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After Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on live television on Sunday, the immediate aftermath wasn’t to bad. He won an Oscar and he partied by dancing to one of his own songs. Then a fallout began. There have been condemnations, from colleagues and the public alike. He’s issued apologies and even resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Now it looks as though he may start losing some work.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, in the last week Netflix has quietly backed off of Fast and Loose, an action-thriller that was to star Smith. As it happens, the project had already lost its original director, John Wick and Deadpool 2’s David Leitch, right before the Oscars — which is to say before that slap. The streamer had been on a sudden, frantic search for a replacement, but now, THR claims, they’ve stopped all that, putting the movie on the back burner.

The film, as described by THR, would have starred Smith (and could still) as a “crime boss who loses his memory after an attack. Piecing together clues, he discovers that he has led a double identity as a wealthy kingpin and a broke CIA agent.” As of now, though, it’s unclear whether Netflix will revive the project with another director and possibly another star.

It’s not the only Smith film that may run into trouble. The actor had reportedly received 40 pages of the Bad Boys 4 script before the ceremony, but a source claims Sony has now put that production on pause. His Apple+ slave drama Emancipation, meanwhile, is already in post-production.

Meanwhile, Chris Rock has seen his stand-up ticket sales skyrocket.

(Via THR)

The Republican party and the LGBTQIA+ community aren’t exactly seeing eye-to-eye these days. A profoundly homophobic and transphobic sect has taken over the GOP. Florida’s conservative governor, Ron DeSantis, is under fire for the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, whose defenders have been defending with disturbingly QAnon-like language. So when some openly gay Trump supporters tried to get the former president’s attention recently, it didn’t go so well.

As per HuffPost, on Wednesday Trump held one of his events in the resort he now mostly lives in these days. There, he claimed that his administration “did great with the gay population, as you know.” (Naturally, that was not true. As president, he oversaw a dramatic increase in anti-gay and anti-trans legislation, which has only gotten worse since he left. Meanwhile, 73% of the LBTQIA+ community supported his successor, not him.)

Trump’s lie was well-received by some at the function. Some in the crowd chanted, “Gays for Trump!” That prompted him to ask where that group was located. When he found them, he blurted out, in typical Trump fashion, “You don’t look gay.”

Whoops! Thing is, sometimes Trump accidentally lets the truth slip, as when he inadvertently admitted back in January that he didn’t actually win the 2020 election, which he didn’t. And so the presumptive presidential nominee for the Republican party in 2024 inadvertently told his queer supporters what he really thinks about them, which involves some stereotype from the Reagan era, back before his first of six bankruptcies.

(Via HuffPost)

Almost two years ago, Polo G released his second album The GOAT, and it was a project that helped boost him towards the star title he claims today. The full-length effort was highlighted by songs like “Martin & Gina,” “21,” and “33” with fellow Chicagoan Juice WRLD. However, Polo G nearly didn’t make it to the album’s spring 2020 release. According to a post he shared on Instagram, he nearly overdosed prior to shooting the music video for “Heartless” which was released with Mustard in 2019.

“Back story Fa Dat video I was Fresh out the hospital bed From almost overdosing Onnem pills,” he wrote to his followers in a post on his Instagram Story. Thankfully he was able to make a quick recovery and head back to work. “I pop right back out & Shoot Dat Video now dat Bitch Platinum w 100ms By it,” he added. This is not the first time that Polo has admitted to struggling with drugs. Back in December, he recalled a near-death experience where he almost overdosed on 17 pills.

“When I woke up, I was in the hospital,” he said according to Complex. “And my pops was just explaining to me like, ‘Yeah, man, they said you would had been here any second, even a minute later, you wouldn’t have made it. You probably could’ve passed.’” He added that he had no recollection of the incident. “They was just walking me through everything that happened that day, because I really didn’t remember at all,” he said. “I think it was like 17 pills I had took in one day, about 15 Xanax and two [Ecstasy] pills.”

You can view Polo G’s message in the post above.

This past Friday, Red Hot Chili Peppers released their 12th album Unlimited Love. The project arrives with 17 songs and it’s their first full-length release since 2016’s The Getaway. To celebrate the new project, the band delivered performances on two late-night shows on the same night. Their performances, which occurred on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, were also a part of an elaborate April Fools joke where Fallon and Kimmel swapped shows for the night.

During their set on Kimmel, Red Hot Chili Peppers performed “Black Summer” from Unlimited Love atop Los Angeles’ famed Roosevelt Hotel in what was a taped segment for the show. Their performance was apparently filmed on Tuesday which was also the day that the band accepted their stair on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. As for their set on The Tonight Show, Red Hot Chili Peppers performed “These Are The Ways,” which is also from Unlimited Love. This performance was done live from NBC Studios in New York, and in the end, the band appeared to be playing live on two different networks — ABC and NBC — at the same time.

