Category: News

After dropping a teaser trailer last week for “La Fama,” Rosalía and The Weeknd have delivered on their promise in spades. The first song off of Rosalía’s Motomami, due out in 2022, “La Fama” arrives with a video that’s both deadly and metaphoric.

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen,” actor and taco entrepreneur Danny Trejo says to an opulent club crowd as the video begins. “I want to introduce the following number. But I must warn you, she’s not for everyone. She will pierce your heart and she will be your only obsession! So get ready for some heat… La Fama!”

But this is no ordinary club, this is a decadent cabaret where people snort diamonds and sip gemstone martinis. Rosalía is the titular “La Fama” singing and dancing seductively and setting her crosshairs on The Weeknd, sitting front and center. His high-pitched voice joins her in Spanish as he rises to heed her siren call. They get closer and closer, and just as their lips are about to meet, she kills him.

“I wanted to write, in my own way, a bachata with a little story around ambition,” Rosalía said in a statement. “Taking as a reference the lyrics of Ruben Blades or Patti Smith and the songs of Aventura, I ended up writing a story of romance with fame.”

The video and the song’s lyrics are definitely symbolic of an obsession with stardom, something that both Rosalía and the Weeknd have experienced a lot of. It’s a cautionary tale to the endless thirst traps surrounding the entertainment industry. And as the lights dim, Rosalía poses for applause while The Weekend lays lifeless and Trejo punctuates what we just witnessed: “Don’t forget, be careful what you wish for!”

Watch the video for “La Fama” above.

Kid Cudi made headlines earlier this year when he donned a dress while performing on Saturday Night Live. That wasn’t a one-off thing for him as he proved yesterday, when he showed up to an award show wearing another dress, one that was flashier than his previous look.

Cudi wore a custom wedding dress to attend the Council Of Fashion Designers Of America’s annual award show, the CFDA Awards, yesterday alongside American Emerging Designer Of The Year nominee Eli Russell Linnetz. Linnetz designed the look and People describes it, “Cudi’s wedding-inspired look featured a full lace catsuit worn underneath a matching tea-length skirt and sleek white blazer. Instead of heels, he opted for embellished white sneakers to add some edge. Of course, the ensemble wouldn’t be complete without a statement veil.”

Linnetz told the publication, “I just out of the blue sent him a text of a wedding dress and I was like, ‘Will you be my bride?’” Cudi also said, “I trust this man so I was down to take it wherever his mind went.”

Following Cudi’s SNL appearance where we wore a dress, he explained that he wasn’t concerned with negative reception his fashion choice, saying, “I’ve never been someone who’s like thinking about the backlash. I don’t give a f*ck about what anyone thinks. You can’t when you’re doing this sh*t. I knew it would piss some people off, but I love that. Because hip-hop is so weird about sh*t. I’ve already seen people making YouTube videos where they’re just strictly talking about me and this dress. Like grown men angry, grown Black men angry. ‘He’s doing something against men and masculinity, it’s a big thing going on…’ And I just be like, yo, this is so funny, this is crazy that I’ve stirred it up like this.

Trying to explain the premise of Showtime’s latest series Yellowjackets feels a lot like Bill Hader’s SNL alter-ego Stefon listing out the elements of his new favorite NYC nightclub.

But the truth is, this show really does have everything: Coming-of-age tropes, ’90s nostalgia, teen drama, thrilling murder mysteries, cannibalism. And it’s all housed in a survival epic that spans decades and stars an eclectic cast of industry greats and promising newcomers.

The main arc starts with a high school girls’ soccer team finding themselves stranded in the wilderness following a tragic plane crash. They’re forced to do some pretty terrible things to survive but survive, they do. We know that for sure because the first few episodes made available for critics effortlessly bounce back and forth between that remote, forested hell and the present day as the now-grown women are all sent anonymous postcards with cryptic messaging, forcing them to reunite to find out who amongst them has broken their decades-long vow of silence about what really went down out there.

It’s Lord of the Flies on steroids, bolstered by a cast that includes Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis, and Melanie Lynskey. It’s also one of the more unique, original stories we’ve seen on TV in quite a while.

So we sat down with Lewis and actress Sophie Thatcher who both play versions of the same character — a young woman named Natalie who finds her purpose in the disaster’s aftermath and struggles to adapt to more civilized society in the present. The ladies told us about what drew them to this story, the challenging shoot, and whether they think they’d survive some time out in the wild.

We’ve seen survival stories before. What stood out to you as really different with this one?

Juliette Lewis: For me, it was one of the best scripts I had read in over 10 years. I love how distinct each character was in the present day and their past selves. I love the marriage between young female athletes in the ’90s to a survival trauma story to these women that were all so different in the present day. All of it was just really seamless. I was like, ‘Oh, I want to be that girl.’ It was one of the grittiest scripts that I’d read in a while.

You both play different versions of the same character. Who is Nat when we first meet her, and how does the crash affect her psyche?

Sophie Thatcher: She starts off with a very different background from everyone else. She’s already had to fend for herself, and she’s already been in kind of a survival mindset most of her life. So I think she comes into the wilderness situation more naturally because she’s already had this part of her brain triggered to work through a lot of things and take care of herself. Out of all of the characters, she thrives out there. I think the wilderness kind of gives her a purpose that she didn’t have before.

When we meet her 20 years later, she’s in rehab. So I’m guessing that loss of purpose really hits her hard at some point?

JL: Yeah, she’s mid-patterns. She’s mid-repetition, and what breaks her from it is this postcard. It emboldens her to go, ‘I’m going back home now.’ And Misty, Christina Ricci’s character, she’s similar in that some people never felt more alive than they did out there. I’ve had that on so many occasions, on tour. You’re like, ‘How am I existing? I need to get off tour.’ But the second you’re home, you’re like, ‘I’ve never felt more alive than when we were slugging it out.’

But in the present day, she’s going back home to find out what the f*ck is up. That’s her vibe, but then you’re going to see her sort of devolve in confusion because she can’t make it quite fit. She can’t make the pieces pull together.

Did any of the cast have to go through survival boot camp to prep for some of the more intense wilderness scenes?

ST: I think just being out there in the wilderness itself was already an immersive crazy experience. Going to Vancouver … I didn’t know anybody. I only knew the actors that I was with, and I know that’s not boot camp, but I think just being there for a week straight staying in this hotel in the middle of nowhere was boot camp enough for me. We were just thrown right into it. But I think that’s good in a way because the characters were thrown right into it. They weren’t prepared.

How do you think you’d fare if you were put in that situation.

ST: I would probably be the first to die.

JL: Oh my god, Sophie! Unacceptable.

You have a character’s rep to protect.

ST: [laughs]

JL: I’m 40, so I’ve lived through some sick stuff. Once you’ve lived through a couple of things, you’re like, ‘Hmm, I think I could survive anything.’ I’m a good person in a crisis. I’ve been in a hurricane, an earthquake. I’ve been on a plane where it was almost going to fall out of the sky. I go into a very weird calm. That’s a survival mechanism, I think. But yeah, I can survive disasters.

Some really weird things end up happening out in the wild. Are we going to dive into the supernatural at some point?

ST: Yeah, it’s never explicit, but pretty early on things get borderline surreal. But I think that is tapping into what people are experiencing and how something so traumatic can actually shift your perception. That’s how I like to take it because I like to find grounding within anything, even anything supernatural.

Without giving away any spoilers, what’s the wildest thing you had to shoot this season?

JL: I did something that I’ve never done on screen before. And it’s all an expression of pain. It’s really intense. I don’t know. I don’t know how it’s going to show. I’m not going to watch anything. But it was an interesting scene to play and it’s at the end of the show. It’s going to be wild and I can’t tell you anything about it.

ST: Oh, there was a lot of stuff that I had never done before. It was scary coming into it. I’ve never gone to a place as dark as it got. But I worked with a female director, which made me feel more comfortable. There’s a lot of backstory within one specific episode. I hadn’t dug that deep on-screen before. So everything was on a different level.

There are some obvious Lord of the Flies comparisons in this story. We all know how that turned out. Do you think gender plays a role in the group’s survival odds at all?

ST: I don’t think it matters what gender. I think naturally, especially at such a young age, women are more emotionally intelligent. So to turn into that cannibalistic mindset … it maybe took them longer just because I think women are smarter men. [laughs]

Obviously.

ST: But I think that’s it. Besides that, there’s no difference. They’re going to go batsh*t crazy.

JL: It’s funny because when you first asked the question, that’s what rises. It’s like, ‘Well we would figure some sh*t out that [men] certainly couldn’t.’ [laughs] With that said, when you’re talking about people that have narcissistic tendencies, that are sociopathic, alphas who put [others] down to feel stronger? That’s in both genders.

Is this the kind of story that lends itself to multiple seasons, or are we going to find a resolution to this by the end?

JL: Oh no! You know how TV people do. They like to torture people. No, they’re going to leave you on a cliffhanger, but they going to answer some questions.

ST: There’s just going to be new questions at the end.

Showtime’s ‘Yellowjackets’ premieres on November 14.

During the Summer of 2020, as COVID-19 cases continued to devastate the country and public gatherings were severely limited, then-President Donald Trump decided to throw an indoor rally to help bolster his depressingly-low polling numbers. We all know how the event turned out — low attendance, high infection rates, and the tragic passing of Herman Cain, a devout Trump supporter and former GOP presidential candidate.

But, according to a new book, what went on behind the scenes of Trump’s vanity-fueled super-spreader event was even worse than what the media initially reported. Basically, this whole thing was a total sh*tshow.

In his new book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, Jonathan Karl recount the weeks leading up to the event. With Trump polling abysmally low numbers thanks to his mishandling of the recent Coronavirus outbreak, his staff advised he’d need to do something to win back voters. Trump, who had been pining for more rallies full of adoring MAGA fans shouting his name, decided a huge gathering during the middle of a pandemic was the shot of adrenaline his campaign needed. Campaign manager Brad Parscale tried to tempt him with a boat rally in Florida and some drive-through options to keep people safe but the former president wanted large crowds, indoors which is why Oklahoma — a state with a Republican governor and lax COVID protocols — was eventually chosen to host the rally. Days before the event, staffers gathered to set things up, hosting their own late-night reunion at their hotel. That’s where the trouble really started.

“Nobody bothered to keep their distance or wear masks,” Karl writes, detailing a booze-filled after-party held in a Trump staffer’s hotel room. “As it turned out, the virus wasn’t just spreading across the country—it was also spreading among the Trump campaign staff.”

Eight members of Trump’s staff would soon be infected with Covid, along with two Secret Service members.

“The headlines were embarrassing,” Karl continues. “Trump was furious that news about infected campaign staffers was getting in the way of news about his triumphant return to the campaign trail.”

Trump officials instructed staffers to stop testing and directed infected staffers to “rent a car” and drive the 1300 miles back to Washington, D.C. despite the CDC issuing a mandatory quarantine of 10 days for those testing positive. They dubbed the vehicle the “Covid-mobile. “One staffer was so sick, he was eventually admitted to a hospital in Tulsa after the rally took place. Still, the thing that almost stopped Trump from attending wasn’t the public health crisis but the embarrassingly low attendance numbers which he had, at one point predicted would be in the 1 million range.

“As Air Force One prepared to land in Tulsa, Trump called Parscale to check in on the thing he cared about the most: the size of the crowd,” Karl writes. “‘Is it going to be full?’ Trump asked. ‘No, sir. It looks like Beirut in the eighties,’ Parscale responded. Trump hung up on him.”

Days after the rally, Cain, who had flown out to the event and attended maskless, was hospitalized with Covid-19. A month later, he died from complications from the disease. Karl describes the reaction amongst staffers to his death as devastating:

“‘We killed Herman Cain,’ one senior staffer told ABC News reporter Will Steakin not long after Cain’s death.”

So yeah, as bad as it looked on TV, apparently Trump’s death rally was even worse in real life.

(Via Vanity Fair)

Fergie sang the national anthem at the 2018 NBA All-Star Game. While plenty of folks have received heaps of praise for their own renditions of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Fergie’s version, uh, didn’t do that. Instead, cameras caught a handful of people listening laughing — Draymond Green and Steph Curry both found it hilarious, LeBron James and Kevin Durant appeared to enjoy it, and Chance the Rapper and Jimmy Kimmel both cracked smiles from their seats.

The rendition was famously remixed by the Warriors, who danced to it just days after Fergie’s ex-husband, Josh Duhamel, said Green was “kind of a prick” for laughing at it. And now, the anthem has been immortalized in the form of a children’s book titled The Fergamerican National Anthem, which takes it and spells out the lyrics as they were sang by Fergie.

You can, indeed, purchase this, so while it would have been extremely good as a thing made one time as part of a bit on the internet, this is even better. Don’t take my word for it, take Curry’s, as the Warriors’ star caught wind of this and is a huge fan.

Perhaps one day things related to this anthem will stop being funny, but today is very much not that day.

Christopher Walken once explained that his unique line delivery is due to his aversion of punctuation. “I think it has to do with the fact that I love the words, but I don’t like the punctuation. I feel that punctuation is a kind of stage direction,” he said. “Punctuation tells you how to say something, and I think the words of what you have to say and how you say them is really up to you.” I bring this up because I would love to hear where Christopher Walken would put the punctuation in the following sentence: Christopher Walken destroyed a Banksy painting potentially worth millions for a BBC comedy series.

The New York Times reports that the Oscar-winning actor “wiped away a real Banksy painting from the side of a building in England on an episode of BBC’s The Outlaws that aired Wednesday night. Though Banksy’s work has fetched millions of dollars at auction, Mr. Walken unceremoniously painted over the artwork on the comedy-drama series, which is set in Banksy’s hometown, Bristol.” A spokesperson for the show, created by The Office‘s Stephen Merchant, said that Walken painted over it during filming, “ultimately destroying it.” Something tells me Banksy would approve of what Walken did.

Here’s what it looked like, mid-paint:

Christopher Walken’s got a fever, and the only prescription is more destruction of million-dollar artworks.

(Via the New York Times)

Five years after 2016’s Suicide Squad landed in theaters, comic-book fans are still asking to #ReleaseTheAyerCut. And five years later, we’re also still hearing revisions on stories about Jared Leto’s gift-giving to his co-stars while going method on the Joker. His version was a twisted Joker who literally had a “Damaged” tattoo, and that’s even before the “We Live In A Society” meme service in the Snyder Cut of Justice League.

That gift-giving was weird, man. There were rumors about a dead rat, and then Leto insisted that it was a live rat, and as Entertainment Weekly noted (while speaking with Leto about House of Gucci) he claimed to have given “used condoms” to cast members, including Margot Robbie and Will Smith, to “create a dynamic,” and some sense of closeness between colleagues. What? Well, Leto now insists that all gifts were “filmed” and “given with a spirit of fun and adventure and received with laughter, fun, and adventure.” He even gave Margot cupcakes, he says, which actually sounds like a great gift that could redeem this whole story, but then this happened:

“I’m playing a guy called the Joker, it’s okay to play some jokes. Nothing ever crossed any lines, and it’s not up to other people on the internet to create those lines,” he says, later adding: “I’m an artist at the end of the day. If I do something risky and you don’t like it, basically, you can kiss my ass.“

I don’t know, man. If those condoms were truly “used,” then that goes past being an artist and dives into matters of hygiene. And hopefully, those condoms had nothing to do with the cupcakes. (Must think about cupcakes.)

A prosthetic-clad Leto stars in House of Gucci, in theaters on November 21.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

Even two years after its epic collapse, MoviePass continues to be the subscription service that simply sounds too good to be true. After shutting down its services in late 2019 and filing for bankruptcy in early 2020, the $9.99 all-you-can-watch movie service made headlines this March when a mysterious countdown appeared on MoviePass’ website, implying the app would soon relaunch despite its shady history and long-standing feud with certain theaters. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this countdown ultimately amounted to nothing, but now new rumblings about the company with a bit more traction behind them have emerged and could mean a big return is on the horizon.

According to Business Insider, MoviePass cofounder Stacy Spikes has repurchased the company after a Southern District of New York bankruptcy court judge approved the sale on Monday. Spikes reportedly placed a bid of an undisclosed amount to the trustee handling the bankruptcy of MoviePass’ former parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics, thus obtaining the company out of bankruptcy. Spikes confirmed Insider’s findings on Wednesday, as well as expressed a renewed interest in a relaunch of MoviePass’ operations again.

“I can confirm that we acquired MoviePass out of bankruptcy on Wednesday. We are thrilled to have it back and are exploring the possibility of relaunching soon. Our pursuit to reclaim the brand was encouraged by the continued interest from the moviegoing community. We believe, if done properly, theatrical subscription can play an instrumental role in lifting moviegoing attendance to new heights.”

While Spikes would not confirm how much he bid on MoviePass, he did tell Insider he put up less than the $250,000 minimum the trustee set in 2020. Considering Variety somewhat recently appraised the company as being worth between $1 million and $10 million, it seems the cofounder got a pretty good deal on the service, though Spikes also stated that all former customer data and email addresses were not part of the sale. If all goes according to plan, Spikes hopes to relaunch MoviePass sometime in 2022. The businessman has even created a new site for the service, iwantmoviepass.com, with an even more simplified logo front-and-center. For those interested in keeping tabs on the service — or perhaps even re-enrolling when the time comes — you can enter your email address over on the site to sign up for email updates.

Finally, if you’d like to delve deeper into the whole MoviePass saga, you should check out the Blackout Dates: The TRUE MoviePass Story podcast.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

The key to fully understanding the position Summer Walker finds herself in on her new album Still Over It is to remember where she left off. Every story has a prologue, and for Summer, that would be “Nobody Else,” the vulnerable confession towards love that closed her debut album Over It. “I want this, I want this to work out so bad / God, I feel it in my chest at night,” she begs on the track. “I want this, I want this, yeah, yeah / Will never fall out of love with you.” As we all know now, Summer’s wishes went unfulfilled, and while this step into love eventually tore her heart apart, it also gave the world what shaped up to be her magnum opus with Still Over It.

Cardi B says it best at the end of “Bitter.” “Put that drama in your music,” the rapper advises Summer while telling her to not “let b*tches… feel like they have a one-up by destroying your moment by telling your business to the world.” For better or for worse, the best way to regain control of a narrative for a successful musician like Summer is to make that best music of your life, and that’s what is present on Still Over It. Through the project’s 20 songs, Summer issues responses to women that interfered with her relationship, onlookers who questioned her decisions without knowing the entire story, and the very man who caused her heartbreak and destroyed the love she hoped would last a lifetime.

