GoneTrending

Show endings are always a tricky prospect. Sometimes you get a Mad Men. Other times you get a Game of Thrones. What will the last of Better Call Saul be? Will it mirror the capper for its parent show, Breaking Bad, which satisfied just about everyone? If you had to go by how confident creator Vince Gilligan is about it — or how much of a gut-punch its penultimate episode was — it might even be better than that.

Gilligan was present for a virtual panel at this year’s Television’s Critics Association to-do, where he seemed barely able to conceal how stoked he was for everyone to see what he and his team cooked up. “It is awesome, I can’t wait for people to see it,” he gushed. As Consequence reporter Liz Shannon Miller pointed out, that’s a very different tack than you see with, say, Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who announced they were going to spend the finale on a tropical island that doesn’t have internet.

It better be good, because this is it for the world of Breaking Bad. “You can’t keep putting all your money on Red 21,” Gilligan said. “I feel like we probably pushed it doing a spinoff to Breaking Bad [but] I could not be more happy with the results. Then I did El Camino and I’m very proud of that too. But I think I’m starting to sense you’ve got to know when to leave the party, you don’t want to be the guy with a lampshade on your head.”

In other words, that’s all, folks. “I don’t have any plans right now to do anything more in this universe,” he added. “I know I probably gave the same answer at the end of Breaking Bad. I gotta prove to myself that I got something else in me. I’m not a one trick pony, that’s what I’m hoping.”

Indeed, Gilligan’s already out there shopping some mystery show that evidently has nothing to do with Walt or Jesse or Jimmy/Saul or Gus or Mike or Kim or whoever. In the meantime, Better Call Saul’s final episode airs on Monday, August 15.

(Via Deadline)

After disabling her Twitter account earlier this year, Cardi B returned to social media a few weeks later with a more restrained approach, seemingly only interacting with fan accounts’ positive posts and only posting the occasional promo or cute baby pic. Now, it seems she’s taken to sharing affirmations, tweeting out a relatively straightforward photo in casual clothes with the caption, “Took a picture in this house I want to buy ….to remind myself to go harder …watch me get it.”

Her husband Offset, who has traditionally been way less online than she has over the years, even dusted off his account to help her manifest her goal. “Damn you really want this house,” he replied with a quote tweet. “Don’t worry we gone get it !!”

It certainly seems the couple is in a better place than they were earlier in their marriage. While the first year or so after their nuptials were fraught with fights, accusations of infidelity, and multiple(!) divorce threats, these days, they’ve been putting on pretty public displays of affection, from Offset cracking fond jokes about Cardi’s cooking to Cardi giving a seductive pole dance to Offset while on vacation. They even have plans to record an album together. They might not be the next Bey-Z (yet), but if ‘Set’s been spending his days in marital bliss, it’s probably no wonder Quavo and Takeoff are out being single (and recording singles) without him.

Don’t you dare put on a ’90s alt-rock-focused without Everclear and Candlebox in the mix! How can fans feel true nostalgic apathy if they don’t hear songs like “Santa Monica” and “Far Behind”? Apparently, this is the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back for a Southern California music festival warmly titled “Flannel Nation.”

In an Instagram post, Everclear indicated that Flannel Nation organizers, “…Do not have the adequate means to provide the level of experience our fans expect and deserve while attending an Everclear show.” Adding that, “With this in consideration, we have decided to pull out of the festival.”

Flannel Nation was supposed to take place on Saturday, August 13th at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, CA, but now as Rolling Stone reports, there will be no more swimming past the breakers to watch the world die for fans of Everclear, Candlebox, or other acts that were slated to appear like Sugar Ray, Soul Asylum, Filter, Cracker, Fastball, Sponge, Star Zero and others. Although Everclear, fronted by singer Art Alexakis, said that they’re working on a contingency plan: “Please stay tuned in the coming weeks as we will be announcing a proper Los Angeles performance where we plan to deliver the type of performance that exceeds our fans’ expectations.”

In a Facebook post, Flannel Nation organizers issued an apology along with the news of the cancellation. “We regret to announce that due to ongoing problems and logistical setbacks, putting on Flannel Nation as intended has become infeasible, therefore we are forced to make the tough decision to cancel this weekend’s event,” the post said.

