This weekend, the NBA will descend upon Salt Lake City, Utah. It’s the biggest weekend of the regular season, as the NBA All-Star Game and everything that comes along with it is finally here. It gives players and coaches a break from the grind of the 82-game sprint to the postseason, and it gives fans a number of events that they look forward to watching on a yearly basis.
Ahead of this year’s weekend, we decided to look at the six events — Friday’s Celebrity Game and Rising Stars Challenge; Saturday’s Skills Challenge, Three Point Contest, and Slam Dunk Contest; Sunday’s All-Star Game — and rank them from best to worst. The worst one, by design, is the Celebrity Game. As for the best? We’ll get to that shortly, but for now…
6. Celebrity Game
I do not need to explain why the Celebrity Game is bad, in large part because the NBA (or ESPN, my memory is a bit fuzzy) has already done this for me. In 2019, the All-Star weekend took place in lovely Charlotte, North Carolina. This remains the only time I went to the see that, as dril once so eloquently put it, the celebs were at it again. Before the game, there was a video package that made fun of how bad the whole thing is. Just a lot of misses, a lot of turnovers, a lot of watching failed U.S. Senate candidates from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania dribbling a basketball off of their foot. Having said all this, it does seem like everyone is in on the joke, and there is something to be said from that (this is also why I love the event with my whole heart). NBA, if you ever want me to do the Celebrity Game despite the fact that I am decidedly not a celebrity, DM me.
5. Skills Challenge
It’s fine? I guess the problem with the Skills Challenge is it’s pretty boring, because it’s not like we’re watching NBA players do anything that’s especially difficult for them. Every now and then you get a not great shooter bricking some threes, or a big fella who’s not quite as tidy dribbling the ball as Chris Paul, but on the whole, the event is just kind of a thing that exists, even if it’ll occasionally add some fun twists like whatever the heck they did with the course last year. Ultimately, the Skills Challenge is an appetizer to what comes later in the evening on Saturday, so it is does its job.
4. Rising Stars Challenge
Does the Rising Stars game suck 99 percent of the time? Yes. Did last year’s version of the event absolutely rock and lead me to believe there is something potentially really, really fun here? Also yes. Adding the Elam Ending and G League Ignite players combine to add some drama to the whole thing, which seems impossible, because it’s the Rising Stars game. I’m putting it here based on potential, but two things: 1. It can fall down to 5 very easily (not 6, because the Celebrity Game exists), 2. The gap between the top-3 and this is considerably large.
3. Slam Dunk Contest
Alright, hear me out. When the Dunk Contest is good, it is the best thing. For my money, there has never been a thing at an All-Star weekend better than Vince Carter’s Dunk Contest performance in 2000. But the issue is the Dunk Contest can be really, really, really bad at its worst. The fact that last year’s Contest was most notable for Cole Anthony taking six hours to throw on some Timbs and Jalen Green doing an NFT dunk(?) is a good example of this — here’s a very upset Stephen A. Smith saying all the things that everyone said in the arena and on social media while they watched the whole thing.
There’s also the fact that we’re seeing less star power than ever in the event. This year: Mac McClung, Trey Murphy, Kenyon Martin III, Jericho Sims. Last year: Anthony, Green, Obi Toppin, Juan Toscano-Anderson. At the 2021 All-Star weekend which was impacted by COVID: Anfernee Simons, Cassius Stanley, Toppin. You have to go back to the famous 2020 contest where Aaron Gordon and Derrick Jones Jr. dueled (and sparked a judging controversy) for a really memorable one that had names that drew fans in (beyond those two, Pat Connaughton and Dwight Howard participated). It feels like the event is losing some of its luster, which knocks it down a bit, especially compared to…
2. Three Point Contest
The Three Point Contest is the best thing on All-Star Saturday night. For years, the Dunk Contest held this crown, but as the years have gone on, this event on the undercard tends to be much better at delivering big names and drama. As the NBA (and the sport of basketball, really) has become more and more defined by the ability to hit threes, the Three Point Contest has become a showcase of the single most valuable skill in the game right now. And because the title of “best shooter in the world” is so coveted, the guys who participate legitimately care about putting on a show.
It also does a wonderful job mixing the people who are the best at that skill with some of the biggest names in the game — prior to Anfernee Simons getting hurt, four of the six players with the most made threes in the league this season (Buddy Hield, Simons, Damian Lillard, Jayson Tatum) were in the field. The last two winners, Karl-Anthony Towns and Steph Curry, are All-NBA caliber players. The whole event is just fantastic, keeps finding ways to get more and more entertaining, and has become the best part of Saturday night.
1. The All-Star Game
Two additions, the Elam Ending in the fourth quarter and teams that are picked by captains, have brought the game to a new level. There’s even an added twist on that second thing this year, as the captains will pick their teams live and in the arena prior to the game. That rocks! I am glad they’re doing this, it absolutely takes an already fun thing and makes it even more fun. I am saying this in part because I am a contentsman and this, potentially, helps us with the whole traffic thing.
Anyway, the All-Star Game hits on every note. It’s a celebration of the game and its best players, obviously, and the league has done a good job turning it into a spectacle that goes beyond basketball. People like Common and (this year) Vin Diesel have introduced players before the game, there’s a halftime show that has increasingly involved more and more artists, etc. And every now and then, you get something like last year’s NBA 75 celebration, which is one of the very best things the league has ever done. It’s the weekend’s main event for a very, very good reason.
