Latest news with #BetteMidler
Geek Tyrant
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Sarah Jessica Parker Says There've Been Discussions About HOCUS POCUS 3 Since Co-Stars Told Disney to Hurry and Finish the Script — GeekTyrant
Sarah Jessica Parker appeared on Watch What Happens Live! this week, and was asked by host Andy Cohen for an update on the status of Hocus Pocus 3 , which Disney first announced was in development two years ago. Since then, it has been crickets from the studio about another sequel in the beloved Halloween fantasy series. Aside from the studio remaining tight-lipped, Parker remains committed to returning. The actress said of the sequel, 'No more developments other than we would like to do it. We've been having some conversations.' Parker co-starred in the 1993 fan-favorite, Hocus Pocus , alongside Bette Midler and Kathy Najimy as the Sanderson sisters, a trio of witches who get resurrected on Halloween night and try to scheme their way to permanently staying in the land of the living. All three actors returned for 2022's Hocus Pocus 2 . Najimy called on Disney one year ago to hurry up and get the Hocus Pocus 3 script finished because the three women aren't getting any younger. She quipped: 'I haven't seen the script, but I've heard rumblings. I think if they're gonna, they oughta, because time is not just marching, time is barrel-assing to the finish line. Get us while we're still breathing, I mean, God!' Hocus Pocus 2 screenwriter Jen D'Angelo confirmed to Entertainment Weekly in 2023 after the end the end of the WGA strike that Hocus Pocus 3 was still in development. 'We're still in the story phase, we're still working on it,' D'Angelo said at the time. 'We've been working on some ideas. It's been fun to dive back into that world and we have so many directions in which to go and so many new characters to explore. We've only scratched the surface of Hannah Waddingham's mother witch. I'm hoping that we are able to explore every aspect of these stories and take these characters on a bunch of fun adventures,' D'Angelo continued. 'We don't really know what it is, but we're exploring all options and I think everybody is so delighted by the reaction that 'Hocus Pocus 2' got, and we're excited to continue those stories.' The second film wasn't as great as the first, but it was still a lot of fun to revisit these characters and build on the lore of the original. I look forward to seeing what they cook up next. via: Variety
The Guardian
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Brooklyn and beyond: Colm Tóibín's best books – ranked!
This dispatch from what we might call the extended Colm Tóibín universe is set near the same time and in the same place as his earlier novel Brooklyn (one character appears in both books). It's the story of a widowed woman who struggles to cope with life after love. If it lacks the drama of some of Tóibín's other novels, the style is impeccable as ever, with irresistibly clean prose that reports emotional turmoil masked by restraint. There is no ornate showing off. 'People used to tease me for it, saying: 'Could you write a longer sentence?'' Tóibín has said. 'But there's nothing I can do about it.' This short novel began as a play, which later became a Broadway flop. Tourists, observed Tóibín, are 'going to take in only one Broadway show, and Bette Midler had just opened around the corner'. Jesus's mother Mary is recalling the events around his crucifixion. Tóibín's Mary is not meek and mild, but hardened by her experience, suspicious of his miracles and despairing of the followers who will take her son away from her. This is a rare first-person narrative for Tóibín, and his quiet style sometimes muffles the emotions Mary feels at Jesus's suffering. In the end it's a book not just about biblical figures, but about how strange our children become to us. Tóibín's second novel shows that his 'deadpan' style was there from the start: 'you're never sure where the laughter is going to come from or where the sadness is', as he described it to the Paris Review. There's more sadness here than laughter – apart from the joke that it always seems to be raining. It's the story of High Court judge Eamon Redmond, a conservative man in 1980s Ireland, where the next generation – including his children – is agitating for reform on social issues such as divorce and abortion. This book is also, says Tóibín, 'the most direct telling of the grief and numbness' he felt as a child at his 'abandonment' when his mother left the family for many months to attend his sick father in hospital. Tóibín's motto might be: If it's not one thing, it's your mother. Redoubtable mothers loom large in his work, and this is a whole book of stories about mothers and their sons. The best are novella-length – Tóibín is a novelist at heart – including one which features early appearances of Nancy and Jim from Brooklyn. These are stories of complicated love, laced with dark comedy. In one, a gangster with a drunken mother is selling stolen paintings to two Dutch criminals. One of the men, his associate tells him, 'could kill you in one second with his bare hands'. 