And if you were planning to go and were hyped to see StarZero, the band commented on Flannel Nation’s post, saying that: “We will catch you next time. Positive vibes to everyone affected by the cancellation. We will be trying to find a show somewhere Saturday night for anyone who’s in the area of orange county. Stay posted to our feed if interested.”

Rock on guys. Rock on.

What a time to be alive. We have cars that drive themselves, stunning art created by artificial intelligence and my personal favorite—air fryers! It’s a reality worthy of George Jetson, who may or may not have been born this very year, according to some Twitter theorists.

Giphy

But still, even with these modern marvels, there are some experiences that need no improvement … even if they do take twice as long.

A Reddit user recently asked the online forum to share one thing they “still preferred to do the old-fashioned way, regardless of technology.”

Unsurprisingly, a main theme in people’s answers had to do with “old-fashioned” activities having a tangible quality to them. Activities that require touch, taste, smell … those things that make us feel human. Sure, efficiency and convenience are great, but feeling alive is pretty great too.

Here are 17 of the best answers that might have you going back to Team Analog:

---

1. Physical board games

“Most of the app versions of the games I like aren’t that great. Plus, it’s more fun to play with someone.” – @Junkolm

2. Photos

“There’s something satisfying and nostalgic about seeing the physical photos. I have my favorites displayed in frames, so I can see them every day. Makes me happy.” – macaronsforeveryone

3. Reading a book

“Love to have a book where I can turn the pages.” – @Jonsmile

4. Drawing

“I never really got the hang of digital art. It’s much easier and more satisfying for me to have all of the tactile input from my work.” – @WitheredFlowers

5. Buttons for cars

“I refuse to buy a car that only uses a touch screen for everything. Much safer to not have to fiddle with a touch screen while driving.” – @Ghertomp

6. Physical menus at restaurants

“I’m with the boomers on this one.” – @cptfuzzybeard95

7. Arts and crafts

“In particular, sewing. Hand sewing is peaceful, quiet, portable, and just overall more satisfying. Plus I get better bragging rights on the finished product.” – @carinavet

8. CDs

“I hate streaming music…I like having ownership of what I listen to.” – @jbnagis

9. Notes

“I will typically use index cards because they are not as easy to ‘fly away’ or get crumpled or lost. But hey…. that’s just me!” – @NoBSforGma

10. Planners

“I am 100% team paper planner. It’s so much easier to flip to a monthly spread and see all my meetings, etc. at once than having to open every damn day on my phone to see what’s there. I collect fountain pens, so any excuse to hand write is a good excuse.” – @eventualguide0

11. Driving a manual car

“No matter how advanced and on point automatic cars are, controlling a manual stick is just so much fun.” – @CoolMaster52

12. Cookbooks

“My grandma always had a library of them and I enjoy the nostalgia of going through them. I still buy them partly because I like the photographs of ingredients and finished meals. It also bugs me that most online recipes have a really long story with a bunch of nonsense that I don’t need. Plus I like to dog ear the pages.” – @GlassAndPaint

13. Plain ol’ watches

“It’s so easy just to glance at your wrist instead of fiddling around with your phone to get the time.” – @biggirliespants

14. Growing food 

“I try to raise, grow, hunt, and forage as much as my own food as possible. It’s expensive and time consuming but the result for my mental health is priceless. I know my scale isn’t possible for everyone but I highly recommend at least growing something from seed to plate, the sense of pride and accomplishment you’ll feel is hard to describe.” – @ElJamoNator

15. Making popcorn

“I still make it in a pot on the stove. And it’s 100% better that way.” – @leaky_eddie

16. Camping 

“A tent and a fire is so much more peaceful to me than having most of life’s conveniences in your trailer.” – @Ginger-Beefcake

17. Non-online dating

When young R&B star Halle Bailey was announced as the star of Disney’s upcoming live-action remake of the beloved animated 1989 classic The Little Mermaid, not everyone was as enthused about the update to the Disney Renaissance favorite as her co-stars. To put it plainly, the subset of genre fans who always complain loudly whenever a minor change is made to a character’s skin color or gender really came for Halle, denouncing her casting as a case of “race-swapping” gone overboard — despite the fact that the main character Ariel’s race is in no way important to the story of her trading her voice for legs.

And unfortunately, due to the ever-pervasive nature of social media, those complaints made their way back to the actress herself. However, she was undeterred by the criticism, as she told Variety in a long-form feature published today. This was thanks mainly to her grandparents, who encouraged her in the face of the racist #NotMyAriel movement.

