Pop Culture Odds and Ends – Out of the Sick Bay Edition

It was finally my turn to catch whatever bug has been floating around this winter. Mercifully my time being down for the count was minimal, but man did it come out of nowhere like a freight train to completely level me. I had a mild cold for a few days and was feeling particularly tired on Saturday, but I had things to do and seemed to rally just fine. Most of Sunday I was OK to, until suddenly I wasn’t. And I do mean suddenly – one minute I was enjoying dinner with my family and the next it felt like someone had jammed an ice pick into my forehead and I felt nauseous. It was awful. I even took a sick day on Monday, which is very unlike me. And then, almost as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone. I’m not yet 100%, but I feel a whole lot better than I did for that 24 hour period. Perhaps this was the universe’s way of telling me that I needed to stay home and clear out my DVR, which was filled with some truly questionable movies that I DVRed.

But even my brief stint in the sick bay wasn’t enough to keep me from this week’s roundup. As usual, I’ve found the best that the world of pop culture had to offer in the last week. So while I start to feel like a human again, catch yourself on what you might have missed.

Television

• Reign will end after its fourth season on the CW.
• Netflix has cancelled Marco Polo.
• WGN cancelled Salem.
• Broad City will return to Comedy Central next August.

• HBO is developing a space drama project with J.J. Abrams.
• TBS has renewed Search Party and People of Earth. I really enjoyed Search Party.
• Ross Geller has a Rate My Professor profile.
• Someone crunched the number to figure out which show has more deaths: Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead.
• Homeland will feature an “Alt-right media personality” next season. Because there isn’t enough of that in reality.
• Also perhaps because of the dumpster fire that was 2016, TNT will not proceed with its series about a modern Civil War.
• Reba McEntire to star in a ‘Southern Gothic soap opera’ from Marc Cherry.
• Conor McGregor will appear on the next season of Game of Thrones.
• Louis CK’s wonderful Horace and Pete is now available on Hulu, so get watching people.
• Sorry to break the bad news: not everyone in Gilmore Girls’ Hep Alien is actually playing their instrument.

• Candace Cameron Bure is leaving The View.
• TV Land has cancelled Impastor.
• An 8-part Adventure Time mini-series will debut in January.
• Jennifer Lawrence and Arnold Schwarzenegger will spend New Year’s Eve with Seth Meyers.
• Late Night with Seth Meyers now has its own podcast.
• Hairspray Live! is NBC’s worst performing live musical to date.
• Emily Rossum is demanding equal pay on Shameless, which co-star William H. Macy supports.
• Modern Family might be wrapping up after one more season.
• Shazad Latif has joined the cast of Star Trek Discovery.
• truTV renews Adam Ruins Everything.
• Hulu is rebooting Foxy Brown as TV series.

• A bunch of classic Late Night with Conan O’Brien episodes are now on YouTube.
• The DuckTales (woo-hoo) reboot will hit TV summer 2017.
• A docuseries about Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine is coming to HBO.
• NBC announced midseason premiere dates for shows.
• The Muppets are bringing back Pigs in Space as a webseries.
• Comedy Central also announced some premiere dates for new and returning series.
• The Girl Meets World season (series?) finale will be January 20^th.
• Craig Ferguson and The Jim Henson Company are producing a Top Puppet reality special at NBC.
• IFC will being airing shorts from the Comedy Crib webseries.
• IFC has renewed Stan Against Evil.
• Seeso has renewed Bajillion Dollar Propertie$.

Movies

• Walton Goggins will play the villain in the Tomb Raider reboot.
• Patrick Wilson joined the cast of Aquaman.
• Hugh Jackman took a pay cut to ensure Logan would be R-Rated.
• Ryan Reynolds really wants Wolverine and Deadpool in a movie together.
• Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn will be part of an all-female DC villains movie.
• Ben Affleck’s standalone Batman movie will be released before the sequel to The Justice League.
• Scarlett Johansson wants to voice a Disney princess. Your move, Disney.
• A Little Shop of Horrors remake is in development; Greg Berlanti attached to direct.
• Ben Mendelsohn is in talks to play Sherriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Origins.
• A “video store” is opening in L.A. that only has VHS copies of Jerry Maguire.

• Ruby Rose is in talks to join the cast of Pitch Perfect 3.
• Kate McKinnon will play the title character in the YA novel adaptation of The Lunch Witch.
• King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword, CHiPs, and Annabelle 2 all have new release dates.
• The tree from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is getting surgery.
• A sequel to An Inconvenient Truth will debut at Sundance.
• Passengers co-stars Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt insult each other:

 

• For all your holiday gift needs: Inside Llewyn Davis trading cards.
• Charles Randolph, who wrote the script for The Big Short, is writing a movie about Megyn Kelly and Roger Ailes.
• Luke Hemsworth (aka “the third Hemsworth brother”) will appear in the indie Western, Leaving Abilene.
• Forbes has declared Johnny Depp Hollywood’s most overpaid actor for the second year in a row. Congrats?
• Chris Evans, on the other hand, is once again Hollywood’s best investment. Way to go, Cap!
• Evans will be directed by Zombieland’s Ruben Fleischer in Jekyll.
• Mark Wahlberg is no longer attached to the Uncharted movie adaptation.
• Apple reportedly is exploring allowing you to rent movies while they are still in the theater.
• Margot Robbie’s Tonya Harding biopic has a distributer. Sebastian Stan has joined the cast.
• Netflix has acquired McG’s new horror comedy film, The Babysitter.

