News

On Sunday, August 11, HBO and Max celebrated their 2024 Emmys nominations with a star-studded, day-long gala of panels, mingling and fun photo ops. TV academy members in attendance were treated to breakfast in the morning, lunch in the afternoon featuring music from director Jamila Wignot‘s “Stax: Soulsville U.S.A.,” and a dinner reception in the evening with specialty cocktails and passed hors d’oeuvres. The FYC event took place at Nya Studios East in Hollywood.

This year, “True Detective: Night Country” leads all HBO and Max programming with a whopping 19 Emmy nominations, including for Best Limited Series and stars Jodie Foster and Kali Reis. “Hacks” is close behind with 16 bids, including for Best Comedy Series and actresses Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder. Find out who wins the gold when the Creative Arts ceremonies take place on September 7 and 8, and the Primetime event airs live on September 15.

SEEPrimetime Emmys odds...

The sound department for the Starz limited series “Gaslit” earned a pair of Emmy nominations for Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. It was the 24th nomination for re-recording mixer John W. Cook II and the second for co-supervising sound editor Kevin Buchholz. Watch our exclusive video interview above.

Cook, who won an Emmy in 2007 for “Scrubs,” is thrilled to be a double nominee this year for “Gaslit” and the HBO Max comedy “Hacks.” He says, “We get so focused on the project that we’re currently working on. Consequently, the stuff that we did six months ago or a year ago tends to fall away in our memories. These moments of getting nominated, I really love the feeling of time to not let this experience go away so quickly. Let’s linger on it. Let’s remember some of the...

Emmy-nominated re-recording mixers John W. Cook II and Ben Wilkins layered in 16 different tracks of recording for a key courtroom moment in Starz’s “Gaslit.”

The political thriller takes a different look at the Watergate scandal. Rather than look at the infamous hotel break-in, the show examines the political relationships and the women — particularly Martha Mitchell, played by Julia Roberts.

It also looks at John Dean, President Nixon’s White House counsel (played by Dan Stevens), and his wife Maureen “Mo” Dean (Betty Gilpin).

In a key moment, John Dean is set to testify before the Senate committee.

The scene before shows John almost chickening out of his testimony. It’s a moment with Mo and the two are sitting outside an office. “He wants to give up and Mo says, ‘You are absolutely not going to give up. You think this is hard? This is not hard.’ Cook explains...

With his Amazon series Homecoming, Sam Esmail strived to create a paranoid thriller in the vein of those from decades past, turning to his sound team to ratchet up the dread through experimental means. Three of the series’ key creatives, Kevin W. Buchholz (Supervising Sound Editor), Ben Zales (Music Editor) and John W. Cook II (Re-recording Mixer) did so, while coming to redefine the term “Original Score.”

Based on a fictional podcast by co-creators Micah Bloomberg and Eli Horowitz, the Golden Globe-nominated series is set at Homecoming, a facility claiming to help soldiers transition back to civilian life. Cutting back and forth between two time periods, the story centers on Heidi (Julia Roberts), a social worker at the facility who eventually comes to recognize its much more sinister agenda.

Drawing inspiration from films like The Conversation, Homecoming was using “a very specific set of paints” to tell a very specific story,...

The Cinema Audio Society has announced its nominees for the 53rd Annual Cas Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for 2016 in seven categories.

On the film side, strong contenders like “La La Land,” “Rogue One” and “Zootopia” picked up nods, while television series like “Game of Thrones,” “blackish” and “Stranger Things” also received nominations. For the first year, the Cas is honoring Documentary films, with nods like “O.J.: Made in America” and “13th” rounding out this inaugural category.

Missing from the film nods are more than a few surprises, including “Deepwater Horizon,” “The Jungle Book” and “Silence.”

“We are blessed this year with a rich portfolio of Cinema Audio art applied. As the creative contributions of sound mixing to modern filmmaking becomes more obvious to the world at large, these productions truly represent the talents of our community,” said Mark Ulano, Cas President, of the announcement.

Read More: 2017 Oscar...

Gawker Media has reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with Hulk Hogan, according to multiple reports, ending a years-long legal battle waged against it with the partial support of tech billionaire Peter Thiel.

As Gawker founder Nick Denton wrote in a blog post this week announcing the settlement: “The saga is over.”

The deal requires Gawker to pay Hogan (né Terry Bollea) $31 million, and he will further receive some portion of the proceeds from Gawker’s $135 million sale to Univision, according to CNBC, NPR and The New York Times.

