Entertainment

Jacob Collier on whom he'd prefer to lose to at the Grammy Awards

Published

11 months ago

February 2, 2025

Jacob Collier on whom he'd prefer to lose to at the Grammy Awards

In a category dominated by the likes of Beyoncé, Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift, Jacob Collier is unquestionably the least famous musician nominated for album of the year at Sunday’s 67th Grammy Awards. Yet the English singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist is actually a familiar contender for the Grammys’ flagship prize: His dark-horse nod for “Djesse Vol. 4” follows an earlier album of the year nomination for 2020’s “Djesse Vol. 3,” which vied against LPs by Post Malone, Dua Lipa and Coldplay at the 63rd Grammys. (Taylor Swift ended up winning that year with “Folklore.”)

Featuring appearances by a wide variety of guests — among them Brandi Carlile, Michael McDonald, Anoushka Shankar, Shawn Mendes, Kirk Franklin and John Mayer — the sprawling yet intricately detailed “Djesse Vol. 4” layers electronics and hand-played instruments as it blends R&B, jazz, folk and even a bit of death metal; the album’s opener, “100,000 Voices,” features recordings of about that many audience members at Collier’s concerts, where he conducts the crowd like a giant choir.

In addition to album of the year, Collier, 30, is up for two more Grammys at Sunday’s show: global music performance for “A Rock Somewhere” and arrangement, for a rendition of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” featuring John Legend and Tori Kelly. Collier discussed the album and his relationships with Joni Mitchell and the late Quincy Jones on a recent afternoon in Los Angeles.

You’ve said that “Djesse Vol. 4” is the last installment in a four-album series. Did you always know it would be the finale?
I did, actually. I finished “In My Room,” which is the first album I made, as a completely solitary mission — recorded, mixed, everything by myself. So after that I was craving collaboration. I wanted to make, in a sense, four different rooms, each dictated by a different sonic environment. The first was like an orchestral record — very big and broad and sort of explosive. Vol. 2 was more folky and singer-songwriter-y, with a smaller acoustic space than the first one. Vol. 3, which was the quarantine album, was almost no space at all. It was what happens in the dark, weird star field of your brain when you just collide stuff together.

And Vol. 4?
For a long time I didn’t know what it was gonna be about. But touring Vol. 3, the thing I fell in love with was the audience. What I recognized in my fascination is that it felt the same to the earliest days, except that now the voice I was more interested in was the voice en masse rather than my own.

Among the nominees for album of the year, yours would seem to share the most with “New Blue Sun,” André 3000’s experimental jazz LP. But he’s talked about the value of a beginner’s mind in his journey as a flute player, whereas I don’t hear much naivete in your music.
I think part of the nature of a fourth album of four is that it’s going to be a bit of an opus to what I’ve learned in the last 10 years of making music. It’s different from “In My Room,” which was very much about naivete: I’ve never done this before. What happens when you make an album? Let’s find out. But this one isn’t a naïve record. I wouldn’t say it’s coming out of the blue.

Have you heard André’s album?
Yeah. I think the value of that record, in a funny way, isn’t a musical value. And I’d imagine he’d be OK with that. The songs all have these 10-word titles, like a diary entry. I’m refreshed by how nonconformist the format of the record is. It doesn’t make me want to make music, but it makes me want to think differently about my life. I wonder how he’ll feel about the record in 20 years’ time. I’m curious what he’s learned from it. I’m also curious who voted for it. He’s such a beloved and well-known figure, but in terms of what the Grammys stand for, which is always a little bit hard to say, I wonder where he sits in that. I’m glad he’s in there, because it’s unlike any other album in the category. It’s very “f— you” in a sense. I love him for that.

I saw you play piano with Joni Mitchell at the Hollywood Bowl last year. How’d you become part of the Joni Jam?
I met Brandi Carlile in 2021 as she was in the process of rekindling Joni’s magic. Joni had been home alone — really, really fragile — and Brandi, who’s just this amazing human, had this vision of the Joni Jams, where people come to Joni’s house and we sing Joni songs. So I went to Joni’s house and was absolutely blown away to even be there. The wall with dulcimers from the ’70s, the paintings on the doorways — it was just unbelievable as a huge Joni fan. I did that and thought, Well, that was a one-off. I was imagining that Joni was kind of on the decline. But she’s gone from strength to strength. So then Brandi called me beginning of last year and said, “Look, Joni’s gonna sing at the Grammys — are you gonna be around?” We played “Both Sides Now” on the show, which then kind of became the Joni Jam at the Hollywood Bowl.

