Month: June 2024

When it comes to iconic TV scenes, some things simply cannot be recreated. When you begin to expect twists, turns or even a full-on war, it becomes less surprising and more expected. Everyone knew that House of the Dragon would have dragons and war, of course, but that doesn’t mean that it has to mimic everything that its predecessor, Game of Thrones did. Still, fans are using the flagship series as a reference point, and it has sparked a debate over which is worse: slaughtering a bunch of humans or kicking a dog on your way to slaughter one human. It’s a conundrum for the ages.

Season two of House of the Dragon premiered this week, and people are already itching to compare the two assassins Blood and Cheese to the infamous Red Wedding from season three of Game of Thrones. As if we should really be pitting two bloody slaughters against each other!

In the premiere, Daemon sends the aptly named gentlemen Blood and Cheese to kill Aemond, only the guys proceed to make Helaena point out her son Jaehaerys, who is then beheaded off-camera. What more can you expect from a man named Cheese? In the books, Helaena has three children, making her choice even darker, and her decision plagues her. On-screen, she does what she can to protect her daughter Jaehaera in a moment of distress.

It makes sense that this scene was watered down a bit for screen, but some fans think that it wasn’t gruesome enough compared to the text, which was apparently being teased as a “Red Wedding” moment.

Of the scene, Phia Saban told Deadline that she tried not to let the scene get to her head. “First instinct was like, ‘oh no, I have to do that in episode one’” she told Deadline. “I think what was really important to me was to really try not to overthink the gravitas of the moment and be like ‘what does this mean for the show, what does this mean in the universe’ I tried to just clap my brain in a way that I could just react to hosw shocking and unomfortable that moment is. It’s a huge shock, and she has to do a super human thing this is make a decision and acts as a mother in the worse circumstances,” she said.

Good thing the Red Wedding scene will always be there streaming on Max (Season 3, Episode 9) when you need it. For now, let Helaena unpack her own trauma and embroider in peace!

The first new (and third, technically) The Walking Dead spinoff, Dead City, breathed street-smart new life into an admittedly ailing franchise. Then Daryl Dixon came from behind to sweep the franchise away into enchanting new territory. That particular spin off is scheduled to return this year, but Dead City‘s second chapter will not be too far behind.

Let’s refresh on what happened at the end of Maggie and Negan’s previous time in Manhattan and discuss what’s to come in the AMC series.

Plot

As viewers will recall, the first Dead City season included Maggie roping Negan into rescuing the kidnapped Hershel (son to Maggie and Glenn). And Negan essentially had no choice but to try and make things right. Sure, the foes had ended The Walking Dead in a semi-truce, but Maggie was not amused when the perpetrator who nabbed Hershel was the Croat, whose tell-tale whistle revealed him to be a member of Negan’s old Saviors crew. Once inside Manhattan, Negan and Maggie dodged urban-jungle hordes, including a particularly nasty variant, and a cockroach attack. Then Maggie ended up turning Negan over to the Croat and leaving with Glenn, yet the happy mom-son reunion didn’t go as planned.

Hershel called out his mom for being obsessed with vengeance against Negan to a fault. Of course, it’s hard to blame Maggie for feeling that way, since long-running PTSD isn’t exactly unexpected after seeing someone they care about (let alone their husband) get their brains bashed in with a baseball bat, but Hershel stood firm, and then Maggie made this final utterance of the season: “This thing with Negan… I’m gonna finish it. So I can just let it go.”

What was she declaring, really? Maggie had prefaced the line with how “[f]or most of my life, I felt like the world kept taking and kept taking, and I think at some point I thought that if I could just fight hard enough, I’d be able to get it back, a little piece of it at least.” Then she admitted that the vengeance means that “you just end up losing what you got. And I don’t want to keep doing that anymore.”

When quizzed by Entertainment Weekly on what this means, exactly (will Maggie rescue Negan or kill him?), Lauren Cohan stayed cryptic:

“I am hesitant to say … I know what it means, and I don’t want people to be directed because I have heard so many different perceptions of that moment. And I love seeing how differently people take it. So I certainly know what it is, and it makes me more excited to do a second season. It makes me really interested to put all that down on paper and on film, because the best part of this character yet is this place that she can go now. And it was not what I ever imagined.”

