Month: January 2022

Rihanna has been especially inspirational to people around the world lately. When her native country of Barbados officially renounced the British crown and became a Republic this past November, she was declared a “National Hero of Barbados,” by Prime Minister Mia Mottley and rose to the distinguished occasion. Ed Sheeran recently revealed how she inspires him specifically, and asks himself “What would Rihanna do?” when he starts making songs. Her talent clearly stretches across the cultural spectrum. She has also become much more than just a fashion icon, but also a creator of iconic fashion, with her Savage x Fenty line of “lingerie for every body.”

As she has customarily modeled many of the new collections for the Savage x Fenty line, she teased a new Valentine’s Day collection in a series of photos on social media. Wearing a red number with pink accents — naturally — she posed for the evening shoot in a modest living room. She wrapped her legs in fishnet stockings that complemented the laced look. “Valentine’s Day is for me….but you can watch,” read the racy caption.

“Can y’all handle this heat?,” read the caption on Fenty Beauty’s post from the shoot. This marks the first collaboration between her Savage x Fenty and Fenty Beauty cosmetics brand too. The post explained that Rhihanna’s “purrfected pout” is from Fenty’s Glow Bomb Heat lip luminizer and plumper, which is due out soon.

Now as far as the incredibly-anticipated follow-up to ANTI goes, Rihanna was quoted as saying that new music is coming “soon, soon, soon.” And that whatever comes from her next is going to be a totally unexpected sound, because “music is like fashion: you should be able to play.”

4400 (CW, 8:00pm) — The revamped series returns with a much more diverse take on the original sci-fi show. The show’s still following the titled number of minority citizens who vanish and then return as though nothing happened after being gone for a century. No one knows what the hell happened, and memories provide no clues, nor does the usually reliable aging process. When the show picks up, people are all upset about Mildred’s performance, and yep, that includes the government.

Ordinary Joe (NBC, 10:00pm) — James Wolk’s still playing three Joes, including a cop and a nurse and a rock star. All of them are now enduring winter blizzards with a family secret threatening one of the Joes.

Kenan (NBC, 8:00pm) — Kenan Thompson’s namesake clashes with Aubrey this week because, god forbid, she’s growing up.

In case you missed these recent picks:

Yellowjackets (Showtime) — Following Doomcoming, there’s plenty of fallout in the wilderness during the season finale. There’s a five-season plan here, so this is not the final rodeo, and if you wondered if this show is for you, then we’ve got some advice. It’s also 25-year class-reunion time with the group digging deep with one last attempt to vanquish trauma. This piece of slow-burn splatter art has been captivating the masses with plenty of mystery and just enough supernatural spookiness to make the story work. If you haven’t caught up yet — and the cast, including Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Tawny Cypress and Melanie Lynskey, is phenomenal — there’s still time to really start theorizing before this finale.

The Tragedy of Macbeth (Apple TV+ film) — Joel Coen adapts the Shakespearean work in a way that’s never been bolder. Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand star with all of the murder, ambition, wrath, and madness that one would expect from this story, and expect a stripped-down take on what matters most to communicate this quintessential power-struggle tale.

The Cowboys loss on Sunday to the San Francisco 49ers was as frustrating a performance as a team can put forth in a playoff game. Dallas consistently shot itself in the foot in key moments with drive-killing offensive penalties and drive-extending defensive ones, and there were some baffling decisions made by the coaching staff from a play-calling and game management perspective.

It was not the first time Cowboys fans were frustrated by what felt like overly conservative play-calling and a rampant lack of discipline from the team (which led the NFL in penalties on the season and piled up 14 on Sunday), but that it happened in a playoff game in which the 49ers weren’t exactly firing on all cylinders, particularly in the second half, brought the calls for changes on staff, starting with head coach Mike McCarthy, to a fever pitch. For a coach who isn’t a play-caller on either side of the ball, discipline, game management, and execution in key moments have to be the areas of his greatest impact, and those were glaring negatives on Sunday.

Despite that, it certainly doesn’t seem as if the Cowboys are going to be making another coaching hire anytime soon, as EVP Stephen Jones (son of owner Jerry Jones) gave McCarthy a public vote of confidence on Dallas sports radio on Monday.

McCarthy has been in Dallas for just two seasons, and the Dak Prescott injury a year ago made his first season something of a wash. So, it’s not exactly surprising the Cowboys wouldn’t be looking to make a change after two seasons, but it also is understandable why Cowboys fans wouldn’t feel inspired by McCarthy’s presence at the helm. McCarthy has done little to assuage the concerns some in Dallas had about him based on the end of his tenure in Green Bay, and Sunday’s loss was truly as frustrating a game to watch from a team with as much talent as the Cowboys, who just don’t play with the discipline needed — whether in committing penalties, playing assignment football, or executing on the crucial details in high leverage situations — in the playoffs.

He’ll seemingly get another crack at turning things around next year and giving the Dallas faithful the deep playoff run they’ve craved for two decades now, but confidence isn’t high in Dallas — except from those in charge, apparently.

This weekend, Spider-Man: No Way Home lost its place atop the box office charts, which it held for four weekends, to the new Scream. In that time, though, the threequel made quite the haul. It broke all manner of records, and during a spike in COVID cases yet. People weren’t just excited to see Tom Holland. They were also responding to the rumors that past Peter Parkers could swing by. They sure did, and one of them, Andrew Garfield, was so good about keeping schtum about his appearance that he even kept it a secret from an old co-star.

As caught by Entertainment Weekly, Garfield swung by Josh Horowitz’s podcast Happy Sad Confused to discuss his recent work, including Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tick, Tick… Boom! They also discussed returning to the franchise after doing two Amazing Spider-Man romps in the aughts alongside then-girlfriend Emma Stone, who played the doomed Gwen Stacy. Like many, Stone caught wind that Garfield (and Tobey Maguire) may have secretly filmed scenes for the multiverse-heavy No Way Home. But Garfield wouldn’t tell, not even for her.

“Emma kept on texting me,” Garfield recalled. “She was like, ‘Are you in this new Spider-Man film?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’”

But Stone was adamant. “She was like, ‘Shut up. Just tell me,’” he said. “I’m like, ‘I honestly don’t know’ — I kept it going, even with her. And then she saw it. She was like, ‘You’re a jerk.’”

Garfrield’s Spidey only got two solo films before Sony (and eventually the MCU) decided to re-tool the series, going for the younger Tom Holland. Garfield’s return as Parker has received raves, though it’s his Tick, Tick… Boom! turn that’s been nabbing him trophies and a possible Oscar nomination. Still, No Way Home is the one he’s been caught quietly seeing with crowds.

(Via EW)

Phosphorescent is used to long gaps between albums. His most recent LP, 2018’s C’est La Vie, came out about three years ago, and that arrived over five years after its predecessor, 2013’s Muchacho. Now, after some time away, he’s got something new up his sleeve: “The Full Moon Project,” which he launches today with a cover of Randy Newman’s “Bad News From Home.”

At the end of last week, Phosphorescent took to Instagram to explain what this new endeavor is:

“I’ve been thinkin awhile now on how to release more music separate from the modern album release cycle and all its requirements and pressures etc.. Recently my tiny animal brain had an epiphany: ‘How dense are you, bub?’ it said. ‘This is easy. Record it. Then put it out there. Duh.’ And then, ‘Maybe the moon can help. Look to it.’

So starting here at the top of this year of 2022 and I suppose aiming for the rest of my natural life, I’m gonna release a song with every full moon. For now it’s going to be exclusively cover songs as there’s a mile-long list of songs that’ve meant the world to me and I’d like to try my hand at em.

They may be moon related (as the first one is) or they may have nothin to do with the moon at all I’m open to this thing evolving into whatever it wants to be (new songs, working demos, requests, mashups, ??) In honor of the year’s first full moon (The Wolf Moon!), the first track from this project will be released on Monday, Jan 17. I’m so excited.”

A full moon occurs about every 29.5 days, so expect new tunes from Phosphorescent pretty much once a month from here on out.

Listen to Phosphorescent’s cover of “Bad News From Home” above.

