Illusionist and endurance artist David Blaine has a history of doing some pretty freaky things in the name of entertainment — last year, he purposely got electrocuted by one million volts.
Blaine is once again testing the limits in a new ABC special.
Premiering last night, "Real Or Magic" features Blaine performing his magic skills in front of random street crowds and a range of celebrities — everyone from Psy and Macklemore to Robert DeNiro and Emmy Rossum.
Perhaps one of the best celebrity reactions came from Ricky Gervais after Blaine inserted a really long needle into his upper arm, inflicting a puncture wound that oddly didn't cause any pain or damage to Blaine's skin.
Gervais pretty much lost it.
"This is mental!" he said. "You're a maniac. That's the worst thing I've ever seen in my entire life. What are you doing?"
Take a look at Ricky Gervais's full reaction here.
Blaine then moved on to a series of other celebrities, puncturing his hand with an ice pick in front of the likes of Will Smith and wife Jada Pinkett Smith, Aaron Paul, Bryan Cranston, and Kanye West.
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith jumped into each others arms.
Hipsters aren't the only group flocking to Brooklyn.
The borough has also become a destination for celebrities who are looking to live "under the radar."
With its low-key bars, amazing restaurants, and vast cultural offerings, it has plenty to offer.
Brooklyn also has a ton of gorgeous (and pricey) brownstones that offer celebs both space and privacy.
We discovered where some of the most famous faces in Brooklyn call home, from the Williamsburg waterfront all the way down to Windsor Terrace below Prospect Park.
When he's in NYC, actor Ed Westwick stays at the apartment he rents at The Edge, a Williamsburg highrise with a spa, “movement studio,” and a virtual golf system.
Anne Hathaway is currently trying to sell her apartment in DUMBO's famous clocktower for $4.5 million. Page Six says she has not one, but two units in the building (one of which she uses like a closet).
Lena Dunham has been sniffing around some more high-end Brooklyn real estate, but as far as we know, she still lives in a Brooklyn Heights apartment she bought last year.
So, how did the networks choose to divide up their broadcasting time? Pew Research Center has crunched the numbers, analyzing one hour of midday and three hours of prime-time programming each day.
The average American television watcher, however, may not have realized that not only is the song a tame version of the infamous "narcocorrido" genre, but also the genre is a multi-million industry in both Mexico and America. Put simply, Mexican drug cartel culture is cool.
A new documentary by photojournalist Shaul Schwarz, called "Narco Cultura," delves into this controversial subject.
The film profiles two very different people — Edgar, the Mexican-American singer of the popular narcocorrido group BuKnas de Culican, and Richie, a CSI investigator over the border in Juarez, Mexico. One lives in relative security in Los Angeles, making good money recording songs that glamorize the lives of violent cartel members, while the other lives across the border, cleaning up bodies while himself under the constant threat of murder.
The film is not meant to blame Edgar, Schwarz told Business Insider, but rather to portray just how deeply narco culture has ingrained itself in Mexico, and how the culture wouldn't exist without America's appetite for drugs and the ineffectual U.S. drug war that seeks to stem the flow over the border.
"I’m mad with [narco culture]. I’m mad with them," Schwarz says. "But I also understand that our messed up policies have really opened the door to this. And these kids are just products of our failed policy to me."
"Let’s take a 12-year-old in Juarez," Schwarz explains, "he sees his mother work for 5 dollars a day slaving at some factory. And yet the guys, the 16-year-olds driving with a big pickup truck, if he just does them a little tiny favor — just store this gun or just look out for when that truck is leaving or where the border patrol is — he’ll get a hundred bucks under the table."
Edgar himself is a product of this culture. Schwarz says that whenever he returned from filming in Juarez, Edgar would excitedly ask to see the footage from over the border. "He sings about it but he’s never seen a body," Schwarz says.
While Schwarz believes that the popularity of narcocorridos may have peaked, he says this culture has had an immense impact even in America. Popular narcocorrido songs are sold in Walmart, and one popular Mexican singer, El Komander, has more than 3.5 million fans on Facebook. Schwarz believes a sense of injustice helps explains the popularity of the music, and he admits he was surprised to find that even CSI investigators would listen to them on the way to murder scenes — even Richie, his Mexican subject, listens to the songs that glamorize cartel violence.
