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All Mariah Carey wanted for Christmas was to have her perennial holiday song at number 1 again.
Well, she got it at Billboard, where the charts are let’s say, fungible.
But the song has struggled this season to retain its crown.
On Spotify today, “All I Want” is number 5.
On iTunes, it’s number 4 on the holiday song chart, and number 10 on the pop chart. On the holiday album chart, the Carey Christmas album is number 7.
The record, which Carey trots out every year despite having no non holiday pop hits for years, got slagged this morning on New York’s Fox 5 by Rosanna Scotto on a hot mic.
“How much does she make from this shit?” Scotto asked. Hilarious.
Carey wrote the song with composer Walter Afanasieff, whose name rarely gets mentioned.
“All I Want” does benefit from streaming. Last week, according to Luminate, it sold only 3,100 paid downloads. But streaming kicked the total up to 257K. And still it wasn’t number 1.
Why is it number 1 on Billboard?
Meantime, the actual number 1 Christmas song this season is by Michael Buble and Carly Pearce. It’s called “‘”Maybe This Christmas,” released in 2011.
Writer E. Jean Carroll won two court cases against Donald Trump this year. One was for him attacking her sexually. (The judge called it “rape.”) That judgement was for $5 million.
The second case was for defamation of character. Award: $83.3 million.
Total damages: $88.3 million. Trump is appealing the judgements. He’s posted a bond of $91 million to cover everything. That’s in addition to his 34 felony count conviction.
But now, Carroll has posted to Twitter X that she’s under consideration to join Trump’s Advisory Board.
It’s hilarious. Carroll received the invitation in the mail and reproduced it on Twitter today.
2025 Golden Globes nominations will be announced at 8:30am. Yes, there are still Golden Globes. On CBS, January 5th, 2025. Nikki Glaser is the host. CBS picked them up after NBC dropped them. Historical note: the Globes were on CBS decades ago but dropped after a scandal involving Pia Zadora’s rich husband buying her an award.
Viola Davis and Ted Danson will get Lifetime Achievement Awards at a special dinner on January 3rd. The dinner is a new deal.
UPDATE So far, no Director nominations for Jon M. Chu for “Wicked.”This is a huge blow for Ridley Scott, who didn’t get Best Picture or Director for his hit sequel.
Somehow Glen Powell is nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a movie– “Hit Man”– he starred in. Huh?
Netflix got almost all of its noms for “Emilia Perez,” but nothing for “The Piano Lesson” and just Best Actress for Angelina Jolie in “Maria.”
The Globes rescued Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong from “The Apprentice.” They also gave Pamela Anderson a nod — and it’s deserved — for “The Last Showgirl.”
Nothing for Jennifer Lopez in “Unstoppable.” That’s a surprise.
EXCLUSIVE It doesn’t look like “Yellowstone” will end next week. I’ve confirmed that Season 6 is in negotiations. The show will return.
This was tipped during last night’s episode during the trailer for the finale. The so called final episode is dubbed the “season finale,” not the end of the series.
“Yellowstone” was tipped to end by everyone because the whole Kevin Costner issue. His character, John Dutton, has been killed off after the actor went to war with show creator Taylor Sheridan.
The plot of the last couple of episodes was that the Duttons had to sell their ranch, and they would be moving on.
But at the last minute last night, Kayce figured out how to save the ranch from financial ruin. Life will go on. New characters will come.
In a rather boring episode, Kevin Costner’s John Dutton is kind of swept away. Next week he gets a funeral. And then he will be forgotten. Meantime, fans complained on line during tonight’s show that a good 15 minutes was wasted showcasing Taylor Sheridan, the series creator, as a rodeo guy. It was pointless.
Almost nothing happened in this episode tonight, but the path is clear. 101 Productions and Paramount aren’t going to throw it all away, after all.
Will Matthew McConaughey ride into town? Or someone else? Most of the characters will return although Wes Bentley’s Jamie will probably get the hook.
The movie about Bob Dylan, “A Complete Unknown,” got a big plug on “Saturday Night Live” tonight.
The James Mangold movie doesn’t open for two more weeks. Yet, “SNL” sketch featured Heidi Gardner as an entertainment reporter on the red carpet for the film’s premiere. She interviews Dylan (James Austin Johnson), Bruce Springsteen (Andrew Dismukes), Bono (Paul Mescal), star Timothee Chalamet (Sarah Sherman).
They all stand in front of backdrop of the film’s logo.
This is a little ironic since “SNL” totally ignored the release earlier this fall of Jason Reitman’s movie, “Saturday Night.” That film was about the first night, 49 years ago, the comedy show was broadcast. It got very good reviews, but no audience, and died at the box office.
“Saturday Night” should have been a hit. But Sony dumped it into the abyss. Watch it on home video. You’ll love it.
But “SNL” never even made a reference to the movie before or during its theatrical run. And only a few short commercials were bought to tie the movie to the live TV show.
Barry Keoghan became an overnight star with “Banshees of Inisherin” and the really crazy “Saltburn.”
Keoghan, at the tender age of 32, has a toddler son with his ex girlfriend back in Ireland. But he’s a movie star now, hanging in Hollywood and dating pop starlet Sabrina Carpenter.
Now young Barry says his fans have crossed the line invading his personal life. He’s deactivated his social media account on Twitter X. He’s pretty upset. Apparently the fans have been slagging him off, bothering his grandmother, and saying he was “a heroine [sic] baby.” (It should be heroin.)
Anyway, this is social media. The price of fame is high these days. But maybe dancing naked through a castle and humping a gravesite wasn’t such a great idea in the end.
Today, the movie musical crosses the $300 million line domestically. It’s been 17 days since the Jon M. Chu film starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande was launched into theaters. Amazing.
Internationally, however, “Wicked” has yet to cast a spell. The total take is $97 million after arriving in a lot of countries.
But for some reason, “Wicked” hasn’t arrived in some key places. The musical only opened in China yesterday. (Pre-sales didn’t look promising, however.) In France, early numbers are low. Germany and a few European locales won’t get it until next week. Japan doesn’t see it until next March.
Still, “Wicked” shows no signs of slowing down through New Year’s here in the States. Once the holiday vacation kicks in, kids are going to be parked in those seats. Is $500 million that far off? Does Elphaba have a broom?
With “Babygirl,” Halina Reijn’s erotic thriller, all I could think was, Nicole Kidman was too much for Tom Cruise. That’s it, period.
Kidman has turned out to be the bravest actress of her generation. She’s got her Oscar, and appeared on Broadway. She’s had massive hits, and intriguing failures. The latter are almost all experiments that made no money but advanced her acting chops beyond imagination. Think “Fur” or “Birth.” She will try anything that pushes the envelope.
“Babygirl” is a sexual thriller. Kidman, who’s a stunning 57 years old, plays a wealthy, successful mogul named Romy. She’s married to Antonio Banderas’s Jacob, a theater director. They have two cute daughters, the eldest of whom is gay. Romy is a total success on the outside. But she has deep secrets, all to do with her sex life.
When the movie begins, Romy and Jacob are in bed, trying to go at it. The sex is a little graphic for a Kidman movie, and this is just the beginning. Romy makes Jacob think she’s satisfied, but she finishes up in a another room watching porn on her laptop.
It’s not long before Romy has her eye on a company intern that looks like a male model. That would be Harris Dickinson as Samuel, blonde, tall, fit and confident. Soon they are playing sex games in a hotel or anywhere else they can get away with it. They radiate heat. But Samuel seems to get the power dynamic before Romy when he reminds her that one phone call could ruin her life. She doesn’t care.
“Babygirl” could take the route of “Fatal Attraction” as Samuel starts popping up on Romy’s home turf. But Reijn won’t let it go that way. She avoids cliches throughout and always has her eye on a third act. When Jacob and Samuel actually break into fisticuffs, the fight takes an unexpected and civilized turn. This is not going to become a murder mystery.
Kidman plays Romy with utmost subtlety and human infusion. She’s an onion, peeling away layers. Another cliche: she’s a snake, shedding her skin over and over. She knows her obsession with Samuel can ruin her business and family, but she’s not going to let it. Kidman plays the sex scenes hot. She learned from Stanley Kubrick, remember? Her eyes dilate when she’s with Samuel, the first man to give her an orgasm (she tells Jacob whoops). But Kidman is all all about eyes. At other times, when Romy is playing the wife, those eyes explode, go very wide so you can see Romy’s gears turning to figure out her next move. Watch her drink a glass of milk she didn’t order, I dare you.
A note about Banderas, who the has thankless cuckold role. Watch Jacob slowly come to terms with his house burning down, and how he responds to it. Jacob has been a good husband, but he’s no pushover.
Reijn is a celebrated Dutch director and writer with no American credits. What big name star would say yes to this? Give Kidman her props. As with movies like “Rabbit Hole,” she saw the potential. Reijn takes her from boardroom to rave nightclub, lighting up the movie with revelations about Romy’s potential to break free. (It’s not for the Academy but Sky Ferreira’s electronic dance music and the lighting are memorable.) “Babygirl” goes into her win column, and guarantees her an Oscar nomination. You can’t wait to see what she does next.
The Bollywood movie, “Pushpa 2: The Rule,” made $4.5 million on Thursday night.
It came within $200,000 of topping “Wicked,” the number 1 film. “Pushpa” outranked Hollywood hits, “Moana 2” and “Gladiator II.”
According to Wikipedia, “Pushpa 2” is a 2024 Indian Telugu-language action drama film[6] directed by Sukumar and produced by Mythri Movie Makers, in association with Sukumar Writings. The film stars Allu Arjun in the titular role, alongside Rashmika Mandanna, Fahadh Faasil, Jagapathi Babu, Dhananjaya, Rao Ramesh, Sunil and Anasuya Bharadwaj. It is the second instalment in the Pushpa film series and the sequel to the 2021 film “Pushpa: The Rise.”
