Category Archives: Lady Gaga

Man who shot Lady Gaga’s dog walker and stole bulldogs sentenced to 21 years

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In a deal, James Howard Jackson pleaded guilty to one count of attempted murder after he was accidentally released from custody

The man who shot Lady Gaga’s dog walker and stole her French bulldogs in Los Angeles last year has been sentenced to 21 years in prison for the high profile robbery that saw the star offer a $500,000 reward for the return of her pets.

James Howard Jackson, one of three men and two accomplices who participated in the violent robbery of dog walker Ryan Fischer, pleaded no contest to one count of attempted murder, the Los Angeles county district attorney’s office said on Monday.

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Suspect in shooting of Lady Gaga’s dog walker mistakenly released from jail

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James Jackson, 19, one of the three suspects accused in connection with shooting of Ryan Fischer, who was walking artist’s bulldogs

The 19-year-old man arrested over the shooting of Lady Gaga’s dog-walker last year was released from jail in California earlier this week – by mistake, the authorities have said.

James Jackson, 19, Jaylin White, 19, and Lafayette Whaley, 27, were charged after the incident last February, accused of attempted murder, second-degree robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery in connection with the shooting of Ryan Fischer, who was walking the music artist’s French bulldogs.

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Golden Globes 2022 tries to do better as Lady Gaga brings the outrage

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After a year of criticism over diversity, the Golden Globes have come up with a decent slate of nominees, with Gaga surely the favourite for best actress

• Full list of 2020 nominations

The Golden Globes nomination list has been announced with a solemn introduction from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s president Helen Hoehne, to the effect that the Globes’ much-criticised controlling body was “trying to be better” and that its constituent membership was more diverse than at any other time in its history. Which is better, I suppose, than being less diverse than at any time in its history.

At any rate, leading the pack are Belfast, Kenneth Branagh’s unashamed heartwarmer about the home town of his early childhood, with seven nominations and Jane Campion’s stark, twisty western-Gothic psychodrama The Power of the Dog, set in 1920s Montana with Benedict Cumberbatch as the troubled, angry cattleman who begins a toxic duel with his new sister-in-law played by Kirsten Dunst and her sensitive teenage son, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee.

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House of Gucci is ‘painful and insulting’, says Gucci family

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Heirs of Aldo Gucci issue statement taking issue with Ridley Scott’s film but have stopped short of legal action

Surviving family members of the Gucci fashion dynasty have expressed unhappiness with their representation in the new film House of Gucci.

In a statement issued on Monday, the heirs of Aldo Gucci – who ran the fashion house for 33 years until the mid-1980s – said they were aggrieved by the lack of consultation by film-makers, as well as their portrayal as “thugs, ignorant and insensitive to the world around them”.

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Searches for Gucci label soar after release of murder film starring Lady Gaga

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Designer brand reaps the benefit of Ridley Scott’s movie telling the story of the killing of firm’s ex-boss

When is murder good for business? When it is made into a Hollywood movie, for one – and when that film stars Lady Gaga. House of Gucci, the Ridley Scott feature released last week to mixed reviews, has sent interest in the Gucci brand soaring.

Searches for Gucci clothing were up 73% week on week, according to e-commerce aggregator Lovethesales.com on Friday, with a leap of 257% for bags and 75% for sliders. The figures suggest that the luxury brand stands only to gain from Hollywood’s telling of the story ofthe glamorous Patrizia Reggiani, who hired a hitman in 1995 to kill her ex-husband Maurizio Gucci, the former head of the fashion label.

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House of Gucci review – Lady Gaga steers a steely path through the madness

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Gaga rules in Ridley Scott’s at times ridiculous drama based on the true-life sagas of the Italian fashion dynasty

“The most Gucci of them all” is how Patrizia Reggiani described herself in a 2014 interview and, judging by this entertainingly ripe, comedically tinged tragedy, she has a point. Variously known as “Lady Gucci” and “Black Widow”, Reggiani became the centre of a very 1990s scandal involving lust, money, fashion, murder… and a clairvoyant. To that tabloid-friendly cocktail, Ridley Scott’s latest “true story” potboiler adds a dash of pop superstardom, with Lady Gaga (Oscar- nominated for her close-to-home performance in A Star Is Born) relishing the chance to find the human cracks beneath a larger-than-life, femme fatale surface.

Adapted by screenwriters Becky Johnston and Roberto Bentivegna from the nonfiction book by Sara Gay Forden, House of Gucci charts a crowd-pleasing course from the Milanese party scene of the 1970s to a high-profile, end-of-the-century trial. At its heart is the doomed romance between Patrizia and Maurizio Gucci, the latter played behind stylishly studious glasses by cinema’s sexy nerd de nos jours, Adam Driver. “I want to see how this story goes,” says Patrizia, embarking upon a twisted fairytale romance with the grandson of Guccio Gucci that starts with masked balls and talk of midnight chimes and pumpkins and ends with family back-stabbings, jealous rages and deadly rivalries.

