Category: News

Will Smith and director Antoine Fuqua are the newest big names to announce they’ll be taking their business out of Georgia following the passing of the highly controversial Election Integrity Act of 2021, which has drawn the ire of voting rights groups that are accusing lawmakers of voter suppression. What’s notable about Smith and Fuqua’s protest is that Emancipation, their upcoming film for Apple TV about a runaway slave, was scheduled to begin shooting in June. Rearranging a production’s location mere months before it begins will cost the team time and money, but in a joint statement, they make it clear that filming in Georgia is no longer an option. Via Variety:

“At this moment in time, the Nation is coming to terms with its history and is attempting to eliminate vestiges of institutional racism to achieve true racial justice,” Fuqua and Smith said in a joint statement. “We cannot in good conscience provide economic support to a government that enacts regressive voting laws that are designed to restrict voter access. The new Georgia voting laws are reminiscent of voting impediments that were passed at the end of Reconstruction to prevent many Americans from voting. Regrettably, we feel compelled to move our film production work from Georgia to another state.”

Smith and Fuqua are not alone. Major League Baseball recently pulled the All Star Game out of Atlanta in protest of the voting laws, which has rankled Republicans like Mitch McConnell, who thinks corporations should “stay out of politics.” Except, of course, when it comes to political donations. Mitch has gladly accepted those.

(Via Variety)

Getting a tattoo could be considered an important life decision, as the ink injected into your skin stays there for the rest of your life. This decision is especially important when the tattoo covers your whole back, so Grimes just made a major move: She took to Instagram last night to share a photo of a gigantic new back tattoo she just got.

The ink looks something like a warped, wire frame version of the bones in a human torso. It was done in white ink, but since the tattoo was still fresh at the time of the photo, the lines look more red than white at the moment. Grimes captioned her post, “Full back in white ink by [Trayer Tryon of Hundred Waters] w sum help from the alien computer brain of [Nusi Quero]. Don’t have a good pic cuz it hurts too much and I need to sleep haha, and it’ll be red for a few wks , but gna be beautiful alien scars. Hope everyone’s having a good day.”

Tryon and Quero also shared some images of Grimes’ tattoo. Quero explained how they collaborated on the design with Tryon, writing, “[Tryon] drew the base shapes on an iPad and then emailed me the image file. I turned it into 3D geometry, selected vertices on the shape, and guided and grew the embellishments along and around the shapes that he laid down first with a series of procedural operators (math rules) in a way that I felt spoke to his shapes, and [Grimes]. I then sent it back to him as a png overlay and etc etc and they went in on it immediately full on 1 take 1 session!”

Check out the posts about Grimes’ new ink above and below.

(SPOILERS for the Midseason Premiere of Fear the Walking Dead will be found below.)

This week’s midseason premiere of Fear the Walking Dead was originally meant to be the midseason finale before it was so rudely interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and wow! What a midseason finale it would have been. It works as effectively, however, as a midseason premiere, and it’s that kind of episode that would have been infuriating had it not been so beautifully executed. Instead, the episode, “The Door,” will go down as one of the most devastating episodes in the history of The Walking Dead universe, and one of the best in years.

It’s been a long time since a beloved character has died on Fear the Walking Dead (Madison in the fourth midseason finale). In fact, in the first half of the episode, I was ruminating about how much Fear had improved without sacrificing any characters, which proved to be an unfortunately ominous thought. By the end of the episode, the series had killed off its (arguably) best character.

The episode begins with John Dorie (Garrett Dillahunt) back in his old cabin, having separated from June. Unable to cope with the weight of his past, John had decided to return to the cabin where he met June to take his own life, but each time he brings his gun up to his mouth to pull the trigger, he’s interrupted by another walker ambling onto his property.

