The public is about to get a good look at Freddie Mercury’s London home, Garden Lodge, which has remained practically unchanged in the past 30 years. Sotheby’s is hosting a series of exhibitions, dubbed Freddie Mercury: A World of His Own, giving fans a peek inside the Queen frontman’s estate.
Highlights of the auction, which was curated by Mercury’s good friend Mary Austin, will be on display at Sotheby’s galleries this summer, hitting New York June 1-8, followed by Los Angeles June 14-18 and Hong Kong June 26-30. It will then move to London for a monthlong exhibit that will display almost 1,500 items. That exhibit will run from August 4 to September 5, which would have been Mercury’s 77th birthday.
Among the items up for grabs: the replica St Edward’s Crown and robe Freddie wore to perform “God Save The Queen” during Queen’s 1986 The Magic Tour; handwritten working lyrics to “We Are The Champions” and “Killer Queen”; a military-style jacket Mercury wore for his 39th birthday party drag ball in 1985; a Tiffany & Co. silver mustache comb; and the silk waistcoat Mercury wore in his final video for “These Are The Days Of Our Lives.”
All together there will be six dedicated Mercury auctions, according to a release, including a live Evening Sale on September 6. There will also be an auction dedicated to Mercury On Stage on September 7, and an At Home auction on September 8. Plus, there will be three online auctions: one dedicated to his love of Japan and two “Crazy Little Things” auctions, featuring some of Mercury’s more eclectic items.
Even a filmmaking legend can have some big-screen regrets.
That’s the takeaway from Steven Spielberg, who tells Time his decision to digitally edit out firearms from the hands of federal agents in a 20th anniversary rerelease of his classic E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was a mistake.
Spielberg made the comments after taking the stage for a sit-down as part of the 2023 TIME100 Summit Tuesday.
The Oscar winner, who has graced the magazine six times — “Seven, I count the shark,” he joked about Jaws‘ toothy villain — looked back at his storied career.
Spielberg says of the reedit, which saw federal agents’ guns swapped out using computer graphics technology, “That was a mistake. That was a mistake. I never should have done that. Because E.T. is a product of its era. No film should be revised based on the lenses we now are, either voluntarily — or being forced to — peer through.”
He added, “I was sensitive to the fact that federal agents approached a bunch of kids with firearms exposed, and I thought I’d changed the guns to walkie-talkies.”
Spielberg expressed, “I have never should have messed with the archive of my own work. I don’t recommend anybody really do that.”
The filmmaker added, “All our movies are a kind of a signpost of where we were when we made them, what the world was like … when we got those stories out there. So I really regret having that out there.”
The same goes for a recent trend in reediting so-called “problematic” language in classic works. “It is absolutely, for me, is sacrosanct. It’s our history. It’s our culture heritage. I do not believe in censorship in that way,” he said to applause.
At 5 years old, Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys‘ son Egypt was credited alongside his father as a producer on Kendrick Lamar‘s “untitled 07” — an achievement the producer joked stirred up feelings of jealousy for him.
“I’m jealous as hell of that one. I thought me and Kendrick was cool,” he said while on the Jennifer Hudson Show. “But they kicked it off at the Super Bowl game, and I looked and him and Kendrick was talking for like 40 minutes.”
“I went over and said to Kendrick, ‘Is he bothering you? Should I move him? I know you enjoying yourself,'” Swizz continued. “He said, ‘No. Swizz, I had writer’s block and what Egypt is telling me is helping me deal with something.'”
He says he doesn’t know what Egypt was helping Kendrick deal with, but that his son “got some money off that record.”
Egypt, now 12, continues to go down the music route, playing piano during his mom’s tour last summer. Swizz insists he and Alicia don’t force art or music on their children, but rather good intentions.
“As long as you have a good intention on what you’re doing, we’ll support it,” he explained. “But it’s not like, ‘You have to be this way.’ We have to let the kids be who they gonna be, but guide them in the right way and not put the pressure on them.”
(WASHINGTON) — Two Senate lawmakers have unveiled bipartisan legislation to require the Supreme Court create a code of conduct amid recent controversies surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas.
The high court is the only branch of government that operates without a code of conduct. Senators Angus King, I-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, on Wednesday introduced a bill to change that.
“A healthy democracy requires trust: trust in systems, trust in institutions, and trust in leaders. Americans deserve to have confidence that every part of their government — especially the highest court in the land — is acting in an ethical manner,” King said in a statement.
Murkowski, too, said it’s “critical the public has full faith that their institutions are functioning, including the judicial branch.”
The legislation would force the court to create a code of conduct, post it publicly online and appoint an individual tasked with handling any complaints of potential violations.
