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Tag: daniel kaluuya

  • Phil Lord, Chris Miller Reveal Themselves as Writers of Golden Globes “Studio Executives” Bit

    Phil Lord, Chris Miller Reveal Themselves as Writers of Golden Globes “Studio Executives” Bit

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    When Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse voice actors Hailee Steinfeld, Daniel Kaluuya and Shameik Moore took the stage to present best screenplay at the Golden Globes earlier this month, the trio claimed their intro had been written by studio executives.

    But, instead, it was Spider-Verse writers Phil Lord and Chris Miller who crafted the memorably stilted dialogue, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

    “We were really happy that they wanted to have Hailee, Shameik and Daniel present and present a prestigious award,” Lord tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I think it’s a nice acknowledgment that the cast of our movie is full of Oscar nominees. Hailee is an Oscar nominee and an Academy member. Kaluuya is an [Oscar] winner. And we wanted to make sure they looked great. It’s a fun show, but you want to make sure you don’t go up there and whiff on a bit. So I think our objective was: How do we make something for them that makes them look great, that honors the category, that is still playful?”

    In coming up with the segment, the duo — who have a history of writing for the Lego and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs franchises and for Apple TV+’s The Afterparty but who admit they’re “not professional variety show writers” — came up with eight options, trading ideas and soliciting suggestions from friends even as late as the Friday before the awards show. The Spider-Verse team ran through the options in rehearsal, and they knew the “studio executives” bit was a winner.

    “It was very clear anytime it was pretend banter, it just always felt canned,” Lord says. “At least with the three of them, the thing that they gravitated toward and really were able to lean into and felt really confident about was the thing where they could play it really straight but still be in on the joke.”

    The segment also offered one of the show’s few allusions to last year’s writers strike, which was appreciated by the head writers for the Globes, who explained they hadn’t yet found a way to acknowledge the strike, Lord and Miller recall. “They were excited about the bit because it was a way to do it with a friendly touch,” says Miller.

    The moment was a hit with the star-studded audience, which included the executives who supported Spider-Verse who were sitting next to Lord, Miller and Spider-Verse directors Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson and Joaquim Dos Santos, who spoke with THR about the bit at the National Board of Review Awards last Thursday.

    All three directors, who were on hand to receive the best animated feature award, said they enjoyed the intro, adding that they were “cracking up” at the “hilarious moment.”

    Powers elaborated that he thought that segment reflected the film.

    “I think that speaks to the spirit of the film that we made and the characters that we had them portray,” Powers told THR. “It was great to have our actors in our film, who are great personalities in their own right, highlighted.”

    As for why they attributed the speech to studio executives and not AI, Miller calls the technology “comedy clam,” or something a bit “hackneyed.”

    “We certainly have no love for AI and don’t want it anywhere near script-writing,” he added.

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    Hilary Lewis

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  • Golden Globes Presenters Mock Studio Executives In Hilarious Defense Of Writers

    Golden Globes Presenters Mock Studio Executives In Hilarious Defense Of Writers

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    Daniel Kaluuya, Hailee Steinfeld and Shameik Moore put “the importance” of Hollywood writing on full display at the awards ceremony.

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  • Daniel Kaluuya Makes His Directing Debut With Dystopian Sci-Fi 'The Kitchen'

    Daniel Kaluuya Makes His Directing Debut With Dystopian Sci-Fi 'The Kitchen'

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    The cast of

    Famous actor Daniel Kaluuya (Black Panther, Black Mirror) is making his directorial debut with the 2023 film The Kitchen. For those who have followed Kaluuya’s career, the subject matter and tone shouldn’t come as a surprise.

    The Kitchen is set to release on January 12, 2024. Co-directed by Kibwe Tavares and Kaluuya for Netflix, The Kitchen is a dystopian sci-fi film set in a future London where all social housing has disappeared. This obvious social commentary on late-stage capitalism has the potential to rouse discussions on the state of the housing market and government corruption.

    Netflix recently dropped the first trailer for The Kitchen:

    The original film stars Kane Robinson, Jedaiah Bannerman, BackRoad Gee, Demmy Ladipo, and more. Despite appearances, The Kitchen isn’t based on existing source material. The Kitchen premiered on October 15, 2023, at the BFI London Film Festival. Production for the movie started back in 2014, an abnormally long development time for a project.

    In an interview with Rolling Stone, Kaluuya said he initially imagined the project as “Reservoir Dogs in a barber shop.” From there, he started brainstorming more ideas to flesh the story out. The story came together after Kaluuya heard people talking about smash-and-grab robberies at various jewelers in London. “I heard about the heists and how the guys doing it were getting £200. £200?” Kaluuya told Rolling Stone. “That means there’s no one around they can sell it to for a million. It said a lot about class.”

