Daily Reviews » Look

Miley Cyrus Says Fans Have ‘More To Look Forward To’

Admin — Mon, 10 May 2010 15:14:51 +0000

Singer/actress has the last season of ‘Hannah Montana,’ a new movie and more music on the horizon.
By Jocelyn Vena, with reporting by James Lacsina

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Miley Cyrus

Photo: MTV News

While Miley Cyrus’ new album, Can’t Be Tamed, doesn’t drop until June 22, the singer/actress is still looking ahead to what’s next.

“I think my fans will be excited to know they’ve got more to look forward to,” said Cyrus, who just released a clip for the album’s title track. “It’s not just gonna be [this]. We’ve got another season of the show ['Hannah Montana'], which I think people are excited about that. I’m working on a movie this summer.”

Miley recently announced plans to take a break from music and focus on her acting career, but she isn’t planning to abandon it altogether. “I think [my fans have] a lot to look forward to in music as well,” she teased.

For right now, Miley fans can enjoy her spicy new song and video, which she says got full approval from her parents.

“My mom was on set,” she said of the edgy video. “And my dad loves it, because I think my dad was thinking I was a little crazy as I was writing it. When you see it, they were so proud of the treatment I came up with.”

Plus, she thinks the video is pretty spot-on to who she is as a person. “I think it definitely shows a change of what people remember me as, but it’s not trying to not be me,” Cyrus said. “I didn’t want to be just a character. I wanted to be myself and just in a bird-like form in the way I dressed.”

What do you think Miley should do next? Tell us in the comments!

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Top Moments: A Good, Hard Look at 30 Rock, Lost, and South Park

Admin — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 14:24:37 +0000

Lots of looks were exchanged on television this week: 30 Rock‘s Jack Donaghy and Lost‘s Sun and Jin had stars in their eyes for their significant others. Oprah Winfrey and Dancing pro Tony Dovolani expressed their disbelief with raised eyebrows. And Desperate Housewives‘ Wisteria Strangler gave his latest quarry a creepy once-over before killing her. Welcome to Top Moments: U Got the Look Edition.

First Look: Watch a Clip From New Doors Doc “When You’re Strange”

Admin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 06:17:59 +0000

A new documentary on the Doors called When You’re Strange is hitting theaters April 9th after opening to acclaimed reviews at Sundance 2009. Since its debut last year, director Tom DiCillo has added a megastar to narrate the film — Johnny Depp — plus tightened up the film’s editing to better tell the story of the psych-rock legends. In Rolling Stone’s exclusive clip from When You’re Strange, check out footage of Jim Morrison and Co. taking the stage in 1968, flanked by police officers prepared for a crowd riot.

“Watching the hypnotic, hitherto unreleased footage of Jim, John, Ray and Robby, I felt like I experienced it all through their eyes,” Depp said in a statement. “As a rock & roll documentary, or any kind of documentary for that matter, it simply doesn’t get any better than this. What an honor to have been involved. I am as proud of this as anything I have ever done.”

Break on Through: a gallery of Doors artifacts.

In the new issue of Rolling Stone, Peter Travers gives When You’re Strange a three-star review, writing, “Clips from a film Morrison made himself in the desert are alone worth the price of admission… New fans and old will find the experience hypnotic.” The documentary was produced by Law & Order honcho Dick Wolf, a huge fan of the Doors who was eager to share their story again on the big screen.

“They say if you remember the ’60s you weren’t there. I can state definitively that one of the things I do remember is buying the Doors first album the day it came out and then listening to it about 10 or 12 times in a row. Both sides. Every song. I’ve been a fan ever since,” said Wolf in a statement. “This movie is the story of the band but it is also an insight into a moment in time that will never be repeated.”

The doc’s soundtrack, which includes live tracks and studio cuts, arrived in stores yesterday.

View full post on Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily

Get a First Look at True Blood’s Season 3 Poster Campaign

Admin — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:15:44 +0000

Although True Blood‘s third season doesn’t premiere until June 13 (9/8c), fans of the HBO vampire drama can whet their palates with one of 12 new posters.

The posters, the first of which features a blood-filled coffee pot, are designed to entice and excite fans with images that reference favorite moments, popular themes and insider storylines. The viral campaign will continue over twelve consecutive weeks, and each poster can be found on HBO.com, True Blood‘s Facebook page, and various other sites.

Lady Gaga/ Rob Fusari Lawsuit: A Closer Look

Admin — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 11:03:35 +0000

Lawsuit provides details on Fusari’s version of Gaga’s early career.
By Gil Kaufman

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Lady Gaga

Photo: F Micelotta/American Idol 2009/Getty Images

The introduction to the $30.5 million lawsuit lodged by producer/songwriter Rob Fusari against his former collaborator and girlfriend Lady Gaga opens with the most famous quote from English playwright and poet William Congreve.

“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned/ Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned,” reads the intro, which includes another lyrical flourish with the added emotional argument, “All business is personal. When those personal relationships evolve into romantic entanglements, any corresponding business relationship usually follows the same trajectory so that when one crashes they all burn. That is what happened here.”

What follows is page-upon-page of legal argument from Fusari’s lawyer detailing the producer’s claims of having discovered and nurtured Gaga (then an unknown singer by the name of Stefani Germanotta, spelled “Stephani” in the complaint), only to have her abandon him and cut him out of her lucrative recording career once she made it big. At press time, a spokesperson for Gaga had not responded to MTV News’ requests for comment on the suit, but a deeper look at the legal document provides interesting details on Fusari’s version of Gaga’s early career.

The suit claims that on March 23, 2006, Gaga performed at a New Writers’ Showcase at New York’s Cutting Room club, where she met a songwriter friend of Fusari’s named Wendy Starland. Germanotta asked Starland if she remembered her from Germanotta’s days working as an intern at the Famous Music publishing company, and the two bonded.

“Starland knew that Fusari had been searching for months for a dynamic female rock-n-roller with garage band chops to front an all-girl version of the Strokes,” the suit reads. “Starland was blown away by Germanotta’s performance and immediately called Fusari and told him she had found him his girl.” The document says that the aspiring singer took a bus the next day to Fusari’s 150 Studios in Parsippany, New Jersey, hiking the last quarter-mile.

“Fusari was expecting someone a little more grunge-rocker than the young Italian girl ‘guidette’ that arrived at his doorstep and was worried that he had made a mistake,” the document continues. “Fusari then asked her to play one of her songs on the studio piano and within seconds realized that Germanotta had star potential. The trick would be coaxing it out of her. Before long, Germanotta was riding the bus to Jersey every day to work with Fusari at his studio. Fusari thought Germanotta’s songs were brilliant but lacked commercial appeal. He pushed her to explore different musical genres. Over the course of the next several months, Germanotta commuted from New York to Jersey seven days a week, radically reshaping her approach. They put their focus on writing music and finding a sound for her.”

Soon enough, Fusari says he convinced Gaga to give up on rock and focus on dance beats, showing her how a drum machine would not impact the integrity of her sound on the day they finished collaborating on “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich,” a song that would ultimately be released in 2008 on her multiplatinum debut, The Fame. He says they then went on to write several other songs together, including the smash hit “Paparazzi,” as well as “Brown Eyes” and “Disco Heaven.”

In a 2008 interview with MTV’s Buzzworthy blog before The Fame‘s release, Gaga credited Fusari with the origin of her stage name. “My name, Lady Gaga, comes from the first producer that I worked with, Rob Fusari,” she said. “I was playing a record for him one day in the studio called ‘Again Again,’ which is actually a B-side for the album, it’s like this super-Beatles/Queen theatrical ballad. He said, ‘God, you’re so “Radio Gaga,” ‘ and I thought that was funny. And every time I’d come into the studio he’d say, ‘Gaga is here, Gaga is here! Gaga Gaga!’ So it sort of stuck, and I tacked on the ‘Lady’ as a sort of ironic contrast to the crazy of the Gaga.”

