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Donald Trump is going to the annual White House Correspondents Dinner.
The toothless event features a mentalist doing tricks instead of a comic.
The only roasting — by Oz Pearlman — will be in the kitchen. Maybe he can make Trump disappear.
This so embarrassing for the WHCA. They’ve just rolled over and played dead. The tables will be filled with right wing celebrities and press like Fox News, etc. Nicki Minaj, Dennis Quaid, Jon Voight, some country band. But no celebrities that anyone would want to meet, trust me.
I guess now that Trump controls CBS and, soon, CNN this is the future.
Sad that the WHCA couldn’t proceed as usual with biting satire from a name comedian, and no Trump. Really lame and cowardly.
Read below, Trump’s idiotic explanation for how he’s going to turn this into a big night.
The Academy Awards used to be the last Sunday in February. That was the latest they should have been. This year the Olympics took up two weeks in February on NBC. But ABC could have easily slotted the show in for the following week. It’s not like they had such great programming.
Also, by now, we know all the movies involved, and who the likely winners are among them. The whole event is “Sinners” (released a year ago) vs. “One Battle After Another” (October). The Best Actor race has been whittled down to Timothee Chalamet vs. Michael B. Jordan. Leonardo DiCaprio is out of the running. Jessie Buckley will take Best Actress for “Hamnet.”
The Academy doesn’t see this, they think it’s 1998. I’m afraid the crowd has moved on this year. They may not realize that the Academy Awards telecast is aimed at a niche crowd. The larger population may think the Oscars already happened.
And then there’s the telecast: only two of the five Best Song nominations will be heard. Ouch! Will there be some other kind of hook entertainment-wise to get people to watch? And what about the real remaining Hollywood stars? We’ve crossed a generational line. Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson are unavailable. Dustin Hoffman is ghosted. Jane Fonda has only recently been on the Oscar stage. Maybe Shirley MacLaine can step in..
So we wait for March 15th, and hope the show on ABC draws some kind of audience. In three years, the production moves to YouTube anyway. By then there will only be a couple of studios left. It’s not a promising thought.
“Sinners” beat “One Battle After Another” for Best Ensemble. The upset was over “One Battle After Another.”
This sets up some needed drama for the Oscars two weeks from tonight. Which one will win Best Picture? Or will the Academy give “Sinners” Best Picture and Paul Thomas Anderson Best Director.
Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor for “Sinners,” knocking out Timothee Chalamet from “Marty Supreme.”
The producers certainly knew “Sinners” and Jordan were going to win. That’s why they had Viola Davis present Best Actor, and Samuel L. Jackson give Best Picture.
Jessie Buckley deservedly won Best Actress for “Hamnet.”
Supporting actor wins went to Amy Madigan for “Weapons” and Sean Penn for “One Battle.”
So far Sean has not shown up for any awards shows. This could be his third Oscar if he wins over castmate Benicio del Toro.
The SAG union, which voted these awards, is the biggest voting bloc in the Academy. It’s always thought that whoever wins SAG will take the Oscars. But will they?
Catherine O’Hara, so beloved, received a posthumous award for the TV series, “The Studio.” Seth Rogen, who won Best Actor in a comedy that show, as well as Best Comedy Ensemble for TV, accepted the award on her behalf with an emotional speech.
Harrison Ford accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award with a lovely speech. He’d been introduced by Woody Harrelson, who had trouble getting jokes over but settled down with serious comments about Ford’s career and family.
The Oscar race is completely between “One Battle” and “Sinners,” each Warner Bros. movies. Plus Amy Madigan in “Weapons” is also from Warners. A year ago, every Hollywood insider newsletter predicted that Warners co-chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy were about to be fired. They got the last laugh.
Shout out to Suzanne Fritz, Warners PR on the West Coast, whom I’ve known for decades. She got a rare shout out from Delroy Lindo when “Sinners” won. Suzanne deserves the kudos.
A couple of notes: why is Madigan’s husband, actor Ed Harris, absent from all these events? And what happened to Chalamet’s “partner,” Kylie Jenner? He brought his mom. He also looked all night like he knew he’d lost. Ethan Hawke did, too, taking off his jacekt and having a real drink before Best Actor was called.
There will be no big surprise in the last hour of the Oscars this year.
The Producers Guild gave “One Battle After Another” their award last night, cinching the Oscar for Best Picture.
Paul Thomas Anderson, winner of the Directors Guild and many other prizes, will win Best Director.
Last night in LA, “Demon Hunters” won the PGA for Animated Feature. So it will probably win the Oscars, too, unless Disney sneaks in for “Zootopia.”
Meantime, Stephen Colbert’s talk show won the PGA for Best Produced Talk show. Getting cancelled has been the best thing for Colbert awards-wise. Every group has given the show an award since the announcement. If Colbert wants a streaming deal with Netflix or wherever, these accolades should help.
Mariska Hargitay’s “My Mom, Jayne” won Best Documentary.
TV Awards went to “The Studio,” “The Pitt,” and “Adolescence.”
Nice news for Colin Hanks, whose John Candy doc won an award Best Streamed Movie.
Tonight, Connor Storrie is the host of “Saturday Night Live.”
