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Madonna, *updated leaked tracklisting.

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Purported image of track list for Madonna‘s upcoming new album. This image, emblazoned with Interscope and Live Nation logos, also claims that the title of Maddy‘s new album is LUV. Now … take all of this information with a huge grain of salt. The photo you can see below showed up on a random Tumblr site and then was unsurprisingly taken offline.



Trust
Dangerous Faith
Sitting on the Whole World
Turn Up the Radio
Waving with the Crowd
Suspended to the Light
Gimme All Your Luvin’
Crossed Fingers
Birthday Song
Reason & Passion
Masterpiece
Solar Salvation
The Darkness Void
Revelation

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Paris ditches the blonde

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Paris Hilton ditched her signature blond locks and tried to go undercover while shopping in Beverly Hills. The 30-year-old hotel heiress tried to go incognito with a long brunette wig, but she couldn’t seem to fool the paparazzi, who snapped Paris out and about.



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Ten Things About Next Week's Episode of Vampire Diaries

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The Vampire Diaries returns in only a few days - on Thursday, January 5 - and thanks to The CW, we've gotten an advance look at the mid-season return episode.

Seeing an early cut without finished music - even in the background! - is a bit strange, but the return episode is a solid installment worth seeing. Especially if you're already a fan of TVD, please don't forget to tune in at 8PM on January 5!

Here are ten teases we can reveal about the episode. They're not detailed spoilers, but they are spoilery so you have been warned.


1. Bonnie! The first person we see in the episode is Kat Graham as Bonnie. She was absent for a good portion of the first half of the season so it's nice to see her again. It's also nice to see her back in her spot as one of Elena's closest friends and confidantes. Unfortunately, after the first few minutes she's not in the episode all that much, but it's a good start.

2. Jogging. In this episode, Elena goes out for a jog. With all the danger she faces in Mystic Falls and everywhere else, why would she ever go out alone? Doesn't she know better?

3. Hair. Either I've gotten used to Damon's hair growing out or he finally got a little bit of a haircut. Damon doesn't resemble Joyce DeWitt quite so much anymore.

4. Jeremy and Tyler. They finally hang out again in the woods, and the flirting begins anew, at least for a good scene or two. Matt's going to feel left out...

Jeremy is kind of a mixed bag for me at this point. When he's got a crossbow, he's kind of cool. When he's around his family and being bratty, he's kind of annoying. It also appears somewhere around the middle of the episode that he's going to do something really, really stupid. Ultimately, I still do think that he is more fun when he's being haunted by his awesome dead ex-girlfriends.

5. And speaking of Tyler... The others, especially Elena, confront him about his current predicament and devotion to Klaus. (Sadly, Caroline is not there either.)

6. Damon is always awesome when he's annoyed. I don't really have to explain this, do I? And although Damon will complain when he does something uncomfortable, he does face some discomfort to help others. The character is really becoming redeemed, and I like that. When the series started, it was Stefan who had been rehabilitated into a compassionate person; now, whether he likes it or not, Damon cares for Elena, and therefore, seems to now be looking out for much more than himself.

7. Shippers will be happy. Which shippers? The CW gods said not to tell... but I can say at least three fan-groups get to see their favorite characters interacting. The choice of names that Klaus lists as "Elena's loved ones" is also particularly interesting. And some shippers might want to get their screen-capturing software handy.

8. New characters. Klaus has a hybrid doing his dirty work and the character is kind of annoying. The new character of Dr. Fell, however, is very one that I hope to see more of. She is played by Torrey Devitto of Pretty Little Liars fame.

9. Heartbreaking decisions. At least one character makes a decision affecting someone else, perhaps for their own good.

10. "None of us are going to get out of this town alive." With my luck this is probably in one of the episode previews, but in case it's not, I'm not going to say who delivers this line... which is pretty much the predicament I see the characters in right now. Look at all of Elena's relatives who have died so far. And yet, there are surely still a few seasons to go.

Source



The Vampire Diaries returns next Thursday, Jan 5, at 8/7c on the CW!

Family Christmas Photo of Our Generation

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Accomplished actress, singer, model, and entrepreneur Lindsay Lohan poses in a glaringly beautiful family photo with her siblings Cody, Michael Jr., model sister Aliana, and mom Dina on Sunday in their Long Island home.

Michael Lohan was stuck in Florida ... completing his court-ordered 4-month stint at a treatment center, which includes a domestic violence intervention program.

Sources close to the Lohans tell us, it was pretty joyous -- lots of gifts, delicious food, and no one jumping off a 3-story balcony.


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5 Theories Where 'AHS' Season Two Could Take Place

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During a conference call following last week's American Horror Story finale, co-creator Ryan Murphy revealed that every season would follow a new family in a new house.

He went on to reveal, "There is a clue in the last three episodes where we say what the second season will be."

Today Ryan took that one step further, telling EW.com that the clue is located in the penultimate episode, Birth. "Go through it frame by frame. I planted it in there," he teased before adding, "I will never reveal it."

So I did just that. Went through the episode frame by frame and here are the Top 5 clues from Birth that might hint at the season two location.

Possible Location #1: Vermont
The episode opens in 1984 with Newhart playing on the television in the background. The show, which ran from 1982 to 1990, took place at an inn ... rife for the haunting?

Possible Location #2: Florida
This has been a popular theory with fans. The location was repeatedly mentioned throughout the season since it's where Vivien's sister Jill lives. Plus, there is no shortage of dead people in the retirement capital of America.

Possible Location #3: A Geographically Irrelevant Prison
Psychic Billie Dean Howard (played by the divine Sarah Paulson) has a long soliloquy about paramagnetic grip -- how evil can be absorbed by an environment. She says, "You see it all the time in places like prisons or asylums. Negative energy feeds on trauma and pain. It draws those things to it." This echoes a sentiment Ryan expressed during the conference call: "There are all different kinds of horror stores to tell, be it serial killing stories or true crime stories or prison stories."

Possible Location #4: North Carolina circa 1590
In an attempt to help Violet expunge Chad from the house, Billie Dean tells her a story about a Ghost Colony that lived in Roanoke around the turn of the century.

Possible Location #5: London, England
In the episode, two doctors treat Vivien: Dr. Marchesi and the unseen Dr. Hall. Well, Marchesi Hall is located in St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

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SNL Cast Members: Ranked from least to most funny.

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We are gathered here today to rank the — what is it? Jesus! — ninety-two past and present cast members of Saturday Night Live, in ascending order of their contribution to the show. This is no way to make friends. But while no one will be completely happy with the results, let's at least stress one of the ground rules: for the purpose of this experiment, these performers are being graded solely on the work they did on SNL itself. If we were talking about their entire careers, Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Rock, and Joan Cusack would be clustered at the top. As it is, they're not even serious contenders for the top twenty.




92. VICTORIA JACKSON (1986-1992)
91. JIM BELUSHI (1983-1985)
90. GARY KROEGER (1982-1985)
89. COLIN QUINN (1995-2000)
88. ROB SCHNEIDER (1990-1994)
87. ELLEN CLEGHORNE (1991-1995)
86. BRAD HALL (1982-1984)
85. HORATIO SANZ (1998-2006)
84. MELANIE HUTSELL (1991-1994)
83. CHRIS KATTAN (1996-2003)
82. TONY ROSATO (1981-1982)
81. JANEANE GAROFALO (1994-1995)
80. JIMMY FALLON (1998-2004)
79. ANTHONY MICHAEL HALL (1985-1986)
78. CHARLES ROCKET (1980-1981)
77. GILBERT GOTTFRIED (1980-1981)
76. MORWENNA BANKS (1995)
75. ANN RISLEY (1980-1981)
74. JEFF RICHARDS (2001-2004)
73. JULIA SWEENEY (1990-1994)
72. FINESSE MITCHELL (2003-2006)
71. GEORGE COE (1975)
70. CHRISTINE EBERSOLE (1981-1982)
69. JIM BREUER (1995-1998)
67. CHRIS ROCK (1990-1993)
66. DENNIS MILLER (1985-1991)
65. CHRIS ELLIOTT (1994-1995)
64. JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS (1982-1985)
63. ROBIN DUKE (1981-1984)
62. ROBERT DOWNEY, JR. (1984-1985)
61. KENAN THOMPSON (2003- ?)
60. JOE PISCOPO (1980-1984)
59. MICHAEL O'DONOGHUE (1975)
58. TIM KAZURINSKY (1981-1984)
57. MARY GROSS (1981-1985)
56. MOLLY SHANNON (1995-2001)
55. WILL FORTE (2002-2010)
54, 53. MICHAEL McKEAN (1995-1995) and MARK McKINNEY (1995-1997)
52. JOAN CUSACK (1984-1985)
51. SETH MEYERS (2001-)
50. ABBY ELLIOTT (2008-)
49. PAMELA STEPHENSON (1984-1985)
48. DAVID KOECHNER (1995-1996)
46 & 45. GAIL MATTHIUS and DENNY DILLON (1980-1981)
44. RICH HALL (1984-1985)
43. GARRETT MORRIS (1975-1980)
42. NANCY WALLS (1995-1996)
41. RANDY QUAID (1984-1985)
40. LARAINE NEWMAN (1975-1980)
39. HARRY SHEARER (1979-1980; 1984-1985)
38. TERRY SWEENEY (1985-1986)
37. FRED ARMISEN (2002-)
36. DAVID SPADE (1990-1995)
35. ANA GASTEYER (1996-2002)
34. MAYA RUDOLPH (2000-2007)
33. TRACY MORGAN (1996-2003)
32. CHERI OTERI (1995-2000)
31. CHRIS PARNELL (1998-2001; 2002-2006)
30. ADAM SANDLER (1991-1995)
29. ANDY SAMBERG (2005-)
28. RACHEL DRATCH (1999-2006)
27. KEVIN NEALON (1986-1995)
26. NORM MACDONALD (1993-1998)
25. CHEVY CHASE (1975-1976)
24. JASON SUDEIKIS (2005-)
23. NORA DUNN (1985-1990)
22. CHRIS FARLEY (1990-1995)
21. JANE CURTIN (1975-1980)
20. BILL HADER (2005-)
19. KRISTEN WIIG (2005-)
16, 17, & 18. BILLY CRYSTAL, CHRISTOPHER GUEST, and MARTIN SHORT (1984-1985)
15. JAN HOOKS (1986-1991)
14. JON LOVITZ (1985-1990)
13. GILDA RADNER (1975-1980)
12. TIM MEADOWS (1991-2000)
11. DARRELL HAMMOND (1995-2009)
10. TINA FEY (2000-2006)

