Category: News

With the first Oscars telecast since Will Smith’s infamous slap of Chris Rock set to air in a few weeks (March 12th, to be exact), The Academy’s brain trust is pulling out all the stops to ensure that nothing actually interesting happens this time around. To that end, they’ve announced that they’ll be implementing an Oscars “crisis team” to put out any potential fires before they start. Will Smith was already banned from the ceremony for a decade, so presumably they won’t have to tie him up like the wolfman.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences CEO Bill Kramer told Time Magazine in a new interview:

“But we have a whole crisis team, something we’ve never had before, and many plans in place. We’ve run many scenarios. So it is our hope that we will be prepared for anything that we may not anticipate right now but that we’re planning for just in case it does happen.”

A whole crisis team! I have so many questions. Where did they recruit this “crisis team?” What are the top 10 of the “many scenarios” they’ve “run through?” Somehow I doubt a thousand A-Teams of veteran corporate stooges recruited off LinkedIn with a thousand Power Point decks could’ve come up with “Will Smith storms the stage to slap Chris Rock over a GI Jane joke” as happened last year. Which makes one wonder how this could possibly help this year. “Okay, so far we’ve got ‘Glenn Close goes after Joaquin Phoenix with a pen knife’ and ‘Sean Penn grinds ceremony to a halt when he won’t stop barking like a dog,’ anyone else?”

I imagine someone dutifully game planning them all, like Dana Carvey reading all the different ways Gerald Ford could die off the prompter.

To her credit, Time interviewer Eliana Dockterman did follow up with a question about how one could possibly envision one of those scenarios. To which Kramer responded:

Because of last year, we’ve opened our minds to the many things that can happen at the Oscars. But these crisis plans—the crisis communication teams and structures we have in place—allow us to say this is the group that we have to gather very quickly. This is how we all come together. This is the spokesperson. This will be the statement. And obviously depending on the specifics of the crisis, and let’s hope something doesn’t happen and we never have to use these, but we already have frameworks in place that we can modify.

“This is the spokesperson, this is the statement…” Ahhh, I think I get it now. This isn’t really about preventing or managing a crisis, it’s a team that knows how to spin a crisis. That makes a lot more sense. Probably a lot easier to0. So when they say “crisis team,” they mostly mean a “carefully-worded apology writing team.” Notes App Boys Assemble!

In any case, it always strikes me particularly funny when the latest Academy CEO vows to return the Oscars to their former glory by ensuring that the event goes off without a hitch. The hitches are all people remember! Last year’s Oscars were dreadfully boring right up until the moment Will Smith let the crazy out and instantly created the most memorable Oscars moment of all time. If you think back to the last five or 10 years of Oscars telecasts, what are the things that stand out? The Slap, followed by the Moonlight/La La Land mixup, theoretically another huge mistake by the Academy.

Going back even further, what else comes to mind? Sacheen Littlefeather rejecting an Oscar on Marlon Brando’s behalf, the streaker… The Oscars, and basically all awards shows, are overly-stage managed self-congratulatory affairs that are far more interesting when all that planning breaks down. It’s all but designed to do so. The best thing that could happen to the Oscars this year is another controversy or another celebrity going “disastrously” off-script. Hopefully the real “crisis team” is tasked with pretending that the people putting on the event aren’t praying for it. It will be more fun and exciting that way.

It’s been pretty well-documented that Ryan Reynolds recently bought European football team Wrexham AFC, for some reason, because it seems like his business model is “why not!” and that’s admirable. But he also has a lot of other stuff going on, like working on the upcoming Deadpool installment that Hugh Jackman so graciously decided to be a part of.

But it seems like Reynolds’ influence is expanding into other territories, as Jackman himself considered buying a team after the initial purchase. But not just any team, he wanted the team to be a Wrexham rival, obviously.

While speaking with BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, Jackman let it slide that he was actually sent offers to be a partial owner for one of the rival teams. Hey, if Reynolds can do it, surely anyone can. “I will admit to you that when Ryan bought that team, I did get more than one offer from rivals to that team for £1 to come in as a co-owner,” Jackman said. “And it did seriously tempt me.”

Though Jackman has yet to purchase a team, he will go head to head against Reynolds on-screen as Wolverine in Deadpool 3. But he says that the option isn’t off the table, mostly because he loves to be mean to his co-star. “I think if I really want to stick it to Ryan Reynolds, then if Wrexham gets to play Norwich, because obviously there’s a different level here, I think it’d be best if I was heading in the winner,” he joked. We already know that Jackman is the real winner going into this whole thing.

(Via ComicBook)

Pusha T notched his first career No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart last spring with It’s Almost Dry, home to “Diet Coke,” and he’s sticking with what got him there. Pusha recently failed to cook a steak on Valentine’s Day, but yesterday (February 22), he returned to more familiar ingredients: Cocaine Bear unveiled Pusha’s “White Lines (Cocaine Bear Remix) and made a lyric video from some of the film’s unhinged trailer footage.

Pusha raps, “All white, all winter / Even snow in the summer / The high falling from the sky / Are you the hunted or the hunter? / I got Tennessee numbers / I sing to the key numbers / The dope boys go crazy / They know I get it out the jungle / I ain’t never been a runner / We ain’t never had to wonder / You heard the pilot lost the load / We call that Dumb And Dumber / There’s no storm without thunder / The bear crawls up and under / Cocaine overload.”

Directed by Elizabeth Banks, Cocaine Bear is billed as “inspired by the 1985 true story of a drug runner’s plane crash, missing cocaine, and the black bear that ate it.” The ensemble cast includes Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Isiah Whitlock Jr., the late Ray Liotta, and more.

Cocaine Bear hits theaters tomorrow, February 24. Watch the trailer above.

One of the more surreal, yet somehow not totally surprising, moments involving Vladimir Putin’s late-February 2022 invasion of Ukraine was the detail that Sean Penn happened to be in the country. Penn was on hand to co-direct a documentary about President Volodymyr Zelensky’s rise from actor/Jon Stewart-like figure to a national leader. Once Zelensky refused to leave Ukraine, he entered folk hero status, but Penn needed to leave Ukraine for safety reasons. The At Close Range actor later described how, before fleeing to Poland on foot, he considered “taking up arms against Russia” but then grew more realistic about the situation.

These days, Penn is absolutely fine about being banned from entering Russia, but he’s reflecting upon how he did meet Putin in 2001 while previously in the country to promote The Pledge at the Moscow Film Festival. In an interview with The Independent, Penn recalled being whisked off alongside co-star Jack Nicholson to meet Putin, who Penn describes as a “creepy little bully” who gave him “a cold, ugly feeling.” Here’s more:

“We were put in a convoy. We knew that Putin was going to be the honoured guest. In the nature of that time and space, we accepted the invitation. We got in this convoy. And we were going as fast as they wanted to drive, with no care for whether it might have presented danger in the villages we drove through. When farmers with pony-driven carts were trying to come across, the security people in our vehicles would lean out the window to baton them away. It was so needlessly aggressive.”

Penn also reflected upon how he initially began his Ukraine-set documentary with a much more “lighthearted” tone than what eventually materialized for obvious reasons. As explained above, Penn began by hoping to pinpoint what took Zelensky from playing an everyman who accidentally becomes president in Servant of the People to being a sort-of everyman who becomes president.

Things took a turn, and the resulting movie, Superpower (also directed by Aaron Kaufman), has premiered in Berlin and will hopefully be in front of the general public soon. It sounds like a more valuable contribution than when Penn farted next to El Chapo while engaging in “experiential journalism.”

(Via The Independent)

R. Kelly has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for child pornography, according to the New York Times. Kelly will serve this sentence concurrently with his 30-year sentence for sex trafficking and racketeering, except for one year. Kelly was convicted of the more recent charge in his native Chicago in September. He was initially accused of 13 charges, including producing child pornography, enticing minors for sex, and obstructing justice. He was found guilty of six — three counts of coercing minors into sexual activity and three of producing sex tapes involving a minor.

Prosecutors wanted Kelly sentenced to no fewer than 25 years in prison due to his “lack of remorse” for his actions and the presumed likelihood he would resume his crimes. One of the prosecutors, Jeannice Williams Appenteng, said, “The only way to ensure he will not re-offend is to impose a sentence that will keep him in prison for the rest of his life.” Kelly’s defense lawyer Jennifer Bonjean, said he wouldn’t pose a threat in his old age, but it doesn’t look like that argument held up.

