Month: March 2021

Conservatives have spent the last week up in arms about a very pressing issue. No, they’re not desperately trying to get stimulus checks to struggling Americans in the middle of a pandemic. They’re worried about Dr. Seuss books. After the late author’s estate announced they would no longer be publishing six (out of over 60) of his books, not wanting kids to be exposed to racist content, Republicans went ballistic. Now House minority leader Kevin McCarthy has recorded a video in which he reads Green Eggs and Ham…which isn’t one of the books that have been pulled from circulation.

What was the point of a five-minute video in which one of the top-ranking Republicans read a children’s book? Beats us! Again, Green Eggs and Ham contains no racist content and is one of the many, many Dr. Seuss books one can still purchase. Whatever McCarthy’s reasoning, it got a lot of people wondering what he was thinking.

Some pointed out that McCarthy seemed to intentionally choose one of the non-racist Seuss books, and not, say, If I Ran the Zoo or And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.

He also failed to point out that it wasn’t some progressive “cancel” campaign that got the books yanked from shelves. It was the Dr. Seuss company itself.

Others pointed out that he was reading children’s books on the taxpayer’s dime.

And that he probably has other things to do — like get that $1.9 trillion relief package passed.

Some suggested McCarthy read other books.

Some pointed out that Republicans will only listen to “doctors” who aren’t real doctors.

And others reminded McCarthy that Republicans don’t tend to listen to the message of Green Eggs and Ham, which is to be open to new experiences.

The NBA had the night off on Friday, as players, coaches, and other league personnel head to Atlanta for the All-Star Game, while the rest of the league enjoys some well-deserved time off from a season that has been in perpetual flux as it navigates the many challenges of the ongoing pandemic.

We were led to believe that the rosters for Sunday’s game had been set, but news emerged on Friday night that Mike Conley was reportedly set to replace Devin Booker in both the game itself and the three-point contest, as Booker recovers from a knee sprain. It was a feelgood moment for Conley and his fans, who have long heralded him as one of the league’s most underappreciated players.

Of course, Conley’s selection means that other arguably worthwhile players were once again overlooked, and if we are to read into a certain cryptic but well-timed tweet, it appears DeMar DeRozan isn’t too happy that the league didn’t peg him as Booker’s injury replacement.

Gets to a point where you just gotta laugh at the bullshit!!

— DeMar DeRozan (@DeMar_DeRozan) March 6, 2021

Now, to be fair, he could be referring to anything. There’s a lot going on in the world. But again, the timing is convenient, and if you were to look at a side-by-side comparison, DeRozan has the edge over Conley in several key statistical categories. Conley, however, has other factors working in his favor.

He’s been instrumental to a Jazz team that currently holds the best record in the NBA, while the Spurs are clinging to the No. 7 seed, with just two games separating them from the 10th place Grizzlies. What’s more, the conversation around of late Conley has centered on how he’s been perpetually overlooked as an All-Star throughout his career.

After all, there are only so many slots available each year, and it’s inevitable that a whole slew of players will feel slighted. Conley should enjoy this honor, regardless of how it came about or who disagrees with it.

Lil Nas X has come a long way since uploading his first song to SoundCloud in 2018. The musician has gone on to break chart records, become a best-selling author, and have the most-certified song in music history. Now, Lil Nas X can check another major milestone off his list.

At just 21 years old, Lil Nas X is officially a first-time homeowner. The rapper recently closed a deal on the first house he purchased with his own money, and to celebrate, Lil Nas X shared some photos in his new crib. “bought my first house today,” he wrote on social media alongside selfies with his house keys, inside his kitchen, and beside a massive hot tub.

While he bought this house off the market, Lil Nas X informed a follower that he plans on designing a future house himself. “this the first one! the next one i’ll create myself,” he wrote.

