Month: December 2020

The Godfather Part III has a very strange place in popular culture. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, yet its historical legacy is, basically, “a disappointment.” And this seems to stem from two distinct events: the first is that The Godfather Part III isn’t the masterpieces that the first two movies are. And the second reason is also nominated for Best Picture that year was Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, which just relentlessly zips along and ushered in a modern way to make mobster movies, while The Godfather Part III felt a little “old fashioned.”

What makes it more of a perceived afterthought it when AMC plays those Godfather marathons that are impossible not to get sucked into, they rarely play the third chapter. So just by osmosis most people have seen the first two chapters numerous times, while the third chapter remains somewhat of a mystery. (I actually know people who have just never seen the third movie because they have heard “it’s bad.”)

Back in March I rewatched The Godfather Part III and found myself really enjoying it. It’s certainly not a bad movie. So much so, that back in June when I spoke to Talia Shire about Rad she kind of prematurely spilled the beans that Francis Ford Coppola was working on a new cut of the movie, which wound up using the original title Coppola always wanted, The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. The Goodfellas style of story certainly hasn’t waned, but, today, The Godfather Part III style doesn’t feel “old fashioned” anymore. It’s “aged well,” as they say. Anyway, the thought of a new cut of the film that can make it even better sounded very appealing.

So here’s what I did: When the new Blu-ray of The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone arrived, I watched it in its entirety. And it looks beautiful. (I later figured out a big reason why, I’ll get to this in a bit.) The thing is, I’m not so familiar with The Godfather Part III that I could immediately spot all the changes, but I felt more immersed than I ever had before, but couldn’t quite put a finger on why. It’s noticeable that the movie has a new opening scene and the closing scene has been edited, but beyond that, I wasn’t quite sure other than, “I enjoyed my experience watching the new cut.” It’s admittedly dense plot seemed more accessible.

So, after watching it through the first time, I took a copy of the new cut and put it on a screen next to a copy of the original cut, and then I hit “play” and took note of all the changes. Ahead is was I noticed, but be warned there are spoilers for both versions of this movie ahead:

Well right off the bat it’s noticeable that the new version of the film has a new, more modern-looking sheen to it. Gone is that “’50s style” golden look that didn’t make a lot of sense for a movie set in the 1970s. And I think the new look works to Coppola’s desire to separate this film from the other two installments. The new cut opens with Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone meeting with Archbishop Gilday at Gilday’s New York City office discussing Michael’s desire to give the Vatican $600 million for shares of Internazionale Immobiliare. So, right off the bat we get to the heart of the plot of the movie – Michael’s desire for a legitimate enterprise – as opposed to the original version when this scene happens a full 40 minutes into the film. Gone is pretty much everything in the original cut’s opening, which includes a flashback to Fredo’s murder, followed by Michael’s ceremony at the church. In the new cut, we go straight from Michael’s meeting with Archbishop Gilday to the ceremony’s afterparty. This does two things which greatly helps the film: It established the plot right away, as opposed to 40 minutes in wondering, “wait, what is this thing now Michael is doing with stock?” It also introduces Andy Garcia’s Vincent earlier in the film, which makes him seem more important right off the bat.

What’s surprising is just these changes alter the film dramatically. Because what follows is not that much is different. Obviously, with the meeting where we learn Michael’s intentions opening the film, the new cut goes straight from Michael having a business breakfast straight into the press conference.

The next major change is, after the massacre in Atlantic City (the sound mix on this is incredible), the scene in which Neri and Talia Shire’s Connie tell Vincent to take out Joe Mantegna’s Joey Zasa has been cut all together. (After the hit in Little Italy, we learn of this meeting simply by Michael (in the hospital after his stroke) being mad about it and telling the three to never do that again.) Also, when Kay (Diane Keaton) visits Michael in the hospital, the scene ends after his son Anthony says goodbye. The original cut then has another scene in which Don Altobello shows up and tries to convince Michael to drop this whole Internazionale Immobiliare stock thing. Rewatching that scene, it’s all a little too obvious what Altobello is up to here and it’s really not needed.

