Category: Viral

Concrete Cowboy, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, falls into that category of movie where the subject matter is so interesting I just want to know more. In this case – and we’ve seen examples during the protests over the last few months – Black cowboys in the middle of large cities. It’s something, admittedly, I just didn’t know much about and the site of people riding horses in heavily populated urban areas seems unusual, but it has a long history and Ricky Staub’s Concrete Cowboy does a good job of filling in that history.

Based in part on the book Ghetto Cowboy by Greg Neri, Cole (Caleb Washington, who you probably know best from Stranger Things) is headed down a bleak path after one too many run-ins with trouble and the police. His mother, at her wits’ end, decides Cole should spend the summer in Philadelphia with his father, Harp (Idris Elba). Harp is part of a local group, the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club, who own and tend horses in Philadelphia. (Many of the actual members of Fletcher Street Riding Club appear in the film to varying, understandable degrees of acting talent that range from, “well, that’s nice they are in this,” to, “oh, I would have bet money that was an actor.”)

The plot of Concrete Cowboy itself doesn’t offer a ton of surprises, and it probably plays out a lot like you think it will. Cole still winds up finding trouble in Philadelphia. Idris Elba’s Harp takes the tough love approach, demanding Cole stop hanging out with certain friends. Then, later, he encourages him to start taking care of the horses in the stables and learn some responsibility. When one of the horses escapes to a local softball field – with a couple of dozen very surprised white, softball playing city-dwellers standing around, not knowing quite what to do – it’s Cole who approaches the scared and feisty animal to bring it back.

So, yes, it’s a movie about a somewhat estranged father reconnecting with his son over their eventual shared love of the horses. A particular scene stood out, as members of the urban horse riding community are all hanging out in a city field, drinking beers and sharing tales of the past. This is also when we meet Leroy (Method Man), a local sheriff who is very much a part of the local community. And his character just underscores how important it is for members of the police to actually know and live in the community they serve – a point that comes into play later in the film. But it’s during this scene that we hear about the history of the Black cowboy and how Hollywood erased their legacy. That even the Lone Ranger was a Black man (Bass Reeves), but as we know became a white guy in hundreds of radio and television installments. But it’s this legacy of the Black cowboy that’s still alive today with these urban cowboy clubs.

Concrete Cowboy is a nice movie about fathers and sons and humanity and the legacy of why there are people riding horses in places you wouldn’t expect to see any horses. In fact, there should probably be more horses in cities. “Less cars, more horses” sounds like a pretty good campaign slogan. During the credits, the real-life members of the club share their personal stories about how the riding club changed their lives. One man can’t walk anymore, but he can still ride. (In the movie his character says this happened during an altercation over a street corner, a street corner that now hosts a Starbucks. “I’ll be in a wheelchair the rest of my life, all for nothing,” he says. I can only assume this story he tells in the movie is a true story.)

A movie like Concrete Cowboy seems to fit the theme of this particular Toronto Film Festival. It’s a movie that, probably, would get swallowed up a bit by all the usual huge films. But this year, thankfully, it’s getting some nice attention. And it’s further proof that, even in this virtual form, it’s a great thing that film festivals continued to push forward as best they could.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Billie Eilish is set to appear on the finale episode off Brian Baumgartner’s podcast about The Office, geeking out about her favorite show with a pair of its stars: Baumgarner and Steve Carell. An Oral History Of The Office has been streaming on Spotify for past 11 weeks, but tomorrow (Tuesday, September 15), the show comes to an end, bringing in the musical super fan for a discussion of The Office‘s legacy and lasting impact for a new generation of fans (Eilish herself was only 12 years old when the show finished its initial on-air run).

Eilish appears on the show via FaceTime call, gushing over the show and confessing she’s watched it 14 times (the episode was recorded earlier this year — since then, she’s completed another watch through). “Honestly, because I’ve been getting older, every time I watch it I understand something new because I started at [age] 12,” she admits. “Most of the things that I know are because of The Office. I swear to god.” She says she watches the show on her iPhone as an escape from day-to-day stress. “It takes me away from the reality of my life,” she says, “It’s a safe space.” Eilish previously appeared with Rainn Wilson (aka Dwight) answering quiz questions about show trivia.

