Category: News

Donald Trump Jr. can’t be happy about reports of the Manhattan DA investigating him as part of a criminal probe into the Trump family businesses. He’s also been very amped up about the like The Muppets (and their faux-cancelation) and teacher’s unions while appearing in front of a wall of guns. That doesn’t even begin to approach his recent slurry Motel 6 video, but on Thursday evening, Don Jr. made it his mission to defend his dad’s refusal to accept election results while speaking with Sean Hannity.

During the interview, Don Jr. declared that his dad is better than most Republicans, who would “rather lose gracefully, I guess.” That’s not really a plan that I would go with, but it’s what they’ve done.” This discussion continued for about seven minutes, and when things were over for Hannity, Don Jr. certainly wasn’t ready to say goodbye. And the eldest Trump son got all kinds of flustered while trying to get a word in while Hannity powered through with his own declarations. And then, boom, bye for now, Don Jr.

Here’s what happened: “When you really want to say something but Hannity ends the interview mid-sentence.”

It was super awkward, to say the least. Don Jr. is not used to someone cutting off his energy. That messes with his amped-up mojo that he’s usually letting fly in lengthy Rumble videos. People really enjoyed this spectacle.

Don Jr. is scheduled to speak at CPAC on Friday, where I assume that he won’t be cut off by anyone. Should be fun!

You can watch Don Jr.’s full interview with Hannity below.

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) kicked off last night in Orlando, Florida, an “oasis of freedom,” according to governor Ron DeSantis, in a country that’s otherwise “suffering from the yoke of oppressive lockdowns.” (More than 30,000 Floridians have died from COVID-19.) But inside the Hyatt Regency Orlando, everyone is required to wear a mask, something that did not sit well with conference attendees.

Two CPAC organizers, executive director Dan Schneider and planner Carly Conley, were met with a rain of boos when they asked the conservative crowd to put on masks. “We conservatives believe in the rule of law, because we know that when the laws enforced, our rights are protected. But also to mention one thing, and I know this might sound like a little bit of a downer, but we also believe in property rights, and this is a private hotel. And we believe in the rule of law,” Schneider said. “So we need to comply with the laws of this county that we’re in. A private hotel just like your house gets to set its own rules.” With all the feeble enthusiasm of an in-over-their-head babysitter, Conley added, “We are in a private facility and we do want to be respectful of the ordinances that they have as their private property. So please everyone, when you’re in a ballroom, when you’re seated, you should still be wearing a mask. So if everybody can go ahead, work on that.”

Instead of “working on that,” the crowd booed and one person yelled “freedom!”

CPAC 2021: already off to a golden start.

(Via Mediaite)

Morgan Wallen is embroiled in controversy after a video emerged of him saying a racial slur, which led to swift and intense backlash: His label suspended his contract and radio stations took his music off the air. Recently, though, Knoxville, Tennessee-based station WMYL, aka 96.7 Merle FM, started playing his music again after their listeners strongly indicated they’d rather hear Wallen than not.

The station launched “The Morgan Wallen Verdict Poll” on their Facebook page on February 7, writing, “We think LISTENERS should determine if 96.7 Merle plays Morgan Wallen or not.” The poll was open until February 16, at which point it was revealed that of the 35,000-plus people who voted in the pole, an overwhelming majority of them — 92 percent, or around 32,000 respondents — were in favor of the station playing Wallen’s music. Sharing the verdict, the station wrote, “96.7 Merle LISTENERS have spoken. YOU have spoken and we LISTENED. Morgan Wallen is back on the air on 96.7 Merle. Share this post, tell your friends, and tune in to the only country station in Knoxville playing Morgan Wallen!”

Ahead of the poll, WMYL station owner Ron Meredith said, “We were disappointed by the behavior in the video, but we were also uncomfortable with sitting in judgment. We are going to now literally let East Tennessee country listeners vote. If they say no, Morgan’s music stays off 96.7 Merle. If they vote yes, we will play the songs local country listeners want to hear most. That’s the business we are in.”

Despite all the backlash Wallen has faced, it’s actually unsurprising that people still want to listen to Wallen: His new project, Dangerous: The Double Album, is No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart and has been for weeks now, even after the controversy surfaced.

