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"You’re going to see a number of things that Stadia can do that is not possible on other platforms," says Jack Buser, director for games at the tech giant. Google's long-gestating foray into gaming has finally arrived as the tech giant's game streaming service, Stadia, launched on Tuesday morning.  "Stadia has been built from the ground up to be a cloud platform," Jack Buser, director for games at Google, tells The Hollywood Reporter. "You’re going to see a number of things that Stadia can do that is not possible on other platforms." Google's gaming offering, which is offered at a $9.99 monthly rate for its Stadia Pro subscription (there is also a $129.99 Premiere Edition available for pre-order that includes a controller, Chromecast Ultra and three months of Stadia Pro and a free tier of the Stadia service is due out next year), is centered on the growing industry of game streaming, allowing players to access AAA titles while on-the-go through their smart phone … [Read more...] about Google Bets on the Future With Launch of Stadia Game Streaming Service

Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” will soon add a new chapter to its complicated legal history. An 11-judge panel from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided Monday to review its decision on whether the band plagiarized the song’s opening guitar riff from Spirit’s 1968 track “Taurus,” Reuters reports. Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page were accused of copyright infringement over their iconic 1971 epic. But in June 2016, a Los Angeles jury ruled that “Stairway to Heaven” were not guilty of infringing on “Taurus,” an instrumental written by Spirit guitarist Randy California (Randy Wolfe) for that band’s self-titled debut LP. In September 2018, a Ninth Circuit three-judge panel ruled 3-0 that the original trial’s judge provided “erroneous jury instructions” and ordered a new trial. With the latest court decision to rehear the decision in that case, Led Zeppelin may … [Read more...] about Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’: Appeals Court to Review Lawsuit Decision

In April 1969, Bob Dylan went to Nashville to record his ninth studio album. It would be his third time recording there with local session pros and producer Bob Johnston, but this time it would be different: Unlike the “thin, wild mercury sound” of 1966’s Blonde on Blonde and the ominous acoustic folk of 1967’s John Wesley Harding, his next LP would be a traditional country record. He called it Nashville Skyline. While experimental bands like New York’s Velvet Underground and San Francisco’s Grateful Dead were pushing boundaries in music, Dylan had been secluded in Woodstock, New York, focusing on his growing family and paying little attention to new musical trends. He ended up once again subverting audience expectations and delivering an album no one was anticipating. “These are the type of songs that I always felt like writing when I’ve been alone to do so,” he told Newsweek. “The songs reflect more of the inner me than … [Read more...] about Bob Dylan’s ‘Nashville Skyline’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know

It’s funny what being held at gunpoint will do to you. And being held at gunpoint by a megalomaniacal rock star? Well, that doesn’t feel very good at all. Not when the rock star has spent the past three months, the entire spring of 1995, living a fantasy life right in front of you, sipping martinis and passing a joint around at 11a.m. with his new wife, a pert blonde actress who inspires over a billion people around the world to drool each week as she runs across the beach in a tight red bathing suit. Not when you’ve been laying wires, tearing up the walls and painting again and again, because the light switch the rock star thought he wanted over here he now wants just there. By the time Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson abruptly fired the handful of the people renovating their Malibu mansion, refusing to pay for work they said was shoddily done, electrician Rand Gauthier was so sick of the celebrity couple’s demands that he was ready to simply write off the $20,000 … [Read more...] about Pam and Tommy: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Infamous Sex Tape

Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez shines in her totally delightful Netflix comedy Someone Great, written and directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. In addition to everything else Someone Great is — a break-up comedy, a killer soundtrack, a girls-together-outrageously romp — it’s a movie about music fans, people who live their lives and suffer and fuck up and bond and grieve while obsessing over their favorite songs. It finds clever ways to crush your soul with Mitski or Phoebe Bridgers tunes. A moment in a bodega where you hear a Selena ballad on the radio and get triggered into a humiliating meltdown, singing along so weepily you can never show your face there again? Who among us, right? Someone Great dropped on Netflix this weekend, with basically zero advance fanfare, and hit a nerve. For one thing, it whisked oldies by Lorde and Lizzo (from like, 2017) to the top of the streaming charts. Gina stars as a New York music critic who gets her dream job writing for … [Read more...] about ‘Someone Great’ Is the Music-Critic Comedy We Had No Idea We Needed