Year: 2022

Perhaps the most famous Pavement lyric comes from the band’s 1994 favorite “Range Life,” when Stephen Malkmus sings at the end of the song, “Out on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins / Nature kids, I, they don’t have no function / I don’t understand what they mean and I could really give a f*ck / The Stone Temple Pilots, they’re elegant bachelors / They’re foxy to me, are they foxy to you? / I will agree they deserve absolutely nothing, nothing more than me.”

Last night, Pavement returned for their first concert in 12 years and they’ve decided to leave the beef behind: Uproxx’s own Philip Cosores was at last night’s (May 23) show at The Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles and he reported Malkmus changed the song’s lyrics to no longer mention Smashing Pumpkins or Stone Temple Pilots. They opted to note different bands instead: While the first one is hard to make out, the second is Toad The Wet Sprocket.

If you ask Malkmus, the original lyrics weren’t a Smashing Pumpkins diss at all, or at least not an all-encompassing one: In a 1999 interview, Malkmus said of the supposed Pumpkins beef: “I only laughed about the band name, because it does sound kinda silly. […] And well, their status, that they were the indie darlings, the heroes of the indie scene. I never really dissed their music. I like their songs — well, most of their songs anyway. Especially ‘1979,’ that’s a cool song. As I said, I never dissed their music. I just dissed their status. I never really cared for the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle or being ‘indie.’”

After a blowout road win in Game 2 to steal home-court advantage from the Miami Heat, the Boston Celtics ceded the advantage with a home loss on Saturday. Just 48 hours later at TD Garden, the Celtics wasted no time in taking control of Game 4, seizing a massive first half lead and cruising to a 102-82 victory to even the Eastern Conference Finals at 2-2.

Prior to tip-off, the lion’s share of attention was on the injury report, with Tyler Herro ruled out for Miami and Marcus Smart out of action for Boston. Even without the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, Boston’s defense was suffocating in the early going, and the Heat certainly missed Herro’s offensive punch. In fact, Miami was simply unable to score for an incredibly lengthy period of time in the opening period.

The Heat missed their first 14 shots, the most consecutive misses to open a playoff game in more than two decades, and Miami did not convert a field goal for more than eight and a half minutes. With seven quick points from Derrick White and reasonable offensive efficiency, Boston took an 18-1 advantage, even as the Celtics missed six of their first seven attempts from three-point range.

Miami eventually coaxed a couple of shots through the rim with help of Victor Oladipo, but Boston led by as many as 22 points in the first quarter and held a 29-11 lead after 12 minutes. The Heat shot just 15 percent from the floor in the period, setting a new franchise playoff record for the fewest points in an opening quarter. Boston was not overly efficient in terms of shot making, but the Celtics owned a massive advantage on the glass, winning the possession battle and benefitting from Miami’s inaccurate attack.

Picking up where they left off in the first quarter, the Celtics nudged their advantage to as many as 27 points in the second quarter, leading 50-23 after approximately 20 minutes of action. The Heat missed 19 of their first 23 attempts from inside the three-point arc, with Boston riding Jayson Tatum on the offensive end.

Tatum led the Celtics with 24 points on 6-of-11 shooting in the first quarter, using 14 free throw attempts to boost efficiency. Boston’s team-wide offensive numbers (38 percent from the floor, 4-of-17 from three-point range) were extremely pedestrian, but with Miami shooting just 11-of-40 from the floor on the way to 33 points, the Celtics held a 24-point advantage at the break.

Boston continued its dominance to begin the third quarter. The Celtics built their lead to 32 points and, by the middle of the period, whispers were circulating on just how long the starters for both teams would remain in the contest.

However, the Celtics scored only 19 points in the third quarter, shooting 35 percent from the floor in the process. It wasn’t as if Miami lit the world on fire on offense, also scoring 19 points, but the Heat used an 8-0 run late in the period to get back within 24 points with 12 minutes remaining.

That (faint) push from the Heat did not persist, and the game effectively ended with a final haymaker from the Celtics early in the fourth quarter. Boston used a 12-5 run to take a 31-point lead, and while the Heat did close the gap with hot three-point shooting in garbage time, the result was never in doubt.

For Miami, it was simply an offensive nightmare. Oladipo performed well with 23 points, but the Heat dug an impossibly deep hole in the first half and shot just 29.6 percent on two-point attempts, even with the help of a scattered fourth quarter. On the other end, Miami’s defense was at least reasonable, aside from failures on the defensive glass, but it was a performance to forget.

