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Training camps will open across the NBA in less than one month. That may seem wild given that Summer League concluded only two weeks ago in Las Vegas, but the league is in the midst of another shortened offseason and the bright lights will come on in the very near future. One of the staples of the offseason is the discussion (or argument) about where teams might fall in the standings, and die-hards often use season win total over/under projections as a baseline for this exercise.

To that end, it is time to go over or under on each team in the Southwest Division. For record-keeping purposes, each line below comes from the folks at DraftKings and they will come to you in alphabetical order.

Dallas Mavericks – Over 48.5

This isn’t a number that I love, in part because the Mavericks hired Jason Kidd. Dallas won at a 48-win pace a season ago, even with a rough start, a thoroughly underwhelming season from Kristaps Porzingis, and the knowledge that the swap involving Seth Curry and Josh Richardson ended in disaster for the Mavericks. That should forecast optimism, particularly with Luka Doncic as a leading MVP candidate and some reasonable moves on the margins with Reggie Bullock and the re-signing of Tim Hardaway Jr. As such, the Mavericks feel like an Over team to me, but that optimism is at least slightly mitigated by what I view as a marked coaching downgrade.

Houston Rockets – Under 27.5

Before we get to the ugly stuff, I’m excited about Houston’s future. Jalen Green looks the part of a future standout, Alperen Sengun is incredibly fun, Usman Garuba and Josh Christopher are quite intriguing, and the Rockets still have Christian Wood, Kevin Porter Jr. and others. The Rockets should even be fun to watch but, after a 17-win disaster a year ago, Houston isn’t going to be good and they have incentive to lose late in the season. Young teams are often bad teams. That’s good to remember amid the future-facing excitement.

Memphis Grizzlies – Under 41.5

The Grizzlies are another tricky evaluation. Memphis openly prioritized the future over the present, both with the trades involving Jonas Valanciunas and Grayson Allen, as well as the draft-night selection of Ziaire Williams. With that in mind, one could expect regression from a 38-34 record last year, especially when taking into account how good Valanciunas was for Memphis. On the other hand, the Grizzlies got only 11 games from Jaren Jackson Jr., and he was clearly limited even when playing. Jackson Jr. should help Memphis, but the organizational priority seems to aim beyond 2022 and the West should be competitive. I still don’t love it, but lean Under.

New Orleans Pelicans – Under 39.5

Which New Orleans team is real? Their 31-41 record would put them on a 35-win pace over an 82-game sample. Their point differential, however, is closer to a 39-or-40 win team. That is the starting point of this breakdown, but the Pelicans… might actually be worse on paper? New Orleans does upgrade from Steven Adams to Jonas Valanciunas, albeit at considerable asset cost, but the Pelicans downgrade from Lonzo Ball to Devonte Graham. Then, there is a clear unknown at head coach, and it isn’t as if their competition got worse. Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram are good, but it’s tough to figure out the overall direction in New Orleans. That means an Under lean.

San Antonio Spurs – Over 28.5

If you haven’t seen the over/under for the Spurs, you’re forgiven for falling out of your chair. After making the playoffs in 22 straight seasons, the Spurs have now missed in back-to-back years, but San Antonio was still the equivalent of a 37-or-38 win team a season ago. Now, they are projected for a win total under 30? The Spurs do lose DeMar DeRozan, who was a key piece of their offense, but San Antonio does bring in very helpful vets in Thad Young and Doug McDermott (although Young could be on the move sooner than later). Those pieces, coupled with talent on the perimeter and the (very) important presence of Gregg Popoovich, leads me to the Over. They won’t be good, but they’ll be competitive.

At this point, people reacting to Lil Nas X’s provocations are doing more work to promote him and his music than he is. Every time he comes up with a colorful troll, they react loudly on the internet, drawing more attention to his stunts and the work behind them. He responds with another promotional prank and they lose it all over again. At this point, it’d probably be best for them if they stopped reacting, which is exactly what Nas wants.

But then we wouldn’t get gems like watching Twitter relentlessly roasting Boosie for his borderline obsession with the 22-year-old rapper turned pop star. Certainly, it’s a lot of fun to just imagine Boosie sitting around thinking about Nas’ latest antics and getting very … ahem … piqued about it. In this case, the antic in question is Nas’ recently released “pregnancy” photoshoot (with his album Montero, his baby — get it?), which was published by no less an outlet than People magazine — a subversive, historical act in itself.

Lil Nas seems to have long since decided that since he’ll be made a public spectacle anyway, he’s going to control the narrative and wring every advantage for himself out of the media’s invasive coverage, lightly satirizing the public fascination with the lives of celebrities along the way. And Boosie can’t stand it. “NAS X WTF U JUST DONT STOP,” he tweet at three o’clock in the morning. “I THINK HES GOING TO TURN AROUND N SUCK ONE OF HIS BACK GROUND DANCERS DICK ON NATIONAL TV.”

While that’s … well, not something that you even can do because the FCC is a thing, it’s very interesting that that’s where Boosie’s mind goes. The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks — or at least, fans Twitter do. It didn’t take long for folks to question why Boosie seems to spend so much time thinking about Lil Nas X when he could be doing, y’know, literally anything else. When Montero does come out, it’s easy to wonder whether the Louisiana rap legend will be one of the first to hit “play” while pondering what Nas’ next move will be.

Before there was Rick and Morty, there was Doc and Mharti.

Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty is one of the biggest shows on television with millions of fans (and millions earned on meta commercials). But creator Justin Roiland’s original vision had nothing to do with incest babies or talking pickles — he just wanted to “troll” Universal Pictures with a Back to the Future parody.

“I actually made this as a way to poke fun at the idea of getting cease and desist letters,” he said. “At the time (October 2006) I had nothing to lose and my original intention was to call this “back to the future: the new official universal studios cartoon featuring the new Doc Brown and Marty McFly” and then I’d just sit back and wait for a letter from their lawyers to arrive. That’s actually why it’s so filthy. I was just looking to ‘troll’ a big studio.”

The Rick and Morty empire began here:

Doc Brown and Marty McFly are the obvious inspirations for Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith, so in a full-circle move, Adult Swim has released a live-action promo ahead of the season five finale where Rick is played by Doc Brown himself, Christopher Lloyd. Jaeden Martell (It) portrays Morty, which isn’t a reference, but it is excellent casting.

The tweet is a reference to a multi-verse, but fans are focused on Doc Brown’s Rick.

The Rick and Morty finale airs this Sunday, September 5.

(Spoilers for Shang-Chi and the MCU will obviously be found below.)

Pushing a superhero tentpole movie out the door in less than two years after initial announcement is a substantial feat during normal times, so Destin Daniel Cretton definitely did the thing with Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings during, well, our current times. The film’s a stunning action piece that worldbuilds like a mofo and gives us plenty of dragon action, and the end-credit scenes manage to top them all. Well, maybe all of them. Nick Fury’s announcement of the Avengers initiative probably can’t be beat, but let’s just say that we don’t simply have people sitting around and fretting over the Tesseract. Instead, the first end-credits scene does a lot to tie this otherwise free-standing movie to the MCU with much appreciated humor on the side.

First, it’s worth noting that we don’t precisely know when this movie falls into the MCU timeline. Much of the action takes place in San Francisco (with no Ant-Man run-ins), and it’s set in a time where smart phones are all the rage, yet full-on in-flight meals are offered in coach (which hasn’t happened since pre 9/11). That’s a wholly confusing combination, and we’re also clearly observing a post-snap world, as indicated during a casual conversation early-on in the movie. And it’s also a time when Doctor Strange sidekick Wong is participating in a fight club (where he bests Tim Roth’s Abomination) that’s run by Shang-Chi’s estranged sister, Xialing. That’s fun.

In the first end-credits scene, Wong reappears to pluck Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) and Katy (Awkwafina) out of their post-climactic return to reality. He takes them to analyze the Ten Rings (the literal pieces or jewelry, not the personal army of Shang-Chi’s dad, Wenwu) and their origins. The end result is that the origins are mysterious and date back millennia, and the Ten Rings act as a sort-of beacon when activated. More importantly for our immediate purposes, though, Bruce Banner (not in Professor Hulk form, yet he still appears to be suffering from Infinity Gauntlet burns) and Carol Danvers (with long hair intact) are on hand to offer commentary. Then Carol pops off on a Captain Marvel adventure, Banner awkwardly wishes everyone well without knowing what to make of the rings, and Wong tells Shang-Chi and Katy that their lives have changed forever.

From there, we see Wong join his new friends for karaoke, which is simply delightful. Here’s what’s also great about this scene: it simply presents tons and tons of questions for the future and doesn’t make us feel slighted by not answering them. Also, hey, this is the first theater-only Marvel release in since the start of the pandemic, so it was nice to feel some levity. People freaking loved this scene.

And here’s a fan theory about the second end-credits scene, in which is a brief one that shows Xialing taking over her father’s organization and using it to train an army of fighters that just happen to be all female. We then see a message about the Ten Rings being scheduled for a return. Well, a Twitter user wants to know this: what if Xialing is actually training the rescued Black Widows? Well, timeline considerations aside, it’s not impossible!

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will arrive in February 2021.

Even if you’re not familiar with Billie Eilish‘s story by now, you probably know that the 19-year-old pop sensation is inextricably linked with Los Angeles. So it only makes sense that she would host a cinematic (because, LA; because, movies) concert in her hometown. Even if no one can technically attend. Enter: Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter To Los Angeles, currently streaming on Disney+.

If you need catching up, here’s a primer on Billie’s SoCal heritage: Born in East LA to showbiz parents, Billie grew up singing in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus and started writing songs as early as age 11. Her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, was famously written in her teeny Highland Park bedroom with brother and producer Finneas. Today, Eilish is a multiple-Grammy-winning household name, ultra-famous for her otherworldly vocals, lyrical honesty, and genre-jumping soundscapes. She’s also gotten the film treatment before: earlier this year, fans got an up-close look at Billie’s incalculable rise to fame in RJ Cutler’s Apple TV+ documentary Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry, which felt satisfying to watch largely due to how unflinchingly it portrayed the upshots and unglamorous downsides to its subject’s viral success.

The viewer got to tag along with Billie as she and Finneas pieced together what would become When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? They watched Billie meet her musical hero, Justin Bieber, fill her room with free swag, and amasses literal armfuls of Grammys. Yet the doc also showed the frustrating and mundane aspects of global fame: negative comments from fans and tour injuries and burnout, among other things. Now, in support of the recently released Happier Than Ever, which she has not been able to properly perform live due to the pandemic (yet — her tour kicks off this month), Billie has teamed up with Disney for the hour-long A Love Letter to Los Angeles, where she performs her second album from start to finish. It’s probably unfair to compare The World’s A Little Blurry to A Love Letter, given how different they are. And yet: knowing the raw visual experiences audiences have had with Billie, between Cutler’s doc and her many music videos, it’s easy to feel slightly underwhelmed by this glossy, Disney-princess iteration.

