Celebrity

Many celebrity court cases have captured the attention of the public over the years, but few have taken a literal world tour. The curious case of Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard has had weeks of testimony and mountains of evidence all to prove or disprove one thing: When Amber Heard wrote in her 2018 Washington Post editorial that she "became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out," was she, in fact, speaking of her former husband Johnny Depp?

It's the year of the villain for the Critical Blast Best of 2021 Awards. After tabulating the votes that awarded Willem Dafoe our award for Best Film Actor, we turned toward the category of Best Series Actor -- those men and women who bring our episodic fantasies and adventures to life.

Not only did superhero actors dominate the category, but the Disney + coterie of streaming shows nearly swamped the nominations. While Luke Wilson took 8.7% of the vote for his work on Stargirl (tying with Ted Lasso's Jason Sudeikis), from that point forward every vote was for an actor on a Disney + MCU series.

Hailee Stanfeld claimed 10.14% of the vote for her work on Hawkeye, and Elizabeth Olson took a sizeable portion of the ballots to earn the second top spot for WandaVision.

Pride of Canada James Cameron, who is undoubtedly one of the world's greatest and well-known filmmakers, was born on the 16th of August 1954, in a place called Kapuskasing, in Ontario, Canada.

James, who was the eldest of five siblings, and his family moved to California when he was 17, where, unsurprisingly considering his love of science-fiction, he began to study physics at Fullerton College.

His mother Shirley Cameron (formerly Shirley Lowe) was an artist and a nurse and his father Philip Cameron was an electrical engineer. It’s not difficult to see that he inherited his mother’s artistic talents and his father’s skill for engineering.

Indeed, he has used these skills and talents in countless interesting and innovative ways within his many roles in the field of filmmaking since.

The majority of the movie superstars have earned millions of dollars with their acting talents, and most of that money is spent on luxurious houses, sports cars, private jets, and whatnot. But this still leaves them with an abundance of money to spend, and some of these movie stars decide to gamble and maybe even win more money. The fact that these movie stars are enjoying gambling shouldn't come as a surprise, considering how much wealth they possess. After all, they too are humans and they need to blow some steam off.

Streaming services once again dominated the voting for the category of Best Series Actor of 2020, with not a single traditional broadcast medium making a statistical showing.

Hulu's The Great saw leads Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult both achieve 3% of all votes cast, in a three-way tie with DC Universe's Stargirl's Luke Wilson, while the superhero lead for the aforementioned Stargirl, Brec Bassinger, pulled in 4%.

DC Universe also saw Doom Patrol's April Bowlby stretch past the pack to nab 9% of the ballots, but Anya Taylor-Joy doubled that with 18% for her work on Netflix's The Queen's Gambit.

Where most of the categories this year have seen an influx of competition, from comics to movies to shows, the Best Film Actor category was surprisingly slim this year -- perhaps an indication that while the films themselves were entertaining, there were very few standout performances in them. It seems an odd dichotomy, yet here we are.

Leading off the list of nominees for Best Film Actor of 2020 is Stranger Things' Millie Bobbie Brown for her titular role in the Netflix film, Enola Holmes, taking only 2% of the vote. She us only barely passed by Ariana Greenblatt, with 3%, for her supporting role in Love and Monsters. 

Sometimes when an actor finishes a film, he or she retains a prop of some kind, a souvenir or memento they can look to in the future for a conversation piece.

Zachary Levi seems to have come away from his stint on SHAZAM with the coolest and most valuable vestige ever: The Wisdom of Solomon. (The superhero character more commonly known as Captain Marvel gains his powers by shouting out an acronym, which gains him the combined powers of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury.)

During the trying and tiring time of the last few days, as votes were being tabulated with deliberation and states were switching colors more slowly than leaves in autumn, Levi interected a thought onto Twitter -- a place designed ostensibly just for that purpose but, ironically, in abject opposition to the ideal on most days.

The Associated Press has been informed that Chadwick Boseman, who portrayed the groundbreaking and inspirational superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, BLACK PANTHER, and AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, has passed away today at the age of 43 from colon cancer.

Boseman was diagnosed with the illness four years ago, about the same time CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR introduced the Black Panther to live action audiences. He never spoke publicly about his condition, choosing instead to continue filming.

The Boseman family statement to the press said that Boseman was 'a true fighter,' “Chadwick persevered through it all and brought you many of the films you have come to love so much; from MARSHALL to DA 5 BLOODS, AUGUST WILSON'S MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM, and several more — all were filmed during and between countless surgeries and chemotherapy."

"It was the honor of his career to bring King T’Challa to life in BLACK PANTHER.”

It seems a day doesn't go by that the Twitter trending list doesn't include a "...isCancelledParty" hashtag. Today it's THE WINTER SOLDIER star Sebastian Stan's turn in the online outrage grinder, as the #SebastianStanIsOverParty tries to gain traction in social media.

The cybermob is stirred up on two fronts.

The tempest-in-a-teapot began when a Twitter user, @angelas550, shared a photo of Alejandra Onieva -- Stan's rumored paramour -- dressed in a kimono, with the caption beneath reading "Asian Night."

That's literally it. Onieva replied to the caption with "Menuda noche de chinos. [What a Chinese night.]"