The pop docs are in right now. Recent documentaries about female pop stars include Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana at the beginning of 2020, a film that portrays an expertly guarded intimacy shepherded by the genre’s best strategizer, and Ariana Grande’s tour “doc” Excuse Me I Love at the end of the year, a piece even more sparing with any personal details, serving primarily as a catalogue of her Sweetener era live show. The most private moment we get of Ariana is a clip of her belting in the car while driving to her show at The Forum — which isn’t exactly breaking any new ground in the singer’s chaotic personal life.

In sharp contrast with those two coiffed and polished films, a new documentary on Billie Eilish, The World’s Little Blurry, reveals an astonishing amount about the experience of the young singer and her family and her quick rise to fame. Though Eilish has been catching industry attention since her debut single, “Ocean Eyes,” hit Soundcloud in 2015, this new film by R.J. Cutler primarily focuses on the writing, recording, release, and reception of her critically-acclaimed, Grammy-record-breaking debut album, When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go?

While these types of films often need to be artist-approved, and therefore leave out anything uncomfortable or actually revealing, it’s clear from the jump the cameras aren’t just there doing carefully rehearsed vignettes. From teenaged Billie’s whining and complaining about how hard songwriting is, to Finneas’ worried concern that the record they’re writing doesn’t have a hit on it, neither of the O’Connell siblings look perfect in this film. Instead, they look like people — and that’s what actually makes them even more appealing.

To hear Eilish talk about who much she thinks she sucks, or get jealous about how quickly Finneas can bust out a song is a new layer to their relationship; to watch their parents Maggie Baird and Patrick O’Connell debate whether giving their ultra-famous daughter a souped-up muscle car for her birthday is the right move brings them back to earth as real parents, ones who have the difficult job of balancing their daughter’s looming star power with her adolescence.

Even more so, Billie is in a relationship that is clearly one-sided, with a boyfriend who can’t quite be there for her and is often unreachable or emotionally distant when she needs him most; all of that is shown instead of scrapped. Even when he ditches her at Coachella, a performance that is presumably one of the most important moments in her career, he’s using the passes she got him to be elsewhere.

Still, neither Billie nor the filmmaker vilify her soon-to-be ex’s inability to be there for her. Nor do they dramatize the bouts with Tourette’s syndrome tics that emerge during a meeting with her label, or the very stark descriptions of her experiences with cutting as a pre-teen. These aren’t things Eilish hasn’t shared in public before, but seeing them in the context of her larger narrative — with her mom looking on, or taking place in the family’s small Highland Park living room — gives a new weight to what her life has been like. Eilish’s music isn’t dark because it’s trendy, or it sells, or because she’s assuming a pop star persona, it’s dark because that’s what she’s really like. And her translating that lived experience with the darker side of life is why her work resonates so deeply with not just her generation, but the ones who came before them, too.

On a lighter note, we also get to see Billie live her dream in a different way. Her former idol and object of teenage romantic obsession, Justin Bieber, not only gets on a remix of her song but also ends up becoming a friend and peer for her. From an initial social media exchange (which led to the remix of “Bad Guy”), to their long, emotional hug at Coachella, where Billie literally cries in his arms, to his phone call on the night of the Grammys, when she broke almost every record imaginable, the arc of their relationship mirrors everything else that is changing in her life. But using Bieber as a foil also deepens our understanding of what’s happening to Billie, and what happens to every teen pop idol.

At 25, Bieber is just old enough to feel comfortably distant from his teenage years, but not old enough to forget the crushing pressure of stepping into the spotlight while still navigating tasks like getting a drivers license (word to Olivia Rodrigo), breaking up with an apathetic partner, or trying to figure out if fan meet and greets are emotionally sustainable. Though Bieber has been through the wringer with his rise and fall, in Billie’s eyes, he never once lost an iota of importance. In the car, after their fateful meet-up she laments to her family how embarrassing it was that she sobbed, until they remind her that she knows exactly how that feels like, her fans often break out in tears when they see her, too.

It’s a subtle but mind-bending comparison that humanizes Billie by revealing how cyclical the process between idolizing others and self-actualizing can be. And, it’s a cutting reminder to the audience that the famous teenagers we tear down, scrutinize, surveil, and pass judgement on are likely dealing with the same degree of insecurity and uncertainty as the rest of us. Bieber’s latest single, “Lonely,” throws his own story into stark contrast, as does a recent documentary exposing how terribly Britney Spears was treated in the early 2000s. Particularly in the context of these two older stars, Billie’s decision to let this documentary take an extremely intimate look at her life, and her real struggles, rings true.

