Month: January 2022

Vic Mensa is no stranger to being arrested. Before yesterday’s arrest for felony narcotics possession — LCD and mushrooms — he was previously arrested for both felony gun possession in 2017 and for toting a set of brass knuckles in 2020 (this one’s a “wobbler,” meaning either a felony or misdemeanor depending on the judge and other factors). So, his nonchalance about the whole situation now that he’s been released is understandable — he’s been here before.

Vic casually updated his fans on his release yesterday afternoon, tweeting, “Wow what a trip.” A couple of hours later, he expanded on that tweet, writing, “i’m freeeeeee. love you all. god works in mysterious ways.” All in all, he seemed unfazed by his latest adventure in the legal system, which saw customs agents at Washington DC’s Dulles International Airport grab a plethora of goodies, including Psilocybin capsules, Psilocybin gummies, and liquid Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD).

Vic was apparently returning from a trip to Ghana (his father is Ghanaian) with his fellow Chicago MC Chance The Rapper, during which they met the president, Nana Akufo-Addo, and promoted local tourism. Chance also posted about Vic’s release, writing, “Thanks for all the prayers. My boy back out here.”

Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox’s relationship is probably best described as intense. The two took things to a new level recently when they got engaged, and in a new Vogue interview, the pair discussed the proposal. They also talked about Fox’s ring, which was designed to be painful when removed.

Kelly said of the ring:

“It’s a thoroughbred Colombian emerald, with no treatment. It was just carved into the teardrop, straight out of the mine. And the diamond was directly from Stephen [Webster]. The concept is that the ring can come apart to make two rings. When it’s together, it’s held in place by a magnet. So you see how it snaps together? And then it forms an obscure heart. And you see this right here? The bands are actually thorns. So if she tries to take it off, it hurts… Love is pain!”

He also explained why he and Fox decided to release the video of their proposal, saying, “We released it to control the narrative. As opposed to someone just catching a weird cell phone picture of a ring on our hand and being like, ‘Whoa!’ But yeah, I didn’t expect it. I just recorded it on my cell phone. And it wasn’t like we had photographers or anything. It was just like me setting my phone against a cup.”

Check out the full interview here.

Amazon’s Lord of the Rings is being touted as the “largest television series ever made” with a reported budget of $465 million — for one season. For comparison’s sake, the final season of Game of Thrones cost only (“only”) $90 million. You can barely buy Lembas bread for $90 million these days. Anticipation is high for Lord of the Rings, to the point where Amazon revealed the title in an epic (and pricey) announcement video.

Amazon’s Lord of the Rings is officially The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

“This is a title that we imagine could live on the spine of a book next to J.R.R. Tolkien’s other classics. The Rings of Power unites all the major stories of Middle-earth’s Second Age: the forging of the rings, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the epic tale of Númenor, and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men,” showrunners J.D. Payne & Patrick McKay said in a statement. “Until now, audiences have only seen on-screen the story of the One Ring — but before there was one, there were many… and we’re excited to share the epic story of them all.” In other words, the multi-season series is set thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres on September 2 with new episodes released weekly. The ensemble cast includes Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Robert Aramayo, Owain Arthur, Maxim Baldry, Nazanin Boniadi, Morfydd Clark, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Charles Edwards, Trystan Gravelle, Sir Lenny Henry, Ema Horvath, Markella Kavenagh, Joseph Mawle, Tyroe Muhafidin, Sophia Nomvete, Lloyd Owen, Megan Richards, Dylan Smith, Charlie Vickers, Leon Wadham, Benjamin Walker, Daniel Weyman and Sara Zwangobani.

In the wake of the recent building fire that killed 17 people in the Bronx, New York, noted Bronx native Cardi B wants to help out by covering funeral costs for the victims. Cardi told TMZ, “I cannot begin to imagine the pain and anguish that the families of the victims are experiencing, but I hope that not having to worry about the costs associated with burying their loved ones will help as they move forward and heal.”

She also said, “I send my prayers and condolences to everyone affected by this horrific tragedy.” Cardi will partner with The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City to ensure that families’ wishes are met and the full costs are covered.

Cardi has become noted for her acts of charity in recent years, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic when she donated 20,000 meal supplements to New York medical workers and gave away $1,000,000 in partnership with Fashion Nova to families in need.

She isn’t the only Bronx rapper stepping up, either. Last week, Fat Joe started a relief fund for the residents of the building, garnering contributions from longtime friends and collaborators like Jay-Z and DJ Khaled. “I need all my people world wide to come together for the families devastated by the fire in the Bronx,” he wrote. “I’m donating and I’m asking everyone that has a Heart to donate. these people are mostly immigrants that have no where to go they lost everything. it’s 10 degrees in the Bronx today!”

