Month: May 2021

Selena Gomez is no stranger to the big screen. She’s worked for Jim Jarmusch (The Dead Don’t Die), even Woody Allen (A Rainy Day in New York, opposite Timothée Chalamet). The pop singer is set to do it again, singing up for the psychological thriller Sprial. According to Deadline, it follows a “former influence whose addiction to social media is causing her body to literally fall apart.” The film is directed by Petra Collins and executive produced by Drake and Future The Prince, who are both executive producers for HBO’s Euphoria. It will reunited Collins and Gomez, who worked together on her music video for “Fetish” back in 2017.

The announcement comes after Gomez shared a promotional video for the third season of Selena + Chef, her HBO Max cooking show. The new season will launch later this year, but in its trailer she showed off a cool, but unfortunately fake, microwave that replaced the traditional beeping sounds with clips from her songs. She also launched Mental Health 101, a new campaign aimed at advocating for mental health education in schools.

“This campaign is so close to my heart because of my own struggles with mental health,” Gomez wrote in a heartfelt letter about the new endeavor. She added, “I hope that Mental Health 101 will be the stepping stones for others that I wish I had… to get connected to the resources that they need, and to empower young people in ways that may not have been possible before.”

Tucker Carlson likes to scare his viewers with exaggerated or simply nonexistent stories about illegal aliens, but on Friday he pivoted a bit: He talked about aliens from outer space instead. The sometimes braying Fox News host, who every now and then likes to turn his attention to the skies, spent his latest show addressing an issue that, as he put it, “could be the most consequential thing to happen to this country, this world, maybe ever.”

What was it? It involved the forthcoming report from the U.S. government about UFOs, which will be released this summer and will let the public in on whatever they know about alien life forms from other planets. It may be mindblowing. It may be an anticlimactic nothingburger. But Carlson believes it will be bigger than big, and to prove it he drew from segments Pentagon employee, Luis Elizondo, who has asserted that when the report goes live, we will, in Carlson’s words, “find an intelligence failure on the part of the U.S. intel community on the level of 9/11.”

Elizondo, who worked in a division of the Pentagon that focused on alien life, has already done some scaremongering elsewhere. He recently told The New York Post that “there is something in our skies, we don’t know what it is, we don’t know how it works, we don’t know fully what it can do, we don’t know who is behind the wheel, we don’t know its intentions, and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it.”

In his segment, Carlson played some UFO footage, then got all hot and bothered. “I’m embarrassed I haven’t thought of it before, these objects are potentially a very grave threat to nation-states,” he said. “So where was the intelligence community in warning about this, or learning more about it?”

Carlson also re-played a clip from an interview he did in October with UFO “expert” Nick Pope, in which his guest said some over-the-top things. “We are under siege, it’s like there’s a war of nerves going on,” Pope told Tucker last fall. “If these were drones belonging to a foreign adversary there would be an absolute outcry. And yet the situation we’re in where we don’t know what these things are and they might even be extra-terrestrial, that’s worse. This is a potential catastrophic failure of intelligence.”

These may seem like hysterical threats, but Carlson claims his sources are on the level. “There are a lot of these, it’s not like, you know, some drunk guy on a road in rural New Hampshire saw something weird,” he said. “This is the U.S. military regularly, very often recording these objects.”

The report will be released on June 1, so we’ll see if Carlson was right to scare the bejesus out of his more gullible viewers. You can view the whole segment over at The Wrap.

Last fall, the Grammys were dealt a heavy dose of criticism about their nominations. Many were upset with some of The Recording Academy’s choices, or lack thereof, such as failing to nominate The Weeknd in any category despite having the acclaimed album After Hours. Months later, the Grammys announced they’re making “significant changes” to their voting process according to Billboard. This includes the elimination of “secret committees,” who were originally tasked with reviewing nominations in the general and genre-specific categories.

With this removal, nominations in these categories will now be selected by a majority, peer-to-peer vote from The Academy’s members. They also chose to reduce the number of categories voters can make selections in from 15 to 10. The Grammys created two new categories for the award show, Best Global Music Performance and Best Música Urbana Album, and added an extra month to the eligibility period for next year’s award show. The time frame of eligibility is now September 1, 2020 to September 30, 2021. The changes will go into effect immediately for next year’s show, which is set for January 31, 2022.

“It’s been a year of unprecedented, transformational change for the Recording Academy, and I’m immensely proud to be able to continue our journey of growth with these latest updates to our Awards process,” Harvey Mason Jr., chair and interim president/CEO of the Recording Academy, said. “This is a new Academy, one that is driven to action and that has doubled down on the commitment to meeting the needs of the music community.”

When Bill Maher’s right, he’s right. The HBO host has a lot of dicey opinions, but one subject where he’s right on the money is cryptocurrency. He devoted a chunk of Friday night’s Real Time to the financial fad that’s getting bigger and bigger, with virtual currencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, and more taking off. Some are even accepted by places like Whole Foods, Etsy, and Home Depot. But Maher’s not having it.

Maher singled out Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency that began as a laugh only to become “real,” as emblematic of the whole fad’s problem. “Far as I can tell it’s exactly the same as the other cryptocurrencies because the whole thing is a joke,” Maher cracked. He referred to all of it as “Easter bunny cartoon cash” and compared it to Tinkerbell from Peter Pan: “Its power is based solely on enough children believing in it.”

But his biggest beef was how bad cryptocurrency is for the environment. He pointed out that every transaction sucks up tons of power, using “more energy than Netflix, Apple, Facebook, and Google combined.” Each exchange, he says, “uses more electricity than a million Visa transactions and has the same carbon footprint as watching 85,000 hours of YouTube.”

He also drew a compare-and-contrast with another major energy suck: “Cars are bad for the environment, but at least they take you somewhere.”

