Names and Faces
■ Long before Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary won an Oscar for writing “Pulp Fiction,” they were just a couple of cinephiles working at a video rental store in Manhattan Beach, Calif., discussing and recommending movies and becoming the filmmakers they were meant to be. Now almost 40 years after meeting at Video Archives in 1983, Tarantino and Avary are revisiting that pivotal moment and the films that made them with the Video Archives Podcast, a venture from SiriusXM’s Stitcher premiering this summer. The company said Thursday that on each episode Tarantino and Avary will rewatch and discuss movies culled from the original Video Archives library. “We never imagined that 30 years after we worked together behind the counter … we would be together again doing the exact same thing we did back then: talking passionately about movies on VHS,” Tarantino and Avary said. “Watching movies was what originally brought us together and made us friends, and it’s our love of movies that still brings us together today.” When Video Archives went out of business, Tarantino bought its inventory and essentially re-created the store in his home. He once estimated that it was close to 8,000 videotapes and DVDs. On the podcast, they teased that they’ll cover everything from “controversial James Bond films” to surprising exploitation pics and beyond. The Video Archives Podcast will be available on Stitcher, the SXM App, Pandora and other podcast platforms.
■ Fresh off her breakthrough role in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” Rachel Zegler will star in Lionsgate’s “Hunger Games” prequel. The studio announced this week that Zegler will play Lucy Gray Baird in “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” an extension of the “Hunger Games” saga that takes place decades before the adventures of Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen. Katniss played in the 74th Hunger Games; Baird will be a part of the 10th Hunger Games. Suzanne Collins, whose books were adapted into the $3 billion blockbuster franchise, in 2020 published a prequel novel upon which “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” is based. In the film, Lucy Gray Baird, a tribute from the impoverished District 12, sings in a pivotal moment during the reaping ceremony. Zegler stars opposite Tom Blyth, who plays the 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow. “Our casting team … spearheaded an exhaustive search, reading hundreds of actors in search of our perfect Lucy Gray. That search ended when Rachel Zegler blew the roof off with her depth and breadth of talent as an actor, singer, and performer,” said producer Nina Jacobson. “Rachel is utterly compelling.” Lionsgate will release the movie in theaters in November 2023.