Have you met Max? It’s the new service formerly known as HBO Max, and they are coming in hot with a whole slew of shows and specials. This is great news for everyone who loves good television, but bad news for anyone named Max, who will no doubt have a confusing year. It’s like Alexa all over again.
But with the new announcement comes the first look at Colin Farrell‘s new show The Penguin, aptly named after his tough guy villain in Matt Reeves‘ 2022 emo superhero film Batman. And by the first look, we can safely say: this “penguin” guy sure is pretty evil. It’s hard to even believe that our lovable boy Colin is really in under all of that makeup giving his best Tony Soprano impression.
According to the official synopsis, the series will pick up right where Reeves’ Batman left off. “After Paul Dano’s The Riddler kills Carmine Falcone, one of Gotham City’s top mob bosses, he floods the major downtown area in a coordinated terrorist attack — leaving Farrell’s Cobblepot with a city in chaos and a power vacuum within Gotham’s underworld.” Reeves is also producing the series.
The series is currently in production and is slated for a 2024 release, where it will have to compete with shows like The Last Of Us and House of the Dragon. But really, when it comes down to it, could zombies and dragons really tackle Academy Award Nominee Colin Farrell? Didn’t think so! And will Robert Pattinson make his grand return to stop him? Who knows.
The Penguin will also star Cristin Milioti, Michael Zegen, and Clancy Brown. Check out the trailer above.
Confirming reports that a new streaming service was on the way, Warner Bros. Discovery has officially announced that HBO Max and Discovery+ will merge into a new super app known simply as Max. As for the reasoning behind the name change, considering HBO has strong brand recognition and a sterling reputation for delivering the best prestige series on the market, here’s what WB Discovery streaming chief JB Perette said during the announcement.
“HBO is not TV. HBO is HBO, it needs to stay that way, which is why we will privilege it in the product experience and also not push it to the breaking point by forcing it to take on the full breadth of this content proposition, had we kept the brand in the service name.”
Everyone got all that? HBO needs to stay HBO, but also here’s a plethora of HBO projects that were announced today for Max, the streaming service soon to be formerly known as HBO Max. (Our heads hurt, too.)
– A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight. Technically, this Game of Thrones prequel series will air on HBO, but to make things as confusing as possible, it was announced in the middle of the Max presentation.
– Harry Potter. Confirming reports that WBD was keen to get J.K. Rowling’s books into a streaming show, this long-rumored project has been officially ordered to series for Max. Featuring an all-new cast, each season will focus on one book, which means it will run for at least seven seasons or eight if the final book is split into two parts like the films.
– The Sympathizer. A new comedy spy series starring Robert Downey Jr.
– The Conjuring. This series based on the horror film series is reportedly being developed by HBO Max for Max? Again, your guess is good as ours here.
– The Big Bang Theory spinoff. Thanks the success of Young Sheldon, a new spinoff from the hit sitcom is headed to Max.
– The Penguin. Based on Colin Farrell’s character from The Batman, this show was already announced and in production, but now it’s headed for Max.
The fourth season of the HBO limited series that was an instant sensation when it premiered in 2014. Season two was a rushed mess, but after a four-year break, season three was mostly a return to form. And season four looks promising, based on the chilly and intense teaser trailer above.
In True Detective: Night Country, “when the long winter night falls in Ennis, Alaska, the eight men who operate the Tsalal Arctic Research Station vanish without a trace. To solve the case, Detectives Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) will have to confront the darkness they carry in themselves, and dig into the haunted truths that lie buried under the eternal ice,” according to the official plot synopsis.
The latest season of True Detective (which recently wrapped filming) is being overseen by showrunner Issa Lopez and executive producer Barry Jenkins, the Oscar-winning director of Moonlight. Creator Nic Pizzolatto is supposedly no longer involved.
True Detective: Night Country, which also stars Fiona Shaw, Finn Bennett, Isabella Star Lablanc, Aka Niviâna, Anna Lambe, Joel D. Montgrand, Christopher Eccleston, and John Hawkes, premieres later this year.
Barbie is one of the movie events of the summer, but Margot Robbie is shocked that the film even got made. “The first time I read the Barbie script, my reaction was, ‘Ah! This is so good. What a shame it will never see the light of day because they are never going to let us make this movie.’ But they did,” the actress told BAFTA (via IndieWire).
There have been set photos and a trailer for Greta Gerwig’s satirical comedy, but precious few plot details. When asked if she would reveal anything, Robbie coyly replied, “Can’t tell ya!” She did, however, previously discuss how the Barbie movie won’t be what people think of when they hear “Barbie movie.”
“It comes with a lot of baggage,” she told Vogue. “And a lot of nostalgic connections. But with that come a lot of exciting ways to attack it. People generally hear ‘Barbie’ and think, ‘I know what that movie is going to be,’ and then they hear that Greta Gerwig is writing and directing it, and they’re like, ‘Oh, well, maybe I don’t.’”
Barbie, which also stars Ryan Gosling as Ken; Kate McKinnon, Emma Mackey, and Issa Rae as various Barbies; and Michael Cera as Allan, just… Allan, opens on July 21st, the same day as Oppenheimer.
John Mayer is a notorious heartbreaker amongst the A-list women in the entertainment industry. But the “Waitin’ On The Day” singer promises that he has since changed his way. However, his old songs, especially the ones about his past whirlwind romances, are still getting him into trouble. During a recent show, the musician took a moment to address one track in particular.
Released in 2013, “Paper Doll” has long since been rumored to be about his pop star ex-girlfriend, Taylor Swift. Following their tumultuous split around 2010, Swifties have whispered that Mayer was the inspiration behind her deep-cutting tracks, 2010’s “Dear John” and 2022’s “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve,” a track Mayer believes “he didn’t deserve” to be at the center of. To be fair, Swift hasn’t confirmed whether or not either song was about him.
Supposedly in response to “Dear John,” Mayer released “Paper Doll,” and during his show at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, he addressed the pushback he received from the song.
“I wonder if people don’t like it because it sounds a little pissed off,” said Mayer. “I don’t really like ‘pissed off’ as a song. […] There’s something about it that’s a little bitchy,” continuing to say it gives off “sarcastic b*tch” vibes.
It’s always a treat when your favorite actor or actress shows up in a highly-anticipated trailer. We all felt this way last week when Michael Cera appeared for just a second in the Barbie teaser, right?
The long-awaited John Wick prequel series, The Continental,is finally heading to Peacock this September, and the first trailer just appeared, filled with lots of violence paired with some fun ’70s music. Fans are ready to see the series, led by Colin Woodell, but there is one split second in the trailer that has been making the rounds on Twitter, and that’s Katie McGrath’s debut as The Adjudicator.
The Adjudicator is a High Table agent who was first introduced in John Wick Chapter 3. Since The Continental takes place several decades ago, it seems like there are multiple iterations of The Adjudicator, and Katkie McGrath appears to be one of them. There is not much to go on in her very brief spot in the trailer, though her fans sure did take note!
McGrath is known for her roles in historical dramas and various sci-fi/fantasy-adjacent roles, most recently as Lena Luthor on Supergirl. Despite ending in 2021, the Supergirl fandom is alive and well and they are more than happy to see McGrath making her assassin debut after all this time.
shoutout to katie mcgrath stans and them only idk how we did it but we survived that 2 year drought pic.twitter.com/I5AfxNCf3Z
KATIE MCGRATH NATION TIME TO WAKE UP I AM BANGING THE POTS AND PANS, SHES HERE AND SHE’S ORDERING THEM ALL AROUND LIKE A BADASS pic.twitter.com/2Vx2SytoBb
When we think about how hard it would be to lose one of our senses, we usually imagine losing our sight or our hearing. But what about losing our sense of smell?
Being able to smell may not seem as important as being able to see or hear, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a big deal if you can’t. Our sense of smell functions as an early-warning safety alert system, for one thing, so losing it can put us at risk. But smell is also one of our biggest memory triggers; a familiar scent can transport us to a specific time and place in the past in an instant. Pleasant smells can also evoke joy, whether we’re inhaling the fragrance of our favorite flower or basking in the mouth-watering scent of our mom’s cookies.
