Month: May 2023

Every single week, our TV and film experts will list the most important ten streaming selections for you to pop into your queues. We’re not strictly operating upon reviews or accrued streaming clicks (although yes, we’ve scoured the streaming site charts) but, instead, upon those selections that are really worth noticing amid the churning sea of content. There’s a lot out there, after all, and your time is valuable.

TIE: 10. The Great: Season 3 (Hulu series)

As of now, Elle Fanning’s Catherine the Great and Nicholas Hoult’s Emperor Peter III still haven’t killed each other, but give them time. First, they must get their marriage somewhat together in order to maintain power. In real life, Catherine went on to be Russia’s longest reigning female empress, and Peter did not fare nearly so well, given that she overthrew him, but this show has taken several liberties for the sake of fun, and no one can hate on that.

TIE: 10. Guardians of the Galaxy (Marvel Studios movie on Disney+)

Before Star-Lord became the Worst Avenger, he charm-danced his way into the heart of Marvel fans in his lovely initial MCU installment. A chaotic prison stint and a Power Stone-enclosing orb filled in the spaces between wonderful bits of dialogue and grumpiness from my dude, Rocket Raccoon. As well, there are still plenty of Groot, Gamora, and Drax the Destroyer devotees out there, so before you watch the group’s last ride together, revisit their first outing.

9. The Diplomat (Netflix series)

People are so happy that Keri Russell is back on TV that this show is still kicking around on this list. She’s also back in the realm of intrigue, albeit with a less tension-packed performance than we saw in The Americans. However, her two roles are similar enough, given that there’s a challenging marriage at stake while an all-encompassing career reigns supreme. This series also appeals as the binge-friendly, meat-and-potatoes, The Night Agent agent type of content, so keep looking for similar series (and a never ending stream of espionage) to come, in addition to second installments of both shows.

8. Love & Death (HBO Max series)

David E. Kelley and Nicole Kidman proceeded with executive producing this second take on the Candy Montgomery story, so one can rest assure that they saw value in taking a different path to telling the story of the ax-murdering suburban adulterer. In the end, this show won’t be on the the top true-crime dramatizations in history, but it does shine some intriguing light on the maneuverings of Candy and the more-than-willing role that Jesse Plemons’ character played in this entire mess. After WandaVision as well, Elizabeth Olsen is probably too good at playing these picture-perfect-from-the-outside women who are long past being on the verge.

7. Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant (STX film streaming on VOD and Amazon Prime)

Jake Gyllenhall (in everything by now) and Antony Starr (The Boys, obviously) are part of this ensemble cast, in which Gyllenhaal’s U.S. Army sergeant character, John Kinley, goes to great lengths to repay the goodwill of Ahmed (Dar Salim), an Afghan interpreter who helped him escape an ambush during the war in Afghanistan. After the U.S. gives Ahmed the shaft, Kinley must race against time to find his old friend before the Taliban hops in line.

6. Silo (Apple TV+ series)

After you finish preparing for Justified: City Primeval by watching Raylan Givens in the “Long in the Tooth” essential episode, you might want to dive a few hundred stories underground for Graham Yost’s currently running show. The story follows the first book within Hugh Howey’s Wool omnibus and follows Rebecca Ferguson’s hard-as-nails engineer, Juliette, as she moves from saving a good chunk of humanity to scrutinizing a murder mystery. The series co-stars Common’s leather jacket along with Rashida Jones, David Oyelowo, Tim Robbins, and Harriet Walter.

5. Evil Dead Rise (New Line Cinema film streaming on VOD and Amazon Prime)

Although this installment cannot possibly compare to the groovy gore of yesteryear (or even the Jane Levy film), the streaming audience seemingly cannot get enough of watching this movie at home. And that’s wild because horror was once thought to be optimally watched in a crowded theater while gripping the seat handles and streaming along with one’s surroundings. Hey, it works at home, too, so draw those curtains and pour all the butter on your popcorn before making sure that you cannot sleep tonight.

4. Barry (HBO series streaming on HBO Max)

The charm of Anthony Kerrigan’s Noho Hank cannot be beat, even if this final season is a bleak affair, which only further highlights the genius of Bill Hader. Soon enough, this will be one of many shows to ride off into the sunset this year, but get in to see the final act of this assassin-turned-actor and thank the TV gods that we have been able to witness this unique combination of humor and darkness.

