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Gotham Recap: Fish Mooney vs. Not-Quite-Mike Piazza
48 minutes ago
Monday night’s Gotham is only useful as a place-holding declaration of intent. Which is to say: Nothing substantial happens in "Beasts of Prey" that won't happen at greater length next week. This is sadly typical of Gotham lately. Various important subplots are progressing, particularly Bruce Wayne's search for Reginald Payne and Fish Mooney's escape from the Dollmaker's island prison. But while last week's episode suggested that various characters are on their way to getting what they really want, tonight's episode makes it seem as if progress won't come to Gotham City without a lot of throat-clearing. So in an episode like "Beasts of Prey," it's tempting to say that the best subplots are the ones that show the most signs of narrative progress. But that's not necessarily a great way to gauge the worth or success of the show's inter-related stories. Instead, I want to try to judge each »
- Simon Abrams
Sarah Paulson Will Also Be Joining American Horror Story: Hotel, of Course
4 hours ago
Sarah Paulson has been in every single installment of American Horror Story so far — would you like to bet whether she will also be in Ahs: Hotel? After keeping mum in March, Paulson today officially joined the cast of the fifth Ahs installment, which also includes Lady Gaga, Kathy Bates, Chloë Sevigny, and Matthew Bomer. (Jessica Lange has bowed out for unknown reasons.) Paulson's involvement in Hotel had been up in the air since she's also playing Marcia Clark in Ryan Murphy's American Crime Story, but apparently they found a way for her to be in two places at once. »
- Nate Jones
To No One’s Surprise — But Everyone’s Delight — HBO Renews Silicon Valley and Veep
4 hours ago
Was there anything to watch this weekend? Kidding! Obviously you were watching Game of Thrones, Last Week Tonight, Veep, and Silicon Valley with the rest of us. That Sunday slate will continue on: Michael Lombardo, head of programming at HBO, announced Monday that Veep and Silicon Valley would join Game of Thrones and Last Week Tonight for another season. Veep will enter its fifth season — this time without its creator, Armando Iannucci — and Silicon Valley will go into its third. Meaning: You may continue to use your parent's HBO Go password. »
- E. Alex Jung
Mad Men’s ‘New Business’ Is All About Old Business
5 hours ago
Mad Men mostly is about how we all conduct the same emotional transactions over and over, performing the same rites, playing the same roles, pushing the same button in the elevator. You remind me of someone. There's this twinge in my chest. What if I never get past the beginning again? What if … I only like the beginnings of things in the first place? Last week's "Severance" and this week's "New Business" were both about this looping sense of repetition, and the inevitability of the patterns of our own lives. Don's big on this, but so was everyone else this week, too. There was no new business at all. Everyone was such old business that they were already in the Rolodex, annotated. (And even that idea, of being generally too drunk for afternoon work, is something we heard Duck Phillips's ex-wife mention, too.) Our newest business this week, Diana, is »
- Margaret Lyons
Katee Sackhoff to Starbuck It Up in a TV Show of Her Own Creation
5 hours ago
Katee Sackhoff is betting on a futuristic TV show for her future. No, another one. According to Deadline, the Battlestar Galactica star is creating a TV show called Rain, a global-warming parable that will look at "a civilization in harrowing decline by its own hand." Sackhoff also plans to play the title character, who is, of course, a soldier. Can we throw some dystopian Power Rangers in there, too? »
- E. Alex Jung
Brand New Releases New Song: It Might Be Spring Outside, But It’s Still Winter in Our Hearts
7 hours ago
Bet that's a headline you never thought you'd read in a million years. Finally, after six years of radio silence, Long Island emo gods Brand New are back with a new song that'll make your head explode. And it's not just that! They're playing Coachella, shipping out those lyric booklets fans (like me) paid $1 for all those years ago, and have a new site currently hosting (for a limited time) their new song "Mene" — which can only mean one thing: A new album is probably in the works! And while Jesse Lacey still isn't feeling a damn thing, we're an emotional wreck. Emo is back, baby! »
- Dee Lockett
8 Songs Hillary Clinton Should Use on the Campaign Trail
7 hours ago
This weekend, Hillary Clinton came clean about her second attempt to enter the White House as the first female president of the United States. Her announcement video, posted on Facebook, felt like a two-minute ad for the United Colors of Benneton; the generic infomercial music was especially boring. You can do better than that, Hc! Since we know the Clintons have pretty decent taste in music (see the 1993 Fleetwood Mac reunion that Bill Clinton made happen), we’d like to suggest the Clinton machinery spice things up a little bit on the campaign trail with these selections. (Feel free to leave more suggestions in the comments.)"Supermodel," RuPaul Hillary would be crazy not to take advantage of that fact that she’s already received an endorsement from the host of your favorite television show. "Money," Liza Minnelli She's been accused of being in the pocket of corporate interests. Maybe she »
- Lauretta Charlton
Patti Smith Is Writing Another M-e-m-o-i-r
7 hours ago
Following the tried-and-tested Hollywood formula of making sequels, Patti Smith will follow up her National Book Award–winning memoir Just Kids with another memoir, M Train, coming in October. Smith says the book is a "roadmap to my life," and will use 18 different "stations" — all of them cafés, it seems — that were important for her creative process. The cover photo below is from EW, and shows Smith at the West Village café 'ino on its last day in business. »
- E. Alex Jung
Stephen Hawking Explains How the Universe Works by Singing Monty Python’s ‘Galaxy Song’
8 hours ago
To celebrate Record Store Day, international treasure Stephen Hawking recorded a cover of Monty Python's universe explainer "Galaxy Song" from the troupe's 1983 film The Meaning of Life. After all, who better to sing the lines, "Pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space / 'Cause there's bother all down here on Earth," than one of the greatest minds of our time? Zoom on, Hawking. »
- E. Alex Jung
One Direction Took Their First Official Picture Without Zayn, and They’re Super Bummed About It
8 hours ago
We knew this day was coming, but now that it's here, we're not sure we're quite ready. As with any band that's lost a member, new press photos are a necessary evil. And now, courtesy of One Direction's management site, we have the group's first official photo sans Zayn Malik. It's okay if you have to ugly-cry — Liam and Niall look like they're about to, too. Meanwhile, Harry's chillin', and Louis is all, "I give up."Caption that. »
- Dee Lockett
Terminator: Genisys’s New Trailer Is Just One Giant Spoiler
9 hours ago
Either Paramount has something major up its sleeve or the studio is trolling hard with its new trailer for Terminator: Genisys, because it spoils everything. And, by everything, we mean a major plot twist that — hello, spoiler! — reveals that John Connor is a cyborg in the latest installment! And he's the one whom Sarah Connor, Kyle Reese, and the T-800 have to defeat and save! And here we thought the first trailer was confusing. »
- Dee Lockett
How Avengers: Age of Ultron Nearly Killed Joss Whedon
9 hours ago
Joss Whedon has written and directed two of Marvel’s megabudget Avengers movies, but midway through shooting the second film — entitled Avengers: Age of Ultron, and coming May 1 — buzz began to circulate in Hollywood that Whedon wouldn’t be coming back for future installments. “This one’s been rough on him,” I kept hearing, and sure enough, Marvel Studios closed a deal last week with Captain America: The Winter Soldier filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo to take the reins from Whedon for the third and fourth Avengers sequels. That kind of directorial turnover is commonplace in the Marvel cinematic universe, but I still wondered if there was more to this story than just an inevitable passing of the torch.I had always intended to ask Whedon about the rumors that Age of Ultron brought him to his knees, but when I met up with the filmmaker this past weekend at »
- Kyle Buchanan
Who Are the Sons of the Harpy, and Why Do They Hate Daenerys?
9 hours ago
As in every HBO show that's not Entourage, the characters on Game of Thrones are faced with hard decisions, but so far, no character on the show has had a harder decision than Daenery's Targaryen's Clash-inspired debate over whether or not to leave Meereen. On one hand, her people need her. On the other hand, she's ruling an unfamiliar culture, her dragons keep eating small children, half the city hates her guts — and oh yeah, in last night's season premiere, we learned that an insurgent group named the Sons of the Harpy is killing all her soldiers just for the heck of it. But wait: Who exactly are the Sons of the Harpy? Well, the first thing to know is that their title is metaphorical, not literal. (There's a lot of them, so that would be one tired harpy.) The harpy is a traditional emblem in Ghiscari culture, and »
- Nate Jones
Cuba Gooding Jr. Plays a Super-Amped, Coked-Up, Almost-Naked Version of Himself
9 hours ago
The very-energetic, often-shirtless Cuba Gooding Jr. comes to Comedy Central's Big Time in Hollywood, Fl as a coked-up, even-more-naked version of himself. In an exclusive clip from his first scene, Gooding Jr. whips out a gun on his little brother Omar Gooding before screaming at his agent to get him some work because he's "in a real bad way." Nothing can stand in the way of this man and his coke — not even Steven Spielberg. The episode, "To Catch a Paparazzi" airs April 15. »
- E. Alex Jung
Mumford & Sons Hate Jay Z’s Tidal Almost As Much As They Hate Their Banjos
10 hours ago
Mumford & Sons may have ditched their banjos for electric guitars on their new album, but that doesn't mean they're down for all things high-tech. In fact, they've made it pretty clear in a new interview with the Daily Beast that they're very much anti-Tidal, Jay Z's new not-so-for-the-people music-streaming service — even if they've embraced streaming as an unavoidable part of their lives. Here's what Marcus Mumford had to say about Hov's latest gimmick: "We wouldn’t have joined it anyway, even if they had asked. We don’t want to be tribal. I think smaller bands should get paid more for it, too. Bigger bands have other ways of making money, so I don’t think you can complain. A band of our size shouldn’t be complaining. And when they say it’s artist-owned, it’s owned by those rich, wealthy artists. What I’m not into is »
- Dee Lockett
Mad Men Recap: That’s What the Money Is For
10 hours ago
“I’m ready,” Don Draper tells his new lover, Diana, in the second-to-last-scene of “New Business.” Something in Jon Hamm’s delivery suggests that Don means it this time — that he’s ready to commit to a woman and have an entirely adult (and maybe even monogamous) relationship. Does he mean it? It doesn’t matter. He’s a sexual version of the boy who cried wolf, a parable that shows how liars are rewarded: On the occasion when they finally tell the truth, nobody will believe them.That’s a terrible position to be in if you’re someone like Don, who’s trampled a lot of people during his time but now seems to be making a sincere effort to improve his character. As has often been the case recently, there were moments in “New Business” where Don, previously a hot-tempered, prideful, and childish man, could have said »
- Matt Zoller Seitz
Listening to Beyoncé With Avant-Garde Composer Holly Herndon
10 hours ago
Holly Herndon is the latest in a long line of women electronic-music pioneers. Like Delia Derbyshire, Wendy Carlos, and Laurie Spiegel, she uses digital tools to create music that mines the way technology influences our perception of the world. She’s especially interested in the emotional impact of interpersonal relationships created online. To wit, her new record Platform, out May 19 on 4Ad, includes a love song dedicated to a fictional Nsa agent who’s spying on a paramour through the internet. “Talking about issues of the Nsa can be dry and didactic,” she says. “So I’m using pop as a carrier signal to talk about a real issue.” Traditionally speaking, this sort of heady, highly conceptual stuff doesn’t translate in the mainstream-pop world — the closest she can get is counting Björk and Thom Yorke as notable fans — but the “mainstream,” Herndon says, is a matter of context: “If »
- Lauretta Charlton
Nobel Prize–Winning Author Günter Grass Has Died
10 hours ago
German novelist and Nobel Prize–winning author Günter Grass has died, reports the New York Times. Grass, best known for his Danzig Trilogy, died on Monday in a clinic in Lübeck, a city in northern Germany where he'd lived for decades. His first novel, The Tin Drum, was adapted into a film that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1980. In 1999, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He most recently published a controversial poem in 2012 criticizing Israel for its rhetoric on Iran's nuclear program, and in 2006, came under fire after revealing he'd been a Nazi during World War II. He was 87. »
- Dee Lockett
Is Varys Really a Targaryen Supporter? Here’s What We Know About Him So Far
10 hours ago
Varys risks his life to help Tyrion across the Narrow Sea. And now, as we begin season five, he claims to want Tyrion's help in putting Daenerys on the Iron Throne. But isn't Dany the same person he helped try to kill in season one? How do we reconcile Varys's claim that he is a Targaryen loyalist when his actions on the Small Council for the last three kings (Robert, Joffrey, and Tommen) have actively opposed a Targaryen restoration? What web is The Spider spinning here? And why? It might help to examine what we know of Varys, which, admittedly, is little. Like Littlefinger, he is a master manipulator who believes that information is power, especially misinformation. He is a master of disguise, as well as a former Master of Whisperers. But he has hinted at his motivations, either by sharing information or withholding it. Spoilers ahead for the most »
- Jennifer Vineyard
What You Missed at the MTV Movie Awards
11 hours ago
Last night, MTV held its annual Movie Awards despite the network having made only one film in the last two years (bet you didn't know MTV was responsible for Project Almanac), and as usual, it was a snoozefest. Sure, Amy Schumer held her own as host with her usual sex jokes, a mini-roast for Kevin Hart, and some great in-between skits involving her auditioning for some of the last year's biggest movies. But the surprises were few and far between: The Fault in Our Stars, the clear tween fan favorite of 2014, walked away the night's biggest winner with three awards, including Movie of the Year. Here's a breakdown of the night's best and worst moments. Channing Tatum: Jennifer Lopez won Best Scared As Shit Performance (for The Boy Next Door), and since she accepted the award from the Magic Mike Xxl cast, she had just one request: twerk! Channing »
- Dee Lockett
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