Year: 2024

Oh, what a day, what a lovely day: the Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga reviews are here (still waiting on the Garfield movie). And would you believe it? Director George Miller has added another classic to his wild filmography. I believe it.

The prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road is being hailed as a “masterpiece” and “astonishing” by critics. Miller and the cast, including Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth (sadly, Piss Boy couldn’t make it), were also greeted with a nearly eight-minute ovation at the Cannes Film Festival. That’s enough time for Adam Driver to smoke two cigarettes!

Let’s get to the reviews.

David Ehrlich for Indiewire:

Rather than reaching for — and failing to clear — the impossibly high bar that he set for himself, Miller has chosen to do something even crazier and more rewarding: He’s created a symphonic, five-part, decades-spanning revenge saga so immense and self-possessed that it refuses to be seen as the mere extension of another movie, even though it manages to deepen the impact of Fury Road at every turn.

Hoai-Tran Bui for Inverse:

Miller has always been a maximalist auteur, but he takes his visually bombastic sensibilities to new heights with Furiosa — a spectacular, utterly deranged epic that is unlike any Mad Max movie ever made. Furiosa trades in the franchise’s western vistas and lone-wolf narrative for a heavy-metal riff on Homer’s Odyssey, delivering a sprawling, immersive saga that manages to outdo its predecessor for the most bonkers action that’s ever been injected into your eyeballs.

John Nugent for Empire:

There is, once again, an astonishing standard of stunts and visual effects sustained throughout these 148 minutes, with at least six audacious set-pieces — including a three-day chase across a desert, and a staggering airborne assault on a War Rig — that must be seen to be believed.

Bilge Ebiri for Vulture:

This wouldn’t be the first time Miller has taken a big franchise sequel and turned it into something strange, sublime, and potentially off-putting. He is, after all, the man who almost ended an entire Hollywood studio with Babe: Pig in the City. Still, whether the new movie is deemed a hit or not, it’s nice to know that, after all these years, George Miller seems determined to stay true to his mad self.

Siddhant Adlakha for Mashable:

A bombastic wasteland folktale, George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is an ingenious, eye-popping prequel to his near-perfect action romp Mad Max: Fury Road. While it revisits several characters and locations we’ve already seen, it’s also a wildly different beast, one that replaces its predecessor’s mile-a-minute chase structure with a years-spanning story that elevates the series’ operatic imagery to the level of biblical myth.

Hannah Strong for Little White Lies:

Furiosa is still miles better than the dreck Hollywood usually treats us to over the summer, and provided it doesn’t take another decade to get the Fury Road sequel that Miller has been promising, perhaps we’ll reach Valhalla yet.

Manohla Dargis for the New York Times:

Miller is such a wildly inventive filmmaker that it’s been easy to forget that he keeps making movies about the end of life as we know it. It’s a blast watching his characters fight over oil, water and women, yet while I’ve long thought of him as a great filmmaker it’s only with Furiosa that I now understand he’s also one kick-ass prophet of doom.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga opens in theaters on May 24.

Nikola Jokic has three NBA MVP awards, an NBA championship ring, and an NBA Finals MVP award somewhere rattling around his house. He has done incredible things on the basketball court and put up some monster performances over his career, but what he did in Game 5 against the Timberwolves may very well be his masterpiece.

Jokic put up 40 points, 13 assists, seven rebounds, and zero turnovers, completely dismantling the Minnesota interior defense that had him flustered in the first two games of the series. Jokic put Rudy Gobert in the blender, leaving the 4-time DPOY seeking help from his teammates or perhaps a higher power, as Jokic gave him work for four quarters.

Jokic spent an entire game testing the will and spirit of the Timberwolves, and it felt that by the end of the game he had broken it, one pivot at a time. Gobert could only toss his hands in the air after Jokic would flip the ball into the basket, and after showing off ever post move in his bag, he had one last trick left, sinking a stepback three as the dagger. It was as demoralizing an individual performance as you can have, as he took the Wolves best defender and repeatedly showed there’s nothing he can do to slow him down, much less stop him. He never showed the same move twice, hitting Gobert with counters and then counters to his own counters, keeping him just enough off balance to create angles and windows to flip the ball into the basket — over, under, around, and through Gobert.

A night earlier, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander put the Oklahoma City Thunder on his back to lead a second half comeback that evened their series with the Dallas Mavericks at 2-2. After the Dallas defense had seemingly shut off the Thunder’s water for Games 2, 3, and the first half of Game 4 with hard closeouts on shooters and walling off the rim, Gilgeous-Alexander decided he needed to do it himself, going to work in the midrange where he hit all 14 of his shots.

For Gilgeous-Alexander, his performance was borne out of necessity. The Thunder had spent two games hoping they would break out of their struggles by sticking to the game plan, but sometimes the playoffs won’t allow you to play the beautiful game. Oklahoma City seemed obsessed with creating the perfect shot, regularly passing up good looks, thinking a great one was around the corner. Dallas preyed on that, sending hard closeouts to create hesitation from shooters and knowing where that next pass was going to recover and extend possessions, forcing the Thunder into desperate late clock shots over and over.

Eventually, Gilgeous-Alexander recognized his team needed someone to go make shots to bend the Mavs defense out of shape, and he obliged with one of the great shot-making performances of this postseason. He showed he too has a wide array of moves and tricks to create separation and hit shots over even the best efforts of Dallas defenders. Even when Dallas did send extra bodies and forced him to go where they wanted him, he would still rise up and hit a shot over the corner of the backboard.

Both performances by Jokic and Gilgeous-Alexander were vital to their teams getting critical wins. A win down 2-1 and a win tied 2-2 are, historically, near-necessities to win a playoff series. It wasn’t just what they did, but how they did it that matters beyond those games by reminding their opponents and themselves that when they’re at their best, there simply are no answers.

In Jokic’s case, it was a message sent (and seemingly received) by Minnesota that they don’t have a defense that can take him out of his game. After the first two games, the Timberwolves were brimming with confidence after frustrating Jokic with their waves of length. After Game 5, they’re left to search for answers, none of which seem readily apparent or attainable. While his effort to turn Gobert into BBQ chicken drew headlines, Karl-Anthony Towns and Naz Reid were on the receiving end of plenty of buckets themselves (or foul calls trying to stop him).

In Oklahoma City, I felt like Gilgeous-Alexander’s performance was more important internally. The Nuggets know Jokic can turn into that kind of playoff monster, but the Thunder hadn’t yet seen SGA completely take a game over this postseason when they absolutely needed it. His aggression was something the rest of OKC’s squad fed off of, and it raised their entire level on both ends of the court. When shots aren’t falling and guys get hesitant, the entire energy level drops for a team, but you could see their confidence and belief build as SGA went into bucket mode in that second half. Eventually, Jalen Williams started to shake out of his funk, becoming more assertive in his offensive movements, and guys like Chet Holmgren, Lu Dort, and Cason Wallace got good looks from three and knocked them down.

That brought the life back into this young Thunder team, and it carried over to the defensive end, where they were able to start getting the stops that got them in transition and made things even easier. The Mavs will certainly have to consider some adjustments to SGA, but I doubt they make any sweeping changes before Game 5 given how well they’ve been playing defensively. The difference going forward for the Thunder should be that belief that even if the Mavs are swarming them, they can be aggressive and attack because their star proved it can be done. He pried the lid off the basket and created some gaps in the Mavs’ armor, attacking the area of the floor Dallas is more willing to concede.

The Nuggets and Thunder are both teams that play a very fluid style, wanting the ball to move and pop, but sometimes in the playoffs you have to have a great Plan B when a defense gets locked in on how to slow your Plan A. Nikola Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander are those Plan Bs, and they reminded everyone on both sides that on some nights, there’s not an answer to the question they can pose.

Unlike Happy’s golf ball, Happy Gilmore 2 has found its home. Variety reports that the sequel to the 1996 comedy starring Adam Sandler was officially ordered by Netflix, where many of Sandler’s other films have premiered, including Sandy Wexler and You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah.

Earlier this year, actor Christopher McDonald, who plays sh*t-eating antagonist Shooter McGavin in the original, was the first to confirm the existence of Happy Gilmore 2. “I saw Adam about two weeks ago, and he says to me, ‘McDonald, you’re gonna love this.’ I said, ‘What?’ He says, ‘How about that,’ and he shows me the first draft of Happy Gilmore 2,” he said in a radio interview. “Maybe you should cut that out [of this audio] because I don’t wanna be a liar, but he did show me that, and I thought, ‘Well, that would be awesome.’ So, it’s in the works. Fans demand it, dammit!”

Sandler wants the sequel to be a tribute to original cast members Carl Weathers, Joe Flaherty, and Bob Barker, all of whom have passed away since 2023. “I would love [The Price is Right host] Drew Carey to be in this movie out of respect to Bob,” he said on The Dan Patrick Show. “When we were writing stuff, Bob was alive. When we were writing stuff, Carl Weathers was alive. When we were writing stuff, Joe Flaherty was alive. It sucks, we love those guys. They were such a big part of the movie and just great people. But we’re going to get them involved somehow. They’ll be involved.”

Happy Gilmore 2 does not currently have a release date.

(Via Variety)

Still salty that Danny DeVito didn’t voice Pikachu in Detective Pikachu? I am (let DeVito take over as the spokesperson for Mint Mobile while we’re at it). Hopefully, the same mistake won’t be made again with another movie based on a Nintendo property. The It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia legend sounds interested in voicing Wario in the sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

“You never know what happens in the world. I’m up for a lot of things… I’m ready to do a lot of things,” DeVito said in an interview with The Movie Dweeb while promoting Poolman. “Whatever’s coming, you know, I look at, I see, I evaluate.” When the interviewer joked that he’ll tell Chris Pratt, the voice of Mario, about who should be cast as his garlic-loving nemesis, DeVito replied, “Tell [him] I’m going to take him to the cleaners but I should be in the movie.”

Pratt recently teased that there could be a “Nintendo Cinematic Universe” and how “there are decades worth of [games] to explore… with Mario and Peach and Donkey Kong and Luigi and Bowser and Yoshi.” But what about Wario? Forget the Switch 2 — the Nintendo news I want is Danny DeVito Announced As Wario. And who’s playing Waluigi? Glenn Howerton, of course.

(Via The Movie Dweeb)

Baby Reindeer made streaming waves that continue reverberating, given the gut punch of a based-on-real-life story from Richard Gadd. Although the creator and star of the series has had to address the unpleasant side-effects (and those have continued) of becoming an overnight sensation, he’s also fielding positive effects, some of which have, in his words, “blew my mind.”

This has included praise from a wicked scared Stephen King, who uttered a telling “BABY REINDEER: Holy sh*t.” Additionally, Gadd recently revealed that he did catch wind of Cardi B’s reaction, and there’s a celebrity response that had Gadd even more floored, as he told Hollywood Reporter:

“There’s been some crazy stuff… The one that meant the most to me along with the Pogues was actually John Cena. He sent me a private video talking about the show and how much he liked it. I’m a big wrestling fan and a big John Cena fan, so that kind of blew my mind. It meant a lot to me.”

Not only is Gadd hearing from those he admires, he’s also unable to hang out and have a quiet bite at pubs anymore. He also revealed that, while recently traveling to Los Angeles for press-related duties, that pilots on his plane came out of the cockpit to bid greetings to him. “I still don’t think of myself as famous,” he admitted, but Gadd should probably get used to the idea.

(Via Hollywood Reporter)

Kehlani is about to have the summer on lock. Last month, they released a new single, “After Hours,” a sexy ladies anthem sung over the Coolie Dance riddim — popularized in songs like Nina Sky’s “Move Ya Body,” Pitbull’s “Culo,” and Elephant Man’s “Jook Gal.” Today (May 14), Kehlani has announced their new album, Crash.

