Month: April 2021

Paul Pierce is, for now, out of a job. The Celtics legend and soon-to-be Hall of Famer found himself getting fired by ESPN after he went live on Instagram during a party with exotic dancers while smoking a blunt among other things. The two sides agreed to “part ways” for whatever that’s worth and in the aftermath of losing a seven-figure gig, Pierce has seemed surprisingly calm about the whole thing.

Pierce has insisted that he has big things coming his way, thanking all his “supporters and haters” for everything, and seeming like, if it wasn’t a planned exit from ESPN, it was at least a departure he wasn’t too upset about. Pierce once again reiterated his promise for a major announcement regarding his future soon, speaking with TMZ briefly on Saturday night.

“Stay tuned, that’s all I’m gonna say. Stay tuned, it could be coming as early as next week,” Pierce said. “Truth gonna bounce back like never before. That’s all you gotta know.”

There’s plenty of speculation on what this all could mean, but Pierce is, if nothing else, milking the attention he snagged from his IG Live that, while at the time only had a few hundred people on it, quickly garnered the eyeballs of millions. If nothing else, he’s put on a masterclass in posting through it.

Bowen Yang’s Weekend Update appearances have become a fixture of his two seasons on Saturday Night Live, and the show’s latest episode brought his best impression yet. Yang used the upcoming anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic to do a hilarious impression of the iceberg that caused the ship’s demise, turning the tables on the narrative that it bears responsibility for the disaster more than a century ago.

The concept alone is funny, and Yang’s execution here is flawless. He chides co-host Colin Jost for his line of questioning about the disaster, claiming several times that he was only here to be interviewed about his new album, entitled Music. Yang’s appearance — including a large headpiece made to look like the tip of an iceberg — drew laughs from the in-studio audience before he was even introduced on the show. And his sincere annoyance at being painted as the bad guy was palpable. Yang even made a pretty good point: the ship ran into him, not the other way around.

Still, Jost was pretty hostile toward the iceberg, asking a few pointed questions that Yang’s character certainly didn’t appreciate.

“What would you say, though, to the families of those who perished in the cold waters of the North Atlantic that night?” Jost asked.

“OK, no. These are not the questions that we discussed,” the Iceberg replied. “This is not very nice, Colin.”

Yang’s sincerity in executing the bit is really what sold it, and playing the victim in an incident that killed more than 1,500 people is certainly a cognitive dissonance we’ve seen a lot in modern times as well. There were also some pretty good questions asked by the iceberg, such as why no one blames the cold water for the deaths, not the iceberg that was minding its own business. Perhaps best of all: we got to hear a bit of that Iceberg’s first single as well.

Carey Mulligan’s stint hosting Saturday Night Live saw her try on a slew of accents and roles, but her monologue got a bit musical thanks to her also famous husband. The Promising Young Woman star took a turn hosting the NBC sketch comedy show during its latest episode, which saw her use the monologue to recap her time in quarantine before Marcus Mumford crashed the party.

“I spent the last year quarantining in the English countryside with my husband and my two small children,” Mulligan said. “Which is the beginning of most horror movies.”

Mulligan didn’t exactly complain, though she said without all those very serious roles to take on for work it did have an impact on her home life. She said, for example, that her bedtime stories for her children got much longer and darker.

“Lots of recently-divorced dragons and unicorns with secret pill habits,” she joked. “My kids would be like, ‘Mom, please it’s two in the morning. let us get some sleep.’”

She didn’t bring her kids to Studio 8H, claiming she left them at home with her husband, Marcus Mumford of Mumford and Sons. But it turns out he was actually in the studio after all, claiming he left the kids with “the sons” and wanted to make sure the show had a musical guest. His band, of course, has performed twice as the show’s musical guest in the past. Though Mulligan insisted that, yes, Kid Cudi would be here to put on a show, we still heard an acoustic guitar interrupt her with what sounded like the opening bars of the group’s most famous song, ‘Little Lion Man.’

“You’re being that guy who takes his acoustic guitar out at a party,” Mulligan said, scolding her husband but eventually letting him play a few chords while she finished the monologue.

