After ‘DISconnected’ premieres Monday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on MTV, Vinny will take part in an MTV News special discussing digital abuse. By Eric Ditzian Vinny Guadagnino Photo: MTV News Long before Vinny Guadagnino was beating the beat on “Jersey Shore” (and beating off the attention of club-hopping ladies), he was a gawky kid getting picked on by high school girls. “I was really awkward-looking and I got bullied a lot — especially by the hot girls,” he recently told MTV News. “I was cool enough to sit at the popular table with the hot girls, but at the same time, I wasn’t the most popular kid at that table. They would make fun of me and it would really hurt me, because you don’t want the girls thinking that you’re a loser.” How times have changed. But Vinny hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to be bullied, and he’s made an effort to use his celebrity to bring attention to the issue, taking part in MTV’s A Thin Line campaign to empower kids to identify, respond to, and stop the spread of digital abuse. On Monday, at 9 p.m. ET/PT, the channel is set to premiere “DISconnected,” a film about online bullying. After the movie, Vinny will take part in an MTV News special to discuss these issues. Though he’s now a celebrity with almost 2 million Twitter followers, he still encounters digital abuse. Not long ago, he posted a YouTube video with some of his young cousins in the background and, as he put it, “some hater called a little girl in the background fat.” “I’ve learned not to let it affect me, but there are other people that can be affected by it,” Vin added. “That’s why I want to share a message with young kids that whenever someone is pointing the finger at you, they have a ton of problems themselves that are making them do that. That’s their own insecurities talking.” Be sure to tune in to “DISconnected” on Monday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on MTV, and check out the movie’s Facebook page. Plus, stay tuned after the movie for MTV News’ Q&A special.
Insomniac’s 16th annual EDM festival will take place June 8-10, 2012. By Gil Kaufman The Electric Daisy Carnival Photo: Getty Images Las Vegas has plenty of classic blinking-light distractions, and one of the brightest, loudest new attractions to blaze across the city’s famous skyline has re-upped for another year: The Electric Daisy Carnival will return to Vegas in 2012 for another three days of EDM madness over the June 8 weekend. After abandoning Los Angeles this summer, the 16th annual Carnival will touch down June 8-10 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, with three-day passes going on sale November 1 for $215. More than 230,000 people attended this year’s event, which featured such dance giants as David Guetta, Swedish House Mafia, Skrillex, Afrojack and Wolfgang Gartner . “When [show producer] Insomniac decided to produce EDC in Las Vegas last June, we knew we were working with the ideal venue, but we weren’t sure how our fans would react,” Insomniac President and CEO Pasquale Rotella said in a statement announcing the return to Vegas. “But after seeing more than 230,000 people show up to enjoy our show, we knew we picked a city and venue that serves as the perfect home for the largest electronic music festival in North America.” The first Las Vegas edition of the show proved to be a spectacle perfectly suited to the desert getaway’s glitz and won the Festival of the Year award at September’s 2011 DJ Awards in Ibiza. Fans were treated to not only sweaty days and nights of the best EDM music on the planet on six stages, but also such attractions as carnival rides, nightly drop-ins by glowing parachutes, daytime pool parties at hotels all along the Strip, 13 large-scale art installations, full fireworks displays and baller helicopter rides that whisked VIPs to and from the festival grounds. VIP tickets for the 2012 Carnival will start at $500, and a special pre-sale event will take place at Insomniac’s debut Halloween festival, Escape from Wonderland, on October 29 in San Bernardino, California. Are you planning to attend the 2012 Electric Daisy Carnival? Tell us below!
