Category: News

Lil Nas X has been on a roll this year. After ushering in a new era of music, the rapper dropped the internet-breaking song “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” along with the introspective number “Sun Goes Down” and the viral Jack Harlow collaboration “Industry Baby.” Thanks to the success of his recent singles, it’s no wonder that Lil Nas X has just become Spotify’s most-listened-to male rapper, surpassing DaBaby’s monthly listeners shortly after the rapper’s homophobic on-stage rant.

Lil Nas X now boasts well over 52 million monthly listeners on the popular streaming platform, according to Spotify’s data. That’s about one million more than DaBaby, who currently sits at 51 million monthly listeners. Upon hearing the news, Lil Nas X graciously thanked his followers for their continued support, saying it’s a career record for him. “wow this is insane,” he rapper on Twitter. “this is the most i’ve ever had in my career. thank u to everybody listening.”

The rapper’s victory over DaBaby in streaming numbers arrives shortly after DaBaby was captured on the Rolling Loud stage making some very uninformed remarks about HIV/Aids and the LGBTQ community. Several festivals booted DaBaby from their lineups as a result of his homophobic rant, and many celebrities like Dua Lipa and Miley Cyrus condemned the rapper out for his uneducated comments.

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

Nicolas Cage has been in some wild movies over the years. He stole the Declaration of Independence in National Treasure, fought evil animatronics in Wally’s Wonderland, and had a cage of bees placed over his head (after punching a woman in the face while dressed as a bear) in Wicker Man, to say nothing of his time as Johnny Blaze in Ghost Rider. But Cage thinks Prisoners of the Ghostland “might be the wildest movie I’ve ever made.” Cage and director Sion Sono (Suicide Club) is a match made in wild heaven.

In Prisoners of the Ghostland, Cage plays a bank robber who’s freed from jail by a rich warlord. The catch: he has five days to find the warlord’s granddaughter, played by Sofia Boutella (Climax, Atomic Blonde), or else the leather suit that he’s in will go kablam. “It’s just crazy,” the actor said about the film. “It’s way out there.”

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

In the treacherous frontier city of Samurai Town, a ruthless bank robber (Nicolas Cage) is sprung from jail by wealthy warlord The Governor (Bill Moseley), whose adopted granddaughter Bernice (Sofia Boutella) has gone missing. The Governor offers the prisoner his freedom in exchange for retrieving the runaway. Strapped into a leather suit that will self-destruct within five days, the bandit sets off on a journey to find the young woman — and his own path to redemption.

Prisoners of the Ghostland hits theaters and VOD and digital on September 17.

When Olivia Rodrigo released her debut single “Drivers License,” it became an overnight viral sensation. The song broke charting and streaming records alike, but it also became embroiled by speculative drama. Fans were convinced “that blonde girl” mentioned in the lyrics must have been Sabrina Carpenter, who her ex-fling Joshua Bassett started dating. Rodrigo has attempted to thwart the rumor in the past, but she’s now shutting it down once-and-for-all.

Rodrigo spoke about the “Drivers License” drama in a cover shoot interview with Variety. When asked about Carpenter and the love triangle speculation, Rodrigo was blatant about her frustrations. “I put it out not knowing that it would get that reaction, so it was really strange [when] it did. I just remember [everyone being] so weird and speculative about stuff they had no idea about,” she said. Rodrigo added, “I don’t really subscribe to hating other women because of boys. I think that’s so stupid, and I really resent that narrative that was being tossed around.”

Elsewhere in the conversation, Rodrigo explained how she was filming her High School Musical: The Musical: The Series in Utah when she learned of her “Drivers License” success. “Oh, my gosh, that was the craziest time of my life,” noted. “I was sitting in a grocery store parking lot, and I called my A&R guy. It had just gone No. 1 on Apple Music, which is hard for a pop act to do. We were looking at each other on FaceTime, speechless, and just stared at each other for a minute. ‘What do we do?’ ‘I don’t know.’ That was the moment that I knew that it was going to be something bigger than I expected.”

Read the full Variety feature here.