Taylor Sheridan volleyed from a steady-enough acting career (Sons of Anarchy and an array of procedural shows) to a whirlwind of writing hits, including Sicario, all the way to helming his own universe for the Paramount Network. That has, of course, included the launch of Paramount+, where several of his series bring plenty of lingering eyeballs after people stop by to watch Top Gun: Maverick. Mind you, there are a lot of Taylor Sheridan shows for people to enjoy on streaming, and although Yellowstone is not actually available on Paramount+ at the moment (you can watch it on Peacock), there’s plenty more there including Yellowstone spinoffs and adjacent shows. These include projects starring Sylvester Stallone and Jeremy Renner and future series to come.
How can you keep track of every Taylor Sheridan-verse show and know where to stream them? We’ve got you covered here. Although there’s currently some drama involving both Yellowstone (Kevin Costner might be out the door soon with an A-list McConaughey on the horizon) and Tulsa King (showrunner Terence Winter is departing with a replacement yet to be announced), they’re firmly part of the roster of ongoing Sheridan hits. He is involved with all of these series — some are directly part of the Yellowstone timeline and others completely unrelated — in varying capacities, whether that’s on the creation side or as full-on writer, executive producer, and more.
Here’s the granddaddy of them all. If you’re reading this, then you’ve probably at least checked out the series starring Kevin Costner as John Dutton, so we won’t spend time describing the show. What does matter is that the drama is now extending beyond the Chief Joseph Ranch and out into the real world because Costner might be leaving the building. Such a development would obviously complicate the rest of the Sheridan universe and carry far-reaching Dutton fallout, which we’ll briefly discuss in a moment.
This first-to-arrive prequel follows on the heels of the initial series’ runaway success and stars Sam Elliot, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, and Billy Bob Thornton. The story goes back to the travels of the O.G. Dutton family moving through the Wild West on the way to Montana. Basically, this is all about the search for America’s promised land, which will yield bittersweet discoveries with welcome callbacks to the beloved series that brought those fans to the franchise in the first place.
Even more A-list power arrived with another prequel/origin story for the Dutton family. As the show’s title suggests, this show picks up four decades following the events of 1883, and two land-defending Duttons are portrayed by Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. There are forces of nature to contend with, sure, but more than that, there’s the Great Depression and Prohibition and predatory parties circling aplenty. A ton of antagonists would like to get their hands on that ranch property, but Helen Mirren ain’t having it. Surely, you’ve seen her work, right? She means business.
6666 (In development)
Although the title of this show suggests some evil cowboys afoot, the label does arrive with context. Reportedly, the still-in-development series will take place at the 6666 Ranch in Texas. As TV Guide points out, this is a direct reference to a Season 5 episode, in which John Dutton’s daughter, Beth, found inspiration from the ranch and decided to “to start selling Yellowstone-branded beef,” and this spinoff would follow the stories that take place with that famous ranch’s cowboys.
Mystery Matthew McConaughey Project? (Up in the air, TBA)
As the label indicates, this one’s a puzzler, but according to an initial report from Deadline, the Magic Mike star is “in talks” to lead a “franchise extension to continue the Dutton saga.” This could be great timing, considering reports that Kevin Costner wishes to leave this universe, and McConaughey’s Texan-yet-adaptable drawl would be right at home in either a Yellowstone offshoot or if they even tried to pop him into the flagship series. Stay tuned on that note.
And now for Sheridan-involved, non-Yellowstone shows…
Jeremy Renner has had a tough time of things in real life lately, but he’s still part of the Taylor Sheridan stable of successes. The Yellowstone king co-created this show with Hugh Dillon, and the story follows Dillon’s observations from his formative years near Ontario’s Kingston Penitentiary. Renner is the figurative “mayor” of the title, meaning that he’s the sales dude who negotiates deals between inmates and law enforcement. Renner truly hits a higher gear in crime drama mode.
Sylvester Stallone has been leading up to this role for his whole career, and he’s genuinely having a blast as a mafia boss with the run of an entire city, which yes, simply happens to be Tulsa. Who would have thought that this city would be so hot on TV these days? After Watchmen and amid the ongoing Reservation Dogs, TV characters cannot seem to stay away from the semi-appealing armpit of Route 66. Stallone delivers a fun and emotional performance in an irresistible show that’s so-far helmed by Boardwalk Empire‘s Terence Winter with a replacement to come. Winter has chosen to move onto other projects, although a second season is in the works for Balboa in the Heartland.
Lioness (In post-production)
This series shall star Zoe Saldaña as top brass at the CIA’s Lioness Program (modeled after the real life entity), where she will mentor and mold recruits into tough undercover operatives. These young women will go on to assassinate baddies in dangerous situations, although one such situation grows complicated when a recruit must grow close to a terrorist’s daughter in order to reach a mark. The show’s been filming in Maryland, and while we don’t have a release date yet, that should be coming soon.
