The Hollywoodland Revue

The 2026 BAFTA Film Awards were intended to celebrate cinema. However, an involuntary outburst during the ceremony sparked a national debate concerning disability, race, and broadcast responsibility. While presenters Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo stood onstage, an audience member, identified in multiple reports as Tourette syndrome campaigner John Davidson, shouted a racial slur. The word was audible in the hall and later broadcast on BBC One, remaining accessible on BBC iPlayer before being edited out. The BBC subsequently issued an apology, acknowledging that viewers heard “strong and offensive language” resulting from involuntary verbal tics and conceding that it should have been removed prior to transmission.

There are mornings in Hollywood when the sun still warms the palms, the neon looks almost nostalgic, and the old promises of this place — reinvention, hope, second chances — tug faintly at the edges of memory. And then there are mornings when all of that vanishes beneath the weight of what we now face on our sidewalks, corners, and doorways. Hollywood has always been a city of extremes, but the homeless crisis has pushed it into something more disquieting, more personal, and far more dangerous than the civic leaders who speak about “compassion” and “complexity” seem willing to admit. I know this because I live here. And I no longer always feel safe on the street where I have spent nearly twenty-two years of my life.

At Hollywood Forever Cemetery by sunset, when the gates are closed and sunlight streams down its peaceful pathways, celebrities sleep amongst legends from film, television, music, theater and more. Right there with them should be the memory of Homer Alba. Homer died on May 14, 2025, at age 79. He served Hollywood Forever as Senior Vice President for 38 years, then Vice President Emeritus. After his retirement, Homer continued to contribute in any way possible. He loved Hollywood Forever beyond words.

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is a lavish, hot-blooded, frequently arresting piece of gothic showmanship—one that often looks like it cost a fortune to photograph and sometimes feels as if it spent that fortune on sensation rather than the slow poison of Brontë’s tragedy. The film, released by Warner Bros., casts Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, with Hong Chau as Nelly Dean, Shazad Latif as Edgar Linton, and Alison Oliver as Isabella Linton.

Illusions have always run deep in Hollywood. During the early decades of the twentieth century séance parlors popped up like popcorn stands at movie theaters, the golden age of spiritualism bringing hope no science could deliver. Dr. Edward Saint—magician, investigator, skeptic, and confidant to Harry Houdini—stood at the uneasy intersection of belief and exposure, a man determined not to destroy wonder, but to protect the living from deception masquerading as hope.

Steve Tracy breezed through Hollywood with starry charisma you don't have to squint to read: He was that kind of actor. Guys like him seem nervous when they're charming and kind when they're strong. He'll probably be remembered best as Percival Dalton, Nellie Oleson's shy bespectacled husband on Little House on the Prairie, a square of decency dropped right into the television show's big sky prairie storms. In Tracy's personal life, however, his journey would wind into another uniquely American narrative: the panic and misinformation of AIDS' early days when hysteria spread faster than understanding and kindness was considered political.

Eric William Dane, the American actor whose presence on both television and film combined charisma with emotional depth, died on February 19, 2026, at the age of 53 following a courageous battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the neurodegenerative disease he publicly revealed in 2025 and used to fuel advocacy and awareness. His family confirmed that he passed surrounded by his loved ones — including his devoted wife, actress Rebecca Gayheart, and their two daughters, Billie and Georgia — and asked for privacy as they grieved.

This weekend’s slate offers an eclectic mix of heartfelt drama, edgy thrillers, international epics, and genre entertainment — something for every kind of moviegoer heading out to the cinema. Here’s a snapshot of the first seven films opening in theaters Friday, Feb. 20:

Long before Hollywood knew how to honor its legends, Madame Sul-Te-Wan made history by becoming the first African American actor to sign a motion picture contract—and then the first black actor to become a featured player at the very beginning of the industry. Born Nellie Crawford in Louisville, Kentucky on March 7, 1873, Sul-Te-Wan grew up in a nation still stumbling under Reconstruction and hard-set systems of segregation. By the time she moved to Los Angeles in 1913, moving pictures were barely an industry—and possibilities for women of color didn't really exist. But Sul-Te-Wan would work for over forty years, ranking among the most frequently employed African American actresses of her silent and early sound eras.

The Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson Sr. was born October 8, 1941, in Greenville, S.C. The architecture of his youth was segregation; the agony and promise of America raced through his young blood. Raised by his mother Helen Burns and later adopted by his stepfather, Charles Henry Jackson, young Jesse knew at an early age that dignity was something Americans had to earn and often barter for.

Before the Academy Award became that locked down, tracked and sacred cultural trophy, it was just a thing. Honorific. Symbolic. Sometimes achingly fragile. Perhaps no lost Oscar underscores this better than Hattie McDaniel's Missing Oscar. Gone With the Wind's Oscar plaque vanished without a trace. It was not the iconic golden statuette we know and love now, but the precursor plaques awarded to supporting actors (and actresses) during that period in time. It was history being made...and then it went mysteriously missing.

Robert Selden Duvall, the versatile American actor who charmed and captivated audiences with his sensitivity and intensity, died on February 15, 2026, at the age of 95. Duvall's six-decade career included memorable performances in films that ranged from Gregory Peck's faithful sidekick Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird to leading roles like the Oscar-winning country preacher in Tender Mercies, and as the gravel voiced consigliere Tom Hagen in The Godfather films.