Month: February 2022

Lil Nas X may have recently published the illustrated best-selling children’s book C Is For Country, but he’s now the star of a different kind of publication. The musician is the lead in a newly released comic book that tells the story of his rise to fame through illustrations.

Titled Fame: Lil Nas X, the 28-page comic tells the story of Lil Nas X’s rise to super stardom through colorful scenes. It begins when he was living in Atlanta and walks readers through the success of “Old Town Road,” his debut album, and other notable moments from his life so far. Distributed by TidalWave Comics and written by Darren G. Davis with art by Victor Moura, Fame: Lil Nas X is officially available to purchase as of Wednesday.

Davis spoke about the upcoming book in a statement. “We’ve found a niche with our bio comics,” he said. “Our success with this comic shows that there is a much wider audience for sequential storytelling than many thought. These readers are simply looking for something other than superheroes or horror. With our bio comics, we strive to bring these new readers evenhanded, well-researched looks at some of their favorite celebrities.”

Lil Nas X isn’t the first musician to get their own Fame comic book. Previous edition of the series include a comic on Adele, Prince, Beyonce, Psy, and Bono.

Check out the cover of Lil Nas X’s Fame comic above and get the book here.

After recently having David Letterman as a guest on Late Night, host Seth Meyers wanted to set the record straight about a conversation the two had about the importance of having an “animal guy.” According to Meyers, Letterman had just told a “wonderful story” about the time frequent guest and zookeeper Jack Hanna had to be taken to the emergency room after being bitten by a beaver because of “how much blood came out when the beaver bit him.” After the humorous, yet gory tale, Letterman asked Meyers if he has an “animal guy,” and Meyers said he didn’t.

However, as Meyers explains in his latest “Corrections” segment, he actually did have an animal guy, but he got rid of him after an existentially awkward encounter with a sloth, as one does:

Here’s the thing: We had an animal guy on this show. Lovely, but there was a moment on this show, the last time we had animals on this show, we had a sloth. And we were over there… and the audience loved it. I mean, being in the same room as a sloth? But at one point, I made eye contact with the sloth who very much had an expression that said, “I don’t want to be here.” And I know that expression. I see it on numerous guests. But they choose to be here. That is the difference. The sloth– you know, people come here, they’re plugging a project. I don’t think the sloth cares how many people come to the zoo. I mean, unless they’re sloth liberators.

Truly, a noble gesture by Meyers and, really, a life lesson we can all live by: Always care more about sloths than celebrities. Or at least we think that’s what he’s saying? The important thing is Seth Meyers will never have to look into a sloth’s face and see the open void of existence staring back at him. Never a good time.

Home Team, Netflix’s new release starring Kevin James as former Saints coach Sean Payton, is first and foremost an attempt at a family comedy, so before we get into the details I should note that my eight-year-old stepson declared, upon his second viewing in two days, “I love this movie.”

Certainly appealing to children is a low bar, but on balance Home Team does seem preferable to the rest of Netflix Kids’ programming, which consists mostly of old Disney and Nickelodeon sitcoms, in which the kids are all wearing five layers of neon clothing that looks fresh from a rack at Pac Sunwear, are styled within an inch of their lives, and shout-sing their lines as if they’re going to be beaten with bamboo canes if they fail to enunciate. I can sense when a 9-year-old has headshots. Few things more offputting. At the very least, the kids in Home Team look reasonably like actual kids, an achievement that sadly bears mention.

That being said, Home Team is one of the most conceptually-strange cinematic ventures I’ve ever seen, an image management exercise disguised as a scruffy kids comedy. The film opens with Sean Payton’s win in Super Bowl XLIV in 2010, the first and only for New Orleans, just five years after Hurricane Katrina. It made Payton such a hero that he released a book called Home Team: Coaching the Saints and New Orleans Back to Life just four months later and it became a bestseller.

