Month: July 2020

Black Widow was one of the many (many, many, many) blockbusters affected by the COVID-19 pandemic; the Cate Shortland-directed superhero movie’s release date was pushed back from May to November 2020, meaning we have to wait that much longer to discover the true identity of Taskmaster. And for Florence Pugh to officially join the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Black Widow is being billed as a showcase for Scarlett Johansson, which is technically true, but according to Shortland, it’s really Pugh’s movie, as we predicted months ago.

“[Kevin Feige] realized that the audience would expect an origin story so, of course, we went in the opposite direction,” she told Empire. “And we didn’t know how great Florence Pugh would be. We knew she would be great, but we didn’t know how great. Scarlett is so gracious, like, ‘Oh, I’m handing her the baton.’ So it’s going to propel another female storyline.” Robert Downey, Jr. and Chris Evans have already departed the MCU — now it’s supposedly ScarJo’s turn, and like Anthony Mackie’s Falcon becoming the new Captain America, Natasha Romanoff has an exciting replacement in Yelena Belova.

Shortland also discussed why Black Widow has a “fitting ending” for Johansson:

“In Endgame, the fans were upset that Natasha did not have a funeral. Whereas Scarlett, when I spoke to her about it, said Natasha wouldn’t have wanted a funeral. She’s too private, and anyway, people don’t really know who she is. So what we did in this film was allow the ending to be the grief the individuals felt, rather than a big public outpouring. I think that’s a fitting ending for her.”

Black Widow (hopefully) comes out on November 6.

While Colin Kaepernick awaits a hopeful return to the NFL this year, as the tone of the league has shifted in recent weeks, he has made waves in the world of entertainment with a pair of major announcements.

The first was a partnership with Netflix on a six-episode mini-series called “Colin in Black and White,” written by Ava Duvernay, that will look at Kaepernick’s high school experience as a Black kid adopted by a white family and living in a predominantly white community. On Monday, we learned that will only be the beginning of Kaepernick’s work in the visual media space, as Disney and ESPN announced an overall first-look deal with Kaepernick that will extend to all areas of Disney’s media empire.

The Walt Disney Company today announced an overall first-look deal with Colin Kaepernick’s production arm Ra Vision Media. The partnership will focus on telling scripted and unscripted stories that explore race, social injustice and the quest for equity, and will provide a new platform to showcase the work of Black and Brown directors and producers. The first-look deal will extend across all Walt Disney Platforms including Walt Disney Television, ESPN, Hulu, Pixar, and The Undefeated. Kaepernick will work closely with The Undefeated, which is expanding its portfolio across Disney, to develop stories from the perspective of Black and Brown communities.

The first part of the deal will be a docuseries on Kaepernick’s journey over the last five years since he began protesting police brutality and racism, and his subsequent ouster from the NFL, through never-before-seen footage and interviews to tell his story from his perspective. The project will be produced on the ESPN side by Libby Geist, Kevin Merida, and Connor Schnell, with Kaepernick also bringing former ESPNer Jemele Hill on as a major part of the project.

“I am excited to announce this historic partnership with Disney across all of its platforms to elevate Black and Brown directors, creators, storytellers, and producers, and to inspire the youth with compelling and authentic perspectives,” Kaepernick said. “I look forward to sharing the docuseries on my life story, in addition to many other culturally impactful projects we are developing.”

Kaepernick’s deal with Disney will go well beyond telling his story and will look to elevate Black and Brown creators across various platforms to tell more stories from perspectives not often given prominent platforms.

Lizzo had planned to celebrate the holiday weekend in style. She and a group of her best friends met up at a rental home to relax, have fun, and enjoy each other’s company. But their plans were thrown off course when they were abruptly kicked out of the home by a discriminatory host.

Lizzo detailed the event in a cheeky Instagram post Sunday. The singer said that she and her friends were evicted from their rental home after the host saw her Instagram, mocked her dancing, and threatened to call the police.

Alongside a video of her twerking in a bathing suit on a sunny rooftop, Lizzo wrote: “This is for the man that kicked me out of my 7-day rental 3 days early yesterday. This is for mocking the way that I dance and for using Instagram footage of me and my 6 black homegirls to say that we could ‘hurt him’ and threaten to call the police. I know you’re watching my page so I just want you to know you can’t stop this Black girls’ shine.”

Even after the incident, Lizzo remained unbothered and said her friends quickly found a new rental house which was “better anyways.”

Read Lizzo’s full story above.

