“The Dark Knight Rises” composer Hans Zimmer has composed a song dedicated to the Aurora, Colo., shooting victims.
Mr. Zimmer posted the track, “Aurora,” on his Facebook page Friday. Mr. Zimmer said he recorded the song in London in the days after the theater shooting last week. All proceeds are being donated to a fund for victims of the shooting that killed 12 people.
The 8½-minute song is being sold for donations from 10 cents to $2,500.
Mr. Zimmer has scored all three films in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.
Madonna draws ire for brief Paris concert
A small Madonna concert that the pop star said was intended to celebrate France’s tolerance instead tested it, drawing boos and cries of “refund!” when she left the stage after just 45 minutes.
Thursday’s show, billed as an intimate event at Paris’ Olympia club, was streamed live on YouTube. By Friday morning, the channel that showed the event disabled comments and had more than 12,000 dislikes compared with 10,000 likes.
An invitation to tweet about the show appeared to backfire — audience members used the suggested hashtag — #MDNAParis — to complain. The rebroadcast of the show cuts off when Madonna leaves the stage, apparently before the crowd realized the concert was over.
The show was announced after France’s far-right National Front threatened to sue Madonna after the singer showed a video at a Bastille Day concert in Paris with an image of the party’s leader, Marine Le Pen, with a swastika on her forehead.
“I’ve heard that a certain Marine Le Pen was upset with me,” Madonna told the crowd, according to the newspaper Le Parisien. “It’s not my intention to make enemies.”
Seinfeld taking stand-up back to New York City
Jerry Seinfeld is bringing back his live stand-up comedy to New York City — the place he said he learned to be funny.
It will be the first time he’ll present full live comedy performances in the city since his 1998 Broadway show, “I’m Telling You for the Last Time.”
There will be one performance in each of the five boroughs on Thursday nights in October and November.
Mr. Seinfeld said: “I was born in Brooklyn, went to school in Queens and started out as a comedian in Manhattan. I feel like New York City taught me how to be funny.”
The first performance is at Manhattan’s Beacon Theater on Oct. 4.
Each show will feature Colin Quinn. Mr. Seinfeld directed him in the Broadway show “Colin Quinn: Long Story Short.”
Spider-Man comic book sells for $657K at auction
Artist Todd McFarlane’s original cover art for The Amazing Spider-Man No. 328 has sold for a record $657,250 at auction, just one among several pieces from the 1990s that went for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The McFarlane cover, which shows Spider-Man gut-punching the Hulk, was part of a collection of original art owned by Martin Shamus, a Long Island, N.Y.-based comics and memorabilia shop owner.
Mr. McFarlane drew several titles for Marvel Comics in the 1990s and then left to develop his own character, “Spawn,” and form Image Comics with other artists and writers.
The cover was among several sold by Heritage Auctions, and also included Mr. McFarlane’s cover for Spider-Man No. 1, which was bought for $358,500.
Stallone: Juggling schedules to make ’Expendables 2’
Sylvester Stallone, one of the biggest action stars in Hollywood, knows that the hardest challenge of making an action film like “Expendables 2” was not the stunts, the guns or the explosive action scenes, but rather, the complicated dance required to get so many major action stars to show up on the same day.
“Everyone in this movie has had a very stellar career,” he added. “To get them all together at one time is a minor miracle.”
Mr. Stallone, who directed the first “Expendables” film, returns to star alongside an all-star cast featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jason Statham, Yu Nan, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Chuck Norris, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Liam Hemsworth, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“It makes it very special because you’re never, ever going to see this again,” Mr. Stallone says in a new behind-the-scenes featurette.
While Mr. Stallone has handed the directing reins over to Simon West, the actor will star as Barney Ross who, along with his group of mercenaries, is out for revenge after one of their own is killed.
“Most of the actions films today are very, highly technical, and so the ’Expendables’ films got to bring back some of that old-time rock ’n’ roll,” Mr. Stallone said.
The rest of the brief, one-minute clip shows the actors performing stunts and fights, sometimes in front of green screens, and driving some pretty heavy machinery.
In one shot, Mr. Stallone is seen smoking a cigar on set — because, really, what else would you expect of Mr. Stallone while hanging out on set?
The “Expendables 2” opens in theaters on August 17.
Compiled from Web and wire reports.
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