The report stated they were taken into custody Wednesday after Los Angles County sheriff’s deputies “smelled a strong odor of marijuana” during a traffic stop, MTV.com reported Thursday.

In a subsequent search, T.I., real name Clifford Harris Jr., and his wife were “found to be in possession of a controlled substance,” the arrest report said. The illicit substance was not revealed.

Harris and Cottle each posted $10,000 bond and were released, sheriff’s deputies said.

A Sept. 3 court date was scheduled.

If watching The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo made you fall in love with Goth heroine Lisbeth Salander, the Swedish sequel, The Girl Who Played With Fire (Flicken some lekte med elden) will deepen the relationship.

It rounds up the usual suspects and key actors, including Michael Nyqvist as Michael Blomkvist and Noomi Rapace as Salander, plus some fresh faces. While the first film introduced audiences to the 20-something antisocial computer-hacker genius Lisbeth, the sequel digs up her disturbed childhood and dysfunctional family tree with deadly consequences. After meeting her sociopath wife-beating papa, Zalachenko, her sullenness makes perfect sense. The trip down memory lane also unearths new foes and allies such as her old friend, Swedish boxer Paolo Roberto (as himself). It also rekindles Salander’s romance with lesbian lover Miriam Wu (Yasmine Garbi). The plot seems designed to peel back Lisbeth’s tattooed tough-girl skin for a peek into how and why she ticks, and kicks ass.

Based, like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, on Swedish journalist Steig Larsson’s book trilogy, this instalment begins with the requisite moral crusade. Freelancer Dag Svensson has sold liberal watchdog Millennium magazine on a juicy story that implicates upstanding members of Swedish society in the sex trade. When Dag and his girlfriend/fellow researcher are mysteriously murdered, charismatic Millennium front man Blomkvist (the literary modify ego of Larsson who was a real-world expert on exposing social evils) takes over their investigation. To make matters worse and more thrilling, the murder weapon has Salander’s fingerprints on it. While the media milks the salaciousness of a pierced, brooding femme fatale on front-page “Wanted” features, Salander and loyal ally Blomkvist don’t hesitate to play with fire (i.e. crazed killers and corrupt officials) in their race to discover the true murderer and clear her name. And all evidence points them to Salander’s father, Soviet defector and Swedish secret police (aka SAPO) consultant Alexander Zalachenko.

Per usual in this misogynist universe, Salander takes on a number of brutes twice her size, including Ronald Niedermann, a blond hulk that’s oblivious to pain (not just others, his own). Her predatory court-appointed guardian, Bjurman, is also back — though this time the tables have turned as he struggles to slip out from under his ward’s thumb.

Directed by Daniel Alfredson, the film, like its predecessor, flawlessly flows from the page to the screen and stays impressively true to the novel. It has tiny of the atmospheric luster of Niels Arden Oplev’s adaptation but all of the gritty, de-glammed realism and violence with a shade more humor. Alfredson makes the most out of Salander’s signature move — the crotch taser — and Larsson’s nod to zombies. Rapace is as captivating and resilient as ever. As in most sequels there’s a tiny less of the rush of a new encounter, and less chemistry between Salander and Blomkvist as they spend most of the motion picture on parallel paths. With a bigger helping of backstory threaded into the narrative the intrigue might also not be as neatly orchestrated and explained, especially for those not familiar with part one of the trilogy. But for fans of the books and first film, The Girl Who Played With Fire still brings the dramatic sizzle and makes one wonder why Hollywood filmmakers who plan to reinvent the franchise are so sure they can do better.

Grade: B+

If you have not yet seen it, you’d probably be horrified to learn that there is a video circulating (don’t watch it!) of a Bosnian woman tossing cute puppies into a river. Well, Michael Bay to the rescue, sort of! Yesterday, on his official website, the Transformers director offered $50,000 for any information that would bring the puppy-thrower to justice. Wrote Bay’s webmaster, Nelson:

Michael Bay has informed me that he is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of the woman in the red sweatshirt and the person who shot this act of cruelty.

Then, shortly after, the message was mysteriously deleted. Anybody hear any loud explosions in Bosnia last night?

Transformers Director Michael Bay Offers $50,000 Bounty for Puppy-Throwing Girl [Gawker]

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Filed Under: michael bay, movies, puppies

It began with a bang: skirling woodwind and dissonant brass fury. Nothing that uncommon for a BBC Proms world premiere. But then audience members at the Royal Albert Hall last Thursday suddenly sat up. Some rooted through their programmes, looking vainly for confirmation; others glanced around in disbelief. Were they hearing this right? Was the esteemed BBC Symphony Orchestra really playing Beyoncé’s Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)?

The piece in question was Hammered Out, by 50-year-old British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage He is well-known for his love of jazz, funk and soul, and had promised influences from James Brown and Tower of Power. The only clues that this piece might carry anything more concrete were coy hints in interviews with BBC Radio 3 – “there are a couple of hidden things, but I’d quite like other people to find them out rather than me saying them” – and his publisher – “this is my most R&B work to date”.

