Month: February 2022

The San Antonio Spurs entered the 2021-22 season making their first real shift towards rebuilding in 25 years, having traded LaMarcus Aldridge a year ago and then sending DeMar DeRozan to the Bulls in a sign-and-trade this summer. With DeRozan in particular gone, the Spurs were fully handing the keys to their offense over to their youngsters, with Dejounte Murray taking the reins as point guard to now run and execute the offense.

Murray has seen his usage rate jump from 23.4 percent last year to 26.6 percent this year, as he has become the catalyst for just about everything in San Antonio. He has rewarded the Spurs for placing that increased responsibility on his shoulders, by having the best season of his career, increasing his production without seeing his efficiency take a hit, and continuing to provide elite-level defense at the point of attack. Murray is averaging career-highs pretty much across the board, with 19.9 points, 9.3 assists, 7.0 rebounds, and 2.0 steals per game (the latter a league-leading number), and while there’s still room for improvement as a shooter (31.9 percent from three), he has answered just about every question about his ability to run the show offensively as a point guard.

Without DeRozan, the Spurs were in desperate need of a shot creator, someone who could both get others shots while also creating opportunities for themselves off the bounce. Murray has accepted that challenge on the young Spurs, and has taken a leap as a result. In terms of creating for himself, Murray is shooting the most unassisted shots of his career (80.3 percent of his twos and 28.4 percent of his threes are unassisted) and he’s actually been a better finisher at the rim (65.8 percent) than he ever has despite having to get those looks more on his own.

Where Murray has really shined though is as a facilitator, where he has taken a massive jump, setting the table for his teammates and being at the center of just about everything the Spurs offense does when he’s on the floor. Murray’s assist percentage has leaped from 25.9 percent a year ago to a staggering 41.1 percent this year, putting him in the upper echelon of creators in the NBA, with only Luka Doncic, Trae Young, Chris Paul, and Nikola Jokic ahead of him in that category, and he’s managed to become an elite facilitator without seeing a noticeable uptick in turnovers (10.2 percent last year to 11.1 percent this year).

All the while, Murray continues to be one of the league’s best perimeter defenders, boasting a rare combination of length and speed that presents a formidable problem for opposing guards. Murray isn’t a household name, as he’s new to a leading role and has been elevated to that on a team on the fringes of play-in contention, but he has more than garnered the respect of players and coaches around the league, who are swift to point out the problems he creates for them on both ends of the floor for a San Antonio team that lacks other elite-level talent.

The Spurs hoped this year would point them in a direction for the future as a franchise, one that has rarely been adrift but found itself seeking a new on-court captain for the first time in a long time this season. It didn’t take long for them to find that in Murray, who has eagerly seized the wheel in San Antonio and gives Spurs fans reason for optimism that their time outside the playoff picture may be short-lived as he takes the leap to being a bonafide star.

(Spoilers for Peaky Blinders will be found below.)

BBC One’s whiskey-soaked gangster saga, Peaky Blinders, is about to drop its sixth season, one that has been (like everything else in the world) delayed due to pandemic-production difficulties. The Cillian Murphy-starring show (which formerly also starred Tom Hardy) will pick up after a cliffhanger, which was one that left Tommy’s safety in jeopardy, but he apparently pulled through. What will come next as the ultraviolence continues, and is this the final season of the beloved series?

Yes, fans will have to get this particular brand of Cockney Rhyming slang elsewhere. The good news, however, is that the sixth season — although it is the last round — arrives very soon (so you can get your fix) on BBC One. That would be February 27, as announced by this mural that appeared in Birmingham, England, which is also the home base of the street gang known as Peaky Blinders.

Yes, Cillian Murphy is back as Tommy Shelby, and the clan is not faring too well as the story picks up. World War II is on the horizon (the outbreak of that war is where the show is scheduled to end), and there’s a lot to tie up in the final season, which (if it matches the previous patterns) will likely contain a half-dozen or so episodes. The good news, however, is that the show’s creator, Steven Knight, has revealed that a future movie will take the story beyond World War II.

Complicating matters here, sadly, would be the passing of Helen McCrory (who portrayed matriarch Polly) in 2021 following her battle with cancer. So certainly, there will be a void left by her absence as the gangster warfare takes a final lap (until movie time).

It’s already been two years since Tame Impala released The Slow Rush in February 2020, but Kevin Parker isn’t done with the LP yet. Today, he dropped The Slow Rush B-Sides & Remixes, an eight-track collection that features the previously unreleased “The Boat I Row,” which skews on the gentler and more hazy side of Tame Impala’s signature psychedelic sound.

Along with “The Boat I Row,” the collection also includes the previously released “No Choice,” “Patience,” an “NTS Version” of “One More Year,” and remixes by Lil Yachty (“Breathe Deeper”), Maurice Fulton (“Patience”), Four Tet (“Is It True”), and Blood Orange (“Borderline”).

