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Yesterday (April 25) saw a major loss for the worlds of music, acting, and activism: Harry Belafonte died at 96 years old. His passing sparked many fond remembrances, including an Instagram post from Questlove.

The Roots drummer’s message begins, “Shining example of how to use your platform to make change in the world. Hi$ activi$m was crucial for the civil rights movement. His activism was key in the anti apartheid movement.” It later concludes, “If there is one lesson we can learn from him it is ‘what can I do to help mankind?’ Thank You Harry Belafonte!”

Find Questlove’s full post below.

“Shining example of how to use your platform to make change in the world.

Hi$ activi$m was crucial for the civil rights movement. His activism was key in the anti apartheid movement.

I once read a touching story of @theweeknd explaining how learning how #WeAreTheWorld (organized by, you guessed it Belafonte) was not only key to his jacksonesque vocal delivery but his family being the key family that benefited from the funds that record raised to relocate his family to safety in Canada.

Before the pandemic the storyline to @summerofsoulmovie was Belafontecentric once @selema explained to us how his father personally uprooted his legendary father #HughMasekela from the 60s South African apartheid & brought him to live in New York City & planted the seeds of activism in him.

He represented many things to us: fun calypso music, iconic acting (I came to know him as #GeechieDan in the iconic #UptownSaturdayNight as a child)—but most importantly he taught me to think in terms of ‘WE’ not ‘I’.

That stuck with me.

If there is one lesson we can learn from him it is ‘what can I do to help mankind?’

Thank You Harry Belafonte!”

The legal battle between Ed Sheeran and Marvin Gaye’s team. Yesterday (April 25) in a New York courtroom, Sheeran defended his songwriting for his 2014 single, “Thinking Out Loud,” which Gaye’s team has alleged plagiarizes his song, “Let’s Get It On.”

In 2016, the heirs of Gaye’s co-writer on “Let’s Get It On,” Ed Townsend, filed a lawsuit against Sheeran, alleging that he and Amy Wadge, the co-writer of “Thinking Out Loud,” replicated an ascending four-chord sequence, as well as a rhythm.

Per The Guardian, Sheeran appeared in court and claimed that he and Wadge wrote the song taking inspiration from the love his grandparents shared.

Ben Crump, the plaintiff’s lawyer, then referred to a video of Sheeran performing a mashup of “Thinking Out Loud” and “Let’s Get It On” during one of his shows, calling the moment “a confession” of plagiarism.

Sheeran then replied, saying, “Most pop songs can fit over most pop songs… You could go from [The Beatles’] ‘Let it Be’ to [Bob Marley’s] ‘No Woman, No Cry’ and switch back.”

He continued, “If I had done what you’re accusing me of doing, I’d be quite an idiot to stand on a stage in front of 20,000 people and do that.”

Sheeran’s lawyer, Ilene S. Farkas, also argued, saying, “The two songs share versions of a similar and unprotectable chord progression that was freely available to all songwriters.”

However, Townsend’s daughter Kathryn Griffin Townsend, who appeared as a witness in the hearing, continued to fight. She lauded Sheeran’s craft, but noted that she intends to “protect [her] father’s legacy.”

The hearings are expected to continue throughout the week.

Ed Sheeran is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

After a brief hiatus from Robert McCall, Denzel Washington is back in action as the former government hitman in the upcoming crime thriller The Equalizer 3, though things look a bit different than the last time we checked in on him back in The Equalizer 2 in 2018. Now he’s “retired.” Allegedly!

The threequel will bring back Washington as he grapples with his past crimes and comes to terms with the fact that you can’t really ever leave your life of crime behind. This is proven time and time again. Not even the picturesque Italian countryside can help this live peacefully! Here is everything we know about the upcoming thriller.

Plot

Equalizer 3 will bring Denzel & Co. to the Almafi coast, where he’s been residing after giving up his life as an assassin. Though things clearly don’t ever go as planned. According to the official synopsis:

Since giving up his life as a government assassin, Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) has struggled to reconcile the horrific things he’s done in the past and finds a strange solace in serving justice on behalf of the oppressed. Finding himself surprisingly at home in Southern Italy, he discovers his new friends are under the control of local crime bosses. As events turn deadly, McCall knows what he has to do: become his friends’ protector by taking on the mafia.

Cast

The movie will reunite Man On Fire co-stars Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning almost 20 years after the two first worked together. Fanning will star as a young CIA agent who assists Washington when there is a crime spike in the area.

Of the reunion, director Antoine Fuqua told Empire, “It was so beautiful to watch them together on the set, just talking, laughing. And they’re both so talented, they just get into it, they didn’t skip a beat. What was weird for me looking through the lens and seeing Dakota as a grown-up!” The movie also stars David Denman, Sonia Ammar, and Eugenio Mastrandrea.

Release Date

The movie will hit theaters on September 1st, just in time for Labor Day.

Trailer

In 2018, James Gunn was fired by the Marvel machine over “indefensible and inconsistent” tweets that he already apologized for years before. Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 was without its director, its leader, so the cast stepped in.

