Category: Worldwide

This article originally appeared on 02.21.19

I know firsthand that getting your period is never a convenient event, especially when it’s your very first one and you don’t have tampons or pads (or diva cups ooh la la) handy.

Depending on what you’re wearing, a leak can show up in ways that announce your cycle to the whole world — and when you’re a teenager that can invariably lead to teasing from cruel peers.

Womanhood can truly feel like a curse when you first enter it.

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Most of the time, when we hear embarrassing period anecdotes, the girl in question is riding solo with her shame-stained pants, or maybe there’s a kind woman with tampons in the public restroom.

It’s rare that a guy, let alone a teen boy, is the unlikely hero in a tale of periods. However, a recent Reddit post served as the delightful exception to the rule of terrifying teen boys.

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When a boy noticed his female classmate’s period stain on the bus, he took the high road rather than making her a punchline.

Here’s what the post in full:

“My daughter started her period on the bus ride home today. A boy a year older than her…that she doesn’t really know…pulled her aside and whispered in her ear that she had a stain on the back of her pants and gave her his sweater to tie around her waist so she could walk off the bus. She said she was kind of embarrassed and originally said it’s okay, but the boy insisted and told her ‘I have sisters, it’s all good!’ If you are this boy’s mom, I want to say thank you and that you are raising him right!! We hear so many bad things about today’s youth and I wanted to share something positive!”

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People on Reddit were happy to hear about such a mature and positive exchange between the teens, particularly how the boy expressed empathy without even knowing her well.

The whole exchange is a testament to how important it is to educate kids about how bodies of all genders work, so it’s normal and not shameful.

“What an awesome kid,” Redditor Imrhien wrote. “This highlights the importance of teaching boys about girls bodies, and vice versa. Understanding engenders compassion.”

It’s also notable how awkward it may have been for him to approach her, one of the reasons teens often take the low road is because kindness is a form of vulnerability.

“I’m guessing neither your daughter nor the boy are very old, maybe around 15,” cli7 wrote on Reddit. “It would be so tempting to make fun of her. And even if not that, very awkward to have this conversation with a stranger. He must have been awfully nice for your daughter to react how she did I have a feeling your daughter made a friend for life.”

In short, this is the right way to raise and kind and respectful kid.

“This is how we should raise our sons and daughters,” Redditor binarydaaku wrote.

Gorillaz have released a new EP — titled Meanwhile — featuring three tracks that they introduced live earlier in August. The first track is “Meanwhile” and features Jelani Blackman with Barrington Levy, then there’s “Jimmy Jimmy” featuring AJ Tracey, and finally a live recording of “Déjà Vu” featuring dancehall performer Alicaì Harley.

“Meanwhile Gardens are just round the corner from Memory Lane. If you get to Crawley you’ve gone too far,” Gorillaz’s 2D said in a cryptic statement.

The animated legends are currently celebrating their 20th anniversary, which included two live sets at London’s 02 Arena earlier in August. According to a release, Meanwhile is a “joyous homage” to the Notting Hill Carnival, where the Damon Alban-led project performed back in 2000, and West London, which is where Gorillaz’s Kong Studios is situated. “This new EP of three tracks collectively titled Meanwhile in recognition of that special moment,” a release reads.

Meanwhile follows the band’s 2020 LP Song Machine, which featured collaborations with a range of artists like Robert Smith, Elton John, St. Vincent, Schoolboy Q, Beck, Slowthai, Jpegmafia, and more. They also celebrated two decades as a band with a book, the Gorillaz Almanac.

Listen to “Meanwhile” above and check out the Meanwhile art and tracklist below.

1. “Meanwhile” (Feat. Jelani Blackman with Barrington Levy)
2. “Jimmy Jimmy” (Feat. AJ Tracey)
3. “Déjà Vu” (Feat. Alicaì Harley) Live from NW10

Meanwhile is out now via Parlophone. Listen here.

Gorillaz is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

As the House Select Committee continues to investigate the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol building following a “Stop the Steal” rally, California Rep. Zoe Lufgren stopped by CNN on Wednesday night, where she confirmed that the committee has requested documents pertaining to Donald Trump‘s “mental stability.” While Lufgren wouldn’t get into the details, she did say it was a “legitimate line of inquiry,” according to Raw Story.

