That’s it. Taylor Swift is officially numero uno with the “1989” album. She sold 1.3 million copies according to hitsdailydouble.com and SoundScan. Swift’s peeps refused to let Spotify stream the album, so that certainly added to actual sales. “1989” becomes the only million selling album of the year. Quite amazing. This may be the last actual hit album in history. God bless her, Swift worked for it. You can’t get away from her at this point. “1989” sold more copies than the entire top 50, maybe more than the top 100 in total. That’s the state of the business.
Watch Chrissie Hynde Sing “Let it Be” from New Paul McCartney Tribute Album
What could be better than the amazing Chrissie Hynde singing the Beatles “Let it Be” from the new “Art of McCartney” tribute album? Nothing! What a treat! I think Chrissie should have sung everything on the set.Anyway, a Tuesday treat!
“Interstellar”: Anne Hathaway Says She Knew All the Physics, Remembers None of it Now
Anne Hathaway says she understood all the physics in her dialogue for “Interstellar” while she was shooting it. “And the minute it was over, poof!” she told me. “I swear I understood it while it was in my head. And then the movie was over and I was like, huh?” (She should talk to Eddie Redmayne, who plays Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything.” He retained it for a short time, too.)
Her mother, Kate Hathaway, becoming a very canny Broadway investor and producer these days, explained: “She sounds smart, so when she says all that on screen, you believe her.”
It’s true. Anne H and Jessica Chastain each are so poised and well spoken you really think they know what the heck is going on in “Interstellar.” Me, I was convinced they shot in outer space. “If you believe that,” Anne– glowing, lovely as usual– told me last night at the film’s premiere– “then we’ve done our job!”
No sign of Matthew McConaughey at the swanky party for “Interstellar” last night at Tavern on the Green. He’s got his Oscar now, so MM did the red carpet at the IMAX Theater, and then found greener spaces. Maybe he found a bar to play the bongo’s in. It didn’t matter. Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain rose to the occasion. If these two ladies (and Jennifer Lawrence) are the future for Hollywood, we are in good hands.
Even though they have no scenes together in “Interstellar,” Paramount’s three hour space opera opening this week, the actresses were their usual gracious, friendly, and funny at the new stripped down Tavern. Hathaway was accompanied by her still newish and terrific husband Adam Shulman, her family, his family, and her friends from Vassar. Chastain had her own posse. They mixed and mingled with everyone all night.
(MM? “He has to do early morning TV.” He follows Denzel Washington into the new category of “the studio is throwing a really expensive great party for, people are expecting to see me, and I’m not going.” Okay.)
Chastain has some buzz for a supporting nomination in Christopher Nolan’s epic. Hathaway should, too. Nolan was very wise to choose them, as well as some others who will go unnamed (I’m told I’m ruining the surprise). “Interstellar” will sweep all tech awards this winter for its look and special effects. Nolan’s achievements may bring him accolades from the DGA, etc. “Interstellar” is great entertainment and smart at the same time.
Beyonce Hoax: No “New “Album Next Week–Media Outlets Fall for Fake List of 11 Non Existent Songs
UPDATE: Sony is releasing the Platinum edition of last year’s Beyonce album. It has two new songs, but none of the nonsense that was spread in the faked photo. CNN and thousands of outlets fell for a hoax that included 11 non existent songs. The actual two new songs are called “7/11” and “Ring Off.” Neither of them was listed on the fake memo.
EARLIER
Sorry kids. There is no new Beyonce album coming out next week. I’ve confirmed it. A clever hoaxer made up some stationery for Columbia Records and Parkwood Entertainment, and posted it to Twitter and Facebook. Alas, ’tis not true. My friends at Sony– er, Columbia– say no such stationery exists. “A good forgery, though!” For this to have worked, it would mean that Beyonce was making a record and videos all summer while she was on tour with Jay Z and then in Paris for their HBO special. It’s not humanly possible. But I like the idea that even CNN took the bait. This is what the internet has become– just noise. Credit though to the creator of the fake memo. They listed Blue Ivy as a special guest artist. And a duet with Justin Timberlake called “Renouncement.” LOL. And a song called “DONK” with Nikki Minaj. In the old days this would come from the National Lampoon people. And PS That Columbia Records logo is from 1965.
The real list:
PLATINUM EDITION BOX SET:
MORE AUDIO CD
7/11
Flawless Remix (Featuring Nicki Minaj)
Drunk in Love Remix (Featuring JAY Z & Kanye West)
Ring Off
Blow Remix (Featuring Pharrell Williams)
Standing on the Sun Remix (Featuring Mr. Vegas)
“LIVE” DVD
Run The World (Girls)
***Flawless
Get Me Bodied
Blow
Haunted
Drunk In Love (Featuring JAY Z)
1 + 1
Partition
Heaven
XO
ORIGINAL CD
Pretty Hurts
Haunted
Drunk in Love (Featuring JAY Z)
Blow
No Angel
Partition
Jealous
Rocket
Mine (Featuring Drake)
XO
***Flawless (Featuring Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
Superpower (Featuring Frank Ocean)
Heaven
Blue (Featuring Blue Ivy)
ORIGINAL DVD
Pretty Hurts
Ghost/Haunted
Drunk In Love
Blow
No Angel
Yoncé/Partition
Jealous
Rocket
Mine
XO
***Flawless
Superpower
Heaven
Blue
Grown Woman
Christian Bale and Leo DiCaprio Say No to Playing Steve Jobs–Who’s Next?
