Syd recently released her sophomore album Broken Hearts Club, whose title off the bat hints at the headspace she was in while working on the record. The artist told Uproxx that the main difference between this LP and her debut was the increased sense of vulnerability, which a listener can notice immediately in the songs. She explained more about that in a new interview with Rolling Stone, discussing how she approached songwriting after going through a breakup.
“There’s one song in particular on the album that I wrote while I was really still in it,” she said. “I wrote it, like, sobbing, probably. But everything else… I actually took a few months off to heal from the heartbreak before I started writing anything, because the first few songs that I wrote sounded really bitter because that anger was still in there so I had to lift some weights. Get that out and revisit it. Once I revisited it, I honestly started off trying not to write songs about it. And so I wrote a lot of random stuff. A lot of practice songs. And I let what come out come out. I think that’s the best way to do it — keep it organic.”
(SPOILERS for The Boys Season 3 will be found below.)
Amazon’s The Boys has launched debut episodes for Season 3, which is perfectly depraved and stunningly deep at the same time. Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy is great satirical fun, but at the moment, it’s time to talk about The Deep and his tan lines.
The Deep’s full spectrum of strange appears later this season, and it’s enough to say there that Chace Crawford wasn’t subtle about wondering whether he’ll work again after what his character does this season. And he also revealed that Aquaman fans don’t like him that much, which makes a lot of sense, especially in light of Zack Snyder’s fish-talking joke and James Gunn’s Peacemaker finale joke about Aquaman doing everything with water-bound creatures.
An Entertainment Weekly interview with showrunner Eric Kripke and Crawford digs into The Deep’s raunchier doings this season. There are some spoilers here, but the gist is that Kripke didn’t take as much inspiration from Aquaman’s fish-loving as from a Netflix documentary called My Octopus Teacher, and Crawford says that he responded, “I know where this is going.” Here’s what Kripke, who was well aware of how that documentary followed a close bond between filmmaker and female octopus, offered to EW:
“No spoilers for the season, but the thing about My Octopus Teacher when I watched it… I watched that whole thing and the whole time I’m like, ‘Is he gonna f— that octopus?!’” Kripke says, immediately breaking into laughter. “And then in the writer’s room, we just kept laughing about that documentary. And it’s a great documentary… but it’s weirdly sexual.”
If you’re interested in watching My Octopus Teacher, it’s available on Netflix. And as for what that film inspired in The Boys, let’s just say that things get, well, Deep.
For weeks now, we’re been hearing about the long awaited pilot for the new series, The NBA Finals, from showrunner Adam Silver (The Orlando Bubble, NBA Draft 2014-2021, All-Star Weekend Los Angeles/Chicago/Cleveland, etc.). While it did not disappoint in terms of tension and establishing initial character dynamics at play, it left a lot of questions.
In the lead up to the series — a spin-off of NBA Conference Finals — there were concerns about pacing, given the lulls and occasional dragging action of its predecessor. One recurring criticism over Conference Finals was it never being especially clear to viewers who was good, not in the sense of protagonist or antagonist, but who “had that dog in them.” The shifting representations in that show was a topic of heady, obsessive discussion amongst its fans, to the point where it was never especially clear whether fans actually enjoyed watching it. So far, that doesn’t seem to be a problem for NBA Finals, which pulled in 8.1 million viewers and had fans unanimously agreeing many of the characters, even this early on, “were a bucket.”
Silver is known for some pretty memorable characters and Finals is shaping up to be no different. Within its opening minutes we got a clear sense of its protagonists, antagonists, and the characters who will no doubt straddle the line.
Steph Curry (Steph Curry) made a definitive case for being the show’s clear main character. The decision to put up six three-point shots within the first 12 minutes and record zero points within the following twelve was an interesting, if a little blatant use of underscoring that we’re going to get the trope of a hero’s journey in the following episodes. It’s a tool that one of Finals joint directors, Steve Kerr, likes to utilize but the hope here is he doesn’t get too heavy-handed with it.