Some things about Joni’s musicianship have deteriorated: She doesn’t play much guitar anymore, and her voice is an octave lower than it was. But her phrasing is intact, and that’s when you know that she’s really a jazzer and that she’s hung out with Wayne Shorter. Every time you do a song, she’ll sing slightly early or slightly late or slightly elongated. And I think once she realized that I was also one of those people, we kind of had a bit of a click. It was really amazing to kind of grant each other that freedom, because a lot of people in that band were very religiously playing her parts. And if they hadn’t been in the band, it would’ve fallen apart. You can’t have just Jonis in the band, you know? I had the delight to be brought in to kind of decorate, to play around — to almost tease her up into the jousting arena. I’ll never forget it.

Jacob Collier, wearing bright clothing, jumps in the air in front of the L.A. skyline.

The set list for the Bowl show was completely insane.
Insane! The first half was just us saying, “Joni, what do you want to do?” She was like, “I want to play the deepest cuts.” And then the second half was more of the well-known tunes. She’s at a point in her career where she could easily say, “I’m gonna put a bow on this, and you’re gonna love it.” But she’s still pushing.

Your mentor Quincy Jones died last year. Do you think anything died with him? Something he did or stood for that we won’t see again?
The biggest gift I received from him was watching how he treated people. You don’t create that kind of legacy without understanding how to reach people’s souls and hearts. I think we won’t see a person with that combination of talent, audacity and humanity. Obviously, it’s there in the music. But being with him in the world, people would come up and say, “Quincy, you’ve done this and this and this,” and he always had a way of disarming them — cutting off the stream of adulation and making it a human interaction.

You have a favorite song or album of his?
One of the first tunes I ever learned of Quincy’s is a song called “Razzamatazz,” from “The Dude.” Patti Austin sings it. It’s just a perfect piece of music — so funky and so fun.

“Just Once” is the one for me from “The Dude.” The thing that happens at the end —
Where it goes up a tone: [sings] “Find a way to stay together…” It’s unreal. The thing about Quincy is he understood the harmonic context of stuff like that because he’d done the arranging thing. The song could easily have stayed in C-major, but no — it must ascend. He was just the coolest.

What’s your stodgiest musical position?
I can be quite a stickler with tuning. I’ve explored microtonality, so on the one hand, it’s like everything’s in tune, right? But sometimes I’ll hear a brass sextet or a string quartet play a piece of classical music perfectly in tune with the piano, and I’m like, “That’s such a shame, because the piano itself is not in tune.”

Now that the “Djesse” project is complete, what will your next record be?
I don’t know yet. It’s the first time I’ve not known for seven years — that’s a thrill for me. A lot of the things I’ve built and made in the past have been big, “100,000 Voices” as the biggest example. Now that I’ve done that, I think my brain is craving smaller containers. What if I made a record just on piano or just on guitar?

If it can’t be you, who would you enjoy seeing win album of the year?
I think Beyoncé’s record is courageous, and I commend people for that. She could have not made that record, or she could have made something more straightforward. I think it was brazen, and I think it came from a place of really knowing what she wanted to say and really f—ing saying it. So I’d be pretty stoked to lose to Beyoncé.

Movie Reviews

Dead Man’s Wire review: Gus Van Sant tackles true-crime intrigue

Published

4 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

Dead Man’s Wire review: Gus Van Sant tackles true-crime intrigue

In 1977, a man named Tony Kiritsis fell behind on mortgage payments for an Indianapolis, Indiana, property that he hoped to develop into an affordable shopping center for independent merchants. He asked his mortgage broker for more time, but was denied. This enraged him because he suspected that the broker and his father, who owned the company, were conspiring to defraud him by letting the property go into foreclosure and acquire it for much less than market value. He showed up at the offices of the mortgage company, Meridian, for a scheduled appointment regarding the debt in the broker’s office, where he took the broker, Richard O. Hall, hostage, and demanded $130,000 to settle the debt, plus a public apology from the company. He carried a long cardboard box containing a shotgun with a so-called dead man’s wire, which he affixed to Hall as a precaution against police interference: if either of them were shot, tackled, or even caused to stumble, the wire would pull the trigger, blowing Hall’s head off.

That’s only the beginning of an astonishing story that has inspired many retellings, including a memoir by Hall, a 2018 documentary (whose producers were consultants on this movie) and a podcast drama starring Jon Hamm as Tony Kiritsis. And now it’s the best current movie you likely haven’t heard about—a drama from director Gus Van Sant (“Good Will Hunting”), starring Bill Skarsgård as Tony Kiritsis and Dacre Montgomery as Richard Hall. It’s unabashedly inspired by the best crime dramas from the 1970s, including “Dog Day Afternoon,” “The Sugarland Express,” “Network,” and “Badlands,” and can stand proudly alongside them.

From the opening sequence, which scores the high-strung Tony’s pre-crime prep with Deodato’s immortally groovy disco version of “Thus Spake Zarathustra” played on the radio by one of Tony’s local heroes, the philosophical DJ Fred Temple (Colman Domingo); through the expansive middle section, which establishes Tony as part of a thriving community that will see him as their representative in the one-sided struggle between labor and capital; through the ending and postscript, which leave you unsure how to feel about what you’ve seen but eager to discuss it with others, “Dead Man’s Wire” is a nostalgia trip of the best kind. Rather than superficially imitate the style of a specific type of ’70s drama, Van Sant and his collaborators connect with the essence of what made them powerful and memorable: their connection to issues that weighed on viewers’ minds fifty years ago and that have grown heavier since.

Tony is far from a criminal genius or a potential folk hero, but thinks he’s both. The shotgun box with a weird bulge, barely held together with packing tape, is a correlative of the mentality of the man who carries it. His home is filled with counterculture-adjacent books, but he’s a slob who loudly gripes during a brief car ride that his “shorts have been ridin’ up since Market Street,” and has a vanity license plate that reads “TOPLESS.” His eloquence runs the gamut from Everyman acuity to self-canceling nonsense slathered in profanity . He accurately sums up the mortgage company’s practices as “a private equity trap” (a phrase that looks ahead to the 2008 financial collapse, which was sparked by predatory lending on subprime mortgages) and hopes that his extreme actions will generate some “some goddamn catharsis” for himself and his fellow citizens, and “some genuine guilt” among Indianapolis’ lending class.

He’s also intoxicated by his sudden local fame. The hostage situation migrates from the mortgage company to Tony’s shabby apartment complex, which is quickly surrounded by beat cops, tactical officers, and reporters (including Myha’La as Linda Page, a twenty-something, Black local TV correspondent looking to move up. Tony also forces his way into the life of his idol Temple, who tapes a phone conversation with him, previews it for police, and grudgingly accepts their or-else request to continue the dialog and plays their regular talks on his morning show.

Despite these inroads, Tony is unable to prevent his inner petty schmuck from emerging and undermining his message, such as it is. He vacillates between treating Hall as a useless representative of the financial elite (when the elder Hall finally agrees to speak with Tony via phone from a tropical vacation, Tony sneers to Hall the younger, “Your daddy’s on the line—he wants to know when you’ll be home for supper!”) and connecting with him on a human level. When he’s not bombastic, he’s needy and fawning. “I like you!” he keeps telling people he just met, but Fred most of all—as if a Black man who’d built a comfortable life for himself and his wife in 1977 Indiana could say no when an overwhelmingly white police force asked him to become Tony’s fake-confidant; and as if it matters whether a hostage-taking gunman feels warmly towards him.

Ultimately, though, making perfect sense and effecting lasting change are no higher on Tony’s agenda than they were for the protagonists of “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Network.” Like them, these are unhinged audience surrogates whose media stardom turned them into human megaphones for anger at the miserable state of things, and the indifference of institutions that caused or worsened it. These include local law enforcement, which—to paraphrase hapless bank robber Sonny Wirtzik taunting cops in “Dog Day Afternoon”—wanna kill Tony so bad that they can taste it. The discussions between Indianapolis police and the FBI (represented by Neil Mulac’s Agent Patrick Mullaney, a straight-outta-Quantico robot) are all about how to set up and take the kill shot.

The aforementioned phone call leads to a gut-wrenching moment that echoes the then-recent kidnapping of John Paul Getty III, when hostage-takers called their victim’s wealthy grandfather to arrange ransom payment, and got nickel-and-dimed as if they were trying to sell him a used car. The elder Hall is played by “Dog Day Afternoon” star Al Pacino, inspired casting that not only officially connects Tony with Wirtzik but proves that, at 85, Pacino can still bring the heat. The character’s presence creeps into the rest of the story like a toxic fog, even when he’s not the subject of conversation.

