Month: December 2020

Despite all evidence confirming that Joe Biden won the presidential election and COVID cases surging all over the nation, Donald Trump is becoming increasingly unhinged in his efforts to stave off reality and taking it out on everyone around around him. According to a new report from Axios, Trump is reportedly lashing out at “anyone who refuses to indulge conspiracy theories or hopeless bids to overturn the election.” That list now includes Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose loyalty to Trump has been waning. “If you’re not in the ‘use the Department of Homeland Security or the military to impound voting machines’ camp, the president considers you weak and beneath contempt,” a source tells Axios.

Trump is particularly irked at that vice president, thanks to a new Lincoln Project ad that claims Pence is “backing away” from Trump. The ad reportedly rattled Trump who has expressed to others that if Pence does his constitutional duty and validates the election results on January 6, it would be the “ultimate betrayal.”

You can see the Lincoln Project ad below:

As for McConnell, Trump has started privately attacking the majority leader for “being the first one off the ship” by acknowledging that Biden won the election. According to Axios, Trump sent out a bizarre PowerPoint presentation where the president takes credit for McConnell’s re-election. The slideshow serves as a threat to others who don’t back Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, which now includes entertaining General Mike Flynn’s suggestion to deploy the military on American soil and “rerun the election.” In other words, a coup.

Trump is also considering appointing Sidney “The Kraken” Powell as special counsel to investigate the election, despite the fact that Trump had her removed from his legal team in late November for spouting conspiracy theories that were too crazy even for him.

(Via Axios)

Most of us try our best to forget about death on a moment-by-moment basis, but that’s been hard to do in 2020.

Some of us have lost loved ones to the pandemic or gotten sick ourselves. The lucky who haven’t have still been forced to think about the disease’s staggering and, as the year ends, still-multiplying death toll. Even riding out the pandemic indoors can prompt the sort of morbid reflection we often try to avoid. Spending time inside constructively by tidying up inevitably means encountering reminders of those we’ve lost and the unceasing march of time.

Filmmaker — or, to use her preferred term, cameraperson — Kirsten Johnson has become a professional sorter of memories. A veteran documentary cinematographer, Johnson’s career has taken her all over the world and made her witness to moments both horrific and inspiring. As a director, she made a breakthrough feature in 2016 called, naturally, Cameraperson, which uses outtakes and other stray moments to create a sense of meaning around her life and work. It is, effectively, a creative act of reflective tidying up that tries to make sense of the past from the odds and ends that have piled up over the years.

Johnson followed up Cameraperson with one of 2020’s best films, Dick Johnson is Dead, a touching and determinedly odd portrait of her father made as he slips into dementia and the pair, together, confront his inevitable end. The film covers approximately three years in the Johnsons’ life during which Dick, his condition worsening to the point where he can no longer be left alone, leaves his Seattle home and psychiatric practice to live in Kirsten’s one-bedroom New York City apartment. They prepare for his death by staging it, again and again, as a series of stuntman-assisted movie-ready mishaps in which Dick appears to die by falling air conditioner, car accident, and otherwise reaches sudden, dire ends. But there’s a happy ending to these deaths via scenes of Dick’s afterlife, a gloriously gauche Heaven inspired by Dick’s life, his Seventh Day Adventist faith, and Lisa Frank art.

If that sounds tacky, or even insensitive, it doesn’t play that way. As Uproxx’s Vince Mancini pointed out in his review, the film finds a roundabout way to talking about, and reframing, topics we generally avoid talking about because “[g]ood art doesn’t just reaffirm that a thing exists, it gives you a new framework for thinking about it.” It’s nothing new for Dick. Having watched his wife slip away to dementia, he knows what awaits him and wants to make the most of the time he has left. If that means working with his daughter to use art as a kind of offbeat therapy, then so be it.

2020 has been a year that’s required everyone not locked in a bubble of denial to think about final things, a year in which, say, a quick, masked trip to the drug store probably doesn’t mean risking death for you or those around you, but who knows? It’s been a year that’s taken away much of what makes life fulfilling, be it the company of others, going to the movies, hearing music played live, or just being able to walk down the street without fearing the consequences. It’s also meant watching businesses shutter and streets empty out as the disease reshapes everyday life.

