Coronavirus cases may be rising in part of the United States, and yet one industry that’s been mostly shuttered for the last six months is starting to go back to work: scripted television. Talk shows, even the occasional comedy series, like SNL, has found ways to adapt to our socially distancing times, but others have simply had to wait. But that wait is coming to an end, at least for a small handful of shows.
One of those is lucky to be based on the other side of the world, in a nation that’s pretty much got this all under control: Amazon’s pricey Lord of the Rings series, which is shooting in New Zealand. According to Deadline, production on the show — which imagines the events leading up to J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved trilogy — has already resumed, having been forced to stop mid-March after coming close to finishing two episodes. During the months-long hiatus, the screenwriting team has been planning out Season 2, as it’s safe to say lots of people want to watch any new show, particularly if it’s returns us to Middle-earth.
Meanwhile, the new Cowboy Bebop, also based in New Zealand, is set to start back up on September 30, and a fellow Netflix program, Sweet Tooth, has been back in front of the lens since September 14. (In other New Zealand news, James Cameron announced he just finished principal photography on the first of four Avatar sequels, with the threequel almost entirely in the bag. Now he and his team just have to spend two years adding cutting edge special effects.)
That’s New Zealand, though. Some productions in the United States are taking the risk and going back to work. Among those is Genius: Aretha, the third in NatGeo’s series about pioneering historical figures, which previously highlighted Albert Einstein (played by Geoffrey Rush) and Pablo Picasso (Antonio Banderas). This one stars Cynthia Erivo as Aretha Franklin, and Deadline reports that, after shutting down in March after filming 5 ½ of its eight episodes, it’s going to try and complete the other 2 ½ starting on October 1. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see it before we see Respect, the Aretha Franklin movie, starring Jennifer Hudson, which is currently scheduled for January 15 of next years but who’s to say what if most theaters will be back open by then?
Genius: Aretha is shooting in Atlanta, Georgia, not too far from production on another show that’s already back: The Walking Dead. According to ComicBook.com, one of its stars, Norman Reedus, went on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to talk about the many rules they have to follow while shooting in our COVID-ravaged country.
“We have all these protocols now. We have to take COVID tests three times a week,” Reedus told Kimmel. “The epidemiologist from the Pentagon during the SARS scare is our on-set doctor now. There’s a whole thing going on over here.” The production is looking to complete another half-dozen episodes, which are reportedly smaller in scale than the previous, wild season. So if you were worried you’d have no new content that didn’t involve actors sitting in front of webcams in their living room, then breathe easy.
The timing of the news seems to indicate that the Clippers are looking to ensure they get into the race for the top coaching candidates before the likes of the Sixers and Rockets fill their head coaching vacancies. One major reason for that is Clippers assistant Tyronn Lue is one of the top candidates for just about every available job at the moment, and his impending interview with the Sixers might have precipitated the Clippers moving quickly to part ways with Rivers.
Shortly after the news broke, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski confirmed that Lue would indeed be a leading candidate, but that ESPN analyst and former Knicks and Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy would also be a seriously considered candidate.
Doc Rivers had two years left on his contract, sources tell ESPN. This is a challenging coaching search for Clippers, who are the ultimate win-now team. Among top candidates in the marketplace: Clippers assistant Ty Lue and former Rockets and Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy. https://t.co/Ov02RYNbK9
Lue checks all of the boxes for the Clippers as a head coach with championship experience — and winning one with some forceful star personalities who didn’t always see eye-to-eye — and he’s familiar with the dynamic of the Clippers locker room. If anything, Lue not getting the job would seem more to be a matter of whether he, as someone who is extremely loyal to Doc, wants the job, but given there are so few jobs with legitimate title contenders that come open, it would be hard to see him turning it down.
As for Van Gundy, he has been getting some buzz in recent years in the coaching carousel not because of his work in the booth with ESPN, but because he’s done an excellent job as the head coach for USA Basketball in qualifying tournaments. It’ll be interesting to see who else the Clippers consider, as they have another assistant in Sam Cassell who has gotten consideration in Houston and Chauncey Billups, who does Clippers TV broadcasts, has made it clear he’s interested in coaching. It wouldn’t be a total surprise to see Billups join Lue’s staff if he were to take the job as a lead assistant as he looks to make the leap into the head coaching ranks.
The recent passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg not only marked the end of an illustrious life of service to law and country, but the beginning of an unprecedented judicial nomination process. While Ginsburg’s spot on the Supreme Court sits open, politicians and regular Americans alike argue over whether or not it should be filled immediately, basing their arguments on past practices and partisan points.
