After nearly two years of bickering, NBA players and owners are back on the same side.

“We want to play basketball,” Commissioner David Stern said.

Come Christmas Day, they should be.

The sides reached a tentative agreement early Saturday to end the 149-day lockout and hope to begin the delayed season with the marquee tripleheader on Dec. 25 originally scheduled to air on ABC and ESPN. Most of a season that seemed in jeopardy of being lost entirely will be salvaged if both sides approve the handshake deal.

Barring a change in scheduling, the 2011-12 season will open with the Boston Celtics at New York Knicks, followed by Miami at Dallas in an NBA finals rematch before MVP Derrick Rose and Chicago visiting Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.

Neither side provided many specifics about the deal, and there are still legal hurdles that must be cleared before gymnasiums are open again.

“We thought it was in both of our interest to try to reach a resolution and save the game,” union executive director Billy Hunter said.

After a secret meeting earlier this week that got the broken process back on track, the sides met for more than 15 hours Friday, working to save the season. Stern said the agreement was “subject to a variety of approvals and very complex machinations, but we’re optimistic that will all come to pass and that the NBA season will begin Dec. 25.”

President Barack Obama gave a thumbs-up when told about the tentative settlement after he finished playing basketball at Fort McNair in Washington on Saturday morning.

The league plans a 66-game season and aims to open training camps Dec. 9, with free agency opening at the same time. Stern has said it would take about 30 days from an agreement to playing the first game.

“All I feel right now is ‘finally,’” Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade told The Associated Press.

Just 12 days after talks broke down and Stern declared the NBA could be headed to a “nuclear winter,” he sat next to Hunter to announce the 10-year deal, with either side able to opt out after the sixth year.

“For myself, it’s great to be a part of this particular moment in terms of giving our fans what they wanted and wanted to see,” said Derek Fisher, the president of the players’ association.

A majority on each side is needed to approve the agreement, first reported by CBSSports.com. The NBA needs votes from 15 of 29 owners. (The league owns the New Orleans Hornets.) Stern said the labor committee plans to discuss the agreement later Saturday and expects them to endorse it and recommend to the full board.

The union needs a simple majority of its 430-plus members. That process is a bit more complicated after the players dissolved the union Nov. 14. Now, they must drop their antitrust lawsuit in Minnesota and reform the union before voting on the deal.

Because the union disbanded, a new collective bargaining agreement can only be completed once the union has reformed. Drug testing and other issues still must be negotiated between the players and the league, which also must dismiss its lawsuit filed in New York.

“We’re very pleased we’ve come this far,” Stern said. “There’s still a lot of work to be done.”

The sides will quickly return to work later Saturday, speaking with attorneys and their own committees to keep the process moving.

When the NBA returns, owners hope to find the type of parity that exists in the NFL, where the small-market Green Bay Packers are the current champions. The NBA has been dominated in recent years by the biggest spenders, with Boston, Los Angeles and Dallas winning the last four titles.

“I think it will largely prevent the high-spending teams from competing in the free-agent market the way they’ve been able to in the past. It’s not the system we sought out to get in terms of a harder cap, but the luxury tax is harsher than it was. We hope it’s effective,” deputy commissioner Adam Silver said.

“We feel ultimately it will give fans in every community hope that their team can compete for championships.”

The league hopes fans come right back, despite their anger over a work stoppage that followed such a successful season. But owners wanted more of the league’s $4 billion in annual revenues after players were guaranteed 57 percent of basketball-related income in the old deal.

Participating in the talks for the league were Stern, Silver, Spurs owner Peter Holt, the chairman of the labor relations committee, and attorneys Rick Buchanan and Dan Rube. The players were represented by executive director Billy Hunter, president Derek Fisher, vice president Maurice Evans, attorney Ron Klempner and economist Kevin Murphy.

Owners locked out the players July 1, and the sides spent most of the summer and fall battling over the division of revenues and other changes owners wanted in a new collective bargaining agreement. They said they lost hundreds of millions of dollars in each year of the former deal, ratified in 2005, and they wanted a system where the big-market teams wouldn’t have the ability to outspend their smaller counterparts.

Players fought against those changes, not wanting to see any teams taken out of the market when they became free agents.

“This was not an easy agreement for anyone. The owners came in having suffered substantial losses and feeling the system wasn’t working fairly across all teams,” Silver said. “I certainly know the players had strong views about expectations in terms of what they should be getting from the system. It required a lot of compromise from both parties’ part, and I think that’s what we saw today.”

