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For the first time, skateboarding is an official Olympic sport, and after watching the men’s and women’s street skateboarding events this weekend, our family has decided it’s officially a totally welcome addition.

I grew up with a skateboarding brother during the earliest years of Tony Hawk’s career, so the sport itself isn’t unfamiliar to me. But I’ve never really followed skate competitions and wasn’t sure how it would translate into an Olympic event. As it turns out, there are several things that make it both entertaining and refreshing to watch in comparison with other sports.

For one, let’s talk about the “uniform” the athletes wear. As debates rage over volleyball bikinis and gymnastics leotards, here are the male and female skateboarders in long, loose pants and baggy t-shirts. They are the most comfortable-looking Olympians I’ve ever seen (being out in the humid Japanese heat notwithstanding). They look like they just popped off the couch after watching a movie and decided to go out and hop on their skateboard.

Secondly, hearing the announcers call out the names of the tricks was surprisingly entertaining. We laughed out loud as they strung together words like “That was a gnarly Frontside Half Cab Kickflip to a Nollie Backside 180!” as if those are just normal things everyone recognizes. Half the time it sounded like they were making things up (they weren’t, of course), which we found just delightful. At the same time, the announcers were good about explaining what the tricks entailed so that those of us who aren’t familiar with the ins and outs could appreciate what we were seeing.

Third, it was awesome to see the chill culture of skateboarding take root on the world’s biggest, most intense sports stage. Skaters are competitive, no doubt, but they also all cheer each other on and seem so supportive of one another. In skateboarding, anyone landing an epic trick is a cause for celebration, and anyone who stumbles gets a pat on the back and a high five for the attempt. There’s no cutthroat vibe here, just a unique combo of concentration and laid-backness, which is fun to witness.

Surely, there was heartbreak among those who hoped to medal, as there is in any sport. But the vibe was just different than it is n most sports. I mean, this is Margielyn Didal, who finished 7th and had some hard falls during the finals. She was like this pretty much the whole time. Pure joy.

The best tricks Margielyn Didal brought out today are these dance moves 😅

#PusoPilipinas #Tokyo2020 #PHI https://t.co/mpzKGEi0YT

— Puso Pilipinas (@puso_pilipinas)
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And how about the diversity in ages, especially among the women skaters? We almost ended up with two teens and a 34-year-old on the podium in the women’s street competition, with a spread of 21 years between the youngest and oldest. (American skater Alexis Sablone turns 35 in a couple of weeks and ended up in 4th place after the final trick.) The gold and silver medal winners are both 13 years old, and the bronze winner is 16. And while the young skaters dominated in the end, Sablone showed that it’s not just a sport for the youth.

(But let’s also take a moment of awe for these 13-year-olds, Momiji Nishiya of Japan and Rayssa Leal of Brazil. Holy moly. So much talent and such great sportsmanship and such a young age.)

Finally, let’s have a moment of appreciation for the sport itself. It took a long time for the athletic world to fully appreciate the skill and practice it takes to do things like flip a moving board with four wheels several feet into the air with your feet, make it do just the right number of flips and turns in the air beneath you, stop it in exactly the right position to slide down a railing over a flight of stairs, and then land it on the ground—all while the board and you are flying through the air—without falling off. When skaters do it perfectly, it looks easy. But it’s a million little movements and balances and weight distributions and calculations that make these tricks work, and as we saw from how many they don’t land how hard it really is.

Also, they land on concrete when they fall. Ouch. And sometimes things like this happen:

Double ouch.

Our family and friends have thoroughly enjoyed seeing skateboarding take its place on the Olympic stage, and are looking forward to seeing the park skateboarding competition coming up. Good move making skateboarding an official Olympic sport, finally. Definitely recommend checking out the highlights if you missed it:

THIRTEEN-year-old Momiji Nishiya wins gold in street skateboarding | Tokyo Olympics | NBC Sports

www.youtube.com

Matt Damon’s been doing the rounds to promote Stillwater (which recently premiered at Cannes), so we’re seeing assorted nuggets here and there, like Damon revealing that his daughter is afraid to watch Good Will Hunting because she fears that it “might be good.” This week, Damon appeared on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, and he went a little further to discuss how his daughter enjoys roasting him. The Bourne star then pulled back the curtain on his experience with Jack Nicholson on the set of Martin Scorsese’s 2006 film, The Departed.

