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Amazon Prime Video Launches Its ‘Coda Collection’ Channel For Music Docs And Concert Films

We may not be able to catch many of our favorite musicians live in concert until this fall — and even that’s up in the air — but at least music fans can re-live some of their favorite concert films and music documentaries thanks to The Coda Collection, a new channel from Amazon Prime Video.

The Coda Collection is $4.99 per month and will feature titles such as Johnny Cash At San Quentin, Miranda Lambert: Revolution Live By Candlelight, and Music, Money, Madness…Jimi Hendrix In Maui at launch on February 18.

It will also be the streaming home for the premieres of Bob Dylan’s Trouble No More and Dave Grohl’s upcoming documentary, among other titles. The new channel was formed in partnership with Sony Music Entertainment, Concord Music, Mercury Studios, Rhino Entertainment, and more. All told, the channel will house 150 exclusive films and shows to start with new content circulating in regularly.

The channel will be accompanied by a blog led by former Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot providing context for the content in question via curated playlists, editorial pieces, original podcasts, and video interviews from prominent critics, writers, and other cultural figures.

You can check out The Coda Collection on Prime Video Channels 2/18 and vising www.codacollection.co for more information.

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Jared Leto Calls Movie Shoots ‘The Least Enjoyable Part’ Of Making Movies And Claims He Hasn’t Rehearsed ‘In 10 Years’

Jared Leto is making the rounds to promote The Little Things, a crime drama that will stream on HBO Max and which co-stars Denzel Washington. Part of his press tour has involved discussing Leto’s shock at emerging from a silent desert retreat to realize that a pandemic was happening, and that’s something that’s obviously still on his mind and will be for quite awhile. For Variety’s Actors on Actors series, though, Leto sat down with Denzel’s son, John David Washington (who’s co-starring with Zendaya in Malcolm & Marie), and Leto revealed what he likes (and mostly doesn’t like) about filmmaking.

Leto will appear later this year in Sony’s Morbius, a Spider-Man spinoff that will target the same moviegoers that made 2018’s Venom such a massive hit, but Leto — who portrayed a much maligned version of The Joker in David Ayer’s 2016 supervillain gathering, The Suicide Squad — revealed that he doesn’t sweat these roles too much. In fact, he doesn’t even rehearse, and he’s not exactly gung-ho on the camera rolling. He prefers the research-prep and finishing the work. From Variety:

– “I haven’t re­hearsed in a movie in 10 years. I don’t have a rule against it, but usually I’m ready to go.”

– “Shooting the movie is the least en­joyable part for me. The two best parts of making movies is getting the job and finishing the job. I like the char­acter build, the discovery. I actually like the time that I spend investigating. I think I just put too much pressure on myself.”

You almost have to respect how successful Leto’s been at scoring roles without enjoying the camera rolling, right? Mostly, this has paid off for him, especially while winning an Oscar for his role in Dallas Buyers Club. He did reveal, though, that he hasn’t watched that film (not even a scene or a play back while making the movie). “I had a lot less anxiety when I didn’t do it,” he explains. He also revealed that he’s generally stressed by making movies, but he’s been attempting “to practice not being so attached to the outcome of things and really just doing the best I can.” Hopefully, his next silent meditation retreat will be a lot more stress-relieving than his last one turned out to be.

Leto will next be reprising The Joker in Zack Snyder’s Justice League director’s cut, which will arrive on HBO Max in March.

(Via Variety)

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Netflix Claims That ‘Bridgerton’ Has Passed ‘The Witcher’ To Becomes Its Most-Watched Original Series Ever

Lupin came close to becoming Netflix’s most-watched original series within its first 28 days of release, with 70 million subscribers checking out the fancy French heist show. But it finished just behind current title-holder, The Witcher (76 million). That record has since been broken by another series, however: Netflix claims that 82 million households have watched Bridgerton since the Shonda Rhimes-produced streamy drama was released in December, well over the streaming service’s original estimate of 63 million. Geralt of Rivia will need to take a long, sad soak in the tub to get over this one.

Of course, with all things Netflix ratings, there are asterisks:

[The Witcher] can still lay claim to having the highest percentage of Netflix households worldwide check it out. When The Witcher debuted in December 2019, Netflix had just over 169 million subscribers, per its quarterly earnings report. That means about 45 percent of its subscribers viewed the show. Netflix ended the fourth quarter of 2020 with 203.7 million subscribers, meaning about 40.3 percent of them checked out Bridgerton.

Also, Netflix defines anything watched for only two minutes as a “view” and the streamer is reporting its own numbers, so who knows how accurate they are. All that being said, Bridgerton, which was renewed for season two, is a massive hit by any metric. I don’t think Shonda Rhimes will be returning to network television any time soon.

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

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Halsey Announces She’s Pregnant With Her First Child In A Series Of Glowing Photos

Halsey is a singer, actor, painter, makeup mogul, and now, she’s a soon-to-be mom. Much to the pleasant surprise of her fans, Halsey announced she’s expecting her first child with screenwriter Alev Aydin.

