Category: News

Every Sunday, you turn the volume up on your television all the way and grind to the absolute bop that is season two of The White Lotus’ opening credit theme. You’ve been so lost in dance during the opening credits that you probably haven’t even noticed that they contain clues and subtle hints at what’s to come in the very horny and very good season.

The credits, designed by Katrina Crawford and Mark Bashore of the creative studio agency Plains of Yonder, have three parts, or chapters, that tell their own story and mirror the season. The beginning is just like the beginning of the season: idyllic Italian art. Then as the music escalates, the images get more menacing. When the music escalates even more the images get even more graphic and weird. Here’s how it was described to Fast Company:

“The first chapter paints an idyllic portrait of Italy set against an operatic voice singing over a harp. Then gears shift and a digitized version of the familiar White Lotus theme song kicks in, bringing some illustrations to life, like feathers being plucked off in a bird fight, or ominous shadows slowly rolling over the paintings. Then the soundtrack bursts into a ‘sweaty dance beat,’ as Bashore puts it, and any sense of politeness is thrown out of the picture. There’s a blow job scene on the beach, two goats mounting, a man stabbing a boar, and a representation of a naked woman being mounted by a swan, much like in Greek mythology, where Leda is raped by Zeus disguised as a swan. Not what you’d expect from a Renaissance painting, is it?”

The designers, who read the scripts for the entire season and therefore know how it ends, told Fast Company that the images that appear on screen with the actors’ names also have meaning. For example, Aubrey Plaza’s name appears next to a pair of fighting birds, which suggests that there’s tension within her marriage. Simona Tabasco’s name appears alongside a cat with a dead bird in its mouth, which Crawford says depicts her as a “gorgeous predator [who is] also hunting to survive.” Meghann Fahy’s name is beside a painting of two babies, representing her character Daphne’s two children. In the first season’s opening credits, Jennifer Coolidge’s name appeared with a monkey. This season she’s still a monkey, but it is chained to a blonde woman trapped in a castle. So if you look closely enough, you might be able to figure out exactly what happens in season two of The White Lotus, or at the very least, get a sense of every character’s essence.

(Via Fast Company)

Martin Scorsese‘s daughter, Francesca, was cut from Bones and All (one of the best movies of 2022), but she’s doing just fine. The We Are Who We Are actress recently turned 23 years old, and one of her birthday presents came in the form of a flattering compliment from Jennifer Lawrence. “Very late birthday post!!! Thank you to everyone who made me and @martinscorsese’s birthdays so special,” she wrote on Instagram, adding, “JLaw said my tits looked amazing so I can die happy now.”

A few things here:

1. Imagine your dad is Martin Scorsese.

2. Imagine your dad is Martin Scorsese, and you share a birthday party with him.

3. That was nice of Jennifer Lawrence.

Francesca turned 23 just one day before her famous father turned 80, so they celebrated together amid a sea of celebs at Cipriani South Street in Manhattan, including The Wolf of Wall Street stars Margot Robbie and Leonardo DiCaprio… Her album also included moments she shared with her friends, such as The Offer heartthrob Sebastiano Pigazzi and Euphoria actress Kathrine Narducci.

If you’re not following Francesca on social media, you really should. Otherwise, you’re missing gems like this.

Marty is also worth a follow on Instagram. I mean…

I want Jennifer Lawrence to compliment me for my birthday. But I’ll settle for that hat.

(Via the Daily Mail)

Selina Meyer had a bag man, Donald Trump has a Supernanny.

While the former (non-fictional) president normally doesn’t seem to care what people think about him or the shady shenanigans he regularly gets up to — like, say, inciting an insurrection at the Capitol — Trump is working harder than he ever did as president in order to distance himself from his dinner with infamous Holocaust denier and white supremacist Nick Fuentes. And Jimmy Kimmel is happily eating up every tiny morsel of Trump’s frantic attempts to turn back time.

