Month: June 2022

Baz Luhrmann is a lot like any other director, only more so. Likewise, Elvis has a lot of the scenes and conflicts we’ve come to expect after 20 years with the musical biopic format, only in this case with the volume cranked to 11 and the saturation pinned at 100; sameness to the point that it starts to become hallucinatory and inspired.

Elvis – in so many ways a sort of kitsch-art earnest version of Walk Hard – is to the traditional musician biopic what Las Vegas is to a traditional city. An idealized reality so manically constructed that it becomes a sort of grotesque, like an absurd parody of Americana rendered in pastel Formica and crushed velvet. It’s real sicko shit, and in that sense it’s hard not to love it. Has there ever been a Baz Luhrmann subject so perfectly suited to his brand of gaudy maximalism? I left the theater coughing up sequins.

Luhrmann has essentially jerry-rigged his own version of the old Liberty Valance adage. Elvis‘s guiding principle is, “when the Velvet Elvis painting becomes fact, shoot the Velvet.”

Luhrmann’s story (co-written by Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, and Jeremy Doner) is framed around, and periodically narrated by, Colonel Tom Parker, who is, and I’m not exaggerating any of these points for comedic effect here, a wicked Dutch carnie. He’s played by Tom Hanks, with a crooked witch nose and balloon animal jowls, and Hanks’ accent is pretty ridiculous. But then again, so is everything else in Elvis, and so is the idea of an accented Dutchman attempting to turn himself into a cigar-chomping Southern dandy like Tom Parker did in the first place. Think Foghorn Leghorn meets Goldmember from Austin Powers.

Tom Parker is an old-school carnival man, who lives for the old “snow job,” where you grift a room full of rubes so well that they gladly fork over their money and leave smiling. He proudly calls himself The Snow Man, and in Elvis, Parker believes he’s found his ultimate sideshow act — the first white man ever to attempt to dance using the lower half of his body. If there’s a major flaw in Elvis (other than Luhrmann’s whole shtick in general, which one should either go in expecting or avoid altogether) it’s that the framing makes it hard not to wish it was a Tom Parker biopic instead of an Elvis one. Give that job to Matthew Wiener, I’d love to see the Mad Men guy’s take on a carnival kitsch Don Draper.

For his part, Elvis Presley (played by sleepy-eyed, pouty-lipped youngster Austin Butler — who may be the most Australian-looking non-Australian dude I’ve ever seen) is depicted as the identical twin of a stillborn sibling, who grew up imbibing black musical traditions thanks to growing up in a black section of Memphis, and all sorts of other now-biopic clichés that also happen to be true — because how many biopic tropes were already built partially out of the Elvis legend? Print the velvet. As such, Elvis doesn’t just see blues musicians steamrolling juke joints and charismatic black preachers captivating tent revivals foreshadowing his future persona, he hallucinates expressionistic, kaleidoscopic montages of them.

One of Luhrmann’s charms (or infuriating tics, depending on your perspective) is that he either can’t or won’t shoot a straight scene of Elvis singing one of his hits (which, as a fan of early rockabilly Elvis music, I would’ve actually appreciated). Instead, he’ll film about seven seconds of one, before the whole thing starts to melt and bubble and distort, transforming into some kind of cruel hallucinatory medley that evolves and modulates and becomes something else entirely. Oh, you wanted to hear “Don’t Be Cruel?” Fuck you, here are five different slowed-down dramatic versions of “Fools Rush In.” “Jailhouse Rock?” Nope, “It’s Alright Mama” remixed as a contemporary rap track for some reason. Baz Luhrmann’s take on Elvis is sort of like reality as filtered through psychedelic mushrooms, where you can’t quite navigate a hallway but you’re transfixed by the texture of the carpet.

There is something to this approach. To attempt to get at the root of who Elvis was as a person would probably be a fool’s errand. This was a guy who essentially became a cultural product as a teenager and died a bloated lounge act at 42. There was no time in his adult life where he was a fully-formed human separate from a stage persona. Luhrmann’s choice is to shoot him as a sort of Snow White with Tom Parker as the wicked witch. We might not learn what makes Elvis tick, but Luhrmann isn’t so concerned with that. He’s more interested in Elvis’s effect on an audience, mostly of young girls and budding gays, who see this First White Man Ever To Move His Butt On Purpose, and absolutely lose their minds. He’s not depicting music so much as collective hysteria, which is firmly within the Luhrmann wheelhouse, and oddly electrifying.

Why not shoot the velvet? And who better to shoot said velvet than Baz Luhrmann, Australia’s polyester Spielberg? You’ll leave feeling slightly nauseous, bludgeoned by kitch and blinded by sparkly plastic, but considering the subject, isn’t that as it should be?

‘Elvis’ opens only in theaters June 24th. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. More reviews here.