This, however, is just an opening frame for a movie that takes place entirely in 2012, the year that Payton was suspended for an entire season over his role in the Bountygate scandal. What is the Bountygate scandal, you ask? It was a story in which Payton and his assistant coaches were implicated in a plot to pay out bonuses for Saints players who injured opposing players. Even after two consecutive watches, my stepson was still pretty fuzzy on this point, and it’s hard to blame him. After a cursory five-second headline montage in the beginning, the most Home Team ever explains Bountygate is when Payton’s son Connor asks him why he got suspended. To which Payton responds, “It’s complicated, but I’m the head coach, so I have to take responsibility.”

Ah, well. Case closed!

But perhaps we’re getting ahead of ourselves. What Home Team attempts is a Bad News Bears-esque comedy about the year Sean Payton became the offensive coordinator for the Liberty Christian Warriors, his son’s sixth-grade team in Argyle, Texas.

The Vanity Biopic industry has been exploding in recent years, beginning with subject-friendly depictions of musicians, which makes sense, given that it’s virtually impossible to make a musician biopic without permission to use the subject’s music — as 30 Rock so memorably skewered in “Jackie Jormp-Jomp.” The public first started to note this cozy subject-filmmaker relationship with Bohemian Rhapsody, which Rocketman managed to take to an even cozier level with a subject who was still alive. Sports got in on the action in The Last Dance, a Michael Jordan-sanctioned docuseries about the Michael Jordan-led Bulls of the ’90s, and took an even more propagandistic turn with King Richard, a fictional film “based-on-the-true-story” of Richard Williams (played by Will Smith) and his tennis-playing daughters — executive produced by the Williams family.

Home Team takes it even further, and weirder, positioning Sean Payton as the lead of a family comedy ostensibly about his biggest scandal, with a script was co-written by Payton’s daughter’s boyfriend, Chris Titone. Home Team‘s other writer is Keith Blum, who has the same last name as Tait Blum, the actor who plays Payton’s son, though it’s unclear whether they’re related. It was produced by Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison production company and directed by Charles and Daniel Kinnane, part of an eight-brother production team of former carpenters from Rhode Island who Kevin James had hired to make shorts for his YouTube channel.

That Hollywood is a nepotistic place and the NFL even more so isn’t news to many people, but even accepting that, the movie itself is a strange piece of content. Happy Madison movies have long consisted of rough frameworks that more or less write themselves (rich kid has to go back to school as an adult, hockey goon becomes a golf pro, etc) fleshed out with Sandler’s unmatched capacity for filling space and goofing around. Part of the charm is that they aren’t trying very hard. In that sense, Home Team isn’t much different. Hotshot coach Sean Payton gets suspended from the NFL for cutting corners, humbles himself by coaching his son’s team of sixth graders, and in the process repairs his relationship with his kids and learns a valuable lesson about not being such an asshole.

Or so you would think.

What’s shocking about Home Team is the degree to which it avoids Payton having to do even the most cursory soul-searching. For the most part, it’s a movie about how Sean Payton is an awesome football genius who cucks anyone who gets in his way. It’s a testament to the filmmakers that it still manages to come off as a reasonably-charming family comedy despite having the id of a serial killer. In an age when one of the most popular forms of Super Bowl ad is a corporation apologizing for a scandal and promising to do better, maybe it was inevitable that we’d eventually get a disingenuous apology biopic.

Following his suspension, Payton, played adequately by replacement-level chubby comedy man Kevin James, who effortlessly evokes ex-jock on account of he is one (rare in the acting world), returns to his former home in Argyle, Texas. It’s there he meets his ex-wife’s new husband, Jamie, who, wouldn’t you know it, is a new age hippie with a top knot in his hair. He likes to meditate atop the coffee table amidst clouds of incense and is played, naturally, by Rob Schneider, one of many old friends Adam Sandler seems to be single-handedly keeping employed. In one of Home Team‘s signature gags, Jamie makes the team homemade “energy logs” with kale and tofu and they end up projectile vomiting, Family Guy-style.