However, it doesn’t lay out what those rules should be — instead giving the court the power to enact its own guidelines.
The court is facing fresh scrutiny over Justice Thomas’ ties to wealthy Republican donor Harlan Crow. ProPublica reported Thomas for years has accepted luxury trips and private travel from the donor and didn’t report it on his annual financial disclosure filings.
Thomas has said it’s been his understanding that “this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.”
The revelation was met with swift condemnation from Democrats.
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, will hold a hearing next week regarding the ethical rules that govern the nine justices and possible reforms to those rules.
Durbin invited Chief Justice John Roberts to testify, warning Roberts the “status quo is no longer tenable.”
Roberts on Tuesday declined the invitation, stating such a scenario would be “exceedingly rare.”
The chief justice also sent Durbin a five-page statement signed by all nine justices detailing the court’s ethics and practices. Roberts said they all adhere to it, despite there being no independent enforcement of such rules.
In the statement, the justices wrote they aimed to provide clarity on how they address ethical issues, stating they look to “judicial opinions, treatises, scholarly articles, disciplinary decisions, and the historical practice of the court and the federal judiciary” or advice from colleagues.
It’s unclear if King and Murkowski’s bill will gain traction in Congress, as Republicans have been less critical of the Thomas controversies. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said last week he had “total confidence” in Roberts to handle any internal issues that arise at the court.
(NEW YORK) — E. Jean Carroll, on the first day of testimony in her civil defamation and battery case against former President Donald Trump, told the jury that she first met Trump in 1987 — but she struggled to pinpoint the year that she alleges he raped her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store.
Carroll, who brought the lawsuit in November, alleges that Trump defamed her in a 2022 Truth Social post by calling her allegations “a Hoax and a lie” and saying “This woman is not my type!” when he denied her claim that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room.
She added a charge of battery under a recently adopted New York law that allows adult survivors of sexual abuse to sue their alleged attacker regardless of the statute of limitations.
“When do you believe Donald Trump assaulted you?” her attorney, Mike Ferrara, asked Carroll during her testimony Wednesday.
“This question, the when, the when, the date, has been something I’ve constantly trying to pin down,” Carroll said.
At first she said she thought it was 1994 or 1995, but she said her friend Lisa Birnbach published an article about Trump for New York magazine in February 1996.
“Lisa never would have gone down to Mar-a-Lago … if she knew what Donald Trump had done to me,” Carroll said, leading her to believe the alleged attack occurred in 1996.
In her opening statement, Carroll attorney Shawn Crowley suggested the lack of specificity doesn’t matter.
“While Ms. Carroll doesn’t remember exactly when this happened, she remembers almost every detail of what happened, and her testimony alone will be enough for you to find Donald Trump liable in this case,” Crowley said.
The defense told the jury those details matter.
“She can’t tell you the date that she claims to have been raped. She can’t tell you the month that she claims to have been raped. She can’t tell you the season. She can’t even tell you the year that she claims to have been raped by Donald Trump,” defense attorney Joe Tacopina said during his opening statement.
“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me,” Carroll said at the start of her testimony. “And when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen. He lied and shattered my reputation. And I’m here to try and get my life back.”
Trump has denied all allegations that he raped Carroll or defamed her.
Earlier Wednesday, the jury heard from the former general manager at the Bergdorf Goodman women’s store.
Cheryl Beal, who worked for the department store in the mid-1990s, testified regarding the store’s layout, including the sixth floor where lingerie, couture brands and designer sportswear were sold, and where Carroll said Trump raped her in a dressing room while few, if any, people were around.
“It wasn’t one of our busiest floors,” Beal said.
Before the jury entered the courtroom, Carroll’s attorney read aloud parts of two social media posts by Trump that she said violated the judge’s orders.
On Truth Social Wednesday morning, Trump posted that Carroll’s legal team is being “financed by a big political donor that they said didn’t exist, only to get caught lying about that.”
He also posted regarding Carroll, “She said there was a dress, using the ol’ Monica Lewinsky ‘stuff,’ then she didn’t want to produce it.”
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said the posts violated the court’s orders against “comments about lawyers and one about DNA.”
“These are out-of-court comments obviously,” said defense attorney Joe Tacopina, but Judge Lewis Kaplan cut him off, saying, “…where for two years he refused to give a DNA sample, and now wants it in the case.”
“What you’re trying to do is to get away from a statement by your client, a public statement, that on the face of it seems entirely inappropriate,” Kaplan told Tacopina.
Tacopina said he would address the posts with Trump.
“I will speak to my client and ask him to refrain from any posts about this case,” Tacopina said.
Kaplan said he hoped the lawyer was successful.