DMX’s death has hurt a lot of people all throughout the entertainment world, with many taking to social media to show the late rapper love and send their condolences. His passing may hurt few more than his ex-wife Tashera Simmons, however, as it came just a day before her 50th birthday. The two got married in 1998 and filed for divorce in 2012. Together they had four children: Xavier, Tacoma, Praise Mary Ella, and Sean.

On Saturday, Simmons took to Instagram to honor DMX and celebrate her milestone birthday with a heartfelt message.

“Happy 50th birthday to me. With much prayer, pulling. Crying and a roller coaster of emotions,” she wrote. “I couldn’t bring myself to just celebrate and close the last 50yrs of my life with out celebrating the life of one of thee most important person in the world to me, my Ex-husband. I know today is my day. But I also understand that God is love. So When God allowed me to open up my eyes and granted me the gift of life, I realize more than ever, that was my true gift today. Glory be to God!!”

She added, “I am so grateful to God and Honored from the bottom of my heart, For the opportunity while on this Journey called life to join hands in marriage with a true disciple and Angel of God to do life with when we did. Everything we went through was necessary. It made me the women I am today. ”

You can check out the post above.

Just a few months removed from the release of his seventh solo album, Man On The Moon III: The Chosen, Kid Cudi brought his talents to the stage of Saturday Night Live. The rapper rocked out in a pair of performances of songs from that album, but it was his wardrobe for the night that got the attention of viewers the most.

Kicking off the night with “Tequila Shots,” Cudi stepped out to the mic wearing a T-shirt that featured actor, comedian, and former SNL cast member Chris Farley, who tragically passed away in 1997 from a overdose at just the age of 33 following a lengthy struggle with drug addiction. Later on in the night, Cudi returned, this time donning an Off-White white floral dress, one that was very similar to the one Kurt Cobain famously once wore. The Nirvana frontman also struggled with drug addiction before his tragic suicide in 1994. Cudi has expressed his love and appreciation for Cobain on a number of occasions. In a past interview with GQ, he said, “I try to use [Cobain] as my muse whenever I can.”

Cudi’s decision to honor Farley and Cobain could have been influenced by DMX’s recent passing. The Yonkers rapper died on Friday after a reported drug overdose that caused a heart attack and left him hospitalized for nearly a week.

You can watch the performances in the videos above.

As vaccines continue to roll out — there have been 115 million shots administered, meaning that 43 percent of the population over the age of 16 has received at least one shot — the pandemic-era box office continues to thaw. Last weekend saw the total box office for the entire weekend cross $50 million for the first time since March 2020, as Godzilla vs. Kong put up an impressive $48.5 million over its first five days.

Despite a precipitous 58-percent fall in its second weekend, Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong still has plenty enough muscle to generate around $13.3 million in its second weekend at around 3,084 theaters. With that, Warner Brothers’ film officially becomes the biggest film of the pandemic, earning around $69.5 million to date. That allows it to surpass Tenet ($58.5 million) Croods: New Age ($56.5 million), Wonder Woman 1984 ($46.2 million), and Tom & Jerry ($40.3 million) as the highest-grossing film of the pandemic, so far. Four of those five films are from Warner Brothers (Croods from Universal/DreamWorks Animation is the outlier).

The 58-percent second-week fall is not atypical. In fact, Godzilla: King of the Monsters experienced a 67-percent fall in its second weekend. What’s most impressive here, however, is that the $69 million earned by Godzilla Vs. Kong after two weekends is only around $8 million less than what Godzilla: King of the Monsters earned in two weekends during the summer in 2019 before the pandemic. Godzilla: King of the Monsters also didn’t have HBO Max airing the film for free to subscribers to cannibalize its box office.

What this means is that moviegoers were really excited about Godzilla vs. Kong itself, or they were really, really excited to return to movie theaters again, and Godzilla vs. Kong gave them the perfect excuse to do so. It’s unlikely that Godzilla vs. Kong will earn the $110 million that King of the Monsters took in domestically, but it might hit $100 million, which is incredibly impressive for a movie released during a pandemic that is also screening on our television sets.

What is just as impressive will be the fact that, by the end of the weekend, Godzilla vs. Kong will have earned nearly $300 million overseas (thanks in large part to China), and around $365 million worldwide, which again makes it the biggest American movie worldwide during the pandemic (surpassing the $305 million of Tenet). It even has a chance to surpass Bad Boys for Life ($428 million) for the biggest Hollywood movie of both 2020 and 2021.

The news wasn’t so great for the weekend’s one wide release, Neil Burger’s Voyagers, which illustrated the limits to which moviegoers would risk their health. The film received dismal reviews (25 percent on RT) and a bad Cinemascore (C), and ultimately could only muster only $1.3 million over the weekend, despite the presence of Colin Farrell and up-and-comers Tye Sheridan and Lily-Rose Depp. That was good for only fifth place. That’s not ideal for a $30 million film, but it can take solace in the fact that it didn’t cost $100 million like Chaos Walking, which opened with only $3.7 million and has only earned $12.5 million, so far.

In second place, Bob Odenkirk’s Nobody continues to do decent business, earning $2.6 million to bring its total to $15 million, the same as its budget. The film will be out digitally next weekend. Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s The Unholy scratched off $2.4 million in its second weekend. It’s up to $6.7 million, which is probably not much worse than it might do outside of the pandemic given the dismal reviews. Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon actually jumped 5 percent this weekend, earning $2.1 million and $35.2 million, so far. It’s also available for a $30 premium to Disney+ subscribers.

In spite of the resurgent box office, the studios so far are still reluctant to push up their release dates to take advantage. There are no new wide releases next weekend, so Godzilla vs. Kong will continue its reign. However, April 23rd will see the release of Mortal Kombat and, depending on America’s mood that weekend, we could see another big box office showing (for the pandemic).

Source: Deadline, Box Office Mojo

When Erik Kripke, the creator and original showrunner of Supernatural, began running The Boys on Amazon Prime, it was only a matter of time before fans started speculating that he’d bring over some of his Supernatural pals. Jim Beaver has already made an appearance, and there has been endless speculation that Jeffrey Dean Morgan would appear in a future season of The Boys once he gets out from beneath commitments to The Walking Dead.

The big get for Kripke, however, was Jensen Ackles, whose Supernatural ended after 15 seasons last year. Kripke began teasing Ackles role as Soldier Boy in Season 3 less than a week after the Season 2 finale of The Boys.

Soldier Boy is the leader of Payback, another superhero group (and a parody of The Avengers). Soldier Boy himself is a parody of Captain America, and he’s one of the first superheroes (and was acquanted with Aya Cash’s Stormfront back in the day). We haven’t seen what Soldier Boy might look like in uniform, but Ackles did post a photo of himself on Instagram Stories while in quarantine ahead of portraying the character. Ackles looks almost unrecognizable.

It’s not clear if the beard will stick around for the shoot. In the comics, Soldier Boy is clean-shaven, although the character may begin his arc on the series in an entirely different state.

The Boys Season 3, by the way, has been shooting since January. If the third season debuts when the second season did (and there are no pandemic-related hangups), expect it to return to Amazon Prime sometime this fall.

Matt Gaetz continues to make news with his underage sex scandal and all the ways it’s clearly not his fault, and so SNL‘s Weekend Update continues to roast the Republican lawmaker to lead its weekly news segment. For the second straight week, co-host Colin Jost roasted Gaetz, this time about new allegations about Venmo payments and his continued insistence that he’s merely being “canceled” by the left.

“Well our favorite Florida congressman, Matt Gaetz, is back in the news, but this time it’s good,” Jost said. “I’m kidding, it’s still the sex stuff.”

Jost said that Gaetz looks like “all the dudes from American Pie combined” and riffed that his Venmo payments to an alleged sex trafficker, who then paid money to women, means that Gaetz is “the only congressman actually helping with student loans.”

Gaetz mentioned his speaking engagement where he said he “wasn’t going anywhere” and noted that it’s “a nice change to see women paying for an hour with Matt Gaetz.” He also made fun of Gaetz for counting on the support of politicians like Donald Trump, Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene who have supported him publicly in the last week, noting that’s not actually a good thing to many people.