Will Byers was once at the center of the Stranger Things story (he inspired countless Christmas light designs), but since season one, the show hasn’t known what to do with him. That was especially evident in season four, where he was just kind of… there. The most interesting thing about the character, outside of his haircut, is something currently unspoken. Speaking of things not being said: no one said “happy birthday” to Will.

In an interview with Variety that published after the season four premiere, Stranger Things co-creators Matt and Ross Duffer were informed that “fans have noticed that in episode two of season four, a rolling camera has the date of March 22, which is supposed to be Will’s birthday.” Did everyone forget about poor Will? “The honest response is, clearly like the characters in the show, we also forgot about Will’s birthday. So the debate now is whether we adjust Will’s birthday or we just let it be really sad,” Matt replied. “We love Will, and I don’t want people to think we don’t love Will because we forgot. We do!” Sounds like something someone who doesn’t love Will would say.

The Duffers have a solution, however, they revealed in a new interview with Variety:

“It’s too sad!” Matt Duffer said. “And it doesn’t make any narrative sense. But we were talking about it yesterday, and I think we’re going to George Lucas that.” As it turns out, it wouldn’t be the first time. “We have George Lucas’d things also that people don’t know about,” he continued, while declining to detail specific alterations from previous seasons.

George Lucas famously went back and “fixed” issues he had with A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi when the Star Wars original trilogy was re-released in theaters in 1997. The Duffers won’t do anything as drastic as Han stepping on Jabba’s tail (although “some of the visual effects” in season four have changed since it premiered), but they can make it up to Will by adding a scene where Max Rebo Band sings “Jedi Rocks” to him. Maybe they can even change the lyrics to “Will Rocks.”

(Via Variety)

Remember the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when lockdowns were first being announced and it seemed like the end of the world (oh, how naive we all were then)? And do you remember how a group of celebrities who were tone-deaf in more ways than one, decided that the best way to raise our collective morale was to stitch together a video of them all singing a cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” from their cozy, luxurious homes, resulting in an online roast session of truly epic proportions? Well, The Boys remembers. And the show found the perfect way to both pay homage and add one last roast in its latest episode.

This week’s episode, streaming now on Amazon Prime Video, opens with The Deep playing the role of Gal Gadot, setting off a parody of the celebrity video along with his super-though-not-so-heroic teammates A-Train and Black Noir. In this case, though, the celebrities include a who’s-who of comedy all-stars like Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis, Elizabeth Banks, Aisha Tyler, Rose Byrne, Kumail Nanjiani, Patton Oswalt, and Josh Gad. However, in the show’s world, the rallying attempt actually works, because this is a world in which Homelander can be an all-out villain without people realizing it — nothing like our world, eh?

You can watch the video courtesy of Twitter below.

This morning, the Supreme Court officially overturned Roe v. Wade. This decision sparked many reactions from the music community and now Taylor Swift has weighed in, too.

Swift shared Michelle Obama’s reaction to the news and wrote on Twitter, “I’m absolutely terrified that this is where we are — that after so many decades of people fighting for women’s rights to their own bodies, today’s decision has stripped us of that.”

In Obama’s letter, the former First Lady wrote in part, “I am heartbroken today. I am heartbroken for people around this country who just lost the fundamental right to make informed decisions about their own bodies. I am heartbroken that we may now be destined to learn the painful lessons of a time before Roe was made law of the land — a time when women risked losing their lives getting illegal abortions. A time when the government denied women control over their reproductive functions, forced them to move forward with pregnancies they didn’t want, and then abandoned them once their babies were born. That is what our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers lived through, and now here we are again.”

The message concludes, “Our hearts may be broken today, but tomorrow, we’ve got to get up and find the courage to keep working towards creating the more just America we all deserve. We have so much left to push for, to rally for, to speak for — and I know we can do this together.”

Find more musician reactions to the Roe v. Wade overturn here.

Between Jalen Green’s hang-gliding finishes and Alperen Şengün’s streetball dimes, widespread fanfare for the Houston Rockets’ other young players was challenging to establish last season.

Green and Şengün rightfully headline conversations of Houston’s future, as does Jabari Smith, who surprisingly fell to the third pick in Thursday night’s draft. Along with that trio, another 2021 first-round pick quietly wrapped up his rookie season maintaining and expanding upon his pre-draft intrigue: Josh Christopher.

In 74 games, playing 18 minutes per contest, the 6’5 guard averaged 7.9 points, 2.5 rebounds, two assists, and 0.9 steals on 53.4 percent true shooting (.448/.296/.735 split). Amid a class stocked with future high-level starters and stars, Christopher did not warrant All-Rookie Team consideration.

Nonetheless, at 20 years old, he flashed an enticing bag of two-way tricks. He remains someone whose development is worth monitoring, both for his league-wide standing and how he fits with the Rockets as they progress toward hopes of immediate winning again.

At this juncture, Christopher is optimized offensively as a second-side option, a powerful wing who feasts attacking off the catch and bulldozing mismatches via the drive. He’s still figuring out the proper utility of his jumper (more on this later) and is rather adept chiseling his way downhill. According to Cleaning The Glass, he shot 62 percent at the rim (64th percentile among combo guards), with 39 percent of his shots coming there (87th percentile). He created more than half of his makes around the basket.

