‘Zombieland 2’ in the Works

Film

It looks like a sequel to Zombieland is in the works:

“That is breaking news that we’re on Zombieland 2 right now,” they said. “We’re sitting with Woody [Harrelson]tomorrow and are going to sort of walk him through some of the stuff we want to do. All the cast is pretty excited.”

Facebook Fires Trending Topics Staff; Decision Immediately Backfires

Facebook

Facebook got rid of the human curators for their “trending news” section and then, predictably, had the algorithm shit the bed and surface a fake story:

Facebook cut its Trending Topics team on Friday in favor of employing algorithms to surface news stories on the social networking platform.

Then on Sunday a fake story about Megyn Kelly getting fired by Fox for being a secret liberal showed up among the Trending Topics after getting hundreds of thousands of likes.

The company didn’t take the story down until Monday morning.

Twenty One Pilots Make History on the Charts

Twenty One Pilots

Twenty One Pilots have become the first artist to have a different number one song on both the pop and alternative songs charts at the same time:

While Twenty One Pilots are the first act to top Pop Songs and Alternative Songs simultaneously with a pair of tracks, they’re the sixth to lead the Nielsen Music-based lists at the same time (the prior five having done so with the same song on both charts). The duo of Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun is the first act to rank at No. 1 on both charts simultaneously in 11 years, since Green Day doubled up with “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” for four weeks in March 2005. (That hit led Alternative Songs for 16 total weeks; the last four of those coincided with the song’s four-week reign on Pop Songs.)

Frank Ocean Tops Billboard Charts

Frank Ocean’s Blonde tops the Billboard charts this week.

Frank Ocean earns his first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart with the arrival of Blonde. The set, which was released on Aug. 20, bows atop the list with 276,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Aug. 25, according to Nielsen Music.

Blonde logs the third-largest debut of 2016, behind only the arrivals of Drake’s Views and Beyonce’s Lemonade.

Sturgill Simpson Discusses Merle Haggard and the ACM Awards

Sturgill Simpson

Sturgill Simpson has posted a note on the passing of Merle Haggard:

Im writing this because I want to go on record and say I find it utterly disgusting the way everybody on Music Row is coming up with any reason they can to hitch their wagon to his name while knowing full and damn well what he thought about them. If the ACM wants to actually celebrate the legacy and music of Merle Haggard, they should drop all the formulaic cannon fodder bullshit they’ve been pumping down rural America’s throat for the last 30 years along with all the high school pageantry, meat parade award show bullshit and start dedicating their programs to more actual Country Music.

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Actor Gene Wilder Passes Away

Gene Wilder has passed away. He was 83.

Gene Wilder, who regularly stole the show in such comedic gems as “The Producers,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein,” “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and “Stir Crazy,” died Monday at his home in Stamford, Conn. His nephew Jordan Walker-Pearlman said he died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 83.