Month: July 2020

Next Saturday’s UFC 251 main event was supposed to be a welterweight title showdown between champ Kamaru Usman and No. 1 contender Gilbert Burns on Fight Island in Abu Dhabi, but after Burns was removed from the card after tweeting he wasn’t feeling well prior to UFC’s charter flight, the main event suddenly fell into question.

Colby Covington and Jorge Masvidal, the Nos. 2 and 3 ranked contenders respectively, both indicated their interest in taking the fight on short notice, and it appears the BMF champ is the one getting the call. Masvidal and Usman are both reportedly headed to Las Vegas, where they will be tested for COVID-19, and if both are negative will take a flight to Abu Dhabi, per ESPN’s Ariel Helwani.

The initial co-main event between Alex Volkanovski and Max Holloway for the featherweight title will be bumped into the main event spot, per Helwani, but given there was tremendous anticipation and hope for a showdown between Usman and Masvidal after Gamebred took down Nate Diaz last November. An announcement of the fight will likely wait until both fighters have tested negative and are on a plane for Abu Dhabi, as UFC will not want to create buzz for a fight before they at least have them on the way. Still, it’s quite the replacement fight and given Masvidal’s sudden rise to being one of the sport’s most popular fighters, will only increase interest in the card.

Bill Gates, billionaire and founder of Microsoft, is pointing the finger at social media companies like Facebook and Twitter for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus.

In an interview with Fast Company, Gates said: “Can the social media companies be more helpful on these issues? What creativity do we have?” Sadly, the digital tools probably have been a net contributor to spreading what I consider to be crazy ideas.”

According to Gates, crazy ideas aren’t just limited to the internet. They are going beyond that. He doesn’t see the logic behind not protecting yourself and others from coronavirus.”Not wearing masks is hard to understand, because it is not that bothersome,” he explained. “It is not expensive and yet some people feel it is a sign of freedom or something, despite risk of infecting people.”

Facebook responded in an email to Fox News saying: “Since January, we’ve worked closely with health organizations, like the CDC, to connect people to accurate information about COVID-19 and we will continue to do more. We’ve directed over 2 billion people to resources from health authorities and just today launched an alert at the top of Facebook and Instagram reminding everyone to wear face coverings to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. We’re also aggressively going after misinformation and have applied warning labels to millions of pieces of misinformation and have removed content that could lead to imminent harm.”

In this case, the phrase “freedom isn’t free” may be relevant in a different way than people traditionally think of the saying. Throughout our country’s history, American soldiers have put their lives on the line to ensure our safety. With COVID-19 cases spiking all over the country, it is up to us to stop the spread of the virus. If that involves staying at home, wearing a mask whenever we go outside and taking precautions until we get the pandemic under control—that’s our duty. Eventually that will allow us to walk our streets freely, eat at our local restaurants and bask in the sun on our favorite beaches. It is a small price to pay compared to the American heroes who have gone to war for us.

The coronavirus isn’t as concerned with our freedom. It infects and kills people all over the world. The medical community knows this, but it isn’t the news people want to hear. They keep searching until they get the answer they want. But when they don’t get it, they point fingers at people like Bill Gates. He’s become the main target.

Conspiracy theorists have placed Gates at the center of blame regarding COVID-19 largely because of his 2015 TED Talk when he warned about global pandemics. People either blame him for the outbreak or accuse him of profiting from it. His prediction five years ago has some hoaxers believing he was the architect behind the spread of the virus, questioning his large investments in vaccine development.

He dismissed the accusations and outlandish theories, telling CCTV back in April, “We are in a crazy situation so there are going to be crazy rumors. We need to make a vaccine without just focusing on one country. We need to make it for the entire world, including countries that don’t have the resources to pay vaccine research or vaccine factories.”

Let’s be real. Bill Gates isn’t hurting for money, and based on the billions of dollars he has dedicated to charity, this doesn’t seem to be a cash grab scheme. In a press call in June, Gates responded to the conspiracies about him related to the donations he made to to develop and produce a vaccine for the illness. “The misinformation thing is just so weird,” he said. “Most of the people I talk to aren’t the ones who are subject to that, so I don’t have any direct connection to it to understand it.”