As Damon tells it, he learned a lot by watching the way that Nicholson works, and he’ll never forget how, the first time they rehearsed together, The Shining star declared, “You know, I never would have made it this far if I wasn’t a great f*cking writer.” Later on during the production, Damon realized how seriously he took that side-part of the job while going home at night and, while unable to sleep, coming up with additions to scenes that had been sparingly written for him. Here’s how one of those scenes expanded, although the full breadth of what Nicholson (wildly) wrote didn’t make it into the final cut.

“The scene was one-eighth of a page… It said, ‘Costello executes a man kneeling in the marsh.’ That’s all it said.” Damon told Maron while suggesting that a lot of actors would have looked at that for one day of shooting and maybe felt a sense of relief because it was a long movie, and they’d just go and get it done. However, “Jack was so excited and said [to me], ‘Wait until you hear what I did.’” Hmm. “He goes, ‘Well, it was an eighth of a page,’ and he goes, ‘I’ve seen that before, so what I did is I made it a woman… and I put Ray [Winston] in the scene with me.’” Oh, that wasn’t all, not by a long shot. Damon continued with this telling anecdote:

He goes, “We’re gonna keep in this same shot, I’m not gonna add any time or money to the schedule. But I shoot her in the back of the head, and she falls over. Now, you could end the scene there, but if you keep the camera rolling, I turn to Ray and I say, ‘Geez, she fell funny.’ Now, that’s a very sinister line. It suggests that I’ve done this before. There’s a way that people fall.

“Now you could end the scene there, but if you keep the camera rolling, Ray reveals an axe that he’s holding behind his back. He’s gonna chop her up. So Ray starts to step forward…

“Now you could end the scene there, but if you leave the camera rolling, I say, ‘Wait, I think I wanna f*ck her again.’ Now that’s a very sinister line.”

At that point, Damon explained, “I’m like, ‘Jesus.’” And Nicholson continued:

“You could end the scene there, but if you keep the camera rolling, Ray gives me a look and after a long pause, I go, ‘Ahhhhh!’ Like I’ve got him. Now, you could keep the camera rolling, Ray says to me, ‘Francis, you really ought to see somebody.’”

Oh boy. As Damon sees it, Nicholson’s additions only added one minute to the production time, and these rewrites didn’t cost producers any more money. And obviously, not all of this made it into the movie because “what ended up being in the movie, I think, was he shoots her, he says, ‘Geez, she fell funny,’ and [Ray] says, ‘You really ought to see somebody.’” Still, there’s a lot of additional (and disturbing, and absurd) emotional breadth to what Nicholson added. This resonates in an unspoken way, especially if one were to, say, go rewatch the movie while imagining Marty’s face after seeing these Nicholson rewrites. You know the assignment… enjoy!

(Via WTF with Marc Maron)

What is it about A24 movies with animals? They’re almost always great. The Witch: great. First Cow: great. The Lighthouse: great. Lean on Pete: great. Uncut Gems: great (you can’t convince me Furby isn’t an animal). You might as well add The Green Knight, starring Dev Patel and an adorable CGI fox, to the A24 animal = great list.

The embargo for A24’s first foray into high-concept fantasy (the “fuck box” in High Life is a different kind of fantasy) has lifted, and the reviews are overwhelmingly positive. “The mythical, adventure-packed drama The Green Knight is the best Arthurian adaptation this side of Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” raves Robert Daniels for Polygon, while Slashfilm‘s Hoai-Tran Bui writes, “The enormity of this film intimidates me. And it hypnotizes me, and seduces me, and captures me until it feels as if the green has grown like moss over my entire body. But rather than threatening to choke, The Green Knight injects a new source of oxygen into the sword-and-sorcery genre.”

