Month: February 2022

Who would win in a fight: Rocky or Rambo?

We’ve all had this argument on the playground after we were finished debating Batman vs. Superman, Alien vs. Predator, Ecks vs. Sever. But no one has thought about it more than Sylvester Stallone, who, after five Rambo movies of varying quality and eight Rocky films of better quality, has finally shared his results in a recent Instagram post.

“If it’s two men meeting in the street and going at each other with no rules I believe the outcome would be… If the fighters wore to remain upright Rocky would prevail. His body punches and Right Hooks Would eventually beat Rambo”

There’s your answers, folks. It’s… oh wait, there’s more.

“If the fight goes to the ground , Rambo will prevail In a bloody brutal fight to the end”

OK, so the victor is… never mind, he’s still not finished.

Rethinking this scenario, I believe that upon initial contact, since they will not be in the rain but fighting outside, basically a street fight, the Rocky will land the first five or six blows. If that does not incapacitate Rambo, which I don’t think he will unless he’s caught clean, Rambo’s skill set will definitely be in full display, , Which means incredibly vicious assaults on the eyes, the throat, every vulnerable part of the body eventually leading to being pulled to the ground and most likely mauled… Then again Rocky is incredibly resilient and pretty good on the ground too !!! That’s my opinion in this fictional world. Final result is neither man will ever be the same.

The winner: Sylvester Stallone, for being the only man strong enough to take on Sylvester Stallone.

Starting March 1, Netflix could find itself in a standoff with the Russian government. The issue: the streaming service has refused to carry 20 free-to-air Russian propaganda channels in light of the Ukraine invasion. As one of the larger streaming companies, Netflix is subject to regulation out of Moscow, which would force the company to comply with a new law that takes effect at the beginning of March and requires the airing of the Russian channels. However, Netflix has announced its intentions not to comply.

“Given the current situation, we have no plans to add these channels to our service,” a Netflix spokesperson told Variety, which then explained the exact quandary the streaming service now finds itself in:

In December 2021, Netflix was added by the Russian regulator, Roskomnadzor, to its register for audiovisual services because the SVOD reached over 100,000 subscribers. Consequently, Netflix is theoretically required as part of a law — known locally as the Vitrina TV law — to distribute 20 “must-carry” free-to-air Russian news, sports and entertainment TV channels.

The channels include Channel One, NTV and Spa, a channel operated by the Russian Orthodox Church. Channel One is understood to be aligned with the Kremlin and likely to broadcast Putin propaganda, Variety understands.

According to Variety, Netflix is the only streaming service large enough to be affected by the new law. At the time of this writing, Netflix has not revealed what it will do should it face pushback from Moscow to comply and air the propaganda channels. Historically, Putin and his government do not handle resistance lightly, as evidenced by, well, everything happening right now.

(Via Variety)

While it mostly traditional pop or hip-hop songs that hang out near the top of the charts, things have been different lately as standout Encanto hit “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” has enjoyed a sustained run atop the Billboard Hot 100. It spent a fourth frame at No. 1 last week, and now it once again occupies that spot for a fifth time on the new chart dated March 5.

Billboard notes the song’s success this week is due to a significant uptick in radio airplay impressions (7.9 million of them, a 23-percent increase from the previous week) despite declines in streams and downloads.

A fifth week on top extends the song’s record for most weeks at No. 1 for a song from a Disney movie. In fact, it now has more weeks at No. 1 than the next two-biggest Disney songs combined: Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart, Sting’s “All For Love” from The Three Musketeers spent three weeks at No. 1 while “A Whole New World” from Aladdin logged a week on top.

Meanwhile, Gayle is having a moment, as her viral hit “ABCDEFU” has hit a new high on the Hot 100, rising from No. 4 last week to No. 3 today.

