Category: 5. Entertainment

Jennifer Aniston stepped out for another dinner date with her new boyfriend Jim Curtis on Wednesday night, keeping the romance very much in the spotlight. 

The Friends star, 56, has been spending more time with the life coach after they were first linked during a summer trip to Mallorca, Spain, over the Fourth of July weekend. 

Since then, the lovers have been spotted on several outings together, showing how much Aniston was enjoying this new chapter after her highly publicised splits from Brad Pitt and Justin Theroux.

Just two nights earlier, Curtis and Aniston shared sushi at Nobu Malibu with the actress’ close friend Courtney Cox and her longtime partner Johnny McDaid. 

On Wednesday, they switched things up by sneaking into a Hollywood hotspot for another intimate dinner, keeping the evening relaxed and private. However, the timing of their outings caught attention as it followed Aniston’s recent admission that she does not cook. 

The Murder Mystery star made the confession during an Instagram post promoting her latest children’s cookbook Cook with Clydeo, named after her beloved dog Clyde. That playful revelation added more charm to her current romance, which has been growing stronger by the day.

Reports also revealed that dogs played a big role in bringing the couple closer. The author and life coach, who owns senior rescue dog named Odie, bonded with the actress over their shared love of animals.

An insider said, “Jennifer really bonded with Jim over his love for rescue dogs, she appreciates that.” The source added that Jim Curtis believed Odie healed a part of him and prepared him for true love, which he found with Jennifer Aniston.

Winona Ryder’s iconic ‘90s haircut wasn’t the work of a celebrity stylist. It was her own doing.

In a video interview with Elle UK, posted on Instagram Thursday, August 21, the Stranger Things star revealed that she cut her own hair throughout the ‘90s — including the choppy, short style she wore in the 1994 cult classic Reality Bites.

“All during the ’90s I cut my own hair,” Ryder, 53, said. “And I remember being incredibly surprised and flattered when my Reality Bites haircut became popular … girls would go to the [hairdresser] and bring that picture in and I thought that was kinda cool.”

The Beetlejuice alum went on to explain that her DIY approach was as low maintenance as it gets. “I mean, I literally just put my head upside down and went like that with the scissors, and I did that for any of my short hair,” she admitted.

In Reality Bites, Ryder plays aspiring filmmaker Lelaina Pierce, a role that cemented her as a voice of her generation. Decades later, fans still rave about the effortless haircut that helped define the film’s grunge-era aesthetic.

Elle UK followers flooded the comments with admiration for Ryder’s honesty and style. 

“Winona could rock any hairstyle regardless!” one person wrote, while another simply summed it up: “Legend.”

Brent Hinds, the former lead guitarist of the acclaimed heavy metal group Mastodon, was killed in Atlanta overnight.

Police said Hinds, 51, died late on Wednesday after his Harley-Davidson collided with a BMW SUV whose driver did not yield while making a turn. The crash occurred at about 11.35pm.

The Fulton county medical examiner’s office later confirmed his death.

Hinds co-founded Mastodon in 2000 alongside bassist Troy Sanders, guitarist Bill Kelliher and drummer Brann Dailor, and went on to gain recognition for his role in the Atlanta-based band.

In a statement posted to Instagram, Mastodon said they were in a “state of unfathomable sadness and grief”.

“We are heartbroken, shocked, and still trying to process the loss of this creative force with whom we’ve shared so many triumphs, milestones, and the creation of music that has touched the hearts of so many,” the band wrote. “Our hearts are with Brent’s family, friends, and fans. At this time, we please ask that you respect everyone’s privacy during this difficult time.”

Earlier this year, Billboard reported that Mastodon and Hinds had “mutually decided to part ways”. But earlier this month, Hinds disputed that account, saying he was forced out and referring to his ex-bandmates as “horrible humans”.

Mastodon released their debut album, Remission, in 2002. Their hardcore sound that combined prog-rock, alternative and grunge among other styles quickly caught the attention of heavy metal fans, and their follow-up record, Leviathan, elevated the group to the metal music mainstream.

