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The Grateful Dead is honored — and rainbow grilled cheese served — at starry MusiCares gala

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The Grateful Dead is honored — and rainbow grilled cheese served — at starry MusiCares gala

Deadheads mixed with bigwigs Friday night at the annual MusiCares Persons of the Year gala, where the members of the Grateful Dead were honored by the Recording Academy for their philanthropy and cultural impact 60 years after the iconic jam band formed in 1965.

“Longevity was never a major concern of ours,” the Dead’s Bobby Weir said to laughs in the audience as he accepted the award. “Lighting folks up and spreading joy through the music was all we ever really had in mind, and we got plenty of that done.”

Held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, the Grammy-weekend charity event — dress code: “colorful black tie” — raised more than $5 million for music professionals affected by the wildfires that devastated much of L.A. last month. As guests munched rainbow grilled cheese sandwiches, host Andy Cohen roamed the well-heeled crowd looking for celebrities to chat up on camera; at one point he buttonholed his old friend John Mayer, whom he asked to name the horniest Grateful Dead song. (“Looks Like Rain,” which imagines “the sound of street cats making love,” was Mayer’s answer.)

Though it never really was in danger, the Dead’s extremely durable legacy got a major boost last year when Dead & Company — in which 77-year-old Weir and 81-year-old Mickey Hart perform music from the Dead’s catalog with Mayer, Jeff Chimenti, Jay Lane and Oteil Burbridge — set up at Sphere in Las Vegas for a hot-ticket summer residency that seemed to go viral every weekend on TikTok. Here, youngsters and oldsters alike turned up to pay tribute to the band.

Vampire Weekend offered a taut “Scarlet Begonias” and Maren Morris a stirring “They Love Each Other.” Noah Kahan and Béla Fleck were folky yet precise in “Friend of the Devil,” while Norah Jones glided smoothly through “Ripple.” The War and Treaty did a typically fiery “Samson and Delilah” with help from a pair of dueling drummers: Fleetwood Mac’s Mick Fleetwood and Stewart Copeland of the Police. Dwight Yoakam brought a hard country edge to “Truckin’”; the War on Drugs found a wistful drive for “Box of Rain.”

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Wynonna Judd performs.

(Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)

Wynonna Judd was the night’s musical and emotional high point: Describing Weir as her “family of choice,” she thanked the whiskery guitarist for singing at the funeral of her mother, Naomi, in 2022, then brought the audience to its feet with a rollicking “Ramble on Rose.” Other performers included Zac Brown, Billy Strings, Sammy Hagar, Bruce Hornsby, My Morning Jacket and the duo of Sierra Ferrell and Lukas Nelson, who teamed up for “It Must Have Been the Roses.”

The night’s excellent backing band was led by Don Was and featured guitarists Rick Mitarotonda (of the ascendant jam band Goose) and Grahame Lesh, son of the Dead’s founding bassist, Phil Lesh, who died last year at 84, just days after the announcement of the MusiCares honor. The Dead’s late mastermind, Jerry Garcia, was represented by his daughter Trixie; Bill Kreutzmann, the band’s founding drummer, sent a video message along with his son Justin.

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Woody Harrelson in a tie-dyed tie and black suit and Bob Weir in a black suit speak on stage while Weir points at Harrelson.

Woody Harrelson, left, and Bob Weir speak.

(Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)

“The road is a rough existence,” Weir said in his speech, “as plainly evidenced by the simple fact that there aren’t all that many of my old bandmates here tonight to receive this recognition.” After Weir and Hart’s remarks — actor Woody Harrelson also spoke at some length about having done a vast assortment of drugs with Garcia — the two stalwart musicians joined the rest of Dead & Company for a mini-set of classics that climaxed, warmly if inevitably, with the Dead’s improbable late-’80s pop hit, “Touch of Grey.”

“I will get by,” they sang with help from the crowd, “I will survive.”

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Movie Reviews

‘Loveyapa’ movie review: Junaid Khan and Khushi Kapoor toil in this shallow rom-com

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‘Loveyapa’ movie review: Junaid Khan and Khushi Kapoor toil in this shallow rom-com

A still from ‘Loveyapa’ 
| Photo Credit: @zeecafe/YouTube

Smartphone is the new villain in love stories. Screenwriters looking for new obstacles for love birds have discovered social evils on the web. After Muddassar Aziz used phone swapping to generate humour in Khel Khel Main, director Advait Chandan recycles the Tamil hit Love Today to create a romantic comedy about the ill effects of social media and artificial intelligence on relationships in Loveyapa.

