BTS Are Bigger Than Ever On 'Map Of The Soul: 7'—And It's Time For The Whole World To Take Them Seriously - Forbes

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1. BTS Are Bigger Than Ever On 'Map Of The Soul: 7'—And It's Time For The Whole World To Take Them Seriously  Forbes
2. BTS: The Song Descriptions for 'Map of the Soul: 7' Are Out — Here's What Fans Need to Know  Showbiz Cheat Sheet
3. New Details Reported On BTS's “Map Of The Soul: 7,” Including Unit Tracks, Solos, And More  soompi
4. BTS' new album 'Map of the Soul: 7' is almost out. Here's what we know  Los Angeles Times
5. BTS to release new album 'Map of the Soul: 7' worldwide on Feb. 21  ARIRANG NEWS
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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2020-02-21 07:00:00Z
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The Sonic movie should have had people puking in their seats - The A.V. Club

Photo: Paramount

Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?

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There’s a glimpse in its opening moments at how crazy the Sonic The Hedgehog movie could have been. The camera pans across a lushly rendered version of the original game series’ iconic Green Hill Zone, complete with those OSHA-defying ramps and loop-the-loops that appear to have naturally grown out of its neon-verdant foliage. It’s the perfect playground for the kind of high-speed madness that the Sonic games embody at their best (and, frankly, worst, though more on that in a second). Unfortunately, a glimpse is all we get; before you know it, Sonic’s surrogate owl mom, Longclaw, has been sent back to Ga’Hoole where she belongs—courtesy of Knuckles’ evil cousins, who get blessedly little screen time—and the Ben Schwartz-voiced speedster is cursed to live out the rest of his life in rural Montana, tragically deprived of the giant springboards and collapsing dirt bridges he was born to traverse.

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Now, would a fully Moebius-based Sonic The Hedgehog movie have eventually turned into hideous, unwatchable CGI soup? Almost certainly. And would the need for a host of non-human characters have forced director Jeff Fowler and his team to dip even further into the Sonic universe’s roster of soul-draining also-rans? Indubitably. (Nobody needs to see a Sonic movie version of Charmy Bee or Big The Cat. Nobody.) But given that Sonic The Hedgehog is a movie where a character primarily known for his speed spends most of his time riding around in a truck, even a taste of the sheer out-of-control adrenaline the apex Sonic games trade in would have been welcome, even if it did send the movie careening off the rails.

Because that’s the core, and the paradox, of all “good” Sonic games: They’re platforming games where you can’t see the next platform coming, because “gotta go fast” and “let’s be careful here” are inherently opposed. In a genre built on precision, the most beloved Sonic games are powered more by hope, as you blindly fling yourself off of cliffs at maximum speed, vaguely praying that you’ll hit the next part of whatever line the developers half-expected you to hit. It’s exhilarating when it works and infuriating the rest of the time, which tends to be a skosh more than good game design would seemingly dictate. But then that’s the price you paid signing on for the ultimate video game expression of “speed is good.” Do you think this Sonic would care that the internet thought he looked like a human-toothed homunculus dredged up from a dentist’s darkest hell? Heck no: He’s too busy bouncing off a spike you never saw coming because he didn’t realize that this cliff was one you’re supposed to jump off, instead of just running. It’s a vibe his screen counterpart could use more of.

With no disrespect to James Marsden or Ben Schwartz—the latter of whom exudes almost herculean charm in his efforts to save leaden jokes despite being exiled in the voice-over booth—the only performer embodying the real Sonic energy in the movie is Jim Carrey, who hurls himself at ad-libs and weird facial expressions with the same brio of a Sonic Mania player saying, “Fuck it, I’m just going to hold right until something good happens or I die.” Instead, the majority of the movie has the feeling of those unfortunate mid-2000s Sonic games where Sega tried to capture both blinding speed and clarity, and ended up with big old dollops of slow-moving nothing instead. (Looking at you, every single 3D Sonic game.) A Sonic The Hedgehog movie too afraid to cut loose with speed—to awkwardly slam into five proverbial walls for every one run executed with flawless energy—is one that fails to capture the essence of the character. The Sonic movie should have left audiences lurching out of the aisles in fits of hedgehog-induced motion sickness, horfing up the popcorn-laden vomit of the happily disoriented. Instead, these viewers listlessly rise, stomachs depressingly settled, and untouched by the chaos that is this franchise’s most distinctive stock in trade.

