(Reuters) Reuters - A Chinese court has jailed a Tibetan film-maker for six years after he made a documentary in which ordinary Tibetans praised the Dalai Lama and complained about how their culture had been trampled upon, campaigners said. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 7 Jan 2010 | 1:10 am
Chinese film director Zhang Yimou is expected to stage a version of Turandot in Taiwan in the first leg of a world tour of his acclaimed production, a Taiwanese official said Thursday. ... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 6 Jan 2010 | 11:50 pm
Chinese film director Zhang Yimou (pictured in 2008) is expected to stage a version of Turandot in Taiwan in the first leg of a world tour of his acclaimed production, a Taiwanese official said Thursday... Source: RSS feed - channel BNImagesEnter | 6 Jan 2010 | 11:50 pm
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Writing animated films requires patience, flexibility and an imagination larger than life. Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 6 Jan 2010 | 11:32 pm
The most shocking thing about Wednesday night's People's Choice Awards?
Well, not much, but that's what made this show so great! Hollywood's fan faves took home top...
(Reuters) Reuters - Japan's most famous orchestral conductor, Seiji Ozawa, has been diagnosed with cancer and will cancel all performances for the next six months to concentrate on treatment, his office said on Thursday. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment News | 6 Jan 2010 | 10:10 pm
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese court has jailed a Tibetan film-maker for six years after he made a documentary in which ordinary Tibetans praised the Dalai Lama and complained about how... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 6 Jan 2010 | 9:50 pm
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - "There's a famous story about Billy Wilder," Nancy Meyers recalls of the days when Wilder was a screenwriter but had not yet become a director. "He wrote... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 6 Jan 2010 | 9:46 pm
There's a battle brewing among Casey Johnson's closest friends.
Tila Tequila, aka the late heiress's nominal fiancée, called police to her Los Angeles home today after...
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Conventional wisdom holds that the movies getting the biggest boost during awards season aren't the studio blockbusters, but rather the smaller films that Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsEnter | 6 Jan 2010 | 9:32 pm
Francophile: Soap Opera star James Franco has been cast as a mountain climber who cuts off his own arm after getting it stuck under a boulder in 127 Hours, Danny Boyle's follow up to Slumdog Millionaire. Franco's character is based on Aron Ralston, who survived in the Utah mountains for five days before taking a dull knife to his arm. We can't wait for the irresistible one-armed dance number over the credits. [Production Weekly]
Lovely Killer:Saoirse Ronan is in negotiations to go from dead teenager to teenage killer in the Focus Features action flick Hanna. Directed by Joe Wright, who Ronan worked with in Atonement, the film will focus on a 14-year-old girl whose father raises her to be a killer. After leaving her father and discovering the trappings of a regular life, she's pulled back into her father's world and must use her killing skills to fight her way back to a free life. It's the American Machine Girl! [Heat Vision/THR]
Zombie Pool:Zombieland scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have signed on to write Deadpool, the X-Men spinoff starring Ryan Reynolds as smart mouthed mercenary Wade Wilson. The script will have a similar tone to Zombieland and the Bill Murray cameo is sure to kick ass. [Variety]
Yank!-ee:Bobby Steggert, who's currently dancing his heart out in Ragtime, will star in the upcoming Off Broadway production of Yank!. The play focuses on a naive Army draftee who works as a photographer for a military magazine. Think of it like Apocalypse Now, with a photographer instead of a writer, and songs instead of explosions. [Variety]
In a blindside worthy of Russell Hantz himself, Jeff Probst tonight revealed the cast of Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains during the People's Choice Awards tonight.
That's where...
The Hoff is taking off.
After four seasons on America's Got Talent, David Hasselhoff is leaving the judges table, his rep confirms to E! News. "I am proud that I was part of...
Aaaah! ABC just dropped new photos from the Jan. 21 episode of Grey's Anatomy, and not only will Katherine Heigl be gracing us with our presence, but it looks like...
You'll have to decide soon if U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker gets his way. Today Walker said that he wants the trial over the constitutionality of Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage in California, to be taped and distributed on the Internet. It's a partial victory for those who wanted cameras allowed in the court room but wished for the proceedings to be streamed live. All Walker needs now is for the court's chief judge to approve his request, which the LA Times says is "expected." Then you'll be faced with the difficult decision of catching up with Maru or watching the most pivotal equal rights battle of your lifetime.
AP - Hanesbrands has ended its advertising campaign featuring Charlie Sheen because of domestic violence charges filed against the actor, a company spokesman said Wednesday.
• The week in reviews: Sam Sifton of the Times calls Casa Lever "deeply likable" and gives it two stars; Gael Greene heads to the Breslin; The New Yorker's Andrea Thompson weighs in on Joseph Leonard in the West Village; and GQ's Alan Richman recounts a couple of disastrous dinners at Sparks. • Another day, another new Danny Meyer project: Meyer's Union Square Hospitality is taking over the restaurant at the Whitney Museum. [NYT, WSJ] • Steve Hanson's second Bill's Burger is Rockefeller Center-bound. [Eater] • Michael White has signed a lease to open a trattoria in the Lafayette Street space that once housed the scandal-plagued bar/club The Falls. [Eater] • Aspen on West 22nd Street has closed for good. [BlackBook] • A preview of next week's Tavern on the Green auction kicked off today. [NYT] • The Post's Steve Cuozzo laments the recent closings of three landmarks: Tavern on the Green, Rainbow Room and the Plaza Palm Court. [NYP] • Hoteliers are hoping brand-name chefs boost business in 2010. [TRD] • The Soho club Greenhouse has been sued for discrimination—again. [NYDN] • Did you know there's a global tea shortage? There is. [Bloomberg]
Thanks to Charlie Sheen's Christmas Day domestic dispute with wife Brooke Meuller, Hanes has yanked the ad featuring the actor and Michael Jordan. It's the one where Sheen tries to bond with Jordan over the comfort of Hanes undershirts only to have Jordan treat him like a sweaty autograph hound.
