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As The Batman gets closer to its March premiere, the cast and director Matt Reeves have been spilling details about the latest take on the Dark Knight that puts Robert Pattinson under the cowl. Taking over the role of Catwoman is Zoë Kravitz, who recently shared the unique fighting style that she brings to the iconic villain/hero.

While talking to Empire, Kravitz revealed that she studied the fighting style of actual cats and worked with her stunt coordinator to develop a more grounded combat approach that isn’t just a bunch of “impressive backflips” that wouldn’t make any sense for this version of Selina Kyle:

“We watched cats and lions and how they fight,” Kravitz tells Empire in the world-exclusive new The Batman issue, “and talked about what is actually possible when you’re my size, and Batman’s so much stronger than me. What is my skill? It’s being fast and tricky. So we did some really interesting floor work that incorporated different kinds of martial arts and capoeira and a kind of feline, dance-like movement.”

The Batman catches up with Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne during his second year of fighting crime, but the film will act as sort of an origin story for Catwoman, who’s moving beyond just learning how to survive. “I think there’s a lot of space to grow and I think we are watching her become what I’m sure will be the femme fatale,” Kravitz told Empire.

(Via Empire Magazine)

If you’re somehow not convinced that Ed Sheeran is a massive star, there’s proof in his streaming figures. “Shape Of You” has been Spotify’s most-streamed song for a while, and now the Sheeran hit has reached a milestone that no other song has reached before: Chart Data reports that “Shape Of You” has eclipsed 3 billion streams on Spotify.

As of this post, the Spotify app indicates the song has 2,998,778,047 plays. Regardless, if the song hasn’t technically reached 3 billion yet, it likely will in the coming days and may have already by the time you read this. For reference, Spotify’s next most-streamed song is The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” which currently has just shy of 2.7 billion plays.

On December 10, 2018, “Shape Of You” became the first song to top 2 billion Spotify streams. It wasn’t the first to hit 1 billion plays, though, but rather, the third, doing so on June 8, 2017. It achieved the feat after Drake’s “One Dance” (which did it first) and The Chainsmokers and Halsey’s “Closer” did.

Meanwhile, Sheeran has two other songs that are getting close to 2 billion Spotify streams: “Perfect” is at about 1.92 billion and “Thinking Out Loud’ has around 1.9 billion plays. If either of those hit 2 billion streams, Sheeran will join Post Malone as the only artist with multiple songs that have at least 2 billion spins. If they both do, Sheeran will be the only artist with three such tracks.

Ed Sheeran is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Anthony Fauci is calling for Fox News to immediately fire commentator Jesse Watters after The Five co-host encouraged people to ambush the doctor in public and “kill shot” his credibility. “The kill shot, with an ambush. Deadly because he doesn’t see it coming,” Watters said at an event for the conservative grassroots organization Turning Point USA this week. “This is when you say, ‘Dr. Fauci, you funded risky research at a sloppy Chinese lab, the same lab that sprung this pandemic on the world. You know why people don’t trust you, don’t you?’ Boom, he is dead! He is dead! He’s done!”

This is the same Jesse Watters who got tricked by a fake photo, attempted to dispute the fabled pee tape with a mind-boggling theory, and referred to Joe Biden as an “angry man” who’s taking his “anger out on the unvaxxed,” so at least he’s staying on brand. (Watters also hates it when people ambush him.)

Fauci called Watters’ comments “crazy” and “a reflection of the craziness that goes on in society.” He continued, “The only thing that I had ever done throughout these two years is to encourage people to practice good public health practices, to get vaccinated, to be careful in public settings, to wear a mask. And for that, you have some guy out there saying that people should be giving me a kill shot, to ambush me?”

“That’s awful that he said that. And he’s going to go very likely unaccountable. I mean, whatever network he’s on is not going to do anything for him. I mean, that’s crazy. The guy should be fired on the spot!”

Fox News has yet to publicly condemn Watters’ comments — and based on the network’s history, probably never will.

(Via Mediaite)

Anyone watching Tucker Carlson on Monday night might have easily thought they had stumbled upon the Comedy Central Roast of Eric Swalwell. But nope, it was just the Fox News host laying into the California congressman for what most people can only surmise is Swalwell’s opinion that unvaccinated people should not be able to travel by plane.

On Sunday night, Swalwell tweeted that he was on a flight headed toward San Francisco and “it is one-hundred percent batty that the unvaccinated are allowed to fly. It’s unsafe in the cabin and we are transporting the virus. Requiring the vaccine to fly is the LEAST we can do to stop the spread.”

Carlson, who may or may not be vaccinated (he’s probably vaxxed and boosted, who are we kidding?), seemed to take severe umbrage at the opinion that people who have not been immunized against a highly contagious virus that has so far killed more than 5.3 million people around the world should not be allowed to share airspace with those who would prefer to not die from COVID. So he launched a very personal attack against Swalwell, whom Carlson described as “the most physically unclean member of Congress”

As Mediaite reports, Carlson—after saying that both the airlines and “any sane physician” would disagree with Swalwell’s anti-vaxxer airplane ban—seems to think that Swalwell’s dick is the real public health crisis. Carlson charged that the congressman “now imagines himself a public health official with the power to make these decisions. So, before we go any further and grant Eric Swalwell that power, we probably ought to see his medical records. It’d be kind of ironic if a guy with multiple chlamydia infections was lecturing the rest of us about how to keep safe from a virus. We await that data.”

Though Carlson offered no proof of his accusations or truly intimate knowledge of the health of Swalwell’s nether regions, the image posted over his shoulder said a lot (also: we like the art above his bed):

The “In Bed With Fang Fang” caption was a reference to Swalwell’s reported sexual liaisons with suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang, who raised funds for a number of Democrats, including Swalwell. Fang fled the country in 2015; while Swalwell refused to say whether he and Fang were intimately involved, he swears that he did not share any sensitive information with the reported operative.

It’s worth noting that Carlson and Swalwell got into a bit of a text tiff this summer, with the Congressman claiming, “Sorry, Tucker, I’m just not that into you.”

As for those chlamydia claims? To borrow a phrase from Carlson: We await the data.

(Via Mediaite)

While the CDC reports that approximately 62 percent of Americans are now fully vaccinated, there are some people down in Texas who think that drinking a bleach-like cocktail of disinfectants is the better way to ward off COVID. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this group of pharmaceutical nincompoops are some of the same QAnon cultists who made a pilgrimage to the Big D last month in order to witness JFK Jr. reemerge, possibly with his dad in tow, in order to restore Donald Trump to power so that the big guy can take care of all the Satan-worshipping pedophiles who are currently running our country.

While it’s unclear whether these followers of Q are still waiting for JFK Jr. (who died in 1999, but is either going to be resurrected or reveal that he’s just been hiding out in Pennsylvania for 20-plus years, as one does) or some other batsh*t other thing to happen, The Dallas Observer is reporting that in an effort to protect themselves from COVID, many of them are drinking from a communal bowl of chlorine dioxide (an industrial disinfectant very similar to bleach) and other chemicals. This information came to the outlet via the family of one of the followers, a woman who abandoned her husband and children to follow charismatic QAnon cult leader Michael Brian Protzman to Dallas.

The cultist, whose name has been withheld, has kept in touch with her family and told them about what they’re doing. “She was proud to tell us that she was the one mixing it up and giving it to everybody,” one family member told The Observer.

“She’s always been into, you know, natural remedies, getting aluminum out of deodorant, things like that,” Sean Leek, the woman’s son, explained. “But that led to anti-vaxxing, and anti-vaxxing led to QAnon.”

It is, of course, impossible to forget that moment in April 2020 when then-president/idiot extraordinaire Trump suggested that consuming bleach might be a good way to end the COVID pandemic—while Dr. Deborah Birx, the newly-appointed White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator looked on in a mix of horror, disbelief, and oh-my-god-what-did-I-do-and-where’s-the-nearest-exit.

As Michael Murney wrote for The Dallas Observer: “It’s unclear why the group is drinking the chemical potion, as many believe the coronavirus, which has killed over 800,000 people in the U.S. and millions worldwide so far, is a government fabrication.”

