Latest news with #French-Canadian
Time of India
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
'It's a lot of weird s**t going on': Kai Cenat breaks silence on growing controversy with xQc
Image via: Getty Images The rivalry among two of Twitch's most prominent streamers, Kai Cenat and "xQc", just entered the boiling over phase. During a recent live stream, Kai Cenat addressed his xQc beef for the first time, and since the incident, the pair have been wanting to take each other on, and fans across the streaming scene are watching his and Cenat's every word. Kai Finally Speaks: 'I Don't F**k With Somebody' In his July 17 livestream, Kai Cenat deviated from the standard shit talking to address speculations regarding his friendships with other streamers, specifically Adin Ross. His demeanor shifted when xQc's name was mentioned. 'I don't even want to mention that n**'s name because y'all guys know the lore behind that. But, n**a, I don't fk with somebody, I'll tell y'all n**s. Like, I don't fk with that n*a. I would tell y'all! It's a lot of weird s*t going on, mud! You feel me?" While cryptic, his remarks validated what a lot of fans had been theorizing for months that the two creators have no love for one another. xQc Responds: "He wants to Make Everything I Say a Big Deal" xQc didn't hesitate to reply. While viewing Kai's stream live, the French-Canadian content creator replied live and responded to Cenat's remarks during his own stream later that day. "He wants to make everything I say a big deal" xQc said, brushing off the suggestion that he had any ill will. 'We're not even in the same room anymore.' It's a quote that exposes a larger trend: while both still dominate Twitch viewership and headlines, their content styles and social circles have drifted ever further apart, physically and figuratively. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Villas For Sale in Dubai Might Surprise You Dubai villas | search ads Get Deals Undo How It Started This conflict isn't precisely recent. The seeds were planted months ago when xQc charged some members of Kai's AMP group of botting viewers, a grave accusation in the streaming community. Admirers started seeing subtle friction between the two from that point on. The tension reignited recently when xQc took a jab at Cenat for allegedly snubbing Adin Ross, another divisive streamer. The comment appeared cursory to some, it was sufficient to provoke Kai. What Comes Next? With both streamers now publicly and negatively talking about each other. As some fans are rooting for a public resolution or even a collab to finish this, others are still enjoying their banter. Catch Rani Rampal's inspiring story on Game On, Episode 4. Watch Here!
USA Today
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Photographer's eerie lookalike inspired a search for world's best dopplegängers
Over the last 25 years, French-Canadian photographer François Brunelle has traveled the world photographing around 250 pairs of doppelgängers. Doppelgängers, which translates from German to 'double walker,' originally meant ghostly counterparts of a living person. In folklore and literature, encountering someone who could be your twin has traditionally been viewed as a bad omen. But in modern usage, the term often describes two unrelated people who closely resemble each other. This concept is the focus of Brunelle's photography series, 'I'm Not a Lookalike!' The inspiration for the project came from his own lookalike: Mr. Bean, who is played by British actor and comedian Rowan Atkinson. After being told for years that he looked like the character, Brunelle watched an episode that included a scene he called 'awkward' to see his doppelgänger in. 'I said, 'Oh my God, it looks like me, and he's taking a bath!'' said Brunelle, who felt like he was watching himself on TV. Upon realizing he couldn't be the only lookalike, Brunelle started photographing doppelgängers together. Some of the pairs he captured didn't see the resemblance, 'which can be quite surprising (and entertaining) at times,' Brunelle admitted via email to USA TODAY. He started his project in Montréal with lookalikes he knew in Canada. As media coverage grew and word spread on social media, he received thousands of messages from people worldwide. Many of the doppelgängers he photographed know each other in real life and were made aware of their resemblance to each other after being told by others, like Ester Scholten and Agnes Loonstra. In 2013, Loonstra was approached by a man on a train in the Netherlands. He mistakenly thought she was one of his university students, Scholten, and encouraged Loonstra to reach out to her. Meanwhile, Scholten learned about this encounter from her professor. Out of curiosity, Loonstra decided to find Scholten on Facebook. Loonstra decided to find Scholten on Facebook. Scholten shared a translation of the first message she ever received from Loonstra with USA TODAY. 