Month: July 2020

Comic Con At Home already gave Rick and Morty fans a first look at Season 5, but that’s not all of the fun show-related video content revealed this weekend. Saturday night saw an eight-minute animated short directed by Takeshi Sano and made by Telecom Animation film.

The anime short — Rick and Morty vs. Genocider has Morty on an adventure in Tokyo to stop the aforementioned Genocider. “Nothing weird happens,” says the description for the video on YouTube. But, of course, some extremely weird things happen. But before we get to the story, you have to appreciate the beautiful animation.

Morty is asked by the Council to travel to Japan and stop the Genocider from attacking Ricks and Mortys in an attempt to find the main Rick, Rick C137. There’s a lot of sitting in traffic, and things of course go sideways as soon as Morty is left on his own. It’s probably best you just watch it for yourself to take in the oddness of it all, but it’s yet another sign that we’ll get a lot more Rick and Morty in the future than we have had in the immediate past. It’s also another faithfully done dive into anime that proves its universe truly does have endless possibilities.

In 2013, ahead of his departure from Saturday Night Live for Late Night, Seth Meyers co-anchored “Weekend Update” for 12 episodes with Cecily Strong. It was a popular pairing, although it also meant losing some of Strong’s popular “Update” characters, like ”The Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation with at a Party,” which Strong co-wrote with head writer Colin Jost.

When Meyers left for Late Night, Cecily Strong was paired with Colin Jost on “Weekend Update” to finish out that 2013-2014 season. However, when “Update” returned in the fall, Cecily Strong — at that point, clearly the more skilled “Update” anchor — had been replaced with Michael Che. In the intervening years, there’s been a lot of speculation about why Che replaced Strong, but there’s never been a definitive answer.

In Colin Jost’s new memoir, A Very Punchable Face, Jost addresses the situation, although his explanation is not entirely definitive, either. According to Jost, the reviews he received for his first eight episodes with Strong were not kind, and during the summer between seasons, Jost decided to drop everything else — his job as head writer, work on a Paramount movie (Staten Island Summer) he had written, and stand-up — to focus all of his concentration on the one thing he wanted most of all: “Weekend Update.” The only problem was, heading into the new season, he had no idea if he still had the job.

In fact, when August rolled around, Jost had to audition for the role of “Update” anchor again, which he found “demoralizing.” He auditioned with Vanessa Bayer, Leslie Jones, Chris Kelly (a writer), Sasheer Zamata, and Michael Che. Cecily Strong was not among those who he re-auditioned with, even though — as Jost notes himself — “Cecily was unquestionably a better performer than I was.”

Going into the 2014-2015 season, Strong’s role on “Update” was an “unknown,” and Jost didn’t know if she wanted to keep doing “Update” or wanted to go back to doing “Update” characters again like “Girl at a Party,” and a bunch of other characters that were huge hits. Jost also didn’t know if she wanted to do “Update” with someone else. “I had no clue what she or Lorne [Michaels] was thinking,” Jost writes. “One of the reasons we did ‘Update’ together in the first place was because Cecily and I wrote together a lot. She’s one of the funniest performers in the history of our show and also one of the best writers.”

Ultimately, Jost suggests, Cecily was such a natural and so good as a regular cast member that, “I’m guessing that’s why Lorne wanted her to do characters again rather than being an anchor.” Of course, Jost doesn’t say for sure, because at that time, he didn’t know what “Lorne or the producers were thinking because everyone stopped talking to me.”

In the end, Jost did finally land the job, although Lorne Michaels was apparently very angry that the pairing between Che and Jost had leaked before he’d announced it. Cecily Strong, meanwhile, returned to the regular cast, where she has been hugely successful over the last five years, creating several more popular “Update” characters, including Jeanine Pirro.

Source: A Very Punchable Face: A Memoir by Colin Jost

The WNBA kicked off its 24th season on Saturday at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida with three action-packed games. The day saw the returns of Seattle Storm stars Breanna Stewart and Sue Bird from injury, the rookie debut of Sabrina Ionescu, and plenty of players show out for their new teams after a historically busy free agency period for the league. Here’s what we learned from the opening day’s slate of games.

