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Big Sean Summons Eminem To Lead A Fleet Of Detroit Rappers On ‘Friday Night Cypher’

Three years in the making, Big Sean has finally unveiled his fifth album, Detroit 2. The album aims to extend the success of its predecessor, which stood as a mixtape the Detroit native released back in 2012. An early standout on the album, even before it was released, was “Friday Night Cypher” thanks to its jam-packed list of features. Bringing nearly all the well-known names in Detroit together, Big Sean calls on Eminem, Royce Da 5’9′, Tee Grizzley, Kash Doll, Boldy James, Sada Baby, Cash Kidd, Payroll, 42 Dugg, and Drego to debut some of their best bars on the new song. In an interview with Vulture, Big Sean explained the meaning behind the song.

I made it a point to make the whole city feel included. There’s a song on there that just takes me back. I used to do this radio show called “Friday Night Cypher.” The whole city would come together and we would cypher it up — that’s real Detroit-style right there… It’s definitely a moment on the album where the city comes together, even people who are rumored to have misunderstandings and beef.

As for the rest of Detroit 2, Big Sean dishes 21 tracks to fans for his latest album — enough to make up for his three-year absence from the game. Across the project, fans can expect to hear Jhene Aiko (twice), Ty Dolla Sign, Wale, Anderson .Paak, Young Thug, Lil Wayne, Travis Scott, Stevie Wonder, Dave Chapelle, Erykah Badu, and much more on the album.

Get ready for some bars and press play on “Friday Night Cypher” above.

Detroit 2 is out now via Def Jam Recordings. Get it here.

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

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SZA Delivers Her First Solo Release In Over Three Years With ‘Hit Different’ Featuring Ty Dolla Sign

Fans have been begging and pleading for SZA to grace them with the tiniest crumb of music for the last three years after the TDE songstress shared her critically-acclaimed debut album, Ctrl. Tellings fans to remain patient while voicing complaints of her own, the singer has finally returned with her first solo release in three years with “Hit Different.”

Calling on Ty Dolla Sign for the new song, SZA drops the track with a matching visual. The video finds the “Love Galore” singer dancing energetically with her girls in a junkyard. Exchanging the song’s bouncy feel for calmer production, SZA slows things down on the song’s second half with a soothing ballad.

It was just a few weeks ago that SZA took to Twitter to voice her complaints about her inability to share music with fans. Sending a tweet in response to the constant requests for new music, SZA said, “At this point y’all gotta ask punch. I’ve done all I can do.” When a fan proved they did just that, SZA’s frustration was clear as the singer responded saying, “This is all he says to me as well . Welcome to my f*cking life .” With her fans turning their attention to TDE’s President Punch for the next 24 hours, SZA would call off her stans with a new message the following day. “Don’t nobody need to free me Lmao I’m not held hostage n neither is my music!!,” she said in one tweet. “Me n punch be disagreeing ..hes never steered me wrong and I trust Gods timing.” Well it seemed like her trust steered her well as her new single has finally arrived.

Listen “Hit Different” in the video above.

Ty Dolla Sign is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

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G-Eazy And Mulatto Put Their Spin On A ‘Deuce Bigalow’ Film With Their Wild ‘Down’ Video

In what is easily one of the more unexpected collaborations of the year, G-Eazy brings Mulatto to the west with their new collaboration, “Down.” Pairing a wild yet entertaining video to the bouncy single, G-Eazy and Mulatto take inspiration from the 1999 sex comedy film Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo for the Reel Goats-directed visual.

Playing a male prostitute who poses as a front desk attendant at a hotel, G-Eazy makes his rounds throughout the hotel and offers his services to those in need throughout the building. Receiving a payment for each person he entertains, G-Eazy gives the lump sum to his boss, Mulatto. It’s not until the rapper reaches a certain threshold that he is allowed to get his hands on some money to keep. Rob Schneider, who starred in the Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo film, also appears in the music video.

