Month: April 2021

On Saturday, much of social media pounced upon learning that Elon Musk, the world’s most eccentric billionaire, would be hosting SNL for some reason. Then came an excellent example of why people aren’t happy it: In a recent interview, as per Deadline, Musk casually admitted that his big hoped-for mission to Mars, which he hopes will lead to a mass colonization of the angry red planet, will probably end in scores of deaths.

“You might die, it’s going to be uncomfortable and probably won’t have good food,” Musk told Peter Diamandis, founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation for scientific discovery. The CEO of Space X has been trying to get regular people, not just astronauts, to join him on their trek to the fourth planet from the sun. But he wasn’t going to say it was safe. Instead he warned people it would be “arduous and dangerous journey where you may not come back alive.”

Musk laughed during much of this, which may not have inspired confidence. “Honestly, a bunch of people will probably die in the beginning,” he said, adding that it’s “not for everyone.” With a chuckle he said it’s “Volunteers only!”

Musk has spent the last decade testing out various rockets, trying to perfect interstellar travel. It hasn’t always worked out. A number of his rockets have blown up by one way or another. In March of this year, one rocket landed safely and then blew up seconds later. But Musk has remained optimistic — well, as optimistic as one can be while blurting out that participants will die, or at least not eat good food. And he believes that by 2026 a million people will be on Mars.

Anyway, at least he’s honest?

You can watch the full video here.

(Via Deadline)

The Dodgers picked up a 5-4 win over the rival Padres on Saturday night thanks to some heroics from Corey Seager in the sixth to break a 3-3 tie with a two-run single. However, the story of the game for many was the battle between Dodgers starter Trevor Bauer and Padres star shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr.

In the first inning, Tatis launched a home run off of Bauer and taunted him as he rounded first base, covering one eye to poke fun at Bauer throwing some pitches in spring training with one eye closed. In the sixth, Tatis went yard again, this time on a pretty great pitch from Bauer that was off the plate outside and he still hammered to left center. After the game, Bauer and Tatis both talked about enjoying the game and that battle, with Bauer noting he’s not going to throw at Tatis for celebrating a home run, via ESPN.

“I like it,” Bauer said. “I think that pitchers who have that done to them and react by throwing at people, or getting upset and hitting people or whatever — I think it’s pretty soft. If you give up a homer, the guy should celebrate it. It’s hard to hit in the big leagues.

“So, I’m all for it. And I think it’s important that the game moves in that direction, and we stop throwing at people because they celebrated having some success on the field.”

However, the cordial behavior didn’t last all that long as someone on Twitter pointed out that on the second homer, Tatis looked down at the ground and seemingly peeked back to look at the catcher. Bauer retweeted the video and told Tatis that if he wanted to know what was coming to “ask daddy nicely next time.” Tatis responded with a photoshop of him holding a child with Bauer’s face, and told him, in Spanish, to “calm down son.”

It’s a funny response from Tatis and just furthers the fact that the Dodgers-Padres rivalry is going to be the most fun to watch in baseball this season (and, presumably, for years to come). They meet again to close their current series out on Sunday Night Baseball, and then won’t meet again until late June.

This past Wednesday, Call Of Duty shared a new trailer for Warzone 3, their free-to-play battle royale game. Its first two seasons thrived during the 2020 pandemic as it grew to be massively popular among gamers, and excitement for the new season only escalated with the new trailer.

The promo video featured a number of musicians, athletes, and entertainment names like Young Thug who blows up a building after hopping on a helicopter piloted by Gunna. There’s also Jack Harlow and comedian Druski parachuting from the sky and that’s just half of it. Saweetie, Swae Lee, Dennis Schröder, Jack Grealish, Mookie Betts, and others star in the trailer. It turns out that the thrilling video had a big influence on J. Cole, who is now a big fan of the game.

The rapper’s manager and Dreamville record label co-founder, Ibrahim “Ib” Hamad shared a text message thread between himself and J. Cole detailing his first foray into the game.

“Yo I’m bout to hit this call of duty for the first time… With Tminus and mez” the rapper says, adding, “What’s goooood.” Ib laughs at Cole’s message and the rapper replies, “Thug and Gunna inspired me.” Ib can’t help but laugh at Cole’s excitement with Call Of Duty: Warzone 3. “You really hyped off that commercial,” Ib says. “I’m dying (laughing emojis).”

You can check out the screenshot of the messages between Cole and Ib above.

