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Archive: February 2009 (311-320 of 448)

Feb 10 2009 01:00 PM ET

Chris Harrison blogs 'The Bachelor': episode 6

Categories: About Last Night, Reality TV, Television, The Bachelor, Things That Are Awesome!

Chrisharrisonportrait_l I have great news for all of you who have been begging (alright, justasking nicely) for more bloopers and behind-the-scenes stuff. Thisseason’s Women Tell All special will be two hours. We have already shota couple segments for this special. I sat down with Jason and got hisperspective on the show now that he’s had a chance to see it on TV andwitness those moments that happened when he wasn’t around. We also wentthrough several bloopers and highlights that have never been seenbefore and didn’t make the show. This special will air in two weeks.

Let’s deal with some of my favorite comments of yours from this pastweek. Alana mentioned she watches the show with her husband Roger who’sa Marine. I love that couples watch the show together but wanted togive a special salute to any and all of our viewers who serve ourcountry. They do the real work so we have the right to do silly thingslike blog and tink champagne glasses. Thank you, Roger! Many of youasked about the house where Jason is staying and where we shootdeliberation. This, as many of you commented, is not Jason’s realhouse. This is a house we rented from a lovely couple that I had thepleasure of meeting and sharing a glass of vino with. This is a verycool house, but I don’t think any parent would really want to raise akid in a house completely surrounded by water. We used this housebecause it looks great and it’s only about ten minutes away from thehotel where all the girls stayed and the rose ceremonies were held.Jason does live in Kirkland (which you saw on Deanna’s season) which ismuch further away. A few of you gave me a hard time about my Green Dayreference last week. You guys were so right I should have mentioned alocal Seattle band like U2.

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Feb 10 2009 11:00 AM ET

Quote of the Day: Gimme a Beat Edition

by Mike Bruno

Categories: PopWatch Quote of the Day

"The new Pee Wee can beat anything, except a bum rap." –Jim Carrey as Pee Wee Herman on In Living Colour

Feb 10 2009 04:01 AM ET

'The Bachelor' episode 6: It's hometown hell week!

by Kristen Baldwin

Categories: Television

You know what we don’t see enough of on television? Bird funerals. So isn’t it a delight that the producers of The Bachelor chose to remedy that situation with this week’s hometown date episode? Don’t worry, I won’t spoil all the gory details here — for full details, click over to my TV Watch recap, now live, as well as host Chris Harrison’s exclusive EW.com blog — but suffice it to say Jason experiences a whole potpourri of wacky on his four hometown dates this week. What did you think of the episode? Should Jillian have admitted on national television that she believes in lake monsters? Have you ever used funny hats to diffuse family tension? And does Ty get cuter every week, or is it just me? Now, if Jason’s adventures on tonight’s episode were too tame for you, click below to check out hometown dates, Doll Bachelor style!

Feb 10 2009 01:04 AM ET

Dave Matthews Band's LeRoi Moore: Grammys snub?

by Aly Semigran

Categories: Grammys, Music

Leroimoore_l It has been a hard couple of months for Dave Matthews Band fans, since the loss of saxophonist LeRoi Moore — and last night’s Grammy festivities didn’t make things easier. Moore, who died in August from complications stemming from an ATV accident, was left out of the Grammys’ "In Memoriam" segment (as was Stooges’ guitarist Ron Asheton).

Fans have been letting their grievances be known via various DMB message boards, including antsmarching.org. The band’s bassist, Stefan Lessard, wasn’t shy about his frustration with Moore’s omission, either. Last night, Lessard twittered, "It just goes to show you how full of s— the Grammys have become," and he responded to fans’ disappointment with, "You all make me proud…. Roi knew that, he loved you all."

Sure, the Grammys had time restrictions, and there were many names to be mentioned. But it does seem like a glaring omission: Moore was Grammy winner and a founding member of one of the most successful touring bands in the country. So the lack of recognition certainly doesn’t sit well. Being a huge DMB fan myself (39 shows and counting), I couldn’t help but get a little upset by not seeing LeRoi Moore get his due. What about you fellow DaveHeads? Did Roi’s omission hit a nerve? Should the Grammys apologize?

UPDATE: In a statement dated Feb. 10, Recording Academy president Neil Portnow said, "Nearly 250 members of our music community have passed in the last year, and all of them have been listed in the program book for the 51st Annual GRAMMY Awards, including LeRoi Moore. For the ‘Encore’ segment of our annual GRAMMY Awards telecast, unfortunately we are unable to include all of the talented and wonderful people within the allotted timeframe."

Feb 10 2009 12:40 AM ET

'Ghost Whisperer': Have we kissed and made up?

by Mandi Bierly

Categories: Ghost Whisperer, Television

Back when Michael Ausiello first broke the news that Jim (David Conrad) would die on Ghost Whisperer, the response was a resounding Noooooooooo. Ditto for when I blogged about his actual death. Since then, we (and Melinda, played by Jennifer Love Hewitt) have seen Ghost Jim step into another man’s body because he didn’t want to cross over and leave his wife. That accident victim, Sam, has amnesia, and Sim (what we shall call Sam-Jim) doesn’t remember Melinda — though he feels a strong, unexplained attraction to her. After weeks of watching Sim deal with the complicated family he isn’t close to (convenient!) and an ex (Teri Polo) that almost pulled him away from Melinda, he and Melinda are officially dating. On Friday’s episode, they shared their first kiss (below). So the question is, are you still mourning Jim’s passing, or have you begun to warm to this storyline?

From a ratings standpoint, the answer would appear to be the latter: The first five episodes of the season averaged 9.5 million viewers, while Jim’s death and the eight episodes that have followed have averaged 10.9 million (an increase of 14 percent). Producers wanted to show us Melinda and Jim falling in love, and I’m enjoying it more now that they’ve stopped showing Sam’s body so much. (Sim only looks like Conrad to viewers.) But I still wish they’d just planned a half-season flashback so it was our Jim we were seeing. We all know what it meant for Melinda to finally find him, someone who believed her gift and supported it. That’s the story I want to hear. Even though Sim, who doesn’t yet know that Melinda sees dead people, will have a similar experience, it’s not THE experience. You could argue that Melinda will be even more desperate now that she’s had that kind of love and lost it — and that’s why I’m tuning in each week — but again, it’s just not quite as satisfying as it could have been.

Your turn.

Feb 9 2009 11:17 PM ET

Seth Rogen's 'Observe and Report' trailer: Hilariously NSFW

by Abby West

Categories: Movie Trailers

I know where I’ll be when Seth Rogen’s movie about a lovestruck dolt of a mall cop hits theaters on April 10. I’d probably go see Observe and Report on the strength of Rogen’s past work alone (Pineapple Express, Superbad, Knocked Up), but if not, this red-band trailer (after the jump) would have tipped the scales for me. Definitely not safe for work, but Rogen, Anna Faris, and Ray Liotta all make it look so good.

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Feb 9 2009 11:07 PM ET

Lady GaGa: Bonus quotes from the dance-pop queen!

by Whitney Pastorek

Categories: Music

LadyGaGa_l

My feature on dance-pop sensation Lady GaGa in the magazine this week is short and sweet, but she’s so full of quotable quotes that it seemed a shame to waste the stuff that didn’t make it on paper. After the jump are the deleted scenes from the late lunch she and I enjoyed on the afternoon of the Golden Globes, pretty much a year to the day after she wrote "Just Dance" — which, at the time, was the No. 1 song in the country. Wearing a jacket with giant feathers on the shoulders, wolfing down rigatoni bolognese like the good Italian girl she is, GaGa spoke for more than an hour, and did not utter a single word with less than total conviction. Even if her music doesn’t do it for ya, it’s hard to hate her chutzpah.

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Feb 9 2009 08:21 PM ET

Paula Abdul, Miley Cyrus, Jason Mraz, Adele, and more video from the Grammys red carpet

by Adam B. Vary

Categories: American Idol, Grammys, Music, On the Scene

EW’s intrepid Whitney Pastorek, seemingly three months deep into covering Grammy week 2009, has delivered some pretty kicking video from last night’s Grammys red carpet. How often did Miley Cyrus rehearse her duet with apparent BFF Taylor Swift? What happened to (eventual) Best New Artist winner Adele’s thumbnail? How would (eventual) Best New Artist non-winners Lady Antebellum deal if they had won the infamously cursed award? Which former Sexiest Man Alive is starring in Juno director Jason Reitman’s next feature film? Is Jason Mraz intimidated at all by competing with Coldplay? These questions and more are answered in the videos below — first up, American Idol judge Paula Abdul tells us which season 7 contestant was convinced at the last minute not to sing Abdul’s classic "Rush Rush."

Feb 9 2009 08:02 PM ET

The Kindle 2 from Amazon: Score one for laziness

by Kate Ward

Categories: Books, Tech

Kindle_l Make way for Kindle 2: Today Amazon unveiled an updated version of their electronic reading machine (to be released Feb. 24), which is being hailed as a faster, slimmer, and longer-lasting rendering of the original. Now, I’ve never been a fan of the Kindle (call me old-fashioned, but I’d prefer not to look at a computer screen 24 hours a day), but there did seem to be some potential in one of Kindle 2′s new features: "Read-to-Me," a text-to-speech conversion option that allows you listen to your downloaded books if you’re too lazy to flip your own pages, or if you’ve burned out your eyes after watching last week’s I Love Money 2 premiere.

There are, however, two downsides to the new feature (which, admittedly, does seem outdated, since audiobooks are so easily downloadable on iTunes): 1) I have a feeling I’ll grow tired of "Read-To-Me" once I’m inevitably forced to hear Eat, Pray, Love for the zillionth time on the subway, and 2) The feature only offers the option of listening to "male or female voices." In my opinion, Amazon could have made this feature even cooler: Instead of offering only unspecified voices for "Read-To-Me," why not recruit celebs or authors to tell the tales? Who wouldn’t want to hear James Earl Jones read a rich, classic saga? Or Antonio Banderes purr through a steamy romance novel? Or Emma Thompson deliver a Jane Austen tale or two?

Still, PopWatchers, how many of you plan to dish out $359 for the Kindle 2? And in an ideal world, what celebrity would you like to have read to you?

Feb 9 2009 06:25 PM ET

Grizzly Bear: Anticipating their next album, 'Veckatimest'

by Simon Vozick-Levinson

Categories: Advance Advancement, Music, Things That Are Awesome!

The blogosphere is all aflutter this morning with news of rising indie stars Grizzly Bear’s third LP. Singer and occasional PopWatch contributor Edward Droste, who’s been chronicling the mixing and mastering process via Twitter, announced over the weekend that the album is finally finished. Stereogum swiftly followed up by revealing its title — Veckatimest, also the name of a tiny uninhabited island in Massachusetts — and a tentative list of songs. Grizzly Bear’s publicist clarified things slightly just now, telling EW that Stereogum got the title right, but not the track list.

In any case, the enthusiasm surrounding this album is well deserved. Last summer Grizzly Bear reached their highest level of exposure yet, debuting Veckatimest‘s "Two Weeks" on David Letterman’s Late Show (below) and touring as Radiohead’s opening act, a.k.a. the coolest gig any band can score. Those performances showed how nicely the band’s sound has evolved, fleshing out their psychedelic folk-rock framework with more upbeat hues and tighter songwriting. Also: Droste, whom I interviewed years ago for my college paper and have exchanged e-mails with from time to time since, is quite possibly the nicest guy in indie rock. All of which explains why Veckatimest is my most anticipated album of ’09 right now. Anyone else eager to hear it?

UPDATE: Grizzly Bear’s publicist adds that Veckatimest is due some time this May, though a specific date has not been set yet. Only three more months to wait!