Movies
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Jennifer Lawrence was on an epic box office and awards run… until 2016. That’s when she pulled down a major payday and earned top-billing in the box office sci-fi dud Passengers, one of the last big-budget blockbusters she starred in before taking a break from the spotlight and slowing her pace for a few years.
According to a new New York Times profile of the Oscar-winning actress posted on Wednesday (Nov. 2), she might have avoided that ding in her resume if she’d just listened to her pal Adele.
“Adele told me not to do it! She was like, ‘I feel like space movies are the new vampire movies.’ I should have listened to her,” Lawrence said of the movie about two astronauts on a giant spaceship who are accidentally woken up 90 years early from hibernation that grossed more than $300 million globally but drew so-so reviews.
The piece opens at the Greenwich Village, New York gay bar Pieces, where we’re told Lawrence tackled the “Easy On Me” singer to the ground in March 2019 after she lost a heated game of musical shots. The original plan was for JLaw to meet Adele at a concert, but since Lawrence was already at Pieces, she suggested the singer meet her there instead. Though both women are careful about their public exposure while out on the town and frequently disappear for months, or years, at a time when not on-cycle, they decided Pieces was a fine place to let loose.
And, according to the article, they did just that, with Adele competing in an onstage drinking game that prompted the very competitive Lawrence to yell, “How could you lose?,” before the aforementioned public takedown. They even indulged in a bit of karaoke, which is a gutsy move when your partner is a Grammy-winning global superstar whose album releases are massive cultural events. Lawrence, however, is a frequent presence at Adele’s concerts, including a cameo at last year’s star-studded “Adele: One Night Only” special.
Lawrence, 32, will return to screens this weekend with the Apple TV+ drama Causeway. Speaking to the Times, she dove into the period in her mid-20s after her run as the star of the Hunger Games franchise when suddenly her movies were not clicking with audiences as much and she could feel like they were losing interest. “I was like, ‘Oh no, you guys are here because I’m here, and I’m here because you’re here. Wait, who decided that this was a good movie?’,” she said.
As she enters a period of higher exposure following the Feb. 2022 birth of her first child with husband Cooke Maroney, Lawrence told the Times her carefree night out with bestie Adele was proof that she’s moved on from being afraid of the tween Hunger Games fans who got too in her head for a while.
“I can tell things are different by my interactions in the real world, just by the way that I can move about life,” she told the paper. “There’s an occasional article about me walking out in Ugg boots, but other than that, the interest has lessened, God bless it.”
Quentin Tarantino loves a good tall tale. But on Thursday night (Oct. 28) QT went on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to pour water on a recent stem-winder that Kanye West told in which the embattle rapper (now known as Ye) claimed that he originally conceived the idea for Q’s 2012 historical revamp tribute to Spaghetti westerns Django Unchained.
After West said in a recent interview that he pitched a similar concept to Tarantino while working up the treatment for the video for his 2005 hit “Gold Digger” — which features Jamie Foxx, later the star of Django — Tarantino told Kimmel that’s not exactly how it went down.
“There’s not truth to the idea that Kanye West came up with the idea of Django and then he told that to me, and I go, ‘Hey, wow, that’s a really great idea! Let me take Kanye’s idea and make Django Unchained out of it.’ That didn’t happen,” said Tarantino of the 2009 Ye video that feature the rapper and Foxx frolicking with scantily clad models.
“I’d had the idea for Django for a while before I ever met Kanye,” Tarantino continued. “He wanted to do a giant movie version of [his 2004 debut album] College Dropout the way he did the album – so he wanted to get big directors to do different tracks from the album and then release it as this giant movie – not videos, nothing as crass as videos, it was movies, movies based on each of the different tracks.”
That story differs significantly from the one West told British talker Piers Morgan in a recent interview. “Tarantino can write a movie about slavery, where actually — him and Jamie [Foxx] — they got the idea from me, because the idea for Django I pitched to Jamie Foxx and Quentin Tarantino as the video for ‘Gold Digger.’ And then Tarantino turned it into a film,” Ye said during the interview, in which he also continued to lean into his recent string of antisemitic comments that have caused his once sprawling business and music empire to crumble.
