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For virtually everyone who watches more than four Aaron Sorkin movies, the viewing experience tends to fall into two categories: before and after. There’s watching Aaron Sorkin movies before you notice all of Aaron Sorkin’s bullshit and after.

Okay, so one could be forgiven for reading this headline as “the Hater’s Guide To Aaron Sorkin.” If you came here looking for an uncomplicated celebration of Aaron Sorkin’s three decades of cinematic excellence, you’ve come to the wrong place. But Sorkin isn’t perfectly good or perfectly bad; like most of his protagonists, his legacy is complex. At the very least, Aaron Sorkin is fun to write about — easily parodied, bold in his choices, and unabashedly himself.

Before you’ve intuited his many storytelling tendencies and tics, Sorkin movies just seem like slick entertainment. And the best ones are — briskly paced, with rapid-fire dialogue and pithy wordplay. Sorkin writes (and lately, directs) the kinds of movies actors love, because they get to do a lot of talking. Sorkin characters are garrulous — animated, articulate, and always thoroughly convinced of their own correctness. They pound tables, point fingers, and effortless drop incendiary truthbombs. Every Sorkin movie has at least five “mic drop” moments. Is it any wonder that Aaron Sorkin movies unfailingly attract incredible actors?

Somewhere along the line one does start to become aware of Aaron Sorkin’s tics. Repeating phrases, adoring dickheads, and the general schoolmarmy smugness of it all. Aaron Sorkin is a teacher at heart, loving nothing more than to have a smart, worldly man explain the world to an emotional, immature woman. He loves duty, honor, ideals, institutions and drools over men in uniform — any uniform. He worships authority and appreciates a pedigree (a Harvard degree, an LSAT score, a decade in special ops). He seems to lack a certain curiosity about the world, and his characters tend to seem like many tiny Sorkins in different costumes after a while.

Yet he’s a perennial awards contender (Adapted screenplay Oscar winner for The Social Network, nominee for Moneyball and Molly’s Game) and will probably continue to be so into the foreseeable future. Because hey, people love snappy dialogue. Aaron Sorkin’s wordy ensemble plays always ooze prestige.

Aaron Sorkin is such a brilliant propagandist for the meritocracy that it’s hard to tell if he’s even doing it on purpose. He specializes in writing professional class people who are very good at their jobs, creating worlds in which oppressive, antagonistic authority figures will bend to your will and have last-minute changes of heart provided they merely hear the right speech delivered by the right person at the right time.

It’s… well, bullshit, but a comforting kind of bullshit, especially for the erudite overachiever types Sorkin has spent his life flattering. It’s nice to believe that our institutions are solid and the people who run them are generally smart and principled. His movies are like candy or junk food: impossible not to enjoy from time to time even if you know too much can turn you rotten.

While I normally structure these rankings from bottom to top (it adds suspense, that’s a little inside baseball for ya from the #content trenches), in this case I thought it made more sense to move from my favorite Sorkins to my least favorite Sorkins. It better tracks my growing disillusion with Sorkin as a storyteller, and I think the general arc of Sorkin familiarity, from excited by his sharpness to fed up with his bullshit.

1. A Few Good Men

I WANT THE TRUTH!

How many people who were alive in 1992 don’t know that scene by heart? It’s interesting to go back to Aaron Sorkin’s early days (A Few Good Men was his first screenplay to be produced, adapted from his own play) and be reminded, oh yeah, this Aaron Sorkin is actually pretty good at pulp-y fiction. Certainly, most of his tics are already present in embryonic form even in A Few Good Men — his uniform worship, the way the resolution requires the bad guy to inexplicably lay his cards on the table at a climactic moment, the way Tom Cruise’s fun-loving dilettante is the one to break open the case rather than Demi Moore’s buttoned-up nerd.

The idea that this was adapted from a stage play both makes perfect sense and is hilarious to imagine. Just think: Aaron Sorkin once staged this play about HONOR, COUNTRY, and HAVING A CODE, with uniformed characters spouting non-stop military jargon for two hours, in front of a Broadway audience of rich theater lovers probably weaned on dancing cats. And in the climax, Colonel Nathan Jessup calls them all sniveling worms. Sorkin supposedly got the idea from his sister, who had been a JAG lawyer, and wrote the first draft on cocktail napkins during “La Cage Aux Folles.” How perfect is that? The whole thing reminds me of a Max Fischer staging “Serpico” at his wealthy prep school.

It’s funny to think about, but it remains arguably Sorkin’s best screenplay, an intense courtroom drama full of unforgettable performances and earworm speeches. Sorkin’s best and worst quality is that he writes slick fiction. Which, in the context of a fully fictional film like A Few Good Men, is immensely entertaining. It’s a shame almost all of his movies since the 90s have been about real events and historical figures. Sorkin is much easier to enjoy when you don’t have to consider the real-world implications.

