There is a fine line between a public reply and a direct message Michael Jordan’s Son Marcus Tweets About Prostitution With Adult Film Star According to BlackSportsOnline MJ’s not-too-bright son Marcus went to his Twitter page to reach out and touch freaky adult film star Rachel Roxxx. The heir apparent must have thought that he was sending a direct message to the classy young lady, but alas, the joke is on him because clearly his tweet went public to EVERYBODY! Check this fool out… Fellas, gotta be more careful with your online fawkery. Twitter and Facebook are cruel and unforgiving places once your business hits the eStreets. Hit the flip side to get a look at the lil’ Becky that Marcus was spending that hard-earned Air Jordan money on.
A trailer for Tom Hooper’s upcoming Les Miserables film leaked onto the interwebs today, revealing looks at Hugh Jackman in action in the musical adaptation. But nevermind the handsome, jaunty period stylings of 19th century France in turmoil as envisioned by Hooper; get an earful of Anne Hathaway’s warbly voice singing a tearful rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream”… and sound off on her Fantine. Are you excited or worried, theater nerds? To be completely fair, this is the worst-quality video you could imagine for a trailer, which appears to have been filmed off of a computer. Even so, the footage looks great to me — sweeping shots, dynamic camera moves, Jackman’s Jean Valjean disappearing into the shadows. What’s most concerning is also the most important element of the film: The singing. According to reports from CinemaCon (where similar footage from the film was screened, including portions of Hathaway’s “I Dreamed a Dream” number), Hooper’s plan was to film most of the musical numbers with his cast singing live, which might explain why Hathaway’s voice sounds a bit unpolished. Or maybe that was intentional. Or maybe it’s just me. [Video removed at studio’s request.] Perez Hilton first posted the video today, along with fawning words for Hathaway’s performance: “If we had any doubts about this, they are GONE now!!!” Over at The Atlantic Wire , Richard Lawson called it “unsettling,” a reaction more in line with my own. My theater nerd pal (and Popular Mechanics editor) Erin McCarthy immediately sent over this video of stage goddess Lea Salonga singing the same number with a much stronger, yet still deeply emotional voice, but perhaps the comparison — or any comparisons, as the entire film’s cast is bound to suffer scrutiny — is unfair. Hathaway is a strong singer in her own right (see: The Oscars) but she’s probably deep in character as the desperate Fantine and her vocal interpretation may reflect that. Was it wise to film the largely sung-through story with live singing? That’s the biggest question so far as we await better looks at Hooper’s Les Mis , due in theaters December 14. [ Perez Hilton , Atlantic Wire ]
Sacha Baron Cohen and Larry Charles’ The Dictator is indefensible and hilarious, an unruly thing that invites you to laugh at things you feel you shouldn’t. I’ve heard people — even some who like the picture — referring to The Dictator as offensive, and one of the guys sitting behind me at the screening laughed at some jokes and remained awkwardly mute during others. After one of these pauses — the vibrations of his uneasiness were traveling right through my seat back — I heard him say to his pal, “I’m not sure how I feel about this.” But as the end credits rolled he announced joyously, “That was great!” as if he’d endured an enema cleansing that made him feel a whole lot better afterward. Cohen has many gifts as a performer, and with The Dictator he reveals yet another one: He knows how to flush stuff right out of you. Cohen’s invented character du jour is a despot named General Admiral Haffaz Aladeen, ruler of the equally made-up North African state of Wadiya. Aladeen hates the West, hates Jews and regularly calls for the execution of anyone who undermines his authority, by, say, questioning his firm belief that nuclear missiles should be pointy and not rounded. His chief adviser is his Uncle Tamir (Ben Kingsley), who chafes under Aladeen’s authoritarian rule and seeks to undermine him. After Aladeen survives an assassination attempt, Tamir persuades him to go to New York to address the United Nations, which has been sticking its nose into his sordid doings. Once he gets to the city — he makes his grand entrance on the back of a decorated camel — he’s kidnapped, stripped of his protruding steel-wool beard and medal-and-scrambled-egg-encrusted uniform, and forced to live as an anonymous immigrant with a tenuous grasp of the English language. It’s at this point that he meets Zoey (Anna Faris), a peacenik mighty-mite who runs a whole-foods store and who, in her desire to be fair and generous to all peoples, attempts