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2020-02-21 06:00:00Z
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Caught between a comic-book tone and Holocaust horrors, ‘Hunters’ struggles to hit the target - The Washington Post

Christopher Saunders Amazon Prime Al Pacino, left, as Mever Offerman and Logan Lerman as Jonah Heidelbaum in “Hunters.”

Amazon Prime’s intriguing but often contorted thriller series “Hunters” (streaming Friday) stars Al Pacino as the leader of a colorful yet clandestine band of mostly Jewish mercenaries who hunt and kill Nazis. It’s a fast, frenetic show that’s all over the place — emotionally, violently and conspiratorially. Its darkly humorous bent competes with its righteous sincerity.

The Nazis seen here, in 1977 America, are also all over the place, where you least expect them (and also where you do). From the show’s opening scene — in which a Carter administration policy adviser (Dylan Baker) executes his family and neighbors at a backyard picnic in Chevy Chase rather than have his Nazi past exposed — viewers begin to understand that a vast network of thousands of Nazis, old and young, have infiltrated the halls of power and are biding their time while their female Fuhrer-surrogate (Lena Olin) plans a terrorist attack in the name of the Fourth Reich.

On the one hand, “Hunters” seems (and plays) like pulp fantasy. On that pesky other hand, here in 2020, there have been shootings in synagogues and a rise in anti-Semitic speech and hate crimes. Because even the most self-evident truths have gone blurry, “Hunters” can sometimes feel powered by contemporary outrage.

But the show, created by David Weil (with “Get Out” and “Twilight Zone’s” Jordan Peele as an enthusiastic executive producer), also struggles to find a sure footing between two disparate tonal tracks. Quite a bit of “Hunters” dwells in that vividly imaginative space suggested by Quentin Tarantino’s film “Inglourious Basterds” (and more recently, Taika Waititi’s “Jojo Rabbit”), in which Hitler’s lingering reach is converted into a campy menace and battled back with physical skills, cunning espionage and assorted heavily armed hokey-ness.

At the same time, “Hunters” frequently flashes back to the Holocaust itself, where a younger version of Pacino’s character, Meyer Offerman, survives Nazi torture and begins to conceive of a lasting revenge. In these scenes, the mood dial switches to a “Schindler’s List” mode in intensity and horror. Well into the 10 episodes (five of which were made available for this review), you’ll have one scene where disco kids shimmy to the Bee Gees on the Coney Island boardwalk, and then, in another scene set 35 years earlier, it’s point-blank executions at Auschwitz.

The story focuses on Jonah Heidelbaum (Logan Lerman), a young Brooklyn man who works in a comic-book store and hustles drugs to support himself and his safta (grandmother), Ruth (Jeannie Berlin), a Holocaust survivor and Jonah’s only relative. A nighttime intruder shoots and kills Ruth in her easy chair, leading a grief-stricken Jonah to investigate the murder, which leads him to Offerman, who explains, eventually, that Ruth was one of his best Nazi hunters.

We follow Jonah’s slow initiation into Offerman’s justice league, members of which include a tough-talking nun, Sister Harriet (Kate Mulvany); a black-power activist, Roxy Jones (Tiffany Boone); a washed-up actor, Lonny Flash (Josh Radnor); a Vietnam vet, Joe Torrance (Louis Ozawa Changchien); and Murray and Mindy Markowitz (Saul Rubinek and Carol Kane), a pair of grandparents who are also Holocaust survivors.

The actors often seem to be working from different notes. As Jonah, Lerman has to juggle deep grief, sidekick naivete and an astonishment at the violence Offerman and company employ when they capture a Nazi. “The Talmud is wrong,” Offerman explains to Jonah. “Living well is not the best revenge. You know what the best revenge is? Revenge.”

For all his wisdom and self-made wealth, Pacino’s character is surprisingly one-note, more of a presence than a marquee attraction; everyone else, including Olin as “the Colonel,” is at risk of lapsing into caricature. The two most interesting and most realized characters are an FBI agent, Millie Malone (Jerrika Hinton), who investigates the death of a NASA employee (someone gassed her in her bathroom shower stall) and slowly discovers the Nazi conspiracy; and a young, white-supremacist assassin, Travis Leich (Greg Austin), whose bloodlust exceeds the coded directives given to him.

With so many plates spinning, it’s easy for the writers and actors to lose track of what kind of show they’re making. “Hunters” treats its 1970s Nazis more like vampires than war criminals — friendly monsters who reveal themselves only when backed into a corner: an old lady watching game shows in her Florida condo; a doddering toyshop owner in Manhattan; a bank president.

