Source: http://concreteloop.com/2011/07/unsigned-artist-spotlight-shamar-forte
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Shia Labeouf's Transformers: Dark Of The Moon has destroyed the competition at the U.S. box office, grossing $97.4 million (£60.9 million) to score the biggest opening weekend of the year so far.
The third installment of the action franchise, directed by Michael Bay, opened on Tuesday night and had pulled in $162 million (£101.25 million) by Sunday, according to early studio estimates.
Its weekend (01-03Jul11) gross of $97.4 million (£60.9 million) beats the $90.2 million (£56.4 million) taken by Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides when it was released in May.
The Transformers sequel also makes history as the largest Independence Day weekend draw since Spider-Man 2's $88.2 million (£55 million) haul in 2004.
Meanwhile, animated film Cars 2 was a distant second on the box office chart with $25.1 million (£15.67 million), while Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts' Larry Crowne enters at four, followed by another new release, Monte Carlo.
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Paramount PicturesUs Magazine Robots clearly rule at the box office!
Transformers: Dark of the Moon topped this holiday weekend's box office chart, ranking in a reported $97.4 million, according to early Sunday estimates.
VIDEO: The week's top celeb news headlines
Shia LaBeouf and Rosie Hungtinglton-Whiteley's flick even bested its predecessors, Transformers (2007) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), which drew $70.5 million and $109 million respectively. Dark of the Moon is expected to take in $372 million worldwide by Monday.
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Kiddie animated flick Cars 2 zoomed to second place this weekend with a $25.1 million take, followed by Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake's raunchy comedy Bad Teacher ($14.1 million) in its second weekend in theaters.
VIDEO: Watch a clip from Bad Teacher
Rounding out the weekend box office was the Tom Hanks-Julia Roberts rom-com ($13 million) and Selena Gomez's teenybopper flick Monte Carlo ($7.6 million).
Tell Us: Which movie did you see this weekend?
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Source: http://omg.yahoo.com/news/transformers-rules-4th-of-july-weekend-box-office/66426
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Source: http://concreteloop.com/2011/06/music-video-lupe-fiasco-out-of-my-head-ft-trey-songz
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If the subtextual homoerotic love affair between Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Professor X (James McAvoy) in the X-Men saga wasn't established canon before X-Men: First Class, well...it is now.
For anyone remotely paying attention, it's pretty clear that the primary story arc of the summer blockbuster is how much Erik and Charles are madly in love, and how it all goes horribly wrong due to a combination of external forces and internal character flaws.
Our own E! Online reviewer appeared to have no idea this all went down, so are we just seeing things because we want to? And what does this turn of romantic events mean for the future of the franchise? Let's discuss:
READ MORE: What were the five biggest movie letdowns of the summer?
Xavier's X-Men and Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants have long represented conflicting approaches to race relations in America, with Xavier standing for a conciliatory integrationist Martin Luther King Jr. approach, and Magneto taking a more militant or separatist Malcolm X approach.
But circa 2011, cultural divisions over race have been supplanted in the popular American consciousness by a debate over gay rights, and the latest X-Men film has updated Professor X and Magneto's adversarial relationship thusly. Sure, a lot of stuff blows up, so it's partly just a summer popcorn movie. But the film can also be easily read as a gay pride allegory, as well as a story of true love gone horribly wrong. (Among other things, by the end of First Class, Professor X affirmatively chooses to stay in the closet and not frighten the straights, while "mutant and proud" Magneto embraces the "drag" of a flamboyant costume.)
Now, about that sexual business in the storyline of the film. Don't fight it, folks. It's there, and it's real, and even James McAvoy is in on it. He told the Daily Telegraph, "It is a little bit of a mini-tragedy that him and Magneto don't, you know, have sex and become married and become best friends."
To double-check our level of crazy fangirling on this topic, we turned to William Earnest, an assistant professor of communication at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, who contributed a chapter called "Making Gay Sense of the X-Men" to the textbook Uncovering Hidden Rhetorics: Social Issues in Disguise edited by Barry S. Brummett. He says, "I think the movie would be less interesting, and much less fun, without [the romantic throughline]. I'm not sure, however, that the majority of moviegoers necessarily recognize the gay love affair, coded as it is, but I do think they'd notice its absence. The late, great Vito Russo (The Celluloid Closet) would probably agree with this assertion, seeing as he found these kinds of coded gay relationships informing so many mainstream films over the decades."
