Category: News

Brian May of Queen found himself in some controversy about comments he made about how the band would fair if they were active today. He claimed that the legendary band would be “forced” to include “people of different colors” as well as a “trans [person]” due to the standards in today’s culture. “I find it frightening that you have to be so calculating about everything,” he said, adding, “You know life doesn’t have to be like that. We can be separate and different.” After his comments circulated throughout the entertainment world, May took to Instagram to clear things up.

“Yes – I was ambushed and completely stitched up by a journalist at the recent ITV event,” May wrote in an Instagram post. “And it’s led to a whole mess of press stories making it look like I’m unfriendly to trans people. Nothing could be further from the truth. My words were subtly twisted. I should have known better than to talk to those predatory Press hacks.”

He continued, “Sincere apologies to anyone who has been hurt by the stories. My heart is open as always to humans of all colours, all creeds, all sexes and sexualities, all shapes and sizes – and all creatures. We all deserve respect and an equal place in this world. And my grateful thanks to all of you who stepped up to defend me in the last couple of days. It means so much that you have faith in me.”

Michael Flynn only spent about three weeks in the Trump administration before resigning in disgrace. But he’s had quite the after life. The former National Security Advisor has embraced his position as a kind of prophet for the QAnon crowd, those who subscribe to a bizarre — and frequently debunked — conspiracy theory involving Satanic cabals and cannibalistic pedophiles, who only Trump can defeat. Not long ago some believers seemed to turn on him. And now a newly released secret recording makes the problem even worse.

As per The Daily Beast, Lin Wood, the Trump lawyer and QAnon booster (who has also recently earned their wrath), released a recording to Telegram of a phonecall between the two, who have apparently had a falling out. It finds Wood complaining to Flynn that his QAnon fanatics had come for him. But Flynn told Wood not to worry about it because it’s BS anyway — while, of course, hatching another, different probably nonsense conspiracy theory.

“I think it’s a disinformation campaign,” Flynn told Wood. “I think it’s a disinformation campaign that the CIA created. That’s what I believe. Now, I don’t know that for a fact, but that’s what I think it is. I think it’s a disinformation campaign.”

Later into the call, Flynn doubled down. “I find it total nonsense,” he says. “And I think it’s a disinformation campaign created by the left.”

The call is a blow to QAnon cultists, whose fanaticism Flynn has long fanned, possibly for personal gain. Recently internecine fighting has erupted between figures like Wood and Flynn, the latter who told QAnon audiences that he supported a Myanmar-style coup to reinstate Trump. (He later denied this.)

In short, it’s not been great for believers in a surreal conspiracy theory. First they got repeatedly stood up by the ghost of JFK Jr., now this.

(Via The Daily Beast)

One would think Mike Lindell could use the money. The MyPillow salesman-turned-2020 election dead-ender is currently being sued for $1.3 billion by Dominion Voting Systems, who he baselessly accused of playing a part in the voter fraud of which there’s no proof. And yet he keeps biting the hand that could literally feed him. Last week he launched (but did not attend) a sparsely-attended protest against Fox News. Now he’s pulled ads from a rightwing Christian radio network.

As per The Daily Beast, the latest source of Lindell’s rage is Salem Radio Network, which hosts the far right likes of Seb Gorka and Dennis Prager (aka the smart guy who bragged that he got COVID on purpose).

“They haven’t had me on for a long, long time,” Lindell railed on Friday, then complained that they will not “talk about why [he] was canceled.” He also deemed them “worse” than Dominion, only days after using similar phrasing about Fox News, which is itself so far right they’re already spreading misinformation about the newly-discovered Omicron strain of COVID.

The next day, he doubled down, telling that he doesn’t want the network helping him make money. First he said that promotional codes will no longer work starting next week. Then he went a step further. “With Salem, nobody gets to sell MyPillow products going forward,” Lindell said. “You are done selling MyPillow products!”

It’s not been a great week for Lindell. On top of [deep sigh] all of that’s already been mentioned, he’s also missed the deadline to file his bonkers conspiracy theories to the Supreme Court, failed to pull off a 96-hour voter fraud special marathon because he got hungry, and severely underestimated the number of viewers to said telecast by, oh, millions.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Earlier this month, French Montana returned with They Got Amnesia, his first album in a couple of years. It’s jam-packed with features from John Legend, Rick Ross, Kodak Black, Pop Smoke, Lil Durk, Fivio Foreign, Fabolous, 42 Dugg, Coi Leray, Ty Dolla Sign, and more. French recently shared a video for the track “Bag Season,” featuring Lil Tjay, but it’s comments he recently made about rap and the NBA during a press run that has some people talking.

“You’re better off making it in the NBA than Hip Hop,” he said during an appearance on Hot 97’s Ebro In The Morning. “NBA, they got like what, 28 teams … 15 players on every team? And that’s in the hundreds. You talk about Hip Hop, you can’t even name 10 people that’s hot every couple months. The odds … anybody can do it if it was easy.” He added, “So you talkin’ about trying to make it? Your hustle gotta be relentless. Can’t take no for an answer, you gotta be up when everybody sleep.”

French recently connected with Saweetie and Doja cat for some freaky fun on “Handstand.” He also joined forces with Fivio Foreign for a video for their collaboration “Panicking.”

You can watch a clip from French’s appearance on Hot 97’s Ebro In The Morning in the post above.

They Got Amenisa is out now via Epic Records. Get it here.

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

As Thanksgiving Day ended and the holiday weekend began, there was alarming news: a new, possibly more virulent strain of COVID had been discovered. It’s called Omicron and it was first detected in South Africa, with possible cases already popping up in the U.K. and parts of Europe. Research still needs to be conducted about, among other issues, whether COVID vaccines can safeguard against it. Meanwhile, Fox News sprang into action — which is to say their hosts are already recklessly spreading misinformation that will make things even worse.

The day after Fox & Friends hosts suggested that Joe Biden is making up new strains to stop from doing his job (or something), South Carolina representative Nancy Mace went on the network to say something even more dangerous: maybe catching a deadly and highly transmissible disease is better than getting a safe, effective, and free vaccine.

“One of the things the CDC has not done and no policy-maker at the federal level has done so far has taken into account what natural immunity does,” Mace said. She then spoke vaguely about medical intel she’s encountered. “In some studies I have read, natural immunity gives you 27 times more protection against future COVID infection than a vaccination.” She concluded that we “need to take all the science into account and not selectively choosing what science to follow when we are making policy decisions.

Mace also pointed to pointed to Florida, which has seen high numbers of cases and deaths, as some kind of model. Governor Ron De Santis has long played tough guy with mask and vaccine mandates, and while cases have dropped in the last month, the state has seen over 3 ½ million cases and over 60,000 deaths — some of the highest in the nation, falling behind only California and Texas, the latter of which has also badmouthed safety measures as disaster mounted.

Mace did not divulge where she saw the data that getting natural immunity — which one can only acquire by catching COVID and then, hopefully, surviving — was better than getting vaxxed. But no serious medical practitioner, much less the CDC, advises this. Quite the opposite.

Meanwhile, Fox News top brass continues to require all on-site employees either get vaccinated or get a negative test, even as hosts and contributors, like Mace, continue to endanger their viewers’ lives.

The 2022 Grammy Awards will see the total number of categories increase from 84 to 86, but that’s not the show’s only big change. The Recording Academy also expanded the number of nominees in three categories: Record Of The Year, Album Of The Year, Song Of The Year, and Best New Artist, all of which are going from eight to ten. And as a new report from TheNThe New York Times, that may have allowed some of this year’s big albums — and a number of songs — may not have made the cut otherwise.

As per the piece, both Ye’s Donda and Taylor Swift’s Evermore were absent from the initial list of nominees that circulated before last week’s official announcement. They weren’t the only ones. Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me by Your Name)” and ABBA’s “I Still Have Faith in You” received nominations for Record Of The Year, but only after the expansion. The same goes for Song of the Year nominees like Doja Cat’s “Kiss Me More” and Brandi Carlile’s “Right On Time.” Meanwhile, Baby Keem and Arooj Aftab landed nominations in the Best New Artist category, but only after the nomination.

Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, told NYT the last-minute expansion was done “to make room for more music, more artists and more genres, and to embrace the spirit of inclusion.” He added that artists added to the categories were the ninth and tenth mos-tvoted-for by the Recording Academy’s members. “For us this is all positive movement,” Mason said. “This is us honoring more great artists, more great music, giving artists an opportunity to shine and showcase.”

You can revisit the full list of 2022 Grammy nominees here.

Late last December, people learned a shocking thing about Alec Baldwin’s wife, Hilaria: She’s not Spanish. In fact, she was born in…Boston. It was the beginning of what is admittedly a not great 12 months for her and her family — or for many families, for that matter. Their troubles peaked in October, when Alec unwittingly fired a prop gun that was believed to be unloaded on a movie set, accidentally killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. And in a post on Instagram, she reflected on her troubles, albeit without mentioning the others in her orbit who have it even worse.

Next to a photo of two of her six kids goofing around in a supermarket, Hilaria reflected on her “challenging year” and thanked her nearly million followers for their support.

“Sometimes I didn’t think I was gonna make it through,” Hilaria wrote. “I want you to know how much you have helped me through some pretty dark struggles. Knowing you were there—such comfort. Yes, my children and my husband, my family and close friends have been invaluable…but YOU, I don’t get to express this face to face, due to the nature of social media and how far we all are.”

She ended by saying, “So, I love you so … with my whole, grateful soul. Happy gratitude day.”

Hilaria also posted a dozen stories on Instagram, though none of them got into specifics — not even about Hutchins, whose body was interred the day she posted all this on social media. To some, it seemed tone deaf.

While an investigation into the accidental shooting on the set of Rust is still ongoing, it’s believed that Alec will not face any criminal charges. Two crew members have already filed civil lawsuits, both naming him, among others, which have led to him lawyering up.

(Via Page Six)

There is a rather lengthy history of name changes in the sports world and, even more specifically, the NBA. There are those who make name changes for religious reasons, while others just want to make a statement or simply draw attention to themselves.

On Monday, the latest entry into the NBA name change list will arrive in the form of Enes Kanter Freedom, as the Celtics bench big will reportedly make that his official name once he becomes a United States citizen, per Shams Charania of The Athletic.

Kanter has spent much of his career being an outspoken critic of various regimes around the world, most notably his home country of Turkey where he and his family have faced significant repercussions for his comments — gaining US citizenship is big for Kanter, who had his Turkish passport taken while traveling abroad once and was detained in Romania. More recently, Kanter has taken aim at Chinese leader Xi Jinping and those who have relationships with China, particularly LeBron James.

Freedom was also Kanter’s chosen addition to his jersey in the 2020 Bubble, so there are Celtics jerseys with Freedom name plates out there if they need one in a pinch. Kanter’s name change isn’t quite as dramatic as the Ron Artest to Metta World Peace change of years past, but that certainly provides a recent example for how this will be a story briefly and then just a normal thing.

It must be strange watching an actor play yourself in a splashy, star-studded biopic, especially when that splashy, star-studded biopic is House of Gucci. The Thanksgiving release is getting mixed reviews, though the general consensus is that it turns a tragic true tale into a trashy, campy farce. So what did Tom Ford, the fashion legend (and filmmaker) depicted in the film’s second half, think? Well, he had a lot of mixed feelings, too.

As caught by Entertainment Weekly, Ford penned an entire essay for Air Mail about his experiences watching the second Ridley Scott movie in as many months. (The Last Duel got far more robust reviews in October, but then, no one saw it.) It begins like this: “I recently survived a screening of the two-hour-and-37-minute film that is House of Gucci.” He calls the movie, from “master filmmaker Ridley Scott,” “shiny” and “ambitious” but also claims it “rivals the nighttime soap Dynasty for subtlety but does so with a much bigger budget.”

Ford, who is played in the movie by Reeve Carney and is briefly shown taking over the struggling Gucci empire in 1990, was left with a distinct feeling of whiplash. “The film is… well, I’m still not quite sure what it is exactly, but somehow I felt as though I had lived through a hurricane when I left the theater,” Ford wrote. “Was it a farce or a gripping tale of greed? I often laughed out loud, but was I supposed to?”

Of course, he can’t help but be biased, as per his own admission. “I also knew many of the other players in this saga and was interviewed on multiple occasions for the book that was the source material for the film,” he admitted, “so it is hard for me to divorce reality from the glossy, heavily lacquered soap opera that I witnessed on screen.”

One thing that rubbed Ford the wrong way was that, for him, obviously, the murder of Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver in the film) was no campy, laughing matter. “I was deeply sad for several days after watching House of Gucci, a reaction that I think only those of us who knew the players and the play will feel,” Ford said. “It was hard for me to see the humor and camp in something that was so bloody. In real life, none of it was camp.”

That said, Ford couldn’t completely resist some of the more, shall we say, over-the-top performances. “At times, when Al Pacino, as Aldo Gucci, and Jared Leto, as Aldo’s son Paolo Gucci, were on screen, I was not completely sure that I wasn’t watching a Saturday Night Live version of the tale,” he wrote. “Both performers are given license to be absolute hams — and not of the prosciutto variety.”

But not everyone in the film is glazed ham. Driver, Ford writes, “gives a subtle and nuanced performance.” And Lady Gaga, as Mauricio’s eventually estranged wife Patrizia, is”the true star of the film.” He adds:

“In her often over-the-top portrayal of Patrizia Gucci, her accent migrates occasionally from Milan to Moscow. But who cares? Her performance is spot-on. Her face is the thing that one can’t take one’s eyes off of. When she is on screen, she owns the frame — not an easy task with so many seasoned and talented cast members vying for our attention. Too many, in fact.”

But feel free to judge for yourself. House of Gucci is now in theaters.

(Via Air Mail and EW)

It’s Thanksgiving week, so holiday malaise has already set in. People are at home, possibly bored, possibly eating too much turkey, and very likely pondering the existential questions of the universe. Like, what makes a good relationship? When will I discover my true calling? And, of course, my personal favorite: How come Adele never has any back up dancers? At least, that last one was what one Twitter user had on their mind a few days ago, given the arrival of 30 and its insane first-week sales, she’s definitely been on everyone’s minds quite a bit lately.

But of course, in true Twitter fashion, it was a reply to the tweet — with a homemade, DIY solution — that really had the internet up in arms this Thanksgiving. To solve the problem that the original poster pointed out, another Twitter genius added footage of Megan Thee Stallion twerking to a song with the closest rhythm match. Seriously, this mashup is almost perfect, which makes the whole thing even better. While Adele belts out her 25 hit “Water Under The Bridge,” Megan pops and rolls behind her. Honestly, this is a collaboration that the internet has already gotten ahem, behind, it might just make sense to bring it into the real world. Adele, your move!