Composer Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

Caroline Brew editor Carla Bley, an influential jazz composer and pianist, died in her home in Willow, N.Y. due to complications from brain cancer. She was 87.

Addie Morfoot Contributor John Legend is lending his voice to “We Dare to Dream,” a documentary about the refugee Olympic team at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Legend will write, compose and record “Don’t Need to Sleep,” an original song for the docu, which will open theatrically Oct. 20 at New York’s IFC Center.

Valerie Wu Intern Miyazaki’s first animated feature in 10 years, “The Boy and the Heron” has come out with its official English voice cast. GKIDS, which serves as animation group Studio Ghibli’s North American distributor, announced that the full cast will consist of Christian Bale as Shoichi Maki; Dave Bautista as The Parakeet King; Gemma Chan as Natsuko; Willem Dafoe as Noble Pelican; Karen Fukuhara as Lady Himi; Mark Hamill as Granduncle; Robert Pattinson as The Gray Heron and Florence Pugh as Kiriko. They’re joined by Luca Padovan as protagonist Mahito Maki and Mamoudou Athie, Tony Revolri and Dan Stevens as the Parakeets.

Jon Burlingame Barbie, Spider-Man, Black Panther – visions of dolls and comic-book characters inevitably will be dancing in the heads of Grammy voters when they sit down to nominate movie music for this year’s golden gramophones. “Barbie: The Album” seems a shoo-in to compete for best compilation soundtrack, the category for movies dominated by songs.

The Cover on NME, HotWax, have shared a playlist exclusively to accompany the story’s launch – listen to it below.The Hastings trio are on this week’s (October 16) edition of The Cover, a renewal of NME’s commitment to supporting emerging talent across the globe on a weekly basis. Every week, a rising artist will feature on The Cover – you can read HotWax’s profile here, featuring photography by Fiona Garden.The trio, composed of Talulah Sim-Savage, Lola Sam and Alfie Sayers, have compiled ‘You Are Invited…’, their key influences that inform the band’s sound.

Danny DeVito has revealed there are plans in place for a Matilda reunion with lead star Mara Wilson. The two actors appeared together in the 1996 film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel, with DeVito as director. Now, DeVito has disclosed that there is a plan for he and Wilson to collaborate on Matilda in Concert, for which the duo will narrate the film over a live score by the composer David Newman.

Liza Foreman Delivering MipJunior’s keynote on Saturday, a composed Ramsey Naito, president of Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Animation talked up some of the recurrent themes at this weekend’s kids content confab, not to mention the network’s strategies for its slew of successful franchises. In her current position, the Nickelodeon veteran has overseen huge expansion. Five years ago, she said, there were only nine animation properties in development.

You would be hard-pressed to pick three more modern-day Manchester United attacking greats than Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and Ryan Giggs. So to be compared to all three must mean you are doing something right.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic If there’s a pop musician of the last 60 years who deserves a great documentary, it’s Antonio Carlos Jobim. Some might bristle at my description of him as “pop.” In Brazil, where Jobim, one of the prime architects of bossa nova, is considered a national treasure, he’s simply thought of as a composer, placed on a pedestal along with classical Brazilian composers like Heitor Villa-Lobos. Jobim’s gorgeously complex chord structures — the aural equivalent of melty-colored Impressionist paintings — were arguably more jazz than pop.

, combat hair thinning, or , experts say that eating food for hair growth is one of the best things you can do.“The saying you are what you eat is no joke,” says celebrity hairstylist celebrity hairstylist , and doctors agree: “Eating a balanced, well-rounded, nutritious diet is essential for the health and growth of your hair,” adds , MD, a board-certified dermatologist at New York City’s . “Protein is an essential food group for hair, for example, as hair is composed of proteins called keratin, and amino acids like L-cysteine, and L-lyseine are also necessary, as they are the building blocks of protein.”That’s also why limiting your nutritional intake can have negative effects on your hair.