Baani (Khushi Kapoor) and Gaurav (Junaid Khan) feel their romance is transparent till Baani’s father Atul (Ashutosh Rana) asks them to swap their phones before they exchange vows. As the phones get unlocked, it opens Pandora’s chat box with the video libraries and vaults of phones revealing secrets that both are not ready to overlook.

Written by Sneha Desai, the film makes interesting observations on how the young generation is losing touch with reality and how there is a distinct difference in their online and offline character. In this game of choices, there is no gender divide. It also touches upon the issues of online fat shaming and the emerging scourge of deepfakes.

Loveyapa (Hindi)

Director: Advait Chandan

Cast: Junaid Khan, Khushi Kapoor, Ashutosh Rana, Grusha Kapoor, Kiku Sharda

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Runtime: 137 minutes

Synopsis: Pushed by the girl’s father, when a couple exchange their phones, their relationship spirals into a crisis.

However, after setting the stage, Loveyapa comes across a skit bloated into a feature film with gaseous matter. It is like a video game with no second level and gradually reads like a visual essay on the ills of the internet. Ironically, the commentary on the emerging necessary evil in society uses the film to promote the latest model of a smartphone in the market.

Made for an audience that expresses its deepest emotions through ready-made emojis, the screenplay suffers from generation loss and a sense of ennui fills you after the popcorn break. One waits for the next box to be ticked followed by a few guffaws.

A still from ‘Loveyapa’ 

A still from ‘Loveyapa’ 
| Photo Credit:
@zeecafe/YouTube

Both Junaid and Khushi are earnest in their performance but if screen presence is something casting directors look for, both have a long way to go. They lack the charm that could tide over the blanks in storytelling. Learning on the sets, Khushi carries a consistent smile and sounds like her sister Janhvi. Junaid is a work in progress and is perhaps better suited for intense roles. His eyes twinkle like his father Aamir Khan’s gaze in the second half but there is not much heft in the story to employ them.

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As always, star kids bank on a strong support cast. Ashutosh Rana once again channelises his chaste Hindi to evoke awe. Grusha Kapoor and Kiku Sharda do the heavy lifting to accentuate the melodrama for those who love to drink new wine from the old bottle.

Loveyapa is currently running in theatres

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Jacques Audiard’s strong prix game

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Jacques Audiard’s strong prix game

Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language, French-made musical “Emilia Pérez” leads all other movies in the 2025 Oscar nominations, adding to the scores of other laurels Audiard’s thematically gritty, visually innovative works have collected over the years.

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The “Emilia” nominations haul is the biggest ever for a non-English-language movie, and the most for a French film since …

*10

“The Artist” in 2012.

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Audiard himself is vying for four Oscars for “Emilia”: directing, adapted screenplay, best picture and co-writing “El Mal,” one of its two nominated songs. He could tie …

1953

Walt Disney’s long-standing record for most (four) wins in a single year.

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3

Directing, screenplay and best picture winner Bong Joon Ho (“Parasite”) appeared to tie Disney’s record in 2020, but the international feature Oscar he accepted technically belongs to South Korea. It is the same reason …

1

… the Oscar nomination for Audiard’s 2009 gangster drama “A Prophet” is credited to France, not Audiard and his fellow producers.

3 dozen+

The César Awards, Lumière Awards and Cannes Film Festival have showered Audiard’s films with nominations and prizes over the years. He has won …

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Césars, including twice taking directing, script and picture honors in a single year — for “The Beat That My Heart Skipped” in 2006 and “A Prophet” in 2010.

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Audiard’s third directing César was for his criminally underseen (in the U.S.) 2018 English-language action comedy western “The Sisters Brothers.” Audiard also is appreciated …

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in England, where he has received six BAFTA nominations (including two for “Emilia”) and won two foreign-language awards (“The Beat That My Heart Skipped,” “A Prophet”) that do count producers as recipients.

2012

Audiard — or fellow nominee Coralie Fargeat (“The Substance”) — could become the first French person to win a directing Oscar since “Artist” filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius*.

* Weinstein-assisted

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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: ‘Love Hurts’ Makes for a Painful Viewing Experience

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Movie Review: ‘Love Hurts’ Makes for a Painful Viewing Experience
Director: Jonathan EusebioWriters: Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, Luke PassmoreStars: Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, Mustafa Shakir, Marshawn Lynch Synopsis: A hitman-turned-realtor is forced to confront his past. I was excited for Love Hurts. I was ready to sit back and bask in the glow of the Ke Huy Quan Renaissance. The Academy Award winner from Everything Everywhere All at Once, best KE HUY QUAN’s LOVE HURTS is reviewed.
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