Category: News

Amy Winehouse’s final album, 2006’s Back To Black, is a highlight of Mark Ronson’s production discography; He produced about half the songs on the album and got a writing credit on the title track. Now, though, Ronson admits that he has regrets about the way he “behaved around” Winhouse while they made the album specifically how he handled her struggles with addiction that ultimately led to her death.

In a new profile from The Guardian, Ronson said:

“Obviously, we had our ups and downs and it was troubling. I don’t know if I fully loved the way that I behaved around her. When she was going through addiction, I wish I’d been a little bit more upfront or confrontational about it. But I just was like, ‘Ah, she’ll sort it out — she did it already once.’ So, whatever.”

He also described how Winehouse treated paparazzi that camped outside of her house, saying, “She would wave to them, occasionally bring them out food. At first I was like, ‘This is just like a pantomime; you both understand what this is.’ Then I was like, ‘No: this is f*cking horrible and disgusting.’ I know people have to make a living — but I hated a lot of those people.”

Check out the full feature here.

This Star Trek legend deserves to be the new host of Jeopardy!.

Who is LeVar Burton?

Following the death of Alex Trebek, Jeopardy! has rotated through celebrity guest hosts instead of settling on a permanent option. Aaron Rodgers has done the best job so far, but Robin Roberts, George Stephanopoulos, Ken Jennings, Katie Couric, Mayim Bialik, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Savannah Guthrie, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta have also all filled in. For the next week, however, it will be fan favorite LeVar Burton behind the host podium.

“One of the things that excites me about it is that it requires such a different skill set—and Alex made it look easy. It was like breathing for him. It’s not easy in the least; I know, I’ve tried,” the Reading Rainbow star told GQ about getting the opportunity to host the game show. “So the challenge of mastering that job of being behind the podium is exciting to me. I relish the challenge.” Burton also said that “knowledge and information” is what most excites him about the job. “That half-hour of television, every evening, is a cultural touchstone in America. And for a Black man to be at that podium — more specifically, for me to be at that podium — it makes a whole lot of sense,” he added.

You can watch Burton’s hype video above, and catch him on Jeopardy! tonight.

Jennifer Lopez gave an Oscar-worthy performance in Hustlers, but it’s not her best role to date. No, it’s not The Cell or Out of Sight, either (although consider this your reminder that Out of Sight rules). It’s the “Jenny from the Block” music video, where between shots of Lopez dancing and going on a shopping spree, she has then-boyfriend Ben Affleck admire her famous butt like it’s the Mona Lisa. The music video — directed by Francis Lawrence, who would later make three of the four Hunger Games movies — premiered on TRL in November 2002, the same month the pair got engaged. Less than a year later, they called off the engagement; by January 2004, the relationship was over.

Until this year, when Affleck and Lopez, like a phoenix tattoo rising from the ashes, started seeing each other again. “They are madly in love,” a source told People. “Even though their split many years ago was devastating for Jennifer, she has never had a bad word to say about Ben. She believes that it just wasn’t meant to be then and feels like they’ve been given a second chance.” Over the weekend, the celebrity couple made it Instagram official (“Instagram official” is to 2021 as “MySpace official” was to 2002) and, more importantly, inadvertently recreated the “Jenny from the Block” music video:

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck appear to be feeling nostalgic during their romantic getaway to Saint Tropez for her 52nd birthday. Affleck, 48, was pictured applying sun cream to his girlfriend’s famous posterior, striking a very similar scene to the one included in J-Lo’s video for the song, which played on their power couple status at the time.

The Daily Mail has the visual evidence, although you could watch the “Jenny from the Block” video and get the same experience, plus hear a mighty catchy song. It’s your choice. Me, I’ll be toasting the happy couple with an iced signature latte from Dunkin.

I hear they’re catering the wedding.

(Via the Daily Mail)

Ed Sheeran is back and in the midst of promoting a new album, but for much of 2020, he went silent. It turns out that was almost a permanent arrangement, as Sheeran says he considered retirement after the birth of this daughter.

In an interview with SiriusXM (as NME notes), Sheeran revealed:

“I stopped playing music for a bit, and music is entirely me as a person. Then I had my daughter and I was like, ‘Right, that’s it. This is me. I am probably just going to be a dad. I am not going to play music anymore.’ […] Then I was suddenly like, ‘It is more important for my daughter to grow up knowing that her parents have a work ethic.’ I slowly got back into music that way and the creative process started flowing again.”

He also noted that he’s coming off a stretch of immense productivity, saying, “I have done two albums and have written like 250 songs. In that, about 50 ballads. I write about 25 songs a week and one of them will be all right and that will go on the ‘maybe’ list.”

Sheeran’s songwriting is at the top of the world right now, as BTS’ “Permission To Dance,” which Sheeran co-wrote, is currently the No. 1 song in the US.

