Donald Trump’s third presidential campaign has gotten off to an inauspicious start. His business was found guilty of fraud, he spent Thanksgiving dinner with anti-Semites, and his “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT” last week turned out to just be a bunch of crappy NFTs. The latter was such a creatively lame move that it got prime real estate on the last SNL of 2022, first during the Cold Open, then during the opening stretch of Weekend Update.
Co-host Colin Jost began by pointing out that the digital trading cards — which depict him as things he isn’t, like a cowboy, a superhero, and “most incredible of all, a guy who didn’t dodge the draft” — should help the “semi-retired maniac” avoid jail time. After all, he said, “he’s pretty much locked down that insanity plea.”
He then tied it back to another recent Trump boondoggle, saying, “It’s such a funny move to get into NFTs after the whole market just crashed. It’s like getting into Kanye now — which Trump also kind of did.”
Elsewhere, Michael Che took on Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto king who is accused of funneling money from customers to make large political donations. “That money,” Che joked, “will now be used to make sure the cameras outside his jail cell aren’t working.”
Later Jost took on another, actually wealthy freak: “A new study found that using screens to stop a child’s tantrums can harm their ability to control their emotions. The study is titled ‘Elon Musk.’”
Elsewhere on Weekend Update, Cecil Strong swung by as one of her beloved characters, the very opinionated Cathy Anne, which wound up being her farewell to the show on which she’s appeared since 2012.
You can watch Weekend Update in the videos above and below.
This week’s SNL wasn’t just the final episode of 2022. It was also the last dance with one of its most acclaimed cast members: Cecily Strong. The show’s resident Judge Jeanine Pirro (and lest you forget, Catherine Deneuve) surprised viewers by announcing her retirement from the late night sketch show, which she did not once but twice: on a RadioShack sketch that turned into her and host Austin Butler singing “Blue Christmas”; and on Weekend Update, where she bid adieu in the guise of one of her beloved characters.
That character was Cathy Anne, the unlit cigarette-wielding, very opinionated neighbor of co-host Michael Che. “Actually, I’m a little emo tonight because the truth is, I’m here to say goodbye,” she told the crowd, revealing that after years of wrongdoing, she was finally going to jail. She wasn’t that worried, alluding to “friends on the inside” who “seem to be doing OK,” prompting a photo of recently departed cast members Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant, who both left at the end of Season 47.
Strong stayed in character for most of the bit, but slightly broke it as she mildly choked up. “Everybody has to go to jail at some point, right? It’s just my time now,” she said. “But I had a lot of fun here and I feel really lucky that I got to have so many of the best moments of my life in this place with these people that I love so much.”
Strong joined SNL in 2012 and over the years has proven a game and inventive performer. Her possible departure has been discussed many times, including in 2021, when it seemed like she was saying goodbye (by way of her Pirro impersonation), only to return in the fall. But this time is real.
You can watch Strong’s Weekend Update farewell in the video above and you can watch her crooning with Austin Butler below. Congrats on the fantastic run.
Last week, Donald Trump hit a new low: After teasing a “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT,” the former president revealed he was simply and belatedly jumping on the NFT train. The move was so unpopular it was even dragged by accomplices and QAnon types, who expected something more from the guy who dines with anti-Semites. Sure enough, it found its way onto the final SNL of 2022.
“This is Donald Trump, hopefully your favorite president of all time, better than Lincoln, better than Washington, frankly, better than Ezra,” said James Austin Johnson’s 45. “You may have seen this week, I made a major announcement, I’m doing my first official collection of Donald J. Trump Digital Trading Cards — or to use the technical term, ‘nifties’ … because they are so neat.”
He then cycled through some of said NFTs, most of them scarily legit. Eventually he was joined by Mikey Day’s Jr. and his fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle, played by Cecily Strong — who soon revealed that this was her last SNL after a decade. She did a recreation of her unhinged RNC 2020 appearance, which left even Trump speechless. After ushering them off-camera, he made sure to note, “What a terrible couple.”
Is fiction any stranger than truth. You can decide by watching the sketch in the video above.
Multiple times per week, our TV and film experts will list the most important ten streaming selections for you to pop into your queues. We’re not strictly operating upon reviews or accrued streaming clicks (although yes, we’ve scoured the streaming site charts) but, instead, upon those selections that are really worth noticing amid the churning sea of content. There’s a lot out there, after all, and your time is valuable.
TIE: 10. The Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special (Disney+ movie)
James Gunn is shaking up the Superman game (meaning that he will focus on a film revolving around the young Clark Kent, and Henry Cavill won’t star, but that is fine since he has another iron in the fire already) and completely retooling the DCEU/DCU. Yet before that happens, he’s still got some MCU cheer on the way during this special that’s the perfect occasion to toss Groot in the fireplace. Just kidding, maybe. Awww, I love Groot, too, but I’m much more about Rocket Raccoon and whatever he’s going to do with that Spoilery Item. Godspeed, Trash Panda.
By now, there’s a good chance that you caught up on this show if you’ve already been watching. So you know who dies and who does the killing and who gets a happy ending. What you don’t know, however, is what no one else knows: will Sicily ever recover from Tanya’s intentionally chaotic wardrobe choices? Also, the wait for Season 3 already seems too long, and I think we need a weekly podcast from Meghann Fahy as Daphne and Aubrey Plaza as Harper, where they simply sh*t all over people in different ways. Admit it, you’d listen to something like that, too.
Sometimes you just wanna watch a Norwegian movie, in which a creature who should only subsist within folklore collides with some impressively decent special effects and a Godzilla-like origin story. Then the being wreaks havoc upon humanity as it sets off for the nation’s capitol. Think of this as holiday counter programming because this is currently the most popular non-English film on Netflix.
One can rarely say “nope” to a Brad Pitt movie, and that’s especially the case for a frenetic Brad Pitt action flick. The title of the film might lead one to believe that this is a remake of the 1975 Japanese film of the same name, but that would be inaccurate. Rather, this picture is based upon Kotaro Isaka’s darkly comedic novel, which follows five assassins en route to Kyoto when they figure out that they’re all on missions that are somehow related. Joey King and Aaron Taylor-Johnson co-star, and expect appearances from Bad Bunny, Michael Shannon, Sandra Bullock, Brian Tyree Henry, and Logan Lerman.
This fantasy series adaptation is back for one final rodeo after easily besting the hell out of the 2007 movie starring Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman that’s also based upon Phillip Pullman’s work. This third season follows The Amber Spyglass and not only gives us more of Plucky Lyra (Dafne Keen continues to hold her ground alongside those Dæmons) but also some bonus helpings of James McAvoy’s Lord Asriel.
Although this show hasn’t yet received a Season 2 renewal, it seems increasingly likely that we will receive more of the record-breaking, non-blinking protagonist who ruled Thanksgiving weekend in the streaming realm. Tim Burton knew precisely how an inventive storyline would work much better than treading old ground from the movies or O.G. TV show, and Jenna Ortega brings the spooky vibe home with Wednesday Addam’s parents, Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Gomez (Luis Guzmán) along for the ride in perfect doses.
Man, this is a bit of a horror movie, but it’s also a movie where Aubrey Plaza kicks some overdue ass. She takes no bullsh*t as Emily, who’s buried deep in student loan hell and catching no breaks from having a felony offense on her record. She’s no heroine, but Emily’s compelling as hell to watch while choosing to hop into a scheme that’s led by Theo Rossi’s sinister character with a soft side. This movie should also please The White Lotus fans who wanted Harper to haul off and beat the hell out of those who anger her most.
Claire Danes is nearly a ghost throughout much of this season (which is dropping on a weekly basis), but her Rachel is still mightily screwing with her husband, Toby Fleishman, as played by Jesse Eisenberg. They play spouses who are divorcing, which is probably in the best interests of everyone, but then Rachel evaporates. There’s a bit of mystery regarding her whereabouts, but that’s not the real attraction of this show. Rather, it’s amazing how Eisenberg can continue to be awkward in many different ways and still remain watchable. Also, Lizzy Caplan’s character rules in Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s adaptation of her own novel, and Adam Brody is here for some finance-bro comic relief.
Did we really need another take on this classic? Once you catch a few minutes of this stop-motion masterpiece, then you’ll realize that sometimes, another retelling of the same story can yield some magic. The maestro who recently brought his Cabinet of Curiosities to Netflix now takes on the wooden puppet whose story gets reinvented with some darkness but with plenty of thematic relevance for a new audience. You probably won’t want to show this to young children, but other ages will dig the latest from the helmer of Crimson Peak.
Alright, so Piers Morgan is having an absolute field day (he even forgot to publicly wish his wife a happy birthday when the first batch of episodes started streaming) with hating on the Sussexes, but they have their fans as well as their detractors. Especially with the second installment that arrived this week, this limited series gives a peek behind the curtain of what pushed Meghan Markle and Prince Harry to make the difficult decision to part from the British Royal Family. And of course there are strong opinions, but that’s part of the viewing experience.
You may have heard that Avatar: The Way Of Water has arrived in theaters and is apparently a very good movie. So before you watch this sequel that James Cameron promised will make “sh*t yourself with your mouth wide open,” you might as well also relive the original trip to Pandora. The film got pulled from Disney+ ahead of the sequel’s theatrical release, but it’s available for rental on Amazon and VOD platforms, so get back in league with the Na’vi and then prepare to check yo’ britches.
Wrapped up in a festive, puffy, silver and gold dress, Lizzo expressed hope for a brighter future and a happy holiday season for all. Joined by a group of equally powerful background singers, the group sang in joyous harmony.
“Someday at Christmas there’ll be no wars / When we have learned what Christmas is for / When we have found what life’s really worth / There’ll be peace on earth,” Lizzo sang.
Lizzo released the studio version of her “Someday At Christmas” cover last month, as part of a series for Amazon Music. Though Wonder’s original version of the song was released over 50 years ago, Lizzo felt the song’s message still rings true today.
“I chose to cover ‘Someday at Christmas’ not just because it’s a classic, but because it’s a reminder to us that almost 60 years later, we are still fighting for peace, compassion, and equality,” said Lizzo in a statement. “A friendly reminder to spread love and kindness this holiday season.”
Check out the performance above.
Lizzo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
In the last Saturday Night Live episode of the year, Lizzo returned to the stage. In festive spirits, she performed her buzzy track, “Break Up Twice” from her critically-acclaimed sophomore album, Special.
During her performance, Lizzo is woken up by an alarm clock, then arises from a bed after hitting pressing the alarm off. Donned in white nightwear, Lizzo lets her man know that she’s willing to give their relationship another try, but she’s not giving him any more chances after this.
“Boy, you know you better / ooh, you know you better / Boy, you know you bettеr watch out / ‘Cause boy, you know me bettеr / you know me so much better / You know that I don’t break up twice,” she sings on the song’s chorus, which interpolates Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)”
As the song progresses, Lizzo is joined by a backing chorus, who sweetly supplement Lizzo’s soulful vocals. She also twerks by her mattress, in true Lizzo fashion.
This is Lizzo’s second time performing on SNL this year, her first being in April upon the release of her comeback single, “About Damn Time.”
Check out the performance of “Break Up Twice above.
Lizzo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Recent polls suggest that Republicans and Democrats have slightly different tastes that have nothing to do with politics.
If you like cats, The Beatles, and Starbucks, you tend to vote Democrat. If you’re into Toby Keith, Budweiser, and Dunkin’ Donuts, you tend to vote Republican.
So how does it work? (Don’t read the answer if you haven’t taken the quiz yet.)
According to ChartsMe, recent studies have found that people who were more prone to disgust are more conservative. This leads them to more closely align with the Republican Party.
Some scientists believe it’s ancestral and that the adverse reactions to conditions we’d label “disgusting” were used to protect primitive ancestors from contamination and disease. This way a person wouldn’t confuse drinking water with dirty pond scum. But if the test told you that you’re a Republican, you probably won’t accept that explanation because studies show you probably don’t believe in evolution.
“One day, I met someone at a convention and ended up falling for a man almost 20 years my senior,” Dykstra wrote. “It wasn’t the first time I’d found myself in a relationship with an older man; I’ve always joked about my daddy issues, and thought that with age came stability and wisdom. Welp.”
Quickly, the relationship turned into one of fear — “I was terrified to piss him off — so I did what he said,” she wrote — and then became assaultive. Dykstra revealed she developed an eating disorder. Then, when she suffered an ectopic pregnancy and either had to have surgery or risk death, she said her fear of having to tell her partner she was pregnant was stronger than her fear of death.
Dykstra is shining an important light on why people stay in abusive relationships.
When people learn of an abusive relationship, the common question that surfaces is “If it was so bad, why didn’t you just leave?” The answer to this question is complex in general and often has nothing to do with a person’s strength. Often, it doesn’t even seem like there’s a choice.
Dykstra’s answer to this question paints a painful picture of why escaping an abusive relationship can feel impossible:
“I believed that, to borrow an analogy from a friend, if I kept digging I would find water. And sometimes I did. Just enough to sustain me. And when you’re dying of thirst, that water is the best water you’ll ever drink. When you’re alienated from your friends, there’s no one to tell you that there’s a drinking fountain 20 feet away. And when your self-worth reaches such depths after years of being treated like you’re worthless, you might find you think you deserve that sort of treatment, and no one else will love you.”
Her story has clearly resonated with people far and wide.
Dykstra’s main goals were to create closure and warn others about how surprisingly common abuse can be. According to The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, more than 10 million people are abused by an intimate partner annually. On an average day, approximately 20,000 calls are placed to domestic violence hotlines.
The stigma of being trapped in an abusive relationship is slowly disappearing. The overwhelming support Dykstra has been shown is a sign that progress is moving in the right direction — but there’s so much work yet to to be done.
You can reach the NCADV in the link below:
NCADV is the voice of victims and survivors. We are the catalyst for changing society to have zero tolerance for domestic violence. We do this by affecting public policy, increasing understanding of the impact of domestic violence, and providing programs and education that drive that change.
As much as people might not want to discuss it, traumatic experiences are not rare. In fact, recent data suggests that 60% of men and 50% of women will experience at least one traumatic event in their lifetime.
For a long time, it was believed that only those who had served in the military could develop PTSD, but that’s simply not true.
The reality is that, while it may be more prevalent among certain groups,PTSD can affect anyone who’s experienced a traumatic event. It’s important to be able to speak about it clearly and openly, without fear or condemnation, in order to promote understanding and healing.
Today, more treatments exist for PTSD than ever before.
The medical and psychological communities are finding new and effective ways of treating the disorder. For example, therapies involving virtual reality and paintball have shown to be promising in treating veterans. Both are methods where an individual is exposed to the triggers of their symptoms in a safe and controllable way.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (where one learns to think more realistically and logically) and eye movement desensitization reprocessing (in which an individual relives the traumatic experience in small doses and while remaining firmly in reality) can also be effective in treating the disorder. But therapy, no matter how effective, is only one piece of the puzzle.
Helping those with PTSD must also include compassion. Here’s how to be an ally.
It’s likely that you know someone who’s experienced PTSD. It’s also likely that you didn’t know how to think or react to the disorder.
Confusion (and even judgment) are normal responses. After all, most of us aren’t trained therapists. But you don’t have to be a mental health professional to help a friend or loved one who’s experiencing PTSD.
There’s no one right thing to say to someone who’s experiencing the disorder. The best thing you can do is just be there. While it may seem helpful to offer wisdom or offer suggestions for how your loved ones can “move on” or “get over it,” that’s actually counter-intuitive.
