GoneTrending

Haim have a new song out today, “Cherry Flavored Stomach Ache,” a jangly, Paul Simon-sounding track that is set to appear on the soundtrack to Netflix’s upcoming film The Last Letter From Your Lover.

The Los Angeles sisters, who released the critically acclaimed Women In Music Pt. III last year, wrote on Twitter that they “made this in the depths of quar,” calling it “the biggest gift.” The song also has a co-write from superproducer Ariel Rechtshaid (who also co-produced it) and was produced by Danielle Haim. According to Rolling Stone, movie director Augustine Frizzell handpicked Haim to write “Cherry Flavored Stomach Ache” for the film. “I’m a huge fan of their music,” Frizzell said. “It has a feel that’s both modern and retro and felt like [lead character] Ellie’s world.”

Starring Felicity Jones (playing Ellie Haworth) and Shailene Woodley (playing Jennifer Stirling), The Last Letter From Your Lover is based on the 2008 novel by JoJo Moyes and is about a journalist who “discovers a trove of secret love letters from 1965 and becomes determined to solve the mystery of the forbidden affair at their center.”

Check out Haim’s “Cherry Flavored Stomach Ache” above. The Last Letter From Your Lover premieres on Netflix on 7/23.

The United States men’s basketball team has found its two injury replacements for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. According to reports by Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN and Shams Charania of The Athlete, Denver Nuggets big man JaVale McGee and San Antonio Spurs youngster Keldon Johnson will join the team ahead of its trip overseas in search of a fourth consecutive gold medal.

A pair of spots opened up in recent days as Washington Wizards star Bradley Beal and Cleveland Cavaliers forward Kevin Love had to leave the team — Beal entered Team USA’s health and safety protocols, while Love pulled his name out due to his ongoing efforts to recover from a calf injury. While neither player is an exact like-for-like fit, McGee gives the team some much-needed size, while Johnson has been with the Americans in recent days, as he got to train with the senior team after getting a Select Team nod.

It’s unclear when McGee will be able to report to Las Vegas for training camp, but at the very least, Johnson has some familiarity with the current group and with USA Basketball head coach Gregg Popovich. It is also unclear whether or not the Americans will have to make further tweaks to the roster — Jerami Grant is in health and safety protocols, while the three players on the Milwaukee Bucks and Phoenix Suns (Jrue Holiday, Khris Middleton, Devin Booker) are still participating in the NBA Finals. A potential Game 7 would take place on Thursday, July 22, while the United States kicks off Olympic play on July 26.

Space Jam: A New Legacy is a bad movie. But you knew that already. You saw the trailers; you listened to the Notorious P.I.G. rap; you read the reviews and the bewildering plot synopsis that I will share again because I can’t get over how wild it is: “Set in a shared Warner Bros. virtual space multiverse, the film follows LeBron James teaming up with the Looney Tunes to win a basketball match against digitized champions to rescue his son from Al-G Rhythm, a rogue AI program.” If you ignore everything but “the film follows LeBron James teaming up with the Looney Tunes to win a basketball match,” sure, that could be a fun movie. LeBron proved he had comedic chops in Trainwreck and the Looney Tunes have always been, and will always be, the best. But it’s not only everything else in that synopsis — “set in a shared a Warner Bros. virtual space multiverse” and “a rogue AI program” — that dooms the Space Jam sort-of sequel, it’s also the film’s cynical mishandling of the Looney Tunes.

Directed by Malcolm E. Lee (Girls Trip) and written by about 17 people, Space Jam: A New Legacy begins in 1998 when a young LeBron James (played by Stephen Kankole) is in middle school and has to make a choice: basketball or anything else. He picks basketball, obviously, and we’re treated to a montage of the four-time NBA champ’s career over the opening credits. The action picks up in the present day when LeBron is a tough-love dad with two kids, Darius (Ceyair J. Wright) and Dom (Cedric Joe). Dom’s the younger of the two, and he’s more interested in playing and creating his own video games than basketball. We’re ten minutes into the movie and still no Looney Tunes.

