Entertainment
Dave Grohl welcomes a baby girl from an affair. He wants to 'regain' his family's trust
Dave Grohl is getting honest about his infidelity, again.
The Foo Fighters lead singer and guitarist revealed that he recently welcomed a baby girl, but not with his wife, Jordyn Blum. He announced in a statement shared to Instagram that his newest child was “born outside of my marriage.”
“I plan to be a loving supportive parent to her,” Grohl said in his Tuesday missive, which did not reveal more details about his newborn daughter’s birth, nor her mother.
Grohl reassured his Instagram fans that “I love my wife and my children” and that he is “doing everything I can to regain their trust and earn their forgiveness.” Blum and Grohl married in 2003. They share three children.
Tuesday’s post was not the first time the Grammy winner came clean about an extramarital affair.
In a 2007 interview with the Guardian, the rocker, now 55, admitted that his infidelity led to his divorce from his first wife, Jennifer Youngblood, in 1997. They were married for three years. The British outlet also reported that the Grohl-Youngblood divorce was a factor in guitarist Pat Smear’s decision to leave the Foo Fighters. Smear and Youngblood had been close friends, but Smear eventually reconciled with Grohl and rejoined the band.
Grohl concluded his statement informing his Instagram followers — he has 1.4 million of them — that he wants to work things out with all parties involved.
“We’re grateful for your consideration toward all the children involved, as we move forward together,” he said.
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Movie Reviews
‘Heretic’ Review: Hugh Grant’s Chilling Performance Gives Religious Horror Film Some Sinister Edge
![‘Heretic’ Review: Hugh Grant’s Chilling Performance Gives Religious Horror Film Some Sinister Edge ‘Heretic’ Review: Hugh Grant’s Chilling Performance Gives Religious Horror Film Some Sinister Edge](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/00075-Heretic-selcts-_KF12875_1-H-2024.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1)
The most compelling moments in Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ mostly sharp religious horror Heretic involve Mr. Reed, a cerebral theologian played with reptilian persuasiveness by Hugh Grant, intellectually sparring with two young Mormon evangelists. Grant, whose eager eyes and puckish smile wooed Renée Zellweger’s Bridget Jones and Julia Roberts’ Anna Scott (Notting Hill), uses his signature charm here to test the bounds of these junior missionaries’ beliefs. He imbues his character, a sinister recluse, with a well-intentioned disposition that soon reveals itself to be an unsettling trap. Heretic, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival before it hits theaters November 15, sells Grant as a convincing villain and makes you wonder why he hasn’t played more of them.
Mr. Reed is the kind of guy whose intense gaze and off-color jokes betray a bizarre personality that’s initially easy to ignore. That’s what happens with Sisters Paxton (The Fablemans’ Chloe East) and Barnes (Yellowjackets’ Sophie Thatcher), two campaigners deployed by their chapter of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to convert this curious soul. When the women reach his house — at the top of a steep set of stairs integrated, Frank Lloyd Wright-style, into a grassy hill — they are eased by Mr. Reed’s candor and warmth. Most people treat the proselytizers like the plague. An early scene in which Sister Paxton is publicly humiliated by a group of teenagers captures their standing in this community.
Heretic
The Bottom Line A great Grant makes it work.
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations)
Release date: Friday, Nov. 15
Cast: Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East
Director-screenwriters: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods
1 hour 50 minutes
But Mr. Reed is different. He invites Sisters Paxton and Barnes to come inside, assures them that his wife is home (Mormon women can’t be alone with a man, they say) and even offers them blueberry pie. Never mind that his movements suggest some malevolence, that he can’t stop staring at a surgical mark on Sister Barnes’ arm or that his questions edge into more personal territory. So rare is his attentiveness to faith — he takes out his own annotated copy of the Mormon bible — that Sisters Paxton and Barnes decide to disregard their anxieties. That, of course, is a mistake.
Beck and Woods, best known for creating A Quiet Place, confidently set up the initial chills of Heretic. Working with long-time Park Chan-wook cinematographer Chung-Hoon Chung and The Hunger Games production designer Philip Messina, the directorial duo focuses on the uncanny details of Mr. Reed’s home to establish a haunting tone. The wallpaper — a sickly yellow pattern — coupled with the lack of windows and the meticulous placement of the furniture cast doubt in both our and the girls’ minds about the trustworthiness of their host.
The hostility of the space becomes more apparent the longer Sisters Paxton and Barnes chat with Mr. Reed. His enthusiasm verges on pushy, a sign that alerts Barnes, especially, to the danger of the situation. By the time the women realize they are in peril — the doors won’t open, the pie doesn’t exist — it is too late. Mr. Reed reveals himself to be a kind of religion obsessive, a self-taught scholar of faith and belief. His studies have led him to some disturbing conclusions, which he maps out for Paxton and Barnes in one of Heretic’s most fun and distinctive scenes. All that can be said is that it involves Monopoly, Jar Jar Binks, Radiohead and the Hollies.
Grant delivers his verbose musings with the composure of a professor and the velocity of a fanatic. He paces around the back room, where he has corralled his guests, and unveils props to support his points. Chung uses overhead shots to capture Mr. Reed’s desktop — a neatly organized tableau of religious texts and versions of the Monopoly board game — which recalls a Renaissance triptych.