One of the most beloved scents in the world, even for people who don’t like the taste of it, is the smell of coffee. So when 54-year-old Jennifer Henderson got to experience her first whiff of coffee after two years of not being able to smell anything at all, her reaction was understandably emotional.
Henderson has been dealing with “long COVID,” a term referring to new or lingering symptoms long after an initial acute COVID-19 infection wanes, since she contracted the virus two years ago. Long COVID can manifest in many ways, one of which is the senses of smell and taste going awry. For Henderson, long COVID has resulted in bananas tasting like metal, garlic tasting like gasoline and her sense of smell being nonexistent for two years, according to WOIO News.
However, Cleveland Clinic anesthesiologist and pain medicine specialists Christina Shin, M.D. and Jijun Xu, M.D., Ph.D. have found that a common pain medication treatment seems to help many COVID long haulers regain their sense of smell and taste. The doctors told WOIO they don’t really konw why it works, but it does offer hope for many who are suffering with long COVID like Henderson.
“You feel like you’re in this box,” Henderson said in a video shared by CBS. “For two years, two senses are gone, completely gone. And now I just feel like I’m getting my life back. I’m getting back to normal.”
Watch the moment she realizes she can smell the coffee:
People struggling with long COVID often feel forgotten as the world increasingly moves away from focusing on the pandemic. It doesn’t help that there’s still so much we don’t know. As can be expected in a novel viral pandemic, data has taken time to collect and analyze, and even defining long COVID has been a challenge as researchers learn in real-time about the long-term effects of COVID infection.
The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that as of January 2023, the estimated workforce numbers affected by long COVID range from fewer than 500,000 to as many as 4 million. A study published in Nature in January 2023 estimated that long COVID occurs in at least 10% of acute SARS-CoV-2 infections, with more than 200 symptoms impacting multiple organ systems being identified with the condition.
Thankfully, breakthroughs like the one from the Cleveland Clinic do offer hope for people who have had far more questions than answers about their symptoms. Hopefully, we will see more people get relief like Henderson did as doctors and scientists keep working to decipher the long COVID puzzle.
If you’ve never heard of the Cat Distribution System, then you probably don’t own a cat, or you do, but you acquired your cat in a normal, non-weird way. You know, like at an animal shelter or from some nice lady on social media who had a box of kittens. Some people do get cats that way, and it’s one thousand percent a valid way to attain cat parent status.
But some lucky folks get cats through the Cat Distribution System (or CDS for short). Is this system real? The only people who know this are cats. They’re also the ones that run the system, so the rules and the way in which you attain your purr machine may be a bit wonky. You may wake up with an unknown cat in your bed even though all of your windows are closed, or you just may be like this delivery driver.
The driver was out picking up orders when a cat came out of the CDS and jumped on the man’s leg as he attempted to get back to his car. Thanks to his dash cam, you get to see CDS at work, and so did his mom. The video currently has over 2.8 million views on TikTok.
When the driver asked his mom if he could keep the cat, at first she said no. Then she saw the footage of the cat aggressively and desperately choosing her son to be its new cat dad—and that’s how you get a cat through the CDS. Once the cat realized she made the right choice, she snuggled up on her dad’s lap as he drove her home.
“We are not cat people,” reads the text overlay. “My youngest son was out making deliveries last night. A cat kept following him. Then jumped on his leg and would not let go.”
I have news for you, Mom, you’re cat people now. It’s how the Cat Distribution System works. They train their recruits to turn non-cat people into cat people, one unsuspecting human at a time. If you don’t make it to the end of the video, yes, they kept the cat and her name is Venus. That’s how the system is designed.
