Category: News

Selena Gomez unfortunately had to skip her scheduled appearance on Tuesday’s (October 25) The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon due to a positive COVID-19 test, but Maren Morris and Zedd were there with their latest crossover pop smash “Make You Say.”

Morris’s silky vocals were punctuated by Zedd’s drums and ethereal background singers. Morris proclaims she’s “one in a million” and “maybe one in a billion” on the tingly pre-chorus before her confidence hits apex in chorus. “Go ahead, walk away,” the country-pop star sings with a catchy staggered delivery. “You’re gonna miss the way I used to make you say / Oh my god, night and day.”

Morris and Zedd’s collaborative chemistry is undeniable. “Make You Say” channels the same magic sauce from 2018’s “The Middle,” which topped Billboard‘s Pop Airplay chart and peaked at No. 5 on the Hot 100. “Make You Say” spent six weeks on the Pop Airplay chart, peaking at No. 38.

Morris’s versatility extends beyond music. She stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live earlier this month to discuss, among other things, her turn as Pickleball Magazine‘s cover girl. She shared that she and her husband, singer-songwriter Ryan Hurd, picked up the hobby during her current North American headlining tour in support of her third studio album, Humble Quest, from this March.

Watch her and Zedd’s “Make You Say” performance above, and her appearance with Kimmel below.

Playing Harry Potter gave Daniel Radcliffe a superpower that came with a curse. On the one hand, he’d have financial stability and the kind of leg up that other actors might spend decades trying to secure, but he’d forever be known — and potentially stuck as — one iconic character. Gary Oldman told Radcliffe as much when they were filming. Foundational success for child actors is far from a guarantee.

“I had this awareness that people expected we would do nothing after Potter — that we would fade away,” Radcliffe told GQ. “I really wanted that not to be the case, because I knew that I loved it, and I wanted to do whatever I have to do to have a career with longevity.”

To make that happen, he looked to actors like Harrison Ford for inspiration. Ford followed icon-making genre turns in Star Wars and Indiana Jones with several dramas like Witness and The Mosquito Coast before transitioning again into action movies in the 1990s. Radcliffe found inspiration in building career longevity and taking chances.

Granted, Radcliffe has gone farther into left field than Ford did, even if the comparison is apt. Instead of jumping from genre sidekick into leading man territory, Radcliffe has flirted with just about every flavor of Bizarre out there. Incomparable legend or not, Ford never would have had the guts to play a farting corpse only a few years after closing up the Indiana Jones trilogy. Radcliffe’s 2022 has consisted of playing a bonkers villain in the rom-com The Lost City and a totally 100% accurate representation of Weird Al Yankovic in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.

(via GQ)

Get ready to be hyped about arguably the greatest to ever play the game. Say Hey, Willie Mays! is hitting HBO and HBO Max on November 8th, and the trailer for the Nelson George-directed documentary is like a loud roar from the past. The enthusiasm here is infectious.

According to the press release, the film features interviews with “Willie Mays, his godson Barry Bonds, and son Michael Mays. Additional interviews include Hall of Famers Reggie Jackson, Orlando Cepeda and Juan Marichal, alongside the late baseball legend Vin Scully, Hall of Fame Broadcasters Jon Miller and Bob Costas, and Mays’ biographer John Shea.”

Frankly, this should be the standard in documentary creation: speaking directly with important subjects while they’re still here to help tell their own stories. The trailer leans quite a bit on the baseball side of things, cheering on The Catch and Mays’ abject domination while weaving in his importance as a civil rights figure who thrilled a city who did not want him to live in their neighborhood because of his skin color.

George was a great choice for the director’s chair, too, as a cultural scholar and the director of the Misty Copeland doc A Ballerina’s Tale. Say Hey, Willie Mays! looks sleek and powerful — the perfect tone to match its iconic subject.

Steve Nash is normally a pretty laid back guy. While is competitive streak is well-known, Nash has always been able to keep a level head in most situations. That changed on Wednesday night during the Brooklyn Nets’ matchup against the Milwaukee Bucks, and in the game’s third quarter, Nash quickly picked up a pair of technical fouls and got tossed from the action.

Nash appeared to be upset with the decision to not call a foul against Giannis Antetokounmpo, who brought the ball up the floor and used his left arm to create a little space with Patty Mills. This sent Mills to the floor — Jeff Van Gundy, on the call for ESPN, said it was a flop, but Nash disagreed mightily, and he let one of the officials know where he stood on the whole thing.

Nash picked up a technical foul for whatever he said, which he could not believe. He quickly approached the ref, and despite multiple coaches and Royce O’Neale trying to hold him back, Nash grew more and more upset with the decision. As such, he got a second technical and got to leave the game a little early.

In Nash’s absence, assistant coach Jacque Vaughn stepped in to serve as the Nets’ coach.

Update: Since the information superhighway blew up on Matthew Perry dissing Keanu Reeves in his memoir (see below), he’s issued a statement saying that he…doesn’t hate him but just used his name randomly? Something like that. “I’m actually a big fan of Keanu,” Perry said in a statement. “I just chose a random name, my mistake. I apologize. I should have used my own name instead.”

Original story: Matthew Perry is on a kind of comeback tour, doing the rounds for his new memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing. Based on the many excerpts that have already been published, it sounds like a bracing read. The Friends alum delves into his longtime battles with addiction, which came close to taking his life. (There’s also some more lighthearted business involving Julia Roberts, though even that story has a sad conclusion.) But there’s one confession that people are not down with: He apparently hates Keanu Reeves.

Twice in his memoir Perry disses Keanu Reeves. “Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?” he writes at point. Later on, after learning about the death of his Almost Heroes co-star Chris Farley, he writes that he “punched a hole through Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room wall when I found out.” Then he adds, lamentably, “Keanu Reeves walks among us.”

Why does the erstwhile Chandler Bing hate the erstwhile Johnny Mnemonic? So far, it’s unclear. Maybe he dedicates a chapter to why he hates him. Or perhaps he never caught wind that Reeves went from a sometime joke to one of the most beloved, kindest celebrities on the planet.

Whatever Perry’s motivation, the Keanu hate left people scratching their heads. In a since-deleted tweet, Reeves’ Bill and Ted costar Alex Winter wrote, “The surest way to consign yourself to the dustbin of the 90’s is to take potshots that no one has made since the 90’s.”

Others felt similarly.

Some wondered if he simply missed a memo or two.

A lot of people stood up for Keanu (who will be fine).

And other reminded people that Keanu knew Phoenix, with whom he starred in Gus Van Sant’s landmark queer drama My Own Private Idaho.

In any case, if Reeves had any doubt he was loved, he only had to check out Twitter on Wednesday. But he was probably busy walking grandmas across the street or something.

It’s official. Jean Weir is Ted Lasso‘s mom.

According to Above the Line, Becky Ann Baker has joined the cast of the feel-good Apple TV+ series starring Jason Sudeikis. She’s shined for decades as a powerhouse character actor (with a lack of award nominations that should be shameful to the Emmy votes) with Midwest-adjacent mom vibes. Freaks and Geeks may be her most notable role for the Millennial crowd, but she also did phenomenal, slightly unexpected work on Girls, and both examples are cherries on top of a stellar career of consistent awesomeness. Thus, this casting is perfect. America’s mom is now Ted Lasso’s mom.

The big question is whether she will (perfectly) play Ted’s mom as a maternal mirror image of over-the-top optimism and folksy charm, or whether she will (perfectly) play against that type as a comedic foil of negativity. After all, fans of the show learned in season 2 that Ted’s father committed suicide when Ted was 16, so we’ll undoubtedly see some of how that affected Mama Lasso as well.

Either way, Baker is an outstanding choice for the role, especially if she has to tell an entire raucous crew of footballers to come home at a reasonable hour from the heavy metal concert.

(via Above the Line)

More than 70 years ago, Lucy first pulled away a football while Charlie Brown was trying to kick it. In those decades, she has repeated the action for various reasons and with various explanations, always leaving Charlie Brown flat on his back. It’s become a symbol for failing the Fool Me Twice test and has left us collectively wondering why poor old Charlie Brown keeps returning to try his doomed kick.

It’s also a really old reference, which is why George R.R. Martin has officially replaced it with updates on The Winds of Winter.

His latest placement of the pigskin comes courtesy of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where the author explained that he’s still not quiiiiiiiiiiiite done with the long-anticipated entry in the Song of Ice and Fire series.

“I am making progress with The Winds of Winter, but it’s still not done yet. I think it’s going to be a very big book,” Martin said. “I think I’m about three-quarters of the way done. The characters all interweave. I’ve actually finished with some of the characters, I’ve got their whole story, but not others. So I have to finish all that weaving. Still gonna take me awhile.”

