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Archive: December 2009 (351-360 of 461)

Dec 7 2009 01:44 PM ET

You can get your Pan flute on in Mr. Jackson's 'Opus'

Categories: Art, Books, Celebrity Scandals, Michael Jackson, The Bad Man Scares Me!, Things That Are Classy

One of the portraits Michael Jackson commissioned from painter David Nordhal does bear resemblance to Michaelangelo’s David statue, as Sunday’s NY Post points out, but it’s more like a cross between that and William Bouguereau’s Le Printemps (The Return of Spring), pictured above right. Spot the difference: Michael is playing a Pan flute because he was a musician. Or a Satyr, depending on your perspective. “Michael” is just one of many paintings and other rare Michael Jackson-themed artwork appearing in The Official Michael Jackson Opus. I’m actually most interested in Nordhal’s depiction of Janet Jackson as a fairy in The Storyteller, but we can’t show that here, so I’ll either need to click this and squint, or just go ahead and buy a book for $249.

UPDATE: I just tracked down EW’s review copy of this mammoth tome. It’s like seven feet high, 240 pounds, and contains a single white glove among the pages. Don’t tell anyone I took it. I’m gonna wear it for blogging, even though it’s not sparkly.

Dec 7 2009 01:30 PM ET

'I'm a Celebrity' contestants charged with killing a rat, liking it

by Annie Barrett

Categories: Animals, Food and Drink, Reality TV

Chef Gino D’Acampo and actor Stuart Manning, contestants from the British version of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! currently face charges of animal cruelty after cooking and eating a rat on the show during a period of exile. The animal welfare organization RSPCA in New South Wales (the show is filmed in Australia) apparently sends staff whenever animals are used or filmed for live performances, like when bugs, spiders, and snakes are used in the show’s Bushtucker Challenges. Since, apparently, the show’s production staff could never have predicted that humans in exile would be hungry, see a delicious-looking animal they want to eat, and act on that instinct, no RSPCA officer was present. (Sadly, the R in RSPCA stands for Royal instead of Rat.) According to the organization’s code of practice, the killing of a rat for a performance is not acceptable. “The concern is this was done purely for the cameras,” a rep said. Thank you to an animal rights organization for encapsulating the universe’s concern for anything that occurs in the entire reality TV genre.

Whatever. This isn’t fair. The story didn’t even tell us what Chef Gino had ended up making for the Quickfire Challenge and who the guest judge was (probably Anton Ego). Shoddy reporting.

Image credit: D’Acampo: Camera Press/Retna ltd.; Manning: Camera Press/Retna ltd

Dec 7 2009 01:11 PM ET

Your favorite made-for-TV holiday movie?

by Mandi Bierly

Categories: Happy Holidays, Television

Alright, so despite our love for Kristin Chenoweth and Josh Hopkins, Lifetime’s 12 Men of Christmas (repeats Tuesday, 9 p.m. ET) couldn’t compare to last year’s Heather Locklear-Robert Buckley offering, Flirting With Forty. But with the Christmas TV movie season in full swing, it’s time to ask you for your all-time favorites. I was reminded of a few of mine this morning when a colleague forwarded me the link to TV Tango’s comprehensive holiday-themed programming guide. Tomorrow at 8 p.m. ET, Hallmark Channel is showing 1999′s A Season for Miracles (pictured), starring Carla Gugino as an aunt who goes on the run with her niece and nephew, to keep them together when her sister lands in jail, and, oops, her car breaks down in a town with a hot cop (Ghost Whisperer‘s David Conrad) who falls for her. Then there’s 2007′s Holiday in Handcuffs, repeating on ABC Family on Dec. 10. That’s the one in which Melissa Joan Hart kidnaps Mario Lopez and makes him pretend to be her boyfriend in front of her family. And, of course, there’s the Tom Cavanagh-starring Snow (2004) and Snow 2: Brain Freeze (2008), which you can catch back-to-back on ABC Family on Dec. 13. That saga begins when Cavanagh, Santa’s son, has to rescue one of his reindeer from a zoo to save his first Christmas as the man in charge.

Your turn.

Photo credit: Everett Collection

Dec 7 2009 12:25 PM ET

The Tiger Woods 'SNL' bit lands the bad-sketch trifecta

by Margaret Lyons

Categories: Saturday Night Live, Sports

The inevitable Tiger Woods sketch on SNL this weekend hit the trifecta of being unfunny, in poor taste, and way too long. Yahtzee!

