Chances are the last glimpse you got of Lena Waithe was when she made her entrance as a new cast member on the now decades-spanning “Grey’s Anatomy,” or sitting in the front row of the Academy Awards ceremony with her partner, “Wicked” star Cynthia Erivo. Well, the next time you see her may be in “Place to Be,” the new film from Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó (the Oscar-nominated “Pieces of a Woman”). Waithe takes her place alongside cast members Ellen Burstyn, Taika Waititi, Pamela Anderson and Edgar Ramirez in an oddball road movie that centers a no-nonsense senior (Burstyn, who’ll be 93 later this year) and divorced man (Waititi) whose life is messy enough to involve a lost racing pigeon. They pile into the car and haul it halfway across the country for… reasons. In other words, indie film narrative quirk in overdrive. We’ll allow it for the cool cast, of course.
Who wants to taste Forbidden Fruits’?
The true importance of independent cinema is its power to launch new voices into the filmmaking world. Enter Meredith Alloway and her feature debut now in production, “Forbidden Fruits,” and its buzzy young cast: bi queen Lili Reinhart (“Hustlers”), Lola Tung (“The Summer I Turned Pretty”), Victoria Pedretti (“The Haunting of Hill House”), Alexandra Shipp (“Straight Outta Compton”) and social media personality Emma Chamberlain. Co-produced by Diablo Cody and based on the play “Of the Woman Came the Beginning of Sin and Through Her We All Die” from Lily Houghton (co-writing the screenplay with Alloway), it’s a horror feature about a secret witch coven operating out of a shopping mall. We see a future double-feature with “The Craft.” Currently in production, IFC Film and Shudder are handling it, so brush up on your hexes for the 2026 release.
Is Colin Farrell about to enlist as ‘Sgt. Rock’?
Colin Farrell won so many awards for “The Penguin” that you can imagine DC is very excited he’s interested in taking on another new character in their stable. Earlier we reported that Daniel Craig, who recently starred in “Queer” for Luca Guadagnino, might be taking on the lead in Guadagnino’s new feature for DC, “Sgt. Rock.” Now, we don’t know who walked away from whom here, but if Craig was close to the project he isn’t anymore. That’s Farrell’s job to steal at the moment, and he’s already proven he’ll put on any amount of prosthetic gear to get into character. The character in question? A stoic mid-20th-century war hero — we daydreamed about making him gay for this iteration, but that seems unlikely — and his super powers are of the street-fighting mortal variety. Gay hero or not, with Guadagnino at the helm you can at least count on a queer “vibe.” Updates as this develops.
Tyler the Creator and Sandra Bernhard’s Safdie ‘Supreme’
Yes, the headlines about Josh Safdie’s follow up to “Uncut Gems,” “Marty Supreme,” are all about the sex scenes between Timothée Chalamet and Gwyneth Paltrow, and that’s amusing in the way that straight people usually are (Gwyneth, for her part, was new to the concept of an on-set intimacy coordinator). But we’re queer and the cast inclusions we care about are hip-hop star Tyler the Creator (who’s been in a couple of “Jackass” films but always as himself) and bisexual Scorsese superstar Sandra Bernhard, who helped pave the road we all walk on. The film is about a 1950s professional Ping Pong player named Marty Mauser (Chalamet) and his dangerous affair with a woman whose husband is part of the Ping Pong mafia (whatever that is, but it does indeed appropriately weird and rough). Speaking of weird, the cast also includes “Shark Tank” main man Kevin O’Leary for some reason, as well as magician Penn Jillette, indie film legend Abel Ferrara, and “The Nanny” goddess Fran Drescher. It comes out this Christmas. Take our money.
Romeo San Vicente is a big fan of uncut gems.