Other notable characters in the supporting cast behind Curry include Klay Thompson (Klay Thompson), with some late-episode fireworks that made up for his quiet performance early on; Andrew Wiggins (Andrew Wiggins), who seems to be taking a more cerebral approach; Marcus Smart (Marcus Smart) with a bold costume decision by Finals other director, Ime Udoka, in a green wig without any additional context (fans of Silver will note that costume has had something of a renaissance in his work in recent years).
There were plenty of standout performances in last night’s pilot, most notably from the evocative body language of Kevon Looney (Kevon Looney) whose character dragged the ball down from the basket again and again to the delight of the live audience. A quiet standout also came in the character of Al Horford (Al Horford) who, after initially dispelling the fears that this might be some kind of Benjamin Button rip-off, came alive in the final half of the show with the prowess and physicality of a much younger actor. And before you ask, no, there was absolutely no CGI involved.
Where the writing in Silver’s stories can occasionally be clunky (who can forget All-Star Chicago’s use of iambic verse from surprising casting decision, Common), or without any context (oftentimes characters are seen walking across the set, alone, shouting to no one in particular), a stirring line of dialogue came in one of the episode’s quiet moments from Smart.
“This isn’t the Heat series,” Smart stresses. “We can’t start back, you have to start up, especially if they setting it so high. You start up and drop because we’re chasing.”
The disorienting, zig-zagging notes on direction in the statement are intentional, meant to evoke memories, and possibly ghosts, of Conference Finals for fans paying close attention. “Now he goes down,” Smart says with an emphatic pause, “into the paint.” It’s an interesting choice by Smart to stagger his lines, but the result is captivating.
What needs work are the interludes between the action of NBA Finals main scenes. The “Halftime” portion of this episode saw five men sitting crammed around a quarter moon shaped desk, their spacing of no real significance.
“I saw a lot of Warriors players grabbing their shorts,” an enthused but somewhat lost member of the group (Magic Johnson) states at one point, seemingly to nobody. There’s also the interaction of the live audience with the show. At one point it seemed that a lackluster “LAWYERS” chant began, but on further inquiry it was meant to be “WARRIORS,” so either better instruction or studio equipment is needed there.
Tonally, there’s still room for a theme to emerge. Is this going to be a heist show? A series about bank robbers hailing from Boston out on one last score (don’t tell Ben Affleck, not because he’ll sue, but because he’ll want to be in it)? Or is this a saga where headbands simply collide?
In the end this episode was one of close conflict and action with plenty of excitement, sustainable character arcs and hooks for a pilot, and will more than likely be green-lit for a full season.
It’s early, but it could be Silver’s most marketable production yet.
Bikini Kill’s Erica Dawn Lyle and The Raincoats’ Vice Cooler have teamed up for their debut album that’s out today, Land Trust: Benefit For North East Farmers Of Color. The projects is full of collaborations, one of the quickest but most exciting of which is “Lost In Thought,” which they made with The Linda Lindas and Bikini Kill’s Kathi Wilcox. The song runs for just about 90 seconds, but it gets a lot of rocking done in that limited window.
The Linda Lindas’ Lucia de la Garza said of crafting the tune, “We all liked the idea of a call-and-response vocal thing in the verse, which really just took after the instrumental part. It’s about feeling overwhelmed by everything bottled up in your brain and getting so lost in yourself you become unaware of your surroundings.” Bela Salazar added, “In the bridge, there’s this chaos. It’s meant to represent how sometimes there are so many ideas or thoughts or just things on your mind, which gets so busy, and it’s supposed to feel like just the right amount of too much.”
Lyle said, “When we came up with the music for this one, it just felt like a rager and it brought to mind for me the pure exuberance of The Linda Lindas, so I suggested we invite them to sing on it. I thought of asking Kathi to add bass because I just remember how much we all enjoyed playing with and being around The Linda Lindas when they opened for Bikini Kill at The Palladium in 2019. Having them on a track with Kathi also really fit with the general theme of the record we were making which was shaping up as an intergenerational lineup of lady rocker badasses.”
Watch the “Lost In Thought” video above and stream Land Trust: Benefit For North East Farmers Of Color in full below.
TikTok is truly the gift that keeps on giving. For every goofy dance or pointless challenge or oddball meme that’ll make you consider giving up on society, throwing away your phone, and moving to the wilderness to live off the land unencumbered by the society that creates such foolishness, there’s at least one magic moment that makes everything worth it. Today, that moment was provided by superproducer Mark Ronson, who used the ability to engage with his fans (a truly criminal mere 100,000) to offer a tiny glimpse of the late Amy Winehouse‘s genius musical process.
After introducing himself and explaining who he is — because TikTok is made up of mostly teens who wouldn’t really know, I guess — Ronson details how he wrote some of Winehouse’s most iconic songs, including “Back To Black.” “Amy came to my studio,” he begins. “And when we met for the first time, I instantly loved her. She played me all this great ’60s music and she left and I got very inspired and I came up with this piano.” After playing the chords from the song, Ronson then shares Amy’s raw vocals, which she sang after “scribbling” out the lyrics one room over after hearing the tune. Check out the videos below.
Despite failing to light critics or the box office on fire when it first premiered in April, Morbius is surprisingly returning to theaters this weekend. After only appearing on 83 screens during Memorial Day weekend, Sony has somehow managed to get Morbius onto more than 1,000 screens where it will go up against the now-week old Top Gun: Maverick, a movie that has shown no signs of slowing down after smashing box office records.
While Sony hasn’t explained its reasons for significantly expanding Morbius more than two months after its release date, Polygon has a pretty good theory why: The memes.
A search on Cinemark and AMC website confirmed showing times for the film. Sony Pictures also confirmed to Gizmodo that the film would be back in theaters this weekend, but didn’t elaborate on reasons why. We have a few hunches. Could it be because Morbius has taken on a second life as a meme? Or perhaps it’s because fans of the morb started streaming the film, in its entirety, on various social media platforms? Does this mean the film has officially crossed that threshold of “so terrible we’re attached to it now”?
It’s true that over the past two weeks, Morbius has been repeatedly trending on Twitter where wholly ironic memes may have just brought the film back to life. In fact, obsessive Morbius meme posters are convinced they can conjure a sequel into happening. Considering the film is already making an odd theater comeback, the chances of being memed into a sequel doesn’t seem so far-fetched at the moment.
Needless to say, news of Morbius‘ return is going over huge on Twitter, where the official account confirmed the good news:
Dominic Fike has become a breakout star lately thanks to a major role in the second season of Euphoria. It turns out he actually nearly appeared on the show’s debut season, but he went a bit too method for his audition and blew it.
That anecdote kicks off a new GQ profile on Fike, which reveals that after making it through multiple rounds of callbacks, Euphoria creator Sam Levinson had Fike do a “final chemistry read” with Barbie Ferreira, who plays Kat Hernandez on the show. Since the show is very much about people being on drugs, Fike decided to take some mushrooms before going to his audition. That decision did not pay off.
“I started peaking right when me and Barbie were reading,” Fike noted with a laugh.
Hallucinations ended up getting the better of Fike, as the letters on his script were dancing on the page and Levinson was seemingly wearing a dress.
Fike remembers, “I looked at him and I was like, ‘Are you wearing a dress right now?’ It was crazy. I started making fun of everybody in the room.” He then described the call he got from his agents later on: “They were like, ‘What. The. F*ck?’”
Clearly, Fike left some sort of positive impression, though, as he eventually landed the show-stealing role of Elliot the next season.
LA’s 23-year-old singer Niki just recently announced her forthcoming album Nicole to follow her 2020 debut Moonchild. The album will arrive this August as she stated on Instagram. “This project is without a doubt my most favorite thing I have ever made as an artist. It’s where younger me and current me meet and hang and have a fucking blast together,” she wrote.
Today she dropped the sprawling lead single “Before” with a cinematic music video. It immediately kicks off with vivid storytelling: “You hid me in your dorm room / It was Halloweekend, I just flew / across the globe, 22 hours just to see you,” she lulls over dreamy synths. It sounds reminiscent of artists like Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, or Angel Olsen. “’Before’ is the irresolute ending to my very first love story. I wrote it as a means to create the kind of closure I never had,” she said in a statement. “I also feel it’s ironically poetic to open this new chapter by telling you how it ends first. I’m so proud of it, and I can’t think of a better song to introduce the ultimate break-up record I’ve always fantasized of putting out but somehow haven’t…until now.”
Watch the video for “Before” above. Check out her Instagram post below.
Anthony Carrigan‘s NoHo Hank makes trying to be liked seem so damn likable onBarry (which airs Sundays at 10ET on HBO). A reliable laugh in the midst of ever-darkening clouds who clings to more powerful men like a well-attired barnicle, Hank has somehow gone from being the host with the most to a shoddy assassin and mobster. But he survives, even thriving at the start of season 3 as his own relationship with Cristobal (Michael Irby), though flawed and built on a shaky foundation, seems like a contrast to the shitshow that was the Barry/Sally coupling.
We know that chaos has bloomed in that relationship for Hank since then as we head toward the last two episodes of the season, and yet there’s a sense that he will somehow be alright, even though, as Carrigan put it in our recent chat, the show is “fan theory proof.” And that’s cool! Sometimes it’s good to stop playing detective and enjoy the ride. That’s what we did in this chat with Carrigan, moving from more serious questions about his role on the show to spin-off ideas, Hank’s vision board, and Jean Claude Van Damme movies.
The show has been categorized as a comedy and Hank is probably the character most reliably in that comedy space, even though, obviously, your character goes through a lot of things that are pretty intense. Do you feel a certain amount of pressure to carry the flag of comedy for the show?
Yeah. Just the classic, “Leave it to the mob boss to just lighten things right on up.” I don’t know. I always feel pressure, just as an actor, because I want to do the story justice and I want to continue to find pathos in this character and not let him turn into a cartoon. But I think the pressure is outweighed by the excitement and the joy of what I get to do. So, as long as I continue to focus on that, that carries me through. The trap is to make things funny, right? To be like, “Uh-oh. Got to be funny now.” As soon as you start to try to be funny, you fall on your face and nobody laughs. You just have to double down and commit so hard to these circumstances, as if you’re in a Shakespearean tragedy. And when you commit and double down so hard, that’s where the comedy comes from.
I honestly can’t figure out if this ends happily or not for Barry or Hank. I’m curious what you think about your character. Do you think it’s going to end happily for Hank?
Selfishly, I sure hope so, but at the same time, at the end of the day, you just want a really compelling story, and whatever that means, I’m all for it. I just want to do my best and be of service to really great storytelling, which I think is what’s happening on this show. The cool thing about it is you can actually find a lot of these really thought-provoking issues and you can spend a long time discussing any of these things like toxicity, relationships, forgiveness, and redemption. All of these concepts are all happening, all at the same time. You can either unpack it and do a deep dive, or you can just go along for the ride, and either way, it works out well for you. But I think that it’ll continue, probably up until the very end, to be complex and nuanced. For sure.
This is an unfair question, but that fidelity to the show and what’s best for the show, does that extend to if Hank gets a bullet in episode eight and isn’t along for the ride in Season 4 or Season 5, or however long this goes? Or do you selfishly want to stick around no matter what happens?
I don’t know. Almost getting killed off in the first episode, in the pilot, weirdly just emboldened me to just enjoy whatever happens from that moment forward. Obviously, there’s something to be said about job security, but at the same time, the rules have gotten thrown out with Game of Thrones, where anyone can die at any time and life’s not fair.
That’s good though, isn’t it?
It’s good, because I would prefer something shocking and horrible to bad storytelling and a safe choice. I feel like, if it’s way more interesting and way more compelling, then I’m all for it.
Based on precedent, I don’t think this is going to turn into a CSI in Season 10 type situation.
Although, that would be quite the surprise. If it slowly blended into a procedural TV show. It’s like, “Hey, did you watch Barry: Special Chechen Unit?”
Honestly, if there was a version of the show that becomes Hank and Barry as buddy cops, private detectives, I could see that show being popular in a weird, perverse way.
It sounds like a Rick and Morty interdimensional cable channel.
At the end of the fifth episode, Barry took Hank’s advice and created a vision board, or I guess a personality totem of all of his interests and what he’s all about. I saw that and I was wondering, “What would Hank’s version of that look like?”
Wow. That’s a great question. Let’s see. I think it would probably be an interactive, probably an interactive experience with just all sorts of things, like delicious treats and sandwiches and options, food. I don’t know. Probably just cardboard cutouts of Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme, and these ’80s action movies that I drew a lot of inspiration from. God. That’s just the start, but who knows? Maybe I’ll try to incorporate a vision board later on.
What’s your ideal sandwich?
My ideal sandwich. Well, okay. I’ve been really digging on Impossible Meat. So a really good Impossible meatball sandwich.
You mentioned action movies, what’s your favorite Jean-Claude Van Damme movie?
Probably Kickboxer. It’s ridiculous and amazing. There’s this scene where he’s dancing in this bar and he’s wasted, and he also happens to be kicking the shit out of people. So it’s amazing.
Well, I’m a big fan of Jean-Claude van Damme dancing randomly. Have you ever seen the music video that they did for Timecop?
No, but I really appreciate that. I’m going to write that down.
There’s a bunch of machines. He does a spin move and then he’s pressing buttons. You’ve never someone so happy to be pressing buttons, which is apparently how time travel happens. But it’s highly, highly recommended.
This means more than you could ever know. I appreciate this on such a huge level.
‘Barry’ season 6 continues on HBO Sundays at 10PM ET
Entering the fourth quarter of Thursday’s Game 1 of the NBA Finals, the Boston Celtics trailed the Golden State Warriors, 92-80, and the lead had been as large as 15 late in the third frame. Once the buzzer sounded 12 minutes later, Boston had snagged a victory, 120-108, and outscored Golden State 40-16 in the final period. At one point, their lead grew to as many as 15.
In an exclusive interview with Yahoo Sports’ Chris Haynes, Ime Udoka detailed what he relayed to his team ahead of their fourth-quarter dominance that saw them steal homecourt advantage and move three wins away from a championship.
“You’re getting punked out there,” Udoka said. “They’re punking us right now. Is this the way you want to go out? This is not us. Let’s at least give ourselves a chance.”
After roaring out to 92 points through three quarters, Golden State’s offense faltered mightily down the stretch, with 16 points over the final 12 minutes. The Celtics’ league-best defense took control and they rode it to a win.
“For anyone, I feel like that challenges us to step up and stop being so soft, you would say,” Grant Williams said. “He’s not afraid to say that to anybody. He was yelling at me, [Jaylen Brown] and whoever was in the game while we were running down the court, telling us to toughen the hell up. That’s what you love about Ime. He tells it like it is.”
Shot-making from Al Horford (26 points) and Brown (24 points), as well as Jayson Tatum’s 13 assists, were critical to Boston’s victory, but defense is its foundation and where the comeback began, which was exactly what Udoka wanted from his players.
“If we’re going to go out, let’s go out playing the way we play. That’s all I was asking,” Udoka said. “I’m happy the guys responded.”
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