'Which of them?' he asks. 'That's the problem,' comes the reply. 'I don't know.' If Tóibín's fiction tends toward low-key gloom, this novel about a gay Argentinian man of English ancestry is his happiest. Richard Garay frequently enjoys himself, especially now that his mother is dead. There's a gusto in his resentment of her ('I am using, with particular relish, the heavy cotton sheets she was saving for some special occasion') and an animal delight in his appreciation of the bodies of the men he loves. Even the darker stuff here – abductions, the fallout of the Falklands war – is described with almost cheerful energy. It catapulted Tóibín from acclaimed literary novelist to bestseller, with the story of Eilis Lacey, a young woman in 1950s Ireland who seems utterly passive in her life. At least, that is, until she goes to the US – the sea crossing is a comic highlight, featuring motion sickness and a shared bathroom – and defies her family's plans for her. Tóibín's sensitive touch means Eilis feels like a real person, even when we want to give her a good shake. Adapted into a film in 2015 starring Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn delivers satisfying emotional tension despite its restrained heroine. It's little wonder it has become Tóibín's best-loved book. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion Last year's sequel to Brooklyn takes up Eilis's story 20 years on. It's a more rounded novel, with a greater range of characters fully on display, and Eilis seems to have found some bottle in the intervening years. 'Can you not control her?' her brother-in-law asks her husband, when she argues with their father. It's also a portrait of a changing Ireland in the 1970s. And although Tóibín dislikes traditional historical fiction ('I hate people 'capturing the period''), he does capture the period beautifully, with a wealth of detail – including the introduction of the toasted cheese sandwich to Ireland's pubs. Tóibín's fourth novel is clear, contained and complex. It is set in his literary comfort zone of coastal County Wexford, but there's nothing complacent about this story, where traditional Ireland – singalongs with bodhrán drums – meets the modern crisis of Aids. It tells of three generations of women trying to get along together as a young man in their family dies. But it is also an acutely observed portrait of parenting young children (more mothers and sons), a retelling of the Greek myth of Orestes, Electra and Clytemnestra, and a rendering of Tóibín's own childhood suffering around the sickness and death of his father. 'I think if you're not working, as a novelist, from some level of subconscious pain,' he has said, 'then a thinness will get into your book.' Tóibín's longest novel is also one of his most gripping. This book about Thomas Mann is an exceptional achievement in imaginative empathy, covering six decades of the writer's life: his self-regard, his literary genius, and the concealed love for beautiful young men that he subsumed into works such as Death in Venice. Tóibín shows Mann as calcified by his public austerity (at his mother's funeral, his daughter sees him cry for the first time). Tóibín likes to poke fun at his own austere reputation. He writes, he once said, on a chair that is 'one of the most uncomfortable ever made. After a day's work, it causes pain in parts of the body you did not know existed' – but 'it keeps me awake'. Tóibín's masterpiece – to date – explores the inner life of Henry James, a man who was 'a mass of ambiguities'. The novel covers five years in James's life, beginning with the failure of his 1895 play Guy Domville, but its scope is vast, teasing apart the public and private man. 'Everyone he knew carried within them the aura of another life which was half secret and half open, to be known about but not mentioned.' James loves gossip and secrets but keeps his own hidden. 'It was the closest he had come,' he recalls, thinking of one abandoned episode of attraction to another man, 'but he had not come close at all.' The Master is subtle, funny, ingenious and emotionally wrenching. Tóibín even took enough influence from James to – finally – write in long sentences. To explore any of the books featured, visit Delivery charges may apply.
