Justin Bieber Finally Cuts His Hair & Fans Are Freaking Out: ‘This Is Not A Drill’ — See Makeover Pic - Hollywood Life

Justin Bieber hit the sweet spot between ‘buzzed head’ Biebs and ‘hair nearly as long as Hailey Baldwin’s.’ But the haircut isn’t the only change in Justin’s life, as his manager teased that ‘something is happening.’

Hailey Baldwin, 22, and Scooter Braun revealed Justin Bieber’s hair makeover to Instagram on April 17, and fans are loving the change of scenery. The 25-year-old heartthrob said bye-bye to his longer hair as he cropped the sides of his ‘do and opted for a tousled, almost spiky front. With his tie-dye shirt and tatted sleeve, JB looked like a punk rocker transported from the ’90s. His wife left a very loving message underneath the hair makeover post! “My love 😩😍😍,” she began. “You are an incredible man, you make me a better human being, you make me happier than I’ve ever been. Insanely proud of who you are and who you’re becoming.. I love you more every single day.”

Fellow celebrities left just as positive remarks. “Awwwww,” model Ashley Graham commented, while Winnie Harlow and Ashley Benson left heart emojis. Meanwhile, Justin’s manager teased that an exciting project is on the horizon. “This guy! Something is happening. Love it,” Scooter wrote underneath his own post, as he borrowed the photo from Hailey. The picture was snapped in front of a green screen in a photo studio, which made fans freak out over the haircut and the possibility of new music. So far, fans know that Justin was enlisted for Lil Dicky’s new song and music video for “Earth Day,” which drops on April 18.

Before cutting his hair, Justin was most recently seen dancing at Weekend One of Coachella with Hailey and her best friend Kendall Jenner, 23. Justin wore a baseball cap, but his sideburns were noticeably longer over the weekend. Seeing his freshly styled hair just days later was a pleasant surprise for fans. “JUSTIN BIEBER FINALLY CUT HIS HAIR THIS IS NOT A DRILL REMAIN CALM,” one fan tweeted, while another fan wrote, “Not only are we finally getting new justin music but he’s gonna SERVE HAIR and LOOKS in a music video after 726252 years im.” A third fan could barely process the news, writing, “THIS PIC KEPT COMING UP ON MY TL AND I KEPT SCROLLING PAST IT BECAUSE I DIDNT EVEN REALISE IT WAS JUSTIN CAUSE HIS HAIR HAS ACTUALLY BEEN DONE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 20 YEARS IS THIS REAL LIFE.”

Justin Bieber pictured here on March 7, before he cropped his sideburns. (SplashNews)

Justin shaved his head in Oct. 2018, and has been growing it out since. He rocked a mustache and long hair, a la young Brad Pitt, throughout the summer of 2018.

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2019-04-18 02:26:00Z
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Single Review: Madonna’s ‘Medellin’ - Variety

April 17, 2019 11:25AM PT

While a song that begins with a cha-cha count-in and the lyric “I took a pill” sounds like it should be a dancefloor rager, it’s actually the unexpectedly low-key return of Madonna, who today dropped “Medellin,” the first single from her forthcoming album “Madame X.” A collaboration with Colombian singer Maluma — himself a native of the country’s mountain city — and her longtime collaborator Mirwais, the song combines a sing-song melody with a reggaeton-inflected, shuffing beat; she and Maluma pair trade off flirty verses in Spanish throughout the song.

While she pronounces the city’s name correctly (“meh-deh-zheen”), to her discredit she needlessly references the city’s violent past — it was the home base of drug cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar — in the lyrics: “We built a cartel just for love/ Venus was hovering above us.” Visitors to the city will know that it’s one of the last things residents want to talk about (unless they’re leading one of the tourist-baiting “Narcoterrorism tours”).

The song stretches on for nearly five minutes, stretching out toward the end with an extended instrumental bit designed for some low-key dancing. While produced by Mirwais, the song recalls Madonna’s previous Latin-inflected work with producer/songwriter Diplo.

The rest of the lyrics are more impressionist and romantic, and the city is only mentioned incidentally. “I took a pill and had a dream/ I went back to my seventeenth year, allowed myself to be naive, to be someone I’ve never been,” she sings on the song’s opening verses. “I took a sip and had a dream/ And I woke up in Medellín.”