Those living with PTSD are already under a great deal of pressure. Suggesting therapy is helpful, but trying to make your loved one see “the good side of things” or “remember that this is all part of a bigger plan” is likely to create even more guilt and stress rather than prompt action. PTSD is painful and it’s serious, but it’s never a sign of weakness.
Respecting boundaries is also important. It’s up to the individual when they choose to talk about their trauma. Nobody should force it or take it personally if they don’t.
Show up, listen, care. These things are enough. More importantly, they’re important steps toward ending stigma and helping our loved ones heal.
Well, folks, I played myself. I was so excited about the prospect of an Avatar sequel that I felt like I needed to defend the feeling. I ended up writing an entire post about it. About how this time, it seemed different. About how it felt like we were actually being sold a movie again, and not a type of fandom, or a corporation’s five-year plan.
Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that the movie, once I saw it, would leave me feeling like the story was only a chapter and not much had been resolved. Beyond the visual trappings and the James Cameron persona, Avatar 2 (minus points for not just calling it that) feels a lot like what I had hoped it was not: a typical franchise movie, a glorified tease for some future sequel. It’s a technological grand slam and a thematic sacrifice bunt.
The first Avatar was released in 2009, which feels like a lifetime ago now, basically because it is. There being sequels was assumed almost from the beginning, and much has been made of the idea that James Cameron had to wait for technology to catch up to his imagination. As Cameron told GQ in a recent profile, “They needed new cameras that could shoot underwater and a motion-capture system that could collect separate shots from above and below water and integrate them into a unified virtual image; they needed new algorithms, new AI, to translate what Cameron shot into what you see.”
That’s right, the guy who made The Terminator had to use artificial intelligence to “translate” his new movie to our eyeballs. More:
“The process for how Cameron builds the Avatar films is complex; it involves creating a data-rich but visually undistinguished package that Cameron calls a template—on which he captures the lighting, performances, and camera moves he wants—which then gets handed over to Wētā to apply algorithms and layers of animation to bring the template to life. ‘It’s not animation in a Pixar sense where they’re just making stuff up,’ Cameron told me. ‘The actors already defined what they did, but it has to be translated from the captured data to the 3D-CG character. And there’s all sorts of AI steps in there.’”
That’s all very complicated, but the end result… well, it looks a lot like animation. Largely that’s due to the fact that Cameron employs a high frame rate system whereby The Way Of The Water uses 48 frames per second (double film’s usual 24) for the action sequences, then clones frames during other sequences to mimic normal, 24 fps film for slower moments with fewer camera moves. The point is to avoid the blurring and strobing that happen when 3D action moves too fast, but avoid the hyperreal effect of the high frame rate when it isn’t necessary.
That’s a lot of work just to jerry-rig a functional version of 3D, and I’m not sure it was time well spent. The high-frame rates still look weird and hyperreal, a conspicuous conceit rather than a streamlined reality. There are some wild set pieces, especially early in the film, that are hard to be invested in because they just look too much like videogame animation (not in a good way). Things like an exploding train on an alien planet look more like miniatures or animation. They don’t make you feel like you’re watching a real thing that happened. There are recognizable actors listed in the credits (Kate Winslet!?) that I don’t remember being in the movie I just saw. “Actors” are largely irrelevant in the traditional sense, which feels a lot like animation by another name. Why do I feel like the pre-fx version of this shot would be more compelling than the post?
20th Century Studios
Yes, I’m already bored of talking about technical stuff. Yet with Avatar: The Way Of The Water, technical stuff is most of what there is. In the first Avatar, the disabled Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) goes to Pandora to replace his deceased brother in the native pacification project (I remember almost all of this, even though I only saw the movie once, 13 years ago). He ends up going native, and helping his new tribe of Na’vi defeat the evil mining corporation that want to kill Pandora’s magical tree and mine the spirits of Na’vi ancestors for unobtanium to power their quad bikes or whatever.
