Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz have named their new son Bronx Mowgli Wentz. Doesn't the phrase "Bronx Mowgli" sound like some rare affliction whose original carrier is probably that greasy bear Aaron Rose on Gossip Girl? The original Mowgli from The Jungle Book clearly does not approve. Though I do see the resemblance. We can't wait for mom and dad's next child, Staten Island Aladdin.
Back in February, I wrote a PopWatch post ranting against those heinous toilet paper commercials starring the stomach-turning "Charmin Bears," and most of you agreed the whole campaign deserved to get flushed. Sadly, The House That Whipple Built failed to hear our cries, as evidenced by its latest spot for Charmin Ultra Strong, featuring the tagline, "no one likes a bathroom tissue that leaves pieces behind." (Insert emotional deadness emoticon here.) Hey, Charmin, guess what else no one likes? No one likes a bathroom tissue ad featuring a baby bear with tiny bits of TP stuck to its bright red hindquarters, and a mama bear that chases him down and cleans his heinie with a broom and dustpan. Rated U…for Unacceptable!
That said, I have many friends and relatives who have an even more viscerally negative response to the long-running series of Charles Schwab ads featuring rotoscoped everymen talking about, well, I'm not sure what, since my husband freaks out and changes the channel every time one of 'em pops up on our TV. They are pretty hideous, though.
But which ads are worse: Charmin's sullied bear bottoms or Schwab's animated talking heads? Place your vote in the comments section below!
For your nausea-inducing pleasure: the famously reclusiveactor/dancer/auteur — aka "The Goot" — running, stretching, and frightening tourists in New York's Central Park. Sans pants. Not even the judicious and responsible use of blurring can render this footage suitable for the workplace. Or any other place in which decent and God-fearing folk live free.
If you're staying home tonight to clean the toilet paper out of your trees hand out candy to trick-or-treaters, there's plenty of Halloween-themed TV to keep you occupied while you wait for the doorbell to ring. Here's a handy list of some of the major macabre marathons on various channels, from horror movies on such channels as AMC, Cinemax, TCM, Bravo, and Spike to real-life ghost stories on Biography, the History Channel, and the Travel Channel. Scariest of all (though probably not on purpose) is Fox Reality's The Search for the Next Elvira (pictured). Eek!
New from Bruce Springsteen is this genuinely frightening Halloween treat: a song and video called "A Night with the Jersey Devil." Streaming on the Boss' website, the clip is inspired by the legendary monster said to haunt the Pine Barrens in New Jersey. The song features unrecognizably distorted vocals and old-timey blues rhythm and harmonica tracks, making Springsteen sound like the unholy spawn of Howlin' Wolf and Tom Waits. In the video, the ax-wielding Springsteen looks like some demented, homicidal, backwoods preacher. It's the scariest thing to come out of South Jersey since Paulie and Christopher lost the Russian and got stranded in the Pine Barrens. Check it out here.
Not everyone needs to party Halloween night -- some of us geniuses keep tacky clothes and bags of fun-size candy bars in the house embedded in our sofas all year long. If you'd rather spend the weekend freaking out in private, EW's Dalton Ross picked his five favorite scary-movie DVDs for an appearance on CBS' The Early Show this week. Go ahead, press play below. The eerie chords at the beginning should render you just unsettled enough to keep watching.
Any titles to add? I might just phone it in and watch rerurns of Spongebob. Those can be pretty terrifying.
“We interrupt this program for a special announcement: A man described as a homicidal maniac has escaped from the hospital for the criminally insane. He is six foot, three inches tall, 210 pounds, dark eyes, bald, and may be wearing a Santa Claus costume.” -–Radio announcement, Tales from the Crypt (1972) (See Joan Collins tidy up after murdering her dead husband in the full clip below, or just skip ahead to the 2:57 mark to hear the quote in question.)
The Brits certainly give good fright. Don’t Look Now, 28 Days Later, The Descent, Alfred Hitchcock, and Clive Barker are all pretty eerie, but the proper anglophile knows if you want to get bloody freaked out U.K.-style on All Hallows’ Eve, you do so with a Hammer. Back in the mid-20th century, Hammer Films Ltd., England’s most prolific horror company, turned out schlocks and shocks to beat the band from their cozy manor house studio in Bray. Hammer movies range from the camp — witness Peter Cushing hunting vampires with a sickle in 1971’s Twins of Evil — to the genuinely creepy, like 1952’s Stolen Face, directed by Hammer mainstay Terence Fisher. The story focuses on Paul Henreid, a plastic surgeon in love with a concert pianist who refuses to marry him, so he reproduces her face on a young criminal and weds her instead. Think of it as Vertigo with a scalpel and extra dose of rage.
Hammer’s greatest output stars Cushing or Christopher Lee — or, as in Fisher’s Curse of Frankenstein, both. The company also boasted a stable of directors and writers unparalleled in the scare world, like Fisher, Roy Ward Baker (Quatermass and the Pit), and Jimmy Sangster (Fear in the Night). Sangster penned the best film on Sony’s new Icons of Horror Collection: Hammer Films set, Scream of Fear. Shot in shiny black-and-white and set in the damp Riviera, Scream stars Picnic’s Susan Strasberg as paraplegic visiting her father’s French villa for the first time in 10 years. The problem: Daddy’s not home, but stepmommy, pop’s chauffeur and creepy doc are, and the woman keeps seeing his corpse around the house.
Scream is joined on Sony's Hammer collection by The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (with Lee as Jekyll’s doomed, double-crossing best bud), The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (featuring a man doomed to eternal life because the only one who can kill him is the brother he previously murdered -- wrap your brain about that!), and The Gorgon (about a forest-dwelling mythological monster so ugly she petrifies people to death, starring Cushing as the doctor helping the local authorities keep it all hush hush).
Watch this clip from Scream, then check out the trailers for Jekyll and Gorgon after the jump. And tell me, what are your favorite British scary movies?
Afternoon, PopWatchers. Hopefully by now you've digested your lunch, because it's time to play "What part of last night's Fringe made you lose your dinner?"
Yes, I think it's safe to say this episode topped even the face-melting pilot in terms of nastiness, what with all the bleeding eyes, exploding heads, and abundant skeeziness of Chris "Digger Stiles" Eigeman (in the form of villain Dr. David Esterbrook). I know I immediately regretted my dinner of spaghetti and meatballs after watching an entire diner full of patrons get their brains boiled by a human microwave. Then, one of the female customers went kablooey, and a few minutes later, we were treated to a nice, stomach-turning view of what remained of her head. Of course, seeing a poor rat (it didn't even have hair!) suffer the same fate might have been worse. (I know, I know, it happened under a sheet. That doesn't make it any better, and I'm sure PETA would agree.) So, since I can't decide which scene was most vomitrocious, let's put it to a vote. (And if you missed all the grossness, we've captured some stomach-turning screengrabs, which you can find after the jump!)
George Lucas (pictured), who insists on a constant entourage of Stormtroopers, accepted a lifetime award in Los Angeles on Saturday during the taping of Spike TV's 2008 Scream Awards, which the net will air tonight from 9-11 p.m. The Screams, which began three years ago as a general horror roundup, have expanded to include comic book and fantasy films, enabling Christopher Nolan and The Dark Knight to naturally share a stage with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola (notes L.A. Times writer Geoff Boucher). Basically, think of the Screams as the awards show for movies everyone sees. If you can't fit the show in this evening thanks to your ultimate Tuesday night roster of Privileged and Eli Stone (kidding!), you can check out the winners list (including Most Memorable Mutilation), here.
So last week, I found in my email box a press release about Living With the Wolfman, a new series premiering tomorrow night on Animal Planet, and I'm still trying to decide what part of the show's description disturbed me most: The male-female-woodland beast love triangle? The anecdote about raw liver being passed from woman to wolf? The fact that our lady protagonist abandoned perfumes and manicures in the interest of communing with nature/getting famous?
After the jump, read the full press release, then tell me if you have any plans to watch this mess. I remain steadfastly undecided, so I'm going to let you all decide whether or not I tune in (and, naturally, blog about it). Vote "yes" or "no"* in the comments section below.
For the average Halloween lover, October 31 is the perfect opportunity to channel an inner witch, vampire, or lingerie-wearing animal. But for me, Halloween is all about getting in touch with my inner Britney Spears. Yep, I've gone as the many stages of the troubled-yet-fascinating pop tart over the years, but my 2007 costume (pictured) was by far my crowning achievement. I knew people would go as bald, umbrella-wielding Brit or lethargic VMAs Brit, so I went a different direction, funneling all of 2007's tabloid fodder into my best costume ever: Britney as Perez Hilton post! How will I beat it this year? Especially with Spears' quiet recent history? Only my local art-supply shop knows for sure.
Now, it's your turn to wow us with your pop-culture-inspired Halloween costumes. Send us photos of what you're planning to wear for Halloween 2008, and you might be featured on the Feedback page of the Entertainment Weekly issue that hits newsstands October 31, or a related photo gallery on EW.com. And if you have photos of a fabulous "vintage" costume from years past, you can send those, too. E-mail your picture(s) (a jpeg, with a minimum of 600 pixels at the longest edge and a maximum file size of 1 Mb) to popwatch@ew.com. In your e-mail, please include your name and a short description of your costume. Submit your costume photos from 12:01 p.m. on October 15, 2008 to 11:59 p.m. on October 22, 2008. U.S. entries only. All photo entries will be judged by EW editors equally on creativity and quality. By sending your picture, you are representing and warranting that you took this photograph and giving us permission to print it in the magazine or post it on our web site(s) without compensation.
Whew! And now that we've got those rules out of the way, get your photos scanned or downloaded and start sending! Looking forward to seeing what you guys cook up.
"It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again. Yes it will, Precious, it will get the hose." --Jame Gumb/"Buffalo Bill" (Ted Levine), The Silence of the Lambs
Only time and repeat viewings (not recommended) will tell:
So, this looks somewhat promising...in that she bothered to show up for rehearsal. To be honest, I care less about what our newly toned chicken nugget's going to do than about how many random SAT words VMA host and vocabulary expert Russell Brand will throw out to a confused audience members. Fatuous. Histrionic. Inscrutable. Viscous. They could all apply! Intemperate. Okay, maybe not.
If you're game, shake that ass back here on Sunday (9/8 Central) for PopWatch's VMAs live blog -- brought to you by Adrienne Day, Simon Vozick-Levinson, and the letters W, T, and F.
Raise your hand if you've come across the new Rihanna video on TV recently and been a little scared. (No, not that new Rihanna video... not that one, either... this new Rihanna video, for "Disturbia.") It's okay, I was shaken too. You can check out the clip below — if you dare. Mad creepy, right? It looks like she accidentally wandered into Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" video, or else some sort of freaky Victorian mental hospital. Not quite what I'd expected for a dance-pop song based around the lyrics "Dom-dom-dee-dom, dom-dom-dee-dom-dom." It's cool to see Rihanna trying something new, though. And the song is so catchy it'd work with practically any visuals — even if this video seems like it was crafted to test the limits of that statement.
So, do you dig this video's haunted-hallucination vibe? And while we're at it, I'm hoping one of you can help explain why this song is called "Disturbia." Did I miss the time when that became a word in the English language? (Is disturbia a place? A state of mind? An unusual first name?) Or is this, like, an oblique tribute to that Shia LaBeouf movie? Help!
Scream 4 is an apparent go, eight years after the last installment hit theaters. The news was buried in reports about Showtime's new deal to be the home of the Weinstein Co.'s and Dimension Films' pay-cable premieres. I haven't read any details about the movie — it's not even listed on IMDB yet, so you know it's in the early stages — but I'm already wondering if I'll see it. I've stopped doing horror (I like to sleep at night), but I could be talked into it. I saw the first three films, during daylight hours, and I'm a sucker for a self-referential script. What about you?
P.S. I wonder what Stephen King thinks about the idea: Can the Scream series still be scary?
I remember very clearly the first time a movie scared the pants off of me. It was 1986's Aliens; I was a freshman in high school, and by my own estimation way too old to be scare-the-pants-off-able. But something about the sheer creepiness of the effects, the horrible magnificence of the alien "queen," made me want to scurry under my seat.
Aliens earned Stan Winston his first Oscar. But the visual effects genius, who succumbed to multiple myeloma yesterday at the age of 62, hardly stopped at outer-space shenanigans. Though Winston majored in painting and sculpture in college, and went to Hollywood with dreams of making it as a actor, he found more work on the other side of the lens. In the early '80s, he set up his own studio and worked with James Cameron on the surprise box-office hit The Terminator (1984). The success of that film lead to a fruitful partnership between the two men — notably, Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) — and he and Cameron went on to found the renowned F/X shop Digital Domain.
Over the course of his career, Winston earned four Oscars (including two for the makeup and visual effects in T2 and another for the groundbreaking dinosaurs of 1993's Jurassic Park) and multiple nominations — impressive in any category. His other work includes (but is hardly limited to) Predator (1987), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Batman Returns (1992), Interview with the Vampire (1994), Pearl Harbor (2001), Iron Man (2008), and several other films currently in production. (A project-by-project gallery of his fantastic creations is here.)
Most of us wouldn't have recognized Stan Winston on the street, and that reinforces the notion that sometimes the truly vital players are not the ones whose faces you see stretched 30 feet tall on the silver screen, or their names lit up in lights. But for those who care about the art of special effects — and Winston most definitely considered himself an artist — a vital part of the picture is gone missing.
I don't like scary shows, which is why my friend Eva specifically wrote "not scary" in the IM she sent me insisting that I watch a clip from last Thursday's Supernatural season finale. She knew I'd enjoy seeing Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam (Jared Padalecki) sing "Wanted Dead or Alive."
Me: They used the best part of the song! Her: I know!
Combine this with the show's appearance in our gallery of gratuitous TV moments, and I'm seriously considering catching Supernatural in repeats. But if I do, will I ever sleep again? Eva says she goes completely cold with fear at least once an episode: "There is often whimpering. On rare occasions, tears."
So how scary is this show? And where does it rank among TV's greatest spooks?
I realize that the trailer for Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman's home-invasion horror flick, The Strangers (below), has been out for a bit, but I just saw it this weekend in front of Smart People and... I totally jumped in my seat. I won't ruin your viewing experience by revealing the shot that made me whimper, but I will ask you to share the trailers that frightened you. What's been the scariest? That's a beautiful thing, if you think about it: The ability to get us that wound up in two minutes...
Our reactions thus far to the still-in-post-production Repo! The Genetic Opera — the sung-through sci-fi/horror musical about organ donation and repossession, starring Paris Hilton, Anthony Stewart Head, Sarah Brightman, and Paul Sorvino — have ranged from bemusement to skepticism. Still, we have to give the film props for its retro-grimy Soviet-style poster art. You've probably seen the poster featuring Hilton popping up around the Web, but here's an exclusive look at the Sorvino one in full. Creepy, no? The film, currently in post-production, seems not to have a firm release date (Lionsgate will likely release it this fall), but you can track its progress on its official website and its MySpace page, where you can also hear some of the songs. I was hoping for a tune called "50 Ways to Lose Your Liver," but alas, no such luck.
This morning, after finding the first-season (uncensored!) DVD of A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila on my desk, I jokingly suggested to my colleague Gary Susman that I try to watch my first episode of the super-popular MTV dating series, just to see how long it would take before I got nauseated. And the answer is... around 5 minutes!
Yes, PopWatchers, within the first 300 seconds of A Shot at Love, I saw the "bisexual" "singer"/"Internet sensation" make out (with tongue) with a complete stranger, heard one dude drop the term "tea-bagging" into casual conversation, and felt my soul die a little as another one of the 16 male contestants compared dating the Asian-American reality star to eating Chinese food. And this, of course, was just an appetizer. Before the episode was over, Tila referred to herself as a "bitch" who could possibly be purchased with expensive jewelry; 16 lesbian contestants arrived on the scene and put on a lingerie fashion show ripped from the mind of a 12-year-old boy (it's a naughty nurse! and a naughty schoolgirl! and a naughty, um, construction worker!?); and Tila declared (very seriously), "I never, ever told anyone this before... I'm a bisexual." Except, of course, the dozens of producers, assorted crew members, and MTV suits it took to greenlight and churn out this televised cauldron of syrup of ipecac in the first place.
Yeah, yeah, I'm Oldie Olsen, totally losing touch with what the kids are into nowadays. But in all seriousness, as the Shot at Love DVD threatens to hit stores next week, I have to ask: Why? How? And should I go ahead and draw up a big welcome sign for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?
No, it's not "Our Favorite Zombie Strippers," the latest brilliant traffic-driving photo gallery idea from EW.com. This is an actual Robert Englund-Jenna Jameson vehicle that's opening in limited theatrical release from April 18-25 instead of going directly to DVD. You probably won't want to see it because you're reasonable, or because you already saw the vampire version of the same story in From Dusk 'til Dawn. But you can't argue that you're worse off having watched this trailer. And if you try to leave a comment that says so, Jenna Jameson will apppear in your mirror, looking exasperated while pretending to read a book, and have her way with you. (In other words... totally do it?)
"HOW THE HELL DID A LEVIATHAN GET IN CITY SEWERS?" An important question — and there are few people I'd rather help me answer it than the Wu-Tang Clan's Method Man. Luckily, Mr. Mef is addressing this very issue in the new graphic novel he's written with David Atchison and artist Sanford Greene. Titled simply Method Man, it won't be on sale 'til July. But I'm lucky enough to have an eight-page excerpt sitting in front of me right now, and — well, let me just see if I can communicate a small taste of its awesomeness to you.
Okay, so, there's an evil sea monster dwelling in the underground sewer system of "One Bad Ghetto, USA." And man, did that thing pick the wrong kung-fu-obsessed rapper to mess with. In the excerpt, Method Man — er, his thinly veiled alter ego, mystical detective/"murder priest" Mosley Paine — accidentally discovers it swimming around. (This would be when he produces the exclamation that opened this post.) Paine pumps a few bullets into the beast... and then the excerpt cuts off. Right in the middle of the action!
Now I'm fiending to read the rest of the story, not to mention the separate graphic novels that Wu brothers GZA and Ghostface Killah are reportedly working on as well. Who's with me? And is it too much for me to ask that Meth record a new tune to soundtrack his monster-slaying adventures — a RZA-produced epic sampling Radiohead's "Fog" (a.k.a. "Alligators in New York Sewers"), perchance?
So I had the apartment to myself for the last four days while my husband took a skiing trip, and that meant I spent many blissful hours lounging around in my pajamas, blaring the music of tragic '80s divas, and reading. Good stuff, except for the fact that I happened to choose John Connolly's The Killing Kind, a book my sister loaned to me over the holidays, to while away the lonely hours. I guess the Washington Post's quote on the cover — "Unfolds with the force and logic of a nightmare" — should have tipped me off, but I kid you not, certain passages freaked me out so badly, I had trouble sleeping.
Cut to me, hiding under my comforter in the dark, wondering if I forgot to lock the deadbolt, imagining weird sounds coming from the kitchen, whimpering with the knowledge that The Killing Kind's spider-loving baddie Mr. Pudd was coming to send me to an arachnid-driven demise. Shudder.
So here's what I need to know: Have any of you ever experienced reading-driven insomnia, and if so, which scary book(s) gave you trouble sleeping? (Yeah, I'm gonna be taking notes because apparently I'm a little masochistic like that.)
cineparanoia noun The overwhelming fear of being judged based on a film selection.
