Category: News

So… what’s Cowboy Bebop?

If you’re not one of the millions of fans who have hopped on the train of this series somewhere in the past 20 years, that may be an actual question you have now that the live-action adaptation has landed.

For the uninitiated, Cowboy Bebop is based on a manga of the same name that was first published in 1998 and created by Hajime Yatate. The accompanying anime series is widely viewed as a classic and the debatable pinnacle of anime storytelling as it follows the adventures of a group of bounty hunters (a.k.a. cowboys) aboard a spaceship called the Bebop.

To be fair, that synopsis doesn’t do the concept justice and seeing it trend on social media every time a trailer drop doesn’t necessarily explain why everyone gets so worked up about it. And while our Jason Tabrys said the show “delivers by way of its playful and creative presentation and the strength of its cast” before saying it gives off fun “rogues in space vibes” akin to Guardians Of The Galaxy and Firefly, gaining a deeper understanding of what inspired it might make you like it more… or cause you to be totally frustrated (which may happen anyway, because overall reviews have been mixed-to-negative). Either way, here’s a list of five episodes of the original Cowboy Bebop that we recommend before diving into this new version.

As a note, this list is meant to serve as a crash course into the world of Spike Spiegel and co., not an all-encompassing, best-of list. Although a couple of these episodes could definitely make one. No, our primary goal is to give you a road map to one of the most respected anime television series of all time so you can decide if you want to take a deeper dive from here.

“Asteroid Blues”

The best way to understand the world of Cowboy Bebop is to start at the very beginning of the anime series.

“Asteroid Blues” introduces viewers to two of the main members of the crew, Spike Spiegel and Jet Black, and shows how chaotic their day-to-day lives can be as they chase down bounties. But, more importantly, how in control they always seem to be amidst that same chaos.

In this case, Spike comes across a woman named Katerina and her smuggler boyfriend, Asimov, as they’re being hunted down by the mob because of some high-value drugs he stole. What starts off as a chance encounter quickly evolves into high-speed chases with even higher stakes.

Along the way, it becomes blatantly obvious that, along with his sleight-of-hand and marksmanship, Spike has mastered the skill of coming off as charming and non-threatening when needed despite the fact that he’s capable of taking out an entire battalion on his own. It also reveals that he ultimately has a good heart even though he works in a profession where that same trait can be hard to find.

Most importantly, this episode shows that not all criminals are bad people and not all bad people are criminals.

This episode also serves as a jumping-off point for the live-action series.

“Gateway Shuffle”

“Gateway Shuffle” makes the cut here for a few reasons. To start, it includes 80% of what ultimately becomes the primary cast of the show. This gives viewers a chance to see all of those dynamics play out as Jet and Spike have since adopted a genetically enhanced Welsh corgi named Ein and have crossed paths with Faye Valentine, a woman with a desperate need for cash and trouble trusting others. Here, Faye gets promoted from a charismatic guest star to the main cast and we learn more about Jet’s past life as a police officer.

Secondly, unlike some of the previous episodes of the series, “Gateway Shuffle” expands the world that much more. It’s not rooted in one specific location as the adventure takes place in the stars— there’s even a great scene in hyperspace!

As fun as it is to see Spike have his shootouts on land, watching him and Faye finesse their way through space to blow things up with lasers is always a treat.

“Ballad of Fallen Angels”

“Ballad of Fallen Angels” is one of the episodes that would likely earn a spot on a “best episode” list. It’s our very first time getting a good glimpse into Spike’s past with organized crime as he gets pulled back to hunt down the person responsible for killing an old friend and mentor. That person just so happens to be the show’s big bad and Spike’s deadly rival, Vicious.

Cowboy Bebop does a good job of slowly giving out sparse details of the crew’s lives so that you can piece it together yourself over all 26 episodes. While Spike’s origin story doesn’t become clear until much later in the run, this episode gives you an idea of just how much there is to uncover.

“Mushroom Samba”

The gang’s all together! By this point in Cowboy Bebop, the crew is complete as they’ve also picked up Radical Edward (a.k.a Ed), a talented hacker with a youthful spirit, a self-adorned name, and a mysterious backstory all their own.

“Mushroom Samba” focuses largely on the adventures of Ed and Ein as they try to find food and fuel to help the Bebop’s crew out of the desert, where it’s currently stranded. Whether it’s due to desperation, confusion, or naivete, Ed ends up bringing back a bunch of hallucinogenic mushrooms that takes the entire crew on their own bad trips.

This inspires Ed to then go on their own bounty hunt for the person who grew the mushrooms and use the profits to buy food. If it wasn’t clear before, this episode proves that everyone on this crew can hold their own.

Not every moment of Cowboy Bebop is devoted to gunfights and space chases. Sometimes, it’s nice to just buckle in for a fun story and spends more time with the crew.

“Pierrot le Fou”

If you only have one episode to show someone the heights of Spike Spiegel’s badassery and his potential to be an enduring favorite character, “Pierrot le Fou” is it. The episode doesn’t make any references to past plot points, so it’s free of spoilers but full of intense action.

This episode focuses primarily on Spike as he accidentally walks right into a fresh murder scene. From there, he’s directly in the crosshairs of an assassin who’s a perfect killing machine and doesn’t like the idea of survivors.

