File under bonehead move of the day: A 41-year-old man in Recife, Brazil was arrested and charged with using false documents and falsification of public document when he tried to open a bank account with a number of fake IDs in his possession, including one featuring a photograph of Jack Nicholson . According to Globo.com (via The Daily What ), the accused was attempting to open an account in the name of one John Pedro dos Santos when authorities caught on. “There is no resemblance between the suspect and actor,” notes the initial report. Closer inspection pegs the photo as Nicholson’s 2003 portrait by acclaimed photographer Martin Schoeller , published in the pages of EW years ago… so at least the guy’s got good taste? [ Globo via The Daily What ]
Bruce Beresford-Redman, the former Survivor producer accused of killing his wife in Mexico two years ago, is speaking out for the first time and proclaiming his innocence. “Everyone seems to have decided that I killed my wife,” he tells 48 Hours Mystery in an episode airing Saturday at 10 p.m. “I didn’t kill my wife – I really didn’t.” In April 2010, the body of Monica Beresford-Redman turned up naked and beaten in a sewer near a resort in Cancun where she was vacationing with Bruce and their two children. Beresford-Redman, who was extradited to Mexico this month for the crime, was arrested soon after authorities found the corpse and witnesses at the hotel said they overheard the couple arguing earlier in the night. “For anyone who really believes… that you’re innocent until you’re proven guilty, please take a look at the evidence. Or in this case, the absolute complete lack of evidence,” says Beresford-Redman, adding: “I doubt that there will ever be a satisfying resolution for this because the evidence is gone. Even if I do manage to get off, I don’t know if Monica’s killers will ever really be caught.”
A 20-year-old victim who was brutally beaten by a gang of men has spoken out about his ordeal. Brandon White, who is openly gay, says he just wants the men who attacked him to be held accountable for their actions. Footage of the homophobic assault, which was uploaded to WorldStarHipHop.com by his attackers, shows White being beaten to the ground as the gang shout out anti-gay slurs. After its initial posting, the video went viral, surfacing on YouTube, The Smoking Gun and The Drudge Report. White, who described his attackers as “monsters” at a news conference Wednesday in Atlanta, says at first he did not want to watch the video because he was “embarrassed.” White says he wants “justice to be done because he deserves it.” “If a straight person can walk into a store and not have a problem then I should be able to do the same thing,” says White. “I could have died that day.” The video depicts the attack as White left the JVC Grocery and Deli on the corner of Delevan and McDaniel streets last Saturday. The men punch and kick the victim. One person tosses a tire onto the victim. As he is beaten, an onlooker yells “no more fa**ots in Jack City,” repeatedly, which, according to multiple sources including The Smoking Gun, is an apparent reference to a local gang located in the Pittsburgh neighborhood. “I feel I was violated,” says White. “The scars run deeper than anyone will know. The physical pain, I can get over that. My thing is: Who’s to say they won’t come after me again? Who’s to say they won’t kill me?” White has spoken with Atlanta police and the Federal Investigators are looking into the attack. U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said her office is looking into potential civil rights violations based on sexual orientation. Unfortunately, Georgia does not have a state hate crimes statute. An Atlanta gay activist says this is strong evidence why Georgia needs anti-hate crime legislation. “There were gay slurs thrown toward him. There were punches. There were kicks,” said activist Devin Barrington-Ward. “These young men committed a hate crime. There shouldn’t be a debate about that.” A rally is scheduled to be held in the Pittsburgh neighborhood at 10am Saturday to highlight the issue of hate crimes against the against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community. Police are offering a reward for information leading to the arrest and indictment of those responsible for the attack, and are asking anyone who has any information to call Crime Stoppers Atlanta at 404-577-8477. Callers can remain anonymous. Source: The Grio RELATED: Bullying Is Not Hot! [VIDEO] G-Unit’s 40 Glocc On Getting Arrested For Beating His Girlfriend [AUDIO] Usher’s Brother Arrested For Beating Baby Mama & Abusing Child
Peter Jackson-produced documentary, premiering Friday at Sundance, contains new info about the murders. By Josh Wigler, with reporting by Josh Horowitz Peter Jackson at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival Photo: Larry Busacca/Getty Images PARK CITY, Utah — The Peter Jackson -produced documentary ” West of Memphis ” premieres at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday (January 20), chronicling the conviction, imprisonment and eventual release of West Memphis Three defendants Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, who were convicted in 1994 of brutally murdering three young boys in Arkansas, despite an overwhelming amount of reasons to believe otherwise. Though Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley were released from prison in August, they have still not been exonerated for the murders. “West of Memphis” aims to present new revelations about their innocence and another man’s role in the crime, and as such, the documentary is something of an ever-evolving work — so much so that a new, crucial interview was just shot and added to the documentary in the last week. “Some witnesses came forward a very short time ago,” Jackson told MTV News about the new revelations. “[Director Amy Berg ] was able to interview them about six days ago. We only just managed to get that particular interview with two young men into the movie, in time for the screenings today. It’s some fairly serious eyewitness statements that I think are going to hopefully push the resolution of the case a little bit further.” Though the documentary is set to make its world premiere at Sundance, Jackson insists that the story is far from over. “This is a story that has not come to an end yet. In fact, it’s very much not ended,” he said. “We have three guys that were released from prison but not exonerated, even though they did not do the crime. We have three young boys who were murdered in 1993, and the killer still walks free. So absolutely, this is not the end of the story. It’s ongoing. It’s literally developing on a daily basis right now.” “West of Memphis” isn’t the first documentary about the trial. The “Paradise Lost” trilogy of documentaries — the last of which made its TV debut last week on HBO — also aimed to prove the West Memphis Three’s innocence. The 2012 Sundance Film Festival is officially under way, and the MTV Movies team is on the ground reporting on the hottest stars and the movies everyone will be talking about in the year to come. Keep it locked with MTV Movies for everything there is to know about Sundance. Related Videos Sundance 2012: Interviews From Park City Related Photos Celebrities Hit The Ground At Sundance 2012 Film Fest
Craziness. Apparently, this guy was wasn’t getting child support from his girlfriend for the two daughters he was raising. The girlfriend made him take a paternity test, and he found out he wasn’t even the father. He shot his girlfriend with a shotgun, hitting her in the neck and shoulder. She lived, calling the police. He’s behind bars, now. More On Bossip! Setting The Record Straight…Again: The Craziest Rumors That Have Come Out Since Blue Ivy’s Birth EXCLUSIVE: Is This The Sidepiece That Almost Made Evelyn Walk Away From Her New Hustle Ochocinco??? Who’s Real? The Most Hated Reality Show Stars Of All Time Don’t Mess With My Man! Famous Women That Will Fight For And Stick Up For Their Boo Thangs
The mother said that she left a hairdryer on next to her child during a cold night and fell asleep. When she woke up, the baby was dead. More On Bossip! Setting The Record Straight…Again: The Craziest Rumors That Have Come Out Since Blue Ivy’s Birth EXCLUSIVE: Is This The Sidepiece That Almost Made Evelyn Walk Away From Her New Hustle Ochocinco??? Who’s Real? The Most Hated Reality Show Stars Of All Time Don’t Mess With My Man! Famous Women That Will Fight For And Stick Up For Their Boo Thangs
Kaley Cuoco kicked off the 2012 People’s Choice Awards tonight alongside her co-stars from The Big Bang Theory , eventually taking center stage and introducing the only ceremony where the fans are in control. So who benefited from your Tweets, texts and online votes? Read on for a full list of winners and return tomorrow for a fashion and music rundown… Favorite Movie: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 Favorite Movie Icon: Morgan Freeman Favorite Action Movie Star: Hugh Jackman Favorite Late Night TV Host: Jimmy Fallon Favorite Movie Actress: Emma Stone Favorite Comedic Movie Actress: Emma Stone Favorite Animated Movie Voice: Johnny Depp as Rango Favorite Movie Superhero: Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern Favorite Movie Actor: Johnny Depp Favorite TV Competition Show: American Idol Favorite Daytime TV Host: Ellen DeGeneres Favorite Network TV Drama: Supernatural Favorite TV Comedy Actress: Lea Michele, Glee Favorite TV Drama Actress: Nina Dobrev Favorite TV Comedy Actor: Neil Patrick Harris Favorite TV Crime Drama: Castle Favorite Cable Drama: Pretty Little Liars Favorite TV Drama Actor: Nathan Fillion Favorite SciFi Show: Supernatural Favorite Network TV Comedy : How I Met Your Mother Favorite New TV Drama: Person Of Interest Favorite New TV Comedy: Two Broke Girls Favorite Cable TV Comedy: Hot in Cleveland Favorite Album of the Year : Born This Way, Lady Gaga Favorite Comedic Movie Actor: Adam Sandler Favorite Movie Star Under 25: Chlo
Murder suspect Joran van der Sloot asked for more time Friday to decide how to plead as his trial opened in the death of a 21-year-old Peruvian woman. The Dutch citizen indicated that he was inclined to confess to the crime but doesn’t accept the aggravated murder charges sought by the prosecution. A three-judge panel ordered the trial to resume on January 11. When he was asked moments earlier by presiding judge Victoria Montoya to enter a plea to the murder charges, Joran van der Sloot answered: “I want to give a sincere confession, but I don’t agree with all the charges that have been placed on me by the prosecutor.” “Can I have more time to think about this?” The 24-year-old, lso the prime suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway, repeatedly shook his head when the prosecutor described how Van der Sloot allegedly beat and strangled the victim, intending to rob her. Van der Sloot long ago admitted to police that he killed Stephany Flores in his Lima hotel room on May 30, 2010. So what’s the holdup here? He claimed in that confession that he did it in a fit of rage after she discovered Van der Sloot’s connection to Holloway’s disappearance on Aruba. Police forensic experts have disputed that version of events. Defense attorney Jose Luis Jimenez said before the hearing that there was a 70% chance Van der Sloot would plead guilty, leading to a reduced sentence. Prosecutors are seeking 30 years for murder and theft. Jimenez contends his client was in a state of emotional distress and would “seek to reduce the charge from first-degree murder to simple homicide.” The latter carries a prison sentence of 8-20 years. Van der Sloot entered the courtroom in Lurigancho prison in Lima Friday morning in a blue blazer and faded blue jeans with a bulletproof vest. He sported a crew cut and an untucked long-sleeved shirt. He took off the vest in court, which lacked air conditioning, and fidgeted, yawning several times and slouching. That drew Judge Montoya’s reproach. “Sit up straight and show some respect for the court,” she told him.
I found 2011 to be a great, overstuffed year in film, though the sweeping trend of nostalgia that peaked during this awards season left me a little cold. Hugo , War Horse , The Artist , The Adventures of Tintin , The Help , even the self-aware looking back of Midnight in Paris — when it’s been such a turbulent 12 months beyond the movies, the comfort of evoking the past, especially the cinephilic past, is understandable, particularly with attendance down once again. But the features I really loved tended to be more prickly, vital affairs, about tragedy and life messily, stubbornly going on in its aftermath — ones that reminded us that film can not only be a great escape, but can also engage and reflect the outside world. 10. Shame Steve McQueen’s sophomore effort took flack from some who found it moralizing in its portrayal of sex addiction, but it’s not a film about a condition, it’s a film about damage. Michael Fassbender plays a man who’s left a traumatic childhood behind and has shored himself up in the city that never sleeps with an immaculate condo and a high-powered job that almost hide his underlying desperation and his inability to connect or open up to anyone on anything other than a physical level. It’s one of the loneliest portraits of urban living I’ve ever seen. 9. Warrior The neglected blockbuster of our Occupy Wall Street era, Warrior drapes Rocky trappings over characters and settings more immediate than you’d ever expect at a multiplex. Its two brothers, in what should have been star-making turns from Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton, head to the cage after taking beatings elsewhere — one’s left the Marines on less than ideal terms after the death of colleague, the other’s upside down on his mortgage and unable to support his family on a teacher’s salary. Add to that the fact that the tournament in which they both compete was started by a former Wall Street type putting up the money to see “who the toughest man on the planet is,” and you have a rousing, violent fight film with a seriously bittersweet edge. 8. The Arbor Andrea Dunbar grew up in run-down Bradford council estates, drank heavily, had three kids by different fathers, wrote a trio of acclaimed plays about the life she knew and died at age 29. Clio Barnard’s documentary about the playwright brilliantly stages its interviews as their own performance, lip-synched by actors in the settings in which Dunbar and her children grew up and lived, and offering a piercing glimpse of how tragedy is taken up — her second work Rita, Sue and Bob Too was made into a film directed by Alan Clarke — and passed down, to her heroin-addicted eldest Lorraine. 7. Certified Copy It’s never clear which part of Juliette Binoche’s antiques dealer and William Shimell’s writer’s relationship is the pretense — are they strangers who play at being married, or a married couple playing at meeting as strangers? The thesis of Shimell’s book may or may not line up with that of Abbas Kiarostami’s film — the relationship between art and reproduction, original and copy — but the figuring out, and the slippery nature of the connection the pair on screen, is delicious. 6. The Tree of Life It’s a film about a family that stretches from the beginning of the universe to a possible vision of the afterlife — if it may not be wholly lovable, its ambition alone should earn respect. But it’s the evocative immersion on childhood that lingered with me after Terrence Malick’s more grandiose imagery had faded, the tactile sense of that Texas street, the house, the endless possibility, uncertainty and wonder of being young and new to the world, the flashes of memory — the offering of a drink to a prisoner, the caress of a baby’s foot, the goading of a younger sibling to touch a light socket — that break up the more iconic moments with startling specificity. 5. Margaret Messy, vivid and wonderful, Kenneth Lonergan’s difficult production has become a critics’ cause, in part because of how tough it’s been to actually see. It’s worth the trouble, and in some ways better because of the long wait in reaching the few theaters it did — it now looks less like a movie about post-9/11 New York and more one about the city in all of its anonymous, chaotic glory, about a teenage girl’s first horrific brush with mortality and about the strange places that life leads us. 4. Take Shelter Few films have attempted to capture our age of anxiety like Jeff Nichols’s drama, about catastrophic dreams that may be caused by mental illness, but seem just as much to spring from the sense of uncertainty with which we’ve all been infected. Anchored by a stunning performance from Michael Shannon, Take Shelter presents a look at quiet breakdown spurred on by a desire to protect one’s loved ones, and pairs it with frightening scenes of monstrous storms and shadowy attackers that rival any of this year’s horror movies. 3. Into the Abyss Trust Werner Herzog to find stories so strange and moving in a terrible small-town triple murder over an automobile. The Texas of this film is recognizable, but it’s also near-mythic — a place of universally broken families, sudden violence, prison reunions and hard-earned redemption. Taken alone, the interviews with Melyssa Burkett or Jared Tolbert would be enough to make the film. As part of a kaleidoscope of suffering and hope, they’re highlights in something dark, funny and expressly moving about the persistence of human nature in the face of loss. 2. A Separation A marriage falls apart over the decision of whether or not to leave Iran in Asghar Farhadi’s magnificent drama, and encompasses in its disintegration a snapshot of the fractured nation that’s so nuanced, empathetic and complex it quickens the heart. Certainly the smartest film of the year, both as a self-contained work and in the respect it offers the audience, A Separation is unadorned by a score or flashy camera tricks — it doesn’t need them. 1. Melancholia The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference, and in Lars von Trier’s film it’s the awesome force of Kirsten Dunst’s depression-fueled disinterest that exudes a gravitational drag on everyone around here even before the arrival of the destructive planet of the title. Before the breathtaking apocalyptic imagery appears — the object looming closer in the sky, the static sparking from fingertips — Melancholia is already a devastating look at an illness that leaves you unable to connect to what life has to offer, even on an extravagant wedding day that seems to compress half a lifetime into a night. But it’s that the film turns to offer a sympathetic eye to Charlotte Gainsbourg’s anxious sibling in the second half that makes it great, and that gives it a soul. As she struggles to hold everything together in the face of approaching disaster, even Dunst’s depressive is moved to offer her a conciliatory gesture as the world ends. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The key to a list of moviegoing disappointments is the element of expectation: I am prepared to say I watched more suicidally bad films in 2011 than in any other year in my life; to be merely disappointed suggests a certain relativity. For example, I found The Ides of March to be a tremendous let down, I think partly because my hopes were inflated. George Clooney’s high political tragedy is perfectly cast, and that early, loaded exchange of glances between rival campaign managers Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti goes off like a starter pistol. But The Ides of March is like that — it keeps threatening to start something interesting, right up to the point that it just… ends. I had the same issue with Good Night and Good Luck , another major disappointment and another film that played as if it were perpetually about to begin . The pleasures of Ryan Gosling’s performance as the fledgling spinmeister feel stingy — why tell us that he’s known to rock the microphone when we paid for the show? And Clooney’s Teflon governor is an empty, well-cut overcoat — perhaps the most glaring evidence of both the character and the director’s failure is that his one big scene with his golden boy star is the least exciting one in the movie. Given the improbable, stadium-rolling wave of appreciation that greeted The Artist , I expected much more than the mannered silent that Michel Hazanavicius and co. delivered. A mediocre movie with a couple of bright moments, The Artist also had too little to say about its chosen themes. Given the challenge of holding our attention across a silent film landscape, the music felt either too sparse or too sentimentally obvious, and the droopy patches felt twice as long as they needed to. The story of a silent film star left behind by the transition to sound was unconvincing when it needed to be clear and dolorous when it might have been lyrical. Similarly cranky friends have fixated on the issue of George Valentin’s (Jean Dujardin) refusal to speak on film—was it the accent? A principled stance? The fact that they were at all unsure points out a massive gap in the center of The Artist , one its title sews up too neatly. Any close follower of Werner Herzog’s career should know better than to bring expectations brewed from his last film into the next. Along with an auteurist consistency of preoccupations, Herzog shares with Woody Allen a prodigious output of wildly variable quality. The titles of this year’s Herzogian harvest — the sublime Cave of Forgotten Dreams and the slapdash Into the Abyss — seem interchangeable, but the latter felt to me like Achilles Herzog, a hot check of a documentary passed off as the real thing. Researched and assembled under extreme time constraints, Into the Abyss is an inquiry into the death penalty that gets by on artful narrative juxtapositions and moments of profound, almost invasive intimacy with its interview subjects. The reach for effect often feels more craven than considered, and the crime at the heart of the film is eventually clouded over for convenience. When a topic and a director — and a title! — of this magnitude collide, the viewer wants the Earth to shimmy; instead we had to settle for the Richter equivalent of a quick freehand sketch. I’ve watched Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy twice now and I still couldn’t give you a basic plot summary. Having felt like a failure after the first viewing, after the second I’m prepared to push the better part of the blame onto director Tomas Alfredson and his Let the Right One In editor Dino Jonsäter. It’s a film that seems designed for le Carré obsessives, which means the rest of us may have to sit through all 57 hours of the 1979 BBC production just to get the facts straight. It’s a shame, because the performances and the production design knocked me out, but of all the ways to sex up a retro-procedural, I’d put mincing it into incomprehensibility second to casting Young Jeezy as George Smiley. With The Iron Lady Meryl Streep re-stamps her all-access passport to human history, and proves once again that the only thing she can’t seem to defy are superlative clichés. There are no words left to describe the kind of work Streep does — even those who dismiss her as a mere impressionist have to admit that her Margaret Thatcher is uncanny in its near-total self-effacement. But the film built around that performance is in some sense designed to disappoint: The biopic is an inefficient delivery system for dramatic tension or even, paradoxically, the human arc of a lifetime. It’s the movie equivalent of a greatest hits package, and while I’m not crazy about the appropriation of the still-living Thatcher’s dementia as a dramatic device, for me the more broadly director Phyllida Lloyd played her hand — ruining every successful visual cue by repeating it three times, leaping from one familiar milestone to the next — the farther we move away from the potential of Streep’s performance and the uneven richness of Thatcher’s story, into the straight flush of political iconography. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
