Category: News

There’s no subtle way to say this: the situation in Afghanistan is a disaster. The swift Fall of Kabul (which happened hours after the withdrawal of U.S. troops who were a mainstay for nearly two decades) is already being compared to the Fall of Saigon during the last moments of the Vietnam War. This is all happening on Biden’s watch, although it must be noted that the Trump Administration did the dealmaking for “peace” here, and the Taliban chose not to honor that agreement. Former President Trump, of course, is attempting to erase memories about how he set the withdrawal date.

“I personally had discussions with top Taliban leaders whereby they understood what they are doing now would not have been acceptable,” Trump declared in a statement, via the Wall Street Journal. “It would have been a much different and much more successful withdrawal, and the Taliban understood that better than anyone.” And that propaganda-laden take is one that Donald Trump Jr. is echoing. The eldest son of the most recent ex-president tweeted up a storm that felt almost celebratory.

“Not surprising,” Don Jr. began. “Biden’s woke ‘intelligence’ gurus are the same ones who were WRONG on Russian collusion & Russian bounties, WRONG about China & Iran being ‘competitors,’ WRONG on Covid origins, WRONG on Hunter’s laptop, & WRONG on basically everything else.”

Don Jr. continued while trashing Biden for being at Camp David (“Please spare us the bullsh*t!” he fired off at Nancy Pelosi). He also slammed Biden’s love of ice cream, tossed in a Hunter Biden jab, and took issue with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, who he said focused too much on “white rage,” of course.

Kimberly Guilfoyle’s boyfriend then topped himself for complaining that the U.S. Embassy in Kabul flew the Pride flag in June. “Seems like maybe they should have focused on other things,” he snarked. “But who knows, I’m sure the media will tell us they’re doing great.”

Well, people were quick to remind Don Jr. how this sudden power vacuum developed, after his dad forged an ill-advised deal with the Taliban.

“You know nothing Jr.” seems like a good blanket response to all things Don Jr.

In 2017, Michelle Branch and The Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney got engaged. Not much longer after that, they revealed they were expecting their first child together, and Rhys James Carney was born on August 28, 2018. Now, the Carney/Branch family is set to grow some more, as Branch revealed that she’s pregnant with her and Carney’s second child together.

Branch announced the news by sharing a story about Carney helping her satisfy a pregnancy craving, writing on Instagram, “You know you’re pregnant when… Woke up to a picture my friend Sonya sent of scones she was eating in England and I immediately had to hop out of bed and make a batch myself. @officerpatrickcarney was my hero (as usual) and went to the market in search of double cream. Couldn’t be more excited (and nervous! Hello, pregnancy after miscarriage anyone?!) to announce baby Carney is coming early 2022!”

Meanwhile, The Black Keys are fresh off the release of their latest album, a collection of blues covers titled Delta Kream. The band is also gearing up for a “World Tour Of America,” and by “America,” they mean just three relatively small cities. As for Branch, her most recent album, 2017’s Hopeless Romantic (which Carney co-wrote and co-produced), was her first since 2003’s Hotel Paper.

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

It’s not hard to find supervillains in real life. In fact, they’re thriving. To rip myself off, I’ll break humanity into three groups: the WWE villain types who love to drink the tears of their rivals and genuinely enjoy wreaking havoc on others like it’s a sport, the Lex Luthors who are world-beaters motivated by narcism and selfishness using their bank accounts as a scoreboard, and then there’s everybody else who is just exhausted. But Mike White’s The White Lotus reminds us all that there is another kind: the oblivious subtle monster, which might be the worst kind because of how casually they manifest in the perfectly pleasant people around us and within ourselves. Who among us hasn’t been short with a server, dismissive of a friend’s needs, or hogged the spotlight and the conversation without even realizing it? Truly, The White Lotus is a sneaky horror story where you should be as afraid of your own reflection as you are of what be lurking under your bed… or in your hotel room after sh*tting in your suitcase. I should mention there will be spoilers here.

Are they villains like the WWE heels and Lex Luther’s of the world? It’s worthy of debate and something we’re going to explore as we look at each of the primary adult guests from season one to determine who was the actual worst. These rankings are derived solely from our read, but we do have some insights from the cast from interviews that speak to the show and their characters in general terms that we’re going to sprinkle in.

6. Rachel Patton (Alexandria Daddario)

She’s one of the adult guests, so I have to add her, but I actually have nothing negative to say about Rachel, who is a victim here — of Nicole Mossbacher and her mean-girl daughter (minorly), of her mother-in-law, of her husband, and of an economic reality that becomes the saddest comment of all at the end of this show.

5. Nicole Mossbacher (Connie Britton)

Nicole’s placement near the bottom of this list is not a reflection of the fact that Connie Britton is Tammy Taylor. In fact, trying to shake things up and play something different is what drove her to The White Lotus.

“I’ve sort of made a career of playing strong women,” said Britton. “What I loved about this, in particular, was that this is sort of the quintessential strong woman and it’s showing the underside. It’s showing how she’s doing all the things that she’s being told she needs to do to be strong and what she believes to be strong, and she’s blowing it. It’s not working. That, to me, was really fun and exciting to contemplate playing because it is really complicated. I don’t see her as villainous, but I see her as flawed.”

That’s an interesting read overall: not villainous, but flawed. Steve Zahn, who plays her husband Mark, said something similar to us, and it’s kind of true for both of them, but maybe not so much for the character in the number 1 spot on this list.

As for Nicole’s flaws, well, both her and Mark share the burden of being inattentive parents. Nicole is also consumed by her job on vacation and feelings that she can’t stop. Which, as someone who has worked on vacation because I can’t stop, feels more sad than anything else. She does kind of decimate another guest (Rachel) over a “hatchet job” article she wrote about her, but that’s after tenderly offering some light mentorship, so it’s sort of a wash.

4. Mark Mossbacher (Steve Zahn)

Largely distracted over a possible health crisis and then pouty and lost in a swirl of overreaction to news about his father’s sexuality, Mark is an inattentive husband and father (as mentioned above) who gets the chance to rise to the occasion after corkscrewing himself into the ground by breaking his wife’s trust (again) and deciding to disclose a past affair to their teenage son so that he could connect with him. Mark also earns the wrong kind of points for his rich white guy grievances about no longer being considered a good guy without putting in the work. What a prick.

3. Kitty Patton (Molly Shannon)

Molly Shannon is so great and ebullient that you can almost miss the ways her character sucks all the oxygen out of every room, diminishes her daughter-in-law, and seems to be a genuine psychopath for not realizing the existence of boundaries, most supremely the one that would keep a mother from popping in on her son’s honeymoon. No wonder Shane (Jake Lacy) is so messed up, his mother is a human wrecking ball with near-zero self-awareness.

2. Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge)

First, as an aside, this might be the best thing Jennifer Coolidge has ever done, and according to her, White (who she’s known for nearly 15 years) had to push hard to get her to leave her home in New Orleans where she had sheltered in place during COVID. “This little text came in from Mike White [at 2AM] and it just said, ‘Are you scared?’ And then I thought, ‘Oh my God, Mike has ESP’ and he gets into your mind,” she told Uproxx. “He knew what I was thinking even across the country. And so I knew I couldn’t get out of it.” Thank goodness she didn’t.

Despite her apprehension (which clearly had nothing to do with the role), the character wound up being exactly what she was looking for: “I always wanted a part like this, where it was someone who was very complicated and didn’t know how to navigate life and was sort of going after the wrong things and oblivious.”

There’s the perfect word to describe Tanya, who maybe shows the biggest heart of all the guests before pulling an epic heel turn that you know is coming, but which still pancakes your soul when you see it. I am, of course, talking about the kiss-off that she gives to Natasha Rothwell’s spa manager Belinda after building up her dreams of starting her own business and breaking free of the resort and all the shitty, fake nice people that wear her down.

To a degree, you want to let Tanya off the hook since she’s so messed up over the death of her mother and she just seems desperate for anyone with a pulse to listen to her, but the carnage left in her wake is just too large to ignore. Even if Tanya is just a runaway trainwreck as opposed to someone taking joy in the decimation of others.

1. Shane Patton (Jake Lacy)

Speaking of which, Shane Patton. There can be no doubt that Shane is an absolute villain, but it all spirals from such a minor place with him choosing to obsess over not getting the best of the best room for his honeymoon. To be fair, you can kind of understand that and almost see it as a romantic gesture to his wife, Rachel (Daddario) — until she indicates that his behavior is wrecking their honeymoon far more than the room mixup. Then it just becomes a clear character flaw.

Rachel’s desire to maintain her independence obviously doesn’t square with Shane’s outdated view of what their relationship is supposed to be. It’s actually heartbreaking to see the disaster of their coupling build and build as she realizes that she’s little more than a prize for Shane.

That he eventually commits an accidental murder isn’t a surprising thing. He’s a male Karen with absolute rage issues that are hyper-focused on Armond (the brilliant Murray Bartlet, whose descent into his self-destructive tendencies as a result of all of these people, speaks to the destruction the guests can leave with little awareness or effort). No, the most surprising thing is his coldness and inability to try and change when Rachel confronts him about her want to end the marriage before its really begun. That they ultimately wind up together is as cynical as it is realistic. Money corrupts, absolutely and also absolutely. But look at the lux accommodations it can also get you. The view is pretty great if you can look past the people who are the absolute worst.

Actor and comedian Bob Saget became a trending topic on Twitter today after apologizing for blocking people on Twitter. Some music fans were surprised to find, though, that Saget tagged Car Seat Headrest in his tweet, writing, “Apologies to all the people I’ve blocked over the years. Just can only let positive stuff in. If I could block myself I would. And sending @carseatheadrest my very best.”

This isn’t as random as it may seem. Back when Car Seat Headrest was a Bandcamp favorite and not yet a broader indie mainstay, he released an album called 4 (11 years ago today, on August 16, 2010). One of the songs is titled “The Ghost Of Bob Sagat,” and it features some explicit lyrics about Sagat. The song begins, for example, “Last night, I was haunted by the ghost of Bob Saget / He said, ‘You’re more or less than just a f*****’ / So I put on a dress and followed him to Heaven / But first, I gave him a blowjob outside the 7-Eleven.”

In his response to Sagat today, Toledo explained the origins of the song, saying, “Bob, you were in a comic my friend @partydogge wrote a while ago! From there, it became a whole thing.” Indeed, the comic, Asscastle (which has some NSFW content), features the ghost of Sagat, much like the Car Seat Headrest song. The artist behind the comic, Cate Wurtz, also designed the cover art for 4.

It appears Car Seat Headrest and Wurtz fans were talking about the song and comic on Twitter in recent days, and Saget apparently started blocking a lot of those people, which led to increased attention and harassment towards Saget. Saget also appears to have messaged some users asking them to be nicer. It would seem this situation snowballed enough that Saget felt compelled to address it more widely with his apology tweet.

Check out some tweets about the situation below.

The whole Jeopardy! hosting fiasco will not die down anytime soon. And that’s not too much of a surprise, given the beloved status of the late Alex Trebek. The selection promise was bound to upset at least some people, although if LeVar Burton had risen victorious, there would have been a lot of happy people, too. Yet producers’ decision to elevate executive producer, Mike Richards, into full-time host duties (of the syndicated flagship show), well, it hasn’t gone over universally well (and not even close). Even with Mayim Bialik picking up the primetime and spinoff variants, the fuss won’t stop against Richards. John Oliver, too, let everyone know that he also felt the “WTF” factor and couldn’t resist taking a swing on Last Week Tonight.

Granted, the Last Week Tonight host dealt with the subject swiftly and mercilessly and didn’t waste too much time on his take. He sandwiched his judgment in between the show’s deep dive (on ransomware) and the theatrics of antivaxxer GOP lawmakers like Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC). As Oliver discussed anti-masking parents who freaked out after a school board meeting, he noted that these parents threatened those who are pro-mask. “We know who you are,” one furious parent yelled in the face of a health-care expert. “You can leave freely, but we will find you.”

Oliver aired this footage with his own addition. “It is genuinely hard to imagine a five word phrase less welcome than ‘we know who you are,’” the host declared. “Aside from obviously ‘new Jeopardy! host Mike Richards.’”

Simple and effective. And worth noting: Oliver’s facial expression over those ragingly ridiculous parents who apparently wish to keep the Covid pandemic going.

