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.
I don’t typically mention video games in my reviews, but The Clone Wars unavoidably made me think of one: BioWare’s masterpiece Knights of the Old Republic, which offered an unforgettable take on George Lucas’s galaxy by taking place 4000 years before any of the movies and giving itself carte blanche to add to the series’ history, creating not only an origin story for Tattooine but for the entire Star Wars galaxy. More than one critic called it the best thing to happen to the series since The Empire Strikes Back. I love Return of the Jedi, but I wouldn’t dispute that.
I couldn’t help but think of KOTOR during The Clone Wars which, like other questionable cinematic Star Wars properties released in the last nine years, attaches itself too rigidly to the existing material. A world like Star Wars, rooted in myth, was never meant to be defined by a consistent socio-political reality. Who cares about the physics behind an AT walker or planet-sized spaceship or how they were financed or how the grim reaper who was apparently the hero’s father came to have control over them? The grim reaper was a tragic badass and the technology looked cool, dammit!
The prequel trilogy attempted to explain these things without offering a compelling reason to care about them, within a structure that was too faithful to the existing movies. Also, unlike KOTOR, it was in the hands of George Lucas, who’s allowed his his gut instinct of what a 10-year-old would like, sudden interest in politics and atrocious dialogue (I’ve seen the original Star Wars more times than I care to count, and it wasn’t that bad) to nearly eclipse his flair for action sequences. Unsurprising that the best thing to come out of the new trilogy was Genndy Tartakovsky’s existing Clone Wars series – which, like KOTOR, freed itself from certain aspects of the world (physics, politics) to strengthen others (action sequences, character development, philosophy).
The Clone Wars was not written or directed by Lucas, although it was supervised by him, so it carries both the strength of new blood (Dave Filoni, who directed several episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender) and the weakness of fidelity to the existing material. The music, by one Kevin Kiner, occasionally moves beyond the blueprint established by John Williams, offering Asian and Middle-Eastern themes for two of the planets.
Another advantage is The Clone Wars’ introduction of and focus on a new character, Ahsoka Tano (voiced by one Ashley Eckstein). Though not quite the protagonist (Anakin, voiced here by TV actor Matt Lanter, still comes off as that), she’s easily the most interesting character, because she’s not defined by existing baggage and we know anything could happen to her.
Speaking of Anakin, he’s a bit more interesting in this movie, heroic but with some of the chaotic edge that led to his becoming Darth Vader (and which was poorly hinted at in the prequel trilogy).
This is a Star Wars movie, so dialogue is primarily there to describe what’s happening on screen. It sounds better than it did in the prequel trilogy, though the banter between Ahsoka and Anakin is atrocious.
I must admit I found the animation off-putting. The stylized characters that worked in Tartakovsky’s series don’t translate all that well to 3D, and the lightsaber battles are obviously staged and appear to be conducted by action figures. I understand what reviewers meant when they said lightsaber battles in KOTOR were impressive – inThe Clone Wars, they simply aren’t smooth.
Die-hard fans of the series who weren’t fazed by the prequels will eat this up. Those of us who Lucas lost can wait for the video. Or forego it entirely. You won’t be missing anything.