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

Last Week Tonight returned from a month-long hiatus (during which the show released breezy segments about octopuses and an enormous penis) to confront a serious subject: housing discrimination in the United States. In doing so, Oliver (after literally talking to his show’s “void” and preparing for a return to a studio audience) made a case for what some feel is necessary to begin closing the racial wealth gap. That hot-button subject would be reparations: “When you deprive somebody of something, you make it right by paying what you owe.”

Oliver referenced Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Case For Reparations,” a 2014 article in The Atlantic. Coates’ piece has proven to be highly influential and is referenced far and wide (it inspired Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen reimagining), even though only a minority of Americans believe that reparations should be paid by current generations for the acts of the past. Oliver went in deep on the subject with this ultimate takeaway: “The only really strange thing about paying reparations to Black people is that we haven’t done it yet.”

While making his argument, Oliver revealed how housing discrimination includes methods that are seldom seen by those who don’t experience them. That would include, say, federal home-loan discrimination and even discrimination by appraisal companies. In other words, it saturates every inch of the housing market.

Oliver glided through an intricate argument, including a relevant clip from an interview (around 19:30 in the above video) with a Black female homeowner, whose house appraisal seemed stunningly low. As an experiment, she asked a white male friend to step into her shoes, and her appraisal amount immediately doubled, no questions asked. Her elation turned to despair when she realized, “I’m the thing that’s devaluing my house.” As Oliver put things, this is an unconscionable result. “We all know the only time the addition of a white man should increase value to anything,” the host explained. “Is if that thing is a movie, and that white man is Stanley Tucci. Otherwise it is just not okay.”

Fair enough. Speaking of fair (or rather, unfair), Oliver also addressed the bipartisan dropping of this ball. The host pointed toward how Richard Nixon torpedoed certain segments of the Fair Housing Act by refusing to have the federal government weigh in on integration of neighborhoods. Oliver also shredded Joe Biden’s idea for a $15,000 first-time homebuyer tax-credit idea that would apply to everyone. This measure, Oliver argued, was one of many “efforts to address the legacy of housing discrimination [that] have been resolutely color blind.” The end result, Oliver argues, is “a wound that we are actively choosing not to heal.” Watch the full segment above.

The USA women have not lost a game at the Olympics since 1992 and will look to extend that streak to win their opening game of group play on Tuesday in Tokyo against Nigeria.

The two teams met in exhibition action in Las Vegas earlier this month in a game that saw the American women find their form with a 31-point victory. Nigeria will have a big addition that didn’t play in that game in Chiney Ogwumike, but Team USA remains a heavy favorite to extend their Olympics winning streak to 50 games — with the added intrigue of Diana Taurasi possibly making her first appearance for Team USA this summer.

The game, as so many during the Tokyo Olympics, will be in the middle of the night stateside, taking place at 12:40 a.m. ET on Tuesday (9:40 p.m. PT on Monday). The good news for those looking to watch is that it will be broadcast live on TV, with USA Network handling the broadcast starting at 12:30 a.m. ET, while it is also streaming here (with a TV provider login) and on Peacock with a premium subscription.

Tip Time: Tuesday, July 27 at 12:40 a.m. ET (Monday, July 26 at 9:40 p.m. PT)
TV Channel: USA Network
Streaming Info: NBCOlympics.com (with TV provider login) and Peacock app (with premium subscription)

On Sunday morning, the USA men disappointed in their opening game of the Olympics, losing to France after a fourth quarter collapse as their offense failed to produce anything in the closing minutes. USA hoops recent struggles offensively have served as a reminder of how different the NBA game is from FIBA basketball, with the physicality allowed and how the lack of defensive three seconds closes the paint off more.

It’s an advantage for those who have that FIBA experience, and we saw that on full display in the wee hours of Monday morning as another NBA star, Luka Doncic, had no problems readjusting to the international game as he lit up Argentina in an historic Olympic scoring performance.

It didn’t take long for Doncic to get it going, scoring 17 in the first quarter including a few of his patented stepback threes that set the tone for what was going to be one of the most dominant individual performances in Olympics history.

In the first half, Doncic finished with 31 points and eight rebounds, as he was simply unstoppable, using his physicality to bully the Argentina guards in the post and using his quickness to get by bigger defenders any time they switched on the perimeter.

In the second half, Doncic started to put some extra sauce on his performance, highlighted by this outrageous behind the back bounce pass to a rolling Mike Tobey as an exclamation point on a sensational game.

Doncic finished with 48 points, 11 rebounds, and five assists on 18-of-29 shooting (6-of-14 from three), as Slovenia ran away with a 118-96 win over the fourth-ranked team in the world, announcing their presence on the Olympic stage for the first time in style. Doncic’s 48 points tied him with Eddie Palubinskas for the second most points in an Olympic basketball game (which, a reminder, are just 40 minutes long), trailing only Oscar Schmidt’s 55 points for the all-time record.