Origin:
I was recently tasked with renting a long list of movies so that our
photo editors could make screen grabs for the latest EW.com gallery: Watching the Unwatchable. I skipped merrily through the video rental store, and happily plunked my movie picks on the counter. The clerk took a long, hard look at me, followed by an even longer look at my film selections. I followed his eyes over the titles:
American History X.Pulp Fiction.Saw (starring Tobin Bell, pictured). The Hitcher.Blade Runner.Reservoir Dogs.The Ring.Requiem for a Dream.
It dawned on me. I was being judged. And, guessing by the look on the young employee's face, I ranked somewhere between disturbed and psychopathic. He seemed momentarily lost in a reverie, and I knew. I just knew he was picturing me running home and hosting a graphic movie marathon, a weekly event celebrating film in its unrated, grotesque, and downright offensive glory, a night culminating in some sort of sacrifice, ending in a toast with a glass of my own blood.
You've heard about the horror-themed reality show The CW is cooking up for us this summer: Tentatively titled 13, it will put 13 contestants in a horror-film inspired setting and weed them out one-by-one with terrifying challenges. (Spider-Man/Evil Dead director Sam Raimi is among the exec producers, so it should be more legit than it sounds.) According to Variety, producers are still debating what kind of classic setting to use: "An evil small town? A lakeside retreat with a creepy secret? An abandoned cabin in the forest?"
What would you suggest? I'd go with a Kiss the Girls-style rustic underground cell block concept myself.
It puts the comments in the comment basket, below.
Not sure if this rumor — that Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes production company is following up its reboots of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street with a remake of Rosemary's Baby — is true, but if it is, it can only mean that Satan really did father a child, and that his initials are M.B. Can we at least get him to promise not to wink at the original by casting Mia Farrow in the Ruth Gordon role?
Can you guys do me a quick favor? Just click on this link and tell me if you see the same story that I see there, because I'm starting to think it might be an addled byproduct of the flu-y symptoms I have coming on at the moment.
What I'm seeing: They're making a movie called Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Undead, starring underappreciated Sopranos alum John Ventimiglia (pictured) as a Shakespeare-adapting playwright/vampire. (Artie Bucco! As a vampire!) The supporting cast includes another of my all-time favorite character actors, Jeremy Sisto, as an incompetent cop, and Ralph Macchio as a mobster, which pretty much speaks for itself. And the film's being scored by Sean Lennon, another underrated fave of mine.
All in all, I give this project a 20% chance of actually existing in the fact-based world. What do you say — is that Hollywood Reporter story there on the other end of that link, or did my flu-like virus make it up? And if it's true, are you half as excited about it as I am?
According to Variety, New Line is rebooting the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, à la the recent reboots of Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (and the upcoming reboot of Friday the 13th), but this new Nightmare is apparently going to star someone other than Robert Englund as Freddy. A reboot seems like a bad enough idea (or at least a superfluous one), but no Englund? C'mon, he made that series. He's not like the less-than-verbal slashers in the other franchises. You can't just put any lunk behind the burn scars and clawed glove. Sure, New Line can cast someone younger who can make Nightmare movies for years to come, but for most of us, when we see Freddy Krueger, we'll close our eyes and think of Englund.
Who's going to start the "Keep Robert Englund" petition? Who can think of an actor who would do a better job? And who wishes the studio would just leave well enough alone?
I haven't read The Ruins, Scott Smith's best-selling novel, but watching the trailer (below) for the April movie, I understand what Gillian Flynn says in her review: "Reading Scott Smith is like having a rope tied firmly round your
middle, as you're pulled on protesting tiptoes toward a door marked
DOOM. The horror is in plain sight; there is no doubt things will end badly — the signs are everywhere."
Should I be as frightened of this film as I am? And for those of you who have read the novel, does it look like the movie will do it justice?
I love it that the Associated Press' obituary for Maila "Vampira" Nurmi suggests that she was the first Goth chick. Which is probably true; certainly, the campy/vampy persona and undead-chic style she pioneered and embodied lives on among black-nail-polished gals everywhere. Nurmi, who died Thursday at the age of 85, first made an impression in the 1950s when she invented the Vampira character to host a Los Angeles-area horror-movie TV show. Her sexy succubus seemed an apparent inspiration for later horror/camp sirens like Carolyn Jones' Morticia Addams and especially Cassandra Peterson's Elvira, though Nurmi filed an unsuccessful $10 million lawsuit against Peterson for allegedly stealing her character.
Even if you never saw Vampira's TV show -- and few did -- fans everywhere can enjoy her work in a variety of Z-grade movies, most famously, Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), in which she gives an aptly robotic performance as a zombie. Sure, the movie is terrible (it's the ultimate so-bad-it's-good flick), but like so much else in it, Vampira's performance has a weird energy that's absolutely riveting. Who knows whether she had talent as an actress; she had presence, a screen charisma that earned her generations of cult fans, and that will surely continue to astonish, delight, and haunt fans of the bizarre and macabre.
Attention 30 Rock fans: You can now hear Tracy Morgan Jordan's gold record, "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah," in its entirety, on NBC.com. If that sentence means nothing to you, watch the clip from the show here, then listen to the three-minute track (which ends with a refence to how it's no "D--- in a Box"). NBC is asking fans to submit their own spooky, scary videos to the song. Anyone done it?
Yesterday, on my train ride to work, a man sat down next to me, opened his portable DVD player, and proceeded to watch one of the most horrific murder scenes I have ever witnessed. The dying woman was probably in her twenties, with blue eyes and blonde hair. The guy caught me gaping at his DVD player. Did I mention that I'm in my twenties and that I have blue eyes and blonde hair? ''Isn't this movie the best?'' he said to me, sighing with deep, unwavering appreciation for graphic violence, fake blood, and extended close-ups of mangled limbs and internal organs. He grinned. ''It's my favorite,'' he added. He grinned wider.
At least, I think that's what he said. It's also very possible that he whispered, ''You're next, blondie.''
Enjoying violent movies doesn't make someone a murderer. I get that. But when we reached our destination, I ran with wild abandon from wacko train guy, lest he hunt me down and push me head first onto the subway tracks. He'd grin from above and cackle, ''What's your favorite scary movie?'' because Scream (pictured) is probably his second favorite movie. After I died, he'd go home to cut up magazines for the ''I know what you did last summer'' note he drops Jennifer Love Hewitt every Halloween.
I realize I have an overactive imagination, but tell me you've never made snap judgment about someone based on their favorite movies or television shows. Not just violent flicks. When my friend revealed that his favorite movie of all time is Hitch, it nearly ended our relationship. Nothing against Hitch, but really, best movie of all time? Does Will Smith even believe that? Try acknowledging that you watch X-Files or Star Trek. Non-fans will want to know if you spend thousands of dollars on eBay for autographed headshots and spend weekend nights alone in your bedroom, holding episode marathons while dusting your still-packaged collector's figurines and alphabetizing your trading cards. I once told a guy that I think Runaway Bride is a good movie, and after that, swear to God, I never saw him again. It was like he knew I'd be finicky and unable to commit, or that he'd be forced to watch every Julia Roberts movie in which love conquers all. (So, every Julia Roberts movie.)
PopWatchers, what does your favorite show say about you? Can a person be judged by his or her DVD collection? Is it normal to watch graphic, ultraviolent horror films during a 6:30 a.m. train commute?
Saw IV opens Friday, so I wandered over to Lionsgate's Santa Monica office yesterday, where the indie studio was hosting its Fourth Annual SAW "Give Til It Hurts" Blood Drive. Lionsgate has teamed up with the American Red Cross to encourage Saw fans to drain a little of their own blood for, you know, life-saving purposes. Approximately 1,200 Red Cross centers across the nation are ready for donations from an entirely untapped demographic — torture-adoring movie fans.
This is all a noble cause, but isn't there something weird going on here? The donation site was decorated with a variety of Saw memorabilia, including an eerie Jigsaw doll (to be auctioned online) and what was described to me as being the "Saw Pig" costume (a raffle prize). The donation chairs were set up so that you could watch the Saw IV trailer while giving blood, and after the withdrawal was complete, you could "unwind" by sitting in a comfy screening room and watching the trailers for all four Saw movies.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to see anything relating to blood, let alone pigs, when I'm about to donate. Yet this isn't a problem for other people. Last year, when Saw III (starring Tobin Bell, pictured) came out, Lionsgate collected over 23,000 pints of blood; this year they're aiming for 60,000. Again, very noble, commendable, honorable, etc. Just weird.
Franchise stars Scott Patterson, Betsy Russell, and Lyriq Bent
showed up to donate blood, and I tried to unearth a few details about the new installment from them, but their lips were mostly shut.
I'm not super interested in stories about local bank holdups or how the contents of my medicine cabinet could kill me, so I almost never stick around for any of my local network affiliates' 11 p.m. newscasts. That said, last night's post-Bachelor tease — "See which celebrity collapsed during Dancing With the Stars!" — had me glued to my set, and gasping with astonishment. My first response, "Yikes! Poor Marie Osmond!" Which was quickly followed by, "Sympathy votes!" And then my mind jumped to the time that dude fell hands-first into a bonfire on Survivor.
So, once you've read Annie Barrett's always hilarious TV Watch and watched the embedded clip of Osmond's collapse, riddle me this: What are the most shocking moments you've ever seen during a live television (or reality television) broadcast?
I was on a NYC street corner, calmly sipping my diet ginger ale, when five werewolves attacked me. They flailed their grey, hairy limbs and circled around me, creating what looked like a mix between an anti-war rally and the Michael Jackson "Thriller" video. You've all been warned to stay away from strangers, but, tell me, what is the protocol when dealing with strange werewolves? Though they appeared to be going in for the kill, I soon realized the pack was motioning towards something behind me. I turned to see a double-decker tour bus, proclaiming in an obnoxiously ghoulish font: Nature of the Beast. I was not about to be ripped to pieces by mythological creatures, I had stumbled into something far more terrifying. An ABC Family Original Film promotion. (Cue bloodcurdling scream.)
If ABC Family thinks I'm going to watch Nature of the Beast (with Eddie Kaye Thomas, pictured) just because a few werewolves jumped me while I was trying to enjoy my lunch break, rubbed themselves up against me, and let me see their tour bus, then ABC Family clearly does not understand the nature of their audience.
So, PopWatchers, seen any ridiculous promotional stunts lately? What gets you interested in a new show? Maybe being violated by werewolves works for you. If so, keep that to yourself.
Gosh, how come CBS didn't pick up drama pilot Babylon Fields this season? Who doesn't love post-apocalyptic procedural crime dramas featuring zombies who've returned from the dead to take up their former lives in the suburbs? (Maybe the network thought — what with ABC's Pushing Daisies and CBS' own Moonlight — that there were enough new series about undead crimefighters already.) TV Week has dug up from the television graveyard three clips from Babylon Fields, so you can get a taste of what we're missing. Catch the second clip, in which two zombie guys discuss the erectile benefits of rigor mortis, and lament the fact that, without this show, we're just not getting enough necrophilia jokes in primetime.
Before you go rushing to iTunes and blow $1.99 to download Britney Spears' brand new "Gimme More" video, here are a few things you should know.
1) If you've seen those ubiquitous paparazzi pics of a brunette Spears donning a leather vest and fishnets on the day of the video shoot, and can imagine them airbrushed and color-corrected, then you've pretty much seen everything there is to see. Sure, there's a few seconds of footage of Brit in a tacky blonde wig, accompanied by a couple of blond friends, giddily staring at "Stripper Britney," but mostly, it's just our dark-haired heroine walking in circles around a pole.
2) Carmen Electra already conquered the "good girl with exotic-dancer alter-ego" genre -- with more enthusiasm and better moves -- in her 1992 clip for "Go Go Dancer," which is streaming free of charge here at PopWatch (after the jump).
3) The "Gimme More" videoclip is quite possibly an homage to Lindsay Lohan's ghastly I Know Who Killed Me, which (spoiler alert!) focused on a bad-ass stripper who experiences "psychic stigmata" after the Yale-bound twin sister from whom she was separated at birth is kidnapped and mutilated by a serial killer. (No, I didn't make that up. And yes, I actually paid to see I Know Who Killed Me. But I did it all for you, PopWatchers….all for you!)
4) A few minutes ago, during my first viewing of "Gimme More," I got distracted IM-ing with one of my friends about whether or not fruit is an acceptable dessert option. I say, perhaps. (Feel free to weigh in.)
The moral of the story is, if you're going to build an entire video around a stripper pole, then you better work said pole like a nine-to-five. Drop it like it's hot. Throw a leg up over your head. Hire one of the elegant ladies of HBO's G-String Divas, and have her teach you that daring move where you hang upside down by your legs and spin with reckless abandon. Alas, in the case of "Gimme More," I've seen sexier pole work during an afternoon of fly-fishing.
(Update: Looks like "Gimme More" has found its way to YouTube -- at least until somebody at Britney's label tells 'em to take it down -- so check it out for yourself, and do a side-by-side comparison with Ms. Electra, after the jump!)
Hello, PopWatchers. Come and play with us. Come and play with us, PopWatchers. Forever. And ever. And ever.
Why am I writing like I'm possessed by those nightmarish twin girls from The Shining? Because I am! Boo! No, actually, I just feel that way after reading my colleague Christine Spines' terrific essay about how the devil-child horror movies of the '60s, '70s, and '80s really screwed her up as a kid. You know: Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist (pictured), The Omen, Carrie. Creepy stuff, eh? Well, for decades, Christine admits, she remained scarred from watching, at a ridiculously young age, Linda Blair fiddle with her crucifix and Sissy Spacek getting showered in blood. Sure, you may not have been 5 years old when you first saw a scary movie, but I'm willing to bet that you suffered similar trauma as a kid. Lord knows I did: I still get the willies when I think about little 7-year-old me, watching that kid getting attacked by that tree in Poltergeist ("one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand...") and not being able to sleep for a decade thereafter.
So, yeah, what horror films have most damaged you? The Devil commands you to speak up!
This morning, a so-called friend emailed me a post from the With Leather blog about
sportscaster Cris Collinsworth, and it's honestly put me off my feed in a way
no YouTube clip has ever done before. I warn you in advance, this five-minute
piece about Australia's
Mouse Plague of 1993 is chock full of horrific images — more chock full than
the bucket of dead rodents that farmer Ann Venning dumps on her driveway.
For those of
you who choose to watch, I have a few questions: Why isn't Venning wearing hip
boots when she "wades into the mouse-infested shed to save her screeching
pigs"? How priceless is the expression on that tiger cat's face when it witnesses
the "explosion of mice"? Were you aware that "mice are one of
the most sexually active creatures on Earth," and that "a single pair
can produce 2,000 offspring in just a matter of months"? Will you ever
recover from Venning's way-too-detailed description of what her young daughter
did with little Fievel's corpse? And why hasn't anyone bought the rights to this
heinoustry and turned it into a horror film?
Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz have named their new son Bronx Mowgli Wentz. Doesn't the phrase "Bronx Mowgli" sound like some rare affliction whose original carrier is probably that greasy bear Aaron Rose on Gossip Girl? The original Mowgli from The Jungle Book clearly does not approve. Though I do see the resemblance. We can't wait for mom and dad's next child, Staten Island Aladdin. 
If you're staying home tonight to 
New from Bruce Springsteen is this genuinely frightening Halloween treat: a song and video called "A Night with the Jersey Devil." Streaming on the Boss' 
George Lucas (pictured), who insists on a constant entourage of Stormtroopers, accepted a lifetime award in Los Angeles on Saturday during the taping of Spike TV's 2008 Scream Awards, which the net will air tonight from 9-11 p.m. The Screams, which began three years ago as a general horror roundup, have expanded to include comic book and fantasy films, enabling Christopher Nolan and 
So last week, I found in my email box a press release about Living With the Wolfman, a new series premiering tomorrow night on Animal Planet, and I'm still trying to decide what part of the show's description disturbed me most: The male-female-woodland beast love triangle? The anecdote about raw liver being passed from woman to wolf? The fact that our lady protagonist abandoned perfumes and manicures in the interest of communing with nature/getting famous?
After the jump, read the full press release, then tell me if you have any plans to watch this mess. I remain steadfastly undecided, so I'm going to let you all decide whether or not I tune in (and, naturally, blog about it). Vote "yes" or "no"* in the comments section below.
Why? 
For the average Halloween lover, October 31 is the perfect opportunity to channel an inner witch, vampire, or 
Scream 4 is an apparent go, eight years after the last installment hit theaters. The news was buried in 
I remember very clearly the first time a movie scared the pants off of me. It was 1986's Aliens; I was a freshman in high school, and by my own estimation way too old to be scare-the-pants-off-able. But something about the sheer creepiness of the effects, the horrible magnificence of the alien "queen," made me want to scurry under my seat. 
Our reactions thus far to the still-in-post-production Repo! The Genetic Opera — the sung-through sci-fi/horror musical about organ donation and repossession, starring 
This morning, after finding the first-season (uncensored!) DVD of A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila on my desk, I jokingly suggested to my colleague Gary Susman that I try to watch my first episode of the super-popular MTV dating series, just to see how long it would take before I got nauseated. And the answer is... around 5 minutes!
"HOW THE HELL DID A 
So I had the apartment to myself for the last four days while my husband took a skiing trip, and that meant I spent many blissful hours lounging around in my pajamas, blaring the music of tragic '80s divas, and reading. Good stuff, except for the fact that I happened to choose
cineparanoia
Not sure if 
Can you guys do me a quick favor? Just click on 
According to 
I love it that the 
Attention 30 Rock fans: You can now hear Tracy 
Yesterday, on my train ride to work, a man sat down next to me, opened his portable DVD player, and proceeded to watch one of the most horrific murder scenes I have ever witnessed. The dying woman was probably in her twenties, with blue eyes and blonde hair. The guy caught me gaping at his DVD player. Did I mention that I'm in my twenties and that I have blue eyes and blonde hair? ''Isn't this movie the best?'' he said to me, sighing with deep, unwavering appreciation for graphic violence, fake blood, and extended close-ups of mangled limbs and internal organs. He grinned. ''It's my favorite,'' he added. He grinned wider.
I was on a NYC street corner, calmly sipping my diet ginger ale, when five werewolves attacked me. They flailed their grey, hairy limbs and circled around me, creating what looked like a mix between an anti-war rally and the Michael Jackson "Thriller" video. You've all been warned to stay away from strangers, but, tell me, what is the protocol when dealing with strange werewolves? Though they appeared to be going in for the kill, I soon realized the pack was motioning towards something behind me. I turned to see a double-decker tour bus, proclaiming in an obnoxiously ghoulish font: Nature of the Beast. I was not about to be ripped to pieces by mythological creatures, I had stumbled into something far more terrifying. An ABC Family Original Film promotion. (Cue bloodcurdling scream.)
Gosh, how come CBS didn't pick up drama pilot Babylon Fields this season? Who doesn't love post-apocalyptic procedural crime dramas featuring zombies who've returned from the dead to take up their former lives in the suburbs? (Maybe the network thought — what with ABC's Pushing Daisies and CBS' own Moonlight — that there were enough new series about undead crimefighters already.) 
Before you go rushing to 
Hello, PopWatchers. Come and play with us. Come and play with us, PopWatchers. Forever. And ever. And ever.
