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Megan Thee Stallion has been embroiled in an ongoing battle with her initial label, 1501 Certified Entertainment, and label head Carl Crawford. The label has reportedly been blocking the rapper from releasing music on her own terms, and though it looked like she was close to a new deal in the beginning of 2021, things still seem shaky for the Houston star, legally speaking.

According to a new report from TMZ, Megan is back in court today trying to get the chance to release her remix of BTS’ latest smash hit, “Butter.” According to the label, they don’t think her collaboration with the biggest K-Pop band of all time will be good for her career. Megan argues they are just trying to block her release in order to get a payoff. In her mind, a remix of “Butter” will be instrumental (heh) in expanding her international fanbase.

Last March, Megan sued the label for blocking her release of new music and was able to get an order that prevents them from controlling her release schedule. She’s now citing that previous order in her new suit, alleging that 1501 blocking the “Butter” remix is another violation. Hopefully Megan will win this one, because hearing her verse on “Butter” will make my summer.

The world lost one of the biggest figures in music over the past 60 years with the passing of Rolling Stones’ drummer Charlie Watts, 80, on Tuesday. Watts has been a part of every show The Stones have played since January 1963, although it was announced earlier this month he wouldn’t be playing with the band on its upcoming No Filter Tour.

No cause has been given for his death.

Watts was an anomaly in a band that was known for its roguish behavior. He was an elegant, quiet man who preferred to wear tailored, classic suits as opposed to the rock ‘n roll bad-boy look that typified the rest of the band.

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His playing was never flashy but it was a major reason why the Stones had such a unique swing. “Charlie’s got rock-solid time. His playing swings and his shuffles are great because of his comfort with jazz-ride patterns,” Rob Wallis of drumming video originators Hudson Music, said according to Drum Magazine.

“Without him, The Stones would be a completely different-sounding band with a very different feel,” he added.

Film Director and Stones’ aficionado Martin Scorsese highlighted Watts’ playing and presence in his 2008 concert film “Shine a Light.” For the song “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” the “Goodfellas” director turned the audience’s perspective to Watts’, giving us a unique look at how he’s seen the world from the stage over the past five decades.

Charlie Watts / Jumpin’ Jack Flash

www.youtube.com

Rest in peace, Charlie.

The return of moviegoing — which is to say people paying cash money to watch motion pictures in motion picture theaters — hasn’t gone as swimmingly as Hollywood hoped. Audiences still seem reluctant to return. Part of it may be due to the pandemic, which still rages. Part of it could be due to the fact that many of these films are also debuting on streamers, sometimes as part of subscriptions. With the appearance of the Delta variant, some studios delayed some upcoming titles. One of them is Sony, who two weeks ago bumped Venom: Let There be Carnage, due in September, a mere three weeks. Now it’s possible it may get nudged quite a bit further.

A new report by Vulture finds multiple sources telling them the studio that they may be planning to delay the Tom Hardy-led comic book sequel all the way to January 21 of next year. That, mind you, is the same date as Morbius, the Jared Leto vampire-superhero opus. Venom 2 was mysteriously MIA at the Las Vegas’ ongoing CinemaCon, the annual gathering for movie theater chain execs. But, Vulture’s sources claim, may simply announce the move at the end.

“They didn’t want to flash to exhibitors that they’re scared of the early fall,” said one source. “Why would you move it three weeks? Buys you nothing.”

Sony declined to comment on Vulture’s reporting, and as of now it’s still due on October 15, having been moved from September 24. But it’s not the only movie that was recently bumped. Paramount’s Clifford the Big Red Dog was recently pulled from its September release date, while Sony sold Hotel Transylvania: Transformania, its fourth and last in the series, to Amazon.

But not all is bleak. Dune and Top Gun: Maverick are still holding fast to their fall release dates, as is the Bond film No Time to Die. Vulture does claim Marvel’s Eternals may be bumped should Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, due September 3, underperforms.

Anyway, please get vaccinated. And even if you are, wear a mask. Movies are great and we all want them back, but living is even better.

