Entertainment

James Caan, the actor who was perhaps best known for his iconic role as Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, has died. He was 82.

A tweet from Caan’s account on Thursday read, “It is with great sadness that we inform you of the passing of Jimmy on the evening of July 6. The family appreciates the outpouring of love and heartfelt condolences and asks that you continue to respect their privacy during this difficult time.”

Bronx, NY native Caan got his start in theater before switching to TV, where he had roles in popular series like The Untouchables, Route 66 and Dr. Kildare.  After making his movie debut in 1963 with an uncredited cameo in Irma la Douce, he worked steadily, but none of his movies were very successful.

In 1971, Caan starred in the hit TV movie Brian’s Song, earning an Emmy nomination. In 1972, his former college classmate Francis Ford Coppola, who’d previously cast Caan in his 1969 film The Rain People, tapped him to play Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, which earned Caan Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.  He also appeared briefly in the sequel, The Godfather Part II.

In the years that followed, Caan, now a box-office success, starred in hits like Funny Lady, Rollerball, A Bridge Too Far, Thief and Chapter Two, but famously turned down roles in now-classic movies like including M*A*S*H, The French Connection, Apocalypse Now, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Blade Runner, Superman and Kramer vs. Kramer.

For most of the ’80s, Caan stopped acting for a variety of personal reasons, but he returned to the screen in the ’90s with Misery, Honeymoon in Vegas and Wes Anderson‘s directorial debut, Bottle Rocket.  He continued to work in TV and movies, most famously in Elf, as Will Ferrell’s estranged father. In 2012, he guest-starred in his son Scott Caan‘s CBS series Hawaii Five-0.

This fall, Caan was to have started filming Coppola’s Megalopolis.

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On Thursday, AMC dropped the trailer for the six-episode swan song of Better Call Saul.

The moody, black-and-white snippet, set to Fred Neil‘s “Little Bit of Rain,” is more of a celebration of the Emmy-winning Breaking Bad prequel series. It gives fans a long, last look at shooting locations from the show, including a courtroom, exteriors and interiors of characters’ homes, Saul’s office and, of course, Gus Fring’s chicken joint, Los Pollos Hermanos.

The sequence ends on the series’ already-struck set, and the lights are turned off.

The teaser ends with a color shot of Bob Odenkirk in his character Jimmy McGill’s walk-in closet, holding to his bare chest a yellow shirt, as seen on his eventual alter-ego, Saul Goodman. “Let justice be done, ’til the heavens fall,” he’s heard saying in the voiceover.

The sixth and final season returns on Monday, July 11 at 9 p.m. ET on AMC and AMC+.

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Do you struggle to remember people? You might have something in common with Brad Pitt.

The Oscar winner recently opened up about his struggle with prosopagnosia, commonly referred to as “face blindness.”

Though the actor has never officially been diagnosed with the disorder characterized by the inability to recognize faces, he recently told GQ that some think he’s remote, aloof, inaccessible or self-absorbed because he can’t remember them.

At the time, Pitt told the magazine he preferred to stay at home instead of going out, saying, “You meet so many damned people. And then you meet ’em again.”

He admitted he had difficulty remembering people even if he had “a real conversation with them.”

“So many people hate me because they think I’m disrespecting them,” he said.

Pitt revealed that he tried being honest with people and asking them where they had met before, but that backfired. “…It just got worse,” he said of that experiment. “People were more offended.”

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, prosopagnosia is thought to be the result of “abnormalities, damage, or impairment” in the part of the brain that “appears to coordinate the neural systems that control facial perception and memory.”

It may also result from stroke, traumatic brain injury or “certain neurodegenerative diseases.”

“There’s a wide spectrum of symptoms people can have and of the severity in which they are affected by this,” Dr. Leah Croll, an assistant professor of neurology at the Temple University Hospital, recently told “Good Morning America.

“For some people, it may be just some minor difficulties in remembering people’s names and keeping strangers straight,” she said. “And for other people, it may be more severe…they have issues with recognizing their own friends and family or even…recognizing their own reflection.”

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There’s close, and then there’s perhaps too close. Denise Richards and Sami, her 18-year-old daughter with Charlie Sheen, have announced they plan to shoot a video together for OnlyFans on Thursday.

“As you know, I’m shooting with my mom soon @deniserichards,” Sami noted on her page. “If you tip in, I’ll make sure to send you a extra special and sweet video from both of us.”

