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Last night, the big Thursday preview movie was not Idris Elba in “Beast,” a good thriller that made $925,000.
No, the winner was a Japanese anime movie called “Dragon Ball Super Super Hero.” Distributed by Japanese company Toei and Crunchyroll via 20th Century Studios — meaning Disney– “Dragon Ball” made an astounding $4 million. That’s a very animated response!
“Dragon Ball” heads into 3,100 theaters this weekend. The new chapter follows 2019’s “Dragon Ball Super: Broly,” which lit up $7.04 million on its Wednesday opening and went on to score $30.4 million in the U.S.
“Bullet Train” rolls on, having crossed $60 million yesterday. And even though “Top Gun Maverick” will be available for streaming at midnight on August 23rd, it’s still in 2,969 theaters.
The producers of “Funny Girl” on Broadway are looking for magic when they relaunch on September 6th with Lea Michele.
They’ve got their first commercial, and it looks good.
Lea Michele becomes Fanny Brice and Tovah Feldshuh will play her mother. Not to put too much pressure on them, but if this doesn’t work. “Funny Girl” will not last through the winter. But I think this will pump up the box office.
The role of a lifetime. Lea Michele joins the cast of FUNNY GIRL as Fanny Brice beginning September 6. See you at the August Wilson! pic.twitter.com/nQatXGOzee
The great TV oracle Joe Adalian, aka @TVMoe and west coast editor of Vulture, Tweeted bad news for “Days of Our Lives” fans today.
Some folks on Twitter have asked me this, so I investigated: When #DaysOfOurLives moves exclusively to Peacock next month, the library isn’t going to expand,” Joe writes. “The streamer will continue offering the most recent season’s episodes and well as the previous season.”
He adds: “Is it possible at some point, Corday Prods. and Peacock could work out a deal to digitize older episodes. Of course. But as of now, there are no plans to do that at launch, or likely anytime soon. Hopefully this will change.”
I’m not surprised to hear this news. “Days of Our Lives” moves to Peacock from NBC in a couple of weeks, and when it does, I think fans should start bracing themselves for a final year for the 57 year old soap. The network is not going to go through the trouble of bringing all the reruns to any archive.
Rather than enrage the remaining 2 million fans by just pulling the plug, NBC is likely setting the stage for a soft ending a year from now. Peacock is not a success, they can’t sustain the “Days” budget as an original program. NBC has a contract through August 2023 and it’s likely the sand will finally run out of the hourglass then.
People are fainting over something Jake Tapper, CNN’s fair minded but liberal anchor retweeted yesterday.
Tapper retweeted Ivanka Trump’s endorsement of her husband’s panned book. Jared Kushner’s “Breaking History,” eviscerated by the NewYork Times and other reviewers, will be published next week.
For Tapper, an avowed critic of all things Trump, to un-ironically put something like that on his Twitter feed can mean only one of two things. He was either hacked. Or the new CNN leader, Chris Licht, made him do it to seem less partisan.
The latter is chilling. Licht has just eliminated Brian Stelter and “Reliable Sources” after 9 years. There is other anecdotal information coming of changes with other CNN anchors who are starting to sound like they’ve been taken hostage. Fear of being fired, or worse, seems like it’s in the air.
Tapper is too smart and principled to be blackmailed. But his Twitter followers are surprised and disappointed. Let’s see where this leads.
CNN’s Brian Stelter has confirmed after many reports that he’s out at CNN, his show, “Reliable Sources,” has been cancelled. Other reports say the whole staff has been let go.
CNN’s new leader Chris Licht, and new owner David Zaslav, are determined to overhaul the network. This is a sure sign that they’re on their way. Stelter was a workhorse who was completely devoted to the network and his show. But low ratings are not going to be tolerated at the revamped news network.
Stelter will turn up somewhere good. He’s too smart and talented not to…
At NBC condolences to super foreign correspondent Richard Engel. He and his wife, Mary, have announced the death of their six year old son, Henry, from neurological disorder RETT Syndrome. Engel wrote on Twitter: “Our beloved son Henry passed away. He had the softest blue eyes, an easy smile and a contagious giggle. We always surrounded him with love and he returned it, and so much more. Mary and Richard.”
We’re very sorry for their loss.
Our beloved son Henry passed away. He had the softest blue eyes, an easy smile and a contagious giggle. We always surrounded him with love and he returned it, and so much more. Mary and Richard. https://t.co/M8LV8SHv6rpic.twitter.com/21Ja6TOtjH
Well, A24 doesn’t seem to know what to do with Owen Kline’s “Funny Pages.”
So they’re screening it themselves on August 25th for 15 bucks.
Kline is the son of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates. This is his directorial debut. It looks like a charming coming of age film.
Show it in theaters? Film festivals? Apparently, “Funny Pages” starts a week long run the next day at Lincoln Center, all day. This is what A24 calls “releasing a film.” No marketing or publicity, no press release. Just, here it is! They’re disruptors!
Good news: even though he’s stopped touring, Paul Simon is still writing and making new records. According to a Facebook post from cabaret singer Barbara Fasano, Simon is recording right now, But even better: discovering that Fasano and her group were recording an old Simon song, “Old Friends.” in the next studio, he came in and the rest is history.
The smart and lucky Fasano writes:
“Here’s how it happened: Eric, Sean, Vito, & I are at Reservoir Studios this week making our new CD. & yes, that’s Paul Simon, who is making HIS new record in Studio B. We had laid down 4 tracks & were about to record OLD FRIENDS. So how could I resist? Around 4:00, there was Mr. Simon having lunch in the communal kitchen, & I introduced myself & said I was sorry to interrupt, but we were actually about to record his song. His face lit up & he was on his feet, walking into our studio. Everyone got introduced & Paul Simon pulled out his guitar & coached us on voicings & instrumentation. In a crazy surreal moment, he began to play OLD FRIENDS on the same guitar he’s been playing on his solo records for 50 years, while I sang along. He stayed with us for nearly an hour. And then we laid down OLD FRIENDS, now sprinkled with pixie dust by this American icon.”
EXCLUSIVE Actress Anna Stuart, a superstar on daytime TV for the last several decades, played Anne Heche‘s mother on the NBC soap opera, Another World, in the early 90s. (Heche played twins, actually, and won an Emmy Award.) The two remained so close that when I ran into Stuart years ago at Heche’s Broadway premiere in “On the Twentieth Century,” she told me, “Anne is like a daughter to me.” I never forgot that.
When Heche had her tragic and still unexplained accident, I immediately contacted Stuart, who was too confused and upset to speak about what was going on. With the space of a few days, she has now graciously agreed. We spoke last night by phone. Stuart was in her upstate New York home, planning to meet her husband, actor James Cromwell, who’s been filming all summer in Los Angeles, for the Emmy Awards.
She told me that on that trip she’d planned to see Heche. They were constantly in touch over the years. Early on Heche had spent a lot of time at Stuart’s home, even after she’d left the soap. “She was closer to me than almost anyone except my husband, my dogs, and my cats,” Stuart said softly.
On “Another World,” Stuart had already played wealthy society heiress Donna Love for several years. At the time Heche debuted, though, Stuart was off the show. “I was in California, they were calling me every three months to come back. They sent me a tape of the new girl playing my daughter, you can see it on YouTube. She’s in a bubble bath. She was very pretty, of course. But you could see she had that energy.”
Stuart had been trumpeted to the just 18 year old Heche as formidable. “She was ready for me,” Anna says. “She wrote a poem to me — this was around the time of Dynasty and the clothes — one line said ‘She wears shoulder pads in her long underwear,'” Stuart laughed. Over the years, they exchanged a lot of poems. “She wrote me wonderful things. How I never failed her. She wrote a wonderful prose poem for [older son] Homer’s 16th birthday. I hope he has it.”
