Month: April 2021

Rosie Perez was nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role at the 1994 Academy Awards for her performance in Fearless (she lost to The Piano star Anna Paquin). That was the last time she attended the Oscars, despite her being an Academy member.

Also, she’s Rosie Perez. She should have an open-door invitation for all events.

“Not even to sit in the audience, not to present, nothing — and I’m a member,” Perez told Variety. “I love the Academy Awards. I cheer on my peers, but it hurts. It’s like when your home team doesn’t ask you to come back into the stadium after you got up to bat and hit the home run.” The actress, who is of Puerto Rican descent, also discussed the Academy’s long history of ignoring non-white actors and actresses (only one Latina actress has won an Oscar, West Side Story‘s Rita Moreno, and that was 60 years ago).

“The biggest struggle has been navigating through other people’s shortcomings,” Perez says. “Other people’s bigotry, racism — and specifically the ones that don’t understand that they are bigots or racists.” At this year’s Oscars, only four of the 23 categories — Jaime Baksht, Michelle Couttolenc and Carlos Cortés in sound (Sound of Metal), Maite Alberdi and Marcela Santibañez in documentary feature (The Mole Agent), and Shaka King in picture and original screenplay (Judas and the Black Messiah) — had any form of Latino representation.

This is why Birds of Prey should have been nominated for Best Picture. For one thing, it’s better than The Trial of the Chicago 7. Also, the Academy would have to invite Perez (who, again, should have a lifetime Oscars entry pass for Do the Right Thing and White Men Can’t Jump). “Yes, change is happening, but it’s too damn slow,” Perez said.

(Via Variety)

Fanclubwallet, the project of Canadian musician Hannah Judge that she named after a Dennis The Menace wallet her father had, started to gain some traction with a cover of The Talking Heads’ “This Must Be The Place” that she shared around this time last year. Since then, she recorded a new EP, Hurt Is Boring, which is set for release on May 14. Ahead of then, she has dropped a new single, “C’mon Be Cool,” a propulsive and deceptively groovy indie rock gem.

Judge says of the song, “I feel like a lot of people might have felt this way during the pandemic. You’re isolated, your life has changed so much in a year, and you realize that maybe everyone else’s lives have not changed in the same manner.” She also describes her style on Hurt Is Boring as “writing emo sh*t that doesn’t sound emo” and noted of the project, “It’s about taking the good with the bad. You can’t really appreciate one without the other.”

The EP emerged from some unfortunate circumstances: Judge spent ten months bedridden after a flare-up of her Crohn’s disease, but she ended up using that time to craft Hurt Is Boring.

Watch the “C’mon Be Cool” video above and find the Hurt Is Boring art and tracklist below.

1. “Car Crash In G Major”
2. “C’mon Be Cool”
3. “Flew Away”
4. “What’s Up?”
5. “Hurt Is Boring”

Hurt Is Boring is out 5/14 via AWAL. Pre-order it here.

Earl Simmons, the man known to the world as Dark Man X, has passed away at the age of 50. DMX, who was best known for hits like “Party Up” and “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” and film roles in Belly and Romeo Must Die, died after an apparent relapse, overdose, and heart attack on April 2 that sent him to the hospital and prompted a wave of supportive posts on social media. After a battery of tests to determine his brain function, his family made the decision to remove him from life support.

It may sound like a cliche, but it’s true; DMX shocked the world when he first arrived on the scene in 1995, appearing with Ja Rule, Jay-Z, and Mic Geronimo on the posse cut “Time To Build” and then utterly destroying his standout verse on LL Cool J’s “4, 3, 2, 1” with Canibus, Method Man, and Redman in 1997. By the time he released his debut major-label album, It’s Dark And Hell Is Hot, anticipation was just as high as the temperature in The Bad Place, leading to a No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200. When he followed up later that year with Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood, he became the first rapper to debut at No. 1 back-to-back in the same year.

