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Movies

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Golden Globe winner Jennifer Coolidge made her TikTok debut on Thursday (Jan. 19) with a little help from her Shotgun Wedding co-star. “Hi, this is my first TikTok and I was trying to think of something cool to do and I think I’m just going to do a poem that I like,” said Coolidge, decked out in a glittery black dress for the occasion.
The dramatic reading of the cultural touchstone began, “Don’t be fooled… by the rocks that I got,” White Lotus star Coolidge intoned with the gravitas of a Shakespearean actress. “I’m still Jenny… Jenny… Jenny from the block,” she added, before tilting the camera to her right to reveal JLo herself.

Yes, Shotgun star Jennifer Lopez was in the room, rocking a serious look and then offering a soft, “I like that” to her friend and co-star, who plays the singer/actresses’ future mother-in-law in the rom-com that also stars Josh Duhamel and Cheech Marin. “I really, really like that.”

On Wednesday night, Lopez appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to plug the movie — and talk about the PTSD she had before finally marrying longtime love Ben Affleck last summer — as well as how “on fire” veteran comedic actress Coolidge is right now. When Kimmel noted that Coolidge is always “odd,” “nutty” and funny in her own unique, often detached, way in everything she does, Lopez said the other Jen isn’t always what you’d think she’d be.

“You expect her, because she’s so hilarious and everything, that she’s gonna come over and she’s just gonna be funny away,” Lopez said. “But it’s kind of like how her characters are where she’s like there and you’re like, ‘Is she trying to be funny or is she not being funny?’ And you don’t know if to laugh or not to laugh and then when you see it later it’s hilarious! And you’re like, ‘I should have laughed!’”

In perhaps the greatest compliment she could give, JLo compared Coolidge to the late great boundary-blasting comedian Andy Kaufman, who lived to blend the barrier between life and comedy. “It’s brilliant, she’s brilliant,” Lopez said.

Watch Coolidge’s TikTok below.

Jennifer Lopez stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday night (Jan. 18) to plug her new rom-com, Shotgun Wedding. And while the movie starring Lopez and Josh Duhamel alongside Golden Globe winner Jennifer Coolidge, rocker Lenny Kravitz and Callie Hernandez looks very cute, let’s be honest, the real wedding Jimmy wanted to talk about was Bennifer’s take two.

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Kimmel congratulated the singer/actress/dancer on the six month anniversary of her Las Vegas wedding to actor Ben Affleck as JLo unfolded the tangled tale of how she and Affleck finally made it to the aisle after months of angst and agita. “We were planning to get married in August in Savannah [Georgia],” she said of the proper nuptials the couple were arranging for friends and family at the actor’s southern estate.

“And it was so stressful,” she said. “And a month before… and I don’t know if you guys know this, but 20 years ago we were supposed to get married and it all kind of fell apart back then and this time we, I absolutely had a little PTSD.” Though they were both happy that their decades-long love affair was finally going to be official, Lopez said the planning was so nerve-wracking that one day Affleck said, “‘f–k it, let’ just go to Vegas and get married tonight.’”

So, of course, they did… but only after Lopez finished her rehearsals that day and Affleck took care of all the details. “It was amazing, it was the best night of our lives,” she said of the Sin City wedding that featured two of their five shared children from previous marriages as witnesses and which found the A-listers waiting in line at the county clerk’s office with some normies just before midnight waiting their turn for the proper paperwork. Most importantly, after two decades, Lopez confirmed that not only was there a new wedding ring, but Affleck had to ask her to marry him all over again to make it official.

Kimmel also wondered if Lopez was okay with the celeb portmanteau Bennifer and JLo said she’s learned to embrace it after initially being meh on it. “Actually it wasn’t a bad thing even years ago but I think it became a thing where people made fun of it,” she said, noting that other couples were subject to the same treatment in the years after as blending celeb couple names became a thing.

Luckily for them, the famed Little White Wedding Chapel agreed to stay open late for them and even offered to have their Elvis impersonator officiant do the deed, which the couple politely declined. And even though Kimmel griped that he was not invited to any of the couple’s weddings, he still got them a very appropriate gift, a pair of sterling silver bride and groom Dunkin’ Donuts cups in keeping with Affleck’s love of the chain.

