In the spirit of that recent Gossip Girl (pictured) ad campaign that cited all those moralists' complaints about the show's risqué content, maybe the show will start touting a recent study that suggests that sexy TV shows lead to real-life teen pregnancy. According to Reuters, this RAND study claims a link between exposure to sexual content on TV (broadcast and cable) and unprotected sex among teens. Those teens in the 10 percent of the test pool that watched the TV series with the most sexual content (among those 23 series RAND was monitoring) were at twice the risk for pregnancy as the teens in the bottom 10 percent of those shows' viewers.
Setting aside all the usual caveats about methodology and statistics, this smells fishy to me. For one thing, as my colleague Mike Bruno points out, correlation is not causation. It's not clear, at least from the Reuters summary of the study, that the researchers are even suggesting that TV influences these kids to engage in risky sexual behavior; it could be that the kids who most have sex on the brain (because they're having it) are the ones most inclined to watch such programming as a result. Moreover, as the Reuters article notes, teen pregnancy rates have been on the decline since 1991. Yet TV has undoubtedly gotten sexier, or at least more frank and casual in discussing sex, especially shows that cater to teens. Shouldn't we be seeing a rise in teen pregnancies, then?
One thing that does seem anecdotally true is that TV offers kids mixed messages about sex. (Sex is HOTTT, but don't have it until you're married, after which, it's NOTTT. Premarital sex can lead to disease and pregnancy, although few characters ever seem to face such consequences. Safe sex means wearing a condom, although no one on TV ever seems to put one on. Losing your virginity is a big deal, even though TV characters tend to describe their first times as humiliating and underwhelming.) Not sure what conclusions anyone could draw, whether teens or researchers, from watching today's confused, sexually blunt TV.
We were told Grizzly Bear singer/songwriter Edward Droste was a huge fan of EW, so we decided to let him blog his Friday at Lollapalooza-- during which he wore a stellar pair of shorts (pictured). Read on! Let the indie goodness wash over you!
Lollapalooza is a hot massive field with as many people as the eye can see. It's really fun to be at a festival with an urban backdrop, particularly one as spectacular as Chicago's. We'd been anticipating playing the festival for some time now and luckily got in just in time to catch our friend Yeasayer's amazing set. They've grown so much since I last fall them this past fall in Montreal and imparted some wisdom upon us about "making it big" in England. You need to have "chants" they told us, "the British love chants, it reminds them of football games." I think that makes perfect sense, really.
Unlike Bonnaroo's dust clouds and Roskilde's fields of mud, Lollapalooza was a very clean, manageable festival. We wandered around a bit confused, getting our bearings after Yeasayer, trying to shake off our bad night's sleep (was our first night ever sleeping in the coffin-like beds a sleeper bus has) and eventually we joined forces with our favorite festival friends CSS, who were playing immediately following us on the Citi stage. It's always funny to see them on tour because they are continually in the best mood and bring the cheer. Lovefoxxx's outfits continually impress me each time I see her. She must own at least 50 body suits of varying patterns and colors.
The third Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses (SC3) kicks off today
at Henderson State University in Arkansas. It's not the first scholarly gathering devoted to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I remember speaking to Joss Whedon in 2002, about a UK academic conference called Blood, Text, and Fears. He said he wished he could be there to hear the live debate on the paper titled "The Spike/Buffy Relationship: Law, Morals, Rape and S&M; or
You Always Hurt the One You Love." Still, more than 90 papers will be presented at SC3, which covers BtVS, Angel, Firefly, and Whedon's film career. You can check out the program on the conference's site. Which titles speak to you? My picks:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: • "'When You Kiss Me, I Want to Die': Gothic Relationships and Social Taboos on BtVS"
• "A Sexy Fuddy-Duddy and a Woman Who Knows How to Moisturize: Adulthood, Authority, and Sex in BtVS" [Giles and Joyce!!!]
• "'Kicking Ass Is Comfort Food': Girlie Feminism, Violence, and the Slayer"
• "... And Yet': The Limitations of Buffy’s Feminism" • "'It's Just... Painful': Love and the Wounded Vampire" • "The Buffy-Riley Leitmotif and Musical Evidence for the Romantic Conflation of Angel and Riley" [No idea what that means, really, but I like the word conflation.] • "'Here Endeth the Lesson': Spike's Torturous Romances and Life Laid Bare"
• "'You Let Him Domesticate You': Anya/Anyanka and Insensitive Interpretations of Consumer and Domestic Stereotypes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer" • "Lies My Mother Told Me: Moms and Offspring in the Buffyverse. Is Death the Only Gift Mothers Can Give?" • "'It's Only Our Methods That Differ. We Use the Latest in Scientific Technology and State-of-the-Art Weaponry, and You... Poke Them with a Sharp Stick': Various Methods for Teaching with Buffy" [There are teachers and professors who use Buffy in the classroom? AWESOME.]
Boffo box office aside, not everyone is loving the new Indiana Jones movie. A number of folks have quibbles about the movie's accuracy. (Let's not even get started on these guys' complaint.) Over at Asylum.com, they've prevailed upon archaeologist Kristin Romey (who's explored some of the Latin American turf covered in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) to see which parts of the movie plausibly portray archaeologists and their work and which do not. The implausible stuff (besides Harrison Ford, pictured, still being able to kick ass at 65) is pretty evident, but the elements that are realistic may surprise you. It turns out that archaeologists often really are spies who pack heat and behave like horndogs. Who knew? Can't wait 'til the Asylum folks apply similar investigative zeal to this season's other fantasy films, including Iron Man, Prince Caspian, and Sex and the City.
All you women out there with dreams of singing superstardom (Carly, Syesha, Kristy Lee, Brooke, you know who you are), listen carefully to the priceless advice from Erykah Badu about achieving success in the music business, in this excerpt from the IFC movie Before the Music Dies. She pulls no punches with her NSFW language — but few topics deserve strong language more than this one, if you ask me. You go, Erykah, with your potty mouth and your insightful observations about the Sisyphean challenge facing female artists in our society!
Want to guess which "tip" is my favorite? Hint: It has to do with a beeper. I'm not sure where you would put the beeper if you were wearing nothing but glitter, but what a great photo shoot that would be.
What do you think, PopWatchers, about Badu's point of view? Is her sarcasm hitting the right note with you, or do you find it over the top?
Technology that requires sitting, that is. I don't think the Archive of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine's study accounted for Wii Tennis, now did it, Archive of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine? According to the study, cutting kids' TV and computer time in half made them eat less and therefore lose weight. One of the authors said, ""Viewing cartoons with embedded food commercials can increase choice of
the advertised item in preschoolers, and television commercials may
prompt eating." And so, clearly, could The Colbert Report from May 1, 2007 (pictured, don't ask). How is this study for real? Like everything I look at everyday doesn't already make me want to shovel in a snack cake. As if! Seriously, though... is there anything on TV or the Internet that does not warrant the tag "may prompt eating"? Your suggestions, below.
Who knew that insurance was such a compelling movie topic? Just in time for the Oscars, the Insurance Information Institute, an industry lobbying group, has compiled a list of the best films ever made featuring insurance agents and claims adjusters as major characters, and it has some excellent movies on it, including Double Indemnity, Memento, and To Catch a Thief. Still, it's a curious list, considering that almost all the movies on it portray the industry and its workers in an unflattering light. In these films, insurance folk tend to be killers, adulterers, or scam artists. They sleep with their policyholders (or, like Rene Russo, pictured, in The Thomas Crown Affair, with the targets of their investigations), plot to defraud their employers, or heartlessly deny benefits to desperate claimants. Kind of surprising that these movies would get the ringing endorsement of insurance lobbyists. Maybe insurance folk, like everyone else, long for the wish fulfillment of the cinema, where everyone's lives seem a little bit more glamorous, dangerous, and exciting. If Hollywood filmmakers can do that for insurers, they can do it for anybody.
There must be a little-known proviso in the Writers Guild rules that permits striking TV writers to pen scenarios for shows other than their own in snarky magazine articles. So it is with New York magazine, which cross-assigned teams of writers from various strike-afflicted shows to dream up season-ending arcs for other strike-afflicted shows. (Hat tip to TV Barn and TV Tattle for the link.) The results aren't as funny as I'd have hoped, though I did enjoy the Simpsons crew's apocalyptic take on The Office. I'd still like to see what, say, Tina Fey's 30 Rock-ers could do with House or Heroes. How about you, PopWatchers? What TV writer swaps would you like to see?
If you've gotten the latest issue of EW, you now have "67 tips to beat the entertainment dry spell" during the writers' strike. But I'm here to offer you another one: Watch sports.
How radical of an idea is it? You tell me. I have some colleagues who refuse to see sports as entertainment — and some who refuse to watch sports, period. I asked Deadwood's Timothy Olyphant, who's been moonlighting as a sports reporter for LA's Indie 103.1 FM morning show for the last two years, why he's a fan. "I'm sure the writers will come picket my house," he joked, "but the reason I like sports is because it's unscripted. That's always been the reason to watch sports. You can't make that sh-- up."
So let's settle this once and for all: Do you watch sports? And if so, which ones?
You know I'm alway pushing the PBR (Professional Bull Riders), which you can catch on the weekends on VERSUS. (Olyphant, by the way, approves. Deadwood creator David Milch hired a bunch of cowboys to hang around the set because they had the right vibe. "They get drunk. They get in fights. And they tell terribly inappropriate jokes," Olyphant said, before sharing one punch line we can't print. "I just like knowing that when you're watching a guy get thrown around, that's his day.") If that doesn't sell you, maybe Travis Briscoe's recent record-tying ride on Copperhead Slinger (below) will:
I may be just a geek, but that geekiness extends beyond the borders of comics, science fiction, and double-dutch. I am also unabashedly geek-prone towards the making of movies... which is why this clip — which shows how three resourceful blokes, with nothing but a couple of costumes, a video camera, a computer (or two), and a boatload of ingenuity recreated the D-Day assault on Omaha Beach — is like mother's milk.
By Jove, man, it's enough to make you wanna pick up a camera, isn't it?
Now, I want you to watch this compilation...and listen closely. I'm not gonna tell you what to listen for, I think you'll notice what ties all the clips together. (And the audio has not been monkeyed with at all.) We'll talk about it after the jump.
With the second season of Big Love (pictured, with Jeanne Tripplehorn, left; and Chloe Sevigny) coming to an end, we thought it was a good time to check in with one of the country's foremost polygamy experts: Salt Lake Tribune reporter Brooke Adams. The plural life is Adams' beat: She's the one covering the trial of Warren Jeffs, interviewing Big Love-like families all over Utah and the border states and constantly updating the paper's polygamy blog. Not surprisingly, she sees a lot of correlations between the plots on Big Love and real-life news stories, so we chatted about some of those last week via IM. —Shirley Halperin
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Are there any perks, for lack of a better word, to being first wife? It seems like a lot of this season has been focused on Barb's inner struggle with the life she's chosen while at the same time trying to assert herself and her position in this three-wife system. From the women you've interviewed, have you noticed this sort of first-wife issue? BROOKE ADAMS: First of all, the plural wives I've spoken with say there is no such thing as a "first wife." They say that for any wife to hold more power than the others makes the whole thing unworkable. The best explanation I've heard is that the wives have to view themselves as equals who are interested in the good of the group and want the same thing for the other wives that they want for themselves. That, at least, is the ideal.
Is the point of living ''the principle'' to take on as many wives as possible (and, in turn, to have as many kids as possible), or is there usually a cap? Roman has something like 27 wives — is that out of the ordinary? Is Bill's situation more common? Bill's situation is far more common. There are a few men who have many, many wives — I call them mega-families — but it is far more common for a plural family to consist of a man and two or three women, with about 20 to 30 children. I've been told that some of these men with really big families organize outings with their children by age range. All the 10-year-olds get together and go do something with dad, for instance. Warren Jeffs is said to have a huge number of wives, too, as did his father. But in the Jeffs' case, many of those are wives only in the caretaker sense, not in real, procreative marriages.
Disney's squeaky-clean tween queen may be helping your kids download porn or worse. The virus and spyware experts at McAfee did some research to find the pop-culture search-engine queries whose results are most likely to lead unwitting users to the most infectious pages, and they found, for instance, that the most dangerous search query among currently popular songs is for "Life's What You Make It" by Hannah Montana (Miley Cyrus, pictured.) Kids who type that into their search engine in the hope of finding downloadable music, photos, and ringtones are most likely to wind up infecting their PCs with redirects to porn sites or data-stealing spyware that enables identity theft.
McAfee research analyst Shane Keats tells PopWatch that scammers closely follow popular culture in order to target kids and other naive and inexperienced Web surfers. "When they first get to an offer for a Hannah Montana screensaver, they just click yes. Three or four clicks later, they've got a single image of Hannah Montana that may or may not be legal, and they're also going to give themselves porno pop-up ads." Of the scammers, Keats says, "You've really got to wonder how they sleep at night. It's one thing to do that to a grown-up, another to do it to a kid who just wants to show their love for their favorite singer." He says he won't let his own kids, ages 5 and 8, surf the 'Net. "There's just too much chance that they'll see an image that they'll never forget."
I know what you're thinking: Slow news day. True, but I've long wanted to launch the EW Experts Corner, a place where the people who send us unsolicited emails pitching their expertise on vaguely entertainment-related topics that we would never cover can speak their piece. Why start with the National Pest Management Association (NPMA)? Because: (a) I hadn't thought of this bit when the makers of slimming Spanx bodywear made certain that we knew that Jessica Alba trusted her Fantastic Four figure to them, and (b) the NPMA email— subject line: Pests and Rodents as Movie Stars!— arrived in my inbox right after the meeting in which the EW.com staff had joked about doing a photo gallery of our favorite rodents on film (and assistant managing editor Dawnie Walton sighed so sweetly when someone mentioned Scabbers).
Also, unlike most of the folks who email us, the NPMA actually acknowledged that their pitch was a stretch, referencing "EW's willingness to present interesting angles on movies," which made me like them even more. So, without further adieu, a conversation with the delightful Cindy Mannes, vice president of public affairs for the NPMA.
In the spirit of that recent Gossip Girl (pictured) ad campaign that cited all those moralists' complaints about the show's risqué content, maybe the show will start touting a recent study that suggests that sexy TV shows lead to real-life teen pregnancy. According to Reuters, this RAND study claims a link between exposure to sexual content on TV (broadcast and cable) and unprotected sex among teens. Those teens in the 10 percent of the test pool that watched the TV series with the most sexual content (among those 23 series RAND was monitoring) were at twice the risk for pregnancy as the teens in the bottom 10 percent of those shows' viewers.
The third 
Technology that requires sitting, that is. I don't think the 
Who knew that insurance was such a compelling movie topic? Just in time for the Oscars, the Insurance Information Institute, an industry lobbying group, has compiled a list of 
There must be a little-known proviso in the Writers Guild rules that permits striking TV writers to pen scenarios for shows other than their own in snarky magazine articles. So it is with 
With the second season of Big Love (pictured, with Jeanne Tripplehorn, left; and Chloe Sevigny) coming to an end, we thought it was a good time to check in with one of the country's foremost polygamy experts: Salt Lake Tribune reporter Brooke Adams. The plural life is Adams' beat: She's the one covering the trial of 
Disney's squeaky-clean tween queen may be helping your kids download porn or worse. The virus and spyware experts at 
I know what you're thinking: Slow news day. True, but I've long wanted to launch the EW Experts Corner, a place where the people who send us unsolicited emails pitching their expertise on vaguely entertainment-related topics that we would never cover can speak their piece. Why start with the National Pest Management Association (NPMA)? Because: (a) I hadn't thought of this bit when the makers of slimming Spanx bodywear made certain that we knew that Jessica Alba trusted her Fantastic Four figure to them, and (b) the NPMA email— subject line: Pests and Rodents as Movie Stars!— arrived in my inbox right after the meeting in which the EW.com staff had joked about doing a
