What to Watch the Week of Christmas: Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal's Reunion, Plus All the New Movies on Christmas Day

Oscar-nominated movie directed by Ava DuVernay follows Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo) during the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights marches.

“Satire is a dangerous game In Hollywood,” Billy Wilder once observed. “It invites self-immolation.” Still, the satiric spirit looms large in many of this year’s buzzworthy movies: American Fiction, Poor Things, Saltburn, Air, The Holdovers and even Barbie.

Director Steven Spielberg’s 1985 version of Alice Walker’s classic, “The Color Purple,” has always been heavily debated. Many knock it for being too tidy and toning down the lesbian love story at its heart. Others, though, consider it a classic and a film that has withstood the test of time a lot better than the movie it lost the Best Picture Oscar to, “Out of Africa.”

Jaden Thompson AARP The Magazine has announced the nominees for the annual Movies for Grownups (MFG) Awards. “Barbie,” “The Color Purple,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Maestro” and “Oppenheimer” will contend for best picture/best movie for grownups.

Amid the flood of awards-season nominations comes AARP, whose Movies for Grownups Awards noms arrived today. Oppenheimer leads the way with six mentions, followed by Killers of the Flower Moon with five. Both will vie for Best Picture alongside Barbie, The Color Purple and Maestro.

The 1619 Project, which has been praised for reframing our understanding of American history but attacked by conservatives who brand it as “woke-ism,” won the Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series Emmy on Sunday at the Creative Arts ceremony.

reportedly turned down the gig. And, former Globes hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler reportedly said they were done. So, the job fell to Jo Koy.“This is my childhood dream,” Koy, 52, told USA Today.“I’m now living something that I would watch as a kid, something that indirectly inspired me to do what I do, seeing everyone from Bob Hope to Billy Crystal to Whoopi Goldberg [host] … Now, I’m in the captain’s seat and I’m loving it.”He told Variety about his plans, “I’m going to poke fun, but I want to do it in a way where we’re still celebrating.

Stuart Miller Four years ago, Gabriel Leone appeared in a small Brazilian movie called “Piedade” playing a character named Marlon Brando; he was not playing the American actor but does bear a resemblance to a young Brando. So it is only fitting that when the Rio de Janeiro native made his English-language debut, in Michael Mann’s “Ferrari,” he’s playing race car driver Alfonso de Portago, a stylish sportsman who both looked like and styled himself after “The Wild One.” “On the first or second page of the script, it refers to him as being like Brando,” says Leone, who had little time to prepare, flying to Italy a month after landing this huge career break.

Hello and welcome to the Scene 2 Seen Podcast. I am Valerie Complex, an associate editor and film writer at Deadline.

Former Amblin and Paramount Pictures vet Matt Andrée Wiltens is joining Gersh as their new SVP and Head of Global Corporate Communications.

Where to watch: Jan. 7, 8 p.m. on Fox.The anthology HBO drama returns for the first time since 2019.

Ryan Seacrest got President Biden to talk about all the chicken parmesan he ate over the holidays while Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper revealed whether they ever need to pee during the show, as both ABC and CNN rang in the new year with their annual specials.

Viewers were left stunned on Saturday evening when one of the masked singers in the UK version of the hit show was revealed as music legend Dionne Warwick – and she was sent home after just one episode.

Queen Latifah, Dionne Warwick and the Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb have been awarded at the 2023 Kennedy Center Honors. Check out the footage below.The annual honours are given to figures in the performing arts for their lifetime contribution to American culture, and were held earlier this month in Washington, D.C.With President Biden in attendance, the show was hosted by Gloria Estefan, and featured tribute performances from artists including Gladys Knight, Missy Elliott and Michael Bublé.Rapsody played a version of Latifah’s ‘Just Another Day’, while Monie Love and MC Lyte duetted on ‘Ladies First’.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “The Color Purple” added $7.1 million on Tuesday, bringing its domestic box office tally to an impressive $25 million after two days of release. The Warner Bros. film, an adaptation of the book-turned-beloved-movie-turned-hit-Broadway-musical, opened in theaters on Monday.

Michelle Obama took to social media to wish everyone a Merry Christmas with a throwback photo featuring her husband, former President Barack Obama, and their daughters Malia and Sasha Obama. The happy family of four can be seen posing with children dressed as elves in the photo.The photo was taken during Obama’s time in the White House, and it shows the close bond that the family shared.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “The Color Purple,” a vibrant adaptation of the book-turned-beloved-movie-turned-hit-Broadway-musical, dominated at the box office on Christmas Day. The film has outperformed expectations with $18 million from 3,152 North American theaters. It’s the largest Christmas Day opening for a film since 2009, and the second-biggest Christmas Day opening of all time.

Oprah Winfrey, was even the Queen of Talk.And the very same year, Stephen Bray — executive music producer of the new “Color Purple” movie musical that opens on Christmas Day — scored his first hits with the future Queen of Pop, Madonna, as co-writer of both “Into the Groove” and “Angel.”But Bray and Madonna shared a different kind of rhythmic history even before that — when they were both living in Ann Arbor, Michigan.“I used to play percussion in some of the dance classes that she was in,” Bray told The Post. “And then she moved to New York and was playing drums for [the band] Breakfast Club in ’79.

Far from the world of royal banquets and formal regal traditions, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex prefer a more low-key Christmas these days. Since moving to balmy Montecito in California in March 2020, Harry, Meghan and their two children Prince Archie, four, and Princess Lilibet, two, have opted for relaxed festive celebrations on their luxury five-acre estate. “We’re probably talking barbecues and walks on the beach for the Sussexes rather than obligatory black-tie dinners and pheasant shoots at Sandringham,” says royal expert Duncan Larcombe.

The Color Purple often succeeds as a thoughtful fusion of two other adaptations of Alice Walker’s landmark novel that still confidently hums its own tune.In shakier moments, though, confidence gives way to nostalgia, when the film hammers home its reinterpretations of quotable scenes and dialogue from the Quincy Jones-produced, Steven Spielberg-directed 1985 adaptation with an insistence that borders on flashing “Hey, remember this?” in bold type onscreen.Creating and saying something new with such proven material, while also purposely coaxing audience sentiment for a beloved original, surely posed a formidable challenge for Bazawule and company. And having Jones, Spielberg, and Oprah Winfrey — the big guns and big breakout from the 1985 film — onboard as producers must have eased and complicated the gig in unfathomable ways.Oprah and Jones also had a hand in the original Broadway musical adaptation, which has spun off its own lore and legacy, and adds another meta layer of pop-lit gloss to what this film aims to freshly reinterpret.The stage musical — with a book by Marsha Norman, and lyrics and music by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray — has amassed its own roster of breakout stars, including American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino, who made her 2007 Broadway debut stepping into the lead role of Celie, and Orange Is the New Black‘s Danielle Brooks, Tony-nominated for playing Sofia opposite Cynthia Erivo in the 2015 Broadway revival.Barrino and Brooks reprise their respective roles here with a lived-in grace and fortitude that does freshly illuminate Walker’s moving narrative, the lifeblood that courses through every iteration.