Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Dak Prescott goes out with a bang, Mississippi State dominates NC State
Watch: Sooner superlatives with OU CB Zack Sanchez
Sunday, December 27, 2015
Chrissy Teigen Gives The Middle Finger To Her Pregnancy Critics
Chrissy Teigen ain't got time for your criticism.
The Sports Illustrated swimsuit model and mom-to-be shared the perfect response to some pregnancy critics this past Christmas Eve, giving us just one more reason to love her.
After revealing that she and husband John Legend are having a baby girl, Teigen responded to a tweet that criticized the couple for apparently deciding to have a baby before getting married. But the joke's on the tweeter, since Teigen and Legend have been married since 2013.
Teigen posted a screenshot of the tweet alongside a photo of her left hand -- with her massive wedding ring -- flipping the bird. (The account that sent the initial tweet seems to have since been deleted.)
Sure, the tweet could have been an honest mistake, but a note to everyone who feels like they have a right to comment on the way other people choose to live their lives: You don't.
And of course, this isn't the first time the "FABLife" co-host has hit back at the haters.
About eight weeks ago, the model shared a photo of one of her pregnancy cravings -- sugary cereal -- which garnered plenty of criticisms from commenters on Instagram.
"Don’t feed your baby that dyed crap," one person wrote.
"I love you but don’t eat this crap while pregnant… it’s beyond bad for baby and of course it’s not organic," another wrote.
Teigen also previously swore off tweeting about her pregnancy (clearly, she didn't follow through) after people commented that her belly looked larger than it should for how far long she was at the time.
Like a boss, she responded by telling everyone to "get out of my uterus."
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Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Chloë Grace Moretz Reveals The New 'Little Mermaid' Will Be Blond
Some things are better left untouched under the sea.
Chloë Grace Moretz, star of the new live-action "Little Mermaid" film, dished on preparing for her role and revealed a key detail that left the fandom in a tiff.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Moretz said that her character will trade Ariel's red locks for something a lot different.
"I want red hair! We're going with the Hans Christian Anderson novel, so I'll actually have blond hair," said Moretz, adding that the remake will be a "modern revisionist tale" that will be "progressive for young women."
As pointed out by BuzzFeed, the Anderson novel never actually mentions the hair color of the mermaid, only describing her locks as "long," "thick" and "waving."
Fans are already a bit upset that Disney isn't making the film -- Working Title and Universal are behind the new movie. Maybe the lack of red hair is that reason that Sofia Coppola, the initial director for the movie, dropped out for rumored creative differences.
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Sunday, December 6, 2015
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Kylie Jenner Transforms Into A Retro Sex Doll For Interview Magazine
Kylie Jenner has yet to officially follow in her older sisters' footsteps and completely strip down for cameras, but she's blazing trails that are all her own with a very strange photo shoot for Interview magazine.
The 18-year-old posed for photographer Steven Klein after being transformed into what we can only describe as a bondage sex doll that's channeling Jackie O. Dressed in latex, propped up and posed in various positions, Jenner appears on three different covers for the magazine's December/January double issue.
To live up to the magazine's namesake, Interview's senior editor Chris Wallace sat down with Jenner, who revealed she's"obsessed" with her hometown of Calabasas and gets through life by trying to "stay sane and not read comments."
Also, her goal for 2016 is to learn to garden.
For more with Kylie Jenner, head over to Interview.
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Thursday, November 19, 2015
Dull football weekend a great time for a fall wedding in Alabama
Monday, November 16, 2015
Cate Blanchett Is Totally Transformed In The Latest Issue Of W Magazine
Cate Blanchett has one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood, but in the latest issue of W magazine, she's totally transformed.
The Oscar-winning actress stars on the cover of the mag's annual fashion and art (December/January) issue, for which she got an avant-garde fashion makeover. The star, who was photographed by Tim Walker, is dressed in all black, wearing minimal makeup and a slicked-back hairstyle. She looks gorgeous, as per usual, but with an otherworldly air.
Inside the issue, Blanchett posed in an array of high-fashion ensembles, channeling Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. The resulting images are visually striking.
In the accompanying interview, the Australian star talks about the role of fashion in films and why she thinks the controversy regarding the casting of her new film, "Carol," was unnecessary.
"I love working with the costume designers on movies. You can visually represent the character through a dress or a bag or shoes. In 'Blue Jasmine,' clothes illustrated my character’s demise," she told the magazine. "If I pair a Birkin bag with a knockoff sweater from Wal-Mart that looks like Chanel, I can subtly reveal the character, and I don’t have to play that emotion."
