Intro for September 16, 2026

Dear Gossips,Can you hear that sound? It’s the sound of a million gossip hounds howling with delight as Tom Cruise gave an interview to GQ, his first cover profile with that magazine in twenty years, and it is a SCREAM. It’s entertaining in the way that only Tom Cruise is, which is to say—this man lives on a different plane of reality and reconciling his world to ours is impossible. Ask him literally anything and he will redirect the conversation to talking about making movies.

Shohei Ohtani Is “Almost” Back to Normal
He's not quite at 100% yet, but he's doing better.
We have a “normal…ish” Shohei Ohtani, a closer who isn't returning to the closer role, and more on the State of the Dodgers: https://t.co/I9J7SFbTbd
— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) September 17, 2026
That didn't stop the Dodgers from clinching another division title.
For the 5th straight year, and the 13th time in the last 14 seasons, the Los Angeles @Dodgers are NL We

One of the most anticipated Midnight Madness world premieres at TIFF this year was Anna Biller’s The Face of Horror. Anna Biller’s The Love Witch, released a decade ago, is now a cult classic. She is a thrilling filmmaker, an auteur in every sense, with her own signature style and a feminist throughline in her work.The Face of Horror was inspired by Japan’s most famous ghost story, Yotsuya Kaidan, a kabuki play written by Tsuruya Nanboku IV in 1825. It’s about a gold-digg

Chris Kreider has several great qualities in his game.
One of them?
His ability to redirect shots in front of the net. We saw him working on his deflections this morning at practice, and we saw just how good he is at that.First practice, and the newcomer is already bringing a new technique to the table#gohabsgo pic.twitter.com/M7npmGSYU1
— DansLesCoulisses (@DLCoulisses) September 17, 2026But Kreider isn't just good at this—he excels.
Since the 2012–2013 season, he's been the N

Rick Bowness clearly has no intention of kicking off training camp with flowers and flowery speeches.
The coach made it known that two players arrived at the Blue Jackets' training camp in a state of physical conditioning that he deemed… insufficient.
And let's just say he wasn't exactly thrilled about it.
Why? Because it's not as if the guys didn't know what was expected of them.
Do I need to remind you that at the end of last season in Columbus, Bowness threw his players under the bus b

Karla Welch is taking the best possible approach to styling Shailene Woodley in that outfit. And if you look at the elements, each piece is totally fine on its own, it’s mashing it all together that is the issue.
But ultimately, a great week for Shailene and the outfit is kind of the cherry on top. It’s immediately recognizable to pop culture connoisseurs, and I just know some visionary is going to pull this off for Halloween.View this post on InstagramA post shared by Karla Welch (@

Following on the heels of Heated Rivalry and Off Campus, Netflix’s new Vancouver Island-shot series Crew Girl is the latest Canadian-made sports romance series to become a global hit.Released on Sept. 10, Crew Girl hit No. 4 on the Netflix Top 10 list, reaching 5.2 million viewers in 80 countries in its opening weekend.The series from Blue Ant Studios follows the story of 16-year-old Teagan Tao (Miku Martineau) whose promising single sculls rowing career is capsized by a family scandal.Fo

Arber Xhekaj must be confused.
Other than that, he's solid. 
The guy has been playing defense for years and years. He's made his mark in the NHL as a defenseman who can drop the gloves and play physically on the ice. But…
But now, at 25, people are wondering if he can switch to forward. The Habs' defensive corps is overflowing (especially on the left side), and Xhekaj will have to work really, really hard to earn a spot on the team's blue line heading into the season opener.
And that

There are just over ten days left until the best baseball of the year, but until then, there are still some exciting races for the top spots.
So without further ado, here's the latest edition of Passion MLB's power rankings. Last week's rankings are shown in parentheses.
1 – Milwaukee Brewers (1)
2 – Los Angeles Dodgers (2)
3 – Tampa Bay Rays (4)
4 – Atlanta Braves (3)
5 – New York Yankees (5)
6 – Chicago Cubs (6)
7 – Philadelphia Phillies (7)
8 –

Mahershala Ali and filmmaker Bassam Tariq were supposed to make a Blade reboot for Marvel, but that project eventually fell apart. What emerges instead is Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, an original action-drama starring Ali and written and directed by Tariq. It is unquestionably a far better movie than anything we would have gotten from Marvel, though the action scenes hint at what might have been (Marvel, you really fumbled a baddie).The film opens cutting between two scenes, as Latif (Al

