Halle Berry has a good sense of humor about Catwoman, a very bad movie. She doesn’t have any regret about taking the part because “it was one of the biggest paydays of my whole life, which, there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t want to feel like, ‘Oh, I can only do award-worthy stuff.’ What is an award-worthy performance?” Berry even collected her Razzie Award for Worst Actress in person, which she later set on fire.
Catwoman is Selina Kyle’s only standalone movie, but two actresses have played her since: Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight and Zoë Kravitz in The Batman. In an interview with Variety‘s Awards Circuit podcast, Berry share the advice she would give to Kravitz about being Catwoman. “I’ll just tell her, get ready, they might come for you – but don’t let that affect your interpretation about who she thinks Catwoman might be,” she said, adding, “I personally think she’s going to be a wonderful Catwoman.”
Andrew Garfield got his bad Spider-Man movie redemption — Berry deserves a No Way Home of her own. She isn’t interested in reprising the role, or so she claims, but what if it also starred Kravitz and Hathaway? Throw Michelle Pfeiffer in there, too, and Lee Meriwether, who played Catwoman in 1966’s Batman. Into the cat-verse, I say.
Taco Bell is doing wings. Did anyone ask them to? Absolutely not. No one even thought to ask, because this is Taco Bell we’re talking about. They don’t make wings. They make weird Frankensteinian stoner “Mexican” food.
And yet, we have to admit the idea is intriguing. If the company created wings that are actually good, we might be dealing with a game-changer. A new era of Taco Bell. If they’re bad… well, at least we get to roast them. Isn’t that prospect alone enough to warrant a review?
As if suddenly selling wings wasn’t weird enough, Taco Bell has also made the strange decision to only make them available for a single week and completely unavailable before 2 pm. Making these wings, dare I say — rare. But before you jump in your car and hit up every local Taco Bell in your area in search of them we need to answer the big question: are they actually worth your time? Let’s find out.
Crispy Chicken Wings
Dane Rivera
Price: $5.99 (order of five)
The Wings:
Taco Bell’s Crispy Chicken Wings are priced at $5.99 for an order of five. That puts the cost of each wing at a little over $1, which feels like a fair price (a bit overpriced, but we’re going through a “wing shortage…”) when compared to other wing-selling establishments. But ultimately what matters is how they taste… I’m torn on this one.
Let me say this outright: these wings are not worth a trip to Taco Bell if you have no other reason to go to Taco Bell. They aren’t going to smack your tastebuds with a flavor so good that this is going to be your go-to wing spot. They aren’t required eating while watching football or doing whatever it is that people like to do while eating wings. On their best day, these wings don’t compare with what you’d find at a Wingstop or Buffalo Wild Wingstop.
But also, I like them. Each order of wings comes with Taco Bell’s Spicy Ranch, which is an attempt to cater to the people who come to Taco Bell expecting Buffalo Wings and end up disappointed to find that these are dry rub wings. In truth though, you don’t need the dipping sauce for these to taste good.
The wings are seasoned with Taco Bell’s “Queso Seasoning” which consists of chili powder, paprika, garlic powder, black pepper, and the smallest hint of cayenne pepper. It tastes great, very similar to Taco Bell’s Nacho Fry seasoning. In fact, I’d hazard a guess that it’s the exact same mix. The spicy ranch adds some sweetness and tang to the flavor, but take the word “spicy” with a grain of salt here, it’s by no means even mild in the heat department.
Dane Rivera
Going the dry rub route seems like a missed opportunity to toss these wings in Taco Bell’s hot red or green sauce, but maybe that’s a menu hack waiting to happen. The seasoning is doled out subtly on each wing and adheres perfectly to the wing’s light batter. My biggest gripe is how greasy these things are. Wings are generally a messy food, but I’d take buffalo sauce-stained fingers over this wet greasy mess any day. After just two wings my fingers were glistening with grease.
My napkin was practically translucent by the end of my meal.
The other big problem I have with them is that they taste a little underdone to me. If you like a crispy chicken wing, this isn’t that. Underneath the skin, the chicken fat is still soft and chewy. It’s a more noticeable problem on the drums, which tend to have more fat in the first place. Fried fat is great, don’t get me wrong, but Taco Bell’s wings would be greatly enhanced with a minute or two more in the fryer. If I could order just the flats, I would, but I imagine a big brand like Taco Bell is meticulous in how many flats and drums you get per order.
While I know enough to know that these aren’t amazing, I found these wings to be strangely addictive. I tore through my five-piece order but then was left feeling strangely unsatisfied. It was almost like I couldn’t stop my rabid eating because I was trying so hard to taste the flavor that never fully showed up. A train that shows on the horizon but never arrives at the station.
