Month: March 2021

For three years, Flying Lotus has been hard at work as part of the team creating the upcoming Netflix anime series Yasuke. It’s lead is voiced by LaKeith Stanfield and follows the story of a Black samurai in war-torn feudal Japan who returns to service to protect a young girl from dark forces. The show is expected to be released at the end of April, and Flying Lotus has just shared a teaser.

Flying Lotus, who scored the entirety of the series, posted the first images from Yasuke to social media. “Proud to share these first images,” he wrote. “3 years in the making and we are finally here… Honor has a new name.”

The musician also revealed how much he’s enjoyed working on the project. “Working on anime is my new favorite thing,” he wrote. “I think imma try n stay a while. Can happily keep doin it. Makes sense to me.”

LeSean Thomas, executive producer and creator of Yasuke, described why the story line piqued his attention in a blog post for Netflix:

“There is a serendipitous nature about this project, how an African-American man goes to Japan to live and work amongst the very best in Japanese anime to create an anime about an African who goes to Japan to live amongst the Japanese elite and become a warrior. Yasuke is a fascinating, mysterious figure in Japanese history that’s drawn a growing interest in today’s media over the decades. I first learned of Yasuke’s role in Japanese history over a decade or so. The children’s book, Kuro-suke by Kurusu Yoshio, featured images that piqued my curiosity. To eventually learn that he wasn’t just a fictional character, but a real person, was exciting material for an adventure story.”

Check out some screengrabs from Netflix’s Yasuke above.

Yesterday in an interview with Angela Yee of the Breakfast Club, Saweetie gave more life to the rumors that she and Cardi B are planning something together. Though Saweetie only just collaborated with another one of the biggest rappers in the game, with Doja Cat on “Best Friend,” of course her fans Cardi’s army would love to see her back in the mix with one of the reigning queens of rap. Speaking of rap queens, the rumors that she’ll be working with Nicki Minaj have also been swirling.

For now, it seems like the collab with Cardi is definitely a possibility, but it will depend on the pair finding the right song to be on together. “Our teams have definitely been talking,” Saweetie said. “I think we’re kinda just waiting for that right record. I think the media just likes to take things out of context, and I’m loving how women artists are starting to realize that sometimes it’s the media that creates something that’s not there. I think it just shows maturity and growth amongst me and my peers to not be affected what the media says.”

Since Saweetie is dating Quavo and Cardi has a child with Offset, maybe we’ll get a track with both female stars and some Migos triplets. A girl can dream! Check out the full interview above to learn more about Saweetie.

The popularity of athletes streaming on Twitch has exploded in recent years and especially in 2020 during the pandemic when they found themselves with lots of downtime. However, as we have seen on numerous occasions, streaming also opens the door for athletes and other famous people to say something that gets them into trouble.

Among the more recent examples was last year when NASCAR driver Kyle Larson lost his ride and all his sponsors when he said the N-word on an iRacing stream — he has since been brought back to NASCAR’s top series, which some have questioned if he’s proven he’s changed and understood what he did wrong. On Tuesday, Miami Heat center Meyers Leonard suddenly was trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons, after video emerged of him very casually dropping an anti-Semitic slur while streaming Call of Duty.

Shortly after that video hit social media, Leonard took a phone call on his stream and said he had to go because his wife needed him, but it’s hard not to think that was him being told his use of a slur was all over Twitter and he needed to end his stream immediately.

It is an inexcusable thing to say, and one would expect a statement to come shortly from the Miami Heat and/or the NBA, as well as an apology from Leonard, but the damage here is done. As Jake Lucky notes, Leonard is also prominent in the eSports space as an investor and member of FaZe Clan.

The Weeknd was somehow not nominated for any Grammy Awards this year, a fact from which he says he’s moved on. So while The Weeknd won’t get any wins this weekend, the ceremony was preceded by some good news for the Canadian artist: The Juno Awards, Canada’s biggest music awards ceremony, revealed their list of 2021 nominees today. Unlike the Grammys, The Weeknd leads the pack with six nominations.