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

Machine Gun Kelly has been making headlines for more than his music lately. The rapper turned pop-punk revivalist has drawn attention for both his quirky relationship with actress Megan Fox and more recently, his efforts at the NBA’s All-Star Weekend, where he represented for his hometown in the celebrity game, showing off his refined jumper despite being shown up by Jack Harlow. Over the weekend, he made another move practically guaranteed to get fans talking, debuting a new hair color on Instagram, along with matching nails and wardrobe.

On the music front, though, he’s been just as busy, contributing his efforts to new songs from both Willow Smith, who followed in her mom’s footsteps with a turn into punk rock on “Emo Girl,” and popping up on pop-punk pioneer Avril Lavigne’s new album Love Sux on the song “Bois Lie.” While those efforts have been mostly well-received, his interpretation of Frank Ocean’s Nostalgia, Ultra cut “Swim Good” didn’t go over quite as well, ruffling feathers on Twitter and drawing ridicule. Fortunately, he had another bid for pop culture awareness up his sleeve: the Semisonic-interpolating “Thought It Was” with Iann Dior and Travis Barker. Could the new hair be a sign that his recently renamed album, Mainstream Sellout, is coming soon?

As she gears up for the release of her sophomore album, Painless, out this Friday March 4th, Nilüfer Yanya has graced us with one final single, in “The Dealer.” Debuted as BBC1’s “Hottest Record in the World” today, it’s another rhythmic groove from the Londoner and one last piece of the puzzle to what’s sure to be a killer record.

All of Yanya’s latest music has been consistently meaningful and empowering, but she doesn’t hit you over the head with a preachy message. Everything is just so damn fun to listen to. “When I was writing this song I was thinking about the transient nature of life and the cyclical nature of the seasons,” she said in a statement. “I find it interesting how we attach certain memories and feelings to different seasons and tend to revisit them time and time again, yet our lives move in a more linear motion and even when we feel like we are going back we never really get to go back anywhere. Musically speaking it’s a bit more playful and relaxed.”

Listen to “The Dealer” above and check out her tour dates which start next week.

Painless is out on 3/4 via ATO Records. Pre-order it here.

With the release of the Uncharted film, we’re all once again skydiving out of cargo planes into the wonderfully weird world of video game adaptations. Are they good? Are they bad? Are they faithful recreations or uneven homages? The answer to all of these questions is “yes,” because video game movies and shows are a little more complicated than the Konami code.

We all know those movies or shows that are so bad they’re good, but it seems like video game adaptations overwhelmingly fall into this category. Everything from the original Super Mario Bros. movie to the Resident Evil film franchise hasn’t always lived up to fan expectations or earned critical praise but many have achieved cult movie status with fans who see past the bumps to find a bit of charm. But cult status isn’t usually the ambition when you think of the big budget nature of these things. How to fix them? Who knows. Maybe some of these long-running series would benefit from different adaptations, like the animated TV show Arcane and how it’s been a hit for League of Legends. Our hosts have some ideas as well and get into it while also talking about their personal histories with these adaptations and which incredibad ones they still love, all while keeping a hopeful eye on the future of video game movies and shows.

So sit back, throw on UPROXX Recon, and enjoy before binge watching a few of your favorite video game movies!

Sarah Snook, unlike seemingly everyone else, was not watching the Euphoria finale on Sunday. She was too busy winning Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series at the SAG Awards with the rest of her Succession co-stars (Tiny Wu-Tang should have accepted on their behalf) and being featured in a joke on Family Guy.

In last night’s episode, “The Lois Quagmire,” Lois warns Peter that if he orders pizza instead of eating the healthy dinner she made him and the kids, “there will be consequences, mom’s out of town consequences, which according to the movies are the worst kind.” Peter is not pleased, so to get back at Lois, he tweets “mean stuff at celebrities who look vaguely like you.” His first stop: Snook’s Twitter. “Hey idiot, your father is stringing you along. You’re never getting the company,” Peter writes, followed a few seconds later by Kendall Roy liking the tweet. Good tweet.

