Kevin Clash is off the hook. The Sesame Street star – who voices Elmo and was forced to take a leave of absence after a man came forward and said he had an illegal relationship with Clash when the actor was 45 and he was 16 – is no longer under investigation because his accuser has recanted his story. An attorney for the accuser released a statement this afternoon that changes his client’s original stance to agree with that of Clash’s : yes, there was a relationship. But, no, it did not violate any laws. Reads the statement: “[The accuser] wants it to be known that his sexual relationship with Mr. Clash was an adult consensual relationship. [The accuser] will have no further comment.” It’s unknown what transpired, but sources tell TMZ Clash’s lawyer met with the accuser’s lawyer and a six-figure settlement was offered at the time. Said Clash in response to this turn of events: “I am relieved that this painful allegation has been put to rest. I will not discuss it further.”
Is there civil unrest amidst The Civil Wars? The popular folk duo of Joy Williams and John Paul White shocked fans last night, releasing a statement announcing that due to “internal discord and irreconcilable differences of ambition” they were unable to “continue as a touring entity at this time. The Civil Wars in Concert So, is this it for the two-person group, which rose to fame in 2011 with the album “Barton Hollow?” “Our sincere hope is to have new music for you in 2013,” they added in the statement, providing followers with a ray of hope.
A night after Cee Le Green and Adam Levine cut their teams in half , The Voice returned last night with 10 new knockout round battles. Which five members of Team Christina would advance to the live shows? Who among Team Blake would move on? Watch a slew of performances below and then scroll down for the full results: Devyn DeLoera vs. Laura Vivas Adriana Louise vs. Celica Westbrook Alessandra Guercio vs. Dez Duron Chevonne vs. De’Borah Aquile vs. Sylvia Yacoub Gracia Harrison vs. Liz Davis Rudy Parris vs. Terry McDermott Colin McLoughlin vs. Michaela Paige TEAM CHRISTINA Devyn DeLoera (“I Have Nothing”) vs. Laura Vivas (“I Need to Know”) WINNER: DeLoera Adriana Louise (“Already Gone”) vs. Celica Westbrook (“Never Say Never”) WINNER: Louise Alessandra Guercio (“Take a Bow”) vs. Dez Duron (“Stuck on You” WINNER: Duron Chevonne (“Dancing With Myself”) vs. De’Borah (“You Found Me”) WINNER: De’Borah Aquile (“Grenade”) vs. Sylvia Yacoub (“Fighter”) WINNER: Yacoub TEAM BLAKE Gracia Harrison (“I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”) vs. Liz Davis (“Gunpowder and Lead”) WINNER: Davis Rudy Parris (“Forever”) vs. Terry McDermott (“Maybe I’m Amazed”) WINNER: McDermott Colin McLoughlin (“Breakeven”) vs. Michaela Paige (“Live is a Battlefield”) WINNER: Paige Julio Cesar Castillo (“Somebody to Love”) vs. MarissaAnn (“Lady Marmalade”) WINNER: Castillo Suzanna Choffel (“Could You Be Loved”) vs. Cassadee Pope (“Payphone”) WINNER: Pope So there you have it. Four teams. Five singers each. It’s on heading into next week. Did you agree with this week’s Knockout Round winners and losers?
What’s weirder than taking your newborn to a party at the Playboy Mansion? Defending that action with a poem. But a couple days after Kelsey Grammer took three-month old daughter Faith to a Halloween bash at Hugh Hefner’s famous residence, he has released a statement explaining the move to TMZ. In rhyme. “Kayte is breast-feeding and we do not have a nanny or a trusted baby-sitter at this time, so Faith goes everywhere with us,” Grammer said , adding: “The baby slept as her ears were covered the entire time and we left shortly after midnight.” He then concluded the statement in odd fashion: “We love our child. Kayte is my wife and lady love (who is 31 and goes by the name Kayte Grammer, by the way, not Walsh). The world is round. All our eyes are blue. Happy Halloween and Cock-a-doodle-doo!” Well, okay then! What do you think? Kelsey Grammer bringing a baby to the Playboy Mansion is… So inappropriate! So much fun for the baby! View Poll »
Don’t make out of pocket statements about Janet’s love for MJ or she’ll slap your azz with legal action! According to Celebuzz: Janet Jackson has fired off a legal letter to Vanity Fair Editor in Chief Graydon Carter, demanding the publication retract allegations suggesting the music superstar delayed her late brother Michael’s funeral over a financial dispute. In excerpts from Randall Sullivan‘s upcoming book, Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson — and published in the esteemed Condé Nast magazine — it was alleged that Janet, 46, had delayed her sibling’s funeral over money owed relating to the burial plot deposit. “The article states that, according to Untouchable, Ms Jackson put down a $40,000 deposit to secure a burial plot for Michael Jackson but refused to let the funeral take place until that money was repaid. This is untrue,” Janet’s attorney Blair G. Brown wrote in the letter sent on October 5 and obtained by Celebuzz. “Ms. Jackson never delayed the funeral in anyway. In fact, she paid for the funeral and was reimbursed for some of those expenses by Michael Jackson’s estate in the year after the services took place.” Jackson, via her lawyer, added: “In addition, there were other private costs associated with Michael Jackson’s passing that Ms. Jackson incurred and for which she has never sought reimbursement. To falsely accuse Ms. Jackson of holding up her brother’s funeral over money is outrageous. This story is particularly hurtful and distressing because of Ms. Jackson’s strong desire to serve her brother, whom she loved dearly, and she wishes to stand with and support her family.” Brown said the damage to Jackson’s reputation was “exacerbated” because the article was republished by numerous media outlets around the world. “I demand that Vanity Fair retract its statement that Ms. Jackson “refused” to let Michael Jackson’s funeral take place until the money she put down as a deposition on his burial plot was repaid,” the lawyer said. “To the extend that this statement appears in excerpts of Untouchable published in Vanity Fair’s November 2012 issue, I demand that Vanity Fair publish a retraction explaining that the statement is false.” Brown also claimed: “The article is replete with additional false and defamatory statement regarding Ms. Jackson.” We really hope none of this bull is true. What do you think? Images via WENN