On Wednesday night, Kimmel shared that “as a result of that little dinner party with Donald Trump last week, they say they’re beefing up security at Mar-a-Lago. They said they will no do increased vetting on guests — and by ‘increased’ vetting, they mean they [will] start vetting guests.”

The funniest part of this news, however, came when Kimmel learned that “According to reports, the new security protocols require a senior campaign official to now be with Donald Trump at all times. They’ve hired a Supernanny to take care of Donald Trump!”

But the damage has already been done, and Trump — surprisingly — seems keenly aware of that. Which is probably why he issued yet ANOTHER (yawn!) statement on Wednesday, which Kimmel estimates to be his “like 400th statement attempting to cover his orange ass. Ever so slightly trying to distance himself from this white supremacist Nick Fuentes, Trump said that if Fuentes had expressed his views at the dinner it wouldn’t have been accepted. And that if he’d known about them, that dinner wouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

While Kimmel was willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt here, he thinks the former POTUS’s argument starts to fall apart a bit given that noted anti-Semite Kanye West was the invited guest. “He expressed his anti-Semitic views well ahead of the dinner,” Kimmel noted of Ye. “Repeatedly!”

You can watch the full clip below, beginning around the 3:40 mark.

On November 22, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner provided a vague progress report on the investigation into Takeoff’s murder. The 28-year-old Migos rapper was fatally shot in the earliest hours of November 1 while attending a private event with Quavo at 810 Billiards & Bowling in Houston. Takeoff was laid to rest at State Farm Arena in his hometown Atlanta on November 11, and there was outside concern that the manhunt for Takeoff’s killer had run dry.

“I feel good where we’re progressing,” Finner told KPRC 2, per iHeart. “You remember on that day, I met with his mother. I talked with that lady personally, made a promise and there’s a lot being said. We want all investigations on murders when people are being killed to move. But the main thing is we get it right. I do not want to send family members on a rollercoaster ride, and then we have to come back and say, ‘Whoa, that wasn’t the person.’ I want everyone to be patient and just understand there will be some justice here in Houston, Texas.”

Over the weekend, reports began leaking that a 22-year-old named Cameron Joshua and referred to as either Lil Cam or Lil Cam 5th had been arrested by the Harris County Sheriff’s Office for a felony charge of unlawful carrying weapons. Speculation caught fire that Lil Cam 5th was connected to Takeoff’s murder because his arrest report listed that Lil Cam 5th was alleged to have possessed an illegal handgun on November 1 in Houston. But it was nothing more than speculation.

The link was officially made yesterday (November 30). As relayed by The Associated Press, Lil Cam 5th “has been charged in connection” with Takeoff’s murder case, though Lil Cam 5th “is not believed to have fired a weapon during Takeoff’s shooting.” Lil Cam 5th’s attorney, Christopher Downey, asserted that “Cameron Joshua did not shoot Takeoff.” There has still not been a suspect publicly identified as the one responsible for shooting and killing Takeoff.

As of now, Lil Cam 5th’s arrest appears to be a small piece in a large puzzle that authorities are still trying to assemble. It’s been one long month since Takeoff’s tragic passing, but after this week’s developments, it’s probably safe to assume that Finner is asking the public to be patient for a reason.

After a seemingly lengthy period of radio silence, there has been some significant movement in the still ongoing sex trafficking investigation involving Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz. His former confidant Joel Greenberg was just dealt an 11-year prison sentence after being zeroed in by the Department of Justice for using taxpayer money to buy drugs, crypto, and sports memorabilia.

Greenberg has also been accused of allegedly providing sex workers to politicians. In the case of Gaetz, one of those workers was allegedly a minor. (The congressman has denied any wrongdoing.) Despite facing a litany of charges, Greenberg has reportedly been cooperating with federal investigators resulting in a lighter sentence for his serious list of crimes. Via The New York Times:

Mr. Greenberg has told federal authorities that he witnessed Mr. Gaetz have sex with the 17-year-old girl and that she was paid. In documents filed in connection with Mr. Greenberg’s sentencing, the Justice Department said he had “provided truthful and timely information” that led to the charging of at least four other individuals and “provided substantial assistance on other matters” that the government would address only in a sealed filing.

