Category: Worldwide

Tove Lo is having a big year. The pop star is set to release a new album, called Dirt Femme, this October, and the singles — “True Romance,” “No One Dies From Love,” and “2 Die 4” — have been building the anticipation exponentially. Today, she’s back with a music video for the latter single.

Though she originally released “2 Die 4” with a music video, that one apparently wasn’t enough. The YouTube caption of the new video reads: “We wanted to make a pop b*tch y2k experience. With all the choreo, the outfits, the wetness. I think we more than delivered.”

The video takes place in a crazy pool party with lots of skin and dancing; the choreography is great and only intensified by the fact that it’s being done in water. There’s also a lot of cathartic headbanging and hair-whipping, and at one point Tove Lo is a big flower. She went all out, and it was definitely worth it.

When releasing the song, she had said, “With ‘2 Die 4’ I wanted ‘instantly iconic’ energy.” She surely achieved that prestigious status with this video.

Check out the video for “2 Die 4” above.

Dirt Femme is out 10/14 via Pretty Swede and MTheory. Pre-save it here.

Over the last several years, A24 has distinguished itself as arguably America’s foremost independent film company. They even have their own distinct voice: On top of high-end American art cinema like Moonlight and The Florida Project, they also crank out genre movies that are (for lack of a better word) “elevated,” serious but eccentric, sometimes even crossover hits. In other words, they’re the perfect place for Nicolas Cage, perhaps the biggest movie star weirdo of the modern age. So how on earth hasn’t the Oscar-winner worked with them yet? Anyway, that’s finally about to change.

As per Deadline, Cage has signed on to star in Dream Scenario, whose title definitely sounds like something that would come from the studio behind movies like Swiss Army Man, The Death of Dick Long, and Everything Everywhere All at Once, the latter their biggest-ever moneymaker. As for what it’s actually about, that’s under wraps. All that’s currently known about it is that it’s a comedy, and that it almost certainly involves dreams.

If the marriage of Nicolas Cage and A24 wasn’t enough, there’s a little cherry on top: It will be produced — but not directed — by Ari Aster, one of the studio’s titans, who had big hits with the madly ambitious nightmare horrors Hereditary and Midssommar. He’s a little busy right now with Disappointment Blvd., which is due sometime next year. As for Cage, he’s been enjoying something of a career renaissance of late, getting some of his best-ever reviews for movies like Mandy, Pig, and the meta romp The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Then there’s Renfield, in which the star of Vampire’s Kiss — about an ’80s NYC yuppie who (wrongly) thinks he’s a vampire — actually gets to play the big cheese himself, Count Dracula.

(Via Deadline)

DaBaby has given fans many reasons to take a step back from him — expressing support for Trump, making many homophobic comments, getting into violent fights with his own fans, and more. All or some of this may or may not have led to the cancelation of the rapper’s show at the Smoothie King Arena in New Orleans on Friday.

On Tuesday, the Ticketmaster listing for the event was deactivated. It now reads, “Unfortunately, the Event Organizer has had to cancel your event.” Before the page was taken down, it was reported by Nola.com that fewer than 500 tickets had been purchased; the capacity of the arena is 14,000 concertgoers. The tickets were as low as $35. As of right now, he has two shows scheduled in the future — one in Paris and one in Houston, Texas.

This isn’t the first time DaBaby has faced consequences for his behavior. The rapper was set to debut his own Burger King meal collaboration, but last month he revealed during a visit to Full Send Podcast that the fast food powerhouse halted the effort after his homophobic comments at Rolling Loud Miami 2021. “I shot a commercial for it and everything,” he told the Kyle Forgeard Full Send co-hosts. It was going to be called the “Jonathan Kirk Meal.”

Last month, Kanye West brought Yeezy Gap to stores for the first time. Of course, this was not without controversy; he received criticism when fans noticed that the items were kept in large, black bags that some compared to trash bags.

Now, he’s stirring up drama again after teasing the Yeezy Gap collaboration with Balenciaga. The rapper posted a photo of the brand’s reflective visor and put the caption: “Gap held a meeting about me without me?”

Commenters weighed in on the situation, with one person writing, “Rule number 1… Never leave out Ye.” Another wrote, “Gap needs to find God.” Hopefully, this situation will get cleared up soon.

West went on Fox News to respond to the trash bag comparisons. He told commentators there, “This is, like, not a joke. This is not a game. This is not just some celebrity collaboration. This is my life, you know? I’m fighting for a position to be able to change clothing and bring the best design to the people.” He told Fox News viewers his goal was to make clothing that’s “more egalitarian and not as pretentious,” and that people shouldn’t “clown the creators” because that will “make innovators and other designers” start acting “less brave.”

Long before the days of affluent beauty influencers, Madam C.J. Walker became known as America’s first self-made female millionaire thanks to her homemade line of hair care products for Black women.

The cosmetic queen’s scalp preparations, lotions, iron combs and pomades were among the first of their kind, at a time when most hair products for Black women were manufactured by white businesses. A natural entrepreneur, Walker would later employ her own “beauty culturalists” to sell her products, causing business to skyrocket. Keep in mind, this model preceded the rise of Mary Kay.

Even after her death, the Walker name was synonymous with self-care. A’Lelia Walker, C.J.’s only child, transformed her mother’s Manhattan townhouse into a salon for members of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s.

Now, Walker’s legacy gets further immortalized by getting her very own Barbie doll.

Madam C.J. Walker.

Walker might have been a savvy businesswoman, but she was also a philanthropist, activist and advocate. She helped other Black women become more financially secure by establishing clubs for her employees and would offer bonuses to those who gave back to their community.

A’Lelia Bundles, Walker’s great-great-granddaughter and official biographer, worked extensively with Barbie designer Carlyle Nuera to help bring the doll to life in an authentic way, according to USA Today.

Wearing royal purple and turquoise—two of Walker’s favorite colors—the signature doll also comes with a very important accessory: a historically accurate miniature version of “Madam C.J. Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower,” a scalp conditioning and healing formula that Walker claimed had been revealed to her in a dream. Walker first sought out hair care solutions after suffering from hair loss herself.

“We wanted to focus on the fact that she manufactured hair care products and to make the young people and the adults who love it think about her being a businesswoman,” Bundles told USA Today.

The Madam C.J. Walker Barbie is part of Mattel’s “Inspiring Women Series,” a line that “pays tribute to incredible heroines of their time; courageous women who took risks, changed rules and paved the way for generations of girls to dream bigger than ever before.” She’ll be joining the likes of Rosa Parks, Ella Fitzgerald and Maya Angelou. Each doll comes with a historical photo along with a short biography explaining how these female role models helped change the world.

See on Instagram

Bundles shared the doll’s significance in an interview with NPR.

“I hope that when little girls and little boys pick up the doll, that they will see something that’s a little different than just a generic doll … as an entrepreneur and as a boss and as a philanthropist and a patron of the arts and somebody who cared about social justice, that they will perhaps see themselves and take one of those narratives,” she said.

Bundles continued, “It means a lot that a child can look at a doll, can have a doll that looks like them … so that they know that they’re part of the world.”

Walker’s Barbie is available for purchase on Mattel, Walmart and Amazon for $35.

Also, yes, her hair care line still exists.

In an era of movie franchises that never end, Jordan Peele is a rarity: an idiosyncratic director who gets Hollywood money to make one-off genre movies (though even he’ll admit he’s no John Carpenter). Get Out didn’t need a follow-up; nor did Us. Same with his third outing, Nope, his longest and most ambitious work yet. But in a new interview with The New York Times, the sketch comedy god-turned-filmmaker teased that we might not have seen the last from the world of Nope.

In the interview, NYT’s Mekado Murphy asked Peele what’s up with an obscure Nope detail caught by Internet snoops: a character listed on the IMDb as “Nobody” who was cut from the film. At first Peele was tantalizingly vague, saying only, “People are doing a lot of interesting detective work, is what’s going on.”

He then elaborated, sort of. “The story of that character has yet to be told, I can tell you that,” Peele said. “Which is another frustrating way of saying, I’m glad people are paying attention. I do think they will get more answers on some of these things in the future. We’re not over telling all of these stories.”

While the story of Nope is more or less resolved, there’s a lot going on in its sprawling 130 minutes. Peele could easily return to the world from the POV of another character, even one who we never see because they didn’t make the final cut. But does he mean a sequel? A spin-off? A side-quel, telling a different story from around the same period? Peele is one of the few filmmakers in contemporary Hollywood who can do whatever he damn well wants, and if Peele wants to stick around in the Nope-verse a bit longer, then that’s what he can do.

(Via NYT)

MIA returned earlier this year, announcing her long-awaited sixth studio album Mata, which is set to follow up 2016’s AIM. The musician has already unveiled the singles “The One” and “Popular” so far, building up hype for the record. However, today she shared some special but complicated news on her Instagram Story.

“Coming soon I promise,” she wrote over a colorful background with music playing. “I had to wait 2 years for a Doja Cat verse… then a Nicki one… then a…. never mind if Mata isn’t out Sept I will leak it myself.”

This would not be the first time that MIA threatened to leak her own music. Her relationship with her label Interscope is rarely tame; AIM was largely overlooked when it came to critical attention in the mainstream, and that was partially due to a number of legal and internal issues involving Interscope. Mata, however, will mark the first MIA album released via her new partnership with Island Records, following her long-standing history with Interscope and XL Recordings.