For some reason, no one wants to play Steve Jobs. Maybe the shadow of Ashton Kutcher looms so large that no actor feels up to playing the Apple creator in a good film. First it was Leonardo DiCaprio who had it and let it go. Now Christian Bale has bailed out after maybe being the guy.
The film is written by Aaron Sorkin based on Walter Isaacson’s book. Danny Boyle, Oscar winner from “Slumdog Millionaire,” is set to direct. Seth Rogen and Jessica Chastain may already be signed up for supporting roles. So now what?
Ryan Gosling is too blonde. But who knows? How about James Franco? He’s worked with Boyle on “127 Hours.” There’s always Dev Patel, from “Slumdog.” Ben Affleck is too busy with Batman. Hmmmm…..What could be making actors bow out of this project? Who do you think should play Steve Jobs this time? Benedict Cumberbatch? Why not? He’s the Daniel Day Lewis of that age group. Stay tuned…
Theatre: “Billy Elliott” Director Stephen Daldry Will Have 3– Yes 3– Plays This Spring
If you want to have lunch with “Billy Elliott” director Stephen Daldry, I’d say do it now. Very shortly he will be too busy to sit for a meal let alone make small talk.
Daldry will be directing two plays on Broadway this spring simultaneously– Helen Mirren in “The Audience” and Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy in “Skylight.” One is original, the other a revival. Each is a hit import from London’s West End, where Daldry started them. The combination would seem overwhelming to anyone, but at least the two productions will be in New York, on Broadway.
Now Baz Bamigboye, the dean of London entertainment writers, reports this extraordinary turn of events in the UK Daily Mail: Daldry will direct a new version of “The Audience” in London just about at the same time, with Kristin Scott Thomas playing Queen Elizabeth II. Daldry says he and playwright Peter Morgan have “reimagined” the play, added Tony Blair as a character, and will launch KST in April, right around time for the Tony Awards deadline here in New York.
Maybe Daldry can make a new movie while he’s at it. He already has one, “Trash,” in the can, which hopefully we will see soon. More recently Daldry directed Kate Winslet to her Best Actress Oscar in “The Reader.” A couple of weeks ago, he moderated a panel discussion at a lunch for Eddie Redmayne and “The Theory of Everything.” Seriously. His secret: I’ve noticed that he wears sneakers.
Prince on “SNL” (Watch Video): 8 Minute Jam, No Hits, Small Sales Bounce, Show Ratings Good
Prince got a little bit of a bounce saleswise from his “SNL” appearance on Saturday night. His own album “Art Official Age” is up to 16 on iTunes. The album with 3rdEyeGirl, “Plectrumelectrum” is at 35. On amazon, they’re 29 and 49 respectively. The ratings for the Chris Rock-Prince combo were very good– 4.9 in the key demo. Interesting, too, because there was heavy use of the black SNL players, black skits, and they were a welcome change.
I was lucky enough to be at the earlier dress rehearsal show, and you could feel the electricity in the room when Prince took the stage. He played 3 songs from the new albums, no discernible classic hits, and didn’t take a bow with Chris Rock and the cast at the end of the show– or on the live show. (Rock was hilarious.)
Cool audience member: Julia Sweeney, (still) cherubic former “SNL” star, with her husband and daughter. “I thought I’d show them what it was like,” she said, as if bringing them back to the old neighborhood. On Friday she’d been on the Today show for Halloween as her “It’s Pat” character.
Michael Jackson Prosecutor Tom Sneddon, 73, Dies; Pursued the Singer on a Vendetta
There isn’t much nice I can say about Tom Sneddon, the former Santa Barbara District Attorney. He is dead at age 73. You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead. But this is what I know: Sneddon conducted a vendetta against Michael Jackson that went on for years. He bungled the 1993 investigation with Jordan Chandler. And then in 2005 Sneddon — with no real evidence– brought Jackson to trial and destroyed him. The child molestation case was almost completely fabricated, with Sneddon at its forefront. It almost certainly led to Jackson’s death.
I watched Tom Sneddon in court through the winter and spring of 2005. He was about as unsophisticated as he could be in upscale Santa Barbara. It’s hard to believe a guy who seemed like such a hick could be popular with wealthy constituents. His pursuit of Michael Jackson was ridiculous, and you could say bordered on racist. It was clear he wanted Jackson out of Santa Ynez, Los Olivos and the whole area. Let’s not forget: Sneddon threw a victory party at a local restaurant during jury deliberations. He was convinced he’d won. It was in the poorest taste, and he was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Early on, Sneddon knew that the Arvizo family was nutty. Not only that, there was ample evidence they were lying about a lot of things starting with their “kidnapping” by Jackson. If yours truly had seen the humungous pile of receipts rung up by the Arvizo’s during their “incarceration,” certainly Sneddon knew about them, too. I certainly reported enough stories at the time detailing the Arvizos’ activities– shopping, restaurants, vacations, spa treatments– that a D.A. with a legitimate brief would have questioned the veracity of his government witnesses.
