It’s not an insult to say that the Scream franchise peaked with the first scene in the first movie. The rest of the 1996 film is really good, too, and the sequels fall between watchable and highly enjoyable (I stand by Scream 3 being better than its reputation), but man, it’s hard to beat that first scene. If you somehow missed both Scream and Scary Movie, which begins the same way, the movie kicks off with high school student Casey Becker answering a phone call from a mysterious man on the other line. They discuss horror movies before the conversation turns sinister: “Why do you want to know my name?” “Because I want to know who I’m looking at.” Minutes later, Casey is dead after the masked killer, known as Ghostface, sees what her insides look like.
That’s not how things are supposed to happen. Drew Barrymore, the biggest star in the movie, isn’t supposed to die in the first scene. But that’s one of the reasons why Scream is so good, and according to Barrymore, it was partially her idea to get murdered.
“In the horror film genre, my biggest pet peeve was that I always knew the main character was always going to be slugging through at the end but was going to creak by and make it,” Barrymore explained on Hot Ones. “What I wanted to do is to take that comfort zone away. I asked if I could be Casey Becker, so that we would establish that rule does not apply in this film.” The rest is horror movie history.
Reports from earlier this month claimed that Donald Trump associates were helping Kanye West land on presidential ballots in states like Vermont, Arkansas, and Wisconsin. Well, it appears Kanye could have used more assistance in Wisconsin, because the state just barred Kanye from appearing on its 2020 presidential ballot.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission, a bipartisan panel consisting of three Democrats and three Republicans, voted 5-1 against Kanye appearing on the ballot due to late qualifying paperwork. The commission determined that Kanye did not file his paperwork on time, an assertion that Kanye’s attorney challenged. He said Kanye had until 5:01 p.m. on August 4 to file, but Wisconsin state law says candidates must file nomination papers “no later” than 5 p.m. on that date.
Commissioner Julie Glancey said (via Politico), “When you’re late, you’re late. We’ve knocked people off the ballot for being one signature short. If we are holding their feet to the fire on the number of signatures, we need to hold their feet to the fire on the time they file.” Commissioner Dean Knudson also noted, “Five o’clock is five o’clock. Maybe I’m just common sense and not a lawyer.”
A day after President Trump flew into an all-caps, white-hot rage over Obama and Kamala Harris at the DNC, Julia Louis-Dreyfus shredded Trump and Fox News during the final night of the event. However, a handful of hosts must not have been feeling too torn up about the Veep star’s speech because it didn’t take away from several Fox News on-air personalities’ praise of Joe Biden’s speech. While formally accepting the Democratic party nomination, Biden vowed to lead the country to “overcome this season of darkness in America.” He further promised that “I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I will be an ally of the light, not of the darkness.”
You can watch the full speech here, but let’s just say that it was surprisingly well-received on Fox News. First up, The Daily Briefing host Dana Perino declared that “Joe Biden just hit a home run in the bottom of ninth… his best.” She went further, singling out his “rhythm, energy, emotion, and delivery.”
Host Laura Ingraham really shocked Donald Trump Jr., who must have been prepared to for a regular old snarkfest against Biden. In the below, clip, you can see the smile melt from his face when Ingraham pointed out that “he did beat expectations, Don.” Not only that, but Ingraham believes that Biden “delivered a good speech” that was “fairly well-delivered.” Don Jr. does not agree.
Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace went even further while gushing over Biden’s “enormously effective speech” that “blew a hole” in the president’s attempts to trash his Democratic rival:
“Remember, Donald Trump has been talking for months about Joe Biden as [being] mentally shot, a captive of the left… And yes, Biden was reading from the teleprompter and a prepared speech, but I thought that he blew a hole, a big hole, in that characterization. It seems to me that after tonight, Donald Trump will have to run against a candidate, not a caricature.”
Elsewhere throughout the evening, political contributor Karl Rove admitted that “it was a very good speech,” and host Bret Baier declared that the evening was “the best he’s been, as far as his delivery.”
And Fox News personalities weren’t the only loud voices here. Over at The Drudge Report, Biden is taking center stage for throwing down a “barn burner” of a speech.
Whereas President Trump tweeted as if the wind had been taken out of his sails. No all-caps rant here, just a muted reaction that described Biden’s speech as “just words!”
In 47 years, Joe did none of the things of which he now speaks. He will never change, just words!
Earlier this summer, Drake promised that he would follow his Dark Lane Demo Tapes project with a new full-length album, and now he’s getting ready to deliver. He recently shared “Laugh Now Cry Later,” which serves as the lead single from Drake’s upcoming album, Certified Lover Boy. He’s now gearing up to get into the full promotional swing of things, as evidenced by a tease of new merch. It’s not just any merch, though, as it looks like Drake is collaborating with Nike for his Certified Lover Boy swag.
On his Instagram Story last night, Drake shared a photo of what is almost certainly merch for his new album, which includes a white Nike baseball hat with lipstick marks on the brim, as well as Nike Air socks with red hearts surrounding the iconic Nike swoosh.
@champagnepapi/Instagram
This comes after Drake apparently failed to secure a trademark for his album title, as he faced a couple roadblocks in that process, one of them being the ’80s band Loverboy, best known for their hit “Working For The Weekend.” In cheerier news, Drake recently gave thanks to Lil Wayne for supporting him early in his musical career, calling the rapper the “most selfless artist ever.”
The BTS Army is perhaps the most fervent fan base in all of music, as they constantly help the group pull off impressive feats. Sure enough, BTS and their fans have done something else amazing today. This morning, the group debuted their new video for “Dynamite,” and it shattered YouTube records.
YouTube hasn’t released official numbers yet, but it has been reported that the “Dynamite” video had racked up 10 million views in just 21 minutes. That surpasses their own record previously set by their “On” video, which hit that same viewing figure in 65 minutes. Additionally, it has also been reported that the video broke another record: During the video’s premiere, there were apparently somewhere between 3 and 4 million concurrent viewers. That eclipses the previous record, which was set by Blackpink’s “How You Like That” video, which had 1.65 million simultaneous watchers.
The group told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe of the track, “This is ‘Dynamite’ — made of positive vibes, energy, hope, love, the purity, everything. Recording this song was really fun, and like Jin said, we’re going through difficult times so we tried to have more fun working on this song. We made this song in hopes of giving energy to the listeners. We’re glad this song turned out great and hope a lot of our fans can listen to it to receive the positive energy we tried to incorporate in the song.”
As of press time, about nine hours after the video’s premiere, it has around 53 million views.
If you do a Google search for “famous people from Delaware,” the top result is Aubrey Plaza, from both Only in Your State and Delaware Online. The latter’s readers poll was taken a few years ago, though. Things have changed since then, and “this week,” a clearly-threatened Plaza said, “all I’m hearing is ‘Joe Biden this’ and ‘Joe Biden that.’”
Shortly after the former-vice president (who isn’t from Delaware, but his family moved to The First State when he was 10) officially accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for president on Thursday, the Parks and Recreation star was one of the special guests for the DNC After Party, along with Zooey Deschanel, Diplo, and Andy Cohen. She spoke to other notable Delawareans (?) to find out if she’s still the state’s most famous person. 30 Rock‘s Keith Powell told her it was Biden, as did Other Space actor Neil Casey (“It’s a no brainer. He’s going to be the next president of the United States”), WNBA superstar Elena Delle Donne, and Sen. Chris Coons. “Aubrey, are you the Democratic nominee for president?” he asked Plaza, who replied, “No, I don’t think so.”
She ended the segment by encouraging viewers to not only vote for Joe, but to also vote in a new (non-existent) Delawareonline.com poll. “Let’s get this Delawarean in The White House,” she said about Biden. “And then go on Delawareonline.com and vote for Aubrey Plaza for most famous person in Delaware in 2021.”
Netflix welcomes a new animated comedy and the return of a fan-favorite fantasy drama this week. Jake Johnson’s Hoops, a raunchy series about a washed-up basketball coach traumatizing his team of talentless misfits lands on the streaming platform. It’s dirtier than BoJack and it sports no lessons about puberty or growing up like Big Mouth does, but there are plenty of bits. If that doesn’t strike you, maybe the new season of Lucifer, which plans to introduce Satan’s twin brother to stir things up, just might?
Here’s everything coming to (and leaving) Netflix this week of August 21.
Hoops (Netflix series streaming 8/21)
New Girl’s Jake Johnson leads this cast of Netflix’s latest animated series, playing a foul-mouthed high school basketball coach named Ben Hopkins. Ben wants to get out from under his father’s shadow — a former pro baller and current owner of a successful steakhouse voiced by the always-funny Rob Riggle — and he thinks coaching a bunch of talentless losers to greatness might help with that dream. There are prostitute bits, a Godfather reference that goes too far, and lots of f-bombs so if that doesn’t speak to you after watching the first episode, don’t stick around for more. No seriously, Jake Johnson told us to tell you that.
Netflix is giving fans of this hellishly-fun crime drama another season and this one feels a bit more experimental than the rest. That’s a good thing because introducing Satan’s evil twin (sorry, we had to) feels like a completely bonkers move that might just pay off. While Lucifer is stuck somewhere in the Underworld, his sibling is f*cking up his relationships on Earth, starting with his romance with Chloe.
I’ve always said Eric Roberts doesn’t get enough credit for being Julia Roberts’ Frank Stallone. Now the hardest working man in show business is trying to become the hardest working man in show business (truly sorry for this joke), after he went on Australia’s The Morning Show to promote a new erectile dysfunction product called “The Rocket.”
The clip, in which Eric Roberts initially gets the name of the product’s website wrong, is a masterpiece of gloriously pointless Australian television. The over-caffeinated hosts goad Roberts into saying “erectile dysfunction” over and over so they can make winky references to sex, but don’t let Roberts actually describe how the product works. Presumably because that might involve, you know, talking about penises and such. Croikey, Eric, you can’t say that on telly! Roberts also begins the segment by clarifying that he didn’t actually suffer from ED when he discovered the product, which would seem to make him a bad judge of cures for it, but hey I’m not a scientist.
According to what I can glean from a piece in the Daily Mail (entitled “Would You Try Zapping Your Penis With ‘The Rocket?’”) the device, which you wand up and down your penis (important to note) works by “sending sound waves through the penis to encourage blood flow and the creation of new blood vessels.” Ooh, can I program it to play “Shock the Monkey?”
It was invented, the piece goes on to note, by Stephanie Wolff, “an anti-aging specialist,” which is definitely a real job, and her husband, Dustin, on whose penis she presumably tested it, and with whom she runs the “Novus anti-aging center” which I think we can all agree is a very fancy name for a thing.
Stephanie and Dustin run a Novus Anti-Aging Center, where a large portion of Stephanie’s days are spent using a kind of mild shock treatment on men’s penises, with the seemingly paradoxical goal of making them work better. [DailyMail]
Can we all give the Daily Mail writer a round of applause? “Stephanie’s days are spent using a kind of mild shock treatment on men’s penises, with the seemingly paradoxical goal of making them work better” is one of the greatest sentences I’ve ever read.
Roberts’ appearance on Australian TV was in February, but he also went on comedian Dave Landau’s podcast in June to promote The Phoenix, which is apparently what The Rocket is called now after a lawsuit settlement with another company that also claimed the name. Update your bookmarks, people.
With this, Roberts adds “Australia’s This Morning” and “Dave Landau’s podcast” to his list of 2020 film and television credits. I was just trying to count them on IMDB but lost track at 40. That is not an exaggeration. He had more than 40 credits just in 2020, a year when filming has been shutdown. Is there a job Eric Roberts won’t take? He works so much that you’d assume he has 15 divorces to pay for, but he’s apparently been married to the same woman since 1992.
Here’s to hoping we all find something we love in life as much as Eric Roberts loves having a camera pointed at him.
Vince Mancini is onTwitter. You can access his archive of reviewshere.
“What is it that you desire?” It’s the siren song for weirdos who can’t resist craving a hefty dose of urban fantasy to shake up what could otherwise be a run-of-the-mill procedural with a side of a The X-Files-style dynamic. Lucifer isn’t prestige fare, as anyone who’s watched the show realizes. It’s often quite silly and saucy with the Devil, who’s sporting some sort of hybrid U.K. accent, walking around Los Angeles like a sharp-dressed man and helping a steely detective solve crimes with his Satanic “mojo.” This version of Lucifer Morningstar originated in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman (with an assist from Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg). The cool thing about this TV series, though, is that the Devil’s comic-book origins don’t matter at all.
Yep, one can totally watch Lucifer for sheer comedy and escapism purposes. It’s funny as heck to watch this tweak on the procedural genre’s will-they-or-won’t-they setup of law enforcement partners. They’ve dragged this question out more adeptly than most shows who attempt to so so. Hell, ahead of Season 5 on Netflix (which picked up the show with Season 4 after a Fox cancellation, and agreed to Season 6 after a #SaveLucifer fan campaign), I still wasn’t even entirely sure why Chloe tolerated Lucifer. After all, she’s the only human who can see through all of his sh*t. Yet that question gets answered more sufficiently this year due to a number of revelations.