Even the final day had turbulent patches. It required multiple calls with the owners’ labor relations committee, all the while knowing another breakdown in talks would mean not only the loss of the Christmas schedule but possibly even the entire season.

“We resolved, despite some even bumps this evening, that the greater GOOD required us to knock ourselves out and come to this tentative understanding,” Stern said.

He denied the litigation was a factor in accelerating a deal, but things happened relatively quickly after the players filed a suit that could have won them some $6 billion in damages.

“For us the litigation is something that just has to be dealt with,” Stern said. “It was not the reason for the settlement. The reason for the settlement was we’ve got fans, we’ve got players who would like to play and we’ve got others who are dependent on us. And it’s always been our goal to reach a deal that was fair to both sides and get us playing as soon as possible, but that took a little time.”

It finally yielded the second shortened season in NBA history, joining the 1998-99 lockout that reduced the schedule to 50 games. This time the league will miss 16 games off the normal schedule.

Though the deal’s expected to be approved, it may not be unanimous as there are factions of hard-liners in both camps who will be unhappy with substantive portions of the deal.

“Let’s all pray this turns out well,” Pacers forward Danny Granger wrote on Twitter.

But getting what the owners wanted took a toll. Stern, after more than 27 years as the league’s commissioner, hoped to close a deal much sooner but was committed for fighting for the owners’ wishes even at the risk of damaging his legacy. Hunter dealt with anger from agents and even questions from his own players about his strategy, wondering why it could so long for the players to use the threat of litigation to give them leverage that had otherwise eluded them.

The sides met just twice in the first two months of the lockout before stepping up the pace in September, when it was already too late to open camps on time. The sides tried meeting in small groups, large groups and even mediation, but nothing sparked compromise.

Things changed this week with the entrance of Jim Quinn, a former NBPA counsel who had good relationships on both sides. The meeting Friday was held at the office of his law firm, though he did not take part.

Hunter said the terms of the deal would come out shortly, preferring to keep them private until they could be shared with the players. They might not like the deal, but it will be better than what many of them feared. Resigned to possibly missing the season, some had signed deals overseas so they would have some paycheck.

Instead, they’re a step closer to returning home.

The Original Post is Located Here: NBA Could Be Back on TV by Christmas

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED THE LATEST AMERICAN HORROR STORY EPISODE!

It’s the mystery that AHS fans have been wondering about for the past eight episodes of FX’s thriller: Who is Rubber Man? Well we finally got our answer in the latest installment of the Ryan Murphy/Brad Falchuk creepfest. The man in the rubber fetish suit is…

Tate (Evan Peters)! Yes the ghostly son of Jessica Lange’s Constance and the boyfriend of Violet (Taissa Farmiga) is the fella who impregnated Violet’s mom, Vivien (Connie Britton), with twins. I’m fairly certain that a ghost/human spawn can’t bring anything but trouble. From the episode, viewers learned that Tate did the deed in order to grant original owner Nora (Lily Rabe) some peace after her own baby was dismembered and then transformed into the “infantata.” It’s safe to say that only AHS fans will appreciate or even understand the last couple sentences I’ve written. While EW normally chats with co-creator Ryan Murphy post-airing, this week we chatted Rubber Man himself, Evan Peters, on the totally twisted development.

Entertainment Weekly: When did you find out you were Rubber Man?
EVAN PETERS: Just that episode.

What did you think? Were you shocked?
I was shocked, but I was also grateful. I was thinking, “Wow that’s pretty cool. I guess I have to slime up and put on the rubber suit.”

What did the other castmembers think about you being Rubber Man? Were they shocked?
Yeah, I think everybody was pretty shocked. “Oh you’re Rubber Man? Oh my God. Wow. Oh you’re sick. Something’s wrong with you.”

Did you have to go to Syren, the L.A. fetish shop, like everyone else to be fitted for the costume?
Yeah I went for “Halloween Part I,” I believe. I though, “That would be interesting if I’m actually Rubber Man. But they can’t do that.” And then they did it and I was like, “Oh my God.”

How is it putting on that suit? I’ve heard it’s oddly cold.
It is. It’s like you’re naked when you walk around set because it’s just a layer of latex. It’s frustrating to put on because you have to lube up basically because if it gets caught on your skin…so you make sure you’re all nice and slick and then you get in there. You have to wear a robe on set or a jacket, so you’re not too cold.