MIA is also known for using social media to provoke. In March of 2020, she wrote on Twitter, “If I have to choose the vaccine or chip I’m gonna choose death,” she wrote. “Yeah in America they made me vacinate my child before the school admission. It was the hardest thing.”

Pi’erre Bourne is rising. The producer is prepping for the release of Good Movie and is heading out on a big tour soon. He’s so famous that Jamie Foxx’s kids are fans, and they don’t believe that his producer tag is actually an old sample of Foxx’s voice.

“I thought that was great, man,” Foxx said when asked in an interview what he thought of the producer tag sample. “My kids… I’m always trying to impress my daughter. She’s 13 and with her friends and I’m like, ‘Listen, that’s me saying that,’ and she’s like ‘Dad, that ain’t you.’ Because, you know, she’s too young to have seen that show when it was out.”

The iconic tag, if you don’t know, comes from an episode of The Jamie Foxx Show and it consists of Foxx shouting, “Yo Pierre, you wanna come out here?” and then making the hilarious sound of a door creaking.

Good Movie is set to arrive in just a few days, and it follows up a joint album with Juicy J in June and reuniting with Lil Uzi Vert on his album The Life Of Pi’erre 5 last year. Last week, the rapper unveiled the single “Good Movie” which kept fans eager to hear the rest of the album.

The fall movie season is upon us, meaning lots of Oscar talk and Oscar bait and serious movies meant to ease moviegoers off brainless summer fare. And then there’s My Son Hunter. Distributed by the dodgy far right outlet Breitbart, it’s an almost certainly questionable look at the president’s son, who has long been a scourge of the GOP, despite not being an elected official. Itsa ridiculous trailer, which makes it look like an Asylum version of The Wolf of Wall Street, was met with heaps of derision. But at least it has some fans: Russian propagandists.

As per The Daily Beast, Russian state media has gone all-in on the movie, which stars fallen Mandalorian supporting player Gina Carano and was directed by a Bond villain. On the aggressor nation’s version of 60 Minutes, host Evgeny Popov breathless hyped the trailer, and hoped that it would do more than simply make a lot of money.

“We’re waiting for the premiere and hoping for a big success in the United States, to bring our beloved Trump back into power,” Popov told viewers.

Will the movie — which looks like it dramatizes claims of dubious veracity, and which depicts Joe Biden (played by former Dynasty star John James) as a menacing mob-like figure who worries about his son’s laptop ruining his “erection” — set the American box office ablaze? Or will it merely scrape together a couple bucks, like a thoroughly discredited Dinesh D’Souza “documentary”? Or will it do what the potentially, finally doomed Trump wants and somehow reinstate him in the White House?

Whatever happens, it’s yet another case of Russia using far right media to attack America. First they used Tucker Carlson, now they’re seizing upon a movie that some critics say accidentally makes Hunter Biden look really cool.

Dr. Oz wants to win a vacating Senate seat in Pennsylvania so badly he even moved across state lines. But if he does nab it, it will only be after enduring untold mockery from his opponent, John Fetterman. For months, the Keystone State’s sitting lieutenant governor has been relentlessly and creatively trolling the former TV quack. Oz has struggled to return in kind. And when he has, things have gotten weird and ugly.

Last week, the Oz campaign tried to clap back at the backlash over a bizarre old video he recorded, in which he tried to slam Biden for inflation-induced prices by supermarket-shopping for “crudité.” Instead it backfired after a campaign staffer cracked that Fetterman wouldn’t have suffered the stroke he had in May if he “had ever eaten a vegetable in his life.”

Not only was it cruel, but Oz is a licensed physician who’s supposed not supposed to make jokes about people’s health. But during a new interview on Pittsburgh radio station KDKA, he tried to awkwardly make things right, in part by seeming to throw his staffers under the bus.

“The campaigns are saying lots of things, both of them,” Oz said when asked about the Fetterman attacks. “My position is — I can only speak to what I’m saying — is that John Fetterman should be allowed to recover fully. And I will support his ability, as someone who is going through a difficult time, to get ready.”

Oz claimed he had “tremendous empathy” for his opponent’s health issues, saying he’s “a physician first.” He also vented about Fetterman not yet agreeing to a debate, probably because he’s still recovering from a stroke from almost four months ago.

“I have no idea if he’s recovered. He’s told us nothing,” Oz said. “And its actually up to him to decide when he’s comfortable sharing with that.”

Will this cause friction at Oz’s campaign headquarters? Possibly! But things are almost certainly already uncomfortable over there on account of Oz trailing behind his opponent. Whatever the case, some weren’t buying Oz’s attempt to distance himself from what’s being said in his name by people he employs. Rebecca Katz, a strategist with Oz’s campaign, certainly wasn’t, tweeting that he should “either stand by the sh*tty things this campaign is saying on your behalf or denounce it.”

(Via The Philadelphia Inquirer)