Year: 2022

The Warriors have unsurprisingly struggled with Stephen Curry out with a shoulder injury, losing three of their last four games (including the game Curry got injured) and entered Wednesday night on the second night of a back-to-back in Brooklyn coming off of a 132-94 blowout loss to the Knicks.

They managed to do themselves one worse against the Kyrie-less Nets, as Brooklyn ran up 91 points on the Warriors in the first half, taking a 40-point lead into the break in the process. The 91 points is a Nets franchise record and the third highest scoring half in NBA history, and they did so behind a startlingly balanced attack.

As a team, Brooklyn was 35-of-49 shooting the ball (71.4 percent), hitting 13-of-19 from three (68.4 percent), and were 8-of-10 from the free throw line. Some of that was simply Kevin Durant being unguardable, as he has been for much of this season, serving as the catalyst for the Nets climb in the standings to fourth in the East after a dreadful start, winning 9 of their last 10.

However, it wasn’t just KD getting his, as Royce O’Neale (14 points) and Nic Claxton (10 points) joined him in double figures, and the other seven Nets that entered the game all scored at least five points, including Cam Thomas who only appeared in the game for three minutes. It was startlingly easy for the Nets to get a good look at the bucket, taking advantage of some horrendous transition effort from Golden State and an equally porous halfcourt defense.

Brooklyn never seemed more than one pass away from a good look at the basket in the first half, and took advantage of that with 26 first half assists. On the other side, the Warriors had just one player in double figures — 17 points off the bench from James Wiseman — as they got the doors blown off for the second straight night in New York City, which should be unacceptable for them no matter if Steph is there or not.

Earlier this holiday season, Phoebe Bridgers released “So Much Wine,” a poignant cover of The Handsome Family’s emotional Christmas ballad. Her peer Christian Lee Hutson unveiled a melancholy rendition of “Silent Night.” Now, Mac DeMarco is here to lift our spirits with a pleasant cover of “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas.”

The “Chamber Of Reflection” singer covered “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” last year and covers a different Christmas song every year as a part of his tradition. “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas” comes with an entertaining video of DeMarco riding on a motorcycle dressed in a large blow-up of Santa alongside Dan McNeill in a blow-up gingerbread man.

Earlier this year, DeMarco teamed up with Snail Mail for the unserious release “A Cuckhold’s Refrain – Peppermint Patty”: “I got the beef / You got the cheese / I’ll be the cuck / You be the tease,” Lindsey Jordan kicked off the song singing.

DeMarco also joined Domi & JD Beck on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon at the beginning of this month to perform the song “Two Shrimps.” He was featured on their debut album Not Tight, which was nominated for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album at the 2023 Grammys.

Watch the video for “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas” above.

After changing his mind on retirement in March and returning to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for his 22nd NFL season, Tom Brady hasn’t had many reasons to smile in 2022. The seven-time Super Bowl champion finalized a divorce from Gisele Bündchen, his wife of 13 years, in October. The Bucs have stumbled to a 6-8 record, and Brady uncharacteristically accounted for four turnovers in a 34-23 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday, December 18.

Who did Brady call to help him get in the holiday spirit? The same person I’d call if I could: Snoop Dogg.

Snoop appeared on the December 19 episode of Let’s Go, Brady’s SiriusXM podcast with fellow NFL great Larry Fitzgerald and sportscaster Jim Gray. He serenaded Brady and Gray, both beaming like children, with an original Christmas carol.

“These nuts roasting on an open fire / Jack Frost nipping at the night,” Snoop sang while lighting a blunt. “It’s time for Jim Grady and TB to get away / But before they do / Roasting on a blunt, on an open fire / Jack Frost nipping at the smoke / Oh, Jim, oh, Tom / What a time that we had / Happy holidays from the D.O. Double G.”

Elsewhere in the episode, Brady asked Snoop to name the time he was most stoned in his life. “With Willie f*cking Nelson,” the new Death Row Records boss said. “We was in Amsterdam on 4/20.”

Watch clips from their conversation below.