Before getting in the ring with Hugh Jackman, check out our handy guide. By Eric Ditzian Hugh Jackman and Evangeline Lilly in “Real Steel” Photo: DreamWorks Shawn Levy was in the midst of editing “Date Night,” the Steve Carell and Tina Fey-starring comedy, when an unlikely call came his way: Steven Spielberg wanted Levy to helm “Real Steel,” a futuristic action flick about boxing robots. No matter that Levy had made his name capturing Ashton Kutcher making sure what happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas and Ben Stiller running through a magical museum. Spielberg wanted him, Levy had always wanted to make a sports movie, and so a new phase in his career began. That fresh cinematic direction hit theaters Friday with Hugh Jackman in the starring role and the #1 spot at the weekend box office virtually assured. Pretty nice work for a new guy. To fully understand how it all came together, let’s flash back to 2009 to learn everything there is to know about “Real Steel”: Training Spielberg, a producer on the film, signed Levy up for the directing gig, but at that point in ’09, they hadn’t nailed down who would play Charlie Kenton, a down-on-his-luck ex-boxer in a future where machines now do the fighting and in which Charlie and his estranged son Max (Dakota Goyo) build a robot who just might be able to be a contender. Think “Rocky,” or maybe another Sylvester Stallone flick, “Over the Top.” Or, as many have scoffed, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots on the big screen. But the film is actually based on a short story by Richard Matheson, whose work has given rise to “I Am Legend,” among other Hollywood fare. That was a pretty good pedigree for Jackman, who entered into talks to play Charlie that October and officially signed on the next month . “Real Steel,” Levy said the next spring, is “a weird amalgam [of influences]. What it’s not is “Transformers” or “Terminator.” There’s definitely shades of that ‘Rocky’ paradigm. There’s shades of “Paper Moon,” in that it is a father/child road movie. And it’s really kind of a redemption movie. It’s got some humor, but it’s definitely not a comedy. It’s got a lot of action, really kind of muscular action, and a lot of … heart.” Entering the Ring Filming kicked off in June with co-stars Anthony Mackie (a boxing promoter) and Evangeline Lilly (um, just a friend of Charlie’s) coming along for the ride. The first look at the flick appeared just as filming began in the summer of ’10, showing off both slick futuristic robots and gritty dystopian environs. The first trailer had an undeniable “Transformers” vibe, despite Levy’s assurances that his movie is an entirely different (robotic) beast. But the comparison is hardly a negative one, especially considering the billions that Michael Bay’s franchise has garnered. And audiences were responding well — so well that Disney reportedly kick-started work on a sequel this past April. The Big Fight As October approached and another trailer appeared — this one focusing less on the “Transformers” actions and more on the “Paper Moon” emotion — we debuted a picture of the “Real Steel” boxing ring as part of our Fall Movie Preview and chatted with Levy, who spoke at length about his motion-capture robots. “This is motion capture with real fighters in a real ring, consulting in the ring with me and Sugar Ray [Leonard], wailing on each other in full contact,” he told us. “We took that captured fight as data and we converted it into robot avatars. That was a big thing. To do the movie as mo-cap instead of animation was a big choice. Mo-cap allows the director to direct a performance; it’s not left to the imagination of an animator that sometimes you don’t even meet. It was huge. Every day we were making sure the robots were cool-looking in terms of design and full-contact fighting.” So, sure, there’s a ton of brawling, but as Jackman told us at the red-carpet premiere recently, there’s also a ton of heart. “A lot people [say], “What is it, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots?” But it’s got a lot of heart,” he said. “This movie is really about the relationships of everyone involved, and I think it’s going to surprise people. I saw it with my mother-in-law, my wife and my kids at the same screening, and they all were crying at one point, laughing, and they really got into it.” Check out everything we’ve got on “Real Steel.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com .
Singer doesn’t disappoint with her dance moves and costume changes, baby bump and all. By Matt Elias Beyonce in her “Countdown” video Photo: Columbia Records Just as Beyonc
Season-nine winner’s album was lowest-selling by show champ. By Gil Kaufman Lee DeWyze Photo: Christopher Polk/ Getty Images Season-nine “American Idol” winner Lee DeWyze has set a couple of records since taking home the title two years ago over dreadlocked rival Crystal Bowersox. Unfortunately for him, though, they’re not the kinds you want to brag about. After landing the worst-selling debut album from an “Idol” winner in history, the soft-spoken rocker has quietly been dumped by his label, RCA Records , after just one release. The singer and former paint-store clerk failed to catch fire with an audience while selling just 168,000 copies of his 2010 major-label bow, Live It Up. With only sporadic touring and no single topping the charts, DeWyze was largely off the radar in the months following the album’s release as he kept a much lower profile than previous winners. He becomes only the second “Idol” winner to be dropped after a single album, following in the footsteps of season five’s Taylor Hicks, whose Arista Records debut sold more than 705,000 copies. While a spokesperson for RCA could not be reached for comment at press time, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed the news. In an interview with the trade magazine last week, newly appointed RCA Records CEO Peter Edge let slip that Illinois native DeWyze, 25, is no longer on the label’s roster. DeWyze’s option with the label expired in September, and his season was the final one of a nine-year partnership between “Idol,” 19 Recordings and RCA’s parent company, Sony Music. While DeWyze has been let go, a number of previous “Idol” winners remain on the RCA roster, including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Jordin Sparks, David Cook and Kris Allen. An unnamed rep for the singer told THR that DeWyze is in a “good place right now” and he is reportedly working on new music and planning his upcoming wedding to model Joanna Walsh. For other artists featured in Mixtape Daily, check out Mixtape Daily Headlines . Related Videos Lee DeWyze Talks New Album ‘Live It Up’ Related Artists Lee DeWyze
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer discusses with MTV News ‘That Used to Be Us,’ his and Michael Mandelbaum’s just-released book about the U.S. By Tami Katzoff, with reporting by Sway Calloway Thomas L. Friedman Photo: Nancy Ostertag/ Getty Images Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Thomas L. Friedman has been talking about foreign policy with his friend Michael Mandelbaum for two decades. Over the past couple of years, though, they started to notice something different about their conversations. “Every time we started off talking about the world, we’d end up talking about America,” Friedman recalled when he spoke with MTV News recently. “And we realized basically that America — its fate, future, vigor, vitality — was really the biggest foreign-policy issue in the world.” The two friends recognized the enormity of the role the U.S. plays in the world — for good or bad. “We’re kind of the tent pole that holds up a lot of the global economy,” Friedman said. “That tent pole buckles or frays, your kids won’t just grow up in a different America; they’ll grow up in a very different world. So there’s a lot at stake.” Friedman and Mandelbaum were inspired to write their new book, “That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back.” In it, they identify four major challenges this country is currently failing to meet: our chronic deficit, our pattern of energy consumption, globalization and the revolution in information technology. Friedman acknowledged that by failing to tackle these issues, his generation has made things very difficult for its descendants. “Young people need to be paying attention right now, because we’re messing with your future.” He cited the nation’s deepening deficit as an example and listed ways in which it will affect young people years from now if it’s not reversed. “One, the currency you hold will buy less. It will just be worth less,” he said. “Second, it won’t be so easy to get a job. The number of companies that will want to start up here, the number of employers that will say, ‘Hmm, I could hire a machine or I could hire a person, or I could hire cheap labor over in another country — I think I’ll go for the machine or the cheap labor.’ And third, you may be counting on your Social Security and your Medicare for when you get old like your parents are now — it may not be there.” Fortunately, these problems also hold countless opportunities, like for those who can find innovative ways to address our nation’s excessive energy consumption. “Whoever invents these systems and technologies is going to have a huge global market in order to thrive in,” Friedman said. Meeting all these challenges, Friedman explained, will spur economic growth. “And if we’re growing, then there’s money for a lot of things, and there’s a pie for everyone to get a slice. If we’re not growing, then we’re fighting over the slices, and we’re collecting all the crumbs.” Related Videos Thomas L. Friedman Says The Next Generation Will Have To Invent Their Job
New clip, released Thursday (October 6), references iconic dance films. By John Mitchell Beyonce in her “Countdown” video Photo: Columbia Records Beyonc
Movie about digital drama and its consequences premieres Monday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on MTV. By Kara Warner Pete Wentz Photo: MTV News LOS ANGELES — With the positive influence technology has had on our busy lives, there is a negative side, with those who abuse technology to hurt themselves and others. MTV has started to raise awareness and fight cyberbullying head-on with the creation of A Thin Lin and the new TV movie “DISconnected.” “DISconnected” revolves around four technology-dependent characters who all endure different types of digital drama and suffer consequences because of it. The film held a screening Wednesday night, and MTV News was lucky enough to catch up with a few star supporters to find out how they deal with the topic of digital drama and cyberbullying in their own lives. “It’s important to me, because having become an artist in the digital age, you get to see all the aspects of how being so connected works,” Pete Wentz said. “It’s such an amazing idea, but at the same time I think it allows people who are cowardly or anonymous, it gives them a lot of voice. Being a dad, knowing my son is going to grow up only knowing this [digital age], it’s really important for him to see that people do stand up and not everybody is hiding behind a computer screen. I want him to know that.” Actor Jordan Calloway, who plays one of the four main characters in the film, agreed with the importance of the film’s serious subject matter. “To be a part of this movement was really important to me, because it drives home a strong message that kids in society need to hear,” he said. “The fact that [director] Leslie [Libman] took it upon herself to get this message out to kids and all of us who use technology, it was really important for me, as a college student myself, to be a part of this, to be able to drive the point across. My character, Isaiah, is based on a true story, which is that of Abraham Biggs; he was a 19-year-old kid in Florida who actually did commit suicide.” Be sure to tune in to “DISconnected” on Monday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on MTV, and check out the movie’s Facebook page. Related Videos DISconnected | Trailer
