Month: August 2021

During last night’s highly anticipated Verzuz between The LOX and The Diplomats at Madison Square Garden, fans watching online quickly crowned Jadakiss the runaway star of the event. From the jump, his relentless needling of his ostensible opponents — from their gear to their performance over vocal tracks — tickled fans’ funny bones, while his own performances recalled his longtime dominance of New York radio and his elite tier rhyme skills. Fans also noted how he’d similarly stolen the show at his prior Verzuz event where he made several meme-worthy moments alongside fellow 2000s New York rap star Fabolous.

Among the responses were those calling Jadakiss the MVP, while still others admonished their fellow fans to appreciate the rapper more.

Even Tyler the Creator was seen in the comments on the stream expressing his “crush” on Jadakiss for having “crazy” confidence and aging well.

Some were even quick to remind others that Jadakiss put out a new album last year, recommending that those impressed by his performance take a listen.

The overwhelming sentiment was one of appreciation for the 20+ year rap veteran, who lived up to his “top 5 dead or alive” reputation for at least one night. Check out more reactions from fans below.

After teasing the upcoming revenge flick with a series of cool as hell photos, Netflix has officially released the first trailer for Kate starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who is absolutely brutal in the title role as a relentless assassin. After finding out she was poisoned shortly before performing a hit, Kate goes on a one-woman killing spree against the entire Yakuza, against the better judgment of her handler, Woody Harrelson, who’s along for the ride.

While Kate‘s premise has been knocked (and praised) for sounding an awful lot like Crank, the stylized trailer bears very little resemblance to the Jason Statham flick. Think more along the lines of John Wick and Atomic Blonde. You’re more likely to see Kate shoot up a whole room, savagely snap a few ankles, and slam faces into hot grill tops than jolt herself with a defibrillator pad. Not to mention, Statham’s character was absolutely manic while Kate seems to be effortlessly calm, cool, and collected while mowing down her enemies with a cigarette dangling from her mouth.

Here’s the official synopsis:

After she’s poisoned, a ruthless criminal operative has less than 24 hours to exact revenge on her enemies and in the process forms an unexpected bond with the daughter of one of her past victims.

Kate starts streaming September 10 on Netflix.

(Via Netflix)

These days, kooky Nic Cage movies are a dime a dozen, and frankly, most of them aren’t very good. The Oscar winner turned family-friendly movie star turned bankrupted eccentric snake owner has become such a consistent novelty act in recent years that my “Nic Cage does something weird” receptors have been permanently fried. Craziness alone is no longer a draw.

The beauty of Pig, the new Michael Sarnoski movie starring Nic Cage as a bedraggled truffle forager, is that while it is utterly bonkers, it’s not bonkers in any of the traditional ways that we’ve come to expect. It’s quietly bonkers, meditative and subdued, rather than loud and frenetic. The trick with directing Nic Cage, after all, isn’t how to light his fuse. He’s more like a nuclear reactor, a source of infinite energy where the job is trying to focus and contain it. As with jazz, Nic Cage’s performance in Pig is more about the lines he’s not screaming*.

What the hell even is this movie? The difficulty in answering this question and the myriad of ways in which one could is largely its appeal. Cage plays, essentially, the food version of a retired action hero. He has climbed the proverbial mountain, experienced loss, become disillusioned by humanity, and gone off to live a hirsute, monastic existence in the wilds of Oregon. He has no indoor plumbing, never seems to take off his fingerless gloves, and a pleasantly snuffling orangish pig is his only companion. Think Luke in The Last Jedi, only with mushrooms from a pig instead of breast milk from a green hippo.

“Robin” and his pig hunt for truffles by day and eat lovingly-cooked mushroom tarts by night, their only contact with the outside world coming every Thursday, in the form of Amir (Alex Woff from Hereditary) a slickster truffle buyer who drives a yellow Camaro. Robin barely acknowledges Amir beyond grunts and gestures until one night, some intruders break into Robin’s campsite and steal his pig. Now, Robin needs Amir’s city connections, not to mention his ride, to help him get her back.

The easy way to fulfill expectations and have enough material for a trailer and a poster and sell the foreign rights would be to turn Pig into John Wick, with Nic Cage in the Keanu role and the dog recast as a pig. That would be a fun concept, though probably not a great story. Yet Pig isn’t really a revenge movie. It’s more like The Wrestler meets Ratatouille, with a strange (and mostly unnecessary?) diversion into Fight Club. Robin’s pig rescue mission doesn’t involve any bloody revenge, though Cage does spend 90% of the film with dried blood on his face. Instead, Robin merely uses food to make his enemies remember why they loved food in the first place. His revenge is to make them tragically aware of how far they’ve strayed from the mission, the metaphysical X-Man of the Portland food scene.

Where John Wick is trapped firmly in its own underworld universe, with nary a “civilian” to puncture the veil, Pig is that, but for food. Every character in the film is involved in the restaurant business in some facet, be it foraging, buying, or cooking, all treated with a grandiosity that’s both comical and admirable. Pig explores a subculture that doesn’t really exist, while asking: wouldn’t it be cool if it did? After a year (and potentially more) in which we lost the act of eating out (heh), there’s something oddly gratifying about a story that grants life-and-death stakes to restaurant food. It’s not that important… and yet… maybe it is?

Pig‘s pleasures are mostly hypnotic and atmospheric. It probably didn’t have to be quite so underexposed, but Sarnoski is definitely doing an art, and it is weirdly calming to watch an orange pig snuffle around a misty forest at dawn. It also would’ve been nice if Sarnoski had been able to convey the sensual, metaphysical power of food through composition and cinematography, the way movies like First Cow, Labor Day, Chef, and yes, Ratatouille did. Pig has some food porn (and is mostly better than the aforementioned movies, save Ratatouille, in other ways), but it mostly leaves Nic Cage’s eyes to do the heavy lifting.

I say Cage’s eyes in particular because most of the rest of his face is obscured by wig, beard, and fake scars and bruises. Which is weirdly effective. Nic Cage’s eyes can convey a lot when you’re not distracted by his giant smooth forehead.

In the end, Pig isn’t life-changing or wildly profound, but that’s part of its beauty. It never tries to artificially amplify the stakes or to be “bigger” than it needs to be. At 92 minutes, it’s more like an odd little fling that runs its course, but you look back on fondly.

‘Pig’ is available in theaters now and VOD platforms now. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

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*Years ago, Werner Herzog attempted to describe what it was like directing Nic Cage in the marvelous Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. “We would do scenes in the so-called normal version, and I had the feeling there was something wilder,” Herzog told an audience at the Toronto Film Festival. “And I would turn to Nicolas and I would say, ‘We’ll do it once more, but this time you should turn the pig loose.’ ”

Was Pig inadvertently inspired by this press conference?

With exactly one week to go until its Disney+ premiere, Marvel’s ‘What If…?’ has dropped a new clip that shows what Steve Rogers is up to in the alternate reality where Peggy Carter takes the super-soldier serum instead of him. In the preview, aptly titled “Steve,” Peggy, Bucky, and Dum-Dum Dugan are pinned down while taking on a Hydra facility and call for air support, which arrives in a very unexpected form.

Flying into the battle is The Hydra Stomper, a massive robot that bears a very close resemblance to Tony Stark’s first Iron Man suit. Only this time, the man inside the armor isn’t the billionaire playboy philanthropist, but instead, non-superpowered WWII soldier Steve Rogers.

Considering its been confirmed that Dominic Cooper will reprise his role of Howard Stark as part of Marvel’s What If…? massive voice cast, it appears the genius inventor will develop Iron Man technology several decades before his son gets trapped in a cave.

As for Peggy’s transformation into Captain Carter, the What If…? creators have revealed that they planned for a second season, and the Hayley Atwell-voiced character will be a sort of connective tissue between seasons thanks to her “strong connection” to The Watcher.

“We realized as we started developing the second season that Captain Carter was going to be the character we would revisit in every season, and continue that adventure,” executive producer Brad Winderbaum told io9. “Obviously, we’re telling a story on a giant multiversal canvas. So you never really know who’s going to pop up where and when.”

As one of the most famous teenagers of her generation, Billie Eilish is used to sharing her life with the public. She had a documentary team make an insightful film about her personal life and debut album’s tour, and she recently published a book containing never-before-seen childhood photos. But living in the public eye isn’t always a breeze. The 19-year-old has unfortunately had to deal with stalkers in the past, which she says only heightens her fear of being alone.

Eilish spoke about her fears in a recent interview with The Irish Times about her recently released sophomore album, Happier Than Ever. The singer said she’s never really liked being alone because she has “a lot of weird, irrational fears.” But dealing with stalkers in the past few years has only made things worse:

“I really don’t like to be alone. I do like having anonymity, or autonomy, but I really am flipped out when I’m alone. I hate it. I have a lot of stalkers and I have people that want to do bad things to me, and I also am freaked out by the dark and, like, what’s under beds and couches. I have a lot of weird, irrational fears. So I’m still at my parents’ house a lot. I just love my parents and really like it here. It’s very comforting.”

The singer has sought restraining orders against stalkers in the past. Earlier this year, in fact, Eilish brought on a 24-hour security team and was able to secure a restraining order against a 23-year-old man who found her LA home and threatened her with a throat-slitting gesture. The man even began to leave terrifying notes for the singer, one of which read, “You can’t get what you want, unless what you want is to die for me.”

Read Eilish’s full interview with The Irish Times here.

Happier Than Ever is out now via via Darkroom Records/Interscope. Get it here.

The legend of Once Upon A Time In Shaolin continues. The one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album which was previously purchased at auction by Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli was recently sold off by the government to settle Shkreli outstanding debts in the wake of his conviction for securities fraud. Although the buyer was originally anonymous, a representative told CNBC that the buyer will identify themselves “in the next two months or so.”

The album has been the subject of plenty of drama from its inception when RZA made the announcement that only one physical copy would be produced and auctioned off — a decision the other members of the band weren’t all that excited about. Recorded in secret over a six-year period, the album was held in an ornate, jewel-encrusted case with leather-bound notes. It was only exhibited once before being sold. Shkreli bought the album before the controversial price hike of his drug.

Over the next few years, Shkreli played the album on live streams, threatened to destroy it altogether, and promised to release it for free if Donald Trump won the 2016 election — a promise he reneged on. However, the album was forfeit after the controversial investor was convicted for securities fraud. Now, we’ll have to wait and see what happens next and what the new buyer — whoever they are — will do with the project.

Pete Parada has been the drummer of The Offspring since 2007, but that run has come to an end, as he has been kicked out of the band. The reason for this personnel change is Parada’s refusal to get a COVID-19 vaccine, a choice that he attributes to medical reasons.

In a lengthy Instagram post, Parada wrote, “Given my personal medical history and the side-effect profile of these jabs, my doctor has advised me not to get a shot at this time. I caught the virus over a year ago, it was mild for me — so I am confident I’d be able to handle it again, but I’m not so certain I’d survive another post-vaccination round of Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which dates back to my childhood and has evolved to be progressively worse over my lifetime. Unfortunately for me, (and my family — who is hoping to keep me around a bit longer) the risks far outweigh the benefits.”

He also noted that he has no ill will towards his now-former bandmates, saying, “I have no negative feelings towards my band. They’re doing what they believe is best for them, while I am doing the same. Wishing the entire Offspring family all the best as they get back at it! I’m heartbroken not to be seeing my road community, and I will miss connecting with the fans more than I can express in words.”

Read Parada’s full statement below.

“I’ve got some unfortunate and difficult news to share. I know many of my close friends and family would’ve preferred to hear this privately first – and I apologize for the public nature of my disclosure, but I don’t know how to have this conversation multiple times.

Given my personal medical history and the side-effect profile of these jabs, my doctor has advised me not to get a shot at this time. I caught the virus over a year ago, it was mild for me – so I am confident I’d be able to handle it again, but I’m not so certain I’d survive another post-vaccination round of Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which dates back to my childhood and has evolved to be progressively worse over my lifetime. Unfortunately for me, (and my family – who is hoping to keep me around a bit longer) the risks far outweigh the benefits.

Since I am unable to comply with what is increasingly becoming an industry mandate -it has recently been decided that I am unsafe to be around, in the studio, and on tour. I mention this because you won’t be seeing me at these upcoming shows. I also want to share my story so that anyone else experiencing the agony and isolation of getting left behind right row – knows they’re not entirely alone.

I have no negative feelings towards my band. They’re doing what they believe is best for them, while I am doing the same. Wishing the entire Offspring family all the best as they get back at it! I’m heartbroken not to be seeing my road community, and I will miss connecting with the fans more than I can express in words.

While my reason for not getting this jab is medical, I want to make sure I’m not carving out a space that is only big enough for me. I need to state, unequivocally, that I support informed consent – which necessitates choice unburdened by coercion. I do not find it ethical or wise to allow those with the most power (government, corporations, organizations, employers) to dictate medical procedures to those with the least power.

There are countless folks (like me) for whom these shots carry a greater risk than the virus. Most of us don’t publicly share a private decision we made in careful consideration with our doctors. We know it’s not an easy conversation to unfold. If it looks like half the population is having a shockingly different reaction to these jabs than was expected – it’s ‘probably because their life experiences have actually been shockingly different, and their reasons range from a conscientious risk/ benefit analysis, to the financial inability to take time off work/lack of health care in the event of potential side-effects, to an understandable distrust in a system that has never prioritized the health or well-being of their communities.

I hope we can learn to make room for all the perspectives and fears that are happening currently. Let’s avoid the unfortunate tendency to dominate, dehumanize and shout down at each other. The hesitant population is not a monolithic group. All voices deserve to be heard.

In the meantime, I’m in the midst of launching a project and releasing some music with my daughter, so please stay tuned for all of that. I deeply appreciate your understanding and support as my family and I find a new way forward.

Sending love to everyone who has been impacted by this pandemic, in all the ways lives have been lost and altered.”

After the events of Loki, the whole concept of What If…? kind of transformed from a fun “one off” series about strange hypotheticals – the original comic would ask questions like “What if Spider-Man became a late night talk show host instead of a crime fighter?” – but now that we know all about variants and how those work, What If…? all has a bit more meaning now. (And speaking of meaning, though for tragic reasons, What If…? will also give us Chadwick Boseman’s final performance as T’Challa.) All of these alternative realities being introduced to us by The Watcher (voiced by Jeffrey Wright), who is basically our guide to each episode.

Head writer A.C. Bradley and director Bryan Andrews were given the mandate to “have fun.” Though, what does that mean when things can get tricky, like with Spider-Man’s complicated deal with Sony? According to Bradley and Andrews, they were basically told it would all work itself out. (And since Spider-Man is featured in one of the episodes, apparently it did work itself out.) Ahead, Bradley and Andrews take us through what she and he wanted What If…? to be. And if there was anything they tried to do that Marvel wasn’t totally into. (Which it sounds like, maybe, the only issue was the fine line of “raunch.”)

After Loki, What If…? seems to have a new meaning. Like we are watching variants, as opposed to just one-off stories.

A.C. Bradley: Yeah, the multiverse is here and it is going to be a blast.

Bryan Andrews: Yeah, it really feels like Marvel’s going that way once the end of Loki happens. So, yeah, the multiverse is out there. And our show explores some crazy things that you can see that are out there. And how much more the films want to dial into that as the phases progress? We’re waiting to see as much as you are. We’ll see. We don’t know.

Do you like that approach? Or would you rather it be kind of how the comics were in the ’80s where it’s more like, “Ah, these are fun to read and maybe don’t tie in with anything else”?

Bryan Andrews: It’s funny, I think it’s fine that things can tie in. I think it’s fine that there’s a multiverse. And I don’t think that’s going to take away anything from whatever Marvel wants to do. There are characters that we have come to know and love, and they will always be there. And it’s okay to have a little step next door to see some craziness. It’s all good.

A.C. Bradley: Our prime mandate was to go show as much fun and fantastic sides of the multiverse as possible.

Chadwick Boseman provides his voice in one of the episodes they sent us. So for a lot of people there’s still this unseen performance from him that that is still out there. And all of a sudden this takes on so much more meaning than you probably ever assumed it would?

Bryan Andrews: That’s totally true. It was really rough at first for everyone, of course. But I think now we can look at it as a gift. We get to enjoy his talent and we get to enjoy him playing that character one more time. And we can embrace that and enjoy that together. He was here just too short. Again, there was so much more work we would’ve all loved to have seen from him. And just him as a person just in the world, we need people like that, like him in this world. But hopefully people can look at this episode and have a smile on their faces. He loved the idea of doing this and he wanted to bring this version of T’Challa to life. And so we can take that to heart and feel joy in the fact that he knew what he was doing when he did it. He knew what he was going through. And he brought it full-on.

You got a lot of actors to reprise their roles for this series. But not everyone. How does a “no” work? Does Robert Downey Jr. just say, “I’m sorry, I’m busy”?

Bryan Andrews: A lot of it is it’s like herding cats. All of these people are extremely talented and they’ve got a lot of stuff going on. And we figured we probably wouldn’t be able to get everybody, just because scheduling is so difficult. But we got a lot, and that was great. So yeah, it’d be awesome to have everybody, but you’ve got to deal with what you’ve got to deal with. And if someone’s too busy and they can’t make it, it’s a bummer. We pivot and we get someone in that can rally and play to the spirit of that character. Not necessarily do “an impression,” but at least try to embody that and then make it a little bit their own, but hopefully not bug the audience too much.

Howard the Duck, he’s having a moment. He’s back.

A.C. Bradley: I love Howard the Duck! When it came to episode two and we knew we could have fun with The Collector, why not have Howard the Duck in there? And Seth Green was so lovely and totally came to play and came in for the role. That was a nice thing. The actors that were able to come in were great. They came to play. They had fun. I think the biggest surprise was a few of them became show ambassadors. Sebastian Stan, Jon Favreau, they would actually spread the word that What If…? is weird and it’s a good time, and you don’t have to do makeup or ADR. And then a few of the actors even were like, “Sign me up for season two. If you want to do another episode, let’s do it.” And that was very telling. That, okay, we’re on the right track here if the people who have lived and breathed these characters for 10 years are liking what we’re doing.

We always hear about the difficulties of the Sony arrangement with Spider-Man and getting him in the movies, but how did that work here? Because he’s going to be in one of these. How does that work?

A.C. Bradley: I think that works with “people above our pay grade.” Though, I think I did ask that early on. I was like, “Can we just touch Spider-Man?” And they went, “Don’t worry about it. We’re going to figure it out. Just tell the best story you can, and we’ll cross that bridge.” That was kind of the mandate across the board with Marvel: As long as you’re not doing something that we’re doing in the movies, go have fun and we’ll figure it out.

Bryan Andrews: No, they want the quality. They want to go for the quality and they’re like, “Yeah, let’s go. And all that BS is stuff that we have to deal with.” It’s like, “We’ll deal with that. Don’t worry about it.” Which I think that’s awesome. From day one on all their projects, it’s quality all the way down the line. You know what I mean? And that’s great.

Was there anything you wanted to do that was too weird that your bosses were not totally into?

A.C. Bradley: We had to stay PG-13. So we couldn’t go too raunchy and we couldn’t go too “har har.” Because we are going to be on Disney+ and there is going to be a six-year-old who ends up watching the show. Whether or not we’re looking for it to happen or not. Otherwise, we were kind of given the keys to the toy store and told to have fun. For me, the whole joy was taking these iconic characters, deconstructing them at times, trying to find the heart in them, finding new stories to tell. And for me, I was able to tell some stories that I don’t think I would have been able to do in other projects. I wouldn’t have been able to write about loss and love and feminism and throwing the world’s greatest party in any other show.

So it sounds like you’re telling me you did put something in there a little raunchy, and they were like, “You can’t do that.”

A.C. Bradley: [Laughs] … I don’t know. We had fun.

Bryan Andrews: You’ll have to be the judge of that when you watch the episodes.

I see you have the first issue of What If…? on your shelf behind you. Graded 9.4, that’s pretty good.

A.C. Bradley: Oh, I bought that right when I got the job, because I knew it was going to go up in value the second the show was announced.

That was a good idea.

A.C. Bradley: A little insider Marvel trading.

And now you’re now you’ve probably committed some sort of crime.

A.C. Bradley: Probably. The SEC’s going to come after me.

‘What If… ?’ begins streaming on August 11th. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Dr. Catherine O’Neal is at her wit’s end, and who can blame her, really? On July 11, the infectious disease specialist with Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge offered a pretty dire warning to Louisiana residents: “If you don’t choose the vaccine, you’re choosing death.” While it sounds like a pretty simple choice, clearly not everyone was listening or agrees. Because now, more than two weeks later, Dr. O’Neal was back at the podium to give an update on the situation at Our Lady of the Lake — the state’s biggest hospital — and it wasn’t good:

“Just over two weeks ago we stood here with 36 COVID-19 patients in the hospital. Today we have 155, which is our max from last April 2020. It doesn’t sound like a lot, honestly, when you think about numbers. But we are the largest hospital in the state. We have almost 800 beds; we have 713 people admitted today. And no one diagnosis should take up a quarter of your hospital. It doesn’t happen. It’s not imaginable, except for now. And we can’t tolerate it, because it’s putting incredible pressure on the rest of our patients and our hospital staff.”

O’Neal went on to detail that when she last looked, they had 23 patients from smaller hospitals and medical facilities with no access to long-term emergency services in need of ER beds. And that she and her colleagues were desperately trying, and failing, to find ways to accommodate them. But it’s not just COVID patients who are suffering. Because these patients are putting a strain on both the hospital’s physical space and resources, individuals who enter the ER for non-COVID-related issues (like a heart attack or stroke) are suffering, too. “When you come inside our walls, it is quite obvious,,, that these are the darkest days of this pandemic,” she said. “We no longer think we’re giving adequate care to anybody because these are the darkest days of the pandemic.”

The silver lining, if you can call it that, is that O’Neal says there are two easy ways that everyone can help lessen the severity of the situation: get vaccinated, and wear a mask.

“Vaccination is going to get us there, but it will not get us there fast enough. And we will lose our friends and our colleagues because of it. But if we put on our masks, as we’ve done through the last several surges, we will see a decrease in hospitalizations again and that will give us time for the vaccination to work. Those who got vaccinated in the last two weeks already have protection and I doubt that I will ever see them in our hospital due to COVID-19. And if you get vaccinated today and you mask up, I doubt that I’ll ever see you.”

You can watch her full update above.

The 2K franchise has always made it a point to deliver a unique music experience. From LeBron James and Jay-Z creating their own soundtracks to 2K21 having more than 100 songs, the series likes to do something different every year. With NBA 2K22 the folks at 2K will once again try something new.

2K22 will not only feature a consistently evolving soundtrack with seasonal updates, but it will have a greater focus on putting rising artists in the spotlight for fans. While there will still be stars like Travis Scott, Megan Thee Stallion, and Freddie Gibbs, it will also feature a variety of new names with the hope of making NBA 2K a venue to discover new music. Some of the artists include:

• Boldy James
• Griselda (Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine, Benny the Butcher)
• Louis Cole
• Yves Tumor
• Blxst
• Smino
• ACADEMY
• Thundercat
• Princess Nokia
• Megan Thee Stallion
• Night Lovell
• Bartees Strange
• Park Hye Jin
• Nosaj Thing
• Insightful
• Jordan Lyles
• Lion Babe
• A.B. Original
• Masego

“We brought in United Masters as a partner and really wanted to shift the focus to being a platform for music discovery,” David Kelley, Senior Manager, Partnerships & Licensing at 2K told Dime. “I think over the last, you know, 20 or so years that the game has been out and has been published, it’s been really important to have those prestige artists. Of course, we’ll always have them.”

The soundtrack will receive new updates on the first Friday of every new season, which will not only give fans something to look forward to, but will help keep the soundtrack fresh so it never gets too repetitive.

With how many people play the NBA 2K franchise worldwide, this is a great opportunity for people to discover new music they may have not gotten the opportunity to hear beforehand. We’ll be able to listen to the entire soundtrack when the game releases on Sept. 1, 2021.