"Hanes is not running the television commercials featuring Charlie Sheen, and those commercials will not run again," a Hanes spokesman told E! News. If, for some weird reason, you still want to see Sheen schilling for Hanes, pick up a newspaper. The company wasn't able to cancel its print ads in time.
(Reuters) Reuters - Strident, clumsy and pointless, "St. Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold" is a sequel to the 2007 attempt at reviving the squealing schoolgirl appeal of a series of Ealing Comedies from the 1950s. Source: Yahoo! News: Entertainment Reviews | 6 Jan 2010 | 7:34 pm
Quintin Cedeno, the principal at the High School for Construction Trades, Engineering and Architecture in Queens, was fired after an investigation showed that he groped and propositioned male students. He was first suspended in October and lost his job once it was reavelded that he "solicited oral sex from at least four male students," "inappropriately touched and attempted to touch those four students," and "engaged in electronic communications and had inappropriate conversations with at least eight male students." [NYP]
According to a spokesman for its production company, the upcoming action flick starring Taylor Lautner and Tom Cruise will actually not star Tom Cruise. Northern Lights doesn't even include the "billionaire father" character that previous reports implied Cruise would play. The spokesman also confirmed that the huge paycheck Lautner will get has left the film with no budget for shirts. Tragic. [EW]
Front Page: Cabler shifting original programming strategy -- Comedy-centric cabler TBS is getting into the one-hour business, ordering a pilot from "Monk" alum Andy Breckman.
Of all the complaining about the decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his 9/11 plotting brethren in New York, few have mentioned the potential cost. They should start. The Mayor's office said today that security for the trails will cost the city north of $200 million a year. Most of that money will go toward paying an around the clock security detail, while the rest will purchase necessary equipment.
Since the decision to try the terrorists was made the federal government, Mayor Bloomberg is looking to Washington for a check. The city needs the “federal government to shoulder the significant costs we will incur and ease this burden,” he said. Or Bloomberg could just pay the tab with $200 million from the bottom of his backpack.
City Says 9/11 Trials Will Cost $200 Million a Year [City Room/NYT]
No dealbreakers here!
30 Rock's Jenna Maroney might be unlucky in love, but the fabulous Jane Krakowski just got a big, ol' rock to call her own.
The funnylady and...
Front Page: High-profile hardware makers unveil latest at confab -- Electronics manufacturers have watched as "Avatar" has wowed moviegoers at the megaplex and now they hope 3D will do the same thing in living rooms.
"No one's too worried about it."
—So 'fesses one of our studio moles concerning Summit's state of mind over the leaked Eclipse script, supposedly belonging to...
New York City's economy must really be on the mend. Mercedes is planning to construct a ginormous 333,000-square-foot flagship on 11th Avenue, which it's hoping will set "the style standard for all other Mercedes dealers around the country." Alas, Jay-Z and Beyoncé will have to wait a bit before they can head to the futuristic, glassy showroom to pick up their next Maybach: It won't open its doors until the beginning of 2011. [NYT]
Courtenay Semel is opening up about the death of her former girlfriend, Casey Johnson.
Semel (whose dad is ex-Yahoo boss Terry Semel) has been expressing some of her feelings through...
Roman Polanski is looking to find out. The Oscar winner, currently under house arrest in Gstaad, Switzerland, asked that a judge in...
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter from yesterday, Lost's Carlton Cuse casually pondered the future of the show beyond this sixth and final season, saying, “The Walt Disney Co. owns Lost. It's a franchise that's conservatively worth billions of dollars. It's hard to imagine Lost will rest on the shelves and nothing will ever be made with Lost. Eventually somebody will make something under the moniker of Lost — whether we do it or not. We just made a commitment to this group of characters whose stories are coming to a conclusion this May.” The Internet is sensibly taking thatto mean inevitable crappy remakes, but we’re hoping Cuse is hinting at a full-fledged Lost amusement park. [HR]
Front Page: Paramount-Marvel pic jumps on 'Spider-Man 4' date -- With production of "Spider-Man 4" delayed, Paramount and Marvel Entertainment have pushed up the release of "Thor" by two weeks to May 6, 2011.
Late last month, when we heard that White House budget director Peter Orszag was engaged to beautiful ABC News reporter Bianna Golodryga, we were so innocently happy for him. Look at that face! That is the expression of a man who literally never thought he could get so lucky. But then this afternoon, the Post informs us that "lucky" might not be the only word to describe this guy's love life. Turns out that barely six weeks before he proposed to Golodryga, his ex-girlfriend gave birth to his daughter. Orszag had told the longtime ex, Yale grad and Harvard MBA (and shipping heiress) Claire Milonas, that he'd marry her when they discovered she was pregnant in early 2009, according to a Post source. But she was a mere three months along when he broke it off — in fact, Orszag was still dating her when he met future fiancée Golodryga at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner in early May. Barely a half-year later, he was engaged to the news beauty, and Milonas was alone with little Tatiana Zoe. Political economists — who knew?
Update: The OMB has passed along this joint statement from Milonas and Orszag:
"We were in a committed relationship until the spring of 2009. In November, Claire gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Although we are no longer together, we are both thrilled she is happy and healthy, and we would hope that everyone will respect her privacy."