One day, LeBron brings Dom to the Warner Bros. lot for “some high-tech movie thing.” The pitch: a digital copy of LeBron will be scanned “right into the movies,” so the Los Angeles Lakers star can be inserted into Casablanca, Harry Potter, Police Academy: Mission to Moscow, or any of the other classics in the Warner Bros. filmography. He astutely calls it one of the five stupidest ideas he’s ever heard, which upsets the sentient algorithm known as Al-G Rhythm (get it?), played by Don Cheadle. We’re now 20 minutes into the movie. There are still no Looney Tunes but there is a convoluted plot: Al-G traps Dom in the Warner Bros. servers and tells LeBron that the only way he’ll see his son again is if “you and I play a little game called basketball.” LeBron accepts the offer, not that he has much of a choice, and he’s tasked with assembling a team.

Twenty-seven minutes into Space Jam: A New Legacy, a movie about LeBron James playing basketball with the Looney Tunes, we finally see our first Looney Tune.

And at first, it’s only one Looney Tune, as everyone but Bugs Bunny has abandoned Looney Tunes World. “This nefarious nimrod nixed my nearest and dearest from Tune World,” Bugs explains, referring to Al-G Rhythm. Using Marvin the Martian’s spaceship, he and LeBron visit other Warner Bros. properties to get the gang back together, like Jason Segel, Amy Adams, and Walter reuniting the Muppets in 2011’s The Muppets, minus any of the charm or wit. Daffy and Porky are in DC World; Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner are in Mad Max World; Elmer and Sylvester are in Austin Powers World (yeah baby?); Granny and Speedy Gonzales, that famous duo, are hanging out in The Matrix World; and so on. It’s a creatively bankrupt montage of a studio’s portfolio and a counterpoint to the oft-repeated argument that [fill-in-the-blank movie rated G or PG] is for kids and, thus, should be exempt from criticism. Children deserve better than corporate propaganda and reference-heavy jokes like Foghorn Leghorn in a Daenerys Targaryen wig yelling “winter, I say, winter is coming” while riding a dragon. It’s the Pulp Fiction “joke” from the original Space Jam, but for an interminable two hours.

The IP gets worse once the game starts. There’s little room for the Looney Tunes to act, well, looney, when so much of the second half of the movie is focused on the crowd of Warner Bros. characters. I can’t say for sure if Daffy and Porky have less screen time than Pennywise, Joker, King Kong, the A Clockwork Orange gang, the Mask, and the Pirates of the Caribbean, but it sure feels like it. Maybe that’s for the best, because with the exception of LeBron and Bugs’ brief introductory meeting, the script doesn’t recognize the slapstick appeal of the Tunes. Instead, they’re used to make grating “well, that happened” asides and go wild at the Notorious P.I.G. rhyming “double” with “trouble.” Space Jam: A New Legacy even has the gall to [spoiler alert?] kill Bugs Bunny in a scene that’s played absolutely straight with no jokes, only for Bugs to appear in the real world moments later. It’s oddly upsetting seeing Taz on the verge of tears.

My hope was that Space Jam: A New Legacy would at least be a fun hate-watch, a good-bad movie for the internet to dunk on (no pun intended). It’s been a while since we’ve had one of those. Maybe since Cats? But at least Cats had the decency to be weird. Space Jam: A New Legacy isn’t weird; it’s a soulless branding exercise.

Before the film begins on HBO Max, there’s a brief teaser for another Looney Tunes property, Looney Tunes Cartoons. When the “skip” button pops up, do yourself a favor and skip Space Jam: A New Legacy and watch that show instead. Or any of the old classics, like “Rhapsody Rabbit” or “Rabbit of Seville.” Heck, even the original Space Jam would do. Anything but Space Jam: A New Legacy.

Click to download here.

Snitches and Rat Packs

Please, pull up a chair, take off your hat with the tiny microphone hidden inside, and listen to the latest episode of Pod Yourself A Gun. Alison Rosen of the Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend and Childish podcasts joins Matt and Vince to talk about The Sopranos season five episode two, “The Rat Pack.”

As the world’s only Sopranos podcast, it’s our responsibility to point out that the title of this episode Has two meanings. It refers to the trio of iconic crooners seen in the collage Jack Massarone gives to Tony in the first scene, but also Jack Massarone, Ray Curto and Adriana, who are ratting on Tony to the FBI. One phrase with two meanings? That’s modern art, baby.

Tony makes it clear that he’s not a fan of art, which makes Alison, Matt, and Vince ask each other if that’s the writers way of showing disdain for these meathead characters who can’t appreciate art. Tony f*cks a lot, eats meats, and is strong, which is exactly the kind of guy a scrawny, dorky writer-type would hate, so maybe they are onto something.

