Ken Loach at Cannes: 'don't know' if 'The Old Oak' will be last film

Russell Brand has announced a UK tour for his new stand-up show Bipolarisation – find all the details on how to secure tickets below.The tour kicks off in August with shows in Maidenhead and Slough, before rounding off with dates throughout September in London, Chesham, Oxford, Plymouth and Wolverhampton.Tickets for the shows will be available first in a pre-sale on Ticketmaster from Wednesday June 7.

What’s left to be said? Andy Cohen predicts that Tom Sandoval is going to ruffle the feathers of every woman in the world during the final part of the Vanderpump Rules reunion.

Sierra Boggess is married!

Jay Johnston, an actor known for work on Bob’s Burgers and Arrested Development, was reportedly arrested and charged with crimes related to the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Nearly 30 years after his shooting death at age 25, rapper and actor Tupac Shakur was honoured with his own posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Prince Harry has been testifying at the High Court in London, England, in a tabloid case against Mirror Group Newspapers  (MGN). In his witness statement released Tuesday, the Duke of Sussex outlined how the British media company's stories about his personal life have impacted his relationships, mental health and safety.On Wednesday, Harry continued to testify in court, and royal expert Katie Nicholl tells ET that the royal family has been apprehensive about him speaking out. «My sources tell me that [King Charles III] and [Prince William] were very wary about Harry going into the witness box,» Nicholl explains.

is back with season 2, as the Bravo reality series continues to follow Captain Jason Chambers and Chief Stew Aesha Scott for another charter season off the coast of Cairns, Australia. Set to premiere Monday, July 17, the upcoming season in the nautical upstairs-downstairs franchise will also be full of new faces, with six new crew members joining the team. Among the new recruits are Chef Tzarina Mace-Ralph, Bosun Luke Jones, Deckhands Adam Lukasiewicz and Harry Van Vliet as well as Stews Laura Bileskaine and Margot Sisson.

The Tribeca Festival is “monitoring the situation closely and following guidance from the city” as New York’s air quality deteriorates rapidly with smoke originating from extensive wildfires on the Canadian border, an unprecedented event in NYC.

Shannen Doherty says the breast cancer with which she was first diagnosed in 2015 has spread to her brain, and shared an emotional video describing her fear as she undergoes treatment.

The table isn’t shaking but Ego Nwodim does have a steak salad in front of her.

EXCLUSIVE: Actress Alexi Wasser (Poker Face) has made her feature directorial debut with Messy, a relationship comedy she also wrote and leads, which is now in post. Others appearing alongside her include Adam Goldberg (The Equalizer), Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley), Mario Cantone (And Just Like That…), Ione Skye (Beef), Jack Kilmer (Palo Alto), Michael Panes (We Bought a Zoo), Ruby McCollister (Search Party), Dion Costelloe (Blue Bloods) and Merlot.   

The CW has set its summer schedule. The network today announced premiere dates for new series Son of a Critch, Run The Burbs, Children Ruin Everything and Moonshine, as well as alternative series Recipe for Disaster, FBoy Island, Down to Earth with Zac Efron and limited series Greatest Geek Year Ever: 1982, and returning series Bump, Family Law and Great Chocolate Showdown.

Jennifer Aniston is teasing the new season of The Morning Show ahead of its Apple TV+ premiere this fall.

EXCLUSIVE: Rebel Wilson has signed with Warner Music and will have her own highly personalized label: Rebellionaire. “Take the ‘b’ out of billionaire and replace it with an ‘r’ for Rebel,” she quipped.

Actor Jodie Comer halted today’s matinee of Broadway’s Prima Facie due to New York City’s bad, smokey air, telling audience members she was having difficulty breathing.

Dahmer – Monster may have been a dark series about a serial killer, but Michael Learned thinks she got the role as the cannibal’s grandmother by showing off her wry sense of humor.

Justin Bieber’s dad Jeremy has been slammed for sharing a homophobic meme during Pride Month.