Most of us probably agree that the September 2026 issue of American Vogue was a flop, right? The cover stars were Kaia Gerber and Homer Gere to promote The Shards – and this isn’t a personal criticism, not directed towards their performances, not a judgement about them as actors or celebrities or models just that, well, for a September issue the image was forgettable, more Cosmo than Vogue, and lacking in general overall excitement and charisma, possibly because neither one of them i

On-ice sessions have begun at the Canadiens’ training camp.
Earlier this morning, Chris Kreider was seen playing on a line with Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield in Group A of the camp.
The newcomer took the opportunity to impress at the end of practice, by the way: First practice and the newcomer is already bringing a new move#gohabsgo pic.twitter.com/M7npmGSYU1
— DansLesCoulisses (@DLCoulisses) September 17, 2026That said, Group B hit the ice a few minutes after Group A finished p

I said this recently, but Pete Alonso stirred up quite a bit of controversy (unintentionally) on the sidelines of his return to Citi Field this week.
He gave fans a way to send their messages to management, and he let those same fans see which players were truly on their side.
Let's just say Francisco Lindor doesn't have it as easy with the fans here as he did in Cleveland.
But inevitably, this also put pressure on David Stearns, the club's president, who was booed en masse by fans this week.
On

The NFL is set to write a new chapter in its history in France.
For its very first game in Paris, the American football league has chosen a major figure in African music: Burna Boy. The Nigerian artist, a GRAMMY® Award winner, will perform during halftime at the game pitting the Pittsburgh Steelers against the New Orleans Saints.
The event is scheduled for Sunday, October 25, 2026, at 2:30 p.m. at the Stade de France. This game will be one of the highlights of an unprecedented international

I was at Saputo Stadium yesterday with a good friend, the guys from HFTV, and Nilton Jorge. It wasn't Montreal's best game, but in sports, dominance doesn't count. You have to score more than your opponent to win.
Yesterday, CF Montréal capitalized on nearly all of its scoring chances, while the Whitecaps were stymied by a Sebastian Breza at the top of his game.
CF Montréal will play in the Canadian Championship final on October 21 at Stade Saputo… against FC Supra Forge FC.

Andrew Scott is a very fine actor, no one doubts this. He has in Elsinore, a quasi-biopic of Scottish actor Ian Charleson, what should be the role of a lifetime. Certainly, Scott pours his heart and talent into his performance, but the film around him is so unimaginative and worse, borderline exploitative, that it sucks the verve out of Scott’s performance. Written by Stephen Beresford and directed by Simon Stone, Elsinore documents the end of Ian Charleson’s life, when he appeared i

As Sarah wrote in yesterday’s site open, Tom Cruise’s greatest role is that of “Tom Cruise”. She is right in saying that his GQ cover story, both in print and on video, is for all the gossip hounds. Pretty sure we’re all still screaming about it.Tom, as we know, is promoting Digger, opening on October 2. Press screenings are starting to happen over the next few days ahead of the world premiere in London on Tuesday. Matthew Belloni posted the early box office project

This morning at practice, we saw Martin St. Louis show his true colors.
As you've probably seen, Chris Kreider was with Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield on the team's top line. Was that a selling point to lure him to the city?
Juraj Slafkovsky, Ivan Demidov, and Oliver Kapanen were playing together.Martin St-Louis is already making his mark.Chris Kreider anchors the first line with Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield, while Juraj Slafkovsky plays with Ivan Demidov and Oliver Kapanen.
In the clip, Caufiel

Blake Snell joined the Los Angeles Dodgers before the 2025 season. After just two starts last year, he was placed on the injured list due to a shoulder injury and ended up missing four months of action. The left-hander then returned to action for nine regular-season starts and pitched an additional 34 innings in the playoffs
The following year, in 2026, Snellzilla began the season on the injured list due to shoulder inflammation that had been bothering him since the previous season.
The 33-year-

The fashion column is back.
This morning, at the Canadiens' practice, we're once again keeping an eye on the jersey colors of certain players. Why? Because it says a lot about potential lines.
This is the first official practice of camp, and since the camp will be short, we'll have to take today's lineups seriously.
According to our colleague Marc-Olivier Cook reporting live from Brossard, Cole Caufield and Nick Suzuki were in red, while Juraj Slafkovsky was in white.
This suggests they might no

The Montreal Alouettes left Vancouver on Saturday night with a crushing 48-29 loss, but also with a rivalry that seems to be growing stronger with the British Columbia Lions.Between on-field tensions, costly mistakes, and raw emotions, it was a particularly eventful evening.
The result is all the more difficult for Montreal to swallow given that several factors contributed to the loss. Despite allowing 48 points, head coach Jason Maas refuses to attribute his team's performance solely to defensi

It’s amazing how much Conor Hellebuyck’s tune has changed in just a few years.
It's normal for a guy signing a long-term contract to say different things when he's signing than when he's asking to be traded to another team.
But still.
In 2023, when he signed a seven-year deal, Hellebuyck thanked the Jets for believing in him. He added that saying goodbye to that would have been hard for him.
He had said he was ready to be a Jets player for life and to bring the Cup back to Manitoba.W

Dear Gossips,A couple of weeks ago, I posted in this space about The Early Spring, the Chinese drama available in international markets on Netflix that was blowing up around the world. After almost a month, The Early Spring remains at #2 on the Netflix non-English chart, where it debuted, which was a first for a C-drama on the platform, and has cracked the top 10 for TV shows overall.The Early Spring is so popular that TIME just published an article about its success and what that portends, as N

Gleb Pugachyov has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons over the past few weeks.
The Canadiens prospect, who hasn't made a splash since the start of his Russian team's training camp, has come under criticism for appearing disinterested and not in good enough shape on the ice.
This has been the case both at camp and during the season.
In his first (and only) regular-season game this season in Russian junior hockey, he was criticized for the way he played and also ended up getting injur

Some of B.C.’s best-known landmarks take a star turn in Marvel’s Wolverine video game, recently released for the PlayStation 5 platform.Players can journey with everyone’s favourite Canadian X-Man up and down the Sea to Sky Highway, following familiar local highway signs in both English and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh sníchim (Squamish language) to such popular Lower Mainland destinations as Sḵwx̱wú7mesh/Squamish and Sk̲wik̲w/Whistler.Even

The race for the playoffs in the National League isn’t all that exciting.
The Brewers have won their division. The Dodgers will do the same shortly. And let's just say we have a pretty good idea which teams will make the playoffs, considering that Arizona is 3.5 games behind the San Diego Padres.
MLB
But what about the American League? Some teams currently leading their divisions are actually at risk of missing the playoffs.
We can all agree that the Rays have a pretty good chance of winni

Travis Kelce’s name has come up in a major financial fraud case in the United States.The Kansas City Chiefs star player is among those identified as victims of a Ponzi scheme involving several million dollars.
The case took a new turn this week with the sentencing of Siddharth Jawahar, founder of Swiftarc Capital LLC. The 38-year-old Texas businessman was sentenced to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of wire fraud. He must also pay $31.35 million in restitution.
Acc

Right now, there are several hot topics in the NHL.
The two biggest names to watch are undoubtedly Dylan Larkin and Connor Hellebuyck. Both players, who have requested trades, are still in Detroit and Winnipeg.
Yesterday, the Red Wings announced an injury (which no one believes) involving Larkin. As for the Jets, they've suspended their goaltender, who failed to report to training camp.
But behind these situations, there are others that aren't generating as much buzz but remain problematic. Niki

Sébastien Berrouard and Charles-Alexis Brisebois discuss the Blue Jays’ playoff race, the Pete Alonso situation, and Aaron Judge’s injury.
Enjoy the show.We'd like to remind you that anyone who wants to listen to us live can do so every Wednesday at 8 p.m. on Facebook, X, and YouTube. We record live to answer everyone's questions.
However, those who prefer to listen in a more traditional podcast format can also do so by visiting all the major podcast platforms at any time.Spot

Connor Hellebuyck’s story is a long one, and it doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon.
We saw a new chapter unfold on Wednesday night.
The Jets' goaltender was suspended by the team after failing to report to training camp on time. Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff will address the media on Thursday to comment on the situation.The Winnipeg Jets announced today that they have suspended goaltender Connor Hellebuyck for failing to report to training camp.
General Manager Kevin Ch