Category: Viral

Damon Albarn is neck-deep in his work with Gorillaz lately, as the group’s Song Machine project is going strong. That’s not his only mega-successful band, though, as he has plenty of fans who are most interested in his Blur-related endeavors. The group has been mostly quiet since releasing its 2015 album The Magic Whip (which was their first record since 2003), but Albarn says he would be happy to perform more concerts with Blur.

Albarn was asked in a recent interview, “have we heard the last of” Blur, and he responded, “I really hope not. I love doing those gigs, they’re great, but it’s not something I need to do. I only do it because there’s a joy in doing it. It’s an absolute treat. I can’t wait to sing Parklife again.”

This echoes what Albarn said in a 2018 interview: “A reunion is never not a possibility. I think most definitely at some point we’ll play those songs again. I’d hate to think I’d never play with those musicians again. […] You want to feel that people really, really, really want you to do it, otherwise you’re kind of becoming a tribute act to yourself. You destroy everything that you’ve created if you do. Some days I really fancy doing a Blur song in the middle of a Gorillaz set. I’ve never tried it, but I probably shouldn’t.”

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

Before the Toronto Film Festival starts, any attendee will read through the descriptions of the movies to get a sense of what’s playing. Because these are all just a bunch of new titles thrown at us that mean almost nothing. When reading about I Care A Lot, I got the sense it would be about how the elderly in the United States can be taken advantage of by unscrupulous predators. I thought this would be a sad movie about the plight of older Americans who can’t take care of themselves. Rosamund Pike plays that unscrupulous lawyer who preys on Dianne Wiest’s character, becoming her legal guardian through dubious means then using that power to steal her assets. What I didn’t know about the movie is Peter Dinklage plays Wiest’s son, a Russian mob boss, and the movie descends into a bloody, violent ever escalating face off between two sociopaths: Pike’s Marla Grayson and Dinklage’s Roman Lunyov.

Ahead, we spoke with both Pike and director J Blakeson about this surprising bloodbath of a movie. Of course, none of us are actually in Toronto (we all wish we were), but we made the best of it over Zoom as Pike and Blakeson talk about this crazy movie that is not what anyone would possibly expect. Oh, and also Chris Messina, who plays Roman Lunyov’s attorney, who wears some pretty crazy suits. (Also, on the day of this interview I was uncharacteristically late. The publicists handling this movie were also handling a movie called Monday, so of course I wrote down the wrong day. Which led to me waking up to a lot of emails asking where I was, then rushing to my computer and spared everyone my “just got out of bed” look by keeping my video off.)

Sorry, my video isn’t on. I had a mixup and came straight from bed. Anyway … this movie was not what I was expecting at all.

J Blakeson: Yeah, I mean, it’s going to go down in some certain places I don’t think people were expecting it to go. Especially with seeing the cast, that they’re all pretty surprising in this, I think. So, yeah. I think people are surprised, but that’s not always a good thing. I think it’s better than doing what they’re expecting.

I read the description and I really thought this was going to be about the sad plight of how we treat our senior citizens and how they’re taken advantage of. At one point I had to check if it was based on a true story. And then the mobsters show up.

Blakeson: [Laughs] Well, they do have mobsters in the world, but this isn’t based on a true story.

Rosamund Pike: Even mobsters get old. That’s what Marla says, even sadistic and moral assholes get old.

It’s funny, the last time I interviewed you was for Barney’s Version, ten years ago. I re-read that interview and a good portion of it is you being disappointed because you thought they said Meg Ryan was coming in to interview you.

Pike: [Laughs] Oh, I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Mike. That’s why you didn’t want to get out of bed today.

Ha, right. Well, I too would be disappointed if I walked in instead of Meg Ryan. Oh, do you know what movie that I kept thinking of when I was watching this? It had a War of the Roses vibe to it.

