AP - "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" gobbled up $140.7 million the first three days the vampire romance was in theaters, while gaining $258.8 million worldwide, according to studio estimates.
AP - "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" gobbled up $140.7 million the first three days the vampire romance was in theaters, while gaining $258.8 million worldwide, according to studio estimates.
Fidel Castro was 32 and building his new government on the fly. He nationalized Cuba's U.S.-run telephone company, tapped Che Guevara as head of the National Bank and claimed he was no... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 23 Nov 2009 | 12:00 am
Performances by Lady Gaga, Whitney Houston, Jennifer Lopez and Adam Lambert Highlighted the Show Winners include: Artist of the Year -- Taylor Swift and T-Mobile 'Breakthrough... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 23 Nov 2009 | 12:00 am
Adam Lambert is fully embracing his new solo career—as well as his keyboard player, too.
The American Idol runner-up gave the final performance at the 2009 American Music Awards,...
Why Not Harvest Pianos Instead?: The British TV series UFO will be turned into a movie starring Joshua Jackson. Jackson will play Paul Foster, a test pilot who works for a covert agency that defends earth against a race of organ-harvesting aliens. Matthew Gratzner, the visual effects supervisor on Iron Man, will be making his directing debut. He'll also be making explosions. [Variety]
It's a Mom's World:Oprah's company Harpo Films has set up a deal with HBO for an hourlong series about a woman who leaves her seemingly perfect family to live in L.A.'s underground, indulging her hedonistic fantasies. Erin Cressida Wilson, who wrote Secretary, is on board to write the pilot. Which means there will be spanking. Lots of spanking. [Variety]
Green Thumb:Twilight: New Moon director Chris Weitz has signed up to tackle a new film for Summit Entertainment. The Gardener revolves around an immigrant who lives in L.A. and works hard to provide for himself and his son. "There are no werewolves or vampires, just a Mexican gardener in Los Angeles," Weitz said. Sounds like the makings of a great Carlos Mencia joke. [Variety]
The Year of the Wolf: The werewolf invasion continues as producers Joel Kastelberg and Etchie Stroh plan to relaunch The Howling as The Howling: Reborn. The 1981 original was about a news anchor who was stalked by a serial killer that turned out to be a werewolf. The film spawned six sequels and a fear of people with really hairy faces. [Variety]
Art of Cooking:Art Smith, of Top Chef Masters and Oprah's kitchen, has landed his own show on TLC. Craving Comfort will follow Smith around the country as his explores variations on classic dishes like fried chicken and apple pie. He plans to dye his hair, wear sun glasses and get some flames tattooed on his neck, since that's a proven model for this kind of show. [THR]
On Saturday night, Senate Democrats squeaked by with the exact number of votes they needed to begin debate on their health care bill. But they'd prefer to not repeat that when it comes time to vote on the bill's passage. So Harry Reid and Co. have set their eyes north, on Maine.
After Saturday's vote, Reid personally reached out to Maine's GOP Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, who voted no on Saturday like all the rest of the Senate Republicans. But unlike most of their colleagues, they're not treating the Democrats's bill like some kind of second coming of small pox.
Collins, whose main concern is the bill's lack of emphasis on reining in the cost of coverage, said:
“I have ruled out voting for this bill but I still very much want to vote for a bill and that is why I am continuing to have discussions. I still cling to the belief that it is possible for a group of us to come together and rewrite the bill in a way that would cause it to have greater support.”
Snowe, who was the only Republican to support the Senate Finance Committee's health care proposal, withdrew her support when the public option was added. But she hasn't given up on the bill yet.
“I’m prepared to continue to work to improve the legislation,” said Ms. Snowe, who said how her proposals are handled will “be a true test of whether there is a will to improve this legislation in a non-ideological, bipartisan manner.”
_ Artist of the Year: Taylor Swift _ Pop-Rock: Male artist: Michael Jackson Female artist: Taylor Swift Band, duo or group: Black Eyed Peas Album: Michael Jackson, "Number... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 22 Nov 2009 | 10:11 pm
How do you say school's out in Chinese? Disney is recreating its hit franchise film "High School Musical" in the East as it turns its attention to the millions of teenagers in the... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 22 Nov 2009 | 9:55 pm
Taylor Swift was named artist of the year at the American Music Awards tonight, leaving the Pulitzer Prize as the only award she's yet to win. But she's releasing a cookbook soon, so that'll change. [AP]
If you thought you missed out on the worst part of the foreclosure crisis because you're a renter, you're wrong! According to the Washington Post, defaults are rising on multifamily buildings and as landlords start the march toward foreclosure they're cutting back on the amenities that renters have grown to expect. You know, things like maintenance, trash removal and extermination. [Washington Post]
Carrie Prejean may have been out of sight at Sunday's Miss California USA pageant—but she definitely was not out of mind.
