In the grand tradition of the late, great Robert Opel : “It’s long been rumored that Opel’s streak across the screen was not necessarily a unilateral act of transgression by Opel, and that he may have had a co-conspirator or two. The facts that he gained access to the backstage area in order to stage the streaking, and that he was given a post-show press conference, give rise to the suspicion that the event was set-up by the producers of the broadcast, maybe to give the long-venerated institution a little jolt.” [ The Awl ]
Next month brings the launch of The Hunger Games , one of the most-anticipated releases of the 2012 calendar and the first installment of a hopeful franchise based on Suzanne Collins’s bestselling young-adult adventure trilogy. In selling their film, studio execs at Lionsgate have ramped up all manner of marketing to immerse fans in the experience — and, in doing so, have made the least-populated jursdiction on the planet a financial beneficiary. The Hunger Games series features teenaged heroine Katniss Everdeen and concerns a North America remade into a dystopian dictatorship, renamed Panem and ruled by the governing body called The Capitol. As Lionsgate has expanded its promotional campaign, a wide array of affiliated websites has sprung up in an effort to make Panem as real as possible, many of those bearing obscure web addresses (e.g. www.Capitol.pn) to imply that the sites originate in the nation depicted in the film. This unique designation is not a studio fabrication, however. The .pn modifier is the domain offered up by the very real government of the Pitcairn Islands, a collection of four land masses comprising 18 square miles in the middle of the southern Pacific Ocean. This British territory rests over a thousand miles west of Easter Island and just as far east of Tahiti. So how did Pitcairn, with barely over 50 residents and intermittent electrical services, become the Internet home of a major Hollywood franchise? “It’s a happy coincidence,” Bill Haigh, governmental registrar for the island’s domain offices, told me in an e-mail correspondence. “Lionsgate have found .pn useful to them, and it has been helpful for bringing benefit to the island.” As the movie studio looked into creating an online presence for the film’s fictional nation, a functional domain was already in place. The Pitcairn government offers up these domains primarily for corporations to establish and/or protect their brand, and Haigh explained that the proceeds go a long way toward the islands’ infrastructural upkeep. “The sale of domain names is of great benefit to the 50 or so inhabitants of Pitcairn Island,” he said, “because revenue thus gathered is used to bring modern telecommunications to this extremely remote spot on the globe via satellite. This is quite an expensive process. And it is not only for telecommunications but generally for supply shipping, children’s education, medical care etc.” The result is that The Hunger Games has become a boon for this tiny territory, one that lacks a movie theater and receives but two cable channels — CNN and Turner Classic Movies. While Haigh declined to divulge the number of Web addresses purchased by the studio (Lionsgate reps did not respond to requests for comment), he did direct me to an online registry where one can inquire about the availability and ownership of various selections. Along with already established Capitol.pn, and CapitolCouture.pn, there are registrations for Panem’s various districts (District1.pn, through District13.pn), and each of the main characters have their own addresses (e.g. PresidentSnow.pn). Ultimately it’s impossible to deduce exactly how many Hunger Games characters, phrases and permutations thereof have staked a .pn claim. After browsing the registry for a while, however, it seems safe to assume that Lionsgate may have vastly more addresses collected than there are Pitcairn residents. And based on the fee of $100 NZ (appx. $75 US) per registered address, Hunger brings in revenues well into the thousands of dollars — a tidy supplement to the islands’ steady tourism business. As geographically remote as the Pitcairn Islands are, this Hunger Games dalliance does not make for their sole involvement with Hollywood. Most of the surnames found on the island are shared by characters from the oft-adapted novel Mutiny on The Bounty ; the book and numerous films are based on historical events that occurred on and around Pitcairn. For this reason cruise ships are a common sight in Bounty Bay, where visitors will find the outpost isle’s own capitol. However, as much of a windfall as Hunger Games may prove for the islands, it is doubtful “Everdeen” will appear anytime soon in the area phone books. Read Movieline’s full Hunger Games coverage here . Brad Slager has written about movies and entertainment for Film Threat, Mediaite, and is a columnist at CHUD.com . His less insightful impressions on entertainment can be found on Twitter .
