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Brian James, founding guitarist and songwriter of seminal British punk group The Damned who later played with Stiv Bators in The Lords of the New Church, died Thursday. He was 70. His family confirmed the news in a Facebook post.

Also featuring singer Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible on bass and Rat Scabies on drums, The Damned first hit the UK charts in March 1977 with its album Damned Damned Damned on Stiff Records. With James as its main songwriter, it was the first of 10 charting LPs in the country. Its first hit single there was 1979’s “Love Song,” starting a run of nine Top 40 tracks led by their lone Top 10, “Eloise,” which reached No. 3 in 1986.

James wrote the influentuial band’s debut single “New Rose,” which came out in October 1976 and is considered Britain’s first punk single, coming a month before The Sex Pistols upended the scene with “Anarchy in the UK.

Brian James, the pioneering punk guitarist who co-founded the Damned, died Thursday, March 6, at the age of 70.

James’ death was confirmed with a statement on his Facebook page. While no cause of death was given, the statement said James “passed peacefully on” with his wife, son, and daughter-in-law by his side.

On X, James’ former Damned bandmate Captain Sensible (Raymond Burns) wrote, “We’re shocked to hear that creator of @thedamned, our great chum Brian James has sadly gone. A lovely bloke that I feel so lucky to have met...

Brian James, founding guitarist and principal early songwriter for the legendary UK punk band The Damned, has died at the age of 70.

James’ passing was reported on his Facebook page, with no cause of death listed. The guitarist, who was born in London in 1955, had just turned 70 on February 18th.

Prior to The Damned, James played in the proto-punk bands London SS, The Subterraneans, and Bastard. He formed The Damned in 1976 with singer Dave Vanian, bassist Captain Sensible, and drummer Rat Scabies.

James wrote most of the songs on the band’s first two albums — Damned Damned Damned and Music for Pleasure — including “New Rose,” which is considered the first-ever UK punk single (preceding any releases by The Clash or Sex Pistols). However, he quit the band at the end of 1977, the same year both of those albums were released.

He went on to form the band Tanz Der Youth...

We lost some entertainment giants in 2024.

Among the big-screen legends who died during the past 12 months were Donald Sutherland, James Earl Jones, Maggie Smith, Carl Weathers, Shelley Duvall, Dabney Coleman, Teri Garr, Louis Gossett Jr., Anouk Aimée, Marisa Paredes and Gena Rowlands.

Related: Saying Goodbye: A Video Tribute To The Hollywood And Media Figures We’ve Lost In 2024

The TV world mourns the likes of Bob Newhart, John Amos, Phil Donahue, Linda Lavin, David Soul, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Martin Mull, Shannen Doherty, Michael Cole, Richard Lewis, Richard Simmons, James B. Sikking, Peter Marshall and Joe Flaherty.

Filmmakers and producers who left us include Norman Jewison, Roger Corman, Al Ruddy, Jon Landau, Lynda Obst, Jim Abrahams, Charles Shyer, Irv Wilson and Paolo Taviani.

The industry also paid tribute to such top executives as Charles Dolan, Paula Weinstein, Jamie Kellner, Richard Parsons, Gerald Levin and Paul Fox.

Broadway’s lights were a...

Emilia Clarke (“Game of Thrones”), Edgar Ramirez (“Emilia Perez”) and Jack Farthing (“Spencer”) will star in “Next Life” from writer-director Drake Doremus (“Like Crazy”), L.A. and London-based production and management company 42, Mutressa and Fetisoff Illusion have announced.

“Next Life” tells the love story of Ivy (Emilia Clarke), who finds herself confronted with parallel universes in which her life unspools in very different ways set against the modern London jazz scene.

Mutressa’s Elika Portnoy, Gleb Fetisov of Fetisoff Illusion and 42’s Ben Pugh and Kate Buckley are producing alongside Doremus. John Palfery Smith will also produce. Production is currently underway in London and set to wrap in late December. CAA Media Finance is representing worldwide rights.

Clarke is best known for her role as Daenerys Targaryen in the HBO award winning series “Game of Thrones,” for which she received four Emmy nominations and three Critics Choice Award nominations.

Movies about gambling follow a simple mantra: A character or characters go up against the odds, eschewing safe bets for a risky, life-changing move. The stakes are high, but the rewards are plentiful. Our protagonists encounter numerous obstacles during their journey and often incur severe losses. They almost always experience a moment of self-reflection and are faced with the ultimate choice: go all in or fold. Rinse and repeat.