Boston did not light up the box score with shotmaking, but the Celtics used the free throw line and their defensive resistance to secure the win. The home team shot 32-of-38 from the line and secured 14 offensive rebounds while committing only 11 turnovers. Tatum led the attack with 31 points, and it was a balanced and effective effort despite only 23.5 percent shooting from beyond the arc.

With the series now leveled at 2-2 and the Heat still boasting home-court advantage in the best-of-seven clash, there is something of a reset in advance of Wednesday’s Game 5 in Miami. Through four contests, however, the series has operated in bizarre fashion, and the status of Herro and Smart will be of great interest as the teams travel on Tuesday.

In a move similar to creating the “burn book” in Mean Girls, Russia has released a list of nearly 1000 Americans who are permanently banned from entering Russia, and the list is really something.

Coming in at number 840 is acclaimed actor Morgan Freeman, who has been banned due to the fact that he narrated a 2017 video clip that accused the Russian government of “cyber warfare.” The clip was from The Committee To Investigate Russia, and was directed by Rob Reiner, a director known for The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally. Reiner also made the list, which includes a slew of actors, politicians, and Mark Zuckerberg. Anyone named on the list allegedly “incite Russophobia.”

Noticeably present on the list is a handful of names of people who are quite literally dead, so they had no plans on heading to Russia any time soon. This includes John McCain, the deceased senator who was once desperate for Twitter followers. McCain died in 2018 after a lengthy battle with brain cancer.

Other notable names include Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Vide President Kamala Harris, and her husband, Douglas Craig Emhoff.

Some people listed were “honored” by the list, including diplomat Mike Carpenter, former federal prosecutor Norman Barbosa, and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin.

Not including on the list is former president Donald Trump, who would tweet about it if he could!

The first trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder was a pretty lighthearted affair. It wasn’t even clear what the movie was about. It shows Chris Hemsworth’s ripped Norse god trying to find the new him in the wake of Avengers: Endgame. He’d appointed Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie as king of New Asgard so he could cruise the cosmos with the Guardians of the Galaxy. We saw glimpses of Natalie Portman’s returning Jane Foster, who we knew would become Mighty Thor. There was some Guns N’ Roses licks. It wasn’t even clear if there would be any real conflict. Maybe there didn’t need to be.

If that’s what you thought, clearly you forgot Christian Bale was the baddie. He’s Gorr the God Butcher, a pale, ghostly “galactic killer” hellbent on destroying all gods. He doesn’t pop up till halfway through the latest trailer, but he singlehandedly darkens and deepens what still seemed like a goofy lark. It’s our first look at him, and he is very much not kidding around.

Before he shows up, though, we get to see more of Portman’s newly ripped Jane. When it begins, it’s narrated by Korg, the endearing rock creature voiced by director Taika Waititi, and he positions the film as being a tale of two former lovers reuniting — and one of them going so far as to steal his hammer. Indeed, as Waititi promised, it appears that Portman will have a lot more to do than she did when she was just some nice scientist from planet Earth.

You can watch the new Thor: Love and Thunder trailer above. The film arrives on July 8.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is about to enter its fourth month, and no matter what Vladimir Putin tells his people, it’s not going well for them. The aggressor nation has been hit with untold sanctions, which have affected everyone from yacht-owning oligarchs to local Netflix subscribers. But now Russia is hitting back at their critics in one relatively small way: They’ve banned almost 1,000 Americans from entering the nation — and before you ask, yes, Morgan Freeman is among them.

As per The Hill, Russia unveiled a list on Saturday that included a whopping 963 names, all Americans, all of them permanently banned from visiting the land that once produced such game-changing luminaries as Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and Sergei Eisenstein. There are the usual suspects: Joe Biden (and his son Hunter), Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Cory Booker, etc. There are also, strangely, some folks from MAGA world, including Louie Gohmert and Paul Gosar. (One name not on it: Donald J. Trump.)

There were even some names from the entertainment industry. Rob Reiner, an outspoken critic of Trump and Russia, was no surprise. But what is Morgan Freeman doing on it? What did the guy from Lucky Number Slevin ever do? Well, maybe it has to do with a video he participated in back in 2017 in which he called out Russia for its alleged interference in the 2016 election.

“We have been attacked. We are at war,” Freeman says in the video, looking straight into the camera, his voice at its authoritative-cum-soothing best. He even accused Putin of using cyberwarfare “like the true K.G.B. spy he is.” He then called on then-president Trump to “use every resource available to conduct a thorough investigation to determine exactly how this happened.”

The video enraged Russian authorities and locals at the time. Perhaps they haven’t forgotten. And now they’ve included him in what the nation’s foreign ministry admits is a reponse to the sanctions they’ve received since invading Ukraine. Anyway, it’s their loss. It just means more occasions to hear him narrate the pool scene from Fast Times at Ridgemont High for the rest of us.

(Via The Hill)

David Cronenberg hasn’t made a movie in eight years, and he hasn’t made a proper “body horror” movie in far longer than that — since 1999’s eXistenZ, where futuristic gamers plug consoles directly into their bodies. Is the director of such vomit bag classics as Scanners, Videodrome, and The Fly — to say nothing of transgressive sex movies like Crash and Naked Lunch — back in the habit? The first reviews of his new Crimes of the Future, say yes — but they also promise something else: an experience that, at least on first viewing, isn’t easy to get a hold on.

The new Crimes of the Future (not to be confused with a somewhat similar early work from 1970 of the same name) stars regular Viggo Mortensen as a performance artist (named Saul Tenser) who has become obsessed with growing new kinds of organs inside his body, crafted by his personal surgeon (Léa Seydoux). Having cast Robert Pattinson in his last two films, Cronenberg turns to fellow Twilight alum Kristen Stewart, who plays a government agent who examines their work.

Despite breaking through as a master of horror, Cronenberg is also what you could dub a maker of art films, and he’s long fused the two genres in ways that are both beguiling and sometimes tricky to grok. It can take multiple viewings to get what he’s doing, especially when he strays from genre, as he’s done with the likes of Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, Crash, and more. Though Crimes’ first wave of Cannes reviews have been positive, even the raves are tempered with warnings that it can be rough going. Cronenberg himself has promised mass walk-outs, and the reviews agree that it’s at least pretty darn gross.

From IndieWire:

Whether you have the stomach to survive “Crimes of the Future” would seem to be a more complicated matter. At a time when holy s*it, you have to see this insanity has become the fastest shortcut for arthouse fare to get around the always-suffocating layers of superhero movie hype, it was inevitable that Cronenberg’s first movie since “Maps to the Stars” would be positioned as some kind of sick endurance test that found him revisiting the familiar preoccupations of body horror classics like “Dead Ringers” and “The Fly” so that he could combine all of their gnarliest moments into a career-spanning orgy of squelching latex.

Variety argues that is “out to provoke and disturb us with something far more traumatic than mere monsters”:

Am I talking about the fact that in the distant future where the film is set, human beings grow mysterious new organs in their bodies? Or that having those organs removed through surgery has become, for a creepy rebel aesthete named Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), a species of performance art? Or that people no longer experience physical pain, and will therefore stand in the street late at night cutting each other for cheap thrills, as if they were shooting heroin in a back alley? Or that surgery itself, as someone puts it, has become “the new sex”?

Entertainment Weekly describes it as a “Cronenberg Greatest Hits” collection, “so loaded does it it come with his signature themes and gooey, seemingly hand-crafted contours.” Critic Leah Greenblatt also calls it “inscrutable,” saying that, “Aside from a few neat visual tricks — a chair seemingly made of rubberized bones, a writhing dancer dotted with real human ears like a walking Duchamp punchline — the film unfurls mostly in shadows and corners, and so do its characters’ inner lives.”

The Playlist:

His new film — titled “Crimes of the Future,” as in committed by rather than during that span of time — finds the master on the other side of his extended sojourn in high-minded literary adaptation, biopic quasi-prestige, and Tinseltown satire, back to playing the body-horror hits on which he made his name. He’s resumed pondering the permeability of flesh, how its penetration by surgical tools (the new sex, as we’re informed) can be just as intimately sensual as good old fornication. We’re treated to state-of-the-art grotesqueries

Deadline:

Originally readied for production in 2003 before being canceled, this is a film very much targeted to the director’s core audience; rarely, if ever, have human organs played such an important role in one of his works, and that’s saying something. But whether it’s age or inclination, he’s having a bit of fun with his grotesque conceits here and taking them less seriously; he’s not at a self-parody stage, but there’s something of a wink behind what he’s doing that wasn’t often in evidence before.

