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After missing two games with a hamstring injury, Deebo Samuel returned in Week 10 with a relatively light workload against the Chargers, with six touches for 51 yards in a 22-16 win. It was the first game with both Samuel and Christian McCaffrey on the field together and, with Samuel still getting back into game shape, the Niners leaned more heavily on their new acquisition.

However, on Monday night in Mexico City, Samuel returned to form with 10 touches (seven catches and three carries) for 94 yards and one touchdown on a sensational 39-yard run in the third quarter that signaled the start of the Niners rout.

Prior to this week, we got a chance to speak with Samuel on behalf of Snickers’ Rookie Mistake campaign, and the 49ers star explained that he and McCaffrey just needed some time to get comfortable together, being that they share some of the same space on the field, but once they did it’d be “special.” That was on display on Monday night and the Cardinals defense eventually became unraveled as they tried to handle all of the weapons the Niners have, from Samuel to McCaffrey to Kittle to Aiyuk.

There’s no secret that San Francisco’s goal is to win a Super Bowl this year, and Samuel said the biggest lesson from the Niners’ recent close calls has been that one mistake can make the difference come playoff time. With as much talent as they now possess offensively, they can apply so much pressure to defenses that, as they showed on Monday, they can be patient and wait for the opposing defense to be the one to make those mistakes this year.

With the attention Samuel, McCaffrey, and Kittle command, San Francisco can exploit one-on-ones in other places, particularly in red zone situations, with Aiyuk being the beneficiary of that on Monday night.

The discipline required to keep this Niners team in front of you for 60 minutes is something few teams possess, and provided Jimmy Garoppolo continues to make the right reads, San Francisco is going to be one of the favorites in the NFC when you couple the explosive potential of this offense with a sensational defense.

After acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk carried a sink into corporate offices (“Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!”), declared that “comedy is now legal” (before announcing a ban on unlabeled parody accounts), and tweeted… whatever the hell this is. Musk is many things — the world’s richest person, a father of 10, the ex-partner of Grimes — but a comedian is not one of them, no matter how hard he tries to impress Nathan Fielder.

Patton Oswalt, an actually successful and talented comedian, broke down why Musk is so desperately unfunny in an interview with the Daily Beast‘s The Last Laugh podcast. “This is such an age-old story. It’s somebody who wants to be funny, and they’re not funny and not everybody can be funny. Not everybody can be a rocket scientist or a business magnate. Elon is a rocket scientist and a business magnate. Those are pretty great things, but he demands to be seen as funny and cool,” he said.

Oswalt believes that Musk sees “comedy the same way he sees money and status, whereas anyone who’s into comedy knows that comedy and [what’s] funny is constantly fluctuating.” He wants to “solve for ‘funny’ and forever be the funniest one” and “doesn’t understand that that’s not how it works in comedy.”

Musk has one thing in common with some comedians, though: he steals jokes.

You can listen to the podcast below.

(Via the Daily Beast)

As Black Panther: Wakanda Forever continues to dominate the box office, star Letitia Wright is no longer remaining silent about the anti-vaccine controversy that created doubts about her presence in the film. In December 2020, Wright shared and then deleted a video that equated the vaccine with the Biblical “Mark of the Beast,” and she was accused of anti-trans remarks. After taking down her social media accounts, Wright has not touched the subject even after a subsequent report in The Hollywood Reporter accused her of spreading anti-vax views on the set of the Black Panther sequel.

That has now changed. In a new report on “How Personal Baggage Will Impact Oscar Chances,” Wright is named alongside Will Smith, Brad Pitt, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Casey Affleck, and Mel Gibson. Via THR:

Then there’s Letitia Wright, the lead actress in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which Disney released Nov. 11. While hers is far from the magnitude of baggage held by Smith or Pitt, she did endure a fair share of bad publicity when she retweeted an anti-vax conspiracy video in December 2020 and then reportedly promoted anti-vax views on the set of the film. (She denies the latter.) Backlash became so strong that some fans on social media called for the role to be recast.

