Category: News

Netflix has been in the original movie business since 2015’s Beast of No Nations, but they’ve always been adamant about one thing: Their movies will, with limited exceptions, never play movie theaters. Perhaps that’s one reason the streamer that started it all has recently found itself in financial peril, to the point that they’re rushing a cheaper, ad-supported version to lure in more people. And perhaps that’s why you might wind up with the luxury of watching one of their star-studded films, like the second Knives Out, in — get this — a darkened auditorium filled with strangers.

A report by Bloomberg (in a bit teased out by Insider) reveals that Netflix is considering rethinking how they release the movies they make in-house. One solution? Let them play movie theaters first then, after 45 days, finally make them available on their streaming coffers to paying subscribers. It’s a different tack than what they’ve done before, which is simply dump their films online to people who have already paid a monthly subscription.

It’s certainly a novel approach, this idea of making extra money by working with movie theaters to charge people upwards of $15 and more a head to see movies that cost quite a lot of money to produce and advertise. But there’s one problem: The nation’s biggest chains, AMC and Cineworld, refuse to play their films if they’re already streaming, as that obviously eats into their profits.

Thing is, movie theater owners would love to show Netflix movies, surely not the least because theaters have seen a 40% drop in attendance since moviegoing returned slightly to normal as the pandemic has begun to wane. Bloomberg reports that Netflix execs met with top movie theater chain heads last month, suggesting that a deal, involving that 45-day theater-exclusive window, may happen after all. They may at least experiment using a couple titles, likely the first of Rian Johnson’s two scheduled Knives Out sequels and/or Bardo, from two-time Oscar-winning Birdman and The Revenant director Alejandro González Iñárritu.

If it works, it will bring to an end one of the stranger business models in cinema’s century-and-a-quarter-plus history, which has made sense for smaller films that might struggle to find an audience in a movie theater but less so for, let’s say, a $200 million blockbuster starring three megastars. Till then, imagine what it will be like to delight at Daniel Craig solving crimes, perhaps with another outrageous accent, among a rapturous crowd of people happy to be away from their sofa.

(Via Bloomberg and Insider)

Irish whiskey is blowing up in the U.S. right now. Case in point, Teeling is about to ship around 6,000 bottles of their first installment of the “Wonders of Wood” series — a bespoke line of Irish whiskeys with unique barrel agings — to the U.S. It’s both very overdue and very welcome.

The tipple from the Emerald Isle used to dominate sales in the world (especially in the U.S.) in the 19th and 20th centuries. Then Prohibition brought the industry to its knees and then mid-20th-century British trade embargos drove coffin nails into Irish whiskey for, what felt like, good. The Irish whiskey industry started to recover in the early aughts as the current whiskey boom shook the cobwebs off the old barrels and, now, Irish whiskey is surging, especially stateside. All of that means we’re seeing new and exciting expressions make their way across the Atlantic yet again.

One of them landed on my desk early this year and I was pretty excited to give it a taste. I dig what the folks over at Teeling have been up to so let’s jump right into it!

Also Read: The Top 5 UPROXX Irish Whiskey Posts of the Last Six Months

• The 100 Best Whiskeys Our Head Drinks Writer Tasted In 2021
• We Blind Tasted A Dozen Irish Whiskeys And Crowned A Winner
• Jameson Vs. Bushmills: The Results Of Our St. Patrick’s Day Blind Tasting
• All The Brands From The Jameson ‘Family’ Of Irish Whiskeys, Ranked
• International Single Malt Whiskies, Blind Tasted And Ranked

Teeling Wonders of Wood First Edition Virgin “Chinkapin” Oak

ABV: 50%

Average Price: $99

The Whiskey:

The first installment of the Wonders of Wood series is a single pot still Irish whiskey. That means the mash is a mix of 50% malted and 50% unmalted barley. The hot spirit is then filled into new American “chinkapin” white oak barrels for an undisclosed amount of time. Those barrels are then blended into this whiskey and proofed down ever-so-slightly to 100 proof.

Tasting Notes:

This is very bourbon-esque on the nose, with clear notes of rich caramel, vanilla pods, almost raw leather, buttery biscuits, a hint of dried apple flowers, a whisper of wet oak, and a wink of fresh mint. The palate, on the other hand, starts off with a malty spiciness that leads to hints of ginger snaps and cream soda with a slight yellow straw note on the mid-palate as a softness kicks in on the mouthfeel. The sweetness returns near the finish with dark cacao and winter spice that then veers toward a thin echo of cumin before unfiltered apple cider soda and green alder round out the finish.

