Month: January 2024

The long wait for Dune: Part Two is almost over. It’ll be over even sooner if you act quickly.

The sequel to 2021’s magnificent Dune opens wide on March 1st, but IMAX is hosting “fan first” screenings a few days earlier, on February 25th. Want to see Timothée Chalamet ride a sandworm on the biggest screen possible? You can search for screenings here.

Dune: Part One returned to IMAX theaters for one day only, last night, and included a sneak peek at the sequel. According to Inverse, director Denis Villeneuve “introduced the epic scene in which Paul rides a sandworm. Telling us that he ‘dreamt of this sequence’ since he was a little kid, Villeneuve also promised the next Dune will have more action and more sandworm riding.”

What more could you want? Here’s more on Dune: Part Two:

Dune: Part Two will explore the mythic journey of Paul Atreides as he unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a path of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the known universe, he endeavors to prevent a terrible future only he can foresee.

Dune: Part Two stars Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Charlotte Rampling, Javier Bardem, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Christopher Walken, and Léa Seydoux.

Las Vegas’ Lovers & Friends music festival will be coming back for another year. With Usher, Backstreet Boys, Snoop Dogg, and many more musicians set to perform, it is truly gearing up to be another jam-packed day for those attending.

Given the festival announced its 2024 lineup just a few days ago, there is a ton of new information to know about it — along with how to get tickets.

Here’s everything to help you be prepared.

When Is Lovers & Friends 2024?

The Lovers & Friends Festival will take place on Saturday, May 4, as the artists will be only performing at the one-day event.

Where Is Lovers & Friends 2024 Held?

The Lovers & Friends event is being held at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds.

Who Is Headlining Lovers & Friends 2024?

There are quite a few headliners for this year, with Janet Jackson, Usher, Backstreet Boys, Lil Wayne, Gwen Stefani, and Snoop Dogg being among the top-billed performers.

When Does The Lovers & Friends 2024 Lineup Come Out?

The lineup for Lovers & Friends 2024 has already been released, as it dropped earlier this week. You can view the poster below.

Is Lovers & Friends 2024 Sold Out?

Right now, no. Tickets for the Lovers & Friends festival have yet to go on sale, but will likely wind up selling out.

Can You Still Buy Tickets For Lovers & Friends 2024?

Those interested in attending the festival can sign up for the presale through their website. The tickets will go on sale tomorrow (January 26) at 10 a.m. PT.

How Much Are These Lovers & Friends 2024 Tickets?

A General Admission pass starts at $235, and GA+ begins at $595. A VIP ticket starts at $695. There is also a VIP Cabana option, along with hotel and ticket packages starting at $679.

John Oliver got quite the surprise during a Wednesday appearance on TODAY. The Last Week Tonight host was doing a victory lap for his Emmy win when he learned that his old boss, Jon Stewart, is returning as host of The Daily Show. Well, part time anyway. Stewart will host the Comedy Central program on Monday nights as America heads into what’s looking like another election show down between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

When asked for his reaction (as the news broke during his TODAY appearance), Oliver was stunned at the turn of events, but he had nothing but good things to say about Stewart, who he worked under during his early days as a Daily Show correspondent.

“I mean, that’s, that is a surprise,” Oliver said via Variety. “That’s a show that needs a host. He certainly is a very, very good one. So yeah, it’ll be exciting to see what he does.”

However, Oliver didn’t contain his remarks to Stewart’s return. He chastised Comedy Central’s parent company Paramount Global for not picking a full-time host to replace Trevor Noah, especially when the show is sitting on a stable of worthy talent:

But Oliver also believes that “after 2025, they should appoint a permanent host,” naming former “Daily Show” correspondent Roy Wood Jr. and former Peacock host Amber Ruffin as potential candidates.

“But it’s going to be very exciting to see Jon again in an election year,” Oliver continued.

In the meantime, Stewart will man his old desk on Monday nights as a rotating group of hosts will fill in for the remainder of the week. That pool will most likely consist of Jordan Klepper, Desi Lydic, Ronny Chieng, Michael Kosta, and Dulcé Sloan.

(Via Variety)

Jake Gyllenhaal knows that the Road House remake presented “big shoes to fill,” meaning that no one will ever replace the late Patrick Swayze. He’s still giving it his Best Ripped Effort, and surely, Andy Dwyer will be somewhere watching to see if that throat rip happens. Somehow, I doubt that will be on the 2024 plan (not to mention a scene like the one that gave an ornery Bill Murray fuel for many years), but you never know. This remake is, after all, initially streaming on Amazon Prime — which is one of the hottest destinations for impossibly ripped leading men — rather than heading to theaters.

