🎶 “A whole new drawwwweeerrer” 🎶 —Aladdin + you

---

View Entire Post ›

Happy tears, commence.

---

View Entire Post ›

Previously on Total Bellas: Nikki asked her boyfriend Artem to move in with her right after he lost his job. Brie and Bryan had an uncomfortable fight about having another kid right after their dog died. It was kind of an intense season premiere.

Was There Anything About Wrestling In This Episode Of Total Bellas?

No! There was nothing about wrestling and Daniel Bryan was only in this week’s episode for about thirty seconds when Brie FaceTimed him to say hi to her dad. Better luck next week.

A Blurry Life

Last week’s episode was split pretty evenly between the lighter Nikki/Artem storyline and the heavier Brie/Bryan one, but aside from a subplot about Nikki struggling as a homeowner and trying to bang Artem in a hardware store, this week’s Total Bellas was dedicated to the twins planning a meeting with their estranged father. Like Brie and Bryan’s drama last week, the storyline mixes run-of-the-mill reality show scene set-ups and some fake-sounding lines with human drama that seems to come from a real place. The result is a weirdly compelling, kind of concerning A-story that looks like it’s going to continue for at least another week.

The drama’s inciting action is that Nikki and Brie are working on their autobiography (they openly say “working with a ghostwriter”) and they need to run the chapter about their childhood by their parents. Nikki hasn’t seen her dad in five years and really wants to reconnect with him but thinks she would have to hide the reunion from her mom and sister. But secrecy goes out the window when, while meeting with their mom, Kathy, about the chapter, Brie reveals she has actually seen their dad pretty recently, encouraged by Bryan. Kathy is not a fan of this!

The Kathy material in this episode is an odd mix of obviously artificial (her one-on-one scenes with Brie and JJ) (I did not miss JJ) (He doesn’t really do anything here) and, in her talking heads, serious and pretty compelling stuff. While the twins sound like they’ve forgiven their dad and describe his past pretty vaguely, mentioning their parents fighting and an unspecified addiction, Kathy provides details that make it sound like she may have been dealing with domestic violence. She talks about how she would make a budget to see if she could leave the Bellas’ dad, Jon, and make it on her own, but stayed until “the final straw was my kids got involved.” It’s actually Jon who ends up describing his past in the most damning way; at dinner with Nikki, Bella, and Artem, he outright says that after he went cold turkey “I promised to my god that I would never hurt another woman again.”

The drama feels crazy, but not in the trademark reality TV sense of, like, Aviva Drescher throwing her prosthetic leg on the Real Housewives, but like maybe we shouldn’t be seeing it in the E! format. The presentation of the show says “Hey, I’m a reality show where a pair of twins are going to get pregnant at the same time!”, but then it hits you with these nuggets of seriousness, but then it doesn’t really dig for them because it’s a reality show where a pair of twins are going to get pregnant at the same time. The tone of the show means that I really have no idea how Nikki and Brie visiting their dad (who seems credible reformed in this episode) and his new family in Mexicali next week is going to play out!

Bella Lines Of The Week

• Nikki tells Artem that “Someone once said that Brie and I look like the eels from – what is it? – The Little Mermaid?”
• Nikki gets like halfway to George Berkely when she and Artem walk by a blocked-off tree on her new street and she asks, “Wait, what’s the joke? When the tree fell was it quiet or loud? Can you tell?”
• Another from Nikki: “Can you mail to Mexico from here?”
• Nikki mentions that she thinks she got her “no filter” from her dad, and you can really hear it when he looks at Artem’s tattoo and says “What do you have for a tattoo. A skeleton.” (His tattoo is not of a skeleton.)
• Jon straight-up askes Artem “Is your relationship with her real?”

John Cena Dig Of The Week

Nikki reflects in a talking head segment that she thinks Artem is “the first man I’ve really trusted. He just has this calming energy.” Are we meant to infer that John Cena does not have calming energy? Really? This man? I find that hard to believe!

Although its release was reportedly withheld in the wake of the Parkland school shooting in 2018, the posthumous XXXTentacion song “School Shooters” received a visual release today complete with a cinematic music video reflecting guest rapper Lil Wayne’s ruminative lyrics. In the song, Lil Wayne adopts the voice of a stressed-out, bullied student who contemplates getting revenge: “Intellect mixed with inner stress / That’s a recipe for disaster,” he rhymes.

As the song was completed after XXXTentacion’s own death in 2018, his presence on the track is limited to his muted chorus and the outro, on which he questions, “How did this happen? Can we go backwards?” The video is dedicated to Anthony Borges, one of the victims of the shooting in Parkland, Florida, and opens with a photo of XXXTentacion visiting Borges in the hospital. Directed by Eif Rivera, the clip focuses on Lil Wayne rapping his verse from atop a police cruiser as students run out of the school building and heavily armed police swarm toward the shooter. It ends with the reveal that the shooting was a dream sequence, prevented by the intervention of the bullied teen’s mother, along with a title card reading, “#StopBullying. If you see something, say something,” and a link to http://www.stopbullying.gov.

“School Shooters” appears on the posthumous XXXTentacion release, Bad Vibes Forever.

Watch the “School Shooters” video above.

Chicago rapper Polo G is already hard at work on the follow-up to his debut album Die A Legend. The first single, “Go Stupid,” is still hot off of its Valentine’s Day release, but Polo shows no signs of slowing down. Today, shared “DND,” the latest single from the upcoming album, along with its moody, Jordan Wozy-directed video.

The video sees Polo putting his phone on “Do Not Disturb” and isolating himself in his home, as well as taking a solo nighttime drive. The paranoid clip comes along at an opportune time, as more and more people are forced to isolate themselves, but it also reflects the traumatized messaging behind his lyrics. “I cut everybody off, keep hittin’ decline,” he rhymes on the chorus. “I swear these painkillers got me on the deep vibe.”

While Polo has yet to announce the upcoming album’s title or release date, fans can rest assured that with fewer distractions — after all, we’re all stuck in the house for the time being, and Polo comes from a generation of rappers used to recording with restrained means — Polo will remain hard at work, banging out even more hard-hitting, emotional anthems.

Watch Polo G’s “DND” video above.

Whether the NBA season comes back or not, it’s clear the typical offseason schedule will fall away. To that end, NBA teams are petitioning the league office to push the regularly scheduled NBA Draft back from June 25 to Aug. 1 at the very earliest, according to a new report from Adrian Wojnarowski and Jonathan Givony of ESPN.

“Multiple top team executives expressed to ESPN their belief that shifting the draft date would give organizations more time to salvage the essential elements of the pre-draft process, possibly allowing for in-person workouts, interviews and medical evaluations of prospects that current social distancing and shelter-in-place guidelines make impossible,” the ESPN reporters wrote on Friday.

This comes after reports earlier in the week showing that the league put rules in place that would limit teams’ ability to carry out the usual pre-draft process, including nixing in-person interviews and preventing teams from organizing virtual workouts with prospects. It is no wonder, then, that this plan would allow most of that to happen as close to normal as possible.

Most importantly, as the NFL’s virtual free agency and draft processes have shown the sports world, medical evaluations must be able to take place, something that currently cannot happen as the United States uses mitigation efforts (i.e. “social distancing”) to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The ESPN report emphasizes that the “Aug. 1 date would be flexible, based on when the league restarts,” as well as the fact that the main priority underpinning the petition is that “team officials believe the draft and free agency should stay connected on the calendar once the season ends.”

There is no feasible way to pull off a draft or free agency before a decision is made on the nature of the 2019-20 season, or of course during gameplay. This plan would create flexibility for the NBA to respond more adequately to the constant changes in the country during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The XFL was just five weeks into its 2020 reboot when the United States’ national emergency over the coronavirus pandemic forced it to shut down, and it appears the likelihood of a return for the young league is low. Konnor Fulk of XFL News Hub reported on Friday that the league has “terminated” all of its employees except for a “skeleton crew” of league executives.

A message on the schedule page of the XFL website still says, “Currently, the XFL will not be playing its regular-season games. However, all players will be paid their base pay and benefits for the 2020 regular season. All XFL ticket holders will be issued refunds or credit toward future games. The XFL is committed to playing a full season in 2021 and future years.”

Understandably, year one was likely pretty low on revenue for the XFL. Like many fledgling sports properties, TV broadcasters aired the games for free, and attendance was meager. Vince McMahon has been determined to keep WWE going through the pandemic, taping matches (and WrestleMania) in the company’s Florida performance center to keep with its typical schedule, but football is a different beast, with more players, larger crowds and no centralized location to play in.