2. Charlie Wilson’s War (2007)

Charlie Wilson’s War, directed by Mike Nichols, is the ironically feel-good story of a womanizing Democratic congressman played by Tom Hanks, who teams up with a born-again debutante played by Julia Roberts, and an irascible CIA agent played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, to get the US government to help fund their proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan by arming the mujahideen. At least… I think the feel-good tone was intended as irony? With Sorkin, it’s often hard to tell when he’s doing propaganda on purpose and when he’s just doing it reflexively.

There are a lot of weird elements of Charlie Wilson’s War, like the way the Soviets are depicted as faceless ghouls, and the way it, you know, sort of elides the whole epilogue of the story, where all that increased funding for anti-communism efforts the movie’s heroes helped raise ended up bankrolling death squads all over the world. Supposedly, Tom Hanks nixed the original ending, which more explicitly tied the mujahideen Wilson’s crew were funding to 9/11 (which still ignores the death squads, but okay). And maybe Hanks was right. Maybe that would’ve ruined the intense irony of the “happy” ending we got.

But no matter how much irony you read into that ending, Charlie Wilson’s War still posits the CIA as the good guys, explaining how much better off we’d be if only we’d have listened to them. (Which is… let’s say… an interesting take). It’s classic Sorkin, where the institutions aren’t the problem, it’s that we didn’t listen to the most brilliant functionaries within those institutions!

The insane politics of it aside, I can’t help but love Charlie Wilson’s War as entertainment. As Gust Avrokatos (that’s GusT, not Gus), Philip Seymour Hoffman spends the movie hurling fastball after fastball, a bravura performance from a generational talent at the top of his game. Have you seen this scene?

Charlie Wilson’s War could be a puff piece about Satan himself and I would still watch Philip Seymour Hoffman do this for seven hours straight. God, he was magnificent. And if you were looking to humanize a Stepford Wife American Taliban and a corrupt(ish?) politician you could do a lot worse than Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks.

3. Malice (1993)

My first thought upon taking this assignment after I went to check IMDB was, “Oh crap, do I have to go rewatch Malice now?”

It’s debatable how much Malice, co-written by Sorkin and the great Scott Frank from a story by Sorkin and Jonas McCord, counts as an “Aaron Sorkin movie,” but having rewatched it, I can confirm that it is absolutely f*cking bonkers and certainly worth a rewatch.

Malice stars Bill Pullman as the dean of a small college and Nicole Kidman as his new wife. They have a framed newspaper in their house whose headline reads, hilariously, “PROFESSOR MARRIES FAVORITE STUDENT,” to explain their relationship, which is one of the most Aaron Sorkin things ever. Their lives get turned upside down when a surgeon with a God complex played by Alec Baldwin rents the upstairs room in their Victorian, where he bangs women and drinks whiskey, when he’s not jogging six miles a day in his Harvard sweatshirt. Incidentally, every character has incredible hair, including Alec Baldwin’s chest, which is essentially a character all its own.

How insane is Malice? At one point, Bill Pullman catches and beats up the town serial killer and that part is, as Roger Ebert put it at the time, “an entire subplot thrown in merely for atmosphere.”

It’s true, not many movies use Gwyneth Paltrow getting raped and murdered as mere foreshadowing. But Malice is deliciously insane, an early showcase of both Sorkin’s penchant for oddly courtly-sounding language (“I’m not going to like you, am I” — “Don’t be ridiculous, everybody likes me”), garrulous egotists (“I am God”), and men pedantically explaining things to women (I swear to God at one point Alec Baldwin chides a woman for saying “who” rather than “whom”). Malice is probably the only movie in history where one of the characters is a rapist serial killer and yet the antagonist still turns out to be a woman.

4. The Social Network (2010)

I wrote a whole separate retrospective on this one a few weeks back if you want to read that. Anyway, I know most people would probably have The Social Network ranked a lot higher on this list, because, admittedly, it is a brilliantly crafted and acted David Fincher film with memorable lines and an unforgettable score. But… I would argue it has not aged well. Its slick construction and snappy pacing can’t make up for how much of it simply rings false.