Late last year, Tame Impala announced a slew of 2022 tour dates, which will be preceded by a couple festival appearances, at Innings Festival later this month and at Okeechobee in March. Then, he’ll spend the rest of the month playing a baker’s dozen shows before popping up again at Hangout Music Festival in May.

Meanwhile, he recently teamed up with Sepatu Compass for his own shoe collection, and The Wiggles are releasing their rendition of “Elephant” on an upcoming covers album that’s out next month.

Listen to “The Boat I Row” above.

The Slow Rush B-Sides And Remixes is out now via Modular Recordings. Get it here.

In typical James Corden fashion, he decided to celebrate the Super Bowl in a weird way. The Late Late Show host sent his parents to talk to celebrities on the red carpet, and of course the two ran into none other than ubiquitous couple Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox.

In the video, Fox shows off her new ring, which is intentionally painful because the bands are thorns, thanks to Kelly’s design. After Corden’s dad plays sax while Kelly strums a guitar in a surprisingly pleasant collaboration, the pairs recreate the photo that Kelly and Fox took with Travis Barker and Kourtney Kardashian making out in a bathroom before the Met Gala. You know the one.

Kelly most recently made news headlines with the NBA’s All-Star Weekend in Cleveland, Ohio where he took his selection to the celebrity game’s roster very seriously by hiring celebrity skills coach Chris Matthews to help him brush up on his jumper before the game. He also unveiled his bombastic collaboration with Willow, “Emo Girl,” and Barker appeared in the music video. His album Born With Horns is set to drop in March after being renamed from Mainstream Sellout.

Watch the video of James Corden’s parents meeting Kelly and Fox above.

It’s time to forgive LeBron James for Space Jam: A New Legacy. It’s still a bad movie, one of the worst of 2021, but as an act of repentance, he’s given us a better basketball movie. Hustle is produced by James and Adam Sandler, who plays a basketball scout who discovers a generational talent (Utah Jazz forward Juancho Hernangómez) with a rocky past. “I love this game, I live this game. There’s a thousand other guys waiting in the wings who are obsessed with this game,” Sandler tells the overseas player who he thinks could become an NBA super-star. “Obsession is going to beat talent every time. You got all the talent in the world, but are you obsessed?” This is how you win.

Hustle was “written originally that I find a player in China,” Sandler said on The Dan Patrick Show last year, but “somehow, Netflix is not in China. So they were like, ‘Would you guys please make it so we find someone in Latin America or Europe?’ So the next thing you know, I’m in Majorca [Spain].”

Here’s the official plot description:

After discovering a once-in-a-lifetime player with a rocky past abroad, a down on his luck basketball scout (Adam Sandler) takes it upon himself to bring the phenom to the States without his team’s approval. Against the odds, they have one final shot to prove they have what it takes to make it in the NBA.

Hustle — which also stars Queen Latifah, Ben Foster, and Robert Duvall, as well as real-life NBA players Anthony Edwards, Tobias Harris, Seth Curry, Matisse Thybulle, and Tyrese Maxey, among others — hits Netflix on June 10.

Ever since Disney+ dropped the first season of Marvel’s What If…, rumors have abound that Captain Carter would make her live-action debut as the MCU movies delve deeper into the multiverse. While the breakout character did not show up in Spider-Man: No Way Home, the evidence that she may appear in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is starting to stack up.

On Thursday morning, the Twitter account for Disney+ Plus Italy sent out an interesting tweet that not so subtly hints at Hayley Atwell‘s hero popping up in the Doctor Strange sequel. Via CBR:

A translation of the tweet reads, “It seems that shield has recently reappeared somewhere … doesn’t that sound like ‘Madness’ to you #CaptainCarter and all the episodes of #WhatIf are waiting for you on #DisneyPlus!”

As for where Captain Carter’s shield “recently reappeared,” eagle-eyed Marvel fans immediately noticed it in one of the shards of broken glass in the new Multiverse of Madness poster. (Those same fans also swore they saw Deadpool, but Ryan Reynolds is denying the character’s in the movie. For now.) The latest trailer for the Doctor Strange sequel also featured elements from the What If… series, so again, the odds of a Captain Carter appearance are looking pretty good right now.

As shown in the premiere episode of Marvel’s What If…, Captain Carter comes from an alternate universe where Peggy Carter takes the super soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers. She later becomes the leader of a Multiverse version of The Avengers that forms to stop Ultron from destroying every version of reality. Considering the trailers for the Doctor Strange sequel suggest that Stephen Strange is causing the Multiverse to unravel from his actions in Spider-Man: No Way Home, it would absolutely track for Captain Carter to show up and help set things right.

(Via CBR)

When the Wii U was discontinued, there was no fanfare or memorial for the end of Nintendo’s console. While it certainly has its defenders — I am one of them! — the console underperformed in comparison to all of its competitors. It only lasted five years before Nintendo had already moved on to the Nintendo Switch. The Switch has been the company’s highest-selling console ever so let’s just say that it was a smart move by Nintendo to move on from the Wii U. Eventually, due to age, the very popular 3DS would join the Wii U, but fans had much fonder memories for Nintendo’s final handheld-only console.

As consoles fade away, so do the services associated with them, and on Tuesday, Nintendo made a sudden gut-punching announcement: The Wii U and 3DS eShops were no longer going to allow purchases in March 2023. Players would only be able to re-download previously purchased titles and nothing else.

This is terrible news for anyone that is a fan of many of the digital-only games that were released to both the Wii and 3DS. Hundreds of games are going to no longer be available to players and some of them might not have any alternative at all. There are even a handful of physical games that are either incredibly difficult to find, or have expensive physical copies, and haven’t received a port. Say what you will about the Wii U or the age of the 3DS, but not letting anyone ever have access to that library of games is not good for anyone.

This is why we wanted to point everyone in a direction. While nobody can possibly buy every game that is available on the digital stores, we have a few games that we think most people will be interested in getting before they shut down for good.

Virtual Console, 3DS/Wii U

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way early. The biggest reason this news is terrible is that the Wii U virtual console, and in some ways the 3DS one, was the best source for Nintendo retro games out there. For all the faults of the Wii U, anyone that was a fan of previous Nintendo games could buy them on the console. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it had an expansive library of options that we haven’t seen anywhere else even come close to matching. It even had Turbo Grafx 16 games! Don’t know what that is? That’s okay, because the Wii U is there to let you experience it.

All of this is an even bigger bummer when we look at how Nintendo has chosen to handle retro games since the launch of the Switch. While it’s very cool that we get unlimited access to NES, SNES, N64, and SEGA Genesis games for a monthly subscription price, the library pales in comparison to that of the Wii U. We can’t even give the excuse of age, because the Switch will turn five in March and the Wii U virtual console options are still far deeper than the Switch ones. Even worse is that Nintendo made it abundantly clear in a now-deleted Q&A answer that it doesn’t feel it’s the responsibility of the company to maintain game preservation.

If anyone has a retro game that they want to make sure they own before it’s too late, and happen to own a Wii U, we strongly suggest exploring the expansive library of games on its virtual console.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, 3DS

The fifth mainline game in the Ace Attorney franchise, Dual Destinies took the franchise in a new direction. As an at-the-time 3DS exclusive, Dual Destinies made heavy use of the handheld’s capability of providing higher graphics and more power. It was the first mainline game in the series to feature voice acted cutscenes and it moved away from sprites to 3D animated models. It even made itself a great entry point for newcomers to the series with a fairly self-contained story.

Unfortunately, this game and its DLC were released as a digital-only title for the 3DS. There is no possible way to get this game for 3DS other than the eShop. Once the eShop has officially shut down, the only way to play it will be to purchase the game on mobile through your phone’s app store. This is a perfectly viable way of experiencing it, but not everyone wants to play a 25-to-30-hour game on their phone. If you’re one of those people and have always wanted to experience this series, then make sure to buy Dual Destinies before the deadline passes.

As an aside, all of this can be said for the sequel, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney − Spirit of Justice, which was also a 3DS only digital title that has since been released on phones.

Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move and Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars, 3DS and Wii U

The Mario vs. Donkey Kong franchise is a series of puzzle games primarily made for handhelds since 2004. It was a spiritual successor to the original arcade game Donkey Kong, and while it wasn’t the most popular franchise Nintendo made, it had enough support behind it to get six different games. Two of the final games, Minis on the Move and Tipping Stars, were digital-only releases unless you wanted to import a Japanese copy of Tipping Stars.

This is an example of the kinds of games that are going to disappear with no way to play them unless they’re eventually ported to the Nintendo Switch. This is a franchise that received enough support from Nintendo to get six different games, but soon, two of the, will not be accessible to anyone, and these aren’t just one off-budget titles. They’re Nintendo-published properties with Mario on the box.

Xenoblade Chronicles X, Wii U

Xenoblade Chronicles X is a spin-off of Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii. Unlike Xenoblade Chronicles 2, it isn’t an official sequel and the plots are essentially unrelated to one another. Since it was also released late in the Wii U’s lifespan, it is one of those forgotten titles for the console that only fans of the franchise really played. As a result, finding physical copies of the game these days can be extremely difficult and very expensive. It’s not impossible, but compared to other games currently exclusive to the Wii U like Star Fox Zero, it’s one of the least accessible games on the console.