This is perhaps the most effective takeaway “Hunters” has to offer, the unsettling notion that the worst among us hide in plain sight — and might even be working on Offerman’s team. Somewhere in Episode 5, there are signs that the show might be hunting for more than just war criminals — something deeper within the human condition. That pursuit gets more difficult when morality becomes a moving target.

Hunters (10 episodes) begins streaming Friday on Amazon Prime. (Disclosure: Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

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2020-02-20 14:00:00Z
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CBS is planning an improved streaming service after squandering its head start with All Access - The Verge

ViacomCBS is launching a new streaming service that will hopefully do more for the recently merged company than the current form of CBS All Access has done in its six-year run.

The new service will build upon CBS All Access (which costs $5.99 per month with ads or $9.99 a month without) by offering an assortment of Viacom networks to customers. The company announced its expansive approach to streaming, which ViacomCBS referred to in a press release as “House of Brands.” Part of the company’s goals to “accelerate” its presence in the streaming space is to “take a differentiated approach that builds on ViacomCBS’ unique foundation in streaming, plays to its strengths.” This includes offering live sports and news, similar to what NBCUniversal is doing with Peacock.

“New broad pay ‘House of Brands’ product will expand CBS All Access by adding the company’s scaled assets in film and TV, including world-renowned brands, and reaffirm and expand the value of entertainment, news and sports — through on-demand and live experiences — for audiences around the world,” a press release reads.

The goal is to complement services such as Pluto TV (free) and Showtime’s premium offerings by “adding a broad pay offering, built on the foundation of CBS All Access.” Details are still extremely thin, including how much the different tiers will cost. CEO Bob Bakish didn’t give many new details, but said the goal is to soft launch the evolved product later this year.

The new service is only a possibility now, thanks to the merger between CBS and Viacom. Networks and studios like BET, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, and Paramount Pictures didn’t fully belong to CBS prior to the network and Viacom rejoining last year. The new service will also give subscribers access to Pluto TV, a free ad-supported virtual TV service Viacom purchased before the CBS merger that offers customers programming from specialized channels. Most notably, Pluto offers access to limited versions of NBC News, Spike TV, MTV, The Movie Channel, CBS News, and CNN.

CBS was one of the earliest entrants in the streaming wars. The company launched All Access in October 2014 — seven years after Netflix launched its streaming service and five years before Disney, Apple, NBCUniversal, and WarnerMedia got into the game. While CBS was early, All Access never became the streaming juggernaut the company hoped it would. Bakish announced that streaming, which also includes digital video, earned $1.6 billion in revenue, which is up 60 percent year over year. The company’s streaming services have more than 11 million domestic subscribers (between CBS All Access and Showtime), which is up 56 percent year over year. Bakish said CBS All Access and Showtime are set to hit 16 million subscribers by year’s end.

Yet, while 11 million isn’t anything to scoff at, CBS All Access and Showtime trail Disney Plus’ 28 million subscribers, which the company amassed within just the first three months of its launch. All Access is still short of Hulu’s 30 million subscribers and a far cry from Netflix’s 60 million subscribers in the US. Recently, however, the company did announce that it broke records for All Access sign-ups, which were driven by the success of Picard, its new Star Trek series, and the Grammys telecast.

At the time, CBS All Access’ slower growth wasn’t as much of a concern since the streaming competition came mostly from Netflix. Now, however, with Disney Plus picking up speed and incoming competition from both NBCUniversal (Peacock) and WarnerMedia (HBO Max) later this spring, ViacomCBS knows it needs to go head-to-head with competitors both in the digital and linear spaces.

“The combined company will have the best of both worlds, premium US programming that seamlessly travels across borders and hundreds of thousands of hours of locally produced international programming, all available with the click of a button,” former acting CBS CEO Joe Ianniello told investors during a call in August 2019.

Prior to Viacom and CBS merging, Viacom’s strategy in the streaming wars was to sell off a number of its key programming in standalone streaming packages. Nickelodeon produced NickSplat, which cost subscribers $6.99 a month, and BET Plus, which featured an array of BET classics and new originals, for $9.99 a month. Many of these channels were available through other platforms, including Amazon Channels, where they could be purchased as add-ons to Prime subscriptions.

Unlike its competitors, ViacomCBS will not use the new streaming service to offer total exclusivity on its series and movies. It will continue licensing. Disney did the opposite with its films in the lead-up to Disney Plus’ launch, and WarnerMedia is in the process of bringing all of its films, including Warner Bros. titles, over to HBO Max. NBCUniversal is set to make its biggest film franchises, including The Fast and the Furious, exclusive to Peacock, too.

Some franchises will be shared, and others licensed. Netflix and ViacomCBS worked out a deal for new titles, including a new SpongeBob SquarePants show. Baskish noted that Netflix is a better option for a Spongebob spinoff, as there’s a bigger kids market there, but considers these types of moves “rentals.” The IP reverts back to ViacomCBS in the long run, but licensing will help drive revenue for the company.

Comedy Central’s South Park is a perfect example. South Park will also stream on HBO Max — a deal that reportedly netted Viacom north of $500 million. It’s unclear how the company decides what to license out and what to keep, but licensing ensures there’s additional revenue coming in while the company attempts to bring new subscribers over to its new streaming service.

Update February 20th, 8:50AM ET: The story has been updated to include details from ViacomCBS’ earnings call with investors.

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2020-02-20 13:16:07Z
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Kanye West Is Getting Roasted for Leaving Kim Kardashian in an Elevator to Carry All Their Bags - Cosmopolitan.com

• Kim Kardashian and Kanye West were caught kissing in an elevator while in Paris. Cute!
• Kanye legit ended the kiss by walking out of the elevator, leaving Kim with the bags, and letting the doors close on her. Good times.

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So, the other day Kim Kardashian and Kanye West were chilling out in Paris when they decided to kiss in an elevator. The moment was caught on camera and was pretty cute (I stan Kimye forever), but forget the kiss. All the internet cares about right now is the fact that Kanye legit left Kim in the elevator to deal with all their shopping bags.

Sending a thank you note to whoever took this video because it's truly making me scream:

And obviously Twitter is roasting Kanye for leaving Kimberly with all their stuff:

Like, THE ELEVATOR DOOR LITERALLY CLOSED ON HER:

FYI, this iconic moment comes after Kanye and Kim were caught on the Kiss Cam at the The NBA All-Star game, and he literally ignored her attempt to kiss him for a full five seconds until she finally landed one of his cheek. It was, to be blunt, the most awkward thing I've ever watched—and I say this as someone who's been tuning into Peter Weber's season of The Bachelor every week. Gonna assume this public elevator kiss moment was somehow a response to the world collectively cringing at Kim and Kanye's kiss cam fail, but uh...better luck next time, guys!

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2020-02-20 12:33:00Z
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Watch Justin Bieber and James Corden Open ‘Yummy’ Food Truck - Rolling Stone

Justin Bieber has been making the rounds to promote his new album Changes and in his latest late night segment the pop singer has launched a food truck with James Corden. The pair joined forces on The Late Late Show to open the “Yummy Food Truck” in Los Angeles, which served fish tacos and grilled cheese sandwiches to raise money for the LA Food Bank.

In the clip, Corden struggles to drive the truck, which has been emblazoned with the duo’s faces. “This is it,” he says. “We’re food dudes now.” Initially, they aren’t sure what sort of food to sell, especially since one is British and one is Canadian, so Corden suggests fish tacos. “We could call them Despitacos,” he says. As for whether they can actually cook? It’s debatable, but at least they are legitimately concerned about possible allergies when a fan says she’ll die if she eats fish.

our favorite salty bae. #LateLateBieber pic.twitter.com/Y1Xn0jQvRG

— The Late Late Show with James Corden (@latelateshow) February 20, 2020

Earlier this week Bieber joined Corden for a round of “Carpool Karaoke,” during which they created a new TikTok dance and argued about whether Bieber could actually fight Tom Cruise. He also made an appearance as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live as well as The Tonight Show, and teamed up with the duo Florida Georgia Line for a country remix of “Yummy.”

During his appearance on The Late Late Show, Bieber also participated in “Todderography” alongside Corden.

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In This Article: Justin Bieber, The Late Late Show With James Corden

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2020-02-20 06:57:00Z
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Day 2 of jury deliberations ends with no verdict in Harvey Weinstein case - ABC News

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1. Day 2 of jury deliberations ends with no verdict in Harvey Weinstein case  ABC News
2. How the charges in Harvey Weinstein's trial work, and why Annabella Sciorra's testimony is so vital  CNN
3. Donna Rotunno: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know  Heavy.com
4. No, the Harvey Weinstein verdict isn’t a judgment on #MeToo itself  New York Daily News
5. Jury deliberations continue for day 2 in Harvey Weinstein trial l ABC News  ABC News
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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2020-02-20 03:45:15Z
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