Fans of James Cameron‘s sci-fi classic Aliens will soon have the chance to own a replica of one of the movie’s most iconic props — but you might have to scan the toy section for it.
Nerf has announced a limited-edition replica of the M41A Pulse Rifle, the weapon carried by the Colonial Marines in the film, and of course by Sigourney Weaver‘s bug-stomping heroine, Ellen Ripley.
Just like Hasbro Pulse’s take on the Spenger Neutrona Wand — one of the Ghostbusters‘ tools of the trade — the designers of the Nerf M41A painstakingly recreated the original Aliens prop.
Unlike previous Nerf collaborations with licensees like Star Wars, the Aliens rifle is hyper-accurate to the real McCoy, right down to sound effects and the red LED ammo counter on the side. In this case, the counter keeps track of the Nerf darts in the automatic rifle’s magazine.
And just like its sci-fi counterpart, the offering has a shotgun-style pump-action secondary fire feature, which in this case flings the fatter Nerf Mega Darts.
For safety reasons, the Nerf Pulse Rifle is colored to match the yellow and white color scheme of the Power Loader Ripley uses to bash the queen in Aliens‘ climax, though that paint scheme likely is nothing crafty cosplayers won’t be fixing to match the movie’s prop.
The Pulse Rifle will be released October 2022, but they’re available for pre-order on Hasbro Pulse’s website and GameStop for $94.99.
Slipknot is bringing Knotfest back to South American in 2022.
Knotfest Chile will take place December 11 in Santiago, while Knotfest Brazil will be held December 18 in São Paulo. The Knot themselves will headline both lineups, which will also include Bring Me the Horizon, Mr. Bungle and Trivium, among others.
Slipknot is also headlining two U.S. editions of Knotfest this fall, taking place September 25 in the band’s home state of Iowa, and November 5 in Los Angeles. Additionally, you can catch the masked metallers on their Knotfest Roadshow U.S. tour, kicking off in September.
After first collaborating on the smash hit “Smooth” in 1999, Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas have released their new song together, “Move.”
The pop/Latin rock fusion track, out today, is the first single off Santana’s new album, Blessings and Miracles, which comes out October 15. The song also features American Authors.
Santana revealed new details about his album Wednesday. The album’s second single, a track called “She’s Fire,” was written by Diane Warren and features rapper G-Eazy. Blessings and Miracles also features collaborations with country star Chris Stapleton, pop star Ally Brooke and more.
“The title of this album comes from my belief that we’re born with heavenly powers that allows us to create blessings and miracles,” Santana says in a statement. “The world programs you to be unworthy of those gifts, but we have to utilize light, spirit and soul — they’re indestructible and immutable. Those are the three main elements on this album.”
On August 21, Rob and Santana will perform at We Love NYC: The Homecoming Concert in Central Park. Santana resumes his Las Vegas residency on August 25 and on September 11, he’ll kick off his Blessings and Miracles tour at the Borgata Spa & Resort in Atlantic City, NJ.
You canpre-orderBlessings and Miracles now. Here is the track list:
“Ghost of Future Pull”/”New Light”
“Santana Celebration”
“Rumbalero” (featuring Salvador Santana & Asdru Sierra)
“Joy” (Carlos Santana & Chris Stapleton)
“Move” (Carlos Santana, Rob Thomas, Zac Barnett & American Authors)
“A Whiter Shade of Pale” (featuring Steve Winwood)
“Break” (featuring Ally Brooke)
“She’s Fire” (Diane Warren, G-Eazy & Carlos Santana)
“Peace Power” (featuring Corey Glover)
“America for Sale” (featuring Kirk Hammett & Marc Osegueda)
“Breathing Underwater” (featuring Stella Santana, Avi Snow, MVCA)
“Mother Yes”
“Song for Cindy”
“Angel Choir” (featuring Gayle Moran Corea)/ “All Together” (featuring Chick Corea)
“Ghost of Future Pull II”
(KABUL, Afghanistan) — Watching the news about Afghanistan has become heart-breaking for ex-refugee and now-U.S. citizen Shabnam, who could only give her first name for the security of her family in Afghanistan.
She told ABC News that her siblings and extended family, like many Afghan citizens, are planning their escape out of the country. She said she’s losing her voice spending days on the phone with her family back home.