So, if you are inclined to read the film this way (and we so are), what is there to see?
The two leads of X-Men: First Class meet cute when Charles Xavier saves Erik Lehnsherr from drowning during a revengey assault on a evil overlord's yacht, and in their first exchange Erik confesses, "I thought I was alone," while Charles reassures, "No, you're not?I'm like you." Sure, they're officially talking about the whole mutant thing, but the language also transfers perfectly to what two closeted males in the 1960s might say to each other as they experienced the gaydar ping of their lives.
Shortly thereafter, Erik and Charles set off to adopt a brood of X-babies they can raise at Xavier's mansion, during which Hugh Jackman's Wolverine makes a brief cameo appearance and encourages the future superhero and supervillain to "go f--k yourselves." Sure, you could say that the line is simply Wolverine being his usual bitchy self, but we say the line was planted to hint that Charles and Erik then quite literally go f--k each other.
Throughout the second act of the film, not only do the two share a bed in a strip club, share a mind meld so powerful they're both brought to tears, and co-parent the X-babies in preparation for the battle against Shaw (Kevin Bacon), they somehow find time to loll around together on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial while "playing chess" and gazing at the oh-so-phallic Washington Monument. No, seriously, "playing chess" is obviously PG-13 movie code for "And then Magneto and Professor X did it...again."
Professor Earnest also notes, "With this not-always-subtle subtext established, finding ways to play with it is easy?a task made even easier by the fact that it's homoerotic, not homosexual in the literal sense, so it's about desire, tension, and, above all, unrequited love. No clothes have to come off, and so far as we know, they don't. But there are looks, body language, conversations, and above all, intimacy...The chess scene aside, from the standpoint of sexual imagery, I think the 'satellite dish' [scene] is the film's richest. Charles even asks Erik's permission to penetrate him! So polite. And then they meld each other's brains out."
Of course, in the tradition of all the best romantic tragedies, by the third act our heroes end up facing off in the climactic final battle, and their fundamental divisions ruin the whole beautiful thing. Bullets are taken, brain-slicings are suffered, and hearts are broken all over the place.
PHOTOS: See our gallery of flick pics from X-Men: First Class
Say that it's mere "brotherhood" or "friendship" if you will. But when the Bad Thing (sob) happens at the end of X-Men: First Class, Erik doesn't respond exactly like a buddy. He passionately drops 500 missiles, clutches Charles to his chest, homicidally freaks out at everyone else on the beach and then basically proposes marriage ("I want you by my side")?all while looking like he wants to kill himself.
They are in love, and that's that.
They should be married and living happily ever after, but Erik's rage issues make him an unsuitable daddy for the X-babies, so Charles divorces him on the beach, and they'll spend the rest of their lives in miserable devotion to each other, facing each other from across the line, instead of living together in Westchester mansion splendor, "playing chess" until they too old and creaky to "move the pieces."
In the end, adding the romantic throughline to the film is a masterstroke. The "X-Men: First Love" approach elevates the otherwise absurd comic-book goings-on. And the narrative heft of the storied mutant war to come elevates the potentially trite romantic arc.
For that matter, the romance somewhat rationalizes the random insertion of the Cuban Missile Crisis plotline. Professor Earnest observes, "It's the decade of the Civil Rights Movement and Stonewall, so the cultural backdrop is custom-ordered to support a burgeoning, forbidden love affair. And certainly their relationship mirrors these struggles.
"The ?60s were also the height of the Cold War, which of course provides the historical template for the storyline. In addition, the Cold War gives us an additional metaphor for star-crossed love. Here are two men who have much in common and, deep down, rather fancy one another. You'd think they'd hit it off famously?and for awhile they do. But eventually political differences drive them apart. Not entirely unlike the United States and the Soviet Union."
