Tony Sirico died yesterdayprompting an outpouring of tributes from fans and former co-workers alike—and especially from The Sopranoswhere he played mobster Paulie Walnuts across all six seasons of the HBO show.

Said mourners today include series creator David Chase, who (per THR) issued a statement today recognizing what Sirico—who spent years in and out of prison before turning to the world of acting—brought to the part of the temperamentalfrequently hilarious Paulie:

Tony was a jewel. The way Buddhists refer to a jewel—supernatural and a master. But certainly not a Zen master. He was so uproarious, so funny, so talented. I’m very happy for him that in his mid-50s and 60s he finally learned how talented and loved he was. I was just thinking about him yesterday, strangely enough, and was reminded that he was a main reason for the success of The Sopranos. I will miss him greatly, Gennaro. As will the world.

Meanwhile, Lorraine Braco—who also appeared alongside Sirico in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas—wrote on Twitter“A stand up guy who always had my back and who loved my children and my parents. I have a lifetime of memories with Tony–starting with Goodfellas to The Sopranos and way beyond but my God, did we have fun doing the Bensonhurst Spelling Bee. I hope he’s in heaven cracking everybody up now. Love you, my pal.” And see also Steve Van Zandt, who wrote “RIP Tony Sirico. legendary Silvio’s best buddy in “Paulie Walnuts” The SopranosFrankie “The Fixer’s” older brother Antonino “Father Tony” Tagliano in lilyhammer. A larger than life character on and off screen. Gonna miss you a lot my friend. Deepest condolences to the family.” These, in addition to a message yesterday from Sirico’s frequent sopranos scene partner Michael Imperioli, who helped spread news of his death, and wrote about his own heartbreak. “I am proud to say I did a lot of my best and most fun work with my dear pal Tony. I will miss him forever. He is truly irreplaceable.”

In addition to those who worked with him, fans have continued to make their own tributes as well, sharing their favorite Paulie Walnuts quotes, and repeating many of the colorful anecdotes that surrounded Sirico—including an-oft repeated story that his major condition for accepting the role of Paulie was that the show’s writers never make him a rat. And, of course, many people have reposted one of the sweetest, strangest moments of Sirico’s career: When he and Steve Schirripa appeared on Sesame Streetbriefly taking over the roles of Bert and Ernie.

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some new news broke yesterday for Marvel’s long-in-the-works fourth Captain America movie, ie, the announcement that The Cloverfield Paradox‘s Julius Onah had signed on to direct Anthony Mackie’s first full movie in the title role.

Mackie’s ascension to the role of Captain America, set up in Avengers: Endgame, and then played with, explored, and ultimately solidified in Disney+’s Falcon And The Winter Soldier, is a delicate thing for the MCU, and a telling one—the first time (give or take a little Norton-Ruffalo switcheroo and some light Black Widow swapping) that the wide-ranging franchise has attempted to slot a “new” character into a key Avengers role.

But please don’t get it twisted, MCU fans: Sam Wilson work Captain America—something that former Cap Chris Evans felt moved to remind doubters about in no uncertain terms today.

Specifically, Evans chimed in to a Twitter thread from The Hollywood Reporterwhich floated a lot of odd language in its coverage of Onah’s hiring that seemed weirdly reticent to refer to Mackie’s Sam Wilson as Captain America, and which openly questioned whether Evans might return to the franchise for Cap 4—on the grounds that “Having stacked casts in solo outings is a key Marvel ingredient at this point.” (There’s also a bit about whether the new movie will dive into “the question of who is entitled to carry the shield,” whichseriously: We just had a whole damn TV show about that.)

Anyway, Evans was having none of it. “Sam Wilson is Captain America,” he plainly stated in response to the thread. (Which was then challenged by a bunch of commenters hailing him as the one true Cap, etc., etc., but hey, online fandoms gonna fan, dumbly, sometimes.) And while we’ll concede that Marvel stars do lie sometimes as part of the company’s vaunted veil of secrecy, it seems extremely implausible that Evans is being anything but honest here—this is Mackie’s show nowand Evans seems to very happy to let him have the spotlight and let Steve Rogers get some well-earned rest.

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There are a staggering number of complicated metrics that economists, sociologist, psychologists, and other “How are people doing?”-ologists have used over the years to determine the health of a society: Life expectancy, GDP, how many people get killed in a global pandemic every year, how close the country is to sliding into autocratic fascism, etc. But—if we’re being completely honest—many of these metrics have the major drawbacks of being total and absolute bummers. Which is why we here at The AV Club‘s Newswire desk have now invented our own measurement of the health of a functioning democracy: The Mjolnir Index, aka, “How much money has the most recent Thor movie made at the box office in comparison to the other films in the franchise?” And baby, from that point of view, we’re looking at nothing but up, up, up!