At its heart, The Social Network is a bullshit movie based on a bullshit book (though definitely worth a read if you like lengthy descriptions of Asian girls’ nipples). Sorkin and Fincher desperately want to turn Mark Zuckerberg into a classic Sorkinian megalomaniac, and there’s certainly some supporting evidence for that. Yet their take just seems… off. Take the first scene (a Sorkin invention) for example. Zuckerberg’s girlfriend (played by Rooney Mara), put off by Zuckerberg’s casual put-downs and obsession with “final clubs,” dumps him, leading to the memorable line, “you’re going to go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole. ”

Fine, sure, good line, and Mark Zuckerberg calling an ex a bitch online in his LiveJournal is part of the historical record. It’s the part where Zuckerberg is obsessed with final clubs that makes no sense. This is the same guy who, according to the same book/movie, wore the same hoodie and sandals every day, didn’t care about money, and famously fell out with Eduardo Savarin (who preferred Italian loafers and suits, according to many adoring passages in the book) because Savarin wanted to stay and finish Harvard, and also sell ads and make money, while Mark just wanted to code and work on his website. Final clubs seem like something the real Zuckerberg wouldn’t have given two shits about. Frankly, it seems like the movie Zuckerberg wouldn’t have either. It’s not only a slick characterization, it’s an inconsistent one.

Anyway, the greater problem with The Social Network is that it came out too early. It ended up being mostly about how cool it was to be a punk billionaire revolutionary (they actually called Zuckerberg that in the press notes) and not how scary it is that the world’s foremost social network is presided over by a guy whose defining characteristic is his glaring lack of social skills. That seems like a more interesting paradox (and just as slick), as “you don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.”

It also seems bad that in a movie about the founding of Facebook, the most memorable characters are the Winklevii. (I must begrudgingly grant Aaron Sorkin credit for inventing the term “Winklevii”).

5. Moneyball (2011)

Judging by its RottenTomatoes score (94%), many people liked Moneyball. I am not one of those people. Moneyball is a brilliant book, though with so much history, analysis, and statistics, it’s not exactly narrative fiction — a problem Steve Zaillian and later Aaron Sorkin seem to have solved by filling it full of the corniest Hollywood bullshit possible. Like Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) connecting with his daughter by having her sing him a song from an Old Navy commercial in a guitar store. Still, I admit, it was fun to watch Brad Pitt eat and spit and frown and throw things.

It’s also debatable how much Moneyball counts as an “Aaron Sorkin movie,” given that he was just rewriting Steve Zaillian. Steven Soderbergh was originally supposed to direct Moneyball, and had a plan to shoot it as a semi-documentary using interviews with many of the real athletes and people from the book, until Amy Pascal shut it down five days before it was supposed to begin filming. I’d still like to see that Soderbergh version. Who knows, maybe Pascal was right and Soderbergh’s Moneyball would’ve been a disaster. But at least that would’ve been interesting. This Moneyball kind of blends in with the wallpaper.

6. The Trial Of The Chicago 7 (2020)

For about 35 minutes, I really thought Sorkin had pulled it off: making me enjoy an Aaron Sorkin movie, about politics, long after I had already started noticing all of his Sorkinisms. Sorkin (who also directed) felt like he was in his element here. The Trial Of The Chicago 7 is a courtroom drama (a setting that justifies all the dramatic bickering and mic drop speeches Sorkin loves), about historical events, with a star-studded cast and many concomitant opportunities to lecture the audience about how he was right about world events all along (which is the essential plot of The Newsroom).

Sorkin positions Tom Hayden (played by Eddie Redmayne), the leader of SDS, as the face of the civilized left, pitting him against his unwashed hippie provocateur frenemy, Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen, in a bizarre Mass accent) of the Youth International Party. This all leads to a big scene where Hayden (surely speaking for Sorkin) lectures Hoffman on how Hoffman is setting back the protest movement, because years from now, people will only remember his zany antics and not his humanitarian message.

In perfect Sorkinian fashion, their later reconciliation comes when Hoffman snootily corrects Hayden’s grammar (he said “blood will flow in the streets” when what he really meant was “our blood will flow in the streets”) while revealing that he’s read everything Hayden has ever written. I thought he was about to say “I worship you, man,” like Hansel tells Derek Zoolander in Zoolander.

Regardless of how ahistorical this was (and I imagine it was very ahistorical) it was a cute moment. Aww, the left can work together! And Tom Hayden is easily Eddie Redmayne’s least grating role in years. Quibbles aside, the movie doesn’t really fall apart until the climax, which is not only one of the corniest scenes ever shot but seems to exemplify all of Sorkin’s worst impulses, both as a writer and as a thinker. [Spoilers to follow…]

The whole trial, Alex Sharp as Rennie Davis has been compiling a list of the names of all the US servicemen killed in Vietnam since the trial began. After the trial ends, Hayden stands up to read a pre-sentencing statement… and begins to read the names of all the dead servicemen, this as the nauseatingly saccharine string music swells in the background and ol’ judge Fuddy Duddy (played by Frank Langhella) screams for order. Even the prosecutor, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, stands at attention, on account of how much he respects the troops. The audience in the courtroom literally slow claps, congratulating Aaron Sorkin for his emotional script.