You can watch the performances in the videos above.

Unlimited Love is out now via Warner Records. You can stream it here.

Red Hot Chili Peppers is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

In the week since the 94th Academy Awards, people haven’t been talking about Best Picture winner CODA. They’ve been talking about Will Smith, who slapped presenter Chris Rock and shouted obscenities at him shortly before winning an Oscar. There have been conflicting reports about how the Academy handled Smith immediately after the incident. But one thing is clear: Denzel Washington tried his best to talk some sense into Smith after he snapped.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, the two-time Oscar-winner, who was nominated that night for Macbeth, attended a religious conference on Saturday, where he discussed his career and his faith with pastor T.D. Jakes. The slap inevitably came up, prompting Washington to reveal — as Smith alluded to during his Best Actor speech not long after — that he, as well as Tyler Perry, went over to Smith and started praying with him.

“I couldn’t have sat in my seat. No way I could have sat in my seat,” Washington said. “That’s just not who I am.”

Washington also repeated some words Smith quoted during his speech. “There’s a saying: When the devil ignores you, then you know you’re doing something wrong. The devil goes, ‘Oh, no, leave him at home.’ My favorite,” Washington said with a laugh, before turning serious. “Conversely, when the devil comes at you, maybe it’s because you’re trying to do something, right. And for whatever reason, the devil got ahold of that circumstance that night.”

He also refused to condemn Smith’s actions. “There but for the grace of God, go any of us. Who are we to condemn?” Washington said. “I don’t know all the ins and outs of the situation, but I know the only solution was prayer.”

On Friday night, Smith revealed that he was resigning from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences over what he’d done. Meanwhile, Rock’s ticket sales have skyrocketed.

(Via THR)

Just a couple of days into the spring season, Harry Styles announced that his third album would arrive just in time for the summer. The singer revealed that the upcoming project would be titled Harry’s House and that it will be available for listeners to enjoy on May 20. To kick off the campaign for his third album, Harry released its lead single “As It Was” and it was quite the successful record thanks to a Spotify record that it recently broke. A press release from Harry’s team confirmed that “As It Was” broke Spotify’s single-day streaming record for a male artist.

In its first 24 hours, “As It Was” reportedly tallied 16.1 million streams which broke the prior record that was held by Drake’s “Girls Want Girls” with Lil Baby, the rapper’s standout track from his 2021 Certified Lover Boy. Drake’s song only posted 12.4 million streams when it was released back in September. While Harry broke the record for the most streams for a song by a male artist in its first 24 hours, he come up short for the overall record. Adele still holds that title and she secured it last fall with the release of “Easy On Me” which posted 19.1 million streams in its first 24 hours.

Harry’s upcoming album will feature 13 songs with songwriting from frequent collaborators Kid Harpoon, Tyler Johnson, and Mitch Rowland. The title, Harry’s House, is also a reference to Joni Mitchell’s 1975 song, “Harry’s House/Centerpiece,” from the album The Hissing Of Summer Lawns. After the announcement, Mitchell showed support for the album’s name, writing, “love the title.”

Harry’s House is due 5/20 via Columbia Records. Pre-save it here.

As the LGBTQIA+ community has been targeted by Republican lawmakers, an unlikely force has come to their aid: giant corporations. Both Disney and Apple have tried to fight new laws, in Florida, Texas, and elsewhere, that demonize queer and trans people. And that’s made Republicans mad — so mad that some of them have been issuing threats that sound suspiciously progressive.

On Friday, Fox News host Laura Ingraham took some time off from spouting pro-Russia talking points to condemn Disney and Apple for being against laws that target already marginalized people.

“These businesses should really learn this lesson now before it’s too late: Stay in your lane,” bellowed Ingraham. “Because if they want to talk about what they know nothing about, expect to be treated like any lame political pundit, on, let’s say, MSNBC.”

She then issued some veiled threats. “You guys have products and services that 74 million Trump voters don’t need to purchase if they don’t want to,” she said. “And when Republicans get back into power, Apple and Disney need to understand one thing: Everything will be on the table–your copyright and trademark protection, your special status within certain states, and even your corporate structure itself.”

If it was unclear that she was talking about antitrust laws, which exist to break up companies that get too large, and which these days are rarely used, she then made that unambiguous: “The antitrust division at [the Department of] Justice needs to begin the process of considering which American companies need to be broken up once and for all for competition’s sake, and ultimately for the good of the consumers who pay the bills.”

That’s right: One of the most popular figures on a deeply conservative news network is effectively saying government should curtail the free market and rein in out-of-control capitalism, targeting a corporation because it owns too much profitable stuff. Already strange times just got stranger still.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Skim the career of Michelle Zauner too hastily and you might come to the conclusion that she primarily viewed her Japanese Breakfast moniker as a valve to release her grief. It was late 2014 when Zauner put a stop to all activities with her band Little Big League and moved back to Eugene, Oregon to be with her mother, who had been diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer that would become terminal. In the history of popular music, it’s common for the psyche of an artist who records in such desperate conditions to be poured over, lyrics examined for insights, every snare crack or synth hum scanned for emotion. But Zauner wasn’t hiding the fact that the music was providing an outlet for her pain. When she posted the short lo-fi release Where Is My Great Big Feeling? to Bandcamp in June 2014, it was with a note that revealed her mother’s diagnosis. “I also hope anyone else who lost or is struggling with a family member or friend with cancer can maybe find some comfort in these sh*tty lo fi songs,” she wrote.

Revisiting the Japanese Breakfast origin story reminds us of the distance Zauner has run to get to the 2022 Grammys, where she is up for Best Alternative Music Album, recognizing her third full-length Jubilee, and Best New Artist. The latter nomination is, of course, ridiculous, given she’s been musically active since 2006 at the latest, but it does reflect Zauner’s establishment in mainstream American music. Jubilee features big choruses, propulsive guitar lines, a grand cadre of orchestral instruments. Encouraged by her bandmate and co-producer Craig Hendrix (though it’s firmly Zauner’s vehicle, Japanese Breakfast is sometimes referred to as a band), she helped compose the string and horn arrangements for the first time. Zauner had, in fact, initially envisioned touring the record with an orchestra. Covid-19 restrictions ended those best-laid plans, but the intent reflects her grandiose vision for the project. “After writing two albums and a book about grief, I feel very ready to embrace feeling,” she told Pitchfork in March 2021. “I wanted to just explore a different part of me: I am capable of joy and I have experienced a lot of joy,” she added. “All the songs are different reminders of how to experience or carve out space for that.”

Zauner has not yet been one of Bowie-esque reinvention. The evolution of Japanese Breakfast from dropping rusty lo-fi jams online to the Grammys has been organic. On Psychopomp, her first album as Japanese Breakfast, Zauner and musician Ned Eisenberg polished up some of those previously released compositions. Alchemising dream pop, shoegaze, and teen movie alternative rock, Zauner wrote songs with lovely melodies but sad overtones. Alongside the fuzzy, chugging guitars of “In Heaven,” there is the image of the family dog searching the house for the Zauner’s missing mother. “I came here for the long haul,” the singer admits. “Now I leave here as an empty f*cking hole.”

Zauner’s voice has a hushed, breathy texture, capable of blowing through the arrangements like smoke through a room. But she can be versatile too. The vocal on “Rugged Country,” also from Psychopomp, has a more trashy feel, calling upon the spirit of Joan Jett.

There was a quick follow-up in Soft Sounds From Another Planet, released on Dead Ocean in 2017. A sure-footed step, the arrangements were more fleshed out and sophisticated. Dream pop was still the blueprint, but with extra synthesizers, funky basslines, various beeps and blips that provided a cosmic texture, and, on “Machinist,” a sax solo. Still, a sense of gloaming shrouded the project. The soothing, beautiful “Till Death” presented post-traumatic stress disorder, insomnia, and fears of genetic disease and death, packaged as a thank you from Zauner to her husband for his support.

We can be tricked into thinking that coming-of-age tales can happen in real life as neatly as they do in a John Hughes movie. But life’s key lessons rarely fit neatly into a weekend stint in detention or unauthorized day off. No Japanese Breakfast album cycle offered a perfect arc with a happy resolution. They gave us Zauner, in her mid-20s and dealing with cacophonous anguish, and the realization that grief is not a straight, descending line that time automatically heals. “I have a sh*t-ton of GI cancer in my family — both my mom and her sister died really young — so I feel like I have a ticking time bomb inside of me,” she told Pitchfork in that interview last year. And yet, there’s evidence that the thunderclouds have perhaps begun to dissipate: “Once death was really close to me, I suddenly became very fearful of it. I think that lit a fire in me like, What do you have to say before it happens?”

