When the Mad Max prequel was announced and Anya Taylor-Joy was cast as a young Furiosa, the burning question on everyone’s mind was if Taylor-Joy would shave her head like Charlize Theron’s iteration of the character. And Taylor-Joy was certainly on board, that is until George Miller stepped in.
“I was so excited to shave my head, then [filmmaker George Miller] saw me in real life, and went, ‘No, we can’t,’” the actress revealed to Empire. While they did not end up taking a buzzer to her head, with the magic of CGI and some good wig caps, Furiosa is still seen with her iconic buzzcut in the trailer.
As for Theron, who has previously mentioned that seeing someone else step into the role is “too hard,” she had been in touch with Taylor-Joy throughout the film’s production. “She’s been so classy and kind in letting me go and do it,” Taylor-Joy said of Theron. “But I feel very lucky that, from the second I read the script, I just knew this person. I felt so fiercely protective over Furiosa, and fiercely protective of her interests,” Taylor-Joy revealed.
Even though the two haven’t met in person, Taylor-Joy has been open about her love for Theron. In 2020, the actress spoke highly of Theron and her take on the character. “The level of commitment by those that have come before me, I endeavor to match that. That makes me really excited. [Charlize is] unbelievable. I have so much respect for the originators of this crazy world.”
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which also stars Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, and Nathan Jones, will follow the young heroine as she travels across a wasteland to try to make her way back home. The movie will hit theaters on May 24th.
After years of referring to him as “Sleepy Joe” and fueling concerns about his age (while conveniently ignoring that Donald Trump is only four years younger), Fox News now thinks Joe Biden is too energetic after he delivered a fiery State of the Union address. Which one is it, guys?
Sean Hannity led the charge by referring to Biden as “Jacked Up Joe” in his post-SOTU commentary. According to Hannity, Biden was “hyper” and an “angry old man,” which seems to be the opposite of “sleepy.” Like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Fox News clearly didn’t know how to react to a Joe Biden who moved so quickly on his feet and took the fight directly to Trump.
Tonight, President Joe Biden laid out his radical wishlist for America. His speech was so hyped up it was bizarre. I will not be shouted at the whole hour. Frankly, so at odds with Everyday Joe, it’s even frightening to me. He spent most of the night shouting, speeding through his speech, and clearly overcompensating from the normal, everyday Joe that can barely string two sentences together. At times it became uncomfortable watching him screaming and yelling and speeding through that speech. The AP affectionately called it “feisty.” I guess that’s one way to describe it. Tonight, America saw, let’s say, a very different Joe Biden. I might call him “Jacked-Up Joe.” And that’s being charitable. He sounded like a hyper-caffeinated, angry, old man.
Not one to miss out on public humiliation, Ted Cruz was also on-brand when he repeated Hannity’s talking point verbatim that Biden seemed like an “angry old man.” Cruz also accused Biden of spreading “lie after lie” during his address, which were also Hannity’s exact words at the top of the show.
In short, Cruz brought nothing new to the table except for saying the same words as Hannity, but in a weirder voice. Maybe they could use a little more energy, too.
Ariana Grande’s new album Eternal Sunshine is out now, which has put the spotlight back on the artist. Her relationship with Ethan Slater was a big pop culture story in 2023, so today, people might be wondering:
Are Ariana Grande & Ethan Slater Still Dating?
It would appear so, yes.
As InStyle notes, during a recent interview on The Zach Sang Show, Sang asked if there was anything Grande wished people knew and she answered, “Plenty. We don’t have enough time. I feel like we don’t need to go into any specifics, but, of course, there’s like an insatiable frustration, inexplicable, hellish feeling with watching people, misunderstand the people you love and you and anything.”
Sang then asked if the new album will set the record straight and Grande said, “I hope so. I think it does. I think it’s the absolute worst idea. Pieces of it touch on things that are real and then pieces of it are part of the concept. So, what is that separation? It’s scary to leave it up to these selective memory people to decipher.”
As for Eternal Sunshine, fans are convinced “The Boy Is Mine” is about Slater (as Cosmopolitan notes). In a Zane Lowe interview, Grande said of the song, “It’s kind of like, ‘OK, I’ll play the bad girl, here’s your bad girl anthem. […] I kind of was like, ‘This is a very bad idea, I think, but there is a large group of my fans that really, they do love a bad girl anthem.’ And this is kind of an elevated version of that.”
Writer and director Yorgos Lanthimos loves to make his audiences uncomfortable, whether it’s in the subject matter presented on screen or the way he presents it. He loves using fish-eye lenses and extreme depth-of-field to distort the image, making even the most mundane moments in his films feel extraordinarily unsettling. Most of the time, his movies are also pretty funny, drawing humor from the absurdity of the human experience. His latest film, Poor Things, is definitely funny, but it also has more than its fair share of truly uncomfortable ideas and scenes.
Like Lanthimos, multi-hyphenate creative Nathan Fielder loves to provoke and disturb, leaving his audiences laughing and cringing in equal turn. When added to the searing discomfort that comes with the work of writer/actor Benny Safdie, you get The Curse, a Showtime limited series in turns hilarious and horrifying and almost always manages to be awkward.
Both The Curse and Poor Things use deeply discomforting humor to deal with topics like womanhood, pregnancy, and playing God, but they’re more deeply linked by actor Emma Stone, who stars in both. In Poor Things, she plays Bella Baxter, created by a Dr. Frankenstein-like father called God (Willem Dafoe) when he discovered a pregnant body washed ashore and chose to put the woman’s unborn infant’s brain inside of the adult mother’s body. She’s hyper-sexual but spends about a third of the movie in a toddler-like state, which can be both comical and tough to stomach. In The Curse she’s Whitney Siegel, an architect and interior designer who is trying to both get pregnant and create a HGTV series about her special eco-friendly homes with her husband, Asher (Fielder).
The characters could not be more different. Whitney is hyper-sensitive to how she’s perceived at all times, carefully manufacturing a persona that will help her sell houses and bring good to the world, albeit performatively. She longs to be put on a pedestal, objectified, like a deity or regent. Hell, the name of her HGTV series even ends up being “Green Queen.” Bella, by stark contrast, would rather disappear into the world so she can both observe and enjoy it. She has been objectified by men since her unconventional birth and longs only to be her own person.
In The Curse, Stone wrings comedy from the awkward situations Whitney finds herself in, so desperate to be politically correct and well-liked that she can’t see how much people loathe her and find her fake. She’s cringey because she cares way, way too much about what other people think, while Bella in Poor Things is the opposite. She doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks, really, following her own desires and moral compass without apology. Her brand of cringe comes from how many of her actions feel out of line with societal norms, while the people around her often react in big, emotional ways.
Where Stone allows herself to be the butt of the joke as Whitney, inspiring laughs by skewering liberal women’s white guilt, as Bella the joke is often more juvenile. Bella loves sex, which she calls “furious jumping,” and we see her having all kinds of sex with a variety of people, though it’s never played for titillation. As Alan Rickman said in Dogma, sex is the joke of heaven, and Lanthimos highlights the absurdity of human sexuality with awkward camera angles and lingering shots of slapping bodies. It’s not shown as shameful, but people around Bella are ashamed of her openness, making for plenty of slightly uncomfortable laughs.
Both roles require intense vulnerability from Stone, who lays herself bare both physically and emotionally. Where some actors might balk at looking so incredibly foolish, she gives it her all. She disappears into both roles, her own ego completely removed from the equation, and audiences are all the better for it. That’s not to say that her co-stars aren’t also bringing their A games, as Fielder and Safdie are both intensely discomforting and often unlikable in their roles, and Poor Things features hilariously uncomfortable performances from Mark Ruffalo, Christopher Abbott, and Margaret Qualley. But Stone is the center of both of these worlds, and they hinge entirely on her ability to be captivating as well as cringe-inducing. Since both Poor Things and The Curse seem to exist in worlds just adjacent to our own, she has to ground things for the audience and feel human enough to follow.
Stone has always been great in roles that tiptoe right around the edge of cringe comedy, first evidenced in teen comedies like Superbad and Easy A and the romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love. In 2018, she starred in the Netflix miniseries Maniac and in her first collaboration with Lanthimos, The Favourite. This was the beginning of her ascent to cringe comedy queendom.
