Week of « Prev | Next »
1-20 of 141 items « Prev | Next »
Watch Will and Jaden Smith Do a Father-Son Version of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air Rap
2 hours ago
During a visit to the BBC’s The Graham Norton Effect to promote the new father-son film After Earth, Jaden Smith joined dad Will to perform the iconic, titular theme song from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Bringing the performance full circle, the former Fresh Prince also brought along his original sidekick, DJ Jazzy Jeff — and, later on, Fresh Prince co-star Alfonso Ribeiro (better known as Carlton Banks) to do his signature dance to a cover of Tom Jones's "It's Not Unusual." This was, of course, a major crowd-pleaser — and not just because fellow Americans Bradley Cooper and Heather Graham were watching from the couch. After all, we already knew that the Brits very much enjoy The Fresh Prince, probably because they are human. »
- Delia Paunescu
Listen to Diplo's Endless Summer Playlist
2 hours ago
We asked D.J., producer, and Major Lazer leader Diplo to program the ultimate summer-barbecue soundtrack, and he sent us the names of these 98 tracks. “I chose these songs because they’re great new music,” he told us. And he guarantees they’ll sound good, even as your cookout winds down: “This looks like an after-party set to me.”Blood Diamonds, “Phone Sex feat. Grimes” Miguel, “Adorn” Unicorn Kid, “Need U” Major Lazer, “Jah No Partial (Yellow Claw & Yung Felix Remix)” Lana Del Rey, “National Anthem (Cashmere Cat Remix)” Missy Elliott, “Work It (R4 Remix)” Ace Hood, “Bugatti feat. Rick Ross and Future” Juyen Sebulba, “Superjam” Shift K3y, “Geeky Playtime” Sibot, “Magnet Jam” Tnght, “Acrylics” Doorly, “Rush (Original Mix) feat. Soraya Vivian” Twin Shadow, “Golden Light” Rita Ora, “Radioactive (The Flexican Remix)”Ginger & the Ghost, “One Type of Dark (Ta-Ku Remix)”Tinashe, “Boss (Ryan Hemsworth Remix)” A-Track, “Landline 2.0 feat. »
10 Pop Culture Questions Vulture Answered This Week
2 hours ago
Every week, Vulture faces the big, important questions in entertainment and comes to some creative conclusions. This week, we dug into your love for Daft Punk, your confusion about Mad Men, and your affection for Arrested Development. You may have read some of these stories below, but you certainly didn’t read them all. We forgive you. Q: How bad was the 2012–13 TV season for networks? A: Pretty damn bad. The whole TV season can be summed up in one chart in fact, and it is not pretty. (Well, the chart is pretty. But the information is troubling.) Q: What's Bill Hader's greatest SNL impression? A: Impossible to choose. In honor of Hader's retirement from Saturday Night Live, we put together a supercut of every impression he did on the show. Ever. Fyi, it's a lot of impressions. Q: Where did "the cornballer" come from? How about "mayonegg"? A: »
- Vulture Editors
Maron Recap: I Just Call Her 'The Pineapple'
3 hours ago
In an episode all about masochism, Marc starts by setting a trap for himself, then walking straight into it. Chatting with Illeana Douglas (Goodfellas, Easy to Assemble), Marc deliberately steers the conversation toward his ex-wife, who Illeana is friends with. Marc grumbles that he's glad his ex’s new baby is "okay," and then just glad that it's "whatever." Maron falls quiet, probably understanding that his baby is this podcast, and it lives in his garage."Marc, I know that it's fun to be depressed, but when was the last time you were on a real date?" Illeana asks. It's a puzzler for Maron — he tends to just sift through fawning fanmail and hook up with women who already have affection for his messy self. The idea of convincing someone to love him, after he's done that twice in the form of doomed marriages, is unfathomable to Marc. Last week »
- Zach Dionne
Why Pop Stars Rule the World and Movie Stars Hardly Matter
6 hours ago
Pop music, and pop stars, are everywhere this summer. Z100 fans can catch the no-longer-charmingly semi-pubescent Justin Bieber, with or without monkey and trailing a mild malodor of manufactured controversy, on his “Believe” tour, starting in late June and running 30 shows. Beyoncé, who may or may not be pregnant with her second child, continues her meticulously plotted post-first-baby comeback (Super Bowl, HBO doc, $50 million Pepsi deal, plus L’Oréal and all those H&M ads adding some much-needed ’donk to our bus shelters) with 26 shows in the U.S. with her “Mrs. Carter” tour, details of which are being Instagrammed and gif-ed and blogged by her rabid global fan base. Mr. Carter (Jay-z) tours stadiums in July and August with the renascent Justin Timberlake, including Yankee Stadium on July 19 and 20. Timberlake continues on with solo dates supporting his 20/20 Experience album, his first in seven years, which received »
- Michael Hirschorn
Lena Dunham Is Not Thrilled About the Girls Porn Parody
23 hours ago
And here is why (via Twitter): "1. Because Girls is, at its core, a feminist action while Hustler is a company that markets and monetizes a male's idea of female sexuality. 2. Because a big reason I engage in (simulated) onscreen sex is to counteract a skewed idea of that act created by the proliferation of porn 3. Because it grosses me out." Fair enough. »
- Amanda Dobbins
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints Trailer: Rooney Mara Loves Casey Affleck and Shooting Cops (Join the Club)
23 hours ago
After seeing the To the Wonder trailer, did you say to yourself, "I can never get enough of watching an Affleck and a pretty woman romantically frolic in a cinematic field?" If so, Ain't Them Bodies Saints offers a new Affleck (Casey), a new woman (Rooney Mara), and a new field (wheat). The David Lowery–directed film garnered a lot of buzz coming out of Sundance and is playing at Cannes. In it, Affleck and Mara play a young outlaw couple who get separated when Affleck goes to prison. It's set in the seventies — apparently, everyone didn't have Saturday night fever. The film opens on August 16, so wear all white, because you'll only have two more weeks before the Labor Day fashion police getcha. »
- Jesse David Fox
Before You Watch Behind the Candelabra: A Liberace Primer
24 May 2013 11:56 AM, PDT
This weekend, in HBO’s latest biopic, the Steven Soderbergh–directed Behind the Candelabra, we are introduced to Liberace during his 1976 Vegas residence. The 57-year-old performer meets 18-year-old Scott Thorson and they begin a five-year relationship. By focusing on so narrow a piece of Liberace’s career, the film leaves out large chunks of his life. So we've got a quick cheat sheet for you — from his start playing saloons to that moment when he tied Batman to a conveyor belt.Early Life Born Wladzio Valentine Liberace on May 16, 1919, Liberace was a twin, but his sibling died in childbirth. Thanks to his mother, he began playing piano at age 4. (In Behind the Candelabra, Liberace's mother is played by actress Debbie Reynolds, who was one of his dear friends in real life.) Liberace began touring the Midwest in his twenties as a classical pianist, but didn't love the music's constraints. »
- Rae Votta
The Best of Streaming: What You Should Watch on Netflix, Hulu, and Other Sites
24 May 2013 11:30 AM, PDT
It’s wild and wooly out there in the world of streaming video. As movies and TV shows become increasingly accessible through a variety of services, it has also become increasingly difficult to keep track of what is available where, what is expiring when, and what is actually worth watching. So every Friday, Vulture will have a list of recommendations of movies and TV shows that are new to Netflix (as well as Hulu, Amazon, On Demand, and other streaming sites), those that are expiring, and those that you should watch just because. Girl Walk // All DayThis ended up on the year-end top-ten lists of several discerning movie critics last December. But it's not a movie — or at least not a movie movie. Rather, it's essentially a 75-minute-long music video, divided into twelve parts. Scored entirely by Girl Talk's All Day, a fantastic, profane, and incredibly catchy mash-up album »
- Gilbert Cruz
Seitz on Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabra: Swan Song or Not, an Impressive Work
24 May 2013 10:35 AM, PDT
Whether the biopic Behind the Candelabra (HBO, May 26, 9 p.m.) ends up being a swan song for director Steven Soderbergh or merely the last entry in one phase of a long career, it’s an impressive work. This story of superstar pianist Liberace (Michael Douglas) and his young lover Scott Thorson (Matt Damon) is dark stuff.Liberace, who goes by “Lee,” dictates their relationship be completely private; he won’t take the teenage Scott out in public. Scott was abandoned as a child by his addict mother and grew up in foster homes; after a while he starts to feel like a concubine, a prisoner in an opulent jail, and his fears of abandonment and neglect are reawakened. At one point, Lee has his face remade to create a more youthful appearance (Rob Lowe plays his plastic surgeon; his makeup suggests Jocelyn Wildenstein by way of a Disney cartoon prince »
- Matt Zoller Seitz
36 Comedy Threequels Graded From Meh to Offensively Terrible
24 May 2013 9:45 AM, PDT
The critical rogering of The Hangover Part III just confirms the general rule that comedy threequels — the subgenre responsible for Home Alone without Macaulay Culkin, Major League without Charlie Sheen, and Beverly Hills Cop III without Eddie Murphy (that had to have been the work of a clone, right?) — fail the sniff test nearly every time. Chalk it up to thrice-used sight gags, catchphrases that were barely guffaw-worthy to begin with, crucial cast members dropping out, or crucial cast members not dropping out but definitely phoning it in. Expectations are and should be so low for comedy threequels that assessing their relative watchability requires an entirely different kind of grading scale: Going A through F seems useless, as you never would need to use anything above a B-minus. So we decided to grade The Hangover Part III and 35 other comedies that mustered a third theatrical release* on a »
- John Sellers
Watch a Face-off Between Arrested Development’s Pop-Pop and Community’s ‘Pop, Pop!’
24 May 2013 9:15 AM, PDT
It was on our dozenth, nay hundredth, viewing of Arrested Development this week when we realized that Pop-Pop, the Bluth family's nickname for patriarch George Bluth, is also the catchphrase of Community's one-man party, Magnitude. It was immediately clear what we had to do as part of our attempt to find every possible way to celebrate the return of the Bluths. Watch and see. We're less than 40 hours away, you guys »
- Sarah Frank,Nick Robins-Early
Stephen King, Revenge Fan
24 May 2013 9:00 AM, PDT
Stephen King has a new book coming out (always), so he's dutifully making the press rounds, including an interview with Parade, in which he describes his TV habits thusly: "Justified, Bates Motel, The Walking Dead. The best show of the year is The Americans. I don't watch Mad Men. I think it’s basically soap opera, and if I want soap opera, I watch Revenge. That show is crazy, but they have great clothes." If there's any kind of beauty in this world, that will be the tagline on the Revenge poster next season. »
- Margaret Lyons
Only God Forgives Director Nicolas Winding Refn on Getting Booed at Cannes
24 May 2013 8:15 AM, PDT
You’ve already heard from Vulture’s Kyle Buchanan about the smattering of boos — mixed with applause — at the Cannes press screening for Only God Forgives, Ryan Gosling’s new, extremely violent collaboration with his Drive director, Nicolas Winding Refn. Reviews have been polarized for the highly stylized odyssey of a drug dealer and Muay Thai boxing promoter (Gosling) who’s manipulated into avenging the murder of his brother, at the urging of his harpy of a mother (Kristin Scott Thomas, whose foul-mouthed monologue deriding the size of Gosling’s cock compared to that of her favorite son is one of the most emasculating moments in recent cinema). Said vengeance places him in direct conflict with a Thai police officer (Vithaya Pansringarm), who carries around a samurai sword he seems to pull straight from his spine, then, after each violent act, sings mournful Thai karaoke with David Lynch–ian surreality. »
- Jada Yuan
The Year of Rock: How the Former Wrestler Became King of the Action-Cinema Ring
24 May 2013 8:00 AM, PDT
It's not hard to smell what The Rock is cooking this summer — it's box-office domination. With four movies released over the past four months (February's Snitch, March's G.I. Joe: Retaliation, April's Pain & Gain, and this weekend’s Fast & Furious 6), the former WWE wrestling icon, otherwise known as Dwayne Johnson, has finally become cinema's indisputable heavyweight stud.Good luck finding anyone in the coveted 18–34 male demographic who doesn't like, or at least appreciate, The Rock. Like his famous in-ring moniker, he's now the People's Champion, a gregarious superstar whose ubiquity — which also extends to recently headlining April's Wrestlemania, as well as hosting an upcoming TNT reality series, The Hero — isn't merely the result of the Hollywood machine deeming him marquee-worthy and force feeding him down the throats of audiences hungry for a post-Schwarzenegger superman. Instead, it's a decisive reflection of his charisma and surprisingly deft abilities »
- Nick Schager
Edelstein: Alex Gibney’s We Steal Secrets Looks at WikiLeaks and the Tragedy of the Modern Hacker
24 May 2013 7:45 AM, PDT
Before I saw Alex Gibney’s documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, I figured Gibney would be kicking the same government hornet’s nest already inflamed by his protagonist, Julian Assange — or some other nest, there being so many hornets and soul-sucking ghouls and dark subterranean forces in this and the last presidential administration that we’re practically living in Harry Potter World. But Gibney ended up following his story into other, even weirder areas. He comes to view the whistle-blowers, the cyberguerrillas in the war against all forms of secrecy, from a sort of psycho-anthropological perspective: Here, he says, is how the culture created them. And here’s how it destroys them. By the time this twisty, probing, altogether enthralling movie hits its final notes, the crimes against the Constitution and humanity have been upstaged by personal demons. Which is our woe as well.Gibney has a »
- David Edelstein
Ken Cosgrove Dances to Daft Punk: A Mash-up
24 May 2013 7:15 AM, PDT
Last week on Mad Men, Ken Cosgrove did a nifty jig, so right on cue, here is your "Ken Cosgrove Dancing to Daft Punk" mash-up. We have one or two issues with the song choice — wouldn't the ragtime breakdown on "Touch" have made more sense? Wouldn't anything besides the Panda Bear song have made more sense? — but as the old saying goes, don't look a gift Daft Punk viral video in the mouth. Our mother taught us that.Related: here is Celine Dion dancing to "Get Lucky." Take notes, it is fantastic. (Via Rich Juzwiak.) »
- Amanda Dobbins
Movie Review: Epic Is a Derivative Slog Through the Forest
24 May 2013 7:00 AM, PDT
Positing that there’s a secret battle in the forest between life and decay, the new animated film Epic proceeds to zoom into a world of tiny forest Samurai (called the Leaf-Men) who ride hummingbirds and fight against the forces of darkness and rot, epitomized by gray, scaly, gnarly creatures called the Boggens. Along comes ordinary-size human M.K. (voiced by Amanda Seyfried), newly arrived at the woodland home of her nutty scientist father (voiced by Jason Sudeikis) and who lands in this magic tiny forest people world just as the beautiful and ethereal Queen Tara (Beyoncé) is dying. Given a magic flower pod by the queen, M.K. joins a veteran Leaf warrior named Ronin (Colin Farrell) and a brash young rebel named Nod (Josh Hutcherson) as they seek to preserve the pod, which will help them crown their new queen if they allow it to bloom in the »
- Bilge Ebiri
Edelstein: Before Midnight Finds Romance in the Struggle of Wills
24 May 2013 6:15 AM, PDT
The most fascinating thing about Before Midnight is that it exists — and that its form, in a sense, preceded content. Director and co-writer Richard Linklater and actors and co-writers Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy have reunited for the second time to chart the latest zigs and zags in the romance of Jesse and Celine — which began in 1995 in Before Sunrise and did not seem meant to go beyond, well, sunrise. Two attractive strangers on a train had a meeting of minds and then bodies and parted with an agreement to meet at a later date. When the three made Before Sunset nine years later, they dodged the biggest challenge. They hit the reset button: Jesse and Celine for convoluted reasons missed each other, and their lives went sadly on — until he wrote a novel and she came to a reading in Paris and …Before Midnight is »
- David Edelstein
Katy Perry Apologized to a Very Aggressive Chief Keef
24 May 2013 5:30 AM, PDT
A few days ago, Katy Perry heard 17-year-old Chicago rapper Chief Keef's song "Hate Bein' Sober" on the radio. She tweeted concern, saying, "I now have serious doubt for the world." Keef, who wasn't directly mentioned in the tweet, found out on Thursday evening and got pretty salty. "Dat bitch Katy Perry Can Suck Skin Off Of my Dick," read one tweet. "Ill Smack The Shit out her," read another. For some reason, Katy Perry decided an apology was owed. From her. To him.Perry closed it out classily, saying, "Believe me, I'm a lover not a hater." If she really felt the need to engage with this kinda puerile nonsense, she should have just said, "Believe me, I'm a firework," spiked a microphone onto her computer, and never thought about Chief Keef again. »
- Zach Dionne
1-20 of 141 items « Prev | Next »
company.