Donna Summer Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. Donna Summer is to this day considered the Queen of Disco thanks to her chart-topping hits throughout the 1970s, famous for her commanding stage presence, dramatic makeup and voluptuous curls.

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A.D. Amorosi Perhaps without you realizing it, there’s a strong chance that the last 12 months of your life have been graced by the classic, sequenced electronic disco of Italian songwriter, producer and soundtrack composer Giorgio Moroder. If 2022-2023 winds up as one of Moroder’s biggest years, that will have happened nearly by accident. Tom Cruise and Jerry Bruckheimer’s mega-box office winner “Top Gun: Maverick” used the composer’s “Danger Zone,” as the original film did. Then there is the fact that Beyoncé sampled his “I Feel Love” for “Summer Renaissance” as part of her 2022 album, “Renaissance.” He was rendered as a big-screen character with Sebastian Maniscalco’s cartoonish portrayal of Moroder in director-writer Timothy Scott Bogart’s “Spinning Gold” biopic (Variety’s Owen Gleiberman wrote that Maniscalco’s Moroder “sounds like a character out of Hogan’s Heroes'”). The Italian producer and composer who now lives in Los Angeles is better-represented in the new documentary on the life of his old friend, HBO Max’s “Love to You Love You, Donna Summer.”

What to watch: 7 movies and shows to stream this week - May 5What to watch: 7 movies and shows to stream this week - May 12Netflix’s “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” revitalized the teen rom-com, inspiring thousands of pale imitations. The series author, Jenny Han, is back with a new story, taking the baby sister of the trilogy’s protagonist and placing her front and center. The series follows Kitty Song-Covey as she leaves Portland for a fancy boarding school in Seoul, hoping to reconnect with her roots and her long distance boyfriend.

“Love to Love You, Donna Summer,” premiering Saturday on HBO. “It’s not pain I could have spoken about, but it’s something that I have to always incorporate into my reality.”The childhood trauma left her “feeling guilty” — even as she was feeling love from fans around the world at the peak of her musical powers.

Donna Summer fans might wish for a more comprehensive documentary bio than HBO’s Love to Love You, Donna Summer (★★★★★), but it’s hard to imagine a more intimate portrait of the woman, artist, mother, and hit-making Queen of Disco than this fascinating music-filled odyssey.Co-directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams and actress-director Brooklyn Sudano, the middle of Summer’s three daughters, Love to Love You is framed as the family’s attempt to, as Brooklyn puts it, “figure out the many pieces of who Mom really was.”Summer, who succumbed to lung cancer in May 2012, provides the filmmakers key pieces to the puzzle by way of her songs and performances, recorded interviews, and footage she shot herself with her treasured Sony movie camera.At the height of her ’70s fame as pop’s First Lady of Love, Summer bought the camera because she loved making movies — and to entertain herself and the crew while on tour, according to her sister Mary Ellen, who sang backup. The video skits and home movies reveal the singer to be an unapologetic goofball, far from the gyrating diva of so-called Sex Rock that her label Casablanca Records was selling.Sex siren was merely a role she played, Summer explains in an interview voiceover.

the music charts and had 14 top-ten singles, including «Hot Stuff,» «Bad Girls» and «She Works Hard for the Money,» making her one of the most prolific singer-songwriters of her era. Now fans can see Summer as never before with the release of the HBO Original . Directed by Oscar and Emmy-winner Roger Ross William and the daughter of Summer, Brooklyn Sudano, this documentary combines intimate footage and interviews from those closest to her.In this personal portrait, viewers will get to see into the life of Summer, on and off the stage.While many are familiar with her on-stage persona — a dazzling presence that could entertain the biggest crowds — few know what she was really like under it all.

Kamala Harris showed off her new vinyl records earlier this week and shared some of her favourite artists.The politician had been shopping in Home Rule Records in Washington, D.C.

Twiggy's singing career may never have hit the heights of her modelling days – but that isn't deterring her from launching another assault on the charts, aged 73. The star's recording career peaked with a self-titled album that reached No 33 in 1976. Other releases over the decades, including one produced by disco queen Donna Summer, sank without trace.

Donna Summer and disco are synonymous. She became known as the “Queen of Disco” and had hits like “She Works Hard for The Money,” “Love to Love You, Baby,” and “I Feel Love,” among many others.

