“I like to do what I’m not supposed to do, and this is the music that feels the truest to me at the moment.” That’s how Miley Cyrusintroduced her new rap-adjacent thumper “Cattitude” at last weekend’s BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend festival. She then made tabloid headlines for the lyric, “I love you Nicki, but I listen to Cardi.” This may be the music speaking to Cyrus right now, but it seems like everything is speaking to her right now—country-tinged synth ballads, Wu-Tang Clan homages, Mark Ronson collaborations, Billie Eilish-style ASMR teasers, and even Black Mirror cameos.
“Cattitude” is proudly unserious, but it’s also kind of embarrassing. “Turn up your gratitude, turn down your attitude/I love my pussy, that means I got cattitude” packs the energy of a self-help slogan and a rejected Lizzo track. Perhaps anticipating blowback to the pussy hat of pop songs, the version on Cyrus’ new She Is Coming EP adds an extensive feature from RuPaul, who playfully smuggles in some exploration of genderqueer sex. Shame it should wind up lodged in this mess, where the highlight is, alas, Miley’s interpolation of Missy Elliott’s iconic rum-pum-pum-pum in “Work It.” “Cattitude” is entertaining, sure, but who’s being entertained?
The Elton John biopic "Rocketman" is launching to theaters this weekend, and film producers, including the singer himself, hope the musical fantasy will be a box office hit.
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In the U.S., "Rocketman" is expected to hit $20 million in sales over its opening weekend — well behind "Godzilla: King of the Monsters," which is currently tracking for more than $50 million, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
While he's known for his popular tunes, Sir Elton John is no stranger to the movie scene. He shares an Oscar and Golden Globe with lyricist Tim Rice for Best Music for the song "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" featured in the 1994 animated hit "The Lion King." He also received two other nominations that year for music featured in the film.
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Elton John, who serves as one of the executive producers for "Rocketman," has at least 10 other producer credits.
So when it comes to sharing his life story on the big screen, Elton John is likely not in it for the money. Instead, Elton John said he wanted to give his fans a transparent look into his past.
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“Some studios wanted to tone down the sex and drugs so the film would get a PG-13 rating. But I just haven’t led a PG-13 rated life,” Elton John wrote in an article published by The Guardian on Sunday. “I didn’t want a film packed with drugs and sex, but equally, everyone knows I had quite a lot of both during the ’70s and ’80s, so there didn’t seem to be much point in making a movie that implied that after every gig, I’d quietly gone back to my hotel room with only a glass of warm milk and the Gideon’s Bible for company.”
"When my career took off, it took off in such a way that it almost didn’t seem real to me. I wasn’t an overnight success by any means ... But when it happened, it went off like a missile."
Some studios wanted to make a more "straightforward" biopic — a suggestion the 72-year-old said he swiftly rejected.
"When my career took off, it took off in such a way that it almost didn’t seem real to me. I wasn’t an overnight success by any means – I’d been slogging around the clubs, making records, writing songs with Bernie and trying to sell them to people who weren’t interested for four or five years before anything big happened. But when it happened, it went off like a missile," he added.
In 2018 alone, Elton John earned $46 million, landing him No. 57 on Forbes' top 100 celebrity earnings list. In 2014, CNN Business named the British musician among the top 10 richest musicians with an estimated net worth of $450 million.
Sir Elton John is now worth an estimated $500 million. (Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
The singer, known for smash hits such as "Rocket Man," "Tiny Dancer" and "I'm Still Standing," now has a net worth of about $500 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. He recently landed on The Sunday Times' 2019 "Rich List."
And his savings account is expected to skyrocket, especially after he launched his farewell tour, "Farewell Yellow Brick Road," in September. In total, Elton John will perform in over 300 shows that will span three years. The world tour is forecast to reach more than $400 million in ticket sales.
With an executive producer title in "Rocketman," Elton John will also probably get a decent cut from profits — though it's not currently clear exactly how much he'll receive.
One of the biggest announcements to come out of Disneyland’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge wasn’t anything to do with the rides or the immersive experiences. This one was just for the adults descending upon the smuggler’s output: Galaxy’s Edge would be the first land at Disneyland to serve alcohol.
Pour one out, rebels.
To be fair, Galaxy’s Edge doesn’t only serve alcoholic beverages; they just happen to be a big draw. But there are plenty of other Star Wars beverages filling the stalls and cantinas of the planet Batuu.