Hogan, a former professional wrestler and reality TV star, sued the media company...

Gawker Media’s new owner, Univision, has removed previously published posts on Gawker sites Deadspin, Gizmodo and Jezebel that relate to the company’s legal issues. Gawker Media executive editor John Cook said in a memo to staff that Univision execs Felipe Holguin and Jay Grant suggested deleting seven posts because they were “under active litigation against Gawker Media” and that Univision subsidiary, Unimoda, “had been authorized only to purchase the assets, and not the liabilities, of the company.” “Unimoda’s legal analysis was that the continued publication of the posts under the new entity would constitute the adoption of liability,...

Chicago Boy Band it’s not, but über producer Dick Wolf and former One Direction singer Zayn Malik are teaming up for a potential NBC drama about a musical group.

RelatedNBC to Reboot Oliver Twist as a Female-Driven Procedural

The project, titled Boys, follows the formation of a hugely successful boy band and all the excitement, competition, fun and pressure that ensue.

Sherri Cooper Landsman and Jennifer Levin (Beauty and the Beast, Brothers & Sisters) will pen the pilot and exec-produce alongside Wolf and Malik.

Ready for more of today’s newsy nuggets? Well…

* USA Network has renewed Queen of the South...

He may have announced his retirement – albeit a temporary one – from filmmaking, but Academy Award winner Steven Soderbergh has not been resting on his laurels. Having delivered the critically acclaimed TV movie Behind The Candelabra, and the equally well-received TV series The Knick, The Girlfriend Experience, and Red Oaks, Soderbergh has turned his attentions to Netflix, where he will stream his latest producing project, Godless.

Godless is a limited series of just six episodes, and is written and directed by Scott Frank (The Wolverine, A Walk Among The Tombstones). Boasting Soderbergh and Casey Silver as executive producers, alongside Frank, the story is set against the backdrop of the U.S western frontier. It stars Jeff Daniels as outlaw Frank Griffin, who is relentlessly hunting his former partner-in-crime, Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell). Goode is hiding out at the ranch of Alice Fletcher (Michelle Dockery), and Griffin’s pursuit of Goode...

Tapping into the mindset of “Mr. Robot’s” vigilante hacker, Elliot (Rami Malek), was a great creative opportunity for both composer Mac Quayle and re-recording sound mixers John Cook and Bill Freesh. They even collaborated together in blending the sonic design.

For Quayle, who specializes in moody electronic music, it was a natural fit— mixing strange ambient sounds with unnerving beats to help blur Elliot’s objective and subjective realities. Fittingly, his lone theme in Season 1 revolved around Elliot’s splintered psychology. The rest he defines as texture and mood.

“The electronic score is pretty dark, paranoid and tense in mood,” said Quaye, who’s nominated for the first episode (“Hello Friend”). “It alternates with melancholy and there are very few light moments.”

Quaye found it fascinating playing with Elliot’s passive-aggressive nature as well as his kindness and destructive behavior. “So it was a stupid idea to have the...

Question: How drunk is too drunk at a hockey game?  Answer: When you sloppily fall out of your seat and crush the guy in front of you ... this according to a new lawsuit.  A guy named John Cooke is suing the Chicago Blackhawks claiming he was enjoying the game at the United Center on May 23rd ... until some drunk jerk sitting behind him got so hammered, he couldn't stand up straight.  The fan says people...

The Cinema Audio Society has announced the nominees for the 52nd Annual Cas Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for 2015 in six categories and the Cas Technical Achievement Award Nominations. "The Hateful Eight" joins "Bridge of Spies," "Mad Max: Fury Road," "The Revenant," and "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" in the Motion Picture - Live Action category.

In the animated category, nominees were .The Good Dinosaur,. .Hotel Transylvania 2,. .Inside Out,. .Minions. and .The Peanuts Movie..

Winners will be revealed on February 20th. Here are the nominees of the 52nd annual Cinema Audio Society Awards:

Motion Picture . Live Action

.Bridge of Spies.

Production Mixer: Drew Kunin

Re-recording Mixer: Andy Nelson, Cas

Re-recording Mixer: Gary Roger Rydstrom, Cas

Scoring Mixer: Thomas Vicari, Cas

Adr Mixer: Bobby Johanson, Cas

Foley Mixer: Chris Manning

.The Hateful Eight.

Production Mixer: Mark Ulano, Cas

Re-recording Mixer: Michael Minkler, Cas

Re-recording Mixer: Chris Minkler

Scoring Mixer:...