A source close to Orzag also clarifies that he and Milonas were not, in fact, dating when he met his fiance.
Members of the NYPD's Gang Unit will be heading to Bermuda to help its police force solve several gang-related shootings that have "rocked the island" recently. Did the fact that Mayor Bloomberg happens to have a lovely weekend home in Bermuda (above) factor into the decision? It certainly seems that way. Bermuda's minister of public safety tells a local paper that Bloomberg contacted the Premier of Bermuda personally to offer up the NYPD's assistance: "He rang the Premier, as a resident of Bermuda and someone who has a keen interest in the safety of Bermuda. He is a friend. He said, 'We probably can help. Get your Commissioner to talk to the head of our Gang Unit.'" Too bad Bloomberg never picked up a castle in Darfur. All that genocide would have been over in no time! [Village Voice, Bermuda Sun]
Venetia Scott styles Marc Jacobs's runway shows and has been styling editorials for magazines for many years. She recently spoke to Ponystep about her disenchantment with fashion magazines:
"I find magazines less and less interesting — I don’t really buy magazines or look at magazines. I mean I’ve got a twelve year old [daughter with ex-husband Juergen Teller] and we were talking about it yesterday — she’ll go on the internet and probably look at something like your [online] magazine [Ponystep] more. She would not ever go to a newsagent and buy a magazine. And even here when we get sent ones that I’ve got work in, she’s not really interested in it. In a way I’m doing less editorial because it seems a bit tired now."
Scott added that styling isn't what it used to be.
"When I first started at [British] Vogue [around 1987] you’d get all the clothes in, have your rail and you’d make looks. Whereas now the designers do the looks. You can’t mix Chanel now with other designers — the power of advertising is that if you don’t do it in the way that they want you to shoot it then the magazines become scared that they’ll lose the cash. When I first started there wasn’t really any bargaining power between the advertisers and editorial; they were two completely separate things. Now it’s ‘I’ll take out a couple of pages and you give me a couple of pages.’"
A respected veteran of her profession with a cushy Marc Jacobs contract, Scott feels more at liberty to take risks in her work. She will chance breaking up a look and sticking sneakers at the end of a Chanel dress if she feels like it because she knows she has Marc Jacobs to fall back on and will always get more work elsewhere. However, she worries for young stylists whose talents may be stifled by editorial deals:
"I think [many stylists] play the game much, much more. And there’s even some who I’m so surprised that they’re playing this game — they don’t realise that if they didn’t play it they’d still get the work because they’re good, you know? I was talking to someone, saying ‘why are you doing all this stuff, why are you doing all these shoots?’ And he says because his agent says so, he has to do this, that and the other. You’re the one that’s really in control, you know? I’m amazed that they’re listening to their agents. And I’m amazed by stylists that are also maybe a bit younger than me but sort of my contemporaries, who are established and good, and they’re saying they have to include all these credits. I've done shoots with these stylists and I think ‘just say f*ck it, it didn’t work’. It doesn’t work within the story. The sense of belief is going to be broken because there’s a Prada shirt sticking out like a sore thumb and we’re meant to be doing Russian prisoners. If you put that in, it’s not believable anymore."
It's nice to hear someone speak so honestly on these issues.
In addition to simply reading our blog, would you like to supplement your daily Vulture experience with 140-character recommendations for viral videos, the latest MP3s, and other new, exciting things to see, hear, and click on? Good news! We've joined Twitter. [VultureBlog/Twitter]
More bad news for job hunters: Faced with a supply that outweighs demand, employers are getting more judgmental about prospective employees than the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders during recruitment season. Take sporting-goods sales executive Daniel Obergfell, who rejected an applicant for mispronouncing his last name multiple times in an interview. Sure, Obergfell (silent "g") understands she might have just been nervous, but in this market, why take a chance?
"Given she never really got it right — even after being corrected, told me it was probably started with nervousness, but the issue more than likely ran deeper than that," he says.
Other deal-breakers as told to the Journal: Tattoos, bad table manners, sweat stains, saying that you have to give your current employer a respectful two weeks' notice, and wearing a tie at a non-tie-wearing company. (You don't know if people wear ties? Find out, loser! Take some initiative and spend some time in the bushes spying on your intended co-workers. But don't get caught! That, too, would be a deal-breaker.) And then there's that old saw, being too eager.
During a July interview at Goliath Jobs, an aspiring marketing manager waved his hands wildly to demonstrate his enthusiasm for the job. The gesturing prospect knocked over his sealed water bottle twice. An intern soon served coffee. Extending his arm to show how far he'd go for a sale, the man toppled the mug. Coffee covered the conference table. "He was very passionate, but way too much," Mr. Mezzapelle says.
You guessed it: Now that man would be lucky to get the coffee-serving job. Hope that doesn't make you too nervous!
Aren't you excited about the second Sex and the City movie? The theater release is only five months away! Surely you'll want to share your excitement with the world by purchasing some Sex and the City jewelry or beach towels or martini glasses, all of which will roll out in droves as the May 28 release date approaches. Dogeared has already unveiled jewelry inspired by some of the Fab Four's greatest quotes! Chains with charms like a diamond, high heel, and the Eiffel tower come with cards that say things like Charlotte's T-shirt-worthy quote, "I've been dating since I was 15. I'm exhausted! Where is he?" Whiny single-lady-inspired jewelry is the best. [StyleList]
Assouline has a preview of its forthcoming book on ex–Nina Ricci designer Olivier Theyskens's career, featuring the stunning photographs of Julien Claessens. It's now available for preorder for $120. Leaf through a few pages on Assouline's site. [Official site]
A few weeks back, we warned you that Avatar's massive worldwide success would result in every movie ever getting the full 3-D treatment. It's not so much the artistic triumphs of the HMFIC's latest that has Hollywood frothing at the mouth, but rather the fact that consumers seemed more than willing to part with a few extra bucks to see a movie while wearing crappy plastic shades over a boring, old two-dimension projection. Well, as studios begin to line up their future quarterly profit projections film lineups, studio execs are requiring just about every filmmaker attached to a tent-pole picture to rethink how their movie would be made in 3-D, regardless of whether it would suit the plot. To wit: According to a report over at Moviehole, MGM's head honcho Mary Parent recently posed that very question to Darren Aronofsky, who's been hard at work prepping the Robocop reboot for months.