The Weeknd and his work are up for Juno Fan Choice, Single Of The Year, Album Of The Year, Artist Of The Year, Songwriter Of The Year, and Contemporary R&B Recording Of The Year. Other artists to score big include Justin Bieber, Jessie Reyez, and JP Saxe, who each have five nominations.

The ceremony is set to take place on May 16. In the meantime, check out the nominees in the major categories below and find the full list of nominees here.

Juno Fan Choice
Ali Gatie
Curtis Waters
JP Saxe
Justin Bieber
Lennon Stella
Les Cowboys Fringants
Nav
Shawn Mendes
Tate McRae
The Weeknd

Single Of The Year
“Drink About Me” — Brett Kissel
“If The World Was Ending” Feat. Julia Michaels — JP Saxe
“Intentions” Feat. Quavo — Justin Bieber
“Kissing Other People” — Lennon Stella
“Blinding Lights” — The Weeknd

Album Of The Year
You — Ali Gatie
Courage — Céline Dion
Changes — Justin Bieber
Thanks For The Dance — Leonard Cohen
After Hours — The Weeknd

Artist Of The Year
Ali Gatie
Celine Dion
Jessie Reyez
Justin Bieber
The Weeknd

Group Of The Year
Arkells
Half Moon Run
Loud Luxury
The Glorious Sons
The Reklaws

Breakthrough Artist Of The Year
Curtis Waters
JP Saxe
Powfu
Ryland James
Tate McRae

Breakthrough Group Of The Year
2Freres
Crown Lands
Manila Grey
Peach Pit
Young Bombs

Songwriter Of The Year
Alanis Morissette — “Ablaze,” “Reasons I Drink,” “Smiling”
Alessia Cara — “Hell and High Water
Jessie Reyez — “Coffin,” “Before Love Came To Kill Us,”
“Far Away,” “No One’s In The Room”
JP Saxe — “A Little Bit Yours” “Golf On TV,” “If The World Was Ending”
The Weeknd — “After Hours,” “Blinding Lights,” “Save Your Tears”

French Language Album Of The Year
A tous les vents — 2Freres
Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs — Klo Pelgag
Les antipodes — Les Cowboys Fringants
Quand la nuit tombe — Louis-Jean Cormier
Pour dejouer l’ennui — Pierre Lapointe

Rap Recording Of The Year
New Mania — 88GLAM
Baby Gravy — 2 Bbno$ & Yung Gravy Baby
Cold World — Eric Reprid
Good Intentions — Nav
Elements Vol. 1 — Tobi

Indigenous Artist Or Group Of The Year
Kîyânaw
The Ridge
North Star Calling
Nunarjua Isulinginniani

Contemporary R&B Recording Of The Year
“Before Love Came To Kill Us” — Jessie Reyez
“Where You Are” — Savannah Ré
“After Hours” — The Weeknd
“Holiday” — Tobi

Producer Of The Year
Akeel Henry
Jordon Manswell
Kaytranada
Murda Beatz
WondaGurl

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

Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame has been the highest-grossing movie of all-time (a worldwide box office gross of $2,797,800,564) since July 2019. That’s both an incredible achievement and not saying much considering there were essentially no movies released into theaters last year — Sonic the Hedgehog is only $2.4 billion behind! Endgame topped Avatar ($2,790,439,092 billion) for the record, but director James Cameron called it a “certainty” that the Na’Vi would triumph over Thanos again.

It might happen as soon as this weekend.

Avatar is being re-released in China on Friday. If it makes an extra $7.4 million at the box office (it will), Cameron will once again have the record. This is very important to him. According to the Hollywood Reporter, “The technologically trailblazing blockbuster will be made available to exhibitors for a nationwide release in both Imax 3D and ordinary 3D.”

Avatar is an especially nostalgic Hollywood title for Chinese millennials. The movie was among the first wave of Hollywood blockbusters to sweep the country as it was entering its high-growth box-office boom era of the late aughts — and Avatar became the biggest sensation of them all.