The Bottle:

The bottle feels like a classic Irish whiskey bottle with “Teeling Whiskey” embossed in the glass. The label is like a cummerbund around the bottom quarter of the bottle with pertinent information. The whole thing comes in a pretty big box with a full oak tree on it and plenty of info. Overall, it’s a distinct bottle with a good presentation for gift-giving.

Botton Line:

The nose is all bourbon whiskey and the palate is all Irish whiskey. I kind of like that, in that it’s the best of both worlds. I do think this might play better in cocktails but I can see pouring it over some rocks and being perfectly happy with it as a mid-week sipper.

Ranking:

89/100 — You can’t complain about a solid B+ on the first outing. However, there are some chinquapin oak-aged bourbons out there that blow this away. Still, this is very easy drinking and rewarding.

Lana Del Rey had quite the 2021 year. She released two albums in the span of seven months with the first being March 2021’s Chemtrails Over The Country Club and the second being October 2021’s Blue Banisters. Between the two albums, Chemtrails Over The Country Club was the better-performing project as it peaked at No. 2 on the albums chart. Both albums are in Del Rey’s past now, and as of late she seems very focused on crafting her upcoming ninth album, which she spoke about during a recent interview with the fashion magazine W.

During the sit-down, Del Rey revealed that she’s been practicing “meditative automatic singing, where I don’t filter anything” as she sings into the Voice Notes app on her phone. “It’s not perfect, obviously,” she said. “There are pauses, and I stumble.” She added that she’s been sending “really raw-sounding files” to producer and songwriter Drew Erickson, who she worked with on Blue Banisters. “He’ll add an orchestra beneath the words, matching each syllable with music and adding reverb to my voice,” Del Rey said. When speaking about the music they’ve created, Del Rey noted that while her 2015 album Honeymoon featured references to color, her new music contained “none of that at all.”

“It’s more just like: I’m angry. The songs are very conversational,” Del Rey said. “For the first song, I pressed record and sang, ‘When I look back, tracing fingertips over plastic bags, I think I wish I could extrapolate some small intention or maybe get your attention for a minute or two.’” She continued, “It’s a very wordy album. So there’s no room for color. It’s almost like I’m typing in my mind.”

It remains to be seen when Del Rey will release this “angry” and “conversational” music. Until then, you can enjoy her most recent release, “Watercolor Eyes,” which was heard in an episode of HBO’s Euphoria.

You can read Del Rey’s full interview with W here.

Megan Thee Stallion is having a good year. The Texas rapper just made her Billboard Music Awards debut, performing “Plan B” and “Sweetest Pie,” and she was given the key to her hometown of Houston at the start of this month. Yesterday, though, she went to the Webby Awards and revealed on the red carpet that her new album is almost done.

“Anything I want to give away? Actually, I’m probably like 95% done with my new album,” she told the interviewer. “I want to tease that for the hotties. I haven’t even told them nothing about my album.” The record will be a follow-up to October’s Something For Thee Hotties, as well as to the aforementioned songs “Plan B” and “Sweetest Pie” plus “Flamin’ Hottie.”

Something For Thee Hotties ended up being the subject of lawsuits when her label, Carl Crawford’s 1501 Certified Entertainment, said that it wasn’t technically an album. After Megan sued them, they sued her back, with the attorney stating: “MTS knows that each ‘album’ must include at least twelve new master recordings of her studio performances of previously-unreleased musical compositions.”

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Mark Ruffalo still hasn’t gotten his own solo Hulk movie, but he seems fine with that. In fact, he seems fine popping up in other characters’ spin-off shows, even if they also focus on another lumbering green beserker. Witness the trailer for She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, a comedic take on the character Stan Lee introduced in 1980, as the more mild-mannered, non-superheroic cousin of always beleaguered Bruce Banner.

The preview for the show, due in August, finds Orphan Black’s Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters, a lowly lawyer who finds herself turning green after receiving an infusion from her superhero relation. When she learns that she can turn into a rage machine at the drop of a hat, she is decidedly non-plussed.

“Your transformations are triggered by anger and fear,” Bruce tells his cousin.

“Those are like the baseline of any woman just existing,” she replies.

But the connections run deeper: One of Walters’ clients just happens to be Emil Blonsky, aka Abomination, who was played by Tim Roth all the way back in the Edward Norton-fronted The Incredible Hulk from 2008, meaning the beloved actor will be back in the MCU for the first time since the George W. Bush era.

Though there are plenty of MCU shows that have either already aired or are en route, She-Hulk share a bit more DNA with one of them in particular: WandaVision. Indeed, it’ll be a little closer to an Ally McBeal-like legal comedy, focusing more on her job than on her battling baddies, which she doesn’t seem wont to do anyway. What’s more, each episode will run a mere 30 sitcom-y minutes.

You can watch the trailer for She-Hulk: Attorney at Law in the video above. It debuts on Disney+ on August 17.

A few months ago, Travis Scott was still living under the radar following the tragedy that took place at his 2021 Astroworld Festival. That incident resulted in ten deaths and nearly 5,000 injuries as well as nearly $3 billion in lawsuits. While many have placed a majority of the blame on Travis for the tragedy, others like the rapper himself feel otherwise. It’s probably why Travis began a slow return to the spotlight, one he completed with his recent performance at the 2021 Billboard Music Awards. Travis has also used the last few months to give back to the community, something he recently did with a donation to college students.

According to TMZ, Travis donated $1 million in scholarships to 100 students enrolled at HBCUs across the country. The students all are set to graduate with the Class of 2022, so his contribution ensures that students are able to do so without running into financial troubles in the near future or further down the line. The upcoming graduates, who finished their final semester with a GPA of 3.5 or higher, will each receive a $10,000 scholarship from Travis’ Waymon Webster Scholarship Fund.

In total, the scholarships were handed out to seniors at 38 schools which include Alabama A&M University, Central State University, Jackson State University, Morehouse College, Texas Southern University, Grambling State University, and more. The $1 million in scholarships are also a part of Travis’ Project HEAL initiative which he launched in March with a $5 million donation to community-based programs.

A lot of touring artists are testing positive for COVID, from noted anti-vaxxer Eric Clapton to the Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron. For the latter, the band reached out to former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer, Richard Stuverud, and original Pearl Jam drummer Dave Krusen who left the group after the first album.

Krusen is the most recent talent to serve as the replacement at the band’s show in Fresno, California last night. On stage, he stated that he didn’t get to play many shows with Pearl Jam when he was actually in the band. “It looks like this week we’re going to get to make up for it,” he said. After exiting Pearl Jam in 1991 because of issues with alcoholism, he went on to play in bands like Candlebox, Hovercraft, Unified Theory, and Sons Of Silver.

This also follows Pearl Jam recruiting a high school student named Kai Neukermans to fill in for Cameron. Eddie Vedder introduced him by saying, “He hasn’t graduated high school yet. This is the year, right? Everybody, this is Kai. Kai, this is everybody!” Neukermans later said of the experience: “It was surreal, the amount of people that were there. The arena lit up and everyone was screaming.”

Watch Pearl Jam with Krusen on the drums perform the song “Once” above.

On Tuesday, Vanity Fair published a sprawling, eye-opening piece about the state of the Star Wars franchise. The good news: They have plenty of TV spin-offs en route. The less good news: It’s not clear when, if ever, there will be another Star Wars movie. (And when/if there is, they won’t star new actors playing already established characters.) The films, mind you, have been divisive at least since the still hotly debated Return of the Jedi. And while some now stick up for the once derided prequels, even one of those fans, co-star Ewan McGregor, admits (in a bit teased out by IndieWire) that the reviews did initially get to him.

The actor, who reprises his role of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the forthcoming Disney+ show of the same name, recently gushed about those three films, which have long been sources of scorn but were also beloved by many kids at the time, who are now adults. But after The Phantom Menace, which made a mint but received so-so reviews (to put it mildly), he wasn’t sure.

“It was hard because it was such a huge decision to do them, such a big event,” he said about the initial reviews. “It was quite difficult for all of us to deal with that, also knowing you’ve got a couple more to do.”

Reviews actually weren’t that bad. Right now, its score on Rotten Tomatoes is a so-so 51%, but that’s a mix of contemporaneous reviews and more recent ones. But many gave it a pass; Roger Ebert was genuinely enthusiastic awarding it 3 ½ stars. It actually took at least till the much more poorly reviewed Attack of the Clones for its reputation to start sagging. By the time he’d finished Revenge of the Sith (whose reviews were the best of the bunch but still well below those of the original trilogy), McGregor says he was happy to put the franchise behind him.