When a Supreme Court vacancy came up in February of 2016, nine months before the election, Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell refused to even take up a hearing to consider President Obama’s pick for the seat, arguing that it was an election year and the people should have a say in who that seat goes to.
Four years later, a mere six weeks before the election, that reasoning has gone out the window as Senate Republicans race to get a nominee pushed through the approval process prior to election day. Now, they claim, because the Senate majority and President are of the same party, it makes sense to proceed with the nomination.
It’s a stunning display of hypocrisy, even by the political world’s standards.
In a recent Senate Judiciary Committee meeting, Senator Ted Cruz (TX-R) attempted to paint the Democrats’ objections to pushing through a SCOTUS nominee as “political theater.” But Senator Amy Klobuchar (MN-D) wasn’t having it. In a nine-and-a-half minute speech, Klobuchar laid out exactly why this SCOTUS nomination goes beyond political theater—and she did so with an authentic eloquence that earned her viral status.
If you haven’t seen this, there is a reason why this is getting a lot of attention. https://t.co/9bwtfkGRnA
The full transcript of her speech shared on Senator Klobuchar’s website:
“Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I sit in a position on this committee where I often follow Senator Cruz and I often have to throw out my entire plan for what I was going to say because of what he said. But I have never had an experience quite like this one. I could choose to start by taking on his interpretation of history because of the fact that the only other time that we have had a justice die this close to an election was when Abraham Lincoln—a wise wise leader—was president. What did he do?
He waited until after the election.
What is unique in your words, Senator Cruz, about this situation? People are voting right now. Democracy is happening right now and we in this room are supposed to be stewards of this democracy. What else is unique in your words about this situation? It is the precedent that was set just a few years ago by the very people sitting here, by the very leader who is still the leader of the Republican Party.
He said this—Mitch McConnell—the American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president. Those are the facts that you live with. But to me, none of those arguments even compare to what I just heard and what I must respond to. Our democracy, what’s happening right now.
What this President said yesterday and Joe Biden has said he will abide by the results of this election. It is this president, President Trump who refuses to commit to make sure there is a peaceful transfer of power after the election if he is not re-elected. Instead, as he has done for months, just yesterday, he again worked to undermine confidence in our election.
He has repeatedly told people, the citizens of this country that it’s not safe to vote by mail. That there’s something wrong with it, except for in Florida where he has voted by mail. This is what he says almost every single day. And to have the chairman of this committee lead this discussion on this solemn day, when tomorrow the first woman in the history of the nation will lie in state and raise the fact that yes, this may end up in court and then to hear you, Senator Cruz talk about how this is because of some war game that you’re talking about that I’ve never even heard about that this can end up in court.
Well, guess what, I will not concede that this is going to end up in court. You know why? Because the people are voting in droves right now. They are voting all over this country because President Trump is behind in states, in red states that no one even thought he could be behind in. Why? Because the people of this country are fighting back because they know what’s on the line. Do I think this is a tragic death at this moment? Yes, it’s tragic because we lost this woman who is an icon way ahead of her time, someone who opened doors for women at a time when so many insisted on keeping them shut.
Well, we are not keeping our democracy shut this year. This was a woman who would never as Senator Durbin explained would not take no for an answer. She literally applied for law school when there were no women hardly in her law school, when she had to go to a dinner with the dean of Harvard Law School. And he had each woman explain why they were allowing a man to be taking this seat, taking the chair of a man and taking it away from a man.
She then goes on to Columbia and graduates, number one in her class. She then comes up with theories that no one had even conjured up before to argue that women should have equal protection under the law. And when they say a man should argue it, she goes and does it herself. And she wins five out of six times setting landmark law for this country.
She then goes to the Supreme Court, is respected across the land, becomes a cultural icon with her own hashtag—Notorious RBG—in her 80s. She never gave up and I am not going to give up on this democracy. Despite these false lies about the Democratic candidate for president. It is President Trump who chose to clear out peaceful protesters and wave a Bible in front of a church.
It is President Trump who after Charlottesville said there are two sides. Well, there’s not two sides when one side is the Ku Klux Klan. It is President Trump who has put out there that military and soldiers should be at the voting places in a pure attempt to suppress the vote. So don’t go telling the people this committee who know better, who is the divisive person, who is the one that has been inciting violence in this election.
And even if they don’t believe us in this room, the American people have seen through it. That’s why just today you saw nearly 500 military leaders join together—former military leaders—and civilian national security leaders, Republicans, Democrats and independents to say that they did not support this president, because they were afraid of what was happening to our country and our democracy.
So this hearing that we are about to have is about that very democracy. And so I don’t think people really care about the fights we’ve had about this before. I think we missed a really important ingredient in what I’ve been hearing my colleagues say from across the aisle and that is people are voting right now.
They are voting on health care right now. The fact that we have a court case out of Texas that is coming up for oral argument on November 10th, in which yes, pre existing conditions are on the line because the argument was made that the whole Affordable Care Act should be thrown out. You cannot just fix that when you haven’t been able to even take up the Heroes Act to do something about the pandemic. Yet, in fact, we see that we’ve got time to ram through a Supreme Court hearing in two weeks instead of spending those two weeks to actually take up the Heroes Act and hope the people of this country.
What else is on the line? Well, civil rights is on the line when you look at the decisions and all the money that has flowed into our politics from the outside as a result of this current court’s decision that is dominated by nominees put forward by Republican presidents.
Women’s rights. Oh, yeah, they are on the line and as those fires were blazing on the West Coast of our country, even the right to regulate our environment and do something to protect our air and water, that is on the line. So this hearing will not be divorced from what is happening right now because this president has put it right in the middle of a political campaign.
That’s his choice, not our choice.
So, I don’t see this as theater as you describe, Senator Cruz. I see this as the real world. I see this deeply personally because I know that we have a President in place that knew that this virus was deadly. He knew that it was airborne and yet my family, we were just trying to clean off the surfaces all the time and wash our hands. And then my husband ends up in the hospital with COVID on oxygen because this President didn’t share with us the information he had at the time. All of that is going to be on the line.
So we will look at this nominee and we will look carefully at this nominee that is our job, but we cannot get away from the fact that the process that puts her before us will be one that is not respecting the democracy that we are supposed to cherish.
So I just—I have listened to this for too long and I think the American people see through this raw use of political power. That is why they’re voting in droves. So if you think you can get away from this just by trying to get this nominee through and no one’s going to notice what she stands for or what her views are and how that’s going to play into decisions that are made that affect people’s lives. They already know. They’re voting now.
“Very nice!” It appears as though Kazakhstan’s number one reporter, Borat Sagdiyev, is set to return to the big screen in the near future and the film’s title is a sight to behold.
Reports show that the title submitted to the Writer’s Guild of America, “Borat: Gift Of Pornographic Monkey To Vice Premiere Mikhael Pence To Make Benefit Recently Diminished Nation Of Kazakhstan” is even longer than the first film’s, “Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan.”
As the title suggests, the film is expected to feature an encounter with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence as well as President Trump’s TV lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Page Six reported that Giuliani called the cops on the film’s star, Sacha Baron Cohen” after he apparently entered his office wearing a pink bikini.
“This person comes in yelling and screaming, and I thought this must be a scam or a shake-down, so I reported it to the police,” Giuliani told Page Six.
The film is also expected to focus on Donald Trump’s relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Borat 2” has been described as a “meta-story” that follows Sagdiyev’s attempts to conceal his identity so he won’t be noticed by his targets. The first Borat film was such a huge hit it turned the character into a pop culture icon, so it’s nearly impossible for Baron Cohen to prank people while dressed as the character.
This was probably why Baron Cohen was spotted performing at the March for Our Rights 3 in Olympia, Washington last June dressed as a bluegrass singer. The comedian trolled a group of 500 supporters of a right-wing militia group by getting them to sing along with a terribly offensive song about the COVID-19 virus.
The song took shots at the Chinese, liberal political figures, CNN, and Bill Gates.
“Obama, what we gonna do? Inject him with the Wuhan flu,” Baron Cohen sang. “Hillary Clinton, what we gonna do? Lock her up like we used to do.”
Borat Sagdiyev was first introduced to English television viewers in 1996 on a show called “Grandpa Television.” At that time, the character was known as Alexi Krickler. The character was revived for “Da Ali G Show” which would become a hit on HBO in America.
Baron Cohen has used the fictional, satirical character to expose real-life racism and antisemitism in American and England. He’s also been criticized by Kazakhstani officials as promoting negative stereotypes about their country.
Kazakhstan’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Rakhat Aliyev, invited Baron Cohen to visit his country saying, “His trip could yield a lot of discoveries — that women not only travel inside buses but also drive their own cars, that we make wine from grapes, that Jews can freely attend synagogues and so on.”
There’s no word on when the film will be released but, in America, we could really use a laugh these days. In a time of political unrest, culture wars, and a pandemic, there’s never been a better time to take a good look at ourselves and few people are better at it than Baron Cohen.
North Carolina native J. Cole has been repping his home state since he first began his musical career. Now, Cole is being celebrated for all of his hard work with a giant mural prominently displayed in Durham to honor Cole’s major contributions to the state’s culture.
