Tag Archives: Guy Ritchie

Today in Madonna History: August 29, 2005

August 29, 2025 By in 2005, August Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

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On August 29 2005, Madonna appeared on the cover of People Magazine with the caption: Bone Breaking Fall.

Madonna had planned to celebrate her 47th birthday on a warm summer afternoon at her country home outside London, relaxing with her husband and children and horseback riding with her assistant.

And then: boom.

On Aug. 16 the singer took a spill on an unfamiliar horse, suffering three cracked ribs and a broken collarbone and hand. Her husband, Guy Ritchie, drove her to a local hospital, where she was treated and released a few hours later. Fortunately she’s almost finished wrapping up her new album, which she shot cover art for last Thursday and is due out in November. That said, “I’m sure she’ll be very restless,” says rep Liz Rosenberg. “She’s usually doing lots of things at once: Pilates, riding her bike. I think it will be tough on her.” At the very least, she can count on the neighbors to pull her a sympathetic pint or two. “She is well-liked by the locals round here,” says Tim Birks, landlord of Madonna’s local pub the King John Inn. “A lot of people will be wishing her a speedy recovery.” So will she get back on the horse and ride again? “Knowing her, she’ll be riding next week,” says Rosenberg. “She is a fearless girl.”

Today in Madonna History: August 28, 2000

August 28, 2025 By in 2000, August Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

On August 28 2000, Madonna appeared on the cover of People magazine with the headline: Labor Days! With Their Men Standing By, Madonna, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Iman Give Birth to New Little Scene-Stealers.

Here’s a snippet of the article inside:

August is often the busiest month for the nation’s maternity wards, but this year it was certainly the most glamorous. On Aug. 8 actress Catherine Zeta-Jones gave birth to son Dylan, with fiancé Michael Douglas nearby. Three days later, reportedly under more urgent circumstances, pop diva Madonna and film director Guy Ritchie welcomed son Rocco. And on Aug. 15 model-actress Iman and her husband, David Bowie, celebrated the arrival of daughter Alexandria. Here, the stories of those joyful beginnings. A Rocky Ride for Madonna’s Rocco There are limits even for those who like to have it all. With daughter Lourdes, 3, underfoot and another child on the way—an addition that she has said will add to her battalion of “nannies, housekeepers and assistants”—Madonna decided that life was getting a bit too hectic, shuttling between homes in Los Angeles, New York City and London, where she most recently shared a $15,000-a-month, four-story townhouse with Baby No. 2’s father, British director Guy Ritchie. Three weeks ago the Material Mom gave away two of her three Chihuahuas, letting Lourdes keep Evita while farming out Chiquita and Rosita to actor Glenn Shadix. “I e-mailed our mutual friend Rupert Everett in Italy to help convince Madonna that I would give the girls a proper home,” says Shadix, who owns two female terriers. “All four girls get along fabulously.”

Today in Madonna History: August 18, 2002

August 18, 2025 By in 2000, August Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

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On August 18 2002, the official poster for Swept Away was released.

The film Swept Away, starring Madonna and directed by her husband, Guy Ritchie, would open on October 11 2002 in US theatres. The movie was initially titled Love, Sex, Drugs, and Money, and was based on the 1974 Italian film Travolti da un Insolito Destino Nell’Azzurro Mare D’Agosto. Adriano Giannini and Bruce Greenwood also starred in the film. In the film, Madonna played a socialite stranded on an island with a handsome, Communist sailor (Giannini).

Today in Madonna History: March 22, 2001

March 22, 2025 By in 2001, March Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

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On March 22 2001, Madonna’s What It Feels Like For A Girl music video premiered.

The video was directed by Madonna’s then-husband, Guy Ritchie, and was deemed to be “Too Hot for TV” by MTV and VH1 because the video depicted gunplay, assault and suicide.

MTV released this statement about the video and their decision to ban it:

It’s been some time since Madonna ruffled the feathers of MTV or VH1 execs with a controversial video — perhaps not since 1992’s Erotica clip — so just under a decade later, the first lady of shock pop is out to prove she can still make ’em sweat.

Unlike the steamy segments of Erotica, 1990’s Justify My Love, and the one that started it all, Like a Prayer, it’s not the sexual content of What It Feels Like for a Girl that raises the red flag, it’s the violence — a concerted no-no in the post-Columbine, and more recently post-Santana, decision-making process.

The music in the video, it should be noted, is a dance remix of the version found on Madonna’s latest album, Music. The album cut will serve as the LP’s third single.

 Directed by her husband, British filmmaker Guy Ritchie (Snatch, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), the clip depicts gunplay, violent assault and suicide — elements MTV and VH1 prohibit in any videos they air. In it, the pop diva portrays a self-described “nihilistic pissed-off chick” who cruises around town inflicting damage on any man that crosses her path.
After picking up Grandma at the “Ol Kuntz Guest Home,” Madonna crashes into a car full of men who wink at her, threatens male police officers with a squirt gun before sideswiping their vehicle, and mugs a man at an ATM with a stun gun before wrapping her stolen car around a lamppost in what appears to be an intentional act.

