Entertainment
George Clooney Channels Edward R. Murrow at 51st Chaplin Gala
George Clooney may have ended his run on Broadway as iconic journalist Edward R. Murrow last year, but the actor, filmmaker, producer, philanthropist, humanitarian, and yes, the son of another journalist hasn’t quite shaken the man just yet.
On Monday evening in Manhattan, Clooney was celebrated with Film at Lincoln Center’s 51st Chaplin Award during a starry gala at Alice Tully Hall. In accepting the honor, which “recognizes an individual’s significant contributions to the art of cinema,” an emotional Clooney dedicated the final moments of his speech to the current state of the world, through Murrow’s own lens and words.
After jovial stories and thank-yous to a packed house, Clooney turned his attention to this weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and much more.
“I can’t be here on a night like tonight and just ignore everything that’s going on in the world and in our homes,” an emotional Clooney said from the stage. “I disagree with everything that this administration stands for, but there’s no place for the kind of violence we saw two nights ago in Washington, D.C. Nor is there a room for this kind of violence in Minnesota with Alex Pretti or Renée Good, or all around this country.”
Clooney then noted that, this time last year, he was on Broadway with his stage adaptation of his film “Good Night, and Good Luck,” which dramatized Murrow’s conflict with Senator Joseph McCarthy over his ongoing communist witch hunt in the 1950s. “His words were important in 1954; they mattered,” he said of Murrow. “They seemed relevant last year. They seem urgent now.”
Clooney then paraphrased part of Murrow’s iconic March 1954 televised editorial about the rise of McCarthyism and McCarthy’s own tactics. “We must not walk in fear, one of another. We must not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that are, for the moment, unpopular. … We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”
He was greeted with major applause, and soon ended his speech with his own words on the matter. “It seems to me that there is a struggle that has to be won against hatred and corruption and cruelty, violence,” Clooney added. “And it is a struggle for the very soul of this republic because to foment hate and violence is to inherit the wind. And then the question is, simply, we as citizens of this great country, what are we to do? And it is in that answer that all of us — left, right, and center — can build a more perfect union, heal our wounds, and begin to truly make America great again.”

The event honored Clooney as the recipient of the 51st Chaplin Award at the annual Chaplin Award Gala. Over its history, the Chaplin Award has been bestowed upon legendary actors and filmmakers such as Jeff Bridges, Viola Davis, Robert De Niro, Barbara Streisand, Sidney Poitier, Michael Caine, Audrey Hepburn, Robert Altman, Billy Wilder, Elizabeth Taylor, and more. A complete list of past honorees can be found here.
Clooney’s multi-faceted career was celebrated through a series of highlight reels, video messages (including one from Matt Damon of hilariously questionable technical quality, and one from Clooney’s close friend Richard Kind, who also attended the event in person), and speeches from some of his colleagues and pals.
Cleverly designed to fete each of Clooney’s many vocations, his “ER” co-star Julianna Margulies spoke about his TV career, and John Turturro dove into his film career (including his musings on “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”). His “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” star Sam Rockwell chatted about his directing career, and Stephen Colbert appeared to illuminate Clooney’s many philanthropic endeavors.
Colbert, funnily enough, also referenced Murrow and “Good Night, and Good Luck” in his speech. “It’s the story of the courage and the integrity of CBS News anchor Edward R. Murrow, standing up to fear-mongering propaganda despite intense governmental and corporate pressure,” Colbert said. Two decades later, he added, practically winking, “this inspiring film has now been seen by millions around the world, and hopefully, someday, by CBS.” And, yes, that earned plenty of its own applause, too.
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Entertainment
Daily Show Says GOP Is Making Trump Sound Like an Indoor Cat With Ballroom Talk
“The Daily Show” called out the Republican party for making Donald Trump “sound like an indoor cat” while touting the need for a White House ballroom.
Host Josh Johnson weighed in on the situation during Tuesday’s monologue, where he suggested that the GOP had a “somehow dumber takeaway” following Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Specifically, after Trump said the attempted assassination proved that a White House ballroom was necessary, Republican leaders, including Lindsey Graham, co-signed this stance and promised to push a bill that would authorize $400 million for the president’s project.
“$400 million? That’s our money. Why do we have to pay for this? We didn’t try to shoot the president,” Johnson quipped. “Make this guy [suspect Cole Tomas Allen] pay for the ballroom.”
He continued: “This is the administration that is obsessed with government waste. I can’t believe they dissolved DOGE right before Trump demanded a $400-million ballroom. It’s like how the Michael Jackson movie ended right before he starts molesting.”
As Johnson went on, he noted that we’re in “such a crazy time now that events don’t even need to be connected to each other.” He also called out the hefty price tag proposed by Republicans, adding, “Is the roof going to be made of Coachella tickets? What could possibly make this thing cost so much?”
Yet, Johnson was left even more baffled by Republicans defending that the ballroom would avoid the dilemma of the president having to leave the White House grounds.
“Wait, wait. The president needs to walk out of his bedroom into the ballroom?” Johnson said. “This feels like it’s Lindsey’s dream. I can see Lindsey like, ‘I must rise from my silk sheets and directly into the cotillion. Oh, it’s a masked cotillion, where I can be my truest self.’”
“But still, as good as the White House is, Trump is going to have to leave sometimes,” Johnson noted before “The Daily Show” played Fox News clips suggesting that Trump shouldn’t have to leave the presidential residence. “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The president shouldn’t have to leave his house? You don’t want the leader of the free world to visit anything?”
At this moment, Johnson pondered if Trump was “depressed,” quipping, “Didn’t he just get McDonald’s DoorDashed to the house? That sounds like a man who’s given up on life, you know? Wait ’til he finds out about Snuggies. There have to be arguments for this ballroom that don’t just make the president sound like an indoor cat.”
