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Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin think nothing of the arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, which accused the Russian president of “the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.” In fact, Putin decided to travel to one of the small slices of Ukraine that Russian troops (and his reportedly jilted private army) have captured. And of course, there appears to be some propaganda involved.

Putin emerged in Mariupol with the intent of putting a happy face on his incredibly deadly invasion that has now lasted over a year. Via Max Fras on Twitter, some purported “residents” awaited Putin and seemed thrilled to see him in the dead of night while a camera crew happened to be lingering nearby. One woman even apparently remarked, “This is our little piece of paradise.”

As Business Insider relays, however, one clip includes a woman heckling Putin while yelling, “It’s all lies, it’s all just for show!”

Business Insider further reports that the clip did emerge within Russian media and made it to airtime, but “[a] new version of the video released later was missing the heckler’s comments.” Not ideal, but it’s on brand. As well, the BBC previously reported that Mariupol’s exiled mayor, Vadym Boychenko, reacted to the visit by branding Putin as a “criminal” who decided to “return to the scene of the crime.” He sure did look satisfied, too.

(Via Business Insider)

(WARNING: Spoilers for The Last of Us Season 1 finale below.)

With The Last of Us Season 1 officially over after delivering dynamite ratings for HBO, showrunner Craig Mazin opened up about adapting the first game for TV and nailing the game’s bleak, yet highly memorable ending.

While the season finale stuck very close to the source material by having Joel gun down a hospital full of Fireflies to prevent them from cutting open Ellie’s brain to look for a Cordyceps cure (and more importantly, lying to her about what went down), Mazin revealed that the series almost tweaked Joel and Ellie’s final moments.

Via GQ UK:

The change was really more something that Ali Abbasi, our director, had been playing around with. He had this thought of just playing out this slightly longer, sadder version where Ellie says, ‘okay’, and then she turns and walks away. And Joel looks after her. We see the two of them walking, not really together but apart, down towards Jackson. It lingers and then fades. There was something beautiful about it. Everybody was like ‘what do we do?’

According to Mazin, the creative team began having a “meta-discussion” about how fans of the game, and viewers who aren’t familiar with the source material, will react to the change. Ultimately, they decided not to mess with success by tinkering with the game’s ending.

“In the end, there’s something very specific about ending on that close-up of Ellie,” Mazin explained. “Not knowing what comes next. Not knowing what she does. Does she walk away from him, does she walk with him, how does she feel? That moment gets suspended permanently. As we’re recording this, we haven’t aired it yet and we don’t know what the reception is going to be. I think people will get angry!”

Good news: Everybody loved it. You did it, guys.

The Last of Us Season 1 is available for streaming on HBO Max.

(Via GQ UK)

Tuesday night was a particularly difficult one for the Los Angeles Clippers, as they not only dropped a game at home to the Thunder that would’ve tied them with the Suns for fourth in the West, but they also saw star forward Paul George get helped off of the floor after suffering a right knee injury after a collision and awkward landing after a rebound.

There was considerable concern about George’s health given how bad it looked when his knee bent backwards and how much pain he was clearly in, as he reportedly left the arena on crutches afterwards. On Wednesday, an MRI was scheduled for George and the Clippers organization and its fans waited with bated breath to find out the severity of the injury. The team brought word in the afternoon that George’s injury was not as severe as initially feared, with an MRI revealing a knee sprain that will be re-evaluated in 2-3 weeks.

That likely means the Clippers will have to navigate the remainder of the regular season without George, as two weeks would be April 5, with the regular season ending on April 9. However, this seems to open the door for George to be back for a playoff series, which is obviously a necessity for the Clippers to be a contender in the West for a deep playoff run. George is averaging 23.8 points, 6.1 rebounds, and 5.1 assists on 45.7/37.1/87.1 shooting splits this year.

What George’s injury does do is further narrow the margin for error for the Clippers, as they will now have even more reason to want to avoid the play-in, with George’s status up in the air for the end of the regular season and the dates for the play-in tournament. L.A. is currently one game up on the Warriors for fifth in the West standings and 1.5 games up on the Thunder and Mavs in 7th and 8th, meaning they will need to close strong without their second-star in order to maintain one of those six guaranteed playoff spots, which will buy George a touch more rest before a first round series begins.

On a Wednesday morning, indie-pop band Wednesday has shared a new song from their upcoming album Rat Saw Good. On their latest single, “TV In The Gas Pump,” vocalist Karly Hartzman offers vivid recollections of life on the road, traveling between tour stops, and the interesting places the stumble upon along the way.

“Violently came up / in a Dollar General / You took too much / Jake walked into a Starbucks / TV in the gas pump / blares into the dark,” sings Hartzman over soft, guitar-and-drum-driven instrumental.

With the vivid imagery, Hartzman paints a picture of the places one comes across while touring.

“This is the first song I’ve written about being on the road, and I really just wanted to collect all that imagery you ingest on tour,” said Hartzman said in a statement. “A few images that made it in the song include: the never-ending gas station stops that blend together and the dystopian gas pump advertisements, a stressful experience in a Panera Bread, and a story of coming up from taking what you thought was a microdose of shrooms in a Dollar General.”

In the song’s trippy accompanying video, a Sims-like version of Wednesday is seen playing music along the side of a railroad, hitchhiking, and, as its title suggests, staring at the small screen in a gas pump.

You can listen to “TV In The Gas Pump” above.

Rat Saw God is out 4/7 via Dead Oceans. Find more information here.

The voice may well sound familiar, recalling Andy Samberg’s Nic Cage impression from SNL, but Digman! (which debuts tonight on Comedy Central) is not “The Nic Cage Show” or any kind of unofficial version of that. If you watch the show for more than 2 minutes, it becomes clear. What Digman! is is a kick-ass action-adventure cartoon filled with an enviable voice cast (Samberg, Tim Robinson, Mitra Jouhari, Guz Khan, Melissa Fumero) that channels the vibes of National Treasure and Indiana Jones while telling the story of a down-on-his-luck archeologist with a mammoth personality that’s trying to reclaim his place atop the food chain in a world that reveres archeologists.

Uproxx spoke with co-creators Samberg and Neil Campbell (who worked together on Brooklyn Nine-Nine) recently to discuss that voice, those inspirations, and a barrage of board games and animation staples that also influenced a show that also finds laughs in randomness, weirdness, and a little darkness. Bottom line, both Samberg and Campbell are having a lot of fun walking the line between satire and reverence for the genre, sending their characters through the streets of Venice, shouting catchphrases, dropping beautiful Hudson Hawk references (as if there were any other kind), and dealing with the sudden realization that neck snaps have consequences. Here’s Samberg and Campbell on all that and more.

So how did Digman! come to be?

Andy Samberg: Neil and I worked together a bunch of times, but most recently before this on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. He was a writer on the show. We would hang out on set for hours and hours while shooting, and kept talking about how we wanted to do something together and create something together. We both agreed that doing an adult animation show would be perfect for us because we really wanted to do something that was super joke heavy.

We will be saying this a lot because it really is the truth, but the root thought behind this was wanting to make something where we never had to cut jokes we loved. Not that we don’t love Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I’m super proud of it and I know he is too, but when you are on a network and it’s that kind of a show, there are definitely jokes you come up with where you’re like, “Well, we can’t do that, obviously,” and that’s the correct answer. But we were like, “It would be nice to work on something where we never have to say that.” So we basically came up with this idea in hopes of actually staying true to that promise.

Are there any specific animated shows from the past that you guys pulled from as inspiration?

Samberg: I could tell you some of my favorites. Certainly, The Simpsons and South Park are the bar. I think everyone agrees, not just because of the longevity, but because they are so dedicated to jokes and comedy. For me, they are part of my comedic foundation and my language. Certainly the quality of the adventure aspects of Rick and Morty and Futurama, things like that, definitely came into play where that is what we would aspire to, shows that take care and do a great job with those elements and make you engaged not just on a comedic level.

Neil Campbell: Yeah, and I think The Simpsons and South Park, in some sense, are basically what helped shaped my sense of humor. Rick and Morty and Futurama are comedy touchstones. We love them, and then I think there’s lots of cool stuff out there that you go, “Oh, it would be cool if we did a sequence that’s like this thing, and this one moment in Neon Genesis Evangelion, or something, or in FLCL, or whatever. One-Punch Man, and other things we love. But I don’t know that we were like… I don’t know if I could point to one moment, as much as it’s just things in our brain that love and aspire to, that people enjoy the show as much as we enjoyed those shows.

Samberg: (With) our love of the genre, the live-action action-adventure genre, and specifically in the world of archeology, or your National Treasures… We were really hoping to give this a cinematic feel, and part of that is the animation, and the design of it, but another part of it is the score.

Yeah, the music is great.

Samberg: Oh, good. I’m glad you like it. It’s my buddy Cornbread, who has done a lot of Lonely Island stuff, and he kills it. We were like, “Go full John Williams,” go full all the stuff that we are paying homage to. That’s the energy we want, and I feel like he has been delivering it at such a high level. The music feels big and orchestral and bombastic.

How do you land on the, I guess, the character quirks, but also specifically his voice, which is familiar, maybe reminiscent of someone…

Samberg: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

I don’t know, it’s sort of close (to Nic Cage). How did that happen? Do you run that by anybody?

Samberg: I will be totally honest. I did Cage on SNL, obviously. It was one of my favorite impressions. It was easily my favorite impression that I did. It was something that was assigned to me, and then it developed into something totally else. I wrote it almost every time with my buddy Rob Klein, and Cage came on the show and did it with me, and it was the best moment of my life. Certainly one of the greatest moments at SNL for me. It was so fun, he was so rad. He correctly pointed out, and we put it into the actual Weekend Update feature, that what I was doing was not actually an impression of him, it was actually a psychotic character that we had written and come up with. So I didn’t want to stop doing it. I loved that character. So we were like, “Well, how can we take this and not have it be we’re just doing The Nic Cage Show, because that is A) illegal, and B) not really something that I was interested in doing. I feel like when he came on and did it with me, that was like, okay, so this has run its course and it’s the most perfect ending you could imagine for it. So that helped us set the stage for the world we would do it in.

The beautiful thing about Digman!, I feel, is that we actually pivoted so hard into creating this whole universe where archeologists are the celebrities, and using that as a jumping-off point. It started as a joke of us talking about how all the movies we loved that have archeologists in them, like Indiana Jones, where everyone is like, “Yeah, an archeologist is a swashbuckling adventurer, who will run away from boulders.” And you’re like, “Yeah, I don’t know any archeologists in real life that do that, but this is pretty fun to watch.” So we were laughing, talking about that, and how that was fed to us, and took it and ran, and it became its own thing.

Do you worry about any kind of Nicolas Cage blowback from the familiarity of the voice?

Campbell: Every night.

Samberg: I certainly hope not. I feel like he’s got bigger fish to fry, honestly. The other thing I will say is this, there are definitely elements of the voice, but as we kept making the show, Rip started becoming something else, I think.

I would agree with that. In the second episode, I was thinking that actually. Not that it’s not still familiar, but it is definitely its own character. It’s not just Nic Cage from National Treasure.

Samberg: Yes, exactly, and we are not making any kind of Nic Cage jokes like the way we were on Update, where it was about the movies he had made, or about his tabloid stuff, or anything like that. So I think the longer we go with it, the less it even feels that way, which I’m really glad of, because, again, it’s not (him). I like that people are recognizing that there is a similarity in the voice, but I also don’t want it to be like, “We’re doing an unofficial show,” do you know what I mean? That was never the intention. It was more like, “Let’s make an adventure show.”

I think the show does a good job of walking the line of making sure you poke fun at some of the conventions of the live-action genre but doing it in a loving way. But I’m guessing that’s a part of it, is making sure that it still feels like it has a place in that genre.

Campbell: Yeah, I think a big thing for us was we love that sense of wonder, and that the world is full of mysteries and secrets and adventures, and stuff that’s part of that genre, like the Indiana Jones movies. But it’s also what Legend of Zelda feels like, and stuff like that, and I think there’s something that we really respond to and love about that kind of thing. What’s that old board game? Fireball Island! Stuff like that, where the world has traps, gangsters, treasures, and mysteries, and we got to find them. We were like, “Oh, well, we could write about some buffoons in a world like that.” And that felt like a lot of fun to us.

Samberg: Pitfall and Jungle Hunt, I would say, are our main two touchstones.

Board games that took an hour to set up.

Campbell: You pray it actually works, that you set them up right.

Samberg: Like Crossbows and Catapults. Did you ever play that? Oh my god, it was the best. You set up huge castles on either side of the room, and then you shoot either a crossbow or a catapult and try and break each other’s castles and get the flag to fall down, basically. Anyway, it was one of my favorite games. But it was a similar thing where it took forever to set up, and then you break it.

Who can I thank for the Hudson Hawk reference in episode two?

Campbell: I think it was you, Andy.

Samberg: Was it me? I feel like I said it, and you were like, “I was about to say Hudson Hawk.”

Endless praise for anybody who remembers that lovely film. I have the novelization of Hudson Hawk somewhere in here, the actual book.

Samberg: We have to reference the novelization of Hudson Hawk.

Campbell: We’ve got to get someone to do a novelization of the show.

It’s one of my all-time favorite things, and I talked to Jon Hamm for Confess, Fletch and asked him about it, so I have to ask you. Sergio on SNL. Is there any chance ever that there will ever be another shred of film of Sergio in this world? SNL50 is only a couple of years away.

Samberg: I can’t imagine if they ask us back for the 50th that Lorne will want anything but Sergio.

That’s the hope.

Samberg: I will say this, we did put Sergio in our 100th digital short. We did bring him back. He is near and dear to my heart. That one was funny because the first draft of that that I wrote was way too long.

Impossible.

Samberg: There is so much lore to it. There’s a Gremlins structure, throwing the curse or whatever. It’s almost like a shitty parable or something. But yeah, the last shot of Sergio, that last scene, was the thing that I really am the proudest of.

The first episode of ‘Digman!’ premieres tonight on Comedy Central at 10:30PM ET

Renfield — or as you’ll call it opening night, “two tickets for The Nicolas Cage as Dracula Movie, please” — comes out next month. This is an exciting development for fans of vampires, Nic Cage, and What We Do in the Shadows (it’s the next best thing until the show returns). Until then, Universal Pictures has released the final trailer for the comedy-horror film, which stars Nicholas Hoult as Renfield, the count’s long-suffering servant. You’d think he would have learned better after working with Immortan Joe, but oh well.

You can watch the trailer above.

“The more I thought about the Dracula character, the more I saw him as Love in Exile, a kind of romantic addict who is symbolic of… you can supplant any addiction, whether it’s alcohol or heroin or sex, or whatever, and turn that bloodlust,” Cage told Collider about playing Dracula. “And he wants the blood, but this is all coming from a place of loneliness and unrequited love for hundreds of years, and he’s constantly getting his heart broken. So this is more the pathos of Dracula from what I’ve found in my analysis of his psyche.”

The Pathos of Nicolas Cage as Dracula would also be a good title.

In this modern monster tale of Dracula’s loyal servant, Nicholas Hoult stars as Renfield, the tortured aide to history’s most narcissistic boss, Dracula (Nicolas Cage). Renfield is forced to procure his master’s prey and do his every bidding, no matter how debased. But now, after centuries of servitude, Renfield is ready to see if there’s a life outside the shadow of The Prince of Darkness. If only he can figure out how to end his codependency.

Renfield opens on April 14th.

Doja Cat gave fans an update about her breast reduction and liposuction surgeries, as the star revealed that she’s currently in recovery.

Earlier this week (March 20), she shared that she got the breast work that she had wanted to have done. “got my titties done and my cl*t bedazzled,” she posted online.

Doja also revealed that she got a reduction instead of implants, after a fan on Twitter asked, “Big boobies or what?” She clarified that she’s now a 32C in terms of bra size.

“How are you feeling,” someone else wondered about her. “4 days into recovery rn,” Doja replied.

“Feels ok. i got lipo so my thighs hurt a lot if i move too much. but im healing really fast,” she added in two more separate tweets. “wish i could suck my own titties thats how good they look rn god damn.”

She also clarified a conversation about her liposuction, after people were wondering why others were mad that she got the procedure. “Lipo is when fat is transferred from 1 area to another,” one person responded, which Doja quickly and politely corrected.

