LOL , the coming-of-age drama starring Miley Cyrus and Demi Moore, opened in limited release this weekend. And we mean VERY limited release : The movie played in seven cities across the country. Total. As a result, it earned about 1/1,000,000,000th of what The Avengers brought in : $46,500. Still, Miley has taken to Twitter and expressed gratitude for the dozen or so folks who did shell out their hard-earned money for this unfortunate flop. “Thank u so much for everyone who went to see LOL,” Cyrus Tweeted on Monday. “It is a film I loved making and I am proud of…. That’s really all that matters to me.” As for what the future holds for Cyrus at the box office? Analyst Len Klady isn’t optimistic. He tells Yahoo: “Miley Cyrus has a real image problem. Basically she’s been undone by Saturday Night Live … people don’t take her seriously.” And that’s, like, totally not cool for Miley and her team. But it might bode well for fans of this star’s music. The more flops she makes, the more likely it is that Cyrus wll return to the album scene.
Give Patricia Krentcil credit where due. The New Jersey woman, now known as Tanning Mom after her arrest for (allegedly) letting her six-year-old go tanning with her, knows how to take a joke. Kristen Wiig’s impersonation of her on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update news segment this weekend was “well done,” she told the New York Post . Tanning Mom conceded, “The whole thing was hysterical.” Tanning Mom Saturday Night Live Parody During the sketch, a charred-looking Wiig likened Patricia Krentcil to a Slim Jim, and later “Wile E. Coyote right after something’s blown up in his face.” The 44-year-old Krentcil, who pleaded not guilty to felony child endangerment charges last week, was not nearly amused after Snooki called her crazy .
Rihanna performed on “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend and absolutely killed it! The Bajan-born singer took to the SNL stage perform her hit songs…
‘It was a song we did, kind of like a funny, kind-of-a-joke song,’ Diplo tells BBC Radio of B’s 2011 single, which sampled his Major Lazer song. By James Montgomery Beyonc
‘I’d like everyone to stay,’ Lorne Michaels says, addressing rumors that Kristen Wiig, Andy Samberg and Jason Sudeikis are leaving the show. By Jocelyn Vena Kristen Wiig and Darrell Hammond on “Saturday Night Live” Photo: NBC Last month, there were rumors that “Saturday Night Live” standouts Kristen Wiig, Andy Samberg and Jason Sudeikis might not be back for another season of the late-night staple. Wiig teased her possible exit in an interview with Alec Baldwin, while Samberg and Sudeikis have remained tight-lipped on their rumored departures. On Wednesday, during a conference call about this weekend’s Eli Manning/ Rihanna episode , the show’s boss, Lorne Michaels, confirmed there would be some cast shakeups next season but didn’t specify how they would take shape. “I’m not really certain myself,” he told reporters when asked whether there would be any exits. “I know there will be some, but it’s just sort of the nature of the way we work that no one kind of talks about it until the season’s done. Needless to say, I’d like everyone to stay. Did that avoid that question successfully?” While he didn’t want to fully commit to commenting on the future of the three actors on “SNL,” he did share that fresh meat would be brought in to liven up the cast for next season. “Every summer, we go out and make the rounds of Chicago and L.A. and New York and various other places where people do this kind of work, and invariably that leads to somebody joining [the cast],” he teased. “The show has always been about bringing new people in.” With the season nearing an end, fans might not have to wait much longer to find out who will stay and who will go. But before any announcements are made, it seems the show has plans for this season to wrap with a bang. Per the show’s Twitter page, Will Ferrell and Usher will be on hand for the May 11 episode and Mick “Moves Like” Jagger will pull double-duty on the May 19 season finale. Who do you hope sticks around for another season? Let us know in the comments! Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: ‘Bridesmaids’
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 ]
Bee Gees singer is still battling colorectal cancer, but doctors shocked by his recovery from coma. By Gil Kaufman Robin Gibb Photo: Getty Images Bee Gees member Robin Gibb shocked his doctors over the weekend when he emerged from a week-long coma. The 62-year-old disco icon lapsed into a coma after contracting pneumonia during his battle with cancer. According to BBC News , a family spokesperson said Gibb, 62, was able to nod and communicate with the members of his family who’ve held a vigil in his London hospital room. Gibb has been battling colon and liver cancer and in February he said he’d made a “spectacular” recovery from the disease, but was soon back in the hospital for surgery. The “Saturday Night Fever” singer had bowel surgery 18 months ago for an unrelated condition, at which time doctors discovered a tumor and diagnosed him with colon cancer. It appeared as if the cancer was in remission as recently as last month. Weakened from chemotherapy and two operations, Gibb lapsed into the coma last week after contracting pneumonia and Dr. Andrew Thillainayagam said on Friday that he had warned the singer’s family that Robin might not wake up. In a statement, Thillainayagam said Gibb remains in intensive care and is, “exhausted, extremely weak and malnourished.” He’s breathing with the help of an oxygen mask and needs intravenous feeding and antibiotics. He added, “It is testament to Robin’s extraordinary courage, iron will and deep reserves of physical strength that he has overcome quite incredible odds to get where he is now.” Wife Dwina and sons, Robin-John and Spencer and daughter Melissa have been at Gibbs side talking to him and playing his favorite music. Related Photos The Bee Gees’ Robin Gibb: A Career In Photos Related Artists The Bee Gees Robin Gibb
Fan-directed video stars grade schooler rapping lyrics to West song. By Gil Kaufman A scene from Ashley Smith’s “Way Too Cold” video Photo: Ashley Smith Films Sometimes there’s no reason to wait for the real thing. We have no idea if Kanye West is planning on shooting an official video for his Kim-Kardashian-crush note “Way Too Cold” (originally titled “Theraflu”) . In the meantime, director Ashley Smith has jumped into the breach, posting an unofficial clip for the song on her Vimeo page on Thursday that, well, just kills it. The can’t-look-away video stars a ridiculously cute half-pint reportedly named Caleb as Kanye and the kid is a star. As he struts the streets with his leggy blonde companion (holding her hand at first, awwww), mini ‘Ye rips the song’s lyrics, yes, even the four-and five-letter ones in a video that is the viral opposite of one of West’s typically high-concept, arty pieces. His swagger is unmistakable as he moves through Manhattan past some of Yeezy’s favorite luxury New York outlets while his companion shakes it for him. All the while, Caleb keeps it cool behind some shades and a mini leather jacket, aping the lyrics by throwing up the Roc to prove his allegiance. And, then, for reasons known only to Smith, actors wearing Donald Trump, Condoleezza Rice, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Sarah Palin masks pop up, posing menacingly on the street, that is when they’re not grinding on each other. How ridiculous is the kid? At one point he pulls off a flawless split, his hand triumphantly up in the air before breaking into a coughing fit as Theraflu pours out into a measuring cup. The good news is that Smith might have plenty more material to choose from, since DJ Khaled recently told MTV News that he and Kanye have plenty more tracks cooking . “Me and Kanye West went back in the lab and we made another record and got some features on there too,” Khaled said, without revealing too much about the next tune. “I can’t really talk about it, so expect another monstrous earthquake to hit the streets.” Related Artists Kanye West
‘I was never going to shoot this video if I couldn’t do choreography,’ Rihanna says in behind-the-scenes video montage. By James Dinh Rihanna Photo: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images/DCP Rihanna has never been known as a dancer, but she’s ready to step her game up for her upcoming “Where Have You Been” video. In an almost three-minute-long behind-the-scenes montage clip that surfaced on Thursday, the megastar takes her Navy to the dance studio, where she’s seen practicing a routine for the upcoming clip alongside a crew of dancers. Rocking some appropriate rehearsal attire and simple sneaks, Ri turns to the camera at one point to admit that a dance routine was necessary for the hard dance track’s video, saying, “I was never going to shoot this video if I couldn’t do choreography, ’cause it would be pretty pointless. It would be disappointing.” As with the foot skills she performed in clips like “Rude Boy” and old-school joint “If It’s Lovin’ That You Want,” choreographer Hi-Hat helped keep Rihanna’s moves in line with the singer’s comfort and style, while still showing off the most choreography we’ve ever seen her do. As one of the world’s biggest pop stars, the recent Billboard Music Awards nominee also revealed that devoting time to performance skills for videos is rare. “My schedule has always been so busy, it never really allowed for us to spend time rehearsing and making up dance moves,” she said. Just last week, Rihanna took to her Facebook to tease a dazzling black-and-white shot from the clip, where she’s seen exposing her midriff and kneeling before forest-like scenery. No word on when the video will be released, but with a recently announced musical guest gig on “Saturday Night Live,” “Where Have You Been” is likely to be one of the singer’s performance sets on the May 5 show. This will mark her third appearance on the late-night sketch comedy show, which will be hosted by New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning. What do you think of Rihanna’s fancy footwork? Sound off below. Related Photos Rihanna’s Vacation In Hawaii Related Artists Rihanna
Dr. Dre, Lady Gaga and others have also used their music careers as launch pads to much more. By Fallon Prinzivalli Justin Timberlake Photo: Elle Decor Can we still call Justin Timberlake a triple threat? We’re not questioning the fact that he can sing, dance and act — although, he hasn’t done the first two in quite some time, so he may need to remind us — as much as we’re thinking that “triple” doesn’t begin to describe his threat. Aside from the incredible success ‘NSYNC and his solo career brought him, Timberlake launched a clothing line (William Rast), has his own brand of tequila (901), has co-owned or endorsed multiple restaurants including Chi, Destino and Southern Hospitality, and we hear he’s a great golfer. Now, the news came Monday (April 16) via Elle D
