NEWS
88rising Signs First-Look Deal With Sony Pictures TV
The global Asian music and media company has hired former Imagine and NBC exec Alex Lin to spearhead its film and television development. Sony Pictures TV has signed 88rising, the emergent company that spotlights modern global Asian culture, to a first-look deal. The two will partner to develop scripted series centering Asian and Asian American culture, across all platforms, and 88rising has hired former Imagine and NBC exec Alex Lin to serve as its first development executive for film and television. Since its founding in 2015, 88rising has quickly risen — pun unintended — from a record label for pan-Asian artists to a music, media and events company that in 2018 became the first to stage an Asian music festival in the United States (Head in the Clouds, dubbed “Asian Coachella...
ARIA Appoints Annabelle Herd as CEO
Herd brings a skillset loaded with legal and lobbying work in the nation’s capital, Canberra, and extensive experience in the television industry. Previously, she carved out a 16-year career at free-to-air Network 10, where she most recently held the post of Chief Operating Officer, tasked with leading its broadcast operations; group strategy; corporate and internal communications; interstate markets; policy, regulatory, compliance and government affairs; and lobbying and stakeholder relations. And before that, she worked at senior levels with government in Canberra, culminating in a stint as Senior Advisor (Broadcasting and Copyright) and Acting Chief of Staff for then Minister for Communications and the Arts, Senator the Hon. Richard Alston AO. While in the capital, she worked as a gover...
Will Leslie Odom Jr. Be the 4th Double Oscar Nominee for Acting & Songwriting in 4 Years?
The double nods for Blige, Erivo and now possibly Odom are a sign of the increased opportunities Black performers are being given in film. Moreover, if Odom becomes a double nominee, he’ll become the second actor to do so for a film in which he or she plays a real-life character. From 1934, when the Oscars introduced their best original song award, through 2016, no one ever received nominations for acting and songwriting in the same year. That’s partly due to the fact that, years ago, singing actors didn’t usually write their own material, but relied on the work of professional songwriters. Judy Garland, Bing Crosby and Doris Day are forever linked with Oscar-winning songs, but they didn’t have a hand in writing them. This started to change in the mid-’70s. Barbra Streisand has stradd...
Hank Aaron Died Of Natural Causes, Death Not Linked To COVID-19 Vaccine
Source: Icon Sportswire / Getty The death of legendary slugger Hank Aaron is still heavy on the minds of many and new details about his passing have emerged. After concerns were sparked that Aaron died of complications from the COVID-19 vaccine, it has been confirmed that the MLB legend passed away from natural causes. Atlanta outlet 11Alive reports that an investigator with the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s office confirmed that Aaron did indeed die of natural causes. Earlier in the month, Aaron joined with a number of Atlanta notables such as Andrew Young in receiving a round of the two-shot vaccine. According to Young, Aaron did not have any adverse reactions to the vaccine and explained to 11Alive his view of things. “I talked to the fella who was his driver, and I said, ‘was hank f...
‘Star Wars’ Uses Its Force To Defend Web Series Host Krystina Arielle Following Racist Attacks
Source: Pacific Press / Getty Yes, Star Wars fans can be ridiculously racist too. Krystina Arielle should have been celebrating after being announced as the new host of The High Republic Show web series, but instead, she was the target of racial attacks. Star Wars swiftly stepped up to defend its new web series host. Yahoo News reported that immediately following the announcement of Arielle becoming the host of the new Star Wars subseries; she was met with racist criticism in response to resurfaced tweets she shared back in June speaking out about the role white people played in racist America at the height of protests that broke out worldwide following the unjust killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. “White People: You do not get to absolve people of racism. Yo...
Kodak Black Backs Out of $1M Tweet Promise After Receiving Pardon
Source: (Photo by Johnny Louis/FilmMagic) / (Photo by Johnny Louis/FilmMagic) If all a man has is his word, Kodak Black isn’t as rich as he thinks he is. The Florida rapper promptly deleted a tweet where he vowed to donate a million dollars to charity if — by some act of a higher power—he was pardoned from his 46-month prison sentence. ” Last Day In ” Out Now pic.twitter.com/rNhW52VAgL — Kodak Black (@KodakBlack1k) January 24, 2021 In 2019, he admitted to lying on federal forms in order to buy four firearms in Miami and with his extensive rap sheet — he knew better. Last Tuesday (Jan 19), the day before that last guy in the Oval Office left with his tail between his legs, he issued a long list of pardons that include Lil Wayne and of course, Kodak Black. The aforementioned twee...
NBA Analyst Sekou Smith Dies Of COVID-19 Complications, Twitter Mourns A Legend
Source: NBA TV / Turner Sports Beloved NBA analyst Sekou Smith has reportedly died of complications from COVID-19. He was just 48. The Turner Sports family mourns the loss of our very own, Sekou Smith. Our thoughts are with his family and friends. pic.twitter.com/97mu4bylfA — NBA TV (@NBATV) January 27, 2021 TMZ reports that Smith had been battling COVID-19. On Tuesday evening (Jan 26), NBA TV, which has employed Smith as an analyst for over a decade, confirmed his passing. “The NBA mourns the passing of Sekou Smith, a beloved member of the NBA family,” said NBA Commissioner Adam Silver in a statement. “Sekou was one of the most affable and dedicated reporters in the NBA and terrific friend to so many across the league.” Proudly born and raised in Grand Rapids, Atlanta was his current home...
Malaa Previews Huge Remix of Alison Wonderland and Valentino Khan’s “Anything”: Watch
A dream remix hath taken shape. It looks like Malaa is on the verge of releasing a huge rework of Alison Wonderland and Valentino Khan‘s hit November 2020 collaboration “Anything.” Alison Wonderland’s dreamy vocals meet Malaa’s sinister deep house vibes in this massive track, which of course has the groovy underpinnings of a Valentino Khan banger. Malaa took to social media to announce that he’s “wrapped up new music” and to share a preview of the unreleased remix in a video, wherein the masked house superstar vibes out to the song in his studio. When Wonderland responded with the “eyes” emoji and an ellipses, all hell broke loose in her tweet’s reply section. At the time of this article’...
Dax Shepard’s ’67 Continental: Classic Luxury Meets Stunt Mobile
From the December 2012 issue of Popular Hot Rodding magazine: It’s called “stealing a shot,” a Hollywood term that means shooting commercial footage without a permit. Technically, anytime you whip out a camera in the L.A. Basin with the intent to publish the results (movie, print, interwebs, whatever) for personal gain, you need a permit. We’re about to “steal a shot” on a forlorn stretch of pavement wedged between scrap yards. A few cracks in the pavement are large enough to swallow small children. Broken bits of glass and metal litter the ground. If this were a movie, a car would be spewed from these fissures, a car such as Dax Shepard’s ’67 Lincoln Continental. Like some dark angel’s limo, this pitch-black Conti reeks of m...
Latin Grammy Foundation Grants Awarded to Rafael Escalona Foundation, LAMC & More
This year’s winners reflect that. The Escalona grant was given to the Rafael Escalona Foundation in Bogotá, for a project to preserve a collection of 174 physical Escalona files and offer them in a new user-friendly format. The second preservation grant went to support ongoing archival and cataloguing work at The Latin American Music Center (LAMC) at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., including the Center’s exclusive collection of compositions and manuscripts. Research grants were given to Buenos Aires’ Universidad Nacional de Quilmes for a field study to record traditional canto con caja (song and drum), and to researcher María Alejandra de Avila in Córdoba, Colombia, who is producing an interactive e-book of banda music in Colombia. Since its inception in 2015 , the ...
What’s Your Favorite Song on Morgan Wallen’s ‘Dangerous: The Double Album’? Vote!
Morgan Wallen‘s Dangerous: The Double Album is spending its second consecutive week atop the Billboard 200, but which of the supersize album’s 30 songs is your favorite? Wallen became the first artist ever to debut simultaneously at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Top Country Albums chart and the airplay-, streaming- and sales-based Hot Country Songs chart last week, when “Wasted on You” launched at No. 1. “7 Summers” took the lead back on Aug. 25, 2020. Meanwhile, Luke Bryan had his eyes on Wallen’s top 10 country hit “Sand in My Boots.” “Luke Bryan fell in love with it too…. I don’t know how he heard it, but we were all like, ‘Man, we wanted you [Wallen] to have it....
Clive Davis Reveals Plans for Not One, But Two Pre-Grammy Benefits: ‘We Are Here to Celebrate Music’
Davis tells Billboard plans for the Jan. 30 event were already underway when the Recording Academy decided this month to reschedule the Grammy Awards from Jan. 31 to March 14 due to the pandemic, so he simply decided to honor the original date and then hold a second event on the party’s traditional evening before the Grammy Awards. “When the Grammys moved to March 14, I had so many wonderful artists already set to join me on 30th and rather than getting into schedules, I decided to keep it Jan. 30, but also do our traditional night before the Grammys on March 13,” Davis says. For the first time, both events will be fundraisers. The annual party has been billed as the Recording Academy & Clive Davis Pre-Grammy Gala for the last several years. Davis is the sole host for both events this ...
