Month: September 2021

After spending years being an absolute entertainment juggernaut, Game of Thrones occupies a weird space in our pop culture these days. Sure, people love to see Jason Momoa and Emilia Clarke adorably reunite, especially in these times of blech, but for the most part the disastrous final season has turned away even hardcore fans of the fantasy series. Back in April, HBO released a new “trailer” for the final season, and it did not go over well. On top of that, Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin has not been shy about saying the ending to his books will not repeat whatever the heck the show did.

So with that in mind, it seems like an odd time to launch an official Game of Thrones convention, but that’s exactly what Warner Bros is doing in February 2022. The three-day event will go down in Vegas, and it promises “special guests, panel discussions, cosplay and trivia competitions, autograph signings, photo opportunities, and exclusive Game of Thrones merchandise.” Via Variety:

“‘Game of Thrones’ is a cultural phenomenon with an incredible fanbase, and we are thrilled to be celebrating both with the first official ‘Game of Thrones’ fan convention,” said Peter van Roden, senior vice president of Warner Bros. Themed Entertainment. “This is an exciting initiative, growing one of our beloved global franchises and allowing fans to become even more immersed in the world of Westeros and beyond. This will be a truly unforgettable experience that loyal and new fans alike will love and enjoy.”

In Warner Bros. defense, the HBO parent company is pouring a colossal amount of money into a seemingly never-ending list of Game of Thrones spinoffs, so it makes sense that it’s trying to rebuild hype for the series. That said, packing people into a convention center during an ongoing pandemic might not be the best approach. Sure, maybe, cases will die down by February, but Warner Bros. is playing with fire, and not the wicked cool dragon kind.

(Via Variety)

After months of rumors, Lady Gaga finally announced Dawn Of Chromatica earlier this week, and now the remix album is out. Among the highlights is Charli XCX and A.G. Cook’s remix of “911.”

Charli wrote on Instagram, “the love for good ones has been so overwhelming i decided to take a vacation to chromatica. the 911 remix is out now… angels and little monsters unite.” She also tweeted, “thank you to @ladygaga and @bloodpop for personally stamping mine and @agcook404’s passports upon our entry into chromatica. we had a blast.”

Back in March, Charli revealed that the idea of her doing a “911” remix didn’t initially work out, tweeting, “I LOVE chromatica. her best era imo. rain on me was the song of 2020 & I wish the clubs were open when it came out so we could have raaaaved to it. Blood Pop hit me up about doing a 911 remix but nothing came of it, obvz I would have died & done it in a heartbeat.” BloodPop then responded with a screenshot of his texts with Charli, revealing that there was a miscommunication between him and Charli.

Meanwhile, the project also features contributions from Arca, Dorian Electra, Mura Masa, Pabllo Vittar, and Ashnikko.

Listen to Charli and Cook’s “911” remix above.

Dawn Of Chromatica is out now via Interscope Records. Get it here.

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

Since the return of live music, Jason Isbell has been very vocal about the importance of COVID safety measures at his concerts. The musician has asked venue owners to get attendees to provide a proof of vaccination at all of his shows, and he event canceled a concert after a venue refused. Now, Isbell has gotten the chance to get some COVID safety advice from the president’s Chief Medical Advisor himself, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Speaking to Fauci in a video call, Isbell first asked how to speak to his friends and family who are reluctant to receive the COVID vaccine. Along with debunking the myth that the vaccine was rushed through the trial period, Fauci said the main thing to keep in mind is to not make people feel guilty about their hesitations:

“One of the things you gotta be careful for what you don’t do, is to make them actually feel guilty and to point your finger at them and say, ‘You’re crazy, you’re stupid.’ That just doesn’t work. What you try and do is to just get into the conversation and have them articulate to you what are the reasons why they’re hesitant, because some of them are very valid questions. If you give them the answer to the valid question, you might turn them around.”

Isbell then asked Fauci’s advice on how to keep concertgoers, staff, and performers safe at live music events. Along with requiring masking, vaccines, and proof of negative tests, Fauci said a big safety measure is holding outdoor concerts. “What you can do as an entertainer: outdoor concerts as opposed indoor concerts,” Fauci said. “I think that’s the most important thing because it really is true that the risk of infection in an indoor, not optimally vented place is dramatically higher likelihood of getting infected to an outdoor one.”

Watch Isbell’s full conversation with Dr. Fauci above.

Madison Cawthorn already called for “bloodshed” about so-called election security this week, and the other half of his Big Lie balancing act has now arrived: Downplaying an actual deadly coup attempt that directly meddled with election security in America.

