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Legendary actor Val Kilmer dies at 65

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Prolific American actor Val Kilmer, who was propelled to fame with “Top Gun” and went on to starring roles as Batman and Jim Morrison, has died at age 65, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The cause of death was pneumonia, his daughter Mercedes Kilmer told the Times. He had battled throat cancer following a 2014 diagnosis, but later recovered, she said.

AFP has reached out to his representatives for comment.

Originally a stage actor, Kilmer burst onto the big screen full of charisma, cast as a rock star in Cold War spoof “Top Secret!” in 1984.

Two years later, he gained fame as the cocky, if mostly silent fighter pilot in training Tom “Iceman” Kazansky in box office smash hit “Top Gun,” playing a rival to Tom Cruise’s “Maverick.”

A versatile character actor whose career spanned decades, Kilmer toggled between blockbusters and smaller-budget independent films. He got a shot at leading man status in Oliver Stone’s “The Doors,” depicting Jim Morrison’s journey from a psychedelics-loving LA film student to 60s rock frontman.

After a cameo in Quentin Tarantino-written “True Romance,” Kilmer went on to star alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in “Heat” and took a turn as the masked Gotham vigilante in “Batman Forever,” between the Bruce Wayne portrayals by Michael Keaton and George Clooney.

A 1996 Entertainment Weekly cover story dubbed Kilmer “The Man Hollywood Loves to Hate,” depicting him as a sometimes surly eccentric with exasperating work habits.

A New York Times interviewer in 2002 said Kilmer “hardly lives up to that reputation” and found the actor instead “friendly, buoyant and so open that he often volunteers personal details about his life and is quick to laugh at himself.”

“You have to learn to speak Val,” director D. J. Caruso told the newspaper.– ‘ Magical life’ –Born Val Edward Kilmer on New Year’s Eve 1959, he began acting in commercials as a child.

Kilmer was the youngest person ever accepted to the drama department at New York’s fabled Juilliard school, and made his Broadway debut in 1983 alongside Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon.

In Hollywood, the Los Angeles native longed to make serious films but found himself in a series of schlocky blockbusters and expensive flops in the early 2000s.

Chastened by a decade or more of low-budget movies, he was mounting a comeback in the 2010s with a successful stage show about Mark Twain that he hoped to turn into a film when he was struck by cancer.

“Val,” an intimate documentary about Kilmer’s stratospheric rise and later fall in Hollywood, premiered at the Cannes film Festival in 2021 and showed him struggling for air after a tracheotomy.

Kilmer “has the aura of a man who was dealt his cosmic comeuppance and came through it,” US publication Variety wrote of the film.

“He fell from stardom, maybe from grace, but he did it his way.”When he reprised his role as “Iceman” in the long-awaited sequel “Top Gun: Maverick,” Kilmer’s real-life health issues,and rasp of voice,were written into the character.“

Instead of treating Kilmer — and, indeed, the entire notion of Top Gun — as a throwaway nostalgia object, he’s given a celluloid swan song that’ll stand the test of time,” GQ wrote.

On his website, Kilmer said he had led a “magical life.”

“For more than half a century, I have been honing my art, no matter the medium. Be it literature, movies, poetry, painting, music, or tracking exotic and beautiful wildlife,” he wrote.

According to the Times, he is survived by two children, Mercedes and Jack Kilmer.

AFP

Entertainment

GoodGirl LA: No man is good enough to marry me

GoodGirl LA asserted, “I’m never getting married because no man walking this earth deserves a goddess like me, now what?”

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Singer Euphemia Ekumah, popularly known as GoodGirl LA, has declared that she’ll never get married, stating that no man on earth deserves her.

The singer’s statement came in response to a fan’s comment questioning who would marry a woman who doesn’t know how to cook, after she revealed she’s never cooked in her kitchen.

GoodGirl LA asserted, “I’m never getting married because no man walking this earth deserves a goddess like me, now what?”

( The Nation)

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Canal+ acquires MultiChoice Group for $3bn

The acquisition, which gives Canal+ the remaining 55% stake it did not previously own, was approved by South Africa’s Competition Tribunal on Wednesday, July 23.

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South Africa’s Competition Tribunal has approved Canal+’s takeover of of MultiChoice Group. Canalplus calls it a “hugely positive step forward.”

Multichoice Group, the parent company of DStv and GOtv, was bought at $3 billion (approx. 55 billion rand) deal by Canalplus.

The acquisition, which gives Canal+ the remaining 55% stake it did not previously own, was approved by South Africa’s Competition Tribunal on Wednesday, July 23.

The approval comes after months of intense negotiations and regulatory reviews, and paves the way for the deal to be finalized by October 8, 2025.

While the Tribunal gave the green light, it imposed several public interest conditions to protect local content and maintain South Africa’s media sovereignty.

For Canal+, the deal represents a major strategic expansion into Africa’s booming media and entertainment market.

Already operating in 25 African countries with over eight million subscribers, Canal+ is now positioned to significantly scale up its presence, targeting 50 to 100 million subscribers across the continent in the coming years.

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Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Cosby Show Star, Dead at 54

Warner was just 14 when The Cosby Show premiered in 1984, with the actor starring as Bill Cosby’s only on-screen son until the show wrapped in 1992.

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Malcolm-Jamal Warner, best known for playing Theodore “Theo” Huxtable on The Cosby Show, has died.

He was 54.TMZ first broke the news, reporting his death occurred in Costa Rica and was an apparent drowning.

Per AP, Costa Rican officials said he was swimming at Playa Cocles in Limon when the current pulled him deeper into the ocean.

“He was rescued by people on the beach,” officials said in a report, but he was without vital signs when first responders arrived.

Notoriously private about his personal life, Warner is survived by his wife and daughter, the latter who was born in 2017.

While he has shared photos of them both on social media, their identities have remained private.

Warner was just 14 when The Cosby Show premiered in 1984, with the actor starring as Bill Cosby’s only on-screen son until the show wrapped in 1992.

In that time, he also hosted Saturday Night Live, appeared on Sesame Street and played his Cosby character on spinoff A Different World for a couple episodes.

He also voiced The Producer from 1994-1997 on The Magic School Bus, before costarring on Malcolm & Eddie opposite Eddie Griffin from 1996-2000.

Later work included Jeremiah on Showtime, Sherri Shepherd’s sitcom Sherri, BET’s Reed between the Lines, and, most recently, The Resident and 9-1-1.Warner was also a Grammy winner, picking up the Best Traditional R&B Performance trophy alongside Robert Glasper Experiment featuring Lala Hathaway for the song Jesus Children in 2015.

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