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Blake Lively paid tribute to one of her fashion OGs on Tuesday night (August 6) at the red carpet premiere of her new film It Ends With Us when she wore a throwback dress originally modeled by Britney Spears more than 20 years ago. “Britney, us millennials all have a story of a moment, or […]
Timothée Chalamet‘s anticipated turn as a young Bob Dylan in the upcoming biopic A Complete Unknown is getting an A-list release date. Searchlight Pictures announced on Tuesday (August 6) that the anticipated film from director James Mangold (Logan) will hit theaters on December 25. That Christmas release date falls in the heart of what is […]
Sure, Joaquin Phoenix won an Oscar for his portrayal of Arthur Fleck (aka the Joker) in 2020. But even an award-winning actor gets nervous on set when he has to sing in front of one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. Luckily for Phoenix, when it came to giving the greasepaint goon a voice voice, his partner in crime, Lady Gaga, was totally there for him.
“I do seem to remember her spitting up coffee the first time I sang, so that felt good, that was exciting, and made me feel confident,” Phoenix told Empire magazine about the Grammy-winning singer’s reaction on the set of the upcoming Joker sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux. “Gaga was always very encouraging of just, ‘Go with what you feel, it’s fine.’ For somebody who’s not a performer in that way, it can be… uncomfortable to do that, but also very exciting.”
It was important that they bond that way because director Todd Phillips wanted to bring the music out of the Joker, who at his core is a mercurial, failed comedian whose violent acts land him in Arkham Asylum, where he strikes up a lyrical love story with Gaga’s Harley “Lee” Quinzel, aka Harley Quinn.
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“Arthur has become this symbol to people,” Phillips told the magazine. “This unwilling, unwitting symbol now paying for the crimes of the first film, but at the same time finding the only thing he ever wanted, which was love. That’s always what he’s been about, even though he’s been pushed and pulled in all these directions. So we tried to just make the most pure version of that.”
That expression of love comes through in musical numbers in the film, because, as Phillips said, Fleck has “music in him,” which explains why the latest trailer has Gaga singing the classic tune “Get Happy” and Phoenix tackling “When You’re Smiling (The Whole World Smiles With You)” in Fleck’s raspy croon.
“It was important to protect that with poor phrasing and occasional bum notes,” Phoenix said in an echo of a recent interview with Gaga where she admitted to purposely tanking her award-winning voice to get into character. “Arthur grew up hearing his mother play these songs on the radio. He’s not a singer, and he shouldn’t sound like a professional singer. He should sound like somebody that’s taking a shower and just bursts out into song.”
Joker: Folie à Deux will open in theaters on Oct. 4.
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Source: Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty / Captain America: Brave New World
We know even more about the upcoming film Captain America: Brave New World, and it sounds like this should be a win for Marvel Studios.
Over the weekend, Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios triumphantly returned to Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con to discuss their upcoming slate of movies coming to the MCU.
Coming off its first trailer, Captain America: Brave New World is Sam Wilson’s (Anthony Mackie) first feature-length film as the titular hero after taking over the mantle from Steve Rogers (Chris Evans).
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New Footage Confirms Plenty of Speculation About The Film’s Plot
During the panel, fans saw new footage from the film featuring President Thunderbolt Ross (Harrison Ford) finally talking about the giant elephant in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the dead Celestial just chilling in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Ross addresses world leaders during the Celestial Island Summit, revealing the now-dead Celestial, Tiamut, whose body is made of Adamantium, which now replaces Vibranium as the strongest metal on the planet.
The new U.S. President, who didn’t care for the Avengers in Captain America: Civil War, wants Wilson to help form and lead a new Avengers squad.
The new footage also gave attendees an even better look at Ford as the Red Hulk, who was revealed to be the villain behind the destruction of the White House in the trailer.
Fans were happy to see Harrison Ford hit the stage and even reenact what he looked like “Hulking out” while filming.
Source: Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty
Giancarlo Esposito finally revealed who he would play in the film, and it’s not who many thought it was. Initially, theories had Esposito playing G.W. Bridge, but, of course, they were wrong.
Esposito will play playing Sidewinder, the King of the Serpent Society.
Captain America: Brave New World arrives in theaters on February 14, 2025.
Other Big Announcements
High on the energy that Deadpool and Wolverine have injected into the Disney-owned studio, Feige happily announced that The Russo Brothers, who gave us easily the best films in the MCU, are back to direct the next two Avengers movies, Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars.
