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This week's new releases include an album from Imagine Dragons and the return of Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez as unlikely crime-solving neighbors in "Only Murders in the Building."
This week’s new entertainment releases include a new album from Imagine Dragons, the reuniting of “Home Improvement” sitcom buddies Tim Allen and Richard Karn for “More Power” and the return of Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez as unlikely crime-solving New York City neighbors in Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building.” The biggest new movie streaming this week is “The Princess,” coming to Hulu on July 1, starring Joey King as a royal who refuses to marry her intended. And Ken Burns adds his heft to “Hiding in Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness,” which gives a voice to young people with mental health conditions and those in their lives.
Sean “Diddy” Combs spoke about his own dream like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. while accepting the highest honor at the BET Awards. The music mogul said his “new dream” involves Black people being free and unified after receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. Combs' honor comes on the night when a few other big stars Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monae and Jazmine Sullivan strongly criticized the Supreme Court’s recent decision to strip away women’s constitutional protection for abortion. Silk Sonic came away with two awards including album of the year for “An Evening with Silk Sonic.”
We may not talk about Bruno, but we can see Mirabel, live and in person. Mirabel, the star of the animated hit Disney film, “Encanto,” made her in-person debut on Sunday at Walt Disney World in Florida. Character performers portraying Mirabel are part of a procession that moves through the Magic Kingdom park throughout the day. The “Disney Adventure Friends Cavalcade” procession also includes the characters of Miguel from the film, “Coco,” as well as Nick and Judy from the film, “Zootopia.”“Encanto” won the Oscar for best animated feature film at this year’s Academy Awards. The film produced the hit song, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.”
Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Presley biopic “Elvis” shook up theaters with an estimated $30.5 million in weekend ticket sales, but — in a box-office rarity — “Elvis” tied “Top Gun: Maverick,” which also reported $30.5 million, for No. 1 in theaters. Final figures Monday, once Sunday’s grosses are tabulated, will sort out which film ultimately won the weekend. But for now, the unlikely pair of “Elvis” and “Maverick” are locked in a dance off. “Elvis” surpassed expectations. “Top Gun: Maverick” became the first 2022 release to reach $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales. It's also Tom Cruise's first $1 billion movie.
For two years, former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords allowed a film crew to shadow her and husband Sen. Mark Kelly. The result is a film titled “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down." An intimate look at Giffords’ recovery after the 2011 shooting that changed her life. But it's also an insider view of how the couple navigated gun control campaigns and a Senate campaign during a pandemic. The movie could not be any timelier on the heels of the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting. Gun reform debates have been raging in government, schools and the U.S. Supreme Court. The documentary is from the same team behind Academy Award-nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary “RBG." The Giffords film arrives in theaters July 15.
Presley never wrote a memoir. Nor did he keep a diary. His music could have been a window into his inner life, but he didn’t even write his songs.
After more than six decades of making bicycles soar, sending swimmers panicking and other spellbinding close encounters, John Williams is putting the final notes on what may be his last film score. In an interview with The Associated Press, Williams says the fifth “Indiana Jones” film will probably be his last film. The 90-year-old composer is instead devoting most of his time to writing concert pieces, including a piano concerto. Still, Williams says he doesn't want to “categorically eliminate any activity" — even biking. The Kennedy Center and Tanglewood are planning celebrations this summer in honor of Williams' 90th birthday.
After more than six decades of making bicycles soar, sending swimmers panicking and other spellbinding close encounters, John Williams is putting the final notes on what may be his last film score. In an interview with The Associated Press, Williams says the fifth “Indiana Jones” film will probably be his last film. The 90-year-old composer is instead devoting most of his time to writing concert pieces, including a piano concerto. Still, Williams says he doesn't want to “categorically eliminate any activity" — even biking. The Kennedy Center and Tanglewood are planning celebrations this summer in honor of Williams' 90th birthday.
“MJ,” the hit-filled Broadway musical about the King of Pop, got a huge bump at the box office after nabbing four Tony Awards and getting valuable exposure in front of millions during its electric telecast performance. The Michael Jackson show may have lost the best new musical crown to “A Strange Loop,” but it won the best actor in a musical trophy for Myles Frost and pulled in $1,661,000 during the week after the Tonys. That was the biggest box office jump last week on Broadway and a new high for the show. “MJ” plans a national tour kicking off in Chicago in July 2023.
Actor Marlee Matlin, director Jason Reitman and producer Jason Blum are joining the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The organization that puts on the Oscars said Wednesday that they are among the 12 Hollywood professionals who have been elected to the board for the first time. Others joining include cinematographer Dion Beebe, casting director Richard Hicks and marketing and public relations executive Megan Colligan. Each of the academy’s 17 branches are represented by three governors who help set and guide the strategy for the academy and manage its financial health.
New footage of former President Donald Trump and his inner circle taken both before and after Jan. 6, 2021, is now in the possession of the House committee investigating the deadly attack on the Capitol. The revelation of the never-before-seen footage came to light Tuesday amidst the committee’s public hearings. British filmmaker Alex Holder revealed on Twitter that he had complied with a congressional subpoena sent last week to turn over all the footage he shot in the final weeks of Trump's 2020 reelection campaign. He said he plans to go in for a deposition with lawmakers on Thursday.