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Fey breathed new life into Weekend Update, bringing sharp, literate political satire to what had been a regularly scheduled dead spot for years. It says a lot that the show's best political joke since her departure has been the Sarah Palin impression she started doing as a special guest.

9. DANA CARVEY (1986-1993)

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The difference in intensity between Carvey when he's just himself and when he's playing a character is downright eerie. And whether he was Garth or the Church Lady or George Bush, Senior, nobody could squeeze more juice out of unpromising characters.

8. MIKE MYERS (1989-1995)

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With his youthful energy and his pre-Internet savvy about how technology and pop culture were reshaping American life, Myers' trademark characters made SNL seem central to the lives of a new generation in the late '80s and early '90s. He made Wayne's World and Sprockets essential pop culture references for years.

7. AMY POEHLER (2001-2008)

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Poehler, whose work on the Upright Citizens Brigade series amounted to an extended, nationally televised SNL audition, was the first performer nominated for an Emmy for her work on the show in years.

6. DAN AYKROYD (1975-1979)

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The most versatile and skilled of the original cast members, Aykroyd, who started out on SNL when he was twenty-three, gave the edgiest years of his life to the show. His letter-perfect impressions were new to TV audiences in their mercilessness, and his targets (Tom Snyder, Richard Nixon) couldn't even pretend not to be insulted.

5. JOHN BELUSHI (1975-1979)

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Belushi brought the pleasures of brash slapstick to a show that otherwise tended towards hip and cerebral. He made it look easy to dominate the stage and make audiences laugh by brute force. But if you look at the performers influenced, including Chris Farley and his own brother Jim, you can see that it isn't that easy after all.

4. PHIL HARTMAN (1986-1994)

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Always game, often inspired, and seemingly egoless, Hartman earned the backstage nickname "The Glue," delivering night after night for eight years, whether the show around him rose to his level or not. He once broke up on the air while playing Frankenstein's monster; it was like seeing Nolan Ryan pitch wild and bean the umpire.

3. BILL MURRAY (1977-1980)

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Murray's stature as the most beloved of all the SNL alumni was hard-won. He basically made it onto the show over Lorne Michaels' dead body, and he had a rough couple of weeks trying to win over an audience that was hell-bent on hating him because he'd replaced the show's first breakout star, Chevy Chase. But by the time Chase returned to guest host, it was Murray's show he came back to. Murray really proved his mettle when he himself hosted the only exciting episode of the notorious 1980-81 season. It looked then and still looks today as if Golden Age SNL is something Bill Murray carries around in his back pocket in case of emergency.

2. WILL FERRELL (1995-2002)

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Long before Old School, Ferrell looked like the friendly, super-straight guy at the fraternity beer bash who'd been putting off graduation for too long because he wasn't looking forward to managing his dad's construction firm. Watching strange demons take over that normal-looking countenance was a joke that seldom got tired. His surrealist sensibilities carried the show for years.

1. EDDIE MURPHY (1980-1984)

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After the disaster of the first season without Lorne Michaels or any of the original cast members, NBC was seriously considering canceling the show, and they probably would have if Murphy hadn't been turned loose to get people talking about SNL again. Whether doing Gumby, James Brown, or Mr. Robinson's neighborhood, Murphy's performances transcended the show and made him the most exciting thing on television at the time.

source: http://www.nerve.com/entertainment/ranked/ranked-every-emsaturday-night-live-em-cast-member-ever-from-worst-to-best

Miscarried Baby Don't Want No Fake Red Carpet Love

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We all know that ‘boys’ aren’t allowed when it comes to Keri Hilson’s dating life, but now the singer has crossed all celebrity men off the list, too.

In a recent interview with EURweb, Keri reveals that she’s been approached by thirsty celebs pursuing her as a love interest simply for a photo op and or tabloid publicity. And she said she’s not having any of that because she’s looking for love, not a marketing scheme.

“I put a lot in that category – rappers, sports players, ball players and things like that. I would never say ‘never,’ but I want something real. I want real love. I don’t want this red carpet Hollywood love. I feel like they’re easily penetrated, and that’s something that I don’t want. I don’t want publicity. I want love.

“I ain’t no dummy. I know that it can work, and I know there is true love in those situations. But the way that some of them have approached me makes me feel like I would just be a publicity stunt, I guess. It’s like a ‘look’ for us to be together as opposed to ‘Oh, let’s get to know each other and see if it works.’ They just kind of want to move fast and want the world to know and be talked about. And that’s not something that’s appealing to me.”

Back in 2010, she told Chelsea Handler that she wouldn’t date a rapper but it looks as though her list of ‘no no’s’ has grown since then:

“When you mix a man who has popularity, who has money, who has b*tches, that’s a scary thing for me. It doesn’t speak to my insecurities. It’s just not the type of man that I want and I think I’m not the type of girl they want. I have a brain. I’m a little more than they bargained for.”

Oop!

I hope this is Kardashian shade.

Top 10 Twitter Controversies in the last 5 years

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10. ABC News Tweets Obama's 'Jackass' Comment


Perhaps President Obama needs to make sure he says, "This is off the record" before he tells it like it is. After CNBC's John Harwood taped an interview with Obama in September 2009, three ABC News employees tweeted a comment that Obama had made about rapper Kanye West. The remark had nothing to do with politics or the state of the country. But rather, Harwood had asked the President what he thought about rapper Kanye West interrupting singer Taylor Swift as she accepted an award onstage at the MTV Video Music Awards the day before. The question came before the start of the interview as makeup was being applied and Obama seemed comfortable enough to say what he really thought: that Kanye was a "jackass" for pulling the stunt. In a video that was later leaked, Obama says, "I'm assuming all this stuff ..." his voice trailing off as he makes a signal with his hand across his neck to imply that what he was saying was off the record. He must have thought he didn't need to finish the sentence, as it's an understood broadcast tradition that such pre-interview chatter is in fact considered off the record.

The bigger question is, Why would ABC News even have had access to the interview? Turns out that ABC and CNBC share a fiber optic line to save money, so ABC News employees were able to listen in on the interview. ABC News apologized for the breach.


9. Palin Refudiates. #Shakespalin Is Born


Last summer, after Sarah Palin mistakenly used refudiate in a tweet about the controversial Ground Zero mosque, she tweeted, '"Refudiate," "misunderestimate," "wee-wee'd up." English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!'Palin reads Shakespeare?! Seriously, though, there may be times when you don't want to just refute or repudiate, and only refudiate will do. Of course, in all likelihood The Bard intended to coin his new words; Palin, on the other hand did not. She deleted the original tweet. And, as TIME noted, "Word nerds and literary buffs didn't take kindly to Palin comparing herself to Shakespeare, and turned her quip into comedic gold." Hence, the #shakespalin hashtag, where Twitter users wrote Shakespearean quotes, Palin-style. In the end though, the New Oxford American Dictionary could hardly argue with the reach of the word, and — while noting that Palin wasn't really the first to have used it — declared it the 2010 Word of the Year.


