Rami Malek’s No Time to Die antagonist Safin has been called a “supervillain,” “the one that really gets under Bond’s skin,” and “a nasty piece of work.” But we still don’t know much about the character, including whether Malek’s playing a classic James Bond villain. A new featurette centered on Safin doesn’t answer that question, but it does provide some depth to the character, along with new footage from the frequently-delayed film.

“What I really wanted from Safin was to make him unsettling,” Malek (in his first major role since winning the Oscar for Bohemian Rhapsody) said in the video above, “thinking of himself as being heroic… Safin is a formidable adversary. James Bond has to adapt to him.” Director Cary Joji Fukunaga added, “What he wants and what he’s willing to do makes him a very frightening character, both personally to Bond, but also on a global level.” Safin is a real setback for the creepy broken mask community.

Here’s more on No Time to Die:

In No Time to Die, James Bond has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help. The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology.

No Time to Die (hopefully) opens on November 20.

Chicken McNugget body pillows? Metal lunch boxes? Burger-patterned ties? Travis Scott’s McDonald’s merch includes some pretty strange stuff. While the Houston rapper’s brand collaboration has resulted in all the usual, expected pieces like sweatshirts, T-shirts, posters, and the like, there are also some eyebrow-raising items that toe the line between inspired and flat-out insane.

Of course, Travis has proven over the past few years that anything with his name on it sells like hotcakes (pun intended), from tickets to his Astroworld Festival, which sold out in a day, to his redesigned Air Jordan shoes, which last sold for over $1,500 on StockX. So, it should come as no surprise that many of the more unusual items of the first drop completely sold out even before the second drop items became available.

Oddly enough, many of the more “normal” pieces are still available, so if you have a little extra cash lying around, there are worse ways to splurge. Some of these things are actually useful and/or stylish, even if most are just an exercise in brand allegiance, while others confused fans as much as the whole concept confused some McDonald’s employees.

But what should you spend your hard-earned dollars on? Here’s a handy guide to the best, worst, and weirdest pieces from Travis Scott’s first two McDonald’s merchandise drops. Get them while they’re hot — or before they hit the secondary market, where the markups are sure to be the same price as a ticket to the next Astroworld Fest.

The Best

Apple Pie Hoodie

The Apple Pie Hoodie is among the most wearable of the apparel available on the site, with a small, subtle breast logo patch and a dope slogan printed on a slant across the back. Sometimes, simpler is better — which is kind of the point of McDonald’s in the first place, right?

Cactus Jack All American Jersey/Shorts/’92 Basketball

One of McDonald’s strongest non-food staples has been its annual All American Basketball Tournament showcasing the best high-school players in the country — many of whom have gone on to play in the NBA. The jersey/short/ball set evokes the nostalgia the whole merch line is shooting for, downplaying the dorkiness of dressing up like a total fanboy by grounding it in this cool real-world event.

Cactus Jack Breakfast Boxers/Illustration Shorts

I’m a sucker for patterned boxers and shorts, and these guys hit just the right nostalgia spot, bringing back their original mascot, Speedee (he was their burger-headed ambassador long before ol’ Ronald and the rest of the allegedly plagiarized McDonaldland characters — this is a thing; look it up).

CJ Arches Sock Pack

Socks are a staple item in any wardrobe, and these ones work excellently as that and as an accent piece without screaming, “Please beat me up and take my lunch money, which I obviously have way too much of!” Pair them with the Coffee Bean Air Jordan 1s and sit back and bask in the glowing adoration of teens and twenty-somethings as you wait in line for that Big Mac and Sprite.

The Worst

Action Figure Series T-Shirt

Honestly, the design on all the Action Figure T-Shirts are pretty fly across the board. But why on Earth are they putting the action figure on shirts instead of, y’know… SELLING IT?!?!

Cactus Arches Outline Denim Pants

These are… jeans. Overpriced jeans that have the slightly tweaked McDonald’s logo on the back pocket. Sure, the entire collection is meant to turn you into a walking billboard for fast food, but 99 percent of the people you meet wearing these will probably just think you really, really like Quarter Pounders — if they can even see the logo in the first place.

CJ Burger Tie

Absolutely not. There is no situation in which a tie is warranted that will also allow you to get away with wearing this monstrosity. Unless you’re one of those “fun” teachers that the students are all secretly afraid of or a dentist, keep this thing out of your closet and way the hell away from your neck.

