Category: Worldwide

Once upon a time, the entire Hollywood industry shut down. On October 5, 1945, thousands of workers walked out of high-powered studios in the name of fairer working conditions. The epic strike took on the name of “Hollywood’s Bloody Friday.” For six months, all productions were severely delayed. That meant: nothing new on television. No movies to go to. No escape from the humdrum of real life. And in those times, no one even had the saving grace of YouTube or TikTok.

Cut to: October, 2021, and we are faced with the same situation. Which is bad news for those looking to binge new shows during their WFH job.

Entertainment has become a saving grace, if not an absolute necessity, during the pandemic. Many of us survived the shutdowns thanks to entertainment. Whether swooning over “Bridgerton” or gaping in awe at “Tiger King,” television has provided us a much-needed escape from reality. However, thanks to disputes over unlivable wages and inhumane working conditions, your favorite show might be stuck on a cliffhanger for a while.

Why is this happening?

Starlets and action heroes in front of the camera often gain the glory of the public, yet behind the scenes, there are crew members—those who run sound, lighting, hair, makeup and camera departments—who normally contribute longer hours and more manpower to keep the wheels of the production running.

These crew members make up a union known as IATSE (the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists, and Allied Crafts). And this past Monday, IATSE once again voted “yes” on a strike approval after broken negotiations with the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers). Yes, it’s the age-old story of the working man versus the money man. IATSE members are fighting for increased income, more rest periods and increased residual payments for streaming projects. If their demands are not met, IATSE has approved a unionwide walkout. Meaning history could very well repeat itself.

Below are a few sample horror stories taken from @iatsestories on Instagram, which depict a regular—yes, regular—day on set:

At best, film and TV crew members are unsung heroes; at worst, they are literally putting their lives in danger due to incredibly taxing working environments. A typical day for crew members is 12 hours. That can go up to 15 or 16 hours a day, without weekends, and sometimes without actual lunch breaks. That’s the equivalent schedule demands of many frontline workers. Only instead of saving lives, members of IATSE risk injury and even work related death. It hardly seems humane to force workers to sacrifice their physical, emotional and mental health in the name of entertainment. Let’s face it: A lot of the time we’re only half paying attention to the screen as we’re folding laundry.

For all the risk, the wages are often less than minimum wage. And though projects from major streaming platforms such as Netflix, AppleTV and Disney+ earn income that rivals—or even exceeds—those of traditionally released blockbusters, the payment terms remain the same as they did 10 years ago.These multimillion dollar companies have the same residual payment responsibilities as a fledgling start-up.

What happens next?

Negotiations are reforming between IATSE and AMPTP, thanks to IATSE’s historic strike authorization. Now that things are back on the bargaining table, perhaps a better, more fair contract can be ironed out between the two unions. Things do seem optimistic. Scarlett Johansson’s lawsuit victory against Disney over “Black Widow” streaming profits shows an artist leveraging power away from a gigantic media conglomerate. Hopefully those without celebrity status, yet who contribute equally (if not more so) to the movie and television shows we love, will get the same fair treatment.

Scarlett Johansson wins lawsuit against Disney.
www.hollywoodreporter.com

If not, it might be reruns of “The Great British Bake Off” for all of us.

This article originally appeared on 9.22.14

One Human Family, Food for All

www.youtube.com

As the NBA gets set for the 2021-22 season to begin, there has been plenty of conversation about vaccine skepticism among a small but vocal percentage of players, most notably Kyrie Irving who is the most significant holdout in a market where he can’t play home games without getting the shot.

The Nets announced on Tuesday that Irving wouldn’t play for them at all until either he got vaccinated or the mandate in New York was lifted, but Irving is one of the exceptions to the rule as most of the league has gotten vaccinated. Over 95 percent of players come into this season having gotten the vaccine, as the last push before camp drew in chunk more of previous holdouts, and for the most part, they will experience the season much as they did pre-pandemic.