Love To Love You, a new documentary film about Donna Summer‘s reign as the “Queen of Disco”, has landed.Love To Love You is described as a “deeply personal portrait” of the late star and her rise to fame with hits including as ‘I Feel Love’, ‘Love To Love You Baby’, ‘MacArthur Park’, ‘Bad Girls’ and ‘Hot Stuff’. It will be released on HBO and HBO Max on May 20.The film, directed by Roger Ross Williams and Summer’s daughter Brooklyn Sudano, goes behind-the-screens with Summer on and off stage, with previously unseen photographs and video footage, much of which was shot by Summer herself.In the trailer, those close to Summer remember an intensely private person who struggled with the attention fame brought.

Queen of Disco in the ’70s, the suicidal singer hit rock bottom.“The most dismal days of my existence were at the height of my career,” says the late legend in the new documentary “Love To Love You, Donna Summer,” which premieres on HBO and HBO Max May 20. In fact, while Summer was riding high from the success of her breakout hit, the orgasmic classic “Love To Love You Baby,” she was enduring an abusive relationship with artist Peter Mühldorfer. One severe beating even left her unconscious, with a black eye and broken ribs.“I hit her, and I never could forgive myself,” says Mühldorfer in the doc.And having grown up in a deeply religious household — her father smacked her for wearing red nail polish because “that’s what whores wore” — Summer was highly conflicted about her image as a sex goddess from hits such as “Love To Love You Baby,” “I Feel Love” and later “Hot Stuff.” In reality, she was more church girl than “Bad Girl.”“You’re looking at me, but what you see is not what I am,” she says in the film, which is co-directed by her daughter Brooklyn Sudano and Oscar winner Roger Ross Williams.

star-studded final show.Corden, 44, announced his departure from “The Late Late Show” in April 2022, just before renewing his contract for an eighth and final year.CBS revealed that after almost three decades, the network will be ending the franchise with Corden’s departure. They’re expected to replace the time slot with a reboot of Comedy Central’s series “@midnight,” executive-produced by “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert, according to Deadline.He revealed on “The Drew Barrymore Show” that his decision to leave was a “very easy” one.“Look, it’s not easy in any way to walk away from something that is so … I mean I’ll never work in a better environment than the one I work in now,” he said in January.“Nothing about leaving the show was to do with not enjoying it.

SPOILER ALERT! This story contains details from James Corden’s primetime special and final installment of The Late Late Show on CBS.

Record Store Day 2023 kicked off earlier today (April 22) with vinyl fans descending on UK record shops around the country.A number of limited-edition and special releases were made available over-the-counter at over 260 participating stores, with many customers queuing since the early hours.The 1975, Blur, Pixies, U2, London Grammar, Madonna, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Foals, Donna Summer and Björk all released vinyl as part of the 2023 event.Taylor Swift, who was last year announced as the first-ever global ambassador of Record Store Day, released ‘folklore: the long pond studio sessions’ on vinyl for the first time today, with many fans taking to social media to celebrate grabbing the limited-edition record.“Still can’t believe she is mine,” said one fan, posing with the vinyl.

Sam Smith is taking their Unholy show on the road. 

The world of assassins gets a ’70s twist.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In “Spinning Gold,” a sketchy but adoring if not outright devotional biopic about Neil Bogart, the upstart ’70s music-industry mogul who founded Casablanca Records, there’s a pivotal moment that spins around the story of how Bogart, at a party he was throwing, played the 3-minute-and-20-second single version of Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby.” He played it over and over again because his guests kept asking for it. That’s when the lightbulb went on. Bogart realized that the song needed to be longer, much longer — long enough to have sex to. (It ended up being 16 minutes and 50 seconds.) This is a rather famous anecdote (in the new documentary “Love to Love You, Donna Summer,” which just premiered at SXSW, there’s a clip of Bogart telling it on a talk show). So we assume that we’re going to see Bogart meet with Giorgio Moroder, the song’s composer and producer, and change music history.

Kiss — that’s a good name,” Bogart said.“Do you really wanna talk business right now?” Biawitz, who was Kiss’ manager, replied. Soon after, Bogart signed the band to his fledging label, Casablanca Records, based on the demo alone. “My father signed them sight unseen — he signed them because of the music,” said Bogart’s son, Tim Bogart.

Oscar winner and Academy member Roger Ross Williams is saying publicly what many in the documentary community have stewed over privately – that the sums of money being spent on Oscar documentary campaigns has “gotten insane.” And Williams, a former Academy Governor representing the Doc Branch, says something may be done about it.

