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Wes Anderson’s next movie, The Phoenician Scheme, has been quietly underway for years, so it comes as a pleasant surprise that the Moonrise Kingdom and The Royal Tenenbaums filmmaker’s next wonderfully weird project will arrive within months. Considering the usual drip-drip of information and speculation for most anticipated movies these days, silence followed by a sudden announcement feels like a sooner-than-expected arrival, and we’ll take it. Because if this movie rolls out with a vibe like every other Anderson movie, the project should be a balm during our current times.

With The Phoenician Scheme, Anderson has returned to his frequent Focus Features stomping grounds, and the studio set a limited release date of May 30 with wide release to follow on June 6. According to Deadline, the film was co-written by frequent Anderson collaborator Roman Coppola and revolves around “tells the story of a family and a family business.”

Variety reports that Benecio del Toro leads the cast (as Zsa-zsa Korda, a ridiculously wealthy man) and several frequent faces from other Anderson projects are onboard. Those include Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston, Tom Hanks, Rupert Friend, and Benedict Cumberbatch. Additionally, Mia Threapleton portrays Korda’s daughter with Cera as her tutor. The cast will be rounded out by Riz Ahmed, Mathieu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright, Hope Davis, and Richard Ayoade.

That list leaves a rather large Bill Murray-shaped hole, given that he is a frequent Anderson teammate, so is he involved? Well in early 2024, Deadline reported that the nine-times Anderson cast member joined the project alongside del Toro and Cera. However, Murray’s name does not appear in the list of names detailed in current coverage of this project, although a recent Entertainment Weekly article (which quotes Murray regarding recent controversies) does mention his involvement in The Phoenician Scheme, so until Murray or Anderson declares differently, the jury remains out there.

The 2025 Grammys were stacked, with one of the standout moments being The Weeknd ending his boycott and returning to give a performance of “Cry For Me.” He’s not finished with the song yet, as today (February 11), he released a new video for the Hurry Up Tomorrow highlight.

In the latest from his apparent farewell era, The Weeknd is primarily a shadowy figure amid abstract imagery (aside from some vivid imagery of crying stuff other than tears). HE sings on the chorus, “And I hope you cry for me like I cry for you / Every night for you, take it easy on me, baby / ‘Cause I tried with you, saw my life with you / End of time with you, now we’re strangers.”

This is coming off a big past few days for The Weeknd, even aside from the Grammys. It was announced this past weekend that Hurry Up Tomorrow debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, making it his fifth chart-topper, earning the largest week for any album since Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department thanks to 490,500 equivalent album units. Meanwhile, the nominations for the Juno Awards (essentially Canada’s Grammys) were announced today, and The Weeknd earned four nods.

Watch the “Cry For Me” video above.

For as long as I can remember, NBA fans have been wishing for a 1-on-1 tournament at All-Star Weekend. Seeing the best players in the world go head-to-head has felt like a pipe dream though, as there has never been any indication it’s been seriously considered — even as the league has seemingly tried everything to shake up the All-Star format.

Among the biggest reasons we’ve never seen it is star players not wanting to get embarrassed, as a 1-on-1 game (which are usually short) creates the opportunity to get absolutely dusted. If a player goes cold at the wrong time or runs up on someone who is hot and just can’t miss, you can get run off the floor quickly. That could, in theory, be detrimental to their brand, which is apparently too much to put at stake.

And yet, in the first year of its existence, Unrivaled got a bunch of the best women’s basketball players on the planet to sign up for their 1-on-1 tournament. It’s the format basketball fans have been begging to see, and on Monday, the first round delivered a very fun opening night of action — even with some injury withdrawals that shortened the first round to just 8 games.

The games are quick — playing make-it-take-it and scoring by 2’s and 3’s with a target score of 11 can go very fast — and guards and bigs were all thrown into the bracket together, with fan-voting determining the seeding, which created some fascinating matchups. The format seems to benefit guards, as having to take the ball out past the three-point line with a 7-second shot clock doesn’t give bigs a ton of time to go to work on the block. That said, bigs who have a face-up game were able to leverage their size advantage and get some wins as well. The games being to 11 (meaning 5 buckets was enough to win if you hit a couple threes) kept the tension high and led to some shocking upsets, most notably Breanna Stewart getting blanked by Aaliyah Edwards, 12-0.

That part — a major star getting worked by a young up-and-comer — is particularly important because it is the situation that so many players are terrified of, but it’s also great for the game. Stewie took it on the chin and congratulated Edwards (her Unrivaled teammate on the Mist), and it was a star-making performance for Edwards, who spent last year toiling away in relative obscurity on the Washington Mystics as a rookie, where she was not even the focal point on her own team. This gave her a stage to show her complete skillset, and she took full advantage, putting Stewie in the blender on offense and putting the clamps on defensively.

