On Sunday night during the 95th Academy Awards, the first teaser trailer for season 2 of the hit FX series The Bear dropped ahead of the show’s highly anticipated return.
The 30-second spot picks up where season 1 ended, when the show’s newly minted Golden Globe winner Jeremy Allen White, who stars as chef and restaurateur Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, closes The Original Beef of Chicagoland.
The characters, including Carmy’s family and kitchen staff, are seen packing up the old kitchen space before panning to a handwritten sign that reads “The Beef is Closed – Thank You for your Patronage.”
The first season ended with Carmy deciding to shutter the beleaguered family-run eatery and fulfill his goal of opening a new dining establishment in its place that bears his nickname — and shares the title of the show.
The caption for the video reads, “It’s not a reopening, it’s a rebirth. FX’s The Bear returns this June. Only on Hulu.”
Metallica is following in the footsteps of Jack White by announcing a partnership with Furnace Record Pressing.
The metal legends have acquired the majority interest in the Virginia-based vinyl pressing company, which was founded in 1996. Metallica’s previously worked with Furnace for vinyl reissues of Master of Puppets and The Black Album, among others.
“Furnace has been great to Metallica and more importantly to our fans,” frontman James Hetfield says. “This deepened relationship between Metallica and Furnace ensures that fans of vinyl everywhere, particularly our Fifth Members, will have continued access to high quality records in the future.”
Meanwhile, Metallica is prepping the release of a new album, 72 Seasons. The much-anticipated follow-up to 2016’s Hardwired… to Self-Destruct, arrives April 14.
Before fans can experience life under the sea when The Little Mermaid debuts in theaters, they can catch up on the movie’s songs the week before.
The movie’s Twitter announced the soundtrack arrives May 19 and will be packed with additional goodies, such as “new performances by the cast,” and music by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman, who scored the original 1989 animated movie.
Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, who also worked on the music for Disney’s Encanto and Moana, contributed new lyrics to the upcoming movie. The songwriter was behind the many earworms featured in Encanto, including the viral hits “We Don’t Talk about Bruno” and “Surface Pressure.”
In addition, Encanto’s “Dos Oruguitas” was nominated for Best Original Song at the 2022 Academy Awards.
He revealed on the 2020 Oscars red carpet that he “wrote four new songs” with Menken for the upcoming flick.
The Little Mermaid album is now available to presave and preorder, but further details about the new offering are limited.
The announcement comes shortly after the film’s official trailer debuted during Sunday night’s Academy Awards, which gave fans their first full look of Halle Bailey’s Ariel, Jonah Hauer-King’s Prince Eric, Javier Bardem‘s King Triton and more.
The live action retelling of The Little Mermaid swims into theaters May 26.
Ashley Graham is speaking out about her now viral interview with Hugh Grant at the Oscars on Sunday.
The model, 35, interviewed the movie star during ABC’s Countdown to the Oscars and was met with very short, blunt answers to her questions. The brief exchange prompted some to deem the interview as awkward and cringeworthy because of Grant’s responses.
So what’s Graham’s response to it all?
“You know what? My mama told me to kill people with kindness, so there you go,” she told TMZ on Monday.
Despite the social media debate, the former Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover girl had a great time at the star-studded event.
“I had so much fun,” she added. “My feet hurt though.”
Adam Levine has three words in response to Blake Shelton leaving The Voice — “It’s about time!”
That’s what the Maroon 5 singer joked to Entertainment Tonight when they caught him outside of the legendary Vanity Fair Oscar party on Sunday, March 12.
Levine, 43, and Shelton, 46, were judges on The Voice together for 16 seasons, before Levine left the show in 2019. The country singer would go on to judge seven more season’s before announcing he would be leaving the singing competition show after season 23.
“I’ve been wrestling with this for a while and I’ve decided that it’s time for me to step away from The Voice after next season,” Shelton said in an Instagram post.
“This show has changed my life in every way for the better and it will always feel like home to me,” he continued. “It’s been a hell of a ride over these 12 years of chair turns and I want to thank everyone at The Voice from NBC, every producer, the writers, musicians, crew and catering people, you are the best. It takes a lot of work, passion, and adult beverages (Ha!) to pull off a live show twice a week.”
Freshman player J’Zavien Currence is shown during an interview with ABC News. (ABC News)
(ROCK HILL, S.C.) — Friday night high school football games are an American tradition. But only one town — Rock Hill, South Carolina — calls itself “Football City.” That’s because the city of 75,000 says it has turned out more NFL players per capita than any other place in the U.S.
From just a handful of high schools have come nearly two dozen players who later turned pro. That reputation spurs big dreams for the high school stars hoping to become tomorrow’s next pro athletes.
