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Christopher Nolan’s Tenet was originally scheduled to be the first new wide release movie in theaters this summer, but after it got pushed back to July 31, that honor now belongs to Unhinged. But considering the Russell Crowe road-rage thriller is more of a documentary than a feature-length film, let’s say it’s The Broken Hearts Gallery.

Produced by Selena Gomez, the romantic-comedy stars Blockers, Hala, and Bad Education standout Geraldine Viswanathan as an “emotional hoarder” who opens a pop-up gallery for “the items love has left behind.” The Broken Hearts Gallery also stars Dacre Montgomery, unrecognizable without his “Billy from Stranger Things” haircut.

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

What if you saved a souvenir from every relationship you’ve ever been in? The Broken Hearts Gallery follows the always unique Lucy (Geraldine Viswanathan), a 20-something art gallery assistant living in New York City, who also happens to be an emotional hoarder. After she gets dumped by her latest boyfriend, Lucy is inspired to create The Broken Heart Gallery, a pop-up space for the items love has left behind. Word of the gallery spreads, encouraging a movement and a fresh start for all the romantics out there, including Lucy herself.

The Broken Hearts Gallery, which also stars Utkarsh Ambudkar, Molly Gordon, Suki Waterhouse, Phillipa Soo, Arturo Castro, and Bernadette Peters, opens on July 17.

The WNBA announced its return to play plan last week, with a 22-game season set to take place at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida. The big question that remains for the WNBA is how many of its stars will be willing to participate given the health concerns of many, coupled with those that believe playing would distract from the Black Lives Matter movement.

The latter has led the Atlanta Dream’s Renee Montgomery to follow in the footsteps of Maya Moore and announce her intentions of sitting out the season to work on social justice reform. The Las Vegas Aces new star Angel McCoughtry, on the other hand, has announced she will be playing, while petitioning the league to allow players to wear the names of victims of police brutality on the backs of their uniforms.

Shortly after McCoughtry announced she would be playing, a major star announced she would not, as the Connecticut Sun released the news that star Jonquel Jones, who finished third in MVP voting a year ago while leading the Sun to the Finals, would not be playing this season due to health concerns.

“After careful thought and consideration I’ve decided to forego the upcoming WNBA season and use this time to focus on personal, social, and familial growth,” said Jones. “This was one of the toughest decisions I’ve made but the resurgence and unknown aspects of COVID -19 have raised serious health concerns that I do not feel comfortable competing in. I’d like to thank the Connecticut Sun organization, my teammates and fans for their unwavering support and understanding. While I won’t be competing this year I’m looking forward to lacing up with my teammates in 2021 and continuing the pursuit for a WNBA championship. Wishing the entire league and everyone involved a healthy and enjoyable season. Go Sun!”

As Jones notes, the recent spike in cases in Florida — with little indication there will be any statewide precautions taken to try and limit the spread once again — coupled with the unknown of long-term complications from the disease has led her to choose to sit out the season. It is a more than understandable concern, and while surely a difficult decision to make, it’s one that is commendable. Sun GM and head coach Curt Miller said the organization supports Jones’ decision fully and looks forward to welcoming her back in 2021.

Jones was spectacular last season, averaging 14.6 points and 9.7 rebounds per game for the Sun, upping those averages to 17.9 points and 10.4 boards per game in the playoffs as the Sun fell just shy of a championship to the Mystics in a thrilling Finals. With the addition of DeWanna Bonner this offseason, the Sun figured to have a dominant frontcourt and were among the title favorites, but with Jones now opting out, their path gets much more difficult.

A recently-leaked track drew the ire of producer Swizz Beats over the weekend, who now says he was ‘in the wrong space’ after making disparaging comments about Drake on Busta Rhymes’ Zone Radio podcast. The record in question circulated briefly online via an anonymous SoundCloud profile and featured Busta and Drake rhyming over a beat by late Detroit producer J Dilla.

On Saturday, Swizz expressed his discontent with Drake, who apparently didn’t want to put out the song “Stay Down,” which he and Busta had worked on years prior. Busta tried to defuse the situation, saying that the collaboration was more about Drake wanting to rap over Dilla beats — Drake is a big fan, shouting him out on Thank Me Later and freestyling over beats from Dilla on past mixtapes. Busta previously told Rolling Stone when the track was in the works, but it never landed on a Drake album and Drake apparently never gave approval to Busta to release the track.

During the interview Swizz’s irritation was evident, despite his insistence that he had nothing personal against Drake. “It’s cool,” he said. “That’s a little kid. That’s a guy. That’s a little guy… It’s no personal things. If it was personal we’d shoot your plane out the sky.” Elsewhere in the interview, he said, “At the end of the day, n****s is pussy for real. What’s up? Pop off. Let’s go.”

