Month: August 2024

Britney Spears’ 2023 memoir The Woman In Me was, like many other things Spears has done, a massive hit. Now, it’s about to get even more exposure, as Variety reports today (August 1) that a movie based on the book is officially on the way.

Universal Pictures landed the rights and they’ve tapped Wicked director Jon M. Chu and producer Marc Platt to make the film. Spears also tweeted today, “Excited to share with my fans that I’ve been working on a secret project with #MarcPlatt. He’s always made my favorite movies … stay tuned.”

A publisher’s statement on the book reads, “In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice — her truth — was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman In Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey — and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history. Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love — and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.”

The movie will certainly have some compelling source material to draw from, as the book sees Spears writing about shaving her head, Justin Timberlake’s alleged affair, and much more.

There are many ways to define American excellence. Jazz. McDonald’s. Shoelaces (oh, that wasn’t us? Never mind). But the dictionary definition should be “Tom Cruise risking his life for our entertainment.” The Mission: Impossible, Top Gun, and first-movie-to-be-filmed-in-space actor will reportedly close the 2024 Paris Olympics with an “epic stunt” to proverbially (and literally?) the torch to the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

According to TMZ, “the plan for the upcoming Closing Ceremony involves Tom repelling down from the top of Stade de France… landing on the stadium field and carrying the official Olympic flag.” From there, the broadcast will cut to previously recorded footage, which begin with two minutes of “Tom’s journey on an airplane… flying with the Olympic flag from France to Los Angeles, where he skydives down to the Hollywood sign.”

The Hollywood sign stunt was apparently filmed back in March (sneaky!). As for the rest of the film, it shows “Tom passing the flag to other Olympians — including a cyclist, skateboarder, and volleyball player — as they make their way around the next host city for the Summer Games.”

Look, I’m not going to claim Tom Cruise is as remarkable an athlete as Olympian Stephen Nedoroscik… but that’s only because we haven’t seen him on the pummel house. Maybe in Mission: Impossible 8.

(Via TMZ)

Jaylen Brown is a pretty popular guy among Boston sports fans right now. While his name has popped up in trade rumors for years, the Celtics always decided to hold onto him, and this season, that belief paid off in a big way, as Brown was named the MVP of both the Eastern Conference Finals and the NBA Finals en route to the team winning its 18th NBA championship.

As a result, Brown received the highest honor that a Boston athlete can receive. During an appearance on First Take this week, noted guy from Boston Matt Damon was asked a simple question: If you could pick one Boston athlete, past or present, to save in a heist, who would you pick?

“There are a lot of them, but I’ll tell you one present day player who I absolutely love for what he does on and off the court, is Jaylen Brown,” Damon said. “I’m so constantly, like, I just admire that guy. I can’t believe, how young in age, he’s already thinking strategically about how to use his platform to make the world a better place … It’s so competitive to get there, you have to be so singularly focused, and then to stay there takes so much.”

Damon made it a point to praise Brown for working hard to stay at the top of his professional field so he can continue to have a platform that lets him impact the world around him. It’s a really cool bit of recognition for Brown from a Bostonian who is held in high regard, and maybe the two can work on some sort of off-court project sometime in the future.

There are certain things that you should not criticize on the internet: babies, animals, and Keanu Reeves, but of course that sometimes happens anyway. At some point over the last year or so, the Marvel universe became a popular subject to dunk on, for various reasons. Look, you can’t churn out constant content without making a few hundred enemies. One of those enemies, it seems, might have been Jamie Lee Curtis. Or at least it was Jamie Lee Curtis, until she backtracked.

While at Comic Con last week, Curtis was interviewed alongside her Borderlands co-stars (that’s a whole other topic) where they were asked to name which phase Marvel is currently in, to which Curtis responded, “Bad.” Perhaps she saw Madame Web?

