South African coach Mark Boucher has hailed the captaincy of Quinton de Kock, who is leading the side in the absence of Faf du Plessis and will continue to do so for the limited overs series against England and Australia which the Proteas will be involved in next.
Pakistan completed a crushing innings and 44-run victory over Bangladesh on the fourth morning on Monday, taking a 1-0 lead in the two-Test series.
Understanding the peculiar dimensions of the grounds and negotiating the wind factor is a must for bowlers to succeed in New Zealand, reckons India pacer Shardul Thakur.
England's Adil Rashid, who starred in the third ODI against South Africa on Sunday, made himself unavailable for selection for England's tour of Sri Lanka.
Ajinkya Rahane scored a century on the fourth and final day of India A's second unofficial Test against New Zealand A as the match ended in a draw.
India captain Priyam Garg has called the aggressive celebration of Bangladesh players as "dirty" following their maiden title triumph at the Under-19 World Cup.
Abu Jayed has been given an official reprimand for breaching Level 1 of the ICC Code of Conduct during the ongoing first Test against Pakistan in Rawalpindi.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Netflix headed into the 92nd Oscars with 24 nominations — the most of any studio — expecting to dominate award season’s biggest night the same way it’s dominated the entertainment industry. Instead, Netflix walked away with practically zilch.
The streamer made out with just two awards: Best Documentary for American Factory (produced by President Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company) and Best Supporting Actress for Laura Dern. Its biggest films — The Irishman and The Two Popes — all went home empty handed.
Only just a week prior, Netflix’s studio chief Ted Sarandos rebuked claims that its lack of awards are previous award shows is part of a “backlash to a tech giant that is upending entertainment-industry business practices...
Parasite ended its award show sweep this season by taking home Best Picture, making it the first non-English speaking film to win the Academy’s most prestigious award.
Bong Joon-ho’s movie about a lower-income family who infiltrates a wealthy household, only to learn a much darker secret, has led the awards season. The movie scored multiple awards for writer and director Bong during the evening including Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best International Feature Film. Although the cast wasn’t recognized individually, they were awarded the SAG award for Best Performance by an Ensemble Cast in a film.
Parasite is also the first film from a South Korean director to win the Best Picture, and the first with a primarily Asian cast. P...
Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
Speaking with journalists after winning his first Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, Jojo Rabbit and Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi had other things on his mind. When asked what he thought writers should be demanding in the next round of discussions with producers, Waititi put Apple’s controversial laptop keyboards on blast.
“Apple needs to fix those keyboards,” he said. “They are impossible to write on — they’ve gotten worse. It makes me want to go back to PCs. Because PC keyboards, the bounce-back for your fingers is way better. Hands up who still uses a PC? You know what I’m talking about. It’s a way better keyboard. Those Apple keyboards are horrendous.”
Taika Waititi jokes about what writers should be asking for in the next...
James Gunn may not be the first director to cross the fan-drawn battle-lines between Marvel and DC comic properties – Avengers and Age of Ultron director Joss Whedon recently crossed over to complete Zack Snyder’s ambitious DC team-up Justice League – but he may turn out to be the most successful, as Whedon’s additions to the aforementioned pic were criticized for contradicting Snyder’s tone and vision.
After directing two installments in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, Gunn was ostensibly fired by Marvel Studios in response to controversial decade-old Tweets that were excavated by what Sp¡ked called “right-wing snowflakes.” The director was subsequently hired by DC Films to create a standalone sequel to David Ayer’s 2016 villain team-up Suicide Squad, to be titled The Suicide Squad (“The definite article, you might say”), but Gunn’s gracious, humble handling of the situation led to him eventually being rehired by Marvel to complete the eventual third installment of his Guardians trilogy.
Having worked on both sides of this particular aisle, Gunn now finds himself in a unique position of directly handling the characters of both universes, which prompted a fan recently to ask:
If you could choose one character from Guardians of the Galaxy and one character from The Suicide Squad to meet each other. Who would those two characters be?
— Rishi Bhakta (@rishi_bhakta) February 8, 2020
Given his less-than-conventional tendencies, Gunn opted for an unlikely pairing:
I’ve discussed this extensively with @MargotRobbie and I think Harley and Groot would have fabulous adventures together. And there are other great combos I’d bring up… if we at #TheSuicideSquad weren’t keeping things under wraps…
https://t.co/rpwssUK85w
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) February 8, 2020
Groot is a member of the Flora colossi from the planet Taluhnia, while Harley is a member of the Feminam psychotici from Earth, and we can only imagine (and presumably Gunn and Robbie already have) just what kind of “fabulous adventures” those two characters might wind up in. But perhaps they’re not so mismatched as they might initially seem, with Harley’s rambunctiously talkative personality potentially complementing Groot’s strong, verbally-limited type, and both of them sharing a distinct disrespect for authority.
Groot might at first be put off by Harley’s weaponized use of a wooden baseball bat, but he has also been known to lend his limbs to those he trusts, having provided the material to make the handle of Stormbreaker for Thor in Avengers: Infinity War. Of course, Groot is already used to dealing with moderately-to-severely deranged personalities, having worked with the belligerent Rocket Raccoon, the vengeful Drax, the mercenary Gamora, the destructive Nebula, and the juvenile Peter Quill. In fact, he has, in many ways, served as a member of a suicide squad all his own, having sacrificed himself to protect his team in 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
In any case, as the fans continue to dream of such a team-up, The Suicide Squad is currently on course to debut on August 6th, 2021. Harley, meanwhile, currently appears in Birds of Prey, in theaters now, while Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 still has no official release date.
When Harley Met Groot, on the other hand, will never, ever premiere.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Netflix headed into the 92nd Oscars with 24 nominations — the most of any studio — expecting to dominate award season’s biggest night the same way it’s dominated the entertainment industry. Instead, Netflix walked away with practically zilch.
The streamer made out with just two awards: Best Documentary for American Factory (produced by President Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company) and Best Supporting Actress for Laura Dern. Its biggest films — The Irishman, Marriage Story, and The Two Popes — all went home empty handed.
Only just a week prior, Netflix’s studio chief Ted Sarandos rebuked claims that its lack of awards are previous award shows is part of a “backlash to a tech giant that is upending entertainment-industry...
Parasite ended its award show sweep this season by taking home Best Picture, making it the first non-English speaking film to win the Academy’s most prestigious award.
Bong Joon-ho’s movie about a lower-income family who infiltrates a wealthy household, only to learn a much darker secret, has led the awards season. The movie scored multiple awards for writer and director Bong during the evening including Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best International Feature Film. Although the cast wasn’t recognized individually, they were awarded the SAG award for Best Performance by an Ensemble Cast in a film.
Parasite is also the first film from a South Korean director to win the Best Picture, and the first with a primarily Asian cast. P...
Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
Speaking with journalists after winning his first Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, Jojo Rabbit and Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi had other things on his mind. When asked what he thought writers should be demanding in the next round of discussions with producers, Waititi put Apple’s controversial laptop keyboards on blast.
“Apple needs to fix those keyboards,” he said. “They are impossible to write on — they’ve gotten worse. It makes me want to go back to PCs. Because PC keyboards, the bounce-back for your fingers is way better. Hands up who still uses a PC? You know what I’m talking about. It’s a way better keyboard. Those Apple keyboards are horrendous.”
Taika Waititi jokes about what writers should be asking for in the next...
Former Australian cricketers Craig McDermott and Sharon Tredrea were inducted into the Australian cricket Hall of Fame on Monday.
Ish Sodhi and Blair Tickner have been called back into New Zealand's one-day squad for their final clash with India after illness swept through the team.
Bangladesh captain Akbar Ali regretted the aggression from his players which nearly resulted into a free for all after his team won the U-19 ICC World Cup.
Quibi’s 30-second commercial during last week’s Super Bowl left many people asking: “What the hell is Quibi?” Tonight’s series of ads at the Oscars is Quibi’s best try to answer that question.
There are five ads in total, and all take place in bizarre situations. An astronaut in space nearly out of air; an asteroid about to hit earth; a cowboy being tied to train tracks as a train approaches; and even a zombie outbreak. The concept of each ad essentially boils down to people having time to watch a single Quibi episode, even in the threat of danger, because they’re so short. The ads were uploaded to Quibi’s YouTube account prior to the show.
Quibi, the short form video streaming service from famous Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg...
Quibi’s 30-second commercial during last week’s Super Bowl left many people asking: “What the hell is Quibi?” Tonight’s series of ads at the Oscars is Quibi’s best try to answer that question.
There are five ads in total, and all take place in bizarre situations. An astronaut in space nearly out of air; an asteroid about to hit earth; a cowboy being tied to train tracks as a train approaches; and even a zombie outbreak. The concept of each ad essentially boils down to people having time to watch a single Quibi episode, even in the threat of danger, because they’re so short. The ads were uploaded to Quibi’s YouTube account prior to the show.
Quibi, the short form video streaming service from famous Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg...
Image: WinFuture
It’s not just leaks that let us know what big tech companies plan to announce at their keynotes, increasingly it’s the companies themselves. Since this year’s Academy Awards fall ahead of Samsung’s February 11th Unpacked keynote, the company decided to go for a huge tease of the Galaxy Z Flip — it basically showed off the whole phone.
We are expecting Samsung to announce new Galaxy S20 phones (three of them) and the Galaxy Z Flip, a folding phone rumored to have a glass screen. The ad showed the phone sitting on a table at a 90-degree angle on its own, the better to do video chatting. It also gave us our first, best look at it folded up and it doesn’t appear to fold completely flat.
In the small print for the ad, there’s copy that says...
Image: WinFuture
It’s not just leaks that let us know what big tech companies plan to announce at their keynotes, increasingly it’s the companies themselves. Since this year’s Academy Awards fall ahead of Samsung’s February 11th Unpacked keynote, the company decided to go for a huge tease of the Galaxy Z Flip — it basically showed off the whole phone.
We are expecting Samsung to announce new Galaxy S20 phones (three of them) and the Galaxy Z Flip, a folding phone rumored to have a glass screen. The ad showed the phone sitting on a table at a 90-degree angle on its own, the better to do video chatting. It also gave us our first, best look at it folded up and it doesn’t appear to fold completely flat.
Samsung just showed off the entire Z Flip during its...
In the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, fan favorite Mace Windu famously wields a lightsaber with a purple blade, helping Samuel L. Jackson’s character stand out from his fellow Jedi in the field of battle. As you may be aware, the color of Windu’s stylish weapon was suggested by the actor himself, but did you know that the exact moment when Jackson made his request was actually captured on camera?
Over on Reddit, the moment was brought to the attention of the fandom once again thanks to a highly circulated upload from user EKRB7. In a behind-the-scenes video – which you can watch here – found amidst the bonus features of the Attack of the Clones home release, Jackson can be seen asking director George Lucas who he has to talk to about the color of his saber. Lucas responds by explaining the standard color coding of the Star Wars franchise:
“Good guys are green and blue, bad guys are red. That’s just the way it works.”
At this point, Jackson suggests a break from tradition, asking Lucas, “No purple lightsabers?” And while the filmmaker doesn’t offer a definitive answer then and there, he does take the idea into consideration, telling Jackson, “You might get purple.” The video then ends on a freeze frame of Jackson’s beaming face.
A purple blade isn’t the only unique trait of Windu’s saber, of course. In a reference to Jules Winnfield’s wallet in Pulp Fiction, the prop department also inscribed the letters “BMF” on the handle. Sadly, no known footage exists of the exact moment when this detail was suggested.
In any case, it’s been a while now since we last saw Jackson wield the purple blade, though he did have a brief voice cameo in the recent Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
What’s more, the star has repeatedly gone on record saying that he’d be game to reprise his role. So while Lucasfilm has yet to confirm anything, feel free to hold out hope that Disney can squeeze him into one of the various live-action TV shows they currently have in the pipeline.