“I don’t want to get into what we might find but obviously, what other officials were contemplating or discussing relative to the president could be irrelevant to understanding the entire situation,” Lufgren told CNN. “So, as you said at the outset, this is a very wide ranging request.”

Ever the vigilant TV watcher, the former president is lashing out at this latest development and proceeded to blast the Jan. 6 commission as a “partisan sham” despite Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger being directly involved. Trump also vowed to use “Executive Privilege” to block any investigation into his role in the Capitol building attack following his MAGA rally. Here’s part of his statement:

Unfortunately, this partisan exercise is being performed at the expense of long-standing legal principles of privilege. Executive privilege will be defended, not just on behalf of my Administration and the Patriots who worked beside me, but on behalf of the Office of the President of the United States and the future of our Nation.

You can read Trump’s full statement below:

(Via Raw Story, Andrew Feinberg on Twitter)

Candyman, new in theaters from Universal, is built upon a strong, specific idea: that for black people to give voice to their own trauma is to inevitably be blamed for causing it. This is an age-old phenomenon, illustrated most recently in the way conservative groups almost immediately labeled Black Lives Matter as a “hate group.” This was something Malcolm X could’ve probably predicted 60-some years ago:

“The guilt complex of the American white man is so profound, that when you begin to analyze the real condition of the black man in America, instead of the American white man eliminating the causes that create that condition, he tries to cover it up by accusing his accusers of teaching hate. But actually they’re just exposing him for being responsible for what exists.”

Candyman, then, is an urban legend-as-metaphor, the spirit who kills only when you summon him by speaking his name aloud. To acknowledge victimization is to be victimized yourself. In the 1992 film, from Bernard Rose (based on a Clive Barker short), the character was the ghost of a 19th century black painter, who had gotten involved with a white woman and was punished by having his hand chopped off and replaced with a meathook, then set on by bees and burned. This new iteration of Candyman, from writers Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld, and director Nia DaCosta, takes this concept a step further: by having its protagonist, Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen from HBO’s Watchmen) essentially become the Candyman when he delves into the gentrification that partly underpins his lifestyle.

McCoy is a painter, who has come down with a bit of painter’s block, living in a fancy loft apartment paid for by his art dealer girlfriend, Brianna (Teyonah Parris). Scrambling for inspiration, Anthony stumbles upon the history of the Cabrini-Green housing projects, where the Candyman was said to live in the walls of the highrise before it was demolished. McCoy goes to the former building site, gets stung by a bee, and the next thing you know, his bee hand is beginning to rot off and he’s seeing a hook-handed killer in the mirror. Working title: “The Santa Claw.”

The implication is clear: acknowledge racism, become the boogeyman. Yet for as meticulously didactic as the movie is in explaining the metaphor, it’s equally muddled in the concrete action. Candyman also feels like it expects the viewer to be much more conversant in the Candyman mythology than I was prepared to be.

Anthony gets obsessed, almost possessed. He begins painting macabre images of dead black men. His piece for an art show, “Say His Name,” is a riff on the Candyman, a series of paintings behind a mirror, inviting the viewer to summon the Candyman themselves. Critics initially dismiss it, until Brianna’s boss and his intern are murdered under mysterious circumstances in front of the very same work. Suddenly people on the news are responding to McCoy’s work, saying his name. Almost as if he’d planned it himself.

Trying to understand it all, Anthony calls on a classic old sage character, a laundromat owner named Burke, played by the silky smooth Colman Domingo. Burke helpfully breaks down Anthony’s possessed paintings and the murdered black men they represent. “Candyman is how we deal with the fact that these things happened, that they’re still happening,” Burke tells Anthony.

“Burke,” of course, was the name of the psychiatrist who interviewed the female lead in the 1992 Candyman, a semiotics student named Helen, played by Virginia Madsen, who was also investigating the Candyman myth. I say “of course” based on the way the movie seems to expect us to naturally make this connection; I only just now discovered it on Wikipedia. Eventually, Brianna’s family history is revealed to have its own connection with the 1992 Candyman story. Anthony’s and Burke’s backstories are even more closely intertwined.

How this is all supposed to relate to the present action — the art, the murders, the becoming — I’m not entirely sure. I intend this not as an insult but simply as a statement of fact. I didn’t understand why the murders were happening and how they were related to the characters’ histories. Candyman is crystal clear on its central metaphor but far more murky on the basics: who is being killed, by whom, and why. Those are important considerations in a slasher movie, no matter how “elevated” that slasher movie is meant to be.

