Category: News

The Portland Trail Blazers finally had their scalding hot start to the season come to an end in Miami on Wednesday night as the Heat handed them their first loss of the season, but more important to the Blazers’ long-term hopes of being a playoff contender again was seeing their star leave the game early.

Damian Lillard came up limping in the fourth quarter and left the game with a calf strain, but said afterwards that he would’ve played through the pain had it been a playoff situation. However, despite the star’s insistence it wasn’t serious enough to warrant real concern, word broke on Thursday afternoon that Lillard would be “re-evaluated” in 1-2 weeks, meaning he will miss at least a few games and the team wants to make sure a calf strain doesn’t become a bigger problem.

There is always some concern when it comes to soft tissue injuries, as there’s no way to know exactly how they will heal and react to treatment. The Blazers clearly don’t want to put early season success ahead of their long-term aspirations, and sitting Dame now to try and get his calf back to full strength before he plays again is certainly the long play, even if Lillard probably isn’t thrilled to be sitting.

In the meantime, Anfernee Simons becomes the star in the backcourt for Portland, and will have a chance to show what he can do as a leading man with a playoff-caliber roster around him (sans an All-NBA guard). If there is a bit of consolation, it’s that the Blazers are about to have four days off after playing Houston on Friday night, meaning they can rest Lillard for a full week and, potentially, only have him miss two games — but that is followed by a stretch of five games in seven days.

When you’ve been around long enough, you start to see the cycle of life for what it is. You stop worrying that “hip-hop is dead” because you realize that all things go through highs and lows. Of course, when Nas first coined that phrase for the title of his 2006 album, he was still in the process of learning this. He was still mature enough, though, to be able to handle the incendiary reactions to it with grace — which, in turn, helped the generation who felt more incensed by it to handle their own volatile situations in the future.

As Jeezy told Billboard in a recent interview about his new Gangsta Grillz mixtape Snofall, Nas’ laid-back reaction to him flipping out over Hip-Hop Is Dead, helped him to keep his own cool when Freddie Gibbs blew up their partnership in 2012. “What I have learned is the same when Nas did Hip-Hop Is Dead and I reacted,” he explained. “I was kinda spazzing out on the radio, if you remember. I’ll never forget when I got in the car from the radio station, somebody from Def Jam was like, ‘Nas wanna holla at you. He’s on the phone.’”

While he anticipated a confrontation, Nas instead wanted to simply explain his position. “I’m ready for whatever he’s gonna say — I’m all for it,” Jeezy joked. “We can fight dogs, race cars, shoot guns or whatever he wanna do. He asked how I’m feeling, and he was like, ‘I can understand your frustration, but let me explain what I’m saying, and how it has nothing to do with you.’ He was so calm — and I always remembered that. When me and Freddie [Gibbs] had our thing, that was one of the reasons I remained calm — because I’ve been on the other side of that. So I’m hearing his frustration, and I get it, because we’re doing business and not everybody’s gonna be happy. It’s like being married, you gotta communicate. You can’t be like, ‘I’m gonna blow the whole house up.’”

As was recently reported, Freddie and Jeezy were able to end their feud after a chance meeting at an airport.

If you haven’t seen The Woman King yet…. get up off your a** and see the stunning historical epic from director Gina Prince-Blythewood (Love & Basketball, Beyond the Lights) in theaters. If you want to wait until you can watch it at home, fine: we are living in weird times that appear to be unending. The Woman King hit theaters on September 16, and it stars Viola Davis, Lashana Lynch, Thuso Mbedu, and John Boyega.

Here’s the film’s synopsis, from Sony Pictures:

In the 1800s, a group of all-female warriors protects the African kingdom of Dahomey with skills and fierceness unlike anything the world has ever seen. Faced with a new threat, Gen. Nanisca trains the next generation of recruits to fight against a foreign enemy that’s determined to destroy their way of life.

So, when is The Woman King streaming?

Okay, sorry, enough meandering. Time to get to it! First, The Woman King will be available to purchase digitally from Apple and Amazon on November 22. It will be available on DVD and Blu-Ray on December 13, and a short time after that, it will be available to rent digitally for a much lower price than it is to purchase. Streaming options for The Woman King aren’t available yet (at least publicly), which is a pretty rare occurrence in 2022. That’s because the film was distributed by Sony, the only major film studio that does not have its own streaming platform (yet). The Woman King could come to Netflix or Amazon Prime, but it probably won’t be available on any streaming service until several months after it’s been available to purchase or rent at home. Although nothing is definitive, it is safe to say that one day, somehow, you will be able to stream The Woman King somewhere.

Let’s get this out of the way quickly: Jon Bernthal is absolutely not playing Aaron Hernandez in a limited series for Netflix.

