Month: September 2023

Ethan Hawke has a new movie on the festival circuit: Wildcat, a drama about the Southern writer Flannery O’Connor. It’s a chance for him to do something he’s never done before: direct his daughter. Maya Hawke has come into her own over the last few years, acting in Stranger Things and Fear Street and Asteroid City, plus standing out as a singer. They appear to have a good relationship, enough that she can make fun of him for badly hitting on Rihanna. Heck, it’s not even weird for them that he directed her doing intimate scenes.

In a double interview with Variety (in a bit caught by Insider), there are two scenes that might be weird for a father and daughter to shoot together. Wildcat dips in and out of some of O’Connor’s work, with Maya playing those characters, too. In one, from the short story “Good Country People,” a young woman played by Maya “goes at it with a Bible salesman,” played by Cooper Hoffman. In another, from “Parker’s Back,” she “gets felt up by a ne’er-do-well,” played by Rafael Casal.

Sounds awkward! Well, it wasn’t.

“We were so comfortable with it,” Ethan said, turning to Maya. “I couldn’t care less.”

Maya added that they “made sure to have an intimacy coordinator on set for them. So that they felt safe and comfortable and not like they were being spied on…”

Interjected Ethan, “…by some creepy dad.”

(Via Variety and Insider)

Conan O’Brien gets the most out of his guests on the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast. He bonded with Japanese Breakfast over her Coachella set. Chris Martin explained why Bruce Springsteen is to blame for his decision to stop eat dinner. Billie Eilish shared “heartbreaking” advice she once received from her idol-turned-friend Justin Bieber. So, it was only a matter of time before Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend hosted a story about friendship.

Questlove was O’Brien’s guest for the September 4 episode of the podcast, and their hour-plus conversation included insight into how Jimmy Fallon helped pieceThe Roots back together again.

Questlove explained that personal and professional responsibilities were stretching The Roots thin around 2009, so they wished “a Celine Dion situation would happen,” meaning a stable residency. Their version of that was joining up with Fallon, first on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and then as the in-house band on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, which he said “is what we needed to actually bond and be friends again.”

The Grammy and Oscar winner then shared a story involving the Red Hot Chili Peppers around 2006 that had previously made him realize that he was no longer friends with his longtime bandmates

“We’re on tour with the Chili Peppers, and it’s a European tour. And they’re playing, like, soccer — I’m sorry, post-[Ted] Lasso, football stadiums,” he said. “You know, it’s like 80,000 to 120,000 [people] a night. Every three to four songs, those guys get into sort of a football magic circle huddle. By the fourth time they do this, I’m thinking like, ‘Oh, they’re gonna call an audible and change up the setlist.’ And then, I had the setlist in my hand, I’m like, Wait, they didn’t change anything. … Why do they keep having these little meetings every five songs, and nothin’ changes from what I know the show to be?”

He continued, “I see Flea in catering, and I’m like, ‘Dude, what are you guys talking about when you go into that huddle?’ And Flea is like, ‘Yo, man, it’s like, I don’t know, man. We’re just so full of gratitude.’”

While Questlove was initially “dismissive” of Flea’s reasoning, his manager put it into perspective: The Red Hot Chili Peppers “actually” liked each other, and The Roots has unknowingly transitioned from being friends to “just business partners” around 2006 or ’07.

“I realized, Ah, sh*t. We’re really not friends. We’re just nine strangers that just play the same songs every night, and that’s it,” Questlove said. “What wound up happening at Fallon is Jimmy has a way of disarming you. At least for the first six years, we were 13-year-olds in adults’ bodies, we could do silly things and not feel like we’re gonna lose our street cred because we’re doing silly sh*t.”

At one point, Questlove said, Fallon “talked The Roots into an eight-man human pyramid,” which perfectly illustrated how crucial Fallon would be to reconnecting them with each other and their individual humanity.

Watch the full clip above.

Ayra Starr ended last year by collaborating with Wizkid, and she hopped on Bien’s “My Baby” in early 2023. But now it’s all about her.

“It’s my first headline tourrrrr !!!” Starr wrote in an Instagram post on July 12 announcing her 21: The World Tour. “I’ve been touring around the world, opening for other artists, opening stages at festivals, Now it’s an Ayra Starr show !”

The tour will have three legs — North America, Africa and Australia, and Europe — and it began in Houston, Texas on July 27. So far, Starr has staged nine shows, including stops in Boston, Chicago, New York City, and Toronto. She will next perform on Wednesday night, September 6, in Charlotte, North Carolina, with the North American leg scheduled to wrap on September 19 in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Starr won’t have much rest before starting her trek across Africa and Australia, beginning on September 30 in the latter’s Gold Coast. The European leg will kick off on November 3 in Stockholm, Sweden and wrap with a grand finale in Zurich, Switzerland on November 30.

If you’re planning on attending any of the remaining dates, check out Starr’s setlist (as chronicled by setlist.fm based on her September 2 show at Webster Hall in New York City).

1. “Intro”
2. “Toxic”
3. “Away”
4. “2 Sugar”
5. “Crazy”
6. “Beggie Beggie”
7. “People” (Feat. Arya Starr and Omah Lay)
8. “Love Don’t Cost A Dime (Re-Up)”
9. “Overloading (OVERDOSE)”
10. “Won Da Mo”
11. “Running”
12. “Stamina”
13. “Bridgertn”
14. “Ase”
15. “Fashion Killer”
16. “Bloody Samaritan”
17. “Rush”
18. “Sability”

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

Michael Imperioli is more than just a beloved actor who doesn’t love any bigots who watch his work. He’s also a filmmaker. He wrote and directed the 2009 indie Hungry Ghosts. And in 1999, he teamed up with his frequent collaborator Spike Lee to write Summer of Sam, about the New York City’s hellish summer season. It was a tough sell, even in the pre-franchise days, and it took some doing to get it off the ground. Indeed, Imperioli recently revealed that he went to some truly outside-the-box means to ensure it was made.

The erstwhile Christopher Moltisanti is one of the talking heads in the forthcoming documentary Ghosts of the Chelsea Hotel, which explores the storied Manhattan institution. In a clip shared with Variety, Imperioli talks about what would become his first produced screenplay.

“I had just begun writing Summer of Sam with Victor Colicchio — we wrote that script together,” Imperioli recalls. “I really wanted to get it made. So I met somebody who was living here who was a witch, who said she could help me get it made, but it wasn’t going to happen the way I thought it would. I was very ambitious at the time and wanted to get that made, so [I] resorted to tapping into otherworldly means to get it through the studio system.”

Imperioli does not go into details about the meet-up. But Summer of Sam got made, and with no less than Spike Lee at the helm, so maybe witches are real.

In another segment of the doc, Imperioli shares a second story about the supernatural lurking in the Chelsea Hotel.

“I saw a ghost here,” he remembers. “Some people may think that I’m insane and it’s bullsh*t or whatever. But I’m not the only person who has seen this apparition of a woman, apparently from the late 19th century, whose soon-to-be husband died on the Titanic. She came from upstate or something and was waiting for him here, and when she found out what happened to him, she killed herself.”

Imperioili survived the spectral encounter, ensuring that we’d see him not only on The Sopranos but, much later, on The White Lotus, too.

(Via Variety)

There’s not a ton of NBA news being made in early September, but on Tuesday night we got a brief flurry of free agency signings as Danny Green inked a deal to return to Philadelphia, while the Lakers finally nabbed Christian Wood off of the open market.

Wood was unable to land a long-term deal in free agency, as he has earned a reputation as a bit of a malcontent and despite strong production (16.6 points and 7.3 rebounds per game in Dallas) has never been a favorite of coaching staffs over his time in the league. That is usually telling, but as often happens when the Lakers make a signing, some can’t help but overlook potential red flags and get maybe a bit too excited about a talented player joining the team.

That happened on Wednesday, when Richard Sherman decided to compare Wood’s stats (over the last three years) to those of Hall of Famer and two-time champion Pau Gasol.

Sherman probably lost a lot of Laker fans with this comparison, as Pau is about as beloved a figure as the Lakers have had in the last two decades outside of Kobe Bryant. He also was a terrific two-way player who impacted winning in a way Wood never has, and it’s honestly wildly unfair to Wood to even trot out a comparison to Gasol.

Wood is a fascinating litmus test for how you view basketball. If you are like Sherman, you can’t help but be blinded by his raw numbers on offense, where he’s a highly effective stretch big. Wood posted the aforementioned strong averages in scoring and rebounding in his one season in Dallas, shooting 51.5 percent from the field and 37.6 percent from three. However, he has long been a tantalizing talent boasting similar numbers in most every stop, but one who has never been able to stick in a single place. The Lakers will be his eighth NBA team entering his 10th year in the league, which isn’t something that just happens with someone capable of Wood’s production. From attitude to a lack of defensive impact has often kept him from getting the minutes he craves — which was particularly the case for a defensive-minded coach like Jason Kidd — Wood has never found a long-term home in the NBA.

Now he heads to L.A. on a minimum deal with a stated goal of playing a big role alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis, but it will require a commitment from him to embracing a secondary role and playing hard on both ends of the floor in a way we simply haven’t seen from him yet. Maybe the Lakers are finally the team that will get through to him, and there’s an optimists view that could happen if you want to try and find one. Dallas was supposed to be that place coming off of a conference finals trip, but the team as a whole fell flat and there were plenty of reasons to be frustrated in that locker room. LeBron James commands a level of respect in the locker room that tends to get guys to buy in, but it still requires the humility to fall in line and James won’t suffer a fool for long. However, all of that is to say, you’re asking someone who’s been in the league a decade to do something they never has, albeit now in a situation they’ve never been in. Wood has become the NBA’s version of the Arrested Development marriage counseling joke, where teams recognize it never worked for anyone else…but it just might work for us.

After spending a decade fronting the dreamy indie pop group The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Kip Berman wasn’t ready to leave music behind. The group disbanded in 2019, but it didn’t take long for Berman to turn to solo music. Finding a place for his own music to live, Berman created the solo project The Natvral. Following up on his 2021 debut solo LP Tethers, Berman embraces heartland rock (with a healthy dose of country twang) on his latest release, Summer Of No Light.

Berman began writing the songs on Summer Of No Light during the early stages of lockdown, so thoughts of climate crisis and raising children in a time where the world seemed to be ending was front-of-mind for him. To clear his head, he picked up a guitar and let the music flow out of him. “After putting my children to bed, I spent many a late night in the basement with my guitar and let my mind wander to the places where I could no longer go,” he said in a press statement. “Initially, a lot of the songs were about getting as far away from the reality of my moment as possible.”

To celebrate the release of Summer Of No Light, Berman sits down with Uproxx to talk Belle and Sebastian, Lewis Capaldi, and crying to Coco in our latest Q&A.

It’s 2050 and the world hasn’t ended and people are still listening to your music. How would you like it to be remembered?

I’d happily trade the latter if it insured the former. But if anyone finds this someday, know that I was a singer of songs, a road dog, and a merch man.

What’s your favorite city in the world to perform?

Wherever will have me.

Who’s the person who has most inspired your work, and why?

I see my Grandpa — he’s 90 now, and like a dad to me. He used to play Viola in the symphony when he was younger, but left that a long time ago. But even though it’s not his work anymore, he still practices every day. He loves it, not because he’s preparing to perform – though I’ve been lucky many times to hear him play, and he plays beautifully – but he is just animated by making music, it’s essential to his being.

I know the kind of music I play is different – but I never want to stop feeling the way he feels — that music is never finished, that there’s always something more to learn, express or share. Maybe it sounds a bit naive – but I want to play with an absence of expectation, to play for the music itself.

Where did you eat the best meal of your life?

A BEC on an everything bagel and a cup of coffee from Peter Pan in Greenpoint… Any time I’m back that way, I always make sure to stop by.

What album do you know every word to?

Maybe Belle and Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister or Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever.

What was the best concert you’ve ever attended?

I remember seeing Belle and Sebastian on September 11th (2001) and it just so happened that I was there with the person I’m now married to. That seems significant, right? They opened with “Turn, Turn, Turn.” But there are many others that stand out: Cat Power backed by Dirty Three at an old laundromat (17 Nautical Miles) in Portland, Leonard Cohen in New York with my mom (it was her old tapes that got me into him), Titus Andronicus at the Hate Shack in Glenn Rock (it was just the back shed at Ian’s parent’s house and I still suspect my old bandmates and I were only invited cuz we were old enough to buy beer), The Prids anywhere, and Dear Nora at the Magic Marker house countless times.

What is the best outfit for performing and why?

Layers, lots of ‘em.

Who’s your favorite person to follow on Twitter and/or Instagram?

While I don’t know a lot about memes, jam bands, or psychedelics – I feel somehow an expert in all three thanks to the tireless work of @Fad_Albert. “Lock him in the van.”

What’s your most frequently played song in the van on tour?

It’s been a bit since I’ve been in a tour van — but perhaps my most spun record of the last couple years is Tele Novella’s Merlynn Belle. Their new one, Poet’s Tooth, just got announced and is sure to be a favorite as well. Oh, and Florry – a band out of Philly on Dear Life Records is first rate. The latest Dear Nora, Human Futures, (Orindal Records) is tremendous as is all Katy’s work.

What’s the last thing you Googled?

Checking… ok, here: “who is Lewis Capaldi?”

What album makes for the perfect gift?

The Orange Juice record with the dolphins [You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever]. I almost named my kid Edwyn — the man is a genius. You can’t not love his voice, his perspective — they were probably the first and best indiepop band, though really anything from Glasgow seems to have that proper balance between dirty and sweet.

Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever crashed while on tour?

There’s been more than a few. There was a cat urine-stained and scented carpeted floor in Columbus, OH once. I remember thinking, “Well, if anyone ever doubts my realness, I’ll someday have this story…” and here I am, so real.

What’s the story behind your first or favorite tattoo?

I haven’t got any.

What artists keep you from flipping the channel on the radio?

I’m lucky ‘cuz where I live I got a great college station, WPRB. They were playing Roxy Gordon a little while back and I had to pull over and just take it in. A label called Paradise of Bachelors just reissued his stuff, which was new to me. Truly a one-of-a-kind artist, I’m grateful to have a station like that in my backyard.

What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

Well, this is just a small thing, but it’s stuck with me. When my old band The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart was starting out, we were on tour in Spain with Bradford Cox / Atlas Sound. We had gone from playing to 12 people at Cake Shop to doing these big shows in Spain within a year, and I was pretty bewildered. For context, there were ads on the sides of city buses for the shows.

I didn’t think we were worthy of all that – I thought about all the bands that I loved who inspired us (The Pastels, Aislers Set, The Wake, Exploding Hearts) and how most of them never got to do anything like that, and I just felt elevated in a way that was both a dream come true and one I didn’t think I deserved.

Well, I couldn’t sleep so I was down eating cornflakes or whatever at the hotel at 5:00 am, and the only other person awake down there was Bradford. And he just sat with me and we talked – and he was just really nice, really understanding of my situation– and encouraging. I dunno, I mean – maybe that’s a small thing, but it helped me get through that time. He was a sweetheart, a real good egg for sure.

What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?

I used to think you had to be monomaniacally devoted to the muses – to the exclusion of all other human relationships or experiences – to win their favor. But it turns out, the muses find that sort of thing a bit annoying. So yeah, just live your life and the songs will probably follow. But don’t try to live your life for ahhhhrt.

What’s the last show you went to?

SRSQ + Frankie Rose at TV Eye. It was AWESOME. I actually met Kennedy (SRSQ) in Santa Cruz in 2015 (?) when we played with Tony Molina, who of course rules. Kennedy wasn’t even at the show, just at a goth dance party next door. But she was like, “I’m in a band called Them Are Us Too, you should listen to it,” and, you know — I did. And it was truly great, tremendous in ways you couldn’t even expect when a stranger hands you a piece of paper. And Frankie, Frankie is one of my faves ever – I’ve done shows with her loads over the years. She’s a true lifer who has made every project she’s been a part of better. I’m always curious to see where her music goes next.

What movie can you not resist watching when it’s on TV?

If I watch a movie at home, it’s usually just with my kids and I cry for reasons they don’t really get. Moana is first rate for that, and Coco really gets me too. I mean, an unheralded musician dad who struggles even in the afterlife to let his daughter know he loves her? I know I’m a bit of a sap, but that one really just wrecks me.

What’s one of your hidden talents?

Ha, my talents seem to remain hidden — even from me.

Summer Of No Light is out now via Dirty Bingo. Find more information here.

Last weekend, Blink-182 announced in since expired social media posts that their headlining reunion tour stops in Glasgow, Belfast, and Dublin would be postponed because iconic drummer Travis Barker “had to return home to the States” to tend to an unspecified “urgent family matter.” On Wednesday afternoon, September 6, Kourtney Kardashian Barker, Barker’s wife since May 2022, specified what happened.

“I will be forever grateful to my incredible doctors for saving our baby’s life,” Kardashian captioned an Instagram photo of Barker holding her hand. “I am eternally grateful to my husband who rushed to my side from tour to be with me in the hospital and take care of me afterwards, my rock. And to my mom, thank you for holding my hand through this.”

She continued, “As someone who has had three really easy pregnancies in the past, I wasn’t prepared for the fear of rushing into urgent fetal surgery. I don’t think anyone who hasn’t been through a similar situation can begin to understand that feeling of fear. I have a whole new understanding and respect for the mamas who have had to fight for their babies while pregnant. Praise be to God. Walking out of the hospital with my baby boy in my tummy and safe was the truest blessing.”

Kardashian Barker revealed her pregnancy to Barker during a mid-June Blink-182 show in Los Angeles. The couple has been over the moon since then, sharing their clever, drum-centric baby sex reveal and teasing what their future son’s name might be.

This will be their first child together. Barker shares Atiana, Landon, and Alabama with his ex, Shanna Moakler. Kardashian previously welcomed Mason, Penelope, and Reign with her on-and-off-again ex, Scott Disick.

According to Blink-182’s official website, the next tour stop is scheduled for Friday, September 8, in Antwerp, Belgium. The band will venture to Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and Peru in early 2024, as the Latin America dates were postponed earlier this year after Barker suffered a “freak accident” that led to finger surgery.

(Via Billboard)

Blink-182 is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Donald Trump may be crushing it in the polls, but the Republican party is still in disarray. There are a lot of candidates hoping — and so far very much failing — to seize the GOP 2024 nomination from his mitts. And while many are afraid to say anything to make him mad, others are not. One of them is Ann Coulter, who’s been on the anti-Trump train for years. Trump hasn’t returned fire that often, but on Wednesday he did, big time.

“Ann Coulter, the washed up political “pundit” who predicted my win in 2016, then went unbearably crazy with her demands and wanting to be a part of everything, to the consternation of all, has gone hostile and angry with every bit of her very ‘nervous’ energy,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Like many others, I just didn’t want her around – She wasn’t worth the trouble!”

For what it’s worth, Coulter hasn’t held back when it comes to Trump. Back in 2019, after he declared a national emergency to (unsuccessfully) complete his dumb Southern border wall, Coulter wrote, “The only national emergency is that our president is an idiot.”

She’s also told him “he had his chance, with a Republican House and Senate,” then pointed out his nepotism in handing key roles to family members, who then got rich as hell.

By early 2022 she declared him “done,” calling him a “liar and con man,” and later dragging him for backing joke candidate Herschel Walker. Maybe she and Chris Christie should form a band.

(Via Mediaite)

Being a lawyer for Donald Trump can’t be fun. Some wind up going to jail for him. Others go broke. Some have to crowdfund to pay the legal fees they acquired for doing his bidding. Over the last few years he’s run through them like water, and it’s not hard to see why. He’s a chaos agent who can’t be controlled, even when he brazenly incriminates himself. It’s probably in his best interest to keep him off the stand. And, of course, that’s exactly what he wants to do.

As per NBC News, Trump went on conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt’s show Wednesday, where they inevitably chatted about his four separate indictments. That he has four chances to go to jail haven’t humbled him or made him more sensible. Indeed, when asked if he, one of the planet’s most unhinged humans, would let himself be cross-examined by real attorneys, he said “absolutely.”

“That, I would do,” Trump said, adding, “That, I look forward to.”

Trump wasn’t clear about which trial he was referring to, so presumably he meant any of them. That’s four chances for him to lose his cool and say something that lands him in the clink.

Still, he’s not sweating them. “They’ll get dismissed, but we’re going to be asking, we’re going to be asking for dismissals of these politically motivated cases,” he thundered.

Trump added that the cases were a “scam,” repeating his line that they’re “election interference.”

Defense lawyers tend to advise their clients not to take the stand. Surely that goes double, triple, quadruple for someone who wants to debate Meghan Markle for some ungodly reason.

(Via NBC News)

This year’s summer movie season was a bumpy ride, with big bombs and shocking underperformers (plus one that was not so shocking). But there were two unambiguous smashes: the duo collectively known as “Barbenheimer.” Not everyone around the world got to see them; Barbie was banned in some Middle Eastern countries. It was also banned in Russia. One problem there, though: Neither Barbie nor Oppenheimer were ever offered to play there.

Russian State TV recently did a segment about Barbie and Oppenheimer, both of which “failed to secure a distribution license” by the warring nation’s Ministry of Culture. The reasoning? That both films “do not promote the strengthening and preservation of traditional values.” One commentator went so far as to call Barbie “non-traditional and no good.” He added, “I don’t understand what is inside the head of any grown-up who goes to see Barbie.”

The commentators also accused it of being everything “our country is fighting.” including “radical feminism, prohibited LGBT scenes, and transgenders portraying females.”

No one went into why Oppenheimer was banned, but maybe it’s due to all that sex.

There were a couple of issues that subtracted credibility from the banning. For one, one talking head said he asked people who’d actually seen Barbie what they thought, and they told him it “didn’t promote any “LGBT values,” nor did it have any kissing. (This is true.) Still, another host declared that makes it “even more suspicious.”

Another commentator then threw cold water on the banning. “Let’s be honest: We aren’t showing them because Warner Bros. didn’t offer it for us to show,” he said. “We banned something that wasn’t even offered to us.”

Soon as he said that, the show’s host announced they were “out of time,” prompting a sudden cut to a commercial.

You can watch the full segment below, during which it’s revealed Russia has also banned the most popular billionaire cartoon character, Scrooge McDuck, who they say teaches kids “the wrong values, not the ones needed today.”