Kelly was previously found guilty of racketeering and eight violations of an anti-sex trafficking law in a New York-based federal case. Kelly is appealing both convictions with Bonjean, who previously successfully appealed similar charges against comedian Bill Cosby.

Before she was a model, before she was in Gone Girl, even before she was in the music videos for “Blurred Lines” and “Love Somebody,” Emily Ratajkowski was on a Nickelodeon show. “Did ya’ll know I was Tasha on iCarly?” the recovering teenage dirtbag wrote in captions for a video she uploaded to her TikTok. “I was 16 or 17, and took two weeks off school to shoot two episodes. I met Jennette McCurdy and her mom.” (Yes, that mom.)

Ratajkowski appeared in two episodes of iCarly, which ran from 2007 to 2012. She played Tasha, Gibby’s girlfriend; their relationship was jeopardized when she accidentally fell on top of Freddie, causing Gibby to believe that she was cheating on him (classic Gibby), which is something I already knew and definitely didn’t copy and paste from the show’s helpfully through wiki page.

You can watch the TikTok below.

In her memoir, McCurdy claimed that she was offered hush money to cover up misconduct from a man known as The Creator, who’s believed to be iCarly creator Dan Schneider. “He takes his coat off and drapes it around me. He pats my shoulders and then the pat turns into a massage,” she wrote. “My shoulders do have a lot of knots in them, but I don’t want The Creator to be the one rubbing them out. I want to say something… but I’m so scared of offending him.” Ratajkowski has her own history with creepy dudes.

While millennials and Gen Zer’s often get lumped together as the “young group,” they are certainly not the same. (Although, it is kind of hard to tell with all the Y2K fashion floating around.)

But speaking as a millennial, we definitely have different approaches to life, a lot of which seems to come down to a sense of self-assuredness. That goes for shopping, socializing, self expression…and even going to the hair salon, apparently.

Alexis Rex (@rex.artistry), hairstylist and owner of Rex Artistry Salon in Maryland, gave a brilliant (and hilarious) demonstration of some key personality differences between her millennial clients and her Gen Z clients in a now viral TikTok video.

First, Rex played her Millennial Customer.

Millennial Customer gently knocks on the door and immediately expresses her gratitude. “Hey girl! So good to see you! So excited!”

But at the same time, Millennial Customer wants in no way to be an inconvenience, so she immediately comes back with, “Where should I put my purse? It’s okay, I’m just going to shove it in my own personal space so it’s not in your way. At all.”

Never one to demand attention, Millennial Customer wants a very subtle hair color change. Really, “it shouldn’t even look like I got my hair done.” Not “super bold,” not “in your face.”

Then after flooding the hair stylist with compliments, Millennial Customer (ever wanting to be a good student) will ask a bunch of follow-up questions about how to maintain the style.

@rexartistry Millennial V Gen Z getting their hair done #hairstylist #hairstylisthumor ♬ original sound – Alexis Rex

Then, Rex played her Gen Z Customer.

Gen Z Customer bolts through the door with a “Hey queen!” like a hurricane (who has time to knock?!) and is ready to plop her stuff down anywhere. Unlike her millennial counterpart, Gen Z Customer is perfectly fine to take up space unapologetically and even show up with hair that “hasn’t been brushed in a month.”

Gen Z Customer also knows exactly what she wants, and it’s anything but subtle. “I wanna do like in-your-face, bold contrast…I wanna look like a different f**king person. Let’s do it.”

The confidence…it’s…palpable.

Gen Z Customer has a different approach to complementing her hairstylist: “Oh my god! F**king Queen! You did that! God I love you.”

No further questions. Gen Z Customer already knows her brand of hair care products, and it’s “Olaplex. All Olaplex.”

Rex’s post quickly racked up 8.6 million views, generating literally thousands of comments discussing how spot on her imitations were.

Millennials in particular chimed in, many of whom couldn’t help but applaud its accuracy of depicting how millennials seem to constantly be apologizing for simply existing.

“I’m a millennial and once I missed the armhole for a sec when putting the cape on. I was convinced I had ruined the appointment,” wrote one person.

Another added, ‘I’m sorry for my hair. I’m sorry my hair takes so long. I’m sorry I had to move my head, omg I’m sorry. You offered me a drink? I will say yes. And then sorry.”