This isn’t the first time Curtis has taken a jab at Marvel, but she quickly backtracked, and posted a statement on social media claiming that she will no longer criticize Marvel: “My comments about Marvel were stupid and I will do better. I’ve reached out to Kevin Feige and will no longer play in that mud slinging sandbox of competition we call the internet nor will I engage in the toilet paper promotion or game play that is designed for clicks not content.” But it didn’t end there.

Ryan Reynolds, who is currently starring in Marvel’s first real hit in years, doesn’t think that Curtis was wrong with her initial comment.

Avengers: Endgame was released in 2019 and made over $2 billion at the box office, though it sparked a major shift in the Marvel universe. The many follow-up movies and shows have not made quite an impact as the Avengers gang, which is why the studio has been hearing criticism, though not all of it was tied to the movies themselves.

Reynolds seems to think that it’s okay to for people to made valid criticisms of the franchise, which is a reason why Deadpool became a whole series dedicated to mocking those superhero tropes. Still, we probably won’t see Janie Lee Curtis sitting in a theater with her Wolverine popcorn bucket anytime soon. Probably.

(Spoilers for The Boys will be found below.)

The Boys began with Hughie’s trauma. The show has kept that (A-)Train going with every season (even when Hughie made some peace with A-Train himself), but the fourth season arguably put Hughie through too much trauma. He lost his father and was tricked into having sex with the Shifter. The episode that hit viewers hardest on Hughie, however, showed him masquerading as Webweaver and being sexually assaulted by Tek Knight (in his sex dungeon) and Ashley without even a safe word to rescue him.

The episode did include Hughie admitting to Starlight that he “was not okay,” and thankfully, that moment did exist, but the discourse on this episode was, well, seriously messy. Part of that had to do with showrunner Eric Kripke’s summary (while speaking to Variety) of “the situation” (and that term was part of Variety‘s question) as not “dark” but “hilarious.” Viewers were not thrilled with that commentary, but now, we’re receiving insight on Hughie’s extra-bad season from Jack Quaid, who spoke with Extra while attending SDCC to promote My Adventures With Superman.

It must be noted that Quaid did not comment at all on the controversy of the sex-dungeon episode, but he does see a light at the end of the tunnel for Hughie (coming in Season 5) and a purpose for his overall hell:

“Hughie goes through a ton every season, and what I think is really happening is that he has to go through such a crucible this season so that next season — look I haven’t seen the scripts, but I do know story structures — I would hope that next season, that’s just teeing him up for a ton of wins. Like, the night is always darkest before the dawn, and I think you’re gonna see some cool stuff from Hughie next season.”

And there you go. Fingers crossed that Quaid’s hunch is correct.

(Via Extra)

A group of high school students in Elizabethton, Tennessee, did something local law enforcement couldn’t do in 40 years. They identified a suspect in the murder of Tina McKenney-Farmer, one of the 14 victims in the “Redhead Murders,” an unsolved series of murders in the south in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

All of the victims were white women with reddish hair who died similar deaths. They were strangled and disposed of on the side of major highways in Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia.

The students’ work was part of a sociology class taught by Alex Campbell in 2018. The class’s goal was to uncover whether the killings were the work of one man. The students’ incredible detective work on the case was documented in a popular 10-part podcast, Murder 101 by iHeart True Crime.

Campbell assigned the project to his students because he enjoys “projects that get the students interested, projects where we can apply what we’re learning in our classes,” he told People. “I had never heard about the murders even though I’ve lived here my entire life. They had these murders, but nobody had ever come to a consensus whether there was a person responsible for more than one of them, was there a serial killer active?”

‘Bible belt strangler’: How did high school students solve 40-year-old cold case murder? | Dan Abram

Over one semester, they determined that 6 of the women were likely to have been connected to the same murderer and labeled him the “Bible Belt Strangler.” They also helped identify one of the unidentified victims, Tina McKenney-Farmer.

