Kanye West, the popular rapper and social icon, has officially filed to appear on Ohio ballots for the 2020 presidential election, according to Fox 5.
West, who announced he would run for the presidency on July 4, submitted paperwork to the state on August 5.
Read More
At 15-years-old, Ava Paige proves that cancer and the Coronavirus are just bumps in the road for this singer/songwriter and soon-to-be superstar.
Read More
Plans for the 2020 college football season — if it is played — should start coming into focus this week.
They will trickle down from the top of major college football, with Power Five conferences putting in place revised schedules they hope will make it easier to manage potential disruptions brought on by COVID-19.
Read More
Olivia de Havilland, the doe-eyed actress beloved to millions as the sainted Melanie Wilkes of “Gone With the Wind,” but also a two-time Oscar winner and an off-screen fighter who challenged and unchained Hollywood’s contract system, died Sunday at her home in Paris. She was 104.
Havilland, the sister of fellow Oscar winner Joan Fontaine, died peacefully of natural causes, said New York-based publicist Lisa Goldberg.
Read More
A&E Network’s cancellation of its popular police show “Live PD” has backfired, big time.
Average prime-time viewership for the channel has declined by 49 percent year over year since the show’s cancellation, according to the Wall Street Journal. Prior to the show’s cancellation June 10, viewership for the channel in 2020 had been up 4 percent over 2019.
Read More
Actor John Saxon, a versatile actor with a lengthy and prolific career who starred with Bruce Lee in “Enter the Dragon” and appeared in several “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies, has died at his home in Tennessee, according to the Hollywood Reporter. He was 83.
The entertainment news outlet quotes Saxon’s wife, Gloria, as confirming that the actor died of pneumonia on Saturday in Murfreesboro.
Read More
Actress Spencer Grammer says she was trying to calm an agitated man when he slashed her in the arm and stabbed her friend in the back Friday outside a New York City restaurant.
Grammer, 36, told US Weekly that she and her friend “did what anyone else would do in the same situation” and were “attempting to prevent the altercation from escalating” when they were attacked.
Read More
Regis Philbin, the genial host who shared his life with television viewers over morning coffee for decades and helped himself and some fans strike it rich with the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” has died at 88.
Philbin died of natural causes Friday night, just over a month before his 89th birthday, according to a statement from his family provided by manager Lewis Kay.
Read More
by Jack Coyle NEW YORK, New York (AP) — A long time ago in a pre-COVID universe far, far away, blockbusters opened around the globe simultaneously or nearly so. In 1975, “Jaws” set the blueprint. Concentrate marketing. Open wide. Pack them in. Since then, Hollywood has turned opening weekends into…
Read More
Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet,” which had hoped to herald Hollywood’s return to big theatrical releases, has yet again postponed its release due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Warner Bros. said Monday that “Tenet” will not make its August 12 release date. Unlike previous delays, the studio this time didn’t announce a new target for the release of Nolan’s much-anticipated $200 million thriller.
Read More
Alex Trebek says he’s responding exceptionally well to treatment for pancreatic cancer and expects to mark his two-year survival next February.
His doctor has said he’s counting on that milestone, the “Jeopardy!” host said, “so I expect to be around ‘cause he said I will be around. And I expect to be hosting the show if I am around.”
Read More
Guest lineups for the Sunday news shows:
ABC’s “This Week” — Govs. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., and Jared Polis, D-Colo.; Rep. Donna Shalala, D-Fla.; Grenita Lathan, interim superintendent of the Houston Independent School District.
NBC’s “Meet the Press” — Polis; Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C.; Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health; Gov. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio; Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
CBS’ “Face the Nation” — Gov. Larry Hogan, R-Md.; Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta; Dr. Michael Drake, incoming president of the University of California.
CNN’s “State of the Union” — Clyburn; Mayors Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles and Ted Wheeler of Portland, Oregon; Gov. Tate Reeves, R-Miss.; Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.
“Fox News Sunday” — President Donald Trump.
LeBron James says his thoughts on social justice can’t be contained on the back of a basketball jersey.
The Los Angeles Lakers superstar won’t wear one of the NBA-approved social justice messages on the back of his jersey when the NBA resumes competition later this month in the Orlando bubble.
Read More
Guest lineups for the Sunday news shows:
ABC’s “This Week” — Adm. Brett Giroir, the Health and Human Services Department official overseeing the nation’s coronavirus testing efforts; Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
NBC’s “Meet the Press” — Giroir; Gov. Larry Hogan, R-Md.; Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of Florida’s Miami-Dade County Public Schools district.
CBS’ “Face the Nation” — Dr. Jerome Adams, U.S. surgeon general; Mayor Kate Gallego of Phoenix; Terry Shaw, president and CEO, AdventHealth; Tom Wyatt, CEO of KinderCare.
CNN’s “State of the Union” — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; Mayor Carlos Gimenez of Miami-Dade County, Florida.
“Fox News Sunday” — DeVos; Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University.
Even though Derek Jones’ dad was a drummer and his grandmother played piano, he never played music until later in life.
“We always had music going on at the house at our supper table. If Dad was in charge of the music, we listened to Allman Brothers, Marshall Tucker, Grand Funk Railroad but if Mom was in control [of the music], we listened to Lionel Richie, Jim Croce, stuff like that,” he said.
Read More
“Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” will be performed live or played before “The Star-Spangled Banner” prior to each NFL game during Week 1 and the league is considering putting names of victims of police brutality on helmet decals or jersey patches, a person familiar with the discussions told The Associated Press.
The person said the league is working collaboratively with players to recognize victims of systemic racism throughout the season in a variety of ways. The person spoke to the AP on Thursday on condition of anonymity because discussions between the league and the NFL Players Association are ongoing.
Read More
Hugh Downs, the genial, versatile broadcaster who became one of television’s most familiar and welcome faces with more than 15,000 hours on news, game and talk shows, has died at age 99.
Downs died of natural causes at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona, on Wednesday, said his great-niece, Molly Shaheen.
Read More
Carl Reiner, the ingenious and versatile writer, actor and director who broke through as a “second banana” to Sid Caesar and rose to comedy’s front ranks as creator of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and straight man to Mel Brooks’ “2000 Year Old Man,” has died. He was 98.
Reiner’s assistant Judy Nagy said he died Monday night of natural causes at his home in Beverly Hills, California.
Read More
Tyler Rich grew up in Northern California in the small town of Yuba City. He grew up listening to country music with his mom and rock n roll with his dad.
“My Uncle [Tim] always had his guitar at every family function. He was always playing. He didn’t know genres, he just knew good music,” he said. “He would play, Tom Petty, Credence Clearwater, George Strait, Brooks, and Dunn or Garth Brooks. He even played Michael Jackson and the Beatles as long as it was good music.”
Read More
Does anyone still believe what they read in the New York Times or watch on any major television network news broadcast? Because for millions of Americans, the credibility of those news sources is at an all-time low. The internet hive mind, even in the face of blatant censorship by search engines and social media monopolies, simply offers too many verifiable, alternative facts for establishment media to get away with the kind of lying they do, and yet they persist. Exposed and discredited, they keep on lying, betting that an exhausted populace simply will not verify every single thing they report.
Read More
The noose found hanging in Bubba Wallace’s garage stall at Talladega Superspeedway had been there since at least last October, federal authorities said Tuesday in announcing there will be no charges filed in an incident that rocked NASCAR and its only fulltime Black driver.
U.S. Attorney Jay Town and FBI Special Agent in Charge Johnnie Sharp Jr. said an investigation determined “although the noose is now known to have been in garage number 4 in 2019, nobody could have known Mr. Wallace would be assigned to garage number 4 last week.”
Read More
Jaws,” “Black Panther” and “Back to the Future” are just a few of the modern popcorn classics coming to the drive-in this summer.
Tribeca Enterprises, IMAX and AT&T on Monday announced the initial lineup for its summer series of films, comedy and football, running every weekend from July 2 through Aug. 2 in cities like Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Miami and Seattle.
Read More
Comedian D.L. Hughley announced he tested positive for COVID-19 after collapsing onstage during a performance in Nashville, Tennessee.
The stand-up comedian, 57, lost consciousness while performing at the Zanies comedy nightclub on Friday night and was hospitalized, news outlets reported. On Saturday, Hughley posted a video on Twitter in which he said he was treated for exhaustion and dehydration afterward.
Read More
Comic-Con may be canceled this year, but Warner Bros. will convene a 24-hour virtual gathering of the biggest names in the DC Comics universe.
The studio announced Tuesday that DC FanDome will be held on August 22 starting at 10 a.m. PDT. The event will feature talent announcements and reveal new content from WB games, comics, film and television.
Read More
Jake Brown knows more about the music industry than any human I have ever met. Being that he just completed his 50th book, Behind the Boards: Nashville, he writes memoirs and provides a plethora of behind the scenes’ antidotes for all music genres.
Brown said he got interested in what goes behind the scenes when he was a kid. His mother took him and his brother to see the Bon Jovi –Slippery When Wet concert. At the concert, Brown and his family had such terrible seats that they couldn’t see the stage much. However, one thing Brown could see was what was happening behind the stage.
Read More
The St. Paul Saints announced Friday that the team will be participating in a 60-game season beginning July 3, but all games will be played in Sioux Falls, South Dakota until “capacity restrictions for outdoor events have relaxed.”
The American Association of Independent Professional Baseball said the shortened season will run from July 3 to September 10, concluding with a championship series between the top two teams. The league will consist of six teams based in three separate hubs.
Read More
Singer songwriter Brandi Carlile has had a productive year and that’s led her to be the leading nominee at the Americana Honors and Awards for her roles as a solo artist, a member of the group The Highwomen, as a producer and as a songwriter.
In the nominations announced Monday for its September awards show, the Grammy-winning artist has a total of seven nominations, including artist of the year as a solo artist and duo/group of the year with The Highwomen, which includes Maren Morris, Amanda Shires and Natalie Hemby. Rocker Brittany Howard, who has won Grammys with her band Alabama Shakes, is up for five nominations, including artist of the year and album of the year for her solo album “Jaime.”
Read More
For the fourth time in its history, the Oscars are being postponed. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the ABC Television Network said Monday that the 93rd Academy Awards will now be held April 25, 2021, eight weeks later than originally planned because of the pandemic’s effects on the movie industry.
The Academy’s Board of Governors also decided to extend the eligibility window beyond the calendar year to Feb. 28, 2021, for feature films, and delay the opening of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures from December until April 30, 2021.
Read More
The closely watched arrival of Christopher Nolan’s big-budget sci-fi espionage film “Tenet” will finally happen on July 31, Warner Bros. announced Friday.
The studio said it would delay the release by two weeks and instead re-issue Nolan’s 2010 sci-fi blockbuster “Inception” in mid-July.
The release date for “Tenet” has been closely watched in all corners of the film industry, which has faced shuttered theaters due to the coronavirus since mid-March. Movie theaters plan to reopen in July for a vastly different summer season than the one the industry had planned.
Read More
The History Channel’s recent series about Ulysses S. Grant was produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and based on the best-selling biography by Ron Chernow. It concluded on Wednesday and was just about what one would expect from a film created by some of academia’s and entertainment’s biggest leftists.
Although the series did fairly well in rehabilitating and humanizing Grant’s better characteristics, it could not resist hammering home trite narratives about Reconstruction, going so far as to omit well-documented history about Grant and his administration to accomplish the task. He who controls how we speak about the past and what we know about the past controls the future. This show, like much of what is created in academia and entertainment, advances that project.
Read More
Here’s what NASCAR hopes is the honky tonk truth — that a Nashville reboot is good enough this time to make the sport a tough ticket in the heart of one of the entertainment hot spots of the south.
The first step? Convincing its star drivers the trip to Nashville Superspeedway in 2021 is the spark of a motorsports rebirth in the area and not just another lazy ride on an intermediate concrete track.
Read More
Nashville, Tennessee – A native of Lake City, Florida, Adam Sanders knew at an early age that music would be his life.
“My mom likes to say I could sing before I could talk. It was as far back as I could remember. My earliest memories were dressing up like Alan Jackson and singing ‘Chattahoochee’ and ‘Don’t Rock the Jukebox,’” he said.
Read More
NASHVILLE, Tennessee – I first interviewed Emily Hackett in October 2018 when she was featured in my Music Spotlight column. There has been a lot of shifts in the music world since then and we were able to talk about how that is affecting her/the industry.
As mentioned in my column, in 2018 Hackett released her EP By the Sun, and in 2019 she released its counterpart By the Moon which landed her as one of CMT Next Women of Country for 2019.
Read More
The first time I heard Drew Baldridge was on Sirius XM’s The Highway as one of their iconic Highway Finds. His songs “Dance With Ya” and “Rebound” resonated with their young audience.
The country singer was kind enough to talk with me over the phone about how he got his start.
Read More
Born and raised on a small farm in South Georgia, Brian Callihan was your typical country boy as he hunted and played baseball and football. However, he found his true passion when he started listening to Keith Whitley.
Callihan said when he was around 10 or 11 years old he got a “Keith Whitley’s Greatest Hits for Christmas,” which was his dad’s favorite singer.
Read More
Richard Wayne Penniman, better known as “Little Richard,” died on Saturday at his Nashville home. He was 87. Millennials and such may be unaware of the man and the great American music he pioneered.
As the big-band era of the 1940s began to wane, musicians opted for smaller combos. They pounded out a rollicking sound with a heavy backbeat, honking saxophones, percussive pianos, and simple lyrics that lingered in the mind. When Chuck Berry sang “roll over Beethoven, dig these rhythm and blues,” that was the music he was talking about. By the mid-1950s, rhythm and blues had been rebranded as rock and roll, and Little Richard was the king.
Read More
Nashville, Tennessee – Even though I was familiar with the country/rock band, Trick Pony, the first time I was aware of Heidi Newfield the solo artist was when I heard “Johnny and June” on the radio in 2008. When I learned that Newfield was going to be one of the guests performing at the Her Song fundraiser for Thistle Farms at Third and Lindsley/Backstage Nashville, I got tickets to help a good cause and see some awesome female artists in an intimate setting. Fortunately, I was able to meet and secure an interview with Newfield who has one of the most beautiful, raw, bluesy voices I have ever heard.
Read More
If you long for the music of England Dan and John Ford Coley along with a little George Benson and Joe Jackson, you will love the tracks from Christian Gratz’s record, 1979. If you are young and not familiar with this type of music, I would like to introduce you to Christian Gratz.
Read More
Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas, whose career spanned more than six decades, died Wednesday at the age of 103.
Read More
Profiles in Courage deserves its place in that vast mythopoeic enterprise the public knows as Camelot. But a much more important book is Peter Schweizer’s Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elites.
Read More
Amy Sherman-Palladino’s writing is full of witty, sharp dialogue that makes you need to rewind a couple times every episode to make sure you caught exactly what was being said. Usually, it’s brilliant.
Read More
The field for this year’s Super Bowl is set, with the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers earning the right to play for the National Football League championship on Feb. 2 in Miami.
Read More
Yes, it’s up for this year’s “Best Picture” Oscar, but that hasn’t stopped critics delivering decidedly mixed reviews to “1917.”
Read More
Those classics that are called the Great Books are most closely associated with Mortimer J. Adler and Robert Hutchins.1 When Hutchins became president of the University of Chicago in 1929, he hired Adler to teach philosophy in the law school and the psychology department. Upon arriving, Adler, rather brashly he admits, recommended to Hutchins a program of study for undergraduates using classic texts. Adler had taught in the General Honors program at Columbia University begun in 1921 by professor John Erskine. Hutchins asked him for a list of books to be read in such a program. When Hutchins saw the list, he told Adler that he had not encountered most of them during his student years at Oberlin College and Yale University. Hutchins later wrote that unless Adler “did something drastic he [Hutchins, referring to himself] would close his educational career a wholly uneducated man.”2 Hutchins remained president for 16 years before serving as chancellor until 1951, and the following year, they did something drastic.
Read More
British comedian and actor Ricky Gervais, in his fifth time hosting the annual Golden Globe Awards, used his opening speech to roast many of the most famous actors and filmmakers in the room and criticize the elitist mindset of Hollywood.
Read More
When Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, they quickly made their intentions for the universe as a whole very clear. A new Star Wars film every two to three years and further adventures into television as well.
Read More
Something really interesting is happening at Malpaso Productions, Clint Eastwood’s movie production company. Eastwood’s films, especially in recent years, portray the best in the American character through real stories of ordinary Americans called by events to stand up and shine. In his latest, “Richard Jewell,” Eastwood continues exploring a theme I’ve called “American Greatness in the Shadow of 9/11.” The result is a body of work that is awe-inspiring and unlike anything we have seen before in American cinema.
Read More
If you are one of those people who will settle in this evening with a hot cup of apple cider to watch a holiday movie, you are not alone. Holiday movies have become firmly embedded in Americans’ winter celebrations.
Read More
There is a scene in the terrific new film Ford v Ferrari where Henry Ford II grills his lieutenant Lee Iaccoca about the failed bid to acquire Enzo Ferrari’s racing car enterprise. Ford learns that Ferrari has a message for him, and Iacocca dutifully delivers: “He said Ford makes ugly little cars in ugly factories.”
Read More
Mr. Rogers will not be on PBS this Friday. Instead, he will be on your big screen as Tom Hanks who portrays him and the friendship he had with journalist Tom Junod. The journalist and television star developed this friendship after Junod was assigned to profile Rogers.
Read More