Taylor Swift appears to be courting a Best Short Film Oscar nomination for All Too Well. But based on what she told attendees at the Toronto Film Festival over the weekend, one day, she might be in the running for a Best Picture trophy as well.
According to Variety, during a moderated talk at the festival, Taylor said when it comes to directing, “I think that I’m at a place now where the next baby step is not a baby step. It would be committing to making a film.”
“I feel like I would just absolutely love for the right opportunity to arise because I just absolutely, absolutely adore telling stories this way,” she added, saying it would be “such a privilege and an honor [to direct a feature film].”
Taylor added that she sees herself directing “human stories about human emotion,” noting that she can’t imagine herself ever “filming an action sequence.”
Referring to the plot of All Too Well, she joked, “I don’t always see myself telling stories about extreme, guttural heartbreak at your most formative age that debilitates you emotionally for years and then you have to develop the scar tissue in order to move on with your life, and limp your way to your typewriter and write a novel about it. I think I’ve done that.”
As for that infamous “scarf” — first mentioned in the lyrics of the song “All Too Well,” and now a focal point in the film — Taylor said, “Basically, the scarf is a metaphor…And I think when I say it’s a metaphor, I’m just gonna stop.”
Kane Brown and his wife, Katelyn,are a busy power couple juggling Kane’s demanding country music career with their home life raising two daughters together.
So when they get some time to themselves, they don’t usually spend it on a fancy night out at a club or a party. In a new Q&A video that shows the couple playing Jenga and answering questions, Kane and Katelyn agree that their perfect date night involves staying in.
However, they might have slightly different thoughts about the specifics.
“Netflix and chill,” Kane says with a big grin, when asked about his go-to date night idea. And while Katelyn’s on board with staying at home, she prefers different date night activities.
“I don’t wanna go out for a date night. I like to stay home, and sitting on the front porch and, like, drinking wine,” she says.
In the video, the couple also answers several more questions about Kane’s music and their life together, including sharing their daughter’s first word: “Daddy.”
Kane and Katelyn are partners in life, but on Kane’s new album, Different Man, they’re also partners in the studio. The pair teamed up for a collaboration, called “Thank God,” which appears on the album’s track list.
AWOLNATION may be getting ready to set “Sail” toward new music once again.
The band has shared a cryptic Instagram post featuring a black-and-white photo of frontman Aaron Bruno sitting in the grass, accompanied by the caption, “Your friends are freaking me out…”
Fans in the comments are speculating the caption could refer to a lyric from a new song from Bruno and company. The post also follows a newsletter AWOLNATION sent out last week announcing that a fresh track would be dropping later in September.
If and when the new tune arrives, it’ll follow AWOLNATION’s guest-filled covers album My Echo, My Shadow, My Covers and Me, which was released in May. The group’s most recent original effort is 2020’s Angel Miners & the Lightning Riders.
AWOLNATION will launch a U.S. headlining tour in October. Badflower will also be on the bill.
It’s been six years since Prince passed away, but his high school friend Morris Day will always remember their many joyful moments together.
“He was an avant-garde, introverted person. But once you got past that surface, he was a really fun and funny dude to be around,” the lead singer of The Time tells Billboard.
Prince recruited Day to front The Time, and they made the Minneapolis sound famous around the world. With their hits “Cool,” “777-9311,” “Jungle Love,” “Ice Cream Castles,” “The Bird” and “Jerk Out,” The Time often toured with Prince. They appeared with the Oscar and Grammy winner in Graffiti Bridge and the classic Purple Rain.
“We had a lot of good times as we jammed nonstop. Sometimes I’d be in the grocery store on what I thought would be a night off. And he’d run into me there, saying he wanted to go in and cut a record,” Morris fondly recalls. “He loved music so much. I’ve never met anybody who cared about the craft as much as he did.”
Now, after more than 40 years as a recording artist, Morris will release what he calls his final solo album in November.
The 64-year-old singer plans to drop his fifth solo album, titled Last Call, on November 11. Snoop Dogg, Big Daddy Kane and Flo Rida are among the stars featured on the project.
Day regrets that Prince will not be able to hear his new music.
“I think he’d be happy with some of the songs, and proud to know that I’m still in the game,” Morris says. “That’s the hardest part, you know. Him not being around, and wondering what he, as [a] mega-talented musician and songwriter, would think about projects I’m working on.”
