Month: September 2022

If the 2018 holiday season taught us anything, it’s that red can be a dangerously divisive color in the political world. One only needs to look back at Melania Trump’s blood-red Christmas trees, which drew comparisons to both The Handmaid’s Tale and The Shining, for proof.

On Thursday night, as Mediaite notes, Joe Biden delivered a scathing speech from Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, in which he took aim at the “MAGA forces [that] are determined to take this country backwards.” When it was over, however, the only thing those “MAGA forces” — including Tucker Carlson and his fellow Fox News hosts — seemed to want to talk about were the aesthetics of the proceedings, which included a red background behind Biden’s podium, with two Marines standing guard. (The latter of which was hardly unprecedented.)

As Carlson was on the air at the same time as Biden, he didn’t actually listen to his speech. But he got enough of the highlights to make a dark assessment of its content, and the president himself:

We made fun of it at the top of the show, because we didn’t really know how else to respond. But Joe Biden really has crossed over into a very dangerous — very dangerous — place. Tonight, he declared in a speech in Philadelphia that anyone who disagrees with him is a threat to the country.

Unsurprisingly, that is not what Biden said. What he did say — which Carlson showed a clip of — was that “too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal.” (Yep, sounds about right so far…) “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic. But the Republican party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a threat to this country.” (Bingo!)

Carlson, clearly irked by what he was hearing — perhaps because it hit a little too close to home? — decided that extra snark was the best reply, which is where that harmless red background became the story of the night. As Carlson noted:

Yeah, ‘they’re a threat,’ says the guy with the blood-red Nazi background and marines standing behind him. It’s a complete outrage that this is being sanctioned as a White House event. In other words, that this is the approved position of our government. It’s totally immoral.

And then the guy who encouraged riots in 2020 accused ‘MAGA Republicans’ of somehow threatening the rule of law in the United States… This is truly nuts and threatening to the future of the United States. It’s hard to believe he just did that, but he did.

Of course, Tucker wasn’t the only talking head on Fox News to take umbrage with Biden’s… choice of background color. Monica Crowley, Trump’s former treasury assistant secretary, described it as being “almost Satanic with that blood-red lighting and the two marines behind him. It was just insane.”

Former Trump speechwriter/37-year old man still on his parents’ cell phone plan Stephen Miller, meanwhile, praised his former boss for “pour[ing] his heart, his soul, his spirit everyday to build a better America,” then castigated Biden for delivering what Miller deemed “the speech of a dictator, in the style of a dictator, in the visual of a dictator, using the words of a dictator.”

Back up: Donald Trump has a soul?

(Via Mediaite)

Timothée Chalamet got deeply philosophical about the state of the world while promoting his new cannibal movie, Bones & All, at the Venice Film Festival. The film, which re-teams Chalamet with Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino, is about two disenfranchised youth trying to navigate life in the American Midwest in the ’80s. The experience led the young actor to examine how hard it is to grow up in these heavily scrutinized times where everything is blasted all over the internet.

“I can’t imagine what it is to grow up with the onslaught of social media, and it was a relief to play characters who are wrestling with an internal dilemma absent the ability to go on Reddit, or Twitter, Instagram or TikTok and figure out where they fit in,” Chalamet said during a press conference (via The Daily Beast). “Without casting judgment on that, you can find your tribe there, but I think it’s tough to be alive now.”

Chalamet took things even further by warning that society is in danger, and that’s why movies are more than important ever. “I think societal collapse is in the air—or it smells like it—and, without being pretentious, that’s why hopefully movies matter, because that’s the role of the artist… to shine a light on what’s going on.”

The press conference was a decidedly different tone from Chalamet, who last promoted his star turn in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune by revealing he kept Zendaya entertained on set with fart jokes. But what is youth if not the fluctuating swing from the death of the world to flatulence humor?

(Via The Daily Beast)

In David Fincher’s 2014 psychological thriller Gone Girl, Nick Dunne, played by Ben Affleck, calls his wife Amy (Rosamund Puke) a “c*nt,” “delusional,” and “insane,” and although he once loved her, that affection only led to resentment and them trying to control each other. Amy’s response: “That’s marriage.”

Affleck quoted one of his movies during his wedding to Jennifer Lopez, but unfortunately, it wasn’t this one. Instead, he chose a less-amusing option from Live by Night, a box office flop that he wrote, directed, and starred in. The line: “This is heaven. Right here. We’re in it now.” Lopez called it “one of my favorite lines that Ben wrote from a movie he directed called Live By Night,” she revealed in her “On the JLo” newsletter. “He also said it the night of our wedding reception in his speech, and I thought… how perfect.”

