CULTURE

Win a Virtual Date With All Your Favorite Avengers—also, Jeremy Renner

Chris Evans' All In Challenge offers fans a chance to hang out with the stars of the Avengers movies (also Jeremy Renner)

In the latest—and maybe the most exciting—installment of the All In Challenge, Chris Evans (AKA Captain America) is offering a virtual hang out with himself and four of the other A-list celebrities who played the original Avengers.

And Jeremy Renner will also be there.

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FILM

9 Strange—but Great—Disney Channel Original Movies You Forgot About

Including mermaids, holograms, and aliens aplenty.

Movies

Photo by Geoffrey Moffett on Unsplash

Disney+ is trickling its way into our daily dependence on streaming services.

This means we've unlocked a whole new world (Aladdin pun intended) of movies to watch half-attentively while we also scroll on our phones. You probably already know of all the classic Disney Originals that are at your disposal, but what about the Disney Channel Originals?

It's probably a given that big hits like High School Musical, Zenon, and Camp Rock are now available for your adult self to stream and reminisce, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. Name a DCOM, and it's likely available on Disney+, including all the strange, ridiculous low-fliers you might've forgotten about. Here are just nine to kickstart your nostalgia trip.

1. Alley Cats Strike!

Anything goes in the Disney Channel universe, including a bowling match to settle a basketball championship tie between rival towns. Why are both towns so invested in high school bowling? Why do the teenage winners get to pick the name of a new school in the area? We don't know, but we're still chasing the high of that final scene.

2. Stepsister from Planet Weird

In this sci-fi comedy from 2000, a literal alien refugee is immediately welcomed into the popular crowd at her new high school on Earth, despite thinking her human form is "grotesque." Not to mention that the emperor of her home planet is defeated by hair dryers and wind blowers.

3. Can of Worms

On the other end of the spectrum of Disney Channel's alien fixation, Can of Worms centers around Mike, who lives an entirely normal life besides believing he doesn't belong on Earth at all. After he accidentally sends a message to space, he's visited by an alien lawyer who deems Earth's living standards subpar. Strangely eerie 20 years later, isn't it?

4. The Thirteenth Year

Cody's birth mother is a mermaid who left him on a random boat when he was a baby. Now, as Cody approaches his teens, his merman features are beginning to present themselves, and he nearly gets accused for cheating during his swim meet. It's just fins, not steroids!

5. Luck of the Irish

There's little to take away from this film other than a white teenage boy finally embraces that he is both Irish and from Ohio, but leprechauns and river dancing will never not be amusing.

6. Motocrossed

Five years before Amanda Bynes posed as her own twin brother in She's the Man, Disney Channel offered their own adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. After Andi's brother gets injured, she decides to fill in for him in an all-male motocross tournament, chopping her hair off and all. The sexism is abundant, but—spoiler alert—Andi can totally take on the guys.

7. The Other Me

Poor Will. His grades are slipping, his dad is threatening to send him to military camp, and he just accidentally made a clone of himself who turns out to be way cooler and smarter than him, so they switch places. Kinda like the Parent Trap, but sciencey.

8. You Wish!

The lesson this film attempts to impart is: don't wish away your little brother, because he might instead become a child TV star and make your life even more of a living hell than it was when you lived under the same roof.

9. Pixel Perfect

The perfect pop star doesn't exist, until, of course, you make a hologram of her. Loretta Modern might have been programmed to become an overnight sensation, but she just wants to be a regular human, damn it! She ends up being helpful in more ways than one, but like all modern technology, she can't last forever.

Maybe they didn't all make total sense, but there's a reason DCOMs became such an integral part of growing up in the 2000s. DCOM creators conceived some of the strangest, most fringe ideas, and served them to a market that didn't mind how nonsensical they were; pair that with Disney Channel's omnipresence in the typical middle-class American household, and these oddly lovable films serve as a timestamp for an era.

CULTURE

Suggestions for Celebrity New Year's Resolutions in 2020

It's not the advice they want, but it's the advice that they need

Photo by: Kelly Sikkema / Unsplash

With the year coming to an end, the annual announcement of New Year's resolutions are kicking off.

People want to make changes in their lives, and a new calendar gives people the occasion to rethink their habits and try to live better in 2020. But so often we are not the best judges of our own problems. Like the friend who announces that he's going to start eating more kale as he downs his eighth shot of tequila, it's sometimes necessary to get some outside perspective from the people who love you most. With that in mind, it's time to take a cold, critical look at our best celebrity friends, and give them the advice they need for the new year—whether they want it or not.

Kanye West: Don't Start a Cult

Kanye West attends the Manus x Machina Fashion in an Age of Technology Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Photo by: By Ovidiu Hrubaru / Unsplash

Kanye, you've never been the kind of person who does things the easy way. You could have stuck with being a musical genius, but you decided to be a fashion icon too, and you created the Yeezy. When they gave a Grammy to Taylor Swift instead of Beyonce, you didn't tweet something passive aggressive—you got up on stage and did something about it. When you were in debt, you didn't talk to your bank, you asked Mark Zuckerberg for $50 million. And more than a decade after you said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people," when it seemed like the whole world was finally ready to stand up and condemn a Republican president's bigotry, you declared that Donald Trump was your brother because you're both "dragon energy."

So now that you've started your Sunday Services, released an album of spirituals, and produced a Christian Opera—Oratorio?—you are fully set up to devote the rest of your life to developing and running the cult of Yeezus. But is that really how the greatest artist of all time should be focusing his energy? Sure you could convert your fans into an insular flock of devout followers who would die for you. But at this point, that would honestly be too easy. It's time to shake things up. It's probably not too late to decide to be the most influential sculptor of our generation, or the greatest therapy patient of all time. Even if you decide to focus your energy on your 2024 presidential run, that's cool, as long as you avoid taking the easy path: Don't start a cult. Also, please don't tell T.I. that investigating his daughter's hymen is "god approved..."

Kim Kardashian West: Fix the American Justice System

Kim Kardashian attends the CFDA Fashion Awards at Cipriani South Street, in New York

Photo by: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

Kim, you've honestly been doing some amazing stuff in the past couple years, and we all kind of feel like we were underestimating you. For too long we thought of you as just a reality show star and a fashion model—an artifact of America's vapid celebrity obsession. But you are so much more than that. Since 2017 you have helped free dozens of prisoners who were falsely convicted or hit with overly punitive sentences. In 2020, we're going to start setting our expectations higher to really help you reach your full potential. Starting January 1st, you have twelve months to fully fix the problems with the American justice system. If you finish early, maybe try to solve climate change too. And maybe check on your husband—seems like he's trying to start a cult.

Tom Hooper: Don't Make Any More Musicals

Tom, after you directed The King's Speech, you won the Oscars for both Best Picture and Best Director in 2010, and you clearly felt empowered to pursue your true passion—making star-studded movie versions of classic musicals. Les Miserables was a hit at the box office, and it even won some awards, but the reviews were mixed. You could have asked yourself why you cast Russel Crowe in a movie that required him to sing, or you could have taken that as a sign that your passion for musicals may not be aligned with your particular talents as a filmmaker, but you were undeterred, and we admire your perseverance. That said, with the selection of your second musical adaptation, you revealed something important about yourself: You have terrible taste in musicals.

Cats has always been a bad musical, and there was probably no way you could have made it into a good movie. You may have misunderstood the appeal that allowed the show to run for 18 years on Broadway—people liked the wild costumes, and the way the performers moved through the audience. The music itself was only ever decent at best, and your ambitious plan to put Idris Elba, Ian McKellen, and Dame Judi Dench in motion capture suits, and digitally convert them into cat creatures would have been misguided even if the result hadn't turned out so deeply unsettling. So, while you've scrambled to recover something watchable from the ashes of this disastrous movie (please don't—it's better as a disaster), we want to make sure you go into 2020 with this important lesson: never again.

Jeremy Renner: Make a "Cats" Movie

Jeremy, no one appreciates your genius. People spent much of 2019 mocking your musical ambitions and using your personal app to embarrass you. It's time for you to show the world that you have nothing to be embarrassed of. Take your incredible singing voice and your untamed energy to a project that truly deserves you: Cats.

We know it's not what people expect, but you're unpredictable, we gotta tell you. And sure, they tried to make a Cats movie this year, but they forgot the secret ingredient—that certain, special Rennergy. You could play every role! And also, all the characters names could be changed to Jeremy Renner, and instead of CGI, you could just be buck naked, covered in body paint. All us Renner heads would go crazy for it. It's a good idea, and it's how you should spend 2020.

Eddie Murphy: Don't Leave Us Again

Eddie, you were gone too long, and your comeback has been too good. Don't be a Mickey Rourke. Be a Michael Keaton—come back for good. Dolemite Is My Name is an amazing movie, and your recent appearance on SNL destroyed their usual ratings. So don't just tease us that you might get back into stand-up or you're thinking about another movie. Make 2020 your year. That is all.

Bill Maher: Lose a Lot of Weight

Bill, you made headlines in September by advocating for fat shaming saying that "it needs to make a comeback" and, "Shame is the first step to reform," and you couched it in terms that made it sound like you were helping people get healthy. You seemed to be implying that people who struggle with obesity don't even realize there's an issue, and they need your bullying in order to see themselves clearly. We were shocked, not because you were ignoring the fact that a shame spiral of yo-yo dieting is actually more detrimental to cardiovascular health than obesity itself, but because you delivered your proclamation with such the smug sense of superiority. It meant that you were absolutely right—that you can't even see what a disgusting pig you are.

Bill, you may think that you are as slim and svelte as ever, but the jowls beginning to form on your cheeks tell a different story. We have to wonder what you even see when you look in the mirror, because for must of us it's hard to even stomach looking at you. To put it bluntly, if you don't have the decency to be ashamed of yourself, we'll have to shame you into dropping some of the excess weight you're lugging around. An adult male skeleton typically weighs around 25 pounds, so our best estimate suggests that you should aim to lose about 135 pounds in 2020. That might sound like overkill, but trust us, no one will miss it when it's gone.

Elon Musk: Get Off the Internet

Elon Musk at the Rihanna's First Annual Diamond Ball at the The Vineyard on December 11, 2014 in Beverly Hills, CA

Photo by: Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock

Elon, remember last summer in the aftermath of the Thai soccer team cave rescue, when people were criticizing your ill-conceived submarine plan, so you called that rescue worker "pedo guy?" And remember how now he's suing you? Or what about the people who have taken issue with your "mass transit" plan that involves drilling a new, single-lane car-tunnel every time traffic gets backed up? Remember how you called your critics "subway stalinists," and dismissed the recognized phenomenon of induced demand as "irrational?" And that's not even getting into all the abuse you took over the botched Cybertruck demo. That must have been hard for you, but not as hard as it was for the rest of the world when you tweeted that image of Tesla stock reaching 420.69...

The point is, you just don't seem to be mature enough to handle the internet. You are not alone, a lot of billionaires—and even "billionaires"—seem to have trouble controlling themselves on Twitter. The good news is, you can still have an active, vibrant life. By all means, keep developing new battery tech and launching free-internet satellites for the world to use. Just don't use the Internet yourself. Make 2020 the year of Elon unplugged. You'll be much happier without being confronted by all the people trying to poke holes in your genius, and we can maybe go back to thinking you're kind of cool.

Grimes: Leave Elon Musk

You're way too cool for him, and you know it.

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders: Please Save Us

Just in case Kim can't fix all our problems alone, could you two please team up and save the world from the people who are so afraid of you? Kthanksbye.

MUSIC

Not Everyone Should Have a Music Career: The 10 Worst Celebrity Songs

Just because someone can act, that does not mean they can sing.

Gwyneth Paltrow - Country Strong

All too often, when a celebrity's head gets too big for their own good, their inflated brain decides they have what it takes to have a music career.

