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The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — I am so proud of everyone

One of the things we do here at The Rundown is analyze trends. We did this just last week, actually, when we addressed the recent string of television characters suffering heart attacks and other health crises while riding a Peloton. That was fun. And strange. But important. It’s good to note these kinds of things when they happen because you can see little themes develop, either on purpose or through a set of happy accidents. This is why it brings me such pleasure to welcome all of you to what I have decided to call the Golden Age of Phallic Shenanigans.

This all started, if not chronologically then at least spiritually, with the release of Pam & Tommy on Hulu this week. Have you started watching Pam & Tommy yet? I hope so. It is weird and a little trashy and surprisingly sympathetic to Pamela Anderson, which feels deserved at this point, even if Pamela herself is understandably not too thrilled about it all. It also, and I must stress here that I am not making any of this up, features an extended scene where an Ecstasy-fueled Tommy Lee has a full-on conversation with his penis, which is controlled by puppeteers and voiced by Jason Mantzoukas.

Here, look. I would never lie to you.

Yup. Happened. There are numerous close-ups of the puppeteered penis moving as it speaks, to signify agreement and disagreement and all of it. It is honestly remarkable. And the voice casting is perfect. Jason Mantzoukas is a maniac and has been for years, dating back to his role as Rafi on The League and extending through his role as Derek on The Good Place. And now, he’s the voice of a world-famous penis. I’m so happy for him.

Entertainment Weekly has a deeper dive.

The idea to bring that to life on Pam & Tommy was just too good to pass up. While the show’s tone is set firmly in reality (albeit one stranger than fiction), they knew Tommy’s penis had to voice its thoughts in at least one scene, playing the devil on his … well, groin. “We could get away with it because he was high on Ecstasy at that time,” Siegel says. “I felt like that gave us the green light. I like to think that could have actually happened — at least, in his mind. It was fun to write and not terribly hard; imagining what Tommy Lee’s dick would say is pretty fertile material.”

There’s also a section in there on the logistics of it all, which I am including both because it fascinates me and because I want them to win a special effects Emmy for this. That would be great. Consider this me starting that campaign now.

Designed by Autonomous FX and operated by Mike McCarty and Dave Snyder, the talking penis came to life via a combination of mostly practical effects with some added CG. “As a Star Wars fan, I’m partial to the animatronic puppet Yoda, the Frank Oz version, over the prequel’s CGI Yoda — I just prefer, as I think most people do, things that are better done practically,” Siegel says. “From the start, we always wanted it to be an animatronic dick.” Siegel pauses before adding, “Most of these sentences have never been uttered. But we had a guy build us an animatronic talking dick and they strapped it on Sebastian, and I hope to God we got behind-the-scenes footage of that day.”

This is delightful. Truly a banner moment in television history. Think of all the great shows of the past: The Sopranos, I Love Lucy, Cheers. Not a single talking penis in any of them. We are breaking ground here.

Speaking of breaking things, Jackass Forever premieres this weekend. This is good news on a number of fronts but mostly because it allows me to share this GIF again.

Some notes:

• I am a reasonably bright person who has thoughts about lots of serious issues but this is still maybe the funniest thing I’ve ever seen
• Johnny Knoxville’s reaction
• The first pump

This, to me, is cinema. And it’s not the only nut-pulverizing in the movie. Not by a long shot. From a feature in The Hollywood Reporter, a legitimate trade magazine that covers the industry and quoted someone as saying “his nuts are bleeding” in the paragraph prior to this.

Speaking of genitalia, the series’ fascination with them could provide fodder for a team of dedicated psychoanalysts. Nothing seems to turn on these overgrown male adolescents more than having their penises and testicles exposed and tortured, over and over again. The nut-crushing stunts performed in this edition are far too numerous to describe in detail, but mention must be made of Steve-O, who allows a swarm of bees to sting his nether regions. Indeed, there’s so much full-frontal male nudity on display that you wonder whether the performers are either very comfortable in their masculinity or precisely the opposite.

Perfect. All of it. Jackass is one of those things that straddles the line between stupid and brilliant, an honest-to-God time capsule of turn-of-the-century suburban angst and boredom crossed with the most powerful Dudes Rock energy of any project in history, with a dash of horrifying bodily harm. Put it in the Smithsonian. I am barely joking. I might not be joking at all. Jackass explains the last 25 years of American history better than any book ever could, for better and worse, but mostly for better. Blammo, right in the beans.