It will take a lot more than a 12-0 loss in a 1-on-1 tournament to put a dent in Stewart’s legacy. She just won another championship with the Liberty and her place among one of the all-time greats is cemented, and while there is some chatter wondering if she’s lost a step, she’ll have a chance to answer that in due time as she and the Liberty go for a repeat campaign in 2025. For Edwards though, that performance against a great is enough to put her on the radar of fans who might not have been all that familiar with her game. The sixth overall pick from last year’s draft certainly isn’t an unknown having starred at UConn, but she was also definitely not the most-discussed player from her rookie class and had an up-and-down campaign in Washington. Beating Breanna Stewart, and doing so in dominant fashion, is the kind of thing that draws broader attention.

This is the real value of a 1-on-1 tournament for the sport as a whole, as it provides a unique stage for players who may play various roles to show different skills. Being great at 1-on-1 requires a different skillset than being great at 5-on-5 (or 3-on-3, in Unrivaled’s case), but it’s also the form of basketball everyone is familiar with and everyone understands. There’s no off-ball action or sets being drawn up, it is just self-creation and survival. That lends itself to entertainment, and Unrivaled has steered into that. Everyone plays 1-on-1, and with a $200,000 prize for the winner, there are enough stakes to add some juice to the proceedings.

As the second round gets set to begin (Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. ET on truTV), we should see even more intensity as we inch closer to that prize money. The seven second round games (Edwards will get a bye after Marina Mabrey and Kate Martin were both scratches from the first round) feature some extremely fun matchups like Arike Ogunbowale vs. Skylar Diggins-Smith and Courtney Williams vs. Rhyne Howard and presents further opportunity for young players to make a statement, most notably Rickea Jackson who will go toe-to-toe with the league’s top dog, Napheesa Collier.

In Year 2, I could see some adjustments being made to the tournament format, perhaps extending games to 15 instead of 11 to give more of an opportunity for runs on both sides, but the first year already feels like a success from the outside after one round. Hopefully the players enjoy it as well and we continue to get buy-in, because it gives fans something they’ve been asking to see for a long time. Perhaps eventually players in other leagues will follow suit and sign up for some 1-on-1 once they see a loss isn’t the end of the world, but in the meantime, it helps Unrivaled stand out and gives players a stage to show their full skillset as playmakers.

Do you know how we knew Kendrick Lamar absolutely killed his Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show, you know, aside from the fact that we have eyes and ears? Because people on the internet are still talking and arguing about it. It provoked conversation, which you can’t say for every Super Bowl Halftime show. That’s a sign of good art. But it isn’t just the set pieces, the Sam Jackson appearance, the SZA cameo, and the significance of the Serena Williams crip walk that is being talked about, many people are also pointing to K-Dot’s fit.

Dude rocked frayed flared jeans on one of America’s biggest stages. That simple act surely justified every fashion decision of that one person in your life who has kept riding for flared jeans through the skinny jeans and now baggy jeans era. Will this signal a return to flared jeans in men’s fashion? If that’s the case, take a page from Kendrick and get the right size, because one of the reasons Kendrick was able to make it work is because they are the perfect length to float above the midsole of his kicks imperceptibly. That’s an important detail!

What we love about Kendrick’s Super Bowl fit is how it calls back to classic golden age of hip-hop street style — jeans, a leather jacket, cap, chain — but elevates the look with some significant designer pieces. Take the flared jeans, they aren’t just an old hand-me-down pair of Lee Jeans, they’re $1,300 medium-wash Flared Surf Jeans by French luxury brand Celine (buy them here), meticulously made in Japan (the holy land of great denim).

If you want the jacket, you’re out of luck. K-Dot’s letterman is a custom piece by London menswear designer Martine Rose. Unfortunately, the brand doesn’t have anything in its current outerwear lineup that looks close to what Kendrick wore. The shoes on the other hand are a lot easier to pick up. Kendrick was rocking a pair of Nike Air DT Max ’96 sneakers in black and white (specifically this Colorado Away colorway, buy them here.), popularized by football coach and former player Deion Sanders.

The specific colorway Kendrick wore was part of Nike’s 2024 season, so you can still pick up the sneakers easily at retail price, even on the aftermarket.

We’ve had some great men’s fashion moments so far this year, and as much as we love Kendrick’s fit, we still have to give the best-dressed honors to Jeremy Strong.