Buying a house is a huge accomplishment for Lil Nas X, as he wasn’t able to move into his own apartment until 2019. The rapper discussed a handful of his memorable life moments in a series of recent TikTok videos, where he got real about depression and family issues during his rise to fame. The rapper revealed that his mother has been in-and-out of rehab while battling addiction and, at one point, he was forced to move in with his abusive brother. But despite his personal struggles, the rapper still managed to become a Grammy-winning artist and continues his successful career.

Check out photos of Lil Nas X in his first house above.

It’s no secret that Blackpink, along with several other international artists, took pop’s center stage in 2020. The K-pop supergroup were able to collaborate with big-name artists like Cardi B and Selena Gomez, grace late-night US television with show-stopping performances, and even star in their own Netflix documentary. Keeping up their successful momentum, Blackpink have partnered with Adidas to star in a brand new ad campaign.

Blackpink flaunted their best poses in a commercial for Adidas’ “Watch Us Move” activewear campaign. The video sees each member of the K-pop group wearing a different sporty look, from a floral windbreaker to a sleek two-toned denim set. The collection is meant to coincide with International Women’s Day, where Adidas aims to celebrate all the strides that Blackpink have made in the music industry.

Ahead of the campaign’s rollout, Blackpink joined together for a clever and unique livestream titled “The Show.” The event was high-budget and cinematic, with the four singers leaning on a legion of dancers and multiple costume changes to perform several of their songs for the first time ever.

Watch the Adidas “Watch Us Move” video above.

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

The NBA All-Star Game is what all players aspire to. It’s a childhood dream. Aside from making First Team All-NBA or being named MVP, it’s the pinnacle of individual accolades. It’s also a rather exclusive club. There are only 13 spots in each conference each season, and deserving players are often left by the wayside.

That’s been the case for veteran point guard Mike Conley for most of his career. During the heyday of the Grit-n-Grind Grizzlies, Conley certain had seasons worthy of real consideration but was always a casualty of the loaded field of backcourt players in the Western Conference.

Now, it appears Conley will have finally get his due, as the league announced on Friday that, pending a health evaluation, Conley will become a first-time All-Star this weekend in Atlanta.

BREAKING: Mike Conley pending medical protocol is invited to the all-star game, league sources tell The Athletic

— Tony Jones (@Tjonesonthenba) March 6, 2021

Can confirm that Utah Jazz guard Mike Conley will be a participant in this Sunday’s NBA All-Star Game, as first reported by @Tjonesonthenba of The Athletic. It is not immediately known if he is an injury replacement, or simply a league invitee. More to come.

— Eric Walden (@tribjazz) March 6, 2021

Shams Charania of The Athletic offered a few more details on the situation, clarifying that Conley will replace Devin Booker, who is suffering from a knee sprain, and will also take his place in the three-point contest.

Phoenix’s Devin Booker has been replaced by Utah’s Mike Conley Jr. in the 2021 NBA All-Star Game on Sunday. Conley will also participate in the 3-point contest.

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) March 6, 2021

Conley will join Jazz teammates Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert when the NBA’s annual midseason showcase kicks off on Sunday. The news is a nice change of pace for the Jazz after a relatively rough week. They dropped an overtime thriller to the Sixers on Wednesday, after which both Mitchell and Gobert expressed their frustrations about the officiating and were subsequently fined by the league.

For Conley, it’s the culmination of an understated but stellar NBA career that now sees him playing a pivotal role on the NBA’s No. 1 team.

Chinese censorship of movies has been a sensitive issue in a world where studios are looking for revenue outside of largely-shuttered American theaters. Monster Hunter, for example, was quickly pulled from theaters in late 2020 after an insensitive joke about being Chinese. But comments made by those involved with movies can also see consequences, which seems to be the case with Nomadland director Chloe Zhao.

Variety reported on Friday that mentions of the film were “quietly swept from the Chinese web” after controversy erupted over an interview the director gave in 2013. According to Variety, questions brought up online about Zhao’s citizenship came in the wake of the director becoming the first woman of Asian descent to win a Golden Globe for best director.

Zhao had apparently received praise from state-run media, and Nomadland was given an April release in China. But some in the country in recent days have wondered about her nationality and focused on a sentence from a quote she gave to a magazine in 2013.