And while the song may not be the dancefloor-filling that fans might be hoping for, it’s a sultry and promising introduction to Madonna’s latest era.

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https://variety.com/2019/music/reviews/single-review-madonnas-medellin-1203191713/

2019-04-17 18:25:00Z
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WGA Sues Talent Agencies in Battle Against Packaging Fees - Variety

The Writers Guild of America has filed a lawsuit against WME, CAA, UTA and ICM as the guild steps up its fight against Hollywood’s largest talent agencies over conflict of interest concerns.

“We are here today to announce the filing of a lawsuit to establish that packaging fees are illegal under the law of California,” WGA general counsel Tony Segall said on Wednesday at the Writers Guild’s Los Angeles headquarters.

The suit has been filed on behalf of the WGA West and East. Packaging fees are at the center of the suit, in the form of two claims that say the agency practice violates state and federal law.

Two writers — Meredith Stiehm and Barbara Hall — spoke about what they said were harmful experiences with packaging fees. Stiehm was a creator on the CBS series “Cold Case.” In the show’s seventh season, Stiehm was asked to gut her budget, leave location shooting in Philadelphia, forgo music licensing and make other concessions she said “adversely affected the quality of the show.”

Meanwhile, she noted, CAA made $75,000 per episode as a part of their packaging fee on the series. The production studio, Warner Bros., refused to reduce the fee. Stiehm estimated CAA made $0.94 cents on every dollar she earned on the show, on top of their commission as her agent.

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Segall encouraged members of the WGA who have yet to disclose the firing of their agents — or openly decry the Code of Conduct at the heart of the war — to “think about the well-being of their guild and their members.”

The WGA’s lawsuit had been expected amid the mushrooming battle between the guild and ATA. The sides had been trying to negotiate a new agency franchise agreement during the past two months, but talks broke down last week as tensions flared and the WGA and ATA were far apart on key issues.

On April 12, the WGA issued a directive to members to terminate their business relationships with any agents that have not signed on to the WGA’s new Agency Code of Conduct. It’s believed that more than 1,000 such termination letters have been sent in the past few days, a development that has left the industry in a state of uncertainty about how to move forward with dealmaking that involves WGA members.

The WGA is taking aim at the decades-old industry practice of talent agencies receiving packaging fees on TV series from production entities. The guild maintains this is an inherent conflict of interest, and it has broadly accused agents of failing to fight for higher salaries for writers in favor of protecting their own financial interests through packaging fees. The guild has asserted that this is a violation of talent agents’ fiduciary responsibilities to writer clients.

More to come.

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https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/wga-sues-talent-agencies-1203191199/

2019-04-17 17:06:00Z
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Stream: Madonna and Maluma Pair Up On 'Medellin' - NPR

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The first single from Madonna's upcoming Madame X suggests that the doyenne of dance pop is making canny decisions in her 60^th year. "Medellin" is a carefully dosed combination of the coolly narcotic dance-pop she's often made with the track's producer, Mirwais, and the energetic reggaetón of the track's featured guest, the Colombian star Maluma, and suggests this global pop sound will be the foundation of her fourteenth studio album. Starting with a whispered "one, two, cha cha cha" from Queen Madge that lends the arrangement a witty vintage feel, the song proceeds to relate a fantasy that's both sexy and slightly nostalgic. "I took a pill and had a dream," Madonna murmurs, her voice artfully Auto-tuned. "I went back to my seventeenth year."

Madonna's reverie transports her to the Colombian mountain city where, in what some might consider the song's most dubious lyric, she and Maluma have "built a cartel just for love." The line, however, makes sense in the larger scheme of Madame X, due out June 14. The singer promises that the album will have the feel of a spy movie, giving Madonna the chance to inhabit many identities – a few she's listed on Instagram include "a teacher, a nun, a cabaret singer, a saint, a prostitute" and many more. Madonna as secret agent, assuming myriad identities but never settling into one? That's a brilliant way to deal with questions the pop superstar has faced in recent years about both cultural appropriation and her refusal to embrace her status as a mature woman and artist.

The fantasy of "Medellin" could belong to a woman of any age, race or social status. Its dreaminess makes it accessible to all without making any claims on authenticity. Grounded in a minimalist take on reggaetón's ubiquitous tresillo rhythm, "Medellin" lets Madonna lay back in the groove while giving the waggish, husky-voiced Maluma plenty of room to spin out his rhymes in Spanish. Madonna and Mirwais are clearly thinking of "Despacito" here, integrating English and Spanish seamlessly in a song meant for a global marketplace.

Intended to be a celebration of the connections among musicians across borders, Madame X features several other collaborations, some intriguing (the Brazilian singer Anitta) and others possibly a bit on the nose (Diplo, Migos). Madonna has said that the album's global perspective was inspired by her life in Portugal, where she's lived since 2017, but of course, the Latin connection has been a major aspect of her work since her earliest days. "Medellin" is, in some ways, a return to her happy place, definitively portrayed in her 1986 single "La Isla Bonita" — only this time with a woozy feel more redolent of a time when synthetic drugs and virtual realities dominate the cultural conversation. Let's hope the rest of Madame X is this playful and charming.

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https://www.npr.org/2019/04/17/714318790/madonnas-new-single-medellin-is-a-self-aware-nostalgia-trip

2019-04-17 17:41:00Z
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WGA Sues Big Four Agencies Over Packaging Fees - Deadline

UPDATED with more info, full lawsuit: The WGA has filed a civil lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against the four major packaging agencies, accusing them of violating state and federal laws with respect to the fiduciary duties to their writer-clients.

Tony Segall, the general counsel for the Writers Guild of America, West, said during a press conference at WGAW headquarters in Los Angeles on Wednesday said the suit against CAA, WME, ICM Partners and UTA makes two claims: that packaging fees violate state fiduciary duty laws, and that those fees violate federal unfair competition laws.

Specifically, the suit cites the anti-kickback provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act. Under that law, representatives of an employee can’t receive money from an employer, Segall said.

“Packaging fees have caused tremendous financial harm to the guilds and their members including the individual plaintiffs,” read the 25-page suit (read it here).

The plaintiffs listed are the WGA West and WGA East, and WGA members Patricia Carr, Ashley Gable, Barbara Hall, Deric A. Hughes, George Johannessen, Deirdre Mangan, David Simon and Meredith Stiehm.

Simon is creator of HBO’s The Wire and The Deuce. Stiehm is creator of the CBS series Cold Case.

“When the show was sold, CAA negotiated a packaging fee for itself, without my knowledge,” Stein said in remarks at the press conference. “It wasn’t until six years and 134 episodes later that I learned about it. It turned out that on the show I created, I worked on exclusively for years, CAA ended up making 94 cents for every dollar I earned. That is indefensible. An agency should make 10% of what a client makes — not 20, not 50, not like in my case, 94%. 10% is enough.”

Packaging has been allowed under the WGA’s franchise agreement with the agencies since 1976. But Segall said Wednesday that “the guild has been uncomfortable with packaging forever.” He added that in the mid-1970s the guild filed lawsuits against then-William Morris Agency, in which a settlement was reached that allowed the guild to attempt to regulate packaging. That, however, was “completely unsuccessful,” he said, and in recent years the TV packaging agencies “have abandoned the 10% commission model” and now rely almost entirely on packaging fees.

“It’s now time to ban it altogether,” Segall said.

The guild and the talent agencies repped by the Association of Talent Agents have not set any dates to resume discussions in their impasse over a new franchise agreement. Formal negotiations broke off Friday, after which the guild ordered its members to fire their agents who refuse to sign its Code of Conduct.

Segall added that “to date, thousands of writers have signed letters” terminating their agents who refused to sign the code, which was approved by an overwhelming vote of the union’s members. It bans packaging fees and prohibits agencies from being affiliated to production entities through corporate parents.

Before talks broke off Friday, the WGA and the ATA each made minor concessions but remain far apart on those two key issues, leading to today’s lawsuit.

“The agencies’ packaging fees violate the fiduciary duty that agents owe to their writer clients and deprive them of the conflict-free representation to which they are entitled,” the suit reads. “For these reasons, and because the payments made from the production companies to agencies as part of any package, constitute unlawful kickbacks from an employer to a ‘representative of any of his employees’ … packaging is an unlawful or unfair business practice for the purposes of the California Unfair Competition Law.”

The suit says packaging fees should be “declared unlawful” and “unjoined” and the plaintiffs should be awarded disgorgement of unlawful profits, and individual plaintiffs should be awarded restitution and damages. “Plaintiffs bring this lawsuit to end the agencies’ harmful and unlawful practice of packaging fees,” it said.