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

Most of Jay-Z’s recent moves have come on the business side of things. He recently sold his Tidal streaming service to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s Square for $297 million in stock and cash. The move gave the rapper a position on the mobile payment company’s board. Prior to that, he sold half of his Ace Of Spades champagne company to LVMH, but a price tag in this deal was not shared.

Despite the business moves, Jay continues to impact as a rapper, and his verse alongside Nipsey Hussle on “What It Feels Like” is complete proof of that. During a recent sit-down with The Times UK, he spoke about his legacy as a rapper and how he hopes to be remembered.

“I’m not beyond ego, right?” he said. “Hopefully they speak of me [with] the names of Bob Marley and all the greats. But that’s not for me to say.” He added, “I’m most proud of overcoming my circumstances and providing opportunity for people who look like me and who came from the same situation that I’ve come from.”

Later in the interview, Jay-Z joked about how hard leg day workouts are for him.

“You ever seen my legs? They’re horrible. So of course!” Back on “Bam” from his 2017 album, 4:44, Jay-Z rapped, “Uh, n****s is skippin’ leg day just to run they mouth / I be skippin’ leg day, I still run the world.” Fast forward a few years and it seems like Jay has realized sticking to leg day could make running the world a bit easier.

Lindsey Graham is no stranger to being wrong. As a fervent supporter of Donald Trump he’s had plenty of practice twisting words and logic to frame his worldview squarely against what’s actually happening in reality. And that certainly continued on Sunday when Graham tried to explain away inherent problems with race and racism America has grappled with from its inception.

On Fox News Sunday, the senator claimed that there isn’t any systemic racism in America, using a very curious reasoning to dismiss all the evidence of bias across all areas of American life in the process.

The Daily Beast has video of the moment, as well as what he actually said to wave away systemic racism in America. The biggest example he gave of racism not existing? The fact that Barack Obama was elected president, and most recently that Kamala Harris was elected vice president in November. The latter of which, of course, he doesn’t think happened anyway because he has supported Donald Trump’s lies that the election was stolen from him.

Wallace then brought up Biden’s remarks, asking the conservative lawmaker point-blank if he believes there is systemic racism in policing and other American institutions. Graham, meanwhile, leaned back on a common right-wing trope that racism simply doesn’t exist anymore because of Obama and Harris’ respective electoral successes.

“No, not in my opinion,” Graham declared. “We just elected a two-term African-American president; the vice president is of African-American and Indian descent. So our systems are not racist.”

He continued: “America is not a racist country. Within every society, you have bad actors. The Chauvin trial was a just result.”

The “bad actors” line is something often brought up by conservatives who refuse to address major problems or even admit that they’re there in the first place. Anything from gun control after mass shootings, police reform after instances of police brutality and economic reforms are waved away as simply “bad actors” or “apples” that are exception to the rule. But more to the point, the idea that one police officer who murdered a black man in broad daylight was actually convicted of a crime proves racism doesn’t exist is absurd to say the least.

Electing two people of color to higher office does not erase America’s long and horrible history of slavery, the vestiges of the Jim Crow south or the systemic biases against minorities in the housing market, the public (and private) education system and the very real, deadly consequences from racial bias in policing across the country. And it certainly doesn’t excuse more recent efforts to revive Jim Crow voting rules in places like Georgia. But Graham’s myopic view is the easy way out when it comes to equity in America, and shows how unwilling conservatives are to even acknowledge that the game has long been rigged to give certain people significant advantages over others.

That some of the men who’ve ostensibly won that game can’t admit those warped rules have impacted so much of American life shows how unwilling they are to make things even a little more fair for people that don’t look like them, and how far everyone else has to go in the struggle to make things better for the rest of the country.

Snoop Dogg is a busy man nowadays. The Long Beach rap legend consistently finds himself in headlines, often for good reasons like his appearance at Triller’s recent Fight Club event and his upcoming role on Jamie Foxx’s Netflix vampire hunter movie. Other times it’s for more controversial things like his recent beef with Eminem. Through these ups and downs, if there’s one thing Snoop will absolutely give to his fans it’s new music and that’s something he did last week.

Celebrating the release of his eighteenth album, From Tha Streets 2 Tha Suites, Snoop returned with a new video for “Look Around.” The visual finds Snoop sifting through a crate of vinyl LPs filled with various rap albums. As the rapper picks one up to look at, the video transitions to him on a recreated version of the cover. The various covers Snoop remakes include LL Cool J’s Radio, Ice-T’s Power, Eric B & Rakim’s Paid In Full, Big Daddy Kane’s Long Live The Kane, Eazy-E’s Eazy-Duz-It, Too $hort’s Life Is… Too $hort, Ice Cube’s AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted and Death Certificate, and Snoop’s own Doggystyle.