Shannen Doherty recently shared the heartbreaking news that the stage 4 breast cancer she has been battling for the last few years has spread to her brain. In a somber Instagram post, the star revealed the emotional roller coaster she went through while being placed under a machine for radiation treatment.«My fear is obvious.

Jennifer Aniston is taking it easier these days.

Chrissy Metz is keeping hope alive for a This Is Us reunion movie!

It doesn’t sound like Tom Sandoval will be winning fans back over any time soon.

The Kardashians is now airing, and there are some strong feelings among the sisters.

Jodie Comer has been getting rave reviews for months for her performance in Prima Facie on Broadway.

Leonardo DiCaprio arrives at his hotel in London, England on Tuesday (June 6).

Niall Horan is opening up about his career.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Jack Lee, who co-fronted the influential L.A. band the Nerves in the late 1970s and saw his songs turn into major hits for Blondie and Paul Young, died May 26 in Santa Monica, Calif. at age 71. His death was revealed Wednesday in a press release, which revealed Lee died after battling colon cancer for three years. Although Lee had not had much public visibility in recent years, “he never gave up on his music,” his family said in a statement, “to the very end. His guitar, right by his side. He lived his songs. One by one they told the story of his life. Some dreams die. His never will.” His greatest success as a musician came with a pair of high-profile covers. Blondie recorded an extremely faithful cover of the Nerves’ “Hanging on the Telephone” in 1978 that remains one of the group’s most instantly identifiable signature songs to this day. (Blondie’s version went to No. 5 in the U.K., although, as an FM hit, it never charted in the U.S.) Paul Young found success in 1983 with “Come Back and Stay,” a song the Nerves wrote but never recorded; it first appeared on a Lee solo project a couple of years before Young had the hit. (The cover reached No. 4 in the U.K. and No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100.) Young recorded a total of three Lee songs for his Euro-chart-topping debut album that year.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer The first time Jesse Garcia (“Quinceañera,” “Narcos: Mexico”) learned about Richard Montañez — the former Frito-Lay executive who’s said that he invented the wildly successful Flamin’ Hot Cheetos brand when he was working as a janitor for the company — the actor immediately thought, “That would be an awesome movie.” Years later, Eva Longoria cast Garcia to play Montañez for her feature directing debut, “Flamin’ Hot,” which premieres June 9 on Hulu and Disney+. The film, produced by DeVon Franklin (“Breakthrough,” “Miracles From Heaven”), covers Richard’s life from his difficult childhood to his marriage to his high school sweetheart Judy (Annie Gonzalez) to his rise at Frito-Lay. For Garcia, it was an all-too-rare opportunity to depict the real-life story of a Latino family in a mainstream feature film.

The X Factor star Rebecca Ferguson has claimed that ITV allegedly "refused" her request to investigate allegations of mistreatment towards contestants on reality shows. In a series of tweets posted on her Twitter account this week, the singer (who was a runner-up on the ITV show back in 2010) alleged that she sent an email to the network in 2021 asking for a review into conduct and aftercare procedures for reality show contestants.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Amazon’s Prime Video greenlit a new documentary from Nascar Studios that will chronicle NASCAR’s special “Garage 56” entry at the 100th anniversary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The documentary will premiere exclusively on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide, and comes as streamers — not always able to spend the billions required for actual sports rights — see traction from offering in-depth documentary looks at various sports. Netflix has found success with a look inside Formula 1 Racing while Prime Video in January announced the launch of “The Ride,” an inside look at the Professional Bull Riders tour.

Jordan Moreau Jay Johnston, an actor on “Bob’s Burgers,” “Arrested Development” and more, was charged for participating in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S.

Thania Garcia Mathew Knowles and Emmy-nominated executive producer Tamra Simmons (“Surviving R. Kelly” and “Casey Anthony: Where The Truth Lies”) have joined forces to launch a new media company called Music World TV, Film & Media. Knowles will serve as CEO and Simmons as president, while executives Jasmine Murray and Krystal Rascoe join as head of development and business liaison (respectively). “I can’t wait to see what this next generation of women can accomplish,” said Knowles, whose long and storied career as a music manager has included developing acts like Destiny’s Child and daughters Solange and Beyoncé. “I’m excited for this new journey. I’ve always believed in giving back and what greater gift can you give than the gift of knowledge.”

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Ruth Carter doesn’t need the prefix “costume designer” in front of her name; she is a household name. Carter made Oscar history when she became the first Black woman ever to win two Oscars,thanks to her work on the “Black Panther” films. With credits that include “Selma,” “Malcolm X,” “Coming 2 America” and being Spike Lee’s go-to, Carter has stories to tell.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor In “The Old Oak,” which played in Competition in Cannes, Ken Loach portrays a village in the North-East of England where the indigenous white community comes into conflict with Syrian refugees – a conflict fuelled by the despair, deprivation and decline of the rust-belt region. Such conditions can be a seed-bed for far right groups, the director tells Variety. Such issues have not been explored sufficiently in film and television, Loach says, and he draws a parallel with the portrayal of the rise of Nazism in Germany in the mass media. “We have endless programs about the Second World War, about the horrors of Nazism and fascism, about the racism, about the Holocaust. Quite properly, we have endless programs about that, but what they refuse to point out is that that arose from alienation, anger, feeling cheated, and finding scapegoats. And that’s how we ended up with Hitler, and that’s the ground in which the far right flourishes. One of the points of the film is to say: This is the cause of fascism. This is where it comes from. This is its seed-bed, and it comes as an inevitable consequence of our economic system. Because if the neoliberal agenda was an essential development for capitalism, to use the old-fashioned word, then that’s where fascism comes from. Implicit in that is that the far right will rise because that’s how people will be heading. And they know that and yet the mass media, the press, just turn their backs on that. They’ll tell us all about the horrors of Hitler. Sure. But they won’t tell us how he came to power. And that’s the huge lesson. And we see it in essence now all the time.”

What could well be Ken Loach’s final film has as much fire and fury as his debut Poor Cow did in 1967, if we discount his pioneering TV work in the run-up. The visual style hasn’t changed a great deal in the years since, but that’s because the British movie veteran, soon to turn 87, isn’t much fussed about surfaces, it’s the inner lives of his characters that he wants to capture. In that respect, The Old Oak would make a fitting swansong, capping the recent North-East trilogy with a vital film that is clearly the work of the team behind previous Cannes Competition hits I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You.

Only nine directors have ever won the Palme d’Or twice. Francis Ford Coppola did it in the ’70s with The Conversation and Apocalypse Now. Ruben Östlund joined the club last year after following The Square with Triangle of Sadness. But this year, there is a very real possibility that, at 86, Ken Loach may go above and beyond that by winning a third Palme for his new film, The Old Oak. Loach first won in 2006 with the historical Irish drama The Wind That Shakes the Barley, then doubled up in 2016 with I, Daniel Blake, a caustic study of Britain’s healthcare crisis. After that came Sorry, We Missed You, a no-less withering look at the punitive gig economy. Like the latter two films, The Old Oak is set in the North East of England and completes an unofficial trilogy, this time with a slightly more optimistic bent. Like all of Loach’s output since 1996, it was written by Paul Laverty, and the pair sat down with Damon Wise to discuss the film’s themes of humanity and social responsibility.

Christopher Vourlias On a recent morning in Cannes, Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan sat over coffee at the Hotel Martinez and recalled a phone call he received nearly 60 years ago, not long after he’d made a splash on the British folk scene. On the other end of the line was a rising screenwriter and director called Ken Loach. “He said he was making his first feature…and would I help him with the music?” Donovan told Variety. The film, a kitchen sink drama called “Poor Cow,” based on a novel by British playwright and author Neil Dunn, tells the story of a working-class single mother leading a hard-luck life in the slums of London. It’s a movie that set the tone for the type of social drama that propelled Loach throughout a remarkable, prolific career.