Category: News

Zack Snyder has a new movie coming out next week, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, which means it’s time for him to talk about “fixing” his old movies.” This time around, Snyder is teasing an official director’s cut for Sucker Punch, which he hinted at last year while promoting, you guessed it, Rebel Moon – Part One. (Not sure if you know this, but Zack Snyder loves director’s cuts. They’re his favorite.)

In a new interview with Empire, Snyder revealed that he already has the footage needed to “fix” Sucker Punch, which technically has an Extended Edition. However, Snyder says that version isn’t a true director’s cut, so here we are.

“The only movie I would change is Sucker Punch, because it never really got finished correctly. Even the director’s cut is not really the correct cut. It’s really just an extended version. If I had the chance, I would fix that movie.”

“I have the footage already shot: they just have to let me put it together,” Snyder added. “We ask every now and then. We have to ask again. I think there has to be a window when no-one’s got the movie.”

By “they,” Snyder is referring to Warner Bros. who now has an icy relationship with the director. While starved for content during the pandemic, the studio surprisingly gave Snyder $70 million to finally release his fabled “Snyder Cut” of Justice League for HBO Max. But since then, Warner Bros. has been in the process of paving over Snyder’s DC Extended Universe and pretending the whole thing never happened.

More concernedly, Snyder is not against his fans firing up another #ReleaseTheSnyderCut-style campaign for Sucker Punch.

“If they want to start a campaign, that’s alright,” Snyder told Empire. May God have mercy on us all.

(Via Empire)

If you were making a list of the most stylish celebrity couples, Rihanna and ASAP Rocky would absolutely be on it. They may even be No. 1, but either way, they’re undoubtedly in the conversation. If you ask Rihanna, though, it’s Rocky who’s pulling most of the weight there, as she reckons his style game is far above her own, as she said in a new Interview conversation with her stylist (and Interview editor in chief) Mel Ottenberg.

Ottenberg made note of Rihanna’s earring and she revealed it was a gift from Rocky. Ottenberg then complimented Rocky’s taste and Rihanna responded, “Isn’t he the best? I be feeling bummy as sh*t next to this man. I feel like, g*ddamn, I look like his assistant. I’m getting on a plane. We should be in sweats. He wants to be in a full Bottega suit. I’m like, ‘Why you got to do that to me?’”

Ottenberg then wondered if there’s “a little competition for the looks” between the two and Rihanna replied, “No. It’s more like I spend my time getting the kids dressed to death, and then I’m like, ‘What’s the most comfortable outfit to wear around them? What’s not going to feel uncomfortable on their face or on their body or make me feel like I can’t hold them properly?’ Moms are lazy dressers in real life.”

Check out the full interview here.

It turns out Calvin Harris‘ wife Vick Hope loves the music of one of his famous exes. That’s right: During a recent episode of Hope’s BBC Radio 1 show Going Home With Vick, Katie And Jamie, she revealed that she only listens to Taylor Swift when Harris isn’t around.

“As soon as my husband goes away, I listen to Taylor Swift,” she shared. “That’s just when I get my little fill — just a little fill, just a couple of songs, get it out of my system, and then it’s done.”

For those who don’t remember, Harris and Swift dated from 2015 to 2016, celebrating their one-year anniversary with the awkward cake video that now makes the rounds every few weeks. After their split in June 2016, Swift briefly moved on with Tom Hiddleston and things got messy between the two. It was revealed that Swift co-wrote one of Harris’ songs, “This Is What You Came For,” and he vented on Twitter about it all.

“I figure if you’re happy in your new relationship you should focus on that instead of trying to tear your ex bf down for something to do,” he wrote at the time. “I know you’re off tour and you need someone new to try and bury like Katy ETC but I’m not that guy, sorry. I won’t allow it.”

Although it’s been a few years and Harris is now married, it seems that he won’t be playing The Tortured Poets Department in his house any time soon.

As with most everything in life, there’s good and bad things about being extremely famous. The bad: you can’t step out the door without being greeted by a flurry of flashing lights from photographers. Also, having to pretend you only drink Dasani bottled water because you were hired as their spokesperson when all you really want is a Diet Coke? Couldn’t be me. But there’s good stuff, too, like if you’re certified extremely famous person Zendaya, you get to go on Night at the Museum-style adventures.