8. Twitter Hack


On December 17, 2009, Twitter was attacked. Users attempting to post their pearls of wisdom and obligatory breakfast food observations met an ominous greeting instead. A group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army took credit for the hack, which was later discovered to be a DNS exploit designed to redirect users from Twitter.com to a page with this message: "This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army. U.S.A. think they controlling and managing Internet by their access, but they don't, we control and manage Internet by our power, so do not try to stimulation Iranian peoples to... Now which country in embargo list? Iran? USA? We push them in embargo list. Take care." The hijack, a careful sabotage of the server that links the Twitter domain name to an IP address, changed Twitter's DNS records to an IP address that lead to the Iranian Cyber Army message page. Digitally, relations between the U.S. and the Iranian government had been tense since the country's last election six months prior — in which Twitter played an integral role — which led the media to believe the group was actually affiliated with the Iranian protesters. In an effort to aid the uprising, the Obama Administration convinced Twitter to delay censoring the message, before it was eventually found to be a fake.

7. Courtney Love's Lawsuits


Courtney Love is nothing if not scandalous. Just a few months after Love paid an undisclosed amount to settle a lawsuit that claimed she defamed a fashion designer on Twitter, the rocker has once again been served with court papers for her actions on the social networking site. The San Diego law firm, Gordon & Holmes, filed a suit in Los Angeles Superior Court saying Love made libelous statements about them on Twitter. Apparently mad when the law firm refused to take her as a client — they had worked with her before, but Love fired the firm after they requested she refrain from substance abuse during their working relationship — Love tweeted to her followers, "I was f___ing devastated when Rhonda J Holmes Esq was bought off." While there's no telling what will happen with this Twitter-charged law suit, it seems the rocker has already signed off the site. Let's hope this time it is for good.


6. Perez Hilton and Miley Cyrus's "Invisible" Underwear

The celebrity blogger with the hot pink website who always seems to get a hold of embarrassing star pics, may have bit off more than he intended when he took on Miley Cyrus. Last summer, Perez Hilton tweeted, "If you are easily offended, do NOT click here. Oh, Miley! Warning: truly not for the easily offended!" Accompanying the tweet was a picture of the teenage pop star climbing out of a convertible, supposedly Britney Spears style — all skirt and no underwear. When some on the interwebs suggested Perez had posted a potentially illegal pic (Cyrus was 17 at the time), he took it down. The New York Daily News reported that Cyrus was wearing underwear, but Hilton later told Joy Behar, "I didn't pick [the photo] for her to look like she wasn't wearing underwear ... it was showing Miley getting out of the car in an unladylike fashion."

This cunt. 

5. The Hitler Tweet


Twitter may be many things, but a venue for nuance it is not. If you're going to call Adolf Hitler a "strong leader," then you better do so with more caveats than can be expressed in 140 characters. And yet, in 2010, Wisconsin Republican state Senate candidate Dane Deutsch tweeted, "Hitler and Lincoln were both strong leaders. Lincoln's character made him the greater leader whose legacy and leadership still lives on!"

When TIME named Hitler 1938's Man of the Year, it was an acknowledgment of his malevolent power; he was a strong leader, yes, but a leader of a "demagogic, ignorant, desperate movement." Deutsch apparently meant as much, but Wisconsin's Senate Democratic Committee pounced on the words months after they were posted and the ill-advised tweeter lost the election to the Democratic incumbent.


4. Twitter vs. the U.K. Superinjunction


A series of tweets had the British legal system in a frenzy in May 2011 as anonymous accounts began tweeting reports of an affair between between footballer Ryan Giggs and reality TV star Imogen Thomas. The problem? Giggs had a super-injunction in place that forbid anyone from reporting on his personal life. So as traditional media outlets could do nothing, Twitter was burning with gossip. (The site even broke a traffic record in the U.K., when one in every 200 Brits online logged onto Twitter.com.) Courts demanded account information from Twitter and the company was sued, in addition to the list of specific Twitter users listed in confidential court documents. At the time, Giggs' identity was referred to as "a VIP" by the media until MP John Hemming pointed a finger at Giggs during a press conference. "As things stand, Britain's twisted privacy law is archaic," wrote the London Times in an editorial. "In the past, this was merely wrong. Today, it is idiotic." But it's still the law.


3. Nir Rosen and Lara Logan


People around the world watched the Egyptian uprising with rapt attention as pro- and anti-government sides battled in Tahrir Square. Journalists, too, were in the thick of the fighting—Anderson Cooper took some much-seen punches to the face and TIME's own Abigail Hauslohner had to flee from government troops blasting tear gas. Then CBS reported that their foreign affairs correspondent and veteran war reporter Lara Logan had been beaten and sexually assaulted. The story blazed around the internet, fanned by tweets from Nir Rosen, an independent journalist (and former TIME contributor) who has reported from Iraq and Afghanistan for more than a decade. Rosen tweeted that she was a "warmonger" and that she was trying to outdo Anderson Cooper. When he apologized, Rosen claimed that he hadn't realized the seriousness of Logan's assault. Rosen, who resigned from his fellowship from New York University's Center on Law and Security, appeared on Cooper's show via satellite from the Middle East and admitted, "I was a jerk and I was being thoughtless." While Cooper didn't buy other parts of Rosen's explanation, on that part, he agreed.

2. Kenneth Cole and the Arab Spring


When the Arab Spring took hold in Egypt earlier this year, the uprisings made headlines around the world. And while many people got on the revolution bandwagon, fashion designer Kenneth Cole decided to capitalize on the resulting press momentum to promote his clothing collection. On Feb. 3, Cole tweeted "Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC" The missive was widely mocked for being insensitive (at best) and downright offensive (at worst), and even spawned a satirical KennethColePR twitter account. "South Africans won't be able to tear APARTheid my new knits — they're just that strong! #KennethColeTweets," one (spoof) message read. Cole offered a clarification: "We weren't intending to make light of a serious situation," before finally apologizing in a Facebook post later the same day. But by then, Cole's flub had long gone viral, and his written regrets did little to calm the ensuing controversy.

1. Representative Weiner's Weinergate



Representative Anthony Weiner created a Twitter scandal for himself when he not only tweeted lewd photos of himself to a 21-year-old college student but also lied about it. "I lied because I was embarrassed," the seven-term Representative admitted at a June 6 press conference. "I have made terrible mistakes." On June 16, the New York Democrat, who had been considered as a potential successor to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, stepped down. Dubbed "Weinergate," the incident led to obvious puns and mounting affair allegations from the Congressman's critics. Weiner, who is married to one of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's aides, fueled the fire himself, at first describing the tweet as a hack and a prank, before he eventually came clean and apologized to both his wife and the public.

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32 Films to Look Out for in 2012

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Prometheus
Director: Ridley Scott, ETA: June 8, 2012
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Few recent films have been as masked in secrecy as ‘Prometheus’. Is it, as was originally mooted, a prequel to the ‘Alien’ series, focusing on that enormous fossilised navigator that John Hurt and co found in the original movie? Or is it, as now seems to be the case, a distantly connected but largely autonomous sci-fi adventure in which the aliens themselves may or may not play a role? The official synopsis of the film, which stars Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron and Time Out hero Michael Fassbender as the resident android, describes it as ‘a journey to the darkest corners of the universe’, which isn’t exactly giving much away. Either way, the prospect of Ridley’s return to sci-fi 30 years after ‘Blade Runner’ has us mightily intrigued.

Star Trek Sequel
Director: JJ Abrams, ETA: 2013

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After the critical and financial success of JJ Abrams’s giddily thrilling ‘Star Trek’ reboot, it seemed likely that the promised sequel would see a warp-speed turnaround. But that hasn’t happened: two years on, and the film hasn’t even started shooting. All we know at this stage is that a script is in progress, Abrams has committed to direct, and that the film should be out before the end of 2012 – though that seems increasingly unlikely. When the film does finally arrive, expect more of what we got in the first one: square jaws, sharp dialogue, searing CGI, strong casting and plenty of sneaky references to original series – plus, very possibly, an appearance from everyone’s favourite seven-foot space psycho – altogether now – ‘Khaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!’.

Total Recall
Director: Len Wiseman, ETA: August 22, 2012

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Hollywood’s annoying habit of tinkering with the classics comes full circle as they retool a film from a little over 20 years ago which was an action mainstay during the whole of the 1990s. Colin Farrell stars as the agent embroiled in a future war, but who can't quite figure out whose side he’s on. If you’re asking us directly whether Len ‘Underworld’ Wiseman will have the same delirious handle over the material (Philip K Dick’s ‘We Can Remember It For You Wholesale’) that Paul Verhoeven did all those years ago, then the answer is a straight no. Part of the joy of the original was its various scrungy latex effects (‘Quaid! Quaid!’) and although Wiseman has said in an interview that CGI will be left to a minimum, it remains to be seen whether the operatic violence will make the transition. Looking at the early synopsis, Wiseman’s film has some key differences, the most obvious being that the tone is going to be a lot more serious (think ‘Minority Report’), plus, it’s not going to be taking place on the Red Planet, putting the kibosh on the original film’s best line: ‘Get your ass to Mars!’.

