Month: February 2022

It’s not all that unusual to see Ice Cube at sporting events. After all, the man’s been famous since his early 20s when he was a member of NWA, and he even runs his own increasingly popular basketball league, The Big 3. But apparently, there are still some sporting events at which you wouldn’t expect to catch the internationally recognized rapper, as seen by the reaction to not only appearing at a Nascar race this past Sunday but performing there as well.

Cube was apparently commissioned for the halftime show at the Busch Light Clash at the LA Coliseum on Sunday (truthfully, I didn’t know car races even had halftimes, so I’m already shocked and confused by this story myself), where he performed hits from across his expansive catalog such as “Check Yoself,” “Friday,” and “You Know How We Do It.” Clearly, though, this wasn’t exactly the audience for an Ice Cube performance, as the audience’s reactions were decidedly mixed.

Online, though, there was as much amusement as bemusement (which actually mean wildly different things, go figure), with fans chiming in to either berate the Nascar audience for not appreciating a musical legend in their midst or demean Nascar for so baldly trying to expand its appeal — likely inspired by the upcoming Super Bowl’s halftime slate of Dr. Dre, Kendrick Lamar, Mary J. Blige, and Snoop Dogg.

It seems the Nascar audience is as reluctant to embrace hip-hop as the hip-hop audience is to embrace Nascar — or maybe, considering the popularity of the sport down South, they just need to tap some more Southern artists the next time around. Just saying, there’s probably a strong overlap between people who love cars and people who love Ludacris. Check out more responses below.

Whenever Leslie Jones live-tweets something it’s always hilarious. Whether it’s Zack Snyder’s Justice League — yes, she sat through the whole thing — or Donald Trump‘s latest embarrassing move, Jones’ Twitter commentary has been a welcomed reprieve in these pandemic times. Which is why it’s unfortunate that the comedian revealed that her beloved live-tweeting of the Olympics might be coming to an end after a series of frustrating setbacks.

In a tweet posted early Monday morning, Jones opened up about the numerous obstacles she’s faced while trying to bring a little comedy to the Olympic events. According to the Saturday Night Live alum, her videos are routinely taken down, and the powers that be seem determined to keep her out:

im starting to feel like this should be my last olympics i live tweet. i know i know, another celebrity bitching. But i’m tired of fighting the folks who don’t want me to do it. They block my videos and they get folks who think they can do it like me. And I’m tired of fighting them. I love the athletes and they love me doing it. And I know y’all love it. But now it’s just gotten too hard. And no one is fighting for or with me. Soooo I guess I’ll leave it to the professionals. But thank you for all the love #uptoyallnow

While Jones has yet to confirm if she’ll return to live-tweeting the Olympics or not, she has been busily retweeting the outpouring of support she’s received since revealing her frustration. Obviously, the love for Jones’ tweets are there, but will it be enough to spur official action is the big question.

(Via Leslie Jones on Twitter)

The nominations for the 94th Academy Awards will be announced tomorrow morning, so you have less than 24 hours to prepare for “Why It’s Good / Bad That Spider-Man: No Way Home Was / Wasn’t Nominated for Best Picture” think pieces. Leaving aside whether it should or shouldn’t be up for the Oscars’ biggest prize, I don’t think it will be — but I do think two of its stars will compete against each other for Best Actor. Below, you’ll find predictions for 11 major categories, broken down by who I think will (not necessarily should) be nominated and one long-shot nomination that I’d like to come true.

Now, before you yell at me, Jackass Forever wasn’t eligible, but maybe next year.

Best Picture

Being the Ricardos
Belfast
CODA
Don’t Look Up
Dune
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
The Power of the Dog
tick, tick… BOOM!
West Side Story

The Long-Shot Nomination: Drive My Car, because it’s the rare three-hour movie that earns every second of its runtime.

Best Director

Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza)
Kenneth Branagh (Belfast)
Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog)
Steven Spielberg (West Side Story)
Denis Villeneuve (Dune)

The Long-Shot Nomination: Julia Ducournau (Titane), because there’s a reason her horror movie about a serial killer who has sex with a car, and then becomes pregnant with the car’s baby, won the prestigious Palme d’Or — it’s remarkable.

Best Actor

Javier Bardem (Being the Ricardos)
Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog)
Andrew Garfield (tick, tick… BOOM!)
Will Smith (King Richard)
Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth)

The Long-Shot Nomination: Simon Rex (Red Rocket), because porn star-turned-VJ-turned-Scary Movie star-turned-rapper is impressive, but porn star-turned-VJ-turned-Scary Movie star-turned-rapper-turned-Oscar winner is a multi-hyphenate for the ages.

Best Actress

Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye)
Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter)
Lady Gaga (House of Gucci)
Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos)
Kristen Stewart (Spencer)

The Long-Shot Nomination: Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World), because the Worst Person deserves Best Actress after giving the year’s finest performance.

Best Supporting Actor

Ben Affleck (The Tender Bar)
Bradley Cooper (Licorice Pizza)
Ciaran Hinds (Belfast)
Troy Kotsur (CODA)
Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog)

The Long-Shot Nomination: Jared Leto (House of Gucci), because I genuinely can’t tell if he’s giving the best or worst performance I’ve ever seen in a major motion picture.

Best Supporting Actress

Caitríona Balfe (Belfast)
Ariana DeBose (West Side Story)
Kristen Dunst (The Power of the Dog)
Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard)
Ruth Negga (Passing)

The Long-Shot Nomination: Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter), because Jessie Buckley is going to get an Oscar someday — why wait?

Best Original Screenplay

Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza)
Zach Baylin (King Richard)
Kenneth Branagh (Belfast)
Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up)
Aaron Sorkin (Being the Ricardos)

The Long-Shot Nomination: Wes Anderson (The French Dispatch), or Asghar Farhadi (A Hero), or Ducournau (Titane), or Paul Schrader (The Card Counter), or Michael Sarnoski and Vanessa Block (Pig), because if McKay or Sorkin’s overblown screenplays win, I will scream.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog)
Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Lost Daughter)
Ryusuke Hamaguchi and and Takamasa Oe (Drive My Car)
Sian Heder (CODA)
Denis Villeneuve, Erith Roth, and Jon Spaihts (Dune)

The Long-Shot Nomination: Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe (Drive My Car), because see: Best Picture.

Best Animated Feature

Encanto
Flee
Luca
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
Raya and the Last Dragon

The Long-Shot Nomination: Belle, because “U” is a bop.

Best International Feature

A Hero
Drive My Car
Flee
The Hand of God
The Worst Person in the World

The Long-Shot Nomination: Lamb, because maybe the titular lamb will show up.

The first round of Oscar nominations begin on Tuesday, February 8, at 8:18 a.m. EST/5:18 a.m. PST, followed by the second batch at 8:31 a.m. EST/5:31 a.m. PST. You can watch at the link below. Maybe a host (or hosts) will be revealed, too.

Each Sunday brings a new Tobe Nwigwe video to look forward to, as the Alief, Texas-based rapper continues his independent campaign to offer a counterpoint to the imagery and messages pervading rap’s mainstream. This week, though, he slows it down as he offers some helpful advice to anyone bothered by his choice of content.

If there was a moment that you could point to as the beginning of Tobe’s breakthrough to a broader level of public awareness, it would likely be the release of his 2020 single, “Try Jesus,” in which he tapped into a gospel vibe for a tongue-in-cheek reminder that he won’t be turning the other cheek. He returns to that well on “Unfollow Me,” which utilizes strains of a pulpit-certified organ as Tobe reminds his haters that they don’t have to stay tuned into his every move.

“If you don’t like what I say or do,” he croons, “Please, for your sake and mine — unfollow me.” As the camera pulls back from the standard closeup his Sunday singles often begin with, he advises his critics that they don’t have to like, comment, or follow if they really don’t want to. The mood is very much in line with his two most recent releases, “Passing Through” and “Undressing Criticism,” in both music and message.

Watch the video for “Unfollow Me” above.

Awards shows are bullsh*t and the Oscars are the most bullsh*t of them all. But unfortunately, the Oscars do, and will probably always, matter. As much as Bradley Cooper’s best actor snub for A Star Is Born in favor of Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody feels like a personal attack against me, it was not, and I have moved on with my life (but I’m still mad). The Oscars are not life or death, and will likely never affect anyone’s personal life. The awards do make a difference in careers and what films get seen. People who are not cinephiles (aka: healthy people) are more likely to only watch films that were nominated for Academy Awards, or only those that win them, which is why Parasite’s sweep of the awards in early 2020 was so significant. Every year, we go through the same Oscars cycle. Someone who deserves it doesn’t win, or doesn’t even get nominated. The cycle repeats itself year after year. Everyone – or, at least, everyone who is obsessed with movies enough to click on this article and get this far into reading it – has that one “who deserved the Oscar but was not even nominated” performance they could discuss ad nausea on command.

Jodie Comer’s performance as Marguerite de Carrouges in the criminally underrated, understated masterpiece The Last Duel from director Sir Ridley Scott will likely become one of the most egregious Oscar snubs in the history of the award. Comer, who won an Emmy in 2019 for her performance as Villanelle on the BBC drama Killing Eve, performs her role as Marguerite de Carrouges – a victim of sexual assault who undergoes ire during the subsequent trial in 14th century France – from varying perspectives. Comer patiently plays with audience expectations by allowing her character to go through the first half of the film quietly, only existing to serve the interests of men, which is the exact way the men in the film see and treat Marguerite. It’s not until the film’s chilling final act that Comer allows Marguerite’s bottled-up anger to explode with a powerhouse performance on par with the performances earning her peers buzz for the Oscar for best actress.

The Last Duel is told in three acts, from three different perspectives. Comer is intentionally and effectively not present in the film’s first two acts because the story is first told from the perspectives of two men. Due to the film’s structure, Comer essentially plays three different versions of Margueritte. In the first act, from Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) perspective, Margueritte is a sweet, obedient, passive, loving young wife who will do anything to please her husband. Jean sees her more as a baby maker who gets him land and advances his position in his country, as well as someone who must succumb to his every emotional and physical need. Jean does not see Margueritte as a person with intelligence, feelings, or experiences and Comer plays up his perspective by making herself seem as small as he sees her. When Margueritte tells Jean she was raped, he helps in her quest for justice by asking for a duel to the death in her honor. But it’s not about her at all. It’s about him and his feud with his former friend Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver). Comer relishes in Jean’s perception of Margueritte, portraying the character as innocently and as naively as he sees her while peppering in subtle body language and facial expressions that indicate he doesn’t understand Margueritte at all.

Jacque Le Gris sees Margueritte in a completely different way than Jean, and Comer amps up the performance as Marguerite in Jacque’s eyes. Le Gris is immediately taken by her beauty and overwhelmed with wit and intelligence. Jacques has the same intentions as Jean. He still sees her as merely an object of his desire but sees something completely different at the same time. Marguerite’s kindness and ability to have a conversation convinces Jacques that the two are in love. Comer does an excellent job at depicting Jacque’s perception of her in a way that, at first, makes you feel like there could be something there even though deep down, you know it’s all in his head, which is a credit to both Comer and Driver’s performances, who act not one but two challenging rape scenes in a respectful way that does not minimize Margeurite’s traumatic experience from both character’s perspectives.

The film’s third and final act takes a significant shift and establishes Marguerite as the film’s hero. Marguerite’s story is the film’s only honest perspective. Surrounded by men telling her what to do and/or calling her a liar, she starts to assert herself. She’s fed up, and with her life at stake (literally, if Jean loses the duel, she will be burned at the stake) and with a baby on the way, there’s a fire within her now that was likely always there but is missing from the first two acts of the film because the men refused to see it because they do not see Margueritte as a human beyond their self-serving interests. Unlike her co-stars – and peers such as Spencer’s Kristen Stewart – who had historical records to base their performances on, little is known about Marguerite de Carrouges despite her being the center of this true story. Even in historical texts, the true story The Last Duel is based on centers the men.

Comer’s inevitable Oscars snub could be the result of several things. First, The Last Duel had a dismal performance at the box office when it came out in October, which soured audiences on the film even though they were unfamiliar with it. And due to the film’s intentional structure, Comer’s role, at a glance, feels less like a leading role than a supporting role. There is also the fact that Comer is more well-known in the television world, and voters might perceive her as more of a television actress who already had her moment with her Emmy win in 2019 — a horrid excuse, but something Academy voters do keep in mind.

In addition to handling sensitive material, playing three different versions of the character, and waiting patiently until the end of the film to make a profound impact, Jodie Comer had to invent a woman erased by history. The Oscar-worthy performance – which is perhaps also going unnoticed because of how effortless and natural it feels – rings true to experiences of women throughout history and of women today. Comer’s haunting and controlled performance in The Last Duel is a necessary reminder that while we have come a long way since the fourteenth century, some things remain the same because we have learned so little.

Vince Staples’ musical output is an ever-evolving thing. When he started out, his music was abrasive and almost contrarian, intentionally flying against the prevailing wind of hip-hop’s mainstream sound. However, over time, he’s mellowed out, at times flirting with a more accessible sound, most noticeably on the hyperactive FM! and the depressive sound of his 2020 self-titled album. In recent months, signs have pointed to that flirtation becoming a full-blown love affair on his long-awaited album, Ramona Park Broke My Heart, which could be the moment he goes from critical darling to fan-favorite superstar.

First, he tapped DJ Quik earlier this year to help finish the project, and now, it’s clear he’s been working with another West Coast hitmaker in Mustard. A song Vince created with the latter has appeared in the unlikeliest of places: a new Beats By Dre ad featuring tennis superstar Naomi Osaka. In the ad, Osaka is shown putting in a brand-new pair of Beats headphones on the tennis court and laying on the net like a hammock while the new song, “Magic,” plays. Judging from the party-ready vibe of the single, it sounds like Staples is actually making a play for radio and playlist love for a change and he sounds every bit as cozy on the Mustard-standard beat as Osaka looks in her makeshift hammock. Staples’ Instagram post promises more on the way, and we can’t wait.

In September, Andy Shauf announced his new album Wilds and released it a couple days later. Despite being so fresh off a batch of fresh music, Shauf returns with more new material today, this time via a pair of new serene-skewing singles, “Satan” and “Jacob Rose.”

Shauf says of “Satan”:

“When I was young, there were a few years where I wasn’t allowed to celebrate Hallowe’en. The church that I grew up in was saying that Hallowe’en was ‘The Devil’s Day’ and that it had its roots in satanic rituals. After a few years of this, my parents realized it was a bit silly to deny us our free candy and let us resume. The Christianity that I was brought up in said that believers went to heaven and non-believers went to hell. A sort of cartoon-like simplification of ancient texts. So with the lyrics of this song, I was trying to take this cartoon-like simplification of life (and death) and pair it with a cartoon-like version of this Christian hell. Where after you complete a long and disciplined life, you find yourself holding a bite-sized chocolate bar stapled to an invitation to a Hallowe’en pool party with Satan himself.”

Listen to both new songs above and check out Shauf’s upcoming tour dates below.

02/17 — Sheffield, MA @ Race Brook Lodge *
02/18 — Woodstock, NY @ Colony Cafe
02/19 — Hamden, CT @ Space Ballroom *
02/20 — Charlottesville, VA @ The Southern Music Hall *
02/22 — Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle *
02/23 — Asheville, NC @ The Grey Eagle *
02/24 — Birmingham, AL @ Saturn *
02/25 — Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West *
02/26 — Orlando, FL @ The Social *
02/27 — Tallahassee, FL @ The Moon *
03/01 — Houston, TX @ Heights Theater *
03/03 — San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger *
03/04 — Ft Worth, TX @ Tulip’s *
03/05 — Oklahoma City, OK @ Tower Theatre *
03/07 — Santa Fe, NM @ Meow Wolf *
03/08 — Tucson, AZ @ 191 Toole *
03/09 — Solana Beach, CA @ Belly Up Tavern *
03/11 — Los Angeles, CA @ Walt Disney Concert Hall ^
03/13 — San Francisco, CA @ Bimbo’s 365 #
03/15 — Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theater #
03/16 — Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theater #
03/18 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
03/19 — Denver, CO @ Gothic Theater
03/21 — Lawrence, KS @ Bottleneck
03/22 — Omaha, NE @ The Waiting Room
03/24 — Chicago, IL @ The Vic Theater
03/25 — St. Louis, MO @ Blueberry Hill Duck Room #
03/26 — Louisville, KY @ Zanzabar #
03/27 — Knoxville, TN @ Big Ears Festival
03/29 — Richmond, VA @ Richmond Music Hall #
03/30 — Washington, DC @ Black Cat #
03/31 — Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer #
04/01 — New York, NY @ Webster Hall
04/02 — Waverly, RI @ The United Theatre
04/03 — Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club
04/18 — Düdingen, CH @ Bad Bonn #
04/19 — Lyon, FR @ Epicerie Moderne #
04/20 — Bordeaux, FR @ Krakatoa #
04/21 — Paris, FR @ Trianon #
04/22 — Rouen, FR @ Le 106 #
04/23 — Luxembourg, LU @ Kulturfabrik #
04/24 — Utrecht, NL @ Tivoli Vredenburg #
04/25 — Rotterdam, NL @ Rotown #
04/26 — Nijmegen, NL @ Doornroosje #
04/28 — Copenhagen, DK @ Loppen #
04/29 — Oslo, NO @ Ingensteds #
04/30 — Stockholm, SE @ Nalen Klubb #
05/02 — Hamburg, DE @ Knust #
05/03 — Berlin, DE @ Silent Green #
05/05 — Bruxelles, BE @ Les Nuits Botanique Festival #
05/06 — Cologne, DE @ Luxor #
05/07 — Genk, BE @ Little Waves Festival #
05/09 — Birmingham, UK @ The Castle & Falcon #
05/10 — Edinburgh, UK @ Summerhall #
05/11 — Glasgow, UK @ Drygate #
05/12 — Manchester, UK @ Gorilla #
05/13 — Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club #
05/14 — Bristol, UK @ Fiddlers #
05/15 — Brighton, UK @ Chalk #
05/16 — London, UK @ Shepherd’s Bush Empire #
05/18 — Belfast, UK @ Empire #
05/19 — Dublin, IE @ Button Factory #

* with Yves Jarvis
^ with Haley Heyndrickx
# with Helena Deland
~ with Cassandra Jenkins

With the Pro Bowl festivities wrapping up in Las Vegas on Sunday — unfortunately not without incident — the complete focus of the NFL world shifts to Los Angeles and the Super Bowl, now just six days away, when the Rams and Bengals will meet.

Oddsmakers place the Rams as 4.5-point favorites entering the week, with a total of 48.5 points, and those numbers have not budged much since early movement pushed the Rams up and the total down a touch. Just about everyone will have predictions for Sunday, and that includes the folks over at EA Sports, who unveiled their official Madden prediction video, featuring Marshawn Lynch playing the role of fortuneteller — and making jokes about running the ball inside the 5.

The video just shows snippets of the action, but EA Sports released the scoring details of how their official simulation got to the Bengals winning 27-24 on a last minute field goal by Evan McPherson.

In the prediction, the Bengals enter halftime down 14-7, following touchdowns by Rams running back Sony Michel and red-hot wide receiver Cooper Kupp, with Ja’Marr Chase putting up the Bengals only touchdown. At the start of the second half, the Bengals lock up on defense with cornerback Eli Apple picking off Matthew Stafford and taking it to the house to tie the game. Joe Burrow takes the lead early in the fourth quarter on a touchdown pass to Tee Higgins, but Los Angeles answers with an Odell Beckham Jr. touchdown to level the game. In the final minutes, Burrow gets his team in field goal range creating another opportunity for Evan McPherson to step up and kick the winning field goal to secure a historic victory for the Bengals franchise.

It certainly tracks for how the Bengals’ playoff run has gone so far, as they’ve been the kings of second half comebacks and have leaned on their rookie kicker to send them through on a couple of occasions already. If you’re of the mind that the Madden prediction is correct, then you like Cincy on the money line (+200) and the Over on Sunday.

Rudy Giuliani and MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell dominated the 2021 Razzies, but 2022 has a new set of winning losers on the way, and the nominations are doozies. For example, The Tender Bar director George Clooney is pushing for Ben Affleck to receive an Oscar nomination when those drop on Tuesday morning, but the annual non-vaunted Golden Raspberry Awards (via their YouTube page and home base) pre-rewarded him with a Worst Supporting Actor nomination his performance in Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel.

In addition, Jared Leto already didn’t have a good year, given that Morbius achieved an unenviable record despite not landing in theaters yet, but as far as the Razzies go, the two-time Joker earned two House Of Gucci nominations, one for Worst Supporting Actor and another for Worst Screen Couple (noted as “Jared Leto & Either His 17-Pound Latex Face, His Geeky Clothes or His Ridiculous Accent”). Another pair of nods went to Space Jam: A New Legacy, which got singled out for both Worst Picture and Worst Actor (for LeBron James).

That’s not all, though. Did anyone even know that Bruce Willis had 8 movies come out in 2021? You probably didn’t watch any of them, but the Razzies took note and created a special category for him called “Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 movie.” Here are the titles: American Siege, Apex, Cosmic Sin, Deadlock, Fortress, Midnight in the Switchgrass (the movie that brought Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly together), Out of Death, and Survive the Game. That’s really something.

The full list of nominations can be viewed here.

(Via The Razzies)

(Spoilers from Netflix’s In From The Cold will be found below.)

Atomic Blonde and The Americans lovers will want to put In From The Cold on their list for a bang-up series full of action scenes and spy intrigue. The show stars Margarita Levieva (The Deuce, Revenge) in the perfect role to make her a household name, over a decade after she danced in Adventureland as every teenage boy’s dream, Lisa P.

It’s rad to finally see Margarita in a role that showcases not only her ability to nail action choreography but one that makes use of her fluent Russian, not to mention a show that looks poised for a second season. Before that happens, though, we need to talk about that wild twist ending that’s a perfect lay up for more Russian spy adventures.

Margarita portrays a single mom named Jenny, whose secret past as Anya Petrova (a Russian operative with a high kill count known as “The Whisper”) comes back to haunt her, big time. She’s pulled back into the life, unwittingly (or so it seems) by a former CIA operative, Chauncey, and she’s forced to go on new missions in order to keep her daughter alive. A ton of wild stuff happens (including her discovery of cameras in her eyes — eek), but the season winds down with Becca safe and Jenny/Anya now apparently in love with Chauncey before she heads outside and sledgehammers concrete to uncover a phone that still somehow has a charge. She dials in and declares, “Agent Anya Petrova. Everything is fine. It worked.”

What the hell, man? So, Anya has apparently still been an active Russian operative this whole time — and only acting like she was reluctant to come “In From The Cold,” as the title indicates — and we don’t know whether Chauncey really has her dossier or if it’s something she simply fabricated and sent to him all by herself. Over the course of this season, Anya ended up killing her own mother (to save Becca), and we saw her young-adult life where she also lived a double life as a college student. So, it’s unclear whether a Season 2 would plan on diving between timelines again, but as far as the twist goes, here’s what creator Adam Glass told Entertainment Weekly:

The only script I kept from [Levieva] was the final script because I didn’t want to change how she was playing Jenny. What I wanted to do by the end was take all the power back, which is she’s been in control the whole time and everything you’ve seen has been one giant act. She knew everything that happened and she put herself in this position. A season 2 would ask why she did this.

Glass also confirmed that he’s planned for future seasons (currently a hopeful total of three), so hopefully, we’ll get more answers in the future.

Netflix’s In From The Cold is currently streaming.