Category: News

For weeks now, music fans have been waiting for Spotify Wrapped, the streaming platform’s annual round-up of the year’s most-played music, to drop. It’s usually unveiled around December 1 annually, and now, it’s here.

Aside from user-specific data that you’re probably already seeing all over social media by now, Spotify also offers a round-up of the top acts among all users. For the third year in a row, Bad Bunny was the world’s most-streamed artist, followed by Taylor Swift, Drake, The Weeknd, and BTS. Bad Bunny is the first artist to ever three-peat, so in celebration, Spotify has turned its heart button into the singer’s custom red-heart icon. When narrowed to just the US, Drake is No. 1, then Swift, Bad Bunny, Kanye West, and The Weeknd.

If you want to get even more specific and look at just the world’s top K-pop artists of 2022, they were, from first to fifth, BTS, Blackpink, Twice, Stray Kids, and Seventeen. Spotify also has a list of the year’s most “viral” artists globally, meaning “their music is most frequently shared to social platforms from Spotify.” Topping that rank is Swift, followed by The Weeknd, Bad Bunny, BTS, and Lana Del Rey.

Check out the data yourself here.

Back in 2018, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker released a self-titled EP as Boygenius. It was a beloved collaboration and since then, fans have been clamoring for more from the supergroup. Well, now it looks like more could indeed be coming, as speculation is rampant after a TikTok video shared yesterday showed the three posing for a photoshoot.

The five-second clip filmed from a moving car shows Bridgers, Dacus, and Baker in vibrant outfits, posing by a telephone pole as two photographers stand across the street. Some fans noted that it appears the trio were re-creating a Nirvana photoshoot for Mademoiselle Magazine in November 1993, in which Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, and Krist Novoselic wore similarly colorful dresses and posed in a similar-looking environment.

Although it’s not clear when exactly this video was taken, one Reddit commenter noted, “This has to be recent, Julien has both arms fully tattooed, when they formed boygenius she didn’t have them like this.” Somebody else also wrote, “Well we do know that Lucy and Phoebe were in L.A. for the 1975 concert [on November 28]… I do see Willoughby Ave in the video and I recognize the spot because it’s by a Sprout’s in Hollywood. I’m really hoping this is real because we need more boygenius.”

(For the especially curious, the video was shot near the intersection of Willoughby Ave. and N Formosa Ave. in Los Angeles; Here’s the Google Maps Street View of the spot.)

Back in June 2021, Dacus said of potential plans for the trio to record together again, “There aren’t any plans, but we talk all the time. I think we are the biggest Boygenius fans. We want it to happen, so we’re not working against it.”

Outside of horror franchises, few sequels are as samey as Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Next verse is same as the first, with one predictable caveat: Everything’s bigger. The quaint (and moneyed) Chicago suburb of the first becomes New York City. No celebrity cameos leads to a certain then-future president. And that violent climax, which treats burglars Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern like Looney Tunes villains? It’s thrice, maybe four times as deadly. Indeed, one of the sequence’s victims reveals he got badly hurt for real.

In a new interview with People about the film, which just turned 30, Pesci talked about the joys of doing more “slapstick” comedy, which was a nice diversion from the more dialogue-driven yuks of films like Easy Money and the Lethal Weapon sequels (to say nothing of arguably the funniest film on his CV, Goodfellas). But comedy is pain, as Pesci recalls.

“In addition to the expected bumps, bruises, and general pains that you would associate with that particular type of physical humor,” he recalled, “I did sustain serious burns to the top of my head during the scene where Harry’s hat is set on fire.”

Indeed, Pesci’s character gets his head set on fire in both of his Home Alone appearances, but the second is even more extreme, leaving Pesci’s Harry walking around, unaware that his head is ablaze. If he looks like he’s in pain, it’s not acting.

Luckily, he didn’t have to put his life on the line for, say, the part where he falls three floors down a building, and survives. “I was fortunate enough to have professional stuntmen do the real heavy stunts,” he says.