A four-year break from album-making saw Zauner harness a passion for writing into the memoir Crying In H Mart, which covered not just her mother’s death, but, as a woman of Jewish and Korean heritage, growing up mixed-race in America. And, not long prior to the book’s release, there was Jubilee. It would be wrong to suggest that this is the sound of commercial compromises, but its sense of catharsis is blended with brighter 1980s indie-pop arrangements into a more mainstream palatable formula. Baroque opener “Paprika” features trumpets, trombones, and cellos, among many other instruments, immediately offering more grandeur. Zauner describes awakening from a dream of untying a huge knot, immediately allowing the listener to share a sense of release.

​​With music co-written by Wild Nothing’s Jack Tatum, lead single “Be Sweet” is Japanese Breakfast’s most anthemic tune: a brash indie number that pulls from both adult contemporary and new wave sounds of the ’80s. Interestingly, it’s followed up with “Komono, IN.” Zauner’s favorite song on the album resembles the vintage 1950s pop of an artist like Patti Page, but with the ripple of a slide guitar bumping up against the strings.

The outer perimeters of the Japanese Breakfast sound are further tested on “Slide Tackle,” which includes a steady, synthesized beat that feels salvaged from an old Postal Service tune. “Savage Good Boy” is underpinned by what sounds like a more hyperactive version of the famous riff from Devotchka’s “How It Ends.”

“Posing in Bondage” is one of Zauner’s greatest achievements. The grinding, machine-like beauty of the music is paired with a lilting melody. The chorus on the short sentences is an exercise in brevity: “Closeness / Proximity / I needed / Bondage,” sings Zauner, each word floating into the atmosphere.

In the wake of Jubilee, Zauner has put out a soundtrack to the videogame Sable — check out strings-led “Better The Mask” and how it resembles the production skills of Jon Brion and Van Dyke Parks. Even more recently, there’s been a new standalone single, “Nobody Sees Me Like You Do.” A piano ballad, it feels like a closing track of an epic record, perhaps a curtain call on the first act of Japanese Breakfast. Collecting a Grammy would be an emphatic button on this period of her career. Zauner’s upward trajectory to this point might have felt unbroken, but that doesn’t mean the road has been predictable.

Game shows have enjoyed a renaissance over the last few years. Jeopardy! and sometimes even Wheel of Fortune have been headline fodder. Classic shows have been revived. As such, this news seems ominous: As per Variety, ABC is probably not bringing back four of their game shows, most notably the Match Game revival that was hosted by now-troubled actor Alec Baldwin.

The network is in the midst of planning it summer schedule, and among those shows reportedly getting the axe are Card Sharks, Celebrity Dating Game, The Hustler, and Match Game. The latter hasn’t been in production for a while, with the last episodes were taped in 2020, prior to the pandemic’s outset. Last year it only aired two new episodes, filmed the previous year.

ABC insists the likely cancellation does not have anything to do with the accidental shooting on the set of Rust, which involved Baldwin.

Launched in 2016, the Match Game revival brought back the classic show, which features contestants trying to match the answers of a bevy of celebrity guests. The show began in 1962 but didn’t come into its own until the 1970s, when it was dramatically revamped as a more comedic program, with the famous participants, often with drinks in their hands, regularly trying to crack each other up. The Baldwin version, which wasn’t as loose as that, ran for five seasons.

In the meantime, other ABC game shows, such as Celebrity Family Feud, Press Your Luck, and The $100,000 Pyramid, are expected to return.

(Via Variety)

There have been multiple examples of transphobic legislation that have been passed across the United States. For example, Texas and Arizona have both passed their own variations of bills that impede on the rights of transgender children. As a result, there has been an increased fight to make sure that basic rights for transgender people are preserved across the country. One example comes from Ariana Grande who recently teamed with Pledge, a charity-centric fundraising platform, to launch the Protect & Defend Trans Youth Fund.

Grande says that the fund was created “to support organizations providing direct services and advocating for the rights of trans youth.” The fund was also launched on March 31 which was this year’s International Transgender Day Of Visibility. Grande has promised to match all donations, up to $1.5 million, made to the Protect & Defend Trans Youth Fund. All of the money raised through it will be split between 19 organizations, with many offering special services to queer and transgender people in different states across the country. It includes Equality Florida, One Iowa, the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance, and the Tennessee Equality Project.

“Right now, there are hundreds of bills pending in state legislatures across the United States that target trans youth and aim to curb their rights,” Grande said in a statement about the new fund. “The impact of fighting these anti-trans bills and policies is felt all year by trans people, their families and loved ones.”

Donations to the Protect & Defend Trans Youth Fund can be made here. If you live in the United States, a donation can be made by texting “PLEDGE” to 707070.