That accessibility is going to become even more difficult when the eShop is shut down for good. The Switch currently has Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is on the way. The only odd game out? X, which currently hasn’t been ported and there hasn’t been any indication of a plan to do so yet. Fans of the franchise, or of gigantic JRPG worlds, might wanna pick this up before getting a copy of the game becomes even harder when the eShop closes.

Hillary Clinton has endured a lot more than defeat from Donald “Meat Breath” Trump. In addition to being the “her” in the “Lock her up!” chant that has become a staple of Trump’s rallies, the former president and his stooges (i.e. Rudy Giuliani and Don Jr.) have never missed a chance to hurl insults and conjecture that some might consider defamatory her way. And Hillary has had enough.

On Thursday, Clinton gave a speech at the New York State Democratic Convention which some people interpreted as the former secretary of state signaling that she might be ready to take legal action against the former president, as well as his cronies at Fox News. As Mediaite reports, Clinton directed attendees to not be “distracted… [by] some new right-wing lie on Fox or Facebook.” More specifically, she was referring to special counsel John Durham’s claims that Clinton and her team “spied” on Trump when he was both a presidential candidate and president of the United States. In response, Clinton told the crowd:

By the way, they’ve been coming after me again lately, in case you might have noticed. It’s funny. The more trouble Trump gets into, the wilder the charges and conspiracy theories about me seem to get. So now his accountants have fired him, and investigations drop closer to him, and right on cue, the noise machine gets turned up, doesn’t it?

Fox leads the charge with accusations against me, counting on their audience to fall for it again. And as an aside, they’re getting awfully close to actual malice in their attacks. But as I said, don’t get distracted. Don’t let the extremes of any or either side throw us off course. Focus on the solutions that matter to voters, not the slogans that only matter on Twitter.

As Mediaite notes, the phrase “actual malice” is what stood out to legal experts, as the Supreme Court uses the term in considering defamation suits, and defines it as a statement one makes “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”

Fox, of course, has run with the narrative, and published a controversial story with the headline “Clinton campaign paid to ‘infiltrate’ Trump Tower, White House servers to link Trump to Russia, Durham finds.” And Sean Hannity is basically daring Clinton to sue his employer. Careful what you wish for?

Could the next Hillary/Donald match-up be in a courtroom? Anything’s possible at this point.

(Via Mediaite)

On Thursday, a New York judge ruled that former-president Donald Trump and two of his kids, rant-prone Donald Jr. and photo op-genius Ivanka, must answer questions under oath about the Trump Organization’s allegedly shady business practices. “In his ruling, state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron gave the green light for the three to be deposed within the next three weeks,” NBC News reports. “He also ordered the former president to turn over documents and information that had been subpoenaed within two weeks and portrayed the Trumps’ claims of being selectively targeted as overblown.”

Jimmy Kimmel has a good idea of what will happen when Trump is under oath. “I bet Trump gets five seconds into that deposition before he shouts, ‘It was Eric!’” he joked during Thursday’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live. “The judge says the Trumps have 21 days to comply. Right now they’re looking for a Bible tiny enough for him to put his hand on to swear him in.”

Kimmel couldn’t resist taking another shot at Eric. “Eric Trump was not deposed for this round of questioning, and maybe it’s for the best, because no judge or even lawyer should be subjected to this.” Cue a supercut of Eric looking real sweaty on Fox News.

You can watch Kimmel’s monologue above.

It’s been about a month now since Gorillaz leader Damon Albarn sent shock waves through the music industry by declaring that Taylor Swift doesn’t write her own songs. Liam Gallagher, whose Oasis was a major rival to Albarn’s Blur in the ’90s, weighed in briefly, but now he’s spoken more about his thoughts on the situation.

In a new NME feature, Gallagher said:

“All them f*cking gorilla albums are co-writes aren’t they? I get it – Noel bangs on about it as well: ‘I’m more important than you because I write my f*cking songs’ As much as you’ve had a decent life and a mad life, sometimes it can be hard to pin down what you want to f*cking say and some people can bring it out of you a bit better.”

Gallagher added, “Well, he won’t be saying that again in a hurry, though, will he? Did he not get ran out of f*cking town by the Swifters? I think [Taylor’s] f*cking cool, man. She does write her songs and I’m sure she’s co-wrote with people.”

He also noted that while he hasn’t heard Swift’s recent folk-leaning albums Folklore and Evermore, he does “like that pop one, ‘Shake It Off’ — that’s a f*cking tune.”

As to Gallagher’s point about Albarn co-writing Gorillaz songs, two of the band’s most recent albums, 2017’s Humanz and 2020’s Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, are almost entirely collaborative tracks that have more than one credited writer. (Of note is the fact that Noel Gallagher co-wrote and sang on Humanz album closer “We Got The Power.”)

Check out the full feature here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.