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Someone tell John Oliver: Adam Driver’s Super Bowl commercial has arrived.

Squarespace (it’s impossible to not read the company name in the voice of your favorite podcast host) has released its ad for Sunday’s game starring Adam Driver. And Adam Driver. And Adam Driver. And about two hundred more Adam Drivers. In “The Singularity,” the 65 star has his mind blown by the concept of a website that makes websites, “meaning it could create itself,” he says. The existential crisis of a commercial ends with dozens of Drivers getting sucked into a black hole, or something, and the original Driver looking into the camera to say, “You did it, Adam Driver.” You sure did.

“I couldn’t be happier to do this commercial with Squarespace and for the Super Bowl,” Driver told Rolling Stone. “The cast ALONE was reason to do this.”

Squarespace founder Anthony Casalena added, “We are thrilled to be back at the big game for our ninth year. Partnering with Adam Driver to satirize our origin is a fun way to honor where we’ve been as a company. While we started off as a website that builds websites, Squarespace has evolved into a powerful platform that provides all of the tools entrepreneurs need to turn an idea into reality and start a thriving business online.” Congratulations to the first cast member of Girls to get a Super Bowl ad.

You can watch an extended cut of “The Singularity” above.

Before becoming Avengers, Jeremy Renner and Evangeline Lilly both starred in 2008’s The Hurt Locker, which kickstarted Renner’s career and launched him onto the A-list. In short, the two actors go way back, so it should be no surprise that Lilly paid a personal visit to Renner’s house to check on him following his harrowing snow plow ordeal.

While promoting Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Lilly gave Access Hollywood an update on Renner’s recovery. What she saw caught her completely by surprise. Via Variety:

“I walked in his house and got chicken skin because I was like, ‘Why are you mobile? Why are you mobile? What’s happening?’” Lilly said. “I expected to sit at his bedside and hold his hand while he moaned and groaned in pain and wasn’t able to move. He was wheeling himself around, laughing with his friends. It’s a miracle. It’s a straight up miracle. He’s made of something really tough that guy. You’ve always been able to see that in him and he is recovering incredibly.”

Renner also shared excruciating details of getting crushed by the snow plow, and Lilly still can’t believe he’s alive after what she heard.

“It was really intense,” Lilly said. “I mean, he had a near death experience that was highly traumatic, and he was awake for the whole thing. I’m still having moments where some of the stuff he told me that he experienced and retelling me the story of what went on and the things he could hear and the things that he could see.”

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania hits theaters on February 17.

(Via Variety)

Burt Bacharach is dead at 94 years old, publicist Tina Brausam confirmed today (February 9), as the Associated Press notes. The publication notes Bacharach died in his Los Angeles home of natural causes on February 8.

Bacharach enjoyed a lengthy career that started in the 1950s, and he was still performing live as recently as 2019. He wrote or co-wrote a number of songs that remain recognizable today, including “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” (a No. 1 single for B. J. Thomas in 1970), “What The World Needs Now Is Love” (initially popularized by Jackie DeShannon’s 1965 recording), and “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again” (Dionne Warwick’s 1969 recording was a top-10 hit). He had success with his own releases as well: His self-titled 1971 album peaked at No. 18 on the Billboard 200 chart.

He has received plenty of award recognition for his work. In his lifetime, he was nominated for 21 Grammy Awards, most recently just in 2022 when Burt Bacharach And Steven Sater’s Some Lovers was nominated for Best Musical Theater Album. He managed to pick up six Grammy wins, too. He also has six Academy Awards and three Emmys to his name, so all in all, he’s just a Tony Award away from achieving EGOT status.

In a 2015 interview with The Guardian, Bacharach said of working with frequent collaborator Hal David (who died in 2012), “The way Hal and I worked was in fragments. We never finished the song in one day. We took our work home. If I’ve been collaborating, I need the time alone to just lie on the couch and try to hear the whole vertical picture of what this song is. There’s only one song I remember that Hal and I wrote quickly: ‘I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.’ We were doing a show in Boston and I got pneumonia. We had good reviews, but there was work to be done and I felt like sh*t. I was put in Massachusetts General and was there nearly a week. The producer was a son of a b*tch. Really tough guy. He just said, ‘How long is he going to be in hospital? Can we put a band in his hospital room? If he’s not functioning in a week, I’ll bring in another writer.’”

This post is being updated.

