Month: August 2021

Frank Oz is the performer behind (under?) some of the most popular Muppets of all-time, including Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy, and Sam the Eagle, and on Sesame Street, Cookie Monster, Grover, and Bert. But he hasn’t been in a Muppets project since 2007, three years after Disney acquired the rights to the not-quite-mops, not-quite-puppets.

Would he be willing to return for more good times and good news?

“I’d love to do the Muppets again but Disney doesn’t want me, and Sesame Street hasn’t asked me for 10 years,” he told the Guardian. “They don’t want me because I won’t follow orders and I won’t do the kind of Muppets they believe in.” Oz said “the soul’s not there” about Disney’s Muppets projects, adding, “The soul is what makes things grow and be funny. But I miss them and love them.” He also believes that negotiations between Jim Henson and Disney when the Muppet visionary was alive is what killed him:

“The Disney deal is probably what killed Jim. It made him sick,” Oz replies. At the time of Henson’s death, he was negotiating with Michael Eisner, then the head of Disney, about selling the Muppets. “Eisner was trying to get Sesame Street, too, which Jim wouldn’t allow. But Jim was not a dealer, he was an artist, and it was destroying him, it really was,” says Oz.

Disney had had mixed success with the Muppets: the two movies, The Muppets and the underrated Muppets Most Wanted, are pretty fun and it’s great that every episode of The Muppet Show is available on Disney+ with most of the original music, but ABC’s The Office-like sitcom was a disaster and it’s sadly only a matter before Muppet*Vision 3D is replaced with an Enchanted ride, or whatever. It would be fascinating to see what Oz would do with the Muppets if he was brought back into the fold, although that’s becoming increasingly unlikely. At least he got to be Yoda one last time.

(Via the Guardian)

Al Roker has seen your tweets, people. By now, you’re likely aware that the veteran NBC weather forecaster stood in the midst of watery hell on a NOLA beach during live Hurricane Ida coverage. The wind and waves whipped the heck out of him while Chuck Todd stayed safely nestled inside Meet The Press studios, and well, people were concerned. Everyone’s grown weary of watching meteorologists and reporters endure the harsh elements to let us know that there’s Mother Nature-related danger out there. And most of the responses to Roker expressed concern for his well being and those colleagues who experience the same during disasters.

Still, Roker wants everyone to know that he can handle it. He fired back (with a rather visceral response) on another live segment, but first, let’s discuss how he took to Twitter. Roker posted a clip of himself dumping water out of his boots, and he wanted everyone to know (of his Lake Pontchartrain dunk) that “I volunteered to do this. Part of the job.” He then added, “[F]or those who think I’m too old to to be doing this, try and keep up.”

He wasn’t done yet. A slightly drier Roker appeared on MSNBC’s The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart and got real with a double-pronged message to Twitter. “First of all, ‘why is NBC putting him out there?’ I volunteered to come out here,” he ranted. “This is what I do. I’ve done this for 40 years, our crews, and we all make sure we’re safe… As much as I love the weather and I love NBC, I’m not gonna risk my life for it.” Then came the big one: “Secondly, ‘Well, he’s too old to be doing this.’ Well, hey, guess what? Screw you!” And then this happened: “These young punks. I will come after them. I will drop them like a bag of dirt!” Enjoy this video of Capehart’s reaction.

If the “I will drop you like a bag of dirt” sounds slightly familiar in the Roker context, well, it should. He loves to whip it out when things get heated. Don’t mess with Al Roker, man.

Regardless, some people hung tight with their stance toward Roker while saying this isn’t about age at all, but it’s about safety for all.

LeVar Burton was pulling for his pal though: “You tell em, @alroker!”

Last week, it looked like Drake finally announced the release date for his upcoming album Certified Lover Boy: Some cryptic video popped up on ESPN’s SportsCenter that all but confirmed that the album is set for release this Friday, September 3. Now, the time for speculation is over, as we now know for sure that Certified Lover Boy is indeed set for September 3.

Drake confirmed the news with an Instagram post this morning. The image features a 4-by-4 grid of pregnant woman emojis, in varying skin tones and hair and clothing colors, and he took to the caption to announce the date.

The album has been pretty much ready to go for at least a month now, as Drake noted in July, “Album’s ready… album’s cooked, looking forward to delivering it to you. Certified Lover Boy on the way and that’s for anyone in the way.”

We don’t know much about the album yet, but it appears Lil Baby is set to appear on it. Not only that, but he’s actually going to put effort into his contributions, as he said recently, “I don’t really care what I say on a song, you feel me? I just freestyle. But with Drake, I be trying to think about it. And that’s what makes it harder for me ’cause like, I’m thinking. When I don’t even think, I just rap. So then like, ’cause it’s Drake, I get kind of like, damn… So I gotta make sure.”

In the lengthy saga that has been the rollout for Kanye’s latest album, Donda, plenty of artists have been involved — in good ways and bad. While controversial features like Marilyn Manson and DaBaby have been the subject of much discussion, Ariana Grande fans were a little surprised to hear what sounded a lot like her vocals on the album’s title track when it finally dropped today.

But if you listen closely, you’ll hear slight differences that indicate it’s likely not Ari herself. First of all, she rarely AutoTuned and filters her voice to the point the female vocals on “Donda” have been altered — mostly because she simply doesn’t need to. It just hasn’t been her style in the past. And though there’s never been any public beef between Ari and Ye, they’ve never collaborated before or really been in the same realm, musically. Of course, they share a friend in Scooter Braun, but that’s about it.

All this to say, those vocals aren’t Ariana — and she confirmed as much on her Instagram Stories today, praising the actual featured artist, The Stalone, like the class act she is.

“You sound beautiful @thestalone,” Ari wrote, putting the subject to bed once and for all. She’s too busy being a blissful newlywed to work on a Kanye timeline, anyway. Check out the song in question above if you haven’t heard it yet.

When the news of allegations about Marilyn Manson’s abusive behavior began to break, it was his longtime partner Evan Rachel Wood who accused the artist of “horrifically” abusing and grooming her, opening the floodgates for more horror stories from women who had been involved with him over the years. Despite the influx of testimonials from women about Manson’s abuse filtering in over the last few months, or who knows, maybe because of them, Kanye chose to feature Manson on the latest version of his ever-evolving Donda project.

Of course, this choice to include Manson despite what survivors of his abuse have come forward with is a slap in the face to those women, and Wood made her position on the matter pretty clear this weekend. Posting a clip of herself covering the New Radical’s still-classic “You Get What You Give,” today she included the following caption along with her cover: “”You get what you give.” For my fellow survivors who got slapped in the face this week. I love you. Don’t give up. @zanecarney @bourbonroomhollywood @ftrlive #newradicals”

Kudos to Wood for both her courage in coming forward, and keeping herself calm in in the face of a pretty blatant, disrespectful move. Further kudos to her for nailing a difficult cover, check that out above.

What could be better than Megan Thee Stallion or Normani releasing new music? The pair of superstars hanging out having a ball in Italy. Please, let this pave the way for a collab between the two young artists? Both of these musicians have faced the unforgiving and inscrutable pressure of being a famous Black woman in American music, and both have handled it with the kind of grace that clearly inspires their fans just as much as the music does. So there’s something freeing about seeing the two party it up in Italy, looking gorgeous and fashionable at a high fashion party.

Both Megan and Normani are in Italy for the Dolce & Gabbana show — probably among many others — but they found each other at this event, and now that they have, it looks like they’re never letting go. In a series of social media posts, these two icons-in-the-making let everyone know that the Sunday scaries are canceled this week. Live vicariously through their blossoming friendship below, and join me in noting that now that Cardi B has collaborated with each of them, first on “WAP” and then on Normani’s “Wild Side,” that the only logical step from here is Megan x Normani uniting.

On Sunday, ESPN televised a high school football game featuring one of the nation’s most well known programs, reigning national champions IMG Academy, and a little known squad from Ohio that few had ever heard of, Bishop Sycamore.

The end result was a 58-0 bloodbath in which IMG dominated Bishop Sycamore in an entirely non-competitive ballgame that had everyone shocked at how that game ever got scheduled, much less placed on national television.

Even the announcers for the game, Anish Shroff and Tom Luginbill, were appalled this game got onto ESPN’s airwaves, going so far as to note they lied about having D-1 prospects on the roster — which, in fairness, should’ve been much better vetted by ESPN before agreeing to broadcast the game.

Zach Barnett of Football Scoop did a deep dive into exactly how strange this situation was and how it even happened, a story that is well worth a complete read. The basic gist is, Bishop Sycamore is an online, sports-centric prep school that is very new and went 0-6 a year ago (which Football Scoop says is just the second season on record). No recruiting services have the school in their database, and there is very little in the way of information about the school and their website is, well, not much.

However, nothing is quite as wild as the fact that it appears Bishop Sycamore played and lost to a team from Pennsylvania on Friday night, less than 48 hours before playing against arguably the best program in the country.

It is an insane story and Barnett’s piece provides a tremendous look at how big of a failure this was by a number of parties to lead to this game ending up on national television, and that even the announce crew felt disgusted by it is an indicator of just how bad it was.