The episode is also scheduled to include appearances from Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski, who played Pam and Jim, respectively. You can stream the full episode here on Tuesday, 9/15.

Story via Billboard.

Gabriel Garzón-Montano firmly believes that in this music industry pond that we play in, people have a tendency to box artists in. That the music you made the first time around is inextricably tied to your identity forever and if you veer away from that, it‘s seen as deviant and your motives come into question.

This mechanism haunted him following his 2014 debut EP, Bishouné, and his 2017 Stones Throw Records-released LP, Jardin. Both are gorgeous collections of newfangled R&B with international flair that often saw a hint of Garzón-Montano’s leaning into the roots of his Colombian heritage, but almost a hesitancy to cross over the whole way. This reluctance, he explains, has been grinding away at him until now.

“I got bored of the music I was making, to the point of debilitating depression,” Garzón-Montano says from his apartment in Brooklyn, the borough where he was born and raised. “I was having this identity crisis, beholden to this imaginary, paranoid mind-frame. We’re like 17-sided rocks as humans and they ask us to choose one of those and make it our whole identity. That is so reductive that eventually it bottoms out. So, I’m giving myself permission to try things.”

Now signed to indie-powerhouse Jagjaguwar, Garzón-Montano’s second LP, Agüita, is due out October 2. It sees the auteur flourishing comfortably in cross-cultural experimentations that he calls a “tasting menu” of his arsenal. On tracks like “Bloom” and “Moonless,” he takes a spiritual look at life and loss, namely on the latter, where he seeks to connect with the inner demons left behind by his mother’s passing when he was 17. Lead single “Someone” treads along a comfortable formula as his past work, with funky keys and bass billowing alongside his tongue-in-cheek bedroom imagery of love and longing.

But it’s the second single, “Agüita,” that makes easily the boldest statement of Garzón-Montano’s career. A full-on cumbia hip-hop assault that’s sung in Spanish and produced entirely by Garzón-Montano, it’s not a far cry from mainstream reggaeton cuts like “Azul” by J. Balvin or Ozuna’s “Un Get.” But “Agüita” stands alone with a palpable chip on the shoulder and the pomp of a nascent phoenix trapped in a thick-shelled egg that they’ve been punching away at relentlessly inside, waiting to break through and soar into the world. And that process was a battle for Garzón-Montano, who insinuated that even though he was “turning 30 grand into $700,000,” on previous release cycles, that the industry hasn’t supported who he wanted to grow into as an artist.

“My biggest fear is that people are only lining up to do this thing that we know doesn’t work,” he says. “On a fundamental level, it scares me. And then I get just sidelined with that every time. I’m supposed to sing about what matters to heart, but at your convenience? Do you feel safe enough to listen to my emotions? Until you do something so shocking and unimaginable, that it feels like the only way to break that is through such intense planning and preparations that there are moments of delight and perversion; muscular and virtuosic control of aesthetic.”

The photography and visuals surrounding Garzón-Montano’s releases have always been committed to building that distinct aesthetic he refers to (the “Bombo Fabrika” video from 2017 is especially stunning), but it’s never pushed boundaries as provocatively as on the clip for “Agüita.” It opens with the shirtless star atop a water truck spraying a hose into the air that flamboyantly symbolizes and sexualizes the song’s aqueous theme and perhaps even introduces the new persona known simply as “GGM.” He then goes from getting a tattoo on the wheel of a tractor to a dirtbike sideshow in the crude Colombian metropolis of Medellín, before riding atop a white horse in the jungles of Pereira. As the video climaxes, Garzón-Montano dances alongside the fiercely choreographed Mulahttaz dance crew, with cuts from both a cityscape backdrop and a ring of bursting fire columns in the night.

Alongside songs on the album like “Muñeca” and “Mira My Look,” “Agüita” represents a transformation. One that was catalyzed by listening to Latino Urbano music and flat out feeling inspired by it all. “When I wake up, what do I want to hear, what makes me dance and gives me the feeling of victorious celebration?” he asks rhetorically.

