Category: Worldwide

Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker performance (for portraying the deeply disturbed Arthur Fleck) won him an Oscar, but that obviously wasn’t his first tango with the Academy Awards. He scored nominations for Walk The Line, The Master, and Gladiator, and it’s fairly evident from the looks of the above trailer that, at minimum, he’ll receive another nomination in short order. In A24’s C’Mon C’Mon, however, he tackles a very different type of story as a normal dude. No really, though, he plays an uncle who forges a relationship with his nephew that changes both their lives.

The synopsis calls this film a “delicate and deeply moving story about the connections between adults and children,” as well as an examination of the ties between generations. Joaquin’s accompanied by Woody Norman, who’s no newcomer to Hollywood (although this is his first feature film) despite his young age, in what looks to be an affecting story, and given that this is A24, one can expect plenty more than what’s simply appearing on the surface in this film, as directed by Academy Award nominated screenwriter Mike Mills (20th Century Women) that also stars Gaby Hoffman.

The trailer gives us a glimpse of the black-and-white visuals of the cinematography from Robbie Ryan and editing from Jennifer Vecchiarello, all of which add up to a “moving meditation” from A24, which doesn’t miss, although where they’re aiming tends to keep everyone on their toes.

C’Mon C’Mon comes to theaters in November.

Jack Antonoff has become a major part of the Lorde universe, as he played a big role in bringing her two latest albums, Melodrama and Solar Power, to life. This is a partnership that Lorde sees continuing for the foreseeable future.

Lorde discussed her work with Antonoff in a new Vogue cover story, explaining that both she and Antonoff realize their partnership will be long-lasting: “Jack listens really well. He’s in therapy. He’s good to talk to about the kinds of things that people writing deep sh*t into a song want to talk about. I think there’s an understanding with us that we’re going to do this for a really long time, and it’s going to be one of the great relationships of both of our lives.”

The piece also notes that Lorde and Antonoff first met “in early 2014 when he brought her a can of pineapple juice at a Grammy party.”

Meanwhile, the story also includes a laudatory quote from fellow Antonoff collaborator Clairo, who says of Lorde, “We’re probably less than two years apart, but she’s my mom. Even from a distance, you feel her presence, like she’s watching over you. I think she’s had this effect on so many young people. I think she’s made a lot of people feel understood and comfortable in whatever state they’re in.”

Check out the full feature here.

In all of the furor over many of the Verzuz battles over the past year and a half, one potential matchup has been posed more than almost any other for obvious reasons: Jay-Z vs. Nas. However, it’s also the one that seems unlikeliest — both for, again, the obvious reasons (they are both incredibly busy with other things) and for some not-so-obvious ones. Longtime Jay-Z affiliate Memphis Bleek gave his own reason, however, and it’s got Twitter in a tizzy debating whether or not he might be right.

In an interview with Bally Sports Network’s Brandon “Scoop” Robinson, Bleek explained why he thinks a Jay-Z and Nas Verzuz is out of the question: Because, in his opinion, Nas doesn’t have enough hits for a hits battle. “It’s no comparison,” he started. “It’s just that Nas don’t have enough songs to compete. No disrespect to him, he just don’t. Jay can battle someone with just his B Sides Concert catalog and it’d still be better than people’s A sides.” While it’s understandable that Bleek would hold such reverence for his former mentor, some on Twitter were quick to try to rebut his claims, offering examples of Nas’ worthiness to compete with Jay. Some even went as far as impugning Bleek’s catalog.

Some, however, agreed with him, pointing out Nas’ suspect beat choices over the past 20 years, while others gave more measured responses allowing Nas to “compete” but not to “win” in a hypothetical Verzuz. For what it’s worth, in those battles where it truly seemed a win or a loss was at stake, many of the obvious picks wound up flustered by poor sequencing choices and their opponents’ willingness to outperform them — see: The LOX vs. Diplomats, just a few weeks ago. However, as mentioned, it’s probably not a likely matchup just because Jay and Nas seem to have no interest. Check out more replies below though, and feel free to weigh in on Twitter.