When we catch up to Jake in The Way Of The Water, he seems to be living a pretty good life on Pandora with his new cat-monkey family, catching fireflies and hopping all nimbly pimbly from tree to tree and whatnot. He’s the leader of his tribe and has a family, which now includes not only his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) but an indeterminate number of kids. Three? Four? He has at least two boys, plus a younger daughter and another maybe-adopted girl who is the daughter of Sigourney Weaver’s character in the first. “Her conception is a bit of a mystery,” we’re told in a voiceover, which are now just there, without the “letters home” framing device to justify them.
Frankly, all of these children’s conceptions are a bit of a mystery. We probably could’ve used a refresher on that, the movie is three hours long. There’s a malformed plot point about the human-Na’avi hybrids having four fingers like humans instead of three like pure Na’vi, but the movie doesn’t really land the explanation and who really cares anyway.
Suffice it to say, Jake’s cat-monkeys and their dreadlocked chill are shattered when the once-dead Marine thug, Quaritch (Stephen Lang), returns to Pandora for revenge, after he and his crew’s consciousnesses are uploaded into nine-foot, feline Na’vi bodies. They show up on Pandora and wreck shop, and Jake and his family are forced to flee the forest Na’vi tribes to seek protection among the Polynesian-coded island Na’vi tribes. It’s there that they learn, you guessed it, the way of the water. That’s basically the entire movie.
The first Avatar was simplistic, but it was about a clash of civilizations. It was about settler colonialists like Jake trying to unlearn the assumptions of the extractive society in which they’d been raised. The Way Of The Water is even simpler than that, and missing a lot of the broader implications. It’s mostly just about Quaritch seeking revenge and Jake’s family learning to love the ocean. Sure?
The Way Of The Water‘s finest moments are under the water, where one of Jake’s sons (that I don’t remember which, or their names, and could barely distinguish between them is a flaw of the film) gets stranded outside the reef by the Polynesian Na’vi. Out in the open waters he befriends a whale creature. Wikipedia tells me the boy’s name is Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and the whale creatures are called “Tulkuns.”
The sequences underwater truly are magical eye candy, and the movie comes closest to finding a reason for existing in the conflict between these pacifist, spiritual sea creatures and the whalers trying to mine them for their brain goo. Which apparently can stop human aging (see Sea of Shadows for real-life analog here). Jemaine Clement (one of a handful of actually recognizable actors, including Edie Falco’s nice turn as the commander of the humans’ Pandora base) plays an expert Tulkun scientist forced to help kill them in order to fund his research. “And this is why I drink,” he says.
It’s the most memorable performance and line in what should’ve been the main storyline in The Way Of The Water. Instead, it gets shunted aside in favor of Quaritch’s thin revenge story (why wouldn’t this guy just go native too?). Likewise, when Lo’ak befriends a rogue Tulkun who had been exiled from his pod for killing, you’d think this storyline would have a big payoff. Instead, it lasts about three minutes (I mean what is this, my sex life?!).
There’s a big, elaborate battle at the end, and visually it’s not nearly as fun as Lo’ak whale riding, and conceptually you get to the end wondering what actually got resolved in this billion dollar movie. Jake Sully learned “the way of the water?” Which boils down to a few lines of space age-y mumbo jumbo, about how water connects birth and death, light and dark?
For a movie that’s so epic in its technological ambitions, The Way Of The Water feels very timid in the scope of its storytelling. It feels momentous only in the context of an assumption that there are going to be more of these movies, which is precisely what I had hoped it would allow me not to do. Oh well, at least there was no post-credits sequence. Small mercies.
‘Avatar: The Way Of The Water’ is out now in theaters everywhere. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more of his reviews here.
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NCADV is the voice of victims and survivors. We are the catalyst for changing society to have zero tolerance for domestic violence. We do this by affecting public policy, increasing understanding of the impact of domestic violence, and providing programs and education that drive that change.