'Hi Ester, probably a bit of an unexpected message, but recently I was approached on the train by a man, and he thought I was you! After some confusion, he said he was a teacher of yours and asked me if I was a girl from Arnhem. Very funny, apparently, he was so amazed by the resemblance (in his eyes) that he insisted I should google you because we seemed so alike. Haha! So here we are... Do you see the same resemblance? 🙂 maybe the ginger hair, bangs and almond-shaped eyes? 🙂' Scholten felt like she was seeing herself when she saw photos of Loonstra on Facebook. 'Even our mouths look somewhat similar. So strange!' Scholten wrote back in her messages to Loonstra. They both found their resemblance surprising because they felt their features were so distinctive that they thought they were unique. The two decided it would be fun to meet, and when they did, they realized it wasn't only their looks that were similar. 'There were a few moments during that first encounter that were almost terrifying, such as the moment we both pulled up a chair to put our feet on and the moment we laughed at the exact same time and discovered the way we laugh is so similar,' Scholten said. Loonstra was 25 and Scholten was 30 when they met on May 4, 2013. At the time, Loonstra was part of an a Capella group that had rehearsals in Scholten's hometown. People waved at her thinking she was Scholten. 'People I knew told me I had been rude for not saying anything when I passed them,' Scholten said. So Loonstra began waving back at the strangers followed by a text to Scholten to let her know. From their very first meeting, a friendship was born as they discovered they shared love for the same music, literature and what Scholten calls their "intense' love of cats. 'About half of all our WhatsApp conversations are about cats,' she said. 'We are proud crazy cat ladies.' From that love came the inspiration for a book they published together titled 'Crazy Cat Lady,' combining Loonstra's skills as an illustrator and Scholten's knack for writing. It was picked up by Workman Publishing in New York and has been released worldwide in English and translated to Spanish, German, Finnish, and even Loonstra and Scholten's native language, Dutch. Agnes also played a special role in Ester's wedding as her maid of honor. 'I see Agnes like the little sister I never had,' Scholten said. Although they don't live in the same part of the Netherlands, they try to see each other at least once a month. Loonstra reached out to Brunelle after hearing about his project from several people who sent it to her. Loonstra and Scholten were later included in a study by the Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain with other doppelgängers photographed by Brunelle that confirmed they and the other lookalikes were not related. Of the 32 pairs studied, researchers found that the lookalikes share similar DNA variations, particularly concerning genes involved in forming facial features. There were also similarities in height and weight. The study's lead researcher Manel Esteller, called it 'coincidences of genetics that happen purely by chance,' and does not mean the pairs are related. Despite the study's findings, Loonstra and Scholten are still frequently asked by strangers if they are biologically related, and sometimes, to keep things simple, they just say yes. Brunelle's website features a callout for lookalikes, and he also created pages on Instagram and Facebook for the project. Brunelle plans to release a book this year featuring about 100 photos of the pairs he's photographed, along with a short story from either the subject or his perspective. He shared a few of those stories with USA TODAY. Roniel Tessler and Garrett Levenbrook | New York City, U.S., 2013 "I was born in New York, and Roniel in Washington, D.C. Roniel's friends met me at the University of Michigan four years ago and mistook me for him. They then put us in touch, and we discovered we lived near each other. We have remained good friends ever since." - Garrett Beatriz Nogueira and Bruna Soares Da Costa | Lisbon, Portugal "I work in human resources, and Beatriz is a student. We were both born in Portugal and have been friends since childhood. We first realized we were look-alikes when people started mixing us up. My own father saw a photo of Beatriz and was convinced it was me! I think we look more alike in profile than face-on. We are similar not just physically, but in personality too. And here is a fun detail, I recently discovered we're both left-handed!" - Bruna Karen Chu and Ashlee Wong | Culver City, California, U.S. , 2013 "I am a nursing student while Ashlee is a registered nurse. Most non-Asian people think all Chinese look alike, but that is far from the truth. I consider myself lucky to have met Ashlee, my 'sister' at a traditional Chinese dance performance. Although many people think we look very similar, Ashlee is definitely shorter." - Karen
Hamilton Spectator
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Simple Plan didn't want to wait until they were ‘really old' to make a documentary
