Month: May 2022

Back in 2013, a delightful musical set went down at Comic-Con, where George R.R. Martin smashed a guitar right in front of Neil Gaiman. That soon led to an onstage reiteration of what The Sandman author and “werefish” inventor declared in 2009 while defending Martin to a fan who felt that the Game of Thrones author simply took too long to write thousands of intricately layered pages of fiction. In the words of Gaiman, “George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.” He had followed up with this: “People are not machines. Writers and artists aren’t machines.”

Gaiman had stressed, back in the day, how “I keep trying to come up with a better way to put it” and “this may not be palatable” in terms of how he was describing the situation, and all of it is very funny. That leads to a similar situation happening this week, where Gaiman answered to a fan who inquired about the release date of Good Omens 2 (the series adaptation starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant) on Amazon. Neil answered with a tweet, obviously in written form, and with a tone that some people appear to have misinterpreted: “No. And if you ask again like that we may not release it at all.”

Defenders of artists can often be a bit, well, passionate. And as it turns out, Neil felt the need (after undoubtedly seeing some replies to the original fan’s tweet) to ask his followers to be kind. “I thought it was funny, and hoped my reply was funny,” he further explained. “WE WILL RELEASE GOOD OMENS 2, WHEN IT IS DONE. We only stopped shooting in March. There is much to be done.”

Not incidentally, George R.R. Martin recently trolled the heck out of his own fans over the (non-)arrival date of Winds of Winter, which he previously promised would arrive in July 2020. A year prior, he had even declared, “[Y]ou have here my formal written permission to imprison me in a small cabin on White Island, overlooking that lake of sulfuric acid, until I’m done.”

The lesson here? Not only are artists not robots, but they have wicked senses of humor. And if you’re really jonesing for Good Omens 2, rest assured (via Gaiman) that it will arrive. In the meantime, there’s plenty of other glorious, new, and funny TV to watch while you wait. (Fill up those queues, you won’t be sorry.)

J. Cole has added yet another bullet point to his “man of the people” resume. This past Wednesday the rapper was spotted at Rowan University in New Jersey, supporting his longtime fan Cierra Bosarge as she graduated from college. Naturally, several other graduates and attendees posted him all over social media.

Cole and Bosarge’s story dates back to 2013 when she called into a radio station requesting he wish her a happy birthday. He gave her a call months later and invited her to meet him in person, upon which she gave him a letter she wrote him detailing the hardships in her life, having two parents who were hooked on drugs and in and out of prison. Due to them being unable to attend her high school graduation, she asked the rapper if he would, to which Cole agreed only if she attended a four-year college. Cierra kept her promise and The Off-Season rapper kept his.

Even Ibrahim Hamad, Cole’s manager and a Dreamville co-founder, had to join in on the celebration, quote-tweeting her with his own congratulatory message. Cole has long spoken about the importance of education, as he attended St. Johns University in New York himself before taking off as an artist. Though going further into academia wasn’t his destined path, he continues to emphasize it to the world.

Kanye West has of course had a longstanding interest in fashion, which he has used to help define Kim Kardashian’s style. In fact, on a new episode of The Kardashians, Kardashian says in November 2021, she started dressing herself for the first time in a decade. She chose her own outfit for a 2021 event, which did not get positive feedback from Ye.

As Yahoo! reports, on the episode, Kardashian spoke about how she was “so nervous” to pick her look for WSJ Magazine‘s 2021 Innovator Awards but went with a faux leather look from her Skims x Fendi collection.

Kardashian said, “[Kanye] called me afterwards. He told me my career’s over and then he showed me a picture of Marge Simpson wearing something similar.”

While we don’t know what specific The Simpsons image West sent to Kardashian, one Twitter user shared what looks like a good candidate:

Kardashian also noted, “I got to a point where I would ask [Kanye] for advice for everything down to what I wear. Even now I’m having panic attacks, like, what do I wear?”

She also said elsewhere in the episode, “That’s his love language, is clothes. I always just trusted in him, but it’s not just about clothes. That was, like, the last thing we had really in common. I’m trying to figure out, like, who am I in the fashion world? Who am I by myself? I was always, like, The Kardashians with my sisters and then I was, like, Kimye. Like, who is Kim K? That is the jump. How do I get there without Kanye?”

