Month: February 2022

There’s been a recent uptick in murders and shootings involving drill rappers in New York City, and new mayor Eric Adams wants to do something about it. He sees a direct correlation between the content of drill rap and the murders and shootings that have occurred because of it. “I had no idea what drill rapping was, but I called my son and he sent me some videos and it is alarming,” Adams said during a speech on Friday. He then suggested a plan to ban drill rap videos from social media as a hopeful solution.

“We are going to pull together the social media companies and sit down with them and state that ‘you have a civic and corporate responsibility,” Adams said. “We pulled Trump off Twitter because of what he was spewing,” he added. “Yet, we are allowing music, displaying of guns, violence. We are allowing it to stay on these sites, because look at the victims. We are bringing them in, we are going to show exactly what is being displayed and we are alarmed by it. We are alarmed by the use of social media to really over proliferate this violence in communities.”

Adams’ comments come after Fivio Foreign shut down the idea that drill rap is the cause of violence in New York City. “This the drill community, and I know like, the police and everybody be looking at n****s like n****s is starting trouble, but niggas ain’t really starting trouble,” he told TMZ . “They tryna feed they kids.”

There are few more star-studded movies than Barbie, the forthcoming film based on the longtime Mattel doll line. It stars no less than Margot Robbie, with no less than Ryan Gosling as her steady Ken. The script is being written by no less than Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, with Gerwig set to direct, making it her follow-up her money-gobbling take on Little Women. Now it appears it’s found yet another big name to add to the pile.

As first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Simu Liu — the relatively obscure actor who shot to name status with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings — is in negotiations to play some as-yet-unrevealed character. He’ll be joining no less than America Ferrera, whose role is also unknown. Indeed, few details have been made public but given the pedigree, let’s assume it will be a smart take on a character who’s long been criticized for perpetuating impossible and regressive standards for female beauty, perhaps most memorably by The Simpsons.

For Liu, it’s another big get for the rising star, who parlayed his addition to the MCU by hosting SNL, where he and cast member Bowen Yang hilariously lampooned the idea of “Asian firsts.” He also recently confessed that he may have embellished his martial arts skills to get the job that made him big.

(Via THR)

A few weeks after Rihanna and ASAP Rocky revealed that they were expecting their first child, Rihanna is opening up about her pregnancy. The singer was seen on the red carpet for the first time since the announcement during the Fenty Beauty Universe event on Friday night. In a conversation with People, Rihanna spoke about the “challenge” of not letting her personal fashion style go away because of her pregnancy. “I like it. I’m enjoying it,” she said.

“I’m enjoying not having to worry about covering up my tummy,” she added. “If I feel a little chubby, it’s like, whatever! It’s a baby!” Rihanna also detailed how fashion and makeup have helped to keep her confidence high through her pregnancy. “Right now, being pregnant, some days you just feel like, ‘Ugh, I just want to lay here on this couch all day.’ But when you put on a little face and a little lipstick, you transform,” she said. “You put some clothes on, and it’s like, when you look good, you feel good. I’ve heard that for a very long time, but it’s true. It really can get you up off that couch and make you feel like a bad b*tch.”

Rihanna’s comments come after she shared a new picture of her baby bump to kick off Black History Month. Her father also chimed in about her pregnancy, saying he’s “ecstatic” about the news and hopes that she has a girl.

Oscar nominations always make people mad, though this year people seem angrier than usual. The biggest controversy, at least according to Jimmy Kimmel and Kevin Smith, is over Spider-Man: No Way Home, the biggest moneymaker since the pandemic began and which was denied a Best Picture nomination. (Fans will have to make do with its lone nom for Best Visual Effects.) But one actor has chosen another snub to make him peeved.

As caught by /Film, Josh Brolin dropped an Instagram video last week in which he discussed how Dune — in which he plays super serious House Atreides weapons master Gurney Halleck — received a stunning 10 nominations, the second most, one behind The Power of the Dog. It even got one for Best Picture. But the actor’s mood was more somber, funereal, miffed. That’s because it should have been 11.

Brolin began by congratulating all his Oscar-nominated Dune colleagues, then he segued into mourning the one person who didn’t get one but, in his estimation, should have. And the unbelievable, almost numbing, flummoxing I feel for Denis Villeneuve not being nominated for Best Director,” Brolin said. “It’s just one of those things where you go, ‘Huh? What?!’”