Candyman is certainly elevated in terms of acting and of composition (with fittingly spooky shots of the Chicago skyline), it was just hard to appreciate much of the action on a visceral level. Candyman, more of a concept than a person, kills in order to “perpetuate the Candyman myth,” I suppose. And that myth, as explained by Burke, serves to help black people cope with racial violence. But what does it mean to cope? To simply carry on? That’s understandable, but also not very cathartic for a genre thriller. I can understand what Candyman represents, but what, exactly, am I supposed to feel when he kills people?

‘Candyman’ is available only in theaters, August 27. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

The first footage from Jurassic World: Dominion was shown at CinemaCon on Wednesday and apparently it’s like “Indiana Jones with dinosaurs” (I would prefer “Fast and Furious with dinosaurs,” but that sounds good, too). “A dilophosaurus screams and unleashes his mane. The T-Rex is seen rampaging, of course. We see someone holding a flare. A triceratops smashing against a Jeep,” Gizmodo reports about the footage, which hasn’t been released to the public. “Shots of Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), and then shots of all of the stars from both series looking up at something, reminiscent of the lighting from the T-Rex attack in the first film.”

Dominion wraps up the Jurassic World trilogy, but it won’t be the final Jurassic film. “It’s the start of a new era,” legendary producer Frank Marshall told Collider about Dominion. “The dinosaurs are now on the mainland amongst us, and they will be for quite some time, I hope.” The only movie in the franchise to fully tackle that concept — what if humans and dinosaurs co-existed on our turf— is the third act of The Lost World. And that didn’t turn out well for the people (and one dog) of San Diego.

But if you’re undecided over whether humans should have brought back dinosaurs to sell a few margaritas (capitalism finds a way), Dominion will put that debate to rest:

“This movie asks a single question: if dinosaurs lived amongst us, would you be safe?” said Trevorrow. “And the answer is no.”

That’s director and co-writer Colin Trevorrow in a CinemaCon sizzle reel posing the “single question” that Dominion asks — and then immediately answering it. My counterpoint: Fred and Barney did just fine in The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas.

Jurassic World: Dominion opens on June 10, 2022.

Chvrches are one day out from releasing their forthcoming LP, Screen Violence, and to celebrate, the Scottish synth-pop leaders gave a chills-inducing performance of single “Good Girls” on The Tonight Show. Beaming in from a dark mountaintop in Los Angeles, the band tore through their synth-splashed single, which speaks to how women have to “constantly justify their right to exist and negotiate for their own space,” as singer Lauren Mayberry put it when “Good Girls” first came out. With city lights twinkling behind them, Chvrches, bathed in eerie red light, created a truly cinematic moment to match the horror-movie inspiration of Screen Violence.

“The opening line (‘killing your idols is a chore’) was something I wrote after listening to some friends arguing about the present day implications of loving certain problematic male artists — I was struck by the lengths that people would go to in order to excuse their heroes and how that was so juxtaposed to my own experiences in the world,” Mayberry said when “Good Girls” first dropped in July. “Women have to constantly justify their right to exist and negotiate for their own space. We’re told that Bad Things don’t happen to Good Girls. That if you curate yourself to fit the ideal — keep yourself small and safe and acceptable — you will be alright, and it’s just not f*cking true.”

Screen Violence is out 8/27 via Glassnote Records. Pre-order it here.

Despite sitting atop the mega success of Hamilton, which dominated Broadway and was an absolute smash-hit when its film version arrived on Disney+ during the summer of 2020, Lin-Manuel Miranda can still have his whole day ruined by a bad tweet. While taking a break from filming the third season of His Dark Materials for HBO, the multi-talented Miranda made an appearance the Edinburgh TV Festival, where he opened up about navigating the self-esteem crushing minefield of social media. Via Variety:

“[The voices] can be loud in your head, good and bad,” the “Hamilton” writer and actor said. “And when you’re an artist who puts things into the world, you know, you’re always having to balance how much you let in in terms of feedback and how you let it affect you. And you know, one loud negative voice can be a day-ruiner. And that’s anybody who interacts on social media, ever. I think that’s not unique to me.”

