Here are the outtakes that if you have any taste will understand why they are outtakes and maybe even understand why they should have been kept on the editing room floor instead of used to garner attention to some Ashley Greene shoot in Men’s Fitness Magazine….cuz she looks fucking horrible….so bad that not even a Jonas brother after being sent on tour for the last 4 months with some abstinence coach to follow his every move could jerk off to when pretending to take a shit…but that could be because she was his girlfriend and no one should jerk off to their girlfriends….it’s a fact….another fact is that this workout machine with her hidden agenda to stay relevant by targeting the youth like Hitler did…bores me even when half naked…but here are the pics of her anyway…
One of the most fascinating and intimate moments in Frederick Wiseman’s Crazy Horse , a peek behind the shimmery veil of Paris’s legendary semi-nude cabaret, is the one in which the club’s no-nonsense manager, Andrée Deissenberg, tells a reporter that women find the performances just as compelling as men do, if not more so – that watching this highly orchestrated display of beauty on-stage speaks to them in a way that goes far beyond garden-variety titillation. “The key to eroticism is the woman,” she says flatly, a statement the reporter doesn’t seem to fully agree with, though he at least has the good sense to bow to her authority on the matter. She knows what she’s talking about, and Wiseman clearly does too. For all his intelligence and attention to craft, Wiseman is also among the warmest, the least clinical, of all documentary filmmakers; there’s never any pretense that he’s just turning the camera on and letting it capture reality. His eyes are open every minute, and his mind is awake. The lithe beauties of Crazy Horse may seem an unlikely subject for Wiseman, who’s revered – rightly – for pictures like his debut, the 1967 Titicut Follies, which documented human atrocities at Massachusetts Correctional Institution Bridgewater. More recently, he’s captured the ramshackle camaraderie of boxing enthusiasts in Boxing Gym . And in La Danse, his seemingly casual yet intense observation of the backstage workings at the Paris Opera Ballet, he traced the ways in which the human body, with all its earthbound limitations, can be trained to move in ways that come as close as possible to human perfection. Now, he’s looking at semi-naked women. And what women! Crazy Horse is neither prurient nor titillating, and it’s not out to make a bold statement. (If you’re looking for evidence that some/most/all women who work as erotic dancers are exploited, damaged or in some way compromised, you won’t find it here.) Instead, the picture is celebratory, in its own quiet way, as well as clear-eyed. The Crazy Horse, which has been operating since 1951, is known for dance routines that are lavish, flirtatious, possibly just a little bit tacky, though in an exquisitely French way. Wiseman’s camera is open to all of it, as it is to the grace and vulnerability of the dancers who perform these routines (many of whom have ballet training). It could be that Wiseman, who is now 81, is more attuned than ever to observing and marveling at the wonder of human movement. We already know there’s eroticism in ballet and boxing. The next natural step, maybe, is to find it in a chorus line of beautiful young women wearing modified – and extremely skimpy – Royal Guardsmen’s outfits. Wiseman’s camera, as always, captures the big moments and the small ones: Preparing to go on-stage, a dancer dots her lash line with glue before applying a lush, flirty faux fringe. Late in the picture, we watch an audition in process, and while the focus is on the hopeful young women angling for a job, Wiseman also clues us in to the practical-mindedness of the judges: They may note, among themselves, that one girl’s legs may not be quite as long as they’d like, but there’s always a degree of businesslike kindness at work, too – they try to make their decisions as swiftly as possible, not wanting to prolong a prospective dancer’s hopeful anxiety any longer than necessary. (It’s the exact opposite of what you see on so-called reality TV.) And, as always, Wiseman is acutely aware of the dollars-and-cents reality behind any illusion. He takes us behind the scenes as Deissenberg and the club’s director and choreographer, Philippe Decouflé, wrangle with the economic realities of running the Crazy Horse: At one point Decouflé begs to close the club for a short time, so he can come up with brand-new routines and even just clean the spotlights, which