It seems like a better solution to have Bill Gates donating his time, efforts and money in developing a vaccine then laying around on the couch, downing bags of potato chips and playing video games like Fortnite all day. But hey, that’s just me.

Floor Is Lava is the perfect distraction from the horrors of reality, and it’s been a big splash on Netflix in recent weeks as people of all ages have watched teams try to traverse a themed obstacle course without tumbling into some weirdly glowing, gooey molten “lava.” The show has been a surprise hit on Netflix, and now we’re getting answers to a number of questions many have wondered online as word spread among the show’s fans.

In an interview with Jean Bentley of The Hollywood Reporter, show creators Irad Eyal and Megan McGrath revealed a number of secrets about the show’s production, though they were close to the vest about the actual material that makes up the “lava” that swallows contestants without a trace.

“The reason we’re being so secretive about it is because it really did take a long time to nail this down,” Eyal explained. “You want the lava to glow. “Oh, that’s easy,” the chemists said, “we could just add in some glowing chemicals.” Well, it turns out those things are carcinogenic. So you can’t have that in there. So it took a long time to figure out exactly how do you make this thing bubble, flow, be slippery, be viscous in the right way, and also be safe that people can be submerged in it for minutes at a time, hours at a time, whatever it is, and come out safely.”

Perhaps most surprisingly, the show was not filmed on a Hollywood soundstage. No one wanted to deal with the lava that took months for scientists to perfect, and it was much heavier than water. So the production found a former IKEA and transformed the entire thing into where the show’s props were made, the show was cast and where the actual rooms full of lava were set up for contestants to traverse.

McGrath: The studios here, we called everybody. We asked all of the main studios and nobody wanted 100,000 gallons of lava on their stuff, which is understandable. Even the places with giant pools that typically hold water, lava is heavier than water so they didn’t want that in their pools either. So we ended up lucking out and we found this Ikea and it was huge. We had all of our different teams in there. There was a welding shop and the casting department and challenge producers had a giant office that they were working in. It ended up working out really well. The main stage is in, I guess the self-serve area of Ikea?

Eyal: It’s that final checkout area with the massive shelves. It’s the biggest room in the entire Ikea. We took everything, cleared everything out of there. So we had all the space that we needed.

There are lots of little details in the interview that are great if you’ve cruised through all 10 episodes are are now in a lava drought, so to speak. And the show is actually re-watchable in a few ways, including that its creators implied a deeper story is at play with the set design. That was explicitly mentioned as something they want to explore in future episodes.

The two creators hinted a lot about a second season, in fact, though nothing is official. Considering Floor Is Lava has been No. 1 on Netflix in several countries and is getting plenty of buzz, it seems likely that we’ll have more lava in our lives soon. But one thing that seems certain: there will be new rooms to jump through in Season 2. That means a somber farewell to the beloved Africa desk, sadly. You were as magnificent as any surface surrounded by lava ever could be.

WARNING: Spoilers for the entirety of Netflix’s Dark will be found below.

Dark, Netflix’s first ever original German series, finally wrapped up a three-season run with a mind-blowing, twisty, confusing, and ultimately satisfying third season. Over the course of those three seasons, Dark quietly found a sizable worldwide audience and a passionate critical following, scoring rave reviews and deserved comparisons to Twin Peaks and Stranger Things. The series has also been marked by confused viewers, attempting to hold the family trees intact in our minds as characters jumped back and forth in time and, eventually, between two different worlds.

After the first season, viewers needed a family tree (see it here) to keep up. By the third season, the family tree itself was as confusing as the series.

Trying to make sense of the quantum entanglement in the third season is a fool’s errand, and at a certain point, one wonders whether creators Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar could keep it even in their heads any longer. By the third season, the series was playing mostly in a parallel world, one where Jonas was never born, which obviously meant a different composition of people, and yet, major events still continued to unfold as they did in Jonas’ world.

