Month: April 2022

After four long years, Lorde released her third album Solar Power last summer. The project became her third consecutive top-five album after it debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200. In addition to announcing the project last summer, Lorde also unveiled a lengthy tour in support of Solar Power. It kicked off back in February and has been smooth sailing for the most part up until now. Unfortunately for Lorde and fans alike, there’s a small hiccup in the tour as she was forced to postpone a pair of shows due to a bout with laryngitis.

“These past couple days I’ve been pushing through some horrendous laryngitis, and I regret to inform you that my voice hasn’t sufficiently recovered to be able to play the show for you,” she wrote in an email to fans. As a result, last night’s show at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut and tonight’s show at The Anthem in Washinton D.C. have been moved to August 25th and August 29th, respectively.

“I’m so, so sorry. I don’t take postponing a show lightly,” Lorde continued in the email. “I’ve tried everything, and unfortunately it’s physically impossible for me to sing much of the set. Please accept my sincere apologies. All well besides that, and absolutely frothing to party with you when I am able.”

Hopefully, Lorde can stick to the regularly scheduled programming once she fully recovers. Lorde’s Solar Power Tour is set to continue through March 2023 with additional stops in North America, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia.

The Atlanta Hawks earned a playoff bid on Friday night with a 107-101 road win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. Thanks to a Trae Young second half masterclass, Atlanta locked up the 8-seed in the Eastern Conference. As a result, they’ll head down to Miami for a Sunday Game 1 tilt against the 1-seed Heat, which beat them in the season series, 3-1. Here are three questions that could end up defining what happens in this series.

How does Atlanta’s frontcourt hold up?

The Heat aren’t exactly a team that will throw wave after wave of size at an opponent. Regardless, Atlanta is heading into this series without its starting frontcourt — John Collins has not played since mid-March due to finger and foot sprains, while Clint Capela suffered a knee injury on Friday night during the team’s play-in win over the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Hawks do have the luxury of a pair of extremely capable back-up bigs: Onyeka Okongwu has turned into a very solid, albeit foul-prone, backup during his second year out of USC, while Gorgui Dieng is a veteran option with a reliable jumper. Having said that, those two have to deal with one of the league’s most unique players in Bam Adebayo, a tall task even at full strength. The ripple effect of having to rely more on guys down the bench impacts their non-centers, too — take a guy like Danilo Gallinari, a veteran who will also be targeted over and over on defense by Atlanta.

Should Capela and/or Collins come back, they should provide a gigantic boost on both ends of the floor to a Hawks team already facing an uphill battle. If they don’t, the challenge becomes even more daunting.

Does Atlanta’s offense have enough answers against Miami’s defense?

Now, I am not a professional basketball player, but as someone who watches basketball, I feel qualified enough to say that having to score on Miami seems miserable. A defensive foursome of Kyle Lowry, Jimmy Butler, PJ Tucker, and Adebayo is as ferocious as there is in the league, while anyone who takes the floor for the Heat ranges from “guy who will compete on defense” to “guy who will compete on defense and is also pretty good at it.”

It stands to reason that Atlanta’s gameplan on offense is to get Trae Young in pick-and-roll situations where he can hunt Duncan Robinson, or Tyler Herro, or whomever the weakest defender is on the floor at a given time for Miami. Again, that guy will be willing to battle Young, and Erik Spoelstra very well might just want his guys to blitz Young and try to force the ball out of his hands, with the bet being that it’s better to live with anyone else beating them. Guys like Bogdan Bogdanovic, Gallinari, Kevin Huerter, De’Andre Hunter will have to hit the shots that come from these situations, whether it’s because Young finds them or the ball gets swung around the perimeter while the Heat scramble.

Will Miami’s offense keep up its recent form?

Miami should be able to tear a not particularly good Atlanta defense apart. The Hawks are 26th in the league in defensive rating and boast the worst mark among teams in the playoffs in that metric. They’re not good at forcing turnovers, and their rebounding should suffer considerably if Capela and Collins cannot play. All of this bodes well for Miami, which should be able to win this series against a clearly inferior Hawks team. That’s especially the case if their recent hot play on offense can punish Atlanta — in the five April games leading up to the playoffs, Miami averaged 121.8 points per game while shooting nearly 52 percent from the field and 46 percent from three. If they can keep that up, this could be a sweep.

The American rightwing has a new enemy: a family-friendly conglomerate co-founded by a union-buster. The Walt Disney Company has become a target of Republican tastemakers, who are unhappy that they’ve come after Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill (after a lot of prodding by employees, that is). Their attacks have been bizarre and disturbing, unearthing old school homophobic language that hasn’t been widely used in ages. How serious is the rightwing about their baseless and bigoted allegations? So serious that one of their loudest members owns Disney stock. Meanwhile, another took his kids to Disney World just a few weeks ago.

That person is Jack Posobiec, an infamous Trump-loving conspiracy theorist. Lately he and many conservatives been calling Disney a haven for “groomers,” a homophobic term from a far more openly bigoted age whose proprietors claim homosexuals are Svengalis enlisting kids to be like them. Posobiec has even been hawking shirts with the bigoted term.

It’s a bit of a gear shift for Posobiec considering he took the family to the Magic Kingdom in late March.

On March 24, weeks after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called the company “Woke Disney,” Posobiec’s wife posted a picture of the family in front of the Cinderella Castle. Some commenters took issue with their choice of vacation spot. When one person asked “what are you doing at Pedo-World,” Posobiec’s wife replied that she did it “for the sake of the childhood memories of the kiddos,” lamenting that Disney “used to be so family oriented.” (That beggars the question of why they still went if it’s no longer family-friendly.)

Life moves pretty fast: Not long after the trip, Posobiec was getting the words “Disney Groomer” trending on Twitter. He was also briefly suspended from the service for promoting shirts that boast the word “Groomers” underneath the Disney logo. It also had a “bring ammo” logo, which seemed to suggest that people should shoot up the very place he’d recently brought his kids.

Then again, conservatives have a long tradition telling people to do what they say, not what they do.

(Via The Daily Dot)

Latto is currently on the road in support of her second album 777. It’s a project that she released earlier this month with features from Lil Wayne, Childish Gambino, 21 Savage, Kodak Black, Nardo Wick, and Lil Durk. 777 has been praised by fans and critics alike since its release which has many calling it a sharp improvement from her 2020 major-label debut Queen Of The Souf. The success of Latto’s second album can be seen through her performances on tour, and during a recent interview, she explained what pushed her to improve her live sets.

“I did Rolling Loud Miami in 2018ish…I was one of the openers,” Latto said to Audacy. “It was 3 p.m. hot as hell and I waited all the way to the end for Cardi B to perform and I stuck around in the hot sun and I was like ‘nah, I gotta see Cardi perform,’ and I just seen her like put on a show. Like, it was actual entertainment. Dancers, choreography.”

She continued, “She really had me entertained to where I wasn’t caring about the heat or standing on my feet all day. I was entertained. So I took that and ran with it like ‘you know what? I wanna put on a show too.’”

You can watch Latto’s full interview with Audacy in the video above.

777 is out now via Streamcut and RCA Records. You can stream it here.

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

Time was an actor did a role and then moved on with your life. If they were lucky (or not), someone asked them to come back for some reunion years, even decades later. Now it’s all but understood that if you were ever in something popular, you’ll be asked to come back for more (and more money). In an age when Michael Keaton is dusting off his Batcape and the current live-action Spider-Man is enlisting his two predecessors to help save the world, could some more Jack Bauer hijinks be far off?

In a new video interview with GQ (as caught by The AV Club), Kiefer Sutherland was inevitably asked about 24, the TV show that made him bigger than ever. And he seemed to be cautiously into the idea of playing the counter-terrorism agent once more.

“I do believe the story is unresolved,” Sutherland told GQ. To his credit, that’s pretty much a fact: The last time he played Bauer, in 2014’s Live Another Day, it ended with him kidnapped by Russian agents.

That said, Sutherland has been in showbiz long enough to know that you don’t make promises. “I have learned that you’re just better off not to be definitive about your answer of whether you will do something or not do something,” he said. “I love playing that character,” he added. “If something were to be written that made sense to me and that I thought was going to contribute to the franchise then I would be behind it, even if my participation in that were to be limited.”

The last time the 24 franchise burped out a revival, namely 2017’s 24: Legacy, Sutherland wasn’t there. Instead the focus was on a war hero played by Corey Hawkins. It was cancelled after one season. (Maybe don’t put the word “Legacy” in the title of your revival. The Bourne Legacy, which swapped out Matt Damon for Jeremy Renner, underperformed, too.)

So there you have it: Maybe you’ll see Jack Bauer again. Maybe you won’t. Till then, you can watch Sutherland’s full GQ chat below.

Jon Batiste is having the biggest year of his lengthy career in 2022. He kicked things off by winning five Grammy awards including Album Of The Year earlier this month. He received the honor thanks to the critical acclaim behind his sixth album We Are. Now, Batiste is gearing to bring that same success to the big screen as it was recently announced that he would be making his acting debut in the remake of The Color Purple. According to Deadline, Batiste will play Grady, a sweet-talking and charming piano man who is also the husband of Shug Avery (played by Taraji P. Henson).

The Color Purple remake has been in the works since 2018. Steven Spielberg (who directed the 1985 film), Quincy Jones (who produced that same take), and Oprah Winfrey (who was nominated for an Oscar as Sofia) are listed as the producers for the remake. Blitz Bazawule, who directed Beyoncé’s visual album Black Is King, signed on as a director and Marcus Gardley from The Chi is writing the show’s script.

Batiste joins Ciara, Fantasia Barrino, and Danielle Brooks in the upcoming film’s cast with the latter two reprising their roles of Celie and Sofia. Other names in the case for The Color Purple remake include Colman Domingo who will play Celie’s abusive husband, Mister, Halle Bailey who will play the young version of Celie’s sister, Nettie, and HER who will play Squeak.

Turner entered the 2022 NBA playoffs with an open spot on its broadcasting roster due to Marv Albert’s retirement at the end of last season. According to a report by Sports Media Watch, that spot is going to be filled by one of the biggest names in all of broadcasting.

The report indicates that Gus Johnson, who in recent years has most prominently been the lead announcer for Fox’s broadcasts of college football games and is among their roster of broadcasters for NFL and college basketball games, will round out the network’s rotation of play-by-play voices alongside Brian Anderson, Spero Dedes, Ian Eagle, and Kevin Harlan.

Fox Sports broadcaster Gus Johnson will call NBA playoff games for TNT this year, working alongside Greg Anthony on Raptors-Sixers Game 2 Monday night and Bulls-Bucks Game 2 on Wednesday. Johnson called some NBA Summer League games last season and has served as an occasional voice of the Milwaukee Bucks and previously the New York Knicks.

While Johnson has called a number of sports in his lengthy career, some of his most well-known moments have come during his time calling basketball games, particularly the NCAA Tournament. We will now end this post by dropping in a video of some of his best calls during Tournament (and other college basketball) games, because they’re extremely fun.

Over 20 years ago, Tom Hanks pulled off one of the boldest tricks an actor can do: He did a movie where he spent most of it alone. (He also lost 50 pounds, which is impressive, too.) The movie was Cast Away, in which he played a man stranded on a remote island after a plane crash. His character spends four years by himself before being rescued. But Hanks wasn’t entirely alone: His character makes “friends” with a volleyball he names “Wilson” (because it’s a Wilson-brand volleyball, of course). And now, some 22 years later, the two have finally reunited.

As per Entertainment Weekly, Hanks attended the opening game for the Cleveland Guardians. The Oscar-winning actor and future Elvis co-star threw out the first pitch, but he wasn’t alone on the mound: He brought Wilson along with him.

Alas, Wilson wasn’t entirely cooperative. The ball kept blowing away from the mound, forcing Hanks to repeatedly delay his throw so he could rescue him.

This isn’t the first time Hanks reunited with his sporting goods pal. In 2015, the two appeared together at a Rangers game at Madison Square Garden.

In Cast Away, which reunited Hanks with his Forrest Gump director Robert Zemeckis (the two are back at it with the forthcoming Pinocchio), the actor’s increasingly desperate character keeps his sanity by talking to Wilson, which features a blood stain faintly resembling a human face. The film’s emotional peak [SPOILER] comes when Wilson is lost at sea, prompting Hanks to scream his name in agony.

Cast Away currently streams on Amazon Prime.

(Via EW)

Liz Sheridan, best known for playing Jerry’s mom Helen on Seinfeld, has passed away in her home in New York City. She was 93.

Though she didn’t become a household fixture until middle age, Sheridan led a colorful life. Born in New York City in 1929 to a concert pianist father and a singer mother, she naturally gravitated towards show business. She started out as a dancer and spent much of her early career working in the Caribbean. In the early ‘50s, she met and for a time dated an up-and-coming actor named James Dean. They split before his career took off. Sheridan wrote about their relationship in her memoir, Dizzy & Jimmy: My Life With James Dean, a Love Story.

Sheridan worked on Broadway. Her credits include working with Meryl Streep and Christopher Lloyd in the 1977 production of the Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill musical Happy End. That year she also made her first screen appearance, in an episode of Kojak. She became a TV and movie fixture, appearing on shows like St. Elsewhere, The A-Team, Moonlighting, Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, Remington Steele, and many more. She had a recurring role on ALF as the family’s nosy neighbor Raquel.

But it was Seinfeld that turned her into a big name. Alongside Barney Martin, as Helen’s husband Morty, she appeared in 24 episodes, playing Jerry’s parents, always meddling in their son’s affairs, whether while visiting or at home in their Florida retirement community.

The news of Sheridan’s passing comes less than two weeks after the death of another Seinfeld parent: Estelle Harris, who played George’s easily agitated mother Estelle Costanza.

Jerry Seinfeld made sure to honor his TV mom after her passing.

“Liz was always the sweetest, nicest TV mom a son could wish for,” Seinfeld wrote. “Every time she came on our show it was the coziest feeling for me. So lucky to have known her.”

Other Seinfeld vets did the same.

As did many others, some of whom honored her other work, such as ALF.

Some couldn’t believe another Seinfeld parent left this mortal coil so soon after Estelle Harris.

And some noted that all four of Jerry and George’s parents have now passed. (Barney Martin died in 2005 and Jerry Stiller passed in 2020. Lawrence Tierney, who played Elaine’s terrifying father, died in 2002.)

You can watch Sheridan’s legendary Seinfeld work on Netflix. In the meantime, enjoy the time Helen and Morty Seinfeld coaxed their son into finally seeing Schindler’s List, with disastrous results.

(Via The New York Times)

Blxst’s rise to stardom started back in 2020 with the release of his debut project No Love Lost. After releasing its deluxe reissue a few months later, the Los Angeles singer was well on his way to being one of music’s most popular new acts. Songs like “Chosen” with Ty Dolla Sign and Tyga helped to elevate his status as he eventually earned a spot on XXL 2021 Freshman Class list. That same year, he teamed up with fellow West Coaster and longtime collaborator Bino Rideaux for their second joint project Sixtape 2, and for 2022, Blxst is ready to step out on his own again.

Next week, Blxst will release his official debut album Before You Go. So far the project has been led by two singles, “About You” and “Sometimes.” The former was released with a music video starring Power Book II: Ghost star Paige Hurd. Before You Go presents 13 tracks and guest appearances from Arin Ray, Grandmaster Vic, Rick Ross, and Zacari. Blxst previously worked with Ross on “Made It Out Alive” from Ross’ 2021 album Richer Than I Ever Been.

You can view the full tracklist for Before You Go below.

1. “Sky Lounge Music”
2. “Never Was Wrong”
3. “About You”
4. “Fake Love In LA” Feat. Arin Ray
5. “Pick Your Poison” Feat. Grandmaster Vic
6. “Couldn’t Wait For It” Feat. Rick Ross
7. “Still OMW”
8. “Keep Coming Back”
9. “Sometimes” Feat. Zacari
10. “Every Good Girl”
11. “Be Forreal”
12. “Talk To Me Nicely”
13. “Let It Be Known”

Before You Go is out 4/22 via Red Bull Records and Evgle.

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