For a guy who mostly made his name playing a series of slovenly weasels, Ben Mendelsohn is having a surprising renaissance as the loving but melancholic father. Fresh off his turn as the haunted cop father in HBO’s The Outsider, Mendolsohn once again plays sad dad in Babyteeth, this time in his natural Aussie accent, anchoring an unforgettable ensemble piece about tragedy and dysfunction. It’s hard to know where exactly Babyteeth is going at first, but it gets its hooks in so deep that when you finally have to let it go it’s exquisitely painful.

Mendelsohn plays Henry, a vaguely disheveled, sagely bedraggled (is there any other kind of Ben Mendolsohn character?) psychiatrist in the Sydney suburbs (you can always tell a film shot in Australia by the ever-present hum of insects and birds) who keeps a weekly appointment with his wife, Anna (Essie Davis from The Babadook). They meet up every Tuesday to have sex and discuss Anna’s medication, with a dynamic that you first interpret as an illicit affair, which is probably the point. Babyteeth, from director Shannon Murphy and writer Rita Kalnejais, always keeps us half a step off balance. Their film has that a sense of casual naughtiness, a straightforward love of innocent mischief common to the best Australian movies, which in this case serves to leaven the central tragedy.

Henry and Anna are attempting to cope, in different ways, with their sick teenage daughter, Milla (Eliza Scanlen from Little Women and Sharp Objects). Milla, meanwhile, is trying to be a teenager while dealing with health problems way outside her maturity-grade, all while living with parents who seem to be unraveling — probably because of her. When she meets squirrelly drug addict Moses (Toby Wallace) at the train station, it’s hard to tell whether her attraction to him is rebellion, schoolgirl crush, or both.

When Moses, meanwhile, a fine-boned feral boy with high cheekbones, a chiseled rat-tail, and the odd face tattoo, takes a shine to Milla, it’s hard to tell if he’s attracted to this underage girl (he’s 23) or just all the drugs she has access to. Even in a movie full of heavy hitters Wallace’s performance as Moses stands out as iconic.

Moses is a uniquely Australian take on The Hopelesss Scumbag You Can’t Help But Love, always clad in small shorts with some filthy but fashionably patterned shirt billowing off his wiry frame like Steven Tyler’s mic stand. Like Shia LaBeouf in American Honey you can practically smell Moses through the screen, yet even as he steals drugs from his family he maintains his Tiger Beat cover boy sexuality, irresistible to Milla and for anyone older, the kind of kid you want to simultaneously hug and whack upside the head with rolled-up newspaper. He’s sweet, he’s an idiot, he’s a puppy who constantly shits on the carpet.

When Game Of Thrones was trying to wrap up, it seemed we had many conversations about the difference between gardeners and architects. That is, storytellers who start with a plot outline (architects) vs. those who start with a few characters and try to imagine what they’d do and sort of let the story grow from there (gardeners). I can’t say I know anything about Kalnejais and Murphy’s process, and there certainly are plot events that stand out as turning points in retrospect, but it’s the ultimate credit to their abilities that Babyteeth certainly seems to define a gardening project. Not a moment in it feels contrived or out of place, even as it’s consistently surprising.

Other players in this drama include: Henry and Anna’s pregnant trashy neighbor (on whom Henry may have a crush), Moses’s long-suffering family, and Milla’s passionate Russian music teacher (who may have history with Anna). In the midst of a swirling tragedy they eventually come to a unique homeostasis, where everyone’s individual instabilities somehow complement one another perfectly enough to create a stable whole. It represents the ultimate dream of family. The tragedy is how fleeting it all is in the end.

Yes, Babyteeth is the kind of movie that will rip your heart out. But it will be a good cry. You’ll be glad you took the ride.

‘Babyteeth’ is currently available on VOD. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

With only five days left on its shoot, The Card Counter was forced to shut down production due to the global pandemic. The gambling thriller is set to be writer/director Paul Schrader‘s follow-up to the critically acclaimed First Reformed, and according to Deadline, the film will finally get a chance to wrap in July after being cleared local authorities in Mississippi and the Screen Actors Guild.

HanWay Films has also provided a first look at Oscar Isaac as lead character William Tell, a gambler and combat veteran who’s out for revenge.

Given Schrader’s penchant for controversial remarks, The Card Counter made headlines back in March when its production was abruptly shut down not just out of caution, but because an actor who flew in for a scene tested positive for COVID-19. Considering the film was so close to wrap, it’s understandable that Schrader would be frustrated, but he went on a Facebook rant that took things a little too far.

“Production halted five days before wrap by my pussified producers because an LA day player had the coronavirus,” Schrader posted. “Myself, I would have shot through hellfire rain to complete the film. I’m old and asthmatic, what better way to die than on the job?”

Here’s the official synopsis:

Issac plays William Tell, a gambler and former serviceman who sets out to reform a young man seeking revenge on a mutual enemy from their past.