Houston ranked just 26th in offensive rating this past season, lacking cohesion and reliable advantage creators, so Christopher didn’t consistently see opportunities to puncture a tilted defense. When he did, though, his forceful, elongated strides and ability to fashion driving lanes with his East-West handling chops glimmered.

He touts the core strength and balance to overwhelm defenders and shrewdly migrates along the arc to simplify openings to the rim; he’s a shrewd off-ball mover, hence his 1.42 points per possession on cuts (78th percentile), per Synergy. Heightened offensive stability around him in the coming years should only further amplify his slashing and off-ball prowess.

The finishing numbers themselves are impressive and deserving of plaudits, but Christopher also shot 54 percent on two-pointers altogether, slightly above the league average of 53.3 percent. For a 20-year-old rookie guard to achieve that, with nearly 58 percent of those makes coming unassisted, is noteworthy.

Although the depths of Christopher’s creation is still being refined and explored, he displayed encouraging pacing and craft in ball-screens. According to Synergy, he ranked in the 59th percentile in pick-and-rolls and when passes are factored in, that mark rises to the 74th percentile. His passing requires further enhancement, particularly with laydowns on drives and avoiding premeditated decisions, but he’s exhibited serious manipulation using screens to venture downhill.

Despite some struggles with his handle, often against stunts and point-of-attack pressure, I hold confidence that he will blossom into a capable secondary pick-and-roll operator. The handle is a notable problem that limits his volume on the ball, but his strength, cadence, and screen manipulation should fuel his downhill escapades, where his finishing acumen prospers.

A couple notes from that montage: the way he sort of casually bludgeons through Kyle Anderson and Buddy Hield for finishes underlines his functional strength — he’s only 20 years old! His premeditated nature as a facilitator is evident on the feed to Şengün. Kenyon Martin Jr. is open for the pocket pass, yet Christopher lasered in on the pass up top and extinguished a potential bucket at the rim.

Christopher’s quickly established proficiency as an attacker and finisher in the league, so that’s likely to serve as his primary scoring means. The jumper, of course, looms prevalently to determine what level of offensive volume he can reliably shoulder, both on and off the ball.

Beyond short pull-ups and turnarounds (inside the free-throw line), I don’t envision off-the-bounce jumpers being a dependable tool for him. His release is a bit slow to consistently fire against defenders off the dribble and his pull-up numbers the past two seasons aren’t ideal. Per Synergy, at Arizona State, he ranked in 29th percentile on pull-ups in the half-court (0.65 PPP, 54 shots in 15 games). This last year, he ranked in the 30th percentile (0.75 PPP, 109 shots in 74 games). It’s both a low-volume and low-efficiency playtype for him.

That being said, this thought process doesn’t really extend to my projection of his catch-and-shoot prospects. South of 32 percent on fewer than two spot-up triples per game as a rookie, as well as 0.82 PPP on no-dribble jumpers at Arizona State, don’t portend well for his chances.

However, he’s made significant mechanical strides over the last 15 months. While his release can be slower than preferred, he’s shown a knack for speeding it up against tight closeouts, especially as last season progressed. Defenses didn’t give him the silent treatment in 2021-22, even if hurried closeouts weren’t always the norm. Christopher packages the requisite power, off-ball instincts, and finishing to predominantly subside on drives in spite of a middling jumper, which is the level I deem attainable for him.

Beyond his interior scoring profits, the most surprising component of Christopher’s Year 1 skill-set was his defense. Houston’s defensive cohesion and execution were consistently underwhelming, yet the rookie guard flashed considerable competency on that end.

His communication, positioning, and awareness off the ball, largely when stationed on the weak-side, popped. Conversely, he had a tendency to be caught in no man’s land and tardiness on switches or reacting to movement was a common theme. The entire team made a habit of flubbing switches, so I won’t knock him much there. Given how concerning I deemed the Rockets’ collective defensive approach, Christopher’s broad knowhow for certain off-ball rotations and positioning should be overwhelming points of optimism.

One of the more thought-provoking exercises as it pertains to his development is discerning his ideal defensive role. On and off the ball, he established obvious assets and warts, both of which were often linked in some manner.

As an on-ball defender, he seemed a beat slow processing decisions from his assignment and that left him susceptible to dribble penetration. That often was masked as lateral mobility limitations, but I consider it linked to delayed recognition more than a physical flaw.

Whether it’s more redeemable than movement problems is tough to answer; I lean yes as he continually adapts to NBA speeds and conditions. When that wasn’t plaguing him, his size and pesky hands frustrated ball-handlers, though he’d occasionally overindulge with the pressure and allow assignments to boogie by him. His dexterity is a weapon, evidenced by a 2.1 percent steal rate (84th percentile, per Cleaning The Glass). He’s adept at denying dribble handoffs, pickpocketing dribblers and cutting off drives with disciplined closeouts.

