GoneTrending

Damian Lillard’s 2022-23 campaign appears to be over. According to Chris Haynes of Bleacher Report, the team has made the decision to shut Lillard down with seven games left in the remainder of the year as he deals with a calf injury.

Lillard has, per usual, been excellent this season, as he was named an All-Star and has put forth a strong case to make an All-NBA team for the seventh time in his career. After playing in only 29 games last year due to injuries, Lillard bounced back in a big way, averaging a career-high 32.2 points, 7.3 assists, and 4.8 rebounds in 36.3 minutes per game while connection on 46.3 percent of his attempts from the field and 37.1 percent of his tries from behind the three-point line.

The decision comes as the Blazers are on the verge of being eliminated from play-in contention. The team is currently 32-43, which puts them in 13th place in the Western Conference. As of Tuesday, Portland sits five games back of the Oklahoma City Thunder, which currently have the 10-seed and the final spot in the play-in. While the team is not mathematically eliminated from having a shot to make it to the playoffs, Tuesday’s news makes it even more likely that the team will miss out for the second year in a row.

Even though you’ve probably seen John Wick Chapter 4 in theaters three or four times by now (you’re only human) you might be looking for a way to enjoy Keanu Reeves in your own home. While a lot of movies have been experimenting with simultaneous theatrical and streaming releases, John Wick Chapter 4 is a good, old-fashioned action movie in the sense that you have to actually go to the theater to watch it. It’s so retro!

Unlike some of last year’s big blockbusters, John Wick comes from Lionsgate, so it probably won’t end up on HBO Max. If you’d like to eventually stream the fourth installment in the Wick-verse, then you’ll have to subscribe to Starz, which currently costs $20 for six months. After streaming there exclusively, the movie will eventually make its way onto Peacock, where the rest of the franchise is available for streaming.

As for when you’ll be able to watch, it’s up for debate. Wick just crashed into theaters last week, so it will probably be some time until it’s available online. For reference, The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent didn’t head to streaming until six months after its theatrical release.

If the timeline is the same, we will get John Wick Chapter 4 on Starz just in time for your annual autumnal rewatch of John Wick sometime in September. It’s always Wick season!

(Via ScreenRant)

There was a time, if you can believe it, where there were multiple monster-of-the-week shows out there dominating television, and X-Files was one of those rare shows that could portray complex interpersonal relationships while also very seriously investigating a life-size parasitic worm. The other show to do this was Buffy, obviously.

Even though we now have some hit shows revolving around giant dragons and undead fungi-infected humans (not zombies), there is one key demographic not getting enough TV air time lately: aliens and anything in the “other” category of weird creepy threats. Luckily, Black Panther director Ryan Coogler may have seen the gap in the critter market and is reportedly working on a new reboot of The X-Files.

The X-Files creator Chris Carter spoke to Gloria Macranko to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the series on the On The Coast podcast, when he let it slip that there is a fresh take on the series coming from Coogler. “I just spoke to a young man, Ryan Coogler, who is going to remount The X-Files with a diverse cast,” Carter said.

While he didn’t give any more info, Coogler has been on a hot streak lately. In the past year alone, Coogler co-wrote and directed both Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Creed III. He recently began venturing into television with the upcoming MCU series Ironheart.

The X-Files ran for nine seasons from 1993 to 2002 before getting two more seasons in 2017 and 2018, on top of the two theatrical releases. Despite whatever new treatment the show gets, Carter is happy about the legacy of the show. “It was special. It was an amazing time,” Carter said of the iconic series. “We made really good television, and we made a lot of it.” Now would be a perfect time to make even more of it, jsut for old times’ sake!

(Via The Verge)

We’re right in the middle of a changing of the guard with some of HBO’s most reliably brilliant and critically beloved shows starting to shuffle off this mortal coil (they’ll be okay, they’ve still got dragons and clickers). But is Curb Your Enthusiasm joining Succession and Barry?

That’s a big question mark in longtime Curb producer/director Robert Weide’s tweet from the final days of shooting on season 12 for the show that debuted 25 years ago, an immense amount of time marked by Weide (and the fact that the show was actually released on VHS after it aired). And look at Larry David, practically unchanged over a quarter century. That’s the benefit of never holding in your annoyances.

