Month: January 2023

Ella Mai announced that she would be going on tour in 2023. The London singer’s North American tour will make pitstops in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and more. The tour is on the heels of her second album, Heart On My Sleeve, which was released this past May. The DJ Mustard-produced project featured artists like Latto, Roddy Ricch, and Lucky Daye.

The “Boo’d Up” singer recently collaborated with iconic producer, singer, and songwriter Babyface for his Girls Night Out album, which features other female artists like Baby Tate, Doechii, CoCo Jones, and more.

Mai’s 34-city tour will kick off in March at the Toyota Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford, Connecticut. The Grammy winner has not announced if anyone will join her for the tour, but fingers are crossed.

Tickets for the Heart On My Sleeve Tour will be available for pre-sale starting Wednesday, January 25, at 10 a.m., with general tickets going on sale Friday, January 27.

Check out the tour dates below.

03/23/2023 – Wallingford, CT @ Dome at Toyota Oakdale Theatre
04/02/2023 – Providence, RI @ The Strand Theatre
04/03/2023 – Philadelphia, PA @ Franklin Music Hall
04/04/2023 – New York, NY @ Terminal 5
04/06/2023– Boston, MA @ House of Blues
04/08/2023 – Washington, DC @ Echostage
04/10/2023 – Atlanta, GA @ Coca-Cola Roxy
04/12/2023 – Miami, FL @ Revolution Live
04/13/2023 – Orlando, FL @ House of Blues
04/18/2023 – Raleigh, NC @ The Ritz
04/19/2023 – Baltimore, MD @ Rams Head Live!
04/21/2023 – Richmond, VA @ The National
04/22/2023 – Norfolk, VA @The NorVa
04/24/2023 – Nashville, TN @ Marathon Music Works
04/25/2023 -Charlotte, NC @ The Fillmore
04/27/2023– New Orleans, LA@ The Joy Theater
04/30/2023 -Dallas, TX @ House of Blues
05/01/2023 – Houston, TX @ Warehouse Live
05/04/2023 – Tempe, AZ @ Marquee Theatre
05/05/2023 – San Diego, CA @ SOMA
05/07 /2023– Los Angeles, CA @ The Novo
05/13/2023 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox
05/14/2023 – Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
05/15/2023 – Vancouver, BC @ Harbour Event & Convention
05/17/2023 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Depot
05/18/2023 – Las Vegas, NV @ House of Blues
05/20/2023 – Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre
05/22/2023 – Minneapolis, MN @The Fillmore
05/24/2023 – Chicago, IL @House of Blues
05/25/2023 – Indianapolis, IN @Egyptian Room at Old National Centre
05/27/2023 – Cincinnati, OH @ Bogart’s
05/28 /2023– Columbus, OH @Newport Music Hall
05/30/2023 – Detroit, MI @ Saint Andrew’s Hall
06/01/2023 – Toronto, ON @ HISTORY

For weeks some unlucky reporters have been placed on the George Santos beat. They follow the fibbing new GOP representative around, trying to get him to address the many, many, many strange and/or alarming allegations made against him. He tends to ignore them. But it’s clear they’re getting to him, just as all the comics who’ve been impersonating him clearly ruffled his feathers. Over the weekend, Santos said he had a vaguely ominous-sounding “surprise” for them. What was it? Turns out it was just donuts.

On Tuesday, Santos showed up at his Capitol hill office bearing some treats. “I got you guys some donuts. Donuts and coffee. For all the hard work you guys do,” Santos told reporters gathered outside his place of work. “Thank you so much for being here and doing your job.”

He also vowed that he would be busy legislating and that he had some “cool stuff coming out of this office soon.”

It was a nice gesture, if one drowning in withering sarcasm. Santos might not want to say much about the claims made against him, even the ones he’s admitted are true, or if deceiving voters to get elected should disqualify him from office, as it would for any other job. But he will try to be funny, even if those attempts don’t go as swimmingly as he would wish. Meanwhile, Dunkin’ Donuts got the most unwelcome GOP product placement since Sidney Powell testified while chugging Diet Dr. Pepper.

(Via The Daily Mail)

It’s official, Chloe Bailey has announced she will be releasing her debut album. Bailey, one half of the musical duo Chloe x Halle, with her sister Halle, is finally ready to step out on her own. The Parkwood singer’s upcoming project will be available soon. The “Mercy” singer dropped a teaser trailer on social media on Tuesday ahead of the forthcoming project’s release. The project, titled, In Pieces, will be released in March 2023.

The album was originally self-titled, but it seems the 24-year-old singer went in a different direction. In an interview with Uproxx, Chloe pointed out that her new music will be different from her past work with Chloe x Halle and that she, as a solo artist is entirely different.

“I think just the body of work,” she said. “I’m a brand new artist, and I haven’t had a body of work out [yet], so it’ll be the first thing people hear from me, really. So I think that’ll be surprising in itself.”

Vibe reports that, during a Q & A with fans online, the “Treat Me” singer shared that her music, like her influences, is a myriad of different genres. She noted this project would have influences from artists like Ye, Imogen Heap, Donna Summer, and more.

While creating the album, Chloe said that she learned to love herself on a deeper level and wants her fans to do the same. However, she noted the most important thing she learned is to”trust her gut,” and that timing is eveI’veing.

“The biggest lesson I’ve learned has been to trust my gut and to trust the timing, ” she told Complex.

Earlier this month, NBC News revealed that Justin Roiland, best known as the co-creator of Rick and Morty, had been charged with domestic violence, in conjunction with an incident that happened in 2020. Roiland pleaded not guilty at the time, and for the last two-and-a-half years he’s undergone more than a dozen hearings. This had all been kept quiet until NBC broke the news, but Adult Swim, which has long aired his popular animated show, is only now coming around to severing ties with him.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, on Tuesday Adult Swim announced that they had severed ties with Roiland. That doesn’t mean Rick and Morty is ending. It means Dan Harmon, the show’s co-creator, is now the sole showrunner. It also means the principal duo, both of whom have always been voiced by Roiland, will have to be recast.

Back in 2018, Adult Swim forked over a fortune for a whopping 70 more episodes of Rick and Morty. As of now, the show, which is famously slow to complete episodes, isn’t even at the halfway mark of completing that contract.

The charges against Roiland include one felony count of domestic battery with corporal injury and one felony count of false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud and/or deceit. The identity of Roiland’s alleged victim has not been made public, though it’s believed it was a girlfriend of his at the time. Roiland was charged in May 2020, arrested, and released that August on a $50,000 bond. He was arraigned in October of that year, during which he pled not guilty. His trial date has yet to be set.

Since then, all while undergoing one hearing after another, Roiland’s career has continued to flourish. His new Hulu show Koala Man bowed this month, while last year he released the video game High on Life. His show Solar Opposites premiered the same month he was charged.

(Via THR)

With the passing years and the fact people just don’t really watch television reruns anymore outside of The Office, Friends, and Seinfeld, it’s easy to forget just how good Michael J. Fox was on Family Ties. His line reading was just perfect. Here’s this guy, Alex P. Keaton, who keeps a framed photo of Richard Nixon in his bedroom, and we couldn’t help but love him. I knew Davis Guggenheim’s Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (which premiered this week at Sundance) would deal with the status of Fox’s current health (we’ll get to that in a bit) but what I really wanted was for this movie to dive into the era when Michael J. Fox was a sensation. The film starts with Fox being asked if he wanted this documentary to be about a famous movie star who has a disabling illness. Fox responds, “That’s boring.” So, yes, I got my wish.

It’s weird to think of Michael J. Fox ever struggling. But he talks about when he first moved to L.A. from Canada he would get roles because he looked significantly younger than he was, but productions didn’t have to worry about actually dealing with an actual kid. He was getting small parts, but after selling off his furniture, he was basically down to spare change and thought he’d have to walk himself to the airport, then take a job back home picking up nails on construction sites. (I will say I was disappointed that at no time during this part of the movie is the cult favorite Midnight Madness mentioned.) As Fox put it, he still had a chip and a seat. Explaining as long as you still have a chair and one chip at a poker table, you’re not out of the game. And his last hope was Family Ties and NBC head Brandon Tartikoff wasn’t a fan of Fox and that’s kind of a problem. Fox was allowed to shoot the pilot. If it didn’t go well, that was that. Anyway, yes, it went well.

We see a lot of clips from Fox’s movies in this, but maybe not the way you might expect. Guggenheim uses an interesting device of letting scenes in Fox’s movies serve as reenactments of things that were happening to him in real life. For instance, when Fox was struggling and couldn’t get a job, we see Fox begging for a job in The Secret of My Success. When we see Roger Ebert mention that Fox should play an ornery character, we see Fox being a prick in The Hard Way.

