Category: News

Kristen Stewart is not the first person that comes to mind when you think actresses who could play Princess Diana. For one thing, she’s not British. There is no second thing, because to many, that’s enough to disqualify her; that would be like having an American become the next James Bond (I’m 95 percent certain there would be another Revolutionary War if that happens). Thankfully, director Pablo Larraín is not part of that “many.” The Jackie filmmaker cast Stewart, fresh off a very good comedic performance in Happiest Season, to play the People’s Princess in his new movie, Spencer.

And based on the first image released from the film, it was good casting.

Yup, looks like Diana. Spencer takes place in December 1991, when “the Prince and Princess of Wales’ marriage has long since grown cold,” according to the official plot description from Neon. “Though rumors of affairs and a divorce abound, peace is ordained for the Christmas festivities at Sandringham Estate. There’s eating and drinking, shooting and hunting. Diana knows the game. This year, things will be a whole lot different.” Stewart described the film as “a dive inside an emotional imagining of who Diana was at a pivotal turning point in her life. It is a physical assertion of the sum of her parts, which starts with her given name; Spencer. It is a harrowing effort for her to return to herself, as Diana strives to hold onto what the name Spencer means to her.” Let’s see if Diana’s family likes Spencer more than The Crown. I’m guessing not!

Spencer, which was written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight and also stars Timothy Spall (Mr. Turner), Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water), and Sean Harris (Mission: Impossible – Fallout), is expected to come out in fall 2021.

Rudy Giuliani’s bad week continues. He’s already been sued by Dominion Voting Systems for $1.3 billion over his part in spreading the “Big Lie,” within which he relentlessly accused Dominion of switching Trump votes in favor of Joe Biden. Now, Rudy’s losing all of that sweet, sweet, ad revenue from YouTube, and that’s after Trump apparently decided not to pay his legal fees.

Yep, matters keep growing worse for America’s (Former) Mayor and the Borat Subsequent Moviefilm star. All of those bizarre videos that he uses to push cigars and gold coins while ranting about the “Biden Crime Family” (and likening them to the Corleones) might push a few people to his website to buy those cigars, but they won’t be earning any ad dollars on YouTube. Rudy’s been (at least) temporarily removed from the Partner Program for spreading misinformation, and ex-President Trump’s ban has been extended. Via The Independent:

YouTube has suspended Rudy Giuliani from its Partner Program, preventing former president Donald Trump’s lawyer from making money from his videos. The Google-owned platform also extended Trump’s channel suspension indefinitely after he was initially banned for one week for flouting its content policies.

“In light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, the Donald J. Trump channel will remain suspended,” a YouTube spokesperson said. “Our teams are staying vigilant and closely monitoring for any new developments.”

In response to this move, Rudy told Washington Post that YouTube has made a “predatory” and “dangerous” move, which he calls a “seductive road to authoritarianism” and potential violation of antitrust laws. Rudy might want to go back to the continuing legal education books, but that would have also been a wise move before his Total Landscaping farce and filing lawsuits in endless states in an effort to help Trump dismantle representative democracy.

(Via The Independent & Washington Post)

In recent months, Doja Cat and Ariana Grande have become regular collaborators. Doja got a featured spot on Positions with her appearance on “Motive,” and more recently, she joined Grande and Megan Thee Stallion on a remix of “34+35.” So, it would be fair to guess that Doja and Grande have gotten to know each other fairly well. That seems to be true based on how spot-on Doja Cat’s impersonation of Grande is.

During a recent Instagram Live broadcast, she prefaced her impression by saying, “I’m going to do the impression, but I’m going to do it very short. I will do my Ariana Grande impression, but I’m not going deep, I’m not going deep.” After taking a second to get into character, she let out a quick “yeah” as Grande before bursting into laughter and quickly exiting frame. She re-entered and exclaimed, “Don’t… don’t get mad!” Doja then tried a couple more “yeahs” before concluding, “That’s it, that’s all you’re getting, that’s all.”

Grande previously said of Doja, “I love her. I was able to work with her earlier this year on this song that I want to save for whenever it’s time again, to drop. But I love her so much. I love her personality. I love what she brings to the table musically. She’s just such a breath of fresh air. I think she’s brilliant and so talented.”

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

Tucker Carlson and Mike Lindell is a match made in hell. The MyPillow CEO dropped by the conservative host’s Fox News show on Tuesday to share his most bonkers theories for why he was booted from Twitter. It had nothing to do with his spreading misinformation and trying to talk former-President Trump into enacting martial law. It’s because he’s the only one brave enough to tell the truth, according to Carlson.

“He’s one of our biggest sponsors, and we are grateful for that,” Carlson said, praising Lindell (he’s lost most of his other advertisers). “He is sponsoring free speech. But of course, the enforcers of orthodoxy are not impressed, they are enraged. For the crime of having different opinions, Mike Lindell has been banned from Twitter.” After ranting about being attacked by bots, Lindell got into what happened before he was suspended from Twitter.

“This time, about 17 days ago, when someone put up on the internet actual new machine election fraud, I retweeted it, and they took my Twitter down. Now when they took it down, this is interesting, they didn’t take it down all the way,” he said. “I just couldn’t do anything and they were running my Twitter like they were me. My friends are going, ‘You’re not tweeting very much and when you do…’ I said, ‘I’m not doing that!’ So I try to take it down and I got a tweet, a thing from Germany saying these are Twitter rules and you cannot do this, take anything down. So they ran my Twitter for 14 or 15 days.” Lindell then accused Dominion Voting Systems of… I dunno, something.

The MyPillow CEO then baselessly accused Dominion of hiring “hit groups and bots and trolls” to go after his vendors before decrying “cancel culture.”

“I thought the rules were if you think someone is saying something incorrect, you explain how it’s incorrect and you convince his audience that actually you’re right and he’s wrong,” Carlson said. “When did that go away? When did we decide force was the only answer to disagreement?”

Lindell also dared Dominion “to sue me because then it would get out faster. They don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want that.” Carlson added, “They’re not making conspiracy theories go away by doing that… You don’t make people calm down and get reasonable and moderate by censoring them. You make them way crazier. Of course!” Not that Carlson or Lindell know anything about crazy theories.

(Via Mediaite)

On occasion over the past few years, Violet Grohl has popped up to perform and prove that her father, Dave Grohl, passed his exemplary music genes on to her. Now, in a sense, the 14-year-old is officially a professional musician: She sang some backing vocals on the upcoming Foo Fighters album Medicine At Midnight.

In a BBC interview, Grohl described renting and recording the album in a “funky old house down the street from where I live” in Encino, California. This led to Violet being featured on the album, as Grohl said:

“At around two or three o’clock, I would take a break and go pick her up from school. Sometimes she’d want to come back to the house and she’d sit on the couch and do her homework. One day, [producer] Greg Kurstin said, ‘Hey Violet, would you like to do a back-up vocal?’ And she got behind the microphone, she did a few takes, and on the chorus of ‘Making A Fire,’ that’s Violet’s high vocal in there.

It seemed very natural [but] it didn’t seem official until my accountant called a few months ago and asked where she should deposit Violet’s check. And I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ She said, ‘Well, she sang on the album so she has to be paid for playing on the record.’ And I said, ‘You can take that money and give it to me, and I’ll put it in an account for Violet that she can open when she’s 18 years old!’”

Find the full interview here.

Though local outlets like KCRW have already been singing Jensen McRae’s praises, it wasn’t until a joke about an imaginary Phoebe Bridgers “cover” that many in the music industry sat up and took notice. Last week McRae tweeted a joke about the intro to Phoebe’s third album in 2023, hypothesizing it would be about getting vaccinated at Dodgers Stadium. Then, she went ahead and wrote the first verse for good measure. Hey, it’s a pandemic, we’re all trying to entertain ourselves as we can.

Thing is, McRae’s “cover” was so spot on — and actually a really good song — so of course Phoebe herself shared it with the simple exclamation “oh my god.”

After that, the internet did its thing and the song became an instant social media hit. So Jensen decided to give the people what we want, and wrote through the whole song, naming it “Immune” and sharing it tonight. While it’s great that this viral incident put McRae on the map, keep in mind that she’s much more than just someone having fun on the internet, she’s an fledgling musician herself on the cusp of releasing a debut album, and has already released incredible original songs like “Wolves” and “White Boy.” Like Phoebe, McRae is a Los Angeles native; she was born in Santa Monica and raised in Woodland Hills in a Black and Jewish family. She received a full ride to USC’s Thornton School of Music and graduated with a degree in popular music performance. Check out “Immune” above and look for a lot more coming from Jensen soon.

Though local outlets like KCRW have already been singing Jensen McRae’s praises, it wasn’t until a joke about an imaginary Phoebe Bridgers “cover” that many in the music industry sat up and took notice. Last week McRae tweeted a joke about the intro to Phoebe’s third album in 2023, hypothesizing it would be about getting vaccinated at Dodgers Stadium. Then, she went ahead and wrote the first verse for good measure. Hey, it’s a pandemic, we’re all trying to entertain ourselves as we can.

Thing is, McRae’s “cover” was so spot on — and actually a really good song — so of course Phoebe herself shared it with the simple exclamation “oh my god.”

After that, the internet did its thing and the song became an instant social media hit. So Jensen decided to give the people what we want, and wrote through the whole song, naming it “Immune” and sharing it tonight. While it’s great that this viral incident put McRae on the map, keep in mind that she’s much more than just someone having fun on the internet, she’s an fledgling musician herself on the cusp of releasing a debut album, and has already released incredible original songs like “Wolves” and “White Boy.” Like Phoebe, McRae is a Los Angeles native; she was born in Santa Monica and raised in Woodland Hills in a Black and Jewish family. She received a full ride to USC’s Thornton School of Music and graduated with a degree in popular music performance. Check out “Immune” above and look for a lot more coming from Jensen soon.

In a world where touring is an activity that won’t return until this fall at the earliest, artists have spent the better part of the last year performing from the comforts of their own home. During a recent appearance on The Late Late Show With James Corden, Halsey reflected on some of the things she missed about touring. However, it’s what she said she did not miss about live performances that caused the singer to recall an interesting moment.

The pop singer revisited a 2016 show at New York City’s Madison Square Garden where nothing seemed to go right at its start. “One time I was onstage, and everything stopped working — sound, lights, video, music, the whole thing, my brain,” she said. “Everything malfunctioned, and I had to stand on the stage for two minutes talking to the crowd…. Two minutes in stage time is like a century.” A video from a fan who attended the concert shows the singer jumping into an impromptu monologue during her performance of “Castle” from her Badlands album when the malfunction occurred. She later revealed that once everything was fixed, she started the whole show over in order to “do the whole thing with no mistakes.”

Halsey’s appearance on The Late Late Show With James Corden comes after she was forced to cancel the world tour behind her 2020 Manic album. “Despite our absolute best efforts, there is no guarantee I’ll be able to tour the currently scheduled dates,” she said in a statement to social media. “I miss seeing all of you in the crowd every night more than anything, but I need to prioritize your health and safety.”

You can watch her interview with Corden in the video above.

Trae Young had a monster night against the Los Angeles Clippers on Tuesday, scoring 38 points on 12-for-23 shooting with five assists in a 108-99 Atlanta Hawks win. Late in the game, Young hit a triple from quite a way behind the three-point line that sealed the deal for Atlanta, and right after the shot went in, he paid a subtle tribute to someone else who was known for having prolific games against the Clippers.

Young pointed to a spot on the floor, and as he was walking to his bench following a timeout, held up a 2 on one hand and a 4 on the other in memory of the late Kobe Bryant, who died one year ago on Tuesday in a helicopter crash.

Young was a gigantic fan of Bryant, and on the day of his passing last year changed up his number to Bryant’s original digit, 8, during the game that the Hawks had that night before switching back to his normal number, 11. He didn’t go to quite those lengths this year, but still, hitting a big shot against a team that Bryant routinely tormented during his Hall of Fame career and then flashing his number on his fingers isn’t a bad way for Young to join the chorus of folks in the basketball universe who honored Kobe on Tuesday.

Verzuz is riding high off the success of their most recent battle between Keyshia Cole and Ashanti, a matchup that brought in huge numbers and even set a new Instagram Live record. Now the Swizz Beatz and Timbaland-led show is on the lookout for their next battle. In fact Timbaland recently said there’s a pairing that Drake is looking for specifically: Usher and Justin Timberlake.

Timbeland shared the news during a recent appearance he and Swizz Beatz made on ESPN’s Jalen And Jacoby, saying Drake told them to make it happen. “I’m like, ‘Soon to come. Soon to come,’” he said. Elsewhere on the show, Timbaland said that the other potential matchups Verzuz are considering include No Limit vs. Cash Money and Missy Elliott vs. Busta Rhymes. About the latter pairing, he said, “It is, to me, the best party that could ever happen on Verzuz,” and added, “It’s just a matter of comfort zone of my sister wanting to celebrate with her brother and understanding that it’s not competition. It’s a party.”

The pair’s appearance on Jalen And Jacoby also caught some attention when they said they were looking to hold battles between dead singers, including Michael Jackson vs. Prince and Tupac vs. Notorious B.I.G. — although, they promised, “in a way that the people is gonna really love it.”