Category: News

For a cartoon sequel that’s about Looney Tunes characters playing basketball with LeBron James, Space Jam: A New Legacy has managed to kick up a surprising amount of controversy over the past few days. While the first “scandal” was a little more tongue in cheek as people reacted to Lola Bunny being “less sexualized” than her, uh, curvy ’90s look, social media erupted over reports that Pepé Le Pew had been pulled from the sequel. The news hit shortly after an op-ed in the New York Times that called out the cartoon skunk for perpetuating rape culture. However, the two events were actually unrelated. Director Malcolm Lee had already cut Pepé from the Space Jam sequel months ago. Of course, by then, conservatives had latched onto the controversy as yet another example of “cancel culture” run amok, and added it to their list of things to constantly rail about, which now includes The Muppets, Mr. Potato Head, Dr. Seuss, and Star Wars.

Enter James Gunn, who was actually “canceled” when Disney fired him from the third Guardians of the Galaxy film after Trump supporters dug up old tweets where he made a series of tasteless jokes that he already apologized for years earlier. But despite that experience, Gunn still thinks the term “cancel culture” is blown out of proportion and that having discussion about topics like Pepe Le Pew is a good thing.

“Stop calling everything ‘cancel culture’ because you’re too dim to have a nuanced opinion,” Gunn tweeted. “People can be offended by something, or think something sucks, and that’s not ‘cancel culture’ – it’s free speech.”

Gunn later expanded his thoughts to everything from Harvey Weinsten to Speedy Gonzales and even touched on being “canceled” himself. You can see the full thread below:

(Via James Gunn on Twitter)

Kanye West has been in the news over the past year, although the focus was usually on his failed presidential campaign or his rumored divorce from Kim Kardashian and not his music. Now that the dust seems to be settling on those first two points, though, it seems like he’s getting back to his craft and progress on his album Donda is being made.

That’s according to collaborator Cyhi The Prynce, who said in a recent VladTV interview, “I think [West] started working on it late last year. Once November, December, January comes around, he kind of takes a hiatus, a little vacation break, get with the family. We’re back working, that’s why I’m out here, too.”

Donda was originally set for release in July 2020, although the album has yet to surface. He shared a tracklist for the album that month, which included a song that seemed to be about Elon Musk and SpaceX. After the missed release date came and went, West shared the cover art for the album, which looked like bodies near a sun as depicted by a heat-sensing camera.

This is the first news about Donda in a while, and since West was apparently close to being finished in July 2020, perhaps the project will be ready for release soon.

Nomadland was the big winner during Sunday’s 26th Critics’ Choice Awards, with the film winning Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Chloé Zhao, and Best Cinematography. But in a way, the real winner was all of us for getting to witness Alan Kim’s cute acceptance speech.

The eight-year-old star of Minari, one of the best movies of 2020, was named Best Young Actor/Actress over, among others, Talia Ryder in Never Rarely Sometimes Always and Helena Zengel in News of the World. While wearing the tiniest tuxedo, Kim said, “Thank you. Thank you. First of all, I’d like to thank the critics who voted and my family…” As he tried to list more names, the tears started flowing. “Oh my goodness, I’m crying…” Kim said (it has a similar energy to this, but happy). It’s freaking adorable.

This acceptance speech, along with the Sonic voicemail, is further proof that Kim should be nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars. Not only does he give a prodigious performance in the A24 indie, about a Korean-American family living in Arkansas in the 1980s, he would also block Jared Leto from getting nominated in the category. Does the Joker really need a second Oscar? (That’s a question that answers itself.)

Over the weekend, the Recording Academy announced its list of performers for this year’s Grammys ceremony, which includes Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and other big names. A pair of artists was excluded, though, and they’re not pleased about it: Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, who are now collectively known as Silk Sonic. The two were so flabbergasted by their absence from the list that they took to Twitter to vent their frustrations and rally the Academy to give them a shot.

Yesterday afternoon, .Paak shared a graphic of the performers list and tweeted, “YO @BrunoMars WHAT THE F*CK?!? Did you see this?!?! Call me back!!” Mars replied, “Wait… are you sure this is even real? where did you find this?” That was the beginning of a playful back-and-forth, which .Paak continued, “Bro it says CBS right at the top! It’s legit. What the F*CK!!?! ANSWER YOUR PHONE!!”

Mars answered, “Are you sure these are performers and not just presenters,” to which .Paak replied, “FAM STOP!!! Did they even hear the song?!? They don’t love us??” Mars then shared a revised image of the list and wrote, “See @AndersonPaak You’ve been misinformed. This is the real real bill. we’re all good!” As .Paak quickly pointed out, though, “And we’re not on this either you PRICK!!!” That elicited a simple “Oh” from Mars.

This is when .Paak got the ball rolling, tweeting, “Do we need to get a hashtag going or something??” Presumably rubbing his eyes while tweeting his response, Mars wrote, “Andy just chill. i’m still waking up.” .Paak was unrelenting, responding, “Nah f*ck that! I haven’t seen my family in months!! I need this to work, You promised me!! Everybody join in!!! I need all of Twitter to help make this trend!! Come on @RecordingAcad #LetSilkSonicThrive.” Mars answered, “I don’t think this is how u get on a show @AndersonPaak, & that’s a pretty long hashtag but i’m rockin wit you. #LetSilkSonicThrive.”

Mars then shared a letter that read:

“Dear Grammys,

If you can see it in your hearts to allow two out of work musicians to perform at your show, we would really appreciate it. We just released a song and could really use the promotion right now. We have a lot riding on this record (and the Pelicans game next week, but that’s another story). We haven’t been able to perform for a while and we just want to sing. We’ll send in an audition tape and take as many covid tests as we need to. I promise we won’t be extra. We just really want a gig again. I hope you’ll consider this request and give us the opportunity to shine. Love, Silk Sonic.”

.Paak added, “WHAT HE SAID! #LetSilkSonicThrive.” .Paak later noted that the hashtag had become a trending topic on Twitter, writing, “@RecordingAcad I know you see this!! We doing real numbers out here!! You can’t ignore the people!!!#LetSilkSonicThrive.” Mars responded, “Yo!!! @AndersonPaak It’s working! you’re a real twitter wizard! @RecordingAcad please log on and look at this!!! #LetSilkSonicThrive.” Mars added, “Wow this started with just us 2 and now we’re a whole army! There’s nothing we cant do. First the Grammys then the world! UNLIMITED POWERRR!”

Still, it would seem .Paak lost hope in the cause, as he was quick to attempt to hop on the BTS train, tweeting, “Bro the @RecordingAcad haven’t even responded… @bts_bighit do y’all need a drummer? #LetSilkSonicThrive.” Mars responded, “You’re right. I got excited we were trending for a while today. I’m sorry I let you down. I hope you & BTS go on to do great things,” to which .Paak replied, “You never let me down champ! Only disappointed me. But sh*t atleast it’s top trending! Don’t give up hope! Either The Grammys or BTS is gonna hit us Back I know it. thank you guys so much!!! #LetSilkSonicThrive.”

Mars and .Paak are certainly fit to appear on the Grammys stage, as they are both accomplished veterans of the awards: Mars has picked up 11 Grammy wins from 27 nominations, while .Paak has 3 wins from 7 nominations.

That’s where the situation stands now. It’s not clear if this is some sort of elaborate social media campaign leading up to an official announcement of Silk Sonic’s addition to the Grammy performance lineup, if this is actually how Mars and .Paak are trying to get involved, or if they’re just goofing around and getting some viral self-promotion in on Twitter. Either way, check out the tweets here or below.

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

Donald Trump, the Queens-born star of everyone’s favorite New York City-set movie (Home Alone 2: Lost in New York), returned to the Five Boroughs on Sunday for the first time since leaving the White House. “Trump pulled up to the Midtown skyscraper where he stays while in Manhattan just before 9 p.m. He was seated in a backseat of a black SUV,” the New York Post reported, adding this amusing detail: “Upon his arrival, he waved to a lone Trump supporter who was across the street next to the media.” One!

Trump is widely disliked in New York, especially the city. He received only 37.75% of the vote in the 2020 election (Biden won the state’s 29 electoral votes with 60.86%), which makes sense, considering last October, the former-president tweeted that New York had “gone to hell.” He also complained that “New York City and State are falling apart” and “all they want to do is investigate to make me hate them even more than I should.”

No wonder he changed his primary residence from Manhattan to Palm Beach, Florida:

New York is a blue state, and the city still more liberal; since Trump took office, there have routinely been demonstrations against White House policies outside his eponymous properties. New Yorkers’ dislike of Trump hit new highs last spring. His administration’s mishandling of coronavirus was felt especially deeply in New York City, an early US center of the pandemic. City and state officials begged a seemingly uninterested Trump for help.

At least he still has one fan left (it was probably Rudy).

(Via the New York Post)

Let’s just say that Meghan Markle’s 2017 engagement and subsequent marriage to Britain’s Prince Harry did not go well with the Royal Family. Fast forward to 2020, and the couple left not only Great Britain but the Royal Family behind for California life, and they seemed quite relieved to do so. The British press continues to trash Meghan, and the family hasn’t defended her at all; in fact, it feels like Buckingham Palace is joining in the criticism, and Meghan’s former Suits co-star, Patrick Adams, has trashed the British Royals in her defense. And after years of not be able to speak her mind, Meghan and Prince Harry sat down with Oprah for a Sunday CBS Evening News interview.

The interview was a doozy. People were outraged at how the couple says they were treated by Harry’s family, who more than suggested that there’s been a racially-charged motivation to what’s gone down. During the interview, Meghan also revealed that she’d grown suicidal (to Oprah’s inquiry on whether she’d considered harming herself, she responded, “Yes. This was very, very clear, … and very scary”) while living as part of the British Royal Family, and she felt that Harry’s decision to leave saved her life.

Now, people are revisiting a prediction made by John Oliver to Stephen Colbert on how Meghan might be treated in the Royal Family. As The Daily Beast’s Molly Jong-Fast tweets, “So @iamjohnoliver really called this one.”

During this interview, Oliver (who is, like Harry, a British man who married an American woman) declared that he wasn’t at all excited about the impending nuptials. “I would not blame her if she pulled out of this at the last minute,” the Last Week Tonight host declared. “I don’t think you need to have just seen the pilot episode of The Crown to get a basic sense of, ‘She might be marrying into a family that could cause her some emotional complications.’”

To that, Colbert offered, “Well this generation seems like nice people, right? They’re all nice people.” And Oliver simply looked at his host and warily replied, “Yeeeeeeahhh.”

Oliver, of course, mentioned TheCrown, which really upset the British royals with Season 4, which pulled no punches in painting in a highly unflattering light for their alleged treatment of Princess Diana — particularly how her eating disorder flew into warp speed while Queen essentially (and allegedly) told her to suck it up and deal with how horribly she was treated by Prince Charles. This led the British government to request a “fiction” disclaimer, although Netflix said no dice.

Watch the full John Oliver segment with Stephen Colbert below.

On Sunday night, while a subset of the sports world was possibly watching the NBA All-Star Game, far more eyeballs were glued to CBS for Oprah sitting down with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry for a tell-all interview about the ill-treatment and racism they’ve received from the royal family and British tabloids in recent years.

In the interview, Markle detailed the horrific things she’s been called and ways the royal family has moved to isolate her. She noted that some members of the family, who she chose not to name, expressed concern over what the skin color of their son, Archie, would be, among other things and noted that at one point during her pregnancy she “didn’t want to be alive anymore.” They also announced, on a more happy note, that she was pregnant once again with a girl, but the focus for many was on the details of the racism and emotional abuse she has faced since marrying Harry.

Among those to respond to the interview was Serena Williams, who is friends with Markle and knows plenty about the racism and sexism you can face from the British tabloids over her career atop the tennis world and as a dominant player at Wimbledon. Williams called for people to “decry malicious, unfounded gossip and tabloid journalism” and voiced support for Markle as she deals with the mental and emotional toll that can take, particularly as a Black woman when those around you don’t support you.

In the leadup to this interview coming out, there were numerous hit pieces and attacks on Harry and Meghan and that will almost assuredly continue in the fallout from it going public, but it showed immense strength from Markle to speak out against what she’s dealt with and she has a powerful ally and friend to lean on in Serena Williams.

All this week, TNT has been running The Inside Story, a four-part behind the scenes documentary on Inside The NBA. It concluded on Sunday night with a look at Shaq’s addition to the show and the more recent years, and for many that meant hope that they would dive into what has become one of the all-time great moments in the show’s history: Shaq tripping and falling while trying to race Kenny to the board.

It, along with the reaction of Shaq and Chuck to the tunnel incident between the Clippers and Rockets, is probably the moment most think of when asked for their favorite Inside moment. Happily, they went back to relive that moment on Sunday’s episode, laughing at Shaq’s tumble like it happened yesterday, with Ernie revealing he still has to defend himself from accusations that he set Shaq up.

As Chuck says, it was most definitely not staged, which you can tell from Shaq’s reaction because he immediately seeks out someone to blame in Ernie. The best part of the segment was the producers talking about how they spent weeks prepping a lip sync battle segment they hoped would go viral, only for that to be upstaged by Shaq eating it while ripping cords out of the desk — further evidence that it wasn’t staged.

It is still a hysterical video to watch and is the best example of how the show is at its best when they riff of something that’s both fun and natural.

Two years ago, Damian Lillard hit what has been to this point the biggest shot of his career when he buried the Oklahoma City Thunder with a deep three at the buzzer that has become part of Trail Blazers lore.

After the game, Paul George was asked about how you defend something like that, and he responded that it was “a bad shot,” which earned him plenty of backlash from fans and was really the beginning of the public somewhat turning on George.

On Sunday night, George watched as Lillard and Stephen Curry buried deep three after deep three in the All-Star Game, capped off by Lillard’s 42-foot game-winner for Team LeBron and was asked if he’s changed his tune on that shot. George, to his credit, said he was rightfully criticized for his past comments on the long threes, which for guys like Dame and Steph have become part of their game, and now has done a 180 and now calls it a “great shot” after seeing them go in for his squad in the All-Star Game.

It is fascinating to see in real time how quickly that shot has become just part of the NBA game, albeit not a halfcourt heave quite in the way Dame and Steph were pulling in the All-Star Game, and for those two and a select few others, it really is a good shot because of how it warps the defense. Obviously it helps to be on the right end of that shot, but it seems George has come around to the new reality of that shot being not just a part of the game today but a good shot for the right guys.

The 2020 NBA All-Star Game brought some much-needed excitement back to the proceedings as the combination of the draft format and the Elam Ending made for a highly competitive final quarter. For the 2021 edition, the Elam Ending proved as a merciful tool to end a blowout early, as the fan-less All-Star experience was, unsurprisingly, not nearly as intense or exciting.

There were still some highlights, mostly coming from Team LeBron. The team ran away to a 170-150 win on the backs of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Stephen Curry, and Damian Lillard. The reigning back-to-back MVP was a perfect 16-for-16 on the night, including three three-pointers — two of which he banked in — as he went off for 35 points. One of the highlights of the night was his 16th bucket coming on one of those banked in threes while the booth begged him not to shoot it to ruin his perfect evening.

Giannis would go on to pick up the Kobe Bryant All-Star Game MVP trophy for his performance.

Curry chipped in 28 points, as he caught fire in the first half, going 6-for-8 from deep, including a little halfcourt shootout with Lillard, and while he cooled off a touch in the second half, he still managed to hit some clutch buckets late.

The game-winner came on a halfcourt pullup from Damian Lillard, who finished with 32 points, including some highlight reel deep threes as he proved Dame Time doesn’t need a clock to exist.

As for the namesake of Team LeBron, he made sure to enjoy a nice long rest, not playing a minute in the second half and watching his draft picks do the work as his squad moves to 4-0 under the new draft format. He had four points and four assists in just over 12 minutes.

On Team Durant, Kyrie Irving led the way with 24 points and 12 assists, while Bradley Beal led them in scoring with 26 points, but they just weren’t able to keep up with the barrage of threes from Team LeBron, who shot over 50 percent from distance on the night compared to 37.5 percent from team Durant.

That put a bow on a strange night of All-Star festivities, and the players will have a few days off before the season gets back under way on Wednesday and Thursday.