And somehow, against staggering odds, these weren’t the only two examples of phallic shenanigans this week. There was also this, from The Afterparty, a very good show.

The backstory here is barely important but I’ll provide some of it anyway. Two characters are having a literal pissing contest. A showdown to see who can pee longest and strongest. A macho competition where urine is a stand-in for ego and success and virility. I won’t tell you who wins. I will, however, laugh at the screencap forever. This is a good deal. For me. Watch The Afterparty.

So, there you have it. Three examples. This is officially a trend. I am so happy for and proud of everyone involved. Especially all the penises. Big week for them.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — I will go to staggering lengths to remind everyone about these videos, but this one is a layup

A couple of important things happened this week:

• Seth Meyers had David Letterman on his show to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Late Night, the show Letterman created and passed to Conan and then Fallon and then Meyers himself
• Jeff Zucker stepped down as top banana at CNN after coming clean about an ongoing relationship with a colleague

Two events, both notable, both involving powerful dudes, one featuring a story about a beaver biting a wildlife expert, but seemingly, mostly unrelated. Things aren’t always as they seem, though. Sometimes there’s a hidden thread that links them together. If you read those bullet points carefully, you already got a pretty decent hint. Or maybe you figured it out right away. Good for you, if you did. Don’t spoil it for everyone else, though.

Okay, we hop in our time machine and head back to 2010. “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga is shooting up the charts. Instagram and the iPad both debut. The Double Rainbow guy was everywhere. And over on NBC, Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien were battling over The Tonight Show, thanks in no small part to a pretty powerful blundering of the whole situation by an NBC executive named… Jeff Zucker.

The details aren’t worth rehashing here, at least not in this paragraph. There’s a good book about it if you have a few hours to kill and a decent Wikipedia page about it if you have a few minutes to kill. The important thing here, and the reason I bring it up, is that the chaos of it all made David Letterman very, very happy. Letterman had his own history with NBC. There’s a book and Wikipedia page about that, too. And it all built to a head and led to one of the best runs in late-night television history.

We got now to YouTube. I will not post all of the videos. I will post a few of them, though. Watch these sometime this weekend. Watch how much fun Letterman is having, the little mischievous twinkle in his eye. This is a man who is alive.

My favorite part of all of this is that he’s doing this just sitting at his desk, riffing, with nothing resembling an actual script to go off of, and it’s still massively compelling television. That’s a little astounding. The man was basically hosting a podcast on video and it was the most riveting thing on television. It was thrilling. I watched all the clips again this week — there are like 10, total — and I was blown away all over again.

David Letterman. Pretty good at television. You heard it here first.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — This is freakin’ adorable

Abbott Elementary is a good show. We have discussed this. And I’m not just saying that because it’s set in Philadelphia and they literally rolled out an Eagles blanket a few episodes ago. (Go Birds.) The freshman comedy about an inner-city public school is smart and sweet and funny and a lot of things network comedies were a few years ago and have increasingly not been lately. I like it a lot. Watch it with your family or by yourself or with a stranger. Again, it’s good.

The show’s creator and star, Quinta Brunson, was on Kimmel this week. During her appearance, Kimmel surprised her with a video chat call-in from one of Brunson’s own teachers, Mrs. Abbott, who she named the fictional school in the show after. And it was, well, adorable. Just cute and wholesome and nice and kind of not what anyone would have expected 20 years ago from the guy who created Crank Yankers, but still. Watch that video. It feels good. And watch Abbott Elementary, too.

I say this for you for all the reasons mentioned above and in the link but also so you’ll have context for this screencap…

… and these two…

… which you can expect to see a lot in the next few months if you follow me on Twitter.

Feel free to save these and use them yourself. They’re quite versatile.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — An incomplete list of celebrities who I suspect know how to make a good pot of chili, based on nothing but feel

Keanu Reeves (probably cooks up a big pot for like landscapers and carpenters who do work on his house)
Dolly Parton
Danny McBride
Denzel Washington (does not let you in the kitchen)
Meryl Streep
Any NFL lineman (offense, not defense)
The Rock
Judy Greer
Craig Robinson
Samuel L. Jackon
Paul Giamatti (spicier than you expect)
Yosemite Sam
Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill (but NOT Seth Rogen)
Maya Rudolph
Tom Cruise (decided one day six months ago that he wanted to learn and did not sleep until he perfected it)
Regina King
Jimmy Kimmel
Any musician who weighs over, oh, let’s say 225 pounds
Big Boi from OutKast, regardless of weight
Danny DeVito
Matthew McConaughey
Margo Martindale
Florence Pugh (is there anything she can’t do?)
Former Seattle Mariner legend Ichiro Suzuki
Nick Offerman
Jessica Chastain, surprisingly
Jamie Foxx

This list will be updated as new information comes in.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Hey, look, a show for Brian…

This is a sketch from Mr. Show. I share it now for two primary reasons: One, because Mr. Show was awesome and I will post sketches from it sometimes just because it makes me feel good; and two, because the creators and stars of Mr. Show, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, just announced a new show they’re doing together for Paramount Plus, and it sounds like some Extremely Brian Stuff.

