SPOTLIGHT December 2024: DIANE WARREN, Revered and Prolific Songsmith

Diane Warren is an artist who even early in her career was called “the most important songwriter in the world”. So far, Warren has been nominated for an Oscar fifteen times in five different decades, and in 2022 garnered an Academy Honorary Award. She is part of the fabric of popular music in a way that transcends genre and gender, with a list of accomplishments that include being the first songwriter, male or female, in the history of Billboard magazine to have seven hits by seven different artists on the charts at the same time. Many of her melodies have a longevity not shared with the films in which they appear. She is quirky, straightforward, mouthy, curse-y and is always herself, whether she’s on the red carpet, attending the Governor’s Ball, or visiting the rescued farm animals living at her self-financed animal sanctuary in Malibu.

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ALINE – Review by Liz Braun

There’s some wild-eyed hagiography going in Aline, a hugely entertaining love letter to Quebec superstar Celine Dion. Co-written and directed by French actress (and comic) Valérie Lemercier — who also stars here — Aline is a kind of camp masterpiece, an over-the-top celebration of both the personal and the professional. This, as the movie makes clear, is the story of Aline Dieu, not Celine Dion, even if all the facts line up.

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