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Miley Cyrus is playing the Hollywood Bowl tonight and Sunday night.
Even though she’s been posting pictures that say “Sold Out,” there are plenty of tickets. “Sold out” is such a flexible term these days!
You can get seats on Ticketmaster for the original price, or head over to Stubhub for resale tickets.
The prices aren’t bad. If I were in LA, I’d go right over to the box office.
I’m curious to see what this show is all about, how it’s staged, and so on. Miley already posted the list of songs she’s going to sing. You’ll have to wait til the very end for her biggest hit, “Flowers.”
Laura Loomer wants to be press secretary to Donald Trump.
“Hear me out,” she wrote on Twitter, and donned a blonde wig. (All the previous job holders were blonde, dyed or otherwise.)
She adds: “I would be an amazing Press Secretary. I’d show President Trump all the receipts. I would bring my binder full of receipts to every briefing.”
If that wasn’t enough, Loomer then made a racist appeal to commentator Joy Reid, and Florida candidate Angie Nixon:
“Girrrl you just need to hook me up with a blonde weave like your home girl Joy Reid and I’ll be ready for my first briefing. You feelz me? @AngieNixon Help a sista out.”
Nixon responded: “You’re not his type boo. Hopefully you will stop the racist antics and heal.”
This comes on the high heels of Katie Zacharia getting the boot after less than a week. She was fed to the wolves on Fox News yesterday. Today, she’s out. If only she were smart enough to take notes, or not sign an NDA. (With her, probably a PDA.)
“Street Fighter,” which features an eclectic cast that includes rapper 50 Cent, made a whopping $4 million in previews.
Will that number build exponentially? “Street Fighter” isn’t really cinema, it’s an action game. Critics on Rotten Tomatoes are at 44%. The audience interest is only 82%. But maybe a return visit following will pump it up for three more days.
Then there’s “You Can See Everything.” A24 has been so difficult with press, I like to say You Can See Everything — But this Movie. LOL.
Anyway, previews brought in $1.75 million. But that may be solely in the very urban hip movie going areas. In the suburbs the theaters are selling well at “rush hour” times because this quasi-documentary is three hours’ long (not including Coming Attractions and ads).
Will it have legs? We’ll see after the first weekend.
Two other openings — “Sense and Sensibility” — a new version, and “Whalefall.” The former did $1.5 million, the latter $990,000.
Even though Ang Lee’s “S&S” is a classic, I’d like to see the new one for many reasons. Maybe whoever released it will send me a screener.
The Tom Cruise comic social satire has lost most of its theaters today, after just two weeks.
“Digger” is down to only 563 theaters from a total of 3,321.
That’s lower than I reported yesterday.
This is a huge blow for Cruise and director Alejandro Innaritu. Warner Bros. is waving a white flag. Usually, a big studio release is contracted for four weeks in theaters.
What’s worse is that many of the remaining theaters is showing “Digger” just once a day, at odd times. So the whole point of filming in VistaVision has been lost.
There are estimates that Warner Bros. will have to write down $250 million in losses.
Even with some celebrities being rallied to endorse “Digger,” it’s not coming back. And if the Golden Globes make an overt effort to revive it in Best Musical/Comedy they’ll be laughed at. I don’t think they want to indulge in that considering their many legal issues on other fronts.
Maybe we’ll see “Digger” soon on HBO Max, where we will study it more closely.
It seems like Franch filmmakers have made a documentary about three time Oscar winner Frances McDormand.
The star of “Fargo” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” is ripe for this treatment. She’s a well known curmudgeon. Hence, the doc’s title, “Anti-Hero.”
When she at last embraces director Yal Sadat, McDormand exclaims, “I did not authorize this!”
She does relent, and says “I love you,” before immediately turning on her heel and exiting the theater.
I do hope we get to see “Anti-Hero” in America. I’m sure it’s filled with iconic moments. I have several delightful memories of McDormand. One was at the 2011 Tony Awards at the Beacon Theater in New York. I came down from the balcony to find her in the lobby, freaking out that she couldn’t back into the live show after using the ladies’ room. She indicated her frustration and that she would leave, but I did help direct her back inside. She later won Best Actress in a Drama.
Also I was a little startled by her outfit, which you can see here. It was a brilliant salute to the mug shot, as told through western wear.
I still haven’t gotten over the annual Louis Armstrong Foundation dinner earlier this week.
The foundation’s purpose is music and medicine as cross-causes to help people.
The night unfolded at the soaring Angel Orensanz Center on Norfolk Street in the Lower East Side. The Gothic structure, built in 1849, was a synagogue for most of its life.
I first went there in 2004 when Alicia Keys put on a private show for her charity, with Clive Davis in attendance. All I remember was Alicia singing a bunch of Marvin Gaye songs. She was insanely good.
Fast forward to this week, with music rising through the rafters. My great friend Tracey Jordan (the most popular person in the music biz) was honored with an award named for her mother, the late legendary jazz singer Sheila Jordan. Suzanne Vega was also honored with the Phoebe Jacobs Award, and performed. (See below for video and Tracey’s post.)
It was one of those nights when you remember what live music is, and was, and can be. Hearing Suzanne Vega perform “Tom’s Diner” in an intimate setting with Marhall Crenshaw and a group of A list Woodstock musicians was a highlight. (See below.)
David Amram, a modern music mission impossible, just returned from a Jack Kerouac weekend in Lowell, Massachusetts. (Yes, they were friends and worked together.) He’s in demand everywhere and hasn’t lost a step. He wrote the soundtrack scores for classic movies like “The Manchurian Candidate” and “Splendor in the Grass.”
And he’s still going!
PS So appropriate that the Louis Armstrong Foundation is in a former Jewish temple. Louie was raised by the Karnofskys, a family of Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants New Orleans. He wrote all about them in his first memoir.
Back in 2001, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and MTV’s John Sykes put together the massive Concert for New York City at Madison Square Garden.
Now David Ellison’s Skydance will offer a 25th anniversary broadcast on MTV channels on October 20th.
The concert featured Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, David Bowie, Jon Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, Jay-Z, The Who, David Bowie, Destiny’s Child, Elton John, plus Eric Clapton with Buddy Guy, James Taylor, Jay Z, and many others. Adam Sandler performed a customized “Opera Man” that brought down the house.
Paul Shaffer was the music director who had to deal with some newer acts showing up with backup tracks on floppy discs to augment their sound. I won’t who they were.
In the end, $35 million was raised for the Robin Hood Foundation, which presumably distributed the money to survivors families.
Everyone hates Harvey Weinstein now, but this was one of his philanthropic bonanzas. It will be hard to cut him out of the show or credits or pretend he had nothing do with it.
As I remember, the show was off the hook, but the after party at the Hudson Hotel was sensational. This was back when the Hudson on West 57th St., was the main location of A list parties and premieres. (Is it still open? I never hear about it.) What a time that was! Paul McCartney led the band.
In the middle of the show, look for a rare Woody Allen short film called “Sounds from the Town I Love.” It’s not available in any other form, and features a lot of name actors.
Producing shows on Broadway right now is a headache.
Ask Roundabout Theater.
The esteemed company was going to stage “The Full Monty” next spring for Tony season.
But it seems like they couldn’t get Big Names to come take off their shirts and dance around at Studio 54. (This seems odd since it was so easy in 1977.)
Anyway, “The Full Monty” will have to wait.
In its place comes a revival of Eugene Ionesco’s “Rhinocerous,” directed by no less than Diane Paulus.
They got Big Names, too: Tony Shalhoub, John Turturro, and Tatiana Maslany. There won’t be any trouble selling those tickets!
It’s a short run, just til the Tony Awards in mid June. Maybe they’ll extend, who knows?
Shalhoub, by the way, is replacing Paul Giamatti, who did Paulus’s “Rhinocerous” up in Cambridge at A.R.T with Turturro and Maslany. Giamatti will be busy all winter with Oscar promotion for ‘The Debut.”
Ionesco, by the way, only died in 1994. I used to eat lunch with him at The Russian Tea Room. He was a bad tipper.
Warner Bros. is using the shovel from “Digger” to dig a grave.
Tom Cruise’s controversial and mostly disliked movie is losing most of its theaters tomorrow.
After two weeks.
“Digger” is leaving 2,535 screens after tonight. It will be left with just 786 screens. Shocking. In most of the remaining theaters, “Digger” will have just one or two shows a day.
For Cruise, it’s a stunning development. By the end of next week, there won’t be much left. Studio movies usually get 28 day runs. Not this one.
At least, since I reported earlier, Neil Young loves it. But he has a heart of gold.
Both Blondie and U2, members of the Rock Hall and actual musicians, dropped singles today from forthcoming albums.
Blondie’s song, “Spectral Eyes,” has a terrible title but it rocks and Debbie Harry sounds terrific. It’s written by Johnny Marr. The album, “High Noon,” is out in February 2027.
U2’s song is called “The Greatest Show on Earth,” from the album “Carnaval de Luz,” coming next month.
The Rolling Stones are dropping five songs in an EP to extend “Foreign Tongues.” One of the songs, “Bad Luck Hideaway,” is just out.
Also, Paul Simon has a new live album out from his recent tour. It includes his “Seven Psalms,” and a bunch of greatest hits. Highly recommended.
Chaka Khan’s “Chakzilla” has been out for about a month. You wouldn’t know it from BMG Records, but I’m telling you the R&B diva sounds amazing, and all the songs should be on the charts.
And Carly Simon’s album “Comes in Waves,” and the single, “Howl,” have been submitted for Grammys.