TORONTO - The problem with so many rock documentaries is they too often come out as the artist winds down their career — at least that's how pop-punk act Simple Plan see it. With their new career-spanning feature-length doc, which premiered this month on Prime Video, the Montreal pop-punk act says they didn't want to follow the pack and wait until the sunset of their lives to share the ups and downs. 'Sometimes bands ... wait until super late, until they're really old,' 45-year-old drummer Chuck Comeau explained in a recent video interview. 'Why not kick off a whole new chapter, look back on what we've accomplished, and use this to start the next part of the story?' Luckily, Simple Plan has plenty of fresh material to talk about. The band has recently been swept up by a resurgence in popularity for their early 2000s hits, thanks in part to TikTok clips that have introduced their pop-punk anthems 'I'm Just a Kid' and 'Perfect' to a new generation. The unexpected popularity has attracted bigger crowds than ever to their shows, just as the group passes their 25th anniversary. 'Simple Plan: The Kids in the Crowd,' from music video director Didier Charette of Hawkesbury, Ont., a town on the border of Ontario and Quebec, skirts much of the ugliness and complications of mainstream fame to focus on the band's rise and enduring appeal. Members recall the odds they overcame as French-Canadian suburbanites seeking stardom in the English music market without much of a blueprint to work from. 'There was nobody coming from Montreal, speaking French, that had done it,' Comeau said. 'The only reference point, I guess, was Celine Dion.' Charette's documentary feature debut relies heavily on archival footage in recounting the earliest days of Simple Plan's precursor band, Reset. They formed in the mid-1990s as a group of high schoolers that included Comeau and Simple Plan lead vocalist Pierre Bouvier. While that band found some success, Comeau and Bouvier left amid personal squabbles. The two made amends and joined forces with local musicians Jeff Stinco and Sébastien Lefebvre to form Simple Plan in 1999. They pursued a major label record deal, eventually landed one, and then jumped the typical hurdles of the music industry. Some critics derided the band as too soft for modern rock, often comparing them to their brattier Canadian counterparts Sum 41. One music magazine stung them with the most backhanded of praise, labelling them 'good guys, bad band.' Meanwhile, some audiences openly displayed their disdain, with festival concertgoers actually whipping water bottles at the band during their live sets. To Simple Plan, these experiences were obstacles to overcome. 'The process of going through this old footage ... was really a nice way to ... give ourselves a pat on the back and say, 'Hey, we're doing pretty good,'' Bouvier said. 'We don't do that enough,' Comeau agreed. Bouvier concedes those early negative incidents might've left the band with emotional battle scars and a drive to prove their worth. 'We had a chip on our shoulder,' he said. 'And a way for us to overcome those haters, so to speak, (was to say) we're going to give the best show ever and ... there's no way you're going to walk away saying that that wasn't a great show.' Avril Lavigne, Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray and Mark Hoppus of Blink-182 are among the band's contemporaries who come to their defence in new interviews. Other significant moments in Simple Plan's history are downplayed by the film, in particular, the departure of the longtime bassist David Desrosiers following allegations of sexual misconduct involving one of the band's fans. In 2020, Desrosiers left the band following accusations from an anonymous person on social media that alleged he made inappropriate 'jokes' with her when she was a minor and that they had consensual sex after she came of age. She also alleged he invited others for group sex without asking her, and threatened and demeaned her. At the time, Desrosiers acknowledged that 'some of the interactions I have had with women have caused them harm' and he pledged to seek professional help. The documentary spends little time on the allegations. While Desrosiers appears in archival footage, he is not interviewed in present day. Even the current band members only discuss the incident in the vaguest of ways, offering very little insight into how suddenly losing one of their members affected them as a unit. Comeau described Desrosiers' exit as 'one of the most challenging moments in our career.' 'It comes with a lot of pain,' he said. 'He was very important to the band. He had a huge contribution musically and personally … and we wanted to make sure the movie would reflect that.' While the band hasn't 'had tons of interactions' with Desrosiers since he left, Comeau said they consulted him during production and showed him a cut of the documentary. 'We felt like we couldn't avoid David because he was a big part of the story,' he added. 'He wasn't interviewed, but we really wanted his contribution to be shown.' Comeau said Simple Plan wanted to make clear in the documentary that their priority was 'to regain the trust of our fans and make sure that we could move forward as a band.' 'Now it's the four of us, and it's been five years,' he added. 'I think we feel like there's another 25 years in us.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 16, 2025.