Hundreds of movies about gambling exist to tell this same story time and again, with slight variations on the formula. Audiences turn up in droves to watch these powerful morality tales play out on the silver screen. And why not? The gambling genre presents the hero's journey in its purest form. It's the quintessential underdog tale, except rather than score the final shot in the big game, characters risk life and limb for a chance to beat the house, upend the establishment,...

The filming of "Schindler's List" was, to put it mildly, a difficult experience for Steven Spielberg. Principal photography took place in Poland in and around many of the concentration camps where Jewish captives were murdered en masse. The weight should be too much for any human being to bear, and it absolutely cut through Spielberg. As he said in Joseph McBride's "Steven Spielberg: A Biography": "I was hit in the face with my personal life. My upbringing. My Jewishness. The stories my grandparents told me about the Shoah. And Jewish life came pouring back into my heart. I cried all the time."

This was not fertile grounds for laughs, but to get through the making of such a soul-scarring motion picture, Spielberg needed some semblance of levity. And so, when he knocked off for the day, he would repair to his quarters in Poland and find lighthearted solace...

It's a big month for Paul Mescal. Gladiator II is just weeks away, a bunch of lads in mini shorts honored him with his very own lookalike competition in Dublin, and now, he may get to start in yet another project with Ridley Scott. According to Variety, Mescal is in...

Samuel L. Jackson and Grammy Award winner Andra Day lead the cast of the upcoming action-comedy movie The Honest Liar. Day won a Grammy Award for the 2021 movie The United States vs. Billie Holiday, which she also starred in and earned her a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination. She more recently appeared in Netflix's 2024 horror movie The Deliverance and played herself in Peacock's Bel-Air series. The Honest Liar's cast also includes dgar Ramrez, who previously starred in the second season of American Crime Story and in HBO's The Undoing.

As per Deadline, The Honest Liar features Jackson playing an acclaimed movie actor, Nick DeFranco, who teaches undercover police officers how to act like criminals in exchange for avoiding prison time. However, Nick's job becomes more complicated when he finds himself falling for one of the undercover female police officers he is instructing. The project is written and directed by Wayne Kramer,...

Exclusive: Oscar nominee and screen icon Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) will star alongside Oscar nominee and Grammy winner Andra Day (The United States Vs Billie Holiday) and Golden Globe nominee Edgar Ramirez (Emilia Perez) in action-comedy, The Honest Liar.

Altitude is introducing the film to buyers at this week’s American Film Market, with CAA Media Finance handling domestic rights.

Written and directed by Wayne Kramer (The Cooler), the film will see Jackson star as an award-winning actor tasked with teaching rookie undercover cops how to act like criminals so they can save their own lives when on the job.

The film will be produced by Hollywood veteran Dan Grodnik (Fast Charlie) and Jeffrey Reisner, through their new outfit Golden Eagle Movie Studios, and executive-produced by Gail Thackray and Tracy Beam. Cameras are due to roll early next year.

The official synopsis reads: “Nick DeFranco is an award-winning actor...

The clock was rapidly approaching midnight when Ozzy Osbourne first appeared on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony stage at the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, Ohio Saturday night. Due to a variety of health ailments, including Parkinson’s Disease, Osbourne’s mobility is severely limited, and he rarely appears in public. But there he was accepting the award on a leather throne with skull armrests, and a giant vampire bat perched on top.

“Let me get the thank yous out of the way, because I’m not...

Have you ever been on such a hot streak in a casino that you feel you can't lose? Everything is coming up on 7, 11, or 21, no matter your game. Well, that is when the casino boss and the house deploy "The Cooler." The Cooler is bad luck in the form of a human being. The cooler is such a destabilizing omen that his mere presence at your table will put the brakes on even the most sizzling run of good luck. In Wayne Kramer's terrific 2003 Las Vegas drama The Cooler, Bernie Lootz (William H. Macy) is the harbinger that ruthless Shangri-La Casino boss Shelley Kaplow (Alec Baldwin) will turn loose to ensure you don't win too much cash.

Singer-songwriter Jesse Malin appeared on CBS Saturday Morning on September 21st for his first public performance since a medical emergency left him paralyzed from the waist down. The punk rocker played a three-song set on the TV program, and discussed his health battle with host Anthony Mason.

Malin was at a restaurant with friends in May 2023 when he suffered a rare spinal stroke that left him paralyzed from the waist down. He has been undergoing physical therapy and stem-cell treatments, and is set to return to the stage for two benefit shows at the Beacon Theatre in New York City on December 1st and 2nd, with proceeds going toward his Sweet Relief Fund. The first gig is already sold out, but you can still get tickets to the second show via Ticketmaster, or tickets to either concert via StubHub.

Ahead of the Beacon Theatre gigs, Malin and his band performed “State of the Art,...

Here’s one cake that didn’t get left out too long in the rain: the eternal pop pastry that is “MacArthur Park.” The song’s epic length and unusual structure haven’t kept it from turning into a decades-spanning perennial, one that is just finding yet another new life as a result of its extensive use in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” which scores a full-on movie-musical climax with actor-singer Richard Harris’ original 1968 version before switching to Donna Summer’s disco remake for the end credits.

Jimmy Webb is one of the indisputably greatest songwriters of all time, known for undying classics like “Wichita Lineman,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Galveston” and “Highwayman.” “MacArthur Park” is undoubtedly a more polarizing song than those others, but more music fans than not will break into a grin upon hearing the start of a seven-minute, suite-like epic that likens a failed romance to...

It’s not often I’d be talking about Agatha Christie, Renny Harlin, Val Kimer and LL Cool J in the same breath, but thanks to the world of Tinseltown magic, here we are! And, before you’re mis-led into thinking this video is about the great Netflix show of the same name, let me just set the record straight. This ain’t that one folks. Nope, the movie we’re focusing on today somehow manages to blend the classic British literary world of Agatha Christie with LL Cool J spitting out lines like. That’s right gore-hounds, twenty years ago director Renny Harlin was best known for action classics, pirate movies, dangling Sylvester Stallone from great heights and giant sharks; way before the likes of The Meg and more recently, Under Paris. Then, an intriguing project came his way that would blend the worlds of Agatha Christie and gangster rappers,...

More than half a century after the release of the last MC5 album, 1971’s High Time, a new album masterminded by the group’s guitarist Wayne Kramer, who died in February, will come out this fall. The record, Heavy Lifting, includes two songs that feature original MC5 drummer Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson, who died in May, alongside guest appearances by Slash, Tom Morello, Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, and Don Was, among others.

The new single, “Can’t Be Found,” begins with a muscular bass line that leads a typically powerful guitar riff.

A new song by legendary Detroit rockers MC5 titled “Can’t Be Found,” featuring Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid, has just been released.

It’s the latest single from Heavy Lifting, the first MC5 album in 53 years. The late Wayne Kramer, the band’s founding guitarist and vocalist, recorded much of the album prior to his passing earlier this year and co-wrote 12 of the 13 songs with Brad Brooks (who performed with MC5 in the years prior to Kramer’s death).

On “Can’t Be Found,” Kramer handled lead vocals and was also joined by classic MC5 drummer Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson, who sadly passed away earlier this year, as well. Reid’s guitar playing shines beginning at the 1:40 mark, where he delivers a blistering solo.

The LP was produced by Bob Ezrin and also features guest spots from Slash, Tom Morello, Alice in Chains’ William Duvall, and more. It...

A covers compilation benefitting the relief fund of singer-songwriter Jesse Malin, who suffered a spinal stroke last year, is set for release on September 20th. The latest single to be released from the effort is Billie Joe Armstrong’s cover of Malin’s “Black Haired Girl.”

The full 27-song tracklist for Silver Patron Saints: The Songs of Jesse Malin was also unveiled and features many of Malin’s friends and colleagues covering the D Generation frontman’s songs, including Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, Bleachers, and many more.

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Billie Joe Armstrong’s take on Malin’s “Black Haired Girl” finds the Green Day frontman is fine form, with the cheerful power-pop tune falling right in his wheelhouse.

“Jesse is a dear friend to me,” commented Armstrong in a press release. “I love his songwriting. He is all heart… His passion is endless. We send...

Proto-punk legends MC5 will release their first album in over 53 years this October, with Heavy Lifting arriving just months after the deaths of guitarist Wayne Kramer and drummer Dennis Thompson, MC5’s last surviving original members.

Back in 2022, Kramer first revealed that the band, along with producer Bob Ezrin, were working on an all-star album that would serve as the first MC5 LP since their High Time was released in 1971.

Many of those guests ended up on Heavy Lifting, including Slash, Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, Alice in Chains’ William Duvall,...

