Stop trying to make Tilly happen
Friday, July 10 — Happy Friday! It feels like it’s always a tough news week, so not to add to your pain, but this next item definitely falls under the “worst thing I’ve heard all week” category. Tilly Norwood, the AI “actor” (I wouldn’t call her that, but it seems every other news outlet is), has booked her first gig. The AI will be the star of a movie called “Misaligned,” where Norwood will play an AI being with “no lived experience but with access to everyone else’s.” Sounds like a nightmare to me – a nightmare that we’re currently living in!
Luckily, I don’t really see this type of thing taking off. It mostly seems to be making everyone online really mad, and for me personally it’s resurrected Betty Gilpin’s amazing open letter to Tilly, where she likens Tilly to “Thor in a diaper” and explains to her what it’s like to be 14 (“It feels like your soul gets a broken glass enema”). But I would like to formally ask the powers that be (that is, the AI studio Particle 6) to please stop trying to make Tilly happen. I don’t know one person who is excited for this. Please! Stop!
Without further ado … Action!
📱 In more “please stop” news, Meta is facing backlash over its launch of a new tool that allows users to create AI images from other users’ Instagram photos without their consent. To opt out, follow these instructions.
🏳️🌈 Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ+ film festival, has announced the theme for its 2026 event as well as a few of the films that will be screening.
🍿 The American Black Film Festival has announced that it is returning to Atlanta on its pop-up tour, stopping by the city Oct. 24-25.
🏳️🌈 GLAAD released its annual “Where We Are in Film” study yesterday, which found a decrease in LGBTQ films in the year 2025.
🏆 “The Pitt” leads the 2026 Emmy Award nominations with a total of 25 nods, followed by “Hacks” with 24. See the full list of noms here.
💔 Bonnie Tyler, the voice behind massive hits like “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “Holding Out for a Hero,” has died at the age of 75.
This week’s newsletter includes interviews with Cinema Life CEO Caroline King, Broadway actor Mandy Gonzalez, and local actor Valeka Jessica. We’ve also got reviews of two new movies, Olivia Wilde’s “The Invite” and David Swain’s “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass.” Plus, what’s playing at movie theaters this week, what I’ve been reading, listening to, and watching, and some reading and listening recommendations for your lunch break.
Thanks for reading!
Sammie
🍑 PeachFest is back! PeachFest returns Sun., July 12 to Underground Atlanta for an unforgettable celebration of Georgia peaches. Enjoy chef-crafted dishes, creative cocktails, live music and experiences from Atlanta’s top chefs, bartenders, artisans and farmers. Bring your friends. Learn more and buy tickets today. SPONSOR MESSAGE
Cinema Life CEO Caroline King receives Fulton County proclamation
📽️ Caroline King can trace her roots back to the theater.
She’s always loved performing – there’s a photo of her as a little girl, standing on a picnic table and putting on a show for a rapt audience of stuffed animals and American Girl dolls. Her parents, she says, would always say, “That girl needs to be on a stage.”
But lately, performing has taken a backseat for King. Instead, for the past eight years she’s been trying to find ways to let other artists get their time in the limelight as the CEO of Cinema Life, a collective of independent film festivals and film events that aim to highlight Georgia’s indie film scene. On opening night of the Georgia Shorts Film Festival on June 19, King received a proclamation from Fulton County honoring her efforts.
📃 Read more about Cinema Life and King’s work here.
When the Matches End, the Dining Begins
SPONSORED BY LIVABLE BUCKHEAD
⚽ After cheering on your favorite teams across Atlanta, treat yourself to the city’s best tables during Buckhead Restaurant Week, July 27-Aug. 1.
More than 50 participating restaurants are serving exclusive prix-fixe menus and inventive pairings crafted to turn post-game energy into an unforgettable evening. Whether you crave bold flavors or a relaxed celebration with friends, Buckhead delivers.
➞ Explore the lineup and discover your next favorite meal. The final whistle is just the beginning of a delicious night.
For Mandy Gonzalez, the musical ‘Basura’ tells a story we all need to hear
🗑️ I can still remember the first time I heard Mandy Gonzalez sing. It was on the “In the Heights” Broadway cast recording, and the first song I listened to was “Breathe.”
It’s still one of my favorite songs to this day. That has a lot to do with composer Lin-Manuel Miranda’s melodies, but also with the way Gonzalez’s powerful performance captures the anxiety and pain of feeling like you’ve somehow let everyone you love down despite your best intentions – a feeling that, as an overachieving teenager myself, I felt acutely familiar with.
Since “In the Heights,” which broke barriers on Broadway with a fully Latin story told by Latin artists, Gonzalez has appeared in Broadway productions of “Wicked” and “Hamilton.” After a fight against breast cancer (she was declared cancer-free in 2020) and the COVID-19 pandemic, she returned to Broadway as Norma Desmond in 2024. Now, she’s starring in “Basura,” a new musical running at the Alliance Theatre through July 12.
🎻 I spoke with Gonzalez ahead of the show’s last weekend. Check out our conversation here.
Valeka Jessica takes one-woman show to Theatrical Outfit’s Launchpad 2.0
🎭 Where else in Atlanta can you see up-and-coming, local theater artists showcase their work? Nowhere else but Theatrical Outfit’s Launchpad 2.0: A “Made in Atlanta” Festival.
This year, local actor and playwright Valeka Jessica is taking the festival by storm with “I’m a Motherf*cking Superstar,” a one-woman show that combines Jessica’s talents for both theatrical storytelling and stand-up comedy. The show first plays on July 17, with three other performances on July 19, 24, and 26.
Jessica’s show grew out of personal experience. “I’m a Motherf*cking Superstar” shares DNA with her book, “Blossoming After Divorce,” and chronicles her struggles with divorce, IVF, sexual assault, and more. It’s a story about learning how to come into your own power, which is fitting, as Jessica’s initial foray into one-woman shows was part of an attempt to take control of her career.
🎤 Learn more about Jessica and her show here.
Intimacy is fraught with resentments in ‘The Invite’
WEEKLY FILM REVIEW
🛏️ There’s a scene early on in “The Invite” that solidifies the movie’s themes in an instant. This is part of what makes the film work so well – it invites you to be on its wavelength from the word go.
Angela (Olivia Wilde) and Joe (Seth Rogen) are shouting at each other – they’ll spend a good portion of the film shouting at each other – about whether or not they should tell their new neighbors, Pína (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton) – who are coming over for dinner in just a few minutes – that they are too loud during sex, the sound of their lovemaking wafting into Angela and Joe’s extremely celibate, unsexy bedroom at night.
The film is also directed by Wilde, and she keeps the camera incredibly claustrophobic here. So much so that you don’t really notice at first that Angela and Joe have spent the entirety of this fight making their bed. They don’t discuss it. It’s never brought up amid all the endless needling and jabs. They just start pulling up the covers. Much like making the bed, fighting has become so ingrained in their routine that Angela and Joe barely even notice when they’re doing it anymore.
🧀 Check out my full review here.
‘Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass’ is silly and stupid, and all the better for it
WEEKLY FILM REVIEW
💇♀️ “There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about ‘The Wizard of Oz.’” David Lynch once said this during a Q&A at the New York Film Festival. And looking through his filmography, pretty much every single film can be connected back to the 1939 classic, in ways both obvious and subtle.
Well, it seems a different David has been thinking equally as often about “The Wizard of Oz.” But his brain takes us less in the direction of “Mulholland Drive” and more towards “Wet Hot American Summer.”
Filmmaker David Swain (with a co-writing assist from Ken Marino) is back with “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass,” a farcical romp that stretches from Kansas to Oz (AKA, Los Angeles), following our sunny, always-smiling protagonist (Zoey Deutch) on her quest to “find the wizard.” And by that, I mean, her quest to have sex with Jon Hamm (played, winningly, by himself).
🇮🇹 Read my full review of the comedy here.
At the Movies!
If you’re looking for a movie to see in theaters this week, here’s what you’ve got to look forward to!
Movies releasing this weekend:
🌊 “Moana” (pictured)
✉️ “The Invite”
✂️ “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass”
🪦 “Evil Dead Burn”
🇪🇸 “Romería”
🎸 “Peter Asher: Everywhere Man”
Special Events:
🏈 Joystick: “Flash Gordon” @ The Plaza (Friday)
🤼♂️ “Clash of the Titans” @ The Plaza (Saturday-Thursday)
🍫 WABE Cinema Social: “Forrest Gump” @ The Plaza (Saturday)
👻 Silver Scream Spookshow: “The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms” @ The Plaza (Saturday)
📻 Soul Cinema Sundays: “Do the Right Thing” in 4K @ The Plaza (Sunday)
🐱 “My Neighbor Totoro” – Studio Ghibli Fest 2026 @ The Tara (Saturday-Wednesday)
🏗️ Cineprov Riffs Demolition Man @ The Tara (Saturday)
👥 “Stand By Me” @ Springs Cinema & Taphouse (Sunday-Monday)
🍑 PeachFest is back! PeachFest returns Sun., July 12 to Underground Atlanta for an unforgettable celebration of Georgia peaches. Enjoy chef-crafted dishes, creative cocktails, live music and experiences from Atlanta’s top chefs, bartenders, artisans and farmers. Bring your friends. Learn more and buy tickets today. SPONSOR MESSAGE
What I’m reading … and watching … and listening to
🍿 Reading: I’ve been making my way through Suzanne Finstad’s biography of movie star Natalie Wood. I’m not super far into it yet, but Wood’s mother and her attempts to win Stage Mom of the Year could fill up their own book.
🇦🇷 Listening: Forgive my inner theater kid for coming out, but I’ve been really jamming out to the West End, Rachel Zegler-led “Evita” cast album lately. But hey, you give “Rainbow High” a listen through and tell me you don’t want to immediately listen to it 17 more times!
🎾 Watching: Wimbledon! I’m become completely obsessed with tennis over the past year, and this year’s Wimbledon has been really exciting, particularly on the women’s side. Coco Gauff, who was the last American left in the tournament, lost in heartbreaking fashion to Karolína Muchová in the semi finals (she’s still the best, though). And on the men’s side, I’m rooting for literally anyone but Zverev. Even if that means Djokovic.
Lights, Camera, Action!
📖 I recently came across a great new podcast called “In Bed With the Right,” where hosts Moira Donegan and Adrian Daub analyze right wing ideas about gender, sex, and sexuality. I’ve been thinking a lot about Lena Dunham since reading her memoir, “Famesick,” so I was delighted to see they recently put out an episode about the “Girls” creator and the way the general populace tends to react to her. Take a listen here.
🖼️ Speaking of “The Invite,” I loved Marya E. Gates’ piece about the film’s set. She talked with production designer Jade Healy about getting inside the character of Angela’s head to figure out how she would design her own living space, the reason the bedroom is the most bare room in the house, and the usefulness of Facebook Marketplace.
🥥 I haven’t yet gotten to see the new live action remake of “Moana,” but Alison Willmore’s review of the film – simply titled “Please Stop” – gave me a good giggle. Check it out here.
🖋️ Today’s Scene was edited by Julie E. Bloemeke.