Washington Post
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
‘Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything' could have told us more
There's nothing wrong with ''Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything,' the new Hulu documentary about the late broadcasting icon. It's an extremely thorough and enjoyable recap of the life of an extraordinary, pioneering television journalist. But it never really goes deeper than that. Jackie Jesko's star-studded film features testimonials from television legends such as Oprah Winfrey and Katie Couric about the role that Walters played — both in their lives and for the industry. Some of Walters's most prominent sit-down subjects are also featured, including comedian Bette Midler and Monica Lewinsky, who both attest to her humanity and character. The film does a good job of telling her whole story, beginning with a difficult childhood and ending with her departure from ABC and all of the 'mixed feelings' (her words) she had about stepping away after 50 years on television. It also charts the sexism, and sexist anchors, that she had to overcome to rise the ranks. A 'warts and all' look at Walters, the film drives home the point that what made her so good on television — an extreme dedication to her craft and an insatiable competitiveness — also hurt her personal and family life. It includes a strong section that poses thorny questions about the ethical implications of Walters's approach to landing interviews with some of world's most hated and feared figures, including an uncomfortable-to-watch-now meeting with Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi and his family. 'I think Barbara would be friends with the devil if it would get the interview,' a former ABC News producer says in the film. It's less clear what the ultimate goal of the film was. Did the filmmakers set out to provide a historical accounting of her career and legacy? Mission accomplished. Or were they hoping to make something that connected her story to the present moment and used it as a window into how television has changed, how it continues to change and what that means for the future? If so, the film falls short. There are, to be clear, some astute observations made about how things are different today than they were in Walters's heyday, when news shows regularly attracted tens of millions of viewers. As recently as 1999, her '20/20' interview with Lewinsky was watched by about 70 million people, a near impossibility today for a distracted populace that spends their evenings scrolling on their phones instead of sitting down for a prescheduled program. 'There's a certain feeling you get when you're watching something knowing that everyone is watching the same thing at that very same moment,' Couric says in the film. 'And that doesn't exist anymore, and I think that's when Barbara was the queen.' Winfrey also talks about how celebrities today no longer need gatekeepers and go straight to the audience. 'There really is no place for a Barbara Walters interview now because everybody does their own interviews,' she says. But the film doesn't explore that keen observation. It doesn't talk about what is lost when newsmakers no longer have to go through someone like Walters to talk to the public. It doesn't address how an Instagram Live video from a pop star is not news or journalism. And it doesn't necessarily connect the dots at a larger level and examine the slow-motion collapse of the television industry, which has been shedding relevance and revenue because it no longer serves the role it once did. Those big newsmaker interviews, for example, helped subsidize some of the less profitable aspects of the television business, meaning that networks today just cannot cover the world like they used to. These days, 'scoops' still matter, but they can't fundamentally change the outlook for a network that is competing with cooking shows on Netflix for attention. While Walters was briefly shown pushing back on Donald Trump in a now-viral 1990 interview, the film doesn't dwell much on the current era in politics, a missed opportunity, as television networks — such as her former employer, ABC — struggle to cover a hostile president who has shown a desire to exact his will on the media industry. The film ends on an extremely uplifting note, with video shown of Walters's last appearance on the daytime talk show she started, 'The View.' Winfrey played emcee as she announced a long list of female television hosts who lined up to greet Walters and wish her well upon her retirement. The picture today is murkier, though. None of the broadcast evening news shows are hosted by women anymore, after Norah O'Donnell was replaced as anchor of the 'CBS Evening News' by two men, John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, this year. If the point of the documentary is to make clear to viewers how special Walters was and how dynamic she was and how influential she was, it also made clear how irreplaceable she was, at a time when her talent at extracting information and confessions is needed more than ever. And that's a sad note to end on. Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything premieres Monday on Hulu.
