Month: February 2024

Blackpink’s Lisa will introduce the world to Lalisa Manobal. The public is already familiar with her musical capabilities. But with the disbandment of the K-pop mega group, she’s ready to step into her own and she’s starting with acting.

With notable personal accolades in the recording industry, Lisa has her heart set on picking up a few for her forthcoming onscreen work. Today (February 12), Variety exclusively reports that Lisa is gearing up to make her acting debut. According to the outlet, Lisa has signed on to join season 3 of Max’s (formerly HBO Max) hit show, The White Lotus.

The details of Lisa’s upcoming role are few and far between, but Variety did reveal that after experiencing a “slight snag” in past casting attempts, The White Lotus is set to begin production soon. Filming is rumored to take place around Koh Samui, Phuket, and Bangkok, Thailand.

So far, Walton Goggins is also slated to appear in season 3. Lisa and Goggins will join Leslie Bibb, Dom Hetrakul, Jason Isaacs, Michelle Monaghan, Parker Posey, Natasha Rothwell, and Patrick Schwarzenegger.

Other castmembers include Tayme Thapthimthong, Christian Friedel, Julian Kostov, Morgana O’Reilly, Lek Patravadi, Shalini Peiris, Carrie Coon, Scott Glenn, Francesca Corney, Nicholas Duvernay, Arnas Fedaravičius, Aimee Lou Wood, Sarah Catherine Hook, and Sam Nivola.

The Houston Rockets picked up a 105-103 win over the New York Knicks on Monday night, although it came with a bit of controversy at the very end. While Houston led by as many as 11 points in the fourth quarter, New York was able to come back and tie things up at 103 with less than 10 seconds to go. It looked like things were headed to overtime, as Aaron Holiday threw up a prayer with one hand from way behind the three-point line that missed.

And then, the whistle sounded. The official near Holiday called Jalen Brunson for a foul on his contest, which sent Holiday to the line for three free throws.

Holiday went to the stripe, where he hit his first two shots with 0.1 seconds left on the clock before missing the third. Tom Thibodeau still thought that there was time remaining on the clock, so he tried to draw up a play while the referees looked at the clock. And when it was determined that there was no time left, Thibodeau was unsurprisingly furious.

The foul on Brunson was one of the worst calls we’ve seen out of an official this season, as it really did not look like there was a foul here at all. Regardless, this will assuredly receive a ton of attention when the NBA publishes its Last Two Minute Report for this game on Tuesday.

In 2022, “Malibu” musician Feid launched his first US tour. Fast forward two years later, and Feid has become a fixture in the North American live music market. Today (February 12), Feid took to Instagram to let followers know the “Ferxxocalypsis” will return yet again come spring.

Starting on April 24, Feid is set to kick off his Ferxxocalipsis Tour in Sacramento, California, at Golden 1 Center. “US dates unlocked,” he wrote. “Prepare the outfit, the floors, the glasses, and the babies.” The 27-date run will span the US and parts of Canada. As of his announcement, special guests haven’t been revealed, but with past collaborations with Bad Bunny, J Balvin, Sebastián Yatra, Manuel Turizo, Maluma, and Karol G, there are bound to be a few unexpected onstage cameos.

Continue below for the full schedule and official tour poster.

The Ferxxocalipsis Tour presale begins on Tuesday, February 13, at 10 a.m. local time. On Thursday, February 15, at 10 a.m., the general public sale will kick off. Find more information here.

Feid’s Ferxxocalipsis Tour dates

04/24 — Sacramento, CA @ Golden 1 Center
04/27 — Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum
05/01 — San Jose, CA @ SAP Center
05/03 — Palm Desert, CA @ Acrisure Arena
05/04 — San Diego, CA @ Pechanga Arena
05/10 — Las Vegas, NV @ Michelob ULTRA Arena
05/11 — Phoenix, AZ @ Footprint Center
05/15 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Delta Center
05/18 — Tulsa, OK @ BOK Center
05/19 — Fort Worth, TX @ Dickies Arena
05/22 — Edinburg, TX @ Bert Ogden Arena
05/24 — Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
05/25 — Austin, TX @ Moody Center
05/27 — Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
05/30 — Chicago, IL @ United Center
06/01 — Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre
06/02 — Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena
06/06 — Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
06/07 — Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center
06/09 — Hartford, CT @ XL Center
06/13 — Boston, MA @ TD Garden
06/16 — New York City, NY @ Madison Square Garden
06/20 — Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
06/21 — Greensboro, NC @ Greensboro Coliseum
06/23 — Duluth, GA @ Gas South Arena
06/28 — Orlando, FL @ Kia Center
07/06 — Miami, FL @ Hard Rock Stadium

