Month: November 2020

Donald Glover is good at music. His Childish Gambino albums have all charted highly and he earned a No. 1 single in 2018 with “This Is America.” If you ask him, though, he’s not the best rapper out there. In fact, he doesn’t even think he’s the best rapper in his family.

This afternoon, Glover made a rare appearance on his Twitter account to talk about the viral “Get Your Booty To The Poll” PSA that generated some attention online recently, revealing that he nearly played a part in it. He also mentioned his brother Stephen Glover in the same tweet, in which he wrote, “also, Angela Barnes Gomes (‘atlanta’ alum) made those ‘get ur booty to the polls’ yall love/hated so much. she asked me to rap on it, but @Steve_G_Lover is a better rapper…so [shrugging emoji].”

These days, Stephen Glover is best known for his work writing on Atlanta, but he started making music when he was 17 years old and has dropped a handful of projects since 2011. Meanwhile, Donald Glover is fresh off the release of his latest Gambino album, 3.15.20, which he released, as the title suggests, on March 15 of this year. He also recently suggested that he like has more Gambino material coming up at some point.

In one of the most unexpected turns of the 2020 election, Georgia has become a battleground state. It was speculated from pre-election polling to be a close race there, but of course we’re all well aware that polls can be wrong. However, the previously reliably red state flipped blue overnight as votes in several Democrat-leaning counties were tallied, including Clayton county—home to the late senator and civil rights icon John Lewis.

Lewis was one of the “big six” leaders of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. In his 20s, he organized sit-ins, marched beside Martin Luther King, Jr., and was arrested at least 40 times in the battle for racial equality. State troopers and “deputized” white men beat him so badly they fractured his skull during the march from Selma to Montgomery on March 7, 1965.

That march was for voting rights, a cause close to Lewis’s heart his entire career. His early activism was instrumental in getting the Voting Rights Act passed, and he spent the rest of his long and storied life defending the right for all Americans of all races to have their voices heard at the ballot box.

Lewis, who passed away in July of this year, in the midst of the largest racial justice movement since the civil rights era, left an essay to be published after his death. In it, he reiterated the need for Americans to exercise and protect their right to vote:

“Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.”

As we witness a sitting president attempt to delegitimize our election and actively seek, with claims of fraud and illegality, to toss out votes being counted in areas with heavy Black populations, we’re watching that warning play out right in front of us.

So it’s incredibly fitting that the votes pushing Georgia toward Joe Biden and away from Donald Trump are the votes from the county Lewis called home. He worked hard to enfranchise voters there. He paved the way for Stacey Abrams to do the same. He spent his life fighting for just this moment, where the voices of people whose votes have been suppressed in dozens of ways throughout U.S. history make themselves heard loud and clear.

People are taking to social media to give a well-deserved nod to Lewis.

If this cartoon doesn’t get you, oof.

And let’s not forget this bit of poetic justice.

The race in Georgia is close, and there are still outstanding ballots to be counted. It may or may not end up making the difference in the election, especially as Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania continues to grow. But if Biden does end up winning Georgia, he will be the first Democratic presidential candidate to take the state since 1992. And it will be a victory directly due to the tireless efforts of Mr. John Lewis and the votes of those he helped bring to the polls.

As the 2020 presidential election begins to wind down, and Democratic nominee Joe Biden‘s lead grows over President Donald Trump in the electoral college, mainstream media is having a bit of a reckoning with itself.

After dedicating so much coverage to Trump — his false claims, his controversial statements, his antagonizing comments inciting violence among his supporters — a handful of networks and publications have started censoring the president in an effort to ensure a peaceful transition of power should Biden win. Quite a few networks refused to air the president’s speech claiming voter fraud in states like Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. CNN aired the speech, but Jake Tapper, who’s consistently delivered tough but fair commentary on Trump over the years, is urging one network in particular to, well, do their job if Trump loses.

During CNN’s live election coverage on Friday morning, Tapper made an impassioned plea to his fellow journalists at Fox News, insisting that fair and honest coverage of this vote isn’t just a matter of “good manners” but of “life and death.”

“I don’t normally talk about any competing network,” Tapper said. “But the Murdochs, and the people at Fox, have an obligation to put their country above their profits. It is very important that people make it very clear that this election, there is no credible evidence that we have seen of widespread fraud. By all accounts, Joe Biden is on the precipice of becoming the next president, fair and square. And people who have the privilege of sitting in seats like we’re sitting in now have the obligation to convey that to their viewers so that there is a peaceful transition of power, and so that there isn’t violence.”

He’s talking of course about the president (and his staff) taking to social media to stir suspicion over national voting practices. Trump’s seen his early lead in states like Pennsylvania and Georgia disappear as mail-in ballots continue to be counted. Those mail-in ballots are heavily skewing Democrat, in part because Trump urged his own base to vote in person, not by mail. Now that those mail-in votes are coming into play, Trump and his supporters are hoping to cast doubt on their legitimacy — though he can’t seem to decide whether he wants to “Stop the count” or “Stop the fraud.”

Every credible news organization (including at least some Fox News anchors), as well as elected representatives in these big swing states, has flat-out denied that any kind of voting fraud is happening. But Tapper is still looking at Fox News, the president’s favorite channel, demanding that they practice responsible journalism instead of giving this political temper tantrum any more credence.

Given that, statistically, voter fraud happens so infrequently it probably couldn’t affect this presidential race — and given that the Trump campaign has yet to prove any instance of that despite drafting quite a few court petitions, it’s safe to say this is the last gasp before Trump’s dream of a second term dies out.

Roblox is a multi-player gaming platform that’s been around since the early 2000s, but most of the world discovered it earlier this year after a global pandemic and national lockdowns forced us all indoors, spurring us to find new forms of connection. A quick Google search will explain how this particular gaming verse works – gamer-created content on servers able to host large swaths of players from around the world that appeals to users looking for more inventive, niche-style play, a majority of whom are under the age of 18. That Google search will also reveal that adults – parents, older siblings, millennials looking for entry-level gaming avenues – are just cluing into how popular this massive online world is with the next generation.

From NY Times articles on how it’s become the online sandbox for “tweens” to op-eds on how its use as a kind of digital babysitter for parents who prefer to spend their time doomsday scrolling on Twitter, the general consensus is this: Roblox, with its 150 million global users spending billions of hours gaming, is the internet’s equivalent of a schoolyard playground where only the cool kids can congregate.

Of course, that’s not the whole story of Roblox. It’s not even why the platform, which started as a way for physics students to model in-class experiments, is, for some, a prototype for what the future of gaming could look like. Instead, Roblox’s appeal and its influence in the Metaverse – a new kind of “human co-experience” its pushing that combines gaming, social media, and entertainment – is how committed it seems to ushering in a new kind of gamer, one that takes control over the content they interact with, in a refreshingly empowering way.

Forget “choose your own adventure,” Roblox is allowing passionate gamers to make their own adventure. That’s the real appeal of the platform.

At least it is for young developers like Mimi_Dev, whose debut game “Dance Your Blox Off” currently has over 90 million plays.

“I’ve been creative since I was young, so making games was just another form of art for me,” Dev tells UPROXX.

She had been drawn to juggernaut style competitive gaming when she first logged onto Roblox in 2013 looking for a digital space to house her 3D projects. She was a gamer, sure, but she didn’t play any titles on the platform until years later. What interested her about Roblox was how easy it would be to take this idea she’d been mulling – a virtual dance studio – and transform it into a socially-interactive experience, complete with props, purchasable costumes, and team-up capabilities.

And she’s not alone. While Roblox launched with a handful of games for users to play, the company has since shifted its user experience goals. They see themselves as a facilitator rather than a generator of content.

“People really enjoy building their own worlds and inviting their friends to play in them,” Tami Bhaumik, VP of Marketing and Digital Civility at Roblox, says. “[That] user-generated content (UGC) [is] our secret sauce.”

She’s talking about games like “Jailbreak,” an amusing role-playing game where inmates must escape prison life and outrun the cops that has had over 3 billion plays since it was released. Or “MeepCity,” another brightly colored role-playing arena where users are invited to hang out, customize animal-like creatures called Meeps, build homes, sell goods, and complete tasks for money or Robux, that they can then spend buying merch.

“There are thousands of different sub-communities on Roblox: war, anime, fashion, trading, FPS, etc. It’s easy to find a community that you fit in with,” explains Laine London, a 23-year-old male creator from Canada who was first introduced to the Roblox platform by his younger cousin. London’s “Book Of Monsters” has over 30 million plays, but unlike Dev, he didn’t arrive on the platform with the intention of crafting his own gaming experience.

“[A] big part of my motivation was the games I played regularly had some bugs,” London adds, “weren’t being updated much, and I had a lot of ideas of my own I wanted to add, so I wanted to recreate them.”

Roblox simply provided the tools for him to do that.

“I didn’t know how to code,” London says. “I don’t think I would have gotten far without all the backend Roblox provides like the servers and the physics engine.”

He’s talking about the Roblox Studio, which offers tutorials and step-by-step processes for everything from understanding Lua, the programming language used to build games on the platform, to GUI animations, sound effects, cross-platform development, and more. The Developer Hub is designed to make creation – whether you’re an experienced coder or a first-time player – easy, accessible, and universal. It’s that lack of gatekeeping, that invitation to engage with content, that’s turning Roblox into something more than just a space for multi-player fun – it’s becoming an incubator for emerging talent and an example of what opening up the world of game creation can mean for the next generation of play.

According to Roblox, nearly 30 percent of users reported that they started learning to code and build their own games during the pandemic. “We saw students recreating physical environments that they miss like their university campus, virtual graduations and birthday parties in the past few months,” Bhaumik says, explaining that the introduction of private servers that allow users to invite specific players and friends into these worlds made them all the more popular.

It’s also started to affect the kinds of players the platform is welcoming.

“We are actually seeing that 17+ is our fastest growing audience at the moment,” Bhaumik explains, citing the company’s push to enhance avatars and features to attract players looking for visually sophisticated content and the platform’s translator tools that allow for multi-language gameplay as big drivers of new traffic. “We envision Roblox [as] this universal connector that can bring people of all generations together through play. The ability to meet, play, learn, watch, work with anyone, anywhere, anytime—independent of what language they speak or what country they are in—is extremely powerful.”

That global audience of gamers of all ages craving variety in content is what drew Toya, an Israeli game development studio that’s focused on female-oriented games and transforming the gaming experience for girls around the world, to the platform. Toya’s launched several successful titles on Roblox, crediting the studio’s ability to provide organic exposure and test and optimize games in real-time as some of its most attractive features.

“Once you become part of the creators, you are also part of the community,” Toya CEO Anat Shperling says. “The creators are the community, and the community members are also the creators. That is the beauty of the platform. We feel like [Roblox] has real potential to enable experimentation with new approaches to game design and user experience.”

There’s still more work to do on the platform. Dev thinks graphics and visuals could be better and London would like to see Roblox expand its audience to reach young adults his own age. But the DNA of Roblox, this idea that if you dream it, you can create it, play it, and get others to play it too, feels like a strong foundation for the future of gaming – one that sees players, not just major publishers setting trends and directing gaming’s new course.

“It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to serve and empower a brilliant community, [to] reimagine what gameplay can look like,” Shperling says. And that’s the real gamechanger.

Emerging Chicago rap star King Von was reported dead at 26 this morning after an altercation at an Atlanta lounge escalated to gunfire, leaving three dead and three injured according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. While Von wasn’t a household name yet, he held a similar place of esteem to Pop Smoke, another rapper who was gunned down this year just as he was beginning to break through to the mainstream.

Among the rap peers and fans who chimed in were Chi-Town compatriots such as Chance The Rapper, Calboy, Dreezy, Joey Purp, and Queen Key, producers like Kenny Beats and Tay Keith, and admirers from across the world of hip-hop and R&B, including DVSN, Jacquees, Lil Yachty, YG, and more.

Von — whose real name was Dayvon Bennett — was signed to Lil Durk’s Only The Family Entertainment. 2020 was a turnaround year for the 26-year-old rapper, who’d been in and out of prison since his teen years and was awaiting trial along with Durk for a February 2019 incident where both rappers were alleged to have robbed and shot a man outside an Atlanta drive-in. Von experienced the biggest boost to his popularity earlier this year with the release of his Levon James mixtape and had just released his debut album Welcome To O-Block last week. His singles “Took Her To The O,” “Why He Told,” and “How It Go” were emerging hits throughout the year as he gained momentum in garnering fans from across the hip-hop spectrum.

See more reactions from hip-hop below.

For the past three days, most of the world has been waiting to find out the outcome of the presidential election, as several key states continue to count the mail-in ballots that will ultimately determine who will be the next President of the United States. That outcome has become increasingly clearer over the past 24 hours as Democratic nominee Joe Biden has taken the lead in states that would put him over the necessary 270 electoral votes needed to win.

As votes continued to trickle in on Thursday night, Biden was able to maintain a somewhat narrow lead in Arizona, but gradually overcame deficits in both Pennsylvania and Georgia. If they hold steady, those two states would give him the presidency.

Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes would’ve been enough by themselves to push Biden over the edge, and after taking a lead in the state on Friday morning, Biden supporters around Philly started to celebrate. Count Sixers star Ben Simmons among those, as he tweeted out this image that was a call-back to disparaging Trump remarks about the city during the presidential debates.

When speaking about poll workers in Philadelphia, Trump made baseless claims about “bad things” happening in Philly, with the implication that there was some kind of impropriety involved. Folks in Philly, of course, wasted no time before turning it into a meme, and now Simmons has joined the fun as the city figured heavily in helping Biden take the lead in the commonwealth.

News outlets have been reluctant to declare Biden the official winner, as there are still outstanding ballots to be counted in several states, but the trend over the past two days has held true, and the former vice president continues to expand his lead, much to the delight of the Sixers’ star.

In a quick turnaround after facing criticism from the disability community, Anne Hathaway has offered a lengthy and heartfelt apology for her performance as the Grand High Witch in The Witches. In the film, the character’s true witch form is revealed to have only three fingers on each hand, which prompted activists to call out Warner Bros. over this slight to those with limb differences, particularly children, and Hathaway agrees with their criticism. The actress teamed up with the Lucky Fin Project to shed light on the power of inclusion and promise to do better when it comes to aesthetic choices for her roles. Via Hathaway’s Instagram:

As someone who really believes in inclusivity and really, really detests cruelty, I owe you all an apology for the pain caused. I am sorry. I did not connect limb difference with the GHW when the look of the character was brought to me; if I had, I assure you this never would have happened.

I particularly want to say I’m sorry to kids with limb differences: now that I know better I promise I’ll do better. And I owe a special apology to everyone who loves you as fiercely as I love my own kids: I’m sorry I let your family down.

You can see Hathaway’s full statement below:

Hathaway’s apology arrives just two days after Warner Bros. responded to the growing backlash. The studio said it was “deeply saddened” to learn that the film upset the disability community, and that “it was never the intention for viewers to feel that the fantastical, non-human creatures were meant to represent them.”

(Via Anne Hathaway on Instagram)

Few athletes or celebrities have worked harder than LeBron James this election with his work re-enfranchising people of color across the country to get them out to vote in record numbers. So it’s not a surprise that James took a bit of a victory lap now that Donald Trump, of whom James is clearly no fan, is on the precipice of losing the presidency to Joe Biden.

We didn’t hear a peep from James most of the week, but when he came out of his silence, he made it worth the wait. Responding to a Twitter follower who sent him a clip from Bad Boys of Martin Lawrence, which you can watch below, James celebrated Black turnout in battleground states that Trump won in 2016 for flipping to Biden.

“My people voted they asses off,” James replied.

Speaking specifically of Georgia and Pennsylvania — two states that, as of this writing, have not been officially called but have been trending towards Biden in the last few days — James gave them a Twitter salute.

While exit polls are notoriously tricky and this year’s batch are even more difficult to pin down, it looks like Biden is on track to win Black voters by around 75 percentage points, with young Black folks in particular turning out in larger numbers. In an election in which millions of people are involved, it’s hard to trace any element back to one particular factor, but James’ More Than A Vote campaign and his continued involvement in educating and turning out Black voters has to be treated seriously.

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — I am correct on this

Every now and then, usually in the wee hours of the morning when you’re trying to sleep, a thought will careen into your brain. A thought so obvious and true that it staggers you. A thought so perfect that it almost upsets you that the rest of the world has not already come together and agreed on it. This has happened to me a few times. Once, it was when I realized that all spoons should be soup spoons because soup spoons are larger and deeper, allowing you to shovel more food into your face with less chance of spilling on your shirt. Most recently, it was when I realized that Tom Hardy must play a villain in the Paddington franchise. It doesn’t have to be in the next Paddington, whenever that is. But it has to happen eventually.

There is already a long and storied history of terrific Paddington villains, and by that I mean there have been two: Nicole Kidman as a diabolical taxidermist named Millicent Clyde who wants to kill and stuff Paddington and place his adorable corpse in a natural history museum; and Hugh Grant as the theatrically evil Phoenix Buchanan, a famous actor who has gone treasure-crazy and frames Paddington for burglary. Both of them are delightful, especially Hugh Grant, who gives the single most mustache-twirling performance ever committed to film by an actor who is technically clean-shaven. It’s incredible. He goes huge with every decision and it still works because you cannot possibly go too big for a role in which you frame a sweet-talking bear for a felony as part of your quest to acquire gold and/or jewels.

All of this is why Tom Hardy is a perfect Paddington villain. Tom Hardy loves going big. Huge, even. Go watch Venom and picture that guy tormenting a little CGI bear. Go watch him as a mumble mouthed bootlegger in Peaky Blinders and witness a man steal every scene he’s in with all the subtlety of a brick to the skull. Go watch The Dark Knight Rises again and picture Bane as a Paddington villain. In fact, picture that whole movie, but with Paddington instead of Batman. Picture the whole franchise like that while you’re at it. The Joker asking Paddington if he wants to know how he got his scars and Paddington listening with all the sincerity in the world as the Joker eventually breaks down and realizes the error of his ways. This is how I will spend my entire weekend.

But I’m getting off-topic. Tom Hardy. You can see it too now, right? It’s so mind-meltingly clear. There are other decent alternatives here, sure, and this is where I toss out names like Idris Elba and Helena Bonham Carter and Olivia Colman and, hell yes, Jackie Daytona himself, Matt Berry from What We Do in the Shadows. But Tom Hardy first. He’s so intense, so maniacal in the choices he makes, so committed to doing The Thing He Is Doing that he makes the perfect foil for a fuzzy little hero who saves the day with nothing but a kind heart and marmalade sandwiches. The yin and yang, sweet and salty, two completely different things locking together to create one perfect thing. It has to happen. I’m going to get mad if doesn’t.

I’ll give them time. Again, it doesn’t have to be the next Paddington movie. If there’s any justice in the world, these movies will match the Fast & Furious franchise in size and longevity and maybe Paddington will go to outer space eventually, too. But let’s not screw around and get cute here. Let’s get it done. Let’s get Tom Hardy in a Paddington movie. He can do any accent he wants. He can do all of the accents if he wants. I do not care. Just make it happen. The people deserve it.

ITEM NUMBER TWO— What would you do if you were playing chess against Anya Taylor-Joy’s character in The Queen’s Gambit and she stared at you over the board like this?

Honestly, I would quit. I would quit on the spot. I might fake an illness or something in a feeble attempt to maintain the tiniest shred of dignity, but everyone would see right through it because I am bad at acting and because I just admitted I would try it earlier in this sentence. Poor planning on my part. Also, I am terrible at chess, so this would be a miserable experience on a number of levels. I barely know the names of the pieces. There’s the king, and the queen, and the pawns, and the… castle, and the… horsey…

Anyway. What I’m trying to say here is that Anya Taylor-Joy is a great actress and I enjoyed watching her cook all the dopes on this show and she is really just very good at staring lasers at and/or through people. Not everyone can do that. I’m not entirely sure one can learn to do it. You either have that kind of intensity in your glare or you don’t, and she extremely does. I want to bring her with me the next time I buy a car. I’ll excuse myself to take a call and leave her and the salesman alone in the office together and she can just burn holes through him in silence for 10-15 minutes and then when I come back in the car will be like $5,000 cheaper.

The Queen’s Gambit is a good show.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — Well here’s a good excuse to post one of the best stories ever

It is the position of this column that politics is bad and makes otherwise sane people behave like lunatics, and for that reason, it will remain a politics-free zone. There are, however, occasionally, politics-adjacent things that cannot be avoided. These can fall into a number of categories including, but not limited to, “a dog gets elected mayor of a small town” and, as we are about to see “a very thin excuse to post a very funny story that has nothing to do with politics.” Let’s dive in. Let’s read about how actor and longtime vape enthusiast Leonardo DiCaprio spent his election night.

Sources exclusively told Page Six that the “Wolf of Wall Street” star set up a wide-screen TV on his outdoor basketball court for a group of close pals such as Vincent Laresca.

DiCaprio — who’s known to own numerous properties around Los Angeles — combined two homes, including one he bought from Madonna, into one mansion back in the ’90s, and installed the basketball court in 2004. We hear he reserves this place for entertaining guests.

This is a very important story. Not because it matters to me in any way that Leonardo DiCaprio and his friends watched election coverage like this. Or that he bought a mansion from Madonna and then combined it with a second mansion, although that really is something. No, the reason this is an important story is because it contains both the name “Leonardo DiCaprio” and the word “basketball,” which means I have no choice but to post George Clooney’s basketball story again. It’s out of my hands. I would apologize but I could not possibly be less sorry. It is one of my favorite stories.

There are three things you need to know before diving in:

• The story is from this Esquire profile of Clooney, which is a good read
• George Clooney said all of this, on the record, to a journalist
• We pick the story up after Clooney and DiCaprio bumped into each other in Cabo months earlier and discussed their shared love of basketball and their desire to play sometime

Okay. Here we go.

They played at a neighborhood court. “You know, I can play,” Clooney says in his living room. “I’m not great, by any means, but I played high school basketball, and I know I can play. I also know that you don’t talk shit unless you can play. And the thing about playing Leo is you have all these guys talking shit. We get there, and there’s this guy, Danny A I think his name is. Danny A is this club kid from New York. And he comes up to me and says, ‘We played once at Chelsea Piers. I kicked your ass.’ I said, ‘I’ve only played at Chelsea Piers once in my life and ran the table. So if we played, you didn’t kick anybody’s ass.’ And so then we’re watching them warm up, and they’re doing this weave around the court, and one of the guys I play with says, ‘You know we’re going to kill these guys, right?’ Because they can’t play at all. We’re all like fifty years old, and we beat them three straight: 11–0, 11–0, 11–0. And the discrepancy between their game and how they talked about their game made me think of how important it is to have someone in your life to tell you what’s what. I’m not sure if Leo has someone like that.”

Just a lovely story on so many levels, from calling out some doofus club kid hanger-on by name, to the majestic pettiness of the way he recounted the score, to the way it all turned into a pretty wise meditation on fame and living in a bubble of your own design. And it’s really funny. I would pay at least $99 for video of this game. More if it only existed on a dusty VHS cassette shot from a terrible angle like the legendary Dream Team scrimmage tape. I am not kidding.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — Congrats to Emily Blunt on all the cussing

There was a report a few weeks back about which actor has said the most cusses in film history. It was one of those things where, like, I can’t verify it, or at least I very much did not want to watch every movie ever made to verify it, so I was willing to accept the findings as presented if they seemed reasonable enough, which they did. Point being: Congratulations to Jonah Hill, King of Cussing. Additional point being: The same crew that did that report, Buzz Bingo (a website but also a great fake name), put together the same list for actresses this week, and it comes with good news and bad news.

Good news first: A sincere congratulations to Emily Blunt, who, on the back of her profanity-filled role in The Girl on the Train, edged out Jennifer Lawrence, Leslie Mann, and Frances McDormand to claim the top spot on the list. But then the bad news: Blunt only has a total of 81 cusses, which is less than one-quarter of Jonah Hill’s total, and not even enough to crack her into the top 30 overall.

Bullet points via Buzz Bingo:

• More than three quarters of swearing in film is performed by male actors (75.6%).
• When analysing the profanity of all actors (both male and female), every actor in the top 10 are male. In fact, the most profane actress (Emily Blunt) only ranks 34 overall with Bel Powley ranking as low as 72.
• When comparing Blunt to the most profane actor overall, Jonah Hill, he has uttered more than four times as many profane words in his career with 376 swears.

This stinks. I hate it. I hate it a lot. Let the women cuss, Hollywood! Come on!

Luckily, the solution here is simple. So simple I almost don’t even need to say it. But I will. Because I want to put it into the universe, in writing, just in case that makes it more likely to happen. I’m even going to start a new paragraph to do it.

A new R-rated film franchise starring Rosie Perez as a foul-mouthed former assassin who is out for blood after a group of crooked cops… did… something. Listen, we can figure that part out. The important stuff is all in there already: Rosie Perez, swear words, Rosie Perez saying upwards of 400 cuss words with her voice over a violent and stylish film franchise, etc. Some of you might be reading this and thinking “Uhhhh Brian, isn’t this kind of just John Wick but with Rosie Perez and a ton of profanity?”

To which I reply: Yes. Yes, it is.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Do you ever catch yourself sitting around and thinking about how the song “Pop! Goes My Heart” from the opening credits of the 2007 film Music & Lyrics is legitimately better and catchier than like 85 percent of the Wham-like 80s music it is allegedly parodying?

I do. I also recognize that this brings us to two of five sections this week that reference Hugh Grant in roles where he sings and dances. Do not tempt me to go back in the last section and add him into the hypothetical Rosie Perez: Cussing Assassin movie I just pitched. I’ll do it. I’m crazy.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Brandon:

I finally watched Inside Man, and I was pleasantly surprised how many people were in it that just make me feel like a movie is in good hands- Denzel, Chiwetel, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer, Wilhelm Dafoe- regardless of movie quality, they’re going to elevate what they’ve been given.

This raises my question: what movie (outside of giant ensemble things like Love Actually and crossovers like Endgame) has the most “I’m in good hands” cast? It’s not really a “best cast” thing, but just a bunch of high floor people.

My knee jerk reaction is Knives Out, but I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

Brandon, this is a fantastic email, in part because it raises an excellent point and in part because it mentions two of my favorite movies. The only problem I have with it is that I don’t know how I can be expected to answer it now that I’m thinking about these movies and how much I love them again. Inside Man rules, as we’ve discussed. Knives Out also rules, which we will probably end up discussing at some point in the near-ish future just based on the staggering number of times I have watched it over the last couple of months. Do you think it’s a coincidence that Christopher Plummer plays a rich guy with secrets in both of these movies, or do you think that’s just the secret to a good movie? It’s a lot to think about. I’m leaning toward the latter but I can be swayed.

To answer your question, in a surprise to no one who has spent any amount of time with or around me in the last few years, I’ll add The Accountant. The Accountant has everyone in it. Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, JK Simmons, John Lithgow, Jean Smart, Jeffrey Tambor, Jon Bernthal, Alison Wright. It’s is just incredibly stacked for a movie that isn’t part of a franchise or based on a beloved piece of literature or directed by, like, Tarantino. And it has a montage where Ben Affleck, the accountant in The Accountant, does accounting. I don’t know what else anyone could possibly ask for.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Nottingham!

In one of the more unusual crime capers of recent weeks, an enterprising crew of thieves with impeccable taste in fine wines tunneled into a secure high-end cellar in Nottingham, England, and stole as much as $65,000 worth of classic vintages and whiskey.

Looking for more proof that politics is bad and ruins everything? Because if you are, you could do a lot worse than “criminals tunneled into a wine cellar in Nottingham and stole $65,000 worth of booze and barely anyone discussed it this week.” It’s a little upsetting to me. And it would be more than a little upsetting if the story didn’t include a handful of fun details that I can share with you, now, in an attempt to right this historical wrong. Details like this.