Meanwhile, it’s also worth keeping an eye out for more anti-Richards shade from former Jeopardy! champs. Both James Holzhauer and Ken Jennings roasted the strategy of having two hosts, and it seems like a gift to Jennings from the late Trebek is causing people to wonder what the legend would have thought about this whole mess. Oh boy.

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the ending of Free Guy. Proceed accordingly.

When Disney absorbed Fox back in 2019, the already massive super company got itself even more new toys. They didn’t just get a massive back catalogue and a bunch of popular IPs. They also inherited some movies that were still in production. One of them was Free Guy, the action-packed Ryan Reynolds comedy that opened atop the box office this weekend, and which is already getting a sequel. And the merger actually wound up dramatically changing the ending of the film.

In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, director Shaun Levy says the general idea behind the climax stayed the same: Our hero winds up fighting an upgraded version of himself, with access to all the weapons in the game’s realm. But after the merger, all of a sudden they had, well, a lot more weapons. Which is to say, they could get their hands on doodads from anything Disney owned.

And so when Guy starts arming himself against his upgraded clone, he, as per EW, “whips out a lightsaber, Hulk fists, and Captain America’s shield as weapons against Dude. That last one comes with a cameo by Captain America actor himself Chris Evans.”

They also got access to Fortnite’s rainbow unicorn mace. One thing that they wound up not using was the gun Josh Brolin’s Cable uses in Deadpool 2…starring Ryan Reynolds.

It’s not unlike what happens in Space Jam: A New Legacy, which lets Looney Tunes characters hobnob with anything owned by parent company Warner Media. Aren’t you glad we’re all very aware of which media company owns which IP?

(Via EW)

The Los Angeles Clippers entered this offseason without much of an opportunity to make significant changes without making a splash on the trade market, and more than two weeks into free agency it seemed they would mostly run it back with last year’s squad. Kawhi Leonard, after taking his time, re-signed on a 4-year max deal that will likely see him miss all of next season after tearing his ACL in the playoffs.

Serge Ibaka, Nic Batum, and Reggie Jackson, their three biggest potential free agents, all likewise chose to return and it seemed we would see the same Clippers team, just without Kawhi, next year. That was until Sunday evening when ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski broke a rather stunning trade that will see L.A. bring an old friend back home as Eric Bledsoe will return to the Clippers, with Rajon Rondo and Patrick Beverley going to Memphis.

Bledsoe was traded to the Grizzlies from New Orleans (where he spent one season after being dealt from the Bucks in the Jrue Holiday deal) prior to the Draft, and it was long reported he wouldn’t be staying in Memphis. The question was whether the Grizzlies would buy him out or if they could find a trade partner for him, and after a month of searching, they managed to find the latter and send Bledsoe back to the franchise that drafted him (after a draft night trade) in 2010.

Bledsoe struggled last season in New Orleans, averaging 12.2 points and 3.8 assists per game on just 42.1 percent shooting from the field. It’s clear that the Clippers are hoping that he will provide them with some needed point of attack defense, as they send Beverley out of town, while providing more offensive upside than he (or Rondo, who proved to be a dud of a deadline acquisition a year ago). For the Grizzlies, they get a young big in Daniel Oturu (if they want to keep him) and cut a little money for next year (Bledsoe has $3.9 million guaranteed for next season), but this seems mostly to be L.A. swapping two guaranteed contracts for one and hoping that Bledsoe has more left in the tank than he’s shown recently.

Woj offered further indication that Memphis might not keep any of the three players coming in, saying they’re “open-minded” about the futures of all three.

As for the financials on why both teams would do this, Bobby Marks provided some further details. The most notable numbers are the L.A. tax bill and the Bledsoe guaranteed money for next year.

James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad may not be doing so well at the box office, but it’s not as though no one’s seeing it. After all, it is playing for free on a very popular streaming service, where it’s reportedly doing gangbusters. Wherever the truth lies, it’s definitely one of the renegade comic book movies, which is to say it gleefully ignores and subverts a lot of the genre’s tropes. But it almost went even farther than it did, and it was already pretty far out.