“Agüita” ultimately came about when Garzón-Montano was covering Tierra Whack’s “Fruit Salad,” becoming enamored by the beat and stretching it out. He added bombastic hip-hop hi-hats in the style of Migos and Roddy Ricch, and the rimshot from his own track “Keep on Running,” then played with re-harmonizations of Whack’s stylistic hums at the end of syllables. He was energized, but at first, his reticence to attempt to make music outside of his pre-determined norm reared its head once again.

“After a while, I felt like I was singing this beautiful, amazing song by this woman giving me so much inspiration as if I couldn’t make something that could please me in this same way,” he says. “And when I realized that, I saw the problems there. That you’re going to live your life in a version that doesn’t do it. And the only thing I’ve ever seen anybody be truly passionate about is discrediting themselves.”

It’s as if being the child of artistically-minded Colombian and French parents — though growing up identifying as a “white” American — didn’t qualify Garzón-Montano to expand his horizons into new styles of music. Or if being part of an industry segment that catered to a certain audience didn’t allow him to cultivate new ones. But the self-proclaimed perfectionist has finally allowed himself to blossom in that sense and there’s now a diverse appeal that represents exactly who he is.

“My whole thesis is that culture is so up for debate and I’m proving that,” he says. “’Agüita’ is my first rap song and I produced the beat entirely by myself. And if you listen to my other music it sounds like a different person. So I thought that’d be at least a conversation point or at the very most, a huge problem for other people who do the same genres in any area that I do… But I busted my tender nutsack for three years and made the most beautiful music of my life and I’m so loving it. It’s total self-expression and it defied my expectation of me.”

Agüita is out October 2 via Jagjagwar. Get it here.

Over the years, the Game of Thrones cast and crew has dropped hints about the HBO show’s original pilot, the one that showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff have threatened to blackmail Kit Harrington with and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau called “unbelievably bad.” The episode has never been released to the public (despite my best #ReleaseTheThronesPilotCut efforts), but for his new book Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, author James Hibberd spoke to everyone involved about the “complete piece of sh*t.”

Coster-Waldau said that “nobody knew what they were doing or what the hell this was,” Lena Headey admitted that Cersei “looked like a Vegas showgirl… furs and massive hair, like a medieval Dolly Parton,” and Iain Glen complained that you couldn’t see “f*ck all” during Daenerys and Khal Drogo’s wedding scene. Speaking of the Mother of Dragons: actress Tamzin Merchant played Dany in the OG pilot before being replaced by Emilia Clarke, but she made quite the impression during her brief time on the show:

George R.R. Martin: So we’re by this little brook. They tied the horses to the trees and there’s a seduction scene by the stream. Jason Momoa and Tamzin are naked and “having sex.” And suddenly the video guy starts to laugh. The silver filly was not a filly at all. It was a colt. And it was getting visibly excited by watching these two humans. There’s this horse in the background with this enormous horse schlong. So that didn’t go well either.

How very Littlefinger of that horse.

The decision to order Thrones to series (with a re-shot pilot, of course) came down to HBO’s co‑president Richard Plepler, who said, “You could see that some of the casting and the narrative was off. It needed to be fixed; it needed to be reshot. But the overall emotional response was that you could feel how engaging it could be.” Of the many changes between the original pilot and the one that aired on April 17, 2011, including Joffrey’s hair (“It was more pageboy cut, slightly pudding bowl-ish”), the biggest was the re-casting of Daenerys. Momoa says Merchant was “great,” but “when Emilia got there, that’s when everything clicked for me,” while writer-producer Bryan Cogman added, “It’s obvious Emilia Clarke was born to play that part.”

Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon is available on October 6.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

The Bucks ouster in five games in the second round at the hands of the Miami Heat pushed them into an offseason no one in Milwaukee wanted to arrive at so soon. It’s one in which they could, potentially, lock up their franchise cornerstone for years to come with a supermax extension, but the hope was they would have a ring in their pocket as a bargaining chip — or at least a Finals appearance — to keep Giannis Antetokounmpo around.

Instead, they have another early exit from the Eastern Conference and questions abound about what comes next. The big market vultures are lying in wait to pick the carcass of the Bucks should Giannis decide not to sign long-term, but he’s stated plainly he won’t be asking for a trade. While there’s a difference in not asking for a trade and agreeing to stay in Milwaukee for your prime years, it’s a good start for the Bucks, but there is work to be done.

