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Victor Wembanyama Thinks Scoot Henderson Is Great And Would Be The First Pick ‘If I Was Never Born’

While preseason begins around the NBA, two games played in Las Vegas between non-NBA teams will be a focal point for many this week.

The G League Ignite and Metropolitans 92 will play a pair of exhibition games in Vegas on October 4 and 6 to provide talent evaluators, front offices, and fans a chance to see the presumptive top 2 prospects in the 2023 NBA Draft go head to head, as Scoot Henderson and Victor Wembanyama take center stage. On Monday, Wembanyama’s Metropolitans 92 squad held an open practice and the young French star met with the media afterwards, with his length as always providing some incredible visuals as he was nearly as tall as the PR guy standing next to him while sitting down.

For anyone wondering what Wembanyama’s level of Dog In Him is, he answered that with one of the greatest responses possible to being asked about his talented opponent this week. Wembanyama made sure to compliment Henderson’s talent and abilities as a player, noting he’s No. 1 pick material and would be considered that in the 2023 class, “if I was never born.”

It’s a tremendous response and wasn’t a dig at Henderson at all, he’s simply stating what pretty much every scout and draft analyst has said. Henderson’s an elite prospect, and his presence in this class is part of why the tank race this year figures to be stronger than we’ve seen in some time, because not only are you chasing a generational prospect in Wembanyama, but the consolation prize for landing the second pick is as strong (on paper) as we’ve seen in a long time.

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Ryan Coogler Said He Almost Quit Moviemaking After Chadwick Boseman’s Death

Chadwick Boseman’s sudden death in 2020 hit people really hard. It obviously hit those closest to him harder than most. That includes those who worked with him, and were planning on doing so again. For Ryan Coogler, who directed him in Black Panther, it not only made him almost turn down helming the sequel, but it almost made him drop out of Hollywood completely.

“I was at a point when I was like, ‘I’m walking away from this business,’” Coogler recently told Entertainment Weekly. “I didn’t know if I could make another movie period, [let alone] another Black Panther movie, because it hurt a lot. I was like, ‘Man, how could I open myself up to feeling like this again?’”

Obviously he didn’t go through with that, and he did return for what looks like a very moving and very gorgeous-looking — and very long — sequel, Wakanda Forever, which deals with a T’Challa-less future. But it still took some doing. Coogler said he found himself checking out lots of Boseman footage and interviews, in which he would talk about how much the franchise meant to him. That got him motivated to get back into the swing of things.

“I was poring over a lot of our conversations that we had, towards what I realized was the end of his life,” the director explains. “I decided that it made more sense to keep going.”

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever hits theaters on November 11.

(Via EW)

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Trump Has Made Good On His Threat To Sue CNN, Furious That Commentators Have Called Him Mean Names

Last summer, Donald Trump threatened to sue CNN. Why not? Seems like he could probably use the scratch. The former president doesn’t always make good on his threats, but this time he has: As per Raw Story, Trump is seeking a whopping $475 million from the news network, which he accuses of defaming him by allowing guests to call him mean names.

The lawsuit, which was filed in Florida on Monday, claims tha “beyond simply highlighting any negative information about the Plaintiff and ignoring all positive information about him, CNN has sought to use its massive influence — purportedly as a “trusted” news source — to defame the Plaintiff in the minds of its viewers.”

Some of those “defamatory” and definitely not accurate things Trump says he’s been called include “‘racist,’ ‘Russian lackey,’ ‘insurrectionist,’ and ultimately ‘Hitler.’”

The suit seeks to save Trump’s honest name and “to vindicate his reputation as a dedicated public servant and to establish CNN’s liability for the harm it has caused to his reputation by the false, defamatory, and inflammatory mischaracterizations of him.”

As it happens, the lawsuit comes shortly after Trump was torched by many for calling Mitch McConnell’s wife — and former Trump administration employee — Elaine Chao “Coco Chow.” It sounds like this one’s gonna sail through the court system.

(Via Raw Story)

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Yasiin Bey Asks Fans To Trust Black Star In How They Choose To Operate

This week the world of hip-hop is loving the new episode of People’s Party with Talib Kweli with special guest, Yasin Bey. The world has been in love with the iconic artist, actor, and activist since Black Star blew up the scene in 1998. The legacy of the duo’s innovative beats, rhymes, and business deals have made them a favorite of hip-hop fans all over the earth.

Since the group announced their relationship with Luminary for the release of the block rockin’ No Fear of Time , as well their Midnight Miracle podcast with Dave Chappelle, the art and business worlds have taken note. These decisions have been made by them, as artists to ensure that Black Star gets the best earning potential for their work. Unfortunately, not all fans understand this. So for the People’s Party season two finale, Talib Kweli asked Yasiin how he feels about the minority of naysayers and trolls who complain online from time to time.

While discussing the importance of these deals Yassin Bey said emphatically, “People say one thing, but their response and their attitude really reveal what they value. Then you know who is really riding with you. Everybody has to take the action that is best suited for them.”

Pointing to Kweli he adds, “That’s what I really respect about what we’ve done — not only creatively but in terms of how the work is getting delivered. You’re gonna get it in a way that we don’t get destroyed and completely compromised. We want it to get out there to as many people as possible, but not at any cost!

For more real wisdom from one of the best hip-hop minds of his generation peep Yasiin Bey on People’s Party with Talib Kweli and co-cost Jasmin Leigh on Luminary and Youtube.

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A Producer On ‘The Simpsons’ Says John Lennon Would’ve Been A ‘Dream’ Cameo On The Show

The list of celebrity cameo appearances on The Simpsons is mind-boggling. The cartoon series has had guests on the show in legendary athletes like Magic Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr, and Joe Namath, actors like Meryl Streep and Jeff Goldblum, and even artists in U2, Smashing Pumpkins, and The Ramones. And that’s just a selection of guests from the first nine seasons (the ones that really matter; don’t @ me) because in the decades since, The Simpsons has leaned even more heavily into its celebrity cameos. So much so, that executive producer and writer Al Jean says that it “astounds” him how many celebrities say yes to being on the show.

But that doesn’t mean that Jean and the rest of the team behind The Simpsons don’t have dreams of who they could and could’ve once had on the show. As reported by Bloomberg, Jean told PA Media that, “Many of the ones that I’d say would be a dream are never going to be on, like John Lennon or Neil Armstrong.” He also added that they had tried to get, “…A few US presidents, not recently, and they said no so that was the sort of like the Holy Grail we never found.”

Armstrong died in 2012 and Lennon in 1980, explaining the impossibility of any future appearances from either. But considering Paul McCartney made an appearance on The Simpsons (enlightening Lisa to the finer points of being a vegetarian) and Ringo Starr had an entire episode centered around Marge’s paintings of him (which also saw George Harrison make a cameo) it’s understandable why the fourth Beatle would seem like a Holy Grail of sorts for Jean too. For now, we’ll have to get by on Barney Gumble’s interpretation of the John Lennon way in the classic Homer’s Barbershop Quartet.

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It Turns Out Candace Owens Got A Matching ‘White Lives Matter’ Shirt At Kanye West’s Controversial YZY Fashion Show

Kanye West’s Paris Fashion Week show for YZY season nine was already controversial thanks to his confusing and infuriating fashion statement but as it turns out, it gets worse. Not only did Kanye make the appalling choice to wear a shirt reading “White Lives Matter” on it but the decision got even more heinous when new photos emerged online showing who Kanye was matching with: conservative commentator Candace Owens, who Kanye previously accused of “using” him to promote her problematic “Blexit” campaign.

The duo’s previous run-in lead to Kanye’s name being attached to the “Blexit” clothing line, which encouraged Black voters to leave the Democratic Party (y’know for the other party that has pained us as criminals and “welfare queens” for the past 50 years). However, just a couple of days later, Kanye backpedaled on the Blexit gear, writing on Twitter, “My eyes are now wide open and now realize I’ve been used to spread messages I don’t believe in. I am distancing myself from politics and completely focusing on being creative!!!”

Of course, just two years later, he ran a sloppy, unhinged, probably-technically-illegal Presidential campaign as a spoiler candidate backed by Republicans who probably overestimated his popularity with “the Blacks” after two-plus years of MAGA hat-embracing shenanigans. As for his ongoing association with Owens, it seems they’ve made up after their falling out in 2018, and his previous concerns about being used to make disingenuous political messages didn’t stop him from doing the exact same thing, six years later.

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The Fictional ‘Blonde’ Misses The Mark By Being Incurious About The Real Marilyn

The word “fictional” is writer/director Andrew Dominick’s sword and shield when it comes to Blonde (which you can now stream on Netflix), an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ novel about the icon Marilyn Monroe. Through the grace of that magical term, there is an implication that the truth need not be followed as a guide. As such, the texture of Monroe’s actual life doesn’t matter much here, not when put up against creative ambitions.

I bet, at the outset, that it feels bold, exhilarating, and empowering to play with an audience’s institutional memory of an icon, skillfully recreating the moments most familiar, and then twisting it all to try and say something profound about fear, abandonment, and the public’s insatiable lust for celebrities to give more than they should or even can. But somewhere along the line, the thread gets lost with Blonde. Somewhere along the line, it becomes clear that ambition should have been tempered by curiosity, flexibility, and above all else, empathy (this is, after all, a real person who has been historically misrepresented and misunderstood), making way for a fuller story that might have felt less exploitative and mean.

As revealed in Christina Newland’s much-discussed interview for Sight And Sound, Dominick wanted to tell a story about the effects of childhood trauma on a person’s life and he found Oates’ book and Monroe’s life to be a helpful vessel. Monroe’s triumphs were of no interest or use, something you can sense when you sit through the film and which is made abundantly clear by his own comments in the interview when asked about specific missing moments of triumph, tenacity, and guts in this telling.

“That stuff is not really what the film is about. It’s about a person who is going to be killing themself. So it’s trying to examine the reasons why they did that. It’s not looking at her lasting legacy. I mean, she’s not even terribly concerned with any of that stuff. If you look at Marilyn Monroe, she’s got everything that society tells us is desirable. She’s famous. She’s beautiful. She’s rich. If you look at the Instagram version of her life, she’s got it all. And she killed herself. Now, to me, that’s the most important thing. It’s not the rest. It’s not the moments of strength.”

As should be clear by now, in this portrait of Monroe, it is not useful to present her as anything more than frazzled, damaged, and eventually defeated by a life wherein she was ceaselessly objectified and basically tortured by everyone she met, everything she did, and especially the unfulfilled promise of ever meeting her father.

The thing is, it really is crude to contort a real person’s life for the act of telling a preordained story that benefits from putting on blinders to nuance, no matter how long ago or publicly they lived. Creative license should be granted, but this is a question of should, not could.

What’s the point of the imagined and poisonous three-way relationship with the adult sons of Charlie Chaplin and Edward G. Robinson? How can you profess that this story is about why someone killed themself when you completely make up an action that necessitated that? Another Dominick quote from that amazing interview is relevant here: “Nobody really knows what the fuck happened. So it’s all fiction anyway, in my opinion.” How freeing, how cynical.

What about the guilt-filled dialogue delivered by a fetus to Monroe over the forced abortion she had had earlier in the film (one of two such scenes filled with physical restraint, assault, and a choice to show the procedure from inside Monroe’s vagina), or the traumatic blowjob scene with JFK and its violent conclusion? At what point do these big stylistic choices veer from the artistic to a violation and even a seeming finger wag at the subject?

The criticism of actress Ana de Armas for occasionally slipping out of her breathy Monroe voice into her own natural sound is legitimate but also telling. In every other way, de Armas embodies the icon, holding our attention while matching the film’s overall visual fidelity to Monroe’s life which was born from copious amounts of research. But that one failing (and it is a slight failing, to be clear) is magnified while some have glossed over Dominick’s decision to put his actress into a story wherein she seems as though she is constantly in a field trying to escape a lightning storm that she can’t quite comprehend.

This is a story devoid of credit for Monroe’s talent, wit, and hard work — no surprise considering Dominick’s feelings about her work as expressed in that same Sight And Sound interview. Assumptions, torture traps, omissions, negative focuses, and distracting visual choices and gimmicks made to stand in for actual character depth, that’s what Dominick layers atop an astonishing life filled with extraordinary heartache, complexity, accomplishment, and turbulence brought on by a world that struggled to see her as more than a 2D object of desire. Rather than showing her work through her frustration before ultimately succumbing, we see her frailty and fear as she circles the drain on a punishing life. Here, Monroe is a 2D object of sorrow whose also made to be naked, violated, and smudged with blood and tears, crying out like a child for her Daddy, whom she sees in every man who drains a little more light from her with savagery and broken promises. This is a brutal interpretation, too free of guardrails for its and our own good.

I get it, the word fictional protects all of this from being taken too literally as a true biopic and examination of Marilyn Monroe’s iconography and existence, but who will remember to hold onto that label when shown such vivid recreations of the highlights and lowlights of a historic life? Like Monroe, this film is flashy and attention-getting. To some, it’ll serve as a spark to dive deeper, but it’ll be enough to satiate the curiosity of many, many others who might see this version and lazily accept it as fact. Whether that is, ultimately, on the audience or the filmmaker is, I suppose, a matter of perspective, but the end result is still a disservice to the legacy of a real person (the newish Netflix doc on her is way more illuminating about who she actually was).

If the world can’t remember Marilyn Monroe without perverting her memory, then perhaps we owe her the blessing of being forgotten. That might be better than whatever this is.

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Elon Musk Received A (Diplomatic) ‘F*ck Off’ From A Ukrainian Ambassador After Suggesting Peace With Russia

At this point, Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine isn’t going well, and that appears to be something that he won’t accept. He recently persisted in mobilizing a vast chunk of fighting-aged Russian men, a move that Putin eventually sort-of admitted that he botched, but from there, he hasn’t decided to stand down. Instead, Putin’s proud that (seven months on) his army’s been able to gather enough Russian villages to annex four regions of Ukraine, but the cities appear to evade capture. Russia was forced to withdraw from the Eastern stronghold of Lyman, and that’s sparked two of Putin’s biggest allies to drag Putin to his face. And on Monday, Ukrainian forces made a stunning Southern advance, which is a development that follows Russian soldiers declaring that there’s no way that Kiev will fall to Putin’s troops.

In other words, this war is in no way guaranteed to go Putin’s way in the end. However, Elon Musk sent unsolicited advice to Ukraine on how to seek peace with Russia:

– Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people.

– Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake).

– Water supply to Crimea assured.

– Ukraine remains neutral.

Musk also made this statement into a poll, and as of this writing, 63.2% of respondents have chosen the “no” option. He continued to argue (in terms of sheer population numbers) that Ukraine has no chance “in total war,” which assumes that the rest of Russia won’t head to the borders if Putin eventually chooses a “full war mobilization.” The Tesla CEO then argued that peace is the only option to save the Ukrainian people.

From there (via Mediaite), Musk received a choice response. Andrij Melnyk, who is Ukraine’s ambassador in Germany, declared, “F*ck off is my very diplomatic reply to you.”

Diplomacy ain’t dead. Russia might have sheer population numbers, but citizens are fleeing to neighboring countries because they don’t want to fight Putin’s war. Whereas Ukraine’s citizens are all-in, and they have Molotov cocktail-wielding grandmas, so it doesn’t sound like peace will be happening anytime soon.

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Whoopi Goldberg Set The Record Straight After A Film Critic Accused Her Of Wearing A Fat Suit In ‘Till’

Whoopi Goldberg took a moment on The View to call out a rogue piece of film criticism that caught her attention. The longtime actress/daytime talk show recently starred in Till, a film about the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi. However, as the reviews started coming in following Till‘s premiere at the New York Film Festival, one critic saw fit to accuse Goldberg of wearing a “distracting” fat suit. Here’s the thing though: Whoopi wasn’t wearing one.

While discussing the powerful film with her co-hosts, Whoopi called out the fat suit remarks and noted that she had been on steroids at the time during a well-documented bout with pneumonia.

Via Deadline:

“I don’t really care about how you felt about the movie,” Goldberg said this morning. “But you should know that was not a fat suit, that was me. That was me. That was steroids. Remember last year? I assume you don’t watch the show, or you would know that was not a fat suit. It’s OK not be a fan of movie, but you want to leave people’s looks out. Just comment on the acting. And if you have a question, ask somebody. I’m sure you didn’t mean to be demeaning.”

Despite not being thrilled with the situation, Goldberg didn’t mention the outlet that ran the fat suit accusation by name. However, Mediaite reports that the review in question was published by The Daily Beast. Following Goldberg’s on-air statement, an editor’s note has been added to the end of the piece, which reads: “This story has been updated to reflect that Whoopi Goldberg says she was not wearing a fat suit.”

(Via Deadline)

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Melissa Villaseñor Tried Her Gwen Stefani Impression On Gwen Stefani Herself

Melissa Villaseñor might have left Saturday Night Live at the end of last season, but she is still going the fans what they really want: more impressions!

Villaseñor was known for doing various spot-on impressions of celebs like Lady Gaga and Owen Wilson on the late-night show from 2016 until earlier this year. This week, she stopped by The Kelly Clarkson Show and happened to have an impression of singer and The Voice host Gwen Stefani ready to go, as Stefani herself sat alongside to watch. Some would think this is a weird, parallel universe-inspired Black Mirror episode, but Stefani found it charming!

The comedian casually slipped in an impression while acting out what it’s like for her to drive while listening to Stefani’s band No Doubt. “So, you know, No Doubt comes on the radio, or Gwen, you come on the radio, and I’m driving — it is dangerous because I get so into your impression, and it’s not safe, you know?” Villaseñor said. “I can’t drive!” She added before belting out “Underneath It All.”

Stefani, who has been the lead singer of No Doubt since the band began performing in 1987, was delighted by the impression, and even asked Villaseñor to do it again, almost as if meeting another version of yourself isn’t slightly creepy at all! “I mean, I always say you’ve made it if somebody like, dresses up for Halloween as you or makes fun of you,” Stefani laughed.

Though Villaseñor won’t be on this season of the sketch show, the comedian can clearly make people laugh. Not everyone from SNL can say that!

(Via The Wrap)