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Mdou Moctar Brings His Guitar Virtuosity To NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert Series

Since the NPR Tiny Desk Concert series has gone remote due to the pandemic, performers from all around the world have been more easily able to participate. Niger guitarist and singer Mdou Moctar is fresh off releasing his latest album, Afrique Victime, last week, and now he’s fresh off a new Tiny Desk performance, which was filmed in Niger.

The three-song set features “Ya Habibti,” “Tala Tannam,” and “Afrique Victime.” Mikey Coltun, Moctar’s bass player and producer, says of the performance, “The concert was filmed outside of the house we were all staying at in Niamey, Niger, in November/December 2020. As with any sort of musical happenings in the region, once some music is blasted, that’s an invitation for anyone to come join, sing, clap, dance, and just come together as a community. We wanted to present the Tiny Desk exactly like this, from when we started playing to finally the energy growing with fans crowded around filming on their cell phones and passing around Tuareg tea.”

In his review of Afrique Victime, Uproxx’s Steven Hyden notes of Moctar’s guitar skills, “Afrique Victime is loaded with moments where Moctar steps out of the song in order to ram his guitar directly into your guts. He does this for emotional effect, bending and blurring notes with the furious energy that defines one of his most obvious influences, Jimi Hendrix. But you suspect that Moctar also believes that ripping off a sick solo is extremely dope, which on this record it absolutely is.”

Watch Moctar’s Tiny Desk performance above.

Afrique Victime is out now via Matador. Get it here.

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Mark Wahlberg’s Mustache-Free Look In The ‘Uncharted’ Movie Has People All Fired Up

Remember when the first Sonic the Hedgehog trailer led to an increase in teeth-based nightmares? I’m normally not a fan of billion-dollar movie studios listening to social media backlash, but Paramount was absolutely correct to give in to the mob and redesign the character (meanwhile, I’m still waiting for the fabled “butthole cut” of Cats).

I bring up Sonic because on Monday, the New York Times shared the first image from another popular video game series, Uncharted. Tom Holland plays rugged hero and professional treasure hunter Nathan Drake, while Mark Wahlberg is Nathan’s father figure and fellow adventurer, Victor “Sully” Sullivan.

This is what Sully looks like at his youngest (mid-40s) in the games:

NAUGHTY DOG

Here is what Mark Wahlberg looks like in Uncharted:

Something appears to be missing. Maybe the Uncharted movie will have a perfectly rational explanation for why Sully — who looks like this in non-flashbacks — doesn’t have a mustache. Maybe he had to shave it off to complete a puzzle (there’s a lot of puzzles in Uncharted) or it was weighing him down while jumping from building to building (there’s even more jumping). But for now, fans of the video games are confused why Sully, whose three character traits are “too old for this sh*t,” “loves smoking cigars,” and “has a mustache,” is not old, isn’t smoking a cigar, and doesn’t have a mustache.

The weird thing is, Wahlberg has teased the Sully mustache (Sully Mustache is an excellent fake name) in the past. So now fans of the game are wondering what happened.

I still have faith the mustache will appear (maybe it will be a reverse Henry Cavill situation?) and that Uncharted will be as much fun as the games.

(Via the New York Times)

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The Lindsay Lohan Comeback Begins With A Netflix Christmas Movie About An Amnesiac Who Finds Love In A Ski Lodge

After signaling that she was ready to return to America and resume her film career, Lindsay Lohan has officially signed on for a new Christmas movie for Netflix. While the Lilo holiday film is currently untitled, the streaming giant sent out a tweet on Monday afternoon touting Lohan’s casting as well as a synopsis for the project that will mark her return to acting.

“Lindsay Lohan will star in a new romantic comedy about a newly engaged and spoiled hotel heiress who finds herself in the care of a handsome, blue-collar lodge owner and his precocious daughter after getting total amnesia in a skiing accident,” Netflix announced in a tweet, matter-of-factly, like it’s not the greatest sentence anyone has ever typed.

According to Variety, the Christmas romantic company won’t go into production until November, so don’t expect it to be ready for the 2021 holiday season. However, it does show a follow through on Lohan’s ambitions to return to Hollywood after spending the better part of the decade overseas and dabbling with reality TV projects:

On CNN’s New Year’s Eve special in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic would press pause on the world, Lohan told hosts Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen that she wanted to “come back to America and start filming again,” and “taking back the life that I worked so hard for, and sharing it with my family and you guys.”

