When quarantine began back in March, Keith would perform original and cover songs for fans from his home, in a series titled Urban Underground, often with wife Nicole Kidman dancing by his side.
The country superstar will be hosting a holiday edition of the virtual show tonight, marking his final Urban Underground livestream of 2020.
Fans can expect to see the singer, who’s been stationed with his family at their home in Australia, performing acoustic renditions of songs off his latest chart-topping album, The Speed of Now Part 1.
Described in a statement as “authentic and spontaneous,” Keith will also offer a musical tribute to his fans.
“Thank you so much for all of your support this year. Let’s close out 2020 together,” he writes on Facebook where the show will airs tonight at 5 p.m. ET.
Ford Fairchild Another member of Runaway June is tying the knot!
Jennifer Wayne revealed on Wednesday morning that she and up-and-coming country singer Austin Moody are engaged: She posted a photo of the couple holding glasses of champagne, with Jennifer showing off the giant rock on her ring finger.
“Happy birthday to the man I get to spend the rest of my life with!!! I love you @theaustinmoody. Can’t wait to celebrate the day with you…” Jennifer captions their engagement photo on Instagram.
According to People, Austin proposed outside of Ocean Way Nashville Studios on Monday afternoon. Jennifer’s bandmate Natalie Stovall was also part of the surprise: She asked Jennifer to meet her at the studio, but when she arrived, Austin was there with a ring in hand.
After Jennifer said “yes,” Natalie popped a bottle of champagne and she and Jennifer FaceTimed fellow RJ member Naomi Cooke to tell her the good news. Naomi also got engaged earlier this month, to Boys Like Girls‘ frontman, Martin Johnson.
Jennifer was previously engaged to “I Met a Girl” singer William Michael Morgan.
Amazon Studios(NEW YORK) — Amazon Prime’s just-dropped Yearly Departed is a series of eulogies for 2020, hosted by Two Dope Queens‘ Phoebe Robinson and featuring a line-up of all female comedians including Tiffany Haddish, Rachel Brosnahan, Ziwe, Sarah Silverman, Patti Harrison, and Natasha Leggero.
Executive producer and writer Bess Kalb tells ABC Audio of the show’s mock-funeral format, “We needed a way to laugh about the year without diminishing it, and I think a sort of overly paying tribute to ridiculous things was an appropriate enough way to do that.”
She adds, “I think the comedy funeral lent itself pretty well to all these things that we are excited to see go — and a few that we can be melodramatic about the fact that we have to let go of for now.”
Brosnahan, the Emmy-winning star of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, explains, “We just…loved the thought of having a group of some of the funniest women that we know and admire say goodbye to this complete dumpster fire of a year together.”
For example, Haddish says a tearful goodbye to casual sex, thanks to quarantine, and COVID-19 testing, while Harrison waves goodbye to “rich girl influencers,” whose social media posturing during the pandemic made them look more ridiculous than usual.
She notes, “Especially in a lockdown…there’s nothing more violently disconnecting to be sitting on your couch covered in little cracker crumbs and then seeing someone…on, like, a floating yurt with 30 of their ‘closest friends,’ drinking champagne. And I think that’s really hard to connect to.”
Yearly Departed includes a show-stopping “In Memoriam” segment by Christina Aguilera, who belts out “I Will Remember You” as a list of things that 2020 ruined — like “Hugs,” “Vacations” and “The Name Karen” — scrolls behind her.
(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) — The Louisville Metro Police Department has moved to fire two officers involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor in her apartment earlier this year.
Officer Myles Cosgrove and Detective Joshua Jaynes were both notified of termination Tuesday, according to their lawyers. Both officers will answer the termination notices in a hearing before Police Chief Yvette Gentry, who was named to the role in September, on Thursday. They can also appeal the police chief’s final determination.
“We plan to attend the pre-termination hearing on December 31st, although I expect the result has already been pre-determined,” Thomas Clay, Jaynes’ lawyer, told ABC News in a statement. “I fully expect Mr. Jaynes will be terminated after the ‘hearing’ no matter what the evidence is to the contrary. We will appeal any disciplinary action taken against Mr. Jaynes because I believe the evidence shows he did nothing wrong.”
Jaynes was not present at the shooting, but prepared the search warrant for Taylor’s apartment.
Louisville’s River City Fraternal Order of Police said in a statement, “The FOP is aware that two of our members received pre-termination opportunity to respond notices today, outlining the chief’s current intent to terminate their employment. In the near future both members will have an opportunity to have a hearing before the chief of police and respond to the information contained in the notices. After those hearings, when the chief makes her final determinations, our members have the right to appeal any discipline that may be issued.”
A ballistics analysis determined that Cosgrove fired the shot that killed Taylor, officials said.
“I can confirm that Mr. Cosgrove has received a pre-termination notice. Otherwise, we have no comment,” Cosgrove’s attorney, Jarrod Beck, told ABC News.
Another officer involved in the raid, Brett Hankison, was fired in June. He had been the only officer punished in the wake of the botched raid.
Hankison was also indicted by a grand jury in September on three counts of wanton endangerment in the first degree in the shooting that killed Taylor, but neither he nor the other two officers involved in the fatal encounter were charged in her death. Hankison was charged for firing bullets into neighboring apartments.