The video “shows my character acting out a fantasy and doing things girls are not allowed to do,” Madonna said in a written statement distributed by her record label, Warner Bros. “This is an angry song and I wanted a matching visual with an edgy dance mix.”
Although What It Feels Like for a Girl won’t be added to the music channel’s regular rotation, MTV and VH1 will air the clip just once.

Today In Madonna History: March 16, 2001

March 16, 2025 By in 2001, March Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

On March 16 2001, MTV and VH1 networks announced that Madonna’s new video for What It Feels Like For A Girl would be broadcast only once on March 20 at 11:30 pm because of the controversy over its violent content.

Madonna later released What It Feels Like For A Girl as a DVD single.

Madonna biographer Andrew Morton had this to say about the video:

“The video is entirely consistent with the themes that she has been exploring for the last twenty years, namely the relationship between the sexes, the ambiguity of gender, and the unresolved conflict, for women in a patriarchal society of being fully female and sexual while exercising control over their lives.”

Today in Madonna History: February 10, 2003

February 10, 2025 By in 2003, February Tags: , , , 1 Comment

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On February 10 2003, Swept Away was nominated for the following Razzie Awards:

  • Worst Picture
  • Worst Remake or Sequel
  • Worst Director (Guy Ritchie)
  • Worst Screenplay
  • Worst Actress (Madonna)
  • Worst Actor (Adriano Giannini)
  • Worst Screen Couple (Madonna and Adriano Giannini)

Madonna was also nominated for Razzies for Die Another Day:

  • Worst Support Actress
  • Worst Original Song

The Golden Raspberry Awards, or the Razzies, recognize the worst in film.

Today in Madonna History: January 30, 2020

January 30, 2025 By in 2020, January Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

On January 30 2020, glowing reviews of Madonna’s first Madame X show in London were published:

Music critic Neil McCormick (The Telegraph) had this to say: Anarchic and experimental – her best show ever? 5 STARS (out of 5)

I’m not sure who was having more fun at the opening of Madonna’s London residency, the audience or the star. She sang, she danced, she joked and she beamed with almost childlike glee at the crowd’s adoring response.

“How happy I am to have made it this far,” she declared, calling London “my second home”.

Madonna first played the city in 1983 to 1,500 early adopters at the Camden Palace. Her next London gig was Wembley Stadium. She was clearly delighted to be back in a venue where she could not just reach out and touch the audience, she could descend from the stage and sit in their laps. “It’s so intimate. It’s gorgeous and a thrill for me to be able to see all your faces.”

David Smyth of the Evening Standard gave the show 4 STARS (out of 5): Madame X is tireless, imaginative and powerfully intimate.

Such drama before Madonna could even take to the stage for her first theatre tour since 1985! Would she arrive drastically late? Would she cancel at the last minute? Tenterhooks all round.

Monday was supposed to be the first of a planned 15 nights at the Palladium, cancelled on doctor’s orders. It was the 10th dropped concert of the Madame X Tour, which began in New York in September and gathered complaints for its late start times.

But tonight at 8.45pm, there she was, dressed as a bloodstained, eyepatch-wearing revolutionary soldier. She was also a spy, a protest marcher and a Portuguese fado singer in the course of a tireless, imaginative show that was far from shrunken arena pop. Thanks especially to an extraordinary troupe of dancers, it was a spectacle that felt more powerful up close.

Like Bruce Springsteen, who showed a different side of himself in his recent Broadway run, and Kate Bush, whose live comeback was more theatre than concert, the 61-year-old has unearthed something new late in her career. The Madame X album may have plummeted out of the charts in an instant, but here its songs dominated and found their purpose.

Batuka, tuneless on record, was euphoric when performed with a mass of smiling, rump-shaking Batuque drummers from Cape Verde. I Rise was far more powerful when backed by footage of anti-gun protests and gay pride marches.

Alexis Petridis of The Guardian, also gave the show 4 STARS (out of 5) and noted: London residency short on hits but big on British banter.

She sings the bare minimum of big hits – Vogue, Like a Prayer, Human Nature – with Express Yourself and La Isla Bonita reduced to interstitial roles (the former performed as a sweet, but brief a cappella duet with her daughter Mercy), and American Life performed in full.

Still, it occasionally serves to remind you that some of Madame X is better than its relatively muted commercial response might suggest – Medellín sounds like the hit single it wasn’t, as does the gorgeous album track Crazy. This is presumably part of the point – the other part being a certain screw-you intransigence designed to underline that we are in the presence of an artiste, not a pop star.

And the BBC had a few fun notes to add in their review:

The audience were required to store mobile phones in sealed pouches as “an intervention for us all”. However, Madonna admitted that even she was getting anxious without a phone nearby.

“I’m having little panic attacks,” she joked. “I’m like, ‘Why is no-one taking my picture?'”

But the gambit worked: Freed from distractions, the audience gave the concert their undiluted attention; while Madonna seemed to relax and have fun without a phalanx of tiny cameras recording her every move.

At one point, she slipped into a British accent and recalled how she’d been ridiculed for developing similarly plummy vowels during her marriage to Guy Ritchie.

“I didn’t know what anyone was talking about until I heard old interviews of myself,” she said. “And then I was horrified and flabbergasted. Why did you let me do that to myself? I’m from Michigan!”

“It’s all Guy Ritchie’s fault,” she decided. “He made me to it.”