“We’re getting into an area in which your client may or may not be tampering with a new source of potential liability, and I think you know what I mean,” Kaplan said.
It remains unclear if Trump will testify himself at any point. The judge demanded to know this week whether Trump will appear, telling the defense that it was time to “fish or cut bait.”
The trial is expected to last about five days. The nine-member jury of six men and three women is weighing Carroll’s defamation and battery claims and deciding potential monetary damages.
This week’s trial is taking place as Trump seeks the White House for a third time, while facing numerous legal challenges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, his handling of classified material after leaving the White House, and possible attempts to interfere in the Georgia’s 2020 vote. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said Monday she would decide whether to file criminal charges against Trump or his allies this summer.
Carroll’s lawsuit is her second against Trump related to her rape allegation.
Carroll previously sued Trump in 2019 after the then-president denied her rape claim by telling The Hill that Carroll was “totally lying,” saying, “I’ll say it with great respect: No. 1, she’s not my type. No. 2, it never happened. It never happened, OK?” That defamation suit has been caught in a procedural back-and-forth over the question of whether Trump, as president, was acting in his official capacity as an employee of the federal government when he made those remarks.
If Trump is determined to have been acting as a government employee, the U.S. government would substitute as the defendant in that suit — which means that case would go away, since the government cannot be sued for defamation.
(NEW YORK) — Former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll, on the first day of testimony in her civil defamation and battery case against former President Donald Trump, told the jury that Trump had raped her.
Carroll, who brought the lawsuit in November, alleges that Trump defamed her in a 2022 Truth Social post by calling her allegations “a Hoax and a lie” and saying “This woman is not my type!” when he denied her claim that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room.
She added a charge of battery under a recently adopted New York law that allows adult survivors of sexual abuse to sue their alleged attacker regardless of the statute of limitations.
“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me,” she testified Wednesday. “And when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen. He lied and shattered my reputation. And I’m here to try and get my life back.”
Earlier Wednesday, the jury heard from the former general manager at the Bergdorf Goodman women’s store.
Cheryl Beal, who worked for the department store in the mid-1990s, testified regarding the store’s layout, including the sixth floor where lingerie, couture brands and designer sportswear were sold, and where Carroll said Trump raped her in a dressing room while few, if any, people were around.
“It wasn’t one of our busiest floors,” Beal said.
Before the jury entered the courtroom, Carroll’s attorney read aloud parts of two social media posts by Donald Trump that she said violated the judge’s orders.
On Truth Social Wednesday morning, Trump posted that Carroll’s legal team is being “financed by a big political donor that they said didn’t exist, only to get caught lying about that.”
He also posted regarding Carroll, “She said there was a dress, using the ol’ Monica Lewinsky ‘stuff,’ then she didn’t want to produce it.”
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said the posts violated the court’s orders against “comments about lawyers and one about DNA.”
“These are out-of-court comments obviously,” said defense attorney Joe Tacopina, but Judge Lewis Kaplan cut him off, saying, “…where for two years he refused to give a DNA sample, and now wants it in the case.”
“What you’re trying to do is to get away from a statement by your client, a public statement, that on the face of it seems entirely inappropriate,” Kaplan told Tacopina.
Tacopina said he would address the posts with Trump.
“I will speak to my client and ask him to refrain from any posts about this case,” Tacopina said.
Kaplan said he hoped the lawyer was successful.
“We’re getting into an area in which your client may or may not be tampering with a new source of potential liability, and I think you know what I mean,” Kaplan said.
It remains unclear if Trump will testify himself at any point. The judge demanded to know this week whether Trump will appear, telling the defense that it was time to “fish or cut bait.”
The trial is expected to last about five days.
During opening statements Tuesday, Carroll’s attorney told the jury that Trump “banged the door closed and lunged at” Carroll as she recounted what Carroll said happened in a dressing room of the department store.
“Ms. Carroll will tell you she was shocked,” Crowley said.
In 2019, when Carroll decided to write about the alleged encounter, Crowley said that “Donald Trump’s response was explosive.”
“Suddenly Ms. Carroll was all over the headlines. The most powerful person in the world … had branded her a liar.”
But Tacopina told the jury in his opening statement that Carroll’s defamation and battery claims are an “affront to justice,” accusing the writer of taking Trump to court “for money, for political reasons and for status.”
Tacopina told jurors that “you can hate Donald Trump” — but that the appropriate place to express those feelings is at the ballot box and not in a court of law.
Tacopina said Carroll “falsely alleged that he raped her,” and that’s why Trump publicly attacked her.
The nine-member jury of six men and three women is weighing Carroll’s defamation and battery claims and deciding potential monetary damages.