3. Succession (HBO series streaming on HBO Max)

The Swede bleeds himself, as we already learned, and it sure sounds like he was pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes because he’s not even a real coder. Yikes. Shiv will need to maneuver hard to recover from nearly hopping onto that ship, along with that horrible scorpion-snake fight. As always, Brian Grubb keeps us updated with his weekly Report Card, and we only have a few episodes left, so hopefully, the Roy family will make them count.

2. Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (Netflix series)

This spinoff might be even more enjoyable than the main Bridgerton series. This spinoff travels back in time to give us an origin story for the title character, who is portrayed by India Amarteifio, and the show deftly hops between the past and the “present”-day period (which still stars Golda Rosheuvel) of the principal series. Corey Mylchreest portrays the younger King George, and although sadness is in the cards for this couple, their initial love story did produce 15 children. Can’t Charlotte get one royal grandbaby? C’mon. Regardless, the couple falls in deep, unyielding love despite the arranged nature of their marriage, and they went through challenges, alright.

1. Air (Amazon Prime Video movie)

Ben Affleck directs this film and also appears as Nike co-founder Phil Knight. He is joined by Matt Damon and Jason Bateman, as Nike execs Sonny Vaccaro and Rob Strasser, respectively. Their mission: to sign Michael Jordan to a shoe deal that will be lucrative for all involved. We never do get to see Jordan, but Viola Davis portrays his mother, and it’s always a joy to see lifelong BFFs (but non-compatible roommates) Affleck and Damon onscreen together again. The film also stars Chris Messina, Marlon Wayans, Chris Tucker, Gustaf Skarsgård, and Matthew Maher.

The Phoenix Suns are making a major change in the aftermath of their defeat in the Western Conference Semifinals. According to multiple media reports, the team has made the decision to part ways with head coach Monty Williams, marking the end of a tenure that saw Phoenix make the NBA Finals in 2021 but fail to reach those highs again in each of the last two seasons.

The decision to fire Williams comes on the heels of a second consecutive blowout home loss in the conference semis to end their season. Last year, as the top seed in the Western Conference, Phoenix was obliterated by the Dallas Mavericks in Game 7 at Footprint Center. While they were the lower seed this time around and were not expected to win the series, the Suns got blown out by the No. 1 seed Denver Nuggets, 125-100, on Thursday night.

Phoenix is one of the most interesting jobs in the league, as a new coach will need to step in and figure out how to make a team work around Kevin Durant and Devin Booker. Phoenix reportedly will look in to moving Chris Paul and Deandre Ayton this summer, as the team needs to try to rebuild the depth that it lost when it pulled off a major move for Durant at the trade deadline this past season.

The 2022 NBA Coach of the Year, Williams accrued a 194-115 record in four years as the head coach of the Suns.

In the aftermath of the Los Angeles Lakers taking down the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round of the playoffs, LeBron James took a few not so subtle shots at Dillon Brooks on social media. While he didn’t have as prominent of an antagonist during the Lakers’ Western Conference Semifinal series against the Golden State Warriors, he still seems like he used social media as a way to clap back at someone.

One of the big talking points in the series was the free throw disparity, with Warriors coach Steve Kerr alleging that the Lakers flopped. After James responded by saying they don’t do that, JaMychal Green posted the following on his Instagram Story:

James never responded to this while the series was ongoing, but one day after the Lakers won Game 6 to eliminate the Warriors and make the Western Conference Finals, he posted the following on Instagram, which very well might have included a response to Green.

The song is “Tuscan Leather” by Drake, and includes the lyric “bench players talkin’ like starters, I hate it.” While it’s by no means as explicit of a response to someone as his posts about Brooks last round, we’re willing to bet LeBron was just as glad he got to post this one.

The Golden State Warriors’ 2022-23 season was supposed to be about their defense of a championship. Instead, one of the biggest stories surrounding the team as the year began revolved around an incident in practice in which Draymond Green punched Jordan Poole, which made headlines even before the video leaked by way of TMZ.

It was a full-blown crisis for Golden State, one which led to Green taking a leave of absence from the team. Back in January, he alluded to it by saying that he hadn’t “been the leader that … I need to be for this team” as a result. And according to Ramona Shelburne of ESPN, the tension that invariably pops up from this sort of incident lingered for much of the season.