Said film is, of course, Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love And Thunderwhich, despite receiving a pretty weak critical reception in recent weeks (and despite reports of new COVID variants raging whoops no, that’s the bad metric, just think about the hammers), is set to have the best opening weekend out of any Thor movie ever.

That is, admittedly, grading on a bit of a curve: The first two Thors, directed by Kenneth Branagh, were not exactly barn burners when they hit theaters in 2011 and 2013, bringing in just $65 million (Thor) and $85 million (The Dark World) on their opening weekends. Waititi’s own Ragnarok, generally held up as the best of the movies, did quite a bit better in 2017, scoring $122 million in its opening weekend. thigh Love And Thunder is expected to sail past even that, per THR: Even at Disney’s more conservative estimates, Waititi’s film will likely bring in at least $135 million this weekend, making it the best Thor earner to date, and establishing once and for all that everything is fine, just fine, things can’t be going bad if the hammer man movies are still making this much cash. We repeat this to ourselves. We repeat this to ourselves, until the repetition makes it true.

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Is Jupiter’s Claim—the fictional theme park featured in Jordan Peele’s new feature nope—as “hell no” inducing as Keke Palmer’s character seems to think in the first teaser? Brave viewers will soon have the opportunity to find themselves. On the same day the film premieres in theaters, the scenery (and alien terror) from the film will come to life in a new attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood.

Created by production designer Ruth DeJong, the new attraction is made from the real set pieces used in the film. per The Hollywood Reporterthe Jupiter’s Claim seen onscreen in nope was carefully disassembled after production and then reconstructed at the West Coast theme park. Original props and details from the movie have also been included in the experience.

“I remember visiting Universal Studios when I was 12 years old and being mesmerized. That experience reinforced my passion and drive to someday join in on the meta-magic of ‘backlot life.’ Since then, I’ve been fortunate enough to direct three movies for Universal,” Peele said in a statement, per THR. “It is a privilege to honor these collaborations with my studio partners, crew members, and cast, and to be able to share Jupiter’s Claim with fans.”

nope‘s Jupiter’s Claim joins the roster of other Universal Studio films that have real-world experiences to go along with them, from Steven Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. nope and its accompanying attraction are part of Peele’s exclusive deal with Universal Studio Group for film and television projects.

In the world of the movie, Jupiter’s Claim is a family-fun park owned and operated by ex-child star Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun) in the Santa Clarita Valley of Southern California. The park’s overarching theme centers around a (decidedly sanitized and white-centric) version of the California Gold Rush. Jupiter’s Claim becomes a central location for the otherworldly chaos sibling duo Emerald and OJ Haywood (Palmer and Get Out‘s Daniel Kaluuya).

both nopeand the Jupiter’s Claim attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood, touch down on July 22.

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Gentleman Jack is no more this week, as deadline reports that the HBO series has been canceled after two seasons on the air. Co-produced by BBC One, and showrun by Sally Wainright, the series aired its second season finale—which will now have to stand as the capstone on its true story of a sexually liberated lesbian smashing her way through Regency era England—a few months back.

The series starred Suranne Jones as Anne “Gentleman Jack” Lister, a British industrialist whose coded diaries, detailing her extensive romantic endeavors despite the stigma against homosexuality in 19th century England, serve as inspiration for the series. Her primary co-star was Sophie Rundle, playing Ann Walker, with whom Lister would eventually have what is considered the first lesbian marriage in the UK (Spoilers, we guess, for a now-canceled show. And also history.)

Like many shows, Gentleman Jack ran into difficulties stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic; although it picked up a renewal for a second season pretty much the moment it began running in the US, the show didn’t manage to air that second season until this year.

HBO issued a statement about the cancellation today, noting:

HBO will not be moving forward with a third season of Gentleman Jack. When we began this journey more than five years ago, we knew the series’ creator Sally Wainwright had a uniquely compelling vision, and it’s been tremendously gratifying to see how Anne Lister’s journey has resonated with viewers. We are incredibly grateful to Sally, to the impeccable Suranne Jones and Sophie Rundle, and to the entire cast and crew for bringing Anne and Ann’s story to life. We’d also like to thank our partners at BBC and Lookout Point for their collaboration on two remarkable seasons.

In addition to Jones and Rundle, the series co-starred Joe Armstrong, Amelia Bullmore, and Rosie Cavaliero.

