Category: News

Indie music has grown to include so much. It’s not just music that is released on independent labels but speaks to an aesthetic that deviates from the norm and follows its own weirdo heart. It can come in the form of rock music, pop, or folk. In a sense, it says as much about the people that are drawn to it as it does about the people that make it.

Every week, Uproxx is rounding up the best new indie music from the past seven days. This week we got new music from Field Medic, Wild Pink, Blink-182, and more.

While we’re at it, sign up for our newsletter to get the best new indie music delivered directly to your inbox, every Monday.

Field Medic — Grow Your Hair Long If You’re Wanting To See Something That You Can Change

Field Medic’s new album with a very long (but beautiful) title was first previewed with the attention-grabbing lead single, “I Had A Dream That You Died,” which proved that he could hold humor and pain in the same hand by reckoning with feelings of despair while still providing levity: “I feel like a chia pet / The way my hair looks dumb / And my heart is made of stone.” The rest of the album dives deeper into the gloom but Kevin Patrick Sullivan has mastered the art of making the listener feel seen and comforted instead of burdened.

Enumclaw — Save The Baby

Washington’s Enumclaw proved themselves last year with the ridiculously infectious EP Jimbo Demo which showcased their knack for groovy basslines and nonchalant vocals that exude a feeling of effortless coolness. Save The Baby immediately kicks off with both of those things on the title track, but the entire album has much more; it goes from being catchy to taking things slower, bringing the listener into moments of vulnerability that can be surprising and impactful.

The 1975 — Being Funny In A Foreign Language

The 1975’s singles were promising, like “Part Of The Band” — which contained the line, “I like my men like I like my coffee / Full of soy milk and so sweet / It won’t offend anybody” — and the exuberant “I’m In Love With You.” Being Funny In A Foreign Language has that irresistible groove that their music has always had — whether it was “Girls” on their debut or “Love Me” off their 2016 LP. They’re as consistent as possible and only getting funnier and more unhinged.

Wild Pink — ILYSM

Last year, Wild Pink swept the indie-folk community off their feet with A Billion Little Lights and they’re already back with a strong, new album called ILYSM. It’s light and tender, moving with delicacy and meaning. Every sound and line feels intentional and poignant; Wild Pink have a way of giving small, soft things a feeling of enormity.

Bill Callahan — Reality

Bill Callahan’s Reality is anything but background music. The 56-year-old indie-rock veteran takes his storytelling very seriously, packing his songs with poetic, striking characters and lines; he opens “Lily” by singing, “I started writing,” leaving space before the powerful next words: “your death song.” To make it even more visceral, he continues: “Long before you were gone.”

Modern Color — “Greener Grass”

California-based quartet Modern Color have a knack for dark, unsettling textures that especially shined through on their last album, 2020’s From The Leaves Of Your Garden. The new “Greener Grass” is a brooding, grungy track with off-kilter, distorted riffs and tired vocals, immersing the listener into a haunted four-minute journey.

Blink-182 — “Edging”

Considering the years of Blink-182 fans begging for the return of original vocalist and guitarist Tom Delonge, the stakes were high for this comeback. However, when they announced the new song title was “Edging,” that probably comforted people, proving to them that their childish humor is still intact. Aside from that, the track is anthemic and catchy, Delonge’s vocals are very distinctly Delonge’s vocals that we all missed, and it’s certainly better than the music they’ve released since Delonge left.

Runnner — “I Only Sing About Food”

Runnner is the indie-folk project of Noah Weinman who released the 2021 masterpiece Always Repeating, a stunning, memorable collection of songs that grappled with love, loss, and self instead of trying send any specific message. “I Only Sing About Food” comes from his forthcoming album Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out. The opening line immediately shows the way he, like Field Medic, is able to weave together pain and humor in a magnetically disarming fashion: “I’m an idiot, I cried in your car / When I couldn’t find the words I was looking for / I overanalyze, I never let it feel good / I only think about death / I only sing about food.”

Black Belt Eagle Scout — “Don’t Give Up”

Black Belt Eagle Scout is the project of Katherine Paul. She had a track featured in the 2019 TV show Trinkets, an incredibly endearing series reckoning with the complexities of youth. This new Black Belt Eagle Scout song does the same, though it seems to focus more on growing up and learning and trying to find strength, especially in the enormity of nature: “The land, the water, the sky,” she repeats at the end, possessed by the endlessness.

Bleached — “Flip It”

LA punk duo Bleached like to have fun, which is why their hit “Think Of You,” from 2011, persists as a great, surfy anthem over a decade later. Their new track “Flip It” watches them only increasing the energy and relatable comedy: “Monday, woke up late / Tuesday, headache.” Their harmonizing vocals are hypnotizing, the riffs are invigorating, and the melody is addictive.

