wounds

SHAKIRA’S performance at the Super Bowl 2020 halftime show was plagued by backstage tensions with her Latina co-star Jennifer Lopez.

But today, the South American She Wolf singer is howling with delight as she dominates music charts around the world following a show-stopping performance at the World Cup Final.

Colombian beauty Shakira, 49, pulled off the ultimate performance, wowing 1.5billion global viewers at Sunday’s mega gig.

The mum-of-two, who is worth £224million, celebrated her success by sharing snaps of herself with Beyonce, Jay Z, David Beckham, BTS, Tom Cruise and Anya Taylor-Joy.

Elsewhere, her rival J-Lo was left washing away her woes after she was pictured in a bathtub on a day out with her sister.

It came after she sang at an intimate gig for Dolce and Gabbana in Sicily last week — a much less extravagant showcase than Shakira’s.

Insiders say J-Lo was licking her wounds after being desperate to land the World Cup gig herself, 12 years on from her stellar performance at the 2014 tournament in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

To add insult to injury, her latest movie, Kiss Of The Spider Woman, was branded a box office flop.

As one music insider said: “J-Lo practically dismissed Shakira as some sort of backup singer at the Super Bowl, but how the tables have turned.

“Naturally J-Lo would have loved her chance to shine on the world stage again.”

Rumblings of a feud between the pair first began in February 2020.

The American football body, the NFL, had booked Shakira and J-Lo to co-headline the prestigious Super Bowl half-time show, a slot that has attracted the likes of Michael Jackson, Prince and Beyonce.

Fans went wild for Shakira as she sang hits including Whenever, Wherever and Hips Don’t Lie, and J-Lo belted out her bangers On The Floor and Love Don’t Cost A Thing.

The critics lapped it up, calling the concert “electric” and the “sexiest half-time show in memory”.

But behind closed doors, Jennifer, 56, was said to be unhappy that she had to share the stage.

In her 2022 Netflix documentary Halftime, a furious J-Lo raged behind the scenes. She blasted the joint ­performance as “the worst idea in the world”, with her manager Benny Medina adding: “It was an insult to say you needed two Latinas to do the job that one artist historically has done.”

J-Lo made it very clear she felt she had deserved the 12-minute slot to herself.

Fans also spotted a difference in how the artists shared promotional photos on Facebook in the weeks before the event.

While Shakira’s snaps featured both Latina artists, J-Lo’s were of herself.

Despite J-Lo’s very public comments, her rival has been more ­discreet, though she has hinted at tensions. Shakira, who released her first album aged 14, confessed: “It wasn’t an easy show to put together.

“There was a lot of work behind it, a lot of stress. But it was one of the highlights of my career.”

Fast forward to now and the tables have turned for the stars, who both burst on to the pop scene in the mid-Nineties.

Shakira’s infectious World Cup anthem with Burna Boy, Dai Dai, has taken the world by storm, triggering a chart frenzy the likes of which J-Lo has not experienced since 2011 when On The Floor — her collaboration with Pitbull — went to No1.

Minutes after her hip-shaking performance of the track at the World Cup Final, it was riding high at the top of Spotify’s chart, handing the star her biggest streaming day ever — and the biggest streaming day in US Spotify history to boot.

Shakira has pledged to donate all royalties from Dai Dai to the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund.

A music insider said: “Shakira’s numbers are astronomical. She is dominating every single music chart on Earth. It’s quite the achievement for any artist, never mind one who turns 50 next year.”

What’s more, the singer’s phenomenally successful Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran (Women No Longer Cry) tour was officially 2025’s highest-grossing global trek and the most lucrative tour of all time by a Hispanic artist.

To top off her reign, Shakira is heading back to Europe this autumn for a 12-arena residency across September and October in Madrid.

It will be at a brand new, specially built venue dubbed the Shakira Stadium.

An insider added: “Having a literal stadium built in your name in Spain is one hell of a mic drop. You can’t buy that kind of triumph.”

It has been a different story for J-Lo, who was forced to cancel her This Is Me . . . Live tour in 2024 amid reports of weak ticket sales.

She said in a statement she was “heartsick and devastated”.

What makes this triumph even sweeter for Shakira is it was born from the ashes of heartache. Both stars have endured devastating public splits.

In 2022, Shakira’s 11-year relationship with Spanish football legend Gerard Pique fell apart amid claims he cheated.