The Hype Williams-directed “Gold Digger” video consists almost entirely of West rapping the song in a raspberry-hued void while Foxx croons the refrain and buxom, lingerie-clad models dance with the men at a nightclub and pose for magazine covers. Tarantino’s controversial Oscar-winning film tells the story of a freed slave named Django (Foxx) who embarks on a killing spree across the South with a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) as they search of Django’s wife (Kerry Washington); there does not appear to be any obvious narrative correlation between the “Gold Digger” video and Tarantino’s film.
Which is exactly what QT told Kimmel, though he did reveal that he did have a meeting with Ye that didn’t amount to anything.
“We used it as an excuse to meet each other and and so we met each other we had a really good time. And he did have an idea for a video,” Tarantino said, adding that the kernel could have turned into something. “I do think it was for the ‘Gold Digger’ video, that he would be a slave. And the whole thing was the slave narrative where he’s a slave and he’s singing ‘Gold Digger.’ And it was very funny. It was a really, really funny idea.”
When Kimmel quipped that it sounds like it could have been a “funny slave video,” Tarantino responded, “It was meant to be ironic. And it’s like a huge musical. I mean, like no expenses spared with him in this slave rag outfit doing everything. And then that was also part of the part of the pushback on it. But I wish he had done it. It sounded really cool. Anyway, that’s what he’s referring to.”
Watch Tarantino on Kimmel below.
Rihanna is officially back. Well, almost. The singer is slated to get back in our ears on Friday (Oct. 28) with the new single “Lift Me Up” from the upcoming Marvel sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The song, written by Tems, Oscar winner Ludwig Göransson, Rihanna and Panther director Ryan Coogler was recorded in five countries and produced by Göransson according to a release announcing the star’s first solo single since 2016.
Ri’s anticipated return to music was written as a tribute to late Panther star Chadwick Boseman, who died in August 2020 at age 43. The song will be released on the singer’s Westbury Road label in partnership with Roc Nation/Def Jam Recordings/Hollywood Records. A brief preview of the song appeared on RiRi’s Instagram on Wednesday (Oct. 26), with her wordless humming floating above a string section.
“After speaking with Ryan and hearing his direction for the film and the song, I wanted to write something that portrays a warm embrace from all the people that I’ve lost in my life. I tried to imagine what it would feel like if I could sing to them now and express how much I miss them,” said Tems in a statement. “Rihanna has been an inspiration to me so hearing her convey this song is a great honor.”
The rumored slot on the Wakanda soundtrack has been buzzing for weeks, with billboards hinting at RiRi’s involvement in the project via cryptic promotions on electronic billboards in New York, and, this week, a teaser post for the film in which the title resets to spotlight the “R” in “Forever” above Friday’s date.
The “Umbrella” singer hasn’t released an album since Anti dropped six years ago, and logged two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. She most recently hit the Billboard Hot 100‘s top 10 on her own with “Love on the Brain,” which reached No. 5 in March 2017. She added her most recent Hot 100 top 10 – her 31st – as featured, with Bryson Tiller, on DJ Khaled’s “Wild Thoughts,” which hit No. 2 in July 2017. In her most recent appearance on the chart, she reached No. 23 in April 2020 with “Believe It,” with PARTYNEXTDOOR.
Though she’s teased her next album several times since, no new solo music has emerged since the Anti era, as new mom RiRi has mostly focused on her Fenty Beauty brand. Her long break from live performance is slated to end on Feb. 12, 2023, when she takes the stage for the 2023 Super Bowl Halftime Show.
The sequel to 2018 global smash Black Panther stars Angela Bassett as Queen Ramonda, Letitia Wright as Shuri, Winston Duke as M’Baku and Dania Gurija as Okoye, fighting to protect their nation from interloping powers in the wake of King T’Challa’s [Boseman] death. The film, also starring Martin Freeman, Lupita Nyong’o and Tenoch Huerta Mejia, is due in theaters on Nov. 11.