In all of the furor over many of the Verzuz battles over the past year and a half, one potential matchup has been posed more than almost any other for obvious reasons: Jay-Z vs. Nas. However, it’s also the one that seems unlikeliest — both for, again, the obvious reasons (they are both incredibly busy with other things) and for some not-so-obvious ones. Longtime Jay-Z affiliate Memphis Bleek gave his own reason, however, and it’s got Twitter in a tizzy debating whether or not he might be right.

In an interview with Bally Sports Network’s Brandon “Scoop” Robinson, Bleek explained why he thinks a Jay-Z and Nas Verzuz is out of the question: Because, in his opinion, Nas doesn’t have enough hits for a hits battle. “It’s no comparison,” he started. “It’s just that Nas don’t have enough songs to compete. No disrespect to him, he just don’t. Jay can battle someone with just his B Sides Concert catalog and it’d still be better than people’s A sides.” While it’s understandable that Bleek would hold such reverence for his former mentor, some on Twitter were quick to try to rebut his claims, offering examples of Nas’ worthiness to compete with Jay. Some even went as far as impugning Bleek’s catalog.

Some, however, agreed with him, pointing out Nas’ suspect beat choices over the past 20 years, while others gave more measured responses allowing Nas to “compete” but not to “win” in a hypothetical Verzuz. For what it’s worth, in those battles where it truly seemed a win or a loss was at stake, many of the obvious picks wound up flustered by poor sequencing choices and their opponents’ willingness to outperform them — see: The LOX vs. Diplomats, just a few weeks ago. However, as mentioned, it’s probably not a likely matchup just because Jay and Nas seem to have no interest. Check out more replies below though, and feel free to weigh in on Twitter.

I’ll never forget the first time I smoked out of a cannabis oil vape cartridge many years ago. After decades of smoking, you know, actual weed, puffing on a vape cart for the first time was a revelation. “This is… future weed!” I remember thinking.

Initially, I loved that vape carts are portable, which allowed me to be even more of a stoner in public and in other situations where smoking weed isn’t appropriate or possible. As time went on, though, I realized that I didn’t really like the high I got from most carts (as they are often called for short). For starters, I found that whatever high came from smoking cannabis vape carts was often short-lived. It also felt one-dimensional — I didn’t get the visual effects from smoking weed, nor the different emotional effects. Mostly, the high I got was a low-grade body high. My tolerance quickly rose, owing to the high THC concentration in the oils, and I found I needed to smoke more and more just to get a little buzz.

Almost as quickly as I jumped in, I weaned myself off of vape carts and went back to actual weed, which is where my loyalties still lie. But I’ve recently added more vapes back into my rotation. Why? Not only has the quality of vape carts gone up but manufacturers are finally using better extracts and concentrates to make them, rather than THC distillate. THC distillate is a mono-cannabinoid oil and is the standard issue substance found in the vast majority of cannabis vape carts. It is also responsible for the lackluster high many report after vaping cannabis oils.

“In layman’s terms, think of distillate like concentrated orange juice, live resin as pasteurized orange juice, and solventless products like fresh-squeezed orange juice — most of the time, consumers would rather have the fresh stuff,” says Nate Ferguson, co-founder and head of production at Jetty Extracts.

“One of the most common misconceptions is that all vapes are created equal,” adds Caleb Counts, co-founder of Connected Cannabis Co. “Many consumers are unaware of the vast difference between vape carts filled with distillate extracts and those that use whole plant live resin.”

Counts is quick to note that distillate carts are often created with the leftover trim of several different strains, which means that only flavorless and odorless THC is extracted to produce oil for smoking. A manufacturer then incorporates artificial additives or other plant terpenes for flavor. Connected — a high-end cannabis brand known chiefly for its high-octane, indoor-grown “designer” weed — recently released its new vape line, which is made with whole-plant, single-source “live resin.” Due to the extraction process, everything from the plant, including THC and unique strain terpenes.