The Green Knight currently sports a 94 percent “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is in line with director David Lowery’s other films (93 percent for The Old Man & the Gun, 91 percent for A Ghost Story, 88 percent for Pete’s Dragon). It’s a must see.

Here’s more:

An epic fantasy adventure based on the timeless Arthurian legend, The Green Knight tells the story of Sir Gawain (Dev Patel), King Arthur’s reckless and headstrong nephew, who embarks on a daring quest to confront the eponymous Green Knight, a gigantic emerald-skinned stranger and tester of men. Gawain contends with ghosts, giants, thieves, and schemers in what becomes a deeper journey to define his character and prove his worth in the eyes of his family and kingdom by facing the ultimate challenger. From visionary filmmaker David Lowery comes a fresh and bold spin on a classic tale from the knights of the round table.

The Green Knight opens this Friday.

Whatever Ariana Grande does, she puts her whole heart into it. So it’s no surprise that the new guest judge on The Voice is already completely attached to her new coworkers — and is literally (well, figuratively) “screaming” in anticipation of the show’s first promo drop. That will come tomorrow, July 27th, but for now take a look at the behind-the-scenes clips and videos that the young diva shared on social media.

“hello and screaming !!!! cannot wait for everyone to see our first promo tomorrow for season 21 of @nbcthevoice !!! it’s ….. the most ridiculous and fun. i adore these humans so much and am already an emotional wreck worrying about saying goodbye to everyone the day of the finale and nothings even happened or aired yet. but yes ! tomorrow ! first promo. i love these people and this crew and my TEAM OH MY GOD and everything about this. i can’t say anything else. but… simply cannot wait til we get started.”

Grande is replacing Nick Jonas for this season of the show, as part of what has already been a huge year for the star. She’s still riding off the success of her sixth album, Positions, and also celebrating her new marriage to Dalton Gomez. Congratulations to Ariana on a hell of a year, and make sure to tune in for The Voice this season to watch her embrace a new role.

As you no doubt have heard, Kanye West threw a massive Donda listening session last Thursday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, though the rapper did not end up releasing the album the next day, as had been promised. Now we know for sure that Kanye is camping out at the Atlanta stadium to put the finishing touches on the album, according to a stadium rep, who confirmed the news to Rolling Stone. Likewise, various media outlets, such as Rolling Stone and Pitchfork, have confirmed that the new release date for Donda will be August 6.

The August 6 date had already been circulating, with media personality Justin Laboy and Kanye collaborator Malik Yusef posting about the August release date last week. TMZ also reported an August 6 release date. As noted above, Donda had been slated to come out on Friday, July 23, via G.O.O.D. Music and Def Jam Recordings.

Over the weekend, TMZ reported that Kanye had essentially moved into the Atlanta stadium to put the finishing touches on Donda. The publication said that “sources with direct knowledge” told them that he and his teamed had created a makeshift studio space and living quarters in the stadium. The rapper even hired a chef to prepare meals for him and his team.

For those who did attend the Atlanta event, which was streamed on Apple Music (and broke streaming records), audiences got to hear a Kanye reunion with Jay-Z, plus album guest spots from Pop Smoke, Travis Scott, Pusha T, Baby Keem, Lil Baby, Lil Durk, and others. Donda, which is named for Kanye’s mother, also features a track called “No Child Left Behind,” which showed up in a new Beats ad starring US track star Sha’Carri Richardson.

Donda is out 8/6 via G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam Recordings.

As usual, new music from Cardi B means lots of huge reactions from fans and critics. While the overall response to Normani’s “Wild Side” video, which features a cameo from Cardi B, is positive, accusations of the two female artists “queerbaiting” with their naked dance scene have begun to pop up. On Friday, Rolling Stone posted about the phenomena of queerbaiting, which is when a straight artist engages in queer romantic or sexual behavior to “bait” queer audiences purely for commercial gain. It can be harmful because it continues to play into the lack of representation for queer audiences by capitalizing on that desire.

