Month: January 2024

The Solar Opposites are back. Yeah buddy! The very funny Hulu animated series is returning for a Valentine’s Day special, in which Korvo (Dan Stevens), Yumyulack (Sean Giambrone), Terry (Thomas Middleditch), and Jesse (Mary Mack) declare war on the holiday. Things almost instantly go wrong. There’s violent birds (between Solar Opposites and The Boy and The Heron, anti-bird propaganda is out of control), a giant wedding ring around the Earth, and a Titanic parody involving Korvo and Terry.

You can watch the trailer for “An Earth Shatteringly Romantic Solar Valentine’s Day Opposites Special” above. If you caught up with season four yet, start with the dinosaur episode. Also, here’s what you missed:

Solar Opposites centers around a team of four aliens who are evenly split on whether Earth is awful or awesome. Korvo (Dan Stevens) and Yumyulack (Sean Giambrone) only see the pollution, crass consumerism, and human frailty, while Terry (Thomas Middleditch) and Jesse (Mary Mack) love TV, junk food, and fun stuff. In season four, we pack up the sci-fi and get normal… for a second. Then it’s back to classic Solar chaos, mayhem in the Wall, and some all new Silvercops adventures!

The Valentine’s Day episode of Solar Opposites premieres on Hulu on February 5. Season five is expected to come out later this year.

Over his three decades as an NFL play-by-play man, Joe Buck has steadily found his voice and comfort in his own skin. But getting to that point was a process, as the son of legendary broadcaster Jack Buck, he wasn’t always sure of what tone he should take and how seriously he should take himself.

Now, he and Troy Aikman make up arguably the best broadcast booth in football for ESPN’s Monday Night Football, in large part because they strike the right balance of not taking themselves too seriously, but are still able to bring the right gravitas to a call in a big moment. It took Buck awhile to loosen up in the booth, and the all-time example of him being far too uptight is when he was paired with Cris Collinsworth for a Vikings-Packers playoff game in Green Bay and Randy Moss celebrated a touchdown by pretending to moon Packers fans.

Buck’s “that is a DISGUSTING act” call has lived on forever, and it’s the one he wishes he could take back. As he explained to Kevin Clark on This Is Football, that’s the easy answer for the thing he would do over in his career, citing how great Randy Moss has been to he and his wife and that he didn’t know the backstory of Packers fans mooning the Vikings team bus in the moment.

It’s one that Buck cringes at every time it plays back, as he can’t believe that came out of his mouth, but it certainly served as a bit of a learning experience for him. Once overly self-serious, Buck now happily pokes fun at himself and the banter between he and Aikman makes their broadcast among the best in the NFL, and that shift likely started after having to hear back his call of Moss’ celebration two decades ago.

Jay-Z continues to expand his extensive portfolio. Today (January 24), his latest collection for Moncler Genius, which arrives as a partnership between fashion house Moncler and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation brand launched through the official Moncler site and via select stores.

The Moncler X Roc Nation collection features large puffed jackets, sweaters, two-piece ensembles, streamlined vests, all of which contain an New York-inspired flair. Many of these fashions may require you to break the bank. The least expensive item in the collection is a t-shirt with the Moncler X Roc Nation logo, which goes for $345. The priciest item is the bomber jacket, which comes in at the tune of $2,405. But thankfully, there’s free shipping! All of the clothes were designed by Jay himself.

Perr Moncler’s website, Moncler X Roc Nation “symbolizes creativity without limits, pooling experience and ambition from shared yet vastly varied points of interest, for a collection that epitomizes the sentiment that genius is everywhere.”

The news arrives with a special trailer shared to Moncler’s social media channels. The trailer was produced by The McGloughlin Brothers, and is narrated by R&B artist Saint Jhn.

“We climb mountains over hard paths,” says Saint Jhn in the clip. “From hard places, climb above the noise to find your voice. Until there is only sky above you. Genius is everywhere.”

