Kelly did not know her stuff with Putin: Stone

Deaf singer wows crowd on AGT

NEW YORK, June 8, (Agencies): Film director Oliver Stone, whose series of conversations with Vladimir Putin air next week on Showtime, said he watched Megyn Kelly interview the Russian president on NBC and concluded that “he knew his stuff and she didn’t.”

Kelly’s interview, which aired on the debut of her newsmagazine, “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly,” on Sunday, “became machine-gun like,” Stone said, and was an example of how American journalism frequently leaves little room for nuance.

“I think she was attractive and she asked hardball questions, but she wasn’t in position to debate or counter him, because she didn’t know a lot of things,” he said.

NBC News President Noah Oppenheim shot back that “no one here is interested in Oliver Stone’s unsolicited thoughts on Megyn Kelly’s appearance or his ill-informed opinion of her journalism.”

“But so long as we’re offering each other professional feedback, please let him know I don’t think he’s made a decent movie since the early ‘90s,” he said.

Putin was combative when asked in the NBC interview about hacking in the US presidential election and relations between Russia and President Donald Trump’s team. He’s more serene on Showtime, where more than a dozen interviews that Stone conducted with the Russian president between 2015 and early this year unfold one hour per night for four nights starting Monday.

As an example of where he believed Kelly was mistaken, Stone said the claim that 17 US intelligence agencies had concluded the Russians were behind election year hacking and used as a preface for a question had been “walked back.” It was a reference to testimony from James Clapper, former director of national intelligence, about a hacking report by three specific agencies. The independent organization Politifact has produced a report that backs Kelly, however, because Clapper had earlier said that all 17 intelligence agencies he had supervised agreed about Russia’s involvement.

Stone, a controversial figure who has interviewed Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and produced a documentary backing Putin’s version of events in the Ukraine, conducts a Putin interview far less confrontational than Kelly’s, at least on the basis of two episodes provided for screening by Showtime. One critic, Marlow Stern in The Daily Beast, called in a “wildly irresponsible love letter” to Putin.

The filmmaker’s style does include its share of ingratiating remarks. “You have a lot of discipline, sir,” he says at one point. “You are an excellent CEO. Russia is your company,” he says at another. Besides office sit-downs, Putin is interviewed driving a car, walking through horse stables at his home and after he played in a hockey game. When Putin makes a claim about a letter he received from the CIA and Stone asks him to produce it, the Russian president says, “My words are enough.”

A deaf singer is moving on to the semifinals of “America’s Got Talent” (AGT) after delivering a performance judge Simon Cowell calls “one of the most amazing things” he’s ever seen or heard.

Mandy Harvey told the judges on the NBC reality competition that she suffers from a connective tissue disorder and she lost her hearing when she was 18. Now 29, the St Cloud, Florida, resident says she taught herself to sing again using muscle memory and visual tuners.

She interacted with the judges with the help of a sign language interpreter.

Harvey received a standing ovation from the crowd and the judges while performing her self-written song, “Try,” on ukulele.

The performance earned Harvey a golden buzzer pass to the live semifinals of the talent show.

Emmy- and Tony Award-winner Kristin Chenoweth will host the 2017 Television Critics Association (TCA) Awards, Variety has learned.

“Throughout her unprecedented career, Kristin Chenoweth has carved a lasting legacy as an entertainment powerhouse and trailblazer. She is the perfect choice to host this special evening, honoring a season that has truly been a landmark year for women in television,” said TCA president Amber Dowling. “The Television Critics Association is proud to have an actress of her caliber leading the night’s festivities, as we come together to celebrate 33 years of the TCA Awards.”

Chenoweth joins an illustrious list of previous TCA Awards hosts, which includes Jaime Camil, James Corden, Terry Crews, Bryan Cranston, Ellen DeGeneres, Conan O’Brien, Drew Carey, Craig Ferguson, Wanda Sykes, the Smothers Brothers, Nick Offerman, Dax Shepard, Key & Peele, and Bob Newhart, among others.

Chenoweth will kick off the evening’s festivities, which will take place Aug 5 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, before handing the reins over to the critics, who will announce the night’s winners. Awards will be presented in a wide variety of categories and genres, such as news and information, youth, drama, reality, and comedy.

Ava DuVernay, Oprah Winfrey, and “Queen Sugar” cast members Kofi Siriboe and Dawn-Lyen Gardner held a short press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. It was part of a busy day that included a press junket and a Television Academy event to hype the hit drama’s second season.

Resuming a practice she began in season one of “Queen Sugar,” DuVernay opened by saying all the season two episodes will be helmed by female directors. All the directors had directed one film that had been in competition at a film festival, but, DuVernay said, “they could not get a job directing an episode of television.”

DuVernay also took special care to emphasize that all the show’s season one directors are now booked solid on other TV shows like “Greenleaf,” “Underground,” and the coveted job of directing TV pilots, where, as DuVernay stressed, “as the director on a TV pilot, you get to decide the world and how it looks in a TV series.”

DuVernay was clear in her mission to effect change in Hollywood by hiring more women and people of all ethnicities and, “having casts and stories that reflect the world we live in, so audiences see people they know onscreen.” DuVernay pointed to Patty Jenkins’s strong directing job on “Wonder Woman.” She also name-dropped Ryan Murphy and Melissa Rosenberg as fellow producers making concerted efforts to hire more women to write and direct on their shows.