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Remember– I told you when I went to see “Spamalot” a few weeks ago, famed songwriter Max Martin was there with Ariana Grande. Martin told me he and his team were working on songs for a new Grande album.
Now comes word that Ariana has taken a forward step and signed with manager Brandon Creed. That’s the same guy Demi Lovato signed with this summer.
Creed, a graduate of Irving and Jeffrey Azoff’s Full Stop Management, is the man of the moment, Both Lovato and Grande come to him after escaping Scooter Braun. Could Justin Bieber be the next Braun album to join his Good World Management?
Creed’s list also includes Charli XCX, Orville Peck, Troye Sivan, and producer Mark Ronson, among others. Ronson told me recently he’s still coming down from guiding the “Barbie” soundtrack to start a new project. But you could see him working with Ariana in a second. Next year will be a big one for Ariana, with two “Wicked” movies and a soundtrack looming.
After bragging for weeks that he would testify in the NY Attorney General’s trial in front of Judge Engoron, Donald Trump is out.
In a rambling ALL CAPS post on TruthSocial, Trump rants about why he’s innocent and says he’s out.
Trump blinks. He would never get on that stand and answer questions about his business practices. He’s completely guilty of lying and over valuing his assets. He’s going to lose the Trump Organization now.
I do really hope Michael Cohen has personal security. Trump seethes with hate for his former employee and whistleblower. In that final section below you can see it pretty clearly.
The reality of the trial may have finally hit home. Back in September, Trump told a conservative radio show when asked about testifying: “That I would. That I look forward to.”
But Trump is a bully and a liar. He’s a blowhard who gins up his audience and base, then reverses course, and makes them believe somehow he was a victim. When Judge Engoron finally reads his decision, it’s going to be some scene.
Here’s the whole thing, to bottom:
Page 1: STATEMENT OF 45th PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP! AS EVERYONE KNOWS, I HAVE VERY SUCCESSFULLY & CONCLUSIVELY TESTIFIED IN THE CORRUPT, BIDEN DIRECTED, NEW YORK STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL’S RIGGED TRIAL AGAINST ME. WORLD RENOWNED EXPERTS, HIGHLY RESPECTED BANK & INSURANCE EXECUTIVES, REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONALS, AS WELL AS OTHERS, BOTH HONEST & CREDIBLE, HAVE STATED, CLEARLY & UNEQUIVOCALLY, THAT I, & MY VERY SUCCESSFUL COMPANY, DID NOTHING WRONG! MY FINANCIAL STATEMENTS WERE CONSERVATIVE, LIQUID, & “EXTRAORDINARY.” A TOP PROFESSOR FROM NYU STERN SAID, “IF MR. TRUMP WERE MY STUDENT, HE WOULD GET AN ‘A’ ON HIS FINANCIAL STATEMENTS. IV’E NEVER SEEN A STATEMENT THAT PROVIDED SO MUCH DETAIL, & IS SO TRANSPARENT, AS THESE STATEMENTS.” PLUS, THEY ALL HAVE AN IRONCLAD DISCLAIMER CLAUSE STATING THAT THE USERS MUST DO THEIR OWN DUE DILIGENCE & ANALYSIS – NO RELIANCE! THE ONLY FRAUD COMMITTED WAS BY THE HIGHLY PARTISAN & OUT OF CONTROL JUDGE, & RACIST A.G. (WHO PROMISED THAT, “I WILL GET TRUMP”)….
Page 2: THEY CLAIMED THAT MAR-A-LAGO WAS WORTH ONLY $18,000,000, WHEN IT IS WORTH 50 TO 100 TIMES THAT AMOUNT, IN ORDER TO ILLEGALLY REDUCE MY VALUES & MAKE A FAKE CASE AGAINST ME. THEY DID THIS ON OTHER PROPERTIES, AS WELL, & WOULDN’T GIVE ME A JURY. LIKEWISE, THE A.G. THUGS DO NOT WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT I HAVE PAID ALMOST 300 MILLION DOLLARS IN NEW YORK CITY & STATE TAXES DURING THE YEARS IN QUESTION. IMPORTANTLY, I WON AT THE APPELLATE DIVISION, WHICH EFFECTIVELY ENDED MOST OF THE CASE, BUT THE BIASED JUDGE REFUSED TO ACCEPT THEIR ORDER, AN UNHEARD OF FIRST! BASED ON THE ABOVE, AND THE FACT THAT OUR UNASSAILABLE FINAL EXPERT WITNESS HAS BEEN SO STRONG AND IRREFUTABLE IN HIS TESTIMONY, WHICH WILL CONCLUDE ON TUESDAY, & THAT I HAVE ALREADY TESTIFIED TO EVERYTHING & HAVE NOTHING MORE TO SAY OTHER THAN THAT THIS IS A COMPLETE & TOTAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE (BIDEN CAMPAIGN!) WITCH HUNT, THAT WILL DO NOTHING BUT KEEP BUSINESSES OUT OF NEW YORK, I WILL NOT BE TESTIFYING ON MONDAY. MAGA!
