Slumdog Advances Toward Oscar

At Sunday’s 15th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, “Slumdog Millionaire” and Heath Ledger triumphed once again, while Sean Penn shocked with a win in the lead actor category over presumed favorite Mickey Rourke.
Coming weeks after ruling at the Golden Globes, this latest victory for ‘Slumdog’ solidified its status as a heavy favorite to take the Oscar for Best Picture.
more HERE

Related:
Producers Guild of America hails ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ as best picture

Nominations for 81st Academy Awards

Best Motion Picture of the Year

• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Frost/Nixon
• Milk
• The Reader
• Slumdog Millionaire

Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role

• Richard Jenkins, The Visitor
• Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
• Sean Penn, Milk
• Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role

• Josh Brolin, Milk
• Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder
• Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt
• Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
• Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road

Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role

• Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
• Angelina Jolie, Changeling
• Melissa Leo, Frozen River
• Kate Winslet. The Reader
• Meryl Streep, Doubt

Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role

• Amy Adams, Doubt
• Penélope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
• Viola Davis, Doubt
• Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler

all the nominations are HERE

Joaquin Around Rap

When Joaquin Phoenix announced his retirement from acting, who knew he would pursue a career as a rapper!
Last fall, the Academy Award nominee said he was quitting acting, proudly displaying the words “Bye” and “Good” that he had scrawled across his knuckles. The disheveled star added that he’d be trying to launch a music career.
Joaquin is working on a rap album that will be produced by none other than music mogul P.Diddy. His first live performance as a hip-hop artist took place at Lavo, a Las Vegas club on Friday night. Additionally, his brother-in-law — fellow Oscar nominee Casey Affleck — will direct a documentary about Joaquin’s attempt to become a rapper. Filming began at Friday’s show.
Joaquin — who’s rumored to have fallen off the wagon — has been struggling to hold it together since the death of his friend Heath Ledger last January. Joaquin’s brother River also died of a drug overdose, in 1993, and when Heath passed, a source says, “All those bad feelings flooded back. He flipped out.”
more HERE

The Resurrection of Mickey Rourke

Mickey Rourke won the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture-Drama at the Golden Globes last night for his lead role in The Wrestler.
He gave a surprisingly eloquent and heartfelt speech, noting that he is not used to speaking in public and that he was almost “out of the business” a few years ago.
more HERE

Related:
‘Slumdog Millionaire’ wins big at Golden Globes
Heath Ledger grabs Golden Globe for performance in ‘Dark Knight’
Kate Winslet receives two Golden Globe awards
’30 Rock’ nearly sweep Globes

Top Entertainment Stories 2008

Heath Ledger’s death was voted 2008’s top entertainment story by U.S. newspaper and broadcast editors surveyed by The Associated Press.
The top 10 HERE

Celebrities Who Died Young

In the aftermath of Heath Ledger’s death, David Hinckley writes about 20 other celebrities who also died before the age of 30.
see them HERE

The 2008 MRC Awards

Media Research Center’s annual awards issue, a compilation of the most outrageous and/or humorous news media quotes from 2008 (December 2007 through November 2008). To determine this year’s winners, a panel of 44 radio talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers, and media observers each selected their choices for the first, second and third best quote from a slate of five to eight quotes in each category. Excerpts:

The Obamagasm Award
“Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope.” — Time’s Nancy Gibbs in the November 17 cover story.

Half-Baked Alaska Award for Pummeling Palin
“The fact of the matter is, the comparison between her [Sarah Palin] and Hillary Clinton is the comparison between an igloo and the Empire State Building!” — MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Hardball, October 14.

The Irrelevant Reverend Wright Award
“To see his [Jeremiah Wright’s] career completely destroyed by three 20-second soundbites, all of the work he has done, his entire legacy gone down the drain, has been absolutely devastating to me — to him, sorry….We are still a racist country.” — Washington Post writer Sally Quinn on PBS’s Charlie Rose, April 30.

From Camelot to Obamalot Award
“Today, the audacity of hope had its rendezvous with destiny….Obama is now an adopted son of Camelot. His candidacy blessed not just by the Lion of the Senate, patriarch of the clan, but by JFK’s daughter.” — David Wright on ABC’s Nightline January 28.

The Crush Rush Award for Loathing Limbaugh
Author/humorist P.J. O’Rourke: “It’s the twilight of the radio loud-mouth, you know? I knew it from the moment the fat guy [Rush Limbaugh] refused to share his drugs….”
Host Bill Maher: “You mean the OxyContin that he was on?…Why couldn’t he have croaked from it instead of Heath Ledger?” — HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, February 8.

Politics of Meaninglessness Award for the Silliest Analysis
“Not doing it [fighting global warming] will be catastrophic. We’ll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years, and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.” — CNN founder Ted Turner on PBS’s Charlie Rose, April 1.

Madness of King George Award
“When somebody asks you, sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation; when somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead; this advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up! Good night and good luck.” — MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann in a “Special Comment” on Countdown, May 14.

Barbra Streisand Political IQ Award for Celebrity Vapidity
“If you have a few hundred followers, and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you ‘Pope.’ It’s like, if you can’t pay your mortgage, you’re a deadbeat. But if you can’t pay a million mortgages, you’re Bear Stearns and we bail you out. And that is who the Catholic Church is: the Bear Stearns of organized pedophilia.” — Bill Maher on HBO’s Real Time, April 11.

Admitting the Obvious Award
“When NBC News first assigned me to the Barack Obama campaign, I must confess my knees quaked a bit….I wondered if I was up to the job. I wondered if I could do the campaign justice.”
— NBC reporter Lee Cowan in an article for NBC’s “The Peacock” advertising supplement, March 23-29.

more HERE

and the Oscar goes to…

yeah…unless Josh Brolin takes it…

Forbes 10 Hottest Tots List

Suri lets us know how she feels…

1. Suri Cruise (daughter of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise)
2. Shiloh Jolie-Pitt (you know who her parents are)
3. Zahara Jolie-Pitt (see above)
4. Pax Jolie-Pitt (see above)
5. Sam Alexis-Woods (daughter of Tiger Woods)
6. Cruz Beckham (son of Posh & Beckham)
7. Matilda Rose Ledger (daughter of Michelle Williams & Heath Ledger)
8. David Banda (son of Madonna & Guy Ritchie)
9. SPF (son of Britney Spears & KFed)
10. Sam Sheen (daughter of D.Richards & Charlie Sheen)
more HERE

Offensive Pizza

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A New Zealand pizza chain has withdrawn an advertisement showing the corpses of actor Heath Ledger, Britain’s Queen Mother and Mount Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary dancing on a grave.
The animated Halloween promotion advertisement on the Hell Pizza website shows the three decomposing celebrities emerging from graves and dancing to Michael Jackson’s song “Thriller”.
Ledger and Hillary died this year and the Queen Mother passed away in 2002.
Hillary’s son Peter said the ad was in “extremely poor taste”.
story is HERE