If a screen neutralizes him, which happens a bit too frequently, he’s prone to wandering into purgatory. With his swift hands and strength, peel switches should become integral to his pick-and-roll defense. Ingraining that into his approach would mitigate this specific shortcoming. If or when he assimilates to the speed of initiators, Christopher’s on-ball defense brings significant promise and is worth being rather excited about moving forward.

As I went from curious observer with a general grasp of his game to in-depth connoisseur this past week, a few swing skills and questions populated my thoughts: To what length does the 3-ball influence his scoring ceiling? Teams invited jumpers by playing off of him and his decision-making in those spots fluctuated. How reliant will he be on its development to climb the offensive hierarchy and increase his usage?

Similarly, when operating North-South, his handle poses setbacks, but he knows how to generate horizontal space with it. If the pull-up reaches a certain tier of comfort and impact, his handle could augment that growth and earn him expanded on-ball duties, namely through pick-and-rolls, where he’s already effective.

Although reaction time seems to be his most pressing inhibitor on the ball, he could benefit from improved technique as a lateral mover. Too routinely, his steps are choppy and he’s more running than sliding. Addressing that and growing more comfortable in his processing of on-ball actions could render him a trustworthy point-of-attack menace.

Yet consistency as a low man in conjunction with his weak-side awareness could see that as his foremost defensive responsibilities. How the Rockets determine this answer, especially with their shallow defensive infrastructure, captivates me.

As Houston embarks on the second full year of a rebuild, Christopher will not define its vision. Regardless, his rookie season provided a clear glimpse into his upside, a player whose complementary two-way game may fill the gaps presented by the future stars of this roster.

The 24th pick will rarely headline discussions of a young core, but after one year, Christopher emphasized he’s absolutely not someone to neglect either. He’s got the juice to earn himself a spot in southeastern Texas for a good, long while.

A war vet. A gangster. A politician. A spy. Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) has worn many hats on the historical crime drama Peaky Blinders. Now, as the show enters its sixth and final season, he’s determined to turn over a new leaf. But some formidable enemies threaten the criminal mastermind’s grand plans of retirement.

Of course, there’s plenty of political maneuvering and intrigue to be had in the show’s last outing — the end of Prohibition brings about a new era of business for The Shelby Company Limited. To help catch you up and give you a map for the road ahead, we tapped Uproxx TV critic Jessica Toomer and head whiskey writer Zach Johnston to tease the new season while also celebrating the collaboration between Bushmills and the series on a new bottle — the Bushmills Peaky Blinders Prohibition Recipe Whiskey (available only in the U.S.). Buy it here.

From the beginning stages of a second world war to a new crime family emerging to challenge Tommy Shelby’s reign, this season is filled with even more of the same thrilling action and highbrow drama that fans have come to love. Let’s set the scene.

Jessica Toomer: We pick up directly after the events of the season five finale, which means Tommy is still reeling from that foiled assassination plot. He’s reluctantly taken on a new partner in business and the family’s undergone some changes. But we can’t dwell on that for too long because a time jump launches us into the action of the 30s.

Zach, you’re a bit of a history buff. What did you think about how this season kicked off?

Zach Johnston: It’s just a whole new world. Prohibition’s over. Tommy is on his own for the first time. He’s still in a position of power in Parliament, he’s still a smuggler, but he’s out of his depth in many ways when it comes to the enemies he’s facing.

JT: I love how this show weaves in historical elements around all of the action within the Shelby group. It reminds you that there were bigger things at play. We’re going to America now. There’s mention of President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. There are a bunch of things that are cluing you in to the fact that everything’s about to get really dicey for everyone.

ZJ: What I sort of love about this season is that there are double-crosses, triple-crosses, quadruple crosses. It’s kind of amazing how it all makes sense. There’s a through-line, and it’s really exciting to watch it all unravel and come together and fall apart and ultimately end where it ends. I have always enjoyed a nice whiskey while watching this show, but this season really called for one.

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Ready to put down your phone and pick up a glass before settling in for the ride? Make sure you’ve got a bottle of Bushmills and do give our custom Peaky-inspired cocktail (and a separate Bushmills original) a try.

Tommy’s Secret

JT: This season, Tommy Shelby is a bit of a broken man. He faces challengers like Oswald Mosley (Sam Claflin), a fascist MP hoping to oppress the same working-class community the Shelbys hail from, and Jack Nelson (James Frecheville), a Boston gangster whose ties to the powerful elite rival Tommy’s own. In order to survive the political machinations and street warfare engineered by his enemies, the Shelby leader needs to keep things close to the chest, which is what inspired this original drink. Can you tell us about it?

ZJ: For this cocktail, I was drawn to the times. Things are unknown in the world in 1933, scary even. It was also a time when the liquor cabinet and the medicine cabinet shared some of the same ingredients. Apothecaries were still full of dried herbs, florals, and botanicals, and those same things went into some of the whiskey people drank.

