Month: February 2023

This may come as a surprise, but some people who watch a TV show based on a video game have toxic views. I know I’m shocked, but it’s true. Take a look at the reaction to the Bill and Frank episode of The Last of Us. Or better yet, don’t look at it.

Actress Melanie Lynskey, who plays Kathleen, an original character created for the HBO series, has also been hearing from the worst that Twitter has to offer since she made her debut during last Sunday’s episode. And frankly, she’s thrilled.

“Other than getting to work with creative geniuses who I respect and admire [creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann] the thing that excited me most about doing #TheLastOfUs is that my casting suggested the possibility of a future in which people start listening to the person with the best ideas,” the Yellowjackets actress wrote in a lengthy Twitter thread. Lynskey described Kathleen as not “the coolest or the toughest person,” but “the organiser. The person who knows where everything is. The person who is doing the planning. The person who can multitask. The one who’s decisive.”

She continued:

Women, and especially women in leadership positions, are scrutinized incessantly. Her voice is too shrill. Her voice is too quiet. She pays too much attention to how she looks. She doesn’t pay enough attention to how she looks. She’s too angry. She’s not angry enough. I was excited at the idea of playing a woman who had, in a desperate and tragic time, jumped into a role she had never planned on having and nobody else had planned on her having, and then she actually got shit done… I understand that some people are mad that I’m not the typical casting for this role. That’s thrilling to me. Other than the moments after action is called, when you feel like you’re actually in someone else’s body, the most exciting part of my job is subverting expectations

Kathleen gets sh*t done, and as long as the sh*t getting done doesn’t involve hurting Joel or Ellie, all the power to her.

You can read the thread below.

Everything is coming up Beyoncé this week. After she made history with her Grammy win for Best Dance/Electronic Album for Renaissance, the presale for tickets to her upcoming world tour began. But that’s not all.

Tomorrow, February 9, the latest collection from Beyoncé’s Adidas-backed Ivy Park label will arrive, just in time to take advantage of all the good Beyoncé vibes this week.

Park Trail, the name of the new collection, appears to be centered around the great outdoors, with parkas and puffer jackets, hiking shoes, and cargo pants all in bold oranges and camouflage prints.

Ivy Park promoted the new line with a campaign featuring folks like Ice Spice and Offset (along with his son, Kody Cephus), releasing images featuring Offset decked-out from head-to-toe in deer hunter orange, a camoed-down Ice Spice, and even model Devon Aoki in an all-purple ensemble featuring a translucent trenchcoat, a knee-length sports dress, and matching sock boots.

Technically, the collection will be available online on February 9, while you can buy the pieces in real life at select retailers beginning February 10.

In other Beyoncé news, fans were relieved to hear that tickets to the upcoming Renaissance Tour cannot be resold for more than their face price as the unusual rollout for them made things a little more complicated than in the past.

The 65th annual Grammy Awards this past weekend were filled with several historic moments. Not only did actor and producer extraordinaire Viola Davis earn the coveted EGOT title, but multi-hyphenated talent Beyoncé became the most-awarded winner of all time, as well as the first Black woman to win in the category of Best Dance/Electronic Album. Well, the flowers for Mrs. Knowles-Carter are still coming in as melodic rapper Smino pays homage to her award-winning catalog in his latest song.

Sampling Beyoncé’s 2003 single “Me Myself And I,” the St. Louis native’s newest track, “Smi Myself And I,” is the lead song off his forthcoming mixtape, She Already Decided 2, the follow-up to the namesake project released in 2020 that’s set to drop on 4/20. On the track, Smino comfortably fixes into the heartbreak pocket Beyoncé set on the inspiration track.

In typical Smino fashion, he cleverly sprinkles several witty metaphors throughout the track, even subtle nods to Queen Bey herself as the track opens, rapping, “I only look up to my Visine / Smi myself and Irene / I be / In the cut like IV / Jim Carey da Nina Simone so bro gone let freedom ring / Whoever carry my semen gone go on and become Big Queen.”

The video for the song directed by The Film Lord captures candid tour footage of Smino and friends as his co-headlining live experience with JID, Luv Is 4ever, continues to sell out across the country. Smino may receive love at each stop but based on the track’s lyrics it is the type of love he’s looking for.

Listen to ‘Smi Myself And I’ above.