On Still Over It, Summer excellently reinforces that despite the whirlpool of controversy, turmoil, and toxicity that her relationship drowned in, her true desire was a love that was offertory rather than transactional. “All I wanted was for you to stay / It’s the bare minimum for me,” she bellows on “Reciprocate.” “I don’t wanna throw it all away / It’s a good thing, it’s a good thing.” It’s this standard reciprocation, which she asks of her partner and fails to receive, that drives her into a pit of sadness and regret. “You should know my mind by now / And it don’t seem to matter how many times I try,” Summer sings on “You Don’t Know Me” in disenchanted spirits. “But I cry, I say it nice / Yell it out loud, write it down, I’m tired.” It’s tracks like these where Summer uses tender production and her best songwriting to cast her pain through a projector to the world, one so big that it allows all the necessary details of her story to exist and roam free for listeners to digest.

As we progress further and further into Summer’s sophomore album, she’s forced to loosen her resistance towards letting go of a love that once made her melt. Through records like “Insane,” “Constant Bullsh*t,” and “Unloyal” with Ari Lennox, Summer almost jumps out of the moving car that is her relationship, but the unknown dangers that await her once she takes that dive delay this long-overdue exit. The man in question is London On Da Track, the father of her first child, and on “Switch A N***a Out” she uses sheer honesty to explain why she stayed beside him much longer than she should have. “’Cause I don’t want nobody, nobody else but you,” she sings, referencing her Over It closer. “And I used to be on my replacin’ sh*t / I would switch a n**** out so damn quick / If he ain’t gettin’ with my sh*t / But it just ain’t like that with you.”

Just like it would for anyone else, Summer reaches her breaking point through the last third of the album. After failed moments to fully shut the door on “Closure,” “Toxic,” and “Screwin,” Summer finally issues the grand closing for a love that she realizes was truly never meant to be. It brings forth some of the most painful and heartbreaking lyrics on the album. “Cause my heart is breakin,’” she bellows on “Broken Promises.” “I’ve been mistaken / You’re not the man I thought you were / And they tried to warn me.” Another example arrives on “Session 33.” “’Cause a house is not a home when no one’s there,” she notes. “So alone, no one’s there / Should I move on since no one’s here? / You know what you got is good, that’s why you refuse to let me walk out your life.”

Calling Still Over It Summer’s true villain story might be taking things a bit too far. Even her most ruthless moments, like dragging London and his mother on “4th Baby Mama,” seem well-deserved for a woman who was left to spend her “whole f*cking pregnancy alone.” In a perfect world, the happiness Summer exhibited to close Over It was still supposed to be alive and well on her sophomore project. A true love story and a child to raise with this forever partner should’ve been the narrative for her second album. Things were supposed to be different, but to her disappointment, that was not the case. Summer has grown as a singer, songwriter, and overall artist set on bringing her vision to life. However, until she receives the love she truly deserves, Summer Walker will still be over it.

Still Over It is out now via LVRN/Interscope. Get it here.

The Carolina Panthers have turned to an old friend in an attempt to bring some stability to their quarterback room. After placing starting signal caller Sam Darnold on the injured reserve due to an injury to his right shoulder, the team announced that Cam Newton will make his way back to Charlotte.

Reports began popping up earlier in the day on Thursday that Newton, who was selected by the team with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2011 NFL Draft and spent the first nine years of his career there, was meeting with the franchise about a possible reunion. It did not take long for both the team and player to agree to a deal, which was announced by Carolina in short order.

Ian Rapoport of NFL Network reported that Newton will be signed through the rest of the season on a deal worth up to $10 million with $4.5 million guaranteed.

Newton spent last season with the New England Patriots, which released him prior to the regular season and opted to give the starting job to rookie QB Mac Jones. He posited that the reason for his release was that he would have been viewed as a distraction, while there was some speculation it was due to the fact that Newton was not vaccinated against COVID-19 (Patriots coach Bill Belichick rejected this, while Newton, per Rapoport, has since been vaccinated).

In the aftermath of Darnold’s injury, the Panthers named PJ Walker their starting quarterback while bringing journeyman Matt Barkley in as a backup. Carolina will play the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday before taking on former head coach Ron Rivera and the Washington Football Team the following week. Darnold is expected to miss 4-6 weeks.