#catrescue #catrescueroftiktok I am not a #catperson but maybe now I will be after today. I #Love my #son has a #huge #compassionate #heart #momsoftiktok #rescate #gato
Gender reveal parties have continued to be popular over the past decade or so, and people have gotten more and more creative with them in an effort to keep them fun for everyone involved. Marissa Bailey decided to take her party to a local restaurant and use cupcakes to reveal the gender, but the catch was there were dozens of cupcakes and only one had the colored frosting in the middle.
Thankfully for the internet, Bailey decided to film the event and upload it to TikTok, where it has amassed over 10 million views. In the video, the family members take turns biting into the cupcakes as curious patrons watch, slowly realizing what’s going on. Soon the other restaurant guests become invested as cupcake after cupcake proves to be free of colored filling. (I don’t know whose idea it was to bake so many cupcakes but, whew, they were going to be there a while.)
Eventually, someone decides handing them out to the now-interested patrons would speed along the process. Even the server gets in on the game and cuts open a cupcake to again reveal no colored filling. So more volunteers raise their hands to bite into cupcakes.
Now there’s even more of a party because strangers are feeling invested and competitive, but alas there’s still no color in the cupcakes. Soon the entire restaurant is collectively shouting out in disappointment as another cupcake reveals a whole lot of nothing. The mom-to-be is looking stressed at this point, but the show must go on.
Surely she’s rethinking the idea of recreating a Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket situation. But just when defeat is hitting the pregnant woman, a shriek can be heard from a stranger in the restaurant, followed by, “IT’S A GIRL!!!” as she dances in place.
What a fun and intense gender reveal. Check it out below:
The Ted Lasso Power Rankings are a weekly analysis of who and/or what had the strongest performance in each episode. Most of the list will feature individual characters, although the committee does reserve the right to honor anything from animals to inanimate objects to laws of nature to general concepts. There are very few rules here.
Season 3, Episode 5 — “Signs”
HONORABLE MENTION: Jamie (I worry that the show has no clue what to do with Jamie right now but I do appreciate everyone giving him a word like “negativit-eh” to pronounce every week); Trent Crimm (the man is getting some primo content for his book); Dani Rojas (I do not like to see him sad); Isaac (he’s kind of like the team mom, which is nice); fingernails (“What’s that about?”): Chris and Arlo, the announcers (having goofy announcers as comic relief is basically just a cliche after Bob Uecker in Major League, but I still love these guys); Dr. Wagner (maybe don’t text patients “have important results, will call after the game”); apology raps (if you bully me, please do not do a rap about it in front of everyone); lamb poop (sour); Ms. Kakes (need to know much more about her someday); Barbara the CFO (need to know what was in that drawer); John Wingsnight and Jessica Darling (leave Anthony Hopkins alone)
10. Rebecca (LAST WEEK: 3)
APPLE
Her team is on a massive losing streak, she’s getting advice about maybe firing Ted and then having awkward little interactions with him in the hallways, she’s seeing all kinds of weird signs out in the world that are making her think that crazy psychic was right, she has baby fever and is making appointments about it with soccer-crazed doctors, and she can’t talk to her best friend about is because said best friend is making out with rich ladies in the office after slugging warm desk vodka from the bottle.
Other than that, solid week for Rebecca.
9. Zava (LAST WEEK: 7)
APPLE
ON ONE HAND: He’s a self-important bozo who goes on long-winded speeches about teamwork and loving his wife and is the kind of person who has just generally convinced himself that he’s smart because he is so very good at doing one thing that he’s been able to carve away anyone in his life who would be able to grab him by his little ponytail and shout “HEY, KNOCK IT OFF” into his perfectly angular face.
ON THE OTHER HAND: I would very much like to see him running his little avocado farm, maybe as a web series or an entire spinoff. I really hope the farm is in England. I enjoy the idea of Zava standing there in the middle of a field giving inspirational speeches to soil that is just straight-up geologically not-suited to grow a tropical crop.
8. Higgins (LAST WEEK: Unranked)
APPLEAPPLEAPPLE
In a way, this explains so much.
