The day after Florida took credit for sending two planeloads of undocumented immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Gov. Ron DeSantis suggested the flights were to “protect” the state while the backlash … Click to Continue »
Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner of White Cherry Entertainment have been named executive producers of the 95th Oscars, Academy CEO Bill Kramer announced on Saturday (Sept. 17). For the eighth consecutive year, Weiss also will direct the show, which will air live on ABC and broadcast on outlets worldwide on Sunday, March 12, 2023. It will be Weiss’s second time and Kirshner’s first time producing the Oscars.
“We are thrilled to have Glenn and Ricky at the helm,” Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang said in a statement. “Their expertise in live television production is exactly what the Oscars needs. We look forward to working closely with them, our board of governors and the board’s awards committee to deliver an exciting and energized show.”
Will Packer and Shayla Cowan produced the 94th Oscars telecast, which went off the rails when Will Smith walked onstage and slapped presenter Chris Rock. “The Slap” got people talking about the Oscars — but for all the wrong reasons. The shocking moment probably got 100 times more attention than the announcement of the best picture winner, CODA. Smith resigned from the Academy, but was nonetheless barred from Academy events for a period of 10 years.
Weiss has directed dozens of live televised events, including seven previous Oscars shows and 21 Tony Awards shows. Weiss’ additional directing credits include last year’s multi-network Inaugural Night special Celebrating America, the Democratic National Convention, the Kennedy Center Honors, the Primetime Emmy Awards, the American Music Awards, the BET Awards, New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and the Academy of Country Music Awards.
Kirshner’s credits include the Tony Awards, 14 Super Bowl Halftime Shows, Night of Too Many Stars, the Primetime Emmy Awards, the Democratic National Convention and various Presidential Inaugurals.
The Academy also announced other key members of the creative team for next year’s Oscars.
David Chamberlin will return for the fourth consecutive year to executive produce ABC’s The Oscars Red Carpet Show, the live lead-in to the 95th Oscars broadcast. Chamberlin leads Full Day Productions, with credits including the Savage X Fenty Show, The Wonderful World of Disney: Magical Holiday Celebration, multiple 30 for 30 films, Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli, NFL Honors and the ESPY Awards.
Lisa Love and Raúl Àvila will join the team for the first time to reimagine the Oscars red carpet aesthetic. Àvila is the creative director for the Met Gala, and Love is a creative contributor overseeing various aspects of the event. They led the creative team for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ 2021 and 2022 galas.
Kenny Gravillis joins the team for the first time to conceptualize the key art for this year’s Oscars marketing campaign. His design agency, Gravillis Inc., recently rebranded Orion Pictures and has developed key art and campaigns for numerous movies, including Dune, Summer of Soul, Birds of Prey, Queen & Slim, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, Free Solo and Iris. A member of the Academy’s marketing and public relations branch, Gravillis also created posters and collateral materials for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ retail store.
Misty Buckley and Alana Billingsley join the team for the first time as production designers. They comprise the first women-led design team on the Oscars. Buckley has designed world tours and productions for such artists as Ariana Grande, Kacey Musgraves and Coldplay, including the British band’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. Buckley also designed the 2021 Grammys, the London 2012 Paralympics Closing Ceremony, the 2015 Rugby World Cup Opening Ceremony, the 2022 Commonwealth Games ceremonies, the Brit Awards and numerous television productions for the BBC and ITV. Billingsley was an art director on six previous Oscars broadcasts. Additional credits include the Kennedy Center Honors, the Primetime Emmy Awards, the CMA Awards, the BET Awards, Disney’s The Little Mermaid Live! and the 2019 Glastonbury Festival.
The 95th Oscars will be held on March 12, 2023, at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood. The show will be televised live on ABC and in more than 200 territories worldwide.
Lea Michele is passing her time in quarantine on TikTok after testing positive for COVID-19 last week. She launched her own TikTok account on Saturday (Sept. 17), poking fun at a dramatic recreation of her performance on Broadway’s Funny Girl with one of her own.
The original TikTok video, created by Javi Rodriguez, featured an impersonation of “Lea Michele on opening night of Funny Girl” that others commented was pretty accurate: “As someone who just saw the show tonight, I can say with 100% certainty that this is what happened,” one person had written.
