Names and faces

Ringo Starr got an early start to Grammy week, with famous friends honoring him for his life and work. The former Beatle received the Lifetime of Peace and Love award from the David Lynch Foundation on Monday night during a tribute concert at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles. In turn, Starr led the crowd in singing happy birthday to Lynch, the director known for Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, who was celebrating his 68th birthday. Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono expressed their love for Starr via videos, while George Harrison’s widow, Olivia, was in the crowd.Starr and McCartney will perform separately at Sunday’s Grammy Awards. “It’s a weird place to be this evening,” Starr, 73, said onstage. “All this praise is overwhelming, really. It’s really great to look out and see all these people I recognize and three of them are meditating.” Lynch’s foundation helps provide scholarships to teach transcendental meditation - a practice the Beatles dabbled in - to at-risk youth, veterans and domestic-violence victims. “Everybody loves Ringo,” Lynch said. “Not just because he’s a Beatle, not just because he’s one of the tastiest drummers ever, but because he radiates that peace and love.”

Calling his late castmate Paul Walker “a terrific guy,” Kurt Russell says he’s not sure what will happen with his role in the latest Fast & Furious movie. Russell joined the seventh film in the franchise and plays a father figure to Vin Diesel’s character, Dominic Toretto. The 62-year-old actor said he had one day left of filming when Walker died in a car crash outside Los Angeles in November. “They’re having to rewrite, they’re having to do whatever they’re having to do to deal with the situation. Listen, it’s catastrophic. It’s the worst thing that could happen to a movie, but it’s not as bad as what happened to Paul,” Russell said in an interview at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, where he’s promoting a documentary about his father’s minor-league baseball team, The Battered Bastards of Baseball. “So everything is in perspective. He was a terrific guy. And life is full of curveballs.” The latest film in the fast-car franchise, directed by James Wan, is now set for release in April 2015. Russell expects to return to the set sometime this year. Russell said of his character, whom he didn’t name: “Whether or not this guy dies off in the movie, we don’t know, and that may have changed now significantly, too.”

Front Section, Pages 2 on 01/22/2014

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