With critics' groups across the country starting to hand out their awards, the Oscar race is officially on. Cinemablend's Sean O'Connell joins us to handicap the major categories. With no clear frontrunner, it's anyone's guess which movie is going to break out before the big night.
In the Best Picture category, it's looking like things are boiling down to a showdown between "The Post" and "Lady Bird." O'Connell weighs the pros and cons of each, noting that he thinks the Steven Spielberg political drama is the best movie of the year. We also consider whether "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" could be the franchise's first Best Picture nominee since the 1977 original, "A New Hope."
Then, we tackle the contenders duking it out in the acting categories. Meryl Streep is looking to win her fourth Oscar for her leading role in "The Post." If anyone can stop her, O'Connell says it will likely be "Lady Bird's" Saoirse Ronan or "I, Tonya's" Margot Robbie. As for the actors, "Darkest Hour's" Gary Oldman is pulling ahead as the one to beat for his portrayal of Winston Churchill.
Although it has 3 million customers, home security company SimpliSafe isn’t a household name yet. It’s hoping that will change on Sunday after its first Super Bowl ad airs.“In a market where people are trying to lock you in a contract or harvest your data, we’re trying to keep you safe,” brand creative director Wade Devers told Cheddar. “There aren’t really a lot of places you can reach the number of people you can reach like the Super Bowl.”
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Friday, Feb. 1, 2019.
Actress Samira Wiley has a promise for fans of her character Moira in "The Handmaid's Tale:" She's both in season three and alive. At least for now. "We should just be happy that's a thing," she told Cheddar Thursday.
The appearances of model Iskra Lawrence and actresses Busy Phillips and Jameela Jamil have all been dramatically altered by retouching in photographs. And all three are have joined forces with American Eagle's Aerie line for a new campaign to show women that reality is a beautiful thing.
PopSockets, the company behind the massively successful grips attached to the back of mobile phones, is eyeing a potential initial public offering, CEO and Founder David Barnett told Cheddar Thursday. "We are considering an IPO. We're considering all options," Barnett said in an interview with Cheddar Thursday.
Airbnb has become the largest player in the lodging market and is growing by about twice the rate of traditional lodging chains as new travelers come onto the platform and existing users book more reservations, e-commerce analyst Ken Cassar told Cheddar Thursday. Cassar, the vice president of strategy and insights at Rakuten Intelligence, said Airbnb now boasts a 25 percent share of the lodging market and reported a growth rate of 40 percent.
Nick Cannon is a busy man. The multi-talented host, producer, rapper, actor, and comedian is in Atlanta for this weekend's Super Bowl in between his gigs hosting "The Masked Singer," the new hit singing competition on FOX, and filling in for Wendy Williams on her eponymous talk show. Cannon told Cheddar he built his career by following a simple maxim: "Say no to anything that sounds like work."
When you got to a sporting event or a concert, you always see a much longer line for the ladies' room than the men's. So why hasn't anyone fixed the problem? Joe Pinsker, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins us to break down some of the possible solutions.
Facebook's year of scandal is a thing of the past ー at least according to Wall Street, Meridian Equity Partners' Jonathan Corpina told Cheddar. Wall Street's positive response to Facebook's impressive earnings show 2018's scandals are old news, Corpina said. "That's an old story; we are in 2019 now. It seems like investors have shrugged off all those negative headlines."
NorCal is on a mission to be a juggernaut in the California cannabis market, and the company has $27 million dollars in fresh funding to help it achieve that goal.
"It brings our total capital raise since inception to well over $50 million. We'll be deploying that capital across the value chain," said NorCal CEO Doug Cortina in an interview on Cheddar.