Avatar will undoubtedly get an American re-release before the sequels come out, as literally no one can remember the plot of Avatar outside of something to do with flying banshees. Avatar 2 is scheduled to be released on December 16, 2022, with subsequent sequels on December 20, 2024, December 18, 2026, and December 22, 2028

(Via Hollywood Reporter)

Stephen A. Smith used Tuesday’s episode of First Take to respond to comments made by LeBron James about the COVID-19 vaccine prior to the 2021 NBA All-Star Game. James, while meeting with the media, did not say whether or not he plans on taking one of the vaccines, but rather, that he intends on keeping that decision among his family.

“That’s a conversation that my family and I will have. Pretty much keep that to a private thing,” James said, per Mark Medina of USA Today. “Obviously I saw Adam had his comments about the vaccination. But things like that, when you decide to do something, that’s a conversation between you and your family and not for everybody. I’ll keep it that way.”

Smith, on Tuesday, expressed that while he understands any sort of apprehension that James has — citing “this nation’s history, its unethical behavior when it came to using Black folks as guinea pigs” — he believes there is value to James being public about taking it because of his influence, particularly due to the fact that the Black community has been disproportionately impacted by the virus.

He announced that, despite his hesitancy due to things like sharing the concerns James has and side-effects associated with the vaccine, he plans to get the first dose of the vaccine “today,” and mentioned that Tyler Perry made it a point to publicize getting the vaccine, something that he believes is important.

With James, he believes that there would be great benefit to him being vocal about getting the vaccine.

“I say this to LeBron James, my brother, all of our brothers, who’s an incredibly, incredibly influential figure,” Smith said. “I would say to him, he has taken positions on many, many, many things of incredible importance to our community. One could easily argue when you see the amount of deaths that have come associated with COVID-19, it’s very little that he has encountered that is more challenging or daunting than this, and if you could speak up about those things, you just might want to think about speaking up about this.”

His comments then became more pointed, saying that while he has no intention of condemning James, “Because he is who he is, and he has acknowledged who he is, this is not the time to get private. Not on this. And that’s why I decided I’m not gonna be private about it as well.”

Max Kellerman, who Smith credited for playing a big role warming him up to the idea of being forthcoming here, praised Smith for using his platform like this, and after First Take went off the air, Smith went to Twitter to continue the conversation.

James has not responded to any of Smith’s remarks. If you’d like to watch the video of Smith’s remarks, head on over to Mediaite.

While sitting down with Conan O’Brien to talk all things WandaVision, Paul Bettany revealed the extensive design process that went into Vision’s appearance in the Marvel films ahead of his debut in Avengers: Age of Ultron. According to Bettany, director Joss Whedon was particularly insistent on Vision being anatomically correct when he’s first “born” in the film. In other words, Whedon felt that the audience for a PG-13 Marvel movie should see Vision’s penis. Yup.

“Vision’s gonna be born. We’re gonna see him be born and, I mean, ostensibly naked. He has to have a penis, right?” Bettany recalled the conversation with Whedon going. According to the actor, Whedon was so intent on the soon-to-be-Avenger going full frontal that a group of Marvel artists actually went off and drew a bunch of concept shots depicting the birthing scene with every body part intact, as instructed. However, once Whedon saw the mock-ups, he realized that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. “Never have I been more sure that I don’t need to see Vision with a penis,” Whedon concluded, according to Bettany’s anecdote.

The revelation about Vision almost pulling a Full Monty in front of Thor and the rest of the gang comes when interest in the character is at all-time high. Thanks to the success of WandaVision, Marvel fans are already churning out theories on Vision’s fate after the series finale left things strangely open-ended. Is the synthezoid love of Wanda’s love truly gone, or did he, again, find a way to live on? It might be a while until fans get some answers as the next Marvel movie, Spider-Man: No Way Home, doesn’t hit until December, and even that isn’t guaranteed to solve the mystery of Vision’s future in the MCU.