Gaga has said in interviews that her moniker derived from the Queen song but was a nickname among family and friends.

The “close emotional quarters” the two purportedly shared during this period grew into a romantic relationship, with Gaga sleeping over at Fusari’s home and he, in turn, socializing with her family and dining at their Manhattan home. Fusari began shopping the CD of songs they worked on together to record companies, including Island Def Jam, which reportedly signed Gaga on the spot after president L.A. Reid heard her performing from his office.

Though her IDJ debut was set for release in May 2007, Gaga was “inexplicably” dropped after three months, according to the suit, just after she had renegotiated her deal with Fusari, which awarded him merchandising rights and some compensation as a producer on the album.

The loss of the deal allegedly coincided with the end of the couple’s personal relationship in January 2007, though Fusari said he encouraged Gaga to keep writing and recording. Around this time, Fusari’s manager, Laurent Besencon — who had also taken on Gaga as a client — introduced her to producer RedOne, who would go on to co-write such hits as “Poker Face,” “Just Dance” and “Boys, Boys, Boys” with the singer, while relegating Fusari to the sidelines, the suit claims.

In the documents, Fusari claims he then talked with a friend, Vince Herbert, who worked with Interscope Records, who sent Gaga’s music to company chairman Jimmy Iovine. The legendary record man was impressed and eventually signed the singer at the same time that Fusari claims Gaga and her father cut off all contact with him. Additionally, the suit claims that Besencon froze Fusari out of the Interscope negotiations and began protecting the interests of Gaga over his own, even allegedly sharing confidential information with her that compromised Fusari’s negotiating posture.

Gaga signed a deal with Interscope in May 2007, and the label released The Fame in August 2008, an album Fusari claims he co-produced and which included songs he is credited with co-writing and producing, “Paparazzi”, “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich” and “Brown Eyes,” along with bonus tracks on various incarnations of the album: “Disco Heaven,” “Retro, Dance, Freak” and “Again Again.”

To date, the suit claims Fusari has received two checks totaling $203,000 and $394,965 (both in 2009) representing his 20 percent commission, with the second featuring the words “endorsed in accord and satisfaction of all sums due to undersigned” on the back.

“By adding this endorsement to the back of the check, defendants had attempted to trick plaintiff into depositing said check and thereby settle all outstanding debts due him by defendants under the [contract] and to bar plaintiff from seeking any additional payments,” the suit reads. In the documents, Fusari says he has not endorsed or deposited the second check. He also says he has not received his 15 percent share of merchandising revenue that was agreed upon in the contract.

As a result, Fusari lodged the $30.5 million suit against Gaga in New York Supreme Court on Wednesday.

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Lil Wayne: A Closer Look At His First Day Behind Bars

Admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:10:31 +0000

‘The best thing to do in the first 24 hours is to keep your mouth shut as much as possible,’ one expert says.
By Jayson Rodriguez

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Lil Wayne at court Monday

Photo: Ray Tamarra/ Getty Images

Lil Wayne has been booked and processed into the Eric M. Taylor Center on Rikers Island to begin his one-year jail sentence.

According to most experts, the first 24 hours are the most crucial to ensuring a successful incarceration. Dr. Jefferey Ian Ross, a faculty member at the University of Baltimore’s Criminology Division, advises that the superstar MC keep to himself as he gets adjusted to his new surroundings.

“Most of the time, the best thing to do in the first 24 hours is to keep your mouth shut as much as possible,” Ross told MTV News. “Keep your eyes open and basically do as you’re told by the correction officers. Essentially, you shouldn’t look at other inmates in the eye, ’cause to a lot of people, that may be considered an aggressive type of action. Also, don’t look at their property, because they may feel like that’s aggressive as well and that you want their property.”

Ross, who wrote the book “Behind Bars: Surviving Prison” along with Stephen C. Richards, explained that most inmates are housed with similar offenders, but there are instances were prisoners get bored and lash out. For these reasons, it’s important for someone like Lil Wayne, a celebrity, to maintain as normal of a disposition as he can.

“Say ‘yes sir,’ ‘no sir,’ no cutting in line,” Ross said. “Don’t act like you have special privileges.”

Unlike NFL star-turned-inmate Plaxico Burress, Lil Wayne shunned a jail coach or a sentencing specialist. Ross said that decision put Wayne at a disadvantage, because some benefits include assistance in building a network within the prison facilities. Sentencing coaches, in some cases, are previously jailed people who can connect incoming inmates with those they can trust inside.

According to Ross, Lil Wayne will eventually have to venture out from his own connections. But in the interim, Ross suggested the old adage that prisoners need to just “do their time.”

“Keep your mouth shut, keep your eyes open, be respectful — not only to correction officers, but to inmates,” he said. “And don’t be a snitch and don’t complain about the housing accommodations, follow those rules and they call that ‘do your own time.’

“It’s not easy,” Ross added. “Criminals don’t face a cakewalk, [regardless of the length of their sentence]. Their liberties and choices are taken away from them, and they’re basically at the will of prison.”

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The Notorious B.I.G.’s MTV Interviews: A Look Back

Admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:32:08 +0000

Thirteen years after B.I.G.’s death, we look back on his life as hip-hop’s brightest star.

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Notorious B.I.G.

Photo: MTV News

Tuesday (March 9) is a day not to mourn, but to celebrate the life and legacy of one of music’s most gifted artists: the Notorious B.I.G.

His voice, his flow, his rhymes, his swag — whatever you wanted, B.I.G. had it to offer. He could tell stories, battle it out, ignite the party or kick game to the ladies. Christopher Wallace was made for rap.

We didn’t get much time with Biggie. He put out his first album in 1994, and he died in early 1997 before the release of his second LP (Life After Death). Due to his work ethic, however, we have a catalog of timeless music that is often imitated, never duplicated. As mesmerizing as a Biggie song was, part of his allure as an artist was his charming personality. He’s a rare breed that could capture the wit and magnetism in his offstage persona and bring it to his music.

Here, we are taking you back into our vaults to relive Biggie’s best MTV interviews. He was candid and thoughtful as he spoke about the inspiration for his music, his stage performance and much more.

On Tuesday night, Diddy is going to celebrate the life of his friend and marquee artist at Brooklyn club the Lab.

“We’re trying to make March 9th a national hip-hop holiday,” Diddy told MTV News last week. “It already is, on the low. MTV is going to have a big special. We’re doing a party. I’m going to Brooklyn. It’s gonna be the first time I’m throwing a party in Brooklyn. I’m from Harlem. Everybody in Harlem knows you don’t usually go over the bridge to Brooklyn. It’s a big, big deal. Me being such a Harlemite, I’m going over there to pay respect to my man. It’s gonna be a big party in Brooklyn with Mister Cee. It’s a big day. It’s a day to celebrate his life. It’s a day to celebrate the life of the man. We done did the movie, the records. It’s something that, I guess, as a label we’re obsessed with: making sure people don’t forget about this man in a positive way. March 9 is Biggie Day. … Bump Biggie all day, feel good and positive.”

On Tuesday, MTV Jams will be playing videos by B.I.G. and a slew of other fallen musical soldiers, such as Michael Jackson, Tupac Shakur, Aaliyah, Big Pun, the Lost Boyz and their deceased member Freaky Tah and Camoflauge. This week’s “Sucker Free Sunday” on MTV2 is running a special tribute to Biggie, hosted by Diddy.

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First Look: New Fleet of Star Wars Toys

Admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:01:47 +0000

New Star Wars toys including this battle-scarred Boba Fett helmet will join the lineup of action figures and superhero-themed collectibles to be unveiled at Toy Fair 2010. The bounty-hunter headgear replica will retail for $35 at its Aug. 1 release.

