MTV News introduces you to Imagine Dragons and their catchy tune from the film, ‘It’s Time.’ By Kara Warner Imagine Dragons Photo: Paul Zimmerman/ Getty Images How perfectly engaging and intriguing is that “Perks of Being a Wallflower” trailer ? We’ve been thinking about it and re-watching it since its debut during our 2012 MTV Movie Awards pre-show, and the one thing that we can’t get out of our heads — in addition to all those great visuals and actors — is that catchy song playing in the background. The song is “It’s Time” by Imagine Dragons . For those who have yet to discover this buzzworthy band from Las Vegas, get thee to downloading more of their infectious, lighthearted tunes. Since forming in Vegas in 2009, Imagine Dragons have had to work their way toward their recent success, a voyage that has certainly had its share of ups and downs along the way. “I remember one gig [where] we were playing a casino in Vegas, and it was a really small stage,” guitarist Wayne Sermon recalled during an interview with MTV News recently. “We played a four-hour set — we’d do those two to three times a week — and we were exhausted, and [frontman] Dan [Reynolds] passes out in the middle of the last song, falls on the drum set, the drums go everywhere, and it was horrible, but we finished the song.” “And all these drunk guys were like, ‘Wooo!’ ” Reynolds laughed. “But it didn’t hurt; I was so tired, it was sort of nice to have a little break.” The band has finally started to see the fruits of their labor, with “It’s Time” climbing the charts, the debut of their music video and plans to begin work on their first full-length EP. But they aren’t letting any of that go to their heads. “It’s crazy. We’ve been a band for three years, living on the road, eating bean burritos every day, and we’re still eating bean burritos every day, but it’s been incredible to see the support that we’ve gotten,” Reynolds said. “We really owe so much to our fans who, from the very beginning, have been sharing the music. And we live in a world where things can happen so quickly, and we’re glad we’ve had three years to really prepare. … We’ve been doing it for a little while, and it feels good … and right.” Jaw-dropping, heart-pounding, gut-busting moments galore. See what went down at the 21st annual MTV Movie Awards ! Related Videos Exclusives From The 2012 MTV Movie Awards
‘All these articles talk about how I’ve changed and I’m like, ‘Good, I hope I’ve changed,’ ‘ Stern says about his bad-boy reputation. By Gil Kaufman Howard Stern Photo: MTV News Settle down, America. Regardless of what you think of segments like “Hottest Chick with the Oldest Dude” or the “Tiger Woods Mistress Beauty Pageant,” new “America’s Got Talent” judge Howard Stern is not going to bring his X-rated antics to prime-time television. Stern starts his run as a judge on the popular reality competition show on Monday (May 14) night and before viewing even one minute of his family-hour act some critics have already decided he’s going to turn the 8 p.m. hour into a non-stop cavalcade of strippers, four-letter words and bathroom humor. If you’ve listened at all to Stern’s SiriusXM radio show over the past six months, the original radio rebel has made it clear that he has only one intention: to be the best, most honest judge on TV. Stern is an obsessive about many things: his career-long nemesis Don Imus, his quirky bathroom habits, babysitter porn, the weight gains and losses and internecine feuds among his staff members and, yes, judges on reality series. As much as he’d love to find better uses for his time, Howard is drawn like a magnet to “American Idol,” “Dancing With the Stars” and various other shows where, frankly, he thinks the judges are lousy, lazy, dishonest and just kind of lame. “AGT” is Stern’s chance to prove that he is willing to put up or shut up. This is the man, you may recall, who has spent decades trying to convince America that he is a