Category: Worldwide

When it was first announced that Greta Gerwig would be moving forward with a feature film based on the beloved (and sometimes very dated) Barbie doll, many fans were wondering what exactly to expect, and how she could possibly top all of those classic animated features that have since gone down in history.

But after the first teaser was revealed, it became apparent that this isn’t just any old regular Barbie movie with veiled 2001: A Space Odyssey references–there are also dance sequences! And on top of those dance sequences, there are many different types of people involved in this movie beyond the titular doll. The cast also includes America Ferrera, Will Ferrell, Issa Rae, Michael Cera, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Ncuti Gatwa, Hari Nef, and others, proving that this movie will be a multiverse of madness for those normal, non-Marvel people (they exist!).

But there are some Marvel stars in the mix, too. Simu Liu recently opened up about the casting process, as Gerwig sought to find all different types of actors, not just an 11.5-inch plastic doll with unrealistic body standards. “I remember very clearly about some of our big intricate dance sequences. Greta was very, very conscientious about who she cast. We were able to cast people of different shapes, sizes, differently abled, to all participate in this dance — all under this message of: You don’t have to be blonde, white, or X, Y, Z in order to embody what it means to be a Barbie or a Ken,” the Marvel actor explained in a recent interview with Vanity Fair. “It’s really about finding your inner beauty and owning that part of yourself and being the best possible version of you.”

Liu then praised the diversity among the set, which will hopefully be apparent on the big screen. “I will say, going on set I was never isolated. I felt like I was going to work every day with a cast that really celebrated each other and celebrated each other’s differences, no matter where we came from,” Liu explained. He will portray Ken (or at least some iteration of him) in the film, alongside Ryan Gosling. He added, “I think when you watch the movie, you’ll see that reflected on the screen.”

As for those intricate dance scenes, Liu has been more or less prepping for this moment his whole life. “One of my first conversations with Greta, I told her, ‘Well, I don’t want to brag, but I was on my university’s hip-hop dance team.’ And she literally screamed. So I feel like that ended up playing a very critical role in me getting this project,” Liu added. Now we can fully understand why noted dance legend Ryan Gosling was also cast in the movie!

Barbie hits theaters on July 21, 2023.

(Via IndieWire)

UFC President Dana White and his wife, Anne, have both issued statements following a New Year’s Eve altercation inside a Cabo San Lucas nightclub in which Anne strikes Dana in the face, and Dana retaliates with a slap of his own.

White spoke with TMZ after the altercation, acknowledging what he’s said over the years that there’s no excuse for “a guy to put his hands on a woman,” and admitted he is embarrassed by the situation.

“This is one of those situations that’s horrible, I’m embarrassed — but it’s also one of those situations that right now we’re more concerned about our kids. We have three kids and obviously, since the video popped up, we’ve shown the kids the video and we’re more focused on our family right now,” White said.

“I’m literally making no excuses for this thing at all. It’s never happened before. It’s the first time it’s ever happened. People are going to say what they’re going to say and it is what is. Whatever people say is deserved. I deserve it.”

In a separate statement provided to TMZ, Anne echoed Dana’s sentiments.

“Dana and I have been married for almost 30 years. To say this is out of character for him is an understatement — nothing like this has ever happened before,” Anne said. “Unfortunately, we were both drinking too much on New Year’s Eve and things got out of control, on both sides. We’ve talked this through as a family and apologized to each other. I just hope people will respect our privacy for the sake of our kids.”

On Tuesday morning, former ESPN personality Dan Le Batard followed the release of the video by questioning how coverage of the incident will be handled considering ESPN’s relationship with the UFC.

As of this writing, ESPN has written about the incident, but has not commented on how the incident will impact the relationship between the two organizations.

Fox Sports commentator Skip Bayless issued an on-air apology on Tuesday morning after getting roundly hammered for a seemingly insensitive tweet about Damar Hamlin, who collapsed on the field during Monday Night Football last night. The defensive back for the Buffalo Bills suffered cardiac arrest and is still listed in critical condition as of this writing. Immediately following his collapse and removal from the field by ambulance, there was speculation about whether or not the NFL would postpone the game, and that’s when Bayless stepped in it with a poorly worded tweet.

“No doubt the NFL is considering postponing the rest of this game – but how?” Bayless wrote before the decision was made. “This late in the season, a game of this magnitude is crucial to the regular-season outcome … which suddenly seems so irrelevant.”

After being widely dragged, Bayless attempted to clarify his tweet later that night and put the emphasis on Hamlin’s health.

“Nothing is more important than that young man’s health,” Bayless said. “That was the point of my last tweet. I’m sorry if that was misunderstood but his health is all that matters. Again, everything else is irrelevant. I prayed for him & will continue to.”

With the controversy over his tweet in the air, Bayless issued an apology on Tuesday morning where he noticeably hosted Undisputed without co-host Shannon Sharpe, who we presume called in “sick.” At the top of the show, an emotional Bayless addressed the bad optics of attempting to discuss sports during a “life or death” situation and emphasized that he feels “wrecked” over the whole thing.

Allow me to say upfront that I apologize for what we’re going to set out to do here today if it offends anyone because we’re going to try to do the show pretty much as we usually do the show. But I’ll admit upfront I’m still shook up by what happened last night to Damar Hamlin. In fact, I’m still wrecked. In fact, I’m not sure I’m capable of doing this show today. But after barely sleeping on it, I decided to give it a try. Maybe I’ll fail. Maybe we will fail, but we’re going to try. We wrestled through much of the night whether to even do a show today because it felt like, in our minds, we almost can’t win with this. Because the last thing we want to try to do is come off as insensitive to what this young man is going through in a life or death situation. The last thing we want to do is offend anyone by trying to do what we always do, which is talk about sports.

After the intro, Bayless then encouraged viewers to share their “emotions of the night” on Twitter, which he promised to read during this “difficult morning for all of us.”

(Via Complex Sports on Twitter)

Iconic hip-hop trio De La Soul’s entire discography will finally be available across streaming platforms this spring. But, with the catalog dating back to 1989, what took the group’s music so long to reach digital streaming platforms? After several failed attempts behind the scenes to agree with their former record label, Tommy Boy, emcees Posdnuos, Trugoy, and Maseo took to social media to air their grievances.

The legal battle began back in 2018. Then, the Long Island natives began planning to release their first six albums on streaming servers in 2019 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of their debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising. Still, they weren’t pleased with the terms Tommy Boy brought to the negotiating table.

On February 26, 2019, the group took to Instagram to reveal the details behind the meeting, writing, “the music will be released digitally,” by Tommy Boy. Still, the group would not be paid fairly, “your purchases will roughly go 90% Tommy Boy, 10% De La,” as the trio allegedly still owed the label 2 million dollars in unrecovered debt.

Quickly fans were outraged by the label’s plans to move forward without the group being onboard, sparking the hashtag #BoycottToyboyRecords. Fellow rapper Jay Z shared in this anger. As the owner of the streaming platform, Tidal, his company refused to upload the albums to its server until De La Soul was satisfied with the financial terms.

The label even attempted to enforce a confidential agreement to restrict the group from speaking on a deal if one had been reached with the public.

Fast-forward to August 8, 2019, the group shared an update on the matter, writing, “After 30 years of profiting from our music and hard work and after seven long months of stalled negotiations, we are sad to say that we’ve been unable to reach an agreement and earn Tommy Boy’s respect for our music/legacy.”

The label shot down the group’s attempt to gain control over their master recordings. The group wrote on Instagram, “Tommy Boy says they are ‘not in the business of giving artists back their masters,’” adding, “Be aware, all parties involved will profit, but De La Soul will not benefit or earn deservedly/fairly. We really tried.”

With the public’s support, the group continued to fight for their music back, even appearing in the animated show Teen Titans Go! in February 2021. The episode featured De La Soul fighting an octopus trying to steal their music (a metaphor for Tommy Boy Records).

Then in August 2021, Talib Kweli revealed the group had reached an agreement with Tommy Boy in an Instagram post captioned, “After years of being taken advantage of by the recording industry in the worst possible ways, De La Soul now owns all the rights to their masters and is in full control of the amazing music they have created.”

Now, Tommy Boy Records has been acquired by Reservoir Media. In a statement, Reservoir’s Executive Vice President of A&R and Catalog Development, Faith Newman, addressed the matter, saying, “As someone who has devoted my life to hip-hop for over 30 years, my relationship with the guys in De La Soul dates back to my early days in the industry, and I can attest to how influential their catalog is to the genre.”

Newman added, “When Reservoir acquired Tommy Boy, the first call we made was to De La Soul. We vowed to bring their music to streaming, and it means the world to our team to make good on that promise and expose a whole new generation of listeners to one of the most important catalogs in hip-hop history.”

De La Soul’s first albums will be available on streaming platforms on March 3.

Bianca Belair and Alexa Bliss fought for the Raw Women’s Championship title on this week’s episode of Monday Night Raw, and some fans noticed that some portions of the match looked oddly familiar.

That’s because Belair and Bliss decided to take their match and become legends on social media for doing a shot for shot recreation of the Scary Movie 3 fight scene between Regina Hall and the girl from The Ring. It was something fans had joked about online and Bliss and Belair decided to bring it to life and did so with startling precision, as you can see in these clips that put the match on top of the scene from the movie.

This is art of the highest form, and what’s great is the vast majority of the audience had no idea they were just going move for move out of a fight scene from a 2003 spoof comedy. Thankfully, plenty of folks on the internet caught what they were doing and made sure we could all enjoy how they painstakingly crafted this match to go along with the Scary Movie 3 scene. Belair retained her title after Bliss got DQ’d and hopefully when they meet again in the ring they will find a new 20-year-old movie to inspire their moves.

Avatar: The Way of Water — a movie starring a white boy with dreads named Spider, a space whale, and Sigourney Weaver as a blue teenage girl — is about to become the highest-grossing movie of 2022. That sonuvabitch Cameron has done it again.

The Avatar sequel is up to $1.4 billion at the worldwide box office after being released in the U.S. on December 16th, including $444 million domestic and $956 million internationally. “That puts Disney’s film on track to surpass the $1.49 billion in sales for Paramount Global’s Top Gun: Maverick, the current highest-grossing film released in 2022,” according to Bloomberg. “The Tom Cruise fighter-jet movie made the most money at domestic theaters within the year, while The Way of Water tops it internationally.” (It’s worth noting that unlike Avatar: The Way of Water, Top Gun: Maverick was not released in China, one of the biggest markets in the world.)

The weekend performance demonstrates the unusual staying power of the Avatar franchise. The Way of Water didn’t even have one of the top three domestic openings of 2022. Its 2009 predecessor Avatar also started out slowly, but ultimately sold a record $2.92 billion worth of tickets… The Way of Water is probably on course to at least break even financially, an accomplishment given its high production costs. That bodes well for a series of sequels Disney has planned for the franchise through 2028.

This can only end one way: Tom Cruise challenging a mighty Ikran to a race.

(Via Bloomberg)

It looks like new music from J. Cole may arrive in 2023. The rapper’s latest stunt has fans abuzz.

Yesterday (January 2), fans noticed that Cole cleared his Instagram page. Soon after, fans began sharing their theories online.

“j. cole instagram is empty, time to rise & shine,” said one Twitter user.

In 2021, Cole dropped his sixth studio album, The Off-Season. Months before, he revealed via social media that The Off-Season would be part of a series of projects leading up to the release of The Fall Off, which he first teased back in 2018 with the closing track of his KOD album, which was titled “1985 (Intro To ‘The Fall Off’).

The item on the list reads “It’s A Boy.” It’s unknown if this is the title of an album, but fans seem to think so.

“J. Cole just cleared his Instagram,” said another Twitter user. “y’all think he’s gonna drop It’s A Boy on January 28th this year?”

January 28 is Cole’s birthday, and also the name of a song from his 2014 album, 2014 Forest Hills Drive.

As of now, the only hint of new music from Cole himself is the cleared-off Instagram page, however, fans have been theorizing since as early as last year about what It’s A Boy could potentially be about.

“J. Cole will drop his It’s A Boy project and showcase why fatherhood is dope,” said one Twitter user last month, sharing their music predictions for 2023.

Queens, New York rapper-turned-mogul 50 Cent is probably better known for producing the juggernaut Power universe for Starz and trolling his fellow celebrities than his music nowadays, but it looks like he wants to reverse that trend this year. While congratulating friend and mentor Eminem on reaching five billion views on YouTube, 50 promised to share new music in 2023. Posting a headline about Eminem’s success on Instagram, 50 captioned the photo, “That’s my boy. Im gonna remind people i’m nice this year. New Music New Tv New movie let’s go!”

Even a couple of decades removed from the peak of his rap chart dominance, 50 has apparently maintained plenty of popularity, despite putting “nothing out in a while,” according to another post he shared. This one, apparently a screenshot from Twitter (so take it with a grain of salt), put 50 on a list of rappers with the most YouTube views for 2022, among names like Eminem, Doja Cat, Drake, Lil Baby, Lil Nas X, and Juice WRLD. The top comment, from Snoop Dogg, reads, “Nice. Staying relevant.”

Truthfully, it’d probably be nicer if he maintained that relevance through new music releases rather than bullying women in the music business. He trolled Lil Kim, Madonna, and Megan Thee Stallion last year about everything from plastic surgery to getting shot in the foot. Let’s hope his new year resolutions included being a nicer person in addition to getting back to rap — but don’t be surprised if he reneges on either after turning down a $1 million record deal from Universal (and failing to follow through on repeated threats to take the Power shows elsewhere).

Former president/current wannabe president Donald Trump welcomed in 2023 by describing America as a “third world country,” which seems like a strange way to win over the voters who didn’t elect you last time around — but hey, what do we know? By all accounts (or at least his own), Trump is a master strategist — a fact backed up by some newly released testimony surrounding the events of January 6th, and reported by Politico.

On January 7, 2021 — one day after telling the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol that he loved them and they were “special” — the just-barely-still-then president released what felt like a hostage video. In it, he came just about as close as he ever has to conceding the 2020 election, and through gritted teeth claimed that he was focused on “ensuring a smooth, orderly, and seamless transition of power” to the Biden administration.

More than a year later, in July 2022, the January 6th committee gave us a behind-the-scenes featurette of the making of that video, in which a clearly annoyed Trump refuses to say “the election is over” and admits that “‘Yesterday’ is a hard word” for him to say. (Three syllables can be difficult.)

But as Politico’s senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney noted on Twitter, a trove of newly released evidence reveals even more embarrassing details (for Trump) of what went on during the filming of that video. And the fact that it managed to be recorded and released at all is a bit of a miracle.

​​ https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1610004023196749829

Shealah Craighead, the Chief Official White House Photographer during Trump’s reign (and who the former president allegedly tried to scam), was onsite for the filming of that video and told the January 6th committee that Donald seemed to be employing some pretty pathetic stall tactics in order to not stand in front of that camera. According to her testimony:

[Trump’s] agitation of stopping and starting the conversation was based on asking for Diet Cokes several times, or stopping to take a sip and then starting again, immediately stopping and taking another sip and then starting again, reading some of the scroll, and then asking for a new Coca-Cola, or needing a towel to wipe his head or something.

It was just there is anything — you know, as you procrastinate, you’re finding anything to do to not to do what you have to do. That’s what it seemed like in my observation. Anything that he could procrastinate with before getting the words out he would do.

If this whole “become president again” plan doesn’t work out, or those NFTs, maybe Coca-Cola has found its new spokesperson!

(Via Politico)

Today is January 3, meaning the holidays are very much over. Don’t tell that to the latest Billboard Hot 100 chart, though. The latest rank is dated January 7, but it reflects the data tracking week from December 23 to 29. Those first three days are prime Christmas music season, so you know what that means: On the new Hot 100, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is once again No. 1, for the 12th total week and the fourth week this holiday season. (This is actually the first time “Christmas” has had four consecutive weeks at No. 1.)

This means Carey has the first No. 1 song of 2013. Furthermore, “Christmas” is now the first song to be on top of the Hot 100 in five separate years (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023). For reference, no other song has been No. 1 in more than two years.

More broadly, Carey extends her record for most distinct years having a song rank on top of the Hot 100, with 19: 1990 to 2000, 2005 to 2006, 2008, and 2019 to 2023. She also ties Boyz II Men as the only other artist to have three songs top the Hot 100 for at least 12 weeks: Her and Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day” (16 weeks), “We Belong Together” (14 weeks), and now, “Christmas” (12 weeks so far).

Aside from Carey, the usual holiday song suspects are in the top 10, with the only non-holiday songs in the region this week being Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” (No. 8) and Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ “Unholy” (No. 10).