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Donald Trump took the stand on Monday in the civil fraud case levied against him by the state of New York. To the surprise of no one, the former president was a difficult witness as he repeatedly went off on tangents and called Attorney General Letitia James and other court officials “haters.”

Judge Arthur Engoron had to warn Trump’s attorneys several times to rein in their client. However, Trump persisted in rambling on during his answers, prompting prosecutors to openly joke about his inability to get to the point. It was an unmitigated disaster for Trump, so naturally, he said the exact opposite while addressing reporters outside the courtroom.

“I think you saw what I had to say today and it was very conclusive. Everything we did was exactly right,” Trump said via CNN before calling the proceedings a scam. “But, anyway, this is a case that should have never been brought and it’s a case that should be immediately dismissed.”

In a way, Trump is going to get his wish. The case is going to be over soon, but probably not for reasons that the former president will like. With Trump’s meandering testimony on the record, the attorney general’s office is ready to rest its case after Ivanka Trump testifies on Wednesday.

Naturally, social media had a field day with Trump’s responses while on the stand. You can see some of his more outrageous moments below:

People were also tickled by the courtroom sketch of the former president, which prompted several jokes about the size of his hands. You can see those reactions below:

(Via CNN)

An all too common sight this NBA season has been fans of the 13 teams that still have local TV rights owned by Bally Sports complaining about the network’s streaming service being down.

With Diamond Sports Group in bankruptcy, which owns Bally’s regional sports networks, many of those fans have been hoping for a change to be coming some time soon. On Monday, John Ourand of the Sports Business Journal brought word of just such a reprieve coming for those 13 fan bases, as Diamond Sports Group and the NBA have reached a deal that, if approved by the judge presiding over DSG’s bankruptcy case, will allow those 13 teams to reclaim their local TV rights after this season.

Diamond Sports Group reached a one-season deal with the NBA that essentially guarantees that the Bally Sports RSNs will continue to carry NBA games through the end of this season. Diamond and the NBA unveiled some of the deal’s details in a bankruptcy court filing this afternoon. The court still needs to okay the deal before it can move forward.

The NBA likes this deal because it gives the league more flexibility as Diamond tries to navigate its way through bankruptcy. Regardless of the current length of some of the NBA teams’ Bally Sports deals, all are set to end after this season.

Now, as Ourand goes on to note, those teams could end up back with Bally Sports after next summer, but it will allow them to explore other carrier options. There are a few teams that have gone to a direct-to-consumer plan, as the Suns, Clippers, and Jazz each have deals with local TV affiliates but offer a streaming option fans that don’t have a TV subscription can buy to watch all of their local games. Other teams will certainly be looking to see how successful those models are, particularly with how many teams are about to have their local rights all come up. It also could represent an opportunity for other RSNs to look to expand, such as NBC Sports and Root Sports, should they be looking to do so given how many teams are set to shop their rights.

Over the past few years, it would probably be fair to say that Stan Culture has been a little … well, toxic. From the BeyHive to the Swifties, fan wars on social media have gotten out of hand on more than one occasion, leading to people being threatened for doing little more than sitting too close to fans’ favorite pop stars.

And the worst perpetrators of all have been the Barbz. Lashing out at any provocation, they’ve terrorized critics of Nicki Minaj so badly that it honestly began to reflect poorly on the rapper herself. After all, most of her peers had made at least the semblance of reining their fans in at their worst; sometimes it seemed as though Nicki encouraged the bad behavior.

But today, finally, after around five or six years of out-of-pocket behavior, it seems Nicki is trying to call them in and calm them down. In a post on her Instagram Story, Nicki addressed their online bullying, writing, “Dear Barbz, Be sure to never threaten anyone on my behalf. Whether in jest or not, I don’t and never have condoned that. We have an amazing album right around the corner 12/08/23. It feels so surreal and euphoric. Wishing you blessings on blessings.”

If the timing seems convenient — coming as Nicki faces multiple legal actions over the Barbz’s near-constant boundary stepping — at least it’s something. As the saying goes, “Better late than never.”

Do you hear the faint jingling of several thousand sequins? That’s the Taylor Swift night on Dancing With The Stars coming soon to a screen near you.

It’s maybe a slight coincidence but let’s break down some facts: the Kansas City Chiefs play the Philadelphia Eagles on ABC next Monday, the day before DWTS. We know that Swift has been showing up to some recent games, and the NFL has been using Swiftian Concepts for their own personal benefit, so is it really far-fetched to believe DWTS is using Swift’s God-like status as a way to boost viewership after a lackluster season? You decide!

The long-running dancing competition will feature Swift’s Eras Tour choreographer Mandy Moore (not that one) as a special guest judge for its “Celebration Of Taylor Swift” night on Tuesday, November 21st. The six remaining couples will shake it off to various Swift cuts. If you ever wanted to see the likes of Alyson Hannigan and Jason Mraz battle it out on the Swift-inspired dance floor, now is your chance. Also, you must be from the year 2008, welcome.

While there is no confirmation that Swift will appear at the Chiefs game or even acknowledge the Dancing With The Stars night, she will be in Argentina this weekend, so maybe we can give her a day off from running through everyone’s brains.

(Via Deadline)

With each passing season of The Boys, more viewer and critical accolades pile onto Antony Starr‘s show-stopping performance as Homelander. And every year, the artsy-fartsy Television Academy and HFPA pass him by. Granted, this is actually not too surprising because we all know that the Emmys and the Golden Globes just do this sort of thing. How many years did Rhea Seehorn get snubbed before finally being nominated for the Kim Wexler role on Better Call Saul? Too many. These awards shows favor certain types of programming, and quite frankly, both The Boys and spinoff Gen V have the audaciousness to litter sharp writing with lewd content and humor that is too biting for “prestigious” award consideration.

As well, The Boys gleefully skewers itself while also being part of a genre that is largely shunned by fancy award shows, but my god. Between these shows and Robert Kirkman’s Invincible, we now live in a world wherein Amazon is producing superhero content that soars further into the stratosphere with each outing, unlike the now-floundering MCU and DCU. And even with Gen V, a show that has been swinging further and further with each episode, Starr managed to swoop in from the sky at the last possible moment and steal the whole finale in less than one minute of screen time.

(You can rewatch that scene here, but GIFs are coming, so hang tight.)

Back when I reviewed Gen V, only six episodes had been released to critics, so I obviously didn’t know about this cameo yet. And I’m glad that was the case, because I had the chance to comment upon how an on-the-scene Homelander’s “revolting charisma would distract the audience from getting to know a whole new roster of screwed-up Supes.” So, did I drop an “oh sh*t” when I saw him materialize in front of a statue of himself? Absolutely.

Let’s first check in with what Starr did. He landed amid maddeningly distorted patriotic music, quickly surveyed the mayhem, and decided how he was going to frame the narrative. Marie addressed him as “Sir,” but he wasn’t having it.

Anytime you see Homelander smile — whether it’s a little half-smirk like this ^^^ one or a full-on, toothpaste grin — you generally know that sh*t is going to go down. That’s down to Starr’s sheer presence, yes, and the way that the writers have developed his character in a frighteningly painstaking way. More than that, it’s the actor-ing. I’m sort of stealing the way that my colleague, Brian Grubb, often uses verbs during fun workplace exchanges, but I mean it here. Starr is not acting. He is actor-ing. (Maybe you and I will talk about the difference one day.) It’s a mood, goddammit.

Also important about the Homelander smile(s): Starr has this unparalleled way of making sure that he only smiles with his mouth. You can see it above, and it’s happening below, too. The smile never reaches his eyes because it’s fake as hell. That’s also a key delineator of psychopathy, and it’s rather astounding that Starr pulls it off in so many variations. Even more than that, he manages to still make his eyes appear dead above while also doing this little eyebrow pop before he lasers the hell out of Marie.

What’s also curious about this scene is that Marie survived, which suggests a future showdown. And I look forward to that with relish.

There’s more going on, though. Homelander referred to Marie as an “animal” for committing violence against “your kind.” That’s a clever bit of writing that leaves open whether he’s being racist as hell, or simply that he sees himself as a superior breed of Supe (or both). He has sided with the now-forearm-less Cate after she was the one who was out of control and probably about to kill Jordan when Marie intervened. Did Homelander do this because he sees Marie as a future threat? That’s possible, but all of this potentially sets Cate up as a Starlight or Queen Maeve replacement on The Boys Season 4.

Man, the producers weren’t messing around when they said that the timelines of these shows bump right up against each other. And it completely makes sense that Homelander would want to pull Cate (and possibly Sam) under his wing because he’s no idiot. He has likely seen enough to know that Marie isn’t buying into what Vought International is selling, and again, her blood-bending abilities (girlfriend turned blood into daggers only a few moments prior to his landing) would be more than a match for his powers.

Homelander does what is good for Homelander, and he’s only growing more unhinged with each passing The Boys season.