Some other questions that we try to answer on the pod: Where do mafia guys get the dead rats to stuff into their dead snitch’s mouths? Is Tony fat, wide, or Sicilian husky? Is Vince’s heart too pure to win a game of poker? Can Matt effectively mansplain crypto to Alison? Listen now to find out.

We’re not mind readers so if you love the show, tell us in a five star review on Apple Podcasts.

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-Description by Brent Flyberg

The Child’s Play franchise was created by Don Mancini, who’s been a part of every Chucky project with one exception: 2019’s Child’s Play. It was a whole thing, but Mancini is back to doing what he does best: terrorizing people with a creepy doll set on evil.

Chucky premieres on USA and SYFY in time for Hollywood, on October 12. The series begins with a Chucky doll turning up at a yard sale in the suburbs. From there, according to the official plot synopsis, “an idyllic American town is thrown into chaos as a series of horrifying murders begin to expose the town’s hypocrisies and secrets. Meanwhile, the arrival of enemies and allies from Chucky’s past threatens to expose the truth behind the killings, as well as the demon doll’s untold origins as a seemingly ordinary child who somehow became this notorious monster.” Mancini is the showrunner, while Brad Dourif and Jennifer Tilly have returned as the voices of Chucky and Tiffany Valentine.

“One of the things that we pride ourselves on, and I think makes our franchise singular, is that we have spun a relatively consistent and coherent narrative over the course of 33 years and seven films and now eight episodes of television,” Mancini told Entertainment Weekly. “I think that’s one of the things that our fans like about the Chucky franchise.”

You can watch the Chucky teaser trailer below.

(Via EW & SYFY)

In some news that prooooobably won’t surprise many people who follow this sort of thing, John Lydon is being sued by his former Sex Pistols bandmates Steve Jones and Paul Cook, for the right to use the band’s songs in an upcoming biopic miniseries about the punk pioneers directed by Danny Boyle.

According to the Associated Press, a lawyer for Jones and Cook told a High Court in London on Thursday that the band members have a “brittle and fractious” relationship with Lydon, but that they’d made an agreement in 1988 that Sex Pistols songs could be used on a “majority rule basis.” They noted that they also had support of bassist Glen Matlock and the estate of the late Sid Vicious.

In response, a lawyer for Lydon said that Jones’ 2016 memoir, Lonely Boy: Tales From A Sex Pistol, had portrayed him “in a hostile and unflattering light.” At one point, the book refers to Lydon as an “annoying little brat with the great bone structure who’s always asking for more.” I’m obviously no lawyer, but that sounds… irrelevant? From a law perspective, anyway.

As for the miniseries itself, announced earlier this year, it is set to air on FX and is based on Lonely Boy. “Imagine breaking into the world of The Crown and Downton Abbey with your mates and screaming your songs and your fury at all they represent,” Danny Boyle said in a statement back in January. “This is the moment that British society and culture changed forever. It is the detonation point for British street culture…where ordinary young people had the stage and vented their fury and their fashion…and everyone had to watch and listen…and everyone feared them or followed them. The Sex Pistols. At its center was a young charming illiterate kleptomaniac — a hero for the times — Steve Jones, who became in his own words, the 94th greatest guitarist of all time. This is how he got there.”

The limited series began filming in March, but no official premiere date has been confirmed yet.

Seven-time Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton wants to change the sport for good by finding ways to improve racial diversity and give Black people more opportunities in a STEM field overwhelmingly dominated by white men. On Tuesday, The Hamilton Commission – an organization founded and co-chaired by Hamilton – published a 94-page report in association with the Royal Academy of Engineering, which highlights the lack of racial and ethnic representation in UK motorsport.

The report, titled “Accelerating Change: Improving Representation of Black People in UK Motorsport,” analyzes the UK education system from the ground up and provides 10 recommendations to addressing the barriers to the recruitment and progression of Black people within the sport. The report notes that the UK — home to seven of 10 Formula 1 teams and over 4,000 companies involved in competitive racing and car design, development and manufacturing — is a global powerhouse in motorsport. Despite this, less than one percent of the workforce in F1 is from Black or other ethnic minority backgrounds. In Formula 1’s 71-year history, there have been zero Black team principals, while only two women have held the role.

In the report’s foreword, Hamilton – the first and only Black driver to race in Formula 1 – discussed his motivations for starting these conversations and opened up about growing up with dreams of becoming a driver despite being consistently chastised and told he would never amount to anything.

“I, like so many other Black students, lost my confidence in school and struggled to see a future where I could be successful. But like any other child, I was born with potential,” Hamilton wrote. “It was the system that failed me and almost destroyed my sense of confidence and any dream of living to my full potential. Looking back, it’s all so clear to me. Why would I believe in myself, if my school never believed in me?”

While drivers are some of the most popular and well-known figures around the world, engineering roles make up the largest single occupation group in motorsport. However, the representation of Black people in engineering and technician roles is sorely lacking. When asked about pursuing a career in engineering, a majority of young Black interviewees said they believed engineering was “not for them” and that they “won’t fit in” given their lack of understanding about the pathways to technical careers and the sector’s existing underrepresentation of people of color.

The report states that the reasons for the lack of Black employees in UK motorsport are largely systemic: Black people are less likely to achieve 1st class honours degrees (which is often how recruits are selected by F1 teams), less likely to study engineering at universities because of a historic lack of access and exposure to the field, and are heavily underrepresented in apprenticeships. Additionally, the majority of the sport’s engineering sector is concentrated in “Motorsport Valley,” a rural area in southern England that is inaccessible for many young Black communities that live in major cities.

Once in the field, it can be difficult for many Black engineers to feel comfortable and stay in the sector due to its exclusionary culture and emphasis on tradition. Many people interviewed by the research team described a perceived lack of progression for Black professionals, a lack of Black engineers in leadership roles, and instances of microaggressions that seemed entrenched in the competitive and “elite” image of the sport. The Commission argues that these issues often originate in the UK school system, where many young Black students are placed into lower ability groups based on low teacher expectations, stereotypes, and a lack of equal resources.

In the report, the Commission lays out ten recommendations to improve diversity in motorsport, which include expanding apprenticeship programs, the establishment of a fund that would provide more resources for Black students, a new approach to teaching STEM to encourage more Black students to participate, and the creation of scholarship programs to enable Black STEM graduates to progress into specialist roles in the sport.

Following the publication of The Hamilton Commission’s report, F1 announced details of scholarships and internships for students from underrepresented ethnic, gender and socio-economic groups as part of its commitment to improving diversity and inclusion in the sport.

“Our #WeRaceAsOne platform is our commitment to make real change and shows our recognition that we know we must make a positive contribution to the world we live in,” said Stefano Domenicali, President and CEO of F1. “All of the teams are committed to this and the work of the Hamilton Commission shows the dedication to addressing these issues across Formula 1.”

It’s been two years since Game of Thrones ended, and since that time, HBO has not stopped chasing spinoff opportunities in an effort to bring the powerhouse series back, along with its legion of viewers. This time around, HBO Max has announced a new animated spinoff that will explore a corner of the Game of Thrones world that never made it to the first series: The Golden Empire of Yi Ti. Located on the continent of Essos in the southeast corner of the fictional world, the area will have a link to character in the upcoming House of the Dragon live-action prequel.

Via The Hollywood Reporter:

The society is considered one of the oldest and most advanced societies in creator George R.R. Martin’s sprawling fantasy realm and is inspired by Imperial China (much the same way Westeros, which was the primary setting for GoT, was inspired by Medieval Europe).

Yi Ti had only a brief reference in Game of Thrones, though a character in HBO’s upcoming prequel series, House of the Dragon, Lord Corlys Velaryon the “Sea Snake,” famously sailed to Yi Ti.

The Yi Ti-focused series is in addition to a previous animated Game of Thrones series that was announced back in March. That project is still in very early development, so little is known in the way of details. However, while the number of animated projects has grown, the Yi Ti series arrives with news that a previously announced live-action prequel concept called Flea Bottom has been scrapped.

To bring everyone up to speed, here’s the current list of Game of Thrones spinoffs in development:

House of the Dragon
9 Voyages
The Tales of Dunk and Egg
A prequel series set in Nymeria
Untitled animation project with no details
Untitled animation project about Yi Ti

We’ll keep you updated as that list continues to change with the wind.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

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 — Listen to me

You know how sometimes you can be aware of something for years, maybe even decades, without it really moving to the front of your brain, into the bright lights where it becomes more than just a passing thought? Or is that just me? It does happen to me a lot. I was almost 30 before I realized I actually liked mushrooms. It’s not like I had been picking them off my food or anything. I had been eating them for years. But one day I was suddenly like, “Whoa, I really like mushrooms.” I’ll get them on anything now. I’m a maniac.

