Category: News

The Watcher has put Ryan Murphy at the top of the Netflix charts for two shows, including Dahmer. Both shows are controversial, and in the case of The Watcher, this largely sources from the people’s frustrations at the lack of a solved crime in this based-on-real-life story. That’s to be expected. Even though this show is a dramatization and takes a lot of creative liberties, Ryan Murphy didn’t pull an answer on The Watcher’s identity out of thin air. He let the open-ended nature of the case stand, and nope, no one ever figured out who wrote those menacing letters to the Broaddus (renamed the Brannocks in the show) quartet.

What actually happened to the family, though? Following the 2018 article by The Cut about their cursed home, the parents found it difficult to sell the property, which they attempted to do eight months after their purchase and eventually did so at a loss as realtor David Barbosa revealed. A lot of publicity and whispering neighbors will do that to a house.

In the show, the family moves back to New York City, but in reality, the family briefly moved back in with family, and as The Cut also reports, the family seems to be alive and well, and they continued to make their home in Westfield, New Jersey. CNN points interested viewers toward Derek Brannock‘s Twitter account, where he’s watching people who are watching The Watcher. Circular! And fitting.

The Watcher is streaming on Netflix.

(Via The Cut, Entertainment Weekly & CNN)

Omar Apollo’s debut album, Ivory, has vaulted the bilingual R&B singer to great heights. His single “Evergreen” marked the Mexican-American’s first appearance on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and has stoked the fire of Apollo’s upcoming The Prototype Tour. One of our most anticipated concert tours of fall 2022, the tour kicks off this week and heads to nearly two dozen stops in North America. But Omar Apollo’s opening act is also not to be missed.

Who Is Opening Omar Apollo’s ‘Prototype Tour?’

Chicago’s Ravyn Lenae is the lone direct support for Omar Apollo on The Prototype Tour and there could hardly be a better opener. The R&B and neo soul producer released her long-awaited debut album, Hypnos, this year as well, to much critical acclaim. The album features production from Steve Lacy, Kaytranada, Smino, Monte Booker, and others who all help elevate the Chicagoan’s velvety smooth vocals.

With Ravyn Lenae joining Omar Apollo, The Prototype Tour promises to be an apt showcase of today’s modern R&B. Check out the full tour dates below and get tickets here.

10/21 — San Diego, CA @ Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre
10/22 — Tucson, AZ @ 191 Toole
10/25 — Tulsa, OK @ Cain’s Ballroom
10/26 — Houston, TX @ 713 Music Hall
10/27 — San Antonio, TX @ Aztec Theatre
10/29 — Boulder, CO @ Boulder Theater
11/01 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Greek Theater
11/02 — San Jose, CA @ San Jose Civic
11/03 — Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater
11/05 — Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex
11/08 — St. Paul, MN @ Palace Theatre
11/10 — St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant
11/11 — Indianapolis, IN @ Egyptian Room at Old National Centre
11/13 — Richmond, VA @ The National
11/15 — Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern
11/17 — Washington, D.C. @ The Anthem
11/18 — Norfolk, VA @ The NorVa
11/19 — Charlotte, NC @ The Fillmore
11/20 — Raleigh, NC @ The Ritz
11/22 — Nashville, TN @ Ryman Auditorium
11/26 — Brooklyn, NY @ Kings Theatre
11/29 — Toronto, ON @ HISTORY

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

The rollout for Smino’s upcoming third studio album, Luv 4 Rent, continues. After revealing the project’s release date with an amusing trailer previewing a song featuring funk legend Bootsy Collins and announcing his co-headlining tour for the album with fellow Zoink Gang rapper JID, the St. Louis crooner shared the album’s cover, which fans noted continues a running theme of haircare related photos from his previous projects, Blkswn and Noir.

However, where the previous projects featured Smino getting his hair done by a woman, the cover to Luv 4 Rent sees a group of men waiting their turns in front of a mirror as Smino either braids his hair or takes his braids down. Some fans noted the change, speculating whether it was a hint to the content that would appear on the album.

So far, we’ve only heard a handful of tracks from the long-awaited album, beginning late last year with “I Deserve.” More recently, Smino shared the J. Cole collaboration “90 Proof,” while it’s unknown whether the Kobe Bryant dedication “24-8” will appear on the final tracklist. Perhaps we’ll find out the secret behind the subtle change to his cover theme when Luv 4 Rent arrives on Zero Fatigue and Motown Records, 10/28. You can pre-save it here.

Things must be a little awkward over at The Daily Show HQ these days. Not only is the show’s host of seven years skedaddling — and a little earlier than expected — but there’s talk that highers-up might replace him with someone in-house. But which correspondent? And wouldn’t that pit all of them against each other? But according to a new report, they might go with a simpler solution, if one reminiscent of Jeopardy! and the most recent Oscars.

As per Deadline, instead of picking one correspondent to replace the departing Noah, they may replace him with two. Or maybe three. Sources claim one idea is to have emcee duties go to Roy Wood Jr. and Desi Lydic. Or maybe they’ll go with another combination. After all, there’s also Ronny Chieng, Michael Kosta, and Dulcé Sloan. That’s to say nothing of daredevil traveler Jordan Klepper, who may want to stop putting himself in the harm’s way that is hanging with Trump supporters.

Having multiple hosts isn’t that unusual. SNL’s Weekend Update has been doing it for ages, to great acclaim. Besides, if one (or both) of the hosts is a woman, then they would be the most high-profile woman in late-night TV now that Full Frontal with Samantha Bee has been given the axe. (Although some just think they should bring Bee back.)

But for now, no final decisions have been made. They still have a little bit of time: Noah’s final show isn’t scheduled until December 8, after which the show won’t return until January 17.

(Via Deadline)

For the life of me I will never understand why anyone would make a superhero movie with, perhaps, the most charismatic action star working today and decide, hey, what if we took away all that charisma? It’s truly baffling. And, look, if you want to make an argument, well, historically, the character of Black Adam is stoic and isn’t going to be delivering nonstop one-liners, well, I would counter that once Dwayne Johnson is cast as the lead – something he himself really pushed for – then there has to be a little leeway to reinvent a character that most people don’t know a lot about anyway. Yes, people have opinions on Batman and Superman. Not a lot of people have strong opinions on Black Adam. Anyway, “stoic” is what we got.

Look, Black Adam isn’t a bad movie. If we take a step back and look at what the DCEU has given us, I could make a case this is in the upper half of quality. This certainty isn’t an incoherent mess like, say, Marvel’s Morbius. The plot makes sense. And Jaume Collet-Serra is a good director and the movie is mostly competent. For me, it’s just a sense of disappointment. There’s nothing that interesting here, but there certainly should be. There are themes that are hinted at, or sometimes directly mentioned – for instance, at one point Black Adam is directly accused of siding with Western invaders over people from his own country – that could have been fascinating. But then they are quickly forgotten to, instead, bring us another CGI cartoon superhero fight that looks a lot like all the CGI cartoon superhero fights we’ve seen before.

Black Adam starts with one of those exposition dumps that includes a voice-over about events that took place 5000 years before. Anyway, a magic stone is found and a kid is transformed into another being named Teth-Adam (who will, eventually, call himself Black Adam). So, Teth-Adam uses his powers for revenge and the people who gave him those powers don’t like that, so Teth-Adam is sent away. So, 5000 years later a resistance fighter and professor, Adrianna (Sarah Shahi) discovers how to resurrect Black Adam (I’m going to refer to him as Black Adam from here on out) in an effort to help the oppressed people of Kahndaq.

But, you see, Black Adam is no hero. Or, at least he keeps telling us this, but never really does anything that bad. Sometimes he kills bad guys, but this is what every action hero in the ’80s and ’90s used to do. And most of the bad guys he tries to kill wind up being saved anyway. The only evidence we really get that Black Adam is not a hero is that he keeps telling us that while he’s hovering in front of the camera. (For whatever reason, Black Adam is always hovering.)

At this point, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) decides to call in the Justice Society to go talk Black Adam, who hasn’t really done anything that bad except kill some bad guys, into surrendering. Why the Justice Society? Your guess is as good as mine. There’s no explanation whatsoever why a superhero group that was historically active during World War II would be in this movie. It kind of presents a scenario where, in the DCEU, the Justice League and the Justice Society are both active superhero groups and Amanda Waller just has her choice on who to call. Sure, a case could be made that Hawkman (Aldis Hodge) and Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan, who got the memo this should be a fun movie) are old and are just still around with not much to do anyway (at one point Doctor Fate makes a direct reference to World War II). But their other two teammates are teenagers: Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell) and Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo). Maybe most people won’t really care. For me, it really was fun seeing Doctor Fate, played by an actor who played James Bond, in a live-action movie. But hierarchy-wise, I really couldn’t figure this out. My best guess is the Justice League, as a property, is still, let’s say, “creatively in flux,” and the people calling the shots just didn’t want to mess with it right now. So, instead, we get the Justice Society with no explanation.

(I’m going to harp a little on this. If this series of movies had some sort of cohesiveness by now – Man of Steel came out nine years ago, but feels like 20 somehow – we should be in a situation where the Justice League could just have rotating heroes on duty up there in the satellite and whoever is active would be called in to deal with this, which would be fun. And it’s sort of what this movie does – again, Doctor Fate is somehow in this movie and that’s very fun – only the workaround is, oh, this is the Justice Society, which makes no sense in this context. Anyway…)

Black Adam had a bunch of reshoots, which is normal these days for a movie like this. But it’s pretty obvious where these new scenes are. Before the reshoots, my guess is the consensus was, “this is dull.” So now there are scenes of Black Adam shooting a television showing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly just as Clint Eastwood draws his pistol. It’s this stoic film that’s not having a lot of fun, then will pause for some “inserted laughs.” But the problem is this movie is still just kind of dull. I found myself a little bored by the end, as the third act devolves into something nothing like the, at times, somewhat interesting first two acts as the Justice Society and Black Adam have to literally fight a hell demon. During the first two acts I still thought maybe something will be done with some of the themes that are introduced. They decided to go a, uh, different direction.

Again, Black Adam is a competent movie. (I hope that quote gets on a movie poster. “Competent!”) And a lot of plot complaints get overlooked when the lead of the movie is noticeably having a good time. Which is weird because we all know how much Dwayne Johnson wanted to play Black Adam, then comes out and gives us this deadly serious take on the character. Yeah, I get he’s the “bad guy,” but also (a) not really and (b) aren’t the bad guys supposed to be having the most fun?

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

On the latest episode of UPROXX’s Grand Encounters, we’re diving into the world of L.A. street fashion and Black history to find a new and inventive cocktail. Mixologist and author Shannon Mustipher welcomes fashion designer John Wesley Dean III — founder of RENOWNED — to the bar to talk about his vibe, life, and experience before creating a cocktail just for him. It’s a classic tale of a bartender taking their patron on a journey of experience and flavor.

The conversation between Mustipher and Dean ping pongs between family history, Black history, and fashion. Dean lays down the importance of his name as a symbol in street fashion, how his father instilled him with power in making his business decisions, and then how Black history is important to Dean’s sense of what fashion can be.

All of this leads to Shannon Mustipher crafting a citrus-forward take on an old-fashioned — called “The Wise Louis” — using Grand Marnier Cuvee Louis Alexandre. Dean’s reaction says it all as he takes his first sip, but you’ll have to watch the full episode above to learn more about the cocktail and how to make it while also getting the chance to hear how John Wesley Dean III broke into fashion.