Martin, 74, was also optimistic that the book would one day be published and added that it should be bigger than 1500 pages.

Now to wait for the football to get pulled back. Now, whenever someone promises something they’ve repeatedly not delivered, you can give Lucy a rest and break out the Martin gifs. ‘Tis the season.

Just when you think you know everything there is to know about what Taylor Swift is up to, she reminds you that you don’t. She definitely did not mention on her “Midnights Manifest” calendar for this week that she’d join Bon Iver (and Aaron Dessner) at OVO Arena Wembley on Wednesday (October 26), though she was scheduled to be in London for The Graham Norton Show.

Bon Iver played back-to-back shows at the venue, and Swift made the second show doubly special. They performed “Exile” live together for the first time — their collaborative track from Swift’s 2020 Folklore album, co-produced with Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff, that claimed Album Of The Year at the 2021 Grammys.

“The most talented person in the world, Taylor Swift,” Justin Vernon said after the rousing performance. Swift countered, “The most talented person in the world, Justin Vernon. Thank you very much. Also, the most talented person in the world, Aaron Dessner.”

Dessner co-produced “Exile” with Joe Alwyn, Swift’s boyfriend of six years with the pseudonym of William Bowery. Fans were initially concerned that Dessner wasn’t involved in Midnights, Swift’s newly released 10th studio album, because he wasn’t listed as a co-writer on any of its 13 tracks. But then, we were surprised by seven additional songs on Midnights (3am Edition). Dessner co-produced “The Great War,” “High Infidelity” and “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve,” with co-writing credit on the latter two.

As acclaimed as Folklore and its 2020 sister album Evermore were, Midnights is on pace to shatter all of her prior releases. It became Spotify’s most-ever-streamed album for a single day, and according to Hits Double Daily, it’s projecting to move between 1.4 million and 1.6 million first-week units, which would place it among the top-10 fastest-selling albums ever. Swift currently owns the Nos. 9, 10 and 11 spots on the list with 2014’s 1989 (1.287 million), 2017’s Reputation (1.216 million) and 2012’s Red (1.208 million).

Midnights is out now via Republic. Get it here.

One of the key criticisms of the Man of Steel era for Superman, extending throughout every appearance Henry Cavill has made as the character, was that it was all simply too gloomy. Supes was depressing, lacking any semblance of the optimism and spirit that the character historically embodied. As DC and Warner Bros. looks to the future, Cavill is promising that the sun will shine again.

“The character means so much to me. It’s been five years now. I never gave up hope,” Cavill told the audience of a live taping for the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “It’s amazing to be here now talking about it again. There is such a bright future ahead for the character. I’m so excited to tell a story with an enormously joyful Superman.”

Enormously. Joyful. That’s the spirit.

Cavill donned the suit again for a mid-credits Black Adam scene, and he confirmed on social media that he was officially coming back as the character for future projects, which solidifies at least part of the hazy plan for the scrapped-yet-reborn DCU. Now under the leadership of James Gunn and Peter Safran, the DC cinematic world will do well to have a beloved, iconic figure at its center. Cavill fills that on both fronts — an excellent version of Superman who will thrive off the anti-depressants. Is some gravitas warranted for these stories? Sure. But zero percent fun? It has been a recipe for slogs for almost ten years.

(via Variety)

Kanye West has been in the news frequently of late, and not for great reasons. After making antisemitic comments on Twitter, people and companies have distanced themselves from him, including Balenciaga, Anna Wintour, Vogue, and his talent agency (CAA). The latest to drop him was Adidas, and that was enough for Forbes to estimate that he is no longer a billionaire.

In 2020, Forbes declared that Kanye West had become a billionaire with an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion. West pushed back on that, though, claiming his actual worth was $3.3 billion. Forbes estimated that after getting dropped from Adidas, West is worth about $400 million. This comes from real estate, cash, his music catalog, and a 5-percent stake in Skims, Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand.

When severing ties with West, Adidas shared this statement: “Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech. Ye’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful, and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect, and fairness. After a thorough review, the company has taken the decision to terminate the partnership with Ye immediately, end production of Yeezy branded products, and stop all payments to Ye and his companies. Adidas will stop the Adidas Yeezy business with immediate effect.”