After spending a year training for an insane stunt where he literally rides a motorcycle off of a cliff and parachutes mid-air to safety, Tom Cruise is already prepping for his next death-defying act. The actor is reportedly learning how to fly a World War II-era military plane called “The Widowmaker” for a stunt in the soon-to-be filming Mission: Impossible 8. Via The Sun:
The plane is to be filmed in a chase with another wartime aircraft. A source told me: “Tom had started to learn to fly a Boeing Stearman biplane earlier this year for a major stunt scene in Mission: Impossible 8.
“It’s obviously a highly skilled task but as usual he has no plans to cut any corners or bring in a stuntman.”
Of course, Cruise has plenty of experience with flying thanks to his work on Top Gun and its upcoming sequel Top Gun: Maverick. However, those are state of the art modern fighter jets that are actively maintained by the armed forces. For this latest stunt, Cruise will be flying an almost 80 year old plane with a reputation for leaving bodies behind. Not only that, but he’ll be pushing the plane to perform in a chase scene where anything could go wrong, but it wouldn’t be a Tom Cruise movie if he wasn’t in constant danger of from falling out of the sky at any moment. The guy jumps off of skyscrapers as casually as you and I walk through a park.
Cat Power dropped her latest album, Wanderer, in 2018, and now she’s ready to follow it up. Instead of a set of originals, though, the new project is a covers collection. The album, appropriately titled Covers (not to be confused with her 2000 covers album, The Covers Record), is set for release next year, on January 14.
After premiering her cover of Frank Ocean’s “Bad Religion” on The Late Late Show last night, she shared the studio version of it, as well as her rendition of “A Pair Of Brown Eyes” by The Pogues.
Marshall says her Ocean cover originates from when she would perform her own “In Your Face” (from 2018’s Wanderer) on tour: “That song was bringing me down, so I started pulling out lyrics from ‘Bad Religion’ and singing those instead of getting super depressed. Performing covers is a very enjoyable way to do something that feels natural to me when it comes to making music.”
She also noted her cover of Billie Holiday’s “I’ll Be Seeing You” was inspired by the 2019 death of collaborator Phillippe Zdar, saying, “When people who you love have been taken from you, there’s always a song that holds their memory in your mind. It’s a conversation with those on the other side, and it’s really important for me to reach out to people that way.”
Aside from the aforementioned tracks, another noteworthy inclusion is a cover of “Pa Pa Power” by Dead Man’s Bones, a duo consisting of Ryan Gosling (yes, that Ryan Gosling) and Zach Shields. Meanwhile, alongside the covers is an updated version of Cat Power’s own “Hate,” which has been re-titled “Unhate.”
Listen to Cat Power’s Ocean and Pogues covers above and find the Covers art and tracklist below.
Domino Records
1. “Bad Religion” (Frank Ocean)
2. “Unhate” (Cat Power)
3. “Pa Pa Power” (Dead Man’s Bones)
4. “White Mustang” (Lana Del Rey)
5. “A Pair Of Brown Eyes” (The Pogues)
6. “Against The Wind” (Bob Seger)
7. “Endless Sea” (Iggy Pop)
8. “These Days” (Jackson Browne)
9. “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” (Kitty Wells)
10. “I Had A Dream Joe” (Nick Cave)
11. “Here Comes A Regular” (The Replacements)
12. “I’ll Be Seeing You” (Billie Holiday)
Covers is out 1/14/2022 via Domino. Pre-order it here.
Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish movies available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
It’s a hell of trick, the way Michael Keaton went from being just a little more alive and electric than everyone else on the screen to how he now fades into roles where he’s at the center of slow-burn David and Goliath stories that mythologize the dogged pursuit of justice. It’s like he pointed his jets inward to melt away any sense of movie star sparkle to become the son of Pittsburgh everyman that he was born to be. One expects we’ll see that in the upcoming Dopesick, we certainly saw it in Spotlight, and from the producers of that film comes this story about the effort to compensate the families of 9/11 victims and the fight to not have that effort lose the thread of empathy and respect when confronted by such titanic loss. Watch it on Netflix.
It is time, apparently, once again, time for a new take on Cinderella, the classic story of a girl and her evil family and how magic and some rodents make her a star. This time around, we have Camilia Cabello in the lead role and Billy Porter as her fairy godparent and Idina Menzel as the evil stepmother and, look at that, Pierce Brosnan as the king. The whole thing basically puts a series of small twists on a story you’ve seen a few dozen times, but sometimes that’s okay. The cast is strong enough to make it all worth a shot. Watch it on Amazon.
What we have here is, on paper, a pretty decent movie. We’ve got Melissa McCarthy and Chris O’Dowd and Timothy Olyphant and a story about a grieving woman who learns to live and laugh and love again through an extended turf war with a combative bird that takes up residence on her property. No complaints so far. The tricky part is in the execution and, given some of the reviews, this all leans toward melodrama until it topples over. But it’s hard to argue with that cast, and you probably have Netflix anyway, so maybe give it a crack for yourself. Watch it on Netflix.
Here’s your reminder that yes, a musical based on Princess Diana’s life does, in fact, exist. And yes, there’s a song in it titled “Here Comes James Hewitt.” Filmed in an empty theater with the original Broadway cast before its official run kicks off, this show has it all: mechanical bulls, Spanish-language ballads, that fantasy trope where Diana crowd surfs during a cellist concert. The story’s not revelatory, and we can’t say it’s the best Diana re-telling we’ve ever seen, but it is the most … musical. Watch it on Netflix.
What we have here is an old-school erotic thriller — think Basic Instinct or Fatal Attraction — with White Lotus star Sydney Sweeney as one half of a curious couple who spends a not-insignificant amount of time spying on their exhibitionist-type neighbors. Things get weird and twisted and steamy, as they do in these kinds of movies, which were super popular in the 1980s and 1990s and have since just about disappeared. Might be worth it to give it a try, but think about closing your own blinds first. Watch it on Amazon Prime.
Clint Eastwood is back as an actor and director in Cry Macho. A movie with a razor-thin plot, where nothing much at all happens, but is still strangely enjoyable. There’s something irresistibly pleasant about the whole thing – which is just an excuse for Clint to star in a movie that could loosely be described as an “action” role. (Though, Clint does make sure he gets to throw a punch. With the assistance of a rooster named Macho.) Watch it on HBO Max.
Based on the Oscar-nominated short film of the same name, The Guilty is a single-location thriller shot during the pandemic that stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a disgraced cop who’s been demoted from patrolling the streets to answering 911 calls. Riley Keough, Paul Dano, Bill Burr, and Ethan Hawke lend their voices, but this is Gyllenhaal’s film; he fills nearly every frame of the 90-minute runtime. It’s his best showcase as an actor since Nightcrawler. Watch it on Netflix.
Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff finally gets a proper send-off in this actioner that aims to go back-to-basics but succeeds more on a personal level. The film fills in plenty of blanks following the events of Captain America: Civil War, but more importantly, we receive butt-kicking ladies in well-choreographed fight scenes and an emotionally resonant story that introduces us to the inner Natasha, as witnessed by Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova. She’s perhaps the only person in the world who’s allowed to tease Natasha, and their dynamic (and the chemistry between Scarlett and Florence) rules. The film also allows David Harbour to perform grunt-filled face work with a wild accent while the ladies swirl around him in hand-to-hand combat. It’s a winner. And it’s now available to subscribers with no extra fee. Watch it on Disney+.
James Wan, he of the Saw and Insidious and Conjuring movies, is back with a new horror film. This one focuses on a woman who has terrifying visions of brutal murders, which are ruining her life a little (as terrifying visions of brutal murders will do) and are also –surprise — actually happening in the real world (which is bad). None of it sounds like a good time for her. For you, though? Maybe. Watch it on Netflix.
