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Thursday and Friday audiences brought in almost $4 million. The Tony Award winning Broadway musical’s filmed version — which has been playing on Disney Plus for five years — is looking at a $10 million weekend.
Not bad considering the filmed version has been so widely available on the small screen. But this is a chance to see it writ large, and I can tell you the different is extraordinary. The camera work is very immersive this way. and you really get the sense of what these heroes of the Revolutionary War went though.
One takeaway from “Hamilton” is the tragedy of watching Donald Trump taking all of Democracy apart after so much work and passion went into it for real. Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, et al gave their lives so we could have this amazing experience only to see it frittered away now by a mad man.
Go see this epic entertainment while it’s in theaters!
The 50th anniversary release of “Jaws” was supposed to last one week.
The week was huge. The beloved saga of Bruce the shark killing people and masticating all over Martha’s Vineyard made $11.3 million in its return to the big screen.
So Universal decided to go fishing for a second week to see if they could duplicate that coin. Alas, it has not worked out.
Last night, “Jaws” was down 93% from last Friday. Bruce was so effective that he scared away the audience. Last Friday: $2.3 mil. Last night: $230,000.
There’s only so much nostalgia for chomping human flesh.
I’ve been listening to David Byrne since Charles Laquidara played “Don’t Worry About the Government” on WBCN in 1977.
This is a song about office buildings, I said out loud. What is going on here?
Then I learned about “Psycho Killer” and so on. On the second Talking Heads album, Byrne did Al Green and Willie Mitchell a amazing turn by reinventing “Take Me to the River.”
The calendar pages start flipping out. In recent times there was “American Utopia,” a work of genius that featured the Heads songs in a staged work, then a Spike Lee documentary. Manna from heaven.
So it’s 48 years later and David Byrne has released “Who is the Sky?” This is a gift. Don’t take it for granted. Simply produced by Kid Harpoon, this collection is about being in love and becoming domesticated in your 60s. This week Byrne announced he was marrying his longtime girlfriend any minute. He’s 70. You can see him riding his bike or jogging in New York if you’re lucky. He keeps moving forward.
“Who is the Sky?” probably could have made last week’s Grammy deadline but I doubt Byrne cares. In a proper world, this would be an Album of the Year. It’s certainly the best thing I’ve heard in 2025. You know how they call all musicians “artists” now? Byrne is actually an artist.
He sings about “The Avant Garde” because if he’d arrived 20 years earlier, he’d been part of it. In the new song, there’s a couplet that crystallizes everything he and Patti Smith and the late Tom Verlaine and even Elvis Costello embody: It’s a passionate life, it’s ahead of the curve/It’s deceptively weighty, profoundly absurd.”
Byrne teamed up for this album with not only the very hot Kid Harpoon, but most importantly with the Ghost Train Orchestra. That he spotted them and decided to collaborate is part of that passionate life. Their eclectic strengths match his, from soaring rich ballads to Mariachi band. The Ghost Train orchestra suits Byrne, who can be ultra modern and very nostalgic. (He references a line from “The Women” spoken by actress Norma Shearer, whose name would be a mystery to anyone under 60.)
You want a lyric sheet with “Who is the Sky” the way we doted over the ones that came with Talking Heads albums. Just the titles make you want to drop the needle — or push the arrow on Spotify. “My Apartment is My Friend” almost seems like the grandchild of “Don’t Worry About the Government.” “What is the Reason for It?” is Byrne, singing with Hayley Williams of Paramore, like they’re Steve and Eydie. “A Door Called No” is so full of positivity that it could be turned into a best seller self help book.
In “The Outsider,” this verse is the definition of Byrne’s whimsy and profundity: In thе cave of secrets I wondеr what I’ll see I met a talking zebra A man with fifty eyes I saw a fountain made of honey I climbed a mountain in the sky
I’m getting the CD in the morning if you can buy one somewhere. It will sustain me in the car, and in life. A plus. It just shows you, great can happen more than once in a lifetime.
PS When the KennedyCenter returns in 2029, David Byrne must be at the top of the list.
After a couple of strikes this summer, pin up girl Sydney Sweeney — a Trumper — may see Oscar stars in the future.
Her boxing movie, “Christy,” has just scored a TKO in Toronto.
“Christy” is a true story directed by the very good David Michod. Reviewers have gone wild for it, calling Sweeney a sensation.
Owen Gleiberman says in Variety: Sweeney gives “a potent, true-note, game-changing knockout of a performance. She plays Christy Martin, who was such a natural dynamo in the ring that starting in the late ’80s, she wasn’t just instrumental in putting female boxing on the map. She became the face of the sport, arguably the most prominent and successful female boxer in the U.S.”
Sweeney jolted to popularity in HBO’s “Euphoria.” She had a big screen hit in 2024 in the romcom “Anyone But You” with Glenn Powell. She has a turkey out right now with “Eden,” and just had others like “Echo Valley” and “”Madame Web.” But “Christy” will evidently change everything.
It was recently revealed that Sweeney voted for Donald Trump. I guess she’s enjoying his presidency. She’ll be asked about it on the Oscar campaign trail, that’s certain. At the very least, however, she can get a Presidential Medal of Freedom, if not an Oscar.
Volman was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia in 2023. Tragic.
With Howard Kaylan, the Turtles had a massive hit, “Happy Together.” The song wasn’t written by them, but their version propelled them on to the Ed Sullivan Show twice.
Their other hits included a cover of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe” and their own “Elenore,” which was a send up of the still ubiquitous “Happy Together.”
Volman and Kaylan toured a comedy rock act called “Flo and Eddie” for decades after the Turtles. They were a cult hit, embraced by a huge audience. They often toured with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.
But “Happy Together” was their calling card. It’s amazing to think they were just 20 years old when that song hit the radio — at the same as the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper — and never stopped.
Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr made a total fool of himself on Capitol Hill this week.
His unscientific theories, arrogance, and lack of expert knowledge were exposed in front of Congress.
Among his many idiotic ideas: that Tylenol causes autism if taken by pregnant women. He also continued to make wild, unsubstantiated, and dangerous claims about vaccines.
Kennedy’s nephew Joe Kennedy III, son of RFK Jr’s brother Joseph Kennedy and also a former Congressman from Massachusetts, is blasting his uncle on social media. He says his uncle is “a threat to the health and well being of every American.”
RFK Jr has previously been called out by his siblings and cousins for his reckless interpretation of science, as well as his bizarre personal habits.
RFK Jr. has been firing or ousting the highest level of people at the CDC, causing a massive backlash at that agency. But this seems even more damning.
Someone at Sony TV or CBS has evidently ponied up for the soap, “The Young and the Restless.”
In the last few weeks, the show has ponied up for a bunch of well known actors to join the cast.
They had to do it. Ratings as dismal, and the show seems like it’s on a loop. As well as the actors, the show also added a strong but disliked producer, Jill Farren Phelps, to their team. Phelps has worked at every soap, killing off fan favorite characters like Sweeney Todd in the barbershop.
More meat pies!
Added to “YR” are Matt Cohen from “General Hospital,” Roger Howarth from that show and “One Life to Live,” Tamara Braun from “Days of our Lives,” and Lucas Adams from “Days,” too. “Y&R” also swapped actors with “Days,” sending one there and bringing one over.
“GH” is also reviving a character who died on screen and had a big funeral 8 years ago. (I guess he’s feeling better!)
In the most recent ratings, only “General Hospital” seems to be turning the ship around. “Y&R” fell under 3 million viewers right before Labor Day.
I didn’t realize they’d only released seven albums in that time. I guess this was because Levine was so ubiquitous on TV with “The Voice” and as a celebrity.
A few weeks ago — three– Maroon 5 released its eighth album, called “Love Is Like.” When it appeared on the iTunes chart at number 5 last week I was stunned I’d heard nothing about it.
A few critics that heard the album in advance, panned it.
Now, “Love is Like” is like, gone. Off the iTunes top 100. Luminate says it sold 45,000 copies of which 12,000 were CDs or downloads.
The fact is, Maroon 5 — which had hits with “Moves Like Jagger” and “Payphone” — may have reached its natural conclusion. Pop bands rarely last this long even with hits and the change of generations.
Now, Maroon 5 can hit the oldies circuit like Backstreet Boys and others of their ilk. Levine is back on “The Voice” after time away, and there’s a reason. He knows that personal celebrity is his calling card going forward. That will fuel gigs. But record sales a thing of the past.
Justin Bieber’s new “Swag II” album is a bizarre combination of things.
The album boasts a seven minute, forty six second spoken word track written his sketchy religious leader Judah Smith.
It also has a stick on the cover Warning of Explicit Lyrics.
“Swag II” is the surprise follow up album to “Swag,” which has been a huge sales disappointment all summer. No one asked for a sequel but here it is.
The album is sort of anti-music. Very little on it is remarkable even with dozens of writers and producers credited throughout. It’s amazing how many people is can take to come up with basically, nothing.
The one song that stood out for me was “Mother in You,” in which Bieber — who doesn’t seem to have an inner life — sings to his baby son, Jack, about seeing his wife, Jack’s mother Hailey, in him. It’s very affecting and heartfelt, so different than almost everything else Bieber offers.
Will “Swag II” fare any better than “Swag I”? The two albums are actually being packaged together as “Swag II,” which makes about as much sense as anything else.”Swag I” has sold 430,000 copies, almost all from streaming. The album has yielded just 8,970 paid downloads. No physical copies were manufactured.
PS All of this is pretty minor after seeing the “Hamilton” Movie this week. You wanna hear songs? These can’t even be compared.
This Sunday at 9pm, HBO goes back to the Delaware Valley in blue collar Pennsylvania.
This is where their enormous hit, “Mare of Easttown,” took place.
Now the same writer, Brad Ingelsby, returns with another seven part drama series that blew everyone away at last night’s premiere.
“Task” stars Mark Ruffalo, Tom Pelphrey (so great in “Ozark”), Emilia Jones from “CODA,” Martha Plimpton and a large cast of less well known but just as talented actors.
Ruffalo plays a semi-retired FBI agent tasked with finding Pelphrey, who’s leading a mini gang of violent robbers. It sounds simple but it’s not. The writing is on the same A level as “Mare of Easttown,” so is the directing. They’re working with a cast of actors who are sure to be in Best Ensemble races in every awards show.
HBO knows they have the hit of the fall. The premiere was held at the architecturally eccentric Perelman Culture Center on the World Trade Center campus. This is one weird building whose entrance is only up flights of steep stairs. The theater was designed as if someone saw Jazz at Lincoln Center and said, “How can we do this but make it really uncomfortable?”
In the end, none of this matter. Aside from the cast, we ran into Kyra Sedgwick, Josh O’Connor, Naomi Watts and Billy Crudup, Josh Hamilton, and Simon Jones from “The Gilded Age,” among others.
In future episodes we’re going to see Mickey Sumner and Raphael Sbarge, among others. But for right now, “Task” is the must see Sunday 9pm HBO show of the season. What a treat!
PS I did finally meet Ingelsby, whose “Mare of Easttown” I think remains one of the great short TV series. He’s mild mannered and pleasant, nothing like the gritty, often violent characters he cooks up. How does he do it, I asked? “I come from there,” he told me. He’s obviously a great observer.
Inglesby told me — EXCLUSIVE — that a “Mare” sequel is a real possibility! “Imagine what it would be like to see those people five years later.” Also, “Task” is looking at a season 2 at some point.
I’ve not looked ahead at the whole season, but I will after after Episode 1 airs this Sunday. I think we will all want to know what happens next.
