen is well aware of the fact that he looks like seemingly one-quarter of the white men in Los Angeles between the ages of 25 and 50.The 6 p.m. bed head. The weeks-past-the-last-trim beard. The could-be-anyone glasses. The ironic T-shirts straining to contain an unapologetic dad bod. It’s a relatable Everydude persona that has won him nearly 100 film and television roles, small and large, over the past two decades.In his breakout 2007 comedy, “Knocked Up,” Mr. Rogen played the directionless stoner who somehow got the girl, and neither could understand why. In “Steve Jobs,” from 2015, he fully inhabited the role of Steve Wozniak, the amiable Apple co-founder who seemed all too content to cede the magazine covers, the billions and, basically, history itself to his swashbuckling partner in the black turtleneck.Mr. Rogen, who is 38 and also a screenwriter, director and producer, long ago transcended the beta male image to become a Hollywood power player. But “ordinary” still serves as a form of camouflage out on the streets.“Before the pandemic, I would wander around L.A. aimlessly without anyone taking pictures of me for months and months and months on end,” Mr. Rogen said. Even fans who recognize him on the streets, he joked, “think I’m just some guy who looks like me.”He doesn’t leave his home in Los Angeles much, but the other day he ventured out to an A.T.M. “Wearing a mask and everything, and someone recognized me,” he said. “It was shocking to me. It just hasn’t happened to me in so long. And if the person who did that is reading this, I’d like to apologize for my reaction. I maybe physically ran away from them.”Mr. Rogen would like to apologize to that fan he maybe ran away from.Credit…Ryan Lowry for The New York TimesTwinning and TweetingAs Mr. Rogen’s shaggy visage filled the screen on a Zoom call from his sun-drenched West Hollywood production office two weeks ago, I vaguely felt like my MacBook screen had turned into a mirror. The hair, the beard, the glasses and the “bod” that I presume we both hope didn’t grow too “dad” during 12 months of idleness. (Mr. Rogen in fact is not a father, which he has said made quarantine easier.)I told him about the time a couple of years ago I checked out a cannabis dispensary in Marina del Rey, Calif., and a woman working the door had a double-take as she checked my driver’s license: “Wait,” she said, “you’re not Seth Rogen?”He responded with his signature timpani-like chortle. “Of all the people who get told they look like me,” he said, “you might look the most like me.”Belying his widely cloned laid-back mien, Mr. Rogen has kept busy during the pandemic, even as large swaths of film and television production went into a deep freeze, along with so much else in the world.As his millions of Instagram followers are well aware, he got seriously into ceramics, posting endless photos of colorfully whimsical vases, soap dispensers and ashtrays. He fashioned them in the garage studio of the home he shares with his wife, Lauren Miller Rogen, 38, an actress and director, and their Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Zelda.Mr. Rogen with his wife, Lauren Miller Rogen, at the premiere of “Like Father” in 2018.Credit…Michael Kovac/Getty Images For NetflixHe also spent quarantine finishing his first book, “Yearbook,” which Penguin Random House will publish in May. It’s a fragmented memoir made up of comical essays recalling his early stand-up gigs as a teenager, adventures at Jewish summer camp in his native Canada and “way more stories about doing drugs than my mother would like,” per the cover flap.A smoke hound of Willie Nelson proportions, Mr. Rogen has also succeeded in bringing Houseplant, the Canadian cannabis company he started in 2019 with his longtime film partner, Evan Goldberg, to the United States. It will soon sell Mr. Rogen’s first commercial foray into ceramics: a sumptuously packaged ashtray and bud vase set priced at $85 — designed by him, but made in China — that unites his twin passions, jays and clays.Like so many others, he worked remotely, taking calls about film projects 9 to 5. Other than that, it’s been lots of streaming (“The Office,” “The Larry Sanders Show”), lots of pot and lots of tweeting.Mr. Rogen began to trend on Twitter when he squared off in a much-publicized flame war with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas that went on for days following Inauguration Day, suggesting that Mr. Cruz was fit for admiration only “if you’re a white supremacist fascist who doesn’t find it offensive when someone calls your wife ugly,” along with various obscenities.When Senator Cruz later tweeted that Mr. Rogen behaved online like “a Marxist with Tourette’s,” Mr. Rogen responded that he did have “a very mild case” of the syndrome, but he certainly did not back down. Twenty years ago, it would have been hard to tell off a famous stranger in this manner, Mr. Rogen said — “but now, thank God, I can do it. People are always like, ‘You’re like that on Twitter, but if you met him face to face you wouldn’t do that.’ And that is very not true. I would one hundred percent tell Ted Cruz to” … cover your ears, kids!Still LifeMr. Rogen joked on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” last April that he had been “self-isolating since 2009.”Mr. Goldberg, a friend since elementary school in Vancouver who speaks with him daily, concurs that Mr. Rogen was “the polar opposite of going crazy.”“As a celebrity who doesn’t like to go out and drink and stuff like that, he’s probably one of the best situated to deal with this. He loves being in his house,” Mr. Goldberg, 38, said. “He loves pursuing his hobbies, he loves watching TV on his couch with his wife and his dog. And that’s it. That’s what he loves. I know he secretly loves being stuck.”With the offices of Point Grey Pictures, their production company, closed, Mr. Rogen and Mr. Goldberg still had plenty to talk about. They are writing a script for the director Luca Guadagnino about Scotty Bowers, a onetime gas station attendant who arranged sexual liaisons for the stars in the silver-screen era.They are also helping produce “Pam and Tommy,” a Hulu mini-series about the rocker Tommy Lee and the “Baywatch” star Pamela Anderson, who did for the celebrity sex tape what Fred and Ginger did for the fox trot when an electrician (played by Mr. Rogen) lifted their notorious home movie.The partners prefer Zoom. “We hung out on his balcony one time,” Mr. Goldberg said, “and it was like, ‘Eh, I’d rather see your face on a screen than sit 15 feet apart from each other.”This is not to say Mr. Rogen’s isolation is complete. Occasionally he invited friends over to his garage studio to throw clay. Robert Lugo, an artist who describes himself as a “ghetto potter and activist” on his website, worked with him on learning how to throw larger pieces.Ash and you shall receive: mug-like trays and vases by Houseplant.Credit…Ryan Lowry for The New York TimesStool here: Mr. Rogen on the floor of his office.Credit…Ryan Lowry for The New York Times“Honestly, I was surprised at how much I got from it,” Mr. Rogen said of ceramics. “It’s meditative. It forces you to be very present.”Pulling the first of many deep hits off a large conical joint, Mr. Rogen explained that his wife, who has worked with clay since high school, signed him up for classes a couple of years ago, and he quickly got hooked. While others took up baking during quarantine, Mr. Rogen hunched over one of three pottery wheels in his studio, which has two kilns.Lately he’s been mixing his own glazes and experimenting with textures to achieve, he said, “a sort of Ken Price-ish effect.”The influence of Mr. Price, an influential sculptor and ceramist from Venice, Calif., who died in 2012, hovers over a lot Mr. Rogen’s recent work — the bulbous shapes, nubby textures and playful explosions of color. (To the initiated, that is. Philistines might describe them not unkindly as equal parts Flintstones and Jetsons.)Mr. Rogen keeps some pieces to decorate his home, alongside furnishings by midcentury designers like Hans Wegner. Others he trades to fellow ceramists, or gives to friends. He has no plans for a gallery show but said he is learning to feel comfortable among the Artforum crowd.“I think I always thought of the art and design world as a very fancy-pants place, and I felt like I had no place in it,” he said.That started to change when he helped design and furnish the glassy mansion for “This Is the End,” the 2013 farce he wrote, directed and starred in, with Mr. Goldberg, in which the apocalypse is an uninvited guest at a party thrown by James Franco playing himself, featuring seemingly half the young actors in Hollywood. “I was like, ‘Oh, I have to have a place in it now,” Mr. Rogen said of the design world, “because I have to do it for the movie.’”Jonah Hill, Mr. Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride, Craiig Robinson and Jay Baruchel in “This Is the End.”Credit…Suzanne Hanover/Columbia PicturesAnd ceramics have stimulated his creativity in a new, satisfyingly material way.“One of the things about films is that they occupy no mass or physical space,” Mr. Rogen said. “They are very intangible. And I think what is so nice about making things like ashtrays is they are incredibly tangible, and they are useful. I love films, and films are very useful to me, but they are not useful in the sense that I interact with them dozens of times throughout my day, in a casual sense, as I’m just smoking weed.”The Houseplant ashtray is a textured earth-tone cup that, aside from the bed for the joint on the lip, could double as serving vessel for green tea at a Santa Barbara wellness retreat.“There are probably millions of people who smoke weed all day who are ashing in a mug and shouldn’t be,” Mr. Rogen said.Ashtrays have been out of fashion since the surgeon general’s warning on tobacco began to sink in. So Mr. Rogen scours eBay and Etsy for vintage pieces. He owns a few of the modernist bronze hedgehog ashtrays by the Viennese designer Walter Bosse, as well as a ceramic bear claw ashtray on an iron stand by the designers Georges Jouve and Mathieu Matégot.“But those celebrated the wrong type of smoking, unfortunately,” Mr. Rogen said. He thinks that cannabis is quickly losing its stigma among high-achieving professionals, and that they might prefer fashionable accessories to grungy head shop paraphernalia.“I don’t even drink and I have a martini shaker,” he said. “I have wineglasses, and champagne glasses. If you like music, you have fancy record players. If our headphones get beautiful packaging and beautiful design, why shouldn’t weed-related products?”