Maybe that’s one reason Pesci did a soft-retire from acting, returning only occasionally, if his old pal Martin Scorsese asks nicely. After all, why would he want to get hurt on set when he can chill in his bonkers beach house.

(Via People)

21 Savage made some controversial comments about iconic rapper Nas recently. “I don’t feel like he’s relevant, he just has a loyal ass fanbase and he still makes good-ass music,” he said in a Twitter space. He then backtracked on the statement after receiving backlash, writing in a tweet, “I would never disrespect nas or any legend who paved the way for me y’all be tryna take stuff and run with it .”

It looks like that all may have been a publicity stint. 21 Savage made an Instagram post about a collaboration with Nas, announcing “One Mic, One Gun” only an hour before its release. It’s out now, and it’s a skittish, relentlessly catchy track, watching the two talented rappers switching verses and embarking on flows about their own determination and success in a genre that poses a lot of challenges.

There are many reasons why we should take 21 Savage’s word with a grain of salt, all pertaining to his rollout with Drake for Her Loss. The cycle was packed with fake press — a faux NPR Tiny Desk, a spoof Howard Stern interview, a parody SNL performance, and a photoshopped Vogue cover. This led to Conde Nast opening a lawsuit against the rappers, seeking either $4 million in damages “or triple the defendants’ profits from their album and ‘counterfeit’ magazine.”

UAB is one of the college football programs on the lookout for a new head coach. The Blazers spent the 2022 campaign under the guidance of Bryant Vincent, the former offensive coordinator who ascended to an interim head coach role after Bill Clark resigned in June to tend to lingering back problems.

After going 6-6 this season with a 4-4 record in Conference USA, it appears UAB is getting closer and closer to finding Clark’s permanent replacement. They school has apparently decided to go Jeff Saturday mode with the search, because according to Football Scoop, former NFL quarterback, ESPN analyst, and current high school coach Trent Dilfer is expected to get offered the job, with the belief being that he will accept the position.

Per sources familiar with the process, UAB officials are expected to approach Dilfer with a formal offer to coach the Blazers’ program, and those sources said that the Blazers’ brass are “optimistic” that Dilfer will accept what would be his first-ever college head coaching position.

The news was confirmed by Matt Fortuna and Bruce Feldman of The Athletic.

Dilfer currently serves as the head coach at Lipscomb Academy, a private school in Tennessee. He has not coached at a higher level, meaning this would be his first college coaching job if he accepted it. The news comes on the same day that UAB players authored a letter to express gripes about the search and throw their support behind Vincent.

UAB still has one game to play this season, as the team will participate in the Bahamas Bowl.

In May, Future unveiled his new album, I Never Liked You. He’s since unleashed a few music videos for the songs “Messaging Me,” “From Now On” with Lil Baby, “Love You Better,” and more. Now, he’s back with a Travis Scott-directed video for “712PM.”

The video will keep the watcher’s eye for all of its three minutes, as it’s packed with fire, fancy fur coats, and screaming fans. There’s even a stripper pole in the middle of a dark field. The visuals add to the luxurious texture of the song.

In a recent interview with Billboard, Future talked about the way making melodic rap songs comes more naturally to him. “Songs like ‘Wait For U,’ I make those in my sleep,” he explained. “But I had to make a certain kind of music to go along with my career and everything that was going on at the time. I was capitalizing off different moments and creating from whatever was going on at the time in the world and my personal life. I was taking the energy from that and making music. But those melodic songs, I make those easy — easier than I can make a rap song, I feel.”

Watch the video for “712PM” above.

The Dallas Mavericks hosted the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday evening, and the home team entered with a sense of urgency. Dallas lost four consecutive games in maddening fashion and, with the Warriors in town for a nationally televised contest, the lights were bright. The Mavericks responded by taking an immediate 23-6 lead out of the gate but, over the course of the game, the Warriors chipped away and the game was tightly competitive early in the fourth quarter.