The new collaboration between Mulatto and G-Eazy arrives after the West Coast rapper took a trip to the alternative world for his most recent project, Everything’s Strange Here, back in June. Across the project’s 11 songs, G-Eazy handled most of the vocal responsibilities on it aside from features from Kossisko and Ashley Benson. Mulatto, on the other hand, shared her debut album last month with Queen Of Da Souf. The project, which arrived weeks after she was named a 2020 XXL Freshman, boasted 13 songs and features from Gucci Mane, City Girls, 21 Savage, and more.

Watch the wild video for “Down” above.

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Three Takeaways From The Clippers Blowout Game 1 Win Over The Nuggets

Two days after a thrilling Game 7 win over the Utah Jazz, the Denver Nuggets had to find a way to refocus and deal with a rested Clippers team finally at full strength, and after hanging around for a quarter, the floodgates eventually opened and L.A. ran away with a blowout win and a 1-0 lead.

The Clippers defense was stifling, and on offense they sliced through the Nuggets defense on unbelievable efficiency on the way to a 120-97 victory. It was quite the performance to assert their dominance to start this series, and now as we look ahead to the rest of the series, here are our takeaways from Thursday’s opener.

1. The Clippers are terrifying

This was just about the perfect game for the Clippers. As always, that starts with Kawhi Leonard, who was 12-of-16 from the field for 29 points in 32 minutes of action. His ability to get to his spot and shoot over any defender without a care in the world is the thing that sets the Clippers apart from most anyone other than the Lakers — who have LeBron who does similar things. Leonard has, like last year, stepped his game up to another level for the postseason and what he does to a defense isn’t just put points on you, but he demoralizes you because even your best effort often isn’t enough.

Beyond Leonard, the rest of the Clippers seem to be rounding into form around him. Paul George had 19 points, seven rebounds, and four assists, still struggling a bit from beyond the arc but looking more like the second star they’ll need him to be moving forward. Marcus Morris continues to be lethal from the outside, hitting 4-of-5 from three-point range and punishing the Nuggets whenever they helped into the paint on Leonard, George, and others.

The bench unit, led by Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell, also seems to be getting into rhythm, which is a huge development since that was the group that struggled the most in the Dallas series. On defense, they got off to a bit of a rocky start, but they took away Jamal Murray and took away the paint, making Denver take a lot of tough, contested jump shots and they did not fall. There’s obviously still a long way to go in this series, but this was about as good of a start as the Clippers could’ve hoped for as they seem to be peaking at the right time.

2. The Nuggets might need a miracle

Denver’s defense steadily got better against the Jazz, particularly in Games 6 and 7 with Gary Harris on the court again, but they just had no answers for the Clippers in Game 1 on either end. Jamal Murray looked like someone that had just had to play a near-perfect 7-game series just to get Denver here, and Jokic, after starting hot, likewise was held in check with just 15 points as Denver’s leading scorer.

On the defensive end, Denver’s weaknesses got exposed by this Clippers team. Harris can only do so much and unlike Utah, L.A. has a lot more capable initiators, particularly on the wings. As such, the Nuggets’ wing defense was exposed as was the soft, doughy interior defense that provides them with almost no rim protection. Draymond Green broke that down perfectly on the halftime show, showing how little a factor Jokic is inside.

The path to wins in this series for Denver is likely similar to that of the Jazz series, as they need Jamal Murray to catch fire again, shooting over the top of the stout Clippers defense, and for them to find ways to force more turnovers to steal some extra possessions because getting consistent stops is very difficult for them. We’ve seen it happen, so we know it’s possible, but to do that four times in this series would require a miraculous turnaround. They’ve been blown out once already in these playoffs in Game 3 against Utah and bounced back immediately, but this Clippers team is a different animal and they will need to show something that wasn’t there on Wednesday to stand a chance.

3. The wings I made tonight were great and here’s how you can make them, too

I’ll be honest, there’s not a ton more to say about this game than the Clippers were sensational and the Nuggets looked tired and overmatched. As such, I figure I can leave you with this, my favorite roasted chicken wing recipe for you to make at home (cooking method comes from Alton Brown’s excellent EveryDayCook book).

