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)”.

Billy Ray Cyrus sports shades, bandana in new rock band; Miley mortified?

It’s every daughter’s nightmare. Dad’s fast approaching 50 and decides he needs to recapture his youth.

In this case, former country star Billy Ray Cyrus, better known these days as the father of Miley Cyrus, is taking a page from his daughter’s playbook and hardening his musical style. The mulleted singer of the inescapable 1992 anthem “Achy Breaky Heart” has formed a rock band called Brother Clyde, whose lineup includes former members of Hole and Snot. Its self-titled debut comes out on Tuesday through Disney, which also handles his daughter.        “I always loved rock ‘n’ roll,” said Cyrus, 48, pictured at left in center with bandana. “That was a heavy part of what I was as a young juvenile delinquent. I tried from my first album to rock like any other Southern rock band.”        That album, 1992′s “Some Gave All,” spent a record 17 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the U.S. pop chart. The single “Achy Breaky Heart” turned Cyrus into a country hunk, an image he rightfully treasures.

Tracks on the new disc include first single “Lately,” featuring rapper King Phaze; “The Right Time,” featuring Dolly Parton; “Alive” featuring his son, Trace Cyrus; and a version of Johnny Cash’s “Walk the Line.” Early listens suggest Cyrus is still partial to the early 1990s, possibly aiming for a less-druggy Alice in Chains sound with the millennial earnestness of Daughtry.        Brother Clyde’s lineup also includes drummer Samantha Maloney (Motley Crue, Hole, Eagles of Death Metal), guitarists Jamie Miller (theSTART, Snot) and Dan Knight, and bass player Dave Henning.

Miley Cyrus has stumbled a bit with her new album, “Can’t Be Tamed,” which took the 17-year-old starlet into slightly edgier territory. After debuting at No. 3 on the U.S. pop chart, it now ranks at No. 33 in its sixth week. Her father’s career is less than red-hot, so he has nothing to lose with his middle-aged reinvention as a dad rocker.

Miley Cyrus’ CD sales slide as she ditches her wholesome image

Miley Cyrus’ young fans are rebelling against her rebellion.

As the Disney starlet approaches her 18th birthday in  November, she is not unwisely downplaying her wholesome image in favor of an edgier facade. The transition shouldn’t have been too hard given all the scantily clad photos that have surfaced in the past few years, not to mention a recently released videoclip that showed 16-year-old Cyrus giving a lap dance to a 44-year-old Hollywood director. 

But her evolution into young adulthood is not getting any easier, if first-week sales of her defiantly titled new album, “Can’t Be Tamed” are anything to go by. The album, preceded by a sexy video, sold just 102,000 copies in the United States last week, landing at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 sales chart released Wednesday.

That’s a hefty drop from the 153,000 units that her Walmart-exclusive EP “Time of Our Lives” sold during its first full week last September. The EP’s numbers would have been higher if it had not gone on sale towards the end of the previous sales week, when it sold 62,000 units in just three days — enough for a No. 3 debut also.

Cyrus’ debut album under her own name, “Breakout,” launched at No. 1 in July 2008 with 371,000 units. She also hit No. 1 with a pair of albums released under her “Hannah Montana” alter ego: “Hannah Montana” kicked off with 281,000 units in 2006, and “Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus” with 326,000 the following year.

Those were the days when Cyrus/Montana concert tickets were the hottest commodity on the planet, and scalpers made a mint reselling them for huge markups to the chagrin of frustrated parents and outraged politicians. But times have changed, and youngsters are agog over Lady Gaga and Ke$ha and Drake and Justin Bieber. The latter’s debut album opened at No. 1 in March with 283,000 units and is one of the year’s biggest sellers with sales to date of 1.3 million. Drake’s debut album opened at No. 1 last week with 447,000 units.

Critics have given a guarded thumbs-up to the Cyrus metamorphosis. Entertainment Weekly’s respectful review gave “Can’t Be Tamed” a B-minus, while the New York Times said it was “the most unexpectedly thrilling” album of her career. Disney said it was heartened by market research showing that Cyrus’ fan base in the 16-22 age bracket stood at 47 percent this week from 16 percent last June.

A kiss — just a kiss? Or a scandal?

Back in the 1940s and the “Casablanca” era,  a kiss was famously “just a kiss”

Not any more.