Over the weekend, Giannis reportedly met with Bucks owner Marc Lasry over lunch to get an idea of the commitment he was willing to make to pushing this team over the hump, and what some of those changes needed to be to make the roster a championship one, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

The luxury tax issue is one that is important, but also probably comes a year too late. Whether having Malcolm Brogdon on this team would’ve made them a championship squad is something we’ll never know, but his creativity on the ball and ability to shoot the ball from above the break would’ve certainly made them more formidable. Instead, they dealt him in a sign-and-trade to Indiana because they had already paid Eric Bledsoe and swapped Brogdon for a first-round pick.

What one wonders is whether Antetokounmpo may consider taking a page from LeBron’s book and signing with Milwaukee on 1+1 deals that consistently apply pressure to ownership to continue spending at a championship level, rather than potentially being locked in on a five-year deal where ownership can try to dodge the tax in the middle while their star doesn’t have the same leverage. If the Bucks weren’t willing to pay Brogdon this past summer in the midst of a championship window, one has to think it could happen again. Antetokounmpo wanted that assurance, but keeping that pressure on them to stay true to their word is always a savvy move for a superstar.

As for what upgrading the roster looks like for Milwaukee, one would have to think it includes upgrading that point guard spot. Bledsoe simply hasn’t worked out in the playoffs and they have to at least try to find a trade partner for him that would allow them to bring in someone with a more diverse offensive skillset. Chris Paul is the name most have connected to Milwaukee for good reason, but making that trade happen requires some real creativity. Any major upgrades for the Bucks likely have to come on the trade market, and figuring out how to land another star level player is the greatest task of the front office in an offseason full of uncertainty with the salary cap.

The thing to remember about Noah Hawley’s television adaptation of Fargo is that no one thought it was going to work. Not me, not you, not anyone either of us knew. Go ahead and lie to yourself if you want, but I know. I know you, like me, saw that someone was adapting Fargo for television without the Coen brothers or any of the original characters and you said “Feh, no thanks, sounds dumb and bad.” And then the first season aired, with Billy Bob Thornton terrorizing everyone he met as demonic hitman Lorne Malvo, and your tune charged. And then it kept changing during seasons two and three, which were also terrific and introduced us to a slew of midwestern criminals and a family of cops named Solverson and, yes, for some reason that worked even though it probably shouldn’t have, space aliens. At some point it became one of the best shows television has to offer, weirder and goofier than the weird and goofy show, more dark and menacing than the dark and menacing shows, always compelling and interesting and inventive. I am very pleased to report that none of that changes in the upcoming fourth season.

Quick plot rundown, with as few spoilers as possible: Season four of Fargo takes place in Kansas City in the early 1950s and focuses on two rival criminal organizations, a Black crime family led by Loy Cannon (Chris Rock) and a local branch of the Italian mob led by the Fadda brothers, Josto and Gaetano (Jason Schwartzman and Salvatore Esposito, respectively). There’s a power vacuum and an ensuing power struggle, and child-swapping, and a jailbreak involving lesbian outlaws, and crooked cops and a badass carrot-chomping U.S. Marshal (Timothy Olyphant, playing a kind of “what if Raylan Givens from Justified were a Mormon from Utah?” character), and a Minnesota-nice nurse with a dark secret (Jessie Buckley, proving the Christoph Waltz Hypothesis true yet again by being more terrifying with each smile). Everyone spends the first few episodes cautiously circling each other, building the pressure and building it and building it, until it all finally starts to pop. It’s a blast. I missed this show very much.