In a new interview with Script Apart (as caught by Entertainment Weekly), Gunn admitted that he almost had the posse of anti-heroes fight a different baddie in the end: Superman. He didn’t elaborate, but even though the protagonists of the Suicide Squad movies are not exactly heroes, they tend to do battle with those (arguably) worse than they are. So the Man of Steel might have gone bad. Again.

But Gunn decided to go with Starro, the giant kaiju starfish, partly because he was one of his favorite villains:

“He’s a character I love from the comics. I think he’s a perfect comic book character because he’s absolutely ludicrous but also very scary in his own way. What he does is scary … He used to scare the crap out of me when I was a child, putting those facehuggers on Superman and Batman. So I thought he was one of the major, major DC villains that was probably never going to be put into another movie. And if they did, it’d have been a ‘black cloud’ version of Starro. Not a giant walking starfish, a kaiju that’s bright pink and cerulean blue, this ridiculously big, bright bad guy.”

Besides, the time was not right to make Superman evil: Things were a little chaotic at the DCEU then (and, frankly, now). “At the time, there were a lot of questions like, ‘Who is Superman in the DCEU? Is this movie outside the DCEU?’, and I just didn’t want to deal with it all that much,” Gunn said.

Too bad — one of the bright spots of the fairly troubled Superman III is the part where Supes goes bad, stops shaving, gets hammered at dive bars, etc. Bring that guy back.

(Via Script Apart and EW)

The NFL, like every sports league, enters every season with some new points of emphasis for their officials. These are usually put in place to try and combat something that got out of hand the year prior as players are quick to recognize when things are and are not getting called and take advantage accordingly.

This year, though, the point of emphasis for the NFL isn’t a crackdown on some kind of actual illegal play, but an attempt to cut down on taunting on the field by adjudicating those moments with unsportsmanlike conduct penalties. If this sounds like it is sure to result in some terrible calls that drive fans insane, well you would be correct. Already this preseason we have seen flags come out for some weak taunting penalties — balls being spun, etc. — but Sunday in the Colts-Panthers game we got the worst one yet when Colts back Benny LeMay got hit with a taunting penalty for rightfully flexing after dragging the pile for 10 yards.

LeMay doesn’t seem to do anything beyond get up, have a brief word for the defender he just took for a ride, and turns excitedly to celebrate what was a sensational run, but he still gets hit with a 15-yard penalty. It is baffling that the NFL would decide that people want to see more flags like this rather than fewer, as if the majority of fans are aghast at a man flexing a little bit after a play. There are certainly moments where players will cross a line with taunting, but it’s one of those “you know it when you see it” things. A guy being fired up about a run and doing something as innocuous as what LeMay did here certainly doesn’t fit that criteria and if the NFL keeps flagging stuff like this all season, it is going to be a long one for fans who will quickly grow tired of flags and frustrated by what is sure to be selective enforcement.

Things aren’t going so hot for Johnny Depp. A respected actor who became arguably the biggest movie star in the world, he’s now all but verboten in Hollywood, even kicked off of franchises mid-stream. So it’s not too surprising that, some nine months after losing his sensational libel suit, he thinks Hollywood has a full-on boycott against him.

In a new interview with the Sunday Times (as caught by Deadline), Depp discussed his latest film, Minamata — which Americans won’t be seeing any time soon. The biographical drama, in which Depp plays Time photojournalist Eugene Smith, just opened in the U.K. But the film’s director, Andrew Levitas, claims that MGM, which owns the rights, is “burying” it due to his scandals. (MGM has denied this, saying it’s still on their docket.) Depp didn’t address that claim, but he did suddenly bring up his career woes while raving about the movie.

“Some films touch people,” he said. “And this affects those in Minamata and people who experience similar things. And for anything… For Hollywood’s boycott of me? One man, one actor in an unpleasant and messy situation, over the last number of years?”

Depp reportedly trailed off after that, but he did add, “But, you know, I’m moving towards where I need to go to make all that… To bring things to light.”

What could that mean, exactly? We may find out before anyone in America sees Minamata. In the meantime, there’s only one other upcoming project on Depp’s IMDb page: an animated TV series called Puffins, in which he voices a bird named Johnny Puff.

(Via Sunday Times and Deadline)