Harry Potter: Wizards Unite took a lot of what made Pokemon Go so popular, put a Harry Potter theme on top of it, and looked to see if fans of the series ran with it. While there was definitely some initial interest around the game, it never reached the same level of popularity as Pokemon Go and unsurprisingly it fell out of mainstream discussions fairly quickly.
Having said that, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite did still have a community that played the game. One report stated that it managed to make about $40 million in profits since releasing back in June 2019. The problem is that compared to Niantic’s larger title, Pokemon Go, it was a failure. As a result, once the current storyline is completed, the game is going to be shut down.
Anyone still interested in playing it will have until the end of Jan. 2022, but make sure to download it before Dec. 6, 2021. Niantic explained its decision to shut the game down on its blog.
We launched Harry Potter: Wizards Unite more than two years ago, bringing together a community of witches and wizards from all over the globe in an epic quest to put an end to the Calamity and keep the wizarding world safe. In the coming months, we’ll be concluding the story and closing the game on January 31st, 2022. Players can read more on our Harry Potter: Wizards Unite blog for full details on what they can look forward to leading up to the finale, including a variety of in-game events, new content and gameplay changes.
Not all games are meant to last forever. Our goal with Harry Potter: Wizards Unite was to bring the magic of the wizarding world to life for millions of players as they stepped outside and explored their neighborhoods. We accomplished that together, delivering a two-year narrative story arc that will soon complete.
While Niantic is correct that no game is meant to last forever, they must be pretty certain that nobody is going to miss the game to be shutting it down so quickly after the conclusion of its story. Even games that aren’t being supported anymore will frequently keep servers up long after the game is finished so any current players can continue playing the game.
We have to wonder what this means for any future games Niantic will release. They recently released a Pikmin AR game called Pikmin Bloom and are also working on a similar game for Transformers. If these don’t manage to bring in record profits the way Pokemon Go have, will they be forced to share a similar fate as Wizard’s Unite? We hope not. Games, no matter the quality, shouldn’t be able to disappear so quickly.
Lorde officially kicked off her Solar Power era last summer with a sunny and carefree visual alongside her title track. But the joyous nature of the video showed only one side to the themes explored on Lorde’s LP. Now sharing a video to her song “Fallen Fruit,” Lorde explores the repercussions of humans’ obsession with consumption.
The visual, directed by Joel Kefali and Lorde herself, opens in the same location as her “Solar Power” visual. Instead of showing only the sunny beaches, though, it constantly flips from daytime to nighttime, when everything has been destroyed and set on fire. In a newsletter emailed to her fans alongside the visual’s release, Lorde said the “Fallen Fruit” video was meant to symbolize how treating nature with “disrespect” will ultimately lead to its destruction:
“In the ‘Solar Power’ video, you were introduced to the island as a lush paradise — glistening water, blue skies, not a grain of sand out of place (barring that pesky beach trash…). Cut to: humans doing as they do, getting greedy, treating the land with disrespect and stripping it of its beauty. There’ll always another pristine place to start again, right?
The gardens that were once lush and fruitful are now on fire. The fishing boats are busted up and overturned. All that’s left of the peaches are their pits. Amid all that, my character makes a choice.”
Watch Lorde’s “Fallen Fruit” video above.
Solar Power is out now via Universal. Get it here.
As the year winds down, rye whiskey has proven itself the most interesting category of American whiskey in 2021. New expressions are taking mash bills, distillation methods, maturation, and even barrel finishing to new heights. One of the best examples of how great, unique, and inspired rye whiskey can be just dropped. The new rye is a collaboration between two soon-to-be icons of American whiskey, Nicole Austin of George Dickel and Todd Leopold of Leopold Bros.
George Dickel x Leopold Bros. Collaboration Blend marries new Tennessee rye with hardcore craft rye from Colorado. That alone should pique your interest in this whiskey, but there’s so much more going on here. This whiskey is about what’s in the bottle, sure. It’s also about a friendship between two of the most interesting distillers working in the industry. Nicole Austin, General Manager and Distiller at Cascade Hollow Distilling Co. in Tennessee, and Todd Leopold, co-founder and Master Distiller at Leopold Bros. Distillery in Colorado, created this blended rye based on a long-time friendship and mutual respect for what the other is doing.
Leopold is renowned for creating some of the most sought-after craft spirits in the game (his absinthe is arguably the best American version on the market). He also runs one of the more interesting craft distilleries in America. The heart of the facility is the malting house, where Leopold’s crew sources unique and standard beer grains and malts them in-house — which is rare in the whiskey game. But the bespoke aspects of Leopold’s distillery go beyond the massive amount of grains being malted on-site. There are propagated and wild yeasts at play. The fermenting tanks aren’t just some stainless steel vats you see at every distillery from Osaka to Orlando. Instead, Leopold has wooden tanks made from Oregon pine for his fermenters, which allows the bacterias and yeasts a place to hide and grow, adding depth to the mash.
That’s before you get to Leopold’s hand-crafted “Three Chamber Still” that Todd Leopold himself re-engineered from hundred-year-old manuscripts and plans. The old-school still works not only as a method to extract ethanol (alcohol) from the mash but it also extracts oils and deeply hidden aromatic esters at the same time, adding a serious depth to the spirit as it comes off the still. That spirit is Leopold’s much-sought-after Three Chamber Rye Whiskey, which is technically referred to as a “heavy whiskey.” This type of rye whiskey was largely lost to American whiskey shortly after World War II and has been given new life by Leopold as “a revival of a lost American tradition.”
This is all before we even get into the four years of maturation or the fact that Leopold found someone to grow Abruzzi Rye (the preferred rye of pre-Prohibition America) for his Three Chamber Rye mash bill. Taken all together, it’s a whole lot of technique. And that’s only 1/2 of the collaboration.
Diageo
As cool as Leopold’s Three Chamber Rye is, “heavy” rye whiskeys made using this method back in the day were usually blended with a lighter column still rye to render out some of the heavier aspects of the whiskey. That’s where Nicole Austin comes in.
Cascade Hollow, home of the Dickel distillery, feels like the biggest little distillery in the whiskey game. It’s nestled in a small hollow on a creek and framed by hillsides covered in deciduous forests (best enjoyed in fall, of course). It feels well-seasoned and worn in. The mash tanks, grist mills, stills, and filtration tanks have real character from being refitted and updated over the decades. You can see the hammer marks on the outside of the grain feeder where generations of whiskey makers had to tap the vessel to keep that grain moving. And yet… Austin’s column still rye is a completely new product in the whiskey industry. That’s a stark contrast to Leopold’s sparkling new Denver facility with hand-crafted everything, which is, ironically, focused on old-school spirits from a bygone era.
That retro feeling at Cascade Hollow is what endears me (and others) to it. It’s kind of like Nicole Austin moved into one of the world’s most respected kitchens with all the seasoned pans, ovens, and appliances you could ever want offering that x-factor you just can’t quite get otherwise. Now she’s playing with all the toys in that kitchen and literally reinventing what’s on the menu from top to bottom — while still respecting the generations that came before her. The equipment at Cascade Hollow is older but it’s seasoned. It’s worth spot welding here and there to keep it functioning because that character is what makes it special.
I’d argue that it’s in the “old distillery making new expressions and new distillery making old expressions” dichotomy where this collaboration really shines. Neither Austin nor Leopold are afraid to try and fail and try again; they’re experimenters and tinkerers. They’re also deeply geeky about the infinite minutiae of not only making whiskey now but how folks made whiskey 25, 50, 100, 200 years ago. That shared interest has bonded the two whiskey makers in the pursuit of making something, anything new and interesting for us to drink.
All of which leads us to the George Dickel x Leopold Bros Collaboration Blend. Let’s take a look at what’s actually in this new bottle of rye whiskey.
The blend is built from four-year-old rye made in Denver at Leopold’s distillery. The rye is their Three Chamber Rye. The mash bill is 80 percent Abruzzi Rye and 20 percent Leopold Floor Malt. That’s blended with George Dickel’s un-released new column still rye, which is a 95 percent rye cut with five percent malted barley.
Tasting Notes:
The nose on this rings like crafty rye with clear notes of bright florals (think lavender and orange blossom) next to an almost woody touch of maple syrup straight from the treetap with a very mild dusting of dark cacao powder and soft leather that really draws you in. The palate delivers on the promise of the nose, with touches of holiday-spiced orange oils and rosewater leading towards light marzipan next to a prickly bramble of berry bushes hanging heavy with dark, sweet, and slightly tart fruit. The florals come in again — with lavender leading the way but this time — but the note is tied to salted caramel-covered dates with little specks of the dried flowers decorating the sweet confection. The mid-palate holds onto the sweet and meaty date while bitter yet floral Earl Grey tea with a healthy dollop of fresh honey leads towards a finish full of more of that powdery dark cacao just touched by dry chili flakes, adding a slight embrace of warmth to the very backend.
The Bottle:
The bottle is a classic Dickel long-neck. The wrapper around the stopper is signed by both Austin and Leopold. The actual label is a double-label with Dickel’s green rye label up top and Leopold Bros.’s clean white label below.
Bottom Line:
This feels and drinks like a solid workhorse whiskey. The rye is very sippable on its own and really benefits from a few drops of water (or a single rock) to let it bloom in the glass. Those floral and dried chili notes will really pop with a deeper orange and chocolate vibe in the glass.
That being said, this also works beautifully, perhaps most ideally, as a cocktail rye. The floral and dark fruity notes really shine through in an elevated Manhattan or even something citrus-forward like a smash or sour.
In the end, you’re getting a $250 bottle of whiskey (that’s how much Leopold Bros. Three Chamber Rye Whiskey costs) cut with a brand new, very unique rye for around $100. That’s a steal for the quality of the juice in this bottle.
Ranking:
93/100 — This is a very unique and delicious rye. However, there wasn’t a big “wow” factor that I would need to bump that number even higher. That being said, this is an excellent collab whiskey that makes me really excited and hopeful that there’ll be more like this from both Nicole Austin and Todd Leopold in the near future.
The wait for the follow-up to Summer Walker’s breakthrough 2019 debut Over It has been a roller coaster, one that’s now reaching the top of the climb before that final freefall that everyone looks forward to. First, Walker projected confirmation of the album’s November release timeline on the side of a building outside of the BET Awards, giving off heavy Yeezus guerilla marketing vibes. Then came a trailer announcing the November 5th official release date for Still Over It. That was followed by a tracklist teaser with an announcement for her next single, “Ex For A Reason,” featuring JT of City Girls, which dropped three days later.
Considering Over Itbroke Beyoncé’s record for the largest streaming week ever for an album by a female R&B artist, the build-up here is warranted. And now, today, Walker tweeted out the album cover along with the entire tracklist, and it’s stacked. Aside from “Ex For A Reason,” highlights include the album’s opening track, “Bitter,” with narration Cardi B, “No Love” featuring SZA, “Dat Right There” featuring Pharrell, plus tracks with Lil Durk, Ari Lennox, and more.
So far, it’s been a big day in Saturday Night Live musical guest news. This morning, Ed Sheeran revealed that he will be able to perform on the show as planned following his positive COVID test. Now, not only has SNL confirmed the news, but they’ve also revealed their next two musical guests after Sheeran: Taylor Swift and Saweetie.
Swift will guest on the November 13 episode hosted by Jonathan Majors, while Saweetie will perform on the Simu Liu-hosted episode on November 20.
This will be Saweetie’s first time on the program. As for Swift, she’s an SNL veteran. Her first stint as musical guest came in 2009, and her upcoming performance will be her fourth. In her second 2009 episode, Swift had the rare honor of serving most as host and musical guest.
Maybe you’re not in the mood for entertainment about a pandemic that wipes out much of the world’s population. I get it. That being said, Station Eleven looks pretty dang good. Based on Emily St. John Mandel’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel of the same name, the HBO Max limited series is described as a “post-apocalyptic saga spanning multiple timelines” that tells “the stories of survivors of a devastating flu as they attempt to rebuild and reimagine the world anew while holding on to the best of what’s been lost.”
Cheery stuff, but Station Eleven has a solid cast, including Mackenzie Davis, Himesh Patel, Gael García Bernal, and Lori Petty, and the behind-the-scenes talent includes creator Patrick Somerville (The Leftovers, Maniac) and Atlanta director Hiro Murai.
Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin praised Station Eleven as one of the best books he read in 2014. “One could, I suppose, call it a post-apocalypse novel, and it is that, but all the usual tropes of that subgenre are missing here, and half the book is devoted to flashbacks to before the coming of the virus that wipes out the world, so it’s also a novel of character, and there’s this thread about a comic book and Doctor Eleven and a giant space station and… oh, well, this book should NOT have worked, but it does,” he wrote on his blog. “It’s a deeply melancholy novel, but beautifully written, and wonderfully elegiac… a book that I will long remember, and return to.”
Station Eleven, which also stars Daniel Zovatto, David Wilmot, Matilda Lawler, Philippine Velge, Nabhaan Rizwan, and Danielle Deadwyler, debuts on HBO Max on December 16.
The current incarnation of the cancel culture discussion, inevitably, revolves around Dave Chappelle’s trans jokes in The Closer. The backlash led to a Netflix employee walkout and Chappelle complaining that he’s endured the “worst three weeks of my life” while continuing to, uh, tell trans jokes at sold-out venues. So, Dave hasn’t technically been “cancelled,” but that’s really beside the point because the subject of cancel culture popped up in Hollywood Reporter interview with O.G. SNL star Dan Aykroyd (and famously one of the Not Ready for Primetime Players).
Granted, Aykroyd was on hand to discuss the upcoming Ghostbusters: Afterlife movie, and Chappelle’s name never comes up, but it’s not hard to guess that this question’s in the air because of the adversarial vibe that Chappelle continues to nurture. And Aykroyd is here to wonder why comedians can’t simply write jokes without resorting to “divisive cards” (or for that matter, poop jokes), which is a relevant point:
“There is enough range in humor where you don’t have to go scatological and you don’t have to go pulling any divisive cards to get a laugh. There is so much in the world to comment on that is outside the realm of offensiveness. As a writer, you can go to other areas and have successful creative endeavors. Scatological humor is fun. It’s easy laughs. But there is more intelligent writing that can happen if you stay away from the offensive material that should be rightly canceled for its hurtfulness.
Aykroyd continued with a personal example, which is that he’s perfectly capable of, say, doing a James Brown “imitation” because “I do his voice pretty good” and “[h]e was one of my best friends.” Yet he decided, “[M]aybe I shouldn’t anymore.” Seth Rogen recently made a similar point, that comedians should accept that some jokes don’t age well, and that’s that. Chappelle, on the other hand, appears to be in the business of being divisive, and with that, he should expect to feel the backlash.
After over a year of dominating the live music and live streaming spaces, the Verzuz brand is expanding to encompass live streaming video games with the next evolution of its competition format, Verzuz Gamez. While the musical hits battles have always been more about celebrating the legacies of those performers who have had a huge impact on hip-hop culture throughout the years, this time, the battle will be a straight-up fight to the finish as the inaugural edition of Verzuz Games will pit a pair of “big” rappers against two “lil” ones in a Call Of Duty: Vanguard tournament.
On Wednesday, November 3 at 6 pm PT, Big Boi and Big Sean will face off against Lil Jon and Lil Tecca for gaming supremacy in a three-hour, multi-round tournament format hosted by T-Pain with a performance by Migos. Aside from having a pretty cool theme, the teams also seem pretty well-balanced, what with pairing the oldest contestant with the youngest (you gotta handicap the zoomer, who was forged in the fires of online multiplayer chaos, by sticking him with the one guy who was around for Pong, otherwise Tecca would definitely run amok and clean up the field). Meanwhile, we’ll have to see if Big Boi and Big Sean can share chemistry as well as a misnomered moniker against one of rap’s first Twitch streaming adopters (Lil Jon — forever ahead of his time).
It’s been several months since the first photos from the upcoming film House Of Gucciturned Adam Driver and Lady Gaga into an instant meme. Since then, we’ve gotten many more previews of the project, including an official trailer that shows Driver and Gaga trying out their best Italian accents. It’s an accent that Gaga now says took her months to perfect — nine month to be exact.
The singer sat down for a cover interview with British Vogue to discuss her role in the film, which is set to premiere in theaters on November 26. During their conversation, Gaga reveals she tried her hand at method acting, striving to completely embody her leading role as Patrizia Reggiani. That included dying her hair brown, taking up photography, and strictly speaking in an Italian accent for nine months both on and off camera.
“It is three years since I started working on it,” Gaga said about the film, “and I will be fully honest and transparent: I lived as [Reggiani] for a year and a half. And I spoke with an accent for nine months of that. Off camera, I never broke. I stayed with her.”
Elsewhere in the discussion, Gaga talked about her co-star Salma Hayek’s response to her method acting. “We were in between takes and Salma was like, ‘Oh, this f*cking method actor is over here. You know, she’s not talking to me right now.’ Because I was doing sense memory work next to her, and she was making fun of me while I was sitting there doing it. And I didn’t even laugh. When the scene was over, I flipped at her and I said, ‘You’re ridiculous!’ and I started laughing and I kissed her. It was a wonderful set, but I’m very serious when I work.”
Ready Gaga’s full interview with British Voguehere.
Tomorrow, Netflix Games will start rolling out on the Netflix mobile app. First on Android, with iOS on the way.
It’s early days, but we’re excited to start bringing you exclusive games, with no ads, no additional fees and no in-app purchases. pic.twitter.com/ofNGF4b8At
Announced by Netflix earlier today, Netflix Gaming is a mobile gaming service being tacked on to pre-existing Netflix memberships at no additional cost. Even better, Netflix has explicitly promised the service will also feature “no ads, no additional fees, and no in-app purchases,” playfully adding “don’t let the Demogorgon tell you otherwise” in their blog post.
As of today, the service is available through the Netflix app on all Android devices with the iOS upgrade reportedly on the way. Netflix members can access the gaming service by logging into the Netflix app, accessing Netflix Games from the homepage or “games” tab, selecting the game they wish to play, and downloading it through their phone’s app store. There are currently five games available through the streaming service, with “a whole lot more” on the way, according to the company. Until then, however, subscribers are encouraged to download and play the Netflix original-inspired titles Stranger Things: 1984 and Stranger Things 3: The Game, as well as the more simplistic Shooting Hoops, Card Blast, and Teeter Up.
Seeing as the project is still in its early stages, we’re still unsure of Netflix’s intended timeline for iOS and various other details, such as will players be able to stream the games they play. However, Netflix has confirmed the games will be available in “many of the languages [they] offer on service” and members will be able to play games on multiple mobile devices on the same account — as long as they stay under their pre-existing device limit. Netflix Games will also be restricted solely to adult profiles in order to prevent kids from playing any games that could potentially have mature themes. Lastly, while some games will require an internet connection, others will be available to play offline in an effort for Netflix to “make those long trips and areas with bad Wi-Fi a lot more tolerable.”
As for what’s next for Netflix Gaming, it certainly looks like the powerhouse streamer might just be working on building up a library of games exclusive for Netflix subscribers, perhaps with the intention to monetize the gaming subscription service later on down the road. Earlier this year, the company purchased indie game studio Night School Studios — the creators behind narrative-driven titles such as Oxenfree and Afterparty — with the intention of having the team work with them to create more games based on Netflix original titles. With any luck, we might see some pretty cool announcements come out of the partnership in the near future.
Either way, Netflix seems to be entering the project with a lot of zeal and appreciation for gaming, which comes as no surprise considering just much of Netflix’s programming is based off of video games. According to Netflix, they “love games,” and are “excited” to take their first step into the world of game development:
“We love games, whether it’s physical games (Floor Is Lava), mind games (The Circle) or Squid Game. And we love entertaining our members. That’s why we’re excited to take our first step in launching Netflix games on mobile to the world.”
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Let the Games Begin