But return he did, some 15 years later (in what was initially to be a movie), although only because he was interested in seeing an older, sadder Obi-Wan. “I just said, ‘I think that it should be a story about a broken man, a man who’s lost his faith,’ ” he told VF. “He always has a funny line to say or always seems to be calm and is a good warrior or soldier or whatever, but to see that man come apart, and see what gets him back together again — that’s where we started.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi starts streaming on Disney+ on May 27.

(Via Vanity Fair and IndieWire)

The Boston Celtics and Miami Heat will begin the Eastern Conference Finals on Tuesday night, but both teams will be without some very important players.

For the Heat, Kyle Lowry remains out with a hamstring injury he suffered in the first round against the Hawks and aggravated against the Sixers. For Boston, both Marcus Smart and Al Horford will be out for Game 1 after Smart suffered a sprained foot in their Game 7 win over Milwaukee, while Horford has entered health and safety protocols.

Losing the Defensive Player of the Year is obviously a major blow to Boston on that end of the floor, but Smart has also become one of their more reliable spot-up shooters and is their best offensive initiator outside of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. One would expect Derrick White, who was terrific in the conference semis against the Bucks, to step into the starting role and play major minutes in Smart’s absence.

Horford has likewise been huge for the Celtics, effectively winning them Game 4 in Milwaukee and playing some of the best defense of his career this postseason. Horford allows Boston to go 5-out on offense and switch everything defensively, and without him they will have to rely on Robert Williams (now fully back from his knee injury) and Daniel Theis in their center rotation, with Grant Williams likely getting some small-ball center minutes when they want to be more switchable. The Horford-Grant Williams pairing had been their most successful defensive frontcourt against Giannis Antetkounmpo and the Bucks, and losing that option for the opener, if not longer, is a big blow.

Last year’s Show Me How You Disappear, was yet another arresting album by Ian Sweet filled with sparkling guitars and emotionally-charged lyricism. The project of LA’s Jillian Medford, Ian Sweet, has now released her second track since the excellent album, in the beaming song, “Fight.” The band has also announced a slew of upcoming North America and Europe tour dates

Medford says “Fight” is about a pandemic relationship that didn’t quite pan out in the end; a reminder that, hey, a lot of people went through that super recently. In a statement, Medford said the track harkens back to the feelings of, “Spending every day with someone, doing everything together, not knowing if the world was going to end. Leaning on someone with such heaviness, putting our entire weight and being onto each other, because it’s all we had. The song plays into both the monotony of the relationship and the catastrophe that I went through after it ended. I felt so content in the relationship but then my entire world fell apart when it ended and I didn’t know how to pick myself back up and move forward.”

The feverish outpouring is captured in the karaoke dive bar-set video by director Lucy Sandler. Medford and friends, take to the stage of Santa Monica Blvd’s Prime Time Pub, to sing “Fight” and each person on the mic feels the song’s purpose in their own way. Meanwhile, Medford’s “I Love Pain” t-shirt, is an omnipresent reminder of the constant flux of relationships, especially in less than ideal times.

Watch Ian Sweet’s video for “Fight” above and check out the full list of tour dates below.

05/18 — Tilburg, NL @ Skatecafe
05/19 — Groningen, NL @ Vera
05/20 — Amsterdam, NL @ London Calling
05/22 — Manchester, UK @ YES
05/23 — Glasgow, UK @ The Hug and Pint
05/25 — Liverpool, UK @ Zanzibar Club
05/26 — London, UK @ The Grace
05/28 — Bristol, UK @ Dot to Dot Festival
05/29 — Nottingham, UK @ Dot To Dot Festival
05/31 — Birmingham, UK @ Hare & Hounds
06/22 — 06/24 — Seattle, WA @ Capitol Hill Block Party
07/27 — New York, NY @ Baby’s All Right #
07/28 — Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s #
07/29 — Washington, DC @ Songbyrd #
07/31 — Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall #
08/01 — Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz #
08/02 — Toronto, ON @ Baby G #
08/04 — Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village #
08/05 — Milwaukee, WI @ Colectivo #
08/06 — Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St Entry #
08/08 — Omaha, NE @ Reverb Lounge #
08/09 — Kansas City, MO @ Record Bar #
08/11 — Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge #
08/12 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court #
08/14 — Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar#

#= with Bnny