However, the investigation into Gaetz has reportedly hit a significant hurdle. The worker in question “has said she does not believe she was a victim.” The lack of charges against Gaetz and others implicated by Greenberg did not go unnoticed by Greenberg’s attorney who surprisingly called out the DOJ.

“If the government is so concerned with general deterrence, then why hasn’t it prosecuted the other individuals, including public figures, who were also involved in Greenberg’s offenses?” Fritz Scheller said during the sentencing hearing. “Indeed, Greenberg’s plea agreement refers to the involvement of multiple co-conspirators, including individuals involved in his sex offense.”

Scheller also revealed that Greenberg’s cooperation was corroborated “by other witnesses and records,” which should probably concern his co-conspirators, whoever that may be.

(Via The New York Times)

Loved your Spotify Wrapped this year? Well, re-watching your Wrapped story just got a little easier.

To re-watch your story, users must open their Spotify app (on Android or iOS) and look for the “Spotify Wrapped” section on the homepage. The first tile selection will have a “Play” button feature in yellow that you will need to tap, and viola! After you tap the tile, your Wrapped stories from 2022 will begin playing. Users can tap the left or right of the screen to go to the previous or next screen.

But if that doesn’t work, there are other ways to access your Wrapped stories. If the prompt for Wrapped is not visible on the homepage, then you can tap the search bar in the app, and the “2022 Wrapped” option should appear as a banner across the top of the screen.

Alternatively, you can type “Wrapped” in the search bar and select the “2022 Wrapped” genre option (which is displayed in the search results). From there, users will need to tap the large banner to start watching their Wrapped stories.

This year the music platform giant has rolled out a new feature for its users that will help offer listeners a “personalized Wrapped experienced” with its new “listening personality” feature.

“Your Listening Personality is a new feature that not only tells you about the music you listen to but what that says about your music taste — bringing a whole new layer of personalization and insight to the entire Wrapped experience,” according to a recent statement.

At least 16 kinds of “personalities” have been created for Spotify Wrapped 2022, including the adventurer, the early adopter, the deep diver, the devotee, and more.

When it comes down to it, 2022 was really Bad Bunny’s year. For the AMAs, he was the most-nominated artist of the year, receiving eight total nods. Spotify declared him the most-streamed artist of the year, and Apple Music named him their Artist Of The Year.

He’s not done making history. The legacy of Un Verano Sin Ti continues today with the announcement that the album landed at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 Albums year-end chart. Un Verano Sin Ti was at No. 1 for an unrelenting 13 weeks in a row, the most since Drake’s Views in 2016. It’s also the first Latin LP and the first all-Spanish release to finish as the year-end No. 1 Billboard 200 Album.

In September, the singer was also the most-nominated artist at this year’s Billboard Latin Music Awards and ended up winning nine awards, such as Artist Of The Year, Tour Of The Year, and Top Latin Album Of The Year. And he’s been celebrating appropriately; at one point, he brought 80 of his friends out to dinner at a Puerto Rican restaurant in the Bay Area. “Over the phone, they just said, ‘We have 80 Puerto Ricans,’” Francisco Gomez of San Rafael Puerto Rican staple Sol Food told the San Francisco Chronicle in an article about the encounter.

If you’ve ever wanted to watch a car talk to a robot gorilla, you’re in luck. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts — the seventh film in the Transformers franchise, and first since 2018’s series-best Bumblebee — is described as “a ‘90s globetrotting adventure with the Autobots and introduce a whole new breed of Transformer – the Maximals – to the existing battle on earth between Autobots and Decepticons.” Basically, it’s Beast Wars, which is big news for people of a certain age. For everyone else, some of the robots are voiced by Peter Dinklage, Ron Perlman, and Michelle Yeoh, which is cool.

You can watch the dialogue-light trailer (which is set to Notorious B.I.G.) above.