Tell just wants to play cards. His spartan existence on the casino trail is shattered when he is approached by Cirk (Tye Sheridan), a vulnerable young man seeking help to execute his plan for revenge on a military colonel. Tell sees a chance for redemption through his relationship with Cirk. Gaining backing from mysterious gambling financier La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), Tell takes Cirk with him on the road, going from casino to casino until the unlikely trio set their sights on winning the World Series of poker in Las Vegas. But keeping Cirk on the straight-and-narrow proves impossible, dragging Tell back into the darkness of his past.

The Card Counter has no official release date at the time of publishing.

(Via HanWay Films, Deadline)

Cardi B continues to be a target of off-color criticisms from the peanut gallery, but she still refuses to take any of their insults. The latest questionable critique compared Cardi to the Aunt Jemima brand mascot after Quaker Oats, the brand’s parent company announced it would discontinue Aunt Jemima due to its offensive roots. As usual, Cardi clapped back, wondering why so many conservative commenters try to bring her down with disingenuous juxtapositions.

In this case, the anonymous detractor posed the question, “Aunt Jemima is degrading to Black women but Cardi B isn’t?” In response, Cardi came back with a question of her own: “Why you conservative Republicans always use my name to get viral tweets?” she wondered. “‘Cause how me & Aunt Jemima correlate? Aunt Jemima is degrading because it’s a symbol that implies black women are only good to be massa servant or cookin’ nanny — THATS WHY!” Cardi deleted the tweet, but her point was clear: “Don’t come for me.”

Cardi, of course, has a point. Most of the criticisms that get leveraged against her are rooted in racism, misogyny, or both. Comparing Cardi to Aunt Jemima is reductive, ignoring all the aspects of her personality by suggesting she herself is a caricature of the worst stereotypes of Black people — stereotypes born not out of any inherent morality, but out of white supremacist thinking. By attacking her for embracing her sexuality, many of her critics reinforce the sexist idea that women should adhere to a restrictive presentation for men’s approval.

Still, Cardi seems to hold her own. From threatening to “dog walk” Tomi Lahren to forcing an apology out of KTLA anchor Doug Kolk, Cardi often turns the tables on her detractors, forcing them to confront the meanings behind their attacks.

Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Killers’ upcoming album Imploding The Mirage was originally slated for a release this spring but has since been put on hold during the pandemic. Even still, the group continues to share previews of the record, the latest being the driving single “My Own Soul’s Warning.” On Wednesday, The Killers joined iHeartRadio for a livestream fundraiser where they pulled from their upcoming release as well as their back catalog. The band also paid homage to Jimmy Buffett with a meaningful cover of his song “A Pirate Looks At 40.”

The Killers’ iHeartRadio livestream raised funds for NAACP and marked the first time since the pandemic that the group has joined together in full to perform music. During the set, the band played their poignant track “Land Of The Free,” with added lyrics dedicated to George Floyd as well as their breezy Imploding The Mirage single “Caution.” Halfway through their performance, The Killers pivoted away from their own music and instead elected to highlight Buffett’s 1975 track.

Introducing the cover, The Killers’ vocalist Brandon Flowers commended Buffett for his songwriting expertise: “I grew up, I think like a lot of people, knowing about ‘Margaritaville’ and maybe ‘Cheeseburger In Paradise’ and both, actually, fantastically written songs. But when you really go a little deeper into the catalog, there is a whole treasure trove by Jimmy Buffett. He’s a master class songwriter, actually, and I’m learning from him.”

Watch The Killers cover “A Pirate Looks At 40” above, at around the 9-minute mark.

Previously on the Best and Worst of NXT: El Hijo del Fantasma unmasked as SANTOS ESCOBAR, a cool WWE circa 2011-sounding name that could’ve just as easily been “El Chapo Gonzalez.” Also, NXT’s spookiest freshman theater standouts gave Adam Cole a big hourglass to show him his time is almost up.

If you’d like to read previous installments of the Best and Worst of NXT, you can do that here. Follow With Spandex on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter, where everything and everyone is terrible.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWE NXT for June 17, 2020.

Best: THE ROAR OF THE CROWD STOMP YOUR FEET TO THE GROUND GIVE IT ALL TO ME NOW CAUSE YOU CALLED TO ME CALLED TO ME

As someone who’s been writing about NXT since Bayley and Sasha Banks were transitioning from jobbers to full-fledged characters, I’m thrilled I got to watch the Women’s Tag Team Champions make good on their promise from 16 months ago and defend the belts on NXT. It brings a peaceful quiet to my brain to see them looking like themselves again, wrestling like themselves again, and connecting modern, main roster continuity to my favorite era; a time when women’s wrestling was turning a corner from disrespected to in-demand and CFO$ roamed the Earth. Like a lot of things that’ve happened since quarantine, I only wish there could’ve been a real Full Sail crowd there to react and watch them perform. It’s like finding out your favorite band is playing a show down the street but it’s happening in some dude’s living room. At the very least they could’ve gone the “unique camera angles and enhanced audio” route and given us a CGI crying Izzy.

If you haven’t been following Raw and Smackdown, you lucky dog, the Women’s Tag Team Championship is suddenly in the spotlight again after a shaky first year that even saw Bayley and Sasha’s inaugural run peter out and devolve into smark conjecture. Their opponents for NXT are Tegan Nox and Shotzi Blackheart, which is great because Nox feels and wrestles like Bayley if she had Sasha’s confidence, and Blackheart is like Banks if she had classic Bayley’s reckless enthusiasm. They aren’t direct analogues or anything, but they’re close enough that they mesh together in the ring like the current characters are wrestling the younger versions of themselves.

The champions retain, of course, using their vennern know-how. Bayley uses her and her partner’s lifetime membership in the Eddie Guerrero match of the month club to introduce a steel chair only for it to be a distraction that allows her to reverse a submission in her team’s favor. It’s a fun main event that feels important and consequential whether it really can be or not right now, and I wish there were regular stop-ins for successful NXT alumni to remind the audience they can still go and that Vince McMahon’s tunnel vision perspective on what wrestling should look like isn’t and can’t be the only option. The only major complaint is that Sasha never interacted with Shotzi Blackheart’s tank and robbed me of a really fantastic “Sasha Tanks” joke. Can Shotzi at least call her submission finish the Tank Statement?

After the match, a babyface-again-somehow Io Shirai shows up to take them to Suplex City and make me think Exclamation Point Exclamation Point Exclamation Point at the prospect of Shirai vs. Banks one-on-one, Shirai vs. Bayley one-on-one, or, in a perfect world, an NXT vacation away from Nia Jax for Kairi Sane and a title opportunity for the Sky Pirates. If the BroSerweights didn’t exist, the Sky Pirates would be the ultimate why didn’t we get more of this NXT tag team.

As a brief aside, I wrote a big thing here about how easy it’d be to turn Bayley face by having her start spending time in NXT again and finding herself, sort of like the pro wrestling equivalent of Only Yesterday, but after making that Crying Izzy joke, I think you need to keep her condescending and casually cruel, in and out of NXT, for however long it takes Izzy to grow up and finish training. Imagine years of Champ Karen only for her to be confronted by the physical and emotional manifestation of the spirit she’d worked so hard to bury and move beyond? Remember, Bayley isn’t Evil Bayley because she had some big personality change, Bayley’s Evil Bayley because she desperately wants to fit in, and Sasha’s the only person who acts like her friend but also comes from that old peer group from which Bayley never got love. I bet if Charlotte Flair or Becky Lynch had started acting like her best friend she would’ve mirrored them, too.

Best: Head Under WALTER

Speaking of Charlotte Flair, please enjoy Breezango mocking Imperium by becoming “Emporium” and entering to the Charlotte Flair version of ‘IV. Allegro con fuoco.’ Can you believe Tyler Breeze has still never held a championship in NXT or WWE? All Fandango’s ever won is a season of game show NXT. Ridiculous.

Breezango once again does Pretty Well against the Tag Team Champions, but aren’t able to win the big one. They end up distracted by the random appearance of Malcolm Bivens and Indus Sher, looking like Mr. Rogers got put in charge of The Twins from The Matrix Reloaded, and a run-in day-saving from Oney Lorcan and Danny Burch. All Elite’s tag division is redonkulous right now, so it makes sense the promotion that brought tag team wrestling back into the zeitgeist would want to show how good it’s division still can be, even if they’ve been handicapped by quarantine and travel bans*.

The tag teams cause a kerfuffle and Dirty Curty forgets which of the champs is legal. He picks the wrong one and gets DDT’d by the other. Like the old saying goes, you live by the putting your opponent’s head in your armpit and falling backwards, you die by the putting your opponent’s head in your armpit and falling backwards. One day I hope Breeze and Fandango are able to pull off an upset and become champs, even if it’s only for a week and just an excuse to get the title from one heel team to another. Be nice to my boys!

*It is so weird to hear WALTER’s music and know there’s still no chance of WALTER showing up. It’s like hearing the ice cream truck and running outside with your money in your hand only to watch it cruise past you and disappear down the street.

Best: Priests Vs. Southerners

A match made in Heaven … a match made in telling you you’re going to Hell!

After getting a strong victory over hoss division also-ran Killian Dain and wrestling like a total babyface, Damian Priest changes out of his ladies’ patchwork mesh wrestling pants and into his skinny jeans with the 35 wallet chains in time to wander out into the parking lot and discover his tires have been slashed by arrogant hillbilly Cameron Grimes. Grimes has gone full Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel now, literally hooting and hollering his way through even normal lines of dialogue. Dude might as well be dressed like an old-timey prospector. The next person who feuds with him should be trying to steal his gold.

Just wanted to quickly say how much I’m digging Priest’s work lately, and how Cameron Grimes’ character growth from “man who wears hat” to “chaotic neutral good old boy who is too loudly southern to get along with anybody and might just be a really intelligent chimpanzee” is Dr. Britt Baker levels of ambitious, but welcomed.

Worst For The Promo Parade, Best For The Matches It Creates

I’m so tired of promo parade booking at this point that I can’t get invested in it even when it’s full of characters I like, setting up matches I want to see.

On this week’s show, NXT Champion Adam Cole (baby) is in a couple of backstage segments and then awkwardly transitions that into the ring so people can start interrupting him with promos of their own. First it’s Keith Lee, who has been randomly confronting Cole backstage over the past couple of weeks and probably knows Cole’s calling him out over the NXT North American Championship to avoid the NXT Championship itself being the thing they beef over. Before that can go anywhere, Johnny Heel Turn interrupts looking like a Portal turret and says HE is the one who should be getting random additional title matches. Keith launches into a terrible bit about how Candice LeRae told him being fallen on and injured by a 320-pound man during a wrestling match is better than sex with her husband, but thankfully Finn Bálor interrupts to save the segment and try out some of the new wrestling jargon he learned on Wikipedia.

William Regal interrupts everyone — that’s four interruptions in this one segment, if you’re keeping score — to announce WAR GAMES that next week Lee will defend his North American Championship in a triple threat against Bálor and Gargano, with the winner moving on to a “winner take all” champion vs. champion match shortly thereafter. Important matches with high stakes, featuring key character who have a lot to lose? Count me the fuck in. I’m begging you, though; give us consequences. No goofy count-outs or draws or stolen pins this time. Just set up the pins and knock them down. NXT used to be brilliant at this, and I think they still can be with a little prompting. It’ll be worth it the next time you want people to get hype about a match you announced and believe it’s going to give them some kind of lasting emotional experience.

Best: Latter Day Santos

NXT has finally showed us what those in the know have known for years: El Hijo del Fantasma, by any name, is one of the best wrestlers on the planet. The guy can wrestle his ass off, he’s got the best dive in the business by (and for) a mile, he can play characters, he can cut promos in Spanish, he can speak perfect English — better English than most native English speakers, if we’re being honest — and he’s tough enough to, for example, put Drake Maverick through a table with a Phantom Driver and send him directly to the Local Medical Facility. Santos is the jam, has already been one of the best and most underutilized guys in any promotion he’s ever been in, and will be a huge star, especially after Vince McMahon realizes he’ll be able to deliver urine lobs and poop jokes without getting “what” chants.

P.S. if he’s the son of El Fantasma, changed his name to “Santos,” and has two henchmen, please call his group Junior Dos Santos.

P.P.S. Phantom Driver is a great name for a finisher and my favorite Victor Sjöström film.

Worst: Crud From A Stone

Here’s the latest match in the Xia Li vs. Aliyah feud that will still be happening when the rest of us are dead and gone. Xia Li and Aliyah are the most low stakes John Cena and Randy Orton ever. This one ends when Robert Stone (brand) gets on the apron but is too drunk and/or depressed to help, so he just vomits into the ring Scott Hall-style. Xia is understandably distracted, and Aliyah manages to roll her up and pin her after two attempts, because Aliyah still can’t properly roll someone up reliably on the first try. I’m not sure if Robbie E pretending to be Aron Stevens instead of Zack Ryder is going to turn that from a Worst to a Best.

Note: Between Kayla Braxton getting slimed and Bob Stone throwing up everywhere, I’m fairly certain Bruce Prichard is out as WWE’s creative lead and has been replaced by Moose from You Can’t Do That On Television. Robert Stone threw up in the ring? WHATTA YA THINK’S IN THE BURGERS?

Also On This Episode

Velveteen Dream, seen here looking like the All That logo, insists he’s a solo act who was just repaying a favor to Dexter Lumis. Dexter Lumis confirms that they are best friends forever by locating Dream’s magical couch room, planting a boardwalk caricature of the two of them, and sneaking away before Dream and find him and, presumably, turn him purple or vanish him with a snap. I don’t know how Dream’s pocket universe works. I’m still too invested in the friendship between and a wrestler given supernatural powers by a magic mirror containing the soul of a Prince impersonator and a serial killer who just wants to have friends and draw cartoons.

Mercedes Martinez is “coming soon” despite already being here, and she’s the only one allowed to wear a mask at the tapings!

Pitch: The NXT Women’s Championship division’s still crowded even after some ill-advised call-ups — does Bianca Belair still “go” to Raw at all? — so you should team up Mercedes Martinez with Kacy Catanzaro and call them “Mercedes Bends.” Shut up, I’m tired.

Timothy Thatcher has gone full Stu Hart, calmly explaining submission holds in a thick regional accent while mercilessly stretching his poor students. I just wish they’d filmed this in someone’s dirty basement. I’d like this more if WALTER hadn’t already done the same segments but better on NXT UK last year. Just put Thatch in Imperium already.

Kayden Carter takes a break from attending every single show taped at the Performance Center and standing in place for several hours to get in the ring and lose to Dakota Kai. Kai unlocked bonus stat buffs now that Raquel Gonzalez is dressing like a member of Harlem Heat. Dakota Kai wants the gold, sucka!

Bronson Reed literally and figuratively squashes PC Christ figure Leon Ruff and then issues a challenge to Karrion Kross. This is a good idea, especially coming right after he found out Keith Lee broke the big fancy hourglass he gave to Adam Cole as an intimidating gift. That came out of the school’s fall play budget, Keith, you’re gonna have to pay for that! Bronson vs. Karron is a good match to book to show that Karrion can wreck big opponents just as easily as small ones, which is essential if you’re planning to run him into double champ Keith Lee at some point. Part of me hopes Reed ends up following Kross around as a subordinate, if only for the amount of “thicc tock” jokes I could make.

Finally, The Undisputed Era send Roderick Strong to Undisputed Therapy to deal with the trauma of being thrown into the trunk of a car and briefly kidnapped by Dexter Lumis. Above is a photo of his therapist, Dr. Lyle Von Fürstenberg, who is (obviously) just Kyle O’Reilly in a costume. I don’t know what’s more interesting, Roddy having PTSD and sprinting away from the back of every car in terror, or Adam Cole and Bobby Fish seeing their friend in pain and thinking, “let’s dress up Kyle like a therapist and fuck with him.” They should’ve taken him to see Dr. Rachel Bonnetta from Backstage.

Quick question, why is Dr. Lyle just Sami Zayn with Bob Belcher’s voice? Who cares, he’s a Canadian national treasure.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Birdman

How did Tozawa not recruit Kacy for his new Ninja Warrior stable?

Zelina Vega watching this Santos promo right now

Endy_Mion (ed. note: yes, I put this right after Sailor Moon on purpose)

Poor Robert and his brand. They really should have shipped him up with Riddle as his manager. Called the label “Bromancing the Stoned”

notJames

Mauro: “The THICC BOY made mince meat out of Cheezburger!”
Beth: “Um, that’s not…”
Tom: “…NXT rolls on!”

The Voice of Raisin

Dakota: I choooose…Raquel Gonzalez!
Tegan: Tsk…I choose Kacy Catanzaro
Dakota: Oh oh! Mr. Boggs, would you like to be on our team?
Wade Boggs: You got yourself a stablemate.
Tegan: Ugh…I’ll take Kayden.

AddMayne

Breezango: This Ain’t Imperium! XXX

Caz

hooray it’s IO SHOWS UP AND MURDERS EVERYBODY, the idea I pitch in all my work Zoom meetings but nobody ever agrees to

Dave M J

Sasha Banks is fantastic, obviously, but my favorite thing about her is the fact that she will die to anybody’s offense to make them look like a threat.

troi

I refuse to believe Undisputed Era would take Roddy to a real therapist and not a stripper wearing glasses.

LUNI_TUNZ

I wish there was someway Shotzi could be in the crowd while Shotzi was in the ring wrestling.

That’s it for this week’s Best and Worst of NXT. We’re not sure you ever actually read this part or do what we ask (or if you even scroll down through the top 10 comments of the week), but hey, it would really help us if you commented down below and shared the column if you liked or laughed at anything. The world’s tough, and that makes this kind of thing a lot easier.

Join us here next week for Damian Priest doing 1999 movie karate against the Lynyrd Skynyrd band member who slashed his tires, Bronson Reed getting sent to the crossroads by Karrion Kross, and a triple threat match for the North American Championship with WINNER TAKE ALL ramifications. GO KEITH GO! See you then!

So much for tasty waves and a cool buzz…

1982’s Fast Times At Ridgemont High launched multiple high-profile careers, including those of Sean Penn — who went on to win two Best Actor Oscars for Milk and Mystic River and have a beard-off competition with Mel Gibson — Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Judge Reinhold. Certainly, the Amy Heckerling-directed and Cameron Crowe-penned film gave Penn his first major film role (as stereotypical surfer dude Jeff Spicoli), although it almost never happened, as Penn revealed on Wednesday night’s edition of The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. We almost had to watch someone else smack themselves in the head with a sneaker while shouting, “That was my skull! I’m so wasted!” Madness.

That detail slipped out while Penn was promoting the Dane Cook(?)-organized virtual table read fundraiser (in which Penn will voice a character other than Spicoli?) for Community Organized Relief Effort. Penn admitted that he doesn’t exactly relish the audition experience, and he’s always felt that way. This attitude might not hurt Penn so much these days, but back when he was unknown, it was bad news:

“Long before I had a penny in my pocket, I had a kind of feeling of entitlement as an actor, not because I thought that I was so good, but because I thought the rest were not so good. And that gave me an awful lot of confidence. And I read the part and I said, ‘I know this thing.’”

As it turns out, he didn’t know this thing, and Penn crashed and burned hard during this audition. He did “terribly, flat,” and then he left the building, but fortunately for Penn, a casting director saw something to him and followed Penn while telling him to “get back in here and audition your ass off.” Mr. Hand would have been proud.

Watch the full clip with Penn and Fallon below.

For much of 2020, the status of Pop Smoke’s debut album has been uncertain. The posthumous album, the title of which has yet to be announced, was previously given a June release date, but earlier this month, that was delayed to a then-undetermined time. Now, though, the album has another release date: It’s set to drop on July 3 via Victor Victor Worldwide.

This news came as an aside in the announcement of Shoot For The Stars, a charitable foundation Smoke established before his death.

Smoke’s mother said of the foundation, “The foundation is meant to inspire inner city youth to do just what the name states, ‘shoot for the stars,’ and help urban youth everywhere turn their pain into champagne by making their dreams a reality. As [Bashar] traveled around the city, he realized that the technology he had access to during his school years was not the norm for urban schools. It was great fun brainstorming and planning [Shoot For The Stars] with him. I am looking forward to working with the team he put together before he was so tragically taken from us. […] We make this announcement and look forward to Pop’s debut album via Victor Victor.”

Steven Victor, head of Victor Victor Worldwide, also said, “With everything happening in the world today, I know Bashar would feel the urgency of need, now more than ever before. He strived to inspire youth and would have loved to see people playing his music and dancing in the streets while they marched in the fight for equality and justice. He made music, not only for the kids in his neighborhood but around the world, to inspire them to dream big regardless of their situation. The hope he carried for the next generation will live on through Shoot for the Stars. It was something that was very important to him and we’re honored to continue his legacy. This is only the beginning.”

Last week, the country music trio previously known as Lady Antebellum announced they would be dropping their name’s association with the Civil era and instead adopting the title of Lady A. Patterson Hood, Drive-By Truckers‘ vocalist, took note of the group’s name change and scoffed at Lady A’s former moniker. That is, until he reflected on his own group’s problematic title. Hood “sincerely” apologized for any “negative stereotypes” his band name has perpetuated, saying he’s open to suggestions about a new label.

In an op-ed written for NPR, Hood detailed how the name Drive-By Truckers came to fruition by merging his love for hip-hop and country. He now recognizes the name’s problematic origins but says he should have been aware of it sooner. “I’m not going to, and can’t, claim that those were simpler times,” Hood said. “They weren’t. Rodney King was still a very fresh memory, and the forming of my band roughly coincided with the O.J. Simpson trial and all of the racial turmoil that accompanied it. The murders of Tupac and Biggie Smalls were just on the horizon.”

Hood ended his piece by apologizing for the name and vowing to continue the ongoing conversation about the prevalence of racism in this country:

“It has always been my intent to be a good person, and to try to be a better person. It’s always a work in progress. Many of our band’s songs have attempted to examine our country’s fatal flaw of racism, from its origins in slavery and religion to our current systematic failure to advance beyond this quagmire of hate and mis-opportunity. It’s an ongoing conversation that can be at times painful, but necessary. Our name was a drunken joke that was never intended to be in rotation and reckoned with two-and-a-half decades later, and I sincerely apologize for its stupidity and any negative stereotypes it has propagated. I’m not sure changing it now serves any higher purpose, but I’m certainly open to suggestions.”

Read Hood’s full op-ed here.

---

View Entire Post ›

Top Chef co-host Padma Lakshmi has managed the impossible. She’s made food and travel TV relevant again. Taste the Nation (my review) doesn’t bombard you with huge doses of food porn from chic restaurants most of us will never get to go to. Instead, Lakshmi and her team venture deep into the American psyche by digging into both the Indigenous and migrant communities that make up the cultural fabric of this country.

In the process, the show manages to strike a harmonious balance between being thought-provoking and educational while also offering a sense of escapism and wonder. In short, Taste the Nation is exactly the food show America needs right now.

As an immigrant, Lakshmi makes an ideal host for a show centered on immigrant food, which is to say: pretty much the majority of mainstream “American” food, from hot dogs to apple pie to pizza to gumbo and beyond. But the show goes well past these commonly explored dishes by paying homage to Indigenous food culture in a way that’s rarely seen on mainstream TV. That aspect is what Padma and I met up (over the phone) this week to talk about.