Blakeson: Yeah, because that’s a story about two people, neither of which are willing to back down and they’re willing to destroy everything to win. And they’re pretty terrible people, but you’re really enjoying the movie. And they got sort of delicious relationship between the two leads. And I think, for that, I think it’s kind of a similar thing. There’s something very fun about having two exceptionally good actors go head to head in a duel to the death across a movie. That’s always sort of a delicious thing for me. And I haven’t seen War of the Roses for many, many years, but I remember enjoying it when I was younger. And I think, yeah, that sort of spirit of enjoyable, terrible people is in this one as well.

Did either of you have to Google interesting ways to almost kill people?

Blakeson: No, that’s just imagination. If I Google that, then I’ll get on some list somewhere, I think.

So how is this working this year with film festivals and a lot of it being at home? I kept imagining the reaction at a packed Toronto screening.

Blakeson: I mean, it’s bittersweet. It’s really great that everybody at TIFF has managed to get this happening in the way they got it happening. And the fact that we do have physical screenings, drive-in screening, that I’m upset I can’t be there, because there’s nothing like watching a film with an audience for the first time. My first film played at TIFF some years ago and that was a great experience for me. So, I’m missing out on that experience, but at the same time, we’ve been working hard on the film for a long time and we’re very proud of it. And I won’t be able to see it. It doesn’t really start to live it’s life until it’s out in front of people and you start hearing what they think of it.

But, of course, it’s I’d much rather be doing this interview at Toronto somewhere, and having a great festival experience, when you meet all the filmmakers and see other films. And you just have those happy accidents of bumping into people who you would never meet anywhere else. And there’s only one director on a movie most of the time, so I never meet other directors. It’s not like I’m an actor in a cast of other actors. I never meet other directors apart from a place like festivals or events. So, the last time I was at TIFF, I met some great filmmakers and it was really exciting. So, it’s a shame I can’t be there. But at the same time, it’s exciting. So, as I said, it’s bittersweet.

And Rosamund, I always hear actors say, “Oh, I just love watching movies.” And I don’t always know if I believe that. But I’ve actually seen you at Toronto just show up for movies you’re not in. I’ve seen you just kind of cruise in and watch movies.

Pike: I’m really sad not to be at Toronto this year. I love doing that because, for a start, when you’re there talking about your own film all the time, it’s such a relief to go. And I mean, it’s the first thing I ask when I arrive in Toronto, “When am I free? Let’s see the schedule. Can you get me tickets for this and this and this?” And I sometimes try and go two extra days either side. So, I see other people’s films. And it’s some of the best experiences I’ve had, seeing films that have been in Toronto. Because I love seeing things at nine o’clock in the morning, when you’ve got that sort of shock. It’s a different experience seeing a film at the beginning of the day. Oh, I do miss it.

Yeah, I can confirm.

Pike: I do love doing that. It puts a level of normalcy on to it. It’s like you know that your film exists in context with all these other films that are part of that year. And you get a sense of what is being talked about and, oh, it’s so… I miss it so much. Yeah.

I know a lot of people just get in and get out. But it’s always nice when you see people stay. I remember Jon Stewart was there for Rosewater, but he was there the whole week just seeing as much as he could. I thought that was neat.

Pike: It might just mean that I’m not busy.

I doubt that’s true. You seem like a very busy person.

Pike: A lot of time on my hands, maybe? Yeah, I mean, actors are always saying that, aren’t they? “I can only be there for six hours. I have to fly in and I’m flying out. I’m going to walk the red carpet and then I’m going to fly out.” I mean, it sounds very glamorous, but also not nearly as fun.

Blakeson: No.

Do you get to see anything this year or no? Do they send you links for other movies?

Pike: We’re not allowed to, because everything is geocoded. I’ve tried, but no one can join the live screenings unless you actually have an IP address in Canada.

And it’s just a weird watching these movies on my couch. Being in New York, I’ve been on my couch a lot in the last six months.

Pike: Well, that can be our other quote. We had one interview where he said it played great on a laptop, you can put that on the poster. And you can also say, “great from your couch.”

