Month: August 2022

Rina Sawayama has dropped the visual for “Hold The Girl,” the title track of her upcoming sophomore album. In the video, directed by Ali Kurr, Sawayama she is seen in an old house, lamenting her personal pain, before climbing to a roof and jumping off. She lands safely in a bed, and is later joined by a crew, dancing in the house, before making a grand escape.

The song itself is a letter to a younger version of Sawayama, reminding her to give herself grace and care, as she grows and continues to make mistakes. “Hold The Girl” is one of the album’s many songs she wrote over the past year-and-a-half, dealing with the loneliness and heartache of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“‘Hold The Girl’ was the first song I wrote for the record at the end of 2020 — I had gone to therapy and had a revelation, so I decided to write this song… that was the start of it. I was crying before going into the studio to write about it,” said Sawayama in a statement accompanying the release of the single.

Check out the video for “Hold The Girl” above.

Hold The Girl is out 9/16 via Dirty Hit. Pre-save it here.

Earlier this week, it was reported that Atlanta’s Music Midtown Festival, which was scheduled for September 17-18 and headlined by Fall Out Boy, Future, Jack White, and My Chemical Romance, was canceled due to a conflict between organizers’ safety standards and Georgia’s Safe Carry Protection Act. Basically, because the state law allows citizens to carry firearms on public land and the festival’s venue, Piedmont Park, is a state park, organizers were not able to ban guns on festival grounds. Clearly, this was a pretty untenable situation, and rather than break the law, the organizers canceled the event.

This move was guaranteed to disappoint and anger plenty of Atlanta residents and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has seized the opportunity to reproach her incumbent opponent Brian Kemp for the results of his “shameful” policies. In a statement, she said:

Brian Kemp’s dangerous and extreme gun agenda endangers the lives of Georgians, and the cancellation of Music Midtown is proof that his reckless policies endanger Georgia’s economy as well. It’s shameful, but not surprising, that the governor cares more about protecting dangerous people carrying guns in public than saving jobs and businesses in Georgia. In dire economic times for so many Georgians, this cancellation will cost Georgia’s economy a proven $50 million. This means that small businesses and workers who rely on events like Music Midtown and their tremendous economic impact have now lost incomes that help put food on the table and a roof over their heads.

The third-year breakout: it happens every NBA season.

Last year, Ja Morant made an All-NBA leap and earned Most Improved Player. Darius Garland became an All-Star. Tyler Herro won Sixth Man of the Year. Two years ago, Deandre Ayton and Michael Porter Jr. enjoyed sizable steps forward. In 2019-20, Jayson Tatum and Bam Adebayo emerged as bona fide stars.

There will assuredly be more folks added to this lengthy history by the time next April rolls around. Among those candidates is Chicago Bulls swingman Patrick Williams, the fourth overall pick in 2020 who owns just 93 career games to his name and showcases eye-popping sequences like these.

Playing for a retooled Bulls team that notched its first playoff appearance since 2016-17, Williams was sidelined for nearly five months last season with a left wrist injury. The 6’7 forward missed out on critical experience to assimilate himself to a new cast of teammates, ones who accentuated a winning environment after Chicago notably upgraded its roster from Williams’ rookie season.

Now, the 20-year-old is healthy and entering a stable situation in his third year following two seasons of constantly evolving rosters. The degree to which the Bulls factor prominently into the upper echelon of a crowded Eastern Conference is linked, in some capacity, to Williams’ development.

Their offensive centerpieces, DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine, and Nikola Vucevic, are all squarely in their prime or have potentially bid adieu to it already (Vucevic scoring resurgence, please). Their defensive anchors are 28-year-old Alex Caruso and 24-year-old Lonzo Ball. Both have historically struggled with injuries and Ball’s status for the upcoming season, after missing 42 games with a knee issue last year, sadly remains murky.

By virtue of the Vucevic deal, the Orlando Magic own Chicago’s 2023 first-round pick. In acquiring DeRozan via sign-and-trade, it also sent a future first-rounder to the San Antonio Spurs. Point being: This is a good team, albeit one lacking many future assets to enhance a roster founded on players in their prime and/or ones saddled with injury concerns. Williams, along with 22-year-old Ayo Dosunmu, are currently the lone rotation players where substantial steps are presumably baked into their imminent development.

Dosunmu impressed mightily last season, especially for a second-rounder, en route to an All-Rookie nod. Yet he will likely play a reserve role, while Williams should start at the 4 and has hinted at much of the intrigue that rendered him a top-five selection fewer than two years ago.

Prior to the draft, the elevator pitch for Williams’ allure was a 3-and-D big who offered weak-side rim protection and could blossom into a supplementary creation role amid the proper setting. Through 93 career games, he’s continued to display the inklings of that skill package and optimism should rein abundant among his proponents.

He’s drilled 41.3 percent of his 167 regular-season triples and is particularly proficient on spot-up reps, having buried 41.9 percent of his 148 catch-and-shoot looks. The issue, though, is his approach as a long-range shooter belies his small-sample merits. He’s often hesitant on the catch, bypassing quality attempts and surrendering the advantages created by DeRozan, LaVine, Vucevic, and co.

Chicago ranked fourth in three-point percentage last season (36.9 percent), but just 30th in rate (.332). Williams seems like a perfect encapsulation of this dichotomy. He’s leaving opportunities on the table in an offense spearheaded by dudes who can reliably fashion those opportunities for him. Through two seasons, according to NBA.com, he’s logged 167 pull-up twos and 148 catch-and-shoot threes. That is not an ideal relationship. At the very least, you’d hope they’re flipped. Assuming more confidence in his ability to hit triples should be a priority moving forward.

Williams’ three-point rate across five playoff games vaulted from .265 to .447, so the hope is he can maintain that sort of volume. Optimally blending his dribble-drive game with shooting off the catch will elevate his offensive impact to enticing levels as a connective ancillary option. He’s showcased a rather intriguing slashing arsenal, finding teammates as a driver, concisely rising for pull-ups, or leveraging his vertical pop to score at the rim.

With his intersection of size, strength, midrange touch, cutting savvy, and live dribble passing chops, he’s quite the threatening player reading tilted defenses, especially if he grows more assertive. Yet shrewd opponents will anticipate the drive or pull-up and short-circuit their closeouts to contain him.

Williams being less premeditated or timid in these situations could help raise his knack for maintaining or extending advantages. When the opposition does grant his jumper respect, he can puncture them in a variety of manners and Chicago’s offensive pillars know how to generate openings for him.

Although the Bulls often deployed him as a ball-screener last season, it felt like he rarely was afforded touches in those scenarios. I’d like to see his pick-and-roll partners look to feed him on short-roll chances more often because he really can be an excellent weapon working downhill from an advantage.

Among absences, lackluster off-ball scoring (save for LaVine and Ball’s half-season), and middling floor-spacing around the core, Chicago’s unit underwhelmed to a 13th-ranked offensive rating in 2021-22. Williams is the sort of player who, if he fine-tunes some important habits, can be a malleable release valve to help maximize talented offensive personnel.

He moves well off the ball, both on relocations around the arc and cutting into vacant space. He’s a good spot-up shooter who sports multifaceted utility putting the ball on the deck. Heightened aggression, flexibility of approach, and willingness to fire off the catch — assuming he continues to be an excellent spot-up shooter — would morph him into a highly valuable and dynamic background player in Chicago’s offense. These are not easy, overnight alterations, but they are worthwhile ones that may give his squad a chance to scale the Eastern Conference ranks.

The bedrock of the Bulls’ defense is Caruso and Ball, likely the NBA’s chief defensive backcourt duo. Once one (and eventually both) was relegated to the bench for an elongated period, their defense cratered. Fueled by a vigorous, turnover-heavy style, they load the gaps and aim to secure takeaways. As such, that exposes them to risk-taking and breakdowns; the hope is the backline will reliably cover in those instances.

Vucevic, while he touts some defensive strengths (rebounding, lively hands), is not a rim protector or paint enforcer. Williams, equipped with suction cup hands, vertical bounce, awareness and a 7-foot wingspan, is an adept weak-side helper on the interior. Last season, on shots within six feet of the hoop, he held opponents 2.3 percent below their average as the primary defender. A season earlier, that mark stood at 3.2 percent. Both numbers are good for any non-center, let alone someone yet to legally purchase a drink and fresh off their initial two NBA seasons.

From my vantage point, the most pronounced and encouraging aspect of his NBA maturation thus far are the strides he’s cataloged athletically. Pre-draft, he was billed as a pretty stiff athlete who failed to move fluidly laterally. Defending in space — i.e. closeouts or on the perimeter — were arduous tasks at Florida State.

Since then, Williams’ flexibility has improved substantially, which manifests in his screen navigation, on-ball defense, and his drives (on the second video compilation included above, note how he slithers around some defenders to score). Controlling his own momentum after shifting weight one direction is still a concern. He’s prone to ceding driving lanes if a fake or jab sends him a certain way. Guards and speedy initiators are his nemesis.

But he can actually be an irritant against wing or strength-based creators and his movement skills are vastly better than from his collegiate tenure. He’s much more flexible and comfortable in space, even if further refinement is required. Whether he’s approaching the upper limit of his physical development in this regard is not my expertise, yet his headway should be encouraging.

Williams actualizing the frequent previews of a vital skill-set for Chicago this upcoming season can help inform its ceiling. His offense is fascinating, yet inconsistent. His defense is promising, yet not fully formed. The gulf between each of those terms is not impossible to bridge.

The carryover from last year’s rotation should be considerable. Cohesion and structure are accomplices in every young player’s development. Williams has rarely enjoyed that luxury in the NBA. A season to test out, discern, and study the role asked of him is welcomed experience he could parlay into a third year leap.

There are an assortment of non-stars who can swing the fate of teams out East. Williams, more than three weeks shy of his 21st birthday, is among them, fair or not at this stage of his brief NBA stay. Something tells me his age-21 season is gonna be a good one regardless. If or when it is, the Bulls’ fortunes may follow suit.

There does seem to be an inherent problem with any film series that starts out clean and simple, then decides to get into its own lore. This isn’t to say lore, on its own, is bad. Lord of the Rings is pretty much all lore. It sells itself on lore. But it’s when movies that are clean and simple start diving into its own origins, which take us further and further away from what made the first movie successful. Alien is a perfect horror movie. I never really needed to know how the Xenomorph was genetically engineered by an android. Even the first Star Wars is, in retrospect, a surprisingly simple movie that never really stops to explain much of anything. And now we get a lot of explanation drawn out over many weeks.

Rewatching the first Predator, directed by John McTiernan, it’s kind of funny we even get that opening shot of the Predator in space coming to visit Earth. That’s about all the explanation we ever get about this guy: he is not of the world. And there it is, coming to Earth for a hunt, probably with the same excitement as your Midwestern family member, who likes to wear camouflage in his spare time, headed out to the woods for a weekend. From that moment on, it’s just about the gruesome Predator and the people it is hunting, which eventually ends with Dutch, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, barely escaping after the Predator blows itself up with a self-destruct feature.

At the end of Predator 2 (which is almost a good movie), after Danny Glover’s Mike Harrigan defeats the Predator on the Predator’s own spaceship (not the same Predator from the first film), he’s surrounded by numerous other Predators. One of the Predators, with no explanation, hands Mike a pistol from 1715 and walks off. On this ship, we can also see a Xenomorph skull from Alien. Now, the more interesting part of all of this was the pistol. The Xenomorph was kind of put in there as just a joke by the special effects team that also worked on Aliens. But the future of Predator would now be tied to fighting Xenomorphs and diving into its own, not very interesting, lore. While the pistol aspect was just ignored … until now.

Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey (which premieres on Hulu this Friday and won’t be in theaters basically for contractual reasons) takes the concept of the pistol, takes us back to 1719, and makes a down and dirty Predator movie that rivals the first movie as a simple film about a Predator on a hunt. At one point we see the Predator fight a bear. The bear holds its own, for awhile.

The story focuses on Naru (Amber Midthunder) a Comanche warrior – who, for what she lacks in strength, she makes up for with her cunning hunting tactics – is unrelentingly picked on by other members of her tribe for wanting to be a warrior when they think she should stay back with the rest of the tribe while the men hunt. We are also introduced to a group of fur traders (yes, this is where the pistol comes in) who do not get along with the Comanche and vice versa. The Predator, for his part, doesn’t seem to care too much about the social implications of either group and view all of them the same way: his prey.

It’s not really too much of a surprise that this movie will come down to a battle between Naru and the Predator. What is surprising is the techniques Naru uses. I mean, look, if Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t beat the Predator with strength alone, Naru will also have to come up with another idea. And the weaknesses we’ve learned about the Predator from the past films all come into play here as Naru starts to analyze her enemy and figure out how to defeat it.

Another surprise here is how gory Prey turns out to be. There’s a reason this is going to Hulu and not Disney+. Yeah, sure, I was a little worried Disney would want the violence dialed down a notch or two. But this is a very violent movie. If Disney did hope the gore would be dialed back, the Predator did not listen. But to be fair, that’s kind of the Predator’s thing, to ignore requests like, “mind dialing it back a bit?”

Let’s hope Prey starts a new wave of really great, back-to-basics Predator movies. I do hope they wind up back in theaters. I got to see this in a theater and it played really well. And I do hope they remain small in scope and story like the original Predator and Prey (and, fine, some of Predator 2). I don’t want to know anything more about the Predator. I know enough. I know, in its free time, it wants to kill people. Great. Set it loose and start the fun.

‘Prey’ will stream via Hulu on August 5th. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Rudy Giualiani is not having an easy go of things right now. On top of still dealing with the $1.3 billion lawsuit filed against him by Dominion Voting Systems, for spreading the Big Lie, he has had his license to practice law in both New York and Washington, DC. suspended. Then there are the heart problems—and who can forget the light tap on the back heard around the world? Now Rudy’s got another headache to deal with in the form of an ex-wife who is demanding more than a quarter-million dollars from her former husband to help pay for the Palm Beach, Florida house they shared — but she took in the divorce.

As Page Six reports, Judith Giuliani — who was married to the former New York City mayor for whopping 16 years, from 2013 to 2019 — filed papers against her ex with the Supreme Court of the State of New York and claims that Rudy has failed to pay $262,000 that was part of their divorce settlement, which was specifically to be used to pay for their house in Palm Beach, a housekeeper to clean said house, and private club fees. You know, just the everyday necessities.

As Page Six writes:

In a sworn affidavit, Judith accuses Rudy of owing her $140,000 for their South Lake Drive, Palm Beach, property alone. The lux condo was listed on the market in 2019 for $3.3 million. It didn’t sell, but Judith claims in the documents that Rudy “is required to pay me $200,000 regardless of whether or not the property has been sold” per the divorce agreement, and she claims that he’s only given her $60,000.

While the agreement stipulated that they each needed to pay their own dues at their country club, because Rudy neglected to pay his half of said dues, Judith had to “in order to remain in good standing with the clubs,” per court papers.

While their divorce settlement also stipulated that Rudy needs to cough up $5,000 per month for Judith to have some kind of help—be it a housekeeper or a personal assistant—she says in the lawsuit that Rudy “has made inconsistent and sporadic payments to me, including a $10,000 check in June 2021 that was returned due to insufficient funds.”

It’s hardly a secret that Rudy is facing a litany of legal issues himself. In fact, he set up his own legal defense fund in the past that was such an abject failure, it was forced to shutter. Despite his financial woes, Judith is confident Rudy’s got the dough to pay her and has demanded he hand it over immediately.

(Via Page Six)

We all know that Beyonce is borderline ubiquitous at this point. Whenever she releases new music, the world stops, and everyone from Diane Warren to Monica Lewinsky weighs in on her creative choices. Even Fox News, which normally pretends that Black women don’t even exist until they need to prop up a wannabe fascist strongman with disingenuous sock puppet theater, gets in on the action, using her as a straw woman to tsk-tsk about declining moral standards (the irony!).

So naturally, with Beyonce’s new album Renaissance out now and dominating the discourse, low-key Beyonce stans are finding all kinds of creative ways to show their excitement. In Philadelphia, NBC reporter Sheila Watko said that she “had to celebrate Bey Day,” so she crammed her morning traffic report with as many of Bey’s song titles as she could get away with turning them into a stream of cheeky, funny-bad puns. While “Formation” and “Heated” seem like low-hanging fruit, it’s pretty impressive how she sneaks in titles like “Beautiful Liar” and “Crazy In Love” — especially off the top of her head. A convenient counter keeps track; she makes it all the way to 15 before her co-anchors offer some relief, contributing a few Beyonce references of their own to complete the clip. You can check it out below.

Brad Pitt’s about to careen back into theaters in David Leitch’s Bullet Train, which co-stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who’s been seen zipping about as Quicksilver in the MCU and will soon appear as a very different Kraven the Hunter that what the world knows. That doesn’t mean that he’s physically impervious, though.

Johnson took a few knocks during the course of Leitch’s actioner, and as he told Variety‘s Marc Malkin, he had a particularly bloody day on set when he fell weak due to a “crazy mad Keto diet.” Messing with one’s blood sugar is no joke, as Johnson explained. His animated delivery in the above clip is everything, and here’s what happened:

“Because I got all scrawny and lean for this, so I basically had low blood sugar levels. We were in a fight sequence and I get drop-kicked across the room. And the one sharp bit of the corner where there wasn’t any padding took a chunk out of my hand. And I literally went wham, passed out. And then I came back and was like ‘Should we go again?’ And they were like ‘No, no, no. You gotta go get stitches at the hospital.’ So then I spent the night in the hospital.”

He lived to tell the tale, obviously, and I’m not about to bash anyone’s diet if keto works for them (big carb fan here, though), but as Aaron appears to suggest, the diet’s not the best fuel for onscreen physical combat.

Bullet Train crashes into town on August 4.

(Via Variety)

With new episodes of Beavis and Butt-head set to premiere this week after being teed up by their new movie, Beavis and Butt-head Do the Universe, creator Mike Judge has been opening up about the show’s wild prominence during the ’90s.

Originally released on MTV, the cartoon featured two teenage morons as they watched music videos and got into all kinds of mayhem out of sheer boredom and stupidity. While the show’s comedy style quickly found an audience, it also became a lightning rod for controversy thanks to Beavis’s love of fire, which had to be frantically yanked from the series. Beavis wasn’t even allowed to say the word following accusations that a five-year-old committed arson because of the cartoon.

“The show came along at a time when there wasn’t a whole lot going on in the world,” Judge told IndieWire. “Things were pretty good. The Cold War was over. Crime was starting to go down in the ‘90s. Suddenly there was this whole thing about blaming violence on television. ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’ was served up perfectly as the show that defined that.”

However, Judge revealed that he wasn’t causing concern with just parents and the media. He apparently had one particular fan who did not appreciate that Beavis and Butt-head made white people look bad. Yup:

Back in the ’90s, I got a string of hate mail from this one neo-Nazi white supremacist because of the way I was portraying white people. He was accusing me of being Jewish, too. He would circle my name in articles and say things like, “Is this real name Judge-stein?” He was just a really awful dude. Every now and then these days, someone celebrates this work the wrong way, but I don’t see it as often as the reverse.

Neo-Nazi hate mail aside, Judge has been pretty happy that, as far as he can tell, Beavis and Butt-head never took off with Donald Trump supporters.

“I haven’t really seen any of the MAGA-head right-wingers celebrating these guys,” Judge said. “Beavis and Butt-Head are such losers. They’re not tearing ass with a giant truck or anything. So hopefully it doesn’t cross paths with all that.”

Beavis and Butt-head starts streaming new episodes August 4 on Paramount+.

(Via IndieWire)

It’s been an astounding 60 years since The Rolling Stones formed, so Mick Jagger has been performing live for a long time now. Even after all these years, it looks like Jagger is still having a ton of fun on stage, especially at a recent concert.

At a performance in Spain (as Daily Mail notes), as the band played “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” Jagger spotted a female fan who had gone ahead and removed her top, leaving her chest exposed for all to see as she bounced around seated on top of somebody’s shoulders. Jagger took notice and decided to return the favor by lifting his own shirt up. Jagger shared a video of the fun moment on his Instagram Story.