The early ’90s seem really tough for Fox. He gets his Parkinson’s diagnosis, then uses pills and booze and work to try to escape his realities. To the point, he refers to his wife Tracy Pollan as “a single mother” because Fox was filming movies basically nonstop. And the quality of those movies were starting to have diminishing returns. (Though, from this era, I will argue Doc Hollywood and The Hard Way are both really good.)

Current Michael J. Fox seems in good spirits. Though he does fall a lot, something Fox says is just part of the deal. His family tells him to be more careful, but “careful” isn’t really the problem here. There’s literally a scene where he’s walking down the street, a fan says hello, and Fox falls down. He gets right back up, but he’s not as lucky when, off camera, he fell and broke his cheekbone on a table. He explains he had to get pins put in his cheek to restructure it. Yet, there he is, still in good spirits.

During Michael J. Fox’s most prominent run, let’s say 1984 until 1992, I was ages 9 to 17. I’ve never really thought about this before, but he really did hit the sweet spot of my most influential years, popular culture-wise. Watching Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, it’s not like I didn’t realize he was an important cultural figure for me – and a lot of us – but it made me realize just how much. And it really makes you realize how hard he worked for it. He filmed Family Ties and Back to the Future at the same time for three months. He didn’t have to do that. He could have passed on Back to the Future after they came back to him after Eric Stoltz didn’t work out. But he knew what that movie would mean for his career, so who needs sleep for three months?

Michael J. Fox in this doc says none of that was real. At the height of his powers, the foundation was made of paper. It’s fleeting. I get what he’s saying – being an actor in movies for a living isn’t going to last forever; there’s a shelf life that’s shorter than most jobs – but I don’t agree it’s not real. At least not in his case. He’s given me and so many others so much joy over the years, joy that’s not always easy to come by. That certainly is real.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Arguably one of the biggest nights of the year, Super Bowl LVII, will be hitting television screens on February 12. The annual sporting event, which will take place at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, typically draws millions of viewers yearly. 2023 will be no different. This year, Rihanna will join legendary performers — artists like Beyonce, Prince, and Michael Jackson — when she takes the stage for the Super Bowl halftime show.

The “Lift Me Up” singer made the announcement on social media this past September, sharing a pic of herself holding a football. Recently, the new mother dropped a teaser trailer of her upcoming performance, only amping up the anticipation.

Ri also dropped a limited edition Super Bowl-themed collection with her Savage X Fenty lingerie company earlier this month. The “Game Day” collection will feature 17 sporty styles, including varsity jerseys, hoodies, sweatpants, and more.

But before the billionaire singer takes the stage, several other acts are expected to appear. Country star Chris Stapleton will be opening the show with a rendition of the national anthem. Emmy award-winning Abbot Elementary actress Sherly Lee Ralph is expected to sing the Black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice.”

The lineup doesn’t stop there. Iconic producer, singer, and songwriter Babyface will be singing “America the Beautiful” at the ceremony.

Super Bowl LVII premieres Sunday, February 12, with kickoff at 6:30 p.m. ET

It has now been nearly a year since Russia launched its attack on neighboring Ukraine. While Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin cronies led the Russian president to believe it would only be a matter of weeks until they could overpower their neighbors to the west, nothing has quite worked out the way Russia planned.

In recent weeks, intercepted calls to home to Russia have suggested that many of Russia’s soldier fatalities have been the result of friendly fire and/or drunken commanders. And Putin himself has admitted that Russia’s military leaders are not doing a great job of providing soldiers with their most basic necessities. Just last week, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky even suggested that Putin might not even be running the show anymore, as some people suspect that he is dead.

Whatever the case, it’s an embarrassing situation for Russia all around, as the country has long touted itself as a global tough guy you wouldn’t want to mess with. And now, as The Daily Beast reports, even the country’s plan to gain the upper hand by bringing in a private corps of 50,000 mercenary fighters has gone totally sideways. Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary organization, has reportedly brought in approximately 50,000 Russian soldiers to fight in Ukraine — several of them coming from Russia’s prisons. But it’s estimated that only 10,000 of those recruits are still alive and/or fighting.

The Moscow Times reported that Olga Romanova, the head of Russia Behind Bars, said: “According to our data, 42,000 to 43,000 [prisoners] were recruited by the end of December. Now they are, most likely, already over 50,000. Of these, 10,000 are fighting at the front, because all the rest are either killed… or missing, or deserted, or surrendered.”