Justin Bieber and The Kid Laroi have become close friends since taking over the charts with their July 2021 collaboration “Stay,” and it appears Bieber’s Canadian interests are rubbing off on his Australian protégé.

Bieber’s Drew House, co-founded alongside Ryan Good in 2019, unveiled a limited-edition collection with the Toronto Maple Leafs in September 2021, which put Bieber “on cloud 9.” The NHL team donned the Drew House reversible jersey for a March game against the New Jersey Devils — a 3-2 win, to sweeten the moment — where pieces where available to purchase at the team store inside Scotiabank Arena.

And even though it was billed as limited edition, the collection is the gift that keeps on giving. Drew House and the Leafs shared photos of Laroi posing as a hockey player at the physical Drew House, located in California’s San Fernando Valley, for photos taken by Bieber on Wednesday, December 21.

Laroi is sporting the grey logo tee with gloves and a helmet in most of the photos, with one photo featuring the 19-year-old in his signature sunglasses and an all-denim fit.

Last month, Bieber surprised fans at a Drew House pop-up in Tokyo. The groundbreaking artist disguised as Theodore, Drew House’s teddy bear mascot, and was all smiles after revealing his identity. Bieber has generally seemed to be in good spirits since postponing his Justice World Tour until at least March 25, 2023 to “rest and get better” after suffering from Ramsay Hunt Syndrome in June.

Remember when Ana de Armas was in Yesterday, the movie set in a grim post-apocalypse where The Beatles never made it big? If you don’t, you have a good excuse: She wasn’t in it. She was, however, in the trailer, prompting fans of the Knives Out and then-future Blonde star to rush out to see it — only to find that, much like the Fab Four in the film, she’d been mysteriously removed. To most, that wouldn’t be that big a deal; the trailer suggested her role would be supporting at best. But some, who only rented the film to see her, were so appalled they sued the distributor for false advertising. Now the suit is moving forward, which lawyers argue may make the makers of trailers extra paranoid about what footage they use.

As per Variety, a federal judge ruled that the lawsuit, filed by two de Armas fans — one from California, the other from Maryland — could move forward after Universal sought to get it thrown out. Universal lawyers argued two main points: that a trailer is an “artistic, expressive work,” and therefore protected by the First Amendment; and that trailers have long used footage that didn’t ultimately wind up in the movie. The original Jurassic Park teaser, for instance, featured no footage that made the final cut.

Lawyers also argued that classifying trailers as “commercial speech” could open the door to all manner of litigations, especially if audiences felt the trailer oversold the movie. (Some viewers in 2011 got litigious over the ads for Drive, Nicolas Winding Refn’s brooding art film thriller with Ryan Gosling, which they said made it look like a Fast and the Furious entry.)

Alas, the federal judge rejected those arguments and the case can now head for courts.

If you’re looking for someone to blame for having the stones to cut Ana de Armas out of any movie, don’t blame the filmmakers or the studio. Blame test screening audiences. The actress was supposed to play a celebrity (possibly herself) who’s serenaded by our hero (Himesh Patel), who’s found himself to be one of the only people on the planet who remember that The Beatles existed. Those viewers hated that Patel’s character would fall for someone who wasn’t the main love interest (Lily James) — but evidently had no problem with him fobbing off Beatles songs as his own.

And now they’ve not only gotten de Armas cut from a movie, they’ve also made movie trailer makers’ jobs harder.

You can watch the offending Yesterday trailer below. Ana de Armas’ bit starts around the 1:53 mark.

(Via Variety)

There’s an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

There’s no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

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A team of researchers at UCI had been experimenting with nanowires for potential use in batteries, but found that over time the thin, fragile wires would break down and crack after too many charging cycles. A charge cycle is when a battery goes from completely full to completely empty and back to full again.

But one day, on a whim, Thai coated a set of gold nanowires in manganese dioxide and a Plexiglas-like electrolyte gel.