With his frizzy grey toupee, self-satisfied Midwest twang, and punchable smirk, Pacino is skin-crawlingly perfect as an old man who built a fortune on being good at one thing, but thinks that makes him a fountain of wisdom on all things, including the conduct of Real Men in a land of women and sissies. After watching TV coverage of Tony getting emotional while keeping his shotgun on Richard, Jr., he beams with pride that Tony shed tears but his own son didn’t. (Kelly Lynch, who costarred in another classic Van Sant film about American losers, “Drugstore Cowboy,” plays Richard, Sr.’s trophy wife, who is appalled at being confronted with irrefutable evidence of her husband’s monstrousness, but still won’t say a word against him.)

Van Sant was 25 during the real-life incidents that inspired this movie. That may partly account for the physical realism of the production, which doesn’t feel created but merely observed, in the manner of ’70s movies whose authenticity was strengthened by letting the main characters’ dialogue overlap and compete with ambient sounds; shooting in existing locations when possible, and dressing the actors in clothes that looked as if they’d been hanging in regular folks’ closets for years. Peggy Schnitzer did the costumes, Stefan Dechant the production design, and Arnaud Poiter the cinematography, all of which figuratively wear bell-bottom pants and platform shoes; the soundscape was overseen by Leslie Schatz, who keeps the environments believably dense and filled with incidental sounds while making sure the important stuff can be understood. It should also be mentioned that the film’s blueprint is an original script by a first-timer, Adam Kolodny, with a bona-fide working class worldview; he wrote it while working as a custodian at the Los Angeles Zoo.

More impressive than the film’s behind-the-scenes pedigree is its vision of another time that unexpectedly comes to seem not too different from this one. It is both a lovingly constructed time machine highlighting details that now seem as antiquated as lithography and buckboard wagons (the film deserves a special Oscar just for its phones) and a wide-ranging consideration of indestructible realities of life in the United States, which are highlighted in such a way that you notice them without feeling as if the movie pointed at them.

For instance, consider Tony’s infatuation with Fred Temple, which peaks when Tony honors his hero by demonstrating his “soul dancing” for his hostage, is a pre-Internet version of what we would now call a “parasocial relationship.” An awareness of racial dynamics is baked into this, and into the film as a whole. Domingo’s performance as Temple captures the tightrope walk that Black celebrities have to pull off, reassuring their most excitable white fans that they understand and care about them without cosigning condescension or behavior that could escalate into harassment. Consider, too, the matter-of-fact presentation of how easy it is for violence-prone people to buddy up to law enforcement officers, especially when they inhabit the same spaces. When Indianapolis police detective Will Grable (Cary Elwes) approaches Tony on a public street soon after the kidnapping, Tony’s face brightens as he exclaims, “Hi Mike! Nice to see you!”

And then, of course, there’s the economic and political framework, which is built with a firm yet delicate hand, and compassion for the vibrant messiness of life. “Dead Man’s Wire” depicts an analog era in which crises like this one were treated as important local matters that involved local people, businesses, and government agents, rather than fuel for a global agitprop industry posing as a news media, and a parasitic army of self-proclaimed influencers reycling the work of other influencers for clout. Van Sant’s movie continually insists on the uniqueness and value of every life shown onscreen, however briefly glimpsed, from the many unnamed citizens who are shown silently watching news coverage of the crisis while working their day jobs, to Fred’s right hand at the radio station, an Asian-American stoner dude (Vinh Nguyen) with a closet-sized office who talent-scouts unknown bands while exhaling cumulus clouds of pot smoke.

All this is drawn together by Van Sant and editor Saar Klein in pop music-driven montages that show how every member of the community depicted in this story is connected, even if they don’t know it or refuse to admit it. As John Donne put it, “No man is an island/Entire of itself/Each is a piece of the continent/A part of the main.” The struggle of the individual is summed up in one of Fred’s hypnotic radio monologues: “Let’s remember to become the ocean, not disappear into it.”

Entertainment

‘Sinners,’ ‘One Battle After Another’ and ‘Hamnet’ among 2026 Producers Guild of America nominees

Published

6 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

‘Sinners,’ ‘One Battle After Another’ and ‘Hamnet’ among 2026 Producers Guild of America nominees

The Oscar race for best picture came into clearer focus as the Producers Guild of America announced its annual nominees for the Darryl F. Zanuck Award on Friday morning. The 10 nominees (full list below) represent established Oscar-season contenders like “Sinners,” “One Battle After Another,” “Hamnet” and “Marty Supreme,” as well as a handful of films whose awards footing is less certain, including “Weapons,” “F1” and “Bugonia.”