Fassbender, McAvoy and Vaughn all deserve special credit for their individual collective contributions to the achievement that is this film. Vaughn deftly centers the story on Erik and Charles' relationship while making sure the fanboys also have plenty to play with. Fassbender absolutely kills it as an emotionally wrecked abuse survivor whose romantic principles are something like "Cruel to be kind, means that I love you." McAvoy, meanwhile, deftly keeps Charles' fluttering (and later broken) heart in his eyes, as the future superhero follows that well-trodden path of falling for a hot bad boy whose powers and flaws are both terribly grand and terribly dangerous.
The smouldering "bromance" in X-Men: First Class is wall-to-wall coded passion?and sometimes not so coded?and if you think they're not having sweaty mutant sex during the entire movie, you just weren't paying attention. To clear up any confusion, we recommend you go see it again...and again...and again, just to catch the finer points. (Not least because higher box-office returns mean increased chances of a sequel.)
So?your thoughts on Charles-Erik? Are we crazy or is this canon now? Hit us back in the comments.
VIDEO: The X-Men junket interviewer from our sister site G4 totally gets it
Source: http://concreteloop.com/2011/06/round-the-way-amber-rose-responds-to-nude-photo-leak
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Happy 4th of July weekend!
But before you settle down for fireworks and BBQ, catch up on the sizzling stories of the past week?because there's nothing more all-American than exercising one's right to indulge in celebrity gossip.
Consider it your patriotic duty!
THEY'RE HE-ERE: A few days after enjoying the action at Wimbledon, Prince William and Kate Middleton arrived in Canada for the start of their North American sojourn. The Duchess of Cambridge (and 11th cousin to Jane Austen) switched out of her "casual" traveling togs for a camera-ready midnight-blue affair before they landed and, what do you know, looked pretty picture perfect. On Friday, on what would have been Princess Diana's 50th birthday (thanks, Newsweek, for pointing out the impossible), they made the rounds in honor of Canada Day. The dazzling duo will be in the Americas for 10 days, concluding their trip in Hollywood among the comparably less elite.
MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE: Shia LaBeouf spilled the hookup beans in Details and is now feeling a little remorseful about admitting to an offscreen dalliance with Megan Fox while the pair were playing an onscreen item in Transformers. The "f--king idiot" (Harrison Ford's words, not ours!) and object of Selena Gomez's admiration blames his age?he's 25, which is rather old in Hollywood years?but we blame douchiness. And Fox, because she's so pretty, hence everything is her fault. (And Josh Duhamel wonders why poor Megan gets a bad rap...) Meanwhile, Shia called it a "blessing" that Megan wasn't in the third film, but box-office analysts have another word for it: "inconsequential."
BABY FACE: Newlywed Courtney Stodden is really 16, as proven by the birth certificate first obtained by E! News. But isn't it funny how she looks 25 and her 51-year-old hubby, Doug Hutchison, looks 19? And why isn't this illegal again?
SHE WON'T BE BACK: Two months after acknowledging that they were separated, Maria Shriver filed for divorce from Arnold Schwarzenegger after 25 years of marriage and one mindblowing admission that the action hero and ex-governor of California had fathered a son with the family's housekeeper?who only just left her post in January! The question wasn't if Maria would divorce her unfaithful hubby, but when.
PLAZA SWEET: Denise Richards adopted a baby girl and named her Eloise Joni Richards?Joni after her mom and Eloise in accordance with her daughters' input. Sam and Lola have stayed in the Eloise Suite at NYC's famous Plaza hotel with their mom?most notably when papa Charlie Sheen huffed and puffed and almost blew the house down while staying in a room down the hall.
MAMMA MIA: Salma Hayek's fashion-industry titan husband, François-Henri Pinault, had a child with supermodel Linda Evangelista years ago. Actually, it was the same amount of years ago that he fathered his child with Hayek.
FREE: Lindsay Lohan completed her stint on house arrest and, after performing more community service at an L.A. women's shelter, headed off to Lexington Social House in Hollywood for supper with Emile Hirsch and other pals.
VOICE OF AMERICA: Seasoned singer Javier Colon won the premiere season of The Voice, which proved enough of a hit for NBC that it will be following the Super Bowl next year?with Christina Aguilera, Cee-Lo Green, Blake Shelton and Adam Levine all along for the season-two ride. Phew!