“She started to cycle these gel capacitors, and that’s when we got the surprise,” said Reginald Penner, chair of the university’s chemistry department. “She said, ‘this thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going.’ She came back a few days later and said ‘it’s been cycling for 30,000 cycles.’ That kept going on for a month.”

This discovery is mind-blowing because the average laptop battery lasts 300 to 500 charge cycles. The nanobattery developed at UCI made it though 200,000 cycles in three months. That would extend the life of the average laptop battery by about 400 years. The rest of the device would have probably gone kaput decades before the battery, but the implications for a battery that that lasts hundreds of years are pretty startling.

“The big picture is that there may be a very simple way to stabilize nanowires of the type that we studied,” Penner said. “If this turns out to be generally true, it would be a great advance for the community.” Not bad for just fooling around in the laboratory.

In the first weeks after the 2020 general election, it was the Wild West over at Fox News. They’d let anyone say anything, no matter how divorced it was from reality. Now they might have to pay for it. The news network is one of the places or figures being sued by Dominion Voting Systems, which was the center of some of the looniest conspiracy theories. Some of the network’s hosts have even been forced to admit they always knew that talk was bunk.

As per The New York Times, Fox News superstars like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity had been forced to sit down for depositions for the case. They did not go well. During a court hearing on Wednesday, before the case goes to jury trial in April, it was revealed that Hannity was asked if he bought the claims notorious Trump lawyer and Diet Dr. Pepper fanatic Sidney Powell had made about voter fraud, including on his own show.

“I didn’t believe it for a second,” Hannity replied under oath.

That’s not good news for Fox News. Defamation trials are tricky because prosecutors have to persuade juries that those accused of such were saying one thing while believing another. Hannity admitting he thought Powell was full of it is strong evidence that the network was doing just that.

Hannity wasn’t the only one to tell the truth about helping Fox News spread nonsense. A lawyer for Dominion revealed that many of the “highest-ranking Fox people have admitted under oath that they never believed the Dominion lies.” That includes not only Hannity but also Carlson, the latter who when asked what he really believes about the 2020 election “tried to squirm out of it at his deposition,” as a Dominion lawyer put it.

Some at the network allegedly tried to stop the self-incriminating spread of misinformation. One employee, another Dominion lawyer said, thought voter fraud claims were “outlandish,” even begging Trump’s staff to jettison Powell before she made things worse. Alas, the network may soon find itself in deep doo-doo, all over a guy they don’t even like anymore.

(Via NYT)

Justin Bieber has a lot going on. The “Peaches” singer just called out H&M for copyright infringement over an unauthorized merch collection; he’s also amongst The Weeknd, Snoop Dogg, Post Malone, and more celebrities serving as defendants in the lawsuit against Bored Ape Yacht Club’s NFT creators.

Luckily, it looks like the most recent news is exciting. The star is reportedly approaching a deal to sell his music rights to Blackstone-backed Hipgnosis Songs Capital for about $200 million, according to sources who told Variety.

Justin Timberlake sold his entire catalog to Hipgnosis in May.

This follows the postponement of Bieber’s Justice World Tour this year. In June, he revealed his Ramsay Hunt syndrome diagnosis, which causes partial facial paralysis. He resumed his tour in Europe and performed six shows from July 31 to August 12, but he announced another postponement following his record-breaking set at Rock In Rio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on September 4.

“After resting and consulting with my doctors, family and team, I went to Europe in an effort to continue with the tour. I performed six live shows, but it took a real toll on me. This past weekend I performed at Rock in Rio and I gave everything I have to the people in Brazil,” his statement read in September. “After getting off stage, the exhaustion overtook me and I realized that I need to make my health the priority right now. So I’m going to take a break from touring for the time being. I’m going to be ok, but I need time to rest and get better.”

The tour has been postponed through at least March 25, 2023.

Idles released their album Crawler in November 2021, which housed tracks like “The Beachland Ballroom,” “Car Crash” and “Stockholm Syndrome.” Earlier this month, the UK five-piece band celebrated the five-year anniversary of their debut album, Brutalism, but they aren’t waiting that long to reflect on Crawler.

