BuzzSugar

What Did You Think of Andy Samberg's Movie Awards Hosting?

BuzzSugar — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:45:41 -0700

In his first turn as host of the MTV Movie Awards, Andy Samberg did some rapping, played a vampire in a New Moon parody, recruited Will Ferrell for a special digital short (see it below), and had his own off-color SNL songs performed by a chorus including LeAnn Rimes and Forest Whitaker. How do you think his hosting worked out?

MTV Shows

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Buzz News Roundup, 3/16

BuzzSugar — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:30:39 -0700

Andy Samberg will host the 2009 MTV Movie Awards on May 31. - PopSugar
The Sci Fi Channel is changing its name to Syfy in July, in part to sound less geeky. - TV Week
Tickets for Michael Jackson's run of 50 shows in London sold out in hours on Friday. - Billboard
Chevy Chase will star with Joel McHale in NBC's Community pilot, while Richard Dreyfuss will play opposite Jason Biggs in Happiness Isn't Everything. - TV Guide
Actor Ron Silver died Sunday at the age of 62. - TV.com
The Pixies are back in action this Summer with a series of European concert dates. - Billboard
ABC has announced its season finale dates (and the return of Ugly Betty), while NBC has a slew of new shows coming this Summer. - The Futon Critic

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What to Download: New Music Today

BuzzSugar — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:30:52 -0800

Tuesdays are big in entertainmentville: Not only do all the new DVD releases hit Netflix, but new music also pours into stores. So I take a spin through each week's music releases and pick out some albums and tracks worthy of a download. In addition to my picks below, Lily Allen's new album hits stores today as well. Here are today's selections:

From the folks who brought you "J**z in My Pants": The Lonely Island (TLI), founded by Andy Samberg and friends, has released its first album and includes greatest hits like "Dick In a Box" featuring Justin Timberlake and "Lazy Sunday" featuring Chris Parnell. But there are so many new songs that are equally hysterical and surprisingly catchy. No, seriously - I want to dance to "Boombox", which features Julian Casablancas, lead singer of The Strokes. The collaborations go on and on including: Norah Jones, Jack Black, and T-Pain.

Live + music = good: Live From the Artists Den is a concert series turned television show, where it airs I do not know (see that? Rhyming). They manage to snag some pretty great artists to perform in some cool venues and now there's a CD compilation of these live performances. The artists on this particular volume include The Hold Steady performing "Sequestered in Memphis," Ani DiFranco performing "Present/Infact," and Aimee Mann performing "31 Today." The sound quality is fantastic! I highly recommend the download.

It's a great day for music. Two more exciting picks up next so read more!

Gone solo: Man oh man, do I enjoy Black Keys, so I've been patiently waiting for Dan Auerbach's solo venture to come out and I'm happy to report that so far I like it. His voice sounds great and each of the bluesy tunes has a little dusting of psychedelia. His sexy electric guitar is something I could listen to all day long. Check out "Whispered Words" and a very beautiful and sparse song titled "When the Night Comes."

Queen of hearts: Aw, India Arie. Sometimes her lyrics are a little (hmm, how to put this. . .) obvious, I guess, but I still can't resist her empowering music. Listening to an album of hers makes me feel like I'm starring in my own reality show and the opening credits are rolling. But anyway, check out the uplifting track "Therapy", and the very pretty "Long Goodbye".

Movie Preview: I Love You, Man

BuzzSugar — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:32:21 -0800

In theory, I think the premise for I Love You, Man is funny and cute: A guy (Paul Rudd) gets engaged to his lady (Rashida Jones - yay for her having more movie roles!) but he doesn't have a best guy friend so he basically goes on a manfriend-hunt to lock down a best man for the wedding.

The trailer features some funny folks (Jason Segel, Andy Samberg, Thomas Lennon) and people I just love seeing pretty much anytime (JK Simmons), and yet, it doesn't really make me laugh. Also (and I'm assuming this is explained in the movie), why doesn't he just ask his brother (Samberg) to be his best man, instead of asking his brother for tips on going on man dates to find some guy he barely knows to be his best man? Time will tell, I suppose. I do appreciate the use of the Pixies' "Here Comes Your Man" in the trailer, anyway.

I Love You, Man opens March 20. To check out the trailer, read more.

Rewind: This Week's Buzz

BuzzSugar — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 06:30:00 -0700

Happy August! I kicked off the last full month of summer by telling you about some things I'm craving right now.
So far, I'm digging the Bob Dylan remix, and I really like this Matt Pond PA song, too. Carrie Underwood's new single, not so much.
Looking forward to fall TV? I've got some early thoughts on "Bionic Woman" and "New Amsterdam" and some hints about what's next for "Heroes."
I'm wondering if you read spoilers, if you think Jimmy Fallon could be a late-night host, and whether you'd rather read the book or see the movie first.
Speaking of books into movies, the Lovely Bones adaptation has some more new cast members, while Cameron Diaz is taking on My Sister's Keeper.
Can you make heads or tails of the Dharma video Phasekitty saw at Comic-Con?
I might not have liked Andy Samberg's movie much, but he and his friends were charming and funny when I interviewed them in person. So was Omar Epps.
We heard about a few disastrous projects this week: Maxim's movies, the now straight-to-DVD Blonde Ambition, and Simon Cowell's big-screen "American Idol."
Have you given any more thought to how you'd recast "Roseanne"?

Hot Rod: More Like Lukewarm Rod

BuzzSugar — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 13:01:11 -0700

After meeting the funny, friendly Andy Samberg and his buddies ("The Dudes") I wanted very much to give Hot Rod a great review. But I just can't do it. Luckily, Samberg himself said once in a separate interview that he knows the movie will get bad reviews. So... woo hoo! I can write this guilt-free.

The premise of Hot Rod is pretty funny, really. Rod Kimble (Samberg) gets no respect from his surly stepfather Frank (Ian McShane). So when he learns that Frank will die unless he gets an expensive heart transplant, Rod vows to raise the money to get Frank a new heart so he can then kick his ass and prove that he's a man. Rod and his buddies cook up a plan for a fundraising event in which Rod will jump his motorbike over a bunch of buses. Montages set to '80s music ensue. That's just the plot, though, so to see what I thought of the movie, read more

Despite not having written the movie, the entire thing has the look and feel of one of Samberg and Friends' "SNL" shorts that goes on for way, way too long. It was originally written as a vehicle for Will Ferrell, and indeed it seems just like a Will Ferrell movie... without Will Ferrell. I think Will Ferrell can sell through a lot of poor scripts just on his fully committed, blithely innocent charm. Andy Samberg... not so much. It's funny that Samberg's buddy and Hot Rod director Akiva Schaffer claims to have tweaked the script to make it more appropriate to Samberg's humor because they didn't want it to be "like Samberg doing a Will Ferrell impression." Because that's exactly what it seems to be.

I enjoyed the allusions to 80s movies - all the synth music, the homages to Rad and Footloose, the wacky low-budget tone. And I love anything Isla Fisher does, though as the generic "girl" part in the movie she's insultingly underused. The focus isn't on her at all, but on these dudes and their gimmicky antics. The most entertaining and relaxed scenes are those that include "Arrested Development"'s Will Arnett whose breezy ability to play the ultimate douchebag comes in handy once again.

Andy Samberg has a great comedic mind for writing "SNL" shorts ("Dick in a Box" was hilarious, for example), but he isn't commanding enough to be the lead in a feature film. In fact, he doesn't seem particularly comfortable playing the lead in a feature film. Next time someone writes a Will Ferrell film, I hope they can get Will Ferrell to be in it.

Photos courtesy of Paramount

Buzz Interview: Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer

BuzzSugar — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 04:30:00 -0700

Andy Samberg and his friends/Lonely Island cohorts Jorma Taccone (pictured, right) and Akiva Schaffer (pictured, middle) have somehow figured out how to achieve the greatest thing ever. Growing up together in Berkeley, California, the three are now working together on "Saturday Night Live" and are about to release their first feature film, Hot Rod, this Friday. So, basically they figured out how to get paid to make jokes with their high school buddies.

Sure, we were there to talk up Hot Rod, which Akiva directed and which stars Andy and Jorma. But really it started to feel like I was back cracking jokes and shooting the breeze with my old buddies, so relaxed and fun was this interview. I also learned a great deal about these smart, fun guys, including the fact that they call themselves "The Dudes" (formerly "The Fellas"), they have a love of all things 1986, and that being on "Saturday Night Live" was Andy's childhood dream. They are fully responsible for bringing "Dick in a Box" to the world, and have been rewarded with an Emmy nomination in the Outstanding Original Music And Lyrics category. Check out all the awesome other stuff I learned about this trio of dudes...

Q. You guys have been friends since junior high school, so before there was Lonely Island, there was…

Jorma: The world didn’t even exist before Lonely Island. (laughs)

Akiva: We were actually born in Berkeley, we all went to Berkeley High School… We got to high school and we all became friends and it basically was maybe eight dudes, and just like we call ourselves "The Dudes" now, in high school we called ourselves "The Fellas." We’ve really matured and grown. (laughs) Pretty much when you’re in high school your dream is to figure out who’s going to pay you to just joke around with your friends from high school, and the three of us went off and the other five are like chemists and studied American Studies in Michigan and are getting their PhDs… so they blew it. They didn’t make it.

Andy: I love that you said, “Eight dudes called themselves The Fellas… before they became The Dudes.” (laughs)

Much more interview if you read more

Q. I know you went to UCSC and I was wondering what it was like trying to have a sense of humor in a town that sometimes can be on the sensitive side.

Andy: We were pretty well trained in that growing up in Berkeley, though. If you’re at all a sarcastic person growing up in that environment of Berkeley or even Santa Cruz, I mean, there’s a lot to be sarcastic about, certainly.

Q. You guys were really involved in the rise of YouTube... What was that like?

Jorma: It is funny because we are tied to like, the rise of YouTube, but I think that was just because we were doing our own shorts and producing them ourselves long before maybe other people were, but… if it wasn’t us it would have been somebody else, YouTube would still be flourishing.

Akiva: Other videos have gotten popular on there after our, after "Lazy Sunday," so one of them at least would have drawn everybody over there. But we got a lot of free press out of the fact that they were tied because with the rise of YouTube we always had to be a part of that story, so it worked out to be pretty good press.

Andy: The way you say that, “the rise of YouTube” –

Akiva: I would never say, “the rise of us,” but “the rise of YouTube” –

Andy: It sounds really scary like (gravelly voice) “the rise of YouTube…”

Q. In the earlier Lonely Island stuff, all three of you did stuff onscreen. Was there ever a time when you made the conscious decision to make Andy "the face," the guy who’s out there?

Akiva: No, Lorne Michaels made that decision long ago. (laughs) Because Andy’s the one, (turns to Andy) you’re the one since you were whatever age, had your own dream of being on "SNL" … I mean, it would be truly sad if one of us was the face on "SNL" and you were the one writing since you’re the one that… that’s what you’ve always wanted.

Andy: I did go, the one thing I did outside of these guys is stand-up, I did for seven years. These guys were working on their own stuff and I would drag my ass out to these terrible clubs and did stuff which I think in my audition for the show came in very, very handy. But, that being said, I would love to see these two onscreen a lot more.

Q. What did you learn from doing the shorts ("Dick in a Box," "Lazy Sunday") that you then applied to Hot Rod?

Akiva: Well, doing all the shorts that we’ve been doing since we decided, since we moved to Tinseltown, as we call it -

Andy: We do NOT call it Tinseltown!

Akiva: Just I call it that, then.

Andy: He would give the DMV his address and it would say "Tinseltown, USA."

Akiva: But, doing all those shorts, I was amazed how much on the set of a movie, once you realize what the 200 people around you are actually doing, and you know their names and you’re not as intimidated by the buzzing around of the 200 people, like, the wardrobe people are just worrying about wardrobe, the lighting people are just worrying about lights, how much it would actually boil right back down to the three of us and a couple of friends. Once everything got quiet and it was time to actually shoot, there was really, actually kinda no difference between doing a short and doing this thing in terms of like, you’re just trying to make the little scenes work. It gets very small right after it gets very big.

Q. How did the movie come about?

Akiva: Well, we didn’t write the movie. This woman Pam Brady had written it and she’s like a, had written for the "South Park" series, she co-wrote the South Park Movie, co-wrote Team America with Matt and Trey. And before we were even asked she wrote it for Lorne and for Paramount and then when we got there, first to Andy they were like, “Andy, why don’t you read it see if it appeals to you?” And then after "Lazy Sunday" it became, “Hey, the three of you guys why don’t you read it?”

Q. How did you guys change the script to make it more specifically geared to your talents?

Akiva: Well, she had written it for Will Farrell, and it had been positioned that it would be a vehicle for him and … it was very much obviously for Will Ferrell. When you read it you couldn’t picture anybody else in the movie but Will Ferrell, there were just these lines that he very much made his persona over the years. So, if [Andy] had just done those lines it would have been like, an impression of Will Ferrell. So, we had to go through... and kinda tweak it a lot just to get it to feel like it was ours, and his, and all that kind of stuff.