Janis: Little Girl Blue director Amy Berg addresses D.A. Pennebaker with Michael Winship Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

D.A. Pennebaker, joined Janis: Little Girl Blue director, Amy Berg, and Writers Guild of America East President, Michael Winship, at Symphony Space in New York for a discussion that led to Janis Joplin's breakthrough performance in Monterey Pop, Kris Kristofferson singing to Odetta, Cat Power, Bob Dylan, Judd Apatow's family tree, poker with Woody Harrelson, Willie Nelson and Owen Wilson at David Niehaus', John Cooke, Jimi Hendrix, Paul Rothchild, Vincent van Gogh, Lester Young and Billie Holiday.

Amy Berg with Michael Winship: "The accomplishment is in having patience because this has taken me eight years." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Amy Berg, clearly a filmmaker who doesn't shy away from tackling issues of childhood trauma, as she did in her feature film Every Secret Thing, chose Janis Joplin as the subject of her...

Veteran Gawker writer Alex Pareene was named editor-in-chief of the website on Tuesday. Pareene replaces Max Read, who resigned in the wake of the Conde Nast gay porno story debacle. He rose to digital fame as a blogger for Gawker and Salon, known for writing that oozed in satire, dry wit and biting humor. He’ll replace Leah Beckmann, who stepped in temporarily as editor-in-chief after Read resigned. Executive editor John Cook praised Pareene as the premiere mischief-stirrer of our time. Also Read: Gawker Executive Editor Demands Writers Cut 'Facebook Viral Garbage,' Work Faster as Traffic Stalls “Alex is...

The “20 percent nicer” version of Gawker has produced a traffic dip, and the renegade site’s acting executive editor told staff on Wednesday to speed things up. John Cook, who stepped in as executive editor when Tommy Craggs resigned after the site’s fiasco over a report about a Conde Nast executive, expressed the need for less “Facebook viral garbage” and more speed mixed with fresher stories. “Traffic is flat,” he wrote in a memo to staff obtained by Politico Media. Gawker Media traffic across sites was 101.2 million unique visitors in September, down from 117.6 million year-over-year. Also Read: Gawker Posts Donald Trump's.

John Cook, the executive editor for investigations at Gawker Media, filed a legal complaint on Wednesday claiming that he had nothing to do with disseminating Hulk Hogan‘s embarrassing sex tape, which was released in October 2012. In documents filed at the Manhattan Supreme Court in New York, Cook moved to quash the subpoena issued for him by the wrestler, whose real name is Terry Gene Bollea, in connection with litigation pending in Florida. See photos: Hollywood’s Most Outrageous Lawsuits (Photos) That lawsuit was sparked by a story that Gawker published on Oct. 4, 2012, regarding the sex tape which portrayed an...

The Cinema Audio Society (Cas) announces the nominees for the 51st Annual Cas Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for 2014 in six categories and the Cas Technical Achievement Award Nominations. Cas President David Fluhr congratulates each of "the nominees on a job well-mixed.. Clever!

The rest of the press release revealed that:

Final balloting for both the Outstanding Sound Mixing and the Cas Technical Achievement Awards will open online Wednesday January 21st and end Friday, February 6th.

The Awards will be presented at a sealed envelope dinner on February 14th in the Crystal Ballroom of the Millennium Biltmore Hotel. During the awards the highest honor of the Cas . the Cas Career Achievement Award will be presented to Production Sound Mixer David Macmillan, Cas. Doug McIntyre, host of Kabc Talk Radio.s McIntyre in the Morning, will be returning as the Master of Ceremonies

Here's the complete list of nominees...

Complaints about the sound mix on Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” clearly didn’t have much influence on the members of the Cinema Audio Society, who on Tuesday made the film one of the five nominees for the best feature-film sound mix of 2014.

“Interstellar” joined “American Sniper,” “Birdman,” “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Unbroken” in receiving nominations for the 2014 Cas Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing, which will be presented on Feb. 14 at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel.

Also read: OscarWrap: Christopher Nolan and ‘Interstellar’ Dream Team Talk Sound, Edit, Design

Missing from the roster of nominees were the action movies “Transformers: Age of Extinction,...