Obviously, you don’t need to be a historian to realize that this scene is pure fiction. In reality, it was David Dellinger who read the names, on Vietnam Moratorium Day, and he was quickly shut down by the judge. Aside from that, the idea that a government prosecutor charged with putting hippies in prison for a decade would suddenly decide to do the right thing, because honor and duty and how much he respected our brave men in uniform, essentially encapsulates the West Wing worldview. Surely your enemies will stop stabbing you in the chest if only they see you salute hard enough.

Furthermore, why would the defendants only read the names of US servicemen and not any of the Vietnamese? It seems utterly out of character for a crew that pranked the judge with a Vietnamese flag on their table and said, in their actual pre-sentencing speeches, [DELLINGER] “Whatever happens to us, however unjustified, will be slight compared to what has happened already to the Vietnamese people, to the Black people in this country, to the criminals with whom we are now spending our days in the Cook County jail.”

Sorkin’s version isn’t just ahistorical, it’s idiotic. The chief conflict over the legacy of the counter-culture is “we stopped an unjust war” vs. “you only stopped the draft.” Which is to say, Boomers either altruistically ended a murderous war OR succeeded only in taking the onus of empire off themselves and their college buddies (and arguably made it much easier to wage foreign wars without raising public outcry). The way Sorkin stages it, the Chicago 7 seem to only care about their own generation and their own country (which, again, didn’t actually happen) and the movie still treats them as unalloyed heroes.

It would be one thing if this were a take, yet it feels entirely accidental. It’s not that Sorkin chose the wrong side, it’s that he seems utterly blind to the stakes of his own story.

7. Molly’s Game

Molly’s Game is some of the worst of Sorkin, and it’s fair to wonder if that’s because it has a female protagonist. Jessica Chastain plays Molly Bloom, and in many ways she’s the perfect Sorkin lead, famous for spewing Sorkin-esque dialogue even before she ever worked with him (see “I’m the motherf*cker who found this place, sir” from Zero Dark Thirty).

Yet in adapting Bloom’s memoir about how she ran a high-stakes poker game in Hollywood, Sorkin finds himself without a necessary ingredient: an axe to grind. Sorkin is brilliant at grinding axes. In Molly’s Game, the closest he comes is with a lengthy breakdown of how ridiculous the concept of bottle service is (something that didn’t come from the book).

This would’ve fit with the theme of the memoir, in which Bloom got sucked into the culture of mindless aughts excess and was eventually done in by the financial crisis (and Tobey Maguire), but rather than go in on any of that (though Michael Cera is great as the fictionalized Maguire), Sorkin just kind of carves up his own protagonist. After opening the movie with her GPA and LSAT scores (apparently to prove that, while a woman, Bloom is smart and worth paying attention to), he spends the rest of the movie exploring her daddy issues. This in the form of Kevin Costner, who, as Molly’s father, shows up periodically to explain all her Rosebud moments.

The best part of Molly’s Game is the framing device Sorkin has invented, in which a lawyer character played by Idris Elba interrogates Molly’s word choices in her memoir. The fun read of this is that it’s not just a classic Sorkin man pedantically explaining something to a Sorkin woman, but Sorkin using his own stand-in to pedantically Monday Morning Quarterback word choices in the memoir he’s been hired to adapt. It’s magnificent.

8. Steve Jobs (2015)

Steve Jobs, directed by Danny Boyle and starring Michael Fassbender as the titular Apple co-founder, is a strange mash-up of The Social Network and Moneyball. Steve Jobs is depicted simultaneously as a vengeful and megalomaniacal nerd, a la Mark Zuckerberg, and also, after a change of heart, a caring father who wishes he’d spent more time with his daughter, a la Billy Beane. Neither take seems to bear much resemblance to reality and Steve Jobs feels like the closest thing Sorkin has to a “paycheck movie.” (Walter Isaacson’s Jobs biography was all the rage at the time, inspiring Elizabeth Holmes’ entire persona, and it makes sense that a studio figured throwing one of Hollywood’s most acclaimed screenwriters at it would be easy money).

Sorkin gets to self-plagiarize a few times with some hot actors and Apple-y window dressing, let Danny Boyle shoot the whole thing in swooping and tilting camera angles, and then go home and live to write another day. I think I forgot 99% of Steve Jobs the moment the credits rolled, and I imagine Aaron Sorkin did too.

9. The American President (1995)

Did you know politics is just a polite disagreement between good-looking articulate white people in suits? If you ever want to know why millions of Americans were so disgusted with the political establishment that they were willing to vote for a deranged orange fascist from a TV show, definitely watch The American President.