The episode relies more on action than dialogue as Spike goes one-on-one against a maniac with a full arsenal of weapons at his disposal and a mind that’s quickly in decline. And Spike’s truly at peak performance as he goes in with nothing more than his intelligence and a couple of weapons he’s always relied on. Again, this episode proves the essence of Spike and how formidable he is.

Will the new series provide the same payoff and do justice to these and many other moments? The critics have had their say, maybe you should give it a look for yourself… after watching these amazing anime classics, that is.

As Squid Game continues to be an international phenomenon (and probably not the best theme for a party, Chrissy Teigen), the Netflix series’s creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has been sharing more and more of his creative process. As he previously revealed, Squid Game has been a decade-long labor of love that only intensified as Dong-hyuk dealt with his own struggles with poverty. There was also the hurdle of entertainment execs not being able to grasp the show’s dark premise of contestants competing to the death for a life-changing amount of cash. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the election of Donald Trump made the world seem like a much darker place, and Netflix bit on the show.

In a new interview, Dong-hyuk has expanded on crafting Squid Game and revealed that things really started to come together around 2018. Adding to the mix was the continued rise of cryptocurrency, which helped the show’s premise seem even more realistic. Via The Hollywood Reporter:

“[It’s] almost like a lottery now — almost like a gamble where people in reality have actually doubled or really increased their wealth overnight,” he explains. “And I feel like the world is gradually moving toward dystopia. There are more and more people who really don’t dream about the future, and that drives people to want to gamble, to really take it all and put it all on the line and hope for the best. And I think these changes have created an environment where the idea of people putting their life on the line playing children’s games is no longer something that is too absurd.”

Dong-hyuk’s thesis is also bolstered by the fact that crypto scammers literally used Squid Game‘s success to make off with $2.1 million from unsuspecting investors who got suckered into buying SQUID coin. The coin had been flagged as a potential scam, and yet, people still bought in hoping for a chance at getting rich quick, driving Dong-hyuk’s point home.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

That’s right, Halle Berry directs herself, as an MMA fighter looking for love, sobriety, redemption, and general peace of mind in Bruised, new this week on Netflix.

It seems like every few years, some prominent director or actor catches the MMA bug. Gavin O’Connor, Dito Montiel, Kevin James, Mandy Moore — the list goes on. Jon Favreau deserves credit for being one of the first, introducing an MMA storyline into Friends, when his rich-guy character and boyfriend of Monica, Pete Becker, decides he wants to be UFC champion. This in an episode that featured a Tank Abbott cameo, aired all the way back in 1997, when the UFC was close to being banned in every state and Dana White was still teaching boxercise classes (given all the MMA references in Favreau’s later filmography, I assume the idea came from him, though I could be wrong).

So sure, maybe Halle Berry, playing an MMA fighter named “Jackie Justice” in her directorial debut, is a little late to the party. Still, there’s something oddly endearing about a 55-year-old (I had to look this up just now, before that I would’ve guessed she was about 44) Oscar winner deciding that the way she really wants to spend her clout is learning submission holds and pretending to get punched in the face by real MMA fighters.

In one of the first scenes, Jackie, a down-on-her-luck UFC washout, has been reduced to cleaning houses. She’s changing her shirt in the laundry room of a big house in the suburbs when the teenage rich kid who lives there tries to record her topless on his cell phone. She protests, but he won’t give her the phone to delete the video. He apparently never got the “you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” memo, and Jackie the MMA she-Hulk tosses him roughly to the floor (I believe it was an osoto gari) and smashes his phone.

In the next scene, when Jackie’s boyfriend/manager asks, “Was that really necessary?” Jackie responds, “Yeah, super necessary.”

Which the true MMA heads in the audience will instantly recognize as a callback to Jorge Masvidal’s answer to the question of whether his punches to a clearly unconscious Ben Askren were necessary, becoming a famous MMA meme (for fans of poetic justice, more or less the same fate would befall Masvidal himself a few fights later).

So, yeah, Halle Berry seems to have gotten really into MMA. Which is pretty weird/cool on the face of it, like seeing Cate Blanchett in the pit at your favorite punk show.

Yet just because Halle Berry genuinely seems to like MMA doesn’t make her (or Bruised screenwriter Michelle Rosenfarb) any better at making a movie about it that’s actually good. Most movie people tend to find in MMA a handy-dandy metaphor for whatever. Which is fine, it’s a dramatic sport, that’s why we like it. It’s not that a movie with MMA movie needs to dissect the act of doing MMA, it’s just that most of the storylines MMA movies cover have already been done a hundred times already by better movies. (Don’t bring up Warrior, someone always brings up Warrior, Warrior was fine).

Bruised is already off to a bad start the minute you look at the status bar. It clocks in at a weighty 132 minutes, which I think most people would agree is too long for a genre picture about fighting. In the film’s first fight scene, Jackie’s Puerto Rican boyfriend played by Adan Canto drags her to an underground fight in a basement. There, a Russian she-hulk called “The Werewolf,” played by real-life she-hulk, jiu-jitsu champion Gabi Garcia (who doesn’t get many MMA fights for the simple reason that they can’t find many other women close enough to her 200-pound size to make a fight sanctionable) goads Jackie into a fight. Finally pushed too far, Jackie smashes The Werewolf’s face, Jared Leto-in-Fight-Club style.

This draws the attention of Invicta FC’s (a women’s fight promotion) fictional owner played by Shamier Anderson, who gives Jackie his business card. He gets Jackie set up with a new trainer, Buddhakan, played by Sheila Atim, who naturally wonders “why am I training this old washout who can’t even beat my most average fighter?”

