Category: News

Multiple times per week, our TV and film experts will list the most important ten streaming selections for you to pop into your queues. We’re not strictly operating upon reviews or accrued streaming clicks (although yes, we’ve scoured the streaming site charts and ratings) but, instead, upon those selections that are really worth noticing amid the churning sea of content. There’s a lot out there, after all, and your time is valuable.

TIE: 10. The Resort (Peacock series)

Vacation-based shows are all the rage for escapist purposes (because good luck in getting anywhere smoothly by air right about now), so if you loved White Lotus and thought that Nine Perfect Strangers was at least decent, then you’ll want to give a whirl or two to this show starring Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper. Palm Springs writer Andy Siara is doing showrunning duties, and the story follows an anniversary trip in Yucatan that transforms into an unsolved mystery, and hey, this is not only a multigenerational tale of mystery but also stars Nick Offerman and Skyler Gisondo.

TIE: 10. Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin (HBO Max)

The entertainment world can’t resist a reboot, and this followup follows a brand new set of liars that hail from the same universe as the O.G. show but also come from a new generation. There may or may not end up being some explicit connections to the original show, but the location definitely changes. Here, the drama goes down in Millwood (not Rosewood) following a massive tragedy from long ago. The central group of pals includes a horror movie buff (because obviously) as well as a virtual-reality obsessive, a track star, and a ballerina.

9. Rap Sh!t (HBO Max series)

The legendary Issa Rae’s in the executive producer seat with her followup to Insecure and all of its block party madness. This series showcases a female rap due that’s rising to the top, fast, after reuniting following a good run as childhood friends. There are side and main hustles and plenty of hustle at parties, but this show also focuses on how the behind-the-scenes madness is often more interesting than the public-facing glamour. It’s all about authenticity, and these ladies nail it.

8. Stranger Things (Netflix series)

Get ready for another long wait for the show’s final season, but even Metallica fans can’t resist this batch of episodes and get down with the Upside Down. Jamie Bower Campbell loved doing the villain thing, and he’s still wondering about that “Vecnussy” curiosity. Hopefully, the final season will arrive with plenty of death because Millie Bobbie Brown is correct: the ensemble cast is simply too damn big. Time to off some people!

7. The Boys (Amazon Prime series)

This season’s actually worth a few watches, especially with all of the “Herogasm” madness because I guarantee that you missed at least a few of the montages going on in the background. (Pour one out for poor Frenchie, who really wanted to be there.) This season somehow sets up Homelander as an even bigger bad than he already was. He’s got very little to lose from here on out, and he might even launch the apocalypse. Eric Kripke might also bring back Black Noir as another Black Noir, and before that happens, we’ll get to see the Gen V spinoff.

6. Only Murders In The Building (Hulu series)

Martin Short and Steve Martin are cool enough, but Selena Gomez is what makes this show as captivating as it really is. Yep, she got robbed for an Emmy, and “Bloody Mabel” might go down, and if you need a little more Selena, go check out Selena + Chef on HBO Max. And then come back and wonder if this show’s mysteries will ever really be solved, or if the central trio will keep on stumbling into scenarios that make themselves look like the guilty parties.

5. The Gray Man (Netflix film)

Geez, this movie has only been out for a week, and already, Ryan Gosling’s going to be leading some spinoff films. Chris Evans and Anna de Armas also star in this action-y spy flick because I guess we needed more movies that remind us of James Bond. Gosling is on a roll with the Barbie movie coming, but in this Netflix movie, he stars as a man of intrigue who’s dodging a merchant of death, and since the Russo brothers produce, you’re definitely in for a well-referenced ride with the story also being able to stand on its own two feet.

4. The Bear (FX series streaming on Hulu)

This breakout hit is a lean, mean, dramedic machine, and the first season was such a raging success that a followup’s already in the works. Will Carmy have sex, though? Somehow, that’s the overriding question for the future, and hopefully, we’ll receive more beautifully show kitchen aesthetics as well. Ayo Edebir and Ebon Moss-Bachrach turn out to be necessary ingredients in supporting Jeremy Allen White (getting the post-Shameless leading man turn that he deserved), and I can’t wait to see where all that tension goes in the future.

3. Harley Quinn (HBO Max series)

King Shark, King Shark, King Shark! Oh right, he’s back (the voice of Ron Funches, that is), and so is Kaley Cuoco’s title character with her lady love, Poison Ivy (Lake Bell). They’re on new adventures of DC villainy, but Ivy sure would like for Gotham to be a paradise akin to Gotham. The show also performed some enormous fan service already with the central couple, so surely, no one will mind the “Harlivy” moniker while all of the outrageous profanity and baseball-bound violence does down, too.

2. Paper Girls (Amazon Prime)

Yep, there’s some Stranger Things flavor here with some undertones of Yellowjackets and Dark. Gather around for another trip back to the 1980s, but don’t worry, this is no mere hit of nostalgia. Rather, the girls come into the future, as based upon the Brian K. Vaughan comic book. The girls get to meet up with the future and their future selves, and there’s a little bit too much time wizardry happening with sci-fi being secondary to the story at hand and the beautiful rendering of friendships and vivid inner lives of the four central protagonists.

1. Better Call Saul (AMC series streaming on AMC+)

Kim Wexler ain’t dead yet, and the good news is that we’re about to see some Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, finally, after a long and winding buildup to their promised visit on this spinoff. There aren’t too many dominoes left to fall here, apparently, but and the show’s already bid farewell to one villain who will be sorely missed. Yet we’re about to see this show’s timeline collide with that of Breaking Bad, and there are only three episodes left. If you had one wish left for this show, what would it be? I’m going with more Cinnabon.

As many of the top wide receivers in the NFL cashed in on big money deals this offseason, one of the breakout stars of the 2021 season was left waiting on his payday as camp began last week.

San Francisco 49ers do-it-all receiver (and sometimes running back) piled up 77 catches for 1,405 yards and six touchdowns, leading the leads in yards per reception, while also carrying the ball 59 times for 365 yards and eight touchdowns, as he did a bit of everything for Kyle Shanahan’s offense. Samuel’s breakout meant he was entering a contract year with just one season of elite production (although he was highly productive as a rookie) but with the obvious skills to be the focal point of a great team.

As such, the two sides worked for months to figure out where his market value was, with rising receiver contracts contributing to the divide, but on Sunday night after a week of a “hold-in” where Samuel worked out on his own away from the team at camp, a deal got done. Samuel will get a three-year extension worth just under $72 million, with a guarantee of $58.1 million.

That’s about the same extension that DK Metcalf just got in Seattle, which positions Samuel as one of the top paid receivers, but still just shy of the absolute top contracts. If Samuel continues to produce at the same level as last year, it’s an underpay on the Niners side, but they were clearly not wanting to pay him record-breaking money coming off a breakout year, in case he takes a bit of a step back in terms of production next year. In any case, both sides will be happy a deal is done, with Samuel understandably wanting to capitalize off a big season and not wanting to risk an injury next year that would diminish his value on the free agent market, while the Niners lock up their most important offensive weapon for a few more years.

This weekend was supposed to be a celebratory one for Wiz Khalifa. That’s because the rapper just released his sixth album Multiverse, a project that is his first official album since 2018’s Rolling Paper 2. Since that 2018 effort, Wiz has shared numerous projects like collaborative efforts with Currensy and Juicy J and mixtapes like 2019’s Fly Times, Vol.1: The Good Fly Young and 2020’s Big Pimpin. As for his latest release, Multiverse checks in at 17 songs with features from They. and Girl Talk. This expected celebratory mood for Wiz quickly changed during a Los Angeles show where the rapper was seen dissing and threatening a pair of DJs.

It all went down during a show at the Poppy Nightclub in Los Angeles. The video does not show was sparked Wiz’s rant, but it does make it clear that DJ Mike Danger and MC Tron were the targets of Wiz’s wrath. “B*tch ass n****, if you wanna fight, n**** we can do it,” Wiz says at the start of the video. “Y’all n****s suck, don’t hug me b*tch. Y’all n****s suck, play my new sh*t n****, play it n****, play ‘Bad Ass B*tches.’ Y’all are horrible DJs.”

Wiz did not stop there. He continued, “I came here tonight to promote for y’all and have a good ass time and have a great time, but you know what I’m not gonna do? I’m not gonna sit here and let these hoe ass n****s act like this sh*t is acceptable. I’m a real ass n**** dawg, my album just came out today. My album just came out today, play my new sh*t dawg.”

The video concludes with Wiz pushing someone away from him onstage, saying, “Get out the way, I don’t like you dawg,” before he returns to performing. To make matters worse, he also took two individuals’ hats and threw them into the crowd.

You can watch it all go down in the video above.

Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti ended the month of July with a unique accomplishment. The final update of the Billboard 200 chart revealed that the album was the first since Adele’s 25 to register 11 or more consecutive weeks of 100,000 or more album sales. Shortly after, Un Verano Sin Ti went on to become the most popular album of 2022 after it passed the soundtrack for Encanto to become the most popular album of the year. Prior to this weekend, it had earned 1.606 million equivalent album units in the US, passing the mark of 1.565 million units that Encanto. That lead will only be extended at Un Verano Sin Ti logged another week at No. 1.

For the Billboard 200 chart dated August 6, 2022, Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti sold 98,000 copies in the past week. That number is comprised of mostly streams as it put forth 97,000 streaming equivalent album units thanks to 135.9 million on-demand official streams of the album’s tracks. This past week marks the first time since the album’s release that it did not sell 100,000 or more copies, bringing its consecutive streak to an end at 11.

However, in maintaining its No. 1 position, Un Verano Sin Ti logged its 12th straight week within the top two positions on the Billboard 200. The last album to achieve this was Drake’s Views in 2016 which put forth 17 straight weeks within the top two positions on the Billboard 200. With Beyonce’s Renaissane expected to make its debut at No. 1 next week, it remains to be seen if Bad Bunny can hold on to No. 2 in order to keep the streak alive.

Nichelle Nichols, who broke new ground as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura in the Star Trek franchise, has died. Details of her passing have not yet been made public, but she suffered a stroke in 2015. She was 89 years old.

When she joined the original run of Star Trek in the mid-‘60s, Nichols became not only one of the first Black women featured in a major television series, but also one of the first portrayals of a Black woman in a position of authority. Creator Gene Roddenberry allowed Nichols to name the character herself; her surname was Swahili for “freedom.”

The show wasn’t your usual sci-fi adventure. It offered a futuristic utopia where men and women of all races worked together, and in which non-white characters weren’t stereotypes. The show casually pushed back against retrograde attitudes, while reflecting the future sought by civil rights activists. Along with co-star William Shatner, Nichols had what has been cited as the first interracial kiss on scripted television, about a year and a half after Loving v. Virginia banned anti-miscegenation laws.

Nichols famously almost left Star Trek after its first season. She was sick of having her lines repeatedly cut. She was tired of racist insults off-set and of condescension from TV execs, who kept her from reading her fan mail. According to The Atlantic Journal-Constitution, one fan kept her from taking off: Martin Luther King Jr.:

But the next day, at an NAACP function, a fan greeted her: Martin Luther King Jr. He told her how important her role was and how he and his family watched Star Trek faithfully and adored her in particular — the only Black character.

Nichols thanked him, but said she planned to leave.

“You cannot and you must not,” she recalls him saying. “Don’t you realize how important your presence, your character is? … Don’t you see? This is not a Black role, and this is not a female role. You have the first non stereotypical role on television, male or female. You have broken ground.

“… For the first time,” he continued, “the world sees us as we should be seen, as equals, as intelligent people — as we should be.”

Nichols stayed.

Nichols went on to play Uhura, who was later promoted to commander, over the next few decades: on two more seasons of the show, on the animated ’70s series, and in six movies. She also played herself on two episodes of Futurama, one of which got (most) of the Trek gang back together.

Nichols did not make an appearance in the J.J. Abrams-led big screen reboot that began in 2009, where Uhura was recast as Zoe Saldana. But she always helped promote the franchise and meet with some of its biggest fans, including the nation’s first Black president. She will be missed.

(Via The Washington Post)

Lil Durk is in the middle of a phenomenal year. He released his seventh album 7220 at the top of the year. That project arrived with 18 songs and features from Gunna, Future, Summer Walker, and Morgan Wallen and went on to become Durk’s first solo No. 1 album. He later extended the project with 12 additional songs with help from Moneybagg Yo, EST Gee, Doodie Lo, Ella Mai, and A Boogie Wit Da Boogie. It’s this album, and previously released efforts from his discography, that Lil Durk brought for a performance at Lollapalooza. His set was going well for the most part, until a scary incident occurred on stage.

During his Lollapalooza set, Lil Durk was walking on stage when one of the onstage pyrotechnics went off in his face. This caused Durk to stumble backward as he held his hands to his eye after he was struck in the face by smoke. After a brief moment, Durk returned to performing as he was seemingly okay after the incident. However, he took to Instagram afterward for an update with fans.