So, how do you think an auteur like Aronofsky — a guy, mind you, who spent six years developing a movie in which Hugh Jackman eats the bark of a future space tree that's supposed to be the reincarnated version of Rachel Weisz! — took this request? Well, if Moviehole is to be believed (and who wouldn't trust a site with a name like Moviehole?), Aronofsky told Parent to shove it and walked off the project, leaving the franchise's future in serious doubt. While we can't really confirm this random report, it surely would be a bummer for both Aronofsky and audiences, and we can only hope that Parent's insistence on 3-D also carries over to the Bond franchise. Because, really, we can see no greater way to make Sam Mendes suffer for his crimes against suburbia than to make him shoot a big action spectacle in three glorious dimensions.
AP - A larger-than-life President Barack Obama became a presidential pitchman Wednesday on a Times Square billboard that used his photo without permission.
The list of six films — which will eventually become four two — that will definitely lose the visual-effects Oscar to Avatar on March 7 now includes: 2012, District 9, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Star Trek, Terminator Salvation, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. [IndieWire]
Governor David Paterson's State of the State speech today was fine — a major improvement, stylistically, on last year's flu-addled effort. In substance it was right on target, too, with its calls for a comprehensive package of ethics legislation (which would restrict campaign contributions and require disclosure of outside business dealings) and cutbacks in spending to keep New York's budget out of bankruptcy. Yet Paterson's appearance before both houses of the state legislature felt like an anticlimax — for reasons that are both good and bad for the governor and for the state.
Beginning Sunday, with a series of leaks and conference calls, Paterson and his aides were able to generate three days of rare positive (mostly) media coverage, steering the Albany conversation into areas that make the legislature look (even more) self-interested and corrupt. Paterson learned from his rookie mistakes last year — instead of giving multiple chatty and confusing interviews himself, as he did last January, Paterson stayed home and practiced his performance while staffers prepared the public ground. He also has a more aggressive and disciplined team in place than he did in 2008, led by chief of staff Larry Schwartz and consultant Harold Ickes, and their influence is showing. Even a pre-speech detour to attend Percy Sutton's funeral in Manhattan this morning went fairly smoothly, and Paterson's speech three hours later is likely to boost his ratings.
Outside the Capitol, that is — which is where Paterson was really aiming. His advisers know that the chances of actually enacting sweeping ethics and budgeting reform are minute, but they're trying to keep Paterson's campaign chances alive by playing to public and editorial-page scorn for the legislature and "special interests." Sure enough, Paterson's in-person audience mostly sat on its hands as the governor beat up on them, bluntly comparing state legislators to drug addicts and sinners.
Interestingly, the bulk of the modest applause came from the Republican side of the aisle — a sign not only of the party's approval of budget cutting, but of its coordinated effort to make mischief for the fractured state Democrats. "I thought the governor was right on the button about cutting spending and taxes," said gleeful Republican Assemblyman Jim Tedisco on the way out of the chamber. "We're going to support him." Democrats, by contrast, greeted the speech with a collective shrug, and are clearly worried about Paterson following through on his vow to run for governor and dragging them down with him this fall. "The governor's broad themes are hard not to agree with," Manhattan's Eric Schneiderman said. "We'll see where he goes from here."
Which is why today's speech ultimately felt like a holding action. Paterson will return in two weeks with his new budget, and the bloodletting will really begin, as lobbyists and legislators fight over scraps and stall any real procedural change. The broad disdain for Paterson isn't personal or partisan; the legislature views governors loudly calling for reform the same way it sees the brutally cold weather outside: as an annoyance to be endured until it eventually goes away. Winter will be back again, as will the tough talk from the state's chief executive — maybe even from the guy sitting behind Paterson's left shoulder during today's speech, Andrew Cuomo. Governors come and go, but the legislature ain't moving.
Earlier this week, some wondered if the ability of the Weinstein Company's 2009 movies to win Writers Guild Awards might be impaired by Harvey's decision not to send screeners to guild members. Turns out they can't anyway. Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds), Tom Ford (A Single Man), and Joe Penhall (The Road) are not WGA members, which doesn't necessarily disqualify them; but to be eligible, movies must be made "under the guild’s Minimum Basic Agreement, or under a collective-bargaining agreement of one of several international guilds," and none of those films were. Oh, and Nine's writer is in the WGA, but Harvey likely just figured that movie didn't stand a chance. [Wrap via Playlist]
Yesterday, color consultants said that black only looks good on four out of five people, depending on your skin tone. Well, Marion Cotillard put that theory to the test last night when she wore a one-shoulder Elie Saab dress to the 21st Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival in Palm Springs, California, and paired it with strappy sandals, a jeweled clutch, and a bracelet — all in black.
But he will never apologize for looking like Jay Mohr.
Politicians today can't get away with making off-color jokes like they used to. Earlier today Nick Ayers, the executive director of the Republican Governors Association, thought up a funny joke about Governor Paterson on the spur of the moment and shared it on Twitter:
Gov Paterson you should accept the ambassadorship to New Zealand. Its beautiful there. Have you not seen it?...oh, right, sorry.
