From The A.V. Club

  • Investigation Discovery's nostalgia hunters are going after Nick and Aaron Carter next

    In a move it’s very difficult not to see in terms of the recent nostalgia/horror firestorm surrounding the network’s Nickelodeon docuseries Quiet On Set, Investigation Discovery has announced that it’ll soon be launching a four-part investigative series into ’90s and 2000s pop culture mainstays Nick and Aaron Carter. Titled Fallen Idols: Nick And Aaron Carter, the series promises to explore “the dark side of fame and fraught family dynamics.” And, perhaps owing to backlash that’s been pointed at...

  • Top Chef recap: Let’s get chaotic

    “I have this sneaking suspicion that something is going to happen today,” Milwaukee Dan sagely introduced Wednesday night’s edition of Top Chef: Wisconsin. And he was quickly proven right: Even before host Kristen Kish could delight the chef-testants by bringing out baking great Christina Tosi—the James Beard Award-winning mastermind behind Milk Bar—to announce this week’s dessert-themed QuickFire Challenge, things were looking surprisingly crowded in the Top Chef kitchen. That’s because not...

  • Publisher cuts the Sacha Baron Cohen stuff out of U.K. version of Rebel Wilson's memoir

    The U.K. version of Rebel Wilson’s new memoir Rebel Rising will be a bit different from the version previously published in the United States—to the tune of most of the material contained in the attention-heavy chapter “Sacha Baron Cohen And Other Assholes,” and specifically all of the stuff about Cohen himself. The Guardian reports that the Cohen stories in Wilson’s book, which cover unhappy experiences she had on the set of 2016's The Brothers Grimsby, have been redacted with big black bars in...

  • Tupac estate threatens Drake with legal action over A.I. voice on diss track

    It was probably inevitable that, of all the really big names in rap and hip-hop, the first one who’d get seriously obnoxious with A.I was going to be Drake. (It was him or Kanye West, and West’s trajectory is so weird and out of step with modern tastes right now as to make the confluence unlikely). After all, A.I. is currently ubiquitous, deeply corny, and will probably conquer us all—so what better parallel for Drake’s music could there be? Now, though, the Canadian Degrassi alum finds himself...

  • Despite all his rage, Billy Corgan is still holding matches in a cage with new reality show

    Someone will say, “What is lost can never be saved.” Nevertheless, Billy Corgan is still trying to bring the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) back and has two shows on The CW app that will cage his rage. Announced earlier today, Corgan is bringing his experiences attempting to restore NWA to its former glory to reality television. Billy Corgan’s Adventures In Carnyland, a new eight-episode reality series heading straight to The CW app, will bring viewers beyond the mat. For those who only...

  • Skyfall writer John Logan is gonna try to adapt Blood Meridian, god bless him

    People have been trying, for at least 20 years, to turn Cormac McCarthy’s Western opus Blood Meridian into a movie—and every single one of them has failed. Big names, too: Ridley Scott moved heaven or hell to try to get the movie made in the 2000s, and Tommy Lee Jones, who would later star in the Coens’ adaptation of McCarthy’s less nihilistic and bloody—if only by comparison—No Country For Old Men, even tried to touch up a version of a screenplay himself a few years prior. McCarthy always...

  • Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney actually admit they leaned into all those affair rumors

    Even amid the summer of many divorces, Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney’s alleged affair on the set of Anyone But You maintained a stranglehold on both headlines and the hearts of gossip-hungry viewers across the nation. The two really looked like they wanted to rip each other’s clothes off every time they stepped onto the red carpet, a state of affairs that was only exacerbated by the two posting intimate, giggly videos on Instagram and certainly by the fact that Powell’s then-girlfriend, Gigi...

  • Abigail's marketing spoils its only twist

    Spoiler Space offers thoughts on, and a place to discuss, the plot points we can’t disclose in our official review. Fair warning: This article explains the ending of the movie Abigail. We couldn’t spoil anything Abigail doesn’t spoil in its trailer, posters, and elevator pitch: A crew of bickering crooks kidnaps a pre-teen ballerina who happens to be a vampire. The only one who doesn’t know the twist is the movie. For much of its runtime, Abigail, a riff on Dracula’s Daughter, stalls for time....

  • Gus Van Sant likens Nicole Kidman to a second director while filming To Die For

    Nicole Kidman is beloved not only by audiences, but by filmmakers. You can see by her extraordinary resumé that she likes to challenge herself, and by the incredibly diverse variety of directors she’s worked with that she wants to have a well-rounded career. (Kidman famously pledged to work with a female director every 18 months.) The people behind the camera see and appreciate her efforts, as evidenced by a New York Times piece about what directors love about her. Five directors were quoted,...

  • Even Christopher Nolan was gagged by The Curse's finale

    Note: this article contains spoilers for The Curse’s final episode, “Green Queen.” Even with the introduction of True Detective: Night Country and Shōgun in recent months, January still gave us TV’s most WTF sequence of the year in the final 30 minutes of The Curse, Nathan Fielder, Benny Safdie, and Emma Stone’s itchy satire of HGTV and white liberalism. For those that haven’t seen it already (you’ve been warned), the season one finale ends with Fielder’s Asher floating off into the atmosphere...

  • Billie Eilish teases Hit Me Hard And Soft as a return to her debut album form

    Billie Eilish shares a lot in her new Rolling Stone interview—about her sexuality, her mental health, her experience with isolation, and her masturbation habits, among other things—but most relevant for fans is the direction of her new album, Hit Me Hard And Soft, debuting May 17. She and her brother/collaborator Finneas describe the new record as “an album-ass album,” which could mean a lot of things. In this case it means they’re hoping to create “a whole body of work that you love to listen...

  • Even when Taylor Swift is winning, her fans think she's losing

    Taylor Swift is the biggest star in the world, and The Tortured Poets Department is, so far, the biggest album of the year. Those facts can be proven in numerical terms: the record-breaking tour, the record-breaking concert film, the record-breaking vinyl sales, the record-breaking streaming numbers. But feelings, to flip a phrase from professional conservative complainer Ben Shapiro, don’t care about facts. Though Swift is indisputably on top, her fans still feel the need to protect Swift from...