Gyllenhaal’s Dalton is a former UFC Fighter (Conor McGregor has a role in the film, too) who finds that the Florida Keys are oddly full of overly aggressive people, who he must punch the living daylights out of as a bouncer. This includes J.D. Pardo, apparently fresh off putting Mayans M.C. to rest, which is an interesting little “Degrees of Kurt Sutter” game that viewers can play, given that Gyllenhaal previously hopped in the ring for Southpaw, written by Sutter and directed by Antoine Fuqua.

Does Gyllenhaal sell his Dalton as much as possible? Sure looks like it. I hope that he was able to hydrate like a demon after filming shirtless scenes for Doug Liman. From the synopsis:

WELCOME TO THE ROAD HOUSE: Prepare for legendary fights, brutal bloodshed, massive explosions, epic boat chases and jolts of mischief. Set to deliver first-rate action with some playful surprises along the way.

The film is billed by Amazon as an “adrenaline filled reimagining of the iconic 1980s film,” so again, everyone acknowledges that Gyllenhaal is not Patrick Swayze because no one could fit that bill. Jessica Williams co-stars as Dalton’s pal who owns the road house, and in addition to J.D. Pardo, some of the people that Gyllenhaal might punch include Billy Magnussen, Joaquim de Almedia, Lukas Gage, Arturo Castro, B.K. Cannon, Beau Knapp, and Darren Barnet. Godspeed to all of their faces.

Amazon also released a poster that doesn’t take advantage of the ripped status as much as it could. Why squish those abs up? Reacher would never.

Road House comes to Amazon on March 21.

Back in May 2023, 50 Cent declared he was on a weight-loss mission ahead of his Final Lap Tour, saying, “We gonna do the tour and stuff like that, right? So I’m back working out like that. I always work out, but it’s different when I gotta start running and all that sh*t. Matter of fact, I’ma show y’all [on] Live every day. Yeah, I’ma do five miles in front of ’em every day. You gonna see me come back down.”

Well, it’s been less than a year and indeed, 50 has made some significant progress. The rapper has sported a noticeably slimmer physique lately, which had some thinking that he used Ozempic as part of his weight-loss journey. In a new video shared last night (January 24), though, he revealed what’s actually going on: He just put in the good old-fashioned work.

50 revealed he has lost 43 pounds, saying, “Everybody talking about weight loss. I was in the gym, I was working the f*ck out, man. And they say it was Ozempic. I was running, I was running. I was doing what I had to do. You see me on tour, I ran around. I was 253 pounds, I came down, I’m 210 right now, right. How you feel about it? You tell me how you feel about it later, right.”

Check out the video below.

The ominous social media wipe remains undefeated. Earlier this month, Justin Timberlake wiped his Instagram grid — a move that has become The Bat-Signal for an imminent album rollout. Timberlake has been confirming everybody’s well-founded suspicions since. Days later, he announced a one-night-only concert in his hometown Memphis, Tennessee, where he performed a then-unreleased song. This morning, January 25, Timberlake released that song (with a video), “Selfish,” as the lead single from his forthcoming album, Everything I Thought It Was, which had been announced last week.

Below is everything else you need to know (so far) about Timberlake’s first album since 2018’s Man Of The Woods.

Justin Timberlake’s Everything I Thought It Was Release Date

Everything I Thought It Was is due out March 15, 2024, per a press release. It will arrive via RCA Records. Find more information here.

Justin Timberlake’s Everything I Thought It Was Tracklist

Timberlake has yet to unveil the EITIW tracklist. All we have so far is “Selfish.”

Justin Timberlake’s Everything I Thought It Was Singles

Again, everything is coming up “Selfish!” Though, it should be noted that Timberlake will serve as the SNL musical guest this Saturday, January 27, so it’s on the board that Timberlake performs another single during the show.

Justin Timberlake’s Everything I Thought It Was Features

It’s getting redundant at this point, but again, this fits under the “we’ll see” umbrella.

Justin Timberlake’s Everything I Thought It Was Album Cover Artwork

See the artworks for Everything I Thought It Was and “Selfish,” as relayed per press release, below.

Justin Timberlake’s Upcoming Tour Dates

Timberlake has all but confirmed he will tour in support of Everything I Thought It Was. As seen in an Instagram video posted by Timberlake from his aforementioned Memphis concert, Timberlake told the audience, “See you on tour!” Timberlake has not officially announced the tour, but he will perform another one-night-only concert at Irving Plaza in New York City on Wednesday, January 31, which happens to be his birthday.

A second coach has been relieved of his duties on the bench after 43 games this season in the NBA. The same week the Milwaukee Bucks made a stunning move to fire Adrian Griffin in his first season with a 30-13 record and hire Doc Rivers, the Washington Wizards have made a much less eyebrow raising move after a 7-36 start to the year.

In the midst of his third season as head coach of the team, Wes Unseld Jr. will transition from head coach to a front office role, remaining with the organization but no longer coaching the team. The team announced the move on Thursday morning, hours after their latest loss to the Timberwolves — their fifth loss in a row.

Assistant coach Brian Keefe will take over, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, as he looks to build some kind of positive momentum over the back half of the season.

That will be hard to do with the roster as currently constructed — and especially so if they continue tearing down in Year 1 of their rebuild at the deadline. Being bad was the plan this season in Washington, but it’s been worse than expected as Jordan Poole has struggled in a starring role, Kyle Kuzma has had ups and downs, and there’s not much in the way of a cohesive team identity at the moment. It might have been a merciful move to not have Unseld’s coaching record (77-130) take any further beating this year (and probably next) as they look to figure out their direction, and they keep the son of a franchise legend employed in the organization, just in a different role.

Reneé Rapp has grown a lot throughout the past year. As she just performed as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, delivering takes of her wildly talented vocals on “Snow Angel” and the energetic “Not My Fault,” Rapp’s audience gained a ton of new recruits.

For those who are just discovering the star, whether it’s through her music career or her reprised appearance as Regina George in the movie adaptation of the Mean Girls musical, there still is a lot to know about how Rapp got to where she is today.

Here’s what to know.

How Did Reneé Rapp Get Famous?

Rapp started her career in North Carolina, where she participated in high school theater productions. She won the Best Actress award at Charlotte’s Blumey Awards for a role in the school’s take on Big Fish. However, it was winning the Best Performance By An Actress at NYC’s Jimmy Awards and getting a $10,000 scholarship that kickstarted her career.

From there, she performed in other local plays like Spring Awakening and appeared at BroadwayCon’s 2019 Star To Be event — where she displayed her killer vocal range. In May of that year, Rapp announced that she would be playing Regina in the Mean Girls Broadway musical. This ran until March of 2020 when the pandemic led to the show’s permanent closure.

The star kept working, eventually being cast as Leighton in HBO Max’s The Sex Lives Of College Girls in October 2020. While she has since departed the show to focus on her music career, that has proven just as strong as a career path.

Rapp began touring in 2022, dropping her debut album Snow Angel in 2023, and then doing an international tour tied to that. Basically, she is very, very busy — but it is paying off.

On top of that, Rapp has been a delight in recent interviews, which has garnered so much attention that she joked about it on Saturday Night Live.

Modern Family ran for 11 seasons and 250 episodes. There’s a lot of options, but Sofia Vergara knows which episode is her favorite.

“There’s one that always we as the co-stars, we always remember when we are together, and I think it was on the second season, we did a Halloween episode,” the Griselda star, who played Gloria on the NBC sitcom, said during this week’s episode of Watch What Happens Live (she’s referring to the cleverly-titled episode “Halloween”). “It was all in the Dunphys house and we all had costumes, and for some reason, we couldn’t get it together.”

Vergara’s on-screen husband, Ed O’Neil, was “dressed as a gargoyle. I was a witch, so the producers and the director wanted to kill us because we could not hold it together. We would laugh.”

Previously, Vergara was asked by Jimmy Fallon about whether it’s time for Modern Family — which, anecdotally, feels like it’s on the verge of a The Office-style resurgence in popularity — to get a reboot. “No, it’s only been four years,” she replied, wisely. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem right. I feel like we need a little bit more time.” But if the inevitable Modern Family reboot needs funding, Ed O’Neil knows a guy. Just don’t ask too many questions.

You can watch Vergara on WWHL above.

Earlier this week, as Donald Trump was blasting The Smiths and going on all-caps tirades, Team Joe Biden released a new line of merchandise ahead of the 2024 presidential election. There’s shirts, digital phone backgrounds, and stickers with the slogan, “Together, We Will Defeat Donald Trump Again.”

Seth Meyers isn’t impressed.

“Oh, Democrats, why are you so bad at this stuff?” Meyers said during Wednesday’s episode of Late Night after putting his head in his hands. “That is not a slogan, that’s like an affirmation you tape on your bathroom mirror.” He continued, “Slogans don’t have multiple punctuation marks in them. A slogan is like, ’Let’s go,’ or, ‘Vote or die.’ This is a sentence so awkward that you think, ‘Oh it must spell out a cool acronym,’ and then it doesn’t.”

I dunno, I think TWWDDTA has legs. Way catchier than MAGA.

Meyers wasn’t finished. “Also, you can’t end your slogan with ‘again’ when his [Trump’s] slogan ends with ‘again.’ Democrats, I’m begging you. Please suck less,” he said before offering a new motto from the Democratic party: “Democrats: We Suck… Less.”

You can watch Meyers’ Late Night monologue, where he also covered Mitch McConnell declining to say whether he’ll endorse Trump, above.