Dane Rivera
The Bottom Line:
Drums: 2 stars. Flats: 3 stars.
Don’t go to Taco Bell for wings, but if you find yourself in the Taco Bell drive-thru by pure coincidence this weekend, give them a try — they’re surprisingly tasty despite being from Taco Bell and having a few obvious flaws. Ultimately, Taco Bell’s Crispy Chicken Wings seem like a menu item for the person at Taco Bell who doesn’t really want Taco Bell. That, unfortunately, means this item doesn’t have a natural menu pairing to help enhance the experience of eating them. Taco Bell’s fries seem like an obvious contender, but they keep removing fries from the menu.
If you’re ordering online and you’re getting the dreaded “an item in your cart is not available at this location” put your shoes on and walk inside your nearest Taco Bell, I guarantee you they are there. For whatever reason, Taco Bell’s app is leading a lot of people towards thinking these are hard to find, but talking to a few Taco Bell employees has revealed to me that these aren’t nearly as popular as the internet would have you believe.
WARNING: Spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home below. Very badly kept spoilers that pretty much everyone knows by now, but spoilers nonetheless. Good talk.
Now that Spider-Man: No Way Home has been out for almost an entire month and is a massive box-office success even by pre-pandemic standards, Andrew Garfield is finally opening up about his role in the film after spending nearly a year denying that he’s in it. As fans pretty much deduced after villains like Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin and Jamie Foxx’s Electro started appearing in the trailers, Garfield and Tobey Maguire‘s versions of Spider-Man arrived halfway through No Way Home thanks to Tom Holland’s Peter Parker and Doctor Strange tinkering with a multiverse-shattering spell.
With that cat fully out of the bag, Garfield has been sitting down for interviews about the wild experience of seeing all the Spidey love he’s getting after his Amazing Spider-Man films failed to perform like Sony expected, which resulted in him being booted from the franchise. Despite that experience, which Garfield has openly described as “heartbreaking,” the actor couldn’t be more thrilled about working on No Way Home and being the “middle brother” to Maguire’s and Holland’s Spider-Man.
While sitting down with Entertainment Tonight, Garfield also revealed that he got so close with Maguire that the two of them snuck into screenings of No Way Home together to watch the audience’s reactions:
“I still can’t believe it happened,” Garfield gushed. “I snuck into a theater on opening night and just watched with my baseball cap on and my mask. In fact, I was also with Tobey, me and Tobey snuck into a theater together and no one knew we were there. It was just a really beautiful thing to share together.”
After getting back in the tights and completely winning over audiences with his No Way Home performance, the big question is if Garfield would come back again as Spidey. His answer? Maybe!
“I’m very, very open, but it would have to be very, very special,” Garfield said. “It would have to be very, very meaningful and fun, and joyful, like doing No Way Home was.”
When did it stop being okay for a video game to be less than 10 hours long? We know it happened at some point, but the exact moment isn’t entirely clear. As video games have become more expensive to make, filled with more content, and increased in price, we’ve seen this lead to games becoming longer and longer. Fans want the most bang for their buck, and spending $60 to $70 on a game that isn’t at least 20 hours long might feel like a rip-off.
Of course, games are usually going well beyond 20 hours — they typically push into the 30, 40, 50, and even 60-hour range, requiring a significant amount of our personal time to complete. It makes sense for folks who have the time to sink that into a game, but for those with a job, a family, or just any other sort of major responsibility, there isn’t as much time in the day and that 60-hour game becomes a mission more than a pleasure. For the kind of person who only picks up a few new games a year, it’s a reasonable lift, but if you’re the sort of person who likes to play as many games as possible, it takes up time they could be spending on other games.
This is not to say that long games are bad. Some of the best games ever made require the player to sink their entire lives into them and every hour is worth that experience, but as developers feel the pressure to make games full of content, it is leading to an industry where every game being made is requiring us to sell our lives to what we buy. This is also leading to intense backlash when a game doesn’t meet lofty expectations. Sometimes, a game just needs to be as long as it should be, and we need to appreciate shorter games more.
Fortunately, we’re starting to see more opportunities for developers to make games that aren’t quite so large in scope. For starters, we’re seeing a push from fans who are happy to play shorter games with worse graphics if it will mean that dev teams are forced to crunch less. The human element of how difficult it is to make a game and what it can do to developers in a thankless industry has led to fans questioning if getting cutting edge games at all times is really worth it.
