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As if things couldn’t get any stranger, Stranger Things is veering into animated territory. The hit Netflix show will be getting its own animated spinoff series, with the Duffer Brothers back to executive produce via their company Upside Down Pictures. Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen of 21 Laps will also produce.

“We’ve always dreamed of an animated Stranger Things in the vein of the Saturday morning cartoons that we grew up loving, and to see this dream realized has been absolutely thrilling,” the Duffer Brothers said in a statement, per Variety. “We couldn’t be more blown away by what Eric Robles and his team have come up with — the scripts and artwork are incredible, and we can’t wait to share more with you! The adventure continues…”

Stranger Things has been a monster hit for Netflix, so it was only a matter of time before they made a spinoff show (or two or three). In typical Stranger fashion, no plot details have been released, though even if they were, they probably wouldn’t be true anyway. Those folks love their mysteries! But hey, they sure do seem excited.

The fifth and final season of the sci-fi series was ordered last year after the fourth season dominated Netflix for almost the entire summer. Production on that season is expected to begin later this year. It will only have to compete with nearly every single other show that’s slated for a 2024 release. Peak TV is back! But next year, probably.

(Via Variety)

BTS announced their indefinite hiatus last October — though 2025 is loosely pegged for a return — and each member of the historic K-pop group is getting a taste of life as a solo artist. In February, Suga announced dates for his first-ever solo tour, which will support his forthcoming debut solo album, D-Day, under the pseudonym Agust D.

Last week, BigHit Music and Suga confirmed that D-Day will release on April 21. The rollout was boosted by Suga’s single “People Pt. 2” with IU last Friday, April 7. And by the end of the weekend, Suga revealed the rest of his D-Day tracklist.

BTS fans likely were immediately drawn to the inclusion of BTS’ J-Hope as a featured artist on “HUH?!” The album also features Ryuichi Sakamoto and Woosung of The Rose.

J-Hope’s feature comes days after it was announced that he will be the next BTS member to complete South Korea’s mandatory military service, which was cited among the primary reasons for BTS’ hiatus in October. Jin enlisted toward the end of last year and is currently serving.

See the D-Day tracklist below.

1. “Haegeum”
2. “People Pt.2” with IU
3. “D-Day”
4. “HUH?!” featuring j-hope
5. “AMYGDALA”
6. “SDL”
7. “Polar Night”
8. “Interlude : Dawn”
9. “Snooze” featuring Ryuichi Sakamoto, Woosung of The Rose
10. “Life Goes On”

D-Day is out 04/21 via BigHit. Find more information here.

Tory Lanez’s attempt to get a new trial after being found guilty of assault has been delayed. According to court reporter Meghann Cuniff, who was affectionately nicknamed “Meghann Thee Reporter” for her coverage of the original Tory Lanez assault trial, the hearing on Lanez’s motion for a new trial has been rescheduled to next Monday, April 17, at his legal team’s request.

The reason they’re looking for more time likely owes to the stiff opposition put forth by Los Angeles prosecutors. According to Vulture, prosecutors filed a 16-page opposition against Lanez’s motion reading, “The defendant’s brief is replete with colorful rhetoric and conclusory statements, but it lacks substance. Despite being nearly 80 pages long, the defendant has failed to cite a single instance of error in the trial court.”

Lanez’s motion for a new trial rests on his defense’s insistence that evidence was admitted mid-trial, denying them the time to mount an adequate response. The evidence in question appears to be an Instagram comment posted from Tory’s account in response to a post on The Shade Room claiming, “People saying Kelsey shot her.” Tory’s account replied, “That’s not true,” undercutting the defense’s alternate shooter defense. However, it was Tory’s defense’s star witness who kneecapped that defense, admitting that it appeared Tory was the one who fired the shots that injured Megan Thee Stallion. Tory plans to appeal his conviction if his motion for a new trial is denied.

You can find more information about the case here.

The power of Christ compels a bunch of ticked-off exorcists to publicly condemn Russell Crowe‘s new movie.

In The Pope’s Exorcist, the Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World actor plays Father Gabriele Amorth, who served as the chief exorcist of the Vatican. He also helped found the International Association of Exorcists, which has criticized the title of the film for being “pretentious.”

In a statement, the group wrote that “watching the film’s trailer confirms, if anything were needed, not only its splatter cinema quality, a real sub-genre of horror cinema, but its unreliability on such a delicate and relevant topic.” The exorcism depicted in the film “becomes a show aimed at arousing strong and unhealthy emotions, thanks to a gloomy scenography, with sound effects such as to arouse only anxiety, restlessness and fear in the spectator.”

The end result of The Pope’s Exorcist, the IAE concluded, is “to instill the conviction that exorcism is an abnormal, monstrous, and frightening phenomenon, whose only protagonist is the devil, whose violent reactions can be faced with great difficulty; which is the exact opposite of what occurs in the context of exorcism celebrated in the Catholic Church in obedience to the directives imparted by it.”

“The Pope’s Exorcist: an abnormal, monstrous, and frightening phenomenon” is a good pull quote. I’m now more excited than ever to see it.

The Pope’s Exorcist opens on April 14.

(Via the Guardian)

SPOILERS from this week’s Succession will be found below.

Succession managed to shock viewers to the core in multiple ways this week, including the timing of Logan Roy’s death and the sheer fact that Connor actually came out ahead of his siblings. Beyond that, something not so fantastic happened to Gerri because Logan made good on his previously expressed disgust and decided that she should be fired. Not only that, but Logan decided that his new Dark Side recruit, Roman, should do the honors.

And Tom got in this too, gamely pestering Roman to fire Gerri fast (under the guise of Logan being disappointed in how the DOJ mess was handled), and this went down without Roman even needing to articulate the initial words because Gerri knew that Roman was being shifty for a reason. Yet Gerri and Roman (who surely will regret not shutting his dad down) both knew that Logan was really doing this because he’s a terrible person. This was further fallout from that that d*ck pic disaster, which Gerri never asked for and which was clearly Roman’s misstep.

In other words, Gerri was fired for a few apparent reasons: (1) Logan wanted to test Roman’s loyalty, but that loyalty probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway (even if Logan hadn’t died) because Logan never keeps his word to his children; (2) Logan was simply being a sadistic a**hole for the hell of it because he knew that Roman would never dare push back at Dad.

In light of Roman’s passing, is Gerri still fired? That remains to be seen, but towards the end of the episode, she made it clear that she’s no longer here to support Roman. Also, don’t you wish that she’d gotten on the phone in Logan’s ear, too? It would go something like this:

HBO’s Succession airs on Sunday nights at 9:00pm EST.

Jane Fonda shared on The Drew Barrymore Show last month that Jennifer Lopez accidentally cut her eyebrow with her diamond ring during the slap scene in Monster-In-Law — an entry in the Early 2000s J. Lo Romantic Comedies canon.

Lopez looks capable of doing much more than that in the official posters for The Mother, her forthcoming Netflix film. The photos were shot by Annie Leibovitz.

“Happy Monday!!! Here are the new posters for my upcoming film THE MOTHER. Only on @Netflix May 12. (PS trailer drops tomorrow!!!!),” Lopez tweeted today, April 10.

Directed by Niki Caro, The Mother‘s official teaser dropped last September. “A deadly female assassin comes out of hiding to protect the daughter that she gave up years before, while on the run from dangerous men,” the description teases.

The intense one-minute clip finds Lopez training in the snowy woods, driving with reckless abandon down a crowded street, and shooting guns. “You saw what was out there,” she says, presumably to her on-screen daughter. “It’s gonna keep coming. If there’s trouble, come find me.”

The Mother also stars Joseph Fiennes, Lucy Paez, Omari Hardwick, Paul Raci, and Gael Garcia Bernal and will stream on Netflix beginning on 5/12.

Watch the teaser above.

UK rapper Little Simz is finally coming (back) to America after financial issues derailed her last planned tour, forcing her to reschedule it. Simz had planned to tour North America last spring after releasing her critically acclaimed album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, but as an independent artist, the tour would have left her in debt. “As much as this pains me to not see you at this time, I’m just not able to put myself through that mental stress,” she wrote at the time.

In the year since, the Mercury Prize winner put out another critically hailed project, No Thank You, and toured Europe, resulting in the On Stage Off Stage short film. Apparently, that’s put her in a better space, allowing her to announce a 10-date slate kicking off in Chicago on September 20 and hitting Atlanta, LA, and New York. Tickets go on sale beginning Thursday, April 13 at 10 am local time. Find more information here.

09/20 – Chicago, IL @ The Riviera Theatre
09/24 – Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade (Heaven)
09/27 – Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater
09/28 – Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo
09/29 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom
10/3 – Los Angeles, CA @ The NOVO
10/8 – Toronto, ON @ HISTORY
10/9 – Montreal, QC @ MTELUS
10/11 – Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore Silver Spring
10/13 – New York, NY @ Terminal 5

As the WNBA and women’s basketball in general grow in stature, the areas in which the league’s business operations need to make sizable leaps become increasingly apparent.

Travel is among the biggest, as teams still fly commercial from game to game, with players having to pay for any upgrades they want for increased leg room and space. Recently, Joe Tsai paid for the New York Liberty to have charter flights to games, and was subsequently fined $500,000, leading to quite the uproar from players and fans wondering why teams were being punished for wanting to spend to create better conditions for their players.

Most recently, the Sparks spent a night in the airport after a game in D.C. after a flight was cancelled and there were not open hotel rooms, leading to further outcry over the travel situations players are often put in. The WNBA heard that and will be taking on the cost as a league to charter flights for teams that play on back-to-backs during the regular season, and throughout the playoffs in 2023. That is a positive step, but one that might not be replicable for the future, as this year there are only five back-to-backs on the schedule. The 2024 season will be much more condensed due to the Paris Olympics, with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert telling the Associated Press that “next year, we can’t do all of them,” with regards to back-to-backs.

Englebert hopes a new media deal can eventually cover the cost of chartering flights, but the current cost for the full season would be $25 million, per the AP, which the league can’t cover. What is maybe most frustrating is the cost per team to charter flights for a full season would be $2 million, which for most any professional sports franchise would be a drop in the buckets and explains why owners like Tsai and Mark Davis, who came to the WNBA having already owned men’s sports teams, have pushed to pay for the charter flights themselves.

To charter for the whole season the estimated cost per franchise would be approximately $2 million. Air travel expenses currently for each team is about $150,000, according to two people familiar with the costs. The people spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly address the issue.

Finding a way to meet that cost, plus paying players more as top stars in college make more now in NIL than they would in a rookie salary in the WNBA, has to be a top priority for the league in coming years if they are to continue this growth. A lot of the onus falls on owners being willing to spend more in the short-term, recognizing how that will benefit their long-term investment. Some see that already, but it’s clear the league as a whole is not ready to make that leap.

For now, we’ll get a half measure in the form of playoff charters and a handful for back-to-backs this season. It’s a start, but one the league has to be able to build on for 2024, because taking a step back in terms of travel conditions would only look worse.

I’m pretty sure if you’ve lived through the 90s, you know the soul-crushing disappointment of realizing you’ve lost your camera. You know, the disposable camera that you had to crank the little spinny wheel on so you could snap the next picture. That trip to Disney—gone. Your sister’s bat mitzvah—poof.

It was a frustrating reality for way too many of us, but with the invention of the digital camera, which came with a fancy wrist strap, we could count on our memories being safe. Unless you were going tubing on the river after your friend’s wedding and hoping to snap some cool shots of everyone relaxing. Oh, and unless your name is Coral Amayi.

Amayi was floating in the Animas River with some friends in 2010 when she fell off of her tube and into the water, where her camera decided to take up residence for 13 years. She had just taken snapshots at her friend’s wedding, so the memory card on her camera held a lot of important memories. Amayi was expectedly crushed.

“When I got to shore, the small cord that attached the camera to the lanyard and floatation device had broken,” Amayi told Today.com. “I walked back to my boyfriend’s house and was uncontrollably crying.”

It really stings to lose memories that are important to you and the bottom of the river is a place lost items are nearly guaranteed to never reemerge. Except, Amayi did get her photos back. It took 13 years, but through random happenstance, a fisherman found the old digital camera. And the best part is, the memory card was still intact and readable.

Spencer Greiner found the missing camera in the river on March 14, and after investigating the memory card, he decided to post the photos on Facebook in hopes of finding the owner.

“I was walking along and saw it sticking out of the sand,” Greiner told Denver’s KDVR. “It was in rough shape, so I really didn’t have any hopes of getting anything off of it, I was just planning to throw it away, and then curiosity got the best of me, and I had to see what was on it.”

“I was like ‘yeah, this is probably not going to work at all,’” Greiner explained to KDVR. “But I plugged it into the computer, and it read immediately and I was like ‘oh cool, let’s see what sort of treasures we’re going to find on this memory card.’”

After posting the pictures in a Durango Facebook group, Greiner actually got a fairly quick response to his list of questions that accompanied the photos. The groom from the 2010 wedding identified himself, and his wife then got in touch with the owner of the camera.

Thanks to Greiner’s detective skills and determination, Amayi was reunited with the long-lost photos of a 22-year-old version of herself. With the condition the camera was in when it was found, it’s a miracle anything at all was recovered.

You can see Greiner open up the silt-filled camera below:

We live in a world where there is more art to consume than ever. There’s no shortage of musical mashups, digital paintings, song covers, cosplay videos, and so on and on and on and on. While having visual and audio exposure to various forms of art is lovely, when we only experience art through an online platform, we sometimes sacrifice that powerful feeling of immersion, of being able to come face to face with a creation and truly be moved by an artist’s message. There’s a subtle, yet undeniable change that happens both internally and externally when you step into something with the intention to inspire. Honestly, it’s the closest thing to real world alchemy that we’ve got.

Agnes Denes might not be a name that regularly comes up on your feed, but she’s made an entire career out of creating art that provides this kind of visceral, profound effect.

Since the late 1960s, Denes has been a pioneer for environmental activism through art, exploring our relationship to the Earth through epically large-scale creations that mimic natural splendors of nature. And what really makes her work unique, even among other similar artists, is that it’s more than a call to action—there’s actual restoration built into the process.

The most brilliant example of this is her grandest work of all, ”Tree Mountain,” which is both artwork and the first ever human-made virgin forest. Yep, she designed a giant, living, breathing thing. Denes doesn’t just praise Mother Nature in her creations…she channels her.

The work’s full title, “Tree Mountain—A Living Time Capsule—11,000 Trees, 11,000 People, 400 Years,” gives a glimpse into the huge scope and scale of the project. Built at the site of an abandoned mine in Ylöjärvi, Finland, “Tree Mountain” measures 1,378 feet long, 886 feet wide, and 125 feet tall, and is made up of thousands of trees planted in a formation reminiscent of the golden ratio.

Though Denes first came up with the concept in 1984, it wouldn’t become an official project until 1992. But once it was backed by the United Nations and the Finnish government, volunteers from around the world came together to help. Anyone who planted a tree received a certificate that not only named them as the owner of the tree they planted but bestowed ownership of the tree to that person’s descendants up to 400 years in the future.

Even granting ownership of the trees is part of the project’s message. As Denes has stated, “Anything you put into the world you become responsible for…my hope is they keep [Tree Mountain] going, for the centuries.”

Truly, at the core of all of Denes’ work is a commitment to a better future for the planet.

“The trees must outlive the present era and, by surviving, carry our concepts into an unknown time in the future. If civilization as we know it ends or changes, there will be a reminder in the form of a strange forest for our descendants to ponder. They may reflect on an undertaking that did not serve personal needs but the common good and the highest ideals of humanity and its environment while benefiting future generations.”