It’s (still) October, so that means that it’s a great time to talk about The Greatest Horror Villain who ever lived. They managed to top several other scary things about And Just Like That… on HBO Max, and of course, I’m talking about Che Diaz, who rattled the Internet, which got a little carried away with jump scare claims. This didn’t seem uncalled for, and yet, I actually ended up enjoying Che Diaz by the end of the first season because the show wrote them to be interesting (and not a safe representation of a non-binary character) and abrasive, and I actually wanted to know more about Che Diaz. I’m not sure that I’ve ever felt that way about any Sex and the City character in the franchise’s history.

I wasn’t alone in my (begrudging) enthusiasm, given that showrunner Michael Patrick King told Variety that “[o]ne of my burning passions about Season 2 is Che,” and King added, “I want to show the dimension of Che that people didn’t see, for whatever reason — because they were blinded, out of fear or terror.” From there, we’re receiving news that Che (who headed out to LA for a sitcom pilot with Miranda determining to join them) will now interact with their TV dad, and we’ve heard this name before because Che mentioned, “Tony Danza is coming in to read for my father. He’s not Mexican or Irish but he is Tony Danza.”

Deadline’s Nellie Andrea reports that, yep, Tony Danza heard the call, and he’s now onboard. In fact, he’ll play Che’s sitcom dad. Via Deadline:

In a meta casting, Tony Danza has been tapped for a recurring role in Season 2 of HBO Max’s And Just Like That…

Noone would comment but I hear Danza will play Che Diaz’s (Sara Ramirez) father in the sitcom they wrote about their family.

I’d actually very much enjoy if we learned that Tony Danza is actually Che Diaz’s real father, but we probably won’t get that lucky. It sounds like he’ll play some heightened version of himself, so that could be fun. I’m also looking forward to seeing another side of Che who isn’t merely a self-professed sex bomb with a flair for being praised for groan-inducing stand-up jokes. FWIW, actor Sara Ramirez, received lot of backlash for the role and seems alright with this, so bring on more shades of Che.

(Via Deadline)

The Central Division is usually pretty easy to predict. You write the Milwaukee Bucks in first place in sharpie, and then, you don’t worry too terribly much about the rest, because, well, why would you, the Bucks are so clearly the best team?

Milwaukee should be the best team in the division this year, but beyond them, every team is interesting to one extent or another. Cleveland pulled off a gigantic offseason trade, Chicago was one of the top seeds in the East last year before becoming a Murphy’s Law team, Detroit is in the midst of an exciting youth movement, and while Indiana might be the worst team in the conference, there is enough there to provide optimism about what is coming down the road.

With the 2022 NBA season finally here, we decided to take a look at the biggest questions that don’t involve injuries facing each team in each conference. And in this space, we’re breaking down the Central.

Chicago Bulls: Can DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine get enough help?

It would be very hard for DeRozan to follow up his magnificent 2021-22 season, which earned him All-NBA Second Team honors. Still, he should be able to score and create a little bit, as should LaVine, who agreed to a gigantic contract extension over the summer to tie him to the Bulls for the foreseeable future.

After that? Woof. Lonzo Ball is still out injured, and while Alex Caruso is a capable hand in the backcourt on both ends of the floor, Chicago is at its best when those two are playing alongside one another. The Nikola Vucevic trade has not worked out — imagine this team with the version of Wendell Carter Jr. that Orlando got and Franz Wagner. Injuries have prevented Patrick Williams from being the players Chicago has needed him to be ever since he was drafted No. 4 overall in 2020. Guys like Ayo Dosunmu, Javonte Green, and Coby White are nice players, but this is asking a ton of them. Goran Dragic and Andre Drummond are nice veterans who are not the players they were younger in their careers.

If you squint and mix whatever you can see with Ball getting healthy earlier than they expect, you can maybe put together a playoff basketball team. But being a playoff team in the East is really, really, really hard, and Chicago looks like a team that needs a whole lot of stuff to go right to finish above the play-in line for the second year in a row.

Cleveland Cavaliers: How do they handle opposing star perimeter players?

Injuries down the stretch really derailed things for the Cavaliers last season, and as a result, the team lost in the play-in tournament. Their response: Trade a bunch of stuff they don’t really need and acquire Donovan Mitchell, giving Darius Garland one heck of a running mate in the backcourt. Those two, plus Jarrett Allen and the ascending Evan Mobley, give Cleveland one of the best four-man groupings in all of basketball. It’d be hard, but there is a universe where the Cavs have four guys make the Eastern Conference All-Star team this year.

The whole “can everyone get the ball enough to be happy?” thing is fair, but at least during their first year, teams can navigate that pretty easily. There is a very, very big question mark, however, about how they will approach the best perimeter players in the league. Garland is a willing defender but can get overpowered easily. Mitchell’s defense has taken a step back with each passing year. Mobley switching onto dudes might work, but that’s only in specific situations.

Can Isaac Okoro provide any offense and make defenses respect him at all? The inverse is true of Caris LeVert, who has, to put it gently, never exactly been Marcus Smart on the defensive end of the floor. They have options a little farther down their bench, but Okoro, in particular, is the guy worth watching here.

Detroit Pistons: Can Cade Cunningham make a leap?

There is legitimate optimism about the Detroit Pistons for the first time in, uh, well it’s been a while. Cunningham, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft and the sort of jumbo playmaker every team would kill to have, is at the heart of it all. For all the young talent in Detroit, and for how their veteran players like Alec Burks, Bojan Bogdanovic, and Nerlens Noel seem to compliment them well, Cunningham’s ability to be the straw that stirs the drink for the next decade-plus is going to be the thing that determines where the ceiling should be set in the Motor City.

As is oftentimes the case with rookie guards, Cunningham struggled out the gate last year. When things clicked, though, you saw exactly why he went No. 1 overall — before the All-Star break, Cunningham averaged 15.7 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 5.2 assists on a true shooting of 48.9 percent. After? Cunningham went for 21.1 points, 6.5 assists, and 5.7 rebounds with a 53.1 percent true shooting. You bet on guys with his size (6’6, 220 pounds) and IQ to figure things out. He managed to do that in his first season.

There is no guarantee Cunningham gets better this year. There is also the chance that he’s an All-Star. If that happens, the Pistons have a real shot of making it into the play-in tournament.

Indiana Pacers: Do they pull the plug and focus on the Victor Wembanyama sweepstakes?

Indiana’s over/under on the year is set at 23.5 wins. There is plenty of stuff here that can help them clear that if they decide to try and win. Rick Carlisle is a good coach, Tyrese Haliburton is one of the league’s brightest young stars, first-round pick Bennedict Mathurin can really score, and with guys like Chris Duarte, Buddy Hield, and Myles Turner on the roster, it’s not hard to see the Pacers —a franchise that has staked its reputation on consistently being competitive — being a thorn in a whole lot of sides this season.

Then again, the team has seemingly been looking to move Turner and Hield for picks, while Carlisle has been at the helm for tanks in the past. In 2017-18, Carlisle oversaw a Dallas Mavericks team that won 24 games and was able to parlay that into Luka Doncic, which has gone pretty well. This time around, the draft’s belle of the ball is another franchise-changing international prospect in Wembanyama, the ginormous Frenchman who may somehow be a better prospect than Doncic. There are a whole lot of good teams in the East and it’s very possible Indiana never has a shot at being one of them, no matter how good Haliburton is and will be. Do they take that approach from the jump, wait a little to play for ping pong balls, or try to push for the postseason all year long?

Milwaukee Bucks: Can Joe Ingles give them anything?

Let’s be honest: It’s hard to have too many questions about the Milwaukee Bucks at this point. They won the title in 2021 and damn near beat the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Semis last year despite Khris Middleton being hurt and Jrue Holiday really, really struggling. This is what happens when you have a player like Giannis Antetokounmpo on your team.

Middleton will need a few weeks to come back from wrist surgery, but when he does, Milwaukee will have its top-3 players and should be able to respond to anyone’s best punch, especially considering Middleton and Holiday famously went right from the NBA Finals to the Olympics last summer and got a full offseason this time around. The team’s presumed starting five — Holiday, Grayson Allen, Middleton, Antetokounmpo, Brook Lopez — is rock solid. The guys coming off the bench have been with the Bucks and know what their jobs are.

All that said, let’s go with a bit of a wild card. Joe Ingles joined the team as a free agent this summer on a 1-year deal, and is not expected to suit up for the team until December or January as he comes back from a torn ACL. If he gives them nothing but good vibes as a 35-year-old dude who suffered a major knee injury, it won’t be a catastrophe or anything. But at his best, Ingles provides savvy secondary playmaking, dead-eye shooting from the perimeter, and pesky help defense, all things that fit like a glove alongside Antetokounmpo. It’s a low-risk, high-reward signing, and for a team that really values continuity, it’s possible that Ingles can provide a little breath of fresh air.

Aaron Dessner has joined Taylor Swift’s collaborative inner circle in recent years, as he contributed to her four latest albums: Folklore, Evermore, Fearless (Taylor’s Version), and Red (Taylor’s Version). Yesterday (October 19), though, the full list of artists who co-wrote songs on Swift’s upcoming album, Midnights, was revealed and Dessner was not on it. After that news made the rounds though, Dessner appeared to tease that he will in fact contribute to the album in some way.

Yesterday afternoon, he tweeted, “Always have to remember things aren’t necessarily how they seem!”

Indeed, while Dessner didn’t co-write any Midnights songs, that doesn’t mean he’s not on the LP at all. There’s precedent here: Dessner didn’t co-write anything on the Fearless or Red remakes, but he was credited as a producer on both of those albums. So, it’s possible Dessner is involved with Midnights in a similar capacity.

It would seem that Swift is keen to continue working with Dessner, as she wrote in July 2021, “I can’t believe I get to work with Aaron Dessner. When Aaron came into my life, I was ushered into his world of free-flowing creativity where you don’t overthink, you just make music. His generosity of spirit and humility bleeds into every part of his life.”

One of the most enduring truths of the current cultural era is that celebrities eat weird. Not as weird as politicians, maybe, but celebrities’ general combination of wealth, the tendency to have other people cooking for them at all times, and fad dieting in order to maintain camera-ready bodies makes their eating habits strange enough to be at least mildly fascinating to us normies. Such that you can reliably count on virtually every famous person you already dislike to be the kind of annoying, persnickety diners service staff love to hate.

That describes the basic appeal of this week’s story making the rounds, in which the owner of Balthazar restaurant in New York City, Keith McNally, wrote on Instagram how he’d banned “nasty little cretin” James Corden from his restaurants. Corden’s alleged sins, according to the post, included finding a hair in his food and using it to blackmail the restaurant into offering free drinks, and the following:

MANAGER’S REPORT # 2

‘James Corden was at Balthazar with his wife on October 9th for brunch. He asked for a table outside. Brunch Maitre D’ Allie Wolters took the party to table 301. Mr. Corden’s wife ordered an egg yolk omelette with gruyere cheese and salad. A few minutes after they received the food, James called their server, M. K. and told her there was a little bit of egg white mixed with the egg yolk. M. K. informed the floor manager, G. The kitchen remade the dish but unfortunately sent it with home fries instead of salad. That’s when James Corden began yelling like crazy to the server: “You can’t do your job! You can’t do your job! Maybe I should go into the kitchen and cook the omelette myself!” M.K. was very apologetic and brought G. over to the table. He returned the dish, and after that, everything was fine. He gave them promo Champagne glasses to smooth things out. G. said that Corden was pleasant to him but nasty to the server.’ M.K. was very shaken, but professional that she is, continued to finish her shift.’

McNally is a guy who has in the past defended Ghislaine Maxwell, not to mention opened the post in question with the wildly dubious preface that “James Corden is a hugely gifted comedian” which would normally discredit everything he said after that. And yet the idea that James Corden is a dick at restaurants is so irresistible, and so speaks to most people’s gut-level reaction to James Corden, that no one really much quibbled about the details.

The story sounded a little shaky, and Corden has yet to comment on it, but McNally claimed in a follow-up post that Corden called and “apologized profusely.” Maybe this guy is just making it all up! Who knows! Who cares? In a week that also gave us the rumor that Olivia Wilde has a “special salad dressing,” and that seeing her prepare it for Harry Styles was the final straw in her relationship with Jason Sudeikis, this #content was just too delicious not to hork up our eager piggy snouts.

The detail that had people spinning, of course, was that James Corden’s wife (TV producer Julia Carey) orders “an egg yolk omelet with gruyere cheese and a salad.” Which was facinating enough on its own to make me want to find out: Are egg yolk omelets a thing? What do they taste like?

I’m not going to tdig into exactly which diet fad leads a person to order an egg yolk omelet (or complain that it contains traces of egg white), but I assume it has something to do with the phenomenon whereby one learns that some past dieting guidance was wrongheaded and immediately runs a thousand miles the opposite direction. I remember working at Starbucks in the early aughts and hearing a customer, just after ordering a breve latte (with half-and-half instead of whole milk), tell her friend that “breve is good for my Atkin’s diet.”

I’ll admit I’m not a registered dietician here, but I’m pretty sure “fat isn’t nearly as bad for you as previously thought” doesn’t necessarily translate to “eat as much fat as you possibly can RIGHT THIS SECOND!”

I assume that’s kind of what’s going on here. And I’m sure someone in the comments is going to tell me why all-yolk omelets Are Actually Really Healthy For You Because Of Ketosis Or Something!!!! to which I say that I absolutely do not care. Whatever! Enjoy your quack diets, weirdos!

Acknowledging my bias against this entire concept, here is my attempt at an egg-yolk omelet, side by side with the regular, whole egg version.

Yes, three bowls. I wanted to do the separating by hand (as opposed to using the shells) to be as sure as I could not to get ANY WHITES in those yolks.

I figured four yolks were roughly the same as two eggs. Added a little salt in there (yes, before the cook. this is the correct way).

Beat them all up. Already the yolk-only omelet is kind of pasty and weird. It feels like you need some liquid in there to even it out.

And some cheese. Gruyere for the egg yolk omelet, my usual supermarket Mexican blend for my usual two-egg omelet. I don’t know if this is where Balthazar’s adds their cheese, before cooking as I do, or after like I’ve seen other people do sometimes, but I’m doing it my way.

I should admit here that I think the standard French omelet and Gordon Ramsay’s scrambled eggs and the egg tornado and all those kinds of “you’ve been cooking your eggs wrong all this time” posts that always go viral are utter horseshit. I’ve tried all those and I still like my way better. I don’t swirl or put a steel fork into my nice non-stick pans or use a double boiler or any of that bullshit. I don’t really want “custardy” eggs anyway. “Use a lot of butter and a little cheese and don’t overcook them” is my guiding egg principle and it works great.

Knob of butter. As per Bill Buford’s most recent book, the butter “should be singing.” That is, bubbling audibly. And the eggs go in right before the butter changes color.

THE TRADITIONAL EGGS:

Like I said, forget all that forking twirling swirling nonsense. I just take my rubber spatula and, as the parts of the liquid egg closest to the pan start to cook and solidify, I pull that part away from the pan and let the liquid, uncooked egg take its place. Pretty simple, right?

Then, once there isn’t enough liquid to replace it, I flip the eggy mass (a little dangerous, but that’s how I like to live).

This is it just before flipping.

I don’t put the pan back on the heat after the flip and I start to fold/roll it as soon as that less-cooked side hits the pan to keep it from overcooking.

ALL YOLKS:

From the start, this whole yolk business feels a little wrong. It’s more of a paste. And you can’t really get any air bubbles in there by beating it.

This version cooks much faster and I suddenly feel like I’m racing against the clock. I removed it from the heat earlier and tried to flip even faster than I did with the whole egg version.

The one upside here is that because yolks are so much less watery, they’re even easier to flip.

I added some chives because I’m fancy.

Immediately you can see that the all-yolk version is flatter and denser. And yet, it looks a lot more normal than I imagined it would when I was beating it (heh).

The egg yolk version is much denser, though it tastes heavily of the gruyere, which is kind of nice. I think it would be eggier than the regular version, but I probably went a little heavy on the Gruyere. Either way, I very much miss the fluffiness of the whole egg, and I honestly prefer that flavor as well. Maybe I could’ve made the all-yolk version less dense by not letting it ooze across the pan while I was cooking, but I’m not so sure. The lack of air bubbles in there also hurts it.

All in all, it’s… fine. I’m sure I could’ve made it slightly better with some more repetition, but I’m not sure why I would. Eggs seem to me like one of those foods God already created in perfectly complementary proportions. Just enough white; just enough yolk. Plus the all-yolk omelet seems like a waste of egg yolks and of eggs in general (since I had to use twice the amount to get not even the same-sized omelet). And for what? To get a slightly higher fat-to-protein ratio? I’m sure that’s useful to someone for some reason but… I don’t care enough to find out.

There, aren’t you glad that we all went on this journey together? God help me if a rumor surfaces about Andrea Riseborough’s love of cat turd hoagies.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more of his reviews here.

During Post Malone’s concert in Atlanta for his Twelve Carat Tour, it appears he’s had another injury. Touring life seems tough enough, even more so when you add in two separate accidents. Through some fan-uploaded videos on social media, Posty — who previously was hospitalized after tripping on an open guitar hole during a St. Louis stop last month — twisted his ankle this time.

“Tell you what, there’s little holes in the middle of the stage where fire comes out of, which is pretty f*cking rad,” Post said on stage. “But, I just twisted up my ankle a little bit over on that hole there. So, if my dance moves aren’t 100 percent, you gotta forgive me tonight, ladies and gentleman. I’ma do my best.”

While Post’s attitude about the injury initially appeared that he was playing it off cool as a minor twist, other concert attendees noticed that he was struggling to walk on stage as the show proceeded.

Malone’s first fall in St. Louis was quite extreme, leading the rapper to reschedule his Boston date just a few days later. “I felt so good last night, but today it felt so different than it has before,” he shared in a Twitter statement. “I’m having a very difficult time breathing, and there’s like a stabbing pain whenever I breathe or move.”

