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.
Perhaps it’s because making a kung fu movie with animals was a legitimately good idea. After all, kids love violence and by using anthropomorphic animals instead of humans the action is kept at a safe distance from reality and genre fans don’t have to cry that it’s unrealistic when it isn’t bloody.
Perhaps it’s because, like the best comedies, Kung Fu Panda takes itself seriously – there are laughs to be had, certainly, but the directors obviously wanted you to care about the characters.
For whatever reason, a good 60 percent of Kung Fu Panda doesn’t feel like a typical DreamWorks film. The medium was obviously chosen because the studio thinks 3D animation is more profitable than 2D, there are lots of stars among the voices (it’s strange that Black’s name is the only one above the title even though Dustin Hoffman, of all people, has the other leading role), and the company’s trademark snark rears its head more than once, usually after Family Guy-esque moments that go on too long, but somewhere underneath it all the film has preserved the impression its creators wanted to make a good movie.
For instance, that Lucy Liu plays one of the two female roles (a snake) goes without saying (the other, a tigress who doesn’t have breasts – congrats directors! – is played by Angelina Jolie). But next to Po (played by Black) and Shifu (Po’s sensei, a red panda played by Hoffman), the third-largest role is handed to comparatively unknown character actor Ian McShane. Shifu’s sensei, Oogway (a tortoise), is played by one Randall Duk Kim. Dan Fogler, Seth Rogen, David Cross and Jackie Chan (!?) are also among the supporting cast, but don’t leave an impression nearly as strong as McShane or Kim.
Like the recent Forbidden Kingdom, Kung Fu Panda is an American take on an Asian genre, and thus filtered through American sensibilities. This means individual heroism is emphasized over cooperation, and ambition over accepting one’s place in the world and destiny. Po may be a slob, the “chosen one” and gets winded easily, but he also collects action figures, worships the “furious five” (the kung fu masters shown in the trailer, played by Liu, Jolie, Rogen, Cross and Chan) and wishes he could be just like them, if only he could find the inner strength and wasn’t constrained by working in his father’s noodle house…
Your enjoyment of Kung Fu Panda will depend on how easily you can suspend your disbelief. If you didn’t buy The Lion King’s savannah take on Shakespeare you certainly won’t enjoy this. I wasn’t kidding when I said the movie takes itself seriously (the villain, Tai Lung, a snow leopard voiced to gravelly perfection by McShane, is easily the most threatening antagonist I’ve seen in a CG film – not that he has much competition), but it is funny; the jokes are usually character-based and move the plot along, and more likely to yield a smile or a chuckle than a laugh. By making a kung fu movie DreamWorks has basically traded their usual formula for another, but it’s at least refreshing to not deal with pop culture references, fart jokes or smart-aleck children for once (though Po still gets hit in the balls).
My only gripe with the movie, and it’s a personal one, is that I don’t think 3D animation was the right medium for it. The credits (and most likely the opening dream sequence, which I missed thanks to the TTC) are presented using traditional animation, and the characters are adapted so perfectly, and the animation is stylized just well enough to make me wish the whole movie could have been done the same way. This is what historians and animators meant when they said the medium doesn’t make a difference to box office – it’s the story. If DreamWorks’ shuttered 2D animation division, or any studio’s for that matter, had created a film like Kung Fu Panda that was engaging (unlike The Road to El Dorado), animal-based (unlike Titan A.E.), with likeable characters (unlike Sinbad), an interesting story (unlike Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron) and action that didn’t feel censored (unlike Treasure Planet) and appealed to adult sensibilities – and, most importantly, that was actually good (unlike Atlantis), it would have been poised to be just as big a hit. C’est la vie.
Animation fans know that calling Kung Fu Panda the best DreamWorks film since Shrek isn’t saying much. But on the other hand, maybe it is.
