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Live from Jimmy Buffett tribute at the Hollywood Bowl with Kenny Chesney

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Live from Jimmy Buffett tribute at the Hollywood Bowl with Kenny Chesney

He did his bit of smuggling, he once sang, and he ran his share of grass. Now, the late, great Jimmy Buffett is being honored by an assortment of his many friends and admirers in an all-star tribute concert Thursday night at the Hollywood Bowl.

Keep the Party Going, as the show is billed, takes place seven months after Buffett died from skin cancer in September at age 76, leaving behind a lifestyle empire that reportedly made him a billionaire — and, of course, a deep catalog of wryly literate songs that blend country, pop, folk, rock and Caribbean music.

In the wake of his death came warm remembrances from the likes of former President Clinton, who said Buffett’s work “brought happiness to millions of people,” and Alan Jackson, with whom Buffett recorded the No. 1 country hit “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere.” Elton John called him “a unique and treasured entertainer”; LL Cool J said he was “glad we had time to vibe.”

Among the many acts set to perform at the Bowl are Paul McCartney, the Eagles, Jon Bon Jovi, Jackson Browne, Brandi Carlile, Kenny Chesney, Eric Church, Sheryl Crow, Zac Brown, Jack Johnson, Pitbull and members of Buffett’s longtime Coral Reefer Band.

7:11 p.m. Greetings from Margaritaville! (Sorry, I had no choice.) With a lineup long on boomer icons — and an audience full of the fans Buffett often compared to Deadheads with credit cards — tonight’s show promises to be like a stylishly graying Coachella, a prospect for which I’m all in. I’m Mikael Wood, The Times’ pop music critic, and I’m happy to be here with my colleagues August Brown and Erin Osmon to play-by-play this tribute to the man who did as much as anyone to bring fruity drinks and sandy desperation into the pop vernacular. — Mikael Wood

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As the native Floridian on the Times team here, I am thrilled to see tonight as the beginning of a Buffett-sance among LA’s songwriter set. Parrothead wear is the look of the summer to come. — August Brown

And we’re off with a festive take on “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” by Buffett’s stalwart backup crew, the Coral Reefer Band. — M.W.

Introducing himself as a Florida boy, Jake Owen says he knows “a lot about citrus” — his way to queue up “Grapefruit – Juicy Fruit.” — M.W.

The Coral Reefer Band puts a brass-infused NOLA spin on “Pencil Thin Mustache,” opener of Buffett catalog highlight “Living and Dying in 3/4 Time.” This colorful crowd — the Bowl looks like a pastel kaleidoscope of leis and Hawaiian shirts — is on its feet and loving it. I wore my Hush Puppies for the occasion. Perhaps I’ll join them. — Erin Osmon

7:26 p.m. Woody Harrelson is here in a beat-up cowboy hat recalling the time he and Buffett smoked a joint on the roof of the Vatican. “That’s not true of course,” he adds, “but wouldn’t that be a great story?” As one of the night’s first celeb presenters, the actor goes on to extol Buffett’s creation of “a new genre of music — and hotels and restaurants and old folks’ homes.” — M.W.

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7:32 p.m. Kenny Chesney takes “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” — which, as bite-size philosophies go, is up there with the best. — M.W.

Kenny Chesney says that, as a kid growing up in east Tennessee, Jimmy Buffett was the first person who showed him that a person can paint pictures with words; a touching and fitting sentiment before he launched into “Where I Come From,” a song that evokes the powerful, everyday images of Buffett’s (and Chesney’s) rural upbringings. — E.O.

7:35 p.m. In a video tribute, Dolly Parton emphasizes Buffett’s multi-hyphenate brilliance — songwriter, author, mogul — and that he was more than just a dude in flip flops. — E.O.

7:42 p.m. The Jimmy Buffett lifestyle crosses seas and transcends continents, as Angélique Kidjo proved on a regal take of “One Particular Harbour.” The two were old pals and collaborators on “Ti Punch Café,” from Jimmy’s final album “Equal Strain on All Parts,” and the respect and camaraderie between them is really delightful. — A.B.

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Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

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Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

I am a sucker for all those straight-to-video slasher movies from the 90’s; there was just a certain point where you knew the acting was terrible, however, it made you fall in love. I can definitely remember scanning the video store sections for all the different horror movies I could. All those movies had laughable names and boom mics accidentally getting in the frame. Trucker seems like a child of all those old dreams, because it is.

Let’s get into the review.

Synopsis

When a group of reckless teens cause an accident swroe to never speak of it.  The father is reescued by a strange man. from the wreckage and nursed back to health by a mysterious old man. When the group agrees to visit the accident scene, they meet their match from a strange masked trucker and all his toys with revenge on his mind.

Roll on 18 Wheleer

Trucker is what you would imagine: a movie about a psychotic trucker chasing you. We have seen it many, many times. What makes the film so different is its homage to bad movies but good ideas. I don’t mean in a negative way. When you think of a slasher movie, it’s not very complicated; as a matter of fact, it takes five minutes to piece the film together. This is so simple and childlike, and I absolutely love it. Trucker gave us something a little different, not too gory, bad CGI fire, I mean, this is all we old schlock horror fans want. Trucker is the type of film that you expect from a Tubi Original, on speed. However, I would take this over any Tubi Original.

I found some parts that were definitely a shout-out to the slasher humor from all those movies. Another good point that made the film shine was the sets. I guess what I can say is the film is everything Joy Ride should have been. While most modern slashers are trying to recreate the 1980s, the film stands out with its love for those unloved 1990’s horror films. While most see Joyride, you are extremely mistaken, my friend; you will enjoy this film much more.

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In The End

In the end, I enjoyed the entire film. At first, I saw it listed as an action thriller; I was pleasantly surprised, and Trucker pulled at my heart strings, enveloping me in its comfort from a long-forgotten time in horror. It’s a nostalgic blast for me, thinking back to that time, my friends, my youth, and finding my new home. Horror fans are split down the middle: from serial-killer clowns (my side) to elevated horror, where an artist paints a forty-thousand-year-old demon that chases them around an upper-class studio apartment. I say that a lot, but it’s the best way to describe some things.

The entire movie had me cheering while all the people I hated suffered dire consequences for their actions. It’s the same old story done in a way that we rabid fans could drool over, and it worked. In all the bad in the world today, and my only hope for the future is the soon-to-end Terrifier franchise. However, the direction was a recipe to succeed with 40+ year old horror fans like me. I see the film as a hope for tomorrow, leading us into a new era.

Trucker is set to release on March 10th, 2026

 

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Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater

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Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater

The lovely, funny “American Classic,” premiering Sunday on MGM+, is a love letter to theater, community and community theater. Kevin Kline plays Richard Bean, a narcissistic stage actor. He’s famous enough to be opening on Broadway in “King Lear,” but he has to be pushed onstage and is forgetting lines. After he drunkenly assails a hostile New York Times critic — caught on video, of course — he’s suspended from the play, and his agent (Tony Shalhoub) advises him to get out of town and lay low until the heat’s off, as they used to say in the gangster movies.

Learning that his mother (Jane Alexander, acting royalty, in film clips) has died, Richard heads back to his small Pennsylvania hometown, where his family — all actors, like the Barrymores, but no longer acting — owns a once-celebrated theater. To Richard’s horror, it has, for want of income, become a dinner theater, hosting touring productions of “Nunsense” and “Forever Plaid” instead of the great stage works on which he cut his teeth.

Brother Jon (Jon Tenney), running the kitchen at the theater, is married to Kristen (Laura Linney), Richard’s onetime acting partner, who dated him before her marriage; now she’s the mayor. Their teenage daughter, Miranda (Nell Verlaque) — a name from Shakespeare — does want to act and move to New York, as her mother had before her, but is afraid to tell her parents. Richard’s father, Linus (Len Cariou), is suffering from dementia, though not to the point he won’t actively contribute to the action; every day he comes out again as gay.

Across the eight-episode series, things move from the ridiculous to the sublime. Richard’s attempt to stage his mother’s funeral, with her coffin being lowered from the ceiling, while “Also sprach Zarathustra” plays and smoke billows toward the audience, fortunately comes to naught; but he announces at the ceremony that he’ll direct a production of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play “Our Town” at the theater, to “restore the soul of this town.” (His big idea is to ignore Wilder’s stage directions, which ask for no curtain, no set and few props, with a “realistic version,” featuring a working soda fountain, rain effects and a horse.) Fate will have other plans for this, and not to give away what in any case should be obvious, the title of the play will also become its ethos, with a cast of amateurs, including Miranda’s jealous boyfriend, Randall (Ajay Friese), and ordinary people standing in for the ordinary people of Wilder’s Grover’s Corners.

