Month: March 2023

The Toronto Raptors fell to the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday night, 108-100. After the game, Raptors guard Fred VanVleet expressed frustration about the officiating, and made it a point to call out one referee, Ben Taylor, for being “f*cking terrible tonight.”

After saying that he did not care about receiving a potential fine, VanVleet excoriated the officiating performance.

“On most nights, out of the three, there’s one or two that just f*ck the game up,” VanVleet said. “It’s been like that a couple games in a row — Denver was tough, obviously. You come out tonight, competing pretty hard, the third quarter, I get a bullsh*t tech, changes the whole dynamic of the game, changes the whole flow of the game. Most of the refs are trying hard, I like a lot of the refs, they’re trying hard, they’re pretty fair, they try to communicate well.

“And then you got the other ones who just wanna be dicks, and it just kinda f*cks the game up,” VanVleet continued. “Nobody’s coming to see that sh*t, they come to see the players.”

VanVleet expressed his belief that this is a widespread problem and not just something that happened on Wednesday night. He then expressed that games officiated by Taylor are the ones where “most of my techs this year” come from.

“At a certain point as a player, you feel it’s personal, and it’s never a good place to be,” VanVleet said. “That’s not why we lost tonight. We got outplayed. But it definitely makes it tougher to overcome.”

The NBA has not announced a fine for VanVleet after his remarks.

Rap music is constantly undergoing a sonic evolution as each generation of talent pulls inspiration for what’s happening around them musically. For this edition of React Like You Know, we sat down with Gen Z rappers to quiz them on Panic! At The Disco’s hit single, “I Write Sins Not Tragedies.”

The emo pop-punk song, originally released in 2005, propelled the band into the mainstream and is now five times platinum in the United States alone. Although the song is continuing to pick up stream with the new generation of music lovers, the band’s frontman Brendon Urie announced that Panic! At The Disco was coming to an end after 19 years of creating together.

On a panel of reactors, Day Sulan immediately exclaims, “This was my sh*t when I was going through my emo phase!” When Uproxx’s Cherise Johnson follows up, Sulan admits, “Nah, I was really emo at one point, I even had pink hair.”

Similarly, Tia Corine gushes about her love of the track stating, “I used to get dressed in the morning to this [song] with my little white TV. What!”

Despite his hardened exterior, rapper King Most Wanted proudly proclaims, “N****s don’t know I f*ck with this sh*t.”

Other the other hand, rappers like Kalan.FrFr confessed that they weren’t familiar with the band but certainly heard the song in passing. “Madden [the video game]! I know this song, but I’ve never seen the video ever before in my life,” he says. Rapper Lil Zay Osama, on the other hand, has a different story: “I started listening to music like this in jail, though.”

4L Javi chimes in to add, “I don’t know the lyrics, but I know how the [instrumental] starts.”

Others like Rich Homie Quan and NLE Choppa join to share that although the video threw them off in the beginning, the same was actually cool.

You can watch our panel react to the “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” video above.

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

Happy news for sad people: The Cure just announced their first North American tour since 2016. Though eccentric frontman Robert Smith said a new album called Songs Of A Lost World would arrive last year and it never came, the “Friday I’m In Love” band’s upcoming run represents an exciting time and hopefully means new material will finally be released soon.

The tour kicks off in New Orleans in May and ends in the beginning of July in Miami. It includes a few nights at LA’s Hollywood Bowl and NYC’s Madison Square Garden. They’ll be bringing along The Twilight Sad to open up.

Check out the full dates below.

5/10 – New Orleans, LA @ Smootie King Center *
5/12 – Houston, TX @ Toyota Center *
5/13 – Dallas, TX @ Dos Equis Pavilion *
5/14 – Austin, TX @ Moody Center *
5/16 – Albuquerque, NM @ Isleta Amphitheater *
5/18 – Phoenix, AZ @ Desert Diamond Arena *
5/20 – San Diego, CA @ NICU Amphitheatre *
5/23-25 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl *
5/27 – San Francisco, CA @ Shoreline Amphitheatre *
6/01 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena *
6/02 – Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena *
6/04 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Vivint Smart Home Arena *
6/06 – Denver, CO @ Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre *
6/08 – Minneapolis, MN @ XCel Energy Center *
6/10 – Chicago, IL @ United Center *
6/11 – Cleveland, OH @ Blossom Music Center *
6/13 – Detroit, MI @ Pine Knob Music Center *
6/14 – Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage *
6/16 – Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre *
6/18 – Boston, MA @ Xfinity Center *
6/20-22 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden *
6/24 – Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Arena *
6/25 – Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavilion *
6/27 – Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena *
6/29 – Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena *
7/01 – Miami, FL @ Miami-Dade Arena *

* with The Twilight Sad

Find ticket information here.

Since 2015, Jennifer Lawrence has played a mop magnate, Mystique twice, cinema’s most stressed out mom since The Babadook, a Russian spy, an astronomer who discovers a comet that will obliterate Earth, and a solider suffering from trauma. There’s also Passengers, but I don’t even want to step into that icky mess again. It’s been a very serious near-decade from a self-deprecating actress who got her start on a TBS sitcom. Thankfully, Hollywood will let Lawrence be funny again in No Hard Feelings.

Directed by Gene Stupnitsky (Good Boys), No Hard Feelings is about two helicopter parents, played by Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti, who hire Jennifer Lawrence’s stumbling-through-life Maddie to “date” (wink) their “unf*ckable” son. It’s a premise straight out of an ’80s comedy. Also a throwback: it’s coming during the summer, something that rarely happens for studio comedies anymore. Here’s to “weiner” double entendres!

Here’s the official logline:

“On the brink of losing her childhood home, Maddie (Lawrence) discovers an intriguing job listing: wealthy helicopter parents looking for someone to ‘date’ their introverted 19-year-old son, Percy, before he leaves for college. To her surprise, Maddie soon discovers the awkward Percy is no sure thing.”

No Hard Feelings, which also stars Andrew Feldman, Natalie Morales, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, comes out on June 23rd.

Tame Impala announced a 10-year anniversary Lonerism box set in February, months after headlining Desert Daze and performing the seminal album in its entirety to commemorate the occasion. Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker recently set out to accomplish a personal milestone, but it turned into something he almost certainly will not be remembering fondly in 10 years.

“Fractured my hip,” Parker captioned an Instagram carousel early Thursday morning, March 9. The photos show him in a hospital bed, his X-rays, and first (literal) steps toward recovery. “Tried to run a half marathon on what turned out to be an existing stress fracture. Whoops. Made it to within 1km of the finish line [smiling with a tear emoji]. That’s life I guess. All shows in Mexico and South America going ahead as planned I’m not quitting on your guys [red heart emoji].”

The previous post on Tame Impala’s Instagram feed came back on December 14, announcing a second show being added at Palacio De Los Deportes in Mexico City, Mexico on Friday, March 10, and Saturday, March 11.

Tame Impala is also among the headliners slated for Lollapalooza’s three South American festivals in Argentina (March 17-19), Brazil (March 24-26), and Chile (March 17-19). The other headliners are Drake, Billie Eilish, Blink-182, Lil Nas X, and Rosalía.

See Tame Impala’s upcoming dates and all three Lollapalooza posters below.

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

Jenna Ellis just pounded another nail into the tightly-sealed coffin housing Donald Trump’s election fraud claims. On Wednesday, the Colorado Supreme Court’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel censured Ellis for misrepresenting evidence at least 10 times. Ellis, who no longer represents Trump, agreed with the court’s findings via an attorney.

“The parties agree that two aggravators apply — Respondent had a selfish motive and she engaged in a pattern of misconduct — while one factor, her lack of prior discipline, mitigates her misconduct,” Disciplinary Judge Bryon Large wrote.

Ellis was a prominent member of Trump’s legal “Strike Force,” which also included Rudy Giuliani and Sidney “The Kraken” Powell. While they made zero progress in proving the 2020 election was stolen, all three of them are facing lawsuits for their wild claims of fraud, which were spouted everywhere from Twitter to Fox News to, somehow, the parking lot of a landscaping company.

At issue in Colorado are several statements that Ellis made either on Twitter or during interviews. Here’s just a sample of the items she’s agreed were “misrepresentations.” Via Mediaite:

On November 20, 2020, Respondent appeared on Mornings with Maria on Fox Business and stated: “We have affidavits from witnesses, we have voter intimidation, we have the ballots that were manipulated, we have all kinds of statistics that show that this was a coordinated effort in all of these states to transfer votes either from Trump to Biden, to manipulate the ballots, to count them in secret . . .”

On November 20, 2020, Respondent appeared on Spicer & Co. and stated, “with all those states [Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia] combined we know that the election was stolen from President Trump and we can prove that.”

On November 21, 2020, Respondent stated on Twitter under her handle @JennaEllisEsq., “ . . . SECOND, we will present testimonial and other evidence IN COURT to show how this election was STOLEN!”

On November 23, 2020, Respondent appeared on The Ari Melber Show on MSNBC and stated, “The election was stolen and Trump won by a landslide.”

You get the picture. As for the fact that Ellis was engaged in political speech, the Colorado Supreme Court made it a point to note that isn’t a free pass.

“The public censure in this matter reinforces that even if engaged in political speech, there is a line attorneys cannot cross,” the ruling stated. “Particularly when they are speaking in a representative capacity.”

(Via Mediaite)

Concert proposals are becoming more and more popular. Whether it’s at an Adele show or at a Snoop Dogg meet-and-greet, popping the big question happens more often than you’d expect in a live music setting. Last night (March 8), a Lizzo gig in Glasgow at the OVO Hydro arena was the site of another proposal.

In the crowd, an audience member held their phone up to their forehead with text that read, “Ask my brother’s boyfriend to marry him.” It caught the “Special” singer’s attention. Over FaceTime, the fan asked his boyfriend: “Will you marry me?” and then added, “For the love of god, just say yes.” Lizzo, holding up the phone, chimed in: “What do you say?” Luckily, the answer was yes, which prompted a lot of cheering and made the concert even more of a celebration.

Lizzo has been having a lot of fun on stage. In Germany, she unexpectedly performed an a cappella rendition of heavy metal band Rammstein’s 1997 song, “Du Hast.” She knew how to hype the crowd up: “You better sing that sh*t,” Lizzo announced. “Y’all ready to go f*cking crazy?”

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

The Last of Us isn’t the only prestige drama with cannibalism. Showtime has released the trailer for season two of Yellowjackets, the surprise hit about a 1990s high school girls’ soccer surviving in the woods following a plane crash, and their contemporary adult counterparts.

“Once upon a time, there was a place called the wilderness. It was beautiful, but it was also violent and misunderstood. And it waited and waited to befriend whoever arrived,” Van (played by Liv Hewson) says in the trailer. From there, we see the soccer squad enduring the chilly elements, and each other.

There’s also a haunting cover of No Doubt’s “Just a Girl” by Florence + the Machine, Elijah Wood flirting (?) with Christina Ricci, and a mystery character tied up on a log held by the other girls, like Bugs Bunny on the way to a boiling pot. “I feel like sh*t’s gonna get a lot worse out there” are the final words spoken in the trailer. That’s bad news for the Yellowjackets, but it’s great news for us, the Yellowjackets viewers.

Here’s more:

Two months have passed since Shauna gave Jackie the cold shoulder— to disastrous results. In the face of their deepening hunger and fear, the tension among our Yellowjackets has only grown worse. The harsh conditions of winter are intensifying by the day, and the psyches of our survivors are deteriorating just as fast. Threatened by the darkness of the wilderness — and the haunting memories of it in the present — our former state champs will be forced to make impossible decisions. As they confront the horrible truth of what survival entails, the real nightmare for each of them will be to figure out who they are — and what they are willing to sacrifice in order to stay alive.

Yellowjackets returns on March 24th, the same night as Succession.

The Main Street Armory in Rochester, New York recently became notorious after a crowd surge incident following a GloRilla concert on Sunday (March 3) resulted in fatal injuries to two concertgoers. On Wednesday, Rochester police revoked the venue’s entertainment license after its owners failed to appear at a meeting with the Rochester Police Department’s Licensing Unit. According to Rolling Stone, the venue had already developed a local reputation for being a “deathtrap,” and police called the move a step to prevent further tragedies.

The incident on Sunday was apparently prompted by false reports of gunfire within the venue. As the crowd pushed toward the exits, ten people were injured. Two women — Rhondesia Belton and Brandy Miller — died from their injuries. The incident came at a time when concert security is under higher scrutiny in the wake of the Astroworld Festival disaster in 2021, which resulted in 10 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and nearly 1,000 lawsuits against the organizers, Live Nation.

GloRilla herself responded to the incident on Monday, writing, “I am devastated & heartbroken over the tragic deaths that happened after Sunday’s show. My fans mean the world to me. Praying for their families & for a speedy recovery of everyone affected.”

Rochester police chief David Smith said, “It is one step we can immediately take to ensure that the events of Sunday night are not repeated. The bottom line is, lives were lost, and we need to take steps to make sure that no lives are lost in the future if this was indeed something that was preventable.”

Since the Armory’s entertainment license was not renewed, it cannot host events like concerts such as an A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie show scheduled for this Saturday, March 11.

James Gunn has a well-known reputation for shutting down trolls on Twitter, and he recently brought that same energy to Instagram when a “racist” user came at the writer/director for a casting decision in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. It all started when Gunn shared a photo of Chukwudi Iwuji as the classic Marvel Comics villain High Evolutionary. Gunn and Iwuji worked together on the HBO Max Peacemaker series, and that experience prompted Gunn to bring the actor over to his final Marvel project.

“Can’t wait for you all to meet this guy,” Gunn captioned the photo of High Evolutionary below:

Because this is the internet, it didn’t take long for someone to complain, but this particular user took things way too far. Via The Hollywood Reporter:

“Damnit…another white guy they made into a black guy. Why couldn’t they just leave him white or i dont know…pick a different minority? How about Asian or gasp! A Latino? (how many Latinos and Asians in MCU? Like total of 5??) Or make him an Indian or something…because they don’t and won’t, that makes them ‘woke.’”

The user continued, “Next time, a major character (hero/villain) will be a trans or homosexual or non-binary (when in comics they are not). Sad and pathetic. They’re picking based on race and what’s PC and not on acting and what’s established.”

James Gunn was not having it.

“I chose the best actor, period, and the best person for the role,” Gunn responded before calling the commenter out. “I don’t give a sh*t what ethnicity @chukwudi_iwuji is, so stop with your racist presumptions on WHY he was chosen. (And, by the way, he’s playing a guy who’s almost always purple in color.)”

When is the internet going to learn that James Gunn will not let your wild accusations go unanswered? Just talk to the guy who tried to call Gunn a “professional liar.” It didn’t end well for him either.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 hits theaters on May 5, 2023.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)