“What’s interesting about Transformers overall is that there are different breeds, different insignias, and different groups, and Beast Wars happens to be one of them. There were these robots whose disguise was animal form, and we have them in our film,” directer Steven Caple Jr. explained to Collider about Beast Wars. “In our film, they’re these prehistoric animals that travel through time and space, and we find them here on Earth.”

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, which also stars Anthony Ramos, Dominique Fishback, Tobe Nwigwe, Peter Cullen, Liza Koshy, John DiMaggio, David Sobolov, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Pete Davidson, and Cristo Fernández, opens on June 9, 2023.

Fox News may have (reportedly) edited Kanye West’s recent Tucker Carlson interview to remove an anti-Semitic rant about “fake children” that he claimed were in his home and planted there. However, no such editing is to be expected from Infowars, where host Alex Jones presides over ceremonies with as much right-wing provocativeness as possible during Kanye’s Dec. 1 visit. White supremacist podcaster Nick Fuentes was also in attendance, in case you were wondering, and let’s just say that Kanye is diving further into a very dark place.

Ye has had quite a week already after revealing that he owes $50 million in taxes, and his divorce settlement includes a child-support determination that left people thinking that he manifested with those “Gold Digger” lyrics. And now, there’s this: Kanye in a full mask with a bible and dropping more anti-Semitism, as Consequence’s Alex Young pointed out on Twitter.

The visit quickly took a turn when Kanye expressed admiration for Hitler, who he apparently believes invented the Autobahn. And this quote actually happened: “Every human being has value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler.”

Here’s the full quote, and Alex Jones seemed uncharacteristically quiet (and possibly uncomfortable, if that’s possible) while this Nazi love happens:

“I see good things about Hitler also. I love everyone, and Jewish people are not gonna tell me, ‘You can love us and what we’re doing to you with the contracts and what we’re pushing with the pornography…’ But this guy who invented highways, invented the very microphone that I use as a musician, you can’t say out loud anything good that this person ever did.”

From there, Ye went on a tear about his belief that “anyone who looks at pornography is a form of a pedophile also.”

According to a thread from The Daily Beast’s Zachary Petrizzo, Kanye also declared that Alex and Nick would be tweeting from his account, so there’s also that mess to look forward to ducking. But it says a lot that Alex Jones may have felt “off” about what came out of Kanye’s mouth on Infowars.

Former US President Bill Clinton joined the widespread chorus honoring Christine McVie after her passing on Wednesday, November 30. The former Fleetwood Mac member’s family confirmed the 79-year-old’s death in a statement posted to her social accounts, noting McVie died “following a short illness” at the hospital and surrounded by her family. No further details about her cause of death have been given.

“I’m saddened by the passing of Christine McVie,” Clinton tweeted Wednesday night. “‘Don’t Stop’ was my ’92 campaign theme song — it perfectly captured the mood of a nation eager for better days. I’m grateful to Christine & Fleetwood Mac for entrusting us with such a meaningful song. I will miss her.”

The tweet included a one-minute video of footage from Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. “The tradition of a presidential campaign song dates back to 1800, when John Adams supporters sang the tune ‘Liberty And Adams,’” the video’s captions read. “[‘Don’t Stop’] had reached #3 on the pop charts in 1977 and appealed to Clinton’s baby boomer demographic. After breaking up in 1987, the original Fleetwood Mac lineup reunited for one night, to perform ‘Don’t Stop’ at Clinton’s 1993 Inaugural Gala. ‘Don’t Stop’ became indelibly linked with Clinton, playing at his rally and convention appearances in the years following his presidency.”

McVie joined Fleetwood Mac as its first female vocalist in 1970 and retired from the iconic British-American band in 1998. She had married bassist John McVie in 1968. They divorced in 1976. She retired from Fleetwood Mac in 1998, the same year the band was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, but she returned in 2014 to tour.

Stevie Nicks, who joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, also publicly grieved McVie with a handwritten note.