So first, the good news for Indiana Jones 5. Not only has director James Mangold been confirmed for the fifth Indy movie, but Steven Spielberg is still very much involved with the project even though he’s stepped aside as director for the first time in the series’ history.

In an interview with Collider, longtime Indiana Jones producer Frank Marshall has confirmed Mangold’s involvement and praised the Ford v Ferrari director as the perfect fit to tackle the whip-cracking archaeologist’s next adventure.

Marshall explained why Mangold was the ideal choice to take over for Spielberg: “His love of the franchise. He’s a wonderful filmmaker. I think he also has a relationship with Harrison. It was all of the right pieces coming together, at the right time.” I must agree with Mr. Marshall — I think Mangold is an expert at twisting old-fashioned genres and tropes with just enough postmodern intrigue to result in comforting yet challenging Hollywood movies. And for those who are still worried about Spielberg’s exit, fear not: “Steven is staying on as a producer, so we’ve got the best of everything.”

And now the bad news. According to Marshall, the writing process for Indy 5 has surprisingly “just started.” This information seems to suggest that Mangold is starting from scratch and jettisoning what has already been a lengthy script process, which has already seen several rewrites and delays. On top of the setback in the writing department, there’s the current state of Hollywood productions that have been scattered to the wind thanks to the pandemic. Even a production as big as Indiana Jones 5 doesn’t know how or when it can restart while protecting the safety of the cast, crew, and surrounding communities where filming would take place.

“It’s a moving target right now,” Marshall tells Collider after admitting that the safety concerns have slowed things down. There’s also the matter of Harrison Ford pushing 80 and developing a penchant for getting into trouble with his plane, which could pose problems if the film is delayed even further. Just putting that out there.

(Via Collider)

Alexis Loveraz, a 16-year-old high-schooler from The Bronx has earned over 660,000 followers on TikTok by helping fellow students with their algebra, geometry, chemistry and SAT prep during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He’s a math whiz with a 4.0 grade point average at Harlem Prep High School, earning the nickname “TikTok Tutor” for his ability to teach complicated subjects with ease on the social media platform.

“How did you explain it better than my teacher?” one commenter asked. “You explain 1000x better than my math teacher!!!” another exclaimed.

Alexis started making videos before the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily closed schools throughout the country. But during the lockdown, they’ve been a lifeline to students struggling to keep up at a time where education has been turned on its head.

“I was, like, really shocked,” Alexis told CBS2. “Things that they probably forgot like before COVID-19, this is like a refresher of what I’m, like, giving them out. It’s really cool because they understand it even better the way I’m explaining it to them.”

His tutorials have become so popular that they’re now appearing on Google Classrooms, helping kids all over the globe keep up with their math and science skills.

“It reached places like United States, Canada, Australia, the Philippines, Singapore,” he said.

In a world where most teens use TikTok to make dance videos or share makeup tips, Alex’s mother is ecstatic that her son uses it to help educate others.

“I’m excited about this. I know he can do this and more. I’m so proud that he helped a lot of people,” said Likmilian Hiciano.

When asked what motivates him to make the videos, Alexis’s response was simple: “The knowledge I have, like, I want to share it to other people.”

The TikTok Tutor’s popularity shines a light on the grim reality faced by students across the world who have lost at least three months of education due to the pandemic.

According to Education Week, the loss of classroom time will create “longstanding gaps in performance between advantaged and vulnerable students.”

When the school bell finally rings, students will be returning to an educational system that will have been weakened by the economic and political fallout from the pandemic.

“I don’t think we’ve had a shock to educational systems of this magnitude, at least to instructional time,” said Joshua Goodman, an associate professor of economics at Brandeis University. “

“And part of that is the number of weeks and months of school students are going to be missing. But it’s also the fact that a bunch of parents will be unemployed, or that their savings will have vanished, or that someone in their family is sick,” he continued.

Over the next few months, the U.S. educational system will have to stitch itself back together to compensate for lost time and money due to the pandemic. But it’s encouraging to know that students such as Alexis have stepped up to do their best to help fill the gaps during the lockdown.