For her part, Richards posted, “Who’s excited for my shoot with @samisheen tomorrow! [Thursday] I am! Also, a bit nervous! Send me some love!!! If I can get wifi, I’ll try and go live from there tomorrow!”

As reported, the Wild Things and Real Housewives veteran came out in support of her daughter launching her account on the steamy, subscription-based social media platform — so much so that days later, Richards launched her own.

Sami’s dad was reportedly less enthusiastic about the venture.

That said, Denise and Sami’s collab left some a little puzzled. One commented on a recent bikini snap Richards, 51, posted to Instagram, “Are you competing with your daughter? Or supporting your daughter…. Super weird.”

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Dave Chappelle put his money where his very outspoken mouth is, and purchased a large plot of land near his home in Yellow Springs, Ohio — and his neighbors are thanking him for it.

Developers had planned to install housing on the 52-acre plot, but Chappelle apparently outbid the developer, meaning the land will be preserved as-is, according to the Daily Mail.

“To me it is clear, the project isn’t going forward. The developers will not be building on that land,” village manager Josue Salmeron told the publication.

In response, some local residents and merchants have been posting signs reading “Thanks, Dave!”

As reported in February, Chappelle took his grievances to a local city council meeting, and along with other residents, decried the plan.

“Hi, I’m Dave Chappelle,” the comic said, after waiting his turn to speak at the time.”I just wanna say…I don’t know why the village council is afraid of litigation from a $24 million-a-year company,” referring to the developer Oberer, “when it’s out a $65 million-a-year company,” Dave said, referring to his Iron Table Holdings company.

“I cannot believe you would make me audition for you!” Chappelle blasted the council members. “You look like clowns.”

Chappelle added forcefully, “I am not bluffing. I will take it all off the table!”

The comic is heavily invested in the community in which he lives, and the parcel of land on which housing would have been built abuts his own property.

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Paramount+ is scaring up a fourth season of its supernatural drama Evil. The series follows a forensic psychologist, played by Katja Herbers, who teams with a Catholic seminarian and a technology contractor — played respectively by Mike Colter and Aasif Mandvi — to investigate alleged supernatural incidents. Evil began on CBS is now in its third season on the streaming service. New episodes of the 10-episode season drop weekly on Sundays…

HBO Max has dropped the first trailer for Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, a sequel to the popular 2010 ABC Family/Freeform teen drama Pretty Little Liars. The new series stars Good Witch‘s Bailee Madison as Imogen, “a true survivor” and the “final girl” who’ll “drive the mystery of uncovering ‘A’ as she fights for her life and the lives of her friends.” Chandler Kinney and Maia Reficco also star. The original Pretty Little Liars ran until 2017 and inspired a pair of spinoffs: Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists and Ravenswood, both of which were canceled after one season…

(NOTE LANGUAGE) Zoë Kravitz has tapped Christian Slater, Alia Shawkat, Geena Davis and Haley Joel Osment to round out the cast of her directorial debut, P**** Island, according to Deadline. They join an ensemble that also includes Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum and Simon Rex. The movie follows Ackie as Frida, “a young and clever Los Angeles cocktail waitress” with her sights set on philanthropist and tech mogul Slater King, played by Tatum. After maneuvering her way into King’s inner circle and ultimately an intimate gathering on his private island, she senses there’s more to it than meets the eye. The project is currently filming in Mexico…

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The Terminal List, out now on Prime Video, stars Chris Pratt, as a Navy SEAL whose colleague is ambushed while on a mission.

Constance Wu also stars in the series, playing journalist Katie Buranek. She tells ABC Audio the show takes audiences on a journey and is far from predictable. 

“It’s not a static story,” Wu shares. “…There’s a lot of twists and turns and things you don’t expect.”

“You just have so many questions and there’s so much mystery and every time you get a different clue, you’re like, whoa, it like blows your mind,” she explains. “I think that Jack Carr and the writers of the scripts for Terminal List did a really great job of really making it unexpected because that’s what makes it fun.”

The script wasn’t the only thing that made working on the series fun. Jeanne Tripplehorn, who portrays Secretary of Defense Lorraine Hartley in the action-thriller, dished that Pratt liked to joke around on set. 

“When we’re in a scene, he knows he’s not joking around…But he definitely has a light spirit and keeps the atmosphere…doesn’t get too heavy,” she says.

LaMonica Garrett, whom audiences will know as Commander Cox in the series, shared a similar sentiment about their costar, stating that Pratt maintained the same excitement from beginning to end. 

“It was a long, hard shoot, long days, long nights. And I was there from the first day to the end,” she recalls. “But the last day of working, he still had that same enthusiasm, the same energy and the same kind of zest for coming to set. And everyone involved with that from the cast, the crew, the crafty, everyone, you know, it just makes the days better. But he keeps that same enthusiasm.” 

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Jerry Harris, a former star of the popular Netflix docuseries Cheer, was sentenced Wednesday to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to sex crime charges earlier this year.

The 22-year-old actor pleaded guilty in February to receiving child pornography and engaging in interstate travel for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with a minor under the age of 15.

Harris faced several other sexual misconduct charges. As part of his plea agreement, he admitted to the rest of the charges as stipulated offenses.

He had faced five to 50 years in prison.

U.S. District Court Judge Manish S. Shah also sentenced Harris to eight years of supervised release following his time in federal prison.

Allegations against Harris, who was a breakout star of the first season of Cheer, first came to light in September 2020, when he was arrested and charged with one count of producing child pornography.

A criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago alleged that Harris enticed an underage boy to produce and send sexually explicit videos and photographs of himself.

The complaint also stated that the boy, who said that he was first contacted by Harris in December 2018, informed Harris during a conversation on social media that he was 13 years old at the time. Harris was accused in the complaint of also making similar requests to the boy’s twin brother.

As part of the sentencing Wednesday, Judge Shah ordered Harris to pay a combined $45,000 under two laws that provide restitution for victims of child pornography and sexual abuse, court records show.

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Matt and Ross Duffer, the sibling creators of the phenomenon Stranger Things, are staying with Netflix in a big way.

Long story short, if you love Stranger Things, you’re in luck.

On Wednesday, the Duffer Brothers, as they’re professionally known, launched Upside Down Pictures, through which they’ll create film and TV projects. Included will be a live-action Stranger Things spinoff series, and a stage play set in the hit show’s universe, produced and directed by Billy Elliot veteran Stephen Daldry.

Also in the mix is a live-action TV adaptation of the hit anime series Death Note, and a series adaptation of Stephen King and Peter Straub‘s book The Talisman.

In a statement, the pair said they “aim to create the kind of stories that inspired the Duffers growing up – stories that take place at that beautiful crossroads where the ordinary meets the extraordinary, where big spectacle co-exists with intimate character work, where heart wins out over cynicism.”

As reported, Stranger Things‘ just-wrapped fourth season racked up 1.15 billion hours viewed in its first 28 days — only the second show to do so, behind only the Korean-language smash Squid Game.

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With an Oscar under his belt, a blockbuster in Thor: Ragnarok and another likely on its way with Thor: Love and Thunder, pretty much everybody wants to work with writer-director Taika Waititi.

So when it came to writing his anticipated Star Wars project, he figured he’d swing for the fences: He tells Rolling Stone he asked his fellow Academy Award winner and Thor sequel lead Natalie Portman if she wanted in.

“I said, ‘I’m trying to work on a Star Wars thing. Have you ever wanted to be in a Star Wars movie?'” Watititi recalled.

You might have noticed a problem with that, but Waititi apparently didn’t.

“She said, ‘I’ve been in Star Wars movies.’ I forgot about those ones,” Waititi admitted.

“Those ones” to which Waititi was referring — possibly sarcastically — are the Star Wars prequels, 1999’s Episode I – The Phantom Menace, 2002’s Attack of the Clones and 2005’s Revenge of the Sith. Portman played Padmé Amidala — the eventual wife of Anakin Skywalker, and mom to Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa.

Not exactly a bit part.

By and large, the films were met with a lukewarm critical reception at the time, but have since warmed in the hearts of Star Wars fans.

Lest the filmmaker’s faux pas be too concerning to fans of that galaxy far, far, away, he also told the magazine of the forthcoming project, “I don’t want to rush.”

“It’s something I wouldn’t want to just leap into and not feel that ‘it’s unique, it’s my film and it makes sense.’ Because that would be a disaster. So I’m gonna do my best to come up with an idea that everyone loves.”

Thor: Love and Thunder hits theaters Friday from Marvel Studios, which is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.

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