Month: October 2021

Jack White has been full of surprises lately. In April, White, who is famously old-fashioned, decided to get into NFTs. Then, this summer, he went ahead and unveiled his new blue-hair look. Now, White’s latest unexpected move is his first solo single since 2018, called “Taking Me Back.”

The guitar-driven rocker is right in White’s usual wheelhouse, although not his technological one, as it debuted in a new Call Of Duty: Vanguard trailer. White recorded the song at his Third Man Studios in Nashville, and impressively, instead of making use of a band, he recorded all the vocals and instruments himself.

For those who might prefer a softer version of the song, White has provided one: He also released “Taking Me Back (Gently),” which has stripped back instrumentation and a jaunty rhythm.

Meanwhile, when White offered the first look at his blue hair in July, it was less about his dyed locks and more about his new website to showcase his art and design work. The About page of the site notes that White is “an interdisciplinary artist, equally as conversant in sculpture and upholstery as he is in music and songwriting.”

Listen to “Taking Me Back” and “Taking Me Back (Gently)” above, and watch the Call Of Duty: Vanguard trailer below.

Although its premise has long since been disproven, Nas’ album Hip-Hop Is Dead was one of his most successful albums commercially and remains in the upper half of his catalog in fan esteem — except for one song, the 1930s gangster movie-influence “Who Killed It?” While it’s technically a creative and innovative approach to the storytelling tracks for which Nas is known and loved, the song does find the Queens icon employing a cartoonish, film-noir detective voice that still puts off hip-hop fans to this day.

On Sunday night’s episode of Desus & Mero on Showtime, the two New York natives finally confronted the rap legend to find out why he chose to go with such an eyebrow-raising technique. Surprisingly, Nas is game; he’s probably far too deep in his career to be defensive about 15-year-old albums, but he still has a pretty good sense of humor about it as he admits, “I wilded out. I was bingeing on James Cagney movies at the time… It was like a joke to do that record and then I left it on the album — it happens.”

This leads to a broader discussion about the importance of details in Nas’ storytelling over the years, as well as a light flex about Nas having time to watch Regis And Kathy Lee in the morning. Also discussed during the interview: Nas’ relationship with DMX, his restaurant chain Sweet Chick, and his latest endeavor, a brand of cigars.

Watch Nas’ interview with Desus & Mero above.

Chris Myers has done it all in his two decades at Fox Sports. From hosting studio shows to play-by-play to sideline reporting, he’s become one of the network’s most valuable assets for the versatility he provides and his ability to seem comfortable in any role he’s given – and in just about any sport.

For Myers, whose background prior to Fox Sports was chiefly in reporting, the first step in taking on new broadcast roles was learning the differences in each and what was most important to those jobs.

“I had to learn right away was when you’re hosting the studio show, there’s the sport, but it really is about you and the personality and the people you’re talking to and that’s kind of where it starts,” Myers told Uproxx Sports. “As a reporter, it’s about it’s about the story, the event, the news, the information, and then you get to the game. And calling play by play, it’s almost like a pilot. I had to learn a checklist before you take off.”

For Myers, it wasn’t just the event itself, or interacting with the talent – things that happen naturally over the course of the game — but instead about the basics. What’s the down and distance? How can he set up his analysts? And once that’s established, all the prepwork and the research can come out naturally when it’s necessary.

At first, you’re dialing back a lot of the information and words you had, even though it seems like you have the space to use it,” Myers said. “You don’t have to fill it all because you have, we talked about, you have the crowd, you have scenery, you have pictures and you have an analyst. So let that breathe a little, and then decide where you’re going to go and the play and the game will lead you to a story.”

After initially separating each, now that he’s been doing all of this for years, he’s found the ways those different skillsets required by each role can help him be better at the others.

Currently, Myers is in the midst of another season calling NFL games, doing play-by-play alongside Daryl Johnston and Jennifer Hale every Sunday, and while play-by-play requires its own unique approach, he feels his time as a host and reporter help him bring a more well-rounded approach to the booth.

Myers’ hosting duties have taught him how to have more fun in the booth to keep the viewers more comfortable, and also setting the table for Johnston to provide insight as the analyst. He also can’t turn off the part of his brain from being a reporter, which leads him to diving deeper into background on players and coaches in weekly prep, knowing he’ll have far more information than he could ever use, but ensuring that if the opportunity presents itself, he’ll be ready to offer something to the viewer that they likely didn’t know before.

“Daryl Johnston and I had a game recently where the Panthers were dominating the Saints and the game was pretty much over in the fourth quarter. So we were able to go back a little bit about Matt Rhule and more of his college roots,” Myers said. “Sometimes you don’t have time for that, but in a game like that you can get deeper in storytelling and talk about how he drafted a player in the fourth round because that player ran well against his team in college, and his wife had seen him do that and texted him during the draft and said ‘We should pick this guy, remember he dominated you when you were coaching it at Baylor.’ So having those kinds of stories ready goes back into the preparation from reporting and you use it in that kind of way.”

For Johnston, working with Myers allows him to do what he does best, which is focus on the game itself and trying to provide insight and information about scheme and the actual football. Myers’ focus on the people and stories, along with Hale, provides a balance to their broadcast team that, for Johnston, is refreshing.

“He adds elements that I don’t bring to the broadcast,” Johnston told Uproxx Sports. “You know, I’m more about football and what’s happening on the field. Chris has a really good balance with history and some interesting nuggets of information about the past, contacts, connections, and it’s really impressive to see how detailed he is. It’s an element that I’m not really focused on, but also one that I don’t have to worry about because I know that Chris is going to have all those angles covered.”

While each role influences the others, each sport requires a different approach. Myers has done football, baseball, NASCAR, boxing, and even dog shows with Fox, and he’s learned the importance of finding the different cadences and rhythms of each. He wants to bring the same energy to every broadcast – he says he tries to say “every night’s the Super Bowl,” which his family makes fun of him for – but where you fit information in and when you lay out as a broadcaster is different in every sport.

“I think that’s really, really important you don’t generalize and you don’t assume [as a broadcaster],” Myers said. “For football, it’s the snap of the football. There’s this aggressive feel, this contact, this, you know, violence within the rules. For baseball, it’s a little more relaxed so but make sure you don’t speak over the pitch, because you don’t know what could happen. It could be a home run, it could be fouled off and a great play by the ball boy, or it hits the umpire. So I think that kind of really separating each sport is kind of the first thing I’ve always done over the years.”

That ability to bounce back and forth, from sport to sport and from studio to booth to field, makes him an incredibly valuable piece for Fox Sports, and with over 20 years at the network, he’s built the requisite trust with producers and directors across Fox’s various sports properties, which allows him to drop in for big games and seamlessly integrate into the broadcast.

“The biggest thing that we have in our business is trust, and trust goes both ways between the truck and the talent, and the talent in the truck,” Richie Zyontz, who produces Fox’s Super Bowl broadcasts, told Uproxx Sports. “When you develop an element of trust, it just eliminates a lot of the nonsense that gets in the way. So, when Chris comes out for the playoffs and basically I haven’t seen him all year, he now transitions from play-by-play to sideline reporting on the biggest games of the year including Super Bowls, I have complete trust in him. I’ve been blessed to work with great sideline people like Pam Oliver and Erin Andrews, and Chris, like them, you can just trust them. You know that if Chris says, ‘Hey I got something,’ I don’t need to waste 30 seconds asking “what do you got?’ because our business is just split-second decisions, and a second in our business is a long time.”

For Myers, the opportunity to do different sports and take on different roles was what drew him to Fox in the first place. He had a background in football and baseball, but with Fox adding NASCAR when he arrived at the company, he got to truly dive into something wholly new to him.

“I grew up on football, baseball, basketball those sports, and NASCAR — I wasn’t the car guy my brothers were, and they would always try to get me out to go to the races,” Myers said. “So I did have to kind of grow in it, and in a way it was kind of refreshing for me. I will say that the fans and people in the sport really took me in and it was kind of a warm feeling that you know, to kind of get into something new.”

Part of Fox’s overall push for their NASCAR coverage was to find the balance between offering the nuanced insight diehard fans wanted, while also making the broadcast accessible for those who were new to the sport. Myers, being part of that latter group, felt his job was to do what he does best, which is keep things light and try to let fans get to know the drivers and people in the sport better. Maybe better than any other sport, Fox has been able to find that balance between giving detail while also defining things for a casual viewer, and for Myers it has opened his eyes to how that can be important on sports like football, where it can be easy to assume the viewers are well versed in terminology and scheme, when that isn’t necessarily the case.

“The NASCAR experience reminded me in doing NFL, we hear terms that were acceptable to us, but I have to have the view that the person watching it could be a 10 year old or an 80-year-old grandmother, along with the die hard football fan,” Myers said. “So I gotta make sure if [Daryl] says, ‘Hey they’re in a Cover 2,’ I’ve heard it a lot, I have seen it and know what it is, but a lot of people, they’ve heard it but they don’t really know what it is or how it affects the game. So I have made an effort to when they say the Z receiver, I’m like well, Daryl, who is the Z receiver and why is he the Z receiver? Some of them are obvious, like the slot receiver, so I don’t want to sound so elementary that you’re offending the die-hard football audience, but I might just tap him and say why did the cover 2 work on this play?”

Myers’ career is a testament to his ability to draw influence and inspiration from all of the different roles he takes on and sports he covers, while also recognizing how separate and different each is and respecting that. It’s a fine line, but one he’s managed to live and thrive in at Fox.

“They allowed me to do different types of things. To be the network’s sideline reporter on a Super Bowl and to call an NFL game or a Major League Baseball game and then to be in the studio or be on the pre-show for NASCAR. So I think doing all of those things helps you in the next thing because there’s always a live TV situation that you don’t expect.”

One of the most memorable of those live TV moments from Myers’ career is that he was the sideline reporter for the Fiesta Bowl between Oklahoma-Boise State, and was interviewing Ian Johnson during his now-famous proposal to his girlfriend after scoring the game-winning two-point conversion, which Myers played an unwitting role in.

“The real story is when I said, ‘Ian do you have a minute to go live on national TV?’ And he goes ‘Live? National TV? Yeah, I’ll do it.’ But he said ‘I want to propose,’ and I thought he wanted to propose a playoff system or something because they didn’t have it in place,” Myers recalled. “So, I’m doing the interview and they’re wrapping me, it was a great game so there are a lot of questions, but I got to finish up because the producer doesn’t know what I had heard, and I’m thinking propose he hasn’t proposed the playoffs yet, he just keeps talking about Boise State. So then I knew he had been going out with a cheerleader from the team, just from our study, our prep that week, and she comes running over and she’s standing by him and he looks at so I said, ‘Are you gonna propose or what?’ or something like that he goes, ‘Oh yeah, yeah. I don’t have the ring, but this is my girlfriend, will you marry me?’ And he kneels down. So I took a lot of heat for, ‘Ah, Myers blew the surprise,’ but he later thanked me and said he kind of froze in the moment because he got caught up in the game. That was one of those off-the-radar kind of moments.”

It’s a moment Myers won’t forget, and it’s all part of a career that’s taken him all over to some of the biggest stages in all of sports. He is Fox Sports’ chameleon, someone adaptable to just about any situation, able to bring both lightness and professionalism to whatever role or sport he’s dropped into.

Ted Cruz’s managed to be likable for about two seconds with his recent reaction to the Zodiac Killer’s (reportedly) unearthed identity, but the goodwill didn’t last. Rather, Ted’s busy racking up enemies as usual and getting roundly thrashed in the process. That would include Patton Oswalt’s response when the senator from Texas unwisely fired off a shot, and Ellen Barkin coming for him over Texas’ insane new abortion law. Now, Ted’s irritating government officials Down Under, and more specifically, that would be Australian Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner.

The Northern Territory is not messing around with the persistent Delta variant, and so, they’ve thrown down a sweeping vaccine mandate that involves fines as high as $5000 for workers who refuse to get the jab. Ted Cruz, who probably is not an expert on Australia (although he did, uh, compare Rand Paul to Crocodile Dundee back in 2011), decided to tweet his disapproval of the mandate.

“I love the Aussies. Their history of rugged independence is legendary; I’ve always said Australia is the Texas of the Pacific,” he tweeted. “The Covid tyranny of their current government is disgraceful & sad. Individual liberty matters. I stand with the people of #Australia.”

Well, Gunner fired right back. He whipped out a ‘G’Day,” and then he fired off a “mate,” so you know he means business. Did he mean these words in the same way that southerners use “bless your heart”? One can only hope. He tweeted out a statement, in which Gunner expressed respect for Texas but not for Ted Cruz:

“We don’t need your lectures, thanks mate… Nearly 70,000 Texans have tragically died from Covid. There have been zero deaths in the Territory. Did you know that? We’ve done whatever it takes to protect the Territory. That’s kept us safe and free. We have been in lock down for just eight days in 18 months. Our businesses and school are all open. Did you know that?

“You know nothing about us. And if you stand against a life-saving vaccine, then you sure as hell don’t stand with Australia.

“I love Texas (go Longhorns), but when it comes to Covid, I’m glad we are nothing like you.”

Read Gunner’s full message to Cruz below.

One easy way to start an argument among movie lovers: Is Donnie Darko underrated, overrated, or accurately rated? It’s one of those movies that naturally seems to polarize people, which may disguise a more salient phenomenon: that everyone seems to remember it.