The class also brought in a former FBI agent, Scott Barker, who taught the 20 students how to profile a case. He told the students that to connect all of the murders to one killer, they needed to identify four things: the timeframe, geography, signature and the M.O. or modus operandi.

The students came to the conclusion that McKenney-Farmer was murdered by Knoxville trucker Jerry Johns, who died in prison in 2015 after being convicted of kidnapping and attempted murder in 1987. Johns picked up a woman, strangled her and left her along Interstate 40.

“If we look at Tina Farmer’s case and how she was killed, do these other cases match the M.O., the signature, the time frame and the geography is all the same and we have five other murders that match it completely. So, we know who killed her. He should be the primary suspect in the killing of all these others,” Campbell told CBS 12 News.

DNA evidence later proved that the students were correct by linking Jerry Johns to the McKenney-Farmer crime scene. Investigators now believe that Johns may have been responsible for more of the Redhead Murders.

By the end of the year, the students had also identified 6 victims in the Redhead Murders.

— (@)

Tennessee State Legislature commended the students for their work. However, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has never publicly credited them with the discovery.

“It’s things that law enforcement haven’t been able to do in 30-40 years. That just gives me so much confidence that when you’re passionate about something, and you’re willing to put in the work, you can get it done and you can really go above and beyond any expectations you have,” student detective Reiley Whitson told CBS 12.

There is an amazing retirement village now accepting guests but instead of catering to elderly people, it’s designed for elderly cats. Shropshire Cat Rescue has been rescuing elderly cats that are set to be euthanized and providing them with top notch elder care.

The owner of the rescue was tired of seeing older cats get passed over for adoption and subsequently put to sleep simply because they were old so she decided to do something about it. That’s where the idea for Shropshire Cat Rescue came from and they’ve got cats wandering the retirement village who are over 20 years old. One cat, lovingly named Cat, loves to hang out in the little “store” in the tiny cat town, while others lounge in cat condos.

Veterinarian, Dr. Scott Miller, owner of an elderly cat himself wet to visit the feline retirement community to check it out. He was impressed with how much the retirement community had to offer the cats that call it home.

Shropshire Cat Rescue is in England, but it’s not the only retirement home out there for felines. A Florida couple opened a retirement home for elderly cats, too. Terry and Bruce Jenkins decided to open their home for elderly cats in their back yard, rescuing them from “hardship situations.” The Jenkins’ don’t adopt the old kitties out, they let them live out their years cozy in their back yard.

In fact, there are several retirement homes for cats in America, but the Shropshire village truly looks like a mini town. It comes complete with stores and other town staples designed for cats to lounge about in, but humans also use the store fronts to store items for the cats.

Watch:

Shropshire Cat Rescue currently has about 17 cats and has a program set up that allows local kids to come play with the cats. The elderly cats get to socialize with humans and other cats while receiving whatever care they need. The retirement home is the last stop for these old guys so there’s no effort to rehome them.

These cats simply get to live out the rest of their lives being loved on by volunteers and the visiting children. Maybe even more retirement homes will start popping up across the country.

This article originally appeared on 5.14.24

Tiny houses are still a popular choice for people trying to downsize but tiny houses for cats are springing up in one man’s backyard. Barna, thought he was doing a good deed for a stray cat that decided that he kinda liked hanging out in this human’s backyard. The cat would show up but at first wouldn’t eat the food set out for him, that didn’t stop Barna.

The man continued to set food out for the cat. Taking note of the changing weather, Barna decided to take one of his hobbies and build the cat, now named Domino a cozy little house. Building things is a hobby for the man, so he made sure to equip Domino’s tiny abode with a heating pad, light and camera.

Before too long the situation turned into a version of the famous children’s book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Another cat showed up, because of course Domino had a bestie but it didn’t stop there.

Barna built a tiny two story condo for the two cats to hang out in while still keeping Domino’s original tiny house. The backyard looks like it was made to host furry tenants in a makeshift cat community because more cats indeed showed up. Now the tuxedo cat has several neighbors to hang out with and thanks to Barna, none of the cats look like they’re missing any meals.