Why is this framed as a CNN segment? To show off Sudekis’s Blitzer? (I like Darrell Hammond’s and Chris Parnell’s better, personally.) No, it was to pad (and pad…and pad) a one-note concept that couldn’t sustain itself. The sketch was endless. READ FULL STORY »

Dec 7 2009 09:03 AM ET

Réalité: Hot-coal torture on 'Top Chef.' Carnies on 'Jersey Shore.' And...porn on 'SYTYCD'?

by Michael Slezak

Categories: Jersey Shore, Réalité, Reality TV, So You Think You Can Dance, Top Chef

Your attention please! We would like to kick off the season finale of EW.com’s groundbreaking-ish video series Réalité with three haikus that reflect this week’s featured shows: Bravo’s Top Chef, MTV’s Jersey Shore, and Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance. Press play below as my cohost Kristen Baldwin and I bid bittersweet adieu to this fall’s crop of unscripted ridiculata, and please do mark your calendars for the Jan. 15 season 4 premiere of Idolatry. Oh, and in the meantime, for all my reality-show rants, follow me on Twitter @EWMichaelSlezak!

Sixty-three degrees
Hot enough to cook an egg?
Not for Padma L

Holy effing skanks
Muscle milk and booze collide
Who cleans that hot tub?

Dude named Legacy
Crab-crawls right into my heart
Better than ‘Porn Dance’

Dec 7 2009 09:00 AM ET

Guilty Pleasures Reality TV Showdown: 'Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica' vs. 'Britney & Kevin: Chaotic'

by EW staff

Categories: Guilty Pleasures Reality TV Showdown, Reality TV, Television

PopWatch is on a quest to determine the Greatest Guilty Pleasure Reality TV Show of All Time. We have 32 seeded contestants in four categories (see full bracket here), and we’re moving on to the Celeb-Reality category (much like questioning the “realness” of the “Real” Lives category, we know that the Kardashians are only a certain level of celebrity). After you vote, please leave comments about why you love the show you chose.

Quarterfinals, Celeb-Reality: Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica vs. Britney & Kevin: Chaotic

Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica
Back when “celebreality” was shiny and new and we believed that if someone called his brother to help move in oversized furniture it was his idea and not a producer’s, MTV cameras followed the union of Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson and we were shocked to find ourselves invested. We had conversations about what a normal, decent guy Nick was and how he seemed to genuinely appreciate his wife, who genuinely didn’t know if Chicken of the Sea was fish or fowl. That’s why we were genuinely sad when the show went from, as we called it, “a light, Kate Hudson-style romantic comedy into a painful, John Cassavetes-esque portrait of a marriage on the brink.” But, of course, we still watched. – Mandi Bierly

Britney & Kevin: Chaotic
Only five episodes for posterity, Britney & Kevin: Chaotic might be the single most destructive reality show ever. Before Chaotic, Britney Spears was the perfect American pop creation: a virginal sexpot, a bubblegum confection spiked with Euro-techno joy juice. This show ended all that. Composed mainly of home video footage shot by her and then-hubby Kevin Federline (the opening credits: “Starring Britney and Kevin. Cinematography by Britney and Kevin. Produced by Britney and Kevin.), Chaotic shows a cigarette-smoking, champagne-swilling, sex-talking Britney, often in deeply unflattering Blair Witch close-ups. (It’s like a sex tape without any sex.) Britney and Kevin’s aimless, elliptical conversations, combined with the ever-shifting background of lavish hotel rooms, plays like an accidental faux-gritty remake of Last Year at Marienbad. And Chaotic is even more addictive in hindsight: the spouses constantly claim that you’re seeing how they fell in love, but all you can see now is how utterly wrong they are for each other. — Darren Franich







Photo Credit: Newlyweds: MTV; Chaotic: Michelle Kohl/UPN

Dec 7 2009 04:14 AM ET

'Brothers & Sisters' recap: Nice day for a Walker wedding (and a funeral?)

by Mandi Bierly

Categories: Brothers & Sisters, TV Recap

Last night, before this episode aired, I sat in my sister’s living room trying to catch her up on the show. Her husband, who’s never seen an episode, also listened. When I finished, he said ABC should just go ahead and put Brothers & Sisters on every afternoon from 2 to 3 p.m. because it’s a soap opera. Of course it is. But I’ve always been fine with that, until now…