Meaning there’s no need for the artificial flavoring that THC distillate carts often add back in. You’re actually getting the good stuff from a single plant — not the dregs and trim of multiple plants.

Live resin also uses weed that is frozen at harvest time instead of being dried, as it would if it was going to be sold as flower. This freezing process halts the degradation of the plant terpenes and cannabinoids. Like THC distillate, live resin is extracted with solvents, like butane. When done correctly, it’s completely safe for the consumer and shouldn’t affect the experience. But solventless extracts — which have been around for as long as the cannabis plant has existed, in the form of hashish, kief, ice water hash, and other concentrates — are also gaining steam in the vape market.

“When you see a solventless product, it means that no chemicals were used in the process of making the highly concentrated material,” Jetty’s Nate Ferguson says. “In Jetty’s case we only use ice, water, heat, and pressure with our proprietary technology and equipment to make what we believe is the cleanest vape product and experience a consumer can buy.”.

Knowing that this is a lot of information to take in, Khalid Al-Naser, head of product at Raw Garden, offers shoppers some tips:

“Testing results are an important way for consumers to confirm that the product is safe and has been tested by a third-party lab,” he says. “Additionally, I think customers should be mindful to buy from licensed retailers, selling licensed products that have been tested. Don’t just buy what’s on sale that day, or go off of the fanciest packaging or strain name. Cannabis is a deep and nuanced experience, you’ll want to take the time to find what you like.”

He adds that consulting a knowledgeable budtender is important because they can make great recommendations on terpene content and aromas. He also says to ask the budenter if there are additives and for testing results — 100% cannabis is always the recommended move for any vape cart.

As for hardware, 510 carts and their batteries (which are long, cylindrical and skinny — the ones that look like pens) are the most popular option. PAX Era vapes, which are prized for their discrete look, are also popylar. Personally, I also like Dart-X, which also requires specific pods/carts and can be found at pretty much any dispensary. It uses medical-grade stainless steel in its core component and can vaporize THC or CBD extract with a 10-20% vapor volume increase.

With all of that in mind, here are a few brands selling some of the best vapes out there:

Raw Garden

Price: $24.99

Raw Garden is widely known among weed enthusiasts to be one of the best concentrates brands out there. Their live resin carts contain 100% cannabis and, after smoking about a billion of these myself, I can confirm both the taste and resulting high are dynamic and as close to the plant as you’ll get without actually smoking it yourself.

Their ready-to-use vapes are also designed to be decoupled when finished, as there is a rechargeable battery that fits any new 510 vape cartridge. So far, Raw Garden is the only brand that has a disposable vape that does this.

Mistifi

Price: $50

Mistifi’s vape carts use what they call a proprietary CO2-based “Hi-Phi” extraction method, which produces cured resin for their triple-strain vapes sourced across multiple harvests to achieve peak terpene levels. It works! These vapes are tasty as hell and the stylish metallic design on the actual carts doesn’t hurt, either.

Jetty Extracts

Price: $41.25

Jetty’s solventless vape carts use high-grade fresh-frozen cannabis, which allows them to retain the original terpenes from the cannabis plant. This means the full-spectrum, body-and-head high is there, along with the in-your-face cannabis taste redolent of the plant’s actual terpenes.

Connected Cannabis Co.

Price: $55

I am completely in love with Connected’s new vape, which shouldn’t be a surprise at all, considering they are also one of the best top-shelf flower brands out there. Honestly, taking a drag from their vapes, which utilize proprietary heating tech depending on the strain to make sure it heats at just the right temperature for those specific cannabinoids and terpenes, is as close as one can get to dabbing without actually physically lighting up a torch.

They come in one-gram 510 carts or disposable half-gram devices.

Rythm

Price: $45

Rythm’s strain-specific live resin carts are made with fresh-frozen flower, which provides a kicking, long-lasting high, and flavorful vaping experience chock-full of terpenes, THCa, and all the other cannabinoids therein.