Before we get into Top Gun: Maverick, I will dispel any mystery about my feelings toward this movie by saying I didn’t just like Top Gun: Maverick, but it’s now just one of my favorite movies. (TO the point I spent money on a poster. I never do that for new movies.) Not “of the year,” but ever. It’s literally one of the best theatrical experiences I’ve ever had. Put it this way: I saw Top Gun: Maverick at a press screening in a large theater with about 15 other people where everyone was pretty spread out because there was so much extra space. These are usually quiet affairs, no matter the movie. (Press screenings can get animated if they are crowded. When it’s just a few people, they are not.) I honestly can’t recall another instance, under these conditions, where people at this type of screening were applauding and cheering. But that’s what happened. This movie is infectious. It’s the definition of a crowd-pleaser. Honestly, Top Gun: Maverick kicked my ass. What a movie.

Is the original Top Gun good? Look, I was 12 years old when that movie came out and it’s ingrained into my being. I, personally, think it’s awesome. Tony Scott created a vibe with that movie that is inherently its own thing. Criticisms of Top Gun aren’t necessarily wrong, they just don’t really matter. Top Gun is Top Gun. There’s really no other movie quite like it and there really couldn’t be. Top Gun kind of exists in a bubble that made Tom Cruise into a huge star and it became the biggest movie of 1986. Top Gun isn’t just part of popular culture, it is popular culture. (Strangely, Crocodile Dundee was second. 1986 was kind of a weird year.) Having said all that, if Top Gun: Maverick relied mostly on imagery – where the first movie thrived in the 1980s – it would be laughable today. Tom Cruise isn’t a cool young kid anymore. Top Gun: Maverick knows that and is a better movie than Top Gun.

When the film opens, Pete Mitchell, call sign Maverick (Cruise), now (only) a Captain, is a Navy test pilot assigned to a remote outpost where his job is to fly planes as fast as they can go. When an international crisis emerges (it’s unclear who the offending country is supposed to be, only referred to as “the enemy”), an old friend of Maverick’s (and ours) requests him personally to train a new group of hotshot pilots who will carry out a strike against this enemy. That’s right, Maverick … is going back to Top Gun. (Over the course of the film Maverick is introduced to other winners of Top Gun and Maverick is quick to point out that he finished second.)

When Maverick gets to San Diego, there are a few problems. One is the presence of an old flame named Penny (Jennifer Connelly) who owns the local watering hole where the pilots hang out. The other is one of Maverick’s trainees is Bradley Bradshow (Miles Teller), call sign Rooster, the son of Maverick’s old buddy Goose. (Teller is surprisingly good, in that I never could picture him as the son of Goose, but he pulls it off.) Rooster does not like Maverick for the obvious reasons, but it goes deeper than that in that Maverick made sure Rooster was initially denied from the Navel Academy as a favor to Goose’s widow (Meg Ryan in the original movie, the character does not appear in this sequel) in an effort to stop him from suffering the same fate. Another pilot, the best in the class (just ask him), Hangman (Glen Powell), quickly figures out the relationship between Maverick and Rooster and points out that, you know, maybe this is a problem? (By the way, Powell plays the cocky Hangman perfectly, with shades of Val Kilmer’s Iceman in that, yeah, he can be a jerk, but he’s also not wrong. This will be a big movie for Glen Powell.) Oh, also, Maverick’s new boss, Cyclone (Jon Hamm) hates him. And makes it clear that if Maverick didn’t have friends high up the ladder, he wouldn’t be at Top Gun again. These two butt heads.

My goodness there’s something to be said about a simple plot. Almost every “blockbuster” movie today is convoluted. There are so many people involved, so many opinions from so many parties, it feels like a lot of movies just throw the kitchen sink of plot details at an audience hoping something sticks. Top Gun: Maverick is the opposite. It truly feels like the brain trust of Cruise, director Joseph Kosinski, and co-writer Christopher McQuarrie kept it between themselves how this movie would operate. (Having Cruise’s influence in that regard certainly helps.) But the plot of Top Gun: Maverick is literally: Here’s the mission, now we will spend the whole movie training for the mission, then at the end we will do the mission. The team train for this mission so many times, with so many unbelievable aerial stunts, by the end there is absolutely no confusion what the final mission entails. At no time will you be thinking, wait, what’s going on? And it all just looks so sharp. There are no moments when I was thinking this looks like a CGI cartoon, like so many “blockbuster” movies do today. It all looks so real my stomach was in knots the whole time. Again, this is how it’s done.

Also, it’s hard not to notice that the third act of Top Gun: Maverick has a lot to owe the original Star Wars. The team is basically trying to blow up a Death Star (the base they are attacking is underground, between two mountains, and it involves a trench run and hitting a small target on the base that will start a chain reaction. If I’m not making myself clear, I am very much in favor of all this. There are more comparisons, but we would be getting into spoilers. It would be like if Star Wars were about Red Leader and the whole movie was about all the X-Wing pilots training for the attack on the Death Star. That’s basically the plot of Top Gun: Maverick. And you know what, it’s awesome.

It’s been 36 years since Top Gun. Top Gun: Maverick feels like a movie that is looking back on its younger self, noticing how brash and cocky it is. There’s some regret in those eyes about some of the choices made. But, also, yeah, that movie was also pretty cool. What if we take what we know now, and use that reflection on the past to make something even better? But, also, keep a good helping of all that cool? That’s Top Gun: Maverick. A movie that totally didn’t need to exist, but my goodness I’m glad it does. This is how “blockbuster” movies should be done.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

The low point of Game of Thrones is generally considered to be not the series finale, but “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken,” the season five episode where Ramsay rapes Sansa after she’s forced to marry him. As Joanna Robinson wrote for Vanity Fair, “I’d never advocate that Game of Thrones (or any work of fiction) shy away from edgy plots out of fear of pushback or controversy. But edgy plots should always accomplish something above pure titillation or shock value and what, exactly, was accomplished here?”

At the time, Sophie Turner, who played Sansa, described the scene as “super, super traumatic” and while she “love[d] doing those scenes,” it was “just really kind of horrible for everyone to be on set and watch.” Sansa’s trauma stayed with Turner, who told Jessica Chastain in a conversation for The Cut that she “developed a coping mechanism of just having the most fun in between takes, so I wouldn’t get traumatized.”

She continued:

“I’m sure I’ll exhibit some symptoms of trauma down the road. At that age, I don’t think I could comprehend a lot of the scene matter. And the first few years, I had my mom with me because she was chaperoning me, so she would be very helpful and give me snacks. I don’t know what it is, but I feel like a 10-year-old in a school play again when someone that I know comes and sees me on set. I feel so embarrassed.”

Turner went from playing arguably the most abused Game of Thrones character to the least-liked X-Men movie to an HBO Max series about a husband who’s accused of murdering his wife. Someone cast her in a buddy comedy with Channing Tatum, stat.

(Via The Cut)

There are so many things that can happen at a concert, but one fan’s don’t typically expect to see is a new life being ushered into the world. That’s precisely what happened last weekend, though, when Metallica played at Estádio Couto Pereira in Curitiba, Brazil on May 7. Joice M. Figueiró, who was 39 weeks pregnant at the time, gave birth at the venue’s outpatient clinic as the band performed, appropriately enough, “Enter Sandman.”

In an Instagram post about the news, Figueiró wrote (translated to English), “At every show I go to, something has to happen, but this time I think I’ve outdone myself. I bought this ticket three years ago and I never imagined something like this would happen.”

Now, the band has caught wind of the news, so James Hetfield took some time to call Figueiró and congratulate her on the new bundle of joy.

On her Instagram Story on Tuesday (May 10), Figueiró shared a brief video of her phone call with Hetfield, who starts, “This is James from Metallica. Congratulations, you guys.” An excited Figueiró responds, “Oh my God. Hi. I cry.” Figueiró noted the call lasted for seven minutes.

In honor of the new baby, check out the Rockabye Baby! lullaby rendition of “Enter Sandman” below.

The Golden State Warriors entered Game 5 feeling frisky after a fourth quarter comeback on Monday night to put them one game away from the Western Conference Finals, so much so that Stephen Curry couldn’t help but add another log to the fire in this series by saying their gameplan for Wednesday night in Memphis was to “Whoop That Trick.”

As Shaq said on the halftime show, the trick fought back as the Ja Morant-less Memphis Grizzlies pummeled the Warriors in one of the biggest playoff blowouts in history, leading by 52 after three quarters and cruising to a 134-95 win. Memphis jumped in front early, and then the Warriors made their expected run to close the gap to one possession, but in the closing minutes of the quarter, that three-point edge ballooned to 10 as the Grizzlies got hot from three.

