Month: July 2020

Just over a month ago, the band formerly known as Lady Antebellum announced that they would be changing their band’s name to Lady A in order to remove any attachment to the pre-Civil War period of history their name is derived from. In a statement, the band revealed they got their name from “the Southern ‘antebellum’ style home where we took our first photos,” and that they decided to make the name change to “take into account the associations that weigh down this word.”

Soon after making the name-change to Lady A, however, it was revealed that Black blues singer Lady A, whose real name is Anita White, was using the name. White herself was critical of the name-change considering the fact that the country band did not reach out to discuss using the name, one White has used for over three decades. After failed attempts to reach a solution with the band, White has released a lengthy statement, which in part, explained why the country band’s name-change is harmful to her and her career.

Though they recognized their impact, Lady Antebellum has not been receptive to my proposals for correcting their infringement, unfortunately. It has already been demonstrated why co-existence will simply not work. My fans used to be able to listen to my music on streaming services; now they struggle to find me. Due to Lady Antebellum’s massive rebranding efforts, Lady Antebellum has erased me from every platform. Lady Antebellum has used their wealth and influence to intimidate and bully me into submission without offering any real recompense for appropriating my name. It is now clear that their apologies, friendly texts, and playing on my love of God were just insincere gestures aimed at quieting me. Well, I will not be quiet any longer.

Revealed in a statement from the country band, they are suing White after she demanded the country band give her $10 million, a move that she explained in her state, but one that pushed the country band to sue her in order to use the name. Despite the suit, White remains unmoved in her stance as she revealed in a recent interview with Vulture. “If you want to be an advocate or an ally, you help those who you’re oppressing. And that might require you to give up something because I am not going to be erased.”

Read blues singer Lady A’s full statement here.

Adding onto an already painful year in the hip-hop community, news broke late Saturday night that 27-year-old Quality Control rapper Marlo was shot and killed in Atlanta. XXL reported that the rapper was driving on Atlanta’s I-285 was he shot.

Signed to Quality Control in late 2017, Marlo was also known as Lil Baby’s right-hand man. The two rappers released their joint project, 2 The Hard Way in October 2017. The project gave Marlo some of his most popular songs, including the title track and the Pnb Rock-featured “Whatchu Gon Do.” Following the joint project with Lil Baby, Marlo would release four more projects including 2018’s 9th Ward God and The Real 1 and 2020’s 1st & 3rd. He was also featured on both volumes of Quality Control’s Control The Streets.

Fellow Quality Control artists took to Twitter to pay their respects to Marlo. Lil Yachty shared a post from a fellow Atlanta rapper with a caption that read, “We just did a song a 4 this morning smh rip brother.” One-half of the City Girls duo, JT, also commented on Marlo’s passing saying, “Rest In Peace Marlo……damn,” in a post to Twitter.

Many other artists paid their respects to Marlo in social media posts of their own including Reese LaFlare, who called his death “crazy,” and Russ who remember Marlo and Lil Baby’s 2017 project 2 The Hard Way and how it played a big part on tour for him.

View other comments and posts from artists in the industry below.

Tom Hanks has hosted Saturday Night Live ten times now, if we include his April stint as host of the show for its first episode in the midst of the pandemic. In those ten times as host, Hanks has created some of the best skits and many of the show’s most enduring characters through 40 years, including David S. Pumpkins, the one-armed tennis player, and Mr. Short Term Memory. When Hanks hosts, viewers can expect that staying up until 1 a.m. to watch the show will be worth it. He’s not only one of the most prolific hosts, but one of the best.

There’s a reason for that, beyond the fact that Hanks is just naturally funny and charming, according to Conan O’Brien, who wrote for SNL from 1987 to 1991. Tom Hanks appeared as a host in all four seasons that Conan wrote, and many will say that those were probably Hanks’ best episodes, and it’s because Hanks did something that other hosts did not.

In this week’s episode of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend with guest Tom Hanks, Conan spelled it out. “I remembered every time that you would host, you would stay up practically the whole night with the writers. I remembered at one point walking through the conference room at night, at like 3 in the morning, and you were lying on the conference table trying to compose a sketch.”

