Taylor Swift sings of love — and now pens greetings cards too

Roses are red, violets are blue, Taylor Swift sings well, and writes greetings card too.

The country-pop starlet, who rocketed to fame with ballads of teen love that she wrote on her bedroom floor, has joined forces with American Greetings Corp. to launch her own line of greetings cards.

 Swift, 20, who last month became the youngest artist to win the coveted Grammy for album of the year, will introduce her first 12 cards with a display marked: “Hi, I’m Taylor and these are my cards.” 

“Staying true to who Taylor Swift is and what she loves, the creative team at American Greetings worked closely with the artist to come up with an eclectic selection of cards that glitter, offer traditional values with her personal flare, and embody her words that make such an emotional connection,” the company said in a statement.  “Taylor’s songs touch millions of people and we believe her cards will have the same emotional appeal to consumers of all ages.”

Women are from Venus, Men are from … Pandora?

In 1992, John Gray’s relationship book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” gave self-help romance seekers everything they wanted to know about the opposite sex. The book became a huge best-seller. But really, all anybody with a desire for romance needed to do was look at who goes to movies on Valentine’s Day, and why, to see just exactly what the opposite sex wanted.

That’s right. This weekend is THE WEEKEND for affairs of the heart, date nights and dinner-and-a-movie outings as V-Day hits calendars on Sunday. And movie ticket seller Fandango.com has polled moviegoers to see just exactly what they will go see in theaters. The results? Forty-two (42) percent of women want to go see the new movie, “Valentine’s Day” while 39 percent of men picked action-packed “Avatar,” which takes place on the faraway moon, Pandora.

In the pool, 92 percent of men say they are “willing to let their dates pick the movie” (Gee, awfully nice fellas), and 94 percent of men say that they do, in fact, actually pay for the trip to the theater (Now, that’s more like it guys).  And while 32 percent of women polled picked Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling in the weepy romance “The Notebook” (2004) as their favorite onscreen couple, 20 percent of men chose Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana in “Avatar.”

We wonder: where does that leave one of the other new movies this week, “The Wolfman“? Well, only 10 percent of men and 7 percent of women want to see that horror show, according to Fandango.  … Maybe a little too much hair. Now, if it were a blue-haired wolfman…

Ringo Starr gets his Hollywood star at low-wattage ceremony

If the stars come out at night, they failed to illuminate Ringo Starr’s Hollywood Walk of Fame induction ceremony on Monday, the first time a star has been unveiled at night.

A surprisingly low-wattage assortment of celebrities showed up to see the former Beatles drummer get his star outside the Capitol Records building, most of them holdovers from Roy Orbison’s ceremony 10 days ago such as Joe Walsh, Jeff Lynne, David Lynch, Eric Idle and Barbara Orbison. 

Walsh, who recently became Starr’s brother-in-law, addressed the 500-or-so fans, as did producer Don Was and folk musician Ben Harper (pictured at left with Was, Starr, Walsh and Starr’s wife Barbara Bach). A chorus of loud boos greeted Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who stood in front of the press photographers after they had finished snapping him. 

When George Harrison got his star last year, Paul McCartney, Tom Hanks and Tom Petty topped the crowded VIP list. But McCartney was in England on Monday, Starr told the crowd, in between frequent flashes of the peace sign. Hollywood was represented this time by, er, “ER” veteran Noah Wyle.

Dr. Conrad Murray, guilty as charged?

(video by Marc Price)

Los Angeles prosecutors finally had their day in court on Monday, when Dr. Conrad Murray — better known as Michael Jackson’s personal physician — was charged with involuntary manslaughter in the pop star’s sudden death. You can read about the charges here.

If you don’t already know about the case, LA coroners have said Jackson died of acute intoxication of an anesthetic drug called propofol, which is used in surgery. Dr. Murray has admitted giving the singer propofol on the day he died, according to court documents, but he has also said other doctors gave Jackson numerous drugs. Indeed, the coroner’s report said several drugs, including the sedative Lorazepam, were in Jackson’s system. You can read about the drugs in his system here.

Taylor Swift wins Grammys, loses music critics

Taylor Swift’s record label has come out in defense of the young pop/country star after her  less-than-stellar performance at the Grammy awards on Sunday had music critics shooting poisoned arrows at her vocal talents.

Swift, 20, took four Grammys on Sunday, including the coveted album of the year for the smash hit “Fearless”, which was also the biggest selling album of 2009. But her haul was somewhat overshadowed by her live Grammy duet with veteran rock singer Stevie Nicks, which The Washington Post called “incredibly wretched” and Ann Powers of The Los Angeles Times described as “tinny and rhythmically flat footed.”

Over to Scott Borchetta, president and CEO of Swift’s record label Big Machine Records in Nashville. “Maybe she’s not the best technical singer, but she is the best emotional singer,” Borchetta told The Tennessean.com. “No one is perfect on any given day. Maybe in that moment, we didn’t have the best night, but in the same breath, maybe we did.”

It’s not the first time that Swift’s vocal prowess has come under fire during the singer-songwriter’s rapid rise to the top and a marketing campaign that has put her just about everywhere in the last six months.  In the past, Swift’s managers have blamed some shaky moments on nerves and the technical constraints of  live performances, while pointing to a string of  sell-out concerts and her undoubted ability to connect with the angst of  young teens going through their first loves.

Missing Paula, awaiting Ellen on “American Idol”

It’s been a long three weeks of  screechers,  also-rans and attention-seekers  as “American  Idol”  plows through auditions looking for a potential star.  And that’s just the celebrity judges.

With the audition rounds finally coming to a conclusion,  all eyes are now turning to the debut of Ellen DeGeneres in the first Hollywood rounds on Feb 9,  and whether she can fill the shoes of the missing Paula Abdul.

So far, most of the celebrity singers and actors called in at short notice last summer to replace the wacky and volatile  Abdul have demonstrated only how difficult it is to find the right blend of chemistry, entertainment and insight on the judging panel that has arguably been one of the show’s biggest attractions over the past eight years.

And the “performances” of  Avril Lavigne,  Posh Spice and Joe Jonas  don’t  bode well for the departure next season of Simon Cowell and his spot-on but oh so insulting quips ( Think “human orange” and “nails on a chalkboard”) .

Mel Gibson finds comeback going tough

(Note strong language in quote, paragraph 4)

The art of the come-back should never be underestimated — especially if you’re Mel Gibson.

Gibson, back on the big screen after an eight-year  absence, is having a tough time fielding the inevitable questions about his infamous drunken anti-Semitic outburst in 2006.

After keeping a mostly low, public profile since that arrest, the “Mad Max” star has been on the media circuit promoting his new kidnap thriller “Edge of Darkness” — and trying to keep a smile on his face.

10 Oscar nominees, but who’s counting?

Back in June, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said it would expand its list of best film Oscar contenders to 10 from five, then Academy President Sid Ganis told reporters doing so would “cast our net wider, and it casting that net wider, who knows what will turn up.” (Read about that here). Essentially, what that meant was the Academy wanted more populist fare among its nominees after years of seeing its membership favor low-budget adult dramas over box office hits like Batman movie, “The Dark Knight.”

Why is that important? The Academy knows that nominating popular movies helps boost the audience size for the Oscar telecast. Last year, when “Slumdog Millionaire” was on a roll at box offices ($141 million), more than 38 million people tuned in to the Oscars compared with 32 million the previous year when gritty drama “No Country For Old Men” ($74 million) won best film. 

Luckily for the Academy, this year it has a box office smash and a critical hit on its hands in “Avatar” — the highest grossing movie of all time. But the film that pundits say is right behind is low-budget, art house flick “The Hurt Locker.” And heading into Tuesday’s Oscar nominations (read about them here), if you asked Oscar pundits who the top five films would have been, the would have said: “Inglourious Basterds,” “Up in the Air” and ”Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.” The fifth slot may have been a toss-up. Then again, it generally always is.

The point is, all five of those films were nominated, and likely only the two — “Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker” — stand a chance at winning, pundits say. So, having 10 nominees may not have changed a thing. But that is what insiders think. You are the fans. What do you think? Did the 10 matter, and does it make for a more exciting show? Put another way, is having “District 9″ among the nominees, for instance, really going to change the thinking among the 6,000 or so Academy members? Maybe not. But how about “The Blind Side”? And do movies like those make you  any more, or less, willing to tune in to the show on March 7?

Sundance rebels?

If you’ve been reading our coverage of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival (and we certainly hope so, otherwise our boss won’t pay for a return trip in 2011), you know by now that this year event organizers were promoting a return to a rebelliousness among independent filmmakers — those people making movies outside Hollywood’s major studios. The words “rebel,” “rework,” “rebirth,” and others figure prominently on Sundance posters, t-shirts, film trailers and the like. If you haven’t been reading about it, click here and here.

So the natural question all week has been, “do this year’s films exemplify a renewed indie spirit?” The answer depends on how you look at it. In the opening day press conference, even Sundance founder Robert Redford and festival director John Cooper seemed to disagree with Redford calling it a festival of rebirth for that independent spirit and Cooper thinking it was more a renewal of Sundance’s pledge to promote fresh, new voices in cinema. Rebirth or renewal? … TomAIto or TomAUto.

Here’s what we think. Sundance is first and foremost about films and filmmaking, say it’s organizers. So, what about the movies? Many are about the same, and a few will always be different — as different as the people who made them and how audiences perceive them. We ask: how was “Buried,” about a Iraq war contractor buried alive, any different from 2003’s “Open Water,” about a pair of scuba divers stranded in the middle of the ocean when their tourist boat leaves them? Both take us on horrific journeys that lead to personal introspection, but “Buried” also preys upon our feelings about the years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. So that’s a little different, yes. Movie watching is subjective and, as Joseph Gordon-Levitt (you can call him Joe) told us, a new movie is often about taking an old idea and “putting your own, unique spin on it.” Read our Q&A with Joe here.

Honoree Neil Young fails to perform at music biz charity event

Ever the “fierce independent” and “iconoclast” — two phrases showered on honoree Neil Young at the music industry’s annual Grammy charity bash on Friday — the grizzled rocker failed to perform for the black-tie crowd who had turned out to salute him. 

Organizers said it was only the third time in the 20-year history of the MusiCares dinner that an honoree had not sung, after Billy Joel in 2002 and Luciano Pavarotti in 1998. Young’s publicist did not return a call seeking comment. Young was never billed as a performer, but disappointed guests assumed the tireless road warrior might dust off a few ditties.

The MusiCares event raises funds for musicians with medical and financial problems. It takes place two days before the Grammys, so an A-list crowd is always in attendance. Young, accompanied by his wife Pegi, was honored for his annual all-star concerts in Northern California for the Bridge School, an institution that helps disabled children.

Plenty of big stars took to the stage at the cavernous Los Angeles Convention Center to hail the Canadian rocker, most of them turning in earnest versions of folkie songs such as “Down by the River” (John Mellencamp, pictured in the middle, at left), “Tell Me Why” (Norah Jones) and “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” (Jackson Browne), and “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” (Lady Antebellum). Josh Groban inadvertently set off an exodus to the bathrooms with his performance of the ballad “Harvest Moon,” but Wilco enlivened proceedings with an epic “Broken Arrow.”