Month: December 2022

Good Morning America hosts Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes are apparently taking the tail-end of this whirlwind week in stride. The couple went from relatively unknown news anchors to the center of affair rumors that kicked off a tabloid frenzy. After having intimate photos published in the Daily Mail, the two have been fighting competing narratives on when exactly their previous marriages ended and their new relationship began. On top of that, Robach and Holmes been showing up to work as top brass at ABC were quick to capitalize on the “ratings gold.”

While the two haven’t outright acknowledged the mounting affair rumors or their now public romance, they did take a not-so-subtle jab at the growing fiasco during their end of the week broadcast. Holmes got the ball rolling by joking that “It’s too bad it’s Friday,” which sparked some awkwardly witty banter with Robach.

Via Page Six:

When Robach, 49, asked if it really was too bad, he poked fun at the “great week” he was having.

“I just want this one to keep going and going and going,” the former CNN anchor, 45, added with a smile. “Just enjoying it.”

However, when Holmes advised Robach to “take it all in,” she replied, “Speak for yourself.”

While their former spouses apparently feel differently, Holmes and Robach are reportedly glad that their relationship is now public even if it’s not how they planned it.

“They’re not ashamed. They’re two consenting adults, who ended up loving each other,” a source told Page Six. “It’s not how they wanted [news of their relationship] to come out, but it’s also kind of a relief.”

(Via Page Six)

It’s probably fair to say that Bones And All, from Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino, isn’t the most groundbreaking concept in the world. It plays a lot, in fact, like the radio-friendly edit of Raw, Julia DuCournau’s 2016 coming-of-age tale about cannibalism and burgeoning sexuality at veterinary college. Yet freshness of concept probably wasn’t foremost on Guadagnino’s mind when he set out to direct David Kajganich’s adaptation of Camille DeAngelis’s 2015 novel. (Sidenote: do you think Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name star, Armie Hammer, ever tried to talk him out of doing a cannibal story?)

Guadagnino doesn’t take teen cannibalism further (trying to be more “out there” than Julia DuCournau seems ill-advised at best) so much as let it breathe. He finds the beauty in it, the power of two outsiders pitted against the world. He’s a sensualist, who seems more concerned with how characters in extraordinary situations might act than with their larger implications, or how they might be shoehorned into an allegory (an almost unheard-of quality among pitch-driven, concept-first American filmmakers these days). To put it in less film critic-y terms, Guadagnino is excellent at shooting gorgeous films about pretty people doing weird things… and that’s nice.

Taylor Russell plays Maren, a late high schooler who in the first scene gets invited to a sleepover — a big deal for her, being the new girl at school. Things are going well (and vaguely sapphicly?) until Maren tries bite off a girl’s finger and eat it. She runs out of the house and back to her own house, where her father (played by the always great André Holland) sees the blood on her shirt, immediately understands what has happened, and gets them all packed up and ready to split town in minutes. Clearly not his first flesh-eating rodeo.

Maren is a bit remote as a protagonist, but with purpose. She’s a young girl on the cusp of adulthood trying to figure out who she is, which is difficult under any circumstances, but especially so when your insatiable craving for flesh forces you into an itinerant lifestyle under a series of aliases. Cannibalism as a vehicle for feelings of adolescent alienation, the search for identity, womanhood, and burgeoning sexuality has, as I said, already been covered in Raw (yes, I know Bones And All the book came out first, please don’t leave me this comment six times). But Bones And All also adds a pleasing dose of lore. Maren isn’t the only cannibal in the world, see. There are others out there, and they can recognize each other by scent. Sorta like highlanders but also sorta like dogs (it feels right).

Maren learns all this from the first fellow meat-eater she meets, Sully, played by Mark Rylance, who seems to be as knowledgeable about the cannibal lifestyle as he is eccentric. Rylance’s performance is absolutely electric, a freak mix of conviviality, vague sexual menace, and hobo self-talk, like if “Ol’ Gil” from The Simpsons was a carnie who might eat you. Simply wonderful.

Maren desperately needs companionship, a support system, parental figures, but those qualities are almost impossible to extricate from people (read: men) who might want to rob, fuck, or kill her. She has essentially the same reservations about Lee, played by Timothée Chalamet, a sort of fashion goth take on Shia LaBeouf in American Honey, but in this case her natural tripidation is undercut by sexual desire. Is it really goodness she’s sensing in this guy or is she just swayed by a jawline that could cut glass? In the end, all we have is our intuition, and companionship is always a leap of faith.

Bones And All largely consists of Maren’s cross-country journey of self-discovery, complete with many gorgeous misty early morning landscapes, with state postal codes superimposed on the screen every time she enters a new one (interspersed with the occasional gory feeding). Road movies have a natural inertia, and Guadagnino is wise to just sort of let us marinate in the moments. In 2022, movies incorporating the fantastic or exploring the supernatural almost always try to skip past the people to drive home the themes. It’s always about “where is this going and what does it mean??” to the point that it can flatten the humanity it purports to celebrate.

Guadagnino’s movies are a healthy antidote to this kind of anti-impressionism. In the end, occasional gore notwithstanding, Bones And All plays less like Raw than it does a cannibal-infused American Honey if it were directed by an Italian guy who was obsessed with Timothée Chalamet. It’s an imagery-first kind of film, and it delivers quite a few that are probably going to stick with me for a while.

‘Bones And All’ is playing now in theaters everywhere. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more of his reviews here.

Tom Rinaldi is a television presenter and sideline reporter who dedicates his life to making us tear up while telling the stories of athletes. The veteran broadcaster left ESPN a few years back and took his talents to Fox, which is in a pretty busy stretch of a few weeks. Every fall, Fox has college football and NFL games on its calendar, and Rinaldi working both of those is nothing new.

This year, Fox is also the home of the World Cup in the United States. Rinaldi has been part of Fox’s coverage of the event from Qatar, but this hasn’t been the only football he’s covered in the last few days. In a recent interview with Richard Deitsch of The Athletic, Rinaldi laid out his schedule from Nov. 21-29, which included stops in Doha, New Jersey, Texas, Ohio, and Kansas City for work.

“I don’t want to sound like a shill, but I’m so incredibly grateful,” Rinaldi told The Athletic about his workload. “Who wouldn’t want to have the opportunity to be at these games and these events? To be in ‘The Shoe’ for Ohio State-Michigan, and then to be in the stadium for the USA against Iran? To be part of the Thanksgiving tradition in the NFL, and then to be on the sideline to see Sean McVay trying somehow, someway to solve Patrick Mahomes? It’s an awesome set of opportunities and a 10-day stretch I’m not ever going to forget.”

Tom Rinaldi if you are reading this I will Venmo you $5 for a cup of coffee, because it is obvious to me that you deserve one.

David Harbour is, by now, a firmly established actor who has found a place in some massive modern entertainment franchises. The Stranger Things star landed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe recently and has seen his career blossom in the streaming era. But one of the early breaks in his career involved a “cloak-and-dagger” meeting he earned because Madonna thought he was hot.

During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the Violent Night star told a story about how he ended up getting cast in “W.E,” a 2011 historical drama about the affair between King Edward VIII and an American, Wallis Simpson. And though Harbour admitted that “it was not a terrific movie” the story behind it all is pretty spectacular.

The conversation happens around the two-minute mark of his appearance. Harbour described it as “crazy” but heard about a job opportunity that slowly revealed itself to be based… well, mostly on how hot he was.

“It was a real cloak-and-dagger type of thing,” he said. “It started out, I got a call from a casting director that I knew very well saying ‘They’re putting together a top-secret movie read-through. But you just have to show up at the St. Regis and go in this room and all will be revealed.”

Despite it being “weird” and “creepy,” Harbour acquiesced.

“And I said ‘Why do they want me?’” Harbour asked, though the casting director didn’t want to tell him at first. Eventually, though, the truth came out.

“Well, the director really liked you in this movie Revolutionary Road. You have, like, a sex scene in it,” Harbour recalled the casting director saying. “They thought you were really sexy.”

Harbour joked about some very famous male directors possibly fitting the bill of this anonymous figure. But eventually, he showed up to the read and “in walks Madonna, who is directing this movie.”

Which, of course, brought Harbour back to the reason he was there in the first place.

“The first thing that flooded over me before she went over was ‘wow, Madonna thinks I’m sexy,’” Harbour said. “I was really excited about that.”

Though he described it as a “truly harrowing, exciting experience” the movie did turn out to be a flop. But the story behind it certainly is not. The segment also includes a very funny exchange about the meaning of Madonna’s “Open Your Heart” music video, which Harbour interpreted VERY differently from Jimmy Kimmel. You can watch the full interview above.

The tributes continue to pour in for late Low drummer and vocalist Mimi Parker, who died in early November, this time in the form of a musical cover: Indie act Storefront Church (Lukas Frank) enlisted the help of Phoebe Bridgers to re-imagine Low’s 1994 single “Words.”

Bridgers is well familiar with covers, having already covered The Handsome Family’s “So Much Wine,” The Carpenters’ “Goodbye To Love,” and The 1975’s “Milk,” but this rendition means a lot more to the guitarist. Parker’s passing was a huge blow to the rock music community, and with the cover, Frank and Bridgers paid their respect.

Co-produced by Waylon Rector, the pair beautifully elevates the track in a way never heard before. An all-star team of musicians (Rector on guitar, Frank on drums, Spoon’s Alex Fischel on piano, Daniel Rhine on bass, and Cynthia Tolson leading the strings) worked to keep the initial mythical allure of the song while bringing it up to the current times.

Frank took to Instagram to share what the cover meant to them, writing, “Low’s music has been incredibly useful to me; it’s like an antidote to anxiety, with Mimi’s voice at the heart of it — relieving, cathartic and honest. This cover features Phoebe, who I’ve known since we were little kids. I couldn’t be more grateful for her contribution and support, both now and over the years.”

Listen to the full cover above.

Though charges of racism are nothing new for Britain’s Royal Family, one bigoted old bag just took it to a whole new level. On Thursday night, Trevor Noah shared the latest controversy facing Buckingham Palace, which involves an 83-year old woman and an exchange that likely has Queen Elizabeth II turning over in her grave.

On Tuesday, Lady Susan Hussey — Prince William’s octogenarian godmother, and the late Queen’s onetime lady-in-waiting — was at Buckingham Palace for a reception at which Ngozi Fulani, an advocate for victims of violence and domestic abuse and the founder of the nonprofit Sistah Space, was a VIP guest. But it was Fulani who ended up being victimized when Hussey began questioning her about her nationality and apparently refused to accept the London-born guest’s response that she was British. Fulani later posted a full recap of the exchange to Twitter, which began with the problematic “Where are you from?,” and devolved into more pointed questions like, “No, but what nationality are you?” (eek!) and “No, but where do you really come from? Where do your people come from?” (NO!!!)

Noah offered some belated advice to Hussey, who has since resigned her “position” (whatever that means), when he explained that “there is only one socially acceptable way to find out someone’s heritage: you swab their DNA while they’re asleep.”

Clearly, Hussey must have skipped the first day of “Avoidable Racism 101,” because Noah said that the first thing they teach you is:

“Never say the word ‘from.’ That’s it. A lot of racism includes the word ‘from,’ so just avoid it altogether. ‘Where are you really from?’ ‘Go back to where you came from.’ ‘You see this clip from Tucker Carlson?’

You can watch the full clip above, beginning around the 6:15 mark.

Matty Healy has been doing a lot on The 1975’s At Their Very Best tour in promotion of their brilliant new LP Being Funny In A Foreign Language — from eating raw meat on his knees to making out with fans. He’s also been running into fans a bit before shows and having interesting interactions, the most recent one being about his height, which he is very passionate about.

In the video, he vehemently (and all in good fun) claims he’s around 5’11″or 6’0″ tall. While standing next to the fan and comparing his height to hers, he says, “How can I be f*cking 5’5″, 5’6″? I am sick to f*cking death of this. I am a big boy!”

This is also not the first time Healy has addressed the perception that he’s short. When asked in a 2018 interview if there are any misconceptions about him, he answered, “There must be, right? Because I’m a person, and I only give a way into what I’m like in interviews or records — which are a context. Everyone in the band is 6’4″ and I’m 5’10”, so everyone thinks that I’m 5’5″. That’s one of them [laughs].”

This is just one of many Healy clips to go viral as of late. A fan-favorite one includes him yelling at security in Auto-Tune during a song, “Someone’s fallen down over there,” he says. “Go and f*cking sort them out. Stop standing there like a bunch of d*ckheads.” There’s also an amazing roster of guests who’ve joined the band on the stage to perform, including Phoebe Bridgers for “Milk” and Jack Antonoff to play some Bleachers deep-cuts.

Once a “huge supporter” of Elon Musk’s Tesla venture, Jack White has made it abundantly clear that he wants no part of anything else that the new Twitter CEO is half-baking, even removing Third Man Records from the social media platform. Now as Kanye West’s Twitter account has been suspended once again (and for the first time under the Musk Twitter regime), White is calling out Musk’s hypocrisy.

“So Elon, how’s that ‘free speech’ thing working out?,” White began in an Instagram post. West, for what it’s worth, was presumably booted for posting a weird image of a swastika inside of a Star Of David. White continued to call out Musk for backtracking on his previous statements on free speech: “Oh, I see, so you have to CHOOSE who gets free speech and who doesn’t then? What kind of crybaby liberal suspends someone’s free speech?”

