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As part of its Geeked Week event, Netflix has shared the first teaser for The Witcher Season 2, and it offers a very brief glimpse at Ciri (Freya Allan) as she begins her training to become a Witcher. When the first season ended, the wayward princess with mysterious and destructive powers finally found her way to Henry Cavill’s Geralt as their two paths were destined to intertwine. Pulling heavily from The Witcher novel, Blood of Elves, Season 2 will see Ciri begin her path to becoming a fierce warrior while also trying to wrangle her dark powers, and that ever-looming danger is evident in the teaser below:

Considering production on the second season just wrapped, The Witcher fans will be waiting a while before they get to see what happens next to Ciri, but for now, Netflix has shared an official synopsis of what our heroes are up against:

Convinced Yennefer’s life was lost at the Battle of Sodden, Geralt of Rivia brings Princess Cirilla to the safest place he knows, his childhood home of Kaer Morhen. While the Continent’s kings, elves, humans and demons strive for supremacy outside its walls, he must protect the girl from something far more dangerous: the mysterious power she possesses inside.

The Witcher Season 2 doesn’t currently have a release date, and might see its premiere slip into 2022, but we’ll let you know when Netflix picks a date.

(Via Netflix Geeked)

The Witcher‘s popularity spans several mediums, and the franchise’s widespread appeal reflects as much. The fantasy book series led to the canon-divergent games and the shockingly good TV series starring Henry Cavill as loner monster hunter Geralt of Rivia. In other words, author Andrzej Sapkowski created a highly addictive monster-universe, which now practically holds conversations with itself. At least, that’s what was happening on Thursday when the CD Projekt Red (the developer of The Witcher video games) and Netflix (the maker of The Witcher TV show) started bantering around on Twitter while teasing a mysterious July 9 event.

Lo and behold, Netflix’s Geeked Week entered its final day with the announcement (“Geralt, meet Geralt”) of the first ever WitcherCon coming as a team effort from CD Projekt Red and Netflix.

The event will be a global online celebration of The Witcher universe, which will unite fans of the games and TV series. Although it must be noted that the two groups are not mutually exclusive, more of a team effort could only help matters. Total The Witcher domination will begin with this set of WitcherCon objectives:

– A variety of entertaining and interactive panels spotlighting the people who brought The Witcher to life in-game and on-screen.
– Breaking news, exclusive behind the scenes and never-before-seen reveals from across The Witcher franchise.
– Intimate looks into the creativity and production behind CD PROJEKT RED’s games, including the upcoming mobile game The Witcher: Monster Slayer, comic books and fan gear, AND Netflix’s live action series The Witcher plus merchandise, as well as the anime film Nightmare of the Wolf.
– Expert explorations into the lore, legends, monsters and origins of the Continent.

The event will be held exclusively online on July 9 on YouTube and Twitch, and another stream will run on July 10. As of now, though, Netflix’s The Witcher doesn’t have a Season 2 release date, although post-production is ongoing, so fingers crossed for a late 2021 release. And please, let’s have more bathtub action, since the TV show officially made it canon, a status that all bathtubs should enjoy.

There’s no Chris Farley story that I won’t read, especially if it involves him getting kicked out of a strip club for dancing naked.

Tom Arnold was a guest this week on The Howard Stern Show, where he talked about his friendship with Farley, including when he was the late SNL great’s sober sponsor. “Lorne Michaels called me and said, ‘You have a lot in common with Chris Farley. Would you please spend time with him?’ He wanted to be sober and I think Lorne was really worried about that, so I was his sponsor for a few years,” the Roseanne star recalled. His advice for Farley: “I always told Chris, you can’t be fat and do drugs, you just can’t. You gotta pick one. I can speak from experience. Pick one, you can’t do everything.”

Later in the interview, Arnold discussed one of his favorite memories with Farley.