“Due to the incident that happened at Lollapalooza in Chicago on stage, I’ma take a break & focus on my health,” Durk wrote with a picture of his right eye in a bandage. “I finished my performance yesterday for my fans. Appreciate y’all.”

You can watch the Lollapalooza incident and see the post from Durk above.

Next year, Rick and Morty will turn a decade old, and it’s still going strong. Maybe it’s because creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon have occasionally taken their sweet time in between seasons, favoring quality over quantity. Still, the last season, only its fifth, had its critics, and it appears Roiland himself is one of them.

In a new interview with IGN (as caught by The AV Club), Roiland is frank about a season he doesn’t hate but which might not be up to his high standards. He was speaking about the upcoming sixth season, due in September, which he praises while not quite trashing its predecessor, but admitting he didn’t think it was up to snuff.

“I will say that it’s a bit more canonical,” Roiland said of Season 6. “It really rewards fans of the show that have been watching up to this point.” He says they’re “finally back into the rhythm of Rick and Morty,” while admitting that he “didn’t particularly think Season 5 was bad, but Season 6 is f*cking amazing. It really is a f*cking quality season.”

Roiland didn’t go into specifics about what he didn’t like (or at least didn’t think was as good as it could have been), but he did say personal matters may have contributed to his take on it.

“Season 5 was a weird one,” he says, pointing out that they lost line producer J. Michael Mendel, who died suddenly in 2019. “It was tough. We were thrown for a loop. That was… yeah. If I talk anymore, I’ll start crying.”

Also of note: When asked to list his five favorite-ever Rick and Morty episodes, Roiland didn’t include any from Season 5. They were, for the record, “Total Rickall,” “Rixty Minutes,” “Big Trouble In Little Sanchez,” “The Ricks Must Be Crazy,” and “M. Night Shaym-Aliens”. Not even the one where our semi-heroic duo battle giant sperm made the list.

Meanwhile, if Roiland thinks he has to make up for what he sees as a bit of a sag in quality, he has plenty of more chances to atone.

(Via IGN and The AV Club)

The 2022 Women’s Euro final on Sunday was not short on drama, as England and Germany needed extra time to decide who would hoist the trophy at Wembley Stadium in front of a massive 87,000-plus person crowd.

The home side took the lead first and looked for over an hour like the better squad, but with 10 minutes to go, Germany equalized as momentum had shifted and, going into extra time, it was the Lionesses that appeared to be desperately trying to hold on. After a scoreless first 15 minutes of extra time, the two sides took a break and England started to regain its footing, ultimately punching what would become the winning goal with 10 minutes to go in the second period of extra time.

Off a corner kick that rattled around in the box, one of England’s late subs, Chloe Kelly, eventually put home the goal that pushed England in front for good, and after making sure there wasn’t a flag up, she ripped off her jersey emulating another iconic women’s soccer celebration of 20-plus years ago from U.S. star Brandi Chastain.

This moment will likely live in English football lore similar to Chastain’s celebration at the World Cup in 1999, and the former American soccer star was watching at home and appreciated that homage, telling Kelly to get ready to enjoy free drinks from the English faithful for years to come.

It was quite the moment, sending nearly 90,000 people in Wembley into pandemonium, and the English would hold on from there to hoist their first major trophy — men’s or women’s — since 1956.

For days, Jon Stewart has been railing on Republicans for blocking a veterans health bill they’d already passed in June. But he’s spent most of his time singling out one of them: Ted Cruz. The Texas senator has claimed, falsely, that the bill — alled the Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act (aka the PACT Act) and meant to help veterans exposed to toxic pit burns — has been amended since it first passed. It hasn’t. And Stewart will not let his deceptions fly.

Stewart went on Meet the Press Sunday, where host Chuck Todd asked him about the excuses Cruz and his colleagues have made for shooting down the bill. Cruz, for instance, has accused Democrats of a “budgetary trick,” claiming they changed one part of the spending to “mandatory.” Stewart pointed out that nothing in the bill has been altered.

“He can’t point to anything specific that was changed,” Stewart said. “They all just got this mumbo jumbo about a budgetary gimmick, but nothing changed. This isn’t my opinion. It is on congress.gov. The text of the bill they voted for June 14th is the same bill.”

After Todd played a clip of Cruz, with a Diet Dr. Pepper can in his hand, accusing Democrats of foul play, Stewart pushed back. “That’s just a word salad that he’s spewing into his coffee cup on his way to God knows where as veterans sit in Washington, D.C. and the sweltering heat, demanding that they pass this legislation that they have been fighting for, for 15 years,” he said.

