Month: March 2023

Ahead of tonight’s episode of The Last of Us, Ellie actress Bella Ramsey tweeted, “I’m only slightly terrified for tonight’s episode. And if I’m scared you should be scared. ITS GONNA BE FIIIIINE SHUSHHHH.” The Catherine Called Birdy star also called filming the episode “exhausting, but those were some of my favorite days on set. That sounds really masochistic, but it’s the scenes that break me that I love the most.”

I also loved “When We Are in Need” (directed by Ali Abbasi and written by Craig Mazin). For one thing, give Ramsey the freaking Emmy right now; for another, it reminded me that Yellowjackets is coming back soon. It also covered maybe my favorite part of The Last of Us video game. It’s certainly the most horrifying — even more than the, ahem, “big daddy” bloater.

While out hunting, Ellie runs into David, the pedophilic leader of a God-fearing group who is disturbingly casual about punishing the sheep in his flock, so to speak, and his right-hand man James. (James is played by Troy Baker, the actor who portrayed Joel in The Last of Us video games; he also voiced Magni in God of War.) She shares some of the deer she shot, but only as part of a trade; she needs penicillin for Joel, who’s still wounded from his near-death encounter. David gets James to fetch the medicine (yay), but the next day, Ellie is captured and taken to their cannibal community (less great).

Did I mention they’re cannibals? I probably should have mentioned that they’re cannibals. And what’s on the menu for tonight? Joel Soup. But first, David’s goons have to find him, which they do… and then television’s favorite father figure recovers in time to kill them and find his way to where Baby Yoda, I mean Grogu, I mean Ellie is being held captive.

Right as she’s about to be hacked to death, Ellie blurts out that she’s been infected. This clever distraction gives her enough time to run away and reunite with Joel, although not before a thrilling sequence in a burning room where she kills David by smashing him with a cleaver approximately 300 times. If she wasn’t already traumatized, that would do it. Speaking of being traumatized…

Each week, we’ll recap the biggest moments of HBO’s The Last of Us before placing bets on the odds of survival for our favorite characters – like the sick, twisted, soulless monsters we are.

The penultimate episode of The Last of Us has a bit of everything. Cults. Cannibalism. Fake religion. That thing where Pedro Pascal mutters the words “baby girl” and the knees of men and women everywhere go weak.

We’re not sure how this narrative diversion contributes to the season at large other than to prove that people are far more dangerous than fungi — which, duh — and that Bella Ramsey deserves some kind of award recognition for the things she’s doing on this show, specifically in this episode. But we’re not complaining, not when it means we get to watch bad men die and hideously designed resort lodges burn.

You’re In A Cult. Call Your Dad.

We’ve examined many facets of human behavior over the first season of this show, from romantic love to the familial kind, the driving nature of vengeance, the duplicity of men, and the natural survival instincts some are born with … and born without. So really, it was only a matter of time before the allure of cults, with their methods of psychological torture and their complex societal hierarchies, had The Last of Us in a chokehold. And it kind of makes sense that a cult modeled after the tenants of Christianity would survive the fungal outbreak only to set up camp in a frozen tundra where no food can grow and no animals roam. Suffering is the highest form of worship, after all.

Still, when the show opens on a mysterious leader we later learned is named David, spouting off passages from the Book of Revelations, we get the feeling this isn’t the post-apocalyptic promised land these disciples were promised. They’re starving, freezing, mourning the death of a recently murdered villager, and desperately planning how to survive on just a couple of weeks left of their rations.

This is not what Drake was talking about when he sang “God’s Plan.”

Now, we’ve seen enough survival movies to know that whatever meat they’re currently living off of is not, in fact, “venison,” but we put the potential cannibalism on the back burner because a deer spotting has David and his men on the hunt. It’s around this time that Ellie, who’s running out of food and out of ideas for how to heal Joel, goes in search of her own game. She’s been hand-feeding her partner bits of jerky for the past few days and while yes, that happens to be a fantasy for many Pedro Pascal groupies on the internet, we never wanted to see it in this context.

Ellie’s an actual survivor, not a middle-aged man playing at being one, which is why she shoots down the deer that David and his group stumble upon. They’re ready to snag it for themselves until she holds them at gunpoint, eventually agreeing to a trade of medicine for half the animal’s hide. While one of David’s henchmen makes the long trek back to town, the pair sit by the fire trading stories to pass the time. David sports some big “Youth Pastor Energy” early on, admitting he used to be a teacher before receiving a higher calling when the world went to sh*t. Since everyone’s brains were infected with fungi, we assume he’s not actually ordained, just self-taught and super righteous about it.