“Every other host,” Conan said, “would dip in and dip out, and see what everyone was up to, and then go out to dinner with Lorne [Michaels], and then maybe come back for a little bit. You were alone in your dedication to making it a great show. Moreso than any other host while I was there.”

Conan described Tom Hanks — along with Bruce Springsteen — as examples of celebrities who have succeeded because they are such hard workers. For the ever-humble Hanks, however, he dismissed Conan’s flattery. “It was a great hang,” he said. “You laugh your head off when you are there, and part of it was, I couldn’t believe I was there. I wanted to soak that up. I mean, Lorne’s a fascinating guy, but after awhile, I don’t need anymore Bob Hope stories at dinner.”

Listen to the entire Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend episode with Hanks, where he talks about his new film on Apple TV+, Greyhound, and having seen both the movie and listened to this podcast, I thought the way that Hanks talks about the movie here is even more interesting than the movie itself.

Source: Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend

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.

I have been running the above message in italics since last March, and while theaters aren’t open for new theatrical movies yet, we are starting to get actual box-office numbers again, largely from drive-in theaters, which represent most of the moviegoing business being conducted at the moment. It’s a shame most of them ran out of business over the last 30 years, because they are doing very well now.

To wit: Empire Strikes Back is the top movie at the weekend box office, thanks to drive-in theaters. In fact, this is the third different year that Empire has led the box office: In 1980, upon its release; with the 1997 re-release, and now during the 2020 pandemic, when it is occupying most of those drive-in theater screens around the country. It should earn around $500K this weekend, which ain’t bad for a 40-year-old film. Meanwhile, as a sign of how the more things change, the more they stay the same in a pandemic: Even in decidedly lo-fi drive-in theaters, Disney holds all three of the top spots this weekend, with Empire and the re-releases of Marvel’s Black Panther and Pixar’s Inside Out. Disney has apparently come in and chased even the low-budget movies, like Wretched and Becky, out of theaters.

Back in our living rooms, where most of the business is still being conducted, Rod Lurie’s The Outpost (based on the book by CNN’s Jake Tapper) is now dominating both the Fandango and iTunes charts. I’ve seen a lot of promotion for it on Twitter, but that’s probably because I follow Jake Tapper on Twitter. Beyond that, there’s not much to say about the VOD charts this week, as it’s mostly titles we’ve ran across a number of times over the last four months: Trolls World Tour, King of Staten Island, and Mel Gibson’s Force of Nature is doing OK. Honestly, if viewers are really into watching a movie set during a storm, watch Crawl, an alligator film set during a hurricane. It is fantastic, and super fun. Trust me!

There were a couple of other indie flicks released to VOD this weekend that I wish had broken out, and are at least worth mentioning: Relic, the atmospheric horror film starring Emily Mortimer that has scored 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and A24’s First Cow, which sits at 96 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Check them out.

Maybe the two best mainstream films of the summer were also released on streaming platforms this weekend, although neither one of them was Tom Hanks’ Greyhound, which I’m sure is doing well for Apple TV+, even though I thought it was a snoozer [Vince disagrees, and so do most critics (79 percent on RT)]. I am more referring to Hulu’s Lonely Island Groundhog Day movie, Palm Springs, which is hilarious and maybe the best movie I have seen this summer (both Vince and Mike agree, as do most critics, who have given it a 93 percent on RT).

The other is the weekend’s top film on Netflix, Charlize Theron’s Old Guard, which Mike correctly suggests is probably the closest we’re going to get to a summer-blockbuster this summer, although with 81 percent on RT, that’s better than most summer blockbusters. It’s a really fun movie, and I say that as someone who hasn’t been all that impressed, yet, with some of the big-budget Netflix movies, like Bright and Extraction. This one is both very good and very fun.

On Netflix, The Old Guard was followed by The Lorax, the Netflix original Desperadoes, and a 2019 indie horror flick I’ve never heard of called Only. It stars Frieda Pinto, Leslie Odom Jr. (from Hamilton), and Chandler Riggs, the latter of which suggests I should at least see what this movie is about (the smattering of reviews for it give it mostly mediocre marks). Meanwhile, for reasons that elude me, the terrible 2008 Kevin James and Adam Sandler movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is at number five. Adam Sandler does very well on Netflix.

I’m not seeing that much worth mentioning among next weekend’s VOD and Netflix releases, which means it’s probably a good time to catch up on any of the great movies released this weekend you didn’t get around to like: Relic, First Cow, Old Guard, and Palm Springs. Or Hamilton on Disney+. Or, you can head to the drive-in. I think that Beetlejuice is making the rounds in drive-in theaters next weekend.

Sources: Deadline, Fandango, Netflix, iTunes

Disney World in Orlando opened up on Saturday, one of two Disney parks that saw paying customers for the first time in nearly four months amid the COVID-19 pandemic. For those desperate to distract themselves from the daily realities of rising case counts and death tolls, it was welcome news. But many saw the parks reopening in Florida amid skyrocketing infections across the South as an unsettling dismissal of medical and safety advice.

As CNN reported, the sights and sounds from inside the park were certainly different as safety measures like plexiglass, social distancing measures and mask use try to combat rising COVID-19 cases in the region where the self-described “happiest place on Earth” resides. Videos showed the usually packed park with sparse groups of people in masks, and reports of short ride waits were everywhere. Many tweeted videos of masked employees waving to guests as they shuffle through a very different park than existed before coronavirus.

A recording also reminded people to wear masks, and video of it echoing through a mostly empty park quickly went viral.

The New York Times has a good on-the-scene report as well, highlighting the efforts the park has made to control reporting on the reopening from inside the park, the reaction from union employees who are returning to work as well as enthusiasm from its patrons.

“We will take any amount of normalcy and any amount of joy that we can get,” Jose Villanueva said as he rested in the shade in Tomorrowland with his wife, Kacie. “I know that some people are upset about having to wear a mask or there being no fireworks. For us, we feel lucky to be here. This was the first thing that made us feel like we could leave our house and still feel safe.”

Why?

“It’s Disney,” Ms. Villanueva said. The couple made the trek to Florida from their home in Laurinburg, N.C.

But what got most of the attention online as Disney reopened was a video of employees welcoming guests back to the park for the first time in nearly four months. First shared on the @DisneyParksJobs account, it showed various employees readying the park and welcoming people back while wearing masks.

The video was discussed so widely on Twitter that it was deleted, though as of this posting it was still available on Instagram. Many described it as unsettling and it quickly became a meme of sorts, with people adding effects to the video to make it more like a horror film trailer.

Adding “Mad World” and some black and white filters really drives the point home.

The music from pretty much any horror movie works here.

Even Midsommar, which does fit thematically in a way.

The A24 vibe was certainly picked up by a lot of people.

Here’s The Shining, if you need it.

And Saw.

Others simply changed the video to say “stay home” instead of “welcome back.”

Inside the park, though, there were plenty of happy people who traveled a long way to get their Disney fix. Not everyone, however, was convinced that was the best idea right now.

Kamaru Usman (17-1) earned a decision victory over Jorge Masvidal (35-14) to keep the welterweight championship in the main event at UFC 251 from “Fight Island” at Yas Island in Abu Dhabi.

Masvidal opened the first with a slew of swift leg kicks, but Usman caught one of them and took the challenger to the mat. Masvidal worked off his back and jumped back to his feet, where he landed stinging knees and a sharp elbow. Usman went for the takedown again, but the challenger fought it off. Masvidal appeared to stun Usman with a right hook late before the end of the round.

Throughout the second, Usman had Masvidal backed against the cage, where he traded stomping his feet and attacking his body. Toward the end of the round, Masvidal showed some life and landed a handful of shots.

The third was much of the same, with Usman dropping Masvidal with back-to-back takedowns. Usman controlled the ground and went to work on Masvidal’s midsection. Usman pushed Masvidal against the cage to open the fourth yet again, trading foot stomps with body shots. Masvidal exploded out of the clinch and moved forward with his own burst of attacks. That was short lived though, with Usman yet again earning an advantage by holding Masvidal against the cage.