Despite the group’s heavy metal influences, Hinds told the Guardian back in 2009 that he felt the band were more classic rock than metal. “That’s the direction I’ve always wanted us to take,” he said. “I never wanted us to be this screaming, lumbering, lotsa-drum-solos band, I always wanted us to be this heavy, psychedelic thing.”

Hinds also had a small foray into television when he, along with his former band members, made a brief appearance on the popular HBO series Game of Thrones as “wildings” in the show’s fifth season.

Warner Bros.’ animated event pic The Cat in the Hat has landed a new release date in theaters, relocating from Feb, 27, 2026 to Nov. 6 of that year.

The studio says the new date gives the film — the first title from the newly relaunched Warner Bros. Pictures Animation division — a long runway to play throughout the year-end holidays when families and kids are more readily available.

Based on the beloved Dr. Seuss tale, Bill Hader voices The Cat. The A-list voice cast also includes Xochitl Gomez, Matt Berry, Quinta Brunson, Paula Pell, Tiago Martinez, Giancarlo Esposito, America Ferrera, Bowen Yang and Tituss Burgess.

Warner Bros. Pictures Animation and Dr. Seuss Enterprises are partnering on the feature, which centers on the fanciful feline as he tries to cheer up a pair of siblings struggling to adapt to their new town in an all new, epic adventure where mischief, magic and mayhem reign supreme, according to the film’s longline. The pic marks Hader’s animated feature debut.

Cat in the Hat is being written and directed by Alessandro Carloni and Erica Rivinoja, with Daniela Mazzucato and Jared Stern producing. Susan Brandt, president-CEO of Dr. Seuss Enterprises, and Hader will executive produce. DNEG Animation will be the animation studio partner.

Warners has released some of its biggest films in November, including the Harry Potter franchise. The holiday time frame is also advantageous in terms of merchandising and partnership programs.

Dr. Seuss’ book The Cat in the Hat was published in 1957 on its way to becoming a perennial classic for generations of kids. This will mark the character’s animated big-screen debut; Mike Myers starred in a live-action adaptation in 2003.

X2 actor Alan Cumming has spilled insights about the shooting of the upcoming film, Avengers: Doomsday.

The 60-year-old actor is all set to reprise his popular role as Nightcrawler in the new MCU movie.

While sharing inside details about the sets of the Russo brothers’ film, Alan revealed that he shot the entire film in “isolation”.

In conversation with GoldDerby, The Traitors actor opened, “I did the entire film in isolation. Lots of green screen, face replacement.”

He further disclosed that the makers gave “fake names” to the characters.

“They even gave characters fake names. I don’t know who I was acting with half the time. [laughs] I broke the internet by mentioning something once, but honestly, I might have got it wrong”, said Cumming.

The forthcoming Marvel film is going to reunite the team of Avengers including Chris Hemsworth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Anthony Mackie and others.

Meanwhile, Tom Hiddleston will also be returning as Loki.

It is pertinent to mention that the new action sci-fi movie will also feature Robert Downey Jr. but not as Iron Man this time. He will be playing the antagonist Doctor Doom.

Backed by Walt Disney, the upcoming project is slated to hit theatres globally on December 18, 2026. 

LONDON — Fifty-five years after rock ’n’ roll’s most important and influential band split up, The Beatles are to release a new collection of unheard outtakes, as well as a remastered and expanded classic documentary series as part of a reboot of a 1990s “Anthology” project.

Paul McCartney, 83, one of the two surviving members of the band alongside Ringo Starr, 85, teased the announcement in an Instagram post on Tuesday, and the band’s official website confirmed on Thursday.

The “Anthology” series was a mid-’90s multimedia project that reunited McCartney, Starr and George Harrison and included three double CD albums, a TV documentary and two new songs, “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love.”

The TV series chronicled the band’s meteoric rise from the clubs of Liverpool, England, and Hamburg, Germany, to global fame — and the acrimonious split in 1970.