Chris Pratt (who plays Star-Lord) organized an open letter to Disney, with guidance from his future mother-in-law Maria Shriver, asking for Gunn to be rehired. He also texted the director Bible verses, like this one: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”

Meanwhile, here’s how Dave Bautista (Drax) handled it:

“Dave and Chris are so different in their approaches,” Gunn told the Hollywood Reporter. “Chris is like, ‘How do we do this methodically and take it one step at a time?’ Dave is like, ‘F*ck you.’” Their combined good cop/bad cop methods worked: Gunn was hired back for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

It came down to a change of heart from [Alan] Horn, the Disney chairman, who had the growing sensation he’d made the wrong call. Gunn heard he was having trouble sleeping over the firing. “It’s a hundred percent because Alan Horn felt sick. He did it because he thought it was the right thing to do,” says Gunn.

“Everything he did subsequently was first class,” says Horn. “He was such a gentleman about it in the ensuing months that we just brought him back. It felt like the right thing to do. I hold him in absolute high regard.”

The Superman: Legacy director still gets emotional thinking about how the cast banded together for him. “I just got teary because it was like, f*ck, I loved all you guys so much and I just realized this journey we had been through together,” he said. Gunn can thank Bautista by casting him as Superman.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 comes out on May 5th.

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

As non-stop updates continue to paint an increasingly ugly picture of Tucker Carlson‘s alleged behavior that may have led to his abrupt firing from Fox News, despite being one of the network’s biggest stars, The Daily Show guest host Desi Lydic couldn’t help but latch on to an interesting little nugget: Carlson’s alleged use of the c-word.

According to details from former Fox News producer Abby Grossman, Carlson not only used the c-word in front of female employees, but he did it “all the time,” which blew Lydic’s mind.

Via The Daily Beast:

“How do you use the c-word at the office all the time?,” the comedian wondered.

“‘Oh, Susan’s taking lunch orders? Tell that c*nt I’ll just have a c*nt salad, hold the c*nt. You know what, do you want to share a c*nt?’”

Of course, Lydic had a pretty good explanation for Carlson’s use of the word: “Tucker’s allowed to say the c-word,” Lydic said. “Because he is one.”

Despite being loaded with barbs, The Daily Show guest host did have some sympathy for the now-disgraced Fox News being canned so swiftly.”

“That is so cold. I mean, that’s barely enough time to pack up all his Nazi memorabilia,” Lydic said before offering up her own theories on Carlson’s exit. “Maybe it was the election lies that cost Fox News $787 million. Maybe it was insulting his bosses in private texts. Maybe it was his overall vibe of ‘creepy dad driving the babysitter home.’”

(Via The Daily Beast)

AI recreations of popular musicians’ voices have become a rising trend, with Drake and The Weeknd’s fake “Heart On My Sleeve” song being pulled from streaming platforms, Grimes saying she’s OK with it, and Liam Gallagher calling an Oasis AI album “mega.” Still, Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek, offered his thoughts on just what this means for the future of the music industry,

“On the positive side, this could be potentially huge for creativity,” Ek said on a conference call, according to Billboard. “That should lead to more music [which] we think is great culturally, but it also benefits Spotify because the more creators we have on our service the better it is and the more opportunity we have to grow engagement and revenue.”

Earlier this year, the streaming service announced an AI DJ aspect to the app, which develops song recommendations for users based on their listening history and features narration from an AI bot.

“I’m very familiar with the scary part… the complete generative stuff or even the so-called deep fakes that pretend to be someone they’re not,” Ek added during a recent episode of Spotify’s For The Record podcast. “I choose to look at the glass as more half-full than half-empty. I think if it’s done right, these AIs will be incorporated into almost every product suite to enable creativity to be available to many more people around the world.”

Currently, Universal Music Group and the National Music Publishers’ Association are some standing against AI, as the record label released a recent statement to the publication:

“The training of generative AI using our artists’ music (which represents both a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law) as well as the availability of infringing content created with generative AI on DSPs, begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation. We’re encouraged by the engagement of our platform partners on these issues – as they recognize they need to be part of the solution.”

Vladimir Putin grew incensed after world leaders mocked his shirtless horseback photos when he invaded Ukraine. Matters did not improve when his former underlings mourned the loss of his “superman” image while claiming that he was “terrified,” and then a report claimed that Putin was “pathologically afraid for his life” and scared to use a cell phone. The last straw, though, appears to be ongoing claims that Putin spends a lot of time hanging in a bunker. The Kremlin is here to shut down what they say are lies, lies, lies.

Those reports intensified once more, along with conspiratorial rumors of a Putin body double, after the Russian president visited an occupied part of Ukraine last week. The last time he did this, Putin staged a group of fake-enthused residents to welcome him while he got heckled in a display that Russian State TV of course edited from broadcast. Still, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov will have you know that this is all Putin. There are no body doubles and no bunkers because Putin is so manly and full of “mega-active” vigor that he would not possibly hide, according to Peskov and via Al Jazeera:

“You see yourselves what our president is like: he always was, and is now, mega-active — those who work next to him can hardly keep up with him,” he said.