The first album in 53 years from legendary proto-punk band MC5 will arrive in October, sadly after classic members Wayne Kramer and Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson both passed away earlier this year.

The LP, titled Heavy Lifting, was originally announced back in 2022. It will finally see the light of day on October 18th, one day before MC5 get inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame via the Musical Excellence Award.

Kramer co-wrote 12 of the album’s 13 songs with Brad Brooks, who served as the band’s singer during their final years before Kramer’s passing. First single “Boys Who Play With Matches” can be streamed below.

The album features a number of prominent guests, including Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, Alice in Chains’ William DuVall, Guns N’ Roses’ Slash, Rise Against’s Tim McIlrath, and Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, among others.

Thompson, the band’s classic drummer,...

Roughly a year ago, acclaimed singer-songwriter Jesse Malin was paralyzed from the waist down when he suffered a spinal stroke. To help with his medical bills and rehabilitation, a number of his musical peers have recorded his songs for a tribute album titled Silver Patron Saints: The Songs of Jesse Malin, set to arrive on September 20th.

Among the acts on the triple-vinyl compilation (pre-order here) are Bruce Springsteen, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Bleachers, Lucinda Williams and Elvis Costello, Rancid, The Hold Steady, Tommy Stinson, Counting Crows, Dinosaur Jr., The Wallflowers, Spoon, Susanna Hoffs, Frank Turner, and Alison Mosshart with Tom Morello and the late Wayne Kramer, among others.

The songs cover Malin’s solo material and his recordings as frontman of the New York City punk band D Generation. Bleachers’ rendition of “Prisoners of Paradise” from Malin’s 2007 solo album Glitter in the Gutter can be heard below.

Bruce Springsteen, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Lucinda Williams, and the late Wayne Kramer all come together for Silver Patron Saints: The Songs of Jesse Malin, a tribute album to the New York songwriter due Sept. 20. Jack Antonoff and Bleachers’ version of Malin’s “Prisoners of Paradise” announces the album, which benefits Malin as he continues to recover from a May 2023 spinal stroke.

Bleachers’ take on “Prisoners of Paradise” is more lo-fi than the original, which Malin cut for his 2007 album Glitter in the Gutter. “Well, I had super heroes,...

Exclusive: Lucy Hale (Pretty Little Liars) has signed on to star in My One and Only, a psychological thriller from writer-director Wayne Kramer (The Cooler) that’s being presented for worldwide sales at Cannes by Film Bridge International.

Set to go before cameras in July, the film centers on Molly (Hale), a recently widowed young woman, suicidal with grief, who is abducted by a man intent on reinventing her as his dead wife — unleashing in Molly a fierce will to live.

Siena Oberman (The Good Mother) will produce for Artemis along with Steven Schneider and David Guglielmo (The Last Stop in Yuma County) for Spooky Pictures. Greg Lauritano (Fairyland) is executive producing alongside Phil Hunt for Head Gear, as well as DC Cassidy, Udaya Sharma and Michael Fisk for Interstellar Entertainment.

“Lucy Hale is one of the most gifted actors of her generation, and...

MC5 drummer Dennis Thompson, the last surviving original member of the influential group, died Thursday morning at MediLodge of Taylor, where he had been rehabilitating following a heart attack in April. He was 75.

His death comes a little over three months since fellow MC5 cofounder Wayne Kramer died. Other key figures in the band’s history, all deceased, included singer Rob Tyner, guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith, bassist Michael Davis and guitarist Kramer. The group’s former manager, John Sinclair, died April 2.

The group was just voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year. The induction ceremony will be held in October in Cleveland.

After leaving the MC5, Thompson continued to perform locally with various Detroit bands, and went on to participate in a series of reunion projects with Kramer during the 2000s.

The MC5 formed in 1965. Thompson credited the band’s rise to its blue-collar work ethic and hard work.

MC5 drummer Dennis Thompson has died after complications from a heart attack. He was 75 years old.

As reported by the Detroit Free Press, Thompson passed away at a nursing home in Taylor, Michigan on Wednesday (May 8th), where he had been rehabilitating from a heart attack he suffered in April.

Nicknamed “Machine Gun” due to his fast, hard-hitting style of drumming, Thompson was the last surviving member of MC5, which will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the Musical Excellence category this fall.