It has been restored by teams led by “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson and will stream on Disney+ from Nov. 21. There will be a new episode, titled “Episode Nine,” that shows behind-the-scenes footage from the “Anthology” reunion in 1994-95.

The three “Anthology” albums are also to be remastered and re-released alongside a new fourth volume featuring unheard tracks from the ’94-95 sessions.

Beatles aficionados eagerly consumed the three “Anthology” albums’ studio outtakes and alternate versions in the 1990s, which captured the exuberant humor of the band in its early days and the creative mastery they showed later on. The band’s music inspired countless younger acts who were making their strides to stardom at the time, including Oasis.

“Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” were the first new songs from the band in more than 30 years, and both were made possible thanks to a shaky, low-quality demo tape recorded by John Lennon in his New York apartment in 1977.

After Lennon died in 1980, the tape was eventually passed to McCartney by Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, and some creative studio trickery from co-producer Jeff Lynne allowed the other Beatles to play along with the faint, ghostly vocals and piano, recorded on a simple four-track tape recorder.

The same tape formed the basis of the Grammy-winning “Now and Then,” the final track to feature all the Fab Four, released in 2023.

The 2020s have been a rich time for celebration of The Beatles’ legacy. Peter Jackson’s “Get Back” documentary showed the making of their final album; the “Beatles ’64” documentary, produced by Martin Scorsese, chronicled the effects of Beatlemania after their whirlwind first visit to the U.S., and McCartney continues to tour and play Beatles classics across the world. His U.S. tour kicks off in Palm Springs, California, on Sept. 27.

However, one question still unanswered for Beatles obsessives is whether the elusive “Carnival of Light” will ever be released. Made at the start of the “Sgt. Pepper” sessions in 1967, the 14-minute avant-garde oddity was made for an event in London. It was driven principally by McCartney but featured all the Beatles, who later reportedly vetoed its inclusion on “Anthology 2” in 1996.

NEW YORK — Ciara will deliver a new bundle of joy on Friday, but it’s not the fifth child her husband publicly flirts with her about.

“It’s time. Honestly, I’ve been working on this album for almost five years,” said the R&B-pop superstar. “I put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, as they would say, into this project … I literally gave birth to two babies while I was making this project, too. So, a lot has happened.”

Expanding her 2023 seven-track EP “CiCi,” it’s the Grammy winner’s first album since 2019’s “Beauty Marks,” her first as an independent artist.

“I was still actively putting out music on the project. So, it’s not like I was five years chillin’,” said the “Level Up” artist. “If I ever stop loving the process and experience, then I’ll stop. But I have so much passion for it and I just feel so fortunate that 21 years later, from my first album ‘Goodies’ to now, that I still have the same excitement I had as a little girl.”

Her eighth studio album, “CiCi” includes songs from the EP such as “How We Roll,” her 2023 Chris Brown collaboration which reached No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B digital song sales charts, “Forever” with Lil Baby and the sensual bop, “Low Key.” But the 14-track full-length record, with writing and production from Theron Thomas and J.R. Rotem, separates itself with appearances from Tyga, BossMan DLow and Busta Rhymes. Latto also joins her on “This Right Here,” an anticipated reunion with Jazze Pha who executive produced her 2004 debut, hitting No. 3 on the Billboard 200.

One of the preeminent stage performers in her class and lauded for her dancing, Ciara owns smashes like “Goodies” which topped the Billboard 100, “Oh” featuring Ludacris, “Body Party,” and “Promise.” Four albums reached the Billboard 200 top 10, including 2006’s “Ciara: The Evolution” which hit No. 1.

In an era where music is often released rapidly, Ciara’s leisurely pace has been questioned by fans and critics, wondering if she’s traded her love for music for a perceived socialite lifestyle with her Super Bowl-winning husband, Russell Wilson.

“I feel like I don’t have to explain anything to anybody,” said the “Ride” singer, who’s recently released collaborations with several Asian artists. “Not every year has been about music. And sometimes, it’s been about me just growing as a human. Sometimes, it’s been about me finding my way obviously as a mom, and then I have family now and my husband, being there for him. These are all real things.”

