Selena Gomez showed what happened behind-the-scenes when filming her “Let Somebody Go” music video with Coldplay. The four-minute clip shows Selena and Chris Martin getting used to the complicated rigging system to make it appear that the two were floating through the air. It also includes interviews from the video’s director, Dave Meyes, and those who were behind the camera about the work that went into bringing the melancholy video to life.
Lizzo says she is “redefining love.” Taking to Instagram on Valentine’s Day, the Grammy winner defined love as “compassion for others, talking on the phone w friends and laughing all night, looking in the mirror & dancing for myself.” She also called love “a precious element” and encouraged her followers to “[h]elp a stranger, call a friend, hype yourself up” to learn her definition of what love truly means.
JoJo has found her next project and is joining the All American series in a recurring role that takes a page from her own life story. Per Deadline, JoJo will play “Sabine, a world famous recording artist who’s been making music since she was 10 years old,” and who searches out Greta Onieogou‘s Layla to help her complete her upcoming album. JoJo’s first appearance coincides with the season four premiere of All American, which airs this Monday, February 21, at 8 p.m. ET on the CW.
Whoopi Goldberg returned to The View on Monday following her two-week suspension and promised that the show would keep having “tough conversations.” Whoopi faced criticism after saying on the show that she did not believe the Holocaust was about race, but instead about “man’s inhumanity to man.” She later apologized but was removed temporarily from her duties as co-host.
Trevor Noah has been announced as the entertainer at the next White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, Deadline reports. The event will return April 30 after a two-year break due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a new interview with Elle magazine, Zoë Kravitz opens up about her divorce, talks internet trolls and laments the too-soon cancellation of her Hulu show High Fidelity. On her divorce from Karl Glusman, The Batman actress says, “It really is less about him and more about me learning how to ask myself questions about who I am and still learning who I am, and that being okay. That’s the journey I’m on right now.” Kravitz is currently dating Channing Tatum.
Bring Me the Horizon‘s collaboration with Ed Sheeran isn’t over yet.
The two acts are planning to release a studio version of their collaborative version of Sheeran’s hit “Bad Habits,” which they performed together during the U.K.’s BRIT Awards last week.
The news was announced in a video of a FaceTime call between Horizon frontman Oli Sykes and Sheeran, during which they reminisced about the fun they had onstage together.
“It’s just a joy to be able to play electric guitar and actually rock out properly,” Sheeran said. “So thank you for agreeing to do it.”
At the end of the call, Sykes and Sheeran agree they need to release a studio version.
“We have to get one out,” Sheeran says.
They’ll do just that when the recording drops this Friday, February 18.
Bobby Crosby had an idea in 2001 when watching a televised concert and seeing fans holding up signs asking the singer to marry them: What would happen if that worked? That, he says, became the basis for his webcomic Marry Me, now a movie starring Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson.
Marry Me debuted February 14, 2007, and Crosby tells ABC Audio he knew his story had movie potential — the “early URL” was MarryMeMovie.com — because “there was always a great reaction” when people heard the plot. “They could just see the movie.”
Crosby adds he “didn’t shop” Marry Me to studios: they “came to me.” He admits, “Early on, I was really picky,” rejecting pitches that took too many liberties, such as in 2009 when Nicolas Cage wanted Justin Timberlake to play the role that eventually went to Lopez. Crosby felt the story “worked better with a female singer.”
Crosby credits Transformers writer JohnRogers for getting the ball rolling after “walking by my San Diego Comic-Con booth in 2008 or 2009… and [saying] ‘Hey, what’s this?'” Rogers would check in periodically on Marry Me‘s availability after that and he asked to option it “in late 2012.” Soon enough, “J. Lo became interested” and the rest is history.
Rogers wrote the Marry Me screenplay and, although it deviates from “the original concept” — for example the main characters were aged up and renamed — Crosby is “glad” the journey is complete.
“A lot of stories are just remakes. And I’m glad [this movie] is based on something… A somewhat obscure webcomic,” he said. “It feels a lot more original than most movies Hollywood is making nowadays. So I like that… especially that it’s mine.”
Marry Me debuted in theaters over the weekend, grossing $8 million for a third-place finish.
(NEW YORK) — A federal judge in New York said on Monday that he will dismiss former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s libel suit against the New York Times, but only after the jury now deliberating returns a verdict.
Deliberations in the case in U.S. District Court in Manhattan began late Friday and continued Monday.
Without the jury present in court, Judge Jed Rakoff told the attorneys in the trial that he has decided to dismiss the case because Palin had not met the high standard of showing that The Times had acted with actual malice when it published an erroneous editorial that erroneously linked Palin’s political action committee to a mass shooting.
In explaining his decision to dismiss the case, Rakoff said the inevitable appeal would benefit from knowing how the jury deliberations turned out.
Palin, 58, sued The Times in 2017, roughly nine years after she was tapped to be Sen. John McCain’s GOP vice presidential nominee, claiming the newspaper deliberately ruined her burgeoning career as a political commentator and consultant by publishing an erroneous editorial that defamed her.
