Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum Make an Unlikely Pair

At first, Jonah Hill balked when he was offered the assignment of co-writing an R-rated comedy based on the show, 21 Jump Street.

He just couldn't see his way into a modern take on the TV police procedural that showcased Johnny Depp in his 1980s breakout role.

"I was like, 'Forget it, I pass,'" recalled Hill in Chicago recently to promote the movie with Channing Tatum.

After some persuasion by the studio, and creative sessions with writer Michael Bacall, Hill started to appreciate how a revamped adaptation might function.

"The goal was making it like a Bad Boys meets a John Hughes movie," said Hill. "And now I feel confident that we have some kind of cool version of that."

Opening March 16, 21 Jump Street is co-directed by Chris Miller and Phil Lord, and features Hill and Tatum as rookie cops assigned to go undercover by posing as high-school students in order to bring down a synthetic-drug ring. Co-starring are Ice Cube as the harried police captain and Rob Riggle as the overzealous coach.

The film, and the laughs, are mostly driven by the unlikely team of Hill and Tatum. Hill, 28, earned a recent Oscar nod for his co-starring role in Moneyball, but is mostly known for his foul-mouthed sidekick in Superbad, and as one of the rude friends in Knocked Up. Tatum, 31, is the handsome hunk type, and divides his screen time between action (Haywire) and romance (The Vow).

A raucous buddy flick is new territory for Tatum, but that's exactly why Hill thought the unlikely combination would work.

"I really wanted the pairing to feel unexpected," Hill said. "And I really wanted the movie poster to be like, 'Wow, I've never seen these two guys together.'"

For his part, Tatum was a little anxious about his role. Improvising in a flat-out laugh-fest is far from his comfort zone.

"You've got to give yourself over to it, in a way," he said of the improv approach that Hill favours. "And you have to have faith in Jonah, and the people that chose you, and go with it."

Along the way, Tatum said he felt he was "schooled in the art, because I can't imagine making a movie in this genre without the actors helping each other."

As it stands, Hill gives Tatum an A for effort in ad libbing. In fact, both actors agreed it was Riggle, as the out-of-control coach, who came up with some of the best lines.

"Rob Riggle is psychotically funny," admitted Hill. "It's like a medical issue."

Tatum said in one sequence involving the three of them that "all Jonah and I did was try to figure out a way not to laugh."

Riggle, memorable as the Tasering cop in The Hangover, said the 21 Jump Street environment "was freeing to the point of craziness," which encouraged him to go full throttle. "When you know the best line wins no matter what, it only makes things better, and funnier," he said.

Besides the Riggle bits, another of Hill's favourite scenes is the opening, when the actor goofs on his teen life in high school as a wannabe Eminem during the rapper's Slim Shady phase.

"I had that idea while we were shooting," said Hill, whose character struts into his school to Eminem's Slim Shady tune. "I had a lot of resistance from people on that, but I was like, 'Just trust me.'"

The moment sets the tone for the rest of the action-comedy ride, which includes a high-profile cameo.

"I wanted the movie to feel like an hour-and-a-half party," Hill said. "I wanted to have fun doing it, and the audience to have fun watching it, and I feel we deliver on that."

He also said he thinks the film connects on a level that the teenager in all of us can appreciate.

"I like our film's back-to-the-future element of reliving a really important period of your life," said Hill. "You know, that's when you think you have all the answers in high school, but then you find out all the answers are completely false."

So, when the undercover cops return to high school, "they revert to the insecurities they had when they were 17, because of their surroundings."

At the conclusion, there's even a hint that the buddy cops might be heading to college for a sequel. Hill and Tatum said they are willing, if movie fans show their support.

Meanwhile, Tatum said he has a proposition for Hill that might be a change of pace for him. In a few weeks, Tatum is doing a few re-shoots on his film, Magic Mike, set for a summer release. It recalls Tatum's brief stint as a male stripper.

"We might have a cameo for Jonah," said Tatum.

Hill chuckled: "Yeah, then it would be time for me to improv the weights, man."

Eat Like No One’s Watching

Even though we are having an Indian summer of sorts here in Manhattan, the lure of December inevitably brings uncontrollable desires to indulge. Tis the season, after all. Don't you get those cravings for sinful meals you want to dive right into without the pressure of anyone watching?

Sometimes it's good to be bad, really bad. Skip the health and exercise regimens and start exploring these spots that are sure to warm your belly, and then some. For those who are trekking to tropical destinations over winter break, my apologies, and for the rest of you, don't worry, swimsuit season is plenty of months away.