While writer Scott Feinberg acknowledges that Wright’s anti-COVID views aren’t severe, and she’ll most likely experience the “least resistance” going into the Oscars, Wright did not appreciate being included next to men accused of violent and/or sexual assault.

In a new Instagram Story, she unloaded on both Feinberg and The Hollywood Reporter for having a vendetta against her. She also denied its previous reporting that she was spouting anti-vaccine views on set, which producer Nate Moore and co-star Winston Duke have also denied in interviews.

You can read Wright’s full statement below:

I had to unblock @hollywoodreporter just to post this. Scott Feinberg and all at this publication. You’re all incredibly disrespectful. How dare you. You mentioned my name alongside men who have been accused of abuse & sexual misconduct. This is vile behaviour. At this point a personal vendetta towards me. I’ve done nothing wrong but respectfully refused to do interviews with this publication. Stop your nonsense. I apologised TWO years ago. Remained silent on the topic. You lied and said I continued talking about it with my cast & crew on my set. THIS WAS NOT TRUE. ASK MY PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR. The film is successful. Your agenda towards me is now even more clear. I won’t remain silent. Stop your disgusting behavior.

@scott_feinberg This personal agenda with your friends at @hollywoodreporter is disgusting. I’ve remained silent as the world told me to kill myself two years ago for a I posted and apologised for. I kept my head down and focused on my craft. And now I’m at the other side of it. Here you are, as a so called journalist we are meant to trust, putting my name into this nasty article for what? You lack substance, you clearly have nothing to report. The movie is beautiful, impactful & breaking box office. I worked my ass off with my cast and crew to dedicate it to my Brother. How dare you. Did my performance rattle you that much? It was that excellent huh? I’m still here, still making impact, still creating projects that touch peoples hearts and it’s not going to stop. Get a life, like for real.

(Via Letitia Wright on Instagram, The Hollywood Reporter)

The Charlotte Hornets have the longest active playoff drought in the Eastern Conference, last appearing in the postseason in 2015-16. While that is a long time to be out of the postseason mix, Charlotte doesn’t hold a candle to the Sacramento Kings. The Kings haven’t made the playoffs since 2006, essentially spanning an entire generation of players. Sacramento entered the 2022-23 season with increased expectations and a fun roster, but the Kings still were not projected to make the playoffs, instead forecasted to be on the fringe of the play-in discussion. Through 15 games, however, the Kings are having fun. And in recent days, Sacramento is rolling.

The Kings are on a six-game winning streak that continued with a 137-point outburst against Detroit on Sunday. It’s the first of that length for the organization since 2005, and it pushes the Kings to 9-6 overall. Of course, that 15-game mark does not ensure anything with regard to 82-game performance, but Sacramento’s offense appears to be real.

Led by De’Aaron Fox and a six-player group averaging at least 12 points per game, the Kings are No. 1 in the NBA in offensive efficiency. Sacramento is scoring 118.6 points per 100 possessions and, during the winning streak, the Kings scored at least 120 points in every contest and put up a whopping 128.9 points per 100 possessions. While per-possession data is more indicative of overall success, Sacramento is also the first team since the 1984-85 season to average least 121.4 points per game in the first 15 contests of a season, and the Kings are in the top quartile of the NBA in a bevy of stats. In fact, the Kings lead the NBA in field goal percentage and two-point percentage (to go along with points per game), and Sacramento is also near the top of the league in assists (28.3 per game), free throw attempts (25.1 per game), and three-point accuracy (38 percent).

Fox is playing the best basketball of his career, averaging 25.4 points and shooting almost 56 percent from the floor. Domantas Sabonis adds another dynamic offensive element with 17.5 points, 10.9 rebounds, and six assists per game, while newcomer Kevin Huerter is scalding-hot from long distance, making 49.5 percent of more than seven three-point attempts per game. Inevitably, the Kings will cool off a bit, and Sacramento is currently a bottom-five team in defensive efficiency. Mike Brown will need his team to take a step forward on that end of the floor in order to compete for the final top eight in the West, but the “light the beam” movement is alive and well in Sacramento, and it is a lot of fun to watch.

Where do the Kings rank this week in our DIME power rankings? Let’s take a glance.

1. Milwaukee Bucks (12-4, Last week — 2nd)

Milwaukee isn’t flying as high in recent days, losing three of the last five. The Bucks still have the best defense in the NBA to this point, and a double-digit loss by Boston on Monday opened the door for this swap. Just don’t get between Giannis and the free throw line in postgame.

2. Boston Celtics (13-4, Last week — 1st)

The Celtics won nine in a row before losing on Monday, and they were probably due for one. The crazy thing is that Boston continues to operate without Robert Williams, but the Celtics are only behind the aforementioned Kings in offensive rating.

3. Cleveland Cavaliers (11-6, Last week — 14th)

It’s been a little bit weird in Cleveland. The Cavs opened 8-1, then lost five in a row, and now have won three in a row. That may not seem like the No. 3 team in the league, but Cleveland has a +6.9 net rating and the underlying metrics are strong. The Cavs also just beat the Heat and Hawks by 38 combined points.

4. Phoenix Suns (10-6, Last week — 6th)

Phoenix has a TNT slot on Tuesday against the Lakers with a chance to build on this market. In keeping with the fact that nothing seems to matter in the regular season for the Suns, Phoenix actually leads the league in net rating (+7.0). Phoenix did lose three of the last five games, but it’s hard to ignore the overall profile.

5. L.A. Clippers (11-7, Last week — 15th)

The Clippers are 9-3 in the last 12 and looking more like the Clippers. L.A. is behind only Milwaukee in defense, and Kawhi Leonard has now played in three straight games. That doesn’t fix everything, especially since he isn’t KAWHI just yet, but a rough start has evaporated.

6. Sacramento Kings (9-6, Last week — 18th)

We’re about to learn more about Sacramento. The vibes are fantastic, but the Kings now face the Grizzlies, Hawks, and Celtics on the road over a four-day period beginning on Tuesday. Even getting one win in that run would be encouraging.

7. Indiana Pacers (10-6, Last week — 19th)

Look at the Pacers. Indiana has won five in a row and nine of the last eleven games. A deeper look is a little bit less exciting than you might think, in part because the last four wins came against bad teams, but the Pacers are No. 7 in offense and playing a fun brand of basketball.

8. Denver Nuggets (10-6, Last week — 3rd)

Denver is 9-4 with Nikola Jokic and 1-2 without him. There is a bit of punishment in this ranking after three losses in five games, but Denver did avenge a bad loss to Dallas with a win in the rematch.

9. New Orleans Pelicans (10-7, Last week — 13th)

It’s been quiet, but the Pelicans are really playing good basketball. New Orleans is in the top five of the NBA in net rating and just completed a five-game run with four wins and a close loss to Boston.

10. Minnesota Timberwolves (9-8, Last week — 23rd)

A 13-spot jump isn’t something that is easy to accomplish, but it was a great week for Minnesota. The Wolves went 4-0 with wins over Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Miami. It’s been a season of fits and starts for the Wolves, but maybe that run is a springboard.

11. Utah Jazz (12-7, Last week — 8th)

No need to panic just yet, but the Jazz are 2-4 in the last six games. The cracks are beginning to show on defense with 117.5 points allowed per 100 possessions over that six-game period. Utah gets a friendly home game against Detroit on Wednesday, but then it’s a Thanksgiving weekend back-to-back against Golden State and Phoenix on the road.

12. Atlanta Hawks (10-7, Last week — 4th)

The Hawks have alternated wins and losses in eight straight games. Being .500 over an eight-game period is generally fine, but three of the losses came by double figures. Atlanta has been out-scored for the season, and the Hawks have work to do on offense in particular.

13. Philadelphia 76ers (8-8, Last week — 7th)

The offense hasn’t been as good as it should be in Philly, but the Sixers are really guarding. The Sixers are giving up about 1.01 points per possession in the last seven games, going 4-3, and the last two losses came against quality opponents in close-fought games.