“It was an inspiring and beautiful thing to hear their words of encouragement,” she said, “telling me, ‘You don’t understand what this is doing for us, for our community, for all the little Black and brown girls who are going to see themselves in you.’” Their words helped put things into perspective for her: “What that would have done for me, how that would have changed my confidence, my belief in myself, everything,” she explained. “Things that seem so small to everyone else, it’s so big to us.”

Elsewhere in the feature, Halle recounted how the time spent away from her sister Chloe while filming during 2020, the height of COVID lockdowns, affected her. “She couldn’t visit me; everything was on lockdown,” she said. “It was that agony, that pain of being pulled away from something that’s like your arm, so I was pulling from that.”

The Little Mermaid is set for release on May 23, 2023.

Even though Disney+ keeps hitting subscriber highs while Netflix feels the struggle, there’s no reason why the streaming home of the MCU and Star Wars can’t benefit from using ad dollars to keep cranking out original TV shows. That’s especially the case because Baby Yoda’s a diva and it ain’t cheap to keep that kid in macarons, and someone needs to be paid to write the inevitable Grogu/Frank Castle crossover.

In all seriousness, though, Disney+ is fast approaching the three-year mark, and they’re switching things up, so they can keep staying fresh. Rather than outright raise prices, though, they’re giving people the option to stay at the same $7.99 current monthly price and watch ads in the middle of The Empire Strikes Back (under the new Disney+ Basic plan), or pay a few dollars more to stay ad-free at $10.99 per month (a plan that will be known as Disney+ Premium). The new structure shall begin on December 8, and Variety has more on how many ads, exactly, that one should plan to see:

Disney+ Basic will launch with about four minutes of ads per hour. It will start with 15- and 30-second spots but will expand to a “full suite of ad products” over time…The strategy appears aimed at mitigating Disney+ subscriber irritation over the price hike on the no-ads plan — and the inevitable cancelations.

Notably, the ads will stay family friendly, which won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but is better kiddos inadvertently seeing inappropriate stuff when parents walk out of the room. And let’s get real, there’s no way to tell who’s watching what based upon title, so we can all deal with child-appropriate ads, even while watching Alien. If you’re a bundler, here’s some more confusion to sort through:

[A]s of Oct. 10, Disney will increase the price of Hulu with ads, from $6.99 to $7.99 per month, while the ad-free tier will go from $12.99 to $14.99 per month. The Disney Bundle in the U.S. (Hulu with ads, Disney+ no ads, ESPN+) will go from $13.99 to $14.99 per month; the premium version of the bundle (Hulu no ads, Disney+ no ads, ESPN+) will remain at $19.99 per month.

Good luck keeping it all straight, but it’s still better than ending up with an overpriced cable plan where you can’t pick and choose your poisons.

(Via Variety)

As more details emerge from the FBI “raid” of Mar-a-Lago, which is already being downgraded to a “low-key” search, a new report claims that White House officials were growing increasingly concerned with Donald Trump‘s habit of carting around documents in cardboard boxes. Following his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, top staff members realized the issue could easily become a concern as Trump was showing no signs of complying with the Presidential Records Act.

More worryingly, nobody knew what the heck Trump was even carting around. Via The New York Times:

For many months before he left office, Mr. Trump would tell aides to bring documents up to the residence for him while he was in the Oval Office, and they complied, but there was no process in place, meaning that officials whose job it was to keep track of paperwork did not always know exactly what had gone up there, according to people familiar with the events.

By the end of his presidency, and as Mr. Trump was fighting to overturn his election loss, some of his aides were concerned with preserving the work of the office itself. His habit of transporting material around in cardboard boxes, with either a personal aide or a valet carrying them, was well known, but the contents were not always clear.

According to the Times, White House staff held meetings on how to get Trump to surrender his boxes, but it’s unclear if he was ever asked or “officials simply did not take the issue to him.” Clearly, the problem has escalated as evidenced by the search warrant served on Mar-a-Lago. Newsweek recently reported that an informant supplied the FBI with information on which documents Trump had and where to find them.

As for why the sudden concern over the documents that the National Archives has tried to retrieve from Trump since he left office, Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice are remaining silent.

(Via The New York Times)

One of our favorite emerging acts of the year, Domi & JD Beck have been on a tear since their debut album, Not Tight, came out last month. Jointly released via Anderson .Paak’s Apeshit Records along with Blue Note Records, the album features appearances from Anderson .Paak, Snoop Dogg, Herbie Hancock, Thundercat, and more. And now for the jazzy hip-hop instrumentalist pair’s latest trick, they’ve delivered a rousing NPR Tiny Desk Concert, where they quite literally, get their flowers.

Recorded in NPR’s Washington D.C. studio (as opposed to the “at home” Tiny Desk variety that’s become popular in the post-COVID era), Bob Boilen’s desk is adorned with an array of colorful flowers that are surrounding Domi on the keys and JD Beck on the drums. Beck drapes a towel over his snare to muffle the sound a bit and make it come across more intimately. Domi plays a double-stacked Nord keyboard setup as they course through “Not Tight,” “Smile,” “What Up,” and even flash their vocal chops on “U Don’t Have To Rob Me.”

And it’s not just their dexterous instrumentals that are once again on full display in this session. But the pair’s quirky disposition is too. “Thank you for coming to our Tiny Desk. It’s pretty sick to be here,” Domi says with a giggle. The rest is pure heat.

Watch Domi & JD Beck’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert above.

As Better Call Saul heartbreakingly comes to a close next week, it’s time for Breaking Bad writer, creator, director, and producer Vince Gilligan to set his sights on something else. Maybe a Kim Wexler spinoff? A Mike Ehrmantraut Philly-based cop drama prequel? A Holly-centric teen slasher comedy-drama a la Pretty Little Liars? Whatever it is, it will probably be very good, and it seems like it’s already in the works.

According to reports, Gilligan already has a plan for his upcoming series, which will come from Sony Pictures TV. The series is allegedly closer aligned with Gilligan’s work on X-Files, not because of aliens, but more because of its take on humanity and the human condition.

The untitled series is being compared to The Twilight Zone, and we all know how much Better Call Saul loves dramatic black and white footage, so this seems on-brand for him! The show is also expected to feature a blend of humor and drama and an over-arching storyline that will play out over several seasons.

While the project is not yet attached to a network, it’s no surprise that he has something lined up after the success of Better Call Saul. Though it really depends on how he decided to end the story because, if Kim dies, Gilligan will never be forgiven.

(Via Deadline)

It’s fair to say that Jason Momoa hit a few stumbling blocks early on in his career. There was that Baywatch: Hawaii stint and his iconic yet limiting Khal Drogo role in Game of Thrones. Momoa found it hard to find subsequent work due to him perhaps being too convincing as a Dothraki chieftain, and even when he found success, casting directors still wanted him to be the muscle bound guy who wore fur coats like a champ. It’s no wonder that, these days, he’s still somewhat typecast even through enormous success. And he’s so weary of always playing the tough guy that Momoa admits his Fast X role feels like a godsend.

No, he’s not shaking off the tough guy reputation by calling out “f*cker” Michael Bay for making him cry (twice) during Ambulance. Rather, the Aquadude sat down with British GQ to discuss his neverending quest rid the oceans of plastic. This turned into a wide-ranging interview, in which Momoa says that his Vin Diesel-adjacent role means a lot to him because his villain isn’t obsessed with looking masculine:

In the tenth Fast and Furious film, Momoa plays a villain whose toenails are painted purple and pink, with a lavender car to match, and who enjoys laughing maniacally as he blows up co-star Ludacris’s car. “I’m a peacock at the highest level and I’m having the time of my life,” he grins.

Momoa previously opened up about how much he loves the color pink and doesn’t care what people think. He digs those pink scrunchies, and who can blame him? They’re kind to the hair. Also, now we know that that the lavender car in a recent Vin Instagram video belongs to Momoa’s villain, and Momoa was having a grand time “trying to do the new Whitesnake video” for Vin’s followers. Let’s relive this again.

Surely, this will finally take the Conan the Barbarian taste out of Momoa’s mouth, too:

“I’ve been a part of a lot of things that really sucked, and movies where it’s out of your hands… Conan [the Barbarian] was one of them. It’s one of the best experiences I had and it [was] taken over and turned into a big pile of sh*t.”

All water under the Hawaiian bridge! Fast X stars most of Hollywood, including Charlize Theron, Brie Larson in addition to the usual gang. Expect the Momoa car to zoom into theaters on May 19, 2023.

(Via British GQ)