Month: October 2023

When it smashed reality back in the summer of 2021, the first season of Loki was an instant hit with fans and is still regarded as the best Marvel series on Disney+ to date. Obviously, that puts a lot of pressure on Season 2, which arrives later this week.

Judging by the first batch of reviews, Loki Season 2 may not hit the highs of the first season, but the new crop of episodes appear to be a (mostly) good time that once again relies on its ace in the hole: Tom Hiddleston. However, the reviews this time around are a little more divided as critics aren’t entirely enthralled Season 2’s story, and then there’s the Jonathan Majors of it all.

Currently facing trial on assault charges, Majors’ presence is a sticky issue that pops up in more than one review. The actor is featured more prominently in the show than trailers and promotional material have revealed, which led to some awkward viewing for some critics. (Loki Season 2 wrapped production prior to Majors’ arrest, leaving reshoots off the table.) However, Hiddleston’s charm and seeing him paired with Owen Wilson once again goes a long way in smoothing over Loki Season 2’s bumps.

You can see what the reviews are saying below:

Mike Ryan, Uproxx:

The thing is, Loki is a pretty fun show. Everything is getting quite absurd in the superhero movie world with multiple universes and variants and all that. I think I’d be happier just going back to, “guy in a metal suit fights bad guys.” But at least Loki knows how absurd all this is and ramps everything up to such a high degree, with every ridiculous thing being met by Wilson’s deadpan, “Whelp, another day at the office,” it can’t help itself from being a good time.

Therese Lacson, Collider:

Much of the strength of Loki hinges on the performance of the cast. Tom Hiddleston easily slides back into his persona as Loki — perhaps a bit more harried this season and a bit wiser, but still the trickster god. For those who worried before Season 1 that an Avengers-era Loki might lose his complexity, it was clear that the show was able to give him back that depth, and Season 2 develops it even more. It’s hard to imagine that this Loki is the same one who once dramatically said he was burdened with glorious purpose. In lesser hands, the character might feel like too sharp of a shift, but Hiddleston has always imparted a fragility to his character that has made him easy to love even when he’s doing particularly terrible things. A heroic Loki doesn’t feel that far removed from the villainous one — perhaps just a bit less deranged and a bit more humble.

John Nugent, Empire:

In fact, everyone seems to be enjoying themselves — most of all Hiddleston. Having donned the green horns for well over a decade by this point, his Loki remains endlessly charismatic. Hiddleston still imbues him with that delicious sense of playful moral ambiguity, but there’s a clarity to the character at this point that feels fresh: that somehow, by trying to save the universe, he finally found the glorious purpose he was looking for.

Yasmine Kandil, DiscussingFilm:

Even though the show does center around its titular trickster, this latest season thrives because it avoids neglecting its electric ensemble cast. With a wide mix of new and returning characters, it wouldn’t be a surprise if a couple of names got pushed to the side or worse, totally forgotten about. However, every player in Loki Season 2 is given rich material to play around with. Most of all, everyone is granted their moment to play an important role in this glorious jigsaw of a narrative.

Bob Strauss, The Wrap:

Characters with compelling issues, high existential drama, quirky comedy and world-threatening action are blended better than in any other Disney+ show to date. “Loki” Season 2 may be the most spectacularly cinematic of the streamer’s Marvel series too, awash with cool FX and reality-shaking mobile camerawork that blasts through awesome sci-fi tableaux. We also explore goofy/brutalist new corners of the TVA bureaucracy’s planet-sized HQ, and each episode so far incorporates beautifully detailed period locations, whether a 1980s McDonald’s seen through adoring alien eyes or a funhouse mirror re-creation of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

From here on out, the Loki Season 2 reviews get a little more pointed. Just a warning in case you don’t want to ruin the vibes going into the new episodes:

Jarrod Jones, IGN:

Those expecting a new multiversally manic season of Loki should temper their expectations; the absence of director Kate Herron has seemingly removed the series’ wily sense of anything-goes possibility, effectively turning Season 2 – and, shockingly, Loki himself – into an obedient, uninteresting cog in the MCU’s increasingly unwieldy mega-structure.

Louis Chilton, The Independent:

To Loki’s credit, there are some commendable elements here. The production design is impressive, with the retro-futuristic bureaucracy of the TVA an original, if just slightly drab, visual idea. The story is also genuinely unpredictable from one episode to the next, albeit fruitlessly so: unmoored from time and space, it’s hard to care about anything that’s happening. The stakes are often so incomprehensibly high – whole universes, realities, on the precipice of oblivion – that they’re functionally meaningless.

