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In case you blinked, we’re already three weeks into the NBA season. Every team has played double-digit games. Christmas decorations are out in droves. The Utah Jazz and Portland Trail Blazers currently maintain the first and second seeds, respectively, in the West, and it doesn’t feel fluky. The college season is in full swing. Everything in basketball that could be happening is happening, and it’s a whirlwind. A vortex of unexpected play, promising growth, and continual advancement of the game as it ebbs and flows into what the 2022-23 season holds in store for us.

Basketball, it’s pretty special.

Without further adieu, we dive back into the Most Intriguing Players in the league this week (you can read last week’s drop here). A reminder, most intriguing does not mean the best. This is a reflection of players who have caught my eye for one reason or another. If I wasn’t reigned into a concise three player breakdown, I would be rattling off 36 percent of the league in one column, so major shout out to my editor. (Ed. note: No problem, Mark.)

Josh Green

The Dallas Mavericks are in an odd place as they start the season. Luka Doncic is off to, undeniably, one of the greatest offensive stretches we’ve seen to start a season.

But, he’s slowed down after a torrid first nine games, which is extremely understandable given his monster 39.6 percent usage rate during that span. The offense has felt kind of my turn, your turn between Doncic and Spencer Dinwiddie, and to be fair, it’s worked well. With Christian Wood out the past two games, the bench offense has struggled mightily, but the defense has remained sturdy. This is a good basketball team, although at times, it is lacking in pop and dynamism outside Doncic.

One potential solution to this: Third year wing Josh Green, who is putting together more and more consistent glimmers of oomph that are enticing.

He still doesn’t shoot a lot, but he’s shooting more, and with absurd efficacy to start the season. He’s going to be left open as he continues to cement his status as a shooter, but the signs are encouraging, even if subliminal.

Green has a fantastic feel for the game as a cutter and secondary playmaker, using his athletic gravity to make things happen in the open floor. Alongside Doncic, arguably the largest gravity swell in the league, Green can exploit pockets that wouldn’t be nearly as malleable or open playing with a less magnetic star ball-handler.

He’s capable of attacking space off the bounce, driving to continue scrambling defenses, and throwing some fantastic connective dimes to keep plays moving.

He brings a little chaos and randomness on either end, and the Mavs need more of that to keep climbing in the West. Green’s continued growth in the season is worth tracking.

Kelly Olynyk

As mentioned at the top, the Utah Jazz are 10-3, the only 10-win team in the West and the first team in the league to reach 10 wins. Lauri Markkanen looks like an All-Star and player the Jazz should prioritize in their rebuild. Jordan Clarkson is playing the best basketball of his career. The team is cohesive. It’s deep. There’s shooting and ball-handling across the board. This isn’t the best team in the West in a playoff series, but they’re putting together replicable, consistent, good play. It’s awesome.

Kelly Olynyk has been central to their success, even if he’s not the first player you’d shout out in the aggregate.

Much of Utah’s offense flows from the elbows and the perimeter, utilizing the shooting gravity of their bigs and quality decision-making they possess as DHO threats. Olynyk stirs the offense and influences it without routinely being the one finishing plays.

He toes the lines of legality as a screener, always moving juuuust subtly enough. He’s evasive in how he screens, sometimes opting to outright bulldoze, or at times dancing like a ballerina, flipping multiple times to pester a defender into inopportune lanes. Olynyk is top-notch at opening up shooters. In turn, he can dive off DHO keepers. He can playmake and score from the post. He can even run inverted pick and rolls well due to his handle and touch.

He is the turnkey that unlocks the upper percentile this offense has hit.

Part of me never wants to see this Jazz team disassembled, and the other part of me thinks about the multitude of contending teams that would benefit from his services. A reunion in Miami makes so much sense for either side. I can envision few players who fit what Golden State needs while also making them better like he could. For now, there’s no place he makes more sense in than the best team in the West.

Jerami Grant

There have been few, if any, teams more enjoyable to watch in the early season than the Portland Trail Blazers. As my colleague Jackson Frank has astutely noted, a team that was starved for wings in the past few seasons is now teeming with wings and versatile forwards throughout the roster.

Chauncey Billups’ defensive schemes make more sense with this season’s talent, running zone frequently, pressing early to slow opposition, and playing extremely connected on that end. Damian Lillard is calling out coverages and competing. Portland will close games and employ frequent lineups without a true center on the court. Their defensive activity is infectious, and their status as the fifth-best defense in the league feels sustainable.

They’re still finding their offensive form, but make no mistake, this Portland team is good. Lillard looks unhampered and back to his superstar ways. Let’s highlight someone else: Jerami Grant has been electric, and an inarguably perfect fit for this team, their playstyle, and what they needed.

While I doubt the 44 percent from deep holds, the process of Grant’s scoring and overall flow within the offense has been stellar and not something I foresaw. Most of his offense is coming off of his catch-and-drive game, something drastically improved during his time with the Pistons.

We still see some ball stopping, but the blend of isolations and face-up scoring has been a necessary addition to this team, as his ability to get to the line has been crucial to the team drawing free throws at the fourth-highest clip in the NBA.

He’s been dynamic as a rover for the defense, helping backline and at the rim. He’s been incredibly active in one of the better zone defenses I’ve seen employed in recent memory.

Grant has never really been a “go get that guy and stop him” type of defender. He’s more of a player who can guard a variety of archetypes adequately and add more value through his off-ball ranginess. Portland has put him perfectly in their defense as a multifaceted events creator. Would he make my All-Defense team at the moment? Probably not, but that I’d have to consider it is a testament to how stellar he’s been in his role.

This is the best version of Jerami Grant we’ve seen in the NBA. He knows what he needs to do in a defined role, but also has room for the creativity and on-ball chops he’s toyed with the past few seasons. Any doubts you had about what Grant could contribute in a winning role as an impactful player should be reconsidered.

The Black Eyed Peas released their new album Elevation today (November 11). The group led by will.i.am teamed up with multiple Latin acts like Shakira, Anitta, Daddy Yankee, and Anuel AA. Perhaps most notably, though, Black Eyed Peas’ latest addition J. Rey Soul joins the group for “Double D’Z.” On that one, will.i.am’s lyrics are pulled from Adam Levine’s alleged DMs with model Sumner Stroh; The refrain goes, “Holy f*ck, holy f*ckin’ f*ck / The body of yours is absurd.”

The Black Eyed Peas first dabbled in the Latin market with their 2020 album Translation. Taboo, who is of Mexican descent, is the group’s link to the Latin music scene. That LP featured the global hits like “Ritmo” with J Balvin and “Girl Like Me” with Shakira. Now they are taking that sound to the next level with the aptly-titled Elevation.

Shakira regrouped with the Black Eyed Peas for the stellar hit “Don’t You Worry” featuring David Guetta. The music video for their feel-good anthem has amassed over 114 million views on YouTube. The group also recently released the video for “Simply The Best” featuring Anitta and Dominican dembow star El Alfa.

Other Latin acts who feature on Translation include reggaeton pioneer Daddy Yankee in the lofty “Baila Contigo” and Anuel AA in “Muevelo,” which features a house beat that’s similar to classic “Pump Up The Jam.” Ozuna and Nicky Jam are also part of the mix. Former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger also features on the dance track “No One Loves Me.”

Elevation is out now via Sony Music Entertainment. Listen to it here.

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

Back in September, Warner Bros. Discovery continued its track of roller coaster decisions by announcing that a Constantine sequel starring Keanu Reeves is finally in the works and with original director Francis Lawrence at the helm. It was a surprising move, not just because of the state of flux with WB Discovery’s DC Comics properties, but because a reboot from J.J. Abrams was in the works. (Obviously, that is no longer the case.)

As for what happened, in a nutshell, Keanu spoke. According to Lawrence, things started moving very quickly behind the scenes after Reeves answered a question from Stephen Colbert about which character he’d love to play again. When he said “John Constantine,” the crowd went wild and that got the ball rolling. Keanu literally breathed life into the project.

“People finally saw that and went, ‘Oh, wait, maybe you guys can go and make the Constantine sequel.’ So it was sort of a variety of factors,” Lawrence told Collider before elaborating on one of the other major roadblocks: Rights issues.

