Month: September 2021

Family Guy has officially left the network that essentially saved it from oblivion more than a decade ago. Saturday marked the final time the Seth MacFarlane show aired on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, the animation showcase that gave it a home after an abrupt cancelation by Fox back in 2003.

Long before the MacFarlane staple was popular enough to spark spinoffs and stretch into Simpsons territory, the show was canceled after only three seasons. But airing on Adult Swim, along with the show’s strong DVD sales, eventually led to it being revived on Fox in 2004, where it has aired consistently ever since.

Family Guy is now slated to run at least 21 seasons, but as of Monday that catalog of 369 episodes and counting will run on Fox and FXX. As The Hollywood Reporter noted, FXX picked up the rights to air reruns, with the final episode running Saturday on Adult Swim, along with a fairly poignant promo bump.

As THR noted, Hulu will continue to be the streaming location for Family Guy, but the full 19 seasons of the show will now air on FXX on Monday–Tuesday (8:00 p.m. – midnight), Thursday (8:00 p.m.–10 p.m.), Saturday (8:00 p.m. – midnight) and Sunday (10:00 p.m.– midnight). The change gives FXX an impressive lineup of animated comedy, with Family Guy joining shows like Archer, Bob’s Burgers and The Simpsons, all airing on the same networks.

Daniel Craig didn’t always seem happy to be James Bond. He’s a serious, classically-trained thespian, and he didn’t always hide his feelings about playing an action hero in a sometimes retrograde franchise. But on his final day on the job in his last Bond movie, Craig got mushy.

A video clip surfaced online recently showing Craig addressing the cast and crew of No Time to Die. (Keep in mind, this is from nearly two years ago, shooting having wrapped in October of 2019.) Clad in a tux, he launched into a short but bittersweet speech.

“A lot of people here worked on five pictures with me,” Craig says, clearly holding back tears. “I know there are a lot of things said about what I think of these films, but I’ve loved every single second of these movies. And especially this one because I’ve got up every morning, and I’ve had the chance to work with you guys. And that has been one of the greatest honors of my life.”

Craig began his tenure as the sixth Bond in the franchise with 2006’s Casino Royale, which took an aging film series in a new and grittier direction. No Time to Die will only be his fifth stint as 007 in 15 years — two less than Roger Moore, one less than Connery (not counting the non-canonical Never Say Never Again), though one more than Pierce Brosnan. It’s still unclear where the series will go next, but, you know, maybe it should be one of the guys who pops up at the end of the video below.

(Via THR)

The New York Jets are a very bad football team and have been for quite some time. Taking a quarterback No. 2 overall wasn’t going to magically fix that overnight, but the Jets did hope that Zach Wilson out of BYU would provide them some promise and stability at that position that they haven’t had since, really, Chad Pennington.

However, things have not gotten off to a great start for Wilson in the NFL, as he has looked the part of a young quarterback playing on a team that is less talented than the rest of the league. However, while his first performance against Carolina was your run of the mill uneven young quarterbacking, his second game against the Patriots was downright awful. In the first 35 minutes of play, Wilson managed to throw not one, not two, not three, but FOUR interceptions, each getting progressively worse.

The first was a ball he forced into traffic under pressure that bounced in the air and got picked. It happens.

The second was a high throw that bounced off Corey Davis’ hands and was, again, picked off the tip. Not a perfect throw but, the old adage in the NFL is if it hits the receivers hands, it’s supposed to be a catch. Alright, that’s one bad luck pick and one unfortunate luck (but forced) one. Just gotta move on.

This is where things go from unfortunate to outright dreadful. This is a pass that is an underthrown duck with no chance to a receiver who is not open. Bad combination.

Somehow, though, that wasn’t the worst of them. That honor belongs to interception No. 4 in which Wilson either overthrows an underneath receiver or underthrows the deep receiver, fluttering a flat-footed ball directly to the DB despite having a clean pocket in front of him.

The last two picks are the most concerning if you’re a Jets fan, as Wilson’s footwork can get very sloppy even when not under pressure and those throws that maybe fell harmlessly at BYU end up getting picked off in the NFL. The good news is he’s not alone in the world of rookie quarterbacks struggling to start the season, as Trevor Lawrence is also piling up the interceptions (albeit with more flashes of great throws sprinkled in between). That said, if, like Sam Darnold famously said early in his time with the Jets, Wilson is seeing ghosts now, that can be hard to shake and it might be a long season in New York for Wilson and the Jets faithful (again).