Step 1: Boil water in a saucepan/stockpot, place steamer basket in pot, place wings in steamer basket, steam the wings for 10 minutes. (This may sound weird, but I assure you it’s very important to the process).

Step 2: Lay paper towels on a baking sheet, place a wire rack on top and pull wings to the rack. Place in the refrigerator, uncovered, for 1 hour. (Again, stick with me here.)

Step 3: Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Remove paper towel from the baking sheet, keep wings on wire rack on the sheet tray, bake for 20-25 minutes.

Step 4: While wings are cooking, melt 1 tbsp butter and add ~half a bottle of Texas Pete hot sauce. Stir to combine.

Step 5: Remove wings from the oven, brush on both sides with the sauce (or toss in the sauce, whichever you prefer), and return to the oven for 20-25 more minutes.

Step 6: Remove wings from the oven (they should be deep golden brown and crispy). Toss or brush with remaining sauce. Serve with carrots, celery, and ranch/blue cheese.

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Lil Durk Labels Himself Chicago’s Jay-Z On His Motivating New Single, ‘The Voice’

Bringing forth more content to his fans in a year where he’s already given so much, Lil Durk returns to the scene with his new single, “The Voice.” Backed by an uplifting beat laced with moody guitar riffs and a haunting voice, Lil Durk celebrates the inspiration he’s become to the streets on the motivating single. The song is filled with confidence as the Chicago rapper stands confident in his status in rap as well as the hood. With lines like, “I’m Durkio, but I’m Chicago Jay-Z,” Durk proves he is more than secure with how outsiders perceive him.

The single arrives after Lil Durk joined Drake for the Toronto rapper’s latest single, “Laugh Now, Cry Later.” The track kicked off the campaign to Drake’s upcoming sixth album while giving Durk his highest-charting single as the song peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart a week after its release. Earlier this year, Durk delivered his Just Cause Y’all Waited 2 project, his first full-length release since late 2019’s, Love Songs 4 the Streets 2. Backed by features from Lil Baby, Polo G, Gunna, G Herbo, and more, the project also gave him his high-position on the Billbaord album charts as it debuted at No. 2. Treating fans to a deluxe edition two weeks later, the Chicago seven new songs.

Watch the video above to hear “The Voice.”

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‘The Boys’ Triumphantly Returns In A Deceptively Deep Blaze Of Depraved Glory In Season 2

As Amazon Prime’s The Boys geared up for a second round, the show faced steep, self-set expectations after making such an unapologetic, ultra-violent, and hyper-sexual debut. Where, exactly, does one go after nailing balls to the wall? Figuratively, I mean. Thank god they didn’t literally do that, but there’s always room in the already-renewed third season. Seriously though, the first batch of episodes burst out of the gate with so much momentum while adapting Garth Ennis’ comic book series and skewering superhero culture, that I genuinely wondered how it could, you know, maintain. If a followup was mostly gonna be about “more blood” and “more profanity,” that’d grow dull and desensitizing pretty fast. Sure, the show would retain some eyeballs, but there’s no reason to turn the show into a live-action-cartoon-esque thing in order to be more daring. It was time to shift into an additional gear.

Fortunately for all involved, showrunner Eric Kripke (along with executive producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg) has injected a shocking amount of depth, in appropriate and believable places, so Season 2 feels more multi-dimensional. The stories behind that spectacle are more engrossing, but there’s no downshift in graphic content. So yes, more gore, and my god, the sound team overdid themselves to emphasize visceral detail. And we get to see more of the vigilante group called The Boys (now fugitives) acting broody with Billy Butcher (Kyle Urban) marching around all gruff-like and Hughie (Jack Quaid) losing his sh*t because that’s a large part of the show’s appeal.

Amazon Studios

Yet we already knew about The Boys’ trauma and why they raged so hard; we’ve seen, in disgusting detail, why Hughie was an easy recruit for Butcher’s vengeance-cause, but we haven’t yet seen enough of the inner turmoil of Supes, and how they’ll attempt to recover from season one fallout as a f*cked-up, reprehensible bunch, as well as their continued maneuvering as corporate propaganda.