poorly endowed, paunchy lover who has never satisfied a woman. How much more honest can you be? He knows better not just as a father of three seemingly well-adjusted adult daughters, but as a professional broadcaster and 30-plus year veteran in the game. There’s a time and a place for everything and “AGT” is not the forum for the Wack Pack and the adult word of Stern. This is a guy, after all, whose first movie was a hit, but who has spent the ensuing 20-plus years reading scripts and discarding them because they didn’t ring true or feel right for him. Every move he makes is meticulously dissected, over-thought and ruminated over both on and off the air. The neurotic, locker room Howard Stern character of the radio is not the same Howard you are going to see on TV. Because who in their right mind would humiliate a child on TV as some have suggested Stern might do? If anything, given his moral compass, Howard is more likely to go after the greedy, self-involved “Toddlers and Tiaras”-style parents that put their children up to audition for transparently selfish reasons. And who could argue with that? That’s not even mentioning the fact that “AGT” picked up the entire production and moved it to New York to accommodate Stern’s radio show. Combine that with a reported $20 million payday, and, let’s assume, an iron-clad morals clause, and there’s virtually no incentive for Stern to go off-script and try to tank the show by crossing streams with his more sordid radio world. Why would Stern spend his life building a brand, only to go on TV and pull some kind of Andy Kaufman stunt and blow it apart just to be shocking? That’s not shocking. That’s self-destructive, bad business and frankly, just stupid. If there’s anything I’ve learned after listening to Stern for the past two decades it’s that he will pick fights with management and complain and lash out, he will stomp his feet, vent his spleen and complain ad nauseum about being treated poorly, but he will not embarrass himself or do anything that could tarnish the legacy of what he’s so painstakingly built for himself and his audience. (Okay, Fartman was not his best moment, but still, c’mon, it was still pretty hilarious.) He wants you to love him, needs you to love him and after hit radio shows, movies, books and television production credits, what better way to do that than to once again prove his detractors wrong and conquer the one medium he’s got left on his bucket list: star of prime time TV? Plus, he loves to win, lives to win, and he knows that with this move he can’t lose. There’s little or no competition from other big-name shows in the summer months, the program already has a huge ratings base and any drop-off from the Stern Effect will easily be made up by his millions of fans. The curiosity factor alone (not to mention a huge, full-court ad campaign that had the normally press-averse Stern doing talk shows and New York Times interviews) will surely give the first few weeks a major ratings boost. After years of experiments, plugging a celebrity judge into a panel is a mixed blessing at this point. Steven Tyler was kind of fun and quirky on last year’s “American Idol,” but by this season he was merely irritating and mostly just a peacocking place-filler who offered little or nothing of substance to the contestants. Howard’s watched this, studied it and has promised that he will be a different kind of judge. “All these articles talk about how I’ve changed and I’m like, ‘Good, I hope I’ve changed,'” Stern said on his satellite radio show on Monday (May 14) about his bad-boy reputation. He’s less angry, jealous and resentful these days, but he’s also more keenly aware of what it takes to entertain and I have a feeling that, love him or hate him, if you tune in tonight you’re going to be surprised. And I guarantee you will be entertained. Do you think Howard Stern will be a good judge on “America’s Got Talent” Let us know in comments below.
Jay will headline and curate Budweiser Made in America music festival over Labor Day weekend. By Rob Markman Jay-Z gives a press conference at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Photo: Bill McCay/ FilmMagic PHILADELPHIA — Jay-Z once bragged in song that he beat his assault charges “like Rocky.” Well, it’s been more than a decade since, and Hov — the multiplatinum mogul who remains atop music’s food chain — has done more than simply beat the charge. On Monday morning (May 14), rap’s most magnetic man drew a crowd of reporters and media types to the very steps that the fictional boxer Rocky has made famous. Standing triumphantly at the peak of the staircase of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Hov and Philly Mayor Michael Nutter announced yet another prolific Jay-venture: Budweiser Made in America , a two-day music festival in Philadelphia, this Labor Day weekend. “Everyone knows my love affair with Philly from the amazing, talented artists I’ve signed from here,” Jay said, prompting State Property MC Freeway to jump onstage beside him. Jay-Z will not only headline the festival, he will also curate the three-stage concert, which will feature close to 30 different acts. Still, for the God MC, there are a few things to consider before pulling off stunts such as these. “Whenever I enter into a project, I try to hit on some touch points. The first thing is: Is it great?” Jay asked rhetorically, addressing the crowd, which braved some clouds and drizzle. “The second one is: Is it gonna push the culture forward?” Forward progress is a safe bet: A press release for the upcoming event promises eclectic acts in multiple genres like rock, hip-hop, R&B, Latin and dance music, but the official roster won’t be announced until May 21. The third item Jay considers is the philanthropic opportunities, so once again, he is partnering with United Way. Together, they put on Jigga’s February Carnegie Hall concert in New York, and this time out, they aim to support local charities in both Philly and South New Jersey. The show will be held September 1 and September 2 on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. Tickets for Made in America will go on sale May 23 through Ticketmaster.com and LiveNation.com . Related Artists Jay-Z
Jay will headline and curate Budweiser Made in America music festival over Labor Day weekend. By Rob Markman Jay-Z gives a press conference at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Photo: Bill McCay/ FilmMagic PHILADELPHIA — Jay-Z once bragged in song that he beat his assault charges “like Rocky.” Well, it’s been more than a decade since, and Hov — the multiplatinum mogul who remains atop music’s food chain — has done more than simply beat the charge. On Monday morning (May 14), rap’s most magnetic man drew a crowd of reporters and media types to the very steps that the fictional boxer Rocky has made famous. Standing triumphantly at the peak of the staircase of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Hov and Philly Mayor Michael Nutter announced yet another prolific Jay-venture: Budweiser Made in America , a two-day music festival in Philadelphia, this Labor Day weekend. “Everyone knows my love affair with Philly from the amazing, talented artists I’ve signed from here,” Jay said, prompting State Property MC Freeway to jump onstage beside him. Jay-Z will not only headline the festival, he will also curate the three-stage concert, which will feature close to 30 different acts. Still, for the God MC, there are a few things to consider before pulling off stunts such as these. “Whenever I enter into a project, I try to hit on some touch points. The first thing is: Is it great?” Jay asked rhetorically, addressing the crowd, which braved some clouds and drizzle. “The second one is: Is it gonna push the culture forward?” Forward progress is a safe bet: A press release for the upcoming event promises eclectic acts in multiple genres like rock, hip-hop, R&B, Latin and dance music, but the official roster won’t be announced until May 21. The third item Jay considers is the philanthropic opportunities, so once again, he is partnering with United Way. Together, they put on Jigga’s February Carnegie Hall concert in New York, and this time out, they aim to support local charities in both Philly and South New Jersey. The show will be held September 1 and September 2 on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. Tickets for Made in America will go on sale May 23 through Ticketmaster.com and LiveNation.com . Related Artists Jay-Z