Via Deadline:

The series will see Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk and Arrested Development star Cross as rival cult gurus manipulating the minds of their deluded followers.

It will be directed by Jason Woliner, who directed Borat 2.

It’s kind of wild to track the careers of these two dudes. Mr. Show started a bunch of careers and altered the course of sketch comedy in a substantial way. Cross was an important figure on Arrested Development (an all-time great comedy) and did some stuff on the cutting edge of political humor. Odenkirk has mentored like half of your favorite alternative comedians (there’s a reason he’s in I Think You Should Leave like once a season), appeared in Breaking Bad and starred in Better Call Saul (two all-time great dramas), and just recently starred in Nobody, a John Wick-style action movie from the writer of John Wick where he got to say this line of dialogue.

And now, like 30 years later, they’re still making ambitious weirdo comedies together on streaming services that have only existed for a few years. That’s… cool. It’s cool. I’m happy for them. And happy for me, too, because this show looks awesome. I’m happy for everyone, really. I guess that’s my point.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Paul:

Brian. BRIAN. Who do we think Jason Momoa is playing in the Fast & Furious universe? Villain? Member of the Family? Villain who later becomes a member of the Family? John Cena is already Dominic Toretto’s evil secret brother. Could Jason Momoa be The Rock’s secret evil brother? What if he’s playing a senator who has nothing to do with crime and is just trying to stop the international crime wave caused by Dominic Toretto and his assorted friends and enemies? How has Jason Momoa not been in a Fast & Furious movie until now? How excited are you about all of this?

We know your stance on Jason Momoa, after all.

See, what I like about this email is that Paul covered all the bases. He provided context. He asked some good questions. He asked some completely loony questions that left me very proud of him. And he included a link to a thing I wrote, which stroked my ego just enough that I got a little fuzzy inside. And it made me remember this tweet, which is contained in the link but I had somehow still forgotten. It’s a good tweet.

The smart money here is on the “villain who eventually becomes a member of the Family,” just because that’s the general trajectory of a new character in this universe. Jason Statham tried to blow Dominic Toretto out of the Abu Dhabi sky in the seventh movie and by the end of the eighth, he was babysitting Dom’s child. These movies are not about making sense. That’s the important thing to remember here.

The complicating factor is that we are allegedly zeroing in on the end of the franchise, which very much compresses the villain-to-barbecue-invitee timeline. It’s still doable, though. Anything is possible in these movies. Ludacris and Tyrese went to space. But let’s consider something else, just to get it on the record…

Momoa spinoff.

A Jason Momoa Fast & Furious spinoff.

You can see it.

Be honest.

A new chapter.

A new Family.

The saga continues.

I’m space??????

Okay, maybe not. But let’s not rule it out.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To New York City!

This morning, joggers in New York’s Central Park may have come across a curious, rather illustrious sight. A cube composed of 186 kilograms of pure 24-karat gold, conceived by the German artist Niclas Castello who has billed it as a conceptual “socle du monde” (base of the world) sculpture for our time, was wheeled out to the Naumburg Bandshell this morning at around 5 a.m.

Listen to me. Listen. We have to steal this stupid gold cube. We have to. In part because they are tempting/taunting us with this, in part because it would be hilarious, and in part just on principle. People around the world are starving. Grocery prices are through the roof because of a pandemic that’s lasted two years now and has everyone a little frayed and fried. And this bozo is dropping a solid gold cube in the middle of a park as a bit.

We have to steal this.

No jury would convict us.

Although the work is not for sale, according to the artist’s team, based on the current price of gold at $1,788 per ounce, its material worth is around $11.7 million. Flanked by a heavy security detail, the 410-pound work is set to be displayed in the park until the day’s end.

Okay, the $11.7 million is a decent reason, too. We can split that up. Even chunks for all of us. But mostly it’s the principle. And the money. It’s two things.

And so, as with all things in 2022, an accompanying cryptocurrency is being launched alongside the physical artwork. The Castello Coin, traded as $CAST, is available for purchase online at an initial price of €0.39 ($0.44) each, with an accompanying NFT auction scheduled for 21 February.

Jesus Christ.

I was kind of kidding earlier but now I think I’m actually serious. We have to steal this thing. We have to come up with a plan. Stop reading here if you are the cops or the FBI. It is entrapment, probably.

My working theory is that we do a Fast Five vault heist and rope it with a car or my wheelchair and haul ass around New York with it dragging behind us and just smashing everything in its path. Like this:

I’m open to other ideas, though.

“The cube can be seen as a sort of communiqué between an emerging 21st-century cultural ecosystem based on crypto and the ancient world where gold reigned supreme,” says the Viennese gallerist Lisa Kandlhofer, who was in New York for the artwork’s launch.

No.

Later tonight, the sculpture will make its way to a private dinner on Wall Street, where numerous celebrities are said to be attending.

I am livid this event already happened. There are only so many times in one’s life where one has a chance to dress up in formalwear and steal a $12 million gold cube from a bunch of vultures and creeps. This leaves us with only two options, really:

• Steal the cube now, wherever it is
• Build a time machine and go back to earlier this week to steal it from this gala

I’m open to either. But it has to happen. We have to restore order out here. We’re doing the world a service, really. They should be giving us an award for this. In addition to the gold cube. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable.

After Kanye West’s latest jab at ex-wife Kim Kardashian over letting their daughter North use TikTok “against his will,” Kardashian has had enough. On her own Instagram story, she defended her decision to share a joint (adult-managed) account with North and challenged Kanye for his “obsession with trying to control and manipulate our situation.”

Kanye’s constant attacks on me in interviews and on social media is actually more hurtful than any TikTok North might create. As the parent who is the main provider and caregiver for our children, I am doing my best to protect our daughter while also allowing her to express her creativity in the medium that she wishes with adult supervision – because it brings her happiness. Divorce is difficult enough on our children and Kanye’s obsession with trying to control and manipulate our situation so negatively and publicly is only causing further pain for all. From the beginning, I have wanted nothing but a healthy and supportive co-parenting relationship because it is what is best for our children and it saddens me that Kanye continues to make it impossible every step of the way.

I wish to handle all matters regarding our children privately and hopefully, he can finally respond to the third attorney he has had in the last year to resolve any issues amicably.

In addition to his censuring North’s TikTok, Kanye has claimed that Kim tried to keep him from attending North’s birthday and threatened to beat up Pete Davidson for his public relationship with Kardashian.

Last year, Marjorie Taylor Greene shocked her fellow House colleagues by posting an anti-trans sign outside of her office that was directly aimed at Congressman Marie Newman, who has a trans-child. It was a surprisingly brazen move even for Greene, but the issue fell to the wayside as the off-the-wall Georgia representative bounced from one controversy to another, much to the chagrin of her own party.

However, Greene’s anti-trans sign is back in the headlines, and this time (according to Raw Story), it’s because it’s been repeatedly vandalized and stolen. In a new video posted to her Telegram account (Greene has been permanently banned from Twitter for posting COVID misinformation), the congresswoman calls the defacement “criminal activity” as she accuses workers in the building of defacing the sign, which reads “There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE … Trust The Science!” According to Greene, she’s had to replace it six times.

Via Raw Story:

“This is criminal activity,” Greene said. “It’s vandalism, destruction of property, so when the person gets caught they’re going to be held accountable. But here’s the scary thing — they work in our building!”

Greene went on to say that she has repeatedly asked Capitol police and the House sergeant of arms to place security cameras outside her office “so that I can feel safe.”

“Because if someone is this crazy, so crazy and deranged over a sign that says there are only two genders, male and female, and they keep attacking it … then obviously they may try to attack me personally.”

In a self-own worthy of Ted Cruz, Greene revealed that the sergeant at arms didn’t think the situation required additional security. Naturally, Greene accused Nancy Pelosi of being behind the decision before going on a rant about how Democrats are “destroying our country” with their rampant sign vandalism.

(Via Raw Story)

The Grand Theft Auto IP is arguably the most valuable name in all of video games. The most recent game, Grand Theft Auto V, is the most profitable piece of media ever. This has largely been thanks to the success of GTA Online, but that doesn’t change how much people adore the GTA franchise.

