Support independent journalism, free from the trades and other publications that are part of the tinsel town machine.
For 12 years, Showbiz411.com has been covering Hollywood, Broadway, the music business and the business of celebrity. Ads are our main source of funding, but contributions (not tax exempt) from readers who enjoy the scoops, exclusives, and fact based reports are always welcome and very appreciated. To inquire about ads, email us at showbiz411@gmail.com.
The Brit Awards: Adele has already won Best Song for “Easy On Me.”
Adele also won Best Artist and Best Album for “30,” which just made their eligibility period which ended December 9, 2021. Anyway, she dedicated the Album Award to her son and her ex husband, then gave herself credit for putting out a “personal” album, the kind no one does anymore, she said.
PS She’s also sporting a GIGANTIC heart shaped diamond engagement ring.
Here’s her performance of “I Drink Wine.” She sat through most of it. But she sang her heart out!
In the last video below, she drops some F bombs, talks dirty like she’s in the X rated “my Fair Lady,” and gets bleeped!
On Sunday night, with the Olympics pressing down on NBC, there were some cable ratings and shows of note.
HBO’s “Euphoria” beat Showtime’s “Billions” by a nose: 353,000 vs. 315,000 viewers. HBO will say they have millions of viewers from other platforms, and they very well may but there’s no way of knowing. This is just HBO Prime vs. Showtime.
“Billions” is consistently good, and this season has been no different. I’m really enjoying all the stories. Paul Giamatti is sensational as usual.
“Euphoria” up til now has been plotless, and woozy. It’s high school kids played by 20 year olds, doing drugs and having lots of pornish sex. Eric Dane has been the sole adult, and his performance deserves an award. He plays a closeted, semi-crazy, violent father of the main male teen, and he’s incendiary.
Incendiary is a good word for “Euphoria.” Everyone is on fire all the time. The show’s star, Zendaya, who’s really a movie star now from “Spider Man” and other projects, is, as they say, lit. This past Sunday’s episode saw her character, Rue, a teen drug addict and dealer with a heart of gold, completely implode. Sam Levinson’s writing and directing was the most focused it’s been so far this season. Rue (short for Ruby) was going through withdrawal, losing her family and friends. She’s sweating, running, puking, zoning in and out, crying, begging, and ultimately being shot up with morphine by the main dealer who says she has nothing else to alleviate her pain.
Two other actors figured in this episode with Zendaya who need to be cited. Martha Kelly plays the drug dealer named Laurie as kind of a droll, unforgiving and self-amused horror story. She frightened the hell out of me. And Nika King, as Rue’s mother, was outstanding.
But this episode was all about Zendaya. I said this from “Malcolm and Marie,” the movie she made during the pandemic with Levinson and John David Washington. Zendaya is just 25 but she is ready for the Oscars. She’s at that level. I don’t know how many seasons she’ll want to keep playing Rue. (Frankly, I would not have been surprised if Rue had died Sunday night. It seemed like she was goners.) Zendaya needs to work in great films. This episode was the equivalent of that. Bravo!
Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci” was the highest earning movie of the ‘quality’ films this season.
But it struck out with the Oscars. No nominations for Best Picture, Director, Actress, supporting roles, screenplay, etc.
What happened? Lady Gaga and Jared Leto campaigned like crazy and seemed poised to join the finalists.
But “House of Gucci” is not a good movie, and the Academy voters got that. Very interesting.
Gaga was excellent, but the whole movie was over the top. As a friend of mine said at our press screening, “Everyone is dialed to 11.”
In the end, “House of Gucci” came off like a Ryan Murphy FX series, like “Feud.” It was garish and artless. It was fun, but we learn that in the higher echelons of the Oscars, fun is not enough to put a movie over.
Still, “House of Gucci” can rest on its box office laurels. And it will always be popular. Years from now, people will watch it and love it. It wins the Oscar for tenacity.
There are many records set with the 94th annual Oscar nominations.
Two One married couples has been nominated!
Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem are married. Cruz was nommed for Best Actress in “Parallel Mothers.” Bardem for “Being the Ricardos.”
Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons acted together in “Power of the Dog.” They were each nominated for supporting roles in that movie. They are not married legally but live together and have a child. So…
Diane Warren got her 13th songwriting nomination for “Somehow You Do.” It’s time she won!
Jane Campion received her second directing nomination. She’s the only woman to have two.
Denzel Washington got his 10th nomination! He already has two Oscars!
First round of Oscar noms: “West Side Story” Tony Kushner screenplay which was praised everywhere, was snubbed.
Surprise nominations for Judi Dench in “Belfast” and JK Simmons in “Being the Ricardos.”
“Power of the Dog” pulled it out for Jesse Plemons. And his wife in real life, Kirsten Dunst for the same movie. Congrats!
Second round: Lady Gaga snubbed for Best Actress! She was supposed to be a lock! Jared Leto didn’t make Supporting Actor! Jennifer Hudson snubbed as Aretha! No lead Black actresses!
Three of the four actors in “Being the Ricardos” were nominated. Shout out to Nina Arianda, who was wonderful as Vivian Vance even though she wasn’t nominated. Her day is coming!