In an interview with British Vogue, Zendaya recalled going to Paris in 2022 with her boyfriend and Spider-Man co-star, Tom Holland. They wanted to visit the Louvre, but they were told by some muckety mucks that “it’s already busy. You might make it worse.” They still ended up going, and “it was actually fine,” the Challengers actress shared. “You just kind of get used to the fact that, ‘Oh, I’m also one of these art pieces you’re going to take a picture of.’ I just gotta be totally cool with it and just live my life.” Bonus: she and Holland go to tour the museum after it closed. “It was one of the coolest experiences ever,” she said. “It was like Night at the Museum.”

Zendaya did not share if lil’ Cowboy Owen Wilson was there. That’s between her and Holland (who is actually the same height as Jedediah).

Challengers comes out in theaters on April 26.

(Via British Vogue)

Monday afternoon saw much of the U.S. captivated by the solar eclipse that passed over the nation. It was a rare scientific marvel that Fox News couldn’t resist using to stir up fear of immigrants crossing the border.

As Jon Stewart hilariously highlighted during the latest episode of The Daily Show, the obsessive border watchers at Fox went for one heck of a stretch as they claimed that drug dealers were itching to exploit the momentary darkness from the solar event thanks to Texas being in the path of totality.

“We are told that officials are bracing for higher traffic than usual and that means a real opportunity for smugglers and cartels and migrants to come right in,” Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer said, via The Independent.

“Or they could just wait till nighttime,” Stewart joked while being rightfully perplexed that the conservative news network would would reach this hard. “Is there nothing Fox can’t tie to immigration? This year’s cicada infestation provides perfect cover for Venezuelans!”

The Daily Show host also spared a moment for Marjorie Taylor Greene’s now viral tweet claiming that the eclipse and Friday’s earthquake in New Jersey were signs of God’s wrath.

“God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent. Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come,” Greene tweeted. “I pray that our country listens.”

“How do you know that is what God meant?” Stewart quipped. “Why would God be so obtuse? Why would he do that? Or she? Why would she? Or how crazy it would be if God insisted on they/them?”

Stewart then jokingly wondered if “dimming the lights” for a bit and giving a New Jersey a little shake is how God works.

You can watch The Daily Show clip above.

(Via The Independent)

Missy Elliott recently announced her new Out Of This World — The Missy Elliott Experience tour, which will kick off in July. As she plays shows across North America, she’ll be joined by Timbaland, Ciara, and Busta Rhymes as support — making it one not to miss, especially for hardcore fans.

For those looking to catch one of her upcoming concerts, here’s what to know about getting tickets.

How To Buy Tickets For Missy Elliott’s Out Of This World Tour

A pre-sale for Missy Elliott’s next tour will open for Verizon users today, April 9, along with other early access chances for fans throughout the week — including an artist one on Thursday, April 11. On Friday, April 12 at 10 a.m. local time, tickets will then be available for the general public to purchase them.

Continue scrolling for a complete list of dates. Additional information can be found through Elliott’s website.

Missy Elliott 2024 Tour Dates: Out Of This World

07/04 — Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena
07/06 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
07/09 — Oakland, CA @ Oakland Arena
07/11 — Los Angeles, CA @ Crypto.com Arena
07/13 — Las Vegas, NV @ T-Mobile Arena
07/16 — Denver, CO @ Ball Arena
07/18 — Austin, TX @ Moody Center
07/20 — Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
07/21 — Fort Worth, TX @ Dickies Arena
07/24 — Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena
07/25 — Sunrise, FL @ Amerant Bank Arena
07/27 — Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
08/01 — Baltimore, MD @ CFG Bank Arena
08/02 — Hampton, VA @ Hampton Coliseum
08/03 — Belmont Park, NY @ UBS Arena
08/05 — Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
08/08 — Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
08/09 — Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center
08/10 — Boston, MA @ TD Garden
08/12 — Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center
08/15 — Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
08/17 — Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre
08/19 — Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena
08/22 — Rosemont, IL @ Allstate Arena

Missy Elliott is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The big eclipse dominated the news yesterday (April 8), but right before that, it was a different moon that was generating attention: On April 6, Megan Thee Stallion shared a video of herself twerking her heart out and issued a challenge. She captioned her post, “IG after dark lol and nobody better not challenge me bc this the best ass on IG [tongue out emoji] or if you think so tag me in your video [crying laughing emoji] stream WANNA BE.”