Alien Labs

Price: $55

Seeing as Alien Labs is also owned by Connected, it should follow that their products are equally excellent. Alien Labs’ hash rosin pens are one of the truest expressions of the cannabis flower, using only ice, water, and pressure as the extraction method. Ice water does an excellent job of maintaining the terpene profile while producing smooth pulls.

The flower is grown with living soil and the affect feels similarly authentic.

Netflix just dropped the first official teaser for Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, a disaster comedy starring Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio as two scientists who are not having the best of luck warning people that a massive comet is about to hit the Earth. Think Armageddon, except instead of gathering together a ragtag team of oil drillers to fly into space for a heroic Hail Mary of a mission, nobody gives a sh*t. That particularly includes Jonah Hill, who has a sizable presence in the new trailer alongside Meryl Streep. The two play government officials who are more concerned with DiCaprio’s “stressful” breathing than an extinction level event.

As if Lawrence, DiCaprio, Hill, and Streep weren’t enough, the trailer also hammers home that Don’t Look Up is jam-packed with one hell of a cast that also includes Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Matthew Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Cate Blanchett, and possibly a few other surprises.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), an astronomy grad student, and her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) make an astounding discovery of a comet orbiting within the solar system. The problem — it’s on a direct collision course with Earth. The other problem? No one really seems to care.

Don’t Look Up starts streaming December 24 on Netflix.

Jimmy Kimmel returned to TV screens last night, after being on vacation since the end of June. A lot of strange stories have popped up over the summer—including some people floating a few conspiracy theories about Kimmel’s already-announced summer vacation, including that he had COVID and/or was dead. Alas, Kimmel confirmed that he is alive and well… though he can’t say the same for the rest of the world. “I leave you people alone for two months, you start taking horse worm medicine?,” Kimmel asked his viewers.

When the conversation turned to COVID, Kimmel brought up the ivermectin craze yet again:

“It was not a fun Labor Day weekend, COVID-wise. The number of new cases is up more than 300 percent from a year ago. Dr. Fauci said that if hospitals get any more overcrowded, they’re going to have to make some very tough choices about who gets an ICU bed. That choice doesn’t seem so tough to me: Vaccinated person have a heart attack? Yes, come right in, we’ll take care of you. Unvaccinated guy who gobbled horse goo? Rest in peace, wheezy.

We’ve still got a lot of pandimwits out there. People are still taking this ivermectin. The poison control centers have seen this spike in calls from people taking this livestock medicine to fight the coronavirus, but they won’t take the vaccine, which is crazy. It’s like if you’re a vegan and you’re just like, ‘No, I don’t want a hamburger. Give me that can of Alpo instead.’

One of the reason these Seabiscuits are opting for ivermectin is because they don’t trust big pharma, which is fine I guess. Except for the fact that ivermectin is make by Merck, which is the fourth largest pharmaceutical company in the world. And even Merck is telling people to cut it out. They released a statement saying ivermectin has ‘no scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID; there’s no meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease; and there’s a concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.’ Listen, if a pharmaceutical company says, ‘Please don’t take the drug we’re selling,’ you should probably listen to them. Or you could just go with a TikTok posted by a disgraced veterinarian instead.”

You can watch the full clip beginning around the 3:00 mark.

The pop culture masses held their collective breaths back in July on the news that Better Call Saul star (and sketch comedy icon, and freshly minted action star, and I Think You Should Leave cameo assassin) Bob Odenkirk had suffered a small heart attack on set. But now, just five weeks later, he’s back, ready to wrap up the home stretch for everyone’s favorite future Cinnabon employee.

While there had been confirmation (via Den Of Geek) that production had continued during Odenkirk’s recovery (with filming on scenes that didn’t require his presence), it was an open question as to how long he’d be out. The phrase “serious as a heart attack” exists for a reason and any kind of cardiac rehab can be timely and arduous. So it’s a great sign that Odenkirk is tweeting out his return with a little self-depreciation thrown into the mix as he compliments show makeup artist Cheri Montesanto for making him “not ugly” before shooting.