Many were also quick to applaud how Gen Zer’s seemed to have no issues in this arena.

“Gen Z just fully owning the ability to take up space,” one person commented.

“As a millennial I love Gen Z so much. They’re so free to be themselves and so open,” wrote another.

While there may be differences between generations, we can all learn something from one another. And we all enjoy getting our hair did.

By the way, Rex didn’t leave out her Gen X or Boomer clients. She has plenty videos of her imitating them, as well as some nifty style predictions on her TikTok, found here.

Rappers and retirement historically don’t mix, but Drake is flirting it anyway. Lil Yachty is the latest guest on the Rap Radar podcast, but that’s been slightly overshadowed by Yachty posting a clip from “A Moody Conversation” interview with Drake for his Futuremood sunglasses company.

“I think I’m at the point now where I just wanna, like — I feel like maybe we talked about this the other day, but I feel like I’m kind of introducing the concept in my mind of a graceful exit,” Drake told Yachty while ocean waves crashed behind them.

Yachty teased that the full episode will drop tomorrow, February 24.

Drake taking stock of his life and career was on full display during his Apollo Theater performance last month, which even featured him wearing his old Jimmy Brooks Degrassi jersey.

“I wanted to make this a show about gratitude,” Drake told his intimate Apollo audience, according to Uproxx’s review. “This is a little story that we put together. My deep love for my family, for my dear friends, and for each and every one of you who have been supporting me for a long time. […] This is my bedroom in my mom’s basement where I wrote a lot of new songs. […] I’m gonna play you some of the sh*t that got us out of here.”

Yachty recently gushed about Drake to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe while promoting his new album, Let’s Start Here.

“I love him to death,” Yachty told Lowe. “That’s my guy, man. … Our relationship has just grown so big and so tight. But that’s my guy, man. That’s my brother, man. That’s like the only person I probably talk to since I was, like, nineteen on a daily basis. Like, every single day.”

If Drake really is planning to slow down on the music front, maybe he’ll use the extra time to work on his “old-man YMCA game.”

Last year, Ab-Soul released his new album Herbert featuring collaborations with artists like Big Sean, Russ, Joey Badass, and Jhené Aiko. He also teamed up with Zacari earlier this month for the track “Motions.” Now, he’s back with an NPR Tiny Desk.

His enthusiastic performance includes “Message In A Bottle,” “Bohemian Grove,” “It Be Like That,” “FOMF,” “Terrorist Threats,” “Fallacy,” “Do Better,” “The Book of Soul,” and “Gotta Rap.” His passionate flows are set to a mesmeric, eclectic backdrop of guitars, trumpets, and saxophones; there’s a sense of vibrant community amongst the cluster of talented musicians packed in the small space. To make it better, today is his birthday. What better way to celebrate?

A statement shared upon the announcement of the album Herbert explained the complexity of the meaning and making of it. “Herbert is a deliberately intimate portrait of the man behind Ab-Soul going back to his foundation,” the statement reads. “As noted by the name of the record, leaving the conspiracy theories, he’s known for behind while emphasizing his musicality. After suffering through a series of unspeakable tragedies, Stevens completed the album as a changed man with a new sense of purpose.”

Watch his Tiny Desk concert above.

Aaron Rodgers is one of several quarterbacks who went into this offseason with an unclear future. The 39-year-old signal caller could retire, or he could try to return to the Green Bay Packers for a 19th season, or he could look at one of the numerous teams around the NFL that believe they’re an upgrade under center away from making a run.

In an effort to figure out what he wants to do next, Rodgers announced that he is going into a darkness retreat, telling Pat McAfee that his plan was to spend four nights inside and come out with “a better sense of where I’m at in my life.” As for what, exactly, a darkness retreat is, Xuan Thai of ESPN spoke to Scott Berman of Sky Cave Retreats, the spot in Oregon where Rodgers unplugged for a while.

Berman said the room in which Rodgers spent his time is a partially underground, Hobbit-like structure with 300 square feet of space, devoid of light, with a queen bed, a bathroom and a meditation-like mat on the floor. It is fully powered, so at any point, the lights can be turned on from inside the room.

Rodgers has emerged from the retreat, although there is no word on what decision he’s made about his future.