Land Man (In pre-production)
Billy Bob Thornton already portrayed U.S. Marshal Jim Courtright in 1883, but he picks up a completely different character for this series outside the Yellowstone timeline and which is based upon the hit podcast of the same name. Here, Thornton portrays an oil company crisis manager, who wheels and deals in West Texas while tangling with “roughnecks” and “wildcat billionaires” who found their fortune in, you guessed it, Texas Tea. The podcast story took on the paradigm shift that went down in the process, so it should be a solid time onscreen, too.
Bass Reeves (In development)
This series will star David Oyelowo and (recently announced addition) Barry Pepper and also stars Dennis Quaid, Forrest Goodluck, and Lauren E. Banks. The show revolves around the real-life Bass Reeves, who is recognized in the history books as the first Black Deputy U.S. Marshall of the West. The show’s description duly recognizes him “as the greatest frontier hero in American history, worked in the post-Reconstruction era as a federal peace officer in the Indian Territory, capturing over 3,000 of the most dangerous criminals without ever being wounded.”
Will there be more to come? We don’t doubt that it’s possible.
The Inside the NBA crew seems to like each other — you don’t work with people for as long as they have unless you do. Having said that, there have been plenty of moments over the years where they try to rile one another up, presumably because it is extremely funny when they do that.
Shaquille O’Neal tried his hardest to do just that on Thursday night while the fellas were in Salt Lake City for this weekend’s All-Star Game. Shaq, unsurprisingly, decided to try and prod Charles Barkley by getting the crowd in attendance to chant “We Hate Chuck,” which, Barkley played in the Western Conference for a while and played against Utah in the 1997 conference finals, so maybe Jazz fans have some long-standing disdain for the dude.
The issue that Shaq ran into is this is not the case, and after this fell flat, the fans actually started to chant “We Love Chuck.”
In fairness to Shaq, he did say this was in an effort to see if the fans loved or hated the Round Mound of Rebound, so he ultimately did get an answer to his question. And once his first chant didn’t work, both Shaq and Kenny Smith led the “We Love Chuck” chant, which was far more well-received.
On Friday’s episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, Pushing Daisies actress Kristin Chenoweth revealed that she was once wooed by The Purple One.
Chenoweth didn’t believe it was Prince at first, understandably so, but she agreed to a date at Paisley Park once she confirmed that it wasn’t an elaborate prank. “I’m sweating bullets, I’m so nervous,” she recalled. “And here comes, ‘click, click, click, click.’ Prince’s heels, right? Comes in. He was like, ‘Hi.’ I was like, ‘I’d like to party like it’s 1999 and wear my raspberry beret.’” Prince was not amused (at least go with deep cuts, jeez), but things improved after dinner when they had a “great talk about life, love, faith.”
They made their way to his basement, where he showed her his display of 200 guitars. “He goes, ‘Pick one up. Play one.’ So I picked up this long, white-necked one. I turned it over and it was all scratched. I was like, ‘What happened?’ He goes, ‘Elvis’ belt.’”
Prince then brought Chenoweth to his theater, where “he played a video of Chenoweth performing that he said ‘inspired’ him,” according to Decider (I hope it was this). Prince told her, “What you do is what I like to do. And please never stop.” Chenoweth doesn’t divulge what happened the rest of the night — she doesn’t (sorry Prince) kiss and tell.
Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish shows available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
The first season of Abbott Elementary was a feel-good network sitcom that caught a massive wave of popularity and won a bunch of Emmys in a time when feel-good network sitcoms are kind of not supposed to do that. Credit for this goes to creator and star Quinta Brunson, who realized that an underfunded inner-city public school was exactly the right place to show us people with good hearts working inside a system that can be cold. Kind of like Parks and Recreation but in Philadelphia. The second season is underway and does not appear to be missing a beat. This is basically a miracle, all around.
Philomena Cunk first appeared as a character in Charlie Brooker’s little universe of shows, making her mark as an “expert” and “investigative reporter” who knew very little about anything but was very confident about all of it anyway. Here, she gets her own playground to go wild, with a full season to examine the history of the world. It’s a ton of fun, part Nathan for You, part Daily Show reports from the field, but still entirely original. And really, really funny. This is a good one to sit down with for a few hours with your brain turned down to a low hum. Let Philomena Cunk teach you nothing of value for a little bit. You deserve this break.
Sir Patrick Stewart’s most iconic character (yes, including X-Men) heads into his final season in the 25th century. This show provides a bounty of happiness for Star Trek: The Next Generation viewers, given that many fan-favorite characters are all onboard, along with Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager. This season will see Picard deal with the threat of Captain Vadic, and it’s something to behold that this particular era of the franchise has now carried on for over 25 years. The “final frontier” keeps on kicking.
Human beings need dreams, but do dreams need salespeople? And are those salespeople providing a service by distracting people with hope or are they just setting people up for disappointment while lining their own pockets? These questions come to mind when watching Hello Tomorrow, Apple’s new Billy Crudup-starring drama that blends 1950s futurism with an exploration of hope (in the form of timeshares on the moon), regret, and the heaven on earth that is redemption.
Joe Goldberg has another new name, and he’s moved to London. More news: the stalker is the one being stalked. Joe also has a new beard, but someone’s still onto him, but most importantly for his purposes, he’s vowed to finally change his ways, but books are still there for him. He’s now Jonathan Moore, a fake professor, who’s staring into the souls of college students and the adults who can’t quit academia, either. Penn Badgley has admitted to to feeling “icky” about a Season 4 poster, which still fits with the theme of the show, but now, it’s also a mystery story.