In one scene, Billie meets Katy Perry in passing at Coachella, who expresses that she’s a fan and offers a listening ear if ever needed. “This is gonna be wild for ten years, it’s gonna be crazy,” she says. “Let me know if you ever wanna talk, ’cause it’s a weird ride.” The World’s A Little Blurry gives us at least the first chapter of Billie’s weird ride, but maybe in a decade Cutler and his crew will follow up.

About 40 minutes into Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar there’s an epiphany. It’s the point of no return. It’s the moment in the movie where a viewer either realizes this is a movie made specifically for them, or, tragically, it’s the moment where there’s really no hope for that viewer ever liking this movie from that moment forward. That moment is a sequence and song known as “Edgar’s Prayer.”

In the film, Edgar, played by Jamie Dornan, is torn. He’s in love with the villain of the movie, Sharon Gordon Fisherman (played by Kristen Wiig, who, yes, also plays Star from the title of the movie). But he’s asked to betray Barb and Star (Annie Mumolo and Wiig) and he feels conflicted about what’s happening. Up until that point, we don’t really know what to make of Edgar. Is he dastardly? Is he a sad sack? It’s at this moment Edgar starts walking along the beach, singing about his woes and belts out the line, “Seagulls in the sand can you hear my prayer?!,” as the visuals we are watching show us Dornan acting out the very specific lyrics. This includes, “I’m going up a palm tree like a cat up a palm tree who’s decided to go up a palm tree,” and then we see Dornan’s Edgar clawing his way up a palm tree, which was a stunt that was actually done practically with a harness. What results is, arguably, the funniest, weirdest two and a half minutes of the last year.

To commemorate the hardest a lot of us have laughed over the course of this last, pretty lousy, year: Jamie Dornan (who, it should be pointed out, couldn’t stop laughing himself while discussing this scene), Annie Mumolo, and director Josh Greenbaum tell us everything we would possibly want to know about the creation, filming, and reaction to “Edgar’s Prayer.” Including how the idea spawned from watching Footloose, to the fact there’s a much longer version of “Edgar’s Prayer” out there that, from the accounts below, is anywhere between a minute longer to a full 10-minutes long.

Annie Mumolo: We basically found out that we were going to get to do the musical number and we were really excited. Then we found out we had a very short time to do it. I think we only had a day or two with these guys at Beacon Street. We went down there and wrote the song. When we were doing it, that just came out organically, the lyrics. When it was all said and done, recorded, can you think of any other titles to that song? You can’t. He’s praying.

Josh Greenbaum: It’s also so long and committed. There’s no reason!

Jamie Dornan: Edgar’s just a confused guy who just wants to be loved.

Annie Mumolo: We knew that Jamie could sing, and then he came in and started singing. He just was belting it out: just singing his heart out so earnestly. Yeah, we couldn’t have dreamed of a better situation.

Jamie Dornan: It’s almost so heightened and silly that he sees this as his “prayer.” Although it’s so ridiculous what’s happening, but it’s a very bizarre way of asking for something or looking for answers. It’s just so silly, but it made sense in this whole world of silliness that we find ourselves in. Actually, it would scare you how normal it felt to to be singing.

Annie Mumolo: We’d heard Jamie could sing, and we had listened to some stuff when we were in talks, like when he was reading the script and stuff. We were hopeful that he would do it. God, poor guy. We just sort of threw it at him. We were like, “Okay, you’re going to sing this crazy ballad. You’re going to be yelling. You’re just going to sing your heart out and belting out notes, and then you’re going to be dancing.” Yeah, he was so game for everything.

Jamie Dornan: He got caught up in this world, in this very strange set of circumstances: Ends up working for a villain, but actually he seems like this sort of sweet guy who just wants to be an official couple. It’s so pure and child-like, his motivations. I love him. He’s a sweetheart.

