Month: April 2021

Earlier this week I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in awhile (this used to be unremarkable; now it feels like a big deal) and, probably because human contact has been so few and far between over the last year, a lot of topics were discussed. And for the life of me I don’t remember why the situation comedy Alice was mentioned, but it was. Then I said out loud, “and Alice was based on a Martin Scorsese’s movie,” and the person I was talking to thought I was kidding. Then it hit me that what I just said out loud really does sound fake. Then I started doubting my own words even though I knew they were true.

I had seen parts of Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Lie Here Anymore here and there but never all the way through in one sitting, so I rectified that this week. It’s a pretty tremendous movie. And should be a must-watch for those who think Scorsese has never made a movie with a woman as his main character. Ellen Burstyn plays Alice and is really dynamite. But watching the movie when you grew up with the sitcom is really a trip. It almost seems reverse engendered, like Scorsese was a huge fan of the show and decided to make his own version in a very Martin Scorsese way with a lot of zooming and beautiful shots and contemporary rock hits.

Then, the next day, I tweeted something vague about how every Scorsese movie should produce a popular sitcom featuring a live studio audience that runs for nine seasons. And, yes, once again, people thought I was kidding. Because when you say it out loud it sounds fake. And when you watch the movie, there is nothing about it that says, “You know, this should be a sitcom.” At least with something like M*A*S*H, a show based on Robert Altman’s movie of the same name, it makes a bit more sense. Plus the television show wasn’t a multi-camera sitcom filmed in front of a live studio audience. (M*A*S*H did have a laugh track, which in retrospect makes no sense.) And even though M*A*S*H became one of the most popular television series of all time, most people seem to realize it was based on a movie. And having the title be the same for both the movie and the show probably has a lot to do with that, and the fact Gary Burghoff was in both the film and the show as Radar.

But this is also something M*A*S*H has in common with Alice, because one actor is in both the series and the movie: Vic Tayback as Mel Sharpels. And yes, when Mel shows up in the movie, about halfway through, it’s pretty weird. In that you can just tell Tayback has new clue this would become his signature role and that he’d wind up playing Mel for almost a decade.

Actually, it’s not completely true Tayback is the only actor to be a regular on the show. Alfred Lutter, who played Tommy, Alice’s son in the movie (and is probably surprised he’s getting a Google alert today), appeared in the pilot for the show and then was replaced by Philip McKeon. (McKeon’s sister, Nancy, played Jo on The Facts of Life and had a nice little family dynasty going at the time. I always wonder if they felt like the Batemans were their enemies.) I do not know the circumstances why he didn’t get the full-time part, but imagine being good enough for Martin Scorsese, then being told you can’t be on the sitcom as the same character. (Yes, it’s a different type of acting skill, but still.)

But the strangest thing of all about all of this is the case of Diane Ladd. Now, Ladd played Flo in the film, which garnered her an Academy Award nomination. In the television show Flo was played by Polly Holliday (who garnered multiple Emmy nominations for this role and a Golden Globes win)of “kiss my grits” fame. Holliday’s Flo became so popular that her character was given her own sitcom (which only lasted two seasons and, even though it performed okay, wasn’t renewed for a third). Now back on Alice, without Flo, a new character was needed. So Flo was replaced by Belle, played by … yep, Diane Ladd. (I somewhat remember when this happened and it was very weird. The studio audience went absolutely nuts for Belle, in a way where everyone obviously knew her and there was something special happening. But as a six-year-old I had no clue what was going on and there was no way to look this up. And, unsurprisingly, my friends in first grade couldn’t provide me with the answer that this was obviously the original Flo from the popular Martin Scorsese movie.)

This really would be like if Goodfellas was turned into a sitcom. Then in the sitcom, Jon Lovitz played the part of Tommy and his character became so popular he got his own show called I’m Funny How, or whatever. Then Joe Pesci shows up as Lovitz’s replacement, playing a brand new character named Fredrick. And on Pesci’s first show the studio audience just loves it.

