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Coachella 2026: Sabrina Carpenter brings out Madonna to perform new song ‘I Feel Free’

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Coachella 2026: Sabrina Carpenter brings out Madonna to perform new song ‘I Feel Free’

Anyone who thinks Coachella’s biggest surprises are reserved for Weekend 1 was proven wrong Friday night as Sabrina Carpenter welcomed Madonna on stage during her Weekend 2 headlining set. The crowd exploded with waves of cheers as the iconic pop star came on stage.

Madge joined Carpenter as a surprise guest during “Juno,” in which Carpenter reemerged in a gown that was a nod to Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” for a torch-passing duet of Madonna’s 1990 pop-house gauntlet “Vogue.”

The classic was followed by the debut of the gloriously upbeat “I Feel Free,” the first track from the pop icon’s forthcoming new album “Confessions II,” due out July 3.

The singer announced the record, a sequel to 2005’s “Confessions On A Dancefloor,” on April 15, alongside a 60-second teaser video for “I Feel Free.”

The Coachella performance, however, marks the first time the song has been heard in full — a fitting full circle moment 20 after Madonna played the Sahara Tent in 2006, complete with the same boots and costuming from that gig. “Confessions II” will be Madonna’s first full-length album since 2019’s “Madame X.”

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“Let’s try to be together. Let’s try to avoid disagreements,” Madonna said as she spoke about the moon and planets aligning.

Before the pair ended with “Like a Prayer,” accompanied by a choir, Madonna had another reason to be grateful.

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“This is probably the first time I’ve ever performed with someone shorter than me,” Madonna said to Carpenter as the crowd laughed. “Thank you for giving me that experience.”

Senior Audience Editor Vanessa Franko contributed to this report.

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Why the ‘Harry Potter’ series is recasting a major role ahead of Season 2

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Why the ‘Harry Potter’ series is recasting a major role ahead of Season 2

Gracie Cochrane won’t be enrolling in Hogwarts this fall.

HBO announced that Cochrane will depart the upcoming “Harry Potter” series ahead of Season 2. Cochrane played Ron Weasley’s (Alastair Stout) younger sister, Ginny, in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” Cochrane and her family attributed the “challenging decision” to “unforeseen circumstances.”

“Her time as part of the ‘Harry Potter’ world has been truly wonderful, and she is deeply grateful to [casting director] Lucy Bevan and the entire production team for creating such an unforgettable experience,” the Cochrane family said in a statement. “Gracie is very excited about the opportunities her future holds.”

HBO said they “wish Gracie and her family the best.”

“We support Gracie Cochrane and her family’s decision not to return for the next season of HBO’s ‘Harry Potter’ series, and we are grateful for her work on season one of the show,” HBO wrote in a statement.

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Tristan Harland, Gabriel Harland, Ruari Spooner, Gracie Cochrane and Alastair Stout.

(HBO)

The HBO series was greenlit for a second season in early May, months ahead of its Christmas Day premiere later this year. If the sophomore season follows J.K. Rowling’s second book, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” (the first season is adapted from the first novel), Ginny will begin her first year at Hogwarts in Season 2.

Cochrane was cast following a massive undertaking by HBO to find young actors for the show. HBO reviewed more than 32,000 auditions before selecting Dominic McLaughlin to play the boy who lived. The cast was filled out with West End performers, like Arabella Stanton (Hermione Granger), first-time actors like Amos Kitson (Dudley Dursley) and longtime stars including John Lithgow, who will play Albus Dumbledore.

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HBO Chairman Casey Bloys explained that they expected a lot of “interest” in the cast because of the cultural prominence of the “Harry Potter” franchise.

“Interest can tip over into more unpleasant and aggressive behavior,” Bloys told Deadline, alluding to racist backlash over the casting of Paapa Essiedu as Professor Snape. “We talked to them about what to expect … but any kind of security that’s needed is an unfortunate aspect of doing IP shows. We just try to be mindful and monitor it.”

In March, HBO released its first trailer for the show, which included a peek at the redheaded Weasley family saying goodbye to Ron at Platform 9¾ before he boarded the Hogwarts Express. The trailer also teased Harry’s acceptance letter from Hogwarts and his wand and Nimbus broom.

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‘Ben’Imana’ Review: Rwandan Women Confront National Wounds and Family Secrets in a Searing Drama

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‘Ben’Imana’ Review: Rwandan Women Confront National Wounds and Family Secrets in a Searing Drama

“I forgive” are the first words uttered by Vénéranda in Ben’Imana, but her ferocious gaze and the clamp of her arms across her chest tell a different story. At the center of a fine cast of mostly nonprofessional actors, Clémentine U. Nyirinkindi brings Vénéranda’s resolve and all her painful contradictions to life in Ben’Imana, a searing and intimate portrait of a nation’s reckoning.

Writer-director Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s drama is set in the Rwandan village Kibeho in 2012. It’s the final year of the Gacaca courts, community tribunals focused on addressing the genocidal crimes committed, neighbor against neighbor, in the previous decade. Through the character’s complex and often tense relationships with her teenage daughter, her sister and her mother, as well as with other women in her village, Dusabejambo has crafted a story that’s both emblematic and achingly specific.

Ben’Imana

The Bottom Line

Mother courage.

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Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard)
Cast: Clémentine U. Nyirinkindi, Kesia Kelly Nishimwe, Isabelle Kabano
Director: Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo
Screenwriters: Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo, Delphine Agut

1 hour 41 minutes

The person Vénéranda officially forgives in the opening scene is Karangwa (Aime Valens Tuyisenge), the man accused of murdering her siblings and other relatives. Of the eight children their mother (Arivere Kagoyire) raised, only Vénéranda and her sister Suzanne (a riveting Isabelle Kabano, who starred in Eric Barbier’s Small Country) survive. Suzanne’s fury is as explosive as her sister’s is contained. Contending to the judge (Adelite Mugabo) that Vénéranda “has no right to forgive on behalf of our family,” she’s determined to bring Karangwa to justice.

And she has no use for the community meetings that Vénéranda has begun leading, in her role as the district’s social affairs officer. Local women are invited to share still-raw memories, to grapple together with the kinds of things that would be immaterial to the courts. Their sessions are part of the country’s “Rwanditude” program, designed to reunite Rwandans after years of ethnic conflict and bloodshed.

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Just as mentions of ethnicity are verboten in the courts, there’s no such identification in these gatherings, no way of knowing whether any of these women is Tutsi or Hutu, whether her husband was murdered or is in prison for murdering, until she stands to tell her harrowing story. (The film’s title is a Kinyarwanda word that emphasizes a collective identity, rather than the ethnic divisions of Tutsi and Hutu that Rwanda’s European colonizers encouraged and enforced.)

The younger generation, personified by Vénéranda’s spirited daughter, Tina (Kesia Kelly Nishimwe), and her boyfriend, a low-key photographer named Richard (Elvis Ngabo), has grown up without ethnic labels. But while Vénéranda holds herself as a model of forgiveness to women in the group, she can’t see past Richard’s Hutu heritage, and she turns a cold heart to Tina when she becomes pregnant and is kicked out of school. “Neither Richard or his family has harmed me,” Tina points out reasonably, while her mother fumes with shame and judgment, her inner turmoil finding expression in a baffling hypocrisy.

As harsh as she can be, Vénéranda is a devoted caretaker of her mother, who has lost her voice as well as her memory and is the regal, silent watcher of the unfolding family drama. Vénéranda also tends to her sister, whose health was taken from her, along with her husband and child, during the attacks. Suzanne is electric with anger even as her physical strength dwindles. “Can’t you stop your bullshit on forgiveness?” she hisses at Vénéranda, and urges her to reveal certain long-hidden truths to Tina.

What binds these two is the depth of what they’ve endured, the unspeakable brutality; what divides them is how they respond to it. Ben’Imana offers no simple definitions of courage, but rather a feverishly human group portrait of its possible expressions, with the exceptional triumvirate of Nyirinkindi, Kabano and the radiant Nishimwe forming the story’s broken but still hopeful heart.

