Month: May 2020
For the past two months, Timbaland and Swizz Beatz’s Verzuz battles have been thrilling their legions of fans. The bouts first began in early March, and since then we have seen battles between Lil Jon and T-Pain, DJ Premier and RZA, Erykah Badu and Jill Scott, and more. Now they’ve revealed the two duels for this holiday weekend.
On Saturday, Jamaican artists Bounty Killer and Beenie Man will face off at 8pm EST. The series will be back only two days later, with Jagged Edge and 112 going head-to-head for a Memorial Day edition, at 8pm EST, for a battle billed as “something for the ladies.”
The two battles will follow last week’s Ludacris and Nelly’s battle, in which the two tapped into their large catalog of Southern hits for what proved an entertaining tête-à-tête. During the battle, Ludacris debuted new music with Lil Wayne and Chance The Rapper, with the former produced by Timbaland, as well as a never-before-heard remix of “Money Maker” with Nelly.
Hopefully, the Verzuz series will continue, as fans have pitched battles between Dr. Dre and Diddy, DMX and Eminem, Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent, Jay-Z and Snoop Dogg, and more.
You can watch Bounty Killer and Beenie Man face off on Sat., May 23, at 8pm, and watch Jagged Edge and 112 on on Mon., May 25 at 8pm EST / 5pm PST, all on Instagram Live.
Let’s begin at the ending — apropos since this is about Christopher Nolan. The last thing you see in the new trailer for Tenet are three bold, shocking words: “Coming to theaters.” Despite all that’s happened in the world, all the blockbusters that have relocated to later dates — or been re-routed to streamers — Nolan’s latest mindbender has held steadfast on its release date, i.e., July 17. Will it will even be safe to go to a movie theater in less than two months? Who knows, but so far Tenet is still playing chicken with the Covid-19 pandemic.
For now, though, we have this latest trailer, which, along with new eye-popping imagery, makes the central gimmick a little clearer. Did you think it was about time travel? Well, here’s Robert Pattinson’s character to tell our tabula rasa audience surrogate, played by John David Washington, that it’s not. Instead, it’s about…well, they call it “inversion,” and so far as we can tell that means that certain parts of the movie will play backwards.
Remember the backwards-crashing car from the last trailer? Well, here’s guns shooting backwards, a fight backwards, and what looks like maybe a terrorist attack in a public space backwards, too. “You’re not shooting the bullet,” one British scientist-looking person tells Washington, “you’re catching it.”
Anyway, minds sufficiently blown and see you — maybe — at the movies on July 17. Unless we don’t.
When any service first launches, there are always weird issues, glitches, and mistakes. When Disney+ bowed back in November, one complaint was more forcefully made than others: The first several seasons of The Simpsons were not available in their original aspect ratio. Disney+ top brass were quick to say the problem would be fixed, but they weren’t slow to actually fix it. Now, as per Variety, they’ve released a date when the switch will take place: May 28, i.e., next week.
The casual plebeian may not think aspect ratios are too wonky to care about; after how many households still have motion smoothing turned on? But complaints about The Simpsons being shown in the wrong shape were about more than mere purity. For its first 19 seasons, and part of 20 — up until 2009 —were designed for old-timey square-shaped televisions. The versions on Disney+ cropped them to fit modern widescreen sets. And by doing so, the censors wound up messing up or even completely eliminating untold visual jokes.
So huzzah! In a week as of this writing, you’ll be able to actually see the “Old Man Yells at Cloud” headline in the Season 13 episode “The Old Man and the Key.” Meanwhile, the long-running show just concluded its 31st season, with no end in sight.
(Via Variety)
