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Fast X isn’t the best Fast and Furious movie. It’s also not the worst. It’s somewhere in the middle, but it does feature one of the franchise’s greatest villain performances with Jason Momoa’s flamboyant turn as Dante Reyes.

The actor and liquor connoisseur was commended as the MVP of the film by numerous critics, including The Wrap‘s William Bibbiani, who wrote, “He’s the polar opposite of Dominic Toretto, wild instead of taciturn, colorful instead of monochrome, femme instead of masc. More, please, I beg of you.”

We agree — but Vin Diesel doesn’t. Radar reports that Diesel is “blaming his new co-star Jason Momoa’s performance in the new Fast & Furious for causing the film to be trashed by critics… Sources revealed desperate Diesel is unwilling to accept that he might have played a role in the poor reviews and is throwing Momoa under the bus — even though Jason is one of a few aspects of the film that critics praised!”

A source told Radar, “Vin is embarrassed Jason is being branded the only bright spot in the film and stealing his thunder in the franchise he built himself.” Diesel is allegedly telling those in his circle that Momoa “overacting” and “scene-stealing” undermined the artistic integrity of Fast X, a movie where someone tries to blow up the Vatican.

Is the rumor playing fast and furious with the facts? Maybe. But it’s not like this would be the first time Diesel has objected to a co-star upstaging him…

(Via Radar)

Mike Pence is running for president. Yes, it’s the former VP who is best remembered for the fly that landed on his head while debating Kamala Harris. He’s also known for his religiously conservative views, and those include a staunch opposition to abortion rights. However, the MAGA crowd cannot stomach him after he declined to overthrow democracy on January 6, so let’s just say that Pence probably doesn’t have too many takers from any party. It’s no wonder that the New York Times reported this filed-paperwork news as a “long-shot campaign,” which nicely sums up the situation.

Still, Pence is in it, although not to win it. He even attempted to warm up the crowd over the weekend ^^ while riding a Harley Davidson at Iowa’s Joni Ernst’s Roast and Ride. It was the worst Sons Of Anarchy spinoff ever. Pence will go up against Bobblehead DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Asa Hutchinson, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and more. Oh, and Chris Christie will probably hop in as well, and don’t forget that one guy, #45. Trump has refused to debate any primary candidates, so get ready for friction on that front.

CNN reveals that Pence will “formally announce his candidacy” on Wednesday in Iowa at an event that will happen before the cable news network’s presidential town hall. And then… let the good times roll?

Or at least, let the jokes roll now. Pence has little to no chance at gaining any traction in the primary, and people have plenty of thoughts about this impending mess. Jordan Klepper leads the reactions with a zinger.

(Via New York Times & CNN)

Udonis Haslem has spent almost his entire life in Florida, growing up in Miami, playing college ball in Gainesville, and then spending the last 20 seasons as a member of the Miami Heat.

He is the embodiment of “Heat Culture” but more than that he’s a massive presence in the Miami community, and of late he’s grown tired of the national perception of his state and the people that live there. Over the weekend, Haslem aired his grievances about Florida governor Ron DeSantis (who is now eyeing a presidential run) to the Boston Globe’s Gary Washburn.

“Well first and foremost I’m going to ask people out there to stop Florida-shaming us,” Haslam said as the Heat prepare for Game 2 of the NBA Finals. “Everybody ain’t down with what’s going on in Florida. People think that because you live in Florida, like you just down with the [expletive]. We’re not. I’m not down with it. I’m not happy about it.

“I happen to live there and I was born there. It’s not my fault. So please stop Florida-shaming us people. We’re not happy about what this man [DeSantis] is doing. Diversity and inclusion and taking the [books away]. We’re not happy about that. I sit at home on the couch with my wife and raise hell.”

Haslem noted his particular frustration with DeSantis and Florida Republicans focusing on book bans and school curriculum, while stripping back gun laws in the midst of rising gun violence.

“You complain about what’s being taught in school but we took away the gun [law] where you can buy a [expletive] assault rifle at 18,” Haslem said. “I’m confused about what’s the priorities. We’re talking education and in the midst of all of this gun violence going on around the world, how about we just drop the gun laws and make it easier for them to get guns? The [expletive] is confusing to me, that’s why I’m not a politician.”