The Ace Hotel has become quite the swanky watering hole for glitterati and hipsters alike, but the real gem of the compound is The Breslin. Helmed by the killer female chef (yes, a rarity!), April Bloomfield delivers fierce animal-centric cuisine. This is not for the faint of heart. Putting a gourmet and playful spin on pub grub coupled with an inventive and potent cocktail program, it's easy to devour yourself into losing all sense of space and time. There is no better way to begin a meal than with "snacks" of caramel popcorn, chicken liver parfait, and boiled peanuts in pork fat. The big guns arrive with Bloomfield's famous terrine board (don't bother worrying about the details), succulent pig's foot and dry aged ribeye for two.

Topping it off with thrice cooked chips (the secret is the duck fat frying finale for the potatoes), I dare you to conquer dessert before you fall into a blissful food coma. For those really looking to live on the wild side, the whole suckling pig and whole lamb dinners are worth the adventure, though you will have to share with about ten of your closest friends you wouldn't mind taking down a true head-to-tail meal with. And consider yourself warned, those that do opt in for these family meals must endure a spotlighted "chef's table" in the middle of the establishment, exposing your dirty little secret to a bevy of diners.

Harlem may now be trendy with the opening of Red Rooster, but the original foodie magnet is famed Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. This roadie shack of heaven that evokes a middle-of-the-country highway motorcycle joint will certainly rev your engine, and it's no wonder with its founders being former Harley-Davidson diehards. The roots of the dishes are Southern, but the barbecued goods take liberty with global influences delivering the perfect fusion of flavors that has built its legacy.

The options are endless, and to make the decision process even harder there is truly nothing they can't do. In particular, the bbq chicken wings are insane (embarrassingly I ordered two full plates for myself!) as are the fried green tomatoes, and don't miss the opportunity to experiment with their many signature sauces. Be ready to dig in with your hands and dump yourself in a trough after all the mess is said and done.

If you aren't familiar with David Chang, you have been living under a rock in New York. Now with four critically-acclaimed restaurants (Ko even has two Michelin stars), there is still something irresistibly nostalgic about his first venture, Momofuku Noodle Bar.

Chang was artfully on the cutting edge of the wave of low-key, subtly designed casual restaurants where it's all about the food, which is anything but ordinary. In the vein of this democratic ethos, where anyone should be able to enjoy modern creativity and elevated flavors of fine dining, you may have to bear a substantial wait to get a chance to taste Chang's creations.

If you can be patient, though, Korean-inspired magic awaits, choreographed to a funky pop music soundtrack that will have you bopping uncontrollably on your barren wooden stool. The famous hoisin pork buns are not to be missed and the various ramen bowls are bountiful, hearty and always packing a punch.

A study in contrasts

If Mitt Romney is weak broth, Newt Gingrich is a bouillon cube. Watching the two Republican presidential front-runners in New Hampshire over two days has been a study in contrasts. Romney is a known conservative ingredient suitable in a main dish. Gingrich is a powerful dose of partisan flavor to be used sparingly.

Gingrich is having his moment now because he offers punchy answers and ready solutions to seemingly insoluble problems. If he endures an examination of his personal baggage, his record on the issues, and his private-sector career, it will be in part because he is the "Republican Ideas Man." But when you listen to those ideas--the scope of the change he is proposing, and the punch with which he delivers his pitch--you get the sense that that voters may not be interested in the Gingrich past because they're too scared of the Gingrich future.

As Romney finished a four-day campaign swing through the state where he has dominated the polls, he touted his recent spending reduction plan and offered his carefully honed lines. President Obama "said if he was unable to get this economy turned around, he would be looking at a one-term proposition," Romney said. "Well, I'm here to collect."

Romney is the safe and steady candidate, and he joked about that when handing out sandwiches at a local diner." This is Mitt Romney "raw and unleashed," he said, referring to a Saturday Night Liveskit that made fun of his boring personality. (It's true: There are reports he returned a VCR tape in the late 1980s without rewinding.)

Listening to Gingrich is a more rock-'em-sock-'em experience. He's a whirring dispensary of ideas and insults. He's going to eliminate White House czars on his first day in office. The supercommittee "is the single dumbest legislative idea" he's ever heard of. Government retraining will be available for lawyers who lose their jobs because of tort reform. The delay in building a border fence is "utterly stupid."

It's easy to see why Gingrich is appealing to Republican voters. They don't need to imagine the stupidity in Washington that Gingrich lampoons. His ideas sound thoughtful. He is good with a political attack or jibe, which is appealing to voters trying to find the magic trick to beating an incumbent. So when Gingrich boasts that he is the best candidate because he can beat President Obama in debates, he adds that Obama won't possibly say no to his suggested three-hour Lincoln-Douglas-style debate because an Ivy Leaguer would never admit to being "afraid to be on the same platform with a guy who taught at West Georgia College."

Gingrich is competing on Romney's turf with that claim about debates. Polls regularly show that voters believe Romney is one who can beat Obama. His business background gives him a good pitch on the economy. Gingrich is trying to leverage his impressive performances in the debates into an argument for why he can go the distance.

Like many of Gingrich's theories, it sounds good--but general election debates will have a different audience. Gingrich won't be pitching to conservatives looking for a fighting champion. He'll be talking to independent and undecided voters. Do they really want Gingrich's message of big change, brusquely delivered?

In scope and personality Gingrich asks a lot. He's talking about profound change. (His boldness is a regular theme of his talks.) But people are already bounced around by change. Do voters really want a constant flow of it from the professor? Even if the strategy is to make government more efficient and get it out of your life, the main takeaway of the Gingrich idea flurry is that everything is going to get thrown upside down.

Photography has ruined travel

Nicotine is bad. Drugs are worse. But we know about them.

There is one addiction that has passed unnoticed into the very heart of modern society, threatening to ensnare the minds of everyone reading this article, and more.

It is insidiously creeping up on hitherto reasonable members of the civilized world, threatening to turn us all into beaming, giggling fools, our faces locked into clownish grins and our brains distracted at the slightest click.

The bane of 21st-century life is the phone camera, a product of such technological prowess and immediate convenience that no one would blame you for “just trying it.”

But one click leads to another; if you don’t like the first hit you delete and try again.

Before you know it you have 300 pictures on your phone comprising beaming, giggling fools, plates of food and cats making funny faces and you have succumbed; you have been dragged in; your life is now defined by images on a handset and the same goes for all your friends.

To give it up now would be just too hard.

The real victims of this click-happy menace are travelers.

Not just the travelers who hope to see a spectacular waterfall in Chile only for the view to be blocked by hundreds of beaming, giggling addicts, but also those camera-phone addicts who are themselves travelers.

Because much like the wretch who drinks to be happy, the snappers are deluded: they think their photos are creating memories, when in fact they are sabotaging them.

My junk was the real deal. Class-A stuff, the cocaine of the photography world -- the digital SLR.

With this oversized device I felt confident. I felt virile. It made me feel superior to the beaming, giggling amateurs fumbling about with their pathetic phones and small, flaccid point-and-shoots.

It took an epiphany for me to kick the habit.

I was diving in Thailand, when a whale shark emerged from the gloom. I snapped away at the beast with my underwater apparatus for the few minutes of air I had left, then returned topside to high-five and celebrate this potentially once-in-a-lifetime experience.

As I scrolled through the 100-odd pictures I had, I realized: they were all I had.

My memories are framed by the 2x2-inch blurry screen of my camera. Not once did I look up to see the fish with my own eyes.

The problem runs much deeper than a small camera addiction too. The technological age has trapped us inside cotton-wool cages.

Just over a decade ago there was no Google to point you to the nearest café. No satellite technology connecting you, via your phone, to a computer to an ATM to the nearest hotel.

When people traveled, they got off the plane and explored. They asked people, real people, where to go for a great night out, not some kind of Stephen Hawking robot girl inside your phone.

Sorry, Siri, you’re not my type. Great fun for profound philosophical inquiries, but when it comes to places to get good dim sum, “25 alternatives within half a mile” is such a turn-off.

Technology treats travel like a puzzle that needs solving. In fact the world is less Rubik’s Cube, more Magic 8 Ball.

Too often the Internet search is a first resort rather than a last, a shortcut that, at least for travelers, gets us to the end while bypassing the means. It is the destination without the journey.

So here’s a challenge: get lost. Seriously. Next time you’re in a new town, ditch the phone. Disable your GPS. Close your eyes, point, then open them and walk. If you need to find somewhere, ask someone.

Even if the place recommended by Real Human is a dive and takes you for US$15 a beer and gives you an intestinal worm and ends with a chase down a dark alley by a chef with a dirty rolling pin, at least you get a good story.

At least you’ve traveled and explored and discovered, for yourself.

But in fact the place recommended by Real Human is far less likely to be a disaster than one randomly suggested by a logarithm.

Getting lost is something to be embraced, not feared.

That’s when you discover the cafe with the weird hallucinogenic soup served by cats in bowler hats that somehow Lonely Planet managed to miss.

Far more fulfilling, I think, than the perfectly efficient evening of hotel-restaurant-hotel, courtesy Google Maps.

Combat clueless college courtship

If you don't know if you're on a date, it's hard to tell the difference between blinks and eyelash batting, thumb wars and handholding.

Whether or not you're on a date can depend on how you're asked, where the date is, and how the person sitting across from you is acting.