All the DC [properties], because Vertigo is part of DC, that sort of like the control of those properties got complicated with Warner Bros. with DC, with JJ [Abrams]’s deal, you know, all those kinds of things. There’s a lot of complicating factors. So it was never Akiva, and Keanu, and I [who had] to be sort of convinced to do it. It was really trying to figure out how we can get some sort of control over the Constantine character again.

The Constantine sequel does not have a release window at the time of this writing, and Reeves is currently busy balancing his other major franchise: The ever-expanding John Wick universe. However, he did find time for a new Matrix movie and, given his passion for playing John Constantine again, we’re guessing the project will happen sooner rather than later. Keanu is that powerful.

(Via Collider)

While Jamie Lee Curtis has effectively been closing the door on one of her famous franchises (which she swears she is done with for real this time), there is one that she is keeping open, and that’s the potential for a Freaky Friday sequel. Curtis has been talking about it a lot lately, and she even admitted that she brought up the idea to her big mouse boss at Disney.

While we have known for a while that Curtis is on board with another Freaky installment, we hadn’t heard from her co-star Lindsay Lohan, who just returned to acting after a lengthy hiatus. Luckily for us, Lohan is also excited about this potential sequel.

Lohan stopped by The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to discuss her new Netflix holiday movie when the topic of a potential second Freaky Friday came up. It seems like she had already spoken to Curtis about the idea. “We did speak about it, yeah,” Lohan admitted. But did they use their special texting code????

The actress explained that Curtis had messaged her about a potential reunion while she was at work. “I was on set filming at the time, and [when] Jamie Lee Curtis writes you, you just get excited and distracted! Immediately, so I had to bring myself down to Earth and be like, ‘I’m on set, I have to focus.’ Then she said Freaky Friday 2, and I got more excited.” While she wouldn’t confirm anything, she did tell Fallon that both Lohan and Curtis are on board, saying “We would both be into it!”

As for a Mean Girls sequel, Lohan believes that’s “up to Tina Fey.” Considering that Fey’s last movie credit was “Vacumming Mom (Voice Only)” in 2021’s Free Guy, maybe she has some free time on her hands to write a quick draft.

(Via Collider)

In more news that reads like SNL-level satire, the guy who draws those Dilbert cartoons has finally turned on Donald Trump.

Why this should matter, we’re not sure. Obviously, it makes for a really funny headline, and it’s likely to piss Trump off considering that the Dilbert Guy — whose real name is Scott Adams — is just one of many former Trump fans now jumping ship after a disappointing Midterms performance. Adams’ day job is drawing cartoons that depict various aspects of office life via a main worker-bee named Dilbert. If you’ve never heard of him, or his drawings, it’s because they exist in these things called newspapers, which are rapidly going extinct.

Adams became a Trump stan sometime in the last few years. He’s since tweeted some controversial opinions about mass shootings, women’s rights, etc. But apparently, the final straw in his idolization of Trump came when the twice-impeached president attacked Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin via his Truth Social account.

This isn’t the first time the Dilbert Guy has publicly opposed Trump’s rhetoric while still professing to be a fan, but it seems like Trump’s insistence on alienating members of his party by resorting to crass name-calling and launching racially-charged barbs was too much for the guy who once suggested that if parents were worried their sons might become mass shooters, they should just kill them.

(Via RawStory)

In our timeline, Grease heartthrob Danny Zuko is played by John Travolta. But in one of those multiverses that Marvel is always going on about, one-half of Rydell High’s second favorite couple (Rizzo and Kenickie are #1, obviously) is portrayed by Henry Winkler.

The Barry star appeared on this week’s episode of Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?, where he discussed his post-Happy Days career. “It was so bad that not only could I not find work,” he said, “but I was sitting at my desk at Paramount and I literally thought, am I ever going to find anything with as much impact as the Fonz? How will I know? Will anybody ever ask me? I’m not getting any offers.” Winkler did get an offer, however: the co-lead role alongside Olivia Newton-John in Grease. Which he turned down.