IN ON THE ACTION: Stephen Colbert, he being a wealthy individual in charge of his very own Nation, has been granted leave to form a Super PAC, which will enable him and his PACmen to raise unlimited campaign contributions for the candidates of their choice.
TMI: Way to kick a man when he's dead, Mrs. Brady.
FATHER KNOWS BEST: Dannielynn met not be an oil heiress, but Anna Nicole Smith's daughter will always be a princess in dad Larry Birkhead's eyes.
ONGOING ISSUES: Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, who's been in and out of rehab for alcoholism, fell off the wagon and ended up in a London hospital...Amber Portwood has admitted she needs help and is in rehab...Brooke Mueller has finished her latest stretch of rehab and is "doing amazingly well"...
SADNESS: Along with Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera mourns the loss of best friend and Jackass costar Ryan Dunn, telling E! News that word of Dunn's death was "the worst news" he's ever heard in his life.
CIVIC DUTY: Los Angeles police are looking to celebs who tweet to spread the word about the July 16-17 closure of the 405 Freeway, which is expected to majorly muck up not only traffic flow but also the Southland economy over that weekend. We are happy to report that every Kardashian kid, plus Kylie and Kendall Jenner, has done his or her part.
YES TO THE DRESS: Kim Kardashian appears to have chosen the designer of the most important couture she'll ever wear: She visited Vera Wang bridal boutiques in both NYC and West Hollywood this week. Nuff said, right?
WEDDING BELLS: Rachel Weisz and Daniel Craig got hitched without making a sound in NYC...Neil Patrick Harris celebrated New York's big news by getting engaged to longtime partner and partner in twin parenting David Burtka...Kate Moss swapped vows with The Kills frontman Jamie Hince in England's Cotswolds district...America Ferrera tied the knot with filmmaker Ryan Piers Williams...Julie Benz is engaged to businessman beau Rich Orosco...Marriage ain't for Charlize Theron...And, despite his recent plan, it's really not for Hugh Hefner, either.
BABY TALK: Tia Mowry welcomed a son, her first child, with hubby Cory Hardrict...Nick Cannon talks to E! News about life with Mariah Carey and twins Monroe (the adorably camera-shy one) and Moroccan...Victoria Beckham has no interest in baring her baby-toting belly (Obviously! She's been wearing nothing but black for eight months.)...Beyoncé is planning on motherhood at some point.
UNHITCHING POST: Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds are officially single entities...David Duchovny and Tea Leoni have separated for the second time in three years...Onetime Survivor player Jonny Fairplay and his America's Next Top Model also-ran wife Michelle Deighton have separated...Mel Gibson and almost-ex-wife Robyn have settled the terms of their at-times strangely supportive divorce.
FASHION SENSE: Heidi Klum spent an hour with Kim Kardashian and is expected to know everything about her, such as what the E! star is planning to wear on her big day...Check out Kelly Osbourne's Material GIrl ad campaign for Madonna and Lourdes Leon.
FINDINGS: "Macho Man" Randy Savage, who died in a May car wreck, was actually felled by coronary artery disease and suffered only cuts and bruises in the actual crash.
FAREWELL: Nick Charles, veteran CNN sports reporter, died of cancer at 64.
FEUDAL TIMES: Ashton Kutcher took issue with the Village Voice...Tim Daly isn't going to be first in line to see Man of Steel.
WHOOPS: Coming off his gay-slur standup scandal,Tracy Morgan took a wrong turn and ended up in Mocking-the-Disabled-Ville.
MUSICAL NOTES: Rihanna and Chris Brown's wires got crossed at the 2011 BET Awards...Lady Gaga unequivocally denies scamming Japanese earthquake victims...Watch Joe Jonas' "See No More" video right here!...Justin Timberlake has snatched up a stake in the recently sold MySpace, confident he can help return the secondary site to social-networking prominence as a destination for music lovers...Amy Winehouse has fallen prey to, well, lots of things really, but this week it was profane hackers...Here's "Rising," the first video from James Franco's musical collaboration with Kalup Linzy...Will.i.am was one of 1,500 hotel guests and staffers safely evacuated from a London hotel after it caught fire...Just as "Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall," every Coldplay video is a bit of an event...Colbie Caillat filled us in on her "Brighter Than the Sun" video and life in general...Madonna still has a mission in Malawi...Eminem makes a statement by shooting himself in "Space Bound"...Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video jacket sells for $1.8 million at auction.
