Fan Fare

Miley Cyrus — too sexy for her shirt?

“Who Owns My Heart”  ponders Miley Cyrus in her new single.

Certainly not Disney, judging by the latest writhe and grind music video from the teen who found fame, and millions of tween girl fans,  as “Hannah Montana”.

Cyrus has spent most of the past year trying to distance herself from her Hannah Montana alter-ego, even though the TV series is still running on the Disney Channel.

But  with still a month to go before she turns 18 in November, the raunchy video for “Who Owns My Heart” has sparked another round of raised eyebrows and hand-wringing about her sexed-up new image.

“Who Owns My Heart” finds Cyrus lying on a bed in a seedy room, making come-to-bed eyes at the camera, trying on skimpy outfits for a party, flashing a leg in a limo and grinding with party-goers (male and female) on the dance floor. It follows the release in June of the raunchy “I Can’t Be Tamed” pop video from her new album which Cyrus said at the time was all about girls empowering themselves.

Entertainment Weekly called the new video “really sultry!” and “a frothy fun video”.

But the Celebritology bloggers at the Washington Post weren’t quite to enthusiastic, saying “(Maybe) I’m just a prude who finds the “Who Owns My Heart” imagery borderline icky for an underage girl (who was and continues to be marketed to children by Disney)”.

“At the Movies” goes dark

The latest movies from Sylvester Stallone, Julia Roberts and Michael Cera will forever be remembered by film buffs as the last to be reviewed on the weekly TV show “At the Movies,” which ended its influential 35-year run this past weekend. Syndicator Disney announced in March that it was canceling the show because it no longer made financial sense to produce.

The show, originated by rival Chicago newspapermen Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, brought film criticism to mainstream America. The two scribes passionately debated each other on the merits of Hollywood blockbusters and small art-house releases, making or breaking movies with their trademarked (literally) thumbs-up and thumbs-down recommendations.

The swan song episode replayed some of those moments: Siskel lavishing praise on the documentary “Hoop Dreams,” and the duo almost coming to blows over such long-forgotten films as the Burt Reynolds comedy “Cop and a Half.” In one notable sequence, Siskel changed his thumbs-up on “Broken Arrow” to a thumbs-down, after being swayed by Ebert’s distaste for the John Travolta thriller.

Siskel and Ebert jumped from local public television to national syndication in 1986. Siskel died in 1999 and was eventually replaced by columnist Richard Roeper. An ailing Ebert stepped down in 2006, and Roeper reviewed movies with a succession of guests for two years. Two of them, A.O. (Tony) Scott of the New York Times and Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune (at left in picture with Scott), rescued the show in 2009 after an ill-fated restructuring with a pair of lightweight critics sent ratings into a freefall.

Phillips recalled working in a factory in 1980 with people who saw their first subtitled films because of the show. “It mainstreamed film criticism and it brought up a different audience into all kinds of specialty and arthouse and foreign-language (movies) they would not have otherwise seen,” he said.

“It democratized it,” added Scott. “It opened it up, to the point that now you have the noise and argumentation of the Internet where you have a hundred flowers blooming in angry contention.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Scott noted. “It’s about everybody getting together and having a focal point for an argument.”

‘S Wonderful? Brian Wilson tackles Gershwins’ catalog

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy. And Brian Wilson is raising the temperature with an album of Gershwin covers. The 14-track album, “Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin,” comes out in the United States and Canada (and Brazil) on Aug. 17 via Disney, in time to make the Grammys’ eligibility deadline. It reaches Australia and Asia the following week, and finally makes it to Europe on Sept. 6.

Among the usual suspects — “Someone to Watch Over Me,” “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” and “Summertime” — are two obscure tunes likely to excite fans of George and Ira Gershwin: “The Like in I Love You” and “Nothing But Love.” The former is an outtake from the 1924 musical “Lady, Be Good!” The latter is based on an unfinished 1929 song “Say My Say.” They are drawn from more than 100 piano demos left by composer George Gershwin at his death in 1937, and made available last year to Wilson by the Gershwin estates and their publisher Warner/Chappell Music. Wilson completed the pair with bandmate Scott Bennett.

At an industry listening party in West Hollywood on Wednesday, a Disney marketing executive said the two songs are “a key selling point” of the album, and he urged guests to get the album “out to the mainstream.” Maybe an alliance with United Airlines would help? Wilson, 68 (pictured at left with Beach Boy Al Jardine in January), attended the event, reprising the album’s a cappella version of the aforementioned carrier’s theme song “Rhapsody in Blue” with his bandmates, but otherwise not saying much.

“Thank you very much. It’s lovely to have you with us. Good night,” he said before being hustled off to a side room to escape the intensifying chatter as the vinyl version played. (One interesting piece of gossip: Wilson, according to a pal, is driving for the first time in decades.)

Initial listens of “Gershwin” reveal Wilson to be in strong voice, clearly heard above the trademark harmonies that tend to drown him out on stage. His version of “It Ain’t Necessarily So” comes close to Bronski Beat’s falsetto cover. The bossa nova version of “‘S Wonderful” tips its hat to Joao Gilberto’s. “Gershwin” could also be viewed as a companion to the Beach Boys’ 1966 masterpiece “Pet Sounds,” given the similarities between that album’s jaunty instrumental title track and the new album’s vocal-free take on “I Got Plenty O’ Nuthin.’” Or between “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” respectively.

Wilson intimates as much in the liner notes, thanking the Gershwin brothers for “creating music that inspired a young boy from Hawthorne, California to follow a dream.”

Don’t mess with the Mouse, Adam

(Writing and reporting by Corinne Heller)

Adam Lambert? Not for Disney.

Appearances by glam rocker Adam Lambert on two additional shows broadcast on the ABC network have been canceled following complaints to the Disney-owned station.

ABC had also canceled an appearance by Lambert on its “Good Morning America” news program a day after he performed at the live American Music Awards November telecast on ABC in November, during which he kissed a male keyboardist and simulated oral sex and other racy acts.

The 27-year-old singer, who came out publicly as gay after finishing second this year on “American Idol” , wrote on his Twitter website on Wednesday: “Yes, sadly friends, ABC has canceled my appearances on Kimmel and NYE. I don’t blame them. It’s the FCC heat.”

“It’ll all blow over,” he wrote on his Twitter page. “Let’s focus on something positive!”

Lambert was to perform on ABC’s annual “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” special and on the late-night talk show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” later this month. He has appeared on rival networks since his AMAs performance and has an appearance coming up later in December on “The Jay Leno Show”.

Zac Efron, Robert Pattinson, not fans of their own movies

Zac Efron, a graduate of Disney’s star machine and teen heart-throb of the “High School Musical” series and “17 Again,” is not the biggest fan of his own movies.

And he’s not the only one. “Twilight” stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart are not exactly talking their own work up either.

With his latest film “Me and Orson Welles” due out next month, Efron told Nylon Guys magazine, “It’s the first time I’ve ever watched a movie (that I’m in) and in the end I’m like, ‘OK! I didn’t check my watch once!”

In fairness to Efron, he is only 21 year-old, so it’s not like he has the long list of movie credits of, say, a Jack Nicholson. Maybe it takes him a while to get warmed up, and he will have some other favorite roles after “Me and Orson Welles.”

But that does not sit well with some Disney fans.  At the Disney fan website, DisneyDreaming.com, they whipped up an article titled “Zac Efron Disappoints Us Again” after his latest comment.

“C’mon Zac Efron, really? We love your movies, and we support all of your roles,” the short article states. “And on top of that, we PAY to watch your movies in theater, purchase them on DVD and buy paraphernalia with your face on it. The LEAST you could do is act like you enjoyed those movies too.”

Wow, who knew those Mickey Mouse ears could be so sharp?

John Lasseter gives old-school animation a hand at Disney expo

John Lasseter, the Walt Disney Co’s chief creative officer, walked onto the stage at the company’s D23 Expo in Anaheim, California, on Sunday wearing a suit jacket over a Hawaiian shirt, and the crowd greeted him with the cheers and shouts usually reserved for a conquering rock god. At one point, a fan held up a flashing red Buzz Lightyear toy the way someone might hoist a cigarette lighter at a concert.

With an adoring audience of more than 3,000 Disney fans before him, Lasseter spent much of the presentation talking about Disney’s new push to reclaim its former glory in hand-drawn animation, an artform the studio abandoned after 2004′s box office failure “Home on the Range.” Lasseter is known for pioneering computer-generated imagery (CGI) on animated movies like “Toy Story” at Pixar Animation Studios, but he went to great lengths to promote Disney’s upcoming projects in that other style of filmmaking, which paradoxically Pixar helped to make less popular through the success of its CGI movies before Disney acquired the studio in 2006.

Lasseter described Disney’s upcoming hand-drawn movie “The Princess and the Frog,” set for a Dec. 11 release, and he offered more details on the new “Winnie the Pooh” movie that Disney announced earlier this week, as a hand-drawn film set for release in spring 2011.

“Honestly, this is the most blessed production I’ve ever worked on,” Lasseter told the crowd about “Winnie the Pooh.”

Aside from its box office potential, “Winnie the Pooh” could also fuel a merchandising line of fuzzy animal characters that has been one of Disney’s highest sellers.

Lasseter said Burny Mattinson, an animator who worked under the late Walt Disney and was involved in two 1960s “Winnie the Pooh” movies, will contribute to the latest “Winnie the Pooh” film. And he said the latest project will try to match the look of those 1960s films, such as by using watercolors the way the original animators did.

The fact that Disney has upped its investment in hand-drawn animation even before seeing how well “The Princess and the Frog” performs at the box office this year shows the studio is committed to the artform. Lasseter told the D23 crowd that when he joined Disney after Pixar was bought by the company, he said on his first day under his new bosses that he wanted to bring back hand-drawn animation.

Marvel’s super-heroes look to invade cell phones

In a sign of the merchandising potential the Walt Disney Co bought with its $4 billion purchase of comic book house and movie studio Marvel Entertainment,  Marvel on Tuesday teamed up with ring-tone company Vringo to launch a new service — cell phone videos of characters like Wolverine, Captain America and the Fantastic Four.

Customers can view animated clips of Marvel characters on their mobile phones, and turn them into video ringtones. In addition to video ringtones, Vringo also has a service that allows customers to call their friends, who would then see a Marvel super-hero or villain on their phones, and identify the caller that way.

The Marvel video clips available on cell phones can be seen here.

Disney officials have cited the merchandising potential of Marvel as one reason that the deal makes sense for them. Now that we know that Marvel characters who have long graced lunch boxes and T-shirts can invade cell phones, can the day be far away when we see your iPod comes equipped with Spider Sense? If it can ward off bad music purchases, it’s all good.

Theoretical “thumbs up” for relaunch of “At the Movies”

Many of the movies entering theaters in the next few weeks may be forgettable afterthoughts unfurled on the post-summer masses, but at least some of the reviews promise to be memorable now that a pair of veteran critics are back at the helm of the influential TV show “At the Movies.”

The series, a descendant of the longtime vehicle for Roger Ebert and the late Gene Siskel, relaunched at the weekend with familiar faces Michael Phillips (right) of the Chicago Tribune and A.O. (Tony) Scott of the New York Times.

While comfortable on the screen, their mild-mannered personalities tended to cancel each other out. Politeness and consensus ruled as the cerebral duo joined every other critic on the planet in trashing Sandra Bullock’s “All About Steve,” and then heaped praise on Mike Judge’s “Extract.” Even when they offered differing recommendations, on the Patton Oswalt drama “Big Fan,” it turned out that they were more or less on the same page anyway. Perhaps the contents of the untouched coffee cups separating them on the austere set need a little spiking.

Speaking of recommendations, the “see it,” “rent it” and “skip it” designations remain. The show is unable to use the famous “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” assessments, which are controlled by Ebert and the Siskel estate.

“At the Movies” slid into irrelevance in the past year after syndicator Disney installed a pair of fresh-faced critics quickly branded as lightweights. The studio had taken the dramatic step after failing to reach a new contract with Ebert, who has not appeared on air since leaving in 2006 to undergo thyroid surgery that has since robbed him of his voice.

In his absence Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper, who came aboard after Siskel died of a brain tumor in 1999, kept the flag flying with a series of guest co-hosts, including Phillips and Scott. The revolving door kept things fresh, and tensions occasionally surfaced when the opinionated Roeper shut down his less-polished guests: Perhaps an edgier third critic, such as Roeper or former guest host Robert Wilonsky of the Dallas Observer, would restore a gladiatorial tone to the show.

‘Twilight’ vs. ‘High School Musical 3′ at Teen Choice Awards

The lovelorn vampires of “Twilight” will vie for top honors at the Teen Choice Awards on Aug. 9 with the singing stars of “High School Musical 3: Senior Year.”

“Twilight” garnered 12 nominations, ahead of 10 for “High School Musical 3.” Miley Cyrus and the teen soap “Gossip Girl” also scored 10 each, while event hosts the Jonas Brothers snagged nine.

The ceremony will be held at the Gibson Amphithreatre near Hollywood, and will be broadcast on Fox the next day. Fans aged 13 to 19 can each vote once daily for their top picks at teenchoiceawards.com.

“Twilight” stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart were respectively nominated for choice movie actor and actress in the drama category. The film’s other nods included choice movie in both the drama and romance catgories. Taylor Lautner, Nikki Reed and Ashley Greene will compete for fresh face awards, and Cam Gigandet for the villain award.

The only head-to-head competition between “Twilight” and “High School Musical 3″ in the movie category was in the liplock category: Stewart and Pattinson vs. Vanessa Hudgens and Zac Efron. Cyrus was also nominated, along with her “Hannah Montana 3″ co-star Lucas Till.

Efron was also nominated for choice movie actor in the music/dance category, alongside co-star Corbin Bleu. Till and “Hannah Montana” co-star Jason Earles will also compete. In the actress race, Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale were up against Cyrus. Cyrus also picked up nominations in the TV and music races, and in random races such as choice female hottie.

Cannes opening night ends on “Up”beat note

Call it a Cannes-style recession, courtesy of Disney magic. Even though there are fewer people at this year’s film festival — merchants say business is down some 30 percent — the opening night premiere party for the movie “Up” still lit up the Croisette late Wednesday night.

The new Disney/Pixar animated movie about an old man who ties balloons onto his house and floats into the air on the journey of a lifetime opened to solid reviews by critics, and fans at last night’s premiere almost unanimously seemed to buy into its sentiment.

But beyond the Disney/Pixar celebration, the party mood that generally grips this playground for the rich and famous on the French Riviera was decidedly subdued. There were fewer yachts in the bay, fewer loud discos pumping music onto the beach and several restaurants and bars that would usually be packed with opening night crowds had, in fact, closed for lack of business.

Still, as they say in entertainment, “the show must go on,” and Disney put one on late Wednesday night. One small item of note, however. Typically at these premieres, there will be plenty of food and drinks on hand, but it did not go unnoticed by anyone at the Disney party that the food was, for the most part, only fruits and candy — hardly a feast for Cannes. Then again, these are tough times, even in the film business.