Watch Johnson’s full monologue above.
“The Daily Show” airs weeknights at 11 p.m. ET on Comedy Central.
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Entertainment
Bill O’Reilly Says Kimmel Isn’t Smart Enough to Understand Gravity of ‘Widow’ Joke
Bill O’Reilly hit back at Jimmy Kimmel’s defense of his controversial “expectant widow” joke about Melania Trump, suggesting the late night host was “not smart enough” to understand the gravity of the dig.
The conservative commentator weighed in on the drama during Tuesday’s episode of “No Spin News,” where he took Kimmel to task for the joke, as well as his defense of the quip, which the comedian called a “light roast.”
“Now, you may remember that in September of last year, Jimmy Kimmel said that MAGA people were partially responsible for the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It was an outrageous comment, a stupid comment, a foolish comment. I gave Kimmel some slack and I did so because everybody makes mistakes,” O’Reilly started off. “I thought that was a reasonable approach. I was wrong.”
He continued: “Kimmel does not deserve the platform. He is a hater. He pedals hate.”
O’Reilly then slammed Kimmel as an “ardent leftist,” later questioning the entertainer’s intelligence for the joke he made at the first lady’s expense.
“That’s pretty damning to say that when the president has already [seen] assassination [attempts] of him twice,” O’Reilly said after playing footage of Kimmel suggesting that Melania had the “glow like an expectant widow” days before a shooter disrupted the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
“Again, Kimmel is not smart enough in my opinion to understand what he’s saying. He’s not smart enough,” O’Reilly sounded off. “Simply doesn’t know.”
He then played footage of Kimmel’s defense of the joke, in which he said that he too was against “hateful and violent rhetoric.” O’Reilly didn’t necessarily buy this line from Kimmel, proceeding to play the number of times the late night host has called out the Trump family.
And it wasn’t just Kimmel that O’Reilly took umbrage with, as he also slammed “very liberal corporation” Disney. Per O’Reilly, the entertainment conglomerate was overseeing a “hatefest” of Trump, citing “The View” as another example.
“They could fix ‘The View.’ That’s not hard. Let’s bring in a couple of moderate women to sit on a panel,” he added. “It’s not as bad as Kimmel, but it’s close. We hate Trump every day, every way.”
As O’Reilly went on, he claimed that Disney was “the big villain here” for allowing this anti-Trump rhetoric. Watch his comments below.
O’Reilly’s criticism came hours after the Federal Communications Commission asked Disney’s eight local ABC broadcast stations to apply for an early renewal for broadcast licenses, a rare move that increases government pressure on the company.
“The FCC determines that calling in Disney’s ABC licenses for early renewal, at this time, under the Communications Act’s public interest standard is essential within the meaning of agency regulations,” David J. Brown, the chief of the FCC’s video division, wrote to Disney, ABC and the stations in a letter on Tuesday. “Therefore, Disney’s ABC is hereby directed to file license renewals for all of their licensed TV stations within 30 days–in other words, by May 28, 2026.”
A Disney spokesperson said the company has received the letter and it believes “ABC and its stations have a long record of operating in full compliance with FCC rules and serving their local communities with trusted news, emergency information, and public‑interest programming.”
The FCC’s demand followed Donald and Melania Trump’s outcry over the “expectant widow” joke, with both the president and first lady calling for Kimmel’s termination.
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Entertainment
Ross McElwee’s ‘Sherman’s March’ 4K and ‘Remake’ Get Release Dates
Forty years ago, Ross McElwee won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for his breakthrough feature “Sherman’s March.” Last year, his latest film, “Remake,” premiered at the Venice Film Festival and took home the Golden Globes Impact Prize for Documentary. Now, as IndieWire shares, both films have been acquired by distributor Music Box Films, which will release “Remake” and a new 4K restoration of “Sherman’s March” later this year.
When it was released in 1986, “Sherman’s March” announced McElwee as a practitioner of a then relatively new form of first-person filmmaking, a style that would influence Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock, among many others, on its way to becoming a dominant documentary subgenre. Ostensibly an attempt to retrace William Tecumseh Sherman’s Civil War march to the sea, the movie becomes a meditation on the “New South” via McElwee’s interactions with women he meets while filming.
Shot on 16mm with McElwee essentially acting as a one-person crew, “Sherman’s March” was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 2000 and endures as one of the landmark independent films of the 1980s. For decades, the film has been available only in standard-definition video, making the 40th-anniversary 4K restoration a major event for cinephiles.
In typical McElwee fashion, “Remake” begins with one subject but veers into other, more productive areas. The film’s title comes from McElwee’s account of “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” director Steve Carr’s ill-fated attempt to create a Hollywood remake of “Sherman’s March” as a “peak TV” comedy series, but “Remake” is really about McElwee’s relationship with his son Adrian, who died in 2016 of an accidental drug overdose. Adrian has been a recurring figure in McElwee’s films since “Time Indefinite” in 1993, and in “Remake,” McElwee explores his son’s life and their father/son relationship via decades of footage.
The result is what IndieWire called “an affecting tribute to his son’s life that doubles as a reflective, career-spanning culmination of his life’s work” when the film premiered at Venice in September. Through his relationship with his son, McElwee explores the passage of time and the thorny issues raised by documenting one’s own life and the lives of those close to the documentarian; the poignancy of the film comes from the fact that McElwee’s filmmaking both celebrates Adrian’s life and is considered a factor in his struggles while alive.
The newly restored “Sherman’s March” will open at the Film Forum on July 3, with “Remake” beginning its theatrical rollout at the same theater on July 10 before expanding nationwide. Both are essential viewing.
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