Thursday, December 18, 2025
Donate
Home Blog Page 1569

“The Big Short” Brings Oscar Buzz to NYC with Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, Tina Fey, and Sir Paul McCartney

Roger Friedman
-
0
“The Big Short” Brings Oscar Buzz to NYC with Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, Tina Fey, and Sir Paul McCartney

Just another Sunday night in Gotham as Adam McKay’s Oscar heavy “The Big Short” landed in New York with a private screening at MoMA followed by a swanky dinner at the Monkey Bar.

Among the guests were hosts Tina Fey and Lorne Michaels, along with cast members Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Jeremy Strong, Finn Wittrock, John Magaro, Byron Mann, and Hamish Linklater (with girlfriend, and, ahem, super actress Lily Rabe). Author Michael Lewis, who wrote the book upon which the was based, was there along with screenwriter Charles Randolph and director Adam McKay (who made one of my favorite films, “The Other Guys.”)

Other stars? Yep. Sir Paul McCartney and wife Nancy showed up for the MoMA part of the night, along with Bob Balaban, Mamie Gummer, David Tennant (the actor who plays “Dr. Who”).

You know Paramount is serious when studio chief Brad Grey comes to town. “The Big Short” is their Oscar entry, and it’s a doozy. This is almost a companion piece to “The Wolf of Wall Street,” except this story of finance and greed is more current– McKay and co. wittily detail the bank bailout and stock market disaster that brought the 2008 recession. Brad Pitt’s Plan B produced, and Brad makes an extended cameo half way through the film that absolves him for any cinematic indulgences this year.

Steve Carell leads the cast (and may well reap an Oscar nomination) with the outstanding Christian Bale, the terrific Gosling and a superior ensemble (my old friend Al Sapienza even puts in an appearance) cast. Marisa Tomei and Melissa Leo– two Oscar winners– pull the weight on the female side.

There are also surprise appearances from some unlikely people playing themselves including Selena Gomez, Anthony Bourdain, and a very sexy Margot Robbie in a bathtub.

At the Monkey Bar party, former “Law & Order” actress Carey Lowell (and former Mrs. Richard Gere, and Griffin Dunne) came with media honcho Tom Freston. Ryan Gosling and I chatted about his adorable 14 month old daughter Esmeralda. Steve Carell marveled at being the lead in yet another serious film (he was so memorable in “Foxcatcher”). Lorne Michaels accepted kudos on his “Adele Week.” Gummer invited us all to come see her in a much praised limited run play called “Ugly Lies the Bone.” Linklater and Rabe — NY theater stars– were excited to meet Mark Strong, currently starring on Broadway in “A View from the Bridge.”

Gosling, by the way, hosts “SNL” next weekend with Leon Bridges as musical guest.

Brad Pitt hits town Monday night for the movie’s real premiere at the Ziegfeld followed by an old fashioned gala in mid town. He and his Plan B team are on a roll– they made “12 Years a Slave”–since “The Big Short” is about to make a big noise.

Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2 Opens to Series Low at $101 Mil, Drags Lions Gate Stock Price

Roger Friedman
-
0
Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2 Opens to Series Low at $101 Mil, Drags Lions Gate Stock Price

“The Hunger Games–Mockingjay Part 2” opened to a series low this weekend with $101 million. This is down 36% from the original film. It’s also way off from the numbers that were being suggested last week by LionsGate– up to $134 million.

What happened? Hubris. This film had good reviews. But there was little interest left in this enterprise to start with. The studio just left it up to the fans, and the fans were ambivalent. Still, LionsGate makes money from the whole thing. It’s just that they end on a down note.

For Jennifer Lawrence, it was a great pay day. And now she comes with David O. Russell’s “Joy,” which looks very very promising for Oscar season.

On Friday, Lions Gate stock ended down $1.20 or 3.31% at $35.02. That’s not too bad off its high for the last year, but we’ll see how it does on Monday based on this information.

Elsewhere, Oscar certain “Spotlight” and “Carol” each did very well over the weekend. Brad and Angelina’s “By the Sea” is now at $312,597 total.

DOA: “The Secret in their Eyes” starring Julia Roberts, with Nicole Kidman. It made $6,633,000 in wide release. DOA, VOD, etc. I could really get into a whole megillah about this, but why bother? It’s over.

Lorne Michaels Wraps Up Adele Week with 2 Great “SNL” Performances by Singer

Roger Friedman
-
0
Lorne Michaels Wraps Up Adele Week with 2 Great “SNL” Performances by Singer

This was Adele week for Lorne Michaels. First he produced her Radio City Music Hall show on Tuesday, a great success. It will air December 14th on NBC. Then last night Adele gave 2 great performances on “Saturday Night Live.” She sang both “Hello” and the song I think is the break out hit from 25, “When We Were Young.” Here’s the latter:

When We Were Young

Scientology: Watch this Insane Video of Tom Cruise Speaking Spanish, Opening Madrid Center

Roger Friedman
-
0
Scientology: Watch this Insane Video of Tom Cruise Speaking Spanish, Opening Madrid Center

Ton Cruise read Spanish off a Teleprompter and opened the Madrid Scientology center in 2004. Someone just posted this to YouTube. Wow. You see, no amount of shame, books, revelations, exposes, can stop him. Tom is deep inside the organization.

The indefatigable Tony Ortega translated. Poor Spain. They don’t need this crap. I hope they can ignore it.

Listen to Adele’s Direct Predecessors: Dusty Springfield and Alison Moyet

Roger Friedman
-
0
Listen to Adele’s Direct Predecessors: Dusty Springfield and Alison Moyet

Adele has a terrific voice, but she’s not the first British singer with big, bad pipes. Adele’s direct predecessors are the legendary Dusty Springfield — who died in 1999 weeks short of her 60th birthday– and the wonderful Alison Moyet.

Here’s Dusty singing “Yesterday When I  Was Young.” This will remind you of a couple of Adele’s new tracks, particularly “Millions of Years Ago”:

And then there’s Alison Moyet, who is only 54 and most definitely still an active recording artist. Alison was the lead singer of Yaz, a British new wave group, before she went out on her own.

Hunger Games Finale Starving for Audience as Studio Overestimates Weekend Take by Millions

Roger Friedman
-
0
Hunger Games Finale Starving for Audience as Studio Overestimates Weekend Take by Millions

UPDATE The Friday number was $46 million, even lower than originally thought.

EARLIER I can’t remember the last time a series finale was less successful than its prior — or penultimate — episode. Such is the case for “The Hunger Games, Part 4, Mockingjay, Part 2.”

Two days ago there were weekend guestimates for this movie as high as $134 million. Then that came down to $121 million. Next, we heard $114 million.

Now the word is $104 million will be the top, and most of that will be reported this morning from a combination of Thursday and Friday nights.

Somewhere there was a big miscalculation about the interest in this film. Me, I am not surprised. The teens in my family were extremely apathetic about “MJ Pt 2.” They said the book wasn’t very good, and that it shouldn’t have been split into two movies. They could wait to see the finale.

Then comes Page Six’s report that the cast wouldn’t give red carpet interviews in New York this week, and were partying privately. In Los Angeles they wouldn’t give interviews, so the studio claimed it was in solidarity with the Paris shootings. Such hooey. What the heck do these things have to do with each other?

The principals are obviously so well paid and so over it they don’t care. Maybe they sense the audience doesn’t much either. We’ll see what the numbers are shortly.

JLO, P Diddy Plan American Music Awards Reunion 16 Years After Arrests Following Nightclub Shooting

Roger Friedman
-
0
JLO, P Diddy Plan American Music Awards Reunion 16 Years After Arrests Following Nightclub Shooting

Ah, nostalgia. Sunday night will bring back beautiful memories on the American Music Awards. Jennifer Lopez is the host. And one of the presenters is Sean P Diddy/Puff Daddy Combs.