Best Picture
Belfast
CODA
Don’t Look Up
Drive My Car
Dune
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
Nightmare Alley
Power of the Dog
West Side Story
Best Actor
Javier Bardem
Benedict Cumberbatch
Andrew Garfield
Will Smith
Denzel Washington
Best Actress
Jessica Chastain
Olivia Colman
Penelope Cruz
Nichole Kidman
Kristen Stewart
Cinematography
Dune
Nightmare Alley
Power of the Dog
Macbeth
West Side Story
Directing
Jane Campion
Steven Spielberg
Paul Thomas Anderson
Kenneth Branagh
Ruyesuki Hamaguchi
Actor in a Supporting Role
Ciaran Hinds
Troy Katsur
Jessie Plemons
JK Simmons
Kodi-Smit McPhee
Actress in a Supporting Role
Jesse Buckley
Ariana DeBose
Judi Dench
Kirsten Dunst
Aunjunue Ellis
Animated Short Film
Costume Design
Cruella
Cyrano
Dune
Nightmare Alley
West Side Story
Live Action Short Film
Music (Original Score)
Don’t Look Up
Dune
Encanto
Parallel Mothers
Power of the Dog
Sound
Belfast
Dune
No Time to Die
Power of the Dog
West Side Story
Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
CODA
Drive My Car
Dune
The Lost Daughter
The Power of the Dog
Writing (Original Screenplay)
Belfast
Don’t Look Up
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
The Worst Person in the World
Animated Feature Film
Encanto
Raya
Mitchells vs the Machines
Flee
Luca
Documentary Feature
Ascension
Attica
Flee
Summer of Soul
Writing with Fire
Documentary Short Subject
“Audible”
“Lead Me Home”
“The Queen of Basketball”
“Three Songs for Benazir”
“When We Were Bullies”
Film Editing
Don’t Look Up
Dune
King Richard
Power of the Dog
Tick Tick Boom
International Feature Film
Flee
Hand of God
Drive My Car
Worst Person in the World
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom
Makeup and Hairstyling
Coming to America
Dune
Cruella
Eyes of Tammy Faye
House of Gucci
Music (Original Song)
Be Alive
Dos Orugitas
Down to Joy
No Time to Die
Somehow You Do — Diane Warren’s 13th songwriter nomination!
Production Design
Dune
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
The Tragedy of Macbeth
West Side Story
Visual Effects
Dune
Free Guy
Shang Chi
Spider Man
No Time to Die
I guess the people at Verizon or their ad agency don’t know the history of the Jim Carrey movie, “The Cable Guy.”
It’s terrible. It was in 1996 and it is now. There was no Rotten Tomatoes then, but now “The Cable Guy” has a rotten 54% on the review site, and only a 51% for audience score. No liked it 25 years ago, and no one likes it now.
So Verizon is using its meme for a Super Bowl commercial. Carrey is reproducing his introduction as the guy who comes to fix Matthew Broderick’s cable but becomes eerily obsessed with him. It’s a funny 30 second premise but an interminable and unpleasant movie that no one wants to see again. Broderick has said on numerous occasions he didn’t like it and only did it for the money. Even Ben Stiller disavowed it.
I have to thank Leslie Jones, ex SNL, for reposting this TikTok video. It comes from an account called mdg650hawk4.0. Here’s the link to this man’s site.If you know who he is, email me at showbiz411@gmail.com.
So here’s Joe Rogan talking to a scientist, seeming extremely reasonable, worrying that people won’t take vaccines seriously. The TikTok thinks Sirius money made Rogan crazy. But really, he’s just pandering. When I was at Fox News there were liberals and Democrats everywhere in the building. But the money was too good to pass up.
“Funny Girl” is coming back to Broadway for the first time since the original production closed in 1967.
But this time around, one of the characters will look a little different. In 2022, Florence Ziegfeld, the man who employed Fanny Brice, will be played by a Black actor. The formidable Peter Francis James will take the role played famously in the 1968 movie by Walter Pidgeon.
James — with 7 Broadway productions under his belt — will be the only Black actor in the main cast, but even that is an achievement. “Funny Girl” is set in a time and place where Black characters wouldn’t have been normally included.
Luckily, we have color blind casting now. So Flo Ziegfeld, who was a Roman Catholic with German roots but was born in Illinois in 1867, is ripe for a change. And look, his name is Florence, so he could begin by explaining that first.
The rest of the cast, like James, is top notch: Beanie Feldstein as Fanny, Ramin Karimloo as Nicky Arnstein, Jared Grimes as Eddie Ryan, and the great Jane Lynch as Fanny’s mother.
Performances begin March 26th at the August Wilson Theater, where “Slave Play” just wrapped its short return run. Opening night is April 24th. The real action will be the Tony Awards, where “Funny Girl” will be up against the Hugh Jackman revival of “The Music Man.” Ouch! That will be a brutal competition!
I am heartbroken to report the death of Chris Huvane.
Chris was the youngest brother in the incredibly talented Huvane family. His older brothers are Kevin, a partner in CAA, and Stephen, the publicist for actresses like Julianne Moore and Jennifer Aniston.
Chris was 47, and it’s reported that he committed suicide after battling depression. The Chris I remember was such a happy young man. He used to dee jay at CAA events and other parties. He was full of fun and life. More recently he’d been a talent manager with clients that included Margot Robbie, Julianne Moore, Zoey Deutch, Zach Braff, the late Chadwick Boseman and Margaret Qualley.
Back around the year 2000 I wrote a feature about the Huvanes in the first issue of Tina Brown’s Talk Magazine. It was always one of my favorite assignments. They were a bright, motivated family of New York kids who all got their start with jobs at the fondly remembered Wyndham Hotel on West 58th St. Kevin and Stephen already had booming careers then, their sister was boldly running the family, and Chris was like a big puppy ready to take on the world.
My condolences to the whole Huvane family, all their friends and their clients– who are friends, too. Everyone loved Chris, and this hurts. Whatever pain he was in, it’s over for him. But no one should do this, we know that. If you’re feeling low, call a friend, call the Suicide Prevention line, do anything but this.
“Funny Girl” is coming back to Broadway for the first time since the original production closed in 1967.