Since then, many others have responded to the challenge, and now that list includes Latto. Last night, Latto shared a 29-second video of herself putting on her best twerking performance, using all surfaces and available camera angles in a dressing room to show off her skills. She captioned the video, “U called for BIG MAMA ??? @GloTheofficial.”

https://twitter.com/Latto/status/1777526940309594617

The twerk challenge is certainly serving as great promo for “Wanna Be,” the new Meg-featuring GloRilla song from Glo’s new Ehhthang Ehhthang mixtape. Uproxx’s Aaron Williams wrote of the release, “The Memphis rapper rediscovers her groove after a successful media run that once again endeared her to the fickle hip-hop audience. More homespun wisdom and elbow swinging trap realness bounds on her latest, which features appearances from Megan Thee Stallion, Moneybagg Yo, and more.”

Watch the “Wanna Be” video below.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Sydney Sweeney is casual enough about her nude scenes that she invites her family over for Euphoria viewing parties. Her dad and grandfather may have walked out of the room, but her grandma is a “big fan,” she once said. “I bring her usually all over the world to my different sets, and I make her an extra.” Sweeney’s grandmother even thinks she has the “best t*ts in Hollywood.”

Not everyone is as comfortable with getting nude on screen, however.

During a recent appearance on Sirius XM’s The Morning Mash Up, Bridgerton actress Nicola Coughlan was asked about the “saucy” scenes on the Netflix series. “I remember reading that Sydney Sweeney was like, in any of the TV shows or movies, she’s done she’s like, ‘Whatever. My parents love it.’ My parents would not love it,” host Nicole Ryan said. Coughlan replied, “No, no. You grow up Irish Catholtic… that’s just not how we vibe.” She even asked for a PG-rated cut of the show to watch her family.

It all dates to her mother’s surprise at the show’s nudity upon watching season one. “When she first saw Bridgerton, she didn’t know it was gonna be so saucy,” Coughlan recalled. “And then you get a bottom, Jonathan Bailey’s lovely bottom, about two minutes into the first episode ever. And she was like, ‘What is this?’ But then, now she thinks it’s fantastic and really funny, and she keeps talking about bottoms.”

Bridgerton returns to Netflix for season three on May 16.

(Via Cinemablend)

In 2011, I made up a rubric for assessing the output of musical artists. I called it The Five-Albums Test. Well, I didn’t exactly “make it up.” I took something that music fans were already doing informally, put an uncreative name on it, and published a column about it on the internet. That is what they call “music journalism.”

It works like this: You take an artist, you look at their discography, and you judge whether they have put out five consecutive “great” albums. That’s it. That’s the methodology. But why five consecutive great albums? Because it’s more than two consecutive great albums (an impressive achievement), three consecutive great albums (a triumph most artists don’t come close to accomplishing) or four consecutive great albums (true “hall of fame”-level performance). If you have five consecutive great albums, you simply are one of the legends of your life and times.

(You can also be one of the greats if you don’t have five consecutive great albums. Some of the most iconic artists of all time don’t have five consecutive great albums. I could elaborate but that would quickly derail this column from the central premise. You can read more here and here, though I’m not sure I still agree with a lot of what I wrote. Direct any questions/comments/admonishments to 2011 me.)

To pass The Five-Albums Test, you need a lot of elements to fall exactly into place. Some are in your control, but many are not. First, you must achieve a level of success that enables you to make at least five albums of any quality. (Making five consecutive bad albums is, from a longevity perspective, also is an incredible feat.) Second, you need enough great songs — 40 at minimum, though you are skirting EP territory if you don’t have at least 50 — to fill out five great albums. Third, these albums must demonstrate an artistic progression (i.e. “each one is different enough from the others”) that at the same time fortifies an instantly identifiable musical identity (i.e. “each one is similar enough to the others”).

This seemingly contradictory magic trick, of course, is the hardest to execute. But none of this stuff is easy. It’s not enough to merely be a genius songwriter and elite musician. You need a bit of luck to help maneuver the inevitable ups and downs of the music industry, popular taste, and the vagaries of late-capitalism.