As an aside, things get a little weirder when Belle is then replaced by Jolene. And it’s revealed that Jolene is related to Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard. Then Boss Hogg and Enos show up in Phoenix at Mel’s Diner, which is a long way from Georgia. So, yes, it just kind of hit me that, “Martin Scorsese made a movie that became a sitcom that takes place in the same universe as The Dukes of Hazzard.” And that definitely sounds fake.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

It’s been a minute since we’ve seen LeBron James appear in a basketball game. The reigning NBA Finals MVP has been on the sideline ever since spraining his ankle against the Atlanta Hawks on March 30, a stretch that has seen him miss 20 games while the Los Angeles Lakers have fought to stay out of the play-in tournament in the Western Conference.

Fortunately for L.A., it appears the King plans to return to his court soon. Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reports that James is going to test out his ankle on Friday night before the Lakers take on the Sacramento Kings, and if he feels good, he’s going to suit up and play. If he does not, however, James’ return is still expected to take place sometime very soon.

The Kings, unsurprisingly, seem pretty stoked about the news.

Los Angeles has gone 8-12 without James in the lineup, although it is worth mentioning that Anthony Davis was also sidelined until recently — the big man battled a lingering achilles injury for months and has played in each of the last four games. Getting James back is obviously going to be a gigantic boost for the fifth-place Lakers., which sit at 36-26 on the year and is two games up on the Portland Trail Blazers for the seven seed. The team has 10 games left this season before the postseason rolls around.

Over the past few years, Travis Scott has been building something special with his Astroworld Festival. The past two fests have become highly anticipated events, but unfortunately, there was no festival in 2020. Now, though, fans have something to be excited about for later this year: The third annual fest is set to go down at NRG Park in Houston, Texas on November 5 and 6.

Scott made the announcement on Instagram today (which is his 30th birthday), writing, “For this bday all I want is rage man we been locked in a house for sometime now and I been banging my head around trynna to get back to it I been wanting to share and experince with all the other like minded chaotic rager like me for some time now. That being said in november pop out at the fest astroworld fest 2021 2 days this year with and out landish line up see u soon !!!”

This year’s lineup has yet to be revealed, but given that it will be curated by Scott himself, there are sure to be some heavy-hitters involved this time around, as has been the case in years prior. Previous editions have hosted artists like Post Malone, Rosalía, Pharrell Williams, DaBaby, Lil Wayne, Young Thug, Playboi Carti, and Megan Thee Stallion.

Tickets will go on sale on May 5 at 10 a.m. CT on the festival website.

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

Easily the biggest cannabis brand launch of 2021 so far and another sign of its founder’s unstoppable productivity, was the Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg collaboration: Houseplant. It isn’t often that a weed drop breaks the internet (or at least its own homepage), but when news of the release went live this past March the site froze and glitched like Rogen on an edible at the Golden Globes with Bryan Cranston.

The flood of interest came after Rogen announced the brand’s long-anticipated United States launch (the company has been operational in Canada for the past two years). Since that initial news, Houseplant has expanded out of Los Angeles — where it was exclusively sold for about a month and a half — and can now be found in dispensaries throughout California.

Houseplant’s now smooth-running site features a cannabis line made up of three different strains and a variety of very stylish home products, including pottery by Rogen. Seriously, dude’s future in housewares is legit. He’s capturing the early 70s zeitgeist perfectly with these pieces — everything looks like it should be in Megan Draper’s Laurel Canyon bungalow during the last season of Mad Men.

But admiring Rogen’s design aesthetic isn’t why you’re here. On to the weed!

The Weed

Houseplant has kept tight-lipped (almost as tight as those tin lids, but we’ll get to that!) about who or what company, exactly, is growing Rogen’s sought-after buds. After comparing a variety of Certificates of Analysis (COAs) — which are thorough testing result documents available at any dispensary for any product being sold in-store — the grower can be revealed as Los Angeles-based THC Design.

This is a smart pick by Rogen and Goldberg. THC Designs is a high-quality indoor grow house that also provides white-labeled cannabis for Method Man’s Tical and Presidential, as well as its own line. Though Houseplant says its three strains — Diablo Wind, Pancake Ice, and Pink Moon — are proprietary to the brand, the COAs indicate that, at present, they are close cousins to three THC Design Strains: XJ-13, Crescendo, and 24-K.

Does that mean that the weed is any less potent? Nope — in fact, Rogen’s versions of the strains are all slightly more potent. Is it necessarily a bad thing? Not at all. Should global movie star, director, writer, potter, and Ted Cruz troller Seth Rogen have to set up his own goddamn grow house from scratch just to enter the weed game? Certainly not.

The idea of white labeling simply implies that customers may pay a premium to get Houseplant compared with their THC Design analogs. In San Diego, for example, an eighth of XJ-13 costs $39; an eighth of Diablo Wind costs $69. Where you land on whether or not you want to pay that premium is, obviously, up to you.

Here are the front pages of the COAs for Rogen’s Diablo Wind compared to THC Design’s XJ-13, in case you want to see how we drew this conclusion. Please note that these certificates are readily available at every dispensary — we’re not putting anyone on blast or sharing industry secrets.

Diablo Wind COA:

XJ-13 COA

If you’re curious about the two addresses listed on those COAs, they’re in the same grow compound. The address on the Diablo Wind certificate is registered to THC Design. As far as the actual strains, you’ll note that the total cannabinoids and the distribution of those cannabinoids match closely, so you can reasonably expect the two strains to react quite similarly with your own biochemistry. If this intrigues you endlessly, enlarge the QR codes on the two documents pictured and dig in.

Otherwise… we’ll shut about the origins of the herb.

The Experience

Anyone who buys this weed is getting some of the best legal indoor cannabis on the market. THC Design is one of the best in the game and Rogen clearly took this collaboration very seriously. When he says he tested and picked strains with great care, there’s no reason in the world not to believe him. You may have heard, the man likes to get high.

Before we get to the actual weed, a quick aside about the packaging. It’s stylish! But also a little cumbersome. Each strain comes in an individual tin with two plastic teeth on either side and a top hat lid. California, like most states with legal cannabis, has strict packaging laws that require a high degree of child-proofing. For packaging to stand out, product designers need to be creative. While Houseplant’s tins are no doubt pretty to look at, they are incredibly hard to open and definitely require two hands.

To be fair, most packaging in California is impossible to open, regardless of design, so this isn’t a knock. Just check out the video of Rogen showing you how to open it above and understand that his designers were certainly limited by the state they operate in.

Now let’s get to the smoke! Across the board, all three strains are stinky and tasty — two of the surest signs of high quality. Even just fiddling with the tins as you attempt to open them will release a potent whiff of what’s to come and is sure to delight any cannabis enthusiast. Each strain comes with an info card that details the cannabinoid levels, terpenes found in the weed (which will give smokers distinct tastes and smells), and ideas for how and when to smoke it. They also come with a word of caution from Houseplant: “It’s strong!”

They’re right. Diablo Wind is a Sativa-dominant strain high in Terpinolene and Caryophyllene terpenes, clocking in at 24.192% THC, according to this specific batch’s COA. A cross between Jack Herer and G13 Haze, its pine and citrus notes, redolent of its Jack Herer lineage, display heavily both upfront in the smell and in taste. It’s an upper, through-and-through, with a refreshing and heady high that almost seems to give the smoker a brain cleanse — as if to jump-start synapses for any kind of activity. It might be a little too strong for daytime smoking for the average toker, but if one were to choose a Houseplant strain to move through the day’s activities with, it should be this one.