This new docuseries from Netflix about the PGA Tour really struck gold with the timing. They thought they were getting a Drive to Survive-style product about the ins and outs of professional golf but then they stumbled into a global controversy about an upstart new league funded by the Saudi government that wooed away a bunch of the PGA’s biggest stars. There is drama here. Lots of it. Which should make for a fun watch.
The mental health and comedy crossover of Ted Lasso was apparent in the show’s second season as Ted’s coping mechanisms started to falter, pushing him to get some help. Shrinking, which comes from the minds of Lasso producer Bill Lawrence and Lasso writer/co-star Brett Goldstein (as well as series star Jason Segel) begins in a similar place with its main character, played by Segel, realizing that his strategies aren’t working when it comes to managing grief, having a relationship with his daughter, and helping the patients who come to him for help as their therapist. What follows is an odyssey of personal rediscovery with plenty of awkward moments, incremental improvements, and a whole lot of charming grouchiness from Harrison Ford as a begrudging mentor type.
The supermodel with loads of famous friends will (as the title of this series suggests) explore all things related to sexuality and the relationships and dynamics that revolve around it. She recently told Variety that making this series made her feel slightly prudish, if that tells you anything at all. It’ll be sheer, awkward fun, as is already evidenced by how she was instructed to take care of herself for a full ten minutes and the report to the camera. Hmm.
One of the most popular video games of all-time comes to HBO as a television series, with Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal leading the cast on a post-apocalyptic trek through a harsh landscape filled with horrors. The reviews are really good. HBO gave it the primo Sunday night slot it reserved for shows like Game of Thrones and Succession. It’s led by Craig Mazin, who also produced Chernobyl, another gripping watch about the potential end of the world. There is a lot to be excited about here. Dive in so you know what your cool friends are talking about.
Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne have combined their powers to give us a gift that keeps on giving with a case-of-the-week style detective show featuring a hyper-observant and very idiosyncratic lead. Played by Lyonne, Charlie Cale just happens to be on the lam and on a roll when it comes to stumbling into other people’s very bad days. Part Columbo with dashes of Highway To Heaven and Psych, Poker Face is a true slice of comfort food, smart, funny, and distinctive.
Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish movies available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
A group of friends decides to hunker down during the COVID-19 lockdown together at nice little lake house and… wait a second. This sounds like the plot of a horror movie. Which makes sense because… it is the plot of a horror movie. This horror movie. The Blumhouse team is at it again, with a slasher on the loose and a deadly virus in the air and about four other things to be terrified of. Maybe there’s a monster in the lake, too. Who knows? Only one way to find out…
Pamela Anderson gets the full documentary treatment from Netflix. Which makes sense. Very few people have defined an entire era of sex appeal and beauty standards — for better or worse — than the Baywatch star did in the 1990s. This look at her life covers, well, all of that, as well as the infamous sex tape and various rock star marriages and her activism for animal rights. It’s kind of a lot, really, which also makes sense. The woman has lived a big life, in a bunch of ways, and now she’s telling the story in her own words.
We all have our little preoccupations and collections. Baseball cards, Funko Pops, creepy victorian dolls with their watchful eyes and secrets. Pez Outlaw is about, you guessed it, collecting pez dispensers, those cheap plastic candy dispensers of yore. But it’s also about making cold hard cash, the lengths one will go to feed their habit for pez and profits, black markets, and international intrigue. So pop back the head of this doc and bite out the sweet treat of infotainment with this hyper-stylized doc.
Daniel Craig returns as Benoit Blanc with a whole new cast of potential murdermakers to relish. Dave Bautista as a scantily clad social media sensation is only one of the ensemble highlights, and the endless buffet of cameos can not be stopped, nor do the story’s twists feel gratuitous or implausible. Instead, the film dances through mischief and swings bigger and better with a series of bewitching wrinkles and knots that will make you forgive the runtime. In fact, you’ll barely notice the passage of time because this film is fun and cerebral and makes perfect sense when all is revealed. Also, one of the greatest TV murder detectives in history makes a (bittersweet) cameo, for crying out loud. Netflix really should have run with a longer theatrical window, but at least it’s streaming for you now.
Black-ish creator Kenya Barris makes his directorial debut in this movie that appears to star too many funny people. We’ve got Eddie Murphy and Jonah Hill (who plays one half of a couple completed by Lauren London) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Sam Jay to bring laughs. Also look for a hefty dose of Nia Long and David Duchovny, who plays a dad (bye bye, Fox Mulder and Hank Moody, who was a different kind of dad). The subject matter happens to be romance and cultural clashes, but fortunately, yes, there are many funny people here.
Tár is a performance piece for Cate Blanchett, which is great because Cate Blanchett always deserves a place to do stuff like that. Here, she plays composer Lydia Tár, a kind of mad genius who is a few days away from a huge symphony performance and dealing with everything around her falling apart. It’s a psychological roller coaster and can be a heavy lift but if you want to see Cate Blanchett give it the full Cate Blanchett, buddy, Tár is the movie for you.
Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon play mismatched best friends — she loves the calm of California, he loves the chaos of New York — who swip-swap houses for a week for reasons that we could explain, but… you’ve seen a rom-com before. You know how this goes. The draw here is less the story than the star power, with a couple of our more charming faces shining bright. A solid watch for a quiet Valentine’s.
