The final episode of The Mandalorian Season 2 hits this Friday, but the show isn’t going away for awhile just yet. Disney+ has confirmed the rumors that a Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian special will air on Christmas Day. The behind-the-scenes series is a huge hit for fans, who are going to love only having to wait a week to watch the making of the second season. However, unlike Season 1, which had eight behind-the-scenes episodes, Season 2 will only have a one hour special as of now. But it will offer insights into the life-action debut of Rosario Dawson’s Ahsoka Tano ahead of her just-announced Disney+ series. Via StarWars.com:
From the triumphant return of legendary bounty hunter Boba Fett to the live-action debut of fan-favorite Ahsoka Tano, the second season of The Mandalorian is a fun, surprising, emotional thrill-ride, which has kept fans excited to see how each new weekly chapter will unfold. This Christmas, Disney+ takes viewers behind the scenes of the groundbreaking season in a new hour-long Making of Season Two special.
If you haven’t seen the first batch of Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian episodes, it’s well worth the watch for fans of the bounty hunting series. The making-of series showcases the groundbreaking technology used to film each episode from only a tiny studio in Manhattan Beach, California. The state-of-the-art tech can instantly transports Mando to new locations at the press of a button. More importantly, there’s an entire episode dedicated to the creation of Baby Yoda, who’s a technical marvel in and of himself. The little guy requires a team of at least six animatronic and puppet experts who individually work different parts of his body to create the life-like cuteness that’s been absolutely dominating the pop culture landscape from the moment he raised his tiny finger.
As some of Trump’s closest allies start to distance themselves from his administration, new information about how the White House grossly mismanaged the COVID-19 pandemic during this extremely tense election year is slowly coming to light.
The New York Times interviewed two senior members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after House Democrats began investigating whether political interference hampered the agency’s ability to do its job. Former chief of staff Kyle McGowan, and his deputy Amanda Campbell, went on record with the paper to reveal just how widespread and debilitating the influence of Trump’s administration was in preventing the CDC from enacting measures that could have slowed the spread of the virus.
In a wide-ranging talk, McGowan, who worked under Trump’s health secretary Tom Price before his appointment at the agency, shared how even the simplest guidelines on social distancing were heavily edited to prevent blowback on Trump and to protect businesses. (One of Trump’s biggest campaign points was the economy.) McGowan also detailed how other senior advisers to the president, people like Kellyanne Conway and Ivanka Trump, often directly interfered in mandates the CDC advocated for. Conway opposed restrictions on choirs and communion in faith communities, presumably because the strongest faction of Trump’s base identifies as Evangelicals. And Ivanka Trump took issue with the CDC’s recommendations when it came to schooling.
“Every time that the science clashed with the messaging, messaging won,” Mr. McGowan said.
McGowan listed other examples of increasingly bizarre interference on behalf of the White House including the Trump administration’s insistence that the agency do away with its COVID tracking app because the president’s team had already made a deal with Apple to partner on the tech giant’s program. Both McGowan and Campbell, along with a handful of other staffers, have since left the agency but as he told The Times, the damage done by Trump’s handling of the virus will take years for the CDC to overcome.
“Damage has been done to the C.D.C. that will take years to undo,” he said. “And that’s terrible to hear because it happened under my time there.”
Over the weekend, Taylor Swift celebrated her 31st birthday with a “Dancing Witch” version of Evermore album opener “Willow.” Now she has added yet another dimension to the song by dropping another witchy new remix of it. This one is dubbed the “Moonlit Witch Version,” and it’s more based on synths than it is acoustic instrumentation.
Swift wrote of the new version of the song, “Ever find yourself waiting for the signal & meeting someone after dark & happening upon a majestic coven in the woods? Me neither but do you want your [music] to make you FEEL like that? Then the ‘willow moonlit witch version’ is for you.” The song’s producer and co-writer Aaron Dessner also tweeted of it, “We made THIS version of Willow too — And I love it just as much as the other versions!! (this one involved ditching my guitars and playing most of the synths I own :).”
