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Brittney Griner has been in the custody of Russian police since February 17 when she was detained at an airport near Moscow for alleged possession of hashish oil cartridges, and her pre-trial detention will be extended for another 18 days — until July 2 — in spite of the growing public push for her return to the United States from those in the WNBA, NBA, and beyond.

Russian state media outlet TASS reports (via ABC) the court has provided investigators an extension of nearly three weeks in the case, leaving the Phoenix Mercury star stuck in Russian custody until at least next month as she faces charges that carry up to a 10-year sentence.

This comes as her fellow WNBA colleagues have pleaded with the United States government to increase their pursuit of her release back to the United States. The WNBA has put Griner’s number and initials on every court leaguewide and players have continually used their time speaking with the media and on their social media accounts to call for a greater response from president Joe Biden and the U.S. government to her detainment.

Griner’s status was officially designated as “wrongfully detained” in early May, but to this point there has been little in the way of positive news regarding any efforts to bring her home.

Fans of historical artifacts were up in arms this week when pictures of Marilyn Monroe‘s famous birthday dress that was worn by Kim Kardashian at the Met Gala returned to its display with significant damage. Kardashian has yet to address the issue, but those in the industry are taking to the internet to express their anger.

As it turns out, the owner of the dress, Ripley’s, reached out to the Academy Museum for their advice, and they decided not to take it. Artist and collector Chad Michael Morrisette told Yahoo, “I work at the Academy Museum, and they told me their head of textiles was called by Ripley’s, the head of textiles conservation, and they asked the Academy Museum, ‘Should we do this?’ And they said, ‘No.’ And they did it anyway. You would never see this at the Smithsonian Institute.”

Morrisette added that Ripley’s should have never allowed such an iconic (and fragile) piece of history to be worn at a gala. “You know, this is not just a dress. This is an iconic costume, it’s an iconic gown. Not only is it the most expensive gown that’s ever sold at auction, it’s really kind of a representation of a period in time.” Morrisette went to see the dress himself earlier this week and said he was “in tears” over the damage. “I’ve seen it before. So I know the difference. It’s dramatic. It’s dramatically different. It’s literally stretched out so bad. It won’t even fit the same shape of the dress form anymore. It’s permanently altered.”

Morissette then added some really powerful words, perhaps hoping Kardashian would respond. “Kim, you will always go down in history for destroying Marilyn Monroe’s birthday dress. That is what your legacy will be,” Morrisette says. “She damaged that dress permanently and irreversibly for an egotistical stroll on a red carpet. It’s the most offensive thing I’ve ever seen in pop culture. Really, truly the most offensive thing I’ve ever seen in pop culture, where you literally steal someone’s legacy and gobble it up in your mouth. It’s disgusting.”

Kardashian has yet to comment on the ordeal, but it’s unlikely she will. As with any controversy, she either speaks up right away or says nothing about it forever until people forget. That’s Hollywood, baby!

Top Gun was 1986’s highest-grossing and sweatiest movie, finishing above Crocodile Dundee, Platoon, The Karate Kid Part II, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (even back then, people loved sequels). Could Top Gun: Maverick repeat the original’s feat?

The glorious sequel not only crossed the $400 million mark at the domestic box office this week ($401.8 million to be precise), it also surpassed Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ($398 million) as the year’s biggest grosser.

Variety reports that “it’s only the second movie in pandemic times (Spider-Man: No Way Home was the first) to cross $400 million Stateside,” while “internationally, the sequel to 1986’s Top Gun has earned $362 million, taking its global total to a massive $783.8 million. Even by pre-COVID standards, Maverick is smashing box office expectations.”

Top Gun: Maverick is the biggest movie of Tom Cruise’s career, and possibly of 2022. Looking ahead, the toughest competition for Highest-Grossing Movie of the Year supremacy comes from Thor: Love and Thunder (unlikely, as Thor: Ragnarok “only” made $315 million in 2017), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (possibly!), and Avatar: The Way of Water. If anyone can take down Tom Cruise, it’s James Cameron.

For more on Top Gun: Maverick, check out our interviews with director Joseph Kosinski and stars Jon Hamm and Glen Powell.

(Via Variety)

This sends the investigation…into a whole new direction!! The latest trailer for season two of the best show about two old guys and a twenty-something solving crime is here!

Only Murders In The Building season two will premiere on Hulu on June 28th. The season brings in a handful of new guest stars, including Cara Delevingne, Michael Rapaport, Shirley McLaine, and Amy Schumer. Of course, the rest of the gang is back, including Selena Gomez, Martin Short, and Steve Martin, in the best trio of the century.

Season two picks up where season one left off, with the gang being investigated for murder while also hosting their fan-favorite podcast. Just the life of a few typical New Yorkers! Here is the official synopsis: “Following the shocking death of Arconia Board President Bunny Folger, Charles, Oliver & Mabel race to unmask her killer. However, three (unfortunate) complications ensue – the trio is publicly implicated in Bunny’s homicide, they are now the subjects of a competing podcast, and they have to deal with a bunch of New York neighbors who all think they committed murder.”

Gomez, who has already had a very busy year, shared the trailer on Twitter, expressing her excitement. “I’m so excited for y’all to see Season 2-coming so soon!”

Season two will premiere on Hulu on June 28th, with episodes weekly through August.

Method Actor Extraordinaire Jared Leto appears to see the world through different lenses. That’s one way to put it, which makes it easy for people to fire shots at him for learning of the pandemic after emerging from a “silent meditation” retreat in the desert. Leto counts himself among the many actors who have recently played notorious grifters, and he sat down with Amanda Seyfried (who recently portrayed Elizabeth Holmes in Hulu’s The Dropout) for a Variety chat that also highlighted Leto’s turn as disgraced WeWork CEO Adam Neumann in Apple TV+’s WeCrashed.

The Variety discussion revolved heavily around discussion of Holmes, who awaits sentencing on multiple fraud convictions after raking in $700 million to fund her snake-oil/sham Theranos blood-testing methods. She was allegedly merciless while attempting to keep her house of cards afloat, even (according to Vanity Fair) caring much less about Theranos chief scientist Ian Gibbons’ suicide than about his documents that could send her further down the test tubes.

Despite all of that, Leto communicated that Holmes (who he once presented, as seen above, with a Woman of the Year Award at a Glamour ceremony) was quite lovely back in 2015, and he stayed in touch with her. While Leto spoke with Seyfried, there were apparent shades of sympathy that surfaced:

“I had heard her speak in Palo Alto. She was great onstage. She was incredibly smart, funny — and then I met her after that, and I liked her a lot. But no indication that things weren’t great in her life and at the company. And then I gave her an award. And now I’m here with you. We stayed in touch after that and talked a few times, but my experience with her was always quite lovely. Not everyone is one thing. No one is one thing. Did you want to meet her?”

From there, Seyfried confirmed that she wanted to meet Holmes before portraying her, but that wasn’t in the cards. Leto offered to put the two in touch (“You want to pass your number along or something?”), and Seyfried waved this away with a “No, no, no. It’s not the time” and a declaration that “it’s really messy.” Unlike Leto, Seyfried refrains from saying much about how she actually feels about Holmes except that the portrayal was done with a careful balance of “both compassion and worthiness,” and then Seyfried offered, “[W]hatever she’s sentenced with, it’s what she deserves.”

From there, Leto appeared to not be too wild about his time on 1990s cult favorite series My So Called Life. “I barely spoke in the project that I did,” he declared. “I think I was in probably two minutes of every episode.” That’s accurate. He leaned against a lot of lockers in that show, though, and it still made more overall sense than “Morbin’ Time.”

(Via Variety)

The 2022 XXL Freshman Class is here, highlighting all the rappers expected to blow up in the year ahead. included are Detroit rappers Babyface Ray and Babytron (no relation), Memphians Big30 and Big Scarr (ditto), Florida’s Cochise, TDE-signed, genre-bender Doechii, Atlanta TikTok favorite Kali, Kenya-born Minnesota transplant KayCyy, Houston firecracker KenTheMan, “Who Want Smoke?” star Nardo Wick, out-and-proud Saucy Santana, and just-out-of-his-teens map-hopper Sofaygo.

Each year, the highly anticipated list offers listeners a guide to some of the hottest up-and-coming talents of the past 12 months. Some are viral stars in their own right, with hit records on TikTok or lots of Twitter buzz. Others are often established vets who are only just receiving their big breaks after signing major label deals or garnering big-name co-signs. While some of the names may not be familiar to many readers when they’re first announced, many of those names do become undisputed stars, headlining festivals, making television appearances, and representing hip-hop in the mainstream for years after their selections.

Prior stars who appeared on XXL‘s Freshman list include high-flyers like J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar, while last year’s list highlighted breakout stars like Blxst, Coi Leray, Flo Milli, Morray, and Pooh Shiesty.

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

Tierra Whack most commonly travels in the hip-hop lane, but the experimental rapper and singer has proven she’s capable of a lot outside of her primary genre. That was most clearly evidenced by the series of genre-specific EPs she dropped last December: Rap?, Pop?, and R&B?. While “Dolly” appeared on Pop?, it would have felt more at home on an EP called Country? or Bluegrass? or Folk?, since that’s more where the tune leans stylistically.

Now, a prominent artist in that space has shown love for the tune, as Kevin Morby has offered a live cover of “Dolly” for SiriusXMU. It’s not much a stretch to see the song performed by Morby, who didn’t have to do much to adapt it into his style, resulting in a pleasant and natural-sounding rendition of the track.

Whack previously told Billboard of the song, “If I hear something cool, I’m like, ‘I wanna try that.’ I watched the Dolly Parton documentary on Netflix and I started listening to bluegrass and I’m like, ‘Yo, this is so cool,’ and then I made a song called ‘Dolly.’”

Meanwhile, Whack has something else to celebrate, as she recently got her first movie role via an appearance in Adam Sandler’s new basketball film Hustle.

Check out Morby’s cover of “Dolly” above and revisit Whack’s original version below.

In the past decade-plus, as streaming services and cord-cutting have become more prominent, sports fans have been pulled in a dozen different directions as they try to watch their favorite teams. Leagues have splintered television rights between various national TV networks, local broadcasters, and streaming services, forcing fans to decide what’s worth paying for and what isn’t to watch their favorite teams.

MLB has a new deal with Apple for exclusive Friday Night games on Apple TV+, and fans who purchase MLB TV subscriptions face tons of local blackout restrictions whenever they try to watch games. NFL fans must have DirecTV if they want to watch every game on the satellite exclusive NFL Sunday Ticket package, and Thursday Night Football is now exclusively headed to Amazon Prime starting this season. NBA games face similar blackout restrictions to baseball, with League Pass subscriptions and NBA TV broadcasts still blacking out viewers from games in their “local area” which, like MLB TV, can include teams that are four-plus hours away.

The fracturing of rights has led to fan frustrations over being priced out or even outright being unable to watch your favorite team, and leagues have insisted there’s nothing they can do because of the local TV contracts. That is until Tuesday, when Major League Soccer laid the blueprint for how to create a streaming service with a partner that has full rights to every game with no local blackout restrictions, no matter what market fans live in, with their new deal with Apple.

The 10-year, $2.5 billion price tag drew much of the attention initially, but fans quickly gravitated to the no blackout news, as it was a breath of fresh air to know that they could simply pay for a service and have access to every game. Fans have proven, over and over, they’re willing to pay to watch their favorite teams, but there are limits to what they’ll deal with in terms of blackouts and restrictions to do so. MLS showed that if you start with that, there’s a lot of money to be made (2.5 times their current national TV deal) in selling full broadcast rights, enough to surely make up any lost money from ridding local broadcasters of exclusive rights in their market.

For the NBA, which is the next league to have its national TV contract expiring after the 2024-25 season, the new MLS deal hopefully provides a backbone for a new and improved League Pass deal that gets rid of local blackouts. Adam Silver has said the RSN bundle is “broken” and is chasing fans away, but those local broadcasts are vital to each team’s revenue. However, if you were to put a League Pass offering up for bidding between ESPN (which could just tie it into their ESPN+ service) and Turner, surely the league could recoup most, if not all, of any lost money for teams that would need to renegotiate local contracts with the various RSNs to get rid of exclusive market rights.