There’s the anchoring point in season two, and boy, is it a welcome turn. The Supes gain more dimension within individual characters, yet the show still maintains an ultra-cynical look at superhero culture because of all the Vought International business. They’re still monetizing those superpowers in almost absurd ways, and the Compound V controversy blows up, but it’s not beaten into the ground. And that’s alright, preferable even. Moviegoers aren’t moviegoers at the moment, so people aren’t feeling superhero burnout much at all right now. We don’t need to kick Supes in the nuts too hard this year. Instead, we can enjoy witnessing more of the The Seven’s inner dynamics, which are a delight to explore. As it turns out, many are more than a little bit traumatized by what went down last year, and sloshing through the mess that Homelander made.

Yeah, so about that guy. What’s particularly entrancing is how Homelander (Antony Starr) continues to be the show’s biggest (and most magnetic) time bomb. A lot of his darkness emerged last year: whatever he did to Butcher’s wife; murdering his mother figure; botching the Flight 37 rescue; and so on. He’s still the most compelling character on the show, and I’m beyond amazed that the writers continue to successfully mine the depths of his depravity, and how Starr is perfectly game to drive those acts home. Getting into this guy’s super-sick head can’t be a simple process, and yet, Starr simply brings that creeping sense of dread and the unsettling air of danger behind that smile.

Meanwhile, nearly every other Supe is dodging his sadistic ways. Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) can’t cope with the sheer evil that he’s seen him commit, and he’s practically hunting Starlight (Erin Moriarty). Meanwhile, Butcher is hunting Homelander, and clearly, the whole world revolves around the guy.

Amazon Studios

That is, except for The Seven’s newcomer, Stormfront (Aya Cash). It’s rare to see such an injection of unparalleled upheaval from a previously unknown character, but boy, does she mess up the (already tenuous) equilibrium of the Supes. She’s more than a wild card; she’s a molotov cocktail. And she’s doing some horrible, god-awful things. Yet her ability to get under Homelander’s skin is what makes her fascinating on a whole other level. And in opposite-land, The Deep (Chace Crawford), is (at least) keeping his pants on this year, which is more progress than expected, and Crawford probably relished the chance get down and dirty while running his character through therapy. He takes a decent stab at redemption, and you might be here for it.

My verdict here is simple enough: The Boys is still very, very funny, and very, very shocking, and often funny and shocking at the same time. In other words, you’ll still sometimes feel bad about what you’re laughing at. Yet the most impressive part of the show — that the violence and sex and profanity do not exist for the sheer sake of those things — has grown even stronger during the sophomore season. Yes, those things are amplified this year, but so is every emotional aspect of the show that grounds the spectacle and keeps it from flying away and jumping the, uh, dolphin. It’s a triumphant return and a damn fine slice of storytelling.

Amazon Prime’s ‘The Boys’ premieres Season 2 with three episodes on September 4, with episodes to follow every Friday.

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Kanye West Has Been Removed From Virginia’s Presidential Ballot After Submitting False Signatures

After celebrating the addition of his name to several ballots across the country, Kanye West’s presidential campaign has suffered yet another blow with less than two months left until the election. A judge in Virginia has ruled to remove the rapper’s name from the state’s presidential ballots after it was discovered a large percentage of the signatures he submitted were invalid.

According to the Associated Press, Richmond Circuit Court Judge Joi Taylor ruled that 11 of the 13 required oaths Kanye submitted for his presidential campaign were gotten through “fraudulent and/or misleading means.” The removal comes a week after the Virginia Board of Elections revealed Kanye submitted the required 5,000 petition signatures and 13 pledges of support from electors.

Kanye’s removal from the ballot was sparked after two of the electors — Matthan Wilson and Bryan Wright — filed a lawsuit claiming they were deceived into giving the rapper a signature for his campaign. According to Law & Crime, Wright said he was approached by someone from West’s campaign to sign to be an “elector for the state.” He later found out he signed for Kanye’s presidential campaign once a news reporter contacted him.