Haslem explained that he tries to focus his efforts on making change in the community where he can, partnering with organizations in the Miami area that focus on mental health, drug rehabilitation, and creating affordable housing, while also encouraging people to vote and take their frustration to the polls when presented the opportunity.

BTS’ hiatus is ongoing to allow for each member to serve South Korea’s mandated military service. While the world-beating K-pop is making an exception this month to celebrate their 10-year anniversary, members are fully engaged in solo pursuits. The latest example has been Suga, released his debut solo LP, D-Day, under the pseudonym Agust D.

Jungkook might be the next BTS star to drop a solo album, as chronicled and translated to English by Soompi:

“On June 4, Korean news outlet Sports Chosun reported that Jungkook was preparing to release a new solo album on July 14 — and that his upcoming album would include an English-language song. Later that morning, Big Hit Music responded by stating, ‘We will make an announcement once the release schedule for Jungkook’s solo album has been confirmed.’

Big Hit’s statement was issued to Star News (as noted by NME).

Jungkook performed his solo single “Dreamers,” which served as the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 official song. He performed it at the opening ceremony last November with a cameo from Qatari singer Fahad Al-Kubaisi. The “Dreamers” video captured the song’s dazzling, larger-than-life essence.

More recently, the 25-year-old was introduced as a face for Calvin Klein’s Spring 2023 campaign in March.

ARMY is ready for whatever Jungkook announcement comes next, as evidenced by this call to action on Twitter.

This August, Yankee Stadium will host Hip-Hop 50 Live, a star-studded concert paying homage to the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. To call the lineup “star-studded” would be doing it an injustice; it’s fair to say that the names billed include nothing short of hip-hop legends. Headlined by rap pioneers Run-DMC, the lineup includes Common, Eve, Fat Joe, Ghostface Killah, Ice Cube, Lil Kim, Lil Wayne, Lupe Fiasco, Remy Ma, Slick Rick, Snoop Dogg, T.I., Trina, and more.

Hip-hop pioneers Grandmaster Caz, Kool Herc, Melle Mel, and Roxanne Shante will headline a Pillars of Hip-Hop set, while Eve, Kim, Remy, and Trina will front a Queens Of Hip-Hop set. DJs such as Battlecat, Clark Kent, Mannie Fresh, and Marley Marl will spin, as well.

The event is billed for August 11, 2023 — which is what’s remembered as hip-hop’s official 50th birthday, the anniversary of the Kool Herc-led block party widely recognized as the moment the culture officially gelled into the foundation of what came after. Tickets go on sale this Thursday, June 8.

In a statement to Rolling Stone, Run said, “I am honored to hit the stage in the Bronx, the birthplace of Hip Hop and celebrate all of my heroes,” while his partner-in-rhyme DMC added, “August is Hip Hop’s 50th birthday! So ’Up in the Bronx’ where it all started we will be celebrating this historic moment in history! I am honored to pay tribute to the culture that allowed this little shy kid from Queens to grow up and become The Mighty King of Rock! Thank you Hip Hop!!!”

You can find more info here.

Chefs have always been at the back burner of things, but thanks to The Bear, they are finally getting their moment to shine in the spotlight (thanks to all of the sweat and grease). Even Jennifer Coolidge, who is the epitome of calm, cool, and collected, used to lose it over chefs. There is just something about cooking and being covered in oil that just makes you irresistible.

Coolidge and Jeremy Allen White had a fun interview for Variety, for which they discussed the upcoming season of The Bear. In season two, we are all hoping that Carmy will get a little bit of action beyond the kitchen, though White doesn’t seem to think so. “In the second season, Carmen tries to pursue some joy outside of work, and it doesn’t work out great. These people are working 15-hour days. It didn’t seem real that Carmy could find love.” Even though viewers at home would happily love Carmy, Coolidge knows first-hand how hard it is to be involved with a chef.

“That is actually real,” Coolodge responded. “I think 99% of my jobs were all restaurant jobs. I was a waitress, and I always fell in love with the angry chefs. I don’t know what it is,” Coolidge said. When pressed for more, she explained, “I just like the way they throw the food down. It was so sexy. They’d be like, ‘Take it. Just take it.’ And there’s something about a man who can do something fast.” Perhaps she has yet to see The Menu, but it seems like a lot of people agree that being a chef is the sexy new profession. Being a crypto bro is OUT, being a smelly chef is IN!