Ever find yourself waiting for the signal & meeting someone after dark & happening upon a majestic coven in the woods? Me neither but do you want your to make you FEEL like that? Then the “willow moonlit witch version” is for you. https://t.co/PW8GKyjmKRpic.twitter.com/KiLB0OMfjf
We made THIS version of Willow too — And I love it just as much as the other versions!! (this one involved ditching my guitars and playing most of the synths I own 🙂 https://t.co/9Z2mImvztu
The new release comes shortly after Swift sat down for an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, during which she revealed she nearly waited until 2021 to release Folklore, saying, “There was a time in the beginning of the process where I was like, ‘I will wait ’til January when things are looking more normal, then I will put out Folklore. I was like, that’s my old brain thinking that there’s any way that I can control this.”
Listen to the “Moonlit Witch Version” of “Willow” above.
Michael B. Jordan is known for his love of basketball, and he’s turning that passion into a showcase for up-and-coming Black players with an HBCU basketball showcase starting in 2021.
The Hoop Dreams Classic will feature two double-header (for men’s and women’s teams) between top HBCU basketball programs as well as “an immersive cultural experience” that highlights other aspect of HBCU campus life like a Battle of the Bands and college and career opportunities for young people.
“This past year has been the tipping point for so many, including myself, in revving up support for Black people,” Jordan said in a statement. “As a Newark native, I am committed to bringing change to the community and am honored to be able to present The Hoop Dreams Classic as a way to celebrate the value of community, education, and Black college experiences. Through our shared love of basketball, I look forward to bringing the communal spirit of HBCUs to the city that helped shape me into the man I am today.”
Jordan is partnering not only with the Hoop Dreams organization but also WME Sports (a division of Endeavor) and Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, the company run by the owners of the Philadelphia 76ers. Some of the money raised from the event will be used to support organizations aligned with HBCUs around Newark, where Jordan was raised.
Throughout 2020, companies and government institutions alike have placed more attention on HBCUs, and the sports world has followed suit. By putting together an event that could become an annual occurrence, Jordan is helping to make sure that support for HBCUs doesn’t stop now.
New York City collective Michelle stormed onto the indie scene earlier this year with their infectious and joyful single “Sunrise,” which featured prominently on all of my playlists this summer. Now, the group is gearing up for the release of their debut LP, which is slated for sometime in 2021, and promises electric verse-trading and an unique blend of elements of hip-hop, indie pop, and R&B.
To celebrate the holiday season, the group’s six members sat down to talk Die Hard, hating Michael Buble, and their love-hate relationship with snow in the latest Indie Mixtape 20 Q&A.
What’s the best holiday gift you’ve ever received?
Julian Kaufman: A hug.
Layla Ku: A letter from Julian.
What is your earliest holiday memory?
Emma Lee: loud room, good smells, orange sweater.
What’s on your wish list for this year?
JK: A covid vaccine.
LK: Some semblance of what once was.
What holiday song can you not resist singing along to?
JK: “Let It Snow”
EL: “IIIIII don’t want a lot for Christma….” come on.
LK: Seconded. There is only one right answer to this question.
What’s the holiday song you wish you could zap out of existence?
Jamee Lockard: “Last Christmas”
LK: Michael Buble’s entire career.
What is your strangest holiday tradition?
EL: taping a drawing of an xmas tree on the wall in lieu of a tree.
What album makes for the perfect gift?
LK: Vince Guaraldi Trio: A Charlie Brown Christmas
Thoughts on snow?
JK: It’s great.
LK: It’s great and it sucks.
Charlie Kilgore: It’s great for the first day and a half, but it all goes downhill once the rock-hard, dirt-colored slush starts piling up.
What holiday movie can you not resist watching when it’s on TV?
JL:How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
Sofia D’Angelo:Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (1964)
In Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Tutar (Maria Bakalova) trick Giuliani into putting himself into an unflattering position. It was pretty gross! It was also the plan “from day one” for father-and-daughter duo Borat and Tutar to target Giuliani, as the Borat sequel director Jason Woliner recently explained to Insider.
“Here’s the craziest thing: Giuliani was the name from day one,” he said. “Rudy was the name in the first version [of the script] I read… For the year and a half we were making this, he wasn’t at the level of prominence he is now. But suddenly just before this came out, he was trying to make a big splash.”
Woliner also credits Borat 2 for making it impossible to take Rudy seriously:
“A few days later the Guardian came out with the piece on his scene in the movie and that just blew up,” he said. “And from my vantage point, it discredited anything he was trying to do.”
It also didn’t help Rudy’s case when he referred to Borat as a real person.
Kacey Musgraves recently guest-starred on an episode of Scooby-Doo, and now, she’s taking her voice acting skills to the next level. The singer announced that she landed a leading role in the upcoming Studio Ghibli film Earwig And The Witch, and she says the opportunity is a dream come true for her. Musgraves will be voicing the part of a witch in the film, and on top of that, she is also slated to lend her vocals to a song for the film.
Announcing her part in Earwig And The Witch, Musgraves said the opportunity was a “bucket list moment” for her: “My dad brought a vhs tape of Totoro home when I was about 9 and I’ll never ever forget the comfort and the magic that movie (and many other Ghibli films) have given me. My sister has always been my Mei and I’ve always been her Satsuki. To say this was a full-circle, bucket list moment is an understatement.”
Earwig And The Witch is directed by Goro Miyazaki, with planning assistance from his father, legendary Academy Award-winner Hayao Miyazaki. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film is based on a children’s novel by Diana Wynne Jones (who also penned Howl’s Moving Castle, upon which a classic Ghibli movie was based) and follows the story of Earwig, who is forced to live with a selfish witch at a young age and sets out to undercover mysterious secrets about her new guardian.
The film does not yet have a confirmed release date, but Musgraves reports that it’s due out some next spring.
Back in early 2018, shortly after Black Panther hit theaters, Chadwick Boseman played a prank on his fans. The staff of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon coaxed some unsuspecting moviegoers into a special room, where they were told they could record a video of them gushing about the actor and what his work meant to them, all while addressing the film’s poster. Each person was eventually interrupted by Boseman himself, who emerged from behind a red curtain, to joyful shocks and shrieks.
Boseman was like that. More than most actors, he really enjoyed interacting with fans, generously giving his time, letting them know he appreciated their love. Of course, in the last few months, clips like the Fallon video have taken on added meaning. After Boseman died in late August — suddenly, prematurely, at only 43 years old, of an illness he had somehow kept private, known only to family and close friends — they revealed someone worried he didn’t have much time left. They show someone devoting his life to goodness and decency.
Chadwick Boseman was a great actor, and the loss we face from his passing — further stressed by the new August Wilson adaptation Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom — is incalculable. He was also a great human being — a gregarious do-gooder who treated fans and colleagues alike as he wanted to be treated. And as a result, he was treated in kind.
It’s easy to paint Boseman as bigger-than-life. When Spike Lee needed someone to play the almost messianic slain soldier in his Vietnam War epic Da 5 Bloods, he turned to Chadwick Boseman. “This character is heroic; he’s a superhero,” Lee told The Atlantic. “Who do we cast? We cast Jackie Robinson, James Brown, Thurgood Marshall, and we cast T’Challa. Chad is a superhero.” (He was referring to Boseman’s turns in, respectively, 42, Get On Up, and Marshall.) In death, Boseman has become almost mythic. His hometown of Anderson, South Carolina was quick to start building a statue of him. The final tweet on his Twitter account, breaking the news of his passing in late August of 2020, stands as the most liked in history, pushing Barack Obama to a distant second.
Boseman earned that mystique. Upon his passing, untold stories of his kindness flooded the internet. Some of those good deeds he did in public. When he won the Best Hero for Black Panther at the MTV Movie Awards, he gave the trophy to James Shaw, Jr., who had stopped a near-shooting at a Tennessee Waffle House. “Receiving an award for playing a superhero is amazing,” he said, “but it’s even greater to acknowledge the heroes that we have in real life.”
But many of those deeds were private and didn’t come to the public eye until after his death. One such story involved him being approached by a young, aspiring actor. Boseman spoke with him for over a half-hour, giving him advice on how to navigate Hollywood as a black actor, even buying him plays that had inspired him at his age.
30 mins later, they are still chatting. Chadwick taking the time to give this guy advice, speaking to what’s it’s like to be a black man in this industry, how to navigate it. The actor thanks him for his time and continues looking for books.
He didn’t want thanks. He just wanted to make sure this young man was taken care of and had access to resources he would need to succeed. Chadwick Boseman was the King of Wakanda. He was James Brown and Jackie Robinson. But above all that, he was a good man.
Boseman knew all too well about Hollywood’s long history of putting black actors in boxes, that only a few, if any, have ever been handed the keys to the city. As his star rose, he didn’t quiet down. He spoke up, as when he was promoting Marshall in 2017:
“There was a period of time where it was Sidney Poitier is the guy. And very often, people will come to me or some of the other guys that are doing well right now and they say, ‘They’re going to pass the torch to you.’ And I don’t think that’s right, because it’s possible for there to be a Chris Pine, or a Chris Evans and Chris O’Donnell and a Chris Hemsworth and all the other Chrises, but it can only be one of us at a time? That is part of what’s wrong.”
Boseman became famous for delivering impassioned speeches that encouraged others to try and effect change in the industry. When speaking at his alma mater, the historically black Howard University, in 2018, he described the difficulties he faced when he “dared to challenge the system that dared to relegate us to victims and stereotypes with no clear historical background, no hopes or talents.” At the 2019 SAG Awards, he didn’t hold back either:
“We all know what it’s like to be told that there is not a place for you to be featured, yet you are young, gifted, and black. We know what it’s like to be told there’s not a screen for you to be featured on, a stage for to be featured on … And that is what we went to work with everyday … we knew not that we would be around during award season or that it would make a billion dollars, but we knew that we had something special that we wanted to give the world.”
For Boseman it wasn’t enough to be famous, to be considered a great actor. Like those that preceded him, he wanted to help make it easier for other black performers to make a mark on the business and on the culture. He fought to make sure Black Panther wasn’t whitewashed, stricken of its blackness, its African-ness. Marvel pushed back when he insisted that T’Challa and his fellow Wakandans spoke with an accent inspired by Xhosa, one of the official languages of Zimbabwe and South Africa. They worried, he told The Hollywood Reporter, that that might be “too much for an audience to take.” But he held his ground. “It felt to me like a deal-breaker,” he said. “I was like, ‘No, this is such an important factor that if we lose this right now, what else are we gonna throw away for the sake of making people feel comfortable?”
That’s why Black Panther resonated — because it didn’t soften the blow. And that’s why its impact could be felt immediately. The day after it hit theaters, Boseman was at an NBA game, where he gave Indiana Pacers star Victor Oladipo a Black Panther mask. Oladipo put it on and, in the guise of T’Challa himself, proceeded to perform a slam dunk. At that moment it felt like black culture was fully at the center of the culture. You could see it in videos of black moviegoers going to screenings in African garb. And you could see it in heartwarming videos of kids, who got to see themselves onscreen, who had a superhero who looked like them.
Boseman was the star of Black Panther, but he made sure it wasn’t the Chadwick Boseman Show. He surrounded himself with many great black actors from his generation: Letitia Wright, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Daniel Kaluuya, Winston Duke, and more. There was the older guard, too: Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker — actors who paved the way for Boseman and for Black Panther. Boseman was a most generous actor. He didn’t hog the spotlight. He made room for others to shine alongside him, and he was at his best when he was playing against others who were as talented as he was. If he was making it, he was bringing everyone along with him.
That Boseman kept his illness under wraps, hiding his struggles with pancreatic cancer even as he made strenuous action films, was a natural extension of that generosity. On one hand, he apparently thought he could beat it and be ready for Black Panther 2. On the other, he wanted to be an example of strength, of grace and humility. In retrospect, you can see the signs. He cryptically alluded to his cancer battles to the press more than once.
Perhaps his malady motivated him to get in touch with younger fans fighting their own illnesses. After Boseman’s death, it was revealed that he’d visited terminally ill children in New Zealand. Then there was the time he broke down during a Black Panther interview, talking about two kids with whom he’d been in touch and who’d recently passed away from cancer. When Boseman himself passed on, a father of one of those children shared a video Boseman had sent them.
This is the first message Chadwick Boseman sent to my son in 2017. He had already been diagnosed with colon cancer, unknown to anyone. Amazing. pic.twitter.com/2Tb4V2O8bN
One of the most gutting examples of Boseman’s generosity was a video from 2019, when he presented Denzel Washington with the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Boseman told a story: When he was young and not particularly moneyed, he was one of a number of students at Howard who received a generous grant to attend a midsummer acting program at Oxford University. Some of that money, he later learned, came from Denzel Washington.
“Imagine receiving the letter that your tuition for that summer was paid for and that your benefactor was none other than the dopest actor on the planet,” Boseman told the crowd. He then got very serious. And as the normally cucumber cool Washington visibly held back tears, Boseman paid tribute to an industry legend whose generosity changed his life.