Maniac showed her ability to balance pitch-black humor with real emotional dramatic weight. In Maniac, she plays Annie, a woman with borderline personality disorder who forms unhealthy attachments to people and seeks to heal herself through a pharmaceutical trial. The series gets as deliciously weird as both The Curse and Poor Things, though it does not push as many potentially uncomfortable buttons as either. It allowed Stone to really show her range and her ability for more complicated kinds of comedy, as she played multiple versions of the same character, each with their own neuroses. The Favourite forces her into some pretty debasing positions as a grasping potential lover of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman). She ended up enjoying working with the Greek director so much that she starred in his short, Bleat, before going on to collaborate again on Poor Things.
Stone doesn’t just inhabit these characters and bring them to life — she also helps shape their worlds behind the scenes, as she is a producer on both The Curse and Poor Things. For the latter, she’s been nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actress and Best Picture. She already won Best Actress for her role in the slightly schmaltzy 2016 Hollywood musical La La Land, so it will be interesting to see if she can snag a second trophy for a very different kind of performance. Regardless of whether or not she takes home any Oscars for Poor Things, she’s clearly made her mark as a complex comedian to be reckoned with. All hail the new queen of cringe. Long may she reign.
Ariana Grande’s latest album, Eternal Sunshine, is out for all to enjoy. However, due to the controversy surrounding her latest rumored relationship with Ethan Slater, most are tuning in to pick it apart for clues. After news of the “Yes, And?” singer’s split from her now ex-husband Dalton Gomez (no relation to Selena Gomez), users online were in a frenzy.
Instead of addressing the questions about her divorce from Gomez or her relationship with then-married Slater, Grande has remained silent. Now, with the project available across streaming (leakers be damned), it appears that she has used her art yet again to respond to the attacks on her character. But did she ever reference Slater? Continue below more.
Are Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine Songs About Ethan Slater?
Life inmates art. But, in the case of Ariana Grande, fans believe it to be quite the opposite. Just as the Arianators are excited to listen to Eternal Sunshine, so are the tea sippers. After combing through the project, users online believe Grande made several mentions of her rumored relationship with Ethan Slater.
According to listeners, Grande wasted no time diving straight into it on the album’s opener, “Intro (End of the World).” The opening verse alludes to her seemingly falling in love with Slater after their first interaction.
“How can I tell if I’m in the right relationship? / Aren’t you really supposed to know that sh*t? / Feel it in your bones and own that sh*t? I don’t know / Then I had this interaction I’ve been thinkin’ ’bout for like five weeks / Wonder if he’s thinkin’ ’bout it too and smiling / Wonder if he knows that that’s been what’s inspirin’ me / Wonder if he’s judgin’ me like I am right now,” sings Grande.
Other references throughout the album are vague, but on “The Boy Is Mine,” Grande seems to be calling back to their secret relationship yet again. “Please know this ain’t what I planned for / Probably wouldn’t bet a dime or my life on / There’s gotta be a reason why / My girls, they always come through in a sticky situation / Say, ‘It’s fine’ / Happens all the time,” sings Grande.
The forbidden love fest didn’t stop there. In the official video for “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait For Your Love),” folks online have begun to compare Evan Peters, who stars in the visual, and Slater.
Lola Brooke is four months removed from the release of her debut album Dennis Daughter and keeps her momentum rolling in 2024 with a new single, “Bend It Ova.” The hyperactive single is a borough-blending, region-crashing crossover, featuring verses from Bronx rapper A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie and New Orleans Bounce icon Big Freedia. The beat blends the best of both artists’ favored production styles, pairing A Boogie’s moody piano riffs with a flashy NOLA beat for a track that is sure to see listeners doing exactly what the song says.
Earlier this year, Lola Brooke followed up her first project with an appearance on Wyclef Jean’s PSA “Paper Right” alongside R&B star Capella Grey, coke rap mainstay Pusha T, and hooper-turned-rapper Flau’jae Johnson. Meanwhile, her September track “You” with Bryson Tiller remains a fan favorite, racking up 15 million views on YouTube and over 13 million streams on Spotify.
A Boogie is also planning on expanding his discography this year, promoting his upcoming albumBetter Off Alone to capitalize on the buzz he acquired from appearing on “Calling” from the Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse soundtrack by Metro Boomin.
Listen to Lola Brooke’s “Bend It Ova” featuring A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie and Big Freedia above.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Imagine deciding to take up a hobby that usually requires many years to perfect at age 35, and three years later ending up in the top 30 in the world at the highest international competition for it.
That’s what happened to a 38-year-old math and physics teacher from Diepenbeek, Belgium. According to Netherlands News Live, Mieke Gorissen has jogged 10km (a little over six miles) a few times a week for exercise for many years. But in 2018, she decided to hire a running trainer to improve her technique. As it turned out, she was a bit of a natural at distance running.
Three years later, Gorissen found herself running her third marathon. But not just any old marathon (as if there were such a thing)—the marathon at the Tokyo Olympics. And not only did she compete with the world’s most elite group of runners, she came in 28th out of the 88 competing in the race.
With the heat and humidity in Tokyo, even completing the race was a major accomplishment. (Fifteen women competing did not finish the marathon.) But to come in in the top 30 when you just started focusing on distance running three years ago? Unbelievable.
In fact, Gorissen could hardly believe it herself. A video of her reaction upon hearing her results has gone viral for its purity and genuine humility. “No,” she said when a reporter told her she came in 28th in the race. “That’s not possible.”
Then she burst into tears.
Her emotional disbelief is so moving. “I was already happy to finish the race,” she said through sobs. “I do think I have reached my goal and that I can be happy.”
“I also think I lost a toenail,” she added, laughing.
Even after the English translation ends in the video, it’s clear how much this finish meant to her. A remarkable accomplishment for a 38-year-old who knits and reads for fun and who has only run two marathons prior to competing in the Olympics.
According to her Olympic profile, she’s glad she got started with distance running later in life. “If I started running in my teens, it wouldn’t have been good for me,” she said. “I wasn’t really happy then, I would have been too hard on myself and I would have lost myself in it in a way that wasn’t healthy. It came at exactly the right time.”
Congratulations, Mieke. You’ve given us all the inspiration to set new goals and dream bigger than we ever thought possible.
We all know parenting can be tough, but if there’s one thing that makes the roller coaster of emotions totally worth it, it’s seeing our children’s faces light up with joy.
Children’s smiles are infectious, and not in the scary pandemic kind of a way. There’s simply nothing better in this world than the face of a bright-eyed little human beaming with happiness, which is why a recent TikTok trend has people grinning from ear to ear themselves.
The premise is simple: The parent asks the kid to record them dancing to Taylor Swift‘s “Love Story” with the screen facing away from them (under the guise that the parent dancing needs to see themselves). So instead of recording the parent dancing, it’s actually recording the kid’s face watching them.
And oh, the love and joy on these kids’ faces is so, so sweet to witness. Watch:
The end did it for me 🥹😭I birthed such a sweet, loving and encouraging little boy!! #momtok #toddlersoftiktok #taylorswiftchallenge #lovestorychallenge #boymom #toddlermom
Seriously, seeing close-ups of kids’ joy should be a daily thing.
Had to jump on the trend! Love this beautiful girl!
Of course, part of the beauty of having kids is you simply never know what they’re going to do. While some youngsters gaze lovingly at their parents while they dance, others have a … well … different reaction. Check out this girl’s facial expressions:
Hilarious. And because this is the internet, naturally someone had to do the TikTok trend with their dog. Gotta admit, Ellie’s toothy grin is pretty darn cute as well.
TikTok trends can sometimes be strange, annoying or problematic, but once in a while one comes along that brings people together in surprisingly delightful ways. Seeing people’s kids’ pure enjoyment watching their parents being silly is simply the best.
A paparazzo caught actor Jennifer Garner performing a touching act of kindness. Instead of being annoyed at having the moment filmed by the photographer, she asked him to help.
Garner was at the beach in Santa Monica, California, handing out bags of necessities to the homeless when she came across a man in a wheelchair who had no socks or shoes. Garner took the socks off her feet, gave them to the man and then attempted to hand over her shoes, but they were too small.
Garner then briskly walked over to the photographer filming her and asked him for assistance.
“What size feet do you have?” she asked the photographer repeatedly. “Can I buy your shoes for him? He needs a shoe.” When the random paparazzo asked what size feet the homeless man was, Garner replied, “10 and a half.”
Jennifer Gardner lead with kindness … takong the time to help out a homeless man in LA. Her shoes must not have fit because she rushed over to the photographer and offered to buy his shoes. #kindness #jg #jennifergarner #homelessman #spreadlove #alwayshelpothers #hockeyhelpsthehomeless #fyp #tmznews #trending #foryou
“Oh, I’m 11! Want me to give it to him? I can give it to him,” he responded, adding that Garner didn’t have to pay him for the shoes. The photographer had a blanket to give to the homeless man as well.
When Garner came across the man in the wheelchair, she was handing out plastic bags filled with necessities, similar to those Upworthy reported on in March of 2022. Garner created a viral video for Instagram that showed how the average person could make bags to give a “random act of kindness” to someone in need.
The underlying message of the post is that with a bit of forethought and preparedness, we all can help people experiencing homelessness.
“Gather these essentials in a quart-sized Ziploc bag and keep them in your car to give away when you see someone in need,” she wrote on the post before listing some items that can really help a homeless person get through the day. “A pair of thick socks. Kleenex. Hand wipes. Disposable toothbrushes. Chapstick. A couple of granola bars. I forgot this time, but like to add feminine hygiene products, too. Add $5, $10, $20 and a smile.”
Homelessness has steadily risen in the United States by about 6% yearly since 2017. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, roughly 421,000 people were homeless in 2022, and nearly 128,000 were chronically homeless, meaning they didn’t have a place to stay for a year or more.
The rise in people on the streets is distressing, and we all hope our leaders can get together to stop the steady increase. But until then, we are all called to do what we can to help alleviate the suffering we see on the streets.
Garner is a beautiful example of taking direct action to make the world a better place. Whether she calls a senator to help pass gun control legislation, buys boxes of books to help school teachers, or helps the homeless, her philosophy seems pretty simple. If you see something wrong, do something. It’s everyone’s responsibility to make the world a better place.
Lifestyle influencer Alexandra Lee, 29, was shocked to learn that she and her mother have opposite showering stances and it kicked off an important debate on the platform: what’s the correct way to stand in the shower?
It all started when Lee decided to renovate her bathroom and wasn’t sure where to put the bench in the shower, so she asked her mom for her advice. “When I shower, the shower head is behind me, so the water is like on my hair and down my back. Of course, I’ll turn around occasionally and move around,” Lee said in her video before noting that her mother stands in the opposite direction.
“But she showers primarily facing the shower head, so the water hits her in the face and down her body,” Lee continued. “She’s shocked that I do the opposite and I’m shocked that she does the opposite. I feel like the normal way to shower is with the shower right behind you and you’re facing that way.”
now I need to know, what is the normal way to shower?!? 🚿
now I need to know, what is the normal way to shower?!? 🚿
It may seem strange that Lee hadn’t considered that there’s more than one way to stand in the shower. However, it was a big revelation for many people because it sparked a pretty intense debate on Lee’s TikTok page and the video received over 5.8 million views.
“Is anyone else surprised by this?” Lee asked.
The comments suggest there is an equal number of nozzle-facers and nozzle face-away-ers. But the most passionate folks in the debate were those who shower with their backs to the nozzle. They can’t seem to understand why anyone would intentionally stand in front of the nozzle and have water continuously shot in their faces, especially when it feels so nice to have hot water sprayed on your back.
“Who the hell faces the water?”user2778056546386 wrote. “Facing the water is unhinged,” Not Jennifer Lawrence added. “If I face the water, I’m gonna drown,” Denise Pettersson commented. “Voluntarily getting waterboarded doesn’t sound fun at all,” Kristina Kubrick wrote.
“I face away! What the hell, people FACE THE WATER?!?” Erin Trent Hohman exclaimed.
There are also those with no preference and alternate throughout their shower session. “I rotate continuously like a kebab,” gentledreams wrote. “I constantly move around like a rotisserie chicken! Equal time on both sides,” Stormi Booke added.
It would seem that there is no wrong way to stand in the shower, but Dr. Cameron Rokshar, associate clinical professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai Hospital, says that one way better protects your skin.
“The real scientific answer behind it has to do with moisturizing your skin,” Dr. Rokshar told Today.com, noting that facing away from the nozzle has a distinct advantage. “The more exposure you get to water, and especially hot water, the drier your skin becomes. If you face the shower and have a whole bunch of water hit your face for 10 or 15 minutes, and you get and out and do nothing about it, that has a drying effect. Water, as it evaporates, takes more water with it.”
This article originally appeared on 12.14.23
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