We also learned Robert Downey Jr., the man who helped build the MCU as we know it as Tony Stark /Iron Man, will be back, but this time as Victor Von Doom, who happens to like the Infinity Saga’s hero or an evil variant aka the Infamous Iron Man.
Downey Jr.’s version of Doctor Doom will also allegedly be from the Fantastic 4: First Steps timeline, which introduces Marvel’s first family of superheroes to the MCU.
Footage of the film starring Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards /Mr. Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm/Invisible Storm), Joseph Quinn (Johnny Storm/ The Human Torch), and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Ben Grimm/ The Thing) was also shown during the panel and gave attendees their first look at the planet devourer, Galactus, played by Ralph Ineson.
It is starting to feel like the MCU is back.
Just saying.
Lady Gaga shouldn’t have to explain this to you, but when she’s on the big screen she’s not Lady Gaga, or even Stefani Germanotta. So, when you go see her in the upcoming Joker: Folie à Deux and notice that the singing voice of her character Harley Quinn is a bit off, it’s called acting, folks.
“People know me by my stage name, Lady Gaga, right? That’s me as that performer, but that is not what this movie is; I’m playing a character,” Gaga told Empire magazine. “So I worked a lot on the way that I sang to come from Lee and to not come from me as a performer.” Gaga, who has disappeared into roles before in A Star Is Born and House of Gucci, said the task of becoming the Joker’s fiendish foil was “unlike anything I’ve ever done before.”
In particular, that required Gaga to explore sides of her performance style that she’s never tapped before, including the bad singer one. “For me, there’s plenty of bum notes, actually, from Lee,” she said of her character’s singing in the second movie starring Joaquin Phoenix as the laughing madman. “I’m a trained singer, right? So even my breathing was different when I sang as Lee. When I breathe to sing on stage, I have this very controlled way to make sure that I’m on pitch and it’s sustained at the right rhythm and amount of time, but Lee would never know how to do any of that. So it’s like removing the technicality of the whole thing, removing my perceived art-form from it all and completely being inside of who she is.”
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The follow-up to 2019’s Oscar-winning Joker follows feckless comedian Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) meeting his lady love Harley Quinn (Gaga) while locked up at Arkham State Hospital. After he’s released, the two go on a series of murderous adventures.
Director Todd Philips told Empire that while Gaga retains some of the belovedly bonkers Quinn quirks from the Batman: The Animated Series comic books and her own animated show, the singer definitely made the character her own. “While there are some things that people would find familiar in her, it’s really Gaga’s own interpretation, and Scott [Silver, co-writer] and I’s interpretation,” said Phillips. “She became the way how [Charles] Manson had girls that idolized him. The way that sometimes these [imprisoned murderers] have people that look up to them. There are things about Harley in the movie that were taken from the comic books, but we took it and moulded it to the way we wanted it to be.” Prepare for a performance that’s totally Gaga.”
Joker: Folie à Deux is slated to open in theaters on Oct. 4; watch the new trailer here.
In the meantime, Gaga is set to perform at Friday’s (July 26) opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, alongside other rumored artists who are expected to help kick off the games, including Celine Dion, Dua Lipa, Ariana Grande, French singer Aya Nakamura and rockers Gojira, though at press time none of those acts had been confirmed.
Many people who know Cymande, the genre-bending British band from the early ’70s, have their own Cymande origin story. For the director Tim MacKenzie-Smith, “it was a mixtape that was passed to me at college, and it had no tracklist. It had 90 minutes of brilliant old American funk on it. Rare groove stuff, soul.”
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MacKenzie-Smith recognized most of the songs – but not all of them. As a Shazam-less college student in the mid-’90s, he spent the next several years wondering who, exactly, had recorded two tracks that he “absolutely adored.” Eventually, a record-collecting friend threw on Cymande in MacKenzie-Smith’s presence and the director had an epiphany: “Oh my god, that’s those tunes that I’ve been loving for the last five years!”
“Why does no one know about this music?” MacKenzie-Smith remembers asking himself. “That started me off on a journey of discovery that carried on for many years, shouting from the rooftops, telling people all about them.”
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Now, MacKenzie-Smith has moved from the proverbial rooftops to the silver screen. After premiering at South By Southwest in 2023 and hitting theaters in the British Isles earlier this year, his documentary, Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande, is opening in the U.S. on July 26. With the help of a diverse roster of talking heads – from the producer Mark Ronson (Amy Winehouse) to the members of psych-funk trio Khruangbin to De La Soul’s DJ Maseo and Prince Paul – the film tells the story of an innovative funk band ahead of its time, derailed initially by an unreceptive music industry but ultimately embraced by the founders of hip-hop, house and disco music and the generations since.