Pacific Rim
Director: Guillermo del Toro, ETA: 2013

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By the time ‘Pacific Rim’ is released in 2013, it’ll be five years since Guillermo del Toro directed a movie. Five years of missed opportunities, announced projects, withdrawn projects, frustration and heartache. And it’s no surprise that the project Del Toro finally got off the ground, after the collapse of both ‘Frankenstein’ and his HP Lovecraft adaptation ‘At the Mountains of Madness’, is the most obviously commercial of the lot, a tale of alien monsters, giant robots and human resistance. Whatever the outcome, production company Legendary Pictures are clearly banking on Del Toro’s good name and the film’s effects-heavy content to sell it to the public: the biggest stars on board are consummate creepster Willem Defoe and Hackney’s finest, Idris Elba, hardly Hollywood royalty.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Director: Peter Jackson, ETA: December 14, 2012 and November 13, 2013

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Strictly speaking, this is two films: ‘An Unexpected Journey’, due on December 14 2012, and ‘There and Back Again’, due on November 13 2013. With shooting finally underway – check out Peter Jackson’s entertaining series of on-set blogs – it seems nothing can stand in the way of Bilbo and co. come next Christmas. The plot doesn’t really need repeating – homely shortarse meets gang of marauding burglars, havoc ensues – but the focus of discussion is still that bizarre, mismatched cast, which ranges from the sublime – Ian McKellen, Christopher Lee and Andy Serkis back on board, Stephen Fry and Benedict Cumberbatch join the team – to the ridiculous – moody Yellow Pages salesman James Nesbitt as Bofur, ex-Doctor Who Sylvester McCoy as Radagast the Brown and the inestimable Barry Humphries as the Great Goblin.

Frankenweenie
Director: Tim Burton, ETA: October 2012

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Tim Burton has spent 2011 making two new films. The first is being shot in LA, a live action film starring Johnny Depp which (per early production stills) displays an uncanny resemblance to ‘The Addams Family’. The other is being shot in the UK, a stop-motion animation that’s a remake of his controversial first short made for (and shelved by) Disney in 1984, ‘Frankenweenie’. Having visited the set of the film, Time Out can confirm that all the immaculate craftsmanship that went in to films like ‘Corpse Bride’ and ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ remains in this feature-length retooling of a story about a young boy who discovers a way of bringing his dog, Sparky, back to life after he’s killed in a car accident. Considering the massive toil of making the film, it’s not due to his cinemas until the end of 2012, but what we can deduce from the snippets we’ve seen so far is that it looks like it could be Burton’s best in a very long time.

The Dark Knight Rises
Director: Christopher Nolan, ETA: July 20, 2012

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Director Christopher Nolan and his screenwriting brother Jonathan close the circle with the last in their globe-conquering series of Batman movies. Plot details remain sketchy, but we know that Anne Hathaway has joined the cast as Selina Kyle aka Catwoman, riding a pretty funky wide-wheeled motorbike, Marion Cotillard is to play potential new love interest Miranda Tate, Joseph Gordon Levitt has signed on as Gotham cop John Blake and eternally rising star Tom Hardy is also on board as musclebound psycho Bane. Tonally, expect more of the same none-more-black grimness of the last two movies. Nolan has vowed that this will be the last in his Batman cycle, but we have no doubt that in a dank cellar somewhere in Hollywood, a studio dogsbody is busily figuring out the character’s inevitable rebirth.

World War Z
Director: Marc Forster, ETA: December 21, 2012

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Another tricky book-to-screen adaptation, as genre-defying director Marc Forster (‘Monster’s Ball’, ‘Finding Neverland’) tackles Max ‘son of Mel’ Brooks’s fine, journalistic account of a zombie uprising. The book spans both years and continents to build a global picture of the titular war, and apparently the movie version intends to do the same, casting Brad Pitt as a UN envoy who travels the world in the aftermath of war, listening to survivors’ stories. A version of the script was leaked online back in 2008 to widespread acclaim, with one reader claiming it could be the first zombie flick to win Best Picture. And while that seems somewhat unlikely, if ‘World War Z’ does indeed prove to be a horror movie in the garb of a major studio prestige picture, it could be something very special indeed.

On the Road
Director: Walter Salles, ETA: summer 2012

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An adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel ‘On the Road’ has been on the cards for years. In the 1950s, Kerouac himself tried to persuade Brando to play Dean Moriarty, while Kerouac would have played his alter ego, Sal Paradise, in a novel that captures the heart and spirit of Beat-era America. Francis Ford Coppola has held the rights to the book since 1979 and tried and failed to get a film going with various actors, including Brad Pitt, Ethan Hawke and Colin Farrell. Finally, he hired Brazilian director Walter Salles on the back of ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’, and many of the team from that film joined Salles in shooting across North and South America in the second half of 2010. British actor Sam Riley (‘Control’) plays Paradise, while American Garrett Hedlund (‘Tron Legacy’) is Moriarty. The cast also includes Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams and Viggo Mortensen. Shortly after shooting, Riley told Time Out it was a hard shoot and other reports suggest that Salles took a guerilla approach, often improvising and making last-minute decisions to suit the story. Kerouac fans will no doubt await the film with claws sharpened – but will it attract a new generation to this mid-twentieth-century American tale?

The Great Gatsby
Director: Baz Luhrmann, ETA: December 25, 2012 

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This $125 million verson of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel – directed by ‘Romeo + Juliet’ and ‘Moulin Rouge’ director Baz Luhrmann – started shooting in Sydney in September 2010 with a cast including Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan. Maguire is playing Nick Carraway, a young man who moves to Long Island in 1922 and finds himself living next door to wealthy Jay Gatsby (DiCaprio). Mulligan plays Daisy Buchanan, Nick’s cousin who rekindles a relationship with Gatsby despite being married to Tom (Joel Edgerton). This being a Baz Luhrmann film, one expects a grandiose level of splendour and glamour from this adaptation, and Luhrmann will surely heavily indulge the look, sound and feel of New York City and Long Island in the jazz age. Luhrmann is shooting the film in 3D, so continuing the format’s reign at cinemas as it continues to spread from lowest-common-denominator blockbusters to the more upscale side of cinema.

Cloud Atlas
Directors: Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, ETA: October 2012

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With a storyline which pretty much defines ‘unfilmable’, David ‘no, not the funny one’ Mitchell’s novel is being adapted for the screen largely, it seems, because lots of people liked it, and not because it’s a particularly good idea. Told in seven loosely connected sections which run the gamut from historical drama through modern realism to distant sci-fi, this is a tale so vast it’s taken three writer-directors to bring it to the screen: Tom Tykwer, the German director whose career since his breakthrough smash ‘Run Lola Run’ has been patchy at best, and the erstwhile Wachowski Brothers, Andy and Lana (who used to be called Larry), makers of ‘The Matrix’. The cast is equally sprawling, with Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent and many others all signing up. Shooting is already underway at Babelsburg Studios in Germany – but we can’t even begin to imagine what the final product will look like.

Cosmopolis
Director: David Cronenberg, ETA: late 2012

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Cronenberg continues his shift into prestige territory with this adaptation of Don DeLillo’s highly praised post-9/11 novel about a wealthy banker, to be played by Robert Pattinson, who travels across midtown Manhattan for a haircut and gets into numerous jams, encounters and accidents along the way. Scripting the movie himself, Cronenberg has gathered up his usual collaborators – including composer Howard Shore and cinematographer Peter Suschitzky – plus a strong cast which also includes Juliette Binoche, Paul Giamatti and Samantha Morton, for what promises to be a slick and steely look at American culture and commerce in the early 21st century.

Lincoln
Director: Steven Spielberg, ETA: December 2012

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After a few years of (relative) inactivity, Steven Spielberg is restaking his claim as the Busiest Man in Showbiz by churning out three in a row: ‘Tintin’, ‘War Horse’ in January 2012, and this biopic of the great American president, due at the end of 2012 (and that’s without mentioning his upcoming sci-fi actioner ‘Robopocalypse’, set for a summer 2013 premiere). But don’t expect a sprawling, ‘Amistad’-style historical epic: rather than trying to cram an entire, hugely eventful life into a single movie, ‘Lincoln’ will focus on the president during the closing months of the Civil War – which also proved to be the last months of his life. Daniel Day Lewis has been dragged out of retirement (again!) to play the title role, while able support is provided by the likes of Joseph Gordon Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Jackie Earl Haley and some other, less important people with only two names.

The Burial Untitled Terrence Malick Film
Director: Terrence Malick, ETA: autumn 2012
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There was a relatively long gap between ‘The New World’ and ‘The Tree of Life’, but now it seems that Terrence Malick has four new films on the go. He’s finished ‘The Burial’ (which may change its name), which stars Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Rachel Weisz, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem, Barry Pepper and Jessica Chastain. The story is said to feature Affleck as a writer in a loveless marriage with Kurylenko, and both husband and wife are looking for something more from their lives outside of their marriage. The three other projects that Malick has on the go are ‘Voyage of Time’, ‘Knight of Cups’ (starring Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett) and ‘Lawless’ (starring Bale, Blanchett and Ryan Gosling). ‘Voyage of Time’ has been described as a natural history film and is said to be an expansion on the ‘birth of the universe’ sequence in ‘The Tree of Life’. Malick was recently caught on camera filming Bale in the crowd at a Texas music festival for one of the new films.


Moonrise Kingdom
Director: Wes Anderson, ETA: Late 2012

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A new Wes Anderson film is always a major event, not just because the string-bean fop director always manages to coax swathes of A-listers on to his sets, but also because he thinks nothing of flaunting his pleasingly gauche interests on screen. On a major high after the plasticine odyssey that was ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’, he returns with ‘Moonrise Kingdom’, a New England set tale that takes place in the 1960s about teen lovers who flee from their town and spark a huge game of hide and seek with the numerous worried denizens. The cast so far is probably his heaviest-hitting to date, and it includes Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, Jason Schwarzman, and Bob Balaban. The film was shot over the summer of 2011, so a Cannes slot might be possible, but it’s perhaps more likely Anderson will head to Venice where he unveiled his previous live-action work, ‘The Darjeeling Limited’.

Django Unchained
Director: Quentin Tarantino, ETA: December 25, 2012

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Is Quentin Tarantino destined to become the new Woody Allen, endlessly churning out his own brand of idiosyncratic, star-studded action-comedies? His new film takes place in the time of American slavery, but, like its wartime predecessor ‘Inglourious Basterds’ will no doubt contain the same blend of endless, intricate dialogue scenes, sudden violence and in-jokey movie references as every other Tarantino movie. ‘Django Unchained’ was set to star Will Smith as the titular slave-turned-bounty hunter, but after he withdrew the role passed to Jamie Foxx. He joins Tarantino alumni Samuel L Jackson, Kurt Russell and Christoph Waltz, plus new boy Leonardo DiCaprio, for what could still be a return to form for the ultimate fanboy director.

The Master
Director: PT Anderson, ETA: early 2013 

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America’s finest living filmmaker (Malick and Lynch are still alive though......) returns with a film which has already become 2013’s most controversial release. When reports began to trickle in that Paul Thomas Anderson’s follow-up to ‘There Will Be Blood’ would focus on a portly WWII veteran in the 1950s who decides to start his own religion, eyebrows were raised, particularly at the headquarters of a certain sect popular with Hollywood actors. It wasn’t long before the film’s original backers had pulled out citing ‘script problems’, leaving the door open for one-woman film studio Megan Ellison to step into the breach. Filming began in June of this year, with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Joaquin Phoenix and Laura Dern in the cast – and still very few details about the plot. Watch this space.

The Angel's Share
Director: Ken Loach, ETA: summer 2012

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Ken Loach, director of films from ‘Kes’ to ‘The Wind the Shakes the Barley’, and Paul Laverty, his writer of more than 15 years, have grown fond of making films in Scotland, not least because that’s where Laverty hails from. After the loose trilogy of ‘My Name is Joe’, ‘Sweet Sixteen’ and ‘Ae Fond Kiss’, they return to Glasgow for this serious-minded caper about lads who get involved in a scheme to make money from stealing a rare whisky as a way of countering the boredom and poverty of unemployment. Loach and his team shot the film in Glasgow and the Highlands in May and June 2011 and got off to a false start when the 74-year-old director fell over at the start of shooting, forcing production to stop for several weeks while he recovered. Laverty tells us that he and Loach wanted to make a lighter film after ‘Route Irish’ and we should expect a film of a similar tone to 2009’s ‘Looking for Eric’.

Lay the Favourite
Director: Stephen Frears, ETA: summer 2012

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British director Stephen Frears (‘The Queen’, ‘Tamara Drewe’) decamped to New Orleans from May to July 2011 to shoot an adaptation of Beth Raymer’s gambling memoir ‘Lay the Favourite: A Memoir of Gambling’. This upscale comedy has been adapted by D V DeVincentis, who also wrote ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’ and ‘High Fidelity’, the latter of which Frears directed back in 2000. The cast is impressive, showing how well-regarded Frears remains in Hollywood. Bruce Willis heads the pack as Dink Heimowitz, one of several men who believe they’ve found a way to beat the bookie, while Catherine Zeta-Jones is Heimowitz’s wife. The credits also feature Rebecca Hall, who plays a version of Raymer, the original book’s author. Here, she is Heimowitz’s assistant, only problems ensue when she gets mixed up with him romantically as well as professionally.

The Three Stooges
Directors: Peter and Bobby Farrelly, ETA: April 2012

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It’s been a long, long, long time since the Farrelly brothers have delivered a film of note, appearing to have been left wallowing in the 1990s comedy mire as rising stars such as Judd Apatow kicked dirt in the faces. Will this film version of the beloved American TV show be the hit that drags them back in to the big time after the chronic panty-raid antics of ‘Hall Pass’? Hmm. The first thing to say is that its original cast would have made it a must see, with Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro and Jim Carrey at one point all set to get the slapstick game on. Yet, it all fell apart at the beginning of 2010. But now a new version is in the can with a markedly less inspiring line-up which includes Sean Hayes, Craig Bierko and Will Sasso…That Larry David and Jennifer Lynch are pencilled in as supporting cast members adds interest, but one suspects if this is a hit, it will be in the US rather than Europe where the Stooges are something of an unknown quantity.

The Dictator
Director: Larry Charles, ETA: May 11, 2012

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It’s probably best to know as little as possible about Sacha Baron-Cohen’s various starring vehicles (‘Borat’, ‘Brüno’) to garner maximum enjoyment and, of course, shock value out of them. This forthcoming film, teaming the fearless star with director Larry Charles once more, is said to be about a dictator in exile who is desperately trying to keep his country free from the scourge of democracy. Although the mooted cast includes a host of Proper Actors, among them Anna Faris, Megan Fox, John C Reilly and Sir Ben Kingsley, talk suggests the film will still have the spontaneous, prankish feel of his two previous films. It’s been scheduled for a May 11 2012 release date, which is the week before Cannes kicks off.

God Bless America
Director: Bobcat Goldthwait, ETA: mid-2012

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Following a pair of masterful pitch-black comedies, ‘Sleeping Dogs Lie’ and ‘World’s Greatest Dad’, comedy legend Bobcat Goldthwait fixes his eyes on the big prize with this excoriating satirical sideswipe at American culture in the twenty-first century. From its poster – the Statue of Liberty holding a gun to her head – on down, ‘God Bless America’ promises a no-holds-barred attack on everything Americans hold dear. It follows the adventures of a suicidal loner who loses his job, picks up his .45 and heads off cross country, picking off ‘those who deserve to die’. Early reviews from the Toronto Film Festival have been almost universally positive, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed for a UK release soon.

Love
Director: Michael Haneke, ETA: autumn 2012

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This is Michael Haneke’s first film since winning the 2009 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for ‘The White Ribbon’. We’re told the story is about an elderly French couple, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva (both of them in their eighties), whose relationship is severely strained when one of them suffers a stroke. Haneke’s regular collaborator Isabelle Huppert (‘Time of the Wolf’, ‘The Piano Teacher’) also features in the cast, playing the couple’s daughter, we believe. Haneke has spoken about wanting to explore the ageing process and its indignities, and we expect this to be at the heart of the film. The Austrian director shot the film in Paris at the beginning of 2011 and is believed to be taking his time with the edit to be ready to show it at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2012. It will mark Trintignant’s return to cinema after an absence of almost a decade.

The End
Director: Abbas Kiarostami, ETA: mid 2012
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In 2010, director Abbas Kiarostami delivered ‘Certified Copy’, his first film made outside his native Iran. The film combined a French lead actress (Juliette Binoche), English lead actor (William Shimell) and an Italian setting (Tuscany), and the final product felt like a celebration of all that’s great about European art cinema. His follow-up, ‘The End’, takes him east to Japan, for a film he has said will be a continuation of themes explored in ‘Certified Copy’. Details of the plot suggest it’s about a student (played by Aoi Miyazaki) who sells her body in order to pay for her studies, but her life changes when she instigates a relationship with an older scholar. Kiarostami has already made one film in dedication to Japanese master, Yazujiro Ozu (‘Five’), and on paper, this one sounds like it could be another one. According to reports, shooting started in November 2011, so Cannes 2012 looks like an outside possibility.

