'All Eyez on Me'

Demetrius Shipp Jr. never acted before playing Tupac Shakur in “All Eyez on Me.” But his connections to the rapper, and to acting, go back to his childhood.

Tom Cruise was no match for Wonder Woman. Warner Bros.’ “Wonder Woman” wrapped up Cruise’s “The Mummy” at the weekend box office, pulling in an estimated $57.2 million in North American theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday. Universal’s “The Mummy” looked its age, selling a relatively feeble $32.2 million in tickets in its debut weekend.

The new “Mummy” reboot is getting pilloried by critics — and that’s delightful news for one group of movie fans.

Music

Jade Jackson can recall every detail of the room in which she played her first gig — the size of the place, what it smelled like, the decor hanging on the walls. But of course she can: The venue, a cozy coffee shop in this tiny Central Coast city, sits just across the street from her parents’ restaurant, where the gifted young country-rock singer has waited tables since her family settled here the summer before she began seventh grade.

Marvel and Disney have created a sort of perpetual motion machine, churning out intellectually spare but critically and commercially successful films based on beloved properties. But DC has done them one better, creating a morally serious cinematic universe devoted to thinking about an interesting question: How would humanity react to the discovery that gods walk amongst us?

We’re not saying that Taylor Swift just released all her music on streaming services at midnight June 9 just because her nemesis, Katy Perry, dropped her new album at midnight June 9. However ... let’s take a look at this intriguing sequence of events.

Q&A

It’s all fun and games until they haul out the gas masks.

“The challenge I present myself with is to get out of my own way,” says Benjamin Montalbano, founder and frontman of Matthaus. “At the end of the day, that’s my MO and my reason for doing this project: to present songs that are digestible but also satisfy my own inner nerdiness.”

“A-leeeee-shaaaa!” The voice is unmistakable. It’s the same one that has announced the giveaway of dozens of free cars. The one that can make anyone - “John Tra-vol-tahhhh!” “Tom Cuh-ru-ooze!” “Celine Dee-onnnn!” - sound as if they’re about to enter the gladiator’s arena.

TV

Don’t keep up with the inner workings of Kevin James’ latest sitcom? It might be time to pay attention, because something odd just happened behind the scenes.

Q&A

Ubisoft announced May 26 that its upcoming video game, "Far Cry 5," will set the series in the United States for the first time. The story pits a player’s band of Heartland resistance fighters against a charismatic doomsday cult leader who kidnaps townspeople all while proclaiming a love of freedom, faith and firearms (not necessarily in that order).

Q&A

At his core, Jay Chandrasekhar, 49, is a storyteller. The actor/writer/director/comedian has been telling stories all his life — often raunchy, hilarious ones with his collaborators in Broken Lizard, the comedy troupe that formed at Colgate University in 1990 and went on to make the cult films “Super Troopers” and “Beerfest” in the 2000s.

On a recent spring evening, Tony Kanal and his bandmates prepared to take the stage at the Roxy in Los Angeles. It’d been 21 years since the Southern California-based bassist last performed at the famed Sunset Strip venue, and it was under decidedly different circumstances. At the time, Kanal’s band, No Doubt, was arguably one of the hottest live acts in the world, thanks in large part to the success of its multi-platinum breakout album, 1995’s “Tragic Kingdom.” This time, however, with a brand-new band, he and three other musicians were hoping for little more than a chance to prove their worth.

David Hasselhoff wasn’t actively stalking Zac Efron on the way to the beachside port-a-potty. But now that they were both there he figured, well, why not make the most of it?

Hollywood’s summer has flopped so far.

Hollywood just suffered its worst Memorial Day weekend in 18 years, an eye-popping omen for what’s shaping up to be a bleak summer box office.

Diana, princess of the Amazons, better known as Wonder Woman, has spent 75 years saving the world in DC comic books and TV shows, and has fought alongside Batman and Superman with her sword and Lasso of Truth. Still, her male counterparts have hogged the big-screen glory.

Movies

Hollywood loves a Cinderella story, and Stella Meghie has a real one. In 2009, Meghie quit her job as a publicist for fashion and beauty brands to go back to school and follow her dreams of being a writer-director. In 2011, she completed her screenwriting degree at London’s University of Westminster; the years that followed have been a film student’s dream.

