(updates with Elizabeth Taylor’s rave review)

After weeks of hype that the King of Pop would no doubt love, the Michael Jackson concert movie “This Is It” hits theaters around the globe on Wednesday.

The premiere from Los Angeles the night before will be webcast live on www.ThisIsIt-Movie.com and on www.crackle.com, and organizers said fans will be able to comment and discuss the event on the web.

One of the first reviews came from Jackson’s good friend Elizabeth Taylor, who attended a private screening last week and took to Twitter on Monday to reveal that it is “the single most brilliant piece of filmmaking I have ever seen.” We assume the two-time Oscar winner did not get around to seeing her last feature film, ”The Flintstones.” 

We’ve told you about the box office (here). We’ve interviewed the director (here). And we’ve even looked at record sales for the soundtrack (here).

Now, with the event film of the fall upon audiences (no disrespect to “Twilight” fans and the upcoming “New Moon”), we took some time to ask everyday moviegoers if they were excited about MJ’s movie. So, we were out at theaters in Las Vegas on Sunday — and even behind the stage of Harrah’s for a chat with a Michael Jackson impersonator — to ask their opinions. Click below to see what they think.

(video by Marc Price)

Kanye West is alive and well, despite an Internet hoax suggesting that the rap star died in a Los Angeles car crash on Tuesday.

A fake story was circulated via e-mail and on social networking websites saying that West was killed in a collision that left a second person injured, a third arrested for  manslaughter and a fourth person detained by police.

None of it was true. The rap star’s girlfriend, Amber Rose, posted a message on Twitter denying the story. “This ‘RIP Kanye West’ topic is not funny and it’s NOT TRUE!” she wrote, according to news website MTV.com. Her Twitter post has since been taken down.

By Wednesday afternoon, the Kanye death hoax was replaced on Twitter by the following popular wisecrack, repeated by several posters, “Whoever started the RIP Kanye West hoax, Imma let you finish, but Balloon Boy had the best hoax of all time!”

West, of course, interrupted singer Taylor Swift’s victory speech last month the MTV Video Music Awards with the words, “Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’ll let you finish, but Beyonce has one of the best videos of all time.”

West, who pulled out this month of a planned tour with singer Lady Gaga, isn’t the first celebrity to be the subject of a fake death report. But could it be the MTV incident that led the hoaxers to choose West as their target this time? If not,  why have the mystery hoaxers got it in for Kanye?

(updates with comment from Joe Perry)

The wife of Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry doesn’t particularly care for the band’s recordings, and has never listened to any of their albums in their entirety. 

“I am not a fan of Aerosmith’s music without the live performance behind it,” Billie Perry (at right with her husband) wrote on her Twitter page on Sunday.

“Honestly I have never listened to 1 CD all the way through. I listen in the studio when they record. I’ve never put an Aero CD on my player. I did order a few songs from iTunes, but have not listened.” 

She considers Aerosmith to be one of the greatest live acts in rock ‘n’ roll, but “… without the live show the songs n lyrics don’t move me.”

Perry’s comments come at a sensitive time for the veteran rock band. Aerosmith was forced to cancel a troubled tour two months ago after singer Steven Tyler fell off the stage, and he has not spoken to his bandmates since.

Joe Perry, who is promoting a new solo album that will keep him on the road through March, recently told Reuters he has not written a song with Tyler in 10 years.

But he took to Twitter to defend his wife’s Twitter messages, saying she had told him when they first met that she was not familiar with Aerosmith and did not care about his fame or fortune. “Made me love her all the more,” he said.

“She’s a real true punk when it comes to R&R and makes no bones about it,” he added. “She’s one of the only people I trust to give me knowledgeable truth.”

His wife, a photographer and poet, uses Twitter to update fans on the band’s internal developments, to the occasional chagrin of fans. But her latest comments aren’t likely to win her any awards for dutiful wife of the year. Alas, if Aerosmith cannot get past its current impasse, the albums are the only way she’ll be able to appreciate one of America’s biggest rock bands.

Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh wrote more than 800 letters during his short life, posting a note almost daily to his brother Theo. This was quite common in the 19^th century, due to the lack of telephones, email and social networking sites.

In his letters, he would chat about the art he was working on, and try to sketch his paintings so his family and friends had a sense of his plans. The letters have become an art history treasure and have recently been compiled in a new six-volume publication.