It has, in a word, sucked. But it’s also made it easier to appreciate the necessity of films like Dick Johnson is Dead and creators who refuse to look away from death and loss — and especially those who create art about living in its presence. It’s not always easy. Anyone looking for a double feature to pair with Dick Johnson is Dead should consider another 2020 film, Relic. The first feature directed by Australian filmmaker Natalie Erika James, from a script by James and Christian White, Relic uses horror to explore some of the same subjects as Johnson’s film. It’s a deeply unsettling haunted house film, of sorts, that ultimately arrives at the same sense of peaceful resignation as Dick Johnson is Dead.

Emily Mortimer stars as Kay, who travels with her daughter Sam (Bella Heathcote) to the home of her mother Kay’s mother Edna (Robyn Nevin) after Edna disappears. There they find the house in disarray and littered with notes seemingly designed to help Edna remember everyday tasks (and possibly a supernatural threat). When Edna returns, the crisis only deepens as her dementia makes her subject to wild mood swings and uncharacteristic behavior, a descent echoed by the house itself. Like Dick Johnson is Dead, Relic would feel exploitative if it wasn’t so well done. It’s ultimately less Edna’s condition that serves as the source of horror than the fear it inspires. The film’s final sequence is at once disturbing, humane, and truthful about what awaits us as one generation gives way to the next.

The years that come will see film after film about 2020. Many will be angry, as they should be. It’s been a year filled with manipulation, willful misinformation, and policy decisions deeply concerned with the well-being of a privileged few rather than the public at large. Many of our losses have been avoidable even if the pandemic itself never was. Others will be reflective of our shared experience living through a plague year. We’ve been through a crisis whose end may be in sight but it isn’t here yet. When it arrives it will be to a country scarred by what it’s been through. But even though it has nothing directly to do with 2020, Dick Johnson is Dead already looks like one of the year’s defining films. We’ve been forced to confront death in a way most years spare us. It’s been awful, but there’s something to be gained by not looking away from death and by considering what it means for those we’ve lost, those we love but know we’ll lose sooner than we’d like, and to the living, who sometimes need to be reminded what it means to be alive and that we won’t stay that way forever.

Around this time of year is when Jack Antonoff hosts his Ally Coalition Talent Show, a concert that raises money for Talent Show Action Center, which supports charities benefitting LGBTQ+ youths. Naturally, things were different this year, and the now-livestream event featured an all-star set of performers. The event was highlighted by Lana Del Rey, who sang a rendition of “Silent Night,” and Hayley Williams, who delivered a non-holiday cover, opting to perform Massive Attack’s “Teardrop.”

Other performers at this year’s event included Big Red Machine, Antonoff’s Bleachers, The Chicks, Clairo, Claud, Brittany Howard, Maggie Rogers, Shamir, Sleater-Kinney, Spoon, St. Vincent, and Tierra Whack. Additionally, Rachael Ray offered a quick cooking demo, while there were one-minute stand-up comedy sets from Mike Birbiglia, Aidy Bryant, Reggie Watts, and others.

Ahead of the show, Antonoff wrote, “The pandemic has been hard on everyone but the communities that we are supporting here have been hit disproportionately harder. so …. we will see you all in 6 days and raise money for local LGBTQ homeless shelters. to anyone who has been in the past- you know how special this night is. obviously we can’t meet in person this year … so … here we go – we’re online and we’re putting something together that will be as special and loose as we do it. thank you to all the friends who are performing here. going to be a very special night that has already raised 250k for homeless LGBTQ youth shelters.”

Watch some clips from the show above.

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

The Little Things stars not one, not two, but three Oscar winners: Denzel Washington (Training Day), Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody), and Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club). The crime-thriller is also the second Warner Bros. movie, after Wonder Woman 1984, to be released simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max (for 31 days) as part of the studio’s new industry-quaking strategy. I normally wouldn’t suggest inviting Leto into your home (who knows where he’ll hide those rats?), but I’ll make an exception here.

In The Little Things, Washington and Malek play two cops who investigate a murder, with Leto, playing a character named Albert Sparma, as their chief suspect. “Well, it’s all in the name: Albert Sparma!” Leto told Entertainment Weekly. “He’s an unusual guy. He’s an outsider, a black sheep, someone who’s stuck in a part of life that maybe he feels like he doesn’t deserve. He’s been blessed and cursed with a significant amount of intelligence and wit, but doesn’t really fit into society so well. For me, it was an opportunity to make a complete transformation, which I took full advantage of and that was a lot of fun, in the preparation, the research, and the building of the character.” The Morbius star also described Washington as my Brando, Pacino, De Niro all rolled up into one.”