It’s a perception she aims at on “Run It Up” with BossMan Dlow, singing, “No matter how many points I put up on the board, you know they gon’ hate / I’m in a league of my own, I’m a wife and a mom / … You ain’t gotta worry, you know that we straight.”

“I go from the stage to the classroom. I go from the classroom to the football field to support my husband. Then, I got on my schedule we’re gonna go school shopping tomorrow,” said the 39-year-old who wrote on every song. “That’s how my life is, but I would not have it any other way.”

Other standout tracks include the previously released slow jam “Ecstasy” which she later remixed with Normani and Teyana Taylor, and the feel good “Drop Your Love,” sampling “Love Come Down” from Evelyn “Champagne” King. She continued her two-step groove on “This Right Here,” recreating the nostalgic magic with Pha and resurfacing his memorable “Ci-araaa!” ad-lib.

“It’s always been love with Jazze and I … there was behind-the-scenes type of stuff that was beyond he and I,” referring to the producer who crafted her megahit “1,2 Step” with Missy Elliott. “People want the classic him. They want me to be me, too, in that moment. And so, I feel like we accomplished that.”

Becoming one of the first celebrities to gain Benin citizenship as part of a recent law by the small West African nation granting rights to descendants of enslaved people, Ciara hopes to shed light on the country, as well as the continent which has exploded globally in the music market thanks to Afrobeats.

She’s also expanding her Why Not You Foundation, the nonprofit founded with Wilson in 2014 to help disadvantaged youth with educational and personal development resources. With Why Not You centers already in Atlanta and Pittsburgh, they plan to expand in the New York-New Jersey area. Wilson signed with the New York Giants during the offseason.

“Success to me is yes, putting out music. Being the best artist I can be, hopefully being known as one of the best to ever do it … But it’s not solely in that,” she said. “People lose themselves because they didn’t live. I don’t want to be that girl – I’m not going to be that girl.” ___

Follow Associated Press entertainment journalist Gary Gerard Hamilton at @GaryGHamilton on all his social media platforms.

Drew Barrymore has gotten candid about forgiveness, growth, and the power of self-compassion.

In a new conversation with Us Weekly, the actress and talk show host responded to the vulnerable query, “How do I forgive myself for the person I was and the mistakes I made while in survival mode?”

“I love this question so much because I have to deal with it all the time,” Barrymore admitted. 

“I feel that I’ve made so many mistakes, and it just echoes all my fears when I look at my two daughters. Like, I really don’t want them to go through any of the stuff I did, and yet, I can’t work from fear,” she added. 

Moreover, she went on to note, “I have to use all my knowledge and life experience to navigate parenting two girls.”

“Maybe I was built for this? Maybe all my mistakes helped me learn the lessons of my own personal rights and wrongs, and I might not have the moral compass I have if I hadn’t gone through those things.”

The 49-year-old star, who has always been refreshingly open about her journey from child stardom to building her own career and family, reflected on the responsibility she now carries as both a mother and public figure.

“I also take a lot of responsibility for what I’ve done. I own it, and I don’t blame others,” she said, noting how much she admires those who seemed to have had life figured out early. 

“Maybe they came from a good family or they’re people who just seem to have such a natural decency about them. It didn’t take trial by fire for them to become emotionally rational people. Those are my heroes, the ones I’ve learned from and followed.”

However, Barrymore emphasized that there’s no expiration date on growth. 

“We can become the person we always wanted to be. Even if it takes longer than we thought. But we also have to use our past as our strength, not our weakness. You lived! You learned! Now go take all that wisdom and fly.”

In closing, she left a powerful reminder, “Don’t let it hold you back. And try not to beat yourself up. It’s such an easy trap. We can’t waste any more time. I’m guessing we’ve all repented and put in the time to figure a lot out. So let’s try to be proud. I’m sure you have much to be proud of, so today, focus on that.”

The Last of Us, HBO’s zombie drama, has plenty of shocking moments, particularly in Season 2.