Good news: The Muppets are back. Everyone’s favorite collection of fuzzy rascals take to Disney+ with a new spooky Halloween story about a haunted mansion. The Haunted Mansion, if we’re being technical. It might be a nice opportunity to fall down a Muppet rabbit hole again. There’s never a bad time to watch The Great Muppet Caper, after all. Watch it on Disney+.
The Sopranos are back. Kind of. The Sopranos are kind of back. Series creator David Chase’s long-rumored, long-awaited prequel movie about New Jersey’s most famous fictional crime family is finally here. What do we got? Well, for one, we’ve got Michael Gandolfini filling the role of a Tony Soprano and playing a younger version of the character his father made famous. We’ve also got a bunch more Moltisantis and 1960-70s fashion all against the backdrop of the 1967 riots in Newark. There’s a lot going here. You’ll probably want to check it out, if only to bask in a little nostalgia for a while. Watch it on HBO Max.
Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish shows available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
Eli Roth has so much going on over at Discovery+ this month (following his recent real-life horror/Shark-Week film on the streamer) that one has to wonder… is he running the joint? It’s a valid question, but more to the point, he’s teaming up with Ghost Adventures host Zak Bagans for this scripted anthology series, in which they illuminate nine of the world’s most cursed artifacts. These relics are actually in display in Bagans’ Vegas museum, but here, you’ll get the historic commentary in addition to having the pants scared off of you.
The New York Times bestselling novel comes to life when a group of give teens (the brain, the beauty, the jock, the criminal, yes, this sounds like a John Hughes imitation) go to detention, and one of them (the outcast) does not emerge. Hey, it happens. Was the death an accident? Not likely. Naturally, the four remaining students all become suspects, and all of them are looking sketchy. Again, it happens! Watch it on Peacock.
Sorry to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos but Apple TV+ is actually winning the space race right now. They’ve already delivered the terrific For All Mankind and now they’re taking us further, to the very borders of the galaxy for this sci-fi adaptation. The story follows a mathematician who develops a formula for predicting the end of a future Galactic Empire before devising a way to save it via a rebellion (of sorts). Yes, there’s a lot going on here, but prestige TV king Jared Harris is a pro at making us care about really complicated science – see Chernobyl – and the casting department has another ace up its sleeve in case you’re on the binge-watching fence. Four words: Lee. Pace. In. Space. Watch it on Apple TV+.
Critics of season one of The Morning Show won’t have an easy time credibly claiming a lack of action or interest in a second season that picks up the thread from the last while also servicing even more characters and the lingering threat of COVID. This is a heavyweight fight all over again with Aniston and Witherspoon leading the way, but look for more of Billy Crudup lounging in the chaos to spark the show once more. Watch it on Apple TV+.
Dave Chappelle’s stand-up comedy run with Netflix has been a lucrative one for both parties, and it’s sixth-and-final chapter time. Expect plenty of controversy and line-crossing (he defends J.K. Rowling and DaBaby, for example), as is customary for the man on the mic to deliver. And there’s no telling whether Chappelle and Netflix’s common goodwill (after CEO Ted Sarandos helped him receive The Chappelle Show license back, along with millions of dollars) will result in a re-upping of a deal beyond this installment, but for now, the comedian (with returning, Emmy-award winning director Stan Lathan) is closing things out. Watch it on Netflix.
Margaret Qualley (Once Upon A Time In Hollywood) stars in this heartbreaking adaptation of Stephanie Land’s New York Times best-selling memoir, Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive. This will, clearly, be a difficult watch, but Qualley’s raw portrayal (of a woman who flees an abusive relationship to go through exceedingly difficult times to break the cycle for her daughter) yields a burgeoning star. Watch it on Netflix. Watch it on Netflix.
Jon Stewart is back with an issue-oriented comedy/news hybrid that builds on a lot of the advances in form carved out by his former Daily Show colleagues. Can it work? To be sure, the brainpower and intensity make it feel like old times, but it’s the human connection — to the causes and in-studio guests — that might make it stand out as a powerful and necessary second act for Stewart as he brings substance and nuance to a strange world that both needs and seems to run away from those things. Watch it on Apple TV+.
Selena Gomez stars alongside the legendary Steve Martin and Martin Short, and the three portray NYC neighbors who aim to unravel an apparent murder inside their apartment building. Yes, they’re all podcasting because everyone does it (duh), and before long, the killer might be after them, too. Martin hasn’t written a feature film since the Pink Panther movies and Shopgirl, and we don’t wanna come out and call this trio a “much cooler Three Amigos” update, but Martin wrote that, too, so why not? Watch it on Hulu
Well, well, well. Guillermo turned out to be a vampire killer, which sure as heck came as a surprise to Nandor, Nadja, and Laszlo, and Colin. The four Staten Island roommates must figure out how to handle this conundrum, along with tackling the other challenges of this season. Those include dealing with wellness cults and gym culture, along with gargoyles, werewolves who play kickball, casinos, and more. In other words, this is still one of the funniest shows on TV. Watch it on FX and Hulu.
Get ready, The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor addicts, because creator Mike Flanagan’s back to cause us more horror fits. This happens to be his favorite project so far and revolves around an isolated community that lives on spooky Crockett Island, which gets even spookier due to a charismatic priest’s arrival. Naturally, a whole lot of supernatural shenanigans are afoot, but human nature can often be scarier than the ghosts that people can dream up. It’s dark, real dark. Watch it on Netflix.
The season finale is upon us, after many weeks of emotions and jokes and biscuits. Things got a little hairy in places. There were tears and doublecrosses. This weekend is the perfect time to get caught up if you fell behind or just continue pressing forward if you didn’t. Just don’t get mad at us if you start feeling things. Watch it on Apple TV+.
Netflix’s most popular show in, well, ever continues to burn up the discourse, and internet bandwidth all over the world. It’s been a while since we had a full-on phenomenon like this one. Get in there if you haven’t yet, or maybe get in there again if you have, if part to enjoy (?) all the class-based cynicism and murderous children’s games, and in part so you have something to talk about with your family during the quickly-approaching holiday season. Watch it on Netflix.
One of the highlights of 2016, as I barely remember it (people, the past two years have really been something) was when the Internet made the case that Ted Cruz may be the Zodiac Killer. I mean, c’mon. It will never not be funny that someone baselessly claimed that Cruz went on a tour of terror, years prior to his on 1970 birth, and it was such a harmless, preposterous meme that it was fine to run with it. After all, have you ever seen Cruz and the Zodiac Killer in the same place at the same time? I thought so.
Well, Cruz never denied being the Zodiac Killer, so I think you all know what I’m thinking about this. So, it really came as quite a blow to learn that, this week, an independent cold-case group known as the Case Breakers said that they solved the Zodiac Killer’s identity. They believe that Gary Francis Poste, who died in 2018, is the actual serial killer who also inspired that David Fincher movie starring Robert Downey Jr. Well, the group based their claim on “forensic evidence and photos from Poste’s darkroom” and “scars on his forehead that similarly matches scars on a sketch of the Zodiac.” Also, Fox News quoted one of Poste’s former neighbors who was like, “[I]t all kind of makes sense now.”
Well, there’s probably chain-of-custody issues that will could prevent this new “evidence” from going anywhere. In fact, the FBI would not acknowledge the claims to CNN following an inquiry while declaring, “The Zodiac Killer case remains open. We have no new information to share at the moment.” And Ted Cruz, interestingly enough, decided to retweet coverage with a Dr. Evil GIF and no further commentary.
Oh c’mon, Ted. He’s loving the attention, obviously, and he previously joked (following his Cancun debacle), “Look, I haven’t had this much negative press coverage since Northern California in the 1960s.” Oh look, Ted tweeted an RDJ GIF, too.
Good day for Ted Cruz, I guess? It must be noted that a law enforcement spokesperson in Riverside County, California threw some cold water on the Case Breakers’ claim that Francis Poste also killed a woman (Cheri Jo Bates) in their jurisdiction. The PD declared that Zodiac definitely did not kill Bates, so hmm, that’s quite a wrinkle in the Case Breakers’ whole argument. And the search for the Zodiac Killer continues… while Ted Cruz roams free.
Getty Image/Ralph Ordaz / Buena Vista Pictures/Walt Disney
Brendan Fraser’s supposedly making a comeback, or a Brenaissance. You may have heard as much. Those are strong words, too, because they presuppose that Fraser went somewhere and emerged, fully formed, into Martin Scorsese’s new project, Killers of the Flower Moon, that’s currently shooting in Oklahoma. News of that casting met with dramatic results. People were incredibly happy for Fraser to land this role, years after his career ceased to flow like gangbusters, during a period when Fraser had a lot going on otherwise. For one thing, he believes that he was blacklisted from Hollywood following alleged sexual misconduct by producer Peter Berk. For another, Fraser’s suffered some injuries that required surgery. He’s been through some sh*t and recently, Fraser grew visibly moved upon hearing that people were rooting for him.
Well, the thing is, Fraser never completely disappeared. Sure, the blockbuster roles faded — yet people still remember how charismatic he was in The Mummy, George of the Jungle, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Airheads, Bedazzled, and so on — but he’s been regularly acting in smaller gigs. There’s also a fantastic role that Fraser picked up a handful of years ago. And it’s a role that he is absolutely crushing. If you’ve ever considered yourself to be a Brendan Fraser fan, you’d be doing yourself a genuine disservice if you didn’t indulge in this one.
HBO Max
I’m talking about Doom Patrol, the DC Universe show that got picked up by HBO Max and is now streaming its third season. It’s a show about f*cked up, misfit superheroes and stacked with a wonderful cast including Matt Bomer, who gives a layered portrayal of a gay superhero, the bandaged-up Negative Man (Matt Bomer), and Diane Guerrero as 64 incarnations of Crazy Jane (including a Karen before her time). Y’all, Diane is phenomenal and gets to do so much more than play the cliché that we saw in Orange Is the New Black, but we’re here to talk about Brendan Fraser.
He’s a guy who’s adept at being funny and using his physicality, often using his looming size (along with exaggerated facial expressions) to advantage for stunts, like swinging from vines, and he wasn’t afraid to push things for action pictures like The Mummy to his eventual detriment. In 2018, Fraser told GQ that he really f*cked up his body in movies. Knee and back surgeries are no joke and probably made him long for the days when Weezing the Juice in Encino Man was the most dangerous move on the agenda. Action and comedy aside, though, Fraser has also taken dramatic turns, as with Crash and Gods and Monsters, which proved that he could have lot going on under the surface.
With Doom Patrol, Fraser gets to do it all in an unusually hefty voice role:
– He gets to be tragic and angry and funny and frustrated and soft and harsh and caring and, paradoxically, very human, despite his character enduring a living nightmare in a robot’s body. He’s the tin man with a heart, kind-of, only that we’re talking about a brain.
– Fraser portrays a former race car-driving superstar, Cliff Steele, who suffers a tragic, seemingly life-ending accident. His body is destroyed (and there are particulars that I don’t want to spoil here), but Dr. Niles Caulder is able to extract Cliff’s brain, which he places into a robot’s body. This transforms Cliff into Robotman and, of course, technically preserves Cliff’s “life” and gives him superhuman strength and all that jazz, and makes him virtually indestructible. Yet what kind of life, really, is Cliff able to enjoy?
