Soccer is returning across Europe, and Italy’s Serie A became the latest to announce its resumption this week, when Italian Sports Minister Vincenzo Spadafora gave the soccer league the go-ahead for a planned June 20 return to the pitch.
“Italy is starting up again and it is only right that football does, too,” Spadafora said on Thursday.
The league plans to finish out the Coppa Italia, an annual cup competition, from June 13-20 and then bring the Serie A back in full starting on June 20. The Coppa has three matches left — two semifinal matches featuring Juventus, AC Milan, SSC Napoli and Inter Milan, and then a final.
As Gabriele Marcotti noted at ESPN, the Italian league has a ton of its season left to play, as Italy was among the first countries to see a mass outbreak at the outset of the pandemic that put sports on hold worldwide. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see teams consistently playing twice a week to condense the schedule, and also more experimental fixtures like single-elimination postseason matches.
Serie A follows Bundesliga, which arrived in Germany this month as the country stamped out its epidemic more effectively, and the Premier League, which announced its June return a few hours before Spadafora gave Serie A the green light.
Sports are arriving in a wave that follows in the wake of countries flattening their epidemic curves, with no crowds and a mass of fans eager to watch their favorite teams again on television.
With audiences trapped inside, directors have been stepping up in a big way by hosting “quarantine watch parties” where they gather with fans on social media to offer insights and field questions about fan-favorite films. Last night, James Mangold joined the lockdown trend by hosting a watch party for Logan, the critically-acclaimed swan song for Hugh Jackman‘s Wolverine.
While Jackman delivered a brutal, yet emotionally poignant performance as the aged and dying mutant hero, newcomer Dafne Keen made a definitive mark on the film with her grounded and visceral portrayal of Laura, better known as X-23 to comic fans. As Mangold notes during the watch party, Keen absolutely anchored the film, and Logan wouldn’t have been the same without her in the breakout role.
“There’s no way this film works w/o the remarkable [Dafne] Keen,” Mangold tweeted. “By the film’s 2nd half, the tables have turned & she is carrying the entire movie as Logan has retreated in sickness & self doubt. & of course, she holds the final frame.”
Jackman was apparently following the proceedings closely, and the actor made a surprise cameo during the watch party to bolster Mangold’s praise for Keen. Jackman also revealed how she landed the part by leaving him beaten and bruised after the audition, which is pretty impressive considering how insanely ripped he gets whenever he’s gearing up to play Wolverine.
“The first day we auditioned her … she punched me in the arm so hard, I was literally bruised the next day,” Jackman wrote. “Hired.”
You can see the full Twitter exchange between Jackman and Mangold below:
When @mang0ld came up w the character of Laura, and that the movie was in essence about family we were worried about finding the right fit. Until we met @DafneKeen. The first day we auditioned her … she punched me in the arm so hard, I was literally bruised the next day. Hired.
— Hugh Jackman (@RealHughJackman) May 28, 2020
(Via Hugh Jackman on Twitter)
The death of George Floyd has dominated the news cycle over the past few days. Famous figures have offered their reactions to the incident, and that includes The 1975 frontperson Matty Healy, who has often spoken up about societal issues. This time, though, Healy’s comments were met with a not-so-positive reaction.
As Metro notes, Healy took to Twitter and, in what seemed to be a reaction to Floyd’s death, wrote, “If you truly believe that ‘ALL LIVES MATTER’ you need to stop facilitating the end of black ones.” At the end of that tweet, Healy included a YouTube link to The 1975’s song “Love It If We Made It.” That’s the part that earned Healy some backlash, as he was accused of using the situation to promote The 1975’s music.
The tweet has since been deleted, and in another tweet that is also no longer available, Healy explained why he included the song in his tweet, writing, “Sorry I did not link my song in that tweet to make it about me it’s just that the song is literally about this disgusting situation and speaks more eloquently than I can on Twitter.’
The song features the lyrics, “We’re f*cking in a car, shooting heroin / Saying controversial things just for the hell of it / Selling melanin and then suffocate the black men / Start with misdemeanors and we’ll make a business out of them.”
Following that tweet, Healy apparently tweeted his original message again and then shared “Love It If We Made It” separately. After that, Healy deactivated his Twitter account (@truman_black), and as of this post, it is still not accessible.
Healy’s tweeting activity drew some outraged reactions from Twitter users. One wrote, “Matty healy a white male promoting his own work to profit off a movement about black people is not defendable and if you are white and defending him you have no argument in the situation it’s really that simple.” Another tweeted, “matty healy constantly speaks up about how he struggles as a white man in the industry and how his band is at a disadvantage cause they aren’t the typical pop band but his response to a black man being murdered is a link to his song??? fvck him #BlackLivesMatter.”
That said, Healy also had some users come to his defense, with one writing, “all youse non 1975 fans go listen to the song, you will realise that it’s about raising awareness, about racism and other topics. so mabye stop tryna cancel matty healy. he wasent using it to promote his own music. he was doing it to raise awareness.”
Find some more reactions to Healy’s tweets below.
matty healy constantly speaks up about how he struggles as a white man in the industry and how his band is at a disadvantage cause they aren’t the typical pop band but his response to a black man being murdered is a link to his song??? fvck him #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/wBNsNB9kMx
— 𝔰 // fan account (@taylucifer666) May 28, 2020
Matty healy a white male promoting his own work to profit off a movement about black people is not defendable and if you are white and defending him you have no argument in the situation it’s really that simple
— ᶜᵃˡˡᵘᵐ | BLM (@callumismynamee) May 28, 2020
matty healy’s response to the murder of a black man was 1) tweeting a link to his own song 2) deleting the link to his song because it was insensitive and people were upset 3) tweeting the link to his song again 4) stropping and deactivating his entire account. what an ally
— luke (@ghoulets) May 28, 2020
matty healy is the biggest performative activist I’ve ever seen that man’s so insensitive to actual real world struggles but wants to be oppressed as a white liberal man stfu
— percy TW (@lgbtfineline) May 28, 2020
matty healy could spit in a fans face n you’d all be like ‘omg
but his intentions were good
’
— kim (@kimchrstina) May 28, 2020
all youse non 1975 fans go listen to the song, you will realise that it’s about raising awareness, about racism and other topics. so mabye stop tryna cancel matty healy. he wasent using it to promote his own music. he was doing it to raise awareness.
— alex
(@yeah1kn0walex) May 28, 2020
Matty Healy’s tweet was well-intentioned, if slightly misjudged. Love It If We Made It calls out police brutality, mass incarceration and the private prison system.
Use your tweets to do the same thing, instead of cancelling someone who believes that #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/ygaRDttBZJ
— Alfie Barrishi
(@AlfieBarrishi) May 28, 2020
before everyone tries to cancel matty healy and say that he’s being insensitive by “self promoting”, take a look at these lyrics and then decide. instead of writing a half assed tweet about how sorry he is for what George Floyd went through, he was trying to express it with lyric pic.twitter.com/nM5B3FHCSq
— Jackie (@jackiekreutz) May 28, 2020
Today is National Burger Day which means if you aren’t already eating a burger you either didn’t know until just now (food holiday saturation) or you’re just not down with burgers (meat not implied). Regardless, you’re here now, so let’s celebrate the near-perfect food combination that is the burger — rivaled only by pizza, shwarma, and burritos as the best handheld foods on earth. Cheeseburgers, avocado burgers, bacon burgers, plant-based burgers, hell, even the plain old hamburger — they’re all delicious and today they’re also pretty cheap.
We’ve collected all the best burger deals that you can pick up for delivery, curbside pickup, or via a drive-thru below, so that you can celebrate the day devoted to the burger the right way. By eating one ASAP.
Buy a Famous Star or Western Bacon cheeseburger and receive another one for just $1, which is the perfect excuse to double up for lunch! Or you know, share with a friend. Whatever.
Today only, Chili’s will be adding their Big Mouth Bites burgers to the three for $10 menu, which includes a beverage and starter.
You may not know this but Del Taco actually makes a pretty damn good cheeseburger. And from May 27th through the 31st you can get a free Double Del Cheeseburger when you purchase a Double Del Cheeseburger through the Del Taco app. That’s four patties of meat baby! If that doesn’t say National Hamburger Day, we’re not sure what does.
Del Taco also offers free delivery, so you don’t even have to leave your house to go through the drive-thru!
The Habit will be offering free delivery for National Burger Day.
Halo Burger QP Combos will be just $5 all Burger Day long.
All orders placed through the Jack in the Box mobile app will be reduced by 20% beginning May 28th until June 1st. What a way to spend the weekend!
Pitch your best burger idea for Johnny Rocket’s menu and you’ll be entered for the chance to win free burgers for a year. That won’t get you a free burger today, but it might make you a minor burger celebrity.
Build your Ruby Tuesday burger online and receive 20% off when using the code MAY20
Order a Smoked Bacon Brisket Burger and receive a second one for just $1. Take a peek at the bacon on that thing and tell us that a bacon burger isn’t the right move to make today?
Receive a free order of fries when you pick up an order through drive-thru at Steak ’n Shake. There is no catch, this also doesn’t have anything to do with Burgers, but hey, free sides, you can’t go wrong!
If fries aren’t your thing, you can pick up a Double Steak Burger and a milkshake for just $4 on May 28th only.
Wayback Burgers — Wayback Burgers is offering their Classic Burger for a reduced price of $5.28 to match the date. Cute!
Wendy’s — Purchase via Wendy’s app and you’ll receive a free Breakfast Baconator or a free Spicy Chicken Sandwich, neither of which are a burger, but still free!
White Castle — Not exactly a National Burger Day deal but a good chance to remind grocery store and retail employees that they can receive 20% off their White Caste Orders until June 15th. Celebrate Burger Day at a 20% discount!
It still goes unnoticed just how precarious the financial position is for Olympic athletes. When the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were postponed earlier this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, athletes like track star Wallace Spearmon, a 200 meter specialist for the United States, faced a massive loss of income.
As Spearmon explains in a new episode of The Nod, a daily interview show on Quibi co-hosted by Eric Eddings and Brittany Luse, Olympians mostly only make money through sponsorship deals with brands that want to get some shine during the Games.
“The Olympic Games actually don’t pay athletes, so all your money comes from sponsor-based companies,” Spearmon told Eddings. “Now, there’s no competition, so companies are threatening to cut athletes for not being able to fulfill their contractual complications, so it’s been really difficult.”
Spearmon related it to someone with a typical day job being asked to work for three years with the promise of being paid out big-time in year four, only year four never happens and instead becomes year five. While that payday is still going to come, pushing things back 365 days can understandably make things difficult, particularly for the athletes who are dependent on getting to the Games and being compensated.
While new episodes of The Nod air daily, the interview with Spearmon airs on Friday on Quibi.
Earlier this year, Sonic the Hedgehog became the highest-grossing video game movie ever (domestic box office only), narrowly beating 2019’s Pokémon: Detective Pikachu and 2001’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. It may not hold the record for long, however.
Sonic and his chili dogs? You’ve met your match in Cate Blanchett and Eli Roth.
The two-time Oscar winner has joined the cast of the Hostel director’s Borderland adaptation. She’ll play “Lilith, a siren and legendary thief equipped with magical skills,” according to the Hollywood Reporter. Blanchett and Roth may seem like an odd match — I’d love to hear her thoughts on The Green Inferno — but the pair have actually worked together before, on the kid-friendly flick The House with a Clock in Its Walls.
Here’s more on Lilith:
Lilith is one of the main protagonists in the franchise, and one of the playable characters in the first Borderlands game. She is one of only six women in the galaxy that belong to the powerful “siren” class, wielding incredible, superhuman powers.
Sounds like the perfect role for Bob Dylan/Queen Elizabeth/Galadriel (the range). The Borderland series has moved over 50 million copies worldwide, good for over $1 billion in sales. That’s like 12 Hostels! Or 30 Hostel: Part IIs!
(Via Hollywood Reporter)
When the pandemic emerged on the West Coast and Seattle began their stay-at-home order, Death Cab For Cutie’s vocalist Ben Gibbard decided to offer solace through music. The singer began hosting nightly livestreams from his living room and sharing music from his decades-spanning catalog. While his livestreams are now far less frequent, Gibbard recently performed an acoustic version of an as-of-then unreleased single. Now, Gibbard returns with the official release of his hopeful track “Proxima B.”
“Proxima B” boasts a driving rhythm guitar accompanied with gently crashing snares. Gibbard’s soothing vocals narrate his longing to leave this world behind in hopes of finding life on a more promising planet. “Oh this world is startin’ to bring me down / The oceans risin’ and we’re all gonna drown / But there’s a place where you and I can go / Where we can start this mess all over,” he sings.