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

Kern County Deputy Sheriff Joe “Deke” Deacon (Washington) is sent to Los Angeles for what should have been a quick evidence-gathering assignment. Instead, he becomes embroiled in the search for a killer who is terrorizing the city. Leading the hunt, L.A. Sheriff Department Sergeant Jim Baxter (Malek), impressed with Deke’s cop instincts, unofficially engages his help. But as they track the killer, Baxter is unaware that the investigation is dredging up echoes of Deke’s past, uncovering disturbing secrets that could threaten more than his case.

The Little Things will open in theaters and on HBO Max on January 29, 2021.

Back during the early aughts, Geraldo Rivera was handing out U.S. troop coordinates on late-night cable news and getting kicked out of Iraq in disgrace. A lot of time has passed since then, but still, it’s sobering to see Geraldo stand as the voice of reason. He’s repeatedly attempted to talk some reason into his Fox News colleagues over Trump’s election loss, and some of them still aren’t accepting reality. On Monday night, Geraldo had pretty much had enough, and he came with metaphorical guns blazing on Fox News while talking with Charlie Kirk and Brian Kilmeade.

“The president is wrong. There is no avenue left. There was no legislative avenue, there’s no constitutional avenue, there is no judicial avenue,” he (accurately) declared. And Geraldo wasn’t thrilled to see a Mark Meadows tweet that described how Trump was meeting with GOP members of Congress and “preparing to fight back against mounting evidence of voter fraud.” Given that voting officials across the U.S. have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and Joe Biden has been certified by the Electoral College, Geraldo blasted Trump’s maneuvers as “reckless and irresponsible.”

Charlie Kirk stayed pretty quiet, but Brian Kilmeade stood up for Trump, and Geraldo called him out: “That’s bogus! There’s no way to turn it around! It hurts to say but it is true.” He wasn’t gone yet: “And ‘mounting evidence’? Come on, Brian. There’s not mounting evidence.” Watch below.

Geraldo’s been on quite a mission lately, delivering a snow-bound rant about GOP “knuckleheads” who are still rooting for Trump as president, and then delivering another snowy reckoning (“are you sh*tting me?”) about the “lunatic fringe” who essentially wants Trump to start a civil war. And the Fox News personality is no longer afraid of offending Trump, who won’t take his calls anymore after Geraldo became one of the first prominent conservatives to declare that Trump lost the election. As Trump himself would have said back in the day, the president’s looking “sad!” while kicking and screaming his way out of the White House. That might actually be literal on January 20, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Charlie Brooker could have made a Black Mirror episode about the pandemic, but instead, he’s wishing Death to 2020, a cathartic response to this train-wreck and sh*t-show of a year. But, hypothetically speaking, what would the COVID episode of the Netflix dystopian series look like? Brooker recently answered this very question.

“A weird thing I’ve noticed, and this is maybe just me — and you wouldn’t tell this from Black Mirror — but I’ve always been a very paranoid and worried person who is neurotically concerned that the worst thing possible is about to happen,” he said during a virtual panel for Death of 2020. “And oddly, when this happened, I think on some levels I pivoted to a strange kind of almost optimism, in a way. Because that dread and anxiety of something terrible happening, once something terrible is happening it’s suddenly a real and going concern and you’re not worrying about some great unknown, you’re dealing with an actual situation.” He then laid out his Black Mirror pandemic episode:

If I’d been writing the Black Mirror version of a pandemic unfolding across the panic, it would have been incredibly violent and incredibly — like, society would have collapsed into dust in a thrilling opening credits scene. And actually, generally speaking at the moment thus far… your neighbor is more likely to help you with something than they are to fight you for a bottle of water.”

Hm, no thanks. Samuel L. Jackson saying “f*ck you” to 2020 is a better use of everyone’s time.

(Via the Wrap)

For better or worse, AMC has become The Walking Dead network, especially of late. There are currently three different scripted The Walking Dead series, an after-show devoted to The Walking Dead, an unscripted reality series devoted to Norman Reedus, and during the pandemic, they even had Friday Night with the Morgans, a living-room chat show starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan and his wife (who will be playing the wife of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s character on The Walking Dead soon).

