Category: Trending

Warning: spoilers for Swarm are below.

After it premiered at midnight last night (March 17), Swarm has taken over the internet. The new Amazon Prime Video series from Donald Glover and Janine Nabers is notable for a number of reasons, including a recently revealed appearance from Billie Eilish. She’s not the only music star in the show, as Chlöe also has a role, and there’s one scene in particular that is making waves online: the sex scene.

We won’t share it here (it’s easy enough to find, though, either via clips on Twitter or in the actual show), but for about 30 seconds in the first episode’s opening minutes, Chlöe and Damson Idris’ characters (Marissa Jackson and Khalid) have sex with each other as they talk dirty and make sexual noises. Partway through, Khalid notices Dominique Fishback’s character (Andrea “Dre” Greene) watching them from the doorway, but he continues and even flashes her a smile before Dre walks away.

Naturally, the explicit scene has drawn so many reactions on Twitter.

In a recent Deadline interview, Chlöe spoke about filming the scene, saying, “I remember when I first read the script, I was like, ‘Oh, this is insane, this is incredible,’ and I cried, and then I realized, ‘You gotta do that sex scene, girl.’ And as open and liberal as I am with my body, I was very scared because I haven’t had that many partners, I’m not like that… that sexual and open. […] Damson made it really comfortable. You know, there were limited people on set, it was a closed set. We were laughing in between. We literally had a bouncy ball in between us. […] I have to give a lot of kudos to him as a man for making me as a woman feel comfortable being literally raw and naked.”

Find some more reactions below.

The demand for Drake and 21 Savage’s It’s All A Blur Tour tickets is so high, they’ve added a slew of extra dates. After fans trying to get in on the presale complained of high ticket prices, the two rappers announced 12 new shows on the tour to alleviate the pressure as the general sale opens up.

Dates in Dallas, DC, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Montreal, Philly, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver were doubled, while Brooklyn, Manhattan, and LA all received third shows. Meanwhile, the dates for Drake’s hometown, Toronto, will be announced in the future.

The general sale for It’s All A Blur tickets begins today, Friday, March 17 at noon local time. You can get more info here and see the full list of tour dates below. New dates are in bold.

6/16 – New Orleans, LA @ Smoothie King Center
6/19 – Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
6/21 – Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
6/22 – Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
6/24 – Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
6/25 – Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
6/28 – Miami, FL @ Miami-Dade Arena
6/29 – Miami, FL @ Miami-Dade Arena
7/01 – Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
7/02 – Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
7/05 – Chicago, IL @ United Center
7/06 – Chicago, IL @ United Center
7/08 – Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
7/09 – Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
7/11 – Boston, MA @ TD Garden
7/12 – Boston, MA @ TD Garden
7/14 – Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre
7/17 – Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center
7/18 – Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center
7/20 – Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center
7/23 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
7/25 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
7/26 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
7/28 – Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
7/29 – Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
7/31 – Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
8/1 – Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
8/12 – Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum
8/13 – Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum
8/15 – Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum
8/18 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center
8/19 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center
8/21 – Los Angeles, CA @ Crypto.com Arena
8/22 – Los Angeles, CA @ Crypto.com Arena
8/25 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
8/26 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
8/28 – Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena
8/29 – Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena
9/01 – Las Vegas, NV @– T-Mobile Arena
9/02 – Las Vegas, NV @ T-Mobile Arena
9/05 – Glendale, AZ @ Desert Diamond Arena

Hollywood producer Steven DeKnight has significantly back tracked after calling Jenna Ortega “toxic” and “entitled.” DeKnight, who worked on the Netflix series Daredevil and Jupiter’s Legacy and directed Pacific Rim: Uprising, blasted Ortega for her remarks about changing her lines on Wednesday and criticizing the writers in public.

Via Twitter:

“I love talking with actors about their lines/stories. But by the nature of the beast, they don’t have the full picture (in TV) of where the story is going and why some lines are needed for the whole to make sense. She’s young, so maybe she doesn’t know any better (but she should). She should also ask herself how she would feel if the showrunners gave an interview and talked about how difficult she was and refused to perform the material.”

“This kind of statement is beyond entitled and toxic,” DeKnight concluded. “I love her work, but life’s too short to deal with people like this in the business.”

However, DeKnight later changed his tune as his remarks about Ortega spread.

“My comments were about breaking the trust that we all have on set and during the production process that our creative differences will stay in the family,” DeKnight wrote in response to a tweet calling him out for “s**tting” on Ortega. “It was never about her creative concerns, which were valid. Or about her performance, which was fantastic. I sincerely hope that clears it up.”

In response to a now-hidden tweet, DeKnight continued to massage his remarks and blamed the pending writer’s strike for heightening tensions.