Speaking at Deadline Contenders at HBO Max, the series’ stars including Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey and Kaitlyn Dever, as well as creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, revealed the moments performed by others that surprised them the most.

The second season picks up five years after the events of the first, with Ramsey’s Ellie and Pascal’s Joel, who has become somewhat of a surrogate father to the wayward teen, easing into as much of a routine as one can in the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse at a compound in Jackson, WY. However, quickly, a group of Fireflies murder Joel on the outskirts of town as revenge for his own murder spree to save Ellie at the Salt Lake City hospital that left their loved ones dead. Ellie then chases down Dever’s Abby and her crew in Seattle to avenge Joel.

Speaking at Deadline Contenders at HBO Max, Mazin said, “I don’t know how Kaitlyn was looking at Pedro, turned to look at golf clubs, turned back and a tear fell. I don’t know how she did it. Perfect.”

Watch the panel conversation, which also included guest star Joe Pantoliano and editor Timothy Good, below, and scroll down for photos from the event.

Ramsey referenced a porch scene with Ellie and Joel – a flashback – when Joel confesses what he did to the Fireflies at the hospital and she is devastated because it means there will never be a cure.

“I don’t know how on the porch scene [Pedro] does the perfect little lip chuckle. It breaks my heart every single time,” she said.

Pascal, for his part, filibusters and doesn’t answer the question, apart from muttering about the porch scene, Bella and Kaitlyn.

For Dever, her wow moment was “when Joel is lying there dead.” “I don’t know how you guys did that moment. I had to leave the room. I couldn’t watch it,” she said.

Druckmann’s most shocking scene was when Pascal’s Joel leads Joe Pantoliano’s Eugene through the woods before he kills him.

After Eugene realizes his fate, he says he needs to see his wife, Gail, one more time, and Joel delivers a potent message.

“There’s that moment when they’re by the lake, and Pedro says, ‘If you love someone, you can always see their face.’ The camera closes in on Joey’s face, and he takes this breath and relaxes, and then there’s little eye twitch, and that eye twitch made it so believable and so emotional,” said Druckmann.

Druckmann, who is head of creative at Naughty Dog, the video game studio behind the original game, said the series has allowed them to “unplug from these characters and get into other perspectives” that it wasn’t able to get into in the game.

“Looking back now at Season 1 and Season 2 … the show really sings when it’s deeply faithful to the source material and expands on it in this really beautiful way,” he added.

His co-creator Mazin said the success of the series comes down to the community that has been created behind the scenes.

“I will say that no matter what you write, if you’re writing a show that is about people that love each other and care for each other, I just don’t believe it’s going to work if on the other side of the camera, people don’t love each other and care for each other,” he said.

He said that he saw that the first day Ramsey and Pascal met. “I never expected that there would be the intensity of that bond between them,” he added.

Mazin said it also applied when Dever arrived. “Then when we bring new people in, we try to create as much of a warm cocoon as we can for everyone, because it’s a hard show to make. We bring in poor Kaitlyn, and we’re like, ‘Welcome to Canada, kill him.’ Then I watch Kaitlyn and Pedro have this incredible bond. I do believe that the family that we’ve created is the thing that kind of keeps us all going. It’s a long, hard show to make, and so without it, I don’t know if I’d be able to do it,” he added.

Ramsey said it was about “going to the extremes and the depths and the highs and the lows.” “It’s about going to those places and not being afraid of emotion,” she said.

Pascal was asked what it was like to shoot a scene as memorable as his death scene.

“You’re so inside of it that you really kind of lose sight of what it will mean when an audience experiences episode 2 of Season 2,” he said. “None of us were really thinking about that as we were shooting it. We were just really in the story.”

Pascal also praised Dever. “I had no doubt in my mind that she was going to knock it out of the park, because I’d seen her knock everything out of the park that she’d ever done up to that point. There was a dance that we just got to really enjoy, that really to just be scene partners for something as intense as that, and right away, just like just being together, it was really fun,” he added.