After becoming a TikTok star, singer/songwriter Jax has her first big radio hit, “Victoria’s Secret.” She was inspired to write the song after Chelsea, the girl she babysits, was told by a friend that she looked “too fat and too flat” in a Victoria’s Secret bikini. Jax says she felt writing the song was a “responsibility” — but didn’t think it would be a “movement.”
“I had Victoria’s Secret, the concept, in my notes for ever, and I … could never find the right words, so I just gave up on it,” she tells ABC Audio. She says she didn’t feel she was in a place to preach body positivity: I’m not, even now, in a place where I’m feeling super body positive.”
But Jax says Chelsea’s story “made my blood boil.”
“This was the first time I felt like it was more a responsibility to Chelsea and her friends and kids that age to talk about it, now that I have a platform,” Jax notes. She especially didn’t want Chelsea to have the body issues she had at that age.
“My friends and I were racing for the thigh gap. We would eat ice cubes to see [if] you could lose 5 pounds quicker,” Jax admits. So, she says, “Not only for mental health reasons, but for physical health, like, I could not watch her start that.”
The success of the song, however, has taken her by surprise.
“I didn’t expect it to turn into people of all ages, shape, sizes telling their own backstory about their own body issues, and self-love and dysmorphia, eating disorders and all this stuff,” she says. “So we kind of, in our own little funny relationship, started a movement!”
Last Friday, a collaborative album titled California Gold that Creedence Clearwater Revival drummer Doug “Cosmo” Clifford recorded in 1978 with one-time Derek & the Dominos member Bobby Whitlock got its release via digital formats.
Clifford produced the 10-track collection, and co-wrote all the songs with Whitlock, while legendary Booker T & the MG’s bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn lent his talents to about half the album.
Clifford tells ABC Audio that the album came together at a time when looking to put together a new band, and Dunn suggested that he contact Whitlock, who sang well and played Hammond B3 organ.
“[Duck] introduced me to Bobby, and we hit it off and started writing songs, and that worked really well,” Cosmo recalls. “We had a good writing team and wrote very easily.”
Clifford continues, “The collaboration was a perfect one. [Bobby] had what I didn’t and I had what he didn’t … [A]nd so we got songs together that we thought would represent us.”
Other musicians who contributed to California Gold included former Graham Central Station guitarist David Vega, another guitarist named Mike O’Neill and bassist Tom Miller.
“It’s a good record,” says Cosmo. “And it has kind of a combination of Delaney & Bonnie [with whom Whitlock previously played] and Creedence and some old blues guys.”
He adds, “I listened to it again … [and] it’s like I’m listening to somebody else … And I’m going, ‘Wow, these guys are pretty good. I wonder who they are. Oh, that’s us.'”
Clifford explains that the album initially got shelved because before the project was completed, Dunn wound up joining The Blues Brothers, while Whitlock decided to move away from the Bay Area.
Cosmo says he recently rediscovered the recordings while “doing a little spring cleaning” trough his archives.
Here’s California Gold‘s track list:
“Good Times”
“Get Down Fever”
“It Ain’t Like Mama Told Me”
“Turn the Beat Around”
“On Hold Again”
“Purple Mountain”
“It’s Always Darkest Before the Dawn”
“Do or Die”
“I’m Happy Just Being Alive”
“Rollin’ On”
(LONDON) — The FBI has joined the search for a 17-year-old Ohio girl who vanished after arriving at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on Tuesday, authorities said.
The FBI Atlanta office described the missing girl, Emma Linek, as being “endangered” and in need of medication that she did not have at the time of her disappearance.
“Another thing that is of concern is that Emma has no known connection to the city of Atlanta or has never been here before or does not know anybody in Atlanta that we know of,” Christopher Macrae, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Atlanta field office, said during a news conference on Saturday with Linek’s father, Mike Linek.
Macrae said Emma Linek was clinically diagnosed with autism.
Emma Linek was initially booked on a Delta Airlines direct flight from Cleveland to Boston on Tuesday, but missed that plane, authorities said. Macrae said she caught another flight with a layover in Atlanta.
“That flight change was unscheduled. So she did not know that she was going to be in Atlanta,” Macrae said. “Her bags made it to Boston, but she did not. Our top priority is to locate Emma and to make sure she’s OK.”
Macrae said surveillance video at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport captured Linek, who also goes by the name Zari, wandering around the airport appearing to be lost.
