Chadwick Boseman, star of Black Panther, is dead at 43

Chadwick Boseman, star of Black Panther, is dead at 43

The actor died after a four-year fight with colon cancer.

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Mark Serrels, Oscar Gonzalez

Aug. 28, 2020 9:05 p.m. PT

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Boseman passed away at age 43 after a four-year battle with colon cancer.

Chadwick Boseman died Friday at the age of 43, according to the Associated Press. The actor, who starred in Marvel's Black Panther and Netflix's Da 5 Bloods, was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in 2016.

pic.twitter.com/aZ2JzDf5ai

— Chadwick Boseman (@chadwickboseman) August 29, 2020

His publicist Nicki Fioravante informed AP that he died in his Los Angeles home alongside his wife and family. Boseman had never spoken publicly about his battle with cancer.

"A true fighter, Chadwick persevered through it all, and brought you many of the films you have come to love so much," reads a statement from his family. "From Marshall to Da 5 Bloods, August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and several more -- all were filmed during and between countless surgeries and chemotherapy. It was the honor of his career to bring King T'Challa to life in Black Panther."

In a 2018 interview with CNET Magazine, Boseman talked about all the reasons he loved playing the character. "I love that he thinks about other people," he said. "He's not afraid to hear wise counsel. I think there is some fear of being wrong. I identify with that, with his plight, his personality. And I love him because the fantasy of playing a ruler -- you never get to do that. You never get to explore what that is. It's fun having power and having a say in what happens to the people around you."

Watch this: Chadwick Boseman loves a good challenge

 1:43

Born in 1976 in South Carolina, Boseman was initially known for his portrayal of real-life figures like James Brown in Get on Up, Jackie Robinson in 42 and Thurgood Marshall in Marshall. He rose to superstardom when cast as Black Panther in numerous movies set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including Avengers: Endgame; Captain America: Civil War; and Black Panther -- a groundbreaking comic book movie that scored seven nominations at the 91st Academy Awards, including Best Picture. 

But beyond the awards and the billion dollar box office gross, Black Panther and Chadwick Boseman helped usher in an era of better representation in comic book movies, and in Hollywood more broadly. 

Most recently he starred in Da 5 Bloods, a drama directed by Spike Lee, playing Norman Earl Holloway, a freedom fighter in the Vietnam war.

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Mark Mann

Tributes online from fans and from his peers in Hollywood have begun pouring in. "A deeply gifted man is gone too soon," Mark Hamill tweeted. "His memory will blaze on fiercely... from here to eternity." Wrote actor Mike Colter, "You were a king on and off screen."

"Your legacy will live on forever," Marvel Studios tweeted. DC Comics also shared a tribute: "To a hero who transcends universes. Wakanda Forever."  

View this post on Instagram

I’m absolutely devastated. This is beyond heartbreaking. Chadwick was special. A true original. He was a deeply committed and constantly curious artist. Few performers have such power and versatility. He had so much amazing work still left to create. I’m endlessly grateful for our friendship. My thoughts and prayers are with his family. Rest in power, King. 💙

A post shared by Chris Evans (@chrisevans) on Aug 28, 2020 at 8:21pm PDT

Our hearts are broken and our thoughts are with Chadwick Boseman’s family. Your legacy will live on forever. Rest In Peace. pic.twitter.com/DyibBLoBxz

— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) August 29, 2020

We are all heartbroken by the tragic loss of #chadwickboseman -- an extraordinary talent, and one of the most gentle and giving souls I have ever met. He brought enormous strength, dignity and depth to his groundbreaking role of Black Panther; shattering myths and stereotypes,

— Robert Iger (@RobertIger) August 29, 2020

To a hero who transcends universes. Wakanda Forever. Rest in Power Chadwick. pic.twitter.com/F5YhIbK4wg

— DC (@DCComics) August 29, 2020

The true power of @ChadwickBoseman was bigger than anything we saw on screen. From the Black Panther to Jackie Robinson, he inspired generations and showed them they can be anything they want — even super heroes. Jill and I are praying for his loved ones at this difficult time.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 29, 2020

Devastating news. We lost a great one. Takoto mai rā e Āriki. #chadwickboseman

— Taika Waititi (@TaikaWaititi) August 29, 2020

Just when you thought 2020 couldn't get any worse...

A deeply gifted man is gone too soon. His memory will blaze on fiercely... from here to eternity.#ripChadwick https://t.co/CBVoNBpuII

— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) August 29, 2020

💔 pic.twitter.com/Y8ZbFdpHCe

— Brie Larson (@brielarson) August 29, 2020

Such a brutal loss. RIP, Chadwick.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) August 29, 2020

All I have to say is the tragedies amassing this year have only been made more profound by the loss of #ChadwickBoseman. What a man, and what an immense talent. Brother, you were one of the all time greats and your greatness was only beginning. Lord love ya. Rest in power, King.

— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) August 29, 2020

Heartbroken.

Rest in Power @chadwickboseman#WAKANDAFOREVER https://t.co/L1EdBy2O0D

— Clark Gregg (@clarkgregg) August 29, 2020

man. speechless. you were a king on and off screen. it doesn't seem real. you were like a comet that flew by so fast. you will be missed brother. rest easy #chadwickboseman 🥺 pic.twitter.com/op0M8Fffml

— Mike Colter (@realmikecolter) August 29, 2020

RIP Chadwick. Jackie Robinson. James Brown. T’Challa. You changed the game. Forever. My prayers go out to your family and loved ones. We loved you and thank you for loving all of us. pic.twitter.com/wZLQjtGMsB

— Cheo Hodari Coker (@cheo_coker) August 29, 2020

I met Chadwick the day Stan put his hand and footprints into the Chinese Theater Forecourt. He was nice and a little nervous, but very regal - like T’challa. And so talented. This is heartbreaking. 43 is too to die. My heart goes out to his family and fellow fans tonight. https://t.co/cdsjU2oB3B

— KevinSmith (@ThatKevinSmith) August 29, 2020

I keep thinking about my 3-year-old in his Black Panther costume. How he wore it almost every day when he got it, refused to take it off. The way he walked around saying “I’m the Black Panther.” How happy it made him. What Chadwick gave us was immeasurable. What an enormous loss.

— Clint Smith (@ClintSmithIII) August 29, 2020

To be young, gifted, and black. pic.twitter.com/Y8KRkadsVv

— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) August 29, 2020

This video shows the significance of Chadwick Boseman‘s role as T’Challa in “Black Panther.” An example of why representation matters pic.twitter.com/oXnRbdwRit

— Austin Kim (@AustinKKim) August 29, 2020

Boseman died on Jackie Robinson Day, which honors the professional baseball player he portrayed in the 2013 film 42. Survivors include his brothers Kevin and Derrick Boseman and his wife Taylor Simone Ledward. 

First published on Aug. 28, 2020 at 7:21 p.m. PT.

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Best blenders of 2020: NutriBullet, Ninja, Oster and more

From summer smoothies to grated cheese, these mix masters are the best for blending, chopping, mixing and everything in between.

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Molly Price 

Aug. 16, 2020 5:00 a.m. PT

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Best blender overall

NutriBullet Blender 1200 Watts

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$100 AT NUTRIBULLET

Best blender on a budget

Ninja Professional Countertop Blender BL610

Jump to details

$90 AT AMAZON

Best blender with extra features

Oster Versa Pro Series Blender

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$190 AT WALMART

A cherished kitchen appliance for decades, blenders top wishlists for weddings, graduations and housewarming parties. They're your best bet if you want a quick smoothie or a frozen beverage, and you can even use them to chop, grind or mix dry ingredients. 

Blenders aren't necessarily a luxury item, but start your search and you'll see that right next to the $50 models are others that cost $500. How do you pick the best blender? When does it really pay off to splurge?

We tested 10 popular models to find out which ones make blending your favorite smoothie recipe, frozen drink or protein shake a breeze. 

Best blender overall

NutriBullet Blender 1200 Watts

Molly Price/CNET

NutriBullet keeps it simple with three power levels, a pulse setting and 1,200 watts of power. It performed well in all of our tests. Smooth batters, finely crushed ice, frothy smoothies and good grated cheese (our torture test) were all easy to achieve. A reasonable $100 price tag means you won't have to break the bank to get a good blender.

More powerful than the Ninja and Oster models below, NutriBullet gets the job done quickly. The 64-ounce blending jar is plenty big enough for most recipes. The blender comes with a handy recipe book and a tamper to make sure all your ingredients contact the blades. It's also dishwasher safe and comes with a one-year warranty. NutriBullet easily takes the top spot as the best blender in our blender model battle. 

$100 AT NUTRIBULLET

Best blender on a budget

Ninja Professional Countertop Blender BL610

Molly Price/CNET

Ninja wins our best blender budget pick at just $10 under the NutriBullet. We tested a $35 Hamilton Beach model and a $50 Black & Decker model, but neither were quite good enough to recommend. Still, under $100 is commendable, and the Ninja Professional Blender performed extremely well. 

Like the NutriBullet, this Ninja blender has three speeds: low, medium and high. It also has a pulse function and 1,000 watts of power. It comes with six blades in three levels. This worked great for smoothies and batters but presented an issue when trying to fit larger items in the 64-ounce container. Overall, this affordable blender is a great buy, especially if you catch it on sale. 

$90 AT AMAZON

Best blender with extra features

Oster Versa Pro Series Blender

Molly Price/CNET

This Oster model is a good performer and includes a few extra features I really found helpful. At $190, it's on the more expensive side, but this price includes a beverage container and a set of bowls and blades for food processing. You're almost getting two appliances here. Other brands also offer kits like this, so that's not the only reason it wins the title for best blender with extra features. 

What I loved about this Oster was its Reverse Blend button, something I didn't encounter on any other test model. Hold down this button, and the blades turn in the opposite direction, scooping in food toward the center. It worked really well when I was crushing ice and making nut flour. Ingredients that were pushed away came right back in for better chopping. 

The Oster has a Smoothie program, a series of blending and pulses, that served up a great drink. A Dip/Mix mode helped mix dry and wet ingredients. In addition to those special modes, you'll also get the standard low, medium and high speeds. This model is pricier, but it does come with a lot of extra accessories and that super helpful reverse blend feature.

$190 AT WALMART

Other models we tested

KitchenAid K400: This $250 KitchenAid blender is beautiful, but left something to be desired when it came to performance for that price. It has five speeds, pulse and three presets. If you have your heart set on a colorful, quality blender, KitchenAid is still a good option. 

Vitamix 5200: Variable speed and sturdy design make this $449 Vitamix 5200 blender a popular model for luxury blenders. At such a high price, I wasn't wowed enough to recommend it. It struggled with cheese grating, and I found it to be noticeably louder than other models. 

Vitamix Explorian E310: This $350 Vitamix blender was easier to use thanks to a dedicated pulse option. Still expensive, and an average performer in my tests, I can't recommend it to anyone on a budget. It does include a great recipe book and custom tamper. 

Blendtec Total Classic: This popular $353 Blendtec blender made great smoothies and crushed ice. However, the Blendtec failed to grate cheese, and the batter mixing preset was less effective than regular blending by speed. 

Hamilton Beach Power Elite: Affordability aside, this $35 blender didn't perform well enough to recommend. While it did have a nice glass bowl, the lid was infuriatingly hard to remove. It has only presets, so you'll need to decode which ones are actually low, medium or high. 

Black & Decker Crush Master: At just $25, this blender will work if you really need something cheap in a pinch. But don't expect excellence. It wasn't able to handle large frozen strawberries or evenly mix pancake batter. Still, it could suffice for small jobs.

Breville Fresh & Furious: Great looks and bonus points for a cute name, but that's not enough to recommend this $175 blender. Performance was average, and it struggled to mix wet and dry ingredients.

Watch this: How we put food processors to the test

 1:49

How we test

Testing blenders isn't just smoothies and ice-crushing. There are a lot of other recipes blenders work well for, and these tests highlight how capable each model is when it comes to dry, large and coarse ingredients. 

Ice 

In a test of pure crushing power, we placed 2 cups of ice cubes into each blender. Counting the number of pulses it takes to get to a fine, crushed ice gives a good indication of real-world chopping power. The three blenders we recommended above performed well.

Ninja and NutriBullet took only four pulses to get to a very fine, almost shaved iced consistency. The Oster blender was close behind with six pulses. Other models didn't fare so well. Some took up to a minute of pulsing to get crushed ice, and a few even left whole cubes after that. 

Smoothie

A classic blender recipe, fruit smoothies were high on my list of recipes to test. I used 2 cups of orange juice and 1 cup of frozen strawberries to make the test smoothies.

While many of these tests yielded very similar results, a few worked faster than others. Not all blenders come with presets, but the ones that do almost always include a smoothie function. When possible, this is the mode we used. If there was no smoothie function, we followed the blender's manual recommendation for smoothie making. This was usually around a minute on high. 

smoothie

Smoothie testing starts with whole, frozen strawberries and orange juice. 

Molly Price/CNET

This is a relatively easy test and most blenders handled it well. Some were frothier and some slushier, but only the Black & Decker model left large chunks of frozen strawberry unblended. 

Nut flour and butter

Blenders aren't all about beverages. There are plenty of other uses, including grinding dry ingredients. For our dry ingredient test, we put 1 cup of almond pieces (unroasted) in each blender and pulsed until those pieces were reduced to a fine flour. A bit of a challenge for some blenders, but most were able to do this in about 10-20 pulses, with the Hamilton Beach model yielding noticeably coarser results. 

Nut butter is a different story. Most blenders aren't really designed for long running times and the level of processing needed to make a butter like almond butter or peanut butter. In fact, many recommend not running the blender for more than a few minutes at a time. 

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This nut flour is a bit coarse. 

Molly Price/CNET

Only one Vitamix model showed real signs of progress toward almond butter in our testing with the nut flour, and it still plateaued before achieving a good consistency. Most models simply whirred the dry ingredients upward and into the hard-to-wash crevices of their lids. If you're set on making nut butters, I'd recommend a model like the Oster with an included processing kit, or a separate food processor.  

Cheese

Did you know blenders can shred cheese? It's true; some blenders can. We placed an 8-ounce block of cheese in each blender and pulsed until the entire block was shredded. This brought to light a few interesting design choices among some models. The Ninja, for example, lost the cheese round because multiple blender blade levels made it impossible to fit the cheese block in the blender. I had to cut it up into pieces. 

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Blenders can shred cheese, and this NutriBullet did so in record time; just four pulses.

Molly Price/CNET

Both Vitamix models bore holes in the cheese block without actually blending it, simultaneously melting what little cheese had been shredded as the machine heated up. Meanwhile, the NutriBullet handled grating the cheese block in three pulses flat. The Oster managed to get the job done in eight.

Pancake batter

If you've seen our list of the best waffle makers, it should come as no surprise that pancake batter made an appearance in our blender testing. While I was happy to fire up the griddle and flip some cakes, mixing batter is an important test. It measures how easy or difficult it is for the blender to mix wet and dry ingredients.

Mixing is typically done on low speeds, but there are a few blenders with mixing presets, like the Breville model we tested. S