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Lady Gaga Top New Year's Eve Draw
14 hours ago
By the New York Post
Lady Gaga looks to be the big winner on New Year's Eve. The "Poker Face" singer's performance at the Fontainebleau in Miami to ring in 2010 is the hottest ticket in the country based on sales through website NewYearsEve.com.
Gaga, who's said to be getting about $300,000 for the show, has already sold north of $1 million in tickets on the site. There are only a few $25,000 tables left and some general admission seats at $425.
Read more at the New York Post. »
- Lew Harris
Record Yule B.O.: 'Holmes at $25M; 'Avatar' at $23.3M
14 hours ago
Expecting a nice surprise under their tree this year, studio distributors instead got the equivalent of a luxury car with a giant bow on it Friday, as the domestic box-office shattered last year's Christmas Day record with an enormous $85 million haul.
In trumping the $75 million record set last Christmas, both “Avatar” and “Sherlock Holmes” came up huge. Fox’s James Cameron-directed 3D epic took in $23.3 million Friday, according to studio estimates, and is being tracked to actually grow 7 percent from its premiere weekend with a $82 million three-day t »
- Daniel Frankel
Reported: Sheen's Wife No Longer Cooperating (updated)
25 December 2009 4:57 PM, PST
By Wrap Staff
Saturday Update: Charlie Sheen’s wife, Brooke Mueller, is no longer cooperating with the police, website TMZ is reporting. The site also says that just before the bail hearing, Mueller recanted her charge that Sheen assaulted her, saying she was drunk when she made the 911 call. Sheen told law enforcement Brooke was the aggressor and he was just trying to defend himself, according to the site. Also according to TMZ sources, both Sheen and Mueller were tested for alcohol; she registered a .13, and he registered a .04. The district attorney's office could not be reached by »
- Adalian
Good Morning, Oscar: Christmas Day
25 December 2009 1:16 AM, PST
By Steve Pond
In a way, Christmas is the last respite before Academy Awards season really starts heating up. Before New Years Day rolls around, voters will be staring at their ballots, studios will know it's time for a full-court press, and nervous potential nominees will see some scary deadlines looming.
But for now, let's forget about that and celebrate a holiday with some pretty close ties to the Academy Award. The classic Christmas song of the past century, for instance, won the best original song award at the 1942 Oscars:
"Holiday Inn" (Paramount Pictures/Unive »
- Steve Pond
Brittany Murphy Buried on Christmas Eve, in a Shroud of Quiet
24 December 2009 5:18 PM, PST
By Steven Mikulan
As Los Angeles wound down into the hush of the holiday season, so too did a silence descend on that season's biggest Hollywood story, the tragic death of Brittany Murphy from still unknown causes.
There were vitually no datelines, blogs or fantic updates about the the Christmas Eve funeral. Either the media was filled with holiday cheer or was too exhausted by its own round-the-clock coverage of Murphy.
In this case, the actress benefited from both timing and location.
< »
- Steven Mikulan
New Film Ignites Debate on Ratings Policy
24 December 2009 1:40 PM, PST
By the New York Times
The romantic comedy “It’s Complicated” arrived at the multiplex on Friday complete with an R rating, ranking it in the same category as “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Basic Instinct” in the eyes of the MPAA. But there is no violence in “It’s Complicated,”and the bedroom scenes are decidedly tame by contemporary standards. Instead, the R rating — which experts say could limit the box-office potential of the Universal Pictures film — comes from a scene in which Steve Martin and Meryl Streep share a joint. Read »
- Lew Harris
Video: The 20 Craziest, Coolest and Cheesiest Christmas TV Moments
24 December 2009 12:28 PM, PST
By Josef Adalian
Sure, "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is a heartwarming classic. And who doesn't get a little misty-eyed every time "It's A Wonderful Life" comes on the small screen?
But let's face it: By this point in the holiday season, you're probably a bit tired of the all the usual Christmas suspects. What you really need is to sit back with some egg nog and relive memories of... a Pac-Man Christmas!
Or how about watching Dolly Parton flirt with Bob Hope in a holiday setting? A teenage Michael Jackson trading holiday greetings with Oscar the Grouch?
They're all her »
- Adalian
Awards Screenings Move to the Slopes, the Islands
24 December 2009 12:06 PM, PST
By Steve Pond
‘Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the town
Not a feature was screening
All the rooms were shut down ...
Okay, that’s not entirely accurate. A few films are still screening in Los Angeles and New York – but not many, particularly not in New York.
And in Los Angeles, meanwhile, most of the action is coming from a single studio, the Weinstein Company, which is four-walling the Malibu Cinema, the Music Hall and Harmony Gold for the next week, running constant screenings of its four contenders, “Nine,” “Ing »
- Steve Pond
Massive Xmas B.O.: 'Holmes at $25M; 'Avatar' at $23.3M
24 December 2009 12:01 PM, PST
Saturday box-office update:
Expecting a nice surprise under their tree this year, studio distributors instead got the equivalent of a luxury car with a giant bow on it Friday, as the domestic box-office shattered last year's Christmas Day record with an enormous $85 million haul.
Both "Avatar" and "Sherlock Holmes" came up huge. Fox's James Cameron-directed 3D epic took in $23.3 million Friday, according to studio estimates, and is being tracked to actually grow 7 percent from its premiere weekend with a $82 million three-day total.
»
- Lew Harris
Video: 'Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer' Turns 30
24 December 2009 10:55 AM, PST
By Josef Adalian
With Christmas just hours away, now seems the right time to take note of a very important anniversary.
"Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" turns 30 this year.
Yup, it's been three decades since the vocal stylings of Elmo Shropshire and then-wife Patsy have been annoying...er, entertaining us with their classic tale of a drunk grandmother who gets killed by one, Kris Kringle.
In addition to selling hundreds of thousands of singles, "Grandma" even inspired an animated kiddie special (Grandma gets run over but doesn't die, thank goodness).
The & »
- Adalian
NBC's 'The Sing-Off': How to Do Reality Right
24 December 2009 10:19 AM, PST
It's been a tough year for NBC -- but the folks at the Peacock went out on a high note with the recently concluded talent competition "The Sing-Off." When it was first announced earlier this year, the whole concept seemed a bit dubious. A cappella singing groups in a show that sounded like a cheap ripoff of "American Idol" didn't exactly scream must-see TV. But give credit to NBC and executive producer Joel Gallen for getting this one (mostly) right. "The Sing-Off" tapped into what's shaping up as a key trend for the 2009-10 season: Feel- »
- Adalian
'Super Sherl' Is a Nuclear-Era Blast
24 December 2009 10:14 AM, PST
By Desson Thomson
I come to praise Guy Ritchie’s eminently entertaining “Sherlock Holmes,” not to bury it.
Also to speak in favor of retooling the past for the present. As our culture grows up less and less educated in the classics and increasingly tutored in such contemporary skills as Excel and free downloading, it’s the only chance we’ve got of keeping the flame of immortality. And in the hyperbole that is filmmaker Ritchie’s lock, stock and trade, we should see good things.<img src="/files/sherlock_0.jpg" style="margin: 15px; height: 294px; width: 275px; float: lef »
- Lew Harris
New Jersey Lawmakers -- Like 'Jersey Shore' -- Nothing But Bunch of Cash, Fame-Seeking 'Guidos'
24 December 2009 10:04 AM, PST
By Dylan Stableford
Like the cast of MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” this is getting stupid – one shot at a time.
Here's the situation, literally.
First, it was the Jersey Shore Convention and Visitors Bureau, which issued a press release blasting MTV's "one-dimensional," guido-filled portrayal of its pristine home.
The press release was issued on a Friday, the day after the show’s debut. And again on the following Monday (“Repeat Alert: Jersey Shore Reacts to 'J »
- Dylan Stableford
Brittany Murphy: Just Another Celebrity Funeral?
24 December 2009 9:51 AM, PST
By Steven Mikulan
The Los Angeles Police Department is offering conflicting predictions of the size of the Christmas Eve funeral of Brittany Murphy.
“This isn't going to be a big thing like the Farrah Fawcett funeral,” Lt. John Romero, an Lapd media spokesman, told TheWrap. “It's just another celebrity funeral.”
Romero said only a few officers would be in the area for Brittany Murphy's Christmas Eve burial at Forest Lawn. The Lapd would be doing nothing out of the ord »
- Steven Mikulan
'Sports Machine' George Michael Dead at 70
24 December 2009 8:26 AM, PST
By Dylan Stableford
Legendary sports broadcaster George Michael is dead.
According to a report out of Washington, Michael had been battling cancer for nearly two years. He was 70.
For 27 years, he was the anchor of the sports desk at D.C.'s Channel 4/Wrc, but he was known to most as the host of "George Michael's Sports Machine" -- a nationally-syndicated sports highlights show that aired on NBC for more than 20 years, beginning in 1984.
It was a Sunday night institution for many sports fans, including me. (For those of a certain age, if you were a kid lucky enough to have »
- Dylan Stableford
Good Morning, Oscar: December 24
24 December 2009 1:36 AM, PST
By Steve Pond
In this morning’s roundup of Oscar news ‘n’ notes from around the web, Peter Jackson and James Cameron decide that movie technology is sort of beside the point.
The Gurus o’ Gold (or maybe the Gurus of Gold; it’s listed both ways on different parts of the website) offer Christmas-week predictions, and in the process elevate “Avatar” to the number two best-picture slot, just below “Up in the Air.” Six of the 15 Gurus (two of whom didn’t participate this week) are now picking the James Cameron film to win; six others »
- Steve Pond
Redbox Pulls Grisly Brittany Posters
23 December 2009 7:52 PM, PST
By the Chicago Sun-Times
DVD rental company Redbox announced Wednesday it has pulled all promotional posters of a straight-to-dvd Brittany Murphy movie, which features a grisly image of the actress bloody in a bathtub.
Redbox began removing all art from "Deadline" at its 19,000 nationwide kiosks Tuesday and artwork for the film was removed from its website.
Read more at the Chicago Sun-Times. »
- Lew Harris
Balloon Boy Verdict: Tough, But Not Enough
23 December 2009 7:16 PM, PST
By Josef Adalian
Karma finally caught up with Balloon Boy dad Richard Heene today, but the judge in the case got the verdict only half-right.
Heene and wife Mayumi were both sentenced to short jail terms and four years of probation, according to the AP. More interestingly, Judge Stephen Schapanski also said the couple couldn't profit in any way from their hoax during their probation -- no books, no reality shows, no paid interviews.
That's as it should be, since, at its heart, this case has always been about Richard Heene's addiction to the notion of fame. He's an attention junkie, and the jud »
- Adalian
The Cowell Chronicles: Separating Fact From Fantasy
23 December 2009 6:12 PM, PST
By Josef Adalian
When it comes to Simon Cowell, those who cannot remember the past are apparently doomed to report it -- over and over again.
While most Americans are happily spending this holiday week visiting with relatives or downing too much egg nog, the international entertainment news media have decided that it's once again time to be begin obsessing over the future of Cowell and "American Idol."
Even though there's not actually any real, hard news to report (yet), the breathless reports keep coming, each more definitive than the last.
Last week, for example, The Times »
- Adalian
A Tough, But Still a Profitable Year for Universal
23 December 2009 5:25 PM, PST
“We got the crap kicked out of us in the press, and to a large extent we deserved it,” Universal Chairman Adam Fogelson told TheWrap about the studio's much-derided 2009. “That having been said, we will still be profitable this year.”
Indeed, the year probably was not as bad as was vigorously reported in some media-on-media circles, despite global theatrical revenue that was down about $800 million from 2008’s studio-record $2.834 billion haul -- give or take this weekend's performance of the romantic comedy “It’s Complicated.” <img src »
- Daniel Frankel
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