While it’s terrifying that it even needs to be said, the Daily Beast writes that bleach is not a recommended treatment/protectant from COVID or any other virus:

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), chlorine dioxide has “not been shown to be safe and effective for any use, including COVID-19, but these products continue to be sold as a remedy for treating autism, cancer, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis and flu, among other conditions, despite their harmful effects.”

It is sold online under various names, including “Miracle Mineral Solution,” “Miracle Mineral Supplement,” “Master Mineral Solution,” and “Chlorine Dioxide Protocol.” Ingestion can lead to respiratory failure, potentially fatal abnormal heart rhythms, life-threateningly low blood pressure, acute liver failure, and the rapid destruction of red blood cells. Members of a Florida family hawking chlorine dioxide through their Genesis II Church of Health and Healing in Bradenton were arrested by federal agents in 2020. They reportedly earned more than $1 million from sales of their “miracle” elixir.

When asked what message he might want to share with his mother, Sean Leek told The Dallas Observer, “We want you home… Your family loves you and when you’re ready to come back we’re here for you.”

(Via The Dallas Observer)

While Taylor Swift’s album Evermore was released in late 2020, it has had a huge 2021: The album has broken vinyl sales records this year on its way to becoming the year’s best-selling vinyl album. For a while, it seemed like Evermore would easily end 2021 as the year’s top vinyl LP, but then Adele’s 30 happened. Adele took vinyl seriously with her new album, turning in the project months early to make sure there were plenty of LPs available, which sparked (debunked) rumors that the album was responsible for industry-wide vinyl manufacturing delays. As far as which album can be crowned the year’s best-selling vinyl, it turns out the race was extremely close.

Billboard reports that on the new Vinyl Albums chart dated December 25 (the final chart of 2021), 30 is on top for a fourth week thanks to 41,000 copies sold during the week ending December 16. That brings the album’s total vinyl sales up to 234,000 copies. Meanwhile, the vinyl sales total for Evermore now stands, as of the latest charting week, at 232,000. This means that 30 ends the year as the best-selling vinyl thanks to just 2,000 more copies sold, which amount to a difference in sales figures of less than one percent.

This feat is even more impressive when you consider that while Evermore has been out for over a year, 30 was only just released a month ago, on November 19.

The Witcher season 2 was not only a banger (in both a literal and figurative sense) but also contained a special treat for those who binged hard, right through the season finale: a teaser trailer for The Witcher: Blood Origin. This is prequel series, so we won’t see Geralt or Jaskier or Yennifer or Ciri. Heck, this series takes place so far in the past that there’s not even a swaggery Vesemir in sight. We do, however, see a pre-Witcher world, which appears to be exclusively populated by Elves, and this six-part limited series shall lead up to the creation of the first Witcher in novelist Andrzej Sapkowski’s world.

Netflix released a list of characters, which reveals that the prequel will have a sense of humor on its hands, much like the O.G. series. “Uthrok One-Nut,” who will be portrayed by Dylan Moran. We don’t get to know him in this trailer, but I’m guessing that the ghost of Sons Of Anarchy‘s Half Sack Eps would like a word. In addition, the cast includes Sophia Brown (Éile), Jacob Collins Levy (Eredin), Michelle Yeoh (Scían), Laurence O’Fuarain (Fjall), Mirren Mack (Merwyn), Lenny Henry (Balor), Lizzie Annis (Zacaré), Huw Novelli (Callan “Brother Death”), and more. From the series logline:

Set in an elven world 1200 years before the world of The Witcher: Blood Origin will tell a story lost to time – the creation of the first prototype Witcher, and the events that lead to the pivotal in “conjunction of the spheres,” when the worlds of monsters, men, and elves merged to become one.

This story takes place 1,200 years before we first meet Grumpy Geralt of Rivia. Press materials point toward the “Conjunction of the Spheres” being the time when “the worlds of monsters, men, and elves merged to become one.” It sure sounds like there are so many monsters running amuck that the Elves or Men banded together to create those mutant, monster-slaying Witchers. If that’s how things go down, it sure adds some interesting shading to the Elve-animosity that we later see in the flagship series.