to understand his motivations as he spouts all sorts of racist and sexist invective. Meanwhile, Aladeen — who has adopted the name Alison Burgers, for reasons so ridiculous that they’re better left unexplained until you see the film — attempts to reclaim his stature with the help of scientist and Wadiyan exile Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas), who agrees to help him regain his mojo by bulking up in the nukes department. Cohen’s targets here include people who fly planes into buildings for religious reasons, people who hate Jews, and women with hair under their arms. As they used to say on Sesame Street , one of these things is not like the others, but those of you who like to cultivate fragrant jungles in your armpits will just have to deal. The satire in The Dictator is sharp but not exquisitely pointed, and the movie is better for it: It’s clear enough where Cohen’s sympathies lie — his jokes have a kind of sick buoyancy, instead of hammering you with their politics. Cohen’s humor is political, though in the end it may really only be humanitarian. At home in Wadiya, amongst his riches, his servants and his high-cost prostitutes (one of whom is Megan Fox, gamely playing herself), Aladeen likes to play video games, including a Wii-style amusement called “Munich Olympics.” I groaned, along with much of the audience, when he hit the “play” button, but there’s anger in the joke as well as audacity. Cohen doesn’t suffer bullies gladly, which makes a character like Aladeen an irresistible canvas for him. The Dictator is a written-and-rehearsed picture, unlike the extended prank Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan , and it’s probably the better film. As he did on that picture (and the more wayward Brüno ), Cohen again pairs with director Larry Charles, who’s acutely in tune with his rhythms. Charles — who has worked extensively in TV as a producer and/or writer on shows like Seinfeld , Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm , and who also directed the gloriously woolly 2003 Bob Dylan fever dream Masked and Anonymous — has by this point proved to be a great midwife for the ideas of oddball intellects. He gives some shape and heft even to Cohen’s silliest gags, like the one in which it’s explained that Aladeen amended the Wadiyan language so that “negative” and “positive” are the same word — this bit of silliness occasions a great little cameo for Aasif Mandvi as a doctor who’s trying to give a patient the result of his AIDS test. Add to that the pleasure of watching Cohen in all his long-legged, language-mangling glory: The Dictator works both as satire and as comedy, and the two don’t always mingle so easily. Cohen has a way of slinging lines that’s as casual as a cook flipping meat patties in a burger joint. “The police here are such fascists!” he says, aghast at the behavior of New York City cops, but he’s really just setting us up for the kicker: “And not in the good way!” By the time Aladeen has been in in New York for a while, his sartorial choices have been unduly influenced by crunchy-granola Zoey, to the point where he thinks nothing of wearing Crocs in public. When Nadal uses this footwear choice as evidence of how far Aladeen has fallen, the has-been tyrant can only agree: “Crocs,” he says dejectedly, “the universal symbol of men who have given up hope.” Cohen may be playing an autocrat, but he doesn’t let his ego run roughshod over his fellow actors. Anna Faris gets less screentime than Cohen does, but she stands up to him admirably, maybe because she’s willing to go just as far as he is for a laugh, even a painful one. As Zoey, a no-makeup martinet with firm ideas about equality among all peoples, she captures perfectly the tyrannical smugness of the tiny but powerful nation of white people known as Park Slope, Brooklyn. The Dictator , for all its liberal leanings, doesn’t let anyone off the hook, not even well-intentioned liberals. Cohen comes right out and says things that most of us, in polite conversation, wouldn’t dare. He knows it’s the impolite conversation that really gets things moving. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