“Are you a damn fool?” Wallace asked him. Harsh but fair, considering Grease became the highest-grossing musical ever at the time. “Yes. I am,” Winkler agreed. “Because I only realized, oh, afterwards, years afterwards. I thought I played the Fonz, I don’t want to do it again. I’m going to submit. It has already happened. I’m already typecast. I should have just shut up and had a really good time making that movie.” He added:

“Now, I go home. I say no. And I have a Diet Coke. John Travolta goes home and has done the movie and buys a plane.”

Aw. Cheer up, buddy. You won an Emmy for Barry, and you did great work on Children’s Hospital, Arrested Development, and Parks and Recreation. Besides, maybe you don’t have plane money, but Travolta wants what you have (fish pics).

Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? is on HBO Max now, and airs on CNN on Sundays.

With Yellowstone Season 5 set to unleash frontier vengeance this weekend, creator Taylor Sheridan has been making the interview rounds to promote a series that, frankly, doesn’t need a whole lot of help. Despite the advent of streaming, Yellowstone has been one of the rare basic cable hits. The show routinely brings in millions of viewers who tune in each week to see what fresh hell John Dutton (Kevin Costner) will exact on anyone reckless enough to come for his Montana ranch.

The show’s neo-western setting and heavily armed ranch hands have made it a pop culture juggernaut for conservative viewers, but if you tell Sheridan that the show is a Republican drama made for Republicans, he’ll literally laugh. Via The Atlantic:

Sheridan insists that Yellowstone is not a “red-state show.” “They refer to it as ‘the conservative show’ or ‘the Republican show’ or ‘the red-state Game of Thrones,’ ” he told me. “And I just sit back laughing. I’m like, ‘Really?’ The show’s talking about the displacement of Native Americans and the way Native American women were treated and about corporate greed and the gentrification of the West, and land-grabbing. That’s a red-state show?”

As The Atlantic notes, Yellowstone‘s politics don’t easily fit into one box or the other. Despite the seemingly conservative staples like guns, a yearning for “traditional” values, and masculine violence, the show also grapples with anti-capitalist themes as well as environmental destruction. According to Sheridan, this ambiguity is deliberate and part of his dedication to “responsible storytelling” that shows the “moral consequences of certain behaviors and decisions.”

“When I stepped into that world, I wanted there to be real consequences,” Sheridan told The Atlantic. “I wanted to never, ever shy away from, This was the price.”

Yellowstone Season 5 premieres November 13 on the Paramount Network.

(Via The Atlantic)

The Indianapolis Colts have a new head coach. After the team decided to fire Frank Reich amid a disappointing 2022 campaign, Indianapolis decided to make a decision that could charitably be described as out-of-the-box, bringing former offensive lineman Jeff Saturday on board in an interim role. Saturday, who was an analyst for ESPN at the time, has never coached in college or the NFL in any capacity.

The decision came under a whole lot of scrutiny, and on Friday morning, former Cleveland Browns offensive lineman and current NFL Network analyst Joe Thomas unloaded on the decision. While citing his time in the league and his understanding of how little time a head coach has to do anything other than devote their lives to their team, Thomas went as far as to say that opting to hire Saturday is “one of the most disrespectful things I’ve ever seen in my entire life to the commitment, the lifestyle, and the experience that it takes to be an NFL coach, any coach, much less the head coach of the Indianapolis Football Coach.”

Thomas pointed out, specifically, how infrequently former Browns coach Rob Chudzinski would see his children one or two times a week, and that becoming a head coach is “not something that you can just show up for.”

“When you’re a coach in the NFL, you do not have a life outside of football,” Thomas said. “Why do you think coaches never retire? What’re they gonna do? They haven’t developed any other parts of their life. They don’t have hobbies, they don’t have a lot of other friends outside of their football world, because they live football.”

Thomas then focused on one specific part of the press conference where Jim Irsay announced Saturday is coming on board, as Irsay said that he is happy that Saturday has no prior experience because “he hasn’t learned the fear that’s in this league because it’s tough for all of our coaches. They’re afraid. They go to analytics and it gets difficult. I mean, he doesn’t have all that. He doesn’t have that fear and there was no other candidate.” Thomas, understandably, found this silly.