People have once again fallen for completely fake entertainment news on Twitter dot com. You’d think that the time a film Twitter news parody account said that Succession’s Jeremy Strong was cast as Stuart Little would get people to be a little more careful about what they believe, but it did not.

Earlier this week, the DiscussingFilm parody account DisbussingFilm tweeted, “Following the success of ‘DAHMER’, Netflix is producing an Aaron Hernandez limited series with Jon Bernthal in the leading role.” The tweet included a photo of Bernthal alongside a photo of Hernandez, which is emblematic of the DiscussingFilm format.

Netflix’s DAHMER is one of the streamer’s most popular series of all time, but it has received backlash for making profit out of tragedy rather than respecting the victims, which has spurred conversation over what true crime stories are appropriate for adaptation. Hernandez played football for the New England Patriots for three seasons. His career ended after his arrest for the murder of his friend Odin Lloyd in 2013. He was found guilty in 2015. Hernandez died by suicide in prison in 2017.

Here’s the tweet:

Following the success of ‘DAHMER’, Netflix is producing an Aaron Hernandez limited series with Jon Bernthal in the leading role.

(Source: Netflix) pic.twitter.com/gZZAdJhxDq

— DisbussingFilm (@DisbussingFilm) October 25, 2022

The tweet had many people fooled: so much so that fake news went viral, and Jon Bernthal became a trending topic on Twitter, according to The Spun.

The Los Angeles Lakers could be doing a lot better at the start of the 2022-23 NBA season. After losing to the Denver Nuggets on Wednesday night, the team fell to 0-4 on the year, and find themselves as one of three teams in the league that have yet to win a game at this early point in the calendar.

While LeBron James and Anthony Davis have done about what you’d expect and the defense has been one of the stingiest in the NBA, Los Angeles’ total lack of shooting has been a gigantic problem. This includes James (25.7 percent from three) and especially Davis (18.2 percent), but as a team, the Lakers are at a hair over 22.3 percent on the season.

All of this has led to the return of one of basketball’s most well-known phenomenons: LeBron posting stuff on social media that can very easily be read as a cryptic message. James posted a video of himself dunking during the game against Denver with a simple caption, “How long will you be taken for granted…..”

In the aftermath of the Lakers’ first loss of the season, ESPN reporter Brian Windhorst did a detailed breakdown of a subtle move James made in his postgame press conference that led him to believe James is trying to get a point across about how things are going in L.A. This latest post by James will only fuel the belief that he’s working to make sure the Lakers’ brass won’t just let another season of his go to waste.

They said they’ll be famous 5eva, not on Peacock 5eva. The Peacock comedy Girls5Eva is moving over to Netflix for its third season, Netflix announced in a press release on Thursday. You might have to pay extra to share your account soon, but at least the money is going toward saving one of the best comedies on TV right now, right?

The comedy series, from creator/showrunner Meredith Scardino and executive producer Tina Fey, follows the reunited members of a popular girl band from the late 90s/early 2000s as they manage their reunion and adulthood. Netflix will be the exclusive home for the third season and the streamer has also acquired streaming rights to the first and second seasons of Emmy-nominated comedy. The series stars Sara Bareilles, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Paula Pell, and  Busy Philipps.

“Our deepest thanks to Peacock for bringing Girls5eva to life and supporting us creatively at every turn since the first pitch,” executive producers Meredith Scardino, Tina Fey, Jeff Richmond & Robert Carlock said in a joint statement. “And we are endlessly grateful to our partners at NBCU for their boundless commitment. Today, we are thrilled to announce that our reunited girl group will be re-reunited at Netflix. We are so thankful to everyone at the streamer who fell in love with our music-filled comedy. We cannot wait to introduce Dawn, Wickie, Summer, and Gloria to the global Netflix audience. Well, not fully introduce, if you look closely, Girls5eva can be seen in the background of the Woodstock ’99 documentary setting a porta potty on fire.”

Fey and Carlock have worked with Netflix before on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, a comedy series they co-created.

If you haven’t seen Barbarian yet, you should head over to HBO Max to watch it right now and come back in roughly 94 minutes. If you have, then congrats! And sorry, because it was pretty rough (in a fun way).

You may or may not recall one of the most disturbing scenes in the film where Justin Long’s jerk character is being breastfed by a human/monster hybrid that has lived in a basement since Reagan’s America. Or maybe you looked away during that scene because that’s also a very reasonable thing to do.

Director Zach Cregger recently told Yahoo! that there was an even darker scene in the script that he had originally taken out because he was afraid that Long would not want to be a part of the project. The scene involved the Mother being force-fed a dead rat, which isn’t that far-fetched from the actual plot of the movie.

Cregger explained, “I was like, ‘When he gets to Bulgaria, I will see if I can talk him into it. And so I very delicately tried to broach it. … And he was like, ‘We have to do that. We have to do that.’” This isn’t surprising considering that Long once played a podcaster who painstakingly transforms into a walrus. He’s into that stuff!

Long eventually did film the scene, but it ended up being cut. “Zach cut that out,” Long told Vulture earlier this year. “He felt like it was a bridge too far, gross-wise.” It would have been gross, yes, but is it really out of character for the basement monster who watches home-birthing VHS tapes? Probably not.

Barbarian is now streaming on HBO Max.

(Via ScreenRant)

Ahead of his upcoming album, What Had Happened Was, DRAM has released another new track, “Ppl” featuring BJ The Chicago Kid.

The Virginia crooner is set to drop the 19-track album on November 10. Last month, he released two more tracks off the upcoming project, including “Let Me See Your Phone” and “Wham.”

DRAM calls this his most “raw and open album yet.” He said What Had Happened Was takes fans on a journey as he reflects on his life and treks through his “personal traumas.”

The singer has been doing quite a bit of reflecting lately. Last year, DRAM decided to change his moniker to Shelley FKA DRAM. The name change was meant to acknowledge his birth name and speaks to the self-reflection process of creating his album of the same name, but this year, he changed it back.

What Had Happened Was is set to drop on 11/10 via Waver Records. You can pre-save it here.

You can check the new song, “Ppl,” above and see the tracklist for DRAM’s upcoming album below.

1. “Vibe of the Year”
2. “Ride Or Die”
3. “Wham”
4. “3s Company”
5. “Let Me See Your Phone”
6. “Where’s My Sunshine”
7. “Best That I Got”
8. “Can’t Hold You Down”
9. “Bad News”
10. “Angry”
11. “A Mother’s Love”
12. “Note To Self”
13. “Soul to Take”
14. “Big Baby DRAM”
15. “Ppl”
16. “Reflections”
17. “First Time Again”
18. “Wwyd”
19. “Wham (Remix)”

John Carpenter hasn’t directed a movie in 12 years, but even if he never steps behind the camera again, his legacy is secure as one of the most influential directors of the 20th century. In a 20-year span, he directed multiple horror movie classics, including Halloween, The Fog, The Thing, Christine, Prince of Darkness, and In the Mouth of Madness, as well as the still-relevant satire They Live, the wildly fun Big Trouble in Little China, and Escape from New York, starring Kurt Russell at his hottest. Hot take: pretty good filmography.

What has Carpenter been up to lately, besides making music and executive producing the recent Halloween films? When asked by Vulture what a typical day for the Horror Master looks like, he replied, “Day-to-day looks like preseason NBA and video games.”

If you direct Halloween, you get to spend your 70s playing PS5, too.

“I started with Sonic the Hedgehog,” Carpenter said. “I love that game. It was very hard. In the old days, they didn’t put save points in the right place. I evolved through the years. Let’s see: Horizon Forbidden West. Fallout ’76, I really like. Crash Bandicoot.”

Carpenter doesn’t need to make another movie. But if he wants to, Kurt Russell in Crash Bandicoot: The Movie is right there.

(Via Vulture)

Henry Cavill is having a bit of a moment. The Man of Steel star has confirmed that he’s officially back as Superman following an appearance in Black Adam, and now, he’s revealing just how close he was to being cast as James Bond after Pierce Brosnan exited the role in the early 2000s.

Cavill has opened up before about auditioning for Bond. Specifically, how Casino Royale director Martin Campbell called him “chubby.” However, what Cavill has never shared is that he actually made it pretty far in the audition process. According to The Witcher star, the decision was down to him and Daniel Craig, and Cavill has no doubt that the producers made the right call.

Here’s what he told Josh Horowitz during a live taping of the Happy Sad Confused podcast. Via Comic Book:

“They told me I was close. They told me it was ultimately down to, and this is what I’ve been told, it was just down to me and Daniel (Craig), and I was the younger option,” the Man of Steel star said. “They obviously went with Daniel and I think it was an amazing choice to go with Daniel. I probably wasn’t ready at the time. I think Daniel did an incredible job over the past movies, so I’m happy they made that choice. It was a fun adventure at the time, and definitely gave a boost to my career. That was the key element of it. I was getting a lot of auditions, which I went to, which went really, really well.”

Of course, the big question is could Cavill get another crack at Bond? Between The Witcher and getting another crack at Superman, his schedule’s about to become very full. There’s also talk of the Bond producers going a younger route, which ironically, would make the older option this time around. Then again, that worked out pretty well for Craig, so (yup, we’re going for it) never say never.

(Via Comic Book)