Editorials
Coachella 2022: The 6 Toughest Set Time Conflicts
Coachella’s organizers have undoubtedly been busy: in a season marred with last minute cancellations, controversies, and inevitable left turns, Paul Tollett and Goldenvoice have definitely been putting in some overtime hours. Hence, one of the latest schedule drops in the festival’s history — nearly 24 hours before the festival begins, to be exact. Such a late set time release means there’s even less time to make decisions about who to see, especially given the festival’s conflict-heavy time table. There are some traditional surprises with the schedule drop — Ari Lennox has moved her set to Friday and J.I.D.’s set will go down on Saturday, for instance — but no surprise is more intriguing than the news that Arcade Fire will be performing a special set in the Mojave Tent at 6:45 p.m. (siden...
Thank God You Can See Master Chief’s Face in Halo the TV Show
The genre-defining video game Halo has been in development for a potential screen adaptation for nearly a decade now, and over that time one question has loomed large: Would we ever see the face of the franchise’s main character, a taciturn super-solider named Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, who has never been unmasked over the course of 16 video games made over 21 years? It’s a question that the Paramount+ series, which debuted this spring, answered towards the end of its first episode, as Master Chief (brought to life here by Pablo Schreiber) removed his helmet while being held at gunpoint by the terrified Kwan (Yerin Ha), in an effort to connect with her. Up until that point, Master Chief had been a man of action but always held at a distance by the show because of the full suit of...
Bruce Willis’ Retirement Means It’s Time to Rethink Our Perception of Bruce Willis
Gasoline Alley, Midnight in the Switchgrass, Cosmic Sin — these are just a few of the titles the visage of Bruce Willis has graced in the last several years, direct-to-video cash-ins that leveraged a few minutes of screentime from one of America’s most revered action stars to drive VOD sales and move Redbox inventory. Take a chintzy script you can film in Eastern Europe or Atlanta with minimal crew and one or two C-listers, throw Willis at the beginning or the end (aided by obvious body doubles), then slap his face on the poster and you’ve got a movie, baby. Willis’ take on this material, in particular, earned this subgenre of film the moniker “the geezer teaser.” Willis’ recent films in particular have been the subject of a deluge of jokes online, from hour-long Red Letter Media videos to...
Taylor Hawkins: A Musician’s Musician, A Fan’s Fan
Shortly after sound checking his “70s dirt rock cover band” Chevy Metal for a performance on the eve of Metallica’s second Orion Music + More festival during June of 2013 in Detroit, Taylor Hawkins spoke — effusively, as was his nature — to this writer about his musical ventures and adventures to that point. “Man, I just wanted to play music all the time, and I’m doing it and it feels great,” said the multi-faceted performer. At that point, Hawkins was five albums into his career with Foo Fighters, after tenures with Alanis Morissette and Sass Jordan, and had also launched another band, the Coattail Riders — thus stacking up a resume of high profile collaborations. “Y’know, I wanted to be in a great band. I’m in one,” Hawkins said. “I wanted to play with great people. I am. I wanted a life...
Top PH PR Expert, Agwuma Kingsley Talks On How The Port-Harcourt Creative Industry Can Thrive
Creatives ranging from super talented music creators, comic stars, actors/actresses, poets including writers, record producers, managers, as well as creative directors and photographers in the Port-Harcourt creative landscape can taste limelight from the city regardless. The internet and the rise of social media have made connecting with the world from anywhere much more possible. While Port-Harcourt creatives have to grow with this mentality and thrive with it first, and then look further to understand how they can fix productive talent incubation and development systems needed to engineer acts and make them revealed from the city. With consistency in building another Lagos, Nigeria structure in Rivers State and implementing the right strategy, investors, brands, and businesses can find t...
How Turning Red and The Baby-Sitters Club Prove We Need More Teen Girl Tales
It’s a bit funny to remember how, thirteen years ago, the enemy of fandom had a face, and it was Robert Pattinson. This is a bit of an exaggeration, except maybe it isn’t, when one remembers how the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, that annual orgy of fandom love, featured a nasty undercurrent of young men “protesting” Twilight‘s invasion of Hall H. In the year 2022, of course, Pattinson has now been embraced to some degree by the fanboys as our newest on-screen Batman. But while that might have changed, the vibes of those lackluster protests remain a too-familiar echo of an attitude to which female members of fandom have always been aware: In the pantheon of the great media landscape which distracts and delights us daily, girly shit is always seen as second-class. Not important. Not because it’s...
