Month: May 2021

While crypto fans are certainly excited about Elon Musk appearing on Saturday Night Live this weekend, few other seem particularly jazzed about watching the billionaire owner of Tesla grasp around for stuff to do on stage. This, perhaps, is why the show has gone with some, well, notable actors with the final two host gigs of Season 46.

SNL announced Monday that Keegan-Michael Key and Anya Taylor-Joy will host the final two episodes of the season. And unlike the last time we saw yellow, blue, and pink index cards, no one made a meme out of letting Pol Pot host America’s most visible sketch comedy showcase.

Key is an easy win for SNL, as he himself helped co-pilot a very successful run of the sketch comedy show Key and Peele on Comedy Central. Musical guest Olivia Rodrigo, it should be noted, first gained America’s attention as the star of the Nickelodeon show Bizaardvark. So expect her to continue the run of musical guests appearing in sketches on the show.

Taylor-Joy, meanwhile, has a string of very serious roles to her credits, perhaps most notably a chain-smoking, beer-guzzling chess prodigy in The Queen’s Gambit. So file live-action sketch comedy as a step in a new direction, though we’ve seen a number of very serious actors get cast in new light on the Studio 8H stage before. Musical guest Lil Nas X is almost guaranteed to take part in the fun as well, especially amid his current album cycle’s controversial trolling.

It all should make for an entertaining last fortnight or so for SNL, which is probably just glad they’re not finishing the year trapped in their individual homes making sketches like they were for Season 45. Now if we can all just survive what’s coming on Saturday, whatever comes after will certainly be worth watching.

The Weeknd’s After Hours was released way back in 2019, but the album still has plenty of life in it. Not only that, but it’s still producing No. 1 singles: On the new Billboard Hot 100 chart dated May 8, his new version of “Save Your Tears” featuring Ariana Grande is on top. Last week, the song (then credited to just The Weeknd) ranked at No. 6. This dethrones Polo G, whose “Rapstar” falls to No. 4.

This is the sixth No. 1 song for both artists. For Grande, it comes after “Thank U, Next,” “7 Rings,” “Stuck With U,” “Rain On Me,” and “Positions.” For The Weeknd, it follows “Can’t Feel My Face,” “The Hills,” “Starboy,” “Heartless,” and “Blinding Lights.”

This makes After Hours the first album to produce three No. 1 singles since Drake’s Scorpion did it in 2018, and just the seventh album since 2010 with three chart-toppers. Another interesting trivia tidbit is that Grande is now just the second artist with three No. 1 duets, after Paul McCartney; Grande’s “Stuck With U” and “Rain On Me” are collaborations with Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga, respectively.

Grande shared her response to the news, tweeting, “thank you so much @billboard @theweeknd and to everybody listening and showing so much love!!!!!! honored and so grateful.”

“Men in Black” star Will Smith posted a revealing Instagram photo on Sunday and a lot of people can relate. The actor, 52, posted a photo of himself in black shorts, an unzipped hoodie, and slippers showing off his new gut and chest.

“I’m gonna be real wit yall – I’m in the worst shape of my life,” he captioned the photo. In a world where celebrities have to be hyper-sensitive about their image, especially when it comes to weight, Smith’s admission was a refreshing reminder that A-listers can have the same struggles that we do.

The post inspired several of Smith’s friends to send him messages of support.

Questlove wrote: “This is the most amazing post in the history of social media.”

“Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” co-star Nia Long said, “You still got it baby!!!”

Director Ava DuVernay said, “I see no ‘worst’ here.”

Smith’s admission received over five million likes, probably because it resonates with a lot of people who are also dealing with weight gain during the pandemic. A recent study by the American Psychological Association (APA) found that two in five Americans gained more weight than they intended over the past year.

The average person who gained more weight than they wanted added 29 unwanted pounds. One in ten said they added more than 50.

According to the APA, rapid weight loss can be a sign of struggling to cope with mental health challenges.

Another study by WebMd confirmed the APA’s findings. A recent poll of over 1,000 readers found that 54% of respondents said they have gained weight “due to COVID restrictions. “Fifty-four percent said they were exercising less, 68% said they were snacking more.

Smith is getting ready to shoot his next film, “Emancipation,” a big-budget true story about a runaway slave in 1863. In the film, Smith plays Peter, a fugitive from slavery who flees Loiusiana to find freedom in the north.

However, the film hit some roadblocks after Smith and director Antoine Fuqua said they were pulling filming out of Georgia due to the state’s recent voting restriction laws. The new Republican-led voting changes require voter ID for absentee voting, limit the use of drop boxes, and restrict giving out food and water to voters waiting in line near polls.

The decision to move filming out of Georgia makes sense for a film that deals with racial oppression.

“At this moment in time, the Nation is coming to terms with its history and is attempting to eliminate vestiges of institutional racism to achieve true racial justice,” the statement read. “We cannot in good conscience provide economic support to a government that enacts regressive voting laws that are designed to restrict voter access.”

“The new Georgia voting laws are reminiscent of voting impediments that were passed at the end of Reconstruction to prevent many Americans from voting. Regrettably, we feel compelled to move our film production work from Georgia to another state,” they continued.

The film was scheduled to start shooting in June 2021.

The Met Gala is an iconic event, but it’s been a while since we’ve actually had one. The most recent was 2019, since the pandemic necessitated the cancellation of the 2020 and 2021 editions. On September 13, 2022, though, the event is set to make its return, and it will be led by a strong set of co-chairs: Billie Eilish, Timothée Chalamet, Amanda Gorman, and Naomi Osaka, as well as honorary chairs Tom Ford, Adam Mosseri, and Anna Wintour. As Page Six notes, Eilish, who will be 19 years old by the time of the event, will be the youngest person to ever have this role.

Chalamet celebrated the news by sharing an appropriate image gallery on Instagram, of the event’s venue (the Metropolitan Museum Of Art’s Costume Institute), Gorman, Eilish, Osaka, and himself. Osaka and Gorman shared similar posts, but Osaka added a bunch of Rihanna photos, noting in the comments, “And yes I’m trying to manifest Rihanna.” Gorman commented to Osaka’s post, “Right?! Can’t wait to see you sis, serving on and off the court.” So far, Eilish has not offered a public comment about the news.

This news comes shortly after Eilish made perhaps the most iconic fashion statement of her career with a revealing new photoshoot for British Vogue.

The stars of Kong Vs. Godzilla were, well, the monsters, but the human actors who played a role in the movie are lining up some sweet gigs in Hollywood as well. Monday brought word that Alexander Skarsgard, the actor who shined in True Blood and Big Little Lies and also alongside the aforementioned large lizard and gorilla will have a very different role in Season 3 of Succession.

HBO revealed that Skarsgard has been tapped to play a prickly tech CEO named Lukas Matsson, who will emerge as a rival to the Roy family. Surely, there will be absolutely no corporate drama involved with him at all. And that’s not all: HBO also dropped the official (and very vague) logline for the new season, which cannot start airing soon enough.

“Ambushed by his rebellious son Kendall (Jeremy Strong) at the end of Season 2, Logan Roy (Brian Cox) begins Season 3 in a perilous position. Scrambling to secure familial, political, and financial alliances, tensions rise as a bitter corporate battle threatens to turn into a family civil war.”

Succession‘s second season ended with a bang, to say the least, so it’s no surprise that a new CEO would come circling what’s apparently now a vulnerable Waystar RoyCo and create some drama. Here’s hoping Matsson made all of his money disrupting the space hidden inside the Earth’s core and has an improbable-sounding explanation for how he and his team got there when we see new episodes on HBO, whenever exactly that ends up being.

[via IndieWire]

The Lakers had a rather disastrous Sunday as starting point guard Dennis Schröder entered the league’s health and safety protocols which will possibly keep him out for the remainder of the regular season, they lost to the Raptors at home to slip to a tie for 7th in the West, and in the mid-fourth quarter of that loss LeBron James left with soreness in his right ankle and did not return.

Making matters worse is that the red-hot Denver Nuggets come into town on Monday for a back-to-back, meaning there wouldn’t be a lot of time for James to heal up to stay in the lineup to try and get the Lakers out of their current funk. After stating last night that they would wait to see how he feels on Monday morning, word emerged from Adrian Wojnarowski and Ramona Shelburne, and quickly confirmed by Shams Charania, that James would indeed miss Monday’s game with Denver.

It is obviously a major development for the Lakers, who will now be without James and Schröder in a game that, should they lose, would push them into the 7-seed and the play-in with seven games remaining. There’s time to dodge the play-in, which LeBron voiced his frustrations with on Sunday night, but it’s an uphill climb to do so given the tiebreaker situation and their issues with health and availability. The good news is that they don’t play again until Thursday, when they have an in-town showdown with the Clippers, so James will have three full days to rest his ankle and get treatment. Still, the reigning champs are in a precarious situation in the final two weeks of the season, and balancing rest, health, and trying not to have to deal with the play-in is a difficult task.

Quando Rondo and some associates were reportedly shot at in a Blackshear, Georgia convenience store parking lot, according to TMZ. Rondo appears to be OK, as he has posted on his Instagram Story since the time the shooting reportedly occurred — at around 3:20 a.m. on Sunday, according to law enforcement sources.

Police apparently are not aware of any bullets striking the rapper, who was not at the scene was officers responded. He was supposedly in the parking lot before the shooting occurred, though. Rondo was traveling in a large group and one person was apparently shot in the hand and received treatment for his injury at a local hospital. Rondo has yet to publicly address the alleged incident, although as aforementioned, he has been active on social media since the time it reportedly occurred.

This incident follows the late-2020 death of King Von, which was the result of an altercation between his crew and that of Rondo. It was reported that outside of a club, King Von approached Rondo, who was asleep in a vehicle. That led to a physical brawl, when then escalated to gunfire.

Over the weekend, Rondo performed at The Vibe Event Center in Waycross, Georgia and footage from the event appears to indicate that only a few dozen people were in attendance. Rondo reportedly addressed the audience, “I ain’t gon’ lie: My shows really be deeper than this, but I know a n**** got a lot of sh*t going on, you feel me? But I still appreciate everybody who came out. I’ma rock this b*tch like it’s 10,000 people in here.”

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

If you haven’t had your fill of a radioactive lizard punching a giant ape (or vice versa), boy do I have good news for you. Ape vs Monster is a low-budget version of Godzilla vs. Kong from The Asylum, the A24 of mockbuster studios. If you spent time in a video store in the mid-2000s, you might be familiar with their work like Snakes on a Train, Transmorphers, Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls, and 18-Year-Old Virgin. (They’re also the geniuses (?) behind Sharknado.) The Asylum churns out legally distinct knockoffs that your grandpa might mistake for the real thing, including Ape vs. Monster.

Directed by Daniel Lusko, Ape vs. Monster doesn’t star Alexander Skarsgård, or Millie Bobby Brown, or Kyle Chandler, but it does have Eric Roberts, an ape named Abraham (it’s unclear if Monster has a name), and a lizard drinking the same green ooze that turned four regular turtles into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Asylum should do TMNT next. It could be called something like Adolescent Monster Martial Arts Reptiles.

Here’s the plot summary: “An ape, lost in space, crash-lands back to Earth. The vessel oozes a sludge that triggers massive growth in both the ape, as well as a passing Gila monster. Once the creatures reach titanic size, their paths cross again, leading to a giant brawl in which Mankind hangs in the balance.” I bet my life savings on Ape.

Ape vs. Monster comes out soon.

The dust hasn’t even settled yet after The Falcon and the Winter Soldier‘s relatively heartwarming finale, at least where Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes’ fates are concerned, and we’ve already got some confirmations and a suggestion for more. A fourth Captain America movie (focusing on Sam taking up the shield for real this time) is on the way. We’ve already seen the Zemo Cut, starring a dancing Daniel Brühl, and now, there might be another cut on the horizon. Maybe? Well, the Zemo Cut arrived after a little Brühl-fueled pressure, and now, Sebastian Stan is pretty much doing the same by calling upon Disney+ to #ReleaseTheBuckySarahCut. Yep, he did so in an Instagram story, which is interesting since he deemed a bare-butt photo worthy of the timeline, yet starting a fan movement was a fleeting-story thing. Regardless of medium, Sebastian was pointing toward a TV Guide article, which we’ll discuss in a moment.

Fans will recall that Bucky Barnes, for the first time in several decades, got flirty with Sam’s sister, Sarah (Adepero Oduye), in Episode 5, and Sam wasn’t happy about it. One cannot exactly blame the dude for not wanting his sister to date someone who only recently shook off the (homicidal) HYDRA brainwashing, but the chemistry between (awkward) Bucky and Sarah was palpable. And shortly before the season closed, they were flirting up a storm while a kid dangled from Bucky’s vibranium arm.

Welllll, director Kari Skogland spoke with TV Guide to reveal that there was more Sarah-and-Bucky footage than we saw in the series:

“There was a little more flirting, I will give it that. I loved the dynamic between Adepero and Sebastian, or Bucky and Sarah. I love that dynamic and it was really fun because, of course, you can imagine Sam was just not up for that… We did have a bit more from that scene we decided not to put in, but it was very enjoyable.”

Let’s just say that fans are enjoying the teasing and want more.

If this cut materializes, all good. Mostly, I want to see Bucky carrying more desserts before taking a vacation in Aruba.

As F9 prepares to rev into theaters (and outer space), the cast and crew of the original The Fast and the Furious sat down for an oral history celebrating the film’s 20th anniversary and, naturally, as these kinds of things usually do, the experience came with the kind of boast that only Vin Diesel can make. While discussing the casting of Michelle Rodriguez and the relationship between his street-racer-turned-secret-agent character Dominic Toretto and Rodriguez’s street-racer-turned-brief-villain-with-amnesia-turned-secret-agent Letty Ortiz, Diesel attempted to put the whole thing in a historical context.

“One of the biggest blessings of the franchise is my relationship with Michelle,” Diesel explained to Entertainment Weekly. “I’ve been told that the Dom-Letty love story is potentially the biggest love story that we’ve seen in cinema. After two decades, you understand that point.”

The biggest love story in cinema history? That’s one hell of a flex, and yet, par for the course for the Fast & Furious films, which has yet to meet a challenge that it can’t plow a muscle car through. As for Rodriguez becoming an integral part of the franchise, the actress admits she almost walked from the first movie when she realized the filmmakers had no idea how actual relationships on the street work. Via EW:

You don’t just get with a guy because he’s hot. There’s a hierarchy there. Can that hot guy get beat up by who you’re dating? If he can, then you don’t date him, because why would you want to lose the hierarchy? In order to keep it real, I had to school them: “I know you guys like Hollywood and all that, but if you want it to be realistic, this is how it really works, and I’m not going to be a slut in front of millions of people, so you’re going to lose me if you don’t change this.” And they figured it out.

Clearly, the filmmakers figured it out, and co-star Jordana Brewster credits Rodriguez for challenging them to get it right. “She was like, “No, I’m not playing that.’ And then she changed it completely,” Brewster said. “It went from a trophy girlfriend to this really layered character.”

(Via Entertainment Weekly)