“An offering from a sage and a king is more than silver and gold. It is a seed of hope, a bud of faith. There is no Black Panther without Denzel Washington. And not just because of me, but my whole cast, that generation, stands on your shoulders. The daily battles won, the thousand territories gained, the many sacrifices you made for the culture on film sets of your career, the things you refused to compromise along the way, lay the blueprints for us to follow. So now let he who has watered be watered. Let he who has given be given to.”
No doubt Boseman was hoping one day he’d be holding back tears as a younger actor said something similar to him. Perhaps that Jimmy Fallon video, the one of him surprising fans, was his way of getting that honor prematurely — of seeing his own funeral, to hear what people said about him, much like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn perched in the church rafters. At the time, only a select few knew what it really meant to him to hear fans sing his praises to his face. But hopefully he knew, in his final moments, that he would be forever remembered as someone who not only gave but who inspired young actors to do the same.
As the split between James Harden and the Houston Rockets becomes more likely, a new story from Tim McMahon at ESPN highlights all the ways the franchise has been “complicit” in making Harden the “boss of the organization.”
Now, with Harden on the outs, the Rockets’ dysfunction and the way they have seemingly kowtowed to Harden is coming back to bite them.
McMahon describes how Harden would use the threat of a trade demand to get what he wanted and then leverage that control into complete manipulation of the team’s schedule and style during the season. This grated especially on Russell Westbrook, who has long led teammates through accountability and companionship rather than unearned superiority.
More from the ESPN story:
Houston’s casual culture appalled Westbrook. In Oklahoma City, despite the fact that he enjoyed the same sort of superstar privileges as Harden has had in Houston, the Thunder operated with the discipline of a military unit under Westbrook’s watch. The Rockets were a stark contrast, especially last season under D’Antoni, who was never known as a disciplinarian and who was a lame duck in the last year of his contract after extension negotiations infamously fizzled twice over the summer.
Westbrook didn’t tolerate tardiness. With the Rockets, scheduled departure times were treated as mere suggestions by Harden and others.
“Nothing ever starts on time,” a former Rockets staffer said. “The plane is always late. The bus is never on time. … It’s just an organized AAU team.”
The Rockets’ culture was not only compromised by Harden often being tardy or disorganized, but also his desire to make the Rockets’ schedule a rolling party across the country. Harden, according to this report, would impose an extra night or two onto Houston’s travel if that allowed the team to spend more time in a place like Phoenix or Los Angeles. If they were within a quick trip of Las Vegas, Harden would take a private flight to party there as well, the report shows.
Altogether, it certainly paints a picture of a place that a hard worker like Westbrook or Chris Paul could have struggled, and helps show why during several big moments along this franchise’s recent history, they have appeared unfocused.
Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane is tackling a reboot of the ’80s comedy classic Revenge of the Nerds, which is already taking great pains to avoid the more problematic moments from the original. The reboot for 20th Century will reportedly star The Lucas Brothers, who will also serve as writers for the project that plans to explore what the heck being a nerd even means today. Via Variety:
The upcoming version won’t be a remake of the 1984 comedy, which hasn’t aged all that well and has been criticized in recent years for depictions of rape. Instead, the contemporary reimagining will pontificate about today’s nerd culture and what even constitutes a geek in the 21st century.
The most problematic scene in question involves Robert Carradine’s Lewis wearing a Darth Vader costume to trick Julia Montgomery’s Betty into thinking he’s her boyfriend Stan who she thinks she’s about to have sex with. When she finds out it’s Lewis, she’s pleasantly surprised despite the act very clearly being sexual assault. Unfortunately, that kind of scene didn’t feel out of place in an ’80s sex comedy, but during a 2019 oral history of the movie, Revenge of the Nerds writer Steve Zacharias voiced his regrets and directly refers to the questionable encounter as “the rape scene.”
“I regret that,” Zacharias told GQ. “I’ve written a play for the musical and I eliminated the rape scene. I made it that Betty was thrown off the cheerleader squad because she flunked trigonometry and Lewis teaches her trigonometry and then before the rape scene he reveals who he is and she wants to have sex with him.”
Hopefully, MacFarlane has better luck after Fox Atomic pulled the plug on a Nerds reboot in 2006 that would’ve starred Adrian Brody. Yup, you read that right.
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to make you FEEL like that? Then the “willow moonlit witch version” is for you. 
