If you’re gearing up to see Ridley Scott’s sci-fi flick for the first time, make sure you’re well-versed in its extraterrestrial lingo. By Kevin P. Sullivan Michael Fassbender in “Prometheus” Photo: If you’re headed out to theaters this weekend to see Ridley Scott ‘s ” Prometheus ,” there are two likely explanations: You’ve been hounded by your friends who have already seen it with theories and a need for discussion or you’re one of those friends and need to see it again. Either way, “Prometheus” is a dense movie filled with symbolism, call-backs to the original “Alien,” and mysteries with elliptical answers, so it might be best to go into the theater with a bit of a primer for what’s about to happen. Whether you’re new to “Prometheus” or you’re very familiar with the work of Weyland Industries, here are some things to consider before heading into the theater. There are no major spoilers here, but if you want to go into “Prometheus” completely fresh, you should probably stop reading. Prometheus : The titan who molded man from clay and gave them fire, which he stole from the gods. As punishment, an eagle repeatedly ate his liver, which regenerated daily. Weyland Industries : The corporation that funds the mission in “Prometheus,” creators of the David 8 android, and antecedent to the Weyland-Yutani Corporation from the “Alien” films. Peter Weyland : Founder of Weyland Industries, played by Guy Pearce. David 8 : An android programmed to assist human life and understand human emotions. He is played by Michael Fassbender in “Prometheus.” Xenomorph : This classic creature from “Alien” bleeds a corrosive acid. It is “a survivor… unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.” The perfect organism. Space Jockey : An enormous, dead humanoid found at the beginning of “Alien” with his chest burst open, surrounded by xenomorph eggs. Facehugger : A developmental stage of the classic “Alien” xenomorph. This creature attaches itself to a host’s face and deposits an embryo in his or her stomach. Chestburster : The phase after facehugger. Once an embryo fully develops, it will exit its host through the abdomen. “Lawrence of Arabia” : The 1962 David Lean film starring Peter O’Toole as T.E. Lawrence. This film appears in “Prometheus” and is the origin of such quotes as “Big things have small beginnings,” “There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing,” and “The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.” LV223 : An Earth-like moon where scientists travel to in “Prometheus” after finding star maps on several prehistoric drawings. LV426 : An inhospitable planetoid where the crew of the Nostromo encounter the Space Jockey and the xenomorph eggs. Check out everything we’ve got on “Prometheus.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com .
“After the show I have to really put some more attention to sex in my life,” Marina Abramovic vows near the beginning of Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present , an elegantly observed, sleekly packaged look at an artist whose career-long balance of enigma and self-exposure culminated in a 2010 retrospective at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. “Semi-intellectual artist at the top of her career,” goes Abramovic’s self-drafted personal ad, “looking for single male.” My head completed a few full rotations taking in what all’s going on in that sentence, but let’s begin with the part about being on top. That Abramovic seems to have willed her own peak into being — the German artist Frank Uwe Laysiepen (AKA “Ulay”) teases his former partner about whether she now prefers to be addressed as “the grandmother of performance art” or “the diva of performance art” — is deftly interlayered with director and cinematographer Matthew Akers’s presentation of a life and career united by the stubborn pursuit of meaning. The picture gives a sense of life’s fragments aligning, finally, to form a coherent story. What that story is depends on who’s doing the telling, of course. At the outset of her three-month MoMA performance — where the artist sat like a Buddha in a red (or blue, or white) dress, receiving an intrigued, then entranced, then near-hysterical public, one at a time, for a bout of eye contact across a wooden table — Abramovic outlines the three different versions of herself, her favorite being the pure, unshackled sensibility watching over the two other, more mortal selves. Hers is a very physical feat, as is made clear; there’s a bedpan built into her chair, and Ulay describes being wrecked by a similar performance during their partnership. As she did then, Marina carries on, outlasting her lover and smiting her doubters, a martyr to an indeterminate and therefore capacious cause — to “create a charismatic space” that will slow down time, return us to the present, absorb our ills, reflect us to ourselves, and/or furnish an insatiable attention-seeker with patiently queued reams of admirers. There is a careful reverence to these kinds of commissioned artist studies, and the earnest styling of the subject as a kind of time-bending sensei — a destination and a journey — might feel more poncy if it hadn’t played out pretty much exactly that way over three months in midtown Manhattan. Walking into the atrium the first day of the exhibition, Abramovic jokes about feeling like Marie Antoinette being led to her fate. But if the crossover success of “The Artist Is Present” came as a surprise, The Artist Is Present suggests a woman very consciously stepping forward to collect her due. “Excuse me,” Abramovic says in her smoky Balkan accent, “I’m 63 — I don’t want to be alternative anymore.” But the HBO treatment (it will air on that channel after a brief theatrical run) makes a strange and occasionally unsatisfying match for its subject. Entire corollary documentaries are glimpsed in a scene or a comment: Ambramovic’s ambition is alluded to in somewhat dark tones; the footage of striking and often disturbing previous performances barely outlines a complex and sometimes confounding sensibility; gallerist Sean Kelly speaks of his team’s invention of a market for her work, a model that has become a standard in the performance-art world; Ulay’s reappearance and the couple’s awkward, poignant reunion