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.
There are three things I love about this job: being able to talk about gaming all the time, getting a chance to play alot of the newest titles and write about them, and special events. Now, these special events…well, they’re very special. They could be as big as going to E3 (maybe next year?) or as small as a demo station in a hotel lobby. Either way, it’s a break from the ordinary and it can lead to very unique experiences (such as playing NHL 10 with Patrick Kane and John Tavares likes we did earlier in the week).
Recently we were invited to another special event, the E3 of the North as they called it. We got a chance to not only sit down with Matt Ryan of Nintendo Canada (along with other members of the Nintendo family) but we also got an opportunity to try out some of the biggest titles that were revealed at this year’s E3!
Lets start with the DS titles.
Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box was available, and while I only had a chance to play two puzzles (and complete them successfully might I add) I felt that this was very similar in puzzle solving and style to the first title, which by all means isn’t a bad thing. Who wouldn’t want more puzzles to play on the bus or on their couch? And hey, if you finish all the puzzles quickly, you can always download more as Nintendo will be providing more puzzles for free as the weeks go on!
You mess with me, you mess with my Phantom... and my choo-choo
I was also fortunate enough to try a demo of the upcoming Zelda title, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. This demo, while only sporting three scenarios to play with, showed me a number of things. First off, this Zelda takes place 100 years after The Phantom Hour Glass (the last DS title). One interesting new feature in Spirit Tracks is the ability to use the Phantom (a bady guy from the last DS title) as a partner to help Link get through the game, by drawing a path for your phantom to follow, you can use him to help you fight against new monsters, or protect you from the elements such as fire. As well I had the opportunity to play against a giant bug boss in which you utilize a new wind weapon to blow poisonous gas away from the bug’s rear (yes, we may all chuckle) to expose it’s weak spot. I found Spirit Tracks to be a beautifully animated title, which no doubt expands on the last Zelda game with everything you loved in the first one, brought up to a whole new level.
DSi ware was also on hand as players had a chance to try out Mario Vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again, the third in this series, what’s new about this title is that as of now at least, you cannot actually purchase it in stores. Minis March Again is a downloadable only game for the DSi from any wi-fi hotspot and loaded straight onto your DSi. By solving puzzles and figuring out how to proceed to the next level, players can create their own levels and put them online for others to see and play as well! Also in the DSi ware I had a chance to experience Flipnote studio, an application that allows gamers with an artistic flare to create short cartoons complete with artistic features in a flip book style creating one frame at a time. Now while I have zero artistic capability, I saw some previous examples of what was made, and with a little time and skill you would be amazed at the amount of detail this DSi unit can provide for animation!
Now moving onto the Wii, while I had the chance to try Wii Fit Plus, Wii Sports Resort, AND Super Mario Brothers Wii, I missed out on actually playing the Wii Sports Resort, which, with the Motion Sensor Plus, looked like a blast giving 1:1 movement for every swing and waggle of the Wii controller. In Wii Fit Plus I was able to cross off one of my things to do before I die because, yes that’s right, I got to fly across an ocean as a giant chicken! No, there isn’t any metaphor there, one of the Fit Plus games has you flapping your arms and leaning to fly and land on specific targets with the final goal of landing on a boat before the time runs out. While I was skeptical regarding how flapping my arms on the Wii Balance Board would work, it actually did as every flap of my own arms was registered into the game and even flapping backwards to slow my speed worked! Now, while I landed near centre of every target and was told I did a great job, I later saw a toddler who couldn’t have been older than 6 years of age shatter my North of E3 chicken flying record with ease… my how the mighty have fallen.
Sure it looks cool... but where's the giant chicken?
Super Mario Brothers. A name so famous, if you asked 100 people I would wager at least 75% of them knew of the Super Mario Brothers, and as such, Nintnedo has found yet another way for us gamers to enjoy their company. This time however, Nintendo has found a way to mix the old with the new. In what seems to me to be a mix of the recent DS New Super Mario Brothers title and the Wii Capabilities, Super Mario Brothers Wii is a 2D side scrolling title very so much like the original Mario games of the NES days with new bad guys (as well as old favourites), new powerups (as well as old favourites), and new motion controls (shake the wii-mote to make your character do a spin jump). This New mario title however, has something no past Mario title has before though… are you ready for it? wait for it… here it comes, FOUR PLAYER CO-OP! and not in the sense that four players can wait and take turns playing like past Mario games, but that four players can play together AT THE SAME TIME! Now, this leads to very new and exciting dynamics in the game as players can work together to progress through the title, or compete with one another to get the most points by jumping on each other, throwing each other, or with the help of everyone’s rideable dinosaur, eat each other via Yoshi tounge! Playing with Matt from Nintendo, his associate, and Jennifer from andPOP we got right into the four player chaos holding the Wii-mote on it’s side like an old school NES Nintendo controller, we soon found out that this was as far from old school as possible as Mario, Luigi, Blue Toad, and Yellow Toad starting running around in a chaotic motion trying to outplay each other and survive to make it to the end of the level. 20 minutes flew by before we relized it and one thing was certain, this game was fun for everyone… and addictive as I didn’t want to stop playing any time soon. As each level ends, players tally up their scores to see who played best for bragging rights as well as to target that player in the next level as a threat to your all time high score. By far in my opinion Super Mario Wii was the highlight of this event and I can’t wait for some good old four player chaos on my couch with some competitive buddies.
So there you have it, the inner workings of a gaming sneak preview. Full of all the whimsy and magic gamers expected from closed door gaming events, I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a blast to be there, but hey, it’s only a preview and before we all know it, these games will be hitting retail shelves across North America!
