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November 23rd, 2009

Fall? What fall? J.Lo says the day after AMAs

Posted by: Alex Dobuzinskis

lopezJennifer Lopez is laughing off her fall at the American Music Awards on Sunday night.

“Did I trip a little bit? I don’t even remember,” the “Jenny from the Block” singer said on Monday morning to Ryan Seacrest on his Los Angeles radio show.

Lopez was laughing when she said that, and she followed it up with a joke — at least we at Fan Fare are taking it as a joke.

“Yeah I meant to do that,” she told Seacrest. “What are you talking about? You should know me better than that, that was part of the choreography.”

During the performance of her song “Louboutins,” Lopez walked on the backs of five male dancers as if she was climbing a staircase, and then jumped off the fifth man’s back and landed on her famously curvy backside. But in slightly less time than it takes for Auto-Tune to iron out bad vocals, Lopez was back on her feet, dancing and shaking.  Like nothing happened, right?

Well, not exactly. While it was probably overshadowed by “American Idol” runner-jloup Adam Lambert’s racy, controversial performance of his single “For Your Entertainment,” J.Lo’s fall also got plenty of attention.

Of course, J.Lo could always use this to her advantage. Before reality star Kim Kardashian came along, J.Lo had the most famous backside in Hollywood. Now that she has stamped a stage with it, J.Lo’s posterior is back in the news again.

November 23rd, 2009

Will Katie Price be missed in Celebrity jungle?

Posted by: Mike Collett-White

jordanKatie Price, aka Jordan, has walked out of “I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!” after the glamour model, celebrity and author was nominated by the public for a seventh “Bushtucker” (read creepy-crawly munch) trial in a row.

It would appear that her recent acrimonious divorce from singer Peter Andre, whom, ironically, she met on an earlier series of the reality TV show, has done little for her standing in the eyes of the British public. Some commentators think the 31-year-old should have seen this coming.

Her departure leaves the show without its most high-profile and headline-generating contestant. That makes it two after Irish twins John and Edward Grimes were voted off the X Factor singing contest last night. ITV will be watching closely to see if the exits translate to lower viewing figures for two of its biggest shows.

November 23rd, 2009

With Jedward gone, has X Factor lost its X factor?

Posted by: Mike Collett-White

BRITAIN/So, the “terrible twins” from Ireland, John and Edward Grimes, have been booted off the X Factor, ending their skin-of-the-teeth, tip-of-the-fingernail existence on the show.

 

Once again in the bottom two of a public vote, Jedward were up against Olly Murs, the singer from Essex who was many tipsters’ favourite to win the show … at least until last night.

 

Rather than a high-octane, madcap dash around the stage surrounded by dancers and pyrotechnics, and a performance closer to shouting than singing, the spiky-haired duo surprisingly chose to sing a ballad, Boyzone’s “No Matter What”.

 

The plan backfired, with a rendition that exposed Jedward’s limited singing ability. The fact that the British media has dubbed Jedward the “tuneless twins” says it all really.

 

Murs was his usual accomplished self with a performance of Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight”, though clearly surprised to see himself scrapping it out with the also-rans.

 

Dannii Minogue had the last vote on the judging panel, and, for a change, declined to refer the decision to the public vote. She did, though, ask whether the X Factor was a singing competition before making up her mind – perhaps she ought to know the basic rules by now.

 

Louis Walsh, Jedward’s mentor, was sad to see his protégés go, and warned that the X Factor would be a duller place without them. Like Jedward or loathe them, perhaps he has a point?

November 22nd, 2009

Vampires + romance = box office love

Posted by: Bob Tourtellotte

twilight-fans(Reporting and video by Marc Price)

Since when did girls start liking guys that stay up all hours at night — drinking? Blood, no less. Since when? Since always. And if a vamp knows how to bite more than her neck, all the better.

Vampire flicks have come a long way since Bella Lugosi, and while we’re a little young to have seen Lugosi in theaters, we do remember Jim Carrey and Lauren Hutton in “Once Bitten” (Today, that would be titled “Cougar Vampire”). We remember “An American Werewolf in London” and “Teen Wolf” — we’re allowed to mention werewolves given “New Moon” and its pack. And we can say, the beasts are doing far better today romancing the gals.