The Producers Guild Awards are considered one of the most reliable bellwethers in the Oscar race because their preferential ballot closely mirrors the academy’s best picture voting system. The PGA Awards have named the future best picture winner in 17 of the last 22 years. Last year, eight of the 10 PGA nominees went on to receive best picture Oscar nominations, including Sean Baker’s “Anora,” which ultimately won both prizes.

Winners will be announced at the PGA’s awards ceremony on Feb. 28 at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Century City.

See the full list of nominees below:

Darryl F. Zanuck Award for outstanding producer of theatrical motion pictures

“Bugonia”
“F1”
“Frankenstein”
“Hamnet”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”
“Sentimental Value”
“Sinners”
“Train Dreams”
“Weapons”

Award for outstanding producer of animated theatrical motion pictures
“The Bad Guys 2”
“Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle”
“Elio”
“KPop Demon Hunters”
“Zootopia 2”

Norman Felton Award for outstanding producer of episodic television — drama
“Andor”
“The Diplomat”
“The Pitt”
“Pluribus”
“Severance”
“The White Lotus”

Danny Thomas Award for outstanding producer of episodic television — comedy
“The Bear”
“Hacks”
“Only Murders in the Building”
“South Park”
“The Studio”

David L. Wolper Award for outstanding producer of limited or anthology series television
“Adolescence”
“The Beast in Me”
“Black Mirror”
“Black Rabbit”
“Dying for Sex”

Award for outstanding producer of televised or streamed motion pictures
“Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy”
“The Gorge”
“John Candy: I Like Me”
“Mountainhead”
“Nonnas”

Award for outstanding producer of nonfiction television
“aka Charlie Sheen”
“Billy Joel: And So It Goes”
“Mr. Scorsese”
“Pee-wee as Himself”
“SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night”

Award for outstanding producer of live entertainment, variety, sketch, standup and talk television
“The Daily Show”
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
“Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”
“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”
“SNL50: The Anniversary Special”

Award for outstanding producer of game and competition television
“The Amazing Race”
“Jeopardy!”
“RuPaul’s Drag Race”
“Top Chef”
“The Traitors”

Movie Reviews

Controversy Surrounds ‘The Raja Saab’ as Makers Allegedly Offer Money for Positive Reviews | – The Times of India

Published

16 hours ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

Prabhas’s ‘The Raja Saab’ has hit theaters, but early social media reactions are mixed to negative. A netizen claims the film’s team offered him ₹14,000 to delete his critical review and post a positive one instead. The authenticity of this claim remains unverified, while fans continue to share their varied opinions online.

Prabhas-starrer ‘The Raja Saab’ is currently running in theaters; the much-awaited film was released today. The early reviews of the Maruthi-directed film have been receiving mixed to negative reviews on social media. However, a netizen has claimed that the makers of the film offered him money to delete his negative review.

Netizen alleges bribe by the makers

On Friday morning, an X user named @BS__unfiltered posted a screenshot online. He said he received a message from the official account of ‘The Raja Saab’ after posting his review. According to him, the film’s team offered him Rs 14,000. They reportedly asked him to post a positive review of the movie instead. Sharing the screenshot, the user wrote, “What the hell mannnnn!!!! They are offering me money to delete this!!! Nahi hoga delete #TheRajaSaab #Prabhas.” However, the screenshot shared by the user is in question for its authenticity and is not verified. At this time, it is not clear if the message was real or AI-generated. The claim is still unconfirmed.See More: The Raja Saab: Movie Review and Release Live Updates: Prabhas’ film to open big at the box office

Fans share their opinions online

Fans and netizens have been active on social media, sharing their opinions about the film. While some enjoyed it, many expressed disappointment. Another internet user wrote, “A horror-fantasy with a good idea but weak execution. Prabhas gives an energetic & comical performance, & the face-off with Sanjay Dutt is the main highlight. The palace setting is interesting at first, but the messy screenplay, dragged 2nd half, uneven VFX, & weak emotional payoff reduce the impact. @MusicThaman’s music & sounding are one of the positives. From the end of the first half, the story becomes slightly interesting. There are 3 songs featuring Prabhas & @AgerwalNidhhi. Nidhhi has performed well. Some scenes feel unintentionally funny, & the climax fails to impress. Overall, a one-time watch at best. This film gives a lead for The Raja Saab Circus—1935 (Part 2), where we may see Prabhas vs. Prabhas.”

About ‘The Raja Saab’

‘The Raja Saab’ is directed and written by Maruthi. The film stars Prabhas in the lead role. The cast also includes Malavika Mohanan, Nidhhi Agerwal, Riddhi Kumar, Sanjay Dutt, and Boman Irani.