Addie Morfoot Contributor During a talk at Copenhagen’s CPH:DOX on Wednesday, Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams spoke about a wide variety of topics, including his latest documentary, “Love to Love You, Donna Summer,” how insanely expensive it is to garner a doc Oscar nomination, and why the racial reckoning that occurred in the nonfiction community after George Floyd’s murder is over. Despite celebrity-driven docs being all the rage, Williams admitted that he usually rejects them. “I have so many celebrities who come to me about making a documentary (about their life),” the helmer told moderator Thom Powers. “It’s never worked out because if they are a living celebrity, who is very popular, they are all about control. It’s a piece of propaganda about their image and their career. It’s not a documentary.”

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor To call “Spinning Gold” a labor of love is an understatement completely uncharacteristic of its subject: the late Neil Bogart, the larger-than-life founder of Casablanca Records, the famously freewheeling 1970s powerhouse that brought the world Kiss, Donna Summer, Parliament-Funkadelic and the Village People in less than five years. Some 25 years in the making, the biopic was written, produced and directed by Bogart’s eldest son Tim (who’s worked in those roles on many TV series, from “Majors & Minors” to “The Jungle Book”) with music supervision from his youngest son, Evan (a songwriter and music publisher who co-wrote Beyonce’s “Halo,” among many other hits), and other family members as producers. Out March 31, it features Tony and Grammy-nominated Broadway star Jeremy Jordan (“Newsies,” “Rock of Ages,” “Waitress”) as Bogart, Michelle Monaghan as his first wife, Lyndsy Fonseca as his second, rapper Wiz Khalifa as P-Funk’s George Clinton, singers Ledisi as Gladys Knight and Tayla Parx as Summer, among many others.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor The entertainment business is filled with polymaths, but this week’s “Strictly Business” podcast guest, Evan Bogart, is a rarity even by its standards: He’s a songwriter of hits for Beyonce, Rihanna, Lizzo and others; owner of the large publishing company Seeker Music; chair of the Recording Academy’s new songwriters and composers wing; and not least, son of the late, legendary Neil Bogart, founder of the 1970s powerhouse Casablanca Records, which brought the world Kiss, Donna Summer, Parliament-Funkadelic and the Village People. Neil is the subject of “Spinning Gold,” a biopic directed and written by Evan’s older brother Tim, for which Evan is executive music producer, and which comes out March 31.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Sometimes, when a documentary has a great subject, it can explore that subject with an intimacy that’s arresting, only to treat other aspects of the story with a kind of cavalier casualness. “Love to Love You Donna Summer” is that kind of documentary. Co-directed by Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano (who is Summer’s daughter), it’s full of home movies and photographs and archival footage of Donna Summer, and it creates an eye-opening portrait of the ambitious yet deeply disconsolate woman she was. We see her when she was growing up in Boston, where she sang gospel in church and felt a gift passing through her, knowing that she was going to be famous, or when she moved to Munich in 1968, at 19, to be in the German production of “Hair” (there’s a startling clip of her onstage, in long dark pigtails, singing “Aquarius” in German), or later on, after she’d become a pop star, at home with her daughters, lost in the empty mirror of fame.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival, has revealed the first slate of films to screen as part of its Special Presentations program at the 30th edition of the festival, running April 27 to May 7 in Toronto. The Special Presentations program, which features high-profile subjects, award-winning films and filmmakers, and original perspectives on current events and pressing issues, will screen in cinemas across downtown Toronto during the festival. The program covers an extensive array of subjects, from a behind-the-runway look at racial diversity in the fashion industry to a harrowing documentation of the recruitment of child soldiers in Uganda. International premieres include “Black Barbie: A Documentary,” a deep dive into the true story of Black Barbie, from her origins to her contemporary presence; “Food and Country,” New York Times’ food critic Ruth Reichl’s uncovering of our broken food system, and the innovators risking everything to transform it; “Stephen Curry: Underrated,” the story of one of the greatest NBA players working today; and “Periodical,” an eye-opening documentary examining the politics, science, and mystery of the menstrual cycle.

Tom Whitlock, who won a Best Song Oscar for co-writing the No. 1 smash ‘Take My Breath Away’ from Top Gun and also wrote the film’s other hit single “Danger Zone,” has died. He was 68.

Donna Summer could hit notes more thrillingly beautiful than any other pop singer of her time, or since. I’m not sure even Whitney Houston, as great as she was, quite reached the glistening heights that culminate “Last Dance” (though she comes very close in “I Will Always Love You”). Mariah Carey (no relation to me) performs impressive vocal acrobatics, yet to my ear she can’t match the bell-like shimmer of Donna in the higher registers. And Donna in the lower registers – well, the voice thrums with visceral resonance.

