Entertainment

America’s music soul isn’t just found in Nashville honky-tonks or Austin dive bars. Across the country, there are cities with deep musical DNA, iconic venues, homegrown genres, and artists who shaped national sound without ever becoming tourist clichés.These are places where you can hear brass bands in the street, blues in a basement, punk in a warehouse, and soul stitched into the culture as naturally as coffee shops and corner diners. If you want live music without influencer crowds, these cities deliver the pure, unpolished version.New Orleans, LouisianaImage Credit: Shutterstock.New Orleans is the heartbeat of American music, but beyond Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street, the city pulses with nightly creativity that feels raw, improvised, and completely unrehearsed. Jazz wasn’t just born he...

Lenovo's most powerful Legion gaming PC is back in stock, but not only that, it's also the least expensive RTX 5090 prebuilt that i can find from any retailer.. The Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 10 gaming PC equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor and RTX 5090 graphics card is marked down to $3,752.49 after coupon code "EXTRAFIVE". This is Lenovo's highest-end gaming PC and what's even better about this deal is that this system includes 64GB of DDR5 RAM, which commands an exorbitantly high price by itself in today's market.Lenovo Legion Tower 7i RTX 5090 Gaming PC for $3,752Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 10 Intel Core Ultra 9 285K RTX 5090 Gaming PC (64GB/2TB)5The Legion Tower 7i is Lenovo's top-end desktop computer, boasting a well-ventilated chassis with a mesh front panel that house...

A still from Wicked: For Good. Photo courtesy of Universal Studios. by MIKE ORLOCKThe last time we saw Elphaba and Galinda (AKA Glinda) in the climactic scenes of Wicked (part one), they were cornered in the tower of the Wizard’s palace, pursued by flying monkeys and Winkie guards because they knew the truth about the “Wonderful One” – that he was nothing more than a carny huckster and fraud. Madame Morrible had turned on them, too; she was their estimable professor at Shiz, the university in the land of Oz where they’d enrolled as rivals but became friends as roommates. Apparently, she had a vested interest in keeping the Wizard in charge of things, even though he didn’t have a magical bone in his body. Cut to the present, which is, of course, the newly released Wicked: For Good (PG...

Synopsis: Children’s music is terminally uncool to adults and dismissed by music critics, yet adored by kids. MUSIC BOX: HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT explores the underestimated and wildly popular genre, delving behind the scenes to tell the origin stories of some of the top names in the field. It also traces the evolution of this prolific business and how advancements in technology and AI are reshaping and turbo-charging this genre.Featuring a colorful and charming cast and their toe-tapping songs, the film reframes children’s music as a misunderstood yet vital cultural artform that influences how kids develop. It chronicles the unexpected paths artists take to embrace the creative freedom found in writing music that shapes childhoods. Anthony Field of “The Wiggles” turned his songs into a globa...

AMD, eschewing a number in favor of an esoteric moniker, is now positioning the new version of its upscaling tech, dubbed “Redstone,” as a true competitor to Nvidia’s DLSS (deep learning super sampling) software suite. You’ll need the latest AMD GPUs to get most of these updated features, but even if you don’t game on PC, you should be paying attention. This kind of software will inevitably change how we experience gaming on consoles and beyond. The reason why most of your games remain playable at 4K resolutions is because of AI. Specifically, AI upscaling technology takes frames rendered at a lower resolution and bumps them up to a higher resolution, all while keeping the enhanced performance. That’s the simplified explanation of how this works. There are a multitude of other software wor...

The roaring crowds, the howling of the F1 engines and some of the most famous race car drivers in the world. It seemed like a normal practice round of the Grand Prix race at England’s Silverstone Circuit in July 2023, except for one thing: One of the world’s biggest movie stars was sitting in a car at the back of the formation line. Brad Pitt, who plays Sonny Hayes in F1: The Movie, had insisted on doing as much of the actual driving himself — as much as insurers would allow, that is — in hopes it would bring added authenticity to the screen. It was a goal shared by the entire crew, led by director Joseph Kosinski: to make F1 the most accurate portrayal of the sport in Hollywood history. It all started with getting the Formula 1 organization involved. The key proved to be seven-...

US Congress member Scott Fitzgerald has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether two of the American music industry’s smaller collecting societies - AllTrack and Pro Music Rights - are violating laws relating to unfair or deceptive practices. He also suggests that the government agency consider issuing guidance on how music licensing organisations can ensure they are complying with those laws. Fitzgerald has expressed concerns before about the way the performing rights in songs are licensed in the US, including the fact that there are multiple performing rights organisations each representing different repertoires: so ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and GMR, as well as AllTrack and Pro Music Rights.  His new letter relates to concerns about how the smaller societies communicate what son...

Nintendo has announced its Nintendo Switch Online additions for December, which are for all the N64-era 3D platformer fans out there. On December 17, Rayman 2: The Great Escape and Tonic Trouble are joining the Switch’s Nintendo Classics library. As a reminder, N64 games are exclusive to Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscribers, along with the emulators for the Game Boy Advance, Sega Genesis and GameCube.For retro gaming completionsists, Tonic Trouble might actually be the more interesting get for NSO, despite being far less well known than the Rayman series. It was Ubisoft’s first 3D platformer, but a number of delays meant it ended up releasing in the same year as Rayman 2, and therefore has become a bit lost to time. The game stars an alien janitor named Ed, who accidentally drops a p...

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery continues the adventures of private investigator Benoit Blanc as he endeavors to solve the twistiest mystery in his storied career. Rian Johnson's Knives Out films are beloved for their subversion of common murder-mystery tropes, adopting everyone's favorite part of the genre while reinventing enough elements to feel fresh and new with each installment. Now, the third and possibly final entry of the franchise comes to Netflix this week. Ahead of Wake Up Dead Man, there are plenty of other great murder-mystery movies to whet viewers' appetites. While some play the tropes of the genre straight, others follow Knives Out's example to reinvent mystery movies as a whole. Each of these mysteries are well worth a watch ahead of Rian Johnson's highly antici...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Compas, a beloved Haitian music and dance genre inspired by merengue and infused with percussion, made… PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Compas, a beloved Haitian music and dance genre inspired by merengue and infused with percussion, made UNESCO’s cultural heritage list on Wednesday. The syncopated rhythm, created in the 1950s, wafts from bars, bedrooms and businesses across Haiti, lifting spirits and providing solace from the country’s grinding poverty and soaring gang violence. On the night of Nov. 18, when Haiti classified for the World Cup for the first time since 1974, compas music accompanied a cheering crowd jogging throug...