This type of thing happened again recently when I saw the news about Vanessa Bayer getting a new series on Showtime. Her own series. A semi-autobiographical one that she writes and stars in. From Deadline:

Co-created and executive produced by Bayer and Jeremy Beiler (Saturday Night Live), I Love This for You is a grounded comedy in which Bayer plays a character, inspired by her own past, who overcame childhood leukemia to achieve her lifelong dream of landing a job as a successful home-shopping channel host. Bayer’s fellow SNL alum Molly Shannon also leads the cast as Jackie, the charismatic host at the network.

As I was reading that, I stopped and I thought for a second and I realized that Vanessa Bayer has been making me — you too, hopefully — laugh for over 10 years now, usually as a small piece of a larger project. She’s the greatest. And yet, as far as I can tell, this will be her first crack at a legitimate starring role in something. That’s… crazy. That’s crazy! Vanessa Bayer is so good. And so many other SNL-types get shots at showcase projects. Hell, so many have gotten shots at them since she’s been there. And it’s not like she wasn’t carrying sketches or chunks of sketches on her own in that period. Even just her Weekend Update characters like Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy or Laura Parsons or her note-perfect take on Jennifer Aniston. That’s not easy, sliding in there on live television and being expected to hit straight dingers for a few minutes. She did it every time.

Need more evidence? Need to see some acting, not just talking into the camera? Cool. No problem. Because here’s the Totino’s sketch.

Look how good she is in that. Really look. The switch from stereotypical sitcom mom worried about her hungry guys eating snacks during the game to a woman in the throes of forbidden passion. This sketch is such a classic that we probably don’t think about it enough in any sort of critical way anymore, but we should. Same goes for this next one.

This was the first sketch I ever saw from I Think You Should Leave. I caught it floating around on YouTube right around the premiere of the first season. It’s what hooked me. I still watch it a few times a year. It’s the hopefulness in her face, I think, where she thinks she’s finally getting it right before going into another dark place about hogs and pigs. I honestly do not think this sketch works nearly as well with anyone else.

It’s not just sketch shows, either. There’s also the weirdo surprise appearances, too. Like this one, which I’ve posted in this column maybe a dozen times and will probably post a dozen more, in which Bill Hader’s appearance as a guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers takes a hard left turn into a one-woman showcase. I won’t spoil the twist for you if I have somehow not forced you to watch it already, but please know that I think about the phrase “we all put our pants on one pants a time” about three times a week while getting dressed.

What I’m saying here — what I have proven with video evidence — is that all Vanessa Bayer has done over the last decade or so is make cool stuff better by adding little touches. Hell, she just did it again in Barb and Stat Go to Vista Del Mar, a delightfully bonkers movie that she is delightfully bonkers in for about 10 minutes. And that’s great. It’s awesome that she’s just out here popping up in all the things we like and improving them around the edges. But it’s also way beyond time for her to get that crack at the bright lights. She has earned it in a few different ways by now. Watch all those videos again and tell me I’m wrong. I dare you.

Let Vanessa Bayer shine, dammit.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — Jonathan Majors: Good at acting

I am something we in the blogging community call “A Big Stupid Marvel Idiot,” thanks to the powerful combination of not reading the comics in my youth and not being able to remember what happened in what order in the movies. Real double threat, this guy. Remarkable stuff. That said, I still watch most of the Marvel offerings and find I enjoy them quite a bit. This should not surprise me as much as it does. Part of it is because there’s good story there, and story usually triumphs over everything else for me when I’m watching something. Another part is that, well, one does not become a multibillion-dollar juggernaut by not catering to idiots a little. Idiots like me.

Which brings me to Loki, the Disney+ series based on Tom Hiddleston’s character that wrapped up its first season this week. I watched every episode and was relentlessly confused by a lot of it and enjoyed it all quite a bit. A great example of this feeling was the stuff in the finale with Jonathan Majors. I had a blast watching it all and did not have any clue until hours later that it was teasing important events for both the future of the show and possibly the entire Cinematic Universe. Most of the credit for this goes to Majors and his extremely big performance.

I mean, Lord in heaven, did Jonathan Majors do a lot of acting in his scene. So much acting. He spent the whole time chewing on an apple and the scenery and it was all just a blast. Every line delivery was the most. Every shrug and chuckle was somehow more than that. This can be a bad thing when the performance calls for subtle notes of grace or quiet gravitas, but here, man, in a show about a time-traveling god who makes out with the female version of himself from another timeline, it was exactly what the situation called for. He gave it the Full Giamatti. I respect it so much.

But this is what I mean. I found the scene and performance captivating on a number of levels while being completely ignorant to its ongoing significance. (If you want to know more about its ongoing significance, don’t worry, Uproxx dot com has you covered.) That’s a credit to the writers and director and everyone else who had a part in putting it together, but mostly it was a credit to Majors. It looked like he was having so much fun the whole time. I’ve gone back and watched the scene two more times since Wednesday morning. You should go watch it, too. Even if you didn’t watch the rest of the show. Or the Marvel movies. Again, this is coming from me, a staggering Marvel idiot. You can trust me on this. I would not lie to you.
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ITEM NUMBER THREE — I suspect this Nicolas Cage story will be rattling around my brain for many, many years

Nicolas Cage has a new movie coming out. It’s called Pig. It is, as far as I can tell, about a man going on a bloody rampage after someone steals and/or harms his prized pig. It is something that, on paper, is both a hilarious sibling of John Wick and the perfect plot of a Nicolas Cage movie. It is also allegedly very good. This is all quite thrilling for me. As is the thing where Nicolas Cage is doing interviews to promote the movie. Because Nicolas Cage interviews are always a ride.

Case in point: This interview with GQ. There’s lots to unpack in there and you are welcome to attempt to unpack it all if you like, but I am now and might always be stuck on this part, which came as a response to a line of questioning about culinary inspiration and how it plays out on film. Read this two or three times in a row. Really let it marinate. I’ll meet you after the blockquote.

Even weirder still, this is one of my earliest memories: my father had taken all of us to Italy and I was about four. For whatever the reason, he had left me with all these nuns. The rest of the family had gone out. They’d given me this very spicy kind of stew and this very fermented drink that tasted like licorice. I remember having that and then the nuns rocking me on a bed to get me to sleep. Later my father said to me, “that was fox stew and they were giving you anisette drink to help you sleep.” So those were my earliest memories and you can see how profound the culinary element brings me right back.

So, a few questions here…

What?

What?

His dad left him with some Italian nuns while the family bounced around on vacation?

Is… is this a thing?

Do nuns just babysit strange American children?

It feels like there is more going on here, somehow, despite so much already going on here, right?

Did… did he say the nuns gave him spicy fox stew and liquor and had him sleep both off?

When he was four?

What the hell?

What kind of nuns are these?

Did Nicolas Cage grow up inside an episode of The Young Pope?

Did you ever, in a million years, think you would hear a stranger Nicolas Cage story than “Nicolas Cage had to return a stolen dinosaur skull to the Mongolian government”?

What are the odds these weren’t nuns and were just some weirdo hippies in black hats that his dad told him were nuns?

Should I stop asking questions now, before I spin myself into a manic state where it is all I can talk about for the next 48 hours?

Yeah, probably. I have to finish this column. But still. I feel like this story does a better job of explaining why Nicolas Cage is the way he is better than any full-length documentary ever could. Although I would definitely watch that documentary. And a season of The Young Pope where this is a major plot point. Which could absolutely happen. That show introduced and killed off a kangaroo in its first season and neither of those things were the wildest thing that happened. Then it brought in John Malkovich for season two and changed its title to The New Pope. And it had John Malkovich play the harp. A show that does all that could easily incorporate Nicolas Cage’s childhood tale of stew and booze. I really need to move on here. Please just know that if you see me in public at any point over the next month, I will probably be thinking about this. Even if I’m driving. So maybe give me some space on the highway.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — Give this to me at once

I’m not sure if you have seen the two Cocaine Cowboys documentaries made by Billy Corben and his team. I hope you have. They’re great. Just informative and fascinating and terrifying. All you could ask for out of a documentary. And now there’s a third one coming to Netflix. This one is called Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami and will be a six-episode docuseries and has a wonderful little description, which I will paste into this empty box riiiiiiiiight now.

