Category: News

The first Virgin Galactic Spaceflight is set to launch this weekend, and one of the Earth’s biggest terrestrial stars has a new song coming to celebrate the occasion. Khalid, the baritone-voiced Texan who most recently released “Working” in collaboration with Tate McRae, will be putting out “New Normal” on July 21, commemorating the landing of the Unity 22 crew after the 22nd flight test for VSS Unity. He’ll also perform the song live on stage for its debut.

Khalid told Rolling Stone, “Around this time last year, I was super fascinated and gravitated toward space. I was watching this comet by the name of Neowise last year, and space travel is something that I’ve always been interested in as well. And I’ve been going through the motions of understanding this new, postmodern future that’s coming together, especially when it comes down to technology — it’s something that really excites me.”

He called the song his “personal therapy,” writing it to help him cope with the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. As he explained to Rolling Stone, I had to come to terms with who I was as an individual and the type of person that I wanted to be. And to me, this song, it just embodies hope for the outcome of our future.”

The launch stream will go live at 7:00 am MDT/9:00 am EDT on the day of the flight at Virgin Galactic.com and on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.

Way back in late 2019, my optimism for an incoming trio of lady-nerd movies vaulted (ridiculously) off the charts. When I say “ridiculously,” that’s a hindsight term because, obviously, things didn’t turn out precisely as planned for anything in 2020. Three particular films — Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman 1984, and Black Widow — were scheduled to land within six months of each other. At the time, it felt like an estrogen-laden windfall after Captain Marvel‘s financial success on the tail of (fake)-negative review bombing by sexist trolls ahead of the movie’s release. The movie turned out to be a cosmic delight that (globally) grossed over $1 billion, even if a certain contingent subsequently could not handle the thought of Brie Larson jokingly holding Thor’s hammer. Although it felt strange for Captain Marvel to be the first female-fronted MCU movie while Natasha Romanoff (still) toiled away as a sidekick-to-dudes for over a decade, Black Widow would “soon” have its day as a solo act.

Well, we had to wait for Fast 9, and we had to wait for superheroine movies, too. Granted, Birds of Prey surfaced before shutdowns, and that was actually the last tentpole out there for over a year. If you weren’t enraptured by that movie (as I was not, since I thought the film took the wrong approach to a Harley Quinn solo film), then you had to hope for something better… eventually. Wonder Woman 1984 (on HBO Max) also did not scratch that itch for a lot of us, so I pinned my hopes on Black Widow. What did I hope for? A few things: (1) A gathering of butt-kicking ladies executing well-choreographed fight scenes; (2) An emotionally resonant story that, at least figuratively, paid proper respects to Natasha (who did not receive a funeral, unlike Tony Stark, in Avengers: Endgame).

Fast forward several months, and I’m pleased to report that the Scarlett Johansson-led vehicle did deliver upon my (tempered) expectations. That’s a notable feat, given that Kevin Feige meant for the movie (which directly follows the events of Captain America: Civil War) to launch Phase 4 (when it was already arguably past time for Natasha to have her own solo movie). Instead, WandaVision (followed by The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and half of Loki) did those honors first. The film, however, still cleanly fits into the timeline, and even perhaps more so in this accidental re-ordering, due to an explicit connection with one of these shows. Johansson’s Avenger receives a proper sendoff, Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova positions herself to carry on the torch, and the audience receives well-executed action peppered with wryly comic moments.

Even more so, Natasha Romanoff’s “solo” picture (also bolstered by David Harbour and Rachel Weisz’s jointly wild accent work) truly introduces us to the title character. More than ever before, we get to know Natasha (who remained a bit of a cipher until death), her motivations, and what made her who she is, beyond scant references to “the Red Room” (the Russian factory that cranked out Widow assassins). A lot of that background comes from the reactions of Yelena, actually, given that Natasha’s been through so much that we don’t see too many visible emotions from her. Hell, most of what we’ve previously seen from her, emotionally speaking, was written all over her face in the moments before she rushed to achieve death before Hawkeye could do so in Endgame. Their dynamic, too, receives more background, since we (finally) hear more (after being teased since The Avengers) about what went down in Budapest.