To briefly recap: in Season 1, he downed an entire plane full of civilians and maintained that level of menace throughout Season 2, which he capped off by jerking off from atop a skyscraper, potentially killing innocents when his jizz hit the ground (clearly, I’ve thought about this scene too much). In Season 3, he convinced a woman to commit suicide as a birthday present to himself. That was perhaps the nudge that left a lot of far-right viewers having a raging meltdown once they realized that they’d been rooting for a bad guy. And in the Season 3 finale, he killed a civilian in broad daylight.

That act was a Trump reference (bragging about being able to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, etc), but Starr has been quick to point out that Homelander is not Trump because that would be “very two-dimensional,” and if this was a political thing, then “with the speechy stuff, if you want someone who can string a sentence together, who does that better than … Obama?”

Fair enough. I prefer to think that Homelander is one-of-a-kind in terms of villainy that we’ve seen onscreen. He is much more complex than Trump, and the Obama comparison similarly only fits one ability of the character. He’s an amalgamation of several influences and a personification of power in and of itself. He is also one bad dude, to say the very least. Remember when he made The Deep eat his still-alive best friend (RIP Timothy the Octopus)? And yet goddammit, Antony Starr. He’s so good at this. Too good at this.

Much of this is down to the attention to detail from the writers of The Boys, but this is very much a case of Starr infusing what could be a cartoonish character with layers. Even when he’s doing terrible things, Homelander remains a pleasure to watch and the only character in recent memory that makes me shout at the screen like that Rick Dalton pointing meme, even if I might not be using the meme correctly because I’m not spectacular with them.

There’s also a little side inquiry from my head: Starr, a natural brunette, once told us about how he shaves off his Homelander hair after filming each season. He described doing so “to fix the damaged hair” with a side effect being that “the world backs off” because people aren’t noticing a “potential psychopath in their midst.” I suspect that also helps remove the Homelander ickiness from his psyche, but perhaps I’m overreaching there.

Yet I do know a few things for sure: (1) Starr is being far too humble when he claims that he has no idea what he’s doing while acting (go watch Banshee if you don’t believe me); and (2) Whatever the guy is receiving for a paycheck, it isn’t enough.

‘The Boys’ and ‘Gen V’ can be streamed on Amazon Prime.

Last week, Variety dropped a warts-and-all report on the inner struggles at Marvel as the studio seems to have lost its shine following the completion of “The Infinity Saga” with the smash box-office hit Avengers: Endgame. While Marvel has found some success on Disney+ and delivered a small handful of successful blockbusters, the MCU hasn’t been the pop culture juggernaut it used to be.

Adding to that narrative is this week’s release of The Marvels, a sequel to Captain Marvel, which has been tracking below average for the MCU. According to Variety, the film has been plagued by extensive reshoots and a director, Nia DaCosta, who left to work on another film during a post-production:

Then eyebrows were raised again when DaCosta began working on another film while “The Marvels” was still in postproduction — the filmmaker moved to London earlier this year to begin prepping for her Tessa Thompson drama “Hedda.” (A representative for DaCosta declined to comment.)

“If you’re directing a $250 million movie, it’s kind of weird for the director to leave with a few months to go,” says a source familiar with the production.

However, in a new interview with Jake’s Takes, DaCosta has set the record straight on what really happened. Most notably, she made it clear that she was very involved in The Marvels post-production, which she worked on remotely.

“I think there’s just a lot of energy and criticism around Marvel anyway, so I’m not surprised,” DaCosta said about the Variety report making headlines. “But for me personally, it was literally just that they moved the date of the film four different times. And so, instead of it being a two year process, which I was deeply committed to, it became a three-and-a-half year process.”

According to DaCosta, Marvel was well aware that she had another film coming up, and everything was worked out before she took off for London.

“We figured out a way to do it remote, we figured out the best process,” she said via The A.V. Club. “And actually at the time that I left to go to London to start prep on my next film, everyone was so clear about what the film was, what we wanted, everyone knew what I wanted. So it really wasn’t the dramatic sort of thing that I think people are feeling like it is.”

The Marvels opens in theaters on November 10.

(Via The A.V. Club)

Don’t feel too bad if you didn’t get tickets for Tyler The Creator’s 2023 Camp Flog Gnaw Festival this weekend. As it turns out, you’ll still be able to catch many of the performances from the comfort of your couch thanks to Amazon Music. Amazon will once again be streaming one of our favorite fests, announcing two streaming channels that will bring Tyler’s set and others to the device of your choice. Amazon has streamed J. Cole’s Dreamville Festival since 2022 along with several other individual concerts like ones from Vince Staples and Kendrick Lamar.

