Month: March 2024

Kristen Stewart has a new movie out: a lesbian thriller called Love Lies Bleeding. But America’s modern right-wing, which has of late rediscovered old school homophobia, hasn’t been attacking that film. Instead they’ve focused most of their attention on the provocative Rolling Stone cover Stewart did to promote it. After enduring reams of conservative backlash, the actress has a simple message for the image’s haters.

Per Entertainment Weekly, Stewart went on The Late Show, during which Colbert brought up the RS cover. He said CBS had asked him not to put it on air due to its risqué nature. He showed it anyway, allowing the nation’s viewers to see the naughty picture of Stewart, her top open, her left hand shoved into her undies. It’s an image MAGA world has deemed “miserable” and “disgusting.” Colbert didn’t agree.

“I want to say that you look better in a jockstrap than I ever did,” he quipped.

Colbert then asked Stewart to comment on the Trumpy attacks. After saying, “Let’s keep this light,” she offered a theory about why the GOP doesn’t like the cover.

“It’s a little ironic because I feel like I’ve seen a lot of male pubic hair on the cover of things,” Stewart explained. “I’ve seen, like, a lot of hands in pants and unbuttoned. I think there’s a certain overt acknowledgement of a female sexuality that has its own volition in a way that is annoying for people who are sexist and homophobic.”

Colbert agreed, saying, “I’ve certainly seen more revealing covers on Rolling Stone or Sports Illustrated, for that matter.” Stewart argued the cover isn’t “remotely explicit,” but Colbert went a step further, saying, “I think it also violates public expectations of female sexuality as opposed to how you’re presenting it here.”

“Yes, because female sexuality isn’t supposed to actually want anything but to be had,” Stewart said. “And that feels like it’s protruding in a way that might be annoying.”

She then addressed her conservative critics directly, saying, “But f*ck you.” She added, cheekily, “But I never will.”

Stewart has long been a scourge of Republicans. One of her biggest haters is Donald Trump himself, who spent years singling her out for social media abuse, partly due to her relationship woes with Robert Pattinson. Stewart was so grossed out by his creepy obsession with her that she used it as an excuse to come out publicly, which she did while hosting SNL in 2017.

“The president is not a huge fan of me,” Stewart told the crowd back then. “But that is so OK. And Donald, if you didn’t like me then, you’re probably not going to like me now, because I’m hosting SNL and I’m so gay, dude.”

Love Lies Bleeding is now in select theaters. You can watch her Late Show appearance below.

(Via EW)

Look, maybe it’s just because I’m no longer in the young crowd, but does it seem like we get new, confusing slang at an exponentially faster rate than before? Just when we finally decipher words like rizz and no cap, now there’s mewing and gyat to contend with. And this is coming from someone without children. I can only imagine how out-of-the-loop parents and teachers must feel.

That is, unless you’re Sam Salem, an eighth-grade substitute teacher who decided to take linguistic matters into his own hands by creating his own “Gen Z slang.”

Salem, who travels around the country doing comedy shows when not “facing his toughest audiences- classrooms full of Gen Z kids,” recently posted a series of videos to his TikTok sharing a truly diabolical plan to not only use made-up “Gen Z-sounding slang words,” but “gaslighting” his students into thinking they’re real.

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And then whenever a student questions him, Salem simply assures them that A) a rapper uses the word all the time, B) it’s all the rage with high schoolers, or C) it’s all over Tiktok. Total evil mastermind.

Below are Salem’s handcrafted Gen Z words. So just know, if you hear a youngster using one of these, you have him to thank.

“Clipped”: when something is really good, alá highlight clips of a sports game.

“Mute”: a replacement for lowkey. So when you want something down in a non-overt way, do it “on mute.”

“Feta”: a negative thing. Think how feta cheese crumbles. When something is feta, it is a good thing that falls apart easily.

“Parked”: just like a parked car doesn’t move, something that’s parked is boring and not going anywhere.

“Pebbles”: while a mountain or a boulder presents a huge obstacle, pebbles are “smooth sailing.” So when something is pebbles, it’s easy to overcome.

