Month: July 2022

Comedian and Academy Award-winning actress Mo’Nique very famously called out Netflix a few years ago after she was offered significantly less money than her peers, Amy Schumer and Chris Rock, for a stand-up special. The comedian asked her fans to boycott the streamer after she was only offered $500K for a special, while Schumer and Rock were offered $11 million and $20 million, respectively. Obviously, she was not pleased.

Now, it seems like the drama has died down between Mo’Nique and Netflix, as she just landed a new special! Last month, the comedian and the streamer settled for an undisclosed amount. Today, Mo’Nique announced that she has a new special in the works at Netflix.

In addition to her untitled special, Mo’Nique will also reunite with Precious director Lee Daniels for the Netflix film The Deliverance alongside Omar Epps, Glenn Close, and Stranger Things’ Caleb McLaughlin. Daniels and Mo’Noqie have had a long (and somewhat tumultuous) working relationship. Inspired by a true story, The Deliverance follows a mother who discovers her children and her home are being haunted by a demonic presence. Spooky!

Mo’Nique announced the projects with a light-hearted video that seemingly pokes fun at her past beef with Netflix. “Can y’all believe this sh*t? I done came on home to Netflix.” That she did!

We don’t often meet the love of our life in fifth grade. But for Simon Jenkins and Peyton Wynn, romantic destiny struck early.

At the ripe old age of 11 years old, Simon and Peyton met at Johnson Elementary School in Pinson, Alabama, where they sat together in Patti Hathorn’s class. Their relationship continued to grow with each passing year, lasting even after graduation. Simon and Peyton both recently turned 21, and still, they’re each other’s special someone.

A photo of Peyton and Simon, already in love.
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Fitting, then, that 10 years later, Simon and Peyton would celebrate their enduring love by getting engaged where it all began.

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WVTM 13 anchor Rick Karle, who posted the story to his Facebook page, shared that Simon’s mother Traci, “an event planner with a flair for the artistic,” suggested the nostalgic setting for his proposal. Getting Simon’s approval, she quickly laid out handcrafted signs, flowers and candles, making everything look extra special for the sweet moment.

The next part of the surprise would be entirely up to Simon. He told WVTM that the ruse had been getting a call from Traci as the couple made their way to a dinner date in celebration of their 10-year anniversary. She had “forgotten something at her PTA meeting at Johnson Elementary School,” and pleaded for them to go retrieve it. Nice one, mom.

Simon and Peyton made their way to the elementary school and found themselves in the lavish display. “You should have seen Peyton’s face when she walked into that classroom,” Simon told WVTM.

Judging by the photos alone, the proposal seemed to be something out of a Hallmark movie.

For Peyton, it was the surprise of a lifetime. “I finally got to say yes to the love of my life. It was like something out of a dream,” the bride-to-be told People.

To make the moment that much sweeter, their fifth grade teacher was also there. How’s that for a satisfying full circle moment?

Patti Hathorn (now Patti Armstrong Hagwood) made her own endearing Facebook post, which read:

“For any teacher that is asked or wonders ‘Why we do what we do’. My response is this: We get to watch more than just academic growth in our classrooms. We watch laughter. We watch friendships blossom and grow. We watch as these relationships continue to develop, and often we get to witness them last a lifetime. And, in some instances, we are privileged to be a part of this continuance…It was such an honor to be asked to be present as Simon Jenkins proposed to his 5th grade love. It is another moment that reminds me of my ‘why’ as I continue to love ‘my’ children each year.”

Hagwood continues to teach and will welcome another class in the fall. Coincidentally, that’s when Peyton and Simon will officially tie the knot, according to People.

Congratulations to the happy couple who gave us all a wholesome love story to smile about today. I guess the adage is true: when you know, you know.

Avengers: Endgame is the longest movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, clocking in at three hours and two minutes. That’s seven minutes longer than The Godfather (but 20 minutes shorter than The Godfather Part II!). To be fair, at least 20 minutes of that 182 minute runtime is credits… which you are legally obligated to sit through in case there’s a post-credits scene.

Endgame is undeniably long, it could have been even longer.

Directors Anthony and Joe Russo recently took part in Wired‘s “Web’s Most Searched Questions” series, where they were asked if they were releasing a six-hour cut of Endgame. “I think the longest [cut] we ever had was like 3 hours and 40 minutes, [but] I think those 40 minutes deserve to be on the editing floor,” Joe said. The only way it could have been six hours is “if we did a supercut of Infinity War and Endgame,” Anthony added. “You have the director’s cut. That’s it. There’s nothing else, sorry,” Joe confirmed.

I think I speak for everyone’s butts when I say: thank you for not doing that.

The Russos’ new movie, The Gray Man, hits Netflix on July 22. It’s playing in limited theaters now, but only [gigantic eye roll] “elitists” won’t wait until it’s on streaming.

(Via Wired)

The Chainsmokers have performed pretty much everywhere over their ten years as a duo, but soon (relatively, at least), Drew Taggart and Alex Pall will go where no other artist has gone before: In 2024, space tourism company World View is sticking the pair in a pressurized capsule tethered to a stratospheric balloon about 20 miles above Earth.

Ryan Hartman, World View CEO, tells the Associated Press that this will make The Chainsmokers the first musical artists to perform at the edge of space. (Presumably, recent thematically appropriate single “High” will be on the setlist.)

The duo said in a statement, “We have always dreamed of going to space and are stoked to collaborate with World View to have this adventure and experience. We know the views of both Earth and space are going to be incredible and inspiring and we hope to leverage this flight for creativity on future projects.”

While it’s not easy to point out exactly where Earth’s atmosphere ends and space begins, one widely acknowledged definition is the Kármán line, which is 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) above Earth’s mean sea level. The line is above the troposphere (where we live), stratosphere, and mesosphere, located near the bottom of the thermosphere. So, at 20 miles up, the duo will be 30-ish percent of the way to space from the Earth’s surface.

It will certainly look like most people’s idea of space up there, though: Here’s the view from 20 miles up in the sky.

With the release of the first official trailer for Clerks III, writer/director Kevin Smith made it clear that he’s still as meta as ever after all of these years. In the new film, Randall (Jeff Anderson) suffers a heart attack, which gives him the push he needs to finally make his own movie after years complaining about everyone’s else. Unsurprisingly, the movie he sets out to make is awfully similar to the original Clerks that put Smith on the map when it was famously scooped up at Sundance by, um, some guy. Let’s go with that.

However, the real life parallels don’t stop there. As fans of Smith know, he suffered a massive heart attack in 2018, and his wife and daughter were not exactly thrilled to relive that experience. Via Entertainment Weekly:

“My wife and kid don’t enjoy the movie the way I do, at least the first half hour,” says the director. “My wife’s like, ‘Look, what you think is funny now was the worst moment of our f—ing lives.’ And I was like, ‘Well, don’t say that to the critics, for Christ’s sakes! It’s too easy a lay-up for them!’”

As Smith notes, mining his personal life and previous films is his whole schtick, so of course, he’s going to use his health scare for the perpetually self-referential movie universe. “It’s incredibly meta,” Smith said. “The snake really eats its own tail, swallows itself, and s—s itself out, and that is Clerks III. You can put that on the poster!”

Clerks III clocks into theaters on September 13, 2022.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

Nicki Minaj’s verse on Kanye West’s 2010 My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy hit “Monster” has become an iconic moment in hip-hop history, and a lot has been said about it in the years since. Amber Rose previously said in 2018 that Ye nearly cut Minaj’s contributions from the song, and Minaj also has her own version of how she almost didn’t make it onto the track. Now, Rose has spoken more about it, claiming that after Minaj recorded her verse, West said something along the lines of, “How the f*ck did you bring in a b*tch that killed me on my own song?”

Speaking about her upcoming album in a new interview on Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay’s Higher Learning podcast, Rose said, “Just know that this was not an overnight thing. I’ve been quiet, on purpose. I sat in the studio day and night. I have a good ear. I’ve A&R’d a bunch of amazing projects.”

That latter point piqued Lathan’s interest, so he asked for examples. Rose replied, “All my boyfriends, all of ’em.” Lathan asked, “You A&R’d for Ye?” Rose responded, “Absolutely! I put Nicki on ‘Monster.’ I put Nicki on ‘Monster.’ I put Nicki on ‘Monster,’ he didn’t know who Nicki was back then. I had Nicki pull up to the studio and I put her on ‘Monster.’

Rose continued, “She was still coming up, and I saw her in the studio and I said, ‘Oh my god, this b*tch is f*cking talented as hell.’ And then I went back to Kanye and I was like, ‘You need to get this girl Nicki on ‘Monster.’ And he was like, ‘Who? What? No. I’m not…” And I said, ‘Just let her pull up, what’s it going to hurt?’ […] She heard the song and then she came back the next day with the verse.”

Lathan then pointed out that West nearly didn’t include the verse on the song, which Rose said was “because it was too good.” She continued, “He told me that the same day. He’s like, ‘How the f*ck did you bring in a b*tch that killed me on my own song?’”

Check out the full interview above, with the West conversation starting at 54:12 into the video.

Weeks after joining the 2022 XXL Freshman Class, Florida rapper Nardo Wick has announced the release date for the follow-up to his breakthrough project, Who Is Nardo Wick? The sequel, Who Is Nardo Wick? 2, is due on Friday, July 22, according to Nardo’s Instagram.

The announcement came as something of a surprise, given Nardo has only released two new tracks since his debut. In April, he dropped the video for “Krazy Krazy,” following up in June with “Riot.” However, he didn’t exactly give any indication that either track was part of a new compilation, only hinting that Who Is Nardo Wick? 2 was in the works earlier this year. Despite their relative lack of promotion, both songs performed well enough — “Krazy Krazy” has crossed the 3 million views threshold on YouTube, while its successor is rapidly approaching that benchmark itself.

As for features and the like, Nardo is remaining pretty tight-lipped. Fans can probably look forward to high-profile names, though; his debut featured appearances from the likes of Future and Lil Baby on “Me Or Sum,” and the remix of his breakthrough single “Who Want Smoke??” featured 21 Savage, G Herbo, and Lil Durk, despite Nardo being relatively unknown when the songs dropped. All we have for now is the album cover, which Nardo shared on Instagram and features a remake of the first album’s cover photo with a different pose in front of the same building. You can check that out below and stay tuned for more info.

Julia Jacklin is gearing up to release one of our most anticipated indie albums of the summer in Pre Pleasure. Out on August 26th, it’s the Aussie singer-songwriter’s follow-up to the wildly successful Crushing. Early singles like “I Was Neon” and “Lydia Wears A Cross” show Jacklin venturing into electronic drums as much as the organic sound that she’s used in her already prolific career. Now on “Love, try Not To Let Go,” Jacklin sinks into a ’70s folk-style groove.

Her soft vocals are a salve as she ranges up gracefully with the drums picking up in the song’s rising tension. But it’s the moments where she settles into a grassy piano and lead guitar riff that sees her at her finest.

“‘Love, Try Not To Let Go’ was written one night during the recording period in my apartment in Montreal,” Jacklin said in a statement. “It’s the first song I’ve ever written fully on piano. It’s the first time I’ve played piano on a record. I thought someone better would redo the take but we kept it so now I’m officially a pianist. We recorded it the next day. I made everyone watch the running scene from Rocky beforehand.”

Watch the video for “Love, Try Not To Let Go” above.

Pre Pleasure is out 8/26 via Polyvinyl Record Co. Pre-order it here.

One of the best episodes of Better Call Saul is also one of the bleakest.

In “Fun and Games,” in which there were no fun or games to be found, Gus refuses to allow himself a moment of happiness; Mike is trapped behind metaphorical bars; and Kim quits being a lawyer. Oh yeah, and she breaks up with Jimmy, who goes full Saul Goodman following a shocking time jump. One of the few laughs during the episode (not a criticism, merely a fact) comes from a dead man’s photographs.

As noted by Twitter user @Mindswideasleep, Howard Hamlin’s memorial at the soon-to-be former Hamlin, Hamlin, & McGill office is decorated with pictures from actor Patrick Fabian’s Instagram. “They just used his Instagram photos I’m dying,” she tweeted.

Here he is diving in Mexico:

And another from the Malibu Triathlon:

The set decorator really outdid themselves: that photo is from 2015, although considering Better Call Saul season six takes place during 2004, Howard’s photos mean he basically invented the selfie. He was a great lawyer, and a trendsetter.

Following the Saul midseason finale, in which he’s shot and killed by Lalo, Fabian told Vulture, “I knew I was going to bow out early, that was already told to me before the season. I didn’t know how, I didn’t know specifics, and like all the seasons, it’s come to me script by script by script. So I didn’t know what was going on until 607 was dropped.” But when he read the script, he thought, “Oh, that’s final. That’s like a shot in the dark as I’m driving away. That’s that.” I mean, he’s kind of in a bunch of Breaking Bad episodes?

Derek Jeter was a model of consistency and stoicism during his playing days, someone who almost perfectly managed the intense media scrutiny that comes with playing in New York, robbing distractions of air before they could takeover the narrative and interrupt his and his team’s focus.

In retirement, Jeter has continued to draw eyes and clicks, because he’s Derek Jeter, a Hall of Fame inductee, husband, father, founder of Player’s Tribune, and former part owner and front person for the Miami Marlins. It’s a life, in totality, that fascinates, partly because Jeter has been so good at limiting his exposure to prying eyes. We want what we can’t have, which in this case means access.

But in an era where everything and everyone seemingly gets a 30 For 30 or a larger docuseries, it should have seemed inevitable that something like ESPN’s The Captain was coming. The question is, with Player’s Tribune producing the seven-part docuseries that debuted after last night’s Home Run Derby (and which you can stream on ESPN+), is this just more brand management?

Enter Randy Wilkins, the director of the project and a lifelong Yankees fan. Wilkins is on the hook to make sure that the series doesn’t feel like, in his words, “a Yankeeography.” And after watching the first five, I can state that it doesn’t, with executive producer Spike Lee’s handpicked director for the project probing Jeter’s life while also running back some of his many classic moments of grit, determination, and backpage attention-getting.

Jeter’s isolating ways, the allure of NYC nightlife, his fierce belief in loyalty, and the erosion of his friendship with Alex Rodriguez all get ample time in the spotlight. But it’s the fifth episode — which deals with race, community action, and complex calculations on whether speaking out in a world where Colin Kaepernick lost everything for doing exactly that — which presents a powerful and thought-provoking bit of commentary on the cross-section of sports and culture.

We caught up with Wilkins about avoiding his fan biases, Jeter’s level of control in terms of the content of the docuseries, whether baseball players should speak out more, and Jeter’s journey.

You grew up a Derek Jeter fan. Were there any moments where you found it hard to delve into certain areas or where you felt like you had to forcibly separate the fan from you as a filmmaker?

Oh, no. I willingly separated that before we even got into it. My primary responsibility is to tell a story that’s accessible to as many people as possible. So my fandom can’t really factor into it. I can’t really have a bias going into telling this story. So I think being a fan helped me because I knew a lot about Derek and Derek’s career. And I think that informed the story structure and what was important in terms of the baseball side of things.

But in terms of telling the story, my primary responsibility is to engage as many people as possible and not just, like, satisfy Yankees fans or present a biased story where it’s clear that this is just a fanboy journey for seven hours. So I was very conscious of making sure that bias and that fandom was put to the side and that we presented Derek in a way that made him accessible to everybody.

Players Tribune is a producer on this. So obviously Derek was involved in this process not just as a subject. What was the level of that involvement? The level of his guidance or lack of guidance with regard to what was being said and what was not being said? Did he have any kind of editorial control over it?

He did, but I mean, it was a collaboration, there was never a mandate. There was never something that was dictated to me to include or remove. We worked side by side. I know a lot of people will think, “he’s a prominent athlete, he has all control over it,” but that wasn’t the case. We worked side by side and if there were conversations that needed to be had, we had those conversations and arrived at a consensus that we were both happy with. So I wasn’t in a position where I had to make creative decisions because I was told to make that creative decision.

I think Derek, to his credit, was very open to being criticized in the project and to be deconstructed in a way that I don’t think really has happened to him publicly before.

Any specific takeaways from this experience where you were like, “Wow, I didn’t realize that that had happened?”

I think how important trust and loyalty are to Derek, and how that really is his moral compass when he deals with people off the field, but even in how he interacts with his teammates. And I think it has a lot to do with his leadership style. I think it has a lot to do with who he embraced in the clubhouse and who he might not have totally embraced in the clubhouse. I think that trust and loyalty are two very real tenets of how he views the world. And I knew about it, and you hear stories that Derek will cut you off, and you hear some kind of hint towards that, but the depth in which he reveals that in multiple ways, both on the field and off the field, was something that I wasn’t really prepared for. It feels like it really drives a lot of how Derek interacts with the world.

Yeah, that was really interesting. What was the quote? “Loyalty one way is stupidity?”

Yeah, when he said that, I was like, “Whoa.”

Him specifically talking about how he sort of looks at every interaction as, “What do you want from me?” I think that was really telling and really interesting. I’m curious what you thought about that.

It goes back to that surprise of how much trust and loyalty really matter to him. And I think that it’s revealing in the sense that, you’re guarded with the media for obvious reasons, but even on a personal level, you’re incredibly guarded, and it feels like you’re forced to be that way. And it’s hard for me to really understand what it’s like to live day to day like that. And I think Derek admits that it’s, in some ways, a character flaw. I think it’s something that he recognizes that might not be the best thing for him.

So I appreciated that candor. But I try to put myself in his shoes as well and being around him now that we’re doing press and we’ve had some things and I’ve been in the public with him, I kind of get it. People always want something from him, whether it’s something small or something big. So I understand being on guard the entire time because you don’t know who you’re coming across.

You wonder if him waiting to have a family until after his career is part of it, too, if he just completely shut off himself from that level of vulnerability that’s obviously required to be in a relationship with somebody, before that point [when he stops playing]. Speculation, of course.

Actually, it’s perceptive and true. I mean, we talk about it in the sixth episode. He always wanted a family, but I think part of it too is that he could be vulnerable with people that he loved and had immediate access to them. You know what I mean? So he could relax and drop his shoulders a little bit and be around people that he trusts and that he cares for, and is protected from all of those responsibilities and the things that come along with celebrity.

So he wanted to wait to have a family because for him, baseball was number one. His career was number one, and he wasn’t going to negotiate that. So I think having a family afterwards allowed him to put all of his energy and focus on raising a family, being a husband, being a dad. And I think part of that too is, it protects him from some of the public demands that he had for so long.

What’s the decision like when you have that “colorless” quote from Wallace Matthews [wherein the longtime sportswriter also said Jeter did not identify racially]? Like, do you instantly know, okay, we’re going back to Derek with this? Like, how does that kind of break down?

We were going to ask him, so we wanted to prepare Derek for it so he wasn’t caught off guard. You know, it was just like a matter of respect so that it didn’t blindside him. Because he obviously didn’t know that this was said prior to like another interview. So we sent it to him. We let him know that we were going to use it, that this was going to be a part of it because it’s such an inflammatory statement that we wanted to put it in there, but we wanted to give him an opportunity to speak his truth, and his family as well.

Did you show Wallace Matthews Derek’s response as well?

Oh no, there wasn’t a response. We gave him a chance to kind of like pull it back and he just kept going.

The NBA made a statement about Dobbs with the WNBA, LeBron and Kyrie spoke out, Joe Burrow from the Bengals. Baseball’s been mostly silent. I know, in the doc, Derek mentioned the toll that athletes can endure if they speak out [on social issues] — Colin Kaepernick being a perfect example of someone who was vocal on a social cause and then got run out of the league, as Derek mentioned. What’s your stance, personally, on if baseball players should be saying more on these social issues?

I think baseball players absolutely should be speaking out more about this. I think that baseball romanticizes tradition and history, but I think that there is an over-reliance on that history and it ignores the present, and I think it ignores the responsibility of the platform that they have. And I think in many cases, Major League Baseball and some of the players hide behind that tradition, and I think they hide behind some of the practices that have been passed down from generations of players to generations of players. And I think that they use that as an easy out, not to say something that requires some courage.

And I think that there need to be more players that speak out and break from those norms that exist within Major League Baseball, and I think it’s absolutely necessary to take place. I think that there needs to be a change in Major League Baseball on a lot of levels, both on the field and off the field, and I think culturally, there needs to be a lot of work done. So I think part of that is breaking that cycle of hiding behind tradition, and just jumping in and talking about things that need to be talked about.

‘The Captain’ is a seven-part series that will stream on ESPN+