Latest news with #JeffBuckley
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Magnolia Pictures Acquires U.S. Rights To ‘It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley,' Amy Berg's Documentary On Late Ethereal-Voiced Musician
EXCLUSIVE: Magnolia Pictures has landed U.S. rights to It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Amy Berg's portrait of the late musician who developed an adoring fan base before his untimely death at the age of 30. Magnolia plans to release the film theatrically (available in Dolby Atmos) on August 8. The documentary, which enjoys a 100 percent critics approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, will premiere on HBO and stream on HBO Max this winter, as part of the Music Box series created by Bill Simmons. More from Deadline Director Amy Berg On Her Jeff Buckley Documentary: Late Singer-Songwriter 'Brought So Much Love And Authenticity To His Music' – Sundance Studio 'The Case Against Adnan Syed' Director Amy Berg Strikes First-Look Deal With Fremantle New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern Docu 'Prime Minister' Acquired By Magnolia, HBO Docu Films & CNN Films After Prize-Winning Sundance Bow 'Told through never-before-seen footage from Buckley's archives and intimate accounts from his mother Mary Guibert, former partners Rebecca Moore and Joan Wasser, Jeff's former bandmates, including Michael Tighe and Parker Kindred, and luminaries like Ben Harper and Aimee Mann, It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley illuminates one of modern music's most influential and enigmatic figures,' notes a release. 'His only studio album, Grace, was released to astounding reviews and challenged conventional ideas of genre and gender. His intimate and influential cover of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' further catapulted him to fame. Still, under pressure to produce his second album, he retreated to Memphis to escape the spotlight and the ever-growing glare of the public eye. In a tragic accident, Buckley drowned in the Wolf River in Memphis in 1997, leaving behind an unfinished second album and a legion of devastated family, friends and fans.' Magnolia Pictures co-CEOs Eamonn Bowles and Dori Begley said in a statement, 'With only one studio album, Jeff Buckley became a legend. Amy Berg has captured his brilliance and complexity in this incandescent film that no true fan can miss.' Berg's credits include the Academy Award-nominated Deliver Us From Evil (2006); West of Memphis (2012); Prophet's Prey (2015); the Emmy-nominated docuseries The Case Against Adnan Syed (2019), and Janis: Little Girl Blue, her 2015 documentary about iconic singer Janis Joplin. 'I've spent practically my entire career trying to make this film which takes a very intimate look at one of the greatest singers and songwriters of all time,' Berg commented. 'I'm so excited Magnolia and HBO have come onboard to share this film with the world and give old fans and new audiences a chance to experience Jeff from this unique vantage point. I couldn't imagine a better team to roll this into the world!' A Topic Studios and Fremantle Film, It's Never Over: Jeff Buckley is produced by Ryan Heller (A Real Pain), Christine Connor (Nuclear Family), Mandy Chang (The Mona Lisa Curse), Matthew Roozen (A Mouthful Of Air), Jennie Bedusa (The Space Within) and Amy Berg. Executive producers are Mary Guibert, Alison Raykovich, Brian A. Kates, Michael Bloom, Jennifer Westin, Maria Zuckerman, Brad Pitt, and Ian Stratford. 'Working with Amy on this labor of love has been a gift,' said Topic Studios' Ryan Heller and Christine Connor. 'And we are delighted that our friends at Magnolia and HBO are joining us to help ensure that Jeff's remarkable story reaches the widest possible audience.' Mark Reynolds, Global Head of Documentaries & Factual, Fremantle, noted, 'We are delighted to have partnered with Amy Berg and Topic Studios on this deeply human and beautifully made film – with such intimate recollections of an artist who continues to inspire – honoring Jeff's legacy with the care and reverence it deserves. We're equally excited to be collaborating with Magnolia as our North American distributor to help share this powerful story with audiences.' The acquisition deal was negotiated by Magnolia Pictures SVP of Acquisitions John Von Thaden, with Submarine's Josh Braun, Dan Braun and Matt Burke on behalf of the filmmakers. It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to screen at festivals around the world including CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, the Sydney Film Festival in Australia, the Provincetown International Film Festival and Nantucket Film Festival – both in Massachusetts. Musician Ben Harper, who as noted above appears in the documentary, became friends with Buckley after they met at a rock festival in France. In an interview with Deadline at Sundance, he told us about the power of Buckley's voice. 