DON’T FORGET, IN ADDITION TO EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE FAKE & FRAUDULENT “CASE” THAT PEEKABOO HAS BROUGHT AGAINST ME, THEIR SO-CALLED “STAR,” & ONLY, WITNESS, SLEAZEBAG & DISBARRED FORMER LAWYER, MICHAEL COHEN, ADMITTED IN COURT TO REPEATEDLY LYING UNDER OATH. IT WAS A TOTAL BREAKDOWN, A NON-RECOVERABLE PERRY MASON MOMENT. THAT ALONE ENDS THIS BIDEN DRIVEN WITCH HUNT. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!
It was not a good time at the box office this weekend.
The rough total for all films came in at just over $68 million. Total.
The number 1 film was Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron,” a Japanese animated film not really for children. It made $12.8 million. For the weekend including Thursday.
Number 2 was the new “Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbird and Snakes.” with $9.4 million.
Even Beyonce’s “Renaissance” movie has turned out to be a big disappointment, picking up $5 million for a total of $28 million. The premiere in London cost more than that!
Movies that should in theaters but aren’t include the whole Netflix group– “Rustin,” “Nyad,” “May December,” and “Maestro,” which is in theaters but there are no box office numbers.
Christmas looms as a bleak time. Warner’s “The Color Purple” should be a massive hit, cross fingers. In the old days, it would have been. But if it doesn’t get Critics Choice and Golden Globe nominations this week, the studio will panic. “The Color Purple” is one of my top 5 movies of 2023. But it’s like a great R&B hit on the singles chart– it needs a lot of love to crossover to the top 40.
Warner’s has some other shots at holiday hoopla with “Wonka” and “Aquaman.” MGM has the great “American Fiction.” And there’s always “The Iron Claw,” which I’ve seen and doesn’t look like a Christmas crowd pleaser.
The good news is that Universal is re-releasing “Oppenheimer” into theaters January 5th. It’s worth second and third look. There’s a lot you miss in the first showing.
Elon Musk has restored hate and evil to Twitter X.
Alex Jones, of InfoWars infamy, has had his account reinstated. He comes with all his old Tweets prior to September 2018, as well.
He’s been immediately welcomed back by every nut job on the platform, starting with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Loomer.
And so it begins.
Jones owes the families of the Sandy Hook, CT mass shooting $1 billion after a jury found that he’d defamed them and the victims, almost all children. He’s a deeply sick man who should not be allowed on any forum. Musk simply doesn’t care what Jones has done — or will do.
As the news spreads today it will be interesting to see what affect there is on Musk’s Tesla stock price. Will the markets care? Will the site lose users or gain them?
Either way, Musk has now done the most reprehensible thing he could think of. Bringing Jones back is Musk’s way of throwing down the gauntlet to the same advertisers he told go f*ck off last week.
For 30 years, the Shoah Foundation has been documenting stories of the Holocaust. This is more important then ever since new poll shows young people either don’t believe the Nazis killed 6 million Jews, or that this was somehow a myth. (Thanks to Mel Gibson for this lunacy.)
Today Oscar winning director Steven Spielberg — who started the Shoah Foundation after making “Schindler’s List” — revealed they are now documenting stories of the survivors of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
“Rob Williams and the team at the USC Shoah Foundation are leading an effort that will ensure that the voices of survivors will act as a powerful tool to counter the dangerous rise of antisemitism and hate,” said Spielberg in a statement on the group’s web site.
Spielberg said the brutality of the October 7 Hamas attacks, along with the surge in antisemitism in their aftermath, has re-opened historic wounds.
“I never imagined I would see such unspeakable barbarity against Jews in my lifetime,” Spielberg said.
The Shoah Foundation is continuing to interview and archive for the history of the Holocaust in addition to the work they will now undertake.
“Holocaust survivors are the most courageous and brave among us, and their accounts are a lasting testament to the resilience of the human spirit,” said Spielberg. “Both initiatives — recording interviews with survivors of the October 7 attacks and the ongoing collection of Holocaust testimony — seek to fulfill our promise to survivors: that their stories would be recorded and shared in the effort to preserve history and to work toward a world without antisemitism or hate of any kind. We must remain united and steadfast in these efforts.”