A senior manager at Vintage Wines Ltd. in Nottingham told The Daily Beast they were “embarrassed” by the theft and were now in the process of contacting celebrities and ordinary people who use the company’s storage vault for their high-price bottles. Many of the clients “were distraught.”

The main celebrity they are talking about here is the estate of Whitney Houston, which stores the late singer’s collection here, but one assumes there are others who did not wish to be identified. I’m more tickled by the use of the phrase “ordinary people.” Like, yes, the celebs, but also… [gestures dismissively in the direction of the unwashed masses].

I’ve been thinking about it since I read this story and if the high-end cellar where I stored my expensive bottles of wine called to tell me my collection had been stolen by a group of criminals who tunneled into the facility… I mean, don’t think I’d be mad. It would be worth it just for the story. I would tell everyone, all the time, repeatedly. Someone would be like “Should we have wine with dinner?” and I’d launch into my story about the criminals who stole my wine by tunneling into a high-end cellar and everyone would groan because they’ve heard it 100 times. It would be great.

Moving on.

They are thought to have dug into the cellar via derelict buildings surrounding the business to access the store’s vaults, which contain hundreds of bottles of high-value wine, whiskey, and port belonging to collectors.

One thing we need more of going forward, and I have always said this, is news stories about elaborate wine heists that include the phrase “derelict buildings.”

The real question here is how these guys got caught after all this planning. It seems like they thought of everyth-…

They were caught when a female member of the staff went down to the cellar to replace a high-value bottle that had been stolen in the store, only to find the thieves swigging vintage Champagne as they rifled through some of the best wines in the world.

Look, if you’re going to get arrested, if there’s absolutely no way around it, you might as well be drunk on champagne. I think that’s the biggest takeaway here.

Johnny Depp asked for “vindication” from a U.K. court during his libel trial (Depp v. News Group Newspapers) over an article from The Sun that labeled him as a “wife beater,” and let’s just say that he received the opposite of vindication. The court ruled that Amber Heard’s account of physical abuse by her then-husband was “substantially true.” The trial and verdict referenced the word “monster” on multiple occasions in regard to Depp (regarding 14 alleged incidents of physical assault), and the saga has backfired in a resoundingly damning way for the former Tim Burton muse.

The verdict followed three weeks of mud-slinging from both sides in a trial full of wild revelations — including “porky pies,” poo in the bed, an ice cream debacle, and alleged animal abuse — and given the court’s verdict, Warner Bros. asked Depp to exit the Fantastic Beasts franchise, in which he portrayed Grendelwald. Depp revealed the news in a typed note that he posted on Instagram:

“I wish to let you know that I have been asked to resign by Warner Bros. from my role as Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts and I have respected and agreed to that request.”

Depp also indicated in his post that he’d seek an appeal of the U.K. court decision, and there’s no word yet on if he still plans to proceed with the U.S. defamation case he filed against Heard. Given that the U.S. standard for defamation would be even tougher for him to achieve than the U.K. one — and based on how Heard never even named Depp in the op-ed that led to his U.S. lawsuit — he might be wise to back away from the U.S. suit, which could only further damage his reputation.

One thing is certain, though. Warner Bros. confirmed that they’ll be recasting the role of Grindelwald. Via Hollywood Reporter:

“Johnny Depp will depart the Fantastic Beasts franchise. We thank Johnny for his work on the films to date. Fantastic Beasts 3 is currently in production, and the role of Gellert Grindelwald will be recast. The film will debut in theaters worldwide in the summer of 2022.”

At this time, J.K. Rowling has not issued a public statement about Depp’s exit from the Fantastic Beasts franchise, but it’s worth noting that in 2018, Depp expressed gratitude for the author after she publicly supported him. At the time, Depp confirmed that he would return as Grindelwald for the third film, and now that he’s gone from the Warner Bros. franchise altogether, one might expect that Rowling would want to make a statement. No response specifically from Rowling has materialized as of yet, though.

(Via Hollywood Reporter & Johnny Depp on Instagram)