14. Washington Wizards (10-7, Last week — 17th)

We dove into Washington’s uptick last week and, right on cue, the Wizards lost to the Thunder at home. That may have prompted an “uh oh,” but the Wizards responded with back-to-back wins over Miami and Charlotte.

15. Golden State Warriors (8-10, Last week — 11th)

The Warriors finally won a road game this week, toppling the Rockets after a hideous start away from San Francisco. The ensuing game was a blowout loss but, well, nobody played for the Warriors in that game. Wednesday’s matchup with the surging Clippers on national TV should be interesting for the champs.

16. Memphis Grizzlies (10-7, Last week — 9th)

Three double-digit losses in the last four games have the Grizzlies dipping in the rankings. Memphis is 0-3 without Ja Morant, and he may miss a decent stretch of time with an ankle injury. It’s something to monitor after how well the Grizzlies managed to play without their star last year.

17. Dallas Mavericks (9-7, Last week — 5th)

Dallas was over-inflated in this space last week, and now the Mavs are probably too low. That’s the nature of it being November. At any rate, the Mavs lost to Houston at home (yikes), and even with Luka out, that’s not great. It still feels like Dallas isn’t quite firing on offense, and the sledding is tough with road games against Boston, Toronto, and Milwaukee this week.

18. Toronto Raptors (9-8, Last week — 12th)

Toronto came close to a third straight win, only to fall to Atlanta in memorable fashion at the buzzer. The Raptors are better than this ranking suggests, but an eight-game absence from Pascal Siakam makes Toronto look a lot more ordinary.

19. Brooklyn Nets (8-9, Last week — 20th)

The Nets got absolutely obliterated by the Kings to start last week, which hurts the metrics, but Brooklyn is generally playing better basketball in recent days. Kyrie Irving is now back with the team just in time for a three-game Thanksgiving road trip that includes a national TV game in Philly on Tuesday.

20. Portland Trail Blazers (10-7, Last week — 10th)

A bit of regression is here for Portland. The Blazers are 1-4 in the last five and the only win came at home against San Antonio. At the same time, none of the losses were of the “bad” variety, and Portland’s defense is still above-average by the numbers. We’re going to need more info.

21. New York Knicks (9-9, Last week — 22nd)

New York is hovering in the middle. The 9-9 record paints that picture, but the Knicks are underwater from a point differential standpoint. It was a status quo week with two explainable road losses, and New York has six of the next seven at home to maybe set up a run.

22. Chicago Bulls (7-10, Last week — 21st)

The Bulls were on the way to the bottom five before a nice win over Boston on Monday. Chicago is playing pretty well on defense, but the offense just isn’t quite there yet. Some of that can be traced to 41 percent shooting for Zach LaVine.

23. Los Angeles Lakers (5-10, Last week — 26th)

Welcome back, Anthony Davis? Davis has at least 20 points in 13 of 14 games this season, and he just put up 35 points and 17.3 rebounds per game during a three-game winning streak. Beating Brooklyn, Detroit, and San Antonio shouldn’t launch a party, but it’s at least improving in Los Angeles from a team standpoint.

24. Oklahoma City Thunder (7-10, Last week — 24th)

The Thunder would probably be even higher if they weren’t the Thunder. Oklahoma City has a very respectable -1.5 net rating, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is on All-NBA watch at this point. Three losses in the last four games keeps OKC down, but they are frisky.

25. Miami Heat (7-11, Last week — 16th)

A winless four-game road trip sinks Miami on this list. It’s not as if there is overarching panic for the Heat but, at 7-11 and with the No. 23 offensive rating, it doesn’t feel like Miami will be repeating its top-seeded effort from last season.

26. Orlando Magic (5-13, Last week — 28th)

Orlando won the first two games with Paolo Banchero, but reality is now setting in. The Magic are 1-4 in the last five games and, even worse, Orlando now plays 14 consecutive games against teams that were projected for the playoffs before the regular season began.

27. San Antonio Spurs (6-12, Last week — 25th)

The Spurs were 5-2. You can do the math on how things have gone since. San Antonio has a hideous -16.3 net rating in the last 11 games, giving up more than 1.2 points per possession on defense. During an active five-game losing streak, four of the losses came by at least 18 points, and it’s really off the rails now after a somewhat promising start.

28. Charlotte Hornets (4-14, Last week — 27th)

Charlotte has the worst record in the league since Halloween at 1-11. LaMelo Ball has played only three games, which explains things a little bit, but he doesn’t change that much to explain away a 4-14 start and an ugly 106 offensive rating. As a reminder, the Hornets won 43 games last season.

29. Houston Rockets (3-14, Last week — 30th)

A nice road win over Dallas this week gets Houston out of the basement. The Rockets are still struggling quite badly (-7.5 net rating), but that victory was a nice bright spot. Now, Houston has a four-day break between games on Sunday and the next contest on the agenda against Atlanta on Friday.

30. Detroit Pistons (3-15, Last week — 29th)

Seven straight losses are bad enough but, with Cade Cunningham out due to injury, it feels dire for Detroit. The Pistons don’t have adequate shot creation right now and, on defense, only the Spurs have been worse by the numbers.

Vladimir Putin’s disastrous war has torn Russia apart, at least financially speaking, and it looks like the same is about to happen for the Russian president’s remaining allies. He’s already been the subject of a reported plot by his inner circle, who have been planning for his succession. And his soldiers sure don’t want to keep risking life and limb, even though an astounding number of them continue to perish as this dismal war drags on. The war began in late February, but before long, as a whistleblower revealed to Newsweek, infighting in Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) began, and there’s no signs of it slowing down. In fact, it’s getting worse.

The report seems like a natural progression from word that Putin’s inner circle has privately admitted that the war is already an embarrassing loss, and now, an agent that identifies as Wind Of Change (you can hear that Scorpions song in your head, right?) has passed on correspondence to Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian dissident, who relays letters that began early March and grew more grave in tone through November. Via Newsweek, here a detailing of the devolution, including how war-weary Russians will soon “descend into the abyss of terror” and more:

“Believe me–that is far more terrifying. I assert, and this is by no means the solitary private opinion of one simple (FSB) employee: we have f***ed up the country. We (FSB) screwed up the country not on February 24, when this whole affair began, but much earlier, when February 24 became possible in principle.”

“Chaos, civil war, collapse–yes, it’s all ahead of us. It is inevitable,” the FSB agent said. “Too many in Russia have crossed the point of no return. They plan to be little czars in the areas they manage to capture. At least, that’s the way they are thinking.”

This kind of talk actually seems tame if one considers the carnage that’s taking place in Ukraine. Even after Putin’s massive draft, companies are running at staggeringly low numbers and don’t even have access to medical care to treat their injuries. Tampons are pretty much the extent of bullet hole treatment, and it truly seems like only a matter of time before the army fully folds, no matter what Putin orders them to do. Sure, he can send in private mercenaries (as he’s already been doing), but if his allies fully turn on him, he’ll be cornered and talking about nukes again until he’s removed from power.

(Via Newsweek)

Kelly Rowland is facing some serious heat from fans. The drama started when she presented Chris Brown with the award for Favorite Male R&B Artist at the American Music Awards over the weekend. While he wasn’t there to collect it in person, the audience booed wildly — as Brown has a documented history of assault. Rowland came to the musician’s defense, telling the crowd, “Excuse me, chill out.”

“I want to tell Chris, thank you so much for making great R&B music, and I want to tell him, thank you for being an incredible performer,” she continued, following the tension. “I’ll take this award and bring it to you — I love you. Congratulations, and congratulations to all the nominees in this category.”

Brown’s absence from the show came just days after the cancellation of his Michael Jackson tribute. He posted a heated video on Instagram calling it “for reasons unknown.” The songs chosen from the rehearsal clip include a medley of Brown’s own “Under The Influence” into Jackson’s “Beat It.”

In the days after the AMA’s, it seems Rowland is sticking by the words in her speech. Yesterday, she spoke to TMZ about why she offered Brown “grace.”

“I believe that grace is very real,” Rowland said. “And we all need a dose of it. And before we point fingers at anybody, we should realize how grateful we are for every moment that we get. Even our own things that we have. I just think it’s important to remember to be human. We are humans.”

“We all need to be forgiven for anything that we could be doing. Anything that we’re thinking,” she continued. “We all come up short in some kind of way. And grace is real. We are humans. And everybody deserves grace.”

While some people see the passing of Halloween as the signal to start hanging mistletoe and putting up the tree, many think that’s still a bit too early to get into the holiday spirit. Now, though, Thanksgiving is just a few days away, and after then is when things start to get really Christmas-y.

Actually, the transformation has already begun on the Billboard charts: On the new Hot 100 dated November 26, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” re-enters at No. 25. If Carey manages to reclaim the top spot, it’ll be the fourth holiday season in a row that she does it. Elsewhere, Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” re-emerges at No. 41, while Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” returns to the chart at No. 50.

These songs were all near the top of the charts last year, too. On the Hot 100 dated December 25, 2021, for example, Carey was No. 1, Lee was No. 2, and Helms was No. 4.

There was some holiday-related activity on other Billboard charts last week as well: Carey’s Merry Christmas re-entered the Billboard 200 at No. 85. Over on the Adult Contemporary Airplay chart, Kelly Clarkson and Ariana Grande’s “Santa, Can’t You Hear Me” debuted at No. 25 while Alicia Keys’ “Please Come Home For Christmas” entered at No. 27.

Aside from the aforementioned, there are already some other new holiday tunes to spin this year, including one from Kurt Vile and his daughters and another from Jimmy Fallon and Dolly Parton.

Did actor and martial arts legend Bruce Lee, who once said, “Be water, my friend,” die from drinking too much water? That’s the theory put forward in a new research paper.

The study, published in the December 2022 edition of the Clinical Kidney Journal, puts forward the idea that the The Way of the Dragon and Enter the Dragon star’s cause of death was “from a specific form of kidney dysfunction: the inability to excrete enough water to maintain water homeostasis, which is mainly a tubular function. This may lead to hyponatraemia, cerebral oedema, and death within hours if excess water intake is not matched by water excretion in urine, which is in line with the timeline of Lee’s demise.”

Lee died at 32 years old in 1973 under “mysterious circumstances.”

The abrupt nature of Lee’s death has been a matter of fervid speculation for decades, with some fans over the years even hypothesizing that the star was assassinated. A 2018 book, “Bruce Lee: A Life,” hypothesized that he died of heat exhaustion, but the current study did not find that temperatures were abnormally high that day. The study hypothesized that although he had not consumed a huge amount of water, his kidneys were potentially not able to handle even normal amounts of fluid. In addition, he had reportedly been existing on a near-liquid diet of mostly juices.

Lee is survived by his daughter, Shannon, who did not appreciate how her father was depicted in Quentin Tarantino’s self-proclaimed best movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

(Via Variety)

People can take a lot of heat from their neighbors if they start putting up holiday decorations too early. It’s a bit of a holiday faux pas to put up Christmas lights until after you’ve digested your Thanksgiving turkey, but some folks are so full of Christmas spirit, they just can’t resist.

If that’s you, the good news is that you now have an excuse for putting up decorations before anyone else on your block. (Not that you needed one in the first place.) According to science, decorating for the holidays early makes you happier. Who can argue with that?

Psychoanalyst Steve McKeown told Unilad that the good feelings stem from a sense of nostalgia. “Although there could be a number of symptomatic reasons why someone would want to obsessively put up decorations early, most commonly for nostalgic reasons either to relive the magic or to compensate for past neglect,” he said.

“In a world full of stress and anxiety people like to associate to things that make them happy and Christmas decorations evoke those strong feelings of childhood,” McKeown continued.

Psychologist Deborah Serani told Today that changing the scenery inside and outside our homes is a great way to get a quick hit of feel-good hormones.