Following the release of the documentary, Framing Britney Spears, Lohan went viral earlier in the year after an old interview with David Letterman resurfaced and showed the late-night host repeatedly mocking her stints in rehab. The video sparked several reactions on social media on how poorly Lohan has been treated by the media, so the public is definitely rooting for her to make a comeback after grappling with its part in fueling the tabloid culture that plagued stars like herself and Spears.

(Via Netflix on Twitter)

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The Trailer For Patton Oswalt’s New Nature Docuseries ‘Penguin Town’ Is Freaking Adorable As Hell

The world has desperately needed a Netflix docuseries about African penguins taking over a South African town in order to keep its species alive, and thankfully Patton Oswalt is around to provide voiceover work on it. Fresh off the heels of an animated turn as M.O.D.O.K, Oswalt’s next project is Penguin Town, and it looks freaking adorable.

“There are a lot of movies about penguins,” Oswalt says in the trailer. “Then, there’s these birds.”

The footage over Oswalt’s words is of a bird struggling to get out of the water, sliding down a slope on his belly, backward back into the surf. More bumbling footage follows, and it becomes clear that this is not your ordinary nature series. Penguin Town, as it turns out, is a project Oswalt executive produced and will narrate when it hits Netflix next month that features a very unique set of birds in a very specific place: Africa.

Framed as equal parts adorable, educational, and hilarious, the footage captured of the birds stumbling over bowls of chips or beach toys and navigating the streets of Simon’s Town, South Africa just highlights the actual plight of very threatened African penguins. The town is the African penguin’s nesting grounds, which means it is home to an annual animal takeover that’s important for the survival of the species.

Here’s the description from Netflix:

After three months in a rehabilitation unit two penguin sisters, Ayoba and Rebecca, who were rescued as two-year- olds from an oil slick on the coast of Cape Town, are about to be released back into their parent colony. Now, fully mature and ready for first-time parenthood the two sisters must find mates, safe nesting sites, and provide for their chicks, all while living in one of the most unusual penguin colonies in the world.

That all sounds much more scientific than the trailer frames it, with stumbling penguins wandering a man-made town and just generally rocking out. As you can see from the footage, these little guys are ready to party.

We’ll see how these goofy birds do in life and love when Penguin Town hits Netflix on June 16.

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Elton John And Alice Cooper Re-Created A 50-Year-Old Photo To Celebrate Bernie Taupin’s Birthday

Elton John is a household name and musical legend, and to those who truly appreciate John’s iconic output, so too is Bernie Taupin. Since the ’60s, Taupin has been John’s songwriting partner, penning lyrics for hits like “Tiny Dancer,” “Rocket Man,” and pretty much every other song for which John is known. Over the weekend, Taupin celebrated his 71st birthday, which led to a delightful look back via a photo re-creation.

50 years ago, on Taupin’s 21st birthday, he celebrated with John, Alice Cooper (with whom Taupin has also collaborated), and actor and comedian Paul Lynde. There’s a photo of the four of them from that night, which they all re-created this year — except for Lynde, who died in 1982. Actor Eric McCormack took Lynde’s place this time around and he’s the one who shared the new photo online, writing in his post that compares both shots, “Bernie Taupin’s 21st birthday and, last night, his 71st. Fifty years later… and I got to be Paul Lynde! Fifteen-year-old me would be losing his freakin’ mind.”

John re-shared the photo, as well as a different snap of just himself and Taupin. He wrote alongside the picture, “Celebrating the milestone birthday of my musical soulmate @bernietaupinofficial. Happy Birthday Brother [rocket emoji] I love you [heart emoji].”

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Director Justin Lin Reveals, As We All Suspected, That ‘Fast Five’ Was Inspired By ‘The Golden Girls’

As the excitement revs up for F9 to finally jump into theaters (and our hearts) after being delayed an entire year due to the pandemic, director Justin Lin has been reflecting on his time with The Fast and the Furious franchise and his unlikely inspirations along the way. While sitting down for Entertainment Weekly’s BINGE: The Fast Saga podcast, Lin opened up about how he almost didn’t come back to the franchise after Tokyo Drift. The director changed his mind after stopping at a small town Arby’s with Sung Kang and seeing kids freak out over the Han Seoul-Oh actor.

From there, Lin was locked in and got to work reshaping the franchise, which included drawing inspiration from one of his favorite shows as a kid: The Golden Girls. As Lin explains to the BINGE hosts, the classic sitcom was involved in a network-wide crossover event that blew his young mind, and he’s wanted to create his own shared universe ever since.

Via EW:

“Saturday nights, it was Golden Girls, Empty Nest, and then there was [Nurses]. They had this thing called Hurricane Saturday night, all three episodes got hit by a hurricane. That was the first time where I was like, ‘Oh, they all exist in the same universe.’ That was the inspiration for Fast Five. We brought back all the characters, they all existed in the same universe. That’s the Golden Girls connection.”

According to Lin, The Golden Girls are officially part of the “Fast lore,” and he would love nothing more than to have Betty White in the last two films, which has to happen now. You can’t just say that and not have Betty White jumping muscle cars while Vin Diesel rides shotgun.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

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Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Sour’ Does Something No Debut Album Ever Has Before As ‘Good 4 U’ Debuts At No. 1

The past few years have introduced a number of successful new music stars to the world, but few of them have had as immediate and drastic of an impact on the music landscape as Olivia Rodrigo (although Lil Nas X comes to mind with the success of “Old Town Road”). “Drivers License” was a huge single that spent its first eight weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Its follow-up, “Deja Vu,” also did well, so far achieving a peak at No. 8. Now, though, Rodrigo has found her way back to No. 1: On the Hot 100 chart dated May 29, Rodrigo’s newest single, “Good 4 U,” has debuted on top.

This has put Rodrigo in the record books: Sour is now the first debut studio album to ever spawn two singles that debuted at No. 1. A handful of other artists have had albums with two singles that debuted at No. 1, although in each case, it was their fifth album, not their first: Mariah Carey’s Daydream (“Fantasy” and “One Sweet Day” (the latter with Boyz II Men), in 1995 and 1996); Drake’s Scorpion (“God’s Plan” and “Nice for What” in 2018); and Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next (“Thank U, Next” and “7 Rings” in 2018 and 2019).

But wait, there’s more: Sour is also the first debut album to spawn to No. 1 singles (that didn’t necessarily debut on top) since Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ 2012 album The Heist did so in 2013 with “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us.” As far as just women, Sour is the first album to pull off that feat since Lady Gaga did it in 2008 with The Fame, thanks to “Just Dance” and “Poker Face.”

Meanwhile, it was a huge week on the Hot 100 for J. Cole as well, as he has four of this week’s top 10 songs.

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‘Succession’ Isn’t A Comedy Or A Drama, It’s Proof Categories Are Silly

Every year, when the awards circuit machine starts rumbling back to life, TV fans are presented with some existential dilemmas. Which show deserves recognition? Is it truly a limited series if it gets a second season? How do you even begin to categorize Succession?

Fine, we snuck that last query in there, but as the lines between genres continue to blur it feels like the right time to return to this years-long debate.

Is Succession a drama or is it actually a comedy?

That we’re even debating this would have been unthinkable when creator Jesse Armstrong debuted it just a few years ago. A dark, nihilistic Shakespearean ode to complicated familial relationships of the bubbled-elite, Succession’s starting premise was a plot pulled straight from the pages of King Lear. An aging business magnate must decide which of his children is worthy of his throne atop a media conglomerate that holds devastating influence in the world of politics, entertainment, news, and more. Aided by the anxiety-raising gravitas of Nicholas Britell’s iconic score, those early trailers focused on the meaty, profanity-ridden performances of the show’s stellar cast — Bryan Cox, Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, and Sarah Snook.

The Roy siblings were vultures, willing to devour their patriarch in pursuit of power, influence, and money while Logan Roy (Cox) was the shrewd Machiavellian conductor, playing his brood against one another — a callous puppet master armed with a litany of well-timed expletive-laden barbs.

And when reviews of the show’s first season hit, they only reinforced that notion. Armstrong’s brain-child was labeled a “more serious Arrested Development,” a case study of power and privilege, and a moving look at the consequences of inherited generational trauma. In other words, Succession was poised to be the dark, dour drama that awards voters would eat up — the weekly binge one referred to when they wanted to impress their friends and co-workers. “Oh, you’re not watching Succession?” they’d say. “It’s only the smartest show on TV.”

And it is. But it’s also the funniest. That humor is just packaged so discreetly, wrapped in the unforgiving tissue of familial betrayal and all-consuming greed, taped together by a casing that protects its main characters from the expected real-world consequences their less-wealthy peers might face, that it’s only after the knife is slid in between our ribs that we recognize that it’s the sharp, cutting humor that’s driving the action.