Technically, they're right––the only thing anyone actually needs to produce an album is cold, hard cash. But all the money in the world can't buy musical talent, which is why pretty much every celebrity album is screaming ear cancer. Come delight in making fun of people who are so wealthy that they fail to realize they have zero musical ability. These celebrity songs are truly the worst of the worst:

Jeremy Renner - Heaven Don't Have a Name

If anyone ever had a fever dream where Hawkeye from the Avengers sang a ripoff of Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive" that was somehow worse than "Radioactive," we're sorry to inform them that their nightmare has become a reality.

Heaven Don't Have a Namewww.youtube.com

Brie Larson - She Said

Brie Larson's horrendous attempt at an Avril impression features inspired lyrics like "La dee da, la dee dee," along with a really poor Napoleon Dynamite impersonator in the music video.

Brie Larson - She Said (Radio Edit)www.youtube.com

Lindsay Lohan - Confessions Of A Broken Heart (Daughter to Father)

While "daddy issues" may be a sexist trope at this point, it's hard to describe Lindsay Lohan's music as indicative of anything else. "Confessions Of A Broken Heart (Daughter To Father)" is less a "song" and more a "desperate cry for help."

Lindsay Lohan - Confessions Of A Broken Heart (Daughter To Father)www.youtube.com

Paris Hilton - Nothing In This World

Based on sound alone, Paris Hilton's Nothing In This World is honestly pretty generic pop. But this music video...just wow. It's about a little, toad-faced, creeper kid who gets straight up abused at school and then goes home to spy on his hot adult neighbor (Paris Hilton, of course) while she undresses. Then she grinds on him a bunch in her underwear. This is horrifying because he's like 13-year-old, max.

Paris Hilton - Nothing In This Worldwww.youtube.com

Bruce Willis - Respect Yourself

"Respect Yourself" is kind of like Aretha Franklin's "Respect" except instead of being sung by one of the most talented vocalists to ever live, it's sung by action star Bruce Willis and also has kind of weird religious undertones.

Respect Yourself ~ Bruce Williswww.youtube.com

Steven Seagal - Girl It's Alright

Steven Seagal has been hit with multiple accusations of sexual assault over the years, and this song is not helping his case at all.

Stiven Seagal "Girl it's alright"www.youtube.com

Gwyneth Paltrow - Country Strong

If Gwyneth Paltrow's "Country Strong" were revealed to be a parody of country music that she made solely because she despises poor people and anything that might interest them, it would be easy to believe.

Gwyneth Paltrow - Country Strongwww.youtube.com

Heidi Montag - Blackout

Heidi Montag writhing around a pool in a bikini while shouting crappy, off-key, bubblegum pop directly into a camera is somehow the pinnacle of both blandness and grossness at the same time.

Heidi Montag - Blackout (Official Video)www.youtube.com

Robert Downey Jr. - Man Like Me

To Robert Downey Jr.'s credit, these vocals are raw, untouched by fancy audio effects that might possibly make his voice anything close to listenable. Because truly, his vocals are unlistenable. This is homeless man singing on the subway bad.

Robert Downey Jr. sings "Man like Me"www.youtube.com

Hulk Hogan - I Want to Be a Hulkamaniac

Okay, now this is epic. Hulk Hogan's "I Want to Be a Hulkamaniac" transcends the good-bad binary. It is a portal to another era, a simpler time when maybe someone really did want to be a "Hulkamaniac" but wasn't sure how to make that dream a reality. Luckily, Hulk Hugan was there to talk-rap instructions, encouraging listeners to take vitamins, say no to drugs, and have fun with family and friends. This actually might be the best celebrity song ever.

Hulk Hogan- I Want to Be a Hulkamaniacwww.youtube.com

FILM & TV

BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN | Your favorite superheroes are (finally) back

JUNE 15TH-17TH | What's Coming to Theaters this Weekend?

http://www.denofgeek.com

It may have taken fourteen years for this sequel but good things are worth a bit of a delay.

In Popdust's column, Box Office Breakdown, we aim to inform you of the top flicks to check out every weekend depending on what you're in the mood to enjoy. Looking to laugh? What about having your pants scared off? Maybe you just need a little love? Whatever the case may be, we have you covered. Take a peek at our top picks for this week…

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