Josh Greenbaum: The scene exists to say he’s upset, right? That’s pretty much it. He’s upset with his current relationship. You don’t need two and a half minutes to say that, but we took it. We took all two and a half minutes to say it, which I think is part of the joke. I mean, Letterman used to do it. It’s an old trick in comedy, like just keep hitting that joke. The first time it feels long, the second time you’re like, “Oh my god they’re still going,” and by the third chorus you’re like, “Oh, I love this, I can’t believe how committed they are.”

Jamie Dornan: It feels like it’s almost fairly linear storytelling until that point. It’s definitely tricky, but I feel like this “prayer” almost works as a catalyst for like, oh, now it’s going to get really weird. In the best way, it sets the tone.

Annie Mumolo: Honestly, it was like these things were just flowing out of him. These things are just flowing out of him, comedic instincts. He was just overflowing with it. His character, he has to walk a very difficult line. It’s really not easy to do. It’s like a tight rope situation and he did it effortlessly. Fluidly and just perfectly. It was really exciting to watch because we knew he was funny and it was really fun to see him just kind of roll and just go. It was awesome.

Josh Greenbaum: Kristen and Annie went with the guys at Beacon Street, who did a bunch of our music, that song in particular, and wrote those lyrics very quickly. Part of it is, okay, we’re going to do the fun joke of being really literal about these lyrics. So he’s narrating that he’s running to the left, to the right. He’s doing splits, he’s climbing a palm tree. A lot of that is just, okay, where do we put the camera? How do we set it up? We did have a choreographer, but a lot of it was also just trying different things and freestyling with Jamie. Obviously a lot of it did involve rather elaborate stunts, like climbing the tree.

The choreography for the song that we see in the movie wasn’t really that planned out, script-wise, beyond a passing reference to the scene in Footloose when Ren (Kevin Bacon) goes to a warehouse and dances to the song “Never” by Moving Pictures. But the difference here is Dornan also has to sing the song.

Annie Mumolo: Jamie, did you tell him how initially in the script, it was just like, “And then there’s a dance number,” and then we actually found out we would actually have to do it?

Jamie Dornan: It said “Edgar dances emotionally,” or something like that, no joke. It’s when I got on the phone with Josh Greenbaum, he said something about, “And Edgar’s big dance and song, think like Footloose.” I was like, “Jesus, what does he even mean?” I had seen Footloose, but it’d been a very long, long time. We rewatched it.

Josh Greenbaum: The original script and the script that I first read, the script that he read, even before he got to Mexico City, to our set, it really did just say, “Edgar does an emotional dance a la Kevin Bacon Footloose.” That’s all it said.

Annie Mumolo: I think we sent him the script, “He breaks into an emotional dance, all off Kevin Bacon in Footloose,” or something. And that’s all we had. But then we really wanted to make our own thing and then it became what it was. We kind of put that in the script as a hopeful, almost like a joke, “and then this happens?” Hopeful with a question mark.

Josh Greenbaum: When Jamie showed up, I was like “Lets get going and rehearse this thing.” He was like “What thing?” Oh, you know the three-minute song where you’re going to dance on the beach really emotionally and climb a tree like a cat, et cetera?

Jamie Dornan: It’s that frustration and turmoil and, “Jesus Christ, the only way I can release this is if I sing and dance my way across the stage.” That’s what kind of works.

Josh Greenbaum: In Footloose it’s obviously very funny but also, again, it works.

Annie Mumolo: Ren finds uneven bars inside the warehouse, and he’s like swinging or something. It’s one of my favorite scenes of any movie ever. I just love it so much.

Josh Greenbaum: The whole point of it is to show his emotional frustration. We kind of thought, why don’t we take that same idea? He’s climbing a tree like a cat, but we’re also just trying not to push too hard. Just lifting his tiptoes up in the sand, he’s frustrated. Trying to express his emotion, it just happens to be very, very funny.

Jamie Dornan: I think Kevin Bacon would have been well capable of singing that and dancing, I’d imagine. It almost felt like you had to sing it to get yourself into it in a way? Particularly for the stuff where I’m singing what’s actually happening. “I’m going up a palm tree, like a cat in a palm tree.” Actually being able to sing the actions that you’re playing out is just brilliant and a real gift. Actually, I had to sing it.

Josh Greenbaum: Jamie did the wonderful thing you should do as any dramatic actor or actor in general in a comedy: just commit. Don’t play the joke. Play the true emotion and the context surrounding it will make it funny as opposed to trying to be funny. Which he did gloriously.