In addition to Virginia, Kanye was also removed from Ohio’s presidential ballot shortly after he was banned from appearing on Wisconsin’s ballot after he missed a required campaign deadline. The rapper reportedly also missed an important financial deadline for his campaign last month.

On a more positive note, Kanye was named the highest-paid male celebrity of 2020 earlier this week.

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Zack Snyder’s ‘Army of the Dead’ Is Already Getting A Netflix Prequel And Anime Spinoff

We haven’t seen Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead on Netflix just yet, but the Dawn of the Dead sequel is apparently getting its own extended universe on Netflix. Snyder’s Army of the Dead isn’t even out yet, as the movie still requires reshoots after it was announced that Tig Notaro would fill a role meant for Zack D’Elia following a series of sexual misconduct allegations against the actor and standup.

But according to a story in The Hollywood Reporter, Snyder’s non-Justice League playground is getting a lot bigger, with an anime and sequel already signed up for by the streaming giant well before the zombie heist film gets an audience on Netflix.

The spinoff movie won’t feature Snyder directing the project, but he will produce it. Interestingly, an actor in the Army Of The Dead film, Matthias Schweighöfer, will direct the movie that will feature on his Ludwig Dieter. According to THR, the movie will film in Germany. As far as the animated series, it will take place in Las Vegas — or what’s left of it — and focus more on Bautista’s origin story.

The anime series, Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, will chronicles the origin story of Bautista’s character and his rescue crew during the initial fall of Vegas as they confront the mysterious source of the zombie outbreak.

Snyder will direct two episodes of the anime series while Jay Oliva, who has directed numerous movies for DC Comics’ animated line and was a storyboard artist for Dead, will act as showrunner and also direct two episodes of the series. Bautista, Ana de la Reguera, Tig Notaro, Omari Hardwick and Ella Purnell will reprise their roles in the anime series.

The original script of Army of the Dead was apparently pretty gruesome, so maybe that will appear in some of the other properties Netflix is cooking up now.

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Charlie Kaufman’s ‘I’m Thinking Of Ending Things’ Is An Insular, Mystifying Experiment

To my mind, Charlie Kaufman has been responsible for at least three or four perfect movies (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Anomalisa at the top), and at the age of 61, could easily rest on his laurels as one of the greatest screenwriters of all time (not that I’d want him to). Instead, he has a 700-page novel and a 134-minute movie coming out this year: Antkind, from Random House, and I’m Thinking Of Ending Things, which he both wrote and directed, out this week on Netflix.

Knowing that Antkind is about a frustrated film critic named B. Rosenberger Rosenberg (part of the joke is that Rosenberg isn’t Jewish), it feels almost like Kaufman is pre-emptively daring any unfortunate middlebrow hack to become the butt of an enduring Kaufman joke by daring not to understand Kaufman’s latest masterpiece. He may as well have titled his latest “It’s a Trap!”

But fine, here I go into the dunking booth. Honestly, we sound like Ignatius J. Reilly any time we write a negative review anyway, and it’s not as if “film critics” were ever in danger of winning any popularity contests. Charlie Kaufman is probably my favorite filmmaker. I’m Thinking Of Ending Things is as of now my least favorite of his films.

Adapted from Canadian author Iain Reid’s debut novel, I’m Thinking Of Ending Things takes its title from the inner monologue of its protagonist, played by Jessie Buckley, who’s thinking of breaking things off with her new boyfriend, Jake — played by Jesse Plemons — during a road trip to visit Jake’s parents (hey, Jessie & Jesse, how ’bout that). The Ireland-born Buckley, previously of Taboo and Chernobyl, and one of the best young actresses around, plays a character known alternately as Cindy, Lucy, Lucia, or Amy, who is either a poet, painter, physics student, gerontologist, waitress, or veterinary student depending on which version I’m Thinking Of Ending Things‘ constantly-shifting reality you choose to believe.