suggests untold romantic galaxies. And then there is curator Klaus Biesenbach, who in word and manner reveals a critical, under-investigated side of Abramovic. “Klaus, I love you,” Abramovic murmurs to him in the moments before her performance begins. “Is this okay?” Biesenbach acquires a curiously steely look when he describes the way “Marina seduces everyone she ever meets.” They are great friends now, he says, repeating it twice, “but we’re divorced .” Groupies and pranksters abound, as do would-be artists who see themselves as part of the show; all shenanigans are quickly shut down as Abramovic lowers her head like a mournful deity. In fact, Biesenbach says, the exhibition is ultimately a self-portrait, and just as he mistakenly believed Abramovic to be in love with him, so the same misunderstanding is repeated “with every single person in the atrium.” The better part of Abramovic’s personality slips out in asides and interactions, rather than in the rehearsed bits about her trinity of selves. Eerily untouched by age, her imposing physicality is softened by girlish accents. A shadow storyline trails Akers’s art show procedural, and it involves, of all plainly human things, Marina Abramovic getting laid. And yet the sideways frequency with which the issue comes up feels telling. As so often seems to be the case with successful women, for Abramovic being at the top of her career means forever looking past that next big project for her “other” life to begin, the one where she falls in love and has heaps of sex and looks up the hot Asian guy from day X and hour Y of her MoMA residency. At the outset Abramovic says she wanted to show the world, one time, the unglamorous underside of art’s creation; in fact the result has a slickness some might find disconcerting. Seeing her pinned down and packaged as an art star or even just a documentary “personality” might feel antithetical to a body of work committed to its own transience. And yet The Artist Is Present is ultimately an Abramovic production, whether the purists care to acknowledge her love of designer clothes and way with a one-liner or not. Why shouldn’t this be the woman who made an entire city confront the tyranny of time’s passage? Because I wasn’t seeking anything so grand from this clean-lined documentary, I came away moved most of all by the perseverance of an artist who, having put the time in, was rewarded with a moment that set a life lived largely through performance into meaningful relief. There’s also something to be said for having your ex come and pay homage to you, on your turf, at a MoMA restrospective of your career. As Ulay himself demurs: Only respect. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
“After the show I have to really put some more attention to sex in my life,” Marina Abramovic vows near the beginning of Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present , an elegantly observed, sleekly packaged look at an artist whose career-long balance of enigma and self-exposure culminated in a 2010 retrospective at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. “Semi-intellectual artist at the top of her career,” goes Abramovic’s self-drafted personal ad, “looking for single male.” My head completed a few full rotations taking in what all’s going on in that sentence, but let’s begin with the part about being on top. That Abramovic seems to have willed her own peak into being — the German artist Frank Uwe Laysiepen (AKA “Ulay”) teases his former partner about whether she now prefers to be addressed as “the grandmother of performance art” or “the diva of performance art” — is deftly interlayered with director and cinematographer Matthew Akers’s presentation of a life and career united by the stubborn pursuit of meaning. The picture gives a sense of life’s fragments aligning, finally, to form a coherent story. What that story is depends on who’s doing the telling, of course. At the outset of her three-month MoMA performance — where the artist sat like a Buddha in a red (or blue, or white) dress, receiving an intrigued, then entranced, then near-hysterical public, one at a time, for a bout of eye contact across a wooden table — Abramovic outlines the three different versions of herself, her favorite being the pure, unshackled sensibility watching over the two other, more mortal selves. Hers is a very physical feat, as is made clear; there’s a bedpan built into her chair, and Ulay describes being wrecked by a similar performance during their partnership. As she did then, Marina carries on, outlasting her lover and smiting her doubters, a martyr to an indeterminate and therefore capacious cause — to “create a charismatic space” that will slow down time, return us to the present, absorb our ills, reflect us to ourselves, and/or furnish an insatiable attention-seeker with patiently queued reams of admirers. There is a careful reverence to these kinds of commissioned artist studies, and the earnest styling of the subject as a kind of time-bending sensei — a destination and a journey — might feel more poncy if it hadn’t played out pretty much exactly that way over three months in midtown Manhattan. Walking into the atrium the first day of the exhibition, Abramovic jokes about feeling like Marie Antoinette being led to her fate. But if the crossover success of “The Artist Is Present” came as a surprise, The Artist Is Present suggests a woman very consciously stepping forward to collect her due. “Excuse me,” Abramovic says in her smoky Balkan accent, “I’m 63 — I don’t want to be alternative anymore.” But the HBO treatment (it will air on that channel after a brief theatrical run) makes a strange and occasionally unsatisfying match for its subject. Entire corollary documentaries are glimpsed in a scene or a comment: Ambramovic’s ambition is alluded to in somewhat dark tones; the footage of striking and often disturbing previous performances barely outlines a complex and sometimes confounding sensibility; gallerist Sean Kelly speaks of his team’s invention of a market for her work, a model that has become a standard in the performance-art world; Ulay’s reappearance and the couple’s awkward, poignant reunion suggests untold romantic galaxies. And then there is curator Klaus Biesenbach, who in word and