Spanish media reported she discovered his infidelity when she returned to their Barcelona mansion and noticed someone had been eating her strawberry jam — a spread that her hubby loathed.

She later dismissed this as “not true”, but split with the former footballer nonetheless.

Instead of moping, Shakira — who has sons Milan, 13, and Sasha, 11, with her ex — marched straight into the recording studio.

She teamed up with Argentine producer Bizarrap to release a ruthless diss track that mercilessly mocked Pique and his new, girlfriend, Clara Chía Marti, who was in her early twenties at the time.

In an obvious dig, she sang: “I’m worth two 22s. You traded a Ferrari for a Twingo. You traded a Rolex for a Casio.”

Shakira also proudly declared in the lyrics: “Women don’t cry any more, they cash in.”

And cash in she did. The song shattered several Guinness World Records, rocketed her career to new heights and proved that hell hath no fury like a Colombian pop ­goddess scorned.

J-Lo, took a different approach. After three failed marriages — to Ojani Noa, Cris Judd and Marc Anthony — with whom she has 18-year-old twins Max and Emme — J-Lo rekindled her early Noughties romance with ex-fiancé Ben Affleck in 2021.

Bennifer 2.0 tied the knot in 2022, and Jen became so hopelessly obsessed with their “fairytale” that she self- funded a cringe-inducing, £15million ­musical film, This Is Me . . . Now: A Love Story.

The film bombed spectacularly, the accompanying album flopped and, just two years later, their marriage ended in another bitter divorce.

J-Lo’s recent cinematic efforts have not fared any better.

While she was once the undisputed queen of the romcom, with movie hits including The Wedding Planner and Maid In Manhattan, her recent films have failed to set the box office alight. In fact, 2024 sci-fi flick Atlas was widely panned, while last year’s Kiss Of The Spider Woman lost millions, leaving ­Hollywood insiders questioning J-Lo’s bankability.

Even a recent return to romcom in Netflix’s Office Romance scored a measly 49 per cent on movie review website Rotten Tomatoes.

While recent professional endeavours may have struggled, J-Lo is the ultimate comeback queen.

And her £300million business empire, including the booming JLo Beauty line, proves she is a ­formidable force.

So while Shakira is enjoying global adoration, it would perhaps be foolish to write J-Lo out of Hollywood quite yet.

WASHINGTON — Democrats have spent nearly two years trying to move past the 2024 presidential election. Now, Jill Biden’s new memoir is forcing them to relive it.

Her new book, “View from the East Wing,” which comes out Tuesday, is already drawing sharp rebukes from top Democrats, some of whom say it is a poorly timed and misleading account of the events that led to the demise of her husband’s presidency.

“Unhelpful … Ripping open a healing scab is never helpful,” John Morgan, a Florida trial attorney who was a major fundraiser for Biden’s 2024 campaign, told The Times. “In my opinion, she was the main problem. She loved the life and didn’t want it to end.”

Those type of frustrations erupted last week as the former first lady began promoting her book, including in a sit-down interview with CBS News airing Sunday, in which she said she thought the sitting president was having a stroke as she watched the 2024 presidential debate.

“I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,” Biden said. The moment “scared me to death,” she added.

For Democrats who had a similar reaction in real time, but who spent months being told by the Biden campaign that their concerns were overblown, her remarks landed like a gut punch. With the midterms around the corner, some bemoaned that Biden was relitigating a sore subject — particularly the question of who knew what about Biden’s aging and cognitive decline.

“What I care about is what happens going forward,” Dan Pfeiffer, a host of “Pod Save America,” a popular progressive podcast, said on the show Thursday. “What bothers me the most is not the timeline of events, but whether Democratic leaders now will ever reckon with the massive breach of trust that came because of how all of that was handled.”

Meghan Hays, a former White House aide to Joe Biden, said on C-SPAN’s “Ceasefire” that although she understands that Jill Biden is trying to sell books, her efforts are not helping the party ahead of the midterm elections.

“We have a lot of momentum in our favor … and when we get pulled back into conversations about age and the election in ‘24, it’s never gonna be a good place for Democrats,” Hays said. “I think it is a tough place to be.”

