Month: August 2023

Iranian-Swedish R&B singer Snoh Aalegra is gearing up for her fourth studio album. Today (August 2), Aalegra has shared “Sweet Tea,” a piano-driven ballad on which she reflects on a pleasant love.

“Sweet Tea” features Aalegra looks fondly on the time spent with someone in her life, finding safety and comfort in their presence.

“You make no sense / So perfect, it makes no sense / Like that empty cup you left in my, my fridge / And that sweet tea is sweeter than you, sweeter than you / Sweeter than you / It feels like I’m dreamin’, dreamin’ / But my dreams ain’t sweetеr than you,” she sings on the song’s chorus.

The song features production by prolific producer and Aalegra’s frequent collaborator, No I.D., and features a slight chord change near the end, encompassing the warmth and whirlwind of emotions accompanied by love. “Sweet Tea” follows Aalegra’s recent single, “Be My Summer,” which was released last month.

Though Aalegra hasn’t said much about her upcoming album, it’s likely that it may arrive soon. Her debut album, Feels, came out in 2017, and was followed by Ugh, Those Feels Again in 2019. In 2021, Aalegra dropped Temporary Highs In Violet Skies, continuing this biannual album release pattern. If this continues, we might be able to look forward to hearing Aalegra’s fourth album before the end of the year.

You can listen to “Sweet Tea” above.

Sucker Punch is the Star Wars: The Last Jedi of Zack Snyder movies. Depending on who you ask, it’s either the worst thing he’s ever made (Rotten Tomatoes thinks so), or it’s a misunderstood gem. “Polarizing” is the word Snyder used to describe the reaction to his action-fantasy film during a recent interview with Letterboxd.

“It was a very polarizing film. To be frank, the people I’ve run across who’ve come to me and said ‘Sucker Punch is my favorite movie’ are normally angsty teenage girls. It’s like a Morrissey song or something,” he said (the more you ignore Sucker Punch, the closer Zack Snyder gets).

Snyder felt disheartened by the main criticisms he heard of Sucker Punch, that it was “too exploitative” and that “people took the movie as if the girls fighting and all that stuff was the movie.” So he wants a Zack Snyder’s Justice League-like director’s cut in the hope that people will reconsider it.

“Brazil was a big influence on the movie as well. I’d say those three movies really – Brazil, Frances, and All That Jazz really were the main influences of the movie. I’ve never gotten around to doing the director’s cut. I still plan to at some point.”

If Sucker Punch does get a director’s cut, can everyone be chill this time?

(Via Letterboxd)

Back in December 2020, the burgeoning DC Universe made two momentous moves shortly after James Gunn took the reins of the studio: Henry Cavill was out as Superman, and Wonder Woman 3 was apparently not moving forward. One of those decisions appears to be permanent as Gunn has already cast a new Man of Steel for his upcoming Superman: Legacy, but according to Gal Gadot, the Wonder Woman situation is a bit more fluid.

While promoting her new Netflix movie, Heart of Stone, in an interview that took place before the SAG-AFTRA strike, Gadot surprisingly revealed that Wonder Woman 3 is still in the works.

Via Comic Book:

“I love portraying Wonder Woman,” Gadot says. “It’s so close to and dear to my heart. From what I heard from James and from Peter is that we’re gonna develop a Wonder Woman 3 together.”

While Gunn has been seemingly working towards a near-total rebooting of the DC Comics live-action universe, Gadot continued to be a presence in the latest films. She appeared in both Shazam! Fury of the Gods and The Flash while Cavill was reportedly cut from the latter.

Shortly after the initial Wonder Woman 3 news hit, Gunn also shot down a fan who claimed that Gadot was “booted” from the Amazonian warrior role, which at the time, suggested that she may stick around for Gunn’s retooled DC Universe. Judging by this latest development, that might actually be the case.

Heart of Stone starring Gal Gadot starts streaming August 11 on Netflix.

(Via Comic Book)

Selena Gomez and Francia Raisa have had their ups-and-downs as friends over the years, but the pair were incredibly close — so much so that Raisa was the kidney donor to Gomez when she needed it.

Although the pair went through a public social media rough patch a few months back, Raisa opened up about the decision to be a kidney donor during a recent interview on the Good Guys Podcast.

“I’ve said this before,” Raisa said. “I just felt it in my heart. I knew I was a match. I knew it was gonna happen. No one forced me to do anything. It came out of the genuine kindness of my heart.”

“‘I take better care of myself now than I did before,” she added, pointing out that she now helps other organ donors with the process.

A few days ago, Gomez also shared a sweet birthday tribute to Raisa on Instagram, hinting that the two had possibly repaired their friendship. She included photos of the two of them throughout their friendship.

“Happiest of birthdays to this special human beings. No matter where life takes us, I love you. @franciaraisa,” Gomez captioned the post.

Raisa also reportedly follows Gomez back on Instagram again. Here’s hoping these two have patched things up.

Earlier this week, it was reported that a lawsuit had been filed by three women against the singer Lizzo claiming that she had created a hostile work environment. Among the claims listed in the suit were allegations of racial, religious, and sexual harassment, interference with prospective economic advantage, and false imprisonment, as well as others, leveled against Lizzo, her production company, and her dance team captain, Shirlene Quigley. Not every complaint applies to every defendant. Here’s a further explanation of the lawsuit.

Defendants Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams, and Noelle Rodriguez are all former members of Lizzo’s dance team. Davis and Williams were hired after competing on Lizzo’s show, Watch Out For The Big Grrrls, while Rodriguez was also hired around the same time after appearing in Lizzo’s “Rumors” video. Davis and Williams were both fired earlier this year, while Rodriguez voluntarily resigned. They have since secured the services of Ron Zambrano, the employment litigation chair at West Coast Trial Lawyers, who filed the lawsuit on their behalf on Tuesday, August 1.

In the suit, Lizzo is accused of organizing nights out at strip clubs and nude cabarets with her tour staff, where she is said to have coerced one of the dancers into touching a nude performer’s breast. Although she did not require participation in these outings, the plaintiffs claim that she offered preferential treatment to those who did, but did not always disclose the nature of the group activities ahead of time, making it harder for them to opt out.

She’s also accused of overworking dancers; a 12-hour rehearsal is explicitly mentioned. Dancers were threatened with dismissal if they gave unsatisfactory performances. One dancer says she was fired for pushing back when Lizzo accused the team of drinking before performances. One dancer also believes that comments Lizzo made about her commitment level were “thinly veiled” criticisms of her weight. She says she was fired for recording a meeting with the singer.

Meanwhile, Quigley is accused of shaming the dancers for their sex lives outside of work and trying to convert them to her religion. They also say she made inappropriate sexual comments. Although the suit does not specify a dollar amount, the three women are asking for damages including unpaid wages, loss of earnings, emotional distress, and attorney’s fees. You can see more information below.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8LRWfBo/

In predictable fashion, Sean Hannity rushed to Donald Trump‘s aid on Tuesday night. The former president has been hit with his third indictment, this time for the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capital building as well as his aggressive efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. As usual, Hannity played fast and loose with the facts while railing against the “deep state” and calling for the resignation of Attorney General Merrick Garland.

“This is an incredibly weak, baseless, convoluted indictment,” Hannity ranted. “It is bizarrely centered around what is clearly protected speech, zero criminal statutes, because there are none that were applicable that are actually written into law.”

Via Media Matters for America:

Are we now living in America where equal justice is dead? The equal application of our laws is a thing of the past? That where the shredding of our Constitution, we’re witnessing this in real time, in front of our own eyes? Is it past time to impeach Merrick Garland? Is it time to flush out all of the Democratic activists out of the bureaucracy and the deep state?

There were just a couple things wrongs with Hannity’s rant. For starters, the indictment included four criminal statutes that Trump allegedly violated. They’re listed right there in the 45-page document. And speaking of said document, the third paragraph is dedicated entirely to the issue of Trump’s first amendment rights.

“The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won,” the indictment reads. “He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts , audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful.”

As Twitter user Kevinly Father noted, Hannity claimed he “spent an hour” reading the indictment, yet somehow he missed the above paragraph and a listing of the criminal statutes. Funny that.

(Via Acyn on Twitter, Media Matters for America)

Congrats to Donald Trump for not only being the only U.S. president to ever face criminal charges, but now, he’s on his third round. Concurrent, no less, but he did once promise his MAGA followers that they’d win so much that they’d eventually be “sick and tired” of winning. Surely, this is not what he meant (because he did respond to the third indictment by comparing his prosecutors to Nazis), but you never know.

Speaking of confusing statements, Tucker Carlson replacement Jesse Watters reacted to this third indictment in a few ways. He didn’t pull a Rudy Giuliani (to be fair, no one could go off the rails in quite that way), but instead, Watters aimed for sarcasm, and this appears to gone over about as well as his recent silver lining for slavery, which he somehow argued benefited slaves and their families in the long run.

Sarcasm is actually the kindest way that one can describe Watters responding to Trump’s indictment for his efforts to overturn the election like this: “They said the defendant impaired the federal government from functioning. Isn’t that literally the Republican Party platform?”

In other words: small government = good? I can only guess that going simplistic with this argument was an attempt at humor, but that of course wasn’t Watters’ whole evening. Additionally, he also attempted to argue that perhaps Trump didn’t know it was wrong to ask Mike Pence to help him overthrow democracy.

Tucker Carlson must be fuming with jealousy to have missed this opportunity to get inside the Fox News audience’s heads, too. Meanwhile, Trump is almost definitely not pleased to be dealing with the Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who has not dealt kindly with the MAGA rioters who did Trump’s bidding during the Jan. 6 insurrection. Get ready to see a whole lot of “WITCH HUNT” in all caps on Truth Social.

Dwight Howard‘s first two stints with the Los Angeles Lakers couldn’t have been more different. Back in 2012, Howard was one of the best basketball players on earth and got traded to Los Angeles to join forces with Kobe Bryant. That didn’t go especially well, and after one year, the big man hit unrestricted free agency, which saw him leave town and become a Houston Rocket.

Fast forward to 2019 and Howard returned to the Lakers on a veteran’s minimum contract after bouncing around the league with four different teams in the previous four seasons. He largely came off the bench for a squad led by LeBron James, thrived in that role, and won an NBA championship for the first (and, to this point, only) time in his career.

Howard’s career hasn’t quite reached those heights since then, as he’s had stints with the Philadelphia 76ers and a third season with the Lakers before heading over to Taiwan last year. But the perspective that he’s gained throughout his career has been rather unique, and recently, Howard appeared on the “My Expert Opinion” to give an answer to a simple but interesting question about his time as a Laker: What was different about being teammates with Bryant and James?

Howard started by pointing out that he was “at two different stages of my life and career with both players,” nothing that he was young, in the prime of his career, and had never played alongside another superstar of Bryant’s caliber when they teamed up in 2012.

“As I got older, I started to realize more of how he felt,” Howard said. “And as a young ballplayer, you’re not seeing that. You think the game lasts forever. When you get older, you see I ain’t got the same amount of time and energy to put into this, that, and the third. It seemed like we fell out, but it wasn’t really like we fell out, we just had some disagreements on the court, like any other team and any other teammate.”

From there, Howard started talking about James, and had high praise for his personality.

“LeBron almost act like someone from the south side of Georgia,” Howard said. “We act kinda like twins — joking, silly, have a good time. We get on the court, we still gonna have a good time but we’re gonna dominate. Kobe ain’t bullsh*tting with nobody, he might not come in the locker room and talk, and everybody like, ‘So, he just gonna walk all the way past us, not dap nobody up, give a head nod or nothing? He’s just walked past us.’”

In retrospect, Howard now thinks this was Bryant’s way to get the team ready for practice when he entered the locker room. “He was just a little different in his approach,” he said. “But that’s Kobe, that’s what made him who he is.”

Jessica Chastain won an Oscar last year, but more importantly, she got to make out (and then some) with Oscar Isaac. They haven’t been the same since.

HBO’s Scenes From a Marriage miniseries starred Chastain and Isaac as a married couple, and the highs and lows (lots of lows) they faced in their relationship. It’s a rough but worthwhile watch, with a Golden Globe-nominated performance from Chastain. The actress called her “intensely emotional” role “very tough” in an interview with the Little Gold Men podcast.

“Scenes From a Marriage was very tough,” Chastain said. “And I love Oscar [Isaac], but the reality is, our friendship has never quite been the same. We’re going to be okay, but after that, I was like, I need a little bit of a breather.” There was so much “I love you, I hate you” in Scenes From a Marriage, she said, and the long-time friends needed time apart from each other. Just like the world needed time to process the red carpet photos of two of them.

Chastain continued:

“But there’s so much joy in what I get to do. There’s a lot of catharsis. I feel like I have the best job in the world because I get to have these experiences. They’re so out of this world and feel like they’re mine. But then I live a very quiet life. I don’t have to have these tortured things in my life. I play them and I experience them, and then I come home and I live quietly and peacefully.”

You can listen to the podcast below.

(Via Vanity Fair)

After hearing about how some artists allegedly treat their crew, it’s refreshing to hear stories of generosity and kindness. Beyoncé, who is currently on her Renaissance World Tour, is always said to be gracious to her team. Though she doesn’t do a whole lot of interviews, many of the people she works with often speak fondly of her, noting how well she treats her collaborators.

Yesterday (August 1), Oprah Winfrey and her longtime friend Gayle King took to social media to express the joy they felt after Beyoncé’s concert. The two lauded Beyoncé for her confidence and how powerful she made them feel.

Hannah Beachler, an Academy Award-winning production designer who has previously worked with Beyoncé, shared Oprah and Gayle’s video on her Twitter feed, while also sharing her experience of working with Bey herself.

“Working with Beyoncé over the years, I have said this each and every time,” said Beachler. “It’s not just on stage. She is tentacles of light, and those tentacles wrap you in power, love, and confidence. She is kind and protective and she’s a girls girl. This is her presence daily.”

She continued, noting that while Bey works very hard on her craft, she also prioritizes her family.

“She is a true Mama to her babies too,” said Beachler. “And she works, not to perfection but until it’s right. She is in love with her husband and he’s (a comedian and kind) in love with her. But be clear don’t cross her.”

Beachler closed out her thread with a story about how Bey went out of her way to make her crew feel special after a disappointing loss.

“One last little story. When I started on Black is King & went to the L.A. offices. There was a bunch of little plastic Emmy Awards w/handwritten names on them,” she said. “They told me b/c they didn’t win for Homecoming, B stayed up after & made everyone their own special one w/ a note.”

It’s good to know Beyoncé is a class act behind the scenes. It would surely break our souls if she weren’t.