When Car Seat Headrest canceled a Chicago-area show last month, singer Will Toledo explained that he was experiencing, “A post-COVID condition which involves heavy nausea, fatigue, dizziness, and a buzzing nervous system.” Dubbed “histamine intolerance,” the ailment had Toledo “stuck in bed” and is one of the more common side effects of Long COVID symptoms. Now it seems as though Toledo’s health has not improved, and Car Seat Headrest has canceled an upcoming West Coast Tour, as well as the band’s appearance at When We Were Young Fest in Las Vegas.

“After another month of struggling to regain my health, I am I am currently forced to face the fact that my body lacks the basic levels of functionality necessary to leave the house most days, let alone embark on a tour,” Toledo said in a Twitter post. “As a result, we are unfortunately forced to pull out of the When We Were Young Festival dates and cancel our upcoming California tour.”

The comments to Toledo’s tweet and the conversation surrounding his announcement have drawn the support of the Long COVID community. “You’re not alone, there’s millions of us suffering from Long COVID,” a reply read, “Right now, sharing our stories is the only remedy to combat the lack of treatment, awareness & support.”

Recently, guitarist Dave Navarro revealed that he is battling Long COVID, saying that he’s, “Been sick since December and supposedly will be back to my old self in… nobody knows how long.” Animal Collective cancelled their European tour citing economic reasons, but also indicating that they had previously cancelled dates because of “bad COVID infections.” The conversation surrounding Long COVID seems to be bubbling up in the music industry and is very much a real one.

Dan Snyder was a hot topic coming into the NFL owners meeting this week, as the reviled owner of the Commanders has been at the center of Congressional probes into the organization’s workplace, where there have been numerous allegations of sexual harassment as well as some questionable financial practices.

As the various investigations into the Commanders have released findings to the public, there has been a renewed push to get Snyder out of the league, which has naturally led him to dig in further. There was a report last week that Snyder has been collecting information on his fellow owners via private investigators and has told people he has dirt on a few, including Jerry Jones, he would make public if they try to oust him from the league. Snyder has denied that in a statement through the team, but it certainly sounds plausible given the spitefulness of NFL owners.

In any case, the prevailing thought heading into this week’s meetings was that Snyder would be discussed but there would be no vote on his future in the NFL in the immediate. Then, Colts owner Jim Irsay became the first to publicly back the idea of getting Snyder out of the league and noted that, while there needs to be more discussion and some investigations need to be finished up, he believed there was “merit” to voting him out and felt they potentially could get the 24 votes needed to do so.

This is noteworthy given its the first time we’ve heard an owner speak like this about Snyder on the record, which he wouldn’t do if he didn’t believe there was at least a good bit of backing for this position from others. That said, he also isn’t offering anything close to a guarantee it happens, and it remains to be seen if there are in fact 24 owners that share this viewpoint and will put it to a vote at some point.

Irsay also noted that he was not concerned about the report of Snyder digging up dirt on other owners.

The Colts owner has seen his share of scandals in his time so we might just already know most of what there is to know about him, but these public comments will only fuel the push to remove Snyder from the outside. We just have to wait to see if the owners will make it happen.

The NBA season gets underway on Tuesday night and the nightcap will be a battle of two divisional rivals that went in very different directions a year ago — the Golden State Warriors will play host to the Los Angeles Lakers for championship ring night in San Francisco.

As a whole, the Pacific Division figures to dominate headlines in the West, as it is home to many of the league’s biggest stars and top contenders. However, while at least three of the teams figure to be legit contenders to win the West — Warriors, Clippers, Suns — with the Lakers hopeful to bounce back into that realm and the Kings looking to snap their playoff drought, there are questions abound for each as we come into the 2022-23 season. Here we will highlight the biggest (non-injury related question) for all five teams as the year begins.

Golden State Warriors: Can they move on from Draymond Green punching Jordan Poole?