have become grimy and don’t highlight the contours of the women’s bodies as they should. Deissenberg shakes her head, asserting grimly that there’s no way the shareholders would go for it. Artistry, whether in ballet or burlesque, has to find ways to flourish despite economic restrictions. But mostly, Crazy Horse focuses on the dancing, the dancers, and the silly-wonderful nature of the Crazy Horse routines. Wiseman doesn’t focus on any single dancer – the word ensemble is key here – and yet the individual performers still emerge as distinctly human. At one point, as the dancers wait to go on-stage, they gather ‘round a TV to watch a Russian compilation tape of ballet flubs, laughing hysterically as presumably perfect dancers slip, stumble, and otherwise humiliate themselves. At another point, Decouflé discusses a routine, called Venus, that the performers dislike because it requires them to touch each other. “The girls often come out of it in tears,” he says. “They’re modest.” The moment is revealing, and more than a little touching: These women revel, publicly, in the beauty of their bodies, but feel awkward and strange when it comes to touching one another. It’s a boundary of privacy and intimacy that they’d rather not breach. When you see the Crazy Horse routines, this makes sense: We’re not talking about improvised bumping and grinding here (although, of course, in the right setting that can be perfectly OK too). These are meticulously orchestrated numbers in which the illusion of nakedness is more extreme than the actual fact of it. The women are both unsheathed and highly artificial. They might wear Rudi Gernreich-style unitards that consist of little more than a triangle of fabric held up, very helpfully, by two slender straps, leaving the breasts fully exposed. Slatted or polka-dotted lighting effects are often used to highlight specific womanly attributes. It’s worth noting, too, that there’s definitely a Crazy Horse type: We’re not talking about a celebration of all shapes and sizes here. At one point in the picture the dancers don headphones offstage to record a theme song, describing themselves, with marvelous tunelessness, as “the girls of the Crazy.” The girls of the Crazy typically have smallish breasts (not an implant in sight) and glorious, rounded bottoms, which they thrust out at every opportunity – at the Crazy, it’s all about the butt. But what about the dancing? There’s a great deal of physical discipline necessary to pull these routines together, as the rehearsal sequences show. The illusion of eroticism is a harsh taskmistress, and the shoes are killer, too. There’s nothing harder on feet than dancing en pointe , but it can’t be all that easy executing a Cirque du Soleil-style routine, as one dancer does, in a pair of shoes that consist of a Lucite spike heel attached to the bare foot with a few pieces of elastic. Like all dancers, the Crazy Horse performers are aware of the importance of elongating the body. And even if numbers like the one called “Baby Buns” are designed to celebrate certain parts of the anatomy, the reality is that there are a lot of hardworking muscles beneath all those comely attributes. Crazy Horse is a movie about process, about performance, about the exacting nature of producing an exquisite, entertaining sexual illusion. Yet Wiseman isn’t one of those documentarians who can’t see the forest through the trees: The girls of the Crazy are simply beautiful and delightful to look at. Even Wiseman, cerebral, perceptive, and a maestro in the editing room, can’t resist urging us, with images if not with words, “Just look at them!” And so we do. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The enduring saga of Margaret — three years in the making, six years in the editing, one week in the theatrical showing, and finally rescued from oblivion by a cabal of devotees best known by their #TeamMargaret brand — presses on this week with news that Kenneth Lonergan’s embattled epic is finally returning to theaters in Los Angeles. Great! But perhaps just as interesting as how this complements the film’s ongoing revival in New York City is how it shores up a better-late-than-never awards campaign by distributor Fox Searchlight. Karina Longworth, who chose Margaret as her favorite film of 2011 (a distinction not too far from critic Alison Willmore’s own here at Movieline ), reports via LA Weekly that Cinefamily will launch a new engagement of the film starting Friday. The run starts at one week but could be extended based on demand — an option exercised three times now by the proprietors of New York’s