But the accusations can also be off base, because interrogating someone’s sexual identity simply because of clothing or dancing in a music video is invasive and harmful, too. That was part of Cardi B’s response to the accusations that were leveled for the “Wild Side” scene, where she was naked, primarily to help hide the growing baby bump. She hadn’t publicly disclosed her second pregnancy at the time the video was shot.

“Uuummmm @RollingStone queer baiting?” Cardi wrote on Twitter. “You do know we was trying to hide a whole baby bump right ?Also I’m married to a man but I have express soo much about my bisexuality and my experiences wit girls. All of a sudden ‘queer baiting’ is the new word & people use it to the ground !”

She followed that initial response up with some more thoughts: “I don’t like this new ‘queer baiting’ word. I feel like it pressure artist to talk about their sexuality or their experiences that they don’t feel comfortable speaking about. If a artist kiss a girl on a video does that means she gotta show videos & text wit wit other women?”

Check out the “Wild Side” video above and decide for yourself.

In recent months, BTS has owned the Billboard Hot 100 chart. “Butter” enjoyed a 7-week run at No. 1 before it was replaced by their own “Permission To Dance” last week. Now, “Butter” has returned: On the latest Hot 100 (dated July 31), “Butter” is back at No. 1 for an eighth week, knocking “Permission To Dance” (which is now at No. 7) off the top spot after it enjoyed a one-week stay.

“Butter” is now tied with Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License” as the longest-running No. 1 song of the year. Additionally, BTS is now the first artist to ever top the chart, replace themselves on the chart, then have the previous song return to No. 1 without having a song by another artist go No. 1 in between.

The song’s return to No. 1 comes thanks in part to sales. “Butter” saw a 132-percent increase in sales, increasing from 49,800 to 115,600 over a week, which was the biggest jump of the week. Inversely, “Permission To Dance” dropped from 140,100 downloads to 85,000, a 39-percent dip.

The group recently enjoyed a two-night stay on The Tonight Show, during which they performed both recent No. 1 singles. They also spoke about “Permission To Dance” co-writer Ed Sheeran, who they haven’t actually met before.

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

When Gossip Girl got its HBO Max reboot, nearly a decade after the luxurious teen soap left the air in 2012, there was no doubt that it would have to be a different experience. The original show, which first aired in 2007 on The CW, became a massively popular symbol of excess, advances in technology, high fashion, youth culture, and New York City-set aspirational living. (Those things are still there.) But today’s iteration of Gossip Girl, as has been discussed across the internet, looks and sounds a little different: For starters, the show’s cast is more diverse, class tensions better reflect today’s real-world economic inequality, and, because it’s an HBO Max original, there’s lot more sex and cursing. Not to mention that the once-anonymous Gossip Girl herself is revealed from the pilot episode. And then there’s the soundtrack.

An average episode of Noughties-era Gossip Girl might’ve featured the caliber of trendy indie-pop that would no doubt also be playing in an American Apparel: The Kills, The Virgins, The Ting Tings. The original pilot even opens to one of the most ubiquitous songs of that time: Peter, Bjorn And John’s “Young Folks.” The reboot’s pilot, meanwhile, opens with music from a less globally known artist: London upstart Hope Tala, whose orchestral “All My Girls Like To Fight” soundtracks the introductory scene in pilot episode “Just Another Girl On MTA.” The remaining 50-odd minutes feature a selection of songs from Frank Ocean (“Super Rich Kids”), Ariana Grande (“Positions”), Tinashe (“Rascal”), Billie Eilish (“Therefore I Am”), Cyn (“Drinks”), Rosalía (“A Palé), Junglepussy (“Spiders”) and more. Frank, Ariana, Rosalía, and Billie are marquee names for sure, but it feels like an intentional choice to open the entire series with non-household name. When I spoke to series music supervisor Rob Lowry, he said that he hoped the Gossip Girl reboot would both reflect today’s popular music but also be a source of new music discovery for audiences. “The way that people are consuming music and finding it, [it’s] through film and TV,” Lowry tells me over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “Which they did [in 2008], but I feel like it was a little bit less obligatory. We look back on it and realize how much we learned.”