Danny McBride has a special flair for playing obnoxious loudmouths — the kind of outwardly cocky yet inwardly tragic jerks that he’s brought indelibly to life in films like “The Foot Fist Way,” “Pineapple Express,” “This Is the End” and the HBO series “Eastbound & Down” and “Vice Principals.”

There was a time when Hollywood executives were convinced that television would end the movie industry. They were certain no one would want to pay for entertainment when there was free TV to watch.

Stepping inside Disney’s latest theme park attraction, Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission BREAKOUT!, is like being thrust into one of blockbuster films’ pulsating, action-packed trailers.

Max Harwood and Danny Miller have been friends since they attended the same grade school in Washington, D.C. In high school, the two started a garage-rock/punk band.

Book review

Special to The Washington Post

Eddie Vedder stands alone now. Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell’s death May 17 left rock fans reflecting on the grunge era, and many came to a sorrowful realization: Vedder, the frontman of Pearl Jam, is one of the movement’s only icons who is still alive.

TV

Add another TV reboot to the long list of shows back from the dead: “Dynasty” will debut on the CW this fall.

Summer movie preview 2017

It's the summer of Chris Pratt. Again.

Warner Bros.' "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword" failed to pull an Excalibur-like miracle to top "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2," becoming the summer season's first big flop.

Zoe Saldana, who reprises her role as Gamora in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” says it’s great that there are more strong roles for women in film.

That day in the summer of 1967, Richard Goldstein walked into the New York Times offices in midtown Manhattan wearing a purple cape. He was 22, a hippie and a freelancer. And he was about to deliver a scathing review of the most important album of the year, perhaps the most important album in rock history.

Billy Joel wanted to be clear: He wasn’t starting a tour.

In “Voice From the Stone,” Emilia Clarke had a dream come true. The star of the HBO fantasy adventure series “Game of Thrones” had been excited about the project ever since she read the script.

If you’ve been to the movies recently, you might have glimpsed it — an unfamiliar name alongside the latest from Tom Hanks, Vin Diesel, Disney’s Belle and her Beast.

After three weeks of “Furious” box office results, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” from Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel Studios, took over this weekend.

A year and a half ago, Fionn Whitehead was an unknown aspiring actor working in a coffee shop in the Waterloo district of London. On his off hours, he’d go in for every audition he could, hoping to catch a break that would free him, he says, from “washing dishes and taking orders from angry businessmen.”

Hollywood, we have a problem. Somehow the summer blockbuster season has arrived without a 007 sequel, a Shrek threequel or a spinoff of the Hangover franchise. What's up?

When Michael McDonald was a teenager, he played as a member of one of the countless pick-up bands that famously backed the late Chuck Berry on the road.

In the appealing new Netflix comedy “Dear White People,” Justin Simien expands his 2014 movie about black life at a mostly white Ivy League college into a 10-part series. That this review is written by a white person would matter to some of the characters within the context of the series, but some of those characters would also wonder whether it should. It’s an issues-based Socratic comedy, of sorts, in which someone is nearly always bantering, debating or arguing; but it’s a romantic comedy as well, and a college comedy in a long tradition of them.

Epic reunion for a power duo

To say that Jude Law is director Guy Ritchie’s muse might be an overstatement, but the pair have worked together on three feature films (plus a Dior Homme ad campaign) in just the last eight years.

In the Martin Scorsese-produced shoot-’em-up “Free Fire,” South African actor Sharlto Copley plays Vern, a narcissistic gunrunner in a polyester suit who’s prone to a certain behavioral grandiloquence.

When Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” was published in 1985, no one knew from Hulu. The streaming service is now presenting the first three episodes of a 10-episode first season based on Atwood’s book. And so much of that sentence once would have seemed as outrageous as her dystopian story of a post-U.S. theocracy in which women have been stripped of their civil rights, with some sentenced to reproductive slavery.

Shonda Rhimes, the TV mastermind whose hits include “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal,” keeps a lid on plot twists. But she’s giving aspiring screenwriters a behind-the-scenes look at how to succeed in her craft.

More musicians are using new technology, including 360-degree cameras, virtual reality musical experiences and vertical videos, to reach the smartphone generation of music fans who are discovering new music on their phones and tablets.

Most actors who dine in Hollywood restaurants don’t talk to beret-clad strangers. And they’re especially not likely to be taking in disquisitions from one of those strangers on wine. Yet there is Charlie Hunnam — yes, gritty-as-dirt Jax from the FX biker series “Sons of Anarchy” — eagerly receiving wisdom from an older man in colorful headgear.

