Italian singer Pausini told the BBC’s Carl Nasman that she’s “very excited” and “proud” to be performing alongside Williams and Scherzinger at the closing ceremony.
“When Robbie [Williams] invited me to sing with him, I felt goosebumps everywhere because Robbie’s one of my favorite singer, songwriter, and performer,” Pausini told the BBC.
The celebrity line-up will continue at half-time with performances by Madonna, Justin Bieber, Shakira and BTS.
Madonna, the best-selling female music artist of all time, is set to perform after the launch of her new album, Confessions II, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart in July.
Bieber also returned to the spotlight earlier this year, with his biggest live performance in four years at the Coachella music festival after cancelling his Justice world tour because of health issues.
The heroic pilot who safely ditched a stricken airliner in a New York City river in 2009 has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Captain Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger III, 75, shared the update on his personal website, writing that he was recently diagnosed and it is at an early stage.
“For now, this means a name may not come easily to me, I forget a story I have recently told, or I don’t sleep as well, but I am in the beginning of this long journey,” he wrote.
US Airways Flight 1549 came down in the Hudson River on 15 January 2009, after both its engines were disabled in a collision with a flock of geese shortly after take-off. All 155 people on board survived.
Sullenberger’s quick thinking and calm demeanour were credited with averting disaster.
The former US Air Force fighter pilot from California said in a post on his website on Tuesday that his Alzheimer’s diagnosis “has challenged what it means to be of service” and that he has found “the answer is to speak up” about the disease.
Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the retired US Airways captain known for the “Miracle on the Hudson,” testifies during a House Transportation Subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C., on June 19, 2019. The pilot announced Tuesday that he has Alzheimer’s disease. File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo
July 14 (UPI) — Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot who safely landed an airliner in New York City’s Hudson River in 2009, announced Tuesday that he’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
He revealed the news in a post to his personal website. He described the condition as “the unwanted visitor at the door.”
“I recently found out that I have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease,” he wrote. “It is early stage. For now, this means a name may not come easily to me, I forget a story I have recently told, or I don’t sleep as well, but I am in the beginning of this long journey.”
Sullenberger was the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549, which made a safe emergency landing in the Hudson River after striking a flock of birds that disabled the plane’s engines. Aviation officials and the plane’s passengers credited Sullenberger with guiding the Airbus A320 safely to the surface of the water. All passengers and crew members aboard the flight survived, prompting observers to describe the incident as the “Miracle on the Hudson.”
In addition to working as a commercial airline pilot, Sullenberger served in the U.S. Air Force, an accident investigator and was the U.S. ambassador to the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization.
He said the diagnosis has challenged what it means to live an act of service.
“And the answer is to speak up. It is my hope that by sharing this, other families living in the shadows with this disease will feel they too can step forward,” he said Tuesday.
“Over the years, when people would ask about the successful outcome of Flight 1549, I would say that ‘courage can be contagious,’ and on that day it helped everyone band together to get everyone off that airplane successfully. Now we need that courage to battle this disease. I am now part of a larger community with many of you, and we will be courageous together.”
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
One of the big discoveries for me at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was the erotic thriller “Night Nurse,” which opens in theaters this week. A remarkably confident feature debut from writer-director Georgia Bernstein, the film is hypnotic and entrancing, with a powerfully sustained sense of mood and menace. Brought to life by two assured lead performances, the story is about a young woman (Cemre Paksoy) who takes a job as an attendant at a senior living community and is assigned to help a man (Bruce McKenzie) who quickly ensnares her into an ongoing phone scam in which he swindles other residents.
Taking cues from the likes of Catherine Breillat and David Cronenberg, there are moments where you start to feel turned on and then feel weird about feeling turned on. It’s delightful stuff, full of the unexpected and unnerving, with shifting power dynamics that destabilize everything. See it with someone you maybe aren’t so sure about.
‘Hudson Hawk’ will have its day
Andie MacDowell and Bruce Willis in the 1991 movie “Hudson Hawk.”
(Columbia TriStar / Getty Images)
Its name has become synonymous with box office bomb, with tales of an out-of-control production leading to terrible reviews and rejection by audiences. Yet 1991’s “Hudson Hawk” is one of those movies that over the years has seen its reputation slowly turn around and is now en route to becoming a cult classic in the vein of “Ishtar” or “Showgirls.”
On Monday at Brain Dead Studios there will be a 35th anniversary screening of the film in 35mm with director Michael Lehmann and co-writer Daniel Waters in-person. Presented by Hollywood Entertainment, the evening could be ground zero for the next stage of the misbegotten movie’s revival.
The movie is a playful buddy-comedy / caper-heist hybrid, starring Bruce Willis as the title character, a master thief newly released from prison who reteams with his old partner (Danny Aiello) as they are drawn into a convoluted conspiracy involving the CIA, a villainous ultra-rich couple (played with maniacal, scene-stealing glee by Richard E. Grant and Sandra Bernhard) and ancient designs by Leonardo da Vinci. Upending action movie conventions, “Hudson Hawk” is simply a fun hang.
On a recent video call together, there is a certain gallows humor shared by Lehmann and Waters over the film, which at the time threatened to derail both of their careers. Waters was already working on the script for Tim Burton’s “Batman Returns” by the time the movie came out, while Lehmann admits he spent some time in director jail — “I was in director federal penitentiary and death row for a while,” he says — before going on to direct films such as “Airheads” and “The Truth About Cats and Dogs.”
