It’s Iowa Day. Most of the political focus in America is on Iowa as that state’s caucuses will happen tonight, kicking off the 2012 Election season. But what do we know about the state? For all hours of media time spent on covering Iowa’s caucuses, how much do we know about the state and the three million people who call it home? When you hear “Iowa” do you automatically think, farming ? Or are you… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Blaze Discovery Date : 02/01/2012 18:12 Number of articles : 2
(AP) Buffalo Bills receiver Stevie Johnson isn’t the first person to get a little carried away ringing in the new year. He just picked the wrong place for his celebration. Bills coach Chan Gailey benched Johnson for drawing an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Sunday when he celebrated a touchdown catch by lifting his jersey to reveal an undershirt that said, “Happy New Year!” The Bills added another… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Blaze Discovery Date : 01/01/2012 20:14 Number of articles : 2
Odds are if you visited a movie theater recently, you might have been there to see Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol or War Horse. The former has been deservedly sitting atop the box office charts since its release and the latter is the latest, tear-jerker live-action drama from one of our most beloved filmmakers, Steven Spielberg. And while the fact they’re both currently playing in theaters is… Broadcasting platform : Vimeo Source : /Film Discovery Date : 01/01/2012 21:28 Number of articles : 2
During Saturday night’s live MTV special, MC re-creates ’80s -inspired ‘Party on Fifth Ave’ video. By James Dinh Mac Miller (file) Photo: Getty Images NEW YORK — Underground-turned-chart topping MC Mac Miller was treated quite nicely by 2011, and he ended the year on a high note when he served up a performance of “Party on Fifth Ave” during MTV’s “NYE in NYC 2012” on Saturday night. To re-create the tune’s ’80s-inspired clip, Miller arrived on set with high energy and never ceased his interaction with the audience. Dressed in a vintage jacket, tuxedo shirt and backward cap, the Pittsburgh rapper bounced alongside his crew of appropriately dressed friends and dancers in front of the audience as he spit the DJ Mark the 45 King-sampling tune. “There’s a party on Fifth Ave., hit me if you try’n a go/ I can be there in like 20/ I’mma honk it and come runnin’, ’cause we gotta hit the road/ Make you sure you got a clean shirt, clean pants, new shoes/ Or just hitch a ride there, you choose,” he rapped in front of the jumping crowd. MTV News spoke with the MC backstage during the event, where he shared his thoughts on the big night. “It’s funny because, in the moment, it just feels like another day at work,” the MC told us. “This is what I do for a living. But then, in actuality, stepping back and thinking about it, performing live on MTV for the News Year’s Eve with millions of people watching is pretty crazy.” Asked why he chose to recreate the clip, Miller explained, “I just think it’s a funny video, and I wanted to do something more than just stand up there and rap or something. We wanted to do something funky, and I wanted to keep all my homeys involved — get their faces on national TV.” Mac wasn’t the only performer to rock out until 2012 as Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, J. Cole and Jason Der
Rebecca Gayheart and Grey’s Anatomy star Eric Dane have welcomed their second child together, another girl they’ve named Georgia Geraldine! Gayheart, 40, and Dane, 39, have been married since 2004, and are already parents to daughter Billie Beatrice, who was born in March 2010. “Rebecca Gayheart and husband Eric Dane welcomed Georgia Geraldine Dane on Dec. 28, just in time for the New Year!” the pair’s rep says . “Both mom and baby girl are happy and healthy, Billie is thrilled to be a big sister, and dad is getting ready to live in a house full of ladies!” In August, an expectant Rebecca Gayheart shared with People some details about going through what was a more relaxed second pregnancy. “What’s made it different is that I’m very focused on Billie … so I’m not very focused on [the pregnancy]. I’m not as neurotic,” the actress said. She also confessed to readying herself for the obstacles that awaited the couple as they prepared to parent two kids under the age of 2: “I’ve heard that’s very challenging. But I think I’m up for it. Eventually it’s going to be great because they’ll be very close in age, and to each other, hopefully.” Congratulations to the happy, growing family! [Photo: WENN.com]
Brock Lesnar went down hard against kickboxer Alistair Overeem in the first round at UFC 141 last night. A few minutes later, he announced his retirement. The former heavyweight champion finished his own meteoric mixed martial arts career on a losing note at Friday’s Ultimate Fighting Championship event. Lesnar retired from the UFC after Overeem stopped him with one vicious kick to the body at 2:26 of the first round in their much-touted heavyweight bout. “Tonight is the last time you’ll see me in the octagon,” Lesnar said . That leaves the UFC heading into 2012 without its biggest star. Brock Lesnar Retires Even though he fought only seven times in the UFC, Lesnar was a pay-per-view audience magnet because of his compelling past as a WWE “champion.” He reigned as heavyweight champ, headlined UFC 100, generated the most Internet traffic of any MMA fighter and actually has fights left on his contract. UFC President Dana White and Chairman Lorenzo Fertitta took the high road with Lesnar even after the fighter blew off the post-fight news conference. White said, “When a guy decides he wants to retire, you let him do it. This is not, ‘Go hit a ball with a stick for the next two or three years on your way out.'” “This is the real deal, guys. Â We’ll figure it out.” He said regardless of how many fights Lesnar has on his contract, “Doesn’t matter. If he’s done, he’s done.”
