At the end of the month, Yeah Yeah Yeahs will be out with Cool It Down, the band’s first album in nine years. Singer Karen O, guitarist Nick Zinner, and drummer Brian Chase were the toast of the New York indie rock scene when they emerged in the early 2000’s, alongside acts like The Strokes and Interpol. So much so, that it earned Yeah Yeah Yeahs a major label deal with Interscope, who released the band’s first four albums. Now in an interview with Vulture, Karen O was very candid about the band’s days with Interscope and how label founder Jimmy Iovine had grand hopes for O as a solo pop star in the shape of No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani.
“Jimmy Iovine was hoping I would be the next Gwen,” O said. “But I wasn’t. In my own way, I carved out something for myself. But I didn’t deliver on the goods as far as that major-label expectation was concerned.”
When asked about whether she herself had any ambitions of being a solo pop star, O set the record straight it just wasn’t in her nature. “I had this quite naïve, useful fantasy. The reason you go to a major label is because it gives you a better shot at reaching the maximum number of people,” O said. “But — similar to not understanding the reality of touring — I had a very detached, abstract notion of that role. Myself — and probably a lot of the other front men that came up with me — buckled under the weight of commercialization and the demands that come with that. Because it just wasn’t really what we set out to do.”
Cool It Down is out 9/30 via Secretly Canadian. Pre-order it here.
Aside from their brief involvement in the now-defunct Kevin Durant Sweepstakes and roller-coaster contract negotiations with Deandre Ayton, the Phoenix Suns’ 2022 offseason has been rather uneventful. After a disappointing second-round exit to the Dallas Mavericks this past spring, their roster and rotation entering the fall looks quite similar to 2021-22.
According to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, however, the Suns are involved in trade negotiations, largely centered on starting power forward Jae Crowder, who has one year and $10.1 million remaining on the three-year deal he signed back in 2020.
“Jae Crowder is a player who’s available on the market right now,” Windhorst said.
Windhorst also said “it’s possible” Phoenix executes a deal that brings back more money.
“In folks that I’m talking to, they don’t get the sense that the Suns are afraid to continue to spend, that they may be spending more,” he said. “It would not surprise me if the Suns get involved in the negotiations for Bojan Bogdanovic from the Utah Jazz, who is available on the market right now. Several teams are bidding for him.”
Bogdanovic is set to earn $19.3 million in the final season of a four-year, $73.1 million contract. Last season, the 33-year-old averaged 18.1 points and 4.3 rebounds on 59.9 percent true shooting, including 38.7 percent beyond the arc. He’s an excellent secondary scorer and off-ball shooter.
Assuming the price is reasonable, both Crowder and Bogdanovic would be worthwhile acquisitions for a number of playoff teams or contenders. I’m skeptical a deal with the framework of a Crowder-Bogdanovic swap alleviates Phoenix’s perimeter creation issues, though, and it doesn’t fill any long-term hole at the 4-spot. Windhorst did mention the Suns are negotiating with reserve power forward Cam Johnson on a contract extension, which would kick in at the start of 2023-24 and help address that question mark in the starting unit.
With the highly anticipated Star Wars series, Andor, hitting Disney+ this week, fans will get a chance to watch Diego Luna‘s title character and the Rebel Alliance become a force to be reckoned with as the series show off five years before the events of Rogue One. Helmed by showrunner Tony Gilroy, Andor has already been confirmed as a two season tale that will span 24 episodes as it depicts a Galactic Empire that’s grown complacent in its power as its overreach and decadence ultimately leads to its downfall.
As for when Star Wars fans can expect the second and final season of Andor, Gilroy has revealed that there will be a bit of a wait. Via The Wrap:
“I have two more years to go,” Gilroy said. “We start shooting in November on Part 2. And I don’t know if … Our past pattern was two years, but I mean, I’ll be on … We’ll shoot from November to August. And then our post[-production] last time was about a year.”
That probably means, at the earliest, we can expect “Andor” Season 2 (or part two, as Gilroy calls it) in fall 2024.
While a two-year wait is probably not what Star Wars fans want to hear, the good news is that the second season of Andor is full steam ahead. Shooting is already set for this winter and early reviews are indicating that the prolonged production has made Andor “one of the best Star Wars spinoff series so far.”
The first three episodes of Andor Season 1 premiere September 21 on Disney+ with new episodes arriving on Wednesdays.
Bannon joined a bunch of other conservative talking heads making an appearance at a conference called “Defeating the Great Reset.” The event’s main purpose was to drum up fear and paranoia about some obscure global strategy Bannon and his buddies think signals the end times. Bannon hypothesized that the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” plan was all in an effort to create “human 2.0.” We’re guessing he means some advanced civilization of human beings because, in clips from the event, he rambles on about world leaders secretly funding scientific experiments with the end goal of achieving immortality.
“They’re all godless,” Bannon can be seen telling the crowd in the clip below. “They all want to live forever. They talk about how they’re going to save kids, but that’s all crap! They want to be immortal.”
Steve Bannon says Biden administration’s initiative to cure cancer is a covert operation to eliminate the human race pic.twitter.com/eW9RdQsk9L
First off, who doesn’t want to live forever? Our pop culture obsession with vampire movies proves immortality is “in” right now. But even more importantly, Bannon has no factual basis for these claims, he’s just spewing nonsense to a collection of easily manipulated people who think that he can make the world work for them again. Case in point: no one bats an eye when later in his speech, Bannon riffs about Biden trying to replace humanity by sending people to the moon and calling it some sort of cancer cure.
None of it makes any sense, but that won’t stop someone’s cousin from buying all the way into this ridiculousness and giving his life savings to the guy who couldn’t even build a wall so that he can “save America.” Maybe the latest round of fraud charges will actually stick.
True crime stories are booming like never before, from podcasts to docuseries to the constant influx of deeply researched new books on murders, heists, kidnappings, and more. Everyone has their own preferred method of consuming these stories, but in the hands of the right filmmaker and the right cast, a based-on-a-true-story project can gain new meaning and force, giving us a reflection of the real world through immersive, troubling tales.
Thankfully, many of the very best of these films are out there on a major streaming service, meaning they’re just a click away. Here are 10 of the best true crime movies you can stream right now.
Based on Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s book of the same name, Alan J. Pakula’s film about two dogged reporters who broke the Watergate scandal wide open remains one of the great political dramas in all of cinema. But for true crime nerds, it’s the detective story that lingers, from the cloak-and-dagger secrecy of Woodward’s meetings with “Deep Throat” to Bernstein’s pure, relentless pursuit of every lead and every secret. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman are absolutely magnetic as the two reporters, and the result is an American classic.
Infamous upon its release in 1967 for its graphic violence, Arthur Penn’s depiction of the legendary doomed love story between Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) and Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) is equal parts American folk tale and true crime masterwork. Through dark comedy, raw sexuality, and bluegrass-driven mythmaking, Penn simultaneously depicts the rise of the Bonnie and Clyde legend and the internal strife of the couple, as they slowly start to realize their crime spree can only end one way. Nearly 60 years later, it’s still an effective, bittersweet masterpiece.
Truman Capote’s 1965 nonfiction novel In Cold Blood is one of the foundational texts of modern true crime, and Bennett Miller’s film is both an examination of why the text was so formative, and how it came to be. Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman in an Oscar-winning role, Capote examines both the crime behind In Cold Blood and the author’s dark fascination with it, merging the two stories into a thoughtful, haunting meditation on our public obsession with human darkness. Hoffman is incredible in the title role, and supporting performances from Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr., and Chris Cooper turn the film into an ensemble tour de force.
Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can follows Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) through his own self-described spree (in his autobiography) of cons and getaways in the 1960s, giving Spielberg plenty of opportunities for both a grand tour of a richly textured American decade and for witty visual flourishes. DiCaprio is great in the leading role, Tom Hanks is equally great as the man pursuing him, and the film gets added brilliance from the notion that Abagnale may or may not have lied about all of the details. So, whether the story is true or the story was an elaborate lie that was eventually made into a feature film, we’ve just been taken in by a great con man.
Sidney Lumet’s film based on a Life Magazine article about a bank robbery gone wrong features legendary work from Al Pacino and John Cazale. It’s a tense, deeply human chronicle of desperation, emotion, and white-knuckle fury, all filtered through the lens of the particular American darkness of the 1970s. Whether you’ve seen it once or you’ve seen it a dozen times, it’s one of those movies that just keeps living up to its own hype and remains a truly indispensable piece of American cinema.
Martin Scorsese has made several great works of American true crime, from Casino to The Wolf of Wall Street, but it doesn’t get any better than his 1990 ensemble triumph. Based on Nicholas Pileggi’s book Wiseguy, about the life of mobster Henry Hill, the film is a decades-long chronicle of a tight-knit group of friends as they rise and fall through the mafia. Built on Ray Liotta’s wonderful central performance as Hill, the film also features some all-time great work from Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci (who won an Oscar for the film), Paul Sorvino, and Lorraine Bracco. Throw in a killer soundtrack, Thelma Schoonmaker’s fearless editing, and some of the boldest choices of Scorsese’s iconic directorial career, and this is a ca n’t-miss classic.
Charlize Theron won an Oscar for her transformative work as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in this film, and while her physical transformation grabbed headlines, it’s the emotional depth of the change that still strikes a chord. Theron disappears into Wuornos for Patty Jenkins’ brutal film, embodying the rage, resentment, and desperation of one of America’s most fascinating serial killers. It’s no wonder that no less a cinema luminary than Roger Ebert called her work one of the best performances in all of cinema.
You don’t usually think of “true crime” when you think of Michael Bay, but the action director extraordinaire tried his hand at the genre, and knocked it out of the park, with this film about a trio of bodybuilders (Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony Mackie) who went on a gobsmacking crime spree in the 1990s. The sheer mayhem of the story is perfectly suited to Bay’s filmmaking style, and the merging of the true-crime reality of the narrative with the “Bayhem” visuals creates a uniquely jaw-dropping portrait of American excess.
Inspired by the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalism that broke open the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal in the U.S., this Best Picture winner is both a thrilling detective story and a chronicle of sheer human determination. A clear cinematic successor to All the President’s Men, Tom McCarthy’s film makes even better use of an ensemble cast to tell its story. Led by Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, and Rachel McAdams, the film’s performances are both tremendous exercises in restraint and deeply emotional chronicles of what happens to investigators when they keep drawing closer to an abyss of subsumed suffering.
Some true crime stories simply don’t have neat solutions, and the mystery of the Zodiac Killer looms large in that category. So, it’s no wonder that David Fincher’s film adaptation of Robert Graysmith’s book is both the story of Zodiac’s real-life crimes and the story of Graysmith’s (Jake Gyllenhaal) own relentless pursuit of a truth that might never fully surface. Even when Zodiac answers certain questions within its own version of events, it’s a film about how mysteries consume us the closer we get to them. Shot with haunting precision by Fincher and featuring a slew of unforgettable performances, Zodiac’s mystery just might consume you too.
About a month ago, TikTok user Britt Barbie shared a video detailing all the things she had gotten at a trip to Five Below, ending each description by saying, “period, ahh!” The clip proved to be extremely popular, so much so that Barbie capitalized and released a new song called “Period Ahh Period Uhh” a few days ago.
The song has actually taken off as a TikTok challenge, as Baby Tate, Chlöe, and Bebe Rexha have all since added their own unofficial verses to the track. Now, Lil Nas X has chimed in, too, not with his own verse, but with a Twitter joke, as he tends to do. This afternoon, he tweeted, “wow so y’all gone support the period ahh period uh girl but won’t support me suckin dick behind mcdonald’s on 12th street at 3:14am in a trench coat while glorilla plays in the background? oh ok.”
wow so y’all gone support the period ahh period uh girl but won’t support me suckin dick behind mcdonald’s on 12th street at 3:14am in a trench coat while glorilla plays in the background? oh ok
This comes shortly after Nas’ debut album Montero celebrated its one-year anniversary on September 17. He marked the occasion on Twitter by asking his fans, “BABY MONTERO turns 1 year old today! what’s y’all top 3?!!!” The joke here was that he made it so only people he mentioned in the tweet could reply to it (he mentioned nobody).
We didn’t know how good we had it. From 2011-2017, we were treated to 54 episodes of Billy on the Street, the delightful Fuse-then-TruTV series where Billy Eichner asks questions to and/or screams at random New Yorkers, oftentimes with a celebrity guest like Amy Poehler, Julianne Moore, and Chris Pratt. There’s been random web-only videos since then, including one where he asks the important question of our time (“When will Emma Stone join Instagram?”), but none since 2019 with Mariah Carey.
Folks, Billy is coming back. For one video, at least.
To celebrate the release of his new comedy Bros, Eichner is dropping the first Billy on the Street in three years on Tuesday, September 20, with special guest Paul Rudd. This is not Rudd’s first time roaming the streets of Manhattan with Eichner, but it will (probably?) be his first appearance where the question isn’t: would you have sex with Paul Rudd? This is the Sexiest Man Alive we’re talking about. Of course you would.
Bros is the first major studio movie with an all-openly LGBTQ+ cast, including gay actors playing straight characters. “Look at all the things moviegoers believe — Star Wars, Spider-Man, and Transformers,” Eichner said earlier this year. “You don’t think a gay man can play straight but you believe in Chewbacca?”
When HBO Max launched, the promise was that it would contain all of WarnerMedia’s vast library under one roof. In theory, it’d be the exclusive home for properties like The Lord of the Rings films, DC Comics, and Harry Potter. Although, that last one proved to be tricky right out of the gate as the Harry Potter films bounced back and forth between the burgeoning streamer and Peacock. However, what was a bug caused by the lucrative (and hard to resist) lure of licensing deals is now starting to become the cornerstone of the new content strategy for Warner Bros. Discovery.
Ahead of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premiering on Amazon, a direct competitor of HBO Max, the streaming/shopping behemoth approached WBD about licensing the LOTR films. Surprisingly, the studio agreed to the deal instead of trying to hoard the Peter Jackson films on its own streamer and hope for it to bring in subscribers.
“We have a ton of content that has been sitting idly for just purely principle reasons,” WBD CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said at a Bank of America event Sept. 8. “The Lord of the Rings is a great [example]: It is a nonexclusive window [and] we look at it as what we are giving up versus what additional revenue we are generating,” the CFO added, noting that “there are positive knock on effects on our own platforms as well.” WBD received an undisclosed sum in licensing revenue.
According to THR, the studio is not afraid to license other heavy hitters like Batman. After HBO Max declined to pick up Batman: Caped Crusader, a spiritual successor to the wildly popular Batman: The Animated Series, it left the door open for other streamers to pick up the series with the big three (Amazon, Hulu, Netflix) in top contention.
As for what this means for the future of HBO Max… that’s anybody’s guess. It’s an interesting change in strategy for the platform that, for one brief moment, was looking like one of the strongest competitors in the streaming wars.
Belgium are headed into the 2022 World Cup with some ultra-high expectations. Led by arguably the two best players in the game at their respective positions — midfielder Kevin de Bruyne and goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois — the Belgians hold the distinction of being the No. 2 team in the world in the FIFA rankings and should be able to win a group that includes Canada, Croatia, and Morocco.
As we learned on Monday, Belgium will try to do this with one of the funnier jerseys we have seen in the lead-up to this winter’s World Cup. Adidas — which, to be clear, has knocked most of their kits ahead of Qatar out of the park — revealed that Belgium will wear a red kit with black sleeves that morph into FIRE.
The real reason for this is very simple: Belgium are known as the Red Devils, everyone knows the devil lives in hell, and everyone knows hell has fire everywhere, according to the 2000 Adam Sandler film Little Nicky. The far sillier reason for this is that Adidas and Guy Fieri collaborated here, a theory that several folks on Twitter believe to be true.
Welcome to Flavortown FC, also known as the Belgium World Cup kit.
“Belgium will be wearing a shirt that even Guy Fieri finds aesthetically offensive.”
Kobe Bryant never did as much acting as the NBA legend he was most frequently compared to, Michael Jordan. But the Los Angeles Lakers great did appear in episodes of Moesha (he famously went to prom with the show’s star, Brandy), Sister, Sister, and All That. Bryant was also supposed to appear on Peacock’s surprisingly good Saved by the Bell reboot, but two days before he was scheduled to film his cameo, he was killed in a helicopter crash, along with his teenage daughter and seven others.
“A wild tidbit that I don’t think a lot of people know, or, it’s not important at all because obviously, we are the least of importance when it comes to this legend and his daughter’s passing, but we were actually supposed to film with Kobe two days after he died,” Saved By the Bell actress Josie Totah said on the Dare We Say podcast.
Co-star Alycia Pascual-Peña continued, “I remember learning that he had passed through one of our best friend Anjelika Washington. She called me specifically because she knew that I’d been talking about it for a month with her — that I was so excited to meet Kobe on set and I can’t believe that he was a fan of the first Saved by the Bell and that he was excited to be on the show.”
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