“Again, I can’t stress this enough: She’s an amazing talent,” DeKnight tweeted. “It was just an unfortunate situation to expose creative differences publicly, and also I’ll admit that writers are on edge because of the impending strike, myself included. A perfect storm.”

The producer wrapped up his apology tour by encouraging everyone, including himself, to be better.

“Back to work. Try, as always, to be kind to each other even when we vehemently disagree,” DeKnight said. “And yes, there are times that I need to heed my own advice. We are all emotional works-in-progress. Love to all of you.”

(Via The Wrap)

Vladimir Putin is taking his shots where he can get them these days while Russia essentially disintegrates in the aftermath of his Ukraine invasion. He’s recently attempted to guilt-trip Russian billionaires into propping up the economy with no takers yet. His private army is recruiting on Pornhub, and eyebrows are finally starting to raise regarding how his critics and detracting associates tend to fall out of high-story windows, totaling in the dozens.

How is the Russian president blowing off steam? He decided to fine a politician for essentially pulling a Marjorie Taylor Greene, which is ironic, given that she seems to favor Putin if that’s the cost of slamming Biden. Yet Putin showed no patience for a (silent) heckler when Mikhail Abdalkin decided to take a stand by placing spaghetti on his ears while virtually spectating a Putin speech. Well, Putin heard about the resulting viral video and tossed over a $2,000 fine. Via Reuters, Vlad as steamed that Abdalkin was “discrediting the armed forces.”

The noodles were apparently a statement that Abdalkin believes that Putin’s speeches are filled with lies.

Putin didn’t take kindly to this move, obviously, yet as NPR reports, he seems to be much happier about the statement recently made by two Russian fighter pilots who took down an unmanned U.S. drone. Accordingly, the Russian Defense Ministry has honored the pilots while deeming the American aircraft to be an “intruder.” Further and as NPR relates, Russia claims, “The Russian aircraft did not use onboard weapons, did not come into contact with the unmanned aerial vehicle and returned safely to their home airfield.” The no-contact claim appears to be completely false, as shown by Pentagon footage (via CNN) that shows the jets pouring fuel upon the drone. It’s not exactly a Lex Luthor move, but it’s not playing fair by any stretch.

(Via Reuters, NPR & CNN)

In this week’s episode, Ian and I review new albums by M83 (which we like) and 100 Gecs (which we are mixed on but are intrigued about). But before that, we delve into the week’s biggest controversy: That tweet from a political writer about how The White Stripes would have been better with a more technically proficient drummer.

Now, this is obviously a bad take. But why do we get so upset about bad takes stated by random people we don’t know or care about? This is the mystery of social media — how does it warp our brains and goad us into arguing with ghosts? Perhaps this why the goddess Meg White has disappeared from this world in the first place, and is now enjoying a quiet life in retirement.

Later in the episode we take a deep dive into our mailbag to address questions about other important issues, including: Will Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois will work as a musical? What are the best ’90s rap skits? And why is it so hard to make a good music biopic?

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 130 here or below and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [email protected], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.

The latest trailer for The Little Mermaid has over one million downvotes on YouTube. Compare that to other live-action remakes, like The Lion King (45,000) and Beauty and the Beast (10,000), and something is, ahem, fishy.

Josh Gad took to Twitter to criticize the racist and “pathetic” trolls who are mass disliking The Little Mermaid, which stars Halle Bailey as Ariel. “Imagine being so broken and pathetic in life that your chief concern is the skin color of… a make-believe singing mermaid,” the frequent Disney actor wrote in response to a Call to Activism tweet about “the controversy surrounding Halle Bailey’s casting” and how he important thing is “that we remember a beautiful and talented actress won the role. We can’t allow racism to ever be normalized.”

“I definitely think that because I love this movie so much, and I’ve treasured it since I was a little girl, I did put a bit of pressure on myself,” Bailey said about playing the gadgets and gizmos-loving mermaid. “Just because I want to deliver all of the feels that I saw when I was a little girl… Knowing that gave it my all and gave 110 percent into everything of this film, I am really proud of myself.”

The Little Mermaid comes out on May 26th.

Yesterday, Billie Eilish confirmed rumors that had been swirling around, that she had landed an acting role in Donald Glover and Janine Nabers’s new Amazon Prime Video series Swarm, which premiered today (March 17). Given that this was Eilish’s live-action acting debut (after her The Simpsons short), it was unclear how good of an actor she would be, but it seems like everything thinks she nailed it.

Warning: spoilers for Swarm are below.

Nabers told Rolling Stone that Eilish’s cult leader character Eva was inspired by Keith Raniere, leader of the NXIVM cult and corporation who was sentenced to 120 years in prison in 2020. Nabers also said of Eilish and Fishback’s performance in the episode, “She came in and their chemistry was really wonderful. This show, in terms of women and violence, is so empowering for me, because you see it from such a masculine standpoint usually in the history of film and TV. To subvert that with this, and with Billie, was great.”