He said Emma Linek was last seen around 10 a.m. Tuesday in the north daily parking lot at Hartsfield, leaving the airport with a stranger.
Macrae said law enforcement officials tracked down the man that Emma Linek was seen leaving the airport with and interviewed him.
“We’ve been in discussions with that individual, but at this time we have not located Emma. Emma was not with that individual,” Macrae said.
Macrae did not release the man’s name or say if he is a suspect in the girl’s disappearance.
Linek’s father, who attended the news conference in Atlanta with Macrae, pleaded with the public for any information on his daughter’s whereabouts.
“We’re anxious to have her back with us,” Mike Linek said.
He described his daughter as a “wonderful girl” with a “sweet bubbly personality.”
“She loves animals. She loves to sing,” Mike Linek said.
Emma Linek’s mother, Eleanor Linek, told ABC affiliate station WEWS-TV in Cleveland that her daughter was traveling to Boston to resume studies at therapeutic boarding school.
The 5-foot-3, 160-pound teenager was last seen wearing plaid pants, a black shirt and carrying a white pillow. Eleanor and Mike Linek said their daughter did not have a cellphone with her.
Eleanor Linek said she dropped her daughter off at Hopkins International Airport in Cleveland on Tuesday morning.
“We took her to the airport, she passed through security, we saw her go through security and to her gate,” Eleanor Linek said. “We don’t know what happened, if she got something to eat or what, but she missed her plane.”
Eleanor Linek said they are extremely worried for their daughter’s well-being and asked anyone who spots her to call authorities immediately.
“I look through feeds, sometimes, on my phone and you see missing children and you think, ‘Oh my God, I can’t imagine what their family is going through,’ and here we are,” she said. “We need to get the word out there to try and find our daughter.”
The FBI asked anyone with information about the missing girl to call the bureau’s tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324).
(LONDON) — A close member of the royal family will care for Queen Elizabeth’s beloved corgis, ABC News has learned.
Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, will look after the dogs after they return to live with him and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, at Royal Lodge in Berkshire, England, a source close to Prince Andrew told ABC News.
Queen Elizabeth II’s love for the breed began in 1933, when her father, then the Duke of York, gifted a Pembroke Welsh corgi, for the family. The future monarch then received Susan — the first corgi of her own — as an 18th birthday present in 1944. Susan would later accompany Elizabeth and Prince Philip on their honeymoon at Broadlands in Romsey in 1947.
Elizabeth is believed to have owned more than 30 corgis descended from Susan throughout her lifetime. Some of the dogs included some corgi-dachshund mixes called “dorgis,” which were conceived accidentally after one of Elizabeth’s corgis mated with a dachshund owned by Princess Margaret.
A pack of corgis soon became synonymous with the monarch and staples of the royal households.
“My corgis are family,” the queen once said, according to Vanity Fair.
Queen Elizabeth has been described by the American Kennel Club as “one of the most prolific and dedicated Pembroke Welsh Corgi breeders and ambassadors that the world has ever seen.”
Elizabeth stopped breeding corgis this past decade to avoid the dogs outliving her, Monty Roberts, an adviser to the queen, told Vanity Fair in 2015. The last of the queen’s purebred corgis, Willow, died in 2018.
But Ferguson found the puppies later gifted to the queen by Prince Andrew following the hospitalization of Prince Philip in 2021.
Ferguson first bonded with the queen over dog walking and horse riding and continued that friendship even after her divorce from Prince Andrew. Royal Lodge is only a few miles from Windsor Castle, and the pair would walk the dogs in the area, the source said.
(LONDON) — Charles III has now ascended as king of England, but his constitutional rule extends far beyond the small, historic island.
King Charles is now also the head of the Commonwealth of Nations, a voluntary association of 56 independent and equal countries — the majority of which are former colonies of the British Empire. It is home to about 2.5 billion people and includes advanced economies and developing countries.
Fourteen of the Commonwealth nations are realms in which Charles is head of state. Those countries include the U.K., Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu.
Of the other 41 member states of the Commonwealth, 36 are republics, while the remaining five — Brunei Darussalam, Lesotho, Malaysia, Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, and Tonga — have their own monarchs.
Despite its ties to the British Empire, any country can join the modern Commonwealth, and other countries without any links from the colonial past have recently been admitted, such as Rhonda and Mozambique. The last two countries to join the Commonwealth were Gabon and Togo in 2022.
