Entertainment (Page 3)

There’s a reason why Christine McVie was considered the heart of Fleetwood Mac.Continue Reading

Throughout the various personal turmoils for which the members of Fleetwood Mac are known, one relationship buoyed the band for decades: the friendship between its two frontwomen, Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks.

McVie joined the band in 1970 during one of its early lineup changes and for years was its only woman. When Nicks was added to the lineup in 1975, the two became fast friends.

Theirs was not a competitive relationship, but a sisterly one – both women were gifted songwriters responsible for crafting many of the band’s best-known tunes. Though the two grew apart in the 1980s amid Nicks’ worsening drug addiction and the band’s growing internal tension, they came back together when McVie returned to Fleetwood Mac in 2014.

At a concert in London, shortly before McVie officially rejoined the band, Nicks dedicated the song “Landslide” to her “mentor. Big sister. Best friend.” And at the show’s end, McVie was there, accompanying her bandmates for “Don’t Stop.”

“I never want her to ever go out of my life again, and that has nothing to do with music and everything to do with her and I as friends,” Nicks told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in 2015.

On Wednesday, McVie, the band’s “songbird,” died after a brief illness at age 79. Below, revisit McVie’s and Nicks’ years-long relationship as bandmates, best friends and “sisters.”

McVie and Nicks hit it off from the start

The story of Nicks joining Fleetwood Mac is legend now: Band founder and drummer Mick Fleetwood wanted to recruit guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, who stipulated that he would only join if his girlfriend and musician Nicks could join, too. McVie cast the deciding vote, and the rest is history.

“It was critical that I got on with her because I’d never played with another girl,” McVie told the Guardian in 2013. “But I liked her instantly. She was funny and nice but also there was no competition. We were completely different on the stage to each other and we wrote differently too.”

Throughout the band’s many personal complications – McVie married and divorced Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie and had an affair with the band’s lighting director, while Nicks had rollercoaster romances with Buckingham and Fleetwood – they were each other’s center.

“To be in a band with another girl who was this amazing musician – (McVie) kind of instantly became my best friend,” Nicks told the New Yorker earlier this year. “Christine was a whole other ballgame. She liked hanging out with the guys. She was just more comfortable with men than I had ever been.”

The two protected each other, Nicks said, in a male-dominated industry: “We made a pact, in the very beginning, that we would never be treated with disrespect by all the male musicians in the community.

“I would say to her, ‘Together, we are a serious force of nature, and it will give us the strength to maneuver the waters that are ahead of us,’” Nicks told the New Yorker.

The band succeeds but McVie and Nicks grow distant

“Rumours” was the band’s greatest success to date when it was released in 1977. But the band’s relationships with each other were deteriorating, save for the one between McVie and Nicks. While the pair were enduring breakups with their significant others, Nicks and McVie spent their time offstage together.

The Guardian asked McVie if she was trying to offset the band’s tumult with her songs on “Rumours,” including the lighthearted “You Make Lovin’ Fun” and optimistic “Don’t Stop.” She said she likely had been.

As multiple members’ drug use intensified, the band’s dynamic grew tense. McVie distanced herself from the group in 1984 amid her bandmates’ addictions, telling the Guardian she was “just sick of it.” Nicks, meanwhile, was becoming dependent on cocaine.

McVie told Rolling Stone that year that she’d grown apart from Nicks: “She seems to have developed her own fantasy world, somehow, which I’m not part of. We don’t socialize much.”

In 1986, Nicks checked into the Betty Ford Center to treat her addiction, though she later became addicted to Klonopin, which she said claimed years of her life. She quit the prescription drug in the 1990s.

After recording some solo works, McVie returned to Fleetwood Mac for their 1987 album “Tango in the Night,” and two of her songs on that record – “Little Lies” and “Everywhere” – became major hits. But Nicks departed the band soon after, and the band’s best-known lineup wouldn’t officially reunite until 1997 for “The Dance” tour and subsequent live album.

The reunion was short-lived: After the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, McVie officially quit Fleetwood Mac, citing a fear of flying and exhaustion of life on the road.

McVie returns to Fleetwood Mac – and to Nicks’ side

In the 2010s, after more than a decade of retirement, McVie toyed with returning to performing. She officially rejoined Fleetwood Mac after calling Fleetwood himself and gauging what her return would mean for the group.

“Fortunately Stevie was dying for me to come back, as were the rest of the band,” she told the Arts Desk.

In 2015, a year after she’d rejoined Fleetwood Mac, McVie hit the road with her bandmates. Touring with the group was tiring but fun, the first time they’d performed together in years.

“I’m only here for Stevie,” she told the New Yorker that year.

Nicks concurred: “When we went on the road, I realized what an amazing friend she’d been of mine that I had lost and didn’t realize the whole consequences of it till now,” she told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in 2015.

During that tour, McVie wore a silver chain that Nicks had given her – a “metaphor,” McVie told the New Yorker, “that the chain of the band will never be broken. Not by me, anyways. Not again by me.”

McVie told the Arts Desk in 2016 that she and Nicks were “better friends now than (they) were 16 years ago.”

Touring with Buckingham and Fleetwood could quickly get tumultuous for Nicks, McVie said, due to their shared history. “But with me in there, it gave Stevie the chance to get her breath back and not have this constant thing going on with Lindsey: her sister was back,” she said.

Their mutual praise continued: In 2019, McVie said Nicks was “just unbelievable” onstage: “The more I see her perform on stage the better I think she is. She holds the fort.”

When their 2018-2019 tour ended, though – without Buckingham, who was fired – the band “kind of broke up,” McVie told Rolling Stone earlier this year. She added that she didn’t speak with Nicks as often as she did when they toured together.

As for a reunion, McVie told Rolling Stone that while it wasn’t off the table, she wasn’t feeling “physically up for it.”

“I’m getting a bit long in the teeth here,” she said. “I’m quite happy being at home. I don’t know if I ever want to tour again. It’s bloody hard work.”

Nicks remembers her ‘best friend’ McVie

News of McVie’s death rattled Nicks, who wrote that she had only found out McVie was sick days earlier. She called McVie her “best friend in the whole world since the first day of 1975.”

On her social media accounts, Nicks shared a handwritten note containing lyrics from the Haim song “Hallelujah,” some of which discusses grief and the loss of a best friend.

“See you on the other side, my love,” Nicks wrote. “Don’t forget me – Always, Stevie.”

Continue Reading

Every year, as the days grow colder and Christmas draws nearer, “Love Actually” quickly becomes a festive favorite on people’s television screens.

But nearly 20 years on from the release of the 2003 romantic comedy, the movie has faced scrutiny over its story lines and lack of diversity.

“There were things you’d change but thank god society is changing. So my film is bound, in some moments, to feel, you know, out of date,” the movie’s writer and director Richard Curtis said earlier this week.

He was speaking to Diane Sawyer as part of a documentary on ABC News titled: “The Laughter & Secrets of Love Actually: 20 Years Later.”

“Love Actually” features interweaving story lines, following several romantic relationships. However, most of the leading cast is White and all the relationships depicted are heterosexual.

Asked about any moments that might make him “wince,” Curtis said: “The lack of diversity makes me feel uncomfortable and a bit stupid.” He added: “I think there are three plots that have bosses and people who work for them.”

The movie features an impressive number of big names from the entertainment industry, with Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Keira Knightley, Bill Nighy, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Martin Freeman, Laura Linney, Martine McCutcheon, Rowan Atkinson and Thomas Brodie-Sangster all appearing at some point.

Nearly 20 years on, “Love Actually” remains popular, becoming a staple of the holiday season.

“It’s amazing the way it’s entered the language,” Nighy said in the ABC News documentary.

“I’ve had people coming up to me saying ‘it got me through my chemotherapy,’ or ‘it got me through my divorce,’ or ‘I watch it whenever I’m alone.’ And people do, and people have ‘Love Actually’ parties.”

When asked if she understood why “Love Actually” had remained popular, Thompson replied: “I so do.”

“Because I think that we forget, time and time again we forget, that love is all that matters.”

Curtis has written several other popular romantic comedies, including “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary.”

“Four Weddings and a Funeral” was released in 1994 and notably portrayed a same-sex relationship between Matthew, played by John Hannah, and Gareth, played by Simon Callow.

Writing in the Guardian 14 years later, Callow said: “It almost defies belief, but in the months after the release of the film, I received a number of letters from apparently intelligent, articulate members of the public saying that they had never realised, until seeing the film, that gay people had emotions like normal people.”

Continue Reading

They say artists have to be willing to do anything for their art, and for Joe Pesci, that includes setting his head on fire.

In a new interview with People, the Oscar winner reflected on the making “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” on the occasion of the sequel’s 30th anniversary and remembered how the comedy required some physically “demanding” stunts on his part.

“It was a nice change of pace to do that particular type of slapstick comedy,” Pesci said of making the first two “Home Alone” films in the email interview, published on Tuesday.

In the uber-successful franchise, Pesci played one half a bungling thief duo (alongside Daniel Stern) who is continually one-upped by a clever kid played by Macaulay Culkin. He acknowledged that the movies “were a more physical type of comedy, therefore, a little more demanding.”

One example – when Pesci’s character Harry walks unsuspectingly into a booby trap laid by Culkin’s Kevin, leading to a fiery finish.

“In addition to the expected bumps, bruises, and general pains that you would associate with that particular type of physical humor, I did sustain serious burns to the top of my head during the scene where Harry’s hat is set on fire,” the “Goodfellas” star recalled.

In fact, Harry’s head is set ablaze not once but twice in the movies, once in 1990’s “Home Alone” and again in the 1992 film, when Harry and Marv (Stern) chase Kevin through a house amid renovations. (Pesci did not clarify during which film he sustained his injury.)

Pesci added that he “was fortunate enough to have professional stuntmen do the real heavy stunts.”

“Home Alone 2,” which hit theaters on November 20, 1992, welcomed back Pesci, Culkin and Stern along with Catherine O’Hara and John Heard as Kevin’s parents. The movie also starred Oscar-winning actress Brenda Fricker as the Pigeon Lady.

Continue Reading

Disney’s press materials refer to the original 1988 movie “Willow” as “beloved,” which despite its admirers feels like nostalgic inflation of a pretty generic George Lucas-plotted fantasy that provided an early directing showcase for Ron Howard. Setting that aside, a Disney+ revival series isn’t without its charms, in a more contemporary narrative that brings back Warwick Davis while focusing on the next generation.

The series begins by recounting the events of the movie, which saw Davis’ simple farmer Willow turn sorcerer and join in a fierce battle to protect a baby who carried the kingdom’s destiny on her tiny shoulders, overcoming ancient evil with the help of the swordsman Madmartigan and (eventually) princess Sorsha. The latter were played by Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley, respectively, who as an off-screen bonus got married after the film.

Kilmer, amid his struggle with cancer, remains out of the picture, but Whalley returns as the now-queen and mother of two headstrong grown children, who play roles in a mythical quest that requires journeying across treacherous lands to thwart the evil crone.

As for the aforementioned baby, Elora Danan, she has grown up in anonymity, “Sleeping Beauty”-like, to protect her, although her identity (a not-to-be-revealed spoiler) soon becomes known. The quest includes a colorful band with plenty of youthful relationship issues, including Princess Kit (Ruby Cruz), who is secretly in love with the knight charged with training her (Erin Kellyman, whose credits include Lucasfilm’s “Solo: A Star Wars Story”); and Boorman (Amar Chadha-Patel), an irreverent brawler in the Madmartigan mode.

Jonathan Kasdan (who also worked on “Solo”) serves as showrunner, collaborating with four directors who each oversaw back-to-back episodes. As constructed, “Willow” draws upon the original while weaving in flourishes that recall the “Lord of the Rings” movies, including lots of sweeping green countryside and abundant, occasionally quite-violent action.

As is so often the case with the growing subgenre of expanded-to-series sequels, this “Willow” at times feels as if it’s spinning its wheels, devoting lengthy stretches to Willow guiding the now-older Elora to master her powers, which he presents as the only hope of saving the kingdom. And while Kilmer’s absence leaves a sizable hole Kasdan and company do a reasonably good job of filling it, including the late arrival of another knight (Christian Slater) with whom Madmartigan shared some history.

Beyond modern-sounding dialogue and situations, the story does exhibit plenty of playful irreverence and humor mixed in among the action sequences and elaborate fantasy production design. The latter in particular suggest that this revival was no small undertaking, and to its credit, it looks like that money ended up on the screen.

While that combination doesn’t add up into making “Willow” significantly worthier of the “beloved” label than its late-’80s predecessor, consumed on its own unpretentious terms, it’s easy enough to like.

“Willow” premieres November 30 on Disney+.

Continue Reading

Mario learns that being a hero is a tough gig in the new trailer for “Super Mario Bros. Movie.”Continue Reading

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West have come to a divorce agreement, a source with knowledge of the negotiations tells CNN.

Per the agreement, a draft of which was obtained by CNN, Kardashian will receive $200,000 per month in child support from West, who last year legally changed his name to Ye, and share joint custody of their four children.

CNN has reached out to representatives for Kardashian and West for comment.

Kardashian filed for divorce from West in February 2021, citing irreconcilable differences.

The couple was married in a lavish wedding in Italy in 2014.

In March 2022, Kardashian was declared legally single after being granted a request to change her marital status.

In an interview with Vogue earlier this year, the Skims founder explained what led to her high-profile split, saying, that “for so long, I did what made other people happy” and that she decided “I’m going to make myself happy.”

She went on to say that “even if that created changes and caused my divorce, I think it’s important to be honest with yourself about what really makes you happy.”

“I’ve chosen myself,” she told the publication. “I think it’s okay to choose you.”

In September, West, who in the latter part of this year has lost multiple business partnerships following a string of antisemitic comments, publicly apologized to Kardashian in an interview with “Good Morning America” for “any stress” he’s caused her.

“This is the mother of my children, and I apologize for any stress that I have caused, even in my frustration because God calls me to be stronger,” West said.

Continue Reading

Continue Reading