Annie Mumolo: He was doing all that in Caribbean summer temperature. It was like 100 degrees. The humidity was crazy. I don’t know how he did it. The whole time we were like, “Is this okay? Is he going to be okay?” Then he would just be like, “Okay!,” and bounce back up again and we were just like, “How is he surviving this?” Oh my god.

Jamie Dornan: Amy Keys was there, and also so incredible. Also, people are coming in to do one little bit for one day. They must have just been like, “What are these guys doing? What am I walking into? They’re lunatics!” She was a team player and just went with it and was unbelievable.

Though the final product seemed a little too long at the time, so it was trimmed down. Which means there’s a much longer version out there, somewhere.

Annie Mumolo: I don’t know if Jamie already said this, but it was longer. It was much longer. Jamie did a bunch of other stuff. For a time we had to trim it. If it were up to us, it would have been a 10-minute thing.

Josh Greenbaum: It’s not 10 but there’s definitely… I feel like there’s another minute we cut out.

Annie Mumolo: Well, it’s not 10 minutes, but if were up to us, it would be. We had a longer version that was in the original cut of the movie. Just for time, we had to make it shorter.

Josh Greenbaum: It’s always debatable what’s the sweet spot. It was like a montage of all the things where he started singing, running, skipping, dreaming, sleeping, eating, thinking. It’s just a quick montage of all these actions he’s doing but some of them are incredibly banal like napping.

Annie Mumolo: Yeah, there was some beautiful stuff in there.

Jamie Dornan: Oh my God. There was reading, crying, sunbathing.

Annie Mumolo: Eating a hamburger!

Josh Greenbaum: Yeah, he eats a hamburger. Oh, kicking, he did karate kicks!

Jamie Dornan: Laughing, eating, drinking. We did insane stuff that just didn’t make it in.

Annie Mumolo: It was all him being very emotional. Doing all these things, like he’s eating emotionally, he’s sleeping emotionally. Yeah, it’s been passage of time of all his feelings, but this was more over the course of a day. Now it’s more of this one moment.

Jamie Dornan: I think, also, we can potentially throw logic to the side at moments.

Josh Greenbaum: I’d love to release the footage. It’s always that weird thing of all of the editorial is shut down, but we should try to find it somewhere. It’s very funny and there’s stuff in there that I think people would really enjoy.

Of course, there were some technical aspects of what we do see that were a bit more complicated than we might expect. The seagulls themselves were difficult because the fear was real seagulls from a seagull handler would just think they were being let free. Dornan as Edgar ripping his shirt off was a challenge because shirts are built to not do that. And then they made Jamie Dornan actually climb a palm tree instead of using any kind of computer effect.

Josh Greenbaum: The reality is actual seagulls are pretty difficult, particularly out on a beach where I think the allure of maybe taking off is rather high. Like, “Oh, now that I’m here, see you later. Thanks for returning me home.” We got stuffed seagulls and I’m holding some of them and moving them. Then we added a little bit of blinking, I think, in the very first shot. Then, yeah, a couple of others in the group are stock footage. The “on a tire” is actually a comp. We couldn’t find a good shot of a seagull on a tire so that’s a heavy VFX shot basically where we comped the seagull on top of a tire on a beach that looked like it might be in the same space as Edgar. That’s how we pulled those off.

Jamie Dornan: I think everyone’s watched this documentary where I saw that even Hulk Hogan had his shirt pre-ripped? Yeah, if you can believe it, I’ve never tried to do it without someone helping me, but I can imagine it’s tough. I think we did one take where I did try to do it without help, and I was like, oh, wow, I really can’t do this. I’m going to have to get wardrobe in to make a couple of cuts.

Annie Mumolo: When you’re feeling frustrated and your emotions are so strong and running through your body, you become the Incredible Hulk! You become the Incredible Hulk. You can do anything.

Josh Greenbaum: Somebody actually asked me, they were like I bet you did that old Batman trick and turned the palm tree sideways and climbed it that way? No, we did it with a harness. That’s all practical. He’s physically doing it. Our great stunt coordinator, Todd Bryant, he hooked Jamie up to a rig. He was basically hooked on by his belt. Still, the shot is actually quite difficult. To make it look like he is climbing up a tree like a cat using his claws is more work than you’d think. He’s got to steady himself because he only has one anchor point. So, he could be swinging around the tree like a tetherball if he wasn’t doing it well. He, actually, as you can probably imagine, has very good body control and is very strong. So yeah, we had to do a few takes where I’m like, “No, no, you’ve got to just gingerly rest your fingertips on the side of this palm tree.” I’m a big fan of doing things practically. Even when Kristen and Annie float down in their culottes, we strung up Kristen and Annie and lifted them 100 feet in the air on a crane and floated them down. So it’s all done real.

Why is “Edgar’s Prayer” having the reaction it’s receiving? It does feel like a perfect storm of “our current situation” and then just seeing something so brazenly weird and funny. But it is certainly causing a reaction in people, even to some of the toughest customers.

Josh Greenbaum: We had previews, we were able to get a preview in before the pandemic hit, the sort of audience test preview. Not as many as we wanted because, obviously, then everything got shut down. But we had one. You sit in the audience and it’s such a nerve-wrecking experience because you’re with 300 strangers. I just remember seeing this one guy, a 300-pound dude, covered in tattoos, very tough-looking guy there with his girlfriend. Again, totally my bad for profiling but you kind of eye people as they walk in being like, “I don’t know if this is going to be his movie.” To be honest, I was validated because, for much of the first third of the movie, he was literally sitting there arms crossed, not really smiling. His girlfriend, you could tell, was digging it and laughing. But he was not into it. Then “Edgar’s Prayer” hit and I kept watching him. As the song got longer and longer, he was laughing. He started laughing harder. By the end of it, he was doubled over and hitting the back of the chair in front of him. I was like, we did it. We just converted this guy who was so anti this movie.

Jamie Dornan: My kids keep wanting to watch that scene. We let them see a bit of it, and it’s all that song obviously, and they always want to watch it. Our two-year-old, she just turned two literally yesterday, she doesn’t have a huge, wide vocabulary yet: but if she comes to grab your hand, she goes, “Daddy … naked … watch,” and she brings you into the TV room. By the way, I’ve had to rent it like six times. I press play and the kids watch it. I’ve seen it so many times now. I can watch it with the kids, but I can’t watch it without remembering how burning the sand was at that moment and how sweaty I was at that moment. And how that was really hurting my leg at that moment.

Annie Mumolo: Look, we’re in a pandemic. It’s been a year. We’re all locked up, and that’s on the lucky end if you haven’t lost a family member or something, which some people have. Or lost their lives. It’s such a crazy, dark time. I can’t speak for why. It’s hard for me to know, but I think for us, as a team, when we’re looking at the movie over the last few weeks, getting it ready and stuff, we all felt we were escaping by watching it. By looking back at it, there’s an escape aspect to it that the way it looks. You want to dive into the picture. I just want to go back there so badly. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. Maybe people just want to have a time where they just laugh and not think about anything.

Josh Greenbaum: I love that the song is good. I think that, hopefully, is the moment for a lot of people that they get it and they go, okay, these guys are just trying to have fun and make us laugh. Why am I resisting? Why am I sitting here with my arms folded and judging? Why don’t I give in to this hilarious madness and enjoy what these people are trying to do, which is just have fun and be silly? It’s so committed, which, again, I think is emblematic of our movie. It’s a big swing and we’re fully committed. It’s that unwillingness to bend or give up on what we’re doing and ultimately we, hopefully, win you over by that point. If we didn’t win you over by then, it’s definitely not a movie for you.

Annie Mumolo: Yeah, when I watch it, I feel lifted out of my seat a little. I feel high almost.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

[Spoilers for the new episode of WandaVision]

Paul Bettany caused a stir online earlier this month when he teased that WandaVision will feature a cameo from a top-secret actor. “Truth is, of all of the characters we were trying to keep secret, a lot of them got out through leaks,” he told Esquire. “There is one character that has not been revealed. And it is very exciting. It is an actor I’ve longed to work with all of my life. We have some amazing scenes together and I think the chemistry between us is extraordinary and fireworks on set.” It wasn’t Evan Peters and Fred “Sy Abelman” Melamed doesn’t appear to be coming back, so who could it be? The predictions ranged from Ian McKellen reprising his role as Magneto to Mark Hamill (the actual Mark Hamill, not smooth-faced Mark Hamill) to literally every famous actor alive.