J’Zavien Currence, 14, is one of those standout players. A freshman at South Pointe High School, he’s starting varsity on one of the best teams in Rock Hill. He’s top ranked not only in South Carolina, but the entire country.
For J’Zavien, football is a family affair. Jay Currence, J’Zavien’s dad and coach, also played football growing up in Rock Hill. Some of his teammates went on to the NFL, including cornerback Derek Ross and tight end Ben Watson.
But even for the best young players, the dream of turning pro doesn’t usually materialize. About 7% of high school football players nationwide go on to play in college. Only 1.5% of college players make it to the NFL, according to the NCAA.
Jibrille Fewell was one of those kids who bet everything on football. He grew up in College Downs, a historically Black, low-income neighborhood in Rock Hill. He became a standout player in high school, and a football scholarship paid for his college education.
But when Fewell didn’t make it to the NFL, he came back to Rock Hill, and his mental health took a turn for the worse.
“I felt like a failure, and I didn’t know what was really next, so I kind of went into a dark era,” Fewell told ABC News.
Now Fewell coaches youth football. He’s trying to make sure that young athletes know how to both play the game and also have the resilience to be OK when it ends. He brings in mental health advocates and even former players to his football camps to help kids think beyond the game.
“Football in this community is only one route and everybody trying to go through that one door,” Fewell said.
Phillip Adams, another standout high school player, made it through that door. But his NFL career was plagued by injuries, including a broken ankle that required surgery and two concussions over three games. He left the NFL in 2016 and returned to Rock Hill, where he struggled with his mental and physical health.
In 2021, tragedy struck when Adams shot and killed Dr. Robert Lesslie, his wife Barbara and two of their grandchildren, along with James Lewis, an HVAC technician working in the home. Another worker, Robert Shook, was critically wounded and later died. Adams took his own life during a standoff with police.
After the incident, Boston University conducted an autopsy of Adams’ brain to determine if chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, could have played a role in the incident. The autopsy found that Adams had an “unusually severe” form of the disease.
“The combination of poor impulse control, paranoia, poor decision making, emotional volatility, rage and violent tendencies caused by frontal lobe damage could converge to lower an individual’s threshold for homicidal acts,” neuropathologist Dr. Ann McKee said at the time.
McKee noted that Adams’ football career put him at high risk for the development of CTE, a diagnosis that cannot be confirmed before death.
Recently, several high-profile injuries in the NFL, including Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest and Tua Tagovailoa’s concussions, have raised questions about the safety of the game and concern for the players.
The NFL has the highest rate of reported concussions among the four major U.S. professional sports leagues, stated a 2021 report in the journal Nature.
In a statement, an NFL spokesperson said the league “continues to make the game safer through better equipment, rules changes and efforts to reduce head contact,” noting that the number of concussions are “25% lower than just a few years ago.” The spokesperson also said the NFL has built a team of “world-class” medical experts on the sidelines in case of an emergency, adding that emergency action plans are in place at all NFL fields and practice facilities.
Concern for player safety is also present at the high school level, where football has the highest rate of concussions among any other sport, according to a 2019 epidemiology study published in the journal Pediatrics. Researchers compared concussions rates in 20 different high school sports from 2013 to 2018.
For Jay Currence, there’s “always that slight fear” of injury risk for his son. At the end of last season, J’Zavien sprained his ankle, taking him out of the last two games of the season, including the big game against his rival high school.
“You just try to prepare best you can, take care of your body best you can, play as safe as you can,” Currence said.
At 14 years old, J’Zavien says he already has multiple offers to play college football at Division I schools.
“We also talk about that, you’re not always going to play, and one day, they’re going to take your jersey from you and you’re going to have to be a productive person and a citizen out here, even after you play,” J’Zavien said.
The families of James Lewis and Robert Shook did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment. The Lesslie family and the Adams family declined to comment.
Courtesy of Sean Tran of Elk Ridge Village Senior Living
(NEW YORK) — At 102 years old, Jean Bailey is not slowing down.
Bailey, an independent living resident at Elk Ridge Village, a senior living community in Omaha, Nebraska, has been leading fitness sessions for her neighbors since the COVID-19 pandemic first started in 2020.
“We couldn’t get out and so we just get out on our floor and started and it just got to be a habit,” Bailey explained in an interview with ABC News’ Good Morning America, adding that she’s been fitness instructing for at least 15 years now.
Approximately 10 to 12 residents regularly attend Bailey’s class, which is held four times a week and involves various movements like circular foot stretches and arm swimming stretches. Although Bailey, a former 4-H leader, herself said she’s “kind of strict” about the moves, she encourages everyone to get started at their own pace and “just move.”
“You don’t have to start out doing this as very strict. But, and we have a couple that — one girl has had a stroke and and there’s one who has arthritis — and I just tell them to, I don’t care what they do but move,” Bailey said.
