Cool Britannia? Cruel Britannia more like! Has it really been too long for Oasis's Liam Gallagher to remember the struggle of living pay cheque to pay cheque? Plus Robbie Williams' apeish behaviour, Brad Pitt coming up short and a Pussycat Doll with a saucer of breast milk.....Wet your appetite for goss with JESSICA BOULTON'S weekly showbiz deep dive....
23:48, 06 Sep 2024Updated 08:40, 10 Sep 2024
Popstar primates, claps for days and Angelina Jolie playing a 'scarlet woman' - join Daily Mirror Columnist Jessica Boulton for Jess Saying, her witty, wry, whimsical rundown of the wacky showbiz week....
A cheer
It’s been a blockbuster week for movies as film festivals in Venice, Telluride and Toronto have treated us to premiere after premiere - including Robbie Williams’ biopic Better Man (more of that to follow), Brad Pitt and George Clooney’s Wolfs (yes, it’s annoyingly spelt that way) and, of course, the much-anticipated sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, featuring Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, and a deliciously-quirky, macabre-musical plot.
The big takeaway from the festivals, however, was this: size does matter. For the internet, and, in turn, the industry, has become absolutely OBSESSED.
With length.
The length of your standing ovation, that is.
So without further ado, here’s Venice’s... Official Top Five Clap Countdown:
In at 5. Maria, Angelina Jolie’s Oscar-buzzy Maria Callas biopic with eight minutes of rapturous applause;
=3. Daniel Craig’s Queer and Joker 2, 11 minutes each;
2. The Brutalist with Adrien Brody (cheered on by his girlfriend, the former Mrs Harvey Weinstein), 13 minutes;
And taking the inaugural top spot with The Clap of the Festival…
1. Tilda Swinton’s euthanasia romp The Room Next Door, 17 minutes.
Yes, 17 minutes of solid, slightly-socially awkward, continual clapping.
Clearly…
• Dove’s a shoo-in to be next year’s festival sponsor. Free emergency hand lotion in the gift bags? A new must.
• Audiences are now hoping every new film’s a dud – just to save themselves the palm-ache.
Which brings me back to Wolfs.
For, imagine the shame … the absolute shame … when Brad and George got – gulp! – a FOUR-MINUTE standing ovation?
Any other time that would be outstanding. In Venice?... Well, it’s HALF the time Brad’s acrimonious ex Ange managed. (Ouch)...So it’s practically a SLAP in the face and a SPIT on the floor.
Perhaps movie PRs should rethink the optics of this new obsession. A-listers getting themselves The Clap after pleasing a bunch of strangers ? That’s the sort of thing that used to be frowned upon.
Tay trouble Tuesday
Someone didn’t learn to Shake It Off…
Yes, the reps for Taylor Swift’s squeeze Travis Kelce called in the lawyers on Tuesday after a bizarre social media story purporting to reveal the couple’s alleged “love contract”.
The document laid out a full media strategy, complete with planned statement, for the couple’s future split on September 28 - and immediately went viral, sparking suggestions Tay-Tay’s great Love Story was really ( gasp! ) a showmance.
But don’t panic. Kelce’s reps have confirmed the document is a fake – and it’s believed the whole thing was created by AI… Which got me thinking…
Could a computer create a better split strategy for some other infamous couples? Spoiler alert: yes. Katie Price/ Peter Andre and Molly Mae/Tommy Fury would have had much smoother break-ups if only they’d embraced artificial intelligence. (It’s not like one of them isn’t already au fait with other kinds of artificial enhancement.)
So could we soon be seeing Terminators working as crisis PRs? There’s a chance. Although blasting an ex while yelling Hasta La Vista, Baby may not de-escalate a situation.
Strictly defence, sorry,
Strictly’s back – sort of! This year’s contestants gathered to film the launch show in Elstree on Wednesday as it tried to move on from the ongoing Giovanni Pernice and Graziano di Prima scandal. Craig Revel Horwood was rather a little more loose-lipped on the situation - only just though.
To summarise his position: he’d been whacked with a cane when he trained as a teen and it, err, didn’t do him any harm. He did, however, add: “But that was back in those days”, before backing the addition of the new training room chaperones. “It’s always good to have another pair of eyes,” he said.
Well done, Craig, I’d say that was a solid 7 for your tap dancing round the question.
Too much Thursday
There’s a reason why I don’t usually listen to breakfast radio. It puts me off my cornflakes. (OK, OK, it’s triple choc granola). And on Thursday, Amanda Holden and Ashley Roberts on Heart certainly made me glad I’d switched from dairy to soya.
For both Amanda and Ashley confessed to having drunk… breast milk. And in Ashley’s case it wasn’t even her’s, but a FRIEND’S, which gives a whole new perspective to asking to borrow a splash.“It was a little sweet,” Ash then moaned. How apt. The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth too.
Not-so mad fer it Friday
Oasis’s ticket drama has been rumbling on and on and on – with politicians seemingly focused more on two lads from Manchester singing Wonderwall than the dodgy cladding on 4,000-odd buildings around the country.
On Friday, Liam Gallagher poured gas on the whole dynamic pricing row - which saw tickets jump up in price from £148 to a supernova £355 – joking that even his mum Peggy “hadn’t been able to get a ticket”.
Asked on X, why they were charging so much, Liam told a fan: "SHUT UP." When another brave fan dared ask if he has any spare tickets, Liam scoffed: "S**t loads but they're really expensive - 100 thousand pounds Kneeling only."
It may be a joke, but if Liam still remembered his working-class roots, he'd realise the country's already on its knees. It has been since the blur of the pandemic. Between the cost of living crisis, race riots and the Tories' callous stain on public services, it's less Cool Britannia more Cruel Britannia right now. The Gallaghers getting the band back together was a national mood-booster, a UK-wide feelgood moment, a dollop of nostalgia and - for want of a better word - an Oasis from the bleak day-to-day of broke Britain post-Covid. But instead of getting that pick-me-up, many have been simply floored. Is it really too long ago for the Gallaghers to remember the struggle of living pay cheque to pay cheque? Or has Liam just entered his Uncool Britannia Era?
Of course, not everyone is calling the Gallaghers Shameless . Longtime frenemy Robbie Williams went as far as to claim the reunion gigs would help “heal the country”.
He followed up with this rather odd compliment: “Liam Gallagher reading his phone on the toilet would be more charismatic and intriguing than 99.9% of the world’s population at their most enigmatic.” Mmmm. I can safely say there has only been one time in my life when I ever wanted to see Oasis have a number two...
1995.
The year of the great Blur v Oasis battle of Country House vs Roll With It. (A chart race that bought many a music exec a mansion).
Jess bananas
Speaking of Robbie Williams... I promised to return to Better Man – and the “man” they eventually found to play him in the biopic. A star known only as… Mr CGI ape.
Yes, apparently director Michael Gracey (the brains behind The Greatest Showman and Elton John biopic Rocketman) decided to avoid a casting crisis and draw on an early quote from Robbie calling himself a “performing monkey”.
Hence Better Man will chart “Robbie” from a young ape to a full-grown cheeky monkey snorting coke with Oasis, arguing with Gary Barlow, dancing in his pants and bagging himself a series of hopefully-less-hairy-pop-star girlfriends.
It’s not an obvious vision but apparently the simian apes (ahem) Robbie’s mannerisms to a tee. Images are under embargo so you'll just have to imagine.....think Caesar from Planet of the Apes, in.....Robbie's Rock DJ tiger underpants. And while it’s unclear if any of the film’s other stars are due an ape-over, I do think I’ve found the perfect guy to play Liam Gallagher.....
What showbiz snafu, scandal or story has caught your eye this week? Let me know in the comments or message me on all your favourite social media via @JessicaBoulton