This seems borderline miraculous, given the circumstances. Released in October 2001, Donnie Darko is one of a handful of films that had their box office chances decimated by 9/11. Without overstating the impact of world events, October 2001 was a time when radio stations had banned songs as seemingly innocuous as “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys” and “Ticket To Ride” by the Beatles, so terrified were they of accidentally reminding people of 9/11. Into this paranoid morass bumbled Donnie Darko, whose trailer, executive producer Aaron Ryder noted, “featured a jet plane engine falling through a roof.”

If “Ticket To Ride” was too soon, you can imagine how that went over. Donnie Darko had premiered at Sundance, that January. Landing at a lesser distributor, Newmarket, Darko‘s rights holders had to be coaxed and cajoled into giving the film any theatrical release at all. Finally giving in, they set it for a release in late October, the same time of year the film takes place, and inadvertently ended up having to market a movie about a plane engine crushing a house in the aftermath of a world-shattering airplane attack.

Not surprisingly, the film didn’t get much support. It earned just over $500,000 in a release that spanned 58 theaters at its widest (2,000-3,000 theaters was standard for a major release at the time). Yet for evidence of Donnie Darko‘s outsized impact, one need only mention the major releases it was was up against in its first weekend: the Kevin Spacey alien comedy K-Pax and the tragically-named Thir13en Ghosts. The latter of which somehow went on to earn almost $42 million in the US alone. Heard any good fan theories about Thir13en Ghosts lately?

You know the story: Donnie Darko eventually found its audience and took off. It became a massive hit on DVD and went on to inspire countless explainer posts on Tumblr. This despite having arguably some of the worst DVD box art of all time:

Its proper place in the canon aside, it’s easy to forget that Donnie Darko‘s writer/director Richard Kelly was just 24 when he sold the script; 26 when it was released. He had to fight to be able to direct it, fight to be able to shoot it anamorphic (without getting deep into the technical weeds, it’s a way of shooting in widescreen without losing vertical resolution), fight for his preferred cast, and fight to get it released theatrically. None of those fights are entirely unique to Donnie Darko, but the final product does feel particularly defined by a filmmaker who resisted being talked out of things. Every film is inevitably a nexus of almost infinite alternate timelines, different ways it could’ve turned out if one actor hadn’t had a scheduling conflict or another hadn’t been vetoed by a producer. Yet perhaps my all-time favorite bit of film trivia is that Mark Wahlberg was approached about playing Donnie Darko but didn’t work out because he insisted on playing him with a lisp.

Above all, virtually every frame, every acting choice, every musical cue — feel like at least one person cared deeply about just this one little thing. It’s a quality that’s so lacking in today’s world of endless streaming that it’s almost jarring to watch. Donnie Darko is so visually dynamic and witty that watching it now almost makes me giddy. The gloriously goofy, slightly macabre, scary-but-perfect-sight-gag bunny mask at the center of it is Donnie Darko‘s visual sensibility in a nutshell. It’s almost impossible not to scream why doesn’t anyone make movies like this anymore?! at the TV when you watch it, even when you know it’s the cinematic equivalent of demanding the neighbor kids stay off your lawn. Truth is though, they barely made movies like this then.

Described by Kelly as “Catcher in the Rye as retold by Philip K. Dick” (with a tagline that slick, you can see how he sold it so fast) Donnie Darko is the story of an angsty, emotionally disturbed teenager and his nearly month-long holiday from consequences (an “unreliable narrator,” say). In a way, it’s also Office Space, with the hypnotist recast as an imaginary friend in a giant bunny costume. “Frank,” who ultimately turns out not to be imaginary, saves Donnie from a falling plane engine, gets him to bust a water main at his school (an unconventional and ultimately successful ploy to get a girlfriend), and set a fire at a pompous self-help guru’s house to expose the man as a pederast. These are all the kinds of moments adult contemporary premium cable shows dream of.

In the beginning of the film, Frank lures Donnie out of his house and sets the time parameters of the film, telling Donnie he has “28 days, six hours, 42 minutes, 12 seconds” before it all ends. Donnie’s sleep walk (he wakes up at the local golf course) ends up saving him from a falling plane engine that landed in his bedroom. Initially, the authorities don’t know where the engine came from. It’s only 28 days (etc) later that Donnie learns the truth: that the engine came from a plane, which encountered a worm hole, sucking one of its engines into a time-space portal landing it 28 days (etc) into the past, crushing Donnie’s bedroom. Did I mention Donnie’s mom and sister were on the plane? Luckily Frank hipped Donnie to all this, which he was able to do, because Donnie kills him as revenge for Frank running over Donnie’s girlfriend with his Trans Am in this 28-day timeline anomaly. Frank’s death conveniently frees his spirit was the bounds of time. In the “end” Donnie goes home to sleep in his bed and gets crushed by the engine after all, sacrificing himself for his mom, sister, girlfriend, and Frank.