The Democratic Party found itself trapped in a similar dynamic earlier this month, when the Democratic National Committee released a long-awaited, 192-page report dissecting the 2024 loss. The committee’s chairman, Ken Martin, shared the postelection autopsy after coming under intense pressure from Democratic operatives, and apologized for how he handled its release.

The report faulted Kamala Harris and Democrats’ focus on “identity politics” but did not address Biden’s decision to seek reelection amid health concerns and the rushed selection of Harris to replace him on the ticket.

In her book, the former first lady writes that her goal is to be able to “set the record straight” about what happened during the debate and the months that followed that led to President Trump’s return to the White House, according to the Atlantic, which obtained a copy of the book ahead of its release.

At one point, she writes that she even suspected her husband may have been inadvertently impaired after taking cough syrup. In the CBS interview, Biden maintained that she never saw any signs of cognitive decline while he was the sitting president.

“He was the same, the essence of the same Joe Biden, but yeah, he was slowing down. He was getting older,” she said. “You know, it’s a very intense job. I think it ages you — quickly.”

Morgan, the former Biden fundraiser, said he does not believe the first lady is telling the truth in her memoir.

“If you like fiction it’s good,” Morgan said. He added that her claim that she had never witnessed her husband act in a similar way since the debate “defies the smell test.”

“His keys should have been taken long before that night,” Morgan said.

Michael LaRosa, a former press secretary for the first lady, called Democrats’ reaction to the new memoir “pretty grim.”

“There is a deep reservoir of frustration among ‘formers’ who believe she enables the culture around her and the President rather than challenging it,” LaRosa wrote. “So now they seem to be challenging her.”

Although many Democrats are publicly expressing their annoyance at the conversation Biden has resurfaced, others do not see the former first lady’s comments having an effect on the upcoming elections.

“This is not going to be part of a conversation in the election. It’s going to be part of a conversation in Washington because that is what Washington does, but this is not going to move the needle in New Hampshire or other states where it matters,” said Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist who ran a pro-Biden super PAC during the 2020 election cycle.

Schale was blunt: “She is selling books.”

Even if that is the case, Republicans are taking notice.

In a Truth Social post on Friday, President Trump appeared gleeful to note that Biden was “finally admitting” that she did not know what was wrong with her husband during “our spectacular, and highly rated, 2024 Presidential Debate.”

The president lamented that the former first lady did not compliment his performance.

“In other words, as many have asked, did my strong performance in that debate cause him to plain and simple ‘choke,’ leading to his ignominious defeat, or were other reasons the cause? Nobody else knows the answer to that, BUT I DO!!!” Trump wrote.

At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, filmmaker William D. Caballero won the NEXT Special Jury Award for Creative Expression for his intensely personal, multimedia feature debut, “TheyDream.” During his acceptance speech, he made a powerful statement.

“In case ICE were ever to harm me or kill me, this film will serve as the truth of who I am, and who my family is, before Fox News or this administration ever makes us out to be the villain[s],” he recalls paraphrasing during a recent interview.

Blending live action footage with different animation techniques — as well as the 3-D-printed miniatures that have been a fixture of Caballero’s work for more than a decade — “TheyDream” honors the filmmaker’s Puerto Rican loved ones, particularly his mother, Milly.

She collaborated with him in the making of this one-of-a-kind portrait of loss, resilience and shared healing. Their heartfelt exchanges throughout this process are also shared on-screen.

“Seeing her light up and become transformed throughout was just invigorating, because it allowed us to talk about heavy things and bond throughout the process of creating a story that’s personal [for us] both,” Caballero says. “It’s like, ‘Let’s guide each other and instead of me taking your stories and making magic with them, let’s make this magic together.’”

The brilliantly unconventional piece of autobiographical storytelling will screen as the closing night film of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF) on Sunday. Recently, John Leguizamo and Ben DeJesus joined the film as executive producers.

Starting with his 2013 short film “How You Doin,’ Boy? Voicemails From Gran’pa,” Caballero has used miniatures to immortalize his loved ones. That bite-sized introduction to his Boricua grandfather’s humorous wisdom evolved into the HBO Latino show, “Gran’pa Knows Best.”

“When I started working on ‘Gran’pa Knows Best,’ I knew that 3-D printing was this new technique,” he says. “But I’d never seen anyone that looked or sounded like my grandfather in it. I realized that it could be a really creative method to preserve his voice and his story. “

Then came the 2017 short “Victor & Isolina” about his grandparents’ relationship, and more recently in 2022, he debuted “Chilly and Milly,” which focused on his parents. Some of the sets from these shorts, tiny replicas of places familiar to Caballero, and a few of the miniature characters were reused in “TheyDream.”