It is an outdated system that only serves to drive fans away, and if teams were to get their cut of a broader League Pass rights deal, on top of what figures to already be a massive national TV contract with the league, then the league can, like MLS, work backwards to fill in the gaps from there. Fans will pay for League Pass, they’ve proven that, and if the product improved with more investment to make it not be incredibly frustrating to use and it had no blackout restrictions for local teams and the games from at least one of the national networks (I’d venture a guess ESPN would be more willing to pony up for it, but Apple or Amazon might also get in on the act), they’d surely pay even more for it.

That’s not to say that it’ll be easy and wouldn’t require a lot of lawyers looking at contracts and fighting with the RSNs, who would likely demand to renegotiate local deals for less money, but it’s now been proven that it can be done and that’s meaningful. Fans have long resigned themselves to a fate of jumping through various hoops and paying for a variety of services to watch games, but the MLS package provides at least some hope that consolidation could be coming. The NBA will be the first of the major sports leagues with the chance to figure out how to follow suit, and could make a lot of people happy by doing so.

Charlie Sheen, the 9/11 star who was arrested for domestic violence against his then-wife, who was investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department for allegedly threatening his ex-fiancee, who called Rihanna a “bitch,” and who former-adult film star Bree Olson accused of withholding his HIV-positive diagnosis from several sexual partners, is concerned that his daughter isn’t being “classy” by joining OnlyFans.

“She is 18 years old now and living with her mother,” the actor told Us Weekly about Sami, his child with ex-wife Denise Richards. “I do not condone this but since I’m unable to prevent it, I urged her to keep it classy, creative, and not sacrifice her integrity.” For her part, Richards said that Sami’s decision to sign up for the adult-friendly subscription website “wasn’t based on whose house she lives in. All I can do as a parent is guide her and trust her judgment, but she makes her own choices.”

In September 2021, Sami claimed that she was “trapped” in an “abusive home” while she was living with Richards and her husband, Aaron Phypers. Sheen, who was married to the Bold and the Beautiful alum from 2002 to 2006, confirmed one month later that Sami had moved in with him and was no longer in school.

[But] Richards’ dynamic with her eldest child appeared to be getting better as Sami celebrated her 18th birthday with a touching social media tribute. Sami, for her part, shared a message of love on Mother’s Day before spending time with her mother in person.

Sami Sheen is charging $19.99 per month for a subscription to her OnlyFans. Which is a much better deal than the $158 it would have cost you to see Sheen’s #Winning-era ”My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not an Option” show. (2011 was a wild time.)

It’s been a grand total of [checking the calendar] just under three weeks since the release of Joseph Kosinski’s last film, Top Gun: Maverick. If you haven’t heard, it is very good and also has made a lot of money. Because of the pandemic delays, it makes sense Kosinski (also the director of Tron: Legacy and Only the Brave) would have another movie all ready to go and it makes a lot of sense Netflix would release it this week, right on the heels of his blockbuster Tom Cruise movie.

Spiderhead is a very different movie than Top Gun: Maverick. Set at a remote prison called Spiderhead, people convicted of crimes have volunteered for a prison with more freedom and a beautiful setting, but in exchange they are used as test subjects for drugs that manipulate emotions. Chris Hemsworth plays Steve – who can be both friendly and funny, but also sinister – who runs the place and also has a taste for smooth ’80s popular music. Miles Teller plays one of the test subjects, Jeff, who as the movie goes on, starts to question more and more Steve’s motivations.

By the time I interviewed Kosinski I had seen Top Gun: Maverick three times, so a few of my questions about that film wound up being a little more obscure. Like, “was that an Easter egg or not,” type questions. (Two out of the three I asked about were, in fact, on purpose. One was just me being too dorky.) But we did get into where was Iceman’s old partner Slider during a pivotal scene? And it turns out Rick Rossovich was on set that day for a mini-reunion of the first film. Also, Kosinski gives us a preview of some of the deleted scenes we might see on the Blu-ray. When I signed into Zoom the publicist asked if I was ready for Kosinski. Considering how much I love Top Gun: Maverick, yes, I was ready.

I was born ready.

Me too!

It’s good to talk to you again. I haven’t talked to you since Oblivion.

Oh my gosh. All right. Nine years ago.

The original title of Spiderhead was Escape from Spiderhead. That is also a good title.

It is. But I think if you read the short story, the “Escape” from Spiderhead is – and if you haven’t read it, I don’t want to spoil it – but his escape is in the final paragraph and it’s a pretty dark interpretation of what an escape could be.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure you just spoiled it.

Yes, sorry, I might have spoiled it for you. So the idea for our film is, if I were to see Escape From Spiderhead knowing nothing else, I would expect a giant action film that involves a lot of escaping.

I see.

From the opening scene on. And that is not this film. This film is obviously a bit more: there’s suspense, there’s comedy, it’s cerebral, it’s a lot of things, but it’s not an action film from the opening frames. So we felt like Spiderhead was a better title for our film.

I saw Spiderhead before I saw Top Gun: Maverick…

You saw them out of order.

Right, for me Top Gun: Maverick is your newer movie.

You’re supposed to watch them in order, but that’s okay. The question is… is it more interesting to watch Top Gun first, then see Spiderhead? Or the other way around? I don’t know.

I think it works either way because they’re so different.

Okay. Yeah. That’s it. For me, it was just a really interesting creatively, going to the opposite end of the spectrum, coming off Top Gun to make this film. And I had a blast making it.

By the way, this wasn’t planned, but in my line of vision I just realized I have this unintentional shrine to your movies in a corner of our home office with a Tron arcade game and a Top Gun: Maverick poster.

That’s a real Tron arcade machine with the four motherboards?

Oh no. There’s a company that makes reproductions. I looked into getting an actual Tron and they are very expensive.

Yeah, I don’t think you want to mess with it. It’s four motherboards, one for each module, and from what I understand, four times the cost to maintain it.

And this one has Tron and Discs of Tron.

Oh see, that’s the bonus.

I used to own an actual Donkey Kong game. If it broke, there’s really not a shop you can just wheel that on down to and get it fixed.

I’ve flirted with the idea of putting an arcade in. Actually, I don’t know if you noticed, but in Spiderhead I have a game…

Joust. I did notice.

Well, it’s a multicade actually. It’s a multicade box designed by the creative director for Daft Punk. He created this really high-end Daft Punk-y furniture line and I got the multicade from them and put it in Spiderhead. And Joust was the game we went with for Jeff.

What were the other options?

Oh, it had Street Fighter. It had 40 or 50 games on it. My editor, Stephen Mirrione, is a huge pinball arcade fan. And I think that’s the reason he agreed to do the movie was because of the Joust.

Because he got to play Joust every day?

Yeah. And he was adamant that we get all these sounds right. So everything you hear, if you’re a Joust aficionado…

I have a Joust t-shirt.

All right. Well then hopefully you were happy with the sounds.

I was very happy. Because once the big bird shows up and the noise it makes, it’s very tough, but you can still kill it. It’s just really hard to hit it.

And I think the sound you hear when Jeff dies [his Joust character, not the actual character] is when that hand comes out of the lava and grabs him. That was the moment we went forward with.

Chris Hemsworth is both funny and sinister in this movie.

They’re all great performances. They’re all great actors. But a performance that people would be maybe most surprised by is what Chris pulled off in this movie.

Well, people know he is funny. But I think the sinister part of it is what will be surprising.

It’s a very complex character: charming, dark, twisted, damaged, a little bit of everything. And his American accent apparently is kind of freaking people out because they’re not used to hearing him.

This is going to sound weird but I found it soothing.

He did such a great job. That took a lot of work. That’s him coming an hour or two early every day to get that accent just right. To be able to pull that off. But he worked really hard. It’s a lot of dialogue. Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese are fantastic dialogue writers. He had it all down. It was really fun to watch and fun to work with him.

This is another movie with good needle drops. Thomas Dolby.

The early ’80s yacht rock kind of genre, for me, was a fun one to dig into and a nice counterpoint for this type of film. And for me, it was a way to kind of try to mask the darkness of what’s really going on in the Spiderhead. By filling it with that kind of music you would hear in the dentist’s office or a doctor’s office playing in the background. It gave, I felt, like an interesting tone that we haven’t seen before.

So I have an idea for you for a movie. I don’t know if you’ve thought about this. I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned this to you, maybe I’ll be the first. Here it is. Top Gun … three.