Q. Andy, how many of the stunts in Hot Rod did you do yourself?

Andy: I mean, I was on the bike a lot, I didn’t ever get airborne…

Jorma: Well, you went off that curb! You got some air, about six inches.

Andy: Yeah, about as much air as I could get... You know, I had never ridden a motorbike, and I was sort of terrible on any sort of wheels to start with - you name it, I crashed on it badly as a kid. So, I was starting from scratch and by that measurement, I did a lot of stuff.

Akiva: You didn’t have to be very good on it to sell the character, he wasn’t supposed to be much of an expert.

Andy: But that being said, what we realized and what we had explained to us is the tricky thing about the stunts in the movie is they all go wrong. And it’s a lot harder to make something look like it’s terribly awry but still be safe. So, I wasn’t allowed to do stuff mostly and to be honest it was the smart move. I think the one I thought I could actually do and looking back I’m SO glad I didn’t do is the pool one. (In the movie, Andy's character tries to jump the motorbike over a pool.) It’s like, what? It’s water! I’ll be fine. But it’s like, “You will die.” The other guy did it and I was like, (whispers) “Holy shit, I’m glad I didn’t do that one.”

Q. Is there a roster of '80s movies that you would recommend as preparatory viewing for this film?

Akiva: Well, Rad. That movie was influential on so many levels. You guys all know Rad?

(Everyone at the table nods.)

Andy: Oh, wow, we gotta go get a beer.

Akiva: It is a rare thing to have eight people at a table together and they all know what Rad is.

Andy: There’s more people [who know it] than I was expecting, you know, there are always one or two people who come in and are like, “So, it was Rad on purpose, right?”

Q. Any others?

Akiva: Well, Footloose obviously. We just wanted it to feel like thousands of '80s movies, like, this is nothing like E.T. but we wanted it to kind of have the tonal quality, picture-wise of E.T. just to kind of remind you of, it reminds us of the movies of our childhood.

Jorma: Just the fact that that Europe album, The Final Countdown, came out in 1986 and Rad came out in 1986, I’m starting to think that maybe 1986 is my favorite year ever.

Andy: I remember being a young lad and being like 1986 is my favorite year so far!

Q. What’s next for you guys?

Akiva: Well, the show ("SNL") starts back up again at the end of September. So we’re going back to that, for now.

Q. How involved are you with the writing process when it comes to the shorts on "SNL"?

Andy: The majority of [the shorts] are written by the three of us.

Q. Do you think you’ll always want to stick together?

Akiva: For a while. Yeah.

Andy: I definitely do. We bail each other out way too often.

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Movie Preview: Hot Rod

BuzzSugar — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:07:15 -0700

Well, it's no Knocked Up, but the new trailer for Hot Rod starring Andy Samberg and opening August 3 makes it look like a perfectly respectable summer comedy.

So what, exactly, does it have going for it? I'm glad you asked:

Isla Fisher
Will Arnett
For all those who got my reference to the 1986 movie Rad in the Top Ten Ladies of Summer post I did, this is the movie I was talking about! However, to clarify, I was a little off on the details: Hot Rod has more to do with motorbike stunts, not BMX racing. Still cool, though!

To have a few chuckles, read more

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Justin Timberlake's Special SNL Gift

BuzzSugar — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 09:42:45 -0800

I'll be the first to admit that "Saturday Night Live" has pretty much sucked lately, but who knew Justin Timberlake would save the day? His performance as the host and musical guest proved that-unlike most musicians who host "SNL"-Timberlake should do more comedy. If you missed the show, you can watch a few of the sketches on NBC's web site.

Or, check out this clip below of JT's hilarious music video parody, "Dick in a Box." He and Andy Samberg play a Color Me Bad-type band gone really bad. Happy holidays!

Buzz-Worthy Video: Joseph Gordon-Levitt Mellows Out

BuzzSugar — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:30:41 -0800

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, so you know I was pysched to watch him play host on SNL this weekend. And boy, did the guy come prepared. He kicked things off with a ridiculously impressive singing-and-dancing performance of "Make 'Em Laugh" from Singin' in the Rain, but my favorite skit of the night was "The Mellow Show." Hosted by Andy Samberg as Jack Johnson and featuring Bill Hader as Dave Matthews, the guys poked fun at some of the music industry's most notoriously laid-back guitar strummers.

JGL fit right in as Jason Mraz, complete with fedora. Check out the video below for even more of Gordon-Levitt's singing skills, and be sure to keep watching for a cameo by Dave Matthews himself! To see it, just read more.