Cinema Village , where tomorrow Margaret enters its fourth week on the comeback trail. The grassroots effort to get Margaret not only seen but outwardly acclaimed represents one of the season’s more inspired awards crusades, and one with which Searchlight is now playing along. Well, sort of, anyway: Speaking with Longworth, a studio publicist confirmed previous reports that Margaret screeners have been distributed Academy-wide — for what that’s worth, particularly with Oscar nomination ballots due Friday by 5 p.m. and the publicist denying that Searchlight’s “strategy” for the film had changed. But really, does the awards noise even matter in light of fans willfully prying a troubled mainstream film out from under a stubborn distributor’s heavy haunches? This is something to celebrate! Do them and their efforts proud and go see this thing, already. [ LA Weekly ]
‘I was trying to destroy myself physically,’ McElhenney says of gaining 50 pounds to play Fat Mac, one of MTV News’ Top 50 TV Characters of 2011. By James Montgomery Rob McElhenney as Fat Mac in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” Photo: Joey L./ FX Gregor Samsa became an insect. Hulk Hogan dyed his beard black and joined the nWo. Metallica used to be awesome. Transformations are as much a part of life as eating, breathing and making fun of Lulu, yet rarely are they as unexpected as the grand, grotesque metamorphosis Rob McElhenney pulled off on the seventh season of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” when he turned the formerly fitness-obsessed Mac into a bulbous, bloated buffoon … mostly because he thought it would be funny. But McElhenney was also making a deeper point, too. By gaining 50 pounds of solid fat, he took a not-too-subtle jab at one of TV’s oldest tropes: Namely, that as shows go on, characters don’t age and they seemingly get better-looking. It’s the kind of deconstructionist slant that has made “Sunny” a cult favorite and made Fat Mac one of the year’s best characters. Because while, sure, it was funny to watch him inject insulin into his ginormous gut, you couldn’t help but ask yourself why there aren’t more characters like him on network shows. So, in celebration of Fat Mac’s inclusion in MTV News’ Top 50 TV Characters of 2011 , we spoke to McElhenney about piling on the pounds, the silky comfort of Tommy Bahama shirts, and how, someday, he hopes to be considered “the De Niro of basic-cable comedy.” MTV News : First off, congratulations on making our list of the Top 50 TV Characters of 2011. Fat Mac actually came in at #8 on the list. Rob McElhenney : I made the top 10? F— yeah! That’s really awesome. Who was ahead of me? [We start reading McElhenney the list, but he makes us stop when we reveal that Snooki came in at #3.] What? Are you f—ing kidding me? I refuse to hear anything else. Jesus Christ. MTV : Mac’s transformation was one of the television highlights of the year, and not just because it’s funny to see him, you know, lug around a garbage bag filled with chimichangas. You just don’t see characters put on that kind of weight on sitcoms now, or really ever before. McElhenney : Yeah. Vanity is such a huge part of television, and if you watch any average sitcom, you notice that the actors get better-looking as the years go by. And I caught myself sitting in the editing room last year, looking at myself, and I said, “Man, I don’t look very good in this scene; I should try to find a different shirt or something next time.” And I realized, “Wow, that is the first time I’d ever really thought that.” So I realized I needed to go in the extreme opposite direction. It’s always been our goal to do the opposite of what any sitcom on network television would do, so that’s what I did. MTV : So it went beyond, just, “It would be funny to see Mac gain an obscene amount of weight …” McElhenney : It wasn’t just a stunt. I thought, if we were being true to the characters, and we were really showing what these people would look like if they lived the way that they claimed to live, this is what we would look like. All we do is sit around and drink and eat terrible food, and there’s certainly no exercise going on, and we don’t seem to really care about our health. So when you hit a certain early-30s, mid-30s range, it’s going to start to fall apart. So, to me, it was less of a stunt or a gag and more of an actual representation of what Mac really might look like at this point in his life. MTV : So once you decided you were going to gain the weight, how’d you go about doing it without, you know, totally destroying your body? McElhenney : Oh, I