'You just hadn't heard anything like it until he came along. It was as singular an instrument as has existed in the world of sound. As powerful and raw, it was equally as vulnerable and fragile. And to have those two counterpoints all within the same instrument was just something unheard of… To be that raw, but that elegant at the same time, and to be that powerful yet that fragile at the same time was just shocking.' At Sundance, Berg shared more about her long effort to make the Buckley documentary. 'I finally met up with Mary [Guibert, Jeff Buckley's mom] in 2010, but she didn't give me the rights for another nine years,' she told Deadline. 'But every time I finished a film, I would reach out to Mary. She did share the archive with me back then, and I was blown away by the voicemail messages and the DAT recordings and his candor, and I just kept at it. I always wanted to tell a love story about Jeff because he brought so much love and authenticity to his music. So, I chose people that had a real deep connection with him to be in the film. It's a love story that simply transcends time. ' Best of Deadline List Of Hollywood & Media Layoffs From Paramount To Warner Bros Discovery To CNN & More 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Revealing Jeff Buckley Doc, ‘It's Never Over,' to Arrive This Summer
A new documentary, It's Never Over: Jeff Buckley, which examines the life of the late singer-songwriter, will open in movie theaters on Aug. 8. An HBO premiere will follow this winter. The film, by director Amy Berg (Phoenix Rising, West of Memphis), features never-before-seen footage from Buckley's archives. His mother, Mary Culbert, and former partners Rebecca Moore and Joan Wasser gave new interviews for the picture. It also includes commentary from Buckley's former bandmates, Michael Tighe and Parker Kindred, as well as singer-songwriters Ben Harper and Aimee Mann. More from Rolling Stone 'It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley' Pays Tribute to One of the Greatest Singers Ever Jeff Buckley's Mom Finally Explains Why That Brad Pitt Biopic Never Happened Questlove's Sly Stone Documentary to Premiere at 2025 Sundance 'I've spent practically my entire career trying to make this film, which takes a very intimate look at one of the greatest singers and songwriters of all time,' Berg said in a statement. 'I'm so excited Magnolia and HBO have come on board to share this film with the world and give old fans and new audiences a chance to experience Jeff from this unique vantage point.' The film looks at how he followed in the footsteps of his father, singer-songwriter Tim Buckley — who died at age 28 when Jeff was 8 — and launched his own music career, signing to Columbia Records. A concert recording, Live at Sin-é, came out in 1993, and Buckley's sole studio album, Grace, came out in August 1994, three years before his death at age 30. His own legacy has grown ever since. When the film premiered at Sundance in January, Rolling Stone wrote that the picture 'does justice to [Buckley's] legacy.' 'Buckley's mother, Mary Guibert, has been extremely protective over her son and his songs, but she's opened up the vaults for Berg's film,' the review said. 'There are pictures of Buckley as a chubby, smiling baby, and rocking a metalhead shag mullet as a teen; clips of him playing in high school bands, glimpses into notebooks filled with an elegant scrawl that you can only describe as Buckleyesque. Music from every phase of his career, in both rough-demo and finished form, plays over the soundtrack, along with voicemail messages — including the last one he left his mom — and recording session banter. Rarities abound, which makes this feel as much like an archive tour as a movable scrapbook.' Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
Daily Mail
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Aussie singer Katie Noonan announces national tour - with a surprising twist