“People are just hopeless and helpless,” Shabnam, who left Afghanistan in 2011 after a Taliban attack forced her to flee the country, said.
The once-ousted militant group has taken over control over the Afghan capital and other major cities after the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country. Many citizens fear what could come of their country and their livelihood in the Middle Eastern nation.
Now, many in the U.S. said they are left scrambling for ways to help their families back home.
“These two days back-to-back, I received calls from home and everybody thinks that I have a superpower that I can help them and bring them, but I don’t. I can’t do anything for them,” Shabnam said.
Women in the country fear that the Taliban will revert to oppressive tactics they used when they ruled in the 1990s, Shabnam said, like keeping women in the home, out of work and out of schools.
“It was a nightmare for me,” Shabnam said of the 90s in Afghanistan. The Taliban has claimed it will guarantee women’s rights under a new regime, but Shabnam and many others do not believe it. “They claim they are changing, but I know they are not. They are just waiting for the U.S. troops to get out of the country.”
Many also fear that the Taliban will retaliate against people with connections to America, who have worked with the U.S. or Afghan government, or who have criticized the Taliban, according to Krish Vignarajah, the president and CEO of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service in Maryland.
Deena, who will also only be named for the security of her family back in Afghanistan, said she feels helpless. She is a first-generation American whose parents fled Afghanistan after the Soviet Union invaded in 1979, and she said she yearns for ways to help her family trapped in Kabul looking for a way out.
In the videos of Afghan citizens racing to get on airplanes and escape the growing Taliban presence in Kabul, she pictures her own family.
“People have lived through the Taliban regime before and people would rather hang on to airplanes and fall to their deaths than stay,” Deena said. “Everyone’s scared. They don’t know what to expect. They haven’t been going to work. Everything has been shut down. They have children and they’re worried.”
Deena is one of 150,000 people with Afghan heritage in America, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In the last 20 years, backed by Western forces, she and her family say they have seen the Afghan government progress and modernize.
“They were pursuing their dreams, they’re becoming doctors and lawyers and artists,” Deena said. “Everything is just going to be taken away from them, all of their hard work and their efforts.”
They fear the Taliban takeover will turn back the clock on this — sparking violence, restrictions and oppression.
“My uncle, the last time I spoke to him, was like, ‘We’re leaving the house. We’re not going to be staying here. We don’t have power right now. We’re safe, pray for us,’” Deena said. “They don’t want history to repeat itself and unfortunately, everyone’s given up on them.”
Vignarajah said her organization has been flooded with incoming messages pleading for help.
Many have been left with the tough decision between staying in their homes or venturing out into the Taliban-controlled streets on the way to the airport. Some face death threats, she said, and retribution from militant groups.
The process for refugee resettlement can be lengthy, Vignarajah said, taking up to months or years to get through the bureaucratic red tape.
“We’re deeply concerned, knowing for those left behind, they face death threats and retribution from the Taliban,” Vignarajah said.
To help, many Afghan Americans and refugees with family back home say raising awareness, call legislators and representatives and volunteer for organizations that help refugees.
“Our hands are tied,” Deena said. “Being someone in the United States who’s in this position and seeing what’s happening over there and hearing the voices of my family members and how scared they are and how devastated they are — It’s a really difficult position to be in.”
(NEW YORK) — A former employee of convicted swindler John Ruffo has come forward with a rare home video showing the wanted fugitive before he disappeared more than 20 years ago.
The VHS video recording, which was filmed in 1995, shows Ruffo talking and strumming a guitar while socializing at the home of Jodylynn Bachiman, a family friend who worked for Ruffo as an office assistant at his New York City computer firm in the 90s.
The U.S. Marshals, who have been hunting Ruffo for almost three decades, say the video shows Ruffo at a time when he was committing one of the largest bank frauds in U.S. history.
The Marshals’ manhunt for Ruffo is the subject of a new season of the ABC News podcast, “Have You Seen This Man.” The podcast tells the story of his swindle and tracks the global search for Ruffo, which has been re-invigorated in recent months as the Marshals have followed new leads in the decades-old case.
Ruffo was arrested in 1996 after authorities say he negotiated more than $350 million in loans for a bogus business project. He pleaded guilty to a raft of federal charges in 1998 and received a 17-year sentence. But on the day he was scheduled to report to prison, he vanished.
The Marshals consider the newly uncovered video recording of Ruffo to be significant, even if it comes from before his escape, because it offers a rare chance to see and hear the man who now sits on the agency’s Top 15 Most Wanted list. The only other known videos of Ruffo do not include his talking at length, according to the Marshals.
Senior inspector Chris Leuer, who is overseeing the case with Deputy U.S. Marshal Danielle Shimchick, told ABC News, “a home video is something we rarely receive.”
“It can provide us with a ton of information about our fugitive as their guard isn’t up,” Leuer said. It’s just them acting normal in a safe environment.”
Bachiman said she found the video while searching through old belongings.
“[Ruffo] would always come over and play the guitar. Always. And my son loved it,” she said.
Bachiman spent several years working for Ruffo’s firm. She was arrested in 1996 when the FBI first exposed the scheme, but was later cleared of any charges or allegations of wrongdoing.
“Now looking back, it’s traumatic,” Bachiman said, of that time. “It haunts you no matter how much time goes by.”
Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger‘s younger brother, veteran singer/songwriter Chris Jagger, will release a new studio album called Mixing Up the Medicine on September 10, and also will publish a memoir titled Talking to Myself the same day.
Mick has contributed some backing vocals to Chris’ album, which features several songs that the younger Jagger wrote with his frequent collaborator Charlie Hart, a multi-instrumentalist who also has played with late Faces bassist Ronnie Lane and Wreckless Eric.
Mixing Up the Medicine, which you can pre-order now, also features three songs with lyrics taken from poems by an obscure 19th-century poet named Thomas Beddoes that Chris set to music.
Among the other musicians featured on the album are one-time Who touring percussionist Jody Linscott and drummer Dylan Howe, son of Yes guitarist Steve Howe.
Chris has already released a few tunes from Mixing Up the Medicine as advance digital tracks, including “Talking to Myself,” a song inspired by his autobiography.
In the book, Chris delves in to his life story, including his childhood with older brother Mick, the siblings’ mutual appreciation of the blues, his own musical adventures and his travels around the world.
Talking to Myself will be the first autobiography from a member of the Jagger family, but Chris says that while he was working on it, he encouraged Mick to write his own.
“I said to [Mick], ‘I’ve almost finished my book, now let’s do yours’ and he laughed,” Chris reveals. “He’d do a fantastic book.”
Reflecting on his experience writing the memoir, Chris notes that “writing can be quite prosaic and descriptive. It doesn’t have to be all poetry. I have even included some recipes in [my book] too.”
Colman Domingo knew he had to dig deep when he took on the role of William Burke, a resident of Chicago’s Cabrini Green neighborhood, who relays the Candyman legend to the main character in the Nia DaCosta-directed supernatural horror flick Candyman.
Domingo tells ABC Audio that his “complex” character came from a simple conversation with the film’s producer.
“The beautiful thing is that Jordan Peele wrote this role for me,” he says. “I met up with him for like 45 minutes and we just talked about everything under the sun — art, culture, society, Blackness, horror. And he wrote this role for me about this storyteller, this guy who was the keeper of this beast [and] this…generational trauma in this neighborhood.”
Colman says his candid conversation with Peele helped him find an authentic backstory for William, whom he describes as a “complex human being, who possibly had a mental illness.”
“He was also triggered by so much,” Colman explains. “And he felt responsible.”
While the actor calls William an “ordinary brother in the community,” who “most people” walk by and “don’t even see,” Colman notes that William is someone who has “always been there.”
“The examination of these men who are always there and are holding our stories,” he says. “They’re the griots. They also have suffered a lot of emotional, psychological trauma…And they’re living with it.”
Still, Colman believes that the real challenge in portraying the “tricky character” of William was showing his vulnerable side.
“I want to make sure that we still found his heart and soul,” he says. “And even as he went and did some off-the-wall stuff, you still understood that he was human.”
Candyman, also starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, hits theaters Friday, August 27.
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration is prepared to begin rolling out booster shots for many Americans the week of Sept. 20, the nation’s top health officials announced Wednesday, citing data that show the effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines against COVID-19 diminishes over time.
In a joint statement by the US Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others, the officials cited the threat of the delta variant and noted “we are starting to see evidence of reduced protection against mild and moderate disease.”
Health care workers and nursing home residents will be first in line.
“Based on our latest assessment, the current protection against severe disease, hospitalization, and death could diminish in the months ahead, especially among those who are at higher risk or were vaccinated during the earlier phases of the vaccination rollout,” the officials wrote. “For that reason, we conclude that a booster shot will be needed to maximize vaccine-induced protection and prolong its durability.”
The CDC has long maintained that the vast majority of people hospitalized for COVID-19 are unvaccinated. There is evidence though that the numbers of vaccinated hospitalizations is growing, particularly for health care workers and nursing home residents who received their shots eight months ago.
“We are prepared to offer booster shots for all Americans beginning the week of September 20 and starting 8 months after an individual’s second dose. At that time, the individuals who were fully vaccinated earliest in the vaccination rollout, including many health care providers, nursing home residents, and other seniors, will likely be eligible for a booster,” according to the federal statement.
For now, the upcoming boosters will be aimed at people who received the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines only. But officials say they anticipate authorizing boosters for people who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccines too. The first J&J vaccines weren’t administered until March, and the Biden administration says it expects more data on the effectiveness of that vaccine in a few weeks.
The administration says vaccines are still working and are the best assurances against severe illness or death.
“Nearly all the cases of severe disease, hospitalization, and death continue to occur among those not yet vaccinated at all,” the officials wrote.
Among those signing the statement were CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, FDA Administrator Dr. Janet Woodcock, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murth and Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
Carlos Santana has announced details of his new album, Blessings and Miracles, which is set to be released on October 15.
The star-studded track list features the album’s first single, “Move,” which re-teams Santana with his “Smooth” collaborator Rob Thomas. “Move” is out today.
The album’s second single, a track called “She’s Fire,” was written by Diane Warren and features rapper G-Eazy.
Blessings and Miracles also features collaborations with Steve Winwood, Kirk Hammett, country star Chris Stapleton, pop star Ally Brooke and more.
“The title of this album comes from my belief that we’re born with heavenly powers that allows us to create blessings and miracles,” Santana says in a statement. “The world programs you to be unworthy of those gifts, but we have to utilize light, spirit and soul — they’re indestructible and immutable. Those are the three main elements on this album.”
On August 25, Santana resumes his Las Vegas residency and on September 11, he’ll kick off his Blessings and Miracles tour at the Borgata Spa & Resort in Atlantic City, NJ.
You can pre-orderBlessings and Miracles now. Here is the track list:
“Ghost of Future Pull”/”New Light”
“Santana Celebration”
“Rumbalero” (featuring Salvador Santana & Asdru Sierra)
“Joy” (Carlos Santana & Chris Stapleton)
“Move” (Carlos Santana, Rob Thomas, Zac Barnett & American Authors)
“A Whiter Shade of Pale” (featuring Steve Winwood)
“Break” (featuring Ally Brooke)
“She’s Fire” (Diane Warren, G-Eazy & Carlos Santana)
“Peace Power” (featuring Corey Glover)
“America for Sale” (featuring Kirk Hammett & Marc Osegueda)
“Breathing Underwater” (featuring Stella Santana, Avi Snow, MVCA)
“Mother Yes”
“Song for Cindy”
“Angel Choir” (featuring Gayle Moran Corea)/ “All Together” (featuring Chick Corea)
“Ghost of Future Pull II”
While ABC Audio previously reported Halle Berry broke two ribs trying to get her directorial debut Bruised to Netflix, the mixed martial arts film has now given her a headache — legally speaking.
Variety reports Cat Zingano, a 39-year-old former UFC fighter, claims to have been asked by Berry to appear in the film, but the 2019 shooting schedule conflicted with Zingano’s off-screen career.
“Zingano was torn between the significantly valuable career-advancing opportunity to fight for title contention, and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be involved with Defendant Berry in a feature film about a character whose story so closely mirrored Zingano’s own life story,” the trade quotes the suit.
The fighter informed UFC she chose the film over the fight, and was cut from the league — and then the film. The suit claims Berry allegedly told Zingano that she could not appear in the film because only UFC fighters could participate.
Zingano alleges Berry then “cut off communication” with the fighter, according to the legal filing, which claims “promissory estoppel” — legalese for Berry allegedly going back on her word.
Reps for the Oscar-winning actress reportedly didn’t respond to Variety‘s request for comment.