John eventually decides to put aside his suicide for a moment and head back to the general store. There, he finds Morgan and Dakota hiding from the rangers that Virginia had sent to track down her sister. One of those rangers makes his way into the store, but John can’t bring himself to kill him. He’s killed too many, he reasons. They hide long enough for the ranger to wander away. Morgan and Dakota, meanwhile, try to convince John to join in Morgan’s new outpost and help them fight off Virginia. John, however, has lost his will to live, and when the ranger John refused to kill returns and nearly kills Morgan, John feels even more convinced that he’s snakebitten. Morgan won’t hear of it, and tries to convince John of his value, but he still feels guilty about Janis’s death, and the fact that he could never figure out who murdered Cameron. The only clue he has is a broken piece of a knife handle, although he was never able to track down the owner of the knife.

After some convincing, John agrees to at least help Dakota and Morgan cross a zombie-infested bridge, which proves to be one of the more harrowing and intense sequences in the show’s history. The car stalls out in the middle of a zombie horde, and John — who doesn’t seem to care if he lives or dies — fights off the zombies as he gets the car restarted. There are so many close calls, it feels almost impossible that he escaped without being bitten.

After they clear the zombies, Dakota and Morgan make one more plea for John to join them, but he again begs off. However, after Morgan leaves the scene for a moment, a zombie stirs and Dakota has to quickly stab it in the head. That’s when John notices her knife. It’s the one with the broken handle. Dorie realized that Dakota killed Cameron, and when he confronts her about it, Dakota admits it, saying that she had no choice because Cameron had prevented her from running away from her sister Virginia.

John tries to calm Dakota down and reason with her, but Dakota doesn’t want to be reasoned with. Afraid that John will rat her out, Dakota eventually shoots him in the chest. John, bleeding, falls into the water below. That’s when it becomes clear that John actually doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes of his father. He wants to live. He wants to return to his wife, June. John manages to swim back to the surface and grab a door, where he floats downstream. It appears as though John will live.

In the meantime, Morgan returns and sees what’s happened. He confronts Dakota about it, and she admits to shooting John, and then makes another confession. It was Dakota who saved Morgan’s life and patched him back up after Virginia left him for dead at the end of Season Six. Dakota wants badly to escape from her sister and live in Morgan’s community, and despite shooting John, she reasons that Morgan owes her that much after he saved her life.

Morgan goes along, but also calls on his walkie into Virginia — who is in John’s cabin, where she’s supposed to meet with him — to let her know that John is floating downstream on a door and to keep an eye out. June is with Virginia and frantically waits for John to float downstream. When John finally floats to shore, it appears that there will be another one of those sweet, heartfelt reunions Fear often does so well. When John looks up at June, however, she sees that he’s no longer alive. He’s a zombie. It appears momentarily that she’s going to let him bite her, but June reluctantly puts a knife through the head of the love of her life. Viewers, meanwhile, are left crestfallen.

It’s a loss that is almost as surprising as it is devastating. Garret Dillahunt is probably the biggest star on the show, which I assumed gave him a certain amount of plot armor. My guess, however, is that Dillahunt could’ve stayed on Fear as long as he’d have liked, but I know he had a hard pandemic during which he lost his father. Dillahunt is also never at a loss for roles — he’s in Zack Snyder’s upcoming zombie film Army of the Dead, James Franco’s The Long Home, Andrew Dominik’s adaptation of a Joyce Carol Oates’ fictionalized account of Marilyn Monroe, Blonde, and Michael Bay’s Ambulance with Jake Gyllenhaal. To be honest, Dillahunt lasted longer than I expected he would, but it was nice to see him go out on such a wonderfully, brilliantly heartbreaking episode of television.

In the meantime, there will obviously be ramifications. June is going to be inconsolable, as will Morgan, who called John his “best friend” in the episode. He is going to have to figure out what to do with Dakota. She’s the only leverage they’ve got to get Grace and the others back from Virginia. On the other hand, it turns out that Dakota is just as bad as her sister, and Zoe Colleti — who plays Dakota — did an outstanding job in the episode (in fact, this entire season). I never considered for a moment that she was behind Cal’s death or that she was the mystery character who saved Morgan. Bravo!

RIP John Dorie. He may have been the least flawed, most well-liked character in the entire The Walking Dead universe since Glenn. The series, which has never been as good as it is now, will nevertheless never be the same again without him. AMC, however, has smartly centered next week’s episode around Colman Domingo’s Strand to remind us that Garret Dillahunt is not the only celebrated actor on the series.

AMC’s ‘Fear The Walking Dead’ airs on Sundays at 9:00pm EST.

It’s been a year of NBA players embracing creating and owning their own media. The Orlando Bubble saw a proliferation of podcasts and YouTube channels and the pandemic had bored players looking to live videos on their social platforms, hosting anything from talent contests to wine tastings. And as the summer of 2020 erupted in necessary protest and set a spotlight on social justice, player media echoed and supported the same sentiment being shouted in the streets.

Beyond28, a podcast created by the Warriors, sponsored by JPMorgan Chase and Goodby Silverstein & Partners (GS&P), and produced by Audio Up Media, is a new and necessary example of a team following in the footsteps of its players.

The Warriors launched their Beyond28 initiative in February 2020 to celebrate Black History Month, but largely to look beyond it. The premise of the platform is to stress that the recognition and celebration of Black culture should not be limited to one month per yer, and features player-led vignettes, interviews, and panel discussions, as well as spotlights on Black artists, culture drivers, and creators.

“We launched the Beyond28 platform last year, before the world set on fire,” Amanda Chin, Warriors VP of Brand Marketing, recalls over the phone with the levity needed to look back on the last 12 months. “When we came back to the table to talk about the importance of what we’re doing and how to approach it moving forward, to create the maximum amount of impact, the idea of a podcast really stuck because it gave us this vehicle to continue the dialogue recognizing the joy and the adversity the Black community faces, day in and day out.”

With the growing prevalence of audio as a preferred medium to tell intimate and inspiring stories, the podcast was in some ways the next logical step for the Warriors, Chin says.

Bay Area natives will recognize the voice anchoring the podcast, ESPN’s The Undefeated writer Marc J. Spears, who worked with Beyond28 last June, hosting a Father’s Day panel about growing up Black in America. Chin says when they started thinking about a host for the podcast, Spears’ name naturally came up.

Starting on Wednesday, April 21, the podcast will premiere across all audio streaming platforms, and a new episode will be released every month over a 12-month period. Episodes will have a wide range of topics, but each one-hour show aims to celebrate Black culture and community through the lens of a specific theme, featuring an array of artists, activists, community members and of course, Warriors players.

“The players have been very embracing of the initiative,” Chin says, “A lot of Beyond28 was really inspired by the players. Back when Andre Iguodala was on our team he was quoted saying that he doesn’t celebrate Black History Month, he celebrates Black History year round. In a lot of ways, that was the impetus for this actually coming to life.”

Already, the Beyond28 podcast has inspired other teams, including the 76ers, to reach out to the Warriors for best practices in lunching similar initiatives of their own. As a franchise-driven program, the podcast is already unique, and with fans hungry for new and meaningful ways to connect with their teams and favorite players, more NBA teams testing out podcasts as a platform to deliver seems the next natural trend.

“It’s great to see it catching traction across the league, and hopefully across sports and in other businesses as well,” Chin agrees.

As for longterm goals for the podcast, the focus is on spending “the next year delivering interesting content on the topic and hopefully reaching out to as many people as possible”.

“If all goes well we’ll continue the podcast,” Chin says, “but really, the goal is to keep our foot on the gas regarding celebrating and honoring the Black experience year round, as a whole.”

Listen to the audio trailer for the Beyond28 podcast here.

Now that Olivia Rodrigo has become a breakout star thanks to her hit single “Drivers License,” cars and driving will likely be a bigger deal in her life than it is in that of most other people. So, Rodrigo’s latest life update might not be news for most other celebrities, but given the context, it’s notable: She got a parking ticket.

Rodrigo took to her Instagram Story yesterday to share a photo of a parking violation she received from the city of Los Angeles. She had jokes, writing, “damn this driving sh*t isnt all fun and games.”