manner reveals a critical, under-investigated side of Abramovic. “Klaus, I love you,” Abramovic murmurs to him in the moments before her performance begins. “Is this okay?” Biesenbach acquires a curiously steely look when he describes the way “Marina seduces everyone she ever meets.” They are great friends now, he says, repeating it twice, “but we’re divorced .” Groupies and pranksters abound, as do would-be artists who see themselves as part of the show; all shenanigans are quickly shut down as Abramovic lowers her head like a mournful deity. In fact, Biesenbach says, the exhibition is ultimately a self-portrait, and just as he mistakenly believed Abramovic to be in love with him, so the same misunderstanding is repeated “with every single person in the atrium.” The better part of Abramovic’s personality slips out in asides and interactions, rather than in the rehearsed bits about her trinity of selves. Eerily untouched by age, her imposing physicality is softened by girlish accents. A shadow storyline trails Akers’s art show procedural, and it involves, of all plainly human things, Marina Abramovic getting laid. And yet the sideways frequency with which the issue comes up feels telling. As so often seems to be the case with successful women, for Abramovic being at the top of her career means forever looking past that next big project for her “other” life to begin, the one where she falls in love and has heaps of sex and looks up the hot Asian guy from day X and hour Y of her MoMA residency. At the outset Abramovic says she wanted to show the world, one time, the unglamorous underside of art’s creation; in fact the result has a slickness some might find disconcerting. Seeing her pinned down and packaged as an art star or even just a documentary “personality” might feel antithetical to a body of work committed to its own transience. And yet The Artist Is Present is ultimately an Abramovic production, whether the purists care to acknowledge her love of designer clothes and way with a one-liner or not. Why shouldn’t this be the woman who made an entire city confront the tyranny of time’s passage? Because I wasn’t seeking anything so grand from this clean-lined documentary, I came away moved most of all by the perseverance of an artist who, having put the time in, was rewarded with a moment that set a life lived largely through performance into meaningful relief. There’s also something to be said for having your ex come and pay homage to you, on your turf, at a MoMA restrospective of your career. As Ulay himself demurs: Only respect. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Following a whirlwind rise to fame in his native Sweden, actor Joel Kinnaman is beginning to make his mark on American audiences thanks to a breakout turn as Detective Holder on AMC’s The Killing and his high-profile casting in the upcoming RoboCop remake . For the Stockholm-born 32-year-old, who breaks Greta Gerwig’s heart at the start of this week’s Lola Versus (but manages to remain sympathetic — a rarity in romantic comedies), setting out for Hollywood couldn’t have come at a better time. And according to him, taking risks — in work and beyond — is what living is all about: “Nothing is more important than the choices we make and the life we choose to live.” Over the course of a decade, the blond, strikingly handsome Kinnaman has emerged as one of Sweden’s most promising talents. Crossing over to Hollywood, he appeared in The Darkest Hour , The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo , and Safe House , while his 2010 Swedish crime thriller Snabba Cash — set to be remade in English with Zac Efron — will debut stateside this summer. In Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister Jones’s Lola Versus Kinnaman takes a slight detour from the “darkness and grittiness” he’s embraced for years, playing Luke, the NYC artist who gets cold feet and breaks his engagement to Greta Gerwig’s Lola, forcing her to re-examine herself and her fairytale expectations of life and love. Kinnaman rang Movieline from London for a wide-ranging conversation about living without regret, leaving Sweden in time to avoid waking up at 45 years old “doing auditions for the third swordsman on Game of Thrones ,” why he quit Twitter but can’t help Googling himself every now and then, and (of course!) our robot future. Hi there! Where are you calling from, by the way? I’m walking around in my robe in a hotel room in London. What are you doing in London? I’m shooting an H&M commercial. Aha! So, let me get this out of the way right off the bat: I got hooked on The Killing and watched all of the first season, on demand, in a matter of days. [Laughs] That’s the way I like to watch stuff, too! Given that most folks here know you as Holder from The Killing , Lola Versus is an interesting project to come out for you now that you’re starting to cross-over from Swedish film and TV into Hollywood. Was it appealing, the variation? Well, yes — it was a very welcome light side step from all the darkness and grittiness that I’ve been involved with, pretty much throughout my whole career. I’m a pretty light and light-spirited person; I’m not a depressed guy. I think that in Sweden and a lot of European countries there’s this whole mythology of the wounded artist, that you can’t really do any great art unless you’re suffering. And I always thought that was bullshit, I thought it was out of not being able to trust yourself to dive into those deep waters, so you create this persona of a struggling person that in turn would make it believable that you could portray these characters. But I’ve usually been cast as these dark, complex, struggling people. Why do you think that is? I don’t know. Of course I have that in me, too, but that’s not what I nourish in life. I don’t think that anybody that is depressed wants to be depressed, and that’s often what you see from performances with actors like that; it’s a depressed character from the first step onstage or the first frame of a movie and it’s like [sighs] and there’s no real journey to it. Does this make you a sort of anti-method actor? Well, I’m not a method actor per se, but if I’m playing a character that at its core of its persona has experiences I don’t have, I try to search