Category: News

Earlier this year, Gina Carano was finally axed from the Star Wars-verse following pushback against controversial statements she made over social media. It threw an already beleaguered franchise into further jeopardy. For one thing, it was assumed her character, the otherwise very popular Cara Dune, would be getting her own spin-off — perhaps Rangers of the New Republic, the Mandalorian spin-off that was announced back in December. But now that show has been given the boot as well.

Variety recently profiled Mandalorian executive producer Dave Filoni, but buried in the article — in a bit highlighted by /Film — was this: Rangers of the New Republic was now “not currently in active development.” Does that mean it will never see the light of day? Not necessarily. But it does mean that it is no longer one of the many, many Star Wars shows being made to fill Disney+ coffers.

When the show was announced, it was really just a title. No details were given. But many speculated that it was a vehicle for Carano’s Cara Dune, and perhaps Carl Weathers Greef Karga. There was even a part in Season 2 in which Dune was recruited to become a “ranger.” But then Dune was fired and now the show was given the can, too. But perhaps we’ll all be okay: Again, there’s already too many Star Wars shows en route as it is.

(Via Variety and /Film)

LeBron James found himself in some hot water on Saturday morning, as a report indicated the Los Angeles Lakers star went to an event that violated the league’s health and safety protocols. Despite this, James was able to avoid a suspension from the league, meaning he will be able to take the floor when the Lakers’ title defense begins on Sunday.

In Charles Barkley’s eyes, it’s not exactly shocking that the league opted to not bring the hammer down. In speaking to LaJethro Jenkins of Yahoo Sports, Barkley straight up said the NBA is not brave enough to tell James he’s not allowed to play in the postseason.

“Let me tell you somethin’,” Barkley said. “Hey, listen, I love Adam Silver, rest in peace, David Stern, best commissioner in sports. The NBA ain’t got the balls to suspend LeBron James.”

Barkley more or less said he knew exactly what was coming when he read this, and believes there might be a bit of a double-standard at work.

“If it was a nobody, they would put him in health and safety protocols,” Barkley said. “Ain’t no f*ckin’ way LeBron James is gonna sit out in health and safety protocols. When I read that, I just started laughing.”

The party James attended, which was held for a tequila brand he endorses, was held outdoors and apparently required proof of vaccinations or testing, which is reportedly why he did not get placed in the protocols.

The NBA playoffs begin on Saturday afternoon. Well, for a few teams, a playoff-like thing kicked off earlier this week with the play-in tournament, but the proper NBA postseason tips off this afternoon, leading to a months-long frenzy to determine which team will end one of the weirdest years in league history with the Larry O’Brien trophy in their possession.

Before this kicks off, we wanted to partake in a thought experiment: What if every NBA team in the postseason could only have their team name suit up and take the floor? For example, for the Los Angeles Lakers, they would be represented by five people from the great state of Minnesota, while the Milwaukee Bucks were represented by five horned deer. There is no good reason for us to do this, but we are, anyway.

A NON-TANGIBLE THING

16. Jazz

As any good jazz musician will tell you, Jazz is at its best when it is something you feel deep in your soul. This makes it absolutely terrible for making up a basketball team. The noise made by a damn saxophone can’t play basketball. Get the heck out of here.

INANIMATE OBJECTS

15. Nets
14. Nuggets
13. Clippers

The ball would be thrown into the air for the tipoff and then just bounce and lay there. All of these things would sit on the floor and not do anything. The game would end 0-0. They are listed above in the order of how much they are all worth — nets on a basketball hoop you can get for a few dollars, a nugget of gold is pricy, a boat is really pricy. Onward.

ANIMALS

12. Bucks
11. Mavericks
10. Hawks
9. Grizzlies

Of these animals, it is hardest to see a path forward for a Buck. Maybe it is able to, like, stab the ball with one of its antlers and then find some way to unwedge it using the rim, but come on, that would be ridiculous. Canonically, a Maverick is a horse (the canon is that one really weird Houston Rockets tweet about putting down a horse because they beat the Mavs in a basketball game), and YouTube tells me horses can be trained to play basketball. A hawk can just scoop up a ball and drop it in. Really dangerous 10-seed here. Also dangerous: Doing Sports against a bear, let alone five of them.

PEOPLE

8. 76ers
7. Trail Blazers
6. Celtics
5. Lakers
4. Knicks

Both 76ers and Trail Blazers are last because they are named after, respectively, the people who signed the Declaration of Independence and those who blazed trails (do you get it) to the pacific northwest. The point: They’re all dead and would suck at basketball right now. Leprechauns would not be particularly good, while people who live in the Land of 10,000 Lakes and people from New York (Lakers and Knickerbockers, respectively) would generally be pretty fine! Chet Holmgren and Paige Bueckers are good! So are the myriad of NBA and WNBA players from New York! Anyway,,,

A BRIEF INTERRUPTION TO DISCUSS THE HEAT

3. Heat

Have you ever played basketball when it’s hot out? Absolutely sucks. When Heat gets real bad, in particular, god, going outside stinks. I can imagine a scenario where it is too hot for someone from Minnesota or New York, or a Leprechaun, or a dead person struggle to play basketball. There are some days in New York where it’s so dang hot that you get on the subway and come off looking like you just ran a marathon. No thanks.

PEOPLE WHO WOULD NOT BE BOTHERED BY THE HEAT

2. Wizards

I have not read the Harry Potter books in a while but if I recall correctly, there is a spell that wizards can use to conjure up water, which helps them defeat the heat. There is also the fact that they are powerful fictional characters and, per one Google search I did, can modify the weather via charms.

THE SUN

1. Suns

The sun. The f*cking sun. Imagine five of them. You’re not playing basketball. In fact, there would probably be problems far more serious than playing basketball if you got five suns next to each other. I don’t know what they’d be because I am merely a blogger and not an astronomer, but this would destroy the ability to play basketball altogether, along with doing anything else, if five stars were to be directly next to one another. Too powerful, sorry.

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood are coming together to form an entirely new band called The Smile, a name that comes from a Ted Hughes poem of the same title. Producer Nigel Godrich and drummer Tom Skinner are joining the duo and the quartet is set to make their debut today, May 22, at Glastonbury’s livestream event Live At Worthy Farm.

Glastonbury co-organizer Emily Eavis shared her excitement for The Smile’s addition to this weekend’s show. “We’re truly honoured that Thom and Jonny have chosen our livestream event to premiere their brand new project, The Smile,” she said. “Sadly, we are all unable to gather together at Worthy Farm, but alongside sets from other wonderful performers, this has all the makings of a special Glastonbury moment—and one we can broadcast to the world.”

This is not the first time that members of Radiohead have worked on side projects. Back in 2009, Thom Yorke formed Atoms For Peace with Nigel Godrich, Flea, Joey Waronker, and Mauro Refosco, and the group went on to release their debut album, AMOK in 2013. Yorke has also played multiple shows with Godrich and Tarik Barri.

Tickets for Glastonbury’s Live At Worthy Farm are still available and can be purchased here.

After setting the internet ablaze with this last single, “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” as well as its accompanying video and pair of Satan Shoes, Lil Nas X returned with his latest release, “Sun Goes Down.” The new track has proven to be far less controversial than the last one, but it was one of his most honest songs to date. Hours after he dropped the track, Lil Nas took to Twitter to explain its title.

“I named the song ‘sun goes down’ because i feel like at night is when those thoughts you try to avoid really start to hit and you can’t escape them,” he wrote in a post. The track finds the singer singing about depression and suicidal thoughts, his decision to come out as gay, and his current satisfaction with how everything in his life has panned out.

The song did spark a brief moment of controversy after fans of Nicki Minaj were not happy that it features Lil Nas namedropping her. He’s been well-documented as a big fan of Minaj, which he addressed in the song, singing, “I’d be by the phone / Stanning Nicki mornin’ into dawn / Only place I felt like I belonged / Strangers make you feel so loved, you know?” He explained the reference in a tweet and promised not to use the rapper’s name in any of his future songs.

“To the barbz who feel i’m using nicki’s name for attention, the song i released last night was recorded last year,” he wrote. “And it’s about my life which 6 of those years were dedicated to nicki. it’s no fake love. but i understand how it looks so i will no longer mention her.”

Despite attending a promotional event that was determined to violate the NBA’s health and safety protocols this week, Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James will not face a suspension from the league. The report of the event comes via Dave McMenamin of ESPN, while Adrian Wojnarowski brings word of James skirting any sort of required time off.

Per McMenamin, James was joined by Drake and Michael B. Jordan, among others, at an event for a tequila that has his backing. There were protocols in place to keep the event safe, but that reportedly did not stop it from being in violation of the NBA’s rules.

The tequila was poured at a brief outdoor photo shoot, and invitees, including recording artist Drake and actor Michael B. Jordan, had to produce proof of vaccination or a recent negative test result in order to attend.

Even with those measures, James, who has declined to say whether he has received the COVID-19 vaccination, was found to be in violation of the league’s health and safety protocols.

Having said this, Wojnarowski reports that the event had enough safeguards in place that James will not receive any sort of suspension, although it’s unclear of James faces other forms of reprimand.

The Lakers knocked off the Golden State Warriors earlier this week in the play-in tournament to earn the 7-seed in the Western Conference playoffs. They’ll attempt to defend their status as champions on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. EST against the Phoenix Suns.

Bowen Yang has only been a performer on SNL for two seasons, but he’s already made a name for himself. Indeed, maybe his most popular sketch is one of its weirdest: He played the iceberg that destroyed the RMS Titanic in 1912, getting defensive with Weekend Update co-host Colin Jost and telling him he’d rather talk about his new album, called, simply, Music. It worked gangbusters, but on Friday Yang confessed to Jimmy Fallon that, leading up to the big night, he wasn’t sure anyone would get it.

For starters, it wasn’t his idea. It came from SNL co-head writer Anna Drezen. “She texts me in February, ‘Hey, maybe for the April 10 show, for the Titanic anniversary, you can play the iceberg who sank the Titanic,’” he told the Tonight Show crowd. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, cool, maybe, sure,’ kind of raised my eyebrow at her over text.”

Two months later he texted her, to see if she was still game. She told him she’d completely forgotten about it. But they managed to get it on the docket for the April 10th show, which was hosted by Carey Mulligan. Still, they weren’t sure it would fly.

“The entire week we did it, we were losing our minds a little bit, because we kept looking at each other and bursting out laughing,” Yang said. “On Saturday, at 7 p.m., as you’re supposed to turn in scripts, we were like, ‘What are we doing? This will never make it onto TV. Will people get it?’”

But they did, and it became the breakout sketch for that night’s show. The lesson? Don’t second guess your strangest ideas, especially if they involve playing a non-sentient piece of ice.

You can watch the Tonight Show segment in the video above.

(Via EW)

Morgan Wallen is slowly working his way back into the spotlight after spending some quiet months to himself after the singer was caught on camera using a racial slur with friends back in early February. He quickly apologized for the incident but not without consequences: He was reprimanded by his peers and record label suspended his contract. Shortly after the video surfaced, NAACP Nashville, which is based in Wallen’s hometown, reached out him to meet and educate him on the history of the racial slur. He agreed to sit down with the organization, but it’s now being reported that the meeting never happened.

According to TMZ, Wallen reportedly ghosted NAACP Nashville after setting up a meeting. The organization’s president, Sheryl Guinn, says the singer’s team expressed interest in meeting with the organization so that Wallen could make things right and learn from his mistakes. However, when the moment came to set a time and date for the sit-down, the singer was nowhere to be found nor did he make an effort to ensure it occurred.

Guinn says the NAACP chapter never pressured the singer to meet with them and simply wanted an opportunity to educate him in hopes that he could become an advocate for racial equality. The news comes after Wallen went to Kid Rick’s Nashville Bar to perform his first show since the controversy.

As far as freshman congresspeople go, Madison Cawthorn hasn’t achieved the notoriety of a Marjorie Taylor Greene or a Lauren Boebert. Perhaps he’s not up for the job. He couldn’t even spread 2020 election lies without badly fumbling the job. The worst thing he’s done is inexplicably visit Hitler’s vacation home. But there’s one thing he’s better at that anyone else: He’s missed more votes than any new representative in Congress.

According to the data analysis firm Quorum, Cawthorn missed over a dozen congressional votes in April alone. Indeed, the five freshmen who’ve missed the most votes are all Republicans, who seem to spend most of their time harassing colleagues and getting kicked off of committees. Cawthorn was not ashamed at his poor record, though.

“To that, I really laugh,” he said on the conservative program Real America’s Voice News. “It shows how the Democrats feel about the nuclear family in America right now. I was doing the only thing that I find more important than my service in Congress, and that’s my service as a husband.”

He blamed Congress for letting “votes pile up” the week he was on his honeymoon with his wife, Cristina Bayardelle, who he married last year. Besides, they weren’t bills he thought were important anyway.

“Every single vote that came up was some Democrat garbage, so I was happy to be able to not actually have to vote on those,” Cawthorn said. “They’re eliminating our voices. They’re not allowing us to debate on the House floor. And, I’m telling you, if I had to choose between voting with Nancy Pelosi or spending time with my beautiful wife, I’ll choose Cristina every time.”

But people on social media were not buying his excuse.

Cawthorn isn’t the first Republican lawmaker to effectively blame his family for why he didn’t do his job. Ted Cruz infamously put the blame on his kids when he fled to Mexico for vacation while his state of Texas was experiencing a freak winter storm.

(Via Insider)

The Zack Snyder people badly want Warner Bros. to restore the Snyderverse (though Zack Snyder himself seems to be against it), but it looks like at least one of its major players is going to be a bit busy: As per Deadline, Henry Cavill is in talks to play another semi-immortal in the reboot of Highlander, helmed by John Wick co-director Chad Stahelski.

The Highlander series originated in 1986, with Frenchman Christopher Lambert as a Scottish warrior who discovers he’s part of a lineage of immortal asskickers. Mentored by a Spaniard played by actual Scotsman Sean Connery, our hero winds up battling a fellow unkillable sort (Clancy Brown) amidst songs by Queen. It was not a hit but its cult became so strong that a sequel emerged in 1991. That one proved a critical-derided bomb that nevertheless kept the franchise puttering over three more films, three TV shows, books, comics, etc., etc., etc.

Presumably this latest revival will amp up the fights, coming from a former stunt coordinator helmed all three John Wick movies. (His co-director on the first, David Leitch, went on to make Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Hobbs & Shaw, and the forthcoming Bullet Train.) But should the reboot prove successful, there probably won’t be only one.

(Via Deadline)