Kat Saka’s Kettle popcorn
Photo: James Bareham/Polygon
Kat Saka’s Kettle
Amidst the bustling marketplace, guests will find a colorful popcorn blend unique to the Star Wars world. The snack has a savory sweet taste, both salty and fruity. We found it a bit addictive, the thing that you blindly pick at while waiting in line, until it’s suddenly gone. A pouch runs you $6.49.
Photo: Joshua Sudock/Disney Parks
Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo
According to Galaxy’s Edge’s in-world lore, famous chef Chef Strono “Cookie” Tuggs owns this mobile restaurant, in which he travels across the galaxy and cooks up delicious meals. This is the main dining location in Star Wars Land and thus features the most expansive menu, with options for breakfast, lunch, and dinner that all range between $12.99-$18.99.
Breakfast includes an egg bite called the Bright Suns Morning, an oatmeal concoction with dragon fruit called the Rising Moons Overnight Oats, and a “sweet galactic delight” called the Mustafarian Lava Roll.
Smoked Kaadu Ribs
Photo: David Roark/Disney Parks
Lunch features Smoked Kaadu Ribs (pork ribs), Fried Endorian Tip-yip (crispy chicken with roasted vegetable potato mash), (chilled shrimp with marinated noodles), Felucian Garden Spread (Kefta with hummus in a pita), and Roasted Endorian Tip-Yip Salad (a chicken salad). We really enjoyed the Felucian Garden Spread, a light and refreshing dish that doesn’t really have a contemporary in the rest of the park’s culinary options.
Yobshrimp Noodle Salad
Photo: David Roark/Disney Parks
The dinner menu includes the Smoked Kaduu Ribs, Friend Endorian Tip-yip, Yobshrimp Noodle Salad, and the Roasted Endorian Tip-yip Salad, as well as the Ithorian Garden Loaf (a vegetable based meatloaf) and Braised Shaak Roast (beef pot roast).
Deserts
Photo: David Roark/Disney Parks
Desserts — available at both lunch and dinner — include the Oi-oi Puff (a raspberry cream puff) and the Batuu-bon (chocolate cake). The Batuu-bon’s more of a sweet milk chocolate treat. It has a neat little chocolate token that rests on top of it’s shiny, round, gooey exterior.
The main dining location in the land also features various themed drinks like Moof Juice, Phattro, and Batuubucha Tea — along with Black Caf (aka regular ol’ coffee with a Star Wars zinger for a name).
Oga’s Cantina
This dining location the first in Disneyland to serve alcohol. Within the park lore, Og’s Cantina is a notorious hotbed of smugglers and less than savory citizens.
Photo: James Bareham/Polygon
Alcoholic drinks, ranging from $14-$15, will include Jedi Mind Trick, the Outer Rim, T-18 Skyhopper, Fuzzy Tauntaun, Dagobah Slug Slinger, Bespin Fizz, Jet Juice, and Yub Nub (which comes with an exclusive Endor mug, hiking up the price to $42). Morning variations include Spiran Caf and Bloody Rancor (spiked coffee and a Bloody Mary-esque concoction respectively).
Oga’s alcoholic drinks (L to R): The Outer Rim, Bespin Fizz, Yub Nub, and Fuzzy Tauntaun
Kent Phillips/Disney Parks
Various beers, wines, and ciders are available on tap, range from $12-$13, and all sport Star Wars names. The beers are Gold Squadron Lager, White Wampa Ale, Gamorrean Ale, and Bad Motivator IPA, with Spice Runner cider. The wine is Toniray and Imperial Guard.
Oga’s non-alcoholic drinks (L to R): Carbon Freeze, Oga’s Obsession, and Cliff Dweller
Photo: Kent Phillips/Disney Parks
Non-alcoholic drinks (all $6-$7.50) include Hyperdrive, Jabba’s Juice, Blurrgfire, Carbon Freeze, Cliff Dweller (which comes with an exclusive Porg mug), Oga’s Obsession, and Blue Bantha. Breakfast drinks include Black Spire Brew, Moogan Tea, and Tarine Tea. If you’re going the non-alcoholic route, we vouch for the Carbon Freeze which takes inspiration from passion fruit bubble tea with pearls.
In addition to its robust drink menu, Oga’s also has one food option during the day, a snack mix called Batuu Bites. Breakfast food includes Mustafarian Lava Roll and Rising Moons Overnight Oats.
Ronto Roasters
The barbeque meat inside the Ronto Wraps is cooked up on a large pod racing engine.
A Ronto wrap
The morning menu includes the $12.49 Ronto Morning Wrap — scrambled eggs, cheese, peppercorn sauce wrapped in pita — as well as Rising Moons Overnight Oats ($6.99). The regular Ronto Wrap, made up of roasted pork, grilled sausage, and slaw, will be available all day for $12.99. Nuna Turkey Jerky is also available at Ronto’s. A collision of familiar foods — hotdog, pork sandwich, and gyro — we like how the salty fat of the meat mixes with the vinegary slaw. Our pita did a commendable job of not getting soggy.
Photo: David Nguyen/Disney Parks
The barbeque joint also features non-alcoholic beverages like the Sour Sarlacc, the Tatooine Sunset, and Meiloorun Juices.
Photo: James Bareham/Polygon
The Milk Stand
Ever wanted to try the ... Green Milk that Luke Skywalker obtained from a creature in The Last Jedi? Or the Blue Milk he served during a family meal during A New Hope? Now you can for $7.99. What can we say? Luke Skywalker really likes his calcium.
If you're at all invested in what goes on in the world of pop music, you'll know about the infamous years-long feud between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry.
It all started back in September 2014 with a Rolling Stone interview in which Taylor revealed her song "Bad Blood" was inspired by her relationship with a fellow artist who she was "never sure" was her friend.
She said the other artist had attempted to "sabotage" her Red Tour by hiring a bunch of people from under her. After some intense investigations, fans deduced Taylor was talking about Katy.
What happened next was a lot of dramatic back-and-forth, but it all ended in May last year when Katy sent Taylor a note and a literal olive branch to officially end the feud.
"Hey Old Friend," the note read. "I've been doing some reflecting on past miscommunications ... I really want to clear the air ... I am deeply sorry."
Things have remained civil between the two since then. They haven't really publicly interacted, but there was a theory that there might be a Katy collab on Taylor's upcoming album.
Not trying to be loud.....but olive branches and palm trees are both symbols for peace..........are we getting a taylor swift and katy perry collab I NEED TO KNOW
Big Machine
However, there has recently been some very suspect activity happening with Taylor and Katy and their social media accounts, and I have officially turned into the personification of the 👀 emoji.
Big Machine
On Wednesday, Taylor posted this photo of herself cradling her new cat Benjamin Button. She posted it on Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter, because she knows he is adorable and needs to be shared across all social platforms.
And who popped in to like the photo on Twitter? Ms Katy Perry.
Now, LISTEN. It's a cute photo and Katy likes cats, so why wouldn't she like it? I get it. But then something else happened.
So, Taylor updated the playlist she has on Apple Music to promote her new song, "Me". And she added Katy's new song, "Never Really Over".
Apple Music
"Everything that happens to us is just part of a story we'll tell someday," Taylor writes in the playlist description. "These songs are the soundtrack of my story at the moment."
Apple Music
And guess what, Swifties? The song is now the 13th track on the playlist.
I think it's fair to say that fans of both are freaking out.
KATY LIKED TAYLORS TWEET AND NOW TAYLOR IS ADDING NRO TO HER APPLE MUSIC PLAYLIST. AS SOMEONE WHO HAS STANNED THEIR FRIENDSHIP SINCE 2008 THIS IS EVERYTHING MY 6 YEAR OLD AND 16 YEAR OLD SELF COULD EVER WANT AND MORE
And they're already calling for a collab/special guest appearance/best friendship in Taylor and Katy's upcoming eras.
katy attending ts7 world tour as a special guest and performing never really over with taylor...yes? YESSS!!!
It looks like this feud is, in fact, really over. 😎
Ellie Bate is a celebrity reporter and talent coordinator at BuzzFeed UK and is based in London.
Niecy Nash (left) and Jharrel JeromePhoto: Atsushi Nishijima (Netflix)
If the heart-rending saga of the Central Park Five didn’t exist, Dick Wolf would have had to invent it. After all, the case of five black and Latino teenagers wrongly convicted of raping and beating a white woman is exactly the kind of thorny, politically fraught story on which Wolf’s iconic Law & Order franchise was built. Even three decades after the attack and its aftermath, it’s not uncommon to hear a Special Victims Unit detective make a sidelong reference to the case or the many lessons it imparted. From the risks of coercive interrogation to the dangers of a ravenous media response, the Central Park Five have served as a totem for systemic failure long after their official exoneration.
