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George Harrison’s estate has denounced the Trump campaign for using “Here Comes the Sun” when Ivanka Trump walked out on stage tonight. Don’t cross the Beatles, Donald. You’ve gone too far. “If it had been Beware of Darkness, we might have approved it!” the Harrison estate Tweeted as a clever rejoinder.
The unauthorized use of #HereComestheSun at the #RNCinCLE is offensive & against the wishes of the George Harrison estate.
At 85 years old and newly married (for the third time), Murdoch will take over running Fox News and Fox Business as Roger Ailes is pushed out.
Murdoch has been on vacation since he married Jerry Hall on March 4th. He Tweeted on that day that he would Tweet no more, and hasn’t.
Instead he’s been enjoying whatever satisfactions an 85 year old can.
Now he will oversee Bill Shine, Jay Wallace, and Mark Kranz, who will all compete for Ailes’s job and none will get it. Murdoch and his sons, who hated Ailes, will comb the world for a Big Name to take over.
This is in the summer before a presidential election.
The only upside might be that Jerry Hall would come to New York. Everyone likes her. But she probably spends the summer in an exotic locale, and not at 1211 Sixth Avenue.
Lachlan Murdoch gets his revenge for Ailes taking away running the TV stations. Megyn Kelly gets hers for Ailes’ perceived lack of support during the Trump fight last winter. Trump gets his revenge for Ailes slighting him at every turn. A number of female reporters and staff are probably thrilled.
There was a well written but maybe too speculative story today about the Weinstein Company and their fortunes. They’ve recently announced a lot of date changes for new movies.
But now they’ve got Stephen Gaghan’s “Gold” and Michael Keaton in John Lee Hancock’s “The Founder” each coming during the last week of December for Oscar runs. This sends Matthew McConaughey and Keaton into the race, not to mention Edgar Ramirez from Hands of Stone, coming in August. Ramirez is also in “Gold.”
The only movie that really suffered a big change is “Tulip Fever,” which was moved abruptly to a dump spot in February 2017, the weekend of the Oscars. That’s a bad sign.
Otherwise, TWC seems to be confident enough to go for it. “Gold” is a business thriller that goes from Wall Street to Indonesia, and also stars one of my faves, Bryce Dallas Howard. “The Founder” is about McDonald’s and Ray Kroc. Good balance.
Oscar season? It’s around the corner. The other interesting Oscar development…I’ll save it for my next item…
Mark Boal, Oscar winning screenwriter of “The Hurt Locker” and screen writer of “Zero Dark Thirty” has filed suit against the US government. The government wants Boal’s taped interviews in the Bowe Bergdahl case. Boal used them for his award winning pieces on NPR.
here’s the press release–
Mark Boal filed a suit in a Los Angeles federal court against President Barack Obama, Department of Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning, Army court-martial convening authority General Robert Abrams and U.S Army Prosecutor Major Justin Oshanain response to Oshana’s threat to subpoena Boal’s taped interviews with accused Army deserter and prisoner of war Bowe Bergdahl, who is facing a general court-martial.
Boal, through his lawyer Jean-Paul Jassy of Jassy Vick Carolan LLP, filed Boal v Obama Wednesday, July 20 in an effort to prevent the nearly unprecedented move by the military prosecutor in the Bergdahl case to force a private citizen into military court to relinquish legally protected materials for an ongoing military trial.
Boal has been a journalist for 20 years and is an Oscar winning filmmaker of “Zero Dark Thirty,” and Best Picture winner “The Hurt Locker,” the latter which of which drew upon his experiences as an embedded reporter in Iraq in 2003. The Tommy Lee Jones starring film “In the Valley of Elah” was based on Boal’s 2001 investigative reportage.
As stated in the filing: The threatened Subpoena from the North Carolina-based military prosecutor against a civilian is unlawful and inconsistent with the First Amendment, the common law, Department of Justice guidelines for the issuance of subpoenas to reporters and state protections for reporters.