Trailers

• Baywatch:

 

• Spider-Man: Homecoming:

 

• The Founder:

 

• Sherlock, season 4:

 

• War for the Planet of the Apes:

 

• The Fate of the Furious:

 

• The OA:

 

• Fifty Shades Darker:

 

• Underground, season two:

 

• A United Kingdom:

 

• The Last Word:

 

• Netflix’s One Day at a Time remake:

 

• The Wall:

 

• Z: The Beginning of Everything:

 

• Lady MacBeth:

 

Music

• The Hamilton Mixtape earned the top spot on the Billboard 200.
• Lin-Manuel Miranda has created a Pandora station for people (like me) who love Hip Hop AND Musical Theater.
• The Grammy Country Music Committee reportedly rejected Beyoncé’s “Daddy Lessons” submission.
• Ryan Adams released a new single.
• Prince was in talks with Netflix for a Paisley Park reality show prior to his death.
• Patti Smith accepted Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize on his behalf.
• Bruno Mars was the latest person to stop by “Carpool Karaoke”:

 

• Madonna also recently made an appearance.
• The Jesus and Mary Chain will release their first new album in 18 years.
• John Legend will perform at halftime of the 2017 NBA All-Star Game.
• PJ Harvey is going out on tour.
• Andrew Lloyd Weber claims that he discovered Rihanna.

• Gucci Mane dropped by NPR for a Tiny Desk performance.
• Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers will do a 40^th anniversary tour.
• For your robot uprising needs, the complete Westworld soundtrack is now available to stream.
• Chance the Rapper has curated a playlist to listen to while you are taking a bath.
• Lupe Fiasco has quit music after being called anti-Semitic.

Stand-Up

• Patton Oswalt, Ali Wong, and others join the Moontower Festival lineup.

Theater

• Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford will bring Sundays in the Park with George to Broadway, after a successful stint at New York City Center earlier this year (which I saw; it was great.).

Books

• R.L. Stine is writing a new Man-Thing comic for Marvel.
• Sony has acquired the rights to the YA novel The Lost Property Office.
• A new online magazine, Extremely Good Shit, explores culture and the Internet.

Best of 2016

• It’s officially awards season – the Golden Globe nominees were announced.
• Here are the Critics’ Choice winners.
• SAG Award nominees were announced.
• NACCP Image Award nominees were released.
• UPROXX writers pick the best new TV shows of 2016 and the 20 best albums.
• Vulture names the best podcast episodes and podcasts.
• Vulture also names the best comedy sketches, stand-up specials.
• Mashable names the best YA books of the year.
• The American Film Institute named its favorite films and TV of 2016.

Odds and Ends

• Bill Murray adds crooning for 94 year old women to his already impressive resume.
• Former SNL cast member Joe Piscopo is considering a New Jersey gubernatorial run.
• The Bachelor announced a line of signature wines.
• Lady Gaga will be interviewed by Piers Morgan about PTSD.
• Mick Jagger and Melanie Hamrick welcomed a baby boy, Jagger’s 8^th child.
• Savannah Guthrie and husband Michael Feldman welcomed their second child.
• Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman and football player Colton Underwood are an item.
• Troian Bellisario (Pretty Little Liars) wed Patrick J. Adams (Suits).
• Flip or Flop’s Tarek and Christina El Moussa announced their separation.
• T.J. Miller was arrested for slapping an Uber driver.
• Wonder Woman lost her job as Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls for the UN because her outfit is too skimpy.
• Former Brady Bunch star Susan Olsen got fired from her radio gig after homophobic rants.
• Johannah Deakin, mother of One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson, has passed away at 43.
• Comedian Adrianne Tolsch has passed away after a battle with esophageal cancer.
• Musician Greg Lake (of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer) has died.
• Joseph Mascolo, best known as Days of Our Lives’ Stefano DiMera, has died after battling Alzheimer’s disease.
• *Sigh* Seriously 2016? Rest in Peace Alan Thicke.

 

Mashups and Supercuts

• Zack Snyder mashed up Justice League and The Force Awakens:

 

• The viral trends of 2016 in one video:

 

• 10 best opening title sequences of all time:

 

• Lorde and Jack Antonoff cover Robyn’s “Hang With Me”:

 

• Christmas lights synchronized to AC/DC:

 

• “The Imperial March” played on a coffee stirrer:

 

• Finding Dory recut as a thriller: