AP National Entertainment News

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer CANNES, France (AP) — Last year, the Cannes Film Festival produced three best actress nominees at the Oscars. This year’s edition may have just supplied another. In Lynne Ramsay’s “Die, My Love,” Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson play a married couple with a newborn who move into an old

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer CANNES, France (AP) — When Richard Linklater first started thinking about making a film about the French New Wave, he figured he’d show it all everywhere except one place. “I thought: They’ll hate that an American director did this,” Linklater said Sunday. “We’ll show this film all over the

PARIS (AP) — Rapper Werenoi, France’s biggest-selling music artist in recent years, has died at the age of 31, his producer and record company said. The artist, whose real name was Jérémy Bana Owona, was the number 1 album seller in France in 2023 and 2024 according to the ranking of the National Union of

By PHILIPP JENNE and KIRSTEN GRIESHABER Associated Press VIENNA (AP) — Austrian fans enthusiastically welcomed classically trained singer JJ back home at Vienna airport on Sunday after he won the 69th Eurovision Song Contest with “Wasted Love.” As JJ walked through the gate, hundreds of fans cheered, some played his song and others surrounded the

By ANDREW DALTON AP Entertainment Writer “Saturday Night Live” was more reflective than festive in the final episode of its 50th season. Scarlett Johansson, who set a record for a woman with her seventh appearance as host, used her monologue to lead most of the current cast of the NBC sketch institution in a song

CANNES, France (AP) — Stars in glamorous gowns often peacock on the Cannes Film Festival red carpet, but one attendee Saturday night literally came as a bird. Ahead of the the premiere of Lynne Ramsay’s “Die, My Love,” with Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence, a man came fully dressed as bird, complete with a beak

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer CANNES, France (AP) — Wes Anderson isn’t driving the bus. Laurent is. That’s the name of the driver who’s bringing Anderson, and his bus, to the Cannes Film Festival. As they drive from his home in Paris to the South of France, Anderson explains by phone: “I don’t drive

MIAMI (AP) — Antonio Brown was briefly detained by police early Saturday following an altercation in which gunshots were fired outside a celebrity boxing event in Miami, according to the former NFL star and video posted to social media. Miami police confirmed in a written statement that officers responded to the area at about 3

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer CANNES, France (AP) — Kristen Stewart has been talking about directing as long as she’s been acting. Not many people encouraged it. “I spoke to other actors when I was really little because I was always like: ‘I want to direct movies!’” Stewart recalls. “I was fully set down

By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press BASEL, Switzerland (AP) — Classically trained Austrian singer JJ won the 69th Eurovision Song Contest in Switzerland on Saturday with “Wasted Love,” a song that combines operatic, multi-octave vocals with a techno twist. Israeli singer Yuval Raphael came second at an exuberant celebration of music and unity that was shadowed

By BRIAN MELLEY Associated Press LONDON (AP) — A fellow musician and friend of Chris Brown has been charged alongside the Grammy-winning singer on allegations they beat and seriously injured a music producer at a London nightclub in 2023, police said Saturday. Omololu Akinlolu, 38, who performs under the name “Hoody Baby,” was due to

By STEFANIE DAZIO Associated Press BERLIN (AP) — Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen is playing a single game of chess against 140,000 people worldwide in a mega-match that could overturn expectations by ending in a draw in the next few days. Billed as “Magnus Carlsen vs. The World,” the online match began April 4 on Chess.com,

BASEL, Switzerland (AP) — Sprinkle on the sequins or settle down on the sofa: It’s time to find out who will be crowned champion at the 69th Eurovision Song Contest. Acts from more than two dozen countries will take the stage in Basel, Switzerland on Saturday to vie for glory through a 3-minute pop song.

NEW YORK (AP) — Testimony in the sex trafficking trial of hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs began this week, opening a window into what prosecutors say was the sordid world of group sex, drugs and violence beneath the glittering, jet set persona cultivated by the Bad Boy Records founder. Much of the testimony was hard

By PATRICK WHITTLE Associated Press FREEDOM, Maine (AP) — Heather Donahue is walking through the woods once again. The star of the successful low-budget horror movie “ The Blair Witch Project ” has an on-screen history of getting into scary situations in a forest. But this time she is merely picking up an old soda

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer CANNES, France (AP) — Kazuo Ishiguro ‘s mother was in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb was dropped. When Ishiguro, the Nobel laureate and author of “Remains of the Day” and “Never Let Me Go,” first undertook fiction writing in his 20s, his first novel, 1982’s “A Pale View of

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer CANNES, France (AP) — Ari Aster’s COVID-era Western “Eddington,” about a 2020 America quickly losing its mind to conspiracy theories, TikTok and political extremism, premiered to a mixed reception at the Cannes Film Festival. “Eddington,” starring Joaquin Phoenix as a muddled, mistake-prone sheriff who runs for mayor in a

By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press BASEL, Switzerland (AP) — One song generating a lot of froth at the Eurovision Song Contest is “Espresso Macchiato,” a dance-pop ditty by Estonian rapper and visual artist Tommy Cash. Estonia’s entry in the pan-continental pop competition, which holds its grand final on Saturday in Basel, Switzerland, is a playful

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer CANNES, France (AP) — You can get nostalgic about almost anything at the Cannes Film Festival, even Jerry Seinfeld on a zip line in a bumblebee costume. For many years, Cannes has played host not just to an endless stream of artistically ambitious movies, but also to some of

By BERENICE BAUTISTA Associated Press MEXICO CITY (AP) — For Colombian singer-songwriter Sebastián Yatra, life is full of small miracles that come from dance, family and freedom. “I saw happiness as a child as my long-term goal, one day to be happy, but I saw it as something very far away, and now I feel

By THOMAS ADAMSON Associated Press PARIS (AP) — For powerful men in France’s film industry, this was a week of reckoning. Gérard Depardieu — the country’s most famous male actor — was convicted of sexual assault. Two days later, the Cannes Film Festival barred another actor accused of rape from walking the red carpet. Together,

By DAVID BAUDER AP Media Writer NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump had more frequent exchanges with reporters during his first 100 days in office than any of his six predecessors, a study has found. Trump’s 129 interactions through news conferences or interviews averaged nearly two each workday, according to Martha Joynt Kumar, director

By BRIAN MELLEY Associated Press LONDON (AP) — Grammy-winning singer Chris Brown ‘s upcoming tour was thrown into question Friday as a British judge ordered him held in custody while facing allegations that he beat a music producer with a bottle in a London nightclub in 2023. Brown, 36, appeared in Manchester Magistrates’ Court to

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — R&B singer Cassie finished testifying in the Sean “Diddy” Combs sex trafficking trial Friday after four emotional days on the witness stand during which she was questioned about the deepest, most disturbing secrets of her sex life and described being beaten and

By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press BASEL, Switzerland (AP) — There has already been triumph and tears, singing onstage and in the streets, and a touch of political division, as the 69th Eurovision Song Contest approaches its grand final in the Swiss city of Basel. Musical acts from 26 countries will take the stage at the

By MICHELLE CHAPMAN AP Business Writer Charter Communications has offered to acquire Cox Communications, a $34.5 billion merger that would combine two of the top three cable companies in the U.S. Cox is the third largest cable television company in the country, with more than 6.5 million digital cable, internet, telephone, and home security customers.

By CAROLYN THOMPSON Associated Press MAYVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — A man who attacked Salman Rushdie with a knife in front of a stunned audience in 2022, leaving the prizewinning author blind in one eye, was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison. Hadi Matar, 27, stood quietly as the judge pronounced the sentence. He did

By ANDREW DALTON AP Entertainment Writer LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said Thursday that it has opened a criminal investigation into rape and sexual assault allegations against Motown music luminary Smokey Robinson. The department said in a statement that its Special Victims Bureau is “actively investigating criminal allegations” against Robinson.

By MARK KENNEDY AP Entertainment Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Three-time Tony Award-winner Charles Strouse, Broadway’s industrious, master melody-maker who composed the music for such classic musical theater hits as “Annie,” “Bye Bye Birdie” and “Applause,” died Thursday. He was 96. Strouse died at his home in New York City, his family said through the

By JENNIFER PELTZ Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein ‘s assistants kept a list of female “friends of Harvey” to invite to events and sometimes considered them a special category for guest lists, an ex-aide testified Thursday at the former movie mogul’s sex crimes retrial. “A ‘friend of Harvey’ was a woman that