Turnage told me he put the Beyoncé reference in as a nod to his young son, Milo, who adores dancing to Single Ladies, but it’s more than just a quote. Indeed, the riffs and rhythms of the pop source infect every aspect of the orchestral work.

So was it really that hidden? Every audience member I’ve spoken to spotted the reference immediately. Yet, surprisingly, Turnage states he thought it would go largely unnoticed. To an extent he was right: none of the press reviews mention Beyoncé, even though critics may have assumed that their ears were deceiving them. In rehearsals some of the younger players made the spot, but concurred to keep it to themselves. In the event, the Proms audience were hipper than even Turnage gave them credit for.

The post-publicity became a minor on-line sensation: those same concertgoers used the BBC iPlayer to post comparisons on Facebook, and soon Turnage/Beyoncé mash-ups began appearing on YouTube. The composer is amused and surprised by the coverage the piece has received, but it was a perfect world wide web storm: a punchy, subversive and pleasing countercultural meme that traveled easily across blogs and Twitter feeds. Possibly a first for contemporary classical music.

From the jazzy Blood On the Floor (1996) to his forthcoming opera, Anna Nicole (based on the life and death of glamour model Anna Nicole Smith), Turnage has rarely missed an opportunity to subvert the mores of the classical establishment with influences from the popular end of the musical spectrum. Hammered Out receives its American premiere in Los Angeles on 13 November with the LA Philharmonic. The word is out now, and it will be interesting to see how the audience at the Disney concert hall reacts to this particular cross-cultural mix.

PromsBeyoncéR&BMark-Anthony TurnageClassical musicUrban musicguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

]]> http://spotceleb.com/2010/09/02/an-unexpected-prom-date-with-beyonce-and-her-single-ladies/feed/ 0 http://spotceleb.com/2010/09/02/is-iran-the-winner-of-the-war-in-iraq/ http://spotceleb.com/2010/09/02/is-iran-the-winner-of-the-war-in-iraq/#comments Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:00:04 +0000 samantha http://spotceleb.com/2010/09/02/is-iran-the-winner-of-the-war-in-iraq/ As Barack Obama appeared on tv Tuesday to declare the end of the U.S. combat role in Iraq, were viewers happiest in Baghdad, Washington, D.C., or Tehran?
The obvious answer would seem to be Washington or Baghdad. In fact, some analysts believe the real winner of the war in Iraq is neither the Iraqis, nor Americans, but the Iranians. It’s a sobering analysis, especially in light of the United Nations-imposed and U.S.-backed sanctions against Iran, intended to to influence the country’s intractable position on its nuclear capability.
Mohammad Bazzi, adjunct senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote Monday at the GlobalPost.com: “In February 2003, as he marshaled the United States for war, President George W. Bush declared: ‘A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region.’ Now, as the U.S. military concludes its combat role . . . Iraq is indeed a dramatic example for the Middle East, but not in the ways that Bush and his administration envisioned. Iraq did not become a beacon of democracy, nor did it create a domino effect that toppled other dictatorial regimes in the Arab world. Instead, the Iraq war has unleashed a new wave of sectarian hatred and upset the Persian Gulf’s strategic balance, helping Iran consolidate its role as the dominant regional power.”
Reached by phone in Beirut, Bazzi elaborated in an interview with Politics Daily. The bottom line, Bazzi explained, was that “Iran has basically leap-frogged the U.S. in the level of influence that it can exert on most Iraqi factions.”The spring’s election and its aftermath, Bazzi said, underscored how effective Iranian influence has been, especially with maneuvering between Iraq’s Shiite factions. “I’d argue that Iran started filling the political void that the U.S. has left in Iraq years ago, and now it becomes even easier with fewer U.S. troops,” he said, noting that the 50,000 U.S. troops that will remain on the ground concern the Iranians. “On a political level, Iranians have played politics in Iraq much more effectively than the U.S. Part of that is that all the Iraqi factions recognized that Iran is not going anywhere, but the U.S. was going to leave, but the Iraqis are stuck with their neighbors.” The Iranians, he said, are “getting a tiny concerned about the political stalemate in Iraq.”Iranians, Bazzi said, are “keen on playing this role of the political broker.” To that end, they called nearly the entire Iraqi leadership to Tehran right after elections. “The Iranians view their strategic interest in Iraq on several levels. Immediate, of maintaining a friendly government in Baghdad, because they do not want to go back to the days of Saddam where there was an extremely adversarial threat next door. The Iranians will want a friendly, Shiite-led government in Baghdad, and they see that as the new reality.”
A weak Iraq is also in Iran’s interest, Bazzi explained. “If Iraq is not as dominate as it once was, if it is friendly and compliant, then it enables Iran to maintain regional dominance in the Persian Gulf.” Finally, he said, Iraq has become a “bargaining chip and a proxy in their conflict with the United States.”

Read Our Other Iraq coverage:

- Republican Reaction to Obama’s Iraq Speech: Mostly Negative
- Biden Gives George W. Bush Some Credit for Iraq Surge Success
- Obama in Oval Office Address: Iraq War Combat Mission Is Over
- Transcript of President Obama’s Speech on Iraq
- Iraq Scorecard: The War So Far
- No Brass Bands When Troops Return Home From Iraq
- Jill Lawrence: What I Want to Hear From President Obama on Iraq — Never Again

9/1/2010 3:19 PM PDT by TMZ Staff  

The guys from War claim Pepsi stole their “signature song” for a national ad campaign … and now the band is opening a $10 million can of whoop ass to make things right.

Ironically, it’s all over the song “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” — which, according to a lawsuit filed in L.A. County Superior Court, is currently being used in an ad campaign for Pepsi Max.

According to War, the band “did not consent to the use of their performance” in the spot — and claim the commercial is a “deliberate violation” of their licensing arrangements.

War ain’t cheap — the band wants more than $10 million in damages.

Calls to Pepsi have not been returned.

Tags: War, Music, Celebrity Justice

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Gabor’s husband, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, tells ET that the actress is resting at home after an overnight stay at UCLA Medical Center. Anhalt called 911 yesterday when he found Gabor unresponsive. “I just called an ambulance. She has to go back to UCLA,” her husband told TMZ at the time.

The 93-year-old underwent surgery to remove blood clots earlier in August. After the surgery, a priest read Gabor her last rites. But she made a recovery and was released.

Gabor broke her hip in a July 17 fall at her home in Bel-Air, California. The actress’s condition began to deteriorate after hip replacement surgery a few days later, and she remained hospitalized for the following three weeks.

Throughout her hospital stay, there were a series of conflicting reports intimating that she was near death (fueled by her husband, Prince Frederic von Anhalt) as well as “going strong” (daughter Constance Francesca Hilton).

Gabor has been partially paralyzed since a 2002 automobile accident and had a stroke five years ago. Blanchette describes her as “pretty much bedridden and wheelchair-bound for the last eight years.”

Filed under: Movie News – Health Issues

NEW YORK — OMG, it’s like one of those freaky Mayan calendar things or something.

But, yes, it’s true: Thursday Sept. 2, 2010, is being celebrated as “90210 Day.” It’s the one day this century that the date will line up perfectly with the famous California zip code.

For fans of the 1990s teen drama “Beverly Hills, 90210,” this is an occasion for celebration in nostalgia for a show widely regarded as cheesy, but nevertheless beloved.

“Beverly Hills, 90210,” aired from 1990-2000 and followed a group of teenagers in wealthy SoCal families. Its main characters — Brandon Walsh (Jason Priestley), Brenda Walsh (Shannen Doherty) and Dylan McKay (Luke Perry) — became enmeshed in increasingly outlandish soap opera plots.

The event Thursday is not inspiring any parades, but the CW network has modified its schedule. It changed things around to make sure an episode of the current incarnation of the show, simply “90210,” will air.

A group on Facebook formed last year is calling it “International Beverly Hills 90210 Day.” Celebrations have been organized in places such as the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles, which will screen old episodes. The town of Beverly Hills, itself, is throwing a party hosted by Larry King.

Sports and pop culture writer Bill Simmons, known as “the Sportsguy” on ESPN.com where he writes, is hosting a podcast devoted to “Beverly Hills, 90210.” Last week in his podcast, “The B.S. Report,” Simmons announced that he will hold a special Thursday and give out “90210 Awards” such as “biggest plot stretch ever.”

“We’re diving so deep into this,” he said. “It’s nearly like we are performing surgery on the show.”

The columnist did, though, state that after the Thursday podcast he would retire references to the show in his writing — which are frequent.

“The show premiered 20 years ago; it’s heyday was 15 years ago. I do not want to be that guy who’s referencing things that happened 38 years ago,” Simmons said.

“Much like when (Michael) Jordan walked away from basketball and Jim Brown walked away from football, I’m walking away from ’90210.’”

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

“I got cancer,” the Oscar-winning actor stated Tuesday during a promotional tour for “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.”

Douglas stated he underwent his first round of chemotherapy and radiation treatment last week, noting, “It’s about an eight-week struggle.”

Douglas stated he learned he had cancer about three weeks ago, joking that it was about the time he was booked to appear on Letterman’s show. He stated he went through “a litany of physicians and tests” without success before the cancer was diagnosed after he and his family returned from a vacation in Europe.

Stage 4 cancer “is intense” but hasn’t spread below the neck, the actor said.

“The huge thing you are always worried about is it spreading. … I am above the neck, so nothing’s gone down, and the expectations are good,” Douglas said, explaining he was told there was an 80 percent recovery rate.

Letterman commented on Douglas looking and sounding good, to which Douglas quipped, “It’s because I’m on stage.”

Asked if physicians believe they caught it early enough, Douglas said, “I sure as (expletive) hope so.”

Douglas’s wife, actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, told People magazine she has difficulty watching the toll the treatment is taking on her husband.

“The hardest part is seeing his fatigue, because Michael is never tired,” Zeta-Jones said.

She stated Douglas broke the news to their children, Dylan, 10, and Carys, 7.

Welcome to Earth! Thank you for not killing us immediately. Ha ha, just a tiny joke there. We’ve made a lot of movies about what might happen if aliens came to visit us, and it usually doesn’t go well for us.

Oh, you have seen some of