In addition to talking about the “Dear Ben Pt. 2” song on her upcoming This Is Me… Now album, the singer was also surprised when Kravitz dropped in unexpectedly (via a fake helicopter landing on the roof bit) to invite the entire studio audience to that night’s Shotgun Wedding premiere.

Watch Lopez on Kimmel below.

Grown adults were grinning like awestruck children as the legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg and composer John Williams discussed their unparalleled 50-year collaboration during an American Cinematheque celebration of the duo at the Writers Guild of America Theater in Beverly Hills on Thursday night (Jan. 12) — and that was before Williams, 90, thrilled the crowd, and surprised Spielberg, by rescinding his prior declaration that he would retire from film scoring after his latest project with Spielberg, The Fabelmans and then one more Indiana Jones film.

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“Steven is a lot of things,” Williams said in response to a question from veteran music journalist Jon Burlingame about packing it in. “He’s a director, he’s a producer, he’s a studio head, he’s a writer, he’s a philanthropist, he’s an educator. One thing he isn’t is a man you can say ‘no’ to.” After an eruption of applause from the audience, Williams noted that he knew Spielberg’s late father, Arnold, who worked at Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation until he was 100. “So I’ve got 10 more years to go. I’ll stick around for a while!” He added, “Also, you can’t ‘retire’ from music. It’s like breathing. It’s your life. It’s my life. A day without music is a mistake.”

Spielberg, who was visibly taken aback at Williams’ change of plans, cracked, “I’d better get to work to find out what the hell I’m doing next!”

Between carefully curated clips from some of the 29 films they have teamed up for, Spielberg and Williams discussed how they met (a Universal executive suggested that Spielberg, a young director in need of a composer, and Williams, an up-and-coming composer, meet for lunch), how they work together (Williams rarely accepts Spielberg’s offer to read a script prior to production, opting instead to wait until it’s done, at which points, Spielberg says, “John sees the movie, then we sit down the next day, and we just start discussing where there should or should not be music”) and they spoke about the role that music plays in the movies, generally, and in their movies, specifically.

“Music is probably older than language,” Williams asserted. “It is a very important thing in all of us — when we’re grieving, when we’re happy. We don’t know why. It’s unknowable.” As for how he determines if a film scene does or does not require musical accompaniment? “In the end, the film tells us, if we pay attention enough. It’s mainly intuitive.” Spielberg paid tribute Williams’ contributions by stating, “I tell a story, and then John retells the story musically.”

Spielberg was aware of Williams’ work before they met, having worn out his copy of the vinyl soundtrack for The Reivers, a 1969 film that Williams had scored. When they first sat down together, Spielberg — a student of film history and film music whose late mother, Leah, was a classical pianist — “seemed to know more about film music than I did,” Williams realized, so Williams agreed to work with him on Sugarland Express.

They began on that film in 1972 — it was released in 1974, and then a year later came Jaws, the first of their truly immortal collaborations. Of Williams’ simple but haunting score for that thriller, Spielberg admitted to Williams, “I was scared when you first played it for me on the piano. I didn’t know you that well. I thought you were pulling my leg.” But Williams had hit on something: “You could play it very softly or very quickly, or soft or loud, so you could kind of manipulate an audience,” he explained.

Music was a central part of the plot of 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with its five-note signature tune — arrived at after 100 permutations were considered — representing a means of communication between humans and aliens. Discussing 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark and 1982’s E.T., with their iconic themes, Williams said to Spielberg, “You and I have always been talking about tempo on films,” observing that the addition of music can make four minutes of screen time feel like two.

Both men faced two massive challenges in 1993: Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List. Spielberg marveled that Williams had scored the former without the dinosaurs having already been added via visual effects, and yet still captured musically the childlike sense of wonder of the characters, who were, at least at that time, played by actors who were “looking up at nothing.” Williams scored Jurassic Park while Spielberg began work on Schindler’s, marking one of the few times that the filmmaker wasn’t present for a Williams scoring session.

As for the role that music would play in Schindler’s? “I really didn’t have a plan,” Spielberg admits. When he finally showed a cut of the film to Williams, Williams was so moved that he was unable to speak for several minutes. “Then,” Williams recounted, “I said, ‘Steven, you need a better composer than I to score this film.’ And he said, ‘I know, but they’re all dead.’” Williams’ violin-centric score ended up being one of his masterpieces, as the film is one of Spielberg’s.