This isn’t Rodrigo’s first vehicle-related difficulty, as it took her quite some time to get her drivers license. In an interview from a month ago, she revealed that it took her four tries to get her driver’s license. Her first two driving tests were thwarted by scheduling conflicts and she said of her third go, “I go to honk my horn and the horn doesn’t work on my mom’s car and she had no idea that the horn didn’t work on her car, because she never uses her horn because she’s like the calmest person in the world. And so [the test administrator] was like, ‘Oh, your car is legally unsafe, I can’t take you out to take the test, go home.’ I didn’t even get to drive out of the DMV, I was so upset. I literally like cried in the DMV parking lot. But the fourth time, I got it, I got my driver’s license.”

Married… with Children was Fox’s first hit show. It also inspired the network’s first (but hardly the last) controversy.

After being “appalled” while watching the season three episode “Her Cups Runneth Over,” anti-obscenity activist Terry Rakolta convinced several companies to “cancel commercials on the Fox Broadcasting Company’s top-rated series and to review their television advertising policies,” according to the New York Times. She was offended by the comedy’s “blatant exploitation of women and sex and anti-family attitudes,” including an old man wearing garters and stockings and Al Bundy ogling a naked woman.

Rakolta may have won the battle — the president of Coca-Cola USA wrote to Rakolta saying that he was “corporately, professionally, and personally embarrassed” that a Coke ad aired during the raunchy sitcom — but Married… with Children won the war.

During an episode of WTF with Marc Maron, Katey Sagal, who played Peggy, credited Rakolta’s boycott for the show’s popularity. “We sent her flowers every year,” the Futurama and Sons of Anarchy actress recalled. “She tried to get us off the air and all it did was get us on the front of the New York Times. And it doubled our audience.”

In season two, Married… with Children was the 116th biggest show on TV with 4.7 million viewers per episode; by season five, it was up to #50 with over 13 million viewers. That’s partially due to still-nascent Fox’s rise into the Big Four, but it’s also because a controversy can do wonders for a fledgling show. It did here — Married… with Children aired for 11 seasons. It still holds the record for Fox’s longest-running live-action sitcom.

As for Terry, she’s married to John Rakolta Jr., who served as the United States Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates during the Trump administration. Shocking.

You can listen to the WTF episode below.

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

Smashing guitars has become a major part of Phoebe Bridgers’ career story in recent months thanks to her famous Saturday Night Live performance and the reactions that ensued. At least for now, she appears to be done destroying guitars, but not stringed instruments overall, as she has channeled her destructive abilities into pulverizing a ukulele.

She does so in a new trailer for the upcoming Showtime series Ziwe, a variety series from comedian and writer Ziwe Fumudoh, who, among other endeavors, is a writer for Desus & Mero. In what looks like an interview clip, Fumudoh, ukulele in hand, suggests to somebody off-camera, “We could break these ukuleles.” The shot then changes to Bridgers, who holds her own ukulele and declares, “Yeah, I’d love that.” The two then get to destroying the instruments by smashing them on the ground.

During a recent interview segment on CNN, Bridgers said of her fateful guitar-smashing moment on SNL, “I’ve always wanted to do it, and when I mentioned it to the show, they built me this whole monitor that would look like it was exploding even if I wasn’t hitting it that hard. So yeah, [it was] just a bucket list thing.”

Watch the Ziwe trailer above.

John Oliver grew emotional while voting for the first time as a U.S. citizen, and he dragged Trump hard over his silly refusal to concede. It’s no secret that he was all-in for a Joe Biden win, and the Last Week Tonight host previously gave himself 30 seconds to party hard before talking about the work to be done to clean up Trump’s mess. That doesn’t mean that he’s going to let President Biden get away with anything, however, and this week, he let loose on #46 for dropping the ball on the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, and specifically, Biden’s seemingly forgotten vow to roll back the cap-based damage done by Trump.

That hasn’t happened yet, although Biden’s website is still promising to “undo the damage” done by Trump in this department. As Oliver notes, Trump “slashed the admissions low down to a historic annual low of 15,000,” and some of that wizardry was down to Stephen Miller, who was the architect of many of Trump’s anti-Muslim policies. Biden vowed (in February) to raise the annual cap on refugee admissions to 62,500 refugees (who have been displaced by war and who are fleeing persecution), but has he actually followed through on helping refugees resettle?

Nope. Biden hasn’t signed the necessary presidential determination, and there appears to be no reason why the president hasn’t done a very simple thing, as Oliver points out:

“He just needs to sign a piece of paper. And for a guy who clearly wanted to be the person who ‘restored the soul of America’ (a phrase he’s uttered many times), it is past time for him to look deep into his own, pick up a f*cking pen and do the right thing.”

And Oliver didn’t limit his disgust to the president himself. He’s got a little gem for White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who has had zero answers for Biden’s non-action on refugees:

“Props to Jen Psaki there, only a few months into the job and she’s already waiving away concerns about stranded refugees with the ease of a Spirit Airlines gate agent letting you know your flight’s delayed.”

On the subject of flights, Oliver pointed out how March saw cancellations of flights for at least 700 refugees who were supposed to be en route to the United States. The host added that the current batch of refugees who are already working on their resettlement process “are are still beholden to Trump’s low admission ceiling and bullsh*t racist rules.” He detailed how one pregnant refugee had her flight indefinitely delayed, which meant that she ended up giving birth before leaving for the U.S., and now, she must redo her own process, and her baby will also (ridiculously) have a process of its own to complete. It’s a great look, and Oliver really let Biden have it.

Perfect games, in either baseball or softball, are incredibly rare, but on Sunday North Texas pitcher Hope Trautwein did something in her perfect game that no one in NCAA history has ever done. The Mean Green took on Arkansas Pine-Bluff on Sunday afternoon and Trautwein was absolutely dealing from the rubber. Trautwein became the third player in NCAA D-1 history to throw 21 strikeouts in a 7-inning game, but the first to do so in a perfect game, seeing 21 batters and sending them all back to the dugout without putting the ball in play.

Per the Associated Press, the other two 7-inning, 21 strikeout games are Alexis Osorio in 2018 and Michele Granger in 1991 — and Trautwein had a 21 strikeout effort earlier this season in a 6-2 win.

NCAA records list two other pitchers with 21 strikeouts in a seven-inning game, but neither of those were perfect games. Alabama’s Alexis Osorio had a 21-K game against Fordham in 2018, and California’s Michele Granger did that against Creighton in 1991.

It is, put simply, the most dominant pitching performance in softball history, and while there’s not much video of Trautwein’s effort, ESPN did find footage of her final strikeout, as she blew a fastball by the hitter.

Trautwein’s performance on Sunday will go down as a legendary afternoon on the diamond, earning a significant place in the NCAA history books and surly being something she’ll never forget.

The San Antonio Spurs have hit a rough patch recently, dropping eight of their last 10 coming into Sunday, pushing them down to ninth in the Western Conference at 24-26, two games back of the Grizzlies in eighth.

The Spurs made the trek across Texas to face the in-state rival Mavs in Dallas on Sunday needing a win to end a five-game skid and keep themselves from slipping closer to the 10-seeded Warriors, and were able to do so thanks to some heroics from DeMar DeRozan. The star guard had 33 points, eight assists, and five rebounds to lead the Spurs on Sunday, outdueling Luka Doncic (29 points, seven assists, three rebounds) down the stretch.

It was a back-and-forth affair late, with Doncic tying the game with 20 seconds to play after driving for a floater off a Mavs offensive rebound.

DeRozan had the answer on the other end, with a filthy stepback from the midrange that found the bottom of the net and gave San Antonio a 119-117 lead with a half second to play.

It is vintage DeRozan, who has been terrific all season for the Spurs and is a big reason why they’re still in the hunt for the play-in out West. Doncic was pushed out near midcourt on the Mavs desperation attempt, and had his heave fall well short of the basket as the Spurs snuck out of Dallas with a much-needed victory.