Here are some of the best TV series, documentaries, and films to stream now.

Anatomy of Lies

Earlier this week, we dove into the story behind Anatomy of Lies, which covers TV writer Elisabeth Finch who faked cancer and other devastating adversities for attention. This docuseries details the Grey’s Anatomy writer and her commitment to a shocking web of lies. From feigning puke breaks on set to using her own wife’s traumatic stories as her own, the details of this case will undoubtedly disturb you.

Streaming on Peacock.

Lonely Planet

It’s every novelist’s dream to attend a luxurious writer’s retreat and fall head-over-heels for a young, gorgeous man who’s actually interested in her craft. And since most of us won’t experience this type of intoxicating romance in our lifetime (and rightfully so, considering it seemingly involves an affair), we can all live vicariously through the movie Lonely Planet. Starring Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth, the film explores the arts of both writing and connection.

Streaming on Netflix.

Teacup

Inspired by the New York Times bestselling novel Stinger by Robert McCammon, Teacup starts as what appears to be a heartwarming movie, following an odd yet endearing group of people in rural Georgia. However, when a mysterious, evil threat rattles the community, they all must do whatever it takes to survive. 

Streaming on Peacock.

Love Is Blind (Season 7, New Episodes)

The third set of Love Is Blind Season 7 episodes were released on Wednesday, and we’re one step closer to the weddings—or lack thereof. Which couples are on thin ice, and which will stand the test of time?

Streaming on Netflix.

MaXXXine

Set in the 1980s, MaXXXine follows an adult film star and aspiring actress who is attempting to make her break in Hollywood. Maxine Minx is just creating a name for herself in the industry when the infamous serial killer, the Night Stalker, begins to haunt Los Angeles—and ultimately shedding light on the actress’s dark past.

Streaming on Max.

Hysteria!

After a popular varsity quarterback goes missing in a small town, the community spirals into a “Satanic Panic”—with one high school heavy metal band capitalizing on the hysteria. However, while using Satanic material to draw in their audience, things go a little too far when mysterious murders and kidnappings begin occurring.

Streaming on Peacock.

Rivals

The new TV series Rivals takes place in 1986 and features power-hungry social elites who are as ruthless as they are ambitious. Dive into the sex-filled, money-driven, luxurious world where competition is fierce and every man is out for himself. 

Streaming on Max.

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A beloved stage and screen actor, Jones is one of less than 30 EGOT winners—earning Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards. Despite having one of the most iconic voices in Hollywood history, he was afflicted with a severe stutter, particularly as a young man. He once told NPR, “I don’t say I was ‘cured.’ I just work with it.”

He was an eight-time Emmy nominee, winning twice for Gabriel’s Fire and Heatwave. Jones’ Grammy win came in 1977 for a spoken word album for children. While Jones was Oscar-nominated for The Great White Hope in 1971, his only Academy Award came from an honorary trophy in 2011. A four-time Tony Award nominee, Jones won twice for his performances in The Great White Hope and Fences and earned a special trophy in 2017. 

Jones’ career started on Guiding Light and As the World Turns, before his big break in 1964’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. His Star Wars fame began the following decade as he memorably voiced the franchise’s iconic villain.

Jones also voiced Mufasa in The Lion King and memorably starred in films including Coming to America, The Hunt for Red October, Field of Dreams, and The Sandlot. He had guest spots on TV shows including The Simpsons, House, and The Big Bang Theory.

The celebrated actor also earned a Kennedy Center Honor in 2002 and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement award in 2009.

Jones was first married to actress-singer Julienne Marie from 1968 to 1972. He married actress Cecilia Hart in 1982 and was with her until her death in 2016. He is survived by his and Hart’s son, 42-year-old Flynn Earl Jones.

The post James Earl Jones Dead at 93 appeared first on VICE.

Formerly and delightfully called Crazy Penis, Crazy P has blended shimmering disco, house, and funk since its formation in the mid-90s by Chris Todd and Jim Baron. Moore became its frontwoman in 2002, contributing soulful lyrics and voicing its most critically acclaimed hits, “Heartbreaker,” “Eruption,” and “Like a Fool.” 

The band shared a tribute to the beloved singer on Crazy P’s Instagram account.