There is a clear disconnect, however, between the songs and the reality of the narco violence. In perhaps the film's most memorable segment, Schwarz follows Edgar on his first trip to Mexico, where he travels deep in the territory of the Sinaloa cartel. The trip, full of drugs and guns, takes a scary turn when BuKnas de Culican are invited to perform at the home of a local drug lord. Even Schwartz, a veteran war photographer, was forced to admit the situation may have been too dangerous and left as the band prepared to play.
"People don’t really get it," he explains. "These cartels are not the John Gotti family, they are not Bloods or Crips, they are armies of extremely structured extremely deadly people. The Sinaloa cartel makes more money in a week than the John Gotti family made in 30 years of Mafia."
When I asked what the film's participants thought about the film, he admits that, while both were relatively happy, Edgar was fearful of the reaction. In at least one interview, the BuKnas de Culican has expressed remorse about his lifestyle and said he would stop writing narcocorridos.
Schwartz, however, isn't so sure. "I think he will write whatever sells," he explains.
"Narco Cultura" was featured at the 2013 Sundance and Berlin film festivals and will open in New York on Friday, November 22 at the AMC Empire 25 and in Miami. A national rollout will follow. You can see a clip of BuKnas de Culican in action below:
Ashton Kutcher lashed out at Wal-Mart on Twitter Wednesday over the company's low wages.
"Walmart is your profit margin so important you can't Pay Your Employees enough to be above the poverty line?" Kutcher tweeted with a link to a news article about an Ohio Wal-Mart's Thanksgiving food drive for employees.
Walmart's twitter account responded, saying the food drive "has been taken so out of context."
Walmart is your profit margin so important you can't Pay Your Employees enough to be above the poverty line? http://t.co/YT8QDmyJ8G
Piper Kerman — a blonde yuppie who went to Smith College — was not a typical inmate when she did time in federal prison, and Redditors were quick to point that out during an Ask Me Anything session Wednesday.
Kerman served 11 months for a drug offense at a federal prison in Danbury, Conn., and her memoir "Orange is the New Black" has an outsider's perspective. Many of the other prisoners in the book are black and Latino and far less educated than she is, as seen in the Netflix series inspired by the book.
"First of all, I have to say that I love that show, and love the book. But I have one big question. Do you think a women of color at Danbury would have had the opportunity to write a book & turn it into a successful TV show like you did?" a Redditor called kathrynbigelow asked.
Here was Kerman's response, which didn't exactly answer the question:
I think inequality and white privilege are one of the big topics of the book. Racism is on stark display in the criminal justice system, whether you are talking about policing, prosecution, sentencing, or what happens to people during incarceration. Andrea James has written a book about her own experience in the same prison I was held in: www.amazon.com/Upper-Bunkies-Unite-Thoughts-Incarceration/dp/0988759306
I also think this is true in terms of how mass media functions in the U.S. ["Orange is the New Black" producer] Jenji Kohan has described the character of Piper Chapman as her "Trojan horse", saying that she could not have successfully pitched a show about women of color, old women, poor women to any major media corporation. I'm not an expert on Hollywood, but that's her POV
It's my hope that the response to the show, and most especially to the range of characters, is evidence that there is a great deal of interest and appetite for much more diversity in media.
Another Redditor was less kind and apparently balked at a column about Kerman's prison experience that her husband, Larry Smith, wrote for The New York Times' Modern Love column.
"How do you feel about including a plotline in which your husband appropriates your story to advance his career, while your entire career relies on appropriating stories of women of color?" Reddit user Drakeytown wrote.
Here was another uncomfortable question, from Redditor zlooh. "A serious question, and not to be meant in a disrespectful or snide manner: Do you think your story - basically the experience of a woman in prison because of unjust drug laws - would have been published/given attention/turned into a television show if you were not white and from a middle class/upper-middle class background?"
Kerman didn't answer those last two. While she has brought a ton of attention to flaws in the U.S. prison system, she's also gotten a bit of flak for being a white person who's getting so much attention for having done time.
The Nation's Aura Bogado voiced some of those criticisms in a harsh column called "White is the New White." Bogado points out that slave narratives became fashionable in the mid-19th century after white people began writing introductions for them.
"The white practice of verifying the lives of black fugitives who were skillfully plotting their own liberation has changed in circumstance and in medium — but the role of white people at its center has not," she wrote. "Today, its latest manifestation is playing out in the Netflix hit series, Orange Is the New Black."
This title has more in common with "Super Mario 64" and "Super Mario Galaxy," some of the best titles in the last two decades of gaming. That's reflected in critical reviews: it currently holds a score of 93 percent on Metacritic, a site that aggregates ratings from top critics around the web.
Edge Online's review of the game praised its technical proficiency, comparing the game's frame rate favorably to the early offerings on the more powerful PS4 and Xbox One:
"This is Mario like you’ve never seen him before, and unlike so many of his next-gen rivals, he nips along at an effortless 60fps. If the true measure of new hardware’s worth is how stark the difference is between it and what came before, then this is the most next-gen game that 2013 has yet produced."
"It fulfills the promise of a multiplayer Mario much better than anything that the Japanese game maker has done before. Super Mario 3D World is marvelous, and its constant variety and fantastic light-hearted co-op play proves that Nintendo still knows exactly how to tweak their Mario formula in fun ways."
"It was then that I realized that Super Mario 3D World had achieved a level of platforming design that's close to perfection, and there was almost never a moment where I didn't have a smile on my face. This is the unequivocally the best Mario game since Galaxy 2, and it shows up anything the "New" series has ever done, and then some."
"Put simply, Super Mario 3D World is stunning. Its world is beautiful, its design is impeccable, and its fun is infectious. I'm running out of superlatives here, so let me finish where I started: Go play it."
Below is a trailer for "Super Mario 3D World" that shows off some of the new gameplay elements:
In his first sit-down interview in nine months, 19-year-old Justin Bieber opened up to The Hollywood Reporter in a 3-hour, one-on-one chat — while wearing a red onesie.
Promoting his upcoming film "Believe," Bieber and his manager, Scooter Braun, revealed some interesting gems about the pop star's career and some famous, influential friends (via THR):
Bieber is over the word "swag": "I'm very influenced by black culture, but I don't think of it as black or white," he says. "It's not me trying to act or pose in a certain way. It's a lifestyle -- like a suaveness or a swag, per se. But I don't really like to say the word ['swag'] anymore. It's kind of played out."
Bieber is proud of himself and doesn't care what you think: "I don't give a f---." Elaborates Bieber: "Not 'I don't give a f---' to just be reckless and do whatever, but 'I don't give a f--- what they say.' … I know who I am and what I'm doing in my life and what I've accomplished and continue to accomplish as a performer, as a writer, as an artist, as a person, as a human being. I'm happy with the man I'm becoming."
Even though he peed in a bucket at a NYC restaurant: The video of him peeing into the mop bucket netted a "so-called friend $40,000 10 months later," snaps Braun.
Justin isn't going to end up like those other child stars: "The rumors were coming so fast and furious that we couldn't address all of them," says Braun of their decision to throw up their hands. "Say whatever the f--- you want. Justin's not going to go crazy. He's not going to end up in rehab. He's not going to end up a statistic. Nine months ago, they said he lost his mind -- he hasn't missed a show since. So we're just going to shut up."
He travels with a pastor: Pastor Judah Smith, who has maintained a steady presence in Bieber's life, traveling as far as South Africa and Australia to help him "not get discouraged or despondent because of perceived failures."
He's the most Googled person on the planet: "He's the only person in humanity who's grown up the way he has -- with smartphones and cameras on him 24/7," says Braun. "Another kid can go out and have a good night on the town, and no one gives a crap, but Justin is the most Googled person on the planet -- for four years straight!"
Scooter Braun is like a father figure: "I'm usually up pretty much all night until I know Justin is in," says Braun of a routine that might sound familiar to parents. "At night is when trouble can come." Typically, Braun will receive an all-clear text or call from Bieber's body guard or tour manager, and that's when he can get some shut-eye. … Until Bieber rings. "The person who usually wakes me up is Justin," he says. "He likes to talk to me in the middle of the night. Because that's when the world goes quiet for him and his mind's running."
Many celebrities have reached out to try and help Bieber: "Oprah Winfrey, Adam Levine and Mark Wahlberg each have reached out to Bieber via calls and emails to Braun. Rita Wilson offered to have husband Tom Hanks counsel the young star. Eminem'smanager, Paul Rosenberg, told Braun: 'If you ever want Eminem to talk to him, he would do it in a second. He cares about that kid.' Braun adds, 'Drake is like a big brother to Justin. And Justin really looks up to Drake. They have an extremely special relationship."
But Bieber's most influential famous friend is Will Smith: "The most present mentor is Will Smith. Braun tells of a particularly tough time for Bieber around the time he returned from his world tour in May that prompted the movie star to drive to Bieber's house and pull him out of bed for a three-hour talk. Bieber's reaction, according to Braun: 'He said, 'Man, that makes me feel so loved. I woke up, and there's Will Smith, one of, if not the, biggest movie stars on the planet. He took time out of his day for me.' "
"Now, Bieber and Smith have a weekly call to go over any potential issues, emotional or otherwise. (Scientology has never been discussed.) At the same time, Braun adds of Smith, "He's telling me: 'Justin's got to go through it. You can't stop him from going through it. That's youth in itself. He's a young man who's growing up, and that's what makes him interesting and relatable. Otherwise, he'd be some kind of weird robot.'"
If you enjoyed the "Lord of the Rings" then Google has something for you: an amazing interactive map that let's you wander through Middle Earth.
Middle Earth is the fictional land from the mind of J.R.R Tolkien, filled with Hobbits, elves, Wizards and all manner of magical creatures.
This map lets you click through all the important places where the action takes place (complete with music and a voiceover). You can look at things close-up, in 3D.
The map is a "Chrome experiment," which means it's an app built using the latest tech for mobile devices and the Web. These experiments are meant to inspire developers to create cool new visual, interactive apps that can run in a browser.
From television shows to celebrity news and scandals, people are always searching for entertainment news. With the year winding down, what did people search for the most in 2013?
Ask.com revealed its top trending search terms for the year today.
Since many of the site's more than 100 million monthly users search queries come in the form of questions, Ask.com compiled the top search terms along with their corresponding questions.
Here are the celebrities and entertainment terms people searched most on Ask.com:
1. North West. Why is Kim and Kanye’s baby named North West?
2. Miley Cyrus. What did Miley Cyrus do at the VMAs?
3. Cory Monteith. How did Cory Monteith die?
4. Paula Deen. What did Paula Deen say?
5. Amanda Bynes. Why was Amanda Bynes arrested?
6. Lamar Odom. Is Lamar Odom on drugs?
7. Breaking Bad. When is the Breaking Bad series finale?
8. Reese Witherspoon. Where can I see Reese Witherspoon’s arrest?
9. Fifty Shades of Grey. Who will play Christian in Fifty Shades of Grey?
10. James Gandolfini. Did James Gandolfini die?
And in case you're wondering, here are the top news stories and questions people searched most on the site:
1. Royal Baby. What is the royal baby’s name?
2. Boston Marathon. Where was the Boston Marathon bomber found?
3. Syria. Will the U.S. invade Syria?
4. Philippines Typhoon. How can I help victims of the Philippines typhoon?
5. George Zimmerman. Why was George Zimmerman acquitted?
6. Navy Yard Shooting. Who was the Navy Yard shooter?
7. Oscar Pistorius. Did Oscar Pistorius kill his girlfriend?
8. Ariel Castro. Who did Ariel Castro kidnap?
9. Detroit Bankruptcy. How far in debt is Detroit?
10. Benedict XVI. Why did Pope Benedict step down?
Remember the scene in "Gravity" when Sandra Bullock is locked inside the Russian space capsule about to give up all hope but finally finds faith when reaching someone on the radio — only to find there is a severe language barrier?
Well, "Gravity" co-writerJonas Cuaron, the son of director Alfonso Cuaron, made a short film telling the other side of the story on that phone call in the pivotal scene.
Titled "Aningaaq," the seven-minute companion piece was initially envisioned as an extra feature for "Gravity's" Blu-ray edition, but after much fanfare at film festivals, Warner Bros. has submitted it for Oscar consideration in the live-action short category, explains The Hollywood Reporter.
"Should it snag a nomination alongside its sure-bet blockbuster companion, they are poised to make Academy Awards history as the first feature and spinoff short drawn from the same material to be nominated together in the same year," notes THR.
Featuring Sandra Bullock's voice, the short film follows an Inuit fisherman stationed in a remote area of Greenland.
The piece was filmed guerrilla style on location with a budget of about $100,000 after Cuaron was inspired by a drunken native het met who would become the basis for the title character, played by Greenland's own Orto Ignatiussen.
Shortly before Kanye West performed his first "Yeezus" show in Brooklyn Tuesday night, he dropped by e-commerce startup Fancy.
In speaking with the staff for about 45 minutes, West spoke about his vision for DONDA, his new fashion startup, Business Insider learned.
We've also heard that West is talking to just about every major VC firm out there, trying to raise money for his startup.
While he did not get into the details of how he'll do it, West says he wants DONDA to become a trillion-dollar company that completely disrupts the fashion industry.
For those of you wondering why it's called DONDA, Donda is the name of his late mother, Donda West.
Just last month, West opened up his Yeezus pop up store in Los Angeles, Calif., right next door to the Kardashian family's fashion store Dash.
While at Fancy, West also shared some of his thoughts on life, society, and great ideas. He told the team, "Don't be afraid to challenge yourself to say things out loud." West also mentioned how it's important to not get too caught up with one successful idea. Just because you have one great, really successful idea, it doesn't mean you should stop there, West said.
Other takeaways: "Don't be so protective of your self-image," West said. He also mentioned that society as a whole needs to start embracing each other as creatives.
So when someone sells something Kanye thinks is less than fabulous, the rapper-designer-genius takes personal offense.
His latest target? Online shoe and clothing retailer Zappos.com and its CEO, Tony Hsieh.
"I got into this giant argument with the head of Zappos that he's trying to tell me what I need to focus on," West revealed this week on writer Bret Easton Ellis's podcast. "Meanwhile, he sells all this s--- product to everybody, his whole thing is based off of selling s--- product."
On Wednesday, Zappos humorously struck back.
The company tweeted: “Kanye West says Zappos sells s--- product. It’s true.”
In the below photo of a toilet and plunger selling for $100,000 on the site, the description reads:
“Interested in buying sh-t product? You’ve come to the right place! Here at Zappos.com, we happily sell s--- products to everybody! This is the throne, everyone has been watching. Whether you’re #1 or #2, your clique will show no mercy, even in Paris.”
Hsieh even endorsed the company's humorous response by tweeting it from his personal account to his nearly 3 million followers:
We're one step closer to possibly knowing the name of the big Batman / Superman movie out in 2015.
Fusible — a site that keeps track of domain sales and acquisitions — reports that Warner Bros. has registered a bunch of new domain namesfor the new Batman / Superman movie featuring Ben Affleck as the Caped Crusader and Henry Cavill reprising his role as the Man of Steel.
There are a total of 35 listed domains which you can check out here. All of them share 8 similar themes which we've pulled out below.
Could one of these be a potential title for the anticipated sequel?
"Battle the Knight" / "Man of Steel: Battle the Knight"
"Black of Knight" / "Man of Steel: Black of Knight"
"Darkness Falls" / "Man of Steel: Darkness Falls"
"Knight Falls" / "Man of Steel: Knight Falls"
"Shadow of the Night" / "Man of Steel: Shadow of the Night"
"The Darkness Within"
"The Blackest Hour" / "Man of Steel: The Blackest Hour"
From the amount of registered domains for each combination, the most popular ones are "Battle the Knight" (six domains), "The Blackest Hour" (six domains), "Knightfalls" (two domains). Fusible reports the "Beyond Darkness" title has two domains — Beyonddarknessmovie.com and beyonddarknessmovie.net.