Farley wound up being Arnold’s best man at the actor’s 1995 wedding to Julie Lynn Champnella. Tom told Howard that they had a bachelor party at Scores strip club, where Chris stole the spotlight. “What happened was, all the guys, David Spade was in the wedding, there was a lot of guys… and then Farley disappeared,” Arnold recalled. “And then came on stage, naked.”

Everyone in their group got “kicked out” of the strip club due to Farley’s antics, but Arnold wasn’t mad. “He’s a big guy and he did not mind being naked,” he said.

Farley taking his clothes off at a strip club of course brings to mind the famous Chippendales sketch on SNL, where he dances alongside peak-hunk Patrick Swayze. Arnold remembers his phone call with Farley about the sketch. “He called me that week and said, ‘I am so embarrassed. They wrote me this thing, it’s embarrassing because I’ll be the fat guy next to Patrick Swayze, what do you think?’ I think if you could be the funniest fat guy ever doing this thing, then you should do it and you should really go for it,” he said. “He was naked a lot. There’s no shame in his game.”

If there is any game that seems more prepared to become a cartoon, it is Cuphead. The entire game is meant to feel like a classic cartoon, from the art style, music, and mood. So the announcement of a Cuphead cartoon in the works made perfect sense, and now we’re starting to get an idea of what it will actually look like.

During Netflix’s Geeked Weeked crossover with Summer Game Fest, a teaser trailer was shown of what the Cuphead cartoon is going to look like. And fittingly it was narrated by King Dice’s voice actor, the one and only Wayne Brady. So far the early signs and Brady’s portrayal of Dice sounds pretty great!

Let’s not over-analyze a single clip, but this has the exact feeling of what a Cuphead cartoon should look and sound like. It’s goofy, there’s a lot of animation happening at once, and it looks like a classic cartoon while somehow feeling modern at the same time. The art style and sound of Cuphead is so incredibly important, and so far it seems they’ve nailed that.

Brady’s portrayal of King Dice is also fantastic. He has a skeevy air to him like he’s going to pull one over on you at any moment. Which, considering King Dice’s role in the game, makes perfect sense. If the rest of the show is as well done as this clip is then the Netflix version of Cuphead is going to be a must-watch cartoon for not only fans of the game, but fans of old-style cartoons in general.

An injury suffered late in the 2020-21 NBA season could cost Pascal Siakam some time when the following year tips off. The Toronto Raptors announced on Friday afternoon that Siakam suffered a torn labrum during the team’s game against the Memphis Grizzlies on May 8, and as a result, the All-Star forward needed surgery.

In a bit of good news, the Raptors said Siakam’s injury went off without a hitch, and he is now on the road to recovery.

A timetable of five months for rehabilitation and recovery would mean that things bleed into the 2021-22 campaign. The NBA told teams on Thursday that it anticipates next season will begin on October 19, and if Siakam is out for the entirety of the five-month timetable, that would put his return sometime in mid-November.

In a statement that applied to most everyone on the Raptors due to the unfortunate circumstances under which they played last season, Siakam hardly had his best year. Having said that, he still averaged 21.4 points, 7.2 rebounds, 4.5 assists, and 1.1 steals in 35.8 minutes per game. While everyone in Toronto will hope to take last year’s struggles and put them in the past, that will particularly be true for Siakam, and should he get back to the level that he showed in past campaigns, it’s not hard to imagine last year’s playoff-less campaign being a blip on the radar.

BTS is one of South Korea’s most beloved exports. The group has topped the charts world over, broken all sorts of records, and found its way into the hearts of fans globally. North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is not among those fans, though. According to internal documents smuggled out of North Korea by South Korea-based publication Daily NK and then made public by South Korean legislators (as reported by The New York Times), Jong-un thinks K-pop is a “vicious cancer.”

In the documents, Jong-un says the music corrupts the “attire, hairstyles, speeches, behaviors” of young North Koreans. Furthermore, state media has declared that K-pop and other South Korean cultural exports will make North Korea “crumble like a damp wall” if left unchecked.

