Jaden Smith stars in Columbia Pictures’ “After Earth,” also starring Will Smith. Will Smith has never spoken openly of his connections to the Church of Scientology, but they are well documented. Whether or not Smith is a devout member or simply curious about this Hollywood faith, he has visible ties to the group. In 2007, he donated $122,500 to several Scientology rehabilitation organizations. Two years later, he and wife Jada Pinkett Smith opened California’s New Village Leadership Academy, a private school founded on the teachings of Scientology creator L.

Against Me! frontwoman Laura Jane Grace is releasing a memoir titled Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout. Grace worked on the book with Noisey editor Dan Ozzi, who told EW, “The book mixes narrative about Laura’s life — growing up with dysphoria and playing in our generation’s most influential punk band — with amazing journal entries she’s been keeping since she was a kid.” After Grace came out as transgender in 2012, Against Me!

The 28-year-old Polish artist Agata Slowak told the writer and curator Alison Gingeras, who prepared the press materials for Slowak’s show at Fortnight Institute, that she “wanted to queer Jesus.” Her paintings are full of nails and stigmata — surreal, sadomasochistic images that depict male ruin and female power. Slowak wrote to me that she, a young woman in a Catholic country, occupies a “rupturing position.” She added, “I find it difficult to function in communities in general.

This interview originally ran during the 2023 Venice Film Festival. We’re recirculating it in advance of Green Border’s theatrical debut. We’ve also asked Holland an additional question, which can be found at the end of the interview. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Green Border since I saw it at its Venice Film Festival premiere this week. The film, about the refugee crisis on the forested border between Poland and Belarus, is a call to arms from director Agnieszka Holland and co-writers Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk — a viscerally disturbing, two-and-a-half-hour warning about the international encroachment of fascism and mass dehumanization, captured even as tragedy continues to unfold.

Ahsoka Tano has had one of the biggest character arcs in all of Star Wars, both in-universe and out of it. First introduced in The Clone Wars movie, the previously unnamed Padawan of Anakin has become not only one of the most complex and essential characters in the franchise but one of the most beloved, to the point where she not only survived Order 66, but became an important part of Rebels and even had a voice appearance in The Rise of Skywalker prior to a live-action debut in season two of The Mandalorian.

As it should be, Alan Arkin gets off the best line in the Argo trailer: “If I’m gonna make a fake movie, I’m gonna make a fake hit!” As an old-school Hollywood producer, Lester Siegel, enlisted to pretend to make a sci-fi movie that needs to be shot in Iran in order to help the CIA sneak six American embassy workers out of the country during the hostage crisis, the 78-year-old is the anchor and heart of the most absurd part of an incredibly hard-to-believe true story.

Actor Alan Rickman attends the New Group Gala 2012: Cabaret Soiree at The Edison Ballroom on February 27, 2012 in New York City. Lee Daniels continues to staff up the White House for his next film, The Butler. The director recently added Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan to the decades-spanning movie about a White House servant; now he’s pulled in Alan Rickman to play her Ronnie. Matthew McConaughey, Cuba Gooding Jr.

Oh, you like podcasts? Sign up for Vulture’s new recommendation newsletter 1.5x Speed here. Oh, you like podcasts? Sign up for Vulture’s new recommendation newsletter 1.5x Speed here. There are few hints of Robert Plant’s Led Zeppelin or Alison Krauss’s Union Station on their new album together, Raise the Roof. Instead, their collaboration sounds timeless, haunting, and melancholic. Their album follows up from their Grammy-winning 2007 album Raising Sand; both albums are steeped in Americana and roots music, favorites that the trio traded across the Atlantic over many years of friendship.

A backwoods swamp is an obvious location for horror. So is a ramshackle settlement deep in the forest. But what about a quaint Nebraska farm surrounded by fields of ripe corn, all juicy and sweet and warmed by the sun? Stephen King’s 1977 short story “Children of the Corn” didn’t invent the idea of terror lurking in the unexplored expanses of a rapidly developing America: In the 1970s alone, Deliverance, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Hills Have Eyes all warned of similar dangers.

This ranking was originally published in 2017. It’s since been updated to include 2023’s “Now and Then.” At Beatles anniversary time, the stories write themselves. “It was 25/30/40 years ago today!” “The act you’ve known for all these years!” “A splendid time was guaranteed for all!” This week’s release of the “final” Beatles track, “Now and Then,” is a time for all those chestnuts and more. But the song doesn’t make sense if it’s not put in context.