TV LAND: Eligible bachelors are dropping like flies on The Bachelorette...Chord Overstreet appears to be the odd man out on Glee...Jeff Probst is headed to CBS daytime...Jake Gyllenhaal tests his mettle on Man vs. Wild...Steven Tyler and Randy Jackson (now there's a surprise) will be back for American Idol's 11th season, but Jennifer Lopez has yet to sign up...Meet the Big Brother 13 newbies...Toddlers & Tiaras never fails to terrify...Behind the scenes at So You Think You Can Dance.
SCREEN PLAY: Newly tattooed Jennifer Aniston fills us in on how she got nasty for Horrible Bosses...Tom Hanks says Toy Story 4 is in the works...Oh, Wild Thing, we think we're starting to get you: Charlie Sheen admits to taking steroids to beef up for Major League...Sarah Palin attends Undefeated premiere in Iowa, slams the haters...Which Robsten costar isn't excited to see the big Breaking Dawn sex scene?...No egg, but there's definitely pie on Robert Pattinson's face in Cosmopolis...Daniel Radcliffe totally cried when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 wrapped...Michelle Yeoh was booted from Myanmar for trying to star in a politically themed film...Check out reviews of Larry Crowne, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Monte Carlo.
TEEN CHOICE: Guess what the Teen Choice Awards are smiling upon these days? It rhymes with "Shylight" and "Larry Kotter."
TRAILER PARK: Colin Firth and Tom Hardy make for appealing espionage in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy...Orlando Bloom travels light (as air) in The Three Musketeers...The task at hand is a dire one for Tom Cruise and Jeremy Renner in Mission: Impossible?Ghost Protocol...Henry Cavill isn't just Superman: He's also one of the Immortals...That's Kelly Macdonald you're hearing in Brave.
LAW & DISORDER: Tobey Maguire says he lost enough at poker already...Dr. Conrad Murray takes some time before his criminal trial starts to respond to Joe Jackson's wrongful death suit...Dastardly David "Puck" Rainey from The Real World: San Francisco was busted for domestic violence...Newly declared Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann is no "American Girl" as far as Tom Petty's concerned...Brooke Mueller's going to be getting her child support straight from Charlie's former bosses at Warner Bros. to ensure that she gets paid, as other studios and networks aren't exactly lining up to be his new boss...Salon owner who abused Jennifer Aniston and Anne Hathaway's credit cards sentenced to probation...Paulina Rubio got collared after crashing.
SPREADS: The emphasis is on Gwyneth Paltrow's nudity, er, jewelry in Vanity Fair's next issue...Anna Paquin talks about all things sex (including bisexuality) in the "Transformations" issue of V...Emma Watson reveals in Seventeen that Draco Malfoy, aka Tom Felton, was her Harry Potter crush...Whirling dervish Anne Hathaway fronts Harper's Bazaar.
SURREAL ESTATE: Katy Perry and Russell Brand have plunked down $6.5 million for a spread in the Hollywood Hills...Regis Philbin is selling his perfectly lovely Greenwich, Conn., estate for $3.8 million...But you'll need $18 million to walk in Katharine Hepburn's hallowed footsteps on Long Island Sound...Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne have downsized to West Hollywood and therefore don't need $12.999 million worth of space in Hidden Hills.
SCENE & HEARD: Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez exchanging I-love-yous while shopping at A|X Armani Exchange in NYC...Pippa Middleton and (not Prince Harry, sorry) banker ex Alex Loudon looking friendly in her parents' box at Wimbledon...Angelina Jolie suited up for water sports at the Mediterraneo Bio Park in Malta...Johnny Depp jamming with Alice Cooper at the 100 Club in London...January Jones and Alyssa Milano heading to respective prenatal yoga classes...Beyoncé delighting young fans from the local Boys & Girls Club with a surprise meet-and-greet at a Target in East Harlem...And here's where the stars are going to be on the 4th!
Poppy Montgomery Ehrinn Cummings Adriana Lima Rachel Nichols Lisa Marie