Bailey said she doesn’t have a favorite move but emphasizes a holistic approach to moving the whole body.
“You just start with your chin on your chest and then you end up making circles with your head and you go to your arms and you go to your legs, you go to your back,” Bailey explained. “They’re all really good, especially the moving parts of your knees and hips and that kind of thing. It’s pretty important to keep those moving fully if you keep walking.”
Aside from staying active, Bailey, who previously owned a floral business, said she’s also keen on keeping up with the community at Elk Ridge Village and enjoys playing card games and dealing blackjack specifically.
Sean Tran, an operations director at Elk Ridge Village, has known Bailey ever since she moved in 14 years ago and said she is “very welcoming to everyone” and maintains a “very positive outlook.”
“She pretty much participates in almost every activity that we’ve got here. So everybody knows who she is and you can’t help but want to hang out and spend some time with her. She’s the sweetest,” Tran said.
As for the secret to her longevity, Bailey said she doesn’t think there’s been any steadfast formula.
“There isn’t any secret. I bet probably genes has something to do with it, the fact that I’ve always been busy,” Bailey said. “I always have a saying for the girls before we start exercising and today was, ‘The only way you can multiply happiness is to divide it.’”
(WASHINGTON) — House Oversight Chairman James Comer has issued the committee’s first subpoena since taking over the gavel, targeting Bank of America for records related to multiple associates of Hunter Biden, according to the Democratic ranking member on the committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, who accused the Republican chairman of coordinating with lawyers for Donald Trump to block a previous probe into the former president’s business.
In a letter obtained by ABC News, Raskin details that the subpoena called for “all financial records” spanning 14 years, beginning in 2009, from three of Hunter Biden’s business associates.
The subpoena was disclosed in a letter that Raskin wrote accusing Comer of coordinating with former President Trump’s team about a 2019 subpoena from the committee regarding foreign spending at Trump-owned properties. Attorneys for Trump have previously argued that seeking to show that foreign officials have stayed at Trump-owned properties because Trump owned them is “too speculative.”
Raskin accuses Comer of working with Trump’s lawyers to prevent the former president’s longtime accounting firm Mazars USA from producing evidence related to his tax dealings. Mazars had previously agreed to hand over documents requested by the Oversight Committee through a House subpoena issued in April 2019, when Democrats held the gavel.
According to correspondence obtained by Democrats, Trump’s lawyers told a counsel for Mazars to stop providing documents related to Trump’s accounting practices to Oversight at the behest of GOP investigators.
“On January 19, 2023, Patrick Strawbridge, counsel for Donald Trump, wrote to counsel for Mazars, stating ‘I do not know the status of Mazars [sic] production, but my understanding is that the Committee has no interest in forcing Mazars to complete it and is willing to release it from further obligations under the settlement agreement.’ When counsel for Mazars sought clarification, Mr. Strawbridge confirmed this direction had been provided to him, twice, by the Acting General Counsel of the House of Representatives, in his capacity as counsel to the Committee,” Raskin wrote.
CNN was first to report on the letter.
A House GOP committee spokesperson denied the allegation from Raskin, telling ABC News in a statement. “The accusation by Ranking Member Raskin is completely unfounded and untrue. There has been no coordination or discussion with anyone from the Committee’s majority with anyone about the Mazars documents.”
The House committee also confirmed it had subpoenaed Bank of America for records related to associates of Hunter Biden: “The Oversight Committee has subpoenaed and obtained financial records related to the Biden family’s influence peddling. These documents solidify our understanding of several areas of concern and have opened new avenues of investigation about the Biden family’s business schemes.”
A representative for Hunter Biden had no comment when contacted by ABC News. The younger Biden has previously denied any wrongdoing, ethically or criminally, but has acknowledged that his family ties likely bolstered his career. President Joe Biden has said that he and his son never discussed his son’s overseas business dealings.
White House spokesman Ian Sams previously called a Comer-led Feb. 8 hearing on Twitter’s handling of Hunter Biden-related tweets a “bizarre political stunt.”
“This appears to be the latest effort by the House Republican majority’s most extreme MAGA members to question and re-litigate the outcome of the 2020 election,” Sams said at the time. “This is not what the American people want their leaders to work on.”
(NEW YORK) — Two people are dead and several others are injured after a driver hit pedestrians in Amqui, a town in the Québec region of Canada, authorities confirmed to ABC News.
The driver turned himself in to police, Amqui police said.
Police are investigating whether the act was deliberate, they told ABC News.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his “heart is with the people of Amqui, Quebec,” in a tweet after the incident.
“As we learn more about the tragic events that have taken place, I’m keeping everyone affected in my thoughts. And to my first responders: Thank you for acting quickly, courageously and professionally,” Trudeau said in the tweet.