(Via Conan)

Let’s start by ticking off a few things that three of the past year’s most popular shows — The Mandalorian, WandaVision, and Ted Lasso — have in common:

• They are all streaming shows created for platforms that did not exist as recently as two years ago
• They all feature a main character with superpowers, provided you consider Ted’s “being really nice a lot” personality to be a power equal to Baby Yoda and Wanda manipulating space and time with their minds, which I do (he’s a sweet man)
• They are all based on previously existing intellectual property, provided you consider a short series of commercials for soccer to be equal to decades of Star Wars movies and the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is, I suppose, almost as much of a reach as a show based on a series of commercials for soccer becoming a beloved cultural phenomenon, but still

There’s one more thing they have in common, too, and it’s one that I think goes a long way toward explaining why all three captured the audience’s interest in the way they did: All three shows went with a weekly release schedule.

Do I think these shows would have been massively popular if they had dumped all their episodes at once on their premiere date, Netflix-style? I mean, yeah, probably. Especially WandaVision and The Mandalorian, thanks to the massive franchises resting underneath them as a foundation. And Ted Lasso did benefit from its mini-dump premiere strategy of dropping the first three episodes together before switching to weekly, so there’s some gray area here. But the main thing I think we should take away from all of this is that the weekly release schedule is just more fun.

It’s more fun in almost every way, too. I love all the next-day blogs about these shows. I love the longer-tail discussions about where they’re heading or could be heading. I love the damn memes that pop up and give the show a weird second life on social media as a shorthand conversation piece. I even, sometimes, begrudgingly, love the increasingly kooky theorizing that takes place on your nerdier forums and publications, if only for their passion. I’ll roll my eyes and sigh and maybe even poke fun at some of the more “detective who is in too deep and has created a massive conspiracy board on the wall in his kitchen, with pictures and printouts connected by pieces of red string” ones, but it’s still kind of cool to see people all get excited about the same thing. And the Kathryn Hahn winking meme might live forever. That’s pretty cool.

I think that kind of conversation is what I miss most when a show dumps its episodes all at once. It becomes impossible to talk about it in any sort of organized way. Everyone is on a different episode and some people finished everything the first weekend and some people keep saying they “will get to it” but the lift of ten episodes feels too daunting for them to get into when there’s an expectation to get to the end as fast as possible. It makes finishing a season of a show — or an entire show — feel like an accomplishment instead of a journey. Shows are good. Episodes are good. Stopping to think about what you saw and talking about it with other people who just saw the same thing is good. We should do more good things.

Some of this opinion is, I admit, a function of my job. It is much harder to write about shows in the binge era. There are times I’ll have the screeners for a whole season and finish them before the show premieres and I really want to talk with people about something that happens in, like, the sixth episode, but a) it’s impossible to know when everyone has gotten to that point, and b) the binge model incentives flying through shows in a way that can cause fun little moments to get swallowed up by larger multi-episode arcs. I watched and enjoyed The Queen’s Gambit a few months ago but I remember very little of it. Boyd Crowder said his plan to leave crime and go legit involved opening a Dairy Queen franchise in an episode of Justified that aired almost 10 years ago and I think about it constantly. The 400 times I mentioned it between that episode and the next one probably had something to do with that. I think — hope — that all this comes across as a love of that water cooler conversation and not as me whining about a job where I watch and write about television.

There’s another aspect to all of this that touches on the These Troubling Times of it all, but I think it holds up as a larger point: Binge-watching is often, by nature, an isolating experience. You’re watching the shows by yourself, at your own pace, sometimes unhealthily as you click “Next episode” at 1:45 AM because you NEED TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS even though you have to be awake in five hours. And then when you finish, you have to wait for your friends to finish to talk about it, which could take weeks, by which point you’re ready to talk about another show. While this can be annoying in any circumstance, it’s especially a bummer now, when we’re all isolated on a much larger and sadder level, cut off from a lot of human interaction by a pandemic that has lasted a full year. That’s one of the things that made The Mandalorian and WandaVision such a blast: It gave people something to talk about that wasn’t a huge bummer. It gave people something fun to discuss during the week and, yeah, get a little weird about and too invested in it. That’s cool. It’s fun. The binge model works for catching up on shows you missed or rewatching your favorites, but it sucks some of the long-term joy out of experiencing cool new things. I think we’re far enough into this experiment to see that on some level.

