This “Mom” AND TLC are gettin’ some bad press (again). The horrible child exploitation show, Toddlers and Tiaras, is back in the news and this time another Mom is under fire…and she may lose custody of her 4-year-old! TLC’s horrifying child exploitation show, “Toddlers & Tiaras,” was shoved back on our radar — if not our TVs — again when a judge banned 4-year-old Maddy Verst from participating in beauty pageants, and a court-appointed shrink recommended that primary custody should be awarded to the child’s father, Bill Verst. Maddy, you might remember, is the child The Post reported on last year when her mother, Lindsay Jackson, strapped fake boobs and a big butt on her and sent her out onstage — via “Toddlers & Tiaras” — dressed like Dolly Parton for a bogus-looking pageant filmed by TLC. Custody? These people shouldn’t have procreated in the first place! The ruling has sparked a national debate. Yesterday, George Stephanopoulos asked legal analyst Dan Abrams on “GMA” whether the court even has the right to assign primary custody based on parent-mandated activities — even if, as mother Jackson alleges, the child’s father has a criminal record? (The Post could find no criminal record.) Abrams was more alarmed, and perhaps rightly so, about the legal implications of court interference in this case. But when is the court supposed to step in to stop child exploitation — especially when it’s witnessed by the whole world on TV? Suppose parents strapped a giant pe*@s on a boy and had him parade on TV in briefs claiming he was dressed as David Beckham? Can you imagine the outrage? Of course not, because it wouldn’t happen. The sexualization of little boys is considered wrong but sexualizing little girls in these bogus pageants? No problem. What? You think those pageants are the real deal? Real for whom? Have you seen the judges? They look like they escaped from Cirque du Soleil! And worse, look at the half-filled conference rooms where these things take place. Those folding chairs strain under the weight of obese stage mothers who’ve spent thousands to participate in these grifter fests. Remember the first time baby beauty pageants were thrust into our consciousness with the murder of JonBenet Ramsey in 1996? JonBenet looks angelic compared to how parents dress their pageant girls now. I blame this step over the bounds of childhood decency on reality TV. It pushes the limits and forces the untalented slobs among us to act as badly as untamed house pets for our amusement. TLC particularly delights in showing bad parenting. Now we’ve got the “Toddlers” spinoff “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” in our faces. It stars Alana, the suddenly famous child-pageant contestant whose morbidly obese mother, June, looks like something out of “Monty Python”and sounds like she quit school in day care. And there’s Bella, also from “Toddlers,” a pageant kid so bratty she should be classified as feral as she goes around biting everything in her path. It’s like the Post said, “These girls look like sex slaves at auction to the highest bidder — and that bidder is TLC.” What do you think? Is there a line we’ve crossed as a reality show lovin’, media whorin’ society that laughs at shows about others’ personal lives. Have we become too numb? Source Images via Youtube
This “Mom” AND TLC are gettin’ some bad press (again). The horrible child exploitation show, Toddlers and Tiaras, is back in the news and this time another Mom is under fire…and she may lose custody of her 4-year-old! TLC’s horrifying child exploitation show, “Toddlers & Tiaras,” was shoved back on our radar — if not our TVs — again when a judge banned 4-year-old Maddy Verst from participating in beauty pageants, and a court-appointed shrink recommended that primary custody should be awarded to the child’s father, Bill Verst. Maddy, you might remember, is the child The Post reported on last year when her mother, Lindsay Jackson, strapped fake boobs and a big butt on her and sent her out onstage — via “Toddlers & Tiaras” — dressed like Dolly Parton for a bogus-looking pageant filmed by TLC. Custody? These people shouldn’t have procreated in the first place! The ruling has sparked a national debate. Yesterday, George Stephanopoulos asked legal analyst Dan Abrams on “GMA” whether the court even has the right to assign primary custody based on parent-mandated activities — even if, as mother Jackson alleges, the child’s father has a criminal record? (The Post could find no criminal record.) Abrams was more alarmed, and perhaps rightly so, about the legal implications of court interference in this case. But when is the court supposed to step in to stop child exploitation — especially when it’s witnessed by the whole world on TV? Suppose parents strapped a giant pe*@s on a boy and had him parade on TV in briefs claiming he was dressed as David Beckham? Can you imagine the outrage? Of