عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Entertainment

Kimmel Says His Joke Was Misconstrued, Trump Says ABC Should Fire Late-Night Host

US television host Jimmy Kimmel arrives for "An Evening With Jimmy Kimmel" at the Roosevelt hotel in Hollywood on August 7, 2019. (AFP)
US television host Jimmy Kimmel arrives for "An Evening With Jimmy Kimmel" at the Roosevelt hotel in Hollywood on August 7, 2019. (AFP)
TT
TT

Kimmel Says His Joke Was Misconstrued, Trump Says ABC Should Fire Late-Night Host

US television host Jimmy Kimmel arrives for "An Evening With Jimmy Kimmel" at the Roosevelt hotel in Hollywood on August 7, 2019. (AFP)
US television host Jimmy Kimmel arrives for "An Evening With Jimmy Kimmel" at the Roosevelt hotel in Hollywood on August 7, 2019. (AFP)

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel said on Monday his joke about US first lady Melania Trump had been misconstrued and was not a "call to assassination."

Kimmel used the opening monologue of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" to address comments made last Thursday in a parody segment on the White House correspondents' dinner.

He said his quip that Melania Trump had "a glow like an expectant widow," referred to the difference is ages of the first lady and her husband, President Donald Trump.

"It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he's almost 80 and she's younger than I am," Kimmel said. "It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination."

Earlier in the day, Trump said Kimmel should immediately be fired by ABC and parent company Walt Disney, joining his wife in calling out Kimmel for remarks made prior to a shooting near a weekend gathering of journalists and politicians.

The Trumps were rushed out of Saturday's dinner ‌after the shooting in the ‌lobby of the Washington Hilton. A suspect identified as Cole Allen charged through a checkpoint and ‌fired ⁠at Secret Service ⁠agents, wounding one, before he was subdued and arrested.

Trump has repeatedly urged broadcasters to drop comedy or news programs he dislikes or which have been critical of him, pressing regulators to revoke licenses of broadcasters he says are unfair to him.

Broadcasters have broad First Amendment rights to make jokes, however, even those that are distasteful, experts say.

Melania Trump called Kimmel's remarks "corrosive" and a symptom of what she described as a political sickness in the United States.

"I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject," Kimmel said. "I do, and I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it."

The comedian played a clip of a ⁠CBS News' "60 Minutes" Sunday interview in which Trump called senior correspondent Norah O'Donnell "a disgrace" for reading ‌an excerpt from the alleged gunman's writings and seeking a response.

The issue poses an ‌early test for Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro, who took the reins last month.

"Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. ‌How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behavior at the expense of our community," Melania Trump said in a post ‌on X. "People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate."

Donald Trump, who previously called for Kimmel to be removed from the air, said the comedian's joke was "something far beyond the pale. Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC."

Kimmel expressed sympathy for Melania Trump, and those who attended Saturday's event, for enduring the traumatic incident. But he rejected the notion that a joke, delivered three days earlier, "had ‌any effect on anything that happened."

Reaction elsewhere to the remarks was mixed.

"Disney and ABC are extremely lucky that Trump wasn't assassinated on Saturday two days after Jimmy Kimmel made ⁠the joke about an 'expectant widow,'" said Todd ⁠Doten, 57, a street vendor on Hollywood Boulevard.

"If that had happened, there would be a backlash against them the likes (of which) they've never seen before."

Dee Thompson, a 64-year-old from North Carolina, worried about the free speech risks if Kimmel should lose his job. "They're going to take away freedom of speech for a lot of comedians, you know," Thompson added.

FCC PRESSURE ON BROADCASTERS

In September of last year, the head of the Federal Communications Commission pressured broadcasters to take Kimmel off the air. ABC briefly suspended Kimmel's show that month over comments he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Hours before the suspension, FCC head Brendan Carr warned that local broadcasters who aired Kimmel could face fines or loss of licenses and said, "it's time for them to step up."

His comments drew pushback from the entertainment industry and politicians on both stripes, including Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who likened Carr's threats to those of an organized-crime boss.

Trump, the subject of two prior assassination attempts, has repeatedly attacked the media and threatened broadcast licenses. Trump had praised Kimmel's suspension in September.

Most Viewed

 
 
Entertainment

Movie Review: ‘The End of Oak Street’ Is a Gonzo Good Time

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Ewan McGregor, left, and Anne Hathaway in a scene from "The End of Oak Street." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Ewan McGregor, left, and Anne Hathaway in a scene from "The End of Oak Street." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
TT
TT

Movie Review: ‘The End of Oak Street’ Is a Gonzo Good Time

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Ewan McGregor, left, and Anne Hathaway in a scene from "The End of Oak Street." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Ewan McGregor, left, and Anne Hathaway in a scene from "The End of Oak Street." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

At the end of the block in David Robert Mitchell’s “The End of Oak Street,” is a cul-de-sac with a telephone pole in the middle and wires radiating out like the cables of a big top. It’s a fitting touch for a breakneck, carnivalesque movie made with throwback showmanship.