Celebrity divorces have seldom been as replete with salacious details as has been that of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, with each side throwing accusations ranging from physical abuse to purposeful defecation on the marital bed.

However, testimony on Monday, July 12, went into a reason for one of the altercations, in which Depp claimed that Heard had thrown a "haymaker" at him on her birthday (a reference to which was later captured on one of the many secret recordings Heard made of Depp prior to their divorce).

We've written before how so many of our Best of 2019 contests were nail-biters, close calls, and photo finishes.

That certainly wasn't an issue when it came to the readers selecting who they thought the Best Film Actor of 2019 was. In fact, the field quickly narrowed so that the only significantly reportable actors became a club of five.

Rosa Salazar and Brie Larson made up the superhero contingent of the pack, for their roles in ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL and CAPTAIN MARVEL, but both were overtaken by Taron Edgerton for his exuberant performance in the Elton John musical-biopic, ROCKETMAN. 

It's the third year that Turner Classic Movies has held their "Bring TCM to Your Hometown" contest, and for the Gateway to the Midwest, the third time was the charm. After what the network termed an "overwhelming response" from St. Louis residents, TCM prepared to bring the classic MGM film, MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS" for a free screening at the historic Tivoli Theatre.

But it wasn't just a free movie the town was getting. TCM host Ben Mankiewicz escorted film star Margaret O'Brien for the event, to make the screening all the more special for fans.

It seems no reality show goes on for very long without one or more of the stars making news for reasons other than the show. HOUSEWIVES OF BEVERLY HILLS went through the drama of Joe and Theresa Giudice having to serve sentences for financial fraud. SURVIVOR's Richard Hatch put his time into the system for failing to pay taxes on his million-dollar winnings.

Now the judicial spotlight is on Todd and Julie Chrisley, the leads of USA Network's CHRISLEY KNOWS BEST. The Chrisleys, and former CPA Peter Tarantino, were all charged August 14, 2019 in Georgia’s Northern District. The charges are numerous, and include conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, actual wire fraud and tax evasion.

Somewhere, original reality star focal point Al Capone is chuckling: "They never learn."

There's a secret about Twitter that a surprising number of people haven't figured out yet. It's not just a leading social media tool, a great way to promote your brand, and a fun way to connect with people who share common (or uncommon) interests -- it's also public and "out loud" and whatever you say on it is seen by everyone and, if archived, lasts forever. Many have been the times an unwary person has spoken in anger, in jest, in drunken carelessness, only to find they've become an overnight sensation or a symbol of infamy.

Such seems to be the case when Star Trek fan, Heather Rae, took to Twitter with her "Hot Take."

Our hours spent in front of our television screens and monitors would never be nearly as entertaining without the vast array of talent that makes that glowing square of light so compelling. So at this time of year, we find it necessary to recognize those who turn us into the moths attracted to their flames.

CW's ARROW made a strong showing this year, with STEPHEN AMELL pulling in 13% of the vote. He was outpaced, however, by KIERNAN SHIPKA's portrayal of Sabrina Spellman in Netflix's CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA (15%) and AMY ADAMS in HBO's SHARP OBJECTS (16%).

However, it was THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL who drew the most attention from our readers this year, driving them to choose series' star RACHEL BROSNAHAN as our Best Series Actor of 2018. They like you, Rachel. They really, really like you!

While it's been the norm for actors in superhero films to rank highly in our annual "Best Of" Awards, as decided by the readers of CriticalBlast.com, this year's crop of nominees saw most of the costumed actors take a backseat to talent like RAMI MALEK (BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY) and CHRISTIAN BALE (VICE). And to be sure, we had some strong showings by TOM HARDY (VENOM) as well as JASON MOMOA and AMBER HEARD (AQUAMAN), proving our readers aren't tired of the superhero genre yet.

When you watched wrestling back in its heyday, before the WCW got gobbled up by the WWF (which later became the WWE), you had a host of colorful, unbridled, over-the-top personalities all itching to get at one another in the squared circle to combat each other and find out who would be victorious.

Riding herd on all of these men and women through his interviews and broadcasts was "Mean" Gene Okerlund, a man of little stature yet who towered large over the industry. He never backed down from the big guys, and always kept the audiences entertained.

Today, we ring the bell for Gene Okerlund, who has passed away at age 76. No cause of death has yet been listed, however Okerlund has had a history of kidney troubles requiring transplants in 1995 and again in 2004.

Godspeed, "Mean" Gene.

When news broke on Twitter that James Gunn had posted jokes about pedophilia and deplorable acts of sexual assault, including rape, Marvel Studios had a PR nightmare on their hands.

Gunn, the writer/director of Marvel's highly successful GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY franchise, had been exposed as someone that may not be a good representative of Marvel's parent company, Disney. While some would argue that since an "alt-right extremist" outed James Gunn, it shouldn't matter. Whether you like who "outed" him or not, it doesn't make the situation less believable when the evidence is clear as day.

Matt Damon: Still Looking Slick at 46

The following statement has been released by Rose McGowan:

I would first of all like to start off this statement saying thank you for your patience. A lot of people have been demanding answers and a response to the recent events surrounding Asia Argento’s sexual assault case. Many people believe that because we have been close in each other’s lives over the past year that perhaps I am affiliated with this incident or being complicit. I am not.