Tommy’s Secret is a cocktail that layers elderflower, ginger, and lemon – things you’d have at the pub and at home back in those days — into a stirred whiskey cocktail. It’s floral, full of citrus, and has a hint of heat built into the apple and honey-forward Bushmills whiskey.

Ingredients:

• 3 oz. Bushmills Peaky Blinders Prohibition Recipe Whiskey
• 0.75 oz. Elderflower syrup
• 0.25 oz. Ginger syrup
• 4 dashes of Orange Bitters
• Lemon peel
• Ice

While it might seem like elderflower and ginger syrup are something you’ll have to make yourself in your own pop-up apothecary, you can get them at any good liquor store. Or just order them online. Elderflower is available here and ginger syrup here. The same goes for the Orange Bitters, every liquor store will have it.

What You’ll Need:

• Rocks glass
• Cocktail mixing jar
• Cocktail strainer
• Jigger
• Paring knife
• Barspoon

Method:

• Add ice to the rocks glass and set aside to chill.
• Add the Bushmills Peaky Blinders Prohibition Recipe Whiskey, elderflower syrup, ginger syrup, and Orange Bitters to the cocktail mixing jar. Add two handfuls of ice and use the barspoon to stir until the mixing jar is ice cold to touch — about 30 to 45 seconds.
• Dump the ice from the rocks glass and add in a large ice cube.
• Strain the cocktail over the ice.
• Express the oils from the lemon peel over the glass and cocktail by gently squeezing it between your thumbs and index fingers with the outer peel facing the glass.
• Drop the peel in the glass and serve.

Bottom Line:

ZJ: This is a super refreshing and light cocktail. The elderflower plays so nicely with the honey and woody apple of the Bushmills. There’s a sweetness first, then a hint of ginger heat hits at the very end of the finish.

JT: In other words, it’s an elevated yet accessible cocktail made with the kind of authentic ingredients that will give you the vibe of that 1930s era without all of the danger that came with it. I like that and it rings true for me, as a fan.

ZJ: That was the goal! Slàinte!

The Shelby Sour

Not quite in the mood for Tommy’s Secret? The Shelby Sour is one of a few official offerings from Bushmills Peaky Blinders Prohibition Recipe Whiskey (which you can find on their site). The shaker is an easy-to-make-at-home drink that’s also super refreshing. Check out the official Bushmills site for more on that drink.

Go here to learn more about Bushmills Peaky Blinders Prohibition Recipe Whiskey. Season 6 of Peaky Blinders is now available on Netflix

It’s official: The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade today, following the leak of a draft of a majority opinion back in early May. People all over the country, and world, are deeply upset about the decision, including some prominent figures in the music community, who are taking to social media today to share their thoughts on the situation.

In a statement shared on social media, Pearl Jam wrote, “No one, not the government, not politicians, not the Supreme Court should prevent access to abortion, birth control, and contraceptives. People should have the FREEDOM to choose. Today’s decision impacts everyone and it will particularly affect poor women who can’t afford to travel to access health care. We will stay active, we will not back down and we will never give up.”

Jason Isbell tweeted, “If you’re gonna talk about how divided we are as a nation, you’ll want to mention SCOTUS decisions like this one, handing power to state reps in crazy-ass gerrymandered districts and completely ignoring the will of the majority of US citizens. This is not what the people want.” He later added, “Eggs ain’t chicken. Something has to be born before it can be murdered. That’s about as simple as it gets.”

Others offered more concise messages, like Maggie Rogers, who wrote, “abortion is healthcare. bodily autonomy is a human right.” Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon also said, “No. Not gonna last. This country is not the country we are supposedly promised. This is not for all, it’s for some.” Finneas added, “I don’t even know what to say other than absolutely f*ck this.”

Check out some more reactions below, from Cat Power, Tyler The Creator, Tegan And Sara, and others.

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

Steve-O isn’t pulling any punches when it comes to the early years of Jackass. While stopping by Mike Tyson’s Hotboxin‘ podcast, the stuntman fully admitted that the show was a terrible influence on kids when it first start airing on MTV in the early 2000s. Granted, the show posted warnings to not try any of the crew’s antics at home, Steve-O says that didn’t help in the years before YouTube, and now TikTok, took over as the prime source of maniacal stunts for impressionable audiences to recreate.

Via The AV Club:

“When Jackass came out, little kids were showing up in hospitals all over the country and maybe the world because they saw us doing this crazy sh*t and they wanted to do it themselves. So, little kids everywhere got video cameras and started f*cking themselves up and showing up in hospitals and getting really hurt.”

While Steve-O owns up to Jackass being a “legitimately bad influence” and “genuinely worth vilifying” in the beginning, he says the franchise is no longer to blame for whatever craziness is happening these days. Sure, they recently pout out a new movie, but there’s a whole sea of reckless content for kids to choose from these days.