Summer movies, of course, are not known for lacking in circus-like mayhem. But much of the pastiche delight of the 1980s-set “The End of Oak Street,” a mid-August surprise, is how it absorbs an Amblin-style blockbuster spirit and conjures, without winking irony or belabored homage, a summer thrill ride seemingly designed for the drive-in.

Mitchell’s breakthrough was the nifty 2014 horror “It Follows,” which he followed up with an admirably ambitious but shaggily self-indulgent Los Angeles neo noir, “Under the Silver Lake.” But any indulgences in “The End of Oak Street,” about a 1980s suburban family whose neighborhood is transported through time, are for the audience. “The End of Oak Street” is a bonkers blast.

It’s best going in not knowing anything about the movie’s twists, so tread carefully on the rest of this review. That’s not to say that an enormous amount of “The End of Oak Street” isn’t immediately familiar, starting with the central family.

The Platts live in what looks like a San Fernando Valley neighborhood full of split levels and tidy little streets. Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) have two kids and a dog named Starbuck. Audrey (Maisy Stella) is a teenager and Brian (Christian Convery) is her younger brother.

But from the moment we meet them, during a neighborhood fair, there are obvious cracks in their all-American life. Greg is working a side job delivering pizzas while Denise is secretly typing up a maybe-aspirational novel about a woman dreaming of leaving her family. The kids have their own secrets, too. They suspect their parents are on the cusp of divorcing, and so, seemingly, do Greg and Denise.

Such a framework for sci-fi cataclysm is, naturally, Spielberg 101. But while “The End of Oak Street” is sure to test and restore their familial bonds, Mitchell, who also wrote the script, takes a route that leans more into horror, absurdism and outright silliness.

In any case, yes, there are dinosaurs. It’s both skillful and a lot of fun how Mitchell teases them out. The first signs are mysterious. A flash of light. A strange exotic flower in a neighbor’s backyard. A giant mount of feces in another’s. But soon, the Platts find that their neighborhood is overrun with primordial beasts and surrounded by jungle: Oak Street is suddenly a suburban island in a prehistoric world.

It’s a perfectly “Twilight Zone” plot that inadvertently solves the problems that have plagued the “Jurassic Park” movies for 20 years. If those films have struggled to find an off-island setting, “The End of Oak Street” instead brings the dino isle straight into suburbia. Encounters with raptors and worse transpire across front porches and shag carpets.

You could chalk it all up to good dumb fun. And it is mostly that, with set pieces built to make an audience groan in anticipation or cheer for the successful swing of a sledgehammer. But where “The End of Oak Street” succeeds where so many others fail is in the sincerity it has for its characters. Ridiculous and over-the-top as the concept is, the Platts are firmly grounded. (Hathaway, especially, helps in this department.) The combination of an earnest family drama with CGI hijinks, plus increasingly nutty plotting, make “The End of Oak Street” a fairly nonstop hoot.

Composer Michael Giacchino does his best John Williams impression to match. But Mitchell’s film also increasingly detours from the Spielberg playbook. Only Mitchell would take a moment for a freaked-out Audrey to sneak into the car to pop a cassette in and listen to Steve Winwood’s “Valerie.”

And while it would be pushing it to say there’s that much underneath “The End of Oak Street,” its characters are united in keeping certain things secret out of fear that their spouse or kids or parents can’t handle the truth. The swiftness that the dinosaurs invade their neighborhood could be symbolic of any ecological disaster, but the subsequent challenges prove each member of the family can handle quite a bit more than expected — even when the parental assurance that everything's going to be OK, like when a giant snake is slithering through their home, is laughably disputable.

It adds up to a gonzo good time that gives an old-school family adventure a darker, modern spin. Mitchell has quickly made suburbia his evident domain, where “it,” or something else, is sure to follow.

Entertainment

Movie Review: ‘The Rivals of Amziah King’ Is a Southern Fried Flick with Too Many Ingredients

This image released by Black Bear shows Matthew McConaughey, left, and Angelina LookingGlass in a scene from "The Rivals of the Amziah King." (Kyle Kaplan/Black Bear via AP)
This image released by Black Bear shows Matthew McConaughey, left, and Angelina LookingGlass in a scene from "The Rivals of the Amziah King." (Kyle Kaplan/Black Bear via AP)
TT
TT

Movie Review: ‘The Rivals of Amziah King’ Is a Southern Fried Flick with Too Many Ingredients

This image released by Black Bear shows Matthew McConaughey, left, and Angelina LookingGlass in a scene from "The Rivals of the Amziah King." (Kyle Kaplan/Black Bear via AP)
This image released by Black Bear shows Matthew McConaughey, left, and Angelina LookingGlass in a scene from "The Rivals of the Amziah King." (Kyle Kaplan/Black Bear via AP)

It turns out that the honey business isn't as sweet as it sounds: In the new movie “The Rivals of Amziah King,” beekeepers steal from each other, poison rivals' insects and rip folk off. “It’s not full of kind people,” the title character warns.

“The Rivals of Amziah King” isn't as sweet as it thinks it is, either. Instead of picking a single variety to explore, the movie is a maddening mishmash of genres — blending Quentin Tarantino's sudden brutality, a coming-of-age tale, a heist flick, a revenge fantasy and a sweet, music-filled country hoedown.

Matthew McConaughey returns to the big screen playing the title character in what can only be called Matthew-McConaughey-turned-up-to-11 mode, pure Cheshire Cat smile, rascally wink and buttery, Southern gentlemanly charm. Suspenders and scruff on, cowboy boots snug, McConaughey is the one who makes everyone's life instantly better just by showing up.

Written by Andrew Patterson and James Montague and directed by Patterson, “The Rivals of Amziah King” follows McConaughey's honey-producing King as he negotiates his patch of rural Oklahoma until he inexplicably leaves the movie at the hour mark and hands it off to Angelina LookingGlass, making her film debut.

We meet King ordering chicken fried steak sandwiches and cherry Cokes as he plays the banjo in a quartet of musicians at a beloved food joint. That gets interrupted when authorities need his knowledge to find out who abandoned $250,000 worth of honey barrels on the road and King starts to investigate. Then someone gets a chunk of their skull — including ponytail — ripped off in an industrial accident and that takes over. Settle in, the whiplash is just beginning.

King soon connects with his former foster daughter — that's LookingGlass, fierce and preternaturally grounded — who he gets to mansplain in the local ways, like what to eat at the potluck (“There's a story in every dish”), life lessons (“Patience is better than being smart”) and beekeeping (“Every queen is a survivor”). Bees here, if you didn't already get from the clunky writing, represent community, sharing and caring.

Cinematographer M.I. Littin-Menz's camera techniques never settle down in this movie, like a puppy forever pulling on its leash. Early sequences employ frozen shots irritatingly dropped into the mix and later we have furious close-ups, quick cuts, quirky flashbacks, ethereal river sequences and lingering poetic images of close-up bees like from a documentary, a kinetic approach that seems not to have much faith in the actual story keeping viewers' interest alive. Music supervisor Winslow Bright swamps many scenes with loud choirs, loud banjo and loud strings.

Maybe that's because as soon as you've settled down for one genre, it gets hijacked by the next. Warm and extended moments of communal song — the great T Bone Burnett had a hand in some of the outstanding Americana tunes like “Quill” with McConaughey exuberant, and “Johnny Come Outside” — are undercut by seeing kids smash their heads on school bus roofs or a cool Western-like tracking of a honey-stealing local rascal that is marred by his horrific, boiling-to-death murder. There are so many montages of honey production that viewers may qualify for a beekeeping certificate.

Great turns are produced by Kurt Russell as a lethal local kingpin who schmoozes his way past the law, and Jake Horowitz, a former Marine who knows how to plan a theft with military precision, mostly shirtless. One brazen theft here is of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and, however you liked that movie, you realize now how hard it was to actually pull off.

Patterson likes to remind viewers of his Oklahoma bona fides, but much of the overlong movie was shot in Alabama. And that hints at what's wrong with “The Rivals of Amziah King” — it just doesn't feel authentic, either in place or in story. Forget honey, it sort of leaves a vinegary taste behind.

Entertainment

Rod Stewart Cancels Tour Dates After Heart Surgery

Rod Stewart performs during the Glastonbury Festival in Worthy Farm, Somerset, England, Sunday, June 29, 2025. (AP)
Rod Stewart performs during the Glastonbury Festival in Worthy Farm, Somerset, England, Sunday, June 29, 2025. (AP)
TT
TT

Rod Stewart Cancels Tour Dates After Heart Surgery

Rod Stewart performs during the Glastonbury Festival in Worthy Farm, Somerset, England, Sunday, June 29, 2025. (AP)
Rod Stewart performs during the Glastonbury Festival in Worthy Farm, Somerset, England, Sunday, June 29, 2025. (AP)

British rock star Rod Stewart, 81, has cancelled forthcoming US tour dates after having a heart operation, his social media announced.

A message posted late Tuesday on his Instagram page said the raspy-voiced rocker has "successfully undergone a routine coronary stent procedure".

This procedure is to widen blocked or narrowed coronary arteries by interesting a tube that allows blood to flow more freely.

He had been due to play a series of US tour dates this month including in Las Vegas.

Now, "on the advice of his doctors, he will take the next four weeks to recuperate and regain full fitness before returning to the stage," his management said.

"Unfortunately, this means he will be unable to continue his current tour dates".

The spiky-haired singer and songwriter, who had a string of megahits in the 1970s and 1980s, has kept up a busy touring schedule despite his age.

He wrote in 2025: "I love what I do, and I do what I love. I'm fit, have a full head of hair and can run 100 meters (330 feet) in 18 seconds."

Stewart has recently cancelled several US shows over ill health, however, most recently on Sunday in Cincinnati, described at the time as due to "an unforeseen but minor medical procedure".

In June, he cancelled a concert in California at the last moment after contracting laryngitis, but faced criticism for attending a World Cup match the next day.

Later in June he was seen receiving oxygen during a show in Utah and told the audience he had nearly fainted.