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Is John Dutton killed off in the first episode of season 5.2 of “Yellowstone”?
That’s the rumor. Tomorrow night, “Yellowstone” screens for press after the remaining cast does a day of interviews.
So far, there are no press screening links for the show which returns on Sunday to the Paramount Channel.
That’s a bad sign for the show. Paramount Channel is keeping it under wraps to surprise viewers. Otherwise, they’d be pushing reviews now for big ratings come Sunday.
There will be a premiere tomorrow night at the Museum of Modern Art followed by a small party. The guests will likely be asked not to reveal any spoilers.
But Costner is gone. He’s not appearing in Season 5.2 at all except in flashbacks.
How will Dutton leave the show? Shot? Heart attack? Just disappear? I guess we’ll see. Meantime, Costner is still flogging a head horse with his “Horizon” movies even if no one wants them.
Originally Lions Gate had it set for April 2025. Now it’s moving to October 3rd, 2025.
The reason could be reshoots. It could also be for the Oscars in 2026.
“Michael” stars his real life nephew, Jaafar Jackson, son of Jermaine Jackson, with Nia Long, Laura Harrier, Miles Teller and Colman Domingo rounding out the cast.
Antoine Fuqua is the director, although he’s never made a movie with so much music. The Michael Jackson story is also rife with issues. Do they include all the scandals? Or concentrate on the career and music legacy?
The scandals are numerous. They include the 2005 trial — Michael was acquitted — to the 1996 settlement with Jordan Chandler, hyperbaric chamber, Bubbles, marriages to Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe, etc.
The Jackson Estate is approving everything. They made wise decisions with the Broadway show, “MJ,” which just covers the period around “Thriller” and leaves out the messy stuff. But the movie may prove to be more problematic. So a delay will buy them some time.
PS The scandals don’t matter. The music has outlasted everything.
Sting led his Broadway cast of “The Last Ship” through a semi-private show last night at 54Below.
The Tony nominated score in concert was supposed to serve as a 10th anniversary tribute to raise money for Project ALS. One star of the original cast, Aaron Lazar, has been diagnosed with the condition.
Many of the original cast and orchestra showed up to two packed performances back to back at the beautiful space below Studio 54. The remarkable Fred Applegate, Rachel Tucker, Sally Ann Triplett, and Shawna Mahic were among those who flew in on their own dime from far flung places, ready to put on a show.
But a couple of the leading men were tied up with other projects. Who took their places at the last minute? Sting, of course. The international rock star wound up singing more than half the show he wrote more than a decade ago. It was an unexpected treat.
Sting explained to the crowd that the men were AWOL. Otherwise, he cracked wise, “I don’t need this much fucking attention!”
He opened the show with “All This Time,” and later crooned “Dead Man’s Boots,” “The Night the Pugilist Learned How to Dance,” “Jock the Welder,” and most notably, “What Say You, Meg?” — the brilliant number sung by Lazar in the show. On a video piped into the room, Lazar recounted how Sting came to him during previews and said, “I wrote a song for you.” They went with musical director Rob Mathes into a rehearsal room, where Lazar’s mind was blown. “What Say You Meg?” is now a classic. Hearing Sting himself sing it last night was a slice of nirvana.
Mathes was the music supervisor last night, and the show was directed uniquely by Tom Ridgely. It’s not easy to fit a whole Broadway show with a big cast into a small space and onto an even smaller stage, but Ridgely did it by placing a sizeable chorus of singers on the other side of the room, nestled among the audience. The result was a spine tingling sonic wonder.
What a night! Broadway veteran Fred Applegate led the finale of the title song with great poignancy. Fred came in from his semi-retirement in California with his wife and son, Ethan, who sang with the chorus. (Note: Fred is always available, he says, for the right role!)
And Sting? What can you say? He’s in the middle of his 3.0 Tour but took a pause to put on the night. His voice is one of the wonders of the world, it just gets better and better. His sense of humor and spontaneity never fail him, either, as the night had one or two “flubs,” but he rolled with the punches. Listening the score, “The Last Ship” seems ready for a revival at maybe Encores! The songs — even the ones that were cut — are a melodic miracle.
Here’s Aaron Lazar from the original show, followed by clips from last night:
Last night in Philadelphia Lady Gaga took the stage with a bunch of celebrities at Kamala Harris’s closing rally.
Gaga’s performance of her hit “Edge of Glory” was sensational and moving, just gorgeous. There wasn’t a dry eye in the audience or at home on the live stream.
Gaga also performed to perfection “God Bless America”:
FULL VIDEO: Lady Gaga performing "God Bless America" at the final Kamala Harris rally in Philadelphia. pic.twitter.com/kcy4D31xvc
Today my old friend, Marshall Fine, publishes his first novel.
Fine, the esteemed veteran film critic, has written a bunch of books about cinema. He was the long time critic for Gannett newspapers. He ran the New York Film Critics Circle, as well. To top that off, his documentary, “Robert Klein Still Can’t Stop His Leg,” about comedian Robert Klein, had its debut at the 2016 South by Southwest Film Festival. It’s a must see.
But now in his first turn to fiction, Marshall is publishing a book you will give every sister, mother, and girlfriend you know. “The Autumn of Ruth Winters” is a finely wrought character study of a 60ish Minnesota woman who has to remake her life when her husband dies.
Like Ruth — and believe it or not the Coen brothers — Fine is from St. Louis Park, Minnesota. He has a keen observant eye for storytelling, so his Ruth recalls in detail her life of ups and downs up to the moment. But then unexpected things begin to happen, and she has to recalibrate for the future. The book has echoes of Jane Austen in modern form that droves of readers will relate to about how to navigate life alone when you get some unexpected curveballs.
Just wait because “The Autumn of Ruth Winters” is likely to get filmed by any number of movie companies looking to tap into the huge female market.
Advance reviews have been off the charts! Actor-writer Griffin Dunne said: “If it is possible to write a bildungsroman about a woman in her sixties, Marshall Fine has done it. Fine takes his reserved heroine, Ruth Winters, on a journey through buried resentments, stifled grief, and petty slights until she finally accepts the love and compassion that was within her all along. She blossomed on the page like Jane Austen’s Elinor Dashwood right before my eyes. Marshall Fine has created a beautiful and moving character, that if we open our hearts, we will see Ruth Winters everywhere.”
Another rave from Oscar nominated “The Holdovers” actor Paul Giamatti: “The moving story of a lonely, ordinary woman told with compassion, wit, and an incredible wealth of very human detail. Time, memory, family, and second chances, it deals with it all. I was rooting for Ruth Winters all the way to the end.”
Bravo! My advice is download it or order it now. “The Autumn of Ruth Winters” may turn out to be the salve we need today!
Melania Trump didn’t get much of a sales bounce in the final week of the presidential campaign.
Her memoir, “Melania,” fell another 50% and sold just under 17,000 copies according to Circana BookScan.
Total sales for “Melania” are under 150,000 and falling fast.
Melania appeared twice in public recently, mostly just to sell copies of the book. But the response has been tepid, at best.
The book is listed as non fiction, but comes across like fiction, a bad novel that would be rejected by all publishers.
is there a correlation between votes tomorrow and the declining sales? There’s certainly one between the sales trouble and empty seats at Trump’s rallies.
Melania is still selling a $250 collectors’ edition to anyone who is interested. Her best bet now is letting Barron sell some copies to the Strand Book Store — if they’ll take them!
will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas released the best campaign song ever. I wish it had come out weeks ago, but we’ll take it!
Meantime, Bruce Springsteen opened a show for the first time ever with “She’s the One.” This was a tribute to Kamala, of course, who Bruce has already endorsed.
Trumpers have Ted Nugent and Lee Greenwood. Harris has every smart pop, rock, R&B, and country star.
Quincy Jones, the greatest of the great, composer, conductor, producer, has died at age 91. He was a giant. There’s no other word to describe him. He was music royalty. (Aretha Franklin even bowed down to him.) I was lucky enough to know him for many years.
There’s a comprehensive obit in the NY Times, although you can never get enough in because was 24/7 legend who never stopped. He wrote Soul Bossa Nova, produced Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party,” the theme song for “Sanford and Son,” and worked with Frank Sinatra for years. He had major funk hits with the Brothers Johnson (“Strawberry Letter 23,” “Stomp,” “I’ll Be Good to Ya” in the mid 70s.
After all that fame, he hit it bigger than ever producing Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad” albums. “Thriller” is the best selling album of all time right up to this minute. In 2985, Quincy produced and orchestrated “We Are the World,” the all star charity video. His famous line to the 30 more superstars: “Check your ego at the door.”
Twenty five years later he conducted an anniversary version featuring Barbra Streisand among others. The whole “We Are the World” experience was chronicled in the exceptional documentary.
Q was married four times, most famously to “Mod Squad” actress Peggy Lipton, and had a three year relationship with actress Nastassja Kinski. He had 7 children including the actress Rashida Jones. He loved the nightlife, and parties. We often joked about how the girlfriends and dates were getting younger as he got older. He told me, half joking. that his age and the girls’ couldn’t add up to more than 100. I asked him, what happens when you’re 82 and she’s 18? He said, “We’ll see about that.”
No one was kinder or smarter. We just hit it off, which was very special to this music fan. Quincy Jones had an amazing life. He and actor Michael Caine were born on the same day — March 14th — in the same year and often celebrated together. Imagine that back when “Bad” and “We Are the World” came out, it was the same time he composed the music for the movie, “The Color Purple,” which he co-produced with Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg.
This is stunning: Q had 28 Grammy Awards, an Emmy and a Tony, and an honorary Oscar. He also had 7 Oscar nominations. The accolades, philanthropy, just went on and on. He was a man who loved and enjoyed people and welcomed everyone who approached him.
Years ago he invented very crazy, expensive headphones for JBL/Harman Kardan. He gave me a pair that I still treasure. They’re huge and a little clunky, like wearing a recording studio on your head! I will wear them today listening to all his hits. Q, you will be sorely missed!
September 5th, 1972 — looking at it now — was not much different than October 7, 2023.
On the first date, Arab terrorists called Black September kidnapped and killed the 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team at the Munich games. It was a savage act, chronicled in the Steven Spielberg movie, “Munich” and Kevin MacDonald’s documentary, “One Day in September.”
Now we’ve got another point of view of the Munich massacre in Tim Fehlbaum’s “September 5th.” This film, concise and nail biting, is about how ABC Sports, led by Roone Arledge, Peter Jennings, and Jim McKay covered the attack instantly, live, from their Olympic headquarters in Munich — and kept it away from the news department.
“September 5th” is a short, ferocious movie that also brings up a lot of bad memories, not all of them 52 years old. You can’t not think about the Hamas massacre of 1,200 Jews at a music festival on October 7th, 2023. (The horrors are paralleled even though they’re not mentioned, of course, in the Fehlbaum film.)
The new film is a showcase memoir from ABC producer Geoff Mason, who’s still alive and was there when all hell broke loose. He’s played with wit and compassion by John Magaro, the 31 year old actor who recalls Dustin Hoffman or Richard Dreyfus and has already established quite a resume. Mason went on to collect 26 Emmy Awards and is a member of the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame. But he’s our go to guy as we meet Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) who would become a TV network titan, as well as a young Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker), producer Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) and the German interpreter who helped save the day (an astonishing Marianne Gebhardt).
So what happened on international TV when there was only room for one network at a time on a single satellite? When there were no cell phones, and no ProTools? When film had to be developed and then manually edited? When there was no Google for fact checking? Fehlbaum underscores the stark reality of how dogged journalism used to work by seamlessly including archival footage. Former ABC Wide World of Sports star Jim McKay, who’s been dead since 2008, for example, becomes a key supporting player.
Apart from the terrorism being no less psychotic than it is today, these are the questions answered by “September 5,” which feels like a child of “Spotlight” and “Lou Grant.” Fehlbaum conveys the immediacy of the unknown threat, knowing how it will turn out. But the terrorism is never far from our minds, and the connection to October 7th is unavoidable. Nothing has changed in 50 years.
Sarsgaard’s Arledge is solid, and only can indicate how in the future this TV exec would become a legend thanks to abrasive confidence. Magaro’s Mason is written as the central character, and the actor gets high marks for leading us through the emergency. He’s our guide. Benesch is the bright light of the film as interpreter Gebhardt who is pressed into service and becomes they key member of the group without warning.
There is no happy ending. But “September 5” will be revelatory to younger generations to see how the world operated without digital equipment. It’s not just how the news was gathered and sent back to the US on the spot, but also how certain analogue things we take for granted — like AM Radio — shouldn’t be eliminated so quickly. If it weren’t for German AM Radio, the ABC Sports producers would have been in the dark.