Explaining the track’s inspiration in a statement, Gibbard said he heard news of scientists discovering an Earth-like planet and began to imagine what life would be like there:
“This one I wrote a while ago. I’m planning on putting it out as a single. I was going to have it out as a single for this solo tour I was doing, a more ramped-up guitar version. But, obviously, the show’s not happening so we’re going to push that to the fall. This is a song I wrote about a planet that was discovered deep, deep in the cosmos, way out there, called Proxima B. The three things you need to know about Proxima B to understand the song is: One, there was a planet called Proxima B that they think has water on it. It’s somewhat Earth-like. Secondly, it orbits the star called Centauri. And three, there’s been a lot of talk of ‘Ooh, maybe we can get there at some point.’ So I wrote this song in response to that.”
“Proxima B” is seeing a release as a 7-inch single and a cassette with an unconventional cover as its B-side: Gibbard recorded his own version of Minor Threat’s 1981 hit “Filler.” While the original track is a raucous and rage-filled anthem, Gibbard infused his indie-rock sensibilities and managed to transform the song into a soft piano ballad.
Listen to “Proxima B” and “Filler” above.
Death Cab For Cutie is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
The best new hip-hop albums coming out this week include albums from Ace Hood, Joell Ortiz, Kxng Crooked, Lil Yachty, Medhane, Powfu, Problem, and Yungmanny. While there are fewer big names than in previous weeks, this week retains a powerful veteran presence alongside some newcomers who have quickly made names for themselves.
Here are all the best new hip-hop albums coming out this week.
Ace Hood — Mr. Hood
Ace Hood’s last studio album, Trials & Tribulations, came out nearly seven years ago. Since then, the Deerfield Beach rapper has gone independent and completely revamped his image. Staying sharp by releasing a string of mixtapes and EPs dedicated to keeping his pen game in shape as he conditioned his body and got married, Hood will likely have plenty of mature subject matter to address as a result of his lifestyle changes.
Joell Ortiz and Kxng Crooked — H.A.R.D.
Eminem named Kxng Crooked (formerly known as Crooked I) one of the most underrated rappers in the game. Likewise, Crook’s fellow former Slaughterhouse member Joell Ortiz has remained one of hip-hop’s top-notch performers, if not one of its best-known. Linking up for an eight-song outing executive produced by Heatmakerz, this dynamic duo aims to tackle social ills with the sort of dense, rhyme-packed verses that have made them two of hardcore rap fans’ favorites.
Lil Yachty — Lil Boat 3
After taking a year off to work on his behind-the-scenes pen game, Lil Yachty has returned to form on his latest singles, “Oprah’s Bank Account” and “Split/Whole Time.” Determining that the best route to support his comeback was to lean all the way into the rapid-fire flows he made his name on, Yachty took his time in crafting Lil Boat 3, working on his physical and mental health and even taking suggestions from proven hitmaker Young Thug to ensure his latest will be his greatest.
Medhane — Cold Water
With social media and streaming breaking down the walls between what once would have been considered “backpack” or “underground” rap, Medhane has swiftly become a force among fans of soulful beats and heady rhymes. The Brooklyn rapper updates the ’90s New York sound espoused by lyrical adherents like Joey Badass, Earl Sweatshirt, and MIKE, drawing on his deep introspection for inspiration and spitting his metaphysical philosophy over scratchy samples.
Powfu — Poems Of The Past
In a Genius video breaking down his breakthrough single “Death Bed,” a recent comment laments when Powfu “used to be our little secret.” Powfu is a multi-genre artist whose material encompasses the scuffs and scrapes of teenage love — a tendency which has made him a favorite of the TikTok set and driven the YouTube views of “Death Bed” into the upper eight figures. Today’s emo kids may have found their latest champion and thanks to the exploding popularity of their favorite social app, Powfu may end up being a true breakout star.
Problem — Coffee & Kush Vol 1.
The Compton star returns with a new project executive produced by Terrace Martin featuring the single “Where I Come From.” With production from 1500 or Nothin and Mike & Keys, the 10-song project is another career evolution for the versatile Problem, who previously promoted the project with the short film, A Compton Story.
Yungmanny — Confused
Prince George’s County, Maryland is having a moment, as DMV representers Kevin Durant and IDK linked up last week for the soundtrack to Durant’s basketball documentary Basketball County: Something In The Water. IDK served as music supervisor, putting his position to good use to promote some of the most vibrant up-and-coming voices from his community — including Yungmanny, who at just 16 has already become a star in his city. On Confused, the teenager sets his sights on the rest of the world, showing off his off-kilter flow and surreal sense of humor.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.