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Shawn Mendes Gets Spiritual As He Embarks On His Biggest Tour Yet
“I hit a low point a few years ago,” Shawn Mendes admits, his brow furrowing beneath his shaggy curls. The sun is setting over a Santa Monica, Calif., apartment complex, and Mendes is leaning forward from his seat as he explains a recent major life change: his embrace of spirituality. It started with meditation to bring a little balance to his chaotic life of pop stardom. That turned into reading religious texts, which turned into a deep dive on the Bhakti movement in Hinduism. For nearly a year, Mendes has spent every Thursday meditating and discussing scriptures like the Bhagavad Gita with Jay Shetty, the author of Think Like a Monk. “I think everybody has a moment where they just decide it’s time to kind of do something different,” says Mendes matter-of-factly. Now spirituality is “a pa...
SXSW Review: X Is Ti West’s Raucous TeXXXas Chain Saw Massacre By Way of Shyamalan’s Old
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 SXSW Film Festival. The Pitch: X has a lot on its mind, and the line between exploitation and empowerment is just one of many rich themes mined by Ti West in his first feature film since the 2016 John Travolta and Ethan Hawke-starring Western In A Valley of Violence. “So the camera changes things,” Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) says midway through the film, just before RJ, Lorraine’s boyfriend and the young starry-eyed director of the porno at the center of the film, storms out of the shoot, furious and uncomfortable with her sudden interest in appearing on-screen in their dirty picture. Lorraine, quiet as a church mouse, is the innocent boom mic operator, not like these other girls willing to debase themselves on-camera, or at least that’s how RJ ...
SXSW Review: Dolly Parton Doc Still Working 9 to 5 Chokes on Its Own Ambition
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 SXSW Film Festival. The Pitch: More than 40 years ago, 9 to 5 burst onto movie screens with a deceptively winning formula for 1980: Take three women at the top of their game — actress/producer/activist Jane Fonda, top-tier comedienne Lily Tomlin, and country music superstar Dolly Parton — and throw them together in the dreary workplaces of Carter-era America with a chauvinistic boss (Dabney Coleman) you’d just love to see tied up and tortured. It may have played like a lark, thanks in no small part to a whip-smart script from Patricia Resnick (3 Women) and fanciful direction from Colin Higgins (Harold and Maude), but it had feminist teeth underneath the laughs, which led it to box-office success and decades of appreciation. Decades ...
SXSW Review: DMZ Creates a Compelling New World, But Only Feels Like the Beginning of the Story
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 SXSW Film Festival. The Pitch: The timing of DMZ is maybe not the greatest, depending on whether or not you’re up for engaging with a story about urban warfare at a time when that sort of literal real-life horror is headline news. But the new HBO Max original series, based on the DC comics series and executive produced by Ava DuVernay, still stands out for its compelling premise and dynamic cast, despite a few issues largely stemming from its format. New World Order: When we first meet Alma Ortega (Rosario Dawson) in the not-too-distant future, she’s working as a medic in an intake facility for those who have tried illegally to enter the United States of America — not to be confused with the Free States of America, because seven years ago, a ...
How Satellites Can Save African Countries from Natural Disasters
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SXSW Review: WeCrashed Is Too Long, But Nails the Daffy Rhythms of the WeWork Scandal
The Pitch: How far can a startup run on vibes alone? Turns out, it’s however far $47 billion gets you, at least in the smoke-and-mirrors valuations of VC culture. After all, that’s the magic number WeWork CEO Adam Neumann (Jared Leto) and his kooky wife/chief branding officer Rebekah Neumann (nee Paltrow; yes, she’s Gwyneth’s cousin, played by Anne Hathaway) used to fool Wall Street for nearly a decade into thinking they were the next great world-changing startup. But within a year’s time, WeWork’s value plummeted, the Neumanns left in disgrace — though not without a $2 billion golden parachute — and the buzziest company in America became a punchline. What led to such a precipitous fall? That’s the question WeCrashed, Apple TV+’s latest push for the startup-grifter boom (after Netflix...