Blakeson: I haven’t been to the cinema, like everybody, going six months. And then I had to watch this in the cinema, just to check the DTP. And it was the first time I’d been in a cinema for six months and you sit there, and the lights go down, and the film comes up. Even though I’d seen it 2,000 times before, it’s still really exciting to be in a cinema again. I just wished it’d been an entirely different movie.

Pike: Were you on your own?

Blakeson: I was there with some of the post team, just checking it through. So, I had a few people walking around, so it felt like a daytime screening at Noting Hill Gate or something. It’s nice.

Yeah, it’s a strange experience from the press side of it. My Toronto from my couch yesterday was this movie, Nomadland, and then Con Air for some reason.

Blakeson: [Laughs] Just a good simple film, if you do an all-nighter.

Can we talk about Chris Messina’s suit?

Blakeson: Yeah, you can. Which one? He’s got two different suits. The white one?

I think my favorite was the one in court.

Blakeson: The shoes, his shoes were fantastic as well in that scene.

I just like to think he showed up like that and that wasn’t a costume.

Blakeson: Well, you say that, but Chris came along with a lot of ideas on the character. And we had a lot of conversations with him – me and Deb, who did the costumes. And so a lot of that comes from Chris’s take on the character. That sort of flamboyant, sort of slimy lawyer look. I mean, I really enjoy Chris in the movie. I think he’s great and he looks fantastic, what can I say.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

The Los Angeles Clippers entered this year with sky-high expectations. Instead, the team suffered an all-time postseason collapse, going from 3-1 up on the Denver Nuggets and leading by double-digits in each elimination game to blowing those leads in every game en route to a Game 7 loss in which they went out with a whimper.

Considering everything that went into building this particular team, not even making the conference finals is an abject disaster. One can argue that this team needed to win a championship to justify the investment they made into this squad, both financially and in terms of what they gave up to put this team together over the years, but according to one member of the franchise, no one in their locker room believed the bar was that high during the 2019-20 campaign.

Paul George spoke to the media after the game and said that, while the expectations to win a ring existed, they never had the sort of title-or-bust mentality among themselves.

“It’s obvious pressure to live up to title expectations,” George said. “But as a player, I mean, you want that. You want that. Again, it’s the first time I’ve been in that situation where we’re expected to win. But it is what it is, it’s no cop out. Fact of the matter is, we didn’t live up to that expectation, but I think internally, we’ve always felt this is not a championship or bust year for us. We can only get better the longer we stay together and the more we’re around each other. The more chemistry for this group, the better, I think that’s really the tale of the tape of this season, we just didn’t have enough time together.”

George does make a point about the external expectations the team faced and that the team didn’t play enough together this season due to injuries, load management, and a handful of other factors. Still, it’s interesting that George discussed the team’s internal expectations, if only because back in June he appeared on Kevin Hart’s “Cold As Balls” and said otherwise.

“I think immediately, we expected to come in and win it all,” George said. “We didn’t have no other, like, hey, this was gonna take a year to get used to one another.”

Brooklyn Nine-Nine will address the nationwide protests against police brutality in season eight rather than stick to the Copaganda “fantasy” that has previously guided the comedy. Scripts were re-written, the goofball tone has shifted, and while star Andre Braugher admits that B99 could “fall flat on [its] face” in going from Halloween pranks to tackling systemic racism and police misconduct, he’s optimistic about the new season.

“Can a comedy sustain the things that we’re trying to talk about? I don’t know. It could be a really groundbreaking season that we’re all going to be very, very proud of, or we’re going to fall flat on our face,” the two-time Emmy winner, who plays Raymond “Hot Damn” Holt, told Variety. “But I think this is a staff, a cast, and a crew that’s willing to take it on and give it our best. I think we have a damn good chance to tell the kinds of stories that heretofore have only been seen on grittier shows.”

Braugher isn’t sure how season eight will depict Holt, who could be “a staunch defender of the NYPD, or he [might try] to burn the whole thing down.” But the actor assures that he’s still a “loving, robotic person. I’m anxious to see what that’s all about, and I have no idea what season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine is going to be, because everything’s changed.”

We’ll find out when Brooklyn Nine-Nine returns in 2021.

For someone who goes on Twitter so much, Kanye West isn’t very adept at using it. Setting aside the irrational nature of the majority of his tweets — which in the last week have included sharing old videos of young Drake and hunting down “fake employees” — the man flat-out does not understand the capabilities of the social platform.

While he’s been embroiled in a days-long rant against the recording industry, he apparently wanted to crowdsource some research into his contract, attempting to upload it as a .pdf file. The problem is, Twitter doesn’t actually support .pdf file reading and furthermore, it appears he tried to “upload” the thing by copying and pasting the filename as a tweet, resulting in nothing more than a tweet with the file name. He deleted it, but here’s the Slack capture, because this is as hilarious as it is baffling.

When the initial tweet wound up not working — of course — Kanye instead vowed to tweet “page by page,” explaining somewhat redundantly that “the PDF is not loading on Twitter.” Given his lack of proficiency with an app designed to be used by 12-year-olds, it might be a while before he figures out how to pull photo files from Adobe Acrobat or whatever program he uses to read .pdfs.

Let’s all just hope that he gets so tied up with doing that, he forgets to tweet for a bit because we could all use a break from Kanye’s Twitter feed — Kanye most of all.

Update: It looks like Kanye figured out a workaround and it’s… well… it’s almost worst than the filename tweet.

Three years ago, Tom Mullen — founder of the Washed Up Emo blog and podcast of the same name — released a book. It was called Anthology Of Emo Volume 1, and featured chapters on The Promise Ring, Dashboard Confessional, Texas Is The Reason, The Get Up Kids, American Football, Mineral, Knapsack, and Rainer Maria, bands from a time and place that Mullen calls “the pre-Bleed American, and also pre-internet era — that moment where you go to a show and you don’t know what [the band] looks like.”

For the second installment of Anthology Of Emo, Mullen looks to cross the line into the 2000’s with chapters on bands like Jimmy Eat World, Braid, Foxing, Saves The Day, and more. While the book itself isn’t out until later this month, we’re happy to share an exclusive excerpt from a 2013 interview with Saves The Day’s Chris Conley, which finds Conley recalling the formation of his band, and the music that inspired him in the first place. Check it out below.

~

Conley: I think Led Zeppelin was the band that really sparked my own inner need to play music, because… in the classical stuff, I’m playing other people’s music. I think I wanted to make my own. [Led Zeppelin] were using a lot of those classical chords and modes that my brain, my subconscious, was just familiar with. It wasn’t like I was listening to other classic rock bands, like Lynyrd Skynyrd or something. That stuff I just don’t like. It just doesn’t do anything for me. The two classic rock bands that really really blew my mind when I was a kid [were] Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith, actually. The ’70s records of Aerosmith are phenomenal, and what I notice from them now is all that classical music in those records.

I mean, Steven Tyler grew up underneath his dad’s piano listening to these incredible compositions. So, that pulled me into rock. Once I was into rock music, then I started listening to other bands with loud guitars. And I really didn’t like anything. There was very little that grabbed me, but I remember feeling at this point in my life, like “Why isn’t there more cool guitar music?” And I felt like it must have been six months later, Nirvana came on the scene, and Nirvana… changed everything. That was the moment where I became more interested in this music that was under the radar, because Nirvana came out and no one else sounded like it.

So, of course, I’m trying to find more stuff that sounds like it, but the stuff that I can find is at my local record store where somebody is saying, “hey, check out Shudder to Think,” or “hey, check out Archers of Loaf or Jawbox.” So I started getting into indie rock, or the really heavy indie music, through Nirvana. Then, I got into that show 120 Minutes, which was just a miracle that existed at that time. I was up one night before school. I was up late watching these videos, and the video for “Seven” by Sunny Day Real Estate came on, and—oh my gosh, I have goosebumps right now. That was a game changer… I lived across the street from this mall where they had a Sam Goody. And I walked over there and bought Diary.

And that was the beginning of a big musical journey into the heart of indie music. You know, Nirvana, and that kind of stuff, was the mainstream—oh, and Smashing Pumpkins, you know, Stone Temple Pilots. All that stuff was so so good. But Sunny Day was my link to the underground, the real current under the surface. It’s through Sunny Day, I started finding other friends that liked that kind of music. And then they’d say, “hey, have you heard this band Jawbreaker?” you know, or “have you heard of the Swirlies?” You know, stuff like that. And I just kind of went on the journey.

I just follow my ears, really. I just get really excited and just follow them, never thinking, “Oh…This is a cool record. This is what people like.” I just like my own stuff. So, that was how I got, eventually, into punk rock, was through Sunny Day—then into Jawbreaker. And then, once I found Jawbreaker, it was over.

Mullen: It totally makes sense. Even hearing your records… it’s like you can hear the Sunny Day. You can hear the indie, but you can hear the heaviness…

Conley: Yeah, Jawbox, too.

Mullen: You listening to all those bands, that makes total sense.

Conley: I still feel, in my songs today, I still feel Jeremy Enigk, and I feel Blake Schwarzenbach all over it. It’s nice to still feel connected to that music that was so inspiring when I was younger. I mean, I literally wore out Diary. The CD was just completely scratched, and I carried the booklet around with me at school, you know? Like, I would read the lyrics. In 10th grade, we had to do a book report of poetry, and I chose the lyrics from 24 Hour Revenge Therapy. And it worked! My teacher was like, “This is really great stuff. Good report, Chris.”

Mullen: [Laughs] I love that. Well, it’s interesting. I mean, did you get involved with the scene in New Jersey? Or were you more sort of playing records and listening to bands kind of on your own, watching TV? Or… Did you start getting involved in the local scene as well?

Conley: It’s funny. I feel like I’m pretty oblivious. I’m sort of in my own world, and I don’t notice a lot of stuff that’s going on outside. So, it’s a miracle that I got anywhere. Honestly, I should still be in a basement somewhere listening to records. But how this all happened was that one of my friends from school, who also liked that sort of underground music, was Bryan Newman, who was the original drummer for Saves The Day. Well, Bryan was pretty ambitious, and he really liked hardcore music.

So, in 7th grade—this was before I even played guitar, I was still in orchestra—Bryan joined a hardcore band in Trenton, New Jersey called Nation In Transit. He would come back the next day after practice and have all these stories about how they are playing all these songs and rehearsing these songs to make a tape. It was so cool to hear about that, but I didn’t play guitar yet. So, the next year, I had started playing guitar, and Bryan said, “Hey why don’t you come over and play with me?” I went over there. We had a blast. We put a blank tape in a cassette player and just recorded the entire jam, and it sounded like Rage Against The Machine.

It was all riffs and half time and stuff. It was just so much fun. And it was just like my best friends were there waiting for me. And that’s how it all started. Then I would write songs, because I’ve always really loved just kind of messing around and finding little cool chord changes or putting little ideas together, you know –on a piano or something. I just love doing that. And so Bryan, and a few other people, just sort of gravitated around that and noticed that I was writing these kind of cool songs. And they said, “We should get a singer and a bass player, and we should go play shows. These are cool. We should make a tape. We should go and record something.”

I never ever in a million years would have thought to even ask someone to be in a band. It wouldn’t have happened. So this is all Bryan Newman. And then once Bryan got us interested, we booked time at a studio, and we made a tape. This is in ninth grade. We made a tape, and it was just so much fun. And ever since then, I just continued to write songs, looking forward to eventually recording them as a group of songs… We started playing in people’s backyards or their basements. Somebody would have a party, and we’d say, “Hey, can we play?” So we started playing all over. You know, just friends from school or some other school in town. Then, the years went by.