– Cliff can see and hear through Caulder’s engineering, but he can’t feel anything. And I’m not talking about emotions here. There are plenty of those when Cliff sorts out residual feelings about his wife or attempts to reconnect with his daughter. Rather, I’m talking about the sense of touch. Cliff can no longer reach out and pet a dog, for example, or touch a person and feel anything. Nothing tactile registers to him. It’s enough to drive anyone crazy, and it’s a heartbreaking realization for viewers to witness. Physical sensations are foreign now; he can’t orgasm (though he can fake it). That’s a source of comedy, sure, but even Cliff’s memories of tactile sensations are fading:
“You know how they say the longer you’re away from people, the harder it is to remember what they look like? I have that but with sensations. I used to hold my arm out when it was raining, feeling the drops hit my skin. I remember doing that but not the feeling. Running my hands through my wife’s hair. In my head, I know it felt amazing. But I don’t know at the same time.”
– Not being able to feel sensations would be difficult for any actor to fathom. However, it’s particularly impressive because Fraser’s most endearing turns on film usually saw him engage in high physical comedy. In Doom Patrol, he’s doing the opposite. His character’s physicality, or should I say, the non-physicality of it all, opens the hatch to a great deal of emotion that he must communicate with only his voice; for the most part, we don’t actually see Fraser in this show, beyond racing flashbacks. It must also be noted that Fraser has given credit where credit is due to his character’s robotic movements. That’s actually Riley Shanahan inside of the suit, as Fraser revealed while reuniting with Scrubs-stars-turned-podcasters Zach Braff and Donald Faison during an episode of Fake Doctors, Real Friends:
“[Riley] is a wonderful comedic performer with fantastic timing, and he is full-on playing the character through a mask. He does the heavy lifting there… It’s like a dream job. Somebody else wears the thing, shows up for you, and in recent months I don’t even go in the studio. I can do ADR on a cell phone.”
Yet Fraser downplaying what he is really doing here. This can’t be an ordinary voice gig. This doesn’t roll out like what Chris Rock described as his typical voice work process while presenting at the Oscars. According to Rock, his experience is what one would ordinarily perceive: he stands in a booth and repeats a few lines (while playing a Madagascar zebra with the boisterous version of Chris Rock’s own personality), and “they pay me a million dollars!”
The voice work required to play Cliff/Robotman seems much more intense. Imagine how difficult it would be to portray someone who cannot feel sensations. Cliff’s consciousness is stuck in a robot body, possibly forever. It’s hell, and he’s frustrated as f*ck while also helping to save the world. It’s a lot of work to be able to express that anguish and balance all those moods, through only a voice when one is also trying to communicate everything that Cliff’s also feeling inside of his soul. It’s a disembodied portrayal, by nature, and Fraser, a very physical actor, must convincingly run the gamut of moods as Riley pulls off Cliff’s often-stilted movements, whether that’s while dancing or perching on a curb while Fraser purges all of that emotion.
HBO Max/DC Universe
To Fraser’s credit, he expresses Cliff’s frustration and anguish (and his crudeness) while still injecting humor. Metaphorically, he’s swinging from vines here, and you can hear it in his voice. It’s nuts, how he pulls it off, working out his rage by dropping enough f-bombs to rival Sam Jackson. Cliff’s failingly macho struggles come to a surprisingly poignant place, as well, which illustrates the careful, almost precarious balance achieved by the writers. Cliff Steele is a group effort, for sure, yet it’s Fraser’s emotional execution that makes him work (and makes Cliff a believably better person, in time).
Granted, I’m really laying things on thick here, but Doom Patrol deserves all the accolades for being ahead of its time (in comic-book form) and lovingly rendered onscreen by Warner Bros. And Fraser’s role, as he portrays it, feels authentic and earnest. I’m not sure whether this is happening because Fraser has experienced plenty of wars against his own body, and he’s gone through some hell. Yet he’s really doling out even more than Cliff Steele, at least as he was as a human, deserves. Yet that’s the beauty of it all. Fraser’s performance in Doom Patrol is unexpectedly transcendent. He’s at the top of the mountain, man, hacking into consciousness from inside a robot bod. Robotman’s a tough gig, and Fraser’s gonna crush that Scorsese role, too.