SXSW Review: Hulu’s The Girl From Plainville Is an Introspective Drama Uninterested in Excuses
The Pitch: Series co-creators Liz Hannah and Patrick Macmanus keep the true-crime story wave going with The Girl From Plainville, an eight-part limited series based on the “texting suicide case.” In 2014, Conrad Roy III died by suicide in Mattapoisett, Massachussets — this tragedy eventually garnered national attention as investigators learned of the role that the teen’s girlfriend, Michelle Carter, played in his death. Roy’s and Carter’s motivations were previously explored in Erin Lee Carr’s 2019 documentary, I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter – and, of course, in all the preceding media coverage of the groundbreaking case. But The Girl From Plainville uses artistic license to venture deeper into the minds of these adolescents, and track how a chance meeting in Flor...
Orchestrating Multi-Cloud: How to Find a Strategy that Works
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Greta Van Fleet Kick Off 2022 Tour in Michigan: Recap + Setlist
Greta Van Fleet opened their “Dreams in Gold” tour in Kalamazoo on Thursday (March 10th), kicking off the run in their homeland of Michigan with the first of five dates in the state. With support from the Rival Sons and Velveteers, Greta Van Fleet left the Wings Event Center with a distinct taste of rock and a night to remember. First, The Velveteers took to the stage, opening with “Motel #27.” The Colorado trio, led by singer Demi Demitro, set the mood for an energetic evening; Demitro thrashed appropriately as she sang about a hazy and uneasy world of loving. Next was Long Beach, California’s Rival Sons, who also held their own in a competition of which opener could wow fans the quickest. For those unfamiliar with the five-piece, they are old enough to have a few grays, and cool enough t...
Song of the Week: The Black Keys Bring the Electrified Funk With “Wild Child”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, The Black Keys remind us why they’re one of the most reliable rock bands in the world. After last year’s love letter to Mississippi Hill Country Blues Delta Kream, The Black Keys have returned with full force. This week, the Akron, Ohio duo of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney have announced their eleventh studio album, Dropout Boogie, and shared the lead single, the thumping “Wild Child.” Dropout Boogie will be released on May 13th, a day before the 20th anniversary of their debut album The Big Come Up, and...
Greg Daniels on How Jim and Pam’s Romance on The Office Inspired Season 2 of Upload
“You’re familiar with my last two years of life, then,” is how Greg Daniels responded when Consequence told him, at the beginning of a Zoom interview, that I’d seen both new seasons of his current TV shows: The Netflix original comedy Space Force, which he co-created with Steve Carell, and the latest installment of Upload, the futuristic rom-com now making its debut on Prime Video. Both seasons are second seasons consisting of seven episodes each, and both were shot with, as Daniels explains below, a lot of the same crew up in Vancouver, Canada. But while Space Force is a workplace comedy set within a satirical version of America’s newest branch of the armed services, Upload is first and foremost a love story. That’s the element which made Daniels excited about telling the story of a not-t...
Rap Song of the Week: Latto Pops a “Wheelie” with 21 Savage
Rap Song of the Week is a new music column breaking down the essential hip-hop tracks you need to hear. Check out the full playlist here. This week, Latto previews her upcoming album with the 21 Savage collaboration “Wheelie.” After winning Lifetime’s reality series The Rap Game back in 2016, the former Miss Mulatto bet on herself, turning down a recording contract on Jermaine Dupri’s So So Def Records in favor of going independent. Six years later, our 2022 Rising Artist to Watch is on the verge of her mainstream breakout. After earning her first Top 40 hit last year with the pop-leaning “Big Energy,” it’s time for Latto to aim even bigger with her upcoming album 777, which drops on March 25th. As Latto’s new single “Wheelie” proves, however, she’s hardly left hip-hop behind. A ...