Set to arrive this summer, Crash marks Kehlani’s fourth studio album. On the cover art, they are seen seated on top of a car with a broken windshield, wearing a dress made out of shiny glass.

While the look of the album’s cover and the title itself may sound ominous, Kehlani revealed in an interview with Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe last month that recording Crash was the most fun they’ve ever had making music.

“I wanted to make things for once that didn’t feel reminiscent,” Kehlani said. “For once, I’m not attached to some story or some public thing or some trauma or some deep explanations. As we go out this process and we have to talk to each other a bunch to all these people, I have nothing but joyful things to say to you. I’m in such a happy place. I’m ready to be outside.”

You can see the Crash cover art below.

Crash is out 6/21 via Atlantic. Find more information here.

Are you familiar with Dr. Dillamond? It’s okay if you aren’t, he’s a very prestigious science teacher who also happens to be a goat because who are you to tell him he can’t teach the periodic table of elements when “Ba”is his favorite element?

Dr. Dillamond is portrayed by none other than Peter Dinklage in the live action adaptation of Wicked, and fans got a good glimpse of the goat in the new trailer, which dropped today.

Wicked tells the (unofficial) origin story of Elphaba and Glinda, who later become the Wicked Witch of the East and Glinda The Good Witch, respectively. But who cares about the witches when we’ve got a cute little goat with glasses.

Even Ariana Grande, who portrays Glinda in the upcoming musical, is excited about Dr. Dillamond, and even changed her profile picture to celebrate the iconic animal:

She is not alone. Dr. Dillamond (who seemingly does not have a first name) has found hundreds of fans, who seem more invested in him then the actual musical. In the musical adaptaion, Dr. Dillamond is a man with a goat head. In the film, they are just going straight Goat. Which is both admirable and entertaining. The Dillamond fans are loving it!

Others are not too keen on the CGI Goat…Peter Dinklage could have gone full method for this one.

Whatever your opinion of Dr. Dillamond may be, please remember to be respectful when you see him in theaters on November 27th. He has a doctorate. Check out the trailer below:

The names we choose to give our children can significantly impact their lives. Multiple studies from across the globe have found that a person’s name can influence their employment, social and economic outcomes.

Unfortunately, humans make snap judgments about one another, and having an unusual name can lead people to make unflattering assumptions. “We’re hardwired to try to figure out in a heartbeat whether or not we want to trust somebody, whether we want to run from somebody,” Northwestern University researcher David Figlio said, according to Live Science.

However, an increasing number of parents are giving their children non-traditional names to help them stand out. “Parents are trying to be original, almost branding their kids in an era where names are viewed on the same level as Twitter handles or a website URL,” writer Sabrina Rogers-Anderson said.

Ruby, a mother on TikTok, took a hard stance on parents giving their children names that sound childish in a post that’s received over 11 million views. Ruby says she named her kids as “adults, not babies” hoping they would never “outgrow” their names.

@rubyyvillarreal

Visit TikTok to discover videos!

“The whole concept when I was trying to look for a name and choose a name for her is I did not want her to outgrow her name,” she said in the viral video. “I wanted the name to fit her as a baby, as a toddler, as a child, and into adulthood. So, it’s like I really am happy with what I ended up with naming her and it just fits her so well.”

She captioned the video, “love having nicknames as they are younger and it doesn’t mean they will prefer it over their name as they get older. Just gives them options.”

People in the comments responded with modern names they think that kids will outgrow.

“My name is Koazy and I’m here for a job interview,” Stalker joked. “Hello sir, I am Bluey Mason Garrison! I was called in for a job interview last Tuesday,” Pastel Purr added.

“I can’t imagine knowing [a] 30-year-old named Emma or Posie,” Mikey wrote.

However, a lot of people commented that names that seem like they’ll be outgrown will sound fine in the future when those names are popular with the new generation. “Kids grow up with their generation having their own names on trend. They will be normal adult names when they are grown,” Kerry wrote.

“Names grow with the generation,” Lauren added. “The name Dennis sounded like a baby name once too. Names grow up just like generations.”

@rubyyvillarreal

Visit TikTok to discover videos!

In a follow-up video, Ruby shared the names she gave her children. Her girl is named Karla Esmerelda and her boy is called Deluca.

“I just really liked how simple, how bold, and strong that the name by itself just really kind of is. Doing some research names with the letter K tend to be like very bold and powerful names, so I really wanted it with a K and not with a C,” she said.

She named her son Deluca, after a doctor on “Grey’s Anatomy.” She said she chose the name because there was nothing to connect it to, and it sounded “nice.”

This article originally appeared on 4.26.23

Would you be considered human if you haven’t locked yourself out of your house at least once? One mom on TikTok found herself in quite the predicament with only her toddler to “mission impossible” his way to unlocking the house door to let his mom, @gesikaaaaaa, inside. The video starts with the camera pointed at a rosy-cheeked toddler on a snow-covered porch.

The boy looks to be no older than 2 or 3 but he’s an expert at following directions … sort of. It’s all still pretty new to him and, as anyone who’s ever interacted with a toddler knows, multistep directions are not the way to go. They tend to hear one thing only and even then are apt to be distracted by a stray piece of lint and not be able to finish the task.

Everything is new to a toddler and it doesn’t take much to distract them. And just about anything can be a toy. So when this mom helped her son through an open window in an effort to guide him through the process of unlocking the door, classic toddler cuteness ensued.

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The desperate mom explains in the video that she left one window unlocked and you can see immediately that there’s no way an adult could fit through the small space without injury. So instead she uses her toddler to do it and once he’s inside the house his instructions are to get a chair … he finds a bowl. His mom tells him, “Focus. Focus. Grab the chair and take it to the door.”

What do you know? That sweet boy did just as he was told. Until he found a rock. Mom quickly refocuses the boy and the chair is back on the move, then he finds the fireplace tongs and takes a break to play with the fireside tools stand. Eventually the little guy succeeds in his mission but the journey there was the cutest maze of side quests you’ll ever see.

Watch him rescue his mom below:

@gesikaaaaaa

Thank god for tiny humans #bne #lockedout #tinyhuman #mamashelper #breakingin #DoTheSmartThings #toddlercomedy #kidtok

This article originally appeared on 1.4.23

There isn’t a single person past the age of infancy who has never made a mistake, and the majority of people do something that they’re not proud of at least once in their lives. While some mistakes are bigger than others, they’re all moments we’d rather keep to ourselves most of the time. For some people those mistakes are poor decisions or lapses in judgment that land them behind bars.

One man found himself facing a judge for sentencing after making poor choices. Arthur Booth had the entire internet weeping after a video of him went viral when the sentencing judge in court recognized him as one of her childhood friends. When Booth recognized the judge, he began to openly sob with embarrassment. He was ultimately sentenced to 10 months in prison and ordered to a drug rehabilitation center.

People wondered what happened after that fateful day in court, and a couple of years later a short update came, showing him reuniting with the judge after finishing his sentence and rehab. But that was years ago, where is he now?

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Turns out, Booth is doing quite well. Rebel HQ uploaded a video showing what the once struggling man was up to, and the update couldn’t be any sweeter. On the day the judge reunited with her former classmate outside of the courtroom, she reminded him, “You’ve got to take care of your family, try to get a job, stay clean. You’re going to do something good for somebody else, that’s what you’ve got to do.”

Booth took her words to heart, making good on his promise and exceeding the expectation to succeed. The once embattled man has stayed away from the things that had cost him his freedom–drugs and gambling. In fact, he travels the country as a manager of a successful pharmaceutical company based in Florida, according to Rebel HQ. The man owns his own home and continues to keep in contact with the childhood friend and judge who gave him the words he needed to hear at the right time.

Watch the entire update below:

This article originally appeared on 3.9.24