The January 6 insurrection attempt that tried to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election was a shocking display of MAGA violence that left five dead and has seen several Capitol Police officers take their own lives in the aftermath of the chaos in Washington. The scenes of violence and threats against politicians like Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and even vice president Mike Pence are well-documented, and if not for the quick thinking of several officers working in the U.S. Capitol it’s thought the incident could have been much worse.

But on Thursday, Cawthorn, a U.S. representative from North Carolina and a staunch Trump ally adored by the far-right, continued to argue that everyone who stormed and smashed barriers, windows, and doors to illegally enter the building was just joshing. As Business Insider detailed, Cawthorn told the Smoky Mountain News that rioters were “normal people” just “kind of wandering in” despite the hundreds of arrests stemming from that day.

“I believe a group of people within the January 6 protestors, a small minority who literally were the ones that endangered people’s lives, ones who got very aggressive, who were the ones busting down the doors, were going bare-knuckle fisticuffs with the Capitol Police. Those people, I believe are dangerous individuals,” Cawthorn said in the interview.

“But the overwhelming majority of the people of the January 6 thing were just normal people, there for a normal protest to redress their government. And then they saw an open door at the top of the Capitol, and they were just kind of wandering in,” Cawthorn said.

Giving this any sort of critical thought at all makes it pretty easy to dismiss the claims that mostly “normal” people were responsible for the MAGA riot. For every Qanon Shaman there were hundreds of far-right Trump supporters of a more anonymous variety, but dangerous and law-breaking nonetheless. Each arrested rioter has their own internet paper trail of crazy conspiracies and methods of radicalization, but none of them are exactly “normal.”

In the larger picture, though, this kind of revisionism about the deadly insurrection is entirely predictable. Trump did it after counter-protests against white supremacists in Charlottesville turned deadly, so it was really only a matter of time before a sitting politician tried to argue that a conspiracy-addled lunatic in Viking horns was a normal dude just milling about Washington DC like an ordinary tourist. Nothing to see here at all, I’m sure.

[via Business Insider]

What does a mid-life crisis look like when you’re an energy-draining, immortal vampire? If you’re Mark Proksch, it’s lots of scat jokes and some on-screen pyro-technics.

What We Do In The Shadows returns for its third season on Sept. 2nd, Proksch’s monotoned undead party-pooper is gearing up for a celebration of his own. Colin Robinson is turning 100 and he’s suddenly very curious about where he comes from. That curiosity coincides with his new appointment to the Vampiric Council and, as the season goes on, Colin Robinson forms a surprising bond with one of his fellow immortal roommates as he goes on a quest to find others of his kind.

Proksch has spent the last two seasons of Shadows delivering snooze-worthy tangents and playing them for the most laughs but this season, his character serves as more than just the not-so-human equivalent of a bottle of Quaaludes. Plot twists, trips to Atlantic City, a failed tenure as a DIY mechanic — Colin Robinson has a part in all of it this time around, much to Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) and Laszlo’s (Matt Berry) eternal frustration.

We chatted with Proksch over Zoom about season three’s major storylines, Colin Robinson’s birthday plans, and how the character really feels about conspiracy theorists.

Colin Robinson’s got a big birthday coming up. How does he feel about that? What’s on his mind this season?

I think he’s in a bit of an existential crisis. I think he is curious as to where he came from and where he’s going. He has the same big questions that we all have rattling around in our minds. He doesn’t know how he became an energy vampire. He doesn’t know if his parents were energy vampires. He doesn’t know if he’s immortal. I think he’s struggling with that and trying to find answers to that as his hundredth birthday is coming up.

So we’re going to learn more about his past and where his kind come from then?

You learn bits and pieces along the way. Really not enough to subside his crisis. I will say there’s a huge twist at the very end of the season, involving Colin. And I think that season four will definitely be dealing with that fallout.

One thing I was surprised to learn was that he has a weird obsession with Guillermo. Particularly, Guillermo’s bowel movements. There are lots of scat jokes at the beginning of this season. What’s up with that?

[Laughs] That was 100% in the script. That’s not an area of comedy that… I mean I found it very funny. It’s very peculiar to the character. I may have thrown in a couple of things, for sure. But that’s all the writers. I loved it because anytime you can inform the audience about the character in any way, it benefits the stories and it benefits the show. So having Colin have that sort of off-center fascination — I don’t want to say fetish — is great and it made me laugh a lot.

His poop obsession gave off some real conspiracy theorist vibes…

Oh, I think he delves into that world quite a bit. I think he was very happy to see the birth of some of these conspiracy cults. Who better than a conspiracy theorist for an energy vampire to hide as?

Now, be honest, was Colin Robinson behind QAnon?

I’m not going to say he is or isn’t, but we may learn about that.

There’s a really interesting friendship that develops this season between Laszlo and Colin. What makes that relationship so interesting to watch?