There is one more game left to be played in the NFL’s Super Wild Card Weekend, but the Cardinals and Rams’ Monday Night tilt was secondary news in the world of NFL takery because the Dallas Cowboys provided an almost unbelievable number of topics to discuss coming out of a dismal six-point loss to the San Francisco 49ers.

The Cowboys awful performance was stunningly complete in terms of who shared the blame, from the coaching staff through most of the team (with some notable exceptions, of course), as there were questionable coaching decisions and an abundance of self-inflicted mistakes and penalties on both sides of the ball, headlined by a catastrophic final sequence that saw Dallas fail to execute a QB draw with 14 seconds left to set up one shot at a game-winning touchdown.

After the game, Dak Prescott took aim at the officials, as did Mike McCarthy, but few pundits were willing to agree that the Cowboys failure fell on the officials shoulders in the same way that seemingly everyone agreed the game between the Raiders and Bengals was tainted by dreadful calls and officiating blunders. Instead, the focus was on the errors and lack of discipline, and no one reveled in this more than the world’s No. 1 Cowboy hater, Stephen A. Smith.

Smith posted his immediate reaction to Twitter on Sunday, but that was just an amuse bouche for what was to come on Monday, because as has been the case all season, Smith was joined by Cowboys legend Michael Irvin on First Take, who could only sit there and watch as Smith took victory lap after victory lap, calling Dallas an “utter disgrace,” and even blaming Irvin for being so quick to embrace and crown a team that hadn’t won yet.

Smith wasn’t done torturing Irvin at that point, as they then ran a 40-second montage of sad Cowboys fans that CBS cut to throughout the game while Stephen A. cackled.

I’m not sure Smith could’ve scripted a Dallas playoff game that would’ve created more opportunities for him to revel in the Cowboys’ collective misery, from the comedy of errors and penalties to Dak and McCarthy trying to blame officials to the fact that even the most ardent of Dallas supporters at ESPN couldn’t muster up much in the way of a defense for that performance. Smith is going to live off of this for the entire week and, probably, much of next offseason and the lead up to the 2022 regular season.

From American Idol winner to a full-blown pop music sensation, Kelly Clarkson is now a daytime TV darling. With NBC’s The Kelly Clarkson Show, Clarkson is setting herself apart from the daytime clutter with highly shareable segments like the popular “Kellyoke” that sees her challenging herself to cover hits from across the pop culture spectrum. She made waves last year with her covers of Billie Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever“and Silk Sonic’s “Leave The Door Open,” and now has showed her dynamism on a cover of Sharon Van Etten’s “The End Of The World.”

Technically a cover of a cover, Van Etten actually first covered the 1962 Skeeter Davis original in 2017 for the inventive soundtrack to Amazon’s The Man In The High Castle. Van Etten’s version gave the perfect cinematic lean for the dystopian show based on a Philip K. Dick novel. But Clarkson’s take is forged deeper in country an Americana. Backed by a five-piece band, it’s the pedal steel guitar that provides the lingering backbone for her to sing over. The performance feels almost like the Grand Ole Opry has come to daytime TV and Clarkson is once again sublime.

Watch Clarkson’s cover of “The End Of The World” above.

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

Joss Whedon has been laying low the last few years, and for good reason: Once a beloved TV and movie maven, he’s fallen from grace following a series of accusations alleging all manner of abuse. Now he’s breaking his silence. On Monday, New York published a lengthy profile of Whedon, in which he says he’s in therapy and working on himself. And while he admits that some of the accusations are legit, others get some push-back.

One of them involves Gal Gadot, who — along with Ray Fisher, whom he also addressed in the profile — accused Whedon of abuse on the set of Justice League, which he’d taken over mid-stream for Zack Snyder. Last year, she claimed Whedon “threatened” her, saying he’d make her career “miserable” after they didn’t get along on-set. Whedon denied the claim, saying, “I don’t threaten people. Who does that?” But he didn’t stop there:

He concluded she had misunderstood him. “English is not her first language, and I tend to be annoyingly flowery in my speech.” He recalled arguing over a scene she wanted to cut. He told her jokingly that if she wanted to get rid of it, she would have to tie him to a railroad track and do it over his dead body. “Then I was told that I had said something about her dead body and tying her to the railroad track,” he said.