Villeneuve did accomplish something no one, not even David Lynch, could do: He turned one of sci-fi’s most acclaimed yet dense tomes into a popular blockbuster, even with one of the most snickerable names in recent cinematic memory. It’s a huge feat, and he still has the second half of the first novel to film, to say nothing of the numerous, increasingly bonkers sequels. Maybe the Academy will finally recognize him when he gets to the one with the giant, horny sandworm-human.

(Via /Film)

On February 16, the first part of Kanye West’s documentary, Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, will be available to watch on Netflix. On Friday night, the director duo held a screening of the film for an audience in Los Angeles, with Kanye himself in attendance. This comes after he requested final edit approval over the documentary earlier this month. He also demanded that Drake narrate the film, but both requests were turned down.

At the screening, Kanye took a moment to speak about Black Future Month, a term he coined to replace Black History Month. “When you have people next to you that believe in you, and a community, and that the community sticks together, that’s the way that we can protect each other,” Kanye told the crowd. “Out here in Hollywood a lot of times, I got my man DaBaby right here, people try to cancel us and we all run away from each other.” He continued, “We not talking to each other, not communicating, and that’s why on Black Future Month we stood up and said, ‘We got stand next to each other and we ain’t gonna let each other go when someone brings up one mistake that someone did.’”

Later on in his speech, Kanye also spoke about his “mistakes” and why he’s open with them.

“When y’all see me doing certain things that y’all wouldn’t expect us to do, and y’all want me to step back and be a house***a, that’s not my position. My position is to make what y’all might think are mistakes in public, so I can show you that that ain’t no red line, that ain’t no real wall. That’s just a smokescreen, and it’s for us to take this. We on labels we don’t own, play for basketball teams we don’t own. The time is now. I got offered $100 million by Larry Jackson to put Donda on Apple, but I ain’t never got a meeting with Tim Cook. So it ain’t about the money, it’s about our power and out respect collectively. So I be saying stuff that people try to remind me in Black History Month that people got killed for. But this is Black Future Month.

You can watch Kanye’s speech in the video above.

It appears that the “Let’s Go Brandon” craze may have peaked. Last fall, conservatives started using the phrase — long story, see below — as a euphemism for “F*ck Joe Biden.” It began at NASCAR, obviously. Lawmakers like Lauren Boebert, even Governor Ron DeSantis seized upon it. One classy guy said it to the president himself during a Santa-themed broadcast. But perhaps that dude represented the trend’s last gasp.

As per The Daily Beast, an Ethereum cryptocurrency called “Let’s Go Brandon” has fallen on hard times. It was all the rage late last year, with shout-outs from TrumpWorld cronies, even getting advertised on the hood of the car driven by Brandon Brown, the NASCAR driver whose name inspired the phrase.

The salad days, alas, are over. Over the last 30 days, the currency has fallen some 99.5 percent, with the combined value of all 330 trillion coins now worth just a few thousand dollars. In other words, “Let’s Go Brandon” is essentially worthless, at least as a form of alternative currency.

The slogan was born when Brown was giving a post-victory interview on NBC, all while the crowd behind him chanted “F*ck Joe Biden.” Reporter Kelli Stavast mistakenly thought they were chanting “Lets Go Brandon.” And thus a far right saying was born, cursing anyone with the very popular name to a dumb association.

But all things must pass, and if the spiraling nature of the crypto is any indication, conservatives angry with the guy who beat Donald Trump by over seven million votes may simply have to start using the f-word again.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Shortly after the release of her fourth album, 30, Adele announced a Las Vegas residency that was set to kick off 2022. Called Weekends With Adele, it was supposed to take over the Caesars Palace Colosseum in Sin City and hold shows every Friday and Saturday (except for one weekend) starting on January 21 until April 16. Alas, Adele was forced to postpone it just before its launch due to COVID-related delays. She shared the announcement with a tearful apology video, and nearly a month later, she’s unveiled additional details behind the problems with the residency.

During an appearance on The Graham Norton Show on Friday, Adele said “lots of delays” and limited “manpower” led to her decision to postpone the residency as she did not want to deliver subpar performances. “I tried my hardest and really thought I would be able to pull something together in time,” Adele said. “I regret that I kept going until that late in the day. It just would have been a really half-assed show, and I can’t do that.” She added, “People will see straight through me, up on stage being like, ‘She doesn’t want to be doing this.’ And, I’ve never done anything like that in my life.”

