Adam Sandler received the prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on Sunday night, but before the Saturday Night Live alum turned movie star could accept the award, he was dutifully roasted by some of the biggest names in comedy. On hand to roast Sandler were his longtime friends and collaborators Judd Apatow, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Ben Stiller, Steve Buscemi, Dana Carvey, Chris Rock, and Conan O’Brien. (David Spade was reportedly briefly in attendance.)
O’Brien, who was already a writer at SNL when Sandler was hired in 1990, kicked off the proceedings by taking a crack at the comedy star for always working with the same people. Via The Hollywood Reporter:
How nice it was that so many people had made the trip to D.C. to honor Sandler, but “have you asked yourself why so many of Adam’s friends were available? Because if Adam isn’t working, they aren’t working.” O’Brien established his credibility, however, by pointing out that Sandler has never put him in any of his movies, and so he “doesn’t owe him a damn thing.” Rather, O’Brien said he was thrilled to help honor Sandler for the “first award he’s ever received where he hasn’t been slimed.”
Naturally, Rock tore up the stage by working in two shots at the infamous Oscars slap, one of which involved a very bold hat tip to Paul Pelosi, who was in the crowd.
“Paul Pelosi is the only guy here who knows just how I feel — it’s just me and you, Paul!” Rock joked before turning things back to Sandler. “Nobody works as hard as the Sandman! Those folks at the Oscars, man… they’re f*cking a**holes.”
This isn’t the only very prestigious comedy award Sandler has received this month. From an extremely rare sit-down interview he did last week with The Washington Post:
On a recent Friday afternoon, the bearded Sandler enters the room with a slight limp courtesy of hip replacement surgery he had in the fall. A few days earlier, he was in Boston, helping Sadie look at colleges. The next day he’ll go to the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards with his daughters who will watch him receive the King of Comedy Award and submit to the inevitable sliming. (Sandler is the first person to receive the top comedy honors from Nickelodeon and the Kennedy Center, let alone receive them in the same month.)
Pitchfork Music Festival wasn’t dampened by three days of rain in Chicago’s Union Park last July. “People don’t come to Pitchfork for Instagram-able moments or to sport glittery festival outfits,” Uproxx’s review surmised. “They come to lose themselves in muddy mosh pits set to the tune of left-of-the-dial artists they won’t hear on mainstream radio.”
This morning, March 20, the 2023 Pitchfork Music Festival lineup was announced, and it’s full of acts primed to provide the same respite at Union Park in Chicago.
The headliners are The Smile, Big Thief, and Bon Iver — in that order. The Smile will handle headlining duties on Friday, July 21, followed by Big Thief on Saturday, July 22, and Bon Iver on Sunday, July 23. Per press release, Pitchfork Music Festival will serve as The Smile’s US festival debut.
Friday’s lineup also includes Alvvays, Perfume Genius, Leikeli47, Nation Of Language, Roc Marciano & The Alchemist, Youth Lagoon, Ric Wilson, Grace Ives, Jlin, Axel Boman, Mavi, Sen Morimoto, and Contour.
In addition to Big Thief, Saturday’s performances will come from Weyes Blood, King Krule, Snail Mail, Panda Bear & Sonic Boom, Julia Jacklin, Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul, Vagabon, MJ Lenderman, Yaya Bey, Black Belt Eagle Scout, 700 Bliss, Palm, and Deeper.
“We’re excited to be back at Union Park with a lineup of artists responsible for some of the very best music of the past year — Alvvays, Kelela, Yaya Bey, Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupil, Grace Ives, 700 Bliss, and more — alongside a few special moments with indie icons,” Pitchfork editor-in-chief Puja Patel said in a statement. “For one, this year will mark the very first time that Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood (as The Smile) and Bon Iver will perform at the Chicago festival. And Big Thief will complete their tour of the fest’s stages over the years with a headlining set, their first at a festival this size.”
Tickets are available now, and you can find all ticket information here.
See the official 2023 Pitchfork Music Festival lineup poster below.
Amanda Bynes was scheduled to make her first public appearance since the end of her conservatorship at a 1990s-themed convention this weekend, alongside former All That co-stars Kenan Thompson, Kel Mitchell, and Lori Beth Denberg. But according to Page Six, the actress had to cancel due to an undisclosed illness.
Mitchell asked the ’90s Con crowd to “send a prayer” to Bynes for her to “feel better.” He also told ET Online that he’s been “praying” for her. “It’s awesome to see she’s doing better,” he said. “We’re just continuing to pray for her on her journey, and it’s answered prayers that she’s doing a lot better.”
She announced her hiatus from acting in 2010 when rumors of substance abuse surfaced. Following a very public breakdown, she was put under a conservatorship in August 2013. The What I Like About You alum then enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in 2014 and graduated in 2019. Her conservatorship then concluded last year and she entered cosmetology school to become a licensed manicurist.
Also at ’90s Con, Kenan and Kel announced that they’re making a sequel to Good Burger, which is to All That as Wayne’s World is to SNL (if, uh, there was more than one All That movie).
We’re on day 105 since Chat GPT arrived and things will never be the same. From initiating new spikes in plagiarism to writing an episode of South Park to sending millions into both panic & utopian fervor, there’s a whole list of reasons every investor is scrambling with y2K-era chaotic energy to get in on the AI craze. And it doesn’t seem like the hype is slowing any time soon.
On March 14th, OpenAI unveiled their new creation, GPT-4. Its improvements are, for a lack of better words, impressive. Here’s what you should know about the latest update:
IT’S EVEN SMARTER:
ChatGPT just underwent an intense 80s-themed training montage where it hit the books hard. For one, GPT-4 has absorbed the souls of Dr. Seuss, Shakespeare, and Steinbeck, to upgrade its creativity.
Oh, and if you thought Chat GPT was smart before, it’s raised its scores in all academic fields. Notably, where it once scored in the bottom 10% of those to take the Bar Exam, now it’s in the top 90%. Cue the intro to “Push It to the Limit.”
Another revolutionary addition to the GPT technology is its ability to interpret images along with text. Open AI stated, “GPT-4 is a large multimodal model (accepting image and text inputs, emitting text outputs) that, while less capable than humans in many real-world scenarios, exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks.”
Basically, the supercomputer now has eyes. Soon, we might all be able to ask GPT “how do I look?” and after five seconds of careful calculation, it will generate the perfect answer.
Next is an improvement to what OpenAI deems “Steerability.” This is essentially the ability to set its tone, worldview, or limitations to customize the experience. Essentially, you can now assign Chat GPT an anchor of sorts (by describing those directions in the “system” message). It’s kind of like the the tokens in the movie Inception that keep dream intruders in touch with what’s real, or like that episode of SpongeBob where he’s instructed to only focus on “Fine dining and breathing.”
“Alignment” the idea that AI’s intentions will align with humanity’s best interests is still yet to be fully understood. OpenAI stated, “Unaligned AI could pose substantial risks to humanity,” saying, “There is currently no known indefinitely scalable solution to the alignment problem. As AI progress continues, we expect to encounter a number of new alignment problems that we don’t observe yet in current systems.” Basically, as smart as GPT-4 is, it’s still not able to analyze its most existential flaw, potentially escaping the grasp of humanity.
While significantly more accurate (40% more likely), GPT-4 can still be prone to “hallucinations” or giving false information or buggy code. For this reason, it’s not advised to use GPT technology for high-stakes situations without human intervention.
GPT operates with limitations, however, it’s still possible to “jailbreak” these boundaries, such as violent and inappropriate remarks. It’s in these moments of jailbreaking that we can see GPT’s potential threat.
Sadly, AI is so in demand, they’ve opted to put GPT-4 behind a paywall. However, for only $20 a month, you get access to ChatGPT Plus, the world’s greatest, most up-to-date super assistant with lots of perks including the new update.
As for image analysis, this function isn’t even accessible to ChatGPT Plus users. There’s a waiting list, but if you’re lucky, conduct research, or perhaps run a large business, you can jump to the front.
If anyone thought Vladimir Putin would think differently about his alleged war crimes after being the subject of an arrest warrant, they thought wrong. Russia responded with a toilet paper joke when (as reported by NPR) the International Criminal Court issued the warrant “for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”
Instead of fretting over a warrant, Putin has been spending time attempting to persuade Russian billionaires into pouring their money into the economy, which is flagging due to sanctions and companies pulling their business from Russia due to the war. And Putin’s also the focus of scrutiny regarding dozens of critics and ex-associates suffering mysterious “suicides” like wandering out of skyscraper windows. So, hearing the Kremlin’s official “meh”-like response to the arrest warrant seems to be on brand:
“The very question itself is outrageous and unacceptable,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “Russia, like a number of other states, does not recognize the jurisdiction of this court, and therefore any of its decisions are insignificant for the Russian Federation from a legal viewpoint.”