On the the subject of vamps, we note Johnny Depp was named People magazine’s sexiest man of the year (you can read about that here) last week. Johnny Depp? Everybody knows Robert Pattinson is the sexiest man — or is it Taylor Lautner? C’mon you “Twi-hards” (that’s a few of you pictured at the premiere at left), which is it: vampire Edward Cullen or werewolf Jacob Black? Pattinson or Lautner?

The movie smashed weekend box office records with a domestic haul of nearly $141 million (read that here), and we were out there again. We asked women: would they let Robert Pattinson drink their blood? The answer is below.

November 22nd, 2009

Sandra Bullock scores touchdown at box office

Posted by: Dean Goodman

It’s been a wild year at the box office for Sandra Bullock, whose report card this decade has been middling at best.

sandyThe actress, 45, returned to theaters for the first time in more than two years in June with the romantic comedy “The Proposal,” which went on to become the biggest film of her career (before accounting for inflation), with $164 million in domestic ticket sales. But then came her September stinker, “All About Steve,” which was one of her weakest entries with $34 million in ticket sales. She is pictured at the premiere of the latter film, looking happier than she should have been.

Bullock bounced back this weekend with the sports drama “The Blind Side,” which kicked off with $34.5 million, a personal best. The opening was good enough for a distant No. 2 behind “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” ($140.7 million, but who’s counting?).

Critics and fans embraced the fact-based saga of a Tennessee housewife who takes in a homeless black teenager and turns him into a football hero. John Lee Hancock (”The Rookie”) directed from an adaptation of Michael Lewis’ book “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game.” It scored a 70 percent positive rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, compared to 30 percent for the “Twilight” sequel. Exit polling conducted by CinemaScore gave it an exceedingly rare A-plus across all demographics. There’s even talk of an Oscar nod, which would be a first for the two-time Golden Globe nominee.

“The Blind Side” was produced for $29 million by Alcon Entertainment, which specializes in female-skewing fare like the “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” movies. The company is financed by FedEx Corp Chairman Frederick W. Smith, and it has a distribution deal with Warner Bros. Pictures.

Bullock cut her undisclosed fee to star in the film, but will share in the profits. “She’ll make quite a bit of money on the movie,” said Broderick Johnson, who runs Alcon with Andrew Kosove.

Johnson predicted the movie would enjoy “a remarkable run” in North America, and reach the $150 million level. But how will it play overseas? American sports dramas have limited foreign appeal, and so the marketing will emphasize the human-interest side. The strategy seemed to work in North America, where women accounted for 55 percent of the audience. Johnson said the international rollout will be worked out next week, but it would likely be spearheaded by launches in the Bullock strongholds of Britain and Germany (her late mother’s homeland).

November 20th, 2009

Fans seek midnight romance under light of “New Moon”

Posted by: Alex Dobuzinskis

lautner2Fans lined up Thursday night at movie theaters to be among the first to get bitten by the “New Moon” phenomenon, the sequel to last year’s “Twilight.” The vampire romance movie ended up setting a box office record of $26.3 million for those midnight screenings by drawing fans like the ones profiled in our Fan Fare video below.

Who will go to “New Moon?” Lots of teen girls, for sure, but also moms who are into the story, young women and the men they drag along on dates. Those groups are expected to snap up tickets to the tune of about $100 million at U.S. and Canadian box offices this weekend. That’s a lot of howling at the “New Moon.”

“New Moon,” of course, has generated plenty of buzz. Tracking firm Trendrr said that in the last three months, more than 100,000 “New Moon” related videos have been added to YouTube.com. Trendrr also said that on Thursday, Twitter.com received more than 91,000 posts related to “New Moon.”

But despite all that popularity, the Vatican is not on-board. This week, an official with the Catholic Church called the film “nothing more than a moral vacuum with a deviant message.” This despite influential film critic Roger Ebert saying that the “Twilight Saga is an extended metaphor for teen chastity.” Who to believe?

For the uninitiated, “New Moon” is the second installment in the “Twilight” franchise based on the books by Stephenie Meyer. In the books and the movies, high school student Bella Swan (Kristen Stewartin the films) falls in love with the vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). But in “New Moon,” there’s another boy competing for Bella’s affection, and that is werewolf Jacob Black, played by 17 year-old actor Taylor Lautner, photographed above at right. As a result, some fans going to “New Moon” are on Team Edward and some are on Team Jacob. As if any fan support is going to change which way Bella’s vampire-loving heart really leans.

