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.
Note: If you’re already interested in seeing District 9 - you know the setup, you’ve seen the posters – go see it. Like all good stories, the best way to experience it is to know nothing about it going in. A word to the squeamish, however – this is a Peter Jackson production by the man who directed The Frighteners and the icky spider-pit sequence in King Kong, not the man who directed Heavenly Creatures or Lord of the Rings.
When we first meet Wikus Van der Merwe, we don’t really notice him; he’s one of many talking heads in the faux documentary that opens District 9, and he isn’t important. Others explain that in the 1980s an alien mothership appeared suddenly over Johannesburg, and that, after nothing happened (by all appearances, there was nothing to keep this ship from torching South Africa like the aliens in Independence Day) humans broke in and discovered a sickly race of alien refugees whose ship had literally run out of gas. Wikus (newcomer Sharlto Copley) is a cubicle drone tasked by MNU, the corporation that has kept the refugees under (debatable) control, to lead a team that will hand the aliens eviction notices, lending a sense of legitimacy to their forced extraction from District 9, the slums in which they currently reside, to District 10, which is more of a concentration camp. In his opening scenes, Wikus comes across as an officious bureaucrat who in any other movie would be the first to go, in a spectacular and probably funny manner. That appearance is crucial, because it means his ultimate role in the story is as much a surprise to the audience as it is to him. I can’t say that if Hitchcock made an alien invasion film Wikus would have been his protagonist, but I do think he would have been proud.
This is science fiction. This uses allegory to cast a light on one of the most shameful aspects of humanity. First-time writer/director Neill Blomkamp, who lived in South Africa until he moved to Canada at 18, never bludgeons us with the parallels, but his film has a clear thesis in mind, and he states it well.
With their clawed hands and hardened carapaces, the aliens almost resemble bipedal lobsters (they’re derisively referred to as “prawns”), and with their tentacled mouths and garbled speech they appear half a step removed from the Aliens/Predator mold of goopy hunters. Yet with their bulbous eyes and thin waists, they’re just as easily injured as humans, and with their weapons confiscated (you didn’t think humans would free them and allow them to live with their own technology, did you?) they can’t easily hurt us – nor is there any indication they’d want to, since they rarely fight unless being attacked.
And here is the sole element of District 9′s plot that I’ll spoil (it’s not much of a spoiler, since it’s revealed in the opening mockumentary, but it’s not underlined): MNU is funded by corporate interests who, as you might expect, are interested in the aliens’ weaponry. Problem is, no human can work them, since they’re attuned to the aliens’ DNA. Both “legitimate” MNU forces and the Nigerian black market that has appeared in District 9 have a cache of alien weaponry, but after 20 years neither has figured out how to operate them – until our plot comes along.
For those who desire nothing else, District 9 is a thrilling action yarn. The mercenaries hired by MNU to police the increasingly volatile district are capable villains, and while their bald leader, Koobus (David James), isn’t the most memorable antagonist in screen history – think Gary Busey in Lethal Weapon rather than Alan Rickman in Die Hard – he gets the job done. The Nigerians, whose wheelchair-bound leader is obsessed with eating the aliens’ flesh, hoping it will let him utilize that robotic exoskeleton taking up space in his warehouse, won’t win the filmmakers any points for racial sensitivity, but they actually come off as slightly more sympathetic than the (mostly white) corporate villains. At least they’re open about what they’re doing.
If there’s a problem with District 9 it’s that the documentary format can’t sustain the story. It’s impossible for a human being holding a camera to capture the aliens’ perspective, and unlike The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, the cameraperson is never identified. Long stretches of movie trade the format for straight narrative, albeit narrative with the same handheld cinema verite style, before abruptly becoming a documentary again. It’s jarring, but I’m not sure Blomkamp could have handled it differently. For whatever reason, the film almost reaches perfection, but not quite.
It is, however, an instant classic that will be fondly remembered for years to come.