There’s more evidence that this might be it for Curb coming from producer Jon Hayman, who tweeted a behind-the-scenes look at what he termed the final shot of the final season. Ain’t no question marks there, friends.

https://twitter.com/Jon_Hayman/status/1640748913497088005

Occasional co-star Richard Lewis was also feeling nostalgic in a recent tweet, though he didn’t indicate that the end of the show was near. Regardless, I’m a twist of emotions, how about you?

Curb has been thought complete a few times before only to come back and continue clearing a high bar. There was the six-year hiatus from 2011 and the three-year one from 2017. Maybe LD just needs another little break. Still, at 75 and with two of TV’s greatest comedies under his belt (counting Seinfeld, which David co-created, of course), maybe the chances are prettay, prettay, good that this new season will be the last, leaving an unbelievable treasure trove of memorable moments and a legacy of turning pettiness into an art form.

Earlier this week, on March 25, Donald Trump hosted a rally for his 2024 presidential campaign in Waco, Texas. At the event, “Justice For All,” a song by Trump and a group called the J6 Prison Choir, was played. The track was released earlier this month and it features Trump and a group of men who were arrested during the January 6 United States Capitol attack (the J6 Prison Choir). On the track, the choir sings the “Star-Spangled Banner” and the song goes back and forth between that and Trump reciting the Pledge Of Allegiance.

Believe it or not, by some metrics, the song has actually performed well, even topping pop stars like Taylor Swift on recognizable charts. This all, of course, has Trump pretty excited.

On March 11, the song was No. 1 on the iTunes sales chart. It also debuted on top of the Billboard Digital Song Sales chart dated March 25, thanks to 33,000 downloads sold between March 10 and 16. However, given that paid downloads, as Variety phrased it, “now represent a minuscule fraction of the music market,” the song’s placement on these ranks isn’t necessarily indicative of significant widespread popularity within the music industry at large. It recently debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart, meaning despite its success with downloads, it did not rank on the Hot 100 chart.

Trump spoke about the song in a recent Fox News interview after Sean Hannity brought it up, saying, “The J6 is beating Taylor Swift. It’s Donald Trump and the J6 Prisoners on iTunes and on Amazon and on Billboard, which is the big deal. No. 1, Donald Trump, so now I feel like Elvis, because now we’ve done The Apprentice — that was a great success. We did… now I’ve done… now I’ve done a recording or whatever you call it. But no, it was No. 1. And you know what this is? That’s a tribute to the fact that people feel the J6 people have been very unfairly treated.”

“Justice For All” can be heard here.

Tetris, which lands on AppleTV+ March 31st, purports to tell the origin story for the famous block-stacking game we Gen Y-ers* remember so fondly, using the self-starting schemer and dreamer who “brought it to America” as its main character. That’s a fairly straightforward pop-movie pitch, and Tetris takes pains to camouflage itself as that pop movie. Yet it’s clear midway through that all the stylistic tricks in the world aren’t going to turn this into Eddie The Eagle.

(*I do not use the term “elder millennial.” If you learned to masturbate via analog methods, you are not a millennial. We are Gen Y — after X, before millennial.)

Every character in this story is much weirder and far more complicated than the format seems to allow for. Disguising something strange as something familiar is a classic artist’s trick, but there are times you wonder how much director Jon S. Baird and writer Noah Pink are deliberately Trojan Horseing and how much they’ve been Trojan Horsed themselves. To their credit, they’ve managed to make a fairly entertaining movie out of what is essentially a games licensing battle, a dull and granular branch of business law, even for business law. In order to do that, they turned their hero’s story into a video game quest, complete with 8-bit graphics as chapter markers. They gain a product, but maybe at the expense of a soul. Which is, admittedly, pretty apt.

Taron Egerton plays Henk Rogers, a Ted Lasso optimistic dreamer-style guy with a Vh-1 I Love The 80s mustache. The hypercolor, commercialized eighties we sell in 2023 has now completely subsumed the actual 1980s, but Tetris is nothing if not conspicuously stylized, so it’s of a piece. Henk is a Dutch-born American expat living in Japan** but we don’t know that at first. We just know that his last videogame flopped, and he thinks he’s found the next big thing when he sees Tetris at a trade show. He uses his last proverbial dime to buy the console and arcade rights to it in Japan, and offers up his house as collateral to a banker while begging for an even bigger loan to help him produce all the games he’s promised to his new partners at Nintendo.