At its peak in 1922, a quarter of the world was ruled by Britain. Over the last century, these countries gained independence. Still, they retained close ties with Britain through an organization called the British Commonwealth, which was founded in 1949 with King George VI, Elizabeth II’s father, as the head.
Elizabeth then expanded the organization into today’s Commonwealth of Nations. It spans all continents except Antarctica and includes the former dominions such as Australia and Canada; long-established colonies in the Caribbean, such as Jamaica and St. Kitts; African countries like Nigeria and Zambia; and countries such as Singapore and India in Asia.
On Thursday, U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss, who the queen had invited to form a government in her name just two days before her death, acknowledged the late sovereign’s efforts in growing and maintaining the Commonwealth throughout her reign.
From the time Queen Elizabeth II took the throne in 1952, she expanded the Commonwealth from a small group of seven countries to a “family of 56 nations spanning every continent of the world,” Truss said.
“We are now a modern, thriving, dynamic nation,” Truss said.
The main benefits of the Commonwealth are shared values, strong cultural and economic ties, similarities in legal systems, the widespread use of English, sports through the Commonwealth Games, sharing of information on matters scientific and medical matters and a host of mutually beneficial personal and institutional relationships, officials said. These values and principles are expressed in the Commonwealth Charter.
The Commonwealth Secretariat is based in London and is a central intergovernmental organization to manage the Commonwealth’s work.
The queen “loved the Commonwealth, and they loved her,” the right Hon. Patricia Scotland, secretary general of the Commonwealth, told the BBC on Saturday.
The succession as head of the Commonwealth from Elizabeth II to Charles III was not automatic or hereditary. In 2018, the Commonwealth voted to have Charles as its next head.
In March, Prince William and his wife, Catherine, now the Prince and Princess of Wales, conducted a tour of the Commonwealth’s Caribbean nations ahead of the queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
During the week-long visit to Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas, the couple endured protests surrounding the history of the United Kingdom’s colonial rule and renewed discourse about the possibility of the transition to independent republics.
Barbados was the latest Commonwealth country to become a republic when it removed the queen as the head of state earlier this year and swore in a president. Barbados is still, however, a member of the Commonwealth.
William later said he did not expect to inherit the position as head of the Commonwealth.
“Who the Commonwealth chooses to lead its family in the future isn’t what is on my mind,” William wrote in a statement posted to the couple’s official Twitter account following the end of the tour. “What matters to us is the potential the Commonwealth family has to create a better future for the people who form it, and our commitment to serve and support as best we can.”
(LONDON) — Jane Hartley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, said she believes the newly crowned King Charles will be a “bridge to the future.”
“I think that he is both a link to the past and a bridge to the future. I think if you watched his speech, his inaugural speech is what we would call it, he touched everything perfectly. He touched his love for his mother, but also his love for the country and his sense of duty to the country. And I think she instilled him in that. And then I think he has been preparing for this role for many, many years,” Hartley told “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz, who anchored from London Sunday.
“So, I think it will be interesting what he does, because I think he will be a bridge to the future.”
During his first speech Friday after the death of Queen Elizabeth, Charles praised his mother while also noting her death marked “time of change” for the royal family.
“As every member of my family can testify, she combined these qualities with warmth, humor, and an unerring ability always to see the best in people,” Charles said in his first speech as king.
“In the course of the last 70 years, we have seen our society become one of many cultures and many faiths. The institutions of the state have changed in turn,” he added. “Our values have remained, and must remain, constant.”
Raddatz pressed Hartley on whether Charles’ ascension to the throne after the death of his mother would cause turmoil in a country already getting used to a new prime minister.
“I have no concerns about the U.K. Our special relationship is truly special. They’re our most important ally in the world. And as we see, in particular what we’re doing on Ukraine together, and there’s a seamless sharing of information, our military, our security…we work really, really well together,” Hartley said.
While Queen Elizabeth was famously tight-lipped about politics, never divulging her views publicly, Hartley said that when she met her earlier this year, the Queen was not only “interested in foreign policy,” but “asked a lot of questions about our domestic politics.”
“She was unbelievably informed,” Hartley said.
Raddatz asked if Charles, who, as prince, waded into politics at times, would follow the tradition his mother set of not speaking about politics in public.
“At least initially, he will follow his mother’s example. But he does care deeply about a lot of issues, especially young people, which I have the deepest respect for him for doing,” Hartley said.