“Being able to create these things in miniature is almost like getting back in touch with the idea of play,” Caballero explains. “As a child, you invent lots of stories all the time. But now as an artist, I’m able to tell stories that touch upon reality and painful memories, but also hopes and dreams in a way that hearkens back to the innocence of childhood.”

Filmmaker William D. Caballero will screen “TheyDream” on Sunday at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF).

(William D. Caballero)

“TheyDream” is a culmination of the eclectic and nimble artistic practice that Caballero has developed since he studied digital art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

“I’d always just been attracted to new ways of expressing myself and expressing stories. And I say this both in a way that brings me pride, but also brings me a bit of a headache, because I don’t think I’ll ever be a conventional filmmaker,” he says, laughing.

Still, working outside the margins of traditional moviemaking requires great adaptability.

When Caballero received funding for “TheyDream” in 2021, the money wasn’t enough to conceive it as he had originally envisioned it: entirely told with 3-D-printed figures in physical sets. The lack of resources forced him to rethink his approach, and he opted for hiring two Puerto Rican animators, Julisse Tinoco and Frank Martinez, each of whom animate in distinct styles, to help him create some of the sequences needed.

“This all goes back to the resourcefulness that I learned when I was young,” Caballero says. “When you’re born Latino and low-income in this society, you can’t let yourself be written off or you’re already defeated before you even begin.”

Caballero grew up in housing projects in New York City, and later in a trailer in his grandmother’s backyard in Fayetteville, N.C. Both of his parents were disabled.

Filmmaker William D. Caballero poses as his father for a reference shot in the making of his 2026 film “TheyDream.”

For Caballero, he says the arts have provided an escape that he “needed in order to survive and not feel weighed down by American consumerism, by poverty and by feeling trapped.” Whenever grief has perturbed him, Caballero has processed it through creativity.

With “TheyDream,” he wished to extend that vehicle for self-reflection to his mother. The film addresses complicated familial bonds and his mother’s experience caring for others.

“Throughout the years, we’ve lost several of my family members that we were both close to, but my mother especially,” he says. “She feels their absence much stronger than I do. I live in Los Angeles, my mother still lives in North Carolina. Knowing that she was alone in the mobile home, it just made me feel like, ‘That can’t be good for her.’”

His mother, he says, deals with self-esteem issues because her identity has for so long been reduced to being a caretaker for elderly relatives, who, inevitably, pass away — leaving her feeling like a failure. In reality, it was thanks to her devotion that they added years of life.

Caballero’s mother was at the Sundance premiere of “TheyDream,” where she witnessed how others saw her through the film she helped her son craft.

“I wanted her to feel like, ‘Mom, look at all these people that are clapping for you. They’re clapping for you because you are a hero. You deserve to hold yourself high and be strong and know that there’s something incredible in your story that’s indicative of the stories of many low-income Americans, regardless of race,’” Caballero says, visibly moved.

A prolific and highly regarded artist (he is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow), Caballero has several other projects in the works that he’s trying to shop around. One of them is an episodic series titled “Second Fiddle,” about a 15-year-old Latino boy who gets accepted to a prestigious summer youth orchestra camp — and whose overbearing mother decides she’s going to stay in the camp with him.

Caballero’s mother, Milly, got the animated treatment in “TheyDream.”

“I never saw a Latino playing violin on TV or the big screen. I didn’t see any quirky, nerdy, artsy Latino kids like I was,” he says. “And I felt in my core that [it] was just wrong and something that I could change.”

Another project, “Raúl Playing Game,” is “an adult version of Pixar’s ‘Inside Out,’ ” that takes place in the mind of a closeted bisexual man. Caballero himself is bisexual. In 2022, “Raúl Playing Game” was selected for the LALIFF Inclusion Fellowship, which provided support for a short film version that serves as proof of concept for a potential TV show.

“I always wanted to make sure that I was telling authentic stories even if not necessarily always positive stories,” he says. “I’m very happy that I never lost track of that. Because I do believe that we need to tell our own stories, in our own unique voices, before someone else does it for us.”