Month: August 2020

Change is tough for everybody, especially when you are suddenly changing a team’s nickname after decades of protests and pleas from people insisting your football team’s logo and nickname was offensive to an entire group of people. For many, Washington’s NFL team losing its racist nickname is a long overdue decision that was made despite the wishes of the man who actually owns the team. Which is why any sort of struggles the franchise has in making that happen is some very satisfying schadenfreude.

The latest example of that is a failed attempt to find a new Twitter hashtag for the team’s upcoming season. On Sunday morning, the Washington Football Team’s official Twitter account tried to announce a new hashtag but quickly deleted the tweet because, well, it wasn’t a hashtag. The team is leaning hard into a traditionalist angle for the upcoming season, with the Established in 1932 aspect of the franchise a major marketing point. Which is why they wanted to change the team’s official Twitter hashtag from #HTTR — hail to the team’s former offensive nickname — to the less offensive #1932. One problem, pointed out by many when the tweet went up, is that the hashtag didn’t work because it doesn’t have any letters in it.

That tweet was quickly deleted, and the team sent out another referencing the mistake and asking fans what they think the team should use.

Even noted Washington NFL franchise fan Dale Earnhardt Jr. had an idea, though like #1932 it didn’t really stand out for a football team.

Most team hashtags are silly and not very clever anyway, so they’ll figure something out eventually. But it is interesting to see a team search for an identity on the fly, especially knowing that if they had changed the name more organically by listening to critics years ago, all of this could have gone a whole lot smoother than it has.

Draymond Green’s long list of fines is a fascinating glimpse at his NBA career, but the latest might be a preview of his post-playing days. Green was fined on Sunday $50,000 for comments he made during an eventful stint on TNT where he openly lobbied for Devin Booker to leave the Phoenix Suns organization.

Green appeared on TNT’s NBA coverage on Saturday night and had a lot of fun going back and forth with Charles Barkley about a variety of subjects. But when Green talked about another breakout performance from Booker as the scrappy Suns fight for the postseason, he apparently crossed the line and got well into tampering territory.

The news hit on Sunday morning, with the NBA making the fine official.

The NBA made it clear the fine was a result of his “get my man out of Phoenix” comments, which even Green admitted was “probably” tampering when he said it live on air. It made for great televison, sure, but as an active NBA player who has spent his entire career with an organization that built a super team and added to it in free agency, it wasn’t a great look for the league.

Booker still has plenty of work to do with the Suns this season, of course, as they try to make an improbable run into the NBA’s bubbled postseason. Green, meanwhile, has plenty of time to keep entertaining on television if he wants to. He’ll probably be more careful about what he says from now on, though.

There’s no denying the success Chika has seen so far in 2020. The Alabama native shared her debut EP Industry Games back in March and has seen rave reviews from some of the industry’s best and most popular acts, including Cardi B. Chika hopes to continue that success in the film world as she prepares to make her acting debut on August 14 through the upcoming Netflix movie, Project Power which stars Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Taking a moment to kick it with fans on Instagram Live, things took a turn for the better when a rap legend joined the livestream.

To Chika’s surprise, Snoop Dogg joined her livestream late Saturday night and her excitement was very clear. “What the f*ck, Snoop in here?” she asked, ecstatic at the rapper’s presence. Snoop would eventually join the livestream where he used the opportunity to praise Chika and her music.

“I’m here to give you your flowers,” he announced. “I’m here to tell you I f*ck with your music. I love your sh*t. I play it. I enjoy it. I wanted to tell you that. I didn’t want to like let you hear about it. I want you hear it from me, from the Dogg’s mouth.”

Overwhlemed by his praises, Chika thanked Snoop for his compliments and returned some of her own to him calling him, “a f*cking legend, an actual goddamn pillar in our community.” The two would eventually agree to collaborate on a song after Snoop requested that he write one for her. In response, Chika said “I’m writing you a country song. It’s gonna be a Black country song,” to which Snoop replied, “Make it work. You gonna make it do what you do.”

While we wait for their upcoming collab, fans can give a listen to Chika’s new single, “U Should.”

Watch their full Instagram Live conversation above and see Chika’s reaction to the conversation in the tweets below.