Starring Michael Douglas as a widower president (with Martin Sheen playing his chief of staff) who falls in love with an environmental lobbyist (played by Annette Bening) while he’s trying to pass a crime bill (and eventually has to declare his private life off-limits from an evil Republican played by Richard Dreyfuss), The American President seems to be an eerie foreshadowing of everything from The West Wing to Primary Colors to that Hugh Grant vignette in Love Actually. Last year’s The Long Shot, starring Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron, is almost a perfect gender-swapped version of The American President).

I was planning to rewatch this movie for this list, but truthfully, I could barely make it through the trailer. The music, the jargon, the decorum… gag me with a lanyard. Please, no more stories about the relatable lives of DC political hacks. The only good rom-com about the president is Dave.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

It’s been three years since the Prison Break special and 11 years since it was regularly on-air, but if you’re hoping for another return to the show that began with one brother breaking another brother out of jail, you’re out of luck. Or at least you’ll have to do without one of its stars: As caught by Deadline, Wentworth Miller said he was done with both the show and with playing straight characters.

The actor broke the news over Instagram, in a caption attached to a blank, white image. “I’m out. Of PB. Officially,” Miller wrote. “Not bec of static on social media (although that has centered the issue). I just don’t want to play straight characters. Their stories have been told (and told).” He knew the news wouldn’t be popular with all. “I understand this is disappointing. I’m sorry,” adding, “If you’re hot and bothered [because] you fell in love with a fictional straight man played by a real gay one…That’s your work.”

Miller came out in 2013, four years after its fourth season ended. On this Fox hit, he played Michael, a man who discovered his brother (Dominic Purcell) had been wrongly imprisoned. To get him out, he hatched an elaborate escape plan, and their adventures continued long after the titular act. Since then he’s kept a relatively low acting profile, appearing on comics shows like The Flash and Batwoman. He’s also a screenwriter, having written Park Chan-wook’s 2013 thriller Stoker, with Mia Wasikowska and Nicole Kidman, and the Kate Beckinsale-led The Disapointments Room.

(Via Deadline)

Over the course of the past few months, Dave Grohl has found himself embroiled in a heartwarming feud. Incredibly talented 10-year-old drummer Nandi Bushell and Grohl have been trading off original songs in a series of drum battles, and now the two have officially decided to write a song together.

In a joint interview with the New York Times, the famous musician and the young prodigy spoke in person (over a video call) for the first time. The two wound up agreeing to write a collboration, but Bushell had just one requirement: it needs to be fast-paced. Grohl also invited Bushell to join Foo Fighters on their next tour, but said that she would have to come out at the end of their set because otherwise she would “steal the show.”

Elsewhere in the conversation, Bushell said that Grohl is her favorite drummer because he “thrashes the kit really hard.” Grohl then told the story of how he first became aware of Bushell’s talent, saying she first caught his attention when her 2019 cover of Nirvana’s “In Bloom” was forwarded to him by a producer.

“I watched it in amazement, not only because she was nailing all of the parts, but the way that she would scream when she did her drum rolls,” Grohl said. “There’s something about seeing the joy and energy of a kid in love with an instrument. She just seemed like a force of nature.”

Revisit Bushell performing her Grohl theme song here.

A Quiet Place Part II was one of many blockbusters bumped to a later date by to the still rampaging pandemic. In fact, when the horror/sci-fi sequel arrives, tentatively on April 23 of 2021, it will be over a year since its original release date. That hasn’t stopped industry execs from doing some world building. In fact, according to Deadline, they’re already planning a third A Quiet Place, and it won’t be directed by John Krasinski.

Having already transitioned into Michael Bay actioners, the onetime Jim Halpert flexed again, directing, co-writing, and starring in the 2018 hit, about a postapocalypse that finds humans trying to evade becoming alien chow to beings with super-sensitive hearing. While no details have been leaked about the threequel — wouldn’t want to spoil Part II — the major change will be the addition of Jeff Nichols, the director of soulful twists on genre movies, such as the doomsday drama Take Shelter, the sorta-thriller Mud, and the quasi-sci-fi Midnight Special. (He also made the quite good docudrama Loving.)

So what does that mean for the third A Quiet Place? Will the third one ditch the family lorded over by a shotgun-wielding Emily Blunt and focus on another group of panicked earthlings? Will Nichols shoehorn in his frequent collaborator, the great Michael Shannon? You’ll find out when it’s released sometime in 2022.

(Via Deadline)

You know when the White House says something that’s even too off the rails for Fox News to air, the Trump administration has flown way over the line.

Today, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany launched into a litany of conspiracy-laden allegations, accusing the Democrats of facilitating illegal voting and rigging the election to beat Donald Trump, a president that has never reached a 50% approval rating. A minute or so into her speech, Cavuto cut her off.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “I just think we have to be very clear…She’s charging the other side as welcoming fraud and illegal voting. Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue showing you this.”