Benny The Butcher is a part of Buffalo’s gritty Griselda collective, a group that stands as one of the most active in the music world. The group has released three albums and a mixtape so far in 2021, with more expected to arrive in the coming months. The rappers of Griselda have contributed to multiple songs as well, with one of the most recent being Kanye West’s “Keep My Spirit Alive,” which features Conway The Machine and Westside Gunn in addition to KayCyy, from West’s tenth album, Donda.

Many questioned, however, why Benny The Butcher was absent from the song and the rapper recently responded to the question and addressed another expected collaboration with a different big-named rapper.

“I don’t think Ye wanted me on there,” Benny said when he asked about his absence from the Donda track during an interview on Twitch with Connected. “I don’t care about it but it’s cool. I got all types of rapper homeboys that’s friends, that’s dope, that’s legends. Everytime they’re dropping an album, I’m not asking why I’m not on that stuff.”

Benny also spoke about his long-awaited collaboration with Drake and why it didn’t appear on Certified Lover Boy.

“Drake is Drake. He’s the biggest artist in the world, so ain’t no tellin’ where that song gon’ land,” Benny said. “We got the song, I played it for all the homies. It’s a vibe and he gotta place that where he sees fit to it.” He added, “I feel like it definitely would have fit in and definitely would have mixed things up, but I also see why he didn’t put it on there.”

You can watch a clip of the interview in the post above.

Doja Cat is almost three months removed from the release of her third album, Planet Her. The project captured features from Young Thug, Ariana Grande, The Weeknd, JID, and SZA as well as Gunna and Eve who appeared on the project’s deluxe reissue. Many of these guests on the album helped provide memorable moments for Planet Her, but according to Doja Cat, she plans to be a bit more careful in selecting the artists she works with in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVr-TwiGNnveWyOouIyz2fQ

“I have been trying to be more careful about who I’m collaborating with,” she said during a conversation with ExtraTV. “Not to say that the people on my album are — they’re incredible. They are the perfect features on my album. But I do want to be more choosy about what I’m doing because I feel like a lot of features are coming out.” She continued, “It feels like people are just getting on each other’s songs for the sake of having them on each other’s songs.”

“I want to be really careful about that,” she added. “Sometimes it’s too much collabs and remixes and things like that.”

Doja’s words come after she provided a phenomenal guest verse to Lil Nas X’s “Scoop” off his recently-released Montero album. You can watch Doja’s conversation with ExtraTV in the video above.

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

Carson Wentz and the Indianapolis Colts were, without a doubt, the better football team early in their game on Sunday with the Rams, but they still managed to trail L.A., 7-3.

That was because of a pair of turnovers on the goal line from Indy, first on downs when Carson Wentz ate a sack on fourth and goal from the 1, and the second on one of the worst interceptions you’ll see all season. Wentz tried to hit tight end Jack Doyle on the old inside shovel pass play, but ended up throwing an interception because of some horrific accuracy on the shovel toss, instead just giving it right to Troy Reeder.

The reverse angle really shows just how awful this was, as Wentz just flips it right to Reeder, nowhere close to his tight end who you can see reaching desperately from just outside the frame to no avail.

It would be hard to throw a worse shovel pass and, given the situation, it was a backbreaking play for a Colts team that was outgaining the Rams significantly and had just been set up with great field position by an interception of Matthew Stafford. Instead, the defense had to trot back out on the field after watching their offense again fail to put points up from inside the 5. Even more frustrating for the Colts faithful is how good Wentz has been aside from the sack on 4th down and that shovel pass interception, as he is 9-for-11 for 116 yards with that pick as his lone blemish.

For millions of NFL fans, the way they consume football on Sundays is solely through the NFL RedZone channel. Those of us who have become hooked to RedZone can no longer function on an NFL Sunday by simply watching one game, we must be bombarded with constant cuts to and from games across the country, with — in the words of Scott Hanson — seven hours of commercial free football.