“Here are three things that happened today. I think the middle pic says it all. That’s my actual face. (Gosh I wish I could’ve been there! So proud and bravo to all!),” the Shiv actress wrote on Instagram, along with, in order, her reaction to the Succession win, a selfie where she has a cookie face (?) over her face, and the Family Guy joke.

Plenty of people making their way through the music industry have some family members who have already fared well in it. Among those is 15-year-old Grace Franklin, whose grandmother is the iconic Aretha Franklin. She auditioned for the current season of American Idol, but, despite her lineage, she did not make it past the audition stage.

In a pre-taped segment, Franklin said, “I feel like people expect me to sing exactly like her, but I am my own artist and I have my own voice.” She then got to showing off that voice with a rendition of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly” (inspired by the Lauryn Hill cover). While Lionel Richie was happily reminiscing about Aretha before Franklin sang, he commented on her perceived nervousness after the song. Meanwhile, Luke Bryan thought the performance was “sleepy and subdued” and Katy Perry called it “soft.”

Perry encouraged Franklin to take another crack at it, so she tried again with her grandmother’s “Ain’t No Way,” which she sang with more force than she used for “Killing Me Softly.” Perry was more receptive of that performance and so was Bryan, although he wasn’t completely swayed. Both Richie and Bryan encouraged Franklin to develop her voice more.

When it came time for the vote, Perry gave Franklin the go-ahead, while Richie and Bryan both passed, even after Perry’s fervent campaigning and playfully storming off set in disagreement.

Check out the audition above.

After a record-breaking number of delays, Morbius starring Jared Leto as the title character/classic Spider-Man villain will finally make its way into theaters on April 1. To herald its arrival, Sony has released a final trailer for the film, which has led to one nagging question following the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home: How the heck is Michael Keaton in this thing?

Granted, Michael Keaton’s Vulture popped up in the very first Mobius trailer, but his presence is the all more confusing considering No Way Home did not smash together the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Sony’s Spider-Man Universe as expected. An end credits scene featuring Tom Hardy’s Venom made it clear that the MCU and Tom Holland’s Spidey will remain in separate film universes. This creative decision will only make things more awkward for Sony as it continues to make movies about Spider-Man villains in a film universe where he doesn’t even exist.

However, again, this raises the question of how Keaton’s Vulture is in Morbius considering he’s a part of the MCU. An easy explanation would be that Morbius is now set in the MCU, but there’s a problem there: The previous trailer included numerous references to Venom who is not a part of the MCU. If those references are removed from the final film, that could solve the puzzle and might be what’s happening. Back in November, Keaton revealed that he was filming some “Vulture stuff,” which could be new scenes to massage Morbius into the MCU.

The other option is that somehow Keaton’s Vulture in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. If so, his presence in Morbius would highlight that the multiversal clean-up at the end of No Way Home wasn’t so tidy after all. A fact that we know is true thanks to the latest trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness that heavily suggests Strange and Spidey did some serious damage to reality.

Morbius opens in theaters on April 1.

Elden Ring is fun. Every time there is positive momentum the game creates an incredible feeling. When a boss is felled there’s an adrenaline rush that few games can achieve. Exploration is rewarding in a way that few open-world games are able to accomplish. Despite this world being so large, it is also so incredibly dense. The game expects the player to spend a lot of time in this world — which is made obvious by the fact that the first major boss kicks everyone’s face in since they’re under leveled. At a road block? Go explore more. There’s always something to do. There are generous respawn points that can be fast traveled to spread throughout the world. This is the most approachable game From Software has ever made and is likely going to bring many newcomers into their Souls line of games. It’s just unfortunate that the rest of us are bound to bounce off of it.

Elden Ring has quickly earned massive accreditation across the video game industry for being an immediate game of the year contender and is already being heralded as one of the best games ever made. To be clear, Elden Ring has earned every single bit of acclaim it has received. The developers at From Software have created the game they wanted to make and done so masterfully. Combat feels the way it should, bosses constantly create that “just one more” feeling, and the world is gorgeous to look at. Exploration is always rewarded with something whether it’s a new area to explore, treasure to find, or a new way to die.

