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Sir Rod has postponed his shows this weekend for a week and says he’ll resume work on August 18th.
Rod gave some interviews recently saying he “knew his days were numbered” or something like that because he was turning 80. Then he book a bunch of shows for 2025, so he’s not going anywhere.
Some guys have all the luck, and except for COVID, Rod Stewart has a lot of it. Now take some time off, Rod. We want to see you out there a long time!
UPDATED Kanye West will probably not like this news.
His “Vultures 2” album came in at 82,845 albums.
That’s around 60,000 fewer than Taylor Swift’s “Tortured Poets Department.” Swift finishes at number 1 with a four month old album while West is a distant second.
It probably doesn’t help that “Vultures 2” was offered for free on West’s website. After a strong start at number 1, “Vultures 2” is at number 4 on iTunes. It’s available for streaming and downloading, but there’s no physical product.
“Vultures 2” has also not given birth to any single tracks. The album has no streaming of individual songs.
The crazier part of this story is that Swift sold almost three times as many albums as West. His were from downloads. Hers were from downloads and CDs, and LPs.
Kanye knows he’s not going to the Grammys next winter. But maybe he’ll turn up and protest Swift winning Album of the Year yet again. So far, that seems to be the story of the 2025 Grammys, same as the 2024 Grammys. And many others.
“Borderlands,” starring Cate Blanchett, has finally risen on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Eli Roth-directed video game adaptation started with a Zero yesterday. It’s now up to 6%.
Last night, “Borderlands” made an astonishing $1.2 million in previews. Considering that RT’s Audience Score is only 49%, that’s pretty good.
But it does indicate that whoever saw it last night satisfied their curiosity.
This is Blanchett’s worst reviewed movie by far. It’s hard to imagine the two Oscar winner took this job, but maybe the paycheck was too much to pass up.
Blake Lively’s “It Ends with Us” made a whopping $7 million last night in previews.
Reviews are middling but there’s strong interest from fans of Colleen Hoover’s best selling book.
Extra promotional help from Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds, and his buddy, Hugh Jackman, didn’t hurt.
There are still many questions, though, about director and co-star Justin Baldoni. He’s been snubbed by the cast, who don’t talk about him or take pictures with him. He wasn’t even at the London premiere. At the NY premiere he was largely ignored. What’s going on? Very strange.
We’ll see over the weekend if interest holds up in “It Ends with Us.” Aside from “Deadpool and Wolverine” there isn’t much out there, so this domestic drama about abuse may over perform.
Sony needs a hit. “Fly Me to the Moon” never launched. “Harold and the Purple Crayon” is DOA. Their only hit this year is “Bad Boys Ride or Die, ” which is nothing to brag about really.
You’d have to go back five years to remember when Shawn Mendes was hot on the pop charts.
It was 2019 when he and Camila Cabello were number 1 with “Senorita.”
Mendes — who turned 26 yesterday — had two more hits in 2020, one with Justin Bieber, and then started a fade out. He stopped touring and mostly recording or having a career while he dealt with mental health issues. (He also had trouble, and still does, finding a shirt.)
Now Mendes is back today with two new songs preceding an album release in October. So far this morning, “Why Why Why” has had an uneasy launch, currently at 74 on iTunes. The other song, “Isn’t that Enough,” hasn’t charted yet.
Mendes apparently played a small show last night in Woodstock, NY. He has a few more coming up including one on the album’s release, October 18th, in Brooklyn. He’s coming back in small steps.
Mendes has pretty much missed four years of his career. That’s okay when you’re older, but when you’re establishing yourself four years is a high school cycle. So now he has turn to more adult listeners and rebuild. He’s a very good songwriter. I was at his actual first show years ago at the then Nokia Theater in Times Square (my nieces, who were 14, insisted on it).
How will this all play out? Last night, Mendes played a birthday show in Woodstock. He’s taking it easy, starting with small shows in London next, then back here.
“House of the Dragon” had a season finale on Sunday up by 20% in total viewers.
The final episode, in which almost nothing happened, brought in 1.47 million people. That was up from 1.2% the week before.
The last episode helped boost the season overall, but “Dragon” still finished an average of 31% down from Season 1.
HBO just announced there will be two more seasons, and then they’ll wrap up this slow moving spin off of “Game of Thrones.”
“House of the Dragon” has so far just not caught on like its predecessor. Maybe the next two seasons can be more fun and outrageous and not just a series of wars among characters few care about.
There’s a coup going on at Atlantic Records, the formerly great music label of Ahmet Ertegun.
It’s not 1980 anymore.
Long time chief Julie Greenwald — a huge success for 20 years — has been ousted. She announced it at a company town hall, according to hitsdailydouble.com.
Greenwald saw the writing on the wall. Last week, Elliot Grainge — son of Universal Music chief Lucien Grainge — was given her job. Greenwald was sent — as we used to say about Conde Nast — “to the 34th floor.” This is amazing.
Grainge is 30 and married now to Lionel Richie’s daughter, Sofia. He’s been a music manager, with some success from Ice Spice and a bunch of hip hop artists we’ve never heard of. Oy vey.
According to hitsdailydouble, all this volatility within the Warner Music groups is attributed to Val Blavatnik. Who he? The young son of WMG owner Len Blavatnik. In April, 25 year old Val was put on the Warner board by his dad. Seems like he called another Elliott and formed an alliance of young sons of moguls.
Atlantic is part of the Warner Music Group, which recently put Robert Kyncl in charge after he wrested power from Max Lousada, who was successful and popular.
Hits points out that Atlantic — which was booming a short time ago with Ed Sheeran and hit soundtracks from “Hamilton” and “The Greatest Showman” — has fallen behind. So change was in the wind. Atlantic doesn’t have much going on this summer aside from Charlie XCX and her “Brat” album. Pointing that out to Blavatnik Sr. was probably enough to get the ball rolling for major changes.
Greenwald is far from ancient. She’s 54, and among her finds was Cardi B. Bruno Mars is also on her resume, although he’s not released anything new in a long time, and seems to be embroiled in vast personal financial drama.
Atlantic has never been pacific. Just read former exec Jerry Greenberg’s book about the label’s history, “Whole Lotta Music.” That will tell you the whole bloody story.
All this and there are no new artists be played on radio, the charts are frozen with Taylor Swift, and there will four different awards shows this coming year celebrating the same small group of acts. Unreal.
Apple Studios has cut “Wolfs” down to one week in theaters.
Two enormous movie stars — George Clooney and Brad Pitt — star in the buddy comedy from “Spider Man” director Jon Watts. But “Wolfs” will be sent to the Apple streaming platform after 7 days in movie houses.
There will never be a box office report, because streamers don’t report numbers.
Apple issued this news couched as secondary to the idea that they’ve greenlit a sequel to “Wolfs.” A sequel? To a movie that won’t be strong enough to have a theatrical run?
This is trouble, no matter how you slice the Apple.
The seven day run just barely covers Oscar eligibility, although that seems unlikely given this news.
What could have gone wrong here? Even if it’s just a popcorn pleaser, “Wolfs” should be able to attract an audience to theaters.
One problem might be the concept: there are no women or romantic interests for these two leading men. It sounds like “Butch Cassidy” without Katherine Ross. Or more like “Lethal Weapon” without Renee Russo and Darlene Love.
Apple is also apparently doing this one week in theaters thing with Steve McQueen’s “Blitz.” Set in World War II London, “Blitz” stars Saoirse Ronan and Harris Dickinson — two hot young actors — and The Jam’s’ Paul Weller — a great rock star — in his film debut.
McQueen won Best Picture for “12 Years a Slave” but can’t have a movie in theaters for more than a week?
If only a Marvel character could have been in these films! It’s really a new world.
To kick off the 50th anniversary season of “Saturday Night Live,” here comes a movie.
Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night” is all about the first episode of “SNL” in the fall of 1975.
The ensemble cast making up the “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” are not unknowns, but they’re all young and newish to movies.
Willem Dafoe, Matthew Rhys, and JK Simmons are the most recognizable names, playing executives.
The movie will be released on October 11th, which might be the night before the “SNL” Premiere on NBC.
No one knew what to call this movie, I guess. “Saturday Night’ was actually the original name of the TV show because there was already a “Saturday Night Live” on ABC with Howard Cosell.
It was a little strange a couple of nights ago at the premiere for “It Ends with Us.”
Blake Lively, the star, brought along husband Ryan Reynolds, and his work husband, Hugh Jackman, to the red carpet.
Lively took a lot of pictures with them but none with director and co-star Justin Baldoni.
In fact, no one from the cast has done interviews with or spoken about Baldoni at all.
It almost seemed like Lively brought the Deadpool and Wolverine stars along to distract the press from whatever is really going on with the “It Ends with Us” cast.
There are 224 photos from the premiere on WireImage and not a single one of Baldoni with any of his actors. That alone raises a lot of questions.
Online, in social media, plenty of people have noticed and posted stories about the underlying tensions aimed at Baldoni. In the film he plays a violent and abusive husband. Is it possible that the feelings toward the character have spilled over into real life?
On the red carpet Tuesday night, Jenny Slate really gave a diplomatic non answer when an interviewer asked about working with Baldoni as a director and actor. She basically sidestepped the whole thing, and talked about herself.
Baldoni is already a TV star from “Jane the Virgin,” and he’s a great looking guy who you’d think would be all over the talk shows, etc.
“It Ends with Us” starts tonight in previews and opens tomorrow everywhere. It has a low 54% Rotten Tomatoes.