“We have about four or five cats who will go in and sleep in the houses,” Barna tells The Dodo. “One night one of the biggest storms of the year hit, I saw that two kittens actually took shelter in the house. That was one of the sweetest things ever.”

Barna has cameras set up inside and outside of the itty bitty kitty community so he can keep an eye on his feline neighbors. The cats’ landlord expresses that he feels gratification seeing his little houses be used by furry tenants. Having a group of cats around probably isn’t too terrible for keeping pests away either so it’s a win for all involved.

This article originally appeared on 5.13.24

Gone are the days when Flavor Flav was known only as a rapper. It’s actually ironic that he started out in Public Enemy, but he’s grown into one of the public’s most beloved celebrities. He’s a fervent Swiftie and Team USA’s biggest fan at the ongoing 2024 Paris Olympics. Flavor Flav already sponsors the US Olympic women’s water polo team, which he described as “bigger than me winning a Grammy,” but his commitment to supporting women’s sports didn’t end there.

On Thursday, August 1, US Olympic discus thrower Veronica Fraley posted on X (formerly Twitter), “I compete in the Olympic Games TOMORROW and can’t even pay my rent. My school only sent about 75% of my rent while they pay football players (who haven’t won anything [laugh-cry emoji) enough to buy new cars and houses [three thumbs-down emojis].”

Flavor Flav replied to the Vanderbilt University athlete, “I gotchu,,, DM me and I’ll send payment TODAY so you don’t have to worry bout it TOMORROW,,, and imma be rooting for ya tomorrow LETZ GO,!!!” He added, “Man of my word,!!! This is what I been saying and promoting with water polo,,, I can’t fix everything on my own,,, but right now I am.”

Alexis Ohanian, the Reddit co-founder and Serena Williams’ husband, also chipped in $7,760.

After her post blew up, Fraley posted a clarification: “Thanks for the supporting messages but I want to clarify my irritation isn’t with the school itself, mainly the rules that bar me from making the amount I’m WORTH as a collegiate athlete such as NIL which favors popularity over performance. that’s all I’m sayin. Wish me luck tm!”

Elsewhere in Paris, Flavor Flav has been spotted encouraging US men’s gymnastics bronze medalist Frederick Richard and still made time to reference Taylor Swift’s “August” on the first day of the month by writing on X, “It’s August here in Paris,,, and these Olympians be livin for the hope of it all.”

See all of the posts below.

A couple weeks ago, Fred Again shared a photo of himself on social media and wrote, “I think I jus finished an album.” It appears that he indeed did: Today (August 1), he announced a new album, Ten Days.

In a statement shared on social media, Fred wrote, “my new record is called ten days. it’s ten songs about ten days. theres been a lot of biggg mad crazy moments in the last year but basically all of these are about really very small quiet intimate moments. some of them are like the most intensely joyful things i have felt, and some of them are the other side of things. and some days I don’t want to speak about loads cos I’m not the only person it was an important day for if that makes sense.”

The album features contributions from Obongjayar, Jozzy, Jim Legxacy, Sampha, SOAK, Anderson .Paak, Chika, Duskus, Four Tet, Skrillex, Joy Anonymous, Emmy Lou Harris, The Japanese House, and Scott Hardkiss. So far, we’ve already heard “Places To Be” with Anderson .Paak and Chika.

Find the Ten Days album art and tracklist below.

Fred Again..’s Ten Days Album Cover Artwork

Fred Again..’s Ten Days Tracklist

1. “Adore U”
2. “Ten”
3. “Fear Less”
4. “Just Stand There”
5. “Places To Be”
6. “Glow”
7. “I Saw You”
8. “Where Will I Be”
9. “Peace U Need”
10. “Backseat”

Ten Days is out 9/6 via Atlantic Records UK. Find more information here.