If you’re anything like me, it probably hurt a little bit to hear someone explain the plot in linear fashion like that. For one thing, it still doesn’t really make sense. Which as a plot contrivance is pure genius. Richard Kelly has figured out a way to make you to relive his movie over and over, by inserting a time travel paradox into the finale. Donnie Darko becomes like that line in a rap song you don’t quite catch the first time and have to keep rewinding. Brilliant as it is as a hook, it’s not even in the top 10 reasons why I love the movie.

Realizing that it’s almost unimaginably pompous to argue that a movie is a cult classic “for the wrong reasons,” I still can’t help but think that Donnie Darko suffers a bit from its association with the stoned college kid ouvre. Along with The Matrix and Boondock Saints, Donnie Darko is one of those movies it’s easy to imagine AJ firing up in the Soprano house media room. Certainly this is its own fault; without the sheen of “what does it all mean, maaaan” and its inextricable (and much to be imitated) “sci-fi element,” Donnie Darko is merely a much more pedestrian period-set indie coming-of-age dramedy. We’ve all seen that movie.

Yet even stripped of its time loop, Donnie Darko would still be an all-time great period-set indie coming-of-age dramedy. It’s Ladybird with a sci-fi element. In hindsight, it’s easy to forget that Donnie Darko takes place in the very specific time period — October 1988, just before the Bush-Dukakis election. In fact the very first line of dialogue is “I’m voting for Dukakis” delivered by Jake Gyllenhaal’s real-life sister, Maggie, playing Donnie’s movie sister, Elizabeth. It’s easy to forget that it takes place in 1988 because Donnie Darko, only 12 or so years removed from the period setting and released slightly before the 20-year nostalgia cycle made 80s period pieces hip, never plays that setting for easy nostalgia or cheap kitsch. It’s simply a matter of verisimilitude. That’s when Richard Kelly imagined the story, so that’s when it takes place — in “Middlesex,” Virginia. (Kelly went to high school Midlothian, Virginia, where his father worked for NASA).

Donnie Darko is a prime example that all those hyper specifics of story don’t winnow an audience, they broaden it. It’s set in a rich, leafy suburb at a lily white private high school, yet there are times watching it that I feel like it plagiarized my childhood (where I attended a largely Hispanic public school in a rural California dirthole). I’m almost positive I had the same bullshit health class taught by a Bible thumper with pearl earrings and a too-tight bun that inspired Beth Grant’s (perfect) performance as Kitty Farmer. Where Donnie had Patrick Swayze’s Jim Cunningham (Swayze’s defining performance in my mind), who Donnie calls “the fucking antichrist,” we had abstinence advocate and former Miss Black California Lakita Garth, offering all kinds of advice on how Jesus could reduce teen pregnancy (which worked out terribly, my class started with 600 students freshman year and graduated less than a third). The language of teenage shitheads drinking beer in fields is universal.

The opening scene, in which Elizabeth declares that she’s voting Dukakis, eventually devolves into bickering between the two, in which Donnie calls her a “fuck ass” and she laughs and tells him to “suck a fuck.” The scene sets a tone for a film that’s almost 100% earworms. It’s a mixture of the arch, the mundane, and the surreal in that endlessly repeatable, endlessly memorable kind of way. Beth Grant pleading “Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!” has lived rent free in my head for 20 years.

The bullies are absolutely ruthless, but with sadism that feels gleeful rather than rote, like so many other high school movie bully cliches do. The Cherita character, a tragic loner played by Jolen Purdy, and the line “go back. To China, bitch,” is so absurdly cruel and abrupt as to be spit-take worthy. And still it manages to be overshadowed by Seth Rogen’s line read of “yeah, well didn’t your dad, like, stab your mom?” and Alex Greenwald’s freakishly memorable stab motion and sound effects.

Greenwald, incidentally, who in Donnie Darko played a bully named Seth (which is funny to me on its own), is in Jason Schwartzman’s band Phantom Planet and used to be engaged to Brie Larson.

Donnie Darko is a movie where even the small, strange performances are perfect, the cast a mix of up-and-comers like Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, and Seth Rogen; and veteran character actors like Holmes Osborne and Mary McDonnell as the Darko parents. Well, perhaps with the exception of Drew Barrymore, who portrayed one of the least-convincing English teachers of all time and whose line reads (“FUUUUCK!” “It’s meant to be ironic!”) are almost as earwormy as “commitment to Sparkle Motion,” but for the wrong reasons. Still, Barrymore deserves far more credit than shame. It was Barrymore who believed in it, who helped finance it through her production company and used her pull to get it a theatrical release. Without her, Donnie Darko might not even exist.

Which would be a shame. It’s the rare high school film that acknowledges sex but neither obsesses nor trips over it. Donnie is a horny high school kid, whose fantasies about sex (he almost jerks off to Christina Applegate in his therapist’s office while hypnotized) and obsession with getting the girl coexist naturally with similar angst about time travel, religion, and the meaning of life. That a teenager can be a horny idiot, but also a budding philosopher, thorny cynic, and stifled romantic is a fact rarely acknowledged in movies about high school.

Then and now, Donnie Darko feels like something special. One can choose to remember it a number of different ways, but for me, it’s less a time travel movie than a timeless suburban gothic, a portrait of mundane perversity rivalling anything, even from masters of the genre like Alexander Payne and the Coen brothers.

Donnie Darko’s legacy is everywhere, in cultural forces obvious and not so obvious. When Donnie Darko couldn’t afford to license “MLK” by U2 for the finale, the composer Michael Andrews created a slowed down dramatic cover of Tears For Fears’ “Mad World,” performed by Andrews’ friend Gary Jules, which went on to become a UK number one hit in 2003. Tears For Fears’ only number one hit, incredibly. This from the soundtrack for a film which, again, didn’t crack seven figures in box office. “Mad World” was, I would argue, almost certainly the inspiration for that children’s choir singing “Creep” in one of the first Social Network trailers. Which in turn spawned the mass phenomenon of slowed-down dramatic covers in trailers. A phenomenon now so widely acknowledged that my dumb tweet about the movie WONKA simply looking like the kind of movie that would have a slowed-down dramatic cover in the trailer received almost 35,000 likes.

When that spaceship suddenly shows up midway through Fargo season two, it’s hard not to think of Donnie Darko, and its mix of small town drama and the supernatural (sidenote: fuck that spaceship). The Leftovers, one of the best shows of the last 10 years, had a similar (and more successful) brew of character drama and existential questions. Would they exist without Donnie Darko? Maybe, but it set a precedent that audiences would accept that kind of genre bending.

While he’s been attached to other projects and has done uncredited work on plenty of movies and TV (so he has said in interviews), Richard Kelly hasn’t officially written or directed a movie since The Box in 2009, 12 years ago. Probably that has more to do with his famously disastrous follow-up whatsit, Southland Tales, in 2006, and its more conventional but still underwhelming successor than Donnie Darko (stories probably worthy of posts of their own).

Maybe there’s some irony to the way that Southland Tales, intended to be such an up-to-the-moment slice of the times (Kevin Smith called the script “a political Pulp Fiction“), feels decades old, while Donnie Darko, a coming-of-age tale made five years earlier and set in 1988, feels like it could’ve been made yesterday. It seems to shoot for something broad and definitive, about the way reality seems to shift underfoot at the cusp of adulthood. In depicting adolescence truthfully, it ends up being entirely offbeat and singularly strange. Maybe the only way to do justice to the high school experience is through the supernatural. To borrow a cliché, Donnie Darko taught us it was okay to be weird.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

While we might not be getting Rob Zombie’s upcoming The Munsters reboot in time for this Halloween, the notorious horror director — responsible for stomach-churning films like House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects, and the 2007 remake of Halloween — has taken to Instagram to share the first cast image of the film. In the image, we see Rob-Zombie-movie-mainstays Jeff Daniel Phillips as Herman Munster and Dan Roebuck as Grandpa Munster, Zombie’s wife and creative partner Sheri Moon Zombie as Lily Munster, and the first look at Zombie’s take on the Munster’s iconic home on 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

In the caption, Zombie said, “Since Halloween is rapidly approaching I thought it was the perfect time to MEET THE MUNSTERS! Direct from the set in good old Hungary I present Herman, Lily and The Count sitting in front of the newly completed 1313 Mockingbird Lane.” The big reveal comes just months after the project was first announced this summer, and — based on how ready-to-shoot the set and crew and looking — could mean the director is already deep into filming in Budapest. Zombie has also shared other images from the set of the film over the past few months, including a look at the special effects his team is using, as well as Lily and Herman Munster’s bedroom attire.

Based on the 1960’s family sitcom of the same name, The Munsters follows a family of classic, horror movie monsters (a Frankenstein, a pair of vampires, and a werewolf) who relocate from Transylvania to the American suburbs and are subsequently forced to assimilate into American culture. As the family tries their hardest to be “normal” and keep their big secret from coming out, plenty of whacky hijinx ensue, ultimately causing all the countless laughs that made the show so beloved in the 60s.

While Zombie has a reputation for making pretty gruesome, hard R-rated horror films abundant in cannibalism and rednecks, based on what we’ve seen and heard so far, it seems The Munsters reboot will be a faithful (and family-friendly) adaptation of the original series. Here’s hoping it’s all treats and no tricks when the trailer eventually drops.

Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.

This week saw long-awaited new music from Adele and what may be one of Coldplay’s final albums. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

For more music recommendations, check out our Listen To This section, as well as our Indie Mixtape and Pop Life newsletters.

Adele — “Easy On Me”

Adele isn’t one to drop non-album singles between projects, so before this year, the last new song we heard from her were from the 2015 album 25. Now, though, 30 is finally on the way next month, and ahead of then, Adele made her triumphant return with “Easy On Me,” an evocative piano ballad that includes a knockout performance from one of music’s most powerful and beloved voices.

Young Thug and Mac Miller — “Days Before”

With how omnipresent Young Thug has been over the past decade, it’s hard to believe that his new album, Punk, is only his second LP. Collaboration has been one of the keys to his career, and he secured some big ones here, including linking up with the late/great Mac Miller on the brief and chill “Days Before.”

Coldplay — “Biutyful”

Last week, Coldplay released their ninth album, Music Of The Spheres (which is perhaps one of their last LPs). The band didn’t drop a new single in the week leading up to the album (probably since “My Universe” is still dominating the world), but some album tracks are particularly interesting, like “Biutyful.” It’s a catchy, airy, midtempo pop-rock tune most notably characterized by an artificially high-pitched voice, which avoids being a gimmick and instead works as a charming musical choice.

Anitta — “Faking Love” Feat. Saweetie

Brazilian pop star Anitta and Santa Clara’s Saweetie come from different backgrounds, but they’re a natural pairing on Anitta’s “Faking Love.” As Uproxx’s Aaron Williams notes, the song “is a brazen breakup anthem, so it’s fitting that she tapped the Bay Area’s own Icy Princess, Saweetie, to deliver a slick, dismissive verse to really drive the message home.”

Summer Walker — “Ex For A Reason” Feat. JT

Summer Walker is gearing up to further stake her claim in the R&B landscape with her second album, Still Over It, but before then, she offered a tantalizing preview of it last week. The song is “Ex For A Reason,” and on it, she and JT of City Girls address themes that line up perfectly with the album title. After sharing the track, Walker noted, “Don’t fight over a n**** that got his attention all over the place. I hope y’all learn from my mistakes.”

Snail Mail — “Ben Franklin”

Lindsey Jordan is continuing to deliver on all the promise she’s shown over the past half-decade with the rollout for her upcoming sophomore Snail Mail album, Valentine. The latest preview of it is “Ben Franklin,” a groovy alt-rocker that sees her getting vulnerable, as it reveals that she recently spent time in rehab.

Maxo Kream — “Greener Knots”

Houston’s own Maxo Kream has an album coming in a matter of hours at that point. Before unveiling the whole thing, last week, he dropped “Greener Knots.” The track features the rapper diving into his rough childhood over some smooth production.

PinkPantheress — “Reason”

It seems there are new ways to blow up in the music industry every day, and PinkPantheress has done so by riding a TikTok-boosted wave. After gaining attention on the platform, her debut mixtape, To Hell With It, is here. It includes tracks like “Reason,” which balances relaxing guitars and vocals with its frenetic rhythm.

Pink Sweats — “I Feel Good”

Pink Sweats is only a few months removed from Pink Planet, but he’s already treating his fans to more, as last week brought a new song, “I Feel Good.” Uproxx’s Wongo Okon notes of it, “The track is a soft and heartwarming release that finds the singer appreciating the world around him and how great life feels nowadays.”

Courtney Barnett — “Smile Real Nice”

Barnett’s main focus at the moment is her upcoming album Things Take Time, Take Time, but last week, she took time, took time for something else: a TV theme song. She wrote the theme (titled “Smile Real Nice“) for the upcoming animated Harriet The Spy series and it sees Barnett adapting her sound to fit wonderfully in a jaunty and immediately catchy format that’s going to sound great over the show’s opening credits.

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

The first two seasons of the LeBron James-Anthony Davis partnership have unfolded in starkly different manners. In year one, they missed a combined 13 games, guided the Los Angeles Lakers to the NBA’s second-best record and rolicked to the franchise’s first title since 2010. In year two, injuries tripped them up and interrupted a title defense. James and Davis were sidelined for 63 games and Los Angeles stumbled to the West’s seventh seed before falling to the Phoenix Suns in six games in the first round.