Ben Travers, IndieWire:

Then there’s Jonathan Majors. Designated a “special guest star” in the episodes in which he appears, the actor currently on trial for multiple assault charges reemerges as He Who Remains, the mysterious figure who Sylvie killed in the Season 1 finale. To say he’s a distraction would be an understatement, considering the role’s prominence in “Loki” and its impact on the MCU’s future. Majors’ talents are undeniable, and he’s mercifully disarmed here — more comic relief than terrorizing villain — but it’s hard to kick back and enjoy his frenzied energy or stilted intonations when you know the monstrous accusations levied against the man in real life.

Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter:

The handiness of the phrase [“wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff’] came to mind more than a few times while I watched the second season of Disney+‘s Loki, on which the creative team has absolutely succeeded in using Marvel‘s money to make a wildly expensive season of Doctor Who featuring Tom Hiddleston as the Doctor. It’s such a perfectly worthy goal — one frequently hinted at in the six-episode first season — that it’s almost churlish to complain that, after however many hundred installments, Doctor Who has mostly dispensed with the need to wallow in the sort of nonstop exposition that too frequently bogs Loki down.

Loki Season 2 premieres October 5 at 9 ET/6 PT on Disney+.

Another day, another lawsuit for Elon Musk.

The guy who ruined Twitter is not only in legal trouble after he falsely accused a recent-college graduate of being a federal agent involved with a neo-Nazi group, Musk is also being sued by his ex-wife, Grimes, over the custody of their kids. According to Page Six, “Grimes filed a ‘petition to establish parental relationship’ on Sept. 29 in a California court… The request asks the court to identify the legal parents of a child when they are not married.”

Although the docket for the case is public, the filings have been sealed; however, it does not appear that the Tesla co-founder has responded to Grimes’ petition. She also has yet to request child support or custody rights.

Musk and Grimes have three kids together: X Æ A-Xii, Exa Dark Sideræl, and Techno Mechanicus. The Tesla founder is now up to 10 kids overall in his one-man quest to populate the planet. He once claimed that “population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming,” but as Joseph Chamie, a consulting demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division, told CNN, “He’s better off making cars and engineering than at predicting the trajectory of the population.”

(Via Page Six)

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s rumored relationship has sent fans into a spiral across social media. The “Sweet Nothing” singer only intensified the online hysteria by attending two recent Kansas City Chiefs games. On September 24, Swift’s surprise appearance at the team’s home game versus the Chicago Bears birthed one of the most offbeat viral pieces of content. As Swift enjoyed a quick meal offered in the VIP suite, an image of her sitting beside a plate of chicken, the new “seemingly ranch” meme, was born.

Donna Kelce, Travis’ mother, got wind of the condiment joke and decided to join the fun. In an image posted to her Instagram Story, she was attending her older son’s, Philadelphia Eagles’ center Jason Kelce, game at Lincoln Financial Field. Seen in the photo, Donna and Kevin Miles, best known as State Farm ad character Jake, recreated the moment. “No ‘seemingly ranch’ available at the Linc,” read the picture’s caption.

The ‘seemingly ranch’ meme has turned into a battle of sauces, with brands such as Heinz and Primal Kitchen announcing plans to release a special edition concoction inspired by the pop culture moment.

Whether or not Taylor Swift or Travis Kelce are dating is no longer relevant as Mama Kelce is the true star.

U2 recently kicked off their first performances to celebrate the opening of Las Vegas’ new venue, The Sphere. Their residency, titled U2: UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere, is built around their 1991 album and held in a $2.3 billion space with a wraparound LED screen. (Yes, even on the outside.)

For those who weren’t able to secure tickets for opening night, fans might be wondering how long U2 will play. They are currently doing 25 shows at the Sphere that will run through December 16. However, while most are currently sold-out, tickets might pop up on resale sites.

There are also other events being held inside the venue, including the premiere of director Darren Aronofsky’s Postcard From Earth film that is set to be an immersive experience of the planet. Right now, no other concerts have been announced besides U2.

U2 fans who are also looking to experience more themed events can check out Zoo Station: A U2: UV Experience, a special interactive pop-up that is currently open at The Venetian. There is a gallery inside the two-floored space, as well as a shop for attendees to buy merch themed to the band.

More information on U2: UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere can be found here.

It’s safe to say that the late night TV hosts were inspired by rootin’ tootin’ Lauren Boebert’s Beetlejuice scandal. John Oliver could not wait to address the subject, and he did so repeatedly and joyously. Whereas Stephen Colbert had possibly been practicing at home and had an impression for the ages.