Anderson’s character confides, “No, you just gotta get her mad. Watch.”

So, is that what this is, you wonder? Halle Berry playing MMA’s version of The Waterboy? That would’ve been… well, an interesting choice, but it turns out to be only one of Bruised‘s half-committed gropes toward a guiding principle. It’s a movie whose method of avoiding the obvious clichés is to just sort of do all of them at once.

“Jackie Justice” — whether this is a birth name or a stage name is never addressed — is simultaneously: a down-on-her-luck fighter looking for redemption, a woman trying to escape an abusive relationship, an alcoholic, a survivor of child sexual abuse, someone struggling with both her sexuality and the mentor relationship, and a struggling mom trying to raise a mute child. That’s right, as if Jackie didn’t already have enough problems, she discovers that the father of the young boy she’d abandoned years ago has been killed, leaving her as the only guardian of a 5-ish-year-old boy (an extremely cute Danny Boyd Jr.) who is now too traumatized to speak. To put a finer point on it: That is too many things for a movie to be!

Bruised also has a bit of a believable dialogue problem. In one climactic scene, Jackie has a fight with her mother in which she reveals herself to be a survivor of childhood abuse. “I was raped,” Jackie snarls. “By all your boyfriends, and your nasty-ass brother Dexter.”

“Dexter paid the rent!” counters Jackie’s mother.

“I paid the rent!” Jackie yells. “With my ass, my mouth, and all my private parts.”

“Okay, okay, look, Jackie, if something happened to you and I was unawares, I mean… don’t you think I woulda capped a nigga if you had just told me? Whatchoo think I kept a .22 under my bed for? Decoration?”

This is real dialogue from the film. It sounds a little like if Max Fischer from Rushmore tried to write Precious.

The most effective storyline is Jackie’s relationship with Buddhakan, who on paper could’ve been a Mr. Miyagi cliché, a meditation-promoting, aphorism-spouting proponent of Eastern mysticism. In practice, she’s probably the film’s best character. In a movie that’s mostly clichés, Sheila Atim’s performance as an earnest, tattooed MMA svengali, who turns out to have some of the same vulnerabilities as everyone else, stands out as something special. What if Mr. Miyagi had boundary issues? Now there’s a storyline.

Buddhakan’s relationship with Jackie is obviously the most fertile ground for something fresh. MMA writer Ben Fowlkes has written about the tendency among female fighters to end up dating competitors or coaches (partly because that’s their social circle, partly because non-fighter men can find fighter women intimidating), and the blurry lines between boss and lover that can result. A trainer-fighter relationship is a lot more intense, more intimate, and controlling than a normal boss-employee dynamic. After all, it often involves having a say in what the fighter eats and when they go to sleep.

Bruised actually does do an interesting job exploring this dynamic, in the all-too-brief moments it actually has time to, between the boyfriend, the mute kid, the mom, the booze… yeah. Halle Berry seems to have discovered that there are lots of stories in the world of MMA. Sadly it seems no one could convince her not to try to tell all of them at once.

‘Bruised’ is available now, only on Netflix. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can check out his film review archive here.

Halle Berry has won an Oscar, an Emmy, a Golden Globe, a NAACP Image Award, a Kids’ Choice Award, a SAG Award, and she showed up at the Razzies to personally accept her Worst Actress trophy for Catwoman while holding the aforementioned Oscar. She’s an icon — officially so.

Berry will receive “The People’s Icon” award at the 2021 People’s Choice Awards for her contributions to TV and film. “Throughout her career, Halle Berry has broken down barriers, directed, and starred in diverse roles that have paved the way for others in the industry,” a statement about her award reads. “In addition to her filmography accolades and trendsetting ethos, Berry is known for her philanthropic work with women, children, and underserved communities. She is an icon of our time and for all these reasons and more, we are honored to present her with ‘The People’s Icon’ award.”

Cardi B will present the award to Berry, whose directorial debut, the MMA fighter drama Bruised, is in theaters now and hits Netflix on November 24. “Fighting is something that I just know so much about on a personal level and on a career level. I understand what it is to fight and not be heard,” the actress said about what drew her to the movie. “I understand the trauma of life that makes one want to fight, need to fight, have to fight.”

Not everyone can recover from this…

… but Berry did, and now she’s saving everyone from the Moon. She really is an icon.

The 2021 People’s Choice Awards air on NBC and E! on December 7.

(Via Billboard)

The Phoenix Suns are once again seated near the top of the Western Conference standings, 1.5 games behind the red-hot Warriors for the top spot, a familiar place for last year’s 2-seed that made its way to the NBA Finals.

After stumbling out of the gates, the Suns have won 10 straight games, most recently a 105-98 win over the Mavericks on ESPN which highlighted the calm and confidence of this Phoenix team. The pressure of being the reigning West champs seems to have rolled off the Suns backs after that shaky start and they are once again drawing teams out into the deep waters of close fourth quarters and daring them to out-execute their star-studded backcourt in the minutes that matter the most. For the last 10 games, no one has been able to meet that challenge.

Over this winning streak, the Suns are carving up opponents in the final period, boasting a fourth quarter offensive rating of 121.1. When funneled into what the NBA defines as “clutch” moments — a five point game inside five minutes — the Suns are scoring at an absurd clip, with an ORtg of 139.2 in 22 minutes of “clutch” ball this season. The Suns have mastered the art of in-game pacing better than anyone, led by the rope-a-dope stylings of Chris Paul.