“I want to make sure that—maybe they do have something to back that up, but that’s an explosive charge to make, that the other side is effectively rigging and cheating,” Cavuto added. “If she does bring proof of that, of course, we’ll take you back. So far, she started saying right at the outset, ‘welcoming fraud, welcoming illegal voting.'”

Then he took a deep breath before saying, “Not so fast.”

It’s a bit surprising that Cavuto seems so taken aback by what McEnany was saying, considering it’s the same evidence-free accusations we’ve been hearing from Trump for months. Only now it’s gone beyond Trump’s divisive and delusional pre-election rhetoric and turned into a right-wing conspiracy theory only bested by QAnon.

The one thing Trump is really good at is creating his own version of reality, and like anyone with a narcissistic personality disorder, he’s good at surrounding himself with people who enable him. Sycophants, loyalists, what have you.

We’ve seen this in the president’s criticisms of Fox News itself when it isn’t kowtowing to him and praising him. And where he goes, his followers follow. After Cavuto cut away from the press conference this afternoon, Trump supporters announced their departures en masse. If Fox News isn’t going to give them the highly biased version of the news that they crave, they’ll keep going farther and farther toward the fringes, to farther-right outlets like Breitbart and Newsmax and OANN, where objective truth goes to die.

Fox News lovers might still find what they’re looking for in the opinion shows, which still seem to be in the business of coddling the president. While Fox News does exhibit some integrity in its actual news shows, its talk host shows are something else entirely. Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and Lou Dobbs will carry Trump’s water forever if they think it’ll keep viewers viewing.

But there’s something those folks really should watch. While Trump and much of the GOP are currently engaged in denying the results of a democratic election, alleging fraud and cheating, saying that Democrats are trying to rig and steal the election…they railed on the Democrats for doing the same thing in the 2018 midterms.

Kayleigh McEnany herself kicks off the video saying, “Democrats are being sore losers. They refuse to acknowledge they lost the election, so what do they do? They cry malfeasance, wrongdoing, criminality, fraud.”

Laura Ingraham comes next with, “Democrats, moreso than Republicans, seem to have a problem conceding defeat. Either the election system broke down, or some mystery votes are hiding somewhere…”

Oh. Huh.

Just watch and see who it sounds like they’re describing now:

Anyway, Fox News, like all media outlets, get to choose what they air and what they don’t. No one is entitled to a platform, not even the president of the United States, when they are lying, making things up, or talking about half of America of being complicit in committing fraud.

We knew 2020 was weird. Just didn’t know it would be Fox-News-cutting-off-the-president’s-spokesperson weird. Let’s just get this nightmare over with so we can move toward 2021 with our new, democratically elected president.

On a very busy Friday, when the nation’s attention was largely occupied on presidential election vote tallies, a little story about the still largely shuttered movie industry broke: Johnny Depp had been forced out of the Harry Potter spin-off/prequel series, Fantastic Beasts. The now controversial actor had played Gellert Grindelwald, the trilogy’s main baddie, and though the third installment was already being shot, his name had been yanked off the call sheet, soon after he lost a defamation suit against The Sun, who had dubbed him a “wife-beater” after his divorce from Amber Heard. Now were getting some details about what led to the decision and, according to The Hollywood Reporter, we’ve learned at least one person will make a lot of money off of this: Johnny Depp.

As per the report, Depp, like many Hollywood A-listers, signed a so-called pay-or-play contract, which meant he’d be compensated in full whether the film is completed or recast or what have you. That means he’ll received his full eight-figure salary, despite having only filmed one scene so far. Think of it the way Megyn Kelly received a full year’s salary from NBC even after they fired her for defending blackface.

That also means that, when the Fantastic Beasts threequel hits theaters in its final form, Depp will be the highest-paid performer involved with it, even though he’ll likely not be involved with it at all. (Who knows? He could always make a simple appearance, much as he did in the series’ maiden voyage, which ends with Colin Farrell’s Grindelwad revealing himself to actually be Depp.) Poor leads Jude Law and Eddie Redmayne, who were to share the same amount of screentime and will still wind up being paid less. And, for that matter, poor other Fantastic Beasts players Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, and more, who aren’t famous enough either to get that much dough, and while shooting a movie in the midst of a pandemic to boot.

(Via THR)

Nigerian superstar Davido is just a few days away from releasing his anticipated new album A Better Time. His 2019 effort, A Good Time, boasted appearances from cutting-edge artists like Summer Walker, Gunna, and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie. Now he offers a taste of what he has in store for his impending LP, tapping Lil Baby for an extravagant video alongside their thumping collaboration “So Crazy.”

