Month: July 2022

Rootin’ tootin’ Lauren Boebert’s got quite the arrest record. Granted, these all involve misdemeanors, and she’s never served prison time, but there have been at least three arrests, two of which she’s described in heroic terms. Missed court dates and additional fines related to those arrests don’t exactly paint the portrait of a law-abiding lawmaker, but of course, Boebert was front and center with criticism when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was one of 17 lawmakers arrested on Tuesday for protesting (the overturning of Roe) in front of the Supreme Court.

There’s clearly bound to be no love lost between AOC and Boebert, who previously challenged the progressive socialist to meet and discuss the wave of mass shootings while Boebert also digs in her Second Amendment heels. Boebert’s also attacked The Squad, including Ilhan Omar, on numerous occasions, and Sarah Palin 2.0 couldn’t be more thrilled to see them arrested. “I hope Squad members arrested today are placed in a cell next to the J6 inmates,” Boebert tweeted.

Naturally, the reactions flew fast and furious. Not only did people come at Boebert with questions about her alleged involvement in plotting the insurrection (and Boebert characteristically avoided the subject), but this was a heck of an opportunity for reminders about Boebert’s own rap sheet. Her mug shot made several appearances in replies, and that included people wondering how she could pass judgment for “good trouble” as opposed to going HAM at a “Country Jam” and telling drunken detainees to flee the scene, along with being arrested in front of her kids over unpaid citations.

Meanwhile, Boebert recently tried to explain away her husband’s arrest for exposing his penis in a bowling alley. Gotta root and toot!

Japanese Breakfast’s Jubilee has been out for over a year now, but the creative force that is Michelle Zauner has kept her foot firmly of the gas ever since. Zauner and Japanese Breakfast have become a face for Asian-Americans not just in indie music, but also in pop culture as a whole. Zauner’s bestselling book, Crying In H Mart, documented how she bonded with her mother over Korean cooking, and how their connection through food carried her emotionally as she cared for her mother in the last days of her life. The press tours surrounding the bestselling book have been never-ending for Zauner and today, the new Korean version “Be Sweet,” Jubilee’s lead single represents a full circle moment on this non-stop past year for Japanese Breakfast.

The version features So Yoon, of South Korean indie band Se So Neon, on vocals along with Zauner, and the result instantly feels like it was written this way to begin with. It’ll surely play well with the crowd at next month’s Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival in South Korea where Japanese Breakfast will be performing.

Zauner explained in a statement that Korean-American superstar DJ/producer Yaeji helped her shape the version as well, saying, “We thought it would be fun to put out a special Korean version of ‘Be Sweet’ preceding our upcoming performance in Seoul. I’m very grateful Yaeji helped me with the translation over a year ago. So!YoON! is one of my favorite indie artists in Seoul right now and I’m so happy we got to collab.”

Listen to Japanese Breakfast’s “Be Sweet (Korean Version)” above.

A24 has made some of the best movies of the past decade, many of which are available on the Showtime app. There’s Moonlight, and The Florida Project, and Green Room, and Lady Bird, and The Last Black Man in San Francisco, and First Cow, and Eighth Grade, and A Ghost Story, and Hereditary, and The Death of Dick Long, and… I could go on.

HBO Max is also getting into the A24 business, and business is good (time). The Wrap reports that the streaming service is adding “several of the distributor’s feature films” beginning August 1, including Ex Machina and Room. HBO Max is already the home of A24 productions like Euphoria, Irma Vep, and the upcoming The Idol, so it’s a natural fit.

Here’s the complete list:

“The Adderall Diaries” (2016)
“Amy” (2015)
“Barely Lethal” (2015)
“The Captive, AKA Queen Of The Night” (2014)
“Charles Swan” (2013)
“Dark Places” (2015)
“The End of the Tour” (2015)
“Enemy” (2014)
“Ex Machina” (2015)
“Ginger & Rosa” (2013)
“How to Talk to Girls at Parties” (2018)
“Laggies” (2014)
“Lean on Pete” (2018)
“Life After Beth” (2014)
“Locke” (2014)
“Mississippi Grind” (2015)
“Mojave” (2016)
“A Most Violent Year” (2014)
“Obvious Child” (2014)
“Remember” (2016)
“Revenge of the Green Dragons” (2014)
“Room” (2015)
“The Rover” (2014)
“Slow West” (2015)
“Son Of A Gun” (2015)
“The Spectacular Now” (2013)
“Tusk” (2014)
“Under the Skin” (2014)

I would suggest starting with: Amy, Ex Machina, Lean on Pete, A Most Violent Year, Obvious Child, Room, and Under the Skin.

(Via The Wrap)

Kodak Black’s legal troubles continued over the weekend when the rapper was arrested on a pair of drug charges in relation to the possession of oxycodone pills. Days after the arrest happened, Kodak Black’s lawyer Bradford Cohen is claiming that the rapper is not wrong for possessing the oxycodone pills because they were prescribed to him. During a conversation with TMZ, Cohen claims that the pills were prescribed to Kodak for pain he was dealing with after he was shot during a fight in Los Angeles back in February. Kodak’s lawyer adds that the pills were also to help him cope with injuries from an alleged assault by prison guards.

Cohen notes that he’s given prosecutors proof that the pills were prescribed, which will hopefully resolve the matter quickly. Kodak’s arrest occurred on July 15 and it came after officers pulled him over for an alleged illegal window tint as he rode in a Dodge Durango. Cops approached the car and it was here that they smelled a strong scent of marijuana. As a result, the vehicle was searched and 31 oxycodone pills and $74,960 in cash were discovered. Kodak was then hit with two drug charges: possession of a controlled substance without prescription and trafficking with oxycodone. All in all, it was an unfortunate event for Kodak in what’s been a strong year musically for him.

Kodak Black is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The entire final season of Better Call Saul has been a real “heart-stopper.” Literally for Bob Odenkirk, who collapsed on the set of the AMC series in July 2021. “I would have been dead if someone hadn’t immediately screamed and gotten someone there to give me CPR,” he said. “CPR saved my life.”

In a recent interview, Odenkirk claimed that he had the heart attack while filming episode nine, “Fun and Games,” but that’s not exactly true. It happened in episode eight, “Point and Shoot,” during the scene where Lalo instructs Jimmy then Kim to drive to Gus’ house and shoot him. “Episode nine is all stuff we shot after my heart attack, and in fact it is the first stuff I shot,” the Emmy nominee told EW. “The pick-up scenes [from episode eight] were not the first things we shot. So in my brain, I was like, ‘Wait a second, the first things I shot when I came back from the heart attack was nine.’ And that’s true.

The confusion, Odenkirk clarified, came from having a “different director. We had Michael Morris directing. We started in on that stuff. And then at some point in shooting that stuff, we stopped, Vince [Gilligan] came back and we picked up the final moments of the scene with me and Lalo and Kim. My brain just had a brain fart and I apologize to the world.” He joked that if you want to compare pre- and post-heart attack, “you’ll want to look at the scene with Kim and Jimmy, when Lalo was talking to them about the plan.”

The final season of Better Call Saul continues next Monday (with special guests?).

(Via EW)

Nickelodeon has long had a strong connection to music. Successful artists like Ariana Grande and Nick Cannon got their starts on the network, and Nick regularly gets top-tier performers to take the stage at the Kids’ Choice Awards, like Kid Cudi and Jack Harlow did a few months ago. Now, they’re getting into the music festival game: Yesterday, they announced NickFest, their first-ever music festival.

The inaugural edition is set to go down on October 22 and 23 at Los Angeles’ Rose Bowl and tickets are set to go on sale on July 26 at 10 a.m. PT. The event will feature headlining performances from The Kid Laroi and Monsta X. Other highlights from the lineup across its three stages include Beabadoobee, Kyle, 24kGoldn, Joshua Bassett, G Flip, and Alec Benjamin.

Beyond the music, there are also set to be “special experiences” featuring some of the network’s hottest current franchises, including SpongeBob SquarePants, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and The Loud House. On top of that, there will also be “appearances by” beloved Nick characters past and present, like SpongeBob‘s Patrick Star, Chuckie Finster and Tommy Pickles from Rugrats, Cosmo and Wanda from The Fairly Odd-Parents, Dora The Explorer, Avatar Aang from Avatar, and others.

The NickFest website describes the event, “NickFest is the messiest music festival ever. A 2-day extravaganza of music’s biggest acts, Nickelodeon characters and stars IRL, family-friendly activities and experiences, exceptional food, and a ridiculous amount of slime. Lovers of Nick nostalgia will be in heaven. Kids will have a blast. And moms and dads will earn the most ‘cool parent’ points allowed by law. Whether you’re 5 or 105 — get ready to let your Nick flag fly!”

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

Last December, the hip hop world suffered a massive loss with the death of Drakeo The Ruler, real name Darrell Caldwell, who was stabbed in the neck at Los Angeles’ Once Upon A Time Festival. Since then, his family filed a $20 million lawsuit against Live Nation, which was then raised to $60 million.

The lawsuit also names promotional partners Bobby Dee Presents and C3 Presents, as well as Banc of California Stadium owners Los Angeles Football Club. It cites the disaster at Astroworld the week before and accuses the promoters of negligence, claiming they did not place “the safety and wellbeing of its guests and its invited artists ahead of profits.”

On Tuesday, files were made public that show Live Nation arguing for negligence on the part of Caldwell’s brother Devante, as well as members of the brothers’ Stinc Team rap collective. In the demurrer obtained by Rolling Stone, Live Nation argue that they were not accountable for the “violent mob,” consisting of about 50 to 100 people with knives, that ambushed the rapper before he was supposed to take the stage. They also argued that no one “asked for additional security” or told promoters that Caldwell “faced threats and constant hostility from gang members.” Meanwhile, promoters argued that legally they were not required to prevent “third-party criminal conduct” since there were no “prior similar incidents.”

When they revived the Halloween franchise with a direct sequel to the original, David Gordon Green and Danny McBride vowed they’d only do three more. And their journey is about to come to an end. This October (of course) brings Halloween Ends, which pits Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode against her psychotic brother once more. And from the look of the first trailer, it’s gonna be knock-down, drag-out.

The threequel (that’s also a fourquel) begins as the 1978 John Carpenter original did, with a POV shot prowling up and inside a suburban house. It’s Michael Myers, of course (or so it’s implied), but this time there’s someone waiting for him: Laurie. And she has a gun.

So beings a series of fights between the two — nasty, bare-knuckle, full-bodied tussles, including one that finds Michael almost successfully shoving his sister’s hand inside the kitchen sink garbage disposal. It’s more action than Laurie saw in the previous entry, Halloween Kills, where she was still recovering from the brutal events of the 2018 film semi-confusingly also called Halloween.

Is this really the end for Laurie and Michael? Or maybe just one of them? Curtis herself formally bid farewell to the character she’s been playing for over 40 years, the one that took her from daughter of Hollywood royalty (and Columbo bit part actress) to star and eventually icon. She even got a tattoo, so this must be it for Laurie, at the very least. Then again, it’s not the first time she’s said goodbye to the character.

You can watch the trailer in the video above. Halloween Ends hits theaters on October 14.

Soccer Mommy just put out one of the most enticing albums of the year with the dark, sprawling Sometimes, Forever, which is submerged in a haunting, OPN-produced atmosphere and littered with lines about Sylvia Plath and love. Today, she’s back with a cover of “Losing My Religion” by R.E.M. for Deezer’s InVersions 90s project.

“There are so many bands and artists from the ’90s that inspire me personally,” Sophie Allison said. “I think there was a lot of good songwriting but also the production had so much range and so much creativity. I wanted to do a version on my own that was a little more solemn and dark. I wanted to keep the chords and arrangement pretty much the same to the original but just add my own voice.”

The “Shotgun” singer recently revealed that she doesn’t use any social media. “I’m not on it,” she told Rolling Stone in an interview about her new album. “Any of it. I’ll log on Instagram every once in a while to check my messages and respond to friends. That’s it. It’s honestly great. I just replaced it with solitaire and word games.”

Listen to her cover of “Losing My Religion” below.

It’s been almost a month since the right-leaning Supreme Court went on a tear. Among their many radical rulings including overturning Roe v. Wade, and its disastrous impact can already be felt. The GOP has remained steadfast in support of the deeply unpopular decision, even when a 10-year-old girl who’s been raped was denied an abortion. The move is even impacting industries one might not have expected to have a problem (but should have).

As per The Daily Beast, the rollback of women’s reproductive rights has sent shock waves across the porn industry. And it’s not hard to imagine why: While female performers or those that can become pregnant have always had to worry about contracting STIs on the job, they knew that if their birth control didn’t work, be it a pill or simply a condom, they had legal options to terminate any unwanted pregnancies.

Now they’re not so sure. Some have turned exclusively to girl-on-girl scenes. “For the time being, I have stopped working with other male models. I would love to continue to work with models if they can prove that they’ve had a vasectomy,” adult film actor Stephanie Eild told The Daily Beast.

The same thought occurred to Arietta Adams, who also stopped doing another form of pornography: what are called “creampies,” or when a man finishes inside their female screen partner, leaving visible residue. It’s proof that the performers did not use a condom, and it’s one of the most popular genres amongst today’s porn patron. At Pornhub, such videos are consistently in the site’s Top 10 searches.

“I want to be secure in that if I happen to get pregnant on set, I will be able to terminate the pregnancy,” Adams said. “I do not want a porn baby.”

While much of the porn industry resides in California, not all of it does. Many adult actors work in states where abortion was quickly outlawed, and because most of them have “independent contractor relationships” with their clients, they receive no protections from their employers should they need to procure abortions.

One porn actor put it even more bluntly than most in her profession. “My whole job revolves around sex, and now it’s being attacked because the government is only viewing it as a reproductive act, not an act of pleasure [or entertainment],” said Skye Blue “I don’t want to be tied to anyone I have sex with for the rest of my life just because one of their little swimmers made it to the egg.”

(Via The Daily Beast)