Following the indie success of Transatlanticism, Death Cab For Cutie signed with a major label and released their first platinum-selling album, Plans. That was 20 years ago, so to celebrate the anniversary, Ben Gibbard & Co. are playing the album in its entirety in three cities: Seattle, Chicago, and Brooklyn.

“Plans is an album that changed the trajectory of Death Cab For Cutie forever — it was our major label debut, it went platinum, and earned us our first Grammy nominations,” Gibbard said in a statement. “We are only playing a few shows in its honor as we’re currently working on our next studio album, but we would be remiss to not take the opportunity to celebrate the 20th anniversary in some fashion.”

Pre-sale tickets will be available on Thursday, February 13, at 10 a.m. local time and will go on sale on Friday, February 14, at 10 a.m. local time for Seattle and Brooklyn and 9 a.m. CT for Chicago. You can find out more information here.

Check out the Plans 20th anniversary tour dates below.

Death Cab For Cutie 2025 Tour Dates: Plans Tour

08/02 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena *
08/05 — Chicago, IL @ Chicago Theatre *
08/08 — Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount ^
08/10 — Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount ^

* with Nation Of Language
^ with The American Analog Set

Canadian post-punk favorites Preoccupations haven’t been away for too long, as their latest album, Arrangements, came out in late 2022. Regardless, they’re back: Today (February 11), the band announced their fifth album, Ill At Ease, and shared the single “Focus.”

The band’s Matt Flegel says of the new song, “Focus…or the lack thereof. Shame and regret: waking up with it, not being able to sleep because of it, and finally falling asleep and having nightmares about it. I put myself a thousand years in the future with these same feelings. While having so many better things to be worried about, as the world falls apart, still finding it impossible to look past meaningless misgivings.”

He also says of the album:

“The well of dark things to write about seemingly has not dried up, and lyrically, it’s where I still tend to draw from. Draining all my anxieties into a song is often the only way I can get through a day. Some songs exist in a world with barren plains of burnt earth, covered in a dust of shame, dread, death, where all the things I love are things that kill me. Some come from the perspective of another distant world, looking skyward into a science fiction ocean of space, solitude, slight hope. Sometimes I’m looking around at the world that we live in now with incredulity, hilariously dissatisfied with how it’s all turned out, and assuming that it can’t be long before it’s all over. Some songs are just a reflection of me looking down at my feet while I trudge along wondering what I’m doing with myself, and if the ground is going to fall out from underneath me at any given moment.”

Listen to “Focus” above. Below, find the Ill At Ease album art and tracklist, as well as Preoccupations’ upcoming tour dates.

Preoccupations’ Ill At Ease Album Cover Artwork

Preoccupations’ Ill At Ease Tracklist

1. “Focus”
2. “Bastards”
3. “Ill At Ease”
4. “Retrograde”
5. “Andromeda”
6. “Panic”
7. “Sken”
8. “Krem2”

Preoccupations’ 2025 Tour Dates

05/22 — Montréal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz PDB
05/23 — Ottawa, ON @ The 27 Club
05/24 — Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
05/27 — Detroit, MI @ Lager House
05/31 — Chicago, IL @ The Empty Bottle
06/01 — Minneapolis, @ MN 7th St Entry
06/04 — Calgary, AB @ Commonwealth
06/06 — Vancouver, BC @ Wise Hall
06/07 — Seattle, WA @ Madame Lou’s
06/08 — Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall
06/10 — San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop
06/12 — Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room
06/13 — San Diego, CA @ Casbah
06/17 — Austin, TX @ Parish
06/18 — Denton, TX @ Rubber Gloves
06/20 — Nashville, TN @ The Blue Room-Third Man Records
06/21 — Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade(Purgatory)
06/22 — Raleigh, NC @ Kings
06/24 — Washington, DC @ Songbyrd Record Cafe
06/25 — Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
06/27 — New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
06/29 — Cambridge, MA @ Middle East Upstairs

Ill At Ease is out 5/9 via Born Losers Records. Find more information here.

It was a bit of a wait, but we finally have a premiere date for Power Book III: Raising Kanan season four. STARZ revealed the date earlier this month, confirming that a new round of episodes will kick off on March 7. Now, the network has returned with an exciting trailer for the upcoming season. It captures Kanan (MeKai Curtis) approaching a turning point in his life where he will have to define the meaning of family for himself going forward. In addition to that, we see clips that capture the growing tension between Kanan and his mother Raq (Patina Miller), the return of Unique (Joey Badass) who seeks revenge on Raq and her family, and much more.

Season four of Power Book III: Raising Kanan is sure to be a thrilling one as it will build on the exciting drama that we saw in season three. There, viewers witnessed the shocking deaths of Ronnie and Detective Howard as while as the rise of Kanan as a sole player in the New York drug world, rather than one living in his mother’s shadow.