“What is so nice about making things like ashtrays is they are incredibly tangible, and they are useful,” said Mr. Rogen, sitting outside his office.Credit…Ryan Lowry for The New York TimesUncomfortable ConversationsAmong celebrities, Mr. Rogen is running neck and neck with Snoop Dogg and Woody Harrelson as ambassadors of marijuana use. “I wake up in the morning, I make a cup of coffee, and I roll a joint,” Mr. Rogen said. “I drink my coffee as I smoke my joint, and I continue smoking weed until I go to sleep. I often will wake up in the middle of the night and have a few hits of a joint if I’m not sleeping well.”When Houseplant becomes available by delivery in some cities in California on March 11, customers will be able to choose among three new strains for the American market (two sativas, Diablo Wind and Pancake Ice, and one indica, Pink Moon). Along with the ashtray set, the company will sell a Bauhaus-inflected aluminum block lighter set, and an LP box with music for each strain.But does the world really need another star-powered cannabis brand? In recent months, Jay-Z introduced a line of cannabis called Monogram, and Ice Cube one called Fryday Kush.Kathy Ireland, the model and entrepreneur, rolled out a line of CBD wellness products, as did Travis Barker, the Blink-182 drummer and boyfriend of Kourtney Kardashian. Martha Stewart introduced a line of CBD gummies flavored with Meyer lemon and kumquat.What can this one actor possibly add?Integrity and a commitment to social justice, said Mr. Rogen, who, as a supporter of pro-legalization organizations such as the Marijuana Policy Project, said he intends to do “everything in my power to shine a light on, and to lend a voice to, America’s racist policies in regards to weed.”“We will not shy away from very uncomfortable conversations,” he said, “and always will do whatever we can to remind people that currently there are people in jail in America for weed, and there are people whose lives are being ruined by weed.”Shelf consciousness: An assortment of ashtrays and other tchotchkes in the Houseplant office.Credit…Ryan Lowry for The New York TimesAnd he has no trouble being a spokesmodel.Mr. Rogen won High Times magazine’s Stoner of the Year award in 2007. Snoop Dogg has marveled at his trademark “cross joint” (one joint threaded through another as a crossbar), which Mr. Rogen made famous in his 2008 pot comedy, “Pineapple Express.”With every bong hit, he inches further up the Mount Olympus of marijuana, into the thin — and presumably pungent — air where the spirits of Jerry Garcia and Bob Marley mingle.In the minds of some fans, Seth Rogen is weed and weed is Seth Rogen. And he is totally fine with that.“I’m honored to be associated with weed, honestly,” Mr. Rogen said. “Sometimes people expect me to try to wiggle out from under being a very famous stoner, or someone who, in some ways, is more famous for being someone who smokes weed than anything else that they have done. But truthfully, that is a worthy thing to me. I’m as proud of it as anything.”His debut as a cannabis entrepreneur comes at an opportune time. More and more states are legalizing pot. Voters in Montana, Arizona, New Jersey, South Dakota and Mississippi all approved cannabis ballot measures in November.Even so, debate about long-term health consequences rages on, as it has for a half-century. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that one in 10 marijuana users will become addicted. The figure is one in six for people who start before 18.Mr. Rogen is one of those. His love affair with pot, he said, began in a ravine near Point Grey Secondary School in weed-liberal Vancouver when he was 12 or 13 years old and his friend Saul produced a foot-long bong from the kangaroo pouch of his hoodie.“I was very fascinated by it the first time we did it, and got really high, and wanted to do it again,” Mr. Rogen said. “Every Friday after school we would go to the ravine and smoke weed.”His use got heavier as he rose to prominence in Hollywood.Mr. Rogen and Mr. Goldberg were high as a Mars probe when they made “Pineapple Express.” And “we could just see how cathartic it was for people,” he said. “They finally saw a weed movie that had the same amount of thought put into it that non-weed movies were getting. The subtext was, stoned people made this. And they convinced someone to give them $25 million to make it. And it’s a good movie.”Mr. Rogen is open about the fact that he has been stoned for pretty much every scene in every movie he has ever made. (Even Cheech Marin of Cheech and Chong has said that he never got high while working.)It’s never been an issue. “In general,” Mr. Rogen said, “there is no amount of weed that I can smoke that will make the average person be able to discern that I have or have not smoked weed.”Those who consider marijuana a harmful and addictive drug may wonder if he is willing to live by the words widely, and probably falsely, attributed to Charles Bukowski: “Find what you love and let it kill you.”Mr. Rogen, who says he has researched the health questions to his own satisfaction, does not see it that way.“The world is not a comfortable place for me, and many other people, at times,” he said. Cannabis provides that comfort. It provides “functionality,” he added. “I can’t define it beyond that.”“It is no different to me than wearing shoes or glasses or anything else that I am doing to acknowledge that I am just not fully cut out for the world and need some help,” he said. “Could I walk around in bare feet all day? Maybe. But why?”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    'A Quiet Place 2' Moved Forward From September Release Date to May