As Lakshmi and I discussed food history, the importance of representation in food TV, and how adaptation and evolution make our shared foodway great, her team informed me that we’d run out of time. She was generous enough to extend the conversation in a follow-up call and I’ve included both parts below. Check it out and then watch the full “The Gullah Way” episode below.

So let’s first talk about the show. It feels very unique; very creative. It’s a bit of an outlier, even in the world of food and travel television. Where did the idea for this show come from?

It came from my work as an artist ambassador with the ACLU — the American Civil Liberties Union — on immigration issues. Shortly after the 2016 election, I started getting involved with them. And as an immigrant myself, I felt really offended by a lot of the rhetoric coming out of Washington that, in my opinion, vilified immigrant communities and the contributions that they have made over generations to this nation.

So, it was through my work on the issue that I felt compelled to write a cookbook celebrating all the foods that immigrants had brought here. And then, in tandem, I was working on a TV project on immigration. My producing partner saw the research that I was doing for the cookbook and we melded the two ideas together. It’s been a real joy to see something that was just an idea in your head turn into a full-blown series.

I’m very lucky that I got to do it.

I come from an Indigenous background and full disclosure, you’ve actually judged one of my Indigenous dishes before for UPROXX. I made a blue corn tamale stuffed with blueberry and Juniper.

That sounds good. Did I like it?

You did! Because of that, the first episode I watched was the one with the Indigenous chefs. It touched my heart because when you’re with Felicia Ruiz, you ask her the same thing you asked me, “How do you know what’s safe to eat when you forage?” It’s really fascinating to watch these Indigenous ingredients get a moment in the spotlight.

How was the decision to include Indigenous food in the show made?

Well, I thought that if I was going to explore “American food” and be truthful about that, I needed to give credit where credit was due. That’s what the whole ethos of the series is. It’s to let people from different communities speak for themselves and create their own narratives — which has not been the case in mainstream media, in my opinion.

So I had to start at what was truly, natively American food before the colonial forces came in and before the European settlers came in and before Christopher Columbus. Depending on the region you’re living in, three sisters is what was in this country, right? Corn, squash, beans. So, I was really interested in embedding myself in a Native American community.

While I’m an immigrant, I’ve done most of my schooling in America. And I was appalled at how little instruction I was given on this part of our land’s history. So it was important for me to set the groundwork and say, “Well, this is what actual American food is and has been.” Everything else that we now consider American food was brought here by other people.

Precisely.

And the whole series proceeds to delve into different communities and what those foods are, but I felt I had a responsibility. Even from an intellectual point of view, I just wanted to learn what I had felt I was deprived of knowing because of a lack of representation in history books. So that’s why I went to San Carlos. That’s why I went to talk to Felicia and the people who are in that episode.

It was really, for me, one of the most eyeopening experiences I’ve ever had. I’ve never foraged for my own food. I’ve never eaten a rodent. I’ve never been on a reservation. It was really a learning episode for me and one that I hadn’t seen in food television. It’s a story that I wanted to let that community tell on as big of a platform as I could give them.

I teared up watching that last scene around the table. My dad’s from a reservation in the Pacific Northwest. And when I got into this business of writing about food, I did so because I wanted to highlight Indigenous food and Indigenous chefs. So seeing Indigenous chefs and food given their due on your show was … it feels like a big moment for American food, in general.

Thank you. From your lips to viewers’ ears, I hope that this show catches on because it was such a beautiful journey that I was fortunate enough to take. And I hope that I can take people watching the show on it vicariously, but I’d also like to keep going because there’s so much more to know and learn.

That’s what I was thinking, as well. As I said, I’m from the Pacific Northwest, our foodways have almost no parallels to the American Southwest. It’s like the difference between Norway and Iran, it’s just a different thing.

Yeah! And that’s the thing, we paint each other with these really broad brushes and obviously the food is going to be different in the Pacific Northwest to Arizona or Florida and so on. In a ten-part series, I have so much to cover. That’s why I hope I get another season greenlit because I want the privilege of exploring those differences in different Indigenous communities.

When you were trying the Indigenous foods down there, did you find any parallels in tastes or textures that were already familiar to you? Was there a connection?

Sure. For me, I really connected with the sumac because I’ve used a lot of sumac from my exposure to Middle Eastern cuisine. And it’s funny because when I was writing the Encyclopedia of Spices and Herbs, I found out that Native Americans used sumac, that it grows wild everywhere in America. So sumac was a taste that I identified with. Then, obviously, the wild onions, and the chilies.

If you see the stone that I’m grinding the chilies with at Felicia’s home, I used to do a very similar thing with my grandmother. So I felt right at home doing that with her. And how we used the chilies reminded me of a lot of different chutneys that my family has traditionally made.

It’s really interesting because the Indigenous side of the series seeps into most episodes, especially the El Paso one. You have this great segment where you take the time to talk about Indigenous Mexican cuisine. How did you navigate that for the show?

