Their five-time Oscar winner The Artist may have just experienced its most lucrative weekend at the box office to date, but newly installed Legionnaire of Honor Harvey Weinstein and his Weinstein Co. minions remain firmly focused today on the Great Bully Ratings Non-troversy of 2012 . How do we know? To Twitter, where #BullyMovie is this morning’s highest-ranking (promoted, ahem) trending topic. Here’s the official shout-out from the Bully gang, carrying over last week’s ” human rights ” crusade to get the Weinstein release’s R-rating reduced to a PG-13. Wildfire petition to tell the @ MPAA to give @ bullymovie a PG-13 breaks 180,000 RT to keep the fire! bit.ly/AbQWZ1 #bullymovie — Bully Movie(@bullymovie) March 2, 2012 So how’s the response? Mostly positive, naturally, with a few contrarian opinions and hilarious misunderstandings thrown in for good measure: #BullyMovie needs to be PG13. #MiddleFingerUp to the bullies at the MPAA who rated this important film R. — Extrovert (@RamiTime) March 5, 2012 I’m curious about #BullyMovie . Does it only look at the victims?Because the bullies themselves are almost always victims of bullies as well. — Scott S Kramer (@scottskramer) March 5, 2012 If @ WeinsteinFilms cannot change the R rating to #BullyMovie then no one can. Seriously, they made “The Artist” won best picture. — Natalia Cariaga (@natajunk) March 5, 2012 Sorry guys, but this #BullyMovie isn’t going to stop bullying any more than “Roots” and “The Color Purple” stopped racism. — FTKL Images (@FTKL) March 5, 2012 #BullyMovie Mean Girls — Erica Mabrey (@adagewhentola67) March 5, 2012 #BullyMovie Precious! — Aidan DeVaughn (@adm1022) March 5, 2012 kind of a #BullyMovie The Little Rascals its the best, back in the day ! — Julian Bolton (@SupermanJr35) March 5, 2012 Harry Potter and the chamber of First Years. #bullymovie — All was well (@iManageMischief) March 5, 2012 Harvey’s secret weapon? What else? @ KhloeKardashian calls @ BULLYMOVIE trailer “heartbreaking” – WATCH THE #BULLYMOVIE TRAILER: bit.ly/znJ8C0 — Bully Movie(@bullymovie) March 5, 2012 What a grotesque fucking circus. Knowledge is power! Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
With all the talk of holding radio talk show hosts accountable lately, it’s probably worth bringing you what liberal firebrand Mike Malloy said last week as storms ravaged the South. According to a clip from his March 2 show, it seems the storms are God’s way of getting back at them for not believing in science. Or something. “Their God … keeps smashing them into little grease spots on the pavement… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Blaze Discovery Date : 05/03/2012 05:09 Number of articles : 2
This is lovely: Ridley Scott is executive producing the “self-portrait” doc Japan in a Day , in the crowd-sourced collected footage vein of Kevin MacDonald’s Life in a Day , to draw attention to and benefit the survivors of Japan’s devastating 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster. Fuji will donate 200 cameras to the project, which will cull from submissions uploaded to Youtube on March 11 with all profits reportedly going back to the victims. Now that’s how you show support , Hollywood. [ Deadline ]
Some contestants who made it through were then sent packing in a new, cruel turn of events. By Adam Graham Contestants audition during “American Idol” Vegas week Photo: Michael Becker / FOX “American Idol” opened with 70 contestants Thursday (February 16) and ended with 42, as the Las Vegas cuts — referred to alternately as “brutal,” “painful” and “deep” — lived up to their billing. Some who made it through on the strength of their performances were later told they, in fact, didn’t make it through, a new twist. The twist wasn’t given a name, but it should have been called the “Gotcha!” — as