In the final round, Usman took Masvidal to the ground again, where Usman chipped away with elbows and maintained a dominant position. With less than a minute remaining, Masvidal made his way back his feet and began throwing a flurry of strikes but didn’t have enough left to finish the fight.

After resurrecting his career to the tune of three consecutive wins, most recently winning the Baddest Motherf***er championship, Masvidal has called for a title shot for the last six months. Gilbert Burns got the opportunity instead, but Masvidal stepped in on one week’s notice after the challenger tested positive for COVID-19.

His opponent, Usman, also saw a meteoric rise over the last year, beating Tyron Woodley in an incredibly one-sided tilt before breaking Colby Covington’s jaw in an impressive first title defense.

Seven months after their first showdown, Alexander Volkanovski (22-1) made good on his promise to keep his featherweight title run going with a decision victory over Max Holloway (21-6) at UFC 251 from “Fight Island” in Abu Dhabi.

Volkanovski and Holloway needed much of the first round to get reacquainted, with neither fighter in a rush to get the action started. The champ attacked Holloway’s leg early, chipping away at this challenger in their return bout much like he did in the first go-around. Holloway sat down on a right that looked to stun the champ and dropped him toward the end of the round with a right head kick.

The champ opened the second with repeated stinging leg kicks, but it was Holloway who was able to piece together combinations as swelling started to show on Volkanovski’s left eye. Up top, anything Volkanovski attempted, Holloway used his length to counter. Again toward the end of the round, Holloway sent Volkanovski to the mat, this time with a quick uppercut counter.

Volkanovski started to find openings in the third, continuing to chip away at Holloway’s lead leg and snapping short combinations inside. Holloway stuffed a takedown attempt midway through the round and continued to press forward with a healthy mix of attacks.

In the championship rounds, it was Volkanovski again pushing forward, opening a cut across the bridge of Holloway’s nose. The challenger appeared to stun Volkanovski with a spinning kick to the abdomen, but the champ battled right back with a takedown. Holloway immediately sprung to his feet and charged ahead with a snapping jab.

Holloway and Volkanovski came out swinging in the final round, with each fighter throwing heavy-handed shots. Late in the round, Volkanovski took Holloway to the ground yet again, but the challenger was burst back to his feet. With a minute remaining, Volkanovski picked up the pace again, shooting over and again while looking for opportunities to end the fight, but it went to the judges.

Volkanovski came into his first title defense unbeaten in the last six years and 18 fights, including wins over Holloway, Jose Aldo, and Chad Mendes. Holloway lost two of his last three fights coming into the co-main event. Before his loss to Dustin Poirier in 2019, Holloway hadn’t lost in five years.

Woj Bombs are going to be left unlit for a little. According to multiple reports, ESPN has decided to suspend Adrian Wojnarowski for an undetermined amount of time following the headlines that the veteran basketball reporter made earlier this week. The news was first reported by Ryan Glasspiegel of Outkick and eventually confirmed by Andrew Marchand of the New York Post.

Earlier this week, United States Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri sent a letter to a collection of media personalities that called on the NBA to, among other things, disclose how much money it makes in China. Wojnarowski apparently received this in his inbox and decided to send Hawley a two-word response that summed up his thoughts on the matter.

A myriad of individuals started to call for some sort of punishment for Wojnarowski. He eventually offered up a statement that apologized for the email — which Hawley, in a corresponding tweet, did not seem to accept — and ESPN sent out a statement of its own that called Wojnarowski’s email “completely unacceptable” and “inexcusable.”

The only detail we know of the suspension is that, per Marchand, it will be unpaid. It is unclear whether or not his suspension will conclude before the NBA’s bubble league in Orlando tips off at the end of the month.

Theater fans are still abuzz about Hamilton‘s appearance on Disney+, so much so that the mention of a retired basketball player named Rip Hamilton caused some considerable confusion on social media. Or at least that’s the best working theory anyone can come up with after the phrase “Rip Hamilton” trended on Saturday and confused a lot of different sections of the internet.