“You can’t escape a big failure in Hollywood,” he adds. “You have to be good-natured about the fact that you’ve made something that so many people hated when it came out, but that you feel still has some value — quite a bit of value, I think. And that eventually people would start noticing that.”
The project began as an idea between Willis and his friend Robert Kraft that snowballed into having action super-producer Joel Silver attached and a screenplay draft by “Die Hard” writer Steven E. De Souza. Eventually Lehmann became involved to direct and he helped bring on Waters, the two having worked together on the hit black comedy “Heathers.” (Waters had also worked with Silver on “The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.”) The reunited writer-director team set about subverting what began as a more conventional action movie.
“My intention was to turn that kind of movie on its head,” says Lehmann. “I thought people have seen these things so many times, they must be ready to see the truly odd version of it.”
“In the Olympics you can’t just go up and make any dive,” says Waters. “You tell the judges what dive you’re going to do and then they grade you. And ‘Hudson Hawk,’ we never told the judges what dive we were doing. I think people got angry: Wait a minute, you didn’t give us a Bruce Willis action movie.”
Leading up to the film’s release, there were reports of a shoot hijacked by a star whose ego was getting the better of him as he rode the wave of the success of the first two “Die Hard” movies. Lehmann admits the clash of personalities made for a complicated shoot.
“Of course, when you’re hired by Bruce Willis and Joel Silver to do what is essentially a vanity project of Bruce’s, you’re not going to have the kind of control that you have when you make a piece of personal filmmaking,” says Lehmann. “But it was really difficult to deal with somebody who, in theory, was one of my bosses as producer on the film and a big star, which is always a thousand-pound gorilla.”
Author David Hughes recently published “The Unmaking of Hudson Hawk,” a book on the film’s production, reception and afterlife. Calling from England, Hughes thinks the critical reappraisal and resuscitation of the movie has gained a bit of momentum — and is in danger of slipping.
“I feel like any day there’s going to be a headline that says, ‘Nope, despite what you’ve heard, “Hudson Hawk” is still s—.’ The pendulum is about to swing back the other way and people are going to start saying that it’s bad again. And when that happens, I think that will be the most perfect life cycle of the film.”
But for now two of the key people behind making the film in the first place want to enjoy a moment they have rarely been allowed.
“People are finally laughing with the movie, not at the movie,” says Waters.
Celebrating a fallen friend
Harry Dean Stanton, photographed in Los Angeles in 2013.
(Jordan Strauss / Invision / AP)
To celebrate the centennial of the birth of the beloved character actor Harry Dean Stanton, Vidiots will screen the 2013 documentary “Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction” on Tuesday. Director Sophie Huber will be joined in conversation by actor Logan Sparks for an evening hosted by Cherry Jones.
The film is a tender portrait of Stanton, who found relative fame later in life with roles in films such as “Alien,” “Paris, Texas,” “Repo Man” and “Pretty in Pink.”
“He makes it look really easy,” said Stanton’s friend and frequent collaborator David Lynch around the time of Stanton’s death in 2017. “But it’s not that easy to be looking like it’s easy.”
A flaky love story
Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel in the 1971 movie “Minnie and Moskowitz.”
(Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)
One of my most memorable moviegoing experiences of the last few years was seeing John Cassavetes’ 1971 “Minnie and Moskowitz” for the first time. The movie has a joyful, unpredictable energy thanks to the openhearted, dynamic performances of its two leads, Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel, as two mismatched strangers who find temporary solace in each other. Romantic, funny and with lots of great L.A. locations and moments — I often think of a perilous U-turn across La Brea by Cassel — this is a singular gem.
It was just announced that a new restoration of the film will premiere later this year at the Venice Film Festival, but there is no reason to wait. The movie is showing tonight at the Philosophical Research Society as part of its “YesterdayLA” series celebrating the city. On Saturday there will also be a rare theatrical screening of 1972’s “Columbo: Étude In Black,” starring Cassavetes as an L.A. symphony conductor who may have committed the perfect crime until he catches the attention of Peter Falk’s rumpled detective.
On the road again
Maribel Verdú, left, Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal in the movie “Y Tu Mamá También.”
(Criterion Collection)
Playing as part of the American Cinematheque’s “Summer Breakdown” series, which, true to its name, features movies about car trouble, Alfonso Cuarón’s 2001 “Y Tu Mamá También” is showing tonight and tomorrow at the Los Feliz Theater in 35mm.
It stars Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna as two teenage best friends who set off on a road trip with an alluring older woman (Maribel Verdú) they don’t know particularly well. Emotions fly fast and furious among all three of them, as the film seems at times like a horndog teen comedy and at others like a subtle exploration of class and sexual dynamics. Of course, it is all of those things, made with a fresh sense of style.
As Kenneth Turan put it in his 2002 review, “Nominally a simple road movie about two Mexican teenagers taking off to look for a mythical beach in the company of a suddenly available woman of 28, ‘Y Tu Mamá’ manages to be comic, dramatic, erotic, sociological and even political, all without breaking a sweat.”
Less positively, Amy reviewed the live-action adaptation of “Moana,” noting “Every one of Disney’s remakes and spinoffs of its animated hits has been a naked cash grab.”
The new “Evil Dead Burn” is brutal and not much else, per our reviewer Joshua Rothkopf: “The gore comes like a tide, shockingly for a mainstream studio wide release.”
