No Time to Die, the 25th entry in the James Bond franchise, was originally scheduled to come out this month, but it was pushed back to November due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. To make up for the lack of 007, Esquire UK hosted a “watchalong” of 1995’s GoldenEye with special guest Pierce Bronsan on Sunday night.

One of the more interesting revelations to come out of the screening was Bronsan saying that after GoldenEye became a huge hit (and inspired one of the greatest video games of all-time), he met with Quentin Tarantino, who has talked about making a James Bond movie for years. “It was after Kill Bill Vol. 2, and he wanted to meet me, so I went up to Hollywood one day from the beach, and I met him at the Four Seasons,” he said. “I got there at 7 pm, I like to be punctual. 7:15 came around, no Quentin, he was upstairs doing press. Someone sent over a martini, so I had a martini, and I waited until 7:30, and I thought, ‘Where the heck is he?’ Word came down, apologies, so I thought, OK, I’ll have another martini.” Who knew Pierce Brosnan was a method actor?

Eventually Bronsan and Tarantino met, and when they did, they were both “fairly” drunk:

“He was pounding the table, saying you’re the best James Bond, I wanna do James Bond, and it was very close quarters in the restaurant and I thought, please calm down, but we don’t tell Quentin Tarantino to calm down,” said Brosnan. “He wanted to do James Bond, and I went back to the shop and told them but it wasn’t mean to be. No Quentin Tarantino for James Bond.”

I’m going to slap so many “No Quentin Tarantino for James Bond” bumper stickers on so many cars. Anyway, of the 25 James Bond films, only one has been directed by someone who was born in America, and that’s the one that hasn’t even come out yet (Cary Joji Fukunaga is from California). By the time Bond 26 comes around, Tarantino might be retired. Oh well, at least he can always make his Star Trek movie.

(Via Esquire)

BBC America’s ‘Killing Eve’ first framed itself as procedural: a show about assassins and the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service that attempts to take them down. More than that, though, the show tangoed through an elaborate cat-and-mouse game between Jodie Comer’s assassin and Sandra Oh’s MI6 agent. This season, that game evolves for the better, and our weekly coverage will keep an eye on how this show’s transforming, and it (along with those kills) is only growing bolder with the passage of time.

This week’s Killing Eve episode, “Management Sucks,” takes its title from a Villanelle declaration when she realizes that being a keeper-in-training isn’t all that she’s cracked it up to be. This takes place during the episode’s central showcase of assassin-clowns — move over, Stephen King’s Pennywise — but there’s another clown (more of a jester, really, and he’d better hope that he keeps the powers that be happy) maneuvering in the background. That would be Kim Bodnia’s Konstantin, who we first got to know in his capacity as Villanelle’s handler, though he’s also a father figure to her, even after she tried to kill him. It’s one hell of a bond that these two have, so we’ll talk about Konstantin, but we should probably get on with this literal clown business first.

Worst clown ever, or the best?

Maybe a little bit of both. However, there’s no time to dwell on details when another killer clown is not-so-killer after all.

Oh, Felix. We hardly knew him, and Villanelle already couldn’t stomach how he botched what should have been a simple kill. Yet it’s not as though Villanelle wasn’t warned. Dasha (Dame Harriet Walter is so good in this role) attempts, during a spectacular conversation, to warn her charge of the downside — “watching someone do a worse job than you sucks” — of not being on the assassin frontlines. Will Villanelle decide to continue pursuing career advancement? She loves the perks of being a star player, although there’s something inside her that’s dissatisfied, and she’s chasing something.

That’d probably be acceptance and love (even sociopaths need affection), and although Villanelle still thinks that Eve is dead at this point, she’s clearly still hung up on the ex-MI6 agent. Despite some real talk from Dasha on how assassins can’t do date nights or normal relationships. I don’t think Villanelle will settle for this, but the matter’s clearly left wide open for now. One thing we do know for sure, thanks to this conversation with Dasha? Villanelle’s maker loves the spice kill, which she views not as one-upmanship but as “a hallmark to Dasha.” However…

Who else is clowning around? Konstantin, who (sadly) isn’t juggling three phones this week, but he’s still quite the player. Later on in the episode, he reveals that he’s still been working for the Twelve, but he’s clearly still all up in the M16 business, so essentially, he’s lurking about everywhere, in plain sight and otherwise. First up, he’s annoying the hell out of a boozy Eve at Kenny’s funeral service.

Eve’s not about to be charmed by Konstantin praising her as a “walking miracle” and remains convinced that he isn’t thinking about anything else than his own goals. And naturally, he’s insisting that Kenny killed himself, but Eve knows damn well that the poor young man must have been taken out by The Twelve. Before we can hear any more about that subject at the funeral, Carolyn’s daughter, Geraldine (Gemma Whelan), lets the audience know that Konstantin’s been hanging around family events for a long time. Not only that, but Konstantin the Trickster later “bumps” into Geraldine outside a shop and feigns an act of kindness by giving her that bus magnet from last episode. Geraldine’s apparently the kind of person who wants to believe in the kindness of “strangers,” and she’s so touched by the gift — which contains a damn microphone because of course it does — that she completely falls for this skeevy smile.

This encounter takes place after we saw Konstantin meet with a mysterious party (representing someone higher up in the Twelve, no doubt, although we don’t see the messenger’s face), who’s instructing him to stay in London. I imagine there’s more on this to come, but the bugged-out magnet does the trick later on in the kitchen where Eve reveals that she’s game to help Carolyn figure out who killed Kenny.

In lovelier and more genuinely heart-warming moments, however, Konstantin’s reunion with Villanelle was everything that I hoped it would be.

There’s a nice little war of words going on between these two, and Konstantin’s winning this round. Villanelle should have known that Eve was still alive because (as Konstantin knows first hand) she can’t manage to actually shoot and kill someone that she loves. Their father-daughter relationship also leads to some jealousy on Villanelle’s part here, given that she takes a shot at his family, and he chides her for being sloppy enough to not make sure Eve was dead. That’s part of why he’s so amused at the idea that Dasha claims to be helping Villanelle become a keeper — a higher status than both Konstantin and Dasha — but one can sense the competitiveness that’s oozing from his words. He wants Villanelle back under his wing, so let the games begin there.

A few loose ends here:

– What should we think of Carolyn’s new boss? He doesn’t seem like a good guy, though we don’t know too much about him yet, other than him (quite obviously) shutting Carolyn down at every opportunity so far.

Well, maybe Carolyn does need a few days off.

– In better-boss land, Kenny’s editor, Paul, did a swell job of getting Eve onboard an investigation after calling her out for obsessively keeping hold of his phone while still attempting to justify not doing any leg work. Perhaps Carolyn will need to thank Paul for all of his insight later down the line. That is, if Eve and Carolyn can get to the bottom of the murder business before the Twelve catches up with them. Thanks to Konstantin’s bugging of that fridge magnet, the race is on for next week.

BBC America’s ‘Killing Eve’ airs on Sundays at 9:00 PM EST with simulcasting on AMC.

A month ago, The Weeknd’s latest album, After Hours, debuted in the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 chart. It hasn’t left the charts since then, and over the weekend, it was reported that After Hours will be spending a fourth straight week on top (on the chart dated April 25).

With this latest feat, The Weeknd pulled something off that hasn’t happened in a while: The last album to spend at least four consecutive weeks at No. 1 was Drake’s Scorpion, which spent its first five weeks on top in 2018. After Hours is not the only album since then with four total weeks at No. 1, though, as there are five albums that have done that. The most recent before After Hours was Roddy Ricch’s Excuse Me For Being Antisocial, which was No. 1 on the chart dated December 21, 2019, fell off from the top spot, then returned to No. 1 for three additional weeks (January 18, February 8, and February 22).

This news comes in the midst of another active month for The Weeknd. A couple weeks ago, he shared a new video for “Until I Bleed Out,” and last week, he dropped a Major Lazer remix of “Blinding Lights.”

After Hours is out now via Republic Records. Get it here.

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

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Director David Ayer has had a lot to say about Suicide Squad since it came out in 2016. He denied an inaccurate report about Jared Leto’s screentime, compared the savage reviews to having his “throat cut,” and confessed that the Joker’s “damaged” forehead tattoo was “one step too far.” Ayer keeps talking (tweeting) about Suicide Squad, because people keep asking him about it, especially when it comes to Harley Quinn.

In response to a Twitter follower writing that “Harley was sexualized in the entire Suicide Squad movie and in Birds of Prey, she was a real character, not a eyecandy,” Ayer replied, “Sadly her story arc was eviscerated. It was her movie in so many ways. Look I tried. I rendered Harley comic book accurate. Everything is political now. Everything. I just want to entertain. I will do better.” That confession led to this back and forth.

“A female character in an abusive relationship is already political, my dude. The way your camera looked at her was political. The way you used her was political. You treated her as an object and she still rose above it. That was political too,” Twitter user The Notorious LHB wrote, to which Ayer responded, “Retweeting because this is very thoughtfully written. Thank you for this. I am growing and learning in a changing world.”

Good on Ayer for admitting that maybe his Harley Quinn wasn’t the best depiction of the character, but you know who the real winner in all this is? Margot Robbie for barely being on Twitter. I wouldn’t want to step into this whole mess, either.

(Via Twitter/David Ayer)

The biggest music news story of the weekend was Lady Gaga’s “One World: Together At Home” livestream event, which brought artists together (digitally) to perform from their homes for a good cause. Some of the world’s biggest stars participated, including Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Beyonce, and plenty of others. It turns out the event was a financial success, as Global Citizen announced that it brought in over $125 million for coronavirus relief.

Sharing the news over the weekend, the organization reported the event raised $127.9 million, with $55.1 million going to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund and $72.8 million going to local and regional responders.

Following the broadcast, Gaga took to social media to share her thanks and appreciation for all those involved and for everybody who took the time to watch. She tweeted, “I love all the artists on #TogetherAtHome. And everyone that watched and everyone the didn’t or couldn’t. We all matter. We’re one world.” She later added, “I am so humbled to have been a part of this project. Thank you @GlblCtzn. Thank you @WHO. I love you.” Gaga also tweeted, “Thank you with all of my heart for watching #TogetherAtHome, sharing in a global moment of kindness with each other, and spreading positive and loving intentions. We love you.”

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