Last year, Blink-182 announced their comeback with original member Tom DeLonge returning to the lineup. They did it with a bang: “We’re coming. Tour’s coming. Album’s coming. Tom’s coming. Tickets on sale Monday. New song ‘Edging’ out Friday.” They revealed the insane tour with bands Turnstile, Wallows, The Story So Far, and Rise Against.

It looks like there may be a roadblock in the way, though. Drummer Travis Barker worried some fans when just tweeting, “F*ck,” on Tuesday, February 7. The following day, he explained, “I was playing the drums at rehearsals yesterday and I smashed my finger so hard I dislocated it and tore the ligaments [swearing emoji].”

The run starts in a little over a month, kicking off March 11 in Tijuana, Mexico. There’s no word yet on if Barker’s injury will have any impact on the tour.

Unfortunately, fans had a tricky time acquiring tickets, which Mark Hoppus acknowledged on his Discord server. “Yes I understand that the ticketing can be frustrating,” he said. “I bought tickets for two of our shows myself just to see what the experience was like. I had tickets yoinked from my cart and the whole thing crash out. Dynamic pricing. I’m not in charge of it. It’s meant to discourage scalpers. We’re trying to bring you the best possible show for the best price. This is a tour celebrating new music and the band getting back together. Thank you for your enthusiasm and I hope to see all of you at the shows.”

Blink-182 is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Janelle Monáe clarified their pronouns as “she/her, they/them, [and] free-ass motherf*cker” during their acceptance speech for the SheHer Award at last month’s Critics Choice Awards. Still, this week, one fan projected another identity on them: Mr. Monopoly.

“Janelle Monáe finally showing off how fine she is instead of dressing like the Monopoly Man,” a user named Kimber Henry tweeted on Sunday, February 5, presumably about Monáe’s 2023 Grammys outfit. “35.7k likes??” Monáe responded. “No new tour. hope it was worth it beloved,” with a kissy-face emoji.

Monáe had already teased “Float,” a trumpet-fueled anthem, on January 24, so fans were understandably concerned that Monáe would go so far as to withhold the new single. Those worries were seemingly put to bed when the Glass Onion star tweeted another teaser clip on Wednesday, February 8, along with the release date of February 16.

And in case you were concerned that Monáe can’t take a joke, they didn’t let yesterday end before tweeting out one more “Float” teaser video featuring Mr. Monopoly dancing — hitting the floss and BlocBoy JB’s “Shoot” dance.

“No, I’m not the same,” Monáe sings. “I think I done changed / See, somethin’ not the same / I used to walk into the room, head down / I don’t walk, now I / Float.”

In the wake of “Float” dropping, Monáe will attempt to drain floaters in the 2023 Ruffles NBA All-Star Celebrity Game on Friday, February 17.

Luther knows what the people want: Idris Elba in a great coat. The only thing better than that? Idris Elba in a great coat… on the big screen! Luther: The Fallen Sun, the film continuation of the crime drama series, finds The Wire star reprising his role as John Luther, who breaks out of prison to find David Robey, a “tech billionaire moonlighting as a serial killer” played by Andy Serkis. He probably won’t give a stirring monologue like he did on Andor, but he will be an utter creep who haunts Luther. The man’s got range.

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

In Luther: The Fallen Sun — an epic continuation of the award-winning television saga reimagined for film — a gruesome serial killer is terrorizing London while brilliant but disgraced detective John Luther (Idris Elba) sits behind bars. Haunted by his failure to capture the cyber psychopath who now taunts him, Luther decides to break out of prison to finish the job by any means necessary. The film also stars Cynthia Erivo, Andy Serkis, and Dermot Crowley, who returns as Martin Schenk.

Luther: The Fallen Sun, which was directed by Jamie Payne and written by Neil Cross, opens in select theaters on February 24 before hitting Netflix on March 10.

Not to sound 10,000 years old, but you don’t hear songs as ringtones out in the wild anymore. People either keep their phone on silent, or vibrate, or stick with the default ringtone. This is a net positive, all things considered, but I sometimes miss the days when “The Final Countdown” or “So Fresh, So Clean” would alert the stranger waiting in line in front of you at the grocery that their doctor is calling with News.

Like everything else from the 2000s, songs as ringtones are due for a comeback — and when that happens, you’ll be haunted by “Whopper Whopper” when you least expect it.

Burger King has released the catchy (maddeningly so) song on Spotify. If you’ve watched any NFL game this season, you already know it. For everyone else, I’m sorry. In my defense: Whopper Whopper Whopper Whopper, you rule! The fast food chain’s Spotify page also includes “Burger Cheese, Burger Cheese,” as well as a six-track EP of jingles like “Chicken Chicken” and “Crispy Fella.” Good luck to your Spotify Wrapped.

Burger King is on the joke. “When I wrote to the fast-food company to request an interview about the origins and evolution of this hit jingle, several days later I finally got a reply,” Catherine Rampell wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post. “It was a link to yet another reprise: ‘Burger-cheese, burger-cheese, burger-cheeeese…’ (‘I think you just got rick-rolled,’ said the unsympathetic editor who urged me to write this piece.)”

Burger King isn’t expected to have a Super Bowl ad. Or maybe “Whopper Whopper” will strike when we least expect it. Like at the State of the Union.

Over the past few years, HYBE Corporation has become one of the biggest forces in music. The South Korean company owns Big Hit Music (home to artists like BTS and TOMORROW x TOGETHER), Big Machine Label Group (Tim McGraw, formerly Taylor Swift), and now, thanks to a new deal, Quality Control.

In a deal announced yesterday (February 8), HYBE subsidiary HYBE America bought QC (whose artists include Lil Baby, Lil Yachty, City Girls, and Migos) in a purchase “valued at $320 million in stock and cash,” as Variety reports.

HYBE America CEO Scooter Braun said of the deal:

“I am so proud and honored to have [Quality Control CEO Pierre ‘P’ Thomas and COO Kevin ‘Coach K’ Lee] join [HYBE chairman Bang Si-Hyuk] and I as our partners. QC is one of the most significant independent labels in the world, working with incredible artists who are, and remain to be, the voices of culture. I’ll never forget riding around Atlanta over 20 years ago with Coach discussing our dreams and ambitions and how we said, ‘If they let us in the game, we are never going to give it back.’ Now, all these years later, we are joining forces to make these dreams a reality.”

He also noted, “It’s important to me and my team that P and Coach continue to have the freedom, and now our global resources, to continue to do what they do best; facilitate and nurture great art and culture.”

This April, Willie Nelson will have his milestone 90th birthday. He hasn’t slowed down, either: He was nominated for four Grammys at this year’s ceremony and he won two of them. He’s lived a long and fruitful life so far, and should his story ever get a movie adaptation, Bryan Cranston would enjoy the opportunity to portray the country icon.

In a new interview with NME, when asked if there’s a musician he’d like to play in a movie, Cranston responded:

“Hmm, that’s a great idea… Willie Nelson comes to mind. The hair and the beard. I think there’s some physical resemblance. He’s very old and wrinkled, and I can relate to that [laughs]. So I wouldn’t have to wear a lot of makeup.

Willie’s had a fascinating career – as a writer and as a performer, and as a free speech person, being anti-war and on the forefront of hemp [culture]. That’s kind of interesting to me, even though I don’t vibe with that stuff. I don’t like smoking, it just doesn’t do it for me.”

He also said of New Orleans, “New Orleans has become such a character in Your Honor. It has a culture and a history that is deeply rooted in music and alcoholic spirits — and other spirits too! Ghostly spirits! It’s a very visceral city with great people. It also has great problems, too, and you have to embrace all of that just like you would a human being. I’m very grateful to be able to go there.”

Read the full interview here.

The Toronto Raptors are bringing back an old friend. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN and Shams Charania of The Athletic, Toronto’s first move of the 2023 NBA trade deadline involves acquiring Jakob Poeltl from the San Antonio Spurs, with Wojnarowski reporting that the team will send Khem Birch and some draft capital to Texas.

Marc Stein had reported in the lead-up to the deal that the two sides were extensively discussing a Poeltl trade. It’s a reunion between Poeltl and the team that drafted him 16th overall in the 2016 NBA Draft. He spent his first two years with the franchise before getting sent to San Antonio with DeMar DeRozan and a pick for Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green.

Since then, Poeltl has turned into one of the game’s most underrated centers, particularly on the defensive end of the floor. Prior to getting moved this year, the big man averaged 12.1 points, nine rebounds, 3.1 assists, and 1.1 blocks in 26.1 minutes per game while connecting on 61.6 percent of his field goal attempts.

Toronto has been mentioned as a team to watch ahead of Thursday’s trade deadline for weeks, as they had the flexibility to acquire players who help them win, move players in an effort to take a more long-term view, or stand pat. While there is still plenty of time for them to do more, acquiring the 27-year-old Poeltl — an unrestricted free agent at the end of this year — gives them another player who could help them improve on their 26-30 record, which puts Toronto in 10th place in the Eastern Conference.