Today, December 21, Idles shared Making Of Crawler, shot and edited by Aris Chatman. The 11-minute documentary begins with footage from between February 8, 2021 to February 21, 2021 and an interesting tidbit, “Crawler was Idles’ first time ever recording any of their parts individually.” We see singer Joe Talbot recording “Progress” with producer Kenny Beats.

“We want people who’ve gone through trauma, heartbreak, and loss to feel like they’re not alone,” Talbot said in a statement about the documentary. “This album shows the ugly side of where those things come from, but also how it is possible to reclaim joy from those experiences.”

Crawler is nominated at the 2023 Grammys, competing in the Best Rock Album category alongside The Black Keys’ Dropout Boogie, Elvis Costello & The Imposters’ The Boy Named If, Machine Gun Kelly’s Mainstream Sellout, Ozzy Osbourne’s Patient Number 9, and Spoon’s Lucifer On The Sofa.

Since its November 2021 release, Idles performed at Coachella, took the stage on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and executed an extensive 2022 world tour.

Watch the Making Of Crawler documentary above.

Hallmark movies tend to be predictable holiday fare, so it’s safe to say that “Rick and Morty” creator Dan Harmon wasn’t off when he cried foul after learning about the “Sister Swap” films.

Harmon saw there were two “Sister Swap” Hallmark movies that came out in 2021 and couldn’t tell which one to watch first. “Well HERE’S THE THING,” Harmon wrote on Instagram “Both Sister Swaps are released in 2021. They are not sequels. Both Sister Swaps are the same story, about sisters—played by real-life sisters, who have to swap…cities.”

In a world where Hallmark churns out 40 holiday films a year, it’s reasonable to think that the company was trying to pull a fast one and save some money by making two identical films and releasing them separately.

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See on Instagram

The “Sister Swap” films star real-life sisters Kimberly Williams-Paisley and Ashley Williams, whose characters are siblings as well. The first film, “Sister Swap: A Hometown Holiday” is about a widow who attempts to reopen her late uncle’s old dilapidated small-town movie theater for one last Christmas screening. While “Sister Swap: Christmas in the City,” which debuted seven days after, is about sisters who swap cities to pursue new projects in the 12 days leading up to Christmas.

Harmon was thrown by the fact that the films shared several scenes with identical dialog.

“We keep going back and forth between the movies,” Harmon said, trying to make sense of them. “The same conversations are happening in each one but there’s no ‘Rashomon’ or ‘Peep Show’ angle, the dialogue in each version is identical but the scenes are cut differently because I assume they just had different editors.”

Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece “Rashomon” is known for its unique structure where the same story is seen from multiple perspectives.

Harmon shared another post where he lined up a scene from both nearly identical films.

See on Instagram

Finally, Harmon’s confusion was assuaged when the people who made the film showed up in the comments. The films’ co-screenwriter, Zac Hug, explained what Hallmark was trying to do with the movies.

“Quick note on this, the task in writing was to make sure the audience didn’t have to see them both but were rewarded if they did. Hallmark also got on board with my sister and me writing them together,” Hug wrote.

Williams-Paisley confirmed that the decision to combine the two films was to do something unprecedented with a Hallmark production. “We wanted to do something outside the box for the genre but also stay in the genre and my sister came up with this brilliant idea of two films that take place in the same time frame and sometimes overlap,” Williams-Paisley commented.

Executive producer Neal Dodson further clarified things for Harmon.

“We had one editor and edited them in tandem,” he wrote. “They share 9 scenes, with different edits to those scenes that favor whichever sister’s movie it is.”

Harmon clearly understands the medium of film—he created the hit series “Community” and “Rick and Morty”—yet he missed the fact that “Sister Swap” was a total revolution in the art of making Hallmark films.

After hearing about the movies from the artists themselves, he changed his mind and said the films were “cinematically unprecedented.”

The films are truly a departure from the usual movie format, not just for Hallmark, but TV movies in general. But, before we get too excited, the productions also probably saved a few nickels by shooting two films at the same time.