“we r hot” show dance rehearsal with commentary (hilarious sexy fun)
After her wild Ukulele post popped up on her crazy subterranean TikTok account and a couple of random posts since, today Billi Eilish posted what appears to be a impromptu reversal video with some hilarious commentary. Set to the song “Lost Cause” (very hot now).
The account which only has 14 videos since it first popped up and has 35.4 million followers (of course!) and 190.3 millions likes, and the video (below) got a whopping 3.2 million in the first hour and currently has accumulated 80 million views to date. The first full video on the account – other than the Ukulele post mentioned above. That one went live back on November 13, 2020.
It’s pretty clear from the humor, voice over and the attitude that Billie loves the vibe and spontaneity of TikTok and this video and her rogue account style fits right in!
Even at the relatively elderly summit of 19 her sultry, dark style along with top of the world presence continues to command loyalty and love for her music and style. Her recent biographical photo book was also a hit and the new songs will likely continue at the top of our summer list. The documentary is great also.
Oh, and the WORLD TOUR 2022 starts in February! Kicking off in Smoothie King Center, New Orleans, LA, however, unfortunately tickets for that show has since been SOLD OUT!
Above: “Brokeback Mountain” / Photo Credit / Focus Features
Sitting on top of the heap of ultra successful streaming giants Netflix must spend and produce more and more content to keep up with views that binge watch new movie titles and even series as fast as they arrive, it seems. It’s given that the deluge of new arrivals helps to reduce the feeling of frustration that can arise when you are searching for something you have yet to watch, but it feels like hours go by, with little new to consider.
With a large number of new titles coming down the pipeline each month, and spread out in terms of release dates presumably in order to prevent a bulge in the first week, at least there is a chance that something completely new, or at least new to the classic library of titles on the streamer, will pop up in the browsing selection.
But what if you don’t stumble across a great, classic title and it is removed, perhaps permanently, before you had a chance to see it? To help pay for the many new titles that are always being added, and produced from scratch, the library must also be culled on a continuous basis. And as we all know by now, often the older classic titles outshine the more recent productions, sometimes with aging, half interested stars and “direct-to-streaming” titles and directors.
Fortunately, this month the last day falls on a Monday and it also comes in direct proximity to a 3-day weekend for Memorial Day, so we have a bit more time to warn you about what you might want to see, before it’s too late.
Netflix had a huge release of new titles for May 2021, 90 to be exact, that were added to the platform. As the end of the month rapidly nears, 20 titles will be leaving to make space in the budget for the June 2021 arrivals.
Therefore, be sure you don’t miss out on the titles below. We have provided trailers and a synopsis for a few select choices, since they are classic movies boasting high-profile stars. Examples such as Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler in “50 First Dates”, “Meryl Street and Amy Adams in “Julie & Julia” and Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway in “Brokeback Mountain” give you a taste and the full list also follows below.
Comedy, Romance, Action, Historical, Horror, Thriller are all on the list.
The list of titles leaving Netflix also includes award-winning films such as: “Milk”, “Miracle” and “The Pursuit of Happyness”.
Below are the titles that will officially be gone from the platform on May 31st at midnight:
Brokeback Mountain
In 1963, rodeo cowboy Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and ranch hand Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) are hired by rancher Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid) as sheep herders in Wyoming. One night on Brokeback Mountain, Jack makes a drunken pass at Ennis that is eventually reciprocated. Though Ennis marries his longtime sweetheart, Alma (Michelle Williams), and Jack marries a fellow rodeo rider (Anne Hathaway), the two men keep up their tortured and sporadic affair over the course of 20 years.
50 First Dates
Playboy vet Henry (Adam Sandler) sets his heart on romancing Lucy (Drew Barrymore), but she has short-term memory loss; she can’t remember anything that happened the day before. So every morning, Henry has to woo her again. Her friends and family are very protective, and Henry must convince them that he’s in it for love.
The Help
In 1960s Mississippi, Southern society girl Skeeter (Emma Stone) returns from college with dreams of being a writer. She turns her small town on its ear by choosing to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent white families. Only Aibileen (Viola Davis), the housekeeper of Skeeter’s best friend, will talk at first. But as the pair continue the collaboration, more women decide to come forward, and as it turns out, they have quite a lot to say.
Milk
In 1972, Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) and his then-lover Scott Smith leave New York for San Francisco, with Milk determined to accomplish something meaningful in his life. Settling in the Castro District, he opens a camera shop and helps transform the area into a mecca for gays and lesbians. In 1977 he becomes the nation’s first openly gay man elected to a notable public office when he wins a seat on the Board of Supervisors. The following year, Dan White (Josh Brolin) kills Milk in cold blood.
The Pursuit of Happyness
Life is a struggle for single father Chris Gardner (Will Smith). Evicted from their apartment, he and his young son (Jaden Christopher Syre Smith) find themselves alone with no place to go. Even though Chris eventually lands a job as an intern at a prestigious brokerage firm, the position pays no money. The pair must live in shelters and endure many hardships, but Chris refuses to give in to despair as he struggles to create a better life for himself and his son.