From there, he had a string of successive hit albums and singles, including … And Then There Was X, The Great Depression, and Grand Champ. Songs like “Party Up,” “What These B*tches Want,” “Who We Be,” “Where Tha Hood At,” and “X Gon’ Give It to Ya” became pop culture fixtures and have remained popular to this day, with many forming the foundation of memes and samples used in hip-hop by top rappers like ASAP Rocky and Drake.

Unfortunately, a lifelong addiction to cocaine, which started at just 14 years old after he was given a laced blunt by an acquaintance, derailed his career multiple times. Legal issues led to multiple stints in prison, including a 2017 conviction for tax fraud prompting his most recent one. After his release in 2019, he seemed to be on the road to a comeback after completing rehab, plotting out a new album featuring Griselda Records and Pop Smoke, and appearing on Verzuz alongside Snoop Dogg.

X was open about his struggles, often making them the center of dark, sometimes menacing, sometimes vulnerable rhymes on his projects. However, no matter how sinister the subject matter, he always came back to his faith; his penchant for adding prayers to his albums and live shows is well-noted. Meanwhile, his vocal pyrotechnics, ranging from a threatening growl to the explosive barks he used as ad-libs (and reportedly trained one of his actual dogs to add to his live freestyles), were made all the more impressive by his lifelong struggle with asthma — which never stopped him from performing without a hype man, pacing the stage like a caged tiger.

He often stole the show; on posse cuts like Mase’s “24 Hours To Live,” he regularly out-rapped, outboasted, or out-performed his collaborators. For a time, he had a reasonable claim to the coveted “King of New York” title in the wake of Biggie’s death, alongside Ja Rule and Jay-Z, with whom he had an alternately friendly and contentious relationship. Although they came into the game at the same time and even plotted on a group project titled “Murder Inc.,” divisions between led to the dissolution of this idea, while fans pitted them against one another in top rapper debates.

Just check out the freestyle snippet from the Def Jam tour documentary, Backstage, where you can see DMX and Jay-Z trading bars during what was likely one of mania impromptu ciphers during their 1999 Hard Knock Life Tour. Jay-Z is cool, collected, and measured as always, but DMX is downright magnetic, speeding and slowing his cadence, one moment just as disaffected as his friend/rival, the next, agitated, belligerent, showing his teeth — just like one of his beloved pets might when a stranger gets a little too close.

X contained all of these emotions and more; his music was an expression of all things hip-hop, from the streetwise braggadocio typical of the biggest hits to the exposed, bloody trauma that he was never quite able to escape from. By putting it all into his music, he expanded the bounds of what rap could be capable of; he was fallible on “Slippin’,” fiery on “Who We Be,” triumphant on “Where The Hood At,” cautioning on “Stop Being Greedy,” and even played the lothario on “What These B*tches Want.” He could be a comedian, a horror film director, an action star, a drug kingpin, a stick-up kid, and a wounded child in need of comfort.

His albums created space and precedent for future rappers like Kanye West and Kid Cudi to address their own struggles with anxiety and depression. And even though X once professed to hate everything Drake stood for, he later softened his stance, understanding that Drake’s outlook was an extension of his own, with different traumas and worries, but the same vulnerability. Kendrick Lamar credits DMX as his favorite rapper for that quality, and he’s likely not the only one who does, as we’ll likely find out in the coming weeks.

DMX’s story could be tragic, but he never let the tragedies of his life solely define him. After all, this was a man who took the internet’s fascination with his gravelly rendition of “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” and ran with it, releasing a studio version that showed his lighthearted side. He was someone who knew just how hot hell could be, but at the height of his success, got close enough to glimpse heaven. The rap world won’t be the same without him, but it already changed so much because of him. He showed us the soul of a man and hopefully, that soul is finally at peace.

In the first episode of Uproxx’s newest show, Behind The Video, breakout Dallas star Erica Banks breaks down the making of the video for her viral hit, “Buss It.” Right off the bat, she debunks the belief that shooting a music video is a simple, straightforward process, then, she gets into some of the details, including the fact that she styled herself for the shoot, and even responds to a famous admirer’s YouTube comment while watching the video.

