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Actress Park So Dam, who played Kim Ki-jung (a.k.a. Jessica) in Best Picture winner Parasite, has been diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer. The 30-year-old was diagnosed during a routine health check and has undergone surgery, according to a statement provided by her agency, ArtistCompany, to CNN. “Actor Park So Dam will focus on her recovery so that she can see you all healthy in the future, and ArtistCompany will also do our best to help the actor recover her health,” it reads.

Papillary thyroid cancer is the most common type of thyroid cancer, according to the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). It normally affects people under 40 years of age, particularly women, and tends to be easier to treat than other types of thyroid cancer, the NHS says. “Around 9 in every 10 people are alive 5 years after a diagnosis of thyroid cancer,” the NHS says on its website. “Many of these are cured and will have a normal lifespan.”

Park, who won a SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Motion Picture for Parasite, will skip the press tour for her new movie, Special Delivery, an action film about a delivery driver who gets “into hot water when she finds herself unexpectedly taking on human cargo in the form of the young boy.” It’s unclear if filming on her next film, Lee Hae-Young’s Ghost, will be delayed.

(Via CNN)

Admittedly, I was a bit worried about the multiverse being a new central theme of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (And, for that matter, the DC movies.) It just seems like a lot, especially at a time when the MCU is also doubling down on the cosmic side of things, too. It just seems so far removed from where it all started with “rich guy builds a suit of armor.” Now, look, with Spider-Man: No Way Home, I’m not saying my trepidation was unwarranted, but if there was a character to do it with, it’s Spider-Man. And not just because he’s Marvel’s most popular character and easily accessible and lighthearted, but it kind of, strangely, resets our timeline. With villains appearing in No Way Home that go back as far as Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie, it’s now that Spider-Man, from 2002, that begins the MCU. (And it’s kind of fitting that Raimi himself will direct the next MCU film, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.)

Jon Watts’s Spider-Man: No Way Home picks up right where Far From Home leaves off. Peter (Tom Holland) has just had his identity outed to the world and is swinging through the streets with MJ (Zendaya) trying to escape the mobs of people who want a piece of Peter for killing Mysterio in the prior film. (Which he didn’t do, but people don’t realize this.) After MJ and Ned (Jacob Batalon) get rejected from MIT because of their association with “the vigilante Spider-Man,” Peter shows up at Stephen Strange’s house looking for help. Doctor Strange can’t fulfill Peter’s request to go back in time to fix all this, but Strange is open to casting a spell that would make people forget that Peter is Spider-Man, the only problem is it’s an all or nothing proposition and Peter would still like a few people to know. So this messes up the spell and instead of people forgetting Peter, everyone who knows Peter is Spider-Man shows up. Which, as you know from the trailer, includes old friends like Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Electro, The Lizard, and The Sandman – all played by their respective actors from the five previous non-MCU Spider-Man movies. (Which, now, technically, as I said earlier, they all kind of are.)

So now Peter has to deal with all these new (old) villains who all hate Peter Parker, but also don’t recognize Peter Parker and, mostly, just seem really confused why any of this is happening. Strange has a fairly easy way of sending them all back, but once Peter realizes that most of them meet a grizzly fate back in their own universes, he has, with some urging from May (Marisa Tomei), a crisis of conscious and vows to help them – even though Strange does not think this is a good idea and most of the villains certainly don’t want Peter’s help and still basically just want to kill him.

Honestly, this movie kind of should be a mess. There are so many villains, played by great actors, who need attention here – keep in mind, even the Avengers movies all kind of focus on one main villain – that it’s pretty remarkable this movie feels so in control of itself. Now, it’s controlled chaos, but it’s still in control. And, yes, I will concede that the only reason all this controlled chaos succeeds is because of the multiverse. Or, at least, a byproduct of the multiverse in having all these (some beloved, some not as much) characters back from previous movies and, most importantly, played by actors who originally played them. (And the “not as beloved” characters have been given, let’s say, some nice improvements and often poke some fun at their origins. Jamie Foxx is really having some fun in this regard. There are numerous references to “electric eels.”)

This is now the eighth solo live action Spider-Man movie since 2002. And, in this movie, at least one characters shows up from every single one of those past movies. In a world inundated with superhero movies, it’s difficult for any of them to feel special anymore. Remember that first time we saw all the Avengers on screen together for the first time in the first movie? That felt special. Bringing back some of these characters we haven’t seen in 19 years made Spider-Man: No Way Home feel special, in that “I can’t believe they pulled this off” kind of way. Yeah, sure, some of that’s nostalgia. I’ll admit it! And sure, yes, some of it is fan service. Whatever! It’s the giving season, so, sure, give us some fan service. But the story is still there (though the second act does start to feel a bit long) and I felt some actual emotion, even with all this chaos swirling around. And in the end Spider-Man: No Way Home somehow finds a way to keep it all together.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Britney Spears has used her Instagram account to speak out against those she feels have done her wrong, including her family and the paparazzi. However, in a recent post, which was deleted shortly after it was shared, the singer took quite the trip back to the past to slam journalist Diane Sawyer over a 2004 interview. “Do we dare forget the Diane Sawyer interview in my apartment almost 20 years ago?” she wrote. “What was with the ‘You’re in the wrong’ approach?? Geeze… and making me cry???”

“Seriously though… I lived in my apartment for a year and never spoke to anyone… my manager put that woman in my home and made me talk to her on national television and she asked if I had a shopping problem!!!” Spears continued in her post. “When did I have a shopping problem?”

Spears also used the post to open up about how she felt after her infamous 2002 breakup with Justin Timberlake. “Something I never shared when I had that break up years ago was that I couldn’t talk afterward,” she wrote. “I was in shock… pretty lame of my dad and three men to show up at my door when I could hardly speak… two days later they put Diane Sawyer in my living room… they forced me to talk!”

She later said that while she was a “baby” at the time of the interview, she now knows how to defend herself. “She said ‘a woman or a girl’ … I would like to say now, ‘Ma’am I’m a catholic slut!!!” Spears wrote in reference to one of the questions Sawyer asked her before adding, “she can kiss my white ass.”

In response to Britney’s post, Jamie Spears’ lawyer Alex Weingarten told People that his client was “complete uninvolved” in the interview. “Mr. Spears has no idea what Ms. Spears is talking about. Jamie never set up any interview with Diane Sawyer and was not present for any such interview,” the statement says. “He had nothing to do with Britney’s career at this point and was completely uninvolved in this interview. Jamie loves Britney very much, wishes Britney nothing but the best and hopes that she continues to seek the help that she needs to stay safe and healthy.”

Mark Meadows has been in the news a lot recently. The former White House chief of staff has a new book out, which he intended as a valentine to his old boss, Donald Trump. Instead it’s revealed damning and/or unflattering things about him, like how he tested positive for COVID earlier than he revealed. (He also gorged on McD’s while in the hospital, near death from the virus he’d long underplayed.) Then he stood up the Jan. 6 committee, whom he’d already sent thousands of explosive documents. Now? He might be going to jail.

As per The New York Times, the committee met on Monday night and among the items on their to-do list was a vote on whether to hold Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress after he’d ignored their subpoena. The vote was unanimous, 9-0. The vote now moves to the House. The charge carries with it up to a year in jail.

Meadows, who was Trump’s right-hand man during his last months on the job — and during the lead-up to the now-former president’s failed attempts to overturn an election he lost by over seven million votes — had previously agreed to meet with the committee. Two days before he was due for a chat, he announced he would defy them, much as Steve Bannon did earlier. Bannon, too, was held in contempt, and he was swiftly indicted. Perhaps the two will share a jail cell.

The Jan. 6 committee also revealed some of the frantic text messages they’d acquired from Trump allies that day, which they had sent to Meadows as the Capitol building was under siege. They included Don Jr., the president’s eldest and most unhinged son, as well as numerous Fox News personalities, including Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Brian Kilmeade. All pleaded with Meadows to urge Trump to call off his supporters, even as they went on the air and made baseless and untrue claims that the group included leftist activists who’d infiltrated the Trumpist throngs to make them look bad.

Not long after Meadows appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. They did not discuss these bombshell texts. Meadows addressed the contempt charge and once again waved the bogus “executive privilege” defense.

(Via NYT)

Burna Boy’s accomplishments over the last few years have been hard to overlook. The Nigerian-born singer had one of the most popular afrobeats albums in 2019 with African Giant. The following year, he released his fifth album, Twice As Tall, which became his highest-charting release and earned him a 2021 Grammy Award for Best World Music Album. He’s also delivered impressive collaborations with the likes of Polo G, Wizkid, Headie One, Sia, and more. With just a few weeks left in the year, Burna Boy has already unveiled plans for what he’s doing next.

On April 28, Burna Boy will take over Madison Square Garden to headline his show “One Night In Space.” The upcoming performance will make him the first Nigerian artist to headline in the iconic stadium, which has enough seats to hold 20,789 people. Burna Boy celebrated the accomplishment in a post to Instagram. “From the Garden city , Port-Harcourt to the “GARDEN” New York!” he wrote. “If you’re crazy enough to think it, you’re crazy enough to do it!”

Tickets for Burna’s “One Night In Space” will be available starting with an artist presale that launches on Wednesday, December 15. General tickets for the show will be available two days later on December 17 at 12pm EST.

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

FKA Twigs has been hard at work on her upcoming third album, which remains untitled at the moment. Back in September, during a conversation with fans on Discord, she teased a “capri season take over,” and assuming that she means Capricorn season, it suggests that something special could arrive between December 22, 2021 and January 19, 2022. As it happens, Twigs recently announced a new collaboration that is set to arrive at the end of the week, namely the song “Tears In The Club,” which pairs her with The Weeknd.

“Are u ready for capri sun takeover??” Twigs wrote in a tweet. “Us capri babies be so cute and prolific but don’t cross us cause we never ever forget.” The announcement falls in line with her earlier comments on Discord. During that conversation, she also revealed what listeners can expect with her next body of work.

“It’s really deep emotional and honest but hopefully more golden tears than blue i channelled my melancholy differently this time and it was so amazing,” Twigs said. “I made my next project thinking about all of u and my friends it’s for getting ready and going out to and being with people who make u feel good, turnt litty bronzer in the sink shimmer on the bathroom floor.” She also said that the project will feature work from Koreless, El Guincho, Cirkut, Mike Dean, Arca, and “lots beautiful others to be revealed soon and some stun and special collabs.”

“Tears in the Club” will be released on December 16 at 7pm EST.

No relationship on Succession is pure, or healthy, or good. Fathers use their children like pawns; children repeatedly try to destroy their fathers. Spouses betray each other, or simply “joke” about not actually loving them during foreplay. Things were even more febrile than usual on Sunday night’s shocking Season 3 finale, with so much big news that you might have missed a smaller character exchange: Amidst his own father all but destroying him and his siblings, Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin) reached out to be Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron), the interim Waystar CEO with whom he has a history of phone sex and even d*ck pics. And she refused to help him.

In a new interview with Variety, Smith-Cameron was asked the inevitable: What’s next for everyone’s favorite weirdo couple (after Tom and Greg, that is)? She, of course, doesn’t know; she’s not on the writing staff. But she did have some insights into the character she’s played over three seasons. And she says Gerri, at least, was never actually interested:

The idea of them having a sexual relationship, from Gerri’s point of view, was always just a matter of time to get it through his head that it wasn’t going to happen. I don’t think he really wanted it to either. He’s got his weird hang-ups, and I think he would’ve been shocked if Gerri had said, “Sure, let’s go.” I feel like it was a sort of fantasy relationship and getting more and more on Gerri’s last nerve because she knew what was at stake, even before the worst possible thing that could happen happened. I feel like they were on borrowed time.

The actress says that while she doesn’t know what’s next for them, she laid out some possible pathways. “I’d like to think they have enough of a real connection that there’s something else coming — either they somehow make contact, even if it’s to be arch-enemies, or it takes the form of them being really furious with each other,” she explained.

Smith-Cameron has spoken about Gerri and Roman’s strange relationship many times before, even explaining its origins as some fun improv between the two that the writers took and ran with. It’s provided the show with some real kink — and with a loaded gun that didn’t go off until the season’s penultimate episode, in which Roman accidentally sent a private image intended for Gerri to his own dad.

Smith-Cameron also talked about where Gerri ranks on the list of characters with the closest thing to a sense of decency. And she thinks Gerri is up at the top, even if no one on the show is anyone’s idea of good.

