Month: August 2021

After a lightning-fast rise to superstardom that began in January with her “Drivers License” single, Olivia Rodrigo’s status as the breakthrough artist of 2021 seems all but assured. Whenever an artist becomes a household name so quickly, in retrospect it seems like it was inevitable. But every such success story needs a strategy, infrastructure, more
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Macklemore, KT Tunstall, Evvie McKinney, Daphne Willis and The Residency will perform at a concert next month to help raise awareness around addiction and recovery. The “Recover Out Loud” concert will be pre-taped at Las Vegas’ Westgate Resort & Casino before streaming on iHeart’s Facebook and YouTube channels on International Recovery Day on Sept. 30.
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Ryan Murphy is expanding his television footprint once again, with another installment of the “American Crime Story” franchise (tentatively titled “Studio 54: American Crime Story”) in development at FX, as well as two new limited anthology series, “American Love Story” and “American Sport Story.” The first installment of “American Love Story” will tell a scripted
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A few days after enlisting enigmatic witch Boro (Catherine Keener) to put a curse on a director who’s wronged her, young filmmaker Lisa Nova (Rosa Salazar) is sick of throwing up slimy, mewling kittens as a consequence. “No!” she practically growls, staring Boro down. “No more throwing up kittens!” Boro shrugs, less than bothered. “Fine,
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Reba McEntire is going the redux route with a triple album she’s announcing today, “Revived Remixed Revisited.” The boxed set, due for release Oct. 8, includes three discs’ worth of fresh spins on hits from her four-decade-plus catalog. “Revisited” has her joining producer Dave Cobb and a small band to strip down some of her
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Gabourey Sidibe is about to get lost in her first scripted podcast role. Sidibe (“Precious,” “Empire”) will star in podcast “If I Go Missing the Witches Did It,” a satirical paranormal thriller involving her character’s mysterious disappearance, from podcast studio/network Realm. Written by Pia Wilson (staff writer on National Geographic’s “Genius: Aretha”), the satirical series
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After deciding to shine the spotlight on digital disruption as the focus of this year’s Durban FilmMart, the leading industry confab on the African continent, there was an unsettling irony to the riots that swept across South Africa this July, prompting the organizers to postpone its 12th edition. “We ourselves were disrupted,” says Magdalene Reddy,
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Cardi B has signed with Warner Chappell Music Publishing, Variety has confirmed. The rapper was previously with Sony Music Publishing. Reps for both companies declined Variety‘s requests for comment. The move comes in advance of Cardi’s long-awaited second full-length album, which followed her 2018 debut “Invasion of Privacy.” She’s released a string of singles, features
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FESTIVALS This year’s 38th Jerusalem Film Festival will host a tribute to iconic Israeli company Cannon Films and producers Yoram Globus and Menachem Golan, curated in collaboration with Quentin Tarantino. The Cannon Film Group produced and distributed films from 1967 to 1993. In ’79 the company was purchased by producer Globus and Golan, who tailored
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Worse things have happened to Oscar winners, but it’s still unfortunate to see both Richard Dreyfuss and Mira Sorvino flailing in the inept muddle of “Crime Story.” Playing a semi-estranged father and daughter thrown into crisis mode over a few hours’ course following a home robbery, the stars are not exactly at their best here.
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SPOILER ALERT: This piece includes spoilers for “The Good Ones,” the eighth season premiere of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” airing Aug. 12 on NBC. The eighth and final season of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” opens by immediately establishing that it will, in fact, be taking place in our pandemic reality rather than sidestepping it for convenience’s sake. First, a
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The months-long boxing-match between Nielsen and the TV networks over how their audiences are measured looks likely to enter another round. The media-industry body that measures the credibility of Nielsen’s ratings measurement suggested the company requested a hiatus from its industry accreditation Thursday knowing that its backing was already “threatened”  by “some deep-rooted, ongoing performance
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A tireless advocate for progressive social justice causes, attorney Ady Barkan got diagnosed with terminal ALS in 2016. It was only a matter of time that the regular motor functions and vocal abilities of the energetic Santa Barbara resident — an adoring husband to his wife Rachael and the brand-new father of baby Carl —
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