In his latest movie, The Woman In Black, Dan traded his Hogwarts uniform for a totally new role as a Dad.
Natalia brings you the latest news on Adele’s interview with Anderson Cooper, Kristen Bell’s interview on Ellen is auto tuned, Ladyhawke’s latest music video and much more!
Natalia discusses what’s new with Pharrell Williams and her thoughts on Karl Lagerfeld’s mean comments towards Adele’s weight. She also shows a roster of animals behaving like humans and, wait until you see the new size of coffee available at Starbucks!
Natalia dishes the latest news on the Juno Awards nominees, the upcoming Spiderman 3D film starring Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield and is Katy Perry hooking up with Tim Tebow? Watch today’s episode to find out.
When The Kooks are in the studio they’re focused and most importantly, sober. Watch Hugh and Luke explain their reasoning below.
The Kooks released a new album called “Junk of the Heart,” and you would think Hugh and Luke would be very excited about it. Well, they seemed rather indifferent to be honest. We spoke about that and why they don’t care about critics.
Natalia dishes the latest in entertainment news on Joan Rivers, Lana Del Rey and a brand new trailer for the movie Hunger Games.
Natalia talks about how Snooki might be pregnant, Nicolas Cage’s Cage Rage, Elisabetta Canalis is dating Steve-O and more for Feb 1, 2012.
Natalia dishes the news on Miley Cyrus breaking her tailbone, a 100 year old woman who plays the Nintendo DS to stay young and Houston, Texas contemplating a statute of Beyonce.
David Beckham debuts a new line of underwear, the worst dressed celebrity – Shy’m and Matthew Broderick is back as Ferris Bueller with a brand new commercial airing during the Super Bowl on Feb 5th 2012.
Daniel Radcliffe is back with his new movie The Woman In Black. It’s a bone chilling remake of a film from the ’80s. Ironically, Daniel actually scares very easily but he’s not afraid of ghosts. In this interview he tells us what really gives him the creeps.
Next time you’re struggling to make conversation, try asking this question: “If you could invite anyone (living or dead) to the perfect house party, who would it be?”
Graffiti6 is starting to make their North American invasion, and they are hitting up the Tonight Show. Does this sound familiar? Well the Beatles made the exact same journey over 40 years ago. Naturally, @jordans_life had to make some comparisons.
Nick plays World of Warcraft. Not only that, he’s the head of his guild, demonstrating that it IS possible to juggle being a hardcore gamer with being a top-selling recording artist.
During a LIVE interview on andPOP.com Nick Carter gave out a number and took phone calls from his fans. These were real phone calls from real fans who we gave exclusive access to one of the biggest recording artists of our generation.
There were great questions about music, fitness, the backstreet boys but the most popular question, however, was about his underwear. In this clip Nick talks about his his ‘Haynes’ and covering his fans with glow in the dark paint.
When releasing new music today, half the battle is online promotion. However, contests, signed merch and giveaways aren’t always the best solutions. When working on their latest album, Hedley came up with a brilliant idea, they decided to make trailers.
It’s hard to prepare for an interview with Hedley. So in this interview, we threw caution to the wind, got a 24 of beer and broadcast the interview live on our USTREAM (andPOP.tv). Eventually Jacob, Dave and @jordans_life ended up talking about hairy legs, their newest music video and more.
Diamandis from Marina and The Diamonds talks to us about her very serious disease. It’s called synaesthetic. And we lied, it’s not a disease. More like a cool condition. Diamandis explains further.
Would you be embarrassed if someone scrolled through your iPod? We sit down with Spee and Brendan to talk about the diverse music on their playlist.
Does anyone remember Remember the Titans? I vaguely remember football players chanting, “Left side! Right Side!” in the rain, and a brick being thrown through Denzel Washington’s window, but that’s about it. I don’t even remember if the Titans won or lost at the end of the movie.
Maybe it’s just me, but sports movies all seem to blur together after a while. They all seem to stick pretty close to the same formula, and they’re rarely memorable.
The latest contribution to the sports movie genre is Coach Carter starring Samuel L. Jackson.
Based on a true story, Coach Carter, out this Tuesday on DVD, tells the story of Ken Carter, a basketball coach who made news when he locked his entire team out of the gym and suspended all basketball related activities because 15 of his 45 players were not meeting their academic commitments.
The stereotypical sports movie formula has four basic criteria and Coach Carter scores a slam-dunk with all four.
First on the list is a main character ? usually the coach, but sometimes the team captain ? who is new on the scene, but paradoxically, he (or she, since lots of sports movies like to play with gender stereotypes,) already has a well-established reputation.
Meg Ryan in Against the Ropes is a great example of this, and Denzel in Remember the Titans is pretty good too.
The second thing any sports movie needs is plenty of subplots.
Rookies who want more playing time show up often, so do rivalries between team members, but the most common seems to be romantic subplots.
My all-time favourite is the Bugs Bunny/Lola Bunny romance in Space Jam, (and by the way, it also has Bill Murray doing a great rookie subplot.)
Third on the list of criteria that any sports movie has to have is unorthodox (and usually unpopular) strategy on the part of the coach.
Whether it’s Coach Carter locking his team out of the gym or Paul Newman beating his opponents to a pulp in Slap Shot, all these coaches seem to have tricks up their sleeves that invariably help them to win games.
A lot of people object these criteria though. Yes, most sports movies stick to the formula, but they’re based on a true story. That’s the way it actually happened, so how can you blame it on the writer or the director?
Which brings us to the fourth component any successful sports movie needs. It has to be based on a true story. Friday Night Lights, Hoosiers, Miracle, Remember the Titans, and Cool Runnings, all claim to be based on reality, and that’s just a short list.
If it weren’t based on a true story, would anyone believe that four Jamaicans and John Candy showed up at the 1988 Winter Olympics to bobsled?
Anyway, there are plenty of inspiring true stories from the world of sports that you hardly need to make stuff up, (unless, of course, you want to see Bugs Bunny shoot hoops with Michael Jordan.)
There are plenty of exceptions to these rules. Rocky is a great example, and so are Raging Bull and Field of Dreams.
Not only do these classics break the mold, by doing so, they have become timeless in a way that Remember the Titans can never hope for.
As I said, Coach Carter has all the qualities of a cookie-cutter sports movie, but don’t misunderstand me, that doesn’t make it a bad movie. It doesn’t even make it a boring movie.
For one thing, the role is perfect for Jackson and I could listen to him shout lines and make passionate speeches all day long.
For another thing, while the movie does stick to the sports movie mold, it doesn’t feel formulaic.
It feels like that was simply the best way to tell Ken Carter’s story, and his story is definitely worth watching.
The only problem with Coach Carter is that it really does feel like every other sports movie, and in five years I’ll probably be saying, “Does anyone remember Coach Carter?”
Jamie McLeod is a Ryerson Journalism student. His movie columns can be read on andPOP every Friday.