The Delicate, Dirty and Diverse World of UK Garage
An upbeat two-step rhythm, a touch of R&B soul, and a groovy house vibe. That’s what it takes to conjure the sound of the people — or as those people call it, UK garage. You may know it from Daniel Bedingfield’s 2001 UK No. 1 “Gotta Get Thru This” or T2’s 2007 single “Heartbroken” with Jodie Aysha. Maybe you heard the recent streaming hit “Pain” by breakout star PinkPantheress, and wondered to yourself where you could find more. From the London streets in the mid ’90s to the modern stages of now, the upbeat rhythms and flirtatious vocals of UK garage is a sound that stays fresh after 30 years due mostly in part to its inherent diversity: diversity of sounds, of influencers, and of creators and fans alike. Advertisement While garage is a definitely UK kinda vibe, the genre has its roots...
Why CODA Should Be This Year’s Underdog Oscar Triumph
Following the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday, February 27th and the Film Independent Spirit Awards on Sunday, March 6th, awards season is now officially going full steam ahead. Every Oscars race tends to have its underdog, and this year’s movie-that-could has the potential to be Sian Heder’s CODA. CODA received warm reactions following a premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and was acquired by Apple TV+, but initially failed to generate the kind of buzz seen around some of this year’s other top titles. Even so — and rightly so — the morning of the Oscar nominations saw CODA emerge with three nominations, including one for Best Picture. Adapted from a 2014 French film, La Famille Bélier, CODA is centered on Ruby (Emilia Jones), the only hearing member of a deaf family. The stor...
Why You Should Be Watching FX’s Snowfall
Since its debut in 2017, Snowfall, a show set during the crack epidemic of the 80s, has quickly become one of the hottest must-watch shows on television. Living up to the reputation that FX has created for itself with its culture-defining shows and characters, Snowfall has managed to take the “drug drama” sub-genre to new heights through layered, intense storytelling, award-worthy acting, and awe-inducing cinematography. With the acclaimed series returning for its fifth season on February 23, the hype for the show has become almost inescapable, with the drama trending every other day on Twitter in anticipation of its return. But, if you’re somebody who has been frankly confused by the sudden reemergence of the show’s endless amount of memes and the seemingly never-ending thirst for Damson ...
Why We’ll Never Stop Talking About NBC’s Smash
An important thing to remember about Smash is that when it premiered, 10 years ago today, the NBC musical drama was supposed to be capital-G Good. We’re talking “awards contender” Good. “All star cast” Good. “Executive produced by Steven Spielberg” Good. Sadly, that didn’t ultimately align with what we got, which was two seasons of the messiest yet ultimately most fascinating broadcast drama of the 2010s — maybe even the 21st century so far. The thing about Smash is, if it had been a total failure, it wouldn’t still occupy space in our mental real estate. But there were just enough glimmers of good TV, aligned with some moments of pure brilliant camp and what is legitimately a top-tier original soundtrack, to ensure its place in television history. Perhaps you missed Smash when it original...
Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours: Still Flawless at 45
As Fleetwood Mac prepared to make its 11th album — and second with its latest lineup — in 1976, it was on top of a world that was falling apart. The group’s self-titled 1975 release, its first with new American members Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, had revived the veteran British band’s flagging fortunes. It was certified seven times platinum and gave Fleetwood Mac its first No. 1 album in the U.S., spawning three Top 20 hits. The group was top of the pops, quite literally. But the quintet wasn’t quite able to bask in its success. All hell broke loose, also quite literally, between albums. Buckingham and Nicks, a couple when they joined Fleetwood Mac, broke up. Singer-keyboardist Christine McVie and bassist John McVie ended their eight-year marriage. Drummer Mick Fleetwood and his w...
Joss Whedon, Spilling Your Guts Doesn’t Mean You’ve Done the Work
Sometimes, the best profiles are the ones that know when to let the subject speak for themselves, and Monday we received a great example of this in Vulture writer Lila Shapiro’s lengthy examination of where Joss Whedon is at in the year 2022. The profile’s answer: not great, on a lot of levels, due to years of controversy stemming from allegations of bad behavior across multiple projects, and Whedon’s not likely feeling much better, given the current online reaction to his statements. There are no shortage of pull-out quotes in the Vulture piece. Whedon refutes Ray Fisher’s allegations by saying the Cyborg scenes in Justice League “logically made no sense” and that’s why he wanted to cut down Fisher’s role. He then uses the sort of terminology that Giles might use to introduce one of Buffy...
