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Posts Tagged ‘Cultural Headlines’

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The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

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1. She might be less than a week old, but thanks to her credited appearance on “Glory,” Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s new baby daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, is now the youngest person ever to have a song on the Billboard chart. [via Billboard]

2. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences is considering moving the Oscars from its home for the past decade — the Kodak Theatre — to the Nokia Theatre in downtown LA, which has twice the capacity. [via LAT]

3. Big news for comics fans: DC Comics has announced that it’s cancelling six of its current titles (Blackhawks, O.M.A.C., Men of War, Hawk and Dove, Mister Terrific, and Static Shock) and introducing six new ones, including Grant Morrison’s Batman Incorporated and Dial H by fantasy novelist China Miéville. [via ArtsBeat]

4. Last night was the People’s Choice Awards, which honors popular movies, TV shows, and musicians, based on over 230 million votes from fans. Not so surprisingly, the big winners of the evening were Katy Perry (who was a no-show) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part II. [via Vulture]

5. The Velvet Underground is accusing the Andy Warhol Foundation of trademark infringement, claiming that it illegally licensed the famous banana logo from their first album cover — which was never officially copyrighted — for use on other products. [via BBC]

Bonus Buzz: Adorable Baby Sloths Get A Bath

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

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1. It has been announced that Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Melissa McCarthy will be among the presenters at this year’s Golden Globe Awards, which airs this Sunday night at 8pm on NBC. So, there you go, that’s three celebrities who aren’t afraid to be in the same room with the evening’s host, Ricky Gervais. [via EW]

2. Exciting news for contemporary art lovers: Yesterday, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s board approved the hire of Sheena Wagstaff, the chief curator at the Tate Modern in London for the past ten years, to oversee a new department at the Met that will be devoted entirely to work from the 20th and 21st century. [via Daily Intel]

3. Apparently director Alexander Payne already has a lead actor in mind for Nebraska, his black-and-white followup to The Descendants, but the person who he wants hasn’t even read the script for the father/son road trip comedy yet. Any guesses who it could be? [via The Playlist]

4. Diplo has a picture book called 128 Beats Per Minute: Diplo’s Visual Guide to Music, Culture, and Everything in Between coming out in April on Universe Publishing, a Rizzoli imprint. He also thinks that this year’s Coachella lineup looks pretty lame. [via Pitchfork]

5. In case you missed this yesterday, the very intense first five minutes of Steven Soderbergh’s excellent new action flick Haywire are streaming on Hulu. We’ve seen the entire film, and promise you that it’s definitely worth checking out in theaters when it opens on January 20th.

Bonus Buzz: The Original Keyboard Cat Has Been Found

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The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

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1. Ladies and gentlemen, this just might be the funniest My Little Pony-related correction that The New York Times has ever issued. [via The Daily What]

2. Hot British actor of the moment Benedict Cumberbatch (who you might recognize from recent roles in War Horse or the BBC’s Sherlock) has come aboard JJ Abrams’ highly-anticipated Star Trek sequel as the film’s villain. [via Variety]

3. Due to issues with the script, Vulture is exclusively reporting that Matt Damon will no longer be making his directorial debut with a film about a smalltown salesman written by Dave Eggers; he is still up for starring in the movie though.

4. Following their recent separation, Zooey Deschanel has officially filed for divorce from Ben Gibbard citing “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for their break up. [via NME]

5. Now that issues regarding rights have finally been hammered out, there’s a Jerry Garcia doc in the works from filmmaker Malcolm Leo that will prominently feature material from a conversation that the director had with The Grateful Dead frontman back in 1987, as well as never-before-seen performances and rare home movies. [via Deadline]

Bonus Buzz: Kanye West’s Bizarre Twitter Rant Is About His Insane New “Design Company”

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The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

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1. Donald Trump has revealed the lineup for the upcoming season of Celebrity Apprentice, and the rather depressing roster of “celebrities” includes Arsenio Hall, Clay Aiken, Dee Snider, Debbie Gibson, and Real Housewives star Teresa Giudice. [via Deadline]

2. Les Miserables director Tom Hooper has offered the choice roles of Eponine and Cosette to Taylor Swift and Amanda Seyfried, respectively. Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, and Sacha Baron Cohen are already on board the project. [via Collider]

3. Pop icons (and longtime mutual admirers) Madonna and Kylie Minogue are finally going to be performing a duet together as part of a British TV special honoring Minogue’s 25th anniversary in music. Any guesses as to what they’ll sing? [via Vulture]

4. The Kardashians are rumored to be launching a new magazine with American Media, the publisher of Star, The National Enquirer, and Shape. Word is that the girls will be involved with the project editorially, but it’s unclear at the point whether it will be more of a fanzine or a lifestyle title. [via NYP]

5. Patti Smith wrote a song inspired by Amy Winehouse that will appear on her next album. “We were at [New York studio] Electric Lady doing a whole other song and I wrote Amy a little poem when she died and my bass player, Tony Shanahan, wrote a piece of music and the two matched perfectly.” [via NME]

Bonus Buzz: 30 Billboards That’ll Make You Say WTF

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The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

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1. Demi Moore has been cast as feminist icon Gloria Steinem in that Linda Lovelace biopic that we feel like we’ve been reading about forever now, and is finally shooting in Los Angeles. Also part of the ensemble: Amanda Seyfried, who plays Lovelace, Peter Sarsgaard as her husband, and James Franco, who will make a cameo as Hugh Hefner. [via THR]

2. On New Year’s Eve Patti Smith announced that her annual residency at the Bowery Ballroom — a beloved tradition for New York-based rock fans — was coming to an end; according to Lenny Kaye, her lead guitarist, the band will continue doing the yearly batch of shows, just at an alternate location. [via ArtsBeat]

3. Despite underwhelming performance at the box office, Sony says that a sequel to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is still in the works, with Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara already on board to reprise their starring roles. That said, David Fincher has not signed on to direct the sequel just yet. [via Vulture]

4. Elton John would like for Justin Timberlake to play him in a forthcoming biopic that’s in the works; JT previously played a younger version of the legendary performer in David LaChapelle’s video for “This Train Don’t Stop There Anymore.” [via LAT]

5. A pixelated image of Morrissey has been hidden in Google Earth, just outside of the UK’s Salford Lads Club, the venue that appears on the cover of The SmithsThe Queen Is Dead album. [via NME]

Bonus Buzz: Who’s Writing Rupert Murdoch’s Tweets?

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The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

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1. Paul McCartney has announced that he will release a new album in February that will feature guest appearances by Stevie Wonder and Eric Clapton and a mix of covers of “songs he was inspired by during his childhood,” as well as two original compositions. [via NME]

2. In case you’re curious, here are the results of a yearly demographic survey of Broadway audiences. The stat that we find the most interesting: The average age of the Broadway theatergoer was 44 years. [via Pop Culture Brain]

3. Regardless of what yesterday’s Twitter rumors might have led you to believe, Bon Jovi was not found dead from cardiac arrest in a New Jersey hotel. He’s actually alive, and making sort of funny signs about it. [via The Daily What]

4. If you could use some help waking up this morning, you can now listen to “Stupid Hoe,” the second single off of Nicki Minaj’s forthcoming Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded album, here.

5. Ryan Gosling has joined the growing list of celebrities, which also includes Zooey Deschanel and Alicia Silverstone, who have publicly asked McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner to step in and prevent his company from using battery hens to source its eggs and other animal products. [via Jezebel]

Bonus Buzz: Super-Nerdy Snow Sculptures

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The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

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1. José Angel Santana, a 58-year-old former professor at NYU, says that he lost his job after giving James Franco a D in “Directing the Actor II,” and is now suing the university. Apparently the bad grade was attendance related; Franco only showed up for two of the fourteen classes. [via Vulture]

2. Now that Grinderman is “over,” Jim Sclavunos reports that Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds could be releasing a follow up to their 2008 album Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! as early as next year. [via NME]

3. Maya Angelou, who recently collaborated with Common on a track that appears on his forthcoming album, The Dreamer, The Believer, was “surprised and disappointed” to find out that the song “used the ‘N’ word numerous times.” His response? “I told her what ‘The Dreamer’ was about and what I wanted to get across to people. I wanted young people to hear this and feel like they could really accomplish their dreams.” [via ArtsBeat]

4. This weekend’s Jimmy Fallon-hosted installment of Saturday Night Live scored the show’s highest ratings of the season so far. No doubt appearances by former castmembers — including Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Tracy Morgan, and Rachel Dratch — as well as a Jude Law cameo (who seemed to be channeling Michael Stipe in that hat), helped out. [via Deadline]

5. Pulling in a respectable $40 million, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows topped the weekend box office, followed by Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked ($23.5 million), and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol ($13 million). When you consider that Mission: Impossible was only playing at around 425 IMAX theaters, that number seems a lot more impressive. [via Digital Spy]

Bonus Buzz: 8 Tyrannical Dictators Still Alive And In Power

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The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

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1. This year’s Golden Globe Award nominations were announced earlier this morning, and while we’ll have more to say about the picks in a bit, in the meantime, you can peruse the full list here.

2. This should be interesting: NBC has announced that Howard Stern will be joining the panel of judges on its summer competition series America’s Got Talent. Stern, who’ll be stepping in to fill the spot recently left vacant by Piers Morgan, still plans to continue doing his radio show. [via Deadline]

3. Lady Gaga, who made an estimated $90 million last year, has topped Forbes new list of the top-earning women in music. Rounding out the top five: Taylor Swift ($45 million), Katy Perry ($44 million), Beyonce ($35 million), and Rihanna ($29 million). [via NME]

4. George Whitman, the American-born owner of the beloved Paris bookstore Shakespeare & Company, died yesterday at the age of 98. His West Bank shop, which hosted readings by some of modern literature’s biggest names, was also a place where aspiring writers could find shelter in exchange for a little work. [via NYT]

5. Courtney Love might be getting kicked out of her West Village townhouse. Why? A minor fire last spring, some wall paper she wasn’t supposed to put up, and $50,000 in unpaid rent. [via Daily Intel]

Bonus Buzz: Animated Remake of ‘Raiders Of The Lost Ark’

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The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

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1. Slashfilm got an early look at Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises prologue, and discovered that the finished film will have a whopping 50 minutes of IMAX shot-and-projected footage. Here’s a spoiler-free recap.

2. This could be interesting: Spike Lee has signed on to direct Eddie Murphy in a new HBO biopic about former Washington DC mayor Marion Berry — aka the man once caught smoking crack in a hotel room full of prostitutes. John Ridley (Red Tails, Da Brick) is on board to pen the script. [via THR]

3. A group of Occupy Wall Street protestors took over the set of Law & Order: SVU last night; the show was shooting an episode that was centered around a fake encampment in Foley Square. “They’ve delivered us this perfectly wrapped Christmas present with a bow on top: they rebuilt our camp,” OWS organizer Jake De Groot told Mother Jones. “How could we not go and take it?” [via TV Squad]

4. “If Columbine is reenacted or some shit, that’s gonna be on my f*cking head. Yeah, it’ll be my fault, just like it was Em’s and Marilyn’s and fucking Slipknot’s and all them motherf*ckers.” — Tyler, the Creator is talking about Columbine again.

5. Pharrell Williams and famed composer Hans Zimmer have been named the musical consultants for this year’s Academy Awards; neither of them have worked on the show in the past. [via THR]

Bonus Buzz: Star Wars-Inspired ‘Lost’ Posters

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The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

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1. Chewbacca is making a non-singing guest appearance on the Christmas episode of Glee. Why? According to Matthew Morrison, there’s “a special within the episode that’s a throwback to the Star Wars holiday special and the Judy Garland Christmas special.” [via THR]

2. Martin Scorsese has revealed that his next film project will be a long-delayed adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence, a story which focuses on a group of Jesuit missionaries in 17th century Japan. [via Slashfilm]

3. This image of Viggo Mortensen on the cover of New York Times Magazine has us convinced that he would have made a much better Benjamin Button than Brad Pitt. [via Best Week Ever]

4. Can you picture Jason Stackhouse having a one night stand with Zooey Deschanel’s awkward New Girl character Jess? Neither can we (unless there was some V involved), but it looks like it will be happening in an upcoming episode of the show. [via Vulture]

5. It has been announced that Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood will compose the score The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming film that’s believed to be based on the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Given how well this creative pairing worked for There Will Be Blood, we can’t wait to hear what Greenwood comes up with. [via Collider]

Bonus Buzz: Baby Chameleons Are Adorable

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