DJ/producer drops second clip from his album Smash, set to drop this summer. By Adam Stewart Martin Solveig Martin Solveig may very well be one of the greatest athletes in dance music. And if you were one of the more than 22 million people who viewed his music video for “Hello” on YouTube — you know, the one where Solveig comes all the way back from a 6-love, 6-love deficit against fellow Frenchman Bob Sinclar, only to throw the tennis match due to a broken heart — then you know exactly why. And now Solveig has released his latest homage to sports with his video for “Ready 2 Go,” which premiered Friday (April 15). “We are shooting the video and episode for this at Stade de France,” Solveig told MTV News at Miami’s Ultra Music Festival last month. The track features the vocals of Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke, which keeps the overall feel “a bit more on the rock side. It’s quite exciting.” Exciting is a bit of an understatement. Fueled by the massive success of “Hello,” which was filmed live in front of 15,000 fans at the Roland Garros Tennis Stadium, “Ready 2 Go” again ventures toward high drama, with a humorous and ambitious plot that in the real world would likely land Solveig and his cohorts in prison. Cleverly garnished with v
It’s all about ME. That’s the theme as Sonja takes center stage. So, the Marriage Equality of New York (MENY) march asks Sonja to be the Grand Marshall? Is she really that big of a draw? I mean I know I’m not their target audience but still, Sonja’s a gay icon? Oh, and in case you missed it, it’s Sonja Morgan’s special day.
Watch ‘Idol Party Live’ for more on why we’re giving Lauren Alaina high marks this week. By Eric Ditzian Lauren Alaina Photo: FOX The question heading into Wednesday’s “American Idol” was no longer why Pia Toscano was booted off so prematurely, but whether the judges would learn a much-needed lesson from her departure. Would Randy, Jennifer and Steven realize their jobs are to dole out expert critiques and sagacious notes, shaping public opinion and letting contestants know what’s working and what needs overhauling? Any hope the judges had recalibrated their critical approach was pretty much lost when J.Lo announced, after a competent but hardly revelatory tune from Scotty McCreery, “Everybody wants us to be tough with you guys, but the truth is y’all are so damn good. All I really want to say is wow.” And our last bit of optimism was flushed away as Lopez, during her review of Haley Reinhart, essentially exposed herself as a judge who will place sentiment (in this case, mealy-mouthed girl-power favoritism) ahead of objective reality. In past seasons, even when Simon Cowell would confess to personally liking an “Idol” hopeful, he’d still have no problem laying down some hard truths. No wonder, as Ryan Seacrest put it last night, this season is clouded by an “insane level of uncertainty.” But there’s nothing ambiguous about our “Idol” report card. The fact is, Wednesday’s night show — theme: songs of the cinema — wasn’t much to behold. No one bombed, but no one blew us away either. If the judges won’t lay down some truth, we will. Excellent Lauren Alaina : We’re not sure what Miley Cyrus did to earn Jimmy Iovine’s enmity, but the guy seemed almost as concerned with ripping the Disney starlet as he was with anointing Lauren as a superstar. In any event, saying Lauren is better than Miley is kind of a backhanded compliment, no? During “The Climb,” she struggled with some pitch problems but showed off an emotive voice and been-doing-this-all-my-life comfort level on stage. One question though: What happened to the country-infused Lauren we’ve come to know? We dig the ballads, but we want that light Southern twang back in the mix. In the end, Lauren lands a top grade, not because her performance was astonishing but because a) she was a pleasure to listen to, and b) there’s no way James Durbin gets an “excellent” just because he shared the stage with shred-master Zakk Wylde. Good Scotty McCreery : Let’s put aside the laughable thesis that Scotty was returning to his country roots on Wednesday, because he’s showed next to no genre growth all season. That’s not meant as a knock. In fact, he presents quite an interesting “Idol” model: the fully formed artist who does one thing so well, there’s little reason to test uncharted artistic waters. And hey, during his George Strait tune, Scotty let his vocals stretch further than they have on the show, even holding one note long enough for us to think, “Geez, he’s actually holding a note.” James Durbin : We knew this was coming . James couldn’t be expected to go all sensitive-rocker for a second consecutive week, even though we continue to argue that’s when he’s at his best. Alas, his heavy metal take on Sammy Hager left us feeling much as we did during his cover of Elton John’s “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” a few weeks ago: tons of fun to watch, but useless as an example of vocal expertise — something he has hardly established he possesses. Haley getting beat up for not giving her vocals an opportunity to sparkle while James didn’t is a deep injustice, a sign that some singers continue to get free passes while others can’t catch a break. Satisfactory Paul McDonald : We knew we should worry as soon as Paul showed up onstage without a guitar and was free to wobble around like that spinning top from “Inception.” It never works out well, does it? Paul’s energy was high and his ability to pump up a crowd remained intact, but we just didn’t get a very good chance to assess Paul the singer, rather than Paul the showman. We fear he’ll end up in the bottom three this week; we hope he doesn’t get sent home. Haley Reinhart : Haley! Haley! Why? Why Blondie’s “Call Me” and why that arrangement? Listen, we actually enjoyed it. Or maybe we just enjoy her. But the judges were correct that the song didn’t allow Haley to showcase her vocals — those great soulful growls. Any momentum she had accrued over the last few weeks likely fizzled away, perhaps not because her performance was worse than anyone else’s (it wasn’t, not by a long shot), but because she doesn’t seem to have worked her way into a permanent, do-no-wrong place in the judges’ hearts. How can she possibly be the only contestant to get slammed, when no one else gets so much as had an unkind word tossed his or her way? We can only hope voters see through the judges’ transparent cheerleading for everyone and bullying of Haley and give her enough support to rediscover her artistic sweet spot. Stefano Langone : This one’s tricky. Was Stefano’s take on Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road” his finest performance on the season — a notch above his surprising showstopper last month of Simply Red’s “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”? That’s up for debate. What is clear is Stefano showed more vocal and emotional abandon on Wednesday night than he has since coming on the show. Yet it’s also clear he generally doesn’t possess a particularly powerful instrument. The judges did their best to make Haley into this week’s fall gal, but there’s no doubting who is the more compelling artist between the two. Hint: It ain’t Stefano. Casey Abrams : Did we fall asleep and miss five weeks of this competition? Since when did Casey remake his artistic identity into some pop-jazz fusion of Adele and Michael Bubl
“It’s hard to find a song that defines me as an artist.” – Casey Abrams These American Idol kids are getting frisky. Like James Durbin , Casey butted heads a bit with producer Jimmy Iovine regarding his selection Wednesday. Jimmy nearly talked Abrams into doing Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” but he went with his gut and that meant channeling a little Nat King Cole. Iovine wasn’t pleased, but the judges give a standing ovation after a intimate, stripped down performance that Casey really put his heart and soul into. Whether “Nature Boy” defines him as an artist remains to be seen. But Abrams fans surely loved this and many people on the fence likely did, too … Casey Abrams – Nature Boy (American Idol) Was it the best of the night? If not, who was? Vote after the jump:
Anderson Cooper got poetic last night, specifically when musing about the Jersey Shore star Snooki . On his show yesterday evening, Cooper added anybody who has ever paid Snooki to his RidicuList — from club owners who pay $25,000 for an appearance, to MTV, who will pay $100,000 per episode. However, most ridiculous, according to Cooper, is Rutgers University . The public New Jersey university paid… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Wire Discovery Date : 13/04/2011 22:01 Number of articles : 5
‘I had to read it at [director] Wes Craven’s house,’ Emma Roberts recalls of her first look. By Kara Warner Courteney Cox in “Scream 4” Photo: Gemma La Mana/ Dimension Films With all the secretiveness surrounding the plot details of the “Scream” movies, it’s natural to assume that the general public goes into the films with as little knowledge as the studio can prevent them from acquiring. (Even journalists are asked to refrain from reviewing or commenting on the film until it opens.) But what about the actors? How much are they privy to when they sign on? MTV News recently caught up with the “Scream 4” cast to find out first, why we should believe their characters are not the killer and second, how much of the script they get to read before they sign on. “[I got] the middle bit, the middle section,” Hayden Panettiere told us. “I was in Germany and [the filmmakers] had somebody fly to Germany, meet me at home to watch me read the middle part of the script, so there was no beginning, no end, subject to change,” she explained. “There’s just something very funny about somebody sitting there watching you read it to make sure you don’t sneak pictures or go sending it anywhere. You feel like your life may be in jeopardy if, God forbid, anything got out.” “When I first read the script, I had to read it at [director] Wes Craven’s house,” Emma Roberts revealed. “So I couldn’t even have it sent to my house. When we got our scripts on set, they all had our names on them and I remember I was getting out of my car to go to work one day and I dropped my script and, literally, the pages were everywhere and I was in this parking lot chasing after all of my pages and, of course, the last few pages were floating away from me,” she recalled. “I grabbed them and brought them to my trailer, [thinking], ‘OK, I don’t know what to do with all this paper, I’m so nervous to be carrying this around.’ ” Franchise veteran David Arquette wasn’t able to pull rank for extra information either. “I didn’t receive a full script, no,” Arquette said. “It’s always been a whirlwind when these films get going. You never really know what’s happening, what’s going to happen, and also how it works in the films … when I go see these movies, there’s a lot of, ‘Oh, they kept that? Wow, that worked. Oooh, scary.’ ” Jokesters Adam Brody and Anthony Anderson, who play buddy cops Hoff and Perkins in the film, claimed that they still don’t know anything about the film. “I’m still getting pages now,” Anderson said. “I got the whole thing, and then they took it back and then gave me another one,” Brody bragged. “For as secret as it was — and I was really paranoid that I had it in my hotel room or backpack forever — it says your name on it and I thought, ‘I’m going to blow this whole thing,’ so surprisingly they gave it to me and let me keep it and I didn’t want it,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t think they gave us the actual script,” Anderson continued. “I think they gave us some type of story with our name on it, to scare us,” he claimed. “Because every time I got to work, the lines that were in the script that I had studied the night before were not the lines we were doing that day at work.” Do you plan to see “Scream 4”? Let us know in the comments! Check out everything we’ve got on “Scream 4.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘Scream 4’ Related Photos The New ‘Scream’ Queens Scream 4: Red Carpet Arrivals Scream 4
R&B singer celebrates with an intimate New York concert two days after the release. By James Dinh Alicia Keys’ Songs in A Minor Photo: J Records Alicia Keys is celebrating a career milestone this year. Come June 28, the R&B songstress will release special 10th anniversary deluxe and collector’s editions of her critically acclaimed debut album Songs in A Minor with previously unreleased material and a brand-new documentary, chronicling the making of the Grammy award-winning LP. “It’s incredibly surreal for me to be celebrating the 10th anniversary of
Here’s a look at Nicki’s journey from street star to pop sensation. By James Montgomery Nicki Minaj and Britney Spears Photo: Getty Images On Tuesday (April 12), after weeks of speculation, it was revealed that Nicki Minaj would be joining Britney Spears’ upcoming Femme Fatale tour , replacing Enrique Iglesias, who dropped off the high-profile trek earlier this month. It’s a big look for Nicki, though, to some, her addition was a bit of a head-scratcher. After all, she’s certainly not the traditional Britney opener , and with just one album (and some mixtapes) under her belt, it remains to be seen how Minaj’s live show will translate to Spears’ massive stage. Oh, and then there’s the very legitimate question of whether the two artists’ audiences are even aware of the other’s existence. Still, at this point, Minaj has done just about everything to prove those naysayers wrong — hit singles and platinum-plus albums tend to have that effect — and over the course of roughly three years, she’s risen from street-DVD sensation to go-to guest star and, finally, to full-fledged pop sensation — and the Femme Fatale tour is proof. So, as she prepares to head out on the road with Britney, let’s take a look back at that transformation. Here are Nicki Minaj’s top pop moments. Mariah Carey’s “Up Out My Face” video shoot , February 8, 2010 : Nicki took her first step toward pop success when she filmed a video for the “Face” remix with Carey, an artist who knows a thing or two (hundred million) about that very topic. Other high-profile cameos would follow — most notably, her turn in Usher’s “Lil Freak” video — but the march to the mainstream began with this candy-coated clip. MTV Video Music Awards Pre-Show performance , September 12, 2010 : Minaj chose an appropriately huge stage on which to make her solo TV debut — the 2010 VMA Pre-Show — and she made the most of it, dressing like a DayGlo cosmonaut (with a pink beehive) and teaming with the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am for a delightfully over-the-top take on “Check It Out.” With her proper first album less than two months away, the VMAs served not only as a launching pad, but as a warning that big things were on the horizon. Pink Friday debuts at #2 , December 1, 2010 : She couldn’t quite make it to #1 (at least not yet) — after all, she had Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy to contend with — but Minaj’s runner-up bow wasn’t a failure by any stretch. With sales of more than 375,000, Pink Friday posted the highest first-week numbers of any female MC since Lauryn Hill’s classic The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill all the way back in 1998. “Moment 4 Life” video premiere , January 27, 2011 : With Pink Friday still riding high on the charts, Minaj gave it a charge with the premiere of her biggest, poppiest video to date: “Moment 4 Life,” a gilded, glamorous fairy tale brought to life. Co-starring her Twitter beau Drake (and, of course, Minaj herself as a fairy godmother), it’s pure pop bliss in every sense of the word. Not surprisingly, the song is her highest-charting top 40 track to date. “Saturday Night Live” performance , January 30, 2011″ : As a New York native, Minaj called her “SNL” performance “monumental.” As an artist making that final push toward crossover success, the gig was equally important. Not only did she wow audiences with her onstage actions, but her cameos in a pair of sketches — most notably, Digital Short “The Creep” with the Lonely Island — proved that she could provide the laughs too. Pink Friday Finally Reaches #1 , February 9, 2011 : Building off that “SNL” success, in February — more than three months after it was first released — Pink Friday finally made it to #1 on the Billboard albums chart, and, in the process, cemented Minaj’s status as a star with staying power. Up until landing the Britney tour, this remained Nicki’s poppiest moment to date — though who knows what will happen when she hits the road with Ms. Spears? What do you think of Nicki joining Britney on tour? Let us know in the comments! Related Artists Britney Spears Nicki Minaj
Gloria James, mother of NBA superstar LeBron James, was arrested for assault last week after an altercation with a valet parking guy, Rockefeller Sorel. The police who busted her weren’t treated much better, according to the surveillance tape, obtained by WPLG in Miami, where the arrest went down. Video shows Gloria James held in a holding room at the Miami Beach police HQ. LeBron’s mom yells at cops, who at one point had to wipe her face. She also tried to break free of her handcuffs. Spoiler alert: Fail. Gloria James Surveillance Video
So much for that rumored break . Just days after Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart supposedly split, the actor led the cast of Twilight in a 21st birthday celebration for his girlfriend on Saturday night. Sources tell Us Weekly a private party was held at Rockwell’s Bar & Grill in Vancouver, as “Rob led the crowd singing” for Kristen, the insider says, adding: “You could tell she was so embarrassed but in a cute way.” Stewart received a motorcycle as a gift and an onlooker makes it clear she and Pattinson are as hot and as heavy as ever: “Rob and Kristin were together all night. They held hands and he kissed her cheek a bunch of times.” Breaking Dawn will be finished filming within a few weeks. But expect to see these two together a lot over the next few months, as they promote the film’s November release.
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