There’s nothing Phoebe Bridgers can’t do. Today, the indie superstar unveiled a cover of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters,” her contribution to The Metallica Blacklist, a covers album that will be out this fall. With features from other artists as disparate as Miley Cyrus, St. Vincent and Jason Isbell, and many more, the wide-reaching project is meant to pay homage to the iconic metal band’s first album. It’s also a charity project, with each artist who shared a cover selecting a charity that a portion of the album’s sales will go toward.

Bridgers described her cover saying it “almost sounds baroque” in an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music. She also had more to say about her relationship with the band:

I’ve always been a big Metallica fan. I think it’s funny, my intro to them was probably way later than so many people who have always loved them. But when I was a teenager, I went to Outside Lands, and I definitely knew Metallica songs from video games and stuff, but I went to Outside Lands and saw their set and was like, “This is a rock band. It’s kind of a gateway to metal because they’re so hooky and you can hold onto so much of it and it actually can get stuck in your head. So that’s what I’ve always loved about Metallica is that they don’t shy away from a great hook.

The Milwaukee Bucks winning the NBA championship this year was a pretty remarkable story if for no other reason than few imagined they were building a championship core years ago when they drafted Giannis Antetokounmpo and traded for Khris Middleton after a lackluster rookie season in Detroit.

They would come together under the guidance of Jason Kidd, whose tenure in Milwaukee is a difficult one to suss out. The Bucks two eventual All-Stars developed into the first glimpses of the players they would become under Kidd, leading to the idea that he had a way with player development. At the same time, Bucks players beyond Giannis weren’t exactly fond of Kidd for his extremely hard-nosed approach to coaching the team that many felt went too far, something that is extremely evident in an anecdote from Mirin Fader’s new book, Giannis: The Improbable Rise Of An NBA MVP.

In the book, Fader details a December 23 loss in the 2014-15 season after which Kidd demanded the team come back on Christmas Eve for practice, to the dismay of the veterans in the locker room as just about everyone had travel booked to go home for Christmas, and called Larry Sanders “a piece of sh*t” while making them run sprints over and over.

It is a story that tracks with just about everything we heard about Kidd’s tenure in Milwaukee, but is particularly relevant now that he is returning to the head of the bench in Dallas. After a few years in Los Angeles on the Lakers roster — where surely there were no sudden Christmas Eve practices — it will be interesting to see if Kidd has softened his approach to practices, particularly with a young superstar already in place in Dallas in Luka Doncic.

Giannis’ feelings towards Kidd were more positive than most, but few others embraced his approach in the same manner. Finding the balance between pushing players without crossing the line will be paramount to whether Kidd can enjoy longterm success with the Mavs without wearing out his welcome as quickly as he has elsewhere. Scheduling impromptu pre-Christmas practices might be one to file away as an easy adjustment to make from his time in Milwaukee to help with that.

Quentin Tarantino may never give the woman who birthed him an “Elvis Cadillac,” but he had planned to gift the rest of us with the most “gangster” version of Star Trek the world has ever seen. At least that’s what The Revenant screenwriter Mark L. Smith, who Tarantino tapped to pen his idea for a new cinematic Star Trek voyage, says.

As IndieWire reports, Smith was recently asked about what is currently known as the “Untitled Quentin Tarantino Star Trek Project” while a guest on the “Bulletproof Screenwriting” podcast. Smith explained that it was Bad Robot, J.J. Abrams’ company, who contacted him about the project—though on Tarantino’s behalf.

“They just called me and said, ‘Hey, are you up for it? Do you want to go? Quentin wants to hook up.’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And that was the first day I met Quentin, in the room and he’s reading a scene that he wrote and it was this awesome cool gangster scene, and he’s acting it out and back and forth. I told him, I was so mad I didn’t record it on my phone. It would be so valuable. It was amazing.”

One can only imagine that Tarantino lapped up every bit of Smith’s high praise for the idea, which the two then began working on. As Smith continued:

“Then just we started working. I would go hang out at his house one night and we would watch old gangster films. We were there for hours. … We were just kicking back watching gangster films, laughing at the bad dialogue, but talking about how it would bleed into what we wanted to do. Kirk’s in it, we’ve got him. All the characters are there. It would be those guys. I guess you would look at it like all the episodes of the show didn’t really connect. So this would be almost its own episode. A very cool episode. There’s a little time travel stuff going on. … It’s really wild.”

Tarantino has made no secret that he’s a major fan of Chris Pine and his version of Captain Kirk in particular. In 2020, while appearing on The Ringer’s “Rewatchables” podcast, QT called Pine his favorite young actor working today—“hands down.”

As for whether or not we’ll ever have the chance to see this totally gangster Star Trek of Tarantino’s imagining: Probably not. In July, it was confirmed that Matt Shakman—director of WandaVision and, more importantly, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s “The Nightman Cometh” episode—will be standing behind the camera on the next Star Trek movie. But hey, there’s (presumably) nothing stopping QT from publishing the script as his next novel.

(Via IndieWire)

Rand Paul loves to remind the world that he’s a physician (which is true). What is also true is that he is not an immunologist, a virologist, or an epidemiologist. (He’s an eye doctor.) Nor has he been in the trenches with the likes of Dr. Anthony Fauci (who has become a favorite target of Paul’s) in studying the COVID-19 coronavirus specifically, which is still new enough that we’re learning things about it every day. Which is all to say that when the Kentucky senator offers up his medical-related opinion on something, it’s just that—an opinion, not a fact. Which is why YouTube just banned Paul from the platform for a week for posting an anti-mask video full of lies and misinformation… and Paul is not happy!

On Tuesday evening, a clearly fuming Paul—whose face is so punchable that even his neighbor couldn’t resist—tweeted about having his video pulled from YouTube… though he claimed (presumably between clenched teeth) that it was “a badge of honor.”

“A badge of honor . . . leftwing cretins at Youtube banning me for 7 days for a video that quotes 2 peer reviewed articles saying cloth masks don’t work.”

In the now-deleted video, Paul was speaking out about the “danger” of mask mandates, which… what?!? It’s one thing to not like being told to do something; it’s another thing to claim that being told to wear a mask when we’re more than 18 months into a pandemic that has so far claimed the lives of more than 4.3 million people around the world, and is seeing record-high numbers of people being hospitalized across America, particularly in places where mask-wearing and vaccine-gettin’ don’t seem to be a priority. States like, oh, I don’t know… Kentucky? Which has seen a 139 percent increase in COVID cases over the past two weeks, according to The New York Times. While doctors and other health officials at the center of the COVID surge are pleading with people to mask up and get vaccinated, Paul took a different tack in his now-deleted video:

“Saying cloth masks work, when they don’t, actually risks lives, as someone may choose to care for a loved one with COVID while only wearing a cloth mask. This is not only bad advice but also potentially deadly misinformation.”

YouTube quickly removed the video for violating its community guidelines. In addition to his tweet, Paul’s office issued an official statement on the matter, in which the good doctor claimed:

“I think this kind of censorship is very dangerous, incredibly anti-free speech, and truly anti-progress of science, which involves skepticism and argumentation to arrive at the truth. As a libertarian leaning Senator, I think private companies have the right to ban me if they want to, so in this case I’ll just channel that frustration into ensuring the public knows YouTube is acting as an arm of government and censoring their users for contradicting the government.”

Noted.

After the British tabloids ran with unsubstantiated rumors that Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer are dating, the internet went absolutely wild over the thought of the former Friends co-stars making their iconic Ross and Rachel relationship happen in real life. The frenzy over Aniston and Schwimmer possibly being an item made the actors trend on social media, so it was only a matter of time until one of them stepped in and set the record straight. That would be Schwimmer, whose rep shot down the dating rumors. Via HuffPost UK:

On Wednesday morning, a rep for David Schwimmer told HuffPost UK that the reports of a romance between the American Crime Story star and his former co-star are not true.

Shortly after getting a response from Schwimmer’s rep, a spokesperson for Aniston also denied the rumors, so that’s that. As for how this particular Ross and Rachel firestorm started, during Friends: The Reunion, Schwimmer and Aniston both admitted to having crushes on each other while filming the NBC sitcom. However, things never worked out because one of them was always in a relationship. That’s where the British tabloids came in.

Earlier in the week, a source for Closer claimed, “After the reunion, it became clear that reminiscing over the past had stirred up feelings for both of them and that chemistry they’d always had to bury was still there.” That report kicked off Friends fans losing their minds on Twitter almost all day Tuesday, so our condolences whenever they find out that Ross and Rachel IRL is a no go.

(Via HuffPost UK)

Shawn Levy movies, for the most part, make a lot of money. Levy may be one of the most consistent directors in this department who doesn’t really get much credit for that. There are, of course, the three Night at the Museum movies, which made just under one and a half billion dollars combined. Oh and there are the Steve Martin movies, Cheaper By the Dozen and The Pink Panther. Oh and let’s not forget the fighting robots movie, Real Steel. Even a more modest movie that people don’t at all consider “a hit,” like This is Where I Leave You, still made money. If you have a movie and you want it to make money, yeah Shawn Levy is a good choice as a director.

There’s also another interesting trend with Levy’s films: he’s often juggling a lot. This is the case with his new film, the Ryan Reynolds vehicle Free Guy (which will be in theaters this weekend), and the case with the overwhelming majority of his movies. But when you think about it, it’s not a lot different from the Night at the Museum movies in that we have our hero who is surrounded by numerous scene stealers, and there’s Levy who has to let them be funny, but also not overwhelm the movie. Levy is good at this. Levy considers himself a conductor.

In Free Guy, Ryan Reynolds plays Guy, an unsuspecting non-player-controlled video game character who is just trying to live his life around the nonstop action of the video game. But then he becomes sentient and a whole bunch of crazy things happen. Free Guy is a cavalcade of color, visuals, and pop culture references that, without a trained conductor, could have easily drifted into madness.

Levy also tells us about what happened when Disney bought Fox, because Free Guy was a Fox project and was in pre-production and a lot of those films were canceled. Was he worried? Well, Levy also knows his movies have a tendency to make money. Plus, now he had access to a much greater war chest of pop culture references like Marvel and Star Wars. And Levy tells us about a “Fox only” reference that got cut out of the movie because, well, they didn’t need it anymore.

It makes perfect sense to me that you directed this movie because there’s so much going on. And you had so much success with the Night at the Museum movies where there are all these peripheral characters that can steal the movie. You’re like a wrangler?

Yes, that is exactly how the job feels, like a ringleader, like a circus. You’ve got a lot of things going, a lot of parts of the stage, but your job is to keep things balanced, to make everybody great, but to be responsible for the balance of all of it.

But see, that sounds more difficult than the way you just described it. How do you do that?

I feel like if we’re lucky, we find the job that we’re well-suited for. And since I made literally my first student film, I’ve felt like, oh, this is what I’m actually built to do, because I’m organized. I like to be prepared. I love actors. And so, I approach all of them with real love and just fanhood. But maybe, I don’t know… I don’t know if I grew up in a different time, if I’d be defined as a little bit of OCD, or I don’t know.

I’m able to cover a lot and be focused on a lot of things at once and keep everything in its right place. So, I believe, and there are very different philosophies – I remember early in my career, I won’t name who they said: “You have one job, make the lead funny. Anything that isn’t the lead, move on.”

Let me ask this. What position was that person in who told you that? Was that an actor, or was that an executive?

It was a producer. It was a very successful comedy producer. And the advice was, if it’s not in service of the movie star being funny, it cannot exist. And that meant the lighting needed to be bright. The framing needed to be clean and not moving. And God forbid if the supporting characters were taking shots from the three-point line. “No, no, no, no, no.” And I was young and new, and I was like, “Oh, okay? Is that the rule?” I have subsequently realized that I completely and absolutely disagree with that. And having a variety of cast members score points on that board. It’s good for the movie.

You have a lot of actors who take three-point shots. I mean, you worked with Robin Williams.

I had Robin Williams, and I had Ricky Gervais, and I had Owen Wilson. I had Tina Fey and Steve Carell, blah, blah. In this one, Ryan is the spine. Ryan is the protagonist. My job is to make sure that I always keep an eye on the primacy of that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want Taika Waititi taking three-point shots. That doesn’t mean that Utkarsh Ambudkar can’t riff and add some flavor and authenticity. Because guess what? Utkarsh is a mad gamer. He knows more about gaming than me. So, okay, give me some of how you would say it. You know what? Maybe it’s not ringleader. It’s like in like the orchestra, especially in the Bugs Bunny animated version, where they’re like doing that thing? So that’s what it feels like. Oh, you got an idea? You joke here. You have an idea? Come on. Yep. Run with it. Okay, good. Oh wait. Taika, you got something? It’s a little bit like that.