Gas lovers will dig Pancake Ice, which is another Sativa cultivar with 33.2% THC. It’s a cross between Chem Dawg and Mandarin Cookies with Limonene, Humulene, and Caryophyllene terpenes. This high is a bit more mellow than Houseplant’s other Sativa-dominant counterpart, while still being uplifting. This is a good smoke for anything outdoors, like hiking or swimming, as the mellow aspect means senses aren’t likely to get too overloaded. Diesel and dirt dominate these smells and flavors.

Pink Moon is the brand’s only Indica at present, though they have said they will be releasing more in short order. It’s a cross of Tangie and Kosher Kush with dark buds at 26.45% THC, boasting Limonene, Caryophyllene, and Linalool terpenes. Mind and muscle-melt are the themes with this strain: this is couch weed. Smokers aren’t going to be able to move for a while after a few hits of this, which is exactly the point. The taste is sweet citrus, more candy than fruit with earthy undertones. That’s the Kush talking.

Bottom Line:

Overall, Houseplant’s weed is really quite good. When it comes to getting stoned, it’ll get the job done and then some. Plus, it’s always a bonus getting smelly, tasty, and squishy nugs on the legal market — sometimes dispensary weed is really old and the terpenes have totally disappeared by the time the product reaches you. This is not the case with Houseplant. Not even close. We bought our sample retail and it was impeccably fresh.

For some, knowing where it comes from may soften the magic a bit. For others, the cool tin and the Rogen stamp of approval will be worth the price difference. Like with anything celebrity-owned, you are going to pay something for the very famous person at the center of it. Certainly, a Houseplant tin on the shelf is more of a talking point than the THC Design versions. But if you’re just smoking to get high, well… you could save yourself a few bucks.

If Without Remorse has any value at all, it’s as a headscratcher. You know it doesn’t work, but what were they attempting here?

The latest in Amazon’s series of Tom Clancy adaptations, Without Remorse was adapted from Clancy’s 1993 novel by acclaimed Sicario writer Taylor Sheridan and Will Staples, and was directed by Stefano Sollima. Sheridan, also of Hell Or High Water and Wind River, enlarges his following with every hyper-masculine shoot ’em up, but Without Remorse is less Sicario than Sicario: Day Of The Soldado, the last collaboration between Sheridan and Sollima — the latter of whom the son of cult Italian director Sergio Sollima and not quite the visual stylist Denis Villeneuve is.

In any Tom Clancy project you expect a certain amount of uniform worship and jargon-y walk and talks. On me! Watch your six! Stand down, lieutenant! I repeat, the professor is holding the conch! Yet despite the backdrop of geopolitcal intrigue, Without Remorse is almost Fast/Furious-esque in its pure ridiculousness. Which could be fun if it didn’t seem so accidental. The pure disrespect this film shows towards how anything works — hospitals, politics, warfare, physics — is glorious at times, but makes a weird mix with Clancy’s meticulously sexless torn-from-the-headlines Risk fantasies.

Michael B. Jordan plays John Kelly, though I didn’t catch his name until about 25 minutes in thanks to Without Remorse‘s muddy sound mix. Kelly, on assignment from shady CIA guy Robert Ritter (played by 35-year-old angsty teen Jamie Bell) leads his SEAL Team in a raid on an arms depot in Aleppo. Kelly’s team rises silently from a fountain like a float of crocodiles (why is there a fountain in an arms depot?) and much Call Of Duty-esque pew-pewing ensues. They double-tap every bad guy in the room before rescuing the hostage, only to discover to their surprise: these bad guys were… Russians!

This information is delivered momentously, as if it should hold great significance to us, though we’re not sure why. It’s an ongoing pattern in Without Remorse, a breathless, non-stop flood of countries, rogue agencies, bad guys, and arms caches, which seem to matter greatly to buff soldiers and sneering suits for reasons unclear to us. Kelly smells a rat, but before he can find it, the members of his team are all getting assassinated one by one. Kelly survives the attack on his house, but they’ve killed his wife! This time, it’s personal!

This kind of plot hokum can work in an action movie, provided the shoot-em-up and chop-socky scenes have an artistry that transcends the setup (Netflix’s Extraction being a good example). Without Remorse‘s action choreography is mostly just sort of utilitarian and lazy. There’s no exuberant gore or memorable violence, and half the time you can’t tell who is shooting whom or what blow Faceless Bad Guy A is even reacting to. I always wonder, if you care that little about the action, why is there so much of it?

If Without Remorse has an appeal, it’s of pure silliness. At one point, Kelly is lying in a hospital bed when his vital monitors start to beep. A pair of nurses, outside the room at the time, shout “Code blue!” and sprint to his bedside. Now, how would they know it’s a “code blue” from outside the room? Doesn’t matter! We need jargon, baby! If someone in a uniform doesn’t shout code words every 12 seconds the cameras will explode!

Without Remorse‘s best scene is probably its most ridiculous, a sequence where Kelly’s team gets shot down over the Barents Sea, then escape a sinking plane and sort of just surface in Murmansk. Every single aspect of the sequence is preposterous, and at no point does it appear that the people shooting it understand that it’s meant to take place above the Arctic Circle. Once in Murmansk, the whole gang is inexplicably there too. This is a movie where characters just seem to teleport to wherever the next scene is supposed to take place — Aleppo, DC, Russia, New York — with no explanation of how they got there or why.

Without Remorse attempts a few “big twists” in the final 20 minutes, only they don’t really come off because there isn’t anything to twist from — none of this plot was believable or even cogently explained in the first place. It felt like the filmmakers are constantly in a hurry. But in a hurry to get to what?

There’s a recurring chess motif (chess! in an action movie! have we ever seen this before?!) and it turns out the “king” was actually just a pawn. Which in practice means that the bad guy we only just met has been replaced with no bad guy. Instead, there’s 15 more minutes of extemporaneous lectures about the value of endless war. Was this what we were rushing to get to? A political rant with all the nuance of a stoned college student at 3 am? We could’ve used about half as much plot and twice as much passion.

‘Without Remorse’ is available on Amazon Prime April 30th. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Over the past half-decade or so, Trixie Mattel has quickly become one of the world’s most prominent drag queens. All the while, he has also maintained a serious music career, releasing a trio of albums since 2017, mostly focused on country and folk music. Today marks the release of Mattel’s latest EP, Full Coverage, Vol. 1, which includes a guest appearance from Orville Peck, another country-lover who’s used to getting dressed up.

Together, the pair cover “Jackson,” most famously performed by Johnny Cash and June Carter. They also shared a video for the track, which shows the two and a band having fun performing the song in an empty theater.

Peck says of the song, “There’s never been a greater country duo than Johnny Cash and June Carter. I think ‘Jackson’ has remained iconic through the years because it perfectly captures the humor, storytelling, and relationship between performers that every good country song should.” Mattel adds, “Jackson! A stunning callback to the golden era of country music! A time of wigs and rhinestones (thank god) and iconic duets. Orville and I are thrilled to put our spin and flourish on this anthem of American music. Yes, I wore red and not pink, so brave.”

Watch Peck and Mattel’s video for their rendition of “Jackson” above.

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

Click to download here.

Janice Soprano: Petty Godfather & Spiritual Gangster

Hope you like dream sequences, and therapy scenes, because David Chase managed to wedge two of each into a 47 minute-long episode of The Sopranos. Guest Johan Miranda, a comedian featured in Larry Charles’ Dangerous World of Comedy on Netflix, joins Matt and Vince to talk about season four, episode eleven of The Sopranos, “Calling All Cars.”

Vince, Matt, & Johan point out that this is a pretty sitcom-y episode. Maybe the shorter runtime has something to do with that, maybe it’s AJ Soprano running his tight five about ethnic cuisine at the dinner table, or maybe it’s the scene where Bobby Baccalá buries a cake at his wife’s grave. That last one is pretty sad, actually. *Wiping a tear from my eye* No one got to eat that cake.