On the other end, we’re also seeing an opportunity for players to play shorter games with a lower cost of entry. Services like Game Pass, which costs $14.99 a month, are letting players experience games for a price tag that is far less expensive than dropping $60 on a new game every month or two. This means that when a game comes out that can be completed in only a few hours, it’s not seen as a negative. Instead, it can be quickly enjoyed and the player can choose to move on to a new experience.
We’ve even seen a few games take advantage of this to tell small intimate experiences. Consider the emotional impact Journey or Abzu had — those games didn’t need to be lengthy experiences. They can be beaten in one sitting and in some ways are enhanced by that. There’s a certain joy in sitting down for an evening and beating a game. It’s similar to spending the night watching a movie or maybe binging an entire TV show. Shorter games have a place.
Right now, one of the best short games out there is Unpacking, a delightful little game where the player is tasked with unpacking boxes and decorating a variety of rooms and homes. The game takes a little about 3-4 hours to beat and is about discovering these little details of the person for whom you’re unpacking. It didn’t need to be a 10-hour adventure. It only needed to be as long as it was and it was better for it. Perhaps the best thing about it is how it reminds games that a game doesn’t need to take their life away. All that matters is that it’s done well, no matter how long it takes.
Gunna, Future, and Roddy Ricch try their hands at numerous careers in their tongue-in-cheek “Too Easy” remix video, finding them all, well, too easy. The video is the latest from Gunna’s new mixtape DS4EVER, the fourth and final installment in his long-running Drip Season, which dropped today. While the song itself preceded the release, the video just arrived this morning to pull more eyeballs toward the highly anticipated project.
Among the tasks the three rappers try out, Gunna becomes a wilderness explorer, an expert mountaineer, and a touchdown-grabbing wide receiver. Meanwhile, Future joins Gunna as a pair of news anchors/weathermen who judge a beauty pageant and gets into some Scottish games, including tug-o-war, rock-throwing, and bagpiping. Roddy, meanwhile, becomes a lounge pianist — not far off from his real-life skillset — and gets his Wu-Tang Clan on at a Shaolin temple.
After many years of waiting and hoping, Oreo is finally resurrecting their iconic middle school favorite, Oreo Cakesters, and have called upon the last Blockbuster in the world to bring the nostalgia back at full force.
Oreo Caketsers were introduced in 2007, where they were often used as lunchtime currency among tweens in the school cafeteria. Two chocolate cakes sandwiched together with the signature Oreo cream, the snacks became an instant favorite. They produced various versions of the cake before discontinuing them in 2012.
To help relaunch their cult classic treat, Oreo has stocked the shelves at another early aughts favorite, the last Blockbuster on earth. Complete with retro-style VHS covers and punny movie titles such as Cakesters 2: Back At It and Cakesters: Resurrections (perhaps starring Keanu Reeves?) the limited-edition Cakesters can be found in Bend, Oregon.
If you don’t find yourself lucky enough to be able to take a quick trip to Bend, Oreo tweeted that they would be available at select stores across the country this month.
They’re just popping up on select retailer shelves, soon available nationwide!
No word yet on if Oreo will bring back other flavors, such as the Golden Oreo Cakesters, but they are known for reviving older favorites in between their various big-name collaborations, such as Pokemon and Supreme.
The Cakesters are just the latest of a slew of Oreo products to hit the shelves this year, as Oreo just announced two new flavors for 2022: Toffee Crunch and Ultimate Chocolate. We are still waiting for them to invent Cannoli flavored, though.
Back in August 2021, it was rumored that Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott were expecting a second child together, a sibling for Stormi. A couple weeks later, Jenner confirmed the news with a video that features Scott hearing the news for the first time. Now, we’re back in the rumor phase, as some thing that Jenner has secretly already given birth to her latest bundle of joy.
BuzzFeed News reports that TikTok user @EmilyCShwartz, who correctly predicted Jenner’s pregnancy, has a new theory. She speculates that Jenner knew she was pregnant while taping the Keeping Up With the Kardashians reunion special on April 23, as while the family was seen taking shots together, Jenner turned away from the camera and didn’t consume alcohol, presumably being conscious of her baby’s health.
So, if Jenner was pregnant on April 23, her due date for the baby would have fallen at some point in December. Furthermore, on December 26, Travis Barker (Kourtney Kardashian’s fiancé) shared a photo that had a baby bottle in the shot, a newborn bottle that was the same brand Jenner used when Stormi was born.
In recent days, Jenner has shared photos of herself looking pregnant (like she did yesterday, below), but it’s possible that these photos were taken on an earlier date and were shared well after the fact. It’s also worth noting that Jenner was secretive about her pregnancy with Stormi, too, so there’s a precedent for her keeping her cards close to the vest.
