‘Nuggets’ Classics From the ’60s Get Dug Up by Susanna Hoffs, Lenny Kaye and Seminal Garage-Rockers for L.A. Benefit: Concert Review

Former TOWIE star Ferne McCann has given her followers a glimpse into her “special” day as her friends threw her a beautiful baby shower at a rooftop restaurant in London. Ferne, 32, is already a mum to her daughter Sunday and is expecting her second child with her fiancé Lorri Haines this summer.The mum of two to be shared a sweet glimpse into some baby shower games that the group played, as well as some delicious looking food.The reality star also showed off her stylish attire for the occasion. Ferne looked glowing as she proudly displayed her blossoming baby bump in a fitted orange dress with an on-trend slit in the side.

Trooping the Colour — once again stealing the show.Accompanied by siblings Prince George and Princess Charlotte, the royal trio waved to spectators from their carriage while en route to the Horse Guards Parade with their mother, Kate Middleton, 41, and Queen Camilla, 75.Audiences were captivated by the animated faces of Louis, 5, who, at one point, held his nose and grimaced.Meanwhile, King Charles, 74, and Prince William, 40, traveled on horses, marking the first time a monarch has ridden horseback since the late Queen Elizabeth II in 1986.After the parade, the royal family gathered on the Buckingham Palace balcony to watch a flypast, and Louis saluted onlookers.While the newly coronated king won’t turn 75 until November, the summertime celebration is a royal tradition.This isn’t the first time Louis has become the star of the show with his playful behavior. At the queen’s Platinum Jubilee last year, Louis’ stunts were a welcome distraction for audiences at home.And at Charles’ coronation last month, Louis stole the limelight while letting out a few yawns during the ceremony.Charles was not only competing with Louis’ adorable antics Saturday, but also daughter-in-law Meghan Markle’s “Suits.”The USA Network series became available to watch Saturday on Netflix, which is also home to Markle and Prince Harry’s bombshell docuseries.Markle, 41, plays lawyer Rachel Zane in “Suits,” her final acting project before becoming a royal in 2018.

Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott are calling it quits.

Four years ago, Taron Egerton revealed on “Watch What Happens Live” that his celebrity crush was Rachel Weisz. But he probably never thought anyone would tell her. When we surprise them both with the clip during this conversation, Egerton turns bright red with embarrassment. Beyond that connection, both actors have stretched to new heights on streaming shows this TV season. Weisz portrays identical twin gynecologists Elliot and Beverly in the Amazon Prime Video drama “Dead Ringers,” based on the 1988 David Cronenberg film starring Jeremy Irons. And Egerton gets jacked as prisoner James Keene, a former college football star arrested on drug charges, in Apple TV+’s “Black Bird.”

J. Kim Murphy Nine years after it was first announced, “The Flash” has finally dashed into theaters, speeding toward a debut ahead of the box office competition. But the DC Studios film isn’t exactly matching the lightning pace of its superhero. The Warner Bros. release got started with $24.5 million on opening day, which includes $9.7 million in Thursday previews. That’s enough to set the Ezra Miller film on a surefire pathway to a No. 1 debut on domestic charts, but it’ll be tough for the film to match its projections heading into the weekend — some bullish ones predicting a four-day bow as high as $85 million through the Juneteenth holiday.

Malina Saval Associate Editor, Features When series creator Tony McNamara was crafting the character of Aunt Elizabeth in Hulu’s Emmy-winning biographical comedy “The Great,” he penned it with his actor wife and fellow Aussie, Belinda Bromilow, front of mind.  “I knew the character and I knew what I needed from an actor to do it,” says McNamara, a seasoned playwright and Oscar-nominated screenwriter for Yorgos Lanthimos’ piquant 2018 drama “The Favourite.”  “I knew [Elizabeth] needed to have a strong dramatic voice but also be  a bit idiosyncratic and have really good comic bones,” McNamara continues. “The actor needed to be able to do comedy and be able to shift gears into a darker place. And I’d worked with Belinda before and knew that she could do that.” 

Sophia Scorziello editor If there’s one thing Americans love to listen to, it’s true crime. A new Pew Research study of the U.S. podcast market found that nearly a quarter of top-ranked titles in America focused on true crime stories. Moreover, 95% of these true crime podcasts use in-depth reporting to cover their topics, compared to other genres which are much lower (split roughly evenly between deep reporting, interviews and commentary). After the crime podcast wave, genres thin out a bit: 10% focused on politics and government, 9% on entertainment, pop culture and arts and 8% on self-help and relationships. The rest covered a broad range of topics like comedy, religion, sports, health and money.

The Academy Awards are facing much criticism after implementing new diversity and inclusion guidelines for 2024.  The guidelines must be adhered to by any film in the running for a "Best Picture" Oscar. Several voting members sounded the alarm after the Academy Awards released its Aperture 2025 initiative -- a sweeping set of regulations designed to make Hollywood more equitable and diverse.

BBC presenter and his conservationist stepdaughter were a hit with Gogglebox fans as they shared their views on the latest TV shows throughout the week. During the episode, the Springwatch star left viewers in hysterics as he appeared in an unusual NASA jumper and dished out some dry jokes. It wasn't long before people watching took to Twitter to share their thoughts on Chris and Megan as they called for them to have their own hour show.

Amy Dowden has revealed two tumours were removed during her breast cancer surgery. The Strictly Come Dancing professional, 32, found out in May that she had stage three cancer and announced earlier this month that she had undergone a mastectomy. Speaking to the Daily Mirror about how she is feeling post-treatment, Dowden said: “The cancer is in the lab now, which is the most important thing.

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Academy Award-nominated actress, multi-platinum recording musician, and producer, Hailee Steinfeld wants to produce more content.“I just can’t wait to do something that challenges me in a way that I haven’t been challenged yet,” Steinfeld told actress Ayo Edebiri on Friday at Tribeca Festival’s Storytellers series. “I would love to produce something that I’m not in. To understand that role in its entirety on its own.”Steinfeld’s first producing gig was Apple TV+’s Dickinson, which she also starred in. The role earned her a 2020 Peabody Award. Most recently, the actress reprised her role as Spider-Gwen in Spiderman: Across the Spider-Verse. The previous installment, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, won a 2019 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.“I didn’t have the opportunity to record with any of the other actors (in the first film),” Steinfeld said. “It wasn’t until we were doing press for the film that I found out that Shameik Moore, who plays Miles Morales (recorded with other people). He said, ‘I had the best time sitting with,’ and he started listing all the people he recorded with. I was like, ‘How do I get in the room with people?’ I didn’t know that was an option.”Steinfeld ended up recording Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse with Moore, Issa Rea, and Shea Wigham. 

There are a lot of lessons to be learned this weekend, but chief among them, is what’s it like for a major motion picture studio to open a movie with largely a number of its cast, primarily its main star, not available to do press. That’s the big looming question which has been on everyone’s minds in the wake of Ezra Miller’s tabloid laden 2020-2022 in regards to Warner Bros. DC’s $200M The Flash, which isn’t looking good with a 3-day around $60M, off from the $70M-$75M the studio was expecting. The studio is still expecting the Juneteenth holiday to deliver and get the film to $70M over 4-days (if that’s the case, that’s the first time the Federal holiday, which has not proven itself to be a big moviegoing day yet, has yielded a daily gross for a movie north of $10M; last year Universal’s Jurassic World: Dominion made only $8.6M on the Juneteenth Monday holiday). The pic did $24.5M yesterday (which includes Thursday previews). Other studios see these figures lower. Given the $9.7M previews last night, at a glance, it looked like Flash had the potential to over-deliver and beat its weekend estimates, and that’s looking less likely now. Should the movie have gone straight to Warners streaming service Max? Absolutely not. They need to make as much money as they can, and that’s through windows.

Michael Morpurgo’s 1999 children’s book comes vividly to life in Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry’s joint feature debut, a castaway fantasy in which a young boy learns vital lessons about the natural order of things. Seasoned screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce is on board too, and yet this is likely one of his sparsest screenplays yet, leaning into the subtleties of the animation: traditional hand-drawn 2D with mixed-media elements for the background. Older kids will likely love it, but a beautifully stark encapsulation of the bombing of Nagasaki in 1945 may rule it out as something for the whole family.

ceremony since ascension to the throne—and first since assuming her new title as Princess of Wales.Fitting, then, that she eschewed in favor of something a little more daring: a custom look by Singapore-born, Paris-based designer Andrew GN, paired with a hat. The shamrock-green hue is, of course, a nod to Kate’s role as colonel of the Irish guards—as is the Cartier brooch affixed to her lapel, which the Princess of Wales also wore on earlier this year.

Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis dressed in matching outfits with a hidden message at Trooping the Colour.The Wales family co-ordinated their clothing with red and white motifs, in reference to the Welsh flag. George, nine, and Louis, five, wore matching navy suits and red ties while Charlotte, eight, picked a white dress with an adorable red trim and neck scarf. The royal siblings travelled in a horse drawn carriage with Queen Camilla, who is Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, and their mum, the Princess of Wales, who is Colonel of the Irish Guards.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle did not make the trip across the pond to celebrate King Charles III’s first Trooping the Colour parade.

Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon has a wickedly funny sense of humor — and he has Molly Shannon to thank for that.

King Charles III may have been the person of honor at this year’s Trooping the Colour, but Prince William and Princess Kate’s kids managed to steal the show.

Kourtney Kardashian is pregnant with her and Travis Barker’s first child together.

Ariana Madix and Katie Maloney have navigated the world of Vanderpump Rules and beyond side by side.

The royal family stepped out in style at the first Trooping the Colour celebration in honor of King Charles III.

A woman was left fuming after discovering her "ignorant" neighbour had been using her garden tap without permission for months. She returned home from work one day and caught the elderly man using her water spigot to wash his two cars.

A doctor has shared one weight loss tip that she claims helps lose belly fat fast, but it's quite intense. Slimming down isn't easy and even those who eat right and work out consistently can have difficulty shifting stomach inches, despite shedding weight from other parts of the body.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic You can easily hear the impact of Tina Turner in the music of Yola, one of the greatest singers of our generation. But it goes far beyond any basic level of influence for this British-bred, now Nashville-based powerhouse. Before becoming a recording artist and Grammy nominee, back in her native U.K., she was a teacher and lecturer in vocal biomechanics who would instruct young singers in how to emulate Turner’s singular voice… or at least how to try. Yola spoke with Variety about Turner, who died May 24 at age 83. These are some of her thoughts, on everything from Tina’s pure technique to the unique challenges she faced as a Black stylist without parallels or filters to her place in genre-bridging musical history.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift and Ice Spice fans in New Jersey were likely feeling they’d amassed some good karma of their own — at least the ones who had made it through the gauntlet to get tickets for Friday’s MetLife Stadium show — as the suddenly dynamic duo gave the audience two doses of “Karma” toward the end of Swift’s long set. One was in the form of a premiere of the video for the song, which went out to the world not very much later. The other was a live performance of the duet, as the new remix’s featured rapper came out on stage to join the headliner for “Karma,” which has ended Swift’s shows each night since the Eras Tour started in April.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Sad songs say so much, as the man said. And in the case of a brand new Taylor Swift song, “You’re Losing Me,” some of her fans believe the lyrics say plenty about her relationship status over the last year or so. If her material is nothing if not almost always immediately quotable, “You’re Losing Me” has some lulus, starting with: “I wouldn’t marry me either / A pathological people pleaser / Who only wanted you to see her.” The overall tone, though, is less sad than weary, bordering on fatalistic: “Do I throw out everything we built or keep it? / I’m getting tired even for a phoenix / Always rising from the ashes / Mending all her gashes / You might just have dealt the final blow.”

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift has lived up to her self-proclaimed “Mastermind” status with the Thursday night/Friday morning release of fresh versions of two “Midnights” songs. In one, which she spices up “Karma” with an all-new verse from arguably the hottest rapper of the moment, Ice Spice. In the other, bluntly subtitled “(Featuring More Lana Del Rey),” Swift all but cedes the aural spotlight to the guest artist who was formerly inaudible on the track, Lana Del Rey. Ice Spice makes a few interjections here and there in Swift’s verses in “Karma” — she adds an affirmative “Facts!” after Swift sings, “Karma takes all my friends to the summit” — and she also gets the first and last words in this remix (“Karma is that girl, like” and a concluding “Karma’s gonna hold you down”). Mostly, though, she’s afforded an all-new second verse, with lyrics including: “Karma is your checks by the bounce / Karma is the fire in your house / And she ’bout to pop up unannounced.”

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Tina Turner, who died Wednesday at 83, rarely failed to electrify, not just in person but with cameras as her conduit to the audience, too. Longtime Grammys executive producer Ken Ehrlich worked with Turner on programs from the late ’70s through the late ’90s, and he shared his memories with Variety of three particularly memorable TV performances. The first of these was in 1985, when she sang “What’s Love Got to Do With It” on the Grammys, the same year she won record of the year for that song — arguably the peak of her career, though she’d been revered for a quarter-century before that and would become a bigger superstar still in the next 25 years to follow. The second appearance he singles out is a duet between Turner and Elton John for a 1999 “VH1 Divas” special that got more fiery behind the scenes than necessary, albeit possibly to its benefit. Finally, he was an integral part of one of Turner’s last great TV spots, a highly copacetic duet with Beyoncé on the 2008 Grammys telecast.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift announced a new deluxe edition of her “Midnights” album, titled “Midnights: Til Dawn,” that will feature Ice Spice as her guest on a fresh version of “Karma” and additional, newly recorded lead vocals from Lana Del Rey on their “Snow on the Beach” collaboration. Digital and physical editions will each have a format-exclusive track. For the digital release, it will be “Hits Different,” a song that was previously only available on the Target version of “Midnights.” More interestingly for fans, the physical edition will have a “Vault” track never before heard from the “Midnights” writing sessions. The all-new song is titled “You’re Losing Me,” the title of which will obviously set fans’ minds aflutter even before they hear it, given recent revelations about Swift’s personal life.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Global Citizen has announced another all-star concert aiming to help force a real effect on world poverty and climate change, this one set to stream live from Paris’ Champ de Mars on June 22 and featuring Billie Eilish, Jon Batiste, Lenny Kravitz and H.E.R., with additional special appearances by Ben Harper, Finneas and Mosimann. The Live Nation-produced event, “Power Our Planet: Live in Paris,” will be held before a ticketed audience and streamed from in front of the Eiffel Tower on the Global Citizen channel on Amazon’s Twitch, with further broadcast or streaming partners to be announced in the coming weeks. The location wasn’t chosen just for its scenic value. The Summit for a New Financial Pact is being held in Paris on June 22-23, and Global Citizen’s stated hopes are that the concert will help compel World Bank President Ajay Banga, the U.S. government’s Janet Yellen and all the G20 Nations to take action on loosening up funds for less developed nations to deal with climate change.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic In response to public and political pressure, the Ford Motor Company has announced that it will keep installing AM radio in new vehicles after all. Previously, the manufacturer had been on record as saying there was no compelling need to maintain the AM band in any of its forthcoming models — a stance that other carmakers had taken with electric cars but not extended as a policy to all vehicles. That had made Ford particularly a target amid growing controversy over the increasing move to eliminate AM and new congressional legislation designed to make it mandatory in all new models. Jim Farley, Ford’s CEO, announced the reversal in a social media statement.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Imagine Adele happy, and you’re at least part of the way toward understanding the appeal of Lauren Daigle, the powerhouse singer whose self-titled third album — and first with Atlantic Records — came out May 12. Of course, making a joyful noise has been something of a mandate for Daigle, who became arguably the biggest star to arise out of the Christian music scene in the last 10-15 years before entering pop crossover territory. But even if peacefulness and positivity weren’t part of the job description up to this point, Daigle is someone who naturally exudes good vibes, in and out of song. As she puts it, quoting her friend Natalie Hemby, Daigle has a “little hippie thing” going on, which she attributes in part to her Louisiana upbringing, that has erupting in perpetual grins to go with her inner groove.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic All these decades on, Paul Simon is still looking for angels in the architecture. Maybe especially now; he’s 81 and, like many of his contemporaries, thinking about end-of-life issues both spiritual and corporeal. The observations in his quietly stunning new album, ”Seven Psalms,” reflect a sort of consummate maturity: There aren’t many more stages of ripeness you can move on to, in this life, beyond the one where a hard out looms. “Psalms” is a collection of songs with concerns in the past, present and (maybe) future, with Simon briefly looking back at some bridges burned; looking presently at how little the topical concerns that divide us seem to matter in the face of mortality; and looking ahead to see… well, to see if there is an ahead, as afterlife concerns remain as murky in old age as they did in youth.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The ASCAP Pop Music Awards honored “Stay,” by the Kid Laroi featuring Justin Bieber, as the org’s pop music song of the year Thursday night. That number came out on top as the performing rights organization calculated the most-played affiliated songs of the past 12 months, with results for the 40th annual awards revealed at a private party held for members at Yamashiro in Hollywood. The org’s interest in “Stay” is via ASCAP member Bieber, one of the co-writers on the smash. The song spent seven weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in mid-2022. Dr. Luke was named the songwriter of the year, largely for his participation in hits that have continued to do well off Doja Cat’s 2021 album “Planet Her,” primarily “Need to Know,” “Woman” and “You Right.” The success of Latto’s “High Energy” and Nicki Minaj’s “Super Freaky Girl” also contributed to the producer-writer achieving the highest number of plays for the year.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Rhino Records is launching a quarterly series of limited-edition vinyl releases intended to appeal to LP-loving audiophiles, with records that are cut directly from analog sources by one of the most revered names in the mastering business, Kevin Gray. The first two releases in the Rhino High Fidelity series, both out today, are the Cars’ self-titled debut album from 1978 and John Coltrane’s 1964 album “Coltrane’s Sound.” It won’t be a high-volume series: The releases will be limited to 5,000 numbered copies, with only two new titles issued per quarter. Each catalog album will have lacquers cut by Gray from the original analog tapes, pressed on 180-gram vinyl, with glossy, fold-out, “tip-on” jackets in the old-school style and supplemental printed inserts with modern essays or interviews.