Latest news with #ChiliPeppers
The Irish Sun
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
Ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers star swerves jailtime for running over & killing pedestrian but victim's family is still suing
EX-HOT Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer has evaded prison after accidentally crashing into and killing a pedestrian with his black SUV. The victim's distraught family is still suing the musician who has also performed with Pearl Jam. 5 Ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer accepted a plea deal following allegations he failed to yield while driving in 2024 Credit: Getty 5 A grandfather, Israel Sanchez, was killed while walking on a crosswalk Credit: Supplied 5 Officials told the court that Klinghoffer, 45, was driving a black 2022 GMC Yukon when his vehicle struck Israel Sanchez, who was walking to the shops Credit: Trial Lawyers for Justice Klinghoffer, 45, had been facing one year behind bars after he fatally hit Israel Sanchez, who was on a crosswalk. The grandfather, 47, who had been walking to the grocery store to buy ingredients to make soup, was later pronounced dead at a hospital. The star had been driving an SUV and making a left turn in Alhambra, California, east of Los Angeles on March 18, 2024, when he crashed into Sanchez, officials told a court. Klinghoffer was charged on August 29 with vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence, a misdemeanor that can bring a maximum of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. READ MORE SHOWBIZ NEWS He was not charged with having any violent intent, only with a failure to yield. The musician pleaded no contest to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence. The victim's only daughter burst into tears while she told Klinghoffer in court that he had caused her 'deep and lasting trauma." Most read in Entertainment Los Angeles County Judge Rosa Fregoso sentenced him to one year of informal probation and 60 days of community labor. Plus, Klinghoffer was ordered to complete a driver safety class and pay restitution - the sum of which will be decided at a later date. Pearl Jam guitarist sued after 'fatally hitting a grandpa with his car' He had been driving a black 2022 GMC Yukon at the time of the fatal crash, the court was told. Sanchez's cause of death was blunt force trauma. A prosecutor warned the defendant about the dangers of distracted driving. He was told, 'If you continue to drive while distracted, and as a result of your driving someone is killed, you can be charged with murder." Klinghoffer replied that he understood. His absence has left an irreversible void in our lives Ashley Sanchez, victim's daughter The dead man's daughter, Ashley Sanchez, burst into tears while telling the court about her beloved dad. She said in her victim impact statement, "My father was an extraordinary grandfather to my [children]. 'His absence has left an irreversible void in our lives.' She also recalled him as the "heart" of the family, who had a "unique gift for soothing,' while his meals were "more than just food - they were expressions of love and care." Speaking directly to Klinghoffer, Ashley added that the death of her dad had caused her 'deep and lasting trauma.' It was also an 'avoidable loss that has shaken my family," she said. CIVIL LAWSUIT In July 2024, Ashley launched a lawsuit for wrongful death and negligence against the star. According to legal filings, plaintiffs alleged Klinghoffer was driving a black SUV with no license plates and turned left at an intersection with a marked crosswalk. The footage was obtained from a neighbor's Ring camera. The lawsuit alleged Klinghoffer 'was likely driving while distracted' and 'made no braking or slowing motion until after he fatally struck.' The civil case is set to be heard on July 1. 'My dad was known for being a great chef, the most talented of his family, the greatest grandpa always full of love and joy,' Ashley said in a news release last July. 'His smile was so infectious. His life was taken by a careless act of a person who didn't bother to look where he was driving," she alleged. DAMAGES DENIED In January, a judge denied the family's renewed attempt to seek damages in the lawsuit, Rolling Stone reported. The judge ruled for a second time that the stated claims against Klinghoffer failed to rise to the level of 'willful and conscious disregard' for the safety of others, the outlet added. Before touring with Pearl Jam, Klinghoffer rose to fame as the guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. In 2012, he and the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, making him one of the youngest inductees ever. in 2019, he left the band to become a touring member of Pearl Jam and Jane's Addiction. 5 Israel Sanchez, who died after being hit while walking in a crosswalk east of Los Angeles Credit: Trial Lawyers for Justice 5 Former Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer accepted a plea deal to avoid jail time Credit: Getty
Los Angeles Times
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Why David Fincher turned the Red Hot Chili Peppers into string puppets