From here on out there are only a few minor changes, not counting the ending. When Michael has his confession, the scene where Don Tommasino is carried out of the car and put into a wheelchair is now gone, as it leads straight into Michael’s conversation with future pope Cardinal Lamberto. The next change happens right before Michael and Mary (Sofia Coppola) are shot outside the opera by the hitman, Mosca. It feels like some beats are cleaned up with there being one less scene of Mosca’s son (the guy who makes the donkey noises) before the shot is fired.

Then there are some fairly big changes to the ending. After Mary is killed, the original cut flashes back to Michael and Mary dancing at the party. Then there are further flashbacks to the prior films. In the new cut, the flashbacks to Mary remain, but all the scenes from the prior films are taken out. Instead, we are taken to “old Michael” a little earlier as we see him from a distance for a longer period of time. Both cuts of the film now show us a closeup of Michael’s face as he puts on his sunglasses. The new version fades away here, and goes to the newly inserted quote, “When the Sicilians wish you ‘Cent’anni’… it means ‘for long life.’ … and a Sicilian never forgets.” The original version, as you probably remember, after Michael puts on his sunglasses, we get a wide shot of him slumping, then falling out of his chair, dead. It’s, to put it bluntly, pretty clumsy looking. So that, thankfully, is gone.

It’s pretty remarkable what just a few changes can make. Honestly, I found myself pretty stunned by the lack of changes. Watching the new cut, it had the feel of a completely different movie. The new opening scene changes the whole tone from, “we are reflecting on the prior movie,” to, “Hey, Michael has a deal to make and here’s what he wants to accomplish.” It makes the whole movie feel like it has a better sense of urgency. It feels less like the whole business enterprise is just something Michael is up to while he mourns killing Fredo and losing Kay. It feels like, now, that’s the plot of the movie and every subsequent scene makes more sense establishing this early.

The truth is, The Godfather Part III has always been a good movie. Circumstance had more to play with its legacy than the movie itself. But with what are some really minor tweaks, Coppola has given his now “Coda” new life. I hope people who were always hesitant to watch it a chance. No, it’s not on the level of the first two films, but those movies are miracles. The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone isn’t a miracle, but it’s a pretty great film that’s just been made quite a bit better.

‘The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone’ will be releaed on December 8th. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

If you’ve been paying attention in 2020, then Spotify’s top five most streamed artists in the world won’t really come as a surprise — but the order might. Where R&B and rap artists like The Weekend and Drake have been repping for Canada in the streaming world for years, this time those two Canadian titans took a backseat. In 2020, it was Bad Bunny’s year. Based on his prolific output alone — not one, not two, but three new albums — the man born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio might’ve had a leg up. Then again, if there wasn’t millions of people streaming his music, he wouldn’t be beating a gargantuan artist like Drake.

In the same week that a song predominantly sung in Korean became a No. 1 hit, Bad Bunny surpassed two English-speaking superstars to win out in streams, proving once and for all that mainstream audiences are more than ready to embrace music without English lyrics. Of course, they’re still listening to mostly men. The top five included Bad Bunny at number one, followed by Drake, J Balvin, Juice WRLD and then The Weeknd. No female artists were in the top five, although Billie Eilish led the field when just looking at female artists, followed right after by Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande, then Dua Lipa and Halsey. Remember, this is just on Spotify, so it could be that Taylor and Ari fans love Apple Music? Or maybe they’re buying physical copies.

Check out all the global trends for Spotify Wrapped 2020 right here.

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

Much of Monday night’s clash between the Seattle Seahawks and the Philadelphia Eagles was unassuming and rather bland. The Seahawks were clearly the better team, leading wire-to-wire, but Seattle wasn’t thoroughly dominant on the offensive side of the ball. The Eagles struggled mightily, headlined by Carson Wentz continuing his prolonged slump, and with the Seahawks leading 23-9 late in the fourth quarter, the win-loss result was all but academic. However, the point spread was still in doubt, at least to some degree, and shenanigans took place in the final seconds.