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In the early ’70s, several young men in London’s Afro-Caribbean diaspora community, including bassist Steve Scipio and guitarist Patrick Patterson, formed Cymande. The band drew on its varied influences – not just the sounds of their Caribbean countries of origin, but the contemporary R&B of Otis Redding and Solomon Burke and the forward-thinking jazz of Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck – to create music that, while inviting, defied easy categorization. That proved an obstacle as Cymande tried to grow its profile.
“The industry at the time tended to pigeonhole black musicians in the U.K.,” Scipio, 74, tells Billboard from his Anguilla home over Zoom, recalling the straightforward “reggae stuff” that labels often requested when Cymande was shopping its demos. “We deliberately made a choice not to go down that route.”
Scipio and Patterson, also 74 and chiming in on the Zoom from London, argue that the British music business treated Black and white musicians differently when it came to creativity. “Young white musicians at the time who were experimenting with all kinds of different things, [the British music business] was accommodating for them,” Scipio explains. “As Black musicians, we were never given that kind of opportunity.”
Cymande eventually landed a deal with Janus Records, and released an album a year from 1972 to 1974. They even earned fans stateside opening for legends including Al Green, Jerry Butler, Patti LaBelle and Ramsey Lewis. But stymied by the industry in the U.K., the band took a break – Scipio and Patterson are adamant today that Cymande never broke up – that ended up lasting 40 years.
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However, while Cymande was sidelined, its music took on a life of its own. As Getting It Back recounts, when DJ Jazzy Jay and other early hip-hop artists in The Bronx began experimenting with using double turntable setups and duplicate copies of records to mix and extend tracks, “Bra,” a standout from Cymande’s self-titled debut, was one of the most common songs they threw on the decks. By the ’80s, legends like The Sugarhill Gang and Gang Starr were sampling “Bra.” With its infectious, easily isolated groove, the song also percolated to disco clubs and became a frequent pick for DJs at the dawn of house music. (Paradise Garage visionary Larry Levan was a fan.) Filmmaker Spike Lee also championed the band, using “Bra” in 1994’s Crooklyn and 2002’s 25th Hour.
“The sampling of Cymande’s material started quite early,” says Patterson, though he explains that, “in the early days of sampling, it was difficult to know who was doing what because it was a hidden culture.”
But after De La Soul released its seminal 1989 album 3 Feet High and Rising, which includes the “Bra”-sampling “Change In Speak,” Scipio’s kids turned him onto it – and by extension, the fact that Cymande’s music had become a touchstone for the artists who followed them. “Something was going on with our music because they were hearing snippets of it in the music that they were listening to,” he says.
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Cymande’s publisher, Sony Music Publishing, has helped the band to identify usages of its music and “to ensure that we are properly recompensed,” Patterson says, with Scipio adding that all sampling matters have been resolved amicably. The sampling was a financial boon (like many Cymande songs, Patterson and Scipio are the two credited writers for “Bra”). And both heartily endorse sampling generally: “I’ve always supported it,” Patterson says. “Steve and I regularly say it’s a good thing, using creativity to make new things.”
In 2014, motivated in part by the decades-long groundswell of support for their music, Cymande returned to the stage in London. MacKenzie-Smith and eventual Getting It Back producer/editor Matt Wyllie were at the gig as the fans. Then, MacKenzine-Smith, who prior to Getting It Back had primarily made sports films, used Cymande’s song “Dove” to open his 2017 documentary about the British boxer Anthony Joshua – and a representative for the band got in touch to let him know they’d heard the synch. “We’d always said, ‘Man, whatever happened to Cymande?’” the director says of his conversations over the years with Wyllie. With contact established with Cymande’s camp, he shot his shot and inquired about doing a documentary about the band: “The only way we were going to find out was to go and make a film about them.”
The film became a labor of love for MacKenzie-Smith, and he embraced “a process of ridiculous research and just obsession, really” as he began searching for musicians who Cymande had influenced. And when the pandemic hit during production, the project’s logistics became even more daunting. “We always had in mind the story of the band itself,” MacKenzie-Smith said. “When there were those days where you thought, ‘We’re never gonna get this finished. Is this [film] ever going to see the light of day?’, then we always remembered that, ‘Hold on a minute – this is a band that took 40 years off and came back and found themselves to have a brand new audience of kids who found them on YouTube. It might take a while, but you get there in the end.’”