After the tragic death of drummer Taylor Hawkins, the future of Foo Fighters was unclear. At the end of 2022, though, the band indicated they would be moving on without Hawkins, writing in a message shared on social media, “Without Taylor, we never would have become the band that we were — and without Taylor, we know that we’re going to be a very different band going forward.” That message concluded, “We also know that you, the fans, meant as much to Taylor as he meant to you. And we know that when we see you again — and we will soon — he’ll be there in spirit with all of us every night.”

Now, as MusicRadar notes, it appears that “soon” really is soon: Radio X DJ Chris Moyles seems to have accidentally let slip that Dave Grohl and company have a new album set to drop in the coming weeks.

While on the air on February 7, after playing the band’s “Walk,” Moyles said, “Oh, I love that song so much: Foo Fighters, and ‘Walk.’ They’ve got a new album coming out in, uh, March, Foo Fighters, which I’m very much looking forward to.”

No official announcements about new Foo Fighters music have been made. Furthermore, at the moment, it’s unclear how or if Foo Fighters have decided to replace Hawkins.

Ed Sheeran is currently touring around New Zealand. Still, the singer found time to hop his way over to Hobbiton, the outdoor set from the popular Lord Of The Rings film franchise, to play some tunes.

As fans flock to Hobbiton for unique tours of the set, Sheeran was an added surprise. He treated guests who were on the tour’s final stop at The Green Dragon Inn to a performance of his 2013 song, “I See Fire,” that appeared on the soundtrack for The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug.

“We had an unexpected guest at The Green Dragon Inn tonight,” the tour captioned on TikTok.

Other TikTok users who stumbled across Hobbiton’s video of Sheeran were shocked by the small, intimate nature of his sudden appearance.

“Imagine you are having the best day of your life at Hobbiton and then you are blessed with Ed Sheeran live I would die,” one user commented.

“Being in that room must have felt magical,” another added.

Sheeran’s appearance was also only available to those who specifically attended the Evening Banquet Tour, as it ends with a two-course feast in the inn.

“In the heart of the Mighty Waikato region, you can explore the lush pastures of the Shire with a guided walking tour of Hobbiton, as featured in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit Trilogies,” the Hobbiton tour website notes.

Watch Sheeran’s performance at Hobbiton’s The Green Dragon Inn above.

Ed Sheeran is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

There are a lot of movies about dogs, mostly because they are cute and perfect, but also because they are probably a lot cheaper to hire than actual actors. But they always seem to follow a similar narrative: there is a cute pup out there who is lost or stolen and needs to get back home. But Strays boldly asks: what if the dog doesn’t wanna go home because the owner is kind of a jerk?

Strays (not to be confused with The Strays, a Netflix psychological thriller that debuts this month, though the timing is a bit unfortunate) follows a lil pooch named Reggie (voiced by Will Ferrell) who keeps getting kicked out of the house because his owner (Will Forte) is a bit of a dirtbag. If this movie was about cats, it would have ended there, but dogs are supposedly loyal and all of that.

Reggie then finds his own pooch crew to hang with and realizes that he actually has to get revenge on his owner, because that’s what happens when you are mean to dogs. The movie also features the voices of Jamie Foxx, Randall Park, and Isla Fisher. As per the official description:

They say a dog is a man’s best friend, but what if the man is a total dirtbag? In that case, it might be time for some sweet revenge, doggy style. When Reggie a naïve, relentlessly optimistic Border Terrier, is abandoned on the mean city streets by his lowlife owner, Doug Reggie is certain that his beloved owner would never leave him on purpose.

But once Reggie falls in with a fast-talking, foul-mouthed Boston Terrier named Bug, a stray who loves his freedom and believes that owners are for suckers, Reggie finally realizes he was in a toxic relationship and begins to see Doug for the heartless sleazeball that he is.

Of course, things take a turn: after realizing what a “sleazeball” (dogs know this lingo) his owner is, Reggie becomes determined to bring his former owner down by chowing down on his genitals. This is a dog we are talking about, they don’t have access to weapons or have thumbs or morals probably. What could possibly go wrong here?!

Strays will debut in theaters on June 9th. Check out the trailer above.

Jack Harlow has finally shared his long-awaited Doritos Super Bowl commercial ahead of the big game this Sunday. Today (February 8), Harlow dropped the minute-long clip on his social media.