We made a 7-inch in our sophomore year of school, and then by junior year, we had gone through a few changes, gone through a few band names, and we were about to record another demo tape. We just felt like it was time to have a name-change, and our buddy came to the studio when we were going to record a bunch of songs. He was just going to hang out for the day. This is Sean McGrath, who, at the time, was in a band called Hands Tied. And we got to know Sean through going to see Mouthpiece at the Princeton Arts Council when we were kids. He came along. He was listening to us play, and he thought, “Hey, this is actually pretty cool. Seriously, you guys could play these hardcore shows that are going on in New Brunswick. I mean, it’s good stuff… I think a cool name for your group would be Saves The Day.”

We were sitting in the studio, Trax East, South River, New Jersey. This is April 17, 1997. We went in and spent one day making the demo. That day, we went home, and we decided that we liked the name Saves the Day. Sean told us it came from his favorite Farside song, which was called “Hero” — the SoCal punk band Farside. I guess there’s a lyric that says, “I wanna be the one who saves the day,” and it stuck. We loved the name. We made the tape. We started playing these hardcore shows. The first show we ever played as Saves The Day — this is hilarious. We played Rutgers University opening for MC Lyte.

Mullen: Yes!

Conley: Because Sean had a friend that was putting on the day’s music. As we played in this indoor facility with bounce houses. It was like a fair, basically… Sean was really cool. He had all these friends, you know, that put on shows. So, later that day…he’s like “Hey, my friends in Ignite are playing this show near New Brunswick. We should go down and just see if we can hop on their equipment and play a few of these songs.” I was like, “Alright!” I didn’t know anything, you know.

So we go down there, and it is a packed show. I mean, Ignite was just so so awesome and put on incredible shows. People were all about it at the time. And they’re the nicest dudes ever. Like, just the nicest dudes ever. So, sure enough, they let us get on their equipment before they even played. And we played like five songs from our demo. The guitars are horribly out of tune. Everyone’s, like, looking at us strangely. And that was the first day of Saves The Day’s live performing history.

Anthology Of Emo Vol. 2 is out this month. Pre-order here.

For decades, Darren Star has brought us soapy TV escapism (Younger, Melrose Place, Sex and the City), and he’s getting into the streaming game now. Star’s new Netflix show, Emily In Paris, will arrive in October and star Lily Collins as Emily, who is (in fact) in Paris. The trailer previews the romantic comedy series that looks like it’ll really hit the spot when Americans can’t exactly fly away to France for play (and even for work in most cases), so yes, it’s a good thing that this show is arriving soon. I was actually daydreaming about France while browsing travel websites last night.

There’s a lot of comfort-content on display here. Emily’s not-so-charmingly dancing around her inability to speak French upon arrival, and there are handsome Frenchmen dashing about throughout the series, yet work feels a little bit toxic. Her boss, played by Kate Walsh (The Umbrella Academy fans know her as The Handler), only adds to the friction on a personal note, but hey, Emily’s got the sights of the City of Lights to help her feel things out. From the synopsis:

Lily Collins stars as Emily, an ambitious twenty-something marketing executive from Chicago, unexpectedly lands her dream job in Paris when her company acquires a French luxury marketing company — and she is tasked with revamping their social media strategy. Emily’s new life in Paris is filled with intoxicating adventures and surprising challenges as she juggles winning over her work colleagues, making friends, and navigating new romances.

Emily In Paris (which co-stars Ashley Park, Philippine Leroy Beaulieu, Lucas Bravo, Samuel Arnold, Camille Razat, and Bruno Gouery) debuts on October 2.

“Mr. Lonely” helped make Bobby Vinton one of the biggest stars of the ’60s, and the single has been covered countless times since then. Now Angel Olsen has offered her take of the track, alongside composer Emile Mosseri, as part of the soundtrack of Kajillionaire, a Miranda July film that drops this month. Olsen and Mosseri’s rendition plays up the tender elements of the song, with Olsen’s mostly-hushed vocals gliding across Mosseri’s lush instrumentation.

When discussing the film’s music, July and Mosseri both expressed interest in getting Olsen involved. Mosseri said, “At Sundance, when Miranda and I started talking about making a version of ‘Mr. Lonely’ for the album, Angel’s name was at the top of the list. We got lucky! She happened to be in LA for a week right before the pandemic hit. We built a version of the song out of the fabric of the score, and Angel came by and sang it so beautifully. It was a truly magical day.”

Olsen says she was immediately interested in collaborating with them: “Suddenly there she was. THE MIRANDA JULY. In my text messages. She was working on songs with Emile for the upcoming film Kajillionaire, which at the time I knew nothing about. I just so happened to be in Los Angeles. So I met with them both, and we talked about cadence and we talked about life and we talked about the film. And Miranda directed me to sing the cover in the way she and Emile thought it would represent the feelings behind the film. It was a lovely experience.”

Listen to Olsen and Mosseri’s “Mr. Lonely” cover above.

The world’s best whisky for 2021 was named today. Okay, that’s a heady sentence in the wide world of whisk(e)y, but, we’re talking about the iconic and much-respected Jim Murray and his Whisky Bible 2021, which dropped this morning. So, what is the best whisky in the world, according to the master?

Drum roll… Alberta Premium Cask Strength! Yes, a Canadian rye was named the best whisky in the world. And, you know what, we can’t argue. We actually called out an Alberta Premium Rye bottle earlier this year as one of our favorites. The stuff it legit. Also, if you’ve drunk rye from an American blender — like WhistlePig — then you’ve drunk the good stuff from Alberta Distillers.

Alberta Premium Cask Strength has a mash bill of malted and unmalted rye, is aged in Alberta Distillery’s wintry warehouses, and then goes into the bottle uncut at a whopping 65.1 percent ABV. It’s gonna have some kick, making it a great cocktail base for those wintry Manhattans and nogs. Overall, Murray gave the juice a score of 97.5 out of 100.

Right now, the bottle is retailing in Canada for around $60 ($45 USD) a bottle. Expect that to change immediately. The last time Murray named a Canadian whisky his “world’s best” (Crown Royal’s Northern Harvest Rye) fights broke out in Canadian liquor stores over the last bottles.

Since Alberta Premium is a Beam Suntory shingle, expect to see these bottles to start popping up a little more regularly stateside soon. Just don’t expect it to be cheap.

With the premiere of Fargo season four, which is as “weird and menacing” as ever, less than two weeks away, star Chris Rock is making the publicity rounds. Which is good news, because Chris Rock stories tend to be good stories. For instance, in an interview with the New York Times, he talked about how he was supposed to play Jimmy Olsen to Nicolas Cage’s Man of Steel in Tim Burton’s never-made Superman movie, and how stoked he was to be “hanging out with the guy that made Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and he’s showing me the models of the sets for Superman.” Rock also discussed the time he, Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, and Prince got, well, c*ckblocked by Donald Trump.

“I remember Eddie, Arsenio, Prince, and me at a club one night,” he told the Hollywood Reporter, “and Donald Trump walks in and all these girls just start running to that side of the room because a f*cking 6-foot-whatever blond billionaire with his name on all the buildings walks in — like if that room was a seesaw, we’d be in the air.” This is like the sleazy, presumably New York City-set version of that One Night in Miami movie:

Years later, Rock would find himself in Brian Grazer’s office in Los Angeles, as Murphy pitched a heist flick — a kind of Black Ocean’s Eleven, starring him, Rock, Chappelle, Chris Tucker, and a few others — about a gang that robs Trump Tower. Murphy envisioned Trump as the movie’s villain. “Like Alan Rickman in Die Hard,” says Rock. What happened from there is another classic Hollywood story: The movie became Tower Heist, directed by Brett Ratner, starring Ben Stiller with Murphy and “a bunch of white people.”

In that same interview, Rock also teased two upcoming film projects: one that he described as “Bad Lieutenant, starring an insane actress,” and another that will pair him with Dave Chappelle and Adam Sandler. No word on Grown Ups 3.

Fargo premieres on September 27.

(Via Hollywood Reporter)