Lizzo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Aminé has been hard at work on his second album ever since he finished promoting his debut, Good For You in 2017. While he dropped OnePointFive in 2018 to hold fans over for the meantime, he admits he never considered it an album, telling Apple Music’s Zane Lowe he released the tape as a placeholder that “gave me more time to work on this, to perfect this.”

Well, we now officially know what “this” is: Limbo, the Portland rapper’s official second album and follow-up to Good For You. Aminé went on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 Radio show today to make the announcement, as well as debut the album’s upbeat new single: “Compensating” featuring Young Thug. The two rappers flex over a percussive jam, which finds them addressing a potential paramour, reassuring her she doesn’t need to compensate for her feelings.

Of his new collaboration partner, Aminé says, “I was in Toronto working with T-Minus on this song and I put the hook together and then Minus told me he had a session with Thug and he thought that we would mesh well together on this song. And he was the one who kind of quarterbacked the whole thing. The only time I’ve ever met Thug before that was I was in Europe and he walked up to me at some festival, I think where it was way out west or some, and he walked up to me and called me a young legend and I never forgot that moment. I never forgot that moment.”

Listen to “Compensating” above.

Young Thug is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

On June 26, Kanye West announced a huge ten-year partnership with Gap, the clothing retailer for which he has long expressed his admiration. Kanye and his Yeezy company are set to launch a Yeezy Gap line next year, but making that announcement wasn’t all Kanye did that day. TMZ reports that he also filed a trademark application on June 26, for the phrase “West Day Ever,” which Kanye hashtagged in his announcement and other tweets from that day.

The trademark application covers over a hundred different types of clothing, including everything from t-shirts to capes to ascots, so expect some West Day Ever merch to emerge at some point.

Josh Gerben, founder of trademark law firm Gerben Law Firm, also reported the news last week. Gerben noted that two applications were actually filed by Yeezy, with the other being for a logo that looks like a Y with a dot above it. The image could perhaps also represent a person with outstretched arms. Gerben notes, “Both applications were filed on a 1(b) basis, meaning that Kanye’s company has a bona fide intent to use the trademarks in association with the goods and services it listed.”

This news of course comes after declared his intention to run for president in 2020, although he might not be as up to date on his paperwork for that endeavor.

Netflix’s The Kissing Booth managed to be both objectively bad and insanely popular, and that combination made it one of the most watched (and re-watched) titles of 2018. So of course a sequel was bound to happen, and the film’s viewers will see The Kissing Booth 2 land later this month. If you’re wondering what the fuss is all about, this trailer can be absorbed without watching the original, and essentially, Joey King’s character got the guy (played by Jacob Elordi) last time around, and now, viewers will wonder how long it will take before all the clichés about cheating come true.

It doesn’t seem to be taking too long! This followup, which is also based upon Beth Reekles’ The Kissing Booth books, sees Jacob’s Noah flying off to college, where he’s (naturally) surrounded by beautiful women. Meanwhile, Joey King’s Elle is still stuck in high school, where a new handsome guy shows up. Also, her best friend’s mad at her, and parents (probably) just don’t understand, and you know how it all goes. If the sequel goes the way of the first film, all formulas and tropes shall stay intact, but fans will nonetheless watch it happen.

From the synopsis:

Elle Evans (Joey King) just had the most romantic summer of her life with her reformed bad-boy boyfriend Noah Flynn (Jacob Elordi). But now Noah is off to Harvard, and Elle heads back to high school for her senior year. She’ll have to juggle a long-distance relationship, getting into her dream college with her best friend Lee (Joel Courtney), and the complications brought on by a close friendship with a handsome, charismatic new classmate named Marco (Taylor Zakhar Perez). When Noah grows close to a seemingly-perfect college girl (Maisie Richardson-Sellers), Elle will have to decide how much she trusts him and to whom her heart truly belongs.

The Kissing Booth 2 arrives on July 24.

It’s nice to know that some things stay the same, all the time, no matter what else is happening around them. The sun, for example. For the foreseeable future, you can bank on the sun rising every morning and burning yellow and hot in the sky. You can bank on pizza being delicious, too, even when it’s kind of bad, because pizza is tougher to destroy than any superhero, including Wolverine, a character whose whole gimmick is being impossible to destroy. And, if you’re the type of person who enjoys fancy but stressful period dramas that involve a murder or many murders, you can also bank on seeing Matthew Rhys looking just as miserable as hell on your television every couple years.