The annual pageant, held at Agua Caliente Resort and...
Oprah only announced her impending retirement on Friday, and speculation on who will replace atop the talk show universe her has already begun. The Times pegs Ellen and Dr. Oz as the front runners, partially because their deals come up for renewal at the same time that Oprah plans to step down. Martha Stewart, Tyra and Bonnie Hunt could also reap some rewards from a talk-show landscape that doesn't include Oprah. But the darkest horse of them all is Katie Couric, who, the Times says, "has long been mentioned as a possible syndicated star." As long as they find someone who can yell out Daniel Day-Lewis half as well as Oprah, we'll be satisfied.
He's done radio. He's done TV. He's even done a Christmas special about a sweater. But Glenn Beck hasn't really done community organizing — until now. The Fox News host announced on his website this weekend that he'll soon hold a series of conventions to teach people “how to be a political force in your own neighborhood and country.” Beck's also working to develop “a 100 year plan” to defeat “the bipartisan corruption in Washington.” (He didn't say if he plans on living another hundred years). And in August he will host a rally in Washington as he releases a book and tours the country with Bill O'Reilly. Well, it's official. Beck is now the hardest working man in woe business.
Beck's plan: Rally followers, sell books [Politico]
Lady Gaga wasn't the most nominated entertainer at American Music Awards, but she was certainly the most compelling performer at Sunday's show. Wearing a Vulcan-inspired headdress and... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 22 Nov 2009 | 8:19 pm
BRASILIA, Brazil - British pop star Sting says Brazil's government should listen to the voices of local indigenous groups before building a massive hydroelectric dam in the Amazon rain... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 22 Nov 2009 | 8:15 pm
At right is the glove Michael Jackson wore when he first introduced the world to the moonwalk in 1983. It's "the Holy Grail" of Michael Jackson collectibles according to its auctioneer. Obviously, it's a beauty. But would you pay $350,000 for it? You would if you were Hong Kong businessman Hoffman Ma, who did just that this weekend. The glove will go on display in the Ponte 16 resort hotel and casino in Macau, the Las Vegas of China, which seems pretty appropriate.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and friends plan to plead not guilty so they can explain "what happened and why they did it," according to the lawyer for one of the suspected terrorists. Scott Fenstermaker, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali's lawyer, said the men wouldn't deny their role in 9/11 but would instead use this chance to give "their assessment of American foreign policy." In case that whole being a part of 9/11 thing didn't provide a clue of what that assessment looks like, Fenstermaker gave a little spoiler. "Their assessment is negative," he said.
Seven bulls from the set of Tom Cruise's latest movie rumbled through the streets of Cadiz, Spain today and injured two women along the way. The bulls escaped from the set of Knight & Day, an action-romance that also stars Cameron Diaz and Peter Sarsgaard, and ran toward a beach. Apparently they were spooked by some SPs. [AP]
Newspapers across the country are reporting circulation numbers that are likely much higher than reality, thanks to a nifty little auditing trick the AP discovered. The trick: if a newspaper sells a subscription to both a print and online version, that subscriber is counted twice. If not for this, circulation numbers would likely appear more dismal than they already do. Which is kind of unimaginable. [AP]
New Moon will close out its remarkable debut weekend with an...
(AP) AP - Pilot Chesley Sullenberger jokes that his heroic handling of a disabled jetliner brought him "rock star sex" in an interview for "NBC's People of the Year" special. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 22 Nov 2009 | 4:26 pm
Cougar Town fans are waiting with bated breath to find out if Jules Cobb can lock down a younger man. But some real-life drama involving star Courteney Cox is going to keep that cliffhanger...
After the abomination that was last week's January Jones hosted episode of Saturday Night Live, we opined that Seth Meyers and the show's writing staff was almost certainly fried after a fall schedule that has seen them put together seven original episodes of the Saturday night show and two episodes of Weekend Update Thursday in nine short weeks. Well, after last night's delightful and joyous program —the season's best episode by a long shot— it seems as if we may have been a bit too harsh on the writers and not quite critical enough of the effort that January Jones put in. Because unlike his predecessor from last week, from the moment that Joseph Gordon-Levitt hit the Studio 8H stage last night like a house of fire, it was clear that he was not only incredibly well prepared for his hosting duties but also extremely enthralled with the opportunity to demonstrate to everyone watching that he's a breakout talent on the verge of mainstream movie stardom.