But so much of why the Warriors didn’t come together this year can be traced back to why they nearly came apart at the beginning of the season.

Green’s punch didn’t just knock out Poole. It laid bare the tension between the older championship core and the younger players the organization hoped would supersede them one day. And it has never really gone away, sources say, despite Poole’s relative silence on the matter this season.

In the aftermath of the punch, Poole agreed to a 4-year extension with the team. Green can potentially become an unrestricted free agent this summer, but expressed after the Warriors were eliminated from the playoffs by the Los Angeles Lakers that his hope is to remain with the team.

Last week, Tucker Carlson won Twitter. The former Fox News star resurfaced nearly three weeks after his firing to announce he’d found a new home: the social media service currently being run — albeit for not much longer — by owner Elon Musk. The post inevitably dominated the news, so much so that the post outperformed ones by such titans as Taylor Swift, BTS, and the “Chief Twit” himself.

As per Forbes, as of Saturday afternoon, Carlson’s tweet, posted Tuesday, had generated 194,000 retweets and 891,500 likes. For context, those stats are even bigger than a photo of member Min Yoon-gi, which scored 176,600 retweets and 530,600 likes. Taylor Swift, meanwhile, has been posting updates about her The Eras Tour, the most popular of which got 56,000 retweets and 463,400 likes.

Tucker also crushed Musk’s post revealing that he was handing the Twitter CEO reins to NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino. That one “only” wrangled 36,100 retweets and 408,000 likes.

So congrats, Tucker Carlson. However, the win may wind up being pyrrhic. Jen Psaki spoke with NBC News’ dark web expert Ben Collins, who poured some cold water on the gamble. He pointed out that Twitter isn’t “really meant for an hourlong video.” After all, Twitter is mean for endless scrolling and quickie dopamine rushes, not for pausing for extended stays. “I don’t think he understands,” Collins added. “He’s just some guy on Twitter now.”

Psaki added that Carlson’s demo — older, angry Republicans used to old-fashioned cable — aren’t who you find on Twitter. “How many 65-year-olds are going to drastically change their routine?” she pointed out.

It’s also worth pointing out that, shortly after Tucker’s announcement post went live, Musk seemed to distance himself from it, even vowing to police a guy known for spreading misinformation and other un-truths. (Good luck with that!)

But as far as getting a lot of people to pay interact with a Twitter post — a good chunk of whom may not actually be his fans — Tucker is, for now, a winner.

(Via Forbes and MSNBC)

Brenan Fraser is in the midst of a well-deserved comeback, and for that he can thank The Whale. The A24 drama, directed by Darren Aronofsky, was an awards season staple, not only netting Fraser his first-ever Oscar but also an Academy Award nomination for supporting player Hong Chau. It did pretty well at the box office, too, for a small indie, amassing $17 million in the U.S. and Canada alone. But for those who missed it in theaters, can it be streamed?

The answer is: yes, but not as part of a streamer’s subscription. Instead you’ll have to rent or buy it. It’s available on major renting streamers, such as Amazon Prime and Vudu, for $4.99. On Apple TV+, it’s $5.99.

There’s no word yet when The Whale will be available as part of a streamer subscription, such as Netflix, HBO Max or Hulu, and it’s hard to predict when that will be or where it will land. A24 tends to shuffle its library among different streamers rather than give one of them exclusive access.

Based on Samuel D. Hunter’s play of the same name, The Whale concerns Charlie (Fraser), a morbidly obese and reclusive English instructor who, like the hero of Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, wishes to reconnect with his estranged daughter (Sadie Sink). Chau plays Charlie’s only friend while Samantha Morton plays his ex-wife.

Evan Fournier‘s time as a member of the New York Knicks looks like it is about to come to an end, according to Evan Fournier. The veteran guard saw his role with the team fall off considerably this year, as he went from a starter, to a member of the rotation off the bench, to out of the rotation altogether. It got to the point that he did not make it onto the floor at any point during the postseason.

The team’s time in the playoffs came to an end on Friday night, as they were unable to knock off the Heat in Miami to force a Game 7 back in Madison Square Garden. One day later and Fournier spoke to the media, where he expressed his belief that he is not going to be a member of the team during the 2023-24 campaign.