Seattle closed as a consensus 6.5-point favorite on this night, even while acknowledging that the Seahawks were -5.5 or -6 earlier in the week. Still, with a 14-point lead, things looked safe… until they weren’t. Wentz connected on a 33-yard Hail Mary pass, with a crazy one-handed catch by Richard Rodgers to bring the Eagles within eight points.

Under “normal” circumstances, the team trailing by eight points might simply kick the extra point to climb within seven. With that said, the Eagles have been at the forefront of the analytical movement to go for two when trailing by 14 and, in predictable fashion, they did so here, with Miles Sanders scampering into the end zone without much resistance from Seattle.

When Sanders crossed the goal line, people without vested interests in the point spread may have simply shrugged, but many took great notice. None more so than a well-publicized bettor that placed a half-million dollars on the Seahawks… at -6.5.

ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt led his postgame coverage with a wink and a nod toward what transpired and, without any doubt, this was a sickening backdoor from a team that didn’t deserve to cover. Everyone that dabbles in the handicapping space has a story (or two) about a bad beat like this, but the Eagles pulled off a miracle that swung quite a bit of money in the desert on Monday night.

In early November, Drake took to Instagram to inform fans that he had once again injured his knee and needed to undergo surgery. The post was made following a pick-up game in his Toronto home which included Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry. The news caused fans to begin speculating that Drake’s injury happened why trying to guard Curry — a difficult feat for professional NBA players, let alone rappers.

Drake has not confirmed whether or not his knee injury was a direct result of Curry, but the basketball player has now spoken. In a recent interview with Complex Sports, Curry playfully responded to rumors that Drake tore his ACL during their game and said he hopes the rapper will address the incident on his upcoming album: “Maybe it might show up in the new album coming out. We’ll see if he drops a lyric or a line or something on what actually happened.”

In other news about Drake’s upcoming music, the rapper predicts his forthcoming record Certified Lover Boy will get some hate. Replying to a fan on his father’s Instagram Live, Drake wrote: “they hated on views just like they will CLB but it’s music to evolve to.”

Check out a clip of Drake and Curry shooting hoops above.

Rumors that Rihanna and ASAP Rocky are dating have been flying ever since she starred in the rapper’s cutesy 2013 video for “Fashion Killa” The two have since remained close friends: they’ve appeared together on the red carpet and he even recently joined her on her Fenty Skin campaign this summer. But now, a recent report points to the two being an official item.

Rocky and Rihanna have been spotting together on several occasions since she split with her ex-boyfriend (and billionaire) Hassan Jameel in January. Dating rumors bubbled up once again when the two appeared side-by-side in video interviews with both Vogue and GQ last August, with fans noticing that they were throwing each other some flirtatious looks. According to a report from Page Six, it wasn’t mere flirting.

Per Page Six‘s report, the two were spotted together as a couple over Thanksgiving weekend, seen dining in NYC’s upscale restaurant Beatrice Inn along with a small group of friends.

While the two may have not yet confirmed the dating rumors, fans think they would make a great couple.

After Rihanna and Jameel broke up, The Sun alleged she and Rocky began seeing each other, but Rihanna’s team later denied the dating reports. Time will tell if Rihanna and Rocky decide to make their relationship public or continue to quell dating rumors.

After years of hard work, Toosii’s is finally geting his breakout year. Fresh off a newly-inked deal with Capitol records, the rapper dropped Poetic Pain, his second full-length release of the year. Now he returns with a sultry video for his melodic track “Sapiosexual.”

Directed and produced by Brian Robles, the video follows Toosii on his quest to form a deeper connection with his love interest. But he knows his relationship isn’t just surface level. And so he and his crush are able to discuss the bigger picture.

Ahead of the video’s release, Toosii got a thoughtful co-sign from his South Coast label mate DaBaby. In an interview at the Revolt Summit in October, DaBaby said, “I know, at the point Toosii is now, I even chime in with him on and off on my own. On my own time just to remind him like, ‘Aye, stay right there in that mode that you in’ or go even crazier ’cause I know who he’s dealin’ with.” He added, “He’s the hottest new artist in the world, you know what I mean, right now… Definitely the hottest new emerging artist fasho.”

Watch Toosii’s “Sapiosexual” video above.

Poetic Pain is out now via South Coast/Capitol. Get it here.

When she joined Donald Trump’s relentlessly bumbling “elite strike force,” lawyer Sidney Powell was held up as a legal legend who would lend credibility to a campaign that desperately needed it. That image didn’t last long. After promising to “unleash the Kraken” upon incoming president Joe Biden, she…didn’t. Instead she proved kookier than even Rudy Giuliani, to the point that she was kicked off the team entirely, leaving her to pursue her own baseless claims of voter fraud independently. That’s not going well either, as witness a new lawsuit alleging malfeasance in a county that, well, doesn’t exist.

Powell has filed a number of lawsuits in states that were targeted by the Trump team, in the hopes of overturning their final results, even after they’d been certified. They’ve been disasters, riddled with errors, typos, and bizarre formatting hiccups that render them unreadable, on top of ridiculous. But one bit in the lawsuit she filed in Michigan caught the eye of Bridge Michigan journalist Jonathan Oosting.

“One of the witnesses in Sidney Powell’s new Michigan lawsuit says in a declaration he thinks there’s something fishy about election returns in Edison County, MI,” Oosting wrote on Twitter. “Thing is, there is no Edison County in Michigan.”

Hey, at least in this one she didn’t spell “district” four different ways! That’s what she did in her widely-belittled lawsuit in Pennsylvania, which certified its election for Biden before Thanksgiving.

But wait, it gets worse. There is no Edison County anywhere in the United States of America.

This lead to much mockery over social media.

Some wondered if the non-existent county played a role in Powell’s QAnon-level conspiracy theory about the late Hugo Chavez helping to steal the 2020 election.

Others roped in another popular Twitter subject.

The Trump team — which, again, ousted Powell from their ranks for making them look bad — has had a helluva time getting basic details about the state correct. One filed by attorney Lin Wood claimed fraud in Michigan, but used data from Minnesota instead. Wood gained notoriety for defending Richard Jewell, a rent-a-cop wrongfully accused of terrorism, in the mid-’90s, and was later played onscreen by no less than Sam Rockwell in last year’s Clint Eastwood movie. But judging how this case is going, it seems the next thespian to play Wood will be Rob Schneider in one of Adam Sandler’s Netflix comedies.

(Via The Inquisitr)

For most of us, politics have been an inescapable fact of life this year. Between pandemics, elections, impeachments, and Rudy Giuliani publicly melting like a QAnon-spouting Wicked Witch of the West, fissures became canyons and once-avoidable conversations became the only thing our conservative grandparents wanted to Zoom about.

So it’s understandable really that Jordan Klepper, comedian and Daily Show correspondent who regularly ventures out into the wilderness of Middle America to quiz fascist cosplayers on their devotion to a fast food-gobbling megalomaniac, would finally land on your radar. Klepper, who we chatted with about his own show The Opposition earlier this year, has been doing these “on-the-street” bits for a while now but something odd happened in 2020 … he defied the odds to become the politically competent thirst trap we didn’t know we needed.

I first noticed this undeniable transformation when Klepper returned to The Daily Show to cover Donald Trump’s impeachment scandal late last year. Klepper was on his usual schtick – teaching basic math to Trump supporters and hunting for the ever-elusive “Trump That B*tch” graphic tee – when suddenly, it hit me. I wanted Klepper to quit interrogating these homophobic groupies and start interrogating me (i.e. my body). It was a life-changing epiphany, a Moses-coming-down-from-the-mountain-type moment. But once the acknowledgment nestled itself in my brain, there was no extracting it. Klepper was, in fact, hot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-ZFoco_1gQ

That bell would toll plenty more throughout 2020. When Klepper attended the Iowa Caucus earlier this year, sporting a thick beard and disheveled hair, I was yet again confronted – as I’m sure we all were – with this surprising development. He walked confidently into a hostile space filled with uninformed, overconfident voters, openly mocking them to their faces, Trojan-horsing them with a friendly demeanor before humiliating them on national TV.

There’s a kind of danger in what Klepper does, an adrenaline rush that comes with the expectation he might be found out. Surely one of these Trump cronies will wise up to his gimmick and mark him as a threat to their hazardly-crafted ideologies? And yet, he forges on in the name of patriotism and rationality, doing the work behind enemy lines so that we, the people, can find some escapist humor in watching prejudice and racism beaten down with deadpan humor and sharp wit. Does something about Klepper shouting “It’s f*cking Caucaus time” get me excited? Yes, but once the thirst was recognized, the harder work of understanding why I was suddenly employing violently thirsty hyperbole to characterize a mostly average-looking white man began.

The investigation took me to New Jersey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6K–CokXUQ&t=222s

In the summer of 2020, Klepper stuffed his pasty, Gumby-like limbs into a pair of patriotic swim trunks to joke about man’s fixation concerning the size of their genitals with right-wing sea captains. I quizzed group chats on this new development during, what would’ve been, the peak of our collective quarantine. Perhaps, I thought, social isolation had warped my libido. I sent videos of Klepper facing off against Trump supporters on open water. “What do you think of this guy?” I’d ask.

“Why, does he want to date you?”

Clearly, none knew who Klepper was or where this fixation came from. But once they watched the man draw correlations between the number of Trump flags on certain vessels and the probability of mid-life sexual insecurities, it began to click. “He’s funny, but he’s not an asshole about it,” one offered. “He knows when to let people make idiots of themselves,” was another nugget of wisdom. “He’s tall and he can wear the hell out of a puffer jacket. Verrry difficult to pull off as a man,” was the scientific thesis from one friend who went down a bit of a rabbit hole of past videos purely for research purposes.

So yes, Klepper, like many normal-looking white men have benefited from the relaxed standards of quarantine and the time spent growing facial hair during the lockdown, but Hasan Minhaj already warned us about this phenomenon. It couldn’t just be Klepper’s looks that had more and more fans on Twitter wanting him to break them off like a damn Kit-Kat bar.

So I pressed on, watching Klepper eventually don masks when the pandemic surged and embed himself further in the chaos of the right-wing horde. He went to Million MAGA marches where he endured the insult of being called “broseph” by a Tea Party member wearing a mohawk helmet. He courageously waded through Coronavirus-riddled crowds to talk SCOTUS picks and mask mandates with tacky-shirt-wearing pretzel-munchers. I overlooked the caveman ramblings unexpectedly unearthed by Klepper’s brand of machismo, ignoring crude would-be thirst tweets like “Fold me like a beef taco you sardonic skyscraper,” and “He might be built like a Sequoia but he could split me in half like a lumberjack” that randomly popped into my brain during these viewings. Instead, I tried to figure out why Klepper and his brand of comedy might hold some appeal this year, an appeal that goes beyond Youtube hits and next-day shares and the disturbing collective need we all have for him to choke us with his favorite skinny tie.

Here’s what I got.

In a time when competence is an undervalued quality, when intelligence is something to be sneered at, when open-mindedness is cordoned to safe-spaces and unchecked hate floods the streets instead, Klepper chooses to disrupt the norm by interrogating it and dismantling it, by holding it up to the comedic light and asking people to defend it. He’s good at toeing the line between sarcastic apathy and mild amusement – able to suppress personal outrage in order to let his subjects do the easy work of embarrassing themselves for him. He’s charismatic – enough that even Trump supporters who probably know his gotcha-antics still want to talk to him – and that charisma is what disarms people whose ideologies he’s calling into question. If 2020 has proven anything it’s that what Klepper does isn’t easy – but it’s necessary and entertaining and maybe it’s making a difference.

Okay fine. That and he’s most definitely become one of the few white men we’d save from the purge. Godspeed you lighthouse-shaped beacon of humanity!

After winning the 2020 NBA title, the Los Angeles Lakers didn’t simply “run it back” with the same cast of characters. To be fair, the Lakers are still built around LeBron James and Anthony Davis, with a number of key cogs returning, but Los Angeles did overhaul its frontcourt, investing in Montrezl Harrell and Marc Gasol to replace Dwight Howard and JaVale McGee at the center spot. In discussing the team’s additions on an upcoming podcast episode, James got into some detail on Wes Matthews (who will bolster the Lakers’ wing rotation), Harrell and Gasol, but he did make sure to nudge Gasol when it comes to a prominent award James didn’t win.

James led with the fact that he is “happy as hell” to have Gasol on board, and he will bring an interesting profile as an impactful defensive piece with high-end basketball IQ. However, he pivoted to a joke about Gasol having “his” Defensive Player of the Year trophy, referencing the fact that Gasol won the award in 2012-13, with James finishing second.

It has to be noted that James won the 2012-13 MVP award, garnering all but one first-place vote, so it wasn’t as if it was a bad year for the 16-time All-Star. Still, the 2012-13 season was the closest James ever came to winning DPOY and, while it probably doesn’t bother him too much, there could be a grain of truth when it is brought up (unprompted) in this fashion.

Gasol isn’t the kind of rim-running force that Howard and McGee were last season, but Harrell can handle the offensive production, while Gasol can potentially pair with James and Davis for a treacherous defensive trio. Regardless, James seems upbeat about his new teammates, even if he just had to get a shot in about one of the only pieces of hardware he doesn’t actually have with his name on it.

Sometimes it seems like social media is too full of trolls and misinformation to justify its continued existence, but then something comes along that makes it all worth it.

Apparently, a song many of us have never heard of shot to the top of the charts in Italy in 1972 for the most intriguing reason. The song, written and performed by Adriano Celentano and is called “Prisencolinensinainciusol” which means…well, nothing. It’s gibberish. In fact, the entire song is nonsense lyrics made to sound like English, and oddly, it does.

Occasionally, you can hear what sounds like a real word or phrase here and there—”eyes” and “color balls died” and “alright” a few times, for example—but it mostly just sounds like English without actually being English. It’s like an auditory illusion and it does some super trippy things to your brain to listen to it.

Plus the video someone shared to go with it is fantastic. It’s gone crazy viral because how could it not.

And if you thought that video was something, check out another one of the same song by the same singer. Why are there two videos? Who knows. But this is truly one of the most 1970s things that has ever happened.

Adriano Celentano – Prisencolinensinainciusol

www.youtube.com

Wow, right?

In a 2012 interview on NPR’s All Things Considered, Celentano explained how the silly pop song came about.

“Ever since I started singing, I was very influenced by American music and everything Americans did,” he told Guy Raz, through interpreter Sim Smiley.

“So at a certain point, because I like American slang—which, for a singer, is much easier to sing than Italian—I thought that I would write a song which would only have as its theme the inability to communicate,” he said. “And to do this, I had to write a song where the lyrics didn’t mean anything.”

In fact, Celentano didn’t even write down any lyrics for the song at first, but just improvised the sounds. And people didn’t appear to care. “Prisencolinensinainciusol” reached number one on the charts not only in Italy, but also in France, Germany, and Belgium.

Celentano’s ability to sound like he’s singing in English without actually saying anything in English is pretty impressive. Especially when you hear him sing in Italian, like this:

Adriano Celentano – L’emozione non ha voce – Official Video (With Lyrics/Parole in descrizione)

www.youtube.com

Languages are fun. And funky. And frustrating when you don’t understand them. Celentano was purposefully making a point with “Prisencolinensinainciusol” to break down language barriers and inspire people to communicate more. Whether he succeeded in doing that or not, it sure is entertaining to see him try.