Sometimes, the duo explained, less is actually more when it comes to music in films. They said they never even considered incorporating music into the famous opening sequence of 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, but decided to employ the trumpet and low strings to stir emotion in later scenes, most famously in the hushed and reverential choral finale. “Musically, it honors all of the veterans, both today and yesterday,” Spielberg said of Williams’ composition for that film, “and it’s why the military is always asking if they can play this score.”

The jazzy main title sequence of 2002’s Catch Me If You Can took Williams back to his roots as a jazz pianist in the 1950s, and Spielberg’s as a jazz aficionado who hung out at jazz clubs while a student at Long Beach State in the 1960s. The recording of Williams’ score for 2012’s Lincoln, which was inspired by 19th century American music, with trumpets at the fore, moved Spielberg and Williams — both students of history — to tears. But for Spielberg, who lost both of his parents in recent years, and for Williams, who had known both of them, The Fabelmans was an undertaking unlike any other.

“For me,” Spielberg professed, “it was the most private and personal experience of my whole career.” Speaking on what would have been Spielberg’s mother’s 103rd birthday, Williams said of his score — which has already been nominated for Golden Globe and Critics Choice awards — “I hope it is worthy of them,” to which Spielberg quickly responded, “Oh, it is.”

Asked to sum up their half-century of making movie magic together, Williams said of Spielberg, “I’ve enjoyed his company and the pleasure and the gift of his inspiration. Can a muse be a man? He’s certainly been a muse for me.” Spielberg, for his part, said that working with Williams — “Johnny,” as he calls him — had been like a ideal marriage. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a disagreement,” he volunteered, before adding with a chuckle, “I mean, what am I going to do? Sit down and write the music myself?” And, he added, prompting Williams to choke up, “In the art form that we’ve both chosen, he has been the most steadfast brother and collaborator that I’ve ever had in my life. And that’s how I would sum up how much I love you.”

This article originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.

Attention, Navy: Rihanna‘s Amazon documentary could be coming out any day now — but of course, the last person who gets to hit the “approve for release” button is the Bad Gal herself.

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Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Thursday (Jan. 5), Peter Berg — director of Friday Night Lights, Lone Survivor and more — gave an update on the long-awaited Rihanna documentary filk that has been more than six years in the making.

According to Berg, the only thing left to do is “waiting for her to approve it. It’s done and sold, and Amazon’s ready.” He continued, “She’s a perfectionist, so we keep adding. It’s been six and a half years of filming, so, yeah, it’s ready to come out. We’re just waiting on her to say, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be a 10-year project.”

While it’s possible that the “Work” singer will want to extend the project, Berg is not worried about Rihanna giving the green light. When asked if there were any concerns about the singer not approving the documentary, Berg replied, “Not really.”

The Friday Night Lights director also revealed that he was surprised Rihanna wanted him to direct her documentary film. “When Rihanna asked me to make a doc, I thought she was joking. My work tends to be a bit more masculine, at least on the surface. But this has allowed me to dip in and out of her life while I’m doing other things,” he said. “I’ve loved it — watching her in the studio, seeing her turn Fenty into this billion-dollar entity and, now, being a mom. It’s such an enriching experience, I don’t really care how long it takes.”

News of the documentary first arose in 2016, and by 2019, it was publicized that the documentary sold to Amazon for $25 million. The untitled doc, which will be narrowed down from over 1,200 hours of footage as of 2019, will serve as an unfiltered look into Rihanna’s life and a glimpse into the evolution of one of the world’s most well-known pop artists. Berg and Rihanna previously worked together on Universal’s Battleship.

A superstar A-team of iconic singers have teamed up for the upcoming single “Gonna Be You.” The Diane Warren-written song featuring Dolly Parton, Go-Gos singer Belinda Carlisle, Cyndi Lauper, Gloria Estefan and Blondie’s Debbie Harry will be released on Jan 20 in advance of the upcoming Paramount Pictures road trip comedy 80 For Brady.

