Names and faces
Beyonce, Blake Shelton, Barbra Streisand and Oprah Winfrey will headline a onehour television special to benefit Hurricane Harvey victims that will be simulcast next week on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CMT. The event will be telecast live at 7 p.m. Central time on Tuesday, and on tape delay at 8 p.m. on the West Coast. It is being organized by Houston rap artist Bun B and Scooter Braun, founder of SB Projects. The show will also be streamed live on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Other performers — including George Clooney, Matthew McConaughey, Dennis Quaid, Julia Roberts, Jamie Foxx, Ryan Seacrest, Michael Strahan, Kelly Rowland, George Strait and Reese Witherspoon — will participate with taped or live messages. Journalists Matt Lauer and Norah O’Donnell will also participate. More celebrities are expected to sign on. The show will benefit several organizations, including United Way of Greater Houston, Habitat for Humanity, Save the Children, Direct Relief, Feeding Texas and The Mayor’s Fund for Hurricane Harvey Relief. The show will air from Los Angeles but will include stages in New York and Nashville, Tenn.
Madonna is heading overseas to a new home in Portugal. The Michigan native had been living in New York. She said on Instagram that she finds the energy of Portugal inspiring and that it makes her feel creative and alive. A spokesman for the singer said she fell in love with the country after ending a tour there in 2004. Madonna posted on Saturday that she’ll be working on a film and new music in Portugal. She said in her Instagram post: “It’s time to conquer the world from a different vantage point.”
Director Darren Aronofsky said his film mother! — a delirious nightmare starring Jennifer Lawrence — is a “roller coaster ride.” It thrilled some viewers at the Venice Film Festival and left others a bit queasy. A horror story that travels from menace to mind-bending mayhem, the movie was greeted with a mix of applause and boos from journalists Tuesday at the Italian festival, where it’s one of 21 movies competing for the Golden Lion prize. Lawrence and Javier Bardem play a couple — identified only as Mother and Him — living in that horror-flick staple, an isolated old house. Aronofsky, who is in a real-life relationship with Lawrence, won the Golden Lion in 2008 for The Wrestler. Rather than portraying a strong woman as she has in past roles, Lawrence seems destined to suffer. “It was a completely different character from anything I’ve ever done before,” she said. “But it was also a different side of myself that I wasn’t in touch with and I didn’t really know, yet.”