Of course, this is not to say that watching A Love Letter To Los Angeles is a waste of time; far from it. As promised in the title, the special is a true celebration of Billie’s hometown, with the singer — at times animated like an actual Disney character — driving around Hollywood at night, gazing at billboards splashed with her face, and sitting in Eastside dining gem Brite Spot. The very same children’s choir she grew up singing in joins her on Happier Than Ever standout “Goldwing.” Billie and Finneas are joined by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who add a dramatic, old-Hollywood oomph to the proceedings. Even the performance setting, Hollywood Bowl (totally empty this time), feels appropriate, given how much that outdoor venue means to both the LA music and film worlds (the Bowl has famously appeared in movies like Beaches, Xanadu, and the original A Star Is Born). Because the seats are empty, fans will no doubt love the unexpectedly intimate experience of watching Billie from the comfort of their living rooms. If they’re also from LA, which the special takes great care to portray in the rosiest light possible, they’ll love it that much more.

But something also gets lost when looking at Billie through the sanitized Disney lens. Billie as animation is nice, sometimes majestic (though having her sprout actual cartoon wings feels irritatingly on-the-nose; it’s the City of Angels, OK, we get it). And while the Los Angeles Philharmonic adds soaring layers to songs like “Everybody Dies” and “Therefore I Am,” Billie’s own vocals sound pre-recorded, which takes away from the live experience. Even the color tones throughout look monochrome, with Billie and Finneas costumed in various shades of brown and taupe. For an artist that transmits such a gorgeous array of color and substance at all times, these visuals risk looking a little drab.

Part of what makes Billie an appealing pop star is the raw, relatable emotion she displayed in The World’s A Little Blurry, not to mention the articulate, timely lyricism on Happier Than Ever, where she addresses fame, industry double-standards, and abuses of power. And, don’t get me wrong, an evening concert in an empty Hollywood Bowl, surrounded by orchestral standard-bearers, is nothing to outright dismiss. Probably the best way to enjoy the Disney+ concert special is if you think of it as an amuse-bouche to the real thing.

A Love Letter to Los Angeles is now streaming on Disney+. Happier Than Ever is out now Darkroom/Interscope.

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — This is getting out of hand

It only dawned on me recently that there are so many good shows now. I think the problem is that we went so long without lots of good shows at once. Things got weird for a while there between various shutdowns and protocols and delays. There were still some good shows in there, but they were spaced out a bunch and some of them weren’t even really that good, if we’re being honest. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And in a world with no shows, Manifest becomes so blisteringly popular after getting canceled that Netflix saves it for a supersized 20-episode final season. Again, it was weird.

But things are getting normal enough now that the flood of shows can rush back to our screens again, and they sure have done that. And they still are doing that. And they will continue to do that for the foreseeable future. It’s crazy that we all used to live like this, just inundated with shows coming at us from every angle, on our computers and televisions and sometimes from the same website where we buy power tools and Gatorade. It’s going to take some adjusting to get back into it.

But hopefully, it doesn’t take long. Look at what we’ve got going on right now. What We Do in the Shadows just came back and that show remains just about perfect. Reservation Dogs is on FX and Hulu, too, and that sucker is a heck of a ride. Only Murders in the Building and Nine Perfect Strangers are on Hulu too, and while I’m enjoying the first one of those a whole lot more than the second, it is undeniable that both are big deals with big stars attached.

Ted Lasso is on, too. People got all worked up about that one recently, not in a great way (more on this in the next section), but that ship is righting itself and remains one of the most pleasant and enjoyable half hours of television you’ll watch any week. Sandra Oh is in a big Netflix show called The Chair that was created by Amanda Peet and produced by the Game of Thrones guys. My beloved Holey Moley is in the middle of its third and stupidest season yet, which I mean in the best way possible. The Other Two and Pen15 and Archer are all back. The White Lotus just ended and gave us a finale so wild that this was not even a top-three crazy thing that happened.

And it is only going to get more intense from here. Take a look at the upcoming schedule if you don’t believe me. Billions is back this weekend. Succession is back in October. Curb Your Enthusiasm is back in October. The Morning Show returns in a couple of weeks. Impeachment: American Crime Story debuts next week and, even though the reviews haven’t been too hot, that’s still a buzzy piece of pop culture you can plop on your plate. B.J. Novak has a big new prestige-y show called The Premise coming to FX soon. There’s a Ken Burns documentary about Muhammad Ali on the way and I am going to watch it just entirely too hard.

And that’s just the fancier stuff. Network television is coming back, too, which is notable because network dramas have gotten so, so weird lately. They’re like middle children who start acting out when all the attention gets distributed between the oldest and youngest kids. The best current example of this is 9-1-1, a show that once killed a man by having a mall escalator malfunction and crush him as he proposed to his girlfriend. But there are new ones getting added to the mix. Ordinary Joe is an upcoming series that stars James Wolk — Bob Benson from Mad Men, renegade zoologist Jackson Oz from Zoo — as a man living out multiple versions of his life on different timelines, including one where he is a rock star. Natalie Zea is starting in a new show called La Brea that looks just as bonkers as you could ever want. Look at this thing.

So I guess what I’m saying here is that we have a good news / bad news situation on our hands. The good news is that there is so much stuff out there that it’ll be easy to keep yourself entertained as the weather cools off and the sun goes down earlier and we maybe have to hunker down a bit again. The bad news is people are about to start a lot of conversations with, “Oh my God, do you watch…?” and it’s going to get really stressful when you keep answering “ummm, no” and they sigh at you and say “You have to watch it. It’s so good.” You remember those conversations. They’re coming back. This isn’t even all the shows. I’m probably missing an obvious one. I bet someone will reach out to me in a tweet that starts with “actually…” to tell me another good show I’m forgetting. I bet it’s already happened.