The success of GTA V and GTA Online hasn’t stopped fans from asking about the next installment in the franchise. GTA V was released back in 2013 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The franchise is due a new entry and there have been rumors for years that a follow-up was in the works. Those rumors were finally confirmed on Friday when Rockstar announced that a new Grand Theft Auto game was indeed in the works.

This is exciting news for fans of the GTA franchise and it sounds like Rockstar has finally found a direction for the next game in the series. Of course, a game entering development does not mean it will finish development any time soon — we have no idea when the new game is going to be anywhere close to done, and until a release date is announced, the only thing we can do is just be happy knowing a new game is on the way.

For anyone who worried that a new game being announced meant that support for GTA Online was no longer going to be a priority, they can put those fears to rest. Alongside the announcement that a new GTA is in development, Rockstar also gave an official release date for when GTA Online will make its way to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

This makes sense, because a long as GTA Online keeps making money, there is no reason for Rockstar to stop supporting it.

The Oscars race is slowly unfolding, with the seeming frontrunners being many of the films that we expected to be here. In a year of immense flux in the entertainment industry, one chock full of fascinating, challenging, and often difficult movies, it’s sadly no surprise that the apparent winners-to-be are cut from the same cloth of victors’ past. (Expect lots of biopics and further exhausting discourse around Don’t Look Up.) Yet awards season isn’t always as predictable as we think it will be. To quote William Goldman, nobody knows anything, and at the end of the cycle, there are always a few movies we were certain would win big yet were left by the wayside as the season progressed. Consider Nightmare Alley (which recently came available to stream on Hulu and HBO Max).

Having taken home Best Director and Best Picture for his previous film, The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro was positioned as an inevitable frontrunner for 2022 long before anyone ever saw a still from his latest project. It hardly mattered that the material was a dramatic step away from del Toro’s usual fare of sci-fi and fantasy riffs, or that it was a remake of a Tyrone Power film from the ‘50s. If any director had earned the right to take that risk, it was the guy who won the biggest prize in cinema with a story wherein a woman has sex with a hot fish-man.

The story centers on Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), an ambitious worker at a rundown traveling carnival who dreams of the big time. Borrowing the cold-reading skills of the carny’s mind-reader (Toni Collette), Stan comes up with a scheme to present himself as a spiritualist preacher who cons rich people out of their money via séance sessions with the help of his “medium” (Rooney Mara.) To move the grift into the big leagues, he then teams up with a devious psychologist (Cate Blanchett) to target a skeptical auto tycoon. It doesn’t take long for Stan to get in over his head.

Based on the novel by William Lindsay, Nightmare Alley seems like standard del Toro stuff on the surface: there’s a carnival and paranormal-esque elements and Ron Perlman is right there. Yet it was a much darker slice of humanity than del Toro’s most iconic work.

One of del Toro’s defining features as a filmmaker is his wholehearted earnestness. He loves fairytales and gothic romances and classic horror, none of which he utilizes with anything remotely resembling cynicism. Even at his darkest, such as his masterpiece Pan’s Labyrinth, he sees light at the end of the tunnel. Nobody finds greater beauty in the beastly than del Toro, whether it’s the ivory glow of the vampire in Cronos, the rom-com sweetness of Liz and Hellboy in Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, or the clay-stained snow surrounding the mansion of Crimson Peak. There may be monsters but often they’re kinder and more graceful than the humans. No matter how bad things are, there are shimmers of goodness throughout del Toro’s worlds.

This precedent is what makes del Toro’s choice to adapt Nightmare Alley so intriguing. There isn’t even the slightest glimmer of goodness in Gresham’s book, a pitch-black noir proudly mired in sleaze. Almost every single character is a narcissistic charlatan concerned solely with the accumulation of wealth. These are brutal, desperate, calculating people, each and every one of whom would make for an excellent villain in any other film noir. del Toro has created his fair share of irredeemable baddies (consider Michael Shannon in The Shape of Water, a macho soldier wholly committed to brutality), but they’re typically balanced out by heroes with good intentions or a scrappy resolve to do the right thing. Nightmare Alley has no such desires.