Miranda speaks from experience. Following the premiere of In The Heights, he faced intense criticism for the film’s lack of Afro-Latino representation, which prompted him to release an apology statement where he wrote, “I’m learning from the feedback, I thank you for raising it, and I’m listening.” While talking to the Edinburgh TV Festival crowd, Miranda said that this type of criticism is ultimately good in the end.

“I think the good thing about it — and I think it’s a very good thing — is that, you know, the distance between anyone and an audience is gone,” Miranda said. “And I think that can be terribly exciting.”

(Via Variety)

There will never be any shortage of interest in the legacy of Princess Diana, whose time in the British Royal Family wasn’t a hospitable one. The Crown recently pulled back the (reimagined) curtain by sh*tting all over the fairy tale, which led to the British government asking for a “fictional” disclaimer, although that didn’t happen. And the new Spencer film is sure to ruffle some feathers with Kristen Stewart portraying Diana as her situation becomes untenable, due to multiple forces including Prince Charles’ philandering.

She’s come a long way from lip-biting in Twilight for this Neon/Topic Studios film, and certainly, one signs up for a lot of criticism when portraying Shy Di, who met a tragic end. The Royals still go on the defensive whenever the subject of Diana’s treatment by both the Royal Family and the press comes up; yet Emma Corrin recently won an Emmy for The Crown, and it remains to be seen whether Kristen Stewart will receive a fair shake in the press or if Piers Morgan will go ballistic, as he tends to do.

The story takes place during the weekend when Diana determines that it’s time to leave Charles. From the synopsis:

The marriage of Princess Diana and Prince Charles has long since grown cold. Though rumors of affairs and a divorce abound, peace is ordained for the Christmas festivities at the Queen’s Sandringham Estate. There’s eating and drinking, shooting and hunting. Diana knows the game. But this year, things will be profoundly different. SPENCER is an imagining of what might have happened during those few fateful days.

Also, here’s what some people are already calling the best poster of the year.

Spencer arrives in theaters on November 5.

A new reissue of The Beatles‘ Let It Be is coming in October and features previously unreleased session recordings and a 1969 mix by producer Glyn Johns. The reissue also includes unreleased rehearsal recordings, studio jams, and new mixes by Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell. The special edition will be released in tandem with The Beatles: Get Back, the coming documentary series directed Peter Jackson, and a new hardcover book also titled The Beatles: Get Back.

“I had always thought the original film Let It Be was pretty sad as it dealt with the break-up of our band,” Paul McCartney wrote in his foreword for a special-edition Let It Be book. “But the new film shows the camaraderie and love the four of us had between us. It also shows the wonderful times we had together, and combined with the newly remastered Let It Be album, stands as a powerful reminder of this time. It’s how I want to remember The Beatles.”

“It’s an album of conflict,” producer Giles Martin, son of the late George Martin, told Rolling Stone about The Beatles’ twelfth and final LP, which came out in 1970. “Not, funnily enough, conflict within the band, despite what people think, but creative conflict. It’s the most creatively conflicted album the Beatles made, because they aren’t quite sure what they’re making.”

“I see Let It Be as a married couple whose relationship has become stale,” Martin added. “They say, what we need to do is go back to the old place and go on those dates we used to go on. But doing that, they realize that the place was just old, and they didn’t have anything to talk about anyway. ‘We need to get our sex life back, let’s go to that club again,’ but then realizing the music’s too loud. And what they need to do is move on to something like Abbey Road.”

Get the Let It Be reissue on 10/15 via Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe. Pre-order it here.

As live shows begin to come back during the pandemic, Cole Bennett’s Lyrical Lemonade annual Summer Smash festival made its return to Chicago’s Douglass Park as a wholly independent-ran event with ASAP Rocky, Lil Baby, and Lil Uzi Vert headlining the event.

Though this was my first time attending Summer Smash, I was the most excited about this festival’s lineup in particular. It included a good mix of performers such as the trailblazing underground rap icon Xavier Wulf, Chicago’s own DCG, Queen Key, and C Dot Honcho, as well as all the artists you’d expect at a Lyrical Lemonade event such as Don Toliver, Lil Tecca, Blueface, Dro Kenji, and Warhol.ss.