Ellie feigns interest because, well, what else is she gonna do? She needs medicine for Joel and a way to leave this weird interaction without being followed home. If you’re a woman who’s ever been on a blind date, you can probably relate.

Eventually, David’s buddy shows back up, but not before David reveals it was Joel who killed his man – the one everyone was crying over earlier – and it was “God’s plan” that he find Ellie.

Why are Christians like this?

Is This A White Lotus?

David and his group return with the whole deer in tow (which, greedy much?) and instead of receiving a warm welcome and a hot meal, he must quell the fears of his flock. Turns out, everyone now knows about Ellie and he promises them he’ll seek justice by tracking down and killing Joel. When the girl whose father was killed challenges him, he backhands her and then comforts her in quick succession, proving he’s got this whole emotional manipulation thing down pat. If that wasn’t enough of a red flag, David’s dinner portion is obnoxiously bigger than everyone else’s.

Ellie races back to give Joel the penicillin she traded for but the town doctor didn’t give instructions for how to administer it so we’re left pulling our hair out, screaming, “That’s not how it works,” as she injects a full syringe straight into Joel’s stomach wound. Unfortunately, we don’t get to spend enough downtime with the pair to see if her unique method of antibiotic delivery works because the group has found their hideout and Ellie must lead them away from a still-bedridden Joel. She does, mounting her horse and taunting a handful of grown men with guns, but not before leaving Joel with a hunting knife and a stern warning to stay awake because sh*ts going down and now is not the time to catch up on beauty sleep.

Unfortunately, Ellie and her horse are overrun and she’s taken hostage by the cult before Joel can wake his a** up and do his damn job. (He does miraculously recover enough to interrogate and slaughter a couple of gunmen, eventually torturing one long enough to learn the group is staying at a resort that’s not on the map.)

While he’s planning a rescue mission, Ellie’s waking up in a concrete cell and discovering what the term “child bride” means for the first time. David’s interest in Ellie at the beginning of the episode felt a bit unnerving, but it’s when he’s got her concussed and caged that we discover his true intentions.

Why are men like this?

The Sheep And The Shepherd

So here’s the truth: David is not a god-fearing man, he’s a guy with violent urges who saw an opportunity when surrounded by a group of frightened, lost people. Being the sociopath that he is, he faked piousness to earn their subservience and love and now he’s bored. Like really bored. Because sure, being worshipped like a god is fun for a while but eventually, you want someone to verbally spar with, someone to challenge you, someone to make life interesting again.

He believes Ellie is that someone, and though he never directly says it, he hints at the hope that she’ll be his equal in every way, his partner, someone to build a life with. Which, ewww.

But those weird romantic declarations where David asserts they both have violent hearts and she reminds him of himself, a person beyond needing a father (literally or spiritually, we guess), all fall on deaf ears because, well, Ellie gets a glimpse of one on the killing room floor. It turns out, David’s been chopping up his own flock to sustain him and while he claims to be ashamed of that fact, he’s quick to threaten Ellie with the same fate should she refuse his offer. She does anyway, breaking his hand and being altogether badass before staving off her own execution by showing her bite mark.

She tries to escape but is trapped in a lodge she accidentally sets on fire with a psychotic pedophile enticing her to let him be her new daddy. It’s very The Shining reminiscent except Ellie is the one who ends up with the meat cleaver, making good use of it by hacking into David’s skull over and over and over again after he tries to sexually assault her.

The episode ends with Ellie escaping the burning building and being comforted by Joel, who arrives just in time to witness her breakdown and hug her through it while calling her “baby girl” and telling her everything’s going to be fine now.

It’s not, but we’re not going to complain when it’s Pedro Pascal saying it.

Survival Odds

Ellie (1 to 10 odds)
Again, these numbers mean absolutely nothing to us but we’ve been told we’ve been doing the odds percentage all wrong this entire time. So, for sake of appearing to care about things like math and statistical probability, we’re switching it up. The bottom line is this: Ellie doesn’t need anyone but herself to survive this hellscape. Sure, having Joel around is nice and reassuring, but she’s graduated from being a smuggled child to a young woman capable of burning down a cult and cutting through a couple of fanatical cannibals on her way out. Ellie is now mother.