out and get firsthand experiences of similar sorts so I have something to fantasize about. I think my technique is always evolving, and I think every character has its technique, but the thread through the way I work is that I usually try to get myself real experience doing what the character does so I have something real to fantasize about. Along those lines, you did ride-alongs with police officers to prepare to play Holder on The Killing , so I’m assuming you’ll spend some time with robots for RoboCop … [Laughs] Yeah, I’m going to Japan and spending time with [real life robots]. Have you seen those? Pretty cool. I have, and it blows my mind that a RoboCop -like future may not be too far away. It’s not. Have you seen these Japanese hospital droids, or humanoids, or whatever they call it? They’ve perfected the skin, and the skin looks so real. They have these motors between the eyes for when they smile. It’s just mind-blowing. We’re pretty close already. You can find it on YouTube! It’s spooky. Lola Versus is a relationship movie, an alternative romantic dramedy, but it’s surprisingly balanced and complex as these movies go — your character is a character who in any average rom-com might be written as evil, so we can hate him off the bat for dumping Lola. But we can’t really do that here. Yeah, it feels more balanced and not so formulaic in that sense. And I like that it starts out where most rom-coms end. And the message of the movie was one of the things that drew me to it; this message of ‘freedom for solitude.’ But at its main core it says, don’t throw your life away by living your life by a formula, like how things are supposed to be done. I think that’s what freaks Luke out — he’s realizing that life is a precious thing and maybe he hasn’t given it everything he could. It’s like being a little bit of a coward. One of the things that came to mind when I read the script, and something I think about a lot, is I believe that this life is everything that we have, and nothing happens after it — nothing is more important than the choices we make and the life we choose to live. There was this, I think, Danish documentary where they did interviews with old people, in their 80s, all over the world, from different classes and histories of wealth, different ethnicities, different religious backgrounds. Interviewing them on life; how they looked upon life. And of course the answers were all across the board, because everyone has such a different outlook on life, because of where they’re from. But there was one question that had a much higher resonance of the quality of answers, all over the world, in different classes and ethnicities, and that was, “What is your biggest regret in life?” And the answer that was common was, “That I didn’t take more emotional risks.” I’m turning 31, and having been thinking about those kinds of questions lately, I’ll be honest with you — watching Lola Versus at times was a little too real for me. [Laughs] Those are the kinds of reality checks that we need! If you got that feeling, that’s the best thing that can happen to you. I think that being a coward within yourself and not exposing yourself to life, giving yourself an opportunity to be everything that you can be — giving yourself the opportunity to evolve fully, to the furthest extent of where you could come — that’s a crime to yourself. You have to be brave. Speaking of such things as bravery, the leap you made from Sweden to Hollywood seems like a challenging transition to make. You’ve talked about going out for auditions, having to deal with not having a big enough “name”… I got out of acting school in 2007, and I had two very intense years — I did nine features in 16 months, where I played the lead in all of them, and at the same time I was playing the lead, Raskolnikov, in Crime and Punishment . It was like a three hour and 45 minute play that was a big success in Sweden. So I had a very intense two first years after I got out of acting school, and it was after that whole period before those movies had come out, that I made the decision to move. It was a good choice, and I was aware of my situation, [thinking] it’s a good time to go now, because in three or four years I’ll be established in a way, in Sweden, where I’m going to be used to being treated in a certain way and that can be difficult to change. So it was very easy to come over to the State without having an ego about things like that. You were afraid that a few more years of success in Sweden and you’d be too famous? Maybe you get too used to not having to fight for stuff. It’s more difficult when you’ve been working as an established actor for 20 years and then as a 45-year-old, everyone respects you and knows your body of work, and then all of a sudden you come to the States and nobody knows who you are, and you’re doing auditions for the third swordsman on Game of Thrones . That can be humiliating, but… so it was a good time for me to come over. You’ve got The Killing and Lola Versus out and, soon, American audiences will see you in a Swedish film, Snabba Cash . And then, Robocop . When I spoke with Jose Padilha about his Elite Squad films, he shared his take on RoboCop and why it was compelling on a human level and it was really interesting to hear his philosophical approach. I mean, he’s a young master, and a very strong visionary. He wants to make something with a lot of substance. And if you’ve seen Elite Squad , you know that the action sequences are a walk in the park for him. He can portray action very realistically — and that’s how he wants to do this movie. It takes place in the future, and it’s RoboCop , but it’s still going to feel like a gritty, down to earth movie… with a lot of fireworks around it. You’ve described a difference in your acting approach to the character, that this RoboCop would be more of an “acting piece” than the original. How so, and why? It just comes from the realization of, as we were talking about robots earlier, our vision of a robot 30 years from now is very different from what a robot was in the future in 1987. That is the main thing, and then there are obviously some things in the script that lead into that that I can’t talk about. Lastly, you spoke about your fame in Sweden and there is