Nominations have been announced for the 51st annual Cinema Audio Society Awards, and as ever with this group lately, there are a few surprises. For instance, "Unbroken" made the cut despite being mostly ignored by the guilds and industry groups so far, and Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" showed up as well. The biggest jaw-dropper might just be that after months of being the poster child for sound complaints, somehow, some way, "Interstellar" ended up in the mix (no pun intended). There are always one or two that drop out, however. Last year, for example, another Marvel movie — "Iron Man 3" — was chalked up here. But it fell out in favor of "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" with the Academy. I find myself wondering if "The Battle of the Five Armies" could make the cut this year as it's even more of an action/sound film than the last.

Gawker has BuzzFeed in its snarky crosshairs. The website's founder Nick Denton held an online meeting on Tuesday and singled out the listicle-loving social content sharing website as its chief rival. Also read: Donald Trump Rep Fires Back at BuzzFeed: ‘Dishonest Article’ Written by ‘Politically Irrelevant Website’ “Jonah Peretti's company is pointless,” Denton sniped. “But he understands the internet; he manipulates the Facebook ecosystem better than anyone; and he is utterly shameless in his pursuit of viral stories. (Even more shameless than we are, some would say.)” Also read: Gawker Editor John Cook Joins First Look Media “And Buzzfeed is...

Gawker editor-in-chief John Cook is leaving the media blog for First Look Media, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's startup news organization, according to multiple media reports. Cook will join former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald as editor of First Look's The Intercept blog. See video: Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept Launches with More Edward Snowden Leaks (Video) Greenwald rose to prominence in early 2013 for his series of reports for the U.K. newspaper on National Security Administration surveillance, tipped off by whistleblower Edward Snowden. Cook, who served as Gawker's editor-in-chief since January 2013, is First Look's second high-profile hire in as many months.

***

Depp After a 10-year hiatus, the Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild Awards will return on February 15th at Paramount Studios. A new category will make its debut at the ceremony, the Distinguished Artisan Award, which the guild will bestow upon superstar actor and physical chameleon Johnny Depp. Said guild president Susan Cabral-Ebert in a statement, "Make-up and hair artisans agree that Johnny Depp is a wonderful selection to receive our first Distinguished Artisan Award. He, probably more than any other actor working today, uses the skills of our members to delineate his characters... A great artist himself, he allows others to shine."

***

Grammys The 56th Annual Grammy Awards held on Sunday night was the gift that keeps on giving for Daft Punk. In addition to beating out Taylor Swift's "Red" for album of the year with "Random Access Memories," the French electronic duo took home awards for Record of the Year,...

Update: Gawker Media has a response to the lawsuit slapped on them by Quentin Tarantino. The online network, via editor-in-chief John Cook, claims that "no on at Gawker saw or had access to Tarantino's script [The Hateful Eight] before AnonFiles posted it... No one at Gawker has any earthly idea how AnonFiles obtained a copy." Cook also points a finger at Tarantino, saying it was the director himself who chose to turn a fairly common instance of script leaking into a story. Earlier: Gawker is getting it left and right. Not only was the online network skewered in last night's "Girls" (Lena Dunham was recently the subject of a stunt by "feminist" site Jezebel, who paid an anonymous source $10K for her unretouched Vogue photos), but it is now being sued by Quentin Tarantino for posting a link to "The Hateful Eight" screenplay. (The leak of the script last week prompted the director to shelve the film.

Last week, a first draft copy of Quentin Tarantino’s (Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained) new script, The Hateful Eight, wound up splashed all over Hollywood and subsequently the internet.

Not surprisingly, Tarantino was extraordinarily upset by what he viewed as an outright betrayal of his trust, and announced that in response he was shelving the project entirely. (For an in-depth recap, see our own Andrew Pollard’s article here).

On Monday, the story took yet another sharp turn as it was announced that Tarantino has filed suit against the Gawker site Defamer for posting multiple links to download copies of his script following the leak. This action caught some by surprise, if for no other reason than that when he spoke to Deadline immediately following the initial leak, the site quoted him as “Lik[ing] the fact that everyone eventually posts it, gets it, and reviews it on the net.” [You can find Deadline's original article on the matter here].

In light of that,...

The website which is the subject of a lawsuit by the director after it linked to a version of his script has hit back by claiming Tarantino was responsible for the media interest

Gawker has blamed Quentin Tarantino for generating the media frenzy that led the website to link to a leaked screenplay for the Oscar-winning film-maker's now-abandoned western The Hateful Eight. It also claimed Tarantino enjoyed fans reading his work and wanted the draft script to be published online.

Tarantino has filed a copyright lawsuit against Gawker Media for disseminating copies of the 146-page screenplay, claiming the company's Defamer blog went "too far" by linking to an anonymous host where fans could read it in full. But Gawker's John Cook has now posted a defiant response accusing the Pulp Fiction director of rank hypocrisy.

"Last week - before the publication of the script online but after it had begun...

Quentin Tarantino has filed a lawsuit against Gawker Media for contributory copyright infringement on Monday, Jan. 27, after Gawker posted links to his leaked script The Hateful Eight.

Tarantino Put Off 'The Hateful Eight' After Script Leak

Last week, Tarantino announced that he was scraping plans to make his film, a classic Western, after the script was leaked and began circulating around Hollywood. Tarantino suspects it was Oscar-nominated actor Bruce Dern’s agent who leaked the script – he had given Dern the script in the hopes of working with him. In an interview with Deadline, Tarantino expressed his anger, saying, “I’m very, very depressed. I finished a script, a first draft, and I didn’t mean to shoot it until next winter, a year from now. I gave it to six people and apparently it’s gotten out today.” That interview was published Tuesday, Jan 21. The next day,...

Update: Gawker has responded to Quentin Tarantino’s legal complaint on its website. Since writer John Cook invokes the original story by Deadline Hollywood in two places, I’d like to shed a little context to where Cook has gone wrong in a reply that seems to excuse Gawker’s brazen and cavalier behavior by lumping us into the mix. But he’s wrong. Writes Cook: “Last week—before the publication of the script online but after it had begun circulating in Hollywood—Tarantino loudly turned The Hateful Eight leak into a topic of intense news interest by speaking about it at length to Deadline Hollywood, which had itself obtained a copy. Tarantino’s very public complaints about the leak—which named the six parties (of varying degrees of celebrity and potential culpability) that he believes had access to it—were picked up and amplified afterward by dozens of news sites,...

Gawker rejected Quentin Tarantino’s claims that it leaked a copy of his latest script, “The Hateful Eight,” in a post by editor-in-chief John Cook. Cook wrote the piece after Tarantino’s lawyer Marty Singer filed suit against Gawker Media, whose site Defamer posted a link to a site where one could download the script last week. The suit accuses Gawker of transmitting a copy of the script that infringes upon Tarantino’s copyright, or, at the very least, or encouraging a copy of the script to be posted. “This claim is false,” Cook wrote. “No one at Gawker saw or had access to.

When the script for what was to be Quentin Tarantino's next movie, western "The Hateful Eight," leaked online last week, the disappointed director vowed to scrap the project. Now, Tarantino is suing Gawker Media for posting links to the script online.

In a lawsuit filed Monday and obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Tarantino's attorneys argued that by posting the script, Gawker website Defamer was practicing "predatory journalism" and "violating people's rights to make a buck."

"This time, they went too far," the lawsuit reads. "Rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that [Tarantino]'s screenplay may have been circulating in Hollywood without his permission, Gawker Media crossed the journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire Screenplay illegally."

Defamer posted a link to the 146-page script last Thursday under the headline, "Here Is the Leaked Quentin Tarantino Hateful Eight Script." The...

Today was a busy day for some of the smaller guilds with the Visual Effects Society, the Cinema Audio Society, and the Makeup and Hairstylists Guilds all announcing their nominations for 2013.

First, we have the Ves, whose main category to look at is “Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Feature Motion Picture,” where we find Gravity and four other nominees that are just going to have to be happy with the fact that they got nominated. This is perhaps the easiest category to call in the entirety of awards season, and I don’t mean just here, but for the Oscar as well (Last year’s winner, Life of Pi, easily took this category before going on to claim the Oscar). It’s true that films like The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and Star Trek Into Darkness had outstanding effects as well, but nothing even came close to the amazing,...

The Cinema Audio Society has announced the nominees for the 50th Annual Cas Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for 2013. Winners will be revealed on February 22nd in the Crystal Ballroom of the Millennium Biltmore Hotel. The Cas Career Achievement Award will be given to Re-recording Mixer Andy Nelson.

Here are the nominations for the 50th Cinema Audio Society Awards:

Motion Picture . Live Action

Captain Phillips

Production Mixer --Chris Munro, Cas

Re-recording Mixer .- Michael Prestwood Smith

Re-recording Mixer -- Chris Burdon

Re-recording Mixer -- Mark Taylor

Scoring Mixer -- Al Clay

Adr Mixer -- Howard London, Cas

Foley Mixer -- Glen Gathard

Gravity

Production Mixer --Chris Munro, Cas

Re-recording Mixer -- Skip Lievsay, Cas

Re-recording Mixer -- Niv Adiri

Re-recording Mixer -- Christopher Benstead

Scoring Mixer -- Gareth Cousins

Adr Mixer -- Thomas J. O'Connell

Foley Mixer . Adam Mendez

Inside Llewyn Davis

Production Mixer -- Peter F. Kurland,...

Gawker will be rebooting its former Hollywood gossip offshoot, Defamer. And guess who's bizz-ack? A.J. Daulerio as editor -- but not for long. Gawker folded side projects ValleyWag and Defamer when times were tough in 2009 -- "it was back in the dark days and the world was going to hell economically," Gawker Editor-in-Chief John Cook said -- deciding to revisit the corollary sites now that the media climate has improved. The company revived ValleyWag in April as a one-man show. Now it plans to do the same with Defamer. Also read: Gawker Sparks...

New York (AP) — Joe Muto has dealt with losing his job, losing his reputation and losing friends. The low point for the former Fox News Channel "mole" came three weeks ago, when he needed to be escorted from a holding cell in handcuffs to use the bathroom.

The ex-producer at Fox is still dealing with his spectacular flameout of April 2012. Muto, who worked on Bill O'Reilly's prime-time show, began writing an anonymous column for the Gawker website about what it was like for a liberal to work at Fox. His bosses blew his cover and fired him within 24 hours.

Muto did get a book deal out of the experience, though, and "An Atheist in the Foxhole" (Dutton) is being released Tuesday.

He also got a criminal record. In an agreement with the Manhattan district attorney, Muto pleaded guilty May 9 to two misdemeanors — attempted unlawful duplication of computer material and...

Toronto – Now a murder investigation is part of the Toronto mayor Rob Ford's widening crack-smoking scandal. As Gawker reaches its $200,000 fundraising goal to publish a video showing Ford allegedly smoking crack cocaine, media reports point to local homicide detectives quizzing senior Ford aides about a possible link to a murder investigation. Gawker on Tuesday closed its Crackstarter campaign on Indiegogo after raising $201,254 from 8,388 people to purchase and publish the now-infamous Ford crack cocaine tape. The rub: Gawker's John Cook on his blog reiterated that the U.S. gossip site "has lost

read more...

Gawker editor-in-chief John Cook has stirred up a lot of trouble for Toronto Mayor Rob Ford recently, alleging that a video exists of Ford inhaling from what appears to be a crack pipe. Like everyone else (except the Toronto Star), Huffington Post has not seen one frame of the video that Cook claims he got to watch after making a special trip to Toronto from New York, based on an email from a tipster.

Cook is adamant that what he saw is real and, in keeping with their penchant for sensationalized news reporting, Gawker has started a crowdfunded "Crackstarter" campaign to raise $200,000 to buy this video from the drug dealers he says currently own it. Though Gawker is forewarning people that they may not actually be able to acquire the video, if they do publish it all hell will break loose in Canada.

So this got us thinking, who is this John Cook,...

Rob Ford is the mayor of Toronto, Canada’s largest city. But he’s about to be better known — at least in the United States — for something else. According to Gawker editor John Cook, there is a video of Ford smoking crack cocaine, Marion Barry style. The cellphone video is being shopped — get this, by Somali drug dealers — to media outlets, but thus far, no one has met their six-figure asking price.

This is where you come in.

In the spirit of Zach Braff and Veronica Mars, Gawker is crowdsourcing an effort to purchase the video — Kickstarter style — so that...

Toronto – Rob Ford is back in hot water after the gossip site Gawker claimed to have viewed a videotape of the Toronto mayor smoking crack cocaine. In a Thursday night post, Gawker’s John Cook said the video is for sale and shows Ford allegedly inhaling from a crack pipe within the last six months. Toronto Star newspaper reporter Kevin Donovan on Friday reported he has similarly seen the 90-second video clip in question where the city’s pratfall-prone mayor “appears to be smoking a crack pipe.” Gawker’s Cook gives a graphic account of sitting in a Toronto car

read more...

Hulk Hogan is still grappling with Gawker, and the media website is not backing down without a (legal) fight.  Despite a judge granting the pro wrestler's request for a temporary restraining order which prohibits the website from posting clips of his now-notorious 30-minute sex tape, Gawker refused to take down a written narrative of the video, done by former Gawker editor A.J. Daulerio, and linked to another website that still showed sex tape.  Gawker got a Florida appeals court to issue an emergency suspension of the temporary injunction in regards to a description of the tape earlier today, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Gawker editor John Cook...

Gawker editor-in-chief A.J. Daulerio is leaving the site and reporter John Cook will replace him, Cook told TheWrap on Thursday. Daulerio, who started at Gawker Media's sports site Deadspin, oversaw the network's flagship publication through a period of record growth. "A.J.'s tenure at Gawker has been much like him: bold, infuriating, unpredictable... and often brilliant," the site's founder Nick Denton said in a staff memo, obtained by New York magazine. "I mean, I really don't fully understand: Aj breaks all the usual rules of orthodox management and has still been the most...

The Cinema Audio Society has announced the nominees for the 49th Annual Cas Awards honoring outstanding achievement in sound mixing for 2012. "Skyfall" and "The Hobbit" were nominated but "The Avengers," "The Dark Knight Rises," and "Django Unchained" were ignored. What? They weren't noisy enough?

The Cinema Audio Society has announced the nominees for the 49th Annual Cas Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for 2012.

"The Hobbit," "Les Miserables," "Lincoln," "Skyfall" and "Zero Dark Thirty" made the cut in the motion picture - live action category (though "The Avengers," "The Dark Knight Rises" and "Django Unchained" were snubbed).

Winners of the 49th Annual Cas Awards will be announced on February 16 at La's Millennium Biltmore Hotel. Sound Mixer Chris Newman will be honored with the Cas Career Achievement Award while director Jonathan Demme will be presented with the Cas Filmmaker Award.

Here's the complete list of nominees; for winners/nominees of other award giving bodies,...

Lena Dunham is reportedly threatening to sue Gawker over the publication of her leaked book proposal. Dunham's 66-page proposal was enough to land a $$3.7m book deal with Random House after a bidding war. Gawker writer John Cook posted the leaked proposal on the site four days ago, with a scathing commentary on the content which Cook describes as the work of "a girl who is lost in her own mind". Gawker has since taken down the report from the site after being contacted by Dunham's lawyer, reports Deadline. Buzzfeed has also followed suit, taking down the images from a post entitled '9 Passages From Lena Dunham's Book Proposal Illustrated By Her Instagrams'. (more)...

Didn’t get a chance to read Girls creator Lena Dunham’s $3.7 million book proposal when it leaked online last Friday? Too bad — Gawker, the site that originally published the proposal, has removed it after being contacted by Charles Harder, the 26-year-old multihyphenate’s lawyer. Buzzfeed has taken down every image from a post titled “9 Passages From Lena Dunham’s Book Proposal Illustrated By Her Instagrams” as well.

But while Gawker writer John Cook got rid of the proposal itself — though it’s probably still floating around on the Internet, since Cook posted it as a downloadable Scribd file — he...

"Top Chef Seattle" is back with another surprise double elimination -- and this time, no winner.

As the episode opens, we find out it's Stefan Richter's birthday, and he's worried this is the day he'll be kicked off. "When I was competing in New York," he says, "everybody got kicked off on their birthday, and I was like 'birthday curse' -- f**k, no. I don't want to go home on my fortieth birthday."

Forewarning? Hmm ... turns out, not so much.

Quick-Fire Challenge

The cheftestants meet Padma Lakshmi and guest judge, Seattle chef Daisley Gordon at Pike's Place Market. The chefs are told to divide into teams of two, and as usual, some are less than pleased with the chef they've been stuck with. They're told their challenge is to make break fast to go ... on a stick, for 50 of the market's workers. They're given one hour to set...

Fox News head Roger Ailes offered "off-the-record" help to President George W. Bush's secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice, in a 2005 letter obtained by Gawker, a Fox spokeswoman acknowledged to TheWrap. In the handwritten note, Ailes praised Rice and said he was just a phone call away. Gawker's John Cook obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act request and presented it as evidence of conservative bias at Fox News despite its "fair and balanced" slogan. "Great first month," wrote Ailes, who recently re-upped his contract as Fox News chief. "You handled...

