I found this article and it showed Johnny Depp in his look as the Mad Hatter in Burtons upcoming Alice In Wonderland. I must say, I'm liking it already. I can't wait to see the outcome of this movie, Johnny Depp is the perfect person to pllay this role.
Here's the video everyone is talking about, Lindsay gets flour thrown on her by animal rights activist.
50 Cent knows hard times. So in these difficult economic days, the artist who debuted with Get Rich Or Die Tryin' is giving something back to his fans by adding a free DVD of a full-length original movie to his fourth major label album, Before I Self Destruct (Shady/Aftermath/Interscope), releasing early 2009.
The album move comes as 50 Cent was rushing to get his album finished for a December release, however it is not complete. With the deadline to secure advertising and retail placement for the album imminent, he decided to move to a date in early 2009.
(source: starpulse.com)
Happy Birthday to actor Owen Wilson (1968), Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett (1962), Weeds actress Elizabeth Perkins (1960), Dynasty actress Linda Evans (1942), classic comedienne Imogene Coca (1908; d. 2001), and Cuban musician and Buena Vista Social Club alum Compay Segundo (1907; d. 2003).
Found this trailer and started to laugh, spoof movies aren't always my favorite but this actually looks pretty funny.
The son of an Arab monarch took the King of Pop to court Monday, charging that Michael Jackson took $7 million as an advance on an album and an autobiography that he never produced.
Lawyers for Sheikh Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa say their client paid Jackson expenses as an advance on the book and joint recording project with the sheikh, who is an amateur songwriter. Jackson claims the money was a gift.
Al Khalifa, 33, was due to testify at London's Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday. Jackson's lawyer Robert Englehart said he was seeking permission to have Jackson testify by video link from Los Angeles.
A lawyer for Al Khalifa said the royal first spoke to Jackson, 50, by telephone while the singer was on trial in California following his 2003 arrest on child molestation charges. Attorney Bankim Thanki said that Al Khalifa wanted to work with Jackson on rebuilding his career. Jackson's finances fell apart after his arrest and he was desperately short of cash.
Al Khalifa's first payment, for $35,000, went toward paying the utility bills at Neverland, Jackson's 2,500-acre (1,000 hectare) ranch and miniature amusement park in California, Thanki said. When Jackson was found innocent of the molestation charges in June 2005, Al Khalifa footed $2.2 million in legal bills, the lawyer said.
Al Khalifa said he believed the money would be repaid once Jackson's career recovered from the damaging trial.
"I saw the payment as an investment in Michael's potential," the sheikh said in a statement read out by his lawyer in court. "He said he would pay me back ... through our work together."
Al Khalifa moved Jackson and his entourage to Bahrain almost immediately after the trial, setting up a recording studio for him in Manama, the Gulf state's capital. The sheikh, who is the governor of Bahrain's Southern Province, supplied Jackson with $500,000 in cash to subsidize his lifestyle and splashed out on a $350,000 European vacation for Jackson and his associates in February of 2006, Thanki said.
"The costs even included the expenses of bringing out Mr. Jackson's hairdresser," he said.
The lawyer said Jackson and the sheikh became close friends and at one time both lived in a palace in Abu Dhabi owned by Al Khalifa's father, Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, Bahrain's king. The singer stayed nearly a year in Bahrain as a guest of the son, but the relationship soured when Jackson repudiated a business deal Thanki said they had agreed to.
Jackson's lawyers say the pair never entered a valid agreement and that Al Khalifa's money was given freely.
Thanki acknowledged that Al Khalifa gave some gifts to Jackson but said that most of what the singer received was part of a business deal.
The gifts, he said, "were essentially personal effects — watches, jewelry."
Thanki said the sheik was wealthy but that paying Jackson's bills had taken a big bite out of his finances.
"Some of the payments were staggering by any standards," Thanki said, saying the expenditure "should not be regarded as loose change for my client."
As for Jackson, he still appears to be in difficult financial straits.
Last week, he was forced to give up the deed on Neverland, which is named for the mythical land of Peter Pan.
The trial is being held in London because the parties had agreed to take any disputes over their deal to an English court, Al Khalifa's representatives said. The trial is due to wrap up by the end of the month.
(source: yahoo news)
A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures release of a Walt Disney Animation Studios production. Produced by Clark Spencer. Executive producer, John Lasseter. Directed by Chris Williams, Byron Howard. Screenplay, Dan Fogelman, Williams.
Bolt - John Travolta
Penny - Miley Cyrus
Mittens - Susie Essman
Rhino - Mark Walton
Dr. Calico - Malcolm McDowell
The Director - James Lipton
The Agent - Greg Germann
An "Incredible Journey" or "Homeward Bound" updated for the superhero era, "Bolt" is an OK Disney animated entry enhanced by nifty 3-D projection. The first inhouse feature from Disney Animation since Pixar guru John Lasseter took over the studio's creative reins, this tale of a canine forced to overcome his superdog complex and learn to become a regular pooch bears some telltale signs of Pixar's trademark smarts, but still looks like a mutt compared to the younger company's customary purebreds. While punchy enough to keep parents amused, pic will probably play best to small fry and, especially with Disney star Miley Cyrus onboard, will have no trouble chasing down hefty biz through the holidays.
Although it seems like a workable notion on paper, onscreen the fundamental premise feels a bit shaky. From puppyhood, Bolt (voiced by John Travolta), a white hound with a black lightning bolt emblazoned on his side, has starred as a sort of Rin Tin Tin on steroids in a popular TV show alongside his owner, Penny (Cyrus). An action-packed New York chase sequence shows off Bolt's skills, as he takes down an army of marauding trucks, helicopters and innumerable ant-like soldiers while sprinting faster than Roadrunner, soaring to enormous heights, stopping vehicles in their tracks and suspending a bad guy in his jaws from a bridge.
All his powers are enhanced for the tube, of course, but Bolt doesn't know this; he's kept on the set or locations at all times to guarantee he believes everything he's doing -- that Penny is actually in danger from the villains and that he can always save the day. So when Penny returns to Hollywood and Bolt inadvertently ends up on the streets of Manhattan alone, he doesn't understand why his customary abilities fail him.
You need to take this canine mental lapse in good faith, which little kids will likely do more readily than their more jaded chaperones. All the same, it takes the entire movie for Bolt to locate his inner real dog, with most of his education coming from wise-girl tutoring supplied by black-and-white street cat Mittens (Susie Essman), an abandoned house pet now reduced to skin and bones.
This being a movie in which animals can speak with one another but not with humans, Mittens spars with Bolt from the outset like a spunky, seen-it-all heroine from a 1930s Warner Bros. programmer, but without that quality of banter.
Film feels particularly flat during the stretch that sees the pair stowing away on a westbound U-Haul truck to search for Penny; their repartee is off-puttingly argumentative, and Bolt's overplayed phobia about Styrofoam proves entirely unfunny. However, things pick up at an Ohio rest stop, where they are joined by Rhino (Mark Walton, providing the pic's best voicing), a roly-poly hamster quite adept at maneuvering the clear plastic ball in which he spends most of his time. Rhino's antics provide welcome comic relief as well as a buffer for the cat-and-dog exchanges.
With Mittens having to explain to her delusional pal that, "Nothing you think is real is real," she proceeds to instruct Bolt in the simple pleasures of being a dog, such as sticking your head into the wind from a vehicle, romping through a sprinkler or cavorting with other dogs. A particularly felicitous passage sees the animals occupying a prefab house being transported by truck, which permits Mittens to instruct Bolt on the niceties of home life while ruing her own lost domesticity.
After a spell in Las Vegas, the journey winds up at a Hollywood studio for an unsurprising action climax that once again mixes fantasy and reality.
One decidedly Pixar-like touch is the deliberate fudging of time period. While the high-tech superhero aspects of the TV show and the Vegas on view clearly define the setting as the present day, the backdrops hark nostalgically back to the late-'50s/early-'60s ambiance of "The Incredibles" and "Cars." Only older buildings are seen in the film's conspicuously underpopulated Manhattan; the Middle America passed through possesses an appealingly idyllic, timeless quality; and even the New Yawk accents of Mittens and a trio of brilliantly animated "Italian" pigeons seem a couple of generations old.
"Wall-E" is also brought to mind, due to the fact that a very large number of the film's incidental human characters, not to mention Rhino, are extremely fat.
Voicings, from Travolta and Cyrus on down, are pro but unexceptional. First-time directors Chris Williams and Byron Howard have both worked at Disney for 14 years in various capacities, and pic's visuals are similarly proficient without inspiration. John Powell's vigorous score adds propulsion and excitement, and the soundtrack includes two new songs, with a Cyrus-Travolta duet, "I Thought I Lost You," featured over the end credits.
Film will be released in flat and 3-D versions, and the latter looked great at the screening caught
(written by: Todd McCarthy, source: Variety.com)
Media and sports entrepreneur Mark Cuban sold 600,000 shares of an Internet search engine company in an insider deal that has triggered a federal charge against him, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced Monday.
According to the SEC complaint, which alleges insider trading, Mamma.com Inc. approached Cuban in 2004 “to participate in (a) stock offering after he agreed to keep the information confidential... Cuban knew that the offering would be conducted at a discount to the prevailing market price and that it would be dilutive to existing shareholders. Within hours of receiving this information, Cuban called his broker and instructed him to sell Cuban's entire position in the company.”
As a result, Cuban was able to dodge a $750,000 loss.
“Mamma.com entrusted Mr. Cuban with nonpublic information after he promised to keep the information confidential. Less than four hours later, Mr. Cuban betrayed that trust by placing an order to sell all of his shares. It is fundamentally unfair for someone to use access to nonpublic information to improperly gain an edge on the market," said Scott W. Friestad, deputy director of the SEC's enforcement division, in a statement.
In a statement on his blogsite, Cuban and his attorney dismissed the charges as baseless and vowed to fight them.
(written by: William Triplett, source: Variety.com)