“It was the most egregious thing I can ever remember happening in the NFL,” Thomas said. “And I went 1-31 my last two years in the NFL.”

Guillermo del Toro’s contributions to popular culture can’t be either overstated or underestimated. Across four decades, 11 (soon to be 12) feature films and several multi-episode series — the Tales of Arcadia trilogy, The Strain, and the recently well-received Netflix horror anthology, Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities — del Toro has bridged the once sizable gap between mainstream audiences and the horror genre through a singular mix of fairy tales, dark fantasy, and, of course, monsters in all of their grotesque beauty.

With del Toro’s latest effort, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, about to hit movie theaters and streaming, there’s no better time to look back at the director’s astonishing career and weigh in on some of his best works.

Cronos (1993)

In 1993, a then 29-year-old Guillermo del Toro ushered his first film into creation. Cronos was a supernatural/family drama where the first-time filmmaker displayed a remarkably assured command of tone, craft, and theme. The film centered on the heartfelt story of a grandfather, Jesús Gris (Federico Luppi), the unconditional love he shares with his preteen granddaughter, Aurora (Tamara Shanath), a medieval, life-extending device, and the machinations of an aging multimillionaire, Dieter de la Guardia (Claudio Brook), and his boorish fail-son, Angel (Ron Perlman, del Toro’s soon-to-be frequent muse). Dying and desperate, the elder de la Guardia attempts to obtain the one object his wealth can’t buy (i.e., more life) by any means necessary. Combined with stunningly repulsive practical effects, shot through with existential humor, and layered thematically, Cronos was more than just a promise of things to come. It was a promise already fulfilled.

Mimic (1997)

Mimic, del Toro’s first film shot in the U.S. with an all-English-language cast, was hampered by rumors of studio interference that marred the filmmaker’s vision and a story focused on a new species of human-sized insects hellbent on expanding their territory up from the sewers to the city streets. Setting a precedent hinted at in Cronos, no one, not even the most innocent child, is safe from the ravenous monsters that dwell in the dark subterranean spaces underneath the city here.

Capable of cleverly camouflaging themselves to appear human-like from a distance, del Toro’s creations played on our instinctive fears of the non-human and the natural world turning against us. With influences ranging from the oversized radioactive horrors of the 1950s to the timely eco-horrors of the 1970s, Mimic remains an essential, if flawed, entry in del Toro’s filmography.

Blade II (2002)

The rare sequel that improves on its predecessor on practically every level, Blade II borrows inspiration from James Cameron’s Aliens with an extended ambush sequence set in the dank, dark underground sewers of a city. The sequence pits a group of non-traditional, cooler-than-cool vampire hunters (they’re both vampires and hunters) against a ravenous swarm of feral mutant vampires. The vampire-hunters have all kinds of high-tech weapons on their side, the feral mutants just their distended jaws, physical strength, and cunning. Not surprisingly, the vampire-hunters — Blade and one or two others excepted — don’t stand a chance, underscoring a key idea explored in Blade II, the hubris of current-gen vampires, and their likely fall when confronted with a new apex predator. With a katana-wielding Snipes as the laconic, stoic title character, pre-MCU comic-book adaptations simply don’t get any better.

The Devil’s Backbone (2001)

Del Toro’s subsequent film, the Spanish-language The Devil’s Backbone (“El Espinazo del Diablo”) foregrounds one of his lifelong obsessions, the Spanish Civil War that left the Francoists — fascists and authoritarians by another name — in power over all of Spain for more than four decades. Set at an orphanage for boys during that period, The Devil’s Backbone nominally follows the newest addition, Carlos (Fernando Tielve) a young boy unceremoniously dropped off by friends of his father, an anti-Francoist Republican. While they depart, embracing all but certain death on the losing side of a war, Carlos quickly befriends several of the other boys. Before long, however, a vision of a dying or dead boy, Santi (Junio Valverde) begins to haunt Carlos.