It was a mere 16 years ago when these two were the Bonnie and Clyde of the music world. They were a couple on the A list of tabloids news.

To wit: JLO and Diddy were part of a shoot out in a Times Square nightclub in 1999. Rather than stay and talk to the police, the couple jumped in a limo sped away. They ran 11 red lights in their efforts to escape involvement.

The party they’d been attending was to celebrate the album release by Puffy protege Jamal “Shyne” Barrow. Combs and Lopez were arrested, but Lopez was exonerated. Combs and Barrow each stood trial. Combs was acquitted. Barrow went to jail for nine years. Combs paid civil settlements to three shooting victims, reportedly coming to around $3 million.

Barrow’s burgeoning career was destroyed. After his release from prison he was deported back to his native Belize, where he resides today. Combs and Lopez went on to fame and fortune.

Ah, memories.

Perhaps anticipating that JLO and Diddy would soon be reunited, Shyne posted this on Instagram this past September 26th:

It took 21 years to make my debut album.
My entire life to that point was put into my first album.
What most people don’t know is the Shyne album was almost never released.
After the now infamous club New York shooting for which my big bro
Anthony Wolf Jones, Sean Puffy Combs, Jennifer Lopez and myself were arrested
on December 27, 1999, Puffy’s lawyers tried to convince him to take the position of distancing himself from me. The logic was, It would be much easier to distance and dismiss yourself from an unknown artist with no albums than a million record selling world famous artist. However to fade into the shadows of obscurity was not my destiny.
Thanks to my big brother Wolf who convince Sean Combs to do the right thing and not abandon his, at the time, little brother. I new I would have to spend sometime in prison so until then all I had was my music and burgeoning career.
Torn between criminal lawyers and Wolf, Andre Harrell, Harve Pierre, bobby Springsteen and @nygiant , Puffy decided to do the right thing and let me continue recording the Shyne album.
Bad Boyz was recorded the previous summer. Puff played me the beat and asked who was the guy that goes Whoooooa sweeen. Barrington Levy I said and that’s how Bad Boyz and Bonnie & Shyne came to life.
The life, produced by Nasheim Merrick was the first post arrest song I recorded and it blew everyone away. At Bad Boy records your music had to be crack or Puff would shut you down immediately. Especially me, there was so much at stake. All the hype all the controversy, my music had to be better than great.
Nonetheless, Song after song I kept smashing larger than life expectations.
I remember when pharrelll came thru as the neptunes at that time and played the beat for n+++ gonna die, it was surreal how all this great music was coming together under such nightmarish circumstances.
Every song was better than the last song or just as dope in its own distinctive way. No song sounds the same on Shyne. No flow is the same. Pound for Pound one of the greatest rap albums.

 

Hollywood Superstars Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt Join Peers Depp, Bullock, Cooper, Roberts in Box Office Busts

Roger Friedman
-
0
Hollywood Superstars Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt Join Peers Depp, Bullock, Cooper, Roberts in Box Office Busts

On Thursday night, “By the Sea,” starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, made $5,908. That’s less than they spend on lunch with their six kids, nannies and bodyguards.

From Monday-Thursday this week, “By the Sea” lured almost no customers. It made $32,000 in four weekdays. Its total is now $127,000.

Friday night should not be much better. Indeed, this is likely the last week “By the Sea” is in any theaters. Rejected by reviewers and audiences, the Pitt-Jolie experiment is headed to video and VOD.

Even abroad, there’s not much interest. So far “By the Sea” has only been released in Italy and Sweden. Europeans, like Americans, probably think it’s a foreign film. The question is, where is not one?

So far this has been a dreary season for “movie stars.” Johnny Depp in “Black Mass” has been so so. Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper each have had disasters. This weekend, Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman are in one together. Now we can add Brangelina.

Justin Bieber Sells 620K “Purpose” with Cab Rides, Bundles; Adele Is One Third of Top 30

Roger Friedman
-
0
Justin Bieber Sells 620K “Purpose” with Cab Rides, Bundles; Adele Is One Third of Top 30

The cabs rides on Lyft and the concert bundles worked: Justin Bieber sold 620,000 copies of “Purpose” last week and finished at number 1. Of the total 116K were streams. He should buy a canoe.