The Dukes Of Hazzard, like many classic TV shows for one reason or another, has not aged particularly well since it first appeared on television in the 1970s. In this case, mostly over its prominent use of the Confederate battle flag on the roof of the show’s famous Dodge Charger, called the General Lee. Which is, of course, named after Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

In the years since, and with increased scrutiny of casually using a racist hate symbol in popular culture, you’ve probably seen less of the Dukes than you once did on TV Land and the like. Many people involved in the show, which has been off the air for nearly four decades now, have moved on to other projects. Including actor John Schneider, who is adamant that “woke Hollywood” refuses to help him with a movie about the actual American flag.

Appearing on Newsmax, the former Bo Duke lamented that he couldn’t find anyone in traditional Hollywood power centers to help make To Die For, which is not a 1995 thriller starring Nicole Kidman but a 2022 movie about someone so upset about where America is headed these days he apparently wants to die for the flag.

“They wouldn’t spend any money to develop it, they certainly wouldn’t film it, they wouldn’t distribute it,” Schneider said after asked a leading question about “woke Hollywood” ignoring a “pro-American” film like his. “But my wife and I are fiercely and unapologetically independent. So we make our own content, we also distribute our own content.

Which is why, of course, he was on TV begging for people to pay $10 bucks to watch his movie online.

“Right now, we are all in. If this movie doesn’t work, we lose everything,” he said. “But we’ve always been there. I believe if you’re not all in, you’re out.”

With that in mind, here’s the unedited description of the movie on his Vimeo:

Even in this ever changing world some things refuse to bend. Meet Gunnery Sergeant Quint North. A creature of habit and discipline, the current PC world and patriots are the enemy of progress mentality makes no sense at all to him. The propensity of athletes taking a knee and disrespecting not only this great country but also those who gave their lives protecting it makes even less.
But what can one man do to fight the intentional decay of the greatest country the world has ever known?
Speak out. Live a patriotic example. And, if necessary, die for his flag.
Why..?
Because she’s worth it.
WARNING: This movie is intensely patriotic. If patriotism and love of country offend you in any way… watch this film… then move somewhere else.

Struggling conservative content creators often go to the “woke Hollywood is out to get us” model of garnering support for fledgling projects. And considering how kneeling athletes are cited here this one has clearly been in the works for a while: Colin Kaepernick hasn’t played football since 2016 and the only athletes still kneeling at this point are English Premiere League soccer players. But the plea for attention seems to be working for Schneider here at least a little bit. Comments on his Vimeo cite hearing about the film from interviews on OAN and Newsmax, two right-wing news havens. Some even want to purchase the film on DVD (or VHS!) to watch it!

So hopefully, the film itself is edited a bit better than the description. But considering how “fiercely and unapologetically independent” Schneider is, I wouldn’t take my chances.

The first reviews for Black Adam are thundering in just a few days before its release, and well, they’re not pretty. In stark contrast to the positively glowing social media reactions, film critics are not feeling The Rock finally making his long-awaited entrance into the DC Extended Universe. — Or just DC Universe? Like the Black Adam movie, it’s all getting very confusing over there.

Despite taking a beating in the reviews, (Black Adam currently sits at 55% on Rotten Tomatoes, a slight uptick from its debut on Tuesday evening) the film is still looking at a sizable box office haul thanks to The Rock’s star power. Unfortunately, based on the initial reviews, his trademark charisma is buried beneath a seemingly misguided attempt to make him yet another gritty, stoic antihero.

You can see what the critics are saying about Black Adam below:

Mike Ryan, Uproxx:

For the life of me I will never understand why anyone would make a superhero movie with, perhaps, the most charismatic action star working today and decide, hey, what if we took away all that charisma? It’s truly baffling. And, look, if you want to make an argument, well, historically, the character of Black Adam is stoic and isn’t going to be delivering nonstop one-liners, well, I would counter that once Dwayne Johnson is cast as the lead – something he himself really pushed for – then there has to be a little leeway to reinvent a character that most people don’t know a lot about anyway.

David Ehrlich, IndieWire:

All due respect to whatever unique and illustrious history Black Adam may have developed since his DC Comics debut in 1945, but the lifeless spectacle that director Jaume Collet-Serra — who made some nifty thrillers before “Jungle Cruise” reduced him to the John Ford of Rawson Marshall Thurbers — has cobbled together for the character’s big screen origin story is so exhaustingly derivative of other superhero movies that the ancient Egyptian antihero might as well not have any history at all.