A far cry from the recently announced Darth Vader helmet, a limited-edition collectible that sells for $900, the Boba Fett helmet is just one of the memorable products from George Lucas’ franchise that will be displayed at New York City’s Toy Fair 2010. Star Wars heads into the event as the most popular licensed toy property, according to market research firm NPD Group.

Get more sneak peeks at upcoming Star Wars merch, including several Lego items, below.

LucasFilm and Lego

Lego Group’s Clone Turbo Tank package, pictured above, will hit stores in August with a $120 price tag.

Hoth Wompa set

Also among the six new Lego Group offerings slated for August release are the Hoth Wampa Set (pictured, priced at $40), General Grievous’ Starfighter, Palpatine’s Shuttle, Plo Koon’s Starfighter and Slave I packages.

General Grievous’ lightsaber

In homage to the elusive cyborg General Grievous from Star Wars: The Clone Wars, this replica weapon, priced at $25, allows users to spin the two light sabers simultaneously in one hand. Retail release: Aug. 1.

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First Look: A Drooling Alice in Wonderland Beast

Admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:04:50 +0000

Direct from Tim Burton’s twisted take on Alice in Wonderland come new images of the beauty — Anne Hathaway’s White Queen — and the beast, aka Bandersnatch (pictured). Described by Disney as a “disgusting, drooling, foul-smelling creature with a big filthy body and the squashed, teeth-baring face of a rabid bulldog,” Bandersnatch shreds characters with a single swipe of his razor-sharp claws.

We can only hope some creative fans come costumed as Bandersnatch when they show up at the Alice in Wonderland event Feb. 19 at the intersection of Hollywood and Highland in Los Angeles. Burton, cast members and musicians featured on the Almost Alice soundtrack album will be on hand for a sneak preview/concert. Streamed live by MySpace, the event will hype the March 5 release of Walt Disney Pictures’ 3-D adaptation of the Lewis B. Carroll fantasy.

There’s no word yet on whether Hathaway (pictured above) will attend the Los Angeles Alice festivities. The Oscar-nominated actress points out in a release that her seemingly sweet character Miranda, aka the White Queen, is the younger sister of Helena Bonham Carter’s evil Red Queen.

“Miranda comes from the same gene pool as the Red Queen,” Hathaway said. “She really likes the dark side, but she’s so scared of going too far into it that she’s made everything appear very light and happy. She’s living in that place out of fear that she won’t be able to control herself.”

Get more first looks at the inhabitants of Burton’s bizarre Wonderland — including a wild series of images illustrating the transformation of Tweedledee and Tweedledum from Burton’s sketchpad to on-screen image — below.

Bayard the bloodhound is voiced by Timothy Spall in Alice.

The Dodo shares screen time with Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
Images courtesy Disney

View full post on Wired: Underwire

The Day the Music Died: A Look Back at a Rock & Roll Tragedy

Admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 06:19:13 +0000

Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty

Today marks the 51st anniversary of “The Day the Music Died,” when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper were killed in a plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa. The musicians were in the middle of their Winter Dance Party tour — which also featured Dion and the Belmonts — across the frozen Midwest states in 1959 when conditions aboard their tour bus became so bad that the three men opted to charter a plane to their next gig. The rest is rock & roll tragedy: Waylon Jennings gave his seat aboard the plane to the Big Bopper, a decision that would haunt him the rest of his life. Valens won his ticket to fly in a coin flip. An inexperienced pilot named Roger Peterson was ill equipped for the wintry weather.

Read Rolling Stone’s account of the last days of Buddy Holly and Greil Marcus’ memorial written on the 10th anniversary of the crash, plus check out our gallery of other rockers that died well before their time:

• The Last Days of Buddy Holly
• Ritchie Valens, J.P. (The Big Bopper) Richardson and Buddy Holly by Greil Marcus
• Not Fade Away: Rockers Lost Before Their Time

View full post on Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily