Month: September 2020

Bryan Cranston helped redefine TV dramas with his Emmy-winning performance as Walter White in AMC’s Breaking Bad, and now he’s back in his first lead television role since his iconic role as a high school chemistry teacher turned meth dealer.

In a Showtime limited series, Your Honor, Cranston once again plays a man who enters a world of crime and corruption to protect his family. Only this time, his character’s intentions are a little less relatable than mounting medical bills. In Your Honor, Cranston plays a judge who goes to great length to cover-up a hit-and-run by his teenage son.

Here’s the official synopsis:

“Your Honor” stars Cranston as Michael Desiato, a respected New Orleans judge whose teenage son, Adam (Hunter Doohan), is involved in a hit-and-run. Forced to cover up the crime in order to protect his son, Michael finds himself in a high-stakes game of lies, deceit, and impossible choices when it’s revealed the person his son killed is the son of Jimmy Baxter (Michael Stuhlbarg), the much-feared head of a crime family. The supporting cast also includes Carmen Ejogo, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Sofia Black-D’Elia, Amy Landecker, Margo Martindale, Lorraine Toussaint, Chet Hanks, Lamar Johnson, and Lilli Kay.

While Your Honor marks a long-awaited return to the crime thriller genre for Cranston, the actor may be making a more specific return very soon. During an interview to promote The One and Only Ivan on Disney+, Cranston revealed to Collider that he’s game to reprise the role of Walter White in the final season of Better Call Saul.

“I would do it in a second,” Cranston said. “But it hasn’t happened yet, I can tell you, and we’ll see. I don’t know. There’s one more season to go and we’ll see what happens!”

(Via Showtime)

Knicks legend John Starks is no stranger to the grind. Well before he was an undrafted rookie trying to make his way in the NBA, Starks was an unrecruited high school prospect with just a single season of organized basketball under his belt trying to figure out how he was going to pay his way through college.

Flash forward a few years, and not only had Starks carved out his niche in the NBA, he would go on to help define a legendary era of Knicks basketball in the 90s, one that was a reflection of the type of toughness and resilience that raised him from obscurity and took him all the way to the bright lights of Madison Square Garden.

Still, it was those early struggles before NBA stardom that influenced Starks the most and have defined his post-basketball career. Since retiring in 2002, he has devoted his time and money to helping young students in financial need reach their educational goals through the John Starks Foundation, which provides grants and scholarships in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Oklahoma based on need and academic achievement.

We caught up with Starks recently to talk about his foundation, the NBA Playoffs, and our shared admiration of his spiritual successor, Luguentz Dort.

Let’s talk about the John Starks Foundation. You guys do such amazing things with that. Can you tell us a little about the events you have coming up?

Yeah, we have our 25th annual John Starks Foundation Golf Tournament at Tamarack [Country Club in Greenwich, CT]. Right now, we have online auction items that the public can bid on and you can go to info at JohnStarks.org to find out more information about the auction items as well as the golf tournament itself. But we’ve been doing this since 1994. It’s been great to be able to provide scholarship money for graduating seniors in the tri-state area. We’ve been dealing with some incredible young people that we try to give the opportunity to go out and start their future. I should also mention that our sponsors have been terrific for the last 25, 26 years now. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic year our sponsors have been incredible by sticking beside us and truly holding up to their commitment to help these young people.

What inspired you to start this foundation?

The inspiration behind it is because I had to do the same thing coming out of high school. I wasn’t recruited or offered a scholarship. I only played one year of high school basketball, my junior year. So I wasn’t offered any scholarships. So in order for me to go to college, I had to basically do exactly what a lot of these young folks do — apply for scholarship money and find ways to be able to pay for college. And so when I got a position playing for the Knicks and my agent asked me “What do you want to do in order to give back?” I thought about my situation coming out of high school. “You know, I want to start a foundation to raise money for graduating teens in the tri-state area as well as back in South Oklahoma where I’m from to provide scholarship money for that.”

Obviously, you have a lot going on with the foundation and the upcoming events. Have you had any time to watch the playoffs? What’s been the most exciting part for you?

I’ve been watching it all. The play has been terrific. You know what I mean? The games have been to terrific, even though the fans are not there. The intensity is still there. You can still feel the passion, and the quality of play has been very good. Not having the fans there probably helped some players that normally, on a court, probably would be nervous, wouldn’t play well. But these guys are locked in. The shooting has been terrific. The coaching has been terrific. It has been a lot of fun. It’s exciting to see a series like Boston and Toronto. Everybody was counting Toronto out. The series was tied going to a game seven. The Lakers series should be a good one. And Denver and the Clippers series. It has been fun to watch.

I’m glad you mentioned that because I wanted to ask you, just from a player’s perspective, how do you think it changes your mindset when you’re in an open gym like that? You hear a lot of guys talk about it being a shooter’s gym. Would that have been different for you as a player?

Well, you said it right. It does turn into a shooter’s gym. You don’t have the crowd, the distraction back there. It’s just like going into a regular gym. And the rim seems so much closer to you. That’s why you see a lot of guys shooting the ball very well. It’s dark, dark behind it. So it’s a lot of fun. You know what I mean? I could see that these guys probably had a lot of time to work on their games and work on their jump shot. It’s been good quality. And obviously they getting a lot of rest. And that’s how you see the energy level so high.

Watching the OKC series, I was thinking about Lu Dort and how much he reminded me of you. I don’t know if you had much of a chance to watch him…

Yeah, I’ve seen him. I watched him play. He’s a player that came out of nowhere. I think he went to Arizona State, I believe. And he just made a name for himself during the playoffs. That’s where you can make your name and get noticed and come up big. And the way he played and the way he defended James Harden, it was just amazing to see a young player like that.

He went out there and played with no fear. I like to see these guys get a chance to show their stuff in big moments. I think that’s probably hurt a lot of guys in college, because they never got a chance to play during the tournament. So a lot of them go unnoticed. But this kid Dort, he made his name during the playoff.

I thought it was also really telling that he was able to have a rough game there, I guess a rough two games, and then completely bounced back from that. It’s rare for young players to be able to withstand that kind of pressure and then recover from it.

Yeah. That’s true. That’s true. And like I say, in the bubble, you don’t really have the fans there to keep that type of play going. So you get a chance to gather yourself mentally and get refocused. And he definitely refocused and played very well.

You were the first player to make 200 threes in a season. And you shot them at a pretty high clip, which was somewhat revolutionary for the time. What do you think about the way three-point shooting has changed the game today?

It’s amazing because the way these guys shoot the ball without any fear of getting pulled out the game from coming down the court one on five and then jack up a three. I could never, and players back then could never do that. You’d be on that bench so quick. And like you say, it’s very accepted, acceptable, I should say, launching them like that. And Houston probably launches them more than any other team. I’m curious to see what their stats will be at the end of the season as far as how many threes they took. But when you don’t have to worry about that type of thing, it frees your mind up. So you’re going to become a better shooter.

With so much social unrest around the country, the players really banded together to make a statement and stage a boycott a couple of weeks ago to try to make something happen. What did you think about the way they handled that situation?

I thought they did a good job of handling it. They truly stepped up at a point in time when you have to say enough is enough. And they wanted to bring attention to the situation that’s going on out here in society. And I thought they handled it very well. To their credit, along with the NBA, they sat down to talk and they came back together. And kept things going. And the most beautiful thing is that all sports responded to that. And so they ain’t just wandering alone by themselves. Every sport stepped up, and that mattered. And that’s good to see. That’s what it’s going to take — a collective effort to get change.

The NBA has really taken on a leadership role in so many way, and you see how other sports leagues and just the general public follow their lead on a lot of things. What do you think about how that has evolved over the years?

That’s been good. You have guys like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade when he was playing, Chris Paul, Carmelo. They led the charge on that. Remember at the ESPY awards where they all stood together? The young players now feel like that’s their role in society. Not just to be a basketball player, but when things are not right you should be able to speak up and try to make a change for the better. That’s going to make this great country a lot better. So it’s great that the NBA has taken that role, and it’s great that other sports and other athletes are following.

The Last Dance was such a huge cultural phenomenon this year. And you and the Knicks were such a big part of that era. You had so many intense battles with Michael and the Bulls. That all time great dunk, just going back and I hadn’t thought about those days in a while. What was it like for you to relive some of those moments or go down memory lane?

It was fun. You know what I mean? I really, truly enjoyed The Last Dance. I thought it was well put together. It’s great to see Michael sit there and really go over everything that happened throughout his career, basically, and throughout that great Bulls run. And it was great to see that they paid homage to the 90s. That was fun years during that time to be playing basketball because the way the game was played, and the physicality of it is what made it so fun. And the intensity level was so high. It was great to see that they did a good job of showing that.

There have been a lot of changes going on with the Knicks. What are you most excited about for the future of the franchise?

Well, I love where we at as far as our direction. You got incredible people in charge that know basketball. And I think our young players are definitely growing. Obviously, it’s going to be a big year, especially in the draft, as well as the free agent market. And so we’re excited. And I think we’re headed in the right direction now. The league is so much younger now.

So you really have to go through your draft, making sure that you pick the right player that’s going to fit the style of play that you’re going to play. You know [Tom] Thibodeau that was a great hire. And so our scouting department is top notch. We’ve been through rough times as we all know. But we’re moving in the right direction. So that’s what I’m excited about.

One of the challenges of livestream concerts is that part of the appeal of traditional concerts is being in the room. Sharing the physical space with the artist and other fans all enjoying an exciting communal experience is a paramount part of the experience. That actually kind of makes Gorillaz the perfect group to thrive in this medium, since they (meaning 2-D, Murdoc, Noodle, and Russel) don’t exist in physical real-life space. Now, finally, they’re doing it: Gorillaz (joined by Damon Albarn) have announced a trio of livestream concerts, “Song Machine Live.” The performances will be their first shows in two years.

There will be three broadcasts between December 12 and 13: One targeted towards viewers in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand; one for North and South America; and one for the UK, Europe, and Africa. Tickets for each show (which are on sale now) cost $15, or $30 for access to all three livestreams, or $40 for a four-pack of tickets that comes with a “virtual party pack including digital backgrounds, screensaver, a custom countdown to the show and a pre-show playlist.”

It hasn’t been announce what guests will be joining the broadcast (if any), but the group has a large pool to draw from. Featuring on Song Machine songs are St. Vincent, Schoolboy Q, Elton John, Beck, Robert Smith, and many others.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The WNBA announced its first three major awards for the 2020 regular season on Thursday, as A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces was named league MVP after leading her team to the No. 1 overall seed in the playoffs in her third season. In addition, Cheryl Reeve of the Minnesota Lynx earned Coach of the Year honors for the third time in her career, while No. 16 overall pick Crystal Dangerfield, also of the Lynx, became the franchise’s second consecutive Rookie of the Year.

Wilson beat out Breanna Stewart of the Storm for MVP honors this year, as Las Vegas narrowly beat out Seattle for the first seed in the playoffs on the final day of the regular season. Stewart, the 2018 MVP, missed the final two games of the season, which may have pushed Wilson over the edge among a national panel of 47 reporters and broadcasters. Wilson averaged 20.5 points, 8.5 rebounds, and 2.0 blocks this season as a dominant force inside for the Aces.

This trophy is the latest of many for the 24-year-old, who won an NCAA championship and the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player in 2017 as well as Rookie of the Year just two seasons ago. Wilson also was an All-Star in each of her first two WNBA seasons. After All-Star center Liz Cambage opted out and starting guard Kelsey Plum rupture her Achilles’ tendon, Wilson led the thinned-out Aces to an 18-4 record in the WNBA Bubble, receiving 43 of 47 possible first-place votes.

Chicago Sky guard Courtney Vandersloot, who set a new WNBA record with 10.0 assists per game this season, was the only player besides Wilson and Stewart to earn a first-place vote.

Reeve won a tight race for Coach of the Year, earning 25 of 47 votes — edging out Vegas coach Bill Laimbeer who got 17 votes– after leading the Lynx to the fourth seed in the league following the departure of the legendary Seimone Augustus and in spite of prolonged absences by 2019 All-Stars Sylvia Fowles and Odyssey Sims. Among those that Reeve built around with those two out this season was Crystal Dangerfield, who earned Rookie of the Year honors after averaging 16.2 points and 3.6 assists per game, starting 19 games for Minnesota, in a sensational inaugural campaign for the 16th overall selection.

The former UConn star becomes the first second-round draft pick in league history to win Rookie of the Year. Dangerfield ran away with the ROY race, taking home 44 of the 47 first place votes. Fourth overall pick Chennedy Carter of the Atlanta Dream finished second with two votes, while Satou Sabally of the Dallas Wings received one vote.

The awards were announced Thursday afternoon on ESPN’s The Jump.

Rhode Island rapper Gizmo rages out in a vein-popping performance of his song “100 Eyes” for UPROXX Sessions. Coming from his Argus Panoptes EP, named for the many-eyed giant in Greek mythology, “100 Eyes” sees Gizmo threatening would-be enemies with overkill, warning them “I don’t do eye for an eye / F*ck all that sh*t, bitch, I’m leaving you blind.”

With metal-esque, violent imagery and an angry delivery, Gizmo might push some folks back on their heels. Fortunately, judging from the “f*ck racists” t-shirt he wore to the studio on shoot day, it seems that aggression is directed towards a very specific target. Gizmo’s over-the-top, gruesome imagery finds its roots in the horrorcore subgenre kickstarted by The RZA’s Gravediggas group in the early ’90s and whose adherents include Eminem and a young Tyler The Creator.

Watch Gizmo’s UPROXX Sessions performance of “100 Eyes” above.

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s new performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too..

Jerry Harris, the breakout student from Netflix’s Emmy-nominated cheerleading series, Cheer, was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of producing child pornography.

He is accused of “enticing a 13-year-old he met on social media to send him photos and videos, even meeting up with the boy at a cheerleading event for oral sex,” according to the Daily Beast. If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison.

Harris’ arrest comes after a USA Today report that Harris was under investigation by the FBI for soliciting sexually explicit photos and sex from minors, including twin teenage brothers who were 13 years old at the time; Harris was 19. The Daily Beast acquired the criminal complaint, which alleges that “one of the boys sent Harris ‘over a dozen photographs and videos’ between December 2018 and March 2020, including shots showing his ‘penis and anus.’ In turn, Harris allegedly sent the boy photos of his penis, as well as a video of him masturbating.” Harris initially denied the allegations before reportedly admitting that he had exchanged the sexually explicit photos with the minor:

The teenager told authorities he met up with 21-year-old Harris at a cheerleading event both were attending, where Harris “solicited oral sex” from the boy in a bathroom. The teenager also “reported a second attempt by Harris to meet… for an in-person sexual encounter when Minor-1 was at a cheer competition that Harris also attended.”

Harris is expected to make a federal courtroom appearance in Chicago on Thursday.

(Via The Daily Beast & USA Today)

Aaron Dessner found himself in a new world when he worked with Taylor Swift on her revered new album Folklore. It turns out that she may have found her way into his world as well: In a new Billboard interview, Dessner suggests that Swift may make an appearance on upcoming material from his Big Red Machine project. At the very least, it seems like she offered Dessner her thoughts on it.

Dessner was asked if there was any material of his own that he didn’t want to offer to Swift when they worked together, and he responded, “Definitely. It was more that there were some songs that are specifically one thing or another. The Big Red Machine stuff is quite far along — and actually, Taylor has been amazing [at giving feedback]. I’ve shared all of that stuff with her, and she has been really helpful.”

That prompted a follow-up question about whether or not Swift will be included on a Big Red Machine song in one way or another, and Dessner answered with a laugh, “I can’t really say, so I guess I’ll say neither yes nor no.”

Swift’s album actually offers somewhat of a preview of what a Swift/Big Red Machine collaboration could sound like, as Justin Vernon co-wrote and features on the Dessner-produced “Exile.”

He also talked about his initial approach to collaborating with Swift, saying, “Well, I’ve definitely listened to all her records — I do that from time to time, just binge-listen to certain things — and I could tell she’s a savant. She’s such a performer, but so gifted as a writer. She told me upfront, ‘Don’t try to be anyone other than yourself,’ because she was really gravitating toward the emotion in the music. She didn’t want me to try and be Max Martin or Jack Antonoff. I didn’t go obsess over ‘Shake It Off’ or something. I had a lot of music that I’d been writing when she approached me, and I just sent a folder because she asked. Hours later, [she sent back] ‘Cardigan.’ It was an unusual vein that we struck.”

Read the full interview here.

With the internet aflutter with those trying to preorder their Playstation 5’s in the past 12 hours, it made sense to wonder when exactly the new generation Xbox models were going to come out. Thanks to a report by Kotaku, we no longer have to do so.

According to the gaming website, both the Series S and the Series X will be available for preorder at 11 AM EST/8 AM PST on September 22nd (a date we’ve known about for a little bit) at every major retail website including Amazon and Walmart. Which for those who missed out on Sony’s next gen console, makes this likely the last chance for gamers to get their hands on a next-gen console at launch.

The fragmented release of the Playstation 5 preorders allowed Microsoft to throw a jab on Twitter about allowing everyone the chance to preorder. The universal release allows gamers the chance to prepare instead of playing whack-a-mole on retail sites.

It’s fair to ask that because there is a concrete time for everyone to preorder their consoles on the internet, does this make it more likely that bots will eat up most of the preorders online? Or will this buck the trend that we’ve seen everywhere else on the internet and will regular people get a fair shot at preordering one? We’ll find out on the 22nd, and may the odds ever be in your favor if you’re chasing one of the new Xbox consoles.

The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S are respectively priced at $499.99 and $299.99 and officially launch on November 10th.

Tucker Carlson, who recently blamed Lindsey Graham for Trump confessing his COVID-19 lies, is fuming mad after his latest pandemic report put him in the crosshairs of fact-checkers on Facebook and Instagram. A video of the Fox News host promoting a conspiracy theory that the coronavirus is man-made is now flagged with warning labels by the two social media giants, and Carlson is not happy.

“Facebook has censored our video with a Chinese whistleblower. Big tech wants control over the facts you see,” Carlson griped on his Wednesday night episode.

However, the facts are not on Carlson’s side. The controversial video from Carlson’s Tuesday night broadcast was captioned, “Chinese whistle-blower to Tucker: This virus was made in a lab & I can prove it,” which set off internal triggers inside Facebook as part of the platform’s ongoing initiative to prevent the spread of misinformation about COVID-19. Via Variety:

On the warning labels placed over Carlson’s posts on Facebook and Instagram, the company links to three fact-checking articles on the issue: two from FactCheck.org — “Baseless Conspiracy Theories Claim New Coronavirus Was Bioengineered” and “Social Media Posts Spread Bogus Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory”— and one from USA Today, “Coronavirus not man-made or engineered but its origin remains unclear.” The consensus among pandemic experts is that COVID-19 appears to have originated as a bat-borne virus in China before it mutated and jumped to humans.

While Facebook and Instagram took a pro-active stance against Carlson, the video is still actively shared on Twitter with no warning whatsoever. As for YouTube, there is simply a link at the bottom of the video directing users to the Center for Disease Control’s website. There is no mention of the YouTubed video containing misinformation, or that it promotes a conspiracy theory published by non-profit groups with ties to far-right figure Steve Bannon.

(Via Variety)

It’s often been said that pop music is formulaic — or, more recently algorithmic, because the zeitgeist — but when a Twitter user posted a video of himself playing songs from The Weeknd on a mini-piano, users on the app went nuts debating just how true of the Canadian singer’s catalog that aphorism is.

The user in question was Andrew Huang, a self-declared “music human” who is best-known for his “Song Challenge” video series on YouTube (ironically, he too is Canadian, from Ottawa). Known for making music with unconventional tools and techniques, Huang posted a video playing the chord progressions of songs from The Weeknd’s catalog, positing in the caption, “Every Weeknd song uses the same 4 notes.” The songs played included “Tell Your Friends” and “Often” from Beauty Behind The Madness, “Reminder” and “Starboy” from Starboy, and “Heartless” from After Hours.

It didn’t take long for fans to rev up their best arguments for whether the video was accurate, inaccurate, good, or bad. A number of replies explained why The Weeknd does this in musical theory terms, with one clarifying that ‘the man found his key signature” and pointing out “some Broadway singers even have parts written specifically for them in their prefered key signatures.”

Others had some fun with the conceit, using it to make fun of both pop music and its critics, while others used it to criticize what they perceived as a lack of songwriting growth from The Weeknd, despite his ever-increasing popularity. There’s a pretty good pun in there too.

Still others just used the opportunity to marvel at the talent and hidden complexity of songwriters like The Weeknd and the fact that they are able to create so much diversity with just a handful of notes (there are only so many keys, chords, and sounds the human brain can interpret as music, yet we’vve been reinterpreting them for centuries and they all sound different — mostly). Meanwhile, one responder summed up the hype in one clever observation, remarking that while Huang never gave commentary on this tendency by The Weeknd, Twitter commenters have rivaled songwriters in their ability to turn basically anything into an argument.

Check out more replies below.