ESSENTIAL INDUSTRY AND AWARD NEWS  NOVEMBER 08, 2019 An Underappreciated Masterpiece Turns 20 “The Insider had everything,” writes K. Austin Collins.“The intrigue, the relevance, the craftsmanship, the stars—everything, apparently, but a ready-made audience.” Looking back at Michael Mann’s tobacco industry whistle-blower drama, it’s hard not to consider it in the context of its box office failure, despite the fact that it earned seven Oscar nominations and starred Russell Crowe at the beginning of his superstardom. And yet, the movie still sings, even while being utterly of its time. As Collins writes, “It’s a movie very clearly made in and beholden to a different era, a distinct moment in the history of truth, American politics, the press, corporate power. It’s razor-focused and intensely specific—yet somehow applicable to other, later moments too. Like the best of microscopes, it lets us press our noses up close—so close, in the end, that though we live in a distinct era of our own, we almost can’t even see the difference.” Elsewhere in HWD, Sonia Saraiya reviews season three of The Crown, which finds Queen Elizabeth and her royal cohort older but not necessarily wiser; Laura Bradleyreports on the shake-up at FX, where even the splashiest of upcoming series will now air exclusively on Hulu; and Julie Miller talks to documentarian Lauren Greenfieldabout her new film The Kingmaker, which finds the notorious Imelda Marcos not quite as apologetic as you might expect.

Smoke and Mirrors There’s an irony to the fact that The Insider was a Hollywood production at all, writes K. Austin Collins. “Hollywood movies are a corporate product too, and indeed, they’re often beholden to the same qualifications, the same complicated entanglements with power, elaborated upon by the movie.” READ MORE » Heavy Is the Head Meeting the Queen in the 1960s and 1970s, older and now played by Olivia Colman, Netflix’s The Crown “has lost a bit of its verve,” writes Sonia Saraiya. READ MORE » If the Shoe Fits When Lauren Greenfield sat down to interview Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines once seen as a modern-day Marie Antoinette, she expected Marcos to attempt to rehabilitate her image. Instead, Greenfield said, she was “not only an unreliable narrator but actively rewriting the history of her family in the country in a way that was dangerous.” READ MORE » Jeff Goldblum Steps Up to the Plate Having played a brief role in Annie Hall and also once played jazz with the director, Jeff Goldblum had no trouble defending Woody Allen in an interview this week. READ MORE » Mrs. America Heads to Streaming If The Handmaid’s Tale could win an Emmy as a Hulu exclusive, why not a miniseries starring Cate Blanchett? That seems to be the logic at the newly Disney-owned FX. READ MORE »