James Franco's a fitting host for Oscars

LOS ANGELES — Deep inside the Kodak Theatre, Oscar co-host James Franco is on a short break from rehearsal for Sunday's show. Amid the hubbub of pre-show activity, a long rack of suits (and a few dresses) sits outside his dressing room door (opposite co-host Anne Hathaway's, which has a "Please Do Not Disturb" sign taped onto it).

As Franco's door swings open, the sound of Tom Petty's Here Comes My Girl spills into the hallway.

A first step into Franco's small dressing room reveals countertops with coffee, a fruit tray, pomades, sprays and a candy dish. In a span of seconds, Franco brushes his teeth, checks his iPhone, pops a few M&Ms and says hello, ready for the first fitting of four Gucci outfits he'll don for the show.

Franco, 32, arrived in Los Angeles at 3:30 a.m. and started rehearsal just five hours later.

"We've done some script readings, but they haven't finalized the script," he says while slipping into the first of four looks, a classic black Gucci Marseille two-button tux. His nerves, for now, are at bay. "For me and Anne, I think it will feel like it went by really fast by the time that we're done. There's a lot to do, and when you do live shows, it goes by really fast."

Gucci, which has been dressing Franco for two years, custom-made four tuxedos for the actor (who is also the face of Gucci by Gucci men's fragrance). Each pocket inside the black, cream, charcoal and burgundy jackets is carefully inscribed with Franco's name.

"They've been incredibly supportive," says Franco, who is so enamored by the Italian fashion house, he pitched Gucci creative director Frida Giannini about making a documentary on how she works. "I think what they do over there is so interesting and has got such a great spirit." Giannini says she wanted Franco to look like a classic Hollywood star for the Oscars. "But at the same time modern and sharply tailored," Giannini says by e-mail. "He is natural and effortless in whatever he wears, very much the Gucci man, and I was able to play with color and fabrication as additional options to the traditional tuxedo."

"I love movies. I like the idea that I can do this at a time when no one expected me to do it," he says. "Movies are changing, the way you watch entertainment is changing, and honestly I don't know how much longer we'll love movies the way we do now. So it's nice to be a part of this while movies are still a really important part of our world."



Read More

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/movieawards/oscars/2011-02-25-franco25_ST_N.htm

Lady GaGa to Release 'Born This Way' in May and New Single in Feb

Lady GaGa celebrated New Year by announcing release dates for her new album "Born This Way" and its lead single. "THE SONG 2 13 11 THE RECORD 5 23 11," she posted on Twitter along with a picture of her stripping down from the waist down and wearing a jacket with the album title emblazoned on the back.

Prior to the announcement, she tweeted her Little Monsters some lyrics from the record, "I'm beautiful in my way, 'cause God makes no mistakes, I'm on the right track baby, I was Born This Way. Don't hide yourself in regret, just love yourself and you're set. I'm on the right track baby, I was Born This Way."

GaGa previously told BBC that "lyrically this album is more poetic." She gushed, "It's really written by the fans, they really wrote it for me because every night they're funneling so much into me. So I wrote it for them. Born This Way is all about my little monsters and me, mother monster."

Teasing about the sound, she said "[It's] a marriage of electronic music with major, epic, dare I even say, metal or rock and roll, pop, anthemic style melodies with really sledge-hammering dance beats." She explained more, "It's kind of like the post-operative stage of the album. I've already done the full heart surgery. I'm just sewing myself back up again."

Beside having a new album on the way, Lady GaGa will also roll out a "Gnomeo and Juliet" soundtrack she worked with Elton John. The song will be made available for purchase in a CD package of the movie theme songs compilation on February 8.

Read More

http://www.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/00037662.html

Eminem makes a major Grammy 'Recovery'

Eminem, who's reaped 11 Grammy Awards in the past decade, could finally nab a long-elusive marquee prize. The rebounding rapper leads the pack of Grammy nominees with 10 nods, including album of the year for Recovery and best record and song for Love the Way You Lie, his hit with Rihanna. Because Lie and Not Afraid face off in the rap song category, he can win a maximum of nine trophies. A sweep is possible, but he faces formidable competition.

Also vying for best album are Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, Lady Antebellum's Need You Now, Lady Gaga's The Fame Monster and Katy Perry's Teenage Dream.

NOMINEES LIST: See who's up for what in most major categories

Other record contenders are B.o.B's Nothin' on You (with Bruno Mars), Cee Lo Green's F- — - You, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' Empire State of Mind and Lady Antebellum's Need You Now.

In song, awarded to composers, Lie, F- — - You and Antebellum's hit are pitted against Ray LaMontagne's Beg Steal or Borrow and The House That Built Me (sung by Miranda Lambert).

Drake and Justin Bieber, the strongest candidates for best new artist, take on Florence + The Machine, Mumford & Sons and Esperanza Spalding, leaving Susan Boyle and Ke$ha off the ballot.

The 53rd Grammy Awards air Feb. 13 on CBS. Nominations in top categories were unveiled during Wednesday's The Grammy Nominations Concert Live!! — Countdown to Music's Biggest Night. LL Cool J hosted the show, which opened with Katy Perry delivering a glam rendition of California Gurls. She was followed by performances by Miranda Lambert, Justin Bieber and B.o.B. with Bruno Mars.

Eminem, whose Recovery is 2010's best seller so far with 3 million copies, is a two-time loser in the best-album race. He lost record bids twice and song once. He's favored to take best-album honors this time.

Because the last cycle's eligibility period shrank to suit 2010's earlier show, this year's stretched 13 months, ending Sept. 30.

Bruno Mars is second in nominations with seven, trailed by Jay-Z, Lady Antebellum and Lady Gaga with six each. Among the top-tier shut-outs are Sade, whose Soldier of Love was expected to garner a best-album nod, and country's Miranda Lambert.

Read More

http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/awards/grammys/2010-12-02-grammynews02_ST_N.htm

Dancing With The Stars watched by 24m viewers

The final of US show Dancing With The Stars attracted an average audience of 24 million people, network ABC said.

The episode, in which Dirty Dancing star Jennifer Grey was crowned the winner, attracted the show's biggest audience in three years, ABC said.

The network said numbers grew to 26.4 million in the last 30 minutes as the winners were revealed.

Disney Channel star Kyle Massey, 19, was voted runner-up with Bristol Palin, 20, taking 3rd place.

Producers said the public voted in record numbers for the three finalists, briefly crashing the show's website.

Grey, 50, told Good Morning America she had resisted pressure to recreate the iconic dance she performed with co-star Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing.

They danced in the 1987 film to Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes' Oscar-winning duet (I've Had) The Time of My Life.

"I knew everybody wanted us to do something with The Time of My Life - there was a lot of pressure for that.

"But I knew that was a dance for Patrick and me, and I wanted to leave it as such."

Swayze died of pancreatic cancer in September 2009 at the age of 57.

Read More

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11838129

'Deathly Hallows' Designer Reveals Scene Secrets

In the weeks leading up to the release of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1," fans were in a frenzy, trying to figure out just how much of the book would make the first film, which scenes would delight and disappoint, and what characters might not return ever again. And trying to get the tight-lipped folks in the Potter camp to discuss those key points was a bit of a struggle. However, now that the film has opened, MTV News has enlisted the expertise of longtime Potter production designer Stuart Craig for a few behind-the-scenes tidbits.

Much has been said of the production moving away from Hogwarts and out on multiple locations, which Craig described as a "movie on the run."

"We made a very different kind of film, which was shot a great deal on location. We traveled quite far, we built sets, and they spend a lot of time in a forest," he explained. "We built forest sets and integrated them into the real forests, so there were challenges there, as you might imagine."

Another one of the production's major challenges — and accomplishments — was shooting the sequence in which Harry retrieves the Sword of Gryffindor at the bottom of a frozen lake.

"There was a really demanding, complicated special-effects requirement there to do the ice," Craig said. "I think that all works remarkably quite well, actually. Harry breaking the ice, diving in and then subsequently strangled by the Horcrux around his neck and is struggling and can't get up quickly because of the ice above him. It's good stuff."

Which begs the question: How did Craig and his team pull off that scene, and what do they use to make the ice look so real?

"As always, well, as nearly always, there's more than one solution. The camera on top, looking from the outside down on it. It's big, thick sheets of Plexiglass with frosty texture on top of that," he revealed.

"When we're underneath, it's actually an area of wax which floats on top of the water. And wax makes very effective ice. They're tried and tested movie techniques; there are a lot. You could write a book one day, a guidebook, to the very movie techniques — frost on window panes with some Epsom salts and brown nails."

One of the great pleasures in chatting with Craig, whose credits outside the world of Harry Potter include "Ghandi," "The English Patient" and "Notting Hill," is the fact that he has such an informed perspective on the inner-workings of the industry; specifically, how advanced film-making technology is now.

"The great thing about movies these days is that you can fix everything," he said. "I have to give a talk at a film festival early next month, and I've just been looking at films that I've done in the past. In particular, 'Ghandi,' years ago in India. The thing then was: If sometimes there was a compromise, it was filmed and it was there, locked. Forever. You look at the movie 20 years later, and there it would be.

"These days, with visual effects able to do so much, you can do face replacement, you can put Dan Radcliffe's head on somebody else's body. There's nothing they can't do, it seems. I mean, at a cost, it's not cheap, so terrible things seem to get fixed, which is very reassuring," he added, chuckling.

Read More

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1653098/20101124/story.jhtml

Concern over Aishwarya film poster

National Organisation for Tobacco Eradication (NOTE) India, the body working for tobacco eradication, on Tuesday wrote to actor Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan expressing concern over use of her images smoking a cigarette in the banners of film Guzaarish displayed all over Mumbai.

Shekhar Salkar, honorary secretary of NOTE told The Hindu here that in the past they had knocked on every door to prevent the clandestine promotion of tobacco using actors. This, he said, contravened the provisions of the Central anti-tobacco legislation. He said he would issue a legal notice to the actor under the provisions of the anti-tobacco legislation for the alleged advertisement of tobacco smoking in the public.

Read More

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article890512.ece