After weeks of feverish anticipation — and just days ahead of his headlining April 16 performance at the Coachella festival — Kendrick Lamar released his new album, “Damn,” on April 13.

Movies

“The Fate of the Furious,” the eighth installment in Universal’s “Fast & Furious” series, sped to more than $100 million domestically and $532.5 million internationally — notching the biggest global opening of all time — thanks to its muscular star power, fast cars, furious action and the kind of over-the-top spectacle usually reserved for summer blockbuster season.

Review

“Don’t be scared — I’ve done this before,” Lady Gaga told the massive crowd gathered April 15 for her Saturday night headlining set at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. And, sure, this was hardly the Super Bowl halftime veteran’s first experience before a live audience numbering in the tens of thousands.

Oprah Winfrey says she lives without feeling rage, which is a nice way to go through your days but potentially limiting when you’re playing the pivotal character in a film about an emotionally scarred woman who is all but consumed by it.

Love, grief, loss and legacy are just a few of the reasons Mayte Garcia is stepping back into the purple light with a new memoir covering her 11 years with the late music icon Prince.

As I struggle for a diplomatic way to bring up that time when the internet was mean to her, Anne Hathaway graciously intervenes.

Octavia Spencer gets around. She co-starred in “Hidden Figures,” earning an Oscar nomination in the process. Last month she played God in the faith-based drama “The Shack,” then hosted “Saturday Night Live.” This fall she’ll star in Guillermo del Toro’s mysterious Cold War fantasy “The Weight of Water.” And soon afterward, she and John Hawkes will co-star as brother and sister in the dark, intense thriller “Small Town Crime,” which she produced, just as she starred in and produced Ryan Coogler’s must-see 2013 feature debut, “Fruitvale Station.” And that’s only 4 percent of her 120 acting credits in the past three decades.

The unquenchable thirst for chatter about President Donald Trump has changed the dynamics of a fierce daytime television competition much as it has in late-night TV.

Nacho Vigalondo grew up watching kaiju eiga — cheesy Asian monster movies. Now the 40-year-old Spanish filmmaker, whose work includes several shorts and low-budget horror and sci-fi films, has made a creature feature himself. His new movie, “Colossal,” represents a giant leap, elevating Vigalondo’s profile as a filmmaker and raising intriguing questions about human behavior, through the vehicle of genre cinema.

Over the weekend, country singer and former “American Idol” runner-up Lauren Alaina posted a Facebook Live video of herself, sobbing.

Richy Jackson was on a plane to L.A. from Houston when he got the big news. Well, the next big news. It was only March, and 2017 was already among the most demanding years of the visual director and choreographer’s career.

TV

Equipped with ergonomic chairs, fluorescent lights and dotted with Mac monitors, the room could pass for just about any modern-day, millennial-baiting workplace. It feels familiar, unremarkable even — that is, until the clouds of cartoon-y smoke start wafting past the windows.

The woman sitting next to the clock will lead you to the dark, scary place, the joyous epiphany. Her words are swift, her gaze fixed. A gleam, like a knife, waits in her smile. Elizabeth Mestnik has been teaching actors — strivers, posers and naturals — for decades. The unfortunate one standing beneath the globed-paper lights of her stage is about to get schooled.

Matthew Perry doesn’t bear much of a physical resemblance to Ted Kennedy, but at least he had nailed the late senator’s distinctive way of speaking. Or so he thought.

“You want some coffee?” Josh Tillman asked on a recent afternoon at his home in the Hollywood Hills. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and as soon as he got to work in the cramped, overheated kitchen, it was easy to see why.

Commentary

Most of the discussion before the release last weekend of Rupert Sanders’ live-action remake of “Ghost in the Shell” concerned the casting of Scarlett Johansson, who is white, to play Major, a character who was Japanese in the original manga and anime franchise. The optics of that decision fed into a long tradition of white actors playing Asian roles with results that range from cringe-worthy minstrelsy to performances that raise questions about why Hollywood apparently can’t bothered to avail itself of the Asian and Asian American actors already doing great work in the industry.

Women will walk up to Taylor Nolan in bars and not even introduce themselves before making their allegiances clear.

No Justice Leaguer has it as rough when it comes to solo movies as The Flash.