From day one, fans swarmed Douglass Park that overstretched miles of land allowing plenty of room to move between the main Lyrical Lemonade Stage, the SPKRBX stage, which was catacorner next to it, and Lenny’s Tent, where the most rambunctious up-and-coming acts came to play.

Despite the rise of Delta around the world during the festival, much about the event felt as safe as possible, including what appeared to be fewer people at this festival than others and that proof of vaccination and a negative COVID test was a requirement for entry (though those can easily be faked). It provided a level of comfort where I could freely walk around without fighting my way through sweaty bodies and BO. It was great. The staff at the festival were very accommodating and this was one of the best festivals to get around logistically. As a plus, a majority of the performances were on time.

On day two, Baby Keem had one of the more stand-out performances. His set drew out an intense and passionate mob that clung on to his every word and they had no problem opening up a mosh pit to get dirty to some of his most popular cuts like his self-titled anthem “Baby Keem,” latest release “Durag Activity,” and popular banger “Orange Soda,” which really got the everyone amped. Remember, Baby Keem only has a handful of songs out and he’s still on the come up despite his relation to Kendrick Lamar. The crowd’s reaction to him foretells a certain future for him that includes packed-out and sold-out shows from dedicated fans (as if he’s not doing that already).


Lil Baby was also really impressive. Seeing him perform live made me even more of a fan because he put effort into his entire stage set and design. Before Lil Baby hit the stage, the lights were shut down and the festivalgoers went crazy. With blue lights beaming down on him, Baby hopped off something that looked like a couch, which sat above the stage and over the crowd. Soon after, he began to rap his verse off his Drake collaboration “Wants And Needs” before getting into “Sum 2 Prove.” His energy stayed high the entire time and so did the legion of fans watching.

On the final day of Summer Smash, there was a Juice Wrld tribute helmed by DJ Carnage on the Lyrical Lemonade stage with fans singing along to his songs and paying their respect. The tribute was followed by a few surprise guests. Over the weekend everyone had their guess on who it could be. Kanye West? Polo G? To the crowd’s shock, it was Lil Durk. The Voice popped out with his crew, filling out the entire stage, and a few fans hopped over the fence into the pit, where they weren’t supposed to be, to catch the Chicago icon perform his hits. First, he made the crowd sing praises to the late King Von by saying his name before getting into his 2020 cut “Redman” off his mixtape The Voice. The crowd ate up every word and at one point Durk hopped into the pit to interact with the energetic crowd and began shooting a music video. The show abruptly came to an end, with Durk not really wanting to dip, but being told he had to. One of his boys tossed hundreds into the crowd and I managed to scoop up a few for myself.

There was also a second surprise guess and it was none other than Chance The Rapper. He only did one song though, and quickly left the stage. Some backstage shenanigans going on after their surprise set caused the festival to shut down for a little bit, and The Kid Laroi, unfortunately, was not able to perform.

Closing out the festival was Lil Uzi Vert, one of the most energetic and engaging performers, ever. His alien stage set design was ethereal and really set the tone for the entire show. One thing is for sure, it’s obvious that Uzi loves his fans and had no problem with them throwing their phones at him on stage — or throwing anything on stage for that matter. Uzi loved the chaos as his set was a maelstrom of space rage. Almost immediately he wanted a taste of the crowd so he hopped off the stage, into the pit to be closer and in tune with the people to rap “Move” with them. Then he ran to the end of the pit to climb the soundstage’s tent to do a massive stage dive into the crowd to the sounds of “POP.”

The chaos didn’t end there, though. Throughout the night Uzi would stop and playfully grab a phone thrown on stage to have the crowd participate in saying a long “hello” to each one. While he was performing “The Way Life Goes,” one kid hopped on stage and did a backflip, but security was too slow to catch him. Uzi on the other hand absolutely loved it.

It was the perfect ending to a 3-day festival that was already smooth to begin with.

Summer Smash is just one of many festivals to make its return post-pandemic and it did so in a grand way while priming itself as a premier hip-hop experience. Considering that this festival has no ties to a big corp like Live Nation or Goldenvoice, it was one the most polished and well-run festivals I ever attended outside of normal festival annoyances such as entry and exit. Heck, even the entry and exit weren’t that bad. Cole Bennett certainly outdid himself with the return of Summer Smash, especially as the world seems to be an apocalyptic blender. Attendance was so worth it.

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