Sesame T-Shirt

There isn’t much to recommend these shirts. The design is pretty bland and depending on your outerwear, will probably mark you more as a McDonald’s employee than a Travis Scott stan from a distance.

The Weirdest

Action Figure Life Size Cutout

Again, why are they selling this, but not the action figure depicted on it?? Whose mans was responsible for this??

CJ House Slippers

House slippers are tight. As a native of Compton and the neighboring Long Beach area, I used to see rather a lot of these out and about. There’s just something cool about someone deciding to be so very cozy outdoors. There’s … nothing cool about these. They’re made up to evoke Ronald McDonald’s clown shoes, only the laces are fries. That’s… uhhhh… nice. I guess. If you copped these, do us all a favor and stick to wearing them in the house.

I’m Lovin’ It Lunch Tray

To be honest, there’s nothing wrong with this, I just have a hard time picturing why anyone would want this. It seems… sort of useful? But, then, if you’re using it at home, shouldn’t you have tablecloths or some nice placemats? Are you bringing this with you to McDonald’s? They have trays there. Heck, if you really need a tray at home… they’re kinda free. I’m not saying you should, just … you can. If you really, really want to.

Nugget Body Pillow

The item that 90 percent of the internet seems to be most fixated on is actually the best thing in the whole collection. It’s useful. It’s cute. It’s funny. It’s not obviously branded with Travis Scott or Cactus Jack logos, so those memes won’t quite apply to you. But it is just plain weird. A body pillow shaped like a McNugget? Who thought of this? I don’t know, but one thing is for sure; at the pitch meeting they were almost certainly… the highest in the room.

Thanks, I’ll be here all week. Unlike this merch, which is selling out fast. Check out the full collection here.

Taylor Swift’s main focus is music, but she’s involved herself in endeavors outside of that as well. For instance, she’s done some acting (some of which was pretty weird), and there’s another potential film on the horizon. At the very least, a Swiftie had an idea for a movie based on Swift’s music, and it caught her attention.

Twitter user @TSlifestyle13 shared his idea for a movie based on a Folklore song, writing, “The Last Great American Dynasty would make an incredible movie. The story is timeless yet unique, the music would be exquisite, and it already has the perfect title. As for the cast: Blake Lively (Rebekah), Ryan Reynolds (Bill), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (neighbor).”

Ferguson was a fan idea, as he quote-tweeted it over the weekend and added, “Ok I’m avail for this.” Reynolds then responded with a reference to some ill-fated lyrics, writing, “But Bill’s heart… ?” Swift herself then chimed in, expressing her admiration for the idea: “not trying to be The Loudest Woman This Town Has Ever Seen but… I LOVE THIS.”

Folklore, naturally, has done quite well since its release. Earlier this month, the album helped Swift tie a long-standing record for the most weeks spent at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 among female artists.

HBO’s Lovecraft Country is ambitious and astounding and will undoubtedly blow your expectations away. Created by Misha Green, who’s working with Matt Ruff’s 1950s-set dark-fantasy novel as source material, the show counts horror visionary Jordan Peele and sci-fi maestro J.J. Abrams as executive producers. The show is full of literary and musical references, along with monsters, both in-your-face and and figurative; we’ll discuss the resulting symbolism on a weekly basis.

From the start, Lovecraft Country has gone gloriously overboard with the “episodic” label: the monster-chomping and cult-ritual episodes, the Poltergeist and Indiana Jones send-ups, and now, the deal-with-the-Devil story. It’s not an anthology series, but the episodes kinda feel that way while joyously jarring us with rapid tonal shifts. Hey, no one can accuse this show of not keeping viewers on their toes. We can guess at some of the reveals on the way, yet the presentation of those reveals end up being something else.

This week, the “Strange Case” episode follows up on Ruby’s apparent partnership with William and emerges with some consequential revelations, in addition to what’s going on with Montrose. I will get a little bit spoiler-y about the Lovecraft Country novel, so be forewarned, but let’s get on with the two most WTF transformations — oh, those gory visuals and sound effects — of the week.

Yep, Christina and William are the same person.

A lot of people guessed the blonde duo’s oneness along the way. It could be argued that this was a poorly kept secret, but I don’t see it that way because, even after about 800 hints, the writers delivered this transformation in the most unexpected (and graphic) way: with Christina emerging from the sloughed-off skin of William.