Joel (7 to 1 odds)
We know Joel woke up and started slicing kneecaps but we’ve got to be honest, we’re not sure how much penicillin it takes to heal a stomach infection. And that’s if it was administered correctly, which we all know it wasn’t. Maybe he’s got a robust immune system or maybe he’s just running on the fumes of adrenaline. We’ll see.

The Memphis Grizzlies are a legitimate contender in the Western Conference, looking to lock down the No. 2 seed for the second straight year, but with 20 games to go in the season, the conversation about the Grizzlies is about what is going on off the court with their All-Star guard, Ja Morant.

On Friday night, after Memphis lost in Denver to the Nuggets, Morant went on Instagram Live from a club, showing off a gun in the video that quickly spread around the internet. This came after numerous alleged incidents involving Morant and those around him came to light, in which Morant allegedly hit a 17-year-old multiple times in the face, threatened a security guard at a mall, and pointed lasers at members of the Pacers after a game in Indiana. All of it painted a picture of Morant going down a troubling path, but the Instagram Live video was the catalyst for the league to step in and investigate Morant, with the team announcing on Saturday that he would not be with the team for at least the next two games in L.A.

On Sunday night, prior to playing the Clippers without Morant, head coach Taylor Jenkins told reporters there was no timetable for Morant’s return and that the young star was “taking on the responsibility to get the help he needs” and the team was focused on being both supportive of him while also holding him accountable — and speaking on the overarching issue of gun violence and the importance of taking the time to handle this appropriately.

Prior to this point, Jenkins had deflected questions about the alleged incidents involving Morant, lamenting them as past issues that had been dealt with. Now, the Grizzlies are having to have whatever process they were hoping to keep behind closed doors play out more publicly, albeit Jenkins wouldn’t go so far as to lay out the steps the team has outlined for Morant’s return.

The hope is that Morant can take this moment to adjust the path he’s on and embrace, as Jenkins notes, the responsibility of being a leader on the team and what is required of that off the court as much as on it. How long it takes for him to show he’s taken those steps to the Grizzlies remains to be seen, but with the stretch run of the season upon them, the timing is certainly adding to the stress of the situation in Memphis.

The Bulls and Pacers met on Sunday with Indiana looking to pull even with Chicago for 11th in the East, two games back of the Wizards for 10th and the final play-in spot.

The result was a high-scoring thriller, as Zach LaVine had another big game with 42 points but it was not enough to overcome Tyrese Haliburton and the Pacers. The first-time All-Star had 29 points and 11 assists in what became a 125-122 Indiana win, including the game-winning bucket as he pulled up from well beyond the three-point line to bury the dagger over Patrick Beverley with under 3 seconds to play.

Haliburton has had a sensational year for the somewhat surprising Pacers, who were a team many had on potential tank-watch coming into the year, but have been competitive and held their group together through the deadline. Aiding Haliburton in the win over the Bulls were rookie Bennedict Mathurin, who had 17 points off of the bench, while Myles Turner added in 16 and Chris Duarte also had a nice night with 15 in a reserve role.

On the Bulls side, DeMar DeRozan chipped in 23 points, but the rest of the squad just was not able to give LaVine quite enough support to get a win in a big effort, as they slide back in their chase of 10th. Both Chicago and Indiana are three games back in the loss column, but just one back in the win column of Washington now, as they’ll be hoping to see the Wizards stumble down the stretch to allow for a real race for that final play-in position.

Fox News’ antics after the 2020 election are finally coming back to bite them. The $1.6 billion lawsuit against the news network by Dominion Voting Systems has been ramping up, prompting lots of damning revelations to go public. For one thing, its own hosts didn’t believe some of the voter fraud malarkey they disseminated. Rupert Murdoch thought it was bunk, too. Problem is, as a recent report shows, they were terrified of losing their audience if they reported the news correctly.

The New York Times got their mitts on a recording of a Zoom call involving, among others, anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, held nearly a fortnight after Election Day and a week and change after most outlets called it for Joe Biden. During the chat, they didn’t congratulate themselves for accurately calling Arizona for Biden earlier than most places. Instead telling the truth was the problem.

“Listen, it’s one of the sad realities: If we hadn’t called Arizona, those three or four days following Election Day, our ratings would have been bigger,” said Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott. “The mystery would have been still hanging out there.”

Instead, MacCallum argued, they shouldn’t report solely on the facts. Instead they should consider how viewer reactions would be to them practicing sound journalistic practice.