With Dallas leading 94-91 with 10:52 remaining, Mavericks guard Spencer Dinwiddie attempted to drive against Warriors guard Jordan Poole, and Dinwiddie’s elbow connected firmly with Poole’s face. After a review, Dinwiddie’s act was upgraded to a Flagrant-2 foul that earned him an ejection.

Dinwiddie seemed legitimately baffled by the ruling, laughing on the way to the locker room, and he exited with 14 points on 5-of-12 shooting in 23 minutes of work. Though Dallas only had to manage the final 11 minutes without him, the Mavericks do have a stark shortage of shot creators, with only Dinwiddie and Luka Doncic operating with high frequency on the ball. Beyond the on-court impact, though, it will be interesting to see if Dinwiddie has anything notable to say after the game, particularly if things sour for Dallas in crunch time.

This holiday season brings forth another look back at old Hollywood starring Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt. (Sorry, DiCaprio.) It’s called Babylon, and it’s a big-budget epic set four decades earlier than Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It’s a big risk for Paramount at a time when non-IP films rarely make big scratch. (Though the studio should be fine; they’re swimming in Top Gun: Maverick fun bucks.) If you’re a casual moviegoer, you may have seen the trailer, but you still might be wondering what its deal is. What follows is its deal.

What the hell is Babylon about?

Set in the 1920s, it chronicles arguably the wildest time in Hollywood history, when stars and filmmakers enjoyed a wild west of depravity and other Jazz Age bacchanalias. The story follows a Mexican-American (Diego Calva) as he enters the industry and rubs shoulders with big names and fellow aspirants alike.

Who’s in it?

Margot Robbie plays starlet Nellie LaRoy, an amalgam of real stars like Clara Bow, Jeanne Eagels, Joan Crawford, and Alma Rubens. Pitt takes on aging matinee idol Jack Conrad, who has bits of John Gilbert, Clark Gable, and Douglas Fairbanks in his DNA. The characters are all fictitious, with few exceptions. One is Max Minghella’s Irving Thalberg, the “Boy Wonder” head of production at MGM, who nabbed the gig at 26 — and died young, too, at only 37. The cast also includes Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, Lukas Haas, Katherine Waterston, Flea, Jeff Garlin, Spike Jonze, Chloe Fineman, and Eric Roberts.

How long is it?

Long! It’s 188 minutes. No doubt Paramount let it go so epic because its writer/director is Oscar-winner Damien Chazelle, of Whiplash, La La Land, and First Man.

What are critics saying?

Reviews are still embargoed, but Twitter reactions from critics are mixed. Variety’s Jazz Tangcay called it “Extravagant, decadent and all together delightfully delicious.” Josh Rothkopf of Entertainment Weekly wrote, “Damien Chazelle brings buckets of energy to Babylon, but it’s never not pounding and obvious and, finally, uninsightful.”

Some were more cautious in their semi-praise. Yolanda Machado, also of Entertainment Weekly, deemed it “ A LOT of movie – a purposeful mess.” Eric Kohn of IndieWire wrote, “My eyes were never bored; my brain is still catching up.”

There are plenty of detractors. Ryan Swen of InReview Online called it “Truly monstrous in its thudding insistence on shoving the viewer’s face in the muck and claiming it’s something novel or moving.” Clayton Davis of Variety said it “feels like if someone read Damien Chazelle the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and then he said, ‘Hold my beer!’”

Margot Robbie, meanwhile, has promised it’s even more out-there than her bonkers breakthrough, The Wolf of Wall Street.

Where can I watch the trailer?

The new one dropped Tuesday, Nov. 29, and it’s right here:

Finally, when does Babylon come out?

It’s getting a plum release date of Dec. 23, the Friday before Christmas. It will have to contend with such big holiday releases as Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Dec. 21), the Whitney Huston biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Dec. 23), and, of course, Avatar: The Way of Water (Dec. 18).

