Make like Furiosa and start your engines: Let’s race through your Monday wrap-up of all things pop culture and entertainment.
Cannes’ security under fire for treatment of women of colour
As a wrap is called on Cannes Film Festival — with Sean Baker’s darkly funny film Anora winning the coveted Palme d’Or — interest has moved away from the blockbuster movies to other drama from the event.
Three women of colour — singer and actor Kelly Rowland, Dominican actor Massiel Taveras and K-pop star Im Yoon-ah — have now all spoken out about how they were treated as they were ushered along the red carpet.
Rowland was attending the premiere of Marcello Mio on Tuesday when she was forcefully led up stairs by a pair of ushers, who formed a barrier with their arms behind her. In video circulating on social media, Rowland can be seen sternly talking to one of ushers, and has since given a statement to the AP alleging she was racially profiled.
“I have a boundary, and I stand by those boundaries, and that is it. And there were other women that attended that carpet who did not quite look like me, and they didn’t get scolded or pushed off or told to get off. I stood my ground, and she [the security guard] felt like she had to stand hers, but I stood my ground,” she said.
Days later, Taveras was also moved along at the premiere of The Count of Monte Cristo, seemingly by the same usher. The actor’s dress included a giant train adorned with a painted image of Jesus Christ; while she tried to display the look over the stairs, the female guard put her arm up against Taveras’s body, corralling her onwards and ruining the photo. Taveras can be seen pushing the woman away.
Yoon-ah, who performs as Yoona, was also moved along at a screening of Horizon: An American Saga. Combined, the three incidents have stirred social media users to call for the guard involved in all altercations to be fired.
Cannes Film Festival has repeatedly come under fire for its treatment of people of colour, and in recent years has worked towards increased diversity in its jury and film selections.
In 2022, film critic Valerie Complex wrote about the repeat microaggressions she’s experienced as a Black woman attending the festival, including ushers and guards repeatedly checking her tickets, ID and bags with added scrutiny.
— Jared Richards
‘That’s crazy!’ Lizzo responds to South Park parody
From Bette Midler to Kanye West, savaging celebrities is a time-honoured South Park tradition. And over the weekend, a new episode of the long-running animated series took aim at Lizzo.
Titled The End of Obesity, the episode parodies the recent popularity of weight loss drugs Ozempic and Mounjaro. A running gag concerns an alternative pharmaceutical called Lizzo that is prescribed in conjunction with listening to the flute-toting pop singer’s music.
In one scene, a doctor prescribes the fictional drug to lead character Eric Cartman and notes:
“She’s a really good singer who talks about body positivity, and just being happy with the way you look. I want you to listen to Lizzo five times a day, and watch her videos just before bedtime. I’m afraid you’ll have to be on Lizzo for the rest of your life.”
So, what does Lizzo herself make of all this?
“That’s crazy!” Lizzo says in a TikTok video where she live-reacts to the South Park roast. “My worst fear has been actualised. I’ve been referenced in a South Park episode.”
Ultimately, after watching along, she handles being skewered particularly well: “I just feel like, damn, I’m really that bitch. I really showed the world how to love yourself and not give a fuck to the point where these men in Colorado know who the fuck I am and put it on their cartoon that’s been around for 25 years.”
She concludes: “I’m gonna keep on showing you how to not give a fuck.”
The South Park parody comes after Lizzo’s request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by three of her former dancers, accusing her of sexual harassment and weight shaming, was denied.
Lizzo has described the claims as “false” and “outrageous”, saying in a statement that she was “not the villain that people and the media have portrayed me to be”.
— Al Newstead
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga box office stalls on opening weekend
The fifth entry in George Miller’s Mad Max franchise has had a relatively muted opening weekend, despite glowing reviews. With a whopping $US168 million ($253 million) production bill, it’s likely many were disappointed that it only nabbed $US58.9 million ($88.8 million) globally.
Furiosa: A Max Max Saga was projected to make $US40-45 million in the US alone, but instead landed at an estimated $US31 million ($47 million), tying with The Garfield Movie.