I think Matt would agree, we never thought our characters would cross paths in that way. Laszlo is a very no-nonsense, brusque horn hound and Colin is kind of the opposite. We had never been paired up really in season one or two the way we are in season three. That said, there is a reason for it that isn’t known to the audience. And again, it’ll reveal itself at the end of the season.

So it’s not just about fixing old cars and setting each other on fire?

[laughs] I think they’re genuinely enjoying their time together, but there is a reason they’re spending that much time together.

Showrunner Paul Simms said that out of everyone’s improv ability, yours is the most interesting. So those tangents that Colin Robinson goes on when he drains people, how much is the script and how much is you?

That’s me. They will usually give me a line if it’s something integral to the script or the story. Otherwise, they’ll say “Colin talks about boxing,” or “Colin talks about this.” If I don’t know that much about that subject, I will change it to a subject I do know about. It needs to feel natural. So it needs to be off the top of my head and be me talking about these subjects that I love or have just gone down a rabbit hole about in the past. So I would say as far as his tangents go, that’s 90% me just rambling. It’s a babbling brook of bullshit. But I have to be right, because if I say a wrong thing, then I’ll be shown as the fraud that I am.

Are there any topics you were surprised you snuck in?

I’m more surprised by what they don’t put in because I’m a big wine fan. I love wine. I talk about wine a lot on the show because it’s such a traditionally boring, pedantic, snooty, snobbish subject. I think that’s changing now amongst younger people, but in the past, it’s always been spoken of by snobs. I’m surprised they haven’t put it in more. I’ve gone on a couple of wine tangents and those haven’t gotten in. Now, I will say that, in the past, when I would go on a tangent, if Jemaine [Clement] didn’t know about what I was talking about, he would cut it with the right assumption that, well, the viewers aren’t going to know about this so it’s just going to be boring. And wine is the subject he doesn’t know anything about and doesn’t give a shit about. That may have been the reason why wine hasn’t made it into the show yet.

Since Colin Robinson is on this journey of self-discovery this season, is he going to discover other kinds of alternative vamps?

Yeah, I’ve wondered that too. We won’t this season, as far as the energy-type vampires. But I think that’s an area that the writers are aware of and if it makes sense, they’ll utilize it.

‘What We Do In The Shadows’ returns to FX on Sept. 2.

Like many others on the timeline, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow is stunned over how Republicans in Texas were able to pass the state’s recent abortion ban.

Maddow chatted with fellow MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell at the end of her show on Friday, and both hosts seemed shocked and outraged over new abortion restrictions and what they might mean for the country going forward. Earlier this week, Texas passed a bill banning abortions after six weeks when “cardiac activity” can be detected in a fetus. Of course, the law doesn’t seem to care that “cardiac activity” actually isn’t a heartbeat and doesn’t signal a viable pregnancy. The law also doesn’t seem to understand that many women don’t know they’re pregnant until a missed period signals that change. By the time they miss a menstruation cycle, they’re already four weeks pregnant, meaning this new bill allows just two weeks for a woman to seek abortion access.

And yes, this is one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, but what’s truly shocking is how the state has drafted the law to circumvent the possibility of legal arguments that it might be unconstitutional. Instead of naming the state as the defendant, this law deputized private citizens, allowing people to sue anyone seeking or providing abortion services and receive monetary damages in the process. It’s inhumane and sets a terrifying precedent, which is what Maddow is particularly troubled about.

The MSNBC host warned that what’s happening in Texas is just the beginning in terms of the GOP’s goal of stripping women of their rights.

“We’re going to see Red states all over the country ban abortion using this as the Xerox template,” Maddow predicted (via Raw Story). “It’s gonna go fast.”

While that statement is unnerving for any person who values the right to have the final say over their own healthcare decisions, Maddow also had a warning for Republicans who are, undoubtedly, celebrating this major milestone in their decades-long push to control women’s reproductive organs.

“The country doesn’t want abortion laws made more strict, let alone, banned,” Maddow said. “There’s a reason folks in the conservative media aren’t talking about this ruling right now. They’re the dog that caught the car. They like talking about trying to achieve this. Now that they have, they realize that actually, the country’s against this and the backlash is going to be considerable.”

(Via Raw Story)

NBA players are extremely into Drake’s Certified Lover Boy. The album, his first since 2018, has been in the works for years, and the early returns from people in the Association could not be more positive.

One player managed to get a little closer to the project than anyone else. Kawhi Leonard, who famously brought an NBA championship to Drake’s beloved Toronto Raptors before heading to Los Angeles to play for the Clippers, had a cameo in the video for Way 2 Sexy alongside Future and Young Thug, who both have have features on the track.

Leonard loves music, as evidenced by his recent Culture Jam project, but it was still a surprise to see him pop up in a music video where he dances alongside Drake, Future, and Young Thug in all-white outfits. Between that and the fact that he just stood there, vibes absolutely immaculate, and seemed to have a terrific time, basketball fans took to Twitter and had some fun.

While this is his only appearance on anything related to the album, it’s not the only time he’s mentioned. Drake name drops Leonard on The Remorse, making 100 percent clear that he (like every Raptors fan, really) wouldn’t hate it if Leonard ever decided to leave L.A. and come back to the 6.

Leonard just signed a max extension with the Clippers, but hey, maybe the time will be right for a reunion in a few years.

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J.R. Smith made an extremely unusual move recently when he decided to enroll at North Carolina A&T State University and walk onto the golf team. This is obviously not something we see, well, ever — usually when NBA players are done with their basketball playing careers, they decide to do stuff like “get a TV gig” or “find another way to work in basketball.”

Smith, however, decided to get an education and pursue a college sport, something that he didn’t get the opportunity to do as he jumped directly from high school to the NBA. While he committed to North Carolina, Smith instead decided to go pro and went 18th overall in the 2004 NBA Draft. It’s hard to fault him for the move, because things went extremely well for him, but Smith is using this to catch up on lost time and get the full college experience.

Thankfully for us, Smith is live-tweeting the entire thing, which is so much better than anything we could have expected. The college experience can really stink, what with all the tests and essays and studying and what not, and Smith has used his Twitter account to both hammer this home and, in a way, let students know that everyone who goes through it has similar struggles with having to take care of everything that’s put on their plate.

In a tweet that went viral, Smith revealed that people around Greensboro do not believe he’s actually doing the whole college thing.

He is, of course, not getting the full freshman year college experience in a few ways that, as someone who went to college, I’m pretty envious of.

He is, however, doing IM sports.

Still, Smith is a student first and foremost, and it’s apparently been quite the fulfilling experience, even if it does seem like there have been some bumps in the road.

In the lead up to his forthcoming album, In Heaven, Strand Of Oaks has shared a gorgeous new single, “Somewhere In Chicago,” which singer Tim Showalter says is a tribute to the late John Prime. Following earlier singles “Jimi & Stan” and “Galacticana,” “Somewhere In Chicago” is a mid-tempo jam that layers rhythm guitar with gentle solos and Tim Showalter’s washed-out vocals.

“My ode to the late John Prine and the midwestern ethos he so perfectly embodied,” Showalter said in a press release. “The song dreams of the great city of Chicago where John can forever and happily wander.”

In Heaven was recorded with collaborator Kevin Ratterman at Ratterman’s Invisible Creature studios in Los Angeles and is the first LP of Showalter’s since his move to Austin, Texas.

Of the album, which follows up 2019’s Eraserland, Showalter said in a press release, “In Heaven was created with so much love and my greatest hope is that it connects with people and provides a momentary space for reflection, joy, catharsis, and whatever else someone might be looking for in their life. Music is magic and I feel like the luckiest person in the world that I’m allowed to share it.”

Listen to “Somewhere In Chicago” above.

In Heaven is out 10/1 via Galacticana Records/Thirty Tigers. Pre-order it here.

While pairing Selena Gomez with the classic comedy team of Steve Martin and Martin Short seems like a slam dunk, you never know what’s going to connect with audiences these days, so their new murder mystery Only Murders in the Building is a gamble just like any other show. Apparently, that bet has paid off as Hulu has announced that Only Murders is now the “most-watched comedy premiere” in the entire history of the streaming platform after debuting earlier in the week.

The news was clearly a huge hit with Steve Martin who co-created the show, and he didn’t waste a minute sharing the good news on Twitter:

Of course, The Wrap report that Martin shared includes some interesting caveats. For starters, as has frustratingly become standard practice, Hulu did not provide specific viewership numbers. On top of that, the streaming platform seems to be having a lot of “historic” moments lately:

This whole internal-record-breaking thing seems to be going around at Hulu. “Nine Perfect Strangers” recently became the most-watched Hulu Original series premiere ever, and movie “Vacation Friends” just had the best opening weekend for a Hulu Original film.

“Nine Perfect Strangers” had a stronger premiere day than “Only Murders” did, we’re told. But again, different genres.

So, basically, Hulu wants you to know that its latest shows and films are doing really great, but you’re just going to have to take Hulu’s word for it because they don’t really do receipts. Welcome to the future of television.

The first three episodes of Only Murders in the Building are available to stream on Hulu with new episodes arriving on Tuesdays.

(Via Steve Martin on Twitter, The Wrap)