That’s something del Toro commits hard to in his adaptation. Cooper is an actor who is at his most interesting when he uses his traditional leading man charm to delve into self-obsessed smarm, and as Stanton Carlisle, he fully descends into the narcissism of the skillful huckster. The audience understands his appeal but cannot help but root for his downfall as he ignores all the warning signs in favor of exploiting riskier targets with bigger paydays. Cate Blanchett plays a femme fatale straight out of a Barbara Stanwyck noir, the kind of woman who everyone knows is dangerous yet won’t stay away from. Aside from the kind-hearted, if somewhat naïve, Molly, every character in Nightmare Alley is self-absorbed, manipulative, or just plain mean. The vast ensemble is focused on money or sex or booze and how to acquire them, and it’s all described with the same blunt tones of perversity. Everyone is fair game for exploitation, be it the gormless audiences of the carnival or the gullible society darlings who throw down big bucks for a blatantly false séance. People seek salvation but Gresham practically guffaws at such naivety. Humanity doesn’t deserve it in his eyes.

del Toro (along with co-screenwriter Kim Morgan) doesn’t shy away from the gloominess of the novel either. The second half of the movie is essentially a slow spiral into the worst recesses of human cruelty and failure. You know, as a viewer, that there will be no solace here, no last-minute reprieve or moment of penance from our horrid protagonist. It’s, to put it mildly, a total bummer. The Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic Michael Dirda described Nightmare Alley as “a creepy, all-too-harrowing masterpiece,” one that left him feeling “utterly flattened.” del Toro nails that effect.

Audiences didn’t clamor to the cinema to see Nightmare Alley. Released in theaters as Spider-Man: No Way Home swung into record-breaking territory as the omicron variant of COVID reared its ugly head, the film only grossed $2.8 million during its opening weekend, finishing fifth at the box office. Reviews were widely positive, though, and it’s received a few critics’ circle awards for its troubles. Mostly, however, there’s been this curious, and unfair cloud of failure surrounding Nightmare Alley. It’s not playing well with the major awards bodies, especially when compared to the likes of The Power of the Dog, Belfast, and West Side Story. Even perennial nominee Bradley Cooper isn’t making waves in the Best Actor conversation. The competition this year is vast, more so than last year, and it seems that there’s just more hype and general warmth towards other movies. Nightmare Alley’s fans are there but the notoriously middlebrow tastes of the Academy may not feel so enthusiastic about a gloomy and cynical noir with a moral about the inherent cruelty of humanity.

Nightmare Alley, however, may get a second chance at a legacy beyond those box office numbers and dashed awards season hopes and dreams. There’s the select release of a special black-and-white version of the film across Los Angeles that will surely stand as one last effort to court awards season voters (and something that makes a lot of aesthetic sense for the old-school noir). But there’s also the release on Hulu and HBO Max, presenting an opportunity for a lot more people to find this film and connect with its approach. Cult status isn’t usually sought, but it’s nothing to turn one’s head at, especially when it’s the last stab at relevancy for something that fully deserves a chance to be remembered.

Jarred Vanderbilt is a defensive chameleon. That label doesn’t arise solely by the conventional thought of him guarding a range of assignments, a la Ben Simmons, but more so by the notion he will undertake virtually any responsibility asked of him.

This season, Vanderbilt’s matchup catalog stretches from Stephen Curry to Giannis Antetokounmpo, so the Minnesota Timberwolves evidently value his versatility at the point of attack. During a December game against the Dallas Mavericks, he went from defending 7-foot center Kristaps Porzingis on one possession before taking 6’1 point guard Jalen Brunson on the next. But he’s not a one-hit wonder, and Minnesota’s coaching staff realizes it.

Excelling as a frenetic on-ball stopper, weak-side rim protector, perimeter helper, and custodian on the glass, intentional chaos is integral to his game. Vanderbilt is one of the league’s best defenders. Nobody channels their motor into tangible impact better than him. The shortlist of 2021-22 All-Defensive Team candidates should undoubtedly include him.

Under head coach Chris Finch, the Timberwolves employ an aggressive pick-and-roll coverage predicated on trapping or showing with the primary big man, most often Karl-Anthony Towns. That represents a shift from the traditional drop defense he overwhelmingly played previously in his career.

Vanderbilt’s functionality as a back-line roamer helps enable success via that scheme. Even if Towns, with his swirling limbs and domineering frame, can’t fluster ball-handlers, Vanderbilt looms large, ready to patch up any holes.

His off-ball talents span well beyond low man duties, though. He can play the nail to bother drivers, excels at denying or pilfering passes and blanketing cutters, and embraces battles against bigger opponents. Mindless decisions from the offense send up a flare for him to pounce. Execution must be crisp when he’s in the vicinity.

The haste with which he covers ground on rotations looks like he’s moving at warp speed while everyone else’s transmission is stuck in neutral. His lateral quickness belies his 6’9 stature, and augments his swift hands and turbo-charged playmaking.