‘Are we a country that includes everybody and give everybody a shot and treats everybody fairly?’ Obama tells the crowd about his gay marriage stance. By Gil Kaufman President Obama arrives in Los Angeles to attend a fundraiser at the home of George Clooney Photo: AFP/Getty Images President Obama again affirmed his support of gay marriage on Thursday night at a star-studded Los Angeles fundraiser at the home of George Clooney. The event, which reportedly raised a record $15 million for the Obama re-election campaign fund, was attended by around 150 guests who paid $40,000, along with two women who won tickets by pledging $3 in an online raffle. Speaking in front of an audience that was likely to be receptive to the message, Obama expanded on his view of gay marriage. “Obviously, yesterday we made some news,” he said to what was reported by The Los Angeles Times to be enthusiastic. Obama was referring to an ABC interview in which he revealed that he now personally supports same-sex marriage, which made him the first sitting president to ever do so. “It was a logical extension of what America is supposed to be. It grew directly out of this difference in visions: Are we a country that includes everybody and gives everybody a shot and treats everybody fairly and is that going to make us stronger? Are we welcoming to immigrants? Are we welcoming to people who aren’t like us — does that make us stronger? I believe it does. So that’s what’s at stake.” The comments reiterated his earlier embrace of gay marriage, which was applauded by celebrity blogger Perez Hilton , who told MTV on Thursday that the news was happy, if a bit late in coming. “I wish he would have done this a long time ago,” Hilton said. The gathering was organized by DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, featured food by famed chef-to-the-stars Wolfgang Puck and took place in a large tent on the basketball court outside Clooney’s huge Tudor-style Hollywood home. Among the stars in attendance were Robert Downey Jr., Tobey Maguire, Jack Black, Salma Hayek, Billy Crystal, Barbra Streisand and husband James Brolin and Clooney’s girlfriend, Stacey Kiebler. Fresh off his joke-filled appearance at the Correspondents dinner in D.C., the president went for laughs again, chiding the host that his famous 2008 “Hope” campaign poster was taken from a photo of him sitting next to Clooney when Obama was a U.S. Senator. “This is the first time that George Clooney has ever been PhotoShopped out of a picture,” Obama said. “Never happened before, never happen again.” And while the night had a positive tone, Obama acknowledged to his high-dollar donors that the upcoming election is going to be much more difficult than the 2008 contest. “This is going to be harder than it was the last time,” he said. “2008, in some ways, was lighting in a bottle … So we’re going to have to fight against cynicism and a belief that maybe things can’t happen and maybe the game is rigged, what’s the point. That’s what we’re going to be fighting against this time.”
Matthew McConaughey opens up about his hit man character for MTV News’ Summer Movie Preview Week. By Kara Warner Thomas Haden Church and Matthew McConaughey in “Killer Joe” Photo: LD Distribution “Killer Joe” is the type of genre film you only need to know a few key details about to be intrigued. First, Matthew McConaughey plays a crazy contract killer. Second, the plot revolves around a desperate young man (Emile Hirsch) who plots to kill his mother with help from his family (Thomas Haden Church, Gina Gershon), who are asked to offer up their teenage daughter (Juno Temple) as a retainer to hire the hit man. Third, the film landed an NC-17 rating for all its gratuitous violence. Bonus highbrow fact: The seemingly crazy story is based on Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Letts’ award-winning play. See what we mean about intriguing? When MTV News caught up with McConaughey recently, we asked him to set aside the film’s outrageous factors for a moment in order to name a few of his character’s redeemable qualities, aside from the killer-for-hire part. “He keeps to himself until he has to go do his business. He’s a very structured guy,” McConaughey said. “Everyone understands, on the up-and-up, what his plan is and how he’ll go through with it. It’s a very clean business, and he doesn’t want anyone else to know anything they shouldn’t know that could implicate them. He’s very, very clean and he’s a very good businessman. He just happens to have a job that’s kinda heinous and absurd.” The “Lincoln Lawyer” and “Magic Mike” said the fun of the film is in not knowing when to laugh or gasp — or both. “It’s a comedy, but everyone played it straight,” McConaughey explained. “It wasn’t a comedy where you played the joke. The situations are absurd. It’s a bit of a hyper-reality, like in some good Tarantino films — very violent, at the same time it’s very funny. It’s the kind of late laugh that you go, ‘I’m not supposed to be laughing, but I just found myself laughing, and is it OK for me to laugh at that? ‘Cause I just did.’ I like it.” It’s Summer Movie Preview Week, and MTV News will be bringing you exclusive interviews, clips and photos for the most anticipated summer movies . Get ready to gorge on inside looks at “The Avengers,” Robert Pattinson’s “Bel Ami,” Kristen Stewart’s “Snow White,” “The Amazing Spider-Man” and more! Related Videos Summer Movie Preview 2012 South by Southwest 2012 Related Photos Get Psyched For Summer Movie Flicks 2012!
