Category: News

If you’re anything like me, when you heard that a “Top Gun” sequel was being made nearly three decades after the original, you may have rolled your eyes a bit. I mean, come on. “Top Gun” was great, but who makes a sequel 30 years later and expects people to be excited? Especially considering how scrutinizing both audiences and critics tend to be with second films.

Then I saw a trailer for “Top Gun: Maverick,” and was surprised that it looked … super not terrible. Then more and more details about the film emerged, then more trailers and behind-the-scenes footage were released, then early reviews started rolling in and … you guys. You guysssss. I don’t know how the filmmakers managed to pull it off, but everything about this film looks absolutely incredible.

And frankly, as a member of Gen X who saw the original “Top Gun” at least a dozen times, I could not be more thrilled. We deserve this win. We’ve been through so much. Many of us have spent the better part of the past two decades raising our kids and then spent the prime of our middle age dealing with a pandemic on top of political and social upheaval. We’ve been forgotten more than once—shocker—in discussions on generation gaps and battles. So to have our late-’80s heartstrings plucked by an iconic opening melody and then taken into the danger zone in what reviewers are saying is the best blockbuster in decades? Yes, please.

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I was concerned that “Maverick” might not be as good as the initial trailer looked, but the vast majority of film critics who have screened it have said it will exceed everyone’s expectations. It got a five-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival over the weekend. More than one reviewer has used the word “perfect” to describe it. Seriously.

Check out this sampling of rave reviews:

“I’m stunned, STUNNED at how absolutely outstanding TOP GUN: MAVERICK is! Perfect pace, thrills, cast, chemistry!!!” – Rob Liefeld.

“As soon as #TopGunMaverick ended, I wanted to watch it again. And again. And again. One of the greatest sequels of all time.” – Cameron Frew.

“Yes I’m gonna say it and I don’t care who disagrees. #TopGunMaverick is a perfect movie. They don’t make movies like that anymore. You wait and see. Your expectations of this movie should be higher than you think.” – Kristian Harloff

“TOP GUN: MAVERICK is the perfect blockbuster. Not only did it feature dazzling aerial combat sequences, but I actually cried, it’s that emotional. And call me crazy, but I humbly predict that it WILL land a Best Picture nod next year. It’s not just THAT good, it’s VERY good.” – Jeff Sneider

Have you seen the trailer? You have to watch this trailer. (Goose’s son. Oh. My. Gracious.)

I’m not a big fan of rah-rah military movies, nor am I a fan of testosterone-filled bro films. I’m not even a huge Tom Cruise fan, so the fact that I can’t wait to see “Top Gun: Maverick” has come as a surprise to some people who know me. I can’t help it. I loved the intensity and excitement of the original and from everything I’ve seen and read, this movie outdoes its predecessor in every way.

“Top Gun,” only better? Be still my cynical Gen X heart.

To understand why this is a movie that must be seen in the theaters, check out how they had the actors actually go through naval training and fly in the fighter jets to film the action scenes. So incredible.

In theaters May 17. Can. Not. Wait.

Carl Cameron and Tucker Carlson are not exactly the Woody and Buzz Lightyear of Fox News. Over the weekend, Cameron—a former Fox New political reporter—chatted with Jim Acosta on CNN and had some pretty harsh things to say about his former colleagues, and Carlson in particular. And, as Mediaite reports, Carlson is none too happy about it.

“Tucker has been screaming ‘fire’ in a crowded movie house for years,” Cameron told Acosta. “And that cliché really comes to the matter of what is free speech. And the fact of the matter is, if you disturb the peace by starting a riot in a movie theater, cops are going to arrest you and you might end up in jail or you might end up in something worse. And that kind of stuff absolutely has to stop.”