was basically trying to destroy myself physically as much as I possibly could. I was trying to eat around 5,000 calories a day, and at first I was doing it as healthy as possible, but after like the 3,000th calorie of grilled chicken breast and rice, you realize you literally have to consume twice as much volume as opposed to just eating a cheeseburger. So after a while, I started eating a lot, a lot of doughnuts. It was really hard, man. The key to it was force-feeding myself this milkshake that I made every day that had weight gainer, chocolate milk, chocolate ice cream, and creatine, which creates bloating, and force-feeding myself two of those every day, and those were about 1,000 calories a piece, and that’s what really put it over the edge. MTV : You know, it’s funny, because you hear about all these actors gaining or losing weight for roles, and they’re almost always lauded for doing so. Does it bother you that, after going through so much, people only see Fat Mac as this sort of stunt? McElhenney : Well, I’d like to enter that conversation. You know, “the De Niro of basic-cable comedy.” [ He laughs. ] Nah, it doesn’t bother me. We’re not that kind of show. But I don’t think people understand how hard it was to just gain all this weight. I started at 162 and I got up to 212 … and I was also working out, just doing, like, powerlifting, because I noticed that most of my weight was just going to my gut, and it wasn’t filling out everywhere else and it wasn’t really playing, so to create that sort of non-defined, smooth look, I had to lift weights, and then the fat just sort of sat on top of the muscle. I was trying to create David, and as we all know, Michelangelo had to start with a slab of marble and then whittle it down. So I was just creating the slab. MTV : Another great thing about the character this season is that he introduced the Tommy Bahama shirt into the national conversation. McElhenney : [ He laughs. ] I see a lot of people wearing them. And I think middle-aged guys wear them because they think it hides their gut, and it doesn’t. In a bizarre way, it makes them look bigger, and originally I was wearing these super-tight T-shirts, and since my fat was kind of rolling out from underneath it, you would think that you would look bigger onscreen that way, as opposed to this big, flowing shirt. But for whatever reason, they actually accentuate the size. They’re like a muumuu. And the truth is, once you slip one of those bad boys on, they’re unbelievably comfortable. They’re made out of silk, and they really just flow and they breathe, and I was like, “Goddamn, I kind of really love these shirts.” I took some home, but my wife [“Sunny” co-star Kaitlin Olson] wasn’t having it. MTV : One of the key episodes this season was “How Mac Got Fat,” which, as the title implies, explained why he put on all the weight. There are scenes of you in flashback when you were skinny. Can you explain the backstory of that episode? McElhenney : We shot it last season, and it was a completely different episode and we were going to air it this year, because we had one less slot last year. So that was always the intention, and then as we started the season, and I went through this endeavor, we realized we couldn’t just air this episode because it wouldn’t make sense anymore. So we sort of broke down the episode and said, “How can we tell this as a flashback, and create this as being the reason why Mac did this in the first place?” So we rewrote it, based on the cut and based on the footage we had, and then we went back and created this completely different episode. It was literally the last thing we shot this season. MTV : So, finally, we know you’ve dropped most of the Fat Mac weight now. Looking back, how do you feel about the entire endeavor? McElhenney : Yeah, I’ve dropped almost all of it. I think the remaining 10 to 12 pounds are probably just going to stay. I’m OK with that. [ He laughs. ] And, you know, I’m really happy I did it. It was hard, but it was worth it. I can tell you right now that this never would’ve happened on network television. Because when I would’ve gone in to pitch it to the network executives, they would’ve said, “Absolutely not.” Because the glamour is such an important part of how they sell their shows, so trying to make the actors look as good as they possibly can is an important part of the process. And our show has never been about that. MTV will reveal the best artists, songs and movies of the year. Come to MTV News each day to see more big reveals and check out more of MTV’s Best of 2011 music, TV, movies and news coverage.
Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro advised director, who aimed to ‘maintain some mystery and surprises.’ By Eric Ditzian Daniel Craig in “Cowboys & Aliens” Photo: Universal Pictures How do you surprise someone who’s seen it all — aliens who snatch bodies and aliens with dreadlocks and aliens who bloodily birth themselves from your stomach and aliens who phone home and aliens who eat cat food and great big blue aliens with tails they use for sex? Forget about the decades of classic extraterrestrial flicks that stream daily on TV, tablets and desktops. This year alone, movies like “Battle: Los Angeles,” “Super 8,” “Green Lantern” and “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” have hit the big screen, each trying to deliver not only eye-popping visuals but the post-credits comment between friends, “Damn, dude, have you ever seen something like that?” The answer, all too often and quite understandably, is, “Yes, yes, I have.” That’s the challenge “Cowboys & Aliens” director Jon Favreau faced as he sought to bring alien baddies to the Old West for a genre mash-up that hit theaters Friday (July 29). Favreau, though, counts himself lucky that he was able to lean on some of the most-established sci-fi players in Hollywood for help. The cinematic result is a race of aliens that land in a down-on-its-luck mining town, start to kidnap residents and eventually reveal themselves as extraterrestrial superfreaks on par with anything we’ve seen at the theater in recent years. Earlier this month in Montana, Favreau talked with MTV News about what makes a great big-screen alien , the special-effects decisions that helped his filmmaking process and the advice Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro gave him along the way. (Beware of spoilers below.) “When you set out to make a movie like ‘Cowboys & Aliens,’ if you just play it as one joke for the whole movie, you’re in trouble,” Favreau explained. “You run out of gas after about the length of an ‘SNL’ sketch. So we really wanted to find an approach that could bear out a whole story. Part of it was identifying what kind of alien movie to make and what kind of cowboy movie to make.” The answer to the alien question was to reach back to classics of the ’70s and ’80s, before CG glam overtook practical effects as the preferred method of creating otherworldly creatures. “The alien movies I like the most are the ones I grew up with,” he said. “It was the pre-CG, almost verging on horror versions of alien films, like ‘Alien,’ ‘Aliens,’ ‘Predator’ and all the Spielberg stuff, and I include ‘Jaws’ in that, too. They were all the same kind of movie. “It was before you had computer effects, so you had to, through lighting and mystery and music, slowly reveal the creature. That technique has some somewhat been lost now, thanks to CGI. Even though we have CGI creatures eventually, we do use animatronics and we do use lighting and all the old techniques to reveal them.” The aliens in “Cowboys” have landed in an Arizona town to mine for gold — a metal as precious to humans as it is to these space travelers. What’s truly cool about them is their transformative quality: Their faces move and shift to expose layers below, and their bodies open up to unleash hidden, gooey hands. Gross and fascinating and scary, all at once. That’s exactly what Favreau was hoping to accomplish. ” ‘Predator’ and ‘Alien’: What was fun about those films is, as you saw the creatures, more and more layers were revealed, whether it was armor coming off with ‘Predator’ [and] weaponry, or in the case of ‘Alien,’ with the second set of teeth or the metamorphosis that it did from its egg state to the face-hugger to whatever that larval phase was when it busts out of your chest and finally into the big [creature],” he said. “It’s the shape-shifting quality of the aliens that I thought was really cool. We wanted to maintain some mystery and surprises with our creature.” To create those surprises, Favreau not only depended on his team of artists and effects masters, but on Spielberg and del Toro. “[Spielberg] was very involved with certain aspects of it preproduction, and one of those aspects was the alien design, because he’s been involved with so many,” he said. “And now seeing ‘Falling Skies’ and seeing ‘Super 8,’ I see that he was not just involved with his own films, but other films and projects he’s been producing and overseeing. He had a lot of specific insight into what things were important. “And Guillermo del Toro, I also know him, and he’s masterful,” Favreau added. “He always said you’ve got to get the silhouette right first and then you got to get the color right and then you got to get the detail right, in that order. He’s actually somebody who helped out and came in the editing room. I was showing him our animatronic work, because he’s very picky about that stuff, and when I knew it passed his muster, I felt very good.” Check out everything we’ve got on “Cowboys & Aliens.” For breaking news and previews of the latest comic book movies — updated around the clock — visit SplashPage.MTV.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘Cowboys and Aliens’ Related Photos ‘Cowboys & Aliens’