So basically Tate is trying to appease Nora by giving her the baby she lost?
Yeah. I had that question too for Ryan. Basically the answer I got was he’s there to help. He sees that Nora’s soul is disturbed and is very sad. He has this sort of sweet spot for people like that. It resonates with him, so he wants to help them out and make sure they’re okay and peaceful. And since she’s dead and can’t leave the house, might as well give her what she wants so that hopefully she can be a little happier, instead of walking around crying all the time and wondering what was going on.

It’s just so twisted that you impregnated Vivien and Violet lost her virginity to you. Were you like, Wow this is twisted?
Yeah, I was like, “That’s a bummer.” You do this thing for this person because you’re trying to be nice, and then you find out the love of your life moved into the house.

I like the Hayden/Tate ghostly duo. Do you guys team up for more fun?
I thought that as well. I thought that was pretty cool. I don’t think there’s too much more in store for us. But it was pretty fun working with her — she’s great.

So will we see you in the rubber suit again?
Oh yeah. Yeah. [Laughs]

Has this been the wildest role you’ve ever had? What has this been like to play?
It’s been interesting to say the least. It’s been exhausting because you never know. As soon as you have your mind made up about something, you find something else out. So you’re kind of on edge all the time wondering what exactly have you done and what are you going to do so it’s been exhausting. I’m psyched for the season to be over with.

Follow Tim on Twitter: @EWTimStack

Read more:
EW’s ‘American Horror Story’ recaps
‘American Horror Story’: Where did Rubber Man get his trademark suit? — EXCLUSIVE VIDEO
‘American Horror Story’: Evan Peters dishes on Violet and Tate, shares his burning questions about the show

The Original Post is Located Here: ‘American Horror Story’: Rubber Man Revealed! We Talk to [SPOILER] About the Major Plot Twist!

Leverage’s season of consequences continues this Sunday. After years of what executive producer Dean Devlin calls “playing Robin Hood,” the team will, by the end of the season, feel the after effects. “Throughout the season we tried to bring back, ‘what happens when you play with fire?’ And it’s all going to culminate with the [two-part] season finale,” he said.

Before then, the next batch of episodes, beginning Nov. 27, will build on the introduction of Latimer, the investor who has been using to the team’s outcomes to make himself a lot of money. “We’re going to allow that to grow to its conclusion, but also to touch back on previous seasons and show how they all relate to what we’re trying to get to at the end of this year. There’s a lot of references — even a lot of references to the pilot–  in the season finale this year,” Devlin said.

Jobs and overarching mythology aside, this season has also seen a lot of personal growth among the team, including the formation of two fan-favorite couples — Hardison and Parker and Sophie and Nate. While many shows have and continue to play the “will they/won’t they game,” Devlin said he had no reservations about taking both couples to the next level because each has different needs and challenges. “Someone said to me a long time ago, which has always stuck with me, which is ‘Young love is all about patience, but mature love is all about compromise.’ And that’s really what these two couples are dealing with,” he says. “Parker and Hardison are trying to deal with passion that they have for each other, yet they have all these roadblocks to exploring that passion. On the other hand, we have the two adults of the show, who are clearly in love, but they have to learn how to compromise and in their personalities they have been uncompromising their entire life.”

The first episode back, which explores the underground world of secret university societies, will particularly challenge the younger set, while episode 2, a fun nod to NBC’s The Office, explores Sophie and Nate’s respective issues. (More on that in Spoiler Room.)

Meanwhile, the somewhat odd man out in this equation, Eliot, will be faced with “one of the most grueling  things we ever put him through” in the first episode back. “The thing that’s happening to Eliot is, Eliot suddenly finds himself caring about other people, which is something he hasn’t done for a long , long time,” says Devlin. “More and more he finds himself the big brother of everybody on the show and finds himself needing to take care of everybody and finding these emotional connections that he didn’t have before. So for him, he’s working on a level of fulfillment he’s never felt in his life. At the same time, there’s this enormous feeling of being uncomfortable. He’s never been a person that allows himself to show weakness or to show sympathy, or to show caring. But he’s overwhelmed with those feelings now for the first time in his life.” But as is often the case with sticky situations on Leverage, Eliot will find that “thing that saves him is the connection to his new-found family.”

Follow Sandra on Twitter: @EWSandraG

The Original Post is Located Here: ‘Leverage’ Boss Spills End-of-Season Secrets

Who will be the Last Man Standing to get Revenge for all those critics who, Once Upon a Time, needed a lesson or two on How to Be A Gentleman? Ooh, we could play this all day! Unfortunately, we’re running out of titles to riff on (if only NBC named it Rock Bottom with the Brian Williams instead of Rock Center) and frankly, the broadcast networks are thisclose to delivering their final verdicts on their fall fare. Midseason is just around the corner, you see, when there will be a whole lot of new shows to keep (or dump).

Here’s our verdict (and the most up-to-date viewership levels and ratings among adults 18-49) on what’s left:

New Girl (Fox): 5.0, 10 million.
Status: Fox was the first network to pick up a new show for a full season. We’re now focusing of that second year pickup, when we think her chances are rosy.

2 Broke Girls (CBS): 5.5 rating, 13.7 million.
Full season pickup. Notice the ratings: This is the highest rated new show of the 2011-12 season.

The X Factor (Fox): Wednesday, 4.4, 12.5 million; Thursday, 4.3, 12.6 million
Full season pickup.

Once Upon a Time (ABC): 4.7, 13.7 million.
Full season pickup. We’ll be brutally honest: After the middling launch for Pan Am and Revenge, we didn’t have high hopes for this high-concept drama from a couple of clever Lost writers. Sometimes, it’s a relief to be wrong. Show like this need to succeed if we want to see more genre shows in the future.

Terra Nova (Fox): 3.6, 10 million
Status: Fox executives already confirmed that it will complete its 13-hour run in December. The network will decide by the end of the year whether Terra Nova will get a second season. Though the dino drama is performing weaker than what the network wants, it’s still got a shot to return.

Last Man Standing (ABC): 3.7, 11.9 million.
Full season pickup. Not surprising: It was a big deal for ABC to get Tim Allen back. But with a new showrunner at the helm as of this month (last one left for personal reasons, new guy comes from Reba), job one is to keep refining Allen’s voice without boring viewers.

Suburgatory (ABC): 3.5, 10.1 million
Full season pickup

Person of Interest (CBS): 3.3, 13.8 million
Full season pickup

Revenge (ABC): 3.6, 10.5 million
Full season pickup. GOOD news for prime time soap fans.

Unforgettable (CBS): 3.0, 13.9 million
Full season pickup

Pan Am (ABC): 2.8, 8.3 million
Status: The period drama has settled at a modest number and, as a result, has yet to get a full season pickup. ABC might complete its run at 13 and postpone a final decision on its fate until May.

NEXT PAGE: The dark half: Allen Gregory, Grimm, Ringer, Prime Suspect and more!

The Original Post is Located Here: Death Watch 2011: Fall TV Survival Status Thanksgiving Weekend Edition

A lot of people seem to dislike this uncomfortable-looking attractive man — whom I’ve been calling Stevecrest — because he’s exceedingly abrupt as he tries and fails to ring around the circus that is the U.S. version of The X Factor. But you guys! I can’t help it. I am beginning to love Steve Jones.

This is a man so endearingly bumbling that he has called 15-year-old Astro “a nice man,” (without sarcasm, but it was a few weeks ago) and Howie Mandel a “top man,” (with just a bit of sarcasm, I believe). One time, after musical guest Rihanna had succeeded in slowly backing away from Steve and finally escaping, he called after her, “You glorious, glorious lady!”

I love that everything he has to come up with on the fly is just so…off. On Tuesday night, faced with the task of getting the judges to stop bickering about Drew, he bellowed, “THIS HAS TO STOP RIGHT NOW, PLEASE.” [Pause.] “THANKSGIVING.” And he bellows EVERYTHING.

As EW.com reader Josh put it, “He’s like a male, Welsh Samantha Harris.” Admittedly, this isn’t the most ringing endorsement I’ve ever read, but I look at it like this: Steve Jones is the only person on The X Factor who consistently makes me giggle. That’s definitely something. (Try harder, Simon Cowell! P.S. I don’t believe anything you ever say.)

If you need a much more convincing reason to give thanks for Steve Jones that might really nail it on the head…. .

This is from 2008's Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging.

Quick, tape measure, trade lives with me!

Annie on Twitter

Read more: ‘The X Factor’ on EW.com

Ask Annie anything about ‘The X Factor’ (or whatever) in the video player below. To see her answers to previous questions, click on the text links below the picture.

View the original article here

The Original Post is Located Here: ‘X Factor’: Yay, Steve Jones!

Tonight at 10 p.m., enjoy an all-new episode of The Soup. No, seriously, enjoy it. Because after tonight, E!’s beloved TV clip show moves to Wednesday nights.

This is not okay. I know here at PopWatch, we take television way too seriously. And I know that what I’m about to say automatically reserves me a spot in the Saddest People On Earth Club. But it was always nice to know that if I couldn’t find anyone to hang out with on Friday nights, I could always hang out with Joel McHale. The Soup was GOOD for a half hour of laughs, followed by, of course, a half hour of finding clips from the show to forward to your friends. Mankini, Courtney Stodden, spaghetti cat — such fun could not be found in any New York bar. (Some, however, might say otherwise.) The Soup was for us outcasts, those of us with nothing to do on Fridays who felt guilty about all the horrible television we watched. Yet, we were dying to talk about it with someone. So how satisfying was it to watch an episode of Rock of Love or Extreme Couponing and be able to pinpoint the exact clip that The Soup would excerpt? McHale, Mankini, intern Matt — these people simply got us. And we had them, every Friday night.

After all, The Soup is the perfect series for Friday nights. Not only does it serve as a solid recap show of the week that was, but it’s great television to turn on when you’re dying to turn your brain off. I find a dancing maxi pad hysterical come Friday night. In the name of Lou, how will I cope if I discover my sharp, post-Revenge brain doesn’t quite feel the same way on Wednesday? I simply would not be able to live, PopWatchers.

And that’s even if there’s space on my DVR for the series. Though South Park just wrapped its season, its return alongside Revenge leaves no room for a Wednesday Soup on at 10 p.m. I’m going to have to make a choice, PopWatchers. And since I can never pass up a helping of “Chat Stew,” I’ll have to wave goodbye to the Graysons, which means I’ll no longer be tapped into the “in” TV show of the year. But I suppose that’s okay: I can just find out what happened on The Soup.

But no: It’s still terrible, PopWatchers! Terrible! Are your spirits similarly destroyed over the loss of The Soup on Friday nights? Are you just going to watch it on Fridays anyway? And what does Greg Kelly think of all of this?! Chicken Tetrazzini!

Follow Kate on Twitter @KateWardEW

View the original article here

The Original Post is Located Here: ‘The Soup’: Wednesday Woe

“There’s gonna be some vicious s–t said on stage tonight,” promised a staffer on Comedy Central’s roast of Charlie Sheen. And he was right. Celebrity roasters took the dais for the much-buzzed-about special and open fired, mocking Sheen’s history of drug use and employing prostitutes, as well as allegations of the actor abusing women. Here’s EW’s slightly NSFW live blog from the Culver City event:

– Comedian Jeff Ross throws some tough punches: “Charlie’s meltdown was so bad Al Gore is making a documentary about it. Charlie’s nostrils are so snotty and full of coke he calls them ‘the Hilton sisters.’ …Charlie if you’re ‘winning,’ something is wrong with the scoreboard. If you’re winning, this must not be a child custody hearing. The only time your kids get to see you is in reruns — don’t you want to live to see their first 12 steps? [Sheen's ex wife] Brooke Mueller is not very bright unless Charlie throws a lamp at her. … Mike Tyson, your opponents spent more time bleeding in the corner than Charlie’s ex wives.”

– Host Seth MacFarlane takes the stage and starts in on Sheen, “a man who was great in two things 25 years ago.” He notes CBS’ Two and a Half Men will air a mock funeral for Sheen’s character during its premiere on the same night the Comedy Central roast airs but, “You can just wait a couple months and see the real thing.” MacFarlane then started to read an obituary he wrote for Sheen, saying the actor was found dead in his apartment, then stopped: “I just kinda just copied Amy Winehouse’s obituary,” adding he “only had to change a few things … like calling him a ‘talent who will be missed.’” Then MacFarlane said: “You’ve seen his movies [and] if you’re a prostitute you’ve seen him point a gun at your face while you try to get him hard. … Charlie, you claim to have ‘tiger blood,’ but after all the porn stars you’ve banged, it’s probably Tiger Wood’s blood … How do you get fired from Two and a Half Men? Do they haul you in and say, ‘Sorry, you don’t suck enough?’ … Why is there no [reality] show about the most dangerous show out there: Being an escort for Charlie Sheen. How long must we wait for an episode of Deadliest Snatch?”

– Jon Lovitz takes the dias: “How much blow can Charlie Sheen do? Enough to kill Two and a Half Men” … Charlie is still close to all his exes. Why he just took Brooke Mueller to Mexico where he banged her ass so hard three bags of coke fell out.” Lovitz also threw a shot at fellow roaster, Private Practice star Kate Walsh: “Kate could play younger roles but she lacks one thing: moisture.”

– Walsh is introduced by MacFarlane as “the hottest actress of 2002.” Walsh shoots back: “The only difference between [Seth] and the hooker Charlie locked in the closet is the hooker eventually came out.” Then: “Charlie, you’re an incredible medical specimen, one of the benefits of waking up at the crack of crack.” And then: “It’s amazing, after abusing your lungs, liver and kidneys, the only thing you’ve had removed is your kids.” (And that one gets an ohhhh from the audience).

Comedian Anthony Jeselnik starts out with a low blow, referencing the actor taking over Spin City: “The only reason you got on TV in the first place is because God hates Michael J. Fox … You dropped out of school faster than Casey Anthony’s kid … you’ve convinced more woman to get abortions than the pre-natal test for Down syndrome.”

– Mike Tyson is on stage. He keeps nervously playing with his jacket, his jokes have a profane poetry slam theme. This segment is going to be edited pretty heavily. If more than 90 seconds of this makes it on the air, I’d be surprised. “This wife beating coke head who claims he’s a rock star from Mars, if he were black he’d be behind bars” — like that.

– Steve-O starts off by mocking the low-wattage dias: “The last time this many nobodies got roasted at least the band Great White was playing … Then takes on Sheen: “Your nose is like my ass, there’s nothing you won’t shove up there … You do have magical powers: your wife, your job, your teeth … Charlie still hasn’t hit rock bottom, he’s is looking forward to it though because he thinks there’s a rock there.”

– Comedian Amy Schumer mocks the dias first, Tyson (“You have a slutty lower back tattoo on your face”) and William Shatner (I’ve seen less bloated men dragged out of rivers”). Then hits Sheen: “There’s no denying how famous you are. It was international news when you ruined the lives of those two girls living with you, your daughters … You’re just like Bruce Willis — you were big in the 80s and now your old slot is being filled by Ashton Kutcher.”

– MacFarlane introduces Shatner as “the guy who played Captain Kirk on Star Trek before it looked like gay guys working in a Mac store.” Shatner replied by telling the audience, “keep it going for Chaz Bono.” Shatner then gets on Sheen: “I know another guy who was kind to whores and he got crucified by Jews too …  I’ve sex in space with green women; you’ve had sex with blue women because they couldn’t handle their drugs… Would it kill you to open a door for [a woman] before locking her in a closet? … “

– And FINALLY …. Charlie Sheen himself, giving his rebuttle: “Until tonight I never realized how f–ked up I was. I just thought I was having fun … Seth MacFarlane, dude to dude, what’s Comic-Con p—sy like? Maybe some day I’ll get to f–k a fat chick with Spock ears and Funyun breath … Kate Walsh, I don’t know anybody who watches your show, because I date woman who can still get their period. When the show gets cancelled it’s the worst news your fan will hear until her cat gets Leukemia. … Mike Tyson never had to bother with porn stars, if he wanted somebody to suck him dry he just called Don King … Jon Lovitz, just last week we chatted in the backyard and had a few laughs, then he got back on the mower and drove off … Amy Schumer, you really f–ked me tonight, which is great because I’m into anonymous sex, and nobody is more anonymous than you… I asked William Shatner to be here because I needed some clean urine; I had to wring it out of the diaper, but it did its job” … and concluded: “Once again, I come out unscathed. You can’t hurt me. I can’t kill me … Did you really think your little jokes were going to hurt me? I did porn stars I did drugs. Then I did the one thing everybody in America wishes he could do. I told my boss to f–k off. And then it was gone … I’m done with ‘the winning’ because I’ve already won.”

Read more:
Charlie Sheen roast will be a ‘comedy intervention’
Jon Cryer reveals ‘Men’ details: Alan is Ashton’s love mentor, Charlie’s death addressed all season — EXCLUSIVE
Charlie Sheen’s first Comedy Central roast teaser — VIDEO

View the original article here

The Original Post is Located Here: Charlie Sheen Roast: ‘I Already Won’

Has it really been seven years since Alexander Payne’s last film? I thought Sideways (2004) was the most exquisite American romantic comedy since Annie Hall, and though it was only Payne’s third high-profile feature (after About Schmidt and Election), it locked in the essential elements of the Payne style: the naturalistic blend of humanity and wit (think ’80s Jonathan Demme meets Preston Sturges meets Jean Renoir), the New New Hollywood classicism that’s bubbly and spontaneous but always masterfully controlled, the sense that every story isn’t just a story but a journey. About Schmidt was a road movie, and Sideways started out as one — but even when Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church got to California wine country and parked themselves there, it felt as if they kept moving, because their drunken cracked voyage of discovery surprised and delighted you in every scene. It was a road movie of the soul.

So is The Descendants, Payne’s long-awaited new film, which premiered at Toronto on Saturday (it’s based on a novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings). In a funny way, Payne has become the Stanley Kubrick of serious American comedy: He takes forever to make a movie, searching, every time (as Kubrick did), for the perfect book to adapt. But when he finally finds it and gets rolling, he turns each film into a fully realized and inhabited universe unto itself. The Descendants is another beautifully chiseled gem — sharp, funny, generous, moving — that writes its own rules as much as About Schmidt or Sideways did. I’ll say right off that I didn’t fall in love with it the way I did Sideways, but watching this movie click together in its own brittle, original fashion is a richly satisfying experience. Almost everything about it seems, well, novel: the lived-in, slightly grungy urban Hawaii settings (it’s about a family that has been on the islands for generations); the performance of George Clooney as Matt King, a rumpled lawyer in ugly tropical shirts, geeky-dad braided belts, and a normal-schmo haircut who has lost any vital connection to his family. And then there’s the premise, which is so straightforward in its everyday darkness that, at first, it seems almost a bit…challenging.

Before the credits, we see a woman standing, smiling in The Sun, on a motorboat. It’s Matt’s wife, who, as we soon learn, was thrown from that boat and now lies in a hospital bed seriously injured. As the movie opens, she’s in a coma, and the news may be worse than that. The Descendants isn’t a when is she going to wake up? movie. It’s something with a much more dire tug: an oh my God she’s gonna die and what are we going to do? movie.

The “we,” in this case, is Matt and his two daughters: 10-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller), who’s a happy-go-lucky brat, and 17-year-old Alexandra (Shailene Woodley, about whom you’re going to be hearing a lot), who’s such an unhappy brat that she’s been sent off to boarding school, where she favors drunken nights on the beach. The more we learn about this family, the more impossibly messed-up we can see that they are. Yet Matt, who’s sitting on a family trust that he’s too conservative, and maybe too stingy, to use (the family owns the last spectacular virgin beach land in The State), isn’t just thrown into the abyss by his wife’s coma. He’s slapped in the face and woken up. The Descendants has been made with the deceptively simple, random flow of an improvised journey, and though some of the things that happen in it sound conventional, the situations keep twisting, whether it’s the comical hunting down of an adulterous lover or the selling off of that trust on behalf of a group of breezy, greedy cousins.

All the acting is freshly minted, from Robert Forster as a father-in-law so cantankerous it takes you a moment to notice that everything he says is true to Shailene Woodley, who makes the teenage Alexandra such a sharp, beguiling presence that she seems to wash away the residue of a thousand bogus movie adolescents. But it’s George Clooney, still a rascal, with the gleam in his eye now heightened, shockingly, by traces of fear, who carries the movie on his noble weary shoulders. I don’t think he’s necessarily better here than he was in Up in the Air, but that was the movie that taught us it wasn’t a lie to feel George Clooney’s pain. In The Descendants, he draws on that trust. He gives a pitch-perfect performance as a man woken up, for the first time in years, by the immensity of his loss. His big “Goodbye” scene will be hailed by everyone as a classic Oscar-bait moment, and it is — but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a great moment, too. It turns sentimentality into something like grace.

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It’s worth asking the question: Fifteen years after Welcome to the Dollhouse (1996), why is Todd Solondz, in his new film, Dark Horse, still dicking around with a character who’s such a sad, arrested, noxiously clueless idiot-loser that he makes George Constanza look like George Clooney? Abe (Jordan Gelber), at 35, is an eager, pudge-bellied dolt who still lives at home with his parents, where he stuffs his room with action figures and models of The Simpsons. He works for his father (Christopher Walken, all scowls and a bad toupee) as a lowly office accountant, blames everyone but himself for his problems, and tosses empty Diet Coke cans into wastebaskets two feet away as if he were shooting “cool” game-winning three-pointers. (He also drives a giant yellow Hummer, which I guess is supposed to symbolize The Corruption Of Our Values.)