But I’ll come back to that. It is important to me that you also know the following things about this new season, which, again, dives into issues of race and immigration and has a number of serious things to say through a wholly original filter, but is also goofy as all hell in the way Fargo is usually goofy as all hell:

• There is a character named Doctor Senator who is neither a doctor nor a senator
• There is a pretentious actual doctor named Dr. Harvard
• Timothy Olyphant’s character is named “Dick ‘Deafy’ Wickware,” and I encourage you to say that name out loud many times between now and the premiere, just as a treat for your mouth
• There are a number of truly delightful turns of phrase, like the time one of the criminals asks for a sit-down with another in order to “hash out the rumpus,” or the time someone describes a particularly troubled character by saying “your mind is a clutter of grievances”
• There are, and I want to stress here that I am simply reporting the facts, at least two dramatic fits of flatulence that are consequential to the action at hand

I honestly don’t know if any single show on television is geared more toward my specific set of interests. It’s violent and serious and terrifying in moments, and blatantly silly and bonkers in others. It’s what I liked about shows like HBO’s rightly celebrated Watchmen series and Amazon’s frustratingly underappreciated Patriot, this audacity to do just everything at once, to insert the stupidest joke in the world into a serious narrative about important issues and make it work somehow. I respect everyone involved in all of these programs very much.

The other thing Fargo has always done well and continues to do well in season four: sui generis characters. Just when you think someone is exactly what you expect, something will happen that yoinks them of the tracks a bit. Jessie Buckley’s nurse character, Oraetta Mayflower, is a fascinating creature, a well-spoken professional who throws around $5 words and is hiding something diabolical behind them. Amber Midthunder plays an unrepentant outlaw named Swanee Capps who has a foul mouth and a cowboy hat and a heap of quickly developing problems. Salvatore Esposito’s Gaetano Fadda is a huge ball of chaotic dangerous energy, bringing an almost silent-film-era level of physicality to the screen, all bulging eyes and overly expressive movements and just the general vibe that he might literally or metaphorically explode at any moment. I love him. I can’t wait for the rest of you to meet him.

I could go on, easily. I haven’t even gotten to the family of funeral home operators who get mixed up in all of this through a fairly ridiculous set of circumstances involving loans and poisoned desserts and vomit-covered cash. The family has a daughter, Ethelrida (Emyri Crutchfield), who is too smart and inquisitive to avoid trouble and it becomes a whole thing. But if I keep going, I run the risk of spoiling some important, fun, dramatic moments for you, and I straight-up refuse to do that. The whole joy of watching Fargo is the unexpected, the things it does that no other show does, or would even think to do, the things that now, in season four, have become recognizable to the show in a way that makes the weirdness of it all almost comforting. There were a few times when I was watching the screeners where something so unexpected happened, or something maybe 30 degrees away from what I expected, that I found myself just smiling, happy that this stew of compelling storytelling and directorial eye-candy and bozo circus shenanigans was back on my television again, finally, after a three-year hiatus.

Fargo has always been good, from the very beginning, against odds so long you could wrap them around the earth like a lasso. None of that changes here. I can’t wait to see how the rest of this rumpus hashes itself out.

FX’s ‘Fargo’ returns for season four on Sunday, September 27.

A lot of artists find themselves in feuds, and recently, Dave Grohl was in the midst of a battle himself. It was far from combative or ill-spirited, though. Instead, ten-year-old drummer Nandi Bushell challenged the Foo Fighters leader and former Nirvana drummer to a drum battle, a challenge that he happily accepted. The two had a fun and friendly exchange back in August, but Grohl wasn’t done with Bushell yet, as he continued their back-and-forth today.

Grohl shared a video of himself seated behind a drum set and addressing Bushell, “OK, Nandi: You got me. You win round one. But I got something special for you, something you never heard before, something I never heard before, because I’m about to write this off the top of my head for you.” Then, backed by The Grohlettes on vocals, Grohl performed a theme song he wrote for Bushell, which begins, “Number one supergirl, best drummer in the world, always right on time, hero wunderkind.”

As of press time, Bushell hasn’t offered a response to Grohl’s latest video, but having one of the greatest rock musicians of all time write you a theme song has to be a special feeling, especially for a ten-year-old kid.

Watch the new video above.

Whatever hip-hop Twitter has decided about his recent music, Chance The Rapper is still inarguably one of the genre’s most vibrant and electric performers. However, thanks to the global pandemic that has most of the music industry on lockdown, he hasn’t been able to showcase this side of his artistry, outside of reposting his favorite television performances on Instagram. Perhaps that’s why public sentiment has turned on him — at least, in part — but tonight, he might be able to turn the tide with his first “live” digital performance of 2020.