Right now, Scarlett Johansson and the MCU are at loggerheads. Last month the actress sued Disney, which owns Marvel Films, over their decision to release her solo outing Black Widow in theaters and on Disney+ PVOD simultaneously. It was a bold move, and it might change the industry altogether. But it hasn’t ruined her relationships with her former colleagues. Elizabeth Olsen came out in support of her. And another MCU alum has just teamed up to reunite with her for some non-MCU shenanigans.

As first reported by Deadline, Johnansson and Chris Evans have signed on for Ghosted, described as a romantic adventure film, in the vein of Romancing the Stone. The movie will be directed by Dexter Fletcher, the actor-turned-filmmaker who helmed Rocketman, and the script comes from Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, of Deadpool and Zombieland. It will also be the latest acquisition from Apple, which nabbed the Sundance fave CODA and gave Martin Scorsese the bucket of cash to make his next picture, Killers of the Flower Moon.

Johansson and Evans go way back. Long before the first Avengers, they appeared together in 2004’s The Perfect Score, playing high school seniors who try to swindle the SATs. He also had a small part in The Nanny Diaries, a Johansson vehicle from 2007. In other words, Black Widow and Cap are getting the band back together.

(Via Deadline)

In 1991, Julie Dash became the first Black female film director have a movie released nationwide, with the dreamy Daughters of the Dust. Thirty years later and we finally have another milestone. This weekend, the new take on Candyman, directed by Nia DaCosta, finally hit theaters, and it went straight to the top of the domestic box office chart, earning $23 million. It’s a solid debut, especially for a movie released during a re-surging pandemic. But it also made history.

As pointed out by IndieWire, DaCosta’s Candyman makes it the first movie directed by a Black female film director to score a #1. There have been a few close calls. Ava DuVernay had two films that got second place: Selma and A Wrinkle in Time. Ditto 1998’s Love & Basketball, by Gina Prince-Blythewood (who would go on to The Old Guard, which Netflix claimed was one of their biggest streaming hits).

But it took a horror reboot-sequel to score the top spot. DaCosta’s Candyman does what many revivals do these days, offering a direct sequel to an original, ignoring all the sequels that came before. (See: David Gordon Green’s Halloween.) Back is Tony Todd’s titular boogeyman, who first appeared in the 1992 original, about a vengeful spirit lurking in a gentrifying Chicago. DaCosta has since been tapped to helm The Marvels, the sequel to Captain Marvel, so it’s highly likely she’ll have another #1 to her name.

Female directors were highly prevalent in cinema’s early days. Actress-director Mabel Norman is the first person to direct Charles Chaplin as the Tramp, while Lois Weber ran her own studio. Starting in the ‘30s, Hollywood studios all but banished women from the director’s chair, though they were regularly employed as screenwriters and other behind-the-scenes professions. The last few decades have seen women slowly taking back the role they once had in the industry. Meanwhile, no major Hollywood studio hired a Black director until 1969’s The Learning Tree, by photojournalist Gordon Parks. Even after that, there have been too few Black filmmakers getting the top gig. In other words, the times, they have changed.

(Via IndieWire)

Val Kilmer has been through a lot the last several years. He battled cancer, and though he won — he’s been clear for four years now — he lost the ability to speak and eat. (His voice is now but a rasp and he stays alive thanks to a feeding tube.) His plight is documented in the recent film Val, but it’s not as though we won’t be seeing him on the big screen again soon. Indeed, he’ll be in the long delayed Top Gun: Maverick, at the request of star Tom Cruise.

In a new piece about the film, currently due on November 19, in People, producer Jerry Bruckheimer reveals that Cruise “really wanted” Kilmer to reprise the role of Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, who in the 1986 original was the rival student at the elite Navy pilot program. (In the belated sequel, he apparently grew up to become a four-star admiral.)

“He said, ‘We have to have Val, we have to have him back. We have to have him in the film,’” Bruckheimer told People. “And he was the driving force. We all wanted him, but Tom was really adamant that if he’s going to make another Top Gun, Val had to be in it.”

Kilmer recently revealed he was forced to take the role, which was his third film, following the ZAZ parody Top Secret! and the MIT college comedy Real Genius. It wound up being his big breakthrough, and he was soon seen in the likes of Willow, The Doors, etc. The relationship between Kilmer’s Iceman and Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell has long been dissected. Quentin Tarantino famously argued for their homoerotic bona fides in the otherwise forgotten indie comedy Sleep With Me. Anyway, it’ll be good to have the two back in swing.

(Via People)