certainly a wealth of admiration online for your work there. Now that you’re carving out a career here, do you go online and read what’s written about yourself? Are you tempted to be on Twitter, as some actors and filmmakers are? I did have a Twitter account, but five episodes into The Killing I terminated it. [Laughs] I felt that it’s enough of a struggle to keep my narcissism at bay, I don’t need to know what everybody’s saying about me. It’s just not healthy. But of course, I’ll Google my name time and again. But I try not to dive too deep into it. Of course, it’s always tempting, and it’s always there and it’s fascinating to hear what people say about you, but my experience of doing that is it’s like Russian roulette. You won’t stop looking until you find somebody saying something really nasty about you, and that’s the only way you’re satisfied. It doesn’t matter if there are 200 people saying great things, you’re only going to remember that one person that said something horrible about you, and there’s no point in that. Lola Versus is in select theaters today. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Underwood wins Video of the Year for ‘Good Girl’ and Collaborative Video By Gil Kaufman Carrie Underwood at the 2012 CMT Music Awards Photo: FilmMagic “American Idol” has struggled to produce hit rock and R&B stars lately, but the show clearly has a knack for pumping out country acts. Just look at the winner’s circle for Wednesday night’s CMT Music Awards ceremony, where “Idol” winner Carrie Underwood took home two major honors and Scotty McCreery went home with some hardware as well. Underwood, who also performed on the broadcast hosted by Toby Keith and actress Kristen Bell, snagged her third Video of the Year honor for the “Good Girl” clip, and hit the podium once again for Collaborative Video of the Year for her work on the “Rescue Me” video with Brad Paisley. Underwood’s man, professional hockey player Mike Fisher, played the role of dutiful husband by giving his wife a big hug and kiss when she and Paisley won their award, then held her purse during the acceptance speech. Paisley had some fun, too, wrapping his arms around Fisher before taking the stage and giving him a long hug before thanking, “this beautiful woman for being in the video, or else it’s just a dork walking through the desert.” He concluded, “to my wife at home, there’s nothing between me and Mike,” to which Underwood added, “not yet!” Season 10 “Idol” champ McCreery continued his winning ways by scoring the USA Weekend Breakthrough Video of the Year for “The Trouble With Girls,” which he accepted just hours before his high school graduation ceremony. Other winners included Luke Bryan for Male Video of the Year for “I Don’t Want This Night To End,” Miranda Lambert for Female Video of the Year for “Over You” and Lady Antebellum for Group Video of the year for “We Owned The Night.” Bryan was clearly excited about his win, saying, “When you’re at this level of what we do as singers, and your fans vote, it speaks huge volumes and it’s crazy to be fan-voted for an award and win it … I don’t really get caught up in trying to be cool, trying to play a part. I just freaking get so excited about this stuff and I will always enjoy it.” Lambert’s acceptance speech was one of the most emotional of the night. Celebrating her third straight Female Video win for the song she co-wrote with husband Blake Shelton about the death of his brother, she thanked Shelton’s brother, “from heaven, for inspiring us to write this song.” Thompson Square accepted the Duo Video of the Year (“I Got You”) and Jason Aldean took home his first belt buckle with CMT Performance of the Year for “Tattoos On This Town.” The show opened with a bang, with a video bit pitting the hosts against each other in a battle to anchor the show alone that featured cameos from Matthew McConaughey, Jon Bon Jovi, President Obama and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. “This is one of the toughest decisions I’ve had to make since I’ve been in office, but I decided I want them both,” Obama said when forced to decide between the country star and the actress. Not wanting to offend any potential swing voters, Romney split the difference too, suggesting the pair work together. “See, I just put two people back to work,” he joked. The show also featured performances from Willie Nelson with Toby Keith, Jamey Johnson, Darius Rucker and Zac Brown Band, as well as Paisley with Hank Williams Jr., Lambert and Journey with Rascal Flatts. Related Artists Carrie Underwood
MTV Movie Awards nominee and Trailblazer Award recipient will play an ‘iCarly’ superfan on the Nick show. By Jocelyn Vena Emma Stone Photo: Getty Images Emma Stone will make an appearance on the final season of the hit Nickelodeon show “iCarly.” According to Stone will play a fan of “iCarly” who Carly and her friends come across while they seek out more mature friends for their pal Spencer. In addition to Stone, talk-show host Jimmy Fallon recently shot a cameo for an upcoming episode. “iCarly” will wrap its fifth and final season this November . “They’ve been saying it’s going to be the final season for a few seasons, and then we always end up doing more episodes ’cause we love making the show,” Carly herself, Miranda Cosgrove, recently told MTV News. “We love doing it, and we have the best time ever, but we didn’t want to overstay our welcome because we feel like it’s something really special.” Before her appearance on “iCarly,” Stone will be at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards where she will receive the MTV Trailblazer Award for her work, which spans all genres. She’s also up for Best Female Performance for her rom-com “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” Best Kiss for her smooch with co-star Ryan Gosling in the flick, and Best Cast for her work in the critically acclaimed “The Help.” To see what other prizes Emma goes home with, tune into the Sunday’s show, hosted by Russell Brand and featuring performances by Fun. , the Black Keys, Martin Solveig and Wiz Khalifa . It all goes down live from the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, California, on Sunday at 9 p.m. ET. 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.
From Twilight to Teen Mom, no pop-culture stone was left unturned. By Terri Schwartz Russell Brand hosts the 2012 MTV Movie Awards Photo: Kevin Winter/ Getty Images UNIVERSAL CITY, California — Russell Brand might have to host every MTV awards show from here on out! The 2012 MTV Movie Awards were immediately off to a good start thanks to Brand’s , and he kept the jokes rolling throughout the rest of the two-hour-long show. In honor of Brand’s sharp witticisms, we’ve put together a list of his nine best jokes that kept us laughing long after he finished telling them. Twilight! Hunger Games! When Brand first walked out onto the Movie Awards stage and started yelling, ” Twilight! Hunger Games!” we figured he was off Andy Samberg. Instead, as he said later in the monologue, he was using them because “these words generate goodwill.” They certainly did, as he used them repeatedly over the course of the night. It’s the End of the World as We Know It “Tonight is an important ceremony because according to the Mayans, the world will end in December this year,” Brand pointed out. “If Earth hurtles into the sun and humanity is destroyed, we will all say as one: We had the MTV Movie Awards 2012 and it was worth it! ” Yes we can, and yes we will. Justin Bieber Is the Man The first pop-culturally relevant moment Brand brought up in his opening monologue was Justin Bieber’s recent attack on a member of the paparazzi. “Justin Bieber beat up a paparazzi. Well done, Justin!” he said. Brand went on to say that he didn’t think he’d ever be able to hit Biebs if he fought him because the 18-year-old is “so pretty” that “even if he was attacking me, I think I would do a little orgasm.” Well, to each his own. Kann-Yay and Kim Brand was quick to thank Kim Kardashian for making his short-lived marriage to Katy Perry not seem so bad in the scheme of things, but he then went on to beg the “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” star and her new boyfriend Kanye West — whose first name he repeatedly mispronounced ” Kann -Yay” — to make a sex tape. “I think of Kim Kardashian as the Stanley Kubrick of sex tapes,” Brand said. “They’re always brilliant, but he only does one a decade.” Brand’s Special “Grease” Tribute Nothing was off limits during the Movie Awards, not even John Travolta’s recent sex scandal . After saying that “Rock of Ages” is the best movie since “Grease,” Brand said he honored that film by giving Travolta a massage. “He needed it, man. He was so stiff, I’m telling ya!” Brand said. Michael Fassbender and His Penis He claimed he never noticed Fassbender’s “huge, engorged talent as I was staring at his massive co–.” That must have been why he decided the “Prometheus” star was going to be the next celebrity he married following hosting an MTV awards show. Sorry, Katy! Taking Advantage of Charlie Sheen’s Old Addictions Charlie Sheen was a great sport during Brand’s opening monologue, especially since the Brit repeatedly took jabs at the “Anger Management” star’s recent problems. “I’ve taped a bottle of Hennessy and a gram of coke under your chair. In case I start going crazy, just nick it and do a couple of lines. Release the tiger blood hero!” Brand said to resounding laughter. Our New Host: Julianne Hough’s Nephew One of the best parts of the night came when a behind-the-scenes shot showed Brand coaching Julianne Hough’s nephew and date for the night to replace him as host. According to Brand, all you need to do to be a great Movie Awards host is talk about farts a lot . And the cutest part is that it was all improvised “! “Teen Mom” Vs. “Teen Wolf” As you probably realized once the 2012 MTV Movie Awards wrapped, the show wasn’t followed by “Teen Mom,” but rather by the season-two premiere of “Teen Wolf.” Whoops! We can’t tell if his gibes at “Teen Mom” instead of “Wolf” were intentional or a mistake, but we still can’t get over his joke, “Do stay tuned after the show for the new season of Teen Mom, where pregnant women are laughed at for money!” Jaw-dropping, heart-pounding, gut-busting moments galore. See what just happened at the 21st annual MTV Movie Awards ! Related Videos 2012 Movie Awards: Most Talked-About Moments Related Photos 2012 Movie Awards: Show Highlights
Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney joke about forming a T. Rex cover band with Depp and Matthew McConaughey. By Kara Warner, with reporting by Josh Horowitz Johnny Depp and the Black Keys perform at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards Photo: Kevin Winter/ Getty Images UNIVERSAL CITY, California — The 2012 MTV Movie Awards only just ended, but we can’t get over the epic onscreen performance/award presentation between the Black Keys and Johnny Depp. Not to mention the fact that they were introduced by rock gods Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith. When MTV News caught up with the Keys themselves, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, backstage after their performance, we asked them how they were feeling after coming offstage. “Super normal, that’s a normal moment for us,” Auerbach joked. “Yeah that’s our normal lives, hanging out with rock stars and movie stars, you know. It was actually a little boring.” “I was trying to hold back yawns,” added Carney. We then tried to get to the bottom of how the unexpected collaboration came to fruition, but even the Keys themselves seemed to have no idea. “I don’t know, I think MTV has a random computer generator,” Auerbach joked, with Carney chiming in, “It was supposed to be us and Regis Philbin, but we rejected it.” In all seriousness, the duo had nothing but praise for their guest star, particularly his preparation and skills on the guitar. “He’s a really good guitar player,” Carney said. “Yeah, no joke. He’s a really good guitar player,” Auerbach reiterated. So now that they’ve played with one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, what other movie stars will the Keys be collaborating with in the future? “Matthew McConaughey on bongos,” Carney joked. “We’re going to start a T. Rex cover band with Johnny Depp and Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Finn.” And now that they’ve finished their work for the night, will the guys be meeting up with Depp after the show? “We’re all going to go meet up at Se