However, on Sunday, Swizz apologized via his Instagram Story, explaining that he had been drinking and was in “the wrong space” during the interview. While Drake himself kept quiet, his OVO affiliate and longtime friend Chubbs shared his view of the situation on Instagram as well, writing, “We don’t need no apology. It’s clear you don’t like us so act that same way when you see us.”

Check out video of Swizz issuing his apology above.

Australian singer Gordi is gearing up for the release of her sophomore album Our Two Skins, which is due this Friday. Ahead of its debut, the singer opted to give fans one more preview of the record with the track “Extraordinary Life” along with a touching video.

In tandem with the song’s release, Gordi said the track’s inspiration came to her while she was in the shower:

“I was standing in a shower in a hostel in Ghent at 2am towards the end of 2017 and I started humming. I began recording the demo in stairwells across Europe while I was on tour with Asgeir and in most of the demo vocals you can hear distant chatter in Icelandic. For all the turmoil and anguish described in the record, this song just sits in pure joy. I like the idea that the ultimate gesture of love is to make someone feel exceptional; like they deserve an extraordinary life.”

About the video, Gordi said it was filmed at the beginning of the pandemic’s outbreak: “As the pandemic was taking off in March of this year, I flew to Bangkok to shoot a video for ‘Aeroplane Bathroom.’ We decided while we were there that we’d cram in another video so we just shot wherever we went – the grand piano in the lobby of our hotel, on public transport, at the local markets. On our last day there we went to a water theme park and I had to go down the slippery slide nine times. I get really bad motion sickness so I felt like absolute shit at the end of making this.”

Watch “Extraordinary Life” above.

Our Two Skins is out 6/26 via Jagjaguwar. Pre-order it here.

It’s been a year of reunions for Steve Carell. He teamed up with The Office co-creator Greg Daniels for Netflix’s Space Force and he’ll soon star in Irresistible, written and directed by former-The Daily Show host Jon Stewart, out this Friday. The political-comedy, about a Democratic political strategist (Carell) who launches a campaign to help a retired Marine colonel run for mayor in a right-wing Wisconsin town, is the first time the Oscar nominee has worked with Stewart since he departed the Comedy Central series in 2005, although if Stewart had his way, he would have fired Carell years earlier.

After Extra host Billy Bush remarked how talented Carell is, Stewart jokingly replied, “I said that to him every day. I said, ‘If I would have known just what a talented actor you are, I would have fired you from The Daily Show like a month in and said, ‘Just go, go do that.’” Carell started on The Daily Show in 1999, and although he was already known to comedy nerds due to his involvement with The Dana Carvey Show, it wouldn’t be until 2003, the year Bruce Almighty came out, that he would break through into the mainstream. Then came Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and mega-hit The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and that was the end of Steve Carell on The Daily Show.

Stewart continued:

“He’s really something. What was so nice for me, I wrote it for him, with him in mind, and when I would get in the edit room and watch it, he’d given me so many nuanced options to play with in edit that I never saw when I was on set, mostly because I was drunk, but his range of everything is remarkable.”

Irresistible is available through video on demand on June 26.

As the NBA and WNBA prepare for returns to the court later this summer in Orlando and Bradenton, Florida, respectively, there are a pair of chief concerns of players getting ready to play in the two bubbles. One is health and safety, wanting the leagues to take more precautions, namely with outside employees from Disney and IMG Academy, to ensure they are subject to similar testing protocols to try and ensure the bubbles stay bubbles.

Another is concern that a return to the court will distract from the Black Lives Matter movement that continues to see protests nationwide against police brutality and systemic racism, which players from the NBA and WNBA have been extremely active in, either with feet on the ground or in using their platform to speak out. Some have expressed a desire to skip the bubble to keep focus on the movement, with Renee Montgomery of the Atlanta Dream recently announcing she will sit out the season to work on social justice reform as Maya Moore has done the past two seasons.

Others see the return as an opportunity to boost their platform to speak out on injustice and issues facing the Black community, provided the league offers their full support in elevating those voices. On Monday, WNBA star Angel McCoughtry, now of the Las Vegas Aces, announced on Instagram she was starting a petition to get the WNBA to allow players to wear the first and last names of people killed or injured by police brutality on their jerseys in place of their names, mocking up examples with Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.

McCoughtry made it clear she was planning to play this season and continuing to fight social injustice, while announcing her petition to the league, which you can sign here.