“Mark Boal fully supports the military justice system and believes that Bergdahl has to face the music in a fair judicial process,” says Jassy. “But Boal is a civilian and a journalist, and under the First Amendment, he should not be hauled into a military court to divulge his unpublished and confidential materials. We are asking the federal court in Los Angeles to protect Mark Boal’s constitutional rights.”
Boal’s taped confidential interviews with Bergdahl are protected under the First Amendment. Many of Bergdahl’s revelations made during his 25 hours of interviews were made public–with his express and legal consent–by way of the multi-part “Serial” podcast earlier this year.
States Boal: “I support the Army, but this particular military prosecutor’s tactics contradict and undermine the stated principles and policies of the Commander and Chief and the Attorney General to protect First Amendment rights. It’s Orwellian, and bizarre.”
Boal’s litigation has drawn the support of one of the most respected journalism advocacy groups in the country, the Washington, DC-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
“We firmly stand with Mr. Boal in his effort to protect these tapes,” says the organization’s Executive Director Bruce Brown. “Well-established law recognizes that journalists cannot do their jobs to keep the public informed if they cannot work free from government interference.”
The new one, called “Collision Course,” has a 14 on Rotten Tomatoes.
The ratings and the box office have been going downhill since the first “Ice Age” in 2002 had a 77.
The second one, in 2006, had a 57. That was followed by “Ice Age 3” with a 45 in 2009. “Continental Drift” in 2012 had a 37.
And now this. The film starring the voices of Denis Leary and Ray Romano has 41 negative reviews vs. 7 positive. And this is the consensus: “Unoriginal and unfunny, Ice Age: Collision Course offers further proof that not even the healthiest box office receipts can keep a franchise from slouching toward creative extinction.”
Ouch! The last “Ice Age” opened to $46 million– actually up from the prior installment–but made far less than the others. With a huge heat wave coming, it may all boil down to whether parents just park their kids in air conditioned theaters– the quality of the movie being maybe the third or fourth consideration.
UPDATE AUG 8TH: Meredith McIver’s Twitter account has been suspended. This has led to all kinds of speculation that she doesn’t exist. But she does. And the “tenant” I met back on July 20th was her sister, Karen, who lives in the house in Westport. I know it’s a better story if Meredith were made up, but she’s real. Her sister was very nice, except for not telling me she was her sister.
July 20th: I have verified the existence of Meredith McIver, author of Melania Trump’s purloined speech. This afternoon Web snarkers questioned whether McIver was real. What a great story that would have been. TRUMP INVENTS SPEECH WRITER.
Alas she’s real. I drove over to a house she owns in Westport Connecticut and spoke to her tenant. McIver lives in New York. She works for Donald Trump, the tenant told me. That’s the story.
Of course it could be an elaborate hoax. And if it is, god bless the people who thought it up. It’s a good one.
Remember when Elizabeth Hurley got pregnant with producer Steve Bing’s baby? That was 14 years ago, and now baby Damian is a teenager. He’s going to make his acting debut alongside his mum on Hurley ‘s E! channel soap opera “The Royals.”
Damian, who goes by the name Hurley, is heir potentially to a billion dollar real estate fortune in Los Angeles thanks to his father’s family, and another fortune made by Steve Bing from movie and record deals. The boy has half brother through Bing thanks to another relationship, this one with the late billionaire Kirk Kerkorian’s wife, Lisa Bonder.
According to a press release, Damian will play the Prince of Lichtenstein in “The Royals” episode. But Damian is probably already considerably wealthier than that Prince who is fictional and also from a country no one can find on a map.
The only hitch there is that Steve Bing once said he’d donate most of his wealth to philanthropy.
Damian’s great grandfather, Leo Bing, and his brother Alexander, were New York real estate titans. Their “Bing & Bing” buildings are still some of the most fabled in the city including the Gramercy Park Hotel. They worked generally with famed architect Emery Roth. The company was sold to Marvin Raynes, son in law of Denver oil magnates Marvin and Barbara Davis (the latter, the beloved Los Angeles society grande dame) in 1985. The Davises also owned the Beverly Hills Hotel and 2oth Century Fox.