As The New York Times notes, “South Korean entertainment is now smuggled on flash drives from China, stealing the hearts of young North Koreans who watch behind closed doors and draped windows.” To combat this, North Korea enacted a new law in December that calls for five to 15 years in labor camps for those who watch or possess South Korean entertainment. Previously, the same crimes carried a maximum punishment of five years of hard labor. Furthermore, people who “speak, write or sing in South Korean style” could face up to two years of hard labor.”

Jiro Ishimaru — chief editor of Asia Press International, a Japanese website that monitors North Korea — told The New York Times, “To Kim Jong-un, the cultural invasion from South Korea has gone beyond a tolerable level. If this is left unchecked, he fears that his people might start considering the South an alternative Korea to replace the North.”

For my money, one of the best albums of 2021 so far is Guapdad 4000’s Illmind-produced, autobiographical 1176 on which the Bay Area rapper exorcises the demons of his youth and cleverly flips an Alice Deejay sample to reflect on his life of crime on “How Many.” Today, Guapdad dropped the deluxe version of 1176, revealing the big-name guest who was initially left off the tracklist: Rick Ross, who appears on the “How Many” remix.

That’s not where the connection stops, by any means. After the deluxe version’s release, Guapdad shared the video for “How Many (Remix),” which sees the two rappers throwing a private house party with a bevy of beauties bouncing their booties and bottles of Ross’s Bel Aire champagne providing the refreshments. There’s also a fun bit where the emblem on a Rolls Royce Phantom slides out of its concealed compartment, only instead of a little angel, it’s a tiny Rick Ross.

Aside from sober reminders of Guapdad’s rough and tumble upbringing 1176 also found the rapper celebrating his Filipino roots with the tender “Chicken Adobo,” which has since become something of an anthem.

Watch Guapdad 4000 and Rick Ross’s “How Many (Remix)” video above.

1176 Deluxe Edition is out now via PARADISE RISING/88rising Records/12Tone Music. Get it here.

Guapdad 4000 is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Right now is a great time to be Michelle Zauner.

She’s fresh off the release of her latest Japanese Breakfast album, Jubilee, which Uproxx’s Steven Hyden reckons might be the best indie album of 2021. She also just dropped her memoir Crying In H Mart, which debuted at No. 2 on the New York Times bestseller list. A few days ago, it was revealed that the book is set to get a movie adaptation, for which Japanese Breakfast will provide the soundtrack.

Then, there was this week, when she was one of the musical performers at Summer Game Fest, a new but already-premiere virtual event that showed off the best of what’s on the horizon in the video game world. This is far from Zauner’s first foray into video games, of course. She supported her 2017 album Soft Sounds From Another Planet with Japanese BreakQuest, a game that she co-developed. She’s also behind the soundtrack of the anticipated new game Sable, the release date of which was just revealed at Summer Game Fest: September 23, 2021. Zauner’s soundtrack for the game, by the way, will also be made available as a standalone double-LP release.

So basically, Zauner has more hyphens than just about anybody.

Ahead of her Summer Game Fest appearance, I got on the phone with Zauner to talk about what she’s playing now, what upcoming games she’s looking forward to, and her rich history with video games, both as a consumer and creator.

Last year was obviously pretty quiet for live music, but I would imagine that gave you some more time to focus on gaming. Did you get into any of those big viral games like Animal Crossing, Fall Guys, and Among Us?

I got into Animal Crossing. I played that for a while and really enjoyed it. The funny thing is, when you got to visit each other’s islands, it was kind of the first precious kind of social interaction that you could have [laughs] and I definitely was into that. I also played A Short Hike, and Spiritfarer. Those were my favorite games during quarantine.

Nice, and which games are you playing now?

I’m playing this game called Dawn Of Man, which is a caveman civilization game where you basically grow a caveman colony from the Paleolithic era to the Mesolithic era, all the way into the Iron Age, and they learn how to make composite weapons and they develop new skills like masonry and become agricultural societies, and it’s pretty fun.

That sounds sweet, I haven’t heard of that one.

Yeah, I don’t know if it’s a popular game, but I’ve been really into it.

