By Jonathan Stempel | NEW YORK NEW YORK Paul McCartney has reached a confidential settlement of his lawsuit against Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC in which he sought to reclaim copyrights to songs by the Beatles. The accord disclosed on Thursday in filings with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan ends the 75-year-old McCartney’s pre-emptive effort
Entertainment
By Piya Sinha-Roy | LOS ANGELES LOS ANGELES Rapper Jay Z let his music do the talking with his new album “4:44” on Friday as he addressed cheating on his wife Beyonce, the birth of his twins and this year’s Oscars best picture. In the title track, Jay Z admitted in his lyrics that he
NEW YORK, June 30 Actress Naomi Watts says her new television series “Gypsy” is part of a recent trend of productions with strong female characters. Watts, who is also an executive producer of “Gypsy,” plays a Manhattan therapist who dangerously inserts herself into the lives of her patients’ acquaintances and family. “Gypsy,” a 10-part series
By Rollo Ross | LOS ANGELES LOS ANGELES In the verdant rain forests of Hawaii, Jack Black, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan simulated dodging rampaging rhinos and hungry hippos as they filmed the long-anticipated sequel to the Robin Williams 1995 adventure film “Jumanji.” The first trailer for “Jumanji: Welcome to the
LOS ANGELES Reality TV celebrities Kendall and Kylie Jenner apologized on Thursday after causing an uproar for selling pricey T-shirts featuring their faces over images of famed music groups and artists including The Doors, Pink Floyd, Ozzy Osbourne and slain rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. In the second recent marketing misstep involving members of
LOS ANGELES Fans were crawling up the walls with excitement as the stars of “Spider-Man: Homecoming” swung into the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe series of films, which have dominated the global box office for years. British actor Tom Holland, who plays the web-slinging hero, showed up at the premiere accompanied by an actor in full
By Lisa Richwine | LOS ANGELES LOS ANGELES AMC Networks Inc on Thursday will release a $5-a-month subscription option designed for pay TV customers who want commercial-free versions of shows such as hit zombie drama “The Walking Dead,” company officials said. Called AMC Premiere, the on-demand offering also includes movies and exclusive content such as
LOS ANGELES Halle Berry, the only black woman to ever win a best actress Oscar, said her 2002 win turned out to be meaningless, and “Fast and Furious” star Michelle Rodriguez warned she may quit the action movie franchise unless filmmakers “show some love for women.” Their comments proved a reality check for women in
LONDON Michael Bond, the British creator of Paddington Bear, a marmalade sandwich-loving refugee from Peru who entertained generations of children with his exploits in London, died on Tuesday aged 91 after a short illness. Wearing a tag round his neck that read “Please look after this bear”, Paddington was named after the London railway station
LOS ANGELES Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler take up gambling to pay for their daughter’s college education in new comedy “The House,” but one person the movie decided not to take a risk on was singer Mariah Carey. Carey filmed a cameo for the film, but it ended up on the cutting room floor, writer
By Dana Feldman and Joseph Ax | LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK Bill Cosby said on Tuesday he has no plans to hold town hall events to discuss sexual assault, days after his spokesman suggested the comedian planned a series of public talks to educate men about how to avoid false accusations. Cosby’s spokesman,
Music streaming service Pandora Media Inc said Tim Westergren was stepping down as its chief executive. Westergren, who co-founded Pandora in 2000, served as its CEO and president from May 2002 to July 2004, before returning to lead the company last year. The company named Chief Financial Officer Naveen Chopra as the interim CEO. (Reporting
By Estelle Shirbon | LONDON LONDON Twenty years to the day after the first book in the Harry Potter series was published, fans gathered online and in the real world to express their enduring love for J.K. Rowling’s magical creation. Since “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” came out in 1997, with a first print
LOS ANGELES New Zealand pop singer Lorde landed her first U.S. chart-topping album on Monday as her latest record debuted at the top of the weekly Billboard 200 chart. “Melodrama,” the second album from 20-year-old Lorde, sold 82,000 albums, 40,000 songs and was streamed nearly 35 million times, totaling 109,000 album units according to figures
LONDON British supermodel Kate Moss has been stripped down and immortalized as a naked, armless mannequin in an advant-garde sculpture titled ‘MILF’, which has gone on display in London. The silicone sculpture of an expressionless Moss and her naked torso was unveiled at the Opera Gallery on Thursday, with the life-like piece priced at 25,000
Facebook Inc (FB.O) is in talks with Hollywood studios about producing scripted, TV-quality shows, with an aim of launching original programing by late summer, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. The social networking giant has indicated that it was willing to commit to production budgets as high as $3 million per episode, in meetings
By Chris Aluka Berry | MACON, Ga. MACON, Ga. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and entertainer Cher were among the political and musical luminaries who attended the funeral for Southern rock pioneer and Allman Brothers Band vocalist Gregg Allman in Georgia on Saturday. Hundreds of mourners joined a procession from the chapel where Allman was
NEW YORK Television talk-show host and comedian Bill Maher drew harsh criticism on Saturday for using a racial epithet on his HBO series “Real Time” in an interview with a U.S. senator from Nebraska. Maher issued a statement on Saturday apologizing for the comment, which HBO called “inexcusable.” Maher was interviewing Ben Sasse, a Republican,
LONDON U.S. pop singer Ariana Grande has paid a surprise visit to young fans who were injured in a suicide attack on a concert she gave in Manchester last month, posing with them for selfies and signing t-shirts. Grande returned to Britain on Friday to lead an all-star benefit concert on Sunday and quickly headed
LOS ANGELES Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell had several prescription drugs in his system when he committed suicide last month in a Detroit hotel, according to the results of an autopsy released on Friday. Cornell, 52, had anti-anxiety drugs, sedatives, barbiturates and sinus congestion medication in his system, a toxicology report from the Wayne County Medical
HAVANA Communist-run Cuba, which once frowned upon the Beatles as a decadent Western influence, on Thursday held an open-air covers concert in a Havana park to celebrating 50 years since the release of the band’s landmark album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Beatlemania has flourished belatedly on the Caribbean island, where authorities in the
SYDNEY Bosses of Australia’s media companies, including an arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, have formed an unprecedented front to lobby for changes they say will allow more consolidation and help them compete with internet giants. This week, in a show of unity, chief executives of companies from radio broadcasters to newspaper publishers joined Prime
NEW YORK Actress Julianne Moore is urging Americans to wear orange on Friday to mark National Gun Violence Awareness Day. Moore got involved in campaigning for an end to gun violence after the 2012 shootings of 20 children at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook elementary school, and she is now chair of the Everytown Creative Council. “When
LONDON Tickets for an all-star benefit concert in aid of the victims of the Manchester bomb attack sold out within minutes of going on sale on Thursday. The “One Love Manchester” concert will be headlined by Ariana Grande, the U.S. singer whose concert in the northern English city on May 22 was hit by a