The Wakanda Forever soundtrack — produced by Coogler, Göransson, Archie Davis and Dave Jordan — will be out on Nov. 4, with Göransson’s score album due out also on Nov. 11.
Check out the “Life Me Up” tease below.
A lot of us love scary movies, but unless you are Elvira, Mistress of the Dark or Stephen King, your opinion on cinematic things that go bump in the night probably pales in comparison to those of the Boulet Brothers.
As drag culture iconoclasts and “horror’s new icons” per genre authority Fangoria, Dracmorda and Swanthula Boulet managed to create a reality competition series (The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula) that serves as both a love letter to horror and a refutation of the idea that reality TV can’t be underground and subversive. Now, the duo is launching The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula: Titans on Tuesday (Oct. 25) on Shudder and AMC+, a spin-off series featuring 10 standout contestants from Dragula’s first four seasons.
“The fans are not ready,” Swan tells Billboard. “The competitors dubbed it ‘Gagula’ because there’s so many different twists.”
With Halloween month (aka gay Christmas) and spooky szn upon us, we spoke with the Boulets about their 10 favorite horror movie soundtracks of all time. We’re talking about everything from John Carpenter’s iconic minimalist score for Halloween to Danny Elfman’s zany theme for the HBO series Tales From the Crypt to the synth fantasia Tangerine Dream crafted for the cult favorite Legend.
The Boulets also explain how the music in these movies affects their own work. “If it’s campier or more fun — and there are definitely fun challenges in this Titans season — you might hear a little music that sounds like Danny Elfman. But if it’s more epic and dramatic, you might hear our love for Bram Stoker’s Dracula and that score in those epic moments,” says Swan. “With so many episodes, it allows us to express musically all the ways we love horror.” Plus, the season will feature a new Boulet Brothers song called “Ascension,” which Drac says they “wrote specifically for the grand finale of the show.”
Read on — and expect to hear some of these sounds when the Boulets throw their annual Halloween Ball in Los Angeles on Oct. 28-29 at the Globe Theatre.
Kanye West claims he originally conceived of the idea for Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 historical revamp tribute to Spaghetti Westerns, Django Unchained. During Ye’s recent contentious chat with British talker Piers Morgan on Piers Morgan Uncensored, the MC/entrepreneur claimed that writer/director Tarantino and star Jamie Foxx cribbed the idea for the film from him based on a pitch he made while brainstorming for the 2005 “Gold Digger” video, which starred Foxx.
“Tarantino can write a movie about slavery, where actually — him and Jamie [Foxx] — they got the idea from me, because the idea for Django I pitched to Jamie Foxx and Quentin Tarantino as the video for ‘Gold Digger.’ And then Tarantino turned it into a film,” Ye said during last week’s interview, in which he also continued to lean into his recent string of antisemitic comments.
The surprise claim from Ye came after Morgan asked him if he believes in limits for free speech and, if so, what West thinks they are. “There are no limits to free speech,” Ye responded. “It’s all context, right?… In that film he creates a context where Leonardo DiCaprio use the [n-word] multiple times within that context.”
The Hype Williams-directed “Gold Digger” music video consists almost entirely of West rapping the song in a raspberry-hued void while Foxx croons the refrain and buxom, lingerie-clad models dance with the men at a nightclub and pose for magazine covers. Tarantino’s Oscar-winning film tells the story of a freed slave named Django (Foxx) who embarks on a killing spree across the South with a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) as they search of Django’s wife (Kerry Washington); there does not appear to be any obvious narrative correlation between the “Gold Digger” video and Tarantino’s film.
Foxx was not originally attached to star in Django, with Tarantino originally considering the late Michael K. Williams and Will Smith for the lead role. A spokesperson for Tarantino could not be reached for comment at press time.