Chika is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group

There are a lot of frivolous purchases you can make when it comes to video games, but buying a second dock for the Nintendo Switch is certainly up there at the top. Unless your first one breaks, a second accessory device that’s mostly used to charge the hybrid console and connect it to a TV feels like excess, especially with rumors of a next-gen Switch looming.

While some gamers will go for whatever Switch is available in these trying times, the ability to play games on a TV in addition to its built-in screen is a huge asset for the console itself. It’s made the Switch a great device for things like Jackbox Party Packs, and bringing your entire console to another Switch dock elsewhere is a satisfying benefit of buying things on the console.

If you’re trying to travel with the dock itself, though, things are a bit trickier. It’s a nifty device but not meant for suitcases or backpacks. If you happen to have the perfect-sized book to wedge in its slot you’re likely not to crack it in half, but not everyone reads as light as I do. It’s a slight inconvenience for most, but the ability to travel with a Switch and put it on any TV has long been a quiet wish for many gamers.

Which is why the Genki Covert Dock for the Switch drew so much fanfare when the accessories company launched a Kickstarter for it in 2019. The AC plug did all the work the Switch dock does in a much smaller package, turning the slotted dock into a smaller wall jack with room to charge your Switch and port its video to a TV through an HDMI cable. The Kickstarter generated more than $1.7 million for Genki, making it the third most profitable campaign for gaming hardware behind the original Oculus Rift.

There isn’t much to say about the Covert Dock’s capabilities that offers any insight: it works great. Plug it in, connect an HDMI cable to a TV and a USB-C cable to the Switch and it fires right up. The USB input charges accessories and connects controllers and does everything the same port on the regular Switch dock does. If there’s anything to review here, it’s that it feels just like it should. There aren’t connectivity questions or concerns it might not work. It does what it should and doesn’t add any extra steps to playing games.

The benefits of the Covert Dock itself are obvious to the Switch, but independent of its HDMI capabilities it’s a great option as a travel charger in general. The Covert Dock comes with international adapters, and the fold-out prongs make it easy to switch to a more exotic power source. If you’re not using (or charging) your Switch at all hours, it can effectively charge MacBooks, phones and anything else that’s at its best charging at 30 watts. It also doesn’t seem to get too hot, which is always a concern when you’re swapping out device-specific chargers.

Though the device has the “covert” naming convention that’s definitely more about its size than function. It’s not the most elegant solution in practice, though, mostly because there’s nowhere to put your console once it’s connected. If you’re hiding it in a cabinet it’s not an issue, but traveling with it will look a little like this.

When you’re on the go, any gaming setup is temporary and size matters first and foremost. Which is why the Genki Covert Dock really is great: it does what it’s supposed to, and takes up far less space than what it’s replacing. The $74.99 sticker price is high compared to other docks but saving you the trouble of untangling your cables to pack up your dock might already be worth that price tag for some. The flexibility it offers on where and on which screens you play your Switch in your home is always nice, too.

The biggest problem with the potential purchase is the fact that, well, most people aren’t going anywhere right now. Its greatest utility is as a travel device first and foremost, both for the Switch and other devices that can use its small package to keep gadgets powered on the go. While testing out the Covert Dock in my bedroom I thought about all the times I could have traveled lighter with it or changed things overseas with less stress. It was a bit of a downer, honestly, to know it won’t be fully utilized in the foreseeable future. Until then, the dock is a bit of an investment in a future where the Switch’s portability is once again more asset than aspirational.

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.

While Christopher Nolan has been angling over the course of the pandemic to make Tenet the first major release after theaters reopen, the much smaller Solstice Studios has been planning all along to open Russell Crowe’s Unhinged two weekends before Tenet as a sort of test case for theaters. We are now less than two weeks away from the release of Unhinged, which I suspect will be when we start to finally get some real box-office numbers.

In the meantime, theater openings continue to progress in China. Now in its third weekend of release, Robert Downey Jr’s Dolittle, which was a bomb in the states, is now the top film of 2020 in China. Granted, it has only earned $15.4 million, and it only had to surpass the animated Spies in Disguise (a Christmas release in America), but at least RDJ can brag — for now — that he has the top movie of the year in the country with the second biggest box office in the world. In the meantime, the Interstellar reissue also opened in China as a tease for Tenet (and will also do so here in two weeks), and it earned $10 million at the box office, which is not bad for being in the middle of a pandemic.

Back in the states, it’s another fairly ho-hum week on the VOD and Netflix charts, as most of the buzz this weekend has been occupied by Seth Rogen’s American Pickle, which HBO Max snatched away from theaters to make available to home viewers (having seen it, it feels like a movie far more suited to the couch than the big screen, anyway). Critics so far have given it strong scores (75 percent), although audiences aren’t as keen on it (48 percent audience score). When a critical and audience split is that wide it is usually because the movie provides something that audiences aren’t expecting, and for those expecting a traditional, raunchy Seth Rogen comedy, American Pickle is decidedly not that — it is far more low-key and sweet than the comedies we typically associate with Rogen.

On the other streamers, Beyonce’s Black is King is no doubt continuing to play well on Disney+; it doesn’t appear anything has come along on Hulu to supplant Palm Springs as its top movie; and while it is hard to say what the top movie is on Peacock, The Big Lebowski is the top featured film on the service at the moment.

Meanwhile, on the VOD charts, Shia LaBeouf’s Tax Collector has taken the top spot on iTunes despite bad reviews (21 percent on RT) and some controversy surrounding the casting of LaBeouf in the David Ayer film. I haven’t seen the film yet, but I like to imagine that it belongs in the same universe as Ben Affleck’s The Accountant, and that the third in the series will be, The Insurance Adjuster.

Meanwhile, Capone jumped to number two on iTunes thanks to the $.99 rental charge, followed by The Outpost and Trolls World Tour. In at number five is Made in Italy, a film starring Liam Neeson and his son with his late wife, Natasha Richardson, Michael Richardson (reviews have been modest, 56 percent on RT).

On Fandango’s VOD charts, meanwhile, Katie Holmes’ The Secret: Dare to Dream — based on the self-help book, The Secret, is now the top film, despite being terrible. There’s not much else to report on that chart (Kevin Bacon’s You Should Have Left is number two followed again by Deep Blue Sea 3), except for those wondering what happened to Josh Hartnett. This mustache happened to Josh Hartnett, whose Most Wanted is #16 on the charts.

Finally, the Netflix charts this weekend are just weird, and very kid-and-teen friendly. The top film is a Netflix original dance film, Work It, which actually has very good reviews (80 percent on RT) based on a limited review count (15). 1993’s Dennis the Menace is number two, for some reason, followed by the original Jurassic Park (another 1993 movie), a Netflix original for kids called Malibu Rescue: The Next Wave and then Adam Sandler’s Mr. Deeds

Mid-August is usually dog days for films during normal times, and that hasn’t changed during the pandemic. Next weekend’s big feature film? Project Power on Netflix, starring Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Dominique Fishback. It’s about a magic pill that gives you superpowers … for five minutes.

Source: Deadline, Fandango, iTunes,

Man, Luka Doncic is really good at basketball, isn’t he? Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks took on the league-leading Milwaukee Bucks in the final game of Saturday night’s slate in the NBA’s Orlando bubble. Despite a fully-healthy Bucks squad, double-doubles by Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton, and a huge evening from Brook Lopez, Dallas was able to gut out a 136-132 win in overtime.

The main reason why was the play of Doncic, who had perhaps the best game of his NBA career. The 21-year-old Slovenian standout scored 36 points on 12-for-24 shooting with a career-high 19 assists and 14 rebounds. It marked his 17th triple-double of the season, the most in the league this year, and he became the third Maverick to have at least 19 assists in a game, joining two other dudes who were quite good at passing the basketball.

The thing that is oftentimes so impressive about Doncic is the total control he is able to exert on games when he’s at his best. Everything happened at the pace he dictated, something that is oftentimes the case when the Mavericks win. He especially turned heads with his final assist of the evening — Doncic came off of a screen set by Maxi Kleber, who immediately dove to the rim.

With Antetokounmpo’s eyes locked on Doncic, the reigning Rookie of the Year laid off a cheeky between the legs pass to his big man, who dunked, made his way to the free throw line, and put the exclamation point on Dallas’ win.