“At that time you could really point to us as being a bad influence,” Steve-O told Tyson. “But I think over the years, because now that there’s so much YouTube, Ridiculousness, so much, it’s not our f*cking fault anymore.”

(Via The AV Club)

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE – I need to know everything this

There’s a big profile of Brad Pitt over at GQ this week. It’s pretty interesting, as most big fancy magazine profiles tend to be, with Pitt waxing poetic about his career and where it’s been and might be going and all of it. Pitt has always been a fascinating guy. He’s got looks he could have skated by on, and enough charm to make almost anything interesting, but he seemed to enjoy playing against it sometimes. Yes, sure, he’s played the coolest guy in the room plenty of times, and he’s good at it, but he’s also been in, like, Fight Club, and he’s worked with Tarantino a couple of times. He didn’t have to do that. He could have worn a cowboy hat and/or starred in rom-coms for two decades and retired to the beach. It’s probably what I would have done.

But anyway, none of that is really the point. The point is that, at one point in this new profile, Brad Pitt revealed that he spent a not-insignificant amount of time turning his French estate upside down looking for buried treasure. This is… fascinating to me. Both the fact that he did it and the fact that he told a journalist about it while being interviewed for a cover story in a big fancy publication. That’s… yeah, it’s fascinating to me. Here, look at this.

He tells me that he was approached a few years ago by a man who explained to him that the château was supposedly home to another fortune: millions of dollars’ worth of gold that one of the estate’s medieval owners had taken from the Levant during the Crusades and buried on the grounds. “I got obsessed,” Pitt says. “Like for a year, this was all I could think about, just the excitement of it all.” He bought radar equipment and scoured his property. “Maybe it has something to do with where I grew up, because in the Ozark Mountains there were always stories of hidden caches of gold.”

Of course, no treasure was unearthed. Pitt says the man who’d approached him was ultimately seeking money for some kind of radar company; an investment opportunity, he was told. The whole thing went nowhere and Pitt was left feeling a little surprised that he’d let himself believe in the idea. The entire experience was, he says, “pretty foolish in the end. It was just the hunt that was exciting.”

Right. So, here’s my main takeaway from this, and it’s something I have considered for a while: If I had been conned by a French radar charlatan into tearing my beautiful French estate to pieces in a fruitless hunt for buried gold, I would take that information with me to the grave. I would not tell friends or family or anyone, just due to the sheer embarrassment of it all. I might even invent a whole fake cover story to explain why there are a bunch of holes in my property, like maybe something like “we had some cables that needed to be replaced” or “I’m into tunnels now” or almost anything else. I am not proud of this. But it’s true. This is, apparently, one of many differences between me and Hollywood icon Brad Pitt.

The other takeaway I had from all of this is that there are about four different television shows based on this that I would absolutely watch. In no particular order:

• A true-crime scammer show about a con man flying around the world to trick celebrities into looking for treasure
• A loosely fictionalized show about an A-list actor discovering millions of dollars worth of treasure on his estate and then fighting off a crew of heavily-armed robbers who want to take it from him
• A docuseries about Brad Pitt crisscrossing the globe on the hunt for buried gold, like Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives but for treasure
• A docuseries about the freaking radar huckster WHO CONVINCED BRAD PITT TO GO ON A HUNT FOR TREASURE

Especially that last one. Just for the stones on that guy. Imagine waking up in the morning and knowing you’re going to meet famous Hollywood actor Brad Pitt and you’re going to send him on a wild goose chase in the hopes of selling him some radar stuff. Again, it’s all deeply fascinating to me. Every part of it. Including the thing where I just pictured George Clooney’s face when Brad Pitt told him this story. Let’s go ahead and add that to the list, too. A show where George Clooney’s celebrity friends tell him embarrassing stories about themselves. You would watch. Do not lie to me.

ITEM NUMBER TWO – Hobbit heist

Two important things are happening here, both of which are just delightful. The first is right up there. It’s the trailer for the upcoming fourth season of What We Do in the Shadows, which is a good show. It is such a good show. One of the best we have, probably. Few television shows commit to that level of silliness on a weekly basis. Remember the Jackie Daytona episode? Remember the thing where Matt Berry said the line “United Kingdom? More like United ding dong”? Remember when Colin Robinson just up and became a baby? Like, an actual baby? It’s all just about perfect and it’s a reminder that you are only limited in life by the furthest reaches of your imagination and it’s coming back soon. This pleases me.

This brings me to the second important thing. Taiki Waititi was on Colbert this week to promote Thor: Love and Thunder. While there, he talked about making the original What We Do in the Shadows movie with his longtime collaborator Jemaine Clement a while back. And he told this story. Which is cool.

“When I did What We Do in the Shadows, when Jemaine and I were shooting that, we didn’t have much money to do that film, and The Hobbit had just wrapped. And, so, our production designer — man, I don’t know if I should tell this. OK, but I will — our production designer, in the dead of night, took his crew to The Hobbit studios and stole all of the dismantled, broken-down green screens and took all of the timber, and we built a house.”

