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It’s hard to pull off Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain’s internet-breaking chemistry on the red carpet. Take Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, for instance. They’re two charismatic, attractive actors, but at the premiere of their romantic-comedy, Your Place or Mine, they looked like 12-year-olds on a first date at Chili’s. The pictures were so awkward that Kutcher’s wife, Mila Kunis, called them out on their lack of passion.

“She even emailed us last night,” Witherspoon said about Kunis on the Today show. “She goes, ‘You guys look so awkward on the red carpet together.’” The Legally Blonde actress wasn’t offended, though. She and Kunis have been friends for years. “It’s just fun because when you know a girlfriend so much, it was just fun to get to know her significant other because I’ve loved her for so long,” Witherspoon explained. “He’s so professional. He’s the funniest guy. I mean, such a goofball. We had so much fun.”

Your Place or Mine director Aline Brosh McKenna (who co-created the wonderful Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) told the Hollywood Reporter that Witherspoon and Kutcher both wanted to “make something fresh and modern that felt very today and a reality and a grounded-ness to it, so like where she lives, her clothing, how her kid dresses and his apartment is a nice apartment, but it’s not like a $20 million apartment. It’s a perennial genre, my favorite romantic comedies come from the ’30s and ’40s, so you can always find a way to update it and I hope that’s what we did.”

But based on the photos, if the question is “your place or mine,” the answer is “neither.”

(Via EW)

A lot happened at the 2023 Grammy Awards this weekend, but the leading narrative throughout the evening was Beyoncé’s chase for history. She entered the night a few wins away from breaking the all-time record for most career Grammys, a record she did end up claiming. Congratulatory messages have poured in since then, and now Beyoncé has gotten one from former First Lady Michelle Obama.

Obama shared a tweet about the record-breaking victory and wrote, “Congratulations @Beyonce for making history. Thank you for blessing us all with the music we live our lives to — the songs that keep us singing and dancing and talking. You deserve all this and more! [hearts emoji] [crown emoji].”

Obama, by the way, is also a Grammy winner: Her first nomination came in 2020, for her Becoming audiobook in the Best Spoken Word Album (Includes Poetry, Audio Books & Storytelling) category, and she won. Husband and former President Barack Obama also has a couple Grammys to his name, for his audiobooks of Dreams From My Father: A Story Of Race And Inheritance and The Audacity Of Hope: Thoughts On Reclaiming The American Dream.

Obama didn’t attend the Grammys, but current First Lady Jill Biden was on hand to award Bonnie Raitt’s “Just Like That” the Grammy for Song Of The Year.

The only person who had a worse time at the Grammys than Beyoncé was Ben Affleck. While Taylor Swift was white-wine dancing, the Air star and director looked miserable seated at the same table as his wife, Jennifer Lopez (who I just learned has the same number of Guinness World Records as Grammy nominations with two).

At one point during the ceremony, Lopez leaned over and said something to Affleck. Was she informing him that his favorite Dunkin was closing? That would explain a lot. But nope, according to a lipreader commissioned by the Daily Mail, Lopez was asking Affleck to — to quote a song that should have won a Grammy — put a smile on your face.

Lopez and Affleck, who frequently looks strained when in public, were seen exchanging tense words during the ceremony, right as host Trevor Noah sat down next to them. “Stop,” Lopez tells him. “Look more friendly. Look motivated.” Affleck replies: “I might.”

Affleck looked “more friendly” in a photo that Lopez shared on Instagram. “Always the best time with my love, my husband,” she wrote, while also tagging Harry Styles, Bad Bunny, and Mary J. Blige. She left off Beyoncé, probably because Affleck’s broken soul was enough for her.

(Via the Daily Mail)

In perhaps the biggest surprise of this year’s Grammys, Bonnie Raitt’s “Just Like That” won Song Of The Year, triumphing over songs by Adele, Beyoncé, DJ Khaled, Gayle, Harry Styles, Kendrick Lamar, Lizzo, Steve Lacy, and Taylor Swift. When Raitt’s song was announced, the open-mouthed look on her face indicated she was the most surprised person in the room.

It turns out that even after the initial shock passed, she still couldn’t believe it.

In a video of a backstage interview after her win, she entered the room and said, “I’m just so surprised, I don’t know what to say to you guys.” Later, she said of the other nominated songs, “I’m so surprised because there were just massively talented, great tunes that represented tremendous excitement of the public, both in sales and just No. 1 and big smashing hits, and my little record was, you know… I’m so glad to be nominated. I was very surprised, but holding up our end of the American roots and my generation, that was… made me very proud. So… I don’t know, I love it.”

After answering another question later, she excitedly added, “I can’t believe it! I just can’t… it’s like, when I won for Nick Of Time [Album Of The Year at the 1990 Grammys], I just could not believe that they called my name, and Dr. Biden gave me my damn award! Get the hell out of Dodge, you know? Sorry, I’m losing it.”

In a different backstage interview, she added, “I’m just completely surprised. I’m absolutely… I was not expecting that. There was so many massive records that are so popular, and to be included in that in the nomination was a surprise enough, but this happened to me 30 years ago, or 32 years ago, when nobody expected Nick Of Time to be in the running for Album Of The Year, and somehow, I made… everybody canceled each other out or something. But this was… I feel at disbelief and very, very grateful.”

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

Lil Yachty’s new album Let’s Start Here elicited many different reactions due to its departure from his previous sound into a more psychedelic direction. Featuring artists like Justin Raisen, Sad Pony, Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Jacob Portrait, Magdalena Bay, and more, Let’s Start Here was a new chapter for the rapper. And it looks like it was a success.

According to Billboard Charts, Let’s Start Here debuted at No. 1 on three separate charts: Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums, and Top Alternative Albums.

About the project, Yachty voiced his desire to expand his sound before the release and not want to be pigeonholed or dismissed as “just some SoundCloud rapper.”

He explained, “This album is so special and dear to me. I think I created it because I wanted to be taken seriously as an artist. You know? Not just some SoundCloud rapper. Not some mumble rapper. Not some guy that just made one hit. I wanted to be taken seriously because music is everything to me, and I respect all walks of music. Not just rap and hip-hop but everything. I wanted to make something that showed the world that shows it, just how great music is to me.”

Miley Cyrus is embarking on a new era in her musical journey. After shattering streaming giant Spotify’s one-week streams record, her latest self-love anthem, despite a nasty break-up, “Flowers” is continuing to move full steam ahead.

The Bruno Mars-inspired track has retained the No. 1 spot this week on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the third consecutive week. With this placement, according to Billboard, the song now ties with Cyrus’ 2013 song “Wrecking Ball” record.

After learning the news, Cyrus took to Twitter to celebrate the career milestone, writing, “[“Flowers”] is spending its third week at No. 1, and as magical as this moment feels, I know it doesn’t happen by chance. This song and its success represent the power of you! This is your moment, and it’s my honor to be the messenger.”

Other notable chart placements “Flowers” hold include this week’s top-selling and most streamed songs and the top spot on the global charts.

“Flowers” is the lead single off Cyrus’ forthcoming album Endless Summer Vacation, due out on March 10. So far, Cyrus has shared that the project is her “love letter to LA” and revealed that produced Kid Harpoon, Greg Kurstin, Mike WiLL Made-It, and Tyler Johnson will have a creative hand in the release.

Chelsea Handler has made no bones about wanting to succeed Trevor Noah as host of The Daily Show. Maybe one day she will. For now, though, she’s “only” one of the guest hosts who’ve been doing stints holding down court while the Comedy Central favorite rights itself. On her first episode for this week, the comic kicked things off by saying how she stoked she was to “spend a week talking shit about all the wackjobs and hot messes out there.” Pretty soon she was talking about one of those wackjob messes: Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Over the weekend, video went viral of the Georgia lawmaker (who only now has the power to make laws, after kissing up to eventually elected Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy) moaning about how her job has made her life “miserable” because it takes up too much time and doesn’t pay as much as she’d like. Her complaints were met with widespread mockery. Now it was Handler’s turn.

“First of all, you’re not a regular person, you moron! You’re a congressperson, because you campaigned and somehow won, which requires you to work year-round,” Handler railed. “I also don’t want to work year-round, and that’s why I don’t.”

If she didn’t like the job, Handler said, “Go work at Foot Locker, bitch.”

But that wasn’t the nadir of Greene’s recent comments. That would be her bristling at all the “crazy things” that some people “believe because they read it on the internet.”

“Well, if that’s not the pot calling the kettle QAnon,” Handler steamed. “This woman thought 9/11 was a hoax, that the Clintons killed JFK Jr. and that Jews are in charge of space lasers. But please, don’t come at her with some crazy ideas, she might believe them!”

Handler also used her opening stretch to talk about the Chinese spy balloon President Biden had whacked as well as a freshman representative who’s been getting more press than even Greene: George Santos.

You can watch Handler’s maiden Daily Show voyage in the video above.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Jack Antonoff is often not afraid to confront the problems in the music industry.

“While we are having the discussion, can venues simply stop taxing merch of artists? This is literally the only way you make money when you start out touring,” the producer wrote when the internet was shedding light on the problematic nature of Ticketmaster.

At the Grammys last night (February 5), he talked more about the concert ticket messes. With the recent Taylor Swift Eras Tour fiasco, Antonoff talked about it to the press to remind people that it’s not the fault of the artist and that “everyone’s trying to figure it out.”

Read what he said below.

“The whole thing is incredibly tough. There’s no reason why — if I can go online and buy a car and have it delivered to my house, why can’t I buy a f*cking ticket at the price that the artist wants it to be? So it’s that simple. And you know the reason why. It’s not ’cause of artists. So the one thing that I would say while holding a microphone is everybody’s got to chill on the artists. Because everyone’s trying to figure it out. We know who’s making it impossible.

Look, I’ve asked very simple things of the industry. Let artists opt out of dynamic pricing. Stop taxing merch, and let artists sell tickets at a price that they actually believe. Don’t turn a live show into a free market. That’s really dirty. Charge what you think is fair. But if for one person $50 is nothing, and one person $50 is more than they could ever spend, you’re creating a situation where a different group can come together at one price. The second everything fluctuates is the second that everything goes K-shaped and turns into a weird free market. That’s not what we do.”

Halle isn’t the only Bailey sister heading to the big screen. Shortly, “Pray It Away” singer Chlöe will also put her acting chops on full display yet again. Although these days, many music lovers have come to know the duo by their countless musical bops; the pair have quite the star in feature films well before her role on ABC’s Black-ish or Grown-ish.

While her beloved younger sister will lend her vocals to Disney’s underwater princess Ariel in the live adaptation of The Little Mermaid, Chlöe will take a different route. According to The Wrap, the producer will star in Blueprint Pictures’ film Girl from the North Country, an adaptation of the Tony-winning Broadway show.

Known for public displays of admiration for music pioneers like Missy Elliott, maybe that influenced her decision to be a part of the film as the music of legendary songwriter Bob Dylan directly inspired it.

In addition to Chlöe, actors Woody Harrelson, Olivia Colman (The Crown), and Tosin Cole (House Party and Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks) have also signed onto the film. Conor McPherson, the author of the book used as an anchor for the Broadway musical, will serve as the film’s writer and director, whereas Blueprint Pictures’ Graham Broadbent and Pete Czernin will serve as producers.

The story will be set in Duluth, Minnesota, during the Great Depression. However, the film will remain faithful to the musical’s plot line is described as “a group of wayward travelers’ lives intersect in a guesthouse filled with music, life, and hope.”

If the film follows in the theater production’s footsteps, the Dylan songs that may be included or worked into the film include “Slow Train,” “True Love Tends to Forget,” and “Girl from the North Country.” So far, the film does not have a release date. However, it has been revealed that CAA Media Finance will represent the film in the domestic market. While Rocket Science will handle the international market, starting with the Berlin Film Festival.

It was a busy weekend for the Brooklyn Nets, with Kyrie Irving’s trade request being quickly fulfilled in the form of a deal with the Dallas Mavericks. In between the request and the completion, the Nets also played a basketball game, defeating the Washington Wizards at home, and second-year guard Cam Thomas erupted for 44 points off the bench in only 29 minutes of work. It was a highly impressive performance from Thomas, who has a well-earned reputation as a bucket-getter, and he was thrust into the starting lineup on Monday evening when the Nets took on the L.A. Clippers at Barclays Center.

With Irving gone, Kevin Durant injured, and Spencer Dinwiddie not yet available, Thomas was the primary perimeter scoring option against the Clippers and, in short, he took advantage of that freedom. In the first half, Thomas scored 22 points and converted five three-pointers.

From there, Thomas didn’t slow down in the second half. In fact, he finished the night with a game-high and career-high 47 points on 15-of-29 shooting and 7-of-11 from three-point distance.

The explosion from Thomas wasn’t quite enough to lead the shorthanded Nets to victory, but he did make some history. Thomas became just the fifth player in franchise history to score at least 40 points in back-to-back games.

He also joined a rather exclusive club of players who matched or exceeded points in back-to-back games across the NBA this season, and even a tighter group of players who have reached at least 44 points in two straight contests.

Finally, the 21-year-old Thomas made rarified air as the second-youngest player NBA history to score at least 40 points in two straight games, trailing only LeBron James.

It goes without saying that Thomas probably isn’t going to average more than 40 points per game in Irving’s absence. There is value in Thomas’s unwavering approach as a scorer, however, and his shot creation can be quite valuable for a team like Brooklyn as it navigates a transition period. If nothing else, this was quite a two-night barrage and, when Cam Thomas has his offensive arsenal cooking, it is breathtaking to consume.