So, look. I’ll do my best to keep you abreast of the big stuff, usually in this very column, just so you can be interesting in that conversation. Just so you can speak semi-knowledgeably and not get shamed for missing out on stuff. But it’s going to get really intense really fast. I need you to be ready. I need you to lock in with me. We have to agree to be in this one together to get through it all alive.

But mostly, I need you to watch Reservation Dogs. You do watch Reservation Dogs, right?

You don’t?!

You have to watch Reservation Dogs. It’s so good.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — The Ted Lasso Discourse is officially good again

The Ted Lasso Discourse has been trending in a bad direction for a bit now. It’s all understandable, I guess, if I want to give everyone and everything the benefit of the doubt. The show had a good and uplifting first season that came out of nowhere at a time when people really needed something good and uplifting. The second season was still good and uplifting through the first handful of episodes, but some people felt it was treading water a bit. Again, this is fine. The problem was that all the writers on the internet saw this red meat in front of their faces and started a feeding frenzy. I say this without much judgment because I am also a writer on the internet and Lord in Heaven knows I’ve participated in these buffets in the past, too.

But it is my great pleasure to report that the Ted Lasso Discourse is good again now, and it’s good again for one simple reason: the conspiracy theorists have entered the chat.

There were actually two Ted Lasso conspiracies this week, which is something that is making me smile right now as I type it. Let’s start with the more tame one, just to ease into it. Some people who like to log into various forums and speculate about upcoming Apple products thought that the company might have premiered its new notchless iPhone 13 in the most recent episode. That’s it up there, allegedly, in the hands of Rebecca’s mom at lunch. Our Ryan Nagelhout looked into this one a bit and more or less had it debunked in an hour.

Apple is certainly known for its product placement in its TV shows, as anyone who watched the first season of The Morning Show can attest. But Lasso, a show where a fake soccer team plays against real soccer teams and was filmed amid a pandemic, makes use of a good amount of CGI to make the show somewhat realistic-looking. So this may just be, well, a fake phone that wasn’t an exact model of a real Apple device. Or a computer-created device that simply doesn’t include all the quirks of the real deal.

These are all good and fair points. But even if they weren’t, I mean, it would be really funny if Apple chose to debut their biggest product of the year by putting it in the corner of the screen in the hands of a character’s mom who was only there for a guest spot. Not, like, Jason Sudeikis. Or one of the big-name stars of The Morning Show, which is also coming back soon, as we discussed earlier. Rebecca’s mom. I almost want it to be true.

And speaking of Ted Lasso conspiracies that may or may not involve CGI and that I want to be true, there was also this: A collection of beautiful minds on the Ted Lasso Reddit page are convinced that Roy Kent, the gruff former player who is now an assistant coach, is actually a character that was created with CGI. Our Josh Kurp investigated this one and, boy, was it ever an investigation.

As spotted by Twitter user @guymrdth, the Ted Lasso subreddit includes a thread started last July with the headline, “Ok just started the show and… CGI??” The post reads, “I just started watching the pilot, and i’m up to the scene where roy is called into teds office. Am i crazy or does he look like a complete cgi character?”

Which is incredible. It’s perfect. Going from “Ted Lasso develops slowly and I’m tired of its optimism and also nothing happens” to “ROY KENT IS A SECRET CARTOON” is about as good a twist in a discourse as you’ll ever see. It’s my new favorite thing. I am thisclose to just deciding to accept it as fact and start telling strangers. I might make it My Thing. It’s so stupid and harmless and I did not think any of it could bring me any more joy.

Until…

This, to be as clear as possible, is Brett Goldstein, Roy Kent himself, replying to a tweet that references the conspiracy and includes the link to Josh’s report, with a robot emoji. I saw that and I started typing exclamation points in so many different boxes. I really did not see any way any of this could get better. I figured we had maxed it all out. I was happy with that.

Until…

The Ted Lasso Discourse is officially good again. We did it. I mean, the conspiracy theorists did it, mostly. But we were there. Counts for something.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — Holy crap, it is happening…

The Accountant is a good movie. We’ve all discussed this many times and we’ll probably discuss it all again the next time I watch it some weeknight on TNT and refuse to shut up about it, but it’s still true. It’s got everything you could want out of a basic cable movie: Ben Affleck as a forensic accountant who is on the autism spectrum and also a highly-trained assassin; Anna Kendrick telling a long story about paying for a fancy dress with money she won through card-counting; a cast that somehow includes Jon Bernthal and JK Simmons and John Lithgow and Jean Goddamn Smart. It’s incredible. The third act is just one insane reveal after another. I am incapable of turning it off once I start.

And now, finally, after five full years, it is getting a sequel. Allegedly. It was supposed to get a sequel a while ago. Then it didn’t. But now it is, at least according to director Gavin O’Connor, who spilled the beans on a CinemaBlend podcast this week. And if “there’s going to be a sequel to The Accountant” is the type of news that will make you, like me, stop dead in your tracks as though the ghost of Abraham Lincoln showed up at your door with a Hawaiian pizza, I have more good news: It might actually become a trilogy.

”Yeah. Yeah. So, I’ve always wanted to do three because what, the second one’s going to be more with — we’re going to integrate his brother into the story. So there’ll be more screen time for Bernthal in the second one. And then the third movie’s going to be, I call it, ‘Rain Man on steroids.’ The third movie is going to be the two brothers, this odd couple. The third one is going to be a buddy picture.”

I am barely joking when I say I might rent out an entire theater for the next Accountant movie. You can come. We’ll all go out for dinner first. We’ll sit at one long table and talk about The Accountant and then when the bill comes I will grab it and I will do this.