Chad Smith remembers the night in 2003 when the Red Hot Chili Peppers played for an audience of 80,000 or so amid the rolling hills of the Irish countryside. After a somewhat fallow period in the mid-'90s, the veteran Los Angeles alt-rock band resurged with 1999's eight-times-platinum 'Californication' and its 2002 follow-up, 'By the Way,' which spawned the chart-topping single 'Can't Stop.' To mark the moment, the Chili Peppers brought a crew to document their performance at Slane Castle, where they headlined a full day of music that also included sets by Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age, for an eventual concert movie. 'Everything's filmed now, but back then it was a big shoot,' Smith, the band's drummer, recently recalled. 'You can get a little self-conscious. At the beginning, I f— something up — nothing nobody would know, but we would know — and Flea kind of looked at me,' he said of the Chili Peppers' bassist. 'We gave each other this 'Oh s—' look. We laughed it off, and I don't think I thought about it after that because the crowd was so engaged. The energy was incredible.' Twenty-two years later, the Chili Peppers are bringing that 2003 gig to screens again — only this time they're string puppets. 'Can't Stop' is director David Fincher's re-creation of the band's rendition of that tune at Slane Castle. Part of the just-released fourth season of the Emmy-winning Netflix anthology series 'Love, Death + Robots,' the animated short film depicts the Chili Peppers — Smith, Flea, singer Anthony Kiedis and guitarist John Frusciante — as dangling marionettes onstage before a veritable sea of the same. As the band rides the song's slinky punk-funk groove, we see Flea bust out some of his signature moves and Kiedis swipe a fan's cellphone for a selfie; at one point, a group of women in the crowd even flash their breasts at the frontman. The puppets aren't real — the entire six-minute episode was computer-generated. But the way they move looks astoundingly lifelike, not least when one fan's lighter accidentally sets another fan's wires on fire. So why did Fincher, the A-list filmmaker behind 'Fight Club' and 'The Social Network,' put his considerable resources to work to make 'Can't Stop'? 'A perfectly reasonable inquiry,' the director said with a laugh. 'First and foremost, I'll say I've always wanted a Flea bobblehead — it started with that. But really, you know, sometimes there's just stuff you want to see.' Fincher, 62, grew up loving Gerry Anderson's 'Thunderbirds' series featuring his so-called Supermarionation style of puppetry enhanced by electronics. But the Chili Peppers project also represents a return to Fincher's roots in music video: Before he made his feature debut with 1992's 'Alien 3,' he directed era-defining clips including Paula Abdul's 'Straight Up,' Madonna's 'Express Yourself' and 'Vogue' and George Michael's 'Freedom! '90.' (Fincher's last big music video gig was Justin Timberlake's 'Suit & Tie' in 2013.) In addition to 'Thunderbirds,' he wanted 'Can't Stop' to evoke the '80s work of early MTV auteurs like Wayne Isham and Russell Mulcahy — 'that throw 24 cameras at Duran Duran aesthetic,' as he put it. Fincher said he knew his puppet concept would require 'a band you can identify just from their movement,' which seems like a fair way to describe the Chili Peppers. He recalled first encountering the band around 1983 — 'I think it was with Martha Davis at the Palladium?' he said — and was struck by a sense of mischief that reminded him of the 'elfin villains' from the old Rankin/Bass TV specials. 'I feel like Finch got the spirit of me,' said Flea, 62, who's known the director socially for years. The bassist remembered discussing 'Can't Stop' with Fincher at a mutual friend's house before they shot it: 'I was talking about how I still jump around onstage and my body still works really good. But I used to dive and do a somersault while I was playing bass — like dive onto my head. And now I'm scared to do it.' He laughed. 'Some old man thing had happened where I'm scared to dive onto my face now. Finch went, 'Well, Puppet Flea can do it.'' After doing a day of motion capture with the band at a studio in the Valley, Fincher and a crew of animators from Culver City's Blur Studio spent about 13 months working on 'Can't Stop.' Fincher said the hard part was giving the marionettes a feeling of suspension. 'With the mo cap, you're capturing the action of a character who has self-determination,' he said, referring to a human Chili Pepper, 'then you're applying that to an object that has no self-determination,' meaning a puppet controlled by an unseen handler. 'It's so much trickier than it looks. But that was kind of the fun, you know? I mean, not for me,' he added with a laugh. Asked if the production involved any use of AI, Fincher said it didn't. 'It's Blur — it's a point of pride for them,' he said. But he also shrugged off the idea that that question has become a kind of purity test for filmmakers. 'For the next couple of months, maybe it'll be an interesting sort of gotcha,' he said. 