The Moncler X Roc Nation collection arrives lest than a year after Jay’s The Art Of All audio/visual experience, which he created with Moncler and revealed at last year’s London Fashion Week.

You can see a preview clip introducing Moncler X Roc Nation above.

Uproxx cover star Chlöe Bailey did a recent interview with People Magazine, where she discussed her sister Halle’s pregnancy and how they tried to hide it until she was ready to share her baby with the world. As Chlöe put it, it was the “best kept secret ever.”

“We just ignore it,” she shared. “I would tell her, like, take social media off your phone, you know, I keep all her other secrets. So this was just another one in the books.”

Chlöe herself is also “on cloud nine” about the fact that she’s now an aunt. Halle and her boyfriend, DDG, welcomed their son, Halo, which they revealed earlier this month through an Instagram post.

Both the sisters are still keeping busy. Chlöe performed at the Urban One Honors: Best In Black event. Halle is set to host a Masterclass that fans can livestream, which will be part of the festivities for Grammy Week. More information about that can be found here.

Chlöe also recently teased during a TikTok livestream that the two could be reuniting to put out some new music. Both sisters worked on their solo projects, with Chlöe dropping In Pieces, and Halle appearing as the lead in the live-action Little Mermaid.

Check out Halle Bailey and DDG’s announcement of Halo’s birth below.

The Milwaukee Bucks made a rather shocking move on Tuesday, firing first-year head coach Adrian Griffin after a 30-13 start to the season. Now, it wasn’t quite as stunning as that record would indicate, because there were plenty of underlying issues the Bucks were overcoming off sheer talent, namely a defense that had no definable principles or strengths.

Giannis Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard, and Khris Middleton have led the Bucks to the East’s 2-seed at the midway point of the season, but of all the top contenders in the East, they seem like the team with the most obvious concerns come playoff time. There’s been a disconnect in the Bucks locker room since before camp, when Terry Stotts abruptly left the team due to disagreements with Griffin despite his strong relationship with Lillard. From there, the team had to demand a switch back to drop coverage with Brook Lopez, and Giannis recently called out the lack of a coherent scheme — and poor effort from the players.

Immediately after Griffin was fired, Doc Rivers’ name was floated as a top candidate for the job. Given the most successful coaches available in mid-January were Rivers, now doing TV work for ESPN, and Budenholzer, who the Bucks just fired, it wasn’t a surprise Rivers’ name would be attached.

On Tuesday night, CNN Sports broke the news that he’s on his way to Milwaukee.

While it seemed like they might have jumped the gun here, CNN stood by its reporting, even as other NBA reporters said things hadn’t progressed that far down the road yet. But on Wednesday morning, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, Chris Haynes of Bleacher Report, and Shams Charania of The Athletic broke the news that Rivers is, indeed, on his way to Milwaukee.

Rivers has not enjoyed much in the way of postseason success since winning a title in 2008 with the Celtics, and that will of course be brought up by everyone when citing the Bucks’ goal of winning it all. That said, he will install some defensive principles and has a strong system on that end, which will be an upgrade from what they’ve been doing even factoring in their personnel limitations. Offensively, we’ll have to wait and see, as Rivers’ teams recently have had a tendency to get bogged down in the playoffs, but Lillard and Antetokounmpo represent a uniquely dynamic pairing that might be able to overcome those problems.

Now, somewhat interestingly, ESPN has to figure out what they’ll do with their lead broadcast team, as Rivers was paired with Doris Burke and Mike Breen. J.J. Redick and Richard Jefferson are the lead analysts for ESPN’s No. 2 team, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if Redick was elevated to that top group.

Ever since Drake’s breakout hit, “Best I Ever Had,” some hip-hop fans have found any reason they could to justify their hate for the Canadian hitmaker. From demeaning his upbringing and early career as a child actor to outdated and regressive homophobic attacks to Yasiin Bey’s pseudo-intellectual take, Drake haters will seemingly always find a reason for dumping on the For All The Dogs rapper.

But all those reasons are just a smokescreen for one, real reason — at least, according to Drake’s longtime mentor, benefactor, and frequent collaborator, Lil Wayne. The New Orleans icon offered an intriguing, “historical” explanation for people hating on Drake during a recent podcast interview which was surfaced by HipHopDX earlier this week. Appearing on The Richard Sherman Podcast (there are TOO MANY PODCASTS), Wayne gave his simple take for all the disrespect:

“He red, he light-skinned,” Wayne conjectured. “That’s just American history. How I know is, because I’m not light-skinned. I hated on all light-skinned dudes in school. So yeah, it’s American history, man.”

While I’m sure there’s more to it than that (at least, for some people), colorism has been a longstanding issue in the music industry. And just speaking for personal experience, there does appear to be a certain amount of resentment that manifests as mean-spirited “jokes” and well-worn stereotypes. But then again, it seems like everyone has to deal with some version of this, so maybe Drake’s status as a relatable superstar remains intact, after all.

Check out the video of the interview below.

Nearly twenty-five years have passed since arena-bound Gladiator star Russell Crowe shouted, “Are you not entertained?” Well, Ridley Scott plans on entertaining the original film’s audience (and hopefully, a few new generations, given the cast) with a sequel. Expectations are obviously running high, given that the original was both a box-office smash and an Academy Award success, taking home the Best Picture award with Russell Crowe picking up Best Actor. At the same time, the reality that a sequel is nearly upon us still feels surreal, given that Maximus didn’t make it out of the first film alive.

Ridley Scott, of course, recently finished up directing another historical epic, Napoleon, starring Joaquin Phoenix, who happens to also have portrayed Emperor Commodus in the original Gladiator. That character also didn’t live to see another era of Ancient Rome, but the good news is that there’s a loaded cast for Gladiator 2, which has finished filming, according to the sequel’s star. Here’s what we know about the upcoming blockbuster film.

Plot

The events of Gladiator 2 have long been the stuff of legends and rumors, and at one point Nick Cave (yes, that Nick Cave) wrote a fantastical script (detailed by Collider) that would have bought Maximus back in the afterlife. And that wouldn’t have happened simply as a quick ghost cameo but as the main plot point after Maximus awakens in the Roman afterlife, which isn’t as idyllic as he imagined. On an even odder note, he would have been tasked with a long and winding odyssey back in Rome, where the fully-grown Emperor Lucius II would have been as god-awful as his Uncle Commodus.

(Fortunately, this did not happen ^^ even though it sounds like a fun movie to watch under the influence.)

In the actual remake from Ridley Scott, the story will pick up around two decades following the events of the first movie. The story follows Lucius II (Paul Mescal), the adult son of Roman empress Lucilla (the returning Connie Nielsen). In the time between the two films, according to Scott while speaking with Rotten Tomatoes, “He’s been in the wilderness” after having “lost touch with his mother.” When the story picks up, Lucilla believes that her son is dead, and boy, will she be surprised.

Filming has been completed, and is there a tiny chance that Crowe could do the ghost thing in this sequel from Ridley Scott? There’s been zero inkling that this could happen, but Crowe did recently admit to Collider that he was “slightly jealous” of the sequel’s existence. He praised the original film’s enduring legacy while adding, “You don’t always get that kind of longevity with every film you do, so, it obviously holds a special place in my heart.”

Now, don’t get your hopes from that nostalgia, but since the plot of Gladiator 2 is mostly under lock and key, anything could happen. Even ghost city.

Cast

How on earth did Paramount go about casting the event-role of Lucius II as an adult? Studio execs Daria Cercek and Michael Ireland witnessed a shirtless Paul Mescal onstage and knew that they had their dude. Via Variety:

To see if Mescal could fill out a toga, Cercek and Ireland watched his performance in the West End revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” “He played Stanley, and there are several moments where he takes off his shirt and it was electric,” Cercek says. “The ladies in the audience were very vocal, and we were like, ‘I think we’ve found our guy.’”

Multiple actors from the first film also reprise their roles for the sequel. That includes Connie Nielsen (as Lucilla), Derek Jacobi (as Senator Gracchus), and Djimon Hounsou (as Juba). We might have been robbed of Barry Keoghan doing shifty, villainous things in Ancient Rome, since (as Deadline reported) he had to drop out for scheduling reasons because he is everywhere else these days. Keoghan departed the role of Emperor Geta, which has been picked up by Fred Hechinger (The White Lotus).

Additionally, the movie stars Denzel Washington and Pedro Pascal (who gathered eye-popping arena-battle experience in Game of Thrones) in mystery roles along with May Calamawy and Lior Raz. As for Mescal doing blockbuster leading man duties as Lucius II, he has gone on record to express trepidation of whether his fame will skyrocket following this sequel’s release. Good luck?

Release Date

Gladiator 2 will entertain us in theaters on November 22, 2024, which is the weekend before Thanksgiving. If the sequel is anything like its predecessor in quality, this movie will have long legs through awards season.

Trailer

The followup film hasn’t yet graced us with a trailer yet, so it’s time to relive the most repeated line of dialogue from Russell Crowe’s career:

Nearly twenty-five years have passed since arena-bound Gladiator star Russell Crowe shouted, “Are you not entertained?” Well, Ridley Scott plans on entertaining the original film’s audience (and hopefully, a few new generations, given the cast) with a sequel. Expectations are obviously running high, given that the original was both a box-office smash and an Academy Award success, taking home the Best Picture award with Russell Crowe picking up Best Actor. At the same time, the reality that a sequel is nearly upon us still feels surreal, given that Maximus didn’t make it out of the first film alive.

Ridley Scott, of course, recently finished up directing another historical epic, Napoleon, starring Joaquin Phoenix, who happens to also have portrayed Emperor Commodus in the original Gladiator. That character also didn’t live to see another era of Ancient Rome, but the good news is that there’s a loaded cast for Gladiator 2, which has finished filming, according to the sequel’s star. Here’s what we know about the upcoming blockbuster film.

Plot

The events of Gladiator 2 have long been the stuff of legends and rumors, and at one point Nick Cave (yes, that Nick Cave) wrote a fantastical script (detailed by Collider) that would have bought Maximus back in the afterlife. And that wouldn’t have happened simply as a quick ghost cameo but as the main plot point after Maximus awakens in the Roman afterlife, which isn’t as idyllic as he imagined. On an even odder note, he would have been tasked with a long and winding odyssey back in Rome, where the fully-grown Emperor Lucius II would have been as god-awful as his Uncle Commodus.

(Fortunately, this did not happen ^^ even though it sounds like a fun movie to watch under the influence.)

In the actual remake from Ridley Scott, the story will pick up around two decades following the events of the first movie. The story follows Lucius II (Paul Mescal), the adult son of Roman empress Lucilla (the returning Connie Nielsen). In the time between the two films, according to Scott while speaking with Rotten Tomatoes, “He’s been in the wilderness” after having “lost touch with his mother.” When the story picks up, Lucilla believes that her son is dead, and boy, will she be surprised.

Filming has been completed, and is there a tiny chance that Crowe could do the ghost thing in this sequel from Ridley Scott? There’s been zero inkling that this could happen, but Crowe did recently admit to Collider that he was “slightly jealous” of the sequel’s existence. He praised the original film’s enduring legacy while adding, “You don’t always get that kind of longevity with every film you do, so, it obviously holds a special place in my heart.”

Now, don’t get your hopes from that nostalgia, but since the plot of Gladiator 2 is mostly under lock and key, anything could happen. Even ghost city.

Cast

How on earth did Paramount go about casting the event-role of Lucius II as an adult? Studio execs Daria Cercek and Michael Ireland witnessed a shirtless Paul Mescal onstage and knew that they had their dude. Via Variety:

To see if Mescal could fill out a toga, Cercek and Ireland watched his performance in the West End revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” “He played Stanley, and there are several moments where he takes off his shirt and it was electric,” Cercek says. “The ladies in the audience were very vocal, and we were like, ‘I think we’ve found our guy.’”

Multiple actors from the first film also reprise their roles for the sequel. That includes Connie Nielsen (as Lucilla), Derek Jacobi (as Senator Gracchus), and Djimon Hounsou (as Juba). We might have been robbed of Barry Keoghan doing shifty, villainous things in Ancient Rome, since (as Deadline reported) he had to drop out for scheduling reasons because he is everywhere else these days. Keoghan departed the role of Emperor Geta, which has been picked up by Fred Hechinger (The White Lotus).

Additionally, the movie stars Denzel Washington and Pedro Pascal (who gathered eye-popping arena-battle experience in Game of Thrones) in mystery roles along with May Calamawy and Lior Raz. As for Mescal doing blockbuster leading man duties as Lucius II, he has gone on record to express trepidation of whether his fame will skyrocket following this sequel’s release. Good luck?

Release Date

Gladiator 2 will entertain us in theaters on November 22, 2024, which is the weekend before Thanksgiving. If the sequel is anything like its predecessor in quality, this movie will have long legs through awards season.

Trailer

The followup film hasn’t yet graced us with a trailer yet, so it’s time to relive the most repeated line of dialogue from Russell Crowe’s career:

Jimmy Kimmel landed a blow on failed presidential candidate Ron DeSantis while tackling the recent Oscar drama over Barbie. The Florida governor ended his flailing campaign on Sunday, officially putting to bed any chances of replacing Donald Trump at the top of the Republican ticket. That news was quickly overshadowed by the Oscar nominations, so Kimmel went ahead and combined the two with brutal results.

While Barbie was nominated for Best Picture, the Academy made the odd choice of not nominating the film’s star Margot Robbie for Best Actress or Greta Gerwig for Best Director. However, Ryan Gosling picked up a nomination for his performance at Ken, and like a lot of people, Kimmel couldn’t help but notice that the Oscar snubs seemed very familiar.

“Barbie was nominated for eight Academy awards, which, who would have imagined?” Kimmel said via The Wrap. “Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig were not nominated for acting or directing. Whereas Ryan Gosling was. He got a nomination for playing Ken, which, ironically, was kind of the plot of the Barbie movie.”

While social media spent most of Tuesday highlighting how the Oscar snubs proved Barbie‘s thesis, Kimmel went another direction by taking a shot at Meatball-less Ron DeSantis.

“It’s pretty crazy. You know, Ryan Gosling plays a guy with no testicles and gets an Oscar nomination. Ron DeSantis does it, he has to drop out of the primary,” Kimmel joked. “It not fair! It’s not fair.”

(Via The Wrap)

In the summer of 2022, Maggie Rogers followed Heard It In A Past Life, her breakout debut album from 2019, with her second LP, Surrender. We’re approaching two years since the release of that project, so naturally, fans are wondering when they can expect her next album

Is Maggie Rogers Releasing A New Album In 2024?

It certainly appears so.

Back in May 2023, Rogers revealed that her next album was pretty much finished. She wrote in an Instagram post, “that’s a wrap on LP3 !!!! [star emoji] [butterfly emoji] written + recorded + off to mixing. so so so in love with these songs and cannot wait to start playing them for you this summer.”

It wasn’t made clear at the time when Rogers was thinking about releasing the album, but fans suspect she has quietly started the rollout. On Instagram yesterday (January 23), Rogers shared a simple image of the letters “MR” (her initials), written in a fancy-looking script on a white background. She didn’t offer any additional information beyond that, but the post’s comments section was filled with fans excitedly speculating that Rogers plans to announce her third album soon.

Furthermore, in an Instagram post from January 22, Rogers shared an 11-second snippet of new music. On December 31, she posted a 38-second sample of another unreleased song.

So, we don’t know for sure yet, but all signs seem to be pointing to a new Rogers album arriving in 2024.