There’s another Britney Spears documentary in the works.
On Tuesday, Netflix teased Britney vs Spears ahead of a promised full trailer premiere on Wednesday.
The 18-second clip begins with text that reads, “The following audio is a voicemail from Britney Spears to a lawyer on January 21st, 2009 at 12:29 a.m.”
We then hear Britney’s voice saying, “Hi, my name is Britney Spears, I called you earlier. I’m calling again because I wanted to make sure that during the process of eliminating the conservatorship.”
The Netflix doc comes after Hulu/FX’s documentary The New York Times Presents: Framing Britney Spears reignited the #FreeBritney movement back in February.
The Rolling Stones No Filter 2021 photo, taken prior to Watts’ death/Credit: J. Rose
As previously reported, The Rolling Stones on Monday night played a private event at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA hosted by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, which was the group’s first gig without their late drummer, Charlie Watts, who died on August 24. Now, Mick Jagger has posted on Instagram a video of the emotional dedication he made to Watts from the stage at the event.
Jagger can be seen telling the crowd, “It’s a bit of a poignant night for us, ’cause this is our first tour in 59 years that we’ve done without our lovely Charlie Watts.”
As the crowd cheers, Mick continues. “And we all miss Charlie so much, we miss him as a band and we miss him as friends on and off the stage, and we got so many memories of Charlie and I’m sure some of you that seen us before have got memories of Charlie as well.”
“I hope you will remember him like we do, so we’d like to dedicate this show to Charlie,” Jagger adds to cheers. “So we’re gonna do it for Charlie!” Jagger then picks up a glass and raises it in a toast, handing the microphone to Ronnie Wood, who adds, “Charlie, we’re praying for you, man, and playing for you!”
“What will we do now?” Mick muses. “Now I’m all emotional.”
The band went on to play a 15-song set with veteran drummer Steve Jordan behind the kit. The Stones’ No Filter 2021 tour officially kicks off this weekend.
Netflix has released the first trailer for Passing, Rebecca Hall‘s directorial debut, starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga.
As previously noted, the film is based on Nella Larsen‘s 1929 novella of the same name. It follows two mixed-race women, played by Thompson and Negga, who reunite in their adulthood and discover that one of them is now passing for a white woman. André Holland, Bill Camp, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Antoinette Crowe-Legacy and Alexander Skarsgard also star. Passing hits select theaters on October 27, before becoming available to stream on Netflix November 10.
In other news, Ashton Sanders has been tapped to play yet another music icon, Deadline as learned. Sanders, who currently plays RZA in Hulu’s Wu-Tang: An American Saga, has joined the cast of the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody. He will take on the role of New Edition singer — and Houston’s ex-husband — Bobby Brown. As previously reported, Naomi Ackie will play the legendary singer in the new feature, which producer Clive Davissays will “present the full story of Whitney Houston impeccably and [ensure] that it will be realistic in every respect.” Kasi Lemmons serves as director, while Academy Award nominee Anthony McCarten will write the script. A release date for I Wanna Dance With Somebody has not yet been announced.
Finally, Ashanti is taking her talents back to the screen. According to Deadline, the singer will produce and star in the upcoming rom-com The Plus One. She will play Lizzie, a soon-to-be bride who asks her “Male of Honor,” Marshall, not to bring “his hated ex, Marie, to her destination wedding.” Unfortunately for Lizzie, Marshall invites Marie as his “plus one.” Additional casting has yet to be announced.
Ellen Pompeo provided an update about the fate of her long-running medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, and teased that the show may be ready to hang up the scrubs after 18 successful seasons.
“They’re not far off,” Pompeo, 51, told Entertainment Tonightwhen discussing fans’ theories that the five-time Emmy winning show will come to an end soon.
The actress, who stars as Doctor Meredith Grey, continued, “I mean, I’ve been trying to get away for years. I have been trying. It’s not because I haven’t been trying. I have strong relationships at the network and they have been very, very good to me, and have incentivized me to stay.”
Pompeo insisted that “creatively, as long as there’s something to do” she will continue starring on the ABC medical drama. “Miraculously, we keep coming up with ways to have a reason to stay and if there’s a reason, that warrants it,” she teased.