The mural is the latest work of art by graffiti artist JEKS. According to JEKS, he worked in collaboration with renowned hip-hop photographer Jonathan Mannion to transform one of his Cole photos into a larger-than-life mural. Painted on Durham’s UHill Walls, the mural sits alongside 40,000 square feet of painted walls across 15 contiguous acres. Cole’s profile was painted last week as part of the city’s goal to create the largest consolidated collection of murals in the Southeastern US.
In other J. Cole news, the rapper is apparently the source of Kanye West’s latest Twitter rant. Kanye asked for a “public apology” a few weeks ago from Cole following his 2016 track “False Prophets,” which many believe is a critique of Kanye’s sudden shift to conservative politics. A few days later, Kanye took shots at the rapper’s sneaker design, saying “all pumas designs are embarrassingly trash but I will personally design puma and adidas and make everything ok.” This comment prompted a response from Cole’s manager, who said the rapper was living “rent free” in Kanye’s head.
Check out photos of J. Cole’s massive mural above.
If you had a Facebook account from 2009 to 2012 your feed was probably full of people’s updates about what was going on in their FarmVille farm, asking friends to visit so they could get points or that one family member that kept sending you invites. It was as much a staple of the rise of social media as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, which is why news the game is shutting down marks the end of a very interesting era of the Internet.
Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever and neither does the original FarmVille. In an announcement that is probably expected for some and surprising for others, FarmVille is shutting down. Cause of death? The end of Adobe Flash. Zynga explained more in a statement on Monday.
Following an incredible 11 years since its initial launch back in 2009, we are officially announcing the closure of the original FarmVille game on Facebook. As previously stated, Adobe will stop distributing and updating Flash Player for all web browsers, and Facebook will stop supporting Flash games on the platform completely after December 31st, 2020. FarmVille will therefore be directly affected as a result of this.
We’re aware that many of you have been with us since the very beginning, helping to build an incredible global community of players over the years who’ve enjoyed this game just as much as we have. For that we say thank you.
For as many faults and arguably toxic features that FarmVille helped create in the gaming industry, it is still a major part of gaming historically and culturally. It might have been a flash game on Facebook but, in many ways, it’s the first mobile game because that model would be copied in phone gaming for the next decade. It would get so popular that South Park made an entire episode about it.
You can make a pretty easy argument that FarmVille is why games have microtransactions today. FarmVille got popular before mobile games were a thing. It came out when the iPhone 3GS was releasing and one year before the iPhone 4. App gaming was sill in its infancy at the time and the largest player base you could possibly find was on Facebook. It was a perfect place perfect time kind of thing and FarmVille reaped the rewards of that.
If you are a fan of FarmVille and this news is disappointing then there is some good news. This might be the end of the original flash FarmVille but there is still farming to be had. FarmVille 2 is available on mobile app stores and Zynga says FarmVille 3 is on the way. While one chapter of gaming history closes another one opens.
The presidential election is in just 36 days and, excluding Lil Baby who recently refused to get involved in politics, many musicians have come forward to urge fans to vote. Taylor Swift encouraged her followers to check their registration status on National Voter Registration Day and Lil Dicky promised to post his nudes if fans registered. Now, Tyler The Creator is the latest musician to discuss the importance of voting — and he took a more direct approach.
In a selfie video posted to Instagram, Tyler The Creator called out his young fans to “cast a f*cking vote” in November. The rapper admitted that this election will be his first time ever participating in an election, and he expects his fans to do the same:
“Look, I know I’m the last person y’all should ever take advice from but I’m reiterating what everyone else is saying. Please, please, if you are young and your f*ckin’ back don’t hurt, go and to them polls and cast a f*cking vote. And I didn’t give a f*ck about none of this sh*t just like a lot of y’all. This i actually going to be my first time voting. But I see the light. A lot of y’all going to be like, ‘My vote doesn’t matter and they’re going to pick who they want’ and yeah, you weird-ass n****, keep that up. Ya’ll was posting black squares and protesting from y’all phone and ‘rights’ this and was canceling everybody. N**** pull up. You want a new DA? Pull up. Y’all want all these rights and sh*t then pull up.”
Fargo has officially returned with both murder and flatulence after a months-long-delay due to you-know-what. So it’s great that we’re seeing an understated Chris Rock doing his dramatic thing, and the show was one of the first to tiptoe back into production, but that doesn’t mean that those involved weren’t nervous. That’s more than expected, given our current situation, and Hollywood Reporter caught up with creator/showrunner Noah Hawley and Rock to discuss the process, which involved a lot of protocols and a special note from Hawley to inspire cast and crew this summer.