Coolidge then admitted that she had pursued many chefs, even with their eccentric behaviors. “There were a lot of chefs in my life. I have to say that when you see that hostile, tough person in the kitchen, it does transfer to real life when it’s out of the restaurant.”

Since everyone and their cousin has been watching The Bear, White admitted that he does get referred to as chef a lot. “We didn’t expect the show to do as well as it did,” he told Coolidge. “We were in New York last summer, and so I was always just walking around. And it happened in a week. All of a sudden, people shouting, ‘Yes, Chef!’”

As for Coolidge’s lines, it seems like fans are finally moving on from making jokes about hot dogs. Now they are screaming about the gays! “I’m so thrilled,” Coolidge said in response to the line from The White Lotus, “These gays, they’re trying to murder me!” becoming a viral moment. Even the Bratz dolls got involved.

She continued, “Mike was very confident about Tanya being pursued by these seemingly friendly gays that seem to be fans of hers. And then Mike was like, ‘We don’t see the gay men as being evil. This is a bad group.’ But it’s interesting because there was a whole group of gay men in New Orleans that went out on Mardi Gras as Tanya. Some of them were on scooters, and they all had ‘These gays, they’re trying to murder me.’ It’s happened in other cities — even in Boston when I did Hasty Pudding. So it really did somehow strike a chord.”

The moment has since gone viral all over and will likely inspire memes for years, if not decades, to come. Now that’s how you stay relevant in 2023.

(Via Variety)

Kyrie Irving is set to be an unrestricted free agent this summer, and despite his considerable talents no one is quite sure what market will be out there for him.

The Dallas Mavericks are the one team we know will be trying hard to sign Irving, simply because they gave up so much to land him at the trade deadline back in February. Outside of Dallas, it’s not abundantly clear what teams will have interest in giving Kyrie the kind of long-term, big money deal he’s seeking. One of the teams expected to be in the mix was the Los Angeles Lakers, who have been connected to Irving for the last year as both he and LeBron James seem very open to a reunion, but with L.A. apparently focused on bringing back the likes of Austin Reaves and some of their other free agents, they won’t have the money to extend Irving a significant deal.

That apparently hasn’t ended Kyrie’s quest to play with LeBron again, and after James made eyebrow raising comments about his future after the Lakers’ loss in the Western Conference Finals, Irving has reportedly tried to convince LeBron to try and make a move to join him in Dallas, per Shams Charania and Chris Haynes.

If your first instinct here is to laugh, you are not alone. That has been the general response from everyone to seeing these reports.

How the Mavs would convince the Lakers to trade LeBron James to them without sending either of Kyrie or Luka Doncic back is beyond me. This is the best package Dallas could offer to make it work financially (and it could only happen on or after Draft night).

That certainly doesn’t seem like a deal the Lakers would be jumping to make, but we’ve seen crazy things happen before. Having this out there a month before free agency opens is going to lead to some very funny conversations and arguments on sports talk television and radio, so congrats to them for having something to talk about beyond the Finals. It’s also incredible how both Haynes and Charania got this nugget of info at the exact same time, and I’ll let you, the reader, try to figure out how and why that might happen at this very moment in time in the midst of the NBA Finals.

According to a new report Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was allegedly knocked unconscious during a Jiu-Jitsu match last month, prompting the referee to halt the competition. The alleged knock out was recently reported in The New York Times, and Zuckerberg is apparently not thrilled. Not only is he personally denying he was unconscious, but so is his coach and the full weight of Meta’s seven billion dollar empire.

Via The Daily Beast:

“At no point during the competition was Mark knocked unconscious,” Elana Widmann, a spokesperson for Meta, said in an email to The Daily Beast. “That never happened.”

Widmann also claimed a Meta spokesperson attending the competition and witnessed an exchange in which the referee “apologized to Mark and his coach after the match for prematurely calling the match.”

The Times reported that the referee called the match after Zuckerberg was reportedly knocked unconscious by a chokehold, to the point the were the Meta CEO was allegedly snoring. However, both Zuckerberg and his coach disputed that claim and personally contacted the writer of the Times profile, Joe Bernstein, to say that actually Zuckerberg was just grunting.

“They both insisted that Mr. Zuckerberg had *not* lost consciousness, and the coach said that the referee had mistaken his effortful grunting for snores,” Bernstein tweeted in an update.