Let’s start with Nora giving a large check to Dr. Handsome, Simon, for his “Guatemala Project.” How does this woman, who just started her own center for cancer patients and their families and is on the board of a sinking family business, have that kind of money lying around? Why would she ever bring money into the relationship that early? If she was going to make that large of an investment (he said he needed $100,000), wouldn’t she have talked it over with someone in the family? The Walkers analyze the heck out of everything else. READ FULL STORY »

Dec 6 2009 09:06 PM ET

'The Amazing Race' finale: And the winner is...

by EW staff

Categories: Television, The Amazing Race

Thankfully what happened in Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas as Meghan & Cheyne, Sam & Dan, and Ericka & Brian raced that last leg to the $1 million prize. No spoilers here (BUT THE MESSAGE BOARDS ARE A DIFFERENT STORY). Jessica Shaw’s got your full Amazing Race finale recap, but if you’ve landed here, tell us what you thought before you click over to get her take on the big finish. Could you stand the suspense??! Did your favorite team win?

More Amazing Race from EW:
Amazing Race: Talking with Flight Time and Big Easy
Amazing Race: Big Brother pair ready for next season?
Amazing Race: Last week’s recap

Dec 6 2009 09:24 AM ET

'Debbie Macomber's Mrs. Miracle': Maybe Christmas specials don't have to be good

by Nicole Sperling

Categories: Misc.

Okay, I’ll say it upfront, I’m not a big fan Christmas movies, so the thought of sitting through Debbie Macomber’s Mrs. Miracle wasn’t exactly my idea of a perfect night in. The Hallmark Channel film, which premiere Saturday night, starred James Van Der Beek as a widowed father of twins desperately seeking nanny, while Doris Roberts played the geriatric version of Mary Poppins. (She didn’t crinkle her nose or snap her fingers to make magic happen, the sound mix took care of that.) You could predict the formulaic plot line of this special ten minutes in. The 6-year-old boys redefined over-acting and the bad fake snow, crappy camera work and baby-doll-substituting-for-infant reaffirmed this was a movie-of-the-week.

Yet. It wasn’t horrible. Van Der Beek, all these years after Dawson’s Creek, is still pretty cute. His love interest, played by Erin Karpluk, sported a fantastic wardrobe and I coveted her hair. And Doris Roberts is still charming, though I was looking for a little more bite after loving her for years on Everybody Loves Raymond. Maybe the moral of the story is that — during Christmastime, at least — TV movies don’t have to be very good. Mrs. Miracle did its job. It made me nostalgic for the holidays, kept me interested for its two-hour run-time and, in the end, I was rooting for the lovebirds. What do you think? Did any of you watch this? Do you lower your standards when it comes to Christmas movies-on-tv?

Dec 6 2009 12:34 AM ET

Lifetime's '12 Men of Christmas': A minute-by-minute guide to Josh Hopkins' beautiful chest!

by Tanner Stransky

Categories: 100% Pure Cheese, About Last Night, Awwwwww So Cuuuuuute, Guess Who!, I Saw It, So You Don't Have To!, News You Can Use, Sexytimes, Shenanigans!, Snap Judgment, Things That Are Awesome!

To quote my short review of Lifetime’s 12 Men of Christmas that ran in EW: “The only reason to watch this trivial holiday movie—with Kristin Chenoweth as an NYC bitch who finds herself after moving to Montana—is to gawk at Cougar Town‘s Josh Hopkins, who plays her love interest, often with a bare (and chiseled!) chest.”

That hasn’t changed, and only struck me more so as I watched the two-hour pic again Saturday, when it premiered at 9 p.m. The movie is supposed to be about Chenoweth’s Amanda Woodward-esque character E.J., who moves to small-town Montana and shakes things up by commissioning a torso-happy calendar featuring the local search-and-rescue guys and, of course, her rocky relationship with town bad boy Will (Hopkins). Despite all that blah-blah-blah plot: This movie is really about Hopkins’ wonderfully maintained upper body. I’m convinced that the producers quickly realized this, too, which is why they so gratuitously featured his man muscles throughout.

For your viewing pleasure—and so you don’t waste time with, you know, the rest of the movie—I’m providing you with a minute-by-minute breakdown of when it’s crucial to stop your DVR and check in on Hopkins’ Very, Very Merry chiseledness:

READ FULL STORY »