Ultimately, there are plenty of fans who agree with these theories, so check out some tweets about it below.
You didn’t hear it from me buuuuut….
Kylie already had her baby. But they’re waiting for the best moment to announce it because Travis needs good PR.
I’m guessing if something new comes out about the Astroworld tragedy, they’ll announce it then.
Usually when we think of Willie Nelson and growing plants, our minds instantly think about cannabis. Heck, Willie is a straight up weed-smoking icon, who takes marijuana tours of Amsterdam with Snoop Dogg and is even the “Chief Test Officer” for his own brand of weed, Willie’s Reserve. But now, thanks to the good folks over at Chia Pet, Willie and his signature braids can be synonymous with plants of the decorative variety, too.
Chia has officially launched the Willie Nelson Chia Pet and it looks freakin’ amazing. Each box comes with a plantar, drip tray, and chia seed packets for 3 plantings. It takes 1 to 2 weeks to make Willie’s braids grow into a “luscious green coat,” which is quite a bit faster than growing weed. Speaking of which, fellow country singer and collaborator Margo Price has already shown her support by scooping up a Willie Nelson Chia Pet and commented on Willie’s Instagram post about it, saying: “Love mine so much! The only thing that would make it better is if it came with cannabis seeds.”
For less than $25, the Willie Nelson Chia Pet is available now on Amazon, Walmart, Menard’s, etc… and if Willie isn’t your thing, Chia Pet also has models featuring “Weird Al” Yankovic, Chewbacca, Bob Ross, David Hasselhoff, and a series dedicated to The Mandalorian.
It’s often said that there are two sides to every story and in the case of Kanye West’s ongoing divorce from Kim Kardashian, it looks like he’s sharing his side with friends and collaborators. Although the initial reports had Kim filing for divorce, citing many “little things” that made their differences more apparent, at least one of Kanye’s rapper homies believes it went the other way around.
On “Thought I Was Playing” from Gunna’s new mixtape DS4EVER, fellow Atlanta rapper 21 Savage uses the celebrity split as the subject for a twisted punchline: “SF90 cost a M, dumped his Glock like Ye did Kim.” Fans on Twitter who caught the line sparked a lighthearted but spirited debate about just who dumped whom.
21 Savage references Kanye West and Kim Kardashian in his verse to Gunna’s “thought i was playing” off DS4EVER via @solarastarpic.twitter.com/4ogKF4NfC8
I know 21 Savage itching for a Ye feature cause his ass lied talking about some “dump this glock like ye did kim” we know that’s not what happened son but it’s hard so i’ll let it slide
— angsty jit wit good music taste (@yungfundipp) January 7, 2022
Uh excuse me did Mr. 21 Savage say “Dump this Glock like YE did KIM” on this Gunna album? Is that how that happened? Lol
Of course, both stars have since seemingly moved on. Kim has apparently been dating comedian Pete Davidson after remarking that she had no intention of reconciling with Kanye, and while Kanye has made repeated public overtures, even going so far as declaring that God would reunite the couple, he has since also been seen out with a new romantic interest. Actress Julia Fox, with whom Kanye had dinner in New York City, described their date in glowing terms, prompting some fans to give their skeptical impressions of the pairing, drawing comparisons with Fox’s character’s relationship in Uncut Gems.
You can check out the full song above.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Sue Bird announced via Instagram on Friday morning that she’ll return for her 19th WNBA season. Bird is the WNBA’s all-time assist leader and a 12-time All-Star who was selected first overall by the Storm in the 2002 WNBA Draft. Across her 18 seasons, she’s helped lead Seattle — the only franchise for which she’s played in the WNBA — to four titles and 15 playoff appearances.
There’s an issue here, however. Seattle tweeted that Bird will return, but she’s a free agent and negotiations cannot begin until Jan. 15. Of course, all of this feels like a formality, but Seattle technically can’t say that Bird is coming back yet.
The Storm entered last year as the reigning champions and were poised to make another deep playoff run before Breanna Stewart suffered a season-ending injury just before the postseason began. With Bird back for a 19th year and Stewart presumably returning at some point, Seattle could be in the mix for a title again this season, depending on how free agency shakes out with key contributors like Jewell Lloyd and Mercedes Russell up for new deals.
Bird averaged 10 points, 5.3 assists, and 2.6 rebounds on 58.3 percent true shooting and earned her 12th All-Star appearance in 2021. For her career, she’s averaged 12 points, 5.6 assists, 2.6 rebounds, and 1.3 steals while shooting 39.3 percent beyond the arc.
Bird will kick off her 19th season on May 6 when Seattle takes on the Minnesota Lynx at 7 p.m. PST.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.