Dever herself said that she focused on Abby’s grief. “I wanted people to be able to really see that and feel that, and really understand just how deep her pain is, and understand how much time she’s spent thinking about this and obsessing over it and calculating exactly what she was going to say and what she was going to do when she was face to face with Joel. That was my main focus,” she added.

The Dopesick star said she also wanted to showcase how desperate her character was.

“She just wanted her dad back so bad, and she felt like killing Joel was the only way she could feel better. There was a moment at the very end when she kills Joel … where she doesn’t feel better, and how she has to live with that. I really wanted to just be able to see the human parts of her, and that she’s not just this evil person that did this horrible thing. There’s so many more layers to her,” she added.

Pantoliano turns up in the sixth episode of the second season, despite the fact his character is only seen in a photograph in the game.

He admits that being a guest actor can be “very challenging.” “It’s like going to a cocktail party and not knowing the hosts and not knowing what the inside of the house looks like. Craig and Neil took the time to call me up and talk to me about the character backstory.”

Pantoliano then told a funny story about how he didn’t recognize Pascal, having worked with him at a reading of Gizmo Love at Lang Recital Hall, Hunter College in New York.

“Pedro said, ‘Joey Pants. You don’t remember me. I’ve been to Hoboken. I’ve been in your house, and that really loosened it all up for me,” he said.

After Pascal’s Joel tells Eugene that if he loves someone, he can always see their face, Eugene takes off his glasses, and thinking about his wife, says ‘I see her’ before being shot.

“A lot of the things that I had to say and feel were things that I didn’t have a chance to say to my mother when she left. A lot of people think you build a character or create a character, but most of the time, you’re finding yourself in the character and the emotional challenges, traumas that we all humans, go through with the uniforms that we put on every morning. This was a glorious opportunity,” he added.

The Last of Us, which scored 16 Emmy nominations, is written and executive produced by Mazin and Druckmann. It is produced by Sony Pictures Television, PlayStation Productions, Word Games, Mighty Mint, and Naughty Dog. Carolyn Strauss, Jacqueline Lesko, Cecil O’Connor, Asad Qizilbash, Carter Swan, and Evan Wells also exec produce.

Mariah Carey will be the 2025 recipient of the Video Vanguard Award, given out annually as part of the MTV Video Music Awards. The singer will also perform on the Sept. 7 telecast, which is airing on CBS for the first time.

Producers are promising a “show-stopping, career-spanning medley of her biggest hits” as part of the three-hour show.

Last year’s Video Vanguard recipient/performer was Katy Perry. The award has had a diva-heavy skew in recent years, with recipients in recent years also including Shakira, Nicki Minaj, Missy Elliott, Jennifer Lopez, Pink and Rihanna. The last time the Video Vanguard Award went to a male performer was when Kanye West picked it up in 2015.

Not surprisingly, just as Perry did last year, Carey has an album to promote that is due soon after the telecast — “Here for It All,” due out Sept. 26 on the Gamma label. Carey released the first single from the project, “Type Dangerous,” in June, a song that is up for best R&B at this year’s VMAs.

Producers are touting that this will be the first time Carey has performed on the VMAs stage in 20 years, when she did a medley to promote her then-new album “The Emancipation of Mimi.” Also of note is that she presented this same award to LL Cool J back in 1997, which means there will be a reunion of sorts, as the veteran rapper is hosting the show this year.

Other performers who have been announced for the show include Sabrina Carpenter, Ricky Martin (who will receive the VMAs’ first-ever Latin Icon Award), Busta Rhymes, J Balvin, Alex Warren and Sombr.

The VMAs will air live in all time zones on CBS and MTV — as well as streaming live on Paramount+ — at 8 p.m. ET/5 PT on Sept. 7 from New York’s UBS Arena.

The 2025 show is being produced by Gunpowder & Sky, with Bruce Gillmer, Den of Thieves co-founder Jesse Ignjatovic and Barb Bialkowski as the telecast’s executive producers. Alicia Portugal is co-executive producer; Jackie Barba is executive in charge of production; Wendy Plaut is executive in charge of celebrity talent; and Lisa Lauricella is executive in charge of music talent.