Norton then asked Adele why she didn’t simply lower her expectations. “I’m not going to try to do a stadium show in a theatre — but it’s Vegas,” she said. “It can’t just be me on my f*cking guitar.” She also assured fans that the residency is still “100% happening.” “I’m not going to announce a new set of dates until I know that everything will definitely be ready,” she added while confirming that the Vegas shows are still scheduled for “this year.”

Ted Cruz is by far the most dunkable lawmaker on Capitol Hill, and not without good reason: The Texas senator always steps in it, even when it’s the star of his favorite movie trashing him. But ragging on Cruz means admitting when he’s innocent. So it is that those viral tweets of him making bizarre claims about Austin Power were, as it were, fake news.

It began with an Austin Powers commercial set to air during the Super Bowl on Sunday — one of a number of high-profile ads dusting off iconic ‘90s movie characters. Shortly thereafter, writer Keaton Patti shared screenshots allegedly showing Cruz repeatedly tweeting bonkers Austin Powers claims.

In one, Cruz “wrote” that “Joe Biden thinks he’s Austin Powers, but he’s actually Dr. Evil,” referring to the hero and villain of the franchise, both played by Mike Myers. He “did it again” for Obama, then reversed the formula for Trump, who was purported to be the swinging secret agent, not the global terrorist modeled on Donald Pleasence’s version of Bond baddie Ernst Blofeld. The final one finds Cruz “discovering” that Myers plays both characters, back in 2015.

Alas, these tweets were too pure for the real world.

Both PolitTweets and CNN’s master fact checker Daniel Dale — hot off proving that a Trumpist lawmaker who thought he was quoting Voltaire but was actually quoting a neo-Nazi busted for child pornography — soon debunked the tweets’ veracity. How? By simply searching Cruz’s Twitter feed for “Austin Powers,” which produces no results. Furthermore, Dale noted that Patti has a history of posting “fake political images as alleged comedy.”

Cruz eventually caught wind of this kerfuffle and made a kind of victory post.

So kudos to Cruz for not actually tweeting weird things about Austin Powers. But fret not: He’s bound to post something mockable again any day now.

(Via The Daily Dot)

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s film career still hasn’t gotten back on track after his stint as governor of California. Perhaps Triplets, the forthcoming belated sequel to Twins, will be the one to atone for multiple underperforming Terminator romps. In the meantime, he’s got that jokey Zeus Super Bowl commercial. And speaking of Twins, he recently went on late night TV to tell a pretty good story about co-star Danny DeVito pranking him by getting him high.

The former Governator went on Jimmy Kimmel Thursday night to talk anecdotes and discuss living with a bunch of animals in his home, including a mini-horse and a mini-donkey. (Kimmel’s team also provided a supercut of his guest repeatedly beating up animals in movies, including an aggressive reindeer in Jingle All the Way.)

There was also a bit about DeVito, a famous on-set prankster. Schwarzenegger told a story about their second film together, 1994’s Junior, the one where the erstwhile Conan the Barbarian gets pregnant. The two were lunching together during a day of shooting, and DeVito — wanting to pay it back due to Schwarzenegger’s habit of gifting him with fine cigars — offered him some good pasta. When they returned to set, Schwarzenegger realized he couldn’t remember his lines. That’s because DeVito had slipped a little something into his food.

You can see Schwarzenegger discuss trying to act while unwittingly high — as well as other fun tales — in the video above.

(Via The AV Club)

On Friday night, Justin Bieber held a performance in West Hollywood at the Pacific Design Center. Afterward, he threw a after party nearby at The Nice Guy, and according to TMZ, the event featured a stacked guest list that included Drake, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Kendall Jenner, and Khloe Kardashian. Things were initially smooth sailing, but at around 3 am local time, a fight broke out outside the after venue. Before the chaos began, Kodak Black was standing on the street smiling and talking alongside Gunna and Lil Baby. When things got out of hand, he reportedly got involved, taking a swing at someone.

The fight was caught on camera and video was provided by TMZ. Shortly after Kodak throws a punch, gunshots can be heard, which causes everyone in the area to flee the scene. Law enforcement told TMZ that four people were injured after ten rounds of gunshots were fired. Officers add that the wounded individuals are all in stable condition and that the suspect(s) remain at large.

The fight and the shooting that followed come after Kodak Black had his trespassing charges from a Florida arrest dropped. He was detained on New Year’s Eve in his hometown of Pompano Beach for failing to comply with a cease and desist letter.

You can view a video of the incident on TMZ here.

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