Entertainment category, Page 121
Actor Treat Williams dies at 71 after motorcycle accident
Treat Williams, the actor best known for his role on “Everwood,” died Monday in a motorcycle accident at age 71. His death was confirmed to People by agent Barry McPherson. Around 5 p.m. Eastern time Monday, Williams was riding his motorcycle on a Vermont road when a car cut him...
Pat Sajak says upcoming ‘Wheel of Fortune’ will be his last as host
LOS ANGELES — Pat Sajak is taking one last spin on “Wheel of Fortune,” announcing Monday that its upcoming season will be his last as host. Sajak announced his retirement from the venerable game show in a tweet. “Well, the time has come. I’ve decided that our 41st season, which...
Carnegie Mellon grads make waves — via politics and performance — at Tony Awards
Carnegie Mellon University certainly was recognized — in more ways than one — at the 76th Tony Awards on Sunday. CMU grad Denée Benton, a previous Tony nominee, made perhaps the night’s biggest waves by taking aim at Florida governor and 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. During an evening that...
Pittsburgh Pop podcast: Talking Tonys and CMU, Taylor Swift, ‘Based on a True Story,’ ‘It’s Ain’t Over’
In this episode of the “Pittsburgh Pop” podcast, host Tim Benz and TV Talk columnist Rob Owen discuss Pittsburgh pop culture news of the moment including Carnegie Mellon University’s showing at Sunday night’s Tony Awards, an excellent awards show telecast in spite of (or because of?) a lack of writers...
Review: Paramore puts on powerhouse performance in Pittsburgh
Paramore provided an energetic, emotional catharsis to a sold-out crowd Sunday night at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh. “All of us in this room, including those of us on the stage tonight, we need this. We need this to survive the world,” singer Hayley Williams told the crowd. “This is...
Tony Awards telecast makes inclusive history, puts on quite a show despite Hollywood strikeVideo
NEW YORK — The intimate, funny-sad musical “Kimberly Akimbo” nudged aside splashier rivals on Sunday to win the musical crown at the Tony Awards on a night when Broadway flexed its creative muscle amid the Hollywood writers’ strike and made history with laurels for nonbinary actors J. Harrison Ghee and...
‘Transformers’ edge out ‘Spider-Verse’ to claim first place at box office
It was Miles Morales and the Spider-Verse versus the “Transformers” at the box office this weekend and the bots came out on top. ” Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” the seventh entry in the series, took the No. 1 spot in its first weekend in North American theaters with $60.5...
Taylor Swift expert? This Carnegie Mellon class tests your knowledge
Taylor Swift isn’t just a music and pop culture icon. She’s also the subject of an elective three-credit course at Carnegie Mellon University. “Taylor Swift Through the Eras” was a spring semester offering through CMU’s Student College (StuCo), which allows students to develop and teach academic courses on topics of...
‘The Boxcar Children’ brings long-running children’s book series to Pittsburgh stage
Author Gertrude Chandler Warner wrote the first book in what would become her “Boxcar Children” series in 1924. It would go on to spawn more than 100 books with the plucky children typically solving mysteries. Prime Stage Theatre’s Sprouts program will bring the stories to life on stage as they...
Movie Review: New ‘Transformers’ tries but fails to energize the saga
With the “Transformers” franchise clearly at a crossroads, its latest protectors have turned to their deep bench of characters. But just adding more robots won’t transform this tired series. “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” returns the franchise to its galaxy-wide self-importance after taking a nice detour with 2018’s smaller “Bumblebee.”...
After making Oscar history, Troy Kotsur pays tribute to his father in new short filmVideo
NEW YORK — When Troy Kotsur made history as the first Deaf male actor win an Oscar at the 2022 Academy Awards, he was thinking about his father. By then, Kotsur had already become a hero to the Deaf community, widely celebrated for his acclaimed performance in the family drama...
Artist listens to inner voice through exhibit at Three Rivers Arts Festival
Through the silence, Laurie Shapiro still hears the message. Shapiro, who lives with a genetic condition causing her to progressively go deaf, often listens to her inner world. “I don’t always hear the outside world,” said Shapiro, a Carnegie Mellon University graduate who lives in Los Angeles. “But I hear...
