Category: Viral

Ellen DeGeneres recently ousted multiple top producers in the wake of revelations of a “toxic” workplace behind the scenes of her long-running daytime talk show. She also promised to address those accusations on-air, and she’s keeping that promise. As you can see in the above clip, Ellen talked about the allegations in the opening moments of Monday’s return to her show. It’s now Season 18 for The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and the host is vowing that “a new chapter” is beginning.

After an (unavoidably) awkward introduction about what a terrible summer this has been, DeGeneres got down to business:

“As you may have heard this summer, there were allegations of a toxic work environment at our show and then there was an investigation. I learned that things happened that never should have happened. I take that very seriously. I want to say I am so sorry to the people who are affected. I know that I am in a position of privilege and power and I realize that with that comes responsibility. And I take responsibility for what happens at my show. This is The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”

DeGeneres also discussed the double-edged sword that her “be kind” mantra turned out to be. She admits that that saying made her “tricky position” even more precarious to navigate, especially when confronted by reports that that she’s a different person behind the scenes than the sunshiney frontwoman exterior led people to believe for years. “The truth is, I am that person that you see on TV. I am also a lot of other things,” she admitted. “I am a work in progress, and I am especially working on the impatience thing and it’s not going well because it’s not happening fast enough. I will tell you that.”

Prior to DeGeneres’ return to air, Howard Stern stated his belief that Ellen should simply embrace being a “prick,” and Steve Harvey urged her to “walk away” (while also siding with the host). Clearly, Ellen isn’t walking away, but this whole fiasco does bring to mind Ellen’s 2018 profile with The New York Times, to which she strongly suggested that she wished to leave building to pursue projects that explore more of her own personality or portray “someone unappealing” on a TV show or movie. Ellen also pointedly stated, “The talk show is me, but I’m also playing a character of a talk-show host. There’s a tiny, tiny bit of difference.” It remains to be seen whether she’ll cut the talk-show persona loose, once and for all, when it’s time for renewed contract negotiations (before 2022).

Through their appearances in various pieces of pop culture, there are certain dates that have become beloved. Next month, for example, will bring Mean Girls Day, because of one line in the movie in which Lindsay Lohan’s character declared the day’s date: October 3. Ahead of that, though, is a favorite in the realm of silly music unofficial holidays: Earth, Wind & Fire Day, which is today.

Of course, the group’s iconic hit “September” begins with the lyric, “Do you remember the 21st night of September?” To mark the day, the band has shared a new version of the song, the “Eric Kupper Remix,” which they released towards the end of last week. The re-work of the song doesn’t alter much (as it shouldn’t) beyond giving it a stronger four-on-the-floor beat, making the legendary tune somehow even easier to dance to.

The song originally came out in 1978, and all these years later, it still gets fans excited. This morning, the song trended on Twitter in the US in various forms; As of this post, four of the top 30 trending topics are related to the song or Earth, Wind & Fire.

As for the significance of the 21st night of September, the song’s co-writer, Maurice White, has explained that there really isn’t any, saying in a 2014 interview, “We went through all the dates: ‘Do you remember the first, the second, the third, the fourth…,’ and the one that just felt the best was the 21st. I constantly have people coming up to me and they get so excited to know what the significance was. And there is no significance beyond it just sang better than any of the other dates. So… sorry!”

Watch the video for the new “September” remix above.

HBO’s ‘Lovecraft Country’ is ambitious and astounding and will undoubtedly blow your expectations away. Created by Misha Green, who’s working with Matt Ruff’s 1950s-set dark-fantasy novel as source material, the show counts horror visionary Jordan Peele and sci-fi maestro J.J. Abrams as executive producers. The show is full of literary and musical references, along with monsters, both in-your-face and figurative; we’ll discuss the resulting symbolism on a weekly basis.

This week’s episode of Lovecraft Country takes a break from Chicago and heads back in time to Atticus’ tour in South Korea. In other words, we’re not getting an immediate followup on finding out that Christina and William are the same person. We also don’t learn what that reveal means for Ruby, who thought she was sleeping with William while also swapping into the body of a white woman. And we aren’t seeing any followup on Montrose coming out as homosexual. This episode also won’t please anyone who isn’t a fan of the show’s abrupt tonal shifts, but man, no one can accuse this series of playing it safe. This week, we do receive a much-needed backstory on Atticus’ Army years in “Meet Me In Daegu,” in addition to more insight into his beef with Montrose.