But his uproarious laugher at the RGA office quickly turned to tears when the tweet was picked up by Politico and the New York Times, and now Ayers has tweeted an apology for his "poor attempt" at humor, and even more awkwardly, has been forced to call the governor's office to apologize.
After much debate, officials in Nevada have (finally!) given a brothel the official go-ahead to begin hiring men. If you're between 21-40, you're "service oriented," and you "have a positive attitude"—and the idea of moving to rural (but scenic!) Nevada and living in a trailer doesn't put you off—apply within.
Have you ever wished Christopher Lee would stop wasting his time in the movies and finally make a “symphonic metal” concept album about Charlemagne? Great news, then, because Christopher Lee is finally making a “symphonic metal” concept album about Charlemagne! The 87-year-old screen legend is putting out Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross on March 15, and he’s hyping the project now. Lee’s released snippets from the album, plus a video where he very grandly (and very slowly) tries to explain himself (and name-checks Manowar!). We’re still a little confused, but apparently the actor is a direct descendant of the King of the Franks, which we guess was enough impetus for a musical biography in a made-up genre with lyrics like “I shed the blood of the Saxon man / I shed the blood of 4,000 Saxon men!” Check out "metal" singer Christopher Lee below.
It's a good thing Citigroup repaid that $20 billion it owed the U.S. government on December 14. If it hadn't, some people might be a tad ticked off to hear that on December 30, the bank paid John Havens, Citi's investment banking chief, $9 million for his stellar work in 2008, making him the broken bank's highest-paid employee for the year. [WSJ]
“It’s down the tubes, totally,” said the dejected record exec on the phone, describing his business. Standard sentiments to be sure, but this time from an unexpected source: Scorpio, one of the last remaining music bootleggers in the country, calling from an undisclosed bunker in the New York area.
The music industry took another tumble in 2009, with CD sales down 12.7 percent from 2008. But the shadier, shadowy side of the business has been equally decimated. At one time, as many as 75 unofficial bootleg “companies” existed, illegally cranking out LPs and then CDs of hard-to-find studio and soundboard-jacked live recordings by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Phish, Pearl Jam, and other rock icons. Some, like the multidisc Dylan Ten of Swords box, are considered classics. Although it’s impossible to gauge exactly how profitable this quasi-industry was, the four-decade-old bootlegging biz generated millions of dollars globally. But now, this old-school method of illegal music distribution — one of rock’s most illustrious if illicit traditions — is being destroyed right along with the legit CD, all by the new-school method: the Internet.
Just ask Scorpio. (Which, of course, isn’t his real name. Like a rock-and-roll Deep Throat, he prefers to use the name of his own longtime label; after a message is relayed to him, he calls from a number that comes up blocked.) Scorpio began cranking out boots (of rare Sex Pistols or New York Dolls songs) in the late seventies, selling them to record stores both in the city and beyond. “I always wanted to get a job at a record company, but nobody would hire me,” he says. “The reason I did a collection of Dolls demos was because I was a fan and I wanted one.” He won’t say how much he made during his peak years (and record stores who still carry them decline comment, not surprisingly). But by the nineties, he was selling as many as 10,000 copies of “hits” like a Misfits collection. He earned enough to quit his day job (“restaurant delivery and bars”) and live full time off his side vocation. “I made what a good used car salesman might make,” he says. “I could afford to go overseas and stay in a decent hotel. It was a reasonable business for a while.”
The beginning of the end arrived in two shifts. First came the advent of the affordable CD-R recorder in the mid-nineties. Scorpio would visit Village record stores and find dubbed copies of his own records. “It got hard to distinguish the real product from the knockoffs,” he gripes. “There are a lot of lowlifes and scumbags in this business — if you want to disparage the term ‘scumbag.’” Then came the Internet, where easily accessible — and free — downloads of concert tapes are, to use the name of one such site that doles them out, a Dime a Dozen. “This is about hobbyists who are not doing it for money,” says Jeff, one recordings poster who doesn’t charge. “Fans want to share their recordings. They don’t want them to go to some bootlegger. You make a better world through giving.”
Here in the States, Scorpio embodies the collapse of his underworld industry. In the old days, a “smash” bootleg could sell between 5,000 and 10,000 units, which someone like Scorpio could sell for as much as $50 (minus costs for elaborate booklets and photo reproduction, which could be considerable in Scorpio’s case). But Scorpio’s recent three-CD David Bowie set, Secrets of My Lost Years 1969–1973 (demos, studio outtakes, and tapes from TV appearances, all from Bowie’s pre-stardom era), took Scorpio four years to compile and has only sold 300 copies in the few stores that carry it. Asked how many new boots he produces a year, Scorpio says, over the phone, “I’m raising one finger on one hand.” As a result, Scorpio has returned to construction work, and any rare collection he now assembles (like long-rumored 1969 Boston live tapes of the Velvet Underground) is, he says, “an accent to the daily grind.” Plus, he adds, the music itself is now less interesting: “Do you really need outtakes of the Verve?”
Mourn or laugh if you like — it’s hard to feel too bad for these guys, who were the ones ripping off the labels and artists before the Internet, just not as successfully — but the demise of the bootleg industry should serve as yet another chilling omen for actual record companies. “The moment [a new bootleg] is released, it ends up on a website and people get it for free,” says Erik Flannigan, who wrote a bootleg column for the now-defunct music newsletter ICE. Fans refusing to pay for music, opting to trade it online and thereby bankrupt the companies that were selling it: Sound familiar?