Cameron suggested that it might be time to enact laws that would prohibit people like Carlson from using their massive media platforms to spread lies and other dangerous rhetoric without real consequences. Carlson grabbed onto the line about ending “up in jail or… something worse,” which he took as a veiled threat, before turning it around and blaming it all on Democrats:

“What’s ‘something worse’? We are not sure what ‘something worse’ is, but it certainly feels like we’re moving toward it at very high speed at this point. That’s the end point to talk like that, ‘something worse,’ because rhetoric has its own internal logic. You’ve experienced it, you can talk yourself into things. We’ve all done that. Democrats are doing it right now, and what they are talking themselves into right now is ‘something worse.’”

“It’s scary,” Carlson concluded of Cameron’s words, taking no responsibility for the many, many, many lies he has spewed and fearmongering he has engaged in. “It is time to pull back,” Carlson continued, in an attempt to be the voice of reason. “It is time to de-escalate. Otherwise, this is going to get really ugly, really soon.”

(Via Mediaite)

A lot of the time, for some reason, rich people try to pretend they are Just Like Us normal, not rich people. They will go out of their way to try to seem “normal” and most of the time, it backfires. For Kendall Jenner, this happened when she just wanted a nice, refreshing cucumber snack. And nothing was ever the same again.

Earlier this month, Jenner was criticized for how she (attempted to) cut a cucumber in a recent episode of The Kardashians. The video made the rounds on the internet of Jenner trying to cut a cucumber after insisting she can to spite her mother Kris, who said she should just have the chef (!?) do it for them. “You go, girl!” Kris says to Kendall, who insists chipping up cucumber is easy. Except it wasn’t easy for her. Of course, TikTok and Twitter exploded with jokes, and now, reportedly, Jenner is “not happy” with the response.

Jenner’s sister Khloe stopped by the podcast Not Skinny But Not Fat and discussed the incident. “Oh my god, she’s like not happy about that. I feel so bad.” Kardashian said when the ordeal was brought up. She added that her sister is blessed in many other aspects of her life, so not being able to cut a cucumber is just one of the small ways Kendall has to suffer. Being rich is hard!

“I’m like, ‘Kendall, God is fair. You’re the most beautiful human being in the world. You have wild-looking toes. God bless. And you can’t cut a f*cking cucumber,’” she said, though the toes thing was a weird add-on. “The world is good. Because she’s like … how can you be this f*cking perfect? She has this perfect life, this perfect dog, she’s a gazelle of a human being, she walks the runway, she’s all these amazing things. You can’t cut a f*cking cucumber?” Khloe is right on this one, actually.

Of course, she couldn’t move on without poking fun at her sister, “I was just confused why it was positioned this way. We don’t know,” Kardashian said, adding, “But I love her. She’s so perfect.” Let’s see if Khloe can cut a watermelon now!

Kellyanne Conway has joined the ever-growing ranks of people writing books about their time in Donald Trump’s White House. But while Conway has had no shortage of tea to spill, she’s still a dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporter, which led to her being booed on Tuesday morning’s episode of The View.

While promoting her new memoir/tell-all, Here’s the Deal, Conway was asked by co-host Sunny Hostin if she was among Trump’s enablers who “lied” to the former president that he won the 2020 election. Conway emphatically stated that she never lied to Trump about the reality of his loss to Joe Biden, but she also didn’t hold back that she still wishes Trump had won.

“It broke my heart. I wanted him to get reelected,” Conway told Hostin before taking a dig at Biden. “He should have won huge. He had all of these accomplishments. He’s running against a guy stuck in the basement and you’re in the middle of a pandemic…” However, Conway didn’t get to finish her thought as The View audience started audibly booing.

Instead of letting the moment go, Whoopi Goldberg stopped the panel and actually chastised the crowd for booing Conway.

“Let me do something before you say anything else,” Goldberg said before turning to face the audience. “Listen, this is The View. And this is her view, and she’s talking about how she feels and what she knows. Please don’t boo her.”