After NCT DREAM hit a career milestone with two nights in South Korea’s largest concert venue, the K-pop boy band is sharing the experience with fans worldwide through their first-ever movie.
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NCT DREAM THE MOVIE : In a DREAM will be released worldwide this November. The feature film will spotlight the group on stage and backstage at their Olympic Stadium show in Seoul from September earlier this year. Fans will also get to see the preparations that went into the concert and interviews with all seven members of NCT DREAM. According to a press release, NCT DREAM members Mark, Renjun, Jeno, Haechan, Jaemin, Chenle and Jisung will “share candid stories and their thoughts and feelings” and “a look at the future the members envision away from the stage.”
The new flick celebrates NCT DREAM’s THE DREAM SHOW2 : In a DREAM concert that played in Seoul, as well as multiple cities in Japan, after the release Glitch Mode album, which hit No. 50 on the Billboard 200 in April to become the group’s first entry on the chart.
In A DREAM will be released in CGV theater chains with ScreenX as well as 4DX and 4DX Screen formats, which offer multi-sensory effects for viewers. Distribution for the movie comes from Trafalgar Releasing (who have pushed fan-focused movie experiences for artists like BTS, Coldplay and Twenty One Pilots) and CJ 4DPLEX Inc. (the tech company behind 4DX, ScreenX and 4DX Screen theaters). ScreenX offers a 270-degree field of view perspective in movie theaters by expanding screens to the side walls, while 4DX provides moviegoers with special effects like vibrations, wind, scents and more to enhance on-screen visuals. Trafalgar reports over 344 ScreenX auditoriums including 4DX Screen around the world in 38 countries.
“We are pleased to continue our relationship with CJ 4DPLEX Inc. and to partner for the first time with SM Entertainment to bring NCT DREAM’s first movie to cinemas worldwide,” said Marc Allenby, CEO of Trafalgar Releasing. “NCTzens all around the globe will be thrilled with the epic live concert performances and exciting behind-the-scenes footage that is meant to be experienced larger-than-life on the big screen.”
NCT DREAM’s debut on the silver screen makes them the latest K-pop act to deliver fans a concert-documentary hybrid film, last seen from the likes of SEVENTEEN, who brought their Power of Love : The Movie film to cinemas in April.
Forthcoming premiere dates and ticketing information for the November screenings will be available here.
Ed Sheeran was very, very close to achieving an all-time career goal for any artist when he was tapped to write a James Bond theme song in 2019. In fact, he had already begun crafting his take on the venerable genre for Daniel Craig’s Bond swan song, No Time To Die, when he was swapped out for eventual Oscar/Grammy/Golden Globe-winner Billie Eilish.
“I was within a f—ing gnat’s pube of doing one [a Bond theme song], and they changed directors, and then they just changed scripts and that was it.. we’d done all the meetings, I started writing it,” Sheeran said colorfully on this week’s episode of That Peter Crouch Podcast. The singer said that as an English performer penning a Bond theme is always a career bucket list item. “I’m not gonna pretend it didn’t hurt not doing it. But if they came back I’d be like, ‘yeah, yeah, of course, yeah!’”
In 2019, Sheeran’s manager Stuart Camp said he and the singer had met with series producer Barbara Broccoli in Dublin in 2017 to discuss a potential Bond theme, saying the film’s team “were interested” in Ed taking a shot at being the latest English/Scottish/Welsh act to give it a go; Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, Paul McCartney, Lulu, Duran Duran, Adele and Sam Smith have all previously recorded Bond themes.
The opportunity at the time appeared tied to director Danny Boyle helming of the 25th Bond movie — Boyle had worked with Sheeran on Richard Curtis’ 2019 Beatles fantasia Yesterday — but after Boyle quit over creative differences and was replaced by Cary Joji Fukunaga, Eilish was tapped for the gig.
Listen to the podcast (Bond talk starts 31:29).
Check out the brand-new trailer for Marvel Studios’ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, in theaters starting November 11. Related Images: