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Fan Chant: A Guide to KCON Los Angeles 2022
Welcome to Fan Chant, a weekly column for K-pop fans, stans, and newbies alike. Each week, I’ll be rolling out interviews, lists, and all kinds of content to keep you in the loop on the latest and greatest from our friends in Seoul and beyond. Also make sure to subscribe to my companion newsletter! This weekend, the city of Los Angeles welcomes the return of KCON, an enormous celebration of music, culture, and community, anchored by performances from some of everyone’s favorite K-pop acts. For the new or uninitiated (like yours truly), it can be a bit overwhelming to prepare for an event featuring so many great artists and groups. This year’s lineup is truly exciting, so we’ve assembled a quick and easy guide to KCON 2022. What Is KCON? Launched a decade ago in 2012 with its flagship event...
The Bear: How Episode 7’s Stunning 18-Minute Single Take Was Made
Over the past few years, single continuous takes have become a commonplace device in film and TV, an objectively impressive if somewhat overused gimmick that allows storytellers an opportunity to flex their ambitions and maximize the high-wire tension of an emotionally significant scene. “One-ers” can sometimes carry an effect of showboating the longer their runtime, but when executed with near-perfect precision, like in FX’s thrillingly chaotic cooking drama The Bear, the result can be a remarkable thing to watch, to see so many moving parts come together seamlessly. Created by Christopher Storer, The Bear is the perfect show to apply such a technique. The series focuses on the volatile and brilliant chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) as he struggles to run his brother’s Ch...
Robin S.’s ‘Show Me Love’ Is Back in the Spotlight — As Are Old Disputes Over Its Credits
At this point it’s a familiar ritual: A star releases a new single that borrows from an oldie, generating a fresh hit but also thrusting the throwback into the limelight. Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul” is just the latest example — the song’s pinging keyboard riff nods to the Stonebridge remix of Robin S’s “Show Me Love,” a full-throated house track that hit the top 10 on the Hot 100 in June 1993. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news As that oldie returned to the popular consciousness, so did a rumor that’s been circulating on the internet for years: That the voice on “Show Me Love” actually belongs to Andrea Martin, a songwriter with a formidable resume of ’90s R&B cuts, who died last year at age 49. “People have been asking me this question [whose v...
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Is as Funny, Charming, and Occasionally Awkward as Its Heroine: Review
The Pitch: What if there was a lady… who was also a Hulk? And also a lawyer? Yeah, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law pretty much tells you exactly what the show is from the start. Quite literally, in fact: The newest Marvel series to come down the Disney+ pipeline features newly minted meta-human Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) speaking directly to the audience about how her life recently got upended by an accidental exposure to her cousin Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo)’s blood. Because Jen and Bruce are related, Jen’s able to survive the sudden infusion of gamma particles into her system, and she also manages to get a handle on being a Hulk with a working human brain relatively quickly. But while she’s learning control over her new persona (with the advantages and disadvantages that accompany it)...
Echo & The Bunnymen’s 40th Anniversary Tour Off to a Rough Start Due to Ian McCulloch Illness: Review
Echo and the Bunnymen have embarked on a long-awaited tour in celebration of their 40th anniversary, though things were off to a rocky start at Atlanta’s Tabernacle concert hall on Monday night (August 15th). Dubbed “Celebrating 40 Years of Magical Songs,” the tour (grab tickets here) kickoff saw both longtime and Gen Z-aged fans rubbing shoulders with each other like friends, with everyone seeming to be in agreement that the Liverpool act won’t be on the road forever. Save for a few festival sets, the Atlanta gig marked the band’s first outing since a UK tour in March, and anticipation Stateside has been high. Unfortunately, vocalist Ian McCulloch was under the weather, as the band confirmed on social media after the set. At one point, McCulloch left the stage for about 20 minutes, while ...
Better Call Saul: 7 Big Questions About the Series Finale, Answered
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the series finale of Better Call Saul, “Saul Gone.”] There’s so much to be asked, when one of television’s great achievements comes to an end. So the morning after the Better Call Saul series finale aired, co-creator Peter Gould and stars Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn very generously spoke with reporters via Zoom for a press conference that explored so many aspects of the final episode, “Saul Gone.” Below, Gould, Odenkirk, and Seehorn answer maybe not all, but at least a few of the biggest questions from the end of the season, from the choice to continue filming in black and white, what was cut from the finale, and when the idea to have Jimmy end up in prison first came up (and why that nearly caused problems with another Breaking Bad...
The Undeclared War Is a Prescient But Ponderous Cyberthriller: Review
The Pitch: It’s 2024, and a post-Brexit Great Britain faces a general election beset on all sides with misinformation, anti-government grievance, and stark division on all sides. What’s more, a foreign cyberattack hits the country’s Internet access, hitting everything except social media. Luckily, it hits the same day 21-year-old student Saara Parvan (newcomer Hannah Khalique-Brown) starts her work placement stint at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the UK’s first defense against cyberterrorism. She quickly figures out how to disable it, and even finds a second exploit that would have further crippled England’s infrastructure. It’s a hollow victory, though, as the young Muslim woman struggles to fit into the “tediously male, stale, and pale” organization even after her im...
Madonna’s Top 20 Songs
This article originally ran in 2014 and has been updated in honor of Madonna’s birthday on August 16th. Here’s a funny picture: In July 1983, metalheads and popsters all stormed into their closest Sam Goody, where they likely collided head first in the aisle at M whilst clamoring for Kill ‘Em All or Madonna. Parents scoffed at the time, but either party held the debut album to the future leader of their respective genres. Wild, huh? It’s almost like something out of a Far Side comic; the two most opposite musical forces, both then and today, essentially born as twins. Cowabunga. Of course, as history goes, Madonna’s self-titled debut didn’t exactly blow out the mall doors upon arrival. The album entered the Billboard 200 at No. 123, and it wasn’t until over a year later that it peaked… at ...
Megan Thee Stallion’s Traumazine Is a Kaleidoscope of Pain and Gain
Do not let the title of Megan Thee Stallion’s sophomore album, Traumazine, fool you — she is stronger than ever, even as she processes her pain through vulnerability. Honesty is at the heart of working through any kind of trauma, and Megan has decided to let us into her process. Meg comes out swinging with “NDA,” finding pockets within pockets of the beat — one of her greatest assets as a rapper. “I ain’t perfect, but anything I did to any of you n****s, y’all deserved it/ You see me in that mode, don’t disturb me when I’m workin’,” she declares. She’s focused over the entire 51 minutes of the project, zeroing in on the intensity that pulsed beneath the surface of her earlier mixtapes Tina Snow and Fever. Traumazine (released Friday, August 12th) is absent of obvious club bangers, which wi...
Better Call Saul Series Finale Review: This Is How They Get You
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the series finale of Better Call Saul, “Saul Gone.”] Sometimes you hit play on an episode of television and see the runtime and groan to yourself, “This did not need to be longer than an hour.” But with the Better Call Saul series finale, coming in at a cool 70-plus minutes (per AMC+, anyway), every extra second of goodbye was quite welcome. After Gene Takovic (Bob Odenkirk)’s unsuccessful attempt to flee the law, as summoned by that nice old lady Marion (Carol Burnett), the identity of Gene is shed forever (following one last diligent phone call to Krista at Cinnabon). Instead, Saul Goodman suits up (eventually literally), using his formidable weaseling abilities to weasel out of “life plus 190 years” for the many, many crimes he com...
Orphan: First Kill Is the Most Bonkers Horror Prequel In Years: Review
The Pitch: Remember Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), the precocious tot who turned out to be a thirtysomething psychopath from Estonia with hypopituitarism? The one who terrified Vera Farmiga and her well-to-do New England family in 2009’s surprisingly chilling Orphan? In the grand tradition of Annabelle: Creation and Ouija: O-ouija-n of Evil, The Boy director William Brent Bell takes us back to Esther’s beginnings, thirteen years later and with a fraction of the budget. Perhaps “beginnings” is a bit of a stretch, to be fair: a more accurate title would be Orphan: Second (or Maybe Third?) Kill, as we’re introduced to little Leena in 2007 Estonia, two years prior to the first film’s events. She’s not Esther yet, but she has already offed her first host family, the one Ver...
Corey Feldman Says Marilyn Manson Sabotaged His 2017 Tour: Exclusive
In the third part of our interview with Corey Feldman, the musician and former child star tells us that he believes Marilyn Manson personally sabotaged his 2017 tour. Check out his thoughts on the 35th anniversary of The Lost Boys here, and reflections on his new box set, Love Left 2.1, here. “The ‘Heavenly Tour’ was definitely the exact opposite of that,” Corey Feldman tells Consequence. “It was the ‘Hellish Tour.’ But that was due to infiltration. We had people that were sent in that were spies that were not there to be musicians but were there to cause mayhem.” According to Feldman, he has collected evidence suggesting that Marilyn Manson led an operation to successfully sabotage that 2017 tour. “If it walks like a horse and talks like a horse,” he says, invitin...
