Natalia brings you the latest news on Adele’s interview with Anderson Cooper, Kristen Bell’s interview on Ellen is auto tuned, Ladehawke’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.
Marina and The Diamonds are working on some new music, but Marina is being very secretive about it. Although the release has been delayed, she let’s us in on some secrets about the new album, and how alcohol changed her life.
Overcome with emotion and unable to show his feelings while speaking at Ryan Dunn’s memorial service last Wednesday, Johnny Knoxville wrote a blog post to his late friend and “Jackass” co-star, who died in a car crash last week.
In the post, Knoxville spoke of Dunn’s “enormous capacity to love” his friends and family as well as his fun personality.
“I felt 34-percent funnier when I was with Ryan, but I guess everyone did. He had such a hair trigger laugh reflex,” he wrote. “He lived his life wanting to laugh and wanting you to laugh with him. He would cackle really f*cking loud, too, and it wasn’t uncommon that he would fall over from it. Sometimes I would fall with him because his spirit was very contagious.”
But while Dunn was capable of making everyone laugh with him, Knoxville also spoke out on his friend’s serious side.
“Ryan was a great listener. If you were having troubles, he was always someone you could go sit down and talk to. Granted, most of our sitting down was actually standing up playing pool together, but he was always there if you were sad about something. That’s why all this is even harder because right now I really need to talk to him but I can’t.”
You can read the full post here.
With recent news of Taylor Momsen and Jessiza Szohr getting axed from ‘Gossip Girl,’ I thought I would do a ‘Top 5: Annoying TV Characters’ post.
These characters are in every show. That one character that likes to messes things up. That one who makes you scream at the television set. Or the just plain stupid. There are too many to name. But I’ve rounded up my top 5 picks of annoying television characters – hope you agree. I think you will.
1. Jenny Humphrey, played by Taylor Momsen.
First up on the list is ‘Gossip Girl’ Jenny Humphrey, played by Taylor Momsen. I’m pretty sure everyone can agree that her character is the most annoying character to ever appear on a television show, ever. From her sulking, goth appearance, to her brief stint as a preppy Constance mean girl, Jenny was always a follower, and never an individual. She cried, she complained, and she wore fishnet stockings. Good riddance.
2. Marissa Cooper, played by Mischa Barton.
Next up is Marissa Cooper from ‘The O.C.,’ played by faded starlet Mischa Barton. Like Jenny, Marissa was always causing trouble. Whether in abusive relationships, dealing with substance abuse, or just all-around a clingy kind of gal, Marissa made you want to shake her and say ‘wake up!’ Sure, she was pretty and rich, but that didn’t make up for her deeply damaged soul. She eventually got killed off, and the show tanked.
3. George O’Malley, played by T.R. Knight.
Third on the list is ‘Grey’s Anatomy’s’ George O’Malley, played by T.R. Knight. George spent more time crying about his personal issues than curing medical cases. He was worse than the female doctors. Yes, the show is a hit because of its mix of medical drama and soap-like personal issues, but George took this to a whole other level. He eventually got killed off, too (notice a trend?) but the show went on without him. And with good reason.
4. Swiper, From ‘Dora The Explorer.’
Don’t lie, we’ve all witnessed an episode of ‘Dora The Explorer’ at one point in our life. Whether babysitting or being too lazy to switch the channel, we’ve encountered Swiper, the fox that likes to steal things. No matter how loud you scream ‘Swiper, no swiping!’ the bastard seems to always get away with things. He messes everything up and delays Dora’s adventure, and for that, he’s number four on my list. Sly little fox, you.
5. Roseanne Barr, Played by Roseanne Barr.
It doesn’t matter who I ask – everyone hates Roseanne. Debatably the most annoying show and annoying family, Roseanne takes the cake with her super-loud-mouth character. Literally, all she does is complain. Her loud nasally voice doesn’t help either. She’s obnoxious, she’s lazy, and she’s immature. And the sitcom’s reruns are always on the damn television. Why are good shows being cancelled and replaced with reruns of this clownery? Sigh.
Kim Kardashian wants you to know that she’s doing okay, even after becoming involved in a physical altercation last week.
Popeater reports that the reality star took a picture with an excited male fan while taking a break from shooting her new show Kim and Kourtney take New York. Unfortunately she didn’t take the boy’s jealous girlfriend into account. She took a drink to the face from the lady before quickly leaving the bar with her party.
In a blog post addressing the issue, Kim was eager to inform her fan base that she left the incident unscathed, if a little wet. “I’m totally fine, guys!” she reiterated after explaining the incident in pretty minute detail.
“Luckily I had Scott and Khloe there to protect me,” Kim added. “None of us were drinking… we just wanted a fun family night out, but when people see the cameras rolling, they try to get attention and I guess that’s what happened when the drunk girl saw that we were filming KKTNY. I always take the high road, so we all left straight after and didn’t feed into their drama….Ok, moving on!”
Oh that Kim Kardashian. Always getting herself into situations that evoke mortal peril. Drink tossing! The horror! Thank Xenu in heaven she escaped without permanent trauma.
Are you missing Lil Wayne? Well don’t cry anymore because the imprisoned rapper has a solution.
Yesterday (April 2nd) Weezy launched Weezythanxyou.com which he will be posting weekly blogs and responses to fan letters, according to MTV.
“Your letter was so thoughtful and sincere,” he wrote in response to Nurris Terrero of New York. “The way you worded everything left me in awe. Please send suggestions on books I should read. I look forward to checking them out.”
You can tell that the festival is in full swing by the overall demeanor of the morning crowd as they gather to begin another day of rock n’ roll excess. Collective hangover and friendly audience are not two terms that usually go together well. Having the first set of the day at SXSW is often one of the most difficult gigs to pull off.
Her name is Nneka. ”Double N, E K A.” as she says from the stage. A truly gifted performer, she single handedly cured the headaches of the masses gathered at the Cedar Street Courtyard on this particular morning. Her songs are about infidelity, poverty and anger. You feel every word she sings. You can’t take your eyes off of her. An absolutely amazing way to start the day.
Welcome to the Live Music Capital of the World. There are over 120 music venues within a block of each other. It can get extremely overwhelming if you don’t have a strategy to conquer the madness. When I first moved to Austin, someone once told me “Walk down Sixth street and follow your ears. When you hear something good… go inside.” It’s a wonderful system to make it all make sense.
At the top notch Billboard showcase Dinosaur Bones capitalized on the amazing location of the stage facing Sixth street and actually drew a sizable crowd into the venue from off of the street. Within ten minutes, the tent was buzzing with a feeding frenzy of music-industry-types. The band has an uncanny way of making an organic transition from hook-filled rock to beautiful ambiance all in the same breath. No one left unimpressed.
Everything changes. That’s why when we got the TXT message at 1pm “Get down to the Red River parking garage across from Stubb’s RIGHT NOW” we just grabbed our iced coffees to go and ran down the street. We’ve wisely learned not to make solid plans.
We arrived at this abandoned parking garage a few minutes later to find a throng of bearded hipsters encircling a makeshift stage. They were everywhere…. even crawling up the chainlink fence surrounding the structure. The immediacy of the moment was perfect. A random happenstance in the heart of Texas. The camera crews were ready to go.
Broken Bells suddenly appear on the stage and break into a set containing The Ghost Inside, The High Road and Vaporize. There’s no question that the buzz on this group is well deserved. They nailed the pop-up show. Expect them all over the radio this summer.
Daniel Berkal leads the trendspotting team at The Palmerston Group, and will be mailing reports from Austin, Texas exclusively to andPOP throughout SXSW 2010.
The people at Zynga have been ruling Facebook with their ridiculously addictive Farmville and Mafia Wars games. Last night, they ruled SXSW by throwing a private party featuring exclusive performances by Atlanta’s The Constellations and indie-kid fave Metric.
By the time that Emily Haines and company took the stage a bit past 930pm, the invite-only crowd seemed to have gone through a centrifuge… separating out the Metric fanatics towards the front while those there mainly for the free Southern Comfort hung around the back. Neither group of patrons were disappointed in the slightest.
Metric were absolutely outstanding. Playing a long set full of both recent songs and fan favorites, the band has finally gelled into a collective force. Emily captivated all in attendance with her intense stage presence and spot-on vocals. It was such a pleasure to watch a group at the top-of-their game show up and give it their all.
While Kanye West may have claimed to Jay Leno to be keeping a low profile on things after his Taylor Swift-MTV Video Music Awards debacle, the new video clip he posted on his blog begs to differ.
The promo video released on Wednesday, Sept. 23 for his new “Fame Kills” tour with Lady Gaga is anything but low profile, according to MTV News.
The video clip, posted by West under the headline, “What Happened to All the Rock Stars? Fame Killed Them!” is a slow motion film featuring a topless Gaga covering herself and wrapped in the arms of a black man while soft, moody music plays in the background. When 30 seconds of this pass, the name of the tour appears on the screen along with a voice that says, “Fame Kills!” and then “West + Gaga” flashes across.
West first made an announcement about the tour earlier this summer at an appearance on “The View,” but it wasn’t a sealed deal until last week. The “Fame Kills” tour is set to begin on Nov. 10 in Phoenix and wrap up Jan. 24 in Dallas.
Spider-Man has an equal opportunity costume in Web of Shadows.
Ok, so for the past week or so I’ve been on a Spider-Man: Web of Shadows binge. Nothing but web-slinging through New York, symbiotes and ass-kickery. It has been awesome – definitely the best “comic-book superhero” game I’ve played in some time, if not ever (I wasn’t going to include comic-book just now, but then I remembered inFAMOUS and Prototype). So that got me thinking how many bad superhero games I’ve played. That got me thinking about how much worse those games could have been if they were about even crappier superheroes – I mean, even Spider-Man 3 had Spider-Man in it, right? So, with that in mind, I’d like to present:
5 Superheroes That Should Never Be in Video Games
*disclaimer – if a game has already been made that should contain one of these characters, then there’s no need to mention it – the damage has been done. (more…)
This past week on Penn and teller’s show, “Penn and Teller: Bullsh*t” they tackled the topic of video games, and namely video game violence. Now, I’ve dabbled in my own research dissecting violence in video games and their effect on the youth from a strictly ethical point of view (no psychology or any other brain rape involved) and it all came down to a small number of children not being able to tell the difference between real life and fantasy… Either that or negligent parents who provide their kids with M rated games at the age of 10 (more on this later).
In this episode, Penn and Teller (I still don’t understand why a show that revolves around debate and speech has half their talent being a mute) talk about the huge amounts of revenue flowing in from video games, the wave of violent crimes depicting video game copying and those deemed to stop them (Jack Thompson, Hillary Clinton, and some guy with a balding pony tail) but also take the reverse approach and provide a 9 year old gamer with a real assault rifle… how can it go wrong? The 28 minute video begins by making a strong comparison, video game violence to us is like three stooges violence to our parents, makes sense already doesn’t it? With every generation there comes a form of entertainment (or violence) the generation before doesn’t quite understand, while three stooges rarely ever dealt with guns or murder, I peg this as just the progression of the times, desensitization from the news, and newer technologies taking precedence. (more…)
This is the summer of the Fighting game!! YES it IS!!
So today I will be going over some of the new releases in the last four months or so, and give you reasons to pick up a controller and knock the other guy out.
And if none of the new releases tickle your fancy, then I have got a list of old greats that are sure to keep the fighting spirit ALIVE!!!! SO BROTHA LETS GET THIS STARTED!!!
In the last little while we have had some old franchises return, some new updates, and some classics sent our way. In fact, if I can honestly count the number of hours I have spent playing a fighting game this year; it would rival if not beat the combined total amount of time I have spent sleeping last year. THAT’S A FACT! (more…)
Now, I’m just gonna start typing and see where it takes me. This is a free for all blog rant and I have no intentions of a specific topic this week.
I just stared at my computer screen for five minutes… this isn’t going to work.
I like video games, I like them alot. Not to a point where I would rather sit down on a weekend evening and play instead of being social… but a few titles out there have gotten me close to that point. I also play a lot of games, one of the perks to this job is that playing games and reading about gaming news is part of my job description! So this past week I went to my local EB games to trade in a few titles and pick up something new, I must have spent a good 45 minutes looking through the Xbox 360 used section, new section, PS3 used section, new section, Wii used section, new section, DS used, new, PSP used, new (as you can tell, I try to save some cash where I can) and after going through every one of these sections, I didn’t really see any titles I would be willing to spend the cash on! (more…)
What’s your favourite game? I know, it’s a tough question to answer for some of us, and a question I get asked almost every time I have an interview regarding any form of game related activities. In fact, it’s such a difficult question for me to answer that I often ask people I interview for andPOP positions just to watch them squirm as much as I do when I have to come up with a quick meaningful response. Do you base your answer on memory? What’s popular at the time? Do you want to sound sophisticated so you refer to some obscure art title? What if the game you say is your favourite turns out to be a personal worst for the person asking you? With such a simple question comes so much drama, and to a point, it gets a little ridiculous.
Personally I would probably have to say my all time favourite video game would have to be Punch Out for the original Nintendo… or Final Fantasy 7 for the Playstation… or Metal Gear Solid for the Playstation… or General Chaos for the Sega Genesis… or the latest Smash Bros title. At least I can narrow down my choices to my top five favourites of all time. Why did these become my favourites? (more…)
Alright!! It’s Friday!! And you don’t care what you read at work as long as the day goes by real quick, am I right?
Well from now on every Friday I’ll be ranting about video games and I’ll try and tackle key issues surrounding our industry as well providing you with some heavily opinionated takes on different games.
So then, today I’ll be taking a closer look at what I think is the most value I have gotten out of a game since F-Zero GX…
BURNOUT PARADISE!
Its sort of funny now that we look at the current next gen racers, a number of years ago we had so few big budgeted racers to pick from. Aside from the Project Gotham Racing and GT series gamers who wanted a causal and very arcade foray into racing had nothing but the Need for Speed and Midnight Club series. And I won’t be counting all the wonderful kart racers or fantastic Futuristic racers here. (more…)
CHEATS – The Gamer’s Moral Compass
Up, Up, Down, Down, Up, Up, Up, Up. And all of a sudden, I can level select in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 on my Sega Genesis. So what if I don’t earn my way to the Ice Cap Zone? I’ve played this game 50 times already – it’s been done. But you’d never catch me sprinting through GoldenEye or Quake with God Mode on – ruins the game for me. So my cheating in games is based on convenience and sportsmanship (after a fashion). But am I the rule, or the exception to it?
Cheats and secrets have been around in games since 8-bit systems. I really wouldn’t be surprised if there was a cheat to make your Pong paddle bigger (and I’m not referencing the herbal medicine junk email we get every day). Back on the Genesis and NES/SNES, we had Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat codes to unlock characters, and Battletoads, Sonic and many other codes for level selection. Later, on platforms like the N64, Playstation and PS2, codes became a way to unlock secret features of the game, features that you couldn’t unlock without the codes. A great example of this is Star Wars: Rogue Squadron for the N64, which had a code to unlock the Naboo starfighter from Episode I. However, LucasArts only released the code after the movie had been released in theatres – so noone was unlocking that baby by accident a few days before opening weekend at the box office. Cheats and secrets are still a big part of games, but as the core gamer demographic grows out of the desire for codes (and more importantly, grows out of hard-core gaming into casual gaming), these become more rewards than hustles.
Hey andPOPpers, Josh again with my weekly ranting. This week’s topic, how do you play video games? What is your ideal setup? How long is a good gaming session for you? When I play, it all depends on the mood I’m in, what kind of game it is, and what happened earlier in the day. If I’m having a crappy day, bad traffic, annoying people, and I’m just in a downright foul mood, I like to cause some havoc. Take my anger out on virtual citizens of a cyber world. I may go home, crack open a nice frosty coke, plop on the couch and pop in some Horde mode of Gears of War 2 and just slaughter alien scum for a good hour or two. If I’m awake and relatively bored I might go back to my old MMORPG ways and play some online final fantasy 11 (either on my PC or Xbox depending on the mood) and slash 3 to 4 hours off my day. When the mood strikes and I feel like watching a movie but want that interactive vibe to it, I would usually play some good, theatrical, and beautiful Metal Gear Solid 4, pop in my Jabra earpiece (that came with Warhawk for PS3) and play with that much more involvement… and yes, if I want to be 100% in the game, I may even toss on my eye patch every now and then. (more…)
Hey andPOPpers, Josh here again and today, I think I’ll rant about the big news of the month, E3. The Electronic Entertainment Expo, the biggest North American video game trade show came and went, and with it, a slew of previews we all expected to see as well as a few big surprises came our way. While I was unable to attend this year, I watched from the comfort of my couch and desk as the news rolled in, and while I got excited for what’s coming our way I couldn’t help but get a little disappointed that while the people there had to deal with crowds, line-ups and costs, they would ultimately be the ones to say they played these games a year or even more before they came out.
So for the past week I’ve been watching the live E3 press releases of the big three: Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft; and I must say, for the most part I was surprisingly impressed with what was announced and shown at these press conferences. (more…)
Hi all, my name is Ahsan and I am starting as an intern writer for andPOP.com! Its a tremendous honor to be a part of the team!
A little bit about myself. I have studied art history and have done 2d arts and animation. I’ve written small time reviews and assessments for the very short lived igosu game site-which had a run time of a week. lol-
I strongly believe in treating games as interactive art, the way I see it video games are intellectually fulfilling and important as any good book, movie, or piece of traditional art..except for the Americas army series of games…just kidding
And being E3 and all I am truly excited to start writing and entertain you all with my unique view of video games in my web comic.
So stay tuned to andPOP as we have a lot of cool things coming your way.
Hey andPOPpers, Josh here (senior gaming editor), chances are if you’ve read a game review on this web page in the past two years, it was written by me. We’re going through some big exciting changes on the gaming front at andPOP, we will be adding more content, more articles, more reviews, contests, interviews, and many more surprises over the next few weeks and I just wanted to get things rolling with what I hope to become a weekly blog.
I guess I would start by telling you all a little bit about my gaming habits. Ever since I was a wee young child I grew up with some form of video game controller in my hand, whether I controlled a pong paddle with it or a horde of orcs I have always enjoyed playing, and try to get as much gaming in daily as humanly possible. From Atari to Xbox 360, from action games to real time strategy games I love everything gaming represents. Whether you play to escape reality or due to being on house arrest, video games have the ability to entertain, educate, and bring people from all over the world together in this fast growing hobbyist lifestyle. My objective, my goal is to create some form of communication with the readers through this blog, and of course, to vent. After all, isn’t that what blogging is really all about?
So this week is the potential return of the greatness that is E3. Yes, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the largest North American video game trade show of the year is taking place between June 2 and 4 in LA and I am stuck here, missing out on my dream gig for a third straight year. That being said however, I’m not OVERLY depressed, because we will be having updates posted throughout the week with regards to the biggest stories, the newest news, and the most embarrassing letdowns as the show progresses!
So there ya go, the first of many blogs to come from the gaming side of things. As we ramp up and revitalize the gaming section we are always open to suggestions. If you have anything you think should be here but isn’t, feel free to leave a comment and we’ll see what we can cook up.