J. Kim Murphy Stop reading if you’ve seen this movie before — a wooden mannequin with the face of Greta Thunberg greets a horde of kindergarteners emerging from a steampunk Trojan horse under a dome of gigantic smartphones bathing them in hot blue light. Alright, keep scrolling.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Matthew Heineman’s moving documentary feature “American Symphony” was recently acquired by Netflix after its debut at the Telluride Film Festival, cementing itself as one of the early frontrunners for the Oscars. Its main subject, “Soul” Oscar winner Jon Batiste, will now be in the race for best original song with the track “It Never Went Away.” Batiste sings the emotional number, which he co-wrote with Grammy-winning songwriter and producer Dan Wilson. Read: Variety’s Awards Circuit for the latest Oscars predictions in all categories.

France’s Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music has announced it is exercising its right to opt-out from making its members’ work freely available for use in the development of artificial intelligence tools.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Godfrey Reggio, creator of the Qatsi trilogy, has been down this road before. The obsessions are familiar — nature’s innocence corrupted by industry, technology and the atomic age — but the audience is presumably different.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Lionsgate‘s adaptation of the Judy Blume novel “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” has been submitted for the Golden Globes in the comedy/musical categories, Variety has learned exclusively. With the expansion from five to six nominees this year, the movie will compete for recognition against Warner Bros’ “Barbie,” Searchlight Pictures’ “Poor Things” and Focus Features’ “The Holdovers.” Written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, the film tells the story of 11-year-old Margaret, who is uprooted from her life in New York to New Jersey, where she deals with the challenges of new friends and a new school. Read: Variety’s Awards Circuit for the latest Oscars predictions in all categories.

Steven Lutvak, the composer and co-lyricist of the hit Tony-winning 2013 Broadway musical comedy A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, died October 9. He was 64.

Nottingham Forest midfielder Morgan Gibbs-White says Paul Scholes and Wayne Rooney inspired him to pursue a career in football.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Director Karan Tejpal’s feature film debut “Stolen” is a nail-biting thriller about two privileged, big-city boys who unwittingly embark on a harrowing adventure as they help an impoverished young woman find her kidnapped baby in rural India. The film, which is produced by Gaurav Dhingra’s Jungle Book Studio, is also a commentary on the alarming number of child abductions in India in recent years, and the explosion of often misguided vigilantism that accompanied the widespread adoption of instant messaging apps, particularly in rural areas.

A wacky film based on a stage show by comedians Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp, Dicks: The Musical – a riff on The Parent Trap with two adult men as the starring twins — opens in seven theaters in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco on a crowded specialty weekend as theatrical releases of fall film festival titles accelerates.    

Jenelle Riley Deputy Awards and Features Editor In her seven feature films as director, Rebecca Miller has presented indelible, complicated characters rarely seen on the big screen. One of those films, “Arthur Miller: Writer,” was a documentary about the heralded playwright, her father. But the remaining six narrative films were of her own creation — including the titular 10-year-old obsessed with absolving her sins in “Angela,” the three women at the center of “Personal Velocity” and the young mother who schemes to reunite her husband with his ex in “Maggie’s Plan.”As with her characters, the filmmaker has excelled at presenting unique worlds to the viewer.

William Earl The Newport Beach Film Festival has added a screening of “Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret” to its Fashion Island main stage line-up. The screening on Sunday, Oct. 15 will include a Q&A with author Judy Blume, writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig and producers James L.

Valerie Wu editor Dancers and non-dancers alike can rejoice at the announcement of upcoming dance documentary “Dance As You Are,” a new project from “Embattled” producer Eryl Cochran. The film was shot almost exclusively on iPhones over 60 days and is the first release from Cochran’s new production label KEYKIX. “Dance As You Are” centers on a group of 75 strangers, ages 23-74, who must come together to form six dance teams over the span of eight weeks.

Michaela Zee Anne Hathaway, similar to her character Patricia in Rebecca Miller’s “She Came to Me,” has dealt with being a perfectionist. “I think perhaps in the earlier part of my life, I believed a little bit more in perfectionism,” Hathaway told Variety at the New York screening of “She Came to Me” on Tuesday night.

Anne Hathaway and Marisa Tomei are stepping out for the premiere of their new movie!