Once a new couple finally acknowledges they're on a date, all sorts of unspoken questions hang in the air, like who should pay and how each person should act.

Each date is different, and there's no magic formula making one successful. That being said, here are a few short lessons, drawn from my own personal experience research and interviews, on how to decode the mystery of the Chico State date.

Being asked out to junior prom via text message didn't sit well with me.

Call me corny, but I prefer the classy fellas that don't hide behind technology because of their fears of being rejected.

I text my friends to hang out all of the time, but that doesn't make it a date.

It's difficult to read between the lines of texts and emails to figure out the difference between "hanging out" and being on a date.

Asking someone out through a text message or the Internet is detached and shows insecurity. The date doesn't count unless the invitation is a little dated. If it's not important enough to ask someone out face to face, the relationship will show it.

Online dating sites such as eHarmony and PlentyOfFish claim to help people find love.

I have had a number of friends that had success on such websites, so I decided to see what all the hype was about - bad idea.

As I was browsing, I found it hard to believe that an 18-year-old male I found was really 18.

He looked 18 in the picture, but the bottom of the photo showed that it was taken in October 1976.

There can be anyone behind your computer screen, from fellas with conviction to convicted felons. Online dating starts with courtship, but if you're not careful, it could end with a court order.

Figuring out who pays during the dating period can get pretty fuzzy.

Paying during a date depends not only on the people in the relationship, but the occasion, said Angela Harter, a graduate student studying nutrition who has been in a relationship for three years.

For the first few dates it's appropriate for the male to pay, but on casual occasions, like grabbing a bite before catching a movie, the cost should be divided.

There is no right or wrong answer, Harter said.

But not everyone agrees.

The male should pay throughout the entire relationship, said Thomas Robie, an undeclared freshman.

"The whole time I always paid, really," Robie said. "I guess you could split it. It just seems weird."

Rather than conform to the heterosexual tradition of male pay, Jessica Arriga, a junior multicultural and gender studies major, said she and her date would take turns paying the bill.

"Sometimes we would split it if we were low on cash," Arriga said.

Due to cultural influences such as TV, books and movies, people in our society have a tendency to assume that in same sex relationships, one person adopts the more masculine role and the other the feminine role, Arriga said.

"I think people need to realize that, and I'm only speaking for women, that not every lesbian couple gives into that dynamic," she said. "They might both want to be feminine or even the one that dresses more feminine might feel like the more dominant masculine person that day."

Over the course of the relationship, who pays depends on the people, their situation and what feels appropriate.

I'm not saying there are specific guidelines to when the other person should start chipping in, but ladies, use some common sense and don't take advantage.

Solar-powered processor and the memory cube

INTEL has unveiled a Near Threshold Voltage Processor which is said to be able to run off a solar cell the size of a postage stamp.

The technology was just one of many others Intel introduced at the Intel Developer Foru,

The Near-Threshold Voltage Processor uses ultra-low voltage circuits which reduce energy consumption by operating close to the turn-on voltage of the transistors. While still a concept CPU, the unit can run fast when needed, but will drop power to below 10 milliwatts when the workload is light.

Intel says the research chip will not become a product itself, although it could lead to the integration of scalable scalable near-threshold voltage circuits across a wide range of future products, reducing power consumption by 5-fold or more and extending always-on capability to a wider range of computing devices.

Another technology seen at the event was the Hybrid Memory Cube, a concept DRAM developed by Micron in collaboration with Intel. According to the company, the Memory Cube demonstrates a new approach to memory design delivering a 7-fold improvement in energy-efficiency over today's DDR3.

Hybrid Memory Cube uses a stacked memory chip configuration, forming a compact "cube," and uses a new, highly efficient memory interface which sets the bar for energy consumed per bit transferred while supporting data rates of one trillion bits per second. This research could lead to dramatic improvements in servers optimized for cloud computing as well as ultrabooks, televisions, tablets and smartphones.

One of Red Skull's Main Weapons in Captain America: TFA Revealed?

A new picture potentially reveals one of the Red Skull's primary weapons that he will use for world domination in the upcoming movie.


According to the very reliable source known as FakeIrOnMaN, the Red Skull will equip his Hydra minions in the new movie with a high-tech weapon known as the "Magic Bullet".

FakeIrOnMaN states that the Red Skull creates the Magic Bullet by taking a regular piece of ammunition and then using the mystical powers of the Cosmic Cube to enhance the bullet's overall power and destruction. The Magic Bullet will apparently allow Hydra forces to chop, grate, and shred Howling Commandoes without the sticky, smelly mess in just 10 seconds or less...

Here is a picture of the infamous device:


If you haven't figured it out already, this is an April Fools' joke.