Season three is a complicated maze, referred to often as a knot, which is the best way to explain it. It’s an infinity symbol that gets tangled in numerous knots, so that older versions of characters who died when they were young are still alive, seemingly defying the rules of time travel. That is eventually explained, in episode six, where we learn that the main characters — Jonas and Marta — are trapped in an infinite loop, and even death doesn’t end the loop, because the characters can simply travel the loop in reverse. Moreover, because everyone’s fate is already fixed, Jonas cannot kill himself and remove himself from the loop, even though Marta had already killed him once. Jonas, meanwhile, had successfully killed the Marta in his world, but most of the events in the third season revolved around the Marta from the world in which Jonas never existed.

Got it? It’s very confusing, and each episode in season three seems to end with another revelation that creates yet another time paradox. However, the important takeaway from not just season three, but every episode up until the end is this: No matter what Jonas and Marta did in either world, the apocalypse would arrive and Jonas and Marta would eventually become Adam and Eva. Adam spent the entire series trying to wipe himself from existence in the hopes of finding himself in a paradise of nothingness. Marta and her allies, meanwhile, spent all of their travels trying to stop the apocalypse that destroyed both worlds.

In the end, both sides kept repeating themselves, and no matter how many times they traveled the loop, it would always end the same way. Every decision they made would lead them to the same place: The apocalypse would wipe out both worlds, but neither Adam nor Eva would die. From what we gather, this same pattern continues to repeat itself hundreds of times until Claudia finally figures it out: Jonas/Adam and Marta/Eva are trapped in a triquetra knot that originated outside of both of their worlds. WHAT?

Basically, what happens is this: A grieving H.G. Tannhaus — the clockmaker from the first season — created a time machine in an effort to undo the death of his son, daughter-in-law, and grandchild. The time machine malfunctioned, splitting his world into two: Jonas’ world and Marta’s world. Neither of their worlds are supposed to exist, but Marta and Jonas’ love for one another basically keep these two worlds intact, traveling their infinite loops between roughly 1890 and 2050. It is, therefore, on Marta and Jonas to return to the original world to prevent the son and daughter-in-law of Tannhaus from dying in a car accident, thus removing Tannhaus’ need to invent a time machine. Without the time machine, the worlds of Jonas and Marta never exist, and neither do Marta and Jonas (or most of the other characters in Dark), who can finally achieve their Paradise of nothingness.

However, those two worlds do have a small impact on the origin world: Marek, the son of Tannhaus, names his child Charlotte — an orphaned girl raised by Tannhaus in the other two worlds — and Hannah, who is married to someone else completely in the origin world, still names her child Jonas after an intense episode of deja vu.

Still, the final season is a mess of fits and starts, dead-ends and deaths, none of which ultimately matter because most of these characters will not exist in the end. Even the final episode is 25 minutes of exposition, as Claudia tries to make sense of and explain the origin world to Adam/Jonas. There’s very little character development — or even much of a story — in the final season. It mostly amounts to characters traveling back and forth through time in two different worlds and never accomplishing anything, which is by design.

Moreover, the introduction of a third, “origin world” in the final episode almost feels like a Deus ex Machina — one that will eventually wipe out nearly every event in the first three seasons — but ultimately it works to satisfying affect because of the emotional bond built between Jonas and Marta in the first season before the two turned on each other. It might have otherwise felt cheap to suggest that these two bastard worlds continued to exist on an infinite loop because of “love,” except that Dark spent three seasons ensuring that the love between Marta and Jonas was intense and believable, so that when they finally do disappear — in all the various timelines — it’s a bittersweet and satisfying relief. It’s such a sweet emotional conclusion that, even after spending three seasons characters who will be rendered nonexistent, I did not feel cheated.

It’s not about the destination, as they say, it’s about the journey, and this journey was a marvelous roller-coaster ride through numerous timelines and two different worlds, all of which would eventually be wiped from existence, while the characters continue to live happily ever after in nothingness.

Netflix’s ‘Dark’ is currently streaming.

Fans have celebrated the life of the late Pop Smoke this weekend thanks to his posthumous debut album, Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon. The album unearthed many of Pop Smoke’s unreleased records, all of which highlighted the new direction that late rapper hoped to take on his project. As fans continue to enjoy the new music they received, 50 Cent stopped by Lil Wayne’s Young Money Radio show to discuss his first-ever meeting with Pop Smoke.

“First of all, he was late to the meeting,” the rapper said. “When he was late Renee, dude who works for me, goes, ‘Yo, why are you late, bro?’ He said, ’50 don’t work for you. You wait for 50. You new.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, my bad.’ Like he said, ‘I just got caught in the trap.’ No, you ain’t no trapping. You have bags and sh*t in the car you was shopping. He said, ‘Yeah, I was. I was shopping.’”

The rapper then shared his thoughts about Pop Smoke and his style as they talked during their first meeting.

He comes upstairs. I talked to him. I’m like, Wayne look, this… someone new in the league is copying your style? And even at that point, it’s a form of flattery. He’s copying you because your material was such an influence on him and that’s the way he learned to do it. He learned it from listening to you. It’s another thing when this n**** talking to you and you looking at him, you going, “Nah this n**** not copying 50 Cent. This n**** is 50 Cent!”

In addition to executive producing the album, 50 Cent also appeared on “The Woo,” which also featured Roddy Ricch. Just a day after the album’s release, a Pop Smoke associate revealed that a deluxe version of Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon could arrive in the near future. Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon is out now via Victor Victor Worldwide and Republic Records. Get it here.

During the current worldwide pandemic, movie studios are no longer providing box-office figures because theaters have been shut down around the nation and the world. Because we are less interested in the actual figures themselves and more interested in what people are watching over the weekends, each week we will dive into Most Streamed and Bestseller Lists on Fandango, iTunes, Netflix, and Hulu to pinpoint the weekend’s most watched films.

Disney+ does not release streaming numbers or charts — at least not yet — but as of mid-May, there were 54 million subscribers to Disney+. It’s safe to say that a majority of them watched some or all of Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton over the Fourth of July weekend. It’s also safe to say that a lot of Disney+ subscribers probably watched the two-hour-and-four-minute Broadway production multiple times. Walking has become a very popular activity during the pandemic, and I suspect that there were people all over the nation taking walks around their neighborhood this weekend, looking into the windows of houses dotted along those streets, and seeing Hamilton playing on millions of television sets in those living rooms.

In fact, I cannot imagine a better way to spend Independence Day than by watching one of the most successful musicals of all-time, which also happens to be about Alexander Hamilton, our Founding Fathers, the fight for Independence, as well as how the first years of this country were shaped. There are 121 reviews of Hamilton on Rotten Tomatoes and, so far, there is only one negative review. It is that good.

Meanwhile, on the VOD charts — and on the other side of the political spectrum — Mel Gibson’s Force of Nature debuted at number 5 on Fandango’s charts, and number three on iTunes, despite a meager 12 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. The film stars Gibson and Emile Hirsch (both of whom have problematic personal histories) as white cops battling Puerto Rican villains during a hurricane. It’s hard to believe the movie came out in this political environment, but there always seems to be an audience for Gibson, even in supporting roles, as he is here.

The top film on iTunes, meanwhile, is The Outpost, a Rod Lurie film starring Scott Eastwood and Orlando Bloom, based on a book written by CNN anchor Jake Tapper, which itself is based on the true story of 2009 The Battle of Kamdesh in Afghanistan. It’s also receiving very good reviews (89 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), and while I haven’t seen the movie, Jake Tapper can typically be trusted when it comes to veterans and the military, toward whom he has devoted much of his career.

Otherwise, there are a couple of increasingly familiar titles on VOD in Pete Davidson’s King of Staten Island, which is still doing well nearly a month after its release, and Jon Stewart’s Irresistible, number four on both iTunes and Fandango’s VOD charts. As for fun wrinkles in this week’s chart: Will Smith’s Independence Day is at number six on iTunes, for obvious reasons.

Meanwhile, over on Netflix, it’s an unusual weekend, in which two old Boston-set movies are leading the way. Mark Wahlberg’s Patriot’s Day, about the Boston Marathon bombing, has resurfaced and is at number one, while Ben Affleck’s fantastic The Town is at number two. Weird. Number three is a Netflix original rom-com, Desperadoes, starring Nasim Pedrad, Anna Camp, and Lamorne Morris. It looks kind of cute, but critics so far are not liking it (it sits at 24 percent on RT).

Last week’s top film, Will Ferrell’s Eurovision: The Story of Fire Saga falls to number four, while the film that has spent the most time in the top five this year, 365 Days, is still at number five, inexplicably. It’s also worth nothing that Splice, a fantastic 2009 horror movie that should be more popular than it is, sits at number ten this weekend. It comes from producer Guillermo del Toro, and director Vincenzo Natali. Check it out.

Next weekend sees the release of Tom Hanks’ Greyhound on Apple+, and Andy Samberg’s Palm Springs on Hulu, in what may end up being the movie of the summer. Meanwhile, Charlize Theron’s Old Guard debuts on Netflix, and is expected to do very well. It looks fantastic.

Source: Netflix, Fandango, iTunes

Bill Pullman played one of the most inspiring fictional presidents in cinema history in Independence Day, a film that’s happening on Twitter in real time this holiday weekend. But just because Pullman has no real political power doesn’t mean he can’t make a difference in the public eye. The actor released a July 4 PSA of his own encouraging people to wear masks in public to help limit the spread of COVID-19.

“I may not be your President anymore. But I gotta tell you, the 4th of July is still my favorite holiday and always will be,” Pullman said, which is followed by the final line from his iconic speech near the movie’s conclusion. He then gets right to the point.

“This Independence Day I’m going to be celebrating my freedom maybe in an important way: I’m going to be wearing my freedom mask every time I go into public places,” he said. He stressed calling it a “freedom mask” and explained that it’s a patriotic thing to do despite what other presidents may tell you.

“Because if all of America agreed to wear one of these going into public places we’d be a little closer to being free to safely going back to places like bars and restaurants and schools. And, most importantly, movie theaters,” he claimed. All of that remains uncertain, of course, but it’s been proven that mask use in public when social distancing isn’t possible does, indeed, limit the spread of coronavirus and has been encouraged by health officials for months now.

The PSA was a bit more somber than his bombastic speech in the film, but it was a nice reminder of the film’s anniversary and an attempt to turn a fictional threat against humanity into an opportunity to battle a very real one.

Kanye West once said he was running for President of the United States in 2020 and it looks like he’s sticking to his word. Today, July 4th, Kanye tweeted that he would be running for President in the upcoming 2020 election, writing: “We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision and building our future. I am running for president of the United States. #2020Vision”

Kanye’s announcement immediately sent Twitter into a frenzy as people wondered whether the announcement was true and began to share their takes on it. For some, it was a cause for rejoicing, while others wondered whether the whole thing was a plot to help Trump, who Kanye considers a friend and stumped for all throughout 2018 with a “Make America Great Again” cap despite backlash from both fans and peers. Kanye hasn’t explained whether this means he’ll be running against Trump and as of press date, Trump has yet to respond. Kanye can count among his supporters Elon Musk, who tweeted that the rapper has his full support. However, the filing deadlines for a number of states has already passed, so it seems unlikely Kanye will actually appear on very many ballots — unless he already filed, and just waited til now to make the announcement.

Kanye first said he wanted to run in 2020 at the 2015 MTV VMAs, where during an acceptance speech, he said, “I don’t know what I finna lose after this. It don’t matter, though; It’s not about me. It’s about ideas. New ideas. People with ideas. People who believe in truth. And yes, as you probably could’ve guessed by this moment, I have decided in 2020 to run for President.”

He later explained his statement in an interview with BBC Radio 1: “We are numb, we’re numb to 500 kids getting killed in Chicago a year, we’re numb to the fact that it was seven police shootings in the beginning of July… we’re numb to places on the Earth that we don’t live – like our life is okay but it’s okay for other people’s lives to not be okay. When I talk about the idea of being president, I’m not saying I have any political views, I don’t have views on politics, I just have a view on humanity, on people, on the truth. If there is anything that I can do with my time and my day, to somehow make a difference while I’m alive I’m going to try to do it.”

See Kanye’s announcement above.

The Los Angeles Dodgers will not have the services of one of their prized offseason additions when the 2020 MLB season begins. David Price, the lefty starting pitcher who joined the team from the Boston Red Sox in the trade headlined by Mookie Betts, announced on Saturday his intention to stay at home this year.

Price revealed his decision in a statement on his Twitter account, citing the health and well-being of himself and his family. He did, however, say that he plans on taking to the diamond in 2021.

Price announced this on what was a notable day for baseball as it is preparing to start this year in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Atlanta Braves announced a handful of positive cases, including star first baseman Freddie Freeman. According to Chelsea Freeman, the four-time All-Star selection is someone who rarely falls ill, but has been in for quite the battle with the novel coronavirus.

https://twitter.com/DOBrienATL/status/1279529857882492928

In New York, the Yankees announced a pair of cases — relief pitcher Luis Cessa, who has mild symptoms, and All-Star infielder D.J. LeMahieu, who is asymptomatic.

It is a tricky needle for MLB to thread, as they really want to get games going but are trying to play in home markets. While this has worked for Korea’s top baseball league and soccer leagues in Europe, all of those places are both smaller and have a much better handle on COVID-19 than the United States. And although Price is the most high-profile name to opt out of the season thus far, there are still other big names, like Los Angeles Angels star Mike Trout and San Francisco Giants stalwart Buster Posey, who are contemplating staying home, too.

Anyone who has spent any time around dogs knows that fireworks can be a jarring experience. The fact that they are in a shelter with the uncertainty of not having a home and being caged, combines for an understandably anxious situation. Santiago mentions to azcentral.com, that sometimes the pets can get so stressed out that they can jump out of windows or dig under fences, which isn’t healthy for their psyche. The third annual Calm the Canines event is sponsored by Maricopa County Animal Care and Control with founder Santiago in Arizona. They comfort animals during these worrisome times.

Andrew Bennett

The two locations in the Phoenix area will once again be hosting dozens of people who come to the shelter to calm the dogs during fireworks. Approximately 700 dogs will be distracted from the ominous pounding of fireworks by people doing everything from playing music to reading stories to them. When the shelter first tried out the event, they were not quite sure what to expect. Then 300 arrived at their doors. “We were shocked by the amount of people that showed up and animals were literally falling asleep,” Santiago told azcentral.com.

The volunteers clearly had an effect on the residents of the two shelters. The thunderous booms could easily be heard inside the walls of the canine safe haven. And if not for the kind hearts of the 300 Arizonians, the anxiety would rather palpable. If you get that many kind hearts in an enclosed area with a slew of homeless dogs, well, I am pretty sure I don’t have to tell you what happens next. Spoiler alert: a whole lot of pups just checked out of the shelter to begin their new lives with the warm souls who adopted them.

Andrew Bennett

I am the proud parent of two dogs who have a pretty sweet life. On their worst day, they get a couple strolls around the neighborhood and a frozen peanut butter Kong. That’s their version of a crushing defeat. Usually there is a trip to the dog beach or run on the countless trails near my house. You would be hard pressed to find two happier dogs in West Hollywood. Because of my sometimes too jovial canines, I often feel like a pretty caring person. Then I compare myself to Jose Santiago. Truth is, I feel like I am the senator with the deciding vote that pushed through a bill to make ice cream trucks illegal for children. Jose Santiago, for all you do, this cone is for you.

Andrew Bennett