When “Elvis” opens in theaters Friday, it will resurrect one of the most iconic figures in American music in the biggest, most bedazzled film to ever try to capture the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. And it will propel Austin Butler, an Orange County, California, native best known to this point for playing Tex Watson in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood,” onto a far bigger stage. Butler’s is an electric Elvis, not campy nostalgia act, with more Bowie in him than you might expect. “Elvis,” which director Baz Luhrmann co-scripted, tells the singer's story through Presley’s infamous manager, Col. Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks.
This week's new releases include albums from Soccer Mommy and Luke Combs, the the action comedy "The Man From Toronto," and the 10-episode, coming-of-age comedy "Gordita Chronicles."
“Lightyear” did not go to infinity (or beyond) in its first weekend in theaters. Pixar’s first major theatrical release since March 2020 blasted off with $51 million in its first weekend in North America, according to studio estimates on Sunday. It opened lower than expected and failed to conquer “Jurassic World: Dominion” which held on to the first-place spot with $58.7 million its second weekend. And in its fourth weekend, “Top Gun: Maverick” dropped only slightly, bringing in an additional $44 million. Its domestic total is now at $466.2 million. Globally, the high-flying sequel has grossed over $885 million.
On the eve of Juneteenth, the Tribeca Festival came to a close with the Rev. Al Sharpton documentary “Loudmouth.” The premiere united on stage Sharpton and Spike Lee — two towering New York figures who have each been vilified and celebrated for their championing of racial justice. The event was held Saturday at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. “Loudmouth” contextualizes Sharpton’s legacy as an extension of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. John Lewis and others, while chronicling his unique longevity despite plenty of naysayers along the way.
The heart of Cooper Raiff's sophomore feature “Cha Cha Real Smooth," available now on Apple TV+, isn't his post-grad character who is living back at his mother's suburban home, working a dead end job and wondering what to do with his life. It's the mother and daughter he meets while attending a bar mitzvah with his little brother. Dakota Johnson plays the young mother with an autistic teenage daughter. Raiff was inspired to write this mother-daughter relationship because of his own sister, who is disabled. A nationwide casting search led them to Vanessa Burghardt, an autistic actor who is making her film debut.
French film actor and amateur race car driver Jean-Louis Trintignant has died at age 91. Trintignant earned acclaim for his starring role in the Oscar-winning “A Man and a Woman” half a century ago and went on to portray the brutality of aging in his later years. He died in his home in southern France, according to Bertrand Cortellini, who operated a vineyard with Trintignant. French news reports said Trintignant had prostate cancer. During a career that started when he was 19, Trintignant appeared in some 120 films. including starring with Brigitte Bardot in “And God ... Created Woman” in 1956.
Naomi Kawase had more material than she knew what to do with after being commissioned by the International Olympic Committee almost four years ago to make a documentary about the Tokyo Olympics. She wound up making two films looking at the Games themselves and also looking at the behind-the-scenes trouble. Each film is two hours long. Much was linked to the unprecedented one-year postponement caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. She says in an interview with The Associated Press “that I never wavered” once she had her two-film structure.
Malaysia’s film censors say it was Disney’s decision to ax the animated film “Lightyear” from the country’s cinemas after refusing to cut scenes promoting homosexuality. The Film Censorship Board says it had approved the movie but with modifications. Scenes and dialogues that it says violate film censorship regulations were ordered to “be cut and muted.” The board said Friday that Disney did not agree to its instructions and decided instead to cancel the screening. The board said it would not compromise on any LGBTQ scenes, but did not specify which scenes violated censorship guidelines. “Lightyear” includes a female character briefly kissing her female partner in one scene.
The NFL and NFL Films will donate footage to The HistoryMakers, which has grown to become the nation’s largest African American video oral history archive. Under terms of the agreement announced Wednesday, the NFL will provide two years of funding to The HistoryMakers along with hundreds of hours of footage from interviews with NFL African American players, including dozens of Pro Football Hall of Famers. NFL Films will provide production services to interview prominent players for inclusion to The HistoryMakers archives which is housed permanently at the Library of Congress.
The summer movie season has not, traditionally speaking, been known for its nuanced attention to female sexuality. But smack in the middle of Hollywood’s high season of masculine thrill rides and sci-fi fantasies is “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” a compassionate comedy in which Emma Thompson stars as a widow seeking romantic excitement with a suave sex worker, played by newcomer Daryl McCormack. The film, a Searchlight Pictures release debuting Friday on Hulu, is an intimate two-hander coursing with many seldom discussed issues of sexuality and shame, pleasure and repression.
🎧 "Toy Story" prequel "Lightyear" opens this week, but will "Top Gun" soar back into first at the box office?
Movie critic Bruce Miller says many of the beats Steven Spielberg introduced with “Jurassic Park” are repeated in "Dominion," but they’re not …