Except one: Paul Bettany.

In the latest episode of WandaVision, “Previously On,” we learn that the Vision we’ve been following, the one living in domestic bliss in New Jersey, isn’t the “real” Vision. He was created by Wanda out of anger and sadness. The real Vision, the one who was killed by Thanos, is in pieces in a S.W.O.R.D. lab. Wanda didn’t steal him, as was originally thought; the footage in episode five was doctored by Director Hayward. But he’s resurrected in the mid-credits scene, now completely devoid of color. (Did anyone else pick up Engineer from Prometheus vibes?) That means there are two Visions on WandaVision: one red, one white — both played by Paul Bettany. Let’s revisit that quote: “It is an actor I’ve longed to work with all of my life. We have some amazing scenes together and I think the chemistry between us is extraordinary and fireworks on set.” It’s totally Bettany talking about himself, havin’ a laugh. What a stinker.

Other WandaVision viewers seem to think so, as well.

Chicago rapper Vic Mensa appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to perform a medley of new songs, “Shelter” and “FR33DOM.” Recruiting “Shelter” guest Wyclef Jean and longtime Windy City collaborator Peter Cottontale, Vic’s prerecorded performance finds him performing from the floor of an empty warehouse and visually condemning the prison system. For the second half of the performance, red highlighting accentuates a riotous rendition of the defiant “FR33DOM.”

Both songs are due to appear on Vic’s upcoming EP, I TAPE, the follow-up to last year’s V TAPE. The activist/rapper revealed the I TAPE due date via a press release after the performance: March 26. It’s clear that Vic is building up to a larger project, so a C TAPE can’t be very far behind that.

“Shelter,” I TAPE‘s first single, featured the reunion of Vic and his musical brother-in-arms Chance The Rapper. The two rappers came up at the same open mic together and had parallel career tracks early on, but when Chance’s Coloring Book took off, the two apparently had a falling out that lasted for several years. In the meantime, Vic released an experimental punk album, became an outspoken critic of various US policies, and even visited Palestine, deciding to recommit to the social justice cause and apparently getting back to his musical roots. You can read more in Uproxx’s new interview with Vic Mensa here.

Watch Vic Mensa’s The Late Show performance of “Shelter” and “FR33DOM” above.

I TAPE is out 3/26 on Roc Nation.

Lady Gaga was met with some distressing news yesterday, when it was reported that thieves shot her dog walker and made off with two of her three French bulldogs. Gaga has yet to offer a public statement about the dog-napping, but now her father, Joe Germanotta, has spoken out about it.

Talking with Fox News, Germanotta said, “Our whole family is upset and praying Koji and Gustavo are not harmed. Help us catch these creeps.”

It was previously reported that Gaga is offering a $500K “no questions asked” reward for the return of her dogs and information about the situation can be sent to [email protected].

Germanotta says the dog walker is a 30-year-old family “friend,” and at the time of the interview, he was unaware of their current condition. It was previously reported, though, that the dog walker was taken to the hospital and is expected to fully recover.

Germanotta continued, “Horrible people in LA. Shooting someone in order to steal dogs is wrong.”

LAPD Public Information Officer Jeff Lee told Fox News that the department is treating the case, which detectives are currently investigating, as “assault with a deadly weapon.” Lee added, “The suspect was last observed in a white vehicle northbound of Sierra Bonita Avenue towards Hollywood Boulevard. No arrest has been made yet.”

(Spoilers from Marvel Studios and Disney+’s WandaVision will be found below.)

We’re now in Week 8 of WandaVision. It’s the penultimate episode in a series that’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and yet, Kevin Feige is using the show to lay much more groundwork for Phase Four and beyond, even going so far to deftly combine two superhero universes, that of 20th Century Fox and the MCU, and that’s only one of the reasons why this show’s been a hit. A lot of the love for the series has to do with its flat-out weirdness and refusal to adhere to one genre, one tone, or even one decade (oh, there have been many). This week, however, a lot of the nerd-ery got temporarily shelved to strip the show back to its emotional bare bones and made it less weird, but that weird will possibly come raging back in the finale.