It starts with Armstrong, who cut his teeth on British standbys like Peep Show and The Thick of It before migrating to the Yank’s version of political satire with Armando Iannucci’s Veep. In fact, as Indiewire first noted, Succession’s creation is really just Armstrong trying to make his idea for a British dark comedy originally titled “Bad Sugar” translate across the pond. That series only achieved pilot status, but its bones — “sexy and scheming heirs of a wealthy mining mogul as they battle each other to become the next head of his fracking empire” — make up the skeleton of Succession’s core dramatic beats. Armstrong’s writer’s room is filled with Veep and The Thick of It alumni and his producing partners include Will Ferrell and Adam McKay (a former SNL head writer turned Oscar-nominated screenwriter and director who directed the show’s pilot).

So that’s the on-paper proof that there’s more riotous humor to this show than one might expect. But to get the full measure of how Succession toys with those ill-defined lines between drama and comedy, you need to investigate how it tells its story — and how that story has been received by fans.

Yes, the thread running through each episode, from season to season, seems to be this marathon grab for power, and in any other, strictly dramatic undertaking, that story arc would resolve or evolve over the course of a show’s run. But, in what feels more like a sitcom-style move, Succession uses the backdrop of a hostile takeover to continuously repeat beats. A son betrays his father. A father betrays his son. A family argues, turns on each other, then bands together to protect its carefully cultivated public image. It’s a loop, one that allows Armstrong and company to dive deeper into character motivations and unpack the layers of relationships between the core cast in the way a serial comedy might. We come away, not with a clearer picture of what’s going to happen in the story, but of who the people who populate it really are — how their quirks, insecurities, and selfish desires might alter that course.

And if Succession’s directional outline mimics that of long-running comedy shows, its dialogue doubles down. There’s a rhythm to how the characters on the show talk — weaponizing corporate-speak and hurling linguistic smart bombs at breakneck speed — that often challenges our idea of how a drama is supposed to sound. Succession favors a blunt mallet and the freedom to whack us over the head again and again and again with outrageous lines that only disgust and amaze as time drags on — like a bruise that smarts worse days later.

That “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” staccato is what’s driven fans to make compilation odes on Youtube, celebrating the brilliant and varied insults of each season. In a normal drama, you might remember a scene, in Succession, you remember the lines — a defining comedic trait if ever there was one. Whether it’s Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfayden) musing on how syphilis is really the Myspace of STDs or Siobhan Roy making a dig at her brother’s “date rape” cologne, the show’s most viral moments are born from its comedic DNA.

And that humor infects major relationships too. Cox’s Logan Roy is a soured, pessimistic tyrant who distrusts everyone around him, including his own children. He constantly makes decisions that force you to root against him. And yet, even he gets laughs — often for the most repugnant behavior. (Remember Boar on the Floor, anyone?)

Kieran Culkin deploys snark and quick-witted comebacks like they’re Roman Roy’s only true life skill, while Snook’s Shiv self-medicates amidst the chaos within her family with copious amounts of sarcasm. Strong’s Kendall, a subservient daddy’s boy stuck between his own ambition and his overwhelming fear of his father, plays his feebleness and indecision for laughs while Macfayden and Nicholas Braun (Cousin Greg) tap into the inherent romantic-comedy roots of their fraught bromance.

But because this humor is so fleeting, so quickly delivered, so agonizingly embarrassing for these characters, so cringe-worthy — we don’t see it for what it is, an attempt to humanize these wholly deplorable beings, to bring a story so far removed from the realms of our own middle-class existence we couldn’t possibly relate or invest in this family without it. We need to be able to laugh at the Roys’ antics, to cackle at the misfortunes they reap on themselves, to gleefully rejoice in their failings because otherwise, the show would lose its satirical underpinnings and become a grim commentary on the consequences of capitalism, an all-too-real portrait of how generational wealth continues to shape the ugliest parts of society. It’d be just another drama about rich people behaving badly.

So no, Succession is not a drama peppered with comedic beats like the world of TV criticism and Emmy voting would have you believe. It’s just the opposite: a comedy that uses dramatic storytelling to add a sense of surreal satire to its humor.

Or maybe it’s something altogether different, a show that exists between those two lines — a bleak, deliciously wicked character study filled with a family of Shakespearean Bluth knockoffs intent on confusing the hell out of awards season voters. That is until, at some point, someone realizes that putting shows like Succession (and Atlanta, Master Of None, and on and on…) in one category or the other misses the point of what makes them great — their ability to do both exceptionally well.