It is a test designed for most people to fail.

As a music critic who is fascinated above all else by discographies, I often ask musicians about how they build and shape their bodies of work. When you make an album, do you think about how it fits with your other albums? Do you think of your albums as being in conversation with one another? How concerned are you with how your overall discography looks? I find these questions endlessly fascinating. The musicians I speak with, however, aren’t always as interested. Some musicians like to analyze their own work, but the majority do not. The unspoken worry, I think, is that thinking too much about these things might lead to self-consciousness. There’s also the sticky matter of luck. When there’s so much out of your control, why worry about it?

But in my experience, there is one particular musician who has thought about these questions more — possibly much more — than I have: Ezra Koenig.

On the press tour for Vampire Weekend’s latest album — their fifth — Only God Was Above Us, Koenig has focused mostly on the record’s musical and thematic narratives. As you might have read: This is the “noisy” VW LP, the one with distortion in place of the impeccably clean guitar lines that have defined their aesthetic since the 2007 self-titled LP. Lyrically, Only God Was Above Us is a “New York City album” that ponders the state of the world with an evolving worldview that moves from anger to acceptance.

Peruse any article about OGWAU, and you will see these points asserted and reiterated. But I’m more curious about the glancing comments from Koenig regarding his conception of Vampire Weekend’s overall catalog. In one interview, he listed “patron saints” for each of the band’s albums — Paul Simon for the self-titled, Joe Strummer and Sublime for Contra, Leonard Cohen for Modern Vampires Of The City, and the Grateful Dead and Phish for Father Of The Bride. For OGWAU, he was even more specific, pointing to the 1997 co-headlining tour by Rage Against The Machine and the Wu-Tang Clan, which reads as semi-jokey shorthand for the ’90s crossover of alt-rock and hip-hop that informs the record’s scruffily metallic, urban/suburban sound.

In another interview, Koenig managed to get even more granular, revealing a four-quadrant chart that he made after Father Of The Bride plotting out the vibes for each VW record. One axis was PREPPIE and HIPPIE, and the other was GOTH and SUNSHINE. According to this chart, the first two albums were PREPPIE/SUNSHINE, Modern Vampires was PREPPIE/GOTH, and Father Of The Bride was HIPPIE/SUNSHINE. That leaves HIPPIE/GOTH for Only God Was Above Us, a not-entirely-inappropriate descriptor of the album’s feel.

For skeptics, this level of creative calculation is indicative of an overbearing perfectionism that can be hard to take. But as a music critic, I find that it adds another layer of enjoyment to Vampire Weekend’s records. I appreciate that Ezra Koenig, along with being a songwriter and record-maker, is also a music critic of sorts. It’s just that he applies that analytical part of his brain to the creation of music. His records are, among other (much more important) things, thinkpieces that riff on sets of ideas, styles, and signifiers. And they are organized inside of Vampire Weekend’s discography like chapters in an evolving book.

I witnessed this side of Koenig first hand when I spoke with him in early 2020, right before lockdown, for a New York Times Magazine article. We ended up chatting for 90 minutes, which meant that the majority of the interview never made the 1,200-word piece. The most pertinent bits about Father Of The Bride made the cut, but my favorite parts of our talk were the nerdiest digressions about Vampire Weekend’s catalog.

“There is, straight-up, a decent chunk of people who really fucked with our first album and thought we fell off after that,” he said at one point. “Like, ‘That first album is fun, second one eh, third one ugh.’ These people are generally not major music critics. Or people who spend a lot of time on message boards. But these people exist because I’ve met them tons of times.”

It’s interesting to consider this population that looks at Vampire Weekend like The Strokes, with Vampire Weekend as their Is This It, a one-and-done emblem of a specific, fleeting moment. I imagine there is another subgroup that carries this analogy one step further, with Contra in the role of the underrated and possibly “secretly better” Room On Fire-esque follow-up. But at least inside of VW’s fanbase, The Strokes get left behind with the third album, Modern Vampires Of The City, the consensus “masterpiece” in the catalog. What struck me in our interview was Koenig’s suggestion that MVOTC was consciously constructed as a “serious statement” to woo critics, in the manner of other famous third-album “breakthroughs” like Born To Run, London Calling, and OK Computer.