While the Russian soldiers who claimed the town of Soledar in recent weeks are reportedly mostly Wagner soldiers, that victory was said to have come “at an extraordinary cost,” according to White House officials.

Zelensky, too, confirmed this when he remarked that, “The area near Soledar is covered with corpses of the invaders. This is what madness looks like.”

(Via The Daily Beast)

(Spoilers from The Boys will be found below.)

Who would have thought that it would be possible to feel slightly sorry for The Deep by the time that The Boys Season 3 rolled around? Chace Crawford’s character began as a sexually assaulter of a Supe, who then fell into a cult and came back and worked towards some form of twisted redemption. Then Homelander, who’s also rape-y and even more malignant, made The Deep eat his true love, Timothy The Octopus, while the little critter was still alive. Here’s how that looked if you wanted a refresher.

This was only one of a handful of situations that made Crawford believe that he might never work again, but the Timothy thing hit The Deep where it counts. Is it no wonder that he might be hitting the weights hard for his Season 4 arc? Crawford seems to be into it even as The Deep has some sh*t to work out. Witness the Instagrammed proof:

Yep, The Deep must need to blow off some serious steam. And you know, Crawford is allegedly not welcome at aquariums anymore, either, but I can’t wait for the inner dialogue to arrive because, man, poor Timothy. RIP into infinity.

Things are going from bad to worse for embattled Republican Representative George Santos.

The recently-elected Congressman from New York has fielded a dizzying number of damning accusations by Democrats and the press but now, he’s facing off against members of his own party who aren’t happy he lied about … well, basically everything. And he’s doing it the only way he knows how, by whining on Twitter.

Santos — who maybe embezzled donations, probably took part in a Ponzi scheme, and definitely lied about his drag queen career and his collegiate volleyball record — took to social media to express disappointment with comments about his long (and very weird) con by fellow Republican John Kennedy. The Senator from Louisianna recently slammed Santos in the press describing him “as nutty as a fruitcake” and comparing him to Glenn Close’s deranged and vengeful character who actually boiled a rabbit to get back at her ex in the film Fatal Attraction.

“That is why I called him a bunny boiler,” Kennedy reportedly said. “I don’t know if you’ve seen Fatal Attraction but there are people like that out there.”

We’re guessing Kennedy meant that as a dig against Santos’ questionable mental state, and it seems like the young Congressman assumed the same. He posted on Twitter that he was hurt by Kennedy’s turn of phrase.

“I am saddened that a distinguished senator from the GOP, whom I’ve respected would use such derogatory language against me,” Santos wrote. “Language like that is hurtful and divisive and has no place in Congress.”

The irony that a pathological liar who giddily flashed white power signs during a publicized congressional meeting would be offended by any type of derogatory language is rife, but Santos’ disgust at being compared to Glenn Close makes one really question his drag credentials. Trixie Mattel would never.

(Via RawStory)

Earlier today, Michelle Yeoh received a much-deserved Oscar nomination for her role in the mind-bending hit Everything Everywhere All At Once. It’s been a long time coming: Yeoh has been acting for nearly half a century and steadily built an iconic career in various martial arts films and action roles.

Naturally, a lot of people have been celebrating the achievement, while others are confused at her being called the first person who “identifies as Asian” to be nominated for best actress at this year’s Academy Awards. The wording is pretty important, though.

While Yeoh is being called the first Asian-identifying actor to be nominated in the best actress category, there have been been a few people with Asian ancestry who have secured nominations (and awards). Merle Oberon was first nominated in 1936 after her role in The Dark Angel, though she reportedly hid her ancestry while working in Hollywood. Actress Vivien Leigh also came from western Asian ancestry on her mother’s side, though she also did not identify as Asian.

Despite the confusing phrasing, it’s still an important milestone that has taken much too long to reach. Yeoh’s performance and the subsequent nomination are a win for under-represented minorities in the industry. The actress told The Hollywood Reporter after learning of her nominations, “It’s taken a long time. But I think this is more than me. At the present moment, constantly, all the time, having Asians walking up to me saying, ‘You can do it, you’re doing it for us.’ It’s like, ‘I understand. I totally understand.’ All this time, they’ve not been recognized, they’ve not been heard.”

Hopefully, fellow award shows can follow in the Academy’s footsteps!

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)