Just note all the varying off-ball jobs on his resume. Many players can specialize in a few areas off the ball. Vanderbilt seems comfortable with nearly all of the prominent ones that routinely factor into possessions.

According to Cleaning The Glass, his 2.6 percent steal rate ranks in the 96th percentile among bigs, a season after his 2.3 percent steal rate placed him in the 97th percentile. Put simply, few front-court players generate takeaways like him.

When the situation demands, he’s similarly adept at setting the tone on the ball. Sometimes, Minnesota even tabs him as the primary big man in ball-screen schemes, whether it’s switching, showing or trapping, if Towns is having a down night defending the pick-and-roll. He’s the Timberwolves’ handyman, and he’s earned an immense amount of trust from Finch.

He’ll pester star scorers to the point of defeat on a possession, ensuring they’re aware of his 7’1 wingspan and all its powers. Bumps and bruises as they maneuver are part of enduring the Jarred Vanderbilt Experience. Brief exhaustion causing a minor slip-up for him to expose is an intended byproduct of his approach.

He’s an unrelenting nuisance, one who’s long and skilled with an array of lively athletic tools. Hellish feels like an apt word to describe facing him.

Vanderbilt’s footprint also shifts outside of any defensive construct. Many players throughout NBA history have proven that playing really freakin’ hard all the time is a skill, and he’s the gold standard for it today. He generates countless possessions by simply refusing to concede that it’s time to switch ends. If you’re watching Minnesota, think the opposing team has secured control of the ball, and look up to see otherwise, the answer to “how did the Wolves get the ball back?” is Vanderbilt more often than not.

Calling him an energy guy undersells his game, but ignoring that facet also paints an incomplete image. Energy is legitimately a component of how he sparks events and points. There’s not a single other player who authors the plays below like him on a nightly basis.

Despite being a 6’9 forward with little on-ball creation zest and just three career triples to his name, Vanderbilt offers steady offensive contributions. Various teams will opt to put their 4-man on Towns and let the center/best rim protector sag off Vanderbilt as a free safety helper.

To counter that and not impede the offense, he’ll hunt out screen-setting chances and swiftly flow into dribble handoffs when the ball comes his way. He’s also a marvelous cutter from all over the court, a savvy connective passer, and dynamite offensive rebounder with a knack for shrewdly high-pointing and tracking boards.

Minnesota has a 115.9 offensive rating when Vanderbilt is on the floor. While he likely benefits a good deal by predominantly playing alongside Towns, he really does understand how to thrive in spite of his limitations. Plus, their relationship is symbiotic because he pilots and simplifies the defense for his All-Star teammate, which is a significant part of why they share the floor so much.

He’s a crafty, patient finisher shooting 69 percent at the rim and rarely hampers Towns, D’Angelo Russell, and Anthony Edwards’ creation efforts. He keenly slips screens to dive into a vacated paint and has the requisite body control to contort for buckets. If there’s space to inhabit that can aid his team, no matter how minute, he will identify and utilize it. On both ends, he flourishes in busy spaces, a rarity for many 6’9 bigs.

Vanderbilt ranks third in Defensive Estimated Plus-Minus (plus-3.4) and 30th overall in Estimated Plus-Minus (also, plus-3.4). He’s not an All-Star-caliber guy, but those numbers shouldn’t be disregarded. The majority of plays involving him feel impactful, and he is constantly searching for a way to make something transpire for his team. A team making a playoff push deservedly starts him because he is quite good.

He’s an elite defender who dons whatever cap is required in a given game, lineup, or possession. His offensive utility is much narrower, but he plays exceptionally well off of Minnesota’s hubs. Everything he provides helps shape its identity.

Vanderbilt may not be captaining the Timberwolves toward the playoffs. Yet he’ll absolutely etch his mark there this spring, adapting to whatever defensive role they lay out for him.

Kanye West has apparently taken issue with his daughter’s app usage, judging from a recent post he shared on Instagram. Posting a screenshot from the @KimAndNorth TikTok shared by his ex-wife Kim Kardashian their daughter North, Kanye wondered, “Since this is my first divorce I need to know what I should do about my daughter being put on [TikTok] against my will?”

This is only Kanye’s latest incident of conflict with his ex, who he also recently claimed tried to bar him from North’s recent birthday party. This was, of course, after Kanye had threatened to beat up Kim’s new beau, Pete Davidson, but let’s face it: self-reflection has never been Kanye’s strong suit.