None of the websites mentioned on Fusible currently head to any location.
Back in July, we knew Warner Bros. registered the domain names BatmanVsSuperman.com and SupermanVsBatman.com— two websites you can currently check out. (Note: The latter goes to Superman's DC homepage while the former will take you to an unfinished website.)
What do you think of these potential titles? When Batman and Superman first appeared in comics together, the series was known as "World's Finest." We're kind of still rooting for "The Blackest Night."
The new Batman / Superman film is in theaters July 17, 2015.
Last week, Jimmy Fallon tried out Sony's PlayStation 4 console before its release. Naturally, ahead of the Xbox One launch tomorrow, he took Microsoft's next-gen system for a spin on "Late Night."
Fallon and guest Will Forte showed off the capabilities of the system's new Kinect camera while jet ski racing on the console's Kinect Sports Rival game.
Check out Fallon and Forte race each other below.
We've been playing with the Xbox One.
During our experience, we've had a lot of trouble getting this game to work. Either our play space wasn't large enough or we had to recalibrate our Kinect first. When we finally did get it to work, it played without problem and was a lot fun — more than the PS4 robots.
The Mafia detested the administration of John F. Kennedy as Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy raised the number of mob convictions from 35 in 1960 to 288 in 1963.
But there may be a much deeper connection between the Kennedys and the mob, and legendary entertainer Frank Sinatra reportedly served as a key intermediary and whipping boy in one case.
According to "The Dark Side of Camelot" by Seymour Hersh, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. (JFK's father) set up a meeting with Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana to obtain Giancana's support for Jack Kennedy's run for the White House — thereby combining the sway of Chicago crime syndicate with that of Mayor Richard J. Daley's Democratic machine.
Hersh also reported, along with others, that Giancana also helped funnel cash to buy votes and endorsements for the West Virginia Democratic primary election in May 1960.
Sabato also writes that "when JFK began having an affair with a black-haired beauty named Judith Campbell while he was still a U.S. senator, Giancana slept with her as well, reportedly so that he would eventually have a direct link to the White House."
It turns out, according to Sabato, that Sinatra introduced Senator Kennedy to Judy Campbell and also "served as the go-between for the West Virginia primary shenanigans."
After JFK reached the White House, however, the mob boss was not welcome near the president's ear. And Sinatra was the one that ultimately paid for it.
When the Kennedys turned on Giancana once they were in the White House, Sinatra had to work hard to deflect the mobster's wrath at Sinatra on account of the Kennedys' unfaithfulness. In atonement, the singer played at Giancana's club, the Villa Venice, with his "Rat Pack" of fellow entertainers, for eight nights in a row.
Sabato notes that "Sinatra worked his way back into Giancana's good graces, but the Kennedys never did."
Here's The Rat Pack playing "Chicago" at the Villa Venice in 1962:
Musical artist Pharrell just released the music video for his new song "Happy". The video is being dubbed as the world's "first 24-hour music video".
When you visit 24hoursofhappy.com, you can literally listen to the song for 24 hours against a full day of video footage. The video encourages you to share specific moments of the video on Facebook or Twitter.
As Emma Carmichael of The Hairpin pointed out on Twitter (where we heard about the video):
Odd Future, Magic Johnson, Steve Carrell and Jamie Foxx all make cameos in "Happy".
You can watch and experience the video here (if you have a full day on your hands). Remember, you can skip around and watch the video at any time of day, by clicking on the clock.
But one of the best on-camera reactions came from Harrison Ford.
Ford was speechless when Blaine mysteriously pulled the 71-year-old actor's card from an orange. He jokingly told Blaine, "Get the f--- out of my house!” It's pretty wonderful.
"Oh God... no.. wow.." said a shocked Aaron Paul. 
Kanye was mostly quiet, aside from some giggling.
From television shows to celebrity news and scandals, people are always searching for entertainment news. With the year winding down, what did people search for the most in 2013?
As Emma Carmichael of 