And The A.V. Club:

Cronenberg’s A History Of Violence and Eastern Promises star Viggo Mortensen plays Saul Tenser, in eternal discomfort because his body is rebelling against him. Within him grow unnatural organs, which his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux) removes during live performance art ceremonies. They live in an underground bunker, or maybe it’s a dried-out aqueduct, and Saul sleeps in what looks like a giant upside-down beetle. He eats in a contraption made from bones that jostles him around, supposedly to help him digest. Whenever he goes out, he wears a cloak like he’s about to sing backup for Enigma. Nothing about it makes a lick of sense, but there’s a surreal flow to it all that, in the moment, carries you from scene to scene.

Crimes of the Future is set to be released in June. You can watch the latest red band trailer above, though be forewarned: It’s intense.

Mozart was known for his musical talent at a young age, playing the harpsichord at age 4 and writing original compositions at age 5. So perhaps it’s fitting that a video of 5-year-old piano prodigy Alberto Cartuccia Cingolani playing Mozart has gone viral as people marvel at his musical abilities.

Alberto’s legs can’t even reach the pedals, but that doesn’t stop his little hands from flying expertly over the keys as incredible music pours out of the piano at the 10th International Musical Competition “Città di Penne” in Italy. Even if you’ve seen young musicians play impressively, it’s hard not to have your jaw drop at this one. Sometimes a kid comes along who just clearly has a gift.

Of course, that gift has been helped along by two professional musician parents. But no amount of teaching can create an ability like this.

Alberto started playing in 2020 in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Italy was one of the first countries to experience a serious lockdown, and Alberto’s mother used the opportunity to start teaching her son to play piano. Alessia Cingolani and her husband Simone Cartuccia are both music conservatory graduates, and mom Alessia told Italian entertainment website Contrataque that she and her husband recognized Alberto’s talent immediately.

She said that although Alberto spends a lot of time at the piano, he also has plenty of time for school and play and television, like a normal kid.

There’s genuinely nothing “normal” about this kid’s piano playing, though. Watch:

Wow, right? There are countless adults who took years of piano lessons and never got to that level of playing. It’s like he’s channeling Amadeus himself.

According to Corriere Adriatico, by the time he was 4 1/2 years old, Alberto had participated in seven national and international online competitions and won first place in all of them. His mother told the outlet that he started out practicing for about 10 minutes a day and gradually increased to three hours.

“He has a remarkable flair for the piano,” she said. Um, yeah. Clearly.

Some commenters expressed some concern for the boy based on his seriousness and what looks like dark circles under his eyes in the video, but if you check out other videos of Alberto playing at home, he is more relaxed. Most of his playing and competition entries have been done online, so performing for a crowd is probably new for him. And in interviews, his mother has made it clear that they prioritize normal childhood activities.

Some children are just genuine prodigies, and Alberto certainly seems to fit that bill. Can’t wait to see what kind of musical future awaits this kid.

Despite being a one-term former president who now rants to strangers in resorts in which he now lives, Donald Trump remains the prospective Republican candidate for the 2024 election. Oh, and he also appears to be okay with a second Civil War! But should he even have enough money to run a third time, he might have a surprising challenger: his former vice president Mike Pence.

In a new profile by The New York Times, Pence was asked if he’d run again, and his answer was cagey but telling. “We’ll go where we’re called,” he replied, saying he would leave it up to prayer. “That’s the way Karen and I have always approached these things.”

Pence did not trash-talk Trump, saying he was “incredibly proud” of their five years of campaigning and leading the nation. Trump, of course, did not return to the favor. After Pence announced he would travel to Georgia to campaign for incumbent Georgia governor Brian Kemp — one of Trump’s biggest punching bags — a spokesperson for the ex-president dissed Pence, charging that he’s “desperate to chase his lost relevance” by “parachuting into races, hoping someone is paying attention.”

Does this mean the bromance between Trump and Pence is finally finito? Whatever the case, things have not been good between them since at least Jan. 6, when Trump’s violent supporters vowed to hang Pence, which Trump has defended. The two have reportedly not talked in a good while, but at least publicly Pence has mostly kept quiet, apart from pointing out that Trump was “wrong” to think Pence could overturn the 2020 election results. Somehow Trump is the mad one here, not the guy who almost got killed.

(Via NYT)

Sometimes you need a helping hand to have the best possible start. That’s what’s happening with five baby Humboldt penguins at the ZSL London Zoo in England.

Zookeepers have stepped in to help care for the newest inhabitants of the zoo’s Penguin Beach after it was discovered their parents were struggling a little. The keepers have become the penguins’ parents, hand-rearing the little penguins in the zoo’s nursery.

