Author: GoneTrending

The Dallas Mavericks‘ 127-125 loss to the Golden State Warriors last month featured a bit of controversy, as the Mavericks protested the result of the game due to an incident late in the third quarter that led to Golden State scoring an easy two points. As it turns out, their efforts to show that they were “deprived of a fair opportunity to win the game” came up short.

The league announced on Thursday afternoon that the Mavericks’ protest of the game was denied. In a statement sent out by the NBA, it was pointed out that there were “nearly 14 minutes remaining in the game” at the time the incident happened, and that Dallas “took the lead twice in the final four minutes.” And despite public statements from Mark Cuban that indicated otherwise in the immediate aftermath of the game, “in its written submission in support of the protest, Dallas agrees that the referee signaled possession to Golden State.”

During a media availability on Wednesday evening, Cuban expressed that he was “very confident” the NBA would say the Mavericks were correct to protest the game, even if he did not think the league would determine the end of the game needed to be replayed.

More than a few times I’ve declared Jedi are boring. They are. This is the inherent problem with the Prequels is that the main characters are all either stoic people with magical powers who think emotions are bad, or people who want to become stoic people with magical powers who think emotions are bad. Now look, I have no problem with individual Jedi. In the original Star Wars, Ben Kenobi is a great character. Though, he doesn’t really identify as a Jedi anymore, going as far to say he was “once a Jedi Knight.” Though the rules about what Jedi even were in the first movie are vague and certainly not what they are in the world of Star Wars now. It seemed to lean more into being part of an army than a way of life. And if there no longer was an army, you were no longer a member. And it wasn’t clear if Jedi had any powers at all, frankly, other than some slight of hand and deception. Anyway, my point is, when you get a bunch of Jedi together, that’s when things get boring.

I’ve always leaned more into the ragtag randomness of the Star Wars galaxy that we see in the Original Trilogy and, to an extent, in movies like Rogue One and Solo. And, for a good while, what we saw in The Mandalorian. Just stories about people without magical powers trying to make their way in this galaxy.

This is why I enjoyed this week’s episode of The Mandalorian so much. Bryce Dallas Howard’s episodes always seem to have an affinity for the stuff I enjoy from this galaxy as opposed to lore. The whole episode was a side-quest, but that’s the way The Mandalorian used to be, all side-quests. Hey if The Mandalorian wants what the Jawas have, you need to get this egg for them. To get the egg, The Mandalorian will have to kill the Mudhorn. Good fun! And this week, Din Djarin and Bo Katan met with their new pals, Jack Black and Lizzo, who were willing to help, but had a little favor to ask first about some malfunctioning droids, which sent the pait from task to task as they tried to solve this mystery. And we even got to hear Christopher Lloyd screaming about what a great visionary Count Dooku was. You know what? More good fun!

But this season has really gotten embedded into the lore of the Mandalorians. And, at first, I gave it a chance. Maybe their lore is interesting. Well, so far, it’s not all that interesting. To the point I don’t care. The Original Trilogy version of Boba Fett takes a lot of modern criticism for getting a lot of attention for not doing all that much. But at the time of The Empire Strikes Back, that’s what made him fascinating. He was just a bounty hunter. His name is never even said in Empire and is just kind of mumbled by Han Solo in Return of the Jedi where if you don’t know that’s what he’s saying, there’s not much chance it can be deciphered. But Fett could be anything. Which made Fett interesting. Well, it turns out when you get a bunch of characters together who all look like Boba Fett, it stops getting all that interesting.

Madalorians, as a collective, might be more boring than Jedi. I don’t care about their religion, which is all they seem to talk about. When they train, it looks like some sort of SPECTRE lair getting ready to take on 007. And yeah, it’s annoying I can’t see their faces because I am someone who enjoys watching actors act and all I’m watching is … actually I have no idea who I’m watching because who knows who is in the costume on a week-to-week basis. After watching Pedro Pascal in The Last of Us, my goodness I just want to watch this man act. I have no idea what his contract is with Lucasfilm, but if I were Lucasfilm, I’d want to have this guy front and center of every episode, not just his voice. But the show is going the opposite direction where Din has recommitted to never taking his helmet off. Great. One of the most charismatic actors working today and we don’t get to see him. (I assume there was an overlap between his work on The Last of Us and The Mandalorian and all of this wound up being a workaround, but it’s still baffling.)

I find myself openly rooting against this plan to bring all The Mandalorians back together and reclaim Mandalore, which I’m not sure is the desired intent. But episodes like this week’s remind me why I still enjoy watching this show so much. And what I loved about it from the start. Just this loner, making his way through the galaxy. But now we get to hang out with hundreds of Mandalorians and they are about as interesting as all the Jedi hanging out together. I wish the Mandalorians would tell Din to take a hike so he can take his helmet off and go make some money collecting bounties.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

On July 21st, many Americans will have to make a tough choice: one ticket to Greta Gerwig’s cinematic event Barbie or one ticket to Christopher Nolan’s extremely long biopic, Oppenheimer? There is one clear answer here… sorry to Cillian Murphy, but you can catch him on the 22nd if you want.

The long-awaited Barbie movie is almost upon us, and now is the time to get to know what you’re in for. Margot Robbie will star as the infamous doll, with Ryan Gosling as her companion Ken, and a slew of other Barbies and Kens. You too can be a Barbie! If you’re into that. Here is what we know so far.

Cast

One of the most appealing factors of the Barbie movie is the stacked cast which consists of acting veterans, newcomers, and Michael Cera as Allan. Alongside Robbie and Gosling as Barbie and Ken, the movie also stars numerous other iterations of Barbie, portrayed by Dua Lipa, Emma Mackey, Alexandra Shipp, Kate McKinnon, Hari Nef, Nicola Coughlan. Meanwhile, the Kens will consist of Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Ncuti Gatwa and Scott Evans. Rounding out the cast is Helen Mirren as the narrator and Will Ferrell as a Mattel CEO.

Plot

Despite all of the buzz, the plot details for the movie are still pretty sparse. We know that Barbie lives in her world with other Barbies, and she will go on some sort of adventure with Ken in the “real world,” but not much beyond that has been revealed.

Trailer

The star-studded trailer dropped this week, featuring few plot details but a whole lot of pink!

Release Date

Barbie will rollerskate into theaters on July 21st, 2023.

(Via Variety)

Emily Ratajkowski‘s dating life has made plenty of headlines lately, and for that reason, it takes up plenty of room in a new LA Times profile that includes EmRata’s reaction to word that she was spotted kissing Harry Styles in Japan. Her response makes her previously suggested timeline a little confusing (perhaps there’s some overlap there that we don’t know about), but what can you do? She’s having a good time, it seems.

In the piece, Emily also makes some vague statements that could be about Eric Andre (that’s the potential reading from columnist Amy Kaufman), and to be frank, they’re not spectacular reveals. These include Emily’s disappointment that this unnamed male didn’t directly comment on her beauty and when asked, he declared, “Are you serious? You’re a famous model.” Emily now remarks, “I need to know that you are specifically attracted to me” rather than a “standard,” but when it comes to Pete Davidson, she is clearly a fan, even though their public appearances looked incredibly awkward. In fact, Emily is still singing Pete’s praises:

“Even my friends were like, ‘What was that like?’” she says, referring to her outings with the “Saturday Night Live” veteran. “I actually don’t understand it. People are so perplexed by the idea that a man might just be respectful to women and treat them like people and thus be easy to go out on dates with.”

Even though Pete and Emily didn’t work out as a long-term couple, there’s plenty of respect there. Back in November 2021, she had let the world know that she understood the attraction, too. To recap, EmRata declared, “[H]e seems super charming. He’s vulnerable. He’s lovely. His fingernail polish is awesome. He looks good!” Lately, though, Pete has admitted that the SNL cast’s focus on his dating life didn’t make him feel great. He probably feels much differently about Emily’s take, though.

(Via LA Times)

Kevin Gates isn’t afraid to share, whether it’s explaining why he almost went one full month without eating or drinking or vulnerably sharing about sexual abuse he suffered in adolescence.

Gates cares about the truth.

“From me not telling the truth, my throat chakra started getting blocked, and I started getting sick,” Gates said on the I Am Athlete episode from Monday, April 3, beginning around the 50-minute mark. “I started having colds and sh*t until I started opening my throat chakra and speaking the truth. I haven’t been sick since.”

He continued, “When I was living at the other spot before I moved here, I used to be sick a lot. Like, weak and everything because I wasn’t speaking my truth, and when I’m not speaking my truth, I’m not living in my truth. When you set boundaries, you’re showing love for yourself. It’s OK to tell people, ‘No, not today.’ But I had a fear of telling people no because, you know, once you tell them no, they act like you never told them yeah.”

Gates, a practicing Muslim, began the episode discussing Ramadan.

“Fasting is the cure for everything,” he said. “When your body don’t have nothing to eat, it’s gonna eat all your bad cells up because it goes into fight or flight. When it eats your bad cells, your body releases hydrogen, and you know, we breathe in oxygen.”

When co-host LeSean McCoy asked when fasting for Ramadan happens, Gates added, “Most people do from sun-up to sundown, but I like to do it to where when I break my fast, it’s just with liquids. I like that liquid diet.”

Gates rapped about, um, food sources in his February single “Breakfast.”

Kevin Gates is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

If you are aware of how things have gone Los Angeles Angels in recent years and have at least one friend with a Twitter account, you are almost certainly aware of the “Tungsten Arm” O’Doyle tweet. The gist: The Angels have had two generational talents in Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, and despite that, they keep losing while those guys do ludicrous stuff on a pretty frequent basis.

This tweet has inspired approximately 500,000,000,000,000 jokes since it was sent, the latest of which came on a Thursday afternoon edition of SportsCenter. The joke itself wasn’t quite in the spirit of the original tweet, because it revolves around a misfortune befalling Ohtani, as the Angels star became the first player in MLB history to get a pitch clock violation as a hitter and a pitcher in the same game.

Of course, as the league’s only player who is an MVP-caliber hitter and Cy Young-caliber pitcher, Ohtani was the overwhelming favorite to be the first person to do this. Still, Ohtani making pitch clock history earned a shoutout for O’Doyle on a Thursday episode of SportsCenter.

The good news for Ohtani is that the last part of the tweet did not come to fruition, as the Angels beat the Seattle Marines, 4-3. Ohtani went 1-2 with an RBI and two walks as a hitter and struck out eight while only allowing one run in six innings of work on the mound.

Lizzo just made her cameo in the Disney+ series The Mandalorian. She played the role of the Dutchess Of Plazir-15, who is the wife of Jack Black’s character, Captain Bombardier. Black shared a selfie with Lizzo and wrote that he had “so much fun” working with her. Now, the “About Damn Time” singer shared her own post.

Alongside a photo burst featuring a selfie of her in costume, as well as another silly selfie with Black and other pictures, she wrote about how she cried after being offered the role. The caption reads:

“When I was a young girl my dad introduced me to Star Wars like a rite of passage. The trilogy’s are his favorite movies and quickly became mine. When Jon favreau called me and offered the role of The Dutchess I cried all day wishing my dad was still with us cus he’d be so proud. Star Wars was a dream I never thought was possible— but thanks to Jon, Bryce, and everyone in the galaxy I am now part of the ever-expanding saga of the stars. I am in honorable company and forever grateful. This is The Way…. and May the Force be with you.”

Find Lizzo’s post below.

Lizzo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

John Leguizamo is not backing down on his beef with The Super Mario Bros. Movie. The actor, who played Luigi in the original 1993 Super Mario Bros film alongside Bob Hoskin’s Mario, has been vocal about the new movie going “backwards” in terms of representation. Leguizamo’s casting was a huge deal in the early ’90s, and to him, the new film erased all that progress by casting Charlie Day as Luigi.

With The Super Mario Bros. Movie now in theaters, TMZ caught up with Leguizamo on the streets and asked him if he’s going to at least check out the new film. He did not mince words. Via Variety:

“No I will not [be watching]. They could’ve included a Latin character,” Leguizamo said. “Like I was groundbreaking and then they stopped the groundbreaking. They messed up the inclusion. They dis-included. Just cast some Latin folk! We’re 20% of the population. The largest people of color group and we are underrepresented.”

When asked again by TMZ if he would be watching the movie, Leguizamo answered: “Hell no!”

Thanks to his recent stint on The Daily Show, Leguizamo has been a hot streak calling things like they see him. However, he might not want to catch wind of what Seth Rogen recently said about the original Super Mario Bros film because it was pretty brutal as well.

“It’s one of the worst films ever made,” Rogen told Variety while recalling seeing it in theaters at 11-years-old. “I was so disappointed. I think it made me realize that movies, like, could be bad. That never occurred to me until that moment.”

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is now playing in theaters.

(Via Variety)

Every so often, a new artist breaks through the noise of mainstream rap by the sheer undeniable strength of their persona. Sexxy Red is one of those rappers. Stepping into a tradition of unapologetically raunchy rappers like Trina, Jacki-O, City Girls, and Sukihana, Sexxy Red’s videos for “Born By The River” featuring Sukihana and “Pound Town” have become viral favorites due to their over-the-top sexuality and bizarrely relatable down-to-earth nature.

The St. Louis rapper is the definition of a round-the-way girl; her videos are shot at gas stations and on Ocean Drive at South Beach. Like GloRilla and Ice Spice before her, Sexxy Red fills her videos with her friends, presents as almost aggressively regular, and flouts the conventions of big-budget productions. Whereas the rappers of the past embraced a “fake-it-til-you-make-it” ethos, piling on the polish, Sexxy Red just puts on the PSD Hooters set and twerks with her friends in a parking lot. It’s a lot of fun, even if it will probably make your mom cover your eyes in horror.

While this might not seem like a recipe for success — her radio-unfriendly rhymes include tongue-in-cheek lines about the color of one of her orifices — she’s certainly captured Rap Twitter’s attention. Hip-hop heads have been debating her music and image just about every other day, with “Pound Town” trending at various points in the past month, thanks in large part to fellow facial tattoo enthusiast Summer Walker covering the song on her own social media. Other peers like GloRilla have also expressed their appreciation for the song, so it’s probably only a matter of time before it’s a new “song of the summer” — just like Glo’s own “Let’s Go (FNF).” It’s already climbing the charts and the Hot 100 isn’t out of reach.

If Sexxy Red seems like too much, just you wait… if her momentum keeps up, she could end up building an insatiable fanbase for whom her current success is just not enough.

Steven Tyler was named in a lawsuit filed last December in Los Angeles filled with troubling allegations of “sexual assault, sexual battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress,” as reported exclusively by Rolling Stone at the time.

“The plaintiff Julia Holcomb [now Julia Misley] alleges that Tyler convinced Holcomb’s mother to grant him guardianship over her when she was 16 years old, which consequently allowed her to live with him and engage in a sexual relationship,” Rolling Stone‘s Ethan Millan relayed within the sprawling report. “She claims they were together from 1973 until about three years later.”

Millman continued, “The suit itself doesn’t name Tyler, naming the defendants as Defendant Doe 1 and Does 2 through 50. But Holcomb — who Rolling Stone mentioned in a 1976 profile of the band in reference to Tyler’s romantic life — has been public about her experience with Tyler in the past, and the lawsuit directly quotes from Tyler’s own memoir.”

The allegations also include Misley being pregnant with Tyler’s child in 1975 at 17 years old, resulting in an abortion at Tyler’s request.

Millman reported on the ongoing case again on Wednesday, April 5. His new Rolling Stone piece states that the Aerosmith leader “has denied all the allegations.” Tyler is said to have filed his denial in Los Angeles County Superior Court last week.

“Tyler, represented by attorney Shawn Holley, issued 24 affirmative defenses denying all the allegations,” Millman wrote. “Among those defenses, Tyler alleged that Misley’s ‘claims are barred in whole or in part by Plaintiff’s consent’ and ‘because of immunity or qualified immunity to Defendant as caregiver and/or guardian.’”

Millman additionally noted, “Tyler also alleged that Misley ‘has not suffered any injury or damage as a result of any action by Defendant,’ further stating that ‘if it is determined that Plaintiff has been damaged, then any such damages were not caused by Defendant.’ Tyler claimed the alleged conduct — presumably writing about the experience in his memoirs — is protected under the first amendment.”

Misley’s attorney, Jeff Anderson, released a statement on Wednesday that denounces Tyler for “gaslighting,” “using a sham legal guardianship to avoid prosecution for sex crimes,” and “40 years of trauma.”

“In a new court filing seeking to deny Julia Misley her day in court, Tyler claims the teenager ‘consented’ to his sexual crimes,” the statement begins. “It’s astonishing, galling and arrogant that an adult is trying to defend his crimes and exploitation of an unguarded 16-year-old for his perverse pleasure.”

Read Anderson’s full statement here.