Super Bowl: the ads, the music and everything but the football – live | Culture – Culture | The Guardian

Uber Don’t Eats

Just because it’s in an Uber Eats bag doesn’t mean you should eat it, as celebrities such as Trevor Noah, Succession’s Nicholas Braun and Gwyneth Paltrow learn the hard way. The Uber Eats spot, in which celebs nom on household goods from dish soap to sponges, mostly serves to confirm that Jennifer Coolidge, most recently of HBO’s The White Lotus, is convincing even when eating a roll of paper towels.

Anna Kendrick and Barbie

An ad for Rocket Homes pairs Anna Kendrick and Barbie and takes a decent on-paper idea – what if Barbie had to contend with the very grim and very real complexities of the housing market – and doesn’t really do much with it. Four, count ’em four, teasers this week, for … this.

While this week has seen accusations of domestic violence resurfaced against half-time performer Dr Dre, we’ve also heard from an accuser of Snoop Dogg, who denies the claim.

You can read the details here:

Meadow is back

Jamie-Lynn Sigler reprises her role of Meadow Soprano in a slick ad for Chevrolet that sees her taking on the late James Gandolfini’s place in a remake of the classic opening to the hit HBO show. It’s refreshing to see a well-known character return in a Super Bowl ad without it being played for laughs, and a recent interview with Sigler plays with the idea that she has taken over the family business.

Michelob Ultra takes Serena Williams bowling

Instead of the Super Bowl, Michelob Ultra heads to Superior Bowl – a dimly lit, worn in, hyper-competitive bowling joint staffed by none other than Steve Buscemi and frequented by Peyton Manning, Serena Williams and others.

An ad for cryptocurrency company Coinbase has aired and it was … just a QR code. A very expensive one:

It’s being viewed as both depressing and ridiculous on Twitter:

And then of course:

Nope

Probably the most anticipated trailer of the evening (that actually dropped this morning) is for the film that has been shrouded in secrecy up until now – Jordan Peele’s latest “social thriller” Nope, out this summer. The rather divisive title is not really explained in the first tease, but it’s quite likely meant to mean Not Of Planet Earth. Maybe. Because the Oscar-winning film-maker has turned his sights up to the sky, after going underground with Us, for a film that’s about something evil sucking people up from above. Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun and some very scared horses star.

Flamin’ hot Cheetos leads a rainforest chorus

Perennial Super Bowl ad favorites Doritos goes sans celebrity in this spot for its flamin’ hot chips, which inspire a collection of jungle animals to sigh, sniff, beatbox and then sing their way through Salt-N-Pepa’s Push It.

Speaking of the NFL’s race and gender issues, and given the league’s repeated failures to address players’ violence against women, I would be remiss not to mention halftime show headliner Dr Dre’s long history of domestic violence allegations. The 55-year-old rapper and producer has been alleged to have assaulted and threatened multiple women since at least 1991, including two mothers of his children and by his wife of 24 years, Nicole Young, whom he divorced last year.

Dre has refuted Young’s claims, but somewhat addressed the others in a statement to the New York Times in 2015: “I apologize to the women I’ve hurt. I deeply regret what I did and know that it has forever impacted all of our lives.”

The details are covered in brief by my colleague Andrew Lawrence, who called the selection of Dre as a headliner “a tone deaf choice for a league grappling with raging gender and race crises”.