Five officers filed a defamation suit against Game in 2006 following the MC’s arrest at a North Carolina mall. By Rob Markman Game Photo: Peter Kramer/ Getty Images Game’s pockets are about to become significantly lighter. On Tuesday, a North Carolina appeals court judge ruled that the Documentary MC pay $5 million in damages to five Greensboro police officers upholding a 2006 ruling, according to report for local North Carolina affiliate My Fox 8 . The suit stems from an October 2005 incident, when Game was arrested at the Four Seasons Town Centre mall in North Carolina. Originally, Game was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct when he went into the mall to sign autographs wearing a mask. Mall security said that the rapper was wearing a full-face Halloween mask and cursing loudly. When Game was asked to leave, he refused and was arrested soon after. The rapper’s crew filmed the arrest and included an edited portion of it in a DVD titled “Stop Snitchin’, Stop Lyin’,” a documentary-style film which Game co-produced. The five officers filed a defamation suit against the rapper in 2006. The suit accused Game and Bungalo Records Inc. (a second producer of the film) of libel and slander, claiming their identities were wrongfully used. Now, the five arresting officers (Hien Nguyen, Matthew Brown, Ryan Childrey, Romaine Watkins and David Gregory) will receive $1 million each for compensatory damages. The officers are also seeking an additional $10 million in punitive damages, but the appeals court decided a new trial would be set for that particular ruling. Related Artists The Game
As Adele marks one year on the Billboard charts, we look at 21 amazing facts about the equally amazing 21. By Gil Kaufman and James Montgomery Adele Photo: Jeff Kravitz/ FilmMagic The traditional gift for a one-year anniversary is paper. Though, considering that Adele has sold more than 6 million copies of her breakthrough album 21 since its U.S. release one year ago this week, trust us, paper is the one thing the Grammy-winning British songbird has plenty of. What she’s also racked up over the past 52 weeks is a gang of awards, records and amazing feats of music industry daring that most people thought just weren’t possible in the download era. So, on the anniversary of the unstoppable album’s chart debut, we thought we’d take a look back at the year that was, with 21 amazing facts about 21 . 1. In February 2011, 21 debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart with first-week sales of 352,000 copies. It stayed in the top three for 24 consecutive weeks and has never fallen out of the top 10 since its release. 2. In the year since its release, 21 ‘s lowest chart position was #7, in November 2011. The following week, it was back at #2, and it hasn’t left the top three since. 3. With her , Adele has broken the record previously held by the late Whitney Houston ‘s soundtrack to “The Bodyguard” by notching 21 non-consecutive weeks at #1. 4. The album’s 21 weeks atop the chart also mean that it spent a staggering 40 percent of the past year as the country’s #1 album. 5. 21 was not only the best-selling album of 2011 in the U.S. — with sales of more than 5.8 million — it’s also the best-selling digital album of all time in this country, racking up more than 2 million downloads to date. 6. The album debuted at #1 in the U.K. upon its release on January 30, 2011, and held that spot for four weeks. After she sang “Someone Like You” on the BRIT Awards telecast, sales increased by nearly 900 percent on Amazon.co.uk within an hour of her performance. She also set a Guinness World Record in September 2011 by becoming the first female artist to have two singles and two albums in the U.K. top five simultaneously. 7. 21 was also the best-selling album of the 21st century in the U.K., passing Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black. 8. 21 has topped the charts in 27 different countries, including Switzerland, Sweden, Mexico, Poland and Greece, and has sold more than 17 million copies worldwide. 9. In the U.S. alone, 21 has sold more copies in one year than Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream, Lady Gaga’s Born This Way, Rihanna’s Talk That Talk and Beyonc
In the wake of Whitney Houston’s death, the public has heard numerous responses from those that knew the legend well ( Ray J ) to know those speculating wildly in order to increase ratings ( Nancy Grace ). But few were closer to Houston than Aretha Franklin, the artist’s godmother. She spoke to The Today Show this morning about actually hearing the tragic news. “I had just finished watching George Clooney in The Descendants and I flipped back to the regular TV and maybe two minutes after I did that, it came across the screen. I just jumped off the side of the bed [and said] ‘What?’ This could not be. What is this? I just said, ‘Oh my, God.'” Franklin said she had seen previews for Sparkle, a film Houston had recently completed shooting, and was confident the movie would lead to a comeback. “She looked fresh, she looked healthy and she looked gorgeous,” the iconic singer said. “I thought, ‘Yes, she has conquered her challenges and she’s on the way.'” Aretha will sing at Houston’s funeral tomorrow and hopes the public doesn’t focus on “the challenges” her goddaughter faced, but, instead, on all the positive aspects of her life. She even penned the following lyrics to memorialize Houston: Twinkle twinkle superstar/We don’t wonder where you are/Up above the world so bright/Like a diamond in the night/Twinkle twinkle she stood alone/I can’t believe that she’s gone.
