Today in viral videos: Russell Brand gets sympathetic, 50 (completely unscientific) ways to trick people into thinking you're smarter than you are, and summer treat from Disney.
Use your time on the beach and stuck in traffic this summer getting an early jump on the fall movie season by reading the source material for all the literary adaptations coming out in the Serious Movie months. That way you can be the smug person who says "Well, that's not how it happens in the book..." all autumn long!
Today in show business news: Ethan Hawke lands one of the biggest roles, Angelina Jolie is casting her next movie, and Wes Bentley's comeback continues.
We expect some big revelations from Shane Salerno's Salinger documentary. A new trailer for the film doesn't quite tell us what those are, but with a focus on topics like the mystery of why Salinger stopped publishing, his time in World War II, and his private relationships, it does portend big things.
The intrepid self-proclaimed sex savants at Cosmopolitan took a subtle dig at the Internet netizens at Reddit by insinuating in a recent listicle that the "ultra-nerds" there have no idea how to handle sexy times with a woman. That went over about as well as you might have expected. But is Cosmo really that much better at giving sex advice than your neighborhood Redditor? Play our fun interactive game and find out.
Her characters in this week's This Is the End and The Bling Ring are not exactly what we've come to expect from the Harry Potter star. But Emma Watson is impossible to pin down — now 23, she's growing up by going back to her fantasy roots, with a new project billed as a female Game of Thrones.
I am all for torturing children. As the overlord of a 9th grade classroom, I forced them to memorize sections of The Aeneid, socked them with the one-two punch of The Odyssey and The Iliad and finished them off on a Shakespearian rack. Let them suffer, I say.
Mass movie casualties are nothing new certainly, disaster flicks have been killing scores of anonymous people for decades, but the ever-upping ante has made it increasingly difficult to enjoy these blockbuster spectacles.
God save the Queen's portrait. A man was arrested in England today for defacing a recent portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, which was on display in Westminster Abbey, in what is apparently a Father's Day-related attempt to ask for her help.
It's summer, summer, summertime, and there is so much good Y.A. available it's hard to keep up. We'll help you get started.
Today in celebrity gossip: Kanye West is embroiled in a rumor scandal, Miley Cyrus beefs with Amanda Bynes, and Duchess Kate blesses a ship.
Here's another reason to be mad at Seth MacFarlane. MacFarlane's show Family Guy decided to campaign for the Emmys by spoofing Girls and making light of one of that show's most controversial scenes in order to make a point about Family Guy's outsider status.
The Church of Scientology forced the British tabloid The Sun to apologize for reporting that UFOs were seen flying over the church's British headquarters — but The Sun apologized to the aliens. It is one of the best newspaper apologies ever.
And on his third day as temporary anchor, John Oliver was unequivocally funny.
Of all the people to sound the alarm on the decline and fall of the film industry, Steven Spielberg might seem like an improbable choice.
Today in show business news: Sandra Bullock considers joining the Annie musical, Portlandia rides again, and Ethan Hawke made a smart business decision.
Neil LaBute is not known as a particularly nice playwright — his vitriol is like a reflex. So when a critic wrote a callous review of his latest Reasons to Be Happy, LaBute jumped straight into the online comments section to chastise him.
At the end of Jenna Sauers' Village Voice cover story on Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, Questlove once again basically confirms that The Roots will be following Jimmy Fallon to The Tonight Show in early 2014, by explaining that his next task is writing a theme song for the show.
Getting cast as the young Hillary Clinton in the pre-Election Day 2016 biopic Rodham should be the role of a lifetime for Hollywood's young A-listers, but portraying any version of a likely presidential candidate might just be too daunting a task.
For a certain set on Twitter, there is only one story that matters right now: the redemption of InkBoy, an anonymous trust-fund kid who blew his fortune way too early and is now working for a landscaping and maintenance company for the summer in the Hamptons. Herein, some encouragement.
Today in celebrity gossip: Jen and Justin's wedding plans hit a snag, Gwyneth Paltrow shuts a magazine out, and Bieber and Cyrus might be an item.
A.A. Gill is a very, very bad boy. That’s how he likes it – and that’s how we like him. In a world that has come to treat fine dining as a religious experience, the Vanity Fair food critic is that rare iconoclast who is willing to say that something tastes like crap, no matter who the chef or what the price
You don't have to finish Anna Karenina to make your summer reading worthwhile.
The first look at the upcoming movie Diana has everything you might expect from a Diana biopic. There will be beautiful gowns. There will be tabloids. There will be humanitarianism. And Watts's look is pretty spot-on, as long as you ignore the uncanny resemblance to the Newsweek editor.
Did Oliver ruin a potentially great bit — some good new-fashioned Siri-meets-NSA American humor — by making yet another British joke? Because his second night substituting as host for Jon Stewart had a lot of the same "I'm British" schtick as the first one.
In case you were wondering, Kanye West has no regrets, just "complete awesomeness at all times."
Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder refused to give up his beloved team's name despite a lawsuit and letters from 10 members of Congress. But now it appears he's bringing in the "pollster"/spin-doctor/Republican Batman to examine what, exactly, everyone thinks about what everyone else thinks is most racist name in football.
Today in viral videos: Everything that's wrong with the man of steel, a PSA that would do KStew some good, and 100 compliments that will make you feel better about yourself. Also: Daft Punk travels through time.
Today in show-business news: The Dumb & Dumber project hits a major snag, Josh Gad books another role, and Michael Cera goes bad.
An upscale men's magazine decided to praise their favorite magazine editors' work, declaring boldly a "New Golden Age" on its cover. Except there's one small diversity problem: all the editors basking in this new golden age are white dudes.
If the latest Star Wars: Episode VII rumor is true, J.J. Abrams might capitalize on the Y.A. movie moment with a story that focuses on two hot young things.
Unsurprisingly, the cheapo horror success The Purge, which earned $36.4 million on a $3 million budget this past weekend, will be getting a sequel. That was inevitable, pure profit is hard to resist. But what will a sequel for this movie look like, given its particularly ludicrous premise? Let's offer some suggestions.
In case the first one wasn't long enough for you, the second installment of Peter Jackson's unnecessarily stretched-out Hobbit trilogy is due out in December, and the trailer for The Desolation of Smaug is out today.
Far from your average record-release event, this was an "instantaneous" gathering of West's invite-only inner circle. (Which, really, was still plenty of people.) Here's everything we learned, gleaned from the few reports to trickle out late last night and throughout the morning.
Designer Roberto Cavalli's Facebook page posted a sketch of a dress for Beyoncé's tour featuring a hyperreal but totally unrealistic illustration of the singer, that morphs her into a stick-thin, seemingly boneless Barbie. It's, well, creepy.
Today in celebrity gossip: Prince Harry has been seen with a new model companion, he's also a hero to the gays, and there's a love triangle scandal a'brewin' down in Alabama.
Well, the embargo broke on Man of Steel reviews late last night, and the response to Zack Snyder's hotly anticipated reboot of the Superman franchise is decidedly... mixed. This version is heavy on the action and heavy on the seriousness, which some critics say drags it down. Other have declared it a triumph. But like it or not, there will be a sequel.
John Oliver officially started his summer gig subbing in as host for Jon Stewart on The Daily Show last night, and right up front, on Night No. 1, he wanted everybody involved to admit that it was "weird." And then he admitted that he could do without the huge frickin' NSA news.
No matter whether you're trusting the conspiracy theorists, the recappers, or Matthew Weiner this season, Mad Men's big gay subplot probably won't get resolved that simply in the last two episodes. So what do you believe? And what does this mean about next season? Let's just say this gets more meta than ever.
Sesame Street — home of Big Bird, Cookie Monster, and Elmo — rarely incites controversy. But then the website of the popular children's education show uploaded a curious feature called "Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration."
Today in show business news: HBO has a big ratings hit, Oprah re-ups with LaToya Jackson, and there's a new man in charge of American Idol. Also: Hobbit.
On the third month of the year 2013, the world rejoiced: The New York Jets had released Tim Tebow, and finally — rejoice! — tabloid Tebow-mania was over. But, lo and behold, the evil genius of Bill Belichick just made everyone care about the Christian quarterback from Florida once more.
The Primetime Emmy Awards (hosted by Neil Patrick Harris) aren't until September, and there's more than a month to go until nominations are announced. But the voting begins tonight.
Today in viral videos: A Shia is (sort of) redeemed, the awesomeness of burning liquid oxygen, and the day Tiago Splitter's basketball career died.
The world of The Challenge is a weirdly self-contained ecosystem, the cast members seeming very much aware of their particular and practiced role in the franchise while also stumbling around obliviously.
Tonight is the first night of Jon Stewart's movie-making hiatus, which means it will be John Oliver's first shot at The Daily Show's anchor desk. And he's lucked out: He couldn't have picked a better news cycle for his brand of humor that is at its best when calling out American hypocrisy in his made-for-BBC accent.
Today in celebrity news: Justin Bieber's guards are armed, Kristin from Laguna Beach is married, and Bradley Cooper has a new lady.
We're a week away from having the potential album of the summer come out and, apparently, it's not even finished yet. Kanye West's albums still wasn't completed as of last week because he was reworking new songs, ones he sang last night during his Governor's Ball performance.
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