Katie Noonan has announced an upcoming national tour - with a surprising twist. The popular Aussie singer, 47, recently shared a post to social media revealing she would be touring Australia later this year - to cover late US singer Jeff Buckley. The former George vocalist is set to perform the late singer's iconic 1994 album Grace in full at venues across the country. The tour will commence at Perth 's Astor Theatre on Thursday, September 18th, promising an enchanting musical journey through Buckley's soul-stirring compositions. From there, she will weave her magic through 20 cities and regional centres, including Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Newcastle. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. The Brisbane-born singer will wrap up her tour on Saturday, November 8 at Civic Theatre in Newcastle. Katie told The Music that Buckley's seminal 1994 album - which was the only one he recorded before his death in 1997 at 30 - helped define her musical career. 'Never had I heard a sound world like this, never had I heard a band that unique and never had I heard a voice that expressive, exploratory and exciting,' she said. 'The album is the biggest influence on my musical journey and was an enormous inspiration for my debut album, Polyserena, and my 29 subsequent studio albums.' She will be supported by Australian singers Jack Carty and Georgia Fields. Katie rose to fame in 2002 as the lead vocalist of Brisbane indie-rock band George, whose debut album Polyserena debuted at number one on the ARIA charts. It subsequently achieved double platinum status, and earned the group the ARIA Award for Breakthrough Artist. In April, Katie shared a heartbreaking update on social media after revealing a year of loss. The former George vocalist is set to perform the late singer Jeff Buckley's iconic 1994 album Grace in full at venues across the country The singer took to Instagram to shed light on what has been a rough 12 months, lamenting the death of her father, the breakdown of her marriage and the crumbling of her oldest band. 'So much profound grief and loss this last year,' she wrote in an Instagram post, accompanied with a sombre selfie of the George front-woman in a black and white hue. 'I am so deeply hurt and exhausted, but there is great solace in knowing I am not alone as I walk this new path - alone yet all one.' She revealed that the split from her husband and bandmate Isaac Hurren resulted in the simultaneous loss of her marriage and band that they had created together, Elixir. Katie added that in 2020 she had been relying on the government's JobKeeper payment scheme to stay financially afloat amid the coronavirus pandemic. The musician began losing income when her tours were cancelled, which she had to work hard to recover from. Katie told the Courier Mail: 'I was crippled by the enormous financial loss, very significant loss, as an independent producer. JobKeeper has been a life saver and I was lucky enough to get on that.' The ARIA-award winning artist was due to go on tour before the lockdown and travel restrictions were enforced across Australia. While she has been lucky to receive the government support, she noted that the industry as a whole will likely take a long time to bounce back.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sombr ‘Didn't Want to Just Do Ballads Forever' — So He Pushed the Tempo and Scored Two Hot 100 Hits
Shane Boose says that, if a piece of music can be described as 'alternative' or 'indie,' he's probably going to enjoy it. 'My favorite band of all time is Radiohead,' Boose, who records as Sombr, tells Billboard. 'And I'm a big fan of Jeff Buckley, Phoebe Bridgers, The 1975. I listen to a ton of alternative music — it's my genre.' Those influences help explain why Sombr's two fast-rising hit singles, 'Back to Friends' and 'Undressed,' have not only exploded on streaming services as crossover pop hits, but have also minted the 19-year-old singer-songwriter at rock and alternative platforms that have been starving for fresh new talent. On this week's Hot 100, 'Back to Friends' leaps up 14 spots to a new peak of No. 56, while 'Undressed' jumps 12 spots to No. 84; meanwhile, 'Back to Friends' hits the top 10 of the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart for the first time, bumping up to No. 9 with 'Undressed' close behind at No. 13. More from Billboard Ye Disses Kendrick Lamar & Tyler, the Creator Again: 'The Two Most Overrated So-Called Artist' Benson Boone Drops 'Mystical Magical' New Song After Its Live Debut at Coachella Chappell Roan's 'Casual' Reigns on Top Movie Songs After 'Novocaine' Appearance Sombr has been on the road over the past few weeks opening for Daniel Seavey in the U.S. — watching each day as his streaming totals grow (through Apr. 17, 'Back to Friends' had earned 40.7 million official on-demand streams, while 'Undressed' had earned 19.5 million streams, according to Luminate) and his crowd sizes swell. 'They 100 percent break my brain,' he says of the streaming totals. As for the crowds, 'You don't usually get to see it happening in real time, increasing every show, but being able to see that has just put it into perspective. When I've had moments in previous years, they've never been like this. And I've never gotten to visualize it while it was happening in real time.' Boose grew up on the Lower East Side and attended the prestigious LaGuardia High School, where he studied vocals while tinkering with GarageBand and Logic in his bedroom. 