TV Talk: ‘Spider-Man’ star Tom Holland enters Apple TV+’s ‘The Crowded Room’Video
Hollywood has yet to produce a new movie star since the start of the social media era for many reasons — social media made stars overly accessible and less like chiseled faces on a Hollywood Mt. Rushmore; film devolved into all superheroes, all the time, sending actors scurrying to premium...
Las Vegas comedy great Pat Cooper, opener for Sinatra, dies at 93
LAS VEGAS — Pat Cooper was a bombastic, boundless comic who became the friend and contemporary of legends. The stand-up performer out of Brooklyn who launched his Las Vegas career some 60 years ago died peacefully at his Las Vegas home Tuesday night, his wife, Emily Conner, announced Wednesday morning....
Taylor Swift’s early show in Western Pa. recalled by Pittsburgh singer
Pop superstar Taylor Swift has played all over Western Pennsylvania, dating back to her first show here in 2006. She’s played a minor-league baseball stadium, a banquet hall in Burgettstown, Star Lake and Mellon Arena. And, of course, there’s been her four previous shows at Heinz Field, with two more...
CNN head Chris Licht is out at the global news network after a brief, tumultuous tenureVideo
NEW YORK — The chief executive CNN pushed out of a job on Wednesday faced mounting problems in his first year leading the struggling network: viewership and profits were declining, programming blunders were growing and the network’s journalists were losing confidence by the day. Chris Licht’s very bad year culminated...
CNN Chairman Chris Licht apologizes to staff as questions grow about his future
CNN Chairman Chris Licht is trying to win back the support of his troops following a disastrous magazine piece about his first year at the network. Licht expressed regret Monday to staffers about the Atlantic profile by journalist Tim Alberta, described by many media industry longtimers as an unusually damaging...
Dead & Company fans rant on social media about traffic at Star Lake
Dead & Company returned to the Pittsburgh area on Monday night for a show at the Pavilion at Star Lake near Burgettstown. Although fans enjoyed the band’s fifth trip to the area since 2016, they did not enjoy the traffic. In a post with almost 300 comments on the Dead...
What are the takeaways from Prince Harry’s day in a London court?
LONDON (AP) — It was a rare sight — a senior British royal testifying in a court of law. What Prince Harry said, both during cross-examination in the witness box Tuesday and in his written witness statement, was just as unusual. By turns defensive, frank and accusatory, his testimony shone...
‘Jerry Maguire’ star Cuba Gooding Jr. settles civil sex abuse case, averting trial
NEW YORK — Just as a trial was to begin, it was revealed Tuesday that Cuba Gooding Jr. has settled accusations that he raped a woman in a New York City hotel a decade ago, according to court records. The actor had insisted through lawyers that his encounter with the...
Irwin’s Lamp Theatre hosts free summer music, movies nights
Free entertainment will be offered throughout the summer at The Lamp Theatre in Irwin, with three local music nights and three family movie nights on tap. The outdoor music series starts Thursday in the Harper Family Courtyard, featuring Nick Guckert from 6 to 7:15 p.m. and Barbara Blue from 7:45...
Meet the Stephen King-endorsed maestro who’s ready to shake up horror moviesVideo
Hours before hopping a red-eye from Los Angeles to London to promote the biggest film of his career, one of horror’s fastest-rising filmmakers is too busy waxing ecstatic over his love of scary movies to worry about making it to the airport on time. Why horror? Let “The Boogeyman” director...
‘Cheers’ bar sells for $675,000 at auction of items from classic TV shows
DALLAS — The bar from the television series “Cheers” sold for $675,000 at auction over the weekend, garnering the highest bid among the nearly 1,000 props, costumes and sets from classic TV shows offered up from a collection amassed by one man over more than three decades. Heritage Auctions said...
Donnie Iris cancels Youngstown show as he receives cancer treatment
Donnie Iris has canceled an upcoming appearance with REO Speedwagon because of ongoing health issues. Western Pennsylvania’s “King Cool” was scheduled to appear June 21 at the Foundation Amphitheater in Youngstown. A Facebook post says that Iris has been receiving treatment for cancer and, while his prognosis is good, he...
‘George’ is about saving and being saved by a wild bird
“George: A Magpie Memoir,” by Frieda Hughes (Avid Reader Press) Frieda Hughes in an English poet and painter who has built a following on birding Instagram (friedahughes) with her beguiling videos of owls. She has also written several children’s books and a weekly poetry column for The Times of London....