“It does create that neurological shift that can produce happiness,” she said. “I think anything that takes us out of our normal habituation, the normal day in, day out … signals our senses, and then our senses measure if it’s pleasing or not.

“Christmas decorating will spike dopamine, a feel-good hormone,” Serani added.

Putting up holiday decorations also sends an excellent message to our neighbors. A study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology found that people who decorate for the holidays are seen by their neighbors as more sociable.

The study found that people who decorate for the holidays are perceived as “friendly and cohesive” and that the added holiday cheer can change people’s perceptions of their neighbors. People believe that their unsociable neighbors are actually more social if they put up decorations. The study concluded that “residents can use their home’s exterior to communicate attachment and possibly to integrate themselves into a neighborhood’s social activities.”

So decorating your home for the holidays will not only make your family happier but make your neighbors’ as well. Looks like a win-win here.

YouGov conducted a survey to find out when most people feel it’s appropriate to start decorating for the holidays. A poll of 2,748 U.S. adults who celebrate Christmas, Chanukah or Kwanzaa found that 27% put their winter holiday decorations up before Thanksgiving, while 69% wait until after Thanksgiving. The most common time was the day after Thanksgiving when 25% of people started decorating for the winter holidays.

But what about those bah-humbug neighbors who will judge you if you start decorating too early? Serani says that they may have some bad memories from childhood associated with the holidays so their disdain may have nothing to do with you at all.

Steven Spielberg has largely proved two things throughout his long and storied career: that he’s both a wildly competent filmmaker and a hopelessly corny man. Many people are so seduced by competent filmmaking that they’d push back on hopelessly corny, but consider: at age 75, when Spielberg finally got around to making his semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale, he called it “The Fabelmans.” It’s the kind of on-the-nose pun I’d normally expect from Tyler Perry, who once named a movie about a lawyer named Wesley Deeds who learns the value of good deeds “Good Deeds.”

While only a man as hopelessly corny as Spielberg would dare name his own origin story “The Fabelmans,” only as competent a filmmaker as Spielberg could actually make it work. And The Fabelmans is miles better than Spielberg’s last few (West Side Story, Ready Player One, The Post…). It’s at its best when it dares to be what Spielberg movies so rarely are: weird. So much of Spielberg’s corniness, I suspect, comes from a general unwillingness to give us much of himself in his movies, his true esoteric, idiosyncratic personality. His inner self is almost always filtered through a bestselling book, or a fantastic narrative, or the eyes of a beautiful shiny horse. It’s why he’s waited until the age of 75 to make the self-referential movie that directors nowadays often make as one of their first.

Spielberg is married, maybe more than any filmmaker ever, to this idea of himself as the ultimate pop filmmaker — accessible, commercial, universal — a guy who makes broad fables. A “fable man,” if you will. That’s why, despite the general corniness and some of the baffling artistic decisions that have increasingly characterized his work, the moments of The Fabelmans when Spielberg seems to let his guard down, to let his genuine, unfocus-grouped self peak through, are genuinely thrilling.

Spielberg has taken on Jewish-themed projects before — Schindler’s List, Munich — but never before has he addressed what it was like growing up Jewish in America. He offers a few telling, tantalizing details in The Fabelmans, but something suggests that he’s not quite ready to be all-the-way vulnerable. Possibly reflected in the fact that he hired two of the most goyish-looking actors alive, Paul Dano and Michelle Williams, to play his parents.

The film begins in the 1950s, with Williams wearing a godawful, 6-year-old’s Cleopatra bob and Spielberg’s stand-in, Sammy Fabelman, played by Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord (feels like way too many names for one person but sure). The scene is young Sammy’s first movie, about which he’s weirdly terrified. His father, Burt (Dano), tries to calm him by explaining the science behind movies. That a series of still images projected quickly creates the illusion of motion, thanks to persistence of vision. A “motion picture,” if you will. As Sammy’s mom says later in the film, “In this house, it’s the artists vs. the scientists, and Sammy is on my team.”

Sammy, naturally, quickly becomes obsessed with making movies. Specifically, with recreating the train crash scene from Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth, which is how mama Mitzi knows Sammy is on Team Art. Mitzi is an accomplished piano player, who has herself mostly put her art on the back burner in order to become a traditional housewife to Burt. Burt is an electrical engineer who seems on the cusp of developing new technology for use in computers, and when he gets a fancy new job which will move the family from New Jersey to Arizona, Mitzi initially has to exhort him to get Bennie hired along with him. Bennie, played by Seth Rogen, is Burt’s best friend/business partner/employee, who seems capable of both translating Burt’s genius to the outside world, and playing along with Mitzi’s artistic sensibilities.

Paul Dano, who at 38, is younger than both Williams and Rogen, and with his pudgy baby face looks even younger than that, is the first of The Fabelmans‘ strange casting decisions. The second comes after a 10-year time jump, when high school-aged Sammy is now played by Gabriel LaBelle. LaBelle, unlike the cerulean-eyed Francis-DeFord, has brown eyes in real life, and to square this circle, Spielberg fits LaBelle with blue contact lenses that look about as fake as all colored contact lenses do. They’re especially distracting in the origin story for Steven Spielberg, the man who popularized the “Spielberg Face” shot, a closeup of a character gazing off in wonder. It’s a shot that focuses special attention on the eyes and Spielberg reuses it countless times here.

LaBelle is a capable actor, so it’s easy to understand why Spielberg wanted to cast him, but if that was the priority, why not hire a younger Sammy with brown eyes? Was eye color really so integral to Spielberg’s conception of himself? Or why not leave LaBelle’s eyes alone and force us to suspend disbelief? We’ve already accepted Michelle Williams’ offputting haircut (which gradually evolves into a less harsh-looking pageboy over the course of the film), what’s an eye-color disparity? The constant closeups of bad contact lenses force us to relive this weird decision over and over.

Sammy faces Anti-Semitism at a new school, he escapes into filmmaking, Mitzi eventually chafes against having to sublimate her artistic self to fit her position as housewife — these are all fairly predictable storylines in The Fabelmans. They’re the parts you expect to be in the trailer, and are. The parts of The Fabelmans that are the most interesting are the parts where it feels like Spielberg is doing honest reflection rather than revisionist myth-making (I’ve never entirely trusted anyone who claims to have known exactly what they wanted to do with their life from the age of 10 onwards).

In one of the best scenes, Judd Hirsch arrives at the Fabelman house, playing Sammy’s showbiz great uncle. Uncle Boris is something of a pirate, and, seeing himself in the boy, gives him a harangue about how “art” and “family” are always going to be opposing forces in the boy’s life. “It’ll tear you apart!” Hirsch bellows, affixing the boy in his unibrowed stare.

While it’s notable that the two most-obvious actual Jews in the movie, Judd Hirsch and Seth Rogen, give the most memorable performances, the scene is the film’s best because it’s the first inkling that Spielberg’s eventual life as an artist was an actual decision. Not only that, that it was actually a tough one, and not something pre-ordained by fate that turned out just fine.

On the flipside, the most memorable part of Sammy’s high school days aren’t him discovering film or getting bullied for being Jewish, it’s when he gets to make out with a hot classmate because she has a Jesus fetish. Images of the savior mingle with bubblegum shots of pop idols on the wall in the bedroom of Monica (Chloe East), who invites Sammy over to her house to convert him, then tries to transmit the holy spirit through her tongue. Sammy getting a bagel in his locker as a taunt is something we’ve more or less seen, but young Spielberg’s perspective on churchy shiksas being both alluring and deranged, which he being a clever boy naturally capitlizes on, is fresh and funny. It also feels like something Spielberg is trying to work through for himself, rather than just telling us what he thinks we want to hear.

Ever the canny salesman, The Fabelmans is mostly a clever mix of things the audience has seen and expects, with enough new to tantalize without scaring anyone off. It’s nice to see Spielberg finally giving us a bit of himself, even if it could be more.

‘The Fabelmans’ is playing now in select theaters, and opens nationwide November 23rd. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more of his reviews here.