She also says that there was another “Buss It” video, but she refuses to let anyone else see it. When asked about the shorts she wears in the video, she reveals that the shorts are coming soon to her official merch site and asks fans to stay tuned.

During Banks’ visit to Uproxx Studios, she also delivered an electric live performance of “Buss It” for UPROXX Sessions. She also recently revealed that before signing to Warner Records, she was offered a deal with DaBaby’s label Billion Dollar Baby Entertainment, but turned it down to consider her options.

Watch Erica Banks break down her “Buss It” video above.

Erica Banks is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The music world suffered a gigantic loss on Friday morning. After spending several days in the hospital in critical condition, Earl Simmons, known to millions as DMX, died at age 50. DMX suffered a heart attack as a result of an apparent drug overdose on April 2, and a few days later, his manager said that he was in a comatose state and on life support, with his team of doctors performing a series of tests in an attempt to determine what would be best.

As is oftentimes the case when someone as revered as DMX passes away, the news led to plenty of people on social media — including many from the world of music — issuing up prayers and tributes. This also included a number of NBA players, including LeBron James and Bradley Beal, some of whom made it a point to look back on his life and legacy.

Eric Paschall of the Golden State Warriors posted a famous video of DMX at Woodstock ’99, where he performed “Ruff Ryders Anthem” in front of a packed, energetic crowd.

Charlotte Hornets youngster Miles Bridges made it a point to say that “this one hurt” and proclaimed that DMX is one of his favorite rappers.

The wait to see Tom Cruise run across movie screens just got a little longer. In a reshuffling of Paramount’s upcoming film slate, the studio has once again pushed back the release dates for both Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible 7. The long-awaited sequel to the 80’s classic was poised to make a patriotic comeback over the July 4th weekend, but it will now debut on November 19, which was the release date for seventh installment in the Mission: Impossible series. That film will now take a sizable step back and hit theaters on May 27, 2022.

As for the reasoning behind this latest release date shuffle, Paramount has remained extremely committed to releasing its films theatrically, and apparently, it’s not liking what it’s seeing in July. Via Deadline:

Top Gun: Maverick stands to be a billion-dollar grossing movie and Paramount isn’t going to let one buck of that slip away. Exhibition continues to be closed in Europe (with UK eyeing a May 17 reopening) and Brazil as they continue to grapple with Covid, and it’s going to take time for those markets to get back in shape. A late November date stands a better chance of Europe and Brazil being fully open for Top Gun: Maverick.

The Top Gun: Maverick delay is surprising given comments from Paramount president Chris Aronson in late January when he struck a confident tone that the film was set for flight in July. “We have no plans to move our theatrical release of Top Gun,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “I think the next two months are critical, and whether the new administration can implement a robust vaccination plan. If Biden’s 100 million vaccines in 100 days works, then I think we’ll be in good shape.”

As we now know, Biden’s vaccination plan has been so successful that the administration hit its goal of 100 million shots in just 58 days and is hoping to double that goal by the time the 100 days are up. However, it appears that Paramount is now concerned with getting the most bang for its buck at the global box office, which remains in flux. Until then, it appears both Maverick and Ethan Hunt are grounded.

(Via Deadline)

Doja Cat provided one of the highlights of this year’s Grammys ceremony with her futuristic performance of “Say So.” It turns out that was a special moment for her, since she “cried like a baby” (in a good way) after she left the stage.

She spoke about it with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, describing the post-performance scene:

“So I performed, it was the first time that I’d ever performed and then cried like a baby after. And I don’t do that, I don’t cry. I just get off stage and I’m like, ‘Yeah, we did it, yeah.’ But for this, literally the director for the whole thing, he came up to me and I was walking off stage and he was like, ‘Thank you so much. You were amazing.’ And I’m like, ‘[sobbing] Thank you.’ And we were rushing out and I couldn’t talk to him. And I was just dying. […] [It was] ugly, ugly. Everybody was holding each other’s shoulders and looking at each other. It was really, really corny, but it was the sweetest, greatest, most intimate moment I’ve ever had.”

She also talked about preparing for the performance, saying:

“I feel like when you think of a Grammy performance, it’s like, three months of rehearsal and like it’s a huge deal, blah, blah, blah. And it is, but we had two weeks to put this together. So we had the two weeks of rehearsal for choreography, but I think that the concept was definitely something that we had for two months, three months. So visually, all that was kind of locked in by the time we started dancing. So I rehearsed for two weeks and then it was really, really difficult at first. Look: we tried different prototypes. I did the boots at the end, but we were trying to do heels. Heels were like… it was scary, but I really wanted to try. It looked so good, it had such a good silhouette.”

Watch Doja speak about her Grammys performance (and her new song with SZA) above.

Sometimes a film wears its elevator pitch on its sleeve, and I didn’t have to read the Wikipedia page to know that Voyagers was sold as “Lord of the Flies in space.” The film, from Neil Burger (Divergent, Limitless, The Illusionist) stars Tye Sheridan from Mud, and Lily-Rose Depp from Johnny Depp’s loins, in a film about a group of genetically-engineered teens on a journey to colonize a distant planet. In the process of their journey, they encounter jealousy, cynicism, lust, and eventually discover that the real habitable planet was the friends they made along the way. The premise, it turns out, is actually better than the pitch, but the movie is so dead set on mimicking the conventions of YA fiction that it squanders its own potential. Voyagers could’ve been a lot more than a teen drama.

With the Earth getting hot and crowded, a team of scientists decides that humanity’s best bet is to create genetic combinations of their best citizens and send them on a journey to colonize a promising-looking planet. The journey will take 86 years, all but guaranteeing that these first-generation lab children will die before ever realizing their only “goal” in life. They exist solely to pass the mortal baton and eventually grandfather a team of future colonists. The future space teens are raised in isolation on Earth, sheltered from the natural world in order that they never come to miss it. Soon one of the scientists, played by Colin Farrell, volunteers to chaperone this suicide mission, little knowing how horny the space teens will eventually become. Farrell, his eyebrows bigger and more expressive than ever, his hair dyed a slightly unnatural shade, turned into Henry Rollins so gradually I didn’t even notice.

There’s a metaphor for life in there, obviously, having to find meaning in a journey even knowing you won’t be around to see its destination. And also for science, the idea of dutifully helping human knowledge advance incrementally, knowing it won’t be enough to save you or loved ones. It’s easy to wonder if it might be better to just drink yourself into a stupor and spend all your time pursuing sensual pleasures, leaving all the sowing and tilling for some other sucker. Who cares? It’s all ultimately meaningless anyway, right?

Personifying this latter view is the steely-eyed Zac, played by Fionn Whitehead. Only he comes to this realization not naturally, but because he, along with the ship’s babyface, Christopher, played by Tye Sheridan, stopped drinking the “blue drink,” which they discovered was spiked with a drug to keep them celibate and docile until procreation time. (Saltpeter, incidentally, has been a widespread military rumor going back generations). In one creepy scene, Zac applies his penetrating Charles Manson gaze to Sela, played by Lily-Rose Depp, staring her down while he emotionlessly gropes her right breast like he’s testing fruit at the supermarket.

The big question here is, why the saltpeter drink? Voyagers‘ stakes are the same with or without it. The bad drug plot feels like a hangover from Limitless, and the characters discovering their emotions is a leftover from Divergent, and both are largely unnecessary impositions on the movie at hand. Voyagers does this over and over, adding baggage from other stories rather than exploring its own premise (which, again, is actually pretty good). Christopher and Zac quickly get railroaded into their respective Ralph and Jack roles before we really get to know them, as if Burger can’t simply let this material be what it wants without trying to crowbar it into something else.

Sheridan is one of the best actors of his generation and Whitehead has perfected an effective if somewhat one-note “wild-eyed sociopath” look. While Hollywood nepotism has occasionally gifted us great onscreen talent (Carrie Fisher or the Gyllenhaal siblings come to mind), at this stage of her career, Lily-Rose Depp doesn’t seem to have quite figured out how to put her striking features to good use. Not that Burger’s scattershot screenplay is doing any of these actors any favors. Meanwhile, Burger’s most conspicuous trick as a director is a recurring montage effect, juxtaposing lightning bolts, sprouting plants, and extreme weather to convey the idea that the teens are becoming dangerously horny. It’s like the train-going-through-tunnel/space-shuttle-taking-off sequence from Naked Gun, delivered unironically. She cannae take any more, captain! The teens are about to blow!

Burger softpedals and PG-ifies his own obvious horniness so much and so often that it only serves to make him seem like a bit of a creep. Is it Zac who needs to go to horny jail or Burger?

Goofiness and occasional sub-par acting is forgivable in YA space fiction. Less acceptable is the consistent disrespect and disregard Voyagers shows toward its own characters and premise. If the eternal question is “what did you want this movie to be?” Voyagers’ consistent, unmistakable response is “sort of like other movies.”

‘Voyagers’ hits theaters nationwide April 9th. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Brad Pitt recently made headlines for doing his own stunts in his next movie, Bullet Train. When reached for comment, Tom Cruise responded, “Lol.” In the Mission: Impossible series alone, the actor has climbed the Burj Khalifa, held his breath underwater for six minutes, shattered his ankle while jumping from one building to another, had a knife inches away from his eye (not worth it for Mission: Impossible 2), and hung off the side of a plane, all for our enjoyment. Our enjoyment, his pain.

While appearing on Friday’s episode of The Graham Norton Show, Cruise discussed his various injuries over the years. “I am a very physical actor and I love doing them. I study and train and take a lot of time figuring it all out. I have broken a lot of bones!” he said. “The first time of any stunt is nerve-wracking, but it’s also exhilarating. I have been told a few times during shooting a stunt to stop smiling.” I wonder who has broken more bones: Tom Cruise or Johnny Knoxville? A follow-up question: can Tom Cruise be in Jackass 4?

Cruise also revealed that he worked “seven days a week” during the pandemic to finish Top Gun: Maverick and M:I 7. “They shut down Mission and said we wouldn’t film for another year, so I had to figure it out,” he said. “We worked with governments, doctors, and our crew to keep everyone working – I haven’t had that banana bread moment yet.”

That’s because he’s a cake guy.

(Via the Daily Mail)

It’s hard to imagine asking the question, “Who is Awkwafina?” now.

With a handful of blockbusters under her belt, a history-making Golden Globes win for her role in The Farewell, and a string of viral hits, the woman once-known as Nora Lum from Queens is anything but unfamiliar. In fact, her swift rise to fame with films like Ocean’s 8 and Crazy Rich Asians and the creative influence she now wields with shows like Nora From Queens is so renowned, it’s almost impossible to remember a time when she wasn’t disrupting Hollywood norms by way of feminist hip-hop odes to her vagina and diss tracks directed at former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s New York soda ban.

Almost.

But it’s important to remember where Awkwafina came from because her success story, however unlikely, is proof that representation is worth fighting for. That, to win that fight, you have to be able to adapt, to roll with the punches, and yes, to get fired from you office job for unapologetically comparing your genitals to an operatic ballad.

It all started on Youtube. (Doesn’t everything?)

Well, really it started before that. Lum, the daughter of a Chinese-American father and a South Korean mother, was predominately raised by her grandparents in Forest Hills after her mother died when she was young. She turned to music at a young age, studying classical and jazz trumpet at New York’s LaGuardia High School. When she was in her teens, she created the alter-ego “Awkwafina” a riff on the bottled water brand that also rebranded her awkward comedy into a moniker of self-confidence. She received a degree in journalism and women’s studies from SUNY before taking a series of odd jobs including (but not limited to) vegan bodega worker, newspaper intern, an employee of an air conditioning company, and publicist for a book publishing firm.

That last is the position she was ultimately fired from after her single “My Vag,” a decidedly feminist take on rapper Mickey Avalon’s tribute to his own genitalia, went viral in 2012, netting over 400,000 views on Youtube. The song, a comedically infused, unashamed homage to that specific body part began, like many of Awkwafina’s great ideas seem to do, as a joke. She taught herself to compose beats on her Macbook when she was 19-years-old and quickly penned the song, creating a music video with some friends to accompany it and uploading it to the internet a couple of years later. She’d follow it up with similarly bawdy, unfiltered riffs on everything from gentrification in New York to soda bans and collaborations with comedy icons like Margaret Cho that poked fun at Asian stereotypes. Eventually, her viral fame ended up costing her a 9-5.

“I was working at an office company and my boss somehow figured out that I made a video and she immediately fired me. So, that was pretty sad,” Awkwafina told Galore. “But then, it was like, ‘Yo, I gotta do this because not only did I just get laid off, but I have this video out. So, if I walk into Cleary and Gottlieb for an interview, they’re definitely going to be like, ‘Oh my god, do not hire her.’”

She’d float for a while after that, starring on an MTV series, producing her debut album Yellow Ranger, connecting with other Asian-American rappers in the game, and even taking part in a documentary called Bad Rap that landed at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. She hosted a truly unhinged (in the best way) web talk show titled Tawk set in bodegas and laundromats around the city and featuring her grandmother, “Grammafina,” doling out sage advice in leather-arm-chair supporting interludes.

But as passionate as Awkwafina was about her music — she once described it as the only thing she has complete control over — she recognized early on that to build a lasting career in Hollywood, she’d need more than a handful of Internet-famous accolades.

“It was a career that was completely new to me that I felt I was blessed and completely lucky to have to the point where I didn’t trust that it would be a lasting career,” the artist told The Ringer. “Life doesn’t work that way. It couldn’t be that good. What happened was not that I became luckier, but I learned that it is a career and it is a job and you have to work to preserve it.”

And so she pivoted, harnessing her innate comedic sensibilities to land bit roles in feature films like Neighbors 2 and shows like Hulu’s Future Man. When the news of her Ocean’s 8 casting came along — the announcement that had Reddit boards and established entertainment writers querying just who the hell Awkwafina was — the once organic transition from comedy hip-hop to acting took on new meaning. Suddenly, Awkwafina was a name that resided on the same casting sheet as Academy Award winners like Sandra Bullock, Anne Hathaway, and Cate Blanchett, not to mention pop idols like Rihanna.

Then came Crazy Rich Asians, a rom-com featuring an all-Asian cast that managed to dominate the box office and give audiences a moving, authentic portrayal of Asian culture and the importance of family at the same time. The experience shooting the film prompted Awkwafina to become more vocal about the need for inclusion and diversity in the projects she was being pitched.

“Here I am with an all-female cast and an all-Asian cast,” she told The Guardian. “I’m fairly new to this industry and I have not experienced some of the struggles I’ve heard about. Time’s up and it’s about time. No more bullshit characters for women, especially Asian American women. Don’t piss off whole communities of people.”

Awkwafina has gone on to make history a handful of times — as the first Asian-American woman to win a Golden Globe for a major acting role in a drama film and as just the second Asian woman to host an episode of Saturday Night Live in the show’s 40 plus year run. She’s created a popular comedy series loosely based on her own life for Comedy Central, voiced characters in multiple Disney films, been tapped for a role in Marvel’s first Asian-led superhero flick, released an NYC guidebook, and become a leading figure in the Times Up movement.

And she’s done it all without following in other’s footsteps, remaining true to herself while pushing the limits that were once delineated for her. Oddly enough, even with that eclectic resume, we have the feeling she’s just getting started.