Never underestimate the power of the internet and a fan base with questionable taste. Last month, Weezer covered Toto’s “Africa” at the request of a fan who spammed each member for months on Twitter — and got many more fans to do the same — with the plea to make it rain on ’em. Now, humoring her once again, Weezer performed the cover on Kimmel last night with the help of Toto’s keyboardist Steve Porcaro.
Oh, you like podcasts? Sign up for Vulture’s new recommendation newsletter 1.5x Speed here. Switched on Pop’s hosts have been seeing Carina del Valle Schorske’s name next to all their favorite pieces of music writing lately. A moving profile of Bad Bunny? There it is. A searing critique of West Side Story? There it is again. A contemplation on love and loss by way of an Aretha Franklin and Smokey Robinson duet?
After we called Whiplash “the Sundance Film Festival’s Strongest Opener in Years,” it went on to win both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the festival. This is what all the hype was about. Opening October 10, the film features Miles Teller playing a young drummer aspiring for greatness and J.K. Simmons as his drill-sergeant-esque jazz-band conductor. If you don’t get enough of Simmons screaming and hitting Teller here, may we direct you to the slap-filled clip we posted two months ago.
One of these beards got fewer votes than the others. Over four seasons on the air, Game of Thrones has done for male facial hair what Mad Men did for skinny-fit suits. The show’s plethora of scruff may make it hard for newcomers to tell the show’s dozens of characters apart (“He’s the gruff, slightly charming bearded guy. No, the other gruff, slightly charming bearded guy!”), but for diehards, each beard on Game of Thrones is as beautifully distinct as a snowflake.
When it came to preparing for 2000’s X-Men, the first in what has stretched out into a now seven-movie series, director Bryan Singer avoided drowning himself in 40 years of comic-book history by binge-watching all 76 episodes of X-Men: The Animated Series. It was a logical move: The show, which premiered in the fall of 1992, did everything Singer’s film franchise would go on to do, spinning original stories out of the comic’s vast, established mythology and occasionally adapting the book’s legendary arcs as keystones for the series.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is fantastic on its own, but Anderson’s four new shorts together make up a much more complicated cinematic exploration of Roald Dahl’s work. Warning: This article discusses plot details of all four of Wes Anderson’s new shorts, three of which are streaming on Netflix now and one of which will debut tomorrow.
The new Wes Anderson short films based on the stories of Roald Dahl’s begin with Sugar and end with Poison.
Sorry, anjinposters, FX’s adaptation of Shōgun has concluded. Toronaga reluctantly followed his fate and will now lead Japan to a new age of peace. The show’s attention to period accuracy, its well-rounded characters, its perfect episode endings, and its endless parade of Japanese character actors will be missed. The series managed to make you feel for so many characters with so many (often conflicting) motivations. Then it made you watch that person you fell in love with get beheaded.
Hip-hop in its earliest incarnations was an experiential thing — not just because rappers and DJs had yet to secure the backing of major labels, but because their work depended on the texture and context that only a cramped nightclub or a sweaty multipurpose room could provide. Even as rap became a massive commercial force, it preserved the thrill of the impermanent: the sample chopped or flipped on the spot only to be nixed by the folks in legal affairs, the virtuosic freestyle that trails off into nothing.
Jennifer Lawrence stars as ‘Katniss Everdeen’ in THE HUNGER GAMES. Thanks to its staggeringly comprehensive publicity campaign (and some very excited coverage on this particular website), you are by now probably aware that The Hunger Games opens on Friday. For some of you, this date has been circled on the calendar for months. For others — perhaps those among you who do not live and die by young-adult-novel trends — the frenzy may still be a bit confusing, especially if you have reflexively grouped The Hunger Games along with Twilight and other teen fads of late.
A comedy boom has to start somewhere, and that’s with comedians — comedians have to start somewhere, and that’s with the first jokes, show, or stand-up special they saw that left an impression on them. So, Vulture polled more than five dozen comedians and comedy writers, big and small, to find out what some of their favorite jokes of all time are, what jokes changed their lives, or what jokes pushed them to get into comedy in the first place — in some cases all of the above.