“I think she has a soul. On the other hand, the universe of “Succession” is depicting the whole world of big business being soulless. In that sense, none of them have souls,” she told Variety. She continued:

I think within that, she has things she will and won’t do. She’s managed to distance herself from some of the more repellant things that have happened at Waystar. She picks and chooses how far she’ll go. I’m always the one telling [Logan], “Sorry, we can’t stop the publication of a book.” The one time you see Gerri in her apartment in Season 2 — after the shooting at Waystar and the first phone sex call from Roman — she’s watching the news, and it’s Pierce News, not ATN. I think she watches the real news; she knows the difference. She compartmentalizes and has a soul and a life and daughters whom she cares for. I think that’s a common thing about human nature, people can be very moral in some ways and have a completely desensitized take on other things. Within the gang of “Succession,” I think she’s one of the more soulful people.

Then again, Gerri does work for Logan Roy, played by a man who, unlike his character, actually cares about the well-being of others.

(Via Variety)

If you have been online at any point in the past few months you have almost assuredly at least seen this man, Billy Ragland, who has become a viral sensation for his ridiculous TikTok videos for Detroit Urban Survival Training, in which he shows you how to disarm people in various situations that you should certainly not try to disarm people in.

The videos are all incredible, provided you recognize them as ridiculous and don’t actually go around trying to grab guns from people which is surely not going to go as successfully as he would like you to believe. Ragland has become a meme because of the absurdity of his videos, and this week he hit mainstream sports, popping up at a Pistons game and then being the inspiration for Odell Beckham Jr.’s latest touchdown celebration in the first half against the Cardinals on Monday Night Football.

Odell is one of the NFL’s most online players, so it’s not surprising he would be the one to come up with this. It is a sensational celebration and the execution from he and Van Jefferson is fantastic, as he wrestles the ball away from Jefferson and then points it at him, with Jefferson sheepishly putting his hands up. I hope we get some more versions of this in the end zone and not in real life, where no one should be trying to actually take Ragland’s advice on disarming would-be robbers.

Ye has been trying his best to win back his ex-wife Kim Kardashian after she filed for divorce back in February. His latest efforts occurred during the Larry Hoover benefit concert, which he held with Drake. He added new lyrics to his 2011 track “Runaway,” rapping, “I need you to run right back, baby, more specifically, Kimberly.” Unfortunately for Ye, such efforts don’t appear to be working, as Kardashian recently filed to be legally single, according to documents obtained by Rolling Stone.

The filing also reveals how Kardashian perceived the end of their relationship. “There is no question that the marriage of the parties is no longer viable,” the documents read. “Petitioner has no desire to reconcile with Respondent and wants their marriage terminated. Irreconcilable differences have led to the irremediable breakdown of the marriage, and there is no possibility of saving the marriage through counseling or other means.”

It continues, “There will be no prejudice to Respondent if our marriage is immediately dissolved, especially given the fact that throughout our marriage, we adhered to the terms of our premarital agreement and maintained the separate property character of our assets.”

The new filing comes after Kardashian credited Ye with helping her interest in fashion during a speech she gave when she won the Fashion Icon Award at the 2021 People’s Choice Awards.

Bristol-based post-punk band Idles released Crawler, their fourth album, last month and it has kept them at the top of the ranks of the UK punk scene’s resurgence. Co-produced by Idles guitarist Mark Bowen and the typically hip-hop focused Kenny Beats, the album is furious, filled with caustic music that wants to pierce your chest plate and punch you in the heart. Breakneck bass and drums pair with singer Joe Talbot’s metaphysical lyrics. Uproxx’s Steven Hyden sums it up by writing that “This kind of music is so heightened that is bound to elicit equally charged reactions. Some will hear it as rousing and even potentially life-changing music; others will find it strident to the point of irritation.”

It’s not always easy to listen to, but it’s pure and is clearly a vessel for seeking greater truths about ourselves. Enter the video for “When The Lights Come on,” filmed in nightvision and sending up suburbia. Talbot calls the song a “poem of light and sound exploring the cold light of day.”

Idles are playing New Year’s Eve with The Strokes in Brooklyn and then are going off on a headlining tour through Europe, South America, and a range of music festivals from there. See full dates and get tickets here.

Crawler is out now via Partisan Records. You can watch the video above.