After dropping a major bombshell, the shocking death of family patriarch Logan Roy, the creative team behind Succession has been opening up about the painstaking process to prevent leaks ahead of the fatal episode.
Thanks to a crafty decision by creator Jesse Armstrong, Logan’s death happens in the third episode of the final season when viewers would least suspect a devastating twist of this magnitude. However, keeping the moment under wraps required some behind-the-scenes subterfuge involving Larry David of all people.
“This was a tough secret to keep!” Succession writer Georgia Pritchett revealed on Twitter, two days after the episode aired. “We decided it in the #Succession writers’ room in Jan 22. So nobody found out we used code on the whiteboards. Larry David meant Logan Dies. So episode 403 said Connor’s Wedding, Larry David. Mind you, that would also have been a great episode.”
This was a tough secret to keep! We decided it in the #Succession writers’ room in Jan 22. So nobody found out we used code on the whiteboards. Larry David meant Logan Dies. So episode 403 said Connor’s Wedding, Larry David. Mind you, that would also have been a great episode. pic.twitter.com/VH1HuHCFOC
Brian Cox also revealed that the production team also tried to shoot fake scenes so paparazzi photos wouldn’t spoil his character’s funeral. But when the film crew ran out of time and told him to stay home, Cox crashed the set anyway to protect the big twist.
“As soon as I got out of the car, there were paparazzi shooting me left, right, and center, and therefore, they thought, Logan’s at the funeral, what is he doing?” Cox told Deadline. “You see, and if I hadn’t done that, if I hadn’t come, they would’ve gone, it’s Logan’s funeral. And I was the one who took that responsibility. They didn’t even think of it. They were so rushed, and so much, you know, this last season was very difficult to film.”
Succession Season 4 airs new episodes Sunday on HBO.
Indie music has grown to include so much. It’s not just music that is released on independent labels but speaks to an aesthetic that deviates from the norm and follows its own weirdo heart. It can come in the form of rock music, pop, or folk. In a sense, it says as much about the people that are drawn to it as it does about the people that make it.
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Blondshell — Blondshell
Singles like the devastating “Olympus” or the catchy “Veronica Mars” showcased an intimate, compelling debut album from Blondshell, the project of Sabrina Teitelbaum. More than half the tracks were released before the unveiling of the LP, but the material sounds satisfying together. It’s a complex portrait of self-destruction and yearning for more, especially portrayed on the new “Sober Together”: “Call me, I wanna be there for you / But not in a way that lets you take me down with you.”
Wednesday — Rat Saw God
Wednesday’s seismic Rat Saw God demands to be replayed over and over again. The explosive opener “Hot Rotten Grass Smell” is a blazing entrance, kicking off the album with noisy guitars and Karly Hartzman’s addictive drawl. It bleeds into the 8-minute catharsis “Bull Believer,” which feels like a finale, but the story’s stillest beginning. “Chosen To Deserve” is a love song with hyper-specific anecdotes about self-destruction; “Quarry” is a tame indie-rock ballad about lice, teenage pregnancy, and drug busts. Rat Saw God will suck you in and you won’t want to leave its dark embrace.
Scowl — Psychic Dance Routine
Though Scowl are most known for playing an insane hardcore show at a Sonic or maybe for being repped by Post Malone on a T-shirt, their music speaks for itself. Psychic Dance Routine commands the listener to feel the songs fully, to be absorbed into their vicious energy. The title track slows things down for a more seething feeling, which bleeds into the ferocious, growl-filled “Wire,” proving their eclectic skill.
Balance And Composure — Too Quick To Forgive
2019 was a tragic year for fans of the beloved Pennsylvania emo band Balance And Composure. They announced their breakup and played vigorous farewell shows that only showcased the passion their music inspired in people. Luckily, they’re back now with a small EP called Too Quick To Forgive featuring songs “Savior Mode” and “Last To Know,” the former of which is certainly one of the best songs of their career. The four-and-a-half minute track captures their catharsis and intensity; “Last To Know,” an ethereal slow-burner, encapsulates their talent for brooding anthems.
Indigo De Souza — “You Can Be Mean To Me”
Somehow, Indigo De Souza’s singles have just been getting better and better. “Younger & Dumber” was a powerful, vulnerable song about maturation; “Smog” was a dancey anthem reckoning with anxiety. “You Can Be Mean To Me” grapples with a toxic relationship: “I’d like to think you got a good heart / And your dad was just an asshole growing up.” The emotional intensity is immediately palpable and impactful.
Feeble Little Horse — “Steamroller”
Feeble Little Horse’s “Steamroller” is an enthralling dose of idiosyncratic shoegaze. Lydia Slocum’s soothing vocals work well against disorienting guitars: “Steamroller, you / F*ck like you’re eating / Your smile’s like / Lines in the concrete.” Their brand of beautifully weird indie rock might never get old.
Origami Angel — “Thank You, New Jersey”
It’s 2023 and pop punk is alive and well. “Thank You, New Jersey” is a relentless anthem that sounds like an acid trip at Warped Tour. It moves nauseatingly fast in the best way and the riffs are ridiculously infectious, almost aggressively so, and the lyrics are unforgettable: “I’m on an island alone with my conscious / There’s no place that I’d rather be.”
Sbtrkt, Toro Y Moi — “Days Go By”
Sbtrkt’s new album The Rat Road arrives in May, and “Days Go By,” which features Toro Y Moi, is a new taste. There’s a groove throughout the four and a half minutes, during which Toro Y Moi catchily narrates the dullness of the days: “I called just to see if you could still go out / Nothing was open so we just stayed in.”
Spaced — “Boomerang” & “Cycle Killer”
Spaced make cutthroat, eclectic hardcore. “Boomerang” & “Cycle Killer” are the newest offerings, and they showcase the band’s devotion to pure mayhem. At around two minutes, both give their all, shredding with insane guitar solos and attention-grabbing shouts and high-energy breakdowns.
Beach Fossils — “Dare Me”
Preparing for Bunny, their first new studio album in six years, Beach Fossils shared the second single “Dare Me” to follow “Don’t Fade Away.” The laid-back song is reminiscent of Turnover’s Peripheral Vision, pulling the listener in with its dreamy atmosphere and nostalgic texture.
A recent advertisement for Bud Light features transgender influencer and activist Dylan Mulvaney, which has spurred violently transphobic reactions from some country and rock artists. In a video uploaded to social media, Kid Rock is seen shooting cases of Bud Light.
Country singer Travis Tritt also took to Twitter to share that he would be removing Anheuser-Busch products from his hospitality rider.
Other artists who are deleting Anheuser-Busch products from their hospitality rider might not say so in public for fear of being ridiculed and cancelled. I have no such fear. https://t.co/YgjO9P03tR
After Tritt’s notice on Twitter, Bryan had some words for the singer.
“I mean no disrespect towards anyone specifically, I don’t even mind @Travistritt,” said Bryan in a tweet. “I just think insulting transgender people is completely wrong because we live in a country where we can all just be who we want to be. It’s a great day to be alive I thought.”
That last sentence is a reference to Tritt’s song “It’s A Great Day To Be Alive.”
I mean no disrespect towards anyone specifically, I don’t even mind @Travistritt. I just think insulting transgender people is completely wrong because we live in a country where we can all just be who we want to be It’s a great day to be alive I thought
In addition to his removal of Anheuser-Busch products from his rider, Tritt also expressed his disdain toward Jack Daniel’s for featuring drag performers in a recent campaign.
One of the surprise delights that awaited viewers of The Super Mario Bros. Movie was another classic Jack Black musical moment — one that has the internet’s attention in a chokehold. “Peaches,” a power ballad sung by Black as the film’s villain Bowser, who secretly pines for the Princess of the Mushroom Kingdom, has quickly become a fan favorite on social media.
Well, here’s some good news for those fans: According to Variety, “Peaches” will be eligible to win a Best Original Song Oscar at next year’s Academy Awards. Which, if you ask the legions of newly converted Bowswer fans, is an award it already has in the bag.
Universal appears to know this as well; in addition to highlighting the song on social media, the studio even commissioned a music video featuring Jack Black directed by hip-hop’s go-to director Cole Bennett, who applies his signature colorful aesthetic to the video.
The music in The Super Mario Bros. Movie has turned out to be an unexpected star with both classic pop needle drops and not one, but two notoriously bad Ninento-related raps of the ’90s returning to introduce heroes the Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong. The cast even made an appearance on late-night TV to perform an acapella version of the game’s iconic theme song.
Check out Bowser’s “Peaches” video above and try not to get it stuck in your head for the rest of the day.
Gorillaz’s 2005 album Demon Days is a classic. It’s full of highlights, including De La Soul’s collaboration on the track “Feel Good Inc.” But during an interview on the Kyle Meredith With… podcast, De La Soul co-founder Maseo divulged that Damon Albarn initially wanted De La Soul on “Kids With Guns” instead.
“When we went to do ‘Feel Good Inc.,’ the initial song was ‘Kids With Guns,’” Maseo said. “When we were having a conversation about ‘Kids With Guns,’ I honestly came out and said, ‘Hey man, I think we forcing it.’ […] I think we’re not really collaborating, we’re just featuring on the record. It’s like Gorillaz featuring De La. We really need to do like a collaboration, where we both artistically show our flavor.’”
“He’s truly out there for artistic value, and I got a lot of love for that,” he said about Albarn. “No idea is a bad idea until we try it — all egos are checked at the door. Everybody is doing their best to make a great song. He hears people on songs like instruments. Everybody’s vocal technically is an instrument, and that’s how he hears the track.”
Rihanna now holds another record, as the singer and makeup mogul surpassed Katy Perry this week to become Twitter’s most followed woman. According to SocialBlade, Rihanna sits at 108,278,326 to Perry’s 108,261,949 when this was written, giving her about a 20,000 lead now. Overall, RiRi has the fourth-highest follower count on the social platform, behind (sigh) the company’s owner Elon Musk, Barack Obama, and Justin Bieber. Rihanna needs a few million more followers to pass Bieber and become the most-followed musician on the platform, as Bieber currently sits at 113,156,831 followers.
In terms of other musicians that round out the top ten of Twitter’s most followed, Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande follow close behind at No. 7 and No. 10.
This comes on the heels of an already big year for Rihanna, between playing the Super Bowl Halftime Show just a few months ago and announcing she’s having a second child with ASAP Rocky. She also performed her song “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever‘s soundtrack at the Oscars, where it was also nominated for an award.
She was also the only female musician to make this year’s Forbes Billionaire List, with her net worth estimated at $1.4 billion, through her music, partnerships, and her Fenty Beauty empire. (Jay-Z and Jimmy Buffett were the only other two performers on the ranking.)
While fans are probably still waiting for new music, Rihanna’s return, whenever it happens, now has an opportunity to be major considering her constantly growing following.
Paul Rudd is good at keeping things light. Even in the MCU, that’s the case, and that could be a reason why Ant-Man: Quantumania (which was not a breezy Ant-Man movie) didn’t keep doing gangbusters in theaters after opening weekend. People expect levity from Rudd, you know? He’s the guy who engineered a great massage story from Seth Rogen, after all. And Rudd was there (in a much different way) for one of his other good friends, Jeremy Renner, while he recuperated from his snowplow accident earlier this year.
Renner, who is promoting Disney+’s Rennervations, visited Jimmy Kimmel, and in the process, he revealed another Paul Rudd instant classic. As revealed after the 8:30 mark above, Rudd did pay proper hospital visits to Renner, where he was “making my day,” but also, he made a faux “Cameo” video that even had the Cameo logo all over it. “He made a fake one, like I paid him money,” related Renner, and then Kimmel played the video, which included Rudd telling him to simply “let the snow melt” if this happens again:
“Hey Jerry, I hear you’re a little banged up. Got in a fight with a snowblower, apparently? Anyway, I just wanted to send this video. It’s really from the heart and I hope you’re feeling better … Apparently, you’re a pretty tough guy … take care and take it easy for a while. And next time, maybe just let the snow melt! Feel better, Jerry!”
There hopefully won’t be a next time, but fortunately, Renner looks to be making a miraculous recovery. Considering his incredibly long list of injuries and that 911 call, one could conclude that the actor who portrays Hawkeye might have some real-life superpowers.
After delivering the back-to-back horror sensations, Hereditary and Midsommar, Ari Aster is back with Beau Is Afraid. Starring Joaquin Phoenix as the titular character, the film eschews the more traditional horror trappings of Aster’s previous work and instead goes for a marathon-length Freudian nightmare that’s confounding critics.
At two hours and 59 minutes, Beau Is Afraid is either a psychological tour-de-force, or an overly self-indulgent slog that’s punctuated with brilliance, but not enough to justify the runtime. The critical reactions are all over the map, which you can see for yourself below:
In “Beau Is Afraid,” Aster tracks his titular antihero from birth to death, from psychoanalysis to this cheeky subversion of Freud, where the child assumes responsibility for his parents’ trauma, rather than the other way around. But he’s crammed so many ideas into this unwieldy container, the film capsizes. In retrospect, “Hereditary” did too, but we forgave it because its finale was frightening, at least. Here, wrapping with an anticlimax seems to be Aster’s idea of a joke.
It’s reminiscent, in a way, of Southland Tales, Richard Kelly’s sweepingly bizarre follow-up to Donnie Darko, which drew deafening boos at its disastrous Cannes premiere in 2006. But Kelly’s film (which is now enjoying something of a cult revival) always felt like it had been made with the best of intentions: it was an ambitious but muddled big swing from a young auteur earnestly running with his newfound creative freedom. Beau is Afraid, on the other hand, seems like Aster sat down one day and said to himself: right, I’m going to make a Southland Tales.
Did you ever hear the one about the boy who feared his mother? “Beau Is Afraid” tells this joke for three gobsmacking, sometimes exhausting, always beguiling hours. At the center is a fascinating performance from Joaquin Phoenix, who actualizes what it looks like for a boy to suddenly stop growing up and merely age into a graying body. Phoenix makes his mouth tiny as if he were still suckling, and his voice intensely frail. His eyes, often used to signal a primal nature, have never seen looked so soft. His character will prove to be far too innocent for this world.
The newest entry to this ignoble pantheon is Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid, an insufferable three-hour slog that would make Terry Gilliam say “reel it in a bit, would ya?” It is juvenile and pointless, loud and abrasive, and not anywhere as clever as it thinks it is. There are, however, individual moments sprinkled throughout that genuinely hum with greatness.
Eliciting laughs of an astonished sort, the willfully unhinged Beau is Afraid is like a funhouse-mirror plunge into Aster’s psyche, where M.C. Escher, Philip Roth, Grant Wood and The Purge all crazily cohabitate. No matter its many inspirations, though, the auteur’s latest is a true American original, and proof that, while the hype surrounding him may have been early, it wasn’t wrong.
Beau Is Afraid may or may not be autobiographical — Aster isn’t saying, nor should he if he ever wants to attend another Thanksgiving dinner. But there are clearly some issues its creator is working through in this epic tale of an Oedipal wreck. And though this may share a certain anything-goes absurdity and deliriousness with another recent A24 hit, the fact that the studio has now given us that Oscar-winner’s evil twin is itself a riotous hoot. This is the anti-Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Three hours that definitely put the odd in odyssey, Beau Is Afraid could be said to suffer from the same bloat, wandering through bizarre detours of varying effectiveness before arriving at a wonderfully overripe operatic climax elevated by Patti LuPone as the Lydia Tár of single mothers. But even if its pacing is uneven, this is a movie of undeniably impressive big swings.
This unmoored epic about a zeta male’s journey to reunite with his overbearing mother eventually stiffens into what might be the most terrifying film he’s made so far. Mileage will vary on that score — the scares are typically less oh shit Toni Collette is spidering across the ceiling and more oy gevalt, Joaquin Phoenix’s enormous prosthetic testicles are causing me to squirm under the weight of my own emotional baggage — but anyone who would sooner die for their mom than answer the phone when she calls should probably mix a few Zoloft into their popcorn just to be safe.
Pedro Pascal proudly holds the title of the internet’s “daddy” (but please don’t ask him to read thirst tweets about himself, that’s weird). The Mandalorian star is still trying to figure out what the term means, exactly, but The Last of Us co-creator Craig Mazin has some ideas about the actor’s daddy appeal (Pascal, Oscar Isaac, and Ethan Hawke should start a band called Daddy Appeal).
“I think everybody either has fond memories of a positive father figure in their life or they have a terrible gaping space in their heart where a positive father figure ought to have been. Nostalgia or longing for let’s call it nontoxic masculinity. And he has that, but he also has this expressive pain behind his eyes,” he told Esquire. Pascal himself has another theory: “Plus, I’m old.”
Sarah Paulson, the “mommy” to Pascal’s “daddy,” also shared her thoughts on the internet’s obsession with her friend. “Knowing Pedro as intimately as I do, I would not want him to be my daddy, personally. I want him to be my pal that I can hang out with until all hours of the night, but Daddy?” she wondered.
Today (April 11), Stranger Things actress Millie Bobby Brown seemingly announced her engagement to Jake Bongiovi via Instagram. In the photo, she is seen being embraced by Bongiovi, as she shows off her rock of a ring.
The post’s caption reads, “I’ve loved you three summers now, honey, I want ’em all,” which Taylor Swift fans will immediately recognize as one of her fan-favorite ballads.
What Taylor Swift song did Millie Bobby Brown use in her engagement announcement?
The lyric comes from Swift’s song “Lover,” the title track to her seventh album, which was released in 2019. The line can be heard in the song’s second verse, as Swift sings:
“We could let our friends crash in the living room
This is our place, we make the call
And I’m highly suspicious that everyone who sees you wants you
I’ve loved you three summers now, honey, but I want ’em all.”
The song was written during her relationship with Joe Alwyn, which reportedly came to an end this past weekend.
At the time of writing, Swift herself is currently on a break from The Eras Tour, but is set to return to the stage this Saturday (April 15) in Tampa, Florida.
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