The return to Saul isn’t exactly Odenkirk’s first assignment post-episode, though. If you want to call fielding a phone call from Paul F. Tompkins during an episode of The George Lucas Talk Show “work.” He’s also been tweeting out appreciation (in response to the outpouring of love and concern) while signal boosting up and coming comics, his son Nate, and his Mr. Show partner David Cross, who is apparently saving some potato salad for him (is this code!? Let’s get conspiratorial in the comments). By the way, Tweeting is work.

Stay tuned for more updates on the progress of season 6, including a release date, a trailer, and the inevitable Jonathan Banks/Mike scowl NFT collection.

Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade filled in for Tucker Carlson on the COVID beat, and wow, he really went all in with Clay Travis. The segment certainly wasn’t (and this is saying something) too out of the norm for Tucker’s audience (who’s accustomed to his COVID cartoon villainy). Yet to celebrate, Kilmeade hosted Fox Sports commentator Clay Travis to talk about how they both think it’s a great idea to pack football stands during the height (yep, humanity is in this spot again) of a pandemic.

“They never want us to have a normal life,” Kilmeade groused while thinking about those CNN commentators who’ve been declaring that this is a bad idea. Travis had a “solution” for him: “This is how we win! How does covid ever end? My answer is, when people decide to let covid in and live their lives.” He continued:

“There are so many people out there for the last 18 months, they have been asking a question I think is the paramount one: how does COVID ever end? And my answer is when people decide to let COVID end and live their lives. That’s why all over the country I was so ecstatic to see millions of fans finally saying ‘it’s been 18 months. It’s time to take our lives back.’”

So… pandemic over, just because that’s what Clay Travis said? Kilmeade seems to be on board with the idea. And on Wednesday morning, Kilmeade (in the below clip) had slightly less energy while the Fox and Friends gang spoke with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who is also a fan of putting lots of people in football stadiums again. To that notion, Kilmeade chimed in, “I don’t want to stay in my closet for the next 20 years.”

Naturally, Jordan replied, “No one does. We want to be Americans and exercise our freedom like we’re supposed to.” Yep, that’s a demographic.

There aren’t many American cities situated as far north as Duluth. Located at the base of the state’s armpit right where Minnesota extends beyond Wisconsin, Duluth sits at the top center of the country, like a star on a Christmas tee. When you visit there, it’s as if you can see from a distant remove the entire vastness of all that lies below. Like the town’s most famous band, the indie-rock institution, Low, Duluth is beautiful and cold, and also resilient. But it’s the feeling of separateness that defines the place. When you’re there, you don’t feel like you’re here.

First emerging in the early ’90s, Low still feels like a band apart. They started out playing crushingly slow and eerily quiet music that was all drone-y ambiance and pregnant pauses. It didn’t sound at all like contemporary rock music, which at the time meant grunge; it was more like a comment on contemporary rock music, a photo negative of the heavy riffs and bellowing melodrama that was in vogue at the time. This was a natural byproduct of the band’s core partnership between Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, a Mormon couple who eventually settled into a typical married Minnesota family life with two kids as they carried on an unlikely indie music career. Their brand was making records that inevitably led listeners inward, with languid grooves and spider-leg guitars leaving enough space to fill in with one’s own thoughts, fears, and existential dread.

As Low progressed into the 21st century, they kept writing quiet songs, but now they played them louder. Robert Plant became a fan and covered two of their songs. A Christmas EP of reverent religious tunes went on to be an enduring seasonal hit. They never found fame or riches, but they were respected and appreciated enough to carve out an admirable career. By the early 2010s, they were known as the kind of band who always makes good albums, an exceptional but numbing consistency that typically sets the stage for the “respectable and slightly dull” era of a legacy band’s existence.