Jay will headline and curate Budweiser Made in America music festival over Labor Day weekend. By Rob Markman Jay-Z gives a press conference at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Photo: Bill McCay/ FilmMagic PHILADELPHIA — Jay-Z once bragged in song that he beat his assault charges “like Rocky.” Well, it’s been more than a decade since, and Hov — the multiplatinum mogul who remains atop music’s food chain — has done more than simply beat the charge. On Monday morning (May 14), rap’s most magnetic man drew a crowd of reporters and media types to the very steps that the fictional boxer Rocky has made famous. Standing triumphantly at the peak of the staircase of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Hov and Philly Mayor Michael Nutter announced yet another prolific Jay-venture: Budweiser Made in America , a two-day music festival in Philadelphia, this Labor Day weekend. “Everyone knows my love affair with Philly from the amazing, talented artists I’ve signed from here,” Jay said, prompting State Property MC Freeway to jump onstage beside him. Jay-Z will not only headline the festival, he will also curate the three-stage concert, which will feature close to 30 different acts. Still, for the God MC, there are a few things to consider before pulling off stunts such as these. “Whenever I enter into a project, I try to hit on some touch points. The first thing is: Is it great?” Jay asked rhetorically, addressing the crowd, which braved some clouds and drizzle. “The second one is: Is it gonna push the culture forward?” Forward progress is a safe bet: A press release for the upcoming event promises eclectic acts in multiple genres like rock, hip-hop, R&B, Latin and dance music, but the official roster won’t be announced until May 21. The third item Jay considers is the philanthropic opportunities, so once again, he is partnering with United Way. Together, they put on Jigga’s February Carnegie Hall concert in New York, and this time out, they aim to support local charities in both Philly and South New Jersey. The show will be held September 1 and September 2 on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. Tickets for Made in America will go on sale May 23 through Ticketmaster.com and LiveNation.com . Related Artists Jay-Z
Just when you think you might have had enough of James Franco , along comes Francophrenia to either whet your appetite for more of the actor-director’s avant-garde pursuits — or officially turn you off to them forever. I might be overdramatizing a bit, but not by much, judging by the walkouts sporadically punctuating the experimental doc/pseudo-soap opera’s recent North American premiere at Tribeca. And with the skies pissing cold rain on Manhattan that evening, you really had to want to leave Franco’s tongue-in-cheek exploration of identity as cast through the prism of his infamous guest stint on General Hospital , reshaped into a sort of leering emo-psychodrama by co-director and editor Ian Olds. Not that Franco didn’t anticipate this. “I’m sure there’ll be different kinds of reactions to it,” he said before the screening, introducing the film with Olds. “But I’m just very glad it’s here at Tribeca. It’s my third film here (after Good Time Max [2007] and Saturday Night [2010]); we love the Tribeca Film Festival. We kind of knew that this film would be not…” Franco paused. “We’ve had mixed reactions. We sort of enjoy that now. I’m sure some of you will be very into it and some won’t. It does take a little bit of… engagement , that’s all. Otherwise, it’s very, very fun.” That’s fair. Francophrenia doesn’t take much of anything seriously, least of all the spectacle around the June 2010 GH episode that brought Franco’s eponymous, homicidal artist to a massive outdoor installation filmed at L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art. There, the killer continued his torment of Port Charles’s finest before — spoiler alert? — a protracted gun battle and, finally, his fatal, tuxedoed tumble from the roof. (The sequence provides the film’s subtitle, Don’t Kill Me, I Know Where the Baby Is .) Fans and casual observers alike had both privately and publicly reckoned with the performance-art nature of Franco’s character to that point; “Who is this guy playing, if anybody?” we asked ourselves, to the extent we cared at all. And in 2010, with the then-32-year-old actor at the seeming height of his creative (and, uh, academic) powers — and well before co-hosting the 2011 Oscars in another performance-art torpedo to his A-list celebrity goodwill — we did care a bit. Which, as Francophrenia asserts in its long, deconstructing takes of hair sessions, set-roaming and other behind-the-scenes banality, was really kind of foolish of us. But in daring to sniff at the inviolable absurdity of fame, the spirit of actor/director Franco’s enterprise equivocates. Is his grinning mask while signing autographs and taking photos with fans just garden-variety, all-in-a-day’s-work magnanimity? Or is it a vulgar showcase for Franco’s cynicism, his “art” shielding him from the plebes? Who’s taking the piss here? It’s not as open a question as it seems, especially as drops of whispery voice-over (written by Olds and Paul Felten) trickle into the sound design before flooding it with equal parts self-aggrandizement and self-effacement. On the one hand, Franco can’t trust the GH director, has to find his way “back to the world,” and asks, “What am I doing here?” as he glowers over the scene, reassuring himself with Marxist polymath Guy Debord’s observation that “Separation is the alpha and omega of the spectacle.” But Olds and Felten leaven all the high-minded paranoia with riffs on Franco’s mythology: “I went to graduate school for a reason, people,” he reminds the viewer at one point — when he’s not, say, craving a cookie or calling his producer Vince Jolivette a “prophet of lies and false consciousness.” Mostly, though, Franco — the character hovering somewhere between the real man and the GH hyperparody — is constantly undermined by the camera itself and even a torrent of gossip promulgated by the icons on the sign outside the men’s bathroom. They chirp about how high and/or pretentious Franco is, deflating his airier platitudes with such brusque dismissals as, “Transcendent my ass!” Conceptually, anyhow, Francophrenia is nothing if not inspired — half-Malick, half- Mystery Science Theater 3000 , a postmodern meltdown superimposed on one of TV’s longest-running melodramas. “It’s easy to see the film as a kind of a gimmick if it’s just riffing on all this culture surrounding James’s celebrity,” Olds said following Sunday’s Tribeca premiere. “It’s a lot of fun to do, but there’s something that interested…” He paused. “The idea is: How can you sort of bend the documentary footage so it serves this artificial narrative, but at the same time, how can you reframe the documentary footage so you can see it with new life? So you can say, ‘What they hell are they doing here? What is all this energy going into? What are they building?’ In a sense, the clearest thing I could think about is that in some ways, it’s maybe like a deranged portrait of the labor behind the spectacle.” But here’s the thing: Franco and Olds have been here before. Francophrenia perhaps works most interestingly as a companion piece to their previous collaboration Saturday Night , another backstage opus also framing what Olds on Sunday called “this sort of mundane human labor.” In that case, it was an all-access glimpse at what goes into producing one episode of Saturday Night Live : the pitch meetings, the grueling all-nighters, the set designs and musical arrangements, the ruthless slashing of material and the general stresses that accompany creating in Studio 8H. Yet where Saturday Night glimpsed those phenomena with a kind of meandering introspection, Francophrenia sends them up with abandon. It’s as though one show is good enough for Franco’s guileless intellect, while the other can only withstand a lengthy frisk before the actor sends it on its way. A viewer Sunday asked Franco about his intentions here, hinting at the double standard that you could just as easily apply to his recent work as Very Serious Artists like Allen Ginsberg ( Howl ) and Hart Crane ( The Broken Tower ). “I really enjoyed working with those people,” he said of the GH crew. “Some of the people I worked with have sadly been fired from General Hospital ; daytime is having a hard time right now. But they’ve gone on to other shows, and I’m going to work with them. Part of my initial impulse to go on General Hospital before this project was even conceived of was to try and examine and break down this kind of hierarchy people have in their minds about levels of entertainment — that movies are better than soaps, or that kind of thing. So I just wanted to insert myself there and experience it and see what it was all about, and I found that there are many things you can do in daytime that movies can’t do, and I really loved it. “I think maybe what you’re reading is because the soap opera is our subject,” Franco continued. “We’re using it as material to examine certain things. But I don’t think the project was ever to make fun of soap operas. It’s just using it like they use me and my image as material to examine certain ideas.” He later elaborated on the ultimate spirit of the project, citing the evaluation of James Franco’s identity by those other than James Franco as his reason for handing the 40-plus hours of GH footage off to Olds. “All along the way, it’s been about turning myself over to these different entities and letting them do what they will with my image,” Franco said. “I look at the film and I see the slicked-back hair and you’ve got all the shots where I’m looking crazy. And that’s exactly how it needs to be! It’s slightly embarrassing. It can’t ever be something where I’m trying to look cool or make you like James Franco or something. It needed to have somebody else manipulating the material and not me, since that’s one of the subjects of the movie.” Again, though: Do we care? I mean, Joaquin Phoenix has demonstrated how much more cynical this could all be, so Franco has at least a little further to go before his whims fall in a forest with nobody around to hear. But to paraphrase Paul Sunday’s admonition in There Will Be Blood , I would like it better if Franco didn’t think I was stupid — or at least if the variation of Franco that appears in Francophrenia didn’t think I was stupid, or that the protean puppeteer above it all didn’t think we can’t spot the hypocrisy calling out from earlier acts of this same show. It’s certainly a show worth watching, an adventure too funny, too playful, too thought-provoking to write off for its cheap shots and rectitude. Still, I hope the curtain comes down soon — and that its mastermind has better ideas ahead. Francophrenia screens again at Tribeca this Saturday, April 28, at noon. Read all of Movieline’s Tribeca 2012 coverage here . Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter . [Photo credits: Doug Chamberlain / Tribeca Film Festival ]
Apple’s iPad and the conditions under which it is built are topics that surface regularly on technology blogs and in the mainstream media. While the company did recently initiate a review by the Fair Labor Association, human rights organizations regularly take Apple to task for not doing more to ensure factory workers employed by its China-based manufacturing partner Foxconn are treated well. Foxconn… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Boy Genius Report Discovery Date : 11/04/2012 21:10 Number of articles : 3
Beyonce has given birth to a baby girl on Saturday evening in New York, a source has told the Houston Chronicle . Both are said to be doing OK. The baby girl is the first child for Beyonce and her husband Jay-Z who will be married for 4 years this year. A very pregnant Beyonce checked into Lenox Hill hospital last night under the name “Ingrid Jackson,” a hospital staffer told the NY Daily News. Staffers at the hospital said that Beyonce and her Jay-Z, rented out the hospital’s entire fourth floor for $1.3 million. With reports that a New York hospital was put on alert for a celebrity birth, the rumors went into full swing over the last few days. Some websites even posted the rumor that the singer had given birth to a baby girl and named her Tiana-May Carter on Thursday, December 29th. Auntie Rihanna was the first to tweet the good news: Congratulations to the happy couple! Now can we all get back to our regularly scheduled lives! Like us on Facebook! Follow @HelloBeautiful on Twitter! Beyonce Checks Into Hospital Still Pregnant Beyonce Spotted In NYC Beyonce Is In Labor, Admitted To Hospital Beyonce & Jay-Z Buy House With Elevator To Nursery?
ABC released a cutesy trailer for the 2012 Academy Awards telecast that speaks loads to the youthful new direction the show’s makers were going in when they brought Brett Ratner aboard, before his untimely exit ; in a slick parody of globe-trotting Hollywood fare, two heroes are tasked with tracking down wizened Billy Crystal for hosting duties on the Big Night. Those heroes? None other than Transformers castmates Josh Duhamel and Megan Fox, because of course. Nothing says current like the girl who was the hottest thing on earth three years ago! Watch the trailer and see if it entices you with its “Hey kids, check us out!” hip comedy stylings. The trailer even comes courtesy of Funny Or Die, it’s so plugged in! And hey, isn’t that Vinnie Jones as a mysterious bartender with inside intel? And Bill Fichtner as Oscarcast producer Brian Grazer? (At least that much makes sense.) And, well, Robin Williams as a Himalayan ferryman? (That cameo actually just makes me sad that he’s not hosting or co-hosting with Crystal.) See, the Oscars are for everybody! This milquetoast-but-four-quadrant trailer proves it! Verdict: The 84th Academy Awards will be televised live on Feb. 26 at 4p.m. PT/7 p.m. ET, and from the looks of it we’ll be in for a loooong night.
After their not-so-dextrous handling of The Road throttled director John Hillcoat’s film into cultural oblivion, let’s be honest: There’s something bittersweet about watching the Weinsteins suffocate Hillcoat’s anticipated follow-up Wettest County for old times’ sake. Starring Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy and Jessica Chastain in an adaptation of Matt Bondurant’s acclaimed Depression-era novel The Wettest County in the World , the movie has been shifted from its relatively favorable April 20 release date to the death row of Labor Day weekend — Aug. 31, where, to be fair, where Focus Features has dined out the last two years with similarly adult-targeted fare like The American and The Debt . Of course, those movies had proven stars in George Clooney and Helen Mirren, respectively; practically since its inception, Wettest County has been viewed as a dramatic mainstream proving ground for leading men LaBeouf and Hardy. Now it’s more like some kind of three-legged race to the holiday box-office finish line, with the duo facing off against the supernatural thriller 7500 . Good luck, fellas! Anyway! All the more resources for the surging #ConsiderUggie campaign . [ LAT ]