Gaga on New Year's Eve in a dress that appears to be made of tin foil and tinsel.
Fashion Week begins anew on February 11 in New York, and last season's most highly anticipated boldface headliner, Lady Gaga, will return this season. Did anyone expect her not to show after she asked to go to Marc Jacobs's show? (Not to mention that she'll be among an entire pretentious industry that worships her.) She will open the festivities with a performance at amfAR's annual New York gala fund-raiser on February 10 at Cipriani 42nd Street. Sir Elton John and plenty of other famous people will be there, but how much do they matter when Gaga could show up with orange hair wearing ziplock bags, riding a mop like a witch on a broom?
This week's Video Look Book subjects are students and friends Andrea Osojnik and Meredith Cunningham. Andrea studies prosthetics and "gelatin works" while Meredith studies print media and fashion. The day we spotted them, Andrea wore a $16 thrift-store coat, a scarf her friend knit for her, and leather pants she says she wears every day because they're warm. "I guess I kind of look like an Amish person," she mused. Meredith calls Andrea's androgynous look "hot." See Meredith's tremendous pair of glasses in the video.
Check out this footage of Jimmy Fallon and a handful of our favorite Muppets, breaking down into an impromptu version of “One” (not Bono’s, the “loneliest number” verzh) before the actual show started taping. We strongly encourage the puppeteers to form an after-hour jam band, because wow… it’s pretty professional. Video courtesy of our friends over at the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon blog, who were lucky enough to catch this act live. They assure us it was totally improvised.
Spoiler Alert: It’s Robin, the small frog on Jimmy’s shoulder, that puts this video over the edge for us. HIS HAT IS PROBABLY THE SIZE OF A DIME!! Also, this picture.
This makes Citi's head of investment banking their highest-paid employee of the post-crisis year. But the relatively large payday didn't come just because Havens is CEO Vikram Pandit's BFF, who followed him when he left Morgan Stanley and with whom he helped launch the seriously ill-fated Old Lane hedge fund, and because when Vikram looks at that large baby face he just melts because there is a man who really believes in him. No. It is because, so far as we can tell, Havens was the driving force behind one of the most significant cost-cutting measures Citigroup has taken in the wake of the crisis thus far, a move that allowed the bank to save — well, they haven't disclosed the exact amount, but certainly oodles of taxpayer money, which therefore absolves Havens of any criticisms that he is pocketing a too-big chunk of it himself. You know what we're talking about?
Back in August, shortly before Citigroup was forced to accept $45 billion in TARP funds, Havens scripted a memo to his fellow Citi-zens outlining the ways in which they could and ought to begin saving the company money. The highly detailed memo, which was reprinted ad infinitum because it was so revealing, we believe, of Havens's extraordinary talents and valuable skill set, read, in part:
“Color presentations are unnecessary for internal purposes; therefore going forward color copying and printing should only be used for client presentations. Also whenever possible, presentations should be printed double sided to reduce unnecessary paper usage.”
What do you think retail chains like H&M do with all the perfectly good clothing that they don't manage to sell? If you guessed "slash it to shreds and dump it in the garbage," give yourself a prize.
Rather than give the items to poor, cold New Yorkers who could very much benefit from a new coat or sweater this time of year, the Swedish retailer destroys the merchandise, presumably so the items don't fall into the hands of some wily entrepreneur who sets up an unofficial H&M outlet on the second floor of a decrepit building on Canal Street. Per the Times:
At the back entrance on 35th Street, awaiting trash haulers, were bags of garments that appear to have never been worn. And to make sure that they never would be worn or sold, someone had slashed most of them with box cutters or razors, a familiar sight outside H & M's back door.
Making the matter especially ironic is the location of H&M's dumping ground:
Directly around the corner from H & M is a big collection point for New York Cares, which conducts an annual coat drive. "We'd be glad to take unworn coats, and companies often send them to us," said Colleen Farrell, a spokeswoman for New York Cares.
Handing over the stuff to New York Cares probably wouldn't work, since every other homeless man and woman in New York would soon be wearing new H&M clothing from head to toe, and that probably isn't the sort of branding the retailer is looking for. Maybe they could send it off to North Korea or something? They sure could use the clothing—have you been to Pyongyang in January? It's freezing!—and without any Westerners allowed inside the country, it's not like anyone would notice, would they?
Front Page: Online vet comes from Philadelphia Inquirer -- Chris Krewson has been tapped as editor of Variety.com, overseeing all editorial content for the website and contributing to its vision and content strategy.
Wanna know the only way to improve upon a nerd’s orgasm? Other than throwing in another person to make it a kinky twosome, what about Big O’ing under one of these?
Yes, that’s right: IPhone Bedding is here.*
Sure, things might get a little awkward when your ass keeps wondering what day it is on the wrongly-spelled “Calender,” it’s still less embarrassing than your other option: Not having an iPhone duvet. It’s the perfect compliment to your Microsoft Zune poster!
*PS: No one will ever sleep with you if you buy this. Enjoy.
SKIN
• Britain's Advertising Standards Authority banned a Johnson & Johnson–owned Clean & Clear advertisement for being misleading with before-and-after shots used to promote the brand's Spot Control Kit. In the "after" shot, the model was wearing face powder. Clean & Clear claims the powder is there simply to remove shine from the T-zone. [StyleList]
MAKEUP
• Charlize Theron is wearing minimal makeup for her Elle Canada February cover and accompanying editorial."Women are under so much pressure!" she tells the magazine. "I'm not surprised we all become part of this beauty race." [Design Scene]
• Katy Perry's most surprising makeup tip: "I live and die by baby wipes. I use ’em for my hands and my makeup." [Glamour]
FRAGRANCE
• Researchers at Chicago's Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation found that when men smell the presence of grapefruit on women, they think the women are, on average, six years younger. [HuffPo]
• Kim Kardashian is wearing retro lingerie and a marabou coat while dangling on a circle contraption in the advertisement for her new fragrance, which she named after herself. The scent launches next month exclusively at Sephora. [StyleWatch/People]
• A Seattle company is working on a formula to create the first-ever carbon-neutral fragrance, which will be made out of leftover beer-brewing material. [London Free Press]
HAIR
• A trend of men asking for gray or salt-and-pepper hair is happening in Washington, D.C. Some even ask for the strands in their eyebrows, and stylists say it's because men sometimes want to appear more conservative or be taken more seriously. [HuffPo]
We get it, readers. You love warm shoes. The way the sheepskin lining hugs your toes is like walking on clouds in heaven — which is why you can't give up your Uggs. But before you say never, we scouted some alternatives to the shapeless boots that you may want to try out. From rainproof suedes to ultrawarm fleece, these are sure to get you through this bitterly cold winter. (And just in time for the weekend freeze about to hit.) For you die-hard Ugg fans, yes, we have a pair even for you. Click ahead and be converted.
Newark Airport turned into a mess on Sunday when an unidentified man strolled into an area reserved for screened passengers. The episode led to an evacuation of Terminal C and delayed thousands of travelers for hours. So how did the guy get past security personnel? The TSA guard at the exit was "chatting on his cell phone at the moment of the trespass." Naturally. [NYDN, NYDN]
Holy crap, Kate Gosselin is kicking off the new decade right. The famous mom unveils hair extensions on the cover of the new issue of People.
“It’s good to have hair again,” the 34-year-old reality TV mom tells People. “I never thought I’d have short hair for as long as I did. I feel like this is a fresh start, a fresh me, a fresh life … I’ve got it. I am now Kate Clean Slate.”
Funny — we never thought anyone would have hair of such disproportionate lengths back and front while viewing themselves on national television and countless magazine covers daily for as long as Kate has. But we can tell this is already so great for her self-esteem, and therefore, the collective self-esteem of our nation. You know a woman's over a divorce when she comes up with hilarious new nicknames for herself. And her new hair may look fake and grossly streaky in a Jersey Shore kind of way, but Kate also looks kind of pretty! Kate Clean Slate? How about Kate Carrie Underwood Wished She Had It This Good?
Someone needs a root touch-up!Photo: Getty Images
Next thing you know, she'll lose twenty pounds and have a hunky 22-year-old draping his muscles all over her in front of the kids.
Have you ever wondered what happens to clothes that large chain retailers don't sell? Not boutiques like Oak or stores like Barneys or other designers that can send things to sample sales, but huge stores full of stuff that's too cheap to resell, like H&M or Wal-Mart. The New York Times reports that both H&M and Wal-Mart throw out unused clothing people don't buy. But they want to make sure that, after they throw stuff out, people can't wear or resell the clothes. So they destroy the items by cutting holes in them with machines. If they're dealing with a pair of shoes, they go to the trouble of cutting the insoles so you can't wear them. Puffy jackets are slashed across the body and the arms are cut off. The 34th Street H&M discards the destroyed but otherwise perfectly good merchandise in trash bags behind the building. Wal-Mart has a contractor that dumps their destroyed unworn clothes in a space on 35th Street. Poor people who need clothes are freezing all over the city, but rather than donate unused goods, these stores are destroying them and treating them like garbage.
People who know about the loot go to scavenge for goods that aren't destroyed since whole, wearable items make it through sometimes. Wouldn't it be easier to simply donate the stuff so they don't have to bother with cutting everything? A New York Cares that holds an annual coat drive and would be happy to have H&M's unwanted goods is located just around the corner from its 34th Street location.
A spokesperson for Wal-Mart told the Times that the store normally donates unused items to charities, and needed to investigate the 35th Street situation. H&M did not respond to ten requests for comment from the Times yesterday. The store also throws out plastic hangers in perfectly good condition, which is ridiculous, because clothes may go out of style, but those certainly do not. The Times reports:
H & M, which is based in Sweden, has an executive in charge of corporate responsibility who leads the company’s sustainability efforts. On its Web site, H&M reports that to save paper, it has shrunk its shipping labels.
Maybe they donated $5 to save the polar bears last year, too.
OK, it’s not Anna Nicole Smithawards show level wasted, but still, this acceptance speech delivered by Mariah Carey for Breakthrough Performance at the Palm Springs Film Festival feels like it was delivered at the bottom of a vodka pool.
Note that it’s been edited down, meaning in actuality the speech probably lasted 48 minutes. Also, we would definitely get tanked with Mariah Carey. We love us some relaxed drunks.
AP - Bayonetta is the most flamboyant video-game heroine in a long, long time. Leggy, bespectacled and clad in a skintight black catsuit, she struts across the screen like a model stalking the runway. That model, however, is more campy than sexy, more RuPaul than Gisele.
AP - Bayonetta is the most flamboyant video-game heroine in a long, long time. Leggy, bespectacled and clad in a skintight black catsuit, she struts across the screen like a model stalking the runway. That model, however, is more campy than sexy, more RuPaul than Gisele.
The Rolling Stone editors picked eight stars —
from Bruce and Beyoncé to Radiohead and U2 — who not
only made the best music but also led the way as Artists of the
Decade in our decade-end...
Was this necessary? Completely Un. Are we better people for watching it? No. But on Man vs. Wild, nothing is perhaps wilder than a self-administered enema on a rickety wooden raft. And when the person writhing in pain just happens to be Bear Grylls… well, ladies and gentlemen, an entirely new fetish is born.
The end of 2009 was a "whirlwind" for Alexa Ray Joel, but she's stepping into 2010 with a new focus: Raising awareness about heartbreak-related depression.
Yesterday, we brought you photos of tennis superstar Andy Roddick living our dream and cupping a koala’s ass. Today, with generous thanks to Pittsburgh’s 96.1 Morning Freak Show, we are given footage that can only be described as “God-given.” While Andy Roddick tries to talk about saving koalas during a press conference, two of these tiny gray perverts proceed to have throw down, dirty tree sex directly behind him.
Note: If you’re a fan of koalas, you might not be ready for a koala face in the throes of ecstasy. Though we have to admit their pillow talk is pretty cute.
Much like the old adage about NASCAR only being interesting when there’s a huge crash, so, too, is Wheel Of Fortune only worth paying attention to when there’s a giant wreck. An actual car wreck, I mean — Wheel Of Fortune is only worth watching when a literal automobile drives through the studio walls and smashes the into the wheel, prompting a stunned silence followed by the sound guy playing the “BANKRUPT” sound effect, which makes people laugh a little then they realize it’s inappropriate and fall silent again.
Little known fact – Kim Kardashian’s new perfume ad is identical to Kim Kardashian’s ad for Becoming a Sluttily-Photoshopped Catherine Zeta-Jones:
It’s not entirely clear whether or not her fragrance will literally turn you into a sluttily-Photoshopped Catherine Zeta-Jones, but I’m assuming that’s what the ad wants you to believe, like how ads for beer make you equate their product with sex or how commercials for alarm systems make you equate their product with sex. It’s called subliminal adversexsex.
Just do not get me started on the perfume’s ass and how totally big it is.
Katy Perry and Russell Brandgot engaged while on vacation in India, marking the first time in history that a giant, painted street elephant was able to roll his eyes. Also, they are perfect for each other like unrelated identical twins.
Lindsay Lohan has accused ex-BFF Patrick “Pootie” Aufdenkampof stealing from her, while the rest of the country accuses him of possibly being a gay Nazi war criminal.
Sharon Stone is set to make an appearance on Law & Order: SVU, while Sharon Stone’s Vagina has opted to appear on NCIS: Los Angeles.
What do you get the person who has everything? Boom.
The recent passing away of heiress Casey Johnson, also the recent girlfriend of Tila Tequila, is sad and no doubt an early loss. But it’s perhaps this line, spoken by Johnson’s ex-girlfriend to Radar, that is raising the most red flags for us: “On one occasion she (Tila) called me and a male friend screaming, saying people were breaking into her home. When I arrived, she was naked with a kitchen knife screaming, but no one was there.” It’s official: Tila Tequila needs to be stopped.
AP - "Psycho Too," (Bloomsbury USA, 256 pages, $35) by Will Self: "Psycho Too" by Will Self begins with a mini-epic journey from the home of writer J.G. Ballard in England to a sinking archipelago of sand called "The World" off the coast of Dubai.
In a series of conflicting tweets on Monday, Tequila, first announced the news of Johnson’s death, before announcing that Johnson was actually not dead, just comatose.
Making fun of crappy banner ads is as easy as making fun of flashing clipart ads about fish in a barrel (seriously, that’d be very easy to make fun of), but that throwaway explanation aside, I couldn’t help but do a wacky black-and-white sitcom double-take when I saw this banner ad for tooth whitening:
Are they claiming they’ll fix your yellow teeth by making you black, thus comparably whitening your mouth? Why does the person in the first photo have one normal tooth next to one disgustingly yellow tooth? Was Photo #1 covering one tooth with, like, a plastic gold tooth then binge-drinking gallons of Coke, and he got the fake gold tooth from some Halloween costume kit called “Gang Thug Man” with an example photo of a sad dude not even trying to feign enthusiasm for appearing on the front of the Gang Thug Man Halloween costume bag?
Got off track there, I’ll save my rants about sad Halloween costume kit photos for February, when they’re topical. In the meantime, I’ll be clicking on that ad to discover this secret mom trick of moms.
The most shocking thing about Wednesday night's People's Choice Awards?
Well, not much, but that's what made this show so great! Hollywood's fan faves took home top...
There's a battle brewing among Casey Johnson's closest friends.
Tila Tequila, aka the late heiress's nominal fiancée, called police to her Los Angeles home today after...
In a blindside worthy of Russell Hantz himself, Jeff Probst tonight revealed the cast of Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains during the People's Choice Awards tonight.
That's where...
The Hoff is taking off.
After four seasons on America's Got Talent, David Hasselhoff is leaving the judges table, his rep confirms to E! News. "I am proud that I was part of...
Aaaah! ABC just dropped new photos from the Jan. 21 episode of Grey's Anatomy, and not only will Katherine Heigl be gracing us with our presence, but it looks like...
No dealbreakers here!
30 Rock's Jenna Maroney might be unlucky in love, but the fabulous Jane Krakowski just got a big, ol' rock to call her own.
The funnylady and...
"No one's too worried about it."
—So 'fesses one of our studio moles concerning Summit's state of mind over the leaked Eclipse script, supposedly belonging to...
Courtenay Semel is opening up about the death of her former girlfriend, Casey Johnson.
Semel (whose dad is ex-Yahoo boss Terry Semel) has been expressing some of her feelings through...
Members of the NYPD's Gang Unit will be heading to Bermuda to help its police force solve several gang-related shootings that have "rocked the island" recently. Did the fact that Mayor Bloomberg happens to 