Born in the Detroit area, Thompson picked up the drums when he was just nine years old. While still in high school, he joined a garage band called the Bounty Hunters alongside his friend and future MC5 bandmate Wayne Kramer on guitar.

Kramer co-founded MC5 with fellow guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith in 1963, with Thompson joining the group a few years later to fill...

Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson, the founding MC5 drummer and the last surviving original member of the pioneering proto-punk group, died Wednesday, The Detroit Free Press reported. He was 75.

An exact cause of death was not given, though Thompson had reportedly suffered a series of medical issues in recent months, including a heart attack in April.

Thompson’s death comes just a few months after the February death of his MC5 bandmate, guitarist Wayne Kramer, and the April death of John Sinclair, the group’s manager. A few months after Sinclair’s death,...

John Sinclair — the celebrated counterculture icon, poet, and political activist who advocated for cannabis and rock & roll and managed the MC5 — died on Tuesday at the age of 82. Matt Lee, a representative for Sinclair, confirmed to The Detroit News that he died of congestive heart failure.

The Flint, Michigan native became known for his fight to legalize marijuana and as co-founder of the White Panther Party, the anti-racist socialist group that served as a counterpart to the Black Panthers.

“He was on the forefront of the marijuana movement,” Lee told the newspaper.

Austin Butler is continuing his auteur collaborations, this time partnering up with Darren Aronofsky.

Butler, who was Oscar-nominated for his breakout transformative “Elvis” role, is set to lead Aronofsky’s upcoming feature “Caught Stealing.” Novelist Charlie Huston will adapt his own work for the screen. Protozoa is producing the Sony crime thriller. The novel is the first installment of Huston’s Henry Thompson trilogy series.

“Caught Stealing” was originally set for an adaptation in 2013 with Patrick Wilson cast in the lead role, now occupied by Butler. The story follows Hank Thompson, a former high school baseball prospect turned alcoholic bartender who gets caught up in a treasure hunt through New York City. A sadistic police officer tries to outrun Thompson, hitmen, and mobsters to find the treasure. Alec Baldwin was cast as the cop in the 2013 iteration that was slated to be written by David Hayter and directed by Wayne Kramer.

Cinephiles will have plenty to celebrate this April with the next slate of additions to the Criterion Channel. The boutique distributor, which recently announced its June 2024 Blu-ray releases, has unveiled its new streaming lineup highlighted by an eclectic mix of classic films and modern arthouse hits.

Students of Hollywood history will be treated to the “Peak Noir: 1950” collection, which features 17 noir films from the landmark film year from directors including Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, and John Huston.

New Hollywood maverick William Friedkin will also be celebrated when five of his most beloved movies, including “Sorcerer” and “The Exorcist,” come to the channel in April.

Criterion will offer the streaming premiere of Wim Wenders’ 3D art documentary “Anselm,” which will be accompanied by the “Wim Wenders’ Adventures in Moviegoing” collection, which sees the director curating a selection of films from around the world that have influenced his careers.

Contemporary cinema is also well represented,...

April’s an uncommonly strong auteurist month for the Criterion Channel, who will highlight a number of directors––many of whom aren’t often grouped together. Just after we screened House of Tolerance at the Roxy Cinema, Criterion are showing it and Nocturama for a two-film Bertrand Bonello retrospective, starting just four days before The Beast opens. Larger and rarer (but just as French) is the complete Jean Eustache series Janus toured last year. Meanwhile, five William Friedkin films and work from Makoto Shinkai, Lizzie Borden, and Rosine Mbakam are given a highlight.

One of my very favorite films, Comrades: Almost a Love Story plays in a series I’ve been trying to program for years: “Hong Kong in New York,” boasting the magnificent Full Moon in New York, Farewell China, and An Autumn’s Tale. Wim Wenders gets his “Adventures in Moviegoing”; After Hours, Personal Shopper, and Werckmeister Harmonies fill...

This article contains spoilers for "Drive-Away Dolls."

When the trailer for Tricia Cooke and Ethan Coen's "Drive-Away Dolls" (read our review here) was first released, folks quickly caught a blink-and-you'll-miss-her appearance of a young hippie woman covered in psychedelic filters played by actress and Grammy award-winning musician, Miley Cyrus. "Drive-Away Dolls" takes place in 1999, so what the hell is up with this lava lamp in the summer of love-looking character? Cyrus' character pops up a few times throughout the film, leading up to the reveal that republican senator Gary Channell (Matt Damon) knew this mysterious acid-tripper in his younger years, and if the public ever learned of their encounter, it would destroy his conservative political career — alluding to a possible presidential candidacy in the near future. What could Gary Channell have done that's so shocking? The answer is not only the key to Cyrus' character but also solves the...