The editorial that prompted the lawsuit was published just days after a gunman opened fire on GOP politicians practicing for a congressional charity baseball game in a Washington, D.C., suburb, injuring six, including Republican Rep. Steve Scalise.
The Times’ editorial board wrote on June 14, 2017, that prior to the 2011 Arizona mass shooting that killed six people and left then-Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords with a traumatic brain injury, Palin’s political action committee had fueled a violent atmosphere by circulating a map that put the electoral districts of Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized crosshairs.
Two days later, The Times published a correction saying the editorial had “incorrectly described” the map and “incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting.”
During the trial in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Palin portrayed herself as the biblical David going up against the Philistine giant Goliath with just a slingshot. Palin, in her testimony, accused The Times of deliberately fabricating lies to sully her reputation.
“It was devastating to read a false accusation that I had anything to do with murder,” Palin testified. “I felt powerless — that I was up against Goliath. The people were David. I was David.”
During the trial, which was delayed for several days due to Palin testing positive for COVID-19, The Times former editorial page editor, James Bennet, testified that while he was responsible for the erroneous information in the editorial, it was an honest mistake and that he meant no harm.
“I’ve regretted it pretty much every day since,” testified Bennet, who resigned from his job in June 2020 over publishing a highly criticized op-ed by U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, advocating a military response to civic unrest in American cities.
The jury in Palin’s case was instructed to decide whether Bennet acted with “actual malice” or with “reckless disregard for the truth” when he inserted the disputed information into the editorial.
In his closing argument, The Times lawyer David Axelrod told the jury the case was “incredibly important because it’s about freedom of the press.”
Axelrod said the First Amendment protects journalists “who make an honest mistake” when they write about a person like Sarah Palin.
“That’s all this was about — an honest mistake,” said Axelrod, adding that Palin’s lawsuit made no claims that she was deprived of income because of the editorial.
(BRUNSWICK, Ga.) — A jury was seated and opening statements got underway Monday in the federal hate crimes trial of three white Georgia men stemming from the murder of Ahmaud Arbery a 25-year-old Black man who was out for a jog in 2020 when he was chased and gunned down.
The 16 jurors, including four alternates, were empaneled on Monday morning following a lengthy selection process that started on Feb. 7. The jury is comprised of eight whites, three Blacks and one Hispanic. Alternates are three white members and one Pacific Islander.
Opening statements in the high profile case against 64-year-old retired police officer Gregory McMichael, his 36-year-old son Travis McMichael and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, commenced on Monday afternoon.
Prosecutor Bobbi Bernstein began her presentation by apologizing to the jury for having to read to them racial slurs and descriptions she said Travis McMichael used in text messages and on social media to describe Black people. Bernstein told the jury they will hear evidence that all three men used racially-charged language when discussing Black people in private.
Bernstein also said she will present evidence that Bryan told investigators that after Travis McMichael shot Arbery he allegedly heard him yell a racist epithet at the victim as he lay dying on the pavement, evidence that was excluded from the defendants’ state trial in which they were all convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Bernstein told the panel that while it is not illegal to use racial slurs, “these slurs can provide you with evidence as to why a defendant did what he did.”
She told the jurors that if Arbery had been white, “he would have been home in time for Sunday dinner.” Instead, she said, Arbery spent his last moments of life “bleeding to death, alone and scared in the middle of the street.”
Defense attorney Amy Lee Copeland attempted to distance herself from her client, Travis McMichael, conceding in her opening statement that the younger McMichael left a digital footprint of using “words that I don’t use and has opinions I don’t share.”
“But these words are not a crime,” Copeland said.
Gregory McMichael’s attorney, A.J. Balbo, said his client was not “an angel,” but was also not a racist. Balbo said Arbery was not followed because he was a Black man, but because he was “the man” the McMichaels recognized in security videos trespassing at a neighbor’s home that was under construction.”
“The killing of Ahmaud Arbery was a tragic and horrible event that didn’t need to happen and could have been prevented in so many ways,” Balbo told the jury.
Bryan’s attorney, Pete Theodocion, painted his client as someone who doesn’t look at people through a racial prism, saying there is no excuse for racism. He asked the jury not to look at evidence against the other defendants and use it against Bryan.
The trial in U.S. District Court in Brunswick, Georgia, is expected to last seven to 10 days.
All three men are charged with one count of interference with Arbery’s civil rights and with one count of attempted kidnapping. The McMichaels were also charged with one count each of using, carrying, and brandishing a firearm, and Travis McMichael faces an additional count of discharging a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence.
If convicted, the men face a maximum sentence of life in prison.
The McMichaels and Bryan were convicted last year on state murder charges in Arbery’s death. They were all sentenced to life in prison.
Arbery was fatally shot after the McMichaels saw him jogging in their Satilla Shores neighborhood near Brunswick, Georgia. They said they assumed Arbery was a burglar, armed themselves and chased him in their pickup truck. The McMichaels’ neighbor, Bryan, joined the pursuit, blocking the victim’s escape path with his truck and recorded video on a cellphone of Travis McMichael fatally shooting Arbery three times with a shotgun during a struggle.