Shot in LA, the video sees him linking up with Lil Baby at a sunny poolside party fit for the biggest stars. Celebrating the spoils of success, the two get down in their flashy visual. The song itself sees Lil Baby adopting Davido’s rhythmic style while also getting personal in his verse. “Heartbreak after heartbreak, my chest done got numb / I tried my best, gave you my all, now I’m done,” he raps.

Ahead of the video’s release, Davido spoke to Uproxx about his upcoming music and how surprised Lil Baby was when he recently gave him a tour of his hometown: “When Lil Baby came to Nigeria, he was with me the whole time,” he said. “When he got there, he was confused. I picked him up in my Bentley truck, took him, drove him around, took him to where the rich people stay at, took him to where the poor people stay at, took him on a yacht, took him to the island, boathouse, all of that. He wanted to actually send me some money to invest in an apartment because he was like, damn, these people didn’t explain like, ‘Oh this is really what Africa is like.’ Media puts out like dirt roads. They don’t show like the skyscrapers. I’ll show you my house. It’s crazy. The market is growing, they even do an Afrochella.”

Watch Davido and Lil Baby’s “So Crazy” video above.

A Better Time is out 11/13 via Davido Worldwide/RCA. Pre-order it here.

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Jeopardy! paid tribute to the late Alex Trebek with a special message before Monday’s broadcast, a day after the legendary host died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 80. The show inserted a special cold open into the broadcast that shared memories about Trebek and a message from show executive producer Mike Richards.

While Jeopardy! often airs in markets in the 7 o’clock hour locally, there are several US markets that air the show earlier in the day. That’s how word of James Holzhauer’s historic run coming to an end hit social media in advance of most people seeing it air “live” in syndication.

And so video of the cold open hit Twitter well before many were able to see the tribute air before Monday’s episode.

“Over the weekend we lost our beloved host, Alex Trebek. This is an enormous loss for our staff and crew, for his family and for his millions of fans. He loved this show, and everything it stood for,” Richards said. “In fact, he taped his final episodes less than two weeks ago. He will forever be an inspiration for his constant desire to learn, his kindness, and for his love of his family.”

Getting emotional, Richards confirmed that those episodes will air as expected, though there was no official word about what will happen to the show next.

“We will air his final 35 episodes as they were shot. That’s what he wanted,” Richards said. “On behalf of everyone here at Jeopardy, thank you for everything Alex. This is Jeopardy!”

The official Jeopardy! account on Twitter posted a message about Trebek that linked to its website, also confirming that episodes with Trebek as host will run until December 25.

It’s an emotional message paying tribute to a man who meant so much to the people he worked with. Despite the fear many had about Trebek and his diagnosis, and the long battle had with pancreatic cancer, it’s still shocking that a central figure like Trebek is truly gone. Another fan-made video of great Trebek moments also circulated on Monday that got many people emotional.

Fans will get 35 more chances to see him at the helm of the show, but it will be an emotional next few weeks of watching to say the least.

While the fall season is more commonly associated with darker spirits, it’s also a great time to dive deeper into tequila. The subtlely smoky, vegetal notes of the spirit go down nicely with the slight chill in the air. While blanco tequila is perfectly suited for summer drinking and mixing, autumn is actually a pretty ideal time to step up to añejos and reposados.

Bill Whitlow, owner of Proper Food & Drink in Covington, Kentucky has clear fall tequila preferences.

“I tend to prefer barrel-aged stuff,” he says. “I’ve been digging on a new tequila — to me, at least — lately from Casa Maestri. Their añejo is super creamy and thick. Right up my alley.”

Instead of leaving you to wander the aisles of your local liquor store with your mask-covered mouth agape, wondering which bottle(s) you should buy, we turned to bartenders for guidance — asking ten well-known bartenders to share their favorite lesser-known tequilas for fall 2020.

Ocho Anejo

Frederic Yarm, USBG bartender in Boston

Ocho is an amazing tequila brand that sources from individual agave farms for each batch, such that the terroir of the plot shines through. Most tequila brands mix together agaves from all over the highlands and lowlands which makes the agricultural aspect less distinctive. Here, the fermentation and distillation techniques allow the agave itself to shine through beautifully, and it allows each batch to be compared in a horizontal flight or enjoyed on its own.

Riazul Anejo

Seth Falvo, bartender at The Hotel Zamora in St. Pete Beach, Florida

Riazul Anejo is a great sipping tequila for the fall and winter. It’s extremely smooth and has a great French oak-forward flavor. The cinnamon spice on the finish makes it a great after-dinner drink during the holiday season as well.