We knew that Christina was into the spell-making thing, so the magic potion seems (by the standards of this show) logical enough. But a magic potion with a transformation that forces one to literally tear their way out of their host-skin? Jesus.

A lot of stuff’s happening here. Ruby’s finding out that she’s actually been sleeping with Christina, for one thing. Yet the nature of William’s existence remains a semi-mystery. That’s where the show heads off into some uncharted territory because neither Christina nor William exist in Matt Ruff’s novel. Instead, Samuel Braithwaite had a son named Caleb, who did a lot of what Christina does (the ceremony rigging, the transfer of money/the Winthrop House to Leti), but the gender-flipping adds new elements to the cult dynamic. Christina’s got an ax to grind for being held down due to being a woman, and she’s clearly a feminist. She’s not overtly racist like her father and the cult, but Atticus suspects that she wants to decode the missing Book of Names pages to wipe out Black America with nefarious spells, much like Titus did with Yahima’s people.

As for William? He may actually exist as a separate entity (I’ll get to that theory soon) when Christina’s not inhabiting his body. What’s also interesting about William being inserted into this series is that the real-life William Braithwaite was an African-American professor, author, and critic who helped helm the revival of American poetry in the early 20th century. He focused upon publishing Harlem Renaissance poets by founding his own publishing house, and his business partner happened to be romantically involved with (the virulently racist) H.P. Lovecraft.

This history may or may not tie into William’s real nature (enemy, ally, or something else?), or that of Christina, but it suggests that their intent isn’t cut-and-dried. And as for my further theory on William, yeah, I suspect he exists as a separate entity. After all, Christina told Ruby that Chicago PD Captain Lancaster tried to kill William. We could view that as Christina simply manipulating Ruby into planting a relic in the captain’s office, and hell, that might be true. But there’s a good chance that William is somewhere else, and we simply don’t know where yet. Here’s why…

Ruby is Hillary, who is Dell.

Remember Dell, the Dog Whistle Lady from the village near Ardham?

She’s back (as I guessed that she would be), but she’s no longer Dell.

Weeks ago, Leti knocked Dell out in the cell that imprisoned Montrose. Her body is now — through the power of that funky potion — the vessel for Ruby to appear as “Hillary” in Chicago. Through Hillary, Ruby receives confirmation that whiteness is the only currency she needs to gain almost anything she desires, and the show makes that case well. Yet in the book, Dell was still alive (although incapacitated, which might tie into Ruby wondering what’s happening in William’s basement). And that’s why I suspect that the “real” William is hanging around somewhere as well.

Wouldn’t it be a total trip if Christina’s whole plan to decode the missing pages was to whip up a spell where the transformations weren’t quite so excruciating? I realize that Lovecraft Country has bigger fish to fry, but damn, I still think that spell would be worth chasing down as well.

As for Ruby, she did a number on Mr. Hughes. While transforming, she executed a rape-avenger manuever akin to Lisbeth Salander’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo revenge on her rapist. This takes Lovecraft Country into dicier territory. Yes, Mr. Hughes did attempt to rape Tamara, a Black employee, while (disgustingly) insisting, “Just let me smell it.” And Ruby, uh, succeeded at raping Mr. Hughes with a high-heeled shoe, which was quite visceral. I expect there to be discussion on whether the scene went too far (with people feeling more conflicted than while watching monsters-eating-baddies).

Enough gore; here’s another transformation.

Montrose v. Himself:

Montrose is nursing a few head wounds, but other than that, he’s physically fine. Internally? That’s another matter, but he’s feeling (overall) better than last week. We receive confirmation of Montrose’s repressed homosexuality, which is something that Tree had suggested. Of course, Tree also (falsely) claimed to have slept with Leti in high school, but Tree’s gossip ended up being true on the Montrose end. We see him with a lover, and he attends a drag show — all after Atticus nearly beat his dad to a pulp.

That Montrose killed Yahima now takes on new layers, when his motive last week appeared to be one of two things: (1) Protecting Atticus; (2) Carrying out some sort of spell while possibly possessed. At this point, we can probably discard the latter angle, but Montrose is clearly traumatized by what he’s witnessed throughout Black U.S. history. Seeing him start a fire and snarl about how it “smells like Tulsa” takes things back to his suggested witnessing of the 1921 Race Massacre went down, including the bombing of Black Wall Street. Montrose also clearly nurses a hefty dose of self-loathing, which may have given him additional fuel (beyond Yahima’s ability to translate the scroll) to murder Yahima, given that the Two-Spirit entity presented as a trans person.