Vogue
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
What We Lost With Barbara Walters
At her best, Barbara Walters was a singular television talent and a sharp interviewer. She was persistent in a sexist industry that often spurned her and she didn't shy away from asking overtly personal questions, prying into the lives of the wealthy and powerful. When interviewing the Kardashian family in 2011, she posited her impressions—in that unforgettable voice: part Boston accent, part lisp—quite plainly: 'You don't really act. You don't sing. You don't dance. You don't have any, forgive me, talent.' Her demand for nothing short of the full story from her interviewees projected the cool confidence of a woman in charge. But privately, Walters had her struggles and insecurities. She lacked confidence in her looks. An unrivaled focus on her career led to a strained relationship with her daughter, Jackie. Meanwhile, many of the relationships she nurtured were transactional in nature. And according to the editor of her biography, 'she did not have the strongest moral compass.' Walters's achievements and shortcomings are given equal airtime in the new documentary Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything, which premiered at this year's Tribeca Film Festival and lands on Hulu today. Made in partnership with ABC News Studios, the film incorporates archival interview tape, so that much of Walters's posthumously produced story is told in her own words. And then there are the former subjects of her interviews, including Oprah Winfrey, Monica Lewinsky, and Bette Midler, who reflect decades later on what it was like to be in Walters's hot seat. She had an exceptional knack for getting her interviewees to open up emotionally; it was with Walters that Winfrey first spoke publicly about being sexually abused as a child, and Walters's exclusive with Lewinsky drew in an estimated 70 million viewers. Jackie Jesko, the director of Tell Me Everything, spent the first six years of her career as a producer at ABC. She was an obvious choice when the search for a director of this movie began; she has been immersed in the world of broadcast journalism and cares deeply about its roots. Vogue spoke to Jesko about her preconceptions of Walters, what it was like sourcing interviews for the film, and what she makes of Walters's legacy. This interview has been condensed for clarity. Vogue: Barbara Walters is a news personality from largely before your time. What was your perception of her before embarking on this project?
CBS News
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Iconic composer Marc Shaiman talks "Some Like It Hot" ahead of Denver performances
One of the most famous and recognized composers in the world of performing arts says he is thrilled for Colorado audiences to experience one of his latest works. Marc Shaiman is a Tony, Emmy and Grammy award winner for his scores heard on stage, TV and at the movies. One of Shaiman's most recent projects was helping create the music for the musical "Some Like It Hot." Alongside lyricist Scott Wittman, Shaiman helped create the sounds of the upbeat musical comedy. CBS The show arrives in Denver in early July. However, ahead of the stop in the Mile High City, Shaiman sat down for an exclusive interview with CBS News Colorado. "Some Like It Hot is a comedy about mistaken identities," Shaiman said. CBS Colorado caught up with Shaiman in Philadelphia under the historic Forrest Theatre. There, Shaiman explained how the story of the musical not only follows others' mistaken identities but also leaves some to consider their own. "(The story) also means who are you, and have you been mistaken your whole life about who you are?" Shaiman said. When asked what Shaiman loved the most about the sounds of the musical, Shaiman was quick to joke around. "What do I love about the music of this production? Well, I wrote it," Shaiman said. CBS Shaiman has worked with some of the biggest names in entertainment, including Barbra Streisand, Robin Williams, Jack Black, Bette Midler, Billy Crystal and many more. He said he loves every challenge he faces when it comes to music. However, when it came to Some Like It Hot, he was thrilled to be able to explore creating music designed for the feel of a 1930s big band. "It was just that birth of swing music," Shaiman said. "Such great songwriting was happening. Whether it was Duke Wellington or Harold Arlen or Cole Porter. There was a great melting pot in New York of Black and white creators writing lyrics and music, rejoicing in each other." Some Like It Hot the musical stays true to the original film, following the story of two men who accidentally witness a mob murder. To avoid being caught, they go on the run, disguising themselves as women and joining an all-women tour band. CBS Shaiman said it was entertaining to explore the task of combining a comedy storyline with a big band tune. "I just love the big band," Shaiman said. "Some Like It Hot was this great moment where I got to revel in this kind of songwriting. We just loved this time period." While the story and the score of the production may be true to the early-to-mid 20th century, Shaiman said he believed people of all ages would love the show when it plays the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. "I feel the music of Some Like It Hot is something all generations should be able to enjoy because it is a joyful sound," Shaiman said. It is hard not to be taken in with the sound of Some Like It Hot." Some Like It Hot plays the Buell Theatre July 8 through the 20. Visit the center's website for more information on tickets. CBS Colorado is a proud partner of the DCPA.