Director Ethan Coen – collaborating with wife Tricia Cooke instead of brother Joel – delivers a disposable but not entirely unentertaining lesbian-centered crime caper comedy in Drive-Away Dolls. With its raunchy sex and vivid violence, the film is more an affectionate tribute to hard R drive-in B movies that more resembles something from the mind of Russ Meyer than anything resembling smart, Oscar-y movies like the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men, Big Lebowski, Barton Fink, Fargo, Blood Simple etc.

Drive-Away Dolls definitely retains the quirkiness of the Coen brand, but key inspirations this time were Meyers’ Motorpsycho, Bad Girls Go To Hell and even something really good like ’50s noir Kiss Me Deadly, with which it shares some plot details.

But “plot” doesn’t really matter much here. Coen and Cooke throw everything against the wall to see what sticks. If it makes narrative sense, it likely is an accident.

Wayne Kramer, who died Feb. 2 at the age of 75, lived a truly rock n’ roll life, from his gloriously unhinged guitar playing with influential proto-punk revolutionaries MC5 to a prison term, years of addiction, and a musical comeback in the Nineties. In this 2018 interview, previously available only in audio form on our Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, he looked back at all of it. (To hear the full episode, go here for the podcast provider of your choice, listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or just press play below.)

You wrote in your book,...

Wayne Kramer, founding member of the legendary Detroit proto-punk outfit MC5 and one of rock’s greatest guitarists, has died at the age of 75.

The singer-songwriter-political activist’s death was announced Friday via his official social media accounts. Kramer died at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles from pancreatic cancer, Jason Heath, an executive director of the artist’s nonprofit Jail Guitar Doors, told Billboard.

On Rolling Stone’s 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time list — with Kramer sharing placement alongside Fred “Sonic” Smith — we wrote, “Forged in Detroit during the 1960s,...

Wayne Kramer, the cofounder and guitarist-vocalist of the iconic Detroit punk band MC5, has died at age 75. The news was shared on Kramer and MC5’s official social media pages today, but a cause of death was not disclosed.

Born Wayne Kambes on April 30, 1948, the guitarist formed the MC5 (for Motor City 5) as a teenager with his friend, Fred “Sonic” Smith. They played locally, eventually becoming the house band at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit.

John Sinclair, a left-wing activist, became the band’s manager, and they soon were a staple of the late-’60s political movements, aligning with the White Panther Party, the anti-racist group that Sinclair cofounded.

The group’s sound was hard to define, but it was defiant, and was widely credited with sparking what was to come in punk. The group performed at the protests outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention and at other rallies before signing...

Wayne Kramer, co-founder, guitarist, and singer of the influential Detroit rock band MC5, has died at the age of 75. Kramer’s passing was announced on Friday (February 2nd) in a post shared to Instagram, revealing that the legendary musician died of pancreatic cancer.

“Wayne Kramer passed away today peacefully from pancreatic cancer. He will be remembered for starting a revolution in music, culture, and kindness,” read the statement on his official Instagram account.

MC5’s history dates back to 1963, when Kramer started a band with fellow guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith. After a couple years, the classic lineup of Kramer, Smith, singer Rob Tyner, bassist Michael Davis, and drummer Dennis Thompson was in place.

While MC5 never reached mainstream success and only released two studio albums — 1970’s Back in the USA and 1971’s High Time — they remain one of the most influential rock bands of all time, paving the way for...

Paul Walker could have been cast as Clark Kent, the Man of Steel. The late actor’s manager, Matt Luber, and stunt double, Oakley Lehman, revealed in the 2018 documentary I Am Paul Walker that the Fast & Furious star walked away from a multi-million dollar deal.

Luber said in the doc, which recently aired on The CW, that Walker “was screen testing for Superman,” adding, “I think it was a $10 million deal, and he was the frontrunner.”

Lehman, who was also Walker’s childhood friend, said the actor “was up for it” and “knew he was thinking about doing it.”

“I knew he did not want to do three or four Superman [films] and be Superman for the rest of his life,” Lehman continued.

According to Luber, Walker was auditioning for the superhero role and donning the Superman costume when the actor decided it was not for him.

“‘I’ve got an ‘S’ on,...