It’s been seven years since Britney Spears and Madonna notoriously  locked lips in a live MTV Music Video Awards show. But women kissing women (or just pretending to) is still making front page news, whether it’s Miley Cyrus on a “Britain’s Got Talent” performance last week, or Sandra Bullock at the MTV Movie Awards show this weekend.

(And let’s not even revisit the Adam Lambert male-on-male kiss furor last November)

But while Bullock’s apparently rehearsed smooch with Scarlett Johansson was mostly seen as just good fun, Miley Cyrus’ kiss (that she now protests wasn’t really a kiss although it may have looked like it)  with a female dancer has not gone down so well, especially with fans of the Disney teen star.

Cyrus, 17, has found herself making plenty of headlines in the past few weeks as she tries to carve a new, more grown-up image  since finishing shooting the final series of Disney Channel’s tween hit series “Hannah Montana.”

Goodbye smiley Miley….

She’s been talking for months about carving out an edgier image after years of  the pink and sparkly world she  inhabited as  “Hannah Montana”, but even so the new Miley Cyrus music video must have come came as a bit of a shock — at least to her millions of Disney Channel fans around the world.

E!Online has an exclusive first look at the music video here

With its black leather figure hugging bodices, sexy dance moves,  and in your face lyrics, “Can’t Be Tamed”  sees Cyrus going down the road trod by Britney Spears after her first couple of albums, and more recently by glam sensation Lady GaGa.

Except that Britney was 20 when she broke away from her bubblegum pop persona and started writhing around with snakes in her single  “I’m a Slave 4 U” ,  and Lady Gaga is now 24.

The music video for “Can’t Be Tamed” makes last year’s fuss over a few seconds of Miley dancing on a pole on an ice-cream cart at the Teen Choice Awards seem like child’s play.

And although Miley has wrapped filming for what will be the final series of her alter ego Hannah Montana, Disney Channel doesn’t start airing it until July.

Should Miley, 17, have held off just a bit longer before striking out as her own woman?  Has she gone from one extreme to another?

Sex and the City 2: the trailer — Penelope, Miley and gasp, Aiden?

Set to the ubiquitous Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ tribute to a dazzling New York, the “Sex and the City 2” promotional trailer was released Friday, and fans were left salivating at the prospect that the ladies, who always loved cosmos, are rapidly turning into ladies who love many other things. That is, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) are returning with more babies, and another exotic trip, this time to the Middle East.

But the biggest surprise in the long trailer (which you can watch below) was the appearance of John Corbett, aka Aiden, who, coincidentally seems to be strolling through Abu Dhabi at the same time as Carrie and bumps into her tanned and in a light shirt, cooing, “This is the best mirage that I have ever had.”

But let’s face it, realism is never why we watched the fashionable girls who whispered what others didn’t dare.  Not only does Aiden make an unlikely return, but there’s Penelope Cruz tantalizing Mr. Big , there’s Liza Minnelli thrusting her arms into the air, and even Miley Cyrus (predictably there to pull-in younger audiences), on the red carpet lapping up the attention with, who else?  Samantha.

The real question is, Can the girls do it again at the box office second time around? (The first cost film around $65 million to make and raked in $415 worldwide, with foreign box office an impressive $262 million).  How much will their staple female audience, (who these days are so enamored with the girls they seem to still want to see them grown up and softened for the big screen),  care that there are less sexual fantasies and jokes that no longer leave them shocked?

Miley Cyrus teaches American Idols a thing or two

 Miley Cyrus might be just 17 but her advice to the “American Idol” contestants proved spot on in her first stint as a mentor on the TV show.

 It was a pity some of them either didn’t listen, or couldn’t figure out what the “Hannah Montana” Disney teen idol was talking about.

 Lose the guitar, she told early season favorite Andrew Garcia, and loosen up on stage.  He did,  and he tried. But sadly it didn’t work for his version of the Marvin Gaye classic “Heard it Through the Grapevine.”

“You sucked the soul out of that song, tortured it, and ruined one of the greatest pop songs of all time,” judge Simon Cowell told Garcia.

Miley  warned Paige Miles to watch her pitch. Right again. But the singer’s version of   ”Against All Odds” was so pitchy on Tuesday night that Kara DioGuardi called it “the worst vocal performance I have ever heard from you, and possibly of the season.”  Ouch!

  Katie Stevens, 17,  took a leaf out of  Miley’s fashion book and got high marks for ditching the pageant queen dresses and looking like a hip teen on stage for the first time.

 And Miley even suggested that front-runner Crystal Bowersox go the extra vocal mile in her version of Janis Joplin’s only No. 1 hit single  “Me and Bobby McGee.”  Bowersox listened and it paid off big time , winning her the biggest thumbs up of the night from the judges.

“Twilight” stars Stewart, Lautner grab Oscar spotlight

Call it Oscar’s equivalent of hiring a really good Beverly Hills cosmetic surgeon to nip a wrinkle here and tuck a chin there.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Monday said four of today’s hottest young actors and actresses — Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Miley Cyrus and Zac Efron — will be presenters at this year’s ceremony for the world’s top film honors on March 7.

The Oscars have long been the arena of mostly veteran actors and actresses, and that is one reason — albeit not the only reason — the telecast is considered by some to be out-of-touch with mainstream moviegoers who tend to be mostly young. We aren’t so sure that piece of conventional Hollywood wisdom is true, but we do know that when box office hits like  the “Lord of the Rings” movies get a lot of nominations, more people tune in to the telecast than when low-budget dramas such as “No Country for Old Men” walk off with the best movie prize. We also know that “Lord of the Rings” was aimed mostly at young audiences and “No Country” at adults.

So, very likely in an effort to spur young audiences to tune-in, Oscar organizers have signed up the foursome to present. All good, but we’d offer that maybe they didn’t have to. Action adventure “Avatar,” the biggest box office hit of all time, is among the most-nominated films and it, too, was targeted mostly at young audiences.

Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus in contention for Oscars

Old-school Hollywood types would be aghast, but think of the boffo ratings if teen starlets Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus nabbed Oscar nominations next year.

The duo are part of the way there, having co-written songs that made the shortlist for Oscar consideration. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Wednesday unveiled 63 original song contenders that will be winnowed down to a maximum of five nominees.

The Swift and Cyrus songs are among the five from Disney’s “Hannah Montana: The Movie,” which starred Cyrus in the title role. Cyrus co-wrote “Don’t Walk Away” with John Shanks and Hillary Lindsay, while Swift co-wrote “You’ll Always Find Your Way Back Home” with Martin Johnson. The three others are “Back to Tennessee,” co-written by Miley’s dad Billy Ray Cyrus, “Butterfly Fly Away” and “Hoedown Throwdown.” But under Academy rules, a maximum of two songs may be nominated from any one film. 

All the artists who received Golden Globe nominations on Tuesday made the cut: Paul McCartney (“Everybody’s Fine”), U2 (“Brothers”), Maury Yeston (“Nine”), James Horner, Simon Franglen and Kuk Harrell (“Avatar”), and Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett (“Crazy Heart”). 

Other notable potential Oscar nominees include White Stripes frontman Jack White (“It Might Get Loud”), British rocker Jarvis Cocker (“The Fantastic Mr. Fox”), and Swedish songwriter Lykke Li (“The Twilight Saga: New Moon”).

Members of the Academy’s Music Branch will screen clips featuring each song on Jan. 12. The nominees will be determined by a points system, and they will be announced along with the contenders in the other categories on Feb. 2. The Academy Awards will be handed out on March 7.

Miley slips from teen idol perch — but does it matter?

Miley Cyrus’s status as a teen idol has taken a knock in a poll of teens and tweens, reflecting the tough time many celebrities have making the transition from child star to a young woman. But is she really the worst celebrity influence — on tweens — of the year?

The poll of 9-15 year olds on the web site JSYK.com seemed to suggest that Miley’s star might be fading after a roller-coaster three-year reign as one of the most popular teens in the world.

In some unsettling results, Miley was deemed to have a worse influence on her younger fans than the likes of Kanye West — who was almost universally condemned for hijacking Taylor Swift’s moment of glory at the MTV Video Music Awards in September — and Britney Spears — a sad example of the price of huge fame at an early age.

But Miley’s standings in the role model stakes don’t seem to be hurting her popularity. Her “Hannah Montana” show is still bringing in bumper ratings for Disney Channel and her latest single “Party in the USA” (the one that caused the fuss about pole dancing) is currently No.2 on the iTunes download charts.

So can Miley be seen as a bad influence but still retain her global popularity, or has she been overtaken by Taylor Swift?

And why do you think she has slipped so far in the opinion of the young fans who helped to rocket her to fame?