He has pleaded not guilty.
Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, who also fired into the apartment, has not been fired by the department. Mattingly was shot in the leg during the raid.
“The Mayor of Louisville has informed the mother of Breonna Taylor that LMPD intends to terminate Officers Cosgrove and Jaynes and that both officers have the right to appeal,” a lawyer for the Taylor family told ABC News.
Jean Porter, deputy director of communications for Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, said in a statement to ABC News, “LMPD Chief Yvette Gentry has initiated disciplinary procedures for officers involved in the Breonna Taylor case, following investigations by LMPD’s Professional Standards Unit. State law KRS67c.326 (1) (f) precludes comments from any persons in Louisville Metro Government about the allegations in these cases.”
Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, was killed when the officers executed a “no-knock” warrant on the home she shared with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, on March 13. The police were looking for Jamarcus Glover, Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, who allegedly was a known drug trafficker. Walker, who said he believed the home was being robbed, opened fire on the officers. They returned fire, striking and killing Taylor.
Walker, who was a licensed gun owner, was initially charged with attempted murder, but that was eventually dropped. He has sued the Louisville Metro Police Department and city of Louisville, claiming he had a right to defend himself according to the state’s stand your ground law. Mattingly filed a countersuit in late October.
The lack of discipline helped to spark months of protests in Kentucky and across the U.S., especially in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May.
Jaynes was placed on administrative reassignment in June over questions about how and why the search warrant was approved, then-acting Police Chief Robert Schroeder said.
iStock/RawPixel(LOS ANGELES) — The COVID-19 pandemic took a terrible toll on the bottom line of the movie business. Thousands of theaters closed throughout the year amid lockdown restrictions, and production on untold numbers of films was temporarily delayed, indefinitely postponed or shut down for good.
As a result, 2020’s highest-grossing film was Universal’s Bad Boys for Life. The Will Smith/Martin Lawrence action comedy, which opened in January, made more than $204 million for the year domestically before movie houses closed. By comparison, 2019’s highest-grossing film, Avengers: Endgame, made more than $350 million in the U.S. on its opening weekend alone. The movie went onto become the highest-grossing movie of all time. Compare that to this year, where the combined box office totals for all of the top-ten movies didn’t make a third of what Endgame did.
Some theaters re-opened when COVID case numbers briefly declined in late summer, and few drive-in theaters enjoyed a brief renaissance, but theaters quickly closed again when infections surged in the fall. One of the handful of major releases this year, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, had to rely on its overseas take to carry the load and ended up making more than $350 million, the great majority of which came from non-U.S. screenings.
Here are the top 10 movies of 2020 domestically and their total grosses, according to Box Office Mojo:
1. Bad Boys for Life — $204,417,855 2. Sonic the Hedgehog — $146,066,470 3. Birds of Prey — $84,158,461 4. Dolittle — $77,047,065 5. The Invisible Man — $64,914,050 6. The Call of the Wild — $62,342,368 7. Onward — $61,555,145 8. Tenet — $57,800,000 9. The Gentlemen — $36,296,853 10. Fantasy Island — $26,441,782
The story of the year from the movie business became the number of films openings that were bumped in a vain effort to outrun the pandemic. Movies including A Quiet Place Part II, Wonder Woman 1984 and the James Bond film No Time to Die all of which saw their release dates bumped as many as three times before their respective studios shifted their release them to next year or, in what became a game-changing strategy, direct to streaming.
Universal made the first move in the spring by moving its then-brand new films The Invisible Man, The Hunt and Emma to streaming in March. Its yet-to open Trolls World Tour opened in what theaters it could in April but was then made available to stream on April 10, its debut date.
That move was followed suit by Warner Bros.’ deciding to bring its Harley Quinn movie Birds Of Prey to streaming shortly after its February release, and Disney, who brought its Disney/Pixar movie Onward, Artemis Fowl and then its live-action Mulan to Disney+.
Other studios made the switch to streaming, too, like Warner Bros.’ Scoob and the sequel to Borat, among dozens of others.
In December, Warner Bros. announced its entire slate of 2021 films — including major titles like Wonder Woman 1984, The Suicide Squad, Dune, the fourth Matrix movie, andLin-Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights film adaptation — will head directly to HBO Max, a major move that wasn’t welcome news to theater chains that still have yet to open in major cities like New York and Los Angeles.
The fates — and release dates — of other major releases are still up in the air. Marvel’s Black Widow film was supposed to open May 1;but after several postponements, its new release date now stands as May 7, 2021. That caused a domino reaction with other Marvel movies that were set to open in 2020, into 2022 and beyond, a backlog experienced by many major studios.
In total, domestic revenues for theaters in 2020 were at a 40-year low, with a total that could reach $2.3 billion — the lowest since the late ’70s before adjusting for inflation, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
As the year wound down, studios resumed shooting again, many overseas, with strict safety protocols in place. Among the films in production as of Christmas 2020 are Jurassic World: Dominion, the next Avatar movies, the fourth Matrix film and the seventh Mission: Impossible movie.
ABCKeith Urban is heading back Underground. 