Klemen Prepelic was the secondary star of the night for Slovenia, drilling 4-of-6 from three as he supported Doncic with 22 points, lighting it up from downtown — the broadcast said he’s called the Slovenian Stephen Curry, apparently for fairly good reason. Argentina certainly didn’t have the shooting night needed to keep up with Doncic, Prepelic, and the rest of Slovenia, as they were a dismal 5-of-31 from deep and will now face an uphill battle to get out of a tough group that also includes Spain.

A new Chucky TV series trailer arrived during this weekend’s low-key, virtual San Diego Comic-Con, and the good-bad news is that the O.G. homicidal doll shall never die. Granted, James Wan’s murderous doll creation, Annabelle, actually surfaced in history before Chucky, but the Child’s Play movies debuted before The Conjuring universe, and even more importantly, Chucky apparently killed Annabelle in a poster during the lead up to the 2019 movie. Yes, that feels like a century ago, and the same goes for the mid-2020 teaser that kept things very mysterious regarding who would voice Chucky. Well, this trailer puts that mystery to rest. Mark Hamill may have been the most recent Chucky, but original voice actor Brad Dourif will return for this USA Network/SyFy sequel series.

Also notably, Jennifer Tilly will return as Tiffany Valentine, but this trailer largely focuses on Zackary Arthur’s Jake, who makes the mistake of adopting Chucky at a garage sale. He soon discovers that Chucky’s running the joint even without batteries, and it doesn’t take too long before the doll’s wielding a knife and you know what that means. As Chucky puts it, this will be the “World Series of slaughter.” Yep, this show likely won’t bring anything too new to the table, but at least it will stay consistent in an honest manner. That’s because Child’s Play franchise writer (and director of three of the movies) Don Mancini created the series and will act as showrunner. From the synopsis:

An idyllic American town is thrown into chaos after a vintage ‘Good Guy’ doll turns up at a suburban yard sale. Soon, everyone must grapple with a series of horrifying murders that begin to expose the town’s deep hypocrisies and hidden secrets. Meanwhile, friends and foes from Chucky’s past creep back into his world and threaten to expose the truth behind his mysterious origins as a seemingly ordinary child who somehow became this notorious monster.

The Chucky TV series premieres on October 12.

Netflix bet on dead with Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, and that bet apparently paid off handsomely, which is a good thing because there’s already a prequel in the can and on the way to your queue. The prequel doesn’t take place terribly far into the past, either. Matthias Schweighöfer returns to the franchise as Dieter, a then-bank teller who’s recruited by a very convincing Nathalie Emmanuel (who promises “a life less ordinary”) to begin his heisting career.

Of course, this prequel isn’t entirely devoid of zombies. The outbreak already existed, given that this is Snyder’s zombie universe, and soon enough, the safes start cracking, or rather, Dieter gets to cracking them. In the process, he gets sucked into a lot more action that he probably bargained for, including a speedboat chase. The rabid Snyder fans will be here for it. From the synopsis:

In this prequel to Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, small-town bank teller Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) gets drawn into the adventure of a lifetime when a mysterious woman recruits him to join a crew of Interpol’s most wanted criminals, attempting to heist a sequence of legendary, impossible-to-crack safes across Europe.

Netflix’s Army of Thieves will debut this fall. Here’s some key art, which includes this tag line: “Nothing is a safe bet.” Nice.

There is a tremendous amount of planning required in putting on an Olympic event, as officials at the highest levels of each sport try to ensure that everything goes off without a hitch, as it is often the biggest stage some of the smaller sports will get to put their athletes on display.

Everything is meticulously planned, but sometimes you just can’t account for someone with a jumpy trigger finger as we learned at the start of the men’s triathlon competition. As the athletes all gathered at the starting platform for the swimming leg of the event, one of the boats that helps guide the athletes along and also houses camera crews was steadily trolling along in front of the platform, getting some long panning shots before the official start.

Unfortunately, the starter somehow didn’t see the giant boat that was blocking half the field from getting into the water and so when the flag went up to indicate all the athletes were in position, they smashed the start button leading to an incredible scene where half the field took off and the rest couldn’t go anywhere because of the big ol’ boat.

The boat trying to speed out of the way is an all-time “oh no” moment, and shouts to the guys at the far end who jumped in front of the boat thinking maybe they just had to beat an extra obstacle. They would eventually wrangle all of the guys who got in the water by driving boats in front to turn them around and restart, and from there the race would go on without another hitch, but it’s certainly an embarrassing moment for the folks driving the boat and the starter who jumped the gun, literally, on starting the race. The announcers were especially hilarious as they watched the replay, trying to figure out how the starter couldn’t see the boat that was right there. We’ll have to wait for the end of the race to see if any of the competitors blame the false start for a poor finish, but it was certainly an unusual sight on a stage as big as the Olympics.