Jared Leto tells MTV News the band will fly overnight from Ireland just to make it to the big show. By James Montgomery At last year’s Video Music Awards , 30 Seconds to Mars wreaked havoc on the white carpet , very nearly blinded drummer Shannon Leto with a “glitter bomb” and took home the award for Best Rock Video — all within the span of roughly three hours. Needless to say, it was a night they’ll remember for a long time. Now that their epic, ultra-NSFW “Hurricane” video has been nominated for a trio of awards — Best Cinematography, Best Direction and Best Editing — at the 2011 VMAs, how do they plan to top last year’s madness? Well, for starters, they’re going to show up. “I’m not sure if the technical awards are even on the show, but we definitely plan on being there. We’re in Ireland the night before, so it will be a last-minute sort of thing,” frontman Jared Leto told MTV News. “I’m not sure what’ll happen after that. But there’s no way we’d miss the show. It’s incredibly humbling and exciting to be acknowledged, especially for a very controversial clip like ‘Hurricane,’ that was banned from a lot of networks to start with. It’s great to have it come full-circle and be recognized in this way.” And that controversy — the “Hurricane” clip had to be drastically cleaned up to even be considered at most networks — is just part of the video’s mystique. Because more than any of the projects Leto pours his heart into, this one was a true labor of love. “It was a very DIY project. It wasn’t like, ‘OK, here’s your two days to shoot, you got your crew and everything’s professional.’ It was very much a guerrilla-style effort, very much a sculpture of sight and sound that we built, and it was great to go through that process that way,” Leto explained. “We shot three days in New York, and then I kept shooting and shooting and shooting. I shot many cities around the states and outside the states. We were editing on the bus. I had a great team of people that helped me on this and many other things. [Videos are] as important to us as the songs themselves. I spend as much time on these little mini-movies as I do on the songs themselves. “I wish there was an award for doing the most with the least. We would’ve won that one, for sure,” he laughed. “We ended up with almost a 14-minute piece, and then another seven to 10 other clips that explored other characters and themes in addition to the video itself.” So, yes, 30 Seconds to Mars will be there on August 28, when the VMAs air live from the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles. And while they might not bring any glitter this time around, they’ll definitely be hoping to repeat the other part of last year’s show: winning. “Being nominated is great, winning is even better, but at the end of the day, it’s the work that’s really the most important, and the people who are enjoying it,” Leto said. “The acknowledgement of the project is really great.” The 28th annual MTV Video Music Awards will air live on Sunday, August 28, from the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles at 9 p.m. ET/PT. See the list of nominees, revisit last year’s highlights and vote for your favorites in the general categories by visiting VMA.MTV.com . Related Photos 2011 Video Music Award Nominees Related Artists 30 Seconds To Mars
‘Nine? I thought that was a typo or something!’ the ‘E.T.’ star says after MTV Video Music Award nominations are revealed. By Jocelyn Vena, with reporting by Sway Calloway Katy Perry Photo: MTV News What does hard work, undeniable girl power, a sprinkling of sass and, oh yeah, some very memorable music videos get you? Well, if you’re Katy Perry , that winning combination gets you the most nominations at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards . “I have nine nominations!” Perry shouted when she heard about her noms from MTV News’ Sway during Wednesday’s night’s (July 20) on-air nominations event. “Nine? I thought that was a typo or something! Oh my god, really? That’s the most nominations I’ve ever gotten for anything,” she added excitedly. Perry was in Seattle when we caught up with her as she took some time off from her busy California Dreams Tour to react to the news of her many VMA nods. So, what exactly is she up for? Perry will be competing for Video of the Year and Best Female Video for “Firework”; Best Pop Video for “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)”; and Best Collaboration, Best Art Direction, Best Direction, Best Editing and Best Special Effects for the Floria Sigismondi-directed “E.T.,” which features fellow nominee Kanye West. Her dreamy “Teenage Dream” clip even nabbed a nomination for Best Cinematography. “I’m so excited. I’m nervous like it’s my first time,” she said during the MTV.com live stream held backstage, where fans caught a glimpse of the pop star getting ready to take the stage. During the sit-down with Sway, Perry’s fellow nominees were announced, and other big VMA contenders include Yeezy, Lady Gaga, Eminem, Adele, Bruno Mars, Britney Spears, Chris Brown and Nicki Minaj. For a complete rundown of this year’s nominees, check out MTV’s VMA nominations list. Cast your votes now for all of the general VMA categories, including Best New Artist, by visiting vma.mtv.com ! You can also get in on Best New Artist text voting by texting BNA to 66333 on your wireless phone. Voting continues through the show, which airs live on August 28 at 9 p.m. ET on MTV. Tune into the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, airing live on Sunday, August 28, from the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles at 9 p.m. ET/PT on MTV. Related Videos The 2011 VMA Nominations Live Related Photos 2011 Video Music Award Nominees Related Artists Katy Perry
Mother Monster’s HBO special will vie for honors at September 18 awards show. By James Montgomery Lady Gaga Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images It’s time to break the meat dress out of deep storage, or perhaps polish up the space egg , because Lady Gaga has another awards show to attend. On Thursday morning (July 14), her “Monster Ball Tour at Madison Square Garden” HBO special picked up five Primetime Emmy Award nominations, top-lined by a nod for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special. In that category, Gaga will face off against the annual Kennedy Center Honors telecast and a trio of rather, uh, unique challengers: Carrie Fisher, Bette Midler and Pee-Wee Herman, each of whom earned noms for their respective HBO specials. The “Monster Ball” special also earned a nomination for Outstanding Directing (Gaga’s creative director, Laurieann Gibson, picked up the nod), and three technical noms: Outstanding Technical Direction, Camerawork, Video Control for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special; Outstanding Lighting Design/ Lighting Direction for a Variety, Music or Comedy Special; and Outstanding Picture Editing for a Special. In each of those categories, Gaga will take on the usual spate of awards telecasts (the 83rd Academy Awards, the 53rd Grammy Awards, etc.), not to mention comedians Ricky Gervais and Louis C.K., each of whom earned nods for their comedy specials. Elsewhere, Gaga’s favorite show, “Glee,” was among the most-nominated programs, landing a nod for Outstanding Comedy Series. Stars Jane Lynch and Chris Colfer also earned nominations, as did guest stars Kristin Chenoweth, Dot-Marie Jones and Gwyneth Paltrow. The 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards will air live from Los Angeles on Sunday, September 18, at 8 p.m. ET on Fox. Will you be rooting for Gaga on Emmy night? Tell us in the comments! Related Artists Lady Gaga
‘I’m glad that he went on because O’Reilly just calls out rappers a lot,’ one music journo tells MTV News of the outspoken MC’s Fox News appearance. By Rob Markman Lupe Fiasco on “The O’Reilly Factor” Photo: FOX Lupe Fiasco won’t back down. After he labeled U.S. President Barak Obama a “terrorist” and questioned U.S. foreign policy, the Chicago rapper appeared on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” on Monday to duke it out with conservative political pundit Bill O’Reilly. Though it was thoroughly hyped before its broadcast, the five-and-a-half-minute pre-taped debate was a bit of a letdown for Rap Radar’s digital content director, Brian “B. Dot” Miller. “The thing is it wasn’t live; Lupe probably said a whole lot of things that were edited,” Miller said. “But the points that were expressed, I felt like he had a good argument. I wish it could’ve gone on a little bit longer, but that’s the power of TV.” Adam Fleischer, XXL magazine’s