I am currently working with the @lvaces and @wnba to use our voices, our uniforms, and our sport to continue to impact and create real change. I am creating a petition (LINK IN BIO) to allow players the ability to put the FIRST & LAST NAME of HUMAN BEINGS that who have been injured or KILLED in incidents involving POLICE BRUTALITY! ⠀ ⠀

Silence is an ally for EVIL and when sports resume WE WILL NOT BE SILENT.

The WNBA had previously stated “the WNBA 2020 season will include a devoted platform led by the players that will aim to support and strengthen both the league and teams’ reach and impact on social justice matters,” and this certainly seems like an opportunity for the league to follow through on that promise. One of the ongoing discussions has been how to allow players voices to be heard during games when the attention is the greatest, and this is certainly a step in that direction. There’s also precedent for such a move, after the Premier League restarted this weekend with players all wearing uniforms with Black Lives Matter written in place of their name.

This would go a step further, placing the names of victims of police brutality on uniforms and it seems like something that should be a pretty easy decision for the WNBA, which has a great history of supporting its players in speaking out for social justice and human rights.

Toss a coin to Netflix as they start to map out The Witcher‘s return to production. Eager viewers began clamoring for a second season immediately after the series launched in a crowd-pleasing way, but all TV and film productions worldwide have been on pause since March amid the pandemic. Studios are now feeling out the process of a safe return to filming, and news of cast member Kristofer Hijvu (Game Of Thrones‘ Tormund) testing positive for COVID-19 will only heighten the palpable need for precautions. Still, The Witcher is finding its way back toward the valley of plenty.

The announcement of the show’s return to production was made in the most Jaskier-Dandelion way possible, of course, with a so-bad-it’s-good poem that could have only been authored by the so-called humble bard:

I’m dusting off my lute and quill,
I have some news, some mead to spill:
After all the months we’ve been apart
It’s time for production to restart.
The Witcher and his bard – who’s flawless,
Will reunite on set 17 August.

Joey Batey will never escape this character, correct? And good luck on getting that earworm of a song out of your head anytime today. As people are aware, Geralt of Rivia can’t be beat, but the question remains: how many bathtub scenes will we see in Season 2? If the number’s on par with the first batch of episodes, fans of the loner monster hunter (and all the books and video games) shall be pleased.

This season carries a few more bonuses: (1) Geralt’s mentor and father figure, Vesemir, will be portrayed by Killing Eve‘s Kim Bodnia; (2) Far fewer timeline shenanigans are to be expected, which shall be a welcome change. That second point feels like a natural progression with Geralt and Yiri finally crossing paths in the season finale, but I can’t even begin to guess where Yennifer will fit into the entire equation. She and Geralt seem doomed as lovers, but one never knows what story tweaks shall arrive. As long as Jaskier’s back for good, the magic can happen, although The Witcher‘s official return date remains up in the air.

In less than two weeks, anyone with a DIsney+ subscription will be able to see the filmed version of the original stage production of the hit Broadway show Hamilton. For fans of the show, July 3rd cannot come fast enough. Those who haven’t seen it or listened to the soundtrack 800,000 times might take an “Oh, that’s nice,” attitude, but those people simply don’t know what they’ve been missing.

I’m embarrassed to admit I used to be a Hamilton doubter. I thought it seemed overhyped. I could not have been more wrong. The fact that millions will get to see it now from the comfort of our living rooms is a gift beyond measure.

The only bad news is that Disney + just quietly ended their free 7-day trial. Super crappy move, in my opinion. But you can sign up for just one month for $6.99—less than the cost of a movie ticket—and then cancel after the first month if you don’t want to keep the subscription. Seven bucks for a month’s worth of Hamilton is a freaking steal.

Last night, a preview of the show dropped on all Hamilton social media pages, including Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Twitter. It’s just a minute-long taste, but the thrill is real. We don’t have to wait for it for much longer.

]Miranda, the literal genius behind the show, also answered a few frequently asked questions about the Disney + release on Twitter. People have been wondering exactly what time it’s going to be up so they won’t miss a second. People have also wanted to know if it’s going to be on the platform for a limited time. (Thank the holy heavens it looks like it’s going to be there to stay. As in, now we really can watch Hamilton 800,000 times if we want to.)

We need this. We all need this. Not just for the entertainment value of it, but for the lens through which the show views our country’s complicated history. The arts have a way of cutting straight to the heart of things, making us process reality in a new way, and Hamilton arguably does that better than anything else. Michelle Obama called it the “best piece of art in any form that I have ever seen in my life.” Agreed. And it’s perhaps more relevant than ever in this moment.

The show moves fast, and the more you listen, the better it gets. If you can’t wait til July 3rd or want more than that short preview, you can listen to the whole soundtrack on Spotify or for free on YouTube:

Hamilton: An American Musical FULL SOUNDTRACK

www.youtube.com

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