Alleged to be the chief U.S. distributors for two of Colombia’s biggest cartels, Cuban exiles Augusto “Willy” Falcon and Salvador “Sal” Magluta were accused of smuggling over 75 tons of cocaine into the U.S. in the 1980s. The high school friends built a reputed $2 billion empire that made Willy and Sal, aka “Los Muchachos,” two of Miami’s biggest celebrities. While law enforcement plotted their takedown, the world champion powerboat racers managed to skillfully outrun and outmaneuver prosecution for decades before the chase finally came to an end. Featuring colorful interviews with those closest to them, their defense team, and the Feds tasked with taking them down, the series paints a vivid portrait of the last of Miami’s “cocaine cowboys.”

Perfect, all of it. It sounds almost exactly like a docuseries I would like to watch. But I’m sure some of you are still stuck on the image I used at the top of the section. The one where a very content John Travolta is gliding across the open seas. That’s understandable, I suppose, if you are not familiar with the film Speed Kills.

I wrote about Speed Kills a few years ago, when it rocketed past theaters and straight to VOD. It’s a magnificent piece of cinema. By which I mean it is awful. A real Money Plane situation. Travolta plays a world champion speedboat racer who starts running drugs for the mob. Do you see now? Do you see why I used that picture up there? I don’t know if I’ll ever have a better excuse to use it. Or to post a picture of the poster for the movie. The poster might be even better. Look at all of it.

So thank you to Billy Corben and John Travolta and cocaine-smuggling champion speedboat racers everywhere. I had a lot of fun writing this section and posting those images. I couldn’t have done it without any of you.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — LASSO TIME

I have fantastic news: Ted Lasso is back. I mean, not yet. It’s back next Friday. But that’s soon. And it’s not like it was a secret that I’m giving you the scoop on. It’s all over the internet. But that’s kind of the point. Ted Lasso is coming back so soon that Ted Lasso stuff is everywhere, which is good, because I love Ted Lasso stuff. Like, for example, this article from our own Mike Ryan in which he shares an email Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis sent him during a difficult time. I read that yesterday and started crying at, like, noon. It felt great. And there’s so much more out there. Let’s take a quick tour.

There’s this profile of Sudeikis by GQ’s Zach Baron. It is a wonderful profile for a lot of reasons, with my favorite being this section about Sudeikis and his wife Olivia Wilde breaking up in a way that didn’t exactly not mirror the way Ted Lasso and his wife split in the show, despite the show being written and shot before his real life caught up to it.

The end of their relationship was chronicled in a painful, public way in the tabloids after photos of Wilde holding hands with Harry Styles surfaced in January, setting off a flurry of conflicting timelines and explanations. Sudeikis said that even he didn’t have total clarity about the end of the relationship just yet. “I’ll have a better understanding of why in a year,” he said, “and an even better one in two, and an even greater one in five, and it’ll go from being, you know, a book of my life to becoming a chapter to a paragraph to a line to a word to a doodle.” Right now he was just trying to figure out what he was supposed to take away, about himself, from what had happened. “That’s an experience that you either learn from or make excuses about,” he said. “You take some responsibility for it, hold yourself accountable for what you do, but then also endeavor to learn something beyond the obvious from it.”

God, that’s deep. And kind of beautiful. And speaking of beautiful things, there’s also this: Caroline Framke at Variety wrote a feature about the on- and off-screen friendship of the show’s female leads, Hannah Waddingham and Juno Temple. A sample.

Keeley and Rebecca were always going to become friends on “Ted Lasso,” but at first glance, that might not have held true for the actors playing them. As with their characters, there are 15 years between Waddingham (46) and Temple (31), not to mention they’re both Leos (“Usually Leos don’t get on!” Waddingham notes with considerable delight). And yet, whether hanging out in a hotel room for Waddingham’s Critics Choice Award win for “Ted Lasso” or a cozy pub for their Variety shoot, the two are so comfortable that they tend to get tangled in each other’s arms, cackling with laughter.

“In the same way we often say that if the chemistry is there in a romantic comedy, it’s going to work, the same is true for friendship chemistry,” says co-creator Lawrence, who’s seen that truism bear out while working on “Friends” and “Scrubs.” For “Ted Lasso,” he continues, “it was palpable and recognizable on camera between Juno and Hannah from the start. Part of that friendship was created by the performers themselves.”