Analysts (via Variety) speculate it’s a combination of issues, including Furiosa being a prequel to 2015’s Fury Road, plus a generally quieter season for films. Recent other would-be blockbusters like The Fall Guy, If and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes have also struggled to break big.
Meanwhile, those on Twitter who did watch it are all making the same joke:
The film, starring Chris Hemsworth and Anya Taylor-Joy, was filmed in Australia and is our country’s most expensive film production to date.
— Jared Richards
Melbourne Design Week Award winners announced
Design team A&A – comprised of Australian industrial designer Adam Goodrum and French marquetry artisan Arthur Seigneur – has won the 2024 Melbourne Design Week Award with a work called The Kissing Cabinet.
The pair have collaborated since 2017, combining contemporary furniture design with the centuries-old craft technique of straw marquetry. The painstaking technique — which became popular in Art Deco furniture design — involves applying fine strips of top-shelf French rye straw to an underlying timber layer, to stunning kaleidoscopic effect.
The prize-nabbing work pays homage to the kind of mechanical furniture that was popular in the 1800s and often featured concealed chambers: When The Kissing Cabinet opens, it reveals a hidden compartment, and when it closes, the design resembles a pair of kissing lips.
The work sold for $280,000.
The annual award is presented as part of Melbourne Design Week — Australia’s largest design festival – and winners are bequeathed with industry cred and a cash prize of $5,000.
— Lisa Skerrett
Lady Gaga confirms new album but cops backlash for COVID confession
Lady Gaga is back in her controversial era.
The slashie star is currently promoting Gaga Chromatica Ball, a new HBO concert film released over the weekend, showcasing her 20-date 2022 world tour.
However, the pop star is facing criticism online after casually revealing she performed a quarter of the Chromatica Ball shows while testing positive for COVID-19.
“I did five shows with COVID,” Gaga revealed to audible gasps during a Q&A at the Los Angeles premiere of the film.
“I shared it with everyone on my team. And I said, ‘I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable at work, and you don’t have to perform and you don’t have to work that day, but I’m going to do the show.’ Because I just didn’t want to let all the fans down.
“And the way that I saw it also is the fans were all putting themselves in harm’s way every day coming to the show.”
Gaga’s comments sparked backlash on social media, with commenters labelling her actions “reckless”, “wildly irresponsible” and “hypocritical”.
“This is the same artist who insisted that only vaccinated fans could attend her concerts” wrote one commenter on X.
“Disgusting … this isn’t something to brag about,” wrote another.
“Careless and absolutely wreckless [sic],” complained yet another.
While some Little Monsters (that’s Gaga fans, fyi) have defended the musician, others have expressed their disappointment and even considered revoking their fandom.
Meanwhile, other Gaga enthusiasts are delighted that Gaga Chromatica Ball concludes with the announcement they’ve been waiting for: LG7, aka her seventh studio album.
“I am in the studio every single day,” Gaga said during the LA Q&A. “It’s nothing like anything that I’ve ever made before. I love to break genre and I love to explore music.”
— Al Newstead
Meanjin prepares to host the who’s who of the writing world
The Brisbane Writers Festival officially launches on Thursday May 30, but things kicked off a little early for fans of smutty fantasy.
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Known for her smash-hit sapphic fantasy series The Roots of Chaos, Samantha Shannon didn’t realise she was a lesbian herself until she started writing the books. The British author appeared in an early special event last week, celebrating the 10th anniversary of her debut novel, The Bone Season.
The festival officially begins, though, with the First Word, a keynote speech from an eminent First Nations writer. This year, Miles Franklin-winning Goorie author Melissa Lucashenko (Edenglassie; Too Much Lip; Mullumbimby) will lead the way.
As well as platforming a range of writers and thinkers, the Brisbane Writers Festival features numerous events diving into deeper issues in the literary world — from how gender impacts writing, to the myriad ways queerness can be expressed, to the difficulties and joys of writing about art.
And First Nations curators Melanie Saward and Lenora Thaker have pulled together a wide variety of First Nations offerings — from Anita Heiss pushing for more Blak romance novels, to a look at the healing properties of telling one’s story through the Dreaming Inside anthology, which shares the voices of incarcerated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
— Katherine Smyrk