I try to approach my work holistically because often the truth is layered and complicated. So in order to get a full understanding of the subject matter that you’re investigating, you need to account for those overlaps.

I can remember having a conversation around some table with other food people saying things like, “No, no, no, if it’s taquitos, you use corn tortillas, but if it’s flauta, you use a flour tortilla.” And this was a table of food professionals and not one person mentioned that flour is a colonial addition to North America and that’s why you have flour tortillas. That it was brought by the Spanish. Traditionally corn is the grain of choice. But that’s why you have both corn and flour tortillas.

To me, that was really interesting. And that has to do with history and colonialism and the layers of how all of those cultures have combined to build into what is now understood as “Mexican” food.

Right.

More specifically, Mexican food to me is super interesting. In America, I think, we are very familiar with Northern Mexican foods because that’s what’s close to the border.

We didn’t have time to go into this, because it was a show about Mexicans in El Paso, but I traveled extensively in Mexico and I filmed extensively in different parts of Mexico as well. We’ve done actually more than one finale for Top Chef in Mexico. And I’ve also gone on my own time with my family. And the cuisine of Mexico is so sophisticated and so diverse. But I don’t think Americans have really scratched the surface of all that is.

It also reminds me of a lot of Indian cuisine with the recados and the seeds. That’s not really surprising when you look at the climate of South Asia and Central or South America. So you have a lot of the same ingredients. You have tamarinds, mango, cumin, coconut, chilies — which are Mexican but were brought to India, again by colonialists. Today you couldn’t imagine Indian food without chili.

Indian food did not have chilies because all chilies come from Mexico and people just don’t know that. I think it’s important because you can trace a country or culture’s history through the foods that they eat. You know, there’s a reason why cumin is in Mexico. It’s because it was brought to Spain by the Moors, which also brought pomegranates. This is why the city of Grenada is called Grenada because that’s the Spanish word for pomegranates. To me, all of that history is really fascinating. And I hope that other people think so too.

You are speaking my language right now. There’s a joke in the Indigenous community that’s basically, “Imagine Italy without the tomato. Imagine Thailand without chili. Imagine Ireland without the potato.”

Right, exactly.

While you were traveling around the country and embedding yourself in immigrant communities, did you get a better sense of what we “think” America is compared to what it is on the ground for migrants?

That’s really what the show is seeking to do. It’s seeking to be a rebuttal to a lot of the vilification and negativity that immigrants have suffered. It’s insulting and offensive to me. I was incensed enough to want to make it my work. Not just my advocacy work, but by actual work-work, my day job.

I think that migration is responsible for a lot of the most beautiful things about humankind. At no other time in our history, as a civilization, has there been more movement, more migration on this earth. This is a subject that deeply interests me because I think that is where the interesting community comes from. Even though there’s a lot of pain, blood, and plunder associated with this, the only good that can come from that suffering — all that pain of earlier times — is the sifting through it all, finding the good, and enjoying it.

So while it sucks that the French were in Vietnam, we wouldn’t have banh mi otherwise. It sucks that people were so interested in spices that they took a left turn when they should have taken a right. Still, it’s cool that India has chilis now. I think that there’s power in the pain that we have collectively gone through as a society. And if we are willing to look with open eyes, we can sift through our collective cultural rubble and at least enjoy the fruits of that very difficult and tumultuous part of our shared history.

I think you don’t get to own only the good things about your culture. You have to be willing to understand that some of those good things come from very dark, bad things.

I feel that.

A lot of the work that I’m trying to do, without hopefully being heavy-handed in the series, is to say, “Okay, nobody comes to a country and leaves everything they know unless they have to or unless there’s a need for it.” Whether it’s forced migration during the Trail of Tears or bringing in slaves from Africa or Iranians or Syrians fleeing the fundamentalist regimes, or… pick any group — that’s what creates migration.

But to me what’s most beautiful is the commingling of our cultures, of sharing, of breaking bread with each other and saying, “Well, I have noodles, I’ll bring that.” And someone else is saying, “Okay, I’ll bring my curry.” To me, that’s something valuable, precious, and worth acknowledging and celebrating.

When my mom came to this country, she was working and she couldn’t find a lot of Indian groceries that she needed. So we have a South Indian dish called upma. It’s made with cracked wheat that’s sauteed with vegetables and spices. It kind of resembles stuffing. And my mom could not find rava or suji, which is the kind of cracked wheat it is, so she used Cream of Wheat because that’s what was affordable and accessible to her at the American supermarket.

Then when I was younger and I wrote my first cookbook I made it with couscous. And then today, because I discovered quinoa, I’d make it for my child with quinoa. Now, is that authentic? Well, it’s pretty damn authentic to me and my life. But it’s interesting that I am using an ancient South American grain to make a very classic South Indian recipe that’s very homey to nourish my family. To me, those are the gifts and the precious stones that dropped out of some very, very dark parts of our history.