Stepping in for Alexandra Patsavas, who is basically music supervisor royalty, having done selections for the original Gossip Girl, The Twilight Saga, The OC, and Grey’s Anatomy, Lowry openly admits that he had “massive shoes to fill.” Lowry is definitely no slouch, though, having previously done the song selections for The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, The Bold Type and Ramy, among others. Upon connecting with series creators Joshua Safran (who also serves as the reboot’s showrunner), Stephanie Savage, and Josh Schwartz, who also oversaw The OC, “I just, like, geeked out,” Lowry says of the experience. “I wasn’t shy about their influence on my entire life and how much the soundtracks for The OC and Gossip Girl influenced what I wanted to do.”

In terms of its music, which is as fluid and diverse as the show’s main characters, the reboot’s overall approach is, “Does this work creatively?” Lowry says. “That’s question number one. Then, is [the song] overused? Is it too present, or does the recognizability actually add to the experience? Does it add to the scene?” Lowry cites an early episode where New York rapper Princess Nokia makes an in-person appearance at socialite Julien Calloway’s (Jordan Alexander) party, something he says helps “elevate that experience” and add to the moment’s glamor. “It’s so excessive and it’s just so big and also helps set the stage. Nokia’s a New York icon.”

It’s important, Lowry adds, that audiences understand that the Gossip Girl reboot, whose main characters are two half-sisters of color from very different socioeconomic backgrounds, is still very much its own show. “This show feels a little bit more sophisticated. It feels a little bit more seductive and sexier and a little bit elevated without sacrificing the drama of it all,” Lowry says.

It likewise felt important to Lowry that the music selections “highlight the excess” around these characters’ opulent lifestyles. As the students of Upper East Side institutions Constance Billard and St. Jude’s discover that Gossip Girl — the anonymous online scion who turns socialites’ personal drama into content — has been resurrected, they’re gathering for martinis at a swanky cocktail bar. The moment is soundtracked by Ariana Grande’s “Positions,” a title that appears to represent both the students’ upper-class status as well as their coming social-media subjugation.

Lowry also wanted to show how accessible music is today (“people have access to any music they want at any time”) by incorporating a range of genres and music from decades past across the episodes, noting how every episode is themed a little differently. “Episode three is an ‘80s episode,” he outlines. “Two’s ‘50s-’60s, kind of like soul and jazz. Episode four is a big pop songs episode.”

One thing the original and the reboot do have in common, though, is a big, splashy event that brings all of the characters together — a prime song selection vehicle. “Josh [Safran] and I kind of decided that each event would have their own sound,” Lowry says. “And I feel like that gives us the opportunity to use some modern pop stuff, some lesser-known stuff.”

In addition to Lowry, the team needed a series music composer to create a whole new Gossip Girl reboot vibe. So they looked up superproducer and songwriter Ariel Rechtshaid, who has worked with every popular artist from Usher to Vampire Weekend to Haim, U2, Solange, Charli XCX, Madonna and more. The catch? He hadn’t technically composed music for TV at this scale. “I’ve always liked the idea of [scoring for TV], I just never had the creative space to do it, and now I do,” Rechtshaid says over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “It was kind of a curious question, when they asked me if I would be interested, and I said, ‘Yes, I’m interested, but, why me?’ Because I don’t have any history of scoring, so what is it about me that makes you want me to do it? And they were sweet; I think they wanted me as part of the brain trust in a way.”