The documentary Love to Love You, Donna Summer, about one of the world’s greatest pop stars, constitutes a kind of duet – between two filmmakers. The film, making its world premiere in Berlin, comes from directors Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano, daughter of the subject of the film, the legendary Donna Summer. 

Taylor Swift, The 1975, Blur, Pixies, U2, London Grammar, Madonna, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Foals, Donna Summer and Björk.The 16th edition of the annual event comes after the recent news that in 2022, vinyl outsold the CD format for the first time in 35 years.“We can’t wait to be taking part in Record Store Day UK,” said Scott Gamble from Crash Records in Leeds. “It’s such a great chance for us – and others stores all over the country – to shout about  what we do and see the local music-loving community out in force.“Having such a great list of releases from household names through to brand new artists means we  get an opportunity to introduce our world to people who aren’t necessarily already part of our brilliant  set of regulars.

Berlinale Adds Disney Tribute Film, Donna Summer Docs To Line-UpThe Berlinale has added Love to Love You, Donna Summer and 100 Years of Disney Animation – A Shorts Celebration to its 73rd edition line-up running February 16-26. Both titles will screen in the Berlinale Special sidebar. Co-directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano’s the Donna Summer film tells the story of the disco star through unpublished film extracts, home video, photographs, artwork, writings, personal audio and other recording. Academy Award winner and Walt Disney Animation Studios President Clark Spencer fronts the Disney film, sharing his favorite shorts from the studios’ 100 years of filmmaking. In other news, the festival has announced it will pay tribute to French cinematographer Caroline Champetier with its Berlinale Camera 2023 award. She has chosen Anne Fontaine’s The Innocents, on which she did the cinematography, for a screening as part of Berlinale Special program.

Written and directed by Chloe Domont, Fair Play follows a couple’s descent into the depths of hell all over a job promotion. The film stars Phoebe Dynevor, Alden Ehrenreich and Eddie Marsan. 

The official trailer for Spinning Gold has dropped and it explores the rise of Neil Bogart as the founder of Casablanca Records. Watch the preview in the video posted above.

People love their legendary rock record label story and the moguls behind them, “Cadillac Records,” “24 Hour Party People,” etc., and now the latest in this line of films is “Spinning Gold.” Directed by Timothy Scott Bogart, the music drama is based on the life of his father, Casablanca Records founder Neil Bogart. Casablanca Records was responsible for an eclectic roster of bands like Donna Summer, Parliament, Gladys Knight, The Isley Brothers, The Village People, Bill Withers, and KISS.

EXCLUSIVE: Timothy Scott Bogart’s movie Spinning Gold about his music producer father, Neil Bogart, and the iconic label he built, Casablanca Records, will hit theaters on Friday, March 31, 2023.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent YouTube Originals will launch on Nov. 18 “Behind the Beats,” a novel animated pop music anthology series produced by France’s TeamTO and 22D Music Group in partnership with France Télévisions, the French public broadcaster.  Episodes 1-4 of the novel history of pop will also debut on the YouTube Kids app, YouTube Originals Kids & Family announced on Wednesday. YouTube and TeamTO have shared first-look images from the series in exclusivity with Variety.  The deal sees YouTube launching the series worldwide but with a one-year holdback in the French language, where France Télévisions has first-window exclusivity. 

Beyoncé has shared a short visual for her latest campaign with Tiffany & Co., which is soundtracked by her ‘Renaissance‘ song ‘Summer Renaissance’.The pop behemoth, who last year starred in the jewellery brand’s ‘About Love’ campaign with her husband Jay-Z, appears in the one-minute clip directed by Grammy Award winner Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo, Never Let Me Go) that sees her command a busy downtown nightclub.With the song itself sampling the queen of disco Donna Summer‘s classic ‘I Feel Love’, the video echoes the Studio 54 era as Beyoncé arrives dressed to impress in glitzy threads and jewellery for the ‘Lose Yourself In Love’ Tiffany campaign.Beyoncé initially “decided to lead without visuals giving fans the opportunity to be limitless in their expansive listening journey”, as a press release stated upon the release of her seventh solo album ‘Renaissance’, which dropped in July. “It is a chance again to be listeners and not viewers, while taking in every gem of the pristine production.”Romanek shot the film using a rare 65mm camera as an “exploration of fearless creativity”, Tiffany & Co.