You can catch the live stream beginning at 3 pm PT on Prime Video, as well as the Amazon Music and Camp Flog Gnaw Twitch channels. You can find more information, including merch links and more, on Amazon Music. The live stream will be hosted by Amber Grimes and Wayno, providing commentary and artist interviews between performances. The full schedules for the streaming channels will be announced at a later date.

Camp Flog Gnaw is making its return after four years away due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Its last event was headlined by a mystery guest who turned out to be Drake, disappointing a few fans who turned up early hoping to catch Frank Ocean. As it turns out, they didn’t miss much.

You can find the 2023 Flog Gnaw set times here.

The most controversial part about Gerry Turner, the 72-year-old Golden Bachelor with a heart of gold (hence the name), was revealed in episode four, when the man sat in a hot tub and viewers watched in horror as contestant Leslie discovered his massive lion tattoo in real-time. Some were taken aback, others decided this was an invitation to be weird on the internet.

Do you know what happens when there is stuff you want to air out in the world? You stop by Live with Kelly And Mark and they will get it all out there for you with ease. Mark Consuelos took no time asking Gerry about his tattoo, which he happily explained.

“There was a point in time where I was thinking about taking on more responsibility in business and so forth, and there’s this saying about every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up [and] it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or a gazelle wakes up and it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be eaten,” Turner said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a lion or a gazelle…when the sun comes up, you better be running.” This is true for most animals too, thanks to the food chain and all that, but it’s the thought that counts. It counted enough for Gerry to want it permanently inked on his body in the form of a lion on his right shoulder.

“That was something that I really believed in at the time, and when I saw that poster I thought, ‘that’s the perfect tattoo,’” he explained. He’s correct: it is definitely a tattoo. Consuelos then replied, “I just fell in love with Gerry,” without considering the audition process for The Golden Bachelor. Or his wife, who was sitting right next to him.

Gerry will hopefully make his final pick on the season finale of The Golden Bachelor airs on November 30th.

(Via Decider)

Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone‘s new Showtime series, The Curse, arrives this week. Much like The Rehearsal, the series is baffling critics who are having decidedly mixed reactions to the 10-episode series from Fielder and the Safdie Brothers.

The fictional tale centers on a couple who are pushing a home improvement series that basically gentrifies a New Mexico community even though they are adamant that their intentions are pure. Like all things Fielder, The Curse is loaded with awkward, uncomfortable moments whose mileage will definitely vary depending on your threshold for cringe comedy.

Here’s what the critics who enjoyed The Critic are saying:

Ben Travers, IndieWire:

Told over 10 hourlong episodes, “The Curse” puts Fielder’s trademark cringe comedy to magnificent use while evolving his reality-adjacent filmmaking style. The series is painful to watch. Asher, Whitney, and Dougie are embarrassed and embarrassing in equal measure. They’re desperate to be seen as “good” white people, even as they actively gentrify a town defined by its Hispanic and Native American citizens, and their willful ignorance is the source of endless gasps, groans, and guffaws. Some scenes, like when Asher takes advantage of his friendship with a former colleague, could fit seamlessly into episodes of “Nathan for You” or “The Rehearsal.” The comedy and tension stems from how far Asher is willing to go to get what he wants — and how awkward he becomes during the requisite social interactions.

Brianna Zigler, Paste:

It’s a disservice to The Curse to go into it thinking it’s just another funny Nathan Fielder venture, but it’s also unfair to go into it, like I basically did, anticipating Nathan Fielder’s Big Serious Adult Dramatic A24 Show. Once I exchanged the grand Alice Tully theater for my bed and 24-inch Roku television, my initial expectations and feelings on the show changed quite drastically. I found that the agonizing cringe and progressively disquieting nature of the series was really meant to be felt in full force alone in the safety of one’s home. When you’re at your most vulnerable, something about The Curse silently sneaks up on you; like the perniciousness of societal decay under the guise of progress.

Belen Edwards, Mashable:

In a departure from shows like Nathan for Youand The Rehearsal, Fielder is not playing a version of himself but rather an entirely new character. Still, you’ll recognize elements of his prior performances in Asher’s awkward deadpan. He’s a total punching bag for the show, with Flipanthropy focus groups wondering why Whitney would even marry him. That disbelief makes it all the funnier — and uncomfortable, naturally — when Asher inevitably loses his cool. Prepare yourself for some angry, desperate rants from Fielder that will leave you speechless, and some especially inspired physical comedy in later episodes.

Ross Bonaime, Collider:

The Curse is one of the most idiosyncratic shows in recent memory, and an impressive mixture of Safdie, Fielder, and Stone’s comedic sensibilities. Watching this series unfurl and its characters struggle and stumble makes it clear that there’s nothing like it on television. Fielder and Safdie have shown time and time again that they can create unconventional, staggering works, but together, The Curse is peculiar, confounding, and one of the most brilliant comedies of 2023.

And here are the critics, who did not love The Curse and found it to be a confounding experience with no end in sight:

Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone:

The Curse is a show that will go to the most extreme lengths it can to make its point. This means having to face some utterly baffling narrative turns along the way. If this sounds excruciating, it frequently is, perhaps too much for even the most ardent fans of either co-creator. Fielder has, in the past, deployed the awkwardness of his onscreen persona in the service of humor, but The Curse is decidedly not a comedy. And where the Safdies often try to make their audience sweat within a thriller context, this is a much more straightforward drama, where the main source of tension is how far into a given scene it will take for someone to do or say the worst possible thing for that situation.

Kristen Baldwin, Entertainment Weekly:

The Curse is cursed with unnecessarily long episode runtimes, as so many premium series are. Part of the bloat stems from Fielder’s penchant for luxuriating in moments of awkwardness, steeping the viewer in their own discomfort long after most shows — even most cringe comedies — would have mercifully cut away. Other scenes just drift along to nowhere, and there’s a sense that Fielder and Safdie had so much admiration for their eclectic ensemble, it was hard for them to kill their proverbial darlings.

Kathryn VanArendonk, Vulture:

It’s certainly off-putting, which is clearly what the show wants its audience to feel. If the aim is to create a series that can only be watched through your fingers, though, repeated story beats and uncovered secrets have to feel like they’re moving somewhere. There are so many little pieces of story to get snagged on, things that seem primed to add up to a big calamitous shock. Instead, The Curse keeps circling back on itself, defusing its bombs before they can explode and haphazardly lighting new ones that burn along merrily and then fizzle into a disappointing muted pop.

Dave Nemetz, TVLine:

Stone is a saving grace here: She’s an Oscar winner for a reason, and she crafts a delicate portrait of Whitney as a cheery TV host with a fragile soul, finding subtle ways to let Whitney’s deep discomfort shine through. Fielder, though, takes some getting used to as a dramatic actor. His deadpan sense of humor is well-honed by now, but when he turns serious, we’re left waiting for a punchline that never comes. That’s a great way to sum up The Curse, actually: It has all the elements of a comedy, but it’d rather see us squirm than laugh, which makes it an intriguing but oddly uneven and unsatisfying series.

The Curse premieres November 10 on Showtime.

Taylor Swift has the number-one album in the country. Now she has the number one (and two and three) song, too.

“Is It Over Now?”, the final (and best) “vault track” on 1989 (Taylor Version), debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, followed by “Now That We Don’t Talk” at No. 2 and “Slut!” at No. 3. Swift becomes the first female artist to ever replace herself at the top of the chart more than once, after Lover fan favorite-turned-ostensible Eras Tour opener “Cruel Summer” was No. 1 last week (it previously happened in 2014 when “Bad Blood” tagged in for “Shake It Off”).

The other vault selections, “Say Don’t Go” and “Suburban Legends,” premiered at No. 5 and No. 10, respectively. Swift’s domination over the Hot 100 didn’t stop here: Billboard reports that she “claims eight songs in the Hot 100’s top 10,” including the Taylor’s Versions of “Bad Blood” and “Style” at No. 7 and No. 9, which “ups her career count to 49 top 10s, the most among women and second among all acts only to Drake.” Swift is also the first solo artist in history to reach No. 1 on the Hot 100 with three songs from three different albums in a single year, following “Anti-Hero” (Midnights) and “Cruel Summer” (Lover).

Here’s the full top 10 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100:

No. 1. “Is It Over Now?” by Taylor Swift
No. 2. “Now That We Don’t Talk” by Taylor Swift
No. 3. “Slut!” by Taylor Swift
No. 4. “Paint the Town Red” by Doja Cat
No. 5. “Say Don’t Go” by Taylor Swift
No. 6. “Cruel Summer” by Taylor Swift
No. 7. “Bad Blood (TV)” by Taylor Swift
No. 8. “Snooze” by SZA
No. 9. “Style” (TV)” by Taylor Swift
No. 10. “Suburban Legends” by Taylor Swift

It’s the only second time in Hot 100 history where every song is from a female artist.