The actress playing Payton’s ex-wife, Beth, meanwhile, has a face that positively screams “wife of someone in Happy Madison.” I would’ve bet my life on this while watching the movie, and when I looked her up afterward I discovered that she was Jackie Sandler, Adam’s wife. Madame Sandler, as it turns out, is also the sister of Home Team writer Chris Titone — the aforementioned boyfriend of Meghan Payton, Sean Payton’s daughter, and presumably the lynchpin of this entire enterprise.

Home Team has the plot developments you would imagine. Payton has to try to reconcile with a son who resents him for never being around, and turn around a struggling team without alienating its fanbase and coach. When Payton arrives, the Warriors have two coaches, the well-meaning nice guy head coach, Troy Lambert (Taylor Lautner), and his drunk comic relief assistant who has to ride his bike to games because of DUIs. This character is played by Kevin James’s brother, Gary Valentine, wearing a barely-trying fake mustache.

When Payton arrives, the townsfolk and even Troy want the bigshot Super Bowl man to get involved with the team, and maybe sprinkle some winner dust on their pitiable underdogs. Payton agrees to become the offensive coordinator over beers with Troy, and soon he’s revamping the offense, switching the star quarterback to running back, and eventually, after a phone call with ex-Steelers coach Bill Cowher, who seems to have agreed to be in this movie only if they could shoot his scene in his home office, even meddling in the defense.

There’s a natural expectation that Payton is going to go too far and have to learn that winning isn’t worth being such a prick. Which he does, but only barely. The angriest Troy Lambert ever gets about being coach-cucked is when he frowns a little (Lautner does a decent job looking like a Texas football coach, and his acting has improved some since his Twilight days, but he’s still not exactly Brando).

There is precisely one scene in which anyone pushes back on Payton’s new win-at-all-costs regime, taking place at halftime during the championship game, when Payton’s son Connor yells at him that he liked his team better before, winning or not. Payton’s realization that maybe he should be less of a dick is squeezed into one quarter of one football game, when he puts two benched players back in the game after benching him and lets their hapless kicker kick, even though it means a probable loss.

It’s a testament to the filmmaking that Home Team‘s ending manages to thread a tight needle between believable, novel, uplifting enough, and mildly comedic. What’s shocking about it is how little introspection and acceptance of responsibility are permitted in this era of image management biopic. Granted, the sports superstar autobiography has been a staple of bookstore shelves for probably 50 years, and few have expected to find genuine vulnerability in one (let alone the athlete actually writing it). Even so, Home Team is essentially the story of how football genius Sean Payton returned to a small town and big dicked everyone, proving why he was better than them in the first place. One of his most humbling moments comes when he has to pay the kooky clerk at the hotel where he’s staying to photocopy his hand-drawn playbook for him (the guy accidentally photocopies his bagel! ha ha ha). Imagine, not having someone happily do your copy work for free. Yes, he’s a long way from the Super Bowl now!

Home Team feels like an old feature I used to read in Sports Illustrated For Kids, “My Worst Day,” in which an athlete would explain how they felt on a day they notably failed. The articles were always about fumbling in a crucial moment or calling time out the team didn’t have, never point-shaving or domestic violence or taking out an entire bus full of disabled kids while driving drunk.

The movie’s most endearing aspect is Adam Sandler’s unwavering loyalty to his inner circle, keeping otherwise radioactive pals like Rob Schneider and Allen Covert gainfully employed, doling out roles to old buddies like Kevin James and newish ones like Taylor Lautner (who was in Grown Ups 2) alike, and giving a shot to other blue-collar aspiring artists from New England (Sandler himself grew up in New Hampshire) like the Kinnane Brothers.

Sean Payton may be the subject of Home Team, but Sandler is the hero, a mafia racket unto himself generously sharing the spotlight and the riches with all his buddies, his wife, his brother-in-law, and anyone else who manages to blunder their way into his good graces. God bless the Sand Man. If there’s a lesson in Home Team, it’s that if Adam Sandler likes you, you never have to work a day in your life.