Dave Franco and wife Alison Brie already have one on-screen project in the books – the unsettling thriller The Rental that will likely turn you off Air BnB for good. For their follow-up, the couple takes on a different genre – swapping horror for comedy – and a different, but no less cringeworthy, topic. Brie plays Ally, a successful TV producer who’s thrown a professional curveball and forced to seek solace in the one place she swore never to return: home. She reconnects with her ex Sean, rediscovers herself, and for a while, Somebody I Used to Know reads like a plot-by-numbers rom-com — until Sean’s fiancé pops up and wedding festivities begin and a possible throuple forms? Come for the secondhand embarrassment-fueled laughs, stay for the surprising amount of heart.
A horror-comedy set on an island where a fancy young couple has traveled to dine at a world-class restaurant led by a world-class chef who may have other things in store for them beyond your standard filets and Caesar salads. It’s… weird. But also surprisingly fun. Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult are out there — apologies for this awful pun but it had to be done — making a meal of it all. In a good way. Definitely in a better way than their characters do. It’s a good time. Just maybe don’t start it before dinner.
Lots going on here, all of it intriguing. We’ve got Julianne Moore and Sebastian Stan and John Lithgow all starring in what Apple describes as a twisty neo-noir thriller where a con artist takes on a slew of Manhattan billionaire. That’s probably enough to get you excited, at least a little. You could do a lot worse, that’s for sure. The world needs more Julianne Moore.
Niall Horan has come a long way in the music industry since finding success in the boyband One Direction over ten years ago. However, the “Heaven” singer doesn’t mind taking a stroll down memory lane to where it all began for him. During his latest visit to The Late Late Show hosted by James Corden, the singer sang the praises of pop superstar Katy Perry for the career he has today.
With Perry’s partner, actor Orlando Bloom, also on set as a guest, host Corden replayed Horan’s rocky audition on the music competition show The X-Factor. Corden turns to Horan to ask, “Is that the moment that really changed your whole thing?”
To that, Horan confesses that the audition wasn’t going as planned. While the other judges were ready to end his dreams of being a music star then and there, it was Perry, who was also a judge at the time, using her voice to advocate for him, that allowed him to move forward in the competition. Horan said, “Katy kept me in the competition. If it wasn’t for her, I definitely would not be here, and she knows it.”
Bloom, Perry’s partner, was shocked to hear Horan’s confession, replying, “That is fantastic!”
The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.
Nearly a decade before she cemented herself as one of the reigning queens of the indie art-pop scene, Caroline Polachek arrived in pop’s mainstream in grand fashion. Tucked away between enduring hits such as “Drunk In Love” and “Partition,” lies “No Angel,” a standout cut from Beyoncé’s industry-shifting eponymous 2013 album, which was co-written and co-produced by Polachek. That song’s breathless carnality and penchant for pairing spacious production alongside subverted song structures reverberates across the universe of Desire, I Want To Turn Into You — Polachek’s fourth studio album and second under her own name.
Across twelve tracks that each function as their own planets in the solar system of her own Desire, Polachek weaves the digital and the analog to create a new plane of existence through which she assesses, internalizes, defeats, and allows herself to be consumed by desire. When she “turns into desire,” she is not just seeking solace in the pleasure of her wants, she is quite literally transforming her very being into the emotion of desire itself. The all-consuming nature of desire transforms both Polachek herself and the world around her, as outlined by the album’s opening track, fourth single, and steadfast thesis, “Welcome to My Island.” With a vocal that stretches from belts and screams to faux whistle notes and robotic spoken word chants, “Island’s” balance of Polachek’s airy tone and angsty synths lays the foundation for the rest of the album.
A stunning exercise in maximalism, Desire triumphs by way of Polachek’s talents as a producer and curator. She understands when to pull back and when to keep her foot on the gas until a song is hurtling through the new solar system she’s created through an amalgam of expressive vocal performances, oscillating synths, and flamenco guitars. “Pretty In Possible” finds Polachek pairing a “Tom’s Diner”-esque intro with a decidedly plasticky breakbeat that fully embraces the vastness of the digital grounding of her world of desire. The imagery is carnal with a hint of despondence — “With your lipstick on my thigh / Drink the tears until they dry” — a recurring convergence of moods. “Bunny Is A Rider,” Desire’s much-lauded lead single, is even sharper in the context of the full record. Between devil-may-care whistles and infantile background coos that recall Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody,” the record deftly balances the effervescence of pop music with the coldness of the genre’s frayed edges. “Sunset,” like “Bunny,” and most of the album’s tracks for that matter, is one of those songs that reaches out from the tracklist and smacks you across the face. Steeped in the intrinsic urgency and passion of flamenco, “Sunset” is an intelligent analog complement to the staunchly digital firestorm that is Desire. The song’s themes of disillusionment should feel incongruent with the warmth of the instrumentation, but that’s the hat trick of contrast that Polachek has perfected with this record.