Loose Ends:

– What’s up with that woman who Atticus keeps contacting in South Korea? And on a related note, who’s paying for those long-distance charges? Series writer Shannon M. Houston is wondering the same thing.

– How will the police shenanigans further develop? Did you catch this moment, by chance? Also, Christina pushed Ruby to plant that relic in Captain Lancaster’s office (he worked with Hiram), and Ruby discovered far more than anticipated. That man in the closet might have been the most vomit-inducing part of the episode. That’s saying a lot.

– When will we see Hippolyta again? George’s widow is searching for answers, and she’s also got Hiram’s orrery, which is apparently the key to unlocking his time machine. Hopefully, we’ll find out more answers to that soon. In the meantime, Atticus is feverishly working to decode the scrolls (in a house that sits above the tunnels) in between getting it on with Leti and punching his dad. “Strange Case” was a very strange episode!

HBO’s ‘Lovecraft Country’ airs Sundays at 9:00pm EST.

Since breaking free of the “that guy from Twilight” label, Robert Pattinson has played a lighthouse keeper, an explorer looking for a lost city in the Amazon, a bank robber on the run, and a… scarf tycoon in Tenet? (I have not seen Tenet.) In The Devil All the Time, his new Netflix movie co-starring Tom Holland as a good ol’ boy turned sinner, he was cast as a reverend. That sounds normal compared to a space criminal, but because this is Robert Pattinson we’re talking about, there’s nothing normal about his performance.

When asked by Esquire UK where Pattinson looked for inspiration to play Reverend Preston Teagardin (fantastic name), director Antonio Campos replied, “We looked at a lot of different YouTube videos of evangelical preachers and also the pop-stars of the time, like listening to interviews with Elvis and hearing the way he would talk. Then Rob’s own madness; he had his own process and was on his own consuming a lot of different references. I didn’t really hear the accent until we started to shoot, he showed up in character and showed me Teagardin for the first time.” Pattinson didn’t stay in character throughout the entire shoot, but “it was like he would kind of zero in and be in it. The performance is almost closer to a possession than it is a performance,” Campos said.

Boyd Crowder would be proud.

The Devil All the Time, which also stars Bill Skarsgård, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Sebastian Stan, Haley Bennett, Eliza Scanlen, and Mia Wasikowska, premieres on Netflix on September 16.

(Via Esquire)

By now, you’re most certainly aware of how Chris Evans’ weekend went. He accidentally posted a very private photo (and a puzzlingly-included meme including his face) onto Instagram. Who knows if that image was actually of Chris Evans, and the photo swiftly disappeared. Yet the damage was done, and the Internet was “Oh Captain, my Captain”-ing all over the place. This has gone on for a few days and will eventually pass, but oh boy, you gotta feel for Chris Evans in the aftermath.

Fellow Avengers star Mark Ruffalo attempted to make his friend feel better about the mishap with a “silver lining” tweet, which may have made things more awkward. He really was attempting to give an assist, but as TV writer and podcaster Ira Madison III pointed out, Ruffalo certainly could have texted Evans rather than publicly publish the sentiment. And he even tagged Evans, which was double-awkward. In contrast, Chris’ younger brother, Scott, emerged on Sunday with a more subtle reaction.

“Was off social media for the day yesterday,” Scott wrote, fully knowing what he was doing. “So. What’d I miss?”

Simple and effective. And as one Twitter user put it in a response, this might be “the MOST ‘little brother’ tweet of all time.”

Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” has proven to be a tremendous success, and now it is racking up even more achievements. Today, Billboard announced their new Global 200 chart and revealed that its first No. 1 song is “WAP.”

Alongside the Global 200, Billboard is also introducing the Global Excl. US chart, which is similar to the Global 200 but, as the name suggests, excludes US streaming and sales data. Maluma’s “Hawái” has the honor of being the first track to top the Global Excl. US chart.

Billboard describes the charts in a series of tweets, writing, “For the first time, @billboard is launching two authoritative charts ranking the top songs globally. The new weekly charts, the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. US, are based on worldwide streams and download sales. The Billboard Global 200 is inclusive of all songs worldwide, while the Billboard Global Excl. US focuses on all territories outside the United States. Both charts collate sales and streaming data from more than 200 territories, with rankings based on a weighted formula incorporating official-only streams on both subscription and ad-supported tiers of leading digital platforms, and downloads from key online music retailers.”

