AP National Entertainment News

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer CANNES, France (AP) — There’s no sufficient way of explaining what it’s like to be around Spike Lee, but his new film, “Highest 2 Lowest” comes pretty close. The main character, played by Denzel Washington, is a Knicks fan who won’t tolerate Celtics green in his house. A framed

By JONATHAN LANDRUM Jr. AP Entertainment Writer LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cardi B is no stranger to ASCAP accolades with another prestigious honor soon to join her trophy case. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers said Wednesday that Cardi B will receive the Voice of the Culture Award. She’ll be honored at ASCAP’s

By BRIAN MELLEY Associated Press LONDON (AP) — Grammy-winning singer Chris Brown was released on 5 million-pound ($6.7 million) bail Wednesday while facing allegations he beat and seriously injured a music producer with a bottle in a London nightclub in 2023. The decision by a London judge to grant bail will allow Brown to launch

By HILLEL ITALIE AP National Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Two giants of the women’s rights movement, Gloria Steinem and Nobel laureate Leymah Gbowee, have teamed up for a picture book with the mission of inspiring young people to change the world. “Rise, Girl, Rise: Our Sister-Friend Journey. Together for All” will be published next

By PAN PYLAS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — Indian author Banu Mushtaq and translator Deepa Bhasthi won the International Booker Prize for fiction Tuesday for “Heart Lamp,” a collection of 12 short stories written over a period of more than 30 years and which chronicle the everyday lives and struggles of women in southern India.

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Sean “Diddy” Combs ‘ one-time personal assistant testified Wednesday that he was in charge of cleaning up hotel rooms after the hip-hop mogul’s sex marathons — tossing out empty alcohol bottles, baby oil and drugs, tidying pillows and making it look as

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union agreed Tuesday to provide emergency funds to help keep Radio Free Europe afloat after the Trump administration stopped grants to the pro-democracy media outlet, accusing it of promoting a news agenda with a liberal bias. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty started broadcasting during the Cold War. Its programs are aired

PARIS (AP) — Police have found a bust of Jim Morrison that was stolen nearly four decades ago from the Paris grave that has long been a place of pilgrimage for fans of the legendary Doors singer and poet. The bust taken in 1988 from Père-Lachaise cemetery was found during an unrelated investigation conducted by

By MARK KENNEDY AP Entertainment Writer NEW YORK (AP) — George Wendt, an actor with an Everyman charm who played the affable, beer-loving barfly Norm on the hit 1980s TV comedy “Cheers” and later crafted a stage career that took him to Broadway in “Art,” “Hairspray” and “Elf,” has died. He was 76. Wendt’s family

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — An angry Sean “Diddy” Combs demanded $20,000 from Casandra “Cassie” Ventura’s mother and threatened to release explicit sex tapes of his longtime girlfriend after learning she was dating someone else, the mother testified Tuesday at the hip-hop mogul’s sex trafficking trial. Regina

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer CANNES, France (AP) — Harris Dickinson is sitting on a rooftop terrace in Cannes, trying to find all the movie tattoos on his body. There’s a little one for 2001’s “Donnie Darko,” but there’s a much larger one on his arm for “Kes,” Ken Loach’s seminal British social realism

By DAVID BAUDER AP Media Writer They have some similarities, Bruce Springsteen and Donald Trump — guys in their 70s with homes in New Jersey and big constituencies among white American men middle-aged and older. And both, in very different respects, are the boss. That’s about where it ends. The veteran rock star, long a

By HILLEL ITALIE AP National Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Former FBI director James Comey says that he’s still a bit bewildered over how a seemingly innocent Instagram shot of shells arranged in the sand led to allegations by Donald Trump among others that he was calling for the president’s assassination and to an interview

By ANDREW DALTON AP Entertainment Writer Salt-N-Pepa are telling their record label not to push it as they fight for the rights to their music. The groundbreaking duo behind hip-hop classics including 1993’s “Shoop” and 1987’s “Push It” say in a lawsuit that Universal Music Group is violating copyright law by refusing to agree to

By WILL WEISSERT Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump hosted the Kennedy Center ‘s leadership at the White House on Monday night, reinforcing how much attention he’s devoting to remaking a premier cultural center as part of a larger effort to overhaul the social and ideological dynamics of the national arts scene. The

PARIS (AP) — Pierpaolo Piccioli, who left Valentino last year, is the new creative director of the iconic fashion house Balenciaga, parent company Kering announced Monday. He replaces Demna, who joined Balenciaga in 2015 and has since moved to Gucci in a shake-up of Kering’s creative stable. Gucci is also owned by Kering. Piccioli takes

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Singer Dawn Richard told jurors at Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex trafficking trial on Monday that the hip-hop mogul threatened to kill her if she told anyone she saw him physically abusing his longtime girlfriend. Richard testified that Combs made the threat the

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer CANNES, France (AP) — Denzel Washington sandwiched a whirlwind trip to the Cannes Film Festival, in between Broadway performances, for the premiere of Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest” on Monday — and was rewarded with a surprise: an honorary Palme d’Or. Cannes had flipped around some of its scheduling

By DAVID BAUDER AP Media Writer CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon said Monday that she is resigning after four years, the latest fallout at the network as its parent company considers settling a lawsuit with President Donald Trump over a “60 Minutes” interview with his former political opponent. McMahon, who has led both the network

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer CANNES, France (AP) — Akinola Davies Jr. and his brother Wale were both toddlers when their father died. Many years later, they began thinking about an idea for movie: What if they had gotten to spend a day with him? In “My Father’s Shadow,” which is playing in the

NEW YORK (AP) — Netflix has thrown “Sesame Street” a safety net with a new streaming deal that offers the popular children’s staple a broad reach while keeping it on its long-standing home, PBS, at the same time, the companies announced Monday. Starting later this year, new episodes will run on Netflix, PBS and the

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer CANNES, France (AP) — “Is this what the end of the world feels like?” So asks a character in one of the most-talked about films of the 78th Cannes Film Festival: Oliver Laxe’s “Sirât,” a Moroccan desert road trip through, we come to learn, a World War III purgatory.

By HILLEL ITALIE AP National Writer NEW YORK (AP) — This year’s winners of the Gotham Book Prize celebrate New York City as experienced on foot, bus and train. Ian Frazier, author of “Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York’s Greatest Borough,” and Nicole Gelinas, who wrote “Movement: New York’s Long War to

By DAVID BAUDER AP Media Writer NEW YORK (AP) — For a television news industry in a constant state of motion, Deborah Norville has been a model of stability. She began hosting the syndicated newsmagazine “Inside Edition” in 1995 and has remained there ever since. Now that 30-year run is coming to a close. Norville,

By LINDSEY BAHR AP Film Writer Death is not looming for the “Final Destination” franchise at the box office. Its sixth installment, “Final Destination: Bloodlines,” drew big crowds to movie theaters this weekend and easily topped the domestic charts with $51 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday. The movie earned the same

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