Cynthia 'Plaster Caster' Albritton, artist and rock star groupie, dead at 74

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle EditorJean Smart and her “Hacks” co-stars are under pressure. A lot of pressure.After an award-winning first season of the HBO Max series, they’re back for their sophomore outing.“Season 2 for any show means you have to prove yourself,” Smart told me at the second season premiere earlier this week at the Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles. “It’s like, ‘You gotta now show us that wasn’t just a fluke.’”It wasn’t long after “Hacks” became a critical darling that Smart learned the streamer was green lighting another season.“As soon as I started getting the scripts for Season 2, I was said, ‘Oh, my god.

EXCLUSIVE: Liam Neeson is set to star in thriller Thug, reuniting with his Cold Pursuit director Hans Petter Moland, who will direct the film for Sculptor Media and Electromagnetic Productions, with Mossbank and CAA handling international sales at next week’s Cannes market.

Eminem’s music to metal songs after the rapper was included on the list of inductees for 2022.Eminem is one of eight artists set to be inducted into the institution later this year, alongside Dolly Parton, Duran Duran, Lionel Richie, Eurythmics, Carly Simon, Judas Priest and Pat Benatar.During a recent interview with Audacy, CEO Greg Harris commented on the rapper’s inclusion in the class of 2022 and hip-hop’s place in the Rock Hall. “For a lot of years people asked about hip-hop,” he said.

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Character actor and Friends alum Mike Hagerty has died. He was 67.

tackled during by a knife wielding assailant during a set at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday — and Rock, who made headlines for being face slapped by WIll Smith at this year’s Oscars,’ both performed a “secret” comedy show Thursday night in Los Angeles, according to The Hollywood Reporter.The tight-lipped, star-studded show that took place inside a small venue inside the Comedy Store club featured a star studded audience consisting of Kim Kardashian, rappers Sean “Diddy” Combs (50 Cent) and Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), in addition to comedian Jeff Ross.Fans paid $160 to see an American Spirit cigarette smoking Chappelle, who was billed as a last minute, unnamed comedian. After raucous ovation, he was joined onstage by Rock about 10 minutes into his set as the duo made light of their viscous circumstances.

Most stocks and sectors closed down Thursday in a massive and broad market selloff that thrashed media and tech shares from big showbiz conglomerates to Amazon, Apple and Meta to Roku, Endeavor, Cinemark and the New York Times.

Déjà vu. As if the slap wasn’t enough, Chris Rock witnessed Dave Chappelle being tackled at the Netflix Is A Joke festival in Los Angeles on May 2, 2022. The Everybody Hates Chris creator quipped back with a response that recounted his own experiences at the Oscars. 

Eminem, Duran Duran, Dolly Parton and Lionel Richie are all set to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 2022.Eurythmics, Carly Simon, Judas Priest and Pat Benatar will also be inducted into the Hall Of Fame this year.Kate Bush, Beck, DEVO, Fela Kuti, MC5, New York Dolls, Rage Against The Machine and Dionne Warwick made the initial shortlist for 2022, but didn’t make the final cut.The honourees — voted on by more than 1000 artists, historians and music industry professionals — each “had a profound impact on the sound of youth culture and helped change the course of rock ’n’ roll,” said John Sykes, the chairman of the Rock Hall, in a statement.The 2022 event, which will be the Hall’s 37th annual induction ceremony, will be held on November 5 at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.The announcement comes after Parton initially refused the honour on the grounds that she didn’t feel that she had “earned the right”. But she reversed her stance last month to confirm she will accept the honour should she be voted in.Parton continued to explain that, at the time she made her statement bowing out, she hadn’t realised that the institution already included numerous artists from other genres outside the world of rock.

Netflix announced today that Joel Kim Booster’s stand-up special Joel Kim Booster: Psychosexual will debut on the streamer on June 21st.

confirmed by her representative, Variety first reported.The native of Chicago’s South Side launched her plaster-casting career in the Windy City circa 1968 after meeting an unlikely patron: Iconoclastic rocker Frank Zappa found the 20-year-old’s artistic vision funny and creative — although he declined to, uh, sit for her — and helped her relocate to Los Angeles.Although guitar god Jimi Hendrix — she “met him” at the Chicago Hilton and Towers in ’68 — was her first cast, she later expanded her oeuvre to include male filmmakers — and eventually the breasts of female artists such as Peaches, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and many others. (Albritton famously revealed that she found many will assistants who helped prep her subjects for her art.)“I was trying to figure out a way to mold a penis so I thought, ‘Well, let’s get together a kit because that will make it even more absurd and ridiculous — and professional look, and create more laughs,” she said in a 2000 interview.

Jimi Hendrix, Buzzcocks’ Pete Shelley, and Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra.Born in Chicago in 1947, she attended art school in the 60s, where she was asked to create a plaster cast of “something solid that could retain its shape.” Instead of going for something typical, Albritton decided to turn her attention to the frontmen of her favourite bands.Jimi Hendrix was her first famous subject, having agreed to being cast while on tour in Chicago in 1968. Hendrix was followed by two members of MC5: Wayne Kramer, and drummer Dennis Thompson, though Kramer’s penis cast didn’t go to plan.“He got the container that wasn’t designed to mix alginates in,” she said in an interview with The Chicago Reader in 2002.

Big news for Charlie Barnett – he’s getting married!

Cynthia Albritton, better known as “Cynthia Plaster Caster” for the plaster casts she made of rock star private parts, died today after what her representatives said was a long illness. She was 74.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorCynthia Albritton, a.k.a. Cynthia Plaster Caster, the legendary artist and “recovering groupie” renowned for the plaster casts she took of many top musicians’ erect penises and other body parts, has died after a long illness, her rep confirms to Variety. She was 74.Her collection included Jimi Hendrix, Wayne Kramer of MC5, Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks, Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys as well as female breasts from the likes of Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab, Sally Timms of the Mekons, Peaches, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and many others.

Selome Hailu SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you haven’t watched Season 2 of “Russian Doll.”As an adoptee, Charlie Barnett has been able to use “Russian Doll” to process his own family history.It’s been three years since Season 1 of the Netflix dramedy first brought Barnett’s character, Alan, and series creator Natasha Lyonne‘s Nadia together in a falling elevator, which kills them both instantly — though they wake up again “Groundhog Day”-style and continue dying cyclically until they learn how to help each other out of the loop. While Season 1 fixated on the concept of the present, Season 2 takes Nadia and Alan to the past, where they find themselves inhabiting their ancestors’ bodies and witnessing first-hand the kinds of family trauma they could have only guessed about before. “I never got the chance to meet my birth mother,” Barnett says.