Phil Pirello, The A.V. Club:

For a movie Dwayne Johnson vigorously hyped as the catalyst for change in the “hierarchy of the DCU,” Black Adam unfortunately resembles large chunks of what came before: A brooding, weightless CG punch-a-thon, shot with the same grimy visual style of previous Snyderverse entries in the DCEU. A movie full of under-cranked, slow-mo action (it’s really okay to let this aesthetic go, Warner Bros.) and over-plotted world-building that delivers more information than emotion because the movie struggles to ground this world on the backs of characters worth emotionally investing in.

Peter Debruge, Variety:

The movie is essentially “Shane” on steroids, set in the Middle East instead of the Old West, but still seen through the eyes of a young boy — Adrianna’s comic book-obsessed son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui), in this case — who idolizes a figure of questionable morality. As with “Shane,” sticking a kid in the middle of the story brings the entire project down to a middle-school-level intellect. And yet, except for the recent Batman movies, that’s how most of the DC films feel.

Joshua Yehl, IGN:

Johnson plays Black Adam in the same vein as Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: a stoic, seemingly soulless killing machine gains a glimmer of humanity and even a sense of humor. While he gets top marks for making his Black Adam just as steely and imposing as in the comics, the character feels a bit too confident and powerful. This makes him come across as one-note when there are clearly more layers begging to be explored.

Alonso Duralde, The Wrap:

“A bad plan is better than no plan at all.” This is a line that pops up at various points during “Black Adam,” and while it’s meant to be a whimsical comment regarding the task at hand, by its second repetition it starts to feel like the movie apologizing for itself and its muddled storytelling.

Helen O’Hara, Empire:

Johnson, Collet-Serra and their team want edge, but without alienating family audiences. So you get massive action scenes without any obvious civilian casualties, and godlike powers without consequence. It’s all nicely shot in low-lying sun and dusty vistas, but it suffers from the weightlessness that gives superhero movies their bad name: great power, no responsibility.

Todd McCarthy, Deadline:

Unfortunately, such arguably worthwhile matters as narrative coherence, appealing characterizations and suspense struggle to emerge here amidst a veritable logjam of intentions and tones. Such matters seem like a mere afterthought in Black Adam, which evinces a strong preference for emphasizing reams of screen-time action over dialogue; brownie points to any mere civilian who can coherently relate the plot and describe the characters’ relationships to one another without a crib sheet. At one point, a little kid asks, “What’s happening?” Good question.

Black Adam opens in theaters on October 21.

Jason Sudeikis apparently wasn’t the only one who Olivia Wilde dumped for Harry Styles. Her golden retriever Gordon reportedly got the boot, too. That’s according to part deux of The Daily Mail’s interview with Wilde and Sudeikis’ former nanny, who has gone scorched Earth on her former employers.

While the rest of the world is trying to figure out what the hell is in Wilde’s special salad dressing — besides sorcery (and it came from Nora Ephron!) — The Mail went ahead and dropped some other alleged bombshells from the couple’s former employee and seeming confidante. In addition to stating that Wilde was sending some, well, wildly mixed messages to Sudeikis by dumping him on November 8 but then regularly returning home and telling the former SNL star that she loved him, she reportedly decided to get rid of her dog just weeks after getting together with Styles in order to have even more time to spend with the former boy bander.

Per the nanny, Gordon was rehomed with his dog walker — though her comments didn’t paint Sudeikis in the best light either. As she told The Mail:

“After [Wilde] left [at the start of November 2020], she came for a visit and said, ‘We have to find Gordon a new home,’ nonchalantly. Jason doesn’t really care for animals and wanted him out of their home ASAP. Jason said Olivia only had the dog for appearances anyway. She rarely cared for Gordon or Paco, the dog she had before. It was myself and others who cared for the dogs. I told Jason I knew somebody who loves Gordon and was willing to take him in so Jason said, ‘Let’s get him out of here right away.’”

Et tu, Ted Lasso?

Something tells us a part 3 of this interview isn’t too far behind.

(Via The Daily Mail)

Before we discuss The Car — the seventh Arctic Monkeys album out Friday — let’s review the band’s recent history in order to understand how we got here. Buckle up: It’s an arduous and convoluted trek across three records and at least as many different personas.

In 2013, they put out their fifth LP, AM. It begins with a song, “Do I Wanna Know?,” that goes on to be streamed (to date) nearly 1.5 billion times on Spotify, making it the most culturally relevant rock track of the last 10 years. The following year, Arctic Monkeys win Album Of The Year at the Brit Awards. Upon accepting the trophy, Alex Turner makes a smirking, self-congratulatory speech about how rock ‘n’ roll will always “make its way back through the sludge” in order to “smash through the glass ceiling, looking better than ever.” It is not clear if he really means this, or if he is merely playing a “charismatically louche” character. Either way, in that moment, he is indisputably the biggest British rock star of his generation.