music editor, also agreed that the way the debate was edited detracted from the end result. “I’m glad that he went on because O’Reilly just calls out rappers a lot, [and] then they don’t usually get a chance to speak for themselves,” he said. “[But] I would like to see the whole interview because it was so clear that things were chopped up. They were switching from clip to clip.” Vibe magazine Senior Editor Clover Hope, on the other hand, didn’t mind the segments, though she, too, is interested in seeing what was left on the cutting-room floor. “I didn’t really notice [the editing] too much. I wish they would’ve pointed it to the Web though,” she said. After Lupe made those controversial comments about Obama and declined the TV host’s initial invitation to appear on his Fox show, ‘O’Reilly called the rapper a “pinhead.” But last night Lupe stood strong, clarifying, then defending his position. “The statement that I made, which was, ‘I believe that the biggest terrorist, Obama and the United States of America and its foreign policy, that was what the whole context of everything was,” Lupe pointed out on the show. “And it’s really just an expression of me trying to understand critically, the society.” O’Reilly, who is often critical of the president, came to Obama’s defense, saying that Lupe’s fans aren’t “exactly political science PHDs,” but rather “impressionable kids.” O’Reilly added that the responsibility of the president is to protect the country and that Obama was doing that through “aggressive action.” Both agreed that the death of Osama Bin Laden was a legitimate action. Fiasco went on to assert that the aim of the war in Afghanistan was to go in and find Bin Laden, which O’Reilly then charged was in effect an oversimplification of the war. “I thought he actually did a good job of holding his own and clarifying that point that he just wasn’t talking about Obama, just America as an institution,” Hope said about Lupe’s overall performance. “I just think it’s too complicated to reduce it to ‘Lupe thinks Obama is a terrorist.’ ” The debate wrapped on a light-hearted note when O’Reilly and Lupe joked about changing the show’s name to “The Fiasco Factor.” “I don’t think one necessarily got the best of the other,” Fleischer said. “O’Reilly had home-court advantage so he kind of controls the narrative, but Lupe held his own.” “I don’t think anybody necessarily won that debate,” Hope agreed. “They kind of both talked.” What did you think of Lupe’s performance on the Fox News show? Sound off in the comments! Related Artists Lupe Fiasco
Season 2 of “Basketball Wives” only went off the air a few weeks ago and Shaunie O’Neal is already drumming up interest for season 3, which began taping last week. Shaunie was a guest on BlogTalkRadio’s “Muthaknows” show earlier this week and she revealed that while rumors that she and her staff have been talking to Kenyon Martin’s longtime boo Trina about joining the show are false, they’d love to have her. Shaunie also said they are still in the process of casting new ladies since Suzy and Gloria are down for the count and not coming back for a third season and Royce’s status on the show is up in the air since that gag order keeps her from reminding folks “who she got” and none of the other b*tches like her anyway… Shaunie also said she’s watched tape of Tanya Williams and finds it really “interesting.” Williams is currently in the process of a divorce from her batsh*t crazy ex-baller Jayson Williams who is known for murking his limo driver and playing with his piece in a car full of other men. Jayson is currently serving time for the “aggravated assault” of the poor dead driver along with a DWI charge. Now that’s drama for your mama. Shaunie also says that as of this week Evelyn will be coming back to the next season but producers are still working out the financial end. She claims she has no say in the pay. Also, regardless of what Shaunie says any of these hoes could end up back on the show at any time because Vh1 signed all of these broads to five season contracts. So There. As for her role in the drama with Tami and Evelyn, Shaunie blames Ev for telling secrets while the cameras are rolling and says if it was up to her the show would be like “Little House on the Prairie,” but fortunately the editing is in other folks hands. She also says Shaq watches the show and finds it entertaining but she isn’t allowed to laugh at any jokes about Hoopz being an STD factory or she’ll get in trouble. Listen to the interview HERE . Would you want to see Tanya Williams or Trina on “Basketball Wives?” Lots of pictures of them below:
