The NBA Draft is less than two weeks away, and unlike past years, there hasn’t been a ton of clarity about what is going to happen. The case can be made that as many as four players deserve to go No. 1 overall to the Orlando Magic, while the trade winds have yet to start blowing in the lead-up to June 23.
In his most recent newsletter, Marc Stein indicated that a pair of teams sitting in the top-10 of the Draft have their sights set on turning their picks into someone a little more established. Stein mentioned that the Sacramento Kings, which sit at No. 4, and the Portland Trail Blazers, which have the No. 7 selection, would be open to moves if a player who could help them win right away became available.
A rare NBA Draft rumble from your infamously draft-shy correspondent: Both Sacramento and Portland are widely expected to give serious consideration to trading the No. 4 and No. 7 overall picks, respectively, if they can concoct appealing win-now swaps. And now I’m told Washington is another top-10 team (drafting 10th overall) said to be weighing the same possibility.
It makes a ton of sense why the Blazers would want to turn this into a more established player, as the team has its sights set on a bounce-back year following a tumultuous 2021-22 campaign. Sacramento, meanwhile, has the league’s longest playoff drought and acquired Domantas Sabonis at the trade deadline, both of which would appear to factor into whatever sense of urgency they feel.
If you like your cooking competitions served with a helping of cutthroat chaos, you need to catch Foodbeast’s Kitchen League: Challengers Vs Champs, which returns for its second season today on Amazon’s Crown Channel on Twitch. Challenges Vs Champs is the only cooking competition that uses live audience participation to create sabotages and protections against your favorite creators and chefs as they duke it out in the kitchen, which adds a layer of excitement and chaos that other cooking competitions just can’t provide.
It’s a bit sadistic to make anyone do anything in a kitchen while blindfolded or with a hand-tied behind their back but… it’s also a lot of fun. So, yeah, we’re all for Kitchen League.
Kitchen League
The new season will feature eight challengers assembled from the Twitch, TikTok, and YouTube universe clashing in a seven-week long single-elimination tournament which will see one challenger emerge with the title belt for the CVC, and a contract to enter Kitchen League to battle a previous Kitchen League champ of their choosing in the eighth and final week of the season.
In addition to some surprise special guests, this season will also include Hyper RPG Production CEO Malika Lim Eubank, Chef Leon C. Brunson, streamers Stanz, BBJess, Oxillery, and Jalon, Twitch chefs BBBubbz and AudreyEnjoys, Kharrii (aka Square Head Guy), and Uproxx’s very own Steve Bramucci. We’re obviously a bit biased towards Bramucci crushing the competition, so if you think that means he deserves some sabotage thrown his way when he competes, by all means, do that! I mean, he’s already out trash-talking.
This season promises to be even more unhinged than the lastm, with brand new game modes and unexpected surprises introduced with every episode — which is saying something, as every moment of the competition is pretty unexpected. One of the newest game modes will be called “Double Trouble,” a 2v2 challenge that includes swapping between gaming and cooking whenever the audience deems fit, which we’re sure will disorient the challengers in the best possible way.
Catch the first match of the second season of Challengers VS Champs today on Twitch.TV/Crown at 4pm PT and every Friday for the next seven weeks.
With a life as weird and wild as that, it kind of makes sense that one of the more talked-about movies premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival happens to be a documentary-musical hybrid based on Giuliani’s most famous exploits. No really, director Jed Rothstein — who previously helmed the popular WeWork documentary — is debuting his latest hyper-realistic nonfiction piece at Tribeca this year. Titled “Rudy! A Documusical,” the movie blends archival footage documenting Giuliani’s rise and disastrous fall with musical numbers performed by Broadway actors. The numbers have been written to narrate specific moments in Giuliani’s life, moments Rothstein said felt so outlandish, that they had to be set to music.
“Rudy is this very unique and mercurial character,” Rothstein told Variety. “He’s very operatic. His personal story is like an opera with these cartoonishly extravagant highs and lows. The songs add an important emotional perspective to a story of a person who has lived in the public eye for a long time and help us better understand why he did what he did.”
According to those who knew him best, Giuliani’s downward descent began when he married his third wife and got a taste for the high life.
“The people that knew him best and knew him longest, say that after 9/11 he had a choice to go high or go low,” Rothstein revealed. “For many years he was a public servant, living on a public servant’s salary. But after he re-married [third wife] Judith Nathan, they got a taste of the high life. They got a taste of owning houses in the Hamptons and Palm Beach and traveling on private jets. Once he made making money the yardstick of success, that’s when he became a cautionary tale.”
Giuliani declined to be a part of the documusical but here’s hoping the cousin-marrying act lives up to the hype.
In April, Phoebe Bridgers released “Sidelines,” which may or may not be her only new song of 2022. One thing about the song that stands out is its optimistic tone in comparison to other Bridgers songs, which are typically rooted in themes of sadness. It turns out that Bridgers shies away from happy songs because away from there is where her comfort zone lies. Now, though, she’s looking to get into creating more joy-motivated material.
In a new Variety interview, Bridgers says of “Sidelines,” “I’m striving to do more stuff like that. I think it’s more challenging to sound smart and write well about happiness than it is about sadness. In the interest of not seeming trite, I lean toward darker subject matter, just out of comfort. And I think a challenge to myself, now, is being articulate about things that are good [laughs].”
She also spoke in detail about how “Sidelines” came to be, saying:
“My drummer Marshall [Vore] and his girlfriend, Ruby [Henley], started the song, and I fell in love with it and was listening to it all the time when it had like a slightly different vibe and different lyrics. And then when I got the opportunity to make music for the show, Marshall was like, ‘Yo! ‘Sidelines,’ that idea is never going to come out. You should make it your own and take it on.’ There wasn’t that much I wanted to redo, and I thought it would be easy. Usually with my songs, even songs that Marshall starts, I’ll rewrite them like 10 times with lots of options. And this was the hardest thing. Everything I put into it felt corny. And what he had already encapsulated was so beautiful that I felt like I was going to ruin it, so it was such a big challenge.
My partner Paul [Mescal] and I were like going through the lyrics, and I was constantly punishing him with: ‘What about this? And what about this? And what about this? What about this?’ And then just one random day, Marshall and I were sitting at the piano and something flooded open, and I wrote some of my favorite lyrics right at the last minute. But it was cool to embark on that. My favorite thing is already loving an idea and not wanting to ruin it, so everything you put into it has to be great — instead of when an idea is still a baby, and there’s not that much compelling about it yet, so you can put anything into it. That’s a challenging way for me to write, because I can’t tell what’s good or not. Whereas if what’s there is already so good, then I don’t want to fuck it up. It just makes the whole thing way better.”
For many drinkers, the term “lager” conjures up images of crisp, clean, refreshing beers that you’d want to crush on a hot day while playing yard games. A simple, easy-going beer. Or maybe you envision maltier, richer tasting lagers. For those in the know, lager definitely more than just a light, crispy beer.
For those not in the know, lagers are brewed and conditioned at low temperatures. Its variations include the classic American lager that you likely imagine when you think of the term, as well as crisp, fresh pilsners (multiple varieties), the malty Vienna lager, bocks, Marzens, Helles, and a handful of others.
Since there is such a vast selection of lagers — way more than simply the domestic adjunct lager section in your neighborhood grocery store’s cooler — it can be difficult to find the right flavor profile for you. That’s why we decided to turn to the experts for help. We asked a few well-known brewers, craft beer experts, and brewing professionals to tell us the one lager they always drink. Maybe you’ll try one of their picks and get turned on to your new favorite lager.
Modelo Especial. I’ve never had a Modelo that I wasn’t happy to be drinking. A fine example of the Mexican Lager Style. Slightly sweet malt flavor with a crisp dry finish. A perfect beer for every occasion. It’s especially thirst-quenching on a hot summer day.
This is an easy one and it’d have to go to my friend Dan Suarez over at Suarez Family Brewing. Their Palantine Pils is just a perfect beer. The guy is a wizard and one of the most humble and genuine brewers I’ve ever met. It’s crisp and clean and has the perfect level of minerality to it that accentuates the delicate flavors of the noble hops used. It is just a perfect beer.
For me, I have to go with the Helles from KC Bier Company. They make a lot of classic German-style beers with traditional methods, but this one has always been my favorite in the summer. It’s light and easy to have more than one of, but still has some great sweet notes of honey and malt that makes it interesting.
Altstadt Lager
Altstadt Lager
Hector Cavazos, owner and head brewer at Rebel Toad Brewery in Corpus Christi, Texas
Altstadt Lager is great. All of their beers are made using German purity laws. This Munich-style Helles lager is known for its malt-forward, crisp, clean flavor that’s highlighted by the use of Noble hops. It’s a great, refreshing, easy-drinking beer for any occasion.
Von Trapp Vienna Lager is my go-to. It’s a bright and flavorful lager with cracker-like malt notes and a classic Noble hop aroma. At 33 IBUs, this lager has an incredible depth of flavor while also being light enough to enjoy several of.
I’d go for my favorite lager style of Vienna/Octoberfest and pick an Ayinger Oktoberfest. It’s the one beer I look for every late summer. From the quaint bottle cap to the rich, malty, and creamy goodness, it’s a beer I’ve loved for decades. It’s the perfect beer for the end of the summer.
Augustiner Bräu Edelstoff
Augustiner
Kevin Smolar, production and quality lab manager at Sun King Brewery in Indianapolis
Augustiner Bräu Edelstoff. We’re lucky to get a lot of great German lagers where I live, but something about the Edelstoff hits is different than the rest. It’s listed as a Dortmunder Exportbier which is a style that fits somewhere between a German pils and Munich Helles. It starts with a sweet, toasted grain aroma and progresses to a bright, spicy, and floral hop flavor that ends in a pleasant bitterness. Its dry finish just makes you want to drink more and is truly a perfect example of the balance found in traditional German lagers.
Firestone Walker Pivo Pils. If I see this beer on tap, I’m ordering it. The hints of lemongrass and overall herbal notes combined with the punchy hoppiness make it stand out from the crowd. It’s a great beer to introduce to anyone that throws a modicum of shade at pilsners.
Bierstadt Slow Pour Pils
Bierstadt
Chris Elliott, chief brewing officer at Wild Leap Brew Co. in LaGrange, Georgia
ABV: 5.1%
Average Price: Limited Availability
Why This Beer?
I love lagers, and most brewers that have experienced a Bierstadt Slow Pour Pils would rank it in their top five. I am no exception, having a pour from the brewery is an incredible experience. It is a crystal clear, perfect lager served in immaculate glassware. I recommend that every beer nerd traveling through Denver experience this brewery at least once in their life.
Harp Lager from Guinness Brewing Co in Dublin, Ireland. Harp Premium Lager is a typical European lager but tastes like it came from the UK. It is clean like a mainland European lager but has subtle fresh fruit aromas and tastes slightly bitter. It is a crisp and refreshing, smooth Irish lager.
Radeberger Pilsner
Radeberger
Marshall Hendrickson co-founder and head of operations at Veza Sur Brewing Co. in Miami
Radeberger Pilsner is my pick. This beer is such a versatile lager for me. It’s crushable if I’m looking for something easy to drink, but it’s also delicately complex if I’m looking to pair a beer with food. It checks all the boxes, and I’d be happy if it was the only lager I could drink for the rest of my life.
Fair State Pilsner from Minnesota. This is a great example of a finely crafted lager. It has all the makings of traditional domestic lagers that we are all familiar with but adds a bold malty flavor to the traditional light lagers.
Nigerian singer Mr Eazi will be unveiling his debut album soon, whose title is yet to be announced, to follow up last year’s Something Else EP as well as some collaborations he partook in. Today, though, he unveiled the promising lead single, “Legalize.”
Dedicated to his partner, actress Temi Otedola, “Legalize” is a kaleidoscopic, head-over-heels love song: “Even if you don’t know baby I go make you realize / I no go let you go baby na you be my wife,” he sings.
He shot the music video in Venice, Italy with Otedola, and figured it would be the perfect time to propose to her, so he did.
“I knew it would stand as a totem we always will look back on,” he said about proposing to her on the set of the music video. “No one on set knew what was going to happen.”
Of “Legalize,” Mr Eazi said, “I started the song in Michael Brun’s house on some edibles, freestyling. Later, I went to London and listened to what I’d recorded, and realized what the song was about. I’ve been thinking of asking Temi to marry me for a long time, so I guess it was in my subconscious.”
As Jurassic World: Dominion opens wide in theaters, franchise veteran Sam Neill is opening up about how director Colin Trevorrow talked him into returning to the series after a nearly 20 year absence: Namely, through a whole lot of wine.
Neill famously played paleontologist Alan Grant in the original Jurassic Park, and after sitting out The Lost World, he returned for the underrated 2001 gem, Jurassic Park III. Since then, Neill admits that he never thought much about returning to the franchise even when the Jurassic World films started up with Chris Pratt in the lead. However, that changed when Trevorrow took Neill out to lunch during a film festival, and the actor didn’t even try to hide how he was talked into joining the cast of Dominion. Via The Wrap:
I think it was October of 2019. I got a Lifetime Award at the Stiges Film Festival, which is devoted to fantasy, horror, and sci-fi, and stuff like that. And Colin turned up for that and took me out for lunch and basically talked me into it. He was persuasive that all these characters would be central to what happens in the story, they’d have their own storylines and so on.
Was there anything in particular he said that swayed you?
Look, I liked him enormously, and also we had two bottles of wine. That helps.
Of course, Neill also said that a major sticking point was that he “wasn’t going to come in and do a cameo,” which Trevorrow addressed, but clearly, the wine helped. Sam Neill loves him some vino. Case in point:
NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series is celebrating Black Music Month with showcases of Black artists both “at home” and at the titular Tiny Desk. The latest episode features genre-bending English singer-songwriter FKA Twig, performing in a mysterious-looking candlelit church, backed by strings and piano. In addition to singing two of her most beloved ballads, “Home With You” and “Cellophane,” as well as debuting a brand-new song, “Killer.”
FKA Twigs upped her game early this year with the release of her mixtape, Caprisongs. The tape, which featured the singles “Meta Angel,” “Jealousy,” “Bliss,” “Papi Bones,” “Honda,” and “Which Way,” highlighted her eclecticism and improved vocals, as well as featuring a spontaneity that hadn’t yet been heard from the convention-challenging Twigs. In her review, Uproxx’s Caitlin White writes, “… a more relaxed, linear style in the songwriting gives a deeper look into Twigs’ psyche than her past work.”
In addition to promoting her new tape, Twigs is expanding her resume, adding a brand-new acting role to her impressive list of achievements. In May, it was reported that Twigs had been cast in an upcoming remake of the 1994 gothic action movie The Crow — which is a perfect opportunity to showcase her martial arts and dance training.
Watch FKA Twigs’ Tiny Desk Concert above.
FKA Twigs is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Bradley Beal has the potential to be the most highly sought-after free agents in basketball this summer. Beal has a player option for the 2022-23 season, and if he turns it down, he’ll hit the open market, where the Washington Wizards have the potential to offer him a 5-year deal worth $246 million.
There is, of course, no guarantee he returns to Washington, even if the team does have the ability to offer him one more year and considerably more money than anyone else. In a recent sit-down with Taylor Rooks of Bleacher Report, Beal laid out what is top of mind as he enters a potentially career-altering summer.
“I know what my decision will be based off of, and that’s gonna be where I feel like I can win, that’s going to be my decision,” Beal said. “If I feel like I can win in DC, that’s what I’m gonna do. And I want people to respect that, you may, you may not, but I’m gonna fight my ass off, I’m gonna compete, and I’m gonna try to make this team better. If it’s elsewhere, it’s gonna be the exact same commitment.
“So, it’s twofold,” Beal continued. “You’re gonna have people rooting for you, saying go, you’re gonna have people saying stay, you’re gonna have people saying take less, you’re gonna have people saying all types of stuff. So, all those things are options, everything’s an option, but for the most part, I’m gonna do what’s best for me, and I can’t concern myself with what other people will say.”
Beal has indicated in the past that he’s leaning towards re-signing with Washington. The veteran guard has spent his entire professional career with the Wizards, and is coming off of season-ending wrist surgery. The Wizards have made the postseason once in the last four years and have not finished with an above-.500 record since 2017-18.
Top Gun: Maverick has been out for a few weeks now, and it’s clear that it’s easily this year’s first and biggest blockbuster. Yet in a film that was otherwise doggedly, meticulously, slavishly built around non-stop callbacks to its predecessor, there was one area in which Top Gun: Maverick notably fell short: sweat.
Top Gun is easily one of the sweatiest movies ever made. Every single character is basically bathed in sweat the entire time. In theory, all that sweat is narratively justified, considering most of the film is purported to be set “somewhere in the Indian Ocean” (against an adversary heavily implied to be the USSR though not stated outright), which I assume is a humid place. Even acknowledging that, there’s enough sweat in Top Gun that you can practically hear a PA putting in a claim for carpal tunnel from squeezing a spray bottle for 15 hours every day. The entire scene of Merlin washing out early in the film (subtext of the scene: flying planes is hard) is illustrated mainly through sweat. It’s basically an entire sweat-based storytelling system.
Paramount
Between the screen makeup and the nonstop spritzing, I have to imagine that the set was covered in giant beige puddles by the end of the day. Whichever PAs weren’t crippled from the carpal tunnel probably had to remove them with giant squeegees at the end of every shooting day, fouling storm drains for miles downstream.
Here’s Goose, one scene later:
Paramount
Even after the action moves to San Diego (a warm but not especially humid place) the characters stay pretty moist. Point is, it’s a very wet movie, and as Derek Zoolander taught us, moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.
Of course, Top Gun wasn’t the only wet movie of its era (though it may have been its wettest). In honor of Top Gun, I took some time out to remember some of Hollywood’s wettest movies.
A Time To Kill (1996)
“Incredibly young-looking attorney tries racially-motivated case in hot place” was a genre unto itself in the 90s, probably partly due to the popularity of John Grisham, a lawyer-turned-author who went to law school in Mississippi, where sweat is officially classified as a food group. One of the most popular exemplars of this phenomenon was undoubtedly A Time To Kill, starring a then-27-year-old Matthew McConaughey, then and now one of our sweatiest actors — nay, sweatiest public figures. He looks like he stinks, in a sexual (?) way.
The Client (1994)
Warner Bros
Then there was The Client (another Grisham adaptation) whose plot hinged on a juvenile delinquent witnessing an incredibly sweaty man try to commit suicide via exhaust pipe. Hey, man, if you had to keep the car running anyway, maybe throw on the A/C? Just a thought.
Body Heat (1981)
IMDB
When the movie has “heat” in the title and the first line of the synopsis is “in the midst of a searing Florida heat wave,” you can bet that movie is going to have some sweat. In fact, I think the entire idea behind this began with “Okay, so audiences love sweaty people, right?”
I’ll give you a nickel for every Body Heat review that doesn’t include the word “writhing.”
Do The Right Thing (1989)
Do The Right Thing
One of the subthemes of Spike Lee’s breakout classic was “people get pissed at each other when it’s really hot” which is why it remains an enduring comment on Brooklyn life. If Spike Lee hadn’t made everyone sweaty he would’ve been fired for dereliction of duty.
Predator (1987)
20th Century Fox
Predator is set mostly in the Central American jungle and it’s about an alien hunter who stalks a team of commandos with his heat vision. So, again, the heat was sort of a theme. But it also revealed another important sweat factor: it really makes your arms pop. I hope the fact that it’s become a meme doesn’t take away from the magic of the original “manly handshake” scene. It’s really one of the finest closeups in all of cinema.
Alien 3 (1992)
Fox
David Fincher’s since-disavowed feature debut starred Sigourney Weaver as Ripley again, this time having crash-landed on an all-male penal colony (a penile colony, if you will). And if I know a thing or two about all-male prisons and I think I do, it’s that they’re always very sweaty and that everyone has a really nice body.
Flashdance (1983)
Paramount
I still haven’t actually seen Flashdance all the way through (not enough all-male prison scenes), but one thing I do know about it is that it’s very sweaty. It’s a film about a steelworker who aspires to be a professional ballerina (you know, that old story) and was the first collaboration by producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. The two would go on to produce, yep, Top Gun. Their penchant for producing sweat-drenched hits is why they two were known as “The Wet Bandits” around town.
Falling Down (1993)
Warner Bros
Falling Down is a bit like a West Coast cousin to Do The Right Thing, in that a big part of the plot is based on the idea that people get fed up when it’s hot out. And it’s about a guy who walks across LA on a summer afternoon, so not surprisingly it was pretty sweaty. It was also directed by Joel Schumacher, who also directed The Client and A Time To Kill. He’s the closest we have to a sweaty movie specialist. I like to think that he got a lot of jobs when the producers sat around going, “Okay, who can handle a big sweat budget?”
I also love this scene, where Michael Douglas’s character is like “Look, I might be a violent reactionary, but I’m not a racist violent reactionary.”
Die Hard (1988)
20th Century Fox
At the time, it was revolutionary casting Bruce Willis as the lead in an action movie on account of he wasn’t super buff like Schwarzenegger and Stallone. But director John McTiernan correctly surmised that we would accept Willis as an action hero as long as he was super, super sweaty.
Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)
I guess if I put Die Hard and Predator on here I have to put Rambo. The opening shots of the trailer really are just lingering shots of Stallone’s glistening torso. My only hesitation: is Rambo really a sweaty movie or is it more of a greasy one? Discuss.
Perfect (1985)
I love that in the eighties you could make a whole movie about people going to exercise classes. How did we never get a Peloton movie? A Soul Cycle movie? I blame the cocaine shortage.
Honorable Mentions
The Last Boy Scout Slumdog Millionaire The Last King of Scotland Amistad City Of God Chinatown Dog Day Afternoon In The Heat Of The Night Amistad
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Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.
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