Feid’s Ferxxocalipsis Tour poster

On Monday evening, the San Antonio Spurs throttled the Toronto Raptors by the final score of 122-99. That was a rather surprising result in itself, as the Spurs entered on a seven-game losing streak and as a solid betting underdog in the game. However, the final result on the scoreboard was not the most interesting thing in a battle between lottery-bound teams, as No. 1 overall pick Victor Wembanyama made history with his individual brilliance.

In only 29 minutes of action during the blowout win, Wembanyama finished the evening with 27 points, 14 rebounds, 10 blocked shots, and five assists. Those numbers jump off the screen immediately and, while he was already enjoying a monster night, the tenth block was what took it from absurd to historic.

Wembanyama became the only rookie in history to finish with a triple-double featuring blocks in fewer than 30 minutes of play. He also became the first player since Clint Capela in 2021 to rack up a triple-double with blocks, and Wemby joined some historic company of players to finish with at least 25 points and five assists in a game with double-digit rebounds and blocks.

Despite San Antonio’s team struggles, Wembanyama is putting together an otherworldly season. He is the league’s most dominant shot blocker, which is not the norm for a first-year player, and his statistical resume is simply awe-inspiring.

Given his one-of-a-kind skill set, it seems like a safe bet to project more history-making nights for Wembanyama. Monday was still special, though, and he is already living up to the considerable pre-draft hype.

Before Titanic came out, Kate Winslet wasn’t exactly an unknown. She’d already nabbed an Oscar nomination, for the hit Jane Austen movie Sense and Sensibility. She’d been in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (alongside no less than Melanie Lynskey), played Ophelia in Kenneth Branagh’s four-hour Hamlet film. Heck, she was in A Kid in King Arthur’s Court. But the then-highest grossing movie ever made (not adjusted for inflation) took her several rungs higher on the fame latter, and being Titanic-level famous? No, sir, she did not like it.

“I felt like I had to look a certain way, or be a certain thing, and because media intrusion was so significant at that time, my life was quite unpleasant,” Winslet told Net-a-Porter, in a bit caught by Deadline.

She added, “Journalists would always say, ‘After Titanic, you could have done anything and yet you chose to do these small things’… and I was like, ‘Yeah, you bet your f*ckin’ life I did! Because, guess what, being famous was horrible.’”

Not that she regretted starring James Cameron’s absurdly beloved mega-blockbuster. “I was grateful, of course,” she said. “I was in my early twenties, and I was able to get a flat. But I didn’t want to be followed literally feeding the ducks.”

Mind you, Winslet doesn’t fame that much anymore. “Oh, it’s such a ridiculous word!” she said. “I wear it really lightly. It’s not a burden, any of it. [Titanic] continues to bring people huge amounts of joy. The only time I am like, ‘Oh god, hide’, is if we are on a boat somewhere.”

Another way of looking at it: Had she not done Titanic, there’s a chance some of her finest work never would have come her way. Had she not played Rose, would she have found herself many years later outside of Philadelphia falling in love with Wawa? Maybe, but maybe not.

(Via Net-a-Porter and Deadline)

In Beyoncé’s Super LVIII commercial, she set out to crash the internet, and that she did. Immediately following the ad’s airing, she unveiled two new singles, “16 Carriages” and “Texas Hold ‘Em.”

The releases kicked off her country era, slated to be heard throughout her upcoming album, Renaissance: Act II. But before the Beyhive could dust off their daisy dukes, Azealia Banks is rattling off her opinion on the creative venture.

On February 12, Banks took to her Instagram Stories to slam Beyoncé’s country records and new direction.

“I love you down, but them r&b runs over the Leslie feist back beats is giving Pickmesha,” she wrote. “Nothing country about it. You’re setting yourself up to be ridiculed again. There’s a theatrical element to country music. Them [country] critics are not just going to accept an ugly blond wig and bullying from Jay-Z. It’s giving big-time musical grift.”