Desire has its fair share of bombast, but its quieter moments are equally rewarding. “Crude Drawing Of An Angel” is a mind-bending track, one that simultaneously exudes seduction and feels like a horrifying pool of squelching quicksand. When Polachek sings “all or nothing,” she flings herself between extremes that are certain to tear her very being apart in her pursuit of desire. The song’s histrionic pre-chorus outlines the insidious underbelly of Desire: how do you reconcile inevitable gratification with pockets of desire that are simply greed disguised as needs? It’s an aching slow burn that actually reaches its moment of release in “I Believe,” yet another standout that finds shimmering synths stabbing through the production, with Polachek’s falsetto piercing the volcanoes of sound that populate the album’s overarching soundscape.
With Desire, Polachek has unlocked a level of self-understanding that many artists strive for but never quite reach. If pop music at its best is the synthesis of the grandest human emotions into bite-sized pieces of saccharine melody, then pop music at its most abrasive and extreme is the filtering of the most minute and overwhelming intersections of human emotion into songs that both rely on and reject traditional notions of structure. Whether she’s anchoring her songs with wordless vocalizations (“Smoke”) or idiosyncratic tests of the elasticity of syllables (“Billions”), Polachek is succinctly conveying the allure of the danger that is intertwined with desire. Like any great pop star, she even invents her own language to make sense of the sheer vastness of this solar system of desire. “Hopedrunk,” “everasking,” “Wikipediated,” “mythicalogical,” you name it, or, rather, Polachek names these things, as if she is an omniscient creator reigning over her own personal Eden.
“Billions,” the album’s second single, closes the record with a bright-eyed children’s choir. It’s an obvious callback to the church bells that close the summery “Fly To You,” but, perhaps more pertinently, it’s a production motif that drives home the cyclical nature of life itself. In tandem, Polachek and the choir sing, “I never felt so close,” a reminder that pursuit, not desire, is the real reward. The implementation of a children’s choir brings to light voices that haven’t yet been tainted by desire which, in turn, build both “Billions” and Desire into odes to the ways in which the pursuit of desire ultimately leads you back to yourself with a deeper understanding of who you actually are — in any plane of existence.
The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.
ITEM NUMBER ONE – Listen to me
I have tremendous news: Someone stole 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs. This is probably not tremendous news for the people who make and transport Cadbury Creme Eggs, I suppose. It is tremendous news for me, though. I’ve been clicking on stories about it all week long. I’ll probably keep clicking on them all weekend. I must know everything about it. I must know how and why someone stole 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs. I must know what they intended to do with 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs. I must know what, exactly, 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs looks like. That’s a big one. I can’t picture it right now. It’s about 199,980 more Cadbury Creme Eggs than I’ve ever seen at once. I don’t think I would know what to do if I saw a collection of 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs. I feel like I would just stare at it for a while.
The caper involved breaking into an industrial unit in Telford, outside Birmingham, on Saturday and making off with about $37,000 worth of the eggs, the police in West Mercia said in a statement on Twitter that was riddled with attempted jokes about Easter.
Honestly, good for the official police Twitter account. I mean, it’s still a crime and you want to be a little careful about taking it too lightly, especially if you are the police, but I’m going to cut them some slack here. This is too good. They deserve to have a little fun after posting a bunch of tweets about murder and arson and stuff. Stealing these eggs was almost a public service in that way.
I said almost.
Officials said the theft was premeditated — one that involved chocolate eggs that are more typically treated as an impulse buy at the grocery store. The prosecutor, Owen Beale, told Kidderminster Magistrates’ Court that Mr. Pool had used a stolen truck cab to tow away a trailer full of the treats, according to The Guardian. The police soon spotted him on the road, and he gave himself up, Mr. Beale said.
Well, that settles it. I need a television show about this. A full-on limited series. Eight episodes, minimum. It doesn’t have to remain perfectly faithful to this exact crime, but it does have to be inspired by it. I thinking some sort of Fargo situation, where we take a real crime and fiction-up the backstory a little bit. Maybe get… I don’t know… let’s say Will Forte in there as the egg thief. I’m just spitballing here. I can be flexible. Jesse Plemons works. So does Statham, I guess, especially since this happened in England. Get Guy Ritchie on the phone.
“This is clearly an organized criminal matter,” he said in court. “You don’t just happen to learn about a trailer with that kind of value being available.”
“This is clearly an organized crime matter,” the prosecutor said about the theft of 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs.
Yup, that settles it. This is the only thing I care about. I know I just said that two weeks ago about the theft of a huge Shrek sculpture but I mean it this time. I meant it that time, too. I especially mean it this time, though, because there appears to be an actual profit-driven motive for this one. Someone woke up with a plan to get a little rich by stealing Cadbury Creme Eggs and followed through with it all. If it was organized crime, that means there’s a scenario where a crime boss yelled “I NEED THOSE CREME EGGS” at an underling at some point last week. I feel like the crime boss should be played by Paul Giamatti.
If you see me out and about this weekend and I appear lost in thought a little bit, like my brain is cranking away on something and my eyes are fixed in an empty stare, there’s a very good chance I am thinking about all of this. Just leave me alone. I have a lot to process.
ITEM NUMBER TWO – John Wick is in the news
We are about a month out from the release date of the fourth John Wick movie. This means a few different things. It means I am getting very excited, for one, because one of the best movie franchises ever made about a legendary assassin going on a technicolor rampage because Theon from Game of Thrones murdered his dog is coming back on my freaking birthday weekend. It also means we’re getting a second trailer with lots of new footage, at least some of which features a dog leaping through traffic to disarm a gunman. Here, look at this very good boy.
LIONSGATE
But mostly, in the short term, it means we are going to find both some of the technical details of the movie and a little bit more about the people responsible for making it. One of the technical details we learned this week is that the movie is going to be very, very long.
Time may be running out for John Wick (Keanu Reeves) but the upcoming fourth installment of the gun-fu franchise certainly isn’t short on time. Collider has learned that John Wick: Chapter 4 will clock in at 2 hours and 49 minutes with credits, making it the longest in the franchise. When we last spoke to the film’s director Chad Stahelski, he promised that it would be the longest in the franchise—and it looks like he followed through on that promise.
That is… it’s just a lot of minutes. Too many minutes , some would say, which puts me in a tough spot, as someone who just confessed to being very excited about it, because I am on the record as saying anything over 120 minutes is too many minutes for… anything. I do not appreciate when the things I love put me in a position to question my personal values. I will allow it, for now, but still.
Moving on. To the things we are learning about the people. Things like, for example, this thing about Keanu Reeves having a lot of stuff to say about deepfake technology.
What’s frustrating about that is you lose your agency. When you give a performance in a film, you know you’re going to be edited, but you’re participating in that. If you go into deepfake land, it has none of your points of view. That’s scary. It’s going to be interesting to see how humans deal with these technologies. They’re having such cultural, sociological impacts, and the species is being studied. There’s so much “data” on behaviors now. Technologies are finding places in our education, in our medicine, in our entertainment, in our politics, and how we war and how we work.
This is all somehow both a little surprising and exactly what I thought Keanu would think about the whole thing. On one hand, it’s easy to forget he’s a deep thinker if you still have the image of him from Bill & Ted in your brain. But on the other hand, it’s a very Matrix-y stance on the whole thing, which feels… right. There’s a lot going on here. That’s what I’m getting at.
Hopefully, this second thing will keep me occupied long enough that I forget the thing about the runtime. At least for a while. I’m still not ready to think about that too much.
ITEM NUMBER THREE – Help, I can’t stop making screencaps of Paul Rudd
Okay, here’s what happened. In addition to the part of my job where I write hundreds of words about people stealing candy, I also edit some blogs. One of the blogs I edited this week was this one, a very good thing by my colleague Nina Braca about Paul Rudd telling made-up stories on Late Night With Seth Meyers. And one of the things I did while editing was look for a nice screencap from the clip to publish with the blog.
So, I clicked play and paused at random to see if I could get a decent representative image. But Paul Rudd was making a face. So I tried again. And he was making another face. Same thing the third time. And the fourth. And the fifth.
And then I started getting curious and hopping around and just grabbing screencaps of whatever I paused on. Guys, Paul Rudd does so many faces. Look at all of these.
NBCNBCNBCNBCNBCNBCNBCNBC
There are two takeaways here, as far as I can tell:
Paul Rudd is a freaking professional and will pull out all the stops to sell a bit when he’s out promoting a movie
I probably should not be in charge of things, for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I am a guy who will take 20 minutes to edit a short little blog because I get distracted by faces Paul Rudd makes
To be fair, I think we all already knew those things.
ITEM NUMBER FOUR – I feel like Brie Larson understands me on a very personal level
Marvel
Brie Larson has always struck me as a good egg. She seems like one of those people who is fun to hang out with, and not just in the “Hollywood star putting on a show about it” way that you see sometimes, where it stinks of effort. You know what I mean here. We don’t need to name names.
Anyway, my position on this matter was confirmed this week when Brie Larson tweeted about pizza.
Still thinking about how we eat pizza from the inside out
That is a good point! One I had but considered until I read this tweet and will probably think about at least 70-80 percent of the times I eat pizza for the rest of my life. I can already hear my friends sighing when I say “Hey, did I ever tell you guys what Brie Larson said about pizza?” for the tenth consecutive time we get together for a couple of slices. I get excited.
Speaking of tweets I saw and me getting excited, please check out what the verified account for Fozzie Bear tweeted after Raquel Welch passed away this week.
I have Raquel Welch to thank for becoming a more confident comedian. On The Muppet Show, she helped pick me up when I was down and she was someone I could confide in. Thanks for being my friend, Raquel.
The main thing I want you to take away from this tweet is that it is kind of incredible. Please go read it again now but picture Fozzie Bear saying it with his voice and face. I did it again just now and it’s taken over my brain again. Which brings me to the other thing I want you to take away from this: If any of you have an in with the Muppets and can have one of them give the eulogy at my funeral, that is definitely something I would sign up for. Any Muppet, honestly, but I think my first choice is the Swedish Chef. That would be a fun little treat for me. Hell, I might fake my death Huck Finn-style just to chill out in the back and see people’s reactions.
ITEM NUMBER FIVE – This is important to me
SIMON AND SCHUSTER
There are really very few things I enjoy in this world more than the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes. I have the full collection right here in fancy-looking books that I still pull out and go read in a park every summer. The stuff is foundational to my entire personality. It resonated so much with me when I was a younger guy. You may not be shocked to learn that I was also a mischievous little snot with an overactive imagination. Some people would say I still am. Those people are not wrong but do not need to be such jerks about it.