Lopez shared more details about the wedding:

“The truth is everyone’s story is different and we all have our paths to travel. No two people are the same. But for us, this was perfect timing. Nothing ever felt more right to me, and I knew we were finally ‘settling down’ in a way you can only do when you understand loss and joy and you are battle tested enough to never take the important things for granted or let the silly insignificant nuisances of the day get in the way of embracing every precious moment. We find ourselves in that long-desired time of life: having gratitude for all that life has shown us, even its trials and tribulations. That night really was heaven…”

That sounds heavenly, but it could have been better. Hear me out:

PASTOR: “Do you take this woman to be your wife, to live together in matrimony, to love her, to honor her, to comfort her, and to keep her in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, for as long as you both shall live?”

AFFLECK: “Gobble gobble.”

Now that’s romance.

(Via “On the JLo”)

(Spoilers for Season 3 of The Boys will be found below.)

The Boys cast members are having a grand time while filming Season 4, and in the process, Antony Starr and Chace Crawford are recreating a little bit of (gross) magic. Chace famously worried whether he would ever work again after what The Deep did (for the entirety of the season), including plenty of octopus sex. And in one particularly icky scene for Deep, Homelander did some pure evil by sadistically forcing his fellow The Seven member to eat his very close friend, Timothy the Octopus, while he was still alive.

It was a scene that made me freak out, and the effective CGI could make anyone dry heave. And considering how horribly The Deep began his run on The Boys (by sexually assaulting Starlight), it’s to Crawford’s credit that we feel for him (let’s just say the world has also had its revenge upon him) while Homelander forces him to commit this revolving act. Well, Starr and Crawford did a little Instagram reenactment, but with this caption from Starr: “No seafood. Just land mammals…” The “#justicefortimothy” hashtag is a nice touch, and an official Amazon Prime account chimed in with a “rip timothy this is what he saw before he died.”

Just for a refresher, here’s Timothy’s perspective.

And Laz Alonso (who portrays the lovable Mother’s Milk) added a “Grubbbbbbbbbbbbb” to the mix in Starr’s comments. Man, is Season 4 here yet? Not until 2023.

Many years ago, Willow launched her music career with an R&B-inspired sound, first on the hit 2010 single “Whip My Hair” and later on her albums through to 2019’s Willow. Things changed, though, on 2021’s Lately I Feel Everything, when Willow pursued a decidedly more rock- and pop-punk-oriented aesthetic. That shift worked out well for her: The album was her first to rank on the Billboard 200 chart and lead single “Transparent Soul” was her first song since 2011 to pop up on the Hot 100.

However, Willow says there was some hesitance about her stylistic pivot and she believes a big reason for it is her race.

In a new Glamour UK interview, she said:

“When I wanted to do a rock album, there were a lot of executives that were like, ‘Hmm.’ If I had been white, it would’ve been completely fine; but because I’m Black, it’s, ‘Well… maybe let’s just not,’ and making it harder than it needs to be. […] If I go through that, every single other Black artist is getting the pushback, [too].”

She also noted, “I love all different kinds of music, I don’t like to box myself into anything. I was trained to be an R&B singer so I went in that direction, but I’ve always had a huge affinity for rock music ever since I was just a wee bean.”

Read the full interview here.

Elton John and Britney Spears’ collaboration “Hold Me Closer” is doing pretty well, as it just went No. 1 on the Australian chart and it could emerge on top in the UK ranks, too. (How it fared on the US charts will be revealed next week.) Given that this was Spears’ first recording in a while, though, John says there was one thing he was unsure about when it came to Spears.

Speaking with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe yesterday (September 1), John said (as Billboard reports):

“She did it so well and so easily, and I’m sure a lot of people thought, ‘Well, can she still sing?’ Well, I knew for a start that she could sing because if you go back and look at the old footage, she was the biggest artist in the world and she could sing, she could dance, she could do everything. So I wasn’t worried about that. What I was worried about is if she would be so nervous because she hadn’t done it for a while, but she came through it with flying colors.”

He also noted, “I’m really happy for Britney, especially because having her on this record is such a gas, for start. But this is someone who has been through hell, who needed some love in her life, a lot of love from a lot of people, and she’s getting it. And she hadn’t really made any music since 2016, so it’s all about her for me. Life unfolds on an incredible speed, and I don’t know what will happen, but I’m so thrilled this is happening because I love the record. I love the fact that it’s ‘Tiny Dancer’ because it’s one of my favorite songs. I’m a lucky man. Listen, what can I say? The record’s taken off. 75 years of age and having the time of my life, and it proves that you can still be modern and be old at the same time if you care to take an interest in what’s going on.”

This November is the two-year anniversary of Alex Trebek’s death, which is hard to believe. It seems like it was only yesterday he was making fun of nerds and being “insensitive” about a pygmy goat. To honor the long-time Jeopardy! host, producers are planning a tribute that will “break the internet.”

In the latest episode of the essential Inside Jeopardy! podcast, executive producer Michael Davies revealed, “Overall, we owe him a fantastic episode of Jeopardy! on that day,” referring to November 8, the day of Trebek’s death (and Election Day). “It may well break the internet. I don’t want to give too much away.”

Elsewhere in the episode, producer Sarah Whitcomb Foss spoke to current Jeopardy! hosts Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik, who discussed the upcoming season, the show’s 39th. ““It’s very exciting and especially exciting to get to share this honor and this platform with Ken who is such a legend and it’s very exciting, it’s overwhelming but in a really good way,” Bialik said. Jennings added, “I’m just such a fan of the show, to this day, I feel like a fan, I wouldn’t be the person I am without all the Jeopardy! I watched as a kid, and then, of course, it changed my life in a big way 20 years ago, it’s just an honor to be associated with the show in any way, and now with Mayim double the perks.”

Jeopardy! returns with new episodes later this month.

(Via TV Insider)

Mild spoilers for The Boys will be found below.

I hear you. You’ve been hearing from friends who have told you that The Boys is an incredible show. They’ve been tossing out names like Homelander and The Deep and talking about something called Vought International, and Supes seem to be different than the superheroes that people have grown to love in Disney/Marvel Studios’ MCU and (in a very different way) the Warner Bros. DC movies. Well, that’s a correct assumption. You’ve never seen “heroes” like these, and yes, you should stream The Boys on Amazon. Let’s move through a brief lowdown of what you need to know before beginning this raunchy trip.

(Also very important: This is a weekly series when it airs, and that’s for the better. It’s best when it’s incrementally watched and digested, but also feel free to binge it hard.)

Source Material: Garth Ennis penned The Boys comic book series, which launched like a bullet in 2005 with a hyper-cynical look at superhero culture (with a hefty amount of political allegory in addition to entertainment value). Like the show, the comic was unapologetically shocking, mega-violent, and drenched in blood and other bodily fluids. Anyone who’s read Preacher or watched it on AMC (by the grace of executive producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who also have a heavy hand in The Boys with Rogen appearing onscreen multiple times throughout three seasons). The show’s largely faithful to the comic, and showrunner Eric Kripke does a fine job bringing the grossest moments from the page to the screen in a believable way.

The Supes: Although the show is named after that other group (who we will discuss), The Seven is filled with parody versions of characters that you’ve loved or loathed in the past. Homelander is a bit of Superman and Captain America (and the latter descriptor also goes for the eventual arrival of Soldier Boy, who’s a blast from the Payback past); the Deep is a super raunchy version of Aquaman who actually f*cks ocean dwelling animals; Queen Maeve is a play on Wonder Woman, and so on. Translucent is invisible, Black Noir never speaks, A-Train can’t control his speed. Let’s just say that they’re a mess, and Starlight is the new lady on the block who goes through some hell. She’s the one with one foot out the door at all times, even if all the Supes do work for Vought International’s PR machine. The less you initially know about that, the better.

The Boys: Enter the vigilante group who’s got more than a little bit of superhero burnout. They’re sick and tired of the Supes getting away with sh*t, and they’re led by Billy Butcher, who’s got a personal score to settle with Homelander. Hughie arrives all freshly un-doe-eyed by the trauma that he experiences very early on in the series. There’s Frenchie and Kimiko and Mother’s Milk (the grounded one), all of whom bring different strengths to the table as they all deal with their own respective ghosts and reasons for fighting against the Vought machine. As they peel back the layers of their targeted onion, they only find that things grow more rotten and corrupt as they dig into the core.

The Spinoffs: The flagship series arrived as such a juggernaut that Amazon couldn’t resist putting offshoots and spinoffs into production. The first new series, Diabolical, arrived in R-ish-rated animated form and serves to not only provide standalone stories (that involved Compound V but aren’t directly related to the main series) but also fill in some blanks, including Homelander’s backstory and how he first got involved in The Seven. This was a nice way to tide fans over during the wait between Seasons 2 and 3 of The Boys. The flagship series is currently filming Season 4, and we don’t know if more Diabolical is coming, but we do know that another spinoff is currently filming…

Gen V will be one to watch. We can expect this to arrive before The Boys Season 4, and Gen V is billed as a college-age version of the flagship series. This spinoff stars Patrick Schwarzenegger, and if you’re wondering if this show is as outrageous as the O.G. series, here’s a clue: when Patrick showed some set photos to his dad, Arnold, the Commando star asked, “What the f*ck are you filming?” That’s a ringing endorsement in and of itself, and yep, I cannot wait to see Gen V and much more of The Boys.