Mike Leigh’s J M W Turner film
Director: Mike Leigh, ETA: autumn 2014
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He’s not going to shoot the film until 2013, but in 2012 Britain’s Mike Leigh will finally get round to working on a long-cherished biopic of J M W Turner, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century British painter. Leigh is known for his contemporary tragi-comedies – and plain tragedies – but he’s delved into the past lives of artists before with ‘Topsy-Turvy’, his film about Gilbert and Sullivan. He hopes to secure a relatively big budget to do this – as Leigh said recently, if he’s to do the man, life and the period justice, he needs to give this story some scale. As usual Leigh will work with his actors for months before shooting to devise the film, but casting is likely to remain under wraps for a while. Leigh often returns to work with actors he’s collaborated with before. Maybe Eddie Marsan (‘Vera Drake’, ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’) is in with a shot at the lead?

The Amazing Spider-Man
Director: Marc Webb, ETA: July 4, 2012

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Most of us still have intricate memories of Sam Raimi’s trilogy of box-office busting Spider-Man films which he made between 2002 and 2007. One of the reasons they did so well were down to the small matter that they we really well written, performed and directed, and – though still cherished as a schlock horror maestro – they gave some serious heft to Raimi’s name. And so, with no ties to this new franchise whatsoever, Spidey gets another (potentially big money) runabout with Brit golden boy Andrew Garfield donning the red spandex bodysuit as your friendly neighbourhood Spiderman. Directed by Marc ‘(500) Days of Summer’ Webb and scripted by Steve Kloves (his first non ‘Harry Potter’-based gig for nearly a decade), it’s going to be very tough for people to overlook the fact that you can only flog Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s fantastical source material so many times each generation. Expectations, though, are understandably high, as the film has been pencilled in for the crucial July 4 weekend in 2012.

Skyfall
Director: Sam Mendes, ETA: November 9, 2012

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Details of the new James Bond movie – ‘Skyfall’ – have been leaking gradually. What do we know? Most importantly, Daniel Craig will be back for more as 007, which is good news as, even if ‘Quantum of Solace’ was a disappointment for many, most Bond fans agree that Craig, who joined the party for ‘Casino Royale’, has brought new energy to the world’s oldest film franchise. We also know that the series’s third director in as many films: British film and theatre director Sam Mendes – best known for ‘American Beauty’ and ‘Revolutionary Road’ – takes over the reins from Marc Forster. Mendes and Craig have worked together before on ‘Road to Perdition’ and are known to have a good rapport. Known locations are Shanghai, Turkey and Duntrune Castle in Argyll, Scotland, while Judi Dench will join Bond newbies Javier Bardem, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, Albert Finney and Ralph Fiennes in the cast.

The Grandmasters
Director: Wong Kar-Wai, ETA : autumn 2012
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Hong Kong maestro Wong Kar-Wai returns to the martial arts genre for the first time since 1994’s ‘Ashes of Time’ with this story about Ip Man, the martial arts master who trained Bruce Lee. Known for enjoying extended post-production periods and tinkering with his films right up to the point they’re screened (the film went into initial production in 2009), festival prognosticators have been mooting the arrival of ‘The Grandmasters’ for over a year now, but we’ve not heard or seen a peep. The few stills that have been released suggest that, true to form, it’s going to be another hyper-stylish affair, and Wong regular Tony Leung Chiu Wai has been cast in the lead role. Wong is a Cannes competition mainstay, so if he’s finished it, expect the film to drop in May 2012. Hopefully it’ll atone for his lacklustre American road movie, ‘My Blueberry Nights’ which he took there in 2007.


The Assassin (this should be interesting at least)
Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien, ETA: late 2012
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Martial arts movies appear to be all the rage at the moment, especially those made by directors who don’t tend to dabble in genre cinema: Wong Kar-Wai’s doing one, Jia Zhang-ke’s doing one, and – perhaps most excitingly – Taiwanese new wave lynchpin Hou Hsiao-Hsien is taking the leap. It’s been a long time coming too, as his last film was 2007’s whimsical Paris-set drama, ‘Flight of the Red Balloon’, though word on the street is that Hou finally started shooting the (what looks to be rather epic) film at the beginning of 2011. Reports suggest that the film is about a shape-shifting female assassin who is steely in her loyalty to family and clients. So those thinking it was a remake of the 1993 Bridget Fonda movie can rest easy. Still, one wonders how a director who made his name with films that were build out of long, slow takes and a fragile aesthetic sensibility will adapt to the tenets of the high-octane chop socky picture.


Seven Days
Director: Michael Winterbottom, ETA: late 2012

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Busy British indie filmmaker Michael Winterbottom has been shooting this unusual project on and off since 2007 and hopes to have it finished for 2012. ‘Seven Days’ tells of the relationship between a husband (John Simm) who is jailed for drugs-smuggling and his wife (Shirley Henderson) who visits him regularly in prison. Winterbottom has written the film with his regular collaborator Laurence Coriat and has been filming it in spurts over the past few years in order to capture the ageing process of his characters more realistically. Winterbottom has worked with both Simm and Henderson several times on films such as ‘Wonderland’ and ‘24 Hour Party People’ so one imagines that he’ll be able to draw easy, natural performances from them once again. Let’s hope he soon finds time to finish it among his many other projects.

Post Tenebras Lux
Director: Carlos Reygadas, ETA: 2012

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The English translation of the title of the forthcoming film by Mexican wunderkind, Carlos Reygads, is from the Latin meaning ‘Light After Darkness’. It’s a title that could’ve stood in for his previous film, 2007’s sublime ‘Silent Light’, which was a glorious mediation on love, religion and nature. Fans of that film will be pleased to hear that he’s reteaming with cinematographer Alexis Zabe for this long-gestating new project, which has been said to contain shades of autobiography and is been filmed on location in countries that Reygadas has spent a portion of his life in, which include England, Spain, Belgium and the place he calls home, Mexico. Notoriously secretive about his projects, Reyagadas described the film as this to Variety: ‘Feelings, memories, dreams, things I’ve hoped for, fears, facts of my current life’. So there’s all to play for, really.

Berberian Sound Studio
Director: Peter Strickland, ETA: late 2012

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Britain has a mad inventor in its midst, and his name is Peter Strickland. Although, on the evidence of his slow-burning debut, ‘Katalin Varga’, you wouldn’t know it, as the entire film was shot in Romania and with an entirely Romanian cast. His new film is a very different beast. Where that first film embraced the rustic settings and long takes of someone like Bela Tarr, this new film appears to be a homage to Dario Argento plus the cycle of paranoid thrillers coming out of America in the seventies (notably De Palma’s ‘Blow Up’ and Coppola’s ‘The Conversation’). ‘Berberbian Sound Studio’ stars the always reliable Toby Jones as a mild-mannered foley artist who’s asked if he would supply sounds for a violent Italian horror movie. But once he arrives on set, nothing is as it seems. From chatting to Strickland during shooting, it’s a film that revolves around a very intricate sound design, and if he can pull it off, this looks set to be a very interesting proposition indeed.

source

There's some odd, rather idiosyncratic choices here and some of the bigger films like Avengers and Hunger Games are missing, but I thought it was a nice change of pace from the lists of only franchise films. What movies are you guys most excited about for next year?

Revenge Midseason Report Card: B+

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We're back with a new TV Fanatic report card. Fresh off Dan Forcella's grade of a B- for this season of The Office, Christine Orlando is here to evaluate the opening set of episodes for ABC's new thriller, Revenge...
"This is not a story about forgiveness." And I'm thankful for that every Wednesday night. Revenge came on the scene this fall and instantly made waves, as Emily VanCamp's Emily Thorne hunted her rich and glamorous prey.
Let's go over what we've seen so far with a TV Fanatic Midseason Report Card.
The Most Diabolical Hero on TV: That's Emily Thorne. She's this captivating combination of orphaned child, sexy girl next door, and ice cold huntress. She's the injured party who has come back to exact her pound of flesh from the Hamptons' elite that betrayed her father.
How can anyone not be intrigued by Emily? The beloved daughter of David Clarke, she was ripped away from her idyllic childhood and tossed into the system only to spend years in juvenile detention. From there she managed to make the warden an ally and an enemy her accomplice.
Somehow, in a few short years and through sheer determination, Amanda Clarke became Emily Thorne, martial arts expert and master of the art of revenge. Yet, surprisingly despite her cold streak and her ruthlessness, we still root for Emily. Perhaps because we've grown to understand the people who did her wrong.

A Cold, Complicated Villain: Victoria Grayson loved David Clarke. She was going to leave her rich husband for him. Then it all went horribly wrong.

In order to save herself, Victoria turned on David but she didn't just leave him, she destroyed him.  That' why it's so easy to hate Victoria Grayson.