Sharing the exciting news on Instagram, Halsey shared a handful of glowing photos of her baby bump. “Surprise,” she wrote with a few baby emojis. Halsey tagged Aydin in the photos, who wrote, “Heart so full, I love you, sweetness,” in the post’s comment section.

Halsey is getting ready to be a first-time mom after she previously suffered a miscarriage, which she penned her mournful Manic song “More” about. Speaking to Apple Music about the painful experience, Halsey said there was a time when she didn’t think getting pregnant was possible for her. “For a long time, I didn’t think that having a family was something I was going to be able to do, and it’s very, very important to me,” she said.

Just ahead of her pregnancy announcement, Halsey got was getting reflective about her tour life after canceling her Manic World Tour. Speaking to James Cordon on The Late Late Show, the singer recalled a 2016 show at New York City’s Madison Square Garden where her sound malfunctioned. “One time I was on stage, and everything stopped working — sound, lights, video, music, the whole thing, my brain,” she said.

“Everything malfunctioned, and I had to stand on the stage for two minutes talking to the crowd…. Two minutes in stage time is like a century.” Thankfully, things were able to get back up and running and Halsey decided to start her entire set over so that she could “do the whole thing with no mistakes.”

See Halsey’s glowing pregnancy announcement above.

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Here’s The Video Of A Cavs Front Office Member Taunting LeBron And Sparking A Monster Fourth Quarter

A very funny story came out earlier this week when LeBron James claimed that he had a 21-point fourth quarter against the Cleveland Cavaliers because he was taunted by a member of the team’s front office after missing a shot to close the third. It was funny because you’d imagine if there was any one organization that would know you do not taunt LeBron James, it would be the Cavaliers, as they had front row seats to watching him do that to other franchises for years.

Instead, they decided to tug on Superman’s cape, which went approximately like this:

Twenty-one fourth quarter points later and James was the driving force behind a 115-108 win over the pesky Cavs. But still, it’s unclear exactly what happened that led to James sneering and scoring just under half of his 46 points in one 12-minute period. Fortunately the video ended up hitting the Twitterverse, and while we can’t get the audio, we can certainly see that James’ claim that he was prodded by someone who got real happy that he missed a jumper was, indeed, true.

Again, how a member of the front office of the team that LeBron James brought to four NBA Finals in a row doesn’t know better is a bit of a surprise, but hey, sometimes you have to learn things like this the hard way.

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‘Wonder Woman 1984’ Helped HBO Max Double Their Subscriber Activations (Way Ahead Of Schedule)

During its fourth quarter earnings call, AT&T CEO John Stankey defended the controversial decision to release WarnerMedia’s entire 2021 film slate on HBO Max by citing Wonder Woman 1984‘s success on the streaming platform. According to Stankey, the highly-anticipated sequel helped double HBO Max subscriptions (including “activations” by HBO subscribers who log into HBO Max for the first time) during the fourth quarter. The streaming service is now two years ahead of schedule in its quest to build a subscriber base that go toe-to-toe with heavy hitters Netflix and Disney+. While Wonder Woman 1984 obviously didn’t, and couldn’t, have a box-office haul in the billions like the first film, AT&T is pleased that its hybrid release strategy worked as planned and was the “right call” for the rest of 2021. Via Deadline:

“You’ve seen other studios have continued to snowplow releases in the second half of the year, which cements our view. We’ll see a crowded theatrical field in late 2021 and early 2022,” said Stankey, “We don’t believe that magically just because there’s more content showing up in theaters all at the same, that’s going to dramatically increase the moviegoing population at that time,” said Stankey.

However, despite the pandemic offering a boon to streaming services, HBO Max isn’t immune to a growing concern amongst top-tier providers: “churn.” According to a new Deloitte survey reported in the Los Angeles Times, 46% of subscribers have cancelled at least one streaming service in the past six months, and 62% of those users pulled the plug because the show or movie they watched was finished. In other words, as the number of streaming services increases, it’s becoming harder and harder to retain subscribers who don’t see the value in paying a monthly fee once they’ve already got what they needed from the service.

In HBO Max’s case, users could theoretically subscribe and unsubscribe based on whether there’s a Warner Bros. movie they want to watch that month or not.

(Via Deadline, Los Angeles Times)

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Jenny Lewis And Serengeti Find Serenity In Their Bouncing Single ‘Vroom Vroom’

Jenny Lewis was supposed to embark on a massive US tour supporting Harry Styles in 2020. But after the pandemic shook her plans, she hunkered down at home. While she was in lockdown, Lewis and Chicago rapper Serengeti began working on a new project together. The duo shared the resulting EP’s first track “Unblu” last December and have now follow-up with another bouncing track.

Lewis and Serengeti shared the alluring single “Vroom Vroom” Wednesday. The accompanying visual, directed and edited by Lewis herself, is stitched together with a handful of silly selfie videos taken on both of their phones and includes a cute cameo by one of Lewis’ furry friends.

Alongside their previous single, Lewis and Serengeti shared a note about how they first started making music together:

“Jenny met Dave down a long hallway in a former Communist Media Center in East Berlin during the People Festival of 2018. Dave asked Jenny to sing on a song about Tom Selleck passing on the part of Indiana Jones. Can you imagine a world where Tom Selleck is Indiana Jones?

A fast friendship was born as they skulked about, cracking jokes and chatting about their mutual love for boxing.

Jenny threw a show for Dave at Dino’s in East Nashville when they returned from Europe. The bartenders said it was the best show they ever had. Jenny was among the 9 fans that attended and danced their asses off.

To cap the torrid evening, Dave said ‘J, I need 7 tracks! Just piano or guitar or whatever!’ Jenny inquired if one would do?

Then the world shut down and Jenny & Dave hunkered down in Los Angeles & Chicago, respectively. Jenny smoked weed every day and Dave stayed totally sober.

The result is five songs made on Jenny’s iPhone, for Dave. Beats, bass, drums, digital tanpura & topline, sent via text, ripe for Dave’s poetry. To accompany the music, Jenny made videos on her phone during the witching hours, editing while under the covers.”

Watch Jenny Lewis and Serengeti’s “Vroom Vroom” video above.

Jenny Lewis is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

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Summer Walker’s Pensive ‘Body’ Video Puts Her Baby Bump On Display

Summer Walker puts her baby bump on full display in the pensive video for her latest Over It single, “Body.” The mostly black-and-white clip sees the singer enjoying the solitude of an oceanside villa, soaking up the sun, and contemplating the view. The simple video lets the track — which Summer has described as her favorite from the 2019 album — take center stage as Summer herself peacefully poses for the camera in curve-hugging black loungewear.

Walker first confirmed her pregnancy with a post on Instagram (which has since been deleted) shortly after rumors circulated online that she and on-again-off-again partner London On Da Track were expecting a child. Meanwhile, a baby isn’t the only thing the singer has been working on recently; in December last year, she announced the launch of her own record label, Ghetto Earth, and its first signee, Over It collaborator NO1-NOAH.

Although Over It was initially released in 2019, Walker shared a deluxe version in 2020 with 13 new tracks, including live, acapella, and instrumental versions of fan favorites like “Come Thru,” “Nobody Else,” and “Playing Games.” She also appeared on LVRN’s holiday album, Home For The Holidays, covering James Brown’s “Santa Claus, Go Straight To The Ghetto” as “Ghetto Christmas,” and Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby.”

Watch Summer Walker’s “Body” video above.

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Jared Leto Almost Signed Billie Eilish After She Amazed Leonardo DiCaprio At A Dinner Party

Anybody who has listened to music over the past few years knows who Billie Eilish is, but that wasn’t always the case. She had an early supporter in Jared Leto, though, and he revealed that before Eilish was with a record label, he considered signing her himself.

Speaking about Eilish and Finneas with James Corden, the actor and Thirty Seconds To Mars leader revealed that the sibling pair once performed at a small dinner party at his house and impressed his guests, including Leonardo DiCaprio:

“They weren’t signed and I thought that maybe I would try and sign them. They were so incredibly talented and just special people. The music is one thing, but I think they [are] just incredibly intelligent, really empathetic, just really good people. I quite like them a lot. At one point, they played at my house. I had a little dinner for like 12 people and I said, ‘Hey, will you guys come and play a couple of songs,’ and they were like, ‘Yeah, sure,’ and they showed up with like a Guitar Center PA and played the most heartbreakingly beautiful music with, like, you know… it shouldn’t have sounded that good, it was impossible that it sounded that good. I remember Leo DiCaprio was there and a couple of other people and they were just like, ‘How did you find these people and, like, who are they?’ Everyone was just jaws on the floor, 12 people max at my place in the hills. Yeah, just great people. I’m huge fans, too.”

Watch the full interview below.

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The First Joke That Jimmy Kimmel Told About Donald Trump Is From A Simpler Time

Jimmy Kimmel Live! premiered on ABC 18 years ago yesterday. In that time, Jimmy Kimmel has made a lot of Donald Trump jokes. In fact, he’s probably made more cracks about the former-president than any other public figure in his nearly two decades as a late-night host, with the exception of Matt Damon. During Tuesday’s episode, Kimmel looked back at the first Trump joke he told — and yes, “it is about his hair,” he cracked.

The clip comes from the January 13, 2004 episode, where Kimmel is discussing how “it’s going to be the coldest week in two decades on the East Coast. It’s supposed to be minus eight in New York over the next couple of days… It’s so cold in New York, Donald Trump’s combover broke off.” Maybe not the finest joke, but as Kimmel noted, “It was a simpler time.” What was Trump doing in 2004? That was the year The Apprentice debuted on NBC. It’s also when he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “in many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat. It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans.” Again, a simpler time.

As for Kimmel’s first Biden joke, that happened in August 2008. “Barack Obama’s freshly-minted running mate, Senator Joe Biden, also spoke tonight. I have to say, after all the name-related problems this campaign has had, why Obama would pick a vice president with the last name ‘Biden’ is beyond me,” he said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with the name ‘Biden,’ [but] it’s like they’re trying to make their ticket sound as much like Osama Bin Laden as possible. We found the two guys in America whose names matched up most closely with the person we hate more than anyone in the world and they put them on the bumper stickers.” Hm, maybe the time wasn’t so simple after all.

You can watch the monologue above.