Maybe keeping league executives in place means McMahon maintains some degree of optimism about the XFL coming back, but it’s not looking good right now.

Domhnall Gleeson’s character in HBO’s Run is far more complex than you’d think at first glance. In retrospect, that sounds about right for an actor who has managed to glide through mainstream Hollywood franchises (Star Wars, Harry Potter), more cerebral, indie fare (Ex Machina), and sweeping epics (Anna Karenina, The Revenant) with the same level of aplomb, like it’s no difficult feat. In Run, he stars as Billy, one half of a pair of college exes, who previously made a pact that a text from one of them was an invitation to abandon their lives and run away for a cross-country trip together. That seems like the worst romantic idea in the universe, yes? Well, Gleeson and Merritt Wever (as Ruby) pull off this romantic-comedy-thriller series and do so with feeling.

Oh, so many feelings, both positive and negative and everything in between those two opposites. The series hails from creative-dynamic duo, Vicky Jones and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, as a followup upon their Fleabag and Killing Eve success. The show is full of complex characters who must navigate their own flaws while searching for fulfillment, and Domhnall’s Billy is no exception. Gleeson was gracious enough to sit down with us to discuss our own bizarre times and the strange journey of his Run character, along with scattered other moments of his acting career.

Domhnall, I hope you are well. Your name is so difficult for Americans to pronounce, but I worked on it.

It is a tricky one. I’m doing good though, how are you?

Pretty good, considering these surreal times.

I know, it’s so weird to start these conversations now, and it feels like the new version of “hello” is “Jesus Christ, I hope you’re okay, for Christ’s sake.”

Yes, and it’s great to talk about shows that have elements of comedy to get us through this time.

I know, that’s where I’m going to. It’s either, like, comedies, or else full-on documentaries about death. Anything in the middle feels like a waste of time. It’s either total escapism, or try to understand these bizarre times.

With Run, you’re returning to a romantic-type role. Your first such role was in Anna Karenina, and you hadn’t considered yourself for that kind of character when Joe Wright cast you, but have you eased into it more now?

Right. That was certainly true at the time. But I think in the way that you aren’t sure that you can do certain accents or not, the only way is to try at 100%, and I adored the work on Anna Karenina, working with Alicia [Vikander] and with Joe, that kind of love story. I had the same sort-of experience on About Time, a very beautiful experience of concentrating on love for a whole job. It’s such a pleasant place to put yourself. It’s a positive way of thinking. On Run, I guess it was slightly different because I think they love each other, those two people, but their circumstances are stretched in a very different way. And there’s much more deception going on in Run. So it’s a different experience between these love stories, I think, but I enjoyed it.

Well, Billy seems to be a simple character at first, but we find out, slowly, how complex his life is, along with that of Ruby. What appealed to you most about him?

Well, he seems to be in love. He seems to be a bit of a liar, and he seems to be a weird mix of controlling and very eager to please. And he was on a journey, like, I didn’t know what was going to happen to him next. I didn’t know how his story would end, and I thought that was a very good thing in terms of wondering where this guy could go, and what I could discover. Most of all, I thought that he was in love, and he was changing his life to try and chase this, or so we think. Or we hope. And I found that very appealing.

I was wondering how much you knew going in. I’ve seen through episode 5, so it had turned into a bit of a caper at that point. Do you think Billy will be judged for texting Ruby?

Oh, that’s hard to say without seeing all seven episodes. I think there’s more of that story to tell. I hope that [people] find him to be complicated, and I hope that he’s not just definitely the person that you want to run away with or definitely the person that you want to avoid in your life. Because I think different people view each other in different ways. That’s part of what the whole thing is about, and sometimes your flaws match up well with somebody else’s strengths. Sometimes they match up terribly with somebody else’s flaws, and I don’t know, I think that without giving anything away, I think on Billy’s side of things, there’s a lot about his relationship with Ruby that would work for both of them, you know? Circumstances are everything. That’s something you normally don’t see in a whole story. Normally, circumstances are there to cut paths, and certain circumstances are a little trickier than that. And real life throws things in the way that are sometimes unassailable, and I think they find themselves in moments like that. I haven’t been talking about the show for very long, so my thoughts are still being formed, and I know we haven’t got much time, so I’m sorry about that.

Oh you’re good, I know that the script was so layered, and Vicky Jones parceled out bits of information on a need-to-know basis, so viewers are going to also work hard to solidify it in their own minds over time.

Yeah, hopefully. And hopefully, it also builds to a sort-of ending that is satisfying. I mean, hopefully, by the time that people have seen episode seven, they feel like a real story has been told. You know, I would like that.

What do you think of this question: “Should you text your ex?”

I think that would be the perfect Twitter conversation to have, but every situation is so different. I think that Billy is well within his rights to text Ruby because they made a deal.

And that’s very much a thing in this show.

I think that with a deal, you’re within your rights to ask, and the other person is within their rights to say no.

I was not clear, but it seemed like one party had instigated that pact. We’re not supposed to know for a while?

Yeah, I think once you see the whole thing, it might be worth another conversation. Because I think it’s complicated, the story of who texted and why, is complicated enough without being overly complicated. I mean, it’s the right amount of stuff going on with that element of that story, and I think that there are layers to that, which I think are interesting and worth talking about. So yeah, that’s something you’ve definitely got to watch to the end to find out.

What was it like to shoot in those tight confines on the train? It looked potentially claustrophobic.

There were elements of it that were rough because it played with your sense of balance because they had these big screens that were connected remotely to the camera, and depending on where the camera moved, the moving images would change perspectives, to make sense for the camera’s eye. It was all quite new technology. The problem with that is that your eye is not connected to the camera’s eye, your eye is just seeing the screen change perspective while moving. And then the train itself is moving from side to side. It was shot inside the studio, and that really makes you want to puke. So, that was not great, but I actually love trains, and I love kind-of smaller spaces.

There are also wonderful little moments in this show, like when Billy pretends to read Ruby’s palm. Was that all-scripted or slightly improvised?

I don’t think so, I think they left in a word here and there, but there were no sweeping changes from the script. The script was already drawn. So, sometimes there would be things that I’m doing in my acting, but I can’t remember how much of any of that was left in, and probably I imagine that all of it was scripted or what was agreed upon on that day, and depending on whether what was scripted was coming across or not.

We’ve gotta talk about Ex Machina for a minute. I recently talked to Alex Garland about the movie, but with you, I’m wondering how people bring up that “Get Down Saturday Night” dance scene to you.

Not often, surprisingly! My character’s role in that was representing the audience, and they probably ask Oscar [Isaac] all the time.

I often find myself often saying, “After a long day of Turing tests, you gotta unwind.” And then your puzzled face pops into my head.

[Laughs] Well, I’m proud to be a part of whatever madness is going on in your noggin! Yeah, it’s funny though, I hear that Alex’s new show is amazing. I haven’t seen Devs yet. I’m looking forward to it very much.

Before we go, I wanted to mention that my daughter is a huge Star Wars fan.

Oh nice!

But your resumé is so diverse that when I mentioned your name, she started shouting about Bill Weasley.

Well, tell her that Bill Weasley said hello from Ireland!

Stay safe over there. Everything is so wild right now with even Peter Rabbit 2 delayed.

Yes, but that’s okay, It’s delayed until January. It’s already done. We lucked out there, and we’ll wait until January.

We will through all of this, as humanity.

Yes, we’ll get back to cinemas. I can’t wait!

HBO’s ‘Run’ premieres on Sunday, April 12 at 10:30pm EST.

The NBA has been on indefinite hiatus for almost exactly a month now amid the coronavirus pandemic that is wreaking havoc across the globe. But that doesn’t mean both the league offices and the players’ union have been sitting on their hands. From the beginning, the two sides have been discussing possible ways forward once it becomes safe to do so.

There’s been talk about resuming with an abbreviated season, skipping the remaining games and jumping right into the playoffs, or in the worst-case scenario, cancelling everything altogether and starting fresh next season once the virus is under control. All options are currently on the table.

For now, though, everything remains on hold. Soon after the league shut down, they announced they were putting a temporary moratorium on all transactions until about the second week of April when things could be re-evaluated. Now that we’re here, both the NBA and NBPA have decided to extend that moratorium indefinitely, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic.

The NBA and NBPA have agreed to extend the moratorium on transactions (agreements, trades, player/team options) indefinitely, sources tell @TheAthleticNBA @Stadium.

Business remains paused.

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) April 10, 2020

In the meantime, the two sides are currently focused on the new HORSE competition that will premier on ESPN this weekend featuring both NBA and WNBA stars. Beyond that, uncertainty remains surrounding just about everything league-related and otherwise.

---

View Entire Post ›