President Barack Obama blended his roles as dad and commander-in-chief on Christmas, spending time with his family and U.S. service members stationed in Hawaii. Posing for a picture with the leader of the free world, one young American was far from intimidated. In fact, the youngster proceeded to maul the President’s face! No word on how the Secret Service handles situations like these, or if the little one was interrogated. Watch the amusing video of Obama and a hands-on baby below: Obama Poses With Baby
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released the poster for the 84th Academy Awards, and it’s… nice? I mean, Oscar looks sexy as ever, and all those foggy images of awards-night glories past recall both the champagne-fueled afterparties and the preponderance of white folks who take this hardware home every year. But isn’t something missing? Like, the host? After all that hullabaloo about Brett Ratner and Eddie Murphy that the Academy worked to deflect, and after all the lengths that the Board of Governors went to just to replace Murphy with an ultrasafe, ultrastable emcee, and after years of advertising hosts from Chris Rock to Jon Stewart to Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin to Anne Hathaway and Anne Franco, where is Billy Crystal? If I’m a casual viewer, I’m far likelier to take positive notice of the host than of the centrally positioned reminder that Driving Miss Daisy actually won Best Picture once upon a sad, sad time. Also: Can’t we get some more color in here? Sidney Poitier? Denzel Washington? Mo’Nique? If it has to be Best Picture alums, maybe Poitier and Rod Steiger from In the Heat of the Night ? Even Anthony Mackie and Jeremy Renner from The Hurt Locker . I’m not sure what this says about the young demographic that the aging Academy claims to covet; I doubt they’re watching Giant and/or The Sound of Music . Or maybe they are! Are you “young” and obsessive-compulsively watching Gone With the Wind on a DVD loop in honor of white, uptight, vaunted Academy legacies? Tell us in the comments! [via Awards Daily ]
On the bus home from a night out at a lesbian club, Fort Greene teenager Alike (Adepero Oduye) swaps her tomboyish outfit for earrings and a pink t-shirt, something clearly not of her own choosing, something selected to appease her mother. Alike is 17 and closeted, at least at home. Her mom Audrey (Kim Wayans) is uptight, religious and almost quivers with the effort of seeing her daughter as she wants her to be and not as she actually is. While Alike’s closer to her father Arthur (Charles Parnell), a cop, he’s chosen to step back from the tensions at home and in his marriage. Liking boys and makeup comes naturally to her younger sister Sharonda (Shamika Cotton) — our heroine is alone in her own personal form of camouflage, trying to blend into the background wherever she goes. What sets writer/director Dee Rees’s sensitive feature debut Pariah (expanded from her 2007 short of the same name) apart from the standard coming out story is that Alike is just as much an outsider at the club as at home, adrift and uncomfortable while her more outgoing best friend Laura (Pernell Walker) picks up girls on the dance floor. She hasn’t found the place in which she feels she can be herself. Alike knows that she’s gay, but her understanding and acceptance of that fact doesn’t mean she knows where she fits, in the scene or out of it — she doesn’t easily fall into the divisions of butch and femme, and she doesn’t seems to do any better at school, where she’s a good student in whose writing a teacher has taken a special interest, but other dangles outside the established social groups. Pariah is a coming of age story that’s uncommonly aware of just how heartbreakingly important the trappings of fashion, of music choices, of hobbies are when you’re young — they’re symbols of everything you think you are or aspire to be, even as they’re woefully inadequate shortcuts to establishing your identity. Alike’s journey take place in a larger landscape of shifting identities — just as the lesbian community isn’t a monolithic entity, neither is the black neighborhood in which the majority of the action is set. Her family has worked its way into the middle class, and Audrey’s consciousness of this achievement informs her stiffness around the coworkers she clearly feels she’s a cut above and her overall fussy propriety. It’s this sense of the type of people with whom her family belongs that leads her to insist Alike hang out with the daughter of an acquaintance from church, Bina (Aasha Davis), as if enough time in each other’s proximity would make a friendship inevitable. Alike begrudgingly walks to school with Bina and hangs out with her on the weekends, and finds a connection with the girl she never expected, one that blossoms into a possible romance when Bina gives our heroine her first kiss. Bina’s the opposite of Alike in many ways, bold where the latter is shy, but also uncertain where she’s fully decided, and the halting tenderness with which their relationship builds is tinged with the knowledge that Bina is probably going to break her heart. Pariah wouldn’t work without Oduye’s luminous performance, capturing the emotional nuances of a character not prone to letting her emotions show. She makes Alike’s vulnerabilities clear through her defenses — Alike’s convinced she has the world fooled, but isn’t anywhere near as in control as she’d like to believe. It’s a lovely, subtle portrayal that’s deservedly been getting a lot of attention for Oduye, who originated the role in Rees’s short and who may also be familiar as the grocery store clerk Louis C.K. awkwardly follows home to try to ask out in the first season of Louie . It’s a performance that good enough to smooth over the fact that the film’s gears grind as it arrives at an ending that feels neat, with Alike finally confronting her parents and encountering the results we’ve been primed to expect from the outset. Pariah is a small story of a painful, formative era in its protagonist’s life, and it sometimes feels roughly hewn to fit into an arc it doesn’t necessarily need. It’s the intimate, unforced details — an exchange between Arthur and his friends at a store, the way Laura chooses to shut Alike out after feeling betrayed by her new relationship — that speak volumes more than the film’s obvious butterfly metaphor, and that attest to a filmmaker and actress worth keeping an eye on. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