Look for The Witcher: Blood Origin to debut in 2022.

Taylor Swift’s new 10-minute version of “All Too Well” made history a few weeks ago when it became the longest song to ever go No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Jack Antonoff, who produced the recording, thinks there’s a big lesson to be had from that.

In a recent interview with Relix, he said:

“You’ve gotta love those moments and hold them close. My initial response was to call out everyone in the industry who told me that no one has attention spans anymore. By the way, the lesson from that isn’t to go make a 10-minute song: The lesson from that is don’t f*cking listen to what the industry says. I mean, it happens time and time again. Can you imagine 20 years ago, someone telling you that trap was gonna be the biggest genre at some point? It’s insane.”

He then also took a moment to shout out a trend he’s noticed emerging in the UK and one artist in particular, saying, “It’s like there’s a thing I love that’s happening in the UK right now which has these sort of Lou Reed-esque spoken word verses with super melodic choruses that all these bands are doing. There’s a specific artist named Self Esteem, who I love. So it’s coming hard and that’s not something you would’ve expected X amount of years ago. Industry predictions on art is an absurd concept and it takes all the joy out of everything. The whole excitement of art and music and live performance and record making is we have no f*cking clue what’s gonna happen next.”

Check out the full Antonoff interview here.

This past October, The Weeknd said on his Apple Music show Memento Mori that his next album is “complete,” but that some additions needed to be made before release. “Some exciting features coming out in the fall before the album drops,” he said. “We’ll slowly be unraveling that info in the next couple months.” Well, we just caught wind of an exciting feature, although it seems as though this is more closely related to the recent diamond certification of “Blinding Lights” than the next album.

In a newly-announced NFT collectibles series, The Weeknd and Billboard are releasing a 7-piece animated series that celebrates the song’s designation as “The No. 1 song of all time.” At 90 weeks, the song became the longest charting song on the Billboard Hot 100 and the news was announced on the cover of Billboard magazine. The cover is one of the seven collectibles, which is available to view on the NFT platform, Autograph, which was co-founded by Tom Brady of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It’s being auctioned off on OpenSea, which dubs itself “the world’s largest NFT marketplace.” A statement on the collection elaborated on each piece in the collection:

“The 7-piece, animated collection is composed of four designs, including a single NFT featuring The Weeknd’s recent cover on Billboard Magazine, which first announced the news of his record-breaking achievement, and three digital trading cards creatively inspired by the iconic “Blinding Lights” music video. The digital trading cards will be released in three tiers of rarity, and each of the collection’s unique, culturally-significant collectibles is individually signed to allow fans the opportunity to own a defining moment in music history as never before, from one of today’s most influential artists.”

For what it’s worth, The Weeknd is now a part of the Board of Directors at Autograph. The auction began on December 20 and continues until December 23 at 1 PM EST. All of the bidding is done via the ETH cryptocurrency. Take a look at the magazine cover NFT below and view the whole collection here.

In-arena proposals happen fairly regularly around the NBA, but on Monday night in Utah there was a far more elaborate proposal than the standard surprise “will you marry me?” Jumbotron proposal.

The Utah Jazz played host to the Charlotte Hornets and during one of the breaks in play, the Jazz dancers came out for a routine, when suddenly the music shifted and all of the dancers but one switched up what they were doing, leaving her in a state of confusion trying to figure out why what they had rehearsed wasn’t happening. That was for a good reason, as the rest of the crew were all in on a surprise proposal that was coming from her boyfriend, who trotted out to midcourt for the special moment — and happily got a “yes.”

The in-arena proposal comes with an element of risk, given you’re doing this in a public forum in front of thousands, but this one was done particularly well and seemed to get the intended happy surprise response. It’s pretty great to see her go from confused and maybe a little mad that everyone switched up the routine without telling her to realizing what was happening as her boyfriend appeared on the court. Congrats to the happy couple, and the bar has certainly been raised for arena proposals.