They became close friends right away. Heche liked where Stuart was living enough that she rented a nearby cottage. “We were family,” Stuart says. “She’d bring boyfriends by. I was in her [very small] wedding [to husband Coley Laffoon]. Badgely Mischka asked to dress her. She had two dresses.” Over time, Heche brought both Laffoon and their newborn son, Homer, for visits.
Of the marriage to Laffoon, Stuart says, “Anne marched to her own drummer. I don’t know. They were on two different pages.” She added, not suggesting this had anything to do with Laffoon, “She had a mantra, Truth is my weapon.”
We did talk briefly about Heche’s relationship with Ellen DeGeneres. Stuart says, “I’m not sure she would have gone ahead with it if she’d known the toll it would take on her career.”
Now she tells me a story about Anne’s failed audition for Brian DePalma’s movie, “Carlito’s Way.” “She was supposed to play a stripper, a pole dancer,” Stuart recalls, “Penelope Miller got the part. Al Pacino thought Anne was too young. But still, Heche was all in. Stuart accompanied her to a private men’s club on 8th Avenue. “She took a stiff drink and then she got up and did it. She danced on a pole. And there I was, dressed like her prudish chaperone in my turtleneck. But I was like a mother at a 6 year old’s dance recital. I was so proud of her. And she was good!”
So what happened? Stuart doesn’t know. She hadn’t seen Heche since before the pandemic, but there were many calls and Face Time, birthday greetings last May. “If I’d known she was in so much trouble,” Stuart says. “I needed to see her in person. She was losing her way. There were signs. She lost her balance. She was obviously in a lot of pain. I can’t help anyone reason it out.”
In an earlier email, Stuart summed up her relationship with Heche for me: “Meeting Anne Heche, was like being transported up to the Starship Enterprise into a new galaxy. She was like no one I had ever met. Her sparkle, her enthusiasm, and fierce curiosity, made you want to stand close by, in the hopes that some of it might rub off on you. She affected everyone that way. I saw that magic over and over again.” She adds: “She is truly dancing with the stars.”
In a week, Jared Kushner’s book, “Breaking History,” will be delivered into the world officially.
But today, the New York Times’s Dwight Garner reviewed in what may become a historic take down. It’s scathing and hilarious at the same time.
And the net net here is that “Breaking History” sits on the amazon best seller list at 1,800, showing no sign of interest with six days to go.
Garner writes: ‘”Breaking History’ is an earnest and soulless — Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one — and peculiarly selective appraisal of Donald J. Trump’s term in office. Kushner almost entirely ignores the chaos, the alienation of allies, the breaking of laws and norms, the flirtations with dictators, the comprehensive loss of America’s moral leadership, and so on, ad infinitum, to speak about his boyish tinkering (the “mechanic”) with issues he was interested in.”
He continues: “This book is like a tour of a once majestic 18th-century wooden house, now burned to its foundations, that focuses solely on, and rejoices in, what’s left amid the ashes: the two singed bathtubs, the gravel driveway and the mailbox. Kushner’s fealty to Trump remains absolute. Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog’s eye goo.”
Mariah Carey knows just how to get herself in hot water.
According to Variety, Mariah is trying to trademark “The Queen of Christmas” for herself. This is because the only record she has on her resume that still sells is “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” The song has been a mega hit for 25 years largely because it’s a take on all the Phil Spector Christmas songs. Walter Afanasieff wrote “All I Want,” Mariah claims co-authorship, but really it’s written and produced like a Spector/Ellie Greenwich song.
Darlene Love objects to the trademark. Darlene is the actual Queen of Christmas, even more so now that Ronnie Spector has sadly left us. Darlene’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” is the ultimate Christmas record. She sang it on David Letterman’s show every year for 25 years. It dates back to the 60s.
And it was written by Spector, Greenwich, and Jeff Barry.
Since she registered her complaint about Mariah trying to muscle in on Christmas, Love has had to endure the wrath of Carey’s fans, the Lambs. (They are hardly lambs, as I could have told her.) Below are Darlene’s latest thoughts on the subject.