“His energy can only be envied. His health can, God willing, only be wished for. Of course, he doesn’t sit in any bunkers. This is also a lie,” Peskov added.

Sure, the body double stuff is probably made up, but the no-bunker claim is extraordinarily difficult to believe, although technically, the claim might be correct if they’re talking about an ordinary old bunker. Whereas Putin has luxury, fortified, above-ground compounds that happen to be filled with pickles and which arrive with their own missile defense systems. When you’ve got that, a bunker isn’t so necessary. Details, details.

(Via Al Jazeera)

Amber Heard has mostly laid low since the conclusion of her high-profile defamation trial against ex-husband (and MTV astronaut) Johnny Depp, where she faced an “organized campaign of widespread targeted harassment.”

But she made her return to the DC universe in the trailer for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which premiered at CinemaCon on Tuesday. It was official confirmation that Heard will reprise her role as Mera in the James Wan-directed superhero movie, despite the wishes of various Change.org petitions.

It wasn’t a given that she would be in the Aquaman sequel:

Heard, who played Mera, the love interest of Aquaman (Jason Momoa) in the hit 2018 original movie, is featured in two brief shots during the trailer in which she’s doing battle underwater. She has no dialogue in the trailer. In June of last year, a now-deleted post on Just Jared reported that Heard was being “cut out” of the sequel. “The rumor mill continues as it has from day one — inaccurate, insensitive, and slightly insane,” a spokesperson for Heard told Insider.

Heard is supposedly only in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom for 10 minutes. She claimed that Warner Bros. “didn’t want to include me” and that the final script featured a “very pared-down version” of her original character arc. “I was given a script and then given new versions of the script that had taken away scenes that had action in it, that depicted my character and another character, without giving any spoiler aways, two characters fighting with one another, and they basically took a bunch out of my role,” Heard testified during the trial. “They just removed a bunch out.”

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom comes out on December 20.

(Via Insider)

A couple named Daniel and Evelyn has one of the better stories of how they met, and it involved James Corden.

On yesterday’s (April 25) The Late Late Show, Corden explained that in 2015, on one of the very first episodes of the show, he did an on-the-street segment called Sidewalk Soulmate. He then played some of it, and in the clip, Corden stopped a random man, Daniel, on the street, and tried to set him up with a passerby. After some failed attempts, he found Evelyn, and she and Daniel agreed to go on a date.

They later had a filmed date on the show, and from there, things really progressed. The two dated for years and actually got engaged in 2019. They had plans for a wedding, with Corden on board to officiate, but the pandemic thwarted that and they ended up having a more intimate ceremony in 2020.

Fast-forward to yesterday and Daniel and Evelyn returned to the show (on the exact date of their third wedding anniversary, no less). Corden was thrilled to reunite with them and give them the wedding reception they didn’t get to have. After bringing out some wedding decorations, Corden started by introducing the Jonas Brothers to give a toast. Then, he revealed that Expedia was giving the couple round-trip tickets to anywhere in the world so they could have a nice honeymoon.

The segment ended with a full-circle moment. Earlier, Daniel and Evelyn noted they planned to have their first dance be to a Norah Jones song. That didn’t end up happening at the time, but last night, Jones herself visited the show to sit at the piano and serenade the couple with a performance of “Come Away With Me,” as they, Corden, the Jonas Brothers, and some audience members slow-danced.

The whole thing is terrific and touching and a beautiful part of The Late Late Show‘s final days, so watch the reception above and find the original 2015 videos with Daniel and Evelyn below. The Jonas Brothers also sat down with Corden for a couple minutes and reflected on their various visits to The Late Late Show over the years, so find that below, too.

James Corden is in his final few The Late Late Show episodes and he’s pulling out all the stops. Last night (April 25), Billie Eilish joined him on the program, seated alongside Natalie Portman for an interview.

During the conversation, Corden brought up Eilish’s acting endeavors, including Swarm, and asked what her dream role would be. She responded, “I don’t know. I would have to, it would have to… I mean honestly, Swarm was kind of a dream role for me. That was a big… when that was brought up to me, I was like, ‘Oh, this is… this is the thing. This is what I want to do.’ Donald Glover is like my all-time hero, lifelong hero.”

Elsewhere, they talked about Eilish making her TV debut with a performance of “Ocean Eyes” on The Late Late Show back when she was just 15 years old. Eilish reflected, “I remember that I was very nervous and I was very sick. I was sick for many years, I feel like. Everything I did, I was sick. And my voice was kind of messed up and I was just, like, really nervous, and I just wanted to really do a good job. And I remember you came to meet us in the room and I remember it was like the first celebrity I had ever been up close to [laughs]. I was like, ‘Oh my god, it’s James Corden! So crazy.’ I don’t know, it was amazing. I was just, like, on 10 all day. It was amazing.”

Watch clips from the interview above.