Overall, this was a tightly focused installment — revolving around Atticus’ Korean War tour of duty, which led him to meet a nursing student, Ji-Ah (Jamie Chung), in two separate contexts (though he doesn’t remember the first) — that’s not nearly as complex as most Lovecraft Country episodes. Of course, there are still numerous WTF moments, so let’s talk those out.

Lots of wizard-y, borderline-snakey things:

Shout out to that trouser snake from Episode 2, but that wasn’t Atticus’ first snakey rodeo. In fact, he was all wrapped up and eye-penetrated by furry “snakes” after Ji-Ah lost control of the monster inside of her during their lovemaking. We’ve seen her a few times already (more on that later), but most importantly, she’s the owner of the ominous voice at the end of that South Korean telephone number. Of course, that first snake vision that we saw, back at the Ardham Manor, appeared to be strictly happening inside of Leti’s alternate, spell-driven reality as an allusion to Adam and Eve’s fall after she was tempted by the snake (which came out of Atticus’ pants).

This time, though, the snake-like creatures are more like furry tentacles. Ji-Ah has been transformed by a shaman — at the behest of her mother, as part of a combative, resentful relationship that parallels that of Atticus of Montrose — into a vengeful entity known as a Kumiho, a shapeshifting fox spirit that seduces and kills men. In order to break the spell and become human again, Ji-Ah must kill 100 men, and she intended for Atticus to be the final sacrifice. Yet she couldn’t go through with it when she first had the chance. And Ji-Ah ends up sparing him during their final meeting (when he finds out she’s a monster that hurled him, naked, across a room), but he’s still driven to contact her. Well, he’s kind-of a monster, too? That brings me to the next point.

Atticus committed some very bad wartime acts:

We know Atticus to be a generally levelheaded man who’s prone to fits of rage when it comes to his father. That’s something that scared the heck out of Leti last week before they reconciled, but we straight-up see the inhumanities that he committed while acting under orders of the U.S. Army. He executed a nursing student on camera while she knelt next to Ji-Ah, and then he helped cart off Ji-Ah’s best friend away (never to be seen again), which is what led Ji-Ah to faux-romantically pursue him when they meet again in the hospital where she works. Later, she tells him, “We’ve both done monstrous things, but that doesn’t make us monsters.” And hell, they could have worked out, if not for the whole shaman-spell thing ruining their romance with sex-tentacles.

How should we view Atticus now, given that we know he’s capable of also torturing prisoners of war (Ji-Ah saw this vision while connected to Atticus’ mind during their tentacled encounter) — is he still the hero of this story? In the debut episode, we saw him waxing rhapsodic about (the racist) Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess Of Mars hero, John Carter, while overlooking the character’s flaws. It’s a problem.

Otherwise, the whole snake-y sex attack provides for a bizarre backstory to Atticus’ brushes with magic before Ardham Manor. We’re gaining some perspective on why Atticus was so levelheaded, compared to George and Leti, during the crazy sh*t that went down with the cult. I mean, he managed to survive a spirit that reduced 99 other men into a bloody spatter like this…

… so perhaps a homicidal white supremacist cult wasn’t all that shocking to Atticus in comparison? Fair.

Is Atticus in real danger of dying?

It’s not looking great, let’s put it that way. Due to the powers bestowed by this ^^^ shaman, Ji-Ah’s Kumiho powers cause her to foresee Atticus’ death in America. We also learn during this episode that Ji-Ah’s phone warnings (“You should have listened to me”) may have sounded like threats, but she actually tried to stop him (“Don’t go home… If you go home you will die. I saw it!”) from leaving because she wanted to protect him. Obviously, Atticus didn’t listen to her and may live to regret his stubbornness, but he’s in too deep now in Chicago. He’s now devoted to unraveling the Language of Adam and stopping Christina from doing whatever it is that she’s plotting to do.

Here’s where we’ve seen Ji-Ah before this episode:

She appeared as the Martian Princess in Atticus’ opening dream.

She was Atticus’ imaginary assailant during his alternate-reality experience in Ardham:

In a show that never even needed a secret weapon to succeed, Jamie Chung’s sure looking like a bonus weapon.

