Month: August 2023

It’s a fine line for actors who have lodged varying levels of irritation with work-stoppage rules surrounding the SAG-AFTRA strike, and context matters when it comes to how these complaints are received.

For example, Arrow star Stephen Amell rubbed people the wrong way while likely feeling frustrated about not promoting Starz’s Heels Season 2. His initial “I do not support striking” (while calling it “myopic”) eventually led to some backlash and clarification, “I support my union … This doesn’t need much clarity.” He then added, “Of course I don’t like striking. Nobody does. But we have to do what we have to do.”

Whereas Mayans M.C. lead J.D. Pardo took a different route by gently calling out strike vouchers (and not the strike itself) after the picket-line phenomenon prevented the FX show’s cast from live-tweeting the finale in their customary way. In doing so, Pardo wrote, “I do find it funny that vouchers are being handed out to continue filming, but I can’t talk about my show that ended after 6 years of hard work.”

And now there’s Zachary Levi, who (let’s just say) can grow visibly emotional at times. He had a social-media meltdown following the box-office demise of Shazam! Fury of the Gods, and now, an isolated clip has surfaced to show Levi (perhaps jokingly) talking about how it’s “so dumb” to not discuss everything from Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel to Tangled. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, this clip isn’t brand new and appears to be taken from Manchester Comic-Con in July:

“I’m not allowed to talk about…. This is so dumb. I’m not allowed to talk about any of my previous work… I’m not allowed to talk about movies that I may be a superhero in. I’m not allowed to talk about TV shows that I may have been a nerd who worked at a Best Buy. I’m not allowed to talk about any animated princess movies that I was fantastic in — as the best prince ever! I’m not allowed to talk about those things.”

Obviously, the clip does not include what Levi declared in the surrounding moments above, but this might not go over well. Levi is known to be slightly abrasive when addressing something that he doesn’t agree with, after all. However, here is a previous video clip of Levi expressing support for the SAG-AFTRA strikes.

(Via Hollywood Reporter)

Emily Blunt fired some cheeky shots at Tom Cruise while fielding questions about a potential Edge of Tomorrow sequel. Fans of the time-bending 2014 science fiction film have been pining for a second installment for years, and according to Blunt, she has seen a script that director Doug Liman “slithered over.” There’s just one small problem: Cruise has been very busy hurtling himself off of cliffs and jumping out of planes.

“I mean, I would love to make it a reality but I just don’t know when or how,” Blunt told the Happy Sad Confused podcast before taking a jab at her co-star. “And how many Mission: Impossibles does he need?”

Blunt took her ribbing of Cruise even further by saying it’d be nice to see him play a more vulnerable character than his super spy Ethan Hunt.

Via The Hollywood Reporter:

Blunt jokes that Cruise needs to “come back to the side where you can be… like wasn’t he brilliant as the cowardly hero? Incredible.” In the 2014 film, directed by Liman, Blunt starred opposite Cruise, who keeps reliving the same day over and over again fighting aliens.

The actress added that she is “so ready” for a sequel and clarified that she is “not the impediment, I promise.”

If they haven’t already, Edge of Tomorrow fans should probably prepare themselves for a sequel not materializing. Blunt’s answer is similar to a response she gave two years ago.

“I did read a script that was in really great shape, but it’s just a matter of if that can even happen now,” she told Entertainment Weekly while promoting 2021’s Jungle Cruise.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

If there’s one thing you can count on from Billie Eilish, it’s for the pop star to switch things up. She routinely tries different things with her hair, and now, her scalp is one again in a new aesthetic era. The fresh look is similar to her green-and-black-hair era, but this time, she has a vibrant splash of red radiating out from the crown of her head atop a sea of black. She debuted the look with a photo on Instagram captioned, “remember me?”

The new look was perfectly fitting, and likely specifically implemented for, her performance at Lollapalooza yesterday (August 3): The festival is hosted in Chicago, so Eilish wore a Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls jersey that perfectly matched her black and red hair. There’s another connection here, too, as Eilish has long collaborated with Nike on her own Jordan sneakers, like the patchworked Air Force 1’s in a “Triple White” color she debuted earlier this year.

This actually wasn’t Eilish’s first time with red hair. She previously revealed that in November 2021, between her blonde and black hair eras, she went red for a week, although that look was never seen publicly.

Billie’s Lolla performance is also notable because she gave her Barbie movie song “What Was I Made For?” its live debut.