Death is going to be common in Elden Ring. Get used to it, but grind it out long enough and most challenges can be overcome. For some players, this makes for a perfect video game, but for others this probably all sounds like a headache. A game that demands dozens of hours of your time so you can master a single boss, get past a challenging area, or simply move on to something new is not exactly the easiest thing to commit to for a casual player. The truth about Elden Ring is that it’s not approachable at all to anyone that dislikes the combat and style of previous From Software games like Dark Souls, Sekiro, or Bloodborne.

This isn’t to say that From Software should have made a completely different game to cater to more people. They came in with the goal of making this exact game and should be celebrated for it, but when a game gets as big as Elden Ring and draws the rave reviews it has, it’s going to bring in people out of curiosity. Plenty who haven’t played any games in the franchise before will want to see if this is the one for them, and a fair warning that you will need to be willing to invest a lot in it to get much of anything out of the experience.

Elden Ring is challenging, and not just with regular bosses but with normal enemies. Dying happens a lot and the best advice anyone can give is to never get attached to the runes used to level up. They’re dropped upon death and if you don’t make it to them before dying again then they’re gone forever. So be wary of that. It would be nice if there was a difficulty setting that allowed players the ability to keep their runes upon death, but that’s not an option as there are no difficult settings of any kind in Elden Ring.

From Software games have never been shy about how challenging they can be. The first Dark Souls became a bit of a meme with how often other challenging games were getting compared to it, but it’s a shame that with so many other approachability options added to the game that this one continues to be ignored. The game is what it is and the only way to make anything easier is to over level, but even that can be hard to do with how challenging the game feels at the start. People who do not like overly challenging games are going to find that Elden Ring is just as hard as previous From Software games and it is not shy about it.

Since Elden Ring is so difficult, that means it’s going to require the player to really invigorate themselves and learn the mechanics. This can feel rewarding because the player gets to watch themselves become better at it, seeing that sense of progression on the screen. The problem is that progression can take many hours, especially for people who have not played a Souls game before. The first major boss is one that most players will be able to reach, but everyone has been talking about how it immediately kicked their teeth in, mostly due to being under leveled.

What the developers were going for here is obvious; they want the player to go back into the world and explore it. Discover every nook and cranny, go explore a hidden dungeon, geat some field bosses, earn a few skills, and really dive into the world and see what it has to offer. The problem with all of this is that some folks just do not have the time to do that. Players sticking to the main path because they want to see what Elden Ring has to offer are going to be sorely disappointed because that option isn’t really there. Thankfully the exploration is fun, but forced exploration for the sake of it isn’t.

Adding to that frustration for new players is that, with all of the other quality of life choices, they chose to not have a quest log. Find an NPC that makes a request of you? Write it down somewhere, because Elden Ring is going to make no indication that a quest has been offered and that the player can complete it. For some this is going to be fun because there is a Dungeons & Dragons like aspect to writing down quests and keeping tabs on what you’re doing. It’s a minimalist game design choice that makes sense in a world like Elden Ring.

Of course, for anyone that isn’t into that kind of thing they’re just going to move on to the next interesting thing they see and forget about it after a few playthroughs. This is Elden Ring once again asking the player to devote a significant amount of their personal time to diving into its world. For the players that fall in love with it? That is going to be right up their alley. For those that don’t, they’re going to find it to be just another annoyance getting in the way of playing the video game.

Elden Ring is a great game. It’s going to deservedly win multiple Game of the Year awards and get talked about for the next decade if not longer. That is why it is so disappointing that a significant portion of people will likely never be able to experience the full game because of its design choices. This might be the most approachable game From Software has ever made, but that does not mean it’s for everyone. For a game that’s as big as this one that’s fairly disappointing to say.