After a pleasantly humorous cold open that managed to tie this week's meeting between President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao with one of the more underrated lines uttered by Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction ("Does Marsellus Wallace look like a bitch? Then why'd you try to fuck him like a bitch, Brett?"), Joseph Gordon-Levitt took the stage for his monologue beaming like someone who had been waiting decades for the opportunity to host SNL. He quickly stated that he had been thinking and preparing for this moment for two full months, which is approximately 59.5 more days than January Jones spent prepping for hers. He explained that Singing In The Rain is his all-time favorite musical and that he's always had a fascination with the song "Make 'Em Laugh." And then he did this:
Wow, just wow! When was the last time you saw a host with that kind of talent and enthusiasm take the stage on SNL? After that performance, we should all start calling him Joseph Gordon-LEVITATE (rim shot)! Oh, and just to prove that nobody slouched when recreating this moment, here's a refresher of what Donald O'Connor's original "Make 'Em Laugh" from Singing In The Rain looks like:
Throughout the course of the evening, Gordon-Levitt gave every single sketch his 100% effort, as if he were campaigning throughout the evening for Lorne Michaels to ask him back to host again next week (interestingly enough, that duty will go to another up-and-comer looking to make a big name for herself, Blake Lively). And while we were certainly fans of JGL before last night, it wasn't until he took the stage that he could not only sing and dance better than we had ever fathomed, but also that he's has an incredible knack for comedic timing. We can't wait to see him back hosting next year!
And while most of the SNL MVP talk these days centers around the show's reliable workhouse, Kristen Wiig, we can't help but feel like this season has belonged to Kenan Thompson. We've long been fans of his tragically underrated Weekend Update character Jean K. Jean, but his performance as fictional BET talk show host Diondre Cole is fast becoming his trademark character:
This is "What Up With That?"'s second appearance this season and only shows signs of improvement. There's no fatigue with either this character or this premise, and we can hardly wait to see where this character is going to go.
Kenan also played an integral role in the evening's Digital Short as a man who has Andy Samberg convinced that he's really Reba McEntire:
All in all, a pretty great show. Even the show's weaker moments, like the Thanksgiving sketch (which was a direct descendant of Will Ferrell and Ana Gasteyer's famed dinnertime blowup sketches, only minus the laughs), were worlds better than the material they turned out last week. Just goes to show you that having a host that is both multi-talented and comes to the table with a clear idea of what they want to accomplish that week goes a long way towards helping inspire the show's writing staff. So a hearty Vulture congratulations goes out to Joseph Gordon-Levitt for totally nailing your performance last night: We're quite certain that Lorne will gladly have you back anytime!
(Reuters) Reuters - Roger Daltrey has dubbed his current solo jaunt the "Use It or Lose It" tour, but his show at the Nokia Theater on Friday demonstrated that sometimes you can use it and lose it as well. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment Reviews | 22 Nov 2009 | 1:46 pm
The TV Guide channel has announced that they'll be showing a marathon of Dirty Dancing from noon until midnight on Christmas day this year. It makes no sense, other than as a welcome break from Christmas programming, and we love it. [TV Squad]
Dorothy McGivney, editor of the popular New York travel site Jauntsetter.com, recently undertook the Blueprint Cleanse, the $195, three-day juice cleanse that every woman in the city seems to have done in the past year, and this week she posted her comprehensive review: she hated it. McGivney describes three hellish days of low energy, headaches, crying jags, and after-effects that left her messed up for weeks. Our favorite part was her pre-emptive defense of the moment when she claims the cleanse made her burst into tears:
"At this point, I'm sure someone from the World of Cleanses would likely tell me that I was going through some emotional purge, but I know what I was experiencing: a nutritional deficit."
An "emotional purge"! So that's the handy explanation cleanse-devotees use to describe what we've observed during the past cleanse-crazed year, which is a bunch of our female friends suddenly, one by one, turning into, well, to be polite, let's just say "cranky zombies" for three-day periods, and then returning to normal a week later, a phenomenon that led us to the conclusion that "She's on a cleanse" is the new "She has PMS." They were just having "emotional purges"!
My Blueprint Cleanse, Part 1 and Part 2 [Jauntsetter]
Bad news for TV watchers: the Times talked to lobbyists about how they plan to handle the congressional health care debate's unfortunate holiday-season timing. Their answer was "We will remain fully engaged." So don't lose your remote control. [NYT]
Two women were slightly hurt on Sunday when they were struck by bulls that escaped the set of a new film that stars Tom Cruise, pictured in August 2009, and Cameron Diaz, local police and officials said... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 22 Nov 2009 | 12:42 pm
Vampire romance 'The Twilight Saga: New Moon' sucked up $140.7 million in its first three days and pulled in a total of $258.8 million worldwide, according to studio estimates.
We love the New York Times' running feature "Sunday Routine," which gives the rest of us the chance to compare our Sundays to those of celebrities, and also to kind of extremely-low-effort stalk them. Today it was SNL's Seth Meyers' turn to share, and aside from the heroic running and the UCB performances, it sounds reassuringly familiar, particularly this part:
"Around 12:30, there’s this moment of truth: Am I going to leave the house before 7? About 90 percent of my friends are in the cast, so when we’re out on Saturday night we make all sorts of plans for brunches and movies that never happen. Let’s just say, if I make plans to see a Sunday afternoon movie, I end up going alone. But don’t feel sorry for me! I love being alone on a Sunday!"
