Over the past year or so, LeBron James has gotten really into tacos, and more specifically, eating them on Tuesdays. This past fall, in fact, he even tried to trademark the phrase “Taco Tuesday,” but that attempt was not successful; “Taco Tuesday” was a firmly established thing long before LeBron James started saying it on social media. While he may not have legal ownership of the phrase, he’s the king of it in the Migos universe: The hip-hop group have released a new song called “Taco Tuesday,” and it features a LeBron sample.

The track, which only runs for about 90 seconds, begins with one of LeBron’s famous “Taco Tuuueeesday” exclamations. Today, of course, is the absolute perfect day for this song to come out: In addition to it being a Tuesday, it is also May 5, aka Cinco de Mayo, a celebration of Mexican culture.

The track is full of thematically appropriate lyrics. Quavo says on the chorus, “Taco Tuesday, I got the cheese, she tastin’ the Kool-Aid.” Meanwhile, Takeoff says on his verse, “My name Jose / It’s a long line at the doorway / We servin’ tacos, get ’em with the nachos / F*ckin’ with a bad vibe, and she go both ways.”

Listen to “Taco Tuesday” above.

It’s well established by now that many of Jared Leto’s scenes from Suicide Squad were cut, because, as the edgelord Joker, he “brought so much to the table in every scene that it was probably more about filtering all of the insanity” (according to Leto), or “it just didn’t make sense” (according to Margot Robbie). Whatever the case may be, director David Ayer denied “inaccurate” reports that he cut the Oscar winner’s screentime because he was “unhappy” about his performance – in fact, his “heart breaks” for Leto.

Responding to a Snyder Cut follower on Twitter, who wrote that Leto’s Joker “was too creepy for compassion, and his look didn’t convince everyone like Batfleck did, appearances matter,” Ayer tweeted, “For sure character creation is a tightrope. I took inspiration from the current DC comics. I find it incredible it’s still such a topic 5 years later. My heart breaks for Jared – he did magnificent work. Most of it remains unseen.”

Who cares about the Snyder Cut? I want to see the Joker cut of Suicide Squad. It looks the way drinking a Mountain Dew mixed with Red Bull tastes — exxxtreme.

Don’t expect to see Leto in The Suicide Squad, though. “No one but me and a few others know all the characters in the movie, but if the Joker isn’t in the film, I don’t think it would be strange as he isn’t a part of the Suicide Squad in the comics,” director James Gunn explained. That gives Leto lots of time to silently meditate in the desert.

(Via Comic Book Movie)

By now, there’s a solid chance that you’ve invested part of the last two quarantine weekends watching Extraction. So, you know what happens during the ass-kicking smorgasbord, which stars Chris Hemsworth as a character (Tyler Rake) who’s not unlike Lethal Weapon‘s Martin Riggs, especially where his own death wish is concerned. And end of the movie (which is arguably 2020’s biggest blockbuster and might soon be the most-watched Netflix movie of all time) left Rake’s fate ambiguous, and purposely so. Viewers aren’t quite sure if Rake lived or died, but we’re going to get more Extraction, so a good guess might be that he lived? Or we’re gonna get a prequel, but there’s definitely a followup on the way.

Deadline reports that the Russo Brothers are back onboard to produce with Joe Russo wielding his pen on the script again. Chris Hemsworth is expected to return as his mercenary character, as is director Sam Hargrave, but those details haven’t been finalized as of yet. Here’s what Joe Russo confirmed as of now:

“The deal is closed for me to write Extraction 2, and we are in the formative stages of what the story can be. We’re not committing yet to whether that story goes forward, or backward in time. We left a big loose ending that leaves question marks for the audience.”

Obviously, Joe’s keeping his options open here when it comes to officially going into prequel-or-sequel land. Honestly, I think I’d prefer the former? The ambiguous ending felt right, and I like to imagine that Rake would be seriously p*ssed off to have survived after he attempted to sacrifice himself for Ovi’s sake. Digging into the roots of his past trauma might yield riveting results, although I suspect that folks will be satisfied with a sequel as well, as long as the action choreography keeps riding high. Whatever the case, this is good news, and we’ll take any positive vibes we can get right now.

(Via Deadline)

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I don’t know what I expected from Clark Duke’s directorial debut, but it wasn’t this. Arkansas (adapted from John Brandon’s novel, adapted by Duke and Andrew Boonkrong and directed by Duke) opens with a Charles Portis quote from Dog Of The South: “A lot of people leave Arkansas and most of them come back sooner or later. They can’t quite achieve escape velocity.”

The film goes on to do a pretty reasonable impression of a Southern noir comical crime story, in the vein of authors like Portis, Harry Crews, Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen, etc. The American South, if one were to extrapolate from these stories, is a place where comical bumblings, criminal enterprise, and fatalism about the inscrutability of the universe collide. Again, not the first thing I expected from the glib guy from Hot Tub Time Machine, but certainly a pleasant surprise.

The Arkansas-bred Duke, who shot a pilot with Michael Cera at Loyola Marymount and became an up-and-comer fresh out of college with roles in Hot Tub Time Machine and Kick-Ass in the early aughts, plays another “Clark Duke-esque” character (glasses, quippy, self-effacing) in Arkansas. “Swin,” one of many characters earning a living from criminality and without a regular name, eventually makes an odd couple with our protagonist, Kyle (played by Liam Hemsworth), an alienated, antisocial introvert, when the two are hired to drive a load of drugs to Arkansas. Hemsworth is classic movie star handsome, almost comically so, a strong silent type, in distinct contrast to Duke’s pudgy post-modern hypebeast with top knot and hammer pants. Their dynamic shouldn’t make sense but does because absurdity is sort of the point. As Kyle informs us via voiceover: “The thing about organized crime in the South is that it isn’t that organized.”

Knowing this helps us not question things like a heavy named “Frog” (Vince Vaughn) and a corrupt park ranger named “Bright” (John Malkovich). That’s sort of the thing about the Southern noir; it’s populated largely by oddballs and eccentrics. Not that those oddballs can’t still be dangerous. Arkansas has life-and-death stakes that it never treats as improv opportunities — what separates it from Southern-set screwballs like Logan Lucky and Knives Out. Arkansas isn’t a screwball, it’s more like existentialism slightly leavened with absurd comedy.

Every character in Arkansas is on their own quixotic journey, fatalistic and alienated and just sort of muddling through. Vince Vaughn’s Frog, a drug kingpin turned pawn shop owner (who feels like a slight variation on his character in True Detective season 2), doesn’t have some Tony Montana-esque plan to get money, women, and power by not breaking his balls. He’s just a guy trying to stay alive and eke out a living. For John Malkovich’s Bright, it’s hard to tell whether the Park Ranger gig is a handy cover for working in the drug business or whether the drug business was a handy way to become a Park Ranger. He’s got a little Frances McDormand-in-Fargo to him.

For Swin and Kyle, a life of crime seems more a means to avoid the rat race than a way to afford flashy cars and beautiful women. Kyle is like a Harry Crews protagonist — not exactly noble, eloquent, or uniquely skilled at any one thing. He’s the opposite of a striver. His main goal in life is to be left alone and his guiding philosophy is to just get on with things. As he explains in his opening voiceover, “I’ve always suspected that I didn’t want the desirable things in life as much as I should.”

It comes as something of a cruel discovery then when Swin and Kyle find that the criminal world seems to have just as many company policies and middle managers as the straight one. If it seems weird to watch a drug movie with no wealth porn or to see redneck characters who are meant to be relatable and comical bumblers in almost equal measure, that’s part of the beauty of Arkansas: it never gives you quite what you’re expecting.

Where gangster and mafioso stories so often seem epic, taking the shape of classic rise-and-fall narratives, Arkansas is elusive and ephemeral. Its characters struggle to survive against a universe that doesn’t really care about them. It’s not the most escapist quarantine content, but there’s a simple beauty to it.

‘Arkansas’ hits Apple, Amazon, On Demand, Blu-ray and DVD on May 5, 2020. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Kanye West has worked with dozens of collaborators over the course of his career, and one of them, La Roux (real name Elly Jackson), didn’t seem to have the most positive experience, as she noted in a recent interview.

In a conversation with BBC Radio 1 DJ Phil Taggart on his Slacker Podcast, Taggart brought up that La Roux once had a collaboration with Kanye (she appears on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy), and she interjected, “‘Collaboration’ is too much of a strong word. I just turned up and did what I was told, kind of.”

She continued, “He’s one of those people that’s not 100 percent normal. It’s kind of a fascinating world to be in. […] You can’t talk about anything normal. You can’t just have a normal conversation — I didn’t manage to, anyway, I found it impossible. He’s on show 24 hours a day. It’s just him. It’s also kind of amazing to be around. I’ll never be around anything like that again. It was really strange. He kind of wants it to be strange as well. That’s kind of what I got from it. I was like, ‘You want this to be weird, you want people to walk away saying: ‘That was really weird.” But then I did walk away saying it was quite weird.”

La Roux then said after privately speaking to a mutual friend about the experience, he told Kanye about their conversation, and Kanye apparently demanded an apology: “One of his friends that I knew, afterwards, […] he kind of looked at me like, ‘It was weird, wasn’t it?’ […] I was like: ‘Yeah, that was pretty weird.’ […] I said I found it all a bit strange. And then he told [Kanye], and they made me write an apology email to him. It was quite creepy. […] I remember writing it, sat on my sofa, lol-ing to myself: ‘Dear Kanye…’ […] It was ridiculous, I just wrote it all with a massive grin on my face. They do genuinely have quite a lot of power! I was like, ‘I think I am going to actually apologize! It’s no skin off my nose.’”

She said she was put off by the way Kanye apparently treated some people, continuing, “I didn’t say anything bad about him. I just saw some behavior that wasn’t directed towards me […] that I can’t approve as a fellow human being. I’m not going to go into it, but I saw some behavior that I found upsetting, unsettling. And that’s all I said. I said he was absolutely lovely to me, because he was. It’s a hierarchical situation, I don’t know what to say. I don’t like hierarchy, and I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I do. And I’m not gonna also [partake in this] ‘conspiracy of silence’ where everyone pretends everything is f*cking normal when it’s blatantly not. I’m not that person, I can’t cover sh*t up. Doesn’t work.”

Listen to the full interview here, with the talk about Kanye beginning at about 41:30 into the episode.

The last time Steve Carell starred in a workplace sitcom, it was The Office, which, despite ending seven years ago, is still reportedly Netflix’s most popular show. In an attempt to recapture that Dunder Mifflin magic… BUT IN SPACE… Carell has re-teamed with The Office co-creator Greg Daniels on Space Force. Except instead of managing a branch of a paper company, he’s now a four-star general in charge of the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces (yes, this one). Agent Michael Scarn would be so proud.

You can watch the first trailer above. Here’s more.

A decorated pilot with dreams of running the Air Force, four-star general Mark R. Naird (Carell) is thrown for a loop when he finds himself tapped to lead the newly formed sixth branch of the US Armed Forces: Space Force. Skeptical but dedicated, Mark uproots his family and moves to a remote base in Colorado where he and a colorful team of scientists and “Spacemen” are tasked by the White House with getting American boots on the moon (again) in a hurry and achieving total space dominance.

Space Force, which also stars John Malkovich, Ben Schwartz, Jimmy O. Yang, Noah Emmerich, Tawny Newsome, Jessica St. Clair (womp it up!), and Fred Willard, premieres on May 29.

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Fresh off his award-winning performance in Uncut Gems (he won the Oscar for Best Actor Doing Cocaine Off Julia Fox In a Bathroom), Abel Tesfaye, a.k.a. the Weeknd, guest starred on American Dad! as himself. The “Blinding Lights” hit-maker is a huge fan of the Seth MacFarlane animated series, telling Variety, “I’ve been watching since high school, but I really appreciated it about seven years ago. It’s been running for so long, and I feel like it has a real cult following. To really enjoy the show in its entirety, you have to really know the characters.” Characters like Stelio Kontos, Jenny, and the Majestic. (Seriously, American Dad! is a good show, no matter what you think of Family Guy.)

In Monday’s episode, “A Starboy Is Born” (which Tesfaye co-wrote with Joel Hurwitz), the Weeknd is kidnapped by Stan to teach Roger a lesson about following the rules; also, Hayley tries to indue the singer, only to learn his deepest, darkest secret: he’s a virgin. He even has a song to prove it, fittingly titled “I’m a Virgin.” The chorus goes like this:

“I’m a virgin
Never got close enough
Cell phone blowin’ up, but I’m waiting
For the right person
Tryna act super tough
But inside I’m a twelve-year old boy”

Also, the Weeknd named season five gem “The One That Got Away,” where Roger discovers that someone named Sidney Huffman has maxed out his credit card, as his favorite American Dad episode, so you know he’s for real. Listen to “I’m a Virgin” below.

Elon Musk ended last week by revealing that his and Grimes’ baby was due on Monday (yesterday, May 4). Sure enough, Grimes gave birth yesterday, and Musk has shared some details about the situation.

Early yesterday afternoon, Musk noted the baby was “a few hours away!” About four hours later, Musk checked back in on Twitter, indicating that the birth was successful by writing, “Mom & baby all good,”

Somebody asked Musk what the baby’s name is, and he responded, “X Æ A-12 Musk.” Grimes giving her child an atypical name wouldn’t be surprising, but Musk may have been joking, because he was in a joking mood. When asked for a picture of the baby, he shared a photo edited to give the kid face tattoos. He also revealed that the baby is a boy. Then, he shared a photo of himself holding his son (while also holding a face mask and wearing an “occupy Mars” shirt).

Grimes’ last baby-related updates on social media came a few days ago. She noted on May 1 that she is “like… redy 4 da hospital,” and a couple days before that, she shared a photo of herself on Instagram and wrote, “It’s weird I thought I looked soooo pregnant when @ryder_ripps took these photos like 7 ish months ago but in retrospect I look tiny lol. Everything is relative I guess. I wuz prob 2 skinny b4. This is the first time in my life I’ve eaten 3 meals a day and that has def been a positive development lol. If u aren’t doing so I’d recommend it!”