Are the publicists and managers of Britney Spears already in damage control mode and preparing for the singer’s breakup with fiance Jason Trawick? A recent slew of Britney split rumors certainly suggests as much. According to the latest intel, from celebrity news site Radar Online , it’s no longer a matter of if, but when they decide to pull the trigger on a split. At the same time, she recently gushed about Jason to People . “It amazes me that no matter what situation I’m in, Jason has the ability to always make me feel protected and loved,” Spears told the magazine. Still, Radar claims the couple is on the rocks and their three-year relationship is on the verge of ending, barring a last-minute holiday reversal. “It’s a make or break holiday for Britney and Jason,” a source said. “Things have been getting worse and worse for months now, and they know they have to figure things out once and for all because they can’t keep going on like this.” “If they do decide to call off the engagement, things wlll be tricky, legally and financially, so it isn’t just the state of their relationship they have to think about.” “If there wasn’t those considerations involved they would have split a while ago.” As Jason Trawick is a co-conservator over Britney Spears’ estate, the decision to stay together or not isn’t an easy one to make for either of them. One big point of contention, allegedly? “Jason wants to be a father, and while he’s happily taken on the role of dad to Jayden and Sean, he still wants Britney to have his kids,” an insider says. “Britney says she’s happy with just her two children at the moment and wants to concentrate on her career, which doesn’t sit well with Jason.” “Which is kind of bizarre … just a few months ago she would have jumped at the idea. There seems to have been a marked turnaround in Britney’s thought process.” Britney Spears and Jason Trawick: Will it last? Yes! He’s perfect for her and her kids. No, I just don’t see the connection. View Poll »
Kelsie Frick pulled off a graduation prank that can only be described in one word: Awesome. Well, you could actually add an extra syllable too. A quick “en” and “awesome” onto the end of her fortuitous last name? Genius: Fricken Awesome College Graduation Prank Earlier this month, at Grand Valley State University commencement, the Michigan native had planned to “dance or do something silly on the stage.” Names were being read so quickly that this wasn’t viable, though, so at the last second, she scribbled something onto the index card with her name on it. “I didn’t know if they’d say it or not because I wrote it in pencil,” Frick said. “But the person in front of me had two middle names, four names in all.” “I thought maybe that would help.” It did. As Frick walked across the stage, the announcer loudly stated, “Kelsie Elise Frick-en-awesome,” trailing off only after the damage was done. “He ended up reading it and he only realized it halfway through,” Frick said. “Afterwards everyone was cheering, laughing and applauding and the lady announcing the name after me, you could tell she was trying to hold back a laugh.” Kelsie, who admits she was nervous about the consequences of her antics after the fact, said no one from the university said anything to her that day. She did receive a few emails from school officials later, congratulating her for graduating and thanking her for “lightening up” the three-hour ceremony. Those things are interminably long. Props to Kelsie on the prank, and to her father Ed, who, thank goodness, recorded the moment on his phone!
A video I made for Justin Bieber using the song “Doing Too Much” by Paula DeAnda. Lyrics: I’m leaving messages and voicemails Telling you I miss you Baby am I doing too much (too much) Why you tryna diss me When I just wanna kiss you Baby am I doing too much (too much) Tell me what’s the issue Who I give these lips to Baby am I doing too much (too much) This is turning into Something I ain’t hip to Baby am I doing too much (too much) See you got me all alone Waiting right here by the phone For you to call me, Just to hear Your voice tone I keep on wondering if you was even Feeling me, I keep on wondering if This was even meant to be Tell me imma waste of time, boy You showing me no sign, is it cuz u on Ya grind, cuz you’re always on my mind I keep on wondering if everything you said was true I keep on wondering if you were really coming through Now here I go again blowing you up, And my girlfriends keep telling me I’m doing too much Now here I go again blowing you up, And my girlfriends keep telling me I’m doing too much I’m leaving messages and voicemails Telling you I miss you Baby am I doing too much (too much) Why you tryna diss me When I just wanna kiss you Baby am I doing too much (too much) Tell me what’s the issue Who I give these lips to Baby am I doing too much (too much) This is turning into Something I ain’t hip to Baby am I doing too much (too much) I’m out with my girls tryna have a good time And you know I’m looking fly tryna meet sum other guys But it gets … http://www.youtube.com/v/lrbe65ri1VY?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Original post: Doing Too Much (Justin Bieber Video) with lyrics
This is 40 ends with a title card saying that it’s “Based on characters created by Judd Apatow .” While this is true — the film’s about Debbie ( Leslie Mann ) and Pete ( Paul Rudd ), who were supporting figures in Apatow’s 2007 hit Knocked Up — it also feels like it might be more accurate for it to declare “Based on Judd Apatow.” It doesn’t just star his wife Mann, it features their daughters Maude and Iris as her children, and it’s not hard to read Rudd’s character as an Apatow proxy who’s struggling through the world of music instead of, these days, riding high in comedy. It’s shot on the same block on which director/writer/producer lives with his family, and includes what are clearly many of his thoughts and experiences on relationships, parenting and getting older. It’s Apatow’s most personal film yet, even more so than Funny People , and it benefits from the closeness of this material to its creator as much as it suffers for it, though its weakest points are when the film strives for the angle indicated in its tile — This is 40 — and tries too hard to be about the universal (“This is everyone’s story,” the trailer boldly declared). Its more general observations on aging and marriage aren’t just familiar, they can take on the well-meaning but blithely entitled sensibility of a college sophomore who’s finally lost his or her virginity and now feels qualified to hold forth about sex with the authority of Dr. Ruth. When Debbie forgets which year she’s lied about being born in to avoid dealing with the big four-O and yells at Pete for needing a Viagra for their morning birthday hookup, or when we watch a montage of the pair getting different orifices checked out by the doctor during a physical, the film feels like a recycled Erma Bombeck column with some added iPad etiquette discussions to modernize jokes about bodies no longer working and looking like they used to. This thing is, Debbie and Pete aren’t like everyone — they’re leading lives of comparable privilege and glamour, existing in an upper middle class world of gluten-free diets and spandex-clad road bike riding groups, of getting hit on by professional hockey players at a nightclub and throwing a concert to which Billie Joe Armstrong comes. They aren’t an everycouple, which is fine — it’s actually the specifics of their marriage and careers that, as the film unfolds at an overlong 134 minutes, make it compelling if more rooted in drama than domestic comedy. There’s an underlying terror guiding their lives, one not just related to getting older but to the possibility of failing to hold on to their economic rung and their concept of a happy, healthy family. Debbie and Pete smile so hard, like they can will away their unhappinesses, which surface instead in bickering. There’s a lot of bickering in This is 40 . Debbie badgers Pete and feels unappreciated by him while he sneaks cupcakes, loans money to his dad Larry (Albert Brooks) and hides the growing financial difficulties his retro record label is facing. An always perplexing aspect of Mann’s place as Apatow’s on-screen muse as well as his real-life partner is that the characters she’s played in his films, particularly Debbie, tend to be so shrill you wonder if there’s some concealed antagonism coming through. That’s a tendency that This is 40 directly addresses, with both Debbie and Pete having joking conversations about the fantasies they’ve had about murdering one another. The openness of that discussion of how you can genuinely if temporarily hate the one you love, and how it’s balanced by the easy unity Debbie and Pete have when defending themselves from another parent (Melissa McCarthy) at a school conference (the film’s funniest scene), is a minor but welcome improvement from the director’s past tendency to paint female characters as martyred nags impatiently dragging their men toward adulthood. This is 40 is notably messy, with narrative threads about which of the two employees (played by Megan Fox and Charlyne Yi) at Debbie’s store has been stealing and about Pete’s not very successful attempt to release a new album by Graham Parker and the Rumour drifting away rather than arriving at an end point. Sometimes that untidiness works for the film — both Pete’s relationship with Larry and Debbie’s with her largely absentee dad Oliver (John Lithgow) suggest lifetimes of complications that can’t be resolved in a side plot — but the questions about artistic integrity and business that are raised in the collapsing of Pete’s label are interesting and half-formed and could do with more exploration. Other elements, including older daughter Sadie’s (Maude Apatow) constant burrowing into her phone and tablet, the revelation of a character’s pill addiction and Jason Segel’s presence as a self-congratulating personal trailer, don’t really fit into any larger scheme. Apatow’s film comes across as overstuffed and understructured, a collection of elements that hasn’t really been assembled into a story and could do with the backbone. Rather than set out to make a feature about middle age and marriage and family, it feels like Apatow would have been better served to focus on making a film about Debbie and Pete and their journey, one that would naturally touch on all those themes. When they have a very funny fight about their relationship in terms of who’s Simon and who’s Garfunkel, the potential of this material is clear, but the end product feels like a step forward in terms of maturity of subject matter and a step back in terms of filmmaking. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Given the behind the scenes false starts that seemed to plague the production of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – lawsuits, studio bankruptcy, a change in directors — it’s perhaps a tad ironic that beginning the story of Lord of the Rings before the story of Lord of the Rings was never a problem. No, for Peter Jackson , Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens, the power troika behind the flick, beginning an episodic, rollicking, children’s adventure story cum three-film epic was the easy part. Deciding where to end, however… Spoilers follow. How does one pinpoint a climax for a first film in a trilogy before the whole story is even a third of the way over? With what may be the turning point of J.R.R. Tolkien’s entire massive legendarium, suggested Boyens. “We understood that you had to arrive the characters at an emotional location as opposed to a geographical location. Instead of just getting them to a geographical point on the journey, it was more important for to arrive them at an emotional place so that you didn’t continue to tell the same emotional story,” the Oscar winning scribe told Movieline . “It’s very hard for Bilbo to be that little Hobbit who has to find his courage,” she continued. “I mean, that could go on and on and on and on. [But when] the ring comes to Bilbo and in that moment he chooses not to take Gollum’s life, that has enormous resonance for the entire mythology.” Occurring almost exactly 30 percent of the way through Tolkien’s The Hobbit , the scene comes immediately after Bilbo finds the One Ring and puts it on for the first time in order to escape from the clutches of the treacherous Gollum, who he has just beaten in a Riddle Game. Perched before Gollum in front of an open doorway that promises freedom, Bilbo has a chance to kill the creature but chooses not to. The scene, sometimes referred to by fans of the series as “The Pity of Bilbo,” has consequences for the rest of the series in a literal sense, as it is ultimately Gollum who manages to destroy the Ring by falling with it into the lava at Mount Doom. So resonant is the scene, in fact, that it’s overtly referenced several times in Lord of the Rings . “The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many,” Gandalf tells Frodo in Fellowship of the Ring . “The pity of Bilbo rules the fate of all,” echoed director Peter Jackson. “Bilbo had a chance to kill Gollum. The fact that he didn’t [kill Gollum] has now created the story of Lord of the Rings , for good or for bad.” Perhaps more importantly for Boyens and Company, it represented a kind of ecclesiastical or moral totem, a crossroads from which Bilbo would never be able to return. (Gandalf believes, for example, that Bilbo was able to give up the Ring so easily because he took it in a moment of pity. “Bilbo has been well rewarded,” he tells Frodo. “Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With pity.”) Using this scene as the climax of the film then necessitated moving other things forward, like when in the story Thorin learns to trust and lean on Bilbo. From the cave scene forward in the film, Bilbo takes agency in his relationship with the dwarves, deciding to actively join them on their quest and helping to save Thorin from the orcs. “Bilbo discovers something in himself and I think that is true courage, knowing when, as Gandalf says, to spare a life,” Boyens insisted. “So we couldn’t just let that moment pass. And I think it would have gotten buried in the great morass of spider fights and other stuff that would have happened if [we didn’t end there and] kept pushing through.” The spiritual ramifications of the scene were so important to the screenwriters that they made a small but profound change in order to underline its moral importance, explained Boyens. In the book, Bilbo simply finds the Ring, as if it was misplaced by Gollum. In the movie, “[Gollum] loses it as he’s murdering someone and Bilbo receives it as he’s saving something,” Boyens explained. “So maybe that act – that unknown act without any knowledge of any greater consequence — is what Professor Tolkien wrote a lot about; [Goodness and grace] must be innate. It must be for its sake an act of charity, an act of kindness. That’s how fate works.” Is this the right place to end The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey , even though it necessitated changing the text to move other things forward? Would you have chosen this spot? Sound off in the comments below. READ MORE ON THE HOBBIT : The Science of High Frame Rates, Or: Why ‘The Hobbit’ Looks Bad At 48 FPS Richard Armitage Talks ‘Hobbit’ And Thorin Oakenshield, Takes A Phone Call From Sauron ‘The Hobbit’ At 48 FPS: A High Frame Rate Fiasco? Follow Shawn Adler on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
My name is Nicole and I’m 17 from Adelaide, Australia . My love for Justin started back when I saw his ‘So Sick’ video of in 2009. From then on my love has just grown and I have always been known has “The girl who loves Justin Bieber.” My Bieber experience happened on the 17 th of July 2012. Justin was coming down to Australia to promote Believe and for weeks there had been competitions on the radio to win tickets to his live and intimate gig – the only show he was doing here and the only way to get in was to win tickets. This show was in Sydney and I live in Adelaide so I knew I had really limited chances of winning tickets but I still tried. I always considered myself as one of the most unlucky people and never thought I could actually have a chance at winning. The competition ran for a week to get on the standby list and then was drawn on the Friday. These were the only tickets available in all of Adelaide so I thought my chances were pretty low. On Thursday morning I finally got through to the station and had to answer a question: Who is Justin Bieber’s current girlfriend? SO EASY I KNOW! Of course I got it right and was put on the standby list. I couldn’t sleep all night knowing that the next day I would find out if it was me who was going to Sydney. I had a 1 in 4 chance and that Friday morning I got the phone call that I had won!! I could not believe it; these sorts of things just didn’t happen to me! I got to take my friend Jennifer and my mum. The next Tuesday we were on the flight to Sydney and I was so excited. That day dragged on forever waiting for the show until we finally we got there at about 5:30 p.m. As soon as the bus pulled up to the show I saw Kenny outside talking to one of the DJs! I couldn’t believe this was actually to me, that I was going to a private Justin bieber gig. THIS ONLY HAPPENS IN MY DREAMS! We finally got inside and luckily got right to the front. When Justin finally came out I was in a state of shock, I couldn’t believe how close I was to him or how perfect he was in real life. He started off talking to the crowd for a while and then sang songs from Believe, acoustically. I was in awe of his voice and how much it had changed since I heard him live at the My World Tour. He sounded just like I was listening to him on my ipod, IT WAS A DREAM COME TRUE. It was so special because it was just Justin and Dan sitting on two stools, with one guitar jamming together with us. It was the most incredible moment of my life that I will treasure forever. I never thought I would have such an opportunity but Justin was right, if you just believe in your dreams they will come true! -@nicolecremona Read more from the original source: My name is Nicole and I’m 17 from Adelaide, Australia. My love…
I’m Holly and on November 12th, 2012, I met Justin Bieber. Two nights before the concert my friend told me she had an extra ticket to Justin’s Barclays Center concert. I went over to her house the night before the concert and we made t-shirts, posters and notes for Justin. After we made the posters and t shirts I went home. My friend called me crying saying that her sister had won the Bieberfever merchandise contest and had won two meet & greets. I thought she was crying because she was happy so I began to cry too thinking I was going to meet him. Her sister said she wasn’t taking either of us and that she was taking her friend instead. So the next day we had to go to Barclays early so that they could get in line for the meet & greet. We waited outside about an hour just waiting to be let inside for the concert, when all of a sudden an Australian man comes up to us. He was holding an envelope and was on the phone talking to someone. My friend backed away shaking her head thinking he was going to abduct us or something. He took two yellow Justin Bieber wristbands out of the envelope and said, “Do you guys want these?” I immediately asked him how much they were thinking, they would be over a thousand dollars. He said, “Nothing, they’re free.” I started crying asking if it was a joke and he said, “No why would I do that?” We asked him how he got them and he said that his daughter had 4 and only needed 2, so she sent him to find two girls who needed them . He put his daughter on the phone and we talked to her and thanked her. When we got into the meet & greet I made sure to get right next to Justin. He was the sweetest person I have ever met. I walked in and immediately started to cry. Justin said, “How ya doin’ sweetheart?” I cried so hard and took the picture. When we were leaving I looked Justin in the eyes and said, “I love you so much.” He said back to me, “I love you too.” That night I also met Dan Kanter, Scrappy, and Jaden Smith. I’m the one holding the purple jacket next to Justin. BEST NIGHT OF MY ENTIRE LIFE! NEVER SAY NEVER, DREAMS COME TRUE IF YOU BELIEVE! -@hollylombino See the original post here: I’m Holly and on November 12th, 2012, I met Justin Bieber….
Standing well over 6′ tall, with an athletic frame and impeccably coiffed hair, Richard Armitage the silhouette screams matinee idol , which makes it all the more impressive that Richard Armitage the person screams “Dwarf!” But, then, this isn’t your older brother’s axe wielding, pipe smoking, occasionally tossed comic relief. As Thorin Oakenshield, the leader of a band of not so merry dwarves looking to reclaim their ancestral homeland from the ravages of the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey , Armitage takes his first bold, steely-eyed, heroic steps into the world of Middle Earth, embodying with method exactness the badass anti-hero of J.R.R. Tolkien’s original. Before that, though… a little bit of fun. Armitage recently sat down with Movieline in New York City where he revealed the physicality of being a dwarf, his facility for speaking in tongues, his hard fought battle scars, and the number one reason you should always answer an interrupting telephone. Movieline: Here’s what we can do. We can do the entire interview in Khuzdul [the fictional language created by J.R.R. Tolkien for the dwarves of Middle Earth]. Khuzdul! Do you speak dwarvish? I speak some dwarvish. Do you speak it fluently? There isn’t really that much [in The Hobbit ]. Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu! No. You can’t fool me. That’s from Lord of the Rings .* Do you know dwarf sign language? [Huge laughter from Armitage as he crosses one forearm perpendicularly over the other, giving an especially vigorous non-dwarf signal.] Yes, any dwarf could understand that. But, no, this is a real thing. Tolkien made dwarf sign language because, you know, it’s too loud to talk in the mines. Actually, we did work with Terry Notary and we did work on a kind of sign language. That scene in Bag End where Dwalin head butts Balin as a dwarf greeting — it’s a visceral, physical greeting. The language implies [physicality] as well. Physical sort of found its way into the vocal for me. Physical as in changing your body? Is there a physical choreography to being a dwarf? A way to walk? It’s sort of informed by the skeleton of these creatures because they’re not really human. Their center of gravity is much lower, their torsos longer — which was really tough for me because I’m the other way around. I’ve got really long legs and a short body. So all of my belts were down here on my hips, and slowly they work their way up to where your waist is. I was constantly having to pull them down. There were other things we worked on — chewing up the ground as you walk. You know, when a dwarf starts running it takes a long time to stop. They’re very heavy, very stooped trains. They can’t stop immediately. Like, they’ll crash through a wall. Their bone structure is heavy and solid. And those huge boots, which I think are going to be a big fashion statement next year. Why not a trend following all these hot dwarves? [Laughs] Oh yeah, we were baking! Dwarves baking wasn’t what I think these websites that listed ‘hot dwarves’ were thinking. Was there ever advice or conversation with John Rhys Davies [who played Gimli the dwarf in Lord of the Rings ]? No. Was there something in his performance that you ever looked at? No. He came to visit and said hello. But we started from scratch. With this dwarf physicality, were you able to escape unscathed from all these battle scenes? I put my tooth through my lip when we were shooting the Battle of Azanulbizar. You see Thorin fighting six orcs. And we choreographed it on the ground and then filmed it on platforms so everything gets higher by about two feet. I actually smacked myself in the face with the shield and had this huge swollen lip that was bleeding down my neck. I was so angry at myself. You know when you hit yourself? I was so bloody angry. And then Andy [Serkis] came and showed me a mirror. I was like, ‘Oh God.’ He said, ‘Do you want to carry on?’ I said, ‘Yeah, cause it looks good.’ It looked really good. It looked really kind of real. In the original film, both Elijah [Wood] and Andy [Serkis] were able to take props home. If I go to your house will I see Ocarist above the mantle? You have Ocarist in the umbrella stand. Cause I want to be able to pick it up. You also have the shield in the kitchen drawer. And on the wall you have the map and key. I’ve got the full kit. The only thing I wanted was the key. But I was very kindly — [Armitage is cut off when the phone in the hotel room where we are conducting the interview rings, interrupting us.] Do you need to answer that? Maybe I should. It’s Sauron. You can tell by his ring.