Emboldened by Goldberg coming to her defense, a grinning Conway then took another jab at Biden. “I think they’re booing about Biden staying in the basement,” she slipped in before going back to hammering the advisors in Trump’s campaign who told him he was going to win the 2020 election in a “landslide.”

(Via The View on Twitter)

Marjorie Taylor Greene has a knack for pissing people off. Just ask Trevor Reed, the former U.S. Marine who in 2020 was sentenced to spend nine years in a Russian prison after being accused of endangering the “life and health” of a Russian soldier in 2019. Reed, who was recently released after serving two years of his sentence living in horrific conditions, is now back in the U.S. with his family—who have never stopped fighting for him. And, as he told CNN’s Jake Tapper, he’s ready to exact a bit of revenge on lawmakers like Greene, who voted against measures that would help bring him home sooner.

In an interview that aired on Monday night, Reed told Tapper that he looked forward to meeting the many House Republicans who had kept him locked away in a Russian prison cell for so long and how he planned to “go to every single one of their campaigns and thank them personally about that.” While Greene wasn’t the only GOP member on Reed’s sh*t list, she took the brunt of his annoyance as part of a group of Republicans who had slowed down the passage of legislation that would allow him to be released. “How do you justify that?,” Reed wanted to know, before noting:

“That’s embarrassing to me that anyone that represents the United States would vote against something like that. I’m sure that the Russians loved that. I’m sure that they’re all big fans of all of those congressmen who did that. That’s completely unacceptable to me. it’s embarrassing. And I better not see that ever happen again to any other Americans because I promise that I will be at every single campaign that that person runs for the rest of their life to tell everyone that they did that.”

Joey Reed, Trevor’s dad, is just as bothered by Greene and what he describes as “her cronies and that small group of idiots.” Like his son, Joey is also a former Marine, and told Tapper that he was disappointed with the way the service branch handled his son’s imprisonment.

“We heard nothing from Marine Corps,” Joey Reed said. “Not a single representative from the Marine Corps. No Marine Corps groups.”

As Paul LeBlanc wrote for CNN:

Ultimately, Reed was returned to the US as part of a prisoner swap in exchange for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian smuggler convicted of conspiring to import cocaine. The US commuted his sentence.

“We need to do absolutely everything we can, as Americans, to advocate for those Americans who are being held illegally overseas and do every single thing we can possible to get them out,” Reed told CNN.

You can watch Reed’s full interview here.

(Via CNN)

For Time’s annual 100 Most Influential People issue, rapper Jack Harlow penned an essay about his buddy Pete Davidson and his comedic craft. Though the two had been online friends for months before their official in-person meeting, the two officially linked up for the first time before Harlow’s appearance on Saturday Night Live last year.

Since then, the two have remained close, and Harlow considers Davidson one of his biggest inspirations.

“Pete’s appeal to the world has everything to do with his authenticity,” wrote Harlow. “He doesn’t try to hide the person that he is. It’s a classic recipe for success and connection. I would consider myself truthful, but being around Pete makes me want to continue to reach even further for the realest version of myself.”

Harlow’s essay coincides with the season finale of SNL‘s 47th season, which marked Davidson’s last show as an SNL cast member. Ahead of his SNL swan song, Davidson took to Instagram (by way of Dave Sirus), saying, “I got to share so much with this audience and literally grow up in front of your eyes. We were together through the good and the bad, the happiest and the darkest of times.”

Jack Harlow is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music.

The late, great John Candy is Canadian royalty, and the favorite actor of another notorious Canuck, Ryan Reynolds. In the latest episode of David Letterman’s Netflix series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Reynolds revealed how far his appreciation for the Home Alone and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles actor goes.

“Growing up, I had a real obsession, quite genuinely, with John Candy. And I still do. Steve Martin, a lot of the guys that came out of SNL,” Reynolds said. “If I’m flummoxed in a scene or I can’t figure out a way in, I will just copy them. That sort of [Martin’s character] Neal Page, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, kind of aggressively unimpressed, kind of over-it character. I just love that, I can never get enough.” Reynolds added that in John Hughes’ 1987 comedy, Candy reads a “non-fiction soft porn” book called The Canadian Mounted, which he had recreated for Deadpool and Deadpool 2:

“It’s supposed to be this non-fiction soft porn, basically. One of those sorts of trash, way sub-Danielle Steel. We’re talking nasty. He reads it in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. And I have that book. Not the exact one he’s holding but I had it remade for Deadpool. I’m carrying it under my arm in a number of scenes. I don’t think anyone’s ever actually seen on camera, but it’s just those little things that you try to never forget those people that have helped you grow you where you are.”

Of course, Reddit caught it. But now everyone can be reminded of Candy’s greatness (and to watch Uncle Buck tonight).

(Via Comic Book)

The Better Call Saul Lie Detector Test is a weekly recap of the major events of the final season, separated out by their apparent truthfulness at the time. This is not one of those recaps that gets into granular detail about things. It will miss the occasional callback or foreshadowing. But it will be fun. Sometimes, that’s what’s important.

Season 6, Episode 7: “Plan and Execution”

Howard had a great day

This was never going to go great for Howard. There was just no reasonable situation where things played out in his favor. He’s on a short list of characters on Better Call Saul who do not appear, or even really come up at all, in Breaking Bad. There has to be a reason for that. The shows are too good and too thought-out to leave important threads dangling and blowing in the wind. We saw how that worked out for, say, Nacho. It’s one of the reasons that Kim and Lalo are now the most interesting characters on the show. The unknown is thrilling. And terrifying. It’s a lot of things.

And I’ll get back to the ending and Howard’s fate in a second. I couldn’t avoid it even if I wanted to. But I think it’s important to discuss how things got there. Howard was right, eventually, in a couple of ways. He was right in the way he put the pieces together, even if putting them together in front of another person made him continue to look paranoid and manic. He was right in his diagnosis of both Jimmy and Kim at the end, about Jimmy not being able to help himself and the two of them plugging their missing pieces together. And he was right that he didn’t really deserve any of it, even if he does drive a Jaguar with a “NAMAST3” vanity plate. They treated Howard like a supervillain when he was just a putz. It was never fair.

The plan did play out perfectly, though. Once they did the emergency reshoots, with Kim going half-Scorsese on the proceedings. If you’re trying to make your mark look crazy, I mean, getting them to say this out loud is pretty much ideal.

It was all so meticulously planned. We had, among other things:

• Liquid-based amphetamines soaking through his fingers
• Private investigator flim-flams
• Photograph ruses

All strung together perfectly, in order, like a maestro conducting various pieces of an orchestra. Two things become clear in all of this: One, if Jimmy and Kim ever really wanted to use their powers for good, if this wasn’t all so thrilling to them in the moment, the sneaking around and the subterfuge and the naughtiness of it all they could do almost anything; two, even the best-laid plans cannot fully account for a mustachioed agent of chaos.

This brings us to the ending.

I saw this coming

What I am going to do here is just present you with the notes I took as I was watching the last few minutes of the episode, typos and all, to give you an idea where my head was at as it played out…

Lalo sneaks in
Jimmy and Kim are freaking out
Howard doesn’t realize
LALO
KIMS FACE
JIMMYS FACE
SILENCER
HOWARD
LALO WANTS TO TALK
JIMMY FACE
KIM FACE
HOWAEDDDD
LET’S TALK

Which, I think, is both a fair representation of how I felt watching Lalo sneak in to make all these shenanigans suddenly very real and a nice little window into my writing process, to the extent I have one. I legitimately shouted a little. Television is fun.

Kim Wexler got what she wanted

Hoo buddy, she sure did not. This was all fun for so long. She and Jimmy even got a little handsy with each other when it was playing out, a little celebration nooky. The plan worked and they got what they had been working toward all season and then, suddenly… not so much. It’s all fun and games until a charming psychopath slips in and blows your former boss’s head all over your living room floor. People say this constantly.

