Rami Malek and Tom Sturridge's Steamy '80s NYC Drama Is About to Dominate Cannes

Rami Malek and Tom Sturridge's Steamy '80s NYC Drama Is About to Dominate Cannes

Picture this: two men's eyes locking across a neon-lit Lower Manhattan bar, circa 1987, while the city outside is both electric and dying. That's the world Ira Sachs — the indie director behind the critically adored Passages — has built in The Man I Love, starring Rami Malek and Tom Sturridge as two men whose lives collide in late-'80s New York, against the pulsing backdrop of the AIDS crisis. French distributor Memento, run by Alexandre Mallet-Guy, has already locked in French rights, betting on the film before a single press screening at Cannes' main competition — the most prestigious slot in world cinema.

Malek, who won his Oscar for Bohemian Rhapsody and last showed up as a Bond villain in No Time to Die, has been deliberately selective since. This is the kind of pivot that turns careers into legacies. Sturridge, best known to younger audiences as the brooding Dream in Netflix's The Sandman, matches him in a pairing that already has awards-season watchers typing up their predictions. The Cannes main competition starts May 13 — the jury's reaction could turn this into the prestige streaming event of the fall.

The last time Cannes went this quietly electric for an intimate drama, it handed out the Palme d'Or.

Gobble's Take: If Call Me by Your Name had a grittier, Malek-shaped older sibling, it would premiere exactly like this.

Source: Variety

Duran Duran and Nile Rodgers Just Dropped the Song That Turns Your Commute Into Studio 54

Simon Le Bon's voice hits the first chorus of "Free to Love" and suddenly there are shoulder pads, shimmering synths, and zero regrets — Nile Rodgers' funky guitar doing what Nile Rodgers' funky guitar always does, which is make you forget what year it is. The British new wave icons behind Rio and Hungry Like the Wolf reunited with Rodgers, the Chic mastermind who also produced some of their biggest '80s hits, for a glittering ode to late-'70s dancefloor excess. Rodgers himself said it captures "the good times we thought were gone forever."

The timing is sharper than it looks. Synthwave nostalgia is everywhere right now, and Duran Duran haven't just chased the trend — they helped invent the original. Rodgers has a genuinely remarkable track record of turning collaborations platinum: he's the reason "Get Lucky" by Daft Punk was inescapable for an entire summer. "Free to Love" is streaming now on Spotify, and if TikTok gets hold of it, this song will be soundtracking someone's thrift-store haul video by the weekend.

Forty-plus years in, they're not trying to be young — they're reminding everyone why the originals still hit harder.

Gobble's Take: Dust off your legwarmers — this track turns any commute into a retro rave you'll replay all weekend.

Source: Billboard

Netflix's Stranger Things Animated Spinoff Is Already Getting Torched by Critics — But One Voice Is Saving It

Odessa A'zion — the sharp breakout from Hellraiser (2022) — steps into the Upside Down as a quick-witted new teen, and her voice performance is the one thing reviewers can't stop pulling out of an otherwise brutal pile-on. Stranger Things: Tales From '85 is Netflix's animated spinoff set between seasons 2 and 3, following Mike, Dustin, and the rest of the Hawkins crew against a fresh wave of monster threats in a style aimed younger and friendlier than the live-action series. Janeane Garofalo voices a snarky adult ally. Critics, however, are calling the show "dull and unambitious" — a cash-grab filler drop that recycles plots and flattens the atmosphere fans actually love.

The gap feels enormous when you stack it against what Netflix animation can do — Arcane won nine Emmys in a single night. This lands right as fans are already counting down, desperately, to Season 5. A'zion's clips are reportedly already circulating on TikTok, her character's delivery giving the internet the meme-ready moments the actual show fails to earn. It won't hurt her career — it might accidentally launch it.

The show may be forgettable, but she is not.

Gobble's Take: Skip the show, hunt down A'zion's clips — your next binge crush is hiding inside this flop.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Elsa Pataky Convinced Chris Hemsworth to Cameo in Her New Thriller — And She Was the One Running the Set

Elsa Pataky has spent years being photographed next to Thor. Now she's directing him. The Spanish actress and action veteran — married to Chris Hemsworth for 13 years — stars in and executive produces The Tribute, a family drama-thriller for SkyShowtime (Europe's answer to Netflix), and managed to land her husband for a surprise cameo that left the crew genuinely starstruck. Pataky described it as "pure magic," a charged moment on set where she was the one calling the shots while he followed her lead.

The Tribute is a high-stakes story of legacy and revenge, filmed against Spain's rugged coastline and drawing on Pataky's own action roots from the Fast & Furious franchise. SkyShowtime is banking on her name — and now Hemsworth's face — to drive global viewership in what is shaping up to be one of the platform's biggest original bets. Pataky has been quietly building toward this kind of creative control for years; the cameo is fun, but the real headline is that she's the one in the director's chair.

Thor who — she's running the show now.

Gobble's Take: Pataky spent a decade being the famous wife; she just made the move that changes that sentence permanently.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Quick Hits

• Boards of Canada surfaces after 13 years of silence: The cult Scottish electronic duo announced Inferno, an 18-track double album dropping next month — their first release since 2013's Tomorrow's Harvest. Billboard
• SXSW horror find heads to Cannes market: American Dollhouse, John Valley's buzzed-about horror feature from this year's SXSW, has been picked up by Blue Finch Films for international sales ahead of the Cannes market. Variety

In Case You Missed It

Yesterday's top stories:

• Sydney Sweeney Got Cut From Devil Wears Prada 2 — And "Creative Decision" Is Doing a Lot of Heavy Lifting
• Hilarie Burton and Jeffrey Dean Morgan Have Been Married for Years — And You've Heard Almost Nothing About It
• RAYE Performed Twice on Colbert and Neither Song Needed a Feature to Demolish the Room
• Olivia Dean's "Man I Need" Hit One Billion Streams — With Zero Hype Machine Behind It