Dusabejambo, working from a screenplay she wrote in collaboration with Delphine Agut, is attentive to her characters’ pain and their resolve, mirrored in the vibrancy of the setting. With strong contributions from cinematographer Mostafa El Kashef, production designer Ricardo Sankara and editor Nadia Ben Rachid, the movie is cinematic in an utterly unforced way, from the first images of gently rolling hills and the sound of birdsong to the bright interiors of Vénéranda’s home and the gentle, lilting score by Igor Mabano. Just as a brief piece of voiceover narration notes that a single word, ejo, means yesterday and tomorrow, Ben’Imana contains whole worlds in one very specific here-and-now.

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Review: ‘Star Wars’ wends its way back to theaters via an unlikely duo in ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’

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Review: ‘Star Wars’ wends its way back to theaters via an unlikely duo in ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’

Nearly 50 years on from “Star Wars” and the launch of a media empire (large or small “e”? You decide), the fandom has become its own galaxy of warring planets. But based on the success of the streaming series “The Mandalorian,” set around the title bounty hunter, we can all agree that his charge Grogu — green, wrinkled, big-eyed Baby You-Know-Who — is still adorable. Of the many “Star Wars” offshoots, this seems to be the sturdiest.

The brand is back together for “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” which is a movie, a hoped-for franchise revival, a fourth season of sorts and an affable throwback. But it’s never quite riveting enough as canon or fodder to supplant anyone’s memories of [insert favorite “Star Wars” film here].

The expectations game was never going to help series creator Jon Favreau’s big-screen version, written with Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor. Granted, this upscaled, agreeably rangy treatment of an adventure storyline that wouldn’t have been out of place on the show could have attempted more. Especially when it puts sci-fi icon Sigourney Weaver in an X-wing pilot uniform as a veteran of the Rebellion, but barely gives her anything to do besides secure Mando a job and keep tabs on his progress. (Gang, try harder. It’s Sigourney Weaver.)

Aimed squarely at kids of all sizes, “Star Wars” has become a glorified tour of a billionaire’s expanding playworld and “The Mandalorian and Grogu” wants the track well-oiled, not bumpy. The simple pleasures here of good vs evil, IMAX hugeness and composer Ludwig Göransson’s space-opera-hits-the-club score, go down easy enough to not be aggravating. It’s a lot.

But it’s not this reviewer’s position to tell you what “a lot” is — loose lips spoil scripts. When the moment comes at an appropriately dangerous time for our heroes, we sense the kind of thing that only movies can do well when they’re myths writ large: slow things down, shift momentum away from the tyranny of exposition and let emotion, humor, wonder and character co-exist. “The Mandalorian and Grogu” takes the series’ thematic underpinnings — what parenting looks like between a masked human loner and an otherworldly toddler — and deepens them.

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The movie takes place in wonderfully detailed environments that evoke the earlier, beloved films. You’re not being pandered to, however; the payoff is a lovely echo. Elsewhere, the action set pieces are serviceably handled by Favreau. (One of them plays like, of all things, an homage to “The French Connection.”)

Otherwise, this is another hunt-and-retrieve narrative for the bounty hunter voiced by Pedro Pascal, physically embodied in armor by Brendan Wayne and, in combat, by fight choreographer Lateef Crowder. Still independent but New Republic-curious, Mando is tasked by Weaver’s Col. Ward to find a wayward scion of the slimy gangster Hutt clan, Rotta (voiced by Jeremy Allen White), whose return will unlock some important information. Of course, things don’t go as planned, which for a while is interesting — are the Hutts like the Corleones, perhaps? — until it’s not, because then the dialogue would need to rise above the level of a middle-school play.

That being said, one of the movie’s strong points, absent its story deficiencies, is that, across its many wordless scenes, it’s at heart a solidly rousing, delightfully icky creature feature, in the vein of a supercharged Ray Harryhausen-meets-Guillermo del Toro joint. “It’s a hard world for little things,” Lillian Gish famously says in “The Night of the Hunter,” a movie nobody will ever confuse with “The Mandalorian and Grogu.” But we all know summer fare like this is only ever as enjoyable as the monsters conjured up for conquering.

‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’

In English and Huttese, with subtitles

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Rated: PG-13, for sci-fi violence and action

Running time: 2 hours, 12 minutes

Playing: Opens Friday, May 22 in wide release

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