White notes Alex Jones also getting suspended and then lays down the hammer in saying, “Perhaps you’re learning how harmful it can be when you let dangerous, hateful people say whatever they want on your stage.”

These lengthy diatribes on Instagram are becoming more frequent for White, but he has a knack for making good sense of ridiculous situations created by ridiculous people. Read his entire post below.

“So Elon, how’s that ‘free speech’ thing working out?

Oh, I see, so you have to CHOOSE who gets free speech and who doesn’t then? What kind of crybaby liberal suspends someone’s free speech?
Hmm….

Conspiracy liar alex jones doesn’t get ‘free speech’ either? I see. So you’re learning that these folks incite violence and hatred but trump…DOESN’T?
Hmmm.

Or is it that liar jones, and anti-Semite egomaniac kanye can’t provide tax breaks for billionaires the way the former president could? Or that maybe the controller of this ‘free speech’ is insulted personally? Or that just maybe, there needs to be, oh I don’t know, RULES and REGULATIONS or else you breed chaos?

It’s nice to watch in real time as you learn that all things need to be regulated, whether that be guns, drugs, alcohol, assembly, or speech because of the danger of someone or something being hurt or destroyed. They’re sometimes called ‘laws’. And perhaps you’re learning how harmful it can be when you let dangerous, hateful people say whatever they want on your stage.

Comments turned off on this post. This isn’t a debate forum. This is me talking on my front porch, not debating in town square. I regulate the platforms i control too. Do the right thing Elon and don’t provide other hate mongers a stage, let them go talk in town square. (And no, twitter isn’t town square owned by the govt., it’s a private company owned by Elon Musk.)
-Jack White III.”

Earlier this year, there were rumors that Bob Odenkirk was going to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which was never proven or confirmed, but it did get the people excited. After finishing up his stint as the lovably scammy Saul Goodman, Odenkirk has expressed interest in doing more action sequences, which is why the MCU would be a perfect fit for him if he decided to ever join.

But instead of signing away the next decade to Mickey Mouse, it looks like Odenkirk will get his own little cinematic universe after becoming the most powerful man in Hollywood (and the world). A sequel to Odenkirk’s action movie Nobody is in the works, with production expected to take place next year.

In Nobody, Odenkirk played a father who turns to violence after his home is robbed. It became an unexpected hit, so it seems like he will be back to punching people on public transit in no time. Producer Kelly McCormick told Collider that they would be going ahead with a sequel.

“We hope to make it [Nodoby 2’s production] next year, so fingers crossed,” McCormick said. “So our theory is you don’t need to make a good sequel just to make a sequel. We need to make a great sequel. And so it’s about making sure that we get it right. And if we do, I think there’s a lot of hope that we can go next year.” Odenkirk hasn’t officially signed on yet, but they can’t make the movie without him, so he will hopefully be involved unless they have decided to get very literal with the movie’s title.

The only way to make the story even better would be to give him a dog sidekick à la John Wick. Better yet, a Keanu Reeves cameo would be perfect. He will have time after March 24th.

(Via Collider)

Feid closed out his breakthrough year with the release of his new EP Sixdo last night (December 1). The rising Colombian star’s EP includes collaborations with hip-hop legend DJ Premier and reggaeton pioneers Zion y Lennox.

Back in September, Feid released Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo Te Pirateamos El Álbum after the LP was leaked online. It’s become the biggest album of his career. In October, Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo climbed No. 8 on Billboard‘s Hot Latin Songs chart. This week, Spotify’s Wrapped campaigned revealed Feid as the 48th most-streamed artist globally this year.

Instead of being a cash-grab of leftovers tracks, Feid pushes his Medellín-made reggaeton to new places in Sixdo. The most adventurous collaboration is “Le Pido A Dios” featuring DJ Premier. Premier’s twinkling hip-hop beats meet Feid’s sentimental flow and the result is a fresh and feel-good banger. It marks the first time Premier has worked with a Latin artist. Universal Music Latin’s Albert Piedrahita, who was behind Feid’s Nieve EP, was the A&R that brought them together.

Another standout on the six-track EP is the dreamy “California.” He puts a new spin on Latin pop with a touch of symphonic strings and piano. Feid’s voice soars as he envisions himself living the good life in the Golden State. His reggaeton reaches new emotional depths in the alluring “Chorrito Pa Las Animas.” Zion y Lennox join Feid on the electronica-infused “La Pasamos Cxbrxn.”

Sixdo is out now via Universal Music Latin. Listen to it here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.