“In a Trump environment,” MacCallum said. “The game is just very, very different.”

Baier agreed. “We are still getting bombarded,” he said, saying it “became really hurtful.” He suggested, like MacCallum, that they consider things other than facts. “I know the statistics and the numbers, but there has to be, like, this other layer,” with which they could “think beyond, about the implications.”

MacCallum had his back. “There’s just obviously been a tremendous amount of backlash, which is, I think, more than any of us anticipated. And so there’s that layer between statistics and news judgment about timing that I think is a factor,” she said, worried about the “loud faction of our viewership” who did not appreciate learning Biden had likely won Arizona, which he did.

That brings things back to a germane quote, first made public in Peter Baker’s 2022 book The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021. Two days after the election, with Biden’s lead narrowing, Baier emailed Fox News president Jay Wallace and others to suggest they recall their calling of Arizona.

“It’s hurting us,” he wrote. “The sooner we pull it even if it gives us major egg. And put it back in his column. The better we are. In my opinion.”

And so Fox News moved into the voter fraud speculation business, which may have wound up destroying them in the end anyway.

(Via NYT)

Last month, SZA and featured opening act Omar Apollo kicked off the North American wing of the former’s SOS Tour. Following its opening, the singer took to social media to share that will she was excited by the crowd’s reception of the show. However as the tour progresses, the setlist will change to give her creative control.

Although SZA ended up postponing her Philadelphia show, she was sure to give twice as much energy during the first night of her shows in New York City. Not only did she bring out her latest musical bestie Phoebe Bridgers for a surprise performance of their song, “Ghost In The Machine,” she also called on hometown rapper Cardi B to join her on stage as well.

Performing their collaborative track, “I Do,” off of Cardi B’s Grammy-Award-winning debut album, Invasion Of Privacy, the arena went crazy. The pair have performed the song together in the past, most notably at Coachella in 2018, but as SZA’s star continues to rise, this moment meant a lot to the songwriter.

After the two performed, SZA took a moment to thank Cardi B for coming out, saying, “This queen is so kind to even take the time with two children and a bajillion dollar career to come here…thank you so f*cking much.”

Cardi B didn’t want the party to stop there, asking the crowd, “Should we get ratchet?” Then the DJ went on to play “Tomorrow 2,” in which Cardi is featured.

SZA’s praise of Cardi B continued on Instagram, where she continued to thank her for making a guest appearance.

View the remaining tour dates below.

03/05 — New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
03/07 — Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
03/09 — Austin, TX @ Moody Center
03/10 — Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
03/13 — San Diego, CA @ Viejas Arena
03/14 — Oakland, CA @ Oakland Arena
03/16 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
03/18 — Portland, OR @ Moda Center
03/19 — Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena
03/22 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Kia Forum

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

The XFL 3.0 has a very different vibe from the initial version, as the league is now a much friendlier and safer place than the early 2000s XFL that glorified the violence of football in a way leagues now try to mitigate.

The league’s stated effort is to give guys a chance to put their game on film and show their talents, allowing them a chance to extend (or start) a career at a higher level in the fall somewhere. However, it’s still football and as such tensions can run high in an inherently violent game, which we saw at the end of a thrilling back-and-forth game between the D.C. Defenders and St. Louis Battlehawks as things boiled over into an ugly brawl that took nearly a minute to get everyone separated and pulled apart.

As Tom Luginbill noted from the sidelines, it had been a chippy game throughout and eventually, as D.C. wrapped up a win, that chippiness became a full-on fight as someone from St. Louis ended up at the bottom of a pile of Defenders players who clearly had taken offense at something and were giving him the business. Naturally that led to other Battlehawks players coming over to try and protect their guy and things only escalated from there.

The Suns and Mavs really do not like each other, and their budding rivalry is one of the best things going in the NBA. On Sunday afternoon in Dallas, the two teams met in what became another tense battle that saw both teams seemingly take control at various times, only for the stars on the other side to get things going and pull things back to make it tight.

Ultimately, it was the Suns that came out on top thanks to some late-game heroics from Kevin Durant, who was simply unstoppable in the closing minute, burying the go-ahead jumper with just under 12 seconds on the clock.

Luka Doncic would drive on Josh Okogie on the ensuing Mavs possession, bumping Okogie to the ground and having a wide open layup chance that he somehow blew, with Kevin Durant snagging the rebound to secure the Suns win.

After that, Devin Booker came over to point to the spot and yell at a ref about Doncic getting away with a charge, which Luka took exception to and told Booker to “f*ck off” and the two got in each other’s face with big grins as they chirped at one another and pushed a bit.

They were handed offsetting technicals, as there was nothing really to the dustup. It’s a bit funny to see Doncic getting mad at someone else chirping at the officials given his propensity for getting on the refs, although he may have thought Booker pointing at the spot was taunting him for missing from 3 feet away from the basket.

In any case, the Suns got the win in a game where Durant and Booker each went over 35 points, while Doncic and Kyrie Irving each had over 30, as the stars showed out exactly as everyone hoped. The closing sequence only adds to the intrigue between these two teams and the hope of NBA fans that we’ll get another Dallas-Phoenix playoff series later this year.

Everyone loves Adele (well, except Chaka Khan), especially on the internet, thanks in part to her award-winning discography but also due to the plethora of memes she has unintentionally given birth to over the past few years. The love for the singer has only heightened over the last few months as her Weekends With Adele Las Vegas residency has brought out fans from all over the world.

The “Easy On Me” singer has made it clear that she expected all black-tie vibes during each performance but attendees have taken it a step further. Apparently, Adele’s residency has become an unofficial go-to wedding-stop ticketed event. Not only has the singer aided in a few romantic proposals at past shows, but just recently a newlywed couple attending the show looking for the singer to sign the bride’s wedding gown.

As the recording artist was being escorted out of The Colosseum at Caesars Palace through the concert hall, she waved to fans until she was stopped in her tracks by a couple overly dressed for the occasion. Fresh off of their wedding ceremony, the bride and groom headed straight to the show, still dressed in their respective formal suit and wedding gown. As the singer stopped to ask if they had just gotten married, the bride asked for the singer to sign her gown. The groom quickly pulled out a pen, and Adele couldn’t resist.

Users on Twitter rushed to share their congratulatory messages to the couple, applauding Adele for the kind gesture.

While others wasted no time, trimming the video for what we’re sure will be Adele’s next trending meme.

Weekends with Adele at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada, will conclude on March 25, 2023.

For the last half century, Steven Spielberg has graced the big screen — and occasionally the small screen — with fantastical visions of the outlandish. Some what does the guy who made Close Encounters of the Third Kind think of an occurrence similar to that movie, namely the recent spate of UFOs? As it happens, he has an appropriately out-there theory on that subject.

During a recent career-spanning interview with Stephen Colbert, the Oscar-winning filmmaker as asked his thoughts on those unidentified flying objects, including the mysterious balloon from China. He got a little conspiratorial.

“I’ve never seen a UFO,” Spielberg admitted. “I wish I had! I’ve never seen anything I can’t explain. But I believe certain people who have seen things that they can’t explain. I think what has been coming up recently is fascinating, absolutely fascinating. And I think the secrecy that is shrouding all of these sightings and the lack of transparency… I think there is something going on that just needs extraordinary due diligence.”

He added, “I don’t believe we’re alone in the universe. I think it’s mathematically impossible that we are the only intelligent species in the cosmos. I think that’s totally impossible. At the same time, it also seems impossible that someone would visit us from 400 million lightyears from here — except in the movies, of course — unless it figures out some way of jumping the shark, so to speak, and getting here through wormholes.”

Spielberg then floated a theory on what they could be. “The most optimistic thing I feel about these things we see in the skies, that the Army and Navy and Air Force are recording on their gun cameras, is that what if they’re not from an advanced civilization 300 million lightyears from here?,” he theorized. “What if it’s us, 500,000 years in the future, that is coming back to document the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st century because they’re anthropologists? And they know something we don’t quite know yet that has occurred, and they’re trying to track the last hundred years of our history.”

Of course, that theory hinges on the idea that humanity to still be kicking around in 500,000 years, which Colbert joked may be outlandish. “Yes, we survive,” Spielberg said. “Or at least a certain percentage of us survives that allows future generations to flourish.”

Spielberg’s theory — which is a lot more soothing than the one cooked up by Tucker Carlson — sounds a bit like the last half hour of his 2001 sci-fi film A.I. Artificial Intelligence, which [SPOILER] finds humanity slowly wiped out by the effects of climate change. Their robot creations, however, seem to have evolved and use the boy droid played by Haley Joel Osment to learn about humanity before their behavior eradicated them from the planet.

You can watch the full interview in the video below.

(Via IndieWire)