Rechtshaid also says that Safran urged him not to worry about anything that came before and to just go with his gut while scoring the reboot. So, while reading the show’s pilot script, Rechtshaid thought about both the city of New York and the “rich, dysfunctional families” that populate certain neighborhoods. “The immediate bullet points that came to mind were New York, which, being an LA native, has always been a little bit exotic to me,” he says. “It has this longer history than LA, it’s kind of connected to Europe to me. It feels literally more classical. String arrangements. I thought about rich, dysfunctional families that are high-powered and the children of that. Like a dark, powerful energy. That was the way I interpreted it.”

Strings and orchestral arrangements also feature heavily in Lowry’s songs, like Hope Tala’s needle-drop, and Kate Bush‘s art-pop standby “Cloudbusting,” which shows up in episode three. (The same episode features Aretha Franklin‘s jazzy “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive.”) Regardless of decade and sub-genre, though, Lowry says the overall connective tissue in the Gossip Girl reboot is pop music. “I think one of the reasons we’ve found the music to be so fun and successful so far is because I genuinely love pop music,” he says. “I just feel like it’s what the show needs. Josh has such great taste and we have such overlapping taste. Josh likes a lot of classical and opera. As the show goes on, you start to see that integrated a little bit more, which I think is really fun. The way that it kind of weaves itself into the narrative while still having a Genevieve song or like, Normani. And then there’s like, a Bach piece. Something from an opera from the 1800s. We have a Taylor Swift song in [episode] 107. I love that there’s a Doja Cat-to-Paul Anka transition. I think it speaks to the show and the level of melodrama, but is still sophisticated. I think it highlights these different worlds and these different perspectives so well.”

If Blade Runner 2049 left you wanting even more stories set in the neon-drenched, cyberpunk Los Angeles of the future, you’ll be glad to know you won’t have to wait another 35 years for the next entry in the series. Later this fall, a 13-episode animated series — Blade Runner: Black Lotus — is coming to Adult Swim and anime streaming service Crunchyroll. At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Adult Swim revealed the first trailer for the anime and much like the previous Blade Runner films, it looks stylish as hell.

Blade Runner: Black Lotus is set in 2032, 13 years after Blade Runner and 17 years prior to Blade Runner 2049. The show follows a replicant (or android) named Elle who has been gifted special powers as well as the title “Black Lotus.” After escaping from her creators, Elle is forced to live a life on the run that’s full of high-octane action, street fights, and katanas while she avoids “retirement,” or replicant deactivation. According to the showrunners, the series will feature a handful of returning characters as well as plenty of fresh faces.

Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed) and Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) are set to direct the series with Cowboy Bebop director Shinichiro Watanabe on board as creative producer. As far as the English version of Blade Runner: Black Lotus goes, Iron Fist actress Jessica Henwick will be voicing protagonist Elle with actors Will Yun Lee, Samira Wiley, Brian Cox, Wes Bentley, Josh Duhamel, and more voicing additional characters.

While Blade Runner: Black Lotus is still waiting on an official release date, it should be hitting both Adult Swim and Crunchyroll later this fall.

DaBaby’s set at Rolling Loud Miami was an eventful one, prompting no less than three viral moments. In one, a mascot costume turned out to be occupied by Tory Lanez, incensing Megan Thee Stallion fans who thought DaBaby was showing disloyalty to the rapper who delivered him several hit collaborations in favor of her alleged abuser. That instance may or may not have led to the next, in which DaBaby dodged a dirty shoe flung his way by a fan in attendance.

But the last one might be the most bizarre. In between two songs, DaBaby tried for a call-and-response hype moment but apparently caught up in trying to encourage fans to count their blessings, he inadvertently shamed an entire community of people who already have to live under a stigma. “If you didn’t show up today with HIV, AIDS, any of them deadly sexual transmitted diseases that make you die in two or three weeks, then put your cell phone light in the air,” he said.

But then he made it worse, doubling down with a homophobic statement. “Fellas, if you ain’t suck a n****’s dick in the parking lot, put your cell phone light in the air.” There’s no generous way to put that one… it’s just outright homophobic, and fans are calling him out on Twitter. Check out their responses below.