Don Fulano Fuerte

Christopher Chamberlain, national beverage development manager at E. & J. Gallo Winery in Modesto, California

It may not be a new tequila to many, but its broader availability on the national stage is — and that’s Don Fulano Tequila. This beautifully crafted estate-grown, ground-to glass-spirit truly embodies everything a sipping tequila should stand for. The bright bold flavors of its blanco tequila are intensified if you graduate to the 100 proof ‘Fuerte’ variation. If you prefer a wonderfully aged expression, Don Fulano offers both a dry-yet-fruity sipper with their reposado and a remarkable rich flavored añejo.

That said, for those willing to splurge, the Don Fulano Imperial Extra Anejo is the ultimate accompaniment to the cool crisp evenings that lie ahead.

123 Organic Añejo

Josh Curtis, bar director at Carbon Beach Club in Malibu, California

123 Organic Añejo may just be the best tequila on the market right now. It tastes like an agave plant… which is what tequila is supposed to taste like. It’s also not super sweet like many añejos are.

Una Vida Anejo

Andy Printy, beverage director at Chao Baan in St. Louis

My personal favorite tequila to sip in the colder months is Una Vida Añejo Tequila. A touch smoky, round from ex-bourbon cask barreling, and tons of buttered popcorn notes on the palate. Lots of room to play with various bitters and sugars to manipulate the profile in a cocktail or even just a few drops of water to release more of the barrel and subtle smokey tones.

Una Vida’s Añejo expression has a reasonable price point and acts even better as a fire pit companion.

Corralejo Reposado

Jenny Harris, bar manager at Point Loma Fish Shop in San Diego

Corralejo Reposado Tequila was my first choice in our November cocktail called “Autumn Harvest Sipper.” Corralejo’s Reposado has warm notes of rhubarb, oakwood, vanilla, and orange and will put you in the mood for fall.

It also pairs nicely with fish tacos.

Los Arango Anejo

Joan Villanueva, beverage director at Galaxy Taco in La Jolla, California

Los Arango Anejo Tequila brings delicate notes of spice and vanilla that allow for it to take over in a Manhattan or an old fashioned variation. My first go-to for a fall/winter drink.

El Tesoro Reposado

Crystal Chasse, beverage director at Talk Story Rooftop in Brooklyn

Once the chilliness settles into the air I reach for a bottle of El Tesoro Reposado. It is tahona-milled which allows the earthy qualities of the agaves to showcase themselves in the final product. Black pepper, oak, and citrus round out the flavor profile — creating a delicious juice to drink neat or to stir into an Oaxacan Old Fashioned for blustery nights.

Tears of Llorona

Mario Latona, manager at STK Steak House in San Diego

It always brings a tear of happiness to my eye when I get to taste Tears of Llorona, especially when you pair it with a Dry-Aged Delmonico from STK. This five year Extra Añejo is a perfect choice for the fall with notes of cinnamon, chocolate, and light notes of roasted agave.

Penta Anejo

Vincent Sol Campos, bartender at Hearsay – Market Square in Houston

Penta Tequila is an easy spirit to get behind, especially regarding its añejo. Penta is the tequila that every agave spirit wants to be and is the first tequila to blend 100% blue agave sourced from all five of Mexico’s legally protected “designation of origin” states. Every fall and winter, I gravitate towards whiskey, but once I was introduced to the Penta line I immediately worked it into my rotation. There is no other tequila to drink during the winter. T

he sweetness from the caramel and vanilla, little hints of spice and orange, and the extra maturation (an average of 14 months) in oak barrels is perfection.

Pour out some of that 40oz out for an icon. Legendary streetwear brand and coveted symbol of fashion-obsessed hypebeasts everywhere, Supreme, has officially sold out for a cool $2.1 billion. The New York Times reports that the brand was bought by VF Corp, which is set to acquire 100 percent of the company and already owns several brands including The North Face, Dickies, and Vans. Label founder James Jebbia as well as senior leadership will remain with the company, which is expected to score VF Corp $500 million in revenue by 2022 alone.

“This partnership will maintain our unique culture and independence while allowing us to grow on the same path we’ve been on since 1994,” Jebbia said in a statement announcing the acquisition.

The move comes at a time of uncertainty for streetwear brands as the pandemic has affected every label from the smallest and least visible to seemingly too-big-to-fail brands like Supreme, as more and more shoppers turn to e-commerce platforms for their fits. According to The New York Times, 60% of Supreme’s sales already come from their virtual webstore so we shouldn’t see too much of a change in the way the company currently operates, but the move begs the question: When the pandemic is over, will the brand still attract around the block lines?

Sure, Supreme already collaborates with mega-brands like The North Face, Vans, and Nike. And it’s cool that the label’s current leadership is staying on board. But the brand is cashing out some of its cultural cool for visibility, and that’s the kind of thing that seems at odds with Supreme’s audience. If they notice and turn on the company or if the market gets saturated, it could be trouble on the scale of Stussy’s collapse.

Check out some of the reactions on Twitter to the news below.