'I made the first few songs in a more shoegaze vein, and most of those songs aren't even out,' he says. 'And then I made the song 'Caroline' after listening to Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago album, and I'd like to think that's the first good song I ever made.' Released in mid-2022, 'Caroline' is indeed a sparse, wrenched folk song that Boose posted to TikTok before going to bed one night, and woke up the next morning to find thousands of reactions. He dropped out of high school, signed a deal with Warner Records in early 2023, then spent roughly two years trying to get lightning to strike for a second time with a string of singles, to little avail. Sombr, who still writes and produces all of his songs, says that he never got impatient while awaiting his breakthrough following his major label signing. 'I was just making music,' he says, 'and I'm a really hard worker. I like to think that, if you really put in the hours and manifest what you want, it will happen.' On the day that he made 'Back to Friends' in his bedroom, he played the finished chorus back, and felt that, with this song, it was finally going to happen for him. Released last December, 'Back to Friends' is a swirl of shakers, dramatic piano chords, fuzzed-out vocals full of post-hookup anxieties and harmonies that lob out rhetorical questions on the chorus. Along with March's 'Undressed,' a ghostly warble-along with an equally outsized chorus, Sombr has reinvented his sound over the course of two songs, moving on from the hushed singles released post-'Caroline' and toward slick, slightly swaggering alt-pop. 'I think they gave me a platform to make more upbeat music,' he says of the two tracks. 'Before 'Back to Friends,' all my music was very ballad-y — there was nothing with a beat. I was so tired of that. I feel like this is a lot more free, as far as the music I want to create. And I wanted my show to be more exciting. I didn't want to just do ballads forever.' After wrapping up his tour with Seavey last week, Sombr will next hit the road with Nessa Barrett, joining for a month-long European run that kicks off on May 26 in Dublin. Earlier this week, however, Sombr announced a fall headlining tour across North America that will start on Sept. 30 — and thanks to the surging momentum from 'Back to Friends' and 'Undressed,' pre-sale tickets apparently sold out within seconds. ('The response has been insane,' Sombr posted on Instagram. 'I hear you all. I am working on upgrades and new dates. Stay posted.') And while Sombr says that a proper debut album is 'definitely on the horizon,' he's trying to savor this singular moment. 'The last show in New York, it was the loudest it's ever been, and I got it in the pit,' he says before letting out a quick laugh. 'It's getting wild, and I love it. It's all I've ever wanted.' Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Yahoo
Gemini Advanced can now recall your past conversations to inform its responses
Google is making Gemini just a bit better. Starting today, the company's chatbot will recall past conversations in an effort to provide more useful responses. "That means no more starting over from scratch or having to search for a previous conversation thread," Google explains. "Plus, you can build on top of previous conversations or projects you've already started." Google notes Gemini "may" indicate if it referenced a past conversation to formulate a response. If the idea of a chatbot recalling information about you makes you feel uncomfortable, Google says users can "easily review, delete or decide how long" Gemini retains their chat history. Additionally, it's possible to disable this feature altogether from the My Activity panel. Gemini is not the first chatbot to include a memory feature. ChatGPT will "remember" things about you in certain contexts. For example, I recently asked OpenAI's chatbot a question about Jeff Buckley's vocal range, to which it later asked me if I was a fan of his music. When I said yes, a notification appeared stating "memory updated." See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. More broadly, building chatbots with long, reliable memories is part of the "agentic" AI future many companies, including Google and OpenAI, are building towards. At I/O 2024, for instance, Google debuted Project Astra, which featured a built-in memory, though it was limited to a relatively short window of time and could "mis-remember" things. Gemini's new memory feature has begun rolling out in English to Gemini Advanced subscribers. It will become available in more languages over the coming weeks.