Critics mostly agree that Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum’s undercover cop comedy is ‘a vibrant reboot of a rather forgettable ’80s TV series.’ By Eric Ditzian Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill in “21 Jump Street” Photo: Sony Where my laughs at? We’ve been suffering through a far-too-serious start at the 2012 box office. The first three-and-a-half months of the year have been dominated by weepy dramas (“The Vow”), kid-friendly animated fare (“The Lorax”), middling horror flicks (“The Devil Inside”) and films that should have kept geek flags around the country flying high but instead could barely inspire a gust of nerdy enthusiasm (“John Carter,” “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance”). Even the adventure-comedy “Journey 2: The Mystery Island” — #4, somehow, on the year’s top-grossing-movies list — elicited more forehead-smacking guffaws than genuine belly laughs. “21 Jump Street” is about to change all of that. As our friends over at NextMovie put it, Jonah Hill’s new film is the “first must-see comedy of the year.” The majority of critics agree, praising the movie’s big laughs, star players and killer supporting performances. Read on for a deep dive into the “21 Jump Street” reviews. The Story “Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as novice cops who are forced to go undercover as high-school students to bust up a drug ring? Come on, that movie’s going to blow, right? But ’21 Jump Street’ doesn’t blow — which could have been this movie’s raunchy, self-deprecating tagline if it didn’t already have several. ’21 Jump Street’ isn’t a wild, fresh reinvention of the movie-clich
Critics are divided over Will Ferrell’s campy telenovela parody. By Kara Warner Will Ferrell and Diego Luna in “Cada de mi Padre” Photo: Pantelion Films At this point in his storied career, Will Ferrell has taught his fans to expect the unexpected. His latest film, “Casa de Mi Padre,” is a perfect example. The outrageous, purposefully campy and telenovela-esque flick is most certainly not a movie for everyone, and critics are divided on whether its ridiculousness is fun or just plain ridiculous; it currently has a 46 percent Fresh rating over at Rotten Tomatoes . Vamanos a las criticas de “Casa de Mi Padre”! The Premise : “Will Ferrell, speaking passable Spanish (with English subtitles), plays Armando Alvarez, a Mexican rancher hot for the fianc
‘This season, we kind of appreciated Jersey more,’ he tells MTV News of season five. By Jocelyn Vena, with reporting by Sway Calloway Sway and Pauly D Photo: MTV News In a sea of laughs (courtesy of Vinny trying to hook up with two lesbians) and drama (including the Situation gossiping about Deena’s sister’s bedtime activities with his brother) on the “Jersey Shore” season finale, perhaps the biggest drama of all was caused by a prank pulled by Pauly D and Vinny. After the crew returned from a camping trip, they found that their pals had pulled the ultimate practical joke, putting all their belongings and the house’s furnishings outside. While almost everyone laughed it off, their pal the Situation didn’t find it as amusing, complaining ad nauseam about the joke. “The finale’s crazy because we go all out with the pranks,” Pauly told MTV News about the season ender. “So me and Vinny, we’re like prank-war champions. The whole house [suffers]. They appreciate it, but they get mad.” It capped off a season that was full of fun, drunken nights, as well as some real emotion, especially when Vinny left the house for a minute to deal with his anxiety issues . In the end, Pauly recalled all the laughs he shared with his roomies. “Well, this season, we kind of appreciated Jersey more,” he said. “So we took advantage of it and everything it has to offer. We were in Italy for so long [last season] that we never were away from the country for that amount of time, so you realize how much you miss gym, tan, laundry. There was no tanning beds in Italy. “Something that surprised me? When Vinny left,” he added about his buddy’s short break from the house. “I never thought he would ever leave me. So he left me, but good thing we brought him back.” With season five over, it’s not clear if the