Charlie Kaufman is one of the most astute relationship chroniclers who has ever lived, giving us the enduring heartbreak of doomed romance in Eternal Sunshine (undoubtedly one of the greatest movies of all time), the narcotic rush of a new lover in Anomalisa, and the petty cruelty of a dying marriage in Being John Malkovich. His movies are about the inherent selfishness of the human condition and the struggle to connect (occasionally with himself as a character, as in Adaptation and Antkind). I’m Thinking Of Ending Things, with a relationship reference right in the title, is clearly attempting to mine some of the same territory, but for the first time, Kaufman seems unable to connect with his own characters. He can’t even name them.

I’m Thinking Of Ending Things is about mortality, relationships, inherited trauma, but more than anything it’s about verbal dexterity. Almost the entire first 30 minutes takes place inside Jake’s early 90s sedan, a two-hander with a single location. To Kaufman’s credit, this isn’t as boring as that sounds. Jake and Cindy/Lucy contemplate and complement, ponder and provoke, discussing Wordsworth, Oklahoma!, and the death drive in the animal kingdom, all culminating in a hilariously bleak poem that Lucy/Cindy/Lucia/Amy recites aloud.

…the sun goes up and down like a tired whore,
the weather immobile like a broken limb while you just keep getting older.
Nothing moves, but the shifting tides of salt in your body.
Your vision blears, you carry your weather with you; the big blue whale;
a skeletal darkness
[…]
you come home with your mutant gifts
to a house of bone
everything you see now
all of it
bone

The poem is the clearest evidence of the old Kaufman wit, and feels a bit self-deprecating, like Kaufman poking fun at his own depressiveness (though for the record I always found him to be at least as idealistic as he is bleak).

Through it all, there are constant tone shifts and brief forays into formalistic experimentation — the implication that Jake can maybe hear what Lucy is thinking, Lucy staring directly into the camera, the extended, certainly-not-intended-literally poems recited by heart. The stylized, hyperarticulate, tone-shifting dialogue, in particular, feels like it was borrowed from Don Delillo or another author whose characters’ dialogue feels more like drowning in the author’s obsessions than listening to separate humans speaking. Is Kaufman doing an art? But why?

This manic invocation of theater, poetry, high culture, horticulture, is the kind of thing I expect from Aaron Sorkin or Noah Baumbach, not Charlie Kaufman. Kaufman’s experimentation has traditionally taken the form of characters doing, not characters saying. Here the main dramatic tension is our expectation that all these references will eventually add up to something.

When Jake and whatsherface finally arrive at Jake’s parents’ isolated farmhouse in the midst of a blizzard, the action gets darker, more provocative. There are scratches on the door to the basement. A border-collie that won’t stop shaking. A pool of blood on the floor of the barn where Jake tells us some pigs got eaten alive by maggots. What’s happening here? Clearly an art of some kind. (Bone, everything you see…)

David Thewlis (voice of the lead in Anomalisa and the yucky-toothed guy in Fargo season 3) plays Jake’s lecherous, belittling father, who goes off on a tangent about how much he dislikes abstract art (didn’t we already see this character, in Sideways, with Thomas Hayden Church’s father-in-law saying he only reads non-fiction?). Toni Collette plays Jake’s high-strung mother. Both parents flash forward and backward in age from scene to scene, sometimes appearing young and vibrant, other times old and decrepit, confirming anew that Kaufman is most definitely doing an art.

Kaufman seems like he’s leaving us breadcrumbs along the way, patterns and memes and callbacks, to Pauline Kael, to David Foster Wallace, to “Baby It’s Cold Outside” (is Kaufman lashing out at being unfairly lumped in with the “sad white guy” artistic milieu?), leaving us wondering whether this will all come together in some Kaiser Soze moment of clarity at the end. He’s turned his characters themselves into yet more ephemera, probably deliberately, but in such a way that makes it hard to care. For all our selfishness, it’s much easier to care about people than about whether a person is doing an art.