Is the movie perfect? No. The action scenes don’t quite measure up to what the movie clearly wanted to do: evoke the pedal-to-the-metal feel of Captain America: The Winter Soldier‘s highway battle. In fact and to be blunt, some of the green-screen work in Black Widow‘s climactic fight looks not-so-great. None of that has anything to do, however, with the fact that this film turns the concept of the big, silly action movie on its head. It’s no longer about a tough guy swinging a hammer because (and no one questions this) he is “worthy,” or some billionaire playboy philanthropist in a fancy suit who commands respect with a reverse snap. Instead, Natasha’s made to earn everything through hand-to-hand combat after a (frankly) long and brutal road. She resolutely does so while (and this is not a spoiler) doing what she wants to do: use her “killing machine” abilities for good. And although we probably thought we understood what made Black Widow who she is, we receive a lot more shading here.

In short, Natasha Romanoff finally gets her due. She earns some peace of mind (during a story that takes place at least a decade before her death), and we get to see how she became who she was, beyond simply being trained as a female assassin. We also get a lot more context into certain pivotal decisions that she’s made along the way. Is the Taskmaster stuff cool, too? Sure. Anything I’d say about that character would be a spoiler, so I’d best not say anything at all.

Instead, the most important character in this film is, well, Natasha, who is embracing those so-called negative qualities about herself — and that checkered past — and funneling them into a more worthy cause. We’re reminded that Natasha could have, after all, chosen not to defect to S.H.I.E.L.D. and to become a mercenary for hire, and yet, she was treated horribly by the U.S. government after Civil War. So, she took a blast to her past, which involved a journey that helped flesh out her sense of self, and that propelled her to be the glue that held the Avengers together after Thanos killed half the universe in Infinity War. I’d even argue that she did more than any other individual Avenger (although Tony Stark got the spotlighted moment) to reverse the Snap.

Ultimately to me, that’s what Black Widow stands for: to spotlight what Natasha truly wanted to accomplish. It’s not simply a film to fill in some timeline blanks for the first female superhero in the MCU, and it’s not only a movie to set up Natasha’s successor. Instead, this film is about Natasha reconciling with a lot of the “red in her ledger” and women standing both for themselves and together as a whole. That’s important, especially when I think back to how Birds Of Prey made faint motions at “emancipating” Harley when, really, she mooned over the Joker for half of the movie. And let’s face it, if Mr. J had shown up, Harley would have ditched the ladies, too (this was no girl-gang movie as sold). Natasha’s also not, like Diana in Wonder Woman 1984, obsessing over her dead ex-boyfriend to the point where she’s essentially romancing a body thief, who she summoned to possess some random dude, troublingly without consent.

Yup, Birds Of Prey and the Wonder Woman sequel screwed those pooches, hard. Rest assured that Black Widow keeps the mission clear without detouring into anyone’s pants. Natasha also becomes much more than the figure who sacrificed her life so that Hawkeye could weep while holding the Soul Stone and return to his family. She transcends infinitely more than the sum of her powerful moves and poses and hairstyles through the years, although if I must pick a favorite in that last department, I appreciate the chaos of her red Endgame roots before the sh*t really hit the Soul-Stone fan.

With Black Widow, there’s also something to be said about this being the “test” movie for Marvel after theaters reopen. If it fails, financially, then lady superheroes will receive the side-eye, but hopefully, those Disney+ premium upgrades will help bring in more pandemic dollars. Don’t forget, too, that A Quiet Place 2‘s strengths rested upon women, too, not only Emily Blunt but also Millicent Simmons. Let’s hope that, in the end, Black Widow can do what Captain Marvel did for lady power, all while glowing even “higher, further, [and] faster.”

‘Black Widow’ arrives in theaters and on Disney+ premier access on July 9.

MEGA-SPOILERS for Black Widow and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will be found below.

Ever since Black Widow‘s greenlighting, I wondered if Marvel Studios would take the action back to Budapest. That definitely happened, once Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff answered a call from Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, who was hanging in the apartment of her older “sister.” This provided ample opportunity for the prequel of sorts (which followed the events of Captain America: Civil War) to deliver on all those references between Natasha and Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye/Clint Barton. In effect, those hints amounted to a long-running joke for fans.

Here’s how it began, in 2012’s The Avengers while the assembled O.G. MCU heroes fought The Chitauri. Natasha remarked that the experience is “just like Budapest all over again!” To that, Clint countered, “You and I remember Budapest very differently!”

This, of course, led everyone to wonder (as enthused fans do) what went down in this mysterious operation, or even if there was a romantic component involved. Thankfully for everyone, Clint (whose wife and family were later revealed, and they heartbreakingly disappeared in The Snap) and Natasha were revealed to be the best of platonic friends. During Avengers: Endgame, the two embarked for Vormir in search of the Soul Stone, and Clint remarked, “It’s a long way from Budapest!” Natasha grinned in response, before this more recent mission ended in a very different way.

As even the most casual Marvel watcher knows, Natasha didn’t make it out of Vormir alive. Natasha sacrificed herself for the Soul Stone, beating Hawkeye in a determined scramble to leap to death. At that point, it felt like we might never hear what went down in Budapest (since Hawkeye obviously couldn’t deliver the goods during a rambling speech at a non-existent funeral), but Black Widow filled in those blanks.

After Natasha confronted Yelena in that Budapest apartment, Natasha revealed her belief that Dreykov (the man responsible for running the Red Room) is dead. Yelena attempts to correct her, and then Natasha unloads the history of how she and Hawkeye spent ten days fighting during a shootout with Hungarian forces, and a building blew up, and all of this was her final step to defect to S.H.I.E.L.D. That’s when Yelena breaks the news: Dreykov is still alive, and he’s cranking out Widows in a secret location. Natasha, apparently, killed his daughter instead of Dreykov himself, and Natasha failed to check for his body to confirm death.

Later, we learn that Dreykov resurrected his daughter and transformed her into The Taskmaster (an identity reveal that felt disappointing and runs in a different direction than the comics), but at least we have some Budapest answers: Natasha and Clint’s operation meant to disable the Red Room architect and secure her eventual place in the Avengers. Also, this information goes a long way to emphasize Natasha’s unfinished business, which was even more “unfinished” than she realized. As for Hawkeye’s fate, watch out, Clint Barton. It sure looks like Yelena Belova will be coming for you, even though the motivating factor there is Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine’s lies. In other words, we’re gonna be putting Disney+’s Hawkeye show on the viewing calendar once there’s a release date.

‘Black Widow’ is currently in theaters and streaming on Disney+ via Premier Access.

The writing of Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album Sour was a joint effort between Rodrigo and collaborator Dan Nigro. They’re not the only writers credited on the release, though: Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff are credited on “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back,” since the song interpolates (but does not sample) Swift’s “New Year’s Day.”

Now, Swift and Antonoff’s officially credited influence on the album has been expanded, as Rolling Stone notes that on Spotify and Tidal, the credits for “Deja Vu” now list Swift, Antonoff, and Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent) as co-writers. That’s because of the strong influence that Swift’s “Cruel Summer” had on the song, which Rodrigo has mentioned before.

Speaking of collaborating, Swift has been doing a lot of that lately. She recently reunited with her Folklore and Evermore collaborators Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon to appear on their Big Red Machine song “Renegade.” There’s also another one, “Birch,” still to come. It’s also rumored that Swift has an Adele link-up in the works, which naturally generated much excitement.

As for Rodrigo, she’s fresh off the release of her Sour Prom concert film and being named Spotify’s most-streamed artist of the year so far.

Listen to both “Deja Vu” and “Cruel Summer” below.

Much like waiting for Alfred Hitchcock to show up and in one of his own movies, anticipating where and when Stan Lee might pop up in a Marvel movie has long been one of the joys of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But since the pop culture giant’s passing in 2018, the use of his image has become a much more contentious thing. While Lee’s posthumous appearance in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame officially marked his final cameo, The Wrap notes that Al Jean, The Simpsons’ longtime showrunner, wanted to resurrect this tradition for “The Good, The Bart, And The Loki,” the animated comedy’s recent Loki crossover short, but was denied permission by Marvel.

After Jean and his team discovered some unused audio files of Lee, they discussed the idea of paying tribute to the Marvel icon in the most Stan Lee way possible: with a cameo.

“We just thought, ‘Oh, we have Stan Lee audio from when he was on our show, could we cameo him in?,” Jean explained to ComicBook.com. “And they said that their policy is he doesn’t cameo now that he’s passed away, which is a completely understandable policy. That was their only note and that was, of course, easily done.”

Jean went on to explain that they faced a similar scenario when they recently made a Star Wars-themed short, but were instructed that they could not feature Grogu, a.k.a. Baby Yoda, in it. “It was like, if you let everybody use Grogu in their stuff that wanted to, it would be all over,” Jean said. “Believe me, I respect that these franchises have a great power beyond ours. I respect it.”

(Via The Wrap)

BTS’ hit single “Butter” is enjoying a tremendous run at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart at the moment: It’s currently at six weeks at No. 1. That success is due in part to the various versions and formats of the song they’ve released. Today brings yet another “Butter” release and this one comes with a great bonus: The CD single of the track is out now, and it features an upbeat new song called “Permission To Dance,” which the band wrote with Ed Sheeran.

Sheeran spoke about the single in a June interview, saying, “I’ve actually worked with BTS on their last record, and I’ve just written a song for their new record. And they’re super, super cool guys as well.” The previous collaboration to which Sheeran referred is the Map Of The Soul: 7 song “Make It Right,” which he also co-wrote.

Sheeran isn’t too far removed from his week-long residency on The Late Late Show, joining the program for comedy bits and performances. Now BTS are gearing up for a late-night residency of their own, as they’re set to spend back-to-back nights on The Tonight Show next week, on July 13 and 14.

Watch the “Permission To Dance” video above.

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

Rudy Giuliani had a good run. After decades of making headlines for going head-to-head with New York’s most feared mafia bosses and cleaning up the city’s once-blighted streets, the former New York City mayor became the poster boy for patriotism and American resilience in the wake of 9/11. But ever since Giuliani officially tethered himself to longtime pal and bad luck charm Donald Trump, things have gone, well, not well.

Most recently, Giuliani was stripped of his right to practice law in the state of New York as well as in Washington, D.C. because all the lies he has peddled in the name of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election so that Trump could be declared the winner. Prior to that, he was the subject of an early-morning FBI raid, which is never a good thing. With his legal fees mounting, Rudy’s equally disgraced old pal Bernard Kerik—former New York City police commissioner-turned-felon—decided to make a big show of setting up what he called The Rudy Giuliani Defense Fund, or (more laughably) The Rudy Giuliani Freedom Fund, with the goal of crowdsourcing $5 million to help Giuliani pay his legal fees. As of earlier this week, the “fund” had raised less than .2 percent of that. Now, as the Daily Beast reports, the fund’s page has been shuttered altogether.

The Fundly account, established in Rudy’s name a day before Kerik launched a website for the legal defense fund in late June, raised $9,798 before the page disappeared—far short from its goal of raising $5 million in two months. While the landing page for the Fundly account is gone, the Giuliani account still shows it’s in possession of its nearly $10,000 donor haul, with the website inconspicuously archiving donor names and amounts given. But links to the legal defense fund page they gave to now automatically redirect to Fundly’s general landing page for “politics and public policy” causes.

While Kerik did not respond to Daily Beast’s request for comment, Robert Costello—the man who has the unenviable title of “Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer”—said he had “no knowledge” on the matter.

To say that people have seemed to stop giving a sh*t about what happens to Rudy would be a massive understatement—particularly if we’re basing that opinion on the amount of money his Fundly page raised. Meanwhile, the one person who should be giving Rudy money—not to help with his legal fund, but because he has a pile of unpaid invoices from Giuliani sitting on his desk—is the one who got Giuliani into all this trouble in the first place: Trump. But that’s not likely to happen anytime soon. According to Michael Wolff’s upcoming book Landslide, “Trump is annoyed that [Rudy] tried to get paid for his election challenge work.”

What’s the word for being a persona non grata to someone who is persona non grata?

(Via Daily Beast)

As is tradition, this week’s episode of Indiecast has Steve and Ian taking questions from you: the loyal listeners. Questions were fielded from all around the globe, leading this Mailbag episode to revolve around a provocative conversation about topics like the state of music journalism and which medium is best for learning about an artist in 2021, as well as bands that could have been bigger had they come around at a different time, blog rock, and the songs that Steve and Ian have listened to the most over the years.

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Steve is recommending Liam Kazar, whose latest effort, Due North, is set for release in August. Ian, on the other hand, is taking the opportunity to once again plug South Carolina outfit Adjy, who released The Idyll Opus (I-IV) last week.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 47 on Apple Podcasts and Spotify below, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts here. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [email protected], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.

Jason Momoa is still in Canada wrapping production on the second season of his Apple TV series, See, and when that’s done, he’ll immediately jet to the set of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which has already started filming. But despite his busy schedule, Momoa still found time on Thursday to get a little freaky for a sexy challenge on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

While filling in for Kimmel, guest host Anthony Anderson got Momoa to participate in the show’s patented “Make It Sexy Challenge” where stars are tasked with taking boring, mundane tasks, and well, making it sexy. In this case, things got wild right off the bat, as both Momoa and Anderson stripped off their shirts before Momoa slathered himself with sanitizer. He hadn’t even been given a challenge yet!

“Normally, I like to squirt it all over my chest,” Momoa said as the live audience hooted and hollered. “Sometimes I rub it all over my face because it kills 99.99 percent of things.” And that was only the beginning of rubbing things all over his chest.

Fo the first challenge, Anderson told Momoa to open a can of tuna, but “make that sexy.” After tossing a can opener to the side and saying, “Most children would use this, but I’m Aquaman,” Momoa seemingly cracked the can with his biceps and then immediately got to work slathering tuna fish all over his chest as Anderson cheered him on.

Anderson then asked Momoa to iron a shirt, and once again, the chest rubbing began. Only this time, Momoa coated himself with baby oil before laying down a not very subtle innuendo. “I like to lay down the shirt, and this is about the long-stroke, okay?” Momoa said. “It ain’t about that short sh*t, you need it long.”

Flight attendants are overworked, underpaid, and a report found that “transportation workers have the highest COVID-19 risk score — 75.7 out of an average 30.2 — of 966 non-health jobs assessed.” They’re about as essential as essential workers get, but because they make customers wear masks to prevent catching a virus that is still killing over 8,000 people every day, Tomi Lahren thinks they’re Nazis. I guess she would know.

During a discussion about “unruly behavior” in the skies on Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News program Outnumbered, former-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany called on viewers to “be nice to our flight attendants” after a “brutal year” of “being the mask police.” Lahren had a different, less empathetic take. “But I will disagree a little bit with Kayleigh on this. I don’t honestly ever do this, but I will say there are so many good flight attendants out there. But there are some flight attendants that take their job as the mask police to extremes, becoming almost Nazis of the air.”

If McEnany is the voice of reason, something has gone terribly wrong:

Lahren, who once referred to social distancing as “willful slavery,” said the strict enforcement of mask mandates is irritating some airline passengers. Airlines have reported a sharp uptick in bad behavior from passengers this year. “It drops beneath your nose,” Lahren said, referencing a slipping mask, and flight attendants are “constantly getting mad at you.”

Lahren continued her bad takes on Twitter, where she tweeted, “You can be kicked off a plane for having an already useless mask below your nose but you won’t be kicked out of this country for being a criminal illegal alien. Makes sense, in Biden’s America.” She also wrote that Joe Biden’s “vaccine patrol” can “kiss my country ass.” Twitter can be very bad (@TomiLahren) but it can also be very good (people making fun of Tomi Lahren).