Tommy Jordan, a North Carolina dad, recently taught his teenage daughter the hard way to show some respect – and that nothing on the Internet is really private. He pulled out a gun and pumped nine bullets into her laptop – on camera. When her dad discovered a Facebook rant that she thought she had blocked from him, he decided to respond in a way that will certainly never be forgotten. Jordan, of Albemarle, N.C., posted this video on YouTube, responding to his daughter Hannah’s post, in which she complained about having to do chores: Facebook Parenting: Dad Shoots Daughter’s Computer “I’m not your damn slave,” Tommy, who works in IT and discovered the post when adding software to her laptop to upgrade it, read from Hannah’s post. “We have a cleaning lady for a reason.” After continuing to read his 15-year-old’s missive, he fired bullets into her computer from a .45 handgun. That’s one way to get your point across. Jordan also addresses Hannah on camera in the video, saying that she can clean up the house and get a new computer if she pays for one herself. Tommy also noted that Hannah must pay him back for the bullets and software he just installed. Ouch. No laws were broken, and there will be no investigation. Just the same, the father’s actions have sparked controversy and discussion, with some finding it way out of line, and others praising his backbone. “Maybe a few kids can take something away from this,” he wrote on YouTube. “If you’re so disrespectful as to post this kind of thing on Facebook, you’re deserving of some tough love. Today, my daughter is getting a dose of tough love.” Tommy Jordan shooting his daughter’s laptop :
Arguably the GOAT in the NBA, professional basketball player and entrepreneur, Michael Jordan was born February 17, 1963, in Brooklyn. Growing up in Wilmington, North Carolina, Jordan developed a competitive edge at an early age. His father James confirms this, “What he does have is a competition problem. He was born with that…The person he tries to outdo most of the time is himself.” Jordan made an impact early on scoring the final basket needed to defeat Georgetown University in the NCAA Division I championships in 1982. Jordan left college after his junior year to join the NBA. Drafted by the Chicago Bulls, he helped the team make it to the playoffs. For his efforts there, he received the NBA Rookie of the Year Award. With five regular-season MVPs and three All-Star MVPs, Jordan became the most decorated player in the NBA dominating the league from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s. Being one of the most marketed athletes in history, it was an easy transition for Jordan to become a leading entrepreneur. Major spokesman for such brands as Nike, Coca-Cola, Chevrolet, Gatorade, McDonald’s, Ball Park Franks, Rayovac, Wheaties, Hanes, and MCI, Jordan was ranked by Forbes Magazine as the 20th most powerful celebrity in the world in June 2010. Jordan still maintains primary owner of the Charlotte Bobcats. Contributing sources: biography.com Top 10 All Time Michael Jordan Dunks Michael Jordan’s Legacy – Career Highlights
The underdog candidate for this year’s Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, Undefeated is, fittingly, about an underdog sports team, a group of kids from an underfunded urban school for whom football provides some desperately needed structure as well as a possible route to a better life. There’s good reason the Weinstein Company reportedly coughed up seven figures for distribution and remake rights to the film — Undefeated is Friday Night Lights meets The Blind Side in nonfiction form, examining issues of class and race through the lens of its ragtag athletics program while also reinforcing American mythos of bootstrapping, hard work and community. Its triumphs are bittersweet, but they’re irresistible. That title isn’t literal, however; there are definite losses over the course of the single hard-fought, promising high school football season this film follows, and it’s still one of the best years the North Memphis Manassas Tigers have ever had. Bill Courtney is Undefeated ‘s center, a ruddy-faced, sweaty white guy who serves as volunteer coach at the mostly (if not entirely) black school. We first see him lecturing his team about how their ranks have been decimated by drop-outs, shootings and arrests: “Most coaches, that would be a career’s worth of crap to deal with. That sums up the last two weeks for me.” Bill has a family of his own and a flooring company to run, but coaching is his great love, and the depth of his investment in it and his sincere faith in the potential saving power of football make his gruff character easy to latch on to. He looks to be the closest thing most of the young men he works with have to a male authority figure in their lives, fathers out of the picture, and they latch on to his devotion and to the expectations he has of them with a quiet hunger. Undefeated also follows three of Courtney’s players through the year. The talented, good-natured O.C. Brown stands a good chance of getting a football scholarship if he can pulls his grades up. Montrail Brown, who goes by “Money,” is a good student working towards college until an injury on the field derails him and destroys his confidence. And Chavis Daniels arrives back on the team after a stint in juvie, and has alarming rage issues to manage. The Tigers have never won a playoff game, and they’re so underfunded that they used to raise money by traveling to play other schools for pay as an easy win. Over their season they face teams that are obviously more upscale (and ones whose racial make-up is very different) as well as teams that aren’t — one game against another Memphis school ends with the police on field shooing the boys back onto their bus to head off a potential brawl with the opposing school. Despite some early setbacks, the Tigers are having a good year, and as the team wends its way to a possible playoff spot the film starts to shine as it delves into the personal lives of its players. O.C. is going to become unrecruitable if his academics don’t improve, but tutors won’t go to the neighborhood where he lives with his grandmother, so another (white) coach takes him in a few days a week, O.C. moving into the coach’s comfy suburban set-up with his wife and kids. The matter-of-factness with which this and a later act of startling generosity are done make them heartwrenching, but also provide a reminder of how difficult things like paying for college or getting better at classwork can be without outside help. Money struggles to find motivation to keep going with school after a knee injury possibly ends his season, and flirts with dropping out. Chavis, the most haunting character, seems to have no filter on his emotions, rage seething up without warning and dissipating just as quickly. He chooses the number “0” for himself because he claims he has no sense, and has a clash with another player based on nothing at all. But he keeps coming back, gets off suspension, finds a place for himself on the team, realizing he needs football and has to change if he wants to be allowed to stay with it. “I’ll die for you tonight,” he tells Bill when he’s put in the game, and you believe him. Aside from what looked like a few technical snags in terms of color, Undefeated ‘s look is fluid and vital. It’s shot vérité style, but still finds moments for nods to studio magic — a circling camera around a hugging Bill and O.C. toward the end is unadulterated, completely effective Hollywood. Directed and edited by Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin (the pair collaborated previously on 2008’s Last Cup: Road to the World Series of Beer Pong ), the film finds romance in its images of the sport, from the boys walking off the field at sunset to the battles under the bright lights to a close-up that lingers on the Manassas temporary tattoo one player has fixed to his cheek. Undefeated doesn’t have the epic, years-spanning arc of Hoop Dreams , but it finds in its season some unfeigned resonance that, like tears during that final embrace on the field, can’t be eluded. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Black history, our history, American history is a complicated matter riddled with facts that make us proud and others that make us cringe. It is a story of a nation built by men and women who sacrificed their lives to force America to live up to its promise. These men and women were also full of contradictions. Frederick Douglass was one of those contradictions. He is remembered as a writer, abolitionist and orator. He was a human rights activist before the label existed. Yet, he also vehemently opposed the Great Migration of blacks from the South to the North to escape the crippling shackles of Jim Crow. Read Douglass’ bio . Douglass was born in February in the early 1800s in Tuckahoe, MD. In his autobiography, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave,” he wrote that he did not know his exact birthdate. Most references to Douglass focus on Douglass’ post-slavery life as an influential abolitionist and a human rights activist. Before he became the great statesman, and the first African American to be nominated for vice-president, Douglass was an educator. He secretly taught himself to read and write and then he taught fellow slaves. He was traded to several different slave owners in Maryland, including a brutal farmer known as a “slave breaker.” Douglass finally escaped to New York. It is ironic that Douglass — who so believed in equality and who himself escaped North — lamented the black exodus from the South in the late 1800s during the early years of Jim Crow. He urged blacks to tough it out. Below are a few quotes from Douglass, compiled by the Gilder Lehrman Center of the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition , regarding the black exodus North. The Negro, long deemed to be too indolent and stupid to discover and adopt any rational measure to secure and defend his rights as a man…. He has, discovered and adopted a measure which may assist very materially in, the solution of some of the vital problems involved in his sudden elevation: from slavery to freedom, and from chattelhood to manhood, and citizenship . . . he has adopted a simple, lawful and peaceable measure. It is emigration—the quiet withdrawal of his valuable bones and muscles from a condition of things which he considers no longer tolerable. This exodus has revealed to southern men the humiliating fact that the prosperity and civilization of the South are at the mercy of the despised and hated Negro . . . . We have the story of the emigrants themselves, and if any can reveal the true cause of this Exodus they can . . . They tell us with great unanimity that they are very badly treated at the South . . . [As a strategy, however] it is a surrender, a premature, disheartening surrender, since it would make freedom and free institutions depend upon migration rather than protection; by flight, rather than right . . . It leaves the whole question of equal rights on the soil of the South open and still to be settled . . . it is a confession of the utter unpracticability of equal rights and equal protection in any State, where those rights may be struck down by violence . . .
Jane Carrey and Ramiro Garcia were among the 68 contestants sent home at the end of day one. By Adam Graham Jennifer Lopez in “American Idol” Photo: Fox When it comes to “American Idol,” everyone wants to go to Hollywood. But the euphoria from that Golden Ticket doesn’t last long for contestants, as the slash-and-burn process of the notoriously cutthroat Hollywood Week takes hold. This year, 309 contestants made it through to Hollywood, and the whittling-down process started immediately. Wednesday’s (February 8) “Idol” focused on the beginning of Hollywood Week, when 68 contestants were shown the door by the end of day one. Among those going home was Jane Carrey, daughter of actor Jim Carrey, who failed to make much of an impression with her timid take on Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Lookin’ Out My Back Door.” Because of her family ties, Carrey was one of the most noteworthy contestants from the audition episodes, but the 24-year-old didn’t make it far before feeling the wrath of Hollywood Week. Also cut was 28-year-old Ramiro Garcia, who was born without ears and whose version of “Amazing Grace” was a standout in the Galveston, Texas, auditions. He was dismissed along with 18-year-old Travis Orlando, the Bronx native who was cut at the same point in Hollywood Week a year ago. Standouts in Wednesday’s episode included 23-year-old Johnny Keyser of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who had Randy Jackson shouting, “Amen! Amen! Amen!” after his version of Amos Lee’s “Dreamin’ “; ladies man David Leathers Jr., the 17-year-old from Fayetteville, North Carolina, who doesn’t look a day over 12 but had the judges and his peers alike applauding his impressive version of Celine Dion’s “Because You Loved Me”; Lauren Gray, the 23-year-old star of the St. Louis auditions who brought the house down with her version of Adele’s “One and Only”; the unforgettably named Phillip Phillips, the 21-year-old who busted out “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and moved one step closer to immortality; and 26-year-old Jessica Phillips — no relation to Phillip, at least as far as we know — who had the gall to do Whitney Houston’s “All the Man That I Need” and pulled it off admirably. Other singers advancing included 22-year-old Heejun Han, who made up for the lack of confidence in his looks with his strong vocals on Michael Bolton’s “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You”; 16-year-old Shannon Magrane of Tampa, Florida, daughter of former St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Joe Magrane, whom Steven Tyler awkwardly dubbed “hot, humid and happening” during her initial audition; and 26-year-old Reed Grimm of Ellsworth, Wisconsin, who’s been performing on stage all his life and showed it with a campy version of “I Got a Golden Ticket” from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” The episode ended with a cliffhanger after 16-year-old Symone Black of Rancho Cucamonga, California, got woozy and took a scary spill off the front of the stage following her rendition of Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.” Hollywood Week has enough drama without people collapsing off the stage, but “Idol” is making us tune in Thursday to find out what happens to Black and see if she makes it to the utterly ruthlessness known as Group Round. What did you think of the beginning of Hollywood Week? Let us know in the comments! Get your “Idol” fix on MTV News’ “American Idol” page , where you’ll find all the latest news, interviews and opinions. Related Artists Jennifer Lopez Steven Tyler