And then I will ask everyone to pitch in. I’m not made of money. But it’ll be fun.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — Basketball news

You know how sometimes you see a headline about a movie that was just announced and despite every fiber of your body wanting to shout “WHAT?!” the reaction that comes out is more along the lines of, “yeah, that sounds about right”? Maybe that’s just me. I don’t know. Either way, it sure did happen again this week when news broke that the comedic braintrust of Lord and Miller are making a movie about one-time Chicago Bull Dennis Rodman’s infamous 48-hour midseason escape to Las Vegas.

Via Variety:

Rodman, then a star player for the Chicago Bulls, asked his coach Phil Jackson if he could take a 48-hour vacation in Las Vegas in the middle of the NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz. Even though the Bulls were on the cusp of their second three-peat championship in eight years, Jackson consented, and a sports legend was born. While Rodman and his teammate Michael Jordan detailed these events in the ESPN docuseries “The Last Dance,” the movie will take its own path with the story.

This is, obviously, fascinating, both that Lord and Miller will get to give their own take on it all and the part that it is a real thing that happened. I do not like being the “imagine if this happened today” guy, but, like, imagine if this happened today. Imagine what social media would look like. It would be total chaos. I would love it. Go read up on all of this if you’re not familiar. Or just go watch or rewatch The Last Dance. This part happens at the end of the third episode and through the fourth. My only real hope with it all is that the movie includes a dramatic recreation of, well, this.

Rodman (and Electra) eventually returned from their foray. But, perhaps predictably, not in the most punctual manner. Jordan was on the case.

“He didn’t come back on time. We had to go get his ass out of bed,” Jordan said in the documentary. “And I’m not going to say what’s in his bed or where he was.”

“There’s a knock on the door. It’s Michael Jordan,” Electra said. “I hid. I didn’t want him to see me like that, so I’m just hiding behind the couch with covers over me.”

I need this. I must have it. I had no idea I even wanted it until earlier this week but now I will simply die without it. And while we’re on the subject of basketball-related things involving television and movies that I must have…

MAGIC JOHNSON GO ON BILLIONS

AS THE GOVERNOR

OR MAYOR

OR A CRYPTO BILLIONAIRE

PLEASE

THANK YOU

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Hey look, a good podcast

Seth Rogen has a new podcast. It’s called Storytime and it is pretty self-explanatory. He has guests come on and tell their favorite stories. Some of the stories are funny, some might be serious, some might even be sad. It’s a great idea for a podcast, or for your own life if you’re trying to fill a gap in a conversation that’s grown stale or awkward. People love to tell stories, especially wild ones, especially wild ones where they are the protagonist.

Rogen spoke with Vulture about the new endeavor, which I bring to your attention now for two main reasons: One, because it is cool and you might like it; and two, because Seth Rogen seems like a pretty righteous dude.

Between Yearbook and the podcast, it feels like you’re doing a lot of looking back with these projects. Do you figure you’re aging into a more retrospective phase in your career?
Probably! I’m not doing anything interesting anymore. I’m just a rich guy living in the Hills who never leaves the house.

There are loads of movies and books about that.
Yeah, but they all suck! [Laughs.] Part of it is just self-awareness that my life is uninteresting now. It is objectively not something I would watch if it was dramatized back to me. I’m also interested in how a lot of people I know are getting to the age where they’re starting to look back and think, What are the events that turned me into the person I am? Once you reach your 40s, you start to feel like you’re finally the person you’re going to be, you know? You’ll always change and evolve, but it’s the first time you start seeing no one knows a lot more than you and that you have as much right to reflect as anybody does.

This is all cool. Seth Rogen gets it. The guy is just making funny movies and weird vases and smoking weed on the beach and recording podcasts with his buddies. If I were still in high school and my guidance counselor asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up, I might just show her this paragraph. Although I suppose that would create some kind of rip in the space-time continuum considering I just wrote this paragraph in the present as a grown-up. There’s a lot to consider here, really.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Beth:

You’re the expert on fake and funny names, so I have to ask: What’s your favorite character name from a TV show or movie?

Well, this is impossible. There are so many good ones that I think my brain is overloaded and blanking out. I will say, though, that no matter your opinion on the later seasons of The Office, introducing a pompous slick new manager named Robert California was a stroke of genius. I’m a big fan of locations as last names so that one has always stuck with me. Plus, it’s just a lot of fun to say.

Robert California.

I’ll probably think of two dozen more tonight but this feels pretty solid.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To the great northwest!

Almost a dozen go-karts were stolen from the Family Fun Center in Tukwila on Monday night and police have been recovering the go-karts all over town.

A couple things worth noting here:

• This whole situation was uncovered and examined in beautiful detail by Brian Floyd in this Twitter thread
• GO-KART HEIST

I must know everything about this immediately. I jumped ahead and read the part about the first two go-karts being discovered on the grounds of someone’s business, but don’t worry. There’s plenty more. Like, for example, this.

A third go-kart was found near the Family Fun Center and a fourth was found at the Foster Golf on Interurban Avenue South.

Several go-karts were recovered nearly six miles away in Renton.

SIX MILES

The go-karts were discovered SIX MILES away. Several of them! That is so far to ride in any go-kart, let alone a handful of them that you and your rascal friends have just stolen under the cover of night. I love this. I love it so much. And I love this next part even more.

Police have been driving found go-karts on city streets to return them to the Family Fun Center.

Perhaps you read that last sentence and thought to yourself, “Hmm. You know what would really drive this home for me? If there was a video of the cops driving these go-karts back to the Family Fun Center, possibly with a police escort, possibly with hilariously on-point soundtrack backing it, possibly tweeted from the local news station’s verified account. That would be nice.”

Well, good news, buddy. Crank the sound up for this sucker.

I don’t know who I’m more proud of, the thieves who stole go-karts and left them littered over the entire Pacific Northwest, or the people at the damn news network who made that video. Let’s just call it a tie and move on. There are no losers here.

Drake’s new album Certified Lover Boy has been out for a few hours now, and between its release and now, fans have been carefully examining the project. That sleuthing has led to an eyebrow-raising discovery: R. Kelly has a writing credit on the album.

Along with Drake, the artists credited as writers on the song “TSU” include Harley Arsenault, Noel Cadastre, F. Hills, Timothy Mosley (aka Timbaland), Ronald Coleman (aka OG Ron C), Christopher Cross, Justin Timberlake, and Robert Kelly (aka R. Kelly).

As Genius notes, the song samples NSYNC’s 1997 song “Sailing,” a cover of Cross’ 1980 single. Furthermore, others have pointed out the song also samples Timberlake’s “Until The End Of Time,” which Timbaland co-wrote. According to WhoSampled, the song also samples Kelly’s 1998 song “Half On A Baby,” which is where his writing credit comes from.

It was reported recently that Kelly is attempting to sell the publishing rights to his back catalog. If somebody purchased the rights, Kelly would not profit from his song being sampled on “TSU.” However, it appears Kelly is struggling to find a buyer, so as it stands now, Kelly still owns his publishing rights and will therefore profit from “TSU,” which is becoming a much-discussed song on one of the year’s biggest albums.

Of course, Kelly has faced many allegations of sexual misconduct in recent years. Most recently, an alleged male victim of sexual exploitation by Kelly testified in court.

Certified Lover Boy is out now via OVO Sound/Republic. Get it here.

When fans tune in for the What We Do In The Shadows season three premiere, things will have changed, for the show itself and the characters within it.

A global pandemic and a thirst for feel-good TV shows to numb the metaphorical pain and very real anxiety of living under lockdowns and surging COVID cases transformed the FX fantasy series into a comedy oasis. Fans who weren’t familiar with its humble beginnings — the show is based on an indie mockumentary filmed in New Zealand and created by Kiwi breakouts Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi — or its mostly-British cast flocked to the offbeat humor surreal mundanity that comes naturally when you drop a trio of centuries-old, out-of-touch vampires in the middle of Staten Island and task them with taking over the New World.

Nandor (Kayvan Novak), Laszlo (Matt Berry), and Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) haven’t quite been up to the task in the world of Shadows — though they’re doing a damn good job of taking over pop culture in our own — but that might be changing in season three as they inherit more power and get saddled with more responsibilities. They’ve also got a Van Helsing-sized problem to contend with in familiar-turned-Buffy-wannabe Guillermo (Harvey Guillen), and Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) seems to be sticking around to drain their energy whenever the mood strikes.

Whoever said life is hard never tried being undead. We chatted with the group’s “relentless” de-facto leader, Nandor. Or, actually, we Zoomed with his human counterpart, Kayvan Novak, but the guy so seamlessly transitioned into the naïve immortal’s obscure Eastern European accent when channeling his character, we’re honestly not sure who we were talking to. Both were delightful and gave us some interesting insight into the vamp’s search for love this season.

You filmed this season in Canada, during the winter, mostly at night, and during a pandemic. So, I have to ask, were you excited to get back to the WWDITS verse, or were you dreading it?

[Laughs] It was brilliant up to the point of leaving. I was distraught. I’d become so attached to just being here in the UK with my fiancé and my dog and my cat, it was hard. That’s the worst bit, kind of tearing yourself away from that. Once you go, then you’re away, you’re at work, and you’re just remembering what you love about being in that environment and playing those characters. As a cast and crew, we were all really happy to see each other again, which is lovely. We are a family. We had just as many laughs as we did in season two.

The vampires have a bit more power this season thanks to Guillermo’s massacre at the end of season two. What’s changed for Nandor? What’s his outlook on life this season?

The biggest change for Nandor is the dynamic with Guillermo. At the end of season two, Guillermo was revealed to be a vampire killer, which messed with Nandor quite a bit because that’s the relationship he’s been leaning on for 10 years. So that was exciting, and I was apprehensive about it. [switches to Nandor’s ambiguous Eastern European accent] “Oh I cannot lose my Guillermo, he’s not scared of me anymore. Is he going to listen to me, what’s the deal?” The status has changed because it was firmly in my favor, in my head, anyway.

Nandor was also going to be going on this journey to try and find love as well, and [I got to] draw from my own experiences and relationships and kind of put that into Nandor’s vulnerability and sense of heartbreak and desperation — all the things that go along with desire and rejection. I got to play all of these emotions within a kind of ensemble comedy in a goofy, funny character. My challenge I guess was to bring something real to the table and thankfully that is all in the writing and the direction.

He’s depressed and horny.

It’s not a great combination, really, is it?

A lot of fans like to read between the lines of the Nandor/Guillermo bromance but it doesn’t seem Nandor is really good at recognizing those signals. Does his obsession with finding someone to share eternal life with this season strain things with Guillermo even more?

I think that Nandor’s pursuit of love is extremely selfish. I think he never really takes into account Guillermo’s feelings. But that happens — you just get tunnel vision, you decide that you want something or someone and you don’t care what it takes to get it. The old vestige is you hurt the ones that you love, right? I think he does love Guillermo and he takes for granted that that love will be reciprocated no matter what, no matter how many times he sh*ts on him, steps on his toes, breaks his heart, pokes him with a stick.

Especially when he’s like, “Oh, I love this person. I love that person. I want to turn her into a vampire. I’m going to go and live with her for the rest of my life, this is it.” He never once takes into consideration that Guillermo might be upset. And when he does, I think his response is just to kind of gaslight him, to be like, “Grow up, man up, get over it.” All these kinds of quite insensitive, blunt reactions. But really what he’s doing is he’s got a hard time dealing with his own guilt that maybe he does bring Guillermo a lot of pain, and he just doesn’t want to hear it. When your mom’s like “Oh, you don’t call me anymore.”You don’t want that kind of family guilt. It’s the most potent kind of guilt that your siblings or your parents can kind of throw on you, like a curse you can’t get rid of. It’s just there. Guillermo is like that. But ultimately you have to submit to that because they’re family and you love them.

There’s a terrific Twilight callback this season, and it’s not the first Twilight reference Nandor has made on the show? Is he a Twi-hard?

It’s weird. They never really explored that joke any further, that I’m really into Twilight. Maybe he’s holding onto some glitter for another time, but I think it’s something that kind of left in the air. I might have to remind them of the fact that Nandor must be into Twilight quite a bit. Maybe [a future storyline] can be they are rebooting Twilight, and I’m going to get a part on it, but as a non-vampire.

‘What We Do In The Shadows’ returns to FX on Sept. 2.

Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 masterpiece (that I, embarrassingly, had not seen until recently) is just under three and a half hours long. But it doesn’t feel long. And this is something I’ve been noticing more and more over the last year and a half – to the point I’ve been having trouble getting back on the same wavelength with modern movies. Because older movies used to “just end.” The plot would be over and the credits would roll.

Now, a couple of things that need to be pointed out here: let’s define “older movies” as anything that falls between, say, 1935 and 2000. (Even in the ’90s movies used to “just end.”) And, also, there are always exceptions, but what I’m talking about here is the vast majority of movies. Before 2000, the plot would end and the credits would roll. Now, the plot ends and the movie just keeps going. Movies I genuinely like wear out their welcome with three or four endings that has to tie up every loose end – which has the effect of making movies seem really long.

Let’s back up a second. So, here’s what happened: On Friday, March 13th, 2020, New York City was about to shut down and enter a frightening new era. I made a decision that, however long this lasted, I wasn’t going to let this time go to waste. So I decided that every classic movie I’ve never seen, but always wanted to, well now this was the time. I figured, then, I could watch 20 or so. Since March 13, 2020, as of today (with several re-watches thrown in, too), I’ve watched 602 movies. I truly became obsessed. I was determined to do something with this time period. If a day went by that I didn’t add a classic movie to my watched list, I felt guilty about it. But immersing myself this deep into classic films, I started to notice the pattern that movies used to “just end.” And then, now, when I watch new movies, they just keep going and going and going and it’s driving me nuts. Why is this? I set off to find out.

Now, I want to be clear, this is not a statement on quality. None of this is saying, “well, they don’t make them like they used to.” (Even though that may be true, but that’s not the point here.) This is not even about ambiguous endings, though there is some crossover. But I’d argue even endings that aren’t inherently ambiguous still leave a lot up to the imagination, which is a good thing. (And I’m also mostly talking about studio movies. You know, studios – these companies that mass-market movies for profit.) And having immersed myself in so many past movies in a relatively short amount of time, I really think it rewired my brain on how the flow of a movie used to go and, probably, is supposed to go. And, now, how modern movies end is just different. And these drawn-out endings make them feel longer.

Seeking out examples of movies “just ending,” I’m scrolling through my Letterboxd diary and almost every single older movie I watched “just ends.” Let’s pick a few at random (spoilers for older movies to come): There’s a slew of Humphrey Bogart movies I watched, and in almost all of his movies, he’ll say one last line after the plot ends, then immediately followed by “The End.” Oh yeah, Nighthawks, Stallone kills the bad guy, sits down on the stairs to his building, the credits roll. Daniel LaRusso wins the All Valley tournament and the movie freeze frames and ends. The French Connection II ending is truly remarkable how quickly it ends after the villain is shot and killed. Even the aforementioned Seven Samurai, this is a three and a half hour movie and once the final battle is over the movie only takes three and a half minutes to wrap everything up. The plot is over, why would we want to sit there and continue watching this? Movies used to realize this. In The Omega Man, a movie I just watched this week, Charlton Heston hangs on to life just long enough to deliver a serum that could be used to save his friend’s life, as his colleagues head to the hills. Does it work? Do they make it? Well, that’s up to me because once he hands it over the credits roll. (I could list literally 200 more but I’ll stop.) I just can’t tell you how many times I’m watching a screener of a modern movie at home, it feels about over, then I check and there’s somehow 45 minutes left. As opposed to when I’m watching an older movie, that feels nowhere near over, and I check to see the time remeaining and there’s somehow only seven minutes left.

Compare that with Free Guy, a movie I mostly liked but it just kept going and going and decided it had to begin, and resolve, a thread about a love interest that I didn’t even pay attention to during the main plot of the film. In the Heights is another movie I enjoyed, but all these older movies had programmed me to think the film would end after it’s showstopper of a dance number after the blackout. Everything seemed mostly resolved and the stuff that wasn’t, I’d figure it out on my own. (More on that later.) But, instead, there was another 40 minutes left, because literally everything had to be resolved. (Again, this was a movie I liked quite a bit.)

I reached out to a few prominent screenwriters/filmmakers to ask them if I was off base. These are people you have most likely heard of who have made movies you have most likely seen. What I found was I was getting two sets of answers. I was getting “on the record” answers that kind of insinuated I was making too big a deal about this. Then I was getting “off the record” or “on background” answers that were much more interesting and honest and made it sound like, yes, I was correct. So what I did was I told everyone I wouldn’t be using their names and would just publish everyone’s quotes on background because I’d rather have the interesting, more honest answers.

The unanimous consensus, and most obvious answer, is movies feel too long now because they have to set up potential sequels. Movies can no longer “just end” and leave some loose threads up to the viewer. Everything has to be resolved in order to set up the next story. “Movies now complete the ending so much that they actually start the next thing,” says one prominent screenwriter. “So many movies now end with the beginning of the sequel.”

“I think, on a practical level, when we’re talking about studio filmmaking,” says another screenwriter, “we’re talking about a given film not being just its own thing, but often the vehicle that sets up a franchise. And when you’re working like that, there’s a lot of heavy lifting to be done in the first entry. Yeah, whatever journey you’re on has to end, but it also has to spark what comes next.”

One of the reasons I cut this off at 2000 is the Lord of the Rings movies, because Return of the King seems to be the Big Bang of a movie that is the opposite of “just ends.” And people were not used to that then, to the point everyone noticed it went on forever after the plot was over. Now, I’m no so sure people would notice. It’s just like every other movie now. Almost every movie goes on way too long after the plot is over.

“Well, I think it has a lot to do with CinemaScore and the testing process,” says a screenwriter. “Movies are looking for that little boost at the end to get that final impression up a bit right as people leave the theater. That’s why post-credit sequences work. You can see that movies that end ambiguously score lower in testing and on CinemaScore. So the longer endings remove all ambiguity.”

He continues, “There is a screenwriter guru person. She says people don’t care about victories; they respond to people celebrating the victories. That’s what makes audiences happy. Hence the medal scene at the end of Star Wars. That’s what gives people joy, not the Death Star exploding. I think maybe we’ve overlearned that lesson.”

And that medal ceremony scene at the end of Star Wars? Do you know how long that scene is? It’s one minute and forty seconds long. That’s it. Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star and they wrap everything up in a tidy scene less that two minutes long. It’s perfect. Compare that to the ending of The Rise Of Skywalker that I think is still going. Every little thing had to be resolved, even Chewbacca finally getting a medal from this aforementioned medal ceremony. Think about watching the first Star Wars in a vacuum in 1977, without all the sequels that would come later. Do we think Han will stick around? Darth Vader got away, what’s he up to? What happened to Ben, why did he just disappear? This created discussion and it created a more satisfying experience because, we, the viewer, could think about those questions and it made us think about the movie more. Now, all that stuff has to be addressed. If Casablanca came out today, It wouldn’t end with Ilsa flying away. We’d have to hear all of Rick’s thoughts about Ilsa flying away. Rick, back at his bar, telling Sam all about his plan to get Ilsa back. Just going on and on and on after the plot is long over.

“Sometimes it’s great to let your imagination run without being pointed in a certain direction,” says, you guessed it, a screenwriter. “And sometimes it’s important to know. But I think writers and directors were given permission by audiences to explore what happens to these people once the cameras stop rolling. Sometimes that’s a good question to answer, and doing so has serious impact. Sometimes it’s a terrible idea and you shoot the foot off everything you worked so hard to achieve.”

Movies feel long. This is a constant complaint. But I truly believe it has nothing to do with length. Older movies are also long. (Again, I just watched a three and a half hour movie and it did not feel long.) It has to do with the modern movie tying up every loose end, leaving nothing to the imagination, taking long victory laps, and setting up future movies. All for the promise of a slightly higher test score and setting up the next movie. Because of this, movies don’t “just end” like they used to. And we are worse off for that.

And here’s one final thought about this from, yes, a screenwriter, “Here’s how execs and producers think: If an audience leaves a theater unhappy with the ending, they’re going to tell people the movie was unsatisfying. And what they don’t understand is that an initial snap reaction to a movie is one thing. And that a happy ending looks and feels great in the moment. But it often means less over the long haul. But they only react to what’s on the cards. And they think that people are going to walk out of a movie where the protagonists don’t outright ‘win’ and tell all their friends the movie sucked. That’s almost never how it works. And you want people to have an experience, not just feel placated. Sometimes life is messy. Sometimes shit ends terribly and it doesn’t invalidate what led you there. Sometimes it’s better to just say thanks and get the fuck out. But so often that’s an organic thing. And so often the testing process squashes that out of fear.”

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Reese Witherspoon has officially the entered the world of cryptocurrency. On Thursday night, The Morning Show actress tweeted that she just bought her first ETH (short for ethereum), and her replies instantly filled up with a welcome wagon full of weird. As for what the heck an ETH even is, and what makes it different than bitcoin, ethereum is the “world’s programmable blockchain,” which has all sorts of applications. Most specifically, creating NFTs, which have been taking the art world by storm. Via MoneyWeek:

Decentralised finance (DeFi) applications allow for all sorts of financial services – decentralised exchanges, for example, or borrowing and lending systems – without the need for typical financial intermediaries such as banks or brokerages.

Ethereum allows for the creation and trade of NFTs – tokens which are connected to digital works of art and other forms of digital property.

On top of watching her follower count skyrocket, Witherspoon soon found herself inundated with an avalanche of pitches for other crypto-coins, which was to be expected, but she probably wasn’t prepared for how bonkers the online crypto crowd can be. Here are just some of the weirdo reactions, and if half of them don’t make sense, that’s par for the course:

However, Witherspoon getting in on ETH wasn’t all welcomes and memes. Some savvy crypto-investors saw her entry as a sign that the price for ETH is about to hit a wall after being on an impressive rally this week, according to Fortune.

It should be noted that Reese was underestimated once before, and you know what she did? Went to Harvard and became a lawyer. True story.

(Via Reese Witherspoon on Twitter)