Yet another video of yet another white woman calling the police on yet another black person is making the rounds, and by now we should all be able to sing along to the familiar tune. It’s like the worst song ever written but it’s played so often you can’t get it out of your head.

Intro: White woman ignores a rule everyone is asked to follow.

Verse 1: White woman gets angry when a black person points out that the rule actually does apply to her.

Verse 2: White woman gets aggressive when the black person starts gathering video evidence of her response.

Bridge: White woman demands that the black person stop gathering evidence—or else.

Chorus: White woman calls the police, turns on the waterworks and claims that the black person calmly filming her tirade is, in fact, threatening her life.

This week’s video shows Amy Cooper, a white woman who had her dog off-leash in an area of Central Park that required a leash, calling the police on Christian Cooper (no relation), a black birdwatcher who told her she needed to put her dog on a leash. The video is striking, from the man having to repeatedly tell the woman, “Please step away from me” as she approached to the hysteria in her voice as she told the police—repeatedly—that “an African-American man” was threatening her life.

Christian Cooper wrote in a post her shared on Facebook with video of part of the encounter:

“Central Park this morning: This woman’s dog is tearing through the plantings in the Ramble.

That’s when I started video recording with my iPhone, and when her inner Karen fully emerged and took a dark turn…”

There’s so much that we could dissect about this story, but it’s not like we haven’t see this before. Predictably, there has been huge public outcry over the incident. Predictably, Amy Cooper issued an apology, telling CNN, “I’m not a racist. I did not mean to harm that man in any way.” Predictably, some white folks have expressed more concerned over the woman’s treatment of her dog than they were over her putting a black man’s life in danger.

I have no doubt that this woman doesn’t think she’s racist. Most white folks don’t think we are. The only white people who openly acknowledge our own racism are blatant white supremacists and those who recognize that racism is woven into our social DNA. And doing something racist, then immediately saying “I’m not a racist”—as if the identity of being a racist or not is the issue and not the fact that your actions were undeniably racist—is, again, a predictable pattern.

That’s going to keep happening until enough white Americans acknowledge that racism lives in all of us. We are citizens of a country founded during the heyday of the transatlantic slave trade, a country whose most celebrated history is completely inseparable from the enslavement of black people, a country whose bloodiest war was fought over whether or not white people had the right to own people based on the color of their skin. We can’t change that history, but we have to acknowledge how that foundation—and the centuries of systematic oppression of black people in America that followed—have impacted us and continue to impact us.

Hell, even the fact that this white woman and this black man share the same last name hearkens to the disturbing possibility that they might have historical ties to one another, as it was common for black Americans to take the last names of the people who enslaved them.

I’ve seen people attempting to defend this woman, saying she simply acted out of fear. But the way she says, “I’m going to tell them that an African-American man is threatening my life,” is chilling. It indicates that she knew that telling the police his race would have a specific effect. She used the image of a black man threatening the life of a white woman as a weapon against a man who politely asked her to stop approaching him and who simply wanted her to put her damn dog on a leash, per the park’s rules.

What’s most telling is the dichotomy between the fear this woman purposely portrayed on her phone call and the actual power she is wielding as she does it. Angry at being called out for breaking the rules and being filmed for her reaction, she used her white woman privilege to make a phone call to the police as if they were her personal customer service line, flipping from aggression to victimhood at the drop of a hat, knowing that her side of the story was more likely to be believed than his—even with video evidence to the contrary being collected in real-time. This is everyday racism in action.

And from all appearances, Christian Cooper just wanted to be able to birdwatch without an unleashed dog mucking things up. He told CNN that he would accept Amy Cooper’s apology: “If it’s genuine and if she plans on keeping her dog on a leash in the Ramble going forward, then we have no issues with each other.” But an apology doesn’t go nearly far enough here, in my opinion.

As with all viral videos dealing with racism, I hope we all learn something from seeing this play out. I hope my fellow white Americans are able to see how egregious her behavior was, how the racism that festers beneath the surface of the white American subconscious reared its head to display its power here, how saying “I’m not a racist” is just a string of meaningless words that don’t belong in an apology for racist actions. I hope people can see the pattern as predictable at this point—a truth that has been shared by black thought leaders over and over again but keeps falling on deaf ears. I hope people who see all of this seek out anti-racism resources to educate themselves. (This Google doc is a good place to start).

I hope that we realize how well we actually know the song at this point, and get so sick of it that we start singing an entirely new tune.

View Entire Post ›

On the latest episode of People’s Party with Talib Kweli, Matthew Modine — actor, filmmaker, activist, and only other older dude besides Keith Richards who can successfully rock a bandana — chopped it up with Talib Kweli over some of the symbolism in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Without giving too much away (you should absolutely see Full Metal Jacket if you haven’t already) Kweli brought up a particularly striking and eerie scene in which U.S. soldiers march through a burning Vietnamese village singing the Mickey Mouse Club theme song, prompting Modine to share an interesting read on the famous scene.

“I never talked to Stanley, but he never asked permission from Disney to use it, he just did it which I think was fantastic,” Modine begins before going deeper. “But it’s the words and Stanley’s deep right?… ‘Who’s the leader of the gang that’s made for you and me? Who’s the leader of the gang who’s marching coast to coast and far across the sea’… I don’t understand why we were fighting in Vietnam, was it just for westward expansionism? Was it just to get Coca-Cola and Marlboro cigarettes, to expand what I believe is American democracy, that we don’t live in a Republic anymore, a democratic society? We live in a capitalistic society. That we’re a corporatocracy?”

A lot has been said about the symbolism of this particular scene, with many common interpretations pointing to a loss of innocence amongst the soldiers, particularly Modine’s Joker, but this read feels particularly resonant right now as we re-enter an economic recession amidst a global pandemic, all while the world potentially sees its first trillionaire in Jeff Bezos. It’s also a great reminder that we should rewatch Full Metal Jacket, or you know, any Stanley Kubrick movie while we still have free time on our hands. Right after we watch this episode of People’s Party, of course.

Check out the clip above for Modine’s full comments and find out why political propaganda soured the actor on Top Gun.

Indie music has grown to include so much. It’s not just music that is released on independent labels, but speaks to an aesthetic that deviates from the norm and follows its own weirdo heart. It can come in the form of rock music, pop, or folk. In a sense, it says as much about the people that are drawn to it as it does about the people that make it.

Every week, Uproxx is rounding up the best new indie music from the past seven days. This week we got the long-awaited (and very long) new album from The 1975, another preview of Phoebe Bridgers’ sophomore album, and a new live track from the Elliott Smith vault.

While we’re at it, sign up for our newsletter to get the best new indie music delivered directly to your inbox, every Monday.

The 1975 — Notes On A Conditional Form

The 1975’s fourth album is also their most bloated and self-important to date, according to Steven Hyden for Uproxx. But that doesn’t mean that Notes On A Conditional Form doesn’t feature some absolute bangers. Spanning nearly an hour-and-a-half, there’s something for everyone on latest effort from The 1975. It’s very diverse in its sonic palette, spanning from punk rock to Britpop to confessional indie.

Jeff Rosenstock — No Dream

When there is a catastrophe, Jeff Rosenstock is always there to soundtrack it. After kicking off 2018 with a surprise album POST-, Rosenstock’s latest LP also dropped out of the sky from nowhere. No Dream is “a raucous, guitar-driven affair,” writes Derrick Rossignol for Uproxx, and it features some of Rosenstock’s heaviest songs to date. With not much going on these days, No Dream gives us that onslaught of punk rock energy that will surely up your energy levels to at least make you feel something again.

Owen Pallett — Island

It’s been almost six years since In Conflict, Owen Pallett’s last solo LP. All that changed late last week when Pallett surprise-released Island, a new album recorded with the London Contemporary Orchestra. It’s a uniquely introspective affair, with cinematic flourishes throughout, making it an especially exciting release. .

Phoebe Bridgers — “I See You”

With Phoebe Bridgers’ sophomore album Punisher just a few weeks out, she has shared another preview in the form of “I See You,” a layered and billowing breakup track that is slightly different than other breakup tracks. “It’s about my breakup with my drummer. We dated for a few years, made music every day, and were extremely codependent,” Bridgers wrote in a statement. “We became like family to each other, so our breakup was extremely tough. But if this tells you anything about our relationship, we wrote this song together, just like everything else.”

Elliott Smith — “Big Decision” (Live at Umbra Penumbra)

To celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Elliott Smith’s self-titled album, his label Kill Rock stars is set to release a remastered and expanded version of the album. Included in the expanded version is the entirety of a lost live album featuring the earliest known recording of Smith as a solo artist, captured September 17, 1994 at Portland’s café and “art salon” Umbra Penumbra. “Big Decision” is the first taste of what we can expect from the newly unearthed live album, and it depicts a songwriter at the height of his talents, though he was unknown at the time.

Khruangbin — “So We Won’t Forget”

With the psychedelic Texan trio prepping to release their third album, “So We Won’t Forget” is yet another promising preview of what’s to come, this time focusing on the passing of time and memory. Sonically, the track features “groove, soft percussive elements, and world music influences,” as described by Carolyn Droke for Uproxx.

Idles — “Mr. Motivator”

Idles enters a new era with a video featuring fan-submitted clips of their workout routines. “Mr. Motivator” is a boisterous reminder of why Idles is one of the best punk bands out there right now, a track that “aims to encourage fans to get through these tough times with dance,” according to Carolyn Droke for Uproxx.

Ian Sweet — “Sword”

Nothing embodies summer more than a good dream-pop track. While a proper new album from Ian Sweet is still unannounced, “Sword” marks a new era for Jilian Medford. It’s a jump into a genreless space, anchored by infectious synthesizers and hopping bass.

Eliza Elliott — “Sometimes You Lie”

On her new single, Eliza Elliott dials into the lane that made Clairo so popular. “Sometimes You Lie” is the lead single on Elliott’s new EP, a promising sign of what we can expect from the up-and-coming songwriter’s latest effort.

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

John Wall has had a rough go of things over the last few seasons. Injuries limited him to 41 games during the 2017-18 campaign and 32 games the following year. This season, Wall has not played at all, opting to get his body right with the hopes that he can regain the form that made him one of the most exciting players in the NBA.

Washington Wizards owner Ted Leonsis said last summer that Wall would likely miss the entirety of the 2019-20 campaign, as Wall is trying to work his way back from a ruptured achilles. Wall spoke to the media on Tuesday, and while he mentioned that his rehab has gotten his body to a point where he feels like he’s at “110 percent,” he does not plan on taking the floor whenever the NBA decides to restart its season.

Washington would need a miracle to make the postseason — the team sits 5.5 games behind the 8-seed and have played 64 games on the year, so if the NBA decides to go with the top-8 squads in both conferences, they would find themselves on the outside looking in. But even with a more expanded playoff format, the Wizards are not winning a championship with a rusty Wall on the floor.

Whenever he’s able to play, it’ll be great to see Wall back out there, especially if he really is healthy and able to get back to being an All-Star point guard. For now, continuing to take things slow and not rushing back to play is almost certainly the sensible decision.

Deonna Purrazzo was one of many WWE Superstars cut from the company last month, and one of the few who openly said she had been thinking about asking for her release before that. Purrazzo has described how she felt misused and creatively frustrated in NXT, and in a new interview with The Wrestling Inc. Daily podcast, talked about why she thinks WWE signed her in the first place: mainly so she wouldn’t sign somewhere else.

Purrazzo was one of the wrestlers announced for All In, the pay-per-view that preceded that creation of All Elite Wrestling, in 2018, but had to pull out of the show when she was signed by WWE. Purrazzo says that she “one hundred percent” thinks WWE signed her because of that All In announcement:

This culminated in, ‘She’s going to go somewhere else and do something good with other people, so we’re going to bring her here.’ If they had done something with me, then that would have been fine. But I feel that in the last year or two with AEW, [WWE] tended to be hoarding.

Purrazzo explained she thinks she suffered from so many other women coming to WWE from the indies around the time she signed with the company. She wasn’t the only person unhappy in this environment, and then when the layoffs came around, “it was the people voicing frustration and maybe the idea that they didn’t want to be here anymore if nothing was going to happen.”

Now that she’s out of WWE, Purrazzo says she doesn’t know if pulling out of All In has ruled out a possible future in AEW:

I don’t know. I feel like there was probably some, ‘Oh, that sucks’ because I committed to doing All In and I actually tried to push my WWE signing date back so I could still do All In. But WWE wasn’t having it, I have to pick and choose those battles, but I don’t think it affected anyone negatively. That’s not anything I’ve heard or has stopped me from being friendly with people that work for AEW.

Purrazzo doesn’t know yet where she’ll end up next, but says “It’s going to be interesting to see those negotiations and see where I land.”

Today, KFC will be testing a “bigger, better, and more premium” chicken sandwich across Orlando. What exactly does “more premium” mean? Well, that it’s capable of competing with Popeyes’ viral chicken sandwich from last year … KFC hopes. It’s not every day that a chicken chain drops a brand new menu staple as essential as the chicken sandwich — it’s as if McDonald’s just decided they wanted to do a refresh on the Quarter Pounder — and it’s even rarer when a brand is this honest about why they’re doing it.

“We wanted a chicken sandwich that really lives up to our legacy as the fried chicken experts and let’s face it, ours wasn’t the one to beat,” said KFC U.S. chief marketing officer Andrea Zahumensky, “We knew an upgrade was necessary, so we painstakingly selected each ingredient to create a bigger, better, and more premium chicken sandwich than ever. I think we’ve unlocked a chicken sandwich that won’t just compete — it’ll win with fried chicken lovers everywhere.”

Will it catch on? That remains to be seen!

According to Orlando Weekly, the new sandwich is 20 percent larger than KFC’s current Crispy Colonel sandwich, offered in spicy and non-spicy iterations, is double-breaded for an extra crunchy and crispy bite — which seems catered to the ASMR crowd when the sandwich inevitably appears in an online review on YouTube — and served on a brand new buttered brioche bun with thick pickles and the Colonel’s real mayo spread.

Before dropping to the public in Orlando, the first taste of the sandwich was delivered to the frontline workers chronicled in Orlando Sentinel‘s Pandemic Portraits, which included teachers, auto mechanics, police officers, and other essential workers on the frontline of the city’s coronavirus response.

The sandwich is now available throughout the Orlando area for just $3.99 a la carte or $6.99 as a meal, which is a small price to pay and the perfect option for you to have delivered to your door for dinner. According to Food & Wine, you can be one of the first to try KFC’s new chicken sandwich at the following 15 locations:

• 16800 W New Hwy 441
• 6217 International Road
• 502 S Alafaya Trail
• 5200 S John Young Parkway
• 4466 Pleasant Hill Road
• 3601 S Orlando Drive
• 2882 N Hiawassee Road
• 1130 W Osceola Parkway
• 5780 Central Florida Parkway
• 11302 S Orange Blossom Trail
• 510 U.S. Hwy 27
• 5680 W US Highway 192
• 250 Aloma Avenue
• 10825 E Colonial Drive
• 3009 W Colonial Drive

If KFC takes the crown, will anyone even care? Or are big viral chicken moments just a thing of the past now?

(Via Orlando Weekly)

Carly Rae Jepsen is fresh off releasing Dedicated Side B, but she might have even more fresh material in the pipeline: She recently revealed that she (along with songwriting collaborator and guitarist Tavish Crowe) has made a quarantine album.

During an appearance on the Switched On Pop podcast, at the tail-end of the conversation (around the 39:10 mark), she spoke about the record, saying, “Tavish and I have already made an entire quarantine album, and it’s very different, it’s kind of fun! We had to do it around Zoom or things like that so it’s been like a challenge, but a really fun one! You kind of write differently that way. You have more time to have space in between the decisions you’re making and more time to kind of be away from the song for a minute, so I find it to be a whole new style of going at it, and I really like it.”

Of course, there are positives and negatives to being an artist during quarantine. Some are out of work, and some (like Rosalía and Charli XCX) have spoken about a pressure they feel to be productive during these times. That said, great works that musicians can be proud of have been released during this time (like Charli’s How I’m Feeling Now). Jepsen spoke positively about the quarantine album-making process, so hopefully that came from a positive space and hopefully fans get to hear it in the near future.

Listen to the full Switched On Pop episode below.

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