If convicted in the federal case, the men must first serve their state sentences before being transferred to federal prison.
In the now-defunct plea deal filed with the court on Jan. 30, Gregory and Travis McMichael agreed to plead guilty to count one of an indictment alleging they interfered with Arbery’s right to enjoy the use of a public road he was jogging on “because of Arbery’s race and color.”
In exchange for the guilty pleas, prosecutors were to dismiss the other charges and allow the McMichaels to serve the first 30 years of confinement in federal prison before being transferred back to the Georgia Department of Corrections to serve out the remainder of their state sentences.
The same plea agreement was not given to Bryan.
Judge Lisa Wood rejected the McMichaels’ plea deal after Arbery’s parents, Wanda Cooper-Jones and Marcus Arbery, strongly objected and claimed it was forged without their consent. Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement that prosecutors were in constant communication with the Arbery family’s attorneys and had been assured the family would not object to the agreement.
Wood claimed she turned down the deal because it would have locked her into the three-decade federal prison sentence, saying she didn’t know if that was “the precise, fair sentence in this case.”
Following Wood’s decision, Gregory and Travis McMichael, who are being represented by court-appointed public defenders due to financial hardship, withdrew their guilty pleas and opted to go to trial.
The Los Angeles Rams and Pitch Perfect‘s Anna Kendrick came out on top on Super Bowl Sunday.
The Rams defeating the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20 was the outcome on the gridiron, but Kendrick’s spot for Rocket Mortgage, which saw the beloved toy vying for her dream home amid stiff plastic competition, was ranked as viewers’ favorite spot.
According to the USA Today Ad Meter, which tracks reactions to each Super Bowl commercial, Kendrick’s ad topped all comers — incidentally, the second year in a row a Rocket Mortgage Big Game ad did so. Last year, the company’s two “Certain is Better” spots starring Tracy Morgan ranked #1 and #2 with on the annual post-Super Bowl list.
The worst-performing ad in the eyes of viewers was the 60-second spot for Coinbase, which showed nothing more than a bouncing QR code, which pointed to the crypto company’s website.
In an attempt to get viewers more engaged with the upcoming 94th Annual Academy Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has announced its looking to everyday moviegoers to select their favorite film of the year.
The Oscars Fan Favorite Award winner will be announced during the Academy Awards telecast March 27 on ABC.
The Academy urges fans to vote by entering the name of their favorite film of 2021 at OscarsFanFavorite.com, or on Twitter, using the hashtags #OscarsFanFavorite and #Sweepstakes.
What’s more, voters can give thumbs up to their fave up to 20 times a day.
The move could direct some attention during the Oscars telecast to popular films that traditionally get overlooked come awards time.
Last week, Jimmy Kimmel raised a flag about this common gripe: Why are blockbusters like Spider-Man: No Way Home seldom considered for Best Picture? Kimmel vented, “Even if you go by the critics reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, [nominee] Don’t Look Up got a 46% and Spider-Man: No Way Home has 90%…”
Kimmel added, “Why do best picture nominees have to be serious? You wanna know what happened? [Academy] voters looked at the list and saw the names Leonardo DiCaprio and Meryl Streep [from Don’t Look Up] and they checked the box and then they put their kids in the car and went to see…Spider-Man and they loved it.”
Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes will host the 94th Academy Awards, airing live March 27 on ABC.
Third Eye Blind will be celebrating their 25th anniversary on a U.S. headlining tour this summer.
The outing, which also includes Taking Back Sunday on the bill, will launch June 22 in Troutdale, Oregon, and will wrap up August 13 in Irvine, California.
Tickets go on sale this Friday, February 18. For the full list of dates and all ticket info, visit ThirdEyeBlind.com.
Third Eye Blind’s 1997 self-titled debut album turns 25 in April. The record spawned hit singles, including “Semi-Charmed Life,” “How’s It Going to Be” and “Jumper,” and has been certified six-times Platinum by the RIAA.
Last month, Third Eye Blind played a pair of intimate 25th anniversary shows in Los Angeles and New York City.
Is Harry Styles gearing up for his next music era? The “Adore You” singer certainly has something up his sleeve after fans spotted him being filmed on a giant bed in front of Buckingham Palace.
British publication Daily Mailobtained photos of the bizarre session, during which Harry was seen lounging on an ornate and oversized metal bed while covered in blankets and surrounded by fluffy pillows. Harry also was wearing a pink and green scarf that matched his painted nails, as well as brown and blue polka dot pajamas.
Observers also said Harry’s guitarist and drummer hopped onto the bed for a bit.
It’s unknown exactly what Harry was doing, but the Daily Mail notes he briefly clogged traffic as the bed was on was towed down the street and toward the palace, while the cameras rolled.
It remains to be seen whether all of this means new music’s on the way. Harry’s last album, Fine Line, came out in 2019.
Harry just wrapped the U.S. leg of his Love On Tour and will pick up the European and South American halves starting in June, following his appearance at Coachella. The last tour date is set for December 10 in Brazil.