Four years later, Arctic Monkeys put out their sixth album, Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino. It does not sound like AM. Nor does it sound like rock ‘n’ smashing through a glass ceiling. Turner no longer resembles a sexed-up nü-Fonzie who makes music appropriate for barbecue restaurants and medium-shelf rum commercials. Instead, he produces a record of hilariously surreal sci-fi torch songs. Tranquility Base is a Kubrickian black comedy in which the sensibility of Dr. Strangelove is transposed on 2001. Predictably, a lot of people hate it. Others, however, consider it the best album of 2018.

This brings us to The Car. Anyone who listens to this album once will instantly compare it to the previous Arctic Monkeys LP. This is not entirely unfounded. As was the case with Tranquility, The Car is fashioned in large part by Turner, by himself, away from the band. He writes alone, plays and records most of the instrumentation alone, and then reworks what he’s done alone. Only at the end of the process does he bring in the other three guys. The inevitable result is that Tranquility Base and The Car both sound like solo records released under a highly bankable brand.

What’s most shocking about The Car is that it proves Tranquility Base was not an experiment — that record marked what is currently a prolonged turn away from rock music. Turner has instead delved deep into 1960s West Coast pop and ’70s porno funk. At the risk of making an overly obvious comparison, The Car is Arctic Monkeys’ Young Americans, a British take on American Black music that manages to express a purely European point of view.

All of this is true, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. It doesn’t account for how the two most recent Arctic Monkeys records feel. They feel very different. Tranquility Base is chilly and overtly comedic; The Car is warmer and also sadder. The sixth record is obsessed with a fictional future (though it feels less fictional four years later); the seventh album is focused on a real (though exaggerated) past. The result is that the former signifies visionary outrageousness while the latter exudes romantic melancholy.

Turner once tried to reinvent his band; now he seems to have outgrown it. The predecessor was a surprising chapter; the new one feels like an ending. The sludge has not been transcended; it now is home.

I understand that for many people who love the first five Arctic Monkeys records — especially AM, by far their most popular in America — this might all come across as disappointing and even frustrating. For this audience, a word of advice: Assume that the band who made AM is dead and buried, and might not be coming back. Not literally (at least not at this point), but certainly in practice. Think back to the classic opening lyric from Tranquility Base: “I just wanted to be one of The Strokes / now look at the mess you made me make.” What came across as a joke before can now be taken at face value. Wanting to be like one of The Strokes is a past-tense aspiration for Turner. These last two records are him experiencing the afterlife of that, and sorting through the leftover detritus.

Getting to the bottom of this requires doing your own sifting through wah-wah guitars, foggy string sections, and reams of absurdist non-sequiturs. The heart of The Car resides between those lines. On the slinky “Jet Skis On The Moat,” Turner purrs, “When it’s over, you’re supposed to know.” Amid the dead-eyed Muzak of “Big Ideas,” one of several tracks that uses old-timey show business allusions as metaphors for exhausted relationships, he imagines producing a film called “The Ballad Of What Could Have Been.” The wistful retro pop tune “Mr. Schwartz” reiterates that idea, with Turner concluding that it’s “as fine a time as any to deduce the fact that neither you or I has ever had a clue.”

When The Car does drift into rock, the record receives a necessary jolt. The lounge-y “Body Paint” deals in references to ancient songs by Elvis Presley and Gerry And The Pacemakers before radically shifting to a rousing Mott The Hoople-style glam-rock climax, an “All The Young Dudes” for dudes who are no longer young. There is no sense of uplift on the title track, the album’s best song, in which cloudy orchestral folk flourishes give way to a tortured guitar solo. But it does function as The Car‘s emotional center. “Thinking about how funny I must look trying to adjust to what’s been there all along,” Turner sings, sounding nothing like the cocksure superstar who accepted that Brit Award eight years ago, but rather a 36-year-old man who used to play that guy on TV.

Reading rock lyrics as tea leaves spelling out a band’s future existence is an easy way to embarrass yourself. I’m not suggesting that Turner is on the verge of breaking up the band and going out officially on his own. But what seems clear is that Turner has definitively moved on from his most commercially successful guise, and is now fully invested in his post-rock star career. And in the process he’s written some of his wittiest and wisest tunes. “Is that vague sense of longing kinda trying to cause a scene?” he sings on The Car‘s most dread-inducing number, “Sculptures Of Anything Goes.” These days for Arctic Monkeys, it’s more about the longing than the scene.