It’s happening again right now, every Sunday night, on HBO’s reimagined prequel-y version of Perry Mason. This version of the famous Raymond Burr character is not a lawyer, not yet, but an extremely hard-boiled private investigator instead, one who is usually drunk or hungover, one whose family farm is failing, one who manages to maintain a perfect “I’m not sleeping enough because of my demons, which I do not want to talk about, please pour the whiskey and leave the bottle” length of stubble on his face. He is also, as you probably know or have guessed by now, played by Matthew Rhys. Here are a few screencaps of Matthew Rhys as Perry Mason.

Have you ever in your entire life seen a more miserable looking sack of meat than this Perry Mason? Look at that face. He looks like he just found out his dog died, in every picture, multiple times in every episode, as though he keeps forgetting his beloved dog died and finds out again every couple hours, or as though he has a number of dogs that are getting systematically murdered by some deranged monster. The man has not had a good day in a number of days. Months. Years. I’m not entirely sure he’s ever had a good day, now that I think about it. It looks like it would physically hurt him to smile, just because the muscles that curl the edges up his lips out and up are probably so atrophied that they can’t bear the weight of the skin and tissue they’re trying to lift. He’s not a happy man. This is what I’m getting at.

Here are some more images of him looking hopelessly despondent.

I should note here that I’m bringing this up only because it’s true and because it fascinates me, not because it’s something that needs to be changed. Matthew Rhys plays a sad loser better than anyone on the planet. I don’t think it’s even all that close, really. A lot of it has to do with him being a terrific actor, which he is, and we’ll be discussing this with more depth shortly. Some of it is just the things he can do with his face. Look at his eyes in those pictures. Look at how sad and empty they are. His mouth dives into a frown so deep you’d need a submersible to retrieve it. Even his cheeks seem to hang off of his face whenever he wills them to, like he suddenly channeled a bulldog through sorcery. We all have gifts. This is his. He is not wasting it even a little.

In fact, let’s back up a bit, in two ways. Remember a few paragraphs ago when I said, “Have you ever in your entire life seen a more miserable looking sack of meat than this Perry Mason?” Well, you might have, provided you watched The Americans. The Americans was great. It was a show about two married Russian spies posing as an American family in the Beltway during the Cold War. It was also a show about the struggle between family and work and how sometimes doing what you think is right can make your life impossible. But primarily, it was about Matthew Rhys looking like a guy who had the will to live removed from his body every morning with some sort of giant, painful suction system.

Here are some screencaps of Matthew Rhys as Russian spy Philip Jennings in The Americans.

This doesn’t do it justice, but it’s a start. Philip Jennings was a defeated man in every way. It got to the point that I started doing a series of recap-style posts for the show titled “The Americans Anxiety Report,” in which I ranked characters and things from the show that made me anxious that week, and the entry for Philip Jennings was always just screencaps of his frowning face. I finally broke down and wrote an entire article titled “Philip Jennings Is The Saddest Man On Television.” No one argued with me about that article. Do you understand? I posted an article with a bold claim for a headline, on the internet, and no one argued with me about it. It might be the only thing the internet has ever agreed on.

And how could anyone disagree with it? Look at this series of screencaps from a conversation he had on the show.

The combination of face and dialogue is one of the most heartbreaking things you’ll ever see. There’s almost no way to make it sadder. The key word in that sentence, for the record, is “almost,” because this is where I inform you that he was saying those words to — and making that face at — his son, Henry, a sweet boy who just wanted to play hockey and tinker with computers. Devastating in every way.

Sometimes he was even sad in a disguise.

I don’t know why, but this bummed me out even more than when he was sad with his regular face. Kind of like seeing someone turn into a puddle of tears at the end of their own Halloween party. It happened a lot, too. He was sad in dozens of wigs and fake mustaches and outfits. The only time I can remember him being happy was when he put on cowboy boots and went line dancing with the employees of the travel agency he operated as a front. Think about that one. The only true joy he — a Russian spy trapped in a life he hated more and more every day — experienced in his whole tragic life was doing the single most stereotypically American thing possible. Even his joy is layered in sadness. Are you seeing my point yet?

It’s started crossing into movies, too, from the small screen to the big. He recently starred in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood as a reporter whose life is changed while working on a story about Mr. Rogers, played by Tom Hanks. Sounds great, right? It is! But his road to happiness has to start somewhere, and in this movie, it starts… here.