Who else accuses their lover of terrorism and watches him die in a Federal prison? As if that weren't enough, she then has his daughter shipped off with social services, then blackmails the girl's therapist into what can only be described as emotional torture.

Who does that?  Who takes away a child's only parent and doesn't feel any guilt? A person with a true conscience would take that child in and try to make up for their sins. Victoria Grayson kicked a little girl to the curb and funded her further torment.

And yet their are moments when we see how much Victoria loves her son Daniel or how Conrad tries to bully her and we feel a shred of sympathy, even with all that she's done and is yet to do.

The Love Interests: This is where things get a little murky. As much as I like Jack I find it hard to believe that he's been pining over Amanda since they were about eight years old. Plus I simply don't feel that much chemistry between the two.  And how old is that dog?

The funny thing is I feel some chemistry between Emily and Daniel, although I wish we knew if Emily feels anything for him. Is she honestly sleeping with the guy strictly out of her plot for revenge?


Best Ally: I love Nolan. He's smart, funny, quirky, and a little lonely. He's been incredibly loyal to Emily even though he doesn't agree with her plan and she's never been nice to him. I hope for two things in the second half of the season:  that we learn more about Nolan's connection to David Clarke and that Emily softens towards her unexpected partner in crime.

Wasted Potential: I'm so disappointed that they killed Frank. Smart and ruthless enough to be a real problem for Emily, I definitely miss his presence. Not only do I love the actor, but Victoria's loyal henchman could have given us years of evil fun.  

Surprise Additions: The new Amanda Clarke adds complications I hadn't seen coming. She makes Jack more human, Nolan and Daniel more protective, and gives Emily an entirely new avenue in which to torment Victoria.

Then there's Tyler, warped, wicked Tyler.  Trouble from the moment he hit the screen, he's quickly spiraling out of control and I can't wait to see him crash and burn.

Revenge is devilish fun to watch each week. My only requests are that I'd like to get to know the characters better as we move forward, especially Emily who seems a little closed off even to the audience.  If we get those things I have no doubt it will earn a solid A by season's end.

Beyond that I look forward to the weeks of Revenge to come. Midseason Report Card: B+


source.


So I watched all 10 episodes yesterday, and all I kept thinking was "DANNY CAN'T BE DEAD!" Who am I going to look at if he's dead? 
The show is so awesome tho. Nolan is the king of all kings. And I didn't like when Emily was being mean to him.
And if that bastard Tyler kills Danny, I swear, he will fucking regret it! Even if I have to get into my television and finish him myself! And I like the crazy-ass fake Amanda. 


Oh my.

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Lil Kim's new Promo Picture...







She looks like...




Sauce

Michael Madsen to enter Celebrity Big Brother house

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'Reservoir Dogs' actor Michael Madsen has reportedly agreed to enter the 'Celebrity Big Brother' house along with Ruby Wax and Andrew Stone.

'Reservoir Dogs' star Michael Madsen has signed up to appear on 'Celebrity Big Brother'.

The big screen tough guy - who famously sliced off a hostage's ear in Quentin Tarantino's violent heist movie - has agreed to enter the house and is set to shock viewers with his antics.

The Hollywood actor - who has appeared in several hit movies, including 'Kill Bill' and 'Donnie Brasco' - is a notorious ladies man and is renowned for his love of partying, and he is also friends with former housemates Vinnie Jones and Stephen Baldwin.

A source told the Daily Star newspaper: "Michael is going to be the Hollywood big gun of the house. He's a formidable character."

Michael is set to be joined in the house by comedienne Ruby Wax and 'Pineapple Dance Studios' star Andrew Stone.

Channel 5 bosses believe outspoken Ruby - who is most famous for her acerbic TV series 'Ruby Wax Meets' which saw her interview and document numerous celebrities - and flamboyant singer Andrew will add arguments and energy to the reality TV show.

A source said: "Ruby is very feisty and speaks her mind. She won't take fools lightly."

The series kicks off on January 5 and other rumoured housemates include 'X Factor' bad boy Frankie Cocozza, 'The Only Way is Essex' star Kirk Norcross, 'Loose Women' panellist Denise Welch and Playboy twins Karissa and Kristina Shannon.

Jedward - who appeared on the last series - are set to return as part of a special task in the first few days.

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:(

Taylor Swift loves to instagram (picture post!)

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@taylorswift13 “Nothing quite like a freezing cold, wintery beach.”




@taylorswift13 "Childhood beach memories revisited."


@taylorswift13 "Me and Meredith on a Sunday afternoon."


@abiander "Going to steal Taylor's cat, Meredith. Or just get one of my own :-) She's a model.."



@taylorswift13 "Headed to the Nashville Symphony Ball = Ball gown time!!"








@haileesteinfeld "Happy Birthday to my dear friend @taylorswift13. :) Thank you for being such a great inspiration to us all!<3




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lol at her wasted face

First Look at Charisma Carpenter on The Lying Game + Clips from the premiere!

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Check out your first look at Charisma Carpenter on The Lying Game!

During a recent round-table interview Charisma said of her experience so far on the Austin-based set, “It’s one of the best sets I’ve been on. It’s probably on par with my experience on

Veronica Mars. A lot of young kids with a great deal of pressure and responsibility just killing it every day. They get it. They’re appreciative. There is no diva. There is no attitude. There are no hang ups. Everybody, everybody, I mean everybody, has a fantastic outlook.”

“…Everybody is really appreciative to be working. It’s not lost on them,” she added. “It’s really a wonderful thing to see such young people taking on such huge responsibilities and jobs and hours and just do it with such grace. I really have been impressed a great deal. And Alexandra Chando without exception. She’s mid-20s and she’s not one character, two characters.”

You can catch The Lying Game premiere on Monday, January 2 @ 9PM ET/PT on ABC Family.









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It’s time for the Zooey Deschanel-style manic pixie dream girl to grow up

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Quirky girls are a peculiar archetype, a subculture in entertainment that includes disparate wackadoodles like Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby and the effervescent young Goldie Hawn in anything. And this past year it included a sitcom tenuously built around the one-note manic-pixie-dream-girl trope’s pageant queen, Zooey Deschanel, who has almost single-handedly infantilized America’s latest sweetheart-type into ridiculousness through her Fox series New Girl.




These borderline-annoying pixies see the world with wide eyes (in Deschanel’s case, doe eyes surely augmented with the plentiful false eyelashes, Photoshop and Rimmel mascara she shills in every woman’s magazine) — they’re lovable, free-spirited eccentrics in baby doll dresses left to run rampant.

The term “manic pixie dream girl” may have been coined by film critic Nathan Rabin (for Kirsten Dunst’s character in 2005’s Elizabethtown) but it also encompasses plucky silent film star Clara Bow, Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment, Jane Fonda in Barefoot in the Park and half of Dharma & Greg. Quirky has its place. It can be funny, even charming. But on its own, in the absence of any other qualities, it doesn’t equal funny. At least 2 Broke Girls is crude, sassy and wise, and Whitney has a potty mouth, to name two of this year’s other female-centric sitcoms.

Initially, I welcomed the idea of offbeat and adorkable as a respite from primetime comedy’s usual shrill scold foils (Last Man Standing) and sex-object-punchlines (Two and a Half Men is flush with both). But quirk has varying dilutions on its spectrum, on a scale of Lucille Ball to Björk.

On New Girl, Deschanel’s Jess floats through life in vintage floral dresses; she’s not just spacey but dumb as a puppy. She’s erratic to the point of manic. At least the functioning-Asperger’s-spectrum characters on Community, The Big Bang Theory and Criminal Minds are given the smarts to offset their stereotypical lack of affect. Heck, Deschanel’s own sister Emily may have no EQ but her Dr. Temperance Brennan at least gets to provide Bones’ deadpan.

New Girl’s Jess gets to makes scrunched-up faces, and occasionally bursts into song at inappropriate times. It’s madcap, get it? Most audiences don’t, judging by the show’s December ratings, the show’s lowest since its fall premiere. It seems being the lady-child with no guile is worse than being the dumb blonde.

And at least in Big Bang Theory, Kaley Cuoco’s book-stupid-but-street-smart Penny (the Chrissy Snow of Gen Y) gets to play the straight man observer, thereby also getting some of the best lines, and biggest laughs. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s also not ingratiating.


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A christmas gift from GRRM

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George R. R. Martin has posted an excerpt from the next Game of Thrones installment, The Winds of Winter, on his personal website.

And lo, a party ensued.