“Terk” : inspired by Salem’s favorite Disney movie, “Tarzan,” a Terk is your loyal-to-the-end bestie. Just like the character Terk was to Tarzan.

@samuelsleeves give me more fake slang words to use on my students #teaching #teachersoftiktok #highschool #middleschool #education ♬ original sound – Sam Salem

“Sparse”: the opposite of “ate.” As in, “ate and left no crumbs.” So basically, as a way to say that whatever thing a person is doing is very not cool. So not cool that it’s sparse. Get it?

“Getty”: inspired by the famous Getty museum of Los Angeles, this word suggests that something is “a work of art.”

“Oozing”: kind of a polite way to tell someone they’re talking too much, since the words are “oozing” out of them, or if they’re doing something that’s embarrassing. Nobody wants to be oozing.

“Swirled”: someone who is wishy-washy—a friend one minute and ignoring you the next, for example—might be someone who is swirled.

“Nabs”: an acronym that’s the opposite of BAE (Before Anyone Else). Which is this case would be Not AnyBody’s Somebody. Could be a good thing, like when someone is single, or a bad thing, when there aren’t any romantic prospects.

“Remy”: Another Disney reference, Remy is inspired by “Ratatouille.” Just like a rat shouldn’t go together with food “because it’s gross,” when something is remy that means two things which shouldn’t go together surprisingly do.

@samuelsleeves Replying to @*LisaG* don’t be swirled otherwise you’ll end up nabs #teaching #teachersoftiktok #genz #millennial #ratatouille ♬ original sound – Sam Salem

Over in the comments section, people were applauding Salem’s fake slang , and not in a muted way.

“You ARE the trendsetter now,” one person wrote.

“You’re ironically creating new slang,” seconded another.

In essence, Salem actually did make fetch happen. Kudos.

Seems like Salem is not gonna stop creating new words anytime soon. To keep up with the trends, follow him on TikTok here.

The “forgotten generation” has hit peak mid-life crisis time, as Gen Xers find themselves careening through their 40s and 50s. And like presumably every generation before them, they’re reeling a bit, asking, “How did I get here already?” as they pluck gray hairs out of weird places, send kids off to college and obsessively check their retirement accounts.

And now a meme that hits right at the heart of that crisis has Gen Xers feeling even more dazed. One might even say…confused.

In cruel bit of calculation, X user @AZNotoriousJPG shared a screenshot image from the cult classic “Dazed and Confused” with this caption:

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“Dazed and Confused came out in 1993 and was based in 1976. A comparable movie today would be based in 2007.”

Wait, what? No. NO. That can’t be right. That math isn’t mathing. Where’s the calculator?

[Frantically calculates this very basic subtraction problem four times because there’s no way.]

— (@)

It’s right. How? How is this possible? The ’70s felt like they were ages from the 90s, while 2007 was only like three years ago. Right?

First of all, I’m wrong. 2007 was 17 years ago—that’s basically an entire generation ago. (I know, I have to let that one sit for a minute.) But secondly, it seems like there was much more of a cultural difference between the 1970s and the 1990s than there was between the 2020s and the 2000s.

But why? In some ways, the 2000s feel like they’ve all been one long decade, at least in terms of “feel.” The 1960s, ‘70s, ’80s and ‘90s each felt like they had a distinct feel in terms of style and culture. We can pinpoint fashions, slang, musical genres and what was popular during those decades. Can the same be said for the 2000s and the 2010s?

Maybe it can. Facebook came out in 2004 and the iPhone came out in 2007, so I’m sure that changed things significantly. Social media and smartphones? That’s huge. Is it just because we’re (gulp) so old now that Gen Xers can’t differentiate between recent decades? Are we just so out of touch with young fashions and hip culture that we don’t even see it?

Honestly? Yeah, probably. I’ve heard my teens say something along the lines of, “That’s giving, like, early 2000s” when referring to a song or a fashion choice. I guess I should be happy that I’m “with it” enough to know what “giving” means, but I’d never be able to tell you how something from the early 2000s is any different than something from two years ago.

Gen Xers have not taken kindly to having this timeline change thrown in their faces:

“Oh!! This hurts!!”

“Lies.”

“I was having a good day. We were all having a good day.”

“I get, we’re old!!! Quit reminding us!”

“All I see from this is that I am old AF.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. 2007 was last week. I have medicine in the closet which expired earlier than that. Not possible.”

“Nope, that’s not okay.“

“You didn’t have to choose violence, yet here we are.”

You can tell the Gen Xers from the millennials and Gen Zers in the comments because the younger folks just keep commenting with “Superbad,” a coming-of-age comedy that came out in 2007. What they don’t understand is it’s not the number of years that hits hard with this meme, it’s the vast difference between how 17 years felt between the 70s and 90s and how they feel in the 2000s.

You have to have lived it to get it, I suppose, but “Dazed and Confused” in 1993 felt more like a movie made now based in the ’80s would feel. Think “Stranger Things.” That’s what the time difference felt like for us.

Time is weird, man. But even 30 years later (wait, what?) “Dazed and Confused” is still a fabulous film, and Gen X is still the coolest generation.

Aaron Rodgers made a very big deal earlier this offseason about how the New York Jets need to get rid of “the bullsh*t that has nothing to do with winning” in the aftermath of a tumultuous, 7-10 campaign that saw them miss the playoffs. It is unclear how a bid to become the Vice President of the United States on a third-party ticket lines up with that mandate, but if there is one person who we know is very anti-mandates, it is Aaron Rodgers.

According to a new piece by Rebecca Davis O’Brien of the New York Times, Rodgers has been approached (along with former professional wrestler and governor of Minnesota Jesse “The Body” Ventura) by Robert Kennedy Jr. about joining him in his longshot bid for the White House this November. Kennedy apparently confirmed that Rodgers and Ventura are “at the top of his list,” while the Times reports that there have been frequent conversations between Kennedy and the Jets quarterback.

Mr. Kennedy said that he had been speaking with Mr. Rodgers “pretty continuously” for the past month, and that he had been in touch with Mr. Ventura since the former governor introduced him at a campaign event last month in Arizona.
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If anything could be interpreted as a hint of where Mr. Kennedy might lean, the domain name kennedyrodgers.com was registered last week using a GoDaddy host.

Rodgers expressed his desire to play 2-4 more years after rupturing his achilles four snaps into his first year with the Jets, and it goes without saying, but it is very hard to see how someone can be on a presidential ballot and be the starting quarterback for an NFL team at the same time — if he were to leave the team to pursue a political career, it stands to reason that New York would turn to either Zach Wilson or the recently-signed Tyrod Taylor. According to the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls, Kennedy would be projected to get 12.9 percent of the nationwide popular vote if the election was held today, putting him well behind both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Today’s MAGA Republicans should be doing well. Their fearless leader, Donald Trump, continues to inexplicably kill it in the presidential polls. Joe Biden continues to do terribly, even after his shouty State of the Union speech. And yet Trump’s minions continue to act like broken weirdos. Nancy Mace publicly outed herself as someone who either didn’t read or didn’t understand The Scarlet Letter before referencing it. Alabama senator Katie Britt recently became a laughingstock thanks to her instant classic horror of an SOTU rebuttal. Now South Dakota governor Kristi Noem is telling both of them to hold her beer.

Per Mediaite, on Monday Noem confused legions by randomly dropping what appeared to be a five-minute infomercial on her social media accounts. What was she hawking? A chain of Texas dentist offices called Smile Texas. Why would the governor of a northern state be shilling for dentists about 1,000 miles south? Well, because they fixed her teeth so darned good, that’s why.

Nomi regaled viewers with the story of how she had a biking accident that knocked out some teeth. Absent from this anecdote was why she traveled some four states away to get them fixed. But fixed they were, apparently.

“I love that my bite is better, that my teeth are a better shape, that they feel better in my mouth and that I can be confident when I smile at people,” Noem gushed.

Also unclear in the video was whether Nomi was paid by Smile Texas to sing their praises. If so, as The Daily Dot notes, she would have had to disclose that or risk being in violation of Instagram rules. Then again, today’s GOP is no longer the party of following the law.

Or maybe Noem’s just really liked that dentist.

Noem’s video left many understandably perplexed.

(Via Mediaite)

Most of the memorable stuff from Sunday night’s Oscars telecast came in the second half when Ryan Gosling led maybe the best musical performance in the history of the show, John Mulaney aced his audition to be next year’s Oscars host, and Al Pacino woozily gave out the film’s final award. From the first hour, Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s tearful acceptance speech seems to have been the audience favorite, but let’s not forget the passionate words of Cord Jefferson, who won Best Adapted Screenplay for American Fiction, a film he also directed.

Jefferson found an unusual path to Oscar’s glory. He came up as a journalist with bylines at the New York Times, Huffington Post, and USA Today, where he wrote on race, pop culture, and more. He served as an editor at Gawker for several years, then made the jump to television as a writer for The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, and producer of Master of None, The Good Place, and The Watchmen. Most recently, he was a writer and producer of the critically acclaimed limited series Station Eleven. American Fiction was his first film of any kind, and it won him an Oscar. Not bad.

Moving from writing about culture to creating it, Jefferson found himself in a unique position to speak truth to power about the business of film. I’ll be honest: His speech won me over immediately. Most winners get to the podium, pull out a piece of paper, and run down a list of friends and collaborators to be thanked. It’s an understandable impulse, but it makes for less than exciting television, and Jefferson seemed to understand that. He started by simply thanking “everyone who worked on the film,” and then got to his actual point.

“This is a risk-averse industry,” he began, “but $200 million movies are also a risk. Instead of making one $200 million movie, try making twenty $10 million movies, or fifty $4 million movies.” The audience lit up at this suggestion, drowning him out with applause before he could even finish his sentence. It’s not a new sentiment, but it’s still an important one. Now more than ever, studio executives protect their jobs by approving big budgets for films based on proven intellectual properties. If it goes wrong, at least they’ll be able to justify the risk because, hey, it worked on the last one. When a film with a truly original vision flops, it’s harder to explain why they ever thought it would be a success.

Typically, a message like Jefferson’s wouldn’t ruffle any feathers at the Oscars. The Academy is at this point mostly responsible for keeping the mid-budget film for grownups alive. But it felt even more important at this year’s ceremony when two of the most financially successful films of the year—Oppenheimer and Barbie—were also the Academy’s favorites. “Blockbuster creep” has already taken its toll on the studio system, but what if it comes for our Oscars? Hollywood is a copycat industry, and while most viewers would be thrilled at the prospect of more established directors in the category of Nolan and Gerwig getting massive budgets to bring their passion projects to life, it might crowd out unproven filmmakers like Jefferson, and remove a rung from the ladder that they use to establish themselves in the first place. Though the occasional blockbuster transcends and proves its value as art and not just commerce, the Oscars are supposed to be more a safe harbor for non-blockbusters, drawing people to them and equaling the playing field a little.

Jefferson walked a tightrope in his speech, honoring the auteurs of today while urging the rest of Hollywood to back the next generation. “I felt so much joy making this movie, and I want other people to experience that joy,” he said. “The next Martin Scorsese is out there. The next Greta is out there—both Gretas [Lee and Gerwig]. They just want a shot, and we can give them one. Thank you to everyone who worked on this movie for trusting a 40-year-old Black guy who had never directed before.”

Jefferson’s delivery made the speech feel extemporaneous, but it couldn’t have been written any better. He blended personal experience with off-the-cuff ebullience—in the tradition of Cuba Gooding, Jr. or Ben Affleck and Matt Damon—ensuring that his pointed message to Hollywood didn’t come off as scolding or condescending. He didn’t thank his agent, his manager, his producers, his leading man, the author of the novel the film was based on, or even his publicist. He’ll save that for later. Instead, he used his platform to speak from a unique vantage point of being both of the industry and outside of it to give Hollywood a message they needed to hear. Let’s hope it didn’t get lost in Ken-sanity.