In a previous interview, he also railed against North’s TikTok use, saying, “Tell her don’t have my daughter wearing lipstick on TikTok and don’t have her on TikTok at all if I don’t approve that.” While he says this is a case of “poking the bear” in order to discredit him, he’s kinda done that all on his own with stunts like his aborted, slapdashed political campaign (which was probably a smokescreen for the Republican candidate who tried to start an insurrection to overthrow the government).

It seems that even at his big age, Ye has yet to grasp the concept of women’s autonomy. If he hates what North is doing now, just wait ’til she’s a teenager.

Dua Lipa is one of the busiest people in music at the moment. She just launched her “Service95” newsletter, she’s in cahoots with Puma, she’s been recording new music, and she’s going on tour this year. On top of all that, Lipa was a guest on The Late Show last night, sitting down for a lengthy interview with Stephen Colbert, during which she got to flex her own interviewing skills.

Colbert closed out the chat by mentioning Lipa’s upcoming podcast Dua Lipa: At Your Service, which drove the conversation towards the art of conversation and interviewing itself. After Lipa noted that she’s been enjoying interviewing people for the podcast and the research that’s involved in that process, Colbert asked Lipa if she had a question for him. After taking a minute to think about it, Lipa said, “I think something that your viewers really connect with in your comedy and your hosting skills, especially in the past few years, is how open and honest and authentic you are about the role your faith plays in your life. I was wondering, does your faith and your comedy ever overlap and does one ever win out?”

The evidence that this was a strong question is the fact it took Colbert nearly two minutes to answer it. He began, “I think ultimately, all being mortal, the faith will win out at the end, but I certainly hope when I get to Heaven, Jesus has a sense of humor.” From there, he continued to discuss the reasons he liked the movie Belfast and how it relates to the relationship between faith and comedy, love and sacrifice, and death and defeat.

They also talked about releasing an album during a pandemic, working with Elton John, and more, so find clips from the interview above and below.

Dua Lipa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

What a week. We received the revelation that Borat 2 star Rudy Giuliani, who’s been shunned by the legal community and much of the world after pushing the Big Lie, took a gig on The Masked Singer. Judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke were so upset that they stormed offstage, according to Deadline, which also noted that the Season 7 taping will head to air in March. So, we have to wait too long to find out Rudy’s costume, but he will never surpass Sarah Palin dressed as a bear and rapping, “Baby Got Back.”

The harsh daylight saw TV news hosts struggling to believe what they’d heard, and of course, The Daily Show unveiled some “leaked” footage, but Jimmy Kimmel laid out the reasons why he’s not surprised. In short, we all should have seen this coming, even if Rudy may not have realized where he was:

“Why would Rudy even agree to do this? Did he think he was going to ‘The Masked Singer Landscaping Company?’ Only Rudy Giuliani would try to overthrow their government, break wind loudly in court, have another one next to a dildo store – and then try to rehabilitate his image by singing ‘Shake Your Groove Thing’ dressed as a pineapple.”

Kimmel did, however, have harsh words for Fox for not even questioning the bad look here. “A lot of people at Fox had to sign off on this,” the late-night host declared. “Not one of them was like, ‘Hey, maybe we shouldn’t have the guy who is under investigation for helping to plot an insurrection signing on our show?’” And maybe that’s why the Fox News people have stayed largely quiet on the subject. Awkward!

A 30-second spot during Super Bowl LVI between the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams is going for as much as $6.5 to $7 million. How much is that in bitcoin? Lindsay Lohan, the Mean Girls actress who has pivoted towards cryptocurrency (and pissing off the Furries), appears in the Super Bowl spot for Planet Fitness, along with William Shatner, Dennis Rodman, Buzzy Cohen, and Danny Trejo.

“People are wondering, what’s gotten into Lindsay?” the commercial asks while Lohan works out. She’s killing it on Jeopardy! (featuring a generic voice as the host); she’s making the paparazzi cry by sleeping better than ever; and she’s traded “DUIs for DIYs,” which has to be the first DUI joke in Super Bowl ad history. “Maybe it’s not what’s gotten into Lindsay,” Shatner says with Kirk-like wisdom, “it’s what Lindsay’s gotten into.”

Besides hitting the elliptical, Lohan has also gotten into Netflix’s Christmas empire. The streamer’s 2022 preview includes a peek at Falling for Christmas, which follows “a spoiled hotel heiress who gets total amnesia in a skiing accident and finds herself in the care of a handsome lodge owner.” I would pay $6.5 to $7 million to watch it right now.

For more Super Bowl LVI commercials, including Gwyneth Paltrow tasting her own vagina (candle), click here.