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2022 Grammys: Jon Batiste, HER and Justin Bieber lead nominations

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Olivia Rodrigo, Doja Cat, Billie Eilish and Lil Nas X also among those with multiple nominations in top categories

The highly versatile, socially conscious pianist, singer and composer Jon Batiste has topped this year’s Grammy nominations, with 10 nods.

Batiste’s nominations straddle everything from the top prizes of record and album of the year, to inclusions across R&B, jazz, roots and classical categories. His score for animated film Soul, made with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails, is also nominated, as are the directors of his music video Freedom.

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Gaga, Gucci and prison ferrets: how true crime conquered the world

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Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci stars Lady Gaga in a tale of fashion and murder. But is true crime – once the soul of cinema, from thrillers and horrors to westerns – now outgrowing the big screen?

What took you so long, House of Gucci? This story was destined to become a movie from the moment the bullet left fashion heir Maurizio Gucci dead outside his Milan office in March 1995 – shot, a witness said, by a hitman with a “beautiful, clean hand”. The film by Ridley Scott now finally arrives dripping with star power, and Lady Gaga as Gucci’s ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani. But the story alone was enough: a glittering tickbox of money, revenge and a villainess kept company in jail by an illicit pet ferret called Bambi.

True crime gold. So why, now that the film is actually here, does the Gucci case feel a strange fit for a movie after all? Put it down to timing. The film’s development began in entertainment prehistory: 2006. Back then, a lavish movie was still the grand prize for any news story, and true crime – that trashbag genre – would simply be glad of the association. Now though, film and true crime have the air of an estranged couple. Had Maurizio Gucci been gunned down on Via Palestro last week, Netflix would already have the rights and the podcast would be on Spotify.

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Madness in her method: Did Lady Gaga really stay in character for 18 months?

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Lady Gaga inhabited her role in upcoming drama House of Gucci off screen and on for a year and a half. Was the ‘psychological difficulty’ she suffered as a result worth it?

A Star Is Born was both a blessing and a curse for Lady Gaga. A blessing because it put her at the centre of a commercially successful, Oscar-nominated film, thereby rocketing her to the top of a profession of which she had very little experience. A curse, too, because she was essentially just playing herself; a singer who went from performing in drag bars to commanding huge stages in very little time. Quick, without looking, tell me the name of the character Lady Gaga played in A Star Is Born. You can’t, can you? You’ve always just called her Lady Gaga.

This means that she ultimately had two options after A Star Is Born. She could abandon her movie career in the knowledge that she had blurred the line between character and performer more successfully than any actor working today, or she could find another role. A role not so heavily steeped in her own biography. A role that would finally prove to the world that she was an actor of the highest calibre.

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Friends reunion: the one where China censors its guest stars

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Viewers say scenes featuring Lady Gaga, boyband BTS and Justin Bieber are missing from Chinese version

For many Chinese millennials, the US sitcom Friends was a window to the American way of life. Teachers would use the show to help students learn English. Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai have Friends-themed Central Perk cafes. So when news that the original cast were to hold a reunion special nearly 20 years after the show was first introduced into China, diehard fans were excited, and some of China’s biggest online streaming platforms bought the rights to broadcast the show.

But eagle-eyed viewers complained on Thursday that some of the much-talked-about scenes in the original 104-minute runtime were missing.

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Lady Gaga says rape as teenager left her pregnant and caused ‘psychotic break’

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Speaking on Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry show The Me You Can’t See, the singer outlined further details of attack she first disclosed in 2014

Lady Gaga has told new details about sexual assault she suffered when she was 19. Speaking on The Me You Can’t See, Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry’s new Apple TV+ series about mental health, she said the rape – that she first disclosed in 2014 – was by a music producer and left her pregnant.

“I was 19 years old, and I was working in the business, and a producer said to me, ‘Take your clothes off,’” she said. “And I said no. And I left, and they told me they were going to burn all of my music. And they didn’t stop. They didn’t stop asking me, and I just froze and – I don’t even remember.” She said “the person who raped me dropped me off pregnant on a corner”.

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Five arrested in Lady Gaga dognapping case – including the woman who returned them

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Detectives do not believe the thieves knew the dogs belonged to the pop star and that the motive was the French bulldogs’ value

The woman who returned Lady Gaga’s stolen French bulldogs was among five people arrested in connection with the theft and shooting of the music superstar’s dog walker, Los Angeles police said Thursday.

Detectives do not believe that the thieves knew the dogs belonged to the pop star, the Los Angeles police department said in a statement. The motive for the 24 February robbery, investigators believe, was the value of the French bulldogs – which can run into the thousands of dollars.

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‘Short, fat, ugly’: Gucci family lashes out at cast appearance in new film

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Ridley Scott biopic tells story of Patrizia Reggiani’s doomed marriage to Maurizio Gucci

The Gucci family has hit out against the “horrible, horrible” and “ugly” casting of the House of Gucci film, starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver.

The film, which is now in production and directed by Sir Ridley Scott, tells the story of Patrizia Reggiani and her doomed marriage to Maurizio Gucci. Reggiani was convicted of his assassination in 1998 after hiring a hitman to kill him.

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Lady Gucci is just the latest guise of the ever transmutable Lady Gaga

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Pop singer, activist, art installation, actor, Stefani Germanotta has taken on many faces

Like Lon Chaney, the great silent actor known as “The Man of a Thousand Faces”, Lady Gaga has traversed roles, from music to fashion to film to politics, transmuting with creative fluidity but remaining – sometimes with defiance – the girl next door.

Last week, the 34-year-old star – days after retrieving her two French bulldogs from a dognapping in which her walker was shot and injured – posted a photo of herself beside actor Adam Driver in which she was wearing a white fur hat and was draped in gold jewellery. It was a publicity shot from Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, a forthcoming film based on the story of Patrizia Reggiani, aka the Black Widow (played by Gaga), who married – and later had killed – Maurizio Gucci, head of the luxury fashion house.

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Lady Gaga’s dog walker describes ‘close call’ after he was shot in robbery

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On social media, Ryan Fischer says ‘healing still needs to happen’ after he was attacked while walking three dogs

Lady Gaga’s dog walker, who was shot last week during a robbery in Hollywood when two of the singer’s French bulldogs were stolen, has described the violence and his recovery “from a very close call with death” in social media posts on Monday.

Ryan Fischer’s posts included pictures taken from his hospital bed, where he says a “lot of healing still needs to happen” but he looks forward to reuniting with the dogs.

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Lady Gaga’s bulldogs returned unharmed after kidnapping

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Dogs were dropped off at a police station in Los Angeles, while dog walker shot in the attack is recovering

Two French bulldogs belonging to Lady Gaga that were stolen at gunpoint earlier this week have been recovered unharmed, police in Los Angeles have said.

A woman brought the dogs to the LAPD’s Olympic community police station on Friday evening, said Jonathan Tippett, commanding officer of the robbery-homicide division.

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‘All that mattered was survival’: the songs that got us through 2020

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Butterflies with Mariah, Bronski Beat in the Peak District, Snoop Dogg on a food delivery ad … our writers reveal the tracks that made 2020 bearable

When it came to lockdown comfort listening, there was something particularly appealing about lush symphonic soul made by artists such as Teddy Pendergrass and the Delfonics. But there was one record I reached for repeatedly: Black Moses by Isaac Hayes, and particularly the tracks arranged by Dale Warren. Their version of Burt Bacharach’s (They Long to Be) Close to You is an epic, spinning the original classic into a nine-minute dose of saccharine soul. But their cover of Going in Circles, another Warren exercise in expansion, is their masterpiece, reimagining the Friends of Distinction original as a seven-minute arrangement with stirring strings and beatific backing vocals that builds into a story about lost love that transcends the genre’s usual parameters. A perfect, if slightly meta, balm for the repetitive lockdown blues. Lanre Bakare

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MTV VMAs 2020: Lady Gaga dominates during unusual pandemic broadcast

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Singer reigns supreme in awards show filled with calls for social justice and recognition of Covid tragedy

Lady Gaga dominated an unusual year for the MTV Video Music awards, winning five awards in a strange and disconcerting evening.

The singer, who led the evening with nine nominations and wore a variety of masks through the night, accepted awards for artist of the year, song of the year, best cinematography and best collaboration for Rain on Me and the inaugural Tricon award, which recognizes an artist who is highly accomplished across three or more disciplines.

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Lady Gaga: Chromatica review – Gaga rediscovers the riot on her most personal album

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Returning to the sound of her maximalist electro-pop heyday, Gaga explores buried trauma, mental illness and the complexities of fame on this return to form

A criticism often levelled at Lady Gaga is that the fantastical imagery she constructs around her albums eclipses the music itself. But it’s a sliding scale – and one that certainly mattered less when she was knocking out undeniable dance-pop party starters like Poker Face and Just Dance, or cementing her status as pop’s freaky outlier on the twisted Bad Romance. That she appeared in alien-like form in that song’s video made perfect sense: here was a chameleonic pop superstar in the vein of Bowie, Prince and Madonna opening a portal to an escapist dimension. Later, it made sense that she would lean into the imagery of hair metal on 2011’s gloriously OTT, Springsteen-referencing Born This Way. Yet on 2013’s bloated Artpop – billed as an exploration of the “reverse Warholian” phenomenon in pop culture, whatever that may be, and featuring at least one performance in which she employed a “vomit artist” to puke green paint on her chest – the aesthetic felt more like desperate distraction tactics.

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