in, “Oh, you thought you were going to go on to achieve your dream of being a singer? Gotcha!” In Vegas, contestants were asked to form groups and sing songs from the ’50s and ’60s onstage at the Aria hotel, home to the “Viva Elvis” show. The episode began, as all future “Idol” episodes should, with Heejun Han talking directly into the camera while wearing a red hooded sweatshirt. Han’s feud with this year’s resident cowboy contestant, Richie Law, has already proven he’s a dry-witted jokester at heart. But Han is also able to turn on the charm, such as when he tamed the “Vocal Coach from Hell,” Peggi Blu, and turned her into a pile of mush in his own hands. Regardless of Han’s chances this season, he should be considered for the position of next “Idol” host, should Ryan Seacrest ever abandon his post. Or hey, isn’t “The X Factor” looking for a new emcee ? Han — God bless Steven Tyler, who sang “Heejun” to the tune of “Hey Jude” when calling his name — made it through to the next round, along with groupmates Phillip Phillips (he apparently is going by “Phil” Phillips now, but we still prefer Phillip Phillips) and Neco Starr. Jairon Jackson initially made it through but then caught an ax to his jugular after the “Gotcha!” twist reared its ugly head. Sorry, man, no one said Las Vegas was going to be all fun and games. Richie Law, who tormented Han when they were groupmates in Hollywood, found a new victim to torture in Las Vegas in Jermaine Jones . The two baritones made for an unlikely duo, joining forces on “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” but they pulled it off — but only after Law once again showed his stubbornness, telling cameras, “I didn’t come here to recycle music; I came here to make it.” His determination paid off, but he needs to find a less aggressive way to celebrate; Jones accused him of both bruising his rotator cup and almost taking his neck off while manhandling him following their victory. The foursome to watch Thursday was the group composed of Reed Grimm , Elise Testone, Haley Johnson and Eben Franckewitz, who earned a standing ovation from the judges and were dubbed “unreal” by Steven Tyler for their version of “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes.” The performance came together in note-perfect fashion, as both Grimm — compared by some to an emerging Casey Abrams, though he reminds us more of actor Ethan Embry for some reason — and heartthrob-in-training Franckewitz made their presences felt. Other victims of the “Gotcha” twist included Gabi Carrubba, Candice Glover, Jairon Jackson, Gaga-alike Angie Ziederman and Schyler Dixon, whose brother, Colton, made it through to the next round. Singers who just plain got cut the first time around included Molly Hunt, Curtis Gray, Curtis Finch Jr., Mathenee Treco and Nick Boddington. While most contestants took their dismissals in stride, Jessica Phillips wins the Sour Grapes Award for most bitter rant of the night, telling cameras, “I’m an actual artist. It just doesn’t seem like they’re looking for real artists,” after the judges told her to pack her bags. She continued: “I didn’t come here to win a television show; I came here for a record deal. And, um, a lot of people are making it through that are not real artists, and they’re not going to sell any records, and I don’t have to worry about that because that’s not me.” Britnee Kellogg, the 27-year-old single mom from Vancouver, Washington, sang alongside Phillips and initially made it through, but was later cut thanks to the “Gotcha!” Only 24-year-old Courtney Williams of Philadelphia made it through from their original trio. Next week, the Idols will continue to fight for their lives as the field is narrowed from 42 to 24. What did you think of Thursday’s “Idol”? 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.