This happened near the end of Colbert’s lengthy monologue that danced viewers through the array of notable happenings since the 5-month writers strike began. At around the 8:30 mark above, the host put a different spin on Boebert having surveillance-video-captured fun with Democrat Bar Guy in a darkened and crowded theater. These are very athletic, lawn-care-inspired moves. Here’s a quick version of what goes down:

“Officials reported she was ‘causing a disturbance,’” Colbert noted. “Which turns out was code for ‘yanking her date’s crank at a family friendly show.’” That wasn’t all: “According to witnesses, she was apparently trying to start him like a lawnmower.”

As one can hear in the video, Colbert’s live-audience was not only thrilled to be back in the studio, too, but they were able to witness this fine dramatic performance by The Late Show host. He even did his own stuntwork. It’s good stuff, so watch the full video above.

You can think of A24‘s Priscilla as the second Elvis movie in two years. Or, more accurately, you can think of it as the first Priscilla Presley movie featuring Elvis Presley.

Directed by Sofia Coppola in her first film since 2020’s On the Rocks, Priscilla stars Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla Presley, who met her future-husband — played here by Jacob Elordi — when she was 14 years old. They were married from 1967 to 1973, and Coppola’s biopic gets into their turbulent time together. You can watch the trailer above, which noticably features a lack of Elvis songs. That’s because Elvis Presley Enterprises doesn’t “like projects that they haven’t originated, and they’re protective of their brand,” Coppola explained to the Hollywood Reporter. “But that made us be more creative.”

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu meets Elvis Presley at a party, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a vulnerable best friend. Through Priscilla’s eyes, Sofia Coppola tells the unseen side of a great American myth in Elvis and Priscilla’s long courtship and turbulent marriage, from a German army base to his dream-world estate at Graceland, in this deeply felt and ravishingly detailed portrait of love, fantasy, and fame.

Priscilla opens in theaters on November 3rd.

It’s telling that on the media site for the second season of Loki – which is where the lead image for this very review comes from – one of the stars of the series is missing. In fact, during the multiple commercials advertising this new season of Loki that I saw while watching football over the weekend, that same actor is missing from all of those, too. Sure, we see a lot of Tom Hiddleston as the title character we’ve gotten to know over the 12 years now somehow. And there’s Owen Wilson back as Mobius, Loki’s partner at the Time Variance Authority, trying to still make sure all the timelines and variants stay in check. And there’s Gugu Mbatha-Raw back as Ravonna Renslayer, causing trouble. And newcomer Ke Huy Quan, fresh off his Oscar win, as the Ouroboros (OB for short), the guy who has seen it all and knows how everything works around the TVA.

But no matter how much the advertising tries to pretend Jonathan Majors (whose trial for domestic violence is now slated to start at the end of October) isn’t in this series, he’s very much in this series. And the whole thing is pretty hard to ignore and ration with while trying to enjoy a series about time travel and alternate timelines.

The thing is, I don’t have any good answers here. And I suspect the folks at Marvel felt the same way. Majors is in this second season of Loki so much (at least through the first four episodes I saw) that it would be impossible to just take him out. His imagery as Kang is everywhere. My best guess is Marvel just decided, well, here it is, and fully expect a bunch of pieces like this one to come out since it’s the first time we are seeing Majors in literally anything since his March arrest. (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania came out in February.)

The thing is, Loki is a pretty fun show. Everything is getting quite absurd in the superhero movie world with multiple universes and variants and all that. I think I’d be happier just going back to, “guy in a metal suit fights bad guys.” But at least Loki knows how absurd all this is and ramps everything up to such a high degree, with every ridiculous thing being met by Wilson’s deadpan, “Whelp, another day at the office,” it can’t help itself from being a good time.

At the end of season one, Loki finds himself at a TVA he doesn’t recognize with images of Kang everywhere. As this season opens, Loki realizes what he’s seeing is the past and is being ripped back and forth across time. Mobius seeks out the help of OB to stop this from happening to Loki, setting up a clever scene as Loki goes back and forth through time, talking to OB in the past and present, which causes present OB to have new memories of Loki from the past in real-time and allows OB the time to build the specific machine needed to help Loki. See, all fun.

But when the artificial intelligence that runs the TVA, Miss Minutes, goes rogue, the equipment there will only work for the founder of the TVA, Kang. (At least I think it’s Kang. It’s still a little confusing if it’s Kang or a Kang variant like He Who Remains, but I think it’s Kang.) So Loki and Mobius go back to 19th century Chicago to enlist a Kang variant for help, Victor Timely (Majors), who is an inventor and con man and an all-around kind of weird dude. Oh, and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino as Loki’s variant) is back, happily living in a timeline in the early ’80s working at McDonald’s, but when this timeline is threatened she also seeks out Victor Timely to kill him, which would be bad.

Marvel has been, kind of shockingly (it’s been seven months now), quiet about what they will do about Majors. And in the past Disney has been quick to take action (remember, James Gunn was fired for some old tweets before he was rehired). The current SAG strike kind of gives them some cover because Majors can’t do press anyway. And with the trial right around the corner, I can only assume they will just wait and see how that goes. And again, I’m not going to pretend I know what they are thinking or what the answers are, but it sure does seem like they’ve punted the ball to all of us to come to our own conclusions about how we feel about all this.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

For the first post-WGA strike episode of The Tonight Show in five months, host Jimmy Fallon helped turn Matthew McConaughey’s children’s book into a song and caught up with musical guest John Mayer. What he didn’t do is address the Rolling Stone report from last month where he was accused of being “dismissive,” “irritable,” and “erratic” to Tonight Show employees, leading to a “toxic” work environment. At least not directly.

“I missed you, oh my god! Five months off, and we are back! I’m so excited to be here. Seriously, I’m more excited than a guy seeing Beetlejuice with Lauren Boebert,” Fallon joked during the opening monologue. Later, things turned serious. “I had a lot of time, five months, a lot of time to really just sit and think, you know? And I finally just took a moment and realized how grateful I am for all of this and for this show. I really love it,” he said, seemingly addressing the allegations. Fallon continued:

“I really love this job, I love doing it. I love telling jokes, I love interviewing people, I love making you laugh. I’m very lucky to have this show, and I want to thank you all for supporting and choosing to have me in your bedrooms at nighttime. This is what I love to do, and I want to do it for a long time. I’m so happy to be back.”

You can watch the monologue above.

Yesterday (October 2), the late-night TV shows returned to the air. That’s a return to normalcy for the television landscape, but it’s also a big deal for the music world, as there are once again regular slots to perform on national TV. To help kick off The Tonight Show post-writers strike, Jimmy Fallon tapped John Mayer for both an interview and a performance.

During their conversation (an extended version of which was shared on the Tonight Show YouTube channel), Mayer spoke about a sketch he wrote for the show that actually made it to air (for a fictional product called “Crypto Bismol”). He also reminisced about the time last year when Questlove (of Tonight Show house band The Roots, of course) played drums for Mayer at Madison Square Garden after Mayer’s regular drummer, Steve Ferrone, was unable to perform due to COVID.

Elsewhere, Mayer also discussed his solo tour and the creative freedom that gives him on stage, as well as his newly announced SiriusXM channel, “Life With John Mayer.” After the interview, Mayer took the stage (solo, of course) for a performance of “Shouldn’t Matter But It Does,” from his 2021 album Sob Rock.

Check out Mayer’s Tonight Show interview and performance above.

Over the last few months, Matt Healy hasn’t made many new friends. In fact, for The 1975, it has seemingly been the exact opposite. Healy has been involved in several public spats with fellow musicians Lucy Dacus, Noel Gallagher, and Rina Sawayama. According to Sawayama, her feud with Healy stems from a myriad of things, including his insensitive remarks about Asian people while taking a jab at rapper Ice Spice.

Healy previously addressed his now-infamous statements on The Adam Friedland Show in July. But yesterday, October 2, during The 1975’s sold-out show at the Hollywood Bowl, he took a moment to issue a formal apology, or so that’s what the Los Angeles, California crowd thought.

In a video captured by a concertgoer, Healy began what was a seemingly genuine reflection of his inappropriate commentary. However, near the end, Healy’s sarcasm emerged as he transitioned into an ad placement for the online therapy service Better Help, with cue cards and an on-screen banner.

Watch the full video and read his statement below.

I apologize to those people, and I promise to do better moving forward. Give it up for an apology. But I also think it’s important that I express my intentions so that everyone knows that there is no ill will coming from them. As an artist, I want to create an environment for myself to perform so, not everything that I do literally. Like for example, I’m onstage right now. But I don’t do this in my normal life..going around singing songs. But I’ve kind of performed exaggerated of myself on other stages, being print or on podcasts, and an often misguided attempt at fulfilling the kind of character role of the 21st-century rockstar. So, it’s complicated. And this might be cheesy, but sometimes playing pretend is the only way you can truly find out who you are. And you could probably say that men would rather do offensive impressions for attention than go to therapy. But there’s nothing wrong with wanting to better yourself. And sometimes that just requires people that really know what they’re talking about.