“We’ve mostly gotten good reviews our whole career. But our first album was controversial. The Village Voice ran opposing reviews,” he said. “People wanted to fight about us in a way that very similar bands didn’t quite get. So, there’s a part of me that wondered what it would feel like to make a record that seemed to be a real crowd-pleaser in that world. And to some extent that was the third album.”

Anyone who disputes that Vampire Weekend passes The Five-Albums Test — for the record, I think they pass with flying colors — will likely have the most reservations with Father Of The Bride, the shaggy 18-track effort from 2019 informed by jam bands and Southern California — “HIPPIE/SUNSHINE” — that put off listeners hooked on the modernist, pop-forward approach of the first three records. I am a fan of FOTB, in no small part because I am also a fan of jam bands and music with Southern Californian vibes. The crunchiness of that record is way up my alley. But for now, I’m less concerned with laying out a critical/aesthetic argument than I am with considering how FOTB fits with the other Vampire Weekend records. When I spoke with Koenig, he implied that the polarization it inspired was practically by design.

“The album format on some level, it can get old really fast. So you have to always find ways in which to break new ground,” he told me. “When you break new ground it’s going to delight some people, alienate others. That’s the nature of the world.”

With VW’s fourth record, their first in six years, some kind of let down was inevitable given how acclaimed their previous effort was. The third LP was a landmark for the long, fading tail of 2000s indie rock, an era that finally more or less wrapped in 2013. By 2019, VW was far removed from anything happening in the vanguard of indie or pop music. Most groups in their position would have raced to keep up. But with Father Of The Bride, Koeing leaned into that separation, zagging as far as possible from the zeitgeist’s zig. His band was now culturally out of step, but on purpose. In that way, FOTB is explicitly the anti-MVOTC, though it did eventually win a Grammy and do fine with most critics. Still, Koenig acknowledged Vampire Weekend’s “proudly washed” image by promoting FOTB as a de-facto solo effort, leaving his bandmates out of press photos. As he recently related to The Guardian, “I just had a feeling that going into the fourth album, seeing a picture of three guys in their mid-30s was kind of like: ‘This is gonna look like damaged goods.’”

Again, that level of self-awareness is bound to annoy those who believe that artists shouldn’t think of their output in terms of critical or public response. But this conception of where each VW record falls is ultimately as thoughtful and smartly constructed as the music, and that carries over to the fifth album.

As Koenig himself I’m sure knows, there are two kinds of “great” fifth albums. The first is the “level up” fifth album, in which a long-running band hits their critical and/or commercial stride several years into their career. Famous examples include: David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars, Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall, Prince’s 1999, R.E.M.’s Document, U2’s The Joshua Tree, Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation, Metallica’s “Black Album, and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Only God Was Above Us is not that kind of record. Like Koenig said, the first album will probably always define the group in the popular consciousness. (“A-Punk” is their most streamed track on Spotify by multiple factors.) And Modern Vampires Of The City has a lock on being the canonical “capstone to the indie era” pick. OGWBU therefore is the second kind of “great” fifth record, the “simultaneously different and similar” album. The sort of LP that is, paradoxically, a career summation that also points forward.

(Three other “simultaneously different and similar” fifth albums that come to mind are extremely un-Vampire Weekend-like: The Who’s Who’s Next, Led Zeppelin’s Houses Of The Holy, and Black Sabbath’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.)

How does this apply to Vampire Weekend? The application of distortion immediately sets Only God Was Above Us apart from the other VW albums. In 10 years, there will be no question from which record “Hope” or “Capricorn” or “Mary Boone” derives. (Whereas the tracks from Vampire Weekend and Contra, in Strokes-like fashion, kind of blend together.) OGWAU is definitely different. At the same time, the lyrics immediately ground the LP in an East Coast milieu that was seemingly abandoned after the beloved third-album masterpiece. It sounds like the disaffected narrator of Modern Vampires Of The City with 11 more years of wisdom. OGWAU is definitely similar. HIPPIE/GOTH-ness has been achieved. The album-catalog-as-book, once again, evolves.