Hamilton‘s streamable version first appeared on July 4 weekend in the United States and saw a surge of people signing up for the streaming service and tweeting about the show’s movie format. For many fans, it was the first time the show’s critically-acclaimed soundtrack came to life, and the reaction to seeing it in motion was a huge social moment. According to a Hollywood Reporter story about the rise of big streaming movies gaining viral buzz, people on social media tweeted about Hamilton two million times on the holiday weekend, three times what the buzz of its Broadway debut in 2015 garnered.

But that attention caused a lot of trouble when people started tweeting “Rip Hamilton” and no one could quite pinpoint whether it was because of some news about the show, the basketball player Rip Hamilton, or merely people noting the anniversary of Alexander Hamilton’s duel with Aaron Burr, which eventually killed him a day later.

Given the intense interest and scrutiny of any and all Hamilton content, the confusion is understandable. And there’s a somewhat interesting history of entertainment fans not into sports completely unaware of, say, a character on The Good Place‘s favorite quarterback actually existing as a real human being. Because a lot of people had no idea Rip Hamilton was a fairly famous athlete.

Hamilton, of course, played for three NBA teams from 1999 to 2013 and won a title with the Detroit Pistons in 2004. He’s beloved for his play with that Pistons team and for his decision to wear a mask the remainder of his playing career after breaking his nose twice during that championship run. If the trend started because of him, it’s likely because of this ESPN tweet about masked players, of which Rip is pretty clearly the most iconic and thus may have prompted a lot of responses with his name in them.

Rip, to his credit, also claimed that he wore it best.

Some people were even worried that Rip Hamilton had, you know, died.

To non-hoops fans, though, the confusion is understandable. “RIP” along with the name of a thing often trends on Twitter when it is widely discussed, usually when something scandalous happened and some are attempting to “cancel” it, so to speak. Which is why many theater fans and perhaps some denizens of Canadian cities on Lake Ontario were confused when “Rip Hamilton” was trending on Twitter on Saturday night.

There are, of course, a considerable number of basketball fans who are also aware of the musical Hamilton, so the middle of that Venn diagram isn’t exactly the product of an obscure pairing. Those in the middle were far from confused Saturday night, but perhaps amused that a plastic mask-wearing former Piston got a lot of theater folks worried about Lin-Manuel Miranda for a little bit.

A mint copy of one of the most beloved classic video games was sold for a record-breaking price at auction this week. The 1985 title Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System, was sold by Heritage Auctions recently that broke the record of $100,150 the same title sold for at an auction last year.

Super Mario Bros. is a classic for a number of reasons, starting with that it was the most popular NES game in the console’s history. It also is the first appearance of Bowser, a staple of the franchise moving forward. All of that is why a copy in very good condition had already owned the current record for highest-priced video game sale in history. But this new copy, also in remarkable condition and featuring a few unique elements, broke the record recently and went for a record $114,000.

As The Verge pointed out, Heritage Auctions explained in detail that a very special feature on this copy made it particularly valuable: cardboard hangtags that are an odd part of the game console’s packaging history.

What’s the deal with cardboard hangtabs? one may, understandably, wonder. Cardboard hangtabs were originally used on the US test market copies of black box games, back before plastic was used to seal each game. As Nintendo began to further establish their company in the US, their packaging was updated almost continuously. Strangely, the addition of the plastic wrap came before the box cutting die was altered to remove the cardboard hangtab. This rendered the functionality of the cardboard hangtab completely useless, since it was under the plastic seal.

There are four sub-variants of the plastic sealed cardboard hangtab box (this particular copy of Super Mario Bros. being the “3 Code” variant) that were produced within the span of one year. Each sub-variant of the cardboard hangtab black box, produced within that timeframe, had a production period of just a few months; a drop in the bucket compared to the title’s overall production run.

The new record copy was graded 9.4 out of 10, about as close to perfect as you can expect for a game that was released more than three decades earlier.

[h/t The Verge]