A couple weeks ago, this would’ve been about the young guys stepping into bigger roles and how that looks, which is still a question for Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody, and James Wiseman as they figure to be more important to the Golden State rotation this season. However, that got pushed to the periphery a bit once Draymond Green dropped Jordan Poole with a right cross at practice, earning a brief suspension and causing the once elite vibes in the Warriors facility coming off a championship to erode quickly.

They do have experience navigating a Draymond spat with a teammate, as they made it to the Finals and were the favorites before getting derailed by injuries against the Raptors in the season after Green and Kevin Durant had their much publicized bench altercation. That, however, didn’t involve any punches being thrown, and while Green and Poole are saying the right things about moving forward as professionals, their dynamic will be scrutinized all year, as will Green’s play as he was the odd man out when it came to extensions this offseason, while Poole and Andrew Wiggins got nine-figure deals.

Los Angeles Clippers: Is there such a thing as too much depth?

The Clippers have an embarrassment of riches with their roster, and while the most important thing for them is the health of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George — provided they are able to play — their biggest hurdle will be figuring out what their rotation should be, particularly as they near the postseason. Steve Ballmer is the biggest ownership advantage in American sports because he truly doesn’t care about the luxury tax, as evidenced by last year’s trade for Norman Powell and Robert Covington in the midst of an otherwise lost year, but Tyronn Lue will have to navigate a delicate situation of getting guys minutes on a team that truly goes 12 or 13 deep with legit rotation guys.

There will not be 20 minutes a night for everyone and while there will be plenty of rest going around, figuring out the right combinations will be a season-long process for Lue to know what the rotation becomes in the postseason depending on what matchups they face. It’s a good problem to have, but it is a genuine hurdle to clear with a talented roster of guys who believe they belong in a postseason rotation.

Los Angeles Lakers: What does their rotation look like?

The team across the hall at Staples Center has a very different problem from the Clippers, as the Lakers enter the season trying to figure out what a good rotation even looks like with this roster. Like the Clippers, the health of their two top stars is the biggest factor in any hopes of being a contender, but even if LeBron James and Anthony Davis can stay on the floor, they’re going to need at least some help. The backcourt got completely remade this offseason, with the very notable exception of Russell Westbrook remaining on the roster, with Patrick Beverley and Dennis Schröder being added and Kendrick Nunn finally being healthy and able to play. With little to work with in terms of cap space, the Lakers filled the roster out as best as they could with Lonnie Walker IV, Damian Jones, Thomas Bryant, Troy Brown Jr., and Juan Toscano-Anderson, all of whom are effectively mystery boxes in terms of how they’ll fit with James and Davis.

For new head coach Darvin Ham, it’s going to be a lot of trial and error early this season to figure out who fits with what combination of stars, with the particularly difficult task of figuring out lineup combinations to get the most out of Westbrook, who has struggled when sharing the floor with LeBron and will try out coming off the bench. There’s always the potential of the Lakers being dangerous if James and Davis are out there, but they’ll need some help and it’s not abundantly clear who is going to provide that on this roster right now.

Phoenix Suns: Can they recapture the magic after a dreadful summer?

The Suns are a bizarre case in that they were so dominant last regular season — like, heads and shoulders above the rest of the league — and then flamed out late in the Mavs series with a Game 7 performance that is an all-time catastrophe, which just continued all offseason.

To recap: That loss was so bad that it saw a rift form between the coach and their young star center, Deandre Ayton, pushing them to try and find a sign-and-trade, fail, and just bring him back after not speaking with the coach all summer. The owner is selling the team for fostering a hostile work environment and saying racist and misogynistic things to employees. Jae Crowder isn’t with the team as they try to trade him because they told him he wasn’t going to start and he wanted out. They guy they’re starting over Crowder, Cam Johnson, somehow didn’t get an extension on Monday at the rookie extension deadline. Everyone seemed miserable at media day. They lost a preseason game to an Australian team.