To summarize:

• Stealing helped them make this movie
• Without this movie, there would not have been the very good What We Do in the Shadows television show
• Also, Taika might not have gotten a break big enough to land the Marvel gig and turn Thor into a ridiculous comedy

The lesson here is clear: Stealing is good. Tell everyone you know.

ITEM NUMBER THREE – Edi Patterson is so cool

The thing about Edi Patterson is that she’s the best. The Righteous Gemstones is straight-up littered with comedy legends and scene stealers — Danny McBride, Walton Goggins, Adam Devine, freaking John Goodman, etc. — and she routinely eats their lunches right in front of them. It might be my favorite performance on television (like, all of television), just a steamroller of chaos cruising through every scene. That’s not easy to do, either. It’s not easy to pull that off without tipping over into caricature. This is, like, acting.

Which is why it makes me so happy that Vanity Fair wrangled her for an interview as part of their Emmy preview. She should absolutely get nominated for an Emmy. And win one. Or more than one. Give her like six of them and let her carry them out in a big bucket. I will settle for one, though. For now. Anyway, sayeth Edi.

The writing team started work on season three last year. So far Judy is the only member of the immediate Gemstone family who hasn’t either started a cult or been blackmailed by sinister, shadowy figures. Is that in the cards for the next go-round with the family? “Judy and everyone else will be in pickles,” Patterson says wryly. “You can expect every Gemstone, at some point, to be in way over their head. I think it’s just in their DNA.”

I am going to say something here and I need you to know I am incredibly serious: I hope Judy Gemstone runs for Congress. She could absolutely start a cult or get blackmailed, sure, she has that in her arsenal. But I want to see her on a campaign trail and I want to see her in a debate. There’s something above a 100 percent chance she would swear. And break the podium. And maybe spit on someone. I, for one, would love to see it.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR – The Mario controversy is fuel to me

Are you aware of the Mario controversy? I really hope you are. I’m going to tell you anyway, so it doesn’t really matter in the long run, but I hope you’ve been living with the same amount of joy I’ve had since I first heard about it a while ago. You deserve nice things. Like, for example, the Mario controversy. Which I will explain to you now. Look at us go.

The short version goes like this: Chris Pratt, a noted not-Italian, was cast as Mario in the upcoming Super Mario Bros. animated movie and he is not going to do the voice. You know the voice. The “ITSA ME, MARIO” voice. Which is hilarious because you have to assume there was A Conversation about it at some point. People probably wore suits and sat in a conference room and debated the pros and cons of having Chris Pratt do a ridiculous Italian accent for the sake of authenticity to the character. I would watch this meeting instead of the movie. I am barely joking.

It gets better. Executives in charge of important things are getting asked about it in interviews. Here is Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri, whose company is bringing Super Mario Bros. to the big screen, being forced to talk about it. Look at this collection of words.

Regarding any upset over casting the non-Italian Chris Pratt as Mario in the upcoming Super Mario Bros Movie, Meledandri asserted: “When people hear Chris Pratt’s performance, the criticism will evaporate, maybe not entirely — people love to voice opinions, as they should.” He added, “I’m not sure this is the smartest defense, but as a person who has Italian-American heritage, I feel I can make that decision without worrying about offending Italians or Italian-Americans. … I think we’re going to be just fine.”

Okay, I know what you’re all thinking.

You’re sitting there saying, “Hmm, I bet Brian just wrote this whole section so he could post the video of Lou Albano singing the ‘Do the Mario’ song.”

First of all, how dare you?

I am a serious writer.

I wanted to post that blockquote, too.

I mean, I did really want to post the “Do the Mario” video again.

Like, a lot.

Let’s call it 70-30 in favor of the video.

Maybe 80-20.

I stand by every decision I’ve made here.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE – I love Sox

I saw Lightyear last weekend. It was pretty good. Maybe not my favorite Pixar movie ever but still, a solid way to spend two hours on a hot summer day. And the “lesbian kiss” crisis was kind of hilarious — like, sad and upsetting, but also hilarious — because people were clutching their pearls with such fervor that I thought it was going to be like a passionate smooch with tongue and fireworks going off in the background when in reality it was such a tiny little “welcome home, honey” peck that I almost missed it.

Also, and this is cannot be overstated… I love Sox

A little context will help: Sox is a robot cat and he’s a good boy and… actually, that’s all the context I’m going to provide. Look at him up there. Look at his face. The people at Pixar are diabolical.

This all did raise an important question: If Lightyear is the movie Andy saw that made him want the Buzz Lightyear toy he got in Toy Story, why did he not also want or have a Sox toy, considering Sox is Buzz’s sidekick and is cool and adorable? Thankfully, this has been addressed.