“No it is not, dear. That is called a fat transfer. I did not get a fat transfer,” she said.

Today Live! With Kelly and Ryan host Kelly Ripa premiered her new podcast, Let’s Talk Off Camera, on Wednesday and used the show’s first episode to lament over the humiliating experience of trying to find the right angles when hooking up with your significant other via Facetime. Ripa said that during the 10 months her husband Mark Consuelos was filming the CW drama Riverdale in Canada, the pair were forced to take matters into, uh, their own hands (via iPhones).

This was in 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, which made visiting each other even more difficult. To bridge the gap, the couple had to get creative, which is where Ripa’s admission of their “ludicrous sexual rituals” came up.

“I became so alarmed at my appearance over FaceTime that I started rigging the computer to hang from a ladder,” Ripa explained on the show. “I hung the computer over a ladder so that I could look up to Mark and he did not have to see what gravity was actually doing [to me].”

Ripa’s commitment to getting the perfect shot is commendable, especially considering how low-quality Apple’s front-facing cameras are, but apparently, drastic measures were necessary. Consuelos had told Ripa the only “potential dealbreaker” in their marriage was abstinence. Even when Ripa was going through menopause, her husband admitted to “not giving her a break.”

“Unless you had some type of medical condition where, like, you lost the use of [your body],” he clarified. “There have never been months [between having sex] unless I was in another country.”

How romantic.

(Via Page Six)

She-Hulk star Jameela Jamil had the ladies of The View dying with laughter during an off-the-wall interview. Jamil was on hand to promote her new podcast, Bad Dates, and she kicked things off by giving the daytime TV audience a boner-themed preview at what to expect.

“I am what you would call a serial erection killer,” Jamil quipped as The View hosts tried to contain their laughter. “I’d have my own Netflix documentary series about all the erections I’ve murdered.”

The topic didn’t get any less scandalous as Jamil broke down what it’s like to date her, which she offered co-host Sara Haines a chance to try. “I’m asking you out, officially, on television,” Jamil said before things got really raunchy.

Via Entertainment Weekly:

She went on to admit that she waits “three months before I kiss or have sex with someone, so it’s like The Hunger Games trying to get into my pants. It’s ridiculous.”

“I just don’t want to see your balls until I’m ready,” Jamil said, which prompted Haines to hang her head in her hands while moderator Whoopi Goldberg smirked to the audience.

“I’m looking at our executive producer, who looks like he’s about to die,” Sunny Hostin said as the audience laughed.

But Jamil was still going. She then dished her most important piece of dating advice, which was especially poignant given the several flatulence-based “scandals” on The View over the years.

“My only dating advice is never, ever — I’ve learned this from the podcast — never, ever trust a fart,” Jamil instructed the audience. “Don’t do it… It’s not your friend. You think it’s your friend. It’s not.… It’s your enemy. It becomes something else sometimes, and we just don’t need to get into it because this is morning television. Don’t make me say it.”

It’s amazing that Whoopi managed to steer the conversation back to safer waters after Jamil’s fart advice, but she pulled it off until Jamil dropped an F-bomb later in the show. Like we said, it was quite the interview.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

Post Malone has officially settled the lawsuit over his song “Circles,” just as it was supposed to go to trial yesterday (March 21). Back in 2019, another musician, Tyler Armes, claimed that he wrote most of the No. 1 hit, including the melody. However, he was only offered five percent in publishing royalties, per The Guardian.

“I was beside him giving input – I was not just someone hanging out in the room,” Armes said. He also added that any negotiations for a higher rate were disregarded by Malone’s manager and team.

The following year, he officially sued the rapper, noting that he wanted proper credit as a co-writer and to receive past and future royalties. Malone wound up countersuing.

“It is an age-old story in the music business that when a song earns the type of runaway success that ‘Circles’ has garnered, an individual will come out of the woodwork, falsely claim to take credit for the song, and demand unwarranted and unearned windfall profits from the song,” Malone’s filing said.

The last development in the case found Judge Otis D. Wright refusing to dismiss the case last year, citing that a jury might be able to find that Armes “shared equal control in the session, making nonhierarchical contributions to a unitary whole.”

Official terms of Malone and Armes’ settlement are undisclosed at this moment.