In other words, if you are a subscriber to AMC+ — AMC’s premium streamer — there’s a good chance it’s because you wanted commercial-free early access to The Walking Dead series. Unfortunately, there’s no new The Walking Dead until February 28th, but there’s still plenty of content to keep one entertained over the next two months. AMC+ promotes itself as streaming “only the good stuff” from AMC and its sister networks (IFC, SundanceTV, Shudder, & Sundance Now). It is, however, accurate to say that the streamer carries the best of what those networks offer, and among the offerings on those other networks, there are a lot of hidden gems, great series that have gone under the radar.

Here’s a taste of what AMC+ has to offer in terms of television series.

Orphan Black

Orphan Black, a Canadian sci-fi series that actually was on BBC America, is easily the most recognized on this list, in part because its star, Tatiana Maslany, has three Emmy nominations and one win for playing several characters on this show. The show is a mystery about a woman who is pulled into a conspiracy when someone who looks just like her winds up dead. As she soon discovers, there are several other characters who look just like her, as well. Some are friend, and some are foe. What’s so remarkable about the series is the performance of Maslany, who gives each of these iterations such distinct personalities that it’s often easy to forget they are all being played by the same person. The first couple of seasons are fantastic, although the series does wane as it gets closer to the end of its five-season run.

Dispatches from Elsewhere

Dispatches aired earlier this year on AMC, and it’s such a bizarre (though infinitely compelling) series that it would have had difficulties finding a large audience at any time, but this one also happened to come out during the height of pandemic anxiety. Still, it’s hard to completely overlook a series that stars Jason Segel (who also created the series), Andre 3000, Richard E. Grant, and Sally Field, although it’s the least well-known Eve Lindley who steals the series. It’s a mystery show — basically, an incredibly elaborate scavenger hunt orchestrated by a mysterious entity. It’s trippy, but it’s a lot of fun, and it’s a shame it was so little seen during the pandemic because it is ultimately an incredibly life-affirming show.

Slings and Arrows

One of my all-time favorite shows, Slings and Arrows, is another Canadian series, this one about a Shakespearean festival. I understand why that might sound like the least interesting series on television, but in reality, it’s essentially just a phenomenal workplace drama set behind-the-scenes of a Shakespearean production. It is funny, it is heartwarming, and it is completely intoxicating, and if you need another enticing hook, a young Luke Kirby and Rachel McAdams also star in the later episodes.

DES

In DES, David Tennant plays Dennis Nilsen, a real-life Scottish serial killer and necrophile, who killed at least 12 men between the years of 1978 and 1983. For a show about a serial killer, it’s unusual in that it’s not about the investigation — Nilsen, in fact, confesses in the opening minutes of the series. The rest is an exploration of psychopathy through the police interrogations of Nilsen. Nilsen is remarkable as a prolific serial killer and necrophiliac because (as a person) he is so profoundly mediocre, an ordinary civil servant who would not have otherwise left a smudge on the world had he not killed so many men.

The Cry

Another Doctor Who alum, Jenna Coleman, stars in The Cry, which is about the mystery behind the disappearance of a baby. It’s one of those shows where, every time you think you are about to witness the worst thing that could possibly happen, it comes at you with a revelation that is even worse, something akin to a fictional Dear Zachary. It is very much a show about a situation that is not what it seems, but it’s also not for the faint of heart. It’s a series that delivers one devastating emotional blow after another.

Gangs of London

In the United States, Gangs of London is currently exclusive to AMC+ (it hasn’t even aired on AMC yet). As the logline suggests, it’s the “story of the city being torn apart by the turbulent power struggles of the international gangs that control it and the sudden power vacuum that’s created when the head of London’s most powerful crime family is assassinated.” That doesn’t tell you nearly as much about Gangs of London as knowing that Gareth Evans is the creator behind it. Evans directed The Raid, and Gangs of London is something akin to a massive, nine-hour iteration of that set in London. In other words, it’s fast-paced, there’s a lot of stylish blood and brutal violence.

Channel Zero

Channel Zero is a creepy, unnerving little anthology series from writer and creator Nick Antosca based on creepypastas (horror-related legends that have been copied and pasted around the Internet, i.e., The Slender Man). Its four seasons originally aired on SyFy so I’m not sure how they found their way to AMC+, but they’re must-watch for horror fans and the first season, especially, should be reserved only for the bravest of souls.