Hey, Atticus once enjoyed Montrose’s favorite book:

Ji-Ah and Atticus ended up bonding and falling in love with their mutual desire to escape reality through pop culture. She adores Judy Garland movies, and he loves losing himself in books. Interestingly enough, we don’t Atticus poring over his usual pulp fiction (by racist authors including H.P. Lovecraft, who Montrose abhors) that was also beloved by the late George. Instead, we see him reading the same book, The Count Of Monte Cristo, that he took note of a few episodes ago in Montrose’s apartment. That was a reference to Black French author Alexandre Dumas’ pushing back at racism (particularly as exercised through colonialism) after experiencing it firsthand.

Atticus even requests for Ji-Ah to read The Count Of Monte Cristo to him, and when she claims to know the ending of the book, he realizes that she’s talking about the movie version. He’s read the book already and wishes to re-experience it… because it’s Montrose’s favorite. He’s not sure whether Montrose liked the book because Dumas was a Black author or due to the protagonist’s successful pursuit of revenge. Yet if it’s the latter, then we’ve still got a lot to see from Montrose before season’s end.

HBO’s ‘Lovecraft Country’ airs Sundays at 9:00pm EST.

In the days before her death, U.S. Supreme Court Justice and women’s rights pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg revealed her dying wish to her granddaughter: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” Not only is Trump planning to ignore RBG, he’s also casting doubts that she said what she, well, said.

While appearing on Monday’s Fox & Friends, Trump said, “I don’t know that she said that, or was that written out by Adam Schiff or [Chuck] Schumer and [Nancy] Pelosi? I would be more inclined to the second. That came out of the wind, it sounds so beautiful, but that sounds like a Schumer deal or maybe Pelosi or shifty Schiff.”

Trump also told the Fox News host that he’s narrowed his list of potential Supreme Court nominees to fill Ginsburg’s seat to five people and that he plans to announce his selection this week. “I think it will be on Friday or Saturday and we want to pay respect, it looks like we will have services on Thursday or Friday, as I understand it, and I think we should, with all due respect for Justice Ginsburg, wait for services to be over,” he said.

Because nothing says showing respect to the recently deceased than to immediately go against their dying wish. Watch the Fox & Friends clip below.

(Via the Daily Beast & The Recount)

Microsoft rocked the gaming world on Monday with news it made a massive purchase of the parent company of publisher Bethesda — maker of games the Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom. The all-cash deal announced on Monday will see ZeniMax Media acquired by Microsoft, with Bethesda joining Xbox Game Studios.

According to a Microsoft announcement on Monday, the $7.5 billion deal is done and will have an immediate impact on video games. It’s a seismic shift in the gaming industry that has a lot of wrinkles and new possibilities, but first and foremost is a move framed by Microsoft as a way to bolster Xbox Game Pass ahead of the release of two new next-gen consoles this fall. Microsoft pointed out in a release that Xbox Game Pass currently has more than 15 million subscribers, and the acquisition of Bethesda brings with it the “intent” to include future Bethesda games on Xbox Game Pass right on launch day.

It’s unclear if those titles — potentially including future Fallout or Elder Scrolls sequels — will be timed Xbox/PC exclusives or how releases of what are now Xbox Studio games will work. Microsoft now has 23 different studios working under its Xbox catalog, with 2,300 employees getting added to the company in the deal. At least one game, Starfield, was mentioned as under development by Bethesda and will presumably be the first to release on Game Pass like Microsoft teased.

Thinking more long-term, the various things made possible by the deal are far more widespread, including great news for Fallout fans as pointed out by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier.

Whether another New Vegas is on the way or not is way too early to determine, but’s a striking example of just how big this deal is and the repercussions it will have across gaming. Microsoft got a lot bigger on Monday, and the next generation of console gaming is poised to look a lot different than anyone thought just a few days ago.

Like other areas of the music industry, the pandemic has presented both challenges and new opportunities to the folks behind NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series. They haven’t been hosting performances from the traditional venue at their offices, but that means they’ve been able to wrangle artists to participate from wherever they find themselves. For their latest, they got perhaps the biggest pop act in the world right now: BTS.

The performance immediately sent shock waves across the internet: It was the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter in the US within a half hour of its debut. For the set, the group took to their hometown South Korean record store and performed their first US No. 1 single “Dynamite.” After that, they dipped into their archives for the remaining two songs: “Save Me” and “Spring Day,” from 2016 and 2017, respectively.

NPR noted, “We’ve been trying to make a BTS Tiny Desk concert happen for years now — even gaming out ways we might move Bob Boilen’s desk far enough forward to accommodate the superstar Korean boy band’s dance moves. In the end, it took a global pandemic — and the launch of Tiny Desk (home) concerts back in March — to make something happen.”