No one plays possum better than the 36-year-old Point God, who eases his way through the first three quarters before taking over in the fourth. During the team’s 10 game win streak, Paul is averaging 7.3 points and 3.3 assists in the fourth quarter, logging 9.8 minutes per, by far the most of anyone on the Suns. Considering he is averaging just 15 points per game (and 10.4 assists) during the winning streak, Paul is scoring nearly half of his points each game in the fourth, and it’s no secret where he’s going.

Chris Paul doesn’t go to the rim anymore. Like, ever. He has six total rim attempts in the last 10 games. Everyone knows he’s going to come from the left side of the floor, get a screen from the right, and then pull-up from the midrange, but within that area he has enough shot versatility that he’s still impossible to defend. His preferred spot is the right elbow, but sometimes he’ll stop in the middle of the floor and raise up or fade out closer to the three-point line on the right wing, or run past the elbow to the right baseline for a falling leaner. Where he goes is dictated by what the defense tries to take away, but the result is almost always the same in the fourth quarter — he’s 19-for-24 in those areas during the winning streak.

If the game isn’t in doubt, Paul will use the screen to get a switch and then have a little fun with opposing bigs in isolation — because sometimes he just wants to be mean, as poor Usman Garuba found out the hard way.

Alongside Paul, ready to take control whenever asked is Devin Booker, who feasts for the first three quarters of action while Paul directs traffic before ceding the reins to the future Hall of Famer. Make no mistake, Booker is just as capable and lethal in the final quarter, but often sits to open the proceedings while Paul gets things going before coming in and offering shotmaking reinforcements.

Booker is averaging just 5.5 minutes per fourth quarter during the winning streak, aided by a few blowouts and the luxury of being able to watch Paul take a lead and extend it while he rests. But he too has his fair share of takeovers, averaging 4.6 points in those 5.5 minutes of action in the fourth, lighting up opponents at a 63.6 percent shooting clip from the field.

Like Paul, Booker wants to work from left to right, and his fourth quarter shot chart is eerily similar.

The Suns have a very simple fourth quarter formula, as they put the ball in the hands of two of the best shotmakers in the league over and over again and beg the question of the opponent: can you do it better? It’s what got them to the Finals a year ago, as up until they met Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton, they couldn’t find a team that had the right answer.

The barrage of fading midrange shots from the right side of the floor is demoralizing, as Paul and Booker pour in shot after shot over the outstretched arms of opponents, as even good contests have little impact on a duo shooting a combined 61.9 percent from the field in the fourth (39-of-63).

The pressure the Suns apply to opponents isn’t limited to the shotmaking of Paul and Booker, as they’ve built a team to amplify their strengths in those big moments. Deandre Ayton and JaVale McGee are both good screeners, aggressive rim runners, and dangerous lob threats, always ready to punish any big who steps too high to take away the elbow.

The addition of Landry Shamet has given the Suns another three-point threat, alongside Cam Johnson and Mikal Bridges, daring opponents to dig down off the line and leave a shooter wide open. Ultimately, in an era where defenses are built to take away the rim first and three-point line second, the Suns are able to apply pressure to those two areas away from the ball, allowing their stars to feast in between on single coverage.

On the other end of the floor, they have the length and athletes to make it hard to go shot-for-shot with them, as Bridges pesters opposing stars while Ayton and/or McGee patrol the paint. Their 109.1 DRtg in the fourth quarter puts them 17th in the league over their winning streak, but when you boast the best offense in the fourth quarter, league average will do the trick. The Suns winning streak isn’t so quiet anymore — not with seemingly every talking now head bringing up how no one is talking about the Suns — but what’s most impressive is how familiar it feels.

As many teams are learning this season, it’s hard to simply replicate past success. Opponents adapt, players go through ups and downs, and finding consistency from game to game, much less year to year, can be maddeningly difficult. The Suns, though, have a simple formula and two stars, one young and one old, who know how to execute it.

The winning streak won’t last forever, but in the long run, they’ll continue bank on there not being many teams, if any at all, that can run a better offense when things get tight in the fourth quarter.

Lately, conversations about David Bowie have largely centered on the “Bowie 75” immersive experiences surrounding the life and times of the Starman in London and New York. But whenever unreleased music from an icon like Bowie is mentioned, it firmly becomes the toast of the sewing circle and this is where we find ourselves today.

Back in 1999, David Bowie suddenly started playing a song nobody had ever heard live before. “Can’t Help Thinking About Me” was actually the first song he’d ever recorded under the David Bowie moniker and it was the stuff of legends. Today, multiple recordings of this song have been unearthed and are out in the world for our nostalgic pleasure. Beginning with a pristine in-studio performance that he played on the Marc Radcliffe BBC Radio 1 show at London’s Maida Vale Studios in October of 1999.

“Can’t Help Thinking About Me” is a driving number with the debonair Bowie’s distinguished delivery front and center atop a driving guitar and lively drums. The backing singers on the recorded version show a manifestation of the star power he held in 1966 that materialized triumphantly in the decades since; he always kept adding to and reinventing the formula. There’s also a previously unseen live video of the song released today recorded at The Elysée Montmartre in Paris in October. The recorded version will appear on the Toy “lost album” in the upcoming David Bowie 5: Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001) and Toy (Toy:Box) box sets.

Listen to “Can’t Help Thinking About Me” above and check out the live version below.

David Bowie 5: Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001) is out 11/26 via ISO Records/Parlophone. Toy (Toy:Box) is out 01/07/2021 via ISO Records/Parlophone

Thanksgiving is all about going HAM. HAM on the ham, HAM on the sides, HAM on the spirits, and, at the end of your meal, while you’re keeling over after stuffing yourself better than your aunt stuffed the turkey, you still gotta muster the energy to go HAM on the pies. In the great pantheon of perfect Thanksgiving pies, only one calls to us like a siren’s song to a sailor. One pie we are willing to risk it all over. It doesn’t matter how full we get, how high we are after that “walk with the cousins,” nothing is going to stop us from cutting a slice of pumpkin pie that’s just slightly larger than it should be, dousing it with whipped cream, and dealing with the consequences later.

Speaking personally, I really like pumpkin pie. So much so that it’s a problem at work — “Let’s do an article about pumpkin pies!” I announce in Slack. “Dane, it’s f*cking June!” my editor replies. But here we are in November. It’s my time; pie time. And like a 1950’s dad who buys a whole pack of cigarettes for their kid after catching them smoking in the garage, he tasked me with rounding up a bunch of pumpkin pies from grocery stores across my city (bake case and frozen, how cruel) and giving them the old blind taste test.

By the end of this article, maybe I won’t reach for that second slice of pie this Thanksgiving. Oh, who are we kidding — of course I will!

The Pies + The Methodology

For this blind taste test, I rounded up 8 different pies from five different markets including Trader Joe’s, Target, Aldi, Whole Foods, Walmart, and a local California supermarket chain, Ralphs, plus two frozen pies, one from Marie Calendar’s which can be found at any market in the frozen section, and one from Great Value which is Walmart’s store brand. I chose these markets because all of them but Ralphs have a multi-state presence, so rather than only grabbing pies from markets that are exclusive to SoCal, I tried to keep things national. If you’re unfamiliar with Ralphs, think of it like a Wegman’s or a Safeway.

Since two of the eight pies were frozen, I cooked them a couple of hours in advance and let them cool so as not to have any extra advantage over the room temp and refrigerated pies. Each pie was given a gentle zap in the microwave, just because I like a warm pie. When I was ready to test, I had my girlfriend bring me a plate of pie one at a time (in exchange for retrieving all of her food for her this Thanksgiving) and I gave each a dollop of whipped cream and got to tasting. Here is what I found.

The Tasting

Taste 1

We are off to a bad start. The consistency of this pie is oddly watery, it feels wet in my mouth, not moist, wet, and it’s pretty damn off-putting. The flavors take a bit of time to start to come together and when they finally combine the spices taste muted. This is hands down, the weirdest pie I’ve ever eaten so I’m going to guess this is one of the frozen pies. Bad pie filling aside, the crust on this one breaks beautifully, it’s flakey and full of flavor.

Will the crust be enough to save it in the ranking? We’ll see, but as of now, this is my baseline for what a bad pumpkin pie tastes like.

Taste 2

This one has a very natural flavor that goes heavy on the spices. I can distinctly taste cinnamon, cardamom, and ginger. The crust, while very neutral-tasting, provides a nice texture to the pie. Overall this one is pretty solid.

Taste 3

Compared to the last tasting this one has a muted flavor. I can taste the spices, but they don’t hit quite as hard as taste number two however the crust here is significantly better. Rather than just providing a flakey texture it tastes buttery, and that’s always a good thing. Had I not had taste two this would be a perfectly serviceable pumpkin pie in my eyes. But knowing a better blend of pumpkin spice is out there is going to hurt this one in the ranking.

Taste 4

This one tastes oddly like a pumpkin muffin. There is an extra dose of sweetness here that takes focus away from the blend of cinnamon, ginger, and allspice and the consistency is a little wet. Not as offensively soaked as taste number one, but still off-putting. The crust here is full of flavor, but it’s also incredibly salty. I don’t know that you’d notice it if you didn’t have another pie side by side to compare it to, but for this blind taste testing the saltiness is jumping out at me.

Taste 5

A good pie but this one doesn’t quite balance the spices right. I’m not getting ginger, cardamom, or clove, just cinnamon. I like cinnamon, but this isn’t a cinnamon pie, it’s supposed to be a pumpkin pie! Not sure I’m convinced. The crust here is all texture, no flavor.

Taste 6

Just looking at this weird patterned crust, I assumed this is our other frozen pie. After tasting it, if this is actually the frozen pie I will forever change my assumptions about frozen pies. This is easily the best pie of the lineup. Not only are the usual pumpkin spices all represented here: cinnamon, clove (likely via allspice), cardamom, nutmeg, and ginger, and they come together harmoniously offering an enveloping wave of spices that is addicting to eat and comforting. Even after tasting five other pies, I couldn’t get enough of this one.

That weird crust I made fun of is also deliciously flakey and adds a nice buttery counterbalance to the spices.

Taste 7

An awful mushy texture plagues this one. The flavors are great, but the texture feels like someone left this pie in the sun too long and it melted. If that sounds weird and gross, good, this pie’s consistency is so off-putting I couldn’t stomach more than a few bites. Am I just getting tired of eating pie? Maybe.

Taste 8

Nope, turns out I’m not sick of pumpkin pie because I’m enjoying this one. The flavors are good, it’s not going to blow anyone at the table away but no one is going to complain either if you roll up with this pie. It tastes like what pumpkin pie should taste like. Its weakest attribute is the crust, it’s all texture and no flavor. I like this one, it’s a perfectly serviceable pie, a scoop of ice cream is enough to take this one to the next level.

The Ranking

8. Marie Calendar’s Ready To Bake Pumpkin Pie (Taste 1)

The Verdict

I was right, the first pie was the baseline for a bad pie. I don’t quite understand the existence of this pie. Heavy statement, I know, but with an average price of $4.99, I just don’t see why you’d ever opt for this frozen pie over the pie from your market’s bakery section, which should be priced about the same. This just has nothing going for it and because of that, it deserves last place.

The Bottom Line

“How bad can a frozen pumpkin pie be?” Bad, and if you buy this one you’ll swear off frozen pies for life.

Buy it here. Or you know, don’t.

7. Ralph’s Supermarket Bakery Fresh Pumpkin Pie (Taste 7)

The Verdict

I wanted this to be good, I sincerely believe most supermarkets make good to great pumpkin pies, but Ralph’s just might be the exception. Maybe something went horribly wrong with my pie, but the admittedly delicious blend of spices couldn’t hold up to the wet consistency that made this pie gag-inducing for me.

The Bottom Line

Trust your supermarket’s bakery case pumpkin pie, unless your nearest supermarket is Ralphs.

Buy it here.

6. Great Value Traditional Pumpkin Pie (Taste 4)

The Verdict

Walmart’s store brand frozen pie is actually better than a fresh pie from a supermarket. Consider my mind blown. Unlike the Marie Calendar’s pie, Great Value keeps things comfortably in the $3 range, and considering the effort you have to put into warming this pie up, it feels like a fair trade. This is probably the cheapest pumpkin pie you’ll find, so if you’re on a tight budget this Thanksgiving, grab this pie, you won’t regret it.

The Bottom Line

A little sweeter than your average pumpkin pie. This one goes a little light on the spices for my taste but is by no means bad. Turns out not all frozen pies are bad, just Marie Calendars.

Buy it here.

5. Walmart Freshness Guaranteed Pumpkin Pie (Taste 5)

The Verdict

Walmart’s store-brand fresh-baked pumpkin pie is a step up in flavor from their frozen option, but it’s also similarly priced, so again, I’m not sure why you’d pick up the frozen pie over this. It actually takes less effort to eat this pie because you don’t have to bake it in the oven for an hour. The flavor here was fine, but ultimately it leaned too hard on the cinnamon and didn’t balance the spices well enough. If that seems like a nitpick, it’s because it is, but that’s what separates the good pies from the great.

The Bottom Line

It’s a good pie. Not great, not essential. Just good.

Buy it here.

4. Target Favorite Day Pumpkin Pie (Taste 3)

The Verdict

Target makes a pretty solid pumpkin pie with a great flavor, nice balance of spices, and the proper mouthfeel. It’s also, hand’s down, the most difficult pie to find on this list. I traveled to three different Targets in my city in an attempt to track down this pie. At the third Target, I reached out to a worker on the floor who was filling out an online order and was also in search of the pie. Turns out Target doesn’t stock this pie in the obvious baked goods stand of their market section, they randomly plop it on one of those random grab baskets they have scattered around between aisles, so the employee and I essentially agreed to a polite race against one another to find this pie.

I was sweating bullets as I fast-walked through the aisles hoping to find it first. I won, sorry to whoever ordered a pie from a SoCal Target online and didn’t get it.

The Bottom Line

Target’s pumpkin pie is good, edging on greatness.

Buy it here.

3. Aldi Bake Shop Pumpkin Pie (Taste 8)

The Verdict

Aldi is the weirdest market I’ve ever stepped foot in, it has this grungy co-op meets stale supermarket vibe that looks like something out of a nightmare and I can’t imagine ever going back. Considering Aldi is in 36 states though, it gave me a unique chance to eat a pie that a lot of people across the country will come into contact with. If you’d an Aldi shopper, grab the Pumpkin pie, it’s delicious.

The Bottom Line

A great-tasting pie that is large enough to feed the whole family.

Buy it here.

2. Whole Foods Vegan Pumpkin Pie (Taste 2)

The Verdict

This wasn’t at all planned but the Pumpkin Pie I picked up from Whole Foods (the only pumpkin pie in the bake case) was actually a vegan pumpkin pie, which explains why this one had a natural spice heavy taste the others didn’t have. I would never reach for a vegan pumpkin pie over a regular pumpkin pie because I’m not vegan, but maybe I should start? I don’t know what kind of magic went into this pie but it was damn good.

It makes sense to me now why the crust on this one was so neutral. I also love that Whole Foods sells half pies. Doesn’t affect the ranking, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

The Bottom Line

Not interested in vegan pies? Try this one and come back to us, it’s one of the best pumpkin pies you can pick up at the market this year.

Buy it here.

1. Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Pie (Taste 6)

The Verdict

I’m not a big Trader Joe’s fan. I’ve always thought there was something ironic about the crowd that flocks to Trader Joe’s like a cat to catnip, viewing it as some sort of next-level local market when all it is is a wolf in expensive sheep’s clothing that produces a whole lot of unnecessary waste. Need a jalapeño? Too bad, instead we’re going to make you buy 10 jalapeños in a plastic case. Like bell peppers? Better like buying a pack of four, and we’ll choose the colors for you, and again, wrap it in a big plastic box. Want a familiar brand, too bad, meet Trader Giotto. Seriously, why do people shop at Trader Joe’s?

