Month: July 2024

In Longlegs, Nic Cage plays a chilling serial killer who does unspeakable things to innocent families and children in the most gruesome way imaginable. For the role, Cage recently admitted that he was inspired by….his mother. Because family can be tough!

Cage was quick to clarify, “Not that she was Satanic,” Cage said, of his mother, Joy Vogelsang, who died in 2021. He explained to AP, “In my approach to try and get more personal with my film performances, I’ve been trying to find a constructive place to put my memories of my mother.”

The actor has previously mentioned his mother’s struggles with mental illness, which is something that led him to acting. “She was plagued with mental illness for most of my childhood,” He told Playboy in 1996. She was institutionalized for years and went through shock treatments. She would go into these states that lasted for years,” he explained at the time, adding, “I do consider her the driving force in my creativity.”

Earlier this month, Cage admitted to The New Yorker that the memory of his mother is what inspired him to join the film in the first place. “For some reason, when I read the script, I heard my mother’s voice. And then I met with [the director Oz] Perkins at the Polo Lounge. And the first thing he said to me was, ‘Nic, this is a movie about my mother.’ And I said, ‘Well, that’s very interesting, Oz, because I was just thinking that I want to make this character about my mom.’” It seems like it paid off for him, as Longlegs could be on track to become Neon’s biggest film.

Cage added, “Gosh, I channeled my dad for Dracula and I channeled my mom for Longlegs. What does that say about my childhood?” Maybe next he will make a movie inspired by his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola. He must be a great source of inspiration.

(Via AP)

As far back as 2022, the stars of Stranger Things have been begging for more characters to be killed on the show.

“It’s way too big,” said Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven) about the size of the cast before season four premiered (it only got bigger). “Last night we couldn’t even take one group picture because there were like 50 of us. I was like, you need to start killing people off. The Duffer Brothers are two sensitive Sallies that don’t want to kill anyone off. We need to be Game of Thrones.”

The Duffers disagree, but Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin) is with his co-star.

“It might sound messed up but we should kill more people,” the actor previously told CBR. “This show would be so much better if the stakes were much higher, like at any moment any of these kids can kick it. I feel like we’re all too safe.” Matarazzo recently reiterated his desire for more bloodshed in an interview with TMZ — and even offered to be the one who bites the bullet.

“I’m going to go for myself,” he said, according to Collider. “Hey, why not? I mean, hope towards the end if it’s going to happen. I want to be in it as much as I can. I want to hang out with my buds as much as I can.”

Stranger Things doesn’t need to protect characters anymore when there’s only eight episodes left, so why not start killing folks? Except Steve. Steve better be safe. And Robin. And don’t forget Joyce. Protect Joyce at all costs.

(Via TMZ and Collider)

Uproxx cover star Griff is a budding pop darling that has earned co-signs from Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, and Sabrina Carpenter. But the “Astronaut” singer’s music is far from the light-hearted bubblegum ballads you might expect.

On her latest single, “Tears For Fun,” Griff avoids the typical heartbreak bedroom banishment and heads straight to the rave. The danceable record, co-produced with Sam Tsang, is the most recent offering from Griff’s debut album, Vertigo.

Hand-and-hand with the song’s intrinsic production is the track’s lyrical contents. “When it kills your heart, but you can’t say no / When it burns you red, but you won’t let go / The deepest cuts, well, they heal so slow / I hope they do, God, but what if they don’t,” sings Griff.

On Instagram, the singer opened up about the inspiration behind each record’s lyrics. “Every song has been written from an emotional sense of vertigo,” she wrote. “That dizzy upside down sensation that heartache often leaves you with.”

“Tears For Fun” is an overwhelmingly addictive example of the intersection of that yearning and disorientation embedded into one track.

Listen to Griff’s new single “Tears For Fun” above.

Vertigo is out now via Warner. Find more information here.

Do you remember Sausage Party, the animated movie about a hot dog with the mind of a teenage boy? Sure you do! It was the first CGI film to secure an R-rating, so in a way, it made history, but not because of the gruesome baby carrot massacre.

The movie was successful enough to warrant its own miniseries, Sausage Party: Foodtopia, which just debuted on Amazon Prime Video. The series consists of eight episodes starring writer Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Michael Cera, Edward Norton, David Krumholtz, and Will Forte.