‘He’s just an uncut lyricist,’ Ross tells MTV News of Maybach Music Group’s latest signee. By Rob Markman Rick Ross and Stalley Photo: MTV News Make no mistake: Rick Ross is a hip-hop fan through and through. So when the Bawse recruits new talent for his Maybach Music Group roster , he reverts to fan mode. Take, for instance, MMG’s Stalley. “He’s just an uncut lyricist, he’s just a pure MC” Rozay told MTV News on the black carpet for the 2011 BET Hip Hop Awards in Atlanta. “When I listen to Stalley’s music, it takes me back to the early days of A Tribe Called Quest.” Stalley is an Ohio MC who migrated to New York and first got some fame with 2009’s MadStalley: The Autobiography mixtape, on which he rhymed over beats from the much-celebrated Mad-Lib. From there, he linked up with Curren$y and a collective of artists who worked out of Dame Dash’s DD172 workspace . This year, Stalley dropped Lincoln Way Nights (Intelligent Trunk Music), and around the same time, he caught the attention of Rozay. After a brief Twitter convo between Ross and Stalley fueled speculation about their working relationship, the rumors that Stalley had signed to MMG started to become more prevalent. The rookie spitter would eventually join Ross on the first leg of Lil Wayne’s I Am Still Music Tour, and the relationship grew, leading to a deal for the Ohio rapper. While Stalley has some serious work to do before he gets to Ross’ level, he does best the Bawse in one category. Known for his lengthy beard, Ross now has to play number two his new artist. “I can’t front: He got that length on me on the beard, he most definitely got that,” Ross said, laughing. “And not only that, the music that he’s making is incredible.” Are you looking forward to Stalley’s MMG debut? Let us know in the comments! Related Artists Rick Ross
‘Somebody came up to me last week and said, ‘How many babies do you think were made off of ‘Motivation’?’ ‘ she laughs to MTV News. By Rebecca Thomas Kelly Rowland in her “Motivation” video Photo: Columbia Records UNIONDALE, New York — Kelly Rowland needed a moment. MTV News had spent a few weeks trying to catch up with the cocoa beauty, and we finally scored some time to chat with her when she hit Nassau Coliseum last week for the New York leg of Chris Brown’s F.A.M.E. Tour . But first, Kelly Ro needed to catch up with her public. After an energetic opening set that included hits from her Destiny’s Child days and the honey-dipped hooks she dropped on rap staples like Nelly’s “Dilemma,” Rowland emerged backstage in a black sequined bodysuit topped with a sheer bolero, positively glowing. A gaggle of label execs and a smattering of VIP fans crammed Rowland’s arena dressing room to celebrate what had clearly been a triumphant night, but it was hard not to feel they were also toasting an impressive year. In April, “Motivation” — an early single that preceded her third solo album, Here I Am — hit radio and started its slow seduction of the Billboard charts, from the Hot 100 (peak #17) to the R&B/Hip-Hop Songs (#1), Digital Songs (#25) and even Ringtones (#3) rankings. The steamy platinum track was atypical fare for Kelly and something of a gamble for a gifted performer who had yet to match her girl-group glory with Stateside solo success. Of course, the risk paid off. ” ‘Motivation,’ wow, ” Kelly said. Back on her tour bus after freshening up, the singer reflected as she relaxed on a cozy leather couch. “It’s a blessing above anything, and it’s just so crazy how something so unexpected — because everything is so tempo-driven on the radio, and I remember being slightly nervous about that, but then I just got over it real quick because I just [had] such great confidence in the record.” With an assist from Young Money general Lil Wayne, the Rico Love/ Jim Jonsin-produced tune let good girl Kelly show off her sensual side — and that silky alto. (In the companion clip, Kells writhes around with some oiled-up dancers, clad in an indigo one-piece that’s more cut-out than cloth.) Fans were soon buzzing about the lyrics, which find the songstress giving her man a titillating, um, pep talk. “Whoa, lover, don’t you dare slow down/ Go longer, you can last more rounds/ Push harder, you’re almost there now,” she sings, adding, “And when we’re done, I don’t wanna feel my … legs.” “I think that there was a side of all women and all people, period; a sensual side, and it just needed to come out this summer,” Kelly said about the song’s heavy rotation. “And I think ‘Motivation’ kinda helped motivate that — a lot,” she laughed. With the infectious, uptempo “Lay It on Me” (featuring Big Sean) already lined up as the follow-up single , K.Ro said she was still blushing over the impact of her million-selling smash. “Somebody came up to me just last week and said, ‘How many babies do you think were made off of ‘Motivation’?’ I was like, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t even think about it like that!’ ” But don’t let the Houston belle fool you: She’s fully embraced what she described as the song’s themes of “sexual freedom” and “confidence.” In fact, while “Motivation” was burning up the charts this summer, Kelly was heating up Vibe magazine’s August/September “Juice” issue, among others, tossing her top for a Janet Jackson-esque cover look. Are you excited to hear more music from Kelly? Tell us in the comments! Related Artists Kelly Rowland