Banks even looped in former R&B singer turned country music star K. Michelle (now known as Puddin) into the conversation. “Yes, Black girls can make country music, but you’re just really not hitting the button,” she said. “K. Michelle, this is your turn to really execute. It’s no shade, but K. Michelle truly understands the assignment.”

After Beyoncé dropped her latest songs, users online also began tagging K. Michelle to get her thoughts on the major shift. K. Michelle is completely on board. “Y’all been mentioning me all night,” she wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “I’m just happy to be spoken about in my genre. I love Bey and will be supporting her like I always do. ”

With Bob Marley: One Love, this will be Reinaldo Marcus Green’s third film in a row focusing on the true events surrounding a man, following Mark Wahlberg as the title character in Joe Bell and Will Smith in King Richard. (You are probably much more aware of that second movie.) With Bob Marley, it’s easy to throw out descriptions like “larger than life” and move on, but that doesn’t really do justice to how much larger than life Marley still is to this day and what he still mean to the people of Jamaica. And that’s the thing, Marley (played in the film by Kingsley Ben-Adir) is such an icon, we often don’t think about what this guy was like in his quiet moments. What his relationships were like. And that’s what Green’s movie focuses on: who even was this guy that is still so famous today?

Ahead, Green explains what he learned the most about Bob Marley about making this film and he tells us why he decided to focus on one time period of Marley’s life – Marley planning the Smile Jamaica concert in 1976, then the Concert for Peace in 1978 – instead of a sprawling look at his whole life. And how the people of Jamaica were his inspiration in many ways, including being told many times, “Don’t mess this up.”

How much time did you personally get to spend in Jamaica? Because that sounds like a pretty good deal.

Yeah, it was a fair amount of time. Fortunately for me, it was my second time actually filming there, so I had rapport with the crew. And I think we filmed for a total of 25, 26 days total in Jamaica? And we had a fair amount of prep there. So yeah, it required it, just how much we had to build, how much we had to capture while we were there. So yeah, it was great to be back.

Did you go to Scotchies?

[Laughs] Yes. We went all over, man. Which is great.

Every time I’m there, all the locals are like, ‘You have to go to Scotchies.” There are a lot of fun dogs.

Yeah, there are lots of stray dogs. We were tempted to bring home a lot, but yeah, that’s Jamaica.

If you’ve never been there, you might think the love for Bob Marley is a cliche, but it’s not. Did you feel like you had to bring this movie home for an entire nation?

Yeah, but it was cool because I equally felt like everyone was reminding me not to mess it up. But also just like, okay, we’re not going to let you mess it up. I was propped up by the entire nation, whether it was our drivers or the grip truck or the craft team. Everybody had an opinion and everybody was like, look, we’re going to help you out. This is an important movie for Jamaica. Bob’s the biggest artist that ever came out of Jamaica and his reach is enormous. And so for them, it’s important. It was important that we did it right or that we at least attempted to.

Yeah, this probably means more to them than, say, Cocktail or Club Paradise.

I’m sure they’re all important. They’re all important.

Admittedly, movies I do like.

I think this one, Bob helped to put Jamaican music and reggae music on the map in a way that no other artist had done that before. So I think when you go to Trench Town, there are murals of Bob and there’s so much that they’ve held in such high regard for him and his family. And so, yeah, there was a certain aura around the film in trying to make sure that we upheld the legacy, which was already so strong.

During the end credits, there are a lot of people with the last name “Marley” listed. If I’m a filmmaker I can see how that would be helpful, but also can see times they might not want something in the movie as you’re trying to tell the story of a real person, and all people have flaws. How did that work?

Look, I couldn’t have made this movie without the support of the Marleys. And I mean that sincerely. Number one, the music, we had to get the rights in order to be able to do this.

Right, there’s no chance without that.

There’s no chance without it. And so that was number one. I wanted Bob’s voice to be the voice of the film. And the good news is that they’re not filmmakers. They’re musicians and artists and they love film. They wanted to be there to support us. And look, if I were making a film about my dad, I’d be protective, too. More oftentimes than not, it’s the little things, like the shirt that he’s wearing or colors or things like that. It’s like, don’t put him in that shirt. That kind of stuff.

So there’s a shirt and they’re like, “He would not wear that shirt”?

