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Something’s definitely off with Hugh Jackman’s Radio City shows.
The “Wolverine” actor plays three shows this weekend — Friday night, Saturday matinee, and evening.
There are large numbers of empty seats at every show. Some are going for as low as $35.
I thought when I wrote about lagging ticket sales a couple of weeks ago that the promoters would do something to gin up interest.
But the sound of silence has been deafening. The result is that Jackman is going to be lonely this weekend.
What’s the cause of this apathetic response? Is it too hot? It”s not too expensive. Are Jackman’s female fans turned off because of his contentious public divorce from long time wife Debra-Lee Furness?
Meantime, tickets go on sale Friday for Sutton Foster’s December run at Cafe Carlyle. The seats should sell fast, but we’ll see if she has trouble too considering Jackman left Furness for her.
Also just announced at Cafe Carlyle: the famed folk, rock (and classical) musician Judy Collins from September 9th to the 20th. What an amazing opportunity to see a true legend up close!
Today Donald Trump wrote something on Truth Social that seemed ridiculous:
“I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so,” he wrote, “I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!”
Why would Coca Cola drop their fructose syrup in favor of cane. Simple: One of Trump’s biggest Republican donors owns all the cane sugar in Florida, and then some.
Jose “Pepe” Fanjul owns the Florida Crystals Corporation. Fanjul, who’s Cuban by birth and spends a lot of time at an estate in the Dominican Republic, runs his family’s empire. is the second eldest of the Fanjul brothers, who control a sugar and real estate business valued at $8.2 billion.
Fanjul is the vice chairman and president of Flo-Sun, a Fanjul family-owned sugar growing and refining company, and of Florida Crystals, according to Wikipedia.
According to Google AI: “[The Fanjuls] own and farm over 190,000 acres of land, including two sugar mills, a sugar refinery, a rice mill, and a packaging and distribution center. Florida Crystals also operates the largest biomass renewable power plant in North America. Additionally, they are the only producer of certified organic sugar grown and milled in the U.S. and the largest Regenerative Organic Certified farm in the country.”
The Fanjuls have contributed millions upon millions to Trump and all Republican candidates. If I had the time or a staff to add up all the donations listed on OpenSecrets.org we could give you a total and you’d fall over while reading this article. There are so many pages that finally one reads “Maximum Limit 500.”
OpenSecrets calculates an average of $1.1 million a year by the Fanjul Corporation for lobbying. They say Fanjul Corp’s 2024 donations came to $2.9 milliion. About 99% of the donations were to Republicans. There was also a $1 million donate to Make America Great Again.
The largest single donation was to the WinRed PAC in 2020 for $85,000.
Everyone in New York — meaning the Upper East Side — knows the Fanjuls. They are fun, social people who split their time between the city, Palm Beach, and the DR. Trump has known them a long time. So the idea that Trump is now arm twisting soda companies to use cane sugar is no surprise — except to the 99% of people who don’t know the background.
And you thought Trump was gulping Coke for his health!
The third “Knives Out” movie has set a world premiere.
“Wake Up Dead Man” will bring an all star cast to the Toronto Film Festival in September.
Daniel Craig returns in Rian Johnson’s murder mystery with a big list of names including Glenn Close, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Josh O’Connor, Mila Kunis, Andrew Scott, and Thomas Haden Church.
That will be some red carpet!
TIFF announced a few other premieres today, with more coming on Monday.
They include “Roofman,” Derek Cianfrance’s new release with Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsohn, LaKeith Stanfield, Peter Dinklage and Uzo Aduba; and Paul Greengrass’s “The Lost Bus” with Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrara.
Chloe Zhao’s “Hamnet” will show in Toronto, but it seems like the world premiere will be in Telluride.
Justin Bieber’s surprise album release, “Swag,” is going to finish at number 2 on Friday with just 165,000 copies sold.
Almost all of those are from streaming. He only sold 6,500 paid downloads. Yeesh.
Bieber was hamstrung by having no physical product available. No CDs or LPs. “Swag” just exists in the air.
