Author: GoneTrending

The debate about so-called “nepotism babies” is all the rage this week after a New York magazine feature detailing the current crop of kids in showbiz with famous parents. Of course, this is nothing new; most of “New Hollywood” when I was a kid in the ’90s consisted of the children of actors my parents grew up watching. But since this is the internet, and nobody remembers anything that happened more than 18 months ago — this holds up, feel free to test it — here we are, talking about a new generation of stars entering their families’ business.

One of the stars who was named in the article weighed in on the debate, offering a nuanced perspective a far cry from his observations about his favorite NBA team and taking “both sides” into consideration. O’Shea Jackson Jr., who is not only named after his father Ice Cube but also actually played him in Straight Outta Compton, noted on Twitter how it was a combination of his father’s advice and his own hard work that got him to where he is in his career as a respected and prolific actor (not a rapper, as his dad started out).

“My dad told me in a perfect world, I would play him in Straight Outta Compton,” he wrote. “I was already in college for screenwriting at USC. I accepted the challenge. And auditioned for two years before getting the role. After that it was up to me, he couldn’t hold my hand through my career. I had to get my ass up and make it work. From the roles I chose. The work ethic I put into them. My professionalism on sets and promo tours. Even leaving HIS agency and goin to find a team of my own. Once the door was opened it was up to me to walk through it and thrive.”

However, he admitted his dad did give him the support system he needed to be able to make those moves. “But none of that. NONE. OF. THAT. Happens that way without the love of my father. The work he put in to get us to a place of opportunity. And for me to ignore that or not accept and use as a guide would be foolish and disrespectful. I am grateful and I use his teachings daily.”

The 31-year-old Ice Cube doppelganger has appeared in a number of buzzy films and TV shows over the course of his career including Ingrid Goes West with Aubrey Plaza, Godzilla: King Of The Monsters, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, and he’ll be appearing in next year’s internet-anticipated action comedy Cocaine Bear. Meanwhile, Ice Cube just put out his second studio album as part of the California supercrew Mount Westmore with Snoop Dogg, E-40, and Too Short.

While the Oscars shortlist was released this week, we still have quite a bit of time to go until the nominees are officially announced. 2022 was a pretty substantial year for movies, thanks to Tom Cruise and his planes and the swarm of superhero movies from the last 12 months. Whether those will be nominated is anyone’s guess.

The eligibility period for the upcoming ceremony runs from January 1st, 2022 until December 31st, 2022, so yes, Avatar: The Way Of Water could snag some of those coveted nominations.

The official list of nominees will be announced on January 24th, while the ceremony will take place on March 12th in Los Angeles. The 2023 telecast will present all 23 of the categories on air after last year’s ceremony neglected to do so, sparking backlash among stars and nominees who wanted to see their peers be awarded.

The ceremony will be led by Jimmy Kimmel, who will return to the stage as host for the third time, though hopefully, he will be standing. While no performers have been announced at this time, in the past, nominated songs and artists have performed their songs during the live show, meaning we could get a Rihanna performance if her Black Panther track gets nominated. Of course, it’s pretty tough competition against that Minions soundtrack.

Charlie Cox is dropping details about the new Daredevil: Born Again series coming to Disney+. After officially joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe thanks to a crowd-pleasing cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Cox was last seen bouncing around the final episodes of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. As of this writing, there are unconfirmed rumors that Cox could make an appearance in Marvel’s Echo as he continues to make his presence felt in the MCU. But if he doesn’t, the actor will definitely be seen in the Daredevil series Born Again that’s scheduled to hit Disney+ in 2024.

Of course, the big question is whether or not Born Again will be an extension of the Daredevil series for Netflix or a reboot. Judging by Cox’s latest comments, the series seems to be a significant reimagining of the blind vigilante. Via NME:

“This has to be a reincarnation, it has to be different, otherwise why are we doing it?” he says. The episode of She-Hulk, in which he had a one-night stand with the title character, showed Murdock as “quick-witted and funny and charismatic and carefree at times,” which is very different from the brooding Netflix version. “My opinion is this character works best when he’s geared towards a slightly more mature audience. My instinct is that on Disney+ it will be dark but it probably won’t be as gory.”

As for fans who want Daredevil to stick to the more ultra-serious tone of the Netflix series, Cox doesn’t agree. “I would say to those people, we’ve done that,” he said. “Let’s take the things that really worked, but can we broaden? Can we appeal to a slightly younger audience without losing what we’ve learned about what works?”

However, Daredevil: Born Again will be different from other MCU series. Where those shows have stayed in the six-to-nine episode range, Born Again will sport a whopping 18 episodes that Cox will film for almost an entire year. Shooting begins February 2023 and isn’t expect to wrap until December.

“If that’s done right and he really gets his hands dirty with that world… I think there’s something quite interesting about that,” Cox said. “To spend a lot of time in a superhero’s day-to-day life and you really earn the moments when he suits up.”

(Via NME)

Foo Fighters boss Dave Grohl and super producer Greg Kurstin have taken their “Hanukkah Sessions” series up a notch this year. On December 5, a private “Hanukkah Sessions” concert was held at Los Angeles’ Largo At The Coronet, the first in-person iteration since its 2020 inception, where “Hanukkah Sessions” performances were recorded to be rolled out on each of Hanukkah’s eight nights throughout this week.

Night One, on December 18, featured Judd Apatow covering “Spinning Wheel” by Blood, Sweat & Tears. Pink joined Grohl and Kurstin for Night Two, and they gave an infectious performance of her 2001 smash “Get The Party Started.” Night Three was a true team effort: Inara George, Kurstin’s The Bird And The Bee bandmate, sang lead on 10cc’s “The Things We Do For Love” with Tenacious D’s Jack Black and Kyle Gass handling backing vocals.

And Wednesday, December 21, we were gifted a heartwarming family affair for Night Four, as Grohl’s 16-year-old daughter, Violet, covered “At Seventeen” by Janis Ian. Violet stole the limelight from her iconic drummer dad, easily strumming the acoustic guitar and delivering pristine vocals.

Violet has been joining Dave on stage for years. In September, she opened the Foos’ Los Angeles Taylor Hawkins Tribute concert with “Hallelujah.” Before that, she had contributed vocals to Medicine At Midnight, the band’s 2021 album.

Watch Violet Grohl’s take on “At Seventeen” above.

Is Trae Young the next superstar NBA player to want a change of scenery? According to Chris Haynes of Bleacher Report, there’s a belief among “rival executives in attendance at the NBA’s annual G League Winter Showcase” that Young, the face of the Atlanta Hawks, may want just that “if the team doesn’t make inroads come postseason time.”

It’s the second bit of big news surrounding the Hawks in as many days. On Wednesday, the team’s President of Basketball Operations, Travis Schlenk, moved into an advisory role. Their general manager, Landry Fields, is taking over basketball operations, and Haynes noted that Fields and Young “meet routinely and have a great relationship.”

Atlanta entered this season with high expectations following the decision to trade three first-round picks for Dejounte Murray in the offseason. So far, those expectations have not been met, as Atlanta is 16-16 and finds itself in ninth place in the Eastern Conference. The team lost to the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday by way of an Ayo Dosunmu buzzer beater.

Young, a two-time All-Star selection, joined the Hawks via a trade on the night of the 2018 NBA Draft that sent Luka Doncic to the Dallas Mavericks. He’s averaging 27.6 points and 9.8 assists in 35.8 minutes per game this year.

The brothers Lopez went toe-to-toe on Wednesday night in Cleveland. Robin, who didn’t play on the evening, came out on top — the Cavs won, 114-106 — while Brook had 14 points, six rebounds, two assists, two steals, and a block in 28 minutes of work. He was also on the receiving end of some absolutely scalding trash talk, all thanks to his twin brother.

TNT mic’d Robin up for the game, and at one point, Brook decided to embellish a little bit of contact and draw a foul as a result. The next time Robin got a chance to talk to a referee, he revealed a detail about his brother’s past as proof that this was a flop.

“That’s a flop,” Robin said. “He’s an actor. I know, he was in West Side Story. He was Officer Krupke.”

This made the referee laugh, which is almost certainly what Robin was going for here. Anyway, a 2006 Los Angeles Times story confirms that Brook “recently played a police officer in a class production of West Side Story.” While it has been a while since I have seen West Side Story, I do not believe that there is a scene where Officer Krupke gets nudged by Evan Mobley and draws a foul on the Cavaliers star.

You never know when a multi-millionaire supermodel, actress, and author is one swipe away. On Thursday’s episode of the High Low with EmRata podcast, Emily Ratajkowski revealed that she recently joined a dating app for the first time. “I was like, f*ck it,” she said. “I was feeling defiant because so many people told me not to get it.”

Ratajkowski, who was married to Sebastian Bear-McClard from 2018 to 2022, created the account on the non-disclosed app while drinking wine, as one does. The My Body writer, who identifies as bisexual and believes “sexuality is on a sliding scale,” has already “gotten a few direct requests from women which is exciting,” but doesn’t expect to stay on the app for long. “I feel like this app is a little bit white,” Ratajkowski added. “It’s very white and feels like a very particular man and very particular type of woman, so I don’t think I’m gonna meet my lady crush on here.”

As for her other alleged crush, Pete Davidson, the pair are getting “more serious” after being spotted in public together, a source told Page Six. They have “similar vibes personality-wise and style-wise,” and Davidson “really makes her laugh and keeps things fun.” This has all the makings of a romantic-comedy: two close friends help each other with their dating profiles, even though it’s obvious they should be together. Will they realize true love has been in front of them this whole thing?

Find out when APPetite For Love comes to Peacock in 2024.

(Via Page Six)

Most kids are busy trying to convince their parents they need a new thing added to their Christmas list a few days before the big day. But 12-year-old Jonathan “J.J.” Werner in Cambridge, Minnesota, stays busy making sure other kids have something under their Christmas tree. He really takes his service projects seriously.

Last year, the young Scout worked to provide Christmas gifts for children in foster care in two Minnesota counties. This year, he added kids currently living in domestic violence shelters to the list. Jonathan raised money by participating in a popcorn fundraiser. He told KARE 11 in 2021, “I adopted all the foster care kids in Kanabec County and Isanti County for Christmas.”

There were up to 120 kids in foster care in the two counties and Jonathan was able to provide a present for each of them, with the help of his mom’s minivan. He made more than $46,194 in popcorn sales, and this year he beat that number by $10,000, selling $56,396 worth of popcorn.

In the United States, there are currently 407,000 children in foster care, with 34% of them being cared for by relatives. There isn’t a set organization that universally provides Christmas gifts for children placed in foster care. Whether children in care receive gifts or not depends on the foster family if there’s no special program from the state or if biological parents don’t provide them. This can leave children without anything to open on a holiday where they will surely be asked at school what Santa brought them.

Thanks to Jonathan and his sleigh-driving mom, nearby children in difficult situations won’t have to go without on Christmas day. The preteen Santa knows just how important it is for kids in foster care to feel loved because he knows someone that has experienced living in foster homes, his own dad.

“My dad spent 14 years in foster care and based upon stories that he had being in foster care, it doesn’t really sound like they had much of a Christmas,” Jonathan told KARE 11. With more and more programs popping up to help foster children experience a good Christmas, things have definitely improved some since Jonathan’s dad was in foster care, according to Isanti Health and Human Services Supervisor Ann Stackpool-Gunderson, as reported by KARE 11.

Jonathan was determined to do his part and other Scouts pitched in to help wrap gifts. It was a team effort that carried on to this year when Jonathan was able to buy even more toys with the money he raised. The amount of determination he has is admirable.

With the help of his team of elves and his mom, all the gifts were successfully dropped off at their respective locations to be distributed. Turns out this Scout may have a future in social work if he takes the Kanabec County supervisor up on his offer to apply for a job there when he’s older.

Seeing someone so young take the time out of their holiday season to do something so selfless gives me the warm and fuzzies. I hope he continues to have success in this big undertaking in the future, because everyone deserves a little extra love during the holiday season.

Lee Plaza in Roanoke, Virginia, was named for Robert E. Lee, and up until 2020, it was home to a monument to the famed Confederate general. In the racial justice protests of 2020, however, the monument was toppled and then removed. And in 2021, the city council voted to split the renaming of the plaza, with part becoming Freedom Plaza and the section where Lee’s monument stood becoming Henrietta Lacks Plaza.

In a move that reflects the nation’s ongoing reckoning with its racial history, a statue of Lacks will soon be erected in the city of her birth, right where the Lee monument stood. At an event at the site this week, artist Bryce Cobbs unveiled a full-sized rendering of Lacks, upon which the new statue will be designed.

Henrietta Lacks was a Black American woman and mother of five who was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer in 1951. While she was being treated at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, a doctor snipped cells from her cervix without her knowledge or consent. Lacks died of the aggressive cancer at age 31, but her cells lived on … and on and on, much to the surprise of Dr. George Gey, the researcher who studied them.

Unlike other patients’ cells, which had always quickly died in Gey’s lab, Lacks’ cells doubled every 20 to 24 hours. These “immortal” cells, nicknamed HeLa cells after Lacks’ first and last name, changed modern medicine in huge ways. HeLa cells have been—and still are—used to study the effects of toxins, drugs, hormones and viruses on cancer cells, to test the effects of radiation and poisons, to develop vaccines (including the polio and COVID-19 vaccines) and to study the human genome.

The world owes Henrietta Lacks a huge debt of gratitude for the medical breakthroughs her cells have helped humanity accomplish. However, it’s also important to acknowledge the injustice that her cells were used without her consent.

In attendance at the art unveiling event were a son and grandson of Henrietta Lacks, both of whom have worked to have her story told and honored. Her grandson Ron Lacks expressed his happiness at the Roanoke event that the plaza project involved the Lacks family and that the organizers of the project had approached them first. The statue design by sculptor Larry Bechtel is set to be unveiled in October 2023.

The replacing of a Confederate monument with a statue of a Black American who contributed to the advancement of humanity feels only fitting. While we can’t right historical wrongs, we can at least acknowledge them and make sure the people we choose to celebrate with monuments are deserving of the honor.

(Emily In Paris spoilers will definitely be found below.)

Emily Cooper and friends only hit Netflix for Season 3 on December 21, but the show’s so easily digestible that a lot of people are… already done watching. Naturally, they’re now wondering (due to a cliffhanger) when they will see more. And if they will see more at all. If you are one of those interested viewers, we have good news for you.

Emily In Paris already received a Season 4 renewal, and as you can see above, this happened when the Season 3 announcement surfaced. The breezy comedy is simply too addictive despite being completely devoid of substance, but perhaps that’s one of best explanations for why this show’s a hit. Not everything needs to be completely cerebral, you know? Sometimes you simply wanna tune out of your mind and watch some soap operatics with nice scenery in a place far from home.

In other words, we’ll get to see the fallout from Gabriel and Camille’s wedding ceremony falling apart, which led to Gabriel’s revelation that Camille is pregnant, and he’s most definitely the father of this baby. Alfie has fled, and Emily and Gabriel both actually seem like they’re done dancing around their attraction and screwing people over, but will they actually happen? I’m guessing that Gabriel will (once again) try to make it work with Camille, which probably isn’t fair to anyone at this point. Maybe Camille will decide that everyone needs to shove it.

Whatever the case, it’s wonderful news that we’ll eventually see that drama happen. No release date exists yet, but stay tuned.

Emily In Paris Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.