course not, because it wouldn’t happen. The sexualization of little boys is considered wrong but sexualizing little girls in these bogus pageants? No problem. What? You think those pageants are the real deal? Real for whom? Have you seen the judges? They look like they escaped from Cirque du Soleil! And worse, look at the half-filled conference rooms where these things take place. Those folding chairs strain under the weight of obese stage mothers who’ve spent thousands to participate in these grifter fests. Remember the first time baby beauty pageants were thrust into our consciousness with the murder of JonBenet Ramsey in 1996? JonBenet looks angelic compared to how parents dress their pageant girls now. I blame this step over the bounds of childhood decency on reality TV. It pushes the limits and forces the untalented slobs among us to act as badly as untamed house pets for our amusement. TLC particularly delights in showing bad parenting. Now we’ve got the “Toddlers” spinoff “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” in our faces. It stars Alana, the suddenly famous child-pageant contestant whose morbidly obese mother, June, looks like something out of “Monty Python”and sounds like she quit school in day care. And there’s Bella, also from “Toddlers,” a pageant kid so bratty she should be classified as feral as she goes around biting everything in her path. It’s like the Post said, “These girls look like sex slaves at auction to the highest bidder — and that bidder is TLC.” What do you think? Is there a line we’ve crossed as a reality show lovin’, media whorin’ society that laughs at shows about others’ personal lives. Have we become too numb? Source Images via Youtube
Brandy previewed tracks off of her new album yesterday. The singer, along with RCA and Chameleon Records, played tracks to an intimate group of media execs, previewing 11 tracks from her upcoming album, Two Eleven , which is set to drop October 16th. It’s Brandy at her most realized: romantically shaky, vocally sharp and musically sound, thanks to an honors corral of producers and songwriters spanning Sean Garrett, Bangladesh, Frank Ocean, Mario Winans, Hit-Boy, Ester Dean, Harmony and more. Over the course of her decades-long career, Brandy has become a woman before our eyes, outgrowing the baby-lamb naiveté of 1994′s Brandy and assuming the role of self-actualized woman (2002′s Full Moon). But it was with 2004′s Afrodisiac that she faltered in her steps, openly wallowing in a bitter divorce, before rising above the dancing flames on ’08′s Human. On Two Eleven, she juggles heartache and romantic solace, a nod to past delusions filtered through the hindsight of 33-year-old reticence. “We gotta stick to the core, which is R&B. I got to bring you back to 2012 with hard beats, but the melodies are soft, and the content of the songs are going to be Brandy.” Two Eleven, still a work-in-progress set to include 15 tracks, also features the Frank Ocean-written “Scared of Beautiful,” which will become a duet pending the Odd Future singer’s vocal addition. Over double-time instrumentation, Brandy stops seeking reciprocity and focuses inward. “I wonder why there’s no mirrors on these walls no more/ You can’t tell me why you’re so terrified of beautiful,” she sings. She’s looking only to herself – no man to safety-net her feelings – and she is ready to face her reflection. We’ll have to wait a lil’ longer to hear all of the tracks but Two Eleven , named after the singer’s Bday and the date of her mentor Whitney’s death, might just be that comeback she needs. Source Images via
Watch in HD for the better quality! If you guys are familiar with my other videos I made a new account. My other one is @JayBee1558. I decided i’m only going to use that account for other reasons. This one I’m going to use to put up my own videos of myself covering songs. So Justin came out with a new album recently called “BELIEVE” and one of his songs, “Be Alright” just caught my attention and I knew that would be a perfect song to cover. It took a few days to learn but I hope whoever is watching at this moment enjoys my cover! Please like, comment, and subscribe! Thank you http://www.youtube.com/v/FqBrFfOIch4?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Visit link: “Be Alright” – Justin Bieber (Cover)