So, with that in mind, let’s all take two lessons from the success of The Mandalorian, WandaVision, and Ted Lasso:

• A weekly release can increase chatter and interest in a quality show by giving people time to think about it on a deeper level and/or highlight cool moments from it, both of which are good
• More shows should feature a cute little alien or a mustachioed sweetheart or Kathryn Hahn, and all three if possible

I am very serious about both of these.

Stone Brewing has become a cornerstone of the craft beer industry (and a bit of a lightning rod within it). Over the past 25 years, the brewery has helped put San Diego on the map when it comes to quality and inventive craft brewing. Along the way, they’ve released hundreds of brews — from special one-off collabs to classic reinventions.

Across the decades, it’s the brewery’s pale ales and IPAs that make up the heart of their output. That’s how Stone made its name and they’ve been wise not to stray too far from that sweet spot.

For this week’s blind tasting, I’m going to be trying five beers from Stone — a lager, two IPAs, a Strong Ale, and an American Ale. Through a partnership with BrewDog Berlin, Stone is still brewing their beers in Germany for the European market. That means I can get these at my grocery store — a long-ass way from San Diego.

The point of the blind tasting is to get a feel for the beers in random order. Which ones offer the best flavor and feel right now (during the end of a pandemic, beginning of spring, the collapse of capitalism, etc.)? How do they stack up as representatives of their respective styles? Which ones do I want to finish right away?

All good questions. Let’s dig into the answers!

Part 1: The Blind Taste

Taste 1:

Tasting Notes:

Wow. The orange-lime vibe on this beer is really clear. The taste has a nice malty oatiness with a slight tropical fruit counterpoint. Nothing is over-done. The malts, citrus, and fruit are all really subtle.

This is nice but pretty light.

Taste 2:

Tasting Notes:

I can see this is a lager from that thin yellow color. The nose and taste is very light lime that builds towards a lime cordial in the bottom of a glass of seltzer water. There’s a touch of malt in the base but, in the end, this feels more like a lime hard seltzer than a lager.

If that’s the point, then they hit it out of the park.

Taste 3:

Tasting Notes:

Hello, caramel malts! This is interesting. There’s a bit of dry grapefruit pith next to a slight savory fruit note, similar to papaya, and a touch of pine. There’s plenty to enjoy here but it’s those rich caramel malts that steal the show.

Taste 4:

Tasting Notes:

This starts with a slightly lighter caramel malt that’s got this toffee and pine resin vibe underneath. The sip holds onto the dank and sweet caramel while adding in a touch of citrus brightness and maybe a hint of pineapple.

This is really well balanced and I kind of want the rest of the can immediately.

Taste 5:

Tasting Notes:

This dark beer is obviously Arrogant Bastard. I can tell from the look and the taste. The sip is full of well-roasted malts with a choco-coffee bitterness next to plenty of piney hop dank and a nice note of earthy … almost mushroom? Maybe moss. But it all comes back to those dark mocha malts and that subtle, dank hoppiness.

Part 2: The Ranking

5. Buenaveza Salt & Lime Lager (Taste 2)

Style: American Lager

ABV: 4.7%

Average Price: $17.99, 12-pack

The Beer:

This light lager is built as a crushable session beer. The brew is lightly hopped with Liberty hops and then spiked with salt and lime, creating a ray of beach sunshine in the bottle.

Bottom Line:

If it was 105 degrees out and I was on the beach, I’d crush these all day. It’s low-ABV and crazy easy to drink. Still as a lager … it was very light. Nothing wrong with that, just not my thing when it’s still only 55 degrees outside.

4. Neverending Haze IPA (Taste 1)

Style: NEIPA

ABV: 4%

Average Price: $11.49, six-pack

The Beer:

This is Stone’s sessionable New England IPA. The brew utilized the classic duo of Citra and Mosaic hops to bring the fruitiness. The ABVs are fairly low for a NEIPA, all things considered — making this pretty easy to drink.