Who?
He’s the 26 year old who’s one of the stars of HBO Max’s series, “Heated Rivalry.”
Even though there are only six episodes of the series about gay hockey players falling in love, “Heated Rivalry” has become its own cult show. The four main actors have been on a publicity tear all over the world, and those six episodes are killing everything else on HBO Max.
Will people watch? Aside from seeing Mumford and Sons? It looks good. So far social media is off the hook. For example there are four posts with Storrie on the “SNL” Twitter account. One of them has 4.6 million likes! The others total up to over 5 million.
If other “Heated Rivalry” stars show up tonight, brace yourself for what could be a big ratings event!
Harry Styles had a huge success tonight at London’s Brit Awards.
He put on a very theatrical version of his new song, “Aperture,” part of his new album releasing this coming Thursday night.
“Aperture” is not really a radio song or that understandable without the visual. But in this presentation it came off as one of David Byrne’s pieces, synchronistically choreographed and beautifully lit. Harry looked elegant smart in formal attire instead of a dress or some other rigged up costume.
Already, “Aperture” — which is more of a chant than a song — is coming back onto the charts.
It’s interesting how this record made no impact on its own. But now we get a little more of what Styles is up to, and it’s pretty fascinating. “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally” now has whetted appetites for the rest of the tracks.
This seems a big leap forward for Harry, who’s calling it disco but it’s techno EDM. It kind of points to Madonna’s “Ray of Light” as well.
People magazine says he won’t be at the SAG Actors Awards tomorrow night. Leo has left for Europe to film Martin Scorsese’s new movie.
This news does bring up the strong chance that Leo won’t attend the Oscars in two weeks. He knows his chances to win Best Actor for “One Battle After Another” are dimmed by Timothee Chalamet and Michael B. Jordan in the first and second places. Even Ethan Hawke has a better shot than Leo.
DiCaprio’s work in “One Battle” is excellent and deserves the most praise. But you can’t blame him for not wanting to sit through another awards night and come up empty. He did win the National Board of Review, which almost certainly turned off all the other awards groups.
Not having DiCaprio at the Oscars would pose a problem for the annual show. The Oscars need celebrity power for ratings. But the whole process has gone on for so long that many nominees — e.g. Sean Penn — may feel it’s not necessary to show up.
We’ll know more after the Actors Awards tomorrow night. It would be ironic if Leo won!
The further destruction of the Kennedy Center continues.
This is a real story, not satire. Trump is renaming the Kennedy Center Honors for himself.
The awards, according to the vile head of the theater Richard Grenell, will be the Trump Kennedy Center Honors.
It’s no surprise since the renaming of the Center itself with Trump’s tarnished moniker added to JFK’s beloved name.
“It will definitely go forward,” Grenell told a local news radio station in Washington DC. “It will probably just be in a smaller venue, which just means ticket demand will be even higher.”
The demand is already fairly low, so much so that the Kennedy Center is closing for two years on July 7th after attendance at events has dropped to all time lows.
A smaller venue? Maybe it can be in Ford’s Theater. I hear that’s a great place for a president to sit in the main box.
Meantime, the annual Mark Twain Prize has disappeared. Last year the recipient was Conan O’Brien. His name was announced in January, the sho was taped on March 23rd and show soon after on Netflix.
But with Trump staring down Netflix in the Paramount-Warners deal, and no comedian willing to not criticize his administration — the Conan show was appropriately vicious about Trump — it looks like the whole Mark Twain Prize is gone at least until 2029 when Trump is tossed from office.
We can say all the offensive changes are a surprise, but they’re not. If you voted for Trump, this is what you get — in addition to today’s war with Iran and all the rest of it. Shame on you.
SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE: “Scream 7” came in just over $64 million Thursday through Sunday. Scary, scary, scary!
EARLIER: Scream on, to paraphrase Aerosmith.
The 7th iteration of the “Scream” series after 30 years is a big hit!
Thursday previews plus Friday numbers bring the total so far to $28.8 million.
The whole gang — Ghostface, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox — is headed to a $66 million opening weekend.
Yes, there will be a “Scream 8,” and probably 9 or 10.
Kevin Williamson, who started this whole thing, brought in a very sad 34% rating among critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Apparently, he’s just regurgitating the old story over and over. But if you’ve never seen it, it’s new to you!
Audiences must like it more than they say. The Audience Meter is only at 78. But still, they’re coming. Maybe there’s a good popcorn bucket.
I’m told “Scream 7” is not as frightening as “Melania,” which is getting a mini-series sequel on amazon.com.
“Scream” was originally from Miramax/Dimension, then moved to Weinstein Company/Dimension. When the latter went under, Spyglass bought the rights to make sequels for Paramount, which owns the Miramax library. It’s good IP! So where is the play or musical? I can’t believe there won’t be one.
At this point, because they still haven’t had the Oscars and those movies are moot at the box office, here’s an idea: Conan O’Brien come out dressed like Ghostface and chase Timothee Chalamet across the stage. I authorize use of this idea!
Or “SNL” should do a sketch with Ghostface terrorizing the “Party of Five” and “Friends” casts — unless they already did that.