Doncic was asked about the assist after the game, and like many great passers, he did not have a logical answer for why he made this happen. Instead, he gave an answer to gets to the heart of what makes him so good at setting up his teammates: he was able to immediately process what was happening and trusted his otherworldly instincts.

The performance was big for the Mavericks insofar as they have a chance to make a move up the Western Conference, although that is a bit unlikely. Currently locked in seventh, Dallas is two games behind the Oklahoma City Thunder in fifth and the Utah Jazz in sixth, and while their next game is against Utah, it would take quite a bit for them to make up that gap.

What made it a big performance, though, was it highlighted how when Doncic is at his best, Dallas is going to have a chance in any game it plays, even if it’s against the best team in the NBA. Perhaps this is something that matters more down the road — when Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis are a little older, and the franchise maybe adds a third star alongside them, and the top of the Western Conference isn’t as cluttered — but right now, the Mavericks are a dangerous group, thanks in large part to their All-Star guard.

Donald Trump’s attempt to ban TikTok has turned into a bidding war of sorts to acquire the United States portion of its operation. The Chinese-owned social media platform has become an antagonist of sorts to the president, and his apparent concerns over privacy issues has sparked an interesting digital conversation, especially on his favorite platform: Twitter.

That discussion took a turn on Saturday, though, when the Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter is a long-shot bider to buy the US operation of the social media network. Microsoft has already shown interest and is apparently the frontrunner to buy TikTok from ByteDance, the network’s owner, but Twitter thinks it has at least one advantage in negotiations.

It is not clear what the valuation of TikTok’s U.S. operations would be, but estimates run into the tens of billions of dollars, which raises questions about how Twitter would finance any deal. Twitter’s market capitalization is about $29 billion and Microsoft’s is more than $1.6 trillion.

Because it is much smaller, Twitter has reasoned that it would be unlikely to face the same level of antitrust scrutiny as Microsoft or other potential bidders, said people familiar with the discussions.

Twitter buying TikToK, though, drew another social network to mind for many people: Vine. The six-second-or-less video platform was bought by Twitter in 2012, but abruptly shut down four years later with its apparent cost to keep going a concern. It’s still beloved by plenty of those online, and is remembered fondly in YouTube compilations and articles memorializing great Vines.

In many ways it’s generally believed that TikToK’s rise in popularity occurred as a direct result of Vine shutting down, as some creators moved to the platform and young people were attracted to the lip synching and dancing videos that populated TikTok. So when news of Twitter on the hunt for another video platform to buy spread, many made the same joke about TikTok and that it may share the same fate as the last one the company bought.

Vine’s death by Twitter’s hands made its original owners warn people not to sell their companies. In this case, though, it doesn’t seem like ByteDance has much of a choice. If they do pick Twitter, though, hopefully the company doesn’t have the same fate as Vine.

One of the biggest titles on the (approximate) calendar for video game fans this fall is Halo Infinite, which fans got a good look at in late July at the Xbox Series X games event. Fans got a cinematic trailer and a look at a significant portion of the game’s campaign, which saw Master Chief land on a Halo ring and start taking care of business against the covenant.

While we still don’t know much about Halo Infinite‘s multiplayer — other than that it will have a free-to-play aspect on the Xbox Series X — we have seen the game in a totally new way. Thanks to YouTuber Hoolopee, who has done a bunch of neat gaming trailer remixes including a PS1 version of the Death Stranding trailer. Their latest work is a remix of the Halo Infinite trailer as an Nintendo 64 game, and it’s something else.

Some gaming fans were critical of the new Halo‘s graphics compared to other next-gen titles we’ve seen, but this game certainly goes back a few console generations. It also contains some classic video game tropes, such as the narrative pop-ups on the bottom of the screen that accompany the real audio with the character’s face. There was also a more retro-themed start screen as well.

It’s a really charming result. Whereas seeing the Halo ring in the Infinite trailer sparked some considerable nostalgia, it really is fascinating to see Master Chief’s gun and the Halo scenery rendered with much more pixelated graphics.

The trailer doesn’t give us anything new to learn from the actual game coming this holiday season, but it’s definitely a fun distraction while we wait.

The Denver Nuggets and Utah Jazz squared off in a game with gigantic implications for seeding in the Western Conference playoff picture. In what might go down as the game of the year, regardless of whether or not it took place in a bubble at Disney World, the two teams threw haymakers for 58 minutes, with the Nuggets barely holding on to come out on top, 134-132, in double overtime.

Denver looked like it was going to see out a win in regulation, so long as Donovan Mitchell did not catch fire in the waning seconds of the fourth quarter. Unfortunately for them, with 10.8 seconds left in the fourth quarter and the Jazz down by five, Mitchell stepped to the free throw line and knocked down both. Some mild chaos broke out from there — including those free throws, Mitchell went on a 7-2 run in those final 10.8 seconds. He did this by drilling a three from the top of the key off an inbounds pass and a coast-to-coast layup where he sliced through Denver’s entire defense.

Mitchell stayed hot during the game’s first overtime. He scored eight points in the extra frame, which included a pair of cold-blooded contested jumpers. The first came on a deep, deep three, while the other was a silky pull-up from the free throw line.

The unfortunate thing for Mitchell is that he wasn’t the only All-Star on the floor. The Nuggets were able to answer his shot making with some brilliance from Nikola Jokic. When Denver needed points, Jokic made them happen, whether it was by digging deep into the bag of tricks to foul out Rudy Gobert or blowing by Royce O’Neale to make a second overtime inevitable.

Denver looked it was going to take care of business in double overtime. Between Jamal Murray hitting shots — including a gorgeous step-back triple to beat the shot clock — and an exclamation point dunk by Jerami Grant with a touch over 20 seconds left, the Nuggets found themselves in the driver’s seat up by six.

And yet Utah kept fighting admirably. Mike Conley hit a pair of triples in the final minute to keep the Jazz in striking distance, while Mitchell hit a three with five seconds left that pulled them within two. Murray took and missed a pair of free throws to crack the door open, and right as the buzzer sounded, Mitchell tossed up a prayer from half court that just narrowly was not answered.

Mitchell’s 35 points led all scorers, while he chipped in eight assists and six rebounds for good measure. Conley had a 20-5-5 outing, while Gobert had 22 and 13 before fouling out. Jokic stuffed the stat sheet with 30 points, 11 rebounds, seven assists, and three steals, Murray scored 23 points with 12 boards and eight dimes, and Michael Porter Jr. contributed 23 points and 11 rebounds. With the win, Denver gave itself some breathing room in the race for third in the Western Conference, as it now sits two games above the Houston Rockets. Utah, meanwhile, is in the six seed, sitting one game back of the Rockets and in a tie with the fifth-place Oklahoma City Thunder, which have the edge based on a slightly higher winning percentage.

Through three seasons, Ozark has followed the Byrde family through some pretty harrowing stuff.Thought some may not think the show is nearly Ozark-y enough, fans of the Netflix show have grown used to seeing some brutal moments on screen. That includes the untimely demise of some very important members of the family. Spoilers coming here, obviously, but the arrival of Wendy’s brother, Ben, set up one of the most heartbreaking scenes of the show’s latest season.

Ben’s struggles with mental health and inability to stay inconspicuous as the Byrde family’s tenuous place in the cartel shifted forced Wendy to make a harrowing decision, but Ben’s death was not actually shown on screen. Given all the other deaths we’ve seen happen with the cameras rolling, some fans had held out hope that Ben was still alive at the end of Season 3, which meant that actor Tom Pelphrey could return for the final season and deliver more moments like this.

And despite some fan theories that Ben survived his cartel encounter, Ozark showrunner Chris Mundy put an end to any speculation that he is alive during the show’s PaleyFest panel. According to TV Line, the breakout star of Season 3 was, indeed, killed.

“I love the fact that people love [Ben] enough to come up with that theory,” Mundy said according to TV Line. “I wish it were true. But it ain’t true.”

It’s not a surprising confirmation, but it does mean Pelphrey will only return to the show in flashbacks at most. His impact, however, will remain on the show in what is expected to be its final season. Mundy said the decision to let the cartel exact their pound of flesh on their own family will weigh heavily on them in Season 4, and impact who else may see their end before the show ends its run.

[via TV Line]