40 Books We Cant Wait to Read This Fall

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  34 minutes  |  7194 words  |  Janel Helmers

Including Sally Rooney, Colson Whitehead, Michaela Coel, and more. Fall Preview A cautiously optimistic guide to an (almost) normal season. Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Courtesy of Publisher Fall Preview A cautiously optimistic guide to an (almost) normal season. The leaves are dropping, anxieties are spiking, and at the center of everything is a warbling uncertainty. Sit down. Read a book. Make your world as big or as small as it needs to be so you can power past whatever’s hunting you outside. [Read More]

5 Extremely 80s Albums That Influenced Wild Nothings Indigo

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  11 minutes  |  2301 words  |  Janel Helmers

Since indie stylist Jack Tatum’s Wild Nothing project broke big onto the scene with its 2010 debut Gemini, Tatum has made exploring the sounds of the 1980s into its own pure virtue by capturing the era’s eerie, shimmering glow through a lo-fi lens. Wild Nothing’s fourth album, Indigo, still finds him drawing from that nostalgic well, but with a twist: this time around, the production is big, bold, and crisp, a gesture that seems both out-of-step with the confines of his oft-ramshackle Captured Tracks labelmates and perfectly in line with trends in overground pop (the 1975’s recent string of singles, Paramore’s excellent After Laughter from last year). [Read More]

50 Cent Legally Asserts That He Has Not Had Penis-Enlargement Surgery

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  277 words  |  Elina Uphoff

In case you’ve ever wondered, 50 Cent says he has never had penis-enlargement surgery — and he’s ready to take that claim to court. The rapper and mogul, born Curtis Jackson III, is suing a Miami-area plastic-surgery clinic for allegedly implying he was a client for penis-enlargement surgery, Billboard reported. The claim focuses on a photo that 50 Cent took with Angela Kogan, owner of Perfection Plastic Surgery & Med Spas, which Kogan later used to promote the business — including a since-removed Shade Room interview about penis-enlargement surgery. [Read More]

7 Existential Quandaries Raised by the Cars Series

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  786 words  |  Aldo Pusey

Cars 3. The Cars franchise is many things to many people. For young children, it is the opportunity to be transported into a world full of good-natured wisecracks and bright, shiny metal. For Disney, it is an opportunity to separate those children’s guardians from their wallets for many Christmases to come. And for those of us whose brains spiral out of control in the darkness of the cineplex, each new Cars film is a veritable rabbit-warren of unsettling thought-paths. [Read More]

7 Theories of What The Wizard of Oz Is Really About

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  5 minutes  |  1045 words  |  Janel Helmers

We’ll have to wait and see if Sam Raimi’s Oz the Great and Powerful manages to become as iconic and enduring a part of our collective pop-cultural subconscious as the original 1939 Wizard of Oz movie and L. Frank Baum’s original novel. (Here’s a guess: No.) But one thing’s for sure: Over the years, both book and movie have fueled a number of elaborate theories as to the story’s deeper meanings. [Read More]

7 Ways Guardians of the Galaxy Reminds Us of the Star Wars Movies

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  5 minutes  |  919 words  |  Sherie Connelly

Guardians of the Galaxy may exist in the Marvel Universe, but its spiritual roots lie in a galaxy far, far away. Directed with wacko verve by James Gunn, this deliriously amusing and exciting superhero spectacle is a work that’s thoroughly indebted to Star Wars, whose influence can be felt throughout its space-Western story of outlaw misfits on a mission to save the universe. While it’s never explicitly referenced — somewhat surprisingly, given the raft of ‘70s and ‘80s pop-culture shout-outs found throughout Gunn’s rollicking adventure — George Lucas’s iconic series is evoked at almost every turn. [Read More]

9-1-1s Oliver Stark Doesnt Care If You Have a Problem with Bucks Gay Kiss

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  267 words  |  Janel Helmers

Fighting fires and biphobia! Oliver Stark, who plays Buck on ABC’s 9-1-1 took to social media following the series’s 100th episode, sharing that he’s “humbled and overwhelmed” by the positive response to his character’s surprise (to some) same-sex kiss. While Buck has been a part of the first responder procedural for all seven seasons, this latest episode is the first official exploration of the character’s bisexuality, by way of a kiss shared with his new friend Tommy (Louis Ferrigno Jr. [Read More]

A Biophysicist Fact-Checks World War Zs Swarming, Sniffing, Tireless Zombies

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  7 minutes  |  1317 words  |  Zora Stowers

When Vulture asked me if I, who earned my Ph.D. studying the physics of DNA, would be willing to watch World War Z from a scientific perspective, I figured they just wanted someone to play the part of a cold-hearted Professor Frink–esque math guy who only finds joy in deconstructing the science in films. But just because I now use lasers at work to study how cells generate force to divide doesn’t mean I can’t accept and enjoy zombie-apocalypse cinema on its own terms. [Read More]

A Collection of House of Cards Best Frank Underwood Side-Eye GIFs

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  1 minutes  |  72 words  |  Sherie Connelly

No one has ever had more contempt for the fools that surround them than House of Cards’s Veep, Frank Underwood. While his trademark is explanatory, Machiavellian asides delivered to the home viewer, sometimes he stays silent and lets severely judgmental looks speak volumes. You’re gonna need to save these GIFs to your hard drive, because when the insufferables start up, you’ll need some eye-rolling inspiration.

The Best Frank Underwood Side-Eye GIFs

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7t8HLrayrnV6YvK57kWlobWdgaHypu9SsnGanlmKwor7DrGSfqpGjuG7BzZ2cq6%2BfpLFuv8idnGadqZp6qLXFrGWhrJ2h

A Conversation With Squid Games Breakout Robot-Doll Star

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  7 minutes  |  1311 words  |  Elina Uphoff

Bang bang. Note: Spoilers about the first episode of Squid Game are ahead. If you’ve spent any time on Twitter, you’ve heard about Squid Game, the new and deeply deranged Korean Netflix series that’s on track to becoming the streamingest show ever for the platform. The nine-episode series follows 456 “contestants” — all mired with life-ruining debt — who compete in a mysterious competition at an island bunker where they participate in violent versions of children’s games. [Read More]