Florence Pugh is showing her support amid the SAG-AFTRA strike.
27.07.2023 - 20:13 / usmagazine.com
Kevin Durant decided to smoke weed just before pushing for the NBA to lift its ban on the recreational drug.
“I actually called [the commissioner] and advocated for him to take marijuana off the banned substance list,” Durant, 34, said during CNBC x Boardroom’s Game Plan Summit on Tuesday, July 25. “I just felt like it was becoming a thing around the country, around the world, that the stigma behind it wasn’t as negative as it was before.”
The Phoenix Suns player insisted: “It doesn’t affect you in any negative way.”
In fact, before meeting with NBA commissioner Adam Silver in person, Durant took a puff of cannabis.
“Well, he smelled it when I walked in, so I ain’t really have to say much,” Durant recalled. “He kind of understood where this was going.”
He argued: “I mean, it’s the NBA, man. Everybody does it, to be honest. It’s like wine at this point.”
Durant explained that following their conversation, Silver, 61, “agreed” to lift the ban. The decision is part of the seven-year collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and the players union that went into effect on July 1.
The NBA began to loosen its reigns on marijuana use for players in 2021, ending random testing for weed and turning its attention to performance-enhancing drugs, according to USA Today. Tests for drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine, which fall into the category of “drugs of abuse,” are also conducted among the athletes.
In years prior, players who violated the NBA’s marijuana policy were punished financially and professionally. Upon their first violation, the athlete had to enter the league’s treatment and counseling program. If they tested positive for the drug a second time, they faced a
Florence Pugh is showing her support amid the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Barbie has been banned in multiple countries following its release.Starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, the fantasy comedy has become the second highest-grossing film of 2023 worldwide behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie, passing the $1billion mark earlier this month at the box office.The film’s success also crossed another milestone, becoming the highest-grossing live-action movie solely directed by a woman.Ahead of its release in July, Barbie was banned in Vietnam due to a scene featuring a map depicting China’s contested territorial claims in the South China Sea.As reported by Reuters, the scene shows “an offending image” of the “nine-dash line”, which is used on Chinese maps to illustrate its claims over large areas of the South China Sea, which is contested by Vietnam.A number of films have recently been banned in the country for the same reason, including Sony’s Uncharted and Dreamworks’ animated film Abominable.Kuwait subsequently banned Barbie after the film promoted “ideas and beliefs that are alien to the Kuwaiti society and public order”, according to Lafy Al-Subei’e, an under secretary of the Ministry for Press and Publication in the country (via the New York Times).Around the same time (August 9), Lebanon’s culture minister, Mohammad Mortada, made moves to ban Barbie, saying that the film was found to “promote homosexuality and sexual transformation”.
Ellise Shafer “Barbie” has been banned in Algeria in its third week of release, according to Reuters. In a statement to the news site, an unnamed “official source” said that the film “promotes homosexuality and other Western deviances” and “does not comply with Algeria’s religious and cultural beliefs.” The news was first reported by local site 24H Algerie on Monday, which wrote that the North African country’s Ministry of Culture and Arts had asked theaters showing the film to immediately remove it from their schedules.
Algerian authorities have pulled runaway box office hit Barbie from local cinemas over its “damaging morals”.
Britney Spears’ teenage sons, Sean Preston, and Jayden, moved to Hawaii with their father just days before tragic wildfires spread through Maui. While many are thinking about the locals that have lost their homes, loved ones, or their lives, Kevin Federline’s attorney shared an update about how the kids are doing.
Barbie movie has been banned in Kuwait and now faces calls for a ban in Lebanon amid complaints in the Arab nations about the film’s social values.Kuwait’s state news agency said that the nation acted to protect the country’s “public ethics”, while Lebanon’s culture minister accused the film of “promoting homosexuality”.The film is however still being shown in other conservative parts of the region, including Saudi Arabia.Barbie, which is directed by Greta Gerwig and stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, has grossed more than $1bn (£784m) worldwide within weeks of its release.Lafi al-Subaiei, the head of Kuwait’s board of film classification, said that the board usually asks for movie scenes to be cut if they are deemed to flout the country’s culture. But when a film promotes behaviour the state considers unacceptable, it is banned outright.The film “promulgate[s] ideas and beliefs that are alien to Kuwaiti society and public order”, a spokesman for the Kuwaiti Ministry of Information said (via BBC News).On Wednesday, the Lebanese Culture Minister Mohammad Mortada asked the interior ministry to “take all necessary measures to ban” Barbie.He said the film “promotes homosexuality and transsexuality… supports rejecting a father’s guardianship, undermines and ridicules the role of the mother, and questions the necessity of marriage and having a family”.Meanwhile, in the US, comedian and actor Marc Maron recently hit out at the film’s conservative critics, describing them as “insecure babies”.“The fact that certain men took offence to the point where they, you know, tried to build a grift around it in terms of their narrative as right wing [expletive] is so embarrassing for them.
A shoplifter has been banned from entering Co-Operative stores in Cheshire for two years. Christopher Downes was handed a criminal behaviour order for "over two decades" of shoplifting.
Lebanon has banned “Barbie” screenings entirely.
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Lebanon, once thought of as among the most liberal parts of the Middle East, is poised to ban global hit movie “Barbie.” More conservative Kuwait said Wednesday that it had gone ahead with a ban due to its promotion of homosexuality. Lebanon’s culture minister Mohammad Mortada said on Wednesday that the Warner Bros. film was found to “promote homosexuality and sexual transformation” and “contradicts values of faith and morality” by diminishing the importance of the family unit.
topped $1 billion in global ticket sales, some countries still aren’t on board.The bubblegum pink flick won’t see a premiere in Kuwait to protect “public ethics and social traditions,” Reuters reported.Lafi Al-Subaie, chairman of the film censorship committee in Kuwait, has accused “Barbie” of “carrying ideas that encourage unacceptable behavior and distort society’s values,” according to the Hollywood Reporter, which cited local media reports. And in Lebanon, per Reuters, the film has been accused of “promoting homosexuality.”Minister Mohammad Mortada, who is supported by the powerful political party and militant group Hezbollah, said the movie was found to “promote homosexuality and sexual transformation” and “contradicts values of faith and morality,” as it lessens the “importance of the family unit.”Because of Mortada’s statements, Lebanon’s interior minister, Bassam Mawlawi, has asked the General Security’s censorship committee to review the film and give its recommendation, according to Reuters.The Post reached out to Warner Bros.
The Barbie movie isn’t going to be found in Lebanon anytime soon.
Deadline has confirmed that Warner Bros’ billion-dollar grossing Barbie won’t be getting a release in Kuwait, and it’s skating on thin ice in Lebanon.
Britt Stewart didn’t win the season 31 Dancing With the Stars mirrorball trophy — but she found The One in her dance partner Daniel Durant.
So many stars are supporting Stand Up to Cancer.
A cancer doctor and her baby have been found dead at their home in a suspected murder-suicide.
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Ryu Seung-wan’s female-led crime caper “Smugglers” topped the South Korean box office for a second weekend, ahead of new release title “Ransomed.” “Smugglers” enjoyed a strong hold in its second weekend of release and commanded 42% market share. It delivered $7.09 million, a drop of only 20% on its opening weekend, giving a 12-day cumulative of $26.2 million, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic).
Naman Ramachandran Auteur Mostofa Sarwar Farooki is spearheading “Ministry of Love,” a 12-film anthology by the leading lights of the Bangladesh film industry for streamer Chorki. The broad theme of the films will be love. Farooki, a celebrated filmmaker whose work including “Television,” “Saturday Afternoon” and “No Land’s Man,” has travelled to festivals worldwide, will co-produce the project on behalf of Chorki.
Even with Kristen Stewart leading the cast and Elizabeth Banks behind the camera, 2019’s “Charlie’s Angels” reboot endured a rough run at the box office, earning a paltry $73 million worldwide. Sure, the reviews weren’t great, but it’s hard to understand how the film performed so poorly when it was based on an established IP with a massive star attached.
Zack Sharf Digital News Director Elizabeth Banks recently told Rolling Stone that the media was behind the “gendered agenda” of “Charlie’s Angels,” her 2019 action-comedy starring Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska that flopped at the box office. The director told The New York Times last year that she wished the film’s marketing “had not been presented as just for girls,” but now she told Rolling Stone that’s the only perspective the media was interested in perpetuating anyway. “So much of the story that the media wanted to tell about ‘Charlie’s Angels’ was that it was some feminist manifesto,” Banks said.
Bill Gates is no stranger to cannabis.