(Via Vulture)

After returning earlier this year with a heartbreaking tribute to her late mother, “Wish You Were Here,” Korean legend CL is back with a fiery new rap song. Literally dubbed “Spicy,” the new track ushers in a return to form for the early K-Pop icon, who is gearing up to release her new album, Alpha. Collaborating with producers Baauer and Sokodomo for the song, CL compared the new song to some of her earlier work like “Hello B*tches.”

“I’m very excited to start my project, ALPHA, with ‘SPICY,’” she said in a press release. “‘SPICY’ is classically CL, following ‘The Baddest Female,’ ‘Hello B*tches,’ even ‘Menboong/ MTBD.’ It’s a song that celebrates just being yourself. For me, being Korean, being Asian… I’m celebrating all that, and that attitude. Just being myself. And I’m so honored to have John Malkovich on the song talking about energy, power and chemistry!”

CL (born Lee Chae-rin) mixes rap, pop, and K-pop for a seriously inventive new sound that expresses the chaotic nature of 2021 perfectly. First breaking out at 17 as the frontwoman of K-Pop girl group 2NE1, CL has been releasing solo music since 2016, and Alpha will be her next bilingual project. Out in October, the album will be preceded by at least one more single dropping next month. For now, enjoy “Spicy” above, and if you need even more CL in the meantime, look for her appearance on Season 2 of Dave.

Spike Lee’s new joint, a four-part documentary love letter to his city that’s called NYC EPICENTERS 9/11➔2021½, premiered this past weekend on HBO ahead of the 20th anniversary of the day that the Twin Towers fell at the hands of terrorists. Lee brings his quintessential New York voice to weave a vibrant tapestry from hundreds of interviews from residents, first respondents, journalists, and politicians. The end result takes the ongoing pandemic and also the Black Lives Matter movement into account for all the positives and negatives that the city has experienced for two decades.

The limited series, as well, is a provocative one, and that includes Spike Lee indulging interviews with conspiracy theorists in the final episode. While speaking with the New York Times, Lee explains why he included the perspectives of a truther group called Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, and that’s because, well, he doesn’t necessarily disagree. “I mean, I got questions,” Lee admitted. “And I hope that maybe the legacy of this documentary is that Congress holds a hearing, a congressional hearing about 9/11.”

If you’re wondering if Spike Lee might put himself in the jet-fuel-can’t-melt-steel camp, that answer would be, uh, yep:

“The amount of heat that it takes to make steel melt, that temperature’s not reached. And then the juxtaposition of the way Building 7 fell to the ground – when you put it next to other building collapses that were demolitions, it’s like you’re looking at the same thing. But people going to make up their own mind.”

Lee stresses that he’s not attempting to change anyone’s mind about what happened on 9/11 in Manhattan on that horrible day. Rather, he insists, “My approach is put the information in the movie and let people decide for themselves. I respect the intelligence of the audience.” Well, now that’s all out there, and HBO’s NYC EPICENTERS 9/11➔2021½ currently airs on Sunday evenings.

(Via New York Times)

Shanda Lynn Poitra was born and raised on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota. She lived there until she was 24 years old when she left for college at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks.

“Unfortunately,” she says, “I took my bad relationship with me. At the time, I didn’t realize it was so bad, much less, abusive. Seeing and hearing about abusive relationships while growing up gave me the mentality that it was just a normal way of life.”

Those college years away from home were difficult for a lot of reasons. She had three small children — two in diapers, one in elementary school — as well as a full-time University class schedule and a part-time job as a housekeeper.

“I wore many masks back then and clothing that would cover the bruises,” she remembers. “Despite the darkness that I was living in, I was a great student; I knew that no matter what, I HAD to succeed. I knew there was more to my future than what I was living, so I kept working hard.”

While searching for an elective class during this time, she came across a one-credit, 20-hour IMPACT self-defense class that could be done over a weekend. That single credit changed her life forever. It helped give her the confidence to leave her abusive relationship and inspired her to bring IMPACT classes to other Native women in her community.

I walked into class on a Friday thinking that I would simply learn how to handle a person trying to rob me, and I walked out on a Sunday evening with a voice so powerful that I could handle the most passive attacks to my being, along with physical attacks.”

It didn’t take long for her to notice the difference the class was making in her life.

“I was setting boundaries and people were either respecting them or not, but I was able to acknowledge who was worth keeping in my life and who wasn’t,” she says.

Following the class, she also joined a roller derby league where she met many other powerful women who inspired her — and during that summer, she found the courage to leave her abuser.

“As afraid as I was, I finally had the courage to report the abuse to legal authorities, and I had the support of friends and family who provided comfort for my children and I during this time,” she says.

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A lot of change happened at once. As a newly single mom, she ended up leaving med school and transferring to a tech school to learn a trade. And because she knew what her abuser was capable of, she took a lot of precautions to keep herself and her family safe.

“I worked and studied hard while my children were in daycare and school, spent the evenings cooking & cleaning, and studied again once the children were in bed. After two years of classes, months of clinical rotations, and becoming alumni at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN, I graduated as a Surgical Technologist and began working full-time,” she remembers.

“It took a couple of years for my nerves to fully relax, but they finally did. It was so amazing to me how empowering it was to advocate for myself, I never stopped.”

She moved back to the reservation in 2015 to work for the health service and to be around family again.

“Within my first week of being home, I noticed so much violence that I once thought was normal behavior,” she says. “One morning, I got a phone call notifying me that my childhood friend was beaten and left for dead by her children’s father; she was flown out to the nearest ICU and taken in for surgery for a hematoma in her skull.”

“I knew something had to be done about this.”

Domestic abuse is a big problem on reservations like Shanda’s. More than four in five American Indian and Alaska Native women and men have experienced violence in their lifetime, and more than one in three experienced violence in the past year.

She spoke with several community members about the violence she was seeing, but she found they were quick to blame the victim. That’s when it occurred to her: “What if I started a self-defense class for Native women?” Shanda says. So she called up her former instructor, found a group of instructors, and attended another class with her new team. And from there they founded their own chapter.

“IMPACT is being used all over the world, yet has never been available to Indigenous communities until now,” she says. “Currently, our team consists of four core members; two suit instructors and two female lead instructors, all Indigenous members of our Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewas. All members are active in empowering our community in many ways.”

“During the closing circles in our workshops, we all get to see the strength and transformation these women worked so hard for. We get to see them take their power back from those who hurt them.”

And that is why Shanda is being named one of Tory Burch’s “Empowered Women” this year. The $5000 donation will be made to IMPACT to help them bring IMPACT to more indigenous communities across the country and further their mission to help Native women recognize and protect themselves from physical violence.

“Empowering women should be as common as knowing how to perform CPR,” Shanda says.

“Truth is, I know what it feels like to be on both sides of empowerment. I know the fear, pain, and humiliation that comes with domestic violence, sexual assault, trauma, and PTSD and I recognize it in my students,” she continues.

“I also know what it feels like to step out of that proverbial cage. To be able to breathe freely. To speak freely. To walk the earth in a good and healthy way. I wish this freedom and empowerment for every person on earth.”

To learn more about Tory Burch and Upworthy’s Empowered Women program visit https://www.toryburch.com/empoweredwomen/. Nominate an inspiring woman in your community today!

Almost from the moment, in Reminiscence‘s opening voiceover, when Hugh Jackman’s character describes memory as “A bead on the necklace of time,” you can sense that what you’re watching isn’t going to be the usual thing.

The film, written and directed by Lisa Joy (the co-creator of Westworld, with her husband, Jonathan Nolan) is set in a flooded, future Miami where nostalgia is big business. Hugh Jackman plays Bannister, a guy who, along with his partner, Watts (Thandie Newton), sells memories. Reminiscence is sci-fi in a way that we rarely see, action-packed, but not action-driven, neither bellicose nor satirical. It’s dense with mythology, so dense that it’s almost disorienting at first, and yet Reminiscence‘s futurism is a means more to explore feelings than to escape them, both unapologetically deep and entirely earnest.

Partly, Reminiscence isn’t the usual kind of thing because Lisa Joy isn’t. Before she wrote for television, Joy was a Stanford grad who worked as a McKinsey consultant, before eventually graduating from Harvard law. She loved writing all the while, though was perhaps too much the product of pragmatic immigrants (her father is English, her mother Taiwanese) to pursue it as a career. At least, not until a spec script for Veronica Mars she wrote while studying for the bar got her her first writing job — on the show Pushing Daisies, which she eventually left to write for Burn Notice, on which she was the only female writer. Reminiscence, from a script she first sold in 2013, is imbued with that DNA: casually brainy, unabashedly romantic.

One thing you have to keep in mind reading a transcript of Lisa Joy is that while she actually does quote Yeats poems that she can recite by heart — a phenomenon I thought only existed in movies, I had never before experienced it in real life — she also sounds every bit the part of someone who grew up in New Jersey. It’s an accent that’s recognizable more for its urgency than its vaguely nasal vowel tones, defined more by its dishiness than its slightly mushy consonants or staccato phrasing. Which is to say, it’s not really the accent of someone you expect to extemporaneously recite Yeats. Yet that’s part of Joy’s appeal. “I don’t want to stay in my lane,” she says.

It makes me very curious about the vernacular stew of the Joy-Nolan household, which combines Joy — conversant in Chinese, with a Jersey accent — and Nolan, who somehow sounds like a guy from Chicago despite being the brother of Christopher Nolan, who sounds distinctly British (Lisa and Jonathan actually met at the premiere of Memento). This has always fascinated me, but I never quite got around to asking about it. It’s just a little hard to broach that subject when someone is in the midst of quoting Yeats.

Or probably Lisa Joy just stories that were more interesting to explore than her husband’s confusing accent. Like the time Drew Goddard torpedoed his own director’s meeting to defend her vision in front of a sexist movie exec. Or the time her parents stuffed her in the back of a U-Haul to go see a Michael J. Fox movie. We spoke over Zoom this past week.

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Vince, I’m going to warn you something right now. There is a chance I might throw up because my son gave me his stomach bug, but do not take it personally if I do.

I’ll take it as a high compliment.

I’m going to puke just a little bit, but I’ll just rebound. We’ll time how long the puke takes, be sure to extend the interview that exact amount, and I will try to hit the mute button beforehand if it does happen.

Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ll be here either way. So, I thought there were some really cool establishing shots in this. Can you tell me about creating the look of the setting?

The world, this kind of sunken world, was always really important to me, but I also knew that I had about a quarter of the budget of most films. The great thing is we built some of it practically, so we were able to build the Coconut Club and that street and sink it. But I knew that I wanted to establish a world in a way that not a lot of films of this budget are allowed explore. I think working on Westworld has taught me some tricks about doing things on a budget, and I knew that water was getting easier for people to make in visual effects. I also am a big believer in giving my incredible visual effects supervisor all the tools he needed to succeed, which are getting as many drone shots and as many practical shots as possible so he’s never just building from nothing.

So was that a real skyline in the opening?

Yeah, we went to Miami. I think we scraped together three days to shoot and ran around like crazy people with Jonah [Jonathan Nolan] and Hugh, getting changed on public trains just to have the shots. I told my cast before we went, I was like, we can’t afford to do any of this stuff so you guys cannot bring an entourage or anything like that, I can’t pay for their ticket. And then I flew coach! I was like, I’m going to get these shots cause I need them for Miami. I do think that if you’re trying to sell Miami, you can’t shoot a whole thing in New Orleans. It really helps to ground it to do a bit of practical photography.

Did you always have this envisioned as a movie or was it ever a series or a book in your head?

I came from TV initially, and so of course the idea of a private investigator of the mind, of course you could have a weekly installment. But I didn’t really want to do that, just in terms of the repetitiveness of it. Features, that’s what I do almost like a hobby. My day job is in TV. When I’m writing something for myself, that’s when I go to features and I’m often trying to figure out something for myself. It’s a form of expiation in a way, more so than a journal entry or something. And so for me, I was fascinated by the idea of nostalgia.

I was pregnant at the time and my grandfather had died and I was thinking about all the times in our lives that would be meaningful, but I was also coming off of a very hard experience at work, where I was the only woman staffed on a show for a couple years. And this was before #MeToo, and there were no repercussions. I used to think of that poem, the Yeats poem, Leda and the Swan about, did she put on his knowledge and his wisdom and his power before the indifferent beak could let her drop? And it’s about the fact that I didn’t have any power and I had to contend with all these ideas of what men think about women. Even when I was selling Reminiscence, it was, it should be a romance, or why isn’t there a rom-com? Don’t you want to do that?

And I was like, no I want to do an action noir. I don’t want to stay in my lane. And that’s why I had to kind of sell it on the open market. Because when I walked into a room, all of a sudden, the idea of what I should be writing would change. I’ve gravitated towards male genres. Westerns, sci-fi, and now noir, in part because it allows me to tease out a little undercurrent of something that I think people have overlooked, the perspective of a woman in some of these things.

I read in another interview that you weren’t allowed to watch TV or movies as a kid.

Yeah, I just wasn’t allowed to, man! I was really nerdy. I grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey and we didn’t have a lot of money. I’m a first-generation American so, I don’t know. They wanted me to study and I did, and I read a lot of books. But even books were a little too like, you’re not going to get a job with health insurance reading books. I’m sure you know this, it’s like, anybody who says they want to do anything involving writing, every parent’s mind just explodes a little bit and bleeds out of their ear, which is understandable cause you always want your kids to be safe.

Although once, for a birthday party, my parents took me and a couple of classmates, they rented, I can’t believe this, a U-Haul truck. You know one of those moving vehicles? We were, I don’t know, seven, ten, something like that, and we all bundled into the back and they closed the thing and it was pitch dark. No anything, just a bunch of young elementary school kids in the back of U-Haul. We drove to the movie theater, and the movie they took me to, my mom liked it because she thought it might be about a very successful person, because it was called The Secret of My Success. And it’s not about some dude getting into Harvard or anything like that. I do remember, at one point, a girl pulls down a guy’s pants in a swimming pool and my mom screamed. And so, I didn’t get to see a lot of them, but I do remember that one.

This one obviously feels like it has a film noir, femme fatale kind of influence. Were there specific movies or books that you were drawing on?

Yeah, I wanted to go with the classics. For me, part of the fun is just like in Westworld, how we looked at a lot of traditional westerns, and then the thing that we tried to do was pry at it from a different angle. So it was a subtle thing, but it was also a kind of turning it inside out. And so I was looking and studying a bunch of Fatales and one of them that I loved a lot for this was Out of the Past. That is a pretty good example of a detective chasing a femme fatale and kind of trying to figure out who the hell she is. Vertigo, which is not really noir, but about the male gaze. I thought, Hitchcock, he’s a pretty good director to look at for inspiration. Slaughterhouse Five is a novel I love and I found deeply moving and also deals with time and kind of meaning. And then a bunch of poetry and stuff that is probably too pretentious to mention. And art stuff, you don’t want to hear that.

This plot deals with selling nostalgia. Did you ever, in trying to sell this project, did you ever run up against people wanting you to sell nostalgia more? Wanting it to not be an original story and maybe be something else?

Well, the thing that they did want was, I was in a meeting once with someone who said, “You have to make Mae [Rebecca Ferguson’s character, the femme fatale] more likable, so that Bannister [Hugh Jackman, the detective] will look more manly. You have to make her more kind of supple and vulnerable. You have to give her a tragic backstory or else people, they won’t understand, and he won’t look manly. They also wanted a very happy ending. I think I do have a happy ending, by the way, but they wanted a more traditionally happy ending. Because I’m a producer on the project, I said no, and this is a story that involves Drew Goddard, who is just a lovely gentleman. I’d never met him before and I was pregnant at the time that this meeting happened, and he was there to talk about maybe directing it.

They had just brought him in to talk about it, and I didn’t know him, though I’m, a huge fan of his work. And so the person talked about how they wanted this to be the ending and the way it should go. And they said, “Well, you’ve got to talk some sense into her. She’s pregnant so she’s just emotional.”

And Drew, to his credit, not knowing me at all, and this is an industry in which I had never seen anything like this happen, he just turns to me, basically ruins the meeting for himself and is like, “Don’t change a fucking word. This is why it’s special.”

I’ve never seen someone just stick up for me. I was used to just blowing it off. And we were friends ever since. I was coming off of this difficult experience and it was incredibly transformative.

You talked about getting a note about likability. That seems like it’s sort of the ultimate studio note, that they want characters to be more likable. What do you think about that? Is likability, even a thing that you strive for with characters?

I always strive for likeability, I just think I like different people than what the classic Hollywood model says. I don’t know the girl that they’re describing. I can’t like her cause she’s fiction. I like the women that I know and the complexities that we discuss and it’s not always tied up in a tidy bow. And look, there is something wonderful about tropes and stereotypes, it’s an easy way to sort and classify the world. This world, let’s face it, is chaotic. So if you can find a way to simplify everything and be like, “Okay, this is a superhero movie so it’s going to have action and some deadpan humor and–” and “This is an arthouse film so it’s going to be very slow, but very meaningful and profound and beautiful.”

I like all those types of films, but I do not believe in these artificial distinctions. I don’t see a reason why Chloe Zhao shouldn’t make The Eternals and Nomadland or make a mashup of the two. I think genre in itself suffers from a gaze that is too strict. I dropped out of a lot of projects about writing Asian characters when I have not been able to agree with the type of Asian representation that they found marketable — which is “sad Asian immigrant” or “nerdy Asian Harvard lawyer.” These are literally things that are said, it’s not subtext.

And those people exist, I actually am a nerdy Asian lawyer, so it’s not like we don’t exist. But that wasn’t the only story that I wanted to tell. To try to break out of those boxes is painful. And when you’re the kind of person who, when people look at you and want to give you a rom-com, you say, no, I want to do this other thing, it’s a hard road. But I do this first and foremost for understanding the world, and I think that if I can understand it a little better by writing my way through it, then maybe someone else can too.

It seems like when people say to make a character more likable, it’s like they want them to be more traditionally moral in some way.

They want them to be safe and charming and do all the classically right things to quote-unquote deserve male affection. And I think we all know what those things are. You can be a little funny and smart, but not too smart. Sexy, but not slutty. Manic, pixie, dream girls were really in, but not so in anymore. So just a little dream girlish, but small, small dose of it. And honestly, every meeting I go to, I know, depending on what outfit I wear, I’ll be treated completely differently, and I don’t mean like a bikini versus a suit. I just mean, am I wearing makeup? Am I not wearing makeup? What do I want to be to them? Because it will absolutely determine the course of the conversation. And men I don’t think have as much variability to them, and it’s the same with people of color. I have a friend who’s black who was really interested in writing about the Salem witch trials, cause that’s what interested him, and every meeting he went into, people just couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that he would want to be interested in that. That’s what he likes. I like writing action. And there’s maybe not a clear lane for it, but you got to try to make one, I guess.

[She did not end up puking]
‘Reminiscence’ is available now in theaters and on HBO Max. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

The last show Bartees Strange played was a bad idea. “I called the venue earlier in the day because I was staying in Crown Heights,” he says, “and I saw there was a line wrapped around the block at Key Foods. I was like, ‘Fuck, dude, it’s rare that people are clamoring to go to the Key Foods.’” On the phone, the people at Brooklyn’s Sultan Room told him it was still on. He prepared to play alongside Fusilier Blake and WSABI Fox, reluctantly moving forward with the plan to bring beach balls to kick off the stage. “I remember singing and I was just thinking like, ‘Damn, was that a bad call to bring the beach balls? Is everyone gonna get sick?’ Sure enough, the next day New York closed, and I was like, ‘Yeah, we had no business playing that show. That was a risky one.’”

It could’ve been worse; the room was only half-filled, and plenty of artists, due to COVID, ended up stuck in other countries on tour having no choice but to play for days upon days. Still, this memory sticks out in Strange’s mind, especially as touring returns. Last month, he tweeted: “The last show I played had 80 people at it. The next show I’m playing is a sold-out amphitheater in STL with Phoebe Bridgers. It’ll be fine. But what the fuck!”

Strange has had, well, a strange experience as one of those artists who gained traction during the pandemic. He got features in Rolling Stone, Billboard, MTV News, A.V. Club, and, of course, Uproxx — practically every music publication possible — all while not having the ability to perform any real-life shows. Now, he has more on his plate than ever: a tour with Courtney Barnett, a tour with Lucy Dacus, a few dates with Phoebe Bridgers, headlining shows in the UK and Europe, and several festival slots, including Pitchfork Paris, Pitchfork Chicago, Shaky Knees, Governors Ball, Outside Land, and Iceland Airwaves.

Before the pandemic, Strange played DIY festivals, like unofficial SXSW shows in houses or smaller stages at fests like Pouzza in Montreal or Mile of Music in Wisconsin. With the latter, he discusses his favorite memory of performing at a festival: “I don’t think they really knew where to put us. The general vibe of the festival was more Americana- and traditional rock-leaning. I opened a set with like ‘Mossblerd’ and it was like 2pm — Mimosa time at the bar — and we were playing it and it was wild. Everyone left. I was like, ‘Damn, all right, song two, let’s do it.’ It was a problem. It’s kind of the festival nightmare — to pull up to a crowded room and empty it.”

It was humbling, and also kind of weirdly inspiring to experience the worst possible consequence. “I’ve lived through it,” he says, and he harbors really no nervousness for playing festivals in the future. He’s quite the opposite. “I don’t want to say it’s every musician’s dream,” he says, “but I remember being a kid and watching YouTube videos of big festivals and wishing I could be on stage. I remember going to festivals and getting jealous and being like, ‘Jesus, like, how do you like get up there? How do you become one of these people?’ I’ve never known what it feels like to be on stage in front of more than 150 to 200 people. I’m excited to see how I’m gonna feel. I’m excited to see how I’ll react to seeing 3,000, 10,000, 20,000 people in a space.”

He owes a lot to his booking agent Tom Windish, who he describes as “a legend.” He’s at the prestigious Paradigm Talent Agency, and reached out to Strange after the release of Live Forever’s single “Boomer.” As live music slowly started coming back, he was able to get Strange on a multitude of lineups.

The other upside to festivals that was lost during the pandemic is Strange’s ability to connect with other artists, especially artists bigger than himself. “Yves Tumor is playing Pitchfork. I have to have to meet them. Like I have to,” he says. “I’m already scheming. I’m like, ‘How do I graciously meet these people that I’ve wanted to be around for years?’ That’ll be funny. I’m sure I’ll fuck that all the way up.”

He feels similarly about his tour with Courtney Barnett, which is special to him because his debut EP Say Goodbye To Pretty Boy was partially inspired by the night he saw The National, and Barnett had been the opening act. “I remember being in the crowd being like, ‘Damn, there’s no Black people here, I need to write something. I want to write something about that,’ he remembers. “And now a year and a half later, we’re going on tour together.”

The best part about his opening slots on tours and his place on festival lineups, though, is the way his performing will allow more people to hear his songs. It’s not an algorithm showing a music lover his material; it’s not everyone retweeting his many interviews online. It’s a tangible introduction, and Strange thinks that that is the proper way to get into his stuff. “I love the record, but I think that we’re just heavier in person,” he says. “I like to play with the arrangements and make things special. So whenever we play live, the set becomes more expansive than I can do on an album.”

The live show is the perfect entrance for any listener to get into an artist’s music. For Strange and any indie-rock act at or around his level, festivals are where people outside of their particular music scene can find out about them. It’s especially beneficial for all of the music lovers who are not engulfed in the Twitter world and not staying up-to-date with publications online. “It’ll be an experience, for sure,” says Strange about performing at some of his biggest festivals yet, “one that I probably will never forget.”

Actors have always loved going overboard to get into character, be it losing or gaining weight, like Robert De Niro or Christian Bale (or Jared Leto), or slathering themselves in makeup and prosthetics. But Jessica Chastain may have gone too far. The Oscar-nominee will soon be seen in the docudrama The Eyes of Tammy Faye, playing the recovered evangelist opposite Andrew Garfield’s disgraced Jim Bakker. She went all-in to look like Faye, and it worked: She does not look like Jessica Chastain. But now she’s worried it may have left lasting damage to her face.

In a new interview with The Los Angeles Times (as caught by The Hollywood Reporter), the It star says that it took an average of four hours to make her look like Faye, who was famously fond of makeup. The longest it ever took was seven hours. “I think for sure I’ve done some permanent damage to my skin on this,” she said.

One problem: Chastain says her eating habits are “very pure” and that she takes care of her skin. Faye’s makeup habits, which erred on the “heavy” side, did not gibe with her skin.

“When you’re wearing it all day every day — the weight of it on your body, it stretches your skin out,” she said, adding, “I finally took it off and I was like, ‘I look 50 years old!’”

Chastain was even worried that the makeup would hinder her performance. “People think it’s easier, but it’s not. You have to reach through the makeup — you can’t let the makeup be the performance,” she said. “She was so emotional, and I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to get emotional with all this stuff all over me. Am I going to be able to see people and feel free? I just had to get used to it. So much for me is I have to trick my mind.”

And then there was the amount of time it took every time. “It was like going on a long-distance flight every day. Because if it takes seven and a half hours to put on, it’s going to take at least two hours to get off. It was concerning to me. I was worried about my circulation,” she said. “That’s the most prosthetics I’ve worn. Even the bronzer and the foundation are so much darker, the lashes are thicker. The makeup gets heavier as she gets older.”

Chastain ultimately said it was fine, “it’s for my art.” But sometimes art can be a giant pain in the butt. You can see the fruit of her labors when The Eyes of Tammy Faye comes out on September 17.

(Via The Los Angeles Times and THR)

In the latest case of Republican in-fighting just dropped, and man it is wild.

In one corner, there’s Candace Owens, a conservative talking-head with a long history of faux-outrage hits like that time she questioned the purpose of celebrating Juneteenth and that time she accidentally advocated for free public healthcare and, a personal favorite, that time she had a public meltdown over the lyrics to Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s hip-hop ballad, “WAP.” In the opposite corner, there’s Trump-supporting Kimberly Klacik, a former Maryland Congressional candidate who lost by a whopping 40 percentage points in the 2020 election and ignited controversy with her campaign slogan, “Black people don’t have to vote Democrat.”

Both Black women were regular Fox News contributors and popular conservative sh*t stirrers until earlier this summer when they took their trash-talking skills and turned them on each other. According to a lawsuit filed by Klacik’s legal team and obtained by Fox Baltimore, Klacik is seeking $20 million in damages in a defamation suit that alleges Owens robbed her of everything from a book deal to more TV appearances and opportunities for a political career by posting a video claiming Klacik was guilty of being a money launderer, cocaine addict, and strip club madame.

The trouble started when the two women got into it over a petty dispute on Twitter after Owens made a Juneteenth post and Klacik commented back, calling out the Fox News personality for her “lack of engagement with Black people.” According to the lawsuit’s timeline, a few days later, Owens posted a 44 minute Instagram video, in which she alleged Klacik had participated in serious criminal behavior. Though Owens acknowledged she couldn’t confirm these rumors, she still shared them with her millions of followers, telling viewers Klacik had committed both tax fraud and campaign fraud, and recruited strippers to work at a club she says is owned by Klacik’s husband.

“In making these allegations of criminal activity, [Owens] claimed to have received information from someone who ‘stripped with [Ms. Klacik]’ and who allegedly told [Owens] that Ms. Klacik used campaign funds to purchase cocaine and scammed people of millions,” the complaint reads. “These caustic and made-up defamatory allegations are without factual support.”

Klacik’s suit says Owens’s statements coupled with her large social media following has left the failed Congressional candidate struggling to book appearances and led to harassment of herself and her family. Owens has yet to publicly address the suit.

(Via Fox Baltimore)