In “Next Goal Wins,” a soccer coach comes from far away to lead a hapless group of athletes. He’s a fish-out-of-water type, ill-suited for the job, but rises to the occasion and everyone feels good at the end. Wait, you’re thinking, that’s the plot of “Ted Lasso.” Well, only kind of. Writer-director Taika Waititi — …
NEW YORK (AP) — Billy Porter is strutting off in an entirely new sonic direction on his fifth album. The Broadway, runway and TV star has pivoted to dance music. “I’m a new artist. There’s a transformation that has happened,” the Tony-, Emmy- and Grammy-winner tells The Associated Press. “I’ve been offered a real second …
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Last year, Dolly Parton was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — against her wishes. Now, almost exactly a year later, she’s releasing her first rock ‘n’ roll album, appropriately titled “Rockstar,” on Friday. In 2022, Parton shared a statement announcing that she didn’t feel she had “earned” …
Dolly Parton’s new album is a detour from country music — could R&B be next? Read More »
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Édgar Barrera is one of the most in-demand people in music. He’s worked with everyone from Madonna and Shakira to Peso Pluma and Karol G. He has one Grammy and 18 Latin Grammys already to his name, and is the top nominee at Thursday’s 2023 Latin Grammys ceremony. Unlike most of …
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Matthew Perry’s “Friends” co-stars are sharing more remembrances of the star in their first personal social media posts since the actor’s death last month. Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer posted heartfelt notes about Perry, who died Oct. 28, on Instagram. The posts on Tuesday and Wednesday were …
Matthew Perry’s ‘Friends’ costars reminiscence about the late actor Read More »
WASHINGTON (AP) — Comedian Kevin Hart has been chosen to receive the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for lifetime achievement in American humor, capping a three-decade career that has seen him rise from the open mics of Philadelphia to become one of his generation’s most successful performers. Hart, 44, launched his career as a teenager …
NEW YORK (AP) — The latest honor for Salman Rushdie was a prize kept secret until minutes before he rose from his seat to accept it. On Tuesday night, the author received the first-ever Lifetime Disturbing the Peace Award, presented by the Vaclav Havel Center on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Only a handful of the …
Salman Rushdie receives first-ever Lifetime Disturbing the Peace Award Read More »
NEW YORK (AP) — Jesmyn Ward’s slave narrative “Let Us Descend” and Jake Bittle’s exploration of climate change’s impact “The Great Displacement” are among the finalists for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence. The medals are presented by the American Library Association and given for fiction and nonfiction, with winners in each category receiving $5,000. …
Everyone had resigned themselves to the fact that “The Hunger Games” ended in 2015. The four-film blockbuster franchise had made nearly $3 billion at the global box office and helped Jennifer Lawrence skyrocket to superstardom. But Suzanne Collins’ Katniss Everdeen saga was over. And, frankly, everyone, including Collins, director Francis Lawrence and producer Nina Jacobson, …
‘The Hunger Games’ starts fresh, without Katniss, in ‘The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes’ Read More »
TORONTO (AP) — Sports movies typically culminate, after stirring locker-room speeches, in a dramatic bid for athletic glory. Taika Waititi’s “Next Goal Wins” concerns the quest of a historically bad national soccer team, the 2011 American Samoa men’s squad, in their struggle to qualify for the FIFA World Cup after an infamous 31-0 drubbing against …
Taika Waititi on ‘Next Goal Wins’ and his quest to quit Hollywood Read More »