‘Doom Patrol’ is currently barreling through Season 3 on HBO Max.
After nearly two years of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, many states are still seeing record-high numbers of infections and hospitalizations. Why? Simple: Vaccinations, you dumb f*ck! On Wednesday night, Jimmy Kimmel gave his viewers an update on the COVID situation in America right now—and in California in particular. “A lot of people want to know why COVID numbers are so low here, and experts believe it’s because we haven’t had a Kid Rock concert in California since August of 2018,” Kimmel joked.
After putting up a COVID map of community transmission rates, Kimmel pointed out how California and Connecticut were the only two states not in the bright red danger zone. And he has an idea as to why that is: While the nationwide average of fully vaccinated adults is only about 57 percent, “more than 80 percent of eligible Californians are vaccinated,” Kimmel explained. “And many who are not are taking to the streets now to protest mandatory inoculation.”
Kimmel then showed footage of the scene right outside his studio, “where one loud anti-vaxxer got a hard clapback from a man living on the streets.” In it, a small group of clearly clueless anti-vaxxing “protestors” decided to cite the homeless population as part of their argument for why vaccines are unnecessary. Here’s how that went:
Protestor: Do you see all these homeless people around? Are they dead in the streets of COVID? Hell, no! Why?
Homeless Man: Because I’m vaccinated, dumb f*ck.
“She did ask why,” Kimmel pointed out.
You can watch the full exchange above, beginning around the 1:30 mark.
Tucker Carlson is not prone to gushing. But every so often, someone impresses the Fox News host enough with their intellect that he has to give credit where it’s due. While interviewing Andrew Yang for his daytime talk show Tucker Carlson Today, Mediaite notes that Carlson took a few moments to lavish some praise on… Ted Kaczynski. Yes, the Unabomber. The math professor-turned-hermit who spent nearly two decades living in the woods and mailing homemade bombs to dozens of people.
So just how did a conversation with Yang, who is best known for his plan to give every American adult $1,000 per month as part of his 2020 presidential bid, turn toward domestic terrorism? It all comes back to Yang’s recent decision to cut ties with the Democratic party and form his own third party: the Forward Party. When Yang expressed his concern that a two-party system is not tenable, Carlson agreed—and noted that:
“Ted Kaczynski, I have to say, has written very convincingly on this. The Unabomber. Bad person, but a smart analysis, I think, of the way systems work. His argument is that large organizations order time morph into purely self-preservation projects. A big system in the end protects itself and that’s kind of all it does.”
We’d like to think that Kaczynski was listening and appreciated the shout-out, but he’s serving out a life sentence for killing three people with his homemade explosives and injuring nearly two dozen more.
After months of teasing, Charli XCX is finally kicking off a new era. A month ago, she got things started with the new single “Good Ones,” and now she has brought the track to TV with her performance on The Tonight Show yesterday.
In the song’s original video, Charli finds herself dancing through a goth funeral before making her way to cemetery and continuing to strut her stuff among the headstones. Her Fallon performance is essentially a re-creation of the latter scene, as she performs the track in a spooky, smokey graveyard setting.
Charli previously said of the song, “This song is essentially about always kind of running away from people who are good for you and running towards the people who are dangerous, you know? Kind of going for bad people and maybe it’s because they’re a bit more fun and exciting… but also bad for you. And I think that’s something that everyone’s sort of been through at some point, maybe… I hope its not just me.”
Watch Charli perform “Good Ones” above.
Charli XCX is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
The NBA kicked off its preseason this week and fittingly, like a younger sibling tagging along, Jr. NBA Week will start Saturday. It’s the seventh year that Jr. NBA, the league’s global youth basketball program for boys and girls, has devoted a week to celebrating and promoting some of its unique partnerships and initiatives, and this year, the focus is on getting kids back on physical courts.