“We are devastated to announce the unbelievable and shocking news that our beautiful Danielle Moore has died in sudden and tragic circumstances,” the band wrote. “This happened on Friday afternoon August 30th. We cannot believe the news ourselves and we know it will be the same for all of you.”

While they didn’t specify exactly what happened to Moore, they did note that they’re still processing her death—as it came as a shock to everyone. Crazy P released its most recent studio in 2019 but has been actively touring clubs in Europe, with a new single in June of this year.

“She gave us so much and we love her so much,” the statement said. “Our hearts are broken.”

Róisín Murphy, the Irish singer and songwriter who shared a like-minded love of bringing disco to pop’s fringes, expressed in her own tribute on X yesterday.

“One of the most beautiful souls has left us,” Murphy wrote about Moore. “One of the best in music, an amazing person, and an amazing singer, performer, and songwriter. I know there will be a great sense of loss and mourning across our community.”

Moore left behind a legacy that will forever live on. In remembrance, revisit some of Crazy P’s best music and watch Moore’s elegant live performance of “Eruption” below.

The post Danielle Moore, Frontwoman to Crazy P, Dies at 52 appeared first on VICE.

That’s because Japan and Brazil teamed up to obliterate 16 of the biggest illegal streaming sites on the Internet because they dared to stream anime.

Japan has been steadfast in its fight against anime piracy. And it makes sense why. It’s one of their biggest cultural exports and rakes in billions of dollars a year, and they’d probably be making a lot more if these sites didn’t exist. So, they collaborated with Brazilian authorities on a special operation called “Operation Animes.” 

The first phase of the operation, in February and March 2023, resulted in the closure of 36 anime pirating sites. The second phase has been underway since September 2023 and has been responsible for the closure of 16 another sites, including Aniwave aka 9anime. Three of the site takedowns were reportedly following criminal charges by Toei Animation, Toho, and Bandai Namco Filmworks.

The whole operation has been spearheaded by an organization called CODA, or the Content Overseas Distribution Association. Based in Japan, the organization enacts countermeasures against global piracy of Japanese media, mostly anime and manga. All of this coincides with a Brazilian antipiracy initiative launched in 2019 called “Operation 404” which aims to cease the operations of piracy sites, apps, and social media accounts.

Brazilian authorities conducted “knock and talk” raids of the site owners’ premises. Eleven of the sites were voluntarily surrendered by their operators. The sites now redirect to a CODA page announcing their closure.

One has to wonder how effective these operations are going to be, considering that piracy sites are a dime a dozen. It’s essentially a giant game of Internet whack-a-mole. You can take down 16 of them—but will another 50 quickly take their place? 

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What began as a series of scrappy upstarts who found success despite the insurmountable odds has reached a new normal. Nothing but the biggest names—many who have already found success in other fields—are diving in and reaping absurd financial rewards, effectively pushing out the new blood that can lift the medium to new innovative heights.

Amazon, Spotify, and SiriusXM have been on a spending spree in recent years, snatching up every big-name podcast they can and locking them up into exclusivity deals that sometimes don’t pan out, or recently buying rights to ads and tours for a show on multiple platforms. This comes at a time when the entertainment industry as a whole is telling unestablished creators that there’s just no money to develop their pitches. 

Podcasting has become a lot like the film and TV industries of the past 20 years, with companies looking for preestablished IP with an existing fan base, so audiences don’t have to do the hard work of wrapping their minds around a new thing.

Jaw-dropping, nine-figure podcasting deals aren’t exactly the norm yet, but there have been quite a few, with increasing regularity. Here are the celebrity podcasters who have broken the bank recently:

The Kelce brothers ($100m): The Amazon-owned podcast studio and publisher Wondery dropped a cool $100 million on the New Heights podcast hosted by current and former NFL players and brothers Travis and Jason Kelce. The deal was announced a week before the NFL season is set to begin.

SmartLess ($100m): Hosted by actors Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett, SmartLess started during the pandemic so the stars could have something to do. It quickly gained a huge following, launching a tour that turned into a TV show. SmartLess jumped ship to SiriusXM in January 2024 for, you guessed it, another $100 million.