While concerns surrounding James’ durability moving forward are valid, given his age and recent injury history between last season and 2018-19, he was still an MVP-caliber player prior to spraining his ankle in mid-March. Davis, however, never truly rediscovered the magic of his dominant 2019-20 as one of many stars who were playing catch up because of the absurdly truncated offseason. For the Lakers to punch their second NBA Finals ticket in three years, they’ll be hoping that the four and a half month layoff has revitalized Davis.

Numbers can never encapsulate the entirety of a player, but the decline in some key areas help indicate the contrasting versions of Davis during his first two seasons as a Laker. In 2019-20, according to Cleaning The Glass, he generated a rim frequency of 42 percent, which fell in line with his prior two seasons of 44 percent. He aptly blended his face-up shooting and driving prowess to attack defenses. The result was one of his most efficient scoring campaigns to date before he went supernova from midrange in the playoffs and had the luxury of taking a few more jumpers each night.

Last season, his rim frequency plummeted to a career-low 32 percent. He floated aimlessly more often, settled for contested jumpers and didn’t display the same pop and vigor of months prior — likely due in part to some injury issues. Davis is a solid shooter among big men, but he’s an elite finisher. More than half his shots came from midrange and he converted just 43 percent of them en route to a career-worst 55.6 percent true shooting. Swapping out those looks at the rim for midrange jumpers didn’t suit him.

After a Defensive Player of the Year-caliber regular season and playoff run, Davis followed 2019-20 up with a lackluster showing. He was late as a helper more commonly, didn’t look as spry as a perimeter mover and failed to maintain the impact of his fellow elite defenders around the league, even if he was still good on the aggregate.

Statistically, the waning defensive activity was reflected in a career-low block rate of 2.7 percent. Because the bar he’s set for himself is towering, that still placed him in the 79th percentile, per Cleaning The Glass, but never before had he dipped below the 83rd percentile in his career.

A resurgent year from Davis should be anticipated. Despite various ailments and a brutally short offseason, he was a (very) good player. He just created such lofty expectations following 2019-20, which is a testament to his greatness. Last year, he and the Lakers had fewer than two and a half months between the end of the NBA Finals and their first regular season game. This year, they’ll have close to five months. The hope — nay, the goal — is that’s the sort of elixir for Davis to rediscover his superstar ways and spearhead another prolific season in Southern California.

Due to the “constraints of arenas,” The Weeknd has postponed his After Hours Tour dates and announced that new dates will be forthcoming in 2022. The singer apparently got a taste for the scale a stadium performance can bring after performing at the 2021 Super Bowl and wants to bring that to the tour he has planned for his latest album.

“The tour dates are moving and will commence in the summer of 2022,” he wrote in his social media announcement. “Due to constraints of arenas and the demand for more shows I want to do something bigger and special for you which requires stadiums. Current tickets will be refunded automatically and all ticket holders will be given priority to buy tickets for the stadium shows when they go on sale. New dates forthcoming.”

Prior to announcing the postponement, The Weeknd suggested that his next “full body of work” could arrive before the tour — something that now seems like a near certainty, if the dates have been pushed back for him to move up to bigger venues. More recently, he intimated that the project is already complete and is only awaiting a few features. Meanwhile, he’s also working on an HBO show titled The Idol, so perhaps the additional wait for the tour will give him the leeway to get all this work off his calendar.

The Memphis Grizzlies have been one of the NBA’s most pleasant surprises the last two years, as they’ve gone from a team that looked like it would be staring down a lengthy rebuilding process after the end of the Grit N Grind era, to a playoff team in just two seasons.

Still, this is a team that is keeping focus on the future, using this offseason to add more young talent and continue trying to figure out who is and isn’t part of their long-term vision, even while trying to compete in the immediate. The two unquestioned members of that long-term core in Memphis are Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr., heading into their third and fourth years respectively. Morant has become one of the NBA’s best young point guards and is in line for what one figures to be a max extension next year.

Jackson, meanwhile, has shown flashes of his immense talent on both ends of the floor in his three seasons with the Grizzlies, but has only played in 126 games over those three years due to injuries. That has kept him from tapping into his full potential so far, but Memphis is banking on that happening sooner than later, inking him to a four-year, $105 million extension on Monday just ahead of the extension deadline, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

It’s the type of deal that makes sense for both parties, as Jackson gets some financial security despite his injury history, while the Grizzlies get a tremendous talent on a deal that could very well look like a steal if Jackson can stay on the floor and continue his upward trajectory. Jackson joins Trae Young, Luka Doncic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Michael Porter Jr., Mikal Bridges, and Robert Williams III as members of the 2018 Draft class to ink extensions this offseason, with the most notable exception remaining being No. 1 pick Deandre Ayton.