‘Home Team’ is currently available on Netflix. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

“Do we only do these conversations so that I will get in trouble?”

That’s Jon Stewart, at around the 4-minute mark above after a swiftly moving conversation (for a The Problem With Jon Stewart-associated podcast episode), in which he attempted to faux-argue that Taylor Swift spread disinformation about a scarf and Jake Gyllenhaal. That subject also brought Jon’s revelation that “I’ve gotten less blowback for Israel-Palestine than I did for a One Direction joke,” but the real subject here was a common one of late: Joe Rogan prompting a Spotify controversy with his Covid disinformation, which led Neil Young and Joni Mitchell to pull their music in protest.

Jon is stepping up (during a discussion with writers Chelsea Devantez and Jay Jurden) to semi-defend Rogan here (following Spotify’s decision to put a “content advisory” warning on his episodes), and that’s largely tied to how he views Joe compared to Tucker Carlson. Let’s back up a moment.

Tucker Carlson’s perpetual wallpaper face of confusion has become the stuff of nightmares for many, although he’s certainly claimed a devoted Fox News audience. One person who is most certainly not a Tucker fan: Jon. And he first gave his thoughts on the Rogan-Spotify controversy:

“Don’t leave, don’t abandon, don’t censor. Engage. I’m not saying that it’s always going to work out truthfully, but I am always of the mindset that engagement, and especially with someone like a Joe Rogan, who is not in my mind an ideologue in any way.”

From there, Jon discussed how Rogan made a false claim about myocarditis and younger people getting the Covid vaccine, and how Joe was called out on this BS by guest Josh Szeps. And in Stewart’s mind, Rogan handled this a lot better than Carlson would have done:

“If you are an ideologue, or if you are a dishonest person — Tucker Carlson never would have looked it up and would have given that look he gives, like somebody’s giving him a confusion enema. Like they’re just firing confusion up his ass. And Joe just went, ‘Oh, I didn’t know… uh, okay. I didn’t get that.”

From there, Stewart argued that Rogan seems like “a person that you can engage with,” so he believes that there’s too much “overblown rhetoric” about this Rogan controversy. Yet Stewart really doesn’t address how Rogan’s claims affect millions of listeners each day, including UFC president Dana White and Green Bay Packers QB Aaron Rodgers, and all of that dangerous misinformation can work disastrous effects. So yup, a “content advisory” from Spotify ain’t so harsh.

Mark Wahlberg is a New England Patriots fan. You might not know this if you’ve never heard his almost-comically exaggerated Boston accent, but it’s true. So, like everyone else from the New England region this week, he was sad (and/or furious) to hear about former-Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s retirement from the NFL.

“He really did something that nobody else did. I certainly appreciate everything he did. And I know everybody else in New England and in Tampa… I mean, he changed the face of New England football, Tampa, and the NFL as a whole,” Wahlberg told Variety. “I just wish him good luck in everything else that he decides to do.”

When the reporter brought up that he could see Wahlberg in the inevitable Tom Brady biopic, the Uncharted star replied, “I could play his uncle. I could play Bill Belichick! I would love to play Bill Belichick. I’m working on the press conferences as we speak. The next five interviews that I do, I’m going to be Bill Belichick.” Expect lots of grumbling.

Brady only has a handful of acting credits to his name, but he did appear in the Wahlberg-starring Ted 2 and the Wahlberg-produced Entourage, so the two have a history. He’s one hoodie away from getting the job.

(Via Variety)

Fresh off her fan-fronted Emmy campaign, Euphoria’s Sydney Sweeney is diving into a new project, this time alongside multitalented pop star Halsey and Red Rocket’s Simon Rex.

National Anthem will be the directorial debut from Tony Tost, a writer and poet. Native American activist Marcus RedThunder serves as a consultant on the film, which will follow the ensemble cast as they hunt for a valuable rare Lakota Native American Ghost Shirt, each for various reasons. The film will be shot on location in New Mexico, and produced by Bron Studios, most recently known for House Of Gucci. Also starring in the film will be Cobra Kai’s Paul Walter Hauser, Toby Huss, Gavin Maddox Bergman, and Harriet Sansom Harris.