    Paramount Pictures

    The sequel to the critically-acclaimed horror movie ‘A Quiet Place’ is now due to scare moviegoers in May after it was previously pushed back to September.

    Mar 6, 2021
    AceShowbiz – “A Quiet Place 2” is set to hit theatres sooner than expected.
    Filmmaker John Krasinski took to Twitter to share his excitement that the sequel to his 2018 horror flick – which he co-wrote, directed, and starred in alongside his wife Emily Blunt – will now be released on 28 May (21), four months earlier than previously planned.
    The movie was originally due to hit theatres in May 2020, but like most films it was hit by a delay due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the closure of cinemas.
    “They always say good things come to those who wait. Well… I think we’ve waited long enough,” Krasinski tweeted.
    What’s more, 45 days after its theatrical release, the motion picture will be available to watch on new streaming service, Paramount+.

      See also…

    The sequel will follow the same family continuing their fight for survival outside of their hometown, and although Krasinski’s character died in the first movie, he will make an appearance in the sequel through flashback sequences.
    Blunt is back as his wife Evelyn Abbott with Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe as their kids Regan and Marcus.
    New additions include Cillian Murphy and Djimon Hounsou.
    The first picture proved to be a cultural phenomenon with both critics and audiences, raking in over $340 million (£245 million) worldwide on a budget of less than $20 million (£14 million) and nabbing an Oscar nomination for best sound editing.
    Rumor has it, the movie franchise is getting a spin-off. John Krasinski is reportedly involved as a producer. He also came up with the idea for the new story, but Jeff Nichols is reported to write the script and direct the project.

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    Kelly Rowland Hesitant to Watch Britney Documentary Due to Lack of Pop Star's Involvement

    WENN

    The Destiny’s Child singer admits she hasn’t watched the controversial Britney Spears documentary because the Southern Belle was not involved in the film making.

    Mar 6, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Kelly Rowland is “having a hard time wanting to watch” the recent documentary about Britney Spears’ conservatorship.
    During an appearance on “Watch What Happens Live” and the programme’s “After Show” on Thursday (04Mar21), Kelly explained that she has some reservations about watching the film because Britney didn’t participate in it herself.
    “I haven’t seen the Britney doc. I’m having a hard time wanting to watch it,” she sighed. “I really respect when artists say, ‘This is a documentary, it’s OK to watch this.’ I respect their space and their privacy and their point of view. And their story, what they feel their story is, from their brains, their hearts their mouths. So, I try and respect that.”
    However, Kelly concluded, “But everybody says they really enjoy it, so that’s great.”

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    The Destiny’s Child singer also weighed in on the changing media landscape since Britney’s much-publicised breakdown in 2008, and insisted that social media has a lot more power these days than it ever did back then.
    “Now it’s social media, and social media is people. From her perspective, (the negativity came from) journalists and all these people in the media. But now social media is people. So people need to just be kind. Period,” she said.
    Following the documentary release, Britney received apology from former boyfriend Justin Timberlake.
    The NSYNC member regretted his treatment of Britney and his former Super Bowl collaborator Janet Jackson.
    “I am deeply sorry for the times in my life where my actions contributed to the problem, where I spoke out of turn, or did not speak up for what was right,” he said. “I understand that I fell short in these moments and in many others and benefited from a system that condones misogyny and racism.”

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