The Boys undoubtedly plans to skewer some spin off tendencies with a title like the recently announced The Boys: Mexico for a show in development. Yet for three seasons thus far and side voyages to Diabolical and Gen V, this Vought International-engineered world shows no signs of losing its edge. For that matter, there continues to be no shortage of bodily fluids and scintillating subject matter, the latter of which largely arrives courtesy of Chace Crawford’s perverted Deep.

The fourth season of the original series is mercifully on the way in only a few months, again on a mostly weekly rollout. The brand shows no sign of weakening, even as both the DCU and MCU’s empires have considerably weakened. Satire ain’t dead, baby, but it’s hard as hell to pull off, and Eric Kripke runs a tight ship while adapting Garth Ennis’ Dynamite Entertainment comic. Without more f*cking around, let’s dive into what we can expect from The Boys‘ long-awaited return to Amazon.

Plot

The fourth season’s story will kick off only a few days after the events of the Gen V finale, in which Homelander blew away Marie, who later woke up in a lab (the woods?) with a handful of her fellow Supes, including Little Cricket. Homelander had engineered the events of the campus mayhem into an opportunity to hold up Cate and Sam as heroes, so perhaps they could crossover into The Boys at some point.

However, that season finale also showed Billy Butcher stumbling onto the lab where the Supe Virus was manufactured. However, Butcher is not exactly on good terms with the rest of The Boys, and Mother’s Milk has plenty of “unfinished business” with the group’s leader after Butcher decided to join forces with Soldier Boy. Additionally, Butcher only has a few months left on his ticker before perhaps croaking from all the Compound V that he decided to take, and Homelander is lining up more dominoes as Ryan becomes an even more dangerous force than we’ve previously seen:

The world is on the brink. Victoria Neuman is closer than ever to the Oval Office and under the muscly thumb of Homelander, who is consolidating his power. Butcher, with only months to live, has lost Becca’s son as well as his job as The Boys’ leader. The rest of the team are fed up with his lies. With the stakes higher than ever, they have to find a way to work together and save the world before it’s too late.

Additionally, Homelander will stand trial for killing a civilian in broad daylight. The Deep will continue perving, Mother’s Milk will shave (hmm), and Starlight and Queen Maeve’s replacements (Sage and Firecracker) are, according to Amazon, “two of the most dangerous supes you’ll ever meet.” What else?

On some silly notes, Vought International has been shilling for some terrible “Homelander High-Tops!” Those look awfully familiar. Also, The Boys’ social media has been trolling the “Wanker-in-chief.”

On the VFX side, we can expect (as prosthetic penis guru/VFX wizard Stephan Fleet assures viewers) more of the same disgusting flavor that we’re used to seeing: “I’m excited for the cast of @TheBoysTV to see the crazy sh*t I’m cooking up in VFX! They really put a lot of trust in me.”

From there, I can only hope that someone decided to gift Mother’s Milk with a new jacket after that “Herogasm” shower that he received. Yikes.

Cast

Erin Moriarty returns as Annie January, who has formally gone rogue from The Seven, although she will obviously still have her Starlight powers. The show wouldn’t be the same without Antony Starr as Homelander, Karl Urban as Billy Butcher, Chace Crawford as The Deep, Jessie T. Usher as A-Train, Jack Quaid as Hughie, Laz Alonso as Mother’s Milk, Karen Fukuhara as Kimiko, and Tomer Capone as Frenchie. Nathan Mitchell will be back, somehow, as a different version of Black Noir after Homelander killed the previous incarnation.

Additionally, Claudia Doumit’s power is growing as Victoria Neuman, and Colby Minifie is still sh*tting bricks while running PR for Vought International as Ashley. No longer on the scene: Dominique McElligott as Queen Maeve, who is hopefully enjoying her lesbian retirement on a quiet farm upstate somewhere. As far as anyone has gathered, Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy is still out of commission for the time being. We will, however, get some Supernatural flavor with the official debut of Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s secretive-smartass character, although we shouldn’t expect him to play a huge role in the story because The Walking Dead: Dead City hopped into shooting a second season.

A duo of new Supes will join The Seven. They include Sister Sage (Susan Hayward), whose non-classic Supe powers might be much more manipulative than powerful in a physical sense (given that she appears to be encouraging Homelander into a “Caesar”-esque position), and the explosive Firecracker (Valorie Curry) seems to be like Queen Maeve if she was more of a chip off the Homelander block.