And now, they arrive at the start of the season with a lot of talent and a core we know can pile up wins in the regular season, but an awful lot of bad vibes — and a few roster questions, like Cam Payne still being their backup point guard and still needing to replace Crowder with any more depth in the frontcourt beyond Dario Saric’s return from an ACL tear. It’s not great, but this is also a team we know is really good and just generally they are confounding to try and figure out.

Sacramento Kings: Can they play enough defense?

The good news for the Kings is they might have the least amount of drama surrounding them coming into the season compared to their counterparts. The bad news is they just aren’t as good of a team (at least on paper). Sacramento exists almost in a tier of their own if you look at the win total projections in Las Vegas, as they are at 34.5, five games behind the Blazers and 11 games ahead of the 4-headed monster at the bottom of the West. That makes for an interesting spot as their goal is clear — snap the postseason drought — but it comes with the problem of not having a clear path to doing so.

They do have the makings of an elite offense, as De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis lead a group that could be explosive on that end of the floor. The additions of Kevin Huerter and Malik Monk only give them more firepower from three-point range, and there’s a world where the Kings are a top-10 offense in the league. The problem is, there’s just not a lot of defensive talent on the roster and they are banking heavily on Mike Brown’s expertise to cobble together something respectable on that end if they’re to have a chance of reaching the play-in.

They are going to play small and fast, and that’s great offensively but leaves them without much in the way of rim protection. Without an elite rim protector, the work has to get done earlier by the perimeter defenders, and they do not have a lot of plus-defenders in the backcourt, which means points will be scored aplenty by both teams in most Kings games this year. That said, we saw last year in Dallas what a great defensive coach can do with a limited roster, as Jason Kidd made the Mavs a much better defensive team than anyone anticipated. The Kings aren’t the Mavs, of course, but if Brown can make them respectable, they certainly have the offensive firepower to be fun and maybe claw their way into that play-in discussion.

Matt Skiba is going to be a busy man at this weekend’s When We Were Young Festival. Skiba will be performing at the punk and emo nostalgia-palooza in Las Vegas with his band Alkaline Trio. But he’s also sure to be bombarded with attention following Blink-182…err, replacing him, with original member Tom DeLonge.

Following news last week that DeLonge reunited with Blink-182 after leaving the band in 2015, Skiba — who filled in for him ever since — has been a gracious dude, saying that, “I am truly happy uou guys are a band and a family again.” But the questions still remain about Skiba’s time with Blink-182 and his recent departure. And in a recent interview with Vulture, he pretty much set the record straight. On top of that, he had some juicy details to share about When We Were Young, namely that, “They announced all those bands playing before anybody said yes.” Vulture says they’ve reached out to the festival for comment on this claim, but Skiba shared some illuminating takes:

“You want to hear something? Whether I’m supposed to, or not supposed to say anything, I guess, is immaterial,” Skiba began. “It makes the conversation more fun. But that festival — initially, they announced all those bands playing before anybody said yes. It was a Fyre Festival kind of stunt that worked. And I only know that because my band was on that initial flyer, with every other band from our whole ilk. And they almost expertly started advertising it before they had a single band on the bill. And somehow, all the bands agreed to do it. I’m not making this up. Somebody may correct me, but I know that Alkaline Trio, we hadn’t confirmed anything. And when we read that, we called other bands that were playing, and nobody knew about it.”

This is especially interesting, considering that Blink-182 is confirmed to headline the already announced 2023 edition of When We Were Young Festival. But Skiba, who admits numerous times in the interview to being out of the loop on things by design, says he’s pumped to play at the festival regardless.

“If that’s an accident or a fluke, then it’s like two particles of sand meeting each other in space. It had to have been planned. And they weren’t wrong. Whoever did that, I’m not even mad. You took a sh*t in the fridge and ate the whole wheel of cheese? I’m not even mad. It’s like, holy sh*t, dude. Congratulations to whoever masterminded that, the Lex Luther of promoters. And I think everybody, including us, is really pumped about it. It’s going to be a great time.”