show will come back for a sixth season . If it does happen, Pauly D is down to hit Seaside again. “Absolutely! I’m there! I love summers on the Jersey Shore,” he said. “I love it as a show, and I love it with my roommates. I wouldn’t do it without [them]. I gotta do it with them. I want all of them, and I want the Jersey Shore.” Until then, fans can get their DJ Pauly D fix with his spin-off, “The Pauly D Project,” kicking off on March 29, the same day as the premiere of “Punk’d.” And of course, the “Shore” spin-off featuring mom-to-be Snooki and JWoww is currently in production. Don’t miss “Jersey Shore” every Thursday at 10 p.m. ET on MTV. For continuing “Shore” coverage, be sure to check in with MTV’s Remote Control blog. Related Videos Jersey Shore (Season 5) | Ep. 11 | We Are Family Jersey Shore (Season 5) | Ep. 11 | Deleted Scenes Related Photos Jersey Shore Season 5 | Ep. 11 | Flipbook
GQ UK is doing a comedy special…..and they got everyone from Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Robin Williams and a lot of other rich for being funny idiots in the shit….but the highlight of the video is not the beat box edit they do…but Olivia Wilde being thrown in the mix to jiggle her tit for no reason other than to jiggle her tits…and as much as I think her stage namee is idiotic….and how I think she’s overrated and not that hot….a titty jiggle always manages to work its way into my website but not my heart…because after years of analysis, failed relationships, hate it turns out I don’t have one. Either way, for a comedy issue, this isn’t funny at all…but the tit jiggle make it worth the abuse the rest of the video puts you through…maybe that’s the joke…forcing you through hell all for a tit jiggle of a bitch you don’t care about….who knows British people are weird. Here’s the new video….
It started with the pudding. Oh, not just any pudding: A perfect pool of melt-in-your-mouth chocolate-hazelnut goodness — a confection so rich, so irresistible, that even Tom Hardy found himself drawn like a moth to a flame to the dessert table before the press conference for This Means War the other week in Beverly Hills. He grabbed a saucer and ambled over to a pack of bewildered journalists, offering an ebullient bon mot about The Woman in Black . “I’d have eaten through Daniel Radcliffe to get that part!” he raved, or so the story goes, before setting down his dish and disappearing once more into the back hallways of the Four Seasons. I’d arrived two minute too late for the Hardy-Pudding Incident, but the room was still abuzz over the moment. So rarely does the talent walk among the press at these things that when they do — especially when as scruffy-faced and so very normal looking as Hardy was that day, clad not in couture but in a military-style This Means War jacket – it can be strangely jarring. Ditto when the film at hand is a Hollywood joint as slick and persona-driven as This Means War , the success of which will depend in great part on how many people out there want to see Reese Witherspoon wrestle with the tough choice of making out with the beautiful, manly Hardy or making out with the beautiful, manly Chris Pine . Decisions, decisions. Given the nature of This Means War as an early-year studio rom-com, it was a curious thing to see how personality played out in the flesh with director McG and stars Hardy, Witherspoon, and Chelsea Handler taking questions together. (Pine was absent thanks to Star Trek 2 filming commitments.) Witherspoon proved predictably amiable, gamely answering queries about online dating, marriage, and shooting her co-stars in the junk with a paintball gun – an old pro at offsetting the tedium of junket questions while coming off as perfectly likeable. McG, ever the showman, commanded the conference with his signature bombast — for better and for worse. According to him, This Means War was never intended to be a terribly complicated or easily categorized kind of film. “Let’s face it, this movie’s not about the human condition,” he admitted. “This movie’s about, ‘Hey, I can’t put it into a box.’ I think that’s one achievement of the picture is that you can go, ‘Hey, it is funny, there is some action, the girls are great, the guys are great.’ And it’s not just like this or just like that. And if we’re successful in doing that, we’re certainly done what we set out to do.” Uh, sure. Over in the corner, meanwhile, Hardy hunched over his mic and avoided giving the usual run of the mill sound bites. Does Hardy ever have conflicts with friends? “I don’t have any friends… I have a dog and a son. A dog couldn’t do anything to upset me, you know, and neither could my son.” What does he think of social media? “I think online dating is a way of procuring people, you know what I mean? Like Facebook, Myspace. It’s a way that people [use] to connect out. And procure small children and sometimes you know, dodgy relationships.” If we’re talking big personalities in This Means War and its junket that day at the Four Seasons, though, Handler took the cake. Playing Witherspoon’s married best friend and confidante, the talk show host/author/comedienne runs away with the film’s funniest lines; word has it McG battled the ratings board over Handler’s risqué ad libs just to get it down to a PG-13 rating, but more than a few gems made it through. Handler, of course, reveled in her reputation for controversy-making. The self-described “horrible influence on everyone” described the real life reversal of her off-screen friendship with Witherspoon. “It’s kind of the opposite. Because in real life, she has children, she’s a mother and she’s married. And I’m single, so it was kind of fun playing opposite roles. [Pause] I’m single and I sleep with a lot of men, so it’s perfect.” This Means War is pretty much exclusively composed of sexy fun and spy games, and its central actors are charismatic all, but something about it still nagged me. I asked McG to explain why his cast noticeably lacks diversity – all four leads (Pine, Hardy, Witherspoon, Handler) are Caucasian with blue eyes, while throwaway roles go to a few supporting actors, including Angela Bassett as a one-note police captain. He answered by pointing to his own 2000 film, Charlie’s Angels . “Listen, that’s a huge concern for me,” he replied. “And I can answer that in good faith because I put Lucy Liu in Charlie’s Angels . I don’t like lily-white movies with lily-white people bouncing around, but you’ve also just got to do what you got to do.” McG continued. “In the spirit of Benetton [Rainbow Complex], you know, the most empowered character in the film is indeed a black woman. I enjoy that the most powerful person in Hollywood is indeed a black woman – Oprah Winfrey. And I’m hoping to just transcend beyond that. I love ethnic diversity all over the place, but I just felt like Chelsea was the right one. I had a singular vision for Tom Hardy, I chased him all the way over to London. And you’re right, because I’m doing the color correction and I’m like, Jesus, everybody’s eyes are popping off the screen, these interior-lit blue mongrels. And it’s a bit of a concern, but you just got to do what’s right.” Without skipping a beat, Handler glanced in my direction and chimed in: “But we ate Chinese food throughout the whole filming.” “ We ate Chinese food throughout the whole filming. ” Immediately I wondered if she’d cracked the joke because of me — and if so, was I even offended by it? … Should I be? In the end I decided that I’d actually have more respect for Handler if she had intended to make a racial joke, in front of dozens of journalists, just to get a quip in; that’s the same kind of inappropriate quick-thinking that makes This Means War even remotely watchable, and the kind of boundary-smashing ballsiness that made me LOL at her E! talk show in the first place. If anything, I’m more offended by McG’s lazy excuse for making This Means War so “lily-white” while clinging to a progressive bit of casting he dared to pull off, once, over a decade ago. So it’s more than a “bit of a concern,” all right. And needless to say, Hollywood’s glaring issue of ethnic underrepresentation is not going to be solved here, with an explosion-filled rom-com like This Means War , and maybe-accidental, probably-on purpose jokes in poor taste blurted out in moments of impromptu press conference stand-up. At least we’ll always have pudding. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