Despite the ghost story trappings, del Toro isn’t interested in the usual jump scares associated with the sub-genre, choosing instead to go deeper while examining the shape and nature of trauma and how it can not only affect multiple generations but warp the minds of survivors too. Heavy on symbolism, The Devil’s Backbone might just be del Toro’s most lyrical, poetic work and a clear masterpiece.

Hellboy (2004) / Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

Returning to the comic book movie genre, del Toro teamed up with artist-writer Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy, and Perlman, as the title character. The spawn of demons brought into our world to destroy it, Hellboy instead becomes a superhero, thanks to the unconditional love and acceptance from his adopted father, Professor Trevor Bruttenholm (John Hurt), and the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.). A cigar-smoking, wisecracking, cat-lover, Hellboy carries a big fist (literally) but has an equally big heart as he pushes back against the forces of evil and their attempts to usher in the apocalypse.

It’s easy to see what brought del Toro to Mignola’s Hell-born character: Hellboy represents an irresistible trope, the misunderstood monster, feared and sometimes hated for their otherness, but who never lets prejudice or bias dictate his actions: Even when he kvetches about it, Hellboy always does the right thing. Which, in Hellboy’s case, usually involves punching — lots and lots of punching.

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Completing a loose trilogy that began with Cronos and continued with The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth finds del Toro returning to the Spanish Civil War and the authoritarian violence and brutality that followed General Francisco Franco’s victory in the war over the Republican Loyalists and their allies. For Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a new home means a new stepfather, Captain Vidal (Sergi López), and a new half-sibling carried by her pregnant mother. Flipping the script on old-school fairy tales, Vidal stands in for the “evil stepmother” trope. Here, however, he doesn’t just mistreat Ofelia and her mother. He’s a mini-dictator, butchering one-time Francoist opponents, real or imagined, with virtual impunity. Of the many monsters wearing human faces in del Toro’s filmography, Vidal represents the most terrifying, in large part because there’s nothing exaggerated or hyperbolic about him. He’s fascism distilled into a pure malevolent presence and Ofelia is his exact opposite, innocent, naive, and desperate to escape a stifling, suffocating existence.

She does this via a set of magnificently interwoven scenes set in a beautiful, beautifully dangerous world filled with fairy tale characters, some benevolent, some, like her stepfather, malevolent, and others, like in the real world, ambiguous in their intentions and actions. Pan’s Labyrinth builds to a memorably bittersweet ending, suggesting an escape into fantasy and fiction might be preferable to a life of repression and oppression.

Pacific Rim (2013)

Before the MonsterVerse was a gleam in a producer’s eye, del Toro stepped into the kaiju space, pitting human-powered robots (mechas) against fearsome, Tojo-inspired monsters from the literal deep. As with most kaiju entries, human characters and their petty, interpersonal concerns take a back seat to rollicking wrestling matches between del Toro’s monsters and robots. While the inspirations are obvious — anime and Tojo, respectively — del Toro brings his customary obsession with detail. Everything from the suits the human pilots wear to the interiors of their individual cockpits, the battle-scarred, multi-functional giant robots (Jaegers), and the seemingly endless series of monsters are richly rendered. If nothing else, Pacific Rim represents del Toro at his most childlike, revisiting the animated robots and man-in-suit monsters of his youth, an innocent preteen with a hyperactive imagination playing with his favorite toys, albeit computer-generated toys and a $200 million-dollar budget.

Crimson Peak (2015)

Misunderstood and dismissed on its release seven years ago, Crimson Peak, a sumptuously made gothic romance, deserves critical reevaluation. The supposed central mystery wasn’t, in fact, much of a mystery (frustrating some), while the horror, such as it was, revealed a del Toro uninterested in the usual mechanics of the genre, instead, focusing on set pieces structured around the central character, Edith Cushing. Mia Wasikowska plays the young heiress and wannabe novelist at the dawn of the 20th century who becomes fatally entangled with a fortune-hunting brother-and-sister couple, Thomas (Tom Hiddleston) and Lucille Sharpe (Jessica Chastain).

The supernatural inevitably make a forceful, permanent appearance, but like The Devil’s Backbone, the ghosts in Crimson Peak are less a frightening presence or menace than the embodiment of history, trauma, and grief. Here, the ghosts also function as both observers and participants, warning Edith of Lucille and Thomas’s duplicitous motives and their plans for a future that doesn’t include her except as a distant, fading memory.

The Shape of Water (2017)

With 2017’s The Shape of Water, del Toro joined longtime friends Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity) and Alejandro G. Iñárritu (The Revenant, Birdman) as Mexican-born Best Director winners. The Shape of Water returned del Toro to one of his foundational obsessions, Universal Monsters (specifically the Gill-Man), grafting the unnamed and captive water dweller (Doug Jones) with an ambitiously layered Cold War allegory and an unlikely, if nonetheless poignant, romance between the kidnapped amphibian and a mute cleaner, Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins). Here del Toro seemingly does the impossible, transporting audiences to a half-fictional, half-real past to present a cautionary tale about how governments, regardless of their stated political ideology, suppress what they don’t understand and exploit what they do, often with the best of intentions and the worst results.

Nightmare Alley (2021)

Not a horror film per se, del Toro’s most recent work, Nightmare Alley — an ultra-stylish adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 critique of class, capitalism, and carnival life — finds del Toro indulging his obsession with the cynical, amoral, greedy takers, losers, and outsiders present in film noir, an indifferent universe, and the hellish consequences that follow when they try to change their socio-economic position. Nightmare Alley centers on Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a carnival worker-turned-celebrity-medium with insatiable appetites. A moral black hole, Carlisle sees himself as naturally superior to the marks he manipulates for personal gain. Unfortunately for Carlisle, he doesn’t realize he’s in a noir and that Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett), a psychiatrist to the city‘s elite, is the most fatal of femme fatales. Like (or better than) Carlisle, she’s an expert manipulator. Probably the bleakest film in del Toro’s filmography, Nightmare Alley proves — as if any additional proof is needed— that del Toro prefers the company of fictional, fantastical monsters to the reality of human-made ones.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)

A longtime passion project, del Toro’s version of the classic tale utilizes a mix of old-school, stop-motion animation techniques and modern technology. A-level talent comprises the voice cast, including Ewan McGregor as the voice of Sebastian J. Cricket, David Bradley as the voice of Geppetto, Tilda Swinton as the Wood Sprite who brings Geppetto’s creation to life, and longtime del Toro regular Ron Perlman in a small, but possibly pivotal role, as Podesta, a fascistic government official. Del Toro and his collaborators promise to take the familiar story of Pinocchio into the kind of monster-filled dark fantasy that has become a hallmark of del Toro’s career as a filmmaker.

What started as a healing exercise for late singer Aaron Carter, his memoir has begun to cause harm to his surviving family and friends. After tributes poured in, including heartfelt messages from rapper The Game, former actress girlfriend Hilary Duff, and his brother Nick Carter, they are now battling it out with the book’s publisher to delay its release.

Despite not having many contributions from the late pop star, NBC Bay Area confirms the book (titled Aaron Carter: An Incomplete Story Of An Incomplete Life) will be released as early as next Tuesday, November 15. President and publisher of Ballast Books, Andy Symonds, who serves as the book’s co-author, stands by the decision to move forward with the project.

In a statement, Symonds said, “Aaron was an open book during the writing process. It’s a tragic irony that his autobiography will never include all his stories, thoughts, hopes, and dreams as he intended.”

Duff expressed her anger over the decision, stating, “There’s a publisher that seems to be recklessly pushing a book out to capitalize on this tragedy without taking [the] appropriate time or care to fact-check the validity of his work.”

She continued, “To water down Aaron’s life story to what seems to be unverified clickbait for profit is disgusting. In no way do I condone shedding any light on what is so obviously an uninformed, heartless money grab.”

Nick Carter hasn’t responded to the news of the book’s release yet. However, Aaron’s former manager Taylor Helgeson issued a comment on the matter, stating, “In the few short days following our dear friend’s passing, we have been trying to grieve and process while simultaneously having to deal with obscenely disrespectful and unauthorized releases including an album, a single, and now it seems a book.”

Fans of the former child star have expressed that they will not support the book.