The series has a comfortable, cushiony feeling; it’s the sort of show that could have been made as a film in the 1990s, and in which Kline could have starred as easily in his 40s as in his 70s; it has the same relation to reality as “Dave,” in which he played a good-hearted ordinary Joe who takes the place of a lookalike U.S. president. The town is essentially a sunny place, full of mostly sunny people, to all appearances, a typical comedy hamlet. But we’re told it’s distressed, and Mayor Kristen is in transactional cahoots with developer Connor Boyle (Billy Carter), who wants clearance to build a casino on the site of a landmark hotel. (Much of the plot is driven by money — needing it, trading for it, leaving it, losing it.) He also wants his heavily accented, bombshell Russian girlfriend, Nadia (Elise Kibler), to have a part in “Our Town.”

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As in the great Canadian comedy “Slings & Arrows,” set at a Shakespeare Festival outside of Toronto, themes and moments and speeches from the play being performed are echoed in the lives of the performers, while the viewer experiences the double magic of watching a fine actor playing an actor playing a part. Kline, of course, is himself an American classic, with a long stage and screen career that encompasses classical drama, romantic and musical comedy and cartoon voiceovers; the series makes room for Richard to perform soliloquies from “Hamlet” and “Henry V,” parts Klein has played onstage. He brings out the sweetness latent in Richard. Linney, who played against her sweetheart image in “Ozark,” is happily back on less deadly ground (though she’s tense and drinks a little). Tenney, who was sweet and funny on “The Closer,” and who we don’t see enough of these days, is sweeter and funnier here, and gets to sing. (All the Beans will sing, except for Linus.)

As a comedy, it is often predicable — you know that things will work out, and some major plot points are as good as inevitable — but it’s the good sort of predictability, where you get what you came for, where you hear the words you want to hear, ones you could never have written yourself. “American Classic” is not out to challenge your world view in any way but wants only to confirm your feelings and in doing so amplify them. Shock effects are fine in their place — and to be sure there are major twists in the plot — but there is a certain release when the thing you’re ready to have happen, happens, whether it brings laughter or tears. Either is welcome.

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‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

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‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

It’s funny how this film is marketed as the first Scream movie in IMAX, yet it’s their sloppiest work to date. Williamson accomplishes two decent kills. My praise goes to the prosthetic team and gore above anything else. The filmmaking is amateurish, lacking any of the tension build and innovation in set pieces like the Radio Silence or Craven entries. Many slasher sequences consist of terribly spliced editing and incomprehensible camera movement. There was a person at my screening asking if one of the Ghostfaces was killed. I responded, “Yeah, they were shot in the head; you just couldn’t see it because the filmmaking is so damn unintelligible.” 

Really, Spyglass? This is the best you can do to “damage control” your series that was perfectly fine?

I’m getting comments from morons right now telling me that I’m biased for speaking “politically” about this movie. Fuck you! This poorly made, bland, and franchise-worst entry is a byproduct of political cowardice.

The production company was so adamant about silencing their outspoken star, who simply stated that she’s against the killing of Palestinian people by an evil totalitarian regime, that they deliberately fired her, conflating her comments to “anti-semintism,” when, and if you read what she said exactly, it wasn’t. Only to reconstruct the buildup made in her arc and settle on a nonsensical, manufactured, nostalgia-based slop fest to appeal to fans who lack genuine film taste in big 2026. To add insult to injury, this movie actively takes potshots at those predecessors, perhaps out of pettiness that Williamson didn’t pen them or a mean-spirited middle finger to the star the studio fired. Truly, fuck you. Take the Barrera aspect out of this, which is still impossible, and Scream 7 is a lazy, sloppy, ill-conceived, no-vision, enshittification of Scream and a bloody embarrassment to the franchise. It took a real, morally upright actress to make Ghostface’s knife go from metal to plastic. 

FINAL STATEMENT

You either die a Scream or live long enough to see yourself become a Stab.

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