This is the kind of character who’s meant to make us squirm, and squirm I did — but not because Abe the excruciating junk-culture sad sack touches the raw nerve of our desperation (the way that the characters in Dollhouse and Happiness did). I squirmed because the real deluded one is now Todd Solondz, who is so stuck in his outdated loser tropes (depressive insecure girls, like the one played here by Selma Blair; the vulgarity of middle-class Jewish New Jersey; helpless schlubs who don’t know how to dress, make small talk, or ask someone out on a date) that he’s no longer connecting with his era. He still knows how to hold you as a filmmaker: Scene for scene, Dark Horse plays — certainly better than Solondz’ last film, the abysmal Happiness sequel Life During Wartime. By the end, though, when he starts to enter the realm of Solondzian metaphysics (dreams within dreams, etc.), it’s as if he’d realized that this material wouldn’t stand up on its own. It’s time for Todd Solondz to stop turning his filmmaking into a contest of “How pathetic can I make my characters?” and to stop confusing that toxic contest with artistic integrity.

Follow Owen on Twitter: @OwenGleiberman

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The Original Post is Located Here: Toronto: Hail ‘the Descendants’

The Creative Arts Emmy Awards — you know, that other Emmy ceremony — handed out dozens of awards Saturday night in Los Angeles before the upcoming primetime ceremony, airing live on Fox Sept. 18.

The night’s biggest recipients were Gwyneth Paltrow, who won an Emmy for her guest starring role on Glee,  as well as Justin Timberlake, who took a statue for his most recent hosting gig on Saturday Night Live. Deadliest Catch was the most sentimental winner: The reality show (which submitted Capt. Phil Harris’ final episode) won an award for outstanding non-competition reality show. It also won the gold in categories like best cinematography and picture editing.

Survivor‘s Jeff Probst took home another statue for best reality show host. The night’s other notable recipients included Loretta Devine (outstanding guest star, Grey’s Anatomy), Paul McCrane (oustanding guest star, Harry’s Law) American Masters (outstanding nonfiction series) and Futurama (outstanding animated program). And hey, The Walking Dead earned some gold for its great work with prosthetics.

Overall, HBO won the most awards with 15, followed by PBS (10) and Fox (9). Among shows, Boardwalk Empire took the most, followed by Deadliest Catch (4) and Gettysburg (4). The awards will air on Reelz Channel Saturday, Sept. 17.

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The Original Post is Located Here: Gwyneth, Timberlake Win Emmys

9/11: The Days After is a remarkable documentary airing on the History channel twice tonight, and will be repeated on September 11. Doing away with narration, it offers up a collection of footage filmed in the immediate wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — footage shot by amateurs, and unedited film taken by TV news crews. Director-producers Seth Skundrick and Nicole Rittenmeyer have added immeasurably to the chronicle of this period of history.

The contrast between the raw, often unprofessional quality of the footage and the filmmakers’ artful editing of their material creates its own tension. There’s not a moment of false drama here. We see so many people volunteering to help — people donating blood, hammering together wooden pallets that will serve as stretchers for the wounded or the dead; parents hurrying to schools to fetch their children and unguarded moments when police and firefighters try to organize rescue efforts, to impose some sense in a world gone senseless, and simply stop and cry.

In the absence of narration, we hear messages left on answering machines and cell phones; calls to radio talk shows that speak hate toward Muslims one moment, and, at other times, callers tell the tales of bravery and sacrifice they have witnessed. We catch bits of conversation and declarations that, while seemingly random, cohere to tell a story: “It’s no longer a rescue effort, it’s a job site.” “Found a body — got a body here!” “Daddy, is the Empire State Building still here?”

For anyone who wasn’t in Manhattan during that awful period, 9/11: The Days After is an amazingly vivid portrait of what the city was like: in shock, in mourning, in fear, in sadness, in anger, in despair, in hope.

If you didn’t see 9/11: The Days After on the History channel on Friday night, try to catch it when it airs again on Saturday at 1 a.m. and Sunday night, 6:30 p.m., EST.

Twitter: @kentucker

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The Original Post is Located Here: ’9/11: The Days After’: Essential TV