February 5, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

Courtesy HBO(NEW YORK) — “Who on earth could believe that about Woody Allen? I couldn’t believe it.”

That comment, from Woody Allen’s ex-wife Mia Farrow, is one of the first heard in the teaser for Allen v. Farrow, an upcoming HBO documentary about the sexual abuse investigation into the famous filmmaker.

The four-part documentary series, which examines the accusations Allen abused his then-7-year-old daughter Dylan, was “meticulously pieced together via intimate home movie footage, court documents, police evidence, revelatory videotape and never-before-heard audio tapes,” according to HBO. 

The project features interviews with Farrow, as well as with her children Dylan and Ronan, family friend Carly Simon, the case’s prosecutor, Frank Maco, and “relatives, investigators, experts and other first-hand eyewitnesses,” many of whom, HBO teases, are “speaking publicly about the events for the first time.”

The special will also deal with Allen’s relationship with Farrow’s adoptive daughter Soon-Yi, who he later married, as well as the aftermath of the abuse investigation and how it changed perceptions of the Oscar-winner’s work.

Dylan Farrow, then 32, made the allegations against her adoptive father in 2018. At that time, Allen issued a statement that read in part, “When this claim was first made more than 25 years ago, it was thoroughly investigated by both the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of the Yale-New Haven Hospital and New York State Child Welfare.”

“They both did so for many months and independently concluded that no molestation had ever taken place,” the statement continued. “Instead, they found it likely a vulnerable child had been coached to tell the story by her angry mother during a contentious breakup.”

Allen v. Farrow will premiere on Sunday, February 21. 

By Stephen Iervolino
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

February 5, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images(CONNECTICUT) — Christopher Plummer, the acclaimed Canadian actor perhaps best known for his role in The Sound of Music, has died. He was 91.

The Oscar winner died at his home in Connecticut with Elaine Taylor, his wife and best friend of 53 years, by his side, his manager confirmed to ABC News.

“Chris was an extraordinary man who deeply loved and respected his profession with great old fashion manners, self-deprecating humor and the music of words. He was a national treasure who deeply relished his Canadian roots. Through his art and humanity, he touched all of our hearts and his legendary life will endure for all generations to come,” Lou Pitt, his longtime friend and manager of 46 years, said in a statement.

Plummer, who began his career on stage, made his film debut in 1958’s Stage Struck and went on to a successful movie career that spanned more than six decades.

He starred in a vast variety of films, including The Return of the Pink Panther, Murder by Decree, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, A Beautiful Mind, Up, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, All the Money in the World, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Knives Out.

He earned his first Oscar nomination in 2010 for playing Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station. He told Canadian television just before the Oscar broadcast, “Well, I said it’s about time! I mean, I’m 80 years old, for God’s sake. Have mercy.” He lost that year to Christoph Waltz.

Two years later, at 82, he won the Academy Award for best supporting actor in Beginners.

Accepting the award, he famously quipped, “You’re only two years older than me, darling. Where have you been all my life?”

In addition to his Oscar, Plummer also won two Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a SAG Award and a BAFTA Award.

But Plummer remained best known to film audiences as the patriarch of the singing von Trapp family, starring alongside Julie Andrews in the 1965 hit musical The Sound of Music.

By Lucina Fisher
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

February 5, 2021 • No Comments • Entertainment News

L-R Shepard, Bovington, Corddry – Courtesy Motor Trend(NEW YORK) — Actors Dax Shepard and Rob Corddry and veteran automotive journalist and driver Jethro Bovington didn’t know each other before they signed on to host Motor Trend‘s new streaming series, Top Gear America, but they tell ABC Audio some wheel time off-camera changed that. 

“Per Jethro’s recommendation, he said, let’s borrow three cars and do a Angeles Crest run, which is the most legendary road in L.A. County,” Shepard says.  “So we got an [Audi] R8, we got a McLaren and we got — Jethro had that [Mustang] Shelby 500 [and] We did a crazy canyon day.”

“Something about it was the most fast forwarding to a friendship. Just by the end of that day, we were like, yup, we’re team,” Shepard declares.

Corddry says he knew he was picked to give an “everyman” perspective on the show, as he had no racing experience compared to his co-hosts. He’s quickly coming up to speed, however.

“[Somebody] asked me, “What’s the craziest thing you you want to do in a car?…I can no longer answer that question because on Top Gear, we are allowed to do stupid, stupid things,” says Corddry. “And so all my dreams are fulfilled in that realm.”

Bovington laughed, “The producers are great because they they come up with stupid things, but I don’t think there’s been an episode where we haven’t said, ‘We should do this thing,’ which is like what their thought times two and they let us do it.” 

Shepard adds with a laugh, “That Ford Explorer comes to mind…It was just sitting there and we said, you know, it would be an absolute crime if we didn’t jump that pile of logs with that thing.”  

Top Gear America is now streaming on the Motor Trend app.

By Stephen Iervolino
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.