Glimpse of Spacey remains in reshot film
Ridley Scott wasn’t able to completely erase Kevin Spacey.
The disgraced actor, who was replaced in All the Money in the World after being accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen men, still appears in a flashback scene in the movie.
The wide shot shows Spacey’s J. Paul Getty walking off a train in the desert. The close-up, however, clearly shows Christopher Plummer, who replaced the actor in reshoots.
The cast, including co-stars Michelle Williams and Mark Wahlberg, and crew reportedly voted unanimously to reshoot Spacey’s scenes after the sexual misconduct allegations.
Plummer was recently nominated for a Golden Globe for the role. New York Daily News
A Jedi masters his public comments
The dark side of the Force even gets to Jedi masters.
Mark Hamill took to Twitter the day after Christmas to apologize for the smack-talking he put out to the universe about the direction of his character, Luke Skywalker, in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
“I regret voicing my doubts & insecurities in public,” Hamill wrote. “Creative differences are a common element of any project but usually remain private. All I wanted was to make (a) good movie. I got more than that.”
Hamill, who added the hashtag #HumbledHamill, said that Last Jedi director Rian Johnson “made an all-time GREAT one!”
In an interview for Vanity Fair posted in May, Hamill recounted telling Johnson he “fundamentally disagree (d) with every choice you’ve made for this character.” Hamill’s comments have not stopped The Last Jedi from soaring to $792 million (U.S.) worldwide — and counting — at the box office, with a 91 per cent critical score on the review site RottenTomatoes.com.
Hamill, meanwhile, also spared a tweet for castmate Carrie Fisher, who played Luke’s sister Leia.
“No one’s ever really gone . . .” Hamill wrote about the actress, who died at age 60 on Dec. 27, 2016.
A photo collage that accompanied the message also included the hashtags #AlwaysWithUs and #CarrieOnForever. Star wire services
Andre Di Cesare ‘lived for music’
Quebec music producer Andre Di Cesare, a longtime player in the province’s music industry who helped singer Roch Voisine rise to global success, has died at 70.
An important figure in Quebec’s music industry in the 1980s and 1990s, Di Cesare collaborated with the likes of Martine St-Clair, Renée Martel, Nicole Martin, Pat- rick Norman and Fernand Gignac.
His record label Les Disques Star, or Star Records, distributed many of the artists.
Di Cesare’s work on Voisine’s breakthrough single “Helene” helped send the New Brunswickborn bilingual performer skyrocketing up the charts. The song held onto the No. 1 spot on the singles chart in France for nine weeks in late 1989 and early 1990.
Di Cesare also contributed to Voisine’s English-language album I’ll Always Be There as an executive producer.
The producer collected a number of gold records over the decades and continued working at Star Records until his death.
“Andre, he lived for music,” his sister told The Canadian Press. “In the last year, he was sick, but he was still working. He followed his artists.” The Canadian Press
Unplugged creator dies in New York
The co-creator of MTV’s Unplugged was struck by a taxi while crossing Fifth Ave. in Manhattan on Saturday and died Tuesday from serious head injuries.
The taxi accidentally struck Jim Burns, 65, who had been walking with his Seeing Eye dog near his Upper East Side home, police said.
Burns co-created MTV Unplugged with Robert Small. The wildly popular show debuted in 1989 at the height of MTV’s musical and cultural influence in America.
The music series returned to the air this year, with performances from locations around the U.S. that hold meaning for the artist performing.
It premiered in September with Shawn Mendes. The Associated Press
Briefly
Irv Weinstein, a longtime television news anchor in Buffalo, N.Y., has died at the age of 87 after a long battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Weinstein was hired by WKBW-Radio as a newscaster and news director in 1958. Six years later, he became an anchor and news director at WKBWTV. He retired on Dec. 31, 1998.
Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt are in talks to reunite for a Mad About You revival, according to TVLine. Over its 1992 to 1999 run, the NBC sitcom won a Golden Globe, a Peabody and five Emmys. The reboot would likely focus on filmmaker Paul and PR specialist Jamie “grappling with empty-nest syndrome in the wake of now 17-year-old daughter Mabel’s admission to college,” according to TVLine.
The FX channel has ordered a scripted dance musical series starring Evan Peters, Kate Mara and James Van Der Beek. Pose, co
created by Ryan Murphy ( Glee), awill include what FX called an unprecedented number of LGBTQ and transgender actors in ongoing roles. The show is set in New York City in the 1980s and is scheduled to start production in February for an eightepisode, summer 2018 debut.
Rihanna is mourning the death of her cousin and calling for an end to gun violence. The singer posted photos of herself with 21-year-old Tavon Kaiseen Alleyne on Instagram on Tuesday, writing that she “can’t believe it was just last night that I held you in my arms!” Alleyne died Tuesday after being shot in Barbados, where Rihanna was born and raised. Star wire services