Author: Jeff Labrecque (1-10 of 840)

May 25 2012 10:25 AM ET

Lakers fans ding Kobe Bryant with Gotye parody

There was no joy in Los Angeles on Monday night, after mighty Kobe and the Lakers were eliminated from the playoffs by Oklahoma City, and two creative fans aimed their frustration at the team’s polarizing star. Parodying Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” the duo of Dan Rib and Ken Belcher knocked Kobe Bryant for not being “The Kobe That We Used to Know.”

Points to any songwriter who can squeeze in references to the triangle offense, but the song’s thrust that Bryant is a ball hog — he scored 42 points in Game 5 but dished out zero assists — is hardly news. It never stopped the Lakers from winning multiple NBA titles… but I digress.

I’m just glad Rib wore his Lakers jersey and steered clear of body paint. Watch it below. READ FULL STORY »

May 23 2012 04:30 PM ET

Irritated moviegoer slugs obnoxious boor half his age. That's not the half of it.

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You know those empowering stories about a mild-mannered Average Joe who gets pushed and pushed and pushed, until he finally stands up and puts a couple of nudniks half his age in their place. This is not one of those stories.

On April 11, a man who was watching Titanic 3-D with his girlfriend in an AMC theater in Kent, Wash., finally lashed out at the group of loud ruffians sitting behind him. He punched one, bloodying his nose and knocking out a tooth. What prevents this story from being heroic in any way is the fact that the annoyed moviegoer was 21 years old — and his victim was just 10.

Yong Hyum Kim was arrested for the assault, according to the Associated Press, and could face up to nine months in jail. Kim told police that he had no idea the person he hit was a child, though the misbehaving gaggle sat behind him, pelting him and his date with popcorn and running through the aisles. READ FULL STORY »

May 22 2012 01:40 PM ET

Maxim Hot 100 list: Bar Refaeli, Amanda Knox, and...Stephen Colbert?

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Image Credit: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

Supermodel Bar Refaeli is the hottest woman alive. It’s science. Actually, more reliable than science: It’s a popular vote of Maxim‘s readers. The 26-year-old former girlfriend of Leonardo DiCaprio and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model was named the men’s magazine’s hottest pin-up, displacing last year’s trophy, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (who dropped to 11th this year). Click below for the rest of this year’s Top 10, and some commentary on other notables, including the hottest cartoon mom, the hottest athlete, and the hottest late-night TV host. READ FULL STORY »

May 21 2012 05:00 PM ET

'Saturday Night Live' poll: Who was the best host of the year?

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Image Credit: Dana Edelson/NBC

Every Monday morning for as long as I can remember, my classmates or coworkers have had some variation of the following conversation: Did you watch Saturday Night Live, and did you think the host was any good? It was normally very analog: yes or no, thumbs up or thumbs down. Over time, frequent guests became reliable favorites — Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin, John Goodman — but no one ever seemed to take the time to step back at the end of the season and ask, Who was the best host this year?

So this season, EW has been relying on your votes in a weekly contest to separate the great from the good. After 22 episodes of varying degrees of ha-ha, 17 hosts have been rejected in our effort to crown the inaugural Mr. or Mrs. Saturday Night Live. Every Monday, the most recent host was pitted against the four most popular previous hosts of the season: the star that then received the least number of votes was bumped. Some brilliant performances have already been sent home — Baldwin, Jason Segel, even Maya Rudolph — and the final five are formidable.

Mick Jagger enjoyed a distinct advantage by being the guest host of the finale; not only does he automatically qualify for the final vote, but his performance is the freshest in everyone’s minds. Still, he has his work cut out for him, as his four rivals have been quite dominant in our season-long competition. Click below to see the tale of the tape for all five finalists. READ FULL STORY »

May 18 2012 05:25 PM ET

What's $67 million among friends: An open letter to Eduardo Saverin

Andrew-Garfield

Image Credit: John Lamparski/WireImage; Jim Spellman/WireImage

Dear Eduardo,

Congratulations on Facebook going public. You are now an even richer billionaire than you were yesterday. You have every reason to celebrate and make nice with your former colleague and bitter legal adversary, Mark Zuckerberg. But I’d like to talk to you about something else — that other reason people now recognize your name — your recent decision to renounce your American citizenship to live in Singapore.

See, here’s the deal: We liked you. We all did. Granted, we didn’t know you; we knew Andrew Garfield playing you in The Social Network. You were kind of that film’s hero — you knew right away Justin Timberlake was trouble and then you smashed Jesse Eisenberg’s laptop! Man, we’ve all been there. Everything turned out okay in the end, of course: You settled for a billion-dollar slice of Facebook, Garfield became Spider-Man. Everybody won.

But last week, just as Wall Street was readying Facebook’s public stock offering, it was revealed that you had renounced your American citizenship last September. READ FULL STORY »

May 18 2012 12:53 PM ET

Nick Offerman willing to do anything to help his Cubs -- WATCH

Question: How many bears could Ron Swanson wrestle? Answer: All of them. But how many brown bears would semi-immortal Nick Offerman wrestle if it would guarantee that his beloved Cubbies would finally win a World Series? It’s one of the many deep questions answered in New Era’s new rivalry ad with Offerman and White Sox fan, Craig Robinson. To summarize, this is how far Offerman is willing to go: ride a saddled pig to Lake Michigan in December, naked, completely shaved, with Wieners Circle chardogs as fingers. Hmmm… those chardog fingers would be a liability against the bears. Watch the latest clip below. READ FULL STORY »

May 18 2012 09:35 AM ET

Conan rehashes 'Tonight Show' 'mix-up'; Letterman calls Leno 'a bit of a brat'

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Image Credit: Jeffrey R. Staab/CBS

Conan O’Brien visited David Letterman’s show last night for the first time in 13 years. You won’t believe what — and who — they discussed. In a way, it was like listening to two old friends who’d been scarred by the same ex-girlfriend; it was just a matter of time before they mentioned her name. Seconds, actually. “I think the longer we just sit here,” said Letterman, after the pair sat down and comically prolonged a moment of awkward silence. “The more uncomfortable it will make Jay.”

Letterman clearly couldn’t resist, gently nudging a slightly reluctant O’Brien to talk about his Tonight Show nightmare. O’Brien joked that he had been assured that the pair wouldn’t discuss it, but why else was he there really? Once O’Brien relented, though, Letterman relished rehashing the events, which he jokingly referred to as his Golden Age of television. “I’ve known Jay a long long time. We go back to the mid 70s, back in Los Angeles at the Comedy Store,” said Letterman. “Jay was always the guy — the funniest guy — he was the guy. He was the guy you’d go to see. He was the guy that you wished you could be more like. He was funny. He was also, uh… a bit of a brat. A bit of a brat. So then, oh you know, when this came along, I said to myself, ‘Oh yes, this is the Jay I know.’”

“You clearly were using my experience to work through some things,” O’Brien observed about Letterman. “You’re someone who’s been in a car accident who passed another guy lying on the road and said, ‘Hahahahahahahaaaaa!’”

Watch two clips from last night’s show. READ FULL STORY »

May 17 2012 03:43 PM ET

Conan and Dave: Kindred spirits in the late-night wars

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Image Credit: Al Levein/NBC/AP

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

That’s one way to look at the relationship between David Letterman and Conan O’Brien, who reunite tonight on Letterman’s program. The then-unproven O’Brien succeeded Letterman on Late Night in 1993, and later they were head-to-head rivals for seven months during O’Brien’s brief and tumultuous reign as host of The Tonight Show. Both men, at similar points in their television careers, found themselves grasping the short end of the stick in passive-aggressive tangles with Jay Leno and downright hostile relations with NBC over late-night’s showcase program.

But they share more than just battle scars, judging by the warm on-screen exchanges over the years. Back in 1994, when O’Brien was still getting the hang of his new job, Letterman graciously returned to his former digs and blessed his successor at a time when O’Brien was being savaged by critics. “The more I watch the show, I realize that you guys do an incredible amount of comedy…that is very high level,” said Letterman. “I think you’ve really done a great job to carve out a wonderful identity for yourselves. There’s nothing like this show anywhere on television.” Watch that early visit below. READ FULL STORY »

May 16 2012 03:49 PM ET

Obama's convention speech to cast long shadow over MTV's awards show

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Image Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images

The President of the United States is due a certain amount of deference when it comes to television appearances — and everything else, really — but Barack Obama has a habit of inadvertently big-footing his way on the tube. Take, for instance, his impromptu press conference to announce the death of Osama bin Laden: he went live with his speech just as Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice finale was nearing its climax on the east coast. Obviously that was a coincidence, but it’s far from the only time POTUS has frustrated the networks.

Fans of The Bachelorette were just about to see Constantine bail on Ashley when the president interrupted to talk about the debt ceiling last July. A Cougar Town episode was postponed when the prez’s January 2011 speech about the Tucson shootings ran long. And Bones nearly had to scrap its 2009 season finale because of one of the president’s early state-of-the-economy chats.

But now, he’s simply gone too far! President Obama is scheduled to accept the Democratic nomination for a second term on Sept. 6 — the same night as MTV’s Video Music Awards. READ FULL STORY »

May 16 2012 11:43 AM ET

Sacha Baron Cohen sent Ryan Seacrest jacket 'made by slave child labor'

Sacha Baron Cohen is not a tyrannical megalomaniac. He just plays one on TV, and on the red carpet, and in The Dictator. That seemed to be the message he wanted to convey to Ann Curry this morning when he sat down with her — as himself, just plain Cambridge-educated Sacha — in Cannes. And he’s nothing like the cruel Admiral General Aladeen he portrays in his new movie. Take for instance his red-carpet stunt at the Oscars, where “Aladeen” poured ashes on Ryan Seacrest. He admitted to Curry that he later sent Seacrest a new jacket — though it did have a label inside that read, “Made by Slave Child Labor.” “But he didn’t send me a thank-you note,” said Cohen. “Unbelievable.”

Though EW has previously noted that Cohen wasn’t averse to being himself, Cohen boasted that this was just his third interview ever without a disguise. He explained that the real reason for those previous stunts was legal concerns. “The movies that I did up till now, they involved real people, so we wanted to limit the exposure for kinda lawsuits,” he said. “At the moment, I think I have the Guinness world record for being the most sued actor in history.”

Watch the exchange below. READ FULL STORY »

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