When it comes to the Sausage Party name, Rogen recently admitted that, like most good things, it all started as a joke. The writer/creator told CBR, “When we were promoting Superbad, and Knocked Up, everyone would ask us what movie we were making next, and as a joke, we would always say Sausage Party as the title, because it just sounded like the movie that we would make next,” Rogen explained. “Slowly, we would start to be like, ‘What would that movie be? Maybe it would be about a sausage. Maybe it would be in a grocery store.’ But, yeah, it started as a joke answer we would give to press interviews.”

The joke soon became a movie, and now that movie has its own show eight years later. But Rogen said that even with all that time in between, he was always working on more food-related ideas.

“We never stopped working on it,” Rogen said. “Throughout the whole post-production of the movie, we kept coming up with more and more ideas, which is why we kept wanting to make the show.”

The series follows the group of food friends as they establish a home base called “Foodtopia,” but they soon realize they need humans to help them survive. Don’t worry, there are some of those food sex scenes that you’ve definitely been waiting for!

Sausage Party: Foodtopia is now streaming on Prime.

Eminem’s been at this rap thing for a very long time — and unfortunately, over the past few years, he’s started to show his age. While still as technically proficient as ever, the battle rap veteran has also seen his musical output over the last half-decade or so stultify, with only his most loyal fans appreciating his efforts at being “the best rapper” and not making “the best albums,” as he once put it.

And so, his latest, The Death Of Slim Shady, might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but there is something interesting here. On the album’s opening track, “Renaissance,” Em does something that’s become rare for him, depending on who you ask: He makes a great point. In a diverting excursion “inside the mind of a hater,” the 51-year-old notes, “I don’t see no fans, all I see’s a bunch of complainers.” Over the course of the song, he expands on this concept, illustrating his true worry: That fans caught up in nitpicking their favorite rappers won’t appreciate what they’ve got ’til it’s gone.

Lord knows, rap fans love complaining about a perceived dearth of care and craftsmanship when it comes to the art of rhyme. It seems every decade, there’s a new subgenre of rap to rail against: When I was coming up, it was “ringtone rap.” More recently, “mumble rap” has been the target of so many criticisms, while elders of the rap game, from Kool Moe Dee to Joe Budden, have always decried the rise of each successive wave of youngsters who rejected tradition, rewrote the rules of rhyme, or otherwise broke from established norms of hip-hop.

Yet, while doing so, they seemingly overlook so many of the contemporary rappers who seemingly deliver exactly what they want. When rap critics deplored the culture’s slide into criminality in the ’90s in efforts to feed the hunger for “thug” imagery, so-called “conscious rappers” like Common, De La Soul, and A Tribe Called Quest were ridiculed — if not outright ignored — by the mainstream. When “jiggy rap” ruled the airwaves, B-boy traditionalists like Mos Def and Talib Kweli toiled away on the underground circuit — the same circuit that spawned Eminem himself.

Even Kendrick Lamar, who Em name-checks in his “Renaissance” verse (“‘Kendrick’s album was cool, but it didn’t have any bangers’,” says the mind of the hater), has pointed this out in his own discography. On “Hood Politics,” from his 2015 album To Pimp A Butterfly, Kendrick raps, “Everybody want to talk about who this and who that / Who the realest and who wack, or who white or who black / Critics want to mention that they miss when hip-hop was rappin’ / Motherf*cker, if you did, then Killer Mike’d be platinum,” acknowledging how the Atlanta rapper’s commercial reception rarely lived up to his critical acclaim.

On “Renaissance,” Em drives the point home, name-checking a slew of other alternative or underground ’90s rap acts, along with some of the better-known ones to illustrate how quickly time sweeps away artifacts that aren’t appreciated enough to be preserved. Wise Intelligent and Cella Dwellas are two acts with impeccable reputations for potent, well-crafted rhymes, but the height of either act’s commercial reception was Cella Dwellas’ 1996 debut Realms ‘n Reality, which only peaked at 160 on the Billboard 200. They haven’t put out anything since. Wise Intelligent’s last album was released in 2018, and truthfully, researching for this piece was my first time hearing about it.