Or how we would style it or that kind of stuff. It’d be little things. “Story” were the things that I can talk to them about. We were making a movie about their dad that had to fit into two hours, so we were going to have to take certain liberties for the purposes of making a film, and they understood that.

You just mentioned trying to condense this man’s life into two hours. We only see his childhood in some short flashbacks. You start the movie with him planning the Smile Jamaica Concert, then ending with the Concert for Peace.

I think we were trying to figure out the window that captured the essence of who Bob was, and in particular, 1976 to 1978 was just like a period of time of rich musical creation. There was an assassination attempt on his life and that would change anybody. And what did he do? He created Exodus, arguably the greatest album of the 20th century. So he clearly was in a state of just rich musical genius and the outpouring of what essentially took him from being a national star to a global star. Exodus is the album that put him on the map in a global way. And it changed him from being just a musician to a revolutionary. what he was after, his music, his message, and how it just got out there in a massive way. So that period of time was just so essential in Bob’s life. And I think, yeah, it just felt like the richest period of time to focus on that could give us a snapshot to the man behind the myth and all the legends.

That’s a good point because a lot of people only know his myth or legend. But he was also someone who had to make choices about his career, things like deciding what album covers should look like.

That’s what I loved about Bob. And honestly, that was the reason for the film to exist. He’s the guy that you see on the buttons and the bags and the T-shirts, but you could even sing along to some of the songs. But I didn’t know. I didn’t really know. I didn’t really know until I took on the journey of this film and realized, man, how regimented he was. He was running his band on the beach. All the things he was doing, everything he put into his body was to reach a deeper state of consciousness. They said he didn’t sleep, he “rested his eyes.” That’s insane. What do you mean you don’t sleep? He just rested. Maybe just felt like he didn’t have a lot of time. He had no time to waste.

What did you learn that you would not have guessed in a million years?

I think it’s the thing that ended up being the core relationship in our film, which is his relationship with Rita and what that was like. And because I didn’t know, I was not aware that Rita was the one that introduced him to Rastafarianism, which is I think the single most important thing in Bob’s creation of music and his rich belief. And their unconventional relationship. Their unconventional courtship, but a love story nonetheless. I felt the same on King Richard. Behind every great man is a great woman, and that relationship was really important to me.

Well, speaking of King Richard – and I promise it’s not the part I assume you don’t want to talk about – but you had Will Smith set as Richard. This is different because you had to cast Bob Marley. How many auditioned and how did you get to Kingsley Ben-Adir?

Look, I want to say I looked at hundreds or thousands. It was a lot. And they were good actors, but just nobody was right. It’s finding a needle in the haystack. And again, we weren’t looking for an identical replica of Bob. I knew I wasn’t going to find that. But I needed someone. And look, it was the 11th hour, man. The rights were about to lapse.

So it was now or never?

It was a now or never. And it was one of those things where it was like, well, I guess I can’t make the movie without Bob. And lo and behold, this tape shows up in my inbox. I get this link and it’s of this guy named Kingsley Ben-Adir. And I didn’t really know Kingsley or his work, and when I saw the tape, I just said, whoa. Leaning in. It had the it factor.

Was he singing and dancing?

No. He wasn’t singing and he wasn’t dancing. And I learned shortly thereafter that that was not in the cards right away. That was something that we were going to have to learn and develop. But I was interested, man. And in the same way that with King Richard, I didn’t need tennis players. I needed a good actor. I could cheat everything else. And that was the most important thing. I needed somebody that could play under the surface, that could dig into the humanity of who Bob was. The guitar, the singing, and the dancing, of course you want to get to be right, but I’m thinking, we’ll see how far he can take that and the rest we’ll have to figure out some movie magic. But luckily for us, we had somebody that dove insanely deep into the research and was able to just capture the essence of Bob for us, which was remarkable. I think my job was not to add more pressure.

So the way people were saying to you, “Don’t mess this up.” You, as a good director, did not pass that along to him…

I was definitely trying not to. Look, it’s trickery, right? What we do is try to get performance. We’re trying to get something that allows your actors to disappear in a performance and a story to be revealed. And no matter how intense it was, I think he was able to let go in the key moments that we needed him to to deliver what I think is a stellar performance.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Although the Kansas City Chiefs managed to pull in the historic victory in overtime, Super Bowl LVIII was painstakingly lackluster. Thankfully, the same cannot be said of Usher’s record-setting Halftime Show performance.