Fashion -- more specifically, a vintage mink coat that was falling apart -- also played a huge role in "Carol."
"That coat was the one to tell Carol’s story. It was perfect," Blanchett said.
But of course, acting is much more than getting to dress up and play characters. For the actress, it's all about broadening horizons.
She explained, "Art is supposed to be a provocation, not an education. In 2015, the point should be: Who cares if I had lesbian relationships or not? Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve always thought that my job as an actor was to raise and expand the audience’s sense of the universe."
Head over to W magazine to read Blanchett's full interview.
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Tuesday, November 3, 2015
What You Should Know About Robin Williams' Lewy Body Dementia
Robin Williams' widow said that an autopsy of the actor indicated that he took his own life in 2014 not because of depression, but because of a progressive brain disease called diffuse Lewy body dementia, or dementia with Lewy bodies, reports People magazine.
In an interview with People, Susan Williams reveals that in the year his death, Williams struggled with unexplained mental symptoms including anxiety and delusions. The disease also manifested itself physically, burdening him with muscle rigidity and impaired movement. But it wasn’t until he died and his body was autopsied that doctors were able to pinpoint the cause of his symptoms.
Head over to People.com to read Susan Williams’ revealing interview.
Williams died Aug. 11, 2014 in his home in Tiburon, California, and his death was declared a suicide by authorities. The circumstances of his death and statements by his publicist led many to believe that the actor was experiencing debilitating depression and substance use disorder. He did indeed suffer from depression, his widow confirmed to People, but his post-mortem diagnosis suggests that dementia with Lewy bodies was the underlying biological cause for those chronic brain disease symptoms.
DLB is a complex disease to diagnose because so many of it symptoms can possibly be Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease. However, the condition is not rare; more than one million Americans have DLB, according to the National Institute of Health’s National Institute on Aging, and most of them are over 50 years old.
The disease is named for Lewy bodies, abnormal protein deposits in the brain. These abnormal deposits can affect a person's thoughts, behavior and mood, as well as their ability to move. It’s the third most common cause of dementia, and the symptoms get worse over time.
The disease can sometimes cause visual hallucinations, causing people to see things like animals or people who aren’t in the same room with them. The Mayo Clinic notes that this can sometimes result in people experiencing depression or having conversations with loved ones who are dead. And in addition to muscle rigidity and restricted movement, other physical symptoms include sweating, increased blood pressure, dizziness, falls and difficulty sleeping.
There are two types of DLB. Dementia with Lewy bodies, which is what Williams had, starts off with movement problems and is followed by cognitive symptoms after less than a year. In another type, Parkinson’s disease dementia, the cognitive symptoms take more than a year to appear after movement symptoms first start.
You’re more at risk of contracting the disease if you’re a man, over 60, or have a family member with DLB. On average, people with DLB live about five to seven years before dying, but some people have lived as long as 20 years with the disease, notes the NIH.
Currently, there is no cure for DLB. Treatment includes medications that are also used for Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Antipsychotic medications can help with the delusions and hallucinations, but people with DLB are extremely sensitive to some antipsychotics, so extreme caution is warranted. Some non-drug treatments for DLB include clearing the home of clutter so moving around is easier, simplifying tasks and daily routines, and even accepting the hallucinations for what they are.
"Many times a person with Lewy body dementia isn't distressed by the hallucinations and even recognizes them as such,” the Mayo Clinic explained. "In these cases the side effects of medication may be worse than the experience of the hallucinations themselves."
DLB doesn't have as much name recognition as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, which is why even some nurses and doctors may not be familiar with the condition or its symptoms, notes NIH. It's often up to a person's caregiver to educate healthcare professionals, friends and other family about the condition, and these demands, along with the responsibility of caring someone with DLB, could grow overwhelming.
Caregivers and people with loved ones who have DLB can seek help with support groups like the Family Caregiver's Alliance and the federal government's Eldercare Locator, which links people with community services in their area. For more guidance on how to explain dementia to teens and children, NIH recommends Alzheimer's Association Teens and Kids and Alzheimer's Foundation Of America Teens.
Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
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Wednesday, October 28, 2015
With 'Late Show,' Stephen Colbert Treats the Internet Like an Adult
Newly anointed Late Show host Stephen Colbert has turned more than a few heads with his guest list. Since taking over David Letterman's chair last month, the comedian has shaken up the typical late night roster of actors and pop stars by inviting public figures not used to drawing such attention -- like former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Secretary of State John Kerry, and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
While politicians are no strangers to late night TV -- former Colbert compatriot Jon Stewart had each of those men on during his tenure of The Daily Show -- Colbert is embracing serious discussion in ways less similar to Letterman and more similar to Charlie Rose.
Perhaps most surprising, however, are the guests Colbert has hosted who are also outside the realm of politics and governance. Interviews with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, and Apple CEO Tim Cook have brought the culture of Silicon Valley to mainstream television in a way it hasn't before -- outside of the occasional evening news broadcast. This also represents an interesting and novel attempt by Colbert and CBS to lure in younger viewers. While Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel have repackaged their format for viral-ready YouTube bits and BuzzFeed headlines, Stephen Colbert is taking tech seriously.
This is exactly what a Late Show audience needs. While Colbert had one of the youngest audiences in television on The Colbert Report, he's inherited one of the oldest. CBS has an average age of 57, the highest among the four major broadcast networks, and David Letterman left The Late Show with an average viewer age of 54. That's a demographic that has likely never used Uber, Airbnb, or Snapchat, but that didn't stop Colbert from having on all three of their respective chief executives on his show.
What this does is two things. First, Colbert gets to play the surrogate for his older audience, often asking the most basic questions about a new technology just to introduce his viewers to the concept. The best example of this was his takedown of CNN's Virtual Reality option for the Republican debate -- in which Colbert ends up watching the event on TV at a bar in his Second Life-esque environment.
But he's no luddite -- watch him bask in the awe of game designer Sean Murray's expansive and miraculous No Man's Sky.
During his Tim Cook interview, Colbert both marvels and mocks the new features of the iPhone 6S -- all while Cook walks him through it. You get that sense that he's not just doing so for the sake of comedy but for your parents. This is a good interview tactic for more reasons than breaking down the complexity of new technologies for digital immigrants. It also strips away the basic assumptions under which many tech companies function -- forcing their executives and founders to be held accountable to their own best practices.
Snapchat's Evan Spiegel sputtered over Colbert's question of how assured users should be that their messages are truly gone. Uber's Kalanick faced a similar grilling on the working conditions of Uber drivers, as well as his desire to replace those same drivers with automated cars. And just this week, AirBnB CEO Brian Chesky faced questions from Colbert over the questionable safety record of the app, whether "disruption" is really a good thing, and to what extent AirBnB is a beneficiary of the Great Recession.
But of course, this is still late night TV. None of these men faced the full scrutiny to which actual journalists might have subjected them, and the visits were clearly all in good fun.
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However, Colbert has made several moves to prove that the tenor of his show would match the seriousness of the conversations, scolding his audience for booing Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and editing out a protester's outburst during his interview with Kalanick. But by merely introducing the concept of the sharing economy to older audiences, Colbert is forcing into the light conversations typically reserved for Marc Andreessen's tweetstorms and the comments sections of Re/Code.
These are public debates that need to happen across all age spectrums, not just the older viewers of late night television. A 2014 Pew study which tested the "Web IQ" of various age groups found little difference between millennials and Gen-Xers on core facts about our digital lives. Fifty-four percent of both 18-29 year olds and 50-64 year olds said privacy policies are meant to ensure the data you give a website like Facebook will remain private and secure (they often say the opposite). Another Pew study from this past May found Americans care very deeply about securing their data online but feel powerless to do so.
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Such details are missed by late night competitors Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon. The closest either has come to a serious discussion about technology and how it affects our lives is a recent Kimmel sketch wherein multiple people freely give their online passwords to the show. Otherwise, Kimmel is happy to interview starlets and make the same jokes about Guillermo, his late night sidekick, over and over.Fallon is a more interesting case, and one whose striking contrast shows the value of Colbert's guest list. Younger than Colbert by a decade -- yet still no millennial at 41 -- Fallon has done more than any other television personality to bring his show into the digital age.
After taking over for Jay Leno, Fallon has succeeded at creating short clips that spread widely online, both through social media and news sites (like this one). He integrates Twitter into The Tonight Show with ease, makes jokes about Snapchat without a whiff of irony, and otherwise implements the infrastructure of the social Web as good as any Kardashian.
Fallon's show lives online -- and relates to people who do as well -- but Colbert is clearly aiming higher. Rather than adopting the Internet as a tool, Colbert is obviously willing to pry open the companies that create it and see what, if anything, is inside. While he stumbled in the beginning, Colbert has matched Fallon in the ratings and even brought a younger audience to CBS. Each was specifically brought on to do just that -- speak to millennials in a way that will get them to turn on their televisions.
Colbert and Fallon have both found an ally in that quest in digital culture -- but Colbert should be applauded for not merely using it but wanting to understand it.
Ben Branstetter is a social commentator with a focus on the intersection of technology, security, and politics. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Business Insider, Salon, the Week, and xoJane. He attended Pennsylvania State University.
A version of this story originally appeared on the Daily Dot.
Photo via Montclair Film Festival/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
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Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Bryce Dallas Howard On the Future of Jurassic World
OK, so that final one is a very specific piece of insight, but is regardless something I observed when in Hawaii a few weeks back, at a luau on an Oahu beach with Bryce Dallas Howard, her husband Seth Gabel, and a group of other industry professionals and locals.
Normally this kind of after-hours interaction remains "off the record" for me. I interviewed Howard two days prior about Jurassic World, which is available Tuesday on DVD/Blu-ray. But meeting with her and Gabel at the luau was an unplanned, unexpected, and incredibly pleasant surprise.
But the experience informs a lot about Howard. Using the unscientific luau lessons of personality assessment, one could never tell she grew up in the business, surrounded by entertainment icons, and has appeared in multiple big-budget blockbusters. Instead, she and Gabel behaved like the ideal of a couple honeymooning in Hawaii: dancing, laughing, playing, and basically, being adorable with one another.
As I sat to write up my interview with Howard, this observation repeated itself in my noggin. While she evolves over the course of the movie, her Jurassic World character Claire is introduced as uptight, all-business, and disconnected from others -- even her own nephews. Beyond being a stark contrast to the actress (which is why it's called acting, dear boy), the character has taken heat for running around in those high heels throughout the course of the film.
However, Howard has embraced the heels as a point of pride for her acting, and the role of Claire. "Damn right I ran in heels," she recently told People's Scott Huver. But Howard also told me that Claire changes a lot in the movie, and there is even a scene in the DVD/Blu-ray extras that shows it off.
"There is a scene on the DVD/Blu-ray extras where you get to see Claire smother herself with dinosaur poop," she said. "I think it's a wish fulfillment of sorts because she starts off this movie being a really rigid woman, and kind of very sterile individual."
"Then you see her thrown in the jungle, and what better than seeing a person like that, wearing all white, need to just cover themselves in poop?"
Poop aside, Howard said her character will continue to evolve, and that her continuing change will be important in the 2018 Jurassic World sequel, which director Colin Trevorrow will again write with Derek Connolly.
"I don't know, honestly, what the trajectory is for my character," she said. "I have talked to Colin, and he feels very strongly about this character continuing to have a significant arc; there were some terrible calls she made as the person who runs the park, and the result of that are devastating."
"I would imagine there's a lot of guilt and needing to face the music," she added. "There's a lot about this story in particular, at this point in history, that is quite meaningful and relevant; I think, through the character of Claire, [Colin] wants to explore a lot of these complex, philosophical issues that come up with genetic modification."
But Howard said there are a lot of unanswered questions about what she'll be up to when she returns to film the sequel. And she considers that a good thing.
"Who is Claire within this, within the reality of the park falling apart, and with the dinosaurs potentially off the island ... That wasn't something we obsessed about while we were shooting," she said.
"The way we approached Jurassic World was as a standalone film, and not necessarily about teasing the next episode of the story," said Howard. "I think there is a lot of integrity in that, and you have to earn the right to have another movie."
"Now that there is going to be another movie, that's when the conversation started about it, and where is this going to go."
As for "where" it is going, it remains a mystery if Jurassic World 2 will return to Hawaii. Regardless, the islands will always hold an interesting significance to Howard with regards to the movie, she said. Howard, who saw Jurassic Park opening weekend as a 12 year-old -- and was told by her father, director Ron Howard, that she was watching "cinema history" -- was offered the job of Claire by Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow while he was atop a Hawaiian mountain.
"That next year we were shooting in Hawaii, and now it's about a year later, the movie has come out, and I'm here in Hawaii again, promoting the release of the DVD and Blu-ray," she said.
"We've had the best time being here," she added.
From dinosaurs to dragons, the 2016 remake of the 1977 Disney film Pete's Dragon is next up for Howard. And she is getting a kick out of her new role as a pseudo Khaleesi, the Mother of Dragons.
"When I was shooting Pete's Dragon, I kept messing it up. I kept saying, 'Where's the raptor? Where's the dinosaur?' They said, 'It's a dragon this time, Bryce.'"
"I'm like, 'It's big and green, that's all that matters!' But yeah, I love them reptiles."
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