'But I can't imagine 10 years from now that people will have the same [view]. Nonlinear editing changed the world for about six weeks, and then we all took it for granted. 'I don't look at it as necessarily cheating at this point,' he continued. 'I think there are a lot of things that AI can do — matte edges and roto work and that kind of stuff. I don't think that's going to fundamentally ruin what is intimate and personal about filmmaking, which is that we're playing dress-up and hoping not to be caught out.' As he reportedly works on an English-language version of 'Squid Game' and a sequel to Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,' did making 'Can't Stop' lead Fincher to ponder the state of the music video now that MTV is no longer in the business of showcasing the form? 'Well, the audience that MTV aggregated — in retrospect, that was time and a place,' he said. 'Remember, the Beatles were making music videos — they just called it 'Help!' There was no invention at all on MTV's part. 'What I do miss about that — and I don't think we'll ever see it again — was that I was 22 years old and I would sketch on a napkin: This is kind of the idea of what we want to do. And four days later, $125,000 would be sent to the company that you were working with and you'd go off and make a video. You'd shoot the thing in a week, and then it would be on the air three weeks after that. 'You make a television commercial now and there's quite literally 19 people in folding chairs, all with their own 100-inch monitor in the back. The world has changed.' He laughed. 'I started my professional career asking for forgiveness rather than permission, and it's been very difficult to go the other direction.'
Tom's Guide
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
My favorite Netflix sci-fi anthology series is back — and it's not ‘Black Mirror'
If I asked you to name a Netflix original sci-fi anthology show, there's a good chance your mind would go straight to 'Black Mirror.' But for me, the top contender in this (admittedly pretty niche) area is 'Love, Death and Robots.' Debuting in 2019, the show now spans 45 episodes (with runtimes that range from merely a few minutes to around 20), so if you've yet to discover the bizarre joys of this Tim Miller-created show, you've got plenty of chapters to keep you entertained, and maybe a little disturbed. 'Love, Death and Robots' season 4 debuted earlier this week (on May 15), and it's already looking like a prime candidate for the best Netflix show you're currently not watching. While 'Black Mirror's' most recent season went straight to No. 1 last month, more than 24 hours post-launch, and 'Love, Death and Robots' (often referred to as 'LDR') has yet to even rank in the top 10. That's a real shame, because while 'Love, Death and Robot' can be characterized as uneven, a common issue with anthology series, when it's firing on all cylinders, it offers unique explorations of sci-fi, fantasy and horror, and is like nothing else on Netflix. The fourth season of the (typically) animated anthology show offers 10 new installments, and these run the gamut from surrealist comedy to chilling nightmare-fuel. This season, there's even a string puppet concert that returns director David Fincher to his music video roots. Yup, the first episode, 'Can't Stop,' is a Red Hot Chili Peppers gig with a real twist: The entire band has been transformed into string puppets, and dance around the stage like otherworldly Pinocchios. It's pretty awesome, and I'm not even a huge Chili Peppers fan. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. That's just the start of the eccentric mix of shorts within 'Love, Death and Robots' season 4, another sees an alien apocalypse play out in miniature form, while one presents interviews with household appliances in the style of beloved Aardman classic 'Creature Comforts.' There's even a rare live-action outing for the series, in 'Golgotha,' a 10-minute short that sees a vicar (Rhys Darby) encounter an alien race that believes a dolphin to be their messiah. Plus, for longtime viewers, the third installment sees a return to a fan-favorite universe. Because (almost all) episodes are standalone, you can totally dive into 'Love, Death and Robots' at this junction. It's very much a series where you can pick and choose the concepts that appeal most to you, or you can make your selections based on fan episode rankings. Which isn't to say the full season isn't worth watching. While it does have its peaks and valleys (the Chili Peppers episode has proved less popular with viewers), overall, 'Love, Death and Robots' season 4 holds a perfect 100% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. One of my favorite things about 'Love, Death and Robots' has always been that it's the perfect palate cleanser in between longer watches. With episodes that can last only a few minutes, it's great for a quick fix of sci-fi creativity or when you have a little time to fill. If you've never seen the show, you've got plenty of worthwhile episodes to get caught up on, and for longtime fans, 'Love, Death and Robots' season 4 continues to carry the show's offbeat but compelling torch. Stream 'Love, Death and Robots' on Netflix now