Season 17, she says, was the definition of creativity because it was filmed during a global pandemic. “We had to work around COVID obviously and so we had to be creative and think of ways to keep the show going and still be safe,” she said.
When asked about the possibility of a groundbreaking 19th season, the actress joked, “Oh please! Oh my goodness, can we pray together?”
However, Pompeo insisted her hands are tied when it comes to confirming if Grey’s is about to enter its final season, telling ET, “I’m not really supposed to say anything about it… I don’t want to be disrespectful to people I’ve promised things to.”
With the release of Final (Vol. 1) on Friday, Enrique Iglesias is winding down the album-making part of his career.
In a new interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, he says he’s “sticking to” his decision to stop making albums.
“Back in 2015-16, I was shooting a video and it just crossed my mind, my next album should be my final album,” Enrique says. “Granted, there’s volume one and volume two, because I have a record contract, to be honest…But I feel I’m in this chapter of my life and making an album, it’s a grueling process for me.”
The 46-year-old says he’s still going to write songs, but they just won’t be released in the format of an album.
Enrique is set to kick off his joint tour with Ricky Martin on September 25 in Las Vegas. He tells Zane you probably won’t see him do a Vegas residency any time soon, though.
“Because I don’t like performing in the same city every single night, at least right now,” he explains. “And I’ve been asked to do Vegas for the past five, six, seven, eight years, and I’ve always said no.”
“I like to travel,” Enrique adds. “…No matter how many times I’ve been to that same city, there’s always something different. I love that. There’s always something different with the fans, and I like meeting different fans.”
(WASHINGTON) — FBI Director Christopher Wray told a U.S. Senate panel Tuesday morning that the bureau has been forced to surge resources toward its domestic terrorism investigations in the past 18 months — increasing personnel by 260% to help handle a caseload that has more than doubled from roughly 1,000 ongoing investigations to 2,700.
“Terrorism moves at the speed of social media,” Wray told the Senate Homeland Security Committee. “You have the ability of lone actors, disgruntled in one part of the country to spin up similar like-minded individuals in other parts of the country and urge them into action.”
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, who appeared alongside Wray, agreed with him that social media is a “terrain that can so easily propagate misinformation, false information and allow communications to occur among loosely affiliated individuals.”
Wray offered more detail during questioning with Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah.
“The first bucket, the homegrown violent extremists, has been humming along fairly consistently at about 1,000 investigations — sometimes a little more sometimes a little less — over the last few years,” Wray explained. “The domestic violent extremists bucket, had been going up quite significantly over the last few years, which is why we’re now at 2,700 domestic terrorism investigations when if you went back two and a half years ago we’re probably more about 1,000 So it’s been a really significant jump there.”
Wray added that officials are “concerned that with developments in Afghanistan, among other things… I think we anticipate, unfortunately, growth in both categories as we look ahead, over the next couple years.”
Those numbers appear to be impacted significantly by the FBI’s hundreds of ongoing investigations into the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Overall, the FBI assesses that the January 6th siege of the Capitol Complex demonstrates a willingness by some to use violence against the government in furtherance of their political and social goals,” Wray said in written testimony provided to the Senate Homeland Security Committee. “This ideologically motivated violence — domestic terrorism — underscores the symbolic nature of the National Capital Region and the willingness of some Domestic Violent Extremists to travel to events in this area and violently engage law enforcement and their perceived adversaries.”
Wray said that even with the surge of resources to tackle domestic terrorism cases, the FBI has not been forced to divert attention away from investigations into threats posed by foreign terrorist organizations like al-Qaida and ISIS, and added the bureau is “certainly watching the evolving situation in Afghanistan.”
In the past several years, Wray said the FBI has thwarted potential terrorist attacks in at least seven cities, including Las Vegas, Tampa, New York, Cleveland, Kansas City, Miami and Pittsburgh.
Wray also flagged what he described as “a sharp and deeply disturbing uptick in violence against the law enforcement community.” He said thatin just the past eight months, 52 law enforcement officers have been killed feloniously in the line of duty, already lapsing the total number killed in all of 2020.
(NEW YORK) — A 16-year-old boy charged in connection with the 2019 stabbing death of Barnard College student Tessa Majors pleaded guilty to second-degree murder Tuesday in Manhattan Criminal Court.
Luchiano Lewis, who was charged as an adult, was 14 when he and two other teenagers were accused in the fatal stabbing of 18-year-old Majors during a mugging gone wrong on Dec. 11, 2019, in Manhattan’s Morningside Park, near Barnard College.
Majors, a freshman at the school, was stabbed several times before she staggered up a flight of stairs and uttered, “Help me, I’m being robbed,” authorities said.
Lewis also pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery Tuesday.
Lewis appeared in court in a dark suit and tie and raced through an allocution in which he said he saw feathers emerge from Majors’ winter coat but did not realize she had been stabbed, let alone killed, until the next morning when he recognized her on the news as the young woman he and the others tried to rob.
The family of Majors sat in the front row and listened to Lewis explain how the trio of middle school friends plotted to rob people in the park. He pinned the idea on 16-year-old Rashaun Weaver, who has pleaded not guilty. A 13-year-old juvenile has pleaded guilty and is serving his sentence.
“He wanted the three of us to do robberies in Morningside Park,” Lewis said of Weaver. “I assumed Rashaun had a knife on him, but using a knife was not part of our plan.”
Lewis will be sentenced Oct. 14, at which point Majors’ family plans to make a statement in court, prosecutors said.
“Are you pleading guilty because you are in fact guilty?” asked Judge Robert Mandelbaum.
“Yes,” Lewis replied.
Police and prosecutors have said Weaver wielded the knife and Lewis guessed he “threw it in the sewer” after the murder.
“This was not a premeditated murder as we heard inside,” Jeffrey Lichtman, the noted criminal defense attorney who is representing Weaver, said outside court. “These were 14- and a 13-year-old boys and we should remember that.”
Once upon a time, Nicole Kidman was married to Tom Cruise. Now she’s reflecting on that time in her life, specifically about how she was treated by the media.
When asked by Harper’s Bazaar if she was annoyed with the media’s obsession over the high profile relationship, the Australian actress replied, “I was young. I think I offered it up?”
“Maybe I’ve gotten a bit more trepidatious, but I’m always trying to be as open as possible. I just prefer to live in the world that way,” she continued, before a moment of silence. She then continued, “I’m wary at times, and I’ve been hurt, but at the same time I much prefer a warm approach rather than a prickly shutdown approach.”
Referencing her current husband, country singer Keith Urban, the Nine Perfect Strangers star added, “My husband, Keith, says that when he met me, he said, ‘How’s your heart?’ And I apparently responded, ‘Open.'”
Kidman, 54, and Cruise were married for 11 years before divorcing in 2001. They share two children: Isabella Jane, 28, and Connor, 26.
The Big Little Lies star and Urban wed in 2006 and they also have two children together — daughters Sunday Rose, 13, and Faith Margaret, 10.
Mudvayne will no longer perform at this weekend’s Louder than Life festival due to frontman Chad Gray testing positive for COVID-19.
“After taking every precaution to follow CDC Covid protocols during rehearsals and recent performance Chad Gray and a few staff members have unfortunately tested positive for Covid-19,” the band writes in an Instagram post.
“The safety of our organization, fans and festival partners must come first,” the statement continues. “We are left no choice but to cancel our performance at Louder than Life this weekend.”
The decision to cancel must’ve been especially painful for Mudvayne, who reunited this year after being on hiatus for over a decade. The band just played their first show since 2009 at the Inkcarceration festival earlier in September.
Mudvayne still plans to play the Aftershock festival in October and Welcome to Rockville in November. They’re also on the lineup for the 2022 Voragos destination festival.
Previously unseen footage of the late Chris Cornell is featured in a new video released to celebrate his daughter Toni‘s 17th birthday.
The video, which was posted to Cornell’s Instagram, shows the father-daughter pair playing music together over the years, including a particularly moving clip of Chris strumming “You Are My Sunshine” on an acoustic guitar while an infant Toni hangs on its neck.
Vicky Cornell, Chris’ widow and Toni’s mother, also posted a video of her own, set to her daughter’s version of the Prince-written, Sinead O’Conner-performed classic “Nothing Compares 2 U.”
Last year, the Cornell family released No One Sings Like You Anymore, a compilation of covers Chris had recorded before his death in 2017. It marks his final, fully completed studio album.