In a press interview for “Lightyear” with director Angus MacLane, producer Galyn Susman, and composer Michael Giacchino, it is jokingly proposed that the creators now need to go back to the original “Toy Story” and add a Sox toy. MacLane plays along with the idea, explaining that the issue may have been that “Andy’s mom couldn’t get it, it was sold out everywhere.”

He continues, “That’s an expensive toy, it would’ve been like Worlds of Wonder or Tiger Electronics, it would’ve been a kind of fancy $70 toy.” He goes on to compare it to his own childhood where he wishes he could have owned an AT-AT toy from “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” but wasn’t able to get one.

The next Pixar movie should open with a short about a collection of frazzled parents standing in line outside a local mall on Black Friday, all trying to get a Sox doll or toy, climbing over each other the instant the doors open as the whole scene devolves into a furious dust cloud of limbs and cussing. That would be fun. For me.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Nick:

Did you see the thing the other week about how Al Pacino wants Timothee Chalamet to play a younger version of his character in Heat in a remake or a prequel? Because I saw that and my first thought was “I need to see Timothee Chalamet yell ‘She’s got a GREAT ASS and you got your head ALL THE WAY UP IT” and then my second thought was “I should email Brian.”

This is a terrific email. Yes, I did see this, and yes, I did have the same thought. Pacino’s character in Heat is so ridiculously grizzled and shouty and late-stage Pacino and the idea of Chalamet doing all of that makes me really happy. I want to see him in all the shouty Pacino roles now. Show me Chalamet doing the “six inches in front of your face” speech from Any Given Sunday. Give me him screaming about flamethrowers in Scent of a Woman. This should be his whole career now. But we definitely start here…

One of the great line deliveries in history. I would watch a reel of every actor in Hollywood giving their interpretation of it. Kieran Culkin could do wonders with it.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Australia!

A Darwin publican has given a crocodile “an almighty smack on the nose” after the reptile upset the pecking order on his island.

Goat Island Lodge owner Kai Hansen used a frying pan to whack the saltwater crocodile named Fred who charged towards him.

A few things here, all of which will, I think, be helpful. The first is that “publican” means pub owner in Australia. I did not know that. It makes it somehow funnier. As does the picture they posted of the guy holding the frying pan he used to bonk the croc, which is the second thing and something you need to see at once. I can’t post it here for copyright reasons but please, click on the link up there as soon as possible.

And once you’re back here, please take a few minutes and think about the thing where the crocodile he hit was named Fred. An Australian bar owner hit a crocodile named Fred with a frying pan. This is news.

Hansen, also known as “King Kai”, lives on the island alongside his beloved pet crocodile Casey.

The reptile entertains visitors on the banks of the Adelaide river.

Sure. Of course.

Hansen added that when Fred moved in, Casey started to climb up onto a walkway near the island’s heliport.

“Now he’s bigger than her and that is a problem,” Hansen said.

Hansen said this forced him to bring out his kitchen utensil shield.

So, to be very clear about all of this: An Australian bar owner hit a crocodile named Fred with a frying pan because it was encroaching on the territory of a second crocodile, named Casey, who the bar owner loves very much and uses to entertain people who line up near the river.

I will be thinking about this a lot in the next few weeks. Maybe every day. A part of me wonders if Fred is plotting revenge. A bigger part of me wonders if there should be a movie about this called Fred’s Revenge. We all have a lot to consider here.

Christian Bale’s one of those actors who (quite notoriously) cannot resist a good physical transformation. To his credit, he also brings the inward transformation as well, so the change-ups don’t seem like they’re done for the sake of simply looking different. Still, one can’t imagine that it’s healthy to live on only coffee, tuna, and apples ahead of The Machinist and the a bunch of donuts and cheeseburgers to prep for American Hustle. Those strenuous regimens still didn’t prepare him for how difficult one aspect of his Marvel transformation (into Gorr the God Butcher) would be for Thor: Love And Thunder.

Granted, Gorr has to compete with Thor’s butt for attention, but if you look at the above photo of Gorr the God Butcher, this doesn’t seem too rough in comparison with what Bale’s previously done. He’s wearing contacts and a full body of makeup, yes, but nothing that would really affect his quality of life outside the studio, right? Wrong. As Bale explained to Deadline, those nails extensions were killer:

“It rendered me completely incapable of everything. I was pathetic,” he said. “I found myself thinking things like, ‘I don’t think I can walk because I’ve got long nails.’ It affected my brain. I was like, ‘I can’t eat, I’ve got long nails.’ I was trying to type. I couldn’t do anything.”

Yeah, try to open a soda can with those nails! (Pro Tip: Use a spoon.)

Bale also glossed over comparisons between his character’s look and Marilyn Manson while declaring, “I hadn’t heard that. I was certainly influenced by the look of Nosferatu.” He further added that Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy” video contains “a character in that that Taika and I both enjoyed and he was my reference, even though perhaps the children would have run to the exits screaming had we fully embraced that.” Between that and the Thor butt, the MCU’s really getting wild these days.

(Via Deadline)