Filed under: Photo Galleries Astrology buffs across the country freaked out this week when they thought their astrological sign had changed — but it turns out they all stayed the same. Check out this gallery of stars whose astrological sign — including Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces,… Read more
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Zodiac Signs — Times, They Aren’t a Changin’
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Tagged baywatch, celeb news, country, dancing-with-the-stars, donna, freaked-out, gallery, Hollywood, hollywood-news, lamas, lorenzo, Photo Galleries, renegade, thought-their, TMZ
‘This is absolutely incredible!’ singer’s manager tweets. By Jocelyn Vena Cover art for Britney Spears’ “Hold It Against Me” Photo: Jive Forget any arguments that Britney Spears is some kind of underdog ; with the release of her latest tune, “Hold It Against Me,” earlier this week, the singer is certainly proving that she’s still at the top of the pop heap. Her manager, Adam Leber, tweeted that the singer was (as of press time) at the top of the iTunes charts in 16 countries: the U.S., Sweden, Australia, Greece, Switzerland, France, Ireland, Italy, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal and Spain. “This is absolutely incredible!” Leber wrote. “Brit’s fans never cease to amaze me.” In addition to thanking the fans, Leber also shared that Brit is hard at work on the video for the track. “Went 2 dance rehearsals yesterday with @BritneySpears & @brianfriedman. HIAM video is going to be incredible to say the least. More to come,” he tweeted Wednesday. Also on Wednesday, Britney Spears thanked fans for all the support they’ve been showing the lead single from Brit’s March album. “Couldn’t of asked for a better 1/11/11..thanks to all my fans and all of the radio stations for playing HIAM!” she wrote . “I am truly blessed…” On Tuesday, the same day the song was up for purchase on iTunes, it launched straight to #1 on the site and quickly broke all previous radio records for the most spins in the first day of release. “Top 40 outlets across the country immediately put ‘Hold It Against Me’ in rotation and received instant-reaction airplay at America’s most-influential stations, including Z100 and WXRK in New York and KIIS and KAMP in Los Angeles,” radio-industry analyst Kevin McCabe said in a statement. Are you feeling the new Britney single like the rest of the world seems to be? Let us know in the comments! Related Videos Reactions To Britney’s ‘Hold It Against Me’ Related Photos The Evolution Of: Britney Spears Related Artists Britney Spears
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Britney Spears’ ‘Hold It Against Me’ Tops iTunes In 16 Countries
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Tagged artists, chase, country, deena-cortese, Hollywood, itunes, jersey-shore, news article, radio, sammi
Country music duo the Bellamy Brothers are upset over Britney song title’s resemblance to their 1979 hit. By Gil Kaufman Britney Spears and the Bellamy Brothers Photo: Getty Images Chances are, nobody out there is going to confuse the Bellamy Brothers’ slow-rolling, 1979 Tex-Mex country hit “If I Said You Have a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me” with Britney Spears’ new club grinder “Hold It Against Me.” Yeah, the titles are somewhat similar, but even with the noise the “Let Your Love Flow” sibling act is making over a possible legal challenge to Brit, the chances of winning a case over the borrowing of a song title is pretty slim, according to a noted copyright attorney who spoke to MTV News. “A title is not copyrightable,” said lawyer Brian Caplan, who has more than 20 years of experience in intellectual property and entertainment law. (Caplan does not represent the Bellamy Brothers.) “The expression, either in lyrics or music in a composition is copyrightable, however if something has been used previously by multiple sources, one can argue that it is trite or commonplace and the latter user has no right to it.” David Bellamy conceded to Entertainment Weekly that he first heard the title phrase — a favorite cheesy pick-up line for bar-trollers across the globe — while watching reruns of the classic Groucho Marx show “You Bet Your Life.” The mustachioed comedian used the line on the show one night in an attempt to sidle up to a buxom blonde, Bellamy recalled. “It was just really funny, and I thought, ‘Well, that’d make a really good song title,” Bellamy said, acknowledging that many songs have the same, or similar, titles these days. “But this particular title is kinda hard to disguise, because the title is the song. It’s not like saying, ‘I love you, baby.’ I think songwriters have become watered-down. This makes me sound like an old man again, but I find that songwriters now are not as strong as they used to be in the ’60s or ’70s.” Lawyer Caplan, who had not heard either song when MTV News contacted him to comment, said that just because a title is not copyrightable does not mean a potential case would automatically go away. “It means that there would be a strong argument as it moves forward to have it dismissed, though,” he said. “If you can show through a survey of prior art that that phrase has been used previously by others prior to the plaintiff’s use, then it significantly undermines [the case] and if it’s only used in the title it’s a slam dunk.” As an example, he said if someone wrote a song called “Jersey Girl” or “My Jersey Girl,” despite the fact that Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee Tom Waits wrote his “Jersey Girl” in 1980 — and Jersey boy Bruce Springsteen helped popularize it a year later — as long as the rest of the song is different musically, lyrically and melodically, there would be no case there, either. In the meantime, Spears is burning up the charts with her tune and breaking some records along the way. “Hold It Against Me” immediately shot to #1 on iTunes upon release this week and broke all previous records for most spins upon its release on Monday. Related Artists The Bellamy Brothers Britney Spears
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Britney Spears’ ‘Hold It Against Me’ Likely Safe From Copyright Case
World Food Programme and Partners in Health have fed and cared for hundreds of thousands of sick and displaced Haitians. By Gil Kaufman Victims of the Haiti earthquake Photo: MTV News No one expected Haiti’s problems to be solved just one year after a monster earthquake hit the island on January 12, 2010 , leveling much of the impoverished nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and killing more than 250,000. The world came together in the weeks after the natural disaster; Americans donated nearly $1.5 billion to help Haiti and another $5.3 billion was pledged at a donors conference two months after the 7.0 magnitude quake. Every penny was needed, as nearly two million people were left homeless, many of them forced into ramshackle tent cities, and nearly 400,000 children were made orphans by the latest natural disaster to strike the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The 12 ensuing months have not been any easier, with the combined force of hurricane season, a bitterly divisive election and a mysterious cholera outbreak that has taken the lives of more than 3,600 and infected more than 170,000. And while Tulane University medical student Alison Smith told MTV News on Tuesday that her recent trips have found slow progress on the island, representatives from two relief organizations, World Food Programme and Partners in Health, said they are seeing encouraging signs in Haiti. “I think the year later is very different in many, many ways … and in many positive ways,” said Anne Poulsen, a spokesperson for the World Food Programme, one of the organizations that benefited from the more than $58 million raised by MTV’s record-setting “Hope for Haiti Now” telethon . The WFP has launched a number of initiatives on the island, from serving hot meals to more than 1.1 million Haitian children every day through its National School Meals Programme to distributing nutritional supplements to children and pregnant and lactating women (with more than 450,000 helped so far) to projects focusing on debris removal, drainage ditch digging and agricultural rehabilitation that provide paying jobs for more than 140,000. To be sure, Poulsen said, the job was and remains huge and daunting, but the WFP managed to get food out to Haitians within hours of the earthquake and has since provided food assistance for more than 4 million in the country. “One year later, the town looks different. … The rubble has been removed, not all of it. … Buildings half-standing have been demolished. … A lot of the people who were in the tent camps, many of these have found a shelter, maybe not a permanent house,” said Poulsen, who recalled the devastation she saw when she first arrived last January as among the worst she’s seen in many years of relief work. “You can see business back up, you can see markets functioning, you can see women carrying their fruit and vegetables down from the mountains,” she said, noting that the number of people in temporary shelters has decreased from 1.5 million in the aftermath of the earthquake to around 800,000 now. Jon Lascher, one of the equipment procurement managers for the medical relief organization Partners in Health, is not surprised that two very different pictures exist of Haiti a year later. “It’s a very complex situation,” he told MTV News. “A year later there is no easy answer. … We are celebrating some of our small gains, but there has been progress made here and it’s interesting progress.” Lascher said there are still “thousands” of workers with a wide variety of nongovernmental organizations lending a hand on the island. As the work has shifted from emergency search and rescue to a more long-term development phase, questions are being asked about what more needs to be done to create self-sufficiency and stability in the shattered nation. For PIH, the first $8 million grant from the “Hope for Haiti” telethon was spent by June on emergency response, with $6 million going to the camps holding displaced Haitians, replacing their makeshift cardboard lean-tos with tents and more stable temporary shelters. PIH set up four medical clinics in these camps, the largest serving more than 51,000 people. While amputations and crushed limb injuries were the big concerns soon after the quake, Lascher said sanitation continues to be a major issue. “Now our biggest concern is clean water, sanitation. You have large groups of people living in very close quarters without sanitation, without clean water, largely without access to proper nutrition,” he said. “What you find, especially now with the cholera epidemic, is that you have huge pockets of the population that are much more at risk for cholera and other diseases than they would have been before the earthquake.” PIH’s staff in the country, many of whom were already there before the quake working on providing health care to Haitians, has grown by more than 1,000 since January to over 5,000, and Lascher said the organization is doing work it’s never done before on the island. In addition to its presence in the capital, where it had not worked before, PIH has set up three clinics in camps and set up a home for physically and mentally disabled children. It is also in the midst of building a 320-bed teaching hospital. It’s a huge job, and Lascher knows that he will spend many more months and years attending to the needs of the island’s people. But he’s got reason to hope that the world won’t abandon Haiti. “We’ve got an incredible group of committed donors and supporters that are still interested in Haiti and still concerned and helping us accomplish the work that we set forth,” he said. “Of course, we are still urging people to stay involved. The work here is far from over. There is so much more that needs to be done.” Related Videos Crisis In Haiti Making Progress In Haiti SuChin Pak Visits Haiti
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Haiti Has Seen Some Progress Since Earthquake, Relief Workers Say
SMH: After a Glock-wielding gunman killed six people at a Tucson shopping center on Jan. 8, Greg Wolff, the owner of two Arizona gun shops, told his manager to get ready for a stampede of new customers. Wolff was right. Instead of hurting sales, the massacre had the $499 semi-automatic pistols — popular with police, sport shooters and gangsters — flying out the doors of his Glockmeister stores in Mesa and Phoenix. “We’re at double our volume over what we usually do,” Wolff said two days after the shooting spree that also left 14 wounded, including Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who remains in critical condition. A national debate over weaknesses in state and federal gun laws stirred by the shooting has stoked fears among gun buyers that stiffer restrictions may be coming from Congress, gun dealers say. The result is that a deadly demonstration of the weapon’s effectiveness has also fired up sales of handguns in Arizona and other states, according to federal law enforcement data. “When something like this happens people get worried that the government is going to ban stuff,” Wolff said. Arizona gun dealers say that among the biggest sellers over the past two days is the Glock 19 made by privately held Glock GmbH, based in Deutsch-Wagram, Austria, the model used in the shooting. Sales Jump One-day sales of handguns in Arizona jumped 60 percent to 263 on Jan. 10 compared with 164 the corresponding Monday a year ago, the second-biggest increase of any state in the country, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data. Handgun sales rose 65 percent to 395 in Ohio; 16 percent to 672 in California; 38 percent to 348 in Illinois; and 33 percent to 206 in New York, the FBI data show. Sales increased nationally about 5 percent, to 7,906 guns. Federally tracked gun sales, which are drawn from sales in gun stores that require a federal background check, also jumped following the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech, in which 32 people were killed. “Whenever there is a huge event, especially when it’s close to home, people do tend to run out and buy something to protect their family,” said Don Gallardo, a manager at Arizona Shooter’s World in Phoenix, who said that the number of people signing up for the store’s concealed weapons class doubled over the weekend. Gallardo said he expects handgun sales to climb steadily throughout the week. Permissive Laws Jared Loughner, the 22-year-old accused in the shooting, has a petty criminal record, yet so far there’s no evidence that his background contained anything that would have prevented him from buying a handgun in Arizona, where limits on owning and carrying a gun are among the most permissive in the country, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun- control advocacy group. Critics have focused on the extended magazine used in the shooting. It was illegal until 2004 under the expired federal ban on assault weapons. The clip — still banned in some states and popular in Arizona, gun dealers say — allegedly allowed Loughner to fire 33 rounds without reloading. Democratic Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York said this week that she plans to introduce legislation that would ban the high-capacity magazine. McCarthy’s husband was one of six people shot to death in 1993 by a lone gunman on a Long Island railroad train. Her son was among the 19 people wounded. “The fact that the guy had a magazine that could carry 33 rounds, he was not out to just kill. He was there to do a mass killing,” said Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky, a forensics expert at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Virginia Tech Light and easy to use, a Glock 9 mm was also wielded by the Virginia Tech killer, Seung-Hui Cho, in a spree that left 32 people dead. The gun is among the most popular sidearms for U.S. police departments. A negative for law enforcement is that the rifling of the barrel makes it almost impossible to match a bullet to an individual weapon with ballistic tests, Kobilinsky said. “It’s one of the greatest guns made in the history of the world,” said Wolff, whose two stores sell Glock-made weapons almost exclusively. When Loughner allegedly walked into Tucson’s Sportsman’s Warehouse last November to buy a Glock 19 — favored as a concealed weapon because it is slightly smaller and lighter than similar caliber handguns — federal law would have required a background check via the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, a telephone-based check administered by the FBI. Background Check Loughner would have had to present his driver’s license and answer several questions, including queries on past drug use, domestic violence or felony convictions. Wolff said in most cases the check takes less than five minutes and the number of denials he receives is a tiny fraction of the total. Wolff called the shooting “horrible.” Nonetheless, it has created a surge of publicity for the gun, he said. “It’s in the news now. I’m sure the Green Bay Packers are selling all kinds of jerseys today as well,” he said. “I just think our state embraces guns.” Arizona law allows anyone to carry a gun in public if it’s in full view, making it what’s known as an open-carry state. Until recently, gun store owners say, it was common to see people carrying weapons in grocery stores or coffee shops. That’s less true today, because last year that state passed a law allowing individuals to carry a concealed weapon without a permit. Gun Law Rating Daniel Vise, senior attorney with the Brady Campaign, said Arizona received a score of two out of 100 on the organization’s rating of state gun laws, and that the rate of gun deaths in the state is one and a half times the national average. Brady Campaign spokeswoman Caroline Brewer said that some states require local law enforcement agencies to approve gun permits, a system that would have given authorities a chance to further assess Loughner, whose behavior acquaintances have described as erratic. Loughner tried to buy ammunition the morning of the shooting at a local Wal-Mart Stores Inc. outlet, then left during the sale process, according to a statement by the company. “If a clerk at Wal-Mart picked something up and refused to sell this guy some ammunition, we can certainly imagine that law enforcement would have picked that up as well,” Brewer said. Source
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Crazy White Folks Buying More Glock Pistols After Arizona Shooting Spree
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This will not help Ted Williams in his battle with the other Ted Williams… The homeless man with a golden voice, who has become an overnight sensation across the country, was detailed by Los Angeles police officers last night following an argument with his daughter. The dispute, which reportedly took place over money , went down at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood. A hotel employee called authorities due to excessivly loud shouting between Williams and his daughter. Both were taken to the police station, though no charges were pressed. Williams has received numerous job offers since he was discovered on the streets of Ohio this month. He has a long arrest record , but Americans have galvanized behind a man who says God has given him a second chance. Let’s hope he’s not on the verge of blowing it.
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Ted Williams: Detained by Police
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‘It kind of leaps around, but it tells a portion of my life,’ comedian tells MTV News. By Rick Marshall Patton Oswalt Photo: MTV News In “Zombie Spaceship Wasteland,” Patton Oswalt’s new essay-driven memoir, the actor/comedian argues that the question of which of those three categories we each fall under decides our destinies and the sort of people we become. Zombies simplify the world around them, Spaceships seek the new, and Wastelands … well, they destroy. For Oswalt, his own answer to that question was a long time coming, but after finishing the book, he’s now certain that he is, indeed, a Wasteland — and he’s not alone. “A lot of comedians are Wastelands,” he writes. “What is stand-up comedy except isolating specific parts of culture or humanity and holding them up against a stark, vast background to approach at an oblique angle and get laughs?” Though it’s the first novel from the geek-friendly actor, Oswalt has dabbled in writing on several occasions, including some recent work in the comic book world that had him scripting stories based on Joss Whedon’s “Firefly” universe (titled “Serenity: Float Out”). With “Zombie Spaceship Wasteland,” however, he turns the focus on himself in a series of short essays — some autobiographical, some fictional — that explore his evolution as a media consumer, creator, and, well, human being. “It kind of leaps around, but it tells a portion of my life,” he told MTV News. “Memories, to me, are more impressionistic rather than ‘This happened, then this happened, then this happened.’ If you think about it, they’re memorized differently depending on what age you were when you had them.” Regularly diverging into lengthy footnotes, off-topic asides and other digressions, “Zombie Spaceship Wasteland” doesn’t follow the conventions of standard autobiographical fare — a fact Oswalt says is a reflection of his own way of thinking and communicating, and something fans of his stand-up comedy will likely find familiar. He even goes so far as to list, at the end of each chapter, everything he did on the Internet while writing that section of the book. “That’s how I talk. When I say things, I’ll digress, so the best way to capture that was with a footnote,” he said of the lengthy notations in each essay. For Oswalt, the difficulty in bringing all the essays together wasn’t so much in finding good material, but deciding which stories to include and how to present them. In one of the longer essays, titled “Victory Tour,” Oswalt presents a diary-style account of the worst gig in his career: a 1994 stint at a comedy club outside Vancouver. In another essay, his memories of an eccentric uncle teach him something about himself and his values. “I had taken those notes so long ago,” he said of the “Victory Tour” chapter. “I didn’t know what I was going to do with them, whether I would turn them into a bit or a graphic novel or something. “The one that was the most satisfying to get down, though, was the one about my Uncle Pete,” he continued. “It got a little bit more real, and I uncovered some things about myself that I didn’t quite realize until I started writing it.” “Zombie Spaceship Wasteland” is on shelves now from Scribner Publishing. Are you a Zombie, Spaceship or Wasteland? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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Patton Oswalt Explains ‘Zombie Spaceship Wasteland’ Memoir
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Tagged actor, bennyhollywood, comic, conventions, country, Hollywood, music-news, patton-oswalt, sharon-dastur, stars, thoughts, TMZ
‘I can see it being another huge hit for her,’ Z100 program director tells MTV News. By James Montgomery Britney Spears Photo: Kevin Mazur/Wire Images You’ve already heard the likes of Perez Hilton and “Jersey Shore” star Pauly D extol its virtues, but with the Monday (January 10) premiere of Britney Spears’ “Hold It Against Me,” we figured it was time to let program directors at radio stations around the country weigh in on the track too. After all, not only are they the ones responsible for putting the song on the air, but they’re the kind of folks who know a hit the second they hear it. So do they think Brit has another smash on her hands? Not surprisingly, the answer appears to be “yes.” “When I originally heard it in December, it blew me away from the first listen, and the same thing happened when we played it on Elvis Duran’s morning show [Monday]; our Facebook and Twitter pages exploded, ” Sharon Dastur, program director at New York’s Z100 , told MTV News. “People are going crazy for it. They heard the leaked version and loved it, and now they’re loving the official version too. I can see it being another huge hit for her.” “We’re playing it at the top of every hour, and the reaction has been great,” Tommy Chuck, program director at Tampa, Florida, station 93.3 WFLZ added. “Both on Facebook and Twitter, people are glad Britney’s back; [they’re] thanking us for playing the song, telling us how amazing she is, and all the air staff loved it. It’s a solid single, and it’ll be a big hit for her.” And while that initial wave of fan enthusiasm was to be expected, what both Dastur and Chuck said would put “Hold It Against Me” over the top is the song itself, a master-class in of-the-moment pop, courtesy of the world’s foremost experts on the subject, Max Martin and Dr. Luke. “Pop radio is a tough business, and if the song is no good, it wouldn’t make it beyond the initial airplay,” Chuck said. “People are really responding to this song, though, commenting on the ‘dub-step’ element of it. It definitely sounds similar to a lot of the dance tracks you hear [on the radio by] Taio Cruz and Usher and Chris Brown. It continues that whole trend.” “[Britney’s] got a great team around her, and with Dr. Luke and Max Martin, you can’t go wrong,” Dastur said. “The reaction [to the song] this morning was outstanding. I asked some producers about it, because sometimes, we’ll play a song, and the reaction is a little one-way or the other. But this one was through-the-roof positive.” What do you think of “Hold It Against Me”? Let us know in the comments! Related Photos The Evolution Of: Britney Spears Related Artists Britney Spears
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Britney Spears’ ‘Hold It Against Me’: Radio Programmers Weigh In
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Tagged artists, bennyhollywood, chuck, country, Facebook, florida, Hollywood, Mtv, News, sharon-dastur
‘Little Fockers’ drops to #2, while ‘Season of the Witch’ lands softly in third. By Josh Wigler Matt Damon in “True Grit” Photo: Paramount Pictures Rooster Cogburn can’t do nothing for you, son — nothing but entertain, that is, as the one-eyed, hard-drinking lawman currently enjoys his stint as the most-watched hero in theaters across the country. After three weeks at the box office, Joel and Ethan Coen’s “True Grit” has emerged with a shiny gold medal for its very first weekend victory. The Western, starring Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon, roped in a winning reward worth $15 million over the weekend, a modest result but enough to secure first place. “True Grit” currently stands atop a domestic gold mine worth $110.4 million, easily the Coen brothers’ single-best performer of all time with virtually no signs of slowing down in sight. As Cogburn’s quest to bag-and-tag the cowardly Tom Chaney and Lucky Ned Pepper’s gang continued to electrify moviegoers everywhere this past weekend, Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro’s “Little Fockers” lost its grasp on audiences. The comedy threequel fell to second place, earning $13.8 million and bringing its current tally up to $124 million. The first new wide release of 2011 landed with a dud, as “Season of the Witch” tracked down a measly $10.7 million bounty from Friday through Sunday. Starring Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman as a pair of Crusades-era warriors escorting a suspected witch to a faraway monastery, “Season of the Witch” failed to make an impression with the moviegoing masses, barely putting a dent into its $40 million production budget. The fourth place “Tron: Legacy” continued on its path towards clearing its production budget, while “Black Swan” managed yet another impressive showing by earning an $8.4 million fifth-place finish. “Country Strong,” which expanded into wide release over the weekend, performed decently with $7.3 million to its name. The Box-Office Top Five #1 “True Grit” ($15 million) #2 “Little Fockers” ($13.8 million) #3 “Season of the Witch” ($10.7 million) #4 “Tron: Legacy” ($9.8 million) #5 “Black Swan” ($8.4 million) Upcoming Releases Seth Rogen will finally prove his worth as a crime-fighter in next weekend’s “The Green Hornet,” while Vince Vaughn and Kevin James wrestle with “The Dilemma.” Check out everything we’ve got on “True Grit” , “Little Fockers” and “Season of the Witch.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos ‘True Grit’ Clips ‘Little Fockers’ Clips MTV Rough Cut: ‘True Grit’
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‘True Grit’ Tops Weekend Box Office
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‘[Co-star] Tim McGraw and the other great country stars filled the airwaves,’ he tells MTV News about growing up on a farm. By Jocelyn Vena, with reporting by Josh Horowitz Garrett Hedlund Photo: MTV News Garrett Hedlund really is just a small-town guy at the end of the day. So when he hit the set of “Country Strong,” which opened Friday (January 7), he embraced his Minnesota farm boy beginnings and his early love of country music. In the flick he plays Beau Hutton, a young country music songwriter who plays a pivotal role in the life of former country star Kelly Canter (Gwyneth Paltrow), as she tries to reclaim her country throne. Beau also falls for a country singer newbie named Chiles, who’s played by “Gossip Girl” star Leighton Meester. “I mean, country, it was the only thing we listened to on the farm with the one radio station,” Hedlund recalled to MTV News about his childhood. “You try to veer from it and you to go to rock and then to rap, and then country on this film kind of pulled me back home.” Hedlund explained that his folkie roots helped him to relate better to his character. “And [with] ‘Country Strong,’ growing up on a farm, [my co-star] Tim McGraw and the other great country stars filled the airwaves around our house,” he told the Orlando Sentinel. “Our only radio station played only country music,” he said. Post-“Country Strong,” Hedlund said he’s fully embracing his Nashville-loving roots. “And now I’m solely country music once again,” he explained. “Driving in L.A. and everything’s a little tenacious; it can get a little intense.” While country music fans might expect 26-year-old Hedlund to cite some contemporary artists as favorites, the “Tron” star told MTV News singers like Taylor Swift and Keith Urban weren’t primary influences for him on “Country Strong.” “I love old-school [artists like] Townes Van Zandt, a lot of the great singer/songwriters that have a lot of these great lyrics and these great stories and beautiful, sad stories.” Check out everything we’ve got on “Country Strong.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘Country Strong’ ‘s Garrett Hedlund
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‘Country Strong’ Star Garrett Hedlund Recalls His Country-Music Roots
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