    Both class and race seem to be at the heart of The Kitchen. Barber shops are well-known staples of low-income neighborhoods, and are a beacon of support for Black communities as well. Kaluuya is no stranger to social commentary projects, having previously starred in Jordan Peele’s Get Out, which tackled Obama-era racism in white middle-class America.

    From the details given, The Kitchen sounds fairly promising. We look forward to seeing what Kaluuya has in store for us.

    (featured image: Netflix)

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    Michael Dawson

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  • Baby, This Was Keke Palmer’s Year

    Baby, This Was Keke Palmer’s Year

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    Keke Palmer glides into Nope on the wings of a many-feathered monologue. In the blockbuster film, written and directed by Jordan Peele, Palmer plays Emerald, the charming animal wrangler for Haywood Hollywood Horses, a legacy company that trains horses for film and commercial productions. She bounds in to give a safety speech on a film set, delivering both her family history and the serious rules of the shoot with endless charisma. The monologue is a mouthful, but Palmer, in real life, did 14 different takes for Peele, relying on her stamina as a longtime actor to buoy her through the highs and lows of the speech. Her delivery—a precision blend of acting, comedy, and even a little singing on the side—shows the wealth of Palmer’s talent, which she’s been refining and displaying for nearly two decades now. An ascendant moment for a longtime star entering a new phase of her career. 

    In other words: Baby, this was Keke Palmer’s year. 

    From the actor’s award-winning performance in Nope—currently appearing on many best-of-the-year film lists—to the launch of her digital platform, KeyTV, to the premiere of her star-studded podcast and her debut as host of Saturday Night Live, where she joyously revealed she was pregnant, 2022 has been a banquet of delicious Palmer-centric moments. It seemed like everywhere one turned, Palmer was there: in theaters, on television, and across social media, her off-the-cuff moments getting transformed into instant memes. In the canon this year? “Aw, shit. They thought I was dead.” Also: “And who the hell are they?” (The latter is from a Vanity Fair video, where all of Palmer’s greatest memes are born.)

    Palmer is, of course, not new to this. She’s been acting since 2004, making her film debut at just 11 years old in the Barbershop sequel. She worked consistently for the next four years, landing breakout roles in Akeelah and the Bee and Madea’s Family Reunion. In 2008, she landed the starring role in the Nickelodeon series True Jackson, VP, the font of her most ardent fan base and the foundation of her acting stamina. In a July interview with VF, she credited her ability to do 14 back-to-back takes of her Nope monologue to her child-star days. “I really think I owe that to Disney and Nickelodeon,” she said. “Working with a large corporation at that age, I had to do a lot of things repetitively, whether it be marketing or whether it be [acting]. My ability to be consistent and to give variation comes from all those years of training as a child.”

    Though she still does G-rated fare (including a voice role in Lightyear, Pixar’s Toy Story spin-off, this year), Palmer advanced past the child-star label long ago. She’s taken on leading roles in shows like Scream Queens and Insecure, as well as films like Hustlers and this year’s Coffy-inspired Sundance thriller, Alice, though the movie received middling reviews. But her casting in Peele’s Nope marked a bold new chapter for her as a leading star, with the film role easily becoming one of the biggest of Palmer’s career (as it would for most actors tasked with carrying the horror auteur’s original, big-budget spectacles). 

    But it wasn’t just Palmer’s layered performance as Emerald that drew attention this year. It was also her whirlwind Nope press tour, which saw her gamely work through the gauntlet of late-night couches and endless themed video interviews, charming everyone with her Angela Bassett impression (which she finally discussed with Bassett herself) and her Halle Berry jokes. Palmer, who once had her own talk show and did a stint cohosting the third hour of Good Morning America, just knows how to turn it on. There’s something almost vaudevillian about her larger-than-life presence in front of the camera, a natural showmanship that just oozes from the self-proclaimed millennial diva. 

    Off set, Palmer’s candidness goes hand in hand with a vulnerability that she brings to both social media, where she talks openly about her skin care struggles, and her podcast, where she’s unguarded about topics like sex and dating.  

    She brought that blend of performance and candor to her Saturday Night Live episode, kicking things off with a funny monologue that quickly became personal. “There’s some rumors going around,” Palmer said midway through her monologue. “People have been in my comments saying, ‘Keke’s having a baby. Keke’s pregnant.’ And I want to set the record straight—I am!”

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    Yohana Desta

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