MacKenzie-Smith expects Cymande’s story of resiliency to resonate similarly with modern audiences. And he also thinks it encapsulates a fascinating aspect of consumption in the digital age.
“Everything’s a double-edged sword, because for artists to make real money from their art is so difficult these days – they get such small amounts of money from streaming, and everything’s available for free on YouTube,” he says. “But, ultimately, with this particular story, it’s actually showing the good in all that. Everyone will quite rightly discuss the bad and what needs to change. But the good in all of that is that a band who thought their time was done have found out that it’s not. And kids who are in their teens or their early twenties, who might be fans of Khruangbin or whoever, are finding this band.”
For their part, Patterson and Scipio still marvel at the continued influence of Cymande’s music. “We are really appreciative of their love for the music,” Patterson says of the musicians who appear in the film, and Scipio calls the process “enlightening … I wasn’t aware the extent to which the music was appreciated out there.”
Since reuniting a decade ago, Cymande has released an album (2015’s A Simple Act of Faith) and has toured periodically. And with Getting It Back propelling them – plus new music in the works and touring on tap for 2025 – Patterson and Scipio envision a new, fruitful era for Cymande.
“Our target now is to make sure that everything is rolling to break out in 2025,” says Patterson. With a laugh, he adds, “We hope to satisfy our fans and the listening audiences that we haven’t been wasting our time.”
First Madonna personally dropped by to show Ryan Reynolds and Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy how to use her 1989 hit “Like a Prayer” in their film. Then, on Monday night (July 22) in New York, the pop superstar made a surprise appearance at the movie’s premiere, walking the red carpet in her inimitable high-fashion style alongside twin eleven-year-old daughters Estere and Stella.
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Madonna wore a short black blazer dress with matching ankle boots and sunglasses while her daughters both rocked oversized white jerseys, with Estere accessorizing her look with maroon pants, white sneakers and a matching headband, while Stella went for dark wash bell-bottom jeans and a white scarf tied around a robin’s egg blue baseball hat. Check out a picture of the singer with Reynolds, co-star Hugh Jackman and director Levy here.
The drop-in was not a total surprise, as Madonna’s 1989 hit “Like a Prayer” is featured in a remixed form in the film after director Levy got her personal permission to use the song in the threequel. In a recent interview with Jess Cagle on SiriusXM, Reynolds described how he, Levy and Jackman convinced Madonna to let them use the song.
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“It did involve a personal visit to Madonna, where we showed Madonna the sequence where ‘Like a Prayer’ would be used,” Levy explained. “Also, let’s preface it with the fact that they don’t license — that Madonna doesn’t just license the song, particularly that song,” Reynolds added. “It was a big deal to ask for it and certainly a bigger deal to use it. We went over and met with her and and sort of showed her how it was being used, and where, and why.”
Not only did Madonna agree to let them use the song that spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1989, but Reynolds revealed she gave some helpful notes as well. “She watched it, and I’m not kidding, [she said], ‘You need to do this.’ And damn it, if she wasn’t like spot on,” Reynolds said. “We literally went into a new recording session within 48 hours to do this note,” Levy said. “It made the sequence better.”
Deadpool & Wolverine opens in theaters on Friday (July 26).
Remember that time in Deadpool 2 where Wade (Ryan Reynolds) rocked that adorable T-shirt that featured a snap of two of Taylor Swift‘s beloved cats and the message, “Olivia & Meredith. Best Friends Purrr-ever?”
Well, as it turns out Swift did not find the bit funny. In a SiriusXM Town Hall last week in New York, Deadpool & Wolverine star Reynolds talked about the cat cameo in the 2018 sequel, joking that it got him into legal hot water with his pop superstar pal. “Yes, I had a T-shirt made. Yes, of [Swift’s cats] Meredith and Olivia on Wade’s shirt,” Reynolds told the audience. “Yeah, you know, just little details, that’s all.”
When host Jess Cagle asked if Reynolds had to get Swift’s permission to feature her kitties in the film, Reynolds went into full deadpan Deadpool mode. “Did you have to call her and get permission?” Cagle wondered. “No, I was sued. I lost everything in that one,” Reynolds teased.
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“And getting sued by a friend is tough to swallow,” Reynolds went on. “Also, she has just a lot of very, very powerful lawyers. I found out later those are just the paralegals. The real lawyers didn’t even bother with it.” He didn’t let the bit hang that long though, adding, “But… I would never do such a thing” in reference to wearing a shirt with Swift’s pets on it without her blessing.
The question came as speculation has continued to swirl that Swift may have a cameo in the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine, which hits theaters on Friday (July 26).
Reynolds and his wife, actress Blake Lively, have been friends with Swift for years and Swifties are convinced Taylor might have a cameo in the upcoming film after Ryan recreated the Evermore cover art in a post earlier this month in which Deadpool showed up in the album cover’s misty forest. There was also an IMAX poster in which the heroes were depicted holding hands and wearing Eras Tour-like friendship bracelets. Recently, though, EW reported that Swift is definitely not in the film.
Watch the interview below.
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Back in January, Natalie Portman had a run-in with one of her biggest icons during Paris Fashion Week when she scored a meet-cute with Rihanna. On Monday night (July 15), the actress visited The Tonight Show to describe her first meeting with the music icon and make-up mogul, calling it “an amazing experience.”
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Specifically, Portman said “I think every woman going through divorce should get to have Rihanna say to her that she’s a bad b–ch,” Portman explained of the moment caught on camera earlier this year after the two women sat front-row at the Dior Haute Couture show. “It was exactly what I needed,” said the actress, 43, who finalized her divorce from husband of 11 years Benjamin Millepied in February.
Fallon then rolled the clip or the two women meeting on the street outside the show, in which Rihanna envelops Portman in a huge hug while saying “I love you!” Rihanna then amped it up, telling Portman, “I am a f–king fan! You’re one of the hottest b–ches in Hollywood forever!” Portman could not believe her ears, responding, “Are you kidding me?… Excuse me, I’m gonna faint!”
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Not only did Rihanna rain praise down on Portman, she also noted, “Yo, I don’t get excited about anybody, but I f–king love you.” Portman appeared to get a bit choked up watching the clip again, telling Fallon, “it was a formative moment in my life.”
Portman, who lives in Paris, also gave Fallon some crucial advice for how to not look like a tourist in France for when he travels there on August 11 to co-host the closing ceremonies at this summer’s Olympic games. According to the Lady in the Lake star the following items are forbidden: no shorts, no flip-flops, no red berets.
Watch Portman talk Rihanna meeting below.
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Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom have been singing each other’s praises since first getting together more than eight years ago. But in a recent Instagram Live chat with fans to celebrate her new single, “Woman’s World,” Perry got super candid about one of the reasons the couple have managed to stay together for so long.
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“Tell us about Orlando’s ‘magic stick,’” Perry read with a smile on her face while scrolling through fan questions during the session. Perry let out a hearty raspberry and smiled at someone off camera, appearing to be thrown by the intimate nature of the query. “Well, we’ve been together for a while,” she said while chewing gum and signing promotional items.
“So I guess he’s got the magic in him,” she finally replied, singing the last bit to the tune of B.o.B.’s 2010 hit “Magic.” Cracking herself up with the NSFW-adjacent response, Perry then got serious about Bloom, with whom she shares four-year-old daughter Daisy Dove.
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“No, it’s really his heart,” she said. “And he gave me my greatest gift ever… Daisy Dove,” she whispered.
Over the weekend, Perry appeared to respond to a wave of criticism for the “Woman’s World” video, sharing behind-the-scenes clips to explain her intentions for the visual that mixes feminist tropes and lyrics with lots of cheeky visuals. “YOU CAN DO ANYTHING! EVEN SATIRE!” Perry captioned her Instagram post.
Between criticism that Perry’s song misfired in its attempt to be a feminist anthem and her team-up with track co-producer Dr. Luke — who was accused of sexual misconduct by Kesha before the singer and producer settled a bitter, nine-year legal battle in 2023 before it went to to trial — “Woman’s World” did not appear to land the way the singer intended.
“We’re kind of just having fun being a bit sarcastic with it, it’s very slapstick, and very on the nose,” Perry says says in the first half of the video that seemed to anticipate some potential backlash. “With this set, it’s like, ‘We’re not about the male gaze but we really are about the male gaze,’ and we’re really overplaying it and on the nose because I’m about to get smashed, which is like a reset, a reset for me, and a reset for my idea of feminine divine, and it’s a whole different world we go to after this.”
“Woman’s World” is the first single from Perry’s upcoming follow-up to her Smile album from 2020, 143, which is due out on Sept. 20.