Em also calls out Big Daddy Kane, who was once regarded one of the foremost lyricists in all of hip-hop, a pioneer who helped advance the technique used in rap by light years ahead of where it was when he first debuted in 1986. Yet, by 1994 — less than 10 years later — he was being treated as an also-ran, with the lukewarm reception of his sixth album Daddy’s Home prompting him to take a long break from releasing music. He still raps, making occasional guest appearances on projects from the long (long, long, long) list of rappers he’s inspired — including Little Brother, MF DOOM, Rapsody, The Roots, and more. But he hasn’t made a new album since 1998’s Veteranz’ Day, and he’s largely considered a relic of the Golden Era, not a titan of the culture like proteges Jay-Z, Eminem, and Black Thought.

Uproxx’s Elliott Wilson called 2024 the best year in hip-hop, hands down. Putting A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie at No. 5 on his best albums list and overlooking albums from LA County natives like Schoolboy Q and Vince Staples notwithstanding, I agree. So, apparently, does Eminem, who goes out of his way to give a nod to J. Cole’s Might Delete Later. But with all these great rappers making great albums, rap fans seem caught up in their disappointment about projects they don’t like or that fell short, or in the contextual circumstances of those albums, like dismissing J. Cole for bowing out of the Kendrick Lamar/Drake beef.

Eminem harps on the past on his latest album to warn us what could happen in the future. Rap fans who’ve wanted lyrics to return to the spotlight have had a smorgasbord in 2024, but if they keep overlooking the good, they’ll only be left with the bad. At that point, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.

At one point in time, Eminem was the big bad wolf of hip-hop. To this day, the “Tobey” rapper doesn’t care who he offends or lyrically shoots at. But Eminem does have one soft spot, and it’s for his daughter, Hailie Jade.

Eminem seems to be excited to bury his alter ego, as seen in his latest album’s title, The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce). But there is another homecoming service atop his mind. On his song, “Temporary” featuring Skylar Grey, Eminem provides Hailie Jade with encouraging instruction on how to heal once he passes in real life.

“A lot of people ask me, am I afraid of death,” he says as the track opens. “The truth is, I think what scares me the most is not being able to say all the things I wanna say to you when I’m no longer here. So this song is for Hailie, for when that day comes.”

Throughout the track, Eminem sprinkled in throwback home audio clips of him and Hailie Jade. He playfully asks, “Where’s Hailie? Where’s she at?”

The eager then-toddler replied: “This ain’t Hailie, it’s a monster!”

Eminem fast forwards to present day to give his daughter of instructions for how to deal with his death: “Hailie Jade, I wrote you this song / To help you cope with life now that I’m gone. How should I start? Just wanna say look after Alaina, Stevie, and Uncle Nate / And sweetie, be strong.”

Listen to “Temporary” below.

The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce) is out now via Shady/Aftermath/Interscope. Find more information here.

The Euphoria cast is very busy. Zendaya starred in two of 2024’s best movies, hopefully with Dune Messiah on the horizon; Sydney Sweeney is everywhere; Hunter Schafer is going Cuckoo mode; Colman Domingo was nominated for an Oscar; and Jacob Elordi is traveling the globe looking for shoes that actually fit him (he’s very tall, you see). But somehow, they’ll find time in their packed schedules for another season of HBO‘s high school-set (for now) drama.

Euphoria season 3 will begin filming in January 2025 with all of the principal cast set to return.

“I am thrilled that we are ready to begin production on Euphoria in January,” said Francesca Orsi, executive vice president of HBO programming and head of HBO drama series and films, in a statement. “We could not be happier with our creative partnership with Sam and this incredible cast. We look forward to bringing this new season of Euphoria to life for the fans.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, “HBO hasn’t set an airdate, but it’s unlikely that Euphoria would be ready to go before late next year, which would mean a gap of up to four years between seasons.”

But even if Euphoria isn’t back until 2026, HBO isn’t exactly lacking for 2025 shows: The Last of Us, The White Lotus, The Righteous Gemstones, Game of Thrones spin-off A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and It prequel Welcome to Derry are all expected to return or premiere next year.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

The Minions are back! Though, they never really left, but still. The little guys return to the big screen in Despicable Me 4, along with Gru and the gang.

In Despicable Me 4, Steve Carrell is back as Gru, the villain-turned-dad, while Kristen Wiig returns as Lucy, his wife. Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, and Madison Polan are set to return as the kids Margo, Edith, and Agnes, respectively, while Pierre Coffin returns to voice the Minions.

At this point, you’ve probably seen the rest of the franchise, which includes:

-2010’s Despicable Me
-2013’s Despicable Me 2
-2015’s Minions
-2017’s Despicable Me 3
-2022’s Minions: Rise of Gru

All of these movies are currently available on streaming, though they are on different platforms. As for the latest entry, Despicable Me 4 will probably land on Peacock approximately three to four months after its theatrical release. Since the movie was released on July 3rd, so it should be streaming around October or November 2024, at least for a little bit.

Then, thanks to a 2021 deal between Universal and Netflix, the movie will head to Netflix for ten months and then exclusively on Peacock for another four months. It’s the classic “Theater to Peacock to Netflix then back to Peacock” move that we’ve come to know and love.

And don’t worry — the Minions will be back again soon. They never really leave us alone for long.

Well, last week was a disaster for both Team Black and Team Green on House of the Dragon. As much as Rhaenys went out like a badass, this still means that Rhaenyra and the Dragonstone crew have lost a powerful chess piece in Meleys (not to mention Rhaenys) during Rook’s Rest (my goodness, that name works here), and I’m not convinced that a kamikaze mission was necessary when you cannot easily freaking replace a dragon.

We’ll find out how that works out for Team Black and what happened to Team Green’s version of the monarch very soon.

When Does ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2, Episode 5 Come Out?

Look for the followup to Aegon’s crash and burn (and how Aemond deals with what he did) on Sunday, July 14 at 9:00pm EST and PST, both on HBO and Max.

Presumably, we’ll also see Ser Criston Cole continue to be completely useless while Daemon keeps doing whatever it is that he is doing at Harrenhal. Alys Rivers seems to be having fun with that, anyway.

Four more episodes remain in the season, which is already moving too fast, but the good news is that HBO is fully in this Westeros game, and we’ll see another Game of Thrones spin off debut in 2025.

When people have children there is all sorts of unsolicited advice and comments that seems to just spring out of people’s mouths. In most cases the people making the remarks are attempting to be helpful, but that doesn’t mean that it actually is helpful. Sometimes what is meant to be a kind word comes out sounding more hurtful than helpful.

Jimmy Knowles recently uploaded a skit that humorously highlights some of the unsupportive things people say to moms. The man plays all the parts in the skit, alternating between different moms and their “helpful” commenters. The video opens up with a mom sounding overwhelmed about how hard some of the days are with the kids. Immediately someone rebuts, “just remember, you chose this when you had them.”

Not helpful. It seems that sometimes people forget that moms are also humans who have bad days and a full range of emotions. But the next person who popped up to give out a little commentary wasn’t much better. Each advisor seems to be worse than the last.

Moms were completely on board with the message in Knowles’ video. Many shared their own experiences while others shared more helpful things people could say that are actually supportive.

“I’ve never heard someone say ‘you can’t complain about your work, you accepted their offer. Be grateful.’ Parenting is the only place this is the norm and it’s so delusional,” one person writes.

“I am the middle of 5 sisters. I’m all about supporting moms. Helpful things to say: – I’ll take the kids to the bookstore for a couple hours. – When can I come help out with housework? – I made dinner. 350 for 30 minutes. Salad isn’t dressed. – I’ve got 3 hours and I’m all yours. What can I do? Kitchen cleanup? Walk the dog? Bathroom duty? Feed the kids lunch while you go for a walk? Help!! Do something. Words are cheap. Actions are love,” someone shares.

“Here’s a great response- You work so hard honey. Thank you. Or from mom- you are such a good mom. I know it can be hard. How about you bring them over here and go have a date night or a quiet night at home,” another says.

“We. Just. Need. Validation. Y’all,” someone declares.

People aren’t asking for much, just actual help either when they’re feeling overwhelmed or before they reach the point of overwhelm. Validation and simply listening empathetically can go a long way.