Watch BTS’ Tiny Desk performance above.

In 2019, Black Panther became the first comic-book movie to win an Oscar, and at this year’s Emmys, HBO’s Watchmen became the first comic-book TV show to win an Emmy in a major category. Comic book fans are starved for theater content this year, so this is a nice consolation prize and further confirmation that Alan Moore’s “unfilmable” graphic novel is getting it done. Thanks to Damon Lindelof’s ambitious and sweeping limited series and radical recontextualization of the source material, Watchmen pulled off an almost-sweep in the Limited Awards categories on TV’s biggest (virtual) night. This brought the show’s total Emmys take to 11 awards — the previously announced honors included Best Music Composition for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and Best Fantasy/Sci-Fi costumes for Sharen Davis and Valerie Zielonka.

On Sunday night, the show’s largest awards went down, which included Best Limited Series, Best Writing In A Limited Series or Movie (Damon Lindelof and Cord Jefferson), Best Lead Actress In A Limited Series (Regina King), and Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Regina King used her speech to urge people to vote, while Mateen and Lindelof both paid tribute to the victims of the 1921 Race Massacre, with the latter stating, “The fires that destroyed Black Wall Street still burn today… The only way to put them out is if we all fight them together.”

Abdul-Mateen, who portrayed Cal Abar/Doctor Manhattan, joined Lindelof’s sentiment while also dedicating his award to Black women:

“Watchmen was a story about trauma. It was a story about the lasting scars of white domestic violence and white domestic terrorism. It was a story about police corruption and brutality. But in the midst of all of that, it was also a story of a god who came down to Earth to reciprocate to a Black woman all the love that she deserved, for her sacrifices, passion and protection. And he did all of that in the body of a Black man, and I’m so proud that I was able to walk into those shoes. I dedicate this award to all of the Black women in my life.”

Weird factoid: Billy Crudup, who portrayed Doctor Manhattan in Zack Snyder’s far-too-literal 2009 Watchmen adaptation, also won an Emmy (Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series) for his work on The Morning Show. And Zack Snyder’s doing just fine, working on his Snyder Cut of Justice League for HBO Max.

This month, Billie Eilish has done all she can to get herself on the holiday wish lists of music fans everywhere this year. A couple weeks ago, she teamed up with Fender to introduce her own signature ukulele. Now, she’s back with perhaps the finest music merch 2020 has offered so far: Billie Eilish action figures.

A pair of new action figures (part of the “In Video” series) have found their way onto Eilish’s merch site, and one of them is based on her look in the “Bad Guy” video. The doll is 10.5 inches tall, “highly detailed,” and “fully articulated.” It features “a life-like head sculpt, rooted hair, real fabric signature yellow outfit, classic yellow tennis shoes and accessories,” and it comes in “a very eco-friendly, corrugated window box that transforms into a dioramic display.”

Then there’s the figure based on her “All The Good Girls Go To Hell” video. This one stands 6 inches in height, is “fully molded,” and features “18 points of articulation and comes with her 3 pivot point, back wings featured in the video.” Like the “Bad Guy” figure, this one also comes in a box that can be converted into a display.

Both dolls are expected to ship in ten weeks, so they should reach buyers in time to be the perfect holiday gift.

Get the “Bad Guy” figure here and the “All The Good Girls Go To Hell” figure here.

There wasn’t much going on with the box office this weekend with Tenet continuing to struggle in theaters domestically (release it to PVOD!), while Mulan continues to struggle in theaters internationally. Here in the United States, we can at least blame the pandemic for the failures of Tenet in theaters, but over in China — where a movie called Eight Hundred has earned $400 million since August 21st — Mulan has only managed to earn $36 million after two weeks. Meanwhile, estimates for how much Mulan has earned on VOD here in the states vary from $30 million to $260 million, although even the lowest number has surpassed Tenet in the states, which has earned $36 million after adding $4.7 million this weekend. Tenet, however, has done fairly well overseas, where it has surpassed $200 million after a solid debut in Japan.

Beyond that, there’s not much to talk about. Every other movie that mounted an effort in theaters struggled mightily: The Secrets We Keep, $90,000; The Nest, $62,000; and the widest new release of the weekend, Infidel, only earned $1.5 million in over 1700 theaters, which is less than the $1.6 million New Mutants earned in its fourth weekend, bringing its total to $17.7 million.