Weezy F Baby and the F stands for “featured recurring guest host.” Lil Wayne’s love for sports has long been documented throughout his music and frequent appearances on sports debate shows. Now, “The Formula” rapper has reportedly found another way to discuss his thoughts on the biggest headlines in sports media.

According to Skip Bayless, he and Lil Wayne will duke it out on Fox Sports 1’s Undisputed once a week when the show returns from hiatus on August 28. During the host’s latest episode of his podcast, the Skip Bayless Show, he shared the news by saying, “Wayne has agreed every Friday going forward to do a segment with me live. He might not always be in the studio, depending on his schedule. But he’s going to be joining me every Friday.”

He continued, “As for the segment — I don’t know. 12 or 15 minutes? If he’s hot or rolling, maybe we’ll keep him on for a couple of segments if he has the time. That you can look forward to, he is so deep when it comes to sports. He doesn’t yell or scream, but he gets emotional.”

That’s not the only new addition set to take place over on Undisputed. Bayless later revealed to listeners that Lil Wayne will also record the show’s theme song. Lil Wayne originally recorded the show’s song “No Mercy” in 2016. When discussing that upcoming track, Bayless said, “Wayne and I started going back and forth. Sometimes in text. Sometimes face-to-face about ‘No Mercy’ going back a year ago. Because at one point, he said to me, ‘I’m going to do another one.’ And I said, ‘You mean you would replace ‘No Mercy.’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ You can’t do better than the best. You can’t do greater than the greatest. Because that song — that theme song ‘No Mercy’ and ‘I won’t back down.’ is simply the greatest sports theme song ever. Not even close. And he would say to me, ‘Watch me. Just watch.’ he felt like I was daring him.”

This week, indie-rock institution Wilco announced a new album. It’s called Cousin, and Steven and Ian naturally wondered: Is this a deliberate reference to The Bear? After all, the hit FX show is known for multiple Wilco needle drops. Did Jeff Tweedy return the favor? The verdict is “probably not,” but it’s fun to speculate about regardless.

From there, they take a hard left to talk about Utopia, the new album by rapper Travis Scott. Utopia is the sort of big tent rap record that used to be common, but in 2023 the genre seems more insular than usual. Is this a temporary blip or a sign of things to come? And is Utopia — an album that includes more than a few signifiers that evoke Kanye West — a conscious attempt to make the kind of album that achieves critical and commercial acclaim?

Another hard left: Steven tells Ian about “Young Love And Saturday Nights,” a (terrible) new country song by Chris Young that borrows the riff from David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel.” It’s part of a trend called “interpolation pop” where songwriters go to song publishers in advance to get permission to use the spare parts of classic tunes. After that, the guys talk about the recent controversy concerning Lizzo, and give the “yay or nay” treatment to the Semisonic reunion.

In Recommendation Corner, Ian talks about the new George Clanton while Steven recommends the recent four-part Spector music documentary.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 149 here and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [email protected], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.

Lollapalooza kicked off last night (August 3). With headliners like Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Odesza, Lana Del Rey, Karol G, The 1975, and Tomorrow X Together, the festival is going to be a blast as it continues throughout the weekend.

The “Bad Guy” pop star played last night and it was nothing short of amazing. Her performances are always grand and emotional, whether she’s headlining a festival or on the stage at an awards show. Along with songs from her debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? and her sophomore LP Happier Than Ever, she gave her contribution to the Barbie movie soundtrack, “What Was I Made For?,” its live debut. It’s even more of a heartfelt tearjerker live than it is as a recording.

Upon sharing the video for the song, Eilish wrote on Instagram, “in january greta [Gerwig] showed me and finneas a handful of some unfinished scenes from the film; we had nooooo idea what to expect at ALLL… we were so deeeeeply moved.. that the next day we were writing and COULDNT shut up about it lolll andddddddddd ended up writing almost the entire song that night. to be real with you this all seemed to happen in a time when i really needed it. i’m so so thankful for that. this video makes me cryyyyy.. it means so much to me and i hope it will mean just as much to you. don’t have much to say other than that, i think it will speak for itself[heart emoji] :””) enjoy.”

Watch Eilish perform “What Was I Made For?” above.

Florence Pugh is cool. She’s cool when she’s causing an international scandal. She’s cool while wearing a flower crown, something I didn’t think was possible. She’s even (especially?) cool when accidentally cosplaying as Guy Fieri.

The Oppenheimer actress compared herself to the celebrity chef in an Instagram Story on Thursday. “Sometimes when I get out the shower I look like Guy Fieri and I love it,” she captioned the selfie. In another photo, she wrote, “Just saying.. could be the new mayor of flavour town. Or should I say… ‘Flo’ver town.” You can see the Instagram Story below.

If Fieri opened a restaurant in England, would it be called Flavourtown Kitchen, with the British spelling? I can’t explain why this makes me angry, but it does.

Pugh explained her decision to cut her hair short in an interview with the Radio Times. “I wanted vanity out of the picture. Hollywood is very glamorous — especially for women — and it’s hard for an audience to see past that. Whenever I’ve not needed to be glam or have a full face of makeup, I fight to keep it that way. It helps the audience,” she said, adding, “Vanity is gone. The only thing that people can look at then is your raw face.”

(Via Page Six)

Previews of new Taylor Swift music seem to pop up out of nowhere, and now it’s happened again. On today’s (August 4) new episode of the Amazon Prime Video series The Summer I Turned Pretty, some of “Delicate (Taylor’s Version)” can be heard during a scene. This is the first rerecording of a Reputation song that has been heard. Naturally, this would suggest that the Reputation (Taylor’s Version) album is in the works.

The Summer I Turned Pretty has actually been a valuable resource for Swift previews. In a 2022 trailer for the show, a snippet of “This Love (Taylor’s Version)” (originally from 1989) was teased. Then, about a month ago, some of “Back To December (Taylor’s Version)” popped up in a trailer for the latest season.

So far, the whole Taylor’s Version albums endeavor has been a massive success. She’s released three so far since 2021 — Fearless, Red, and Speak Now — and they’ve all topped the Billboard 200 chart. “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version)” from Red (Taylor’s Version) was even a No. 1 single on the Hot 100. In fact, it’s the longest chart-topper ever and the first one that’s over 10 minutes in length.

Check out the The Summer I Turned Pretty clip above.

Never did I think, for a moment, that I’d ever see Brian Kilmeade halfheartedly trying to get down on TV.

I will say, however, that this is a fantastic maneuver to keep his spirit from deflating on live TV after his MAGA hero got indicted yet again. His sad-spirit vibes got real with round two, and Fox News didn’t totally ignore this third round, but man, all of this has to be so awkward for Fox And Frenemies.

That’s not only the case because Fox News is in the position of now covering Trump’s criminal charges surrounding his efforts to overturn the election, but the conservative cable news network is also still attempting to recover from that massive Dominion Voting settlement after certain personalities went several extra miles to promote the Big Lie. It’s a different day now, however, and while transitioning (as one can see from the chyron in this video clip) from the latest Trump legal mess, Steve Doocy and the gang decided to do some type of dance move. Well, alright!

Granted, this moment is not contextualized to the full demeanor of this episode, but here, at least Brian Kilmeade doesn’t look nearly as depressed as he did about Trump’s previous courtroom adventures. Given that he went full-on cheerleader for Trump in the past, this is quite a shift. Maybe he worked some stuff out, you never know.

It was a day of mixed emotions for Donald Trump. On Thursday, the thrice-indicted former president flew from his New Jersey golf club to a courthouse in Washington D.C. to plead not guilty on felony charges accusing him of trying to overturn the 2020 election results. He was on Truth Social before arriving, and he was Truth Social after his court appearance, as well, to complain about how “dirty” the nation’s capital is.

“CONSIDERING THE FACT THAT I HAD TO FLY TO A FILTHY, DIRTY, FALLING APART, & VERY UNSAFE WASHINGTON, D.C., TODAY, & THAT I WAS THEN ARRESTED BY MY POLITICAL OPPONENT, WHO IS LOSING BADLY TO ME IN THE POLLS, CROOKED JOE BIDEN, IT WAS A VERY GOOD DAY!” he wrote, not quoting Ice Cube. But behind the scenes, Trump was in a sour mood.

“I’m learning tonight that Trump left here in a sour and dejected mood. He was, quote, ‘pissed off,’ according to someone who spoke to him,” CNN host Kaitlan Collins said on Thursday night, Mediaite reports. “I am told that the former president, one thing that irked him particularly, was during that hearing today that lasted about 27 minutes, was when the magistrate judge referred to him as simply ‘Mr. Trump.’ That may not sound odd to anyone else, but he is still referred to by his former title ‘President Trump’ when he’s at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey, as he is tonight, or at Mar-a-Lago.”

“Mr. President, you’re in big trouble.” Is that better?

(Via Mediaite)