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“When I wrote ‘Gonna Be You’ for 80 FOR BRADY, I wanted to write a song that celebrated these women’s deep friendship,” said Warren in a statement. “Since 80 was in the title I got a crazy idea, why not get some of the most iconic singers from the 80s, who are still amazing and always will be, to all sing it?!!!! Everyone I approached said yes and was just as excited as me!! I’m honored to have Dolly Parton, Belinda Carlisle, Cyndi Lauper, Gloria Estefan and Debbie Harry on this song!! ‘Gonna Be You’ is that song you want to sing along to with all your good friends!!!”

The anthem will accompany the film starring an equally star-studded cast of Oscar winners and nominees led by Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno and Sally Field that was inspired by the true story of four best friends who take a trip to the 2017 Super Bowl to see their hero QB Tom Brady play in the big game; the movie will hit screens on Feb. 3. Check out the movie trailer here.

The track is just one of the all-star collabs country icon Parton has on tap for this year. Dionne Warwick revealed earlier this week that she and Parton recently recorded a gospel song called “Peace Like a River” written by Dolly that Warwick promised will be “very special.”

Daisy Edgar-Jones will star as Carole King in Sony Pictures’ film version of the Broadway hit Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Deadline announced on Thursday (Dec. 15).

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King co-signed the actress’ casting in a statement to the site, saying, “Daisy has a spirit and energy that I recognized as myself when I was younger. She’s a tremendous talent and I know she’s going to give a great performance.”

Lisa Cholodenko — who was nominated for an Oscar for The Kids Are All Right — will direct the film, which will be produced with Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and Paul Blake, who also produced the stage show. According to Deadline, the movie is being written “based on Douglas McGrath’s book of the musical.” As for the movie, it will follow King’s rise to fame and off-stage triumphs and tragedies.” 

Beautiful: The Carole King Musical was a Broadway smash. The stage play was nominated for seven Tony awards, winning two: best performance by a lead actress in a musical (Jessie Mueller) and best sound design of a musical (Brian Ronan).

Following the news of her casting, Edgar-Jones posted the Deadline article to her Instagram Story, sharing two smiley-face emojis to celebrate the news. Portraying King in the forthcoming biopic is the latest high profile project the actress has taken on — the actress has previously starred in Where the Crawdads Sing, Normal People, War of the Worlds and more.

Fresh off the acclaim for her directorial work on the 14-minute All Too Well: The Short Film, Taylor Swift will be taking her talents to the big screen. Searchlight Pictures announced on Friday morning (Dec. 9) that Swift will make her feature directorial debut for the studio with an unnamed film for which she wrote the original script.

“Taylor is a once in a generation artist and storyteller,” said Searchlight presidents David Greenbaum and Matthew Greenfield in a statement announcing the project. “It is a genuine privilege to collaborate with her as she embarks on this exciting and new creative journey.” Swift made history recently when she became the first artists to ever win three video of the year awards at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards and only the second female to direct the winning best longform video winner (for All Too Well: The Short Film).

Swift wrote and directed the 14-minute All Too Well short, which recently screened at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival. Though there are scant details about Swift’s feature directorial debut, The Hollywood Reporter noted that during her TIFF talk, the singer shouted out women directors including Nora Ephron, Chloe Zhao and Greta Gerwig as her directorial influences.

On Thursday, Swift pulled back the curtain on her direction of the heartbreaking “All Too Well” clip starring Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien in an Instagram post. The behind-the-scenes footage finds a pony-tailed Swift describing to the actors in detail how they should be feeling in the moment, sometimes trading places with them and tracking their approximate movements for them.

“The first seeds of this short film were planted over ten years ago, and I’ll never forget the behind the scenes moments of the shoot,” she wrote in her caption to her post. “I owe everything to @sadiesink_, Dylan O’Brien, my incredible DP @the_rinayang and my producer @saulysaulysauly.”

The All Too Well video — which is eligible for short film submission at the upcoming 95the annual Academy Awards — followed up Swift’s previous stints behind the camera helming the clips for her directorial debut with “The Man” from her 2019 Lover album, as well as her direction on clips for “Cardigan” and “Willow.”

In addition to a brief role in David O. Russell’s just-released drama Amsterdam, Swift has acted in a number of other films, including Cats, The Giver, Valentine’s Day and The Lorax.

Ever thought about what it might be like getting stuck in a museum for a night? Joshua Bassett might have an idea.
The High School Musical: The Musical: The Series actor will star as Nick Daley — the son of Ben Stiller’s original night-watchman character from the 2006 film — in the upcoming animated feature Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again. Bassett puts his voice-acting chops to the test in the movie’s first trailer, which dropped Tuesday (Nov. 29).

Unlike the original movie trilogy, Kahmunrah Rises Again — which will air exclusively on Disney+ — is now animated and features many of the beloved characters from the franchise, including Sacagawea, Teddy Roosevelt and Rexy, returning as cartoon versions of themselves, as Bassett’s Daley takes over the role of night guard for his father at the American Museum of Natural History.

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According to the film’s synopsis, Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again features Daley, a high school student, who is “following in his father’s footsteps and is determined not to let him down. Luckily, he is familiar with the museum’s ancient tablet that brings everything to life when the sun goes down and is happy to see his old friends, including Jedediah, Octavius, and Sacagawea, when he arrives. But when the maniacal ruler Kahmunrah escapes with plans to unlock the Egyptian underworld and free its Army of the Dead, it is up to Nick to stop the demented overlord and save the museum once and for all.”

The film additionally features the voices of Jamie Demetriou, Alice Isaaz, Gillian Jacobs, Joseph Kamal, Thomas Lennon, Zachary Levi, Akmal Saleh, Kieran Sequoia, Jack Whitehall, Bowen Yang and Steve Zahn.

Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again will premiere Dec. 9 on Disney+. Watch the trailer in the video above.

This Friday (Nov. 18), nine months after their bright, buoyant studio album Time Skiffs, Animal Collective releases a new project in the form of The Inspection, the soundtrack to an A24 film that opens the same day.

“The Inspection is a story of a Black, gay man who joins the Marines in search of validation from and acceptance from his mother,” says star and executive producer Gabrielle Union in a teaser trailer. “It’s about the fight every day to be seen and respected.”

The film stars Jeremy Pope as Ellis French, a character inspired by director/screenwriter Elegance Bratton’s own life. And while Animal Collective probably isn’t the first band you think of when you hear the words “U.S. Marines,” Bratton feels the experimental indie outfit provided him with the “perfect backdrop” to explore various emotional states on screen.

“We were very inspired by the music of our composers Animal Collective. We wanted to create the right rhythms to blur the line between what French thinks is real and what is really happening,” Bratton explained. “So those fantasy sequences could serve as the evolution of French’s inner life. In essence, we wanted to create a sense of the stir craziness of the monotony of boot camp, juxtaposed with the massive transformation Ellis French undergoes. Animal Collective provides the perfect backdrop to shrink and expand the time according to the emotion.” (The soundtrack also features contributions from singer-songwriter Indigo de Souza.)

With The Inspection being AnCo’s second feature-length film soundtrack (following 2021’s Crestone), we asked the group to share their favorite movie soundtracks of all time. See what Avey Tare (David Portner), Geologist (Brian Weitz) and Deakin (Josh Dibb) chose below.

Assuming the role of Ariel in the live-action remake of Disney’s The Little Mermaid is Halle Bailey‘s biggest acting look to date. But despite the apprehension — and at times, backlash — that comes with portraying such an iconic character in the Disney franchise, the “Do It” singer insists she’s cool as a cucumber leading up to the film’s May 2023 release.

“I don’t feel any pressure anymore,” Bailey told E! News on Tuesday (Nov. 15) when asked about playing the titular character. “I think that before I started filming, I did feel some nerves naturally because the film is so important to so many people.” The 22-year-old added that leaning on her close friends and family, including big sister Chloe, helped her overcome any fears she had.

Perhaps the most “touching” part about getting to play Ariel, the actress revealed, was getting to see the reaction little girls had to her performance of “Part of Your World” when it was released in September.

“It just makes me cry,” she shared. “The fact that all these little Black and Brown babies are going to be able to feel like they’re being represented is really special to me. I know that if I had that when I was younger, it would have changed a whole lot for me and my perspective on who I am as an individual.”

In addition to feeling “super honored” to play a Disney princess, the star added, “I’m just really grateful to kind of be in this position and I just hope everybody really enjoys the film.”

The Little Mermaid live action remake will be released on May 26, 2023. Revisit the trailer — in which Bailey sings “Part of Your World” — below.