The king's voice was choked with anger. "You are a worse pirate than Salladhor Saan."
Theon Greyjoy opened his eyes. His shoulders were on fire and he could not move his hands. For half a heartbeat he feared he was back in his old cell under the Dreadfort, that the jumble of memories inside his head was no more than the residue of some fever dream. I was asleep, he realized. That, or passed out from the pain. When he tried to move, he swung from side to side, his back scraping against stone. He was hanging from a wall inside a tower, his wrists chained to a pair of rusted iron rings.
The air reeked of burning peat. The floor was hard-packed dirt. Wooden steps spiraled up inside the walls to the roof. He saw no windows. The tower was dank, dark, and comfortless, its only furnishings a high-backed chair and a scarred table resting on three trestles. No privy was in evidence, though Theon saw a champerpot in one shadowed alcove. The only light came from the candles on the table. His feet dangled six feet off the floor.
"My brother's debts," the king was muttering. "Joffrey's too, though that baseborn abomination was no kin to me." Theon twisted in his chains. He knew that voice. Stannis.
Theon Greyjoy chortled. A stab of pain went up his arms, from his shoulders to his wrists. All he had done, all he had suffered, Moat Cailin and Barrowton and Winterfell, Abel and his washerwomen, Crowfood and his Umbers, the trek through the snows, all of it had only served to exchange one tormentor for another.
"Your Grace," a second voice said softly. "Pardon, but your ink has frozen." The Braavosi, Theon knew. What was his name? Tycho... Tycho something... "Perhaps a bit of heat... ?"
"I know a quicker way." Stannis drew his dagger. For an instant Theon thought that he meant to stab the banker. You will never get a drop of blood from that one, my lord, he might have told him. The king laid the blade of the knife against the ball of his left thumb, and slashed. "There. I will sign in mine own blood. That ought to make your masters happy."
"If it please Your Grace, it will please the Iron Bank."
Stannis dipped a quill in the blood welling from his thumb and scratched his name across the piece of parchment. "You will depart today. Lord Bolton may be on us soon. I will not have you caught up in the fighting."
"That would be my preference as well." The Braavosi slipped the roll of parchment inside a wooden tube. "I hope to have the honor of calling on Your Grace again when you are seated on your Iron Throne."
"You hope to have your gold, you mean. Save your pleasantries. It is coin I need from Braavos, not empty courtesy. Tell the guard outside I have need of Justin Massey."
"It would be my pleasure. The Iron Bank is always glad to be of service." The banker bowed.
As he left, another entered; a knight. The king's knights had been coming and going all night, Theon recalled dimly. This one seemed to be the king's familiar. Lean, dark-haired, hard-eyed, his face marred by pockmarks and old scars, he wore a faded surcoat embroidered with three moths. "Sire," he announced, "the maester is without. And Lord Arnolf sends word that he would be most pleased to break his fast with you."
"The son as well?"
"And the grandsons. Lord Wull seeks audience as well. He wants — "
"I know what he wants." The king indicated Theon. "Him. Wull wants him dead. Flint, Norrey... all of them will want him dead. For the boys he slew. Vengeance for their precious Ned."
"Will you oblige them?"
"Just now, the turncloak is more use to me alive. He has knowledge we may need. Bring in this maester." The king plucked a parchment off the table and squinted over it. A letter, Theon knew. Its broken seal was black wax, hard and shiny. I know what that says, he thought, giggling.
Stannis looked up. "The turncloak stirs."
"Theon. My name is Theon." He had to remember his name.

The rest of the chapter can be found at the source!

Sel Gomez Interview :)

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I remember when The Wizards of Waverly Place debuted on The Disney Channel. Selena Gomez was an up and coming young star, obviously destined for great things since she was chosen as the lead on the magical young sitcom, but no one could have predicted she’d become a movie star, chart topping singer and celebrity girlfriend.

Gomez has filmed the last episode of The Wizards of Waverly Place, although the show will surely continue to air daily on The Disney Channel for new fans to discover. Before the holidays, Gomez spoke about the show to reflect on her years as a Wizard. She was under the weather, but as cheery and delightful as always.

Selena Gomez: Hello everybody. I am sick so I apologize for sounding nasally.

Q: Well you look lovely as always.

SG: Thank you! That is the power of hair and make up.

Q: What have been the surprises along the way when you look back on your time on the show?

SG: It has been fun, it has been crazy, it has been great. We had a great run and being able to say that I was on a show for four years and got to be with great cast is a thing that a lot of people can’t say. I feel very grateful for that.

Q: What has been your most magical memory or one moment that you will look back on and will make you smile?

SG: The laughs. When we messed around with each other. It was never one distinct memory, we had a lot of memories every day.

Q: How emotional was the last day?

SG: It was very emotional. On the last day we only finished the series with us three. Everybody else had series wrapped already so it was just us three and Jake. We went in and I was trying to avoid it as much as I could. I was trying not to think about it and just continue to do the scene and whenever they said that was a series wrap on my character and then listening to them wrap was really hard. I just started crying and I couldn’t stop. The two guys were like macho men not crying.

Q: What about the day after you wrapped?

SG: David Henrie texted me and was like, “I feel like I’ve just broken up with a girlfriend.” It was weird. (SHIPPER HEART BE STILL)

Q: Did you get to keep your wand?

SG: Yeah, it was a gift from the producers on the show, they gave me, David and Jake our wands in a little glass case with a little engraving, it was nice.

Q: Did the show end the way you wanted it to? Did the right person become the family wizard?

SG: I think it was good, I think it was right what they did.

Q: You got to do so many different things, what were your favorite episodes along the way?

SG: I never really had a favorite episode, I remember season three because that was my favorite because we all had our groove, it wasn’t the end, we knew we were going to do another one and we all just played against each other and were just wanting to make each other better. It was the best season I think and all of that was my favorite.

Q: You have a song in the charts that is quickly climbing the music charts.

SG: I do, yes.

Q: Is it surreal for you when you look at your career at this point because you have so many things going on?

SG: Sure, I’m very blessed. I love what I do. I love it. Especially music, it was something I was passionate about but I did not expect it to take off as well as it did so I am very thankful for that as well. Doing both has been good for me, I like it.

Q: With so many music shows on now, how does it feel to hear some of your songs performed by regular people like The Fannin Family on The Sing-Off?

SG: A lot of the times it is better than how I do it, so that is why I like it. It is fun, they give me ideas. It is really cool to see on YouTube a bunch of my fans covering my songs because you get to see in their eyes how they interpret what I sing, what my lyrics mean and what that means for them. So it is really special. It’s cool.

Q: Are you doing the movie Spring Breakers with Harmony Korine now?

SG: Yeah… I know. [Laughs] I watched all of his films. I had to fight for that role because I flew to his house in Nashville and watched all his movies. I was like, “I want to be in your movie” and he auditioned me for like an hour or two hours and it was awesome. Then I got the part so I am excited. It is something that is very dark and is very different and I am excited to be able to work with him. Of course he is the person that is going to create all of this and he is going to help me and James Franco, Vanessa [Hudgens], Emma [Roberts] and all those people. They are all going to be so great to work against and the script is [great]. People are going to be a little surprised.”

Q: Is this going to knock your fan base on its ear a little bit?

SG: Well, the good thing about that is that it is an independent film. So it will go to film festivals but it won’t be so easy access to the younger audience. They can’t go to the movies to watch that unless they went somewhere, so it wont be so much about that. It will be more for me just doing something that I am passionate about.

Q: Did you have any special traditions on filming nights in front of the live audience?

SG: We’d go right back before we’d do intros and we would just get together and do a quick prayer. It was nice.

Q: Computers are such a big part of everyone’s lives now. How lost would you be without your laptop?

SG: I watch my shows and movies on there, I stay connected with my family on iChat and everything so that is my life.

Q: What are you doing in the New Year’s Eve show?

SG: I am excited, it is going to be fun. I’m singing and we do the countdown and I will be with Demi [Lovato] and it will be fun. I’m excited.

Q: Have you ever been in Times Square before on New Year?

SG: Nope.

LOVE HER SFM




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Is a Russell Brand & Katy Perry Divorce Announcement Imminent?

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Is the California Gurl on her way to becoming a single one as well?

The rumor mill has been working in overdrive with speculation that things aren't going as smoothly between Katy Perry and Russell Brand as we've been led to believe.

Uh-oh.

A source confirms to E! News that Katy and Russell have been having "problems" and that they've been spending "a lot of time apart," including Christmas.

Sure enough, the "Teenage Dream" singer was spotted swimming sans her hubby in Hawaii over the holiday weekend while Russell was reportedly in England.

Our source adds that things began getting tense between the two in early December and that Katy has been "a mess" about it at times.

Here's hoping the new year will be a better one for the entertaining couple.

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I'm can only assume Russell has come to his
senses and is returning to his one true love, Noel.

Meryl Streep being honored by the Kennedy Center

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Too bad the movie sounds like it glosses over a lot of Thatcher's problematic policies.

Queen Alicia and baby Egyptsus @ Celtics vs. Knicks

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Merry Christmas! Alicia was spotted at the Boston Celtics Vs The New York Knicks game today. Little Egypt is growing up SO fast, make sure you check out the pictures as he stands on the court.










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