Justin would have finished first but Travis Scott hot-footed him with his own surprise album called “Jack Boys 2.”
“Jack Boys 2” is being pegged at 250,000 copies, almost all physical. But you won’t see “Jack Boys” on any actual chart leading up to this moment. That’s because it was sold as part of a merchandise box with a cap and a mask or a shirt and I don’t know what else.
“Jack Boys 2” by itself only sold 60,000 copies. But packaged up with that other mishegos pushed up the sales to 250,000.
Bieber could cry foul. But he has no manager. (Maybe his billionaire wife, Hailey, is calling shots.) So there was no preparation for “Swag,” no marketing. This is why Justin can’t afford a shirt, a belt, pants that fit, a decent roach clip, or a clue.
Bieber’s one consolation here is a modest single hit with a song called “Daisies,” currently number 4 on iTunes.
The New York Times doesn’t want four senior culture critics anymore.
Are they looking for influencers? At this point, why not?
The Times says they’re re-assigning, code for canning, pop music vet Jon Pareles, theater critic Jesse Green, classical music expert Zach Woolfe, and TV critic Margaret Lyons.
Why? Because they have experience and knowledge and respected (yes even Jesse Green) by the readers.
Also, they don’t have TikTok accounts.
Pareles has been the chief pop critic since 1988. Just last week he wrote an incredible piece on Bruce Springsteen. Pareles has been able to write about new and breaking acts as well as classic artists. He’s shaped the paper’s opinion about pop, rock, R&B, etc with great taste and knowledge of his subjects. Forcing him out is just stupid.
The other three have been at their jobs for some time. Green gets a lot of flack and “everyone hates him.” But everyone “hated” all the former theater critics including Frank Rich and Clive Barnes. Wolfe and Lyons are all well respected.
Sia Michel is the editor who caused this chaos. She thinks moving respected critics to other jobs is going to be fun for them. In other words, they weren’t having a career, they were just piece workers in the factory. Maybe AI will take over.
Sad stuff, that even the Times doesn’t care about the reporters or the readers. But authority no longer matters. The main thing is, can you sell $20 objects from China to unwitting customers.
Liza Colon Zayas starred in the most interesting episode of “The Bear” in Season 3. (Not the current season — “The Bear” is a year behind the Emmy Awards.)
It was called “Napkins.” Colon-Zayas is nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy. There was nothing funny about the episode, but the actress will win, no questions asked. (She’s already won other awards.) She turned in a remarkable performance.
The episode was directed by the show’s co-star Ayo Edibiri, who was nominated for Best Directing. It’s the only directing nod for “The Bear,” which also surprisingly received nothing for writing. (Maybe too much of it seemed repetitive.)
Interesting because Ayo Edibiri just co-wrote (with Lionel Boyce) episode 4 of season 4, called “Worms.” It’s the best episode of this past season.
“The Bear” is starting to fade. One more season should wrap it up. Jeremy Allen White has gone on to play Bruce Springsteen in the movies. Ebon Moss Bacharach — nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy — is in “The Fantastic Four.” But the real breakout from “The Bear” is Edibiri. I can’t wait to see what she does next.
That’s Donald Trump. He’s been excised by the UK Chelsea football team from their official trophy win photograph.
Trump barged into the picture on Sunday in New Jersey after Chelsea beat PSG 3-0 for the FIFA World Cup.
He was repeated asked to move away during the official picture but wouldn’t budge, so the team did it for him.
Trump’s presence at the game Sunday was bizarre anyway as many have noted. Melania — or someone playing her — came with him but wore gigantic white sunglasses and had no expression on her face. She stood apart from her husband the entire time.
Trump himself wore his omnipresent blue suit that looks like it was made in a Kohl’s basement. The pants were once again too big, with the legs wider than David Byrne’s big suit. What is he hiding under there? The Epstein client list?
THEY ERASED HIM!
Chelsea photoshopped Trump out of their official trophy raising photo.