One Direction didn’t do too badly either: with little promotion they sold 470,000 total. Only about 50,000 were streams.

Bieber’s fans certainly hit the stream button enough times. Did they take get a lot of free cab rides from Lyft? We’ll have to ask. Many of them are too young to drive, so maybe it worked.

Both Bieber and 1D were knocked off their perches last night by Adele. All of the tracks from her “25” album are selling individually enough that they occupy a third of singles on iTunes in the top 30 right now. The album is number 1.

Bieber’s label, DefJam, run by the gregarious and popular Steve Bartels, had three of the top four selling albums last week, and one more at number 10. DefJam also figures into the soon to be released Rihanna album “Anti,” which looks like it will go through Samsung and maybe stay off charts a la Jay Z’s last record, “Holy Grail.” Rihanna’s record is coming in December, hoping to penetrate Adele’s fortress at number 1. Good luck with that.

 

Carly Simon Wrote “You’re So Vain” After Making a Shocking Discovery About Warren Beatty

Roger Friedman
-
0
Carly Simon Wrote “You’re So Vain” After Making a Shocking Discovery About Warren Beatty

So, yes, Carly Simon told People that she wrote the middle verse of “You’re So Vain” about Warren Beatty. But why did she write it? What caused this witty observation about the Oscar winning director and nominated actor?

The story of Warren is told in Carly’s spellbinding new memoir, “Boys in the Trees,” coming out on Tuesday. And it’s a doozy.

They met when Carly played the Troubadour in West Hollywood in 1971. It was just when “That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard it Should Be” and “Anticipation” had launched her into the stratosphere. Beatty came backstage.

She writes: “What a glorious specimen of man. He put them all to shame, if looks and charm were what you were after.
He homed in like a tracking dog. It was mysterious because it worked and it shouldn’t have. Now, when I say it worked, I mean it was irresistible. He had to have me as a notch in his belt, a belt where the greats could mix warmly with the rich, the famous, and the fair.”

Beatty, she says, had several women going at once, and kept a list with his “mains” at the top. She knew this and knew what she was getting into. “I could see that I was right up there above women like Catherine the Great, Marie Curie, Maria Tallchief, and Lillian Hellman.”

Simon tells the story of what led to “You’re So Vain”: Beatty flew into New York and came right to her house in the middle of the night for a night of lovemaking. From Los Angeles, he told her he “had” to see her, and missed her. She was charmed, and giddy. He left her place at 5am to be on a set  Alas, this would turn out to be untrue– hold on…

Later that day, Simon visited her therapist, in whom she confided that Beatty had really been present for her, and was really “himself.” She felt as if he were into her and only her.

The therapist had something to say.

It was then that I noticed Dr. L looked unwell. He had a pallor that scared
me, and I thought he was going to be sick or do something violent or that
he might die on the spot. I asked what was wrong and sat forward in my
chair. He said:
“Under the circumstances, I can’t withhold this. It’s too much to
believe . . . it’s unbelievable, in fact . . . I suppose . . . I suppose I will tell
you . . . that . . . You are not the first patient of the day who spent the night
with Warren Beatty last night.”

It was 11am Carly noted, and she was only his third patient of the morning. She writes:
“Poor Dr. L must have in fact wondered whether we women hadn’t put together some practical joke. He must have thought he was going crazy.”

Beatty, Simon reports, “did howl” when she confronted him, and their relationship ended not too long after that.

And, of course, there was no set to report to. In 1971, Beatty made two films– “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” and “$ (Dollars).” Neither of them was shot in New York.

PS Beatty 2015: happily married with four kids. We await his movie about Howard Hughes, still untitled, which finished shooting in June 2014.

 

 

 

1...1,5681,5691,570...2,323Page 1,569 of 2,323

Hollywood to the Hudson

Company

Trending

Categories

© Showbiz411.com