What’s your earliest gaming memory or the game from your childhood?

The game from my childhood is definitely Secret Of Mana. That was what got me into RPGs and video games to begin with. It’s also one of the only RPGs I know that it has a two-player option. I started playing video games when I was like five years old. I had a Super Nintendo and I remember playing that with my dad. That was the beginning of realizing that video games could be art.

How was making your own game soundtrack for Sable different than making, say, a Japanese Breakfast album?

It was so different, honestly. I mean, it’s the first project that I’ve been a cog. That sounds really reductive, but I really appreciate being a cog in the creative machine. [Gregorios Kythreotis and Daniel Fineberg, the two-person team behind Sable developer Shedworks] are very much the directors of that project, and I just was so excited to contribute to someone else’s vision that I trusted. And to their credit, they were very supportive and pretty hands-off and just let me be creative and truly liked everything that I submitted for the most part.

It’s definitely a different vibe because first of all, lyrically, there are only like three songs with lyrics on the soundtrack, but you have to approach it from a place that’s not necessarily personal to you. It has to be this kind of universal feeling and it has to feel like it lives within the game. Also, a lot of the time for me, when I was writing, the narrative wasn’t all the way put together, so you have to kind of guess what’s going to cover the general idea of what’s happening.

It’s a coming-of-age story, so also my influences were super different for it. I was thinking a lot about Alan Menken and how he crafts this universal feeling and a song that everyone can relate to. That was actually a really lovely experience for me and took me to a very different place in my songwriting because I feel like so much of what I do for Japanese Breakfast is rooted in specific detail. I was doing these broad strokes of human feeling, like, what’s it like to feel uncertain about the future? Or coming of age, or discovering what path do you want to pursue? Instead of filling it with all these kind of little details, you have to sort of do these broad strokes but also make it compelling. So that was really fun for me.

Also, because it’s an open-world game, you have to make sure that the songs are really sprawling and don’t get grating. It’s very different from writing pop music where you’re always trying to find a hook that gets stuck in your head. It’s almost the opposite of that, because if you had something like that constantly for ten minutes while you’re exploring a place, it would get really f*cking annoying, so having to do more ambient sprawling work was interesting.

Do you have a favorite game soundtrack?

I really liked the Final Fantasy IX soundtrack and… what else? I was really inspired by the Chrono Cross soundtrack because I really liked that there’s alternate versions of the same song, because you go into a different time/world. So I kind of liked looking at the variations of those songs because I made a lot of day and night versions for this soundtrack. It was really fun to see how you can manipulate a song and keep it at the same key, but slow it down and create sparser instrumentation to make it feel like it’s a nighttime vibe. And of course, [The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild] soundtrack is incredible and does that as well.

Was there anything that surprised you about the process of making your own game, Japanese BreakQuest? By the way, that title is just [chef’s kiss sound].

Thank you [laughs]. I’m pretty sure that the label came up with that title. They approached me about it because my husband made these MIDI versions of the songs [from Soft Sounds From Another Planet] just for fun, and we were going to just release them on a cassette tape as a B-side kind of thing. When I sent it to the label, they were like, “You should make a game.” And I was like, “Oh yeah, I should make a game.”

They introduced me to this woman named Elaine Fath. She did all of the design and all of the development and a lot of the writing, and I kind of just helped her come up with the concept based on some of the lyrics and concepts on the record. I helped with the character design and some of the writing and then helped place all of the songs and stuff like that. But yeah, it was really, really fun and really cute. I’d love to do that again. It was a great experience.

Having been involved with games, both making one and making music for one, how has that changed how you look at games now?

I guess I just have a newfound appreciation of what goes into them. So much of making a game is things breaking and fixing them. I think I just realized it’s a really wild craft and just how much of their lives are invested in, getting to know Daniel and Greg from Shedworks and just seeing they spent over five years of their lives on this project. After writing a book and knowing what it’s like to work on a long-term project, it’s really awe-inspiring that they’re creating a world. They’re actually creating a universe. It’s really inspiring, the kind of work ethic you need. I also learned more about sound design from Martin Kvale, who has been a really wonderful collaborator to work with. It just made me appreciate it so much more.