Jeffrey Dean Morgan also spoke with EW, and he believes that even though The Dama wants to recruit him and appears to be treating him well, “I think he thinks he’s f*cked.” Now, we can wonder how f*cked Negan is and whether Maggie will help him or just return to put Negan out of his (and her) misery.

Cast

Lauren Cohan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan will clearly return as Maggie and Negan. Kim Coates of Sons of Anarchy fame has joined the second-season cast, which includes Gaius Charles, Mahina Napoleon, Trey Santiago-Hudson, Charlie Solis, Željko Ivanek, and Jonathan Higginbotham.

Zero crossover action has been confirmed for this season, but presumably, Daryl and Carol are completely out of the question. There’s also no reason for Rick Grimes or Michonne to be dumb enough to head into Manhattan, and we don’t even know whether more of The Ones Who Live is in the cards. So don’t expect to see any new original cast members this season unless a massive surprise or a change of venue happens. Still, it’s worth remembering that the three new spin offs do exist in “the same timeline.”

Release Date

With Daryl Dixon returning on September 29 for its second season, we can bet on early 2025 for Dead City‘s second chapter.

Trailer

Hang tight! AMC might not reveal a full trailer until Daryl Dixon: The Book Of Carol returns, so they can do so during a live episode broadcast. For now, we will have to make do with watching these cockroaches again.

When it comes to reboots, sequels and all of that other fun stuff, there is always a chance that you will get a cameo from the original actors somewhere in there. With Marvel, people from other movies show up all the time (for better or worse) while other reboots feature a knowing nod to the original. But for the upcoming Blade reboot, it doesn’t look like we’ll get any of that. Who even knows it the movie will happen at all at this point.

Wesley Snipes, who played the human/vampire hybrid Blade in the 1998 Marvel film Blade, doesn’t seem too enthused about the upcoming reboot that’s been in limbo for almost five years. The movie has had its fair share of production bumps over the years, and most recently, the film’s director Yann Demange exited the film. He was the second director to leave the project.

Snipes took to social media to make a slight jab at Marvel for the long delays. “Blade, lordylordylordy,” he posted on X. “Folks still lookin for the secret sauce, ridin snowmobiles in traffic, kinda rough.” He said, adding #Marvel. The folks at Marvel have yet to comment on Snipes’ snark.

In 2014, Snipes said he was open to returning as Blade, but after long delays and Marvel’s restructuring, it doesn’t seem like he wants in anymore. When Mahershala Ali was announced to take over the role, Snipes was supportive. For now, the reboot is set for a November 2025 release with Ali and Mia Goth attached to star. But Snipes (agrees that he) will always be Blade.

(Via Variety)

Charles Barkley announced his intention to retire from broadcasting at the end of the 2024-25 NBA season on Friday night following Game 4 of the NBA Finals. Barkley, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee as a player whose second act has seen him become arguably the most well-known pundit in sports history, said that regardless of what happens with the next NBA media rights deal, he plans on calling it a career.

“I talked to all the other networks, but I ain’t going nowhere other than TNT,” Barkley said. “But, I have made the decision myself, no matter what happens, next year is going to be my last year on television. And I just want to say thank you to my NBA family, you guys been great to me, my heart is full with joy and gratitude. But, I’m gonna pass the baton at the end of next year”

Saying that there will be a void left by Barkley’s departure — assuming that he does, indeed, hang up his headset after what will assuredly be a year of other networks putting on the full-court press to get him to change his mind — is a gigantic understatement. Barkley was a spectacular basketball player, but several generations of basketball fans know him primarily as the guy who sits all the way to the right on TNT’s NBA studio desk — following his retirement at the end of the 1999-2000 season, Barkley joined Inside the NBA and has spent the last 24 years with Turner.

Because we live in a society where the next thing is always the most important one, there’s one question that comes to mind: Whether it’s Turner or, more likely, one of the networks (Amazon, ESPN, NBC) that are going to get broadcast rights in the next television deal, who is going to fill the void left by Charles Barkley?

The answer, pretty simply, is no one. As Barkley mentioned in his announcement, he had conversations with the other networks about bringing him on board as a contributor once the new TV deal goes into effect at the start of the 2025-26 season. That’s because everyone understands the value of having him on the air — few people on television, let alone on sports television, are as charismatic as Barkley. You can find someone better at breaking down the finer points of the game — Barkley isn’t going to do a detailed breakdown of the Blazers coverage against a Spain pick-and-roll set or something — but Barkley just inherently knows how to make good TV. There is no forced effort, no switch he has to flip once he arrives at Studio J to shine. Instead, he simply makes TV magic by being The Chuckster at all times, and never compromising on that in any way.

That’s ultimately what makes trying to replace him impossible. Barkley is not someone who goes out there and tries to be good on TV, he just … is. The Charles Barkley that you see on TNT is the Charles Barkley you get in interviews (just with less cursing), and I would guess is the Charles Barkley you get if you run into him at a Home Depot or something. There is an effortlessness to his ability to get on a set, grab a microphone, and say things that people enjoy, which stems from the fact that he doesn’t seem to care that there’s a camera on him.

Take, for example, when he showed up on ESPN’s set during the Stanley Cup Final between the Florida Panthers and the Edmonton Oilers last week. The whole thing worked because you can put Barkley on any TV show and he’ll have it bend to his will, not because he’s forcing any action, but because he is a one-of-a-kind magnetic personality and when he’s on the air, you let the show go in whatever direction you want. It’s the reason why an NBA player can go on an NHL studio show and it’s still fun to watch, or Saturday Night Live can do an Inside the NBA sketch and everyone, regardless of whether they’re a basketball fan, can find it hilarious.

There will presumably be efforts to try and replicate what Barkley brings to television to one extent or another. If Turner is able to keep an NBA package and Inside the NBA goes away, the thought for years has been that Draymond Green would slide into Barkley’s seat on the desk (even if that’s not quite right), while Vince Carter, Jamal Crawford, and Candace Parker are all very good on television and have experience on studio shows. Should TNT fail to land a piece of the pie, NBC, Amazon and ESPN, which has frequently drawn the ire of basketball fans for its inability to put together a compelling NBA studio show despite multiple tries, should all make overtures to those four names. However, none of them stand much of a chance if they are tasked with being the next Chuck.

The important thing is that whether it’s any of those individuals or someone else who is in the ex-player media sphere and gets identified as a name to watch — this is where I suggest ESPN going in the complete opposite direction from what it has always done and giving Jeff Teague free rein to do literally anything he wants — they never get saddled with the expectation of being Barkley’s successor in any way. Even if, as my colleague Robby Kalland theorized, Amazon or NBC agrees to a deal that lets them rent out the Inside studio from Turner and broadcast the show with Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith, and another person, Barkley’s departure is going to make it feel different. Saddling that fourth person, or anyone who gets tagged as his spiritual successor on any network, with the expectation of being his replacement is setting them up to fail from the very beginning. That’s because even if they grow into being an exceptional television analyst, they will not be Chuck.

Bringing in new voices and new perspective is going to be a very valuable thing for the basketball media space, and in a way, Barkley announcing he’s calling it a career is a good thing. He’ll be missed dearly, but throwing him on a studio show that isn’t Inside the NBA with people who are not Ernie, Kenny, and Shaq would have felt a bit wrong. But when we get to 2025 and television networks roll out their studio crews for the upcoming NBA season, it’s of the utmost importance that the individuals on the various shows are asked to be themselves and never try to be anyone else, especially Chuck. That’s what made Charles Barkley an institution on American television for a quarter of a century, and it’s why we’ll never see anyone quite like him again.

(House of the Dragon spoilers will be found below.)

This week’s second-season debut of HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel included multiple profound and horrifying scenes, but of course, what’s receiving plenty of attention is a rather banal affair. Literally!

Less than halfway through the “A Son For A Son” episode, viewers received the sight of Alicent and Ser Criston Cole engaged in a tryst. Despite Alicent then telling Criston that they must not do that again, well, they kept doing it. In fact, Alicent and the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard were shagging away when Blood and Cheese attacked Queen Helaena Targaryen and hacked off Prince Jaehaerys’ head.

Arguably, the “failed” Blood and Cheese plot (Daemon had directed the pair to take out Aemond as vengeance for the death of Lucerys) could have failed harder, had Ser Criston been doing his job instead of doing the nasty. Beyond that hypothetical, there’s the real question of how long Alicent and Criston have been carrying on like this. King Viserys has been dead around 10 days, so this seems fast, but Olivia Cooke kind-of hinted (during first-season promotion) that there were “simmering undertones of something” and that Criston is “a virile man.”

Showrunner Ryan Condal has now spoken on the “timing” issue. In an interview with Collider, Condal specified that this is “a brand-new relationship.” Hmm:

“It feels very awkward there. They’re literally talking about the weather. So, that’s the thing, it’s a brand-new relationship. We don’t specifically get into, intentionally, when and where it started. Part of that is the fun of leaving it up to interpretation by the viewing audience. But it’s certainly a new thing, a new romance. And the idea is that these two characters have this very stunted emotional development, particularly in the world of intimacy with a partner. Cole, because he’s been a canned man his entire life in the order of the Kingsguard and his past sins with Rhaenyra and wearing that like a millstone around his neck.”

Now the question remains: when will the rest of King’s Landing find out about the affair? Helaena probably won’t be talking (she has enough to process, my god), but Alicent and Criston can only keep this mess secret for so long.

HBO’s House of the Dragon airs on Sundays at 9:00pm EST.

(Via Collider)

In April, Sabrina Carpenter generated some attention online when she modeled lingerie for a campaign from Skims, Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand. This rubbed some folks the wrong way since Carpenter is friends with Taylor Swift, who famously does not have the best relationship with Kardashian. Carpenter has now addressed the situation in a new Rolling Stone cover story.

Carpenter said:

“As much as people want to believe you’re tuned into every little thing, I’m not because I’m constantly working. In that scenario, I’ve been very, very communicative with her about that situation, and I just love her so much and support her ’til the end. So it was no weirdness for me, but I know people will just say things because that’s all they have time to do.”

Elsewhere, Carpenter said of Swift, “I hold her to such a different echelon. I could never compare my life, my career, my trajectory to anything close to what she’s done.” She also noted of their friendship, “We’re very, very verbal with each other about our mutual love and admiration. […] She played me ‘But Daddy I Love Him’ before it came out, and that’s also one of my favorites.”

Check out the full interview here.

Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.

This week saw Normani release an album at last and NxWorries also drop an anticipated effort. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

For more music recommendations, check out our Listen To This section, as well as our Indie Mixtape and Pop Life newsletters.

Normani — “All Yours”

It finally happened: Normani released an album. After five years, Dopamine is here. She celebrated the project’s long-awaited release last week with “All Yours,” a smooth and catchy number that delivers some steam.

NxWorries — “KeepHer” Feat. Thundercat

Speaking of long-awaited releases: Anderson .Paak took a break from his solo work and Silk Sonic to revive NxWorries last week for the duo’s first album since 2016. He and Knxwledge brought some other folks into the fold, too, like Thundercat on the glossy “KeepHer.”

Khalid — “Adore U”

Khalid’s latest album, Free Spirit, was his first No. 1 project, but that was five years ago now. Fans have been waiting for a new album since then (aside from the Scenic Drive mixtape in 2021), and while there’s no news of one yet, he did come through last week with “Adore U,” which sees him trying his best to bridge a gap.

Tommy Richman — “Devil Is A Lie”

Tommy Richman is a candidate for the year’s biggest breakout star thanks to the success of “Million Dollar Baby.” Now he’s in the process of proving he’s more than a one-hit wonder, and he took a stab last week with “Devil Is A Lie.” Like “Million Dollar Baby” before it, it’s got a catchy high-pitched hook that you should start hearing in TikTok videos.

Destroy Lonely — “Luv 4 Ya”

You may have heard “Luv 4 Ya” when Destroy Lonely performed it at Coachella, and now the studio version of the track is here. Uproxx’s Aaron Williams notes of the song, “Over a murky beat produced by Lil 88, Henny, and Evertime, the new song finds the young Atlanta upstart going for broke.”

Charli XCX — “Spring Breakers”

Charli dropped Brat, then she dropped a deluxe edition and decided to erase any doubt about its nature by titling it Brat And It’s The Same But There’s Three More Songs So It’s Not. Among those three more songs that makes it not the same is “Spring Breakers,” which continues the energetic dance party from the base album.

Victoria Monét — “Power Of Two”

On top of dropping a new video for “Alright,” Monét also entered the Star Wars universe last week with “Power Of Two“: The track is a cinematic end credits song for the new series The Acolyte.

Toro Y Moi — “Tuesday”

Toro Y Moi has found himself all over the musical map in his stylistically varied career so far. Who knows where he’ll go next on his upcoming album Hole Erth, which was announced last week. He offered a look, though, with “Tuesday,” which has a bit of hip-hop and a bit of indie rock going on (the album has features from both Don Toliver and Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard).

Nilüfer Yanya — “Method Actor”

New Nilüfer Yanya is coming! She announced the album My Method Actor last week and also shared “Method Actor,” which has a rock edge atop a rhythmic, alternative foundation.

Tanner Adell — “Too Easy”

The influence of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter continues. The album helped vault Shaboozey to stardom and it has also increased the profile of Tanner Adell. She came through last week with “Too Easy,” a catchy country-pop number that boasts a TikTok-ready “Boys are too easy” hook.

Fede Álvarez, director of Don’t Breathe and 2013’s Evil Dead, knows how to work a claustrophobic atmosphere. That’s only a single quality out of many why he was the guy to handle adding a movie to the existing Alien franchise. Of course, he is wise enough to never definitively choose whether the 1979 Ridley Scott movie or the 1986 James Cameron sequel, Aliens, is the better movie. That’s like choosing between the first two The Godfather films, you know? And considering that most sequels don’t come close to the original, it’s a handy dilemma to have.

Álvarez’s upcoming Alien: Romulus is an interquel that takes place in between Scott and Cameron’s contributions, so let’s talk about what we can expect from this facehugging good time.

Plot

This film’s events take place in between Alien (2090-ish) and Aliens (the year 2179), so expect an older (relatively speaking), familiar look to the ship and its technology, and of course, everything here happens as though Prometheus never happened. Álvarez also found inspiration for this show’s characters — a group of young-adult scavengers — after watching Aliens‘ extended cut and wondering what happened colony children grew up and left their homes. These characters, like the crew in Alien, will be blue collar, and the show’s simple description is as follows: “Young people on a distant world find themselves confronting the most terrifying life-form in the universe.”

Are Ridley Scott and James Cameron involved in any way? Scott is producing, and Cameron did some hefty consulting to help map out the ship’s details for this film. In other words, the film’s scavengers will find out the horror of old-school filmmaking in the best way (for the audience).

Additionally, another current Alien project exists, and that would be FX and Noah Hawley’s series (starring Timothy Olyphant) that has been filming in Thailand. The events of that particular take on Xenomorphs revolve around what happens when they crash land on Earth and have the run of an open environment.

Whereas Alien: Romulus is all about being in space, where as the original film’s tagline declared, “No one can hear you scream.” The effects will be mainly practical, including these face huggers, on a ship where there’s no escape from the critters:

The film will also be theatrically released after originally being planned for a Hulu streaming event. And it’s a damn good thing because this is definitely a poster for a movie that should be watched in a theater:

Cast

Xenomorphs and Facehuggers are always the chief attraction with these films, and we can likely expect a synthetic among the scavenger crew. The very human cast, however, includes Cailee Spaeny along with Isabela Merced, Aileen Wu, Archie Renaux, David Johnson, and Spike Feam.

Release Date

On August 16, everyone can be heard screaming if they head to the multiplex.

Trailer

Fans of Aliens should especially enjoy the water scene in this trailer, and multiple nods to Reply include a face off with Cailee Spaeny and a Xenomorph.

Previously, a teaser trailer did the job in a chillingly effective yet sparse way.

Ariana Grande has explained several times why she modeled Eternal Sunshine as something of a concept album inspired by the Jim Carrey- and Kate Winslet-led film, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Grande’s lifelong affinity for Jim Carrey is well-documented, and now, the two-time Grammy winner shared another particularly interesting adolescent interest while visiting Podcrushed.

Just before the 30-minute mark of the Podcrushed episode, Penn Badgley joked about Grande’s casting of Evan Peters and Badgley in her videos for “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait For Your Love)” and “The Boy Is Mine,” respectively.

“Is it a serial killer tour?” Badgley said, while Grande giggled.

Peters portrayed Jeffrey Dahmer in Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, and Badgley became the internet’s favorite stalker — if such a thing exists — as Joe in You.

Grande acknowledged she “knew someone was gonna say this.”

She continued, “I knew [everyone] was gonna be like, ‘Why the f*ck? What is this pattern? Do we need to talk about this pattern here?’ Um, maybe there’s something to look at. No, I’m kidding. […] No, but I was infatuated with serial killers when I was younger.”

That’s not all. Grande then shared a story to back up her alleged adolescent infatuation.

“Years ago, before the Dahmer series, I was in a Q&A with fans — young fans,” she said. “It was young fans at the time. I think it was in between me being Cat [on Victorious] and pop stuff, so it was a younger group. With a parent, someone said, ‘If you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, you’re so cute. Mom and Dad, is it okay if I give the real answer?’ And they were like, ‘Sure, I guess. What’s the answer?’ And I was like, ‘Um, I mean, Jeffrey Dahmer’s pretty fascinating. I think I would have loved to have met him. Like, you know, maybe with a third party or someone involved, but I have questions.’ And the parents were like, ‘We’ll explain it later, sweetheart.’ And I was like, ‘I’ll just sing ‘Problem’ and go home.’”

Elsewhere in Grande’s two-part Podcrushed interview, she further discussed casting Badgley in “The Boy Is Mine,” whether she’ll release an Eternal Sunshine deluxe album, her process for filming Wicked, and more.

Watch the full Podcrushed episodes below.

Sabrina Carpenter is the subject of a new Rolling Stone profile shared today (June 17), and notably, the piece reveals that Jack Antonoff worked on “about half” of Carpenter’s upcoming album, Short N’ Sweet. In the story, Carpenter also takes a minute to go to bat for Antonoff in his battle against the haters.

Carpenter says of Antonoff’s detractors, “F*ck them all. F*ck them all. I think he’s one of the most talented people I’ve ever met. When he’s in a room, he’s able to literally touch every instrument in the room and make it sound magical. He also works very fast, which I really appreciate because I work very fast.”

She also explained how she and Antonoff became friends, starting by meeting outside of a New York comedy club a couple years ago: “I was peeing my pants because I wanted to work with him for my whole life. After that, we, luckily enough, became friends; personalities meshed, and it was only a matter of time. He heard some of the stuff that I was working on for this album, and we just started to make magic.”

Meanwhile, Antonoff also offered a quote about Carpenter’s single “Please Please Please,” which he produced. Antonoff said, “There’s like an Olivia Newton [John] feeling, there’s a Dolly [Parton] feeling, there’s an incredibly super modern pop feeling. The little vocal runs she does are so bizarre and unique — they’re doing this really odd, classic, almost yodel-y country thing. She’s becoming one of the biggest young pop stars, and that song is such a statement of ­expressing yourself, not just lyrically, but sonically.”

Check out the full feature here.