It’s a big week for the filmmaking Paul Andersons. Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master opened in a handful of cinemas in New York and Los Angeles, and Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil: Retribution in theaters everywhere (in 3D and otherwise). While The Master offers up a immersive, abstract look at an unstable man being courted by the head of a cult-like movement, Resident Evil: Retribution in its own way also departs from the usual narrative confines of moviemaking. It’s the closest thing you’ll find yet to a recreation of a video game sensibility on the big screen — which is in line with the franchise’s source material — and makes for a memorably unsettling if not particularly satisfying viewing experience. Resident Evil: Retribution finds action star (and Anderson spouse) Milla Jovovich returning to play Alice, a former employee turned sworn enemy of the evil Umbrella Corporation. Considering how crazily far and, frankly, nonsensical the story has gotten from its start as the story of a weaponized virus infecting a secret genetic research facility, the film pays surprising attention to the basic premise before skimming over the developments of the more recent installments in an intro sequence. The series’ ability to shuck off its own history is put on display in the initial action scene, which picks up where the last film left off: a slow-motion sequence of explosions and gunfire that runs backwards before lurching forward at full speed to neatly do away with the Arcadia and any other surviving characters on board. Then again, who cares about those guys? The Resident Evil films have clearly become a continuing discombobulated nightmare belonging to Alice and Alice alone. Again and again, she seems to find safety, only to wake up in some new, terrible scenario in which she has to fight for her life. Resident Evil: Retribution takes this idea to its end point by being set in an underwater Umbrella-run base in which different test stages have been built for the company to demonstrate its bioweapons. All-white hallways string together life-size recreations of Times Square, downtown Tokyo, central Moscow and a suburban street. Each houses a scenario in which, at the bidding of the central A.I., swarms of infected humans, ax-wielding mutants or zombie soldiers will be released to attack. Resident Evil: Retribution , in other words, has taken great pains to find a way to have real-life game stages. This sensibility extends to the way the film explains its mission — rendezvous with a rescue team and find a way out — and the way it provides weapons for its characters: armories rise out of the ground, or, in a sequence that demonstrates definite game logic, Alice looks in an abandoned cop car, heads to a nearby bike to take its chain, smashes in the window and adds both her new tool and a gun from the vehicle to her inventory. This is even the case in the way actors from earlier installments in the franchise — Michelle Rodriguez and Oded Fehr — are folded into the film, thanks to Umbrella’s fondness for cloning. A glimpse of multiple versions of Alice in storage also reinforces the idea that if she were to die, she could just respawn and start over. Video games and movies have an uneasy partnership. The first Resident Evil is one of the best of a shaky history of adaptations from console to big screen, but the franchise has skewed toward the sensibility of the former medium rather than the latter in a way that’s unique but tiresome. At its best, Resident Evil: Retribution feels like a series of elaborate cut scenes strung together, but much of the time it’s a reminder of how incredibly unfun it can be to sit around watching someone else play without getting a chance yourself. The film’s extravagant action scenes have not a whiff of consequence to them, and other than Alice, the foremost quality of all of the characters is their disposability. A sequence like the one in which clones of familiar characters are put through an impossible test scenario is genuinely disconcerting in how it shakes up our perceptions of the reality of what’s on screen. But even that becomes a reminder that bringing one of the traditional qualities of a video game protagonist — his or her qualified immortality — to a movie further strips any sense of human investment in the character. Any consistency on screen is entirely stylistic: there are no rules in this universe other than that Alice will battle on, defying gravity and physics and looking fabulous despite the world eternally ending all around her. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Also in Friday afternoon’s round-up of news briefs, two more Toronto International Film Festival titles head for theatrical runs. And Sparkle ‘s Mara and Salim Akil eye some Abandonment Issues . Re-Mastered Raiders of the Lost Ark Gets Extended Theatrical Run The re-mastered first installment of the Indiana Jones saga will have an extended run beginning Friday after what studio Paramount Pictures called an “extraordinary response” during its one week IMAX engagement. The Steven Spielberg-directed and George Lucas-executive produced feature will play in more than 300 digital theaters across the United States and Canada. Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures debuts on Blu-ray September 18th from Lucasfilm Ltd. and Paramount Home Media Distribution with seven hours of bonus material added. Toronto’s The Brass Teapot Heads to North American Theaters The feature stars Juno Temple ( Diane ) and Michael Angarano ( Haywire ) who play John and Alice, broke newlyweds very much in love, that stumble upon a magical teapot that rewards physical pain with wads of cold hard cash, offering a rather twisted way out of their financial burdens. The film just had its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival where Magnolia Pictures acquired the title. The distributor’s acquisitions exec Peter Van Steemburg negotiated the deal while The Gersh Agency executed the sale on behalf of the filmmakers. No release date was announced. Around the ‘net… Romney Criticizes Anti-Islam Film; Backs Off Earlier White House Criticism “I think it’s dispiriting sometimes to see some of the awful things people say,” the former Massachusetts governor told George Stephanopolous on Good Morning America Friday. “And the idea of using something that some people consider sacred and then parading that out a negative way is simply inappropriate and wrong. And I wish people wouldn’t do it.” He also said the First Amendment protects that free speech. He added that he and the White House were now more in sync over his criticism about the statement released by the U.S. embassy in Cairo when protests began earlier this week. The statement condemning the film lead him to criticize the Administration and caused backlash against him by both Democrats and some Republicans. “What I said was exactly the same conclusion the White House reached, which was that the statement was inappropriate. That’s why they backed away from it as well,” said Romney, THR reports . Still Heads to U.S. Theaters The Toronto International Film Festival romance pic starring James Cromwell and Genevieve Bujold will get a release some time in 2013. In the feature, the two actors play a couple in their later years. He sets out to build a more suitable home for his ailing wife and quickly is blindsided by local building codes and bureaucratic officials as his wife becomes increasingly ills and a flurry of orders to stop building, Variety reports . Sparkle ‘s Mara and Salim Akil Eye Abandonment Issues The duo last teamed with Screen Gems on Sparkle and have entered a deal with Paramount Pictures on the new project. Mara Brock Akil will write the scrip and husband Salim Akil will direct and both will produce, Deadline reports .
National Urban League Furious Over Nike Release Of Expensive Sneakers The National Urban League is speaking out against Nike and their upcoming release of the most expensive shoe in Nike history at a whopping $315. Nike’s basketball ads in the 1980s and early 90s featuring Michael Jordan and Spike Lee’s alter ego Mars Blackmon popularized the famous line “Money, it’s gotta be the shoes!” Fast forward to 2012 – Nike is still selling sneakers and charging big-time money for them. This fall, the sneaker giant is expected to unveil its ‘LeBron X’ sneaker and if you want to wear them, it will cost a cool $315 according to the Wall Street Journal. The National Urban League wants no part of it. The civil rights organization has slammed Nike for charging so much for the shoe and is encouraging parents not to spend their money on an “empty status symbol.” The group’s president Marc Morial has asked Nike to scrap its plans to release the show altogether: “I ask Nike – and the parents whose children are targeted in this misdirected campaign – to join us in our efforts to empower young people to value their own talents – athletic and otherwise – above material tokens and work together for broader access to the economic mainstream.” The urban league released a statement earlier today, where Morial describes the LeBron James sneaker as representing “twisted priorities and confused values.” Earlier in the statement, Morial says: “To release such an outrageously overpriced product while the nation is struggling to overcome an unemployment crisis is insensitive at best.” According to the Wall Street Journal, this version of the ‘LeBron X’ sneaker includes its own electronics and will be the most expensive shoe in Nike history. Would you buy these for your child or let them spend their hard earned money to purchase them? Source
Tameka Raymond recently released a statement thanking fans for support during the loss of her son, Kile. She also addressed the custody battle with Usher……
So we now know where Robert Pattinson is holed up : inside the vacation home of Water for Elephants costar Reese Witherspoon. But when will the public actually lay eyes on this smoldering superstar, whose heart was recently torn out and stomped all over by Kristen Stewart? It’s sounding more and more like August 13 . That’s the date on which Cosmopolis premieres in New York City and on which Pattinson is expected to walk the red carpet. He’ll then field questions from the media on the following day, despite recent rumors stating otherwise. ” Cosmopolis is a film that Robert is very proud of and looks forward to supporting,” his rep said in a statement today. “No confirmed engagements have been canceled. Any reports to the contrary are inaccurate.” Watch the official Cosmopolis trailer now and then give advice to Robert: Should he forgive Kristen Stewart?