Movieline is excited to welcome Alonso Duralde back to the pages of this site with a new regular feature we’re calling High and Low . Every week, the dauntless Duralde will wade through the mind-numbing number of home-entertainment choices out there and recommend two must-see releases: His first pick will be geared for cineastes looking for essential viewing. His second will be aimed at movie lovers seeking out the highest form of guilty pleasure available: the offbeat, the campy, the kitschy and the just plain wacky. Take it away, Alonso: HIGH: Les Vampires (Kino Classics; $34.95 DVD/$39.95 Blu-Ray) Who’s Responsible: Written and directed by Louis Feuillade; starring Musidora, Édouard Mathé, Marcel Lévesque. What It’s All About: Consisting of 10 serialized chapters, such as “The Severed Head” and “Satanus,” Feuillade’s silent 1915 crime drama follows journalist Philipe (played by Mathé) as he attempts to investigate the notorious syndicate known as The Vampires. (Sorry, Twilight fans, no blood-sucking here.) Over the course of this epic, which has been strung together as a single six-hour-and-40-minute (approximately) movie, we get murder, robbery, identity theft, poison rings, codebooks, gas attacks, paralysis drugs and orgies. What’s not to like? Why it’s Schmancy: Critics of the era despised Les Vampires — even in 1915, crime stories were considered old-fashioned and beneath Feuillade’s abilities — but the serial was embraced by André Breton and other founders of the Surrealist movement, particularly for the way that Feuillade combined a very realistic portrayal of Paris’ streets and sewers with his fantastic tale of masked bandits and their over-the-top skullduggery. More recent fans include Olivier Assayas, whose 1996 Irma Vep featured Hong Kong superstar Maggie Cheung (playing herself) coming to Paris to star in a remake. (Sexy assassin Irma Vep — played by Musidora in the original — is one of the key members of The Vampires, and her name is, of course, an anagram.) Why You Should Buy It (Again): This two-disc set comes beautifully mastered in HD, from the 1996 35mm restoration produced by the Cinémathèque Française and supervised by Feuillade’s grandson. The score for the silent film was compiled and performed by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. LOW: Godzilla vs. Megalon (Tokyo Shock; $16.99 DVD) Who’s Responsible: Written and directed by Jun Fukuda, story by Takeshi Kimura and Shinichi Sekizawa; starring Katsushiko Sasaki, Hiroyuki Kawase, Yutaka Hayashi. What It’s All About: In this 13th outing for one of Japan’s most enduring franchises, the underground kingdom of Seatopia protests the damage that atomic testing has inflicted upon them by stealing the robot Jet-Jaguar and using it to guide their demon god Megalon to destroy mankind. (Megalon flattens Tokyo first, naturally.) Jet-Jaguar’s inventors use a remote control to regain power over their creation, and the cyborg joins forces with Godzilla to whomp the tar out of both Megalon and giant alien insect Gigan. Why It’s Fun: 1973’s Godzilla vs. Megalon sees the series moving in several entertaining directions; for one thing, the actual Godzilla suit has become more streamlined and less cumbersome, allowing the actor inside (Shinji Takagi, this time) to move around more and to engage in more physical combat. Also, the introduction of Jet-Jaguar came at a time when lots of Japanese kids’ shows, inspired by the success of Ultraman , started throwing in more robots, and giving Godzilla an automaton sidekick with which to defeat the bad guys gives the movie a real jolt. (This is one of those rare films that’s as much fun to watch unadulterated as it is on Mystery Science Theater 3000 .) Why You Need to Buy It (Again): Both the original Japanese version and the English dub, as well as a trailer and photo gallery. Alonso Duralde has written about film for The Wrap , Salon and MSNBC.com. He also co-hosts the Linoleum Knife podcast and regularly appears on What the Flick?! (The Young Turks Network). He is a senior programmer for the Outfest Film Festival in Los Angeles and a pre-screener for the Sundance Film Festival. He also the author of two books: Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas (Limelight Editions) and 101 Must-See Movies for Gay Men (Advocate Books). Follow Alonso Duralde on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Before she was cast in Gary Ross ‘s The Hunger Games as District 5’s elusive Tribute — known only by the nickname “Foxface,” per her wily dexterity and appearance — actress Jacqueline Emerson was a devoted fan of the YA series. Big time . “I was obsessed!” she told Movieline ahead of this week’s Hunger Games DVD/Blu-ray release. “It was my new book series that I was in love with.” Upon getting the part (a connection to Ross’s daughter put her in the director’s sights), the high schooler had to keep her secret from friends and concerned teachers for months — and now, over a year and $684 million in Hunger Games box office receipts later, the one-time child rocker looking for her next adventure with college and a Spike Lee project on the horizon. Emerson, who deferred enrollment at Stanford University for a year to tend to her burgeoning career as an actress and musician, rang Movieline to discuss her Hunger Games experience, the challenges of playing Foxface — Katniss’s most intelligent fellow Tribute, and therefore a dangerous, enigmatic rival — and her unique industry beginnings as a sixth-grade member of the Disney-backed Devo cover band Devo 2.0. You loved the books, but you also happened to have a connection to Gary through his daughter. How did your casting as Foxface come about? Claudia, who’s Gary’s daughter, told her dad that I’d read the books because we knew each other. So I came in and did an interview with Gary because he was interviewing kids who had read the book. A couple of weeks later he gave me a call and said, “Jackie, I really see you as Foxface – would you come in and audition?” And I absolutely flipped out. It’s my favorite book series of all time! I would kill to be in the movie! I slept like four hours the night before, I was tossing and turning, I had a physics test the next day and I don’t even remember it, and I went to my audition after school. I was hoping I did well but I wasn’t really sure, but a week later I got a call from Gary and he talked to my mom and said, “We really want Jackie for the part, it’s not set in stone but she should begin training.” And I died. I was so excited. I immediately started training and working out and getting toned down. Let’s keep in mind though that I found out about this in March, and I wasn’t able to say anything until mid-May. I don’t know how you did it! I had signed a ton of NDAs so I couldn’t tell anybody anything, and my friends were getting really worried about me because I’d be missing school, and I was working out all the time. They couldn’t figure out why because I’d never worked out before. I was losing weight and toning up and getting muscular, and they were all really worried about me – it was junior year and so it was very stressful, I had teachers who would call me into their office and be like, “Jackie, are you okay? Are you feeling alright?” What would you tell them? I would say, “Oh no, I’m fine. I’m just busy.” I’d skate around it. Finally it was announced and I hadn’t signed any contract yet so I wasn’t even entirely sure it was going to be me. And I told a couple of my best-best friends because I needed a few people to help defend me from the rest of my friends [laughs] and everyone was so excited. What was your initial audition like? Foxface is an unusual character in that she conveys so much with no known name and no dialogue, so your performance had to come through silently. Yes. They had me come in and do a lot of reaction stuff — they’d map out a scenario for me and be like, “Okay, you stop here and look around and take it in and think about the complexity of it, but you’re scared at the same time,” but all with the face and without dialogue. It was a very unorthodox audition. Did you always relate to Foxface when you read the books? Oh yes, she was always one of my favorite characters. I was always intrigued by her. Her intelligence is a great element to the character and to the book — she’s a character who adds a lot of mystery to the proceedings during the Games. I loved that. And I loved how you knew so little about her and yet Katniss was kind of scared of her in a way. She was one of the only people in the game that Katniss respected. There’s a point where Katniss goes, “Maybe Foxface is the real enemy here.” I thought that was interesting. And amid all the bloodshed, Foxface manages to get far in the Games without harming people. She’s only defeated by herself, by stealing Peeta’s poisonous berries. I think it’s definitely one of those movies you want to see more than once. I liked it so much better the second time I saw it, and I liked it even better the third time I saw it. By the fourth time I was like, okay, I get it now. [Laughs] But it’s got to many levels. You watch it again and pick up so many subtleties. You’ve previewed the new Blu-ray releases. What’s your favorite special feature? For The Tribute Diaries, all of us got Flip cameras and in the couple of weeks leading up to the premiere we filmed all of us hanging out, the mall tours, and stuff like that so that’s a cool insight into us hanging out. There’s also a lot of the Tributes on set, which was really nostalgic for me to watch. It’s like watching a documentary of my summer. Your summer yearbook. Exactly! This cast grew pretty close, which happens with these huge franchises as young performers bond together on the shoot and press tour. Did you get any great advice from the older castmembers who are a few years ahead into their own careers? Jen especially gave me really really great advice, and she was there for me when I was freaking out or nervous or confused. She was always really, really supportive, from the beginning – from the first day I met her. She was there to help me along, and I appreciated that so much. It was really wonderful to have that. Your next film, Son of the South , is an indie with impressive folks behind the camera – Spike Lee is producing, and his frequent editor is directing. When do you start and how did you come