“During the breeding season, we check the nests on Penguin Beach every day, keeping an eye out for any chicks who might not be feeding enough or whose parents are struggling to care for their brood,” ZSL London Zoo penguin keeper Suzi Hyde explained in a statement from the zoo.

“These five chicks all had first-time parents who needed a little bit of extra support, so we were happy to swoop in—with a little help from a few soft toy penguins, donated by the zoo shop, for them to snuggle up to.”

Baby animals usually have a parent to snuggle up to and penguin babies depend on their parents for their survival. Both penguin parents are responsible for the care and feeding of the babies. Adult penguins recognize their babies by their distinct call. The ZSL zookeepers are currently caring for the babies by feeding them round-the-clock. But humans can’t snuggle like their penguin equivalents. Enter the stuffed animals.

All of the little penguins were born between April 14 and 24 and have been living under warming lamps with their stuffed surrogate parent in the center. Currently, they’re being fed something called a “penguin milkshake,” which is a mix of blended fish, minerals and vitamins. It mimics the food that is regurgitated to the babies from their parents.

The zoo recently shared a video of the babies in their little incubator bowls during their daily weigh-ins and it’s clear they’re growing stronger every day.

“The chicks have all steadily increased in weight by ten percent each day, so they’re growing very quickly,” Suzi Hyde said. “They’re always eager for their next meal and make sure we know it’s feeding time — they may be only a month old, but they’ve definitely perfected their squawk!”

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Four of the baby penguins are girls and there is one boy. Because they’re inhabitants of London Zoo, the zookeepers thought it would be great to honor Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee by naming each of them after different prominent moments in her 70-year reign as monarch. There’s Hillary, named after Sir Edmund Hillary, the first British person to scale Mount Everest; Bobby, who honors soccer player Bobby Moore leading to a World Cup win in 1966; Apollo, after the moon landing in 1969; Mac, named after Ellen MacArthur, who set a record in 2006 for a nonstop sail around the world; and Bernie, after the creator of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee.

Currently, the penguins are covered in soft gray feathers that aren’t waterproof, so they can’t really do much. In another month or so, when they’re around 10 weeks old, they will be moved to the zoo’s nursery pool and begin swimming lessons. Once they have their waterproof feathers, they’ll join the 62 other Humboldt penguins in the Penguin Beach exhibit.

Warning: This post contains a big-ish spoiler about the Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers movie.

There’s a new Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers movie up on Disney+, and it’s surprisingly meta and clever and funny. Okay, maybe that’s not that surprising considering it stars John Mulaney and Andy Samberg and was directed by the latter’s Lonely Island compatriot Akiva Schaffer. One minor character — Ugly Sonic, voiced by no less than Tim Robinson — has gotten a lot of attention. So has another one, but not for the same reasons.

As caught by writer Ryan Broderick, on his newsletter Garbage Day, a lot of people on the 4chan board /co/, dedicated to comics and cartoons, are more than a little peeved with how it treats one of the late ‘80s/early ‘90s Disney Afternoon show’s main characters. That would be Gadget, the Hackwrench, the gang’s mechanic and all-around tech wizard who’s voiced, on the show and in the movie, by Tress MacNeille, aka the voice of Agnes Skinner, Lunch Lady Doris, and more on The Simpsons.

For some kids of a certain age at a certain time, the blonde-haired Gadget — who, let’s stress, is a cartoon mouse — was something of a, shall we say, epochal figure in one’s development. And, as Broderick noticed, some of them took to the anonymous message board to vent their frustration at what happens to her in the movie: She’s hooked up with Zipper, the housefly, and produced an army of mouse-bug hybrids.

Some of the posts are apoplectic. “Did they stop to consider for a second how this would affect her hoardes [sic] of loyal fans?” one 4chan user steamed. Another condemned the idea of a mouse commingling with a “filthy insect that feeds off excrement” and producing “maggot-vermin abomination offspring.”

A search on the 4chan board finds still more. “It’s not even about Gadget or you f*cks, it’s about the PRINCIPLE of it,” one wrote. “She represented childhood innocence, and (((they))) corrupted that idea on purpose.” Another wrote, “Bros, how do i cope the fact that the waifu of my infancy got f*cked by a fly?”

For everyone else, the new Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers movie streams on Disney+. It has a Post Malone song.

(Via Garbage Day)