So the bigger question is, will Damian ever get a Bing & Bing apartment? Even the Prince of Lichtenstein would covet that!
Ok: you do listen to Donald Trump mock Barack Obama, right? He hates Obama, tried to prove he was born in Kenya, and thinks he’s a terrible, terrible president.
It turns out Melania Trump, the wife with the plagiarized speech, knew she was stealing her words from Michelle Obama.
Meredith McIver, who wrote Melania’s purloined speech, tells the NY Times: “A person she [Melania] has always liked is Michelle Obama.” Over the phone,” Ms. Trump “read me some passages from Mrs. Obama’s speech as examples. I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately became the final speech.”
Let’s go over this again for people who move their mouths when reading, or follow the Trumps blindly. Melania Trump admires First Lady Michelle Obama and read her speeches to her own writer, who then used those words to write Melania’s speech.
McIver, at Melania’s request, jettisoned the speech that had been written for her by experts. McIver is a former ballerina. On purpose, the Trump campaign allowed words written by Obama speechwriters to be used in Monday’s speech.
Donald Trump always says “I’ll get the best people.” And it turns out, that would be Michelle Obama, highly educated, literate, not a fashion model without an education.
If Melania Trump trusts the Obamas, I think that says a lot about where we go next. The Trumps have some great qualities, I am sure, but being President and First Lady– well, they went to the experts when they needed them.
LA Theatre update: “Grey Gardens,” had its recent dazzling premiere at the esteemed Ahmanson Theater. Based on the Maysles brothers documentary film of the same name, this illustrious and superb musical, directed by Michael Wilson with the book by Doug Wright, score by Scott Frankel and lyrics by Michael Korie, tells the strange tale of the eccentric, albeit lovable Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis’s Aunt and cousin, Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter ‘Little’ Edie Beale, both wannabee singers and actresses and both sadly talentless.
The duo’s troubled lives took a tragic long road to their finally crumbling once storied mansion, the aforementioned “Grey Gardens,’ where they wound up living in filth, pretty much only their numerous cats and raccoons as their companions. The show was a hit on Broadway, and now has achieved cult status, with men and women showing up in the turbans that ‘Little Edie’ sports. Rachel York, as ‘Little Edie,’ gives one of the most sublime performances I’ve ever seen in the theater. York also plays Edith in the first act, a role that Betty Buckley takes over in the remarkable second act, chews up the scenery with her simply sensational performance.
Adding to the theater grandeur, the world’s grandest theater dame, 90-year-old Angela Lansbury, received a rapturous pre-show standing ovation, just by as they say in the theater, ‘ arriving.’ The Ahmanson smartly played a voice over of Angela, in her own imitable way, asking patrons not to text, talk or open their annoying candies. Afterwards, Angela, who sneaked in at the last minute, stood up for a rousing 3 minute standing ovation from the adoring crowd. It was truly a memorable night for theater aficionados.
I spoke with the glorious Angela at the intermission and asked her how she felt being there and being adored as she is.
“Theater always thrills me, the opportunity to see great theater in Los Angeles is not an everyday occurrence so I’m thrilled to be here and see this production which I think is quite gorgeous and wonderful sung and acted so far. The director, Michael Wilson, is a good friend of mine; we worked together on “The Best Man,” a play by Gore Vidal in NY. So it’s a special evening for me. Also, one of the actors in the play tonight, Simon Jones, a dear friend, has acted with me before in “Blithe Spirit,” right here in this theater. “
I asked how it felt to be given that splendid standing ovation. She answered, “I had no idea they were going to use the voice over. I thought it was extraordinary that here I’m sitting and then stood up for the audience. So I was very surprised and very grateful. “ Angela, what a class act you are. And bravo to the Ahmanson and The Mark Taper Forum for keeping Broadway Theater on the West Coast thriving. Run, don’t walk to this production.“Grey Gardens,” runs through August 14th.