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The Jokerman himself, Bob Dylan is up to his rascally old tricks again. The 81-year-old legend, the writer of such tracks as “It Ain’t Me Babe,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and “Here Comes Santa,” who recently sold his entire music catalog for $300 millionjust picked up another million at auction, off-loading a one-of-a-kind new version of “Blowin’ In The Wind.”

Pitched as a “full rebellion against mass consumerism” by producer T-Bone Burnett, who orchestrated the coup, the newly recorded version of Bob Dylan singing “Blowin’ In The Wind” sold at Christie’s in London today for 1.4 million pounds or $1.7 million. The winner of the auction, whose name has not been revealed (though we’ll just go ahead and assume it was Martin Shkreli), received a one-of-a-kind version of the song pressed onto a state-of-the- art acetate disc called Ionic Original.

Said to be nearly impervious to wear-and-tear, the Ionic Original also boasts “higher fidelity” than other formats, which, for nearly $2 million, it fuckin’ better. Thankfully, the winner won’t need to buy a new record player to spin it. Any old hunk of junk you pick up from Urban Outfitters will do. Might we suggest one of those turntables that also looks like an old-timey radio?

Now for the brutal part. Despite this being a new version of a classic Dylan song, which T-Bone Burnett called “the best record I’ve ever heard in my life,” us penniless peons will never get to hear it. You see, this was all in an effort to show NFTs what actual scarcity is. “An Ionic Original is not a ‘copy,’” Burnett said. “It is an original recording. We are not contriving scarcity. this is actually scarce. It is a unique, handmade, original recording.” This isn’t just downloading JPEGs of ugly monkeys and calling it art. It’s a singular work by a singular artist that we’ll never get to give a C+ to, and that really grinds our gears.

We’ll just have to take T-Bone’s word for it that “Bob sounds good. The band sounds good. The song’s great.” Unfortunately, he insists that we shouldn’t worry about hearing it “because there are thousands of Dylan recordings [we] can hear for free.” As he told variety, “I can tell you, though, when Cézanne was in Aix-en-Provence painting a landscape, he wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh, man, I hope everybody gets to see this!’ or ‘How is everybody gonna get to see this?’ He was just thinking, ‘How do I get this down? How do I get this on this thing?’” Funny.

He continued:

Because we work in an age of mechanical reproduction, musicians have had to accept the definition of the value of their music from the government, from corporations, from technologists, from record companies, from streamers. Well, in this case, we have taken matters into our own hands, and we control the means of production and we control the copyright. We’ll be able to explore: What is the value of a song? What is the true value of Bob Dylan singing ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ 60 years after he wrote it, in this environment? And we’re gonna find out.

It’s worth $1.7 million, and we’ll never get to hear it. Enjoy your money, T-Bone!

[via Variety]

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As hard as it is to believe, Better Call Saul has been on the air longer than its progenitor, Breaking Bad. Across these six seasons (compared to Breaking Bad‘s puny five), we’ve come to know many of the fixtures of Jimmy McGill’s Saul Goodman’s stomping grounds: The inflatable Statue of Liberty outside the Kettleman’s office trailer; the parking lot of Kim and Jimmy’s Albuquerque apartment; the skeletal beginnings of Gus Fring’s meth empire. All sights where gunfire is common, lies are expected, and characters, well, are welcome.

With the final half of the final season finally making its way to television, AMC released a little teaser clip-show, offering last looks at all the great places where Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) ruined someone’s life.

Better Call Saul‘s somber trailer evokes more bad news for Jimmy coming down the pike. After all, this is where all the pieces that set up Breaking Bad fall into place, which means that Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) has to go Of course, one hopes that that won’t mean what we all assume it means. But after more than a decade of watching Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould stage some of the most surprising television ever, maybe we should trust that they know what they’re doing.

And Gilligan and Gould certainly have a lot of cleaning up to do, almost as much as Kim and Jimmy have in their apartment after a visit from Lalo (Tony Dalton). The mid-season finals of Better Call Saul primed us for a bloodbath that we’re not sure we’re ready for. In her season six wrap-up, recapper Kimberly Potts put it perfectly: “This may be the most shocking, jarring Gilligan universe death since young Drew Sharp was murdered by ‘dead-eyed Opie’ Todd in Breaking Bad” Next week can’t come fast enough.

Better Call Saul returns to AMC on July 11.

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Nicki Minaj’s husband Kenneth Petty has been sentenced to three years of probation and one year of home detention after failing to register as a sex offender in California, per CBS Los Angeles. In addition to the two charges, Petty will also be required to pay a $55,000 fine, according to the US Attorney’s Office.