From the mid-‘90s through the aughts, one of the most popular SNL segments was “TV Funhouse,” an animated series of parodies from writer Robert Smigel. Smigel and team got away with a lot. It’s responsible for such classics as “The Ambiguously Gay Duo,” “Fun with Real Audio,” “The New Adventures of Mr. T” (including one where he plays Torvald in a production of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House), and numerous Disney parodies, including one that toured the shocking secrets concealed in the “Disney Vault.” Then there’s the holiday favorite “Christmastime for the Jews.”

One segment, however, only aired once. On the March 14, 1998 episode, featuring Julianne Moore and The Backstreet Boys, the week’s “TV Funhouse” consisted of a Schoolhouse Rock! send-up called “Conspiracy Theory Rock.” What was the conspiracy theory? That there was a “media-opoly,” in which a small number of corporations control everything people see, read, and consume, and can even control what gets covered on the news. Crazy, right?

After the sketch aired, SNL honcho Lorne Michaels announced it would be yanked from reruns, replaced by a second Backstreet Boys performance. The cartoon has long been the subject of its own conspiracy theory, namely that NBC effectively deep-sixed it over its edgy truth-telling, especially considering it directly roasted NBC and its then-parent company General Electric.

The debunkers over at Snopes worked their magic on this one ages ago, but theories rarely stay dead for long. The sketch recently made the rounds again, prompting Smigel to do two things: post a decent version of it on the Instagram page for arguably his most famous creation, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog; and tell the “actual story” behind why it was disappeared from syndicated reruns.

“Yes, it was pulled after its initial airing & it’s easy to see why. BUT what always amazed me was that NBC let it on in the first place,” Smigel wrote in the caption. He also says that among the NBC/General Electric highers-up, there was “a real willingness not to censor the piece.” It did go through an “extensive note process,” even “beyond the Standards dept & up the executive ladder.”

To cover his back, Smigel added the “voices in my head” line for the narrator, to make him seem crazier — “not that it made a big difference.” Still, he was surprised that even “NBC West Coast” top brass Don Ohlmeyer even allowed a joke about NBC firing Weekend Update host Norm Macdonald for doing too many O.J. Simpson jokes.

Still, Michaels tried to cover his butt. The segment aired much later than usual, as Michaels said NBC’s then-president Bob Wright usually turned it off after Weekend Update. “On this night, however, Bob Wright got home late, and saw what he saw,” Smigel recalled. Nothing happened for months, until word broke that it was being cut from the rerun. “I wasn’t especially surprised but Adam was fired up. He leaked the story to a few TV journalists who’d written about the cartoons, NBC claimed it wasn’t funny (not that it was)and that’s why people know & still talk about it today.”

Smigel ended by pointing out the sketch made it to the “TV Funhouse” best-of DVD, “so it’s only been Kinda Banned since 2006.”

You can watch the sketch in the embedded Instagram post above.

Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan were once close friends, spending extensive time together whether it be on a golf course, in a casino, or elsewhere. However, that relationship publicly deteriorated a decade ago, and Barkley has discussed the desire to make amends with his former confidant on numerous occasions.

That sentiment was again expressed this week when Barkley spoke to Taylor Rooks about the long-term rift, and he expressed the wish to “get past this bullsh*t” and bury the hatchet.

Within the conversation, Barkley spoke about the friendship effectively ending due to on-air comments about Jordan and his performance as the owner of the then-Charlotte Bobcats. “I’m going to do my job first and foremost, because I can’t criticize other coaches and general managers and give him a pass because he’s my best friend,” Barkley said. “I just can’t do that.”

Barkley also referred to it as “a really unfortunate situation for me and him,” and said he “thought it would blow over” before attributing it to mutual stubbornness. When pressed by Rooks on what he might say if given the opportunity, Barkley ended with the hypothetical sentiment of “Let’s get past this bullsh*t and get back to playing golf and having fun.”

Obviously, any relationship is complex, even before getting into the dynamics with two of the most famous people in the country and public grievances over a period of years. Rooks is also right that it seems quite sad from an outsider’s standpoint, but perhaps things can be mended if the two men can sit down and have a conversation with the benefit of time to heal some wounds.