Ricky Gervais hosted the Golden Globes in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2016, and 2020, which was also his final time hosting the Globes. “I don’t care anymore. I’m joking. I never did,” The Office and Extras creator said in his monologue, sounding like someone who cares. “NBC clearly don’t care either — fifth time. I mean, Kevin Hart was fired from the Oscars for some offensive tweets… Lucky for me, the Hollywood Foreign Press can barely speak English and they’ve no idea what Twitter is, so I got offered this gig by fax.”

Speaking of the Oscars, now that Pete Davidson is out, the Academy is looking for a host for the 2022 ceremony in March: would Gervais be interested if he was offered the gig? Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager attempted to ask him that question on Today, but before they could finish speaking, Gervais started shaking his head.

“They’d never let me do what I wanted,” he said. “I mean that’s why the Globes got me. They said I could write my own jokes and say what I wanted, no rehearsals.” If the Oscars gave Gervais the same no-notes offer, “I’d do it,” he explained, “but that would never happen. I’d be canceled halfway through.”

Maybe Gervais and the Academy can reach a compromise: he won’t host, but he will reprise his role as Dominic Badguy from Muppets Most Wanted during the show. This is step one in my plan to get the Muppets to host the Oscars.

You can watch Gervais’ interview on Today here.

(Via Today)

Fargo alum Allison Tolman’s managed an impressively varied array of TV roles in recent years. She dove into action mode in ABC’s Emergence, bopped into housewife mode for Why Women Kill, and she will soon appear in the Gaslit miniseries alongside Sean Penn, Julia Roberts, Patton Oswalt, Dan Stevens, Hamish Linklater, and Betty Giplin. Still, Tolman makes time to be active on Twitter, where she offered a piece of her mind on TV shows that can’t quit with the weight jokes.

Yep, these scripts are still popping up, and although some TV shows are more blatant in their approach, many others offer subtler, more insidious jokes about weight. Tolman’s now appealing for this tired approach to end. “Writers and showrunners- take the jokes about weight out of your scripts. I promise they aren’t funny,” she tweeted. “And even if they were, they won’t hold up well. And even if they did, they’re unkind-either to your characters and actors or someone in your audience or crew. It’s not worth it.”

From there, Tolman offered tips on how these jokes aren’t always forthright and directly about a character’s bod. They can also revolve around food, exercise, clothing, and so on. From there, she explained how character descriptions shouldn’t default to using descriptors like “Fat Lady In Theater” when “Annoying Lady In Theater” works better and is, frankly, much more useful to inform the character.

You can read the rest of Tolman’s thread below. Her replies are mostly positive and yep, it’s high time for Hollywood to move past defaulting to weight as a punchline, especially when the world offers to many more opportunities for humor that are, you know, actually funny.

In a hilarious new parody commercial, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert takes aim at the recent rash of anti-vaccine protestors who staged a sit-in at an Olive Garden in Times Square last week. After yelling at employees and storming the bar area, the group refused to leave in an effort to defy New York City’s indoor dining mandate that requires proof of vaccination before entering a restaurant. The ruckus eventually resulted in arrests as the NYPD cleared the protestors out and loaded them into police vans waiting outside. Via The New York Post:

Three men and a woman were expected to be charged with trespassing, according to officials. Their names were not immediately released.

“Wake up New York! Wake the f— up!,” one of the suspect yelled while being led into a police van in the heart of Times Square, according to video on social media.

“I got arrested. They arrested me for trying to eat at Olive Garden, that’s what happened,” another protester said, claiming his civil rights were violated.

Sensing that these people need a restaurant that caters to their complete disregard for public health, The Late Show welcomed to the Covid Garden. Here, shirtless cooks who don’t believe in washing their hands will expertly prepare such delicious dishes as Spinach & Artichoke Diphtheria, Fried Mozzarubella Sticks, Spaghetti Carbonanthrax, and Chicken Malaria. As the commercial ends, it puts a spin on the classic Olive Garden logo: “When you’re here, you’re family — is in danger.”

Unfortunately, there’s no mention of bottomless breadsticks, but then again, you’d have to live long enough to eat them, so why bother?

Jared Leto doesn’t appear to relish roles where he actually looks like himself. We’ll eventually see him vamp out in Morbius, and let’s just say that he’s favored lots of time in the makeup chair with House Of Gucci, Suicide Squad, Dallas Buyers Club, and Chapter 27. Yet in WeCrashed, we actually see Leto in physically recognizable form (albeit with some contouring at work) as he plays Israeli businessman Adam Neumann, the one-time CEO of WeWork who crashed and burned in the tatters of his messianic complex and his flawed shared-office-space model. This happened quite quickly, too, with WeWork once valued at $47 billion and shattering into nothing within weeks.

In this eight-episode limited series, Leto (accompanied by Anne Hathaway as Neumann’s wife, Rebekah, also an apparent narcissist) returns to TV long after his stint of leaning against lockers as Jordan Catalano in My So-Called Life. The dude loves to pour on the accent work, and his Neumann is disconcertingly comfortable with the idea of comparing himself to Jesus Christ. It must be the hair. From the synopsis:

The series is inspired by actual events — and the love story at the center of it all. WeWork grew from a single coworking space into a global brand worth $47 billion in under a decade. Then, in less than a year, its value plummeted. What happened?

The story’s based upon Lee Eisenberg and Drew Crevello’s podcast, WeCrashed: The Rise and Fall of WeWork. Co-stars in this miniseries include Kyle Marvin, America Ferrera, and O-T Fagbenle, and look for WeCrashed on Apple TV+ on March 18.

This past September, Hatchie announced that she had signed to Secretly Canadian and released the shimmering shoegaze pop of “This Enchanted.” Hatchie (aka Aussie Harriet Pilbeam) has now announced her plans to release Giving The World Away, the follow-up to her lauded 2019 debut Keepsake, and has also released the new single “Quicksand.”

The song veers more towards dance-pop, evoking shades of Sky Ferreria or Caroline Polachek. The ’80s dance floor synth beat stands out and Hatchie flexes her soaring vocals as she pleas for joy to shine through uncertainty. Giving The World Away will be out on April 22nd and Pilbeam reflected on the song in a statement:

“‘Quicksand’ is about dealing with the realisation that you’ll never be satisfied. I started writing it when I was home between tours in 2019 before finishing it with Joe Agius and Dan Nigro the next year. I was feeling guilty and ungrateful for not being happy about a few different things in my life that were technically going well. I had to work through some tough learned thought processes and emotions that had been working away for years to try to understand how to be happy with my present, and stop fixating on my past and future. The video digs deeper into showing this juxtaposition of such sadness and anger despite being surrounded by glamour and grandeur.”

Watch the video for “Quicksand” above. Check out the Giving The World Away artwork and tracklist below, as well as Hatchie’s 2022 North American tour dates.

1. “Lights On”
2. “This Enchanted”
3. “Twin”
4. “Take My Hand”
5. “The Rhythm”
6. “Quicksand”
7. “Thinking Of”
8. “Giving The World Away”
9. “The Key”
10. “Don’t Leave Me In The Rain”
11. “Sunday Song”
12. “Til We Run Out of Air”

05/04 — Washington, DC @ Songbyrd Record Cafe
05/05 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Foundry
05/06 — Somerville, MA @ Crystal Ballroom at Somerville Theatre
05/07 — Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
05/09 — Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz PDB
05/10 — Toronto, ON @ The Garrison
05/12 — Pittsburgh, PA @ Club Cafe
05/13 — Columbus, OH @ Ace of Cups
05/14 — Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village
05/15 — St Paul, MN @ Turf Club
05/19 — Vancouver, BC @ Fortune Sound Club
05/20 — Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
05/21 — Seattle, WA @ Neumos
05/23 — San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop
05/25 — San Diego, CA @ Casbah
05/26 — Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room

Giving The World Away is out on 4/22 via Secretly Canadian. Pre-order it here.

About a month ago, while talking about how busy her life has been lately, Cardi B revealed that she plans to drop a new album in 2022, saying, “I’m in a lot of positions and that requires a lot of my time, and on top of that, I gotta put out this album next year.” Now, it appears Cardi has been working on some new music lately, as she shared a behind-the-scenes look at her current home studio setup.

In a recent clip from Cardi’s Instagram Story (which RapTV preserved and re-uploaded), Cardi pans the shot around the room and says before laughing, “Look what Ed built me in this ghetto-ass studio.” The setup consists primarily of an Apple computer, speakers, a microphone surrounded by a DIY shroud made of what looks like a comforter, and some other gear.

This would be far from the first time that some high-quality music was recorded in a humble setting. There are too many examples of this to count, but here’s a notable one from not too long ago: In 2017, Four Tet went viral in some circles after he shared a photo of the space where he recorded that year’s New Energy, one of 2017’s most beloved electronic albums. The setup consisted of just a small desk, laptop, MIDI keyboard, monitors, and a couple of other small pieces of equipment.

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