Tost told Deadline, “I am truly honored to have the opportunity to bring National Anthem to life on film, and to work with Page Fifty-Four Pictures, Bron Studios and this incredible cast,” says Tost. “I’m especially thrilled to be bringing to the screen a vision of modern rural America that pays tribute to the myths of the West while also radically reinventing them.”

This is slated to be Halsey’s acting debut, though the singer has been attached to various projects over the years, including a TV show with Sydney Sweeney. In 2020, it was announced that the two would star alongside each other in The Players Table based on the bestselling YA novel They Wish They Were Us. No updates on that project have been announced at the moment.

Conservative news site The Daily Wire is releasing a movie, for some reason, starring none other than controversial sperm-selling weirdo Vincent Gallo. If you feel so inclined to watch it, good news! They are releasing it for free on YouTube.

The movie, a thriller titled Shut In, (not to be confused with the 2016 Naomi Watts film of the same name) will also star Rainy Qualley, daughter of Andie MacDowell. Qualley stars as a young mother who is held captive by a violent ex, played by none other than Gallo. (Perhaps Qualley did not realize The Daily Wire is the site of conservative gadfly Ben Shapiro? We will give her the benefit of the doubt.) The movie did have promise when it was initially being developed, as Jason Bateman was attached to direct, but the job eventually went to Disturbia director D.J. Caruso in 2019.

The Daily Wire picked up the film for a US-only stream, that will also include a trailer premiere for the next Daily Wire film, Terror On The Prairie. This isn’t the first movie The Daily Wire has acquired–according to the site, their live-stream of 2020’s Run Hide Fight attracted 300,000 viewers.

The movie premieres on YouTube Thursday, Feb. 10th at 9 pm.

The topic of censorship has been a heated one recently. Making the most headlines is the proposed book ban in Texas, with nearly 100 school districts calling to remove library books that deal with race, racism, sex, gender and sexuality.

NBC listed 50 titles that parents have tried to ban in Texas, and the list includes highly acclaimed works such as “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, “The Perks of Being A Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky and “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison.

But it’s not just Texas. Book bans are spreading across the country so fast, you’d think we’re living out Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.” Which, ironically, doesn’t seem to be prohibited yet (this time, at least).

One comic shop owner decided to take a stand by sending free copies of a graphic novel deemed “too graphic” for eighth grade curriculums. And because of his actions, others are following suit.

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When Ryan Higgins, owner of Sunnyvale’s Comics Conspiracy (cool shop name), heard the news that Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize winning “Maus” was pulled from the curriculum by the McMinn County Board of Education in Tennessee, he was baffled.

“You can’t teach the Holocaust without showing the most graphic imagery that humanity has ever seen,” Higgins told SFGATE. “[“Maus”] is nothing compared to the actual thing. It’s just mind-boggling that they’d remove it. It’s one of the most acclaimed graphic novels of all time, it’s just a seminal work. It’s been taught in schools and libraries and colleges for decades at this point.”

“Maus” depicts the story of Spiegelman’s parents experiencing the Holocaust and their imprisonment at Auschwitz. In the comic, Jews are represented by mice, Germans by cats, Poles by pigs, Americans by dogs and Swedish by deer. Like “Watchmen” and “The Dark Knight Returns,” “Maus” played a pivotal role in bringing mature comics to the mainstream.

So why was it banned? Over complaints of profanity and nudity. In particular, a dead nude female mouse, in a scene that reflected the suicide of Spiegelman’s mother.

In USA TODAY, Spiegelman himself called the decision a “culture war that’s gotten totally out of control.”

In anti-Orwellian fashion, Higgins offered to donate up to 100 copies of “Maus” to any interested family in the McMinn County area.

