Category: Worldwide

CNN interviewed Lara Trump on Sunday morning, and anchor Jake Tapper took the wife of Donald Trump’s son Eric to task for comments she made questioning Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities in an awkward interview that didn’t generate many productive answers from anyone. Instead, it was Tapper who chided Trump for mocking Biden’s stutter and appearing to diagnose Biden with cognitive issues, something Tapper quickly pointed out was something many people have done to the candidate Lara Trump was there to support.

Tapper showed footage of Lara Trump at an event for the president mocking Biden’s ability to speak, where she chided the former vice president for not being able to “get the words out.” The CNN anchor asked the Trump surrogate “How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?” The question, of course, came because Biden famously overcame a stutter early in his life, which is still sometimes present when speaking.

“First and foremost I had no idea that Joe Biden ever suffered from a stutter,” Trump said before quickly pivoting. “I think what we see on stage with Joe Biden is very clearly a cognitive decline.”

But Tapper wasn’t having it, quickly shutting Trump down and causing the two to talk over each other for several seconds. It was awkward, but Tapper seemed intent to not let Trump deflect from her comments and accuse the Democratic nominee for president of having an unproven medical ailment rather than address her own comments.

“I think you were mocking his stutter,” Tapper said. “And I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline.”

From there, Tapper got a bit personal.

“I would think that somebody in the Trump family would be more sensitive to people who do not have medical licenses diagnosing politicians from afar,” Tapper said. “Plenty of people have diagnosed your father from afar, and I’m sure it offends you — your father in law from afar. You don’t have any standing to say (that).”

Trump tried to say she didn’t diagnose Biden with anything, she was merely expressing concern. But Tapper dismissed that quickly, and instead of asking a final question simply ended the interview. It was clearly a frustrating exchange for Tapper, who didn’t let Trump get to the talking points she wanted to once she avoided answering his initial question.

Movie theaters are struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic, and not even news that theaters will officially be open again in New York State can counteract the dearth of moviegoers and a wilted new movie release schedule. Regal Cinemas has already closed its theaters back down, and unless something major changes it seems moviegoers — and major box office smashes — will not return until there’s a coronavirus vaccine. But AMC is doing its best to fill theaters by letting some people live out their pre-coronavirus dreams of renting an entire theater out for yourself.

As CNN pointed out, the theater chain has started letting people reserve an entire screening for themselves starting at less than $100. AMC has a form on its website where you can narrow down what theaters are available, which showings you can snag and how much it will cost for up to 20 guests you know to hold court in an AMC theater where no one else is allowed.

According to the site, the movies available range from new releases like The War With Grandpa, Tenet and The New Mutants but also includes some classic favorites back in theaters in an effort to get people back to the movies and also to, well, fill screens as movies get delayed. So if you ever wanted to see Hocus Pocus on the big screen, now’s your chance. Most theaters have always had deals like this possible for school field trips and birthday parties if you knew who to ask, but $100 to rent out an entire theater is a fairly novel distraction from all the horrors that have made going to the movies feel perilous these days.

While it’s unclear if putting you and 19 of your friends in the same room is a good idea during a pandemic, you could always use the promotion to recapture one of the most enjoyable moviegoing experiences you could stumble into in the Before Times: getting a screening of a film, and the theater it’s playing in, all to yourself.

While The Walking Dead: The World Beyond continues to struggle in its freshman season and Fear the Walking Dead rebounds in its sixth (and this week’s Fear episode is every bit as good as last week’s), we continue to see connections between all three shows in The Walking Dead universe.

For instance, the CRM — one of the main storylines in The World Beyond — looks as though it will eventually lead us to the whereabouts of Rick Grimes, who was taken by the CRM on The Walking Dead. We have also seen the CRM — still in its infancy — appear on Fear the Walking Dead, and it looks quite possible that Isabel, a character who appeared on Fear the Walking Dead, is the daughter of Elizabeth, the leader of the CRM on The World Beyond.

Let’s add one more potential connection to the mix: Last week’s episode of The World Beyond was called “The Blaze of Gory,” or BOG, for short. The BOG is an area seemingly in Nebraska where thousands of tires have been burning for over a decade. In other words, The BOG is a literal tire fire that the teenage characters on The World Beyond have to navigate through to get to their destination in New York.

It is not, however, the first time in The Walking Dead that we’ve seen a reference to The BOG. In fact, at least two of Althea’s tapes on Fear the Walking Dead reference The BOG:

It’s possible, of course, that these tapes just coincidentally reference an acronym from The World Beyond, but I don’t think so because we actually know some details about The Bog tapes. Althea tried to give one of The Bog tapes to the likely daughter of Elizabeth from the CRM, Isabel, when Isabel was going to kill Althea. However, when Althea told Isabel what was on the tape, Isabel couldn’t bring herself to kill Althea (also, because she was in love with Althea). The Bog tape, in other words, saved Althea’s life.

What was on the tape? According to Althea, it documents a fight that breaks out between the National Guard and the Army, which Althea captures. Unfortunately, while she’s doing so, she leaves her brother Jessie alone, who ends up dying during the early days of the outbreak.

Obviously, the tire fire happened a long time ago in Nebraska, and Fear the Walking Dead is several years behind The World Beyond’s timeline. However, we know that this tire fire has been blazing for a decade, and we also know that Althea has traveled around the country extensively. We know, therefore, that Althea could have been in Nebraska when the tire fire ignited. That tape is also important in Fear lore because not only did it save her life when she offered it to a CRM soldier, but the incident documented in “The Bog #7” was the impetus for Althea’s decision to collect other people’s stories on camera.

It makes sense, therefore, that Scott Gimple would use the tape as a way to find another intersection between the two shows.

Tune in to the third episode of The World Beyond tonight on AMC to see them continue to traverse The Bog, while on a very good Fear the Walking Dead, the action will center on Alicia and Strand.

Justin Bieber’s comeback year has lived up to be much more than fans may have expected, and he added to it on Saturday with a performance on Saturday Night Live. After a nearly five year absence the pop singer returned with his “Yummy” single — one that peaked at No. 2 on the singles chart — and his Changes album soon after.

Unable to tour his new album as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Bieber not only pushed the tour back to 2021, but has seemingly began the rollout of what could be a second project with two new singles, “Holy” with Chance The Rapper and “Lonely” with Benny Blanco. Performing the songs for the first time, Bieber stopped by Saturday Night Live to debut live performances of his new singles.

Kicking things off with “Holy,” Bieber stood alone on a dimly-light stage supported by a neon-blue cross that was brandished behind him to perform the song. After delivering the first two verses and the bridge of the song, Bieber welcomed Chance The Rapper to the stage where he rattled off his verse on the track to complete the performance, one that ended with Bieber fighting back tears as he crouched down to hide them.

Soon after, Bieber returned to the stage to perform his newly-released single, “Lonely,” with Benny Blanco. He started things off sitting in front of the mirror in what appeared to be a dressing room just as the younger version of himself did in the “Lonely” music video. Bieber would slowly make his way out to the SNL stage while performing the song and showing off some serious emotion in the process. He would end the performance on stage under a singular spotlight, one that helped accentuate the somber mood of the song.

This marks the second time this year that Bieber has stopped by SNL as the pop singer made a visit to the late-night show back in February to perform “Yummy” and “Intentions.” You can watch both of Bieber’s SNL performance in the videos above.

Saturday Night Live‘s string of new episodes until the general election continued on Saturday night, and another televised presidential event gave the show an obvious entry with its cold open. This time, though, with dueling town halls on different networks, the sketch was an attempt to highlight what politically active Americans may have seen by flipping between the two events, which played out very differently on each network.

Jim Carrey was back as his energetic, aviator shades-wearing Joe Biden and Alec Baldwin was back as Trump. Maya Rudolph returned to crash Trump’s town hall as Kamala Harris, too. SNL‘s framing of the Biden town hall was that of a long-winded old man who struggled to know where people in the socially-distanced hall in Philadelphia were even asking questions from. It was a far goofier take than his policy-focused event actually was on Thursday, but the juxtaposition to Trump was an important part of the bit.

For the second week in a row, Carrey’s Biden transformed into a pop culture reference. First, he donned a sweater and pretended to be Mr. Rogers, a reference to a Trump surrogate’s tweet about the Biden event in its aftermath. The next time viewers saw him, however, he was Bob Ross, paintbrush and canvas on screen and suddenly talking about happy little trees. Trump, meanwhile, saw his back and forth with Savannah Guthrie literally turn into WrestleMania. At this rate seems clear that SNL will keep making debates and town halls its cold open until the president and vice president stop holding them. Which means we almost certainly know what the topic of next week’s cold open will be, too.

A stacked sports slate on Saturday ended with boxing’s lightweight division crowned its new king. While Ukrainian ace Vasiliy Lomachenko entered his bout as the favorite to unify all of the titles in the division, Brooklyn’s own Teofimo Lopez was able to stun the boxing world, coming out like a house of fire and surviving a late onslaught from Lomachenko to become the sport’s undisputed lightweight champion by unanimous decision.

The fight itself was terrific — once Lomachenko, who started rather slowly, began throwing everything at Lopez, the bout lived up to its billing as one for an undisputed title. Not every fight features two guys trying to be on the front foot, but fortunately for those who turned in, Lomachenko and Lopez had zero interest in making this one boring.

Among those who tuned in were a bevy of NBA players, all of whom were enamored by the performances put on by the pair.

Even before the decision came in, those who checked out the bout seemed to think that things went in Lopez’s direction.

There was, however, an exception: Bradley Beal seemed to think this would be called a draw.

Beal did have a bit of a gripe after it ended, as he thought one judge’s card which went 119-109 for Lopez was a touch too generous.

Another hooper, Kristaps Porzingis, was a bit harder to read, although he seems to think the judges might have gotten this one wrong altogether.

If Porzingis did indeed think Lomachenko won this one, well, he’s a bit of an outlier. Lopez was magnificent, and with the win, he boosted his career record to 16-0. Oh, and now he gets to say he’s the best of the best in his division, which featured a guy who had a claim for being the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world.

Michael B. Jordan has already made his mark on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and he’s officially turning his attention to DC Comics. The actor and one of the stars of Black Panther is taking some time away from thirst trapping as voter outreach to get involved behind the camera in the DC Universe.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Jordan will serve as a producer on Static Shock, a film DC announced at DC FanDome earlier in the summer.

“I’m proud to be a part of building a new universe centered around black superheroes; our community deserves that,” said Jordan in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “Outlier Society is committed to bringing to life diverse comic book content across all platforms and we are excited to partner with Reggie and Warner Bros on this initial step.”

Outlier will be in the creative center of the Static feature and for Jordan, a comic book fan, this is an opportunity for not only for some world-building but to be directly involved in franchise-building. Should the first movie spark a hit, a multi-platform franchise could be born.

Jordan certainly understands the significance of Static, a character introduced in 1993 by Milestone Comics, a company founded by Black writers and artists attempting to make comics more inclusive for people of color that was distributed by DC. And his presence on the project certainly adds some considerable attention to the project, as his turn as Killmonger in Black Panther was one of the most compelling performances in what was an historic and award-winning superhero film.

[via THR]

It can be a bit cliched to compare things that happen in sports to what you might see in a video game. While I fully concede this, if you have played enough Madden in your life, something similar to what happened in Saturday’s game between Mississippi State and 11th ranked Texas A&M has probably happened to you. And depending on what side of the moment you are on, it either makes your week or makes you want to quit playing video games altogether.

Aggies signal caller Kellen Mond dropped back on a third-and-6 and thought he had a receiver across the middle of the field. It’s hard to tell if a Bulldog defensive player got their hand in there or if the intended receiver, Ainias Smith, had it bounce off of his body, but regardless, the ball lazily popped up into the air and landed in the hands of Mississippi State’s Emmanuel Forbes.

After making Mond miss, Forbes took off in the other direction. No one touched him, and 60 yards later, the Bulldogs got on the board for the first time in the game.

Forbes deserves a ton of credit for keeping his head on a swivel and being in the right place at the right time. Still, this is quite the strange sequence of events, and if this happened to me in a game of Madden, I would almost certainly snap my controller in half.

A pair of 4-1 squads in the NFC North will butt heads on Sunday afternoon. The Cleveland Browns will make their way down to the Steel City to take on the Pittsburgh Steelers, with the loser falling behind the winner (and, should they take care of business the week, the Baltimore Ravens) in the race to try and win the most competitive division in the league.

Because the game will take place in Pittsburgh, one Browns player will put aside city rivalries to pay homage to one of the most beloved people ever produced by the city. According to an Instagram post by sneaker king Mache, Jarvis Landry will wear a pair of custom cleats that pay tribute to Mac Miller. Three images of Mac — one on each of the outsoles and one one the left insole — are on the kicks.

While Landry didn’t post the cleats to his own IG, he did post a video that shows off what he’ll be wearing, along with some clips of Mac and his game.

Landry was among a number of athletes who expressed their sadness back on Sept. 7, 2018, when Mac passed away from an accidental overdose. Sunday’s game is slated to kick off at 1 p.m. EST.

Aside from his Funeral album and a few music videos and guest features, Lil Wayne’s 2020 has predominantly been spent on his Young Money radio show where he’s invited artists like Eminem, YBN Cordae, 50 Cent and Lil Baby to sit down and chat with him.

Jumping back into the interviewee chair for the first time in a while, Lil Wayne stopped by DJ Khaled’s new podcast The First One to speak with the famed Miami producer. Among the topics they discussed over the 45-minute interview, Lil Wayne revealed his top five favorite rappers.

He began his list with two expected names, Jay-Z and The Notorious B.I.G., before going on to mention Noreaga, aka N.O.R.E., as the third member in his list.

“I was the hugest N.O.R.E. fan,” Wayne said. “He had this thing about him where he could be from anywhere and you f*cked with him.” Next on his list, Wayne named another New York-based rapper, this time Cam’ron, as another one of his top five favorite rappers. “I was the biggest Cam fan,” he said after mentioning Cam’ron. Lastly, Wayne concluded his list with Missy Elliott and made sure to deliver her flowers in the process.

“That was my favorite because that would be why I was making so many sounds,” said Wayne while referencing her early work. “But you know Missy was into the whole ‘brrrt,’ you know what I meant? She about to make the ‘hehehehe ha.’” Wayne later revealed that his longtime producer Mannie Fresh was the one who encouraged him to include to add the “ha ha” ad libs. “I was like, ‘Man, he want me to do a sound for every damn line!’ And so the ‘Block Burner’ song was my best favorite song because my favorite artist was Missy Elliott.”

Missy caught wind of Wayne’s comments and shared her response to them on Twitter. “You never know who you may inspire in life or in what way,” she said in a tweet. “This is a list of those who must of impacted Lil Wayne in some way for different reasons Creating his own Masterpieces & becoming LEGENDARY,” adding, “I’m so HUMBLED.”

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.