“I’ll say in particular this year, we felt an urgency to focus on expanding opportunities for boys and girls to participate in our sport and to make sure we were providing access in an equitable way,” David Krichavsky, Senior Vice President and Head of Youth Basketball Development at the NBA says over the phone. “And that really comes off the experience of the past 18 months and the COVID-19 pandemic, when sports were taken away from young people. And really, the experience of the past 18 months as well shined a bright light on the lack of equity across communities, including access to sport.”
It was in examining where that lack of equity stemmed from that helped to guide Krichavsky and Jr. NBA to partnerships with Girls Leadership and Laureus Sport for Good, along with the new initiatives with these organizations designed to remove barriers to participation in youth basketball.
One especially troubling statistic emerging from the pandemic’s effect on youth participation in sports overall is that kids from low-income houses are quitting sports at six times the rate as those from high-income homes. By the age of 14, girls drop out of sports twice as often as boys. As such, the partnership with Girls Leadership, a non-profit leadership development organization that teaches girls to exercise the power of their voice, feels especially urgent.
“We have had, since 2018, our Her Time to Play program, which is a program in partnership with the WNBA to provide girls opportunities in the sport of basketball and women increased opportunities to coach youth. And we’ve had a tremendous amount of success with that program,” Krichavsky says, adding, “but have a new partnership with Girls Leadership that’s intended to provide enhanced curriculum, also very much focused on social and emotional learning and leadership development.”
That program is targeted to reach 20,000 girls over the next NBA season, increasing and enriching girls and young women’s engagement in sports. One part of that enrichment is poised to come from an effort to go full-circle on who youth first encounter organized play from. In partnership with Laureus Sport for Good, an organization focused on improving the lives of young people through sports, Jr. NBA will launch an online training program for youth basketball coaches, organizers, and educators focused on curriculum that includes social and emotional learning, leadership, and player-coach relationships.
“What we thought was a really important point of opportunity and expansion for us,” Krichavsky says, noting Jr. NBA’s existing suite of resources developed to support coaches, “was giving coaches tools to develop their players off the court. And so this online training with Laureus has really focused on social and emotional learning, and helping coaches educate their players around issues like leadership and mental health and building empathy and collaboration with their teammates.”
Krichavsky referred to the new initiatives with Girls Leadership and Laureus Sport for Good as two pillars out of the groundwork his team used to develop Jr. NBA’s new partnerships and their desired impact, with the third being perhaps the most important.
“The third pillar really comes from the fact that schools give us the greatest opportunity to reach the largest number of youth,” Krichavsky stresses. “We’ve had a number of programs in the school setting previously, but we’ve doubled down on that commitment and we’ll be reaching an additional 3,000 elementary and middle schools in the year ahead, again with enhanced resources and curriculum to support basketball in the PE setting, as well as the afterschool setting.”
It makes sense — to reach the youth who have been shut out of sports over the course of the pandemic, whether through barriers to access or as fallout of fielding the pandemic itself, the most direct way is to bring basketball to them. To do so, Jr. NBA uses an existing network of non-profits to help identify schools across the U.S. with basketball programs that are looking to do more.
It’s on that note that I’m prompted to ask Krichavsky, personally, what excites him most about these new initiatives and the work Jr. NBA is doing. His answer is two-fold, and fits the ethos of these new partnerships and initiatives perfectly, though it’s entirely personal.
He immediately touches on the concentrated efforts in these programs to reach and impact girls, adding that he’s a dad to two young girls himself, and brightens as he notes that Jr. NBA’s first in-person event since the pandemic began will be taking place Sunday, the day after Jr. NBA Week starts, with an outdoor event in New York at Brooklyn Bridge Park focused on play in accordance with the NBA’s health and safety protocols as well as life skills and off-court development.
“All the kids will be masked and we’ll be playing in accordance with the protocols designed by our NBA health and safety team,” Krichavsky says, noting that as successful as Jr. NBA At Home program was, “we’re all very, very excited to get back out there and hear the bouncing ball in person.”
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