John Travolta briefly surfaced Thursday night to honor his friend Shirley MacLaine at the American Film Institute, appearing in public for the first time in awhile. He has kept a very low profile amid a series of lawsuits involving male-on-male sexual misconduct and allegations of a gay affair (with pilot Doug Gotterba ). There was no discussion of that last night, just a tribute to MacLaine. Travolta spoke on stage , alongside Jennifer Aniston and Julia Roberts. The 58-year-old actor said, “Several years ago, Warren Beatty was talking about a young actress. And I said to him, ‘What was she like?’ And he said, ‘She filled the room with presence like I’ve never seen before.'” “And I said, “You know your sister, Shirley? She fills the room with presence.'” Travolta then added, “She fills the world with presence like no one I’ve ever seen before.” “And that’s my Shirley. And I love you.” “Shirley MacLaine is first a dancer, and when you move from Broadway to film to television to writing to directing, you have to move with the grace of a dancer. To train and push harder than you ever thought you could.” Well said.
She stars in the biggest movie in the land ( Snow White and the Huntsman ), and also stars in what is bound to be the biggest movie in the land this weekend ( Prometheus ). But Charlize Theron is focused on the small screen. In a recent interview , the Oscar winner copped to being a MAJOR Game of Thrones fan, saying: “I am absolutely foaming at the mouth over Game of Thrones . I cannot get enough of that. When my son came in my life, that was a bottle feed because I couldn’t watch television; I used to watch so little. That was my TiVo feed every two hours – watching Game of Thrones . My mom was like, “Do you think it’s fine that you’re feeding your son while there’s like sword fights?” I was like, “It’s fine, Mom. It’s fine.” Would she guest star on the HBO epic? “I’d be totally open to it.” Game of Thrones , of course, is notorious for its sex and nude scenes. So, in other words series casting directors: Give Theron a call. NOW!
Won’t this affect that expensive azz wedding he has coming up? After spending Thursday trying to trade wide receiver Chad Ochocinco , the New England Patriots decided to release him, according to league sources. Ochocinco took to Twitter this afternoon to thank the loyal Patriots fans: “Thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to play for the “Patriot” organization… fans were f—— wicked awesome, I wish all of you the best…,” Ochocinco tweeted. The Patriots pushed trade conversations with other teams up to near the end of the day’s transaction deadline at 4 p.m. But despite conversations with other teams, there was not enough interest to make a deal. Ochocinco’s biggest issue in New England was not his ability; it had more to do with his ability to pick up the Patriots playbook, which the veteran wide receiver struggled to do. Earlier Thursday, there had been speculation that this was Ochocinco’s last day with the Patriots because the wide receiver left the training facility before the team’s OTA. However, Ochocinco said later in the day he had not been released and simply was attending an eye doctor’s appointment. In other words Ochocinco couldn’t catch up to speed with the playbook, and the Patriots decided to part ways. Luckily, Ocho isn’t in the same predicament as his good friend, Terell Owens and will more than likely find a new team by the time his name change goes into effect. Hopefully he’ll be back on his feet soon, Evelyn knows you can’t cop red bottoms with unemployment checks. Where do you think Ochocinco will end up now? Source
Dr. Alessandro Olivi tells MTV News the diagnosis shouldn’t change Crow’s lifestyle: ‘She can still sing!’ By Kara Warner Photo: Bryan Steffy/Getty Images Despite the severity of the news that Sheryl Crow has been diagnosed with a brain tumor , the good news is that the type of tumor, a meningioma, is non-cancerous. MTV News caught up with Dr. Alessandro Olivi, a professor of neurosurgery and director of the Meningioma Center at Johns Hopkins University, who spoke very positively about Crow’s prognosis. “If they elected to observe it [and not perform surgery], that means the tumor is an incidental finding and considered, like it is in the majority of these cases, biologically favorable,” Olivi said. “It’s benign and doesn’t need to come out, because it’s not causing any problems and can be monitored safely.” Olivi, who also serves as the vice chairmen of the department of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, went on to say that doctors don’t yet know what specifically causes the tumors, just that they tend to occur in women and that estrogen might play a role. “We don’t know what causes them. We know that there is preponderance in women over men. Some people have said it’s related to estrogen. There might be some receptor, but not to the point where I would say to change hormone treatment,” he said. “For example, with menopause, you produce less estrogen and people are on hormone replacement. I don’t consider that a reason not to do it. In other words, the correlation [between estrogen and meningioma] is loose. We don’t know in reality what the cause is. The good thing is that in the vast majority, they are self-limiting, and the biological behavior is not one of an aggressive cancer.” Speaking to how the tumor will affect Crow’s day-to-day lifestyle moving forward, Olivi said she’ll likely only need routine checkups. “She just needs to do what she is told as far as monitoring and imaging, which will probably be once every six months if everything is OK and can be moved up to once a year,” he said. “But no change in lifestyle; she can still sing!” Related Artists Sheryl Crow
Amid rumors of Charlie Sheen’s drug-fueled partying , the warlock was asked point blank if he has been using illegal substances and spiraling out of control again. He was also asked if he has any knowledge about Brooke Mueller relapsing (something her lawyer passionately denies, saying her trip to rehab is “preventative”). Sheen’s response, to TMZ, appears below: I can’t speak to anyone’s opinion or judgement. I was there they were not. their tepid hearsay is a baseless static drone. a mantra. their theme. I refuse to be held hostage by their ‘constitutional’ privilege, to judge those who can and who do. nabobs. CS In other words, Charlie is neither confirming nor denying if he or Brooke is on drugs, but he is blasting the people who talk about him as uninformed losers who aren’t #winning. [Photo: WENN.com]
MTV News spots a red velvet wall on the set that reminds us of the erotic trilogy — a sign of things to come on Sunday? By Terri Schwartz, with reporting by Jim Cantiello “Fifty Shades of Grey” Photo: The Writer’s Coffee Shop UNIVERSAL CITY, California — Something strange is happening on the MTV Movie Awards set. While scoping out what was supposed to be a rehearsal for Fun., we saw some workers rolling in … giant red plush walls? It looks a bit suspicious, if you ask us. Maybe it’s just because we have “Fifty Shades of Grey” on the mind, but our first thought when we saw the set piece was that it was a wall from a giant velvet sex room. And considering the Movie Awards’ track record of crazy epic stunts, we wouldn’t put it past anyone here. Of course, it could just be part of a normal set. With everyone from Fun. and Wiz Khalifa to the Black Keys performing at this year’s awards show, we wouldn’t be surprised if one of them was a closet “Fifty Shades” fan. Maybe we should do some digging and see if we can get some deals signed for the upcoming “Fifty Shades of Grey” movie . “Howlin’ for You” would be an appropriate first track on the album, right? “Fifty Shades” has been on many celebs’ minds recently, with everyone from Kristen Stewart and Sam Claflin to Stephenie Meyer , Selena Gomez and Brooklyn Decker talking about it. And we’d be lying if we said we weren’t enablers. We even did an “After Hours” with the “Snow White and the Huntsman” cast where we had them read certain erotic sections of the book. Trust us when we say that you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Charlize Theron read the words “oh-so-happy trail.” Head over to MovieAwards.MTV.com to vote for your favorite flicks now! The 21st annual MTV Movie Awards air live this Sunday, June 3, at 9 p.m. ET. Related Videos Behind The Scenes At The 2012 MTV Movie Awards Related Photos Books You Can Read Instead Of ’50 Shades Of Grey’
I’d be lying if I said I truly understood the music video for The Black Keys’ “Gold on the Ceiling,” or that it didn’t just give me shades of the stomach-turning willies I’ve been getting from the words “face” and “eating” all week. So please, someone, watch the bizarre VHS-stylings of the latest Harmony Korine joint — an aesthetic cousin to his recent Trash Humpers , with a visual nod to the wheelchair banditry of Umshini Wam — and share in my amused discomfort. Because, yeah. Baby Twinz are my new nightmare. If I see anyone dressed like this on Halloween, I might instinctively punch them in the throat before fleeing in the other direction. You’ve been warned. [via The Playlist ]
Why can’t heroines just be heroines anymore, instead of micromanaged personalities who may as well have the words “Role Model” tattooed across their foreheads? That’s the fate suffered by poor Kristen Stewart as the warrior princess athlete orphan Christ figure Snow White in Snow White and the Huntsman . She’s not just Joan of Arc — she’s Joan of Archetypes. Moviegoers who love Kristen Stewart — and they include a distinctive subgroup who avoid the Twilight pictures as a vampire eschews sunlight — have long been waiting for Snow White and the Huntsman , hoping to see this enormously appealing actress in a role that is, at last, worthy of her. I think Stewart has held her ground admirably enough in the Twilight pictures, particularly the profoundly crazy-ass Breaking Dawn – Part I , which gives her character something to do other than swan about moodily. (They don’t call her Bella Swan for nothing.) She also made a fine and fierce Joan Jett in Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways . But Snow White and the Huntsman , the debut feature of Rupert Sanders , does her no favors. This Snow White is clearly designed to be a young woman of agency, not a girly-girl victim who waits around for a prince to save her. The problem is that she’s so admirable, so aggressively self-reliant, so beloved and respected by little forest animals as well as simple-minded villagers, that she barely has time to be a woman. Stewart is laced so tightly into her character that she can hardly breathe, let alone give a performance. Luckily, Charlize Theron — as the really, really wicked Queen Ravenna — is on hand to give us something to watch, and boy, does she. This is, of course, a “dark” version of the fairy tale, not a cheerful one, and as written by Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock and Hossein Amini, it at least half-delivers on that score. The picture opens with a quick backstory, revealing how the young and ravishing Ravenna tricked Snow’s father, a poor widowed king, into marrying her before murdering him on their marital bed. Along with her hapless twit of a brother, Finn (Sam Spruell) — the two have a quasi-incestuous, master-and-servant relationship — she takes over the kingdom, turning it into a place of darkness and death, as was her plan all along. She also locks away the orphaned Snow, who starts out as a little girl before morphing into the comely but feisty K Stew. Snow eventually manages to escape into the forest, which, under Ravenna’s rule, has become a wasteland in which tangled branches transform into writhing, hissing serpents and flowers that appear to be made of mussel shells glisten with venomous portent. Snow needs help, but just a little. And when a sturdy local huntsman shows up — he’s played by Chris Hemsworth, of Thor and The Avengers — the two reluctantly join forces, though Snow has not forgotten her first love, a duke’s son named William (Sam Claflin), even though we can all see how boring, if good-looking, he is. Snow White and the Huntsman isn’t as willfully hammy as that other recent entry in the Brothers Grimm source-material parade, Tarsem Singh’s Mirror, Mirror , and it’s not as enjoyable either, though admittedly it’s a completely different creature. Production designer Dominic Watkins sure knocked himself out here: One of the movie’s most fantastic backdrops is a fairy refuge inhabited by slippery, naked little creatures with pointed ears and oversized peepers; their homeland is also populated by stands of mushrooms, each sporting a single, blinking eye, and moss-covered turtles that provide handy landing pads for clouds of butterflies. Most magnificently, this forest is also home to a dignified-looking white hart with a set of antlers that spread as wide and as tall as the branches of an oak. (They resemble, in the good way, an over-the-top showgirl headdress.) The hart bows in respect to Snow, because it’s clear she has the power of healing, of leadership, of having fabulous hair even though she’s been fighting her way through an ugly forest for days on end. She’s also a great warrior, as we see during the picture’s lavish but oddly unexciting climactic battle sequence. She doesn’t even need a