MTV Movies Blog › seinfeld

It's an extremely sad day for "Seinfeld" fans today: Uncle Leo has uttered "Jerry! Hello!" for the last time.

Multiple sources are reporting that Len Lesser, the character actor best known for playing the hilariously irascible Uncle Leo for eight seasons of Jerry Seinfeld's hit sitcom, died yesterday in California from cancer-related pneumonia. He was 88 years old.

"Seinfeld," as if it needs to be said, excelled in featuring a vast wealth of deplorable, eccentric or otherwise anxiety-provoking guest stars. Lesser's Uncle Leo ranks extremely high on that list, if not at the very top. After the jump, we're celebrating the brilliant Lesser by recalling some of our favorite Uncle Leo moments.

Read more...

Tags Len Lesser, seinfeld, Uncle Leo

J.K. Rowling announced on Thursday (July 31) that "Tales of Beedle the Bard," her brief fictional stories about wizarding within her longer, fictional stories about wizarding, would finally go on sale this Christmas. Here at MTV there was, of course, much rejoicing at this news.

It also got us thinking. Turns out a lot of us here are suckers for the kind of meta-fiction "Tales of Beedle the Bard" represents, what with it being a pretend work getting a real release. But why stop there? We came up with a list of the top five fictional books we'd like to really read next.

"Old Custer" by Eli Cash ( "The Royal Tenenbaums" )

Everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn. What this revolutionary book presupposes is ... maybe he didn't? Brilliant. And, besides, book openings don't get better than this: "The crickets and the rust-beetles scuttled among the nettles of the sage thicket. 'Vámonos, amigos,' he whispered, and threw the busted leather flintcraw over the loose weave of the saddlecock. And they rode on in the friscalating dusklight."
Read more...

Tags back to the future, beetlejuice, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, seinfeld, tales of beedle the bard, the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, the royal tenenbaums, watchmen