Check out the video below.

November 19th, 2009

Jason Segel sings for love, or a one-night stand — whatever works

Posted by: Alex Dobuzinskis

jason-segelIn an age when celebrities guard their privacy like gold, Jason Segel goes a different route. On Wednesday night, the “How I Met Your Mother” star stopped by a Swell Season show in Los Angeles, where he gave an impromptu performance and sang out what he said was his phone number, proclaiming that he wanted to use his “celebrity status to make love to a Swell Season fan tonight.”

Click here to see a video of the comedic performance, complete with Swell Season pianist/singer Marketa Irglova holding up a placard with Segel’s supposed number, with its Syracuse, New York, area code. Segel’s song featured lyrics that asked concertgoers to call him for a hook-up, but only if they’re “disease free,” and he made liberal reference to his full frontal nude scene in last year’s “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” which he said involved “no special effects.”

Before the song, Swell Season singer Glen Hansard introduced Segel by saying that he had bumped into the actor at a hotel bar, along with Paul Rudd, Segel’s co-star from the movie “I Love You, Man.” Hansard, who himself starred in a movie, the 2007 film “Once,” in which he and Irglova played struggling musicians trying to make one great album, said at the concert that he, Segel and Rudd had engaged in a bout of drinking, and things got “properly hairy.” Supposedly, the Segel performance resulted from that.

For the record, this is not Segel’s first musical foray, check out this link to him performing a comic serenade on Craig Ferguson’s late night talk show. swell-season

But it made sense for Segel to get on stage at a Swell Season show, since the band (pictured at right last year at a show in Prague) is all about celebrating the musical abilities of everyday folks, which was also a big theme in their film “Once.”

On nearly every song at his set at L.A.’s Wiltern Theatre, Hansard had the crowd sing along, not only inviting them to chime in but coaching them on how to do it. When one woman in the audience took the lead harmony vocal on one song, Hansard called her “beautiful.”

So in the spirit of amateur music-making, Segel sat at the piano and said he had asked Swell Season how to write a song, and that Irglova told him to “include as much personal information” as possible. Hence, the lyric with his phone number in it.

It got the Wiltern audience laughing uncontrollably. But the real question is, did it work for Segel that night? Is there anybody out there who, ahem, knows for certain?

November 19th, 2009

Hip-hop and contemporary miss out on So You Think You Can Dance

Posted by: Solarina Ho

karenkevinbroadway091116_0334Wednesday’s So You Think You Can Dance results show opened with a trademark Wade and Amanda Robson group number that drew an enthusiastic response from the judges and audience alike, but it wasn’t long before everyone got down to unpleasant business. There were some small surprises and the judges were unanimous in their decisions.

Karen Hauer and Kevin Hunte’s Broadway routine disappointed judges on Tuesday and was the only dark spot of the evening, so it was no surprise the pair found themselves dancing for their lives.

Victor Smalley and Channing Cooke executed a strong Tyce Diorio jazz number, but viewers may have agreed with judge Adam Shankman who found the Bobby McFerrin song choice detracted him from connecting with the performance.

molleenathanpopjazz091116_0807Mollee Gray and Nathan Trasoras were back in the game after last week’s disastrous salsa, so it came as a surprise their pop-jazz dance put them among the bottom three couples. Judge Nigel Lythgoe, who called on Nathan to live up to his potential as “one of the best dancers” they’ve ever had on the show, speculated that their poor showing may have been backlash from last week.

In the end, the judges whittled it down to personality and growth.

Channing always performed under the radar and this week, her technical strength could not outshine the personality and charisma the judges saw in Karen.

channingvictorjazz091116_0474Kevin, who often found himself standing in Karen’s shadows as well, could not hide his awkwardness with other dance genres from the judges. In the end, his lack of growth relative to Victor’s cut his competition short.

What did you think of the viewers’ and judges’ decision?

(Top) Karen Hauer (L) and Kevin Hunte (R) perform a Broadway routine choreographed by Spencer Liff. © 2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. CR: Mathieu Young/FOX

(Middle) Nathan Trasoras (L) and Mollee Gray (R) perform a Pop Jazz routine choreographed by Laurieann Gibson. © 2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. CR: Mathieu Young/FOX

(Bottom) Victor Smalley (L) and Channing Cooke (R) perform a Jazz routine choreographed by Tyce Diorio. © 2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. CR: Mathieu Young/FOX

November 18th, 2009

Launching a Star Ship? Nah, just the “Star Trek” DVD

Posted by: Bob Tourtellotte

abrams(writing, reporting and video by Frank Simons)

With Hollywood glitz usually reserved for the launch of a Star Ship — namely the Enterprise — Paramount Home Entertainment on Tuesday released director J.J. Abrams’ recent re-boot of “Star Trek” on DVD and Blu-ray. It’s little wonder that Paramount pulled out all the stops to “premiere” the DVD. The movie was a big hit this past summer ($384 million at box offices), and Abrams is a star director having created “Alias” and “Lost” for TV and directed “Mission: Impossible III.”

So, Monday night at Los Angeles’ historic Griffith Observatory, high above the galaxy that is Hollywood, Paramount threw a star-studded bash the likes this planet had never seen for a “Star Trek” DVD. Abrams and many of the film’s stars beamed onto the red carpet just steps away from the Observatory’s Leonard Nimoy (that’s Spock to you older Trekkies) Event Horizon Theater. They were all smiles when discussing their big hit this past summer, but remained tight-lipped about details of the upcoming sequel.

“I haven’t made any decisions,” was the oft repeated answer to questions regarding a possible release date, if Abrams was officially on board to direct, and whether or not the film would be released in 3-D. Although Abrams did say he was “open” to the possibility of a 3-D sequel, one thing he was 100 percent certain about was that there would not be a “Directors Cut” of the current film.

Other members of the new “Star Trek” universe were more willing to discuss how they wanted events to unfold ahead — in the 23rd Century. Zoë Saldana (Uhura) “wouldn’t mind having a couple Spock-Babies,” John Cho wanted his Sulu character to learn more martial arts and possibly become “a poet,” and Karl Urban would like McCoy to say “I’m a Doctor, not a Scientologist!” As for more Spock, Leonard Nimoy told us, “there’s more Spock to play – and Zachary Quinto is going to do it.”

Outside the Observatory under the stars, Green Orion Slave Girls served Romulan Ale and “Red Matter” (the mysterious power source used so villainously by Eric Bana’s “Nero” in the film), welcoming revelers to party like it’s 2258.1999.

Paramount is confident — and they should be based on the film’s box office — that DVD and Blu-ray sales will take this film’s profits where no “Star Trek” DVD has gone before. The two disc DVD and three disc Blu-ray Special Edition have hours of additional material, so there’s something to please even the grumpiest Klingon. Features include behind-the-scenes featurettes, nine deleted scenes, a “gag” reel, director and creative team commentary, and many other tribble-sized bits of fun. But the party was anything but tribble small. Click below for some video of the event, but pardon us for some of the shaky video, we were having difficulties juggling notes and pens and microphones and cameras.

November 18th, 2009

Early UK reviews suggest Twilight sequel lacks bite

Posted by: Mike Collett-White

The Daily Mail calls the eagetwilightrly anticipated second instalment in the Twilight franchise “disastrous” and “one long pain in the neck“, and gives it just one star out of five compared with four stars for the first film. The Daily Mirror is kinder, saying the movie “effortlessly sweeps you along in a swirl of intoxicating passion.” It goes on to say the film, which hits US and UK theatres on Friday, works better as a love story than as a supernatural adventure.

Whoever you believe in the coming days, when the already speeding Twilight hype machine goes into overdrive, critics’ opinions are likely to have little impact on how the film fares at the ticket booths. The Twilight franchise based on the hugely popular novels by U.S. author Stephenie Meyer is being touted as the next Harry Potter, i.e. billions of box office bucks in the next few days.

As in the original, British actor Robert Pattinson plays Edward, the brooding bloodsucker who befriends Bella, played by Kristen Stewart. And Taylor Lautner is set to become the next heartthrob for his portrayal of American werewolf Jacob Black.

Catherine Hardwicke’s original Twilight movie made $384 million at the global box office. Few would bet against the sequel beating that tally, no matter what the critics think.