(** Trying to pin down even one aspect of Tetris‘s story is like trying to squish a watermelon seed with your finger. It just squirts off somewhere else. Every character in the story is like this if you dig even a little.)

When those Nintendo boys show Henk the prototype for the Gameboy, he knows this simple block game is the perfect fit for its 8-bit, black-and-white graphics. It’s a potential goldmine, he just has to secure the handheld rights from their current owner — the USSR’s software publishing body, Elektronorgtechnica, aka ELORG, who in turn took them over from Tetris’ actual inventor, Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov), who stands to gain nothing other than patriotic pride.

Henk, being the dreamer that he is, just shows up at ELORG unannounced and on a tourist visa, at which point he learns from the ELORG director that the games he’s been making are basically bootlegs, on account of the guy he bought the rights from never had the rights to them in the first place. This is due to a complicated series of events that saw a shady fixer named Robert Stein (Toby Jones), “discover” the game behind the iron curtain. He then sold/promised its worldwide rights to Mirrorsoft, a company owned by British business tycoon Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam), and run like a make-work program for Robert’s desperate-to-prove-himself silver spoon son, Kevin (Anthony Boyle). As the movie tells it, Kevin keeps trying to negotiate Legitimate Business while his evil father constantly undercuts him by doing corruption, the father leaning on his personal friendship with Mikhail Gorbachev for leverage.

Astute readers may be realizing now something that took most of a movie to dawn on me: “Robert Maxwell” isn’t just some rich British guy. He’s Ghislaine Maxwell’s father. The one who died under incredibly shady circumstances, supposedly drowning near his yacht, “The Lady Ghislaine,” right after defaulting on £50 million in loans from Goldman Sachs. He actually wasn’t even originally British, having been born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch in Czechoslovakia before fighting in the resistance and eventually getting naturalized. Kevin is Ghislaine’s brother.

The movie never mentions any of this, not even in the epilogue text, and I suppose that’s understandable, given the Jeffrey Epstein connection being an uncloseable can of worms that would hijack the story were it to be breached.

That spicy a-meat-a-ball of a factoid aside, the parties maneuvering for the Tetris rights are: the Maxwells, Robert Stein, Henk, ELORG, Pajitnov, and a Communist party official named Trifonov (Igor Grabuzov), a sneering, greasy-haired, ostrich-eyed villain in a turtleneck who would’ve been over-the-top in Rocky IV (my God, just look at this dude’s face, the greasy hair and turtleneck are practically redundant). At first I took Trifonov to be warmed over Cold War propaganda, the True Believer Communist who will stop at nothing to prevent evil western-style freedom from corrupting the citizens with cheap Pepsi and exposed bosoms.

Trifonov is not a true believer, however, but a skeptic who senses the impending collapse of the Soviet Union and wants to secure his bag at the expense of his country. This in opposition to the True Russian Patriots like Pajitnov and ELORG’s manager. Yes, there is a very corny scene in which Pajitnov takes Henk to a secret Russian rock n’ roll rave party set in a graffiti-strewn brutalist parking garage, where proto-dissidents scream about wanting Levis and dance to “The Final Countdown.” But Trifonov, in colluding with the Maxwells, seems meant to represent not the Communist state, but the collusion between self-interested Russians and predatory capitalists, which characterized the coming Yeltsin-gangsters-oligarchs period of Russia in the 90s. (Putin’s popularity stems largely from clamping down on the chaos of that era, even though it birthed him).

If the villains in Tetris are the “bad” capitalists, it’s a bit of an open question what makes Henk a “good” one. Is it because he has a nice mustache? Is it because he bet his actual house and took a risk? To paraphrase William Wallace, the tycoon who bleeds on his yacht after defaulting on a 50 million pound loan, does he not also risk?