The filmmaker clarifies: “We’re still in discussions about whether it should be a prequel or sequel. It’s an interesting conversation. I’m meeting with writers and I’ve also gone back to [ Blade Runner co-writer] Hampton Fancher and he still speaks the speak. He’s right there. I spoke with him this week. But we don’t even have a script yet. I’m not sure that that’s going to be a story point, so I don’t know. But if it were, nothing would please me more. Honestly.” [ EW ]
Based on a true story out of World War II-era Lvov, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), In Darkness seeks to distinguish itself from the painfully distended genre of Holocaust movies with relentless “you are there” realism. It’s not quite Smell-o-vision, but the idea seems to be to try and make the experience of the 12 Polish Jews who hid in a sewer for 14 months as uncomfortable for the audience as it was for them. It seems significant that even a movie like The Reader paused in the midst of its “I was deflowered by a war criminal” melodrama to acknowledge that there is nothing to be learned from the Holocaust. Because its stories of annihilation and survival have taken on the ritual interplay of genre, often they have as much to tell us about current narrative appetites as they do about history. In Darkness , currently nominated for a Best Foreign-Language Feature Oscar, is foremost a Holocaust movie that asks to be measured against all the others; its primarily lessons are directed toward the genre itself. Not all of the victims, for instance, are noble or even particularly nice. Director Agnieszka Holland ( Europa, Europa ) seems so enamored with her own resolution on this account that little more is offered in the way of characterization. But making the victims “human” does not necessarily make them complicated, or well drawn; in fact it leaves them vulnerable to cliché. So here we have the upper-class couple (Maria Schrader and Herbert Knaup) and their two small children, the resourceful hero (Benno Furmann), the rogue (Marcin Bosak), the pretty sister (Agnieszka Groshowska), the wanton redhead (Julia Kijowska), and a few others who never really emerge from the sewer’s shadows. Crammed together into a miserable crevice of the Lvov underground after a pogrom destroys the city’s Jewish ghetto, they all behave badly some point. There are fights over food, space, noise — and though bitter religious recrimination occasionally erupts, it feels more like a requirement of the genre than a reflection of deteroriating inner lives. In Darkness is based on the story told in a 1991 book called In the Sewers of Lvov , by Robert Marshall (adapted here by David F. Shannon). Its central figure is also one we have come to recognize on film: the benevolent gentile. Leopold Socha was a Catholic Pole and prolific thief when the war broke out; he also worked in the sewer system, and offered to help hide the group of Jews in exchange for payment. Robert Wieckiewicz, an enigmatic performer with a tough potato face, plays Socha as a Polish Tony Soprano by way of Graham Greene, with all the charisma, martyr issues and ambivalence about his own better nature that suggests. In Darkness is most successful when it follows Socha through a city where life goes on despite the nightmares unfolding in plain view and underfoot. The opening scenes use an effective contrast to set up the question: What kind of times are these? Socha and his sidekick (Krzysztof Skonieczny) shake down a couple of teenagers in what appears to be a middle-class family home; during their getaway they cross paths with a group of naked women racing through a forest, pursued to their death by nattily uniformed gunmen. From there Holland continues to effectively exploit the tension between Lvov’s ominous sense of suspended reality and the denial human beings are capable of when not directly threatened themselves. Socha and his wife (Kinga Preis) speak about the massacres that take place in their streets like they have just read a report about a country halfway around the world. Though the tensions are not addressed in depth, the fact that German, Yiddish, Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian are spoken more or less interchangeably evokes the clashing ethnic currents that made Poland the Holocaust’s crucible, a better host than most of the region for genocide. Absolutely everyone is on the take, and the sudden perishability of human life has only heightened the instinct for self-preservation. That that instinct is more acutely felt in the character of Socha and his life above ground suggests the overriding misery emanating from the film’s depiction of life in the sewer. With a few exceptions — including cinematographer Jolanta Dylewska’s bravura depiction of a flash flood that threatens to drown the stowaways — Holland cannot make the group’s determination felt because she’s so intent on making us feel the mortification of their suffering. The squeaking and scampering of rats becomes a motif over two and a half hours — it ends almost every scene with one last dash of disgust — and the seemingly high incidence of sewer sex gets lingering attention as well. Rather than beginning with the assumption that there is no possibility of our coming to know that kind of suffering exactly and using imagination and insight to truly take us inside the Lvov Jews’ plight, Holland makes the base conditions of their confinement a narrative as well as aesthetic priority. And frankly it’s boring as shit. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