Zuckerberg allegedly being knocked out is a markedly different story than what Joe Rogan gushed about last month. The podcaster called the Meta CEO a “f*cking savage” following reports that Zuckerberg scored a gold medal in his first match. There was no mention of a dispute over Zuckerberg possibly being unconscious or just grunting really hard.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Hope is a dangerous thing, and so is The Shawshank Redemption being #1 on the IMDb Top 250 Movies list since… forever? It feels that way, at least, with The Godfather and The Dark Knight right behind it. The list needs a shake up — like on Letterboxd, which has a new highest-rated movie ever.

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is officially the highest rated film of all-time on Letterboxd,” the social media platform for film buffs tweeted. It’s the fifth film to achieve the honor, following The Godfather, Parasite, Come and See, and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Paddington 2 was robbed.

The only movies to appear in the top 10 on both the Letterboxd and IMDb lists? The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and 12 Angry Men. (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is #15 on IMDb.) Paddington 2 was robbed, again.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a hit among critics (95 percent Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and at the box office. The animated masterpiece grossed $120.5 million this weekend, which is the second biggest opening weekend of the year. “Overseas, Across the Spider-Verse added $88.1 million to its haul, giving it a grand total worldwide weekend of $208.5 million, Sony Pictures’ biggest animated opening of all time,” Entertainment Weekly reports.

If (when?) Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse drops out of the #1 position on Letterboxd, it better not go lower than #11: that’s where The Shawshank Redemption is.

If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power was “the most ambitious project Halsey’s done to date,” according to Uproxx’s review of the August 2021 album. It’s also Halsey’s most recent project, and they revived one of its tracks, “Lilith,” for Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo IV video game.

Halsey performed “Lilith” at The Game Awards 2022 last December, a big reveal of their impending collaboration with the highly anticipated game. Today, June 5, she and BTS’ Suga sweetened the imminent release with all-encompassing, cinematic video for “Lilith (Diablo IV Anthem).”

Per press release, the Henry Hobson-directed video was partially filmed in Cambrai, France’s Chapelle Des Jésuites, “where Blizzard had filled the ceiling with paintings and a 160-foot mural inspired by the game.”

The three-minute visual begins with a hooded Halsey entering the church alone. They’re ready for war, striding confidently despite being struck by various spears. Suga lends an extra layer of mystique.

“You get too caught up in the moment / You can’t call it love if you show it,” he sings softly while isolated in an all-red room. “We just f*ck things up / Yeah, I noticed.”

According to Blizzard’s official website, Lilith is a central character in Diablo IV:

“Seeking refuge from the eternal conflict between the High Heavens and the Burning Hells, Inarius and Lilith formed Sanctuary and gave life to the Nephalem with the Stolen Worldstone. Fearing for the destruction of her hybrid offspring, Lilith led a violent, protective act to protect the Nephalem; ultimately leading Inarius to turn his back on her, banishing her to the abyss, becoming enemies henceforth. Lilith’s return ushers in an age of darkness and misery. What fate awaits?”

Halsey is just as invested as any other Diablo IV player.

“I’m thrilled that I get to collab with Suga of BTS on a reimagined version of ‘Lilith’ for the Diablo IV anthem,” Halsey said in a statement. “Having spent countless hours in Sanctuary with my family, I’m here as both a fan and collaborator. Plus, I’ve always wanted to do a concept with Suga with this type of dark mythology. Hopefully, fans of Diablo, Suga, and myself will love Lilith’s embrace.”

Last month, Halsey updated fans on Tumblr about entering “album mode” and asking for patience.

“It will pay off in the long run,” she wrote, in part. “This feels like my debut all over again, in some ways. Your love and support have carried me through a time where I thought maybe I only had a few albums left in me, but I know now that there are so many more than I could have ever dreamed. Anyways, I love you. Down the rabbit hole I go.”

Around the same time, Halsey was a surprise guest at Suga’s headlining concert at Kia Forum in Los Angeles. They performed “Suga’s Interlude” together for the first time, and Halsey later posted about how special the moment was to be on stage with Suga, their “twin.”

Watch Halsey and Suga united once again for the “Lilith (Diablo IV Anthem)” above, and check out the imagery below.

Diablo IV is out 6/7 via Blizzard Entertainment. Find more information here.