Exclusive: Global sales agent Palisades Park Pictures has signed an agreement with VIP Medienfonds to represent all available media rights to titles in the Media 8 film library.

The slate includes rights to 14 films released between 2002-2013. The library includes titles such as Patty Jenkins’ Monster, starring Charlize Theron; Upside of Anger, starring Kevin Costner, Joan Allen, and Evan Rachel Wood; and Barbara Kopple’s action thriller Havoc, starring Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Channing Tatum.

Palisades Park Pictures will launch sales on the library titles at the upcoming MIPCOM and AFM markets. The licensing deal was negotiated by Birkemoe with VIP Medienfond’s Christian Beutel.

“Christian and the team at VIP are wonderful partners and it’s a pleasure to be in business with them on this important library of Academy Award winners, box office hits, and iconic genre fare,” said Palisades Park Pictures CEO and Partner Tamara Birkemoe. “I...

Paul Walker enjoyed a lengthy career in Hollywood that carried him through various roles in several unique movies before his unfortunate death in 2013 at just 40 years old. Fans likely remember him best as Brian O'Conner in the "Fast and Furious" franchise, but the talented and handsome actor also appeared in critical hits such as "Pleasantville," "Joy Ride," and Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers," and served as executive producer on the films "Vehicle 19," "Hours," and "Pawn Shop Chronicles." He even enjoyed a guest spot on National Geographic's "Expedition Great White" in 2009.

In his youth, Walker popped up in a variety of high-profile TV shows, among them "Highway to Heaven," "Charles in Charge," "Who's the Boss," and "Touched by an Angel," before making the leap to schlocky B-movie horror films such as "Tammy and the Rex," opposite Denise Richards, in which his character's brain somehow lands inside a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Julie Chrisley reported to Federal Medical Center Lexington in Kentucky on Tuesday, January 17, to begin her seven-year prison sentence, but she isn’t the only reality star incarcerated at the facility. Ex-cheerleader Jerry Harris, who appeared in the Emmy-winning Netflix docuseries Cheer, was locked up at Federal Medical Center Lexington last August after being sentenced to 12 years in prison for soliciting sex and pornographic photos and videos from minors. However, Julie and Harris are unlikely to cross paths while in prison as male and female inmates are kept separate. Chrisley resides with her fellow female inmates at Federal Medical Center Lexington, while Harris stays with the male inmates at Fmc Lexington Camp, located adjacent to the main institution. Other notable names who have served time at Fmc Lexington include the former mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, Larry Langford; guitarist and co-founder of the Detroit rock band MC5, Wayne Kramer; political activist...

Analysis: actor’s complex public persona remains intact as he faces charges in death of Halyna Hutchins

Whatever else has happened, or will happen, in the vividly eventful career of movie star Alec Baldwin, his name is destined to be linked with that of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, whom he tragically shot dead on a movie set in New Mexico in 2021. Baldwin accidentally fired a live bullet from a revolver being used as a prop. Now he faces criminal charges of involuntary manslaughter, despite a private legal settlement Baldwin reportedly reached with the Hutchins family.

Alec Baldwin’s mercurial, defiant, combatively emotional behaviour – which has been part of his presence as a performer and public figure – has been in evidence since the shooting. He gave an emotional interview last August in which he blamed the armourer and the props assistant but declined to blame himself and even exhibited notes of histrionic self-pity,...

After finding mainstream success with "The Fast and The Furious" in 2001 and its sequel, "2 Fast 2 Furious" in 2003, Paul Walker went through a strange time in his career. The Southern California native tried to capitalize on his image with 2005's "Into the Blue," which flopped about as bad as a movie can flop at the box office. And so Walker turned to director Wayne Kramer.

Having caused a considerable stir with his previous effort, "The Cooler," the director doubled down on the whole dark, disturbing thing with his next project. "Running Scared" was an intense, violent, and strangely haunting crime thriller that resurrected the rawness of similar crime outings from the 1970s. Showcasing a grim desaturated look that heightened its overall sense of doom and seediness, "Running Scared" was an outlier at a time when the adult demographic was seemingly being ignored by mainstream films.

Kramer was likely hoping...

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One year after Alec Baldwin was involved in a tragic shooting on the set of Rust, the star says he has lost multiple acting opportunities, noting in an interview with CNN in August that five roles disappeared. Yet since the Oct. 21, 2021, death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who died when Baldwin pulled the trigger of a prop gun that was not supposed to contain live rounds, the actor has maintained a steady stream of work not all that different from the low-budget fare he appeared in before Rust.