Cardi B is throwing Kanye West’s own words in his face after he labelled the chart-topper an “Illuminati industry plant” in a clip going viral on social media.

Michaela Zee Leonard Bernstein‘s children Jamie, Alexander and Nina were in complete awe the first time they saw Bradley Cooper as the renowned conductor and composer. “It took our breath away, it made us gasp,” Jamie Bernstein told Variety at the New York Film Festival premiere of “Maestro.” “In some pictures, we could tell a little bit that it was Bradley, but there were certain photographs where we would go, ‘Oh my God!’ It was so amazingly perfect.” “I had a FaceTime call come in, and I didn’t recognize the number. But I chanced it, and it was my father as an old man!” added Nina Maria Felicia Bernstein.

Naman Ramachandran The full company for the second run of “My Neighbor Totoro,” a stage adaptation of Miyazaki Hayao‘s beloved 1988 Studio Ghibli film, has been unveiled. The production is a collaboration between multi-award-winning composer Joe Hisaishi, who executive produces, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), Improbable and Nippon TV. It will reopen at London’s Barbican arts complex this fall.

The beloved 2004 comedy, 13 Going On 30, is being brought back to life in a new way!

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Neo Sora’s concert documentary “Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus,” a standout at the Venice Film Festival, has sold for theatrical distribution in North America to Janus Films ahead of its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival. The theatrical release will be followed by a Blu-ray Disc release on the “Janus Contemporaries” label. This is the latest deal inked by London and Paris-based production, finance and sales outfit Film Constellation, following a slew of sales to Spain (Filmin), Portugal (Midas Filmes), Germany and Austria (Rapid Eye), Scandinavia (NjutaFilms), Baltics (Kino Pavasaris), South Korea (Media Castle), China (JL Vision Films), Hong Kong and Macau (Edko Films), Taiwan (Cai Chang) and Singapore (Anticipate Pictures).

The Expendables 4 (officially titled Expend4bles) has been released – check it out below.Directed by Scott Waugh, the fourth instalment in the action blockbuster series sees veterans Jason Statham, Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren and Randy Couture all reprise their roles.This new entry, however, might be defined by its newcomers, including Curtis Jackson aka 50 Cent, Megan Fox, Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Jacob Scipio, Levy Tran and Andy Garcia.A synopsis reads: “Armed with every weapon they can get their hands on and the skills to use them, The Expendables are the world’s last line of defence and the team that gets called when all other options are off the table.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor The 27th annual American French Film Festival set for October has been canceled in light of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the Franco American Cultural Fund announced. “The FACF Board of Directors determined this week that it was not possible to continue with business as usual,” the board said in a statement. The Los Angeles festival, formerly known as Colcoa, had been set for Oct.

Naman Ramachandran Indian-born singer, songwriter, composer and actor Guru Randhawa has signed with CAA for representation. Randhawa began by releasing independent singles and grew to become a global icon and pop star recognized for his Punjabi and Bollywood hits. In 2012, he made his music debut with the single “Same Girl,” then signed with the leading Indian label T-Series and released “Patola,” which has more than 493 million views on YouTube.

The American French Film Festival (TAFFF), which had been due to take place in L.A. from October 18 to 22, has been shelved due to the writers and actors strikes.

Bradley Cooper is keeping it casual as he steps out for a walk!

As Yahoo News reports, the artist was also part of a provocative artist scene alongside singer Grand Jojo and The Sex Life of the Belgians director Jan Bucquoy. Deprijck went on to create his own surreal works which included an underpants museum in Lessines.‘Ca Plane Pour Moi’, known as ‘Everything’s Going Well For Me’ when translated from French, became a smash hit in 1977 for the Belgian artist Plastic Bertrand.

David Benedict “What a terrible tragedy.” Indeed. That’s the lyric cried out as, in theory, the famously magnificent Cornish home at the heart of the story burns to the ground at the climax of the musical of “Rebecca.” Or, rather, when smoke is pumped into the auditorium, the frontcloth glows red and cast members race around to startlingly little dramatic effect.