Release Date

Season 4 debuts with three episodes on June 13 followed by weekly installments and a season finale on July 18.

Trailer

This ominous teaser trailer suggests that Sister Sage could be pulling some Homelander strings. Democracy begins to fall, too, and this show always feels far too timely, doesn’t it? Somehow, it always manages to entertain in the process. Also, that peek at Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s character feels perfect.

It’s been five long years since Marvel had to axe all their Netflix shows. Long before the brand’s interconnectedness clearly got too complicated for audiences, the streamer had a good thing going with a string of shows revolving around the gang known as the Defenders: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron First. At least some of those shows’ side characters are coming back for the forthcoming revival Daredevil: Born Again, and it looks like maybe — or maybe not, who knows — one of them might be Jon Bernthal’s take on the Punisher.

Per IGN, Bernthal posted a semi-cryptic image on his Instagram account. It was the cover of a children’s book entitled One Batch, Two Batch, showing two bears, a father and child, the latter wielding a chocolate chip cookie with one bit out. Why would Benthal, a grown man, post this?

Real heads know. As IGN points out, One Batch, Two Batch is the children’s book Benthal’s Frank Castle reads to his daughter every night before she goes to sleep. That’s not all: The Punisher sometimes likes to quote a line from it — “One batch, two batch, penny and dime” — before he kills people. Imagine someone quoting a children’s book to you before they take you out.

This seems to confirm a rumor that was floated earlier this month, namely that Bernthal’s Punisher is back for Daredevil: Born Again. If that’s true, he’ll join some other Marvel Netflix show alumni, like Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilison Fisk, aka Kingpin, and Wilson Bethel’s Poindexter, aka Bullseye. Thanks to set photos, it appears another big character may be back, too: Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones. Or maybe that won’t happen. Maybe neither of these things will happen.

Whatever the case, everyone will know for sure when Daredevil: Born Again hits Disney+ and Hulu sometime next year.

(Via IGN)

Justin Fields finds himself in no-man’s land as he gets set for his fourth year in the NFL. The former top-10 pick is almost assuredly on his way out of Chicago as they hold the No. 1 overall pick in April’s Draft and are widely expected to take Caleb Williams to be his replacement. However, the Bears are also going to take their time making that decision final, meaning Fields likely won’t get moved until much closer to (or during) the Draft.

That is an issue right now for Fields. The NFL is already an unforgiving place when it comes to providing opportunity. Teams don’t care about the extenuating circumstances that might’ve caused you to struggle, from coaching turnover to a lack of help on a roster. They just care that the production hasn’t measured up to expectations. Add in the desire to move quickly once free agency opens to fill your most important positions — something that is especially true at quarterback — and you end up with Fields sitting in limbo with fewer and fewer potential landing spots.

Fields, for his part, had the best season of his young career in 2023, completing 61.4 percent of his passes for 2,562 yards, 16 touchdowns, and nine interceptions while rushing for 657 yards and 4 TDS. However, the Bears were still a middling team at 5-8 with Fields starting, and while he took strides as a passer, there are still concerns about his willingness to let it rip and inconsistent production. There are games Fields looks like a potential high-end starter and others were he looks like a young quarterback still trying to adapt to the speed of the NFL game.

Entering his fourth year at 25 years old, there’s certainly still time for Fields to hit his full potential, but his biggest issue is he’s due to get paid next year. The going rate for a mid-tier starting quarterback in the NFL is $25 million (Jimmy Garoppolo, Geno Smith) to $35 million (Baker Mayfield, Jared Goff, Derek Carr). If teams aren’t sold on Fields being a lock to produce like that, they won’t want to give up a lot in a trade and be on the hook to pay him next year, because then you risk having spent decent draft capital on a one-year rental.

That’s why Fields now finds himself in a fairly precarious position as QB jobs dry up with free agency opening and the Draft looming. The Atlanta Falcons were seen as a snug fit for Fields, as he’s an Atlanta-area native, but they paid big money to bring in Kirk Cousins instead. The Steelers were also considered a potential landing spot for Fields, but chose to sign Russell Wilson on a cheap deal. The Vikings, who lost Cousins to the Falcons, quickly scooped up Sam Darnold as their apparent stop-gap quarterback until they can figure out a long-term option, whether that’s Darnold or someone they take in April. The Raiders, which signed Gardner Minshew, are in a similar spot.

That leaves just a handful of options for Fields before he finds himself on the outside looking in, possibly having to go the Geno Smith route to find his footing in the league. Making life harder for Fields (and the reason he’s in this position in the first place) is the fact that this year’s Draft features four QBs many project to be top-12 picks. Williams, Drake Maye, Jayden Daniels, and J.J. McCarthy all could go in the top-10, meaning bad teams that would otherwise be in the mix for a QB on the trade market would rather choose to roll the dice on landing their QB of the future. That’s not because those four are locks to being better than Fields, but because if you get a QB on a rookie deal, it opens up your chances to build out a contender quickly around them by spending money elsewhere.

The only starting jobs currently available are:

• New England Patriots (No. 2 pick)
• Washington Commanders (No. 3 pick)
• Denver Broncos (No. 12 pick)

Any of those three teams could look to trade a second-round pick for Fields and use their first-round selection to give him some weaponry around him — the Pats or Commanders could theoretically use their top-3 picks to pair him with another ex-Buckeye star in receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. However, that seems unlikely because of the financial reasons laid out above and the fact that teams needing quarterbacks tend to take them as much out of fear as out of desire. Passing on a generational quarterback (see: the Bears and Patrick Mahomes) can haunt your franchise for years, and teams are absolutely terrified of that happening. Few will be ridiculed if Fields becomes a star elsewhere for passing on the chance to trade for him, but if Maye or Daniels were to pop somewhere else while Fields stalls out in New England or Washington, they would never hear the end of it.

Is that a thing teams should worry about when building their team? Probably not, but it certainly factors into the calculus. If those three teams all choose to make their quarterback addition through the Draft, the only real hope for Fields is to get traded somewhere he could get into a quarterback competition.

The Titans have a new coaching staff — would they want someone else in the building to compete with Will Levis this year? The Raiders could surprise everyone and trade for Fields to compete with recently-signed Minshew for the starting job, particularly if they don’t end up with a QB of the future at No. 13 overall (or trading up), but that seems unlikely. The Giants just signed Drew Lock to backup Daniel Jones, seemingly removing my favorite potential Fields landing spot from the board of options (I think Brian Daboll would be just about the ideal coach for Fields). Maybe the Saints look to bring in Fields to push Derek Carr now that Jameis Winston is gone, but that’d be a questionable use of resources in New Orleans.

As of now, it seems more likely that Fields is a high-profile backup somewhere next year rather than a starter. That likely sets his timeline back a few years before even getting a chance as a starter again, following the Smith/Darnold/Minshew playbook. That can get you a 1-year “prove it” deal, which can get you a long-term contract. For now, it seems Fields is the latest victim of the NFL’s unforgiving lack of patience, but all it will take is seizing the next opportunity when it arrives to change all of that.

The Oscars have come and gone once again, and they have been the topic of discussion for numerous reasons: Oppenheimer winning for most of its nominations, including Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture; Ryan Gosling’s unforgettable performance of “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie; John Cena wearing nothing but Birkenstocks and his birthday suit to present the Oscar for Best Costume Design; and in the biggest upset of the night, Emma Stone winning for Best Actress instead of Lily Gladstone. A smaller, but still notable, moment that had people talking was Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt presenting together to pay tribute to the community of stuntpersons whose hard and amazing work helps make films so incredibly entertaining to watch. Some viewers at home thought this would’ve been a perfect opportunity for the two of them to announce that The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences finally made it official, and introduce the new category of Best Stunt Choreography for the Oscars starting next year, along with Best Casting.