Last night’s Jimmy Kimmel was a rerun, I guess. But this interview with Eddie Murphy was so good, it could win an award.
Murphy hates doing press and interviews. He’s rarely candid about his life. But this story about his friendship with Dick Cavett, and a bet Richard Pryor made with him, is spectacular.
Elon Musk certainly wants to warn off whatever advertisers are left at Twitter.
On the platform he signaled “OK” when a crackpot right wing account published a poll saying conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should be allowed back on Twitter.
Musk wrote “OK.”
A new low, certainly. This may do the trick. Jones, whose “InfoWars” is still out there somewhere, currently owes the parents and families of Sandy Hook Elementary $965 million after a jury in a now famous defamation found he’d lied repeatedly to his listeners that the 2012 Connecticut school shooting was a fake.
“All made up. Hilarious,” Jones said when the jury read the outcome in October 2022. “So this is what a show trial looks like. I mean, this is the left completely out of control.”
The shooting rampage took the lives of 20 children and 6 adults. Immediately Jones began saying that the shooting never took place, and that the deaths were lied or staged. The Sandy Hook families sued him for defamation. InfoWars was removed from almost everywhere, and Jones became a pariah to everyone but his uneducated followers.
Since the $965 million decision, Jones has filed for bankruptcy and continues to evade having to pay the Sandy Hook group.
Musk’s comment is going to have a severe blowback. But on what? He’s already decimated Twitter? Will his Tesla car sales be affected? You’d think after this that Tesla owners would be embarrassed to be seen driving them. Is this the breaking point, or will it go lower? Musk is already in a deep set back after approving an anti-semitic Tweet that resulted in dozens of major advertisers leaving Twitter.
Musk’s response to unhappy advertisers: “Go f*ck yourselves.”
The Sundance Film Festival announced its movies for the January powwow in Park City, Utah.
Now “The Morning Show” actor Mark Duplass has posted a comforting note to filmmakers whose works were not selected.
“We’ve been rejected so many times, and it always hurts,” Duplass says and cites three movies he’s made including “Biosphere,” which played at the Cannes Film Festival this year. He says of movies that didn’t make it, “If you think it’s great, keep pushing.”
Duplass can be seen in the Apple TV hit, “The Morning Show,” and in dozens of indie films, Next he’ll appear in “Hurricanna” about Anna Nicole Smith. He might be playing Anna’s friend, Howard Stern.
Ryan O’Neal has died, and it’s sad, of course. But there is a bright side.
O’Neal got a New York Times obit written by legendary Times Hollywood reporter Aljean Harmetz.
Aljean covered Tinseltown for the Times from the mid-70s through 1990. Her byline was constant and her scoops were spot on. This was before the internet and rumors flying around all day on Twitter. If you wanted to know the breaking news in Hollywood, it was all from Harmetz.
The brilliant reporter turns 93 this December 30th. Before she left the Times it seems like she stockpiled some obits for the morgue, or library of celebrities. The last one that appeared was two years ago, was for Jane Withers, aka Josephine the Plumber in Comet cleanser commercials.
Harmetz’s obits appear once a year or two. Who knows when they will run out? Her previous obits were for Sean Connery, Doris Day, Tab Hunter, Dina Merrill, Mickey Rooney, and Shirley Temple Black. Some of her older ones included Paul Newman, Shelley Winters, and Lena Horne. In other words, only Big Stars.
So congrats to Ryan. No Oscars but the top movie writer maybe in the history of the Times. Not bad!
ABC is closing “Station 19” this spring after 7 seasons.
The “Grey’s Anatomy” spin off about a firehouse in Seattle will close its doors during May Sweeps after moving from 8pm to 10pm on Thursdays. Clearly, the time change, announced earlier, was a sign that ABC wasn’t interested in continuing anymore with the Shonda Rhimes show since the creator moved on to Netflix.
Now the big question is, What happens to “Grey’s?” This is its 20th season, and star Ellen Pompeo will not be around much. Showrunner Krista Vernoff has already left, too. “Grey’s” has pretty much done its job, and without a star central character, the end may be near, too.
Ironically, “Station 19″‘s ratings are better than “Grey’s.” The former show averaged 3.86 million viewers a week vs. the latter’s 3.5 million. Neither number is spectacular. You want to get 5 mil and up to stay on the air. A real hit is in the 6 to 7 million range, although those days may be over for good.
“Grey’s” might get one final full season after this, but the whole show is in the ER at this point and will soon be transferred to hospice. Two decades is a rare thing for TV. But remember the days when Shonda Rhimes ruled Thursdays on ABC with “Greys,” “Scandal,” and “How to Get Away with Murder.” It was a great run!