Alex Cooper ($125m): The host of the sex and relationship podcast Call Her Daddy just signed a three-year, $125 million deal with SiriusXM. She’d had a three-year $60 million deal with Spotify and been a part of the Barstool Network before that.

Conan O’Brien ($150m): Late-night TV comedy legend Conan O’Brien signed a $150 million deal with SiriusXM back in 2022. It’s not just for his incredibly popular Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast but the entire Team Coco podcast network, which includes podcasts hosted by other big-name stars like Rob Lowe.

Joe Rogan ($250m): Controversial podcaster, comedian, and MMA commentator Joe Rogan has one of the biggest podcasts on earth. In February 2024, he signed a new $250 million multiyear deal that ensures that his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, remains on Spotify.

Bill Simmons ($250m): Here’s one to watch. Bill Simmons is a sports and pop-culture fanatic who made a name for himself with some of the best sports writing ESPN has ever published on his site, Grantland. He later started a new website and podcast network called The Ringer, home to a series of massive shows, including The Bill Simmons Podcast. The Ringer sold for $250 million in 2020—but its deal with Spotify is up in early 2025. Could the next one set a new record? 

The post Celebrity Podcasters Keep Getting $100 Million Deals Lol What Help appeared first on VICE.

Sandler recently revealed that the sequel, which does not yet have a release date, will feature professional golfers and an appearance by NFL star and Taylor Swift beau Travis Kelce, who, Sandler says, made it loud and clear that he wanted to be in the sequel from the moment it was announced. We don’t know what his role will be just yet.

The sequel will also feature Benny Safdie, who, along with his brother Josh, directed Sandler in Uncut Gems. Both brothers act on screen to some degree, but Benny has been in more high-profile roles, including a significant role in Oppenheimer. Josh Safdie directed Sandler’s upcoming stand-up special, Adam Sandler: Love You, which hits Netflix on Tuesday, August 27.

Sadly, two of the legends who helped make Happy Gilmore an all-time comedy classic, Carl Weathers and Bob Barker, passed away since it was released. But, hopefully, the newer inclusions to the cast can bring new life as the kind of tertiary wack-o characters that usually populate Sandler movies.

Sandler hyped it all up last night on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

The post ‘Happy Gilmore 2’ to Feature Benny Safdie, Travis Kelce, and a Bunch of People from New Jersey appeared first on VICE.

The complaint says that ever since Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010, their control of a massive chunk of the live music retail space has stifled competition, harming venues, artists, and music fans. The Live Nation side of the business primarily promotes and produces live music events, while Ticketmaster sells tickets for various entertainment events. Allegedly, when it comes to major venues, Live Nation controls around 60% of concert promotions while Ticketmaster controls around 80% of primary ticketing.

The suit alleges that Live Nation-Ticketmaster uses exclusivity agreements with venues to muscle out competition and force them to use Ticketmaster—your run-of-the-mill strong-armed monopolistic tactics, leading to higher prices and a worse experience for people who just want to watch a live show.

New York Attorney General Letitia James and other state AGs are trying to get treble damages imposed, which are a penalty under federal law that triples the amount of damages awarded to a plaintiff in a case. So they’re not just trying to tamp down on Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s dominance. They’re trying to topple a giant.

There’s no telling what the ticket industry will look like if Live Nation-Ticketmaster is ultimately deemed a monopoly. But it is nice to know that the DOJ is actually taking steps to protect us from the hell we all have to go through basically every time we want to see a show.  

The post The DOJ Is Coming for Live Nation-Ticketmaster and Its Alleged Monopoly appeared first on VICE.

If you’re unfamiliar, the Backyard Sports franchise launched in 1997 with the PC game Backyard Baseball. It was a hit and quickly spawned several sequels, featuring a bunch of neighborhood kids who gather together to kill time outdoors playing sports like basketball, football, soccer, and hockey. The series hasn’t had a new entry since a pair of 2015 mobile games, Backyard Sports: Baseball 2015 and Backyard Sports: Basketball 2015.

Originally published by Atari and developed by Humongous Entertainment, the Backyard Sports brand is being revived by Playground Productions, described as “a STEM-focused family entertainment firm led by former Chicago public school teacher Lindsay Barnett.” 