The Boys is currently streaming Seasons 1-3 on Amazon.

Britney Spears’ Instagram has been deactivated for a short while now, during which time she has instead been more active on Twitter. Now, though, Spears has returned to Instagram and in her first post back shared last night (September 1), she addresses her sons Jayden and Preston, telling them about her nude photos, their father Kevin Federline, motherhood, and more.

She starts, “I’ve tried my best at being the best person I can be … to be basically held hostage in homes under nurses and bullsh*t I hope my kids one day understand my reasoning of my play in water revealing myself as any woman would being held under blankets and supervision under the conservatorship !!! Finally at 40 without the restraints of what my family did to me …”

Spears also noted of Federline, “I helped your father who hasn’t had a job in 15 years … I assume it is easier for you guys not to have someone check on you to make sure you’re doing your homework !!!! I’m sure the standards of your dad smoking weed every day benefits your daily life at 15 and 16 to partake in a VERY COOL GENERATION !!!”

Read Spears’ full post below.

“I’ve tried my best at being the best person I can be … to be basically held hostage in homes under nurses and bullsh*t I hope my kids one day understand my reasoning of my play in water revealing myself as any woman would being held under blankets and supervision under the conservatorship !!! Finally at 40 without the restraints of what my family did to me …

I say to my son Jayden that I send all the love in the world to you every day for the rest of my life !!!! My love for my children has no boundaries and it deeply saddens me to know his outcry of saying I wasn’t up to his expectations of a mother … and maybe one day we can meet face to face and talk about this openly !!!! Maybe dear child YOU can explain to me why our family would do that to anyone !!!!

I helped your father who hasn’t had a job in 15 years … I assume it is easier for you guys not to have someone check on you to make sure you’re doing your homework !!!! I’m sure the standards of your dad smoking weed every day benefits your daily life at 15 and 16 to partake in a VERY COOL GENERATION !!! I completely understand your need to live with your father as I had to play the perfect role for 15 years for absolutely nothing. I’m so happy I was able to carry 4 tours, judge X Factor and WAAAY more … I did that for you.

And Preston … I’m aware of your gift … I know you’re a teacher in my life and dear child I’m a teacher for you as well !!! It’s horrible to see your dad be a hypocrite and say the media is horrible yet he has you talking about personal matters to them !!! If you could pause for a second remember where you came from !!! I hope you can look in the mirror and remember … you are my child and always will be !!!! Since Preston didn’t speak, I send my love !!! I would love nothing more than to see you two face to face. Keep playing your gift on the piano … you and your brother both are brilliant and I’m so proud to call you both mine.

As for my mental health … my dear child understand you must learn to pick up a book and read one before you resort to even thinking about my intellect sweetheart !!! Tell your father to go try and at least mow the lawn …

Psss if you can honestly sit back and say with your sensible brilliant mind what memaw and paw paw did to me was fine and call them not bad people … then yes I have failed as a mother and hopefully that’s a chat for you and your father to sit face to face and try to learn WHAT’S GOOD.”

While Freddie Gibbs’s recent headlines have focused on his intense back-and-forth over social media with Benny The Butcher, the Indiana rapper has clearly not lost a step when it comes to the booth. The “Too Much” video finds the Bandana artist celebrating his excess wealth surrounded by beautiful women playing slots. With money in mind, it made perfect sense to throw Moneybagg Yo into the mix for a guest appearance.

The two traverse the casino while security watches with fury through their security cameras. It is a unique foray for Gibbs, as the production is more trap-focused and he utilizes autotune on his vocals. As for Moneybagg, this beat is right in his usual brooding yet high-energy pocket.

“Too Much” marks Freddie Gibbs’s first release of 2022 and comes with the announcement of his forthcoming album $oul $old $eparately set to release on September 30. “Too Much” follows Gibbs’s deluxe edition of Piñata, released in 2021. The 40-year-old is coming off of a major year after Alfredo, fully produced by The Alchemist, was nominated for a Grammy at the 2021 award show.

Moneybagg Yo has stayed present, notably joining his label CMG The Label for their compilation album Gangsta Art. He was also featured on Offset’s recent single “Code” and the two appeared on Trippie Redd’s “Big 14” in August.

Check out the video for “Too Much” above.

$oul $old $eparately is out 9/30 via ESGN and Warner. Pre-order it here.

Freddie Gibbs is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.