The concert, set to take place at the flagship Ralph Lauren store in Chicago at 9:00pm ET tonight (September 14), will stream live on Chance’s social media as well as the brand’s. It’s a pre-recorded performance, so expect a lot of production value. Meanwhile, there will be an interactive AR waiting room on Snapchat ahead of the performance allowing fans to take a nostalgic look at Chance’s career so far and at Ralph Lauren’s future fashions. The show will be available via website, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube for 24 hours after it goes live.

In a statement, Chance said, “Music and fashion to me have always been interlinked. Ralph Lauren has always been one of my favorite designers, right by my side for some of my favorite moments in my career and personal life. This intimate virtual concert ties together all the greatest events of my life and allows me to sing about them the way I always wanted to.”

Watch Chance’s digital concert live at 9pm ET/6pm PT tonight.

Donald Trump has been attempting to court Joe Rogan fans on Twitter ahead of election day. Yes, that’s very odd, even by 2020 standards, but true. Trump retweeted an MMA account that posted a Rogan clip, and then the president uploaded a clip of Rogan comparing Biden to a “flashlight with a dying battery.” So of course, Trump was thrilled to hear about the recent Joe Rogan Experience episode with UFC fighter Tim Kennedy, to whom the host mentioned that he wouldn’t mind moderating a presidential debate.

The proposed debate “would be four hours with no audience,” as Kennedy noted on Twitter. He also inquired, “Who wants this?”

One person in particular answered while shouting it from the rooftop.

Well, there’s like 0.000031% chance of this actually happening. However, Rogan — who endorsed Bernie Sanders earlier this year — has indicated that he will vote for Trump. He based the decision upon his distaste for Biden, but yes, it does appear that he’s siding with the current president.

In the past, Rogan has called out Trump’s habitual lying and summarized Trump’s discourse as “put[ting] things into some very digestible form that morons love.” He added, “I’m not saying that all people who are Trump supporters are morons, but there’s a lot of people who are morons that like him because he’s talking in this frequency.” More recently, Rogan declared that Biden “seems to be mentally compromised,” which Rogan believes makes “a large group of people … very uncomfortable.” Well, there’s been no reaction from Biden’s camp on those statements or Rogan’s offer to host a marathon debate, but at least someone is into it.

The biggest news in the Fresh Prince of Bel Air universe is that Will Smith finally ended his feud with Aunt Viv, though a “gritty” reboot of the show is also something of interest as well, I suppose.

Another fun marketing stunt in the Fresh Prince universe, though, is Will Smith himself putting the show’s iconic mansion on AirBnB for an extremely affordable rental price. The listing popped up on the site on Monday, and according to Page Six, Will’s wing of the mansion is listed on the short-term rental site for just $30 a night.

“Ready for the freshest staycation ever? If this place looks familiar that’s because it’s just as fly as it was when I first rolled up the driveway. I’m back,” Smith wrote in the listing. “And this time, I’m handing you the keys so you’ll have my wing of the mansion all to yourself — but my sneaker collection is off limits, aight?”

Here’s the description of the place, apparently written by Will himself:

It’s your crib for the night, so feel free to act like you own the place. My wing of the mansion includes my bedroom (great for naps), a full bathroom (great for spitting bars in the shower), pool area (great for dips), an outdoor lounge, and the dining room (great for eating obviously). And you gotta do it like my guy DJ Jazzy Jeff so don’t forget your sunglasses!

During your stay, you’ll get to indulge in a few royal perks, including:
– Lacing up a fresh pair of Jordans before shooting some b-ball in the bedroom (you read that right—IN the bedroom).
– Spinning throwback classics all night on turntables just like DJ Jazzy Jeff’s.
– Donning a fly look from my closet, from argyle prepster to all-star athlete —from experience: both at the same time turns heads!
– Soaking up the sun poolside on luxe lounge chairs.
Note: while you will not have access to a kitchen; all meals will be provided and served on silver platters, of course.

Availability for the 1-bedroom stay was extremely limited and quickly filled up, so if you’re reading this, you already missed your chance to stay where the prince grew up, at least on television. Still, there are some fun photos of the mansion’s setup on the listing page. And according to that listing, the stays include AirBnB making a donation to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Philadelphia, which is a nice touch.

(Via AirBnB)