In part, he has benefactors involved in Rust to thank for his continued employment, with upcoming titles including the sleep-walking-centric False Awakening and 97 Minutes, his first acting gig after briefly retreating from film sets.

“You don’t abandon your good friends at the drop of any trouble,” 97 Minutes screenwriter Pavan Grover tells The Hollywood Reporter of continuing to work with Baldwin.

Ric Parnell, who played the fictional band Spinal Tap’s drummer Mick Shrimpton in the classic 1984 heavy metal “mockumentary” “This Is Spinal Tap,” has died at the age of 70, according to a post from the group’s Harry Shearer and Yahoo News. No cause of death was initially reported.

Ric Parnell, our drummer in This is Spinal Tap, passed away today. No one ever rocked harder.

— Harry Shearer (@theharryshearer) May 2, 2022

The group — fronted by actor-musicians Michael McKean (as David St. Hubbins), Christopher Guest (as Nigel Tufnel) and Shearer (as Derek Smalls) — crossed the line between fiction and reality from their inception: the band literally road-tested tested their concept shortly after making the film, opening shows for psychedelic sludge-rockers Iron Butterfly, and no one in the audience was for the wiser.

Spinal Tap’s drummers are a running punchline in the film — all of the group’s previous drummers had died,...

Cynthia Albritton, also known as the legendary Cynthia Plaster Caster — the alias that sprung from her plaster casts of famous musician and artists’ body parts, mainly erect penises and women’s breasts — has died after a long illness on Thursday, friends close to the artist confirmed. She was 74.

What began as a college art project that fulfilled her “groupie” love for music became a decades-long work. Albritton’s first famous cast was Jimi Hendrix. She went on to document a range of musicians from different genres and eras, including Dennis Thompson...

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.

Although unconventional and a self-described “recovering groupie,” Albritton evolved as an artist, expanding from music stars to film directors, eventually adding females. She started her career by making a cast using a dental mold-making substance called alginate, which solidified around the subject’s member and then slipped off as the participant, er, “cooled off.”

In 1968, Jimi Hendrix was her first cast. She later expanded to include male filmmakers in the collection and then female artists’ breasts.

Among the artists who submitted to the process were Wayne Kramer of the MC5 and Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks. Kiss’ Gene Simmons wrote a song called “Plaster Caster” for the band’s 1977 platinum album Love Gun. “The plaster’s gettin’ harder...

Punk pioneers MC5 are plotting a big return in 2022, with Wayne Kramer and Co. announcing a handful of tour dates this spring and the band’s first album in over 50 years, set to arrive in October.

MC5 will return to the road May 5 with a hometown show at El Club in Detroit. From there, the band will play shows in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn, before heading out to the West Coast for a run that wraps May 15 at Soda Bar in San Diego.

Tickets for the shows will go on sale this Friday,...

The nominations for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2022 are in, and the list features Eminem, Dolly Parton, Lionel Richie, Duran Duran, Beck, Pat Benatar, Carly Simon, A Tribe Called Quest, Kate Bush, Devo, Judas Priest, Eurythmics, Fela Kuti, MC5, New York Dolls, Rage Against the Machine, and Dionne Warwick. The top vote-getters will be announced in May and inducted in the fall.

“This year’s ballot recognizes a diverse group of incredible artists, each who has had a profound impact on the sound of youth culture,...

Part of Alice Cooper’s enduring appeal has been the fact that, unlike many of his Seventies FM-radio peers, he always rejected the notion that rock & roll should be Serious Art. “School’s Out” is just a distant cousin of Chuck Berry’s “School Days,” and “I’m Eighteen” is inherently funny since Cooper was 23 when it became a hit, and he hasn’t stopped singing it for the past 50 years. That’s why his great Seventies albums like Love It to Death and Killer were great in the first place.

Alice Cooper has released a new song, “Our Love Will Change the World,” from his upcoming album, Detroit Stories, out February 26th, 2021 via earMUSIC.

The track has a deceptively peppy step with bright, crunchy guitars and charming piano lines, while Cooper’s vocals are backed by an ever-present choir. But the lyrics have a decisively sinister edge, one that’s way more “no future” than “the children are our future”: “Our love will change the world,” Cooper sings, “You may not like it now/But you’ll get used to it somehow.