As I’ve offered before with other banned comics, I’ll donate up to 100 copies of The Complete Maus to any family in the Mcminn County area in Tennessee. Just DM me your address! pic.twitter.com/ptmdjmwYE5

— Ryan Higgins (@RyanHigginsRyan) January 26, 2022

Though Higgins has made similar offers in the past, this time around, the pledge went viral. And now it’s a full-blown movement. By Sunday, the complete edition of “Maus” had nabbed the No. 1 spot on the Amazon books best sellers list.

Nirvana Comics in Knoxville has created a fundraiser to help provide more copies to students. Its goal was to raise $20,000. So far, it has raised more than $100,000.

On the fundraiser website, Nirvana Comics hailed Spiegelman’s work as a “masterpiece,” and “one of the most important, impactful and influential graphic novels of all time.”

“We believe it is a must read for everyone,” the store stated.

For Higgins, standing up for impactful works of art is more than fighting the status quo. It’s about being a force for good.

The shop owner told the The Washington Post: ”When thought-provoking comic books and graphic novels are banned, this hits my world. Sending out free copies of ‘Maus’ is something I can do. If even one kid reads it and it changes their world, that’s a wonderful thing.”

ASAP Tyy looks like he’s having the time of his life during his UPROXX Sessions performance of the dancehall-inspired “Ting.” The Harlem-raised rapper’s single is imbued with all the jerk chicken-scented energy of the New York summertime, so it’s no wonder he was feeling so good while performing it, kicking his legs up and grinning into the camera like a kid in a candy store.

While the ASAP Mob that Tyy reps is best known for producing father-to-be ASAP Rocky and “Plain Jane” star ASAP Ferg, it’d be a mistake to overlook the less prominent members like Tyy. They’ve secretly been releasing some of the most intriguing, charismatic, and consistent music from the posse over the past few years, even if they seemingly fly just below most folks’ radars. Tyy himself is three mixtapes into his career, which helps to explain his lower profile (for comparison, Ferg has three albums, two mixtapes, and an EP to his name), but he’s been building up his discography with strong singles for the past year, dropping tracks like “100 Rounds,” “1990,” and “Who Ain’t With Me.”

As his catalog grows, so too will his audience, especially with fun summer singles like “Ting.” When he does drop his debut solo album, it’ll be well worth fans’ time to give it a spin.

Teen four-piece band The Linda Lindas launched into the public eye when their song “Racist Sexist Boy” went viral. After making their debut with the 2020 self-titled EP, The Linda Lindas are proving they’re here to stay with the recently announced album Growing Up. Now celebrating the upcoming LP, the young rockers to The Late Late Show With James Corden stage to raise a ruckus with their energetic number “Growing Up.”

This isn’t the first time The Linda Lindas played on late-night TV. After “Racist Sexist Boy” went viral, the group was invited to perform the track on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. But their Late Late Show set was still cause for celebration, as it drummed up excitement for their debut LP’s title track. Infusing the performance with rowdy energy, The Linda Lindas showcased their knack for exciting a crowd with their “Growing Up” performance.

Ahead of The Late Late Show set, the group sat down for an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to chat about their music. Explaining the themes behind “Growing Up,” the band said they were feeling disillusioned by watching their teen years go by in a pandemic, so they wrote a song about it:

“I was just sitting in our living room, and it was during the pandemic, it was just at a point when I was just particularly missing everyone. I was like, ‘Oh my God, we’re at this point in our lives where we’re supposed to be figuring out who we are and what we want to do with our life and stuff.’ But it sucked that I wasn’t able to do that with some of the people that are most important to me. I don’t know. It was like you can’t make growing up happen, but you can’t stop it from happening either. So I was just like, I wanted to sing about it, I wanted to write a song about it because that’s how I found that I wanted to express myself most during the pandemic.”

Watch The Linda Lindas deliver “Growing Up” on The Late Late Show above.

Growing Up is out 4/8 via Epitaph. Pre-order it here.