Fishback also said of Eilish, “She’s so respectful of the craft. She came in with ideas, wanting to talk about it, being game to rehearse. I think she’s wonderful. I’m such a fan of her as a person due to what I experienced with her on set.”

Eilish fans were similarly laudatory of Eilish’s performance, offering plenty of compliments about her acting skills.

In particular, fans made note of the moments in which Eilish kisses other women.

Check out some more clips from the episode below.

For years now, a critical component of hip-hop history has been missing from the streaming music landscape: De La Soul. Finally, though, the trio’s music hit Spotify, Apple Music, and the rest last month. Tragically, however, this all finally came together shortly after the death of member Trugoy The Dove. To celebrate their streaming debut, though, surviving members Posdnuos and Maseo visited The Tonight Show yesterday (March 16) to talk about it.

A couple minutes into the conversation, Jimmy Fallon spoke about how the trio’s debut album, 1989’s 3 Feet High And Rising, has changed the lives of so many music fans and asked Questlove to share how the album changed him. Quest explained, “For the first time, we just saw, like, ourselves. This is how the group bonded, Tariq [Black Thought] and I. We saw three friends just having fun with each other, practical jokes and all that stuff, and we had never seen that in hip-hop before.”

Elsewhere during the conversation, Fallon started by acknowledging Trugoy’s death and how hard the current De La Soul revival must be in light of that. Posdnuos noted that it’s been “bittersweet.”

Later in the episode, the pair teamed up with The Roots for a performance of “Stakes Is High.”

Watch the interview above and the performance below.

(WARNING: Spoilers for this week’s Power Book II: Ghost episode will be found below.)

With the conclusion of BMF season two, comes the start of another season in 50 Cent’s cinematic universe: season three of Power Book II: Ghost. The show stars Michael Rainey Jr. as Tariq St. Patrick and Gianni Paolo as Brayden Weston. It’s been a little over a year since the finale of season two which brought an end to a collection of shocking events that occurred within the season’s final two episodes. Mecca, Zeke, and Lauren were all killed in that finale and Monet was exposed at the family dinner table for sleeping with Mecca and lying for years about Zeke being her nephew when he was actually her son — one she shared with Mecca. It was quite the dramatic end to season two of Power Book II: Ghost and now it’s time to pick up where we left off.

In the season three premiere of Power Book II: Ghost, we return to see that Monet is still heavily grieving the loss of Zeke while actively demanding that her family do whatever they can to find his killer. Much of her anger is directed at Diana, but that isn’t too much of a surprise when she was the one who exposed her true life in front of the Tejada family at the dinner table last season. As for Tariq, he’s enjoying a new peaceful life away from the drug with his new girlfriend Effie. However, as it always does, Tariq’s past caught up to him leaving him to deal with a pesky business partner and the demands of Mecca’s boss who arrives to wreak havoc on his life more than anyone else has before. Elsewhere, Brayden begins work with the Weston family and continues to work with Tariq, Cooper Saxe continues to be the bothersome act we’ve known him to be as her works with the enemy a bit more than expected, and the truth of Lauren’s disappearance somewhat comes to light.

Here are some of the biggest takeaways that we have after season three’s first episode, “Your Perception, Your Reality”:

Tariq’s Reality Is He’s Forever Attached To His Past

The way we perceive the world can also be defined as our reality, and Tariq’s reality is he’ll never be able to have a fresh start. Sure, the eldest St. Patrick is an effective and successful drug dealer considering the fact that he doesn’t own a car (I really hope this is solved in season three), but he doesn’t want to do this forever. Tariq’s side hustle as a drug dealer began as a way to get money to pay his lawyer Davis McClean to free his mother from prison in season one. This forged a relationship with Monet that he now maintains today. Now that his mother is out of prison, Tariq doesn’t need to hustle but he’s in too deep with Monet to exit until she’s ready to. Fast-forward to now and in the first episode of season three, Tariq admits that he’s enjoying the break from hustling after Mecca’s death in the season two finale. Unfortunately for him, that break is now over as Noma, a new and more threatening drug connect than Monet ever was in Power Book II: Ghost, has arrived and forcibly employed Tariq, Cane, and Brayden to sell the leftover product that Mecca had in his possession before his death. For Tariq, he can try his best to run away from a past that looks like his father’s, no matter how much he despises that idea (just don’t say that to him before you end up like Bash, RIP to him). For now, there’s no such thing as a fresh start for Tariq St. Patrick, just a repeat of the past with different details.

Noma Is Here To Fill In Monet’s Shoes And Then Some

Season three of Power Book II: Ghost begins with Monet still grieving heavily over the loss of her son Ezekiel “Zeke” Cross. As is sometimes the case with people who are grieving over a heavy loss, Monet is quite snappy and short-tempered with her family — especially with Diana and Lorenzo. The one person Monet is still kind to so far this season is Tariq because he was the one person who was with her at the time of Zeke’s death, so she knows Tariq wasn’t responsible for it. There’s a bit of love between the two in their lone conversation in the season three opener, which is a big contrast from the strictly business relationship we’ve seen them exhibit in prior seasons. If you thought that meant Tariq was getting a break, well it’s time you met Noma. She was Mecca’s boss and fiancée, and in her search to learn what happened to Mecca, she stumbles upon Tariq, Cane, and Brayden. In a matter of a few minutes, the trio watches Noma shot and kill a young lady, pistol-whip Cane, and threaten to kill them all if they do not tell her how Mecca was killed. In the end, Tariq, Cane, and Brayden (and later Effie) are tasked with moving what’s left of Mecca’s drug supply. If Tariq thought Monet was a lot to deal with, it’s only going to get worse with Noma. The stakes are higher and the risk is higher, but it remains to be seen if the reward will be higher as well.

Cooper Saxe Is Still A Nuisance

If there’s one character I don’t miss from Power Book II: Ghost it’s Cooper Saxe. The prosecutor who worked tirelessly to put James St. Patrick behind bars in the original Power series is now a defense attorney working in Davis McClean’s. Yet, he struggles to stay on the same team as the main characters of the show. Between eavesdropping on Tariq and Davis’ conversation in the latter’s office to working with prosecutor Jenny Sullivan — despite being a defense attorney — to help her prove that Davis is working for Tariq and the Tejada family, Cooper Saxe is just all over the place. With his motive for season three out in the open, it’s clear that Cooper Saxe will continue to be a nuisance to Tariq and his circle of friends and associates — and not in the Sergeant Blanca Rodriguez “talented cop” kind of way. It’ll be trademark Cooper Saxe making a bunch of mistakes on his way to hopefully solving an investigation that will eventually be ruined because of his own mistakes. Hooray!

Nobody Is Ready For The Truth

This week’s episode title couldn’t be more perfect for the events that led by and took place in the season three premiere of Power Book II: Ghost. “Your Perception, Your Reality” the title reads for episode one. In numerous instances in this episode, we see examples of how the characters’ perception of their worlds become their new reality. Tariq was made to believe that Lauren is dead, but we now know that’s not the case. Monet thinks Zeke’s killer is still on the loose when little does she know that they’re living in her home — that being her husband Lorenzo. Davis believes Saxe is on his side when he’s really helping Jenny get evidence that Davis is working for Tariq and the Tejada family. However, as the saying goes, “when perception changes, truth changes,” but this saying could also work if it were flipped. The truth always comes to light, and among all the aforementioned situations, one of them will indeed come to light and shake up someone’s world and their perception of it. The truth that we know for now is that no one is ready to hear it. Whether it be Lauren’s return, the discovery that Cooper is working for the other side, or the truth about Zeke’s death, whichever comes out, if not all in season three, the damage that follows will be heavy.

New episodes of ‘Power Book II: Ghost’ are available on the STARZ app on Fridays at 12:00 am EST and on the STARZ TV channel at 8:00 pm EST.

Has the evil of Ticketmaster been defeated? After pissing off several artists and their respective fan bases, it appears Robert Smith and The Cure were able to talk some sense into the ticket giant.

Yesterday (March 15) Smith and several of The Cure’s fans expressed their chagrin toward Ticketmaster, as they were met with steep prices when they attempted to purchase tickets for the band’s upcoming tour.

Today, Smith took to Twitter and revealed that he met with Ticketmaster and discussed this fiasco. In turn, Ticketmaster is partially reimbursing fans for the excessive fees they paid.

“AFTER FURTHER CONVERSATION, TICKETMASTER HAVE AGREED WITH US THAT MANY OF THE FEES BEING CHARGED ARE UNDULY HIGH, AND AS A GESTURE OF GOODWILL HAVE OFFERED A $10 PER TICKET REFUND TO ALL VERIFIED FAN ACCOUNTS FOR LOWEST TICKET PRICE (‘LTP’) TRANSACTIONS…,” said Smith.

Smith continued, saying, “AND A $5 PER TICKET REFUND TO ALL VERIFIED FAN ACCOUNTS FOR ALL OTHER TICKET PRICE TRANSACTIONS, FOR ALL CURE SHOWS AT ALL VENUES; IF YOU ALREADY BOUGHT A TICKET YOU WILL GET AN AUTOMATIC REFUND; ALL TICKETS ON SALE TOMORROW WILL INCUR LOWER FEES.”

The general on-sale for The Cure’s upcoming tour will take place tomorrow, and thankfully fans won’t have to worry about excess fees.