It’s nice to see Jagger doing well, as Rolling Stones had to cancel a June concert after Jagger tested positive for COVID-19. Elsewhere, Jagger found himself in the news back in May after sharing his thoughts on Harry Styles, saying, “I mean, I used to wear a lot more eye make-up than him. Come on, I was much more androgynous. And he doesn’t have a voice like mine or move on stage like me; he just has a superficial resemblance to my younger self, which is fine — he can’t help that.”

Revisit our recent ranking of The Rolling Stones’ songs here.

A new mainline title in the Pokémon franchise is already almost here and we can’t believe it, either. Soon enough, all of us will be diving in, choosing our starter Pokémon and going on an adventure through a whole new region. Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet, the latest releases, promise to be some of the biggest yet with promises of an entirely open world and some wild looking legendaries.

On Wednesday, we got a closer look at the upcoming games thanks to a Pokémon Presents showcase, which gave us some new information about Pokémon Go, the world championships, and other Pokémon spin-off games, like Pokémon Cafe. That wasn’t what everyone was waiting on, though — the stars of the showcase were obviously Scarlet and Violet, and we got a lot of fun information to break down throughout the presentation.

Legendary Rider Pokémon

Remember when legendary Pokémon were great beasts to be conquered? They were mini-boss fights that put a player’s skills and patience to the test to see if they were worthy of taking on the power of such beasts. As time has gone on, though, they’ve become less a challenge to be conquered and instead an ally on the player’s journey. In Scarlet and Violet, they’re taking on their most prominent role yet by being the player’s main form of transportation. Biking, surfing, and flying can all be accomplished with the assistance of legendary Pokémon, and that’s a little odd to see when you consider what the games used to be like. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, because what child didn’t dream of riding around the Kanto region on a Zapdos, but it’s just weird that these creatures that used to be a major challenge of the game are now a mode of transportation.

Terastal Forms

Ever singe MegaEvolutions were added to the franchise, every new mainline game has needed a new special form of some kind. There were Z-Moves, Gigantamax, and now, there’s Terastal. This new transformation for our Pokémon surrounds our allies in a shiny crystal that unsurprisingly makes them more powerful, but it can sometimes come with a type change on top of that. The showcase didn’t give away too much info about how these new crystals will impact gameplay, but it sounds like Pokémon can have multiple “Tera-Forms,” which will obviously encourage players to catch the same kind of Pokémon more than once.

New Multiplayer Features

The last couple of Pokémon games have been taking big steps forward in improving the multiplayer aspects of the game. Scarlet and Violet will be no different with each game providing new features like co-op multiplayer, where multiple players will be able to run around in the same world. Not only that, but the games will allow players to hang out with each other, creating some fun virtual get together opportunities with friends. The new big feature has to be buffed up “Tera-Raids,” where players will be able to try and capture extra powerful Tera-Form Pokémon in raid battles. Features like this are always fun because it’s going to give players more to do beyond the single player plot.

No Set Gym Path

Gyms are returning in Scarlet and Violet, but there’s a really cool twist to them that most games in the past haven’t done. These games will allow players to tackle the gyms in any order they want. Essentially every traditional Pokémon game has sent the player on a set order to explore the world, but by removing that, it’s going to make this new open world feel that much more freeing for longtime fans. This does raise the question about just how “open” these gyms are going to be. Will the game’s difficulty be based on how many badges a player has gotten, or will they have a set difficulty from the start? If it’s the latter, then most players will obviously take on the easy gyms first, which kind of defeats the purpose of letting players choose. It will be fun to see what the devs at Game Freak have decided.

Two Extra Stories

For anyone tired of the old gym format, don’t worry, because there’s supposed to be two more plot lines the player can follow along. Having multiple plots isn’t exactly new in a Pokémon game, but they’ve traditionally been interwoven together so the presentation making it a point to tell us that there are two extra plots for players to follow will hopefully mean that they’re just as fleshed out as the gym badges path that most traditional players will follow. Hopefully, these aren’t just the same three plots in most Pokémon games — Gyms, 11 year old saves the world, complete the Pokédex — and we actually get some variety.

Everything teased Wednesday sounds like an opportunity for the devs at Game Freak to take the mainline games in an entirely new direction. It’s also an opportunity to repackage what many of us are used to and call it something new, but let’s be hopeful and assume it’s the former. The franchise has been leaning towards a refresh for a while and maybe this is finally it.