Month: April 2022

As Hollywood’s first man Pete Davidson continues his victory tour of stardom, he now has just landed his own sitcom at Peacock. The streaming service has ordered a full season of the half-hour sitcom, written, starring and executive produced by the Saturday Night Live cast member. NBC royalty Lorne Michaels will executive produce the series, no surprise there.

Bupkis will allegedly be a fictionalized version of Davidson’s life, probably a cross between The King Of Staten Island and 30 Rock, with some Curb Your Enthusiasm sprinkled in there somewhere. Perhaps there will be some stand-up style interludes like Seinfeld. One can dream!

No other cast has been announced at this time, though Davidon’s close friends Dave Sirus and Judah Miller are attached to write. Reportedly there are some A-listers who are itching to get involved, mostly because Davidson is having a moment right now.

Susan Rovner, Chairman, Entertainment Content, NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, told Deadline: “Pete Davidson is one of the most sought-after comedians today with his smart, one-of-a-kind humor and honest point of view. Bupkis will showcase Pete’s funny, surprising and unfiltered brand of comedy audiences have come to love as we continue to bolster our Peacock comedy slate. We can’t wait to dive in with Lorne Michaels, Broadway Video and our partners at Universal Television.”

Hopefully, Davidson’s pal Colin Jost will pop in for a cameo.

There is ample nudity in all three of Robert Eggers’ exquisitely detailed films, The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman, but no full-frontal male nudity. What gives? There was supposed to be a scene with Robert Pattinson’s “actual erect penis” in The Lighthouse, but that would have put the film in NC-17 territory, which was a no-go for box office success. Eggers tried again in The Northman — which features a naked sword fight on an erupting volcano — but he “didn’t get them,” he told Letterboxd with a sigh.

Eggers tried to take a glass-half-full perspective on the lack of dongs:

“It’s probably good that we don’t see any penises there; it might distract from the story and the tension, because human beings are such sad creatures that we would be trying to catch a glimpse the whole time.” That said, he does think full-frontal nudity could have added to an earlier sequence. “In the berserkers’ raid of the Slavic village, I think if some of those berserkers had been entirely naked, that would have been a lot scarier.”

Someone needs to let Eggers make his Nosferatu remake (with or without Harry Styles) and have every male character be naked. I’m worried for his happiness otherwise.

(Via Letterboxd)

Ahead of her upcoming second album, Beatopia, Beabadoobee has released the video for her dreamy, introspective new single, “See You Soon.” In the video, the bedroom-pop singer is seen riding through the countryside as she ponders life while taking in the sights of the trees and animals around her.

On the song, she sings of loving someone who made her lose her way. “I wanted to be everything you see / But I went the wrong direction, you needed some perfection,” she opens on the song’s first verse, before leading into the chorus, “And I’m not sure why but I will see you soon / I guess I have to take you, I’m deteriorating.” Through vocal layering and fading effects, Bea creates a calming, ambient mood.

Bea says in a statement:

“I feel like the idea behind ‘See You Soon’ is that it’s meant to make you feel like you’re tripping on shrooms. Or, I feel like the chorus especially, I want it to sound like a breath of fresh air, like a realization of some sort. I wrote it during a time where I was away a lot and making a lot of mistakes and doing a lot of things to help me figure a lot of stuff out. And I feel like I found the importance of doing that really, it was really therapeutic because it made me appreciate everything around me so much more. Being away and being by myself with my own thoughts, it was kind of like a punch in the face. And I guess it’s just really playing along with the fact that you know, it’s okay to make mistakes, as long as it makes you a stronger person, as long as it makes everything makes sense. And it’s important to be by yourself sometimes.”

Check out “See You Soon” above.

Beatopia is out 7/15 via Dirty Hit. Pre-save it here.

SIFU is one of the most challenging games to release this year. It, largely by design, wants the player to fail so eventually they can move forward better at the game. The problem is that this made the game a little too challenging for some people and completely unplayable for others.

On Tuesday, the creators of SIFU, Sloclap, announced a roadmap for content updates that fans can expect to see from SIFU in the upcoming year. First on the agenda: Finally do what many have been asking since the beginning and adding a difficulty mode to make the game a little more approachable. Maybe now those of us who were unable to get past the early portions of the game can actually make a dent into it this time.

SIFU is a really fun game when everything in it comes together. Those moments where combos flow and enemies fall beneath your feet make the player feel like they’re taking part in an action movie just as the developers of the game wanted. Unfortunately, those moments were few and far between with how challenging and frustrating the game felt. This is a great opportunity for fans of action games to experience SIFU with less headaches and more progress.

Forget windmills—tomatoes are the real killers! Bananas and pineapples, too. That’s according to Donald Trump, the world’s foremost nonsensical expert on the world’s most deadly inanimate objects. As The Daily Beast reports, transcripts from an October 2021 deposition have the former president defendant a comment he made during a February 1, 2016 campaign stop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he told his supporters: “If you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, just knock the crap out of them, would you?”

When asked about his reasoning for encouraging attendees to commit violence, Trump swore that his team had been notified that protestors were planning to infiltrate the event, and “They were going to throw fruit. And you get hit with fruit, it’s—no, it’s very violent stuff. We were on alert for that.”

After a brief discussion confirming that a tomato is indeed a fruit, Trump made it clear that being assaulted with produce was no laughing matter. While he allowed that he was half-joking with his “knock the crap out of them” bit, he still contended that flying tomatoes are “very dangerous stuff… You can get killed with those things.”

As The Daily Beast writes:

Asked whether he was trying to “incentivize people to engage in violence,” the former president responded: “No, I wanted to have people be ready because we were put on alert that they were going to do fruit.”

Trump continued with another tomato tirade: “And some fruit is a lot worse than—tomatoes are bad, by the way. But it’s very dangerous. No, I wanted them to watch. They were on alert. I remember that specific event because everybody was on alert. They were going to hit, they were going to hit hard.”

While Trump couldn’t say whether any tomatoes—cherry, beefsteak, or otherwise—were confiscated that day, he did confirm that, yes, he believes that security should take action if they witness any illicit fruits in the crowd.

“Well, a tomato, a pineapple, a lot of other things they throw. Yeah, if the security saw that, I would say you have to—and it’s not just me, it’s other people in the audience get badly hurt—yeah, I think that they have to be aggressive in stopping that from happening. Because if that happens, you can be killed if that happens.”

The more you know.

(Via The Daily Beast)

In what will likely be the best CGI-live action hybrid since the 2019 classic Detective Pikachu, the lovable chipmunks Chip and Dale are back in their own movie, featuring almost too many cameos from various Disney properties.

In Chip N’ Dale: Rescue Rangers, the iconic rodents have to reunite to solve a crime after being estranged for years. It’s like Who Framed Roger Rabbit but for the 21st century, where Disney now owns everything. Will we get a Baby Yoda cameo? Probably!

The ensemble cast features a slew of comedians Seth Rogen, Keegan-Michael Kay, J.K. Simmons, Will Arnett, Eric Bana, and more as various real, CGI, and hand-drawn characters. As per the official description:

Chip and Dale are living amongst cartoons and humans in modern-day Los Angeles, but their lives are quite different now. It has been decades since their successful television series was canceled, and Chip (John Mulaney) has succumbed to a life of suburban domesticity as an insurance salesman. Dale (Andy Sandberg), meanwhile, has had CGI surgery and works the nostalgia convention circuit, desperate to relive his glory days. When a former castmate mysteriously disappears, Chip and Dale must repair their broken friendship and take on their Rescue Rangers detective personas once again to save their friend’s life.

The movie hit Disney+ on May 20th. No word yet on if it will get a theatrical release, but it absolutely should. Check out the trailer above.

New graduate Jillian Orr sent a strong message to underclassmen coming up behind her at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Orr was there to receive her degree in psychology, and for the first time since being a student at the Y she decided to share her truth while also protesting against the school’s LGBTQ policies. Orr had sewn a rainbow flag into her graduation gown and as she walked across the stage to receive her degree, she opened her gown revealing the flag to the audience and cameras.

A private research university, BYU is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the school restricts LGBTQ+ students from dating or showing signs of affection toward a same sex partner while enrolled. Students risk being disenrolled from the university for violating this policy, which also allows other students to report same sex dating to the school. For Orr, this wasn’t something that directly affected her until about halfway through her time there when she came to realize that she was bisexual.

The psychology student grew up in the Mormon Church and completed an 18-month mission trip in Oregon, but things changed when she was honest with herself about her feelings. Orr told TODAY “I started to realize my actions and beliefs were not lining up and there was a lot of preconditioned shame and guilt around it, but I came to the realization that this is who I was and it was beautiful.”

Login • Instagram

See on Instagram

BYU’s policy on LGBTQ students is written in its honor code, where showing homosexual inclination is deemed as dishonorable. Students who desire to express who they are in a school environment are not doing so to bring any sort of dishonor, because being a part of the LGBTQ+ community isn’t dishonorable. Being able to show affection to your partner while walking to class or frequenting a campus hangout shouldn’t evoke feelings of fear or shame, but policies such as these cause students to hide their true selves giving them no place to feel truly safe. Private universities and schools are able to set their own policies and it’s typically up to the students and their families to decide if their policies align with what they would like to follow, but it makes you stop to wonder about the kids who don’t feel safe enough to come out at home, which can happen for many reasons.

People who grow up in strictly religious households may hold more shame and fear coupled with a lack of support at home and within their friend group around their sexual orientation. This can lead to depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation, but the fear around coming out may keep them attending institutions that are in direct contrast of who they are as a person. While this doesn’t appear to be Orr’s case, her daring to show an LGBT pride flag while crossing the stage was a clear nod to other students letting them know that they can make it through being authentically themselves.

Orr told TODAY, “I hope that they recognize that the sooner they live their life authentically, the sooner they can tap into true happiness,” she said. “The faster you do the scary thing, the sooner you can be free.” Orr said she hopes that students at the school who are hiding their sexual orientation will feel less alone by seeing her bold act.

If you are having thoughts about taking your own life, or know of anyone who is in need of help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (273-8255) or text “HOME” to the Crisis Text Line: 741741.

New York-based guitar favorite Delicate Steve has a new album, After Hours, coming out in July. So far, he’s previewed it with “Street Breeze” and with today’s new one, “Playing In A Band.” The collaborative spirit of the song title carries over into the song’s video, for which Steve dug into his contacts list and recruited a bunch of recognizable indie music figures to make appearances.

Steve himself actually only appears in the clip briefly, for a couple seconds before clips from his guests take over for the rest of the video. The clips show a bunch of folks from the indie music world performing parts of the songs, sometimes in their living rooms, sometimes outside, sometimes out on a walk. Contributing to the visual are artists like Kevin Morby, Waxahatchee, Nels Cline of Wilco, Craig Finn of the Hold Steady, Meg Duffy of Hand Habits, Damon McMahon (aka Amen Dunes), and plenty of others.

Steve previously said of his upcoming album, “I wanted people to find comfort in the music, to find a home in it, because that’s what it did for me. It helped me finally find a home in the sound of the electric guitar.”

Watch the “Playing In A Band” video above.

After Hours is out 7/8 via Anti-. Pre-order it here.

There’s still absolutely no clarity about exactly why an upcoming “Tucker Carlson Original” documentary (End Of Man) previewed itself with a testicle-tanning clip. I mean, what the heck do you do with that information? Well, one could do what that information beckons, which is to laugh at the absurdity of it all, and that’s what The View co-hosts belatedly did while the world continues to process the madness.

Actually, things got pretty crazy, and you know what? That’s alright. Sometimes you just need to let loose and have some good belly laughs, especially in today’s grim world. It’s amazing that coffee or tea or water never blew across the table on The View after Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin lamented that serious discussions had been shelved because of Tucker Carlson’s “tanning of his testicles.”

That led to hilarity with Ana Navarro offering, “Now we know why Tucker doesn’t like Latinos and African Americans.”

To which Hostin suggested, “Little envy.” And Navarro added, “Brown envy.”

Behar then finished up with this: “We missed that story last week, but leave it to us to resuscitate it.”

The video’s surely going to come to the attention of Tucker. Whether he’ll comment on it is a whole other issue. The Fox News host might not want to be outnumbered, you know? Then again, no fight is too small for him, if he’s not too overly excited about Elon Musk “unshackl[ing]” Twitter or something.

Boston-based trio Pet Fox cite both Weezer and Autolux as influences for their new record A Face In Your Life, which might be all you need to hear to be compelled to listen. It helps that the band is made up of members of Ovlov and Grass Is Green, plus a former player from Palehound; the three of them together are predictably very powerful.

The new lead single for this just-announced LP proves this. “Checked Out” is propelled forward with playful rhythms, engaging vocals, and addictive melodies. Singer Theo Hartlett told Flood Magazine about the song: “The idea of ‘checked off, checked out’ is that someone can quite literally have a checklist that once fulfilled, they can disregard and ‘check out’ so to speak. There’s so many people that do not give a damn about you until they realize that you hold some sort of worth that is valuable or cool to them.”

The production is rich and crystal clear with the help of Seth Engel, who’s worked with acts like Ratboys and Retirement Party.

Listen to “Checked Out” above, and check out the album artwork and tracklist below.

1. “Settle Even”
2. “Only Warning”
3. “A Face In Your Life”
4. “Checked Out”
5. “Hesitate”
6. “Thanksgiving”
7. “It Won’t Last”
8. “Undeserving You”
9. “Stubborn”
10. “Slows Me Down”

A Face In Your Life is out 6/17 via Exploding In Sound Records. Pre-order it here.