Michele, who’s currently on a 10-day break from her role as Fanny Brice in the Broadway revival show just after her run in the show began, did her own take of the “Don’t Rain on My Parade” entrance on TikTok.
“duet with @javirod305 #funnygirl Clearly I can’t wait to get back to @funnygrlbwy next week,” she captioned the clip on Saturday.
Michele had just taken over the starring role on Sept. 6, after standby Julie Benko filled in following Beanie Feldstein’s exit from the production in July. Michele is due to return to the stage on Sept. 20.
Watch her first post on TikTok here and embedded in the tweet below.
Blake Lively, who is expecting her fourth child with husband Ryan Reynolds, posted several personal photos of herself with her friends and family Saturday (Sept. 17) on Instagram — featuring her baby bump and a cameo from Taylor Swift.
The actress posted the photo album in hopes that showing herself pregnant would make the paparazzi less interested in getting a shot of her without permission.
The seventh photo in Lively’s 10-image collection of personal pictures showed her in a bikini, hugging her pal Swift. The pair both grinned at the camera for the snapshot.
“Here are photos of me pregnant in real life so the 11 guys waiting outside my home for a unicorn sighting will leave me alone,” Lively wrote on Instagram Saturday evening. “You freak me and my kids out.”
“Thanks to everyone else for all the love and respect and for continuing to unfollow accounts and publications who share photos of children. You have all the power against them. And thank you to the media who have a ‘No Kids Policy.’ You all make all the difference,” she said.
Lively and Swift are longtime friends whose paths have also crossed professionally: Swift used the names of Lively and Reynolds’ children (James, Inez and Betty) in her 2020 song “Betty” after featuring their daughter James introducing her 2017 track “Gorgeous,” and Lively directed Swift’s “I Bet You Think About Me” music video in 2021.
See the photos Lively shared of herself while pregnant on Instagram.
Life Is Beautiful, Las Vegas’ block-party festival, returned to the streets downtown for its ninth edition on Friday (Sept. 16). The three-day cacophony of music, art, comedy and food set amid the lights of 18 electric blocks always delivers a number of surprises for both attendees and performers. 2022 was no exception. With stand-out sets from Charli XCX, Alison Wonderland and Blu DeTiger, this one belonged to the women who dominated Friday’s lineup.
Blu DeTiger
Rising star Blu DeTiger performed not once, but three times on Friday: first her own set on the Huntridge stage, then at the Toyota Music Den and later at the official Life Is Beautiful after party at the Sand Dollar Lounge inside the Plaza Hotel, where she DJed and riffed on her bass. During her festival turn, the bass prodigy was dreamy, funky, poppy heaven on her own tasty songs such as “Cotton Candy Lemonade,” “Toast with Butter” and “Crash Course” — and then with covers of Gorillaz, OutKast and M.I.A. Closing out the 40-minute set with Vintage, and ripping on the bass, DeTiger left us wanting more and assured she would deliver.
Billboard talked after the set with DeTiger, who shared that while she embraces her following on TikTok, where she rose to fame, nothing beats the live crowd. “I released most of my music during the pandemic. I got a lot of my fanbase during the pandemic, and I started playing shows at a certain level because that’s how the trajectory was going. I suddenly had all these people that knew the words,” she says. “I’d rather the real human performance over performing to a phone.”
Alison Wonderland
Australian DJ and producer Alex Sholler, also known as Alison Wonderland, is the current reigning queen of EDM — and she straightened that crown closing out day one with a booming set that showcased her range of talents. Playing until 1 a.m. in the Fremont tent, she provided a divergent sound to the other headliner of the night, indie rockers Arctic Monkeys on the Downtown Stage. The Church of Wonderland was the theme of the set with stunning lasers and projections as she played her remix of Dua Lipa’s “New Rules,” “U Don’t Know” and numerous tracks from her new album Loner, like “Something Real.” Singing, DJing and cello playing, she offers something fans just can’t get from other EDM artists. Seeing her live is like taking a trip through her soul — raw, visceral, churning and burning, yet delicate and intricate. Sholler told Billboard that playing Life Is Beautiful in 2018 stills stands out in her mind.
“It was the energy. It’s always the energy that makes me remember a show. I remember it just being such a rush. And I was having a really good moment in life at that time, too,” she says.