Indeed, it’s clear that most moviegoers stayed home to watch the Emmy Awards, to enjoy the NFL, and to catch up on Netflix. Speaking of the streamer, their big new release of the weekend was The Devil All the Time, starring Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson. Despite all that star power, the film didn’t do as well as an obscure 2016 English/French film called The Take.

The Take — known as Bastille Day internationally — stars Idris Elba and Game of Thrones‘ Richard Madden. The film actually did decent at the box office internationally, earning $14 million (on a $4 million budget), but almost no one saw it stateside, where it earned only $50,000 in 100 theaters. It didn’t earn much by way of critical raves, either, scoring 48 percent on the Tomatometer, as well as a dismal 41 percent from audiences.

And yet, it’s the top film on Netflix this weekend. Superficially, it’s easy to understand why: it’s a movie from Idris Elba and Richard Madden newly released to Netflix, and I’m sure that there was a heavy sampling of the movie. However, one thing we do know about Netflix’s metrics is that they count it as a view anytime someone watches more than two minutes of a movie. There were probably a lot of people who watched The Take without finishing it, if comments on Twitter are any indication.

And why is that? Because the film is half in English, and half in French, there weren’t English subtitles for all of the French-speaking parts. I checked, and can confirm these accounts:

So, let that be a warning to any of you who cannot speak French but love Idris and Richard Madden enough to give The Take a sampling. If you don’t mind not understanding half the movie, and are just tuning into to watch Idris in action, be prepared to take it in while not understanding what is happening.

Through Kanye West’s recent issues with his recording contracts, the rapper has realized that not only does he want to get himself into a more desirable situation, but that he wants to do the same for other artists. In recent days, Kanye has taken to Twitter to share his vision for a newly structured music industry, in which artists are treated more fairly. Over the weekend, he crystallized those thoughts into an outline of proposed “New Recording And Publishing Deal Guidelines.”

The overall theme of Kanye’s outline is that artists should have more power and ownership over their music. His outline insists that artists own copyright of their recordings, that artists make more money off their work than their labels do, that contracts be easier to understand, and that artists have a more transparent way to see how much they are earning from their music.

After making his points, Kanye concluded, “This is a call for all artist to unify … I will get my masters , I got the most powerful lawyer in music and I can afford them but every artist must be freed and treated fairly.”

Find Kanye’s full outline below.

“1. The artist owns the copyright in the recordings and songs and leases them to the record label / publisher for a limited term. 1 year deals

2. The record label / publisher is a service provider that receives a share of the income for a limited term. The split can be 80/20 in the artists favor.

3. DEPENDANTS

Artists must be dependent on no one but themselves to manage their catalog. You should need NO ONE else to understand the business you’re in.

4. LAWYERS

the first thing that changes about Record Deals is actually lawyers.

We need Plain English contracts. A Lawyers role is to IMPROVE deals…. not charge for contracts we cannot understand or track. Re-write deals to be understandable from FIRST READ.

5. EQUITY & BLANKET LICENSES ARE THE MAJORITY OF FUTURE NEW INCOME.

If you’re with a major you have invested your ‘songs’ as shares in their power to get equity and deals. Almost ALL new deals now are based on ALL songs going to a store or app. The equity is the Artists.

NO MORE blanket licenses. It should be clear from day one… what shares you get NOW and when you leave. If your song helps a deal over the line you invested in that store / app same as they did.

UMG now has a 2.2 billion share holding stake in Spotify. This is the artists. The system as to how we get share balances on our royalty statement needs to be created and a system on when Artists can cash in.

5. ADVANCES ARE JUST LOANS!!

On Artists re-signing these stop. Advances are Loans with 75% interest rates (or worse). NO other business in the world takes a look at the business, buys shares, starts to profit when it profits. Record Companies have to buy into you, not loan you.

6. ROYALTIES

Again back to dependents. You need a business manager to read how you did? So you pay to see your money!!! NO MORE.

Royalty portals need to show (and do not now)

Every song you delivered

Every store you are in

How many streams per song

Income per song

It sounds basic and logical but t does NOT exist. They focus on top earners and ZERO look at the 440 stores…. Only the top few. Artists are global. That’s why their contract territory says GLOBAL

Royalty department in EVERY label. No more separating finance teams from the music.

7. PORTALS

Are not just for royalties. They are for your entire business. Every audio file, every asset, every deal stored WITH the money. Money and Music must stay together. When your term ends, download it all. Leave.”