Via Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News:

“You know I’m not gonna be back,” Fournier said. “There’s no way they’re gonna keep me. I would be very surprised if they do. So, we’ll see. It’s obviously not in my hands though.”

The veteran guard, who has one year remaining on his contract, was pulled from the rotation in November and only re-emerged because of injuries or meaningless end-of-season contests.

“I mean, wouldn’t you guys be surprised ,” Fournier added. “Eleven years in, big contract, they’re obviously trying to develop the young guys. I didn’t play this year, so why would you bring me back?”

Fournier will turn 31 in October and has two years left on his current deal, although the second year is a team option. For 2023-24, he’s set to make just under $19 million, and the Knicks possess a boatload of future draft capital that could, in theory, incentivize a team to take on that money for a year. Fournier has spent each of the last two seasons in New York.

Last month, Labrinth released his third studio album, Ends & Begins, which features the Euphoria fan-favorite, “Never Felt So Alone,” along with a collaboration with Zendaya, called “The Feels.” In the weeks prior, he performed electrifying Coachella sets, in which, Zendaya and Billie Eilish made surprise appearances. All of these moments have fans waiting on pins and needles for an update on the third season of Euphoria.

However, in a recent interview with Variety, Labrinth, who composes music for the show, says even he is in the dark about what’s to come of the show’s upcoming season.

“I don’t even know if they’re writing it yet,” said Labrinth. “There’s a whole writers strike, so. But hopefully, they get it together and it’s a vibe. I think me and Sam [Levinson] are supposed to talk at some point, but I’m excited. I think all of the guys that are working on the show are excited to get back into it when it’s coming around. It’s intense when it comes around, though. Once it comes around, you’re like, whew.”

There are rumors that the season is set to premiere in early 2024, and will contain a five-year time jump, however, given the ongoing WGA writers strike, who knows when we’ll actually find out?

According to the American Kennel Club, the Pembroke Welsh Corgi is “a strong, athletic, and lively little herder who is affectionate and companionable without being needy.” They are considered to be a smart breed, one that is capable of things like going viral on the internet because of their knowledge of the game of basketball.

If you have a Twitter account and found yourself scrolling at any point over the last few days, perhaps you saw a bunch of fans of the Los Angeles Lakers or the Golden State Warriors tweeting about Corgis. There’s a very simple reason for this: There is a TikTok account dedicated to an extremely good dog that makes predictions on sporting events by hitting a ball that bounces into a specific basket. And for Lakers-Warriors, the account — @aircorg, aka Steph Furry, aka Fluffy Mamba (I, also, cannot believe I just typed out any of that) — successfully predicted each of the first five games.

Of course, the dog was perfect right up until Game 6, as the prediction ended up being that the Warriors would rally from a 3-1 deficit to move on to the Western Conference Finals. Instead, L.A. won Game 6 to punch their ticket, which led to plenty of jokes at the dog’s expense.

The official SportsCenter Twitter account also decided to get in on the fun.

Apparently, even the Lakers knew what was going on with this dog.

This is all pretty great, because more sports fans should put their hopes and dreams into a dog on the internet. If you’re interested in tailing (or fading) any of Air Corg’s picks, well, it has the Philadelphia 76ers beating the Boston Celtics in seven games.

The Golden State Warriors saw their title defense come to an end in the Western Conference Semifinals this year. On Friday night, the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Warriors at Crypto.com Arena, 122-101, to win their series in six games and send Golden State into the offseason far sooner than it would have liked.

It marked the first time that a healthy Warriors team failed to make at least the conference finals since 2014, and now, the front office has to figure out a number of things if they want to get back to their championship winning ways. Steve Kerr addressed this after Game 6, as he made clear that the team just was not good enough to get the job done.

“To be fair I think this team ultimately maxed out,” Kerr said after the game, according to Kendra Andrews of ESPN. “We were barely in the playoff picture most of this year … This is not a championship team.”

The most pressing things are the futures of a trio that have been at the center of the Warriors’ success. Draymond Green has a player option for next year, general manager Bob Myers is out of contract this summer, and Klay Thompson is eligible for an extension. There are also the futures of some of the team’s younger players, like Jordan Poole and Jonathan Kuminga, and whether Golden State wants to continue hoping they can contribute to a contender or if they need to be flipped for more win-now pieces.