RedZone really has warped how we watch games, as the pace of just one game isn’t enough anymore, especially with things like stoppages and commercial breaks, so we lock in at 1 p.m. ET every Sunday and ride with our guy Scott as he takes us around the league to see every score and big play. So, when everyone’s RedZone feed got stuck on a RED ALERT screen for about 10 minutes on Sunday, it felt like the football apocalypse to many. Were we about to be forced to watch, gulp, one game on a channel with commercials?

Happily, RedZone fixed itself eventually and we were back to watching games at a breakneck pace, but that 10 minutes of horror led to plenty of reaction online as fans freaked out about our beloved whiparound channel going down mere minutes into Sunday’s action.

Lil Nas X released his debut Montero on Friday and since then, fans have been enjoying its fifteen tracks with features from Jack Harlow, Megan Thee Stallion, Doja Cat, Miley Cyrus, and Elton John. In addition to giving fans a collection of new music to enjoy, the singer also used the spotlight moment to give back to the community.

More than a week before the album officially arrived, Lil Nas opened up a “baby registry” linked to numerous charities that his fans could donate to. After a string of donations, TMZ has revealed some of the amounts raised for various charities.

According to the publication, a representative for Bro In Convo, a Florida-based charity in support of Black, gay, bisexual, and queer men, told TMZ that they received $33,140 in donations as a result of Montero. The Bro In Convo charity was specifically tied to “That’s What I Want.” Additionally, Transinclusive Group, a national charity providing assistance to transgender/non-conforming people, informed TMZ that they received $5,000 thanks to “Montero (Call Me By Your Name).”

Other charities like CH-PIER, which is connected to “Dead Right Now,” and Compassionate Atlanta, which is linked to “The Art of Realization,” each received almost $1,000 thanks to Lil Nas’ baby registry.

You can view the tweet for the baby registry above.

Montero is out now via Columbia. Get it here.

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

Chris Rock was already a strong advocate for people getting vaccinated against the novel coronavirus and that hasn’t changed even after he disclosed that he suffered a breakthrough case on Sunday.

The comedian has urged people to get vaccinated amid a still-ongoing pandemic that’s seen the Delta variant of the virus decimate unvaccinated populations. And while some vaccinated people have still gotten coronavirus, their cases are much milder and see much, much lower rates of hospitalization and death compared to the unvaccinated that get sick.

On Sunday, Rock admitted that he was one of those breakthrough cases and urged people to get vaccinated.

“Hey guys I just found out I have COVID,” Rock said on Twitter on Sunday. “Trust me you don’t want this. Get vaccinated.”

Rock had previously talked about getting vaccinated on TV before both on Live With Kelly And Ryan as well as late night shows.

In May on the Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, Rock joked that he cut the line to get vaccianted with the one-shot Johnson and Johnson vaccine.

“I didn’t care. I used my celebrity, Jimmy,” Rock said. “I was like, ‘Step aside, Betty White, I did Pootie Tang. Step aside, old people.’”

Hopefully Rock is OK and recovers quickly from his illness. But it’s clear the comedian believes what science backs up: that his illness could have been much worse if he didn’t already have the jab.

Amazon is getting the Lord of the Rings gang back together in a big way, and while many of the familiar faces will be missing from the project the big-budget series will apparently sound like the blockbuster, critically-acclaimed trilogy based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

While Peter Jackson will not helm the project, the series is reportedly close to securing the services of an important element in the movies’ signature feel. According to Deadline Howard Shore, who won three Oscars for his work on the original Jackson-helmed trilogy, is “in talks” to develop the score for the series and compose other music.

Shore, whose film credits include The Hobbit trilogy, Twilight Saga, Hugo, The Departed, Pieces Of A Woman, Philadelphia, The Silence of the Lambs and many others, provided the unforgettable and often ominous score that framed the stakes in the battle between Sauron’s evil forces of Orcs, Goblins, and Uruk-Hai forces against the men, hobbits, elves and dwarves in Middle Earth.

It would certainly be a big deal to snag Shore, who would provide an aesthetic bridge between the projects set in the same cinematic universe as the LOTR trilogy but will not include some of the most familiar characters from the Tolkein universe. As Deadline noted, principal photography for the series has finished in New Zealand and Amazon has already set a release date of Sept. 2, 2022. But there’s clearly a lot of work left to be done to put the project together, and bringing in Shore to score the series would be a big win for what’s already the most expensive TV show in history.

[via Deadline]