The Hollywoodland Revue

The passing of Chuck Norris on March 19, 2026, at the age of eighty-six, marks the end of one of the most unlikely—and ultimately enduring—careers in modern American popular culture. A martial artist turned actor, a disciplined competitor who became a cinematic symbol of invincibility, Norris lived long enough to see himself transformed into something beyond stardom: a myth, equal parts man and legend, shaped as much by his own life as by the imagination of the public.

On a night designed to celebrate illusion, the 2026 Academy Awards revealed something far more enduring—Hollywood itself, in all its contradictions, sensitivities, and quietly simmering rivalries. The Academy Awards have always been, for better or worse, both a reflection of Hollywood and also a funhouse mirror distortion of it. For an industry that is perpetually looking forward, praising its newest stars and inventions, Oscar night inevitably finds a way to force it to reckon with its past as well. This year, however, along with smiles and canned humility, we also got glimpses of generational conflict. There wasn’t one headline-grabbing bomb but a million tiny ones.

There are weekends when Hollywood arrives with a roar—and others when it drifts in like a mosaic of competing voices, each vying for attention under the marquee lights. The theatrical slate for March 20, 2026, belongs to the latter. It is a curious and revealing cross-section of the modern industry: one major studio spectacle, a handful of genre offerings, and a strong undercurrent of independent and prestige pictures that whisper rather than shout.

Viola Delee lived in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century, when industry, immigrant neighborhoods, and vaudeville houses helped to form the city’s identity. She was born in 1883 to William and Kate Delee. They were a family of three daughters who lived on Chicago’s South Side. In the winter of 1903, Viola, like many young women of her day, enjoyed all the amusements the city had to offer, particularly the theater. Stepping out to watch a performance was an easy way to momentarily forget the repetitive cycles of work and home. Chicago welcomed its newest theater, the Iroquois, to Randolph Street that season. Dubbed the most elegant and “absolutely fireproof” theater in the nation, the irony would soon prove tragic.

Rudolph Valentino was still one of Hollywood's biggest legends in the late 1940s, more than twenty years after his death. The silent screen idol was born in Italy and had died suddenly at the age of thirty-one in 1926. His death unleashed unprecedented public hysteria with women fainting in front of Campbell's funeral home in New York while newspapers published dozens of pages of tributes to him and Hollywood came to a standstill to mourn him. For movie producers in the late forties looking back on the silent film era, Valentino's rags-to-stardom-and-death story fit perfectly with the biographical film that flourished during the post-war era. However, it turned out to be very difficult to make a film about his life.

Hollywood gathered once again beneath the glittering lights of the Dolby Theatre for the 98th Academy Awards, and while the ceremony stretched late into the evening—as Oscar nights inevitably do—it unfolded with unusual energy, humor, and a sense that the industry had rediscovered how to entertain itself. Hosted by Conan O'Brien, the evening balanced sharp comedy with genuine celebration of filmmaking, producing one of the tighter ceremonies in recent memory even if the clock still drifted well past its scheduled ending.

When the Academy Awards are presented tonight, the presenters, nominees, guests, and members of the press will file into the Dolby Theatre for the evening’s celebration. What most of them likely do not realize—or perhaps never considered—is that the very ground beneath their seats was once the site of the legendary Hollywood Hotel, owned and operated by the formidable Almira “Mira” Hershey.

Jacob Elordi might be one of the hottest young actors working today, but to understand how he got here, and why his name is being whispered in awards season circles, you have to understand how hard he's fought against the version of fame that's been offered to him. Raised in Brisbane, Australia, on June 26, 1997, Elordi was not born into money or status. His humble beginnings kept him grounded—and quite literally far away—from the world of fame that now surrounds him, and it informs the way he thinks about his career to this day. Pursuing acting was originally a means to gain recognition, quite the opposite of fame; it was a way out of obscurity—followed by a very unwanted burst of notoriety.

Edward Everett Horton remains one of Hollywood’s most beloved character actors — the fluttering sophisticate with impeccable timing and an unmistakably gentle wit. Audiences adored him, directors trusted him, and generations of filmgoers felt affection for him long after he left the screen.

Every weekend brings a fresh selection of films competing for the attention of moviegoers, and the mid-March lineup offers a varied mix of romance, horror, comedy, and independent drama. Whether you are in the mood for an emotional literary adaptation, a supernatural chill, or an offbeat art-house curiosity, theaters are offering several distinct options. Below is a brief guide to the most notable wide and limited releases arriving this weekend, with a quick look at their stories, the talent behind them, and how critics and audiences are responding.

Every year there is at least one movie that becomes a love-it or hate-it phenomenon. People will walk out of theaters wondering what they just watched and talk about it for years to come. Bugonia was that movie for 2025. The film, a weirdly hilarious sci-fi thriller from provocateur director Yorgos Lanthimos, was nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture. Continuing Lanthimos's body of work that explores the absurdity of people, paranoia, and moral ambivalence, Bugonia was perhaps predictable for people who have seen his previous works with Emma Stone Poor Things and The Favourite. The film represents another bold and unsettling cinematic experiment.

At his death in Los Angeles on Christmas Day, 1930 newspapers around the nation reported the passing of a man whose life sounded almost mythical. William H. Taylor, known in movie colony circles as “Billy the Scout,” had been reported age 103. He was said to have been a veteran of both the Civil War and the westward Indian campaigns and had been one of the oldest people associated with motion pictures in their earliest years. Taylor's life had spanned the bloody violence of the nineteenth century frontier and the development of the motion picture industry which would in turn dramatize that era.