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https://deadline.com/2019/04/writers-guild-sues-agencies-packaging-fee-fight-1202597518/

2019-04-17 17:13:00Z
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Game of Thrones’ season 8 premiere was pirated almost 55 million times - The Verge

Game of Thrones returned to HBO with some of its highest ratings yet last Sunday, but even those numbers were dwarfed by an even bigger audience. The season 8 premiere had almost 55 million pirated views across illegal streams, downloads, and torrents in the first 24 hours, according to analytics firm MUSO.

Of those 55 million pirated views, MUSO says that the vast majority (76.6 percent) came from unofficial streams of the episode, with web downloads accounting for 12.2 percent of views, public torrents for 10.8 percent, and private torrents for 0.5 percent.

For comparison, HBO saw a total of 17.4 million viewers across its three platforms (the premium cable channel and its two internet streaming services, HBO Go and HBO Now), split between 11.8 million for the traditional TV channel and 5.6 million on the company’s official internet streams. Those numbers will likely go up in the coming days as more viewers watch the episode, but, presumably, so will the pirated views.

According to MUSO’s data, the most pirated views by country came from India (roughly 10 million views), which MUSO speculates is due to the difficulty of accessing the show there, and China (with roughly 5 million pirated views), which only airs a censored version of the show through official channels. On the other hand, the United States — which perhaps has the easiest legal means to access HBO — came in third on the charts with nearly 4 million illegal views, so it’s also possible people just don’t like to pay for HBO.

If past seasons are any indication, enthusiasm for the show is only going to grow as the final season progresses. That’s good news for HBO’s ratings, which will likely continue to break its own record. Looking at the massive piracy figures, you have to wonder what those numbers would look like if the series was even more accessible to users.

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https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/17/18412159/game-of-thrones-got-season-8-premiere-pirated-55-million-times-first-24-hours-hbo

2019-04-17 16:37:50Z
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‘Game of Thrones’ star Kit Harington claims he almost lost a body part while filming dragon scene - Fox News

“Game of Thrones” star Kit Harington says he nearly lost his manhood — well, at least a part of it — while filming a wild scene in the Season 8 premiere.

Harington, who plays Jon Snow in the popular HBO show which began it’s eighth and final season on Sunday, revealed in a behind-the-scenes clip that almost lost his right testicle while filming the scene where his character rides one of Daenerys Targaryen’s (Emilia Clarke) dragons.

The actor, 32, explained he had to ride a mechanical bull-type machine that the show’s CGI professionals would later transform into a dragon. While Clarke has become accustomed to riding on the “buck," Harington, on the other hand, has not.

‘GAME OF THRONES’ STAR KIT HARINGTON SAYS EMILIA CLARKE BLEW HIM AWAY WHEN THEY MET

“Buck work is not easy,” he began. “I think what sums up the buck for me was there was a bit where Jon almost falls off. The dragon swings around really violently, like this, and my right ball got trapped, and I didn’t have time to say ‘Stop!’ And I was being swung around.”

“In my head, I thought, ‘This is how it ends, on this buck, swinging me around by my testicles, literally.’”

“Sorry. Probably too much information,” Harington added with a grin as people behind the camera began to giggle.

Thankfully, Harington remained intact.

In a separate interview, the actor revealed he was blown away by Clarke when he first met the "Mother of Dragons."

‘GAME OF THRONES’ STAR SOPHIE TURNER REVEALS SHE HAS A ‘REAL URGE’ TO BECOME A POLICE OFFICER

“I remember the first time I ever saw her,” Harrington told Esquire for the magazine's cover story. “She came into the Fitzwilliam bar. I had been talking to Rich Madden at the bar and he went, ‘I’ve just met the new Daenerys. She’s gorgeous.’ And I was like, ‘Really? I haven’t met her yet.’ And then she came in and I saw her and was like, ‘Wow.’”

“She takes your breath away when she walks into a room, Emilia,” he added.

The first episode of the final season of was a record-breaker for the series and HBO. The 17.4 million viewers who watched Sunday's episode either on TV or online represent a season-opening high for the fantasy saga.

Fox News' Ann W. Schmidt and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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2019-04-17 15:27:18Z
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