A couple of years ago, one of the original Backyard Sports developers answered some questions from fans on Reddit, where he remembered the game being made in a completely different era of gaming history.

“Most of the team was 20-somethings, with no kids,” he wrote. “We didn’t bring in education experts, we didn’t do extensive focus testing, no A/B testing (because we burned our game to CD-ROM after all), etc. We just made a game we thought would be fun for kids.”

One of the series’ quirks among fans was the absolute dominance of one of its characters, Pablo Sanchez, who was seemingly good at every sport—as cataloged in a recent deep dive on the YouTube channel Secret Base. Turns out, Sanchez was extremely, unfairly good. Even better than some of the real-life pro athletes featured in the games.

Playground Productions plans to expand the Backyard Sports brand into more than just games: merchandise, film adaptations, and television projects—the works. We’ve wanted nearly 10 years without so much as a peep from the series, and now we’re about to get way too much. 

The post ‘Backyard Sports’ Reboot Means the Greatest Video Game Athlete Ever Is Coming Back appeared first on VICE.

In case you’re not familiar with the whole Y2K thing, it was theorized that computers of the late 90s wouldn’t know what to do when the year changed from 1999 to 2000. It was thought that maybe computers would not be able to interpret the “00”—and that rather than just chill and ride the vibes, they would have a complete meltdown, plunging humanity back into the stone age. None of that happened of course. The Y2K bug did not cause machines to meltdown, nor did they gain sentience and rebel. 

But they do all that in Y2K. The film stars Rachel Zegler, best known for roles in Steven Spielberg’s wonderful 2021 remake of West Side Story and Disney’s upcoming live-action Snow White. It was produced by Jonah Hill and co-written and directed by Kyle Mooney.

Mooney is a sketch comedy veteran who got his start posting videos he filmed with his troupe Good Neighbor on YouTube way back in the site’s early days. Good Neighbor published just over 40 sketches over four years, and only a handful have less than a million views. Kyle also posted several sketches to a personal YouTube channel, many of them featuring characters he would later bring to Saturday Night Live, like the socially awkward SoCal skater named Todd.

This isn’t Mooney’s feature film directorial debut, though. Back in 2017, he released an underappreciated comedy-drama called Brigsby Bear, about a guy who is determined to film an ending to the children’s TV show he watched while living in an underground bunker for his entire life.

Y2K will hit theaters on December 6. Check out the trailer above, and keep your eyes peeled for Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst at the two-minute mark.

The post Watch the ‘Y2K’ Trailer, a Disaster Comedy from Kyle Mooney and A24 appeared first on VICE.

Actress Isabel Merced spoke about Dever’s security detail in an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, hosted by Josh Horowitz. Merced plays the character Dina on The Last of Us; according to the show’s creators, there could possibly be two seasons after this one, and Abby and Dina will feature prominently. Which is to say that anyone who doesn’t like Abby better strap in—you’re about to get a lot of her.

If you’re wondering why Kaitlyn Dever needs a security detail, well, there are a few reasons. 

Abby’s character is despised by some, to the point of self-induced insanity, largely relating to gender roles. As in the video game, Abby is portrayed as a muscular woman, which some gamers didn’t like. Abby also befriends a trans character throughout the game’s narrative. There’s been some (mostly negative) speculation that Abby is herself a trans woman, even though she is not. And then, of course, there is the major narrative spoiler that I’m going to gently tiptoe around by simply saying that Abby does a thing in the video game that some gamers reacted to as if it happened to them in real life.

Now, if you think a security detail for an actress playing a disliked video game character is a bit much, there is precedent. Laura Bailey is the wildly accomplished voice actress who portrayed Abby in 2020’s The Last Of Us Part Two. Unhinged weirdos also sent her death threats and even threatened the life of her child, who was an infant at the time. Neil Druckmann, one of the show’s executive producers and the creative director of the video game series, also received an enormous amount of completely unwarranted hatred and death threats. 

Devery isn’t a bodybuilder. She isn’t trans. But she’ll probably befriend a trans person in the show, and she still might do the thing she does in the game that caused a lot of weirdo brains to spray sparks and smoke. That’s more than enough to make some unhinged folk flip their shit like it was 2020 all over again. 

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