Those who haven’t gotten vaccinated, however, will return to the rigid protocols of last year, with added separation from teammates and coaches who can go to dinners and out on the town on the road. Some have bristled at that, but the league’s lone player-turned-majority owner, Michael Jordan, is all-in on the NBA’s protocols, as he noted in an interview with TODAY.

It’s far from a surprise that Jordan, now part of the Board of Governors, would say this, but it is notable considering that a number of the NBA’s most prominent active voices have been less than enthusiastic about endorsing the importance of the vaccine. Jordan makes no bones about his support of the league’s policies and his Hornets squad is among those that are all fully vaccinated, which seems less than coincidental given his stature and influence.

It also led many to imagine what the infamously competitive Jordan would’ve done if he had a teammate holding out and potentially missing games on a championship squad because they refused to get a vaccine, with the general consensus being Jordan giving them the shot himself if necessary.

Monday night marked a milestone for Late Night, as Seth Meyers welcomed back a live audience for the first time in 19 months. And while he was appreciative of having real, live engaged humans to interact with once again, he was even more thankful when he saw what the alternative could have been like.

As Meyers explained:

“The man just refuses to go away. On Saturday [Trump] went to Iowa to hold yet another rally, where he repeated the same deranged lies about the election that he’s been repeating for months. And yet, even his own crowd wasn’t exactly electrified by hearing the same old incoherent nonsense over and over again.”

Remember this?

Those are the faces of people hearing, yet again, about how Trump was up in the polls on Election Day (as pretty much everyone had predicted would be the case), then the polls closed and people started, you know, actually counting the votes… and his lead disappeared. The man whose wife immigrated to America also took a moment to describe immigration as “a sick thing happening to our country.”

The response to Trump’s tired-ass comments? Pretty much silence. Which made Meyers feel a bit better: “Wow—and I was worried about bringing audiences back!”

You can watch the full clip, which begins just before the 6:00 mark, above.

Cardi B and Offset are known for trying to one-up each other with expensive gifts. Last year, even though Cardi had filed for divorce, Offset gifted her a pricey Rolls Royce for her birthday. But this year, since the two have since rekindled their marriage, Offset showed his love by giving her an even bigger gift: an entire house.

Cardi celebrated another year around the sun with a major birthday bash. The theme was dancehall, according to one of her tweets, and the rapper told her guests to bring their best Caribbean dancehall looks. Per a report from TMZ, those in attendance included Chance The Rapper, 2 Chainz, Lizzo, Snoop Dogg, Tiffany Haddish, and Teyana Taylor.

Halfway through the celebration, Offset got on the microphone to unveil his gift. Armed with an entire video presentation, Offset revealed he bought Cardi an entire house in the Dominican Republic, her family’s homeland, complete with stunning architecture and a rooftop pool.

Along with the eye-catching birthday gift from Offset, many other celebrities wished Cardi a happy birthday to ring in her 29th year. Celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres, her recent collaborator Normani, and even Beyonce shared some sweet birthday wishes with the rapper. Even Halle Barry tweeted at Cardi, calling her a “sweet soul,” much to the rapper’s surprise. “Thank you soooo much… Like imagine Halle Berry wishing you a happy birthday? Like omgg,” she responded.

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

For a long time, it seemed as though Nicki Minaj was one of the very few successful female rappers in the US, charting well and holding her own against the guys at the expense of a talented crop of women who seemed to never pan out past their initial hit singles. Now, though, a plethora of rapping women have stormed the charts, upending the rap status quo and changing the complexion of hip-hop arguably for the better.