This is really a Janice episode though. She so badly wants Bobby Sr. to forget about his dead wife that she catfishes a child on AOL. Listen now and help us decide, is Janice a spiritual Munchausen by proxy-er, a gaslighter, or just a manipulative psycho? Let us know what you think in a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.

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-Description by Brent Flyberg

Family Guy memes haven’t taken over the internet like The Simpsons or I Think You Should Leave memes have, but they’re still plenty popular. One that I see a lot is the scene of Stewie Griffin repeatedly bugging Lois while she’s stressed out in bed. “Lois. Lois. Lois. Lois. Lois. Lois. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mommy. Mommy.” And so on.

To get people to take the COVID-19 vaccine, Fox and Family Guy turned the clip, from the season five episode “Stewie Loves Lois,” into an intentionally (and effectively) annoying PSA. Instead of Stewie saying “hi” after Lois screams “what?!” at him, he now says, “Get the vaccine,” before giggling and scurrying away. As noted by Deadline, it will play at the end of Sunday’s episode, “Meg Goes to College,” in which “Meg deals with a college admissions scandal, while Brian embarks on a fitness journey.”

President Biden initially aimed for 100 million Americans to receive the vaccine during his first 100 days in office. But over 200 million vaccinations have been administrated since January, which he called an “incredible achievement for the nation.” But Biden also cautioned that “we still have some work to do.” Hopefully an animated baby can help.

You can watch the PSA above.

Eminem, who counts himself an avid collector of items like action figures, baseball cards, comic books, and $600 cassette copies of classic hip-hop albums, recently became the subject of a collection of valuable goods himself — with the caveat that those “goods” only exist digitally. Em released a collection of NFTs to take advantage of the swiftly expanding crypto bubble which included digital copies of the above-mentioned items last weekend, with the resulting sales raking in nearly $2 million. According to CryptoBriefing, the collection raised “just short of $1.8 million” on Nifty Gateway on Sunday.

Other stars, like The Weeknd have also released NFTs that have made over $1 million, but Eminem is arguably the biggest artist to enter the game to date. NFTs — or “non-fungible tokens” — are like a digital certificate of authenticity for a piece of art, keeping a sort of chain of custody within the code that is associated with the item, which may have a physical component. If that seems like a confusing explanation, Saturday Night Live actually repurposed an Eminem song to try to explain NFTs, with Pete Davidson and Jack Harlow employing the beat from “Without Me” to break down how the newfangled wealth laundering devices work. Eminem seemed bemused, but quickly announced his collection, which turned out to be a wise decision for the rap icon.

Netflix got clever a few weeks ago while comparing the Big Stuck Boat in the Suez Canal to Lucifer‘s chronic will-they-or-won’t-they vibe. In the process, they ended up letting the show’s Season 5B release date (May 28) fly, and now, there’s a trailer that reveals that the Devil is still up to no good. Even worse, Lucifer is still plagued by his twin brother, Michael, who’s trying to take his place, and Lucifer also decides that he wants to be God? Alright.

Well, God’s apparently retiring, so there’s an opening for that gig. Heaven help us all if this show ever starts to make sense (and Tom Ellis has so much swaggering fun with his lead role), but Netflix’s synopsis promises that “God himself comes to Earth. Secrets will be revealed, heroic sacrifices will be made, and the world will never be the same.” Also, it sure looks like the show’s suggesting that Lucifer will break Chloe’s heart, even though she forgave him after learning that she was crafted as a miracle intended for him. My goodness, Chloe, this is an occasion to move on from this cad.

Fans will recall that Chloe was able to gain Lucifer’s mojo ability (and could use it on him) during the early part of Season 5, and Season 6 will be the show’s final run next year, so it’s really time for Netflix to decide what to do with these two. This is one of those shows where the comic-book origins of this version of Lucifer Morningstar aren’t necessary to enjoy the series, although I would surely suggest diving into those origins — Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman (with an assist from Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg) — if you feel the urge. Otherwise, get ready for more silly-sexyiness next month.

Lucifer returns to earth on May 28.