What’s objectively clear is that Henk did what everyone else did in this story: smelled a big opportunity and rushed in to try to get his beak wet, even though he didn’t actually invent shit. Certainly, he befriends Pajitnov and bonds with him (they like the same programming languages, awww!), but it’s hard to say whether this actually represents Henk fighting for the real inventor or just doing a more elegant job getting Pajitnov to relax his proverbial anus before screwing him.

Tetris is cheeky on every level, and maybe we’re supposed to apply a jaundiced eye to this story about the triumph of “nice” capitalism. But even the most charitable read holds that the more interesting exploration of who could and should own which IP gets subsumed by the hero’s journey structure. This arcane battle over rights eventually devolves, Argo-like, into an actual car chase which is believable on exactly zero levels.

Maybe Henk Rogers really was the “good guy” in all this — which doesn’t sound like a hard thing to be compared to Robert Maxwell and various shady fixers — but with an ending as outlandish as Tetris‘s, it’s impossible to know which parts we’re supposed to take at face value. Tetris is mostly entertaining and simplifies an impossibly complex story admirably, but it also loses some its most important themes in the process.

‘Tetris’ streams March 31st, only on Apple TV+. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more of his reviews here.

Just when you thought the Gwyneth Paltrow ski trial couldn’t get more absurd than the phrase “Gwyneth Paltrow ski trial,” here comes the stick figures.

A day after Paltrow’s legal team shared a hilariously crude CGI reconstruction of the Oscar-winning actress and retired optometrist Terry Sanderson colliding, an expert showed off his drawing skills to confirm that her version of the event is “consistent” with the laws of physics.

In an attempt to explain complicated physics, Dr Scher drew stick figures to show how Mr Sanderson and Paltrow would have been travelling that day and where their centres of gravity would have been. He concluded that Paltrow’s version of events is “consistent with the laws of physics” while Mr Sanderson and friend and fellow skier Craig Ramone’s version does not make sense.

He’s a regular Janey Briggs, that Dr. Scher.

This is somehow more confusing than actual physics. But what else would you expect from this trial? There’s been “goofy AF” opening statements, cozy serial killer cosplay, and questions about Taylor Swift. Later today, Paltrow’s kids, Apple and Moses, are expected to testify, so that should be very normal for everyone involved. Especially this upside down blob person. Or is it a bunny?

(Via the Telegraph)

Pride Month might be in June, but the city of Los Angeles has already announced the headliners for its annual Pride In The Park celebration taking place June 9-10. It’s just not Pride without a diva or two, and this year’s selection of Pride performers has that covered with Megan Thee Stallion and Mariah Carey leading the show on Friday (6/9) and Saturday (6/10), respectively.

Carey posted the announcement on Instagram, writing, “I’m thrilled and honored to be a part of LA Pride 2023,” she wrote. “I am happy to be back in person celebrating with the LGBTQIA+ community here in Southern California and throughout all of the lands!!! Let’s come together to celebrate love, inclusion, and Pride.”

Meanwhile, in a separate statement, Meg said, “I can’t wait to headline LA Pride in the Park and celebrate the phenomenal LGBTQIA+ community. This incredible event advocates diversity, inclusivity and equality, so I’m honored to perform and have a blast with all of the Hotties in attendance.”

The theme for this year’s Pride In The Park event is “All Out With Pride,” and future performers will be announced in the coming months. The 2023 Pride In The Park celebration will take place at the Los Angeles State Historic Park on 6/9-10. You can find more information here.

We talk a lot about the various beer styles that are well-suited for spring drinking. They run the gamut from bocks, Goses, lagers, pale ales, saisons, Kölsch-style beers, IPAs, Helles lagers, sours, and more. While we can debate which one is the best for days, today we want to tout the highly drinkable, flavorful spring staple: wheat beer.

While we aren’t trying to disrespect those who came (and brewed) before and we understand wheat beers have deep roots in Europe (specifically in Germany and Belgium), today we’re going to dive into American-made wheat beers exclusively. This top-fermented beer style made with a higher amount of wheat as opposed to the usual barley is known for its yeasty, wheat, citrus, and sometimes banana and clove flavors (depending on the beer itself).

Not only is it a great spring beer, but it’s the type of complex, crushable, thirst-quenching beer you’ll want to imbibe well into the summer months (I’d argue that like IPAs, wheat beers can be year-rounders). Keep scrolling to see eight widely available American wheat beers you’ll want to stock up on this season, ranked on flavor alone.

8) Blue Moon Belgian White

ABV: 5.2%

Average Price: $10 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Before every brewery in America seemed to make its own wheat beer, there was Blue Moon. Launched in 2005 by Coors, this witbier is known for its hazy, unfiltered appearance with orange peels, coriander, and sweet wheat.

Tasting Notes:

The nose is fairly generic with aromas of orange peel, wheat, and light spices. Overall, it’s kind of muted and bland. The flavor is a little better with wheat, cereal grains, orange peel, lemon zest, and maybe some coriander. It’s not a bad beer, it’s just a little light and boring.

Bottom Line:

If you’re simply looking for a wheat beer to crush this spring and summer, go ahead and grab some Blue Moon. If you’re looking for even the tiniest amount of complexity, look elsewhere.

7) Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat

ABV: 4.4%

Average Price: $12 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Brewed since 1990, Boulevard’s Unfiltered Wheat has been imitated by countless brewers throughout the country in the last few decades. This sessionable, hazy beer is known for its orange peel and spice flavors and crushable nature.

Tasting Notes:

Caramel malts, orange peels, lemon zest, and wheat highlight this beer’s nose. The palate continues this trend with more wheat, tangerine, lemongrass, cloves, and light banana. Due to its low ABV, it’s a little lighter in flavor than it could be.

Bottom Line:

This beer is known for its sessionable nature. This makes it both crushable, but also a little muted overall.

6) Sierra Nevada Sunny Little Thing

ABV: 5%

Average Price: $11 for a six-pack

The Beer:

This wheat beer variety of Sierra Nevada’s popular “Little Thing” line, Sunny Little Thing is brewed with ale yeast, two-row Pale malt, wheat, oats, Cara-Pils malt, Crystal hops, and orange and grapefruit. This hazy, fruity wheat beer is known for its bold, bright, refreshing, spring-like citrus vibes.

Tasting Notes:

While there are aromas of sweet wheat, rolled oats, and cereal grains, this beer’s nose is dominated by grapefruit and tangerine. Drinking it reveals more notes of orange peels and grapefruit zest up front along with wheat and a creamy, sweet mouthfeel from the addition of oats. The finish is dry and lightly tart.

Bottom Line:

This is a wheat beer for citrus fans, as it’s dominated by grapefruit and orange. If you prefer a beer with a slightly less heavy hand, buy something else.

5) Goose Island 312

ABV: 4.2%

Average Price: $11 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Referred to as an “urban wheat ale”, this 4,2% ABV, crushable, sessionable beer is brewed with wheat and 2-row malts. It gets its bright, hoppy flavor from the addition of Hallertau, Millenium, and Cascade hops. It’s known for its wheat, hoppy, citrus flavor profile.

Tasting Notes:

The nose leans heavily into lemon zest, orange peel, cereal grains, wheat, and lightly floral, earthy hops. The palate is a little thin but has notes of wheat, biscuit-like malts, orange peels, lemon zest, and light spices, The finish is dry and slightly bitter.

Bottom Line:

Another crushable, sessionable wheat beer, Goose Island 312 isn’t the most exciting beer on the market. But, even though it’s a bit watery, it has all the flavors wheat beer fans crave.

4) Revolution Sun Crusher

ABV: 5.3%

Average Price: $12 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Available from April through July, Revolution Sun Crusher is an aptly named beer because this spring and summer wheat beer is totally crushable and thirst-quenching on a warm (or downright sweltering) day. Brewed with Carapils and 2-row malts as well as red wheat and flaked oats, it gets its floral, citrus flavor from Apollo and Amarillo hops in the kettle and dry-hopping with Crystal, Amarillo, and Mosaic hops.

Tasting Notes:

Cracker malts, lemon zest, orange peels, and lightly floral hops are present on the nose. While the nose isn’t overly exciting, the palate makes up for it with notes of wheat, oats, orange peels, lemon zest, wet grass, crackery malts, and lightly bitter, floral hops. Its finish is sweet, wheaty, citrusy, and lightly hoppy.

Bottom Line:

This is one for the hop fans. It has all of the classic wheat beer flavors that are only heightened by the addition of hops in the kettle and dry hopping.

3) Allagash White

ABV: 5.2%

Average Price: $10 for a four-pack

The Beer:

When it comes to American-made wheat beers, there are few (if any) more well-known and acclaimed than Allagash White. This 5.2% ABV Belgian-style wheat beer gets its classic flavors from being brewed with oats, malted wheat, and raw wheat as well as coriander and Curaçao orange peel.

Tasting Notes:

Classic aromas of caramel malts, oats, wheat, orange peels, and coriander make this a very welcoming beer. The palate continues this trend with notes of funky yeast, bananas, coriander, wheat, and bright orange zest. Although American, it has the classic flavor of authentic European wheat beer.

Bottom Line:

There’s a reason brewers and drinkers alike love Allagash White. It’s simple, classic, and highly flavorful. It’s the kind of wheat beer you’ll stock all year long.

2) Bell’s Oberon

ABV: 5.8%

Average Price: $11 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Like Canadian geese returning from their winter vacation in the southern parts of the US, you can count on Bell’s releasing Oberon every spring. This eagerly-awaited, citrus-filled wheat beer is brewed simply with the brewery’s signature ale yeast, wheat malt, hops, and water.

Tasting Notes:

Complex aromas of wheat, honey, orange peels, banana, and yeasty bread are prevalent on the nose. The palate is a gentle mix of wheat sweetness and hop bitterness with hints of orange, lemon, banana, and light spices. Sweet, lightly spicy, hoppy, and delicious.

Bottom Line:

Simplicity is the name of the game when it comes to Bell’s Oberon. This beer doesn’t rely on any over-the-top flavors. It’s simple, elegant, and perfect.

1) 3 Floyds Gumballhead

ABV: 5.6%

Average Price: $12 for a six-pack

The Beer:

3 Floyds is well-known for its limited releases and its iconic Zombie Dust Pale Ale. But you definitely shouldn’t sleep on its highly flavorful, well-balanced Gumballhead wheat beer. This 5.6% ABV, year-round wheat beer is brewed with white wheat and dry-hopped with specifically chosen hops from Yakima Valley.

Tasting Notes:

A very inviting nose of fresh pine, lemon zest, orange peel, wheat, and funky yeast greets you before your first sip. Drinking it brings forth notes of yeasty bread, sweet wheat, orange, honey, and a final bite of floral, piney hops.

Bottom Line:

Wheat, fruit, citrus, hops… what’s not to love? This is the epitome of an Americanized wheat beer. It has all the wheat flavors from Europe with an American, hoppy spin.

The normally brusque Brian Cox, who has no qualms saying how he feels (particularly when it involves Method acting), is setting the record straight on his recent remarks about Meghan Markle. During a recent interview with Haute Living New York, the Succession star opined on Markle’s well-documented troubles with the Royal Family, and his words were misinterpreted, as though he blamed Markle for her situation. Although, in case it looked like he’s picking sides, the actor made it clear that he thinks the monarchy shouldn’t exist.

“She knew what she was getting into,” Cox said. “And there’s an ambition there clearly as well — the childhood dreams of marrying Prince Charming and all that sh*t we see as fantasy that could be our lives in our dreams.”

However, Cox now claims those remarks were taken out of context. In a new interview with the Radio Times, Cox said he’s a “bit angry” with how his thoughts were presented because he has “enormous sympathy” for what happened to Harry and Meghan.

Via The Daily Beast:

“They’re the product of an institution which is moribund and shouldn’t exist any more.

“But that’s a difficult situation where [Meghan] comes from, and it’s understandable that she sees something [appealing] — and it does look like a fairy tale. But it was a fairy tale that went horribly wrong.”

Being taken out of context does track. Cox has made previous remarks where he’s fully defended Harry and Meghan and has gone so far to say he believes the Royal Family did them wrong.

“I don’t know what went on, but something clearly traumatic went on for the pair of them,” Cox told Good Morning Britain in December. “I don’t think they made it up, I don’t think it’s false. I think it’s true and should’ve been rectified, and it hasn’t.”

(Via The Daily Beast)