Ahead of the season four premiere, check out a synopsis of what viewers can expect in the upcoming episodes below.

In the riveting fourth season, slates have seemingly been wiped clean for Kanan, Raq, and the rest of the Thomas family in pursuit of a fresh start. However in the eye of the storm, one very dangerous obstacle looms large, Unique is alive. Unique makes a volatile and violent return, as he hunts to upend the lives of the Thomas family. Amidst the chaos, the Thomas family faces a truth that can no longer be denied: You are who you are. Although you may be capable of change, the fundamentals remain the same, and sooner or later, you will be forced to confront the inescapable reality of your inherent nature. In season four, whether the family chooses to reject or embrace the truth may be the difference between life and death.

Watch the new trailer for season four Power Book III: Raising Kanan in the video above.

Belfast-bred, genre-warping R&B singer Jordan Adetunji’s 2025 is off to a great start. Thanks to the runaway success of his hit single “Kehlani,” Adetunji found himself nominated for a Grammy (for Best Melodic Rap Performance), garnering a warm reception from fans and critics for his debut mixtape, A Jaguar’s Dream, and now, preparing to embark on his first-ever headlining tour.

Beginning on February 26, the tour will take Jordan from Amsterdam to Los Angeles, hitting stops in Chicago, London, New York, Paris, and Toronto in between. Tickets are on sale now; you can find more information about the tour here. See the tour dates below.

The last date on Adetunji’s tour sees him performing for the first time at Rolling Loud, joining the likes of ASAP Rocky, fellow rising stars BossMan Dlow, Destroy Lonely, and Ken Carson, and headliner Playboi Carti. Meanwhile, next week, he’s up for two MOBO Awards (for Best Newcomer and Song of the Year) and in March, will compete for his first-ever BRIT Award (for Song of the Year). With all that in just the first quarter of the year, Jordan Adetunji’s 2025 is looking way up.

Jordan Adetunji 2025 Shows

02/26 — Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
02/27 — London, UK @ The Lower Third
03/02 — Paris, France @ La Boule Noire
03/07 — Chicago, IL @ Schubas
03/09 — Toronto, ON @ The Drake Hotel
03/11 — New York, NY @ Mercury Lounge
03/13 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Moroccan Lounge
03/15 — Inglewood, CA @ Rolling Loud California

Sabrina Carpenter had one of the biggest songs of 2024 with “Espresso.” That said, her label apparently had higher hopes for a different Short N’ Sweet track to be the album’s big breakout.

In a new Vogue cover story, it’s revealed that Island Records wanted “Please Please Please” to be the album’s lead single, but Carpenter went to bat for “Espresso.” She explained:

“There’s something about this song that, if I’d never heard it before, and I heard it live for the first time, I would understand it. I was definitely being swayed in another direction, but I knew deep down that it was this song. I was afraid of disappointing people for, like, five minutes. And then I was like: No.”

To give the label a bit of credit, favoring “Please Please Please” wasn’t an awful instinct: The song was the only Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single to come from Short N’ Sweet, but “Espresso” (which topped out at No. 3) was a bigger success overall (the two songs currently have 1.2 billion and 1.9 billion Spotify streams, respectively).

The piece also notes “Espresso” was the first song Carpenter wrote for the album, and she said of it, “I was writing all these sad songs, and ‘Espresso’ was like the one breath of fresh air. In the midst of all of it, I was like, This is still such a huge part of me — this mentality and the sense of humor and the playfulness.”

Read the full feature here.

“Gelphie” is the shipping term for Elphaba and Glinda, the two leads in Wicked. There were thousands of stories and artwork centered around the romantic entanglements of the Shiz University roommates before the movie musical came out, and now there’s thousands more.

Ariana Grande, who plays Glinda, has seen some examples of “Gelphie,” although maybe she wishes she hadn’t.

“I wish I could unsee some things,” the actress told The Hollywood Reporter. “I mean, wow, I had a feeling, but I didn’t know it would be on this scale or this graphic.”

Grande also discussed the audition process to play the pink-loving witch. “People who didn’t understand would say, ‘Oh, that’s so silly, they know how talented you are,’ and I was like, ‘That’s very nice, but Glinda requires so much. I have to be able to earn this and I don’t want it unless I’ve earned it.’ It became this beautiful evolution of getting to know myself beneath it all,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I love this person underneath the drag.’”

The Wicked sequel, Wicked: For Good, comes out on November 21. Until then, Grande is up for Best Supporting Actress at the 2025 Oscars against Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown), Felicity Jones (The Brutalist), Isabella Rossellini (Conclave), and Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez).