Month: June 2024

It’s what Bridgerton fans have been waiting for: the mirror scene.

In season 3, episode 5 of the Netflix series, Penelope Featherington (played by Nicola Coughlan) and Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) engage in the show’s lengthiest (and “hottest”) sex scene to date. It goes on for nearly six minutes.

“Luke and I decided entirely what we wanted to show on camera,” Coughlan said about the scene. “We had a lot of say in the mirror scene in particular, how that was shot and that we wanted that to be front-facing into the mirror and undress in front of it. It was like an amazing moment, and also I was like, when I’m 80, I’m gonna look back and be like, ‘My boobs look great! They’re all my own and they’re sitting up there.’ No regrets.”

Things got so heated between Coughlan and Newton, they accidentally broke a piece of on-set furniture during filming.

“We did break a piece of furniture while doing one of those scenes,” the actress told Entertainment Weekly. “I didn’t know what it was gonna be like, but it’s a little bit like a stunt in which they’re like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna do this, this, and this.’ But then they gave us freedom to like, we had a lot of say in how we did those scenes and what we wanted to do.” She added, “It was fun.”

Hopefully Coughlan’s parents are enjoying the PG cut of the mirror scene — or they can watch the clip that Netflix uploaded to its Twitter account. Porn is allowed on the “everything app,” but this is still probably all that the streaming service felt comfortable sharing.

Bridgerton season 3 part 2 is streaming on Netflix now.

If Goldenvoice’s No Values festival was on your radar over the weekend, you likely heard about the traffic. Once inside the festival, it was all anyone wanted to talk about, overshadowing the punk event that was set to jolt nostalgia into locals’ bloodstreams while also connecting genre legends with today’s exciting upstarts. But for most, getting into the event was an ordeal. Those who arrived early waited hours to park, and those who arrived a bit later were met with worst-case-scenerio freeway traffic. The latter is obviously not the festival’s fault, and I can’t speak to the logistics of how the former went wrong, but regardless, No Values didn’t begin on the right foot for many in attendance, and that unfortunately will be the lens from which the festival is viewed.

The uphill battle to endure discomfort in the name of fun is essentially the narrative of music festivals in general. If you are going to a fest to drink, get high, and watch bands, generations have decided the experience is ultimately worth it. The task felt a bit more precarious at No Values, especially with an influx of bands several decades past their prime that could make even the youngest attendees contemplate their own mortality, dwell on the passage of time, and question their place in the world. At one point, a guy walked through the crowd offering ibuprofen out like it was LCD at a Phish concert.

But enter Turnstile and The Jesus Lizard, two bands on opposite ends of their careers, but both operating in a perfect space to make a music festival work as designed. For different reasons, these are two bands that can force the audience to put whatever outside baggage they brought into the day to a dark corner to visit later. For an event that asked the audience to wrestle with the adage “punk’s not dead,” you couldn’t have asked for two better bands to testify in punk’s defense.

For The Jesus Lizard, their booking at No Values wasn’t really indicative of the festival’s vision in the first place. They’re a band generally more revered in the indie space, but their post-punk and noise roots tangentially aligned them with many of the more directly punk bands on the bill. Still, seeing frontman David Yow, now in his 60s, immediately look at the audience during his band’s afternoon set and get a huge grin on his face set the stage for an ageless, egoless performance. He smiled because he knew he wanted to be in that crowd, and it only took him a few moments before he was crowdsurfing, joking about needing to give his family his phone, keys, and wallet. Soon he’d be raising his middle finger, kicking his legs in the air, complaining about the lack of beer on stage, and generally showing any of the younger generation of performers on the bill just how it is done. Hell, he probably showed the veterans a thing or two.

But a big part of what made The Jesus Lizard’s set so affecting was the juxtaposition in how Yow looks with how he acts. No shade on a man in his 60s, but, well, he looked like a normal man in his 60s. His hair is mostly gone, his body not particularly nimble. But it all felt like a smokescreen for what he still contains inside. I watched him climb back onto his tall stage with little help, unbutton his shirt and showcase a sturdy physique, and, most importantly, recapture the chaotic energy that made his band a thing in the first place. This wasn’t nostalgia like so much else at No Values. This was vitality.

Turnstile couldn’t be in a more different place. In some ways, they feel like the only rock band right now, showing the kind of meteoric ascent that appeals to critics, passive radio listeners, Taco Bell customers, and angsty teens that is all but nonexistent in 2024. And though people in the audience wore their finest devil locks and Social D patches, Turnstile were in the prime position to actually win new fans that could, and should, fuck with them.

Just as The Jesus Lizard underscored vitality, so did Turnstile. Where one wore their aging bodies as a badge of honor, Turnstile projects the youth and beauty that could make the crustiest old punk feel 22 again. Their brand of grooving hardcore borrows from just about any genre prevalent in today’s youth culture, but it’s the underlying energy and self-belief that makes Turnstile feel bigger than any stage they play on. And the “Free Palestine” flag they brought with them portrayed a band not afraid to ruffle the feathers of the old guard. This is their world now, and they’re not going to put their principles on hold for anything.

Often times when walking around No Values, it felt like a hall of mirrors put through a time portal, everything a little distorted from how it should be and how you remembered it. For many, it might have been a welcome diversion from whatever their current life is like to return to their youth, their innocence, if just for a day. But the festival was at its best when it was in the moment of now, where Turnstile and The Jesus Lizard were operating. When the PBRs are going for $16, they were about as punk as it gets.

Check out some exclusive photos of Turnstile and The Jesus Lizard at No Values festival below.

When the EA Sports team invited me down to their Orlando campus as part of a press trip for an early preview of their upcoming football titles, I was far more excited by the re-launch of the EA Sports College Football franchise. It was the game that became such a big part of my life in high school and college, and has me more excited than any video game release in the last decade.

To me, Madden is what it is. I don’t get the game every year — I skipped Madden 24 — and tend not to play it as often or for as long. My issue with Madden isn’t the glitches that go viral, as that is just part of a modern simulation game that has so many combinations of things that can happen on any given play. My issue has been the game often feels the same year-to-year in terms of gameplay, and the kinds of modes I care about, namely Franchise, have felt like they’ve been on the backburner for awhile in favor of things like Ultimate Team.

As such, I wasn’t particularly hyped to get an early look at Madden 25, but after their presentation my interests were piqued. What they were talking about sounded like things I wanted to hear. For one, Franchise mode has been beefed up significantly (and I’ll have more to come on that with the lead designers on the mode), with 74 new dynamic storylines that keep the mode fresher for longer, and are season-long challenges rather than weekly checkpoints. As someone who has always preferred the career modes to online play, that’s exciting news and I’m genuinely intrigued by how it plays.

However, a good story mode only matters if the game itself plays well. Every year we hear about new gameplay updates, but they don’t always result in the game feeling all that different. This year, however, I was blown away by how much fun I had once we got on the sticks, particularly because the new running game engine is nothing short of spectacular.

The big gameplay innovation unique for Madden 25 (i.e., not in EA College Football) is BoomTech, a new physics-based tackling and ball-carrier system, within an updated FieldSENSE system. For years, the game has mimicked real life by putting a lot of focus on the passing game, which has yielded some terrific results but also left the running game feeling a bit left behind. This year, with BoomTech, they have made huge strides in the running game, creating what I think is the most fun Madden game I have ever played.

Their goal with BoomTech was to completely revamp how ball carriers and tacklers interact, with a physics-based engine that leans on player size and stat attributes to determine everything. That means the offensive player reacts differently to getting hit by a defensive tackle than they do a cornerback. Also, a bigger ball-carrier will react to hits differently than a smaller one, which means if you fire up the game and play as the Ravens, with Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry, the same hit by the same defender will have a different end result.

They also made the contact system far more dynamic. Your running back will also, depending on ratings, be able to bounce off tacklers and recover, with their attributes dropping as they’re off balance but steadily growing as they recover to get back to full strength. That means if you get hit on the side by a smaller player, you’ll have a good chance of bouncing off, but if you get hit again quickly, even by a weaker hit, you’ll likely go down. However, if you can avoid that second hit for a second as you regain your footing, you’ll have your full attributes again and might be able to shrug off or avoid another tackler down the field.

The EA team also completely revamped the Hit Stick and Ball Carrier Control system, where your timing will matter considerably on the Hit Stick. If you go to early, like I often did, your guy will dive at the ground, if you’re slightly early or slightly late, the impact is lessened, but if you time it up just right, you’ll light up the offensive player. Your angle of attack will also matter to the success of the tackle, as hitting someone square will have a greater impact than coming in from the side. On offense, the same physics apply to trying to truck a defender, and using the right stick to try and perform jukes and moves now requires more skill. That is not something I have, but watching the demo with one of the developers who is great with it showed how you can get explosive athletes like Lamar Jackson or cover athlete Christian McCaffrey to dance through the defense with properly timed moves and combinations. Their goal was to dial back how impactful the single big juke was, and task the player with having more control throughout the run in order to evade the defense.

Ball carriers also have a better feel for the game, and instead of running square through tight holes, they’ll get skinny, tuck the ball away, and duck through traffic between the tackles. That’s important because they continue to hone in their blocking system, as offensive line play has likewise been upgraded. You can slide protection at the line of scrimmage (half slides or full slides), and when running the ball, the linemen are much better about playing assignment football and their individual success or failure is independent of the rest of the line — and, like everything else in the new game, their success is ratings dependent. That means if you’re building a team, you can no longer just ignore your line, because everything is ratings-based and if you haven’t invested well enough in the trenches, you won’t be able to game the system.

To really put the new running system to the test, I played as the Los Angeles Chargers and put Greg Roman and Jim Harbaugh’s playbook through its paces. For one, the depth of the playbook was tremendous, and I was very impressed by how the things they talked about in the presentation actually bore out once we got to playing the game. That’s not always the case, as every year they list out a number of new innovations, but they don’t always make the game feel all that different. With the running game, you can feel a difference in Madden 25 and it has me more excited for the launch than any Madden game of the last decade.

Playing on All-Pro with the Chargers against the Seahawks, I had the Gus Bus absolutely rolling. It was so much fun running Inside Zone, picking your way through the middle of the defense, and then Outside Zone, stretching it wide when your tight end got a good seal, or cutting it up behind the guard or tackle when the defense set the edge. There was success to be found on most plays, but you were often presented with two or three bad options and one (maybe two) good ones on each play. That’s how real football works, and it is a real joy to assert your will as a team by running the dang ball in this game. I stayed in that I-formation and played proper football for four quarters, turning Justin Herbert almost exclusively into a play-action merchant, and piled up 63 points.

With Gus Edwards, a power back, I was able to experience the new BoomTech system at work, bouncing off tacklers that take bad angles. At the same time, he’s not nearly as dynamic in the open field, which is, again, true to life. How you like to run the ball is going to really determine what back you want to put on your team, because for someone like me that lacks the finesse and stick skill, but has a good feel for finding holes between the tackles, a big back was ideal because success was less about the moves I could make in the open field and more about whether I could run downhill between the tackles and dish out contact as much as I took it.

That also will impact your playbook choice, because I was incredibly impressed by how realistic each play design operated. If you run Duo, your linemen will work their doubles off the ball and look to get next level on the backside backers, with your job being to track the linebacker hit the correct side of the hole. If you run Zone, you’ll have to be patient, and figure out which of your lineman wins his assignment and who is getting to the second level to pave the way, cutting it upfield or stretching it out wide depending on how the blocking shakes out. This makes for an incredibly fun and rewarding running experience, where nothing feels predetermined and the success of a running play is largely on whether you make the right read or not as the ball-carrier to find the hole and hit it quickly.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you this will be the perfect Madden game, but it certainly feels like a genuine step forward for the franchise. I have always been frustrated with line play and running the ball in football video games, but the improvements in those areas in Madden 25 are legitimately fantastic, and if you want to get down and dirty in the trenches, this is the game for you.

Uproxx was invited on a hosted trip by EA Sports for reporting on this piece. They did not review or approve this story. You can find out more about our policy on press trips/hostings here.

The Despicable Me franchise has been very good to Pharrell: He’s been involved on the music side of things since the first movie, and the second film’s breakout hit “Happy” was a No. 1 single and is the biggest song of Pharrell’s career. Well, Despicable Me 4 is set to hit theaters in July, and ahead of that, Pharrell has a new song from the movie, sharing “Double Life” today.

The tune isn’t as general and movie-agnostic as something like “Happy” (“Who will you be tonight? / That’s the question / Who will Gru be tonight? / That’s the question,” goes the song’s refrain), but it has a great groove and that Gru refrain is actually catchy as hell. This probably won’t be a world-changing single like “Happy,” but it’s in the upper tier of kids movie soundtrack fare.

This follows the Black Yacht Rock album Pharrell quietly released earlier this year. Uproxx named it one of the best albums of 2024 so far, and Uproxx’s Aaron Williams noted, “The most compelling thing about this album is watching a master at work, with a focused goal, crafting some of the best music of a long and storied career in service of shedding light on an oft-maligned musical mode.”

Listen to “Double Life” above.

Last week, Rihanna sent fans into a hopeless spiral when she was photographed wearing a T-shirt dress that read “I’m retired.” Fans couldn’t help but interpret this message as a reference to the long-running joke about Rihanna taking forever to release a new album (her last on, Anti, came out in 2016). But in a recent interview, Rihanna said they shouldn’t give up hope just yet — and revealed the item she’d actually wear to signal her music-making days are done.

As Rihanna told Extra (according to the Los Angeles Times) on Monday (June 10), “That was just me looking into the future. I’m not retired. I just like that dress. I got it as a gift and I loved it.… They didn’t read the second line, I’m not retired, I’m just retired from dressing up — it’s a lot of effort.” As far as how she’d alert fans to the end of her music career, she said, “Wait for the ‘I Quit’ T-shirt.”

She also denied resurfaced pregnancy rumors after having two babies back-to-back, joking, “Can I get my six-pack back first? I don’t think I ever had one, but still. Let me go to Carnival one summer? Please, one summer.” However, she did admit she would like to try adding a girl to the mix. Although Rihanna has been more focused on motherhood than dropping that coveted ninth album, her maybe-husband ASAP Rocky did say that she’s been working on new music, so perhaps that T-shirt is staying in the closet — for now.

Squatters’ rights laws are some of the most bizarrely misused legal realities we have, and something no one seems to have a good answer for. Most of us have heard stories of someone moving into a vacant home and just living there, without anyone’s permission and without paying rent, and somehow this is a legal question mark until the courts sort it out.

According to The National Desk, squatters’ rights are a carryover from British property law and were created to ensure that abandoned property could be used and to protect occupants from being kicked out without proper notice. It should go without saying that squatter law isn’t meant to allow someone to just take over someone else’s property, but sometimes that’s exactly what happens.

It’s what happend to Flash Shelton’s mother when she put her house up for rent after her husband passed away. A woman contacted her with interest in the property, only she wanted to do repairs and look after the home instead of paying rent. Before anyone knew it, she had furniture delivered (which she later said was accidental) and set up camp, despite Shelton’s mom not agreeing to the arrangement.

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But since the woman had expressed her intention and already moved in, the matter was out of police hands, as Shelton found out when he tried to contact the local sheriff.

“They said, ‘I’m sorry but we can’t enter the house, and it looks like they’re living there, so you need to go through the courts’,” he shared in a YouTube video.

Shelton rightfully didn’t want the expense of a court battle, so he took matters into his own hands—not with violence, but with logic. He had his mom lease the home to him, and then told the squatter that she had to move everything out because he was moving things in.

“If they can take a house, I can take a house,” he said.

He was calm and clear about her having to get everything out within the day or he would have people come and take it, and thankfully, she didn’t put up a big fight.

That experience made him realize how squatter law can be abused, but that there’s a faster system for removing a squatter than to go through the court system. If a squatter can move in and force a homeowner to take them to court to prove they are living there illegally, then he could simply move in alongside the squatter, putting the squatter in the position of having to take the homeowner to court instead.

“The legal process is so slow, and at some point when they’re in there, you’re going to feel like they have more rights than you do and that’s how you’re going to be treated. So even though you it’s your house and you’re paying the mortgage or whatever, at some point squatters feel like they have more rights than you, so they don’t have an incentive to leave until a judge tells them to, until they’re actually ordered to, and that could take months.”

After successfully removing the squatters in his mother’s house, Shelton has been tackling similar squatter situations for other homeowners in California, earning him the nickname “The Squatter Hunter.”

“All I’m doing is becoming a squatter and flipping this process on them,” Shelton told CBS News. “I figured if they could take a house, I could take a house.”

According to CBS, he’s successfully removed a dozen squatters in the past year. “”I’m not going in and I’m not hurting anyone,” he said. “I’m not kicking them out, I’m not throwing them out.” He’s literally just moving in himself, setting up cameras, and then creating small annoyances until the squatters get fed up enough to move out.

California isn’t the only state that has seen issues with squatters. There are squatter stories from all over the U.S. of people moving into a property and refusing to leave without a court order, tying owners up in lengthy, expensive legal battles.

Shelton even has a Change.org petition to try to get squatter laws changed to “make squatting in residential maintained homes criminal.” Making squatting illegal “will shift the burden of proof onto the squatter and make the crime punishable with restitution an option for damages,” the the petition states.

Watch Shelton share his personal story:

This article originally appeared on 4.5.24

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon has been gearing up for a second season, which is subtitled The Book Of Carol because during the zombie apocalypse, good friends go to France when they believe their platonic soulmate is in trouble. Daryl isn’t still in trouble, but Carol doesn’t know that, and although it will be lovely to see them back together again, Daryl’s real best friend didn’t have a trip to France in the cards.

That would be Dog (portrayed by Seven the dog), who was so beloved by Daryl and the audience that he received his own backstory and remained a fixture in the series for several seasons. We also know that Dog survived The Walking Dead finale, so hopefully, he was enjoying a nice belly rub from Judith every day after Daryl left.

As much as the audience would have loved some “Dog” scenes at the Nest or, you know, in front of the Lourve, it would have been horrible to watch Dog suffer atop a capsized rowboat with Daryl as he floated to France. So it made sense that he wasn’t seen in Daryl’s spin off, but he was sorely missed:

Sad news arrived on Thursday when The Walking Dead‘s X/Twitter account announced, “Rest in peace, Seven. #TWD’s best boy.”

Norman Reedus also took to his Instagram story and later made an Instagram post to mourn the “best TV buddy ever.”

Dead City got in on the sadness, too: “Rest in peace Seven. You will forever be in our hearts. Dog. The best damn tv pal of all time”

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon will return on September 29 with a dog-shaped void in Daryl’s heart.

Megan Thee Stallion‘s new album Megan is on the way, but before its release, she’s made a big change to one of the most important parts: the cover art. Thee Stallion had the album’s cover updated across DSPs from its original version; on the new cover, a nude-ish Megan emerges from a giant egg. This re-aligns from the old cover, which depicted Megan coming out of a monarch butterfly chrysalis hanging from a tree. The original cover drew complaints from fans — along with Ice Spice’s Y2K cover — for featuring an awkward design.

Meg almost certainly saw fans’ jokes about the original cover, which deviated heavily from the established snake theme of her promo so far. Having released singles like “Cobra,” “Hiss,” and “Boa,” representing the way snakes shed their skins, the butterfly theme of the cover also nodded to the concept of transformation, but seemingly came out of left field. Speaking of left field, positioning the subject to the extreme left of the cover is pretty much a day-one design class error — not that it can’t be done to make an artistic statement, but here, the decision was misplaced (along with Meg). You can check out the new cover for comparison below.

Megan is out on 6/28

Saltburn: The movie that dominated 2023 (and made for some awkward Christmas gatherings) thanks in part to its iconic bathtub scene. The movie is also known for its soundtrack, especially for giving new life to Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder On The Dancefloor.”

Well, there’s a new vinyl edition of the soundtrack out now via Blood Records and Bad World, and it’s the perfect tribute to the movie: The vinyl record itself is filled with “bath water” (some liquidy substance that probably isn’t actually bath water but nonetheless gives that impression).

In a recent interview, Ellis-Bextor told Uproxx of her song’s resurgence, “I love it when fun things happen, unexpected things happen. I’ve been lucky enough to have it a couple of times in my career when something unexpected has just taken flight. It’s always pretty glorious and you just got to enjoy it. Those moments are special.”

Check out the vinyl edition’s tracklist below.

Saltburn: Music From The Motion Picture (Bath Water Edition) Tracklist

1. Bloc Party — “This Modern Love”
2. Ladytron — “Destroy Everything You Touch”
3. Cold War Kids — “Hang Me Up To Dry”
4. Arcade Fire — “No Cars Go”
5. Tomcraft — “Lonliness”
6. Mason Vs Princess Superstar — “Perfect”
7. Sophie Ellis-Bextor — “Murder On The Dancefloor”
8. MGMT — “Time To Pretend”
9. Babybird — “You’re Gorgeous”
10. Girls Aloud — “Sound Of The Underground”
11. The Killers — “Mr. Brightside”
12. Benny Benassi & The Biz — “Satisfaction”
13. The Cheeky Girls — “Have A Cheeky Christmas”

Danny DeVito has been a working actor since 1970s. He’s seen it all and learned many lessons along the way, including: how do you raise children and not have them turn into annoying nepo babies? DeVito is a father of three with his wife, Cheers legend Rhea Perlman, and when his It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia co-stars Rob McElhenney and Kaitlin Olsen were having kids of their own, they reached out to him for advice.

“Having Danny DeVito and Rhea in our lives, who have raised three wonderful kids, has been really helpful,” McElhenney told Business Insider. “Really, the trick is not much of a trick at all. It’s just, show up, be there for them, make sure that they know that they’re the most important thing in your lives, which they are.”

Both of McElhenney and Olsen’s kids have appeared on It’s Always Sunny, but the Mythic Quest star doesn’t think fame will go to their head. “We’ve been very fortunate because we have a lot of people in our lives who were either raised by people of great affluence or celebrity or people who raised kids in that scenario who turned out great,” he said. “If your parents are around, they show up, they give you unconditional love with boundaries and respect you and spend time with you, you’re probably going to be OK.”

If I had access to Danny DeVito, I would ask him for advice, too. Even about less pressing issues, like: what should I get for lunch? (He always answers Jersey Mike’s.)

(Via Business Insider)