Month: April 2020
To begin the new year, My Chemical Romance announced their first North American tour in over nine years. The announcement came after the group held a reunion concert in Los Angeles to close out 2019, their first concert together in seven years at the time. Unfortunately, as it has done to the rest of the music industry, the coronavirus pandemic forced My Chemical Romance to delay their tour according to Rolling Stone.
Still, My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way is doing is best to keep fans sated by debuting new music while everyone is stuck at hime. On Saturday, Way uploaded four new songs to his SoundCloud page.
“I’m calling all of this stuff Distraction Or Despair, since that seems to be the two things I keep shifting between. Probably a lot of other people too,” Way said in the Instagram post. “But I think only some of the tracks are tied to an ‘album’ of that name. I’m just winging it, keeping it casual.”
The four songs range widely in terms of their completeness, from the 14-second experiment of “Success!” to the more finished piece of work in “Phoning It In,” a song he said he planned to originally release as a single, and “may still do that at some point when I finish them.” Each song features a detailed explanation of its inspiration behind it on its SoundCloud page. Way said “Crate Amp 2” was him “messing around with this Crate amp I got off of Reverb for cheap,” and the Stooges-inspired “Welcome to the Hotel” is something he had in mind for his comic series Umbrella Academy Volume Three: Hotel Oblivion.
Encouraging fans to donate to the COVID-19 Response Fund, Way said, “With all this uncertainty I just wanted to start uploading some unreleased stuff. Just so people can check it out and have something to listen to. Just felt like sharing.”
My Chemical Romance is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music.
During the current worldwide pandemic, movie studios are no longer providing box-office figures because theaters have been shut down around the nation and the world. Because we are less interested in the actual figures themselves and more interested in what people are watching over the weekends, each week we will dive into Most Streamed and Bestseller Lists on Fandango, iTunes, Netflix, and Hulu to pinpoint the weekend’s most watched films.
We are now in our third week of inspecting the most watched movies at home, and it’s interesting how much more movement there is in the VOD market than in the traditional box office. That may be more of a function of our current situation, however, where theatrical movies released earlier this year are heading to VOD in a much faster clip to take advantage of the increased movie consumption at home. They’re probably also trying to recoup some of their losses, as well.
In our first two weeks, we’ve been eyeballing the iTunes and Google Play lists to come up with the most watched VOD movies, but Fandango’s most watched VOD movie seems to be a very good compromise between the two lists. In either respect, most of the lists suggests that the two most popular VOD movies this weekend were the home debuts of the two biggest films released in theaters in 2020, Bad Boys for Life and Sonic the Hedgehog. The two movies add to their $204 million and $146 million theatrical box office. Meanwhile, Pixar’s Onward comes in third now that it is being offered for $5 rental instead of $20 purchase (note families: It’s free on Disney+, which cost $6 a month, and if you are spending $5 to watch Onward, you probably live in a family that could use Disney+ to help get through the next couple of months. This is not a plug. It is a lifeline).
Invisible Man is still going strong even at the $20 rental price point, but it’s still doing extraordinarily well, even as other movies have debuted and fallen below it, like Knives Out and Jumanji. e don’t have exact figures on Invisible Man on VOD, but it’s safe to say that it has been a resounding success. Excluding Trolls World Tour (which is on presale), Invisible Man is number four, while Harrison Ford’s Call of the Wild — which was also ousted from theaters early — debuts at a middling #10, ahead of the original Bad Boys and two other movies still only available for purchase, Ben Affleck’s The Way Back and Robert Downey, Jr.’s Doctor Dolittle, which isn’t even doing well on the VOD market with families starved for movies.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell’s Downhill, which bombed in theaters, is likewise not making much noise on the VOD market, where it debuted at number 24. Meanwhile, I am only seeing it on the iTunes list (#11), but the critically acclaimed indie flick Never Rarely Sometimes Always seems to be doing well. I haven’t seen it yet, but a lot of critics are calling it the best movie of 2020, so far (Mike Ryan also spoke to the director about the film).
Elsewhere, there is not a lot of churn on Hulu’s Most Popular Movies list, so I may abandon it next week, as Pete Davidson’s Big Time Adolescence — a Hulu original — remains in the top spot for the third week. The rest is a mix of familiar, mostly older comfort titles, although it’s always interesting to see what kinds of movies bubble to the surface, like for instance The Escort, a 2016 movie about a sex-addicted journalist who throws himself into the world of high-class escorts. It sounds like a lot of teenagers were browsing Hulu after their parents went to sleep this weekend.
Finally, over on Netflix, there is a lot of movement as titles come on and off and the algorithm does its magic. Last week’s top film, The Platform, dropped to number seven this week, making way for a new number one, the Netflix original Coffee & Kareem with Ed Helms and Taraji P. Henson. It does not look good; in fact, both critics (14 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (48 percent RT Audience score) agree that it is lousy. I’m not sure if it because of Helms’ in Coffee & Kareem, but his The Hangover is also now the 5th most watched movie on the streaming service this weekend, too.
Number two, however, is a headscratcher. The Roommate is a 2011 film starring Leighton Meester, Minka Kelly, and Cam Gigandet about an obsessive, stalking college roommate. Two of those actors barely have a career these days, so I have no idea why the movie is suddenly popular, except that there are probably thousands and thousands of people in America right now who have been trapped indoors with their roommates for a very long time. The film miraculously made $37 million upon its release in America, despite a Rotten Tomatoes score of 4 percent. Are we that hard up for entertainment already?
The people simply can’t get enough Tiger King, and now one notable figure from the Netflix show says more is on the way. Jeff Lowe, a big cat enthusiast featured on the show, says at least one more episode of the wild docuseries is in the works and may be here sooner than you’d think.
The New York Post reported Saturday night that Lowe claims a new episode of Tiger King is coming, and Netflix is filming for a release that may come in a matter of days. Appearing, strangely, in a video tweeted by Los Angeles Dodgers player Justin Turner, Lowe says he will be in a new episode.
So our friend @christie_dish listened to the podcast, @HoldingKourt and after last weeks episode decided to send us this!!!
BREAKING NEWS FOLKS
There will be 1 more episode of #TigerKing on@Netflix pic.twitter.com/YeRSIlDKTJ
— Justin Turner (@redturn2) April 4, 2020
“Hey Kourtney and Justin, this is Jeff and Lauren from the ‘Tiger King’ show on Netflix. Thanks for watching our show,” Lowe said in the video.
“Netflix is adding one more episode. It will be on next week. We’re filming here tomorrow.”
Lowe ends the video with some coronavirus advice — telling Turner to “stay safe, and put your mask on.”
Lowe apparently got connected with Turner after the show was mentioned on his wife Kourtney’s podcast, Holding Kourt. The original run of the docuseries was seven episodes, all of which came out in mid-March. And though it was years of filming in various locations to get the full story, quite frankly it very much ended in medias res, so to speak, as (spoilers) its star remains in jail while others who appear to be involved in some shady dealings remain free. Lowe, one of those very shadowy figures who takes over the zoo once run by Joe Exotic, actually saying more Tiger King is coming probably means something is in the works, and he certainly seems willing to appear on camera again.
Variety reported that Netflix did not comment on the potential for another episode, so it’s initially unclear if this very tight production schedule could actually work and there will be a new episode by week’s end. Netflix did recently release a reunion episode of a similar hit, Love is Blind, so it’s not completely outside the box to go back to the well on what works. There’s also plenty of reasons to be skeptical, though, given the fact that the coronavirus pandemic has essentially shut down production on TV and movies around the world, especially in the United States. Given what we learn about Lowe in the series it’s more than reasonable to remain skeptical of it all until new Tiger King actually pops up on Netflix, but we’ll keep you posted.
Officials hope that the NFL season is not interrupted by coronavirus, but now we know the pandemic has impacted at least one notable football legend. NOLA.com reported Sunday morning that record-setting Saints kicker Tom Dempsey died from coronavirus complications over the weekend.
COVID-19, the novel coronavirus currently gripping much of the globe in a pandemic and is particularly deadly in nursing facilities. And as ESPN confirmed the report, we know it is responsible for the death of the 73-year-old placekicker who once held the NFL record for longest field goal for 28 years.
Former New Orleans Saints kicker Tom Dempsey, who famously made a 63-yard field goal in 1970 despite being born without toes on his right kicking foot, has died due to complications of the coronavirus, his family told NOLA.com. He was 73.
Dempsey had been battling Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. He was a resident at the Lambeth House senior living center in New Orleans, which has been hit hard by the virus. More than 50 residents have been affected, according to NOLA.com.
The Saints released a statement they shared on Twitter Sunday morning.
Statement from New Orleans Saints Owner Gayle Benson on the death of legendary kicker Tom Dempsey: https://t.co/nDVUocm2UC
— New Orleans Saints (@Saints) April 5, 2020
Dempsey’s most impressive record was set in 1970 when he made four field goals in a 19-17 win over the Detroit Lions, including an NFL record 63-yard field goal. That record stood for nearly three decades until it was tied in 1998 by Denver Broncos kicker Jason Elam. In 2014, Matt Prater broke the record with a 64-yard field goal. The custom cleat he used to kick with still sits in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