From the King of Pop to the Boss, the Super Bowl stage has played host to some memorable performances; MTV News looks back on the best. By James Montgomery Madonna Photo: Martin Fraser/ Getty Images On Sunday night, Madonna will join an exclusive club that includes the likes of Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Diana Ross and, uh, Up With People when she performs at halftime of Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis. Yes, you’d be hard-pressed to find a bigger stage than the big game — last year’s Super Bowl was watched by some 111 million Americans — which is why the producers of the halftime festivities always recruit the biggest stars to perform (except for 1999, when Big Bad Voodoo Daddy inexplicably found their way into the proceedings). And Madonna most certainly fits that bill, which is why, while we’re not quite sure what she’ll bring to the Super Bowl stage — aside from her promise that it’ll be “the greatest show on earth” — we’re reasonably confident that it’ll be a performance folks will be talking about on Monday. And probably Tuesday too. Of course, if Madge wants to secure her spot among the all-time greatest Super Bowl halftime performances, well, she’ll definitely have to deliver the goods. Over the years, some of the most prodigious talents have gotten lost in all of the ephemera that comes with a Super Bowl slot (lasers, explosions, confetti, marching bands, will.i.am), but still others have risen to the challenge, delivering performances that have thrilled, chilled and even made us forget about the game itself. Here’s a look at our favorite Super Bowl halftime performances. Check out photos of past Super Bowl halftime shows! Diana Ross, Super Bowl XXX : The dynamic Diana stole the show in 1996 with a classy, brassy performance that featured nearly as many of her biggest hits as it did costume changes. Her voice was in prime form, powerful enough to outshine a full gospel choir, an army of tuxedo-clad dancers and, of course, end-zone pyrotechnics. But it was her exit — lifted from the stage via helicopter, while blowing kisses as the chorus of “Take Me Higher” blasted through the stadium — that truly put this one over the top. Prince, Super Bowl XLI : Not even a near-constant downpour could dampen this 2007 performance from the Purple One, who stalked across a custom “symbol” stage (while wearing a kerchief tied around his head), wailed on approximately 46 guitar solos, begged the audience to “take my picture,” out-watted the famed FAMU marching band, covered the Foo Fighters and even managed to freak out network censors by casting a lengthy (and quite phallic) shadow from behind a piece of fabric. So, you know, it was just your average Prince show. Oh, and then he did “Purple Rain” in the rain. Meta. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Super Bowl XLIII : They opened with Springsteen leaning on Clarence Clemons (a nod to the cover of 1975’s Born to Run ), begged the viewing audience to “put down the chicken fingers,” and then absolutely, positively destroyed the stage in Tampa with a set that featured classics like “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” “Born to Run” and “Glory Days.” And then Springsteen finished things off by shouting, “I’m going to Disneyland!”As several fans have come to say, this wasn’t a halftime performance, it was a football game played around a Springsteen concert. As an added bonus, this is also the performance that gave us the now-immortal meme. Michael Jackson, Super Bowl XXVII : It started with the late, great King of Pop magically leaping from the Rose Bowl scoreboards to his stage on the 50-yard line, featured a staggering 3,000 dancers, some killer choreography (the Moonwalk!) and a career-spanning medley of Jackson’s hits (everything from “Billie Jean” to “Black or White”). And as if MJ’s performance wasn’t testament to his superstardom, how about the 90-second ovation he received before ever singing a word? It was almost enough to make one young writer forget the Bills were on their way to losing a third-straight Super Bowl. Almost. U2, Super Bowl XXXVI : If there is another band on the planet more capable of seizing the moment than U2, well, we’d like to meet them. In this case, that meant performing at the first Super Bowl since the 9/11 attacks, before an audience of millions still reeling and recovering. And, in typical form, Bono and company didn’t shrink from the spotlight. Though there were more than a few highlights, their solemn, spiritual performance of “Where the Streets Have No Name” — which saw the names of all the victims of 9/11 projected behind them — was not only the most memorable of the night, it’s without a doubt the most memorable (and chill-inducing) in Super Bowl history. And then, to top it all off, Bono pulled back his jacket to reveal an American flag. Game over. What songs do you want Madonna to perform during the halftime show? Leave your comments on our Facebook page!
In April 2010 Palestinian terrorists stabbed five family members to death in the Israeli settlement of Itamar; three children, including a baby girl, were among the victims. The killers slashed the baby’s throat. Later that day Palestinians handed out candy … Continue reading → Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Gateway Pundit Discovery Date : 29/01/2012 17:34 Number of articles : 6
Mark Wahlberg is continuing to walk back his recent comments about September 11, saying he made a mistake but attempting to put it in some context. In the latest issue of Men’s Journal , the actor said that he would have handled things differently had he been on one of the planes downed by terrorists. Wahlberg’s 9/11 comments were widely criticized and he quickly apologized. Speaking to Kidd Kraddick in the Morning on Friday, he explained it as such: “I would never disrespect the victims of 9/11 or their families. It was misunderstood. My only intention was to explain that I would do anything to protect my family – I would put myself in harms way to protect my family or innocent people.” “That was it. First and foremost, I am not speaking as an actor.” “I am a real guy from the streets and I’ve been in a lot of situations, so I was very out of line and I wasn’t thinking about the real heroes and the guys, women, children, fathers, sons, daughters who were on those flights.” This came up because Wahlberg was initially booked on one of the flights hijacked out of Boston on 9/11/01, before serendipitously moving his flight. “If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did,” he told the magazine. “There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, ‘OK, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry.'” His comments greatly offended some victims of 9/11. “People are much more vigilant now than they were on 9/11,” Mary Shetchet, a spokesperson for the support group Voices Of 9/11, explained. “10 years later it easy to say you would have responded differently.”
‘We Found Love’ singer will join band for ‘Princess of China.’ By Gil Kaufman Rihanna Photo: WireImage Rihanna and Coldplay will perform live together for the first time on February 12 when they take the stage at the 54th annual Grammy Awards for the televised debut of their Mylo Xyloto collaboration, “Princess of China.” Rihanna, nominated for four Grammys this year, broke the news on Twitter , writing, “My friends @ColdPlay and I will be sharing the stage for a performance at this years Annual Grammy Awards!” A short time later she added, “WE reached 2BILLION views on @youtube !!! THANK U!!! I’m in a great mood, and I got some GREAT NEWS!!! PRINCESS OF CHINA #GRAMMYS2012.” The show, which will be hosted by rapper LL Cool J , will also feature a performance by rock icon Paul McCartney, who will join a lineup that already includes Grammy nominees Foo Fighters, Kelly Clarkson, Bruno Marks, Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift and Jason Aldean. At the time Xyloto was released , Coldplay singer Chris Martin explained that the decision to invite another voice into the studio was made because of the unusual story arc of the band’s Grammy-nominated album. “Her bit on our record is my favorite bit. … When the song came out, it sort of asked for her to be on it. And I think at this point, we have nothing to lose, and so we’ve been trying some new things and trying to break down the perceived boundaries between different types of music,” Martin told MTV News. “Our new record is sort of a story; it’s not quite a musical, but it’s dangerously close. There’s a bit of a love-story thread, so we really needed someone to sing even higher than me,” Martin said. “[It’s] hard, but very possible. You need to be a female really. For all [drummer] Will [Champion]’s good intentions, he [can’t do it] … “… So, in like a dream scenario, we had a song that I’d secretly kind of written to see if Rihanna would want to sing it,” Martin continued. “And then the rest of the band wanted to keep it, so we came up with the idea of asking her to sing it with us, and, to our great surprise, she said OK.” More Grammy performers and presenters will be announced in the coming weeks. Related Videos MTV News Extended Play: Coldplay Related Photos 2012 Grammy Performers 2012 Grammy Nominees Related Artists Rihanna Coldplay