Then, something incredible happened: Low radically reinvented themselves. With 2015’s Ones And Sixes, they commenced a relationship with producer B.J. Burton, who at the time was also in the process of assembling Bon Iver’s shape-shifting third album, 22, A Million. A long-time Low fan, Burton “had this vision of pushing them to make the most beautiful, distorted, post-apocalyptic record,” he later said, “the sort of thing you’d find 2,000 years ago if you dug the earth up.” But Ones And Sixes wasn’t all that different from Low’s previous albums.

On the next Low record, 2018’s Double Negative, the band finally fulfilled their producer’s ambitions. They brought him songs, and Burton then proceeded to digitally deface them, processing the sound of Low’s guitars and vocals the way a washing machine might “produce” a cassette tape mistakenly left in a jacket pocket. The final results sound like the afterbirth of another album that was destroyed in a fire, a haunting echo from an already dead source. These jagged and scrambled sounds exhilarated Sparhawk and Parker. Just as their early records deconstructed rock music, they were now discombobulating technology. “Maybe it’s revenge,” Sparhawk said in a recent interview. “I want to see technology break as much as it has broken me.”

The new Low album out Friday, HEY WHAT, completes a trilogy of Burton-assisted records. It’s also the strongest of the lot, an instant classic that culminates and sharpens their previous experiments for an overwhelming emotional experience. Like fellow upper midwestern legacy rock acts Bon Iver and Wilco, Low have mastered a unique form of “psych” music — as in “psychedelic” and also evoking extreme “psychic tension” — that balances an earthy musical approach with intense digital perversion. It might very well be the best album of a long and storied career.

The initial feeling that HEY WHAT prompts is disorientation. As was the case with Double Negative, it’s difficult to discern what exactly you’re hearing at any given moment. Is that a strangled synth noise gurgling the hook on the astonishing “All Night”? Could that really be a guitar playing an ersatz Black Sabbath riff on the thrillingly abrasive “More,” or is it actually the sound of an android being tortured in a secret S&M dungeon? HEY WHAT is a sonic assault, and yet Low once again achieves so much with relatively few sounds. This is essentially a voice and guitar record, so every added element carries extra weight. When a drum beat expectedly enters midway through the album’s closer, “The Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off),” it hits like “When The Levee Breaks.”

What separates HEY WHAT from its predecessor is the prominence of Sparhawk and Parker’s vocals. On Double Negative, the voices are frequently buried amid the glitchy detritus. But on HEY WHAT, Low’s power couple sing out loud and proud with more or less total clarity, often contrasting with the absolutely hellacious soundscapes that surround them. Like on “Days Like These,” in which they sing as they would in church, before distorted guitars violently crash in and torch the pews, leading to an extended, oddly peaceful ambient coda. Or the chilling “I Can’t Wait,” in which they plead “I’m afraid” several times over what sounds like a bloodless computer beeping out binary code after a nuclear blast.

Whereas Double Negative unfolded as a mood piece, expressing the shocked trauma of the Trump years in purely musical terms, HEY WHAT is more dynamic, juxtaposing calm and hysteria throughout. The former comes entirely from Sparhawk and Parker, who sing about their marriage most explicitly on the almost unbearably tender “Don’t Walk Away,” an old-fashioned, ’50s-style ballad in which they jointly croon lines like, “I have slept beside you now for what seems like a million years.” But the whole album feels like a celebration of how having a longtime partner can make living in a confusing, terrifying world a little less confusing and terrifying.

Perhaps that’s why HEY WHAT, in spite of a musical palate that ensures the word “apocalyptic” will appear in every album review, ultimately feels redemptive, and even romantic. Low’s ability to re-think their approach and achieve a genuine artistic breakthrough that caps an already great discography is certainly inspiring; how many bands this good made their greatest LP 27 years after their debut? But — I know this is a mawkish phrase but screw it — it’s the power of love shared between Sparhawk and Parker that resonates most profoundly. Together, they sound strong and indefatigable on HEY WHAT, even as demons descend.