Act of Valor
All Dogs Go to Heaven
The Blair Witch Project
The Boy
Deliver Us from Eva
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
Julie & Julia
Above: “Julia & Julia” / Photo Credit / Columbia Pictures
Marauders
Miracle
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz
The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior
The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption
Soul Surfer
Striptease
Waiting…
Above: “Striptease” / Photo Credit / Warner Bros. Pictures
Blue Sky Studios has made a mix of movies over the years. Being the animation subsidiary of 20th Century Fox, Blue Sky hasn’t become a household name quite like Pixar, DreamWorks, Illumination, or even Sony. The studio found initial success with “Ice Age” in 2002, which sparked a five movie, fourteen-year franchise that still remains very popular overseas. In between these Pleistocene Epoch-themed successes, they have also produced movies such as “Robots,” “Rio,” “The Peanuts Movie,” and “Ferdinand.”
There is nothing wrong with any of these movies. Some of them even managed to fare well at the box office. Critically, however, none of them have really made an enormous splash, and they tend to fall behind films made by Blue Sky’s competitors.
As of this past March, though, 20th Century Fox has been under Walt Disney Studios’ control, making Blue Sky a Disney property. Therefore, Blue Sky’s next project will be the studio’s first to be released under Disney’s watch.
That next release is titled “Spies In Disguise,” and despite getting its release date perpetually pushed back since January, the film will finally hit theaters on December 25th.
Although “Spies In Disguise” will be Blue Sky’s first release under Disney, the project entered into development back in 2017—long before the Fox acquisition. Likewise, production predominantly took place in 2018. Thus, Disney really didn’t have much oversight in the making of the movie.
The film is partially based off of a 2009 animated short titled “Pigeon: Impossible,” directed by Lucas Martell. This feature adaptation will be the directorial debuts for Nick Bruno and Troy Quane, both of whom have worked in the animation and art departments on previous Blue Sky productions. Meanwhile, Brad Copeland (“Ferdinand”) and Lloyd Taylor (“The Wild”) wrote the screenplay.
The first personnel that Blue Sky signed onto the project, however, were actually the two star voice actors: Will Smith and Tom Holland, both recognizable faces with fairly familiar voices (especially the former). The studio casted these two as the leads way back in 2017 during development.
In the film, Will Smith plays superspy Lance Serling, a suave hero who continually saves the world from destruction—the cartoon character design even looks a little like Smith. Holland, on the other hand, plays Walter Beckett, Serling’s tech officer who invents gadgets to aid the spy on his missions. The plot takes off when Serling ingests Beckett’s latest creation—a “biodynamic concealment”—which zanily turns him into a talking pigeon.
Humbled by this change in species, Serling must team up with the nerdy Beckett to save the world from archvillain Tristan McFord, who is voiced by Ben Mendelsohn. Along the way, the two protagonists learn the perks of being a pigeon when it comes to spying, creating many quirky, action-packed, and humorous instances in the process.
There is no telling what critics might say about “Spies in Disguise.” The animation looks good (it is computer animated with sharp edges and caricature-esque figures in a similar style to “The Incredibles”). Simultaneously, the casting is on point and the story seems funny enough. However, with “Frozen II” still being in theaters and family-friendly sensational blockbusters like “Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker” also coming out in December, “Spies In Disguise” will have a lot to compete with, and will most likely fall to the wayside for most moviegoers.
Soul is an American computer-animated fantasy adventure comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It is directed by Pete Docter, produced by Dana Murray and stars the voices of Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Questlove, Phylicia Rashad and Daveed Diggs. The film is scheduled to be released on June 19, 2020.
Bad Boys for Life is an American buddy cop action comedy film directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and Will Smith and starring Smith and Martin Lawrence. The sequel to Bad Boys (1995) and Bad Boys II (2003) and the third Installment in the Bad Boys trilogy, the film follows detectives Lowrey and Burnett reuniting once again when a Romanian mob boss exacts revenge on the duo just as they are about to officially retire.
The Invisible Man: a science fiction psychological horror film written and directed by Leigh Whannell. It is a very loose modern adaptation of both the novel of the same name by H. G. Wells and a reboot of the 1933 film adaptation of the same name. The film stars Elisabeth Moss, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid and Harriet Dyer.
Hala is a 2019 drama film written and directed by Minhal Baig. It was screened in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. It is scheduled to be released in a limited release on November 22, 2019, followed by digital streaming on December 6, 2019, by AppleTV+.
Screen legend Bruce Willis plays Lt. Wakes, a vengeful police detective determined to solve the murders of his partner and informant. Wakes joins forces with Madison (Whelan), a witness injured during the shootings.
Ang Lee’s Newest Direction is an Attempt to Elevate a Clichéd Genre…
No two movies from visionary director Ang Lee are quite the same. One moment he is making a modern martial arts classic, the next, an introspective superhero movie, and after that, a heart wrenching romance about two gay cowboys. If there is one commonality across his entire filmography it is that every movie is ambitious. Thus, we knew from the get-go that his new film “Gemini Man” was unlikely to be a standard shoot-em-up action movie. The sight of a twenty-three year old looking Will Smith acting in the trailer confirmed this.
Skydance Media, the company behind the latest Mission Impossible and Terminator movies is producing Gemini Man. The film falls in with their impressive line of action movies that tout A-List stars in the leading roles, except this time, there are two leading men, but still only one A-List star.
In “Gemini Man,” Will Smith plays two versions of the same character. One of them is a middle-aged man who fits the actor’s natural current look. The other one, however, is a young adult that looks like Will Smith out of his “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” days… well, that plus a touch of CGI makeup.
Can VFX Extend the Reach of Will Smith via Digital Clone?
CGI has definitely come a long way since the turn of the millennium, but the human eye has also learned to recognize when things are off. Thus, generating a human face, especially one as recognizable as Will Smith’s, with computer technology is one of the trickiest tasks for a visual effects artist.
With the help of over seven-hundred people on the VFX team, “Gemini Man’s” young Will Smith was created through motion capture animation. Smith would perform all of the young character’s scenes wearing sensors on his face, and then the VFX team would animate over his face to essentially de-age the actor while preserving the performance. It is a technique made popular by Andy Serkis’ performance as Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and has more more recently been boldly used to recreate Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.”
Attempts to create human beings out of CGI and motion capture are not without their critics. Especially when the CGI human being is based off someone whose look the audience knows, it becomes easy to tell when the slightest detail is off. Digitized images have a certain over-polished, almost plastic look to them. So when the image is trying to resemble something as organic as a human face, it is very difficult to fool the viewer.
We cannot deny that there is a something just a little prosthetic looking about the young Will Smith in “Gemini Man.” Then again, maybe that is just due to the fact that we know what Will Smith actually looked like at twenty-three and our knowledge of the on-screen face being artificial forces us to seek out the blemishes.
will Will Save You from Yourself? Hubris Implies only a Hero’s Clone can Beat the Hero
Narratively in the movie, the young Will Smith is a clone of the older Will Smith, whose blood was used for an experiment against his knowing twenty-five years ago. In the present, the two Will Smiths are both hit-men pinned against one another. When they learn that they are the same person, though, the situation becomes far more complicated.
The movie’s first trailer made it look like a flat out Will Smith versus Will Smith story, a sci-fi action flick about one version of the self against another in the vein of Rian Jonson’s 2011 “Looper.” However, the second trailer reveals more about the man behind the cloning, the young Will Smith’s mentor and the older Will Smith’s former boss. While there will still be plenty of Smith on Smith action, this crime-boss character, played by Clive Owen, will likely be the archvillain, and perhaps we will witness the two Smiths teaming up to take him down in the end.
Even if there is something a little uncanny about seeing a CGI Will Smith, with Ang Lee behind the camera, an enormous VFX department, and an impressive cast of writers including David Benioff, Billy Ray, and Darren Lemke, “Gemini Man” is bound to be an interesting ride, so much so, that we may be able to look past the digital imperfections to appreciate what it is in all of its originality.
Disney’s 1992 animated musical fantasy about a young man trying to win the love of a princess with the help of a genie is back again. The story originated in the 17th century as a collection of Middle-Eastern folktales called “One Thousand And One Nights” also known in English as the “Arabian Nights”. Disney’s latest live action reimagining will make its debut later this month.
Disney’s recent live action reboots have resulted in some fresh and unique films. Disney is using an inventive approach by taking on directors who aren’t previously known for being associated with animation (or even children’s movies). Director/Actor Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Elf, Swingers) re-imagined The Jungle Book to mesmerizing results. Favreau has also been tasked with reworking the soon to be released Lion King, 2019 version.
Photo / Disney
Aladdin’s director Guy Ritchie is best known for his cockney-accented crime comedies Lock Stock And 2 Smoking Barrels, and Snatch. Ritchie was also at the helm for the successful Sherlock Holmes franchise. Ritchie is also known for his sense of character development and narrative.
However, Aladdin is a visual effects driven film, with special effects delivered by the VFX giant Industrial Light And Magic. ILM was founded by George Lucas, and has been responsible for everything from Jurassic Park to Star Wars. This time they were tasked with turning Will Smith into a genie, as well as conjuring his Arabic Golden Age backdrop.
Aladdin initially made its debut at the Grand Rex in Paris on May 8th. Today (May 13th) the film enjoys its first regional premier in Jordan, in the presence of Prince Ali bin Hussein and Princess Rym Ali.
Photo / Disney
Stars, including Will Smith, Mena Massoud and Naomi Scott will all be in appearance along with, as mentioned above, Guy Ritchie helming.
Walt Disney studios are scheduled to release Aladdin in 3D, Dolby Cinema, and IMAX on May 24th, 2019*
(*corresponds to the original date of the new Star Wars film “Star Wars IX: The Rise Of Skywalker”)
