AP National Entertainment News

By DAVID BAUDER AP Media Writer Writers Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer of The Atlantic say they’ve learned one thing during their years of covering President Donald Trump: His first word is rarely his last one. That’s obvious from their circuitous journey in landing interviews with the Republican president, which included an apparent late-night “butt

CANNES, France (AP) — Halle Berry, Jeremy Strong and Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia will be among the jury members at this year’s Cannes Film Festival deciding the Palme d’Or winner. Festival organizers on Monday unveiled the eight jury members who will join president Juliette Binoche at the 78th edition of the French film festival next

By KRYSTA FAURIA Associated Press LAS VEGAS (AP) — Abel Tesfaye has always known he wanted to pursue a career in cinema. He sees his meteoric rise to fame as one of today’s biggest pop superstars under the moniker The Weeknd as a detour to make that happen. Nearly two years after he made his

By JACQUES BILLEAUD and MORGAN LEE Associated Press SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The main cause of Gene Hackman’s death was heart disease, but he was also in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease and likely had not eaten for a long time, according to a new autopsy report. The report documents the 95-year-old actor’s

By ANDREW DALTON AP Entertainment Writer BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Mon Mothma was first introduced to “Star Wars” fans as the rebel leader who appears only long enough to move the plot forward by delivering battle plans in hushed tones. But in the last moments of the most recent “Andor” episodes on Disney+ (spoilers

By MARK KENNEDY AP Entertainment Writer NEW YORK (AP) — One of Broadway’s more impressive performances this season is by Andrew Durand, who is a kinetic force in the first half of “Dead Outlaw” and absolutely motionless in the second. For some 40 minutes, he’s a corpse, standing in a coffin. “Some nights I want

NEW YORK (AP) — An admired and longtime poet whose subjects range from school integration to the memories of Holocaust survivors has won a $100,000 prize given for “exceptional talent.” Poets & Writers announced Monday that Cyrus Cassells is this year’s winner of the Jackson Poetry Prize, which was established in 2007 and has been

By NICOLAS VAUX-MONTAGNY and SYLVIE CORBET Associated Press PARIS (AP) — A trial began Monday in Paris over the 2016 heist in which armed robbers tied up Kim Kardashian in her bedroom and stole millions of dollars’ worth of jewelry during Fashion Week. The robbery was considered the biggest heist targeting an individual that Paris

By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — Get out the glitter balls, sew on the sequins and prepare to party: The Eurovision Song Contest approaches. The 69th annual musical extravaganza takes place in Basel, Switzerland in May. It will see acts from 37 countries vie for the continent’s musical crown in a contest that

By DAVID BAUDER AP Media Writer “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley paid tribute Sunday to Bill Owens, the show’s executive producer who resigned last week, saying on the air that “none of us is happy” about the extra supervision that corporate leaders are imposing. Pelley made his comments at the end of the evening’s CBS

By MARK KENNEDY AP Entertainment Writer NEW YORK (AP) — First-time nominees Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker and Bad Company will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a class that also includes pop star Cyndi Lauper, the hip-hop pioneers Outkast, the rock duo the White Stripes and grunge masters Soundgarden. Salt-N-Pepa, the

By PHILIPP JENNE Associated Press PANG, Germany (AP) — Men in short leather pants and embroidered suspenders risked dislocated digits Sunday as they vied for the top prize at Germany’s championship in the sport of fingerhakeln, or finger wrestling. Around 180 competitors took part in Sunday’s 64th German championship in Pang, about an hour’s drive

Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Drag performer Bianca Castro-Arabejo, who was known as reality television star Jiggly Caliente on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” died Sunday at age 44, days after her family reported hospitalization for a serious infection. Castro-Arabejo, who became a judge on “Drag Race Philippines” in 2022, scrapped plans to appear on the

By LINDSEY BAHR AP Film Writer Horror movies are often one-week wonders at the box office, but Ryan Coogler’s“Sinners” is defying the odds and proving to be true event cinema. In its second weekend in theaters, “Sinners” earned $45 million in ticket sales from theaters in the U.S. and Canada, according to studio estimates Sunday.

By KRYSTA FAURIA Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) — Steven Spielberg proclaimed “The Godfather” the “greatest American film ever made,” Robert De Niro teasingly bemoaned being cast in the sequel and not the original and Harrison Ford fought back tears reflecting on his role in the 1974 film, “The Conversation.” At the center of it

By SYLVIE CORBET Associated Press PARIS (AP) — One of the suspects in the armed robbery of Kim Kardashian said he plans to take responsibility for his role in the 2016 high-profile heist and will apologize in court as the trial begins Monday in Paris. Yunice Abbas, 71, who has publicly acknowledged his participation in

By JOCELYN NOVECK AP National Writer “Me love you long time,” a Vietnamese sex worker tells the U.S. troops, swiveling her hips as she hawks her services. “You party?” The first female character in Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam War classic “Full Metal Jacket,” she appears for just a moment — and halfway through the film. Likewise,

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI Associated Press There was no president. There was no comedian. What remained at the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual dinner were the journalists and the First Amendment. The stripped-down festivities Saturday night were a reflection of the somber tone in Washington at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, in which

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles police have released video from the shooting of author Jillian Lauren, the wife of a Weezer band member, during a chaotic backyard confrontation that culminated in a volley of gunfire. Lauren’s wounds were not life-threatening in the April 8 shooting in the northeast Los Angeles neighborhood of Eagle Rock,

By HILLEL ITALIE and MARIA SHERMAN AP Entertainment Writers NEW YORK (AP) — Out of the many Vietnam War protests she performed at in the 1960s and 1970s, Judy Collins can never forget one in Washington, D.C., where she stood before thousands and sang Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War.” “It was just me, and Bruce

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Authorities released more videos Friday related to their investigation of the deaths of actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, including images of agents returning to the couple’s Santa Fe home days after they were found to look for more evidence. The bodies of Hackman, 95, and Arakawa, 65, were

By ASHRAF KHALIL Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Organizers and the Kennedy Center have canceled a week’s worth of events celebrating LGBTQ+ rights for this summer’s World Pride festival in Washington, D.C., amid a shift in priorities and the ousting of leadership at one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions. Multiple artists and producers involved

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer NEW YORK (AP) — The irony tickles Cheech and Chong: The Palisades fire smoked them out of their homes. “I had to de-smoke my house,” Tommy Chong says, giggling. “Can you imagine that?” Chong and Cheech Marin ‘s houses, both in the Pacific Palisades, didn’t burn down. But as

By ELISE RYAN Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — As the COVID-19 vaccine began distributing more widely in early 2021, California-raised singer-songwriter Jensen McRae affectionally joked in a tweet that Phoebe Bridgers would release a song in two years about “hooking up in the car while waiting in line to get vaccinated at Dodger Stadium.”

By MARK KENNEDY AP Entertainment Writer NEW YORK (AP) — The great theater composer Stephen Sondheim loved puzzles, and when he died in 2021, he left one for his good friend, British super-producer Cameron Mackintosh. He left him an unfinished show. The two men conceived of a revue of Sondheim’s songs during the pandemic and

By MARIA SHERMAN AP Music Writer NEW YORK (AP) — When Billy Idol first entered American consciousness in the early ’80s, leather-clad and bleached hair in tow, he not only brought a punk rock sound to the mainstream. The Englishman brought a new attitude, a new, rebellious way of being. In the time since, songs

By HOLLY MEYER Associated Press Speculation surrounding a conclave to elect a pope is a time-honored tradition. But for the impending conclave following the death of Pope Francis, the ranks of armchair Vatican experts have swelled thanks to Hollywood. “Conclave” the film, a moody 2024 political thriller, introduced many laypeople to the ancient selection process

By MEGAN JANETSKY and FERNANDA PESCE Associated Press MEXICO CITY (AP) — Two days before her new album was launched, musical icon Vivir Quintana was behind barbed wire at a women’s prison in Mexico. The singer had spent the past 10 years visiting women incarcerated after defending themselves and, in doing so, killing their abusers.

By JENNIFER PELTZ Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Friends of one of Harvey Weinstein’s accusers testified Thursday that the woman told them long ago that Weinstein sexually assaulted her. Adding a new perspective to the ex-movie mogul’s retrial, one witness said she’d once suggested that accuser Miriam Haley date the movie mogul, but Haley

By DAN GELSTON AP Sports Writer PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Ryan Howard was a rookie with the Philadelphia Phillies just putting baseball on notice with his moonshot home runs when he met Buck O’Neil, a champion of Black ballplayers during a monumental, eight-decade career on and off the field. Howard was introduced to O’Neil as a