Their fire was further stoked by an interview Zhao, who was born in Beijing, gave to Filmmaker Magazine in 2013. In it, she explained that she was drawn to her early subjects about the American heartland because of her upbringing in China, and “being in a place where there are lies everywhere.” The magazine deleted the section in mid-February, days before the “Nomadland” China release date was announced. The publication has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

In the wake of that quote, many in China noted that Nomadland-related content on Chinese websites began to disappear online, and even some noted promotional posters vanishing. The Variety story details various sites where mentions of both Zhao and Nomadland were popular and since disappeared, leaving some interesting complications with what’s been called spotty censorship.

Searches for the hashtags “#Nomadland” and “#Nomadland Release Date” currently yield the message that “The topic’s page cannot be shown due to related laws, regulations and policies.”

The censors’ selection appears spotty, however — hashtags such as “#Nomadland Movie,” “#Chloe Zhao,” and “Chloe Zhao Wins Golden Globe for Best Director” are still available, the latter of which has been viewed some 350 million times.

Not only does all this lead to questions about whether Nomadland will see a Chinese release this spring, but whether Zhao’s future films there will be in doubt as well. The biggest of those, Marvel’s The Eternals, is currently scheduled for a November release and China would be a huge market for the comic movie seeing a release while, even with vaccines, the pandemic is still expected to impact the American market.

China has reversed decisions like these in the past, especially given how big a film the MCU title is expected to be. But it’s certainly an interesting situation that highlights just how different the political climate is in various places around the world, and how tenuous doing business in China can be for the movie industry.

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, a number of Republican-led bills are fast-tracking through state legislatures throughout the country in an attempt to restrict voting rights. A new campaign from More Than A Vote, the organization spearheaded LeBron James and a number of other Black athletes and artists that looks to expand voting in the United States, wants to make clear that they’ll fight these efforts at every turn.

The organization will use the 2021 NBA All-Star Weekend in Georgia, one of the states where the GOP is pushing bills to clamp down on voting rights, as an opportunity to debut its new campaign, Protect Our Power. James will play a major role in raising awareness for this by narrating an ad which stresses that More Than A Vote’s work was “never about one election.”

“It’s always been More Than A Vote,” James said in the ad. “It’s a fight that’s just getting started. And we’ve been ready. You with us?”

“What we see right now in Georgia is a concerted effort to make it harder for Black people to vote, period,” Addisu Demissie, the organization’s executive director, told USA Today. “Everything from making it illegal to take people food and drink in lines – and we know those lines end up in Black communities more than other communities – to eliminating (early) Sunday voting, which is about as an egregious an attempt to stop Black people from voting because of our souls-to-the-polls tradition in our community.”

Georgia was one of the states in the 2020 election that helped put Democratic president Joe Biden over the top in a tight race against now-former Republican president Donald Trump. In an attempt to undermine the election, the latter spewed a myriad of conspiracy theories and false information, with a special emphasis on Georgia, a state that had not voted for a Democrat since Bill Clinton in 1992. Trump famously called Georgia’s Secretary of State and tried to persuade him to “find” the number of votes to make up his deficit to Biden, for which he is now under investigation.

While these various efforts didn’t work in that election — nor in the election for two Senate seats in January that both went for the Democrats — Georgia’s Republican-led legislature has taken steps to restrict voting rights in the aftermath, with its House passing a bill earlier this week to restrict early and absentee voting.

“Black and brown voters changed the game in 2020, so in response, lawmakers are trying to change the rules in 2021,” new Atlanta Dream owner Renee Montgomery told CNN. “We know that as athletes and as leaders we have to keep our foot on the gas to protect our power, preserve and expand our voting rights, and to continue turning moments into momentum. More Than a Vote is just getting started.”

A longtime Stephen Spielberg pet project is finally coming to screen thanks to a lot of people who made Stranger Things. That project is a TV adaptation of “The Talisman,” a horror book from Stephen King and Peter Straub that Spielberg apparently loved so much he secured the screen rights to the project two years before it was actually published.

According to reports, however, that nearly four-decade project is finally happening. The Hollywood Reporter shared on Friday that Curtis Gwinn, who was an executive producer and writer on Stranger Things, will serve as showrunner and write a TV adaptation of “The Talisman” as a Netflix project.

The Duffer Brothers, whose own Stranger Things owes more than a few debts to King’s work, will executive produce a series adapting the book, that will be produced by Netflix in association with Spielberg’s Amblin Television and Paramount Television Studios.

As the report outlines, there are some parallels to Stranger Things in some ways, starting with the protagonist being a young boy who stumbles into some very… strange things.

Talisman tells of a 12-year old boy named Jack Sawyer who sets off on an epic road-trip quest in order to save his dying mother’s life. He is in search of the Talisman, a powerful relic that can not only heal his mother but, as he learns, save the world. Sawyer’s journey criss-crosses two realities: the America we know and its dangerous, fantasy-world twin, The Territories.

The book was an instant best-seller when it hit stories in 1984 and King and Straub reunited for a sequel in 2001. On the adaptation front, the most recent developments occurred in 2019 when Mike Barker, who directed several episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, was involved in what was then being envisioned as a feature.

With two books to mine for content it seems the group has a lot to work with here. And after decades of waiting, there’s been plenty of time for Spielberg and Co. to figure out what they want to do with it all.

[via THR]

At their cores, Stephen A. Smith and Guy Fieri have the same job. Sure, one is paid lots of money to be a television personality who opens culinary doors to millions of people while the other is paid lots of money to be on television 17 hours a day and someone fire off sports takes in every single one of them, but peel back the layers of the two and both are entertainers.

They go about this in different ways, sure, but Fieri and Smith want to keep schmucks like me entertained. These two ended up crossing paths on Friday in an attempt to entertain us, and by god, did they. Fieri appeared on the ESPN+ program Stephen A’s World to discuss the Guy’s Grocery Games Tournament of Champions, which airs on Food Network this weekend, and a handful of other things.

A lot of stuff happened (Fieri invited him over for dinner!), watch the whole thing, all that, but the highlight of the interview came when Stephen A. got a chicken sandwich from Fieri’s restaurant, Chicken Guy, that admittedly looks extremely good. Anyway, enjoy:

The number of times Stephen A. says he is going to take a bite before taking a bite is, for my money, the best part of this entire video, with “Guy Fieri appeared to take a picture of the computer or tablet through which he was watching this” a very close second. It is my sincere hope that ESPN and the Food Network watch this and come together and realize that we, the viewing public, need a television show in which Guy Fieri and Stephen A. Smith do stuff together. They could eat food or talk about basketball or, like, go to a pottery class or something, I do not care. Much like a very good poker hand, these are two kings.

Fans have been pressing SZA about the status of her sophomore album ever since the singer’s debut record Ctrl took off in 2017. SZA has said that her next LP is “on the way,” but to appease fans, the singer returned Friday to share a vibrant video alongside her 2020 single “Good Days.”

Directed by SZA herself, the “Good Days” visual depicts SZA drifting off in a daydream and transporting herself to two of her happy places. She appears in a whimsical garden, surrounded by moss and life-sized mushrooms, where she lets go of her inhibitions through meditation and dance. Her second happy place is a fully stocked library, where she combs through books while pole dancing.

Ahead of the visual’s release, SZA addressed how a snippet of her upcoming song went viral on TikTok. Because the song is unreleased, fans have decided to name it “Shirt,” but SZA isn’t so sure about that title. “‘Shirt’ is super easy to remember and now every time I work on it in the studio I reference it as ‘Shirt,’” she said in a recent interview with CBS This Morning. “Some people call it ‘Blood Stain,’ which is very graphic. Now this song, which I wasn’t even 100 percent sure of the placement on my album has centered itself on my album. Now we shot a video for it.”

Watch SZA’s “Good Days” video above.