What we ended up with this week was Elizabeth Olsen and Kathryn Hahn giving us two incredible performances. After learning about “Agatha All Along,” we saw a bit of an Agatha Harkness origin story, but what really matters is how Agatha relates to Wanda Maximoff. Through a flashback-heavy exploration of the moments when Wanda and Pietro’s parents were killed, we truly got to see the roots of her trauma. We saw Wanda’s love of sitcoms from an early age, and all of these revelations easily flow into this series’ marvelous structure. And we saw Agatha — a sorceress from the comics who helped Wanda come into her powers while training with HYDRA — declare that Wanda is much more dangerous than she could possibly understand. She’s using her powers to manipulate energy and matter to cook up “breakfast for dinner,” which doesn’t sound all that evil to us in the audience. Yet Agatha’s characterization of this as “chaos magic” does come close to a “We’re not so different, you and I”-type declaration from villain to hero, and it does sound like Scarlet Witch is being set up as the biggest bad here.

Yep, Wanda recreated her perfect house and perfect husband and perfect life, despite all of the sadness that it now brings her. And we’ve definitely got Scarlet Witch now, baby.

So, next week is finale time. Guessing where we go from here feels like a shot in the dark, but it’s worth discussing how we have not seen Mephisto at all despite all of the hints that we’d be seeing the MCU’s version of the Devil). There were suggestions that Evan Peters’ Pietro could secretly be Mephisto, but a member of the WandaVision team shut down that theory. Fan theories abounded that Mephisto was Agnes’ husband and would be played by Al Pacino, but that never materialized. In fact, it sure doesn’t seem like we’re going to be seeing Mephisto at all?

Nor do we know if we’ll see Pietro next week, or what will happen to Wanda’s (fabricated-in-the-comics) kids, who are now in Agatha’s clutches. We don’t know if Agatha and Wanda will team up (can they go there, after Agatha killed Sparky?) and both go on to spread chaos magic in Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (Elizabeth Olsen has what’s thought to be a significant role in the film). Darcy and Jimmy Woo and Monica Rambeau (who’s got the Photon vibes doing as of last week) might be on deck again for finale time (all of that post-credit Hayward business about the true manipulation of Vision will go somewhere else, no doubt), but probably no Mephisto!

Unless…

Alright, so we did get one bit of weirdness this week. Bryan Cranston showed up, ever so briefly, while Malcolm In The Middle flashed onscreen as Wanda and Vision watched TV. This blip happened amid a bittersweet conversation, and it’s all very emotional as Wanda attempted to grapple with all of the devastating loss that she’s experienced in her life. All of this could build toward the kind of power we saw when Wanda took on Thanos in Avengers: Endgame, but for now, we’re also left with one parting thought: Bryan Cranston is technically now part of the MCU. Yet it’s too bad that this didn’t happen with him as Walter White. Let’s call it now: Walter White is Mephisto.

Disney+’s ‘WandaVision’ streams new episodes on Fridays.

While today’s Republicans are predominantly Evangelical Christians, they clearly missed the part in The Bible about building false idols. In a move that truly captures the apocalyptic vibes of his presidency, Bloomberg’s William Turton captured footage of a golden statue of Donald Trump being wheeled around CPAC on Thursday, and people are having a blast dunking on the graven image. Shortly after the footage hit Twitter, “Golden Calf” started trending as religious leaders and others pointed out the awkward (and hypocritical) Biblical implications of turning Trump into a golden idol, which is a big no-no, according to Christian scripture. And, yet, that’s definitely a gilded Trump wearing American flag shorts.

After the initial shock of watching Republicans worship a golden idol off, people started noticing that the statue looks like Bob’s Big Boy, which unleashed a new buffet of jokes. The restaurant mascot is still trending as of Friday morning.

Folks also notice that the golden Trump statue resembles Bart Simpson thanks to being wheeled around on what looks like a skateboard and the weird blocky cartoon feet. If you can’t tell by now, the whole thing is a comedy gold mine.

While the golden idol jokes are hilarious, there is a serious side to the whole production. According to Axios, Trump will attend CPAC and declare himself the “presumptive 2024 nominee” for the next presidential election in a show of his “total control” of the GOP. And, frankly, Trump’s plan might of off without a hitch. However, the former president is currently facing significant legal trouble after the Supreme Court ruled this week that New York state prosecutors can access his private tax records. He didn’t like that.

(Via William Turton on Twitter)