Seven Years, Thousands of Hours of David Bowie Footage and an Inspirational Train Ride Later, Brett Morgen Finally Realized His ‘Moonage Daydream’

David Bowie-inspired baby names have been on the increase since the icon died in 2016, new figures have found.According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of boys registered with the name Ziggy, a reference to his acclaimed 1972 album ‘Ziggy Stardust’, at birth in England and Wales rose from 49 to 136 between 2016 and 2021.The number of boys registered with the name Bowie also rose from 35 to 78 during the same period.The names grew in popularity for girls too, with 28 girls called Bowie and 14 called Ziggy last year. The name Ezra also rose in prominence following George Ezra‘s success with 1,226 boys registered with the name last year.Like Ezra, the number of baby girls named Mabel also peaked in 2021 at 885, which followed particularly large increases in 2018 and 2020.This may have been influenced by the singer and songwriter Mabel, whose breakthrough single ‘Finders Keepers’ reached the Top 10 in 2017, according to the new research.Elsewhere, Star Wars, Pixar movies and the TV show Sex Education were also among the cultural influences credited with boosting the popularity of less common names.Meanwhile, it was recently announced that Bowie’s fourth studio album, ‘Hunky Dory’, will be released as a deluxe reissue that will include unreleased home demos, live recordings and other rarities from that era.Last month, Brett Morgen’s Bowie documentary film Moonage Daydream also arrived in cinemas, along with an accompanying companion album featuring previously unheard material, unique mixes created for the film, and dialogue from Bowie.In a five-star review of the film, NME wrote: “Morgen’s film isn’t a greatest hits set.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor Douglas Kirkland, the celebrity photographer known for his photos of Marilyn Monroe and numerous other stars, died Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 88. His 1961 Monroe portraits showed the superstar reclining on a bed surrounded by white satin sheets. In addition to his portraits of Hollywood notables including he was a special photographer for films including “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “The Sound of Music,” “Sophie’s Choice,” “The Great Gatsby,” “Out of Africa,” “Titanic” and “Moulin Rouge!” His photos appeared in hundreds of magazines, and among the celebrities he photographed were Brigitte Bardot, Coco Chanel, Audrey Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Ann-Margret, Natalie Wood, Catherine Deneuve, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Charlie Chaplin, Peter O’Toole, Paul Newman, Marcello Mastroianni, Michael Caine, Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Frank Sinatra, Mick Jagger, Bjork and Michael Jackson.

very scary. ” But, through it all, she has remained insistent on a woman’s “prerogative to have a little fun”. Now 58, she tells me it’s the “fun, fearless” side of her that she’s channelling in her buoyant new single, “Waking Up Dreaming”, from a sixth album expected to drop in 2023.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor Lionsgate has tapped Ruben Fleischer to direct the third installment of action-heist franchise “Now You See Me.” The “Venom,” “Uncharted” and “Zombieland” director will take the helm of the third installment of the story of the thieving illusionists know as the Four Horsemen, while also featuring a new generation of characters. Lionsgate Motion Picture Group president Nathan Kahane announced the new film, which will get a new draft of the screenplay by “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith. The previous draft was by Eric Warren Singer.

David Bowie‘s fourth studio album, ‘Hunky Dory’, will be released as a deluxe reissue that will include unreleased home demos, live recordings and other rarities from that era.‘Divine Symmetry (An Alternate Journey Through Hunky Dory)’ is set to arrive on November 25 via Parlophone and will, across four CDs, feature 48 previously unreleased  tracks and demos taken from the 12 months leading up to the release of ‘Hunky Dory’ in 1971.The first CD of the collection contains home and hotel room demos of songs that would end up on ‘Hunky Dory’, along with unreleased songs like ‘King Of The City’, ‘Right On Mother’, ‘How Lucky You Are (Miss Peculiar)’ and ‘Tired Of My Life’.Other discs include Bowie’s 1971 John Peel live session, BBC radio recordings, live cuts, the ‘BOWPROMO’ EP, B-sides, alternate versions of ‘Hunky Dory’ tracks and more. Coinciding with the reissue’s announcement, Parlophone have shared Bowie’s previously unreleased rendition of ‘Hunky Dory’ album track ‘Kooks’, taken from BBC’s Sounds of the 70s with Bob Harris radio show.