Do you want to know the craziest part of all this? The part that turns this whole exercise on its head a little bit? Matthew Rhys, King of the Hangdog Character, Undisputed Champion of Prestige Television Misery, is… a delightful man. An absolute giggly, silly goofball. I know this because I’ve seen The Wine Show, a European food and travel series that is available on Hulu in which he and countryman Matthew Goode gallivant all over the continent to learn about wine from a series of experts. It is, I promise, lovely. My favorite segment involves the two of them learning about ridiculous wine gizmos while doing awful James Bond accents. It happens every episode.

I don’t think my words are getting this across very well. I think the season one blooper reel will do a much better job.

My working theory is that the beard makes him happy.

A big part of me wants to see Matthew Rhys in the wackiest comedy you can imagine, a modern-day Dumb and Dumber, just to watch him cut loose for a couple hours. Another part of me — the wiser, more rational, much smaller part — isn’t so sure. Maybe if you do something better than anyone else in the world you should do that thing whenever you have the chance. There’s a brilliance here that the world deserves to see. Even if that brilliance is pure misery.

It’s settled. The king stays the king. A hug every now and then wouldn’t hurt, though.

Both Microsoft and Sony have offered glimpses at what their upcoming next generation consoles — the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5 — will deliver to gamers later this year. Back in May, Xbox held a gameplay showcase that introduced some of the titles coming to the Series X — albeit with not a ton of actual gameplay — and PlayStation held a similar event in June that gave a look at a new Spiderman title and more.

As we roll towards what would have been E3 season, we will be getting even more online events to show off new games and the next-gen consoles, starting with an Xbox Game Showcase on Thursday, July 23 at 9 a.m. PT. There will be plenty of anticipation for big announcements at this event, but we can already check off one big name that will have a prime spot, as the Halo account teased Halo Infinite gameplay will be part of the showcase.

The cinematic trailer for the game was part of the last Xbox showcase, and the gameplay offered up of Halo Infinite figures to be one of the centerpieces of this month’s event.

We’ll surely be getting more announcements on dates for various developer events in the near future, but for now you can go ahead and mark July 23 on your calendar.

Pharrell if officially linking up with Netflix for a new docuseries. The singer is the mastermind behind the upcoming series, Voices Of Fire, which will take an unscripted look at the rich community of gospel singers in his Virginia Beach hometown.

The new docuseries will center around Pharrell’s uncle, Bishop Ezekiel Williams, who is a well-respected musician and singer in Virginia. Voices Of Fire will follow Bishop Williams and a core team of influential gospel leaders as they seek out a group of the area’s most talented voices. Throughout the series, Bishop Williams and his fellow musicians aim to build an inspiring team of singers by finding those with diverse backstories of all ages and ethnicities.

Pharrell will serve as the Voices Of Fire executive producer through his media company, I Am Other. Along with working behind-the-scenes Pharrell will also briefly appear in front of the camera to assist his uncle’s search for talent. According to Variety, those close to Pharrell say the project inspires and is “just what we need right now.”

Pharrell announced Voices Of Fire Sunday alongside Bishop Williams. The announcement arrived during their digital appearance at this year’s Essence Festival as they discussed the intersection of art and faith.

Ever since starting his Young Money Radio podcast, Lil Wayne has gotten accustomed to being the interviewer rather than the subject, but gladly switched chairs for a new interview about the podcast with Variety magazine. While much of the exchange focuses on the podcast itself, Wayne does find a few moments to talk about other things important to him, including his charitable donations, teasing a potential new Carter album, and soul legend Betty Wright, who was a personal friend and inspiration to him.

Wayne goes so far as to call Wright “a mother” to him and describes how he came to know her music and its effect on him. “Ms. Betty was like a mom,” he said. “I became a fan as a kid because my mom would listen to her sh*t loud as f*ck in the crib while she’d be getting dressed. What stuck out was the talking on the records that Ms. B would so famously do. Another interesting and consistent fact about it all is that whoever played her songs knew every word of the talking part! As a kid, you’d have to sit there and have them try to act like Ms. B and talk to you like that. It obviously stuck with me. I met her when I moved to Miami, she was nothing but a mother ever since. Not only to me but my friends and my daughter as well. She’s more than missed by myself and a world of others. I have a lot to thank her for but I thank her most for my musical confidence! I can do anything.”

Of that possible new Carter entry, Wayne responds to a question about his favorite Carter album by hinting, “My favorite Carter album is the next one.”

Read Lil Wayne’s full interview with Variety here.