So, there’s a little more substance going on now, which feels more concentrated due to Netflix not doing the bloated 20+ episode seasons like Fox did. Most importantly, the show stays blissfully ridiculous, for these reasons and more:
(1) The idea of Lucifer growing bored by the routine matters of running Hell and seeking to amuse himself with the LAPD instead;
(2) The same goes for Tom Ellis portraying the Devil as a dashing playboy who runs a nightclub and talks to himself in the mirror whilst nude;
(3) The Devil needs therapy, too! And he constantly frets over how to resolve that unresolved sexual tension with Chloe (Lauren German), who he usually addresses simply as “Detective.” It sort-of reminds me of a long-lost Matthew McConaughey movie, Surfer, Dude, in which he actually plays naked bongos and only addresses his love interest as “East Coast.” There’s a good guest-star idea for Season 6.
(4) The writers decided that Season 5 was the right time to spring an out-of-nowhere announcement on us: Lucifer has a secret twin brother. What a supernatural soap opera we have here, and that tomfoolery is such a punch in the face that I have to respect it.
Look, the show has a loyal audience, who isn’t going anywhere, and the show certainly doesn’t need to pull out major stops itself to keep viewership high. Nonetheless, that’s what this new split-season does. Stones that were previously left unturned are illuminated, and there’s plenty of demonic little trinkets along the way. Like Lucifer 2.0 (his name is Michael, and it doesn’t make much sense in a biblical way), for example, who’s determined to steal his brother’s life while unfurling a very different set of wings on earth while Lucifer’s on a trip to Hell. For sure, “I was wondering when you’d show our face again” is one of the most Lucifer lines that ever existed.
Netflix
There’s also an episode that viewers have been anticipating (and chattering about) about for awhile: the noir story that travels back to the 1940s. And the series also delivers an excellent meta-episode with a show within a show (called ¡Diablo!). Neither of these experimental efforts are simply a gimmick or bottle episodes but further the narrative. It’s remarkable that the show has constructed such an air-tight set of eight episodes (and done away with the Fox bloat) while retaining what is beloved about these characters. All of this is led by the swaggering antichrist himself, who manages to get himself into so many jams among humans, it’s a kick to watch.
Look, if you watch and love this show already, you’ll be thrilled with where it’s going now. If you don’t watch and are predisposed to enjoy either procedurals or comic books, give the “evil” guy a shot. Lucifer makes a fine binge watch, and you’ll have plenty of time to catch up before the (likely) endgame of Season 6. For now, either prepare to gobble up eight new episodes over a weekend or miss out on a devilishly delightful spin on the same formula that’s relished by Law & Order: SVU and Criminal Minds addicts. The difference, though, is that Lucifer isn’t a stressful watch. It offers sheer joy and pleasure for all involved.
This season, really, is a love letter to the fans who kept the show alive and threw down over the possibility of it ending too soon. The Devil is back, baby, and he’s gonna use that mojo on you.
‘Lucifer’ returns for its fifth season August 21 on Netflix.
After putting the Brooklyn legend on blast earlier this year by letting fans know a Nas album was the way, Big Sean slides through with a verse of his own on “Replace Me” with Don Toliver from Nas’ new King’s Disease album. With Don Toliver holding the track together with a hook that samples Ella Mai’s “Trip,” Nas and Big Sean both lay verses that speak on the topic of relationships, with Big Sean’s verse alluding to his own relationship with Jhene Aiko. Sean references his relationship with the “Triggered” with the line: “You know I’m good at reading you I spent like ten thousand hours,” pointing to Jhene and Nas’ “10k Hours” collaboration from her Chilombo album.
Nas first announced his King’s Disease earlier this month in a trailer to Instagram, one that revealed Hit-Boy as the album’s executive producer. Soon after he shared its first single, “Ultra Black,” a track that caught more attention for its diss to Doja Cat than the song’s overall appeal, or lack thereof, to fans. King’s Disease‘s thirteen songs present features from Charlie Wilson, Lil Durk, Anderson .Paak, Fivio Foreign, ASAP Ferg, The Firm, AZ, Foxy Brown, and Brucie B.
As for Big Sean, fans are still awaiting the release of the Detroit native’s Detroit 2 album, which he announced back in March.
Listen to “Replace Me” in the video above.
King’s Disease is out now via Mass Appeal. Get it here.
Don Toliver is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warne Music Group.
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