And then there’s the thing where the show got nominated for an — industry term coming here — absolute crapton of Emmys this week, including one for Brett Goldstein, who plays my beloved Roy Kent and responded to his nomination thusly via email.

Holy f***ing s***. What an incredible honor. Proper dream come true s***.

Every part of this show has felt like magic to me. To have the privilege to work on it, to get to make something with this incredible team and now for us to be nominated as a team is just too lovely. Extra special tahnks to Jason and Bill for inviting me to be part of this. What a thing…

As a cynical English guy I’m struggling to deal with all this wonderfulness. I’m not crying, you’re crying. F*** off! You’re crying. You ****.

All of that and I got to post the video of Ted giving a lovingly tweaked rendition of the legendary Allen Iverson practice rant. Very little to complain about anywhere here. So… let’s not!

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 Sam, who technically sent this as a direct message on Twitter, which you are welcome to do as well if you do not feel like bringing email into all of this:

Thank you so much for informing me that Sheryl Crow is a Milwaukee Bucks fan. I had no clue how much I needed this information until today.

This is true, for the record. Sheryl Crow, pop music legend, noted haver of fun and soaker-up of sun, is apparently a huge fan of the Milwaukee Bucks, who as of this writing are tied with the Phoenix Suns at 2-2 in the NBA Finals. I don’t remember how I learned this or exactly when, but it is currently my favorite thing on the internet. She’s been live-tweeting the games, too, or at least posting two or three tweets per game. Look at these.

And this one.

And this one, which is my favorite by a whole mile, maybe two.

I feel like I should clarify here that I am not doing this ironically to make fun of Sheryl Crow. My adoration of it all is genuine. It’s one of the things that’s good about social media, seeing people’s personalities and learning what they’re like. Lord knows about 30-40 percent of my tweets are panicky reactions to things the Philadelphia 76ers did or did not do. Sheryl Crow loves the Bucks so much she’s cussing out the referees in a public forum. That’s cool to me.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Utah!

This section usually features blockquotes from a text-version local news story interspersed with some snarky little jabs from me, but we are breaking the form this week. I am just posting this tweet. Watch that video if you have not. It’s nuts. They’re just dropping thousands of fish out of an airplane. For nature! I can’t stop looking at it. Imagine you’re fishing or hiking out there and you see this happen without the benefit of a voiceover that explains it. You hear a plane and look up and BLAMMO thousands of fish are falling out of the sky. You’d be telling people about it for the rest of your life. Most of them would not believe you. Until now. Until you show them this tweet.

That’s my favorite part of it all. My second favorite part is the thing where they say a high percentage of the fish survive because, like, what do you even consider to be a high survival rate for fish that have been heaved out of an airplane? You could tell me 10 percent was a high number and I would believe you. I would go as low as five. It’s much higher than that, though. I have so much respect for whoever brought this idea up for the first time in a meeting. I bet he — and I don’t think I’m out of line in assuming “let’s just drop them out of a plane and see what happens” was an idea from some dude, probably named Derek — had been thinking about it for weeks before he finally had the courage to suggest it. I hope he runs the whole agency now.

And then, after I retweeted this, I got this reply from the one and only Action Cookbook, which makes the I Think You Should Leave reference I was immediately furious I didn’t make myself.

A flawless news story. Congratulations to everyone involved. Especially Derek.

Saweetie’s still promoting her upcoming debut album, Pretty B*tch Music, despite delaying it after meeting Cher and attending a performance boot camp to bolster her live shows. The Bay Area rapper most recently sat down for a video interview with Billboard in which she reveals more details about the upcoming album, including the fact that some of its content upset her mom.

Apparently, Saweetie has a song that is partially in Tagalog — one of the official languages of the Philippines (Saweetie is part Filipino) — and her mom, who is Filipino and Chinese, doesn’t quite approve. “I do talk some sh*t in Tagalog,” she admits. “My mom was really against it. My Asian side, they’re very traditional — they were immigrants. So it’s like, their culture’s a little bit more reserved. So, she was just like, ‘Girl, I can’t believe you just said that!’”

The “Tap In” rapper also explains that one of the reasons for the album’s delay is how personal it is to her. She hopes it will “humanize” her in the eyes of fans who only see her as a star (albeit one with a cast-iron stomach) and tweet hurtful comments without considering their effects.

You can watch Saweetie’s latest interview here.

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