“Look Around” can be found on the From Tha Streets 2 Tha Suites album which Snoop released on 4/20 to celebrate the weed-themed holiday. Its ten tracks feature contributions from Mozzy, Larry June, J Black, Devin The Dude, and more.

You can press play on the “Look Around” video above.

From Tha Streets 2 Tha Suites is out now via Doggystyle Records. Get it here.

SPOILERS for Fear the Walking Dead will be found below.

Two episodes into the back half of Season Six of Fear the Walking Dead, and there have already been two major deaths. John Dorie was the first victim, shot and killed by Dakota, while in last week’s episode, June got her revenge by killing Dakota’s mother, Ginny.

Those two deaths, interestingly, may pave the way for the next Big Bad in the series. Ginny’s absence, of course, leaves an opening for another major villain, since she had been the primary antagonist for the past season. Meanwhile, the forthcoming villain will be someone from John Dorie’s past, hinted co-showrunner Andrew Chambliss in an interview with Entertainment Weekly: “I think people should go back and look at what John Dorie has said in the first half of the season, because it will offer a clue as to one of the big threats in the back half of the season.”

As Comicbook.com suggests, Chambliss is likely referring to a serial killer that Dorie’s father put in prison, though he had to do so by framing him, which cost Dorie’s father his job. Here’s how Dorie described him in Episode Four of this season:

“Women were going missing in the Houston area. Bodies showing up miles away. The term didn’t exist then, but I suppose the fella doin’ it is what we’d call a serial killer. Detectives found him living on this compound out in the desert with a bunch of people he brainwashed into thinking he was the second coming or somethin’. Really, he was just some two-bit mortician spouting on about death and new beginnings … just a bunch of nonsense dressed up to sound profound.”

“Nonsense dressed up as profound” certainly sounds like the person behind all that spray-painted tags reading, “The end is the beginning.” The group responsible for those tags is already being set up as the back-half villains, and it would only make sense that they’d be led by someone Alicia described in the season six trailer as, “The King of the Crazies.” In fact, the KIng of the Crazies narrates that trailer: “Everything is winding down,” he says. “Death is inevitable, but from this death comes new life.”

That definitely sounds like “nonsense dressed up as profound.” That character’s name is Teddy, he’s played by John Glover (Smallville), and he looks exactly like a two-bit mortician.

It would seem that after the zombie apocalypse, Teddy managed to escape prison, and now on top of everything else, Morgan and the Gang now have to deal with a serial killer with an apparently large following and a ready supply of spray paint. We can’t wait to meet him.

Fear the Walking Dead airs Sunday nights on AMC.

Source: EW, Comicbook.com

Fans of family and holding Corona bottles by the neck had a big weekend as a new look at the latest Fast and Furious movie hit social media. The long-delayed movie got an emotional new trailer on Sunday afternoon, with Vin Diesel narrating a loving triubute to nights at the movies and reflecting on what’s been a tough pandemic-filled year for everyone.

Originally slated to hit theaters in 2020, Fast 9 was one of many films to see delays after theaters closed amid the age of coronavirus. And the latest trailer reflects on that tough time and a offers a warm welcome back for fans who are hopefully helping bring the pandemic to an end in America.

“It’s been a while,” Diesel said as the camera focused on a black car driving alone. “The roads were a little empty. The places that we used to gather went quiet. We’ve gone through a year that tested us. But we’re starting to see the promise of a new day.”

With emotional music playing, and maybe a nod to the late Paul Walker, Diesel parked the car and stepped out front to speak directly to the camera.

“For more than 100 years there’s one place where we’d all come together to be entertained. To escape, to go someplace new. The movies,” he said. “There’s nothing like that moment when the lights go down. The projector ignites, and we believe.”

Cue the car chases, with Diesel quite literally throwing a car off a mountain and flying to another mountain. The trailer starts to show some actual scenes from the upcoming film, but the emotional pull is still there.

“After staying apart for so long, it’s time to come back together. To laugh, to cheer, we’re ready to make you believe again,” he said between some dialogue from the film. “Because nobody does a comeback like the movies.”

It’s a surprisingly gripping trailer for what’s become an absurd big-budget action franchise. But it also will resonate with the millions of fans the franchise has had, especially those who have missed the theater experience over the last year. If Fast 9 wants to frame itself as a return to the movies, there are plenty of people who will oblige them and see it on the big screen. As Han said to close out the trailer, “it’s good to be back.”

We’ll have to see just how it all plays out on June 25 when Fast 9 finally hits theaters.

What is this? A competition for the top spot at the box office? Between two movies that wildly exceeded expectations? During a pandemic?!

There are still plenty of concerns about the future of theaters, especially with places like the Arclight shutting down and chains shedding theaters around the country, but the box office is clearly beginning to thaw. Three weeks ago, Godzilla vs. Kong proved that moviegoers would come back to theaters with a $48.5 million five-day opening, becoming the biggest domestic hit of the pandemic by the next week. Godzilla has now earned $84 million in three weeks now and is poised to become the first film in over a year to cross the $100 million mark in America.

This week, however, moviegoers illustrated that they were not only ready to come back for big, expensive blockbusters with solid reviews but for a bad sequel to a bad video-game adaptation, too, largely out of a sense of nostalgia and to have a good time in theaters. Warner Brothers’ Mortal Kombat earned a robust $22.5 million this weekend, wildly exceeding expectations the studio had for the film of around $12 million. It becomes the biggest debut for an R-rate film during the pandemic, and actually came very close to the $23.5 million the original Mortal Kombat, which often feed off the crowded movie theater experience, are basically critic-proof. Audiences liked it, anyway, giving it a solid B+ Cinemascore and an audience score of 88 percent on RT.

We should note, again, that WB earned $22.5 million on Mortal Kombat despite the fact that it was also available for free to HBO Max subscribers. Undoubtedly, a lot of subscribers watched Mortal Kombat at home, and yet the film also looks like it can turn a profit in theaters, as well. Warner’s strategy to release movies at home and in theaters at the same time seems to be working, not only netting positive box office results but adding 2.7 million subscribers to HBO Max during the first quarter, the most new subscribers among new streaming services for the second quarter in a row.

Mortal Kombat, meanwhile, is running neck and neck with Funimation/Aniplex’s Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train. The anime film opened in far fewer theaters, but it clearly has a passionate fan base, who turned up this weekend in big numbers. Demon Slayer even outmatched Mortal Kombat on Friday ($9.5 million to $9 million), but the movie was a bit frontloaded. Expectations for Demon Slayer were around $10 million, but it ended up earning a surprising $19 million this weekend. The movie sits at 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes (with a 99 percent audience score), although there have only been 15 reviews for this film, compared to the 177 reviews for Mortal Kombat.

It’s a weekend where the overall box office is poised to approach $50 million for the weekend, and while that is a far cry from the $400 million the box office earned during the same weekend two years ago when Avengers: Endgame opened, it’s nevertheless clear that the box office is slowly coming back.

Beyond the top two and Godzilla vs. Kong in third place, Bob Odenkirk’s Nobody, which is already available digitally, was in fourth place this weekend with $1.6 million and $21 million overall (besting with $15 million budget, even before PVOD receipts). Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon, meanwhile, held on to fifth place with $1.55 million and $39 million overall. It’s also earned a ton of money on Disney+.

Demon Slayer and Mortal Kombat will probably duke it out for the top spot next weekend, as well, with only one new wide release on the calendar at the moment, the horror film Separation with Rupert Friend, Brian Cox, Madeline Brewer, Mamie Gummer. The following weekend, however, will see two wide releases (with limited potential): Wrath of Man with Jason Statham and Here Today, a comedy starring Billy Crystal and Tiffany Haddish.

Source: Deadline, Box Office Mojo

Saweetie is set to have a big summer this year, but it’s nothing she’s not used to. Her prior records like “Tap In,” “My Type,” and “Icy Grl” could be found on the summer soundtracks for years and with official debut album, Pretty B*tch Music, on the way, her fans can expect some more great music from the Bay Area act. Before that arrives, however, Saweetie revealed that she brought her talents to an artist development boot camp with the goal of working on the areas she struggles in as a musician.

She shared the news during a recent interview with Apple Music. “For me, I’m gonna focus on what I struggle with — I struggle with breathing control, I’m gonna work on my dance moves, my details, all that good stuff, my body, my stamina, everything,” she said. The hosts on the Apple Music show were surprised by her involvement in the camp and commended her for joining it and putting an effort to improve her skills.

The interview came just a couple weeks after she released her Pretty Summer Playlist: Season 1. The seven-track effort saw appearances from Drakeo The Ruler, Bbyafricka, Kednra Jae, Lourdiz, and Loui.

You can watch Saweetie’s full Apple Music interview above. Pretty Summer Playlist: Season 1 is out now via Warner. Get it here.

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