But New York made sure to get Gadot’s response to Whedon’s claims. And she did not agree with his version of events, saying, “I understood perfectly.”

Whedon also denied Fisher’s claims of abuse, even going so far as to call him a “bad actor in both senses.” It’s some tough words from someone who, earlier in the profile, admits to the New York reporter that he’s “terrified” of “every word that comes out of my mouth.”

(Via Vulture)

When we reported earlier this month that the publishing rights to David Bowie’s entire catalog had been sold for upwards of $250 million to Warner Chappell, little did we know how quickly we’d start seeing the results thereof. Now two weeks after the acquisition was announced, Bowie’s entire discography is about to be available on the Peloton exercise equipment app.

Peloton has introduced The David Bowie Collection, which makes every release in Bowie’s catalog, “from deep cuts to his biggest hits,” available for Peloton users to select as the soundtrack to their workouts. There’s also three new remixes from St. Vincent, Honey Dijon, and Tokimonsta (who all fancy themselves Peloton users) that are also a part of the Collection. St. Vincent remixes “It’s No Game, Pt 1,” Honey Dijon chose “Let’s Dance,” because she says “it’s a true celebration of music and movement,” while Tokimonsta gives “Golden Years” a spin.

St. Vincent’s Annie Clark shared her thoughts on the collaboration in a statement:

“I chose “It’s No Game (Pt. 1)”, because it has a part 2 on the record, and I figured maybe Bowie wouldn’t mind so much if I made a part 3. I wanted to take Bowie’s throat-shredding vocal take from part 1, and make it front and center. ‘Three steps to heavaaaaaaaaaaaahn…’”

The David Bowie Collection becomes available on the Peloton app starting January 19th and is available for all users.

David Bowie is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

On Monday, New York magazine published a lengthy profile of Joss Whedon, the fallen TV and film maven who, over the last handful of years, has been accused of all manner of abuse. The allegations include him toxic behavior around actresses (and not just Charisma Carpenter, who came forward last year.) They include women he slept with charging him with emotional manipulation. And they include actors on the set of Justice League, which he took over mid-stream from director Zack Snyder, accusing him of being threatening and, in Ray Fisher’s case, dramatically cutting his role down.

After laying low the last couple years, Whedon finally broke his silence, responding to the many accusations. Some he accepts. (Of one relationship that went south, he says he “should have handled the situation better.”) Some he denies. Fisher’s accusations are among the latter.

In Justice League, Fisher played Cyborg, and it was his first major role. In Snyder’s original version (and somewhat in the so-called “Snyder cut” that was released last year), Cyborg — DC’s first Black superhero — was the center of the story. When Whedon boarded, he cut his role way down. In 2020, amidst the George Floyd riots that sprung up nationwide, Fisher spoke out, accusing Whedon of not only being rude but of gutting his role. He even claimed Whedon had used color correction to change the color of his skin.

In the New York profile, Whedon pushed back:

Whedon says he cut down Cyborg’s role for two reasons. The story line “logically made no sense,” and he felt the acting was bad. According to a source familiar with the project, Whedon wasn’t alone in feeling that way; at test screenings, viewers deemed Cyborg “the worst of all the characters in the film.” Despite that, Whedon insists he spent hours discussing the changes with Fisher and that their conversations were friendly and respectful. None of the claims Fisher made in the media were “either true or merited discussing,” Whedon told me.

Whedon ended up describing Fisher as a “malevolent force,” calling him “a bad actor in both senses.” (Fisher reportedly didn’t respond to multiple interview requests for New York’s article.)

There’s a lot more in the profile. Whedon shoots down Gal Gadot, who’s also accused Whedon of on-set abuse, even threatening her career, saying she simply didn’t understand the nuances of his discussions with her because “English is not her first language, and I tend to be annoyingly flowery in my speech.” In an e-mail, Gadot said, “I understood perfectly.”

(Via Vulture)