There have been many critics and cinephiles who have been clamoring for The Academy to lavish some praise and acknowledgment on the stunt community outside of the occasional speech and montage every few years. And there have been films that are perfect examples of why this should have become a reality by now. Films like the John Wick series (the staircase scene in Chapter 4 alone is proof of this), the Fast & Furious series, the Mission Impossible series, Bullet Train, The Woman King, Baby Driver (its writer-director, Edgar Wright, expressed his appreciation on Twitter for the film’s inclusion in the Oscars stunt montage, while also stating that more needs to be done), both volumes of Kill Bill, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and last but certainly not least, Mad Max: Fury Road.

If The Academy is truly serious about acknowledging the stunt community with its own category at the Oscars (and it is admittedly a long and complicated process for a new category to be introduced), here are some upcoming films this year that look like they will be deserving of some nominations for their stunt performers.

Monkey Man

Dev Patel makes his directorial debut (and puts his black belt in tae kwon do to very good use) in this Jordan Peele-produced action film about a young man working in an underground fight club who decides to inflict revenge on his mother’s killers. From what has been shown in the trailer so far (especially the red-band trailer), Monkey Man looks to be a combo of John Wick, Oldboy, and even Bloodsport that will earn the film its R rating, and with fight choreography that will have audiences talking about it long after the closing credits.

Boy Kills World

Before we get to see whether or not he surpasses expectations with his lead role in the long-awaited remake of The Crow, Bill Skårsgard stars in this action film about a young boy who becomes deaf and mute after witnessing the murder of his loved ones by a corrupt and powerful family, and spends the rest of his childhood in rigorous martial arts training so he can seek his revenge as an adult. Skårsgard’s inner voice is provided by the legendary H. Jon Benjamin, so have fun deciding for yourself as to whether it is Sterling Archer or Bob Belcher who is providing the narration for this.

Road House

There have been some conflicting viewpoints seen in the press as to whether this should be released in theaters, or whether it should be released on Amazon Prime Video. Regardless of which viewpoint is truthful and correct, viewers will get to see this remake of the 1989 cult classic that starred the late, great Patrick Swayze, and blessed us with memorable quotes like “Pain don’t hurt,” and “I want you to be nice until it’s time to not be nice”. Gyllenhaal plays a former MMA fighter who is hired by a bar owner (Jessica Williams) to help clean up her newest place of business in the Florida Keys so that it no longer resembles a slaughterhouse, which leads to him butting heads with a ruthless and boisterous troublemaker played by UFC champion Conor McGregor.

Deadpool & Wolverine

The long-awaited sequel/introduction of The Merc with a Mouth to the Marvel Cinematic Universe is almost here, and this time, we get to see him cross paths with one of the best things to come out of Canada since maple syrup: Wolverine, the adamantium-clawed mutant who will be played once again by Hugh Jackman, despite the fact that we saw him perish in the 2017 film Logan. The Deadpool films have been well-known for their clever stunts and fight scenes, and seeing not just one, but two, superhuman characters who can take lots of punishment while they’re dishing it out, looks to promise even more.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

The prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road is centered on the origin story of Imperator Furiosa (played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road, and now played by Anya Taylor-Joy in this film), and how she became trapped in the nearly inescapable grasp of Immortan Joe and his War Boys. It already looks like it will be just as delightfully bonkers (or batshit, whichever works best) when it comes to the vehicular mayhem that is to be expected in any Mad Max tale, and much like Fury Road did upon its release, Furiosa is highly likely to inspire just as much noise from its viewers in asking/demanding The Academy to finally give the stunt community the praise and acknowledgment they all deserve.

The Fall Guy

The 1980s television series that starred Lee Majors as a stuntman who moonlights as a bounty hunter to track down criminals every week gets the big-screen treatment, with Ryan Gosling playing the role of stuntman Colt Seavers, and Emily Blunt as Jody, the action film director/ex-girlfriend of Colt who asks him to find the leading man for her mega-budgeted action film before it is shut down. This will be the second time Gosling plays a stuntman, though it’s safe to say that The Fall Guy will be a lot less gory and disturbing to watch than Drive. And if there’s any of these films that deserves an Oscar nod for Best Stunt Choreography, what better candidate than a film about a stuntperson doing what he does best to save the day?