However, in a recent Instagram Live chat with her “Boyz” collaborator Jesy Nelson, Nicki expressed some disapproval of the modern wave of female talent in hip-hop, saying that this generation of rappers can’t take criticism. “The new females, it’s almost like they don’t want to be critiqued ever,” she complained. “It’s like everyone is just supposed to praise you 24/7. Why would you even want that? Let me tell you what happens when that happens. What happens is when you put out an album, the sales won’t translate because people have been lying to you, and they haven’t told you they don’t like a song… Then when you put an album out and you thinking everybody love you. I’ve seen it recently happen. You know they put an album out, and it doesn’t sell what they want it to sell. Well, that’s because a lot of people are lying to you for whatever reason. You should want people to be honest with you.”

When one Nicki fan excerpted that clip to Twitter, though, some fans were quick to call Nicki out, cleverly wondering whether “the call is coming from inside the house,” as the saying goes. Certainly, Nicki’s statement appears to — perhaps inadvertently — describe the disappointing rollout for Nicki’s 2018 album Queen. When that album stalled at No. 2 on the Billboard album chart, the rapper conducted a vendetta of lashing out at media outlets and streaming platform companies for what she considered an “agenda” against her. The responses ranged from awed disbelief at what some fans saw as a stunning lack of self-awareness to wondering whether Nicki purposely pointed the spotlight at herself while playing the “my friend has a question” card.

Nicki’s most loyal fans, meanwhile, took to speculating about which artists she could be talking about, positing Drake, Lil Nas X, and Megan Thee Stallion as possible answers — because the Barbz are nothing if not delusional. For the record, Drake held the No. 1 spot for three weeks while Lil Nas X has had multiple No. 1 hit records and debuted at No. 2 on the albums chart with his debut album — also, neither are women, so chalk up homophobia to the list of offenses from that fan base. Likewise, Good News, Megan Thee Stallion’s debut album, also debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, moving over 100,000 album-equivalent units in its first week and going platinum earlier this year.

Hopefully, whichever artist Nicki was referring to has learned a lesson and expelled the yes men from their inner circle. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the live stream, Nicki wondered whether she was being algorithmically muted on social media after her vaccine misinformation fiasco. You can watch the whole stream below.

It’s been nine years since the last Home Alone movie, and… yes, really, the last Home Alone movie came out nine years ago. I’m as surprised as you are, but look, it’s right there on Wikipedia: 2012’s Home Alone: The Holiday Heist, starring not-Macaulay Culkin as not-Kevin McCallister. It’s actually the fifth Home Alone movie, even if you stopped watching once Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern left. But Disney+ is about to release the sixth installment in the series, and based on the trailer above, it looks pretty fun.

Home Sweet Home Alone stars Jojo Rabbit standout Archie Yates as Max Mercer, “a mischievous and resourceful young boy who has been left behind while his family is in Japan for the holidays. So when a married couple attempting to retrieve a priceless heirloom set their sights on the Mercer family’s home, it is up to Max to protect it from the trespassers… and he will do whatever it takes to keep them out,” according to the Disney+ synopsis. The married couple bandits are played by Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney, while Aisling Bea, Kenan Thompson, Timothy Simons, Pete Holmes, Ally Maki, Chris Parnell, and Devin Ratray (Buzz!) round out the cast.

Between the shockingly good cast and the behind-the-scenes talent (Borat co-writer Dan Mazer is the director, while SNL‘s Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell co-wrote the screenplay), Home Sweet Home Alone should be, at the very least, the third best Home Alone movie. Maybe even second best, if there’s no you-know-who cameo.

Home Sweet Home Alone hits Disney+ on November 12.

With the House Select Committee doggedly investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol building following a “Stop the Steal” rally, Donald Trump is now blaming government officials for not stopping his supporters sooner. Yup, you read that.

As damning information continues to be revealed about Trump’s actions while a throng of MAGA rioters breached the Capitol in an attempt to stop the 2020 election from being certified (and, perhaps, hang Mike Pence, AOC, and Nancy Pelosi while they’re at it), the former president has released a statement blasting officials in his own administration for ignoring intelligence that his fanbase would do something crazy like launch a full-on coup. Via Mediaite:

The highly partisan Unselect Committee is just a sideshow to distract America from MASSIVE failures by Biden and the Democrats. What happened to the Capitol would have never happened if the people in charge did their job and looked at the intelligence. They abandoned the officers on the ground, just like Biden abandoned Americans in Afghanistan. Instead of holding bad leaders accountable, the Democrats are going after innocent staffers and attacking the Constitution.

Again, the January 6 occurred under Donald Trump’s administration. It would still be another two weeks until Joe Biden took office. But here’s the thing: Trump isn’t exactly wrong.

In the weeks leading up to the rally, there were several media reports that his supporters were planning something big. So, yes, there are some serious questions to be asked about why there wasn’t more of an effort to contain the MAGA horde before it got out of hand. It’s not like the President of the United States was personally directing the crowd creating an unprecedented constitutional nightmare that tied the chain of command up in knots. That’d be crazy, right?

(Via Mediaite)

Netflix’s Squid Game is dominating the world, sort-of, by ruling topping streaming charts in over 90 countries, to the point where a broadband provider sued Netflix over a massive surge in traffic. Audiences await word of a sequel or a spinoff or anything new at all, and even Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has congratulated his rival streaming service for knowing how to dominate audiences around the globe. Of course, Bezos was kind-of missing the point, since the show is a blistering critique on capitalism (with a capital “C”), but a further point is that people cannot get enough of this (fictional, thankfully) show about hundreds of desperate contestants who play a deadly survival game to win enough money to, you know, survive in the real world.

Well, South Korean filmmaker Hwang Dong-hyuk has been very vocal amid his show’s overwhelming success. He has claimed to have lost six teeth due to all the stress involved with bringing this intense series to life. He also recently sat down with IndieWire to discuss the show’s inspirations. Some of those have been very obvious, given that the Korean economy has been in the tank. Dong-hyuk revealed that, yes, that was certainly an impetus, but he also outlined the other inspirations with this whammy (Trump being like a VIP) at the end:

“…And then Donald Trump became the president of the United States and I think he kind of resembles one of the VIPs in the Squid Game. It’s almost like he’s running a game show, not a country, like giving people horror. After all these issues happened, I thought it was about time that this show goes out into the world.”

Obviously, Trump fronted a reality TV franchise (The Apprentice) that rolled out like a game show, and that’s also arguably how he helmed the U.S. as president. That sentiment is not new, but it’s really something to see it starkly represented in moments of Squid Game. Of course, Dong-hyuk added that he was also inspired by “the cryptocurrency boom” and “the rise of IT giants like Facebook, Google, and in Korea, there’s Naver, and they are just restructuring our lives.” It’s all very bleak stuff in the context of the show, but clearly, it’s resonating.

(Via IndieWire)

Dave Grohl is on a big storytelling kick, which is fair: His new book, The Storyteller: Tales Of Life And Music, is out now. So, he’s been doing some interviews about it, and in a recent one with Waterstones, he discusses a dinner party that got more and more star-studded as the night went on.

The story takes place around the time of the Grammys, during a year when Grohl was asked to present an award (which he was in 2013 and 2015). Grohl wanted to avoid the regular Grammy after-parties, so instead of going to one of those, he and his Foo Fighters bandmates booked a table at a restaurant.

Then, Paul McCartney, who regularly meets up with Grohl when he’s in town, ended up joining them. Shortly after getting that set up, McCartney bumped into AC/DC at a hotel and invited them to join the festivities.

“This was huge to me,” Grohl said, “because I really was a huge AC/DC fan when I was young. The thing about AC/DC is you never see them unless they’re on stage. It’s not like you see them walking the carpet at a movie premiere. […] So to see them in the flesh, off-stage, was wild.”

That would have been enough to make this a fascinating evening, but the story kept going from there, ending with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band performing as they walked down the street and into the restaurant to join the celebrity for dinner.

There’s more to the story and it’s best told by Grohl himself, so watch him recount the tale above and find the full interview below.