Heretic is quite compelling in these early moments, which include Paxton and Barnes’ entrance as well as Mr. Reed’s presentation. East and Thatcher’s performances play a big role in keeping us hooked. If Grant is the wily villain, these actresses are the savvy horror protagonists worth rooting for. A gripping transition occurs as Mr. Reed intellectually ambushes these women, whose faith gets tested in the most extreme manner. East’s Sister Barnes pulls us in first with her shrewd observations and fearless reproach of Mr. Reed’s logic. But soon we’re watching Thatcher, who smartly leverages Paxton’s perceived naivety throughout the film.
Like The Assessment, another offering at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Heretic is most compelling as a three-character chamber drama. The charade between Mr. Reed, Paxton and Barnes helps to distracts from the screenplay, which wobbles under analytical pressure. Beck and Wood, at first, seem intent on interrogating the pitfalls of modern religion, but their narrative never goes all the way in its criticism. Once Mr. Reed moves on from his speeches and into more conventional horror-villain machinations, so too does Heretic distance itself from its most fiery theses. While it doesn’t totally diminish the thrill of watching Grant’s character revel in his own supposed cleverness, it does make the enterprise disappointingly shallow. A thread with a Mormon leader pursuing an earnest search for the missing girls similarly goes nowhere beyond a cheap joke done better earlier in the film.
The relationship between Paxton, Barnes and Mr. Reed remains the most absorbing thread throughout Heretic. Even when the screenplay heads into deflating territory — trading potential acerbity for more neutral conclusions — their cat-and-mouse game keeps us curious and faithful.
Movie Reviews
Speak No Evil (2024)
![Speak No Evil (2024) Speak No Evil (2024)](https://images.bauerhosting.com/empire/2024/09/speak-no-evil-1.jpg?ar=16%3A9&fit=crop&crop=top&auto=format&w=undefined&q=80)
Chilled American couple Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise (Mackenzie Davis) meet overfriendly Brits Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) on an Italian holiday and accept an invitation to spend a weekend with them in the West Country. However, it becomes apparent that the charming hosts have a sinister hidden agenda.
Christian Tafdrup’s 2022 horror Speak No Evil — available on Shudder — was an impressive, frog-boiling psycho picture about polite Danish folks who unwisely agree to spend a weekend away with the hearty Dutch family they met on holiday and are subjected to many, many micro-aggressions before the macro ones start up. For a while, James Watkins’ English-language remake hews close to the original… then, the films diverge (around the time of the excruciating decision to go back for the daughter’s toy rabbit) and become different, if complementary experiences.
There’s no denying that the first film was upsetting, and having watched that you wouldn’t want to go back again, so new twists are satisfying. James McAvoy, with a Mummerset burr and an imposing too-much-time-in-the-gym physique, is a charismatic, intimidating presence. He’s not played an all-out villain before, and goes to town with this, repeatedly springing some unforgivable trespass on his guests before taking it back and begging for sympathy, or acting hurt that they’re offended and stringing it out for another few hours, even as clues pile up about the depth of the hole they’re falling into.
Director James Watkins is very good at ratcheting screws.
Both Watkins’ major horror films — Eden Lake, The Woman In Black — are fairly ruthless in killing off characters who ought to be safe in the genre, aligning his vision with the bleakness of Tafdrup’s film. However, this fight is more even-handed, and a Straw Dogs-ish farmhouse battle rousingly pays off multiple Chekhov establish-deadly-weapons-for-use-later moments, throwing in extra revelations which add bite.
The business of this story in both versions is suspense, and Watkins is very good at ratcheting screws — stringing out moments like a possible getaway, one the villain seems happy to let play out, in such a manner that a companion even compares him to “my aunt’s cat” because he insists on playing with his food — but also springs satisfying reversals and pay-offs.
It’s not Speak No Evil (2022)— because what would be the point of that? — but Speak No Evil (2024) is a quality horror-suspense picture.
Entertainment
Stylist Rachel Zoe, husband Rodger Berman announce split after 26-year marriage
![Stylist Rachel Zoe, husband Rodger Berman announce split after 26-year marriage Stylist Rachel Zoe, husband Rodger Berman announce split after 26-year marriage](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/ce29293/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1760x924+0+27/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe6%2Fd8%2F6b89297d42e5bb7f415aa5bc614b%2Frachel-zoe-divorce-cropped.jpg)
It’s over for celebrity stylist and reality star Rachel Zoe and her husband, Rodger Berman. The couple is calling it quits.
“The Rachel Zoe Project” star announced Monday that she and Berman “have come to the mutual decision to end our marriage” after 33 years together and 26 years of marriage.
“We are incredibly proud of the loving family we have created and our countless memories together,” Zoe and Berman said in a joint statement posted on her Instagram. “Our number one priority has been and will always be our children. We are committed to co-parent our boys and to continue to work together within the many businesses we share. We ask for privacy during this time as we navigate this new chapter.”
The couple, who are both from New York, met in 1991 while both were attending George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Zoe was working as a hostess in a D.C. restaurant where he was working as a server. They got married in February 1998 and had two sons — 13-year-old Skyler and 10-year-old Kaius — who have been featured on the designer’s Bravo reality series and her Lifetime show “Fashionably Late With Rachel Zoe.”
The “Climbing in Heels” podcast host, who rose to fame in the early 2000s as a wardrobe stylist for the likes of Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan, became synonymous over the past couple of decades with the boho-meets-rocker chic aesthetic. She has expanded her brand as a fashion designer and TV personality over the past two decades and built up Rachel Zoe Inc. and the investment management company Rachel Zoe Ventures, among others. Berman, a former investment banker, is a co-founder and co-chief executive of the former company and managing partner of the latter.
It is unclear whether the couple has already filed for divorce.
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