The floodgates opened in the second quarter, as Memphis kept piling on, as Adams continued his interior dominance and the rest of the Grizzlies continued to pour in bucket after bucket, outworking and outplaying the Warriors on both ends of the floor.

Their 77 points in a half were the most in Grizzlies playoff history, and if the Warriors were going to have any chance to come back from down 27, we’d know it by the mid-third quarter. There was no rally in Golden State, who looked like a team ready to fly home to San Francisco, coming out of halftime with the same lackluster energy and effort, while Memphis was happy to exorcise some demons. The Grizzlies continued to pour it on, with Jaren Jackson Jr. offering the exclamation point with back-to-back deep threes as Memphis opened up a 52-point lead through three quarters.

That tied some NBA history, as the biggest lead through three quarters since 1970 in the playoffs, and, naturally, the fans serenaded the Warriors bench with “Whoop That Trick” at every possible moment down the stretch.

The final 15 minutes of the game were a glorified Summer League run, as both teams emptied the benches in the third quarter, with neither team playing a starter more than 25 minutes. Jaren Jackson Jr., Desmond Bane, and Tyus Jones all finished with 21 points, while four other Grizzlies hit double figures on the night. Klay Thompson, meanwhile, was the high point man for the Warriors with 19.

It was one of the most jarring playoff performances we’ve seen in the modern NBA, as a team up 3-1 got run off of the floor after talking some cash sh*t mere hours before. From an objective (or Memphis) viewpoint, it was a pretty hilarious game, and even Warriors-inclined observers could mostly just laugh at the performance given all the noise leading up to it. Now the series shifts back to the Chase Center for a Game 6 where the Warriors will feel confident given how well they’ve played at home this postseason, but Memphis certainly won’t back down from the challenge now brimming with confidence themselves.

Dan Crenshaw may be many things, among them a Republican lawmaker who’s not above snapping at a young girl for directly quoting his sometimes appalling rhetoric. But the Texas representative does clear one incredibly low bar: He’s no fan of MAGA extremist colleagues like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz. Late last year, he straight-up called them “grifters,” prompting some inter-party squabbling. And when she tried to pick one of her hysterical fights with him on Wednesday, he cooly brushed her off with a simple retort.

Greene, of course, is one of a faction of today’s GOP, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who have taken the incredible position of siding with Russia in their invasion of their neighboring nation. While trying to slam Joe Biden on the southern border, he wound up doing what one never does: He responded to a Twitter troll with a low follower count. The person called Crenshaw out on voting for a $40 billion bill to aid Ukraine.

“Yeah, because investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea,” Crenshaw told the rando. “You should feel the same.”

Greene then quote-tweeted Crenshaw’s response, claiming the U.S. was “funding a proxy war with Russia” and suggesting that Ukraine lives “should be thrown away, as if they have no value.”

But Crenshaw decided to call her out on spouting some of the same lines spread by Russian propaganda, writing, simply, “Still going after that slot on Russia Today huh?”

Greene later responded, doubling down on the “proxy war” line and claiming that sanctions on Russia are only succeeding in driving up fuel prices and raising inflation.

A fair amount of Democrats would side with some of what Crenshaw said, though certainly not all. That said, if this ain’t a “let them fight” moment, what is?

(Via The Hill)

The Boston Celtics will want a lot of plays back in the fourth quarter of their Game 5 loss in which they scored just 21 points as the Bucks stormed back from nine down coming into the final period to steal a 110-107 win and take a 3-2 series lead back to Milwaukee.

While there will be plenty of things for Boston to clean up in the film room from their fourth quarter offense, it’s their final two plays that stick out the most, in which Jrue Holiday flat out took the ball from Marcus Smart. The first came on an incredible baseline block after Pat Connaughton forced Smart to catch the ball going back to the baseline but almost gave him an open drive to the hoop down one, with Holiday rotating over and cleanly ripping the ball away as Smart went up.

That’s a play you just tip your cap to an incredible defensive effort, but the final play of the game will be the one that Celtics fans (and the team when they get to the film room tomorrow) will cringe watching back. As Smart catches the ball from Horford after making the inbounds pass, Jayson Tatum starts streaking up the far side of the court with no one covering him after Wesley Matthews got taken out by his own teammate in Bobby Portis and then falls again after getting tripped up by Connaughton. Tatum wave his hand wildly to call for the ball to try what would’ve been a fairly wide open three to tie — Giannis would’ve been late trying to close out from in the paint — and there’s no one Boston would’ve rather had taking that shot, but Smart fumbled his dribble and never got his head up in time to see Tatum and instead ran into the blitz from Holiday.

There’s obviously a ton of variables at play here, but it’s tough to see the guy you want to get that last shot streaking wide open and not be able to get him the ball. Smart’s first dribble got away from him, causing him to put his head down and scramble after it, which opened the door for Holiday to jump in for the steal (or a foul on the floor at worst) and ice the game. Boston would’ve needed to have Tatum make that shot and then still win an overtime period, but that was at least a path to victory and salvaging their melt earlier in the quarter.

By now, you’ve likely seen news stories about the baby formula shortage in the U.S. According to CBS News, the formula shortage has been coming for months, with supply chain issues, labor shortages, product recalls and inflation creating a perfect storm and hampering manufacturers’ ability to keep up with demand.

The shortage is causing intense stress for families that rely on formula as retailers resort to rationing purchases and customers find store shelves empty of major brands.

It’s genuinely a crisis. And unfortunately, some breastfeeding advocates are using the shortage to tout the benefits of breastfeeding: This isn’t a problem if you breastfeed! It’s “free!” It’s “readily available!” It’s nature’s perfect food! It’s “what God intended!” It’ll never be recalled!

Folks? Now is not the time or the place.

To be clear, I’m an enormous fan of breastfeeding. My mother is a retired lactation consultant and I was raised in La Leche League meetings. I breastfed my own three kids through toddlerhood and pumped breastmilk to feed my adopted nephew. I’ve written articles and made videos defending breastfeeding in public. I am enamored with the miraculous way our bodies can grow a whole person and also create food for that person. It’s amazing. Breastfeeding is awesome in my book.

But I also live in the real world. I know that breastfeeding doesn’t always work out for a huge variety of reasons, none of which I have the authority to judge. I know how most moms agonize over every decision they make and how easy it is to feel shamed for not doing what people tell you is “best.” I know that baby formula saves lives.

For years now, there’s been a slogan battle between “breast is best” and “fed is best,” when really neither statement is really accurate. The “breast is best” idea is a simple way of stating that breast milk is the most nutritionally beneficial food for most babies. That’s not a judgment; it’s the medical consensus. The “fed is best” idea is a simple way of stating that the most important thing is that a baby is fed. That’s not a dismissal; it’s reality. But neither statement encompasses the complex truth, which is that there’s a lot of bad information out there that makes informed decisions difficult and that there are millions of individual circumstances that can impact how a baby ultimately gets fed.

However, none of that matters when there’s a baby formula shortage. Babies that rely on formula need it. And they need it immediately. Period.

Now is not the time to advocate for breastfeeding, no matter how passionate you feel about it. Parents impacted by the formula shortage are already worried enough; adding to their stress with messaging that might induce guilt or shame is an entirely crappy thing to do at this moment. It’s like saying to someone who fell off a boat and is floundering in the water, “See, this is why people should learn to swim.” That’s not advocacy—it’s cruelty.

I know that some people will take any and all mention of breastfeeding as a slam on formula feeding, and I’m not of the mind that people should avoid talking about the benefits of breastfeeding in general. But there are times and places for advocacy and education and there are times and places where it’s not helpful at all. We’re in the latter time and place right now. This formula shortage might naturally push some new moms toward breastfeeding, but it’s not a situation that should be exploited to convince people to breastfeed.

If we want to be helpful, the best thing we can do at the moment is to offer advice and support that may actually help. Dr. Steven A. Abrams, MD, a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, suggests the following when a parent is in an urgent need situation. These are things we can help with:

• Talk with your pediatrician and ask if they are able to get you a can from the local formula representatives or one of the charities that has some. Your local WIC office may also be able to suggest places to look.

• Check smaller stores and drug stores, which may not be out of supply when the bigger stores are.

• If you can afford it, buy formula online until store shortages ease. Purchase from well-recognized distributors and pharmacies rather than individually sold or auction sites. Do not import formula from overseas, as imported formula is not FDA-reviewed.

• For most babies, it is OK to switch to any available formula, including store brands, unless your baby is on a specific extensively hydrolyzed or amino acid-based formula such as EleCare (no store brand exists). Ask your pediatrician about recommended specialty formula alternatives available for your baby.

• Check social media groups. There are groups dedicated to infant feeding and formula, and members may have ideas for where to find formula. Make sure to check any advice with your pediatrician.