Soulmates

Fans of Black Mirror will also love Soulmates, which comes from one of the writers of Black Mirror. The first season of the six-episode anthology series revolves around a computer algorithm in the future that predicts someone’s soulmate with 100 percent accuracy. Each episode explores how such an algorithm upsets the balance of things, while also investigating whether being with the one you’re meant to be with can actually provide happiness.

Katy Perry’s new video for “Not The End Of The World,” in a way, has been years and years in the making. Towards the start of Perry’s career, she and Zooey Deschanel drew a lot of visual comparisons to each other, so Perry made terrific use of her famous lookalike in the new video, which involves a mix-up between the two. This isn’t the first time Perry used her resemblance to Deschanel to her advantage, as Perry told Deschanel in an Instagram Live chat following the video’s premiere: Perry admitted that before she was famous, she used to pretend to be Deschanel so she could get into clubs.

Perry told Deschanel:

“I have to admit something, Zooey. When I came to LA, I was pretty much a nobody, and you were like just getting so huge at that time, it was like Zooey Deschanel ran the world at that particular moment. Your star was really being born. You have always been everything to me, but in that moment, I was so complimented to look like you. But I have to admit something to you on a Live: When I first got to LA, I went to the club a lot. And I wanted to get into the club, and I had no money, and I had no clout, I had nothing, and sometimes I would pose as you to get into the club.”

Much to Perry’s surprise, Deschanel informed her that Perry’s reveal wasn’t news to her. With a laugh, Deschanel responded, “Well, I know this, because people were like, ‘I saw you!’ But I’m such a goody two-shoes, and as people kept going like, ‘I saw you out! I made eye contact with you,’ and I was like, ‘No!’ Then everybody kept telling me about this girl Katy, ‘Katy who looks just like you,’ and I’m like, ‘Who is this Katy?’ And then when I first met you, I was so relieved because you’re so pretty, and I was like, ‘Oh, thank God. She’s so pretty.’ You never know when people say you look like somebody, what they’re going to look like. But I was like, ‘Oh my God, she’s so gorgeous, thank you, compliment.’”

Watch the full chat above, with the club story starting at 7:35 into the video.

It didn’t take long for Billie Eilish to become one of the most successful pop stars in the world. Aside from setting tons of records because of how successful she is at such a young age, Billie has taken all of her fame in stride, and seems to be hard at work on a follow-up to her tremendous debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?.

Like most people, she’s had her routines disrupted due to the pandemic, and took to her Instagram stories tonight to tease fans back about how often they tease her over hair. After getting that out of the way, Billie also let fans know that she has lost of new material on the way, and a whole new era is going to begin.

“Ok, I have a fun story to tell you,” she says, kicking off her forward-facing monologue. “But first, f*ck you guys, stop making fun of me, oh my God. I’m f*cking making you an album. I will not put it out if you keep making fun of my hair, shut up! I’m changing it… it will be the end of an era, I’m going to give you a new era. I have announcements to make, I got some sh*t to put out. Anyway, doesn’t matter, leave me alone, let me live with my hair that I’ve had for way too long.”

Yes, let her live so she can stay focused on that new album. 2021 is looking up already.

Rumors about new music have been swirling around Playboi Carti since he teased a collaboration with Travis Scott yesterday, but now he’s firmed things up. Tonight Carti officially announced his latest project Whole Lotta Red will come out this week. Since albums usually drop on Thursday night/Friday morning, and that happens to be Christmas Eve/Christmas day this week, the album will be something of a holiday gift for fans. While there aren’t a whole lot of other details available, Carti did share the artwork for the project and made it available for pre-order on his website.

Here’s the artwork:

And a few tweets echoing the news:

Aside from the collaboration with Travis, not a lot else is known about the release. The artwork says “the wonderful world of red” on the side, along with the phrase “volume one, number one,” but it’s unclear if that has anything to do with a double album or is just for aesthetic purposes. Of course, fans will remember that back in April, Carti released a different image that was assumed to be the cover for Whole Lotta Red, which apparently has either been replaced or wasn’t intended for that in the first place. Unless he decides to drop new songs in the lead to the album release, guess we’ll have to wait until Christmas for more.