Winnipeg Free Press
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Simple Plan didn't want to wait until they were ‘really old' to make a documentary
TORONTO – The problem with so many rock documentaries is they too often come out as the artist winds down their career — at least that's how pop-punk act Simple Plan see it. With their new career-spanning feature-length doc, which premiered this month on Prime Video, the Montreal pop-punk act says they didn't want to follow the pack and wait until the sunset of their lives to share the ups and downs. 'Sometimes bands … wait until super late, until they're really old,' 45-year-old drummer Chuck Comeau explained in a recent video interview. 'Why not kick off a whole new chapter, look back on what we've accomplished, and use this to start the next part of the story?' Luckily, Simple Plan has plenty of fresh material to talk about. The band has recently been swept up by a resurgence in popularity for their early 2000s hits, thanks in part to TikTok clips that have introduced their pop-punk anthems 'I'm Just a Kid' and 'Perfect' to a new generation. The unexpected popularity has attracted bigger crowds than ever to their shows, just as the group passes their 25th anniversary. 'Simple Plan: The Kids in the Crowd,' from music video director Didier Charette of Hawkesbury, Ont., a town on the border of Ontario and Quebec, skirts much of the ugliness and complications of mainstream fame to focus on the band's rise and enduring appeal. Members recall the odds they overcame as French-Canadian suburbanites seeking stardom in the English music market without much of a blueprint to work from. 'There was nobody coming from Montreal, speaking French, that had done it,' Comeau said. 'The only reference point, I guess, was Celine Dion.' Charette's documentary feature debut relies heavily on archival footage in recounting the earliest days of Simple Plan's precursor band, Reset. They formed in the mid-1990s as a group of high schoolers that included Comeau and Simple Plan lead vocalist Pierre Bouvier. While that band found some success, Comeau and Bouvier left amid personal squabbles. The two made amends and joined forces with local musicians Jeff Stinco and Sébastien Lefebvre to form Simple Plan in 1999. They pursued a major label record deal, eventually landed one, and then jumped the typical hurdles of the music industry. Some critics derided the band as too soft for modern rock, often comparing them to their brattier Canadian counterparts Sum 41. One music magazine stung them with the most backhanded of praise, labelling them 'good guys, bad band.' Meanwhile, some audiences openly displayed their disdain, with festival concertgoers actually whipping water bottles at the band during their live sets. To Simple Plan, these experiences were obstacles to overcome. 'The process of going through this old footage … was really a nice way to … give ourselves a pat on the back and say, 'Hey, we're doing pretty good,'' Bouvier said. 'We don't do that enough,' Comeau agreed. Bouvier concedes those early negative incidents might've left the band with emotional battle scars and a drive to prove their worth. 'We had a chip on our shoulder,' he said. 'And a way for us to overcome those haters, so to speak, (was to say) we're going to give the best show ever and … there's no way you're going to walk away saying that that wasn't a great show.' Avril Lavigne, Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray and Mark Hoppus of Blink-182 are among the band's contemporaries who come to their defence in new interviews. Other significant moments in Simple Plan's history are downplayed by the film, in particular, the departure of the longtime bassist David Desrosiers following allegations of sexual misconduct involving one of the band's fans. In 2020, Desrosiers left the band following accusations from an anonymous person on social media that alleged he made inappropriate 'jokes' with her when she was a minor and that they had consensual sex after she came of age. She also alleged he invited others for group sex without asking her, and threatened and demeaned her. At the time, Desrosiers acknowledged that 'some of the interactions I have had with women have caused them harm' and he pledged to seek professional help. The documentary spends little time on the allegations. While Desrosiers appears in archival footage, he is not interviewed in present day. Even the current band members only discuss the incident in the vaguest of ways, offering very little insight into how suddenly losing one of their members affected them as a unit. Comeau described Desrosiers' exit as 'one of the most challenging moments in our career.' 'It comes with a lot of pain,' he said. 'He was very important to the band. He had a huge contribution musically and personally … and we wanted to make sure the movie would reflect that.' While the band hasn't 'had tons of interactions' with Desrosiers since he left, Comeau said they consulted him during production and showed him a cut of the documentary. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. 'We felt like we couldn't avoid David because he was a big part of the story,' he added. 'He wasn't interviewed, but we really wanted his contribution to be shown.' Comeau said Simple Plan wanted to make clear in the documentary that their priority was 'to regain the trust of our fans and make sure that we could move forward as a band.' 'Now it's the four of us, and it's been five years,' he added. 'I think we feel like there's another 25 years in us.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 16, 2025.
Hamilton Spectator
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Quebec bids farewell to singer Serge Fiori during national funeral in Montreal
MONTREAL - Thousands of people gathered at Montreal's Place des Arts on Tuesday for the national funeral of legendary singer-songwriter Serge Fiori. Fiori, the co-founder of the influential French-Canadian rock band Harmonium, died on June 24 at age 73. His family accepted the Quebec government's offer to help organize his funeral, which took the form of a musical celebration at Montreal's premier arts venue. Politicians, performers and the public packed Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier in downtown Montreal for a musical final bow that was broadcast live on Radio-Canada and the LCN network. Fiori left his mark on Quebec's musical world with Harmonium and beyond, including as a duo with musician Richard Séguin and through solo projects. Premier François Legault, who took part in the event, recalled listening to Harmonium's first album in 1974 as a 16-year-old, saying Fiori 'made our lives more beautiful.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 15, 2025.