The “Ruin” singer’s rollerskating set not only featured some of his biggest hits (view the full setlist here) but also a few of his notable collaborators. Lil Jon, HER, Ludacris, and Alicia Keys headed to Las Vegas to join the fun. Today (February 12), users went back to rewatch the clip on the NFL’s official YouTube but quickly noticed a slight modification.

According to viewers, Keys’ vocal slip-up while opening with her 2003 song “If I Ain’t Got You” had been edited. Now, folks are calling out the NFL for allegedly correcting the vocal crack as a professional courtesy to Keys.

“Alicia Keys said, ‘Sike.’ Lol. Mandela effect happening right before our eyes,” joked one user.

“The way they fixed her vocals before uploading this on YouTube, LOL,” wrote one user.

“No way they fixed Alicia Keys’ voice online ,” said another.

“It be the non-music mfs on here like, ‘Alicia started in the wrong key.’ Terminology all wrong. She just cracked, babe,” penned another.

That isn’t the only thing users are up in arms with from Keys’ cameo. When Usher embraced Keys during their debut of “My Boo,” viewers began tagging her husband, producer Swizz Beatz demanding that he have a word with Usher. However, he laughed it off as the unbothered cool guy he’s always proven to be.

Alicia Keys hasn’t issued a response to the audio scrubbing. She’s probably just as unfazed as Swizz.

What did Taylor Swift ever do to make MAGA hate her? She voted for Joe Biden four years ago — and probably will again — but other than that? And yet the far right have made her one of their many, many (many, many, many) enemies. Some even hatched a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory about her somehow rigging the Super Bowl and the 2024 presidential election. Now they’ve even come for one of her guests at Sunday’s big game.

Per HuffPost, a number of MAGA wackos have glommed onto the idea that Ice Spice, the hit-making rapper who was hanging with Taylor at Super Bowl LVIII, was flashing “Satanic hand gestures” during the game, all while dressed in “demonic clothing.”

Oh, and Taylor? She was being an “alcoholic” for occasionally downing beer at a football game.

What Ice Spice was really doing was throwing up “devil signs,” which has been used in music since the Jazz age but which gained a new kind of notoriety in heavy metal circa the ‘70s thanks to Ronnie James Dio. As for the “demonic clothing,” i.e., her upside-down crucifix, the debunkers Snopes spent some valuable time pointing out that such jewelry isn’t necessary “demonic” or “satanic,”

Still, is Ice Spice some Satanist? Unlikely! In an interview with Interview magazine in 2022, the one born Isis Naija Gaston talked about going to Catholic school as a kid and how even today she’s “still religious in the sense where I strictly pray every day, all the time.”

Anyway, keep it up, Republicans! Enraging both Swifties and Ice Spice fans will only drive them to make sure you’re never back in the White House.

(Via HuffPost)

It’s been a week since the death of Toby Keith. After the late singer’s family announced his passing (reportedly due to stomach cancer), figures all across country music rallied together to pay tribute to the fallen entertainer. Even The Late Show host Stephen Colbert, still filled with emotion, issued a statement reflecting on his “unlikely” friendship with Keith.

While Keith’s loved ones asked for privacy as they mourned, his fans came together in a very public way to honor him. According to Billboard, due to the spike in streams and album sales of Keith’s 2008 album, 35 Biggest Hits landed the No. 1 spot on its 200 chart. 35 Biggest Hits, upon its debut release in 2008, peaked at No. 2.

The milestone marked Keith’s fifth No. 1 album overall and first chart-topper since 2010’s Bullets in the Gun. Billboard’s metrics for the week of February 8 comprised a total of 66,000 units. The breakdown includes 46,000 SEA units (equaling 64.04 million on-demand official streams), 11,000 album sales, and 9,000 TEA units (or song sales from an album).

During Zach Bryan’s recent show, he paid his respect to Keith by performing a cover of his 2002 song “Courtesy Of The Red, White, And Blue.” “America lost a really, really important Oklahoma boy this week,” he proclaimed to the sold-out crowd.

The streams are predicted to increase as the country music festival starts in April, starting with 2024 Stagecoach.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.