I do not think I need a great reason to express my love of Calvin & Hobbes on a random Friday in February, but I do have one this time. The creator of the comic, Bill Watterson, who has more or less disappeared from public life since Calvin & Hobbes wrapped up its run, has a new book coming out later this year.
From Bill Watterson, bestselling creator of the beloved comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, and John Kascht, one of America’s most renowned caricaturists, comes a mysterious and beautifully illustrated fable about what lies beyond human understanding.
In a fable for grown-ups by cartoonist Bill Watterson, a long-ago kingdom is afflicted with unexplainable calamities. Hoping to end the torment, the king dispatches his knights to discover the source of the mysterious events. Years later, a single battered knight returns.
For the book’s illustrations, Watterson and caricaturist John Kascht worked together for several years in unusually close collaboration. Both artists abandoned their past ways of working, inventing images together that neither could anticipate—a mysterious process in its own right.
This sounds much heavier and darker than a comic strip about a little rascal and his stuffed tiger going on adventures together, but it also sounds like a book I am going to pre-order and talk about non-stop for a while. This is a big deal for me. You’re all going to have to give me some time to freak out a little.
READER MAIL
If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at brian.grubb@uproxx.com (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.
From Joe:
Had a weird dream over the weekend that I feel like you’ll appreciate.
So basically Cris Collinsworth was sick (food poisoning or something) and they needed a new color commentator for the Super Bowl. Who do they turn to? That’s right, Anna Kendrick. A shocking choice, but apparently Anna has been doing color on the Jets radio broadcast for the past several years and no one noticed because it’s the Jets (I know the Chargers would make more sense, but in my dream, it was the Jets). So she comes in and in the 2nd surprise of the night, Anna Kendrick is one of the people who really enjoys offensive and defensive line play. So instead of Collinsworth, we get 4 hours of Anna Kendrick breaking down blocking schemes and pass rushes, and everybody loves it.
I like three things about this email:
Everything about it
The general concept of dreams as a thing where our bodies shut themselves off every night but our brains are like “Nope, I got some more business for us to attend to”
The thing where Joe woke up and said “I should tell Brian about this
Please send me emails like this. As often as you want. I really do love them. Be more like Joe, everyone. He’s a good man.
Well, this is certainly interesting, I suppose. But I really don’t see how it can top the story I led with this week about the stolen creme eggs. That was really someth-…
A statue of the comic strip character that was stolen from a park in Monterey, California, last summer was found submerged in a nearby lake.
I am now completely invested in this.
The park’s original statue was stolen in 2006 and hasn’t been found. Its replacement was stolen in August 2022 by someone who cut through its foot to remove it.
So, wait. This is the third stolen Dennis the Menace statue? From the same place? And the second one involved a theft so pre-planned that they brought along a cutting implement to chop off the thing’s foot? Holy hell. I still want a television show about the egg heist, but now I want this one, too. Maybe it can be a whole limited series, like how Ryan Murphy does American Horror Story and American Crime Story. At the very least, I need both of these to become episodes of Pierce Brosnan’s new heist show on the History Channel. I need to hear him explain this.
And this, too.
In the years between the two thefts a Dennis the Menace statue was found in a Florida scrap yard and was sent to Monterey, where officials determined it was not the right one, KSBW reported. It had actually been taken from a Florida children’s hospital.
To be clear here: there is a nationwide epidemic of Dennis the Menace heists and I am just learning about it all now. I am thrilled, mostly, but also a little mad that no one told me about it before this week. I mean, honestly. It’s my whole thing!
Come on!
The hospital allowed Monterey to keep that statue, which is now in front of a city parks building.
This is very sweet and I’m glad they did it but I do worry that revealing its location like this will put it in danger of being stolen again. We need to put these things into some sort of witness protection. Or at least give them some sunglasses and a wig. Things are pretty dangerous for them out there, apparently!
From the very early days of the pandemic, Evangeline Lilly courted controversy by sharing an Instagram post where she refused to self-isolate herself or her children. She ultimately walked back those remarks and apologized for being “arrogant” and “dismissive,” but she still voiced a concern about a loss of freedom. That concern manifested itself again in January 2022 when Lilly attended an anti-vaccination rally in Washington, D.C. She would later voice support for the anti-vax trucker convoy in Canada.
While social media speculated on Lilly’s future with Marvel, she remained a part of the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania film. Much like Letitia Wright, it appears Lilly’s anti-vaccine views were not a problem for Marvel, and in a new interview, she now claims that she spoke to the studio and Quantumania director Peyton Reed. According to the Wasp actress, both were “respectful” and “supportive.”
“They’re very respectful. In fact, I’ve had direct conversations with them that I have instigated and they’ve always said, ‘That’s not our business. That’s not for us to tell you how to live your life or what opinions to have.’ And I actually even got a really supportive phone call from Peyton Reed at one point and just saying like, ’Just so you know, there’s some rumors spreading about Marvel ditching you or canceling you. And that didn’t come from Marvel and that didn’t come from us, so just ignore that.”
When Happy Sad Confused host Josh Horowitz noted that it’s “huge” to know that Marvel has her back, Lilly agreed.
“It’s really nice. And I think it’s really healthy,” she said. “I think there there needs to be a divide between your professional life and your personal life.”
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