The Reid novel from which the film was adapted has been described as a “psychological horror” in the vein of Stephen King, and Kaufman’s movie feels David Lynchian at times, like a series of vignettes in which a horror film is about to break out but never does. It offers, mainly, the vague sense that this is all supposed to be a fresh and intriguing way of telling a story. And this intrigue is meant to be enough for us not to mind that the characters are all ciphers performing a series of illusory bits and homages amidst a frozen wasteland. This dearth of recognizable humanity and situations made me feel, presumably Kaufman-like, trapped inside my own head, both lonely and bored.

Maybe it’s quarantine, but lately I find myself feeling less and less interested in the innovative storytelling techniques and groundbreaking formal experimentation that once inspired me, and which, to some extent, were Kaufman’s bread and butter. These days I kind of just want to meet interesting characters and go to interesting places. Ted Lasso looks like absolute Disney drivel on paper, but had me hooked, thanks to a cast of characters I just wanted to hang out with for a while and a setting that was just enough outside my daily experience as to offer some novelty. Ted Lasso is a decidedly less ambitious thing than I’m Thinking of Ending Things and I judge them through different lenses (and yes, some dull critic invoking a dopey commercial television show in a review of a Charlie Kaufman movie would probably make a great bit for B. Rosenberger Rosenberg). But maybe a polarized world that always feels on the brink of some fresh collapse has made me yearn for simple stories of nice people, interesting places, and low stakes. I don’t know.

Maybe, like Sean Dolittle said of sports recently, Charlie Kaufman movies are a reward for a functioning society. Or maybe this one just wasn’t quite as good.

‘I’m Thinking Of Ending Things’ streams on Netflix on September 4. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

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A New Francis Ford Coppola Edit Of ‘The Godfather Part III’ Will Be Released On Its 30th Anniversary

Apparent The Godfather saga isn’t done pulling Francis Ford Coppola back in one more time. According to a report, the conclusion of the trilogy will see a new edition, one that will try to finish the saga the way he originally intended: with a different name and, if possible, a fix to the story his daughter Sofia played out on film that has been widely panned since its release in 1990.

Vanity Fair reported on Thursday that Coppola is, indeed, releasing a re-edit of the third film in The Godfather series, this time giving it the name he and author Mario Puzo originally wanted for the film: The Death of Michael Corleone.

The project, saddled with the lengthy title Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, will debut in theaters (where open and available) in December before hitting digital platforms as well as physical media.

The very different title is a departure from what’s been known as Part III of the saga for decades, and according to a release will conclude the series in a different order as well.

Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone is an acknowledgment of Mario’s and my preferred title and our original intentions for what became The Godfather: Part III,” Coppola said in a statement according to Vanity Fair. “For this version of the finale, I created a new beginning and ending, and rearranged some scenes, shots, and music cues. With these changes and the restored footage and sound, to me, it is a more appropriate conclusion to The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II and I’m thankful to Jim Gianopulos and Paramount for allowing me to revisit it.”

Vanity Fair’s story about the re-release details the years-long retrospective Coppola has had in the press over what he would do if he were to release a re-edited version of the film, so it’s likely we know what will actually happen in Coda. It’s also a pretty thorough run through of all the issues the film had with production and casting, which seemed to hamper what we originally got on Christmas Day back in 2020. For one, the role his daughter, Sofia, played at just 19 with little acting experience is likely to be very different.

“I want to show Sofia a new version, because she is so beautiful in it and so touching,” he told Deadline. “She wasn’t an actress. But she was the real thing, playing that 19-year-old Italian girl in love with her own cousin [played in the film by Andy Garcia]. Godfather III as The Death of Michael Corleone is doubly painful because at the end he doesn’t die, but he does worse than die. He loses everything he loves—and he lives. There are certain things in life that are worse than death.”

The film will hit theaters in December, where possible, but is also on demand as the still-ongoing coronavirus pandemic leaves the moviegoing experience entirely uncertain. For fans who may have been soured on the finale all those years ago, they just might be pulled right back in this winter.