But Sneddon was out to get Michael Jackson. He’d lost out in 1993 when Jackson paid off Chandler. He wasn’t thrilled that Jackson had needled him in songs on subsequent albums. When Sneddon turned up at Neverland in November 2003 with bottom feeding tabloid reporter Diane Dimond for the big search and arrest, he showed his cards. It was a grudge match return.
That Tom Mesereau, Jackson’s defense lawyer, made such mincemeat of that prosecutors’ office should tell us everything. Sneddon did a lot of smirking in that trial. He really thought he was sending Michael Jackson to prison. He certainly humiliated the pop star. But then his case fell apart: Janet Arvizo, revealed as a welfare cheat, told Tom Mesereau she thought Jackson was going to take her kids away in a big helium balloon. She and her kids all had different stories. No one could explain how Arvizo was getting bikini waxes while Sneddon insisted she’d been taken against her will.
Jackson left Los Olivos two weeks after the trial was over. Mesereau had advised him to go. Sneddon, he said, would never give up. He’d make Jackson’s life a living hell. So I’m sorry Tom Sneddon is dead, and certainly it’s a terrible loss for his family. Maybe he was a wonderful father and husband. But his overzealousness to get even with Michael Jackson caused a lot of damage. The fact is, and people don’t like this, Michael Jackson was innocent of those charges. They should never have been brought.
Movie Box Office Ends in Near-Tie, and Very Scary Low Numbers Overall
The weekend movie box office wasn’t good for a couple of reasons: it ended in a near tie. And the numbers it ended with were very, very low.
Dan Gilroy’s “Nightcrawler” starring Jake Gyllenhaal made only $10.909 million for the whole freakin’ weekend. On top of that, “Ouija,” a movie based on a board game, finished right behind it with $10.9 million. Okay, Friday was Halloween, so fewer people than usual went to the movies. But what happened on Saturday and Sunday?
Altogether, the top 10 came in under $50 mil for the weekend. Wait. What? This sounds like a story I’d write about the pop music charts. But it isn’t. It’s the movie business. Hollywood. And if the top 10 makes less than $50 mil for the whole weekend, then a lot of heads are going to roll. It takes a lot of money to support Hollywood. That number is not enough.
It may just be the luck of the draw or a bad cycle. But in the top only “Gone Girl” has made over $100 million. All 9 releases are low earners and don’t have big prospects. “Fury” with Brad Pitt and “John Wick” with Keanu Reeves aren’t exactly bringing people in by the droves.
All hopes are now pinned on “Interstellar” and “Big Hero 6” next Friday. We’ll see what happens. But there has to be real concern at the studios about the year’s numbers and how they’re going to translate into lifestyles.
Oscars: 2 Months Left and No Clear Leader As Season Reflects This Year’s Box Office Malaise
You never know what kind of year it will be in movies. For the last couple of years, it’s been good times. The box office numbers were high, and the critics’ movies were in abundance. There was cross over, too. So the Academy Awards were really a contest, with lots of nail biting. Prognosticators were in full force.
But 2014? Not so much. We are now two months away from the end of the year, and the big deadline. For the first time in a long time, we’ve seen a lot already. Only a few movies remain serious question marks: Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper,” Rob Marshall’s “Into the Woods,” Angelina Jolie’s “Unbroken.” Another film with a lot of promise, “Selma,” from Ava Duvernay, isn’t ready. It’s so not ready that only 30 minutes of it will be shown at the AFI fest next week.
For once, there is no last minute Harvey Weinstein addition. His films have all been seen. There will be no drama over “wet print” screenings. We complained about them. Now we miss them.
This year, unlike last, we don’t have a big important movie like “12 Years a Slave.” There’s no “Gravity” (“Interstellar” does however talk about gravity a lot). “American Hustle” for 2014? Closest would be “Foxcatcher.” And so we wait and see. Could it be JC Chandor’s “A Most Violent Year”? That would certainly make up for Roadkill Attractions destroying his “All is Lost.”
I don’t know why, it’s just a feeling, but the importance of “Boyhood,” how people feel when they see it, and how it was made could come back if it has the right campaign. Will Josh Sapan spend the money to make it happen? Could be, he’s very smart.
So, to paraphrase Sting from his new musical, what have we got? This is it:
1. Foxcatcher
2. Boyhood
3. The Imitation Game
4. The Theory of Everything
5. Whiplash
6. The Grand Budapest Hotel
7. St. Vincent
8. Birdman
9. Wild
10. Mr. Turner
What we don’t have: realistic Best Picture nominations for “Gone Girl,” “Inherent Vice,” or “Interstellar.” Elements of these films may wind up with nominations, but the totals are less than the parts. Julianne Moore is a shoo in for “Still Alice,” but the movie is slight.