TV

“You want to take that phone call?” Rachel Ramras is midway through explaining how the idea for the new TV Land comedy “Nobodies” sprang out of a failed movie pitch to fellow Groundlings alums (and series executive producers) Melissa McCarthy and husband Ben Falcone when she catches cast mate and series co-creator Larry Dorf checking his phone.

The little kid stood right in front of the stage, his eyes fixed on Joe Mailander. The kid mirrored Mailander, one of the guys onstage in the Okee Dokee Brothers, down to the plaid shirt, pint-size fedora and toy guitar with steel strings and capo, no less. He mouthed every word that Mailander sang. Between songs, the kid tried to tune his guitar, just like Mailander did.

An album. A mixtape. An audiobook in which he annotates his old scripts from “Degrassi: The Next Generation.”

Movie review

The film “Life” is a test-tube baby, born from a blend of old-school monster-movie DNA and state-of-the-art digital effects. At times silly — yet surprisingly satisfying — this tale of sci-fi suspense and horror, set in the weightless environment of the International Space Station, gives Emmanuel Lubezki’s vertiginous “Gravity” cinematography a run for its money, with dizzyingly deft camera choreography and long, unbroken takes shot by Seamus McGarvey (“Nocturnal Animals,” “The Avengers”) that may remind viewers of his work on “Atonement.”

Movie review

The randy action-comedy “CHIPS” is pitched right to that 18-24 demographic, but that audience is probably wondering what this whole California Highway Patrol movie is about. Two words, teens: Erik Estrada. He was the ultimate late ’70s small-screen sex symbol and people were really into his hair — at least according to what we’ve been able to glean from the “CHiPS” detritus that always seems to be in the pop cultural ether.

Q&A

Even amid the chaotic melee on the Dolby Theatre stage during the infamous best-picture Oscar flub, Ryan Gosling was typically unflappable. While most reacted with shock and confusion, there was the “La La Land” star — cool and bemused — chuckling on the side of the stage.

Folks on Sesame Street have a way of making everyone feel accepted. That certainly goes for Julia, a Muppet youngster with blazing red hair, bright green eyes — and autism.

Audra McDonald has six Tony Awards and a voice that will make you believe in angels. That combination puts her in a place where she can be choosy when selecting her next job.

Jenny Lawson — the best-selling author of “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened” and “Furiously Happy” — has a new book, and it’s a coloring book, kind of.

While TV star Jussie Smollett was in the recording studio working on his own music apart from “Empire,” set for release later this year, he couldn’t help but write a song about what’s going in the world, from injustice to President Donald Trump.

One of the most cherished musical numbers in a Disney movie centers on a young woman ostracized from her community because she likes to read.

Movie review

Looked at logically, “T2 Trainspotting” should not work as well as it does. In fact, it shouldn’t work at all. But up there on the screen, where it matters, the dark magic remains intact and logic be damned.

Movie review

What would Howard Ashman have thought? We’ll never know. But as the credits rolled on “Beauty and the Beast,” Disney’s live-action update of its own 1991 animated masterwork, I found myself perusing the late, great lyricist’s words in search of a phrase that would do the experience justice.

During a recent phone conversation about his latest film, John Goodman wisecrackingly proved that even when the cameras aren’t rolling, he can put on one heck of a show.

For so long, March came in like a CGI lion and went out like an animated lamb. The month was often a safe space to open such kiddie fare as Fox/Blue Sky’s animal cartoons and handily win an audience.

Defending so-called “genre” fiction against the people who shallowly assume that it’s nothing but stories of ray guns printed on cheap paper stock is a long and noble argumentative tradition.

Music

Inside a trendy Fairfax District sneaker store in Los Angeles on a busy afternoon, Khalid is scanning the room looking for a pair that catches his eye.

Movie review

With seven full-on King Kong movies since his arrival on-screen in 1933 — not to mention countless media spinoffs — it’s reasonable to question his return in “Kong: Skull Island.” Why make another movie about the big ape? Turns out, there are excellent reasons. Lots and lots of them.

He’s a lover, not a fighter. The big ape called King Kong has been a chest-pounding pop culture icon for nearly 85 years. But for all of his destructive ways, the hairy heap of horror has a heart. More specifically, he has a thing for winsome blondes.

Rosamund Pike’s philosophy of acting is that it’s a process of observing what it means to be human. That way of thinking came in very handy as she tackled the feature film “A United Kingdom,” where she plays Ruth Williams in the true story of a marriage that almost brought down a kingdom.

When “The Americans” premiered on FX way back in 2013, the drama felt like a period piece, a Reagan-era Cold War throwback that, like “Mad Men” or “Downton Abbey,” was infused with nostalgia for a bygone era. In 2017? Not so much.

David Letterman has been off the “Late Show” for nearly two years, and during that time he has apparently been bursting to offer his opinion on a few topics, especially his old friend “Trumpy.”

To hear Olivia Harrison tell it, it wasn’t unusual for George Harrison to stroll through their house spouting words at random -- a process that could cause an outsider to wonder whether the ex-Beatle had suddenly started speaking in tongues. “George would throw out words one after another,” she said in a recent interview. “He knew he’d find the word. He was good at that."

“It feels too good to be back home,” Ari Lennox tells a sold-out crowd at U Street Music Hall in Washington, D.C., on an unseasonably warm night in January. The show was her fifth in the area in as many months since releasing her debut EP “Pho” in October. But for the past five years, she’d been away from the place she called home.

Hugh Jackman could have given up on Wolverine a long time ago if he wanted to. When Bryan Singer briefly left the “X-Men” movie franchise to make “Superman Returns,” not even Jackman’s one-of-a-kind charisma could save 2006’s “X3: The Last Stand,” perhaps the only “X-Men” movie fans prefer to just not talk about because it was so rushed and just not good.

Jordan Peele never thought his directorial debut “Get Out,” a horror spin on “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” for the post-Obama age, would ever actually make it to the big screen.

Even Hollywood’s greatest storytellers couldn’t create a tale as wild as the past week of Gary Alan Coe’s life.

Forget Batman vs. Superman or Captain America vs. Iron Man. In James Mangold's moving tribute to X-Men's Wolverine, "Logan," it's all Logan vs. Logan. He strips away the spandex, the posse and the chaos, distilling the story down to the essence of the man, Logan, also known as Wolverine, also known as James Howlett. What's left is the agony and the ecstasy of mutanthood, which star Hugh Jackman expresses as physical and mental torture. Logan's greatest opponent is, and always has been, himself.

Even the biggest snafu in Academy Awards history could not snap the ABC telecast out if its recent ratings slump.

In a film industry often criticized for exploiting a fear of Muslims, Mahershala Ali received a standing ovation as he achieved a historic feat 20 minutes into Sunday night’s Academy Awards ceremony, becoming the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar.

For 82 years, accounting and consulting firm PwC has enjoyed a reputational boon from handling the balloting process at the Academy Awards.

The 89th Academy Awards got off on the right foot, with a song and dance, but ended with the most stunning mistake ever to befall the esteemed awards show when the best picture Oscar was presented to the wrong movie. Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, holding an incorrect envelope, wrongly presented the top prize to “La La Land,” instead of “Moonlight.”

Beyond a stretch of thrift stores and nail salons, in a small Panorama City house he shares with eight people, four dogs and a lot of crucifixes, John Geronilla is in the grip of a Hollywood daydream. A Filipino immigrant and aspiring filmmaker, he is bound for Chicago in the morning to work on a successful TV series.

Ryan Eggold is ready for more action in NBC’s “The Blacklist: Redemption.” Eggold’s character, Tom Keen, grew into a key part of mothership “The Blacklist.” Now Tom and Famke Janssen’s Susan “Scottie” Hargrave are front and center in “Redemption,” two people with dark pasts who are intent on righting wrongs, not committing them.

In Aeschylus’ play “Agamemnon,” the titular king’s homecoming from the Trojan War is marked by his vengeful wife Clytemnestra, who offers him a red carpet on which to walk.

In yet another confirmation that you’re getting old, pop superstar Rihanna has hit a landmark: She has now landed 30 songs in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, a feat achieved only by the Beatles and Madonna.

Sunday night is Oscar night, and as always, a few questions await their answers:

Add David Duchovny to the long list of actors who have used their fame to become gigging musicians. The New York native best known for his role as the brooding Fox Mulder on “The X-Files” or bacchanalian Hank Moody on “Californication,” Duchovny released his first album, “Hell or Highwater,” last year.

Of all the Academy Awards contenders this season, the surest sure thing heading into pre-Oscars week is Justin Hurwitz, the 31-year-old composer of "La La Land."