For the past few weeks, Harlow has teased a love triangle in the ad. Now, we see he was referring to the instrument, the triangle.

Throughout the commercial, Harlow seeks to “try a new angle.” He confides in Missy Elliott about quitting rap — “I gotta do me, Missy,” — teaches a triangle-playing class, and playing the triangle in an arena.

Later, he is seen at an awards show anticipating a win for the Triangle Player Of The Year award, only to lose to one Elton John.

It’s gearing up to be a big year for the “First Class” hitmaker. In addition to this hilarious Super Bowl ad, Harlow is gearing up for his big screen acting debut with a remake of White Man Can’t Jump, which will premiere on Hulu in May.

In the meantime, you can check out his Doritos Super Bowl commercial above.

Super Bowl LVII will take place this Sunday, February 12 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona beginning at 6:30 p.m. ET. The game will broadcast live on Fox.

Jack Harlow and Missy Elliott are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Joey Badass has been creating quite the acting resume for himself, his latest role being Unique in STARZ’s television series Power Book III: Raising Kanan, executive-produced by 50 Cent. However, as the show is on currently on hiatus, the Brooklyn native has turned his attention toward re-entering the music sector.

After a five-year hiatus, the emcee releases his latest album, 2000, a representation of a new creative era for him. Well, that’s not the only musical era on his mind lately. While attending the 2023 Recording Academy Honors’ Global Impact Awards presented by the Black Music Collective, the entertainer spoke about one of the evening’s honorees, Lil Wayne’s era of music.

While walking the red carpet, Joey caught up with Baller Alert to discuss the evening, his return to music, and more. But when discussing Lil Wayne, he had a fun fact to share with correspondent Angie B.

“I wanted to be signed to Young Money, fun fact,” confessed Joey, when discussing Wayne’s record label Young Money’s impact on music in the mid-2000s thanks to signees like Nicki Minaj and Drake.

“When I was a kid, word. I had a little bar I was like, Lil Diggy and Twista ain’t got nothing on this. I was with the smoke.”

But when is comes down to Wayne’s Cash Money-era which is when he got his epic start in music, or his Young Money-era, Joey prefers the Young Money era. Watch the full clip above.

It’s always bugged me that Matthew McConaughey had to play a rodeo cowboy dying of AIDS in Dallas Buyers Club to win an Oscar, when he’d already given one of the defining performances of an entire decade two years earlier. I’m speaking, of course, of McConaughey’s turn as “Dallas” in 2012’s Magic Mike, whose second sequel, Magic Mike’s Last Dance, opens this weekend.

I can understand audiences maybe not being able to fully appreciate Magic Mike for what it was in its own time. People showed up expecting a fun romp about male strippers with lots of dance numbers, and what they got was more like The Wrestler with pleather speedos. Male stripping and professional wrestling are both heavily kitsch, but both movies are about exploring and examining that kitsch for what it says and what it means rather than simply reselling it. I don’t begrudge anyone for just wanting to see the dicks shake (for those people, there’s Magic Mike XXL), but I also think that bait-and-switch is an acceptable strategy if you’re tricking people into appreciating art.

Magic Mike was a financial crisis movie. Steven Soderbergh (who directed the original and returns for Last Dance) was so unsubtle in making Magic Mike a financial crisis movie, in fact, that it’s only a testament to how good the stripping was that anyone could’ve been so dumbstruck as to miss that this was a financial crisis movie.

Magic Mike was set in Tampa, Florida, which is partly a semi-autobiographical reflection of the fact that ex-male stripper Channing Tatum grew up there, but also partly a reflection of the financial crisis, which hit Tampa particularly hard (to paraphrase Billy Corben, Florida has always been, first and foremost, a real estate scam). Tatum’s character in Magic Mike is an aspiring furniture designer who works in construction and owns a car detailing business, who moonlights as a male stripper. Partly for the money, but also partly because Dallas (McConaughey) has promised him equity in a future club Dallas he’s opening in Miami. “I want to hear you say the word,” Mike says to Dallas in their first scene together, “Equity.”

Basically, Mike wants to own something. Because what was the foreclosure crisis if not the event when so many Americans realized that the houses they “owned” were actually just rented from a bank? There’s a reason that one of the climactic scenes in Magic Mike is Mike trying (and failing) to charm a bank representative into giving him a small business loan. It doesn’t matter how much cash Magic Mike puts on the table, he still can’t trade it for trust or assets. His money is no good here; he can’t escape his circumstances.

Tatum plays the whole thing beautifully and I could write a whole separate essay here about how Magic Mike was the moment when Channing Tatum achieved the actor’s version of his character’s dream in the film — not just starring in it, but owning a piece of it. Producing his own semi-autobiographical starring vehicle that spawned a franchise. Not only was it a smart business move, it was good art. Every heartthrob and sexpot, or maybe just every heartthrob and sexpot’s agent, dreams that they’ll be able to hone their craft — through all the extra opportunities show business naturally affords beautiful people — and one day become real actors. It’s hard to imagine a starker example of that actually coming to pass than Channing Tatum in 2012, who went from a mumbly himbo we loved making fun of (C-Tates, as we called him on FilmDrunk) to two legitimately brilliant performances in Magic Mike and 21 Jump Street (on which he was also a producer).

Channing Tatum feels like everyone’s “local boy makes good.” Yet there’s a reason Magic Mike opens on McConaughey’s character. As both movie characters and public personae, McConaughey represented Tatum’s potential, realized. Casting is probably half of acting, and Matthew McConaughey as Dallas is one of the most cosmically perfect mergers of acting performance and public persona in cinema history. (Maybe the Academy voters just got confused when they gave him the Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club instead of for playing a club buyer named Dallas).

McConaughey, a one-time fresh-faced leading man (A Time To Kill) turned rom-com punchline (Failure To Launch?) turned dude known for playing the bongo drums shirtless, opens the film in front of a screaming crowd of women. The first shot of his face is him grabbing his crotch (in leather pants). He asks the crowd, “Can you ever touch this? Well, the law says that you cannot touch. …But I think I see a lotta lawwwwbreakers in the house tonight.”

Iconic. How many movie cold opens have ever gotten you as pumped as this one? McConaughey is not just a great actor and a great character, he’s a human redemption arc, the entire movie in a nutshell represented in a single man. McConaughey is 41 years old and dressed in a wide-open leather vest with leather pants and cowboy hat in this scene. You know how sometimes it feels like you can see smells? McConaughey looks for all the world like a guy you could smell from across the room in this scene, and yet somehow, not in an entirely off-putting way.

The cowboy thing is thematically important, and McConaughey’s drawl, coming from a born-and-raised Texan, is genuine. Magic Mike is a movie about a generation of men who have been, essentially, emasculated by an economic downturn, stripped of the things they’ve been raised to believe are the totems of modern manhood — homeownership, being the primary breadwinner of a household, qualifying for loans — attempting to become whole by acting out these kitschy, over-the-top parodies of masculinity: cowboy, construction worker, Ken doll, Tarzan. And they’re doing it in a profession that, essentially, they learned from women. The opening dance scene cuts on a sound, which turns out to buzz of Mike’s trimmer while he grooms his pubes. When he wears a shirt and tie onstage, it’s a kitschy joke and women through money at him. When he tries to wear a shirt and tie for real in the loan office, it doesn’t work. It’s still a joke.

The boys in Magic Mike are trying to become their idea of what a man is by being, more or less, male male impersonators. They’re all acting out “fake it till you make it,” both as a business strategy and as a lifestyle. Soderbergh and screenwriter Reid Carolin make this about as plain as it could be in a later scene when one of the other strippers describes reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad and going to a Robert Kiyosaki convention. Masculinity is a performance, and “The Kid,” played by Alex Pettyfer, hunky and appealing as he is, has to be taught. Naturally, it’s McConaughey’s character who does the teaching, in Magic Mike’s most enduring scene. If they’d played this to introduce McConaughey’s deserved Best Supporting Actor award on Oscars night, it would’ve brought the house down.

Again, in terms of looks, acting prowess, and public persona (the assumptions we carry into the film about McConaughey before he even says a word), I’m convinced that no other actor on Earth could’ve achieved quite what McConaughey achieves in this scene. He’s teaching The Kid how to perform masculinity, how to own the magical power of his cock and balls and seed (a power Dallas is trying to manifest into reality through sheer force of will), and doing it in a swim cap, spandex t-shirt, drag speedo, and jazz shoes. And he makes you believe. I didn’t even know what jazz shoes were before Magic Mike.

A lot of movies are about “daddy issues,” and Magic Mike isn’t not about those, but it’s more specifically about male mentorship — both the exhilaration and dubious nature of it. McConaughey is about 40, Tatum about 30, and Alex Pettyfer about 20. It’s easy to imagine that they’re basically the same dude at different points in the timeline. Every one of them is basically trying to convey what he’s learned about being a man to the generation just below, which is in turn coming of age in a place and time where not all of the previous generation’s wisdom may apply.

McConaughey in particular is able to evoke this with remarkable economy. Probably my favorite shot of the film is the one or two-second shot of McConaughey’s face when Mike first pushes “The Kid” out onstage for the first time. The Kid, not knowing exactly what to do, turns back to Dallas for guidance. At which point Dallas offers him a reticent, wary nod of conditional approval (the 00:27 mark of this video):

It’s a look of both fear and excitement, anticipation and trepidation. One that says “I know you’re not ready for this and I probably shouldn’t let you do it, but the universe has given you this moment, so sink or swim.”

Whatever your “scene” is, whether it’s music or sports or comedy or whatever, chances are you’ve experienced some version of this moment. I loved it when I first saw it 10 years ago and now I experience it on a few added levels as a father and stepfather. This theme, of trying to follow and set examples simultaneously, the exhilaration and terror of losing control, works doubly or triply well with the actors in Magic Mike. Because it’s true not only for McConaughey/Tatum/Pettyfer as characters in this movie, but also as actors and public personae.

McConaughey is the himbo turned artist in the midst of a redemption arc. Tatum is the himbo just taking control of his own narrative, and Pettyfer is the fresh face in his first blush of himbodom with a future still to be written. In a case of art predicting life, Pettyfer, just like his character in Magic Mike, may have learned the wrong lessons or just fucked up the right ones, and as of yet hasn’t quite had that second act. One of the complex emotions Tatum was surprisingly (at the time) adept at conveying in Magic Mike was Mike’s dawning realization that he might not actually be good for his protege.

Auteur theory says everything is planned by an all-knowing, God-like creator. I’m more of the opinion that true greatness requires more than a blueprint (and sometimes even happens at the expense of one). It requires a confluence of time, place, people, perceptions, and serendipity to come together just so in this unrepeatable way. A kind of “magic,” if you will.

Am I surprised that Academy voters overlooked Matthew McConaughey that year (when the award went to the admittedly brilliant Christoph Waltz for Django Unchained)? I suppose not. A good way to think about movie awards is that they’re essentially just focus groups by another name. If the voters were distracted by Magic Mike’s dick-shaking (its dick-shaving, its dick-pumping…), well, that was partly by design, wasn’t it? A bait and switch that worked too well. I don’t know if Matthew McConaughey’s performance in Magic Mike was underrated, overrated, or properly rated, but it will always stand out to me as an example of how great a great movie can be.

‘Magic Mike’s Last Dance’ opens this Friday, February 10th, in theaters everywhere. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more of his reviews here.

Netflix‘s last attempt at clearing up confusion over its anti-password sharing measures didn’t go over great. Time for round two!

“We know there’s been a lot of confusion about sharing Netflix,” the streaming service tweeted on Wednesday. “A Netflix account is intended for one household, so we’re rolling out new features in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain (and more broadly in the coming months) to give you more control over your account… and yes, you can still watch Netflix while traveling!” Bounty hunters in New Zealand are already searching for the Netflix intern who spun a globe and landed on the country.

Netflix also shared “An Update on Sharing,” which includes measures being taken to prevent parents in New York from sharing their account with their daughter in Seattle. Subscribers will be asked to set their primary location, then “manage who has access to their account from our new Manage Access and Devices page.”

The link also provides information on how to transfer profiles, watching while you travel (“Members can still easily watch Netflix on their personal devices or log into a new television, like at a hotel or holiday rental”), and pricing.

Members on our Standard or Premium plan in many countries (including Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain) can add an extra member sub account for up to two people they don’t live with — each with a profile, recommendations, login and password — for an extra CAD$7.99 a month per person in Canada, NZD$7.99 in New Zealand, Euro 3.99 in Portugal, and Euro 5.99 in Spain.

You can find out more here. Let’s see how it’s going!

Time for round three!