Probably because they have some good shit. It pained me to see Trader Joe’s ranked as the best pie but that’s what blind taste tests are for, they help us leave our biases at the door and focus in on what really matters — the flavors and experience. You’re not going to have a bad experience with this pie, it’s amazing. The spices are powerfully represented and well balanced. A scoop of ice cream on a gently microwaved slice will send you to heaven.

The Bottom Line

The best pumpkin pie your money can buy for this year’s Thanksgiving. It’s a reason to take a trip to Joe’s. Take it out of the box and pretend you baked it, you’ll be the legend of this year’s dinner.

Buy it here.

Taylor Swift clearly has no trouble revisiting her past, as she’s fresh off the release of Red (Taylor’s Version). She’s not going to just gloss over the rougher details, though, as she proved with a recent Instagram post in which she brings back the “Drunk Taylor” memes.

For the unfamiliar, in the summer of 2019, a video of Swift dancing to her hit “You Need To Calm Down” at a party went viral, largely because she seemed to be in a bit of an altered state. Swift herself didn’t fight that narrative, as she wrote on Instagram at the time, “Threw a party to celebrate with the people who made the ME! & YNTCD videos with me- and we had so much fun that ‘Drunk Taylor’ is trending on Twitter. CHEERS.”

Fast-forward to yesterday, when Swift shared a video of herself lip-syncing to her new Red (Taylor’s Version) song “Nothing New (Taylor’s Version).” Specifically, she mouths along to the part of the song that goes, “I’ve had (I’ve had) too much to drink tonight,” with the audio gradually slowing down and becoming distorted towards the end. From there, she shared a couple screenshots from the “Drunk Taylor” video and wrote on one, “Drunk Taylor was her name,” and then adding on another, “Mojitos were her game.”

She captioned the post with what seems to be a call for Phoebe Bridgers (who features on the song) to share some drunken skeletons from her closet, writing, “I cringe but I miss her. Your move @phoebebridgers.” Swift also included one of her famous Easter eggs in the post, although it’s not too subtle: The post’s audio is titled “Nothing New (Drunk Taylor’s Version).”

This comes after Swift offered some high praise for Bridgers, telling Seth Meyers last week, “Phoebe Bridgers is one of my favorite artists in the world. I just think she’s… if she sings it, I will listen to it. I love her voice and I also love that she’s a very funny person.”

Red (Taylor’s Version) is out now via Republic. Get it here.

When The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was released on November 19, 2006, it did so to applause nearly as thunderous and intense as the game itself. After a string of Legend of Zelda titles decidedly more cartoonish in nature, Twilight Princess represented a return to the darker side of the series — a side we hadn’t seen much of since Majora’s Mask. It was the first Zelda title to merit a ‘T’ rating (a pretty notable shift for the series) and earned it by simply being more macabre and somber in tone than any of its predecessors. The music was moodier, the art more frenetic, and the world more grim, and all in all, it made for a game that felt nearly suffocating.

However, in the midst of Twilight Princess‘ oppression was the comfort of familiarity. Despite trying to make the player feel a bit disconnected, the game itself was intricately tied to The Legend of Zelda series. It upheld the standard Legend of Zelda formula and duality we’d come to expect and maintained the titles’ emphasis on creating immersive environments and enticing dungeons riddled with secrets and ripe for repeat exploration. For as innovative as Twilight Princess felt in regards to its narrative, combat improvements, Shadow of the Colossus-esque tone, and overall world construction, it felt just as much as a celebration of the 20 years of history that came before it. All things considered, it was a pretty damn perfect game.

As of today, it’s been 15 years since The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess hit shelves and, subsequently, 15 years of it holding the title of greatest Legend of Zelda game of the century. And, as much as I loathe the term, I know this is irrefutably a pretty “hot take” that I would love to explain almost as much as I’d love the folks as excited for Breath of the Wild 2 as myself to simply hear me out… and perhaps even consider readjusting their expectations for the upcoming game.

While this whole conversation is admittedly subjective and all us Legend of Zelda fans have our own respective favorites — Skyward Sword, Link Between Worlds, and even Spirit Tracks certainly among them — I think the biggest point of contention with my statement has to be 2017’s Breath of the Wild, and believe me, I get it. While Twilight Princess was the highest-rated and best-selling modern Legend of Zelda game prior, it’s no secret that Breath of the Wild triumphed over it upon release. Much like Twilight Princess was with the Wii, Breath of the Wild was the launch title for the Nintendo Switch, making it a near compulsory purchase for day one console owners. However, it also had even more going for it.

Breath of the Wild was a revelation for the series that completely shifted The Legend of Zelda‘s trajectory. It was massive and minimalistic, with an open-world and open-ended gameplay. While the past few decades has seen a concentrated effort made towards advancing the games’ narrative prowess and retaining the series’ formula, Breath of the Wild showed little hesitation in shrugging that weight off and embracing the beauty found in simplicity. It shed the series’ complex score and increasingly heavy narrative, and embraced its core ideology of survival in every sense. However, in this purge towards innovation and perfection, I believe it lost valuable parts of the series’ identity as well, making Breath of the Wild a phenomenal game, but ultimately a lesser Legend of Zelda — something I hope Breath of the Wild 2 can fix.

While Breath of the Wild rests upon the foundation The Legend of Zelda laid down and uses several of the series’ pillars to hold itself up, this naturally makes some of its big omissions even more noticeable, with the most glaring of all of them being the game’s lack of any mechanic that facilitates the series’ near-signature sense of “duality.” In Twilight Princess, this is executed perfectly with the transformation between Hylian and Wolf Link, which allows players to pass between the real world and the corrupted Twilight Realm to interact with the world in more interesting ways. In Majora‘s Mask, this manifests through the masks, whereas Ocarina of Time relies upon time travel, and Link to the Past gives the players portals between the light and dark worlds. This feature simply doesn’t exist in Breath of the Wild, and while it’s not mandatory, it feels fundamental to the series and makes titles without it feel a bit less engaging — and it’s not the only thing the game is missing.

More frustrating than the lack of duality is Breath of the Wild‘s lack of true dungeons — overseen by treacherous beasts, filled with unusual tools and treasures, and filled with puzzles to solve. In lieu of temples and dungeons, you are presented with uninspired divine beasts and optional shrines that, while clever, ultimately begin to feel identical. And it hurts all the more to see these so fresh off of Twilight Princess. After all, in Twilight Princess you visit nine dungeons with vastly different designs, enemies, and fundamental mechanics. Spinning throughout the ancient Arbiter’s Grounds and taking on Stallord is one of the most memorable experiences in Zelda history, while the Lakebed temple is such a glorious homage to Ocarina’s water temple. You also visit Snowpeak Ruins, a vast estate run by a Goron trying to save his sickly wife, and the awe-inspiring Temple of Time. You don’t get moments like this in Breath of the Wild, and it’s honestly a bit heart-breaking.

Without both the sense of duality in previous games — and the engaging and diverse temples and tools — so much of your drive for exploration is reliant upon you intrinsically motivating yourself to progress through the game. Long gone are the almost pseudo-“Metroidvania” aspects of the series that beg us to visit and revisit areas and ask ourselves “what can I do now that I couldn’t before?” Simply put, you are shoved out into the wild, western RPG-inspired world rather than pulled into it. A remedy to this, of course, could be a strong narrative, and while Breath of the Wild has an abundance of charm and endearing characters, this is still an area that feels lacking.

With the exception of the game’s exposition (which is delivered to you by an old man later revealed to be the spirit of Princess Zelda’s father, King Rhoam), all of the narrative beats in Breath of the Wild are optional. While you’d be hard-pressed to complete the game without stumbling into some plot, it is possible to do so and even more possible to miss a significant amount of it. You see, outside of the events leading up to your infiltration of the divine beasts, the story is primarily unraveled through 13 memories you can find and view that are scattered across Breath of the Wild‘s Hyrule — and only one of them being mandatory for your completion of the game. While I don’t inherently think this is a bad design decision and even enjoy the idea of a narrative that is less spoon-fed, the game’s lack of narrative structure when coupled with the above qualities can make players who are less completion-oriented feel disinterested from this vast, beautiful world, and turns the once lush and living land of Hyrule into nothing more than a beautiful sandbox with but few toys to play with.

While impossible to ignore all Breath of the Wild did right as a game, these are the grievances I have with it as an entry in The Legend of Zelda series — all of them so easily remedied by a remembrance of what came before. I dream of a game where the 13 memories were portals to the past that allow you to live out Hyrule’s demise rather than that experience being a separate $60 Musou game, and where inspired temples, beasts, and tools return to the land of Hyrule. Previous Zelda games, such as Twilight Princess and, to an even larger extent, Majora’s Mask, prove that you can couple linearity with freedom in a beautiful and unalienating way, and that The Legend of Zelda is at its best when it does just that.

Following an intense, heavily-scrutinized trial, Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges stemming from his shooting of two people during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year. An emotional Rittenhouse broke down while his verdict was being read and collapsed into his seat when he was found not guilty of the fourth and final charge. Following the verdict, Judge Bruce Schroeder, who exhibited controversial behavior during the trial, including screaming “Don’t get brazen with me” at a prosecutor and disrupting the proceedings when his phone’s ringtone began playing a popular song at Donald Trump rallies, praised the jury for its decision. Via CNN:

The panel of five men and seven women deliberated more than 25 hours over the past four days in a closely watched case that polarized an already divided nation. They had asked the court a handful of questions, including requests Wednesday to rewatch much of the video evidence of the shootings. In the end, the panel agreed with the defendant’s testimony that he feared for his life and acted in self-defense.

The judge praised the jury, saying he “couldn’t have asked for a better jury.”

Rittenhouse’s trial has been a highly partisan spectacle thanks to a combination of Second Amendment advocates and the Black Lives Matter protests that broke out last year following a spate of police shootings. Liberals wanted to see Rittenhouse convicted for traveling across state lines and killing two people with an illegally obtained AR-15 while “protecting” a town he doesn’t live in. Conservatives, on the other hand, view Rittenhouse as a “folk hero” and believe he was justified in killing the protestors for self-defense reasons, and in some cases, racially motivated reasons.

With the trial already being a contentious subject, Rittenhouse being acquitted sparked strong reactions from social media as celebrities weighed in on the verdict:

Political commentators also had a lot of to say about the verdict, which was, sadly, not surprising:

And, naturally, right-wing figures were either having an all-out celebration and/or preparing to sue… Joe Biden? You pretty much get the gist here:

(Via CNN)