While we here at Vh1 are all proud alumni of the Get That Money, Honey School of Economics, some people seem to be completely stroking out over news of Lena Dunham‘s alleged $3.5 million book deal. “Lena Dunham became eligible to vote in 2004, so you should listen to her,” Gawker’s John Cook fumes. “Keep your hate pure, kids.” Declared The A.V. Club, “Of course, $3.7 million may seem like a lot, but consider how often you yourself have been tormented with self-doubt about what you’re wearing to the Met Ball, and what you might pay for advice that made you feel as though Lena Dunham understands you.” Lol, guys. Come on. “Hannah Horvath would be seething with jealousy right now,” EW joked about the deal. Yeah, and she’s not the only one. Search “Lena Dunham” and “book deal” on Twitter to behold a diva-off of impressive proportions.

Late last month, the novelist tweeted this to his 300,000 followers: "I'm not sure if this is good news or bad news but I just found out that Nikki Finke lives in the same building as I do in West Hollywood …" Now, this would normally just disappear into that Twitter black hole of celebrity-on-celebrity sightings, were Finke not so devoted to guarding her privacy, especially her address. Gawker's John Cook did a bit of snooping and discovered that Deadline owner Penske Media does, in fact, own an $830,000 apartment in Ellis's building.Since that's not definitive proof of anything, Cook e-mailed Finke with a link to Ellis's tweet. But, instead of confirming or denying, the Hollywood news queen called up the office of Amanda "Binky" Urban at International Creative Management, which represents Ellis, and gave her assistant what the Observer reports was "an epic, otherworldly screaming-at, the likes of which...

HBO's highly anticipated new show "Girls" may have been a hit with the critics, but not everyone loved Lena Dunham's brand of humor after the series premiered on Sunday night.

On the new comedy, Dunham (the creator, director, writer and star) gives viewers a unique look into the lives of young twentysomethings living in New York City. "I think that I may be the voice of my generation," Hannah, played by Dunham, tells her parents, who have recently cut her off. "Or at least a voice. Of a generation."

Critics of "Girls" have blasted the series trying to speak for a generation of young women living in the city and for not including much diversity in the process. But despite the joke that Dunham makes in the pilot episode, "Girls" doesn't intend to represent everyone, said the show's co-executive producer Judd Apatow on Wednesday night at the Tribeca Film...

HBO's highly anticipated new show "Girls" may have been a hit with the critics, but not everyone loved Lena Dunham's brand of humor after the series premiered on Sunday night.

On the new comedy, Dunham (the creator, director, writer and star) gives viewers a unique look into the lives of young twentysomethings living in New York City. "I think that I may be the voice of my generation," Hannah, played by Dunham, tells her parents, who have recently cut her off. "Or at least a voice. Of a generation."

Critics of "Girls" have blasted the series trying to speak for a generation of young women living in the city and for not including much diversity in the process. But despite the joke that Dunham makes in the pilot episode, "Girls" doesn't intend to represent everyone, said the show's co-executive producer Judd Apatow on Wednesday night at the Tribeca Film...

HBO's hotly anticipated comedy "Girls" premiered last night to 872,000 viewers. The Lena Dunham-created, Judd Apatow-produced series presents itself as a window into a generation. But not everyone is liking the view.

Though "Girls" (Sundays at 10:30 p.m. Et on HBO) received rave reviews from multiple places (Emily Nussbaum touted the show as revolutionairy in a New York mag cover story and HuffPost TV's Maureen Ryan said it was "bold" and fresh"), morning-after reviews seem less enamored.

"Girls feels less like a commentary on this generation and more like an indictment on it," John Kubicek wrote for BuddyTV.com. "These characters have been raised believing that they're special and that they can do anything they want. The problem is that none of them seem to want to do anything. There's nothing particularly special about Hannah's life, no reason that her memoirs would be remotely interesting."

Many writers found the characters unsympathetic,...

HBO's hotly anticipated comedy "Girls" premiered last night to 872,000 viewers. The Lena Dunham-created, Judd Apatow-produced series presents itself as a window into a generation. But not everyone is liking the view.

Though "Girls" (Sundays at 10:30 p.m. Et on HBO) received rave reviews from multiple places (Emily Nussbaum touted the show as revolutionairy in a New York mag cover story and HuffPost TV's Maureen Ryan said it was "bold" and fresh"), morning-after reviews seem less enamored.

"Girls feels less like a commentary on this generation and more like an indictment on it," John Kubicek wrote for BuddyTV.com. "These characters have been raised believing that they're special and that they can do anything they want. The problem is that none of them seem to want to do anything. There's nothing particularly special about Hannah's life, no reason that her memoirs would be remotely interesting."

Many writers found the characters unsympathetic,...