It’s like that episode of Seinfeld where Bob Cobb made everyone called him The Maestro. You should do that.

Any Seinfeld reference and now we’re friends forever.

Okay, you’re The Maestro.

Thank you.

When you started this movie, it was a Fox production and, correct me if I’m wrong, the Disney purchase happened while you were making this?

Prepping.

Okay. You hadn’t started filming yet.

Right before shooting. Right before filming. I think I know where your question is going.

Well, it’s interesting that there are so many Disney property references in this movie that probably couldn’t have happened if that doesn’t happen, I assume…

They definitely wouldn’t happen. Definitely wouldn’t happen. And the third act of the movie was always going to be Dude versus Guy, Ryan versus Ryan 2.0. And it always had this fundamental idea of, oh, now he has mastery of the game. He can access any tools and weapons that he can dream of.

So, when we realized, right as we were about to shoot, wait a second, now our bosses are Disney? And Disney has the deepest toy chest of all time: with the greatest toys, weapons, and iconography. Let’s see if we can access some of that. And to our great fortune, Disney really supported the movie and gave absolute trust to Ryan and me. And when we went to them and said, “Could we use this, this or this?” They said yes. And when we said, “Well, which one?” They said, “All of them.”

Well, I’m curious, did a “Fox only” reference get cut? Were you going to use maybe a Predator? And it’s like, sorry, Predator. We’ve got Star Wars now.

Well, I don’t want any spoilers, so I’m still going to dance around it. But I do know, I’m remembering now that one of the weapons was Cable’s gun from Deadpool 2. And that didn’t make the cut, partly because it’s very big and heavy, and partly because we did have bigger and better toys coming out of the toy chest.

I’ll just say, Cable’s got a great gun, but not near as recognizable as some of the things you used.

Agreed.

Was there a day or a week where you were worried the movie would be canceled?

It’s so weird because they did shut down other movies.

They did.

There was a big, expensive movie called Mouse Guard. And it was done. Everyone just go home. But, weirdly I don’t remember being nervous. Because I think it helps that Ryan and I have individually made a few billion dollars for studios. And they knew that a) we had certain audiences and things that probably could be trusted. But b) we are very similar in that we aren’t looking to spend a studio’s money because it makes us feel better about ourselves. Give me enough money to tell this story well and I’m going to treat your money with respect. And, hopefully, if I do my job well, you’re going to make some money. That’s how I approach my job. I get to tell stories on the biggest canvas around. That’s a privilege. I don’t take it lightly. And I want to be respectful of that privilege. And I think Disney knows that’s how Ryan Reynolds and I approached the work. And, hopefully, audiences will find it and enjoy it, because that was the whole point.

All right. Thank you, Maestro.

[Laughs] Thank you.

‘Free Guy’ opens in theaters on August 13th. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Last month, Baltimore’s “friendliest hardcore band on the planet” announced a brand-new album, Glow On, arriving later in August via Roadrunner. Now, Turnstile has unleashed a new face-melting tune called “Fly Again,” which joins a crop of tracks that are also set to appear on Glow On: “Alien Love Call” featuring Blood Orange, “Blackout,” “Holiday,” “Mystery,” “No Surprise,” and “T.L.C. (Turnstile Love Connection).”

Opening with a piano interlude, “Fly Again” quickly cranks into gear, with vocalist Brendan Yates crowing into the mic over razor-sharp riffs, “Still can’t fill the hole you left behind!”

Turnstile initially shared news of their new album on Instagram, posting a local billboard that announced the project, before formally unveiling it a few days later in mid-July.

“This album has been inspired by a lot of dance music,” Yates also told Kerrang of Glow On, which follows up 2018’s Time & Space. “Being a band of drummers, we always focus on rhythm. Every song is intentionally – or, maybe, not intentionally – danceable. That’s not to say that it needs to be super-fast or groovy; it can be mid-paced, slow, or whatever. Latin Marenghe rhythms. Jazz music. Really heavy hardcore grooves. It’s that the excitement is constant.”

Listen to “Fly Again” above. Look for Glow On come 8/27 via Roadrunner Records. Pre-order it here.

Turnstile is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.