We've all heard that Robert Pattinson doesn't change his clothes more than once a week and is kind of smelly (just Google "Robert Pattinson smells" if you don't believe us), but it turns out it's all a strategic move to foil the paparazzi, as we learned at the Cinema Society and D&G-hosted New Moon premiere on Thursday.
Nurse Jackie star Peter Facinelli, who plays Robert Pattinson’s father in the Twilight movies, takes credit (blame) for Robert Pattinson’s rumored body odor problem. “He’s smart, because if he doesn’t changes his clothes and the paparazzi get pictures of him in the same outfit all the time, then they can’t sell the pictures,” Facinelli told us at Thursday's Cinema Society screening of Twilight Saga: New Moon. “That’s what I said he should do; I said, ‘You should not change your clothes, this way, how are they going to sell the picture of you in the same outfit all the time, because it will look like it was from the same batch.’” Father knows best.
Pattinson’s co-stars deal with the issue in their own ways. The lovely Ashley Greene, who plays Pattinson’s sister Alice Cullen, tries to avoid breathing when in his presence. “You know what, I think maybe out of a defense mechanism, I don’t sniff him,” she said, laughing. Kellan Lutz, who plays brother Emmett Cullen, admires how Pattinson still looks great, even in musty attire. “He’s got a great style. I wish I could pull off the easiness that he does,” Lutz told us. And director Chris Weitz is actually grateful that Facinelli gave R-Patz the sage advice. “I can smell him coming, that’s the nice thing,” Weitz explained.
Jezebel put together a remarkable montage of Oprah's signature celebrity introductions that shows the host was using the same cadence and enthusiasm at least as far back as 1988. It's honestly mesmerizing. (Our favorite is "Friends!") [Jezebel]
Gerardo Sanchez, a 37-year-old exterminator and father from the Bronx, apparently lost it on a D train at 2 am on Saturday when Dwight Johnson, 36 and believed to be homeless, refused to move his bag to let Sanchez sit down. The two got into an argument, and Johnson reportedly punched Sanchez, who then pulled out a knife and stabbed Johnson to death while 30 fellow passengers looked on. Gerardo "Jerry" Sanchez's co-workers and friends describe him as a devoted hardworking father who has been on pain medication after a recent fall. What a tragic story. Subway Riders Sealed in Murder Car [NYP] Harmless Looking Pest Exterminator Shatters Usual Image of a Psycho [NYDN]
This week's cover story by Gabriel Sherman, "Show Me the Money," takes a behind-the-scenes look at AIG's new CEO, Robert Benmosche, who is fighting government pay czar Kenneth Feinberg — and the populist wind at his back — for every penny he can get to pay his furious traders, who are threatening to walk and take the U.S. economy down with them. When you're done reading it, check out this animation of the cover's dancing baby banker, based on photography by Donat.
Jon Gosselin came bearing gifts. He left one giant step closer to losing a wife.
The artists otherwise known as Jon & Kate met face to face at a Pennsylvania law office on Saturday...
It's happy feet time!
With just a couple of days to go until the disco ball trophy is handed out on Dancing With the Stars, we thought we'd check in with some DWTS vets to find...
We know the box office for New Moon is going through the roof like a werewolf chasing a vampire bat or something, so obviously fans are digging it. Reviewers, of course, not so much.
But...
It's going to be a very health care holiday season, now that the Senate voted 60-39 last night to let the health care debate begin. The madness will start right after Thanksgiving and is expected to continue through December. [NYT]
More than 80 Michael Jackson collectibles -- including the late pop star's famous rhinestone-studded glove from a 1983 performance -- were auctioned off Saturday, reaping a total $2 million.
Adam Lambert is fully embracing his new solo career—as well as his keyboard player, too.
The American Idol runner-up gave the final performance at the 2009 American Music Awards,...
Carrie Prejean may have been out of sight at Sunday's Miss California USA pageant—but she definitely was not out of mind.
The annual pageant, held at Agua Caliente Resort and...
Cougar Town fans are waiting with bated breath to find out if Jules Cobb can lock down a younger man. But some real-life drama involving star Courteney Cox is going to keep that cliffhanger...
Jon Gosselin came bearing gifts. He left one giant step closer to losing a wife.
The artists otherwise known as Jon & Kate met face to face at a Pennsylvania law office on Saturday...
It's happy feet time!
With just a couple of days to go until the disco ball trophy is handed out on Dancing With the Stars, we thought we'd check in with some DWTS vets to find...
We know the box office for New Moon is going through the roof like a werewolf chasing a vampire bat or something, so obviously fans are digging it. Reviewers, of course, not so much.
But...
