Dark Phoenix's Dazzler Explained: Who Is the Mutant Singer in the X-Men Movie? - IGN

Her career ends just as it finally begins.

By Jesse Schedeen

Warning: Full spoilers follow for Dark Phoenix.

If you don't want to know about this big X-Men Easter Egg in the film, read no further! But head in this direction if you're wondering whether or not Dark Phoenix has a post-credits scene.

Exit Theatre Mode

Fox's X-Men movie universe may be coming to a close, but not before debuting one last fan-favorite character. Dazzler finally makes her big screen debut in Dark Phoenix, albeit only in cameo form and apparently played by Halston Sage (The Orville). She has no dialogue but is seen singing -- and using her mutant powers to generate a light show while wearing her trademark white outfit -- during the X-Men's party on the grounds of the mansion.

We'll never see this version of Dazzler become a full-fledged member of the X-Men since the Fox series is coming to an end, but her appearance is still a fun nod to fans of the comics. And if you're not up on all things Dazzler, here's a brief primer on the character.

Dazzler as seen in Dark Phoenix

Who Is Dark Phoenix's Dazzler?

It's fitting that Dazzler makes her movie debut in an adaptation of The Dark Phoenix Saga, because that's where the character first appeared in the comics. Dazzler debuted in 1980's Uncanny X-Men #130, lending a hand to the X-Men during their conflict with the Hellfire Club. Dazzler (real name Alison Blaire) didn't immediately take up the X-Men's offer to join the team, preferring to focus on her solo career. That eventually led to a long-running solo series and a critically acclaimed graphic novel called Dazzler: The Movie.

Dazzler eventually did join the X-Men in the late '80s, finding solace in the team after the revelation of her mutant status destroyed her recording career. There she forged many key relationships, falling in love with Longshot and butting heads with the recently reformed Rogue.

These days, Dazzler tends to drift wherever the wind carries her. She's served on several incarnations of the X-Men, as well as ancillary teams like Excalibur. She even had a brief stint as an agent of SHIELD. But whether on her own or as a member of the X-Men, she's played a big part in defending her fellow mutants and the Marvel Universe as a whole.

Dazzler's Mutant Powers

Dazzler's mutant powers are often confused with those of fellow X-Man Jubilee. Where Jubilee's body is able to generate its own firework-like bursts of energy, Dazzler has the ability to channel soundwaves into beams of light. She can manipulate just about any form of sound energy in her surrounding environment, but she prefers to use music as her personal canvas. The rhythmic, predictable patterns of music give Dazzler a greater degree of control over the sound. She can even use her body to store sound energy like ammunition for future battles.

Dazzler's light beams can be used for a variety of purposes. She prefers to use her power to help put on a good show at her concerts, creating psychedelic light effects to accompany her songs. However, her power can also be used offensively. Dazzler can blind and disorient her enemies, and she can even shape her light beams into thin, destructive laser blasts.

Dazzler isn't generally considered to be one of the more powerful X-Men members, but her power grows along with the strength of the soundwaves she manipulates. For example, she was once given a huge power boost by Galactus, who fueled Dazzler with the sound of an exploding galaxy.

Dazzler: Beyond the Comics

Dazzler first appeared outside the comics in 1989's Pryde of the X-Men, an animated TV movie once intended to serve as the pilot for an ongoing series. Dazzler also appears as a playable character in X-Men: The Arcade Game, which is based on that canceled animated series.

Exit Theatre Mode

Instead of Pryde of the X-Men, we got the wildly popular X-Men: The Animated Series in 1992, and Dazzler eventually put in an appearance there. Appropriately enough, she played a big part in the first episode of that show's adaptation of The Dark Phoenix Saga. Dazzler has also had small roles in the animated series Wolverine and the X-Men and video games like X-Men Legends II and Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

Dazzler was once poised to be among the very first Marvel characters to get a theatrical movie. Bo Derek was slated to star in a Dazzler movie in the '80s, but that project eventually fell apart. Her X-Men movie debut was first teased in 2016's X-Men: Apocalypse, in a deleted scene where Cyclops and Jean Grey purchase one of Dazzler's albums in a record store, but now Dazzler has finally appeared in the followup movie Dark Phoenix (played by Halston Sage). A quick glimpse of Sage as Dazzler first emerged last month in Emeli Sandé's "Extraordinary Being" music video tie-in with Dark Phoenix.

While Dazzler will never get her chance to play a prominent role in Fox's X-Men franchise, she is due for a big return to the animated realm. An animated Dazzler series is one of four new Marvel shows being developed on Hulu, written and produced by Erica Rivinoja and Chelsea Handler. That series (where Dazzler will team up with fellow hero Tigra) will cross over with the other three in a Netflix-spoofing special called The Offenders.

Jesse is a mild-mannered writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.

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https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/06/07/dark-phoenix-dazzler-singing-mutant-halston-sage-x-men

2019-06-07 07:00:19Z
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Dr. John Dead at 77 - Pitchfork

Dr. John, the New Orleans funk icon, died of a heart attack today. His family announced the news in a statement. He was 77.

Born Mac Rebennack, Dr. John was a session musician who recorded with artists like the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Sonny & Cher, Frank Zappa, Harry Nilsson, and more. His debut album as lead artist was 1968’s Gris-Gris, which he recorded under the name “Dr. John, the Night Tripper.” He released dozens of albums over the years, and in 1973, he landed a hit song with “Right Place Wrong Time.” His 1974 album Desitively Bonnaroo is the namesake for the massively popular Tennessee festival.

He famously appeared in the Band’s iconic final concert film The Last Waltz where he performed “Such a Night.” One of his final albums was the Dan Auerbach-produced 2012 album Locked Down. He followed that in 2014 with the Louis Armstrong tribute Ske-Dat-De-Dat: The Spirit of Satch.

This article was originally published on June 6 at 6:29 p.m. Eastern. It was last updated on June 6 at 6:46 p.m. Eastern.

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https://pitchfork.com/news/dr-john-dead-at-77/

2019-06-06 22:29:00Z
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Beyonce's reaction to watching Jay-Z talk to Warriors' owner's wife goes viral - Fox News

Beyoncé seemed less than thrilled when her husband and rapper Jay-Z was speaking with Nicole Curran, the wife of the Golden State Warriors majority owner Joe Lacob, during game three of the NBA finals.

The “Drunk in Love” singer — in between her husband and Curran — was seated courtside at the Wednesday night faceoff between the Warriors and the Toronto Raptors. In a video shared by ESPN on Twitter, Curran is seen leaning over at one point to speak to Jay-Z, just before he and Beyoncé wave to the camera. Shortly after, the rapper and Curran resume talking — seemingly to the annoyance of Queen Bee.

Social media users were quick to note the expression on the singer’s face turned from a smile to what appeared to be a scowl. Beyoncé later shifts over toward Curran — a move some fans argued online appeared to be the singer setting a boundary.

ADELE EXPERTLY RAPS NICKI MINAJ, DANCES TO BEYONCE AT PARTY POST-DIVORCE ANNOUNCEMENT

“Beyoncé just scooted this woman out of her personal space,” wrote on Twitter user.

“Beyoncé don’t like that girl beside her at all,” wrote another.

“How dare her talk across Beyoncé,” said a third.

“Beyoncé was not feeling that lil lady leaning over her to chat with her man,” wrote a fourth.

Photos of the “Partition” singer’s seemingly displeased face also quickly became a meme.

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“Me whenever someone just doesn't get that they are all in my personal space,” wrote one fan.

Per Buzzfeed, the encounter went so viral that fans later found Curran’s Instagram page and flooded the comments on her photos with bee emojis — later leading her to disable the comments section altogether.

Later, seemingly referring to the viral moment, Curran posted a photo of herself and Beyoncé alongside the caption: “We should all help and support each other.”

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https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/beyonce-jay-z-golden-state-warriors-wife-reaction

2019-06-06 15:51:50Z
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‘Swamp Thing’ Canceled After One Season at DC Universe - Variety

The Swamp Thing will have to return to its swamp.

DC Universe has canceled the show after a single season, and the news comes after only one episode of the series has aired.

Based on the DC Comics characters created by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson, the one-hour drama series followed CDC researcher Abby Arcane (Crystal Reed), who returns to her childhood home of Houma, Louisiana, in order to investigate a deadly swamp-borne virus. She develops a surprising bond with scientist Alec Holland, only to have him tragically taken from her. But as powerful forces descend on Houma, intent on exploiting the swamp’s mysterious properties for their own purposes, Abby discovers that the swamp holds mystical secrets, and the potential love of her life may not be dead after all.

Virginia Madsen, Andy Bean, Derek Mears, Henderson Wade, Maria Sten, Jeryl Prescott and Will Patton all also starred.

Mark Verheiden and Gary Dauberman served as writers and executive producers on the series, with James Wan and Michael Clear executive producing via Wan’s Atomic Monster banner. Rob Hackett of Atomic Monster was a co-producer, and Atomic Monster produced the series in association with Warner Bros. Television.

This was not the first time Swamp Thing has come to the small screen. Aside from appearances on various animated DC shows, USA Network previously aired a live-action “Swamp Thing” series for three seasons from 1990-1993. Dick Durock starred in the series, reprising the role he had played in the films “Swamp Thing” and “The Return of Swamp Thing.”

DC Universe’s other shows include “Doom Patrol,” “Young Justice: Outsiders,” and “Titans,” all of which have aired one season to date.

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https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/swamp-thing-canceled-1203234773/

2019-06-06 15:17:00Z
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Dark Phoenix review: the X-Men deserved a better ending - Polygon

Just before Team Magneto and Team Professor X duke it out in the streets of New York, both factions pursuing the Phoenix-empowered Jean Grey, Xavier begs his old friend to call off the hunt. Fighting won’t solve anything. Blood doesn’t need to be spilled. Mutants need to come together, for the future’s sake. It’s a classic X-Men movie reprise, to which Magneto delivers a frank response.

“There’s always a speech ... and nobody cares.”

He said it, not me.

Dark Phoenix is yet another speech. It’s less a disaster, as word of reshoots and calendar-hopping signaled to devotees, than a let down. Pegged in the post-Avengers: Endgame weeks as the “final battle” of 20th Century Fox’s X-men franchise, the film brings Xavier and his band of crime-fighting mutants to their bleakest moment, dealing with trauma inflicted on one of their own by one of their own. Secrets are unraveled, foes become allies in showdowns between friends, and a series known in the last decade for colorful, comic book camp takes a psychological turn that would shatter expectations if the characters contained even an ounce of depth beyond their genes. In the end, a story about treating “others” as people can’t find a human element for its core characters, 12 movies in.

[Ed. note: the following contains light plot spoilers for Dark Phoenix]

20th Century Fox

From writer-director Simon Kinberg (who takes another crack at the Phoenix saga after adapting it for 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand), Dark Phoenix barely acknowledges the existence of X-Men: Apocalypse as it jumps ahead to the year 1992, a time when mutants and the powerless are living in harmony and the X-Men are celebrated as heroes. So much so that when a nasty space cloud threatens NASA’s Endeavor mission, the president himself rings Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) on the Oval Office X-Phone to request the team’s assistance. Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) questions the professor’s judgment: At what point is launching a bunch of twenty-somethings into space child endangerment? Xavier brushes off the condescension: Helping the un-mutated is the only way to find acceptance.

Dark Phoenix tugs at these existential questions in a way the movies haven’t since First Class, and, in the space-set rescue mission that kicks off the movie, mines true spectacle from the inquisition. Mystique knows this is wrong, but she caves, allowing Nightcrawler to jump aboard the ship, Quicksilver to gather the astronauts, Cyclops to patch up the hull of the shuttle (with an energy beam periscope!), and Jean Grey to eventually sacrifice herself to keep the crafts from rupturing under the bombardment of a nasty space cloud. The scene is dangerous, and makes Mystique’s case without endlessly pontificating on the X-Men’s core metaphor. But for most of the movie, we get just that.

There’s always a speech ... and nobody cares.

We experience most of Dark Phoenix through the eyes of a transformed Jean. Through Kinberg’s lens, the alien entity wrapped around the telepath’s genetic makeup becomes a form of empowerment. Phoenix Jean knows what she wants: alcohol, sex, and for Charles Xavier to get out of her goddamn head. The gender politics are messy, but intriguing. There’s enough innuendo in the movie that one could read Jean’s awakening as a carnal evolution that the men in her life aren’t comfortable with. Jean worries about hurting people she loves, then hurts people she loves. Charles doesn’t handle himself well when confronted by his overbearing relationship with his foster student. The movie morphs into chamber drama as the professor drinks his 18th whiskey in a two-hour movie. On-the-nose dialogue and clunky action plotting rip the promising, existential exoskeleton right out from under the movie’s skin. The end credits roll over a husk of what could have been.

20th Century Fox

The highs of Dark Phoenix, and pretty much every X-Men movie, come from the cast, who bend overwrought material to their will. Sophie Turner and Michael Fassbender, technically playing a 62-year-old Magneto, spend a large chunk of the movie hand-gesturing at CG objects. They’re masters at it, with Fassbender delivering a top-five metal-crunching moment in the movie’s climactic set piece. McAvoy clearly tastes the meat of the movie’s opening 30 minutes, delivering those notorious X-speeches in the face of Nicholas Hoult’s Beast, who finally gets to lock horns with his leader.

Lawrence is clearly the “nobody” of Magneto’s battle-ready diss. She sleepwalks through a fourquel that could use her female energy to complicate Jean’s arc, and flexes a contractual superpower over the logic of when we would and wouldn’t see Mystique in full makeup. It’s one of the highest-profile DGAF performances of all time.

On the opposite end of the investment spectrum is Jessica Chastain, as a villain who wants Jean’s nasty space cloud energy so that she can [literally every villain plot], who’s stunted not by personal energy — she nails the Terminator run — but by a patchwork script and a commitment to Hal 9000 monotone. Chastain deserves Fassbender-level wickedness, or at least the Power Rangers wackiness of Oscar Issac in Apocalypse. Instead, her character Vux feels as faceless as her army of CG goons that Storm uses for target practice.

Thanks to the reboot-inverting Days of Future Past, Dark Phoenix wraps up a single continuity that began with 2000’s X-Men. At least on paper. The major flaw in this grimdark tale of identity and sacrifice is that no character carries with them the baggage of the previous installment. The X-verse doesn’t need to be an interwoven narrative like the MCU, but to invest in the Professor X/Magneto/Jean narrative is to understand how each of them got here (see: Logan). Dark Phoenix, which contains multiple flashbacks to scenes earlier in the movie, builds only on itself, when implicitly promising to culminate a 20-year journey.

But Magneto is wrong: people still care about the X-Men, but the people running the show didn’t care about them enough to make this moment momentous.

But he’s right about the speeches.

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https://www.polygon.com/2019/6/6/18654147/x-men-dark-phoenix-review

2019-06-06 13:58:44Z
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MARVEL STUDIOS Exec Calls X-MEN Name 'Outdated' - Newsarama

Credit: Jen bartel (Marvel Comics)

Is the name "X-Men" outdated? Marvel Studios' Executive Vice President of Production Victoria Alonso thinks so. During an interview about Captain Marvel's home video release, Alonso is asked about the future of the X-Men at Disney and goes on an interesting tangent.

"I don't know where the future is going," Alonso told Nuke the Fridge. "Its funny that people call it the X-Men... there's a lot of female superheroes in that X-Men group; I think it's outdated."

Alonso has worked as a producer on all of Marvel Studios' films, originally handling visual effects but has now grown to oversee the complete production of each film.

"I don't know where it's going to go. They just now have joined," she continued. "They have a movie coming out soon under that banner, their last film. We'll see what time will tell."

You can watch the interview in full here:

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https://www.newsarama.com/45468-marvel-studios-exec-calls-x-men-name-outdated.html

2019-06-06 13:17:00Z
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Marcia Cross says her anal cancer is linked to HPV and husband's throat cancer - CNN

The "Desperate Housewives" star appeared on Wednesday's episode of "CBS This Morning" to discuss her diagnosis more than a year ago.

Cross, 57, said it came about as a result of a routine digital rectum exam during a visit to her gynecologist.

Marcia Cross shares cancer battle

"I was so not thinking anything was wrong because I didn't have any symptoms, and she gave me an exam and came around and said, 'Well, I just want you to know, whatever it is it's curable,'" Cross said. "It was like 'What? What are you talking about?'"

Cross is talking about her cancer battle to help destigmatize the disease.

"I know that there are people who are ashamed," she said. "You have cancer. Should you then also feel like ashamed like you did something bad because it took up residence in your anus?"

Her husband, actor Tom Mahoney, was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2009.

Doctors now suspect that Cross' cancer and Mahoney's came from the same type of human papillomavirus, known as HPV.

HPV can be transferred through sexual intercourse or skin-to-skin contact and can also cause cancer of the cervix and genitals.

Early immunization can prevent the types of HPV that most commonly cause cancer and Cross said she plans to get their 12-year-old twin daughters vaccinated.

"My girls don't know it, but they're up for their first shot the end of the school year," Cross said.

Cross has completed radiation and chemotherapy and both she and her husband are in remission.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Marcia Cross' first name.

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/06/entertainment/marcia-cross-husband-cancer-trnd/index.html

2019-06-06 12:35:00Z
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