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Director Ava DuVernay isn’t content for the story of the Central Park Five to exist as a law enforcement case study, or for the public to only know the men by their reductive sobriquet. When They See Us, DuVernay’s furious and infuriating four-part Netflix series, maintains a disciplined focus on the men involved, showing how their lives and communities suffered irreparable damage as a result of their incarceration after confessing under extreme duress. The ground-level approach lies in stark contrast with that of co-director Ken Burns’ non-fiction take on the same material, which concerns itself more with the procedural errors and how growing anxiety about metropolitan crime created a bloodthirsty mob.
Those elements of the story are well-represented in DuVernay’s scripted version, but only as much as they’re required to recount the awful facts. One night, in April of 1989, five Harlem boys—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise—literally fall in with a bad crowd. Each kid follows a large, disparate group of young black men into Central Park, only to watch in horror as the mob’s idle hands make fists and pummel random passersby. The police arrive to stop the crowd from escalating its violent behavior, and the five boys who eventually take the fall get swept up in the NYPD’s broad net. Unbeknownst to the boys, who were mostly strangers prior to that night, a 28-year-old jogger had been dragged off a Central Park trail, raped, and beaten within inches of her life.
The jogger’s attack doesn’t seem to fit with the other crimes, in terms of time, space, and physical evidence, and the boys are initially confused when their interrogations turn toward a rape they know nothing about. But that doesn’t stop city prosecutor Linda Fairstein (Felicity Huffman) from prodding detectives to garner confessions by any means necessary, with widespread public outrage curdling into top-down political pressure and an entire city demanding swift justice. That includes pressure from a certain real estate developer who once seemed most likely to inspire the main antagonist in a next-gen Leisure Suit Larry game, but instead became the de facto leader of the free world. The limited series isn’t bashful about calling out the president by name and highlighting how his public push for hang-’em-high justice then is reflected in his policies toward black and brown people now.
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Asante BlackkPhoto: Atsushi Nishijima (Netflix)
The first episode is hardest to watch because it shows in harrowing detail the circumstances that would lead anyone, especially a minor, to admit involvement in a violent crime. It’s one thing to hear a voice in a documentary recalling a 30-hour interrogation without food or sleep, outside the presence of parents or legal representation and often augmented with physical abuse or the threat thereof. But it’s entirely different to watch those events dramatized, to see the terror and confusion of the situation acted by newcomer Asante Blackk, who plays Richardson and distinguishes himself among a cast of ringers. Blackk is puberty personified, with the face of a ceramic cherub and an impossibly mannish voice, making him the best vessel for a story about kids forced into adulthood by their circumstances.
After the initial arrests, DuVernay focuses on each phase of the boy’s experiences coming of age in the criminal justice system, returning to territory she previously explored in her mass incarceration documentary 13th. Each episode makes increasingly obvious that if DuVernay could have communicated more using only tight close-ups of the core actors, she would have done so. The four-episode structure and the tight focus on the boys works well for the story, but frequently means the impressive ensemble cast flits in and out before they’re able to make a real impression. Blair Underwood and Joshua Jackson, to name two, show up as part of the boys’ ragtag legal team, but they don’t have much to chew on, which is probably for the best considering how little impact they ultimately had on their clients’ fates.
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That’s certainly not the case for Jharrel Jerome, best known for his role in Moonlight, who gets the biggest spotlight here as Wise, whose arc represents the cruelest twist in a plot full of them. Jerome is the only actor to portray his character as a child and as an adult, and the feature-length final installment is almost entirely a showcase for his performance. As handsome and well-rendered as When They See Us is, the nature of the story makes the show taste like medicine, and one could be forgiven for stopping after the first episode on account of sheer emotional exhaustion. But if there was a single episode to watch, it would be the last one, which portrays Wise’s horrifying journey as the only one of the five boys to be sent to an adult prison. Jerome’s performance is absolutely stunning and richly detailed, down to his choice to replicate Wise’s clenched oral posture.
There’s light at the end of the tunnel, of course, the mostly post-scripted vindication of the men after the actual culprit came forward and DNA evidence exculpated Wise, McCray, Richardson, Salaam, and Santana, leading to a multi-million dollar settlement from the city. But man, it’s a hell of a tunnel. When They See Us is DuVernay at her best: urgent, unflinching, and political. But like 13th before it, it’s a gutting viewing experience, one that probably benefits from binge-viewing, but makes doing so nearly impossible.
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