David Bowie’s drummer has reflected on the late singer’s life following the unveiling of his stone on the Music Walk of Fame in London. Bowie died in January 2016, and has now been hailed as ‘one of the most amazing artists that has come out in history’ by Michael ‘Woody’ Woodmansey. The music legend’s stone was laid on the Walk of Fame this week in his memory at the Camden-based trail which recognises influential artists from around the world.

David Bowie was honoured with a stone on Camden’s Music Walk Of Fame yesterday (September 22) – see footage and reaction below.The ceremony, originally set for September 15 before being delayed due to the death of Queen Elizabeth II, saw Bowie’s friends and collaborators unveil the stone and celebrate his life and legacy.Among those paying tribute and unveiling the stone was Spiders From Mars drummer Woody Woodmansey, who told Reuters: “It’s another landmark for his legacy basically music, the films, the videos, and everything he did for the culture.“He was just an amazing artist – 24/7 he was on the job and it always showed in the products. To be able to move through all the different characters and the musical genres that he did and pull it off, I don’t think anybody’s achieved that ever, [he was] one of a kind, unique.”Lee Bennett, the founder of the Walk Of Fame, said the release of new Bowie film Moonage Daydream was the “catalyst” for the series to “come back with David and unlock the rest of the schedule” after COVID-related delays to new stones being laid.“[There was] no one better to come back with,” he said.

Boy George has listed his north London mansion up for sale for a whopping £17million. The 61 year old has lived at the Italian-inspired Hampstead mansion for nearly 40 years, having bought the incredible space back in the mid-1980s. The incredible space underwent a three-year renovation, which started with the singer embroiled in a battle with Camden Council to get planning permission to extend the property.

Roy Trakin Brett Morgen’s “Moonage Daydream,” a freewheeling documentary about David Bowie, doesn’t offer a chronology of the life of the late pop icon. Rather it provides a fever dream of sound and vision, with songs torn apart, reimagined and reassembled in ways that reflect its subject’s chameleonic music and art. The doc, out now in IMAX theaters, was a labor of love for Morgen that took four years to assemble and edit. It was another 18 months constructing the ambitious soundtrack, which required the talents of the Oscar-winning “Bohemian Rhapsody” team of Ventura, Calif.-based rerecording mixer Paul Massey (with David Giammarco); London-based supervising sound and music editor John Warhurst and supervising sound editor Nina Hartstone; and Dolby Atmos Music Studios.

At this point, we’ve all seen enough documentaries about 20th-century musical geniuses that the average viewer could direct one in their sleep: archival footage of the greatest-hits performances, behind-the-scenes clips showing the snatches of solitary humanity underneath the currents of history, and some interviews with loved ones and collaborators that go beyond the image to a subject’s vulnerable core. Tried-and-true as the template might be, Brett Morgen also finds it fatally boring, and endeavors to chart a less clear-cut path with his films.