to the project? I’m very excited — I’m not sure when it shoots yet because I’m not sure it has full funding, but I’m just excited to be a part of this project because it’s a really important story. It’s the story of Bob Zellner, who’s a civil rights activist, and I’m honored to be a part of it. It’ll be really fun to bring to life. Did you get to audition for Spike Lee or talk with him? No, I didn’t! I did an interview with the director and talked to him, and he sounds great. I can’t wait to work with him. You also have a parallel career as a musician, and you have a music video out. In addition to this, you were accepted to Stanford. So what’s your plan for the next few years? I’m taking a year off — it’s interesting, because I’ve wanted to take a year off since 9th or 10th grade because high school’s been very intense for me. I went to a very hard prep school, and I’m also not ready to leave my family yet and I’m kinda young for my grade. So this is great because it really gave me an excuse to take a year off and pursue what I love for a year in my artistic side, which, even though I’d done a ton of stuff in high school and I was part of drama and stuff like that, I didn’t get to really pursue it. I recently signed with a new agent and I signed with managers a couple of months ago, so I’m really beginning this journey. It’ll be a lot of fun. I will say that I went to Berkeley, so I unfortunately can’t fully support your choice of school. [Laughs] You did? I’m supposed to hate you, but I can’t! I’m so sorry! I wish you luck at Stanford nonetheless! And finally, I must ask about one of your earliest credits in a band called Devo 2.0. Oh my god, yes. I’m so curious about it. Is it correct to describe it as a family-friendly Devo cover band made of kids? Yes! It was wonderful! I had such a good time. I was in sixth grade, and it was the first audition I ever went on. We did a DVD, and a bunch of music videos, we did a two-week tour around the East Coast to different schools on a tour bus, and it was so much fun. We finished out with a performance at the House of Blues, and then it was kind of over. But I thought it was a great experience. My mom kept telling me the whole time, “You know, every journey has a beginning, a middle, and an end — and this is not the most important thing that you’ll ever do.” And I think that was probably the best advice that I could have gotten when I was in that, because otherwise I may have gotten too attached to it and too caught up in my two minutes of… fame. [Laughs] It was so happy to have my mom there because she really kept me grounded, and I had such a great time. It’s a memory that I will always look back fondly on. So you were basically a rock star in sixth grade. I know, isn’t it funny? I always forget about it because it was only for like a year, and then it was over. But it was a really great experience. You played the keyboard but you also sang — does that make you the Mark Mothersbaugh or the Bob Casale of Devo 2.0? I think I was the Jerry Casale. I don’t really know — they changed all the parts around, but Jerry actually toured with us and we met Mark a couple of times. What do you remember most about meeting or working with them? Honestly… I do not remember. [Laughs] I was in sixth grade! All I know is I had a really good time. Do Devo’s lyrics have different meaning to you now that you’re older? Yes — completely. I definitely had a very skewed understanding of them when I was younger. Actually I have a theory that Devo 2.0 was made to prove the point of devolution, because their songs went from having a lot of meaning to, like, “It is a beautiful world!” That’s the theory I’ve come up with in recent years. [Laughs] The Hunger Games is on DVD and Blu-ray August 18 at 12:01 a.m. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Beasties filed a suit against Monster for using a number of their songs in a May promotional video. By Rob Markman The Beastie Boys in 1987 Photo: Getty Images
Searching For Sugar Man , which tells the improbable story of how a singer-songwriter named Sixto Rodriguez rose, fell, and found superstardom in what amounts to a parallel universe, is an elegy in several keys. One is clear and familiar: Upon his excited discovery by a noted producer, the music business circa 1969 ate Rodriguez for breakfast, and a talent still acknowledged by his peers went to waste. The second is more personal, and although Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul leaves a distinct and ultimately frustrating berth around the man at the center of his documentary, it becomes poignantly clear that an abbreviated resume and a family to feed didn’t keep Rodriguez from living an artist’s life. And then, perhaps most resonant and abstract, there is the film’s charting of the confluence of circumstances that can create a legend and shape lives – a confluence whose particularities are less and less possible in an information-glutted age. Sugar Man opens with much but fleeting stylistic fanfare. Over a blend of vivid landscapes, a steady-cam tour of bleak and snowy Detroit, moody recreations of key scenes and a neat effect that moves from image to illustration and back, various players (beginning with a Cape Town record-store owner called “Sugar”) recount the film’s heavily fragmented story of a mysterious musician out of Detroit who, South African legend has it, staged “probably the most grotesque suicide in rock history.” Why “South African legend,” you might ask, and the answer is what takes Sugar Man ’s story from sad but common to extraordinary. In many ways that story belongs to the men who stand in for what was apparently a solid chunk of the South African populace in the 1970s, when apartheid was in full swing and the country was under totalitarian rule. A hilarious origin story has an American girl bringing a single Rodriguez album into the country, patient zero-style, with bootlegs and label requests proliferating from there. With sizable cuts from Rodriguez’s two studio albums of Dylan-esque folk rock accompanying them, those men (musicians and music fans) describe how songs like “I Wonder” and “Anti-establishment Blues” sparked something – a glimmer of rebellion, the comfort of fellow feeling – in them. Elsewhere referred to as an “inner city poet,” if Rodriguez’s lyrics lack a certain prosody they are written squarely and straightforwardly in the protest tradition of the time. A grassroots process that had to sidestep censors and a heavily restricted media helped foment a folk hero in the public’s imagination. Rodriguez, we are told, is bigger than Elvis in South Africa, and certainly bigger than the Rolling Stones. His sonorous tenor is sweet but strong and pleasingly clear – somewhere between Cat Stevens and Neil Diamond. Even so, the truth is that, though skilled and even singular, of the songs we hear nothing astonishes or even comes close; a couple sound too dated to be great. But then we’re not supposed to be evaluating his music for signs of greatness, not really. Perhaps under different circumstances, like the ones in South Africa, he might sound different; he would be different. Much discussed is the lack of personal details that fueled the Rodriguez enigma; his mystery was part of what made him great. Bendjelloul upholds that idea, whether he likes it or not, after a rambling exposition of how a couple of amateur Cape Town sleuths finally tracked the very much alive Rodriguez down. Mexican by birth and extremely reticent by nature, Rodriguez is an uneasy interview; we learn more about him just watching his delicate form move down a snow-laden sidewalk like an exotic but flightless, black-coated bird trapped in a crummily ordinary world. Interviews with his three daughters are sweet but a little unsatisfying, and in its final third – which details his triumphant arrival in South Africa and introduction to an adoring audience of twenty thousand – Sugar Man falters. Various threads of the story (including the rather major question of how an estimated half a million records sold resulted in zero royalties) are left to fray. It isn’t clear that the director recognized the most prominent among them: Bendjelloul is enamored not with the deeply organic nature but the novelty of this “instant” success story. And yet Sugar Man is most interesting when it touches on the conditions that combined to draw a cult hero out of some decent music and a generously enabled, imagination-firing mystique. I imagine even the wise and thoughtful Rodriguez himself would insist that more than one man’s third act justice, this is a story about time and a swiftly vanishing context. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Katy Perry is just an average at best looking girl who managed to make it. She was a try hard hipster with really bad skin with good timing and more importantly big tits that people with connections didn’t mind fucking. The fact that she made it to this level of fame is almost criminal. It is a fucking giant shit on pop culture because she’s not talented, her songs are irritating, she can’t dance, her style is offensive, and above fucking all she’s ugly….and I don’t just mean kinda ugly…I mean real fucking ugly, the kind of bitch you would only notice at the coffee shop cuz of her extreme stench of cat piss, cuz cats are the only people she likes… You get what I am saying here, and if you don’t just look at the bikini pics, and you’ll probably get it, unless you’re one of those guys who just can’t see past a fucking bikini…..and all it takes a bitch to redeem herself is some half nakedness, like me… But at least I know that this is nothing special, fitness levels are dumpy for what I’d want in a popstar, the worst kind of con artist….. TO SEE THE REST OF THE PICS FOLLOW THIS LINK
