Barbra Streisand cannes-celled her trip to the Cannes Film Festival because of a knee injury.
But she sent a video for the closing ceremony, where she was awarded an honorary Palme d’Or for her contribution to cinema.
Isabelle Huppert introduced her after a clip reel highlighting Streisand’s career.
Stephen Colbert was already back on TV on Friday.
Hours after signing off his 11 year run on CBS, Colbert popped up as guest host of “Only in Monroe,” a local access show in Michigan.
He last hosted the same show in 2015, right before taking over “The Late Show.”
It’s like the real life version of “Forever Fernwood.” Hilarious.
Guests include actor Jeff Daniels and rocker Jack White.
There’s a lot of talk of hot dogs, and, of course, local news.
Maybe Stephen can book a full time job!
Drake is really back.
The Canadian rapper issued three new albums simultaneously last week, and now he’s cleaned up.
Drake’s trio sold a total of 650,000 copies, mostly from streaming.
“Iceman,” the biggest one, came in at 460,000 equivalent sales. That was followed by “Habibti,” with 114K and “Maid of Honour” with 109K.
That’s a stunning return after living through the chaos and humiliation of his feud with Kendrick Lamar.
The latter’s fans declared Drake “over,” as Lamar had his monster hit with “Not Like Us,” and won Grammy Awards as well. Five of the top ten singles on Spotify are from the album, as well.
Add to that another 50,000 in sales for older albums on the chart.
Is this Drake’s way of fulfilling his contract with Universal Music? Or just a three pronged attack? Universal won’t say, but the real life Aubrey Graham is probably better staying put now and letting bygones be bygones. After all, Universal made this happen. And what’s Kendrick going to do now? Release four albums at once?
Elsewhere on the chart, Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” album from a decade ago is having a Renaissance. I’m not sure why. But coincidentally Paris Jackson — Michael’s daughter– has released a new song produced by Linda Perry called “Teenage Drama.” And it’s very good.
Meryl Streep recently said in an interview: I think when we tend to Marvel-ize the movies now — we got the villains and we got the good guys — and it’s so boring.”
The first lady of film added: “And what’s really interesting about life is that some of the heroes are flawed and some of the villains are human and interesting and have their own strengths. So that’s what I like about this [film]. It’s messier.”
A three time Oscar winner, Streep may have been prescient. Her own Disney-released movie, “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” made for adults, is a surprise box office behemoth with $556 million already banked worldwide.
No one flies around in a spaceship or wears a cape in “Prada 2.”
Meantime, another Disney movie, made for kids and with plenty of special effects, is having a tough time.
“Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu,” is off to a slow start this holiday weekend.
Jon Favreau’s movie version of a TV series should be much bigger than “Prada 2.”
But in previews and Friday showings, the total is only $33 million. It probably won’t get to the $100 mil mark by the end of Monday, Memorial Day. Crazy.
Friday was really a day of disappointment for “M and G.” Of course, bad weather over the weekend will keep people away from beaches, so maybe they’ll check the film out. But it should have done far better last night.
Ironically, one feature of “M and G” is the voice of Martin Scorsese, the famed director. He’s taken a dim view of comic book movies in the past. Yet, he’s one of the best reasons to see the latest “Star Wars” Film!
It’s also cold out on Memorial Day after three days of 90 degree weather. We’re really living in the Upside Down!
amFAR Cannes on Thursday at the Hotel duCap Eden Roc in Antibes was a D list affair, D for desultory.
The performers were Lizzo, Robbie Williams, and Zara Larsson. Robin Thicke was present but it’s unclear if he performed his purloined Marvin Gaye song, “Blurred Lines.” People would rather hear the original, Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up.”
Long gone are the days of Elton John and other superstars who performed at this event when it was meaningful.
If you have to hire Robin Thicke, you know you’re in trouble.
This left people wondering, Where was Sombr? The 20 year old New York popstar has been the talk of the music industry for over a h once year. He was nominated for Grammys, sells out shows, and has big hits like “Back to Friends,” and “12 to 12.”
Sombr would have been an easy booking, you’d think. Both of his parents work for amFAR. Mom Bennah Serfaty is the publicity director for eons. Dad Andy Boose, who also manages his son, has been putting on the amFAR event for as many eons. Couldn’t he have gotten Sombr at a discount?
Alas, amFAR Cannes — which was once a hot ticket — looked like a dreary echo of itself. Sharon Stone, of course, is long gone. Rami Malek might have been the biggest star. There was almost no one of note who’d been at the festival. Stars who were in town — like Penelope Cruz– were absent. Aside from Heidi Klum and Eva Longoria, it’s hard to say who was actually in attendance. The pictures are of people you’ve never heard of!
Despite this lack of star power, amFAR execs are still raking it in. Here’ s a snapshot from their 2024 tax filing:
Stephen Colbert went out on top last night.
His season finale scored 6.74 million viewers, way above his average 2.6 million.
It didn’t hurt that both Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon showed re-runs out of respect for him. They also appeared on Colbert’s show.
Other guests included Paul McCartney, Jon Batiste, Elton John and a miscellaneous group in the audience including Ryan Reynolds and Tim Meadows from “SNL.” The latter trained at Second City in Chicago with Colbert years ago.
The show was extended by a half-hour for the occasion. It wasn’t necessary. The additional time was wasted on a long, boring bit about time warps and wormholes with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
But the two final musical numbers — one an Elvis Costello song performed by the singer, Colbert, and Jon Batiste — and Paul McCartney’s big all star finish of “Hello, Goodbye” — were poignant and moving. Even more so was McCartney turning off the lights at the Ed Sullivan Theater 62 years after the Beatles performed on its stage.
The final moment was a sweet touch. A spotlight shined on a little glass snow globe a la the ending of “St. Elsewhere,” in which autistic Tommy imagined the whole series.
Byron Allen leases the time starting next week for his “Comics Unleashed.” The ratings won’t be very high, but CBS doesn’t care. They just wanted Colbert silenced from attacking Donald Trump every night. Trump agreed, gloating today on his failing social media. No can wait until he’s gone and maybe some sense and sensibility will return.
Donald Trump is such a family man. His first wife is buried on his golf course. His second wife is gagged from speaking and works for him Palm Beach.
Let’s not forget Barron, MIA all the time, locked in the White House basement,
Now Trump says he’s skipping son Don Jr’s wedding to Bettina Anderson, who will be his second wife.
Obviously, Melania doesn’t want to go and Donald won’t go alone to the private island in the Bahamas. He’d have to spend time with Don Jr’s five children. Their mother, Vanessa, announced yesterday she has breast cancer. Trump doesn’t want to get involved with that lot. He’s not the Consoler-in-Chief, after all. (He lacks empathy for everyone.)
Will he play golf? If the weather is good. Otherwise it will be a long day of insane post on the failing Truth Social, which hit another all time low yesterday on the stock exchange.
Paul McCartney on trumpet! Jon Batiste leading the band!
After the “Colbert” finale was over, the whole gang led the audience in “When the Saints Go Marching in.”
Of course, afterwards, all the celebs we saw on screen went to an after party down in the Flatiron District. Stephen must have quite a headache this morning!
Ed Sheeran is outta there at Atlantic Records in the US. He’s overall gone from Warner Music where he was signed in the UK.
But Sheeran’s big sales are in the US, and Atlantic Records has not done much for him in a long time. The writing was on the wall. The new Atlantic has invested big time in Hillary Duff, and had little interest in Sheeran, once their biggest artist.
Sheeran, who recently shaved his head — always a sign of change in a Lifetime movie — has plenty of options. He could go to bff Taylor Swift’s label, Republic Records, or to the new set up called 26.2 Records at Sony Music run by his former Atlantic friends Max Lousada and Julie Greenwalk.
For a while now, Sheeran’s music has been released on his own Gingerbread Man label and licensed to Warner. But that’s no excuse for the new Atlantic team doing just about nothing for his releases.
If Sheeran goes to Universal, it would be ironic since that’s the empire of Sir Lucian Grainge. Grainge’s son, Elliot, runs Atlantic.
The decline of Sheeran’s sales is notable because he’s just 35, and has the potential for more hits easily.
His career has changed though, especially with the current problems in live shows. He was selling out stadiums and arenas at his height, but has lately wanted to pull back to smaller venues.
Still, Ed has sold the equivalent of 643,000 albums so far in 2026 which isn’t bad considering he doesn’t have a current radio hit. But his catalog will stay at Warner Music for the time being.
But the fact that in the US the Atlantic people couldn’t promote Sheeran or make him stay says a lot. But they do have Hillary Duff, Don Toliver, Alex Warren, and, in all seriousness, Bruno Mars, who is left over from the prior administration.
“I met Ed Howard from Asylum records at a show in Notting Hill when I was 18 and I ended up crashing at his and his now wife’s house. Whilst there I played him a bunch of music, and just chatted about life and what I wanted to do. I honestly didn’t know at the time he worked at a record label, I thought he was just someone cool who was letting me crash on his sofa. But the next day I found out who he was, and we started chatting. He came to so many of those small gigs, with Ben Cook who ran Asylum at the time. All the tiny tiny pub gigs no one came to, they came to. So when ‘No.5 collaborations’ [Sheeran’s independently released debut EP] came out, and I was offered a deal, I signed instantly. I love those guys so much.
“Over the last 15 years, I’ve put out so much music and had so much success with that company. We’ve built something amazing together and enjoyed such life changing stuff happening to us. My life is hugely different now to what it was when I was a teenager, and I’ve been feeling in my gut for a long time that a lot of things in my professional life need to change. I am, underneath it all, a singer songwriter who plays pub gigs. And I’ve sorta morphed into this pop star who plays stadiums over 15 years, it’s a super amazing thing to have happened but also a lot to get your head around.
“I decided to leave Asylum / Warner last month. I leave the company with SO much love and gratitude for everything we have achieved together. This isn’t a ‘disgruntled artist leaves record label’ type situation. This is a boy who started as a teenager on the company with different priorities, to the father of 2 man who exists now, who feels like he needs a shift and change in the way he does things professionally. I love Ed Howard forever, I love Asylum forever, and the door is always open for the future. Thank you everyone across Warner worldwide who has worked on my projects over the last 15 years, it’s been an incredible journey. Excited to see where the next 15 years takes me. Loads of love to everyone x.”
The naysayers were proven wrong last night.
The new “Star Wars” movie is a hit, as predicted.
“The Mandalorian and Grogu” took in $12 million in previews and is headed to a galactic weekend.
The big screen installment of the TV series should clear $100 million this weekend, and then some.
Pedro Pascal returns as the bounty hunter with his Yoda like buddy Grogu. Sigourney Weaver is the military adviser who dispatches them on their adventure. Martin Scorsese has a hilarious surprise cameo.
Reviews are good for this kind of movie considering bloggers want to kill it just for sport. Audiences are giving “The Mandalorian” 88%.
I do think the holiday weekend will turn out well for them. Disney will be lucky to see bad weather drive people into theaters.
Stay tuned…