“WAP” previously enjoyed a run at No. 1 on the Hot 100, although it was taken down by BTS’ “Dynamite.”

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

Donald Trump generated enough support nationwide to win the last presidential election, but based on the general tone of conversations surrounding the POTUS, the hip-hop community at large isn’t on board with his reign. At the very least, DaBaby isn’t about it. He made that clear with an Instagram post over the weekend, in which he shared some explicit words regarding Trump’s re-election campaign.

The rapper got a text from an unrecognized five-digit number, which began, “Reply YES to join Trump and receive important messages.” Well, DaBaby wasn’t interested in receiving any messages from Trump, regardless of their supposed importance, so he did not reply “YES.” Instead, he went with, “F*CK YALL.” The automated Trump campaign texting system must have heard that one before, because it responded, “Donald J. Trump For President: You have been unsubscribed and will not receive any more messages.” In the caption of his post, DaBaby wondered, “Who gave bruh nem my number?”

Meanwhile, his other recent Instagram posts have been more celebratory. One of them shows off the fact that his and Roddy Ricch’s “Rockstar” finished at the top of Billboard‘s Songs Of The Summer chart. In another post from earlier this month, he commemorated the track achieving 4-times Platinum certification.

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

Before actor Deon Cole became known for playing Charlie Telphy in both Black-ish and its spin-off Grown-ish, as well as DJ Tanner in Angie Tribeca, he was a longtime writer for Conan O’Brien. As he explained to Conan O’Brien on this week’s Conan Needs a Friend podcast, Conan hired Cole after he’d done a stand-up set on the show, and Cole almost didn’t take the job because he didn’t like waking up that early. After some brief growing pains, however, Cole became a huge on-camera hit for Conan’s old show.

In fact, Deon Cole was such a hit that when NBC pulled Conan off The Tonight Show and Conan decided to go on tour before accepting a job with TBS, he brought Cole along with him. It was during that tour when Deon Cole came up with a terrific minibar life hack for those among us who drink too much, come back to a hotel and hit the minibar too heavily, and wake up the next morning and realize we don’t have the money to pay for all the minibar charges.

Enter Deon Cole. “We kicked it so hard after one of the shows that we closed a bar down.” Cole told Conan. “We left the bar, went to my room, opened up the minibar, and drank everything in the minibar. I woke up that morning and was like, ‘Yo. We drank this stuff.’ I looked at the bill on it, and the bill was, like, insane. I was like, ‘Yo, I cannot pay that.’”

So what did Cole do? “So, I was thinking: What’s the difference between this liquor, and the regular liquor in stores? So, I got up and I went to a whole bunch of liquor stores and I bought a whole bunch of the little mini bottles. I went store to store to find the matching mini bottles [until I recreated] everyone last one of those, including the M&Ms. I replaced all that sh*t.”

“That’s insane,” Conan told Cole. “That’s a criminal mastermind at work. It’s a genius move.”

It really, really is, and I don’t know why more people have not thought to pull off this perfect life hack. Why pay $28 for a pack of M&Ms you pulled out of the minibar at a weak moment when you can replace them for $.75 at the 7/11 down the street?

Source: Conan Needs a Friend

Even the most pessimistic person could not have predicted the hellscape that 2020 has become, and yet some new movies and television have proven eerily prophetic. That’s not always a good thing: How will people react to the forthcoming new miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand, which kicks off with a grisly pandemic? On the other hand, Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 — about the protests that engulfed the nation half a century ago, and which were arguably even more impassioned than the ones happening right now — may have perfect timing.

The movie is due on Netflix on October 16, and the first trailer doesn’t remotely try to hide its topicality. Instead it leans into it. The trial itself involved activists accused of conspiracy, incitement to riot, and other charges in the wake of the fiery 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The all-star cast includes Sacha Baron Cohen as Abby Hoffman, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Bobby Seale, Eddie Redmayne as Tom Hayden, and many, many more.

But the stars take a backseat to the protests, portrayed as fiery and right on, and filled with chants — e.g., “Whose streets?” — that have been heard in American cities since late May. Though the film won’t hit the streaming giant for another month and change, it’s clear it will be as vital then as it is now, or as it would have been had it come out right after the murder of George Floyd. In the meantime, if you haven’t been reading up on the antiwar protests of the late ‘60s, it would probably behoove you to do that.