In other words, Putin isn’t sweating the warrant. In fact, he spent part of the subsequent days in Ukraine to visit Mariupol, where Russian troops have found rare success amid a largely disastrous invasion that has led to Ukraine taking back most initially claimed territory from Russia.
In Ukraine, Putin was not welcome by all, as one can imagine. That includes (according to the BBC), Mariupol’s exiled mayor, Vadym Boychenko, who declared Putin to be a “criminal” who decided to “return to the scene of the crime.” Boychenko further declared, “He’s come to see what he will be punished for.” And the International Criminal Court agrees.
Rolling Stone reports The Weeknd has settled a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against him over his 2018 single “Call On Out My Name.” The lawsuit was filed in September 2021 by the electro duo Epikker, who claimed that “Call Out My Name” was significantly similar to their unreleased song “Vibeking.”
According to Billboard, Epikker — which consists of Suniel Fox and Henry Strange — claimed to have evidence that The Weeknd (Abel Tesfaye) had heard the song. Email correspondence between Epikker and Tesfaye’s “playback engineer” appeared to confirm that he’d “listened to and liked” the original song.
In a statement filed with the Los Angeles court on Friday, the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote, “The parties have reached a settlement in principle of this action. Because the parties are still in the process of formalizing, executing, and consummating that settlement, Plaintiff respectfully requests that the Court take all dates off calendar and set a date in 30 days for the parties to file a joint status report if the case has not already been dismissed.”
Rachel Zegler, who portrays the Greek goddess Athena in the movie, took to Twitter to encourage people to still see it despite the negative reviews: “hey our film is actually really good! but mostly i just absolutely loved making it and the people i met whilst doing so 🙂 go see it! give it a chance. we have an 85% audience score for a reason.” The actress then added a collection of fun behind-the-scenes photos to show that, hey, even if you don’t like the movie, they had a good time making it.
hey our film is actually really good! but mostly i just absolutely loved making it and the people i met whilst doing so 🙂 go see it! give it a chance. we have an 85% audience score for a reason. pic.twitter.com/2OmbMSlsyw
— rachel zegler (she/her/hers) (@rachelzegler) March 19, 2023
She continued to call certain people “senselessly mean” in their backlash for the film, which opened last week to a (somehow) lackluster $30 million at the box office. “Some people out there and just being… senselessly mean. And it’s unnecessary. And I know, I know, ‘If you can’t handle the heat…’ and all that nonsense, and you’re right. But our film is actually very good, it’s just cool to hate on fun nowadays. That’s okay. We’re good.”
some people out there and just being… senselessly mean. and it’s unnecessary. and i know, i know, “if you can’t handle the heat…” and all that nonsense, and you’re right. but our film is actually very good. it’s just cool to hate on fun nowadays. that’s okay. we’re good.
— rachel zegler (she/her/hers) (@rachelzegler) March 19, 2023
Compared to the powerhouse that is Marvel, DC is not having a great time out there. After Black Adam and Shazam!, the whole universe in an odd place while James Gunn gets to work retooling the whole place. It’s okay, everyone will unite in harmony later this year when Barbie hits theaters.
Miley Cyrus, perhaps more than any of her peers, has an intriguing relationship with albums. Her career, from “Party In The U.S.A.” to “Wrecking Ball,” is largely defined by her singles. With each subsequent album serving as either an affirmation or rejection of the album that precedes it, Cyrus’s discography is littered with collections that contain the heights of 2010s pop music and some borderline unlistenable tracks. On Endless Summer Vacation, Cyrus is still striving to craft an undeniably consistent body of work. Funnily enough, the thing that stifles Cyrus’s latest set is the very thing that muddied her previous records; for the first time in her post-Bangerz career, Miley Cyrus plays it too safe.
When the Grammy-nominated icon unveiled “Flowers,” a blissful mélange of Gloria Gaynor’s disco-streaked perseverance and lyrical Easter eggs sourced from Bruno Mars’s “When I Was Your Man,” the song seemed to signal yet another new career peak for one of the most important pop stars of the 21st century. “Flowers,” which served as the lead and only pre-release single from Endless Summer Vacation, shattered Spotify records and clocked six weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100. Serving as her first full-length follow-up to her widely lauded Plastic Hearts and a years-long rebrand into a properly respected vocalist following a decade’s worth of drug-fueled foam finger controversies, Endless Summer Vacation wasn’t supposed to feel this flat. Cyrus’s eighth studio album answers the question: “What would a Miley Cyrus record sound like if she tempered all of the more daring and explorative elements of her artistry with the safe predictability and facelessness of adult contemporary?”
Loosely divided into two acts – an “AM” and “PM” side — Endless Summer Vacation finds most of its triumphs in the morning. After nearly two months, “Flowers” still holds up, and, more importantly, its breeziness provides both a baseline and a foil for the other soundscapes present on the album. “Jaded” arises as an instant standout, transforming the glam rock of Plastic Hearts into a pristine vocal performance set against an arrangement straight out of the late-aughts glory days of pop-rock.
While “Flowers” and “Jaded” both benefit from infectious, immersive production, their colorless lyrics are the earliest hints at where Endless Summer Vacation begins to falter. Most of the songwriting on Endless Summer Vacation is remarkably dull, if not frustratingly nondescript. “Rose Colored Lenses,” a Sgt. Peppers-informed psychedelic rock groove, loses its bite by way of lyrics that do nothing to transform the “rose colored glasses” adage beyond its most basic meaning. “We could stay like this forever, lost in wonderland / With our head above the clouds, falling stupid like we’re kids,” she sings. This unsavory combination — drab songwriting, intriguing production, and a reliably fantastic vocal — forms a left-of-holy trinity that reigns over Endless Summer Vacation.
Thankfully, the album’s sequencing never allows for a string of forgettable tracks to completely muddy the overall experience. In fact, the three songs that close the album’s AM side are among its best. The Brandi Carlile-featuring “Thousand Miles” is a heartfelt country-pop ballad that puts all of Younger Now to shame, from the gorgeous harmonica outro to Brandi’s ethereal upper harmonies in the song’s back half. And while the studio version of “You” will never match gut-wrenching wails of the live version — Cyrus first gifted us “You” on her 2022 live album Attention— it remains Miley’s strongest love-focused power ballad since “When I Look At You.”
Endless Summer Vacation begins to transition to its PM side with “Handstand”: a boundless, freewheeling song where, for the first time on the album, Miley doesn’t sound like a prisoner to restraint. Consisting of a spoken word poem, a chorus, and a bridge, “Handstand” expertly captures the feverish lust and sweaty stupor of a debaucherous summer night. Miley Cyrus is always at her best when she lets herself get a little weird. In the past, her primary obstacle has been getting too weird, but on Endless Summer Vacation she could do with a few more doses of the Dead Petz/Bangerz fusion that grounds “Handstand.” Perhaps the other songs on the PM side of Endless Summer Vacation struggle to match the allure of “Handstand” because they lean too heavily into the straightforward contemporary pop that looms over the album instead of seeking an anchor in the grimier edges of hip-hop, alternative pop, and psychedelic rock that ground Cyrus’s most intriguing musical offerings.
“River,” which is currently being primed to serve as the album’s second official single, has all the makings of a pop smash, but it still feels dull. The same is true for “Violet Chemistry,” “Wildcard,” and “Island.” All of these songs are fine, but boring metaphors and production that strips some of the character from Cyrus’s voice leave us with songs that aren’t necessarily lifeless, just limp. The synth-pop-meets-electro-rock haze of “River” is well-trodden sonic territory for Cyrus, yet an aimless chorus sours the whole affair. Tracks like “Violet Chemistry” and “Wildcard” present a Cyrus who has seemingly forgotten that the world has seen her at the zenith of pop culture’s obsession with the grotesque, taboo, and sexual. The grime of the Endless Summer Vacation’s PM songs sounds as if someone transposed the wilder moments of Cyrus’s mid-2010s career through a filter that left things palatable, but derivative. Between lyrics that sacrifice a solid sting for universality and production that revels in its tedium, the back half of Endless Summer Vacation unironically sounds like an inoffensive playlist blasting throughout an airport terminal. Nonetheless, there are some bright spots, like the spunky Sia-featuring “Muddy Feet,” that offset the absolute slog that is “Wonder Woman” — the album’s closing track which nods to Sarah McLauchlin’s “Angel” in all the worst ways.
The success of “Flowers,” along with Cyrus’s new muted online persona, pointed towards an album that would feel a bit more grand than Endless Summer Vacation. A perfectly fine record that ultimately suffers from how safe it is, Endless Summer Vacation is, at the very least, undeniable proof that Miley Cyrus is still capable of playing and thriving in the mainstream pop game. Hopefully, Cyrus’s next record will prove that she’s able to do all of this while making music that actually feels urgent and fresh.
“Very, very young, I was like 18 or 19, I just decided — I was like, ‘Right, I’m gonna do five math symbols as my albums,” Sheeran said, in part. “One’s gonna be orange, one’s gonna be green, one’s gonna be blue, one’s gonna be red, one’s gonna be yellow. And you’re gonna just see a poster, and the poster’s gonna have an equals sign on it, and you’ll know what it is.”
Sheeran executed that plan to perfection, with five consecutive No. 1 albums to his name. It began with the orange-covered + (Plus) in 2011, followed by the green X (Multiply) in 2014, the blue ÷ (Divide) in 2017, and the red = (Equals) in 2021. (Sheeran also stuck the No. 1 album No.6 Collaborations Project in there in 2019 for good measure.)
Now, we’ve arrived at the yellow finale, – (Subtract), due out on May 5. And with the album’s release, which will be prefaced by at least one single, Sheeran is properly reflecting on the journey to this point. This morning, March 20, the four-time Grammy winner and Disney+ — of course there’s a plus sign involved — jointly announced The Sum Of It All, a four-part original documentary series.
“I’ve always been guarded of my personal life; the only documentary I’ve ever made has been one that focused on my songwriting,” Sheeran captioned his Instagram announcement. “Disney approached me to make a four-part documentary on the making of my next album Subtract. Initially the documentary was just that, a documentary on the formation of an album. But, as my life took a few twists and turns, the subject matter of the album changed, and so did the documentary. It became something completely different to what I thought it would be.”
He continued, “I wanted to provide context to the album as it touches on very personal things, that we all experience. I knew if I made a documentary, I would want to put my trust in the hands of the director, so it wouldn’t be sculpted by me, and was actually an accurate reflection of who I am, even if it’s uncomfortable to watch. The team at @fulwell73productions have done a fantastic job of that. I hope you guys connect with this 4-part series, The Sum Of It All, streaming May 3rd @disneyplus.”
Read Disney+’s official description for The Sum Of It All below, and watch the official trailer above.
“Ed Sheeran: #TheSumOfItAll, a four-part Original docuseries, is streaming May 3 on #DisneyPlus.
For the first time ever, global superstar, Ed Sheeran opens the doors to a definitive and searingly honest view into his private life as he explores the universal themes that inspire his music. This series follows Ed after he learns of life changing news and reveals his hardships and triumphs during the most challenging period of his life. This original 4-part series features exclusive footage behind his iconic hits, never-before-seen personal archive with his friends and family, and epic stadium performances giving insight into Ed’s world.
In each episode, Ed faces themes and emotions that most people experience. Ed expresses his deeper thoughts as he reassesses life and explores what he thinks of the world, of himself and how this difficult time has influenced him and his new music.”
– (Subtract) is out 5/5 via Atlantic. Find more information here.
Ed Sheeran is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Jordan Peele is not only a great filmmaker. He’s also consistent. The filmmaker’s directorial debut, Get Out, which won him an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, came out in 2017. Two years later came Us. Three years after that, Nope. Peele will continue his “new movie every two or three years” cycle in 2024 with… UNTITLED. OK, that’s not the actual name of the movie, but considering the brevity of his other titles, it could be.
Universal Pictures has scheduled a Dec. 25, 2024 release date for Peele’s untitled fourth feature. No plot details have been revealed. “Additionally, an untitled horror/thriller from Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions will open in theaters on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024,” according to the Wrap.
“Look, all of my movies, I’m trying to give you something for whatever mood you’re in,” Peele told Uproxx when Nope was released last year. “So I think that there is a way to watch this movie in a way that you’re going to come armed for that conversation afterward. There’s also a way to watch this movie where you say, ‘Look, I’ve been working all day, all week. I want to shut off and see some wild stuff.’ Then I want that to be there for you as well, and if you want it all, I want to give the audience that, too.”
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