Hawley knew that he needed to invoke a big gun here, so to speak, so he thought about Tom Cruise, who not only called a head of state to help Mission: Impossible 7 resume production but also plans on filming in space at some point before 2022. You had to know things got a little cinematic, right? For sure:
“Someday in the not too distant future Tom Cruise will go to space. He will bring a film crew with him. He will bring a director and actors. They will shoot a film. Now space, as we know, is an airless vacuum where nothing can live. A hostile void where a suit breach or airlock malfunction can kill, where even the simplest tasks must be done methodically, deliberately. Astronauts train for years to prepare. They drill protocols and procedures into their heads. They know that surviving in space will require their full concentration… Now imagine doing all that AND making a movie.”
Well, the note worked, and Fargo kicked back into gear, even with Hawley unable to join the Chicago set once more. The season appeared to finish filming without substantial incident, but Chris Rock did not hold back on how the experience impacted his thoughts. That’s because Fargo is a show with a lot of intense face-offs and some handshakes and, well, all of those things that crime syndicate members do to intimidate each other.
“You got an intimate scene with somebody — and I don’t even mean sex, I mean just an argument,” explained Rock. “And you’re yelling back and forth and you’re like, ‘Okay, I hope this motherf*cker don’t have COVID.’” Hey, no one can ever accuse Chris Rock of holding back on his true feelings.
We Are Who We Are (HBO, 10:00pm EST) — This week, Caitlin and Fraser strengthen their bond, which doesn’t go over well with the larger group after Caitlin and Sam’s breakup. Meanwhile, Maggie’s exploring the nearby Chioggia Festival during her own bonding experience. This is Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino’s first stab at a TV series, and it’s an immersive experience with (of course) a sun-drenched, often picturesque Italian setting. This show should tide Euphoria fans who don’t mind more literally euphoric vibes and less nihilism than the Zendaya-starring series.
Whose Vote Counts, Explained (Netflix docuseries) — Are all votes created equally in the U.S.? Nope, and the right to vote goes under examination in this project to take on what’s actually a fairly dysfunctional system within America’s democracy.
Filthy Rich (FOX, 9:00pm EST) — Kim Cattrall returns to TV in a super-soapy turn. She stars as a mega-rich Southern widow who learns that her late husband fathered three illegitimate children and included them in his will. This week, Margaret attempts to reconcile the situation while also capitalizing upon things for herself.
Manhunt: Deadly Games (CBS, 10:00pm EST) — This week, the true-crime anthology series (that chronicles the manhunt involved with the Richard Jewell scandal) digs into the firestorm created by the FBI’s “hero-bomber” theory going public. You’ve heard the story of the fallout from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, now witness the TV dramatization (as opposed to the sensationalized movie version) of one of the most complex manhunts on U.S. soil.
The Third Day (HBO, 9:00pm EST) — Jude Law and Naomie Harris star in this series. He’s playing Sam, who’s fighting for his life in this episode after finding out his secret connection and fearing the islanders’ intentions for him. It sounds stressful but like a thrilling distraction for sure.
Following an in-depth report on his finances published by the New York Times on Sunday, President Donald Trump has responded in his usual manner: angry tweets.
According to the New York Times report, the first of many in an ongoing investigation into Trump’s financial records, the president paid only $750 in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017, which is a seriously low amount for a supposedly successful businessman. The Times also found that Trump has a significant amount of debt and will owe anywhere from $400 to $600 million in 2022 when several loans that he personally guaranteed come due. In short, the report painted a bleak and troubling view of the president’s finances. As usual, the president lashed out on Twitter with his customary accusation of “Fake News,” which caused the hashing #TrumpMeltdown to trend on Monday.
“I paid many millions of dollars in taxes but was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation & tax credits,” Trump tweeted. “Also, if you look at the extraordinary assets owned by me, which the Fake News hasn’t, I am extremely under leveraged – I have very little debt compared to the value of assets.”
Trump then repeated his claim that he’s the “only President on record” to give up his $400,000 presidential salary, which has nothing to do with his purported debt and low income tax rate. You can see his full meltdown below:
The Fake News Media, just like Election time 2016, is bringing up my Taxes & all sorts of other nonsense with illegally obtained information & only bad intent. I paid many millions of dollars in taxes but was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation & tax credits…..
…..Financial Statements, from the time I announced I was going to run for President, showing all properties, assets and debts. It is a very IMPRESSIVE Statement, and also shows that I am the only President on record to give up my yearly $400,000 plus Presidential Salary!
Of course, as always, the most damning evidence against Trump is his own tweets. Diligent Twitter users were quick to discover that the president loved to boast about how much he pays in taxes, even going so far as to criticize then-President Obama for only paying 20% of his income.
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