If Van Gogh had lived in the 21^st century, would he have logged on to a social networking site such as Facebook, MySpace or Twitter, and posted regular updates about the progress of his work? Judging from the volume of his correspondence, that would be likely. He wouldn’t have had to repeat his thoughts to every letter recipient, and if he had a camera at hand he could have uploaded photos of his work for others to comment on.

But he would have had to learn to be more concise in explaining his thoughts, especially on Twitter where posts are limited to 140 characters. Some historians say he became increasingly reclusive in his life, so maybe superfluous friend requests would have aggravated him too much.

Like many other artists, Van Gogh was penniless and largely ignored until after his death, when he was recognized as a revolutionary whose influence stretched into the 20^th century. If more people could have seen and shared his work in progress, he might have become a legend in his lifetime.

On television, Disney star Miley Cyrus can flip between her normal self and her Hannah Montana alter ego, just by putting on a blond wig.

On the Internet, the 16 year-old Cyrus also can switch off unwanted public attention, just by deleting her Twitter page, as she did on Thursday,  without a clear explanation.

Will Cyrus’ departure herald a celebrity exodus from Twitter? Don’t count on it.

Just this week, Elizabeth Taylor used the website to announce to the world that she was going into the hospital for heart surgery. And even as Cyrus quit the website, “30 Rock” star Tracy Morgan announced that he was joining it Thursday. Why? Because his fans wanted him to, that’s why, Morgan said.

Of course, there is an online campaign to get Cyrus back to Twitter. On Thursday afternoon, “Mileycomeback” was the most active topic on Twitter, meaning some users of the site were typing in those words to call on Cyrus to restart her Twitter page.

Cyrus has a strong force that appears to have pulled her off Twitter. In an article titled “Miley Cyrus Quits Twitter for Boyfriend,” People magazine said that in one of her last Twitter posts, Cyrus wrote, “FYI Liam doesn’t have a Twitter and he wants me to delete mine with good reason.”

Liam Hemsworth is reportedly Miley’s latest boyfriend, and her co-star in upcoming movie “Last Song.”

Octogenarian poet Maya Angelou was alive and well on Sunday, despite the dire overnight reports of online gossip site TMZ and a panicked army of Twitter followers. 

TMZ reported on Saturday night that the prolific writer was hospitalized earlier in the evening ahead of a scheduled appearance at an awards show in Los Angeles. The report spread like wildfire through cyberspace, and Angelou became the top trending topic on Twitter as anguished members of the microblogging site passed around the news. Some morbid scribes added an “R.I.P.” for good measure.

The only problem is that 81-year-old Angelou was not ill, and was nowhere near Los Angeles. She was about 1,800 miles away in her hometown of St. Louis.

TMZ updated its story on Sunday to say that Angelou was never scheduled to appear at the event. It blamed the erroneous report on event organizers, saying that someone had told one of its cameramen that Angelou was a no-show because she had been hospitalized.

The online gossip community has had a mixed track record with recent deaths and mishaps. The emergence of Twitter means that such reports now get amplified. TMZ got the worldwide scoop on the death of Michael Jackson in June, but wrongly reported the following month that former UFC superstar Kimo Leopoldo had died. Last month, gossip columnist Perez Hilton claimed that former Charlie’s Angels star Jaclyn Smith had tried to commit suicide. It appeared to be a case of mistaken identity. Hilton also suggested in 2007 that Fidel Castro had died.

Former “Charlie’s Angels” star Jaclyn Smith did not shoot herself in Honduras, despite gossip columnist Perez Hilton’s claim to the contrary on Tuesday.

Hilton created an international incident after he sent out a Twitter message: “OMG! Jaclyn Smith suicide attempt! Tragic news! She’s in critical condition! Details coming ASAP!” 
    
His source was a Honduran newspaper that later appeared to correct its initial report to say that rather than Smith, the victim was a woman who played her stunt double.
    
Smith quickly took to Facebook and Twitter to calm the masses: “Jaclyn is safe and home with her family. She is not in Honduras. It is a lie.”
    
Hilton, who once reported that Fidel Castro had died, took a lot of heat on Twitter, with the word “douche” cropping up frequently.

Singer and actress Jessica Simpson  wants to see her dog again, and she doesn’t care what people think about her campaign to get the pooch back, after she saw a coyote make off with the animal.

This star-search drama comes courtesy of social networking website Twitter, where Simpson posted a missing poster on Monday with a picture of the small, caramel-colored dog.

“My heart is broken because a coyote took my precious Daisy right in front of our eyes. HORROR! We are searching. Hoping. Please help!” Simpson wrote on the page.

And on Wednesday came another Twitter message from Simpson, this one bearing all the fighting tenacity of a pitbull in a prize match. It seems some folks have been critical of Simpson’s public plea to find Daisy, a fact that evidently upset Simpson.

“Still holding out hope despite the (jerks) that say is it a dumb thing to do. Daisy is my baby… why would I stop searching? I’m a mom,” Simpson wrote, apparently meaning by the word “mom” that she loves her pet like a mom, a la Leona Helmsley. 

Unfortunately for Simpson, these things don’t often end well when a coyote makes off with a live creature. At its most tragic end, coyotes can kill small children.

One of the most famous cases involved the 1980 disappearance of a baby named Azaria Chamberlain in Australia. Her parents said that Azaria was taken by a dingo, which is a wild dog similar to a coyote, when the family was camping, but the authorities did not believe them and the girl’s mother, Lindy, spent three years in prison. When a new investigation backed up Lindy’s dingo claim, she was freed.

Meanwhile, Simpson can keep holding out hope, but it’s looking grim for Daisy. This may be a very wily coyote indeed, and unless it wants to end up in a reality show, the predator will probably keep a low profile.

One drawback of Simpson’s Twitter search poster is that it fails to say where the dog was snatched by the coyote. Simpson probably wants to keep a low profile herself, but does that mean she expects all of America to look for her dog? Or should the search be confined to Los Angeles and her home state of Texas?

Reruns can be boring, even with a highly anticipated show like Fox’s high school musical comedy “Glee.” But the network has a new idea for the one-hour rerun of its pilot episode airing tonight at 9 p.m., which is positioned to build fan interest for the season premier on Wednesday.

Cast members of the show will answer questions from fans on social networking website Twitter, and their short responses will appear on television in the lower part of the screen. They will also offer up insights on their own, at least as much as Twitter allows a person to say with its 140 digital character limit.

Fox is calling this a “tweet-peat,” instead of a repeat airing, and it will involve cast members Lea Michele, Kevin McHale, Amber Riley and others.

Fox has been working overtime on the Web to build fan interest for the show, and this is the latest example of that. Putting Twitter comments directly on the TV screen is a new direction for network television.

Will Friday’s “tweet-peat” help attract more viewers to the season premier on Wednesday? It probably can’t hurt. The show has already received some good reviews, with critic James Poniewozik of Time magazine writing that if creator Ryan Murphy can “flesh out the overly broad characters, this series could be a rare, sophisticated, joyous hybrid that gets to have its pop candy and satirize it too.”

(The above image from Fox Broadcasting is an example of how the Friday night rerun of the “Glee” pilot episode will look)

(Note: some strong language in quote and book title)

Filmmaker Kevin Smith has some faithful fans, the kind of movie buffs who — at least in the online world — would love to have an all-night chat with Silent Bob, Smith’s movie screen alter ego, ironically named because Smith is anything but silent.  In fact, Smith is loquacious enough to fulfill his fans’ desire for nonstop conversation, by planning for a 24-hour Twitter marathon of questions-and-answers on Monday.

In a release announcing the “event,” Smith joked that he has spent a long time prepping for this day.

“I’ve been training for this my whole life, simply by being a lazy fat-ass who’d rather stare at a screen than better himself with a brisk constitutional,” Smith said in a statement.

Smith has some other training in the non-stop blabbermouth arena. Back in 2005, at a theater in his home state of New Jersey, Smith held a Q&A session with an audience that lasted from 8 p.m. until 3 a.m. And he has often kept in touch with his fans online, going way back to the grungy 1990s.

Smith last year came out with the comedy “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” starring Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks. Smith told Reuters at the time that Americans are too uptight about sex, and that there is “no better way of knowing a person than knowing what their sex life is.”

Smith’s Twitter page is http://twitter.com/ThatKevinSmith, so that’s the place to go on Monday to hear him wax poetic or nostalgic or pornographic about anything he wants to discuss.

Also, proving he has more to say, Smith has written a book called “Shootin’ the Sh*t with Kevin Smith,” a title that almost rhymes, and he launches a 15-city international speaking tour this month with stops that include Chicago, Miami, London and Edmonton, Canada.