SEATTLE — It's a rare feat for an artist's freakiest record to double as its commercial breakthrough.

Soundgarden’s “Badmotorfinger” was born in peak MTV era, 30 years ago Oct. 8, two weeks after Nirvana’s “Nevermind.” By the time the first-wave “grunge” band dropped its marvelously wigged-out fourth album in the fall of 1991,...Read more

LOS ANGELES — For 50 years, Haile Gerima has been a beacon for genuine independence, free both from the strictures of the film industry and the constraints of conventional storytelling.

The Ethiopian-born, Washington, D.C.-based director emerged in the early 1970s as part of a group of filmmakers from UCLA who would come to be known as the "...Read more

Memory is a malleable, fragile thing.

I've never thought more about memory's fleeting nature than I have this past year and a half of pandemic life. An insecure fear that a loved one or former partner would forget about time we shared together has become front of mind, the result of so much uncertainty in our lives.

Surrounded at home by an ...Read more

“Dear White People” star John Patrick Amedori compared the show’s final season to zooming a spoon into a child’s mouth like an airplane. The trick for talking about topics as sensitive as those covered in Netflix’s Ivy League dramedy is to make it entertaining.

The final season of the series presents itself as a ‘90s-themed musical ...Read more

One of the talking points heading into the No Filter Tour is that you better get tickets, 'cause this could be the last time.

This is a line we've heard before: If you're 30 and you're going to a show this tour, know that they were saying this about The Rolling Stones before you were even born. Because rock 'n' roll bands weren't designed to ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Your bottom is in good hands at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

Choosing seats for the museum's two state-of-the-art theaters was a research-intensive, two-year process that included in-person testing at manufacturing sites in Italy as well as flying mockups back to Los Angeles, where they were again tested by Academy ...Read more

NEW YORK — Bringing “The Tragedy of Macbeth” to the big screen was a full-circle experience for Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand.

The Oscar winners star in the latest cinematic adaptation of the timeless William Shakespeare stage tragedy, with the movie making its world premiere last week at the Lincoln Center as the New York Film ...Read more

“Moulin Rouge! The Musical” is the big winner at the 74th Tony Awards, with 10 wins from its 14 nominations. “Jagged Little Pill” picked up two Tonys, including one for Diablo Cody for best book of a musical. In play categories, “A Christmas Carol” leads with five wins, mostly in craft categories, while Matthew Lopez’s “The ...Read more

NEW YORK — The “best revival” could be Broadway itself.

The 74th annual Tony Awards Sunday will carry a double dose of meaning. The ceremony at the Winter Garden Theatre won’t simply honor the pre-pandemic Broadway theater season that was cut short in March 2020, it will seek to draw attention to the Theater District as it awakens from ...Read more

“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” led the North American box office for a fourth consecutive weekend, surpassing “Black Widow” as the highest domestic earner of the pandemic.

The Walt Disney Co. film took in $13.3 million in sales at U.S. and Canadian theaters, researcher Comscore Inc. estimated on Sunday. That fell slightly ...Read more

Alanis Morissette had at least 15 very sound reasons for taking Sunday off to fly to New York from the West Coast leg of her ongoing 25th anniversary "Jagged Little Pill" concert tour, which celebrates her 33-million-selling 1995 breakthrough album.

"Jagged Little Pill," the hit Broadway musical based on her album, has a field-leading 15 ...Read more

CHICAGO — We can thank France, not America, for the flowering of Melvin Van Peebles’ feature film career.

The Chicago native, who grew up in suburban Phoenix about 20 miles south of downtown Chicago, died Sept. 21 at the age of 89. Without Van Peebles, there is no Spike Lee, among others. Van Peebles broke through with the outlandish studio...Read more

NEW YORK — “The Wire” actor Michael K. Williams died from a lethal combination of fentanyl, heroin and cocaine, the city’s medical examiner said on Friday, revealing the cause of death for the beloved Brooklynite.

The Flatbush native, who publicly struggled with addiction, was found dead on Sept. 6 in his Williamsburg penthouse.

The ...Read more

The woman suing Nicki Minaj and the rapper’s husband, Kenneth Petty, spoke out against the couple on talk show “The Real” this week, accusing the pair of launching an intimidation campaign against her and threatening her safety.

Petty was convicted in 1995 of sexually assaulting Jennifer Hough, who appeared Wednesday in her first ...Read more

Sarah Jessica Parker is honoring Willie Garson, who died earlier this week.

Parker, 56, took to Instagram Friday afternoon with a collection of photos of the pair — on and off the set of “Sex and the City” to pay tribute to the man who imbued Carrie Bradshaw’s closest male friend, Stanford Blatch, with his colorful and lovable spirit ...Read more

Elon Musk and musician Grimes are “semi-separated” after three years together, according to the SpaceX founder.

“We are semi-separated but still love each other, see each other frequently and are on great terms,” Musk told Page Six on Friday.

He mostly blamed geography and careers for his sorta-split from the singer and mother of their...Read more

As he brainstormed ideas for an album that would celebrate 60 years of the Temptations, Otis Williams had an epiphany.

If we're making a record for the Tempts' diamond anniversary, Williams thought to himself, Smokey Robinson has to be part of it.

It was Robinson, after all, who had ignited the group's Motown career in 1964 with "The Way You ...Read more

Queen Bey is crazy in love with turning 40.

A few weeks after celebrating her milestone birthday, Beyonce penned a heartfelt letter on her website Thursday to thank “every inspiring human who took the time to send me all the beautiful [happy birthday] messages.”

She also reflected on how much she’s grown over the past four decades, ...Read more

CHICAGO — “What if?” Two words; one question.

The movies love that question. It fulfills the weirdest daydreams, unearths long-buried treasure, imagines what might’ve been and might be still.

Three of the films screening this week at “Reeling: The 39th Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival,” held at the Landmark Century Centre...Read more