Random Thoughts

Rusty wrote:I started watching that a week ago but I've had to resort to clips. I can only listen to Shannon Sharpe in small doses. He's loud. I can't listen to loud people.

WyldeMan wrote:

I keep rewatching Katt's Williams' crazy fuckin interview / three hour comedy special. This ain't goin away, I think it's hilariously awesome that January 2024 has been the month of Katt. I've never seen any celebrity interview blow up like this over 52 million views in just three weeks. I love watching all those overrated bastards squirming after being outed and so far nobody has issued any kind of a real denials, just a whole lot of lawsuit threatening which tells me all I need to know. This story is still trending everywhere weeks later.

And that diss track aimed at Luda where he out rapped and out shined him on podcast with Suge Knight from prison had me in fuckin stitches! 

“I’m coming for your number one spot / One of us a killer and the other one is not / One of us the realest and the other one a fraud” 

UltimateMarvel wrote:I've only watched half of it but it's been pretty crazy.

WyldeMan wrote:

UltimateMarvel wrote:I've only watched half of it but it's been pretty crazy.

To say the kind of stuff that he did, Katt's gotta feel pretty god damned bullet proof with his blackmail files otherwise he's just crazy.

Hearing Chappelle's reaction to the interview though is just sad and disappointing. Whatever respect I had for that man, he continues to kill every time he opens his mouth. He only cared because Katt didn't come at any white people instead of realizing he only came at those who talked shit and lied first. But it's always about race with Dave, it's the only thing he cares about. Probably why his comedy specials are so unfunny now, he's too busy baiting the Trans community into another headline for himself than doing anything of substance .

Rusty wrote:It's funny because he did take a shot at some white people. He made a quip about Joe Rogan and says he has the same 4 or 5 comedians on all the time and they aren't even funny. Clearly talking about Tom Segura, Bert Kreischer, Ari, and that crew.

Netflix reached a multibillion-dollar, 10-year deal for exclusive rights to W.W.E.’s flagship weekly wrestling show “Raw,” as the streaming giant broadens its offerings with more live content.

The deal will bring “Raw” to Netflix starting in January 2025, Netflix and TKO Group, W.W.E.’s parent company, said in a statement. Netflix will also own the rights to stream W.W.E.’s other shows and specials outside of the United States.

The agreement will cost Netflix more than $5 billion and will last for 10 years, with an option to extend an additional 10 years or opt out after five, TKO Group said in a regulatory filing.

“By combining our reach, recommendations, and fandom with W.W.E., we’ll be able to deliver more joy and value for their audiences and our members,” Netflix’s chief content officer, Bela Bajaria, said in a statement.

“Raw,” which started the careers of stars like Stone Cold Steve Austin, John Cena and Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson, has appeared on linear television since its debut in 1993. It now airs on the USA Network, where it draws 17.5 million unique viewers a year, according to W.W.E.

TKO, which is controlled by the Hollywood power broker Ari Emanuel’s Endeavor and was created by the merger of W.W.E. and Ultimate Fighting Championship last year, said in a separate statement that Mr. Johnson would join its board. TKO’s shares jumped about 17 percent on Tuesday; Netflix shares were up slightly.

With the W.W.E. deal, Netflix, which has 247 million subscribers, greatly expands its stable of live programming, which also includes the reality show “Love Is Blind.” The company has recently focused on sports documentaries over live sports, but adding “Raw” to its lineup brings it in closer competition with rivals like Peacock, which has made live sporting events a backbone of its service and recently streamed a National Football League playoff game.

The announcement came a day after Netflix said Scott Stuber, the company’s film chairman who lured filmmakers like Rian Johnson, Zack Snyder and Greta Gerwig to the streaming service, would depart in March.

Netflix will report its quarterly earnings on Tuesday afternoon.

WyldeMan wrote:To say the kind of stuff that he did, Katt's gotta feel pretty god damned bullet proof with his blackmail files otherwise he's just crazy.

Hearing Chappelle's reaction to the interview though is just sad and disappointing. Whatever respect I had for that man, he continues to kill every time he opens his mouth. He only cared because Katt didn't come at any white people instead of realizing he only came at those who talked shit and lied first. But it's always about race with Dave, it's the only thing he cares about. Probably why his comedy specials are so unfunny now, he's too busy baiting the Trans community into another headline for himself than doing anything of substance .

joey con carne wrote:HOly shit I haven’t watched wrasslin’ in so long. But the Royal Rumbo is on this weekend and I just might tune in for it.

UltimateMarvel wrote:Katt is very popular at the moment and it's all very interesting. Even if half of it is true, it's still insane to hear.

I heard Dave's latest Netflix special wasn't that great.

joey con carne wrote:Made it to Season 2 of Hoicules: The Legendary Journeys

Let’s goooooooo i got like four days to finish the entire series

Holy shit I forgot there were some made for TV movies. Five before the series started. Watching the first one now.

joey con carne wrote:I was thinking to myself they must really like Lucy Lawless. The guy who played Salmoneus, Robert Trebor, played a slave in the second movie where Xena's pal, Gabrielle, played another character whose name was Deianeira. wtf is going on? Then, in the next movie, Hoicules meets his wife, Deianeira, played by Tawny Kitaen.

LOL so many recasts. But the whole use of Deianeira twice in two movies for two different people.... It's wild.

And only because you mentioned iZombie do I now recognize the little girl. She turned into the hydra! Too cool.

joey con carne wrote:Got through the five movies. The last one Maze of the Minotaur had a lot of flashbacks to previous films. Kinda lame. But one thing I do realize now that I didn't really think about before is Zeus is so useless. Is a whiney little bitch in Greek mythology?

I will do my best to power through season 2 tomorrow. Will keep watching as much as I can over the weekend, too. After the 28th I will likely not watch anything else on Prime for a long while.

I downloaded a bunch of "various artist" country albums. I am digging Jessica Harp. She has such a nice voice. Not familiar with her work but I'll be listening to more now.

joey con carne wrote:I agree the women are so beautiful. I’m on the second episode of season 2 and Tracy Melchior… god daaaaamn. Googled her and she still looks pretty noice.

Every episode they find a girl more beautiful than the last.

Woo woooooooooo

joey con carne wrote:And Lucy Lawless has made another appearance as Lila in episode 5 of season 2. LOL! This is getting comical.

As with most superhero shows, Hercules definitely has situational strength. Bruce Campbell played Autolycus and tried to hit Hercules with a spear a la wrasslin’ and Hercules didnt even budge or feel it. Meanwhile, he blasts fools with haymakers and they keep getting back up. God I love this show.

joey con carne wrote:No, she returned as the same Lyla (I spelled her name wrong in my previous post) from season one with Cliff Curtis.

And now they recast Nemesis with Theresa Hill. She’s even more beautiful than the first Nemesis! This show is insane. Whoever is the casting director… bravo.

Fun fact: just read Karen Witter, who played the first Nemesis, was married to Chuck Lorre for ten years until 2010. That’s kinda cool.

Tyger wrote:I finally got a new TV. Best Buy had an LG OLED as a deal of the day last Saturday for 57% off, got it set up Friday. Haven’t watched any movies on it yet, but it’s great just watching TV.

Tyger wrote:I finally got a new TV. Best Buy had an LG OLED as a deal of the day last Saturday for 57% off, got it set up Friday. Haven’t watched any movies on it yet, but it’s great just watching TV.

Tyger wrote:I finally got a new TV. Best Buy had an LG OLED as a deal of the day last Saturday for 57% off, got it set up Friday. Haven’t watched any movies on it yet, but it’s great just watching TV.

Melissa Barrera Incites More Controversy With New Social Media Posts, Sparking Heated Debate at WME

Melissa Barrera is once again under fire over a series of new social media posts involving the Israeli-Gaza conflict, prompting her representatives at WME and Sugar23 to explore dropping the actress as a client.

The “In the Heights” and “Scream” star earlier this week posted a link in her Instagram bio that directed her followers to donate money to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East to benefit “all the martyrs in Gaza and the West Bank.” The plea was deemed particularly incendiary given that Barrera posted the link one day after the Biden administration and several other countries halted aid to the organization in the wake of explosive allegations that 12 UNRWA staffers directly participated in the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel, including two who took part in kidnappings. Ten percent of the agency’s Gaza staff allegedly have ties to Hamas and another Islamist militant group that the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization. On Jan. 28, the U.S. announced its decision to freeze all money to the group.

Barrera’s posts quickly made the rounds across the industry and within WME, which consulted with outside advisors on the best approach to fire her given that such a break could spark backlash. (A WME rep denied that outside advisors were enlisted.) Sources say the agency and her management company Sugar23 were poised to drop her as a client. But on Thursday, both decided to reverse course for now. WME and Sugar23 declined comment.

In November, Spyglass Media fired Barrera from “Scream VII” over social media posts about the conflict including one that accused Israel of “genocide and ethnic cleansing” and about distorting “the Holocaust to boost the Israeli arms industry.” Barrera led the fifth and sixth “Scream” entries over the past two years and was poised to star in the next “Scream” outing.

At the time, a Spyglass spokesperson explained the decision in a statement to Variety that read: “Spyglass’ stance is unequivocally clear: We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech.”

At this month’s Sundance Film Festival, Barrera chanted the controversial line “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” during a pro-Palestinian protest on Main Street that drew nearly 100 activists. The Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee have called the slogan antisemitic and see it as a threat to the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state. WME was aware of her inflammatory rhetoric, but has continued to represent the actress even as clients and staffers complained, sources say.

But one insider says the new posts from Barrera were deemed to be the “final straw” given the widespread shock over the organization’s ties to the Oct. 7 attacks. The list of countries that have followed the U.S. in freezing funds to the organization include Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Estonia, Japan, Austria and Romania. However, some politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted the Biden administration over its UNRWA decision, calling it “unacceptable.”

As the UNRWA scandal widened, Barrera doubled down and wrote on Instagram: “Guess it’s always up to the people. Made a fundraiser with @unrwa. donate what you can and share [heart emoji] may it be returned to you tenfold.” Another source familiar with the internal debate at WME expressed dismay over its failure to move quickly on the matter.

“Before, WME could hide in the fuzziness and ambiguity of ‘from the river, to the sea’ and the implications of the amateur-hour collegiate activist messaging. But this is blatant terror support,” the source says.

Barrera appeared to be aware of the uproar stirred by her posts. On Jan. 31, she wrote on Instagram, “Apparently some people are mad that I’m sharing this fundraiser.” She did not respond to a request for comment.

In the wake of Oct. 7, a handful of people including Barrera have been dropped from projects and by their representatives and employers over their rhetoric. CAA cut ties with a staffer and two clients over incendiary anti-Israeli social media posts, while UTA fired Susan Sarandon as a client after she said at a rally that U.S. Jews who feel unsafe “are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country.”

Top CAA agent Maha Dakhil stepped away from her duties as co-chief of the motion pictures department over her Instagram posts, including one that said, “What’s more heartbreaking than witnessing genocide? Witnessing the denial that genocide is happening.” (Dakhil, who represents Tom Cruise and Natalie Portman, apologized and remains an agent.) In perhaps the move with the greatest financial implications, BMG severed its relationship with rock legend and Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters over his statements regarding Israel. But some calling for Barrera’s ouster say their outrage has nothing to do with her voicing support for the Palestinian cause but instead for crossing several lines. One source notes that Mark Ruffalo has been vocal about the Israel-Gaza conflict and just nabbed an Oscar nomination for his role in “Poor Things.”

Barrera has one studio project on the way, the Universal horror movie “Abigail.” It is unclear at this time if the studio will put her forward with the marketing campaign and on junkets. Though Barrera’s Hollywood prospects may have dimmed in the wake of her posts, her social media profile has skyrocketed. She now has 1.5 million Instagram followers, twice as many as she had before she called for donations to the UNRWA.  

Thomas Bidegain, one of the more famous French screenwriters, and longtime collaborator of Jacques Audiard (he also wrote Tom McCarthy’s “Stillwater”), recently released his second film as a director in France, titled “Soudain Seuls.”

Although the film was shot in French, with French actors, it was originally supposed to be shot in 2021, in English, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Vanessa Kirby as the main couple. It was a hot project that even had the likes of Margot Robbie eyeing to star.

As chronicled in the latest issue of Technikart, this $30 million film collapsed, mainly due to a paranoid, capricious and power-hungry Gyllenhaal — who was not just the lead actor, but also producer on the film. This story is wild.

It turns out Gylenhaal was very keen on rewriting and rethinking the whole project a mere 8 weeks before production was scheduled to begin, and as the sets were being built. It led to some major power moves on his part.

The report states how the film broke down as the crew was working hard on it in Iceland. The way Gyllenhaal is portrayed is rather, shall we say, unpleasant, bordering on psychopathic behavior.

Gyllenhaal had some incomprehensible whims (he demanded to drive a car "neither red nor white") to paranoia (asking the set constructors to sleep in their cars because he feared they'd bring covid to the hotel he shared with the crew) to many episodes of yelling at his director (he supposedly did the first reading rehearsal in the accent of Pepe Le Pew).

The strangest anecdote has Gyllenhaal, while visiting set locations, deciding to strip to his underwear and diving into the freezing ocean because "When I see the sea, I swim in the sea.” This bewildered the crew, which included Bidegain.

The nightmare finally ended when Bidegain had to make a “heartbreaking” call to producer Alain Attal, conceding defeat, “Our visions diverge too much. We won’t be able to shoot in September. … It’s all over, and the €26 million is gone!”

It’s not like this story is coming from a dubious source either. It’s been talked about heavily in France the last week, having been covered in some of the biggest media outlets in the country. I’m actually surprised nobody in the U.S. has picked up on this yet.

Source: World of Reel

UltimateMarvel wrote:Very brave of Melissa and what she's doing but after last time, probably smart to lay low for her career.

Crazy story on the Jake Gyllenhaal article.

joey con carne wrote:Would be cool if Melissa Barrera loses the last of her movie deals. I love it when stars’ careers go down the shitter especially for something like this.

WyldeMan wrote:Brave is definitely not the word I would use, "self-destructive" seems more appropriate. She should have stuck to taking her clothes off onscreen and kept those rocks rattling around in her head like an empty spray paint can cause this isn't a Miss Universe pageant and nobody asked her opinions. I like how that article mentioned that she doubled her followers after the last controversy so that must mean it's going to help her movie career right? She gained 700k whack jobs who share in her misguided political opinions, how can it not make her a megastar?

WyldeMan wrote:I bet she gets dropped by her agents and the studio puts Abigail on the shelf.

WyldeMan wrote:Enjoy the quick ride back to the bottom Barerra.

WyldeMan wrote:Gyllenhaal comes across like a complete cunt and it doesn't even surprise me a little bit. He has that smug punchable face and seems like he'd be a pretentious art house snob who thinks his movies are all transcendent. Yet it's kind of funny just how many of the movies he makes he's getting punched in that face. It's like he knows his target audience. Honestly I've skipped the majority of his career this past decade because almost none of them looked interesting and when I did give any of them a chance, I didn't care to revisit them again. Or am I missing a masterpiece in the Jake Gyllenhaal catalog from the past 15 years that you think will change my mind?

joey con carne wrote:Would be cool if Melissa Barrera loses the last of her movie deals. I love it when stars’ careers go down the shitter especially for something like this.

UltimateMarvel wrote:I don't think I've heard anything bad about Jake Gyllenhaal and his behavior on sets before. As for his catalog, he's got a lot of great hits. I thought you liked Nightcrawler?

UltimateMarvel wrote:Joey's obsession with a celebrity's downfall is hilarious.

UltimateMarvel wrote:Nice! Didn't even know Super Bowl was this week.

Wylde, do you still invest in Trade Options?

WyldeMan wrote:I haven't traded any options for probably a year now, maybe longer. I took a time out on it. Why what's up?

UltimateMarvel wrote:I've been watching some videos and learning. Starting small was going to dip my toe in earlier today on Snapchat. Wanted to know your input on this. If I bought Put, if it hits the Strike Price of $11.50, I wouldn't make profit until I sold it or do you immediately make profit once it reaches that price before it expires?

WyldeMan wrote:I've never bought anything through SnapChat, that's seems sketchy to me how the hell does that work? Does SnapChat have a Brokerage account now?

"A put option buyer makes a profit if the price falls below the strike price before the expiration. The exact amount of profit depends on the difference between the stock price and the option strike price at expiration or when the option position is closed."

Honestly man, I'm waaay too high tonight to give you coherent investment advice. I would not trust me right now.