Is there anything different about planning a performance for an event like Summer Game Fest, where music isn’t necessarily the main focus?

Yeah. They had me perform in front of this giant wall that has the gameplay behind me. And then also there’s a section where I kind of disappear and stop singing and then it gets to go into the gameplay. I was definitely very hesitant at first to just… I don’t really identify as a singer, and I was nervous that if I didn’t have a band with me that people wouldn’t be able to know that I had produced and composed the whole soundtrack, and think that I was just the singer. So I was definitely nervous about just being alone and singing, but I think that it went well and I’m really happy with the way that it turned out.

What upcoming games are you most eager to hear more about, whether it’s at Summer Game Fest, E3, or just in general?

Lena Raine just did this game called [Chicory: A Colorful Tale] that looks really cute. I’m excited to see that. We just dropped the Sims cottagecore expansion pack, [The Sims 4 Cottage Living] just dropped the trailer that they featured “Be Sweet” in. I just watched that today and it does look very good. And yeah, what else? What are you looking forward to? I don’t know what else is coming.

Well, there’s possibly more news about Breath Of The Wild 2 that some people think might be coming.

I’m definitely very excited. I mean, Breath Of The Wild is my favorite, like everyone else. Just the pinnacle of excellence. I definitely am very excited for that as well.

Jubilee is out now via Dead Oceans. Get it here.

Resident Evil is a series that we just can’t get enough of. From video games to movies, and now a TV show, Resident Evil is a franchise that has been covered from every possible angle. However, while the Resident Evil movies are certainly fun, they fail in one aspect: They never properly captured the personality of the characters they were supposed to be portraying.

With Netflix’s Resident Evil series, that may be changing soon. Lance Reddick, known for excelling in every role he’s ever been in, is going to be playing the role of Albert Wesker. To avoid potential spoilers for anyone that has somehow not interact with Resident Evil before, let’s just say that’s an incredibly important casting choice and Reddick is perfect for it.

There is a lot that’s really great about this choice. For starters, Reddick is perfect at delivering his lines in a way that is necessary for someone like Wesker. Depending on how they choose to portray Wesker, he’ll need to be someone that’s confident, cool under pressure, and at times a little unhinged. There’s no reason to believe that Reddick can’t pull that off.

Resident Evil first came out back in the ’90s as a horror/action game. It was Capcom’s attempt to make a Hollywood blockbuster-style video game. Let’s just say they managed to perfectly nail their assignment because Resident Evil is still seeing new releases to this day.

What would a Scooby-Doo spinoff look like without Scooby-Doo? Just ask Mindy Kaling, whose upcoming adult animated series Velma will give Velma Dinkley, Mystery Incorporated’s most underrated crime-solver, the attention she has long deserved. But Kaling’s Velma won’t be your mom’s Velma.

According to The Mary Sue, Warner Bros. Global Kids, Young Adults and Classics president Tom Ascheim shared some details about the upcoming HBO Max series at The TV Kids Summer Festival:

“We have a not for children, Mindy Kaling project called Velma because she was excited to reimagine what Scooby-Doo would be like if Velma were of East Asian descent and lived in a different world. And in that version, which is going on HBO Max first, there’s no dog and no van but we have our 4 key characters through a different lens and I think it’s great. Allowing our creators to play with our IP is super powerful.”

A Scooby-Doo spinoff with no Scoob? And no Mystery Machine? While that may have come as a surprise to some fans of the original series, it was the part about Velma being East Asian that really got people talking—not all of it good (which is both sad and unsurprising).

Some people had to be reminded that Velma was a cartoon, not a real person.

And that Scooby once drove a car…

Also: That Velma has been Asian before.

And, once again, that she’s not real.

The best news: The “no dog” thing means we won’t be subjected to Scrappy Doo.

A date has not yet been set for Velma’s release.

(Via The Mary Sue)