Stewart also dragged him for, as he suggested, making stuff up. “Look, anybody can say anything, you know,” Stewart said. “We can say Elvis Presley is still alive, but at some point we all have to live in reality, and what he is saying is just factually incorrect. The bill that Ted Cruz voted yes on had the exact same funding provisions as the bill he voted no on. It is the exact same bill. None of this makes any sense.”

Meanwhile, another GOP lawmaker who voted no on the PACT Act, John Cornyn, seemed to admit that Republicans only blocked the bill to own the libs.

(Via Rolling Stone)

This story originally appeared on 10.26.21

As the U.S. ramps into an all-too-familiar presidential election cycle where the only viable candidates left on the ballot are men, the UN announces a study that may—at least partially—explain why.

The Gender Social Norms Index released yesterday by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) offers a look at gender equality as measured by people’s personal gender bias. The data, which was collected from 75 countries covering 81% of the world’s population, found that 91% of men and 86% of women show at least one clear bias against women in the areas of politics, economics, education, and physical integrity.

In other words, 9 out of 10 people worldwide—both men and women—are biased against women in vital areas that impact the world in major ways. Splendid.

It would be easy to assume that these numbers are skewed by countries where women are blatantly oppressed, and that is somewhat true. However, a majority was found to hold no gender biases in just six of the 75 countries studied—and no, the U.S. was not among them. Nope, not Canada either.

Andorra, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden were the only countries where a majority of people showed no clear gender bias. (Andorra came out on way on top, with 73% of its population showing no bias—the only country to top 70%. Go Andorra.)

Where did the U.S. and Canada stand? According to the study, 43% of Americans hold no gender bias while Canada clocks in at 48%. Basically, if you’re sitting in a stadium full of people as a woman in North America, half of the people you’re looking at likely harbor some kind of clear bias against you. Same goes if you’re a woman competing in a sport, giving a talk at a conference, or—ahem—running for public office.

Perhaps the most unnerving stats from the report are these:

– About 50% people—both men and women—think men make better political leaders than women

– About 40% of people think men make better business leaders than women

– Close to 50% of men believe that men have more right to a job than women

– About 30% believe that it’s justifiable for a man to beat his intimate partner

Ummm, that last one? Holy moly.

What’s just as concerning is that despite decades of progress on women’s rights, bias against women is increasing in some countries among both men and women. And this is the case even among some countries that scored well on the index—bias in top-six Sweden, for example, actually increased over the nine years the study covered.

“The share of both women and men worldwide with moderate to intense gender biases grew from 57 percent to 60 percent for women and from 70 percent to 71 percent for men,” the report states, adding: “Surveys have shown that younger men may be even less committed to equality than their elders.”

That last part is worth repeating. Evidence points to young men being less committed to gender equality than older generations. That is not good news for the future, folks.

Of course, we have made big strides across the globe in terms of increasing access to education, improving healthcare for women, and other areas. But women still don’t have a place at most of the decision-making tables, and we obviously still have social norm hurdles to overcome to achieve true gender equality.

“We have come a long way in recent decades to ensure that women have the same access to life’s basic needs as men,” said Pedro Conceição, head of UNDP’s Human Development Report Office. “We have reached parity in primary school enrollment and reduced maternal mortality by 45 percent since the year 1990. But gender gaps are still all too obvious in other areas, particularly those that challenge power relations and are most influential in actually achieving true equality. Today. the fight about gender equality is a story of bias and prejudices.”

Results of the study indicate a backlash to the push for gender equality, the report states. Indeed, change is uncomfortable for many people and progress is often a two steps forward, one step back process. For sure, social norms are more complex and challenging to change than laws.

“Policymakers often focus on the tangible—on laws, policies, spending commitments, public statements and so on,” the report states. “This is driven partly by the desire to measure impact and by sheer impatience with the slow pace of change. Yet neglecting the invisible power of norms would miss a deeper understanding of social change.”

Social norms also directly impact progress made in all areas. Currently, no country in the world is on track to meet the gender equality goals by Sustainable Development Goal target of 2030. With stats like these, that’s not shocking.

Clearly, something to keep in mind as we advocate for gender equality is how to effectively address people’s core beliefs about women and equality in general. Legal progress without social progress is shaky at best, and true gender equality won’t become reality unless people believe that it should.

It appears we have some serious work ahead of us on that front.

This article originally appeared on 03.06.20