Category: News

A recent PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll found that 41 percent of Republicans do not plan on getting vaccinated against COVID-19, compared to only four percent of Democrats. Will a right-leaning celebrity — Jon Voight? James Woods? D.J. from Full House? — step up and convince their fellow Americans to get the dang shot to achieve her immunity? Meghan McCain has offered, but the White House isn’t interested.

Politico reports that McCain, the Republican voice (and hair) on The View, “didn’t hear back from the White House after offering to get vaccinated on air alongside her brother Jimmy McCain. She wanted to be in sync with the Biden administration on its vaccination efforts before airing such a segment.” But “she got crickets in response.” Unlike her co-host, Whoopi Goldberg, who had a “private briefing” at the White House to go over talking points. Can you blame them? No matter your political beliefs, who would you rather hear from: Guinan from Star Trek or… whatever is happening here?

McCain “just wanted to help with messaging and encouraging Republicans to get it, and the show wanted it too,” said a View insider. The apparent snub was all the more notable because McCain’s mother, Cindy, is being vetted to be an ambassador for the Biden administration to the U.N. World Food Programme after her endorsement of Joe Biden in the election… Nevertheless, Goldberg was briefed and McCain was not. A White House source said it was due to the fact that McCain was not eligible at the time to be vaccinated, but that was not relayed to McCain.

This report should make Friday’s episode of The View very interesting.

(Via Politico)

In a sneaky bit of cross-promotion, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson offered DC Comics fans a tiny glimpse of his Black Adam costume while promoting his new energy drink on Instagram. In the photos, The Rock can be seen staring intently at his computer while cans of ZOA are conveniently placed in the foreground on his desk. At first glance, the photos might not look like much, but at the end of a lengthy caption about aluminum can supplies and how The Rock’s new brand of energy drink will be the “hardest workers on the block,” the super-jacked entrepreneur revealed that the pics are hiding a secret for anyone who read all the way to the bottom:

and if you swipe left and ZOOM IN, you’ll see a small piece of my GOLD BLACK ADAM peeking out from under my black cloak of secrecy (my weekly board meetings all take place during my 30min breaks from shooting #BlackAdam)

Sure enough, if you look closely, you can make out a tiny portion of The Rock’s Black Adam costume underneath his robe:

After a lengthy development process that only got longer thanks to the pandemic, there was always a question mark around whether or not Black Adam would actually happen. But The Rock’s introduction to the DCEU is finally filming, and not only that, but it’s added Pierce Brosnan to the cast as the classic DC Comics character Dr. Fate. The film will also feature Noah Centineo as Atom Smasher and Aldis Hodge as Hawkman.

Black Adam will hit theaters July 29, 2022.

(Via The Rock on Instagram)

Law & Order creator Dick Wolf has got a closet full of industry awards and accolades for being a television pioneer. Now he’s got one more title he can add to his business card: Lifesaver. As Deadline reports, an 11-year-old girl in Orlando, Florida, managed to both evade being kidnapped and help track down the man who attempted to abduct her with skills she learned from watching Law & Order: SVU.

From Deadline:

“Alyssa Bonal, 11, was waiting for her school bus when a knife-wielding man tried to abduct her. The girl had been playing with some blue slime when the man approached. She fought him off and ran away, but made sure to mark him with the slime, an identification tactic she learned from watching Law & Order: SVU.

The man, identified as 30-year-old Jared Paul Stanga, was captured later and still had the blue dye from the slime on his arms.”

So much for television rotting a kid’s brain! Alyssa’s mom, for one, was glad that her daughter’s time spent glued to SVU was well spent. “She said, ‘Mom, I had to leave some sort of evidence behind like on Law & Order SVU.’ We’ve watched probably every episode on Hulu,” Alyssa’s mom Amber told the Pensacola News Journal. “She’s a smart cookie, she thinks on her toes. She got that slime everywhere.”

SVU star Mariska Hargitay was equally impressed, and shared a message with Alyssa via Instagram, writing to the youngster that: “You are one BRAVE, Strong and Smart young woman. I think the SVU squad might have to add slime to their crimefighting gear!”

Tell us when SVU goes full meta and rips this very story from the headlines for an episode of SVU.

(Via Deadline)

Noel and Liam Gallagher aren’t exactly itching to get back together and share a loving embrace. The brothers have been famously combative since (and before) Oasis broke up years ago. So, hopes of a reunion shouldn’t be high. If you give Noel enough money, though, he’ll do it. In fact, he’s named his price: £100 million, which is equal to around $140 million.

This story begins in February 2020, when Liam wrote of his brother on Twitter, “We’ve been offered 100 million pounds for a tour still not enough for the greedy soul oh well stay young LG.” At the time, Noel responded, “To whoever might be arsed: I am not aware of any offer from anybody for any amount of money to reform the legendary Mancunian Rock’n’Roll group Oasis. I am fully aware though that someone has a single to promote so that’s maybe where the confusion lies.”

Now, Noel has again addressed the topic, saying on a recent episode of The Jonathan Ross Show (as NME notes), “There isn’t £100 million in the music business between all of us… if anybody wants to offer me £100 million now, I’ll say it now, I’ll do it. I’ll do it for £100 million. Ludicrous. What is funny though is that I think Liam actually believes it.”

There’s certainly still a market for the group today: “Wonderwall” recently became the first ’90s song to surpass a billion streams on Spotify.

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s paycheck grew $500 lighter after her refusal to wear a mask on the House floor this week. In doing so, she shredded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s warning letter to representatives, and on Thursday night, MTG appeared for an interview on the ultra-right-wing Real America’s Voice News to accuse Pelosi of subjecting congresspeople to a Holocaust-style environment. Yes, she’s being totally serious while speaking to David Brody, since MTG has apparently never heard of Godwin’s law and decided to suggest that she’s being made to wear the Star of David.

“This woman is mentally ill,” Greene ranted. “You know, we can look back in a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star and they were definitely treated like second class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”

She wasn’t done yet, of course. Greene continued fueling her own obsession with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (who called her “deeply unwell” after Greene stalked her in the halls of Congress) by declaring that, nope, AOC is the one who is “unwell.” Via Mediaite, Greene also called her colleague “completely disconnected from reality” and “maybe just not that intelligent.” MTG lodged this insult after her own decision to ceaselessly pester AOC to debate a “communist manifesto” despite not even reading the Green New Deal in question.

(Via Mediaite)

Are you stronger than Jim Halpert? That’s the question Stephen Colbert wondered as John Krasinski — former The Office star and current co-writer, director, producer, and star of A Quiet Place Part II — joined The Late Show host in the studio on Thursday night. It’s hard to blame Colbert for being excited: Krasinski was the first guest to join Colbert in the studio in 14 months.

At one point during their interview, Colbert just came out with the question: “How strong are you?” Clearly at a loss to answer the query, Krasinski just sort of shrugged his totally ripped shoulders. Determined to prove himself physically superior to his guest, Colbert cleared his desk and told Krasinski that they were going to arm wrestle.

“Do you know this is probably my first arm wrestling, maybe ever, but certainly since I was 12,” Krasinski informed the competition, noting that, “When I saw Over the Top, everybody arm-wrestled… for about two weeks.” But Colbert was undeterred as he continued to clear a space on his desk for the match — and even took off his glasses to brace himself for the battle that lay ahead.

In what might have been a misguided attempt to throw off his competition, Colbert informed Krasinski that he had once arm wrestled Daniel Craig. When Krasinski asked how that ended, as if he couldn’t have guessed, Colbert asked “Have you ever arm wrestled a backhoe?”

So how did Jack Ryan compare to James Bond? Well, you’ll just have to watch the video above to find out (we promise — it’s worth it.)

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 no longer need to wear masks indoors. “We have all longed for this moment when we can get back to some sense of normalcy,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said. It’s true. Things have gone back to normal, because many Americans are trying to find a loophole.

“The CDC announced last week that with a few exceptions, vaccinated Americans don’t need to wear masks indoors, and since they did that, there’s been a sharp increase in Google searches for fake vaccination cards. Searches for ‘fake COVID vaccine card’ are up over 1,100 percent, which is so gross,” Jimmy Kimmel Live! host Jimmy Kimmel said during the monologue of Thursday’s episode. “Let’s start calling these vaccine avoiders what they are: free loaders. The only reason you’re somewhat safe now is because other people got the shot.” He continued:

“You’re the person who heads for the bathroom when the check comes at the restaurant. You’re the lady who takes home the centerpieces from a wedding you weren’t invited to. You’re the guy who brings five napkins to a potluck dinner. That’s you. You don’t think it’s you. But it’s you.”

You can watch the entire monologue below (the vaccine talk begins around 7:30).

Overwatch 2 was first unveiled to the world at BlizzCon 2019. It was a significant moment for the game franchise as well as Activision Blizzard. They had a cinematic trailer, characters had clearly changed, and the idea of the team-based FPS growing stale was starting to infiltrate the minds of many fans that had been playing since it first released in 2016. No one expected a sequel right away, but with development clearly underway there was an assumption that more news would be on the horizon as the months passed.

Fans, however, were in for a long wait on that news and signs of what Overwatch 2 would become. Details that did come out were sparse and lacking detail. Then game director Jeff Kaplan left the company in April. For some, the news set off alarm bells about what it meant for the future of Overwatch. But on Thursday, the Overwatch development team managed to answer a few of those questions with a showcase of what the multiplayer will look like. It’s been a long time coming, but Overwatch 2 appears to be taking shape. Here’s what we know about Overwatch 2 up to this point.

5v5

The biggest news out of the Thursday PVP showcase was that Overwatch 2 is moving away from the 6v6 combat style that has defined it since launch. They’re throwing all that out for a 5v5 structure and changing the meta to be two healers, two DPS, and one lone tank. This is going to change the game entirely, but how so remains to be seen. We already know that heroes are being reworked to fit the new system, but how will this impact strategies? It’s exciting news and something that we’ll be watching with anticipation as more details come out.

Push

We’ve known about this for a little bit now. It’s a new game mode for Overwatch 2, but we finally got to see it in action and it’s hard to see how this is any different than a payload, but they swear it is. This is something that we may have to experience ourselves by playing it, because the general style of the game felt very much like an escort map. Even with the video we still need some more information on this one. At least the robot is cute?

Less Crowd Control?

One of the biggest complaints about modern Overwatch is how easy it is to be stunned. Crowd control abilities like Mei’s freeze, or McCree’s stun can make someone want to quit a game ASAP, and with fewer tanks that could become more powerful than ever. Developers have hinted, however, that some heroes may see altered abilities. We already know for certain, for example, that Mei’s freeze will no longer stop players in place. Most players agree Overwatch is at its best during freedom of movement so this is overall a good change as long as it’s balanced properly.

New Maps And Engine!

The Thursday event showed us a lot of new maps and the new engine at work. It’s even more colorful than the current game and the darker shading is a definite improvement on the current visuals. That they managed to create an engine that somehow looks even better than the previous one is impressive. Combat also looks smoother and the new maps are going to play to that. There are more corridors and verticality. In the current meta, this would be really not fun, but the new hero changes will likely lend themselves to this new map design.

Story Mode On The Way

We already know this but a story mode is on the way in Overwatch 2. It will be player vs. environment-based and is supposed to expand upon the story and universe that has been established in the cinematics up to this point. What that story will look like we still aren’t sure. They’ve given us no details besides calling it player vs. environment and it is the part of Overwatch 2 that people will have to pay for.

PVP Updates Will Be In Overwatch 1

If you already have Overwatch you’re in luck, because all the multiplayer updates seen today are going to be pushed in Overwatch 1. That will, hopefully, be a free update, but the details of how that whole thing is going to work haven’t been explained yet. They have stated the two games will be compatible though.

We’ll learn more as time goes on, but it’s nice to finally have some details about Overwatch 2. Hopefully a release date and more is on the way as well. It’s been a long wait for hardcore Overwatch fans, but the time before the game sees the light of day can feel even longer now that we’re starting to know what’s coming.

About two and a half minutes into Afrique Victime, the new album by Nigerian guitar phenom Mdou Moctar, the music explodes at you in a way that records often don’t anymore.

At the start of opening track “Chismiten,” Moctar sings in his native Tamasheq — a Tuareg language spoken by nomadic tribes from North Africa — about the dangers of “being so jealous and insecure” and how he’s praying to God for help in avoiding those behaviors. But Moctar doesn’t seem all that interested in talking about sin. Instead, he wants to show God’s fearsome power in his music.

Around the 2:20 mark, he steps away from the mic and leans into his Fender Telecaster. At first, his playing is slow and wandering, like he’s trying to locate a coherent train of thought. After about a minute, his guitar gathers speed and intensity. His tone is fierce and ecstatic, like a violin being played at a fever pitch. (Fans of Superwolves, the recent album by Matt Sweeney and Bonnie “Prince” Billy that Moctar guests on, will recognize this fevered sound immediately.) After about two minutes, he sounds spent. But then, suddenly, he fires up back again, emitting an incredible squall of violent noise. Moctar plays a guitar solo like LeBron James dunks a basketball — what some might see as an indulgence, they see as a demonstration of power, skill, and sheer determination to never be conquered by anyone.

For Moctar, this determination derives from his background as a man raised by a devout Muslim family in Agadez, Niger. Faced with ambivalent parents and a dearth of music stores, Moctar was forced to build his first guitar out of wood and bicycle cables, a story that sounds straight out of the mythology of “Johnny B. Goode.” I first heard him play on 2019’s Illana (The Creator), a vibrant and bracingly loud ripper of an album that made the 35-year-old Moctar the hottest rising star in a scene that also includes the Tuareg legacy act Tinariwen and fellow desert blues star Bombino.

Afrique Victime is loaded with moments where Moctar steps out of the song in order to ram his guitar directly into your guts. He does this for emotional effect, bending and blurring notes with the furious energy that defines one of his most obvious influences, Jimi Hendrix. But you suspect that Moctar also believes that ripping off a sick solo is extremely dope, which on this record it absolutely is. It might even make you ask: Why don’t we hear guitar solos more often these days?

When the great Eddie Van Halen — who Moctar has also cited as an influence — died in October, it felt like witnessing the passing of the world’s most accomplished blacksmith. In his prime, Van Halen was acknowledged as our reigning guitar hero, a designation that doesn’t really exist in 2021. This is not to say that nobody plays guitar anymore, as some overheated pundit is bound to inevitably declare every few years, only for some other pundit to inevitably declare a few years after that that “guitars are back, baby!” Let me be clear, as a person who receives at least 100 music PR emails every day: There were many, many guitar bands yesterday. There are many, many guitar bands today. And there will be many, many guitar bands tomorrow.

But the concept of the guitar hero — a virtuoso player who is singled out for mega-stardom because of their instrumental prowess — seems to have mostly passed. Yes, you still have master guitarists soloing away in the jam, blues, and jazz scenes, like Trey Anastasio of Phish and Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi of the Tedeschi-Trucks Band. But closer to the mainstream, guitarists tend to stress other aspects of their musicality beyond an ability to play a lot of notes hard and fast for minutes at a time in the middle of songs.

For instance, the most majestic guitar record of 2020 was Live Drugs, a concert album by The War On Drugs in which the band’s frontman and lead guitarist, Adam Granduciel, extends several tracks with dazzling solos. But Granduciel is first and foremost a songwriter and record maker who utilizes the guitar as part of a larger sonic tapestry, rather than as a focal point. The same can be said Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast, whose excellent forthcoming LP due next month, Jubilee, concludes with an unabashedly grand three-minute guitar solo that evokes Prince’s iconic shredding on “Purple Rain.” But like Granduciel, Zauner is “more” than just a guitar player; the solo ultimately is meant to express an emotional truth embedded in her album, not how freaking good she is at guitar. They’re more like guitar workers than guitar heroes.

Even artists who are known first as guitarists tend to shy away now from the sort of show-offy, “look at me!” theatricality that defined the age of Hendrix, Clapton, Page, and Van Halen. Players such as Yasmin Williams, William Tyler, Bill MacKay, and Daniel Bachman are textualists more interested in creating unique and striking sounds from their instruments, rather than ripping technically impressive (but otherwise conventional) solos. Even Ryley Walker, whose recent Course In Fable ranks among 2021’s best indie records, favors the soloing style of ’70s prog and ’90s post-rock, a wonkier approach that doesn’t quite square with the populist hero worship that a person like Eddie Van Halen inspired.

I suppose there are good reasons to move beyond the guitar hero archetype. For one thing, it led to a fair amount of excessive, self-indulgent, and boring music. (Like about 85 percent of Eric Clapton’s output.) There’s also something chauvinistic about putting a shirtless dude (because it was almost always a shirtless dude back then) who can wheedle-wheedle-wheedle with great proficiency on a pedestal, as if that’s somehow the be-all, end-all of music.

On the other hand, when it’s done well, it can be exhilarating to hear someone wheedle-wheedle-wheedle with great proficiency! The beauty of an expertly performed guitar solo is how it breaks free from the rigid structure of a melody, in order to simulate the feeling of briefly (or perhaps not that briefly) exploring previously uncharted territories of the mind, soul, and spirit. Put another way: A great solo is exciting on a primal, lizard-brain level. It’s musical but it’s also athletic, in that it spotlights the extreme edge of human potential. The fact that most people can’t do this is both the point and the problem — in the wrong hands, a guitar solo can turn a rock star into an elitist megalomaniac. (Or perhaps an anti-lockdown activist.)

But in the right hands — like a man who aspires to make music that feels like the wide and windy expanse of an endless desert — a guitar solo can sound like freedom. The physicality on display explains why so many guitarists and air-guitarists alike are often reduced to making goofy faces that express a unique combination of pleasure, surprise, and even pain. The visceral adrenaline rush of a killer guitar solo can almost be too much.

On Afrique Victime, the purest rush occurs on the title track, which is also the album’s most overtly political song. Moctar, a frequent critic of French colonialism and the devastating impact it has had on his country, rails about how “Africa is a victim of so many crimes / if we stay silent it will be the end of us.” But, again, it’s his guitar that speaks most forcefully. And, like he does on “Chismiten,” he gives over almost half of his song to a long, fiery guitar solo that stands apart as the album’s angriest and also most rock ‘n’ roll moment.

The violence and indignation of the lyrics achieves full expression in his playing, which starts at “face-melter” speed and picks up from there. There are some lightning-quick, Van Halen-style arpeggios, but this is him working mostly in “Machine Gun” era Hendrix mode, where the velocity and extreme volume signify a deeper cultural narrative about fear and death. As the minutes roll on, the cumulative effect of all those notes is stunning — your eardrums feels as ravaged as Moctar’s home country.

Western audiences won’t know what Moctar is singing about without a set of translated lyrics. But that guitar solo speaks a universal language.

Afrique Victime is out today via Matador. Get it here.

Netflix crushes the content game this week even more than usual, so much so that you might be tempted to stay at home to binge like the wind, even as the weather grows nicer and the CDC is lightening up on masking recommendations. This week, the platform brings us the newest contribution of Zack Snyder to the streaming masses, after his recent HBO Max smash success, and Aziz Ansari returns after an extended, largely self-imposed hiatus from the Internet. Between these two selections, there’s a lot of action and a ton of heart, even if they both reside on opposite ends of that spectrum. There’s also two series followups coming your way and nope, we have no idea how Netflix keeps bringing us all of these offerings without appearing to slow down at all.

Here’s everything else coming to (and leaving) the streaming platform this week.