“Does he think those are good character references?” Jost asked. “Who’s next on his list, the ghost of Jeffery Epstein?”

Another highlight of the segment was Michael Che addressing Will.I.Am’s high-tech facemask that’s gotten some buzz this week.

“Singer Will.I.Am announced that he’s developing a new face mask that will come with an air filter, bluetooth and noise-canceling earbuds. Or, hear me out, just get the vaccine man,” Che said. “I like Will.I.Am, but if you don’t make another hit soon you’re going to be Will.I.Was.”

Saturday Night Live already has one news program in its Weekend Update segment, but in its latest episode the show led off with a fictional news program set in Minnesota to cover an important ongoing trial that’s been national news. The sketch, called Minnesota Now, has four anchors debating the trial of Derek Chauvin, who is accused of killing George Floyd in an incident that sparked nationwide protest and a renewed call for civil rights justice in America.

Despite the sea change the Black Lives Matter protests have had in some areas in recent months, however, the premise of the sketch is that the Black members of the news program aren’t so sure Chauvin will see consequences for Floyd’s death.

“Let’s just say we’ve seen this movie before,” Ego Nwodim’s anchor says to a pair of white anchors played by Kate McKinnon and Alex Moffat. Kenan Thompson’s anchor character, sitting next to Nwodim, agrees. The back and forth is supportive, with everyone on set believing the evidence against Chauvin is convincing and the crime horrible. But the optimism from McKinnon and Moffat was not embraced by the Black anchors.

“She means well, she means well,” Thompson’s character said when McKinnon’s insisted things would be different this time.

Chris Redd’s weatherman character was brought in to break a tie, so to speak, but he wasn’t having it.

“Man, don’t put me in this mess,” he said. “I’m still in hot water for being in that Paul Pierce video.”

The “dialogue” did, indeed, get “heated,” but they got to other sad news that also drew some confusion: the death of Prince Phillip and DMX.

The sketch concluded with something they assumed everyone could agree on: the plight of Matt Gaetz and his growing sex scandal. But, unfortunately, there was at least one person willing to stick up for him there as well.

We live in a time when conservatives breathlessly espouse personal freedoms but come up curiously empty on personal responsibility for just about anything of consequence, and no politician seems to embody that more these days than Matt Gaetz. The Florida congressman is currently embroiled in a scandal that’s grown to include allegations of a relationship with a 17-year-old, drugs and curious financial payments to an accused sex trafficker and dogged the fervent Donald Trump ally in recent days.

But Gaetz has blamed basically everyone but himself for the scandal, refusing calls for him to resign and claiming that anyone who thinks he’s done something wrong is simply trying to “cancel” him. The fact that he’s being “canceled” for allegations of some serious, QAnon-level crimes doesn’t seem to matter here. On Saturday, following a “Save America” rally at a Trump property in Florida where he insisted he was “not going anywhere,” Gaetz doubled down on Twitter to accuse the “deep state” for wrongly targeting him for cancelation.

The “Deep State” is a term conservatives tend to deploy to describe shadowy forces apparently in the US government and corporations that work to control America, often at the expense of conservatives and Republican ideals. But the idea that Gaetz is simply “canceled” by woke liberals is fairly absurd given the seriousness of the investigation against him, let alone the idea that his public Venmo transactions and potentially ushering underage women across borders is somehow an act of the Deep State. Which is why his message didn’t exactly go over very well on Twitter.

The tweet sparked the phrase “DEEP STATE” to trend on Twitter on Saturday, and drew a number of points of clarification from people responding online. It was the Justice Department during the Trump administration, for example, that apparently opened the investigation into potential Gaetz wrongdoing. But none of that seems to matter when Gaetz can lump his case into the growing list of things such as Mr. Potato Head, Pepe Le Pew, and Dr. Seuss that MAGA folks insist are being wrongly canceled. But only one of those, mind you, has an open federal investigation against them that’s been made public knowledge.