Hmm. Wow.

Right.

So, to make one more after two?

Yes.

Wow. Okay. Alright.

I feel bad I’m springing this idea on you that you haven’t thought about.

Well, let’s see, in 36 years, I’ll be 84. I mean, we’ll see if I still got it in me at that point to pull it off. But, yeah, I think it’s going to be a while before we see another Top Gun movie. They’re a challenge to pull off and we’d have to top what we did on this one.

I did notice watching it a third time that, at the bar, “Slow Ride” was 86 on the jukebox.

Yes. You’re the first person to bring that up. That Hangman types in “86.” Yeah. A subtle reference to the first movie. You deserve a prize for that.

I do deserve a prize.

Did you see the Top Gun Easter egg in Spiderhead?

No, because I hadn’t seen Top Gun yet so I wasn’t even looking for that.

Well, Rooster’s F-18 toy is hidden somewhere in the movie. So keep an eyeball out for that.

Here’s a really nerdy question and I bet the answer is no. After Tron: Leagcy you almost remade The Black Hole. And now you do Top Gun and you have a character named Bob. Is there any relation to B.O.B. the robot from The Black Hole?

I’m going to say no to that.

I was giving “yes” around a 5 percent chance.

Yeah.

But if it was right, you’d be impressed.

But there are Black Hole references in Tron: Legacy, as you know. I mean, I guess that’s what you’re referring to? They’re, hidden. Those toys are hidden in the opening scene of Tron: Legacy. V.I.N.CENT.

You know, The Black Hole is the weirdest thing. I just re-watched that like a week ago.

Wow. You made it all the way through?

Oh I strangely love it. It’s so weird. What’s also weird is our local drug store, they sell The Black Hole toys like right now.

What?

That nothing has been done with the property since then but still has a weird little footprint.

That’s crazy.

I interviewed Rick Rossovich for the release of a new Top Gun Blu-ray and he mentioned he was on set one day, but that’s all he would say. Was there a scene with Slider?

There was a mini Top Gun reunion on the set during Ice Man’s funeral. So yeah, Val was there. Rick was there. Tom [Skerriti] was there. Jerry [Bruckheimer] was there. So we did have a mini Top Gun OG reunion, off-camera, that day, which was really cool. Yeah.

What was that like for you?

Amazing. Oh I just love hearing those guys talk about making the first movie because it sounds like they had a blast. But also there was a little competition between them all, which is really fun to hear about. They can all laugh about now. But yeah, I mean it’s like anything, they didn’t know they were making an iconic film. They were just guys in their twenties, having fun in San Diego and making a movie and then it became this thing. So it was wonderful to see that friendship exists between all of them up until now.

So at the beginning of the movie, when we see the calendar, “Mach 9 today.” But it also says, “Dinner with Joe.” Is that you? Is that a reference to you?

Yes. “Dinner with Joe.” Yeah. You caught that too? Nothing gets past you.

I’ve seen it a few times.

Great. No, I love it.

When was the decision made to pretty much make the first five minutes exactly like the original movie?

Early on, because a lot of that footage was the first footage we shot for the film. So yeah, I wanted the opening of the film to tell the audience that this is a Top Gun movie and we love it as much as you do. Don’t worry. It’s a Top Gun movie, but it’s all the new toys. We remade the Simpson/Bruckheimer logo, all that stuff was just fun to build. The only thing we changed was we added, “and women.”

Will there be deleted scenes on the Blu-ray?

Maybe we have a couple of nice scenes that I would love to include, that were great scenes, that just didn’t make sense in our final cut.

What are they?

Well, there’s one you see in the trailer of Maverick. When he first gets to the Coronado, every Navy base has an airplane on a stick out front. Like a model, and he pulls up and looks up and it’s it’s his F-14 that he shot down three MiGs with in the first film.

Oh, wow.

So it’s him staring up at that plane. That was a nice little beat. And there was a nice scene in the infirmary with Cyclone and Phoenix and Bob. If it were in there, it would’ve taken a little bit of the tension away when Maverick comes in to tell Rooster they’re going to be okay. But it was a really nice scene for the three of them. So maybe we’ll get to include some of that on the Blu-ray.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.