Charli XCX
Playing the intimate Huntridge stage, Charli XCX easily could’ve occupied space on the main stage. It’s through her festival sets that you really get the scope of her body of work and its hits. From “Lightning” to “I Love It,” the Greek goddess-themed staging created a stunning visual presence while the sing-along quality of her catalog was pure auditory pleasure. Her energy carried over to the crowd, which bounced back to the stage and her dancers. The biggest treat of the night was “Hot in It,” a Tiësto collab — playing it in the town the DJ unquestionably dominates.
Shaggy, Cage the Elephant and More Highlights
Other top acts included Shaggy on the BACARDÍ stage, Cage the Elephant and Coin on the Downtown stage, Wet Leg on the Huntridge stage and Sonny Fodera on the Fremont stage.
Shaggy brought the party with all fun tracks that everyone sings along to, including “Angel,” “Boombastic” and “It Wasn’t Me.” He shouted out his collaboration with Sting on the Frank Sinatra-homage album Com Fly Wid Mi, performing “That’s Life.”
Playing off the fun house vibes of the night at the BACARDÍ stage, Oliver Tree was a delicious festival snack, riding on stage in a scooter, making reference to the heat by describing himself as a pork chop and playing an extra huge guitar. Appropriately, his album Ugly Is Beautiful was prominently featured.
T-Pain, who dropped in when Migos dropped out, was the perfect day one closer on the BACARDÍ stage. His collaborative hits “Black and Yellow” with Wiz Khalifa and “Good Life” with Kanye West are festival bangers that never grow stale.
Before closer Arctic Monkeys, Cage the Elephant could have easily been the headliner of the night. The band, fronted by Matt Shultz, moved up the lineup quite a bit from their turn in 2017, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the theatrics. Shultz has the persona of Iggy Pop crossed with Mick Jagger, and he banged out the hits, wore at least three extravagant hats and stage dived into the crowd while wrapping himself in his fishnet tights. At one point, he even stopped and started a song over as a drone show appeared in the night’s sky for the website Factz.com. Unrelated to the festival, the colorful flying devices paraded into a letter “Z” pierced by an arrow.
Day two will feature Lorde, Gorillaz, Bob Moses, Hope Tala, Kygo and many more.
Lorde teased the possibility of new music during her headlining set at Primavera Sound in Los Angeles on Friday (Sept. 16).
The 25-year-old alt-pop pioneer, who has been touring North America in support of her latest album, 2021’s Solar Power, delighted fans at the Southern California festival after revealing that her next release may be arriving soon.
“Who knows what will come next?” the New Zealand songstress casually stated while running though the themes of past three albums. “Well, I know. And you’ll know sometime soon.”
She added about her past music, “When I was a teenager it was about not being a teenager, when I was 20 it was about a boy, (and) now it’s about the climate.”
Lorde’s debut album, Pure Heroine, arrived in 2013, bowing at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. The set featured the hit song “Royals,” which spent nine weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 that same year. “Team,” which was also featured on the set, reached the top 10 of the chart.
The singer-songwriter’s 2017 follow-up album, Melodrama, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and last year’s Solar Power started at No. 5.
Lorde also touched on the climate change theme of Solar Power during her gig at Primavera Sound.
“You all felt that heat wave last week,” she said, referencing California’s epic mid-September temperatures, which exceeded 100 degrees in many areas. “Do not forget that this is an emergency. Don’t acclimatize to 112-degree weather. This is f—ed up; it’s the defining crisis of our lives and I’m so terrified f—ing terrified for the future. All we can do is be really present to it, try and vote with the climate in mind, and go outside — it’s the best thing.”
Watch a fan-captured video of Lorde hinting at new music during Primavera Sound on Twitter here.
Three South Florida men face possible life prison sentences after being accused by federal agents of holding Cuban migrants hostage in a Hialeah stash house in exchange for $15,000 from … Click to Continue »
After the state’s Board of Education chair insinuated Thursday that he wants Broward Schools Superintendent Vickie Cartwright suspended or fired, three of the nine Broward School Board members said Friday … Click to Continue »
TALLAHASSEE — Florida’s unemployment rate might be about as low as it can go as it remained at 2.7% in August. The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity on Friday released … Click to Continue »
LOS ANGELES — Mario Lundes greeted first lady Jill Biden at the Homeboy Industries bakery Friday afternoon eager — but nervous — to share his redemption story. “It’s hard, but … Click to Continue »