7. Nate/Jade (LAST WEEK: 5/Unranked)
APPLE
A few notes on this little piece of business:
I do not know if I like the show humanizing Jade in this way, and this quickly, if only because I enjoyed her a lot in those short bits as a cold and slightly dense hostess
I would like to know how long Nate sat there by himself at the window table after Anastasia left, because it seemed like kind of a long time, like at least from appetizers through dessert, which is really just very humiliating on a number of levels
I got extremely hungry while watching this scene, which was, I suspect, not the emotion they intended to inspire when they all sat down to create it, although this is probably one of those things that says more about me than the show
Still… very cute. Good for these two. I hope they have four awkward little children who are mean and also spit sometimes. Maybe not the spitting. I’ll think about it.
6. Keeley/Jack (LAST WEEK: Unranked/8)
APPLE
I suppose this is where I should do a big thing about the ethics of hooking up with your big investor and/or boss after a night of chugging vodka and cleaning up lamb poop, or maybe about how it’s a little weird how the show just kind of bounces Keeley from relationship to relationship and how — even as it became obvious from the body language on the couch — it struck me as weird that she’s just up and hooking up with women now (I mean, good for her if that’s what she’s feeling in the moment, but it did kind of scream in front left field from a character standpoint)…
… but mostly I just want to point out how massively ineffective the privacy screen on her office is if you can see straight through it to watch a couple of silhouettes start making out. A set of regular-ass blinds or curtains would work better than that. This is one of those things where we went ahead and invented ourselves backwards. Someone should be fired. Hopefully, they don’t have access to farm animals.
5. Ted (LAST WEEK: 2)
APPLE
The team can’t win a game. The fans are shouting a lot. His bosses are openly yelling at him and kind of discussing the process of moving on from him as coach. His kid is bullying some poor sap named Doug — not a lot of kids named Doug these days — and getting advice about handling it from his wife’s new boyfriend who was also their marriage counselor. The best player on the team just kind of surprise-retired to go be a farmer. Not ideal, on paper.
AND YET
You saw the speech at the end. You saw him shut down that feedback sound that usually signals a panic attack is en route. It feels like the classic moment in any sports movie where things are at their darkest and most hopeless just before they turn around. This is, weirdly, where Ted tends to shine. He still knows squat about soccer, and he’s maybe not the best tactician at any sport he coaches, but the man can do inspiration. That’s his whole deal. I don’t know if it’ll all work out, like, victory-wise. I do not think they’ll win the championship this year. But they’ll pull out of whatever this is. That’s… something.
4. Making a big scene when you get fired (LAST WEEK: Unranked)
APPLE
I mean, yes, Shandy was rightfully fired. And, sure, this was kind of just the “WHO’S COMING WITH ME?” thing Jim Breuer did in Half Baked with more swearing and hair. But…
Like…
I don’t know. I’ve never made a scene when I left a job and it looks kind of fun. The closest I ever came was when I was a teenage cashier at a grocery store and the manager told me I had to stay late because they were short-staffed and I had plans that night so was like “Nope” and just split. I could have gotten on the intercom and played around a little. I knew the code to use it from the register. That would’ve been fun.
We all have regrets.
3. Mae (LAST WEEK: Unranked)
APPLE
Runs a tight ship.
2. Roy (LAST WEEK: 9)
APPLE
A few Roy notes:
His little monologue about handling bullies was so dark and so much longer than I expected and maybe the hardest I’ve laughed at anything so far this entire season
I hope Trent transcribed the entire thing and includes it in the chapter about Roy
I enjoyed how everyone in the office started doing playfully little monkey noises and Roy did a chest-pounding gorilla grunt
Take a second today and picture Roy’s face when he finds out that the woman he appears to have regrets about dumping is now hooking up with attractive wealthy ladies at work. That’s a fun little visual for you.
1. Coach Beard (LAST WEEK: 1)
APPLE
You know, you think you’ve finally peeled back most of the layers of the onion on a guy and then he just up and reveals he used to perform at a strip club named Man City. It makes sense, I guess, given the things we know about him already, including his love of discos and nightlife and hula hoops and…
Wait a second.
Do you think he…
With the hula hoop…
At Man City…
Hmm. A lot to consider here.
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