Month: October 2021

As Squid Game continues to be a record-breaking international phenomenon, the Netflix series‘ anti-capitalist messaging is spurring real-world action thanks to a recent protest in South Korea. According to reports, over 27,000 people took to the streets in Seoul, where members of the South Korean Confederation of Trade Unions donned Squid Game costumes as they rallied for improved working conditions. The union members were reportedly inspired by the characters on the Netflix series who compete in childhood games with a deadly twist to better their lives.

“They too are struggling to make a living,” tweeted Lim Yun Suk from Channel News Asia, who shared video from the protest below:

During the protest, workers revealed that Squid Game was very difficult to watch because the experiences mirrored their own. Via Insider:

“In ‘Squid Game,’ you see characters scrambling to survive after being laid off at work, struggling to operate fried chicken diners or working as ‘daeri’ drivers,” a rental service where drivers take drunk people home in their own cars, Lee added. “That reminded me of my co-workers who died.”

Created by South Korean filmmaker Hwang Dong-hyuk, who struggled for a decade to sell the series because network execs found the scenarios “too implausible,” Squid Game became an international hit after Netflix took a gamble, which paid off huge. It also didn’t hurt that Donald Trump became president, which sadly, made the show’s dark conditions more realistic.

“It’s almost like he’s running a game show, not a country, like giving people horror,” Dong-hyuk told IndieWire. “After all these issues happened, I thought it was about time that this show goes out into the world.”

(Via Lim Yun Suk on Twitter, Insider)

Rep. Jim Jordan appears to have eaten his Wheaties this week because the man just won’t stop. On Wednesday, he and Matt Gaetz spent an inordinate amount of time acting like nuisances during House committee hearings that addressed Steve Bannon deciding to ignore a subpoena on the Jan. 6 MAGA coup. It’s to the point where people started recalling that memes have compared Jordan and Gaetz to Beavis and Butt-Head, but they’re not harmless doofuses who sit on couches and watch music videos. Instead, they’re armed with far-right information and stonewalling any progress whatsoever when they take the mic.

Well, Jordan’s back in the saddle again on Thursday, when he decided to ding-dong out and act like a clown because he couldn’t play a video for the House Judiciary Committee. Attorney General Merrick Garland (who was on hand to discuss Justice Department oversight) appeared to discuss possibilities for dealing with Bannon’s defiance, and Garland declared, “The Department of Justice will do what it always does in such circumstances, we’ll apply the facts and the law and make a decision, consistent with the principles of prosecution.”

Meanwhile, Jordan was ranting about an “accelerated march to Communism.”

Then he began to freak out about wanting to play his darn video.

And here’s the video that Jordan wanted to play, as blasted out on Twitter by the House Judiciary GOP account. It’s a montage of right-ring parents freaking out over COVID protocols at town hall meetings, sprinkled with Fox News clips.

Via Mediaite, Jordan wasn’t allowed to play this video because he apparently didn’t adhere to the committee’s protocol for attempting to secure video approval 48 hours in advance. Jordan, of course, pushed back at the rule’s existence while also stating that he did, in fact, follow the rule. Hmm.

(Via Aaron Rupar & Mediaite)

A pandemic, a disparate wealth gap, and widening political divides are stressing everyone out right now, which might be why murder rates are up in Polk County, Florida. The good news? The sheriff there has an easy fix: eat more Moonpies.

Sheriff Grady Judd gave a press conference on Tuesday to address the rising number of homicides in his county. Despite the overall crime rate staying low, the area has had a record number of murders for the first half of 2021 with the local news reporting that 34 people have been killed from homicidal deaths, first and second-degree murders, and officer-involved shootings so far. Obviously, that’s very disturbing news for residents, so Juddy offered some sage advice for the people doing most of the murdering these days: chill the f*ck out.

“What’s that all about? Just calm down. Quit murdering your friends and your family,” Judd said in a statement. “I know that’s a novel idea for some people.”

And look, Judd understands that resisting those homicidal impulses can be tough, so once again, the sheriff is coming in clutch with some tricks for not killing people.

“Just chill out, drink a 7up, eat a MoonPie, quit murdering people,” he said.

No, the drink choice is questionable because honestly, we can’t remember the last time we walked into a gas station and saw 7up just chilling on the shelves, but few can argue with the snack option. Moonpies are, in fact, delicious and apparently, they have the power to curb bloodlust. We wonder why the company doesn’t put that in their marketing materials?

In all seriousness though, this 10-second clip is funnier than anything Dave Chappelle has put out in the last decade. Watch the full video below:

It’s been less than a year since Olivia Rodrigo released her debut single “Drivers License,” and she’s already taken the world by storm. She’s performed at a number of awards shows, walked the Met Gala’s red carpet, and her debut album Sour smashed several charting records. Now offering fans even more Sour content, Rodrigo debuts a video to her somber heartbreak track “Traitor.”

The visual sees Rodrigo meeting up with her friends to try to heal the heartbreak laid out in the song’s lyrics. As she sings of her ex moving on a little too quickly, Rodrigo tries to distract herself by hitting up an arcade. But she eventually decides that won’t do the trick and instead breaks into a high school’s pool. She then jumps into the water fully clothed and causes a ruckus with her friends, which definitely helps mend her heartbreak.

Ahead of the release of her “Traitor” visual, Rodrigo explained in an interview with Alanis Morissette for Rolling Stone‘s “Musicians On Musicians” series that she was grateful her breakout moment came during quarantine. “I think had I not just been doing the same thing that I had always been doing and writing songs in my bedroom, maybe I would have gotten a little more in my head about it than I did,” she said.”

Watch Rodrigo’s “Traitor” video above.

Sour is out now via Geffen/Interscope. Get it here.

Conservative media in the United States has painted Australia as a state on the brink of authoritarianism due to strict COVID-19 protections in some parts of the country. These news outlets appear to be using the country as an example of what can happen in America if liberal politicians go unchecked.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson ran a story on Australia earlier this month claiming the country “looks a lot like China did at the beginning of the pandemic.” He ended it by saying that “what’s happening in Australia might be instructive to us in the United States” and that things can “change very quickly” and become “dystopian and autocratic.”

Carlson provides zero reasons why Americans should be fearful of becoming an autocratic country due to COVID-19, beyond the idea that “things can change very quickly” so his appeals sound a lot more like fear-mongering than genuine concern.

Florida governor Ron De Santis–whose state’s COVID-19 death rate is some 50 times Australia’s–suggested that the U.S. should reconsider its diplomatic relations with Australia, asking whether it was freer than China.

While conservative media in the U.S. bemoans the state of Australia, people living Down Under don’t care much for their concerns. Polls show that the vast majority of Australians support vaccine mandates, presumably because they don’t want their fellow countrymen to die.

Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz got in on the Australia bashing last week when he posted a tweet featuring a video of Australia’s Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner announcing the country’s latest vaccine mandates.

Gunner had announced that anyone who serves the public in hospitality, gyms, retail or any other customer-facing industries must get their first coronavirus vaccine within a month or face a $3,750 (5000 Australian dollars) fine.

“I love the Aussies. Their history of rugged independence is legendary; I’ve always said Australia is the Texas of the Pacific,” Cruz wrote before adding, “The Covid tyranny of their current government is disgraceful and sad. Individual liberty matters. I stand with the people of Australia.”

Gunner responded to Cruz on Twitter, educating him on the effectiveness of vaccines and how compared to Australia, Texas is a complete disaster when it comes to protecting people from the virus.

G’day from Down Under @tedcruz. Thanks for your interest in the Territory. I’m the Chief Minister. Below are a few… https://t.co/kOI3wRqTtb

— Michael Gunner (@fanniebay)
1634528825.0

“Hey Ted Cruz, g’day from the Northern Territory in Australia. Here are some facts. Nearly 70,000 Texans have tragically died from COVID. There have been zero deaths in the Territory. Did you know that?” he wrote before adding, “Vaccination is so important here because we have vulnerable communities and the oldest continuous living culture on the planet to protect. Did you know that?”

He then added, “We don’t need your lectures, thanks mate. You know nothing about us. And if you stand against a life-saving vaccine, then you sure as hell don’t stand with Australia. I love Texas (go Longhorns), but when it comes to COVID, I’m glad we are nothing like you.”

The difference between Texas and Australia is staggering when it comes to the number of people who’ve died due to COVID-19. Australia has a population of 25.7 million and has had 147,275 total cases and 1,558 total deaths due to COVID-19.

Texas, on the other hand, has a similar population of 29 million but has 3,474,092 cases and 68,043 fatalities. That’s more than 45 times the death rate.

Cruz can bash Australia all he wants, but if he actually loved the people of Texas, he’d care a bit more about their health. Few people have much use for liberty when they’re dead or stuck on a ventilator.

The way in which one frames Mike Conley Jr.’s 2020-21 season depends on the viewpoint. By and large, it was successful individually. He bounced back from a downtrodden, injury plagued 2019-20 to nab his first All-Star berth, shot a career-high 41.2 percent from deep and helped guide the Utah Jazz to the Western Conference’s No. 1 seed. From a regular season perspective, it was one of the best years of his career.

But amid all those triumphs were more injuries that cost him 14 of Utah’s final 22 games, including much of the playoffs. He missed the first five games of the second round against the Los Angeles Clippers. By the time he returned for a do-or-die Game 6, he was not his All-Star self, scored eight points on 1-of-8 shooting and was limited to 26 minutes. This is not to say Utah would’ve won with a healthy Conley — and L.A. was likewise missing Kawhi Leonard over the final two games — but him being at his best seems paramount for the Jazz if they are to finally look like a title contender in the postseason.

When available, Conley’s pick-and-roll chemistry with Rudy Gobert and pull-up shooting bolster the offense significantly. He’s not much of a creator without a pick present, but he’s a dazzling ball-screen guard and decision-maker. In a movement-heavy offense like Utah’s, his off-ball exploits also pair well. Alongside the necessary, explosive scoring tendencies of Donovan Mitchell that aren’t always flanked by consistent decision-making, Conley’s methodical, savvy approach helps balance possessions.

Defensively, he flows around screens and can pester opposing guards, though bigger, brawnier assignments pose trouble. For all the hand-wringing about Gobert’s defensive trials against Los Angeles, it was merely a byproduct of the more prevalent issue: Utah’s dearth of effective perimeter defenders, which Conley’s absence and restraints exacerbated. At the very least, he would’ve helped in some regard.

It’s easy to say a healthy Conley solves many of the Jazz’s faults. A healthy Conley, though, has become increasingly difficult to expect in recent seasons. He’s struggled with injuries in both years with Utah and missed most of 2017-18 surgery due to season-ending surgery on his left heel. That’s three times in four years where a 34-year-old, 6-foot-1 guard’s season is notably impacted by injuries.

The Jazz rightfully kept Conley in town with a three-year, $72.5 million this summer. He is very good. They need him. He fits properly with their other All-Stars. But they need him healthy to challenge the contenders in the West. Any chance of breaking through the second round, something the franchise has failed to do since 2006-07, in part relies on him being ready for the stretch run, primed to splash triples, toss lobs and fluster assignments on the perimeter defensively.

About a month ago I knew very little about Dune. As opposed to now where I’ve seen two full Dune movies and even watched a documentary about another one that was never made, Jodorowsky’s Dune. So I guess it’s fair to say that, now, as I type this, I at least know something about Dune.

I had avoided David Lynch’s 1984 version for, well, pretty much all my life because when the director of a movie won’t even talk about it in interviews, as Lynch famously won’t, that’s a pretty good sign something went wrong. I do remember as a kid trying to watch it on HBO. It’s hard, now, to convey just how popular Sting was at the time. This was the rocker Sting. This was still the Sting that was the lead singer of The Police. And, yes, I wanted to watch the movie that starred Sting! A big deal was made about the fact that Sting was in Dune. At the time, this was much more important than the fact this was a David Lynch movie. Well, as a little kid with a short attention span, I didn’t have the patience to sit through this whole movie just for the surprisingly few scenes with Sting. And, frankly, I had no idea what was going on. It just felt like a confusing, kind of gross movie with hardly any Sting.

With the new Dune coming out and the fact Arrow was releasing a new 4K disc of the original, I decided to buy the disc and sit down and watch David Lynch’s Dune from beginning to end for the first time. And I’m still shocked at what I’m about to say: I found myself kind of, sort of, enjoying it.

Comparing David Lynch’s 1984 Dune and Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 Dune is actually pretty interesting when you get beyond the obvious: the new one has modern effects and costs a whole lot of money. But a lot of the same scenes happen in both movies, with very different approaches. And even though the new Dune is only half of the first book, it still covers about three-fourths of the material that’s in Lynch’s film. (I get the feeling that a lot of what Villeneuve wants to do in a second Dune movie, Lynch just “montages” through, with a voice-over that basically says, “we fought a lot of battles.”)

Lynch’s Dune over explains the story, to a fault. To the point that we hear what the characters are thinking. Yes, it creates a maddening amount of exposition, but at the same time, if you look at Lynch’s Dune as a king of the annotated movie, it serves as a really good primer headed into the new movie.

Here’s an example: In Villeneuve’s Dune, space travel is hardly explained. We know the spice on Arrakis is basically a fuel, making it very important to all these different factions, but that’s about it. When Leto and Paul Atreides (Oscar Isaac and Timothée Chalamet) travel from their planet to Arrakis, they just kind of fly up to a big space tube and then magically appear out the other end at their next destination. For whatever reason, Villeneuve doesn’t seem very interested in the more, let’s say, nerdier aspects of this story. His Dune kind of does away with all that and just focuses on the battle for spice on Arrakis.

The problem is, I kind of like those nerdier aspects. Because what that space tube does is it uses the spice to fold space (I know I’m oversimplifying this), creating the possibility of travel. And Lynch seems fascinated by this (I guess that’s not very surprising) and leans into all the nerdy things about Dune. So when Paul (Kyle MacLachlan, who makes a pretty bizarre, interesting Paul) travels to Arrakis in the 1984 movie, we get a whole lesson about how this all works. And how there’s a whole guild that controls travel and how that guild is causing trouble for everyone. I wish the new one had this stuff because I find this whole concept really interesting. But because I had watched Lynch’s first, I had an okay enough working knowledge of this anyway.

Look, Villeneuve’s Dune is a better movie. I’m not here to offer some sort of contrarian opinion that Lynch’s is “actually better.” It is not “better,” but I will say I’m pretty sure I had more fun watching it. Now, that could be by the time I watched Villeneuve’s movie, I had watched this same story twice in one month. But, watching Lynch’s Dune in 2021, it’s retroactively interesting. In that when it came out, it was “David Lynch is trying to make a good Dune movie.” But now it’s more, “Dune got the David Lynch treatment.” It feels more like a David Lynch movie than it does a Dune movie. There are so many visuals in Lynch’s Dune where you can kind of see where he’d go soon with Blue Velvet then, later, Twin Peaks, both also starring MacLachlan. (But, also, some scenes are still really gross. But, again, it’s David Lynch.) Imagine walking out of the new movie this weekend and thinking, “I wonder what a David Lynch version of that movie would look like.” Hey, that actually exists!

For its faults (and it does have those), it’s a colorful, weird, overly-explained Dune movie. As opposed to Villeneuve’s movie, which is beautifully shot, but the colors are purposefully drab. (In Lynch’s movie, he even makes sand look kind of pretty.) There’s one sequence in Villeneuve’s Dune where two characters are in a particular situation, they go to a place where not much of anything happens, then are back in the same situation. Lynch’s version just skips this sequence altogether. And, infamously, some of Lynch’s scenes were edited out in a, “Well, those 100 pages of the book will be a montage,” kind of way. So it’s hard to tell what got cut and what he just found boring. I get why filmmakers get so caught up in the story of Dune, but a good case could be made that maybe it was best to skip over some of these scenes for a movie. (And, yes, in the new Dune, I’d have been okay if a couple of these scenes were skipped.)

I keep trying to get people to watch Lynch’s Dune. Probably for selfish reasons, because I want to discuss it and not many people I know have watched it, for basically the same reasons I hadn’t: they heard it’s “bad,” it’s long, it’s a chore. I don’t think any of those things are true. It’s too interesting to be bad, it’s about 20 minutes shorter than the new movie and it’s a full story, and it moves a lot quicker than I expected. He won’t, but I wish Lynch would talk about it more. I understand making Dune wasn’t his favorite experience, but in 1984 this movie seems like an impossible task. (At the end of Jodorowsky’s Dune, Alejandro Jodorowsky is ecstatic talking about how Lynch’s Dune was terrible. It’s a funny moment in the movie, and I see his point that it’s a human reaction after all he went through and having it taken away from him, but also I have no doubt his end result of a movie would have been similar.) But, if, after you see the new Dune you are thinking, hey, I wonder what this same story would look like, only David Lynch directed it … you are in luck.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

James Carville has never been known as a wishy-washy, sentimental kind of guy. But while being interviewed by MSNBC, he admitted that he feels sort of sorry that Steve Bannon might be carted off to jail. Not for Donald Trump’s former White House chief strategist and senior counselor, mind you—but for the poor guy who has to share a cell with him.

When asked about Bannon being held in criminal contempt over his unwillingness to appear before the January 6th committee, Carville didn’t mince words:

“Just take Bannon, and throw him in jail. The only person I feel sorry for is his cell mate. You can imagine what that guy smells like. Jeez. But that’s their problem… You don’t need to fool with these people. If they don’t comply then, Merrick Garland, lock them up.”

Bannon wasn’t the only Trump crony Carville had some harsh words for—he had some thoughts on Jim Jordan, too:

“You’ve got Jim Jordan, who knew this pervert wrestling coach and never said a word about it. And he doesn’t remember he talked to the president. That committee has all the records; they know what’s going on. Liz Cheney said that Steve Bannon was involved in the planning of this and probably Trump was. I’m not surprised Jim Vaughn wants to stop this because he’s got his hands all over this mess, too. But that committee is moving ahead. And if Bannon doesn’t go, Merrick Garland’s got to lock him up pronto.”

(Via @Acyn)

It’s been a few months since Academy Award and multi-Grammy-winning artist HER released her swooning album Back Of My Mind. She’s currently on tour across the country supporting the album’s release, but she managed to stop by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to share an intimate rendition of her emotive track “For Anyone.”

The performance opened with HER seated at a bedazzled piano and sporting her signature round glasses. Though she was joined by some backup singers and accompanying musicians, her room-filling vocals alone were enough to mesmerize as she sang of closing herself off to love after a particularly painful heartbreak.

Ahead of her performance on The Late Show, HER gave an interview with Vulture where she talked about how many people perceive her as an “industry plant,” a word that’s meant to call out nepotism, but is oftentimes used to discredit the hard work a woman has put in to get where she is in the music industry. “With social media, people think they know everything about success. People see my success now, and they don’t understand the sacrifices, the 15-hour days in the studio, the pressure from my parents to go to college,” she said.

HER went on to explain the work she put in to reach her level of credibility: “For me, I grinded it out kinda like a rapper: I dropped a mixtape, nobody knew who I was, it was a very slow build, and here we are now. The awards shows and all that stuff, that was surprising to me. But I realized, Oh my gosh, I’ve arrived, and in a different way. You don’t need some No. 1 radio single — even though I got that!”

Watch HER perform “For Anyone” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert above.

Back Of My Mind is out now via RCA Records. Get it here.

Michael Bay has been busy as a producer in recent years with A Quiet Place, Bumblebee, and A Quiet Place Part II, but he’s slowed down the pace as a director. In fact, since his last Transformers movie, which of course we all remember is called Transformers: The Last Knight, he’s only directed one explosions-fest: 6 Underground. But he’s returning with the very Michael Bay-looking thriller, Ambulance.

Ambulance stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Will and Jake Gyllenhaal as Danny, adoptive brothers who plan “the biggest bank heist in Los Angeles history: $32 million” to help pay for Will’s wife’s medical bills. “But when their getaway goes spectacularly wrong, the desperate brothers hijack an ambulance with a wounded cop clinging to life and ace EMT Cam Thompson (Eiza González) onboard,” according to the official plot summary. “In a high-speed pursuit that never stops, Will and Danny must evade a massive, city-wide law enforcement response, keep their hostages alive, and somehow try not to kill each other, all while executing the most insane escape L.A. has ever seen.”

If the titular vehicle turns out to be Transformer, that would be a Split is an Unbreakable sequel-level twist. Ambulance, which is based on the 2005 Danish thriller Ambulancen by Laurits Munch-Petersen and Lars Andreas Pedersen, opens on February 18, 2022.