This is a powerful story, and if this kid can achieve what he has, there isn’t anything that you can’t achieve. Homeless High School Student David Boone Accepted To Harvard David Boone had a system. There wasn’t much the then-15-year-old could do about the hookers or drug deals around him when he slept in Artha Woods Park. And the spectator’s bench at the park’s baseball diamond wasn’t much of a bed. But the aspiring engineer, now 18 and headed to Harvard University in the fall, had no regular home. Though friends, relatives and school employees often put him up, there were nights when David had no place to go, other than the park off Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. So he says he made the best of those nights on the wooden bench. His book bag became his pillow, stuffed with textbooks first — for height, he says — and papers on top for padding. In the morning, David would duck into his friend Eric’s house after Eric’s parents left early for work so he could shower and dress before heading to class at Cleveland’s specialized MC2STEM High School. David expects to graduate from there next month as salutatorian of the new school’s first graduating class. “I’d do my homework in a rapid station, usually Tower City since they have heat, and I’d stay wherever I could find,” he said. David says that giving up would have left him stuck in a dead-end life, so it was never an option. “I didn’t know what the results of not giving up were going to be, but it was better than nothing and having no advantages,” he said. “I wanted to be in a position to have options to do what I want to do.” David was born to a young mother, who divorced his father when David was a little boy. When David was a student at Sunbeam Elementary, medical problems put him in the hospital regularly, said Mary Solomon-Gatson, the school’s former nurse. Even then, she said, he impressed her as a bright child. He was one of the school’s few students to pass the state’s achievement tests, she said, despite missing classes constantly. Even at that school, which covers kindergarten through eighth grade, David said he was pushed to join gangs. He refused, fueling tension with gang members. Once, he says, they tried to jump him. Because his older sister dated a member of a rival gang, he said, the situation was that much worse. “There was a lot of pressure for me to join. That was the life they lived, so it was the only life to live and they thought if I wasn’t with them, I was against them,” David said. In the summer after eighth grade, he said, gang members shot at his family’s Eddy Road home. He attributes that mostly to the issue of his sister’s boyfriend, but his whole family was affected. No one was injured, but the family split up. His mother went to stay with a boyfriend, he said. His three sisters went to stay with friends and he went to his friend Eric’s house — for a while. Though Eric’s family took him in for a short time, he said, he couldn’t stay there permanently. “We’ve been through a lot as a family,” said his mom, Moneeke Davis. “There’s been a lot of challenges and adversity.” But she said David was determined to build a better life. “He’s so focused, so driven and so humble,” Davis said, adding that she is grateful for the people “the Lord put in [David’s] path” to help him. Sometimes he stayed with Solomon-Gatson, sometimes with Eric, sometimes with other friends and relatives, and sometimes in the park. “It’s a lot to take someone in, particularly a teenage boy,” David said. “I was kind of upset that no one would, but I was never upset at any one person.” Though the park baseball diamond was mostly isolated from crime in other parts of the park, he soon decided it wasn’t safe to sleep there. He says he developed a new plan: When he wasn’t in school, he would sleep in parks during the day and roam and study at night, so he’d be awake and alert to trouble. “If you sleep in the daytime in the park, people don’t bother you,” he said. “You’re just taking a nap. It’s acceptable.” In between studying at Tower City, he’d work at a now-closed boutique, he said, to buy food. Before leaving Sunbeam, David had applied to several district specialty high schools, including the John Hay School of Science and Medicine. But he was intrigued after attending a meeting at the Cleveland Public Library about the newly created MC2STEM High School, which teaches science, technology, engineering and math with a hands-on, projects-based program. David likes tinkering and learns best by pulling things apart to see how they work. When he was 6, he says, he took apart the family television set and put it back together in working order. His favorite part of school, pre-high school, was an eighth-grade project about solar electricity. That let him dive in and make plans for a combined solar and wind farm that he was excited about. MC2STEM caught his eye because it would allow him to work on projects at the Great Lakes Science Center, with General Electric at the Nela Park campus and with companies across the region. With a nudge from Solomon-Gatson, he applied and was accepted. Instantly, he was hooked by an early project on alternative energy. That covered material he had worked on for his solar and wind farm project and had him working on it with GE engineers. MC2STEM also pushed him — hard. “They don’t accept mediocrity,” he said. The school requires students to master a subject before moving on to the next. In the first two years, students receive an A in a class or an incomplete and keep taking the class until they earn an A. MC2STEM also has longer school days and a year-round schedule with classes most of the summer. Through the school, David has worked at Lockheed Martin and Rockwell Automation and landed a spot last year at the Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Like many students at MC2STEM, he took classes at Cleveland State University this spring, in subjects such as differential equations, calculus-based physics and an introduction to computer science. MC2STEM Principal Jeff McClellan praised David’s appetite for learning and his ability to connect with people who can help him learn what he needs. “If you tell him that ‘a person can help you with your calculus, make the call,’ he’ll do it,” McClellan said. “He was getting up at 5 a.m. and coming in early to get caught up on his work.” Over time, McClellan learned one of the other reasons that David was coming in early was because he was bouncing from place to place to place. So McClellan and his wife took in David. He lived with them for more than a year — parts of 10th and 11th grade. “My wife and I talked it over and said that we can’t do everything for everybody,” McClellan said. “But we could help him. It was just the right thing to do. He needed somewhere to go.” David is now living with his friend Eric again but said he was thankful to McClellan for the home when he needed one and for continuing to offer help after he left. “There’s nothing I can’t call him for,” David said. Now the school and the district can brag about David’s success. He turned down places like Yale and Princeton to go to Harvard, where he will study engineering and computer science. He also landed a Gates Millennium Scholarship, which will cover all of his college costs not covered by other aid. “It wasn’t all easy,” David said. “It wasn’t all fun and games. It was a lot of hard work and I just made it happen.” What an amazing story. It is kind of hard to understand why his mother or one of his sisters wasn’t able to care for him — but times have been hard and when they are that hard people really struggle to take care of themselves, so much so that they can’t take care of others. Source
Andy Samberg, Ciara and crew weigh in on teaming up for a Sandler comedy, during Movie Awards Sneak Peek Week. By Josh Wigler, with reporting by Josh Horowitz The cast of “That’s My Boy” Photo: MTV News Whether he’s going back to school, tapping in golf balls or hanging out with his fellow grown-ups, Adam Sandler knows how to bring the laughs. He’s especially hilarious when he’s allowed to deliver his fair share of F-bombs, which he does rather liberally in “That’s My Boy,” his new comedy about a disgraced father — that’s Sandler — trying to reconnect with his son, played by “Saturday Night Live” comedian Andy Samberg. It’s a ridiculous premise, sure; Sandler’s only 12 years older than Samberg, after all. But that doesn’t make working on “That’s My Boy” anything less of a dream come true for Samberg. As part of our Sneak Peek Week leading up to the MTV Movie Awards on Sunday (June 3), Samberg and his “That’s My Boy” co-stars joined together onstage to praise the work of Sandler, one of the Lonely Island frontman’s comedy heroes. “It was awesome to work on this,” he said. “It was a full-tilt dream come true for me to be asked to do it.” Co-star Will Forte agreed, saying, “It was such a wonderful set, because Adam, who’s also one of my comedy heroes, tells you exactly what he wants, then he lets you discover stuff on your own too. He points you in the right direction. He’s so amazing to work with.” Amazing, yes, but vulgar too. Make no mistake: “That’s My Boy” is a hard R packed to the gills with beer, bongs, boobs and bad language. “It is a dirty movie. It’s a raunchy movie,” Forte said. “If you’ve seen previews for the movie, then you have no idea what it’s about, because they need to take five seconds here and five seconds there. … It’s a dirty movie.” It’s not just comedy veterans like Sandler, Samberg and Forte who get dirty in “That’s My Boy” either. Even Grammy-nominated singer Ciara was allowed to get in on the fun, and she said she’s walking away from the Sandler experience with a desire to pursue further acting adventures. “It was so much fun. This crew is so hilarious,” she said. “From this experience, I want to do so much more. I’m determined to do more.” As for what Samberg took away from working with Ciara? “She taught me so many dance moves,” he quipped. Head over to MovieAwards.MTV.com to vote for your favorite flicks now! The 21st annual MTV Movie Awards air live Sunday, June 3, at 9 p.m. ET. Related Videos Movie Awards Sneak Peek Week: ‘That’s My Boy’