Bottom Line:

This is another sip that suffered from it not being summer. I never would have guessed it was a NEIPA, given how thin the body was (which is the point). Still, this didn’t quite grab my attention like the next three beers did.

Refreshing? Yes. Crushable? 100 percent. Do I need it in my life? Not at the moment.

3. Arrogant Bastard Ale (Taste 5)

Style: American Strong Ale

ABV: 7.2%

Average Price: $12.99, six-pack

The Beer:

This beer comes from Stone’s “Arrogant Consortia.” The beer has become a mainstay of the craft beer scene, especially on the West Coast. The brew is built to highlight the West Coast IPA vibe of deeply roasted malts next to dank AF hoppiness.

Bottom Line:

This has always been one of those beers I order one of off the tap when I show up and then move onto the next thing. It was fine out of the can. The malts really stood out and were well balanced with the hops.

Yeah … this is tasty, maltier than I remember, and worth another look the next time I can get it off the tap.

2. Stone Ripper (Taste 3)

Style: American Pale Ale

ABV: 5.7%

Average Price: $11.57, six-pack

The Beer:

Ripper is a high-end pale ale. The brew mixes in hops from the Pacific Northwest and Australia (mostly Galaxy). The idea is to push the dankness to the borders of what pale ale can be, without going full West Coast dank like an IPA.

Bottom Line:

This one stood out. Those caramel malts were rich and sweet yet that grapefruit kept it in check. I definitely can see drinking this on a long weekend.

1. Stone IPA (Taste 4)

Style: American IPA

ABV: 6.9%

Average Price: $11.99, six-pack

The Beer:

This is the West Coast IPA that helped launch a whole damn movement around the world. The idea behind this West Coast beer is to find that special balance between malt underbelly and the dank and fruity hoppiness. It takes tons of hops to do that and this is loaded with Magnum, Chinook, Centennial, Azacca, Calypso, Motueka, Ella, And Vic Secret hops.

It’s a lot, but they make it work.

Bottom Line:

This was the one beer that really shined the brightest today. It was crisp, just the right amount of malty, and had that perfect balance of fruit and dank. This was the can I finished out of the bunch.

Part 3: Final Thoughts

Looking back now (a couple of hours later), I think I might have ranked the lager a little bit low. It’s creeping into my head and I want a little more. Or that might just be a latent need for summer to be here already.

Still, there’s a reason Stone IPA is a classic beer. It really hits a nice balance and is very easy-drinking. I was pleasantly surprised by the Ripper as well, but it was a little more caramel malt forward and that was hard to get away from compared right next to the Stone IPA.

In the end, the Stone IPA really had no competitors. That being said, I wouldn’t turn away any of these beers, depending on the season.

Donald Trump Jr. has weighed in on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s tell-all interview with Oprah that aired over the weekend and in a quite shocking twist, his opinion turned out to be a useless rant that absolutely nobody asked for. (Just kidding. That’s pretty much exactly what we’d expect from Don Jr.)

Yes, the former president’s son recorded a lengthy video giving his recap of the highly-publicized sit-down where he implied that Prince Harry had been “brainwashed into some sort of woke reality,” before unsurprisingly blaming Markle for all of the couple’s problems over the last few years.

“Are we pretending that Meghan Markle isn’t the kind of person that was looking for all of this attention?” Don Jr. questions in the video. “Because it seems like literally all of her actions in life up until now, we’re about getting that kind of attention for herself.” He added, “She just wants it to be good attention. The problem is if you don’t have the personality to do that. It doesn’t always work out as much.”

Donald Trump Jr. accusing someone else of wanting attention? Oh, the irony!

Trump’s eldest son seemed to think his take on the interview mattered because he’s actually met the Queen before, a shameless flex he used to paint Markle as some sort of villain in this whole thing, berating Oprah for not pressing the couple on allegations of bullying that recently surfaced ahead of the tell-all.