This week’s trial is taking place as Trump seeks the White House for a third time, while facing numerous legal challenges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, his handling of classified material after leaving the White House, and possible attempts to interfere in the Georgia’s 2020 vote. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said Monday she would decide whether to file criminal charges against Trump or his allies this summer.
Carroll’s lawsuit is her second against Trump related to her rape allegation.
Carroll previously sued Trump in 2019 after the then-president denied her rape claim by telling The Hill that Carroll was “totally lying,” saying, “I’ll say it with great respect: No. 1, she’s not my type. No. 2, it never happened. It never happened, OK?” That defamation suit has been caught in a procedural back-and-forth over the question of whether Trump, as president, was acting in his official capacity as an employee of the federal government when he made those remarks.
If Trump is determined to have been acting as a government employee, the U.S. government would substitute as the defendant in that suit — which means that case would go away, since the government cannot be sued for defamation.
Yes is giving fans another taste of their upcoming album. The band, currently made up of Steve Howe, Geoff Downes, Jon Davison, Billy Sherwood and Jay Schellen, just released the new tune “All Connected,” the second single they’ve shared from their upcoming album, Mirror To The Sky, which drops May 19.
“The initial idea came from a musical sketch I’d created using the idea of our ‘connectivity’ in regard to communications in the modern age,” Sherwood shares. “It’s very exciting to know Yes are maintaining that edge and energy we all know and love.”
He added, “This track is firing on all cylinders. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did creating it.”
Mirror to the Sky is available for preorder now and comes in a variety of formats, including a limited deluxe box set, featuring transparent electric blue double vinyl, two CDs and a Blu-ray, with a 36-page hardcover book, a poster and more.
(NOTE LANGUAGE)Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen came to fame for playing Michelle Tanner on Full House, but it almost didn’t happen, thanks to their co-star John Stamos.
Stamos appeared on his pal and former Fuller House co-star Josh Peck‘s Good Guys podcast, and while John is known as one of Hollywood’s, well, good guys, he hit a wall with the twins early on.
“We’re doing the scene,” Stamos recalled of the show’s pilot. “Joey [Dave Coulier] and I were changing the baby, right? And Danny [Bob Saget] is gone and said, ‘Take care of the kids.’ ‘Yeah, we got it. We got it.’ So, we’re carrying the baby downstairs and we take her in the kitchen and we hose her down. And she was screaming. Both of them. They wanted to be anywhere else but there, and so did I.”
Stamos added, “They were 11 months old, and God bless them. They kept switching: ‘This one’s not gonna cry.’ I couldn’t deal with it. And I said, ‘This is not gonna work,’ and I screamed it 10 times. I said, ‘Get rid of them, I can’t work like this.’ And so they got rid of them. They bring on these two redheaded kids,” Stamos said.
He added, “I’m sure their parents loved them and thought they were attractive … It had nothing to do with [them being] redheaded, but they weren’t attractive.”
The swap only lasted a “few days,” with John adding, “Bring the Olsens back! These kids are terrible.”
Stamos also admitted he called his manager after the first table read when co-star Jodie Sweetin “blew the roof off the place,” and said, “Get me the f*** off this … kids show,” because you “couldn’t even hear my lines they were laughing so hard at her thing.”
The concert documentary The Last Waltz, about The Band’s farewell concert, opened in theaters.
The movie, directed by Martin Scorsese, focused on The Band’s Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, show at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, which was billed as their “farewell concert appearance.”
The show featured guest appearances by a whole host of musicians, including Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, EricClapton, Dr. John, Ronnie Wood, Muddy Waters, Neil Diamond, Van Morrison and Neil Young.
Considered one of the greatest concert documentaries of all time, in 2019 the film was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry.
PJ Harvey has announced a new album called I Inside the Old Year Dying.
The milestone 10th studio effort from the “Down by the Water” artist — and her first since 2016’s The Hope Six Demolition Project — arrives July 7.
“I think the album is about searching, looking — the intensity of first love, and seeking meaning,” Harvey says. “Not that there has to be a message, but the feeling I get from the record is one of love — it’s tinged with sadness and loss, but it’s loving. I think that’s what makes it feel so welcoming: so open.”
You can listen to the record’s first single, “A Child’s Question, August,” now via digital outlets.
Here’s the I Inside the Old Year Dying track list:
“Prayer at the Gate”
“Autumn Term”
“Lonesome Tonight”
“Seem an I”
“The Nether-edge”
“I Inside the Old Year Dying”
“All Souls”
“A Child’s Question, August”
“I Inside the Old I Dying”
“August”
“A Child’s Question, July”
“A Noiseless Noise”