cadre of great English character actors disguised as dwarves to save her, but they show up anyway. (The gang includes Eddie Marsan, Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Nick Frost and Toby Jones, all shot to appear height-challenged.) Stewart moves through the picture looking noble and sadly dull, unwittingly setting the stage for the evil queen to steal her show. Theron is marvelous here, playing Ravenna as a cooler-than-cool customer who’ll do anything — include draining the blood from innocent young beauties — to stay young-looking. She works wonders with dum-dum dialogue along the lines of “My beauty…fades,” and struts around boldly, doing justice to Colleen Atwood’s luxurious glittering-metallic costumes. (At least one of these appears to be an obvious nod to the late British designer Alexander McQueen, featuring a collar of shiny black plumes that fan around the queen’s face like an ornithological lion’s mane.) Snow White and the Huntsman looks great. And yet even there, it’s often guilty of trying too hard. The picture was shot by Greig Fraser (the DP behind great-looking pictures like Bright Star and Let Me In ), and many of its images are arresting. But it also features a number of “what for?” visuals that have no real reason to exist other than that they look cool. At one point Ravenna submerges herself in a creamy-white milk bath (cool!) and emerges as a figurine coated in porcelain (wha…?). Clearly, this is one of her special magic beauty treatments, but it doesn’t make sense even in a fantastical way. And it’s emblematic of all the ways in which Snow White and the Huntsman works overtime to wow us, to make us shiver, to remind us that, hey, girls can be strong too! This Snow White is no wussy princess. But her tomboy nobility is no match for the imperious Ravenna and her succession of liquid-stainless-steel gowns and spiky medieval-gal-on-the-rag headgear. Don’t see Snow White and the Huntsman for its ho-hum empowerment message. See it for the killer clothes. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Jenelle Evans just got engaged to Gary Head , and already, rumors are flying that the Teen Mom terror may expecting a second child she has no interest in. The Oak Island, N.C., product has “put on 20 lbs. recently,” according to a source because she is pregnant with another baby … supposedly. Allegedly. Hey, at least she’s in a “stable” relationship at this point. Her engagement to Gary Head has already lasted two whole weeks, beating analyst expectations. Is she actually pregnant though? We doubt it. It’s just hearsay. Still, “she’s so irresponsible, it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s pregnant,” says an insider. “But for her to want another child would be crazy, because it doesn’t seem to bother her at all that she doesn’t have custody of [2-year-old son] Jace.” Who said anything about wanting one? Anyway, baby or not, Gary is stoked he gets to see Jenelle Evans nude for the rest of his life, or at least until their engagement ends this summer. “She just broke up with Kieffer [Delp] a week before the engagement and immediately got back with Gary,” the insider explains. “Gary is thrilled, because he had asked her to marry him before and she said no. I guess she changed her mind.” Guess so.
Demi Lovato is currently judging X Factor auditions and will kick off a summer tour on June 12 in Del Mar, California. In other words: she’s very busy these days. But give the singer about a decade and she’ll be ready to settle down. “I want to be married with kids in 10 years,” Lovato tells the latest issue of Cosmopolitan , which is apparently all about sex and nudity for a change. With what kind of man will Lovato end up? She can’t say for certain, of course, but she does dish on one deal breaker:’ “I know one quality I won’t tolerate: I would never be with a guy who is controlling.” That point of view has to do with the problems has Lovato encountered throughout her teenage years, issues related to depression and eating disorders. She tells Cosmo she felt “relieved” when she was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder in 2010. “I felt relieved when I found out. Like I’m not completely crazy; there’s a medical reason for all of it. It’s a daily thing; you don’t get time off from it. And if I feel myself slipping back into old patterns, I have to ask others for help, which is hard for me to learn, because I really like doing everything on my own.”