1. The WNBA kept its promise to support Black lives

Earlier this month, the WNBA announced that it would dedicate this season to furthering the Black Lives Matter movement and fighting for justice for Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old EMT who was killed by Louisville police officers. Some of the planned initiatives include having the words “Black Lives Matter” painted on the courts, placards with Taylor’s name on the backs of players’ jerseys, and a player-led Social Justice Council.

Ahead of the opening game between the New York Liberty and Seattle Storm, players Layshia Clarendon and Breanna Stewart took mics into their hands and spoke about the importance of getting justice for Taylor before both teams held a 26-second moment of silence to remember her life. The players helped initiate the league’s conversation about social justice and it is really heartening that the WNBA is working with them on ways to keep the momentum going. As a league composed of 80 percent Black players and the first American basketball league to return to play, the WNBA is in such a unique and important position and the women of the league have been using their platforms admirably.

As President of the Players’ Association Nneka Ogwumike said postgame, “Our movement has found its moment.”

2. Breanna Stewart proved she’s back to full health

The Storm’s Breanna Stewart made her long-awaited return from a torn achilles injury in Saturday’s opener against the Liberty and looked sharp, scoring a team-high 18 points, eight rebounds, and four steals along with two assists. The 6’4 forward missed last year but enjoyed an outstanding season in 2018, averaging a career-high 21.8 points, 8.4 rebounds, and 2.5 steals per contest on her way to earning league MVP and helping the Storm win their third championship. If Stewart can consistently put up those kinds of numbers this season, Seattle will surely like their chances to win a fourth title in Bradenton.

3. Sabrina Ionescu belongs in this league

There were plenty of debuts to go around for the Liberty, with a roster that includes only two returning players from 2019. Point guard Layshia Clarendon impressed, scoring a team-high 20 points and earning two steals, three assists, and two rebounds. And, after much anticipation, rookie sensation Sabrina Ionescu finally got her first taste of league action on Saturday, slotting in at the two. The Storm certainly took her presence personally, but the former Oregon star looked solid, scoring, rebounding, and giving instructions to her teammates. Ionescu may not have had a show-stopping night against one of the league’s best, but she definitely showed that she belongs in the WNBA.

4. The Los Angeles Sparks are not here on vacation

The Sparks must have heard everyone (yours truly, included) pinning the Storm as all but guaranteed to stroll to the 2020 championship, because the team from L.A. did not come to play … or rather, that’s exactly what they came to do. The Sparks completely outclassed the Phoenix Mercury by a score of 99-76, and everyone stepped up in the win. Candace Parker looked like her old, unstoppable self which will be a worrisome sign for the rest of the league, putting up 13 points, seven rebounds, and an assist. Meanwhile, Ogwumike and new addition Seimone Augustus went a perfect 14-for-14 from the field, with the latter scoring a game-high 21 points, six rebounds, and two assists. L.A. put on a show for opening weekend and everyone will be watching to see if they can keep that up.

5. Never doubt Mike Thibault and the Washington Mystics

If you thought that the Washington Mystics would fall off this year without league MVP Elena Delle Donne, Natasha Cloud, Tina Charles, and Kristi Toliver, you would be justified. But Saturday showed that you should never, ever doubt this team and head coach Mike Thibault. The defending champions are an extremely well-oiled machine, and they proved how they know exactly how to run Thibault’s system. They took care of the Indiana Fever in a comfortable 101-76 win and looked deadly on offense — by the time halftime rolled around, the Mystics were hitting a scorching 72 percent of their shots.

The 2019 Finals MVP Emma Meesseman scored 14 points, five rebounds, and three assists while Aerial Powers had 16 points, five rebounds, and two assists. Another player to keep an eye on is Myisha Hines-Allen, who reached a career-high 22 points in the first half before finishing with 27 points on 64.7 percent shooting, 10 rebounds, and two assists. Out of all six teams that played on Saturday, Hines-Allen led all players in scoring and rebounds.

Kevin Smith’s Saturday night Comic-Con panel is a San Diego tradition, even if the event didn’t actually take place in California this year. The Comic-Con@Home event still had An Evening with the director, which featured a livestream with a number of announcements and fun. But it also gave us a trailer for the horror movie Killroy Was Here.

The film, which featured plenty of gore and the usual Smith style, takes the World War II graffiti and makes it a human flesh-hungry killing machine finding victims in an extremely odd American town.

The movie was made with students from Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. Smith spoke there a few years ago and started working with them, though the film did get put on the shelf thanks to a Jay And Silent Bob remake and some health issues for Smith.

Something else the panel revealed was the Netflix animated show Masters of the Universe: Revelation, which is a follow-up to the 1980s cartoon. Smith didn’t reveal a release date for the comic, but did talk about the show and what to expect once it hits the service.

“It’s not us reinventing it, it’s not us going, ‘Hey man, everything you knew about He-Man is wrong,’” Smith said. “It’s literally us telling the next story in that series of stories.”

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.

Some movie theaters around the country have re-opened, but they haven’t been met with brisk business, in part because all of the major movies have been delayed again, as the major studios have mostly decided to wait the pandemic out before releasing their blockbusters. However, Dave Franco’s The Rental — from IFC Films — did get a theatrical release this weekend, and though most of its grosses came from drive-in theaters, it is officially the top film at the box office, scoring around $400,000 over three days, according to Deadline. That’s not bad at all for a low-budget horror film, especially when we consider that it is also the most rented film on iTunes this weekend, and for good reason. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but The Rental is a solid little horror film from Franco and co-writer Joe Swanberg, scoring 72 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

Beyond The Rental, the top films on the Fandango and iTunes charts are the same films that have led the way for the last few weeks and months: The Outpost, Trolls World Tour, King of Staten Island, Invisible Man, Scoob, etc. There is, however, one interesting new entry in the upper echelons of both charts, and that is a Lucy Hale movie called A Nice Girl Like You. The film is about a woman who is called “pornophobic” by her ex-boyfriend, so she decides to create a wild sexual bucket list. Reviews have not been kind (14 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), but this best part about this movie is that it is apparently “based on a true story.”

Before we move on to Netflix, it’s worth mentioning that theaters are now slowly opening with limited seating capacity in China, and over there, they are watching movies released stateside while China was in the throes of the pandemic, which is why Dolittle and Bloodshot are leading the way, although figures are not particularly robust ($3.2 million and $1.7 million, respectively, over two days). It is, however, nice to see real box-office figures. Meanwhile, the Last Train To Busan sequel, Peninsula, has almost earned $20 million now in Korea. That’s a movie I’d like to see released VOD and digital stateside (the movie is expected to get a limited theatrical release in August and stream exclusively on Shudder next year).

Disney+ is reporting on “trending” movies now, and this week, the top film was Hamilton followed by Frozen II and Moana. Last Christmas is the top “featured” movie on HBO Max, Palm Springs is the top film on Hulu, and if I had to guess based on the movie that is most featured on Peacock, it would be Jurassic Park.

Finally, the sequel to a hugely successful original film, The Kissing Booth, is the top film on Netflix. In fact, The Kissing Booth 2 is doing so well that the original, The Kissing Booth is also in the top five at number three. Critics like the sequel marginally more than the original (28 percent on RT instead of 17 percent), but audiences do not. The original scored 59 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, while the sequel sits at only 41 percent with audiences. What happened?!

Meanwhile, the animated film Animal Crackers, which has an impressive voice cast — John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Danny DeVito, Ian McKellen, Sylvester Stallone, Raven-Symoné and Patrick Warburton — finally saw the light of day in the United States. It was released in China two years ago, but its release date was repeatedly pushed here in the States amid financial difficulties. It debuted at number two on Netflix, and reviews are OK: 62 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

Not much to speak of yet for next weekend’s releases, beyond a movie I’m really looking forward to on Apple+ called Boys State. Otherwise, season two of Umbrella Academy is the big draw on streaming next weekend.

Source: Fandango, Netflix, iTunes, Deadline

The Minnesota Lynx kicks off a 22-game regular season at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. against the Connecticut Sun on Sunday at noon. The Lynx are lead by head coach and general manager Cheryl Reeve and her all-female coaching staff — former Lynx players Rebbekah Brunson, Plenette Pierson, and Katie Smith are her assistants.

Reeves is the gold standard of coaching and will look to lead her team to a 10th straight playoff appearance. Like last season, Minnesota will be without key players to start the season. Maya Moore is still on sabbatical as she is fighting for criminal justice reform. Seimone Augustus is now a member of the Los Angeles Sparks. Odyssey Sims, who led the Lynx both in points (14.5) and assists (5.4) last season, will probably miss the year — Sims gave birth to her first child in April and is out on maternity leave.

WUBBLE ROSTER
Kayla Alexander
Rachel Banham
Lexie Brown
Bridget Carlton
Karima Christmas-Kelly
Napheesa Collier
Crystal Dangerfield
Damiris Dantas
Sylvia Fowles
Mikiah Herbert Harrigan
Megan Huff
Shenise Johnson

KEY PLAYERS TO WATCH
Napheesa Collier: Great on both ends of the floor, the reigning WNBA Rookie of Year looks to continue her Midas touch. Collier averaged 13.1 points, 6.6 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 1.9 steals ,and 0.9 blocked shots while starting all 34 regular-season games in 2019 while shooting 49 percent from the field, 36.1 percent from three-point range, and 79.2 percent from the free throw line. Collier was named to the All-WNBA second team and the All-Rookie Team for her efforts and earned an All-Star berth. The advanced stats back up the counting stats: Collier ranked second in the league and first among rookies in defensive win shares at 2.4 and boasted a defensive rating of 95.1.

Sylvia Fowles: At 34, Fowles is still a prolific player. However, her numbers were down from two seasons ago. The former league MVP averaged 13.6 points, 8.9 rebounds, and 1.5 assists per game while leading the league in field goal percentages at 58.8 percent. Fowles is one of the leaders on the team and is ready to impart her knowledge and experience to her younger teammates. The Lynx offense should still run through Fowles.

EXPECTATIONS
Despite not having Moore last season, Minnesota finished the season with a record of 18-16 and was eliminated in the first round of the WNBA Playoffs (Cheryl Reeves, it must be said, is the GOAT). Even though the roster might look drastically different, the Lynx are expected to make another playoffs push. The Lynx will need their bench players to perform well because Collier and Fowles can’t carry the load alone. As good as those two players are, they really need others to step up in order for the team to have a successful season.

X-FACTOR
Lexie Brown: She is poised to be the Lynx’s starting point guard. Brown is a solid shooter and averaged 7.6 points and 1.4 assists per game last year. Her assists numbers should improve dramatically since she will be a starter, plus Fowles will have to rely on Brown to get the ball in the post in order for her to feast. Brown is an excellent three-point shooter at nearly 40 percent and the Lynx will need that to continue in the upcoming season.

BIGGEST ON-COURT QUESTION
Will Collier repeat her outstanding play in her sophomore season? How will Reeves bring out the best in this roster to make a playoff push? Can Fowles return to dominance at 34? The Lynx added three-pointer shooters that lead to better floor spacing and may take the pressure off of Fowles. How well will it work? Only time will tell, and the team’s first game against a hungry Sun side should provide a good early test.

The NBA’s Orlando bubble is a genuine experiment in attempting to play professional sports amid a pandemic, and that means a lot of unprecedented decisions will be made over the next few months. The first of those may be what to do with Clippers guard Lou Williams, who left the league’s bubble but made waves on social media when images of him at an Atlanta gentleman’s club leaked earlier this week.

Saturday brought word that the NBA would investigate Williams in order to determine how long he would have to quarantine to re-enter the bubble in Orlando days ahead of a return to live regular season games. And Sunday morning brought word of the punishment, so to speak: 10 days in quarantine before he can rejoin the Clippers.

As Charania notes, the quarantine will make Williams miss at least the first two Clippers games of the resumed season. A 10-day stay alone is not the full two weeks it may take for coronavirus symptoms to develop, but it’s still significantly longer than Zion Williamson will have to quarantine after he left the bubble earlier in the month. As we learned yesterday, the Pelicans rookie will be alone in an Orlando hotel room for just four days. It’s an unfortunate blow for Williams and the Clippers, as teams will need every moment of time together to get back into basketball shape as play gets set to resume after months of inaction. But it also speaks to the seriousness with which the NBA is keeping its bubble safe. No one knows how to pull all this off exactly, but caution seems to be the best way to address any of the unknown issues bound to come up.

Regis Philbin’s death on Saturday caused an outpouring of memories and stories from people about his life in entertainment. But the best one wasn’t a classic clip from Who Wants To Be A Millionaire or Live With Regis And Kelly, but an appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman. Several people on Twitter shared a moment from 2009 when Philbin dressed up as the animated character Shrek in full green makeup and prosthetics on his head, apparently appearing as a surprise to Letterman on air.

One popular Millionaire clip that did surface was one of the most baller game show moments of all time, which deserves to be shared here as well.

But the clip of Philbin as Shrek truly brings down the house. It was shared multiple times by different people, and all of them saw wide circulation online.

The segment is nothing short of hilarious, with Letterman and Philbin immediately at odds with each other. The show’s host looks extremely amused, but is trying to hide it. Philbin thinks he’s wasted his time getting ready and keeping it a secret, getting annoying as Letterman plays with his fake ears.

“Are you playing with my horn?” Philbin asks. Letterman is clearly selling it hard, but it’s significantly funnier if he seems nonplussed, which he pulls off here perfectly. As the video circulated social media in various forms, Letterman himself tweeted about Philbin and his many appearances on his show.

Another popular clip that was shared was Katie Nolan and the Crowd Goes Wild crew making Regis compose his first tweet.

It was a gem.

Philbin clearly impacted a lot of people with his work in television, and it was a lovely coda on his life as a performer to have such a wonderfully weird moment get shared by so many.

Lou Williams has found himself in some hot water with the NBA. The Los Angeles Clippers’ high-scoring guard left the NBA’s Orlando bubble earlier this week for an excused absence, but an image of him popped up on social media that appeared to show him at a club with Jack Harlow, with both wearing faces masks.

Questions popped up about what Williams was doing, and on Saturday afternoon, Shams Charania of The Athletic reported that the league has decided to respond to this by opening an investigation into what Williams — who has since returned to the bubble — did while he was away from the team.

The news of the investigation, which is being done to determined how long Williams will need to quarantine now that he’s back, was confirmed by Ramona Shelburne and Bobby Marks of ESPN.

Shelburne reported that as part of the investigation, Williams admitted that he went to Magic City, a gentleman’s club in Atlanta.

The good news for Williams is that he was tested every day that he was away from the Clippers, which means that his quarantine could be as few as four days, as we saw with Zion Williamson of the New Orleans Pelicans. The issue, though, is he may be held out for longer based on what is determined.

There is no word on whether there would be any additional punishment from the league or if Williams would just need to quarantine for an extended period. The Clippers begin their bubble schedule on Thursday night against the Los Angeles Lakers.

Baseball is back in the United States, with MLB’s 60-game regular season getting underway in earnest this weekend despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Because of the rising case counts in the United States, the Blue Jays won’t play in Toronto this year and fans will not be allowed in ballparks, causing a problem for broadcasters showing games on TV: will fans get weirded out by empty parks?

For some teams, a lack of fans won’t be very unusual, but a barren Wrigley Field or Fenway Park might look a bit odd. Which is why Fox Sports claimed they had an answer in a video hyping the start of the MLB season: virtual fans.

Awful Announcing caught the Fox broadcast explaining the deal with these fake fans during Saturday’s nationally televised game, showing them turn from Cubs fans to Brewers fans on command and stand up just like, you know, a very unsettling video game.

As The Verge explains, the fans are very much video game-inspired, using the Unreal Engine to generate fans to place in on top of live images of the empty stands.

“We’re not looking to fool anybody, it’s still about the game. But shot-to-shot, when you’re watching a broadcast, it’s not more noticeable that you’re watching what is normally a broadcast with fans in just an empty stadium and having it feel weird — we want to give people a sense of normalcy,” (executive producer and head of production and operations at Fox Sports Brad) Zager says. “And we felt like going down this path and trying to use a virtual crowd will hopefully make it so that blends in, and you can focus on the game more because you’re not thinking about the emptiness of a Major League Baseball stadium during the game.”

The effect, well, certainly doesn’t fool anyone. And for many people it made the fact that baseball was happening during a pandemic that much more apparent.

It really did look very odd to have CGI crowds on things like foul balls.

And, of course, it’s computer technology so there are so many things these virtual fans can do in order to appear somewhat normal.

The alternative is to just keep the stands empty. Or, as some teams did, put cutouts of fans in seats for charity.

At least that goes to a good cause, though.