A few things are worth noting here, and I’m going to do them via bullet points for the sake of efficiency:

• I still don’t think Kim ends up dead, for a lot of reasons, most of them related to Jimmy not being a shell of a person when we meet him in Breaking Bad, but I do think that card for the vacuum cleaner guy who makes people disappear that popped up the other week sure looks more interesting now
• It’s wild to trace this back and see how many potential exit ramps they both blew past that could have prevented this from happening, up to and including Kim literally disregarding an exit to pull a screaming U-turn to follow through with the plan that day
• Rhea Seehorn is very good at acting

All worth remembering as we move forward.

This is the beginning of the end of Lalo

I could be wrong on this and I’m sure someone will yell at me if I am but… was that moment in the sewer, when he heard the click and realized Gus was tapping the phone at the nursing home… was that the first time we’ve really seen Lalo lose his cool? It felt notable, even if it wasn’t the first time. Lalo does not crack like that. He’s cold and charming and suave and patient and surprisingly athletic, and he uses all of those things to create an aura of something approaching invincibility. The man has been doing surveillance alone in a sewer for lord knows how long and seems to enjoy it. As I’ve said before, he’s like John Wick crossed with Danny Ocean. Maybe with a little Bond villain tossed in. He delights me.

But this… this felt like a tiny crack in that exterior, right? Like maybe he’s about to let his emotions cause him to make a mistake? The thing about creating a character who seems invincible is that you have to find a way to slide in little slivers in the armor to make them vulnerable. (Superman, kryptonite, etc.) If Lalo starts to snap a little, the cold and calculating and smiling forcefield of his could weaken, and then suddenly that gun hidden in the superlab becomes a whole thing. Shoutout to Chekhov.

What we don’t know yet is how long this all takes. There are only a handful of episodes left. Lalo can’t have long for this universe. But if this is how it starts, if he gets angry and makes mistakes… that could explain a lot of things.

Hiding in a sewer seems cool

I don’t know. One on hand, sewers are smelly and dark and wet and I do not think I would enjoy hanging out in one for any amount of time at all, even just a minute or two. I am very much an above-ground/dry-land type of dude.

On the other hand, Lalo seemed like he was having fun. And the image at the top of this section made me laugh out loud. There is very little separating him and a ninja turtle in this moment. You know, besides, like, ooze. Still.

The real winner here is Irene

Extended litigation would have taken up to two years, by Howard’s own admission. Everything going to heck in dramatic tweaked-out fashion gets her a chunk of the settlement now, in cash, to enjoy in the remaining time she has. Good. Irene deserves everything. If this show does anything to harm her I might blow up a building.

I bet she will be sad about Howard, though. I do not want Irene to be sad. She’s a sweet woman. I hope one of the last episodes is devoted entirely to her blowing all the money on a fancy Mediterranean cruise. Let Irene live.

There is no going back at this point

Better Call Saul was always kind of two different shows at once: The fun lawyer shenanigans one with Jimmy and the serious drug one with Mike and Gus. The two worlds circled each other a lot and occasionally intersected, but for the most part, stayed in their own lane. That is no longer an option. It stopped being an option somewhere in those closing moments, as early as Lalo appearing in the shadows behind Howard and as late as Lalo depositing Howard’s brain on the carpet. Maybe when he screwed on the silencer.

Either way, welcome to the point of no return. It’s pretty stressful here. And it’s not going to get much less stressful as we press on. Everything is extremely real now, for the characters on the show, of course, but also for us watching at home. It is not a huge leap from here to Jesse getting kidnapped by meth Nazis. We are a lot closer to that than we are Slippin’ Jimmy. Might be time to work on some breathing exercises.

The people who make this show are very good at their jobs

I had chosen this heading already based on a number of things — the camera work when Kim and Jimmy were staging the scene at the bench, the damn Frisbee, the way the show took a throwaway reference to someone named “Lalo” from Breaking Bad and turned it into the most fascinating character on television, etc. — but then I noticed something else.

The title of this episode is “Plan and Execution.”

Plan and EXECUTION

These brilliant bastards went and told us the ending way before it happened. We all saw that and thought, “oh, right, of course, execute the plan,” but they meant, like, an actual execution. It was right there in front of us the whole time. I find this somehow hilarious and perfect and infuriating all at once. These rascals. They must have all been sitting around giggling about it for weeks. Imagine their faces when they came up with it. Full-on ear-to-ear Grinch smiles throughout the room.

Good for them.

This is a lovely and useful GIF

Yup. I suspect I’ll be dropping this one a lot. Has nothing to do with just about anything else on the show, and I respect that me devoting a whole bolded section to it might feel trivial after such a wild and heavy episode, but… also…

Look at him.

Better Call Saul is a pretty good show.

If there is one thing a rap fan will do, it’s criticizing female rappers for outlandish standards they refuse to hold anyone else to. Case in point: City Girls, the fun-loving Miami duo whose music is all about living the high life on someone else’s dime and turning up in the streets, has gotten more than their fair share of criticism that their music isn’t deep enough. While this echoes complaints that other women in hip-hop have made that they aren’t taken seriously enough as artists, City Girls defended themselves in a new interview with Complex.

“I feel like a lot of times, people tend to forget and try to discredit us and say we make bad music,” JT told Complex’s Speedy Morman during their interview. “And I never, ever, ever feel like that. I feel like everything we put out is fun and is a bop.” She took it a step further, insisting that the duo could just as easily switch up for a more socially aware style, but that it wouldn’t suit their true musical philosophy. “It’s not conscious rap, but I could definitely do a conscious rap,” JT insisted. “I feel like our music is for freedom and fun and partying and to make women feel good and to pop they sh*t.”

For what it’s worth, their approach is much more lucrative, as Cardi B once pointed out, reminding fans that when she made emotional, vulnerable songs like “Be Careful” she was rejected, but when she made “WAP,” the song went No. 1 basically overnight. ““When I did ‘Be Careful,’ people was talking mad sh*t in the beginning,” she reminded her fans on Instagram. “So it’s like if that’s what people ain’t tryna hear, then, alright, I’mma start rapping about my p*ssy again.” Meanwhile, Rapsody had an even better take on the “conscious rap” argument, saying that “[artists like] Cardi B makes conscious music — that’s conscious to what she was doing.”

Things are not going well in Russia. Granted, things are better in Russia than they currently are in Ukraine (due to Vladimir Putin’s big, dumb war), but still, it’s all a freaking mess. And the resulting confusion couldn’t be more evident from how the Russian government released a seemingly semi-random list of American public figures who will be permanently banned from having the pleasure of entering Russia. Granted, a lot of the names — like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Vide President — do make sense when it comes to a list of perceived Russian enemies, given that Russia’s awfully sore about sanctions.

The list truly grew weird, however, with the appearance of the late John McCain, who passed away in 2018 from brain cancer and obviously would never be traveling to Russia in the first place. Then came Morgan Freeman, who was apparently banned because he narrated a clip (alleging “cyber warfare” on behalf of the Kremlin) within The Committee To Investigate Russia, a 2017 project directed by Rob Reiner, also of This Is Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride. Well, we haven’t yet seen a response from Freeman, but Deadline spoke with Reiner, who went the satirical/sarcastic route:

The veteran filmmaker, who was a surprise inclusion on a list published by Russia over the weekend, quipped to us: “No comment. Except to say that I’m heartbroken and will have to live with the disappointment.”

Yup, it’s time to adjust those (nonexistent) vacation plans. Then again, there’s probably no one heading into Russia for fun and pleasure these days, and this (confusing) list won’t help future tourism one bit. And the Kremlin sure can hold a grudge.

(Via Deadline)