Moonage Daydream, a film about David Bowie, opens with “Hallo Spaceboy,” a deep cut from his 1995 album Outside. It’s clear from the use of this song that Brett Morgen isn’t making a traditional documentary about the Thin White Duke.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor Super, the boutique distribution label from Neon, has acquired U.S. rights to Alice Diop’s “Saint Omer” after it won the Silver Lion Grand Jury prize in Venice along with the Luigi De Laurentiis Lion of the Future award. “Saint Omer” was recently shortlisted for France’s submission to the Academy Awards and will premiere at the New York Film Festival and play the BFI London Festival. Neon plans a theatrical release. “Saint Omer” is Diop’s debut fiction feature, which she co-wrote with Amrita David and Marie NDiaye, and it stars Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville and Aurélia Petit. Toufik Ayadi and Christophe Barral of Srab Films produced alongside Arte France Cinéma and Pictanovo Hauts-de-France.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor The first thing to know before seeing “Moonage Daydream,” Brett Morgen’s dazzling, exhaustive and exhausting memoir of David Bowie’s life and career, is that it assumes the viewer already knows a lot about the subject — his relevance, his influence, the brilliance of so much of his music, and the basics of his personal history. Like another recent historical film about an oft-trodden subject — Todd Haynes’ “The Velvet Underground” — it eschews the standard, chronological, done-to-death “Behind the Music”-style template that has become a predictable default for music documentaries and finds a dramatically different way to tell the story. In the case of “Moonage Daydream” — the significance of the second word of the title in this impressionistic film cannot be overemphasized — that different way is to let the man himself do all of the talking: Literally the only voiceovers heard in this 135-minute-long film are from Bowie (presenting real or conveniently fictionalized accounts of his life and work) and various interviewers. While that makes for an unusually free-form approach to structuring a documentary (and was enormously challenging for Morgen, who worked on the film for over four years and suffered a heart attack while doing it), in many ways it’s freeing: Instead of a rigid timeline or forced, overarching theme dictating the narrative, Bowie’s words do.

Sunday Lunch series, Toyah Willcox and Robert Fripp have dedicated a cover of David Bowie‘s ‘Heroes’ to the late Queen Elizabeth II.A description shared with the video – which sees Willcox hold up handwritten placards dedicated to the Queen as well as the duo’s personal heroes, while Fripp plays guitar behind her – saw the pair offer their condolences to the British Royal Family. “Toyah Willcox and Robert Fripp wish to extend condolences to the Royal Family, and respect the dedication HRH Elizabeth II showed her country during her unprecedented reign,” the description read.“The Sunday Lunch series is paused to play “Heroes” in acknowledgement of the passing of Her Majesty the Queen.”Watch the video below:The couple have been delivering Sunday Lunch episodes since 2020, when they began the series during the coronavirus pandemic.

David Bowie's daughter was just 15 when he passed away in January 2016 but now Alexandra Jones is 22 and recently shared a wonderful throwback video of the pair together.MORE: Iman shares rare picture of her daughter with David Bowie and fans go wildThe video showed Alexandra - known as Lexi - sitting on her father's lap as the two sang Somewhere Over The Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz.A post shared by Lexi Jones (@_p0odle_)WATCH: Lexi shares throwback video with father David Bowie"My wizard of oz," she captioned the video that saw Lexi wearing a yellow tee and boldly singing the lyrics as David helped her out. Fans thanked her for sharing the moment with them, as one wrote: "So wonderful and funny and intimate.""What a Wizard he was!!!" another shared.READ: Iman's never-before-seen picture of David Bowie and daughter Lexi leaves fans choked upRELATED: David Bowie's wife Iman opens up about their remarkable marriage five years after his deathLexi lives in New York City; she is the daughter of David and his wife Iman.

Former Emmerdale star Patsy Kensit is to tie the knot for the fifth time after a secret engagement to her boyfriend of only five weeks. The actress, 54, will marry multimillionaire property tycoon Patric Cassidy after saying "yes" on Tuesday. The loved-up pair were introduced through mutual friends and a friend told The Sun: “This has been a whirlwind romance.

David Bowie digital art project approved by the late artist’s estate is set to launch next week.The venture is a partnership between the Bowie estate, the NFT marketplace OpenSea, and Andrew D. Keller and Joaquin Acrich’s Web3 company We Love The Arts.Set to launch on September 13 on OpenSea, Bowie On The Blockchain is being billed as “a first-of-its-kind multiple artist NFT sale” that will bring together the work of nine NFT artists.Each artist, including Pussy Riot‘s Nadya Tolokonnikova, has created “their own unique takes paying homage to David Bowie and his influence across their artistic and personal identities”, according to a press release.Tolokonnikova said in a statement about Bowie On The Blockchain: “David Bowie to me is a platonic ideal of an artist, charismatic, passionate, imaginative, magnetic af, he always puts art x curiosity x subversion over profit, a magician and a muse.