Army Of The Dead (Netflix film streaming on 5/21)

Zack Snyder’s pretty much the King of Streaming at the moment after Justice League scored big for HBO Max on the superhero front, and he’s spreading his love around over at Netflix while going back to his undead-loving roots. This zombie-heist movie follows a group of mercenaries who head into the Las Vegas quarantine zone to pull off the ultimate heist, which is apparently worth $50 million to Dave Bautista’s character. Watch out for these intelligent zombies, through, and an undead tiger. Fortunately, Bautista is aided by hot Tig Notaro (who replaced Chris D’Elia), and the film also stars Matthias Schweighöfer, Ella Purnell, Ana de la Reguera, Garret Dillahunt (TWD universe fans will enjoy his presence), Raúl Castillo, Theo Rossi, and Omari Hardwick.

Master of None: Season 3 (Netflix series streaming on 5/23)

It’s been (four) years since we’ve seen Aziz Ansari’s brainchild do its thing, and that’s not even (officially, at least) down to the pandemic. Ansari’s been largely out of the public eye following sexual misconduct allegations, although he did emerge a few years ago for an insightful comedy special that goes a long way to show that gazing inward, but he’s still got a lot of comedic material to mine. This season, the co-creator’s taking a step behind the camera to direct in a season that he cowrote with the Emmy-winning Lena Waithe, whose character (Denise) moves from the sidelines to the forefront. The season will largely focus on Denise’s relationship with Alicia (Naomi Ackie) to bring viewers a new modern love story. There’s no word yet on whether Aziz will make an on-camera appearance, but clearly, he remains intent upon breaking new storytelling ground.

Who Killed Sara?: Season 2 (Netflix series streaming on 5/19)

Alex Guzmán’s working hard to uncover the Lazcano family’s darkest secrets, which might have something to do with his sister’s death. In the process, he unmasks Sara’s true nature that she kept hidden from almost everyone. Meanwhile, a mystery corpse is discovered buried in his patio, which doesn’t help the whole return-to-prison factor. To save himself, he must take on investigative hats to solve the title’s mystery.

Special: Season 2 (Netflix series streaming on 5/20)

This season, the main characters start to come into their own power while realizing that happiness can most reliably be found inside of oneself. Karen and Ryan can’t get it together enough to speak since their big blowout fight. Ryan’s dealing with writer’s block, too, which eases when he meets someone else who isn’t entirely available, and meanwhile Kim meets a tech mogul, and they have a predictably complicated relationship. And Karen realizes that it’s time to focus on herself and stop taking care of everyone else, but it doesn’t come as an easy revelation.

Here’s a full list of what’s been added in the last week:

Avail. 5/12
Dance of the Forty One
Oxygen
The Upshaws

Avail. 5/13
Castlevania: Season 4
Layer Cake

Avail. 5/14
Ferry
Haunted: Season 3
I Am All Girls
Jungle Beat: The Movie
Love, Death & Robots: Volume 2
Move to Heaven
The Strange House
The Woman in the Window

Avail. 5/16
Sleight

Avail. 5/18
Sardar Ka Grandson

Avail. 5/19
The Last Days
Sabotage
Small Town Crime
Who Killed Sara?: Season 2

Avail. 5/20
Hating Peter Tatchell
Special: Season 2
Spy Kids: All the Time in the World

Avail. 5/21
Army of the Dead
Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous: Season 3
The Neighbor: Season 2

Avail. 5/22
Sam Smith: Love Goes – Live At Abbey Road Studios

Avail. 5/23
Master Of None: Season 3

And here’s what’s leaving next week, so it’s your last chance:

Leaving 5/29
American Crime: Seasons 1-3
My Week with Marilyn
The One I Love

Leaving 5/31
50 First Dates
Act of Valor
All Dogs Go to Heaven
The Blair Witch Project
Brokeback Mountain
The Boy
Deliver Us from Eva
The Help
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
Julie & Julia
Marauders
Milk
Miracle
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz
The Pursuit of Happyness
The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior
The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption
Soul Surfer
Striptease
Waiting…