According to the original federal indictment, Petty first moved from the East Coast to California in July 2019, shortly after he and Minaj tied the knot. Petty was required to enter his name on the sex offender registry within five working days of his move to the state, and the indictment alleges Petty did not do so.

Petty initially pled guilty to the charge of failing to register as a sex offender last year. He was convicted of first-degree attempted rape in 1995, when he was 16 years old. He was also charged with one count each of assault in the second degree, unlawful imprisonment in the second degree, and possession of a weapon for the same incident. At the time, he served roughly four and a half years in prison, and is now required to register as a sex offender anywhere he goes as part of his plea agreement.

In addition to his attempted rape charge, Petty was also convicted of manslaughter as part of an unrelated case in 2006. For that charge, Petty served seven years of a ten year sentence before being granted probationary release in 2013.

In 2019, the woman who Petty assaulted in the ’90s sued both Petty and Minaj, claiming the couple harassed and intimidated her, causing emotional distress. Minaj was eventually dropped from the lawsuit. Petty and Minaj currently live together in Calabasas, California with their two-year-old son.

Minaj and Petty have yet to make any statement(s) on his sentence.

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No one does honoring the greats like Olivia Rodrigo. From a “complicated” duet with Avril Lavigne to bring Alanis Morissette onstage for “You Oughta Know,” Rodrigo has been on a streak of performing with the scribes behind the maligned-woman anthems she learned to rock out on. During last night’s Sour Tour stop in London, Natalia Imbruglia was the latest to join Rodrigo onstage.

Rodrigo brought out Imbruglia to perform Imbruglia’s ’90s heartbreak anthem “Torn.” To the absolute delight of the audience at the Eventim Apollo, Imbruglia handled the first verse while Rodrigo joined in to sing the second. Skipping around the stage, clutching their chests and hugging each other, Rodrigo and Imbruglia proved getting your perfect sky torn and just needing to sing about it has no age limit—and that‘s what’s going on.

The performance is a welcome addition to Rodrigo’s winning streak of throwback duets, and it isn’t even the first surprise guest she’s welcomed to the stage in the UK During each set at Glastonbury Festival in June, Rodrigo brought Lily Allen onstage for a very pointed performance of Allen’s “Fuck You.” Before kicking off the sing-song diss track, Rodrigo took a moment to dedicate the song to a very special group of people— the Supreme Court justices who voted to strike down Roe v. Wade, and federal abortion protections with it.

“I’m devastated and terrified that so many women and so many girls are going to die because of this. I wanted to dedicate this next song to the five members of the Supreme Court who have showed us that at the end of the day, they truly don’t give a shit about freedom,” Rodrigo told the crowd. “This song goes out to the justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. We hate you.”

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Former Cheer star Jerry Harris has been sentenced to 12 years in prison in a child pornography case after he pleaded guilty last year to two separate charges, per Associated Press.

Twenty-two years old Harris has been sentenced for coercing teenage boys to send him explicit footage and photos of themselves, as well as soliciting sex from minors at different cheerleading competitions. Harris was first arrested in September 2020, after the The FBI began investigating grievances against the Netflix star stemming as far back as 2018.

per The Chicago Tribune, a complaint from that year alleged Harris reached out to a teen on Snapchat and urged him to send sexually explicit material while knowing that the boy was a minor. When the boys parents found his phone, the boy also revealed Harris had also initiated sexual encounters with him at cheerleading competitions, something another 13-year-old victim also accused Harris of.

The same complaint stated that when the FBI obtained a warrant to search Harris’ Illinois home, Harris admitted guilt and also shared he’d received sexually explicit snapchats from “at least between 10 to 15 other individuals he knew were minors.” Harris was also sued in Texas by two underage brothers, identified by USA Today as Charlie and Sam, who accused Harris of “sexual harassment, exploitation, manipulation, intimidation and sexual abuse.”

Per the order of US District Judge Manish Shah, Harris will follow up his sentence with eight years of court-supervised release. Harris has been in custody at a federal detention center while awaiting trial.

Before Harris learned the sentence, he had an opportunity to say a few words, which used to apologize. “I am deeply sorry for all the trauma my abuse has caused you. I pray deep down that your suffering comes to an end,” he said. “I’m not an evil person. I’m still learning who I am and what my purpose is.”

The 12-year-sentence is a slightly more lenient verdict than the 15 years (plus 10 years of court-supervised release) the prosecution had pushed for. Shah told Harris to see the verdict as ““expression of the seriousness of your crimes, tempered with some hope that all is not lost for you or for your victims, and that in the future some healing can occur,” per AP.

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