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The ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’ Viral Video Will Be Deleted Forever After Selling For A Crazy Price As An NFT

Cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been all the rage in recent months, though the craze has died down a bit as market speculation has given way in many cases to the realization that not everything minted on the blockchain is wildly valuable.

Many things are still selling for big price tags, though, and those who have gotten in on the craze to gain ownership of big moments from internet history are still opening their wallets. Leave Britney Alone and the cheese sandwich tweet made infamous by Fyre Fest are two of the most notable examples of cashing in on viral fame. And the latest will actually take a beloved video off the internet forever if you believe the news.

Charlie Bit My Finger, a famous video in which a young boy with an English accent reacts to an even younger boy biting his finger, was a viral sensation in 2007 when it was uploaded to YouTube. And now, the video itself has sold as an NFT for $760,999 and the video will be deleted forever.

As Variety detailed, the sale of the video will mean whoever wins is “the sole owner of this lovable piece of internet history.” There’s even an opportunity to make a “parody video” with the now-grown boys who star in the video.

The NFT auction of “Charlie Bit My Finger” was won by a user with the screen name “3fmusic” on Sunday, May 23, with a bid of $760,999. A Twitter account with the same name — which on Sunday tweeted “CHARLIE BIT ME!” — describes 3F Music as “one of the best and well equipped music studios in [the] Middle East” based in Dubai, but it’s not clear that is the same entity that won the NFT auction.

The boys’ dad, Howard Davies-Carr, told CBS News that the money from the NFT sale “means that Harry goes to university and has a nice place to stay and doesn’t have to have a bar job.”

The video, which currently has more than 880 million views on YouTube, is unlisted on YouTube as of publication but still available here, which means you still have a bit more time if you’d like to see what several earlier iterations of the Internet found funny. There are also, of course, a number of copies floating elsewhere online, so it’s unlikely this means the video will be truly gone forever. And while it’s a shame that we’re losing an early icon of viral fame, in this modern age of asset acquisition and a renewed interest in ownership of digital access, all that matters is who has control of what and not what gets taken away from the majority in the process.

[via Variety]

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Europe Travel News: Spain Reopens And The U.K. Remains Closed

The reopening of the tourism sector is real (if a bit slower than we might wish). Over the weekend, we got two pieces of European news, one exciting and the other disappointing. Spain has officially announced when fully vaccinated U.S. citizens can visit again, while U.K. officials said there was “no rush” to lift the ban on non-essential travel by U.S. citizens.

First the bad news: The U.S. and the U.K. are at a bit of a standstill. The Biden administration hoped to lift travel restrictions to the E.U. (the 27 country economic bloc) and the U.K. by mid-May. Well, we’re a week away from June and that’s simply not happening. As of last Friday, the White House said that “there were no changes in travel restrictions planned at the moment” between the U.S. and Europe, in general.

The U.K. did open travel between the U.K. and 12 green-listed countries (not including the U.S.) but with big caveats. The sentiment seems to be that while U.K. officials have approved travel back and forth from a dozen “safe” destinations, all non-essential travel, including casual tourism, should be avoided. Basically, they’re using the hard science that airports have become super-spreaders of the virus and its new variants for tempering their gusto to get their citizens back on the road.

Spain, on the other hand, announced that U.S. citizens can travel to the peninsula starting on June 7th. The country — which needs tourism to survive — decided not to wait for the European Union in reopening its tourism sector. As of June 7th, fully vaccinated U.S. citizens will be allowed to travel to Spain.

If you’re received two Pfizer or Moderna vaccines at least 14-days before arrival (or one Johnson & Johnson dose), you’ll be allowed to travel to Spain. Children under 18 can travel to Spain without a vaccination. But if that child is over six they have to show a negative PCR test before boarding the plane and get another one on arrival, plus, get tested before flying back to the U.S., all at the traveler’s own expense.

If you’re over 18 and not vaccinated, you cannot enter Spain — even with a negative COVID test. And, naturally, there are still COVID precautions in place once you get to Spain from social distancing rules, mask mandates, and possible curfews. Moreover, Spain can change any of these rules at any time. You’ll also have to fill out a Health Questionnaire before you travel.

Still, if you want to visit Barcelona, Majorca, Paya de Maro, or MOTHERF*CKING IBIZA, it’s on.