Maher also called out the big tech bros, like future SNL host Elon Musk, who talk about the environment while taking part in energy-sucking cryptocurrency. “How can Tesla be all-in on saving the planet with electric cars and then participate in destroying it with this completely unnecessary online play-money?”

Maher’s words did not sit well with some pro-cryptocurrency types.

But others argued that you can hate cryptocurrency and Bill Maher at the same time.

Remember Donald Trump? He used to be the leader of the free world. Then he lost an election. Then he tried to overturn said election. Then he inspired his violent followers to try to storm the Capitol. Now he spends his days in a Florida resort, banned from most of social media, crashing weddings to blather for minutes on end about the election he lost. You don’t hear from him very often, apart from the occasional weird “press release,” which rarely go viral. Now, some three-and-a-half months after he left office in disgrace, a video is going around that shows the depths of his sorrow.

It’s not clear if the video is new or when it was taken. Perhaps each day, each week, each month is now a blur for the former American president. It shows him addressing the randos willing to pay an exorbitant membership to be in the same company as an unpopular former politician. Their reward is addresses like the one in the video, which finds the owner of Mar-a-Lago awkwardly, robotically ranting about the “rigged election” and the “thousands and thousands of votes” that were allegedly supposed to be for him, based on nothing but whatever’s in his broken brain.

The person who posted the video on Twitter put it well: “The one time leader of the free world who now lives alone in a hotel sharing buffets, common areas, and staff with strangers, yearns for attention and relevance so badly, he now stands on a patio step every night ranting to tens of people about a 6 month old election that he lost.”

As the video went viral, people — clearly never fans, many amongst his sharpest critics — almost felt sorry for the guy. Almost.

Some compared it to the end of a sad movie.

Or a certain Dickens character.

Or Napoleon.

Or a Disney World animatronic.

There were Shining jokes.

And other jokes.

During Trump’s disastrous presidency, many pointed out that real life had come to resemble a vicious satire. Now that it’s over, his life resembles a depressing tragedy, about a dangerous man who got his comeuppance — who got it three times filled and running over. But the only ones who get to see it are at Mar-a-Lago.

The Celtics look like they want to end the season on a good note. After a massive comeback against San Antonio, they finished April with an 11-5 record in a month that featured young superstar Jayson Tatum put up a career high twice. Having just scored 53 two weeks ago, Tatum led Boston to its comeback over the Spurs with a whopping 60 on Friday night.

That scoring total tied Tatum with the legendary Larry Bird for the most points in Celtics history.

Most impressively, it only took him 37 field goal attempts, as Boston’s offensive engine was relentless getting to the basket.

That set up the pull-up three, a weapon he’s developed nicely since being drafted in 2017.

Tatum also had five assists and, incredibly, zero turnovers. That’s about as fine an offensive performance as you will see in the NBA.

This all came in the midst of a comeback, too. Boston was down 29 at the half and looking hapless again, as they have many nights this season. The Celtics scored just 48 points in the first half.

Without Kemba Walker and in a game in which Jaylen Brown went 5-24 from the field, it took every bit of effort from Tatum to will the Celtics to victory. They are now tied with Atlanta for fifth in the East and are only two games in the loss column behind the Knicks for fourth.

When it comes to pop stars, Ariana Grande has always been pretty vocal about her liberal political leanings. During last year’s primary she made her support of Bernie Sanders very clear, and later supported the Biden/Harris ticket. One of issues that, for some reason, has been a divisive one over the last few years is support of queer relationships and gay marriage. Ari has continually vocalized support for those groups, and today she’s made an even more straightforward statement on the subject by dedicating the lyric/dance video for one of the most romantic songs on her latest album, Positions, to a queer couple.

Dancers Cory Graves and Brian Nicholson star in the sweet clip, which is a little more than a lyric video and a little less than most fan-made dance videos, offering an understated look at two people playing out the emotionally-charged lyrics with their bodies. By specifically making two men the partners exchanging loving glances and touches here, instead of a man and a woman, Grande has opted to make a subtle political statement about the song’s intent. It’s just another impressive move from a diva who has already overcome so much herself, and continues to advocate for others. Check out the clip aboe.

Fast 9 is shaping up to be the moviegoing event of the early summer, and the latest trailer framed the movie as an emotional return to movie theaters after a tough, plague-filled year. Despite nearing double digits on Fast and Furious films, fans are still extremely hyped up for the much-delayed movie. And they’ll certainly be glad to hear of the rigirous standards the film has for everything that appears on screen. Including the franchise’s notably speedy and temperamental motor vehicles.

Series star Vin Diesel appeared on an Entertainment Weekly podcast to hype up the latest movie in the Fast Saga, and he dropped a very interesting note about how they pick the cars the franchise uses. And as i09 pulled from it, Diesel revealed that the movie’s most expensive characters are cast much like the humans that appear alongside them.

“Part of the process of Fast is we’ve always auditioned our cars,” the actor said. “The cars have really been such a significant part and representation of our characters, that there is a process of casting, right? Of casting the exact vehicle for the state of mind that the character is in, or the journey that the character is going through.”

Few people get to live their lives picking which car to drive based on their “state of mind,” so congrats to those in the Fast universe for that luxurious opportunity. But it’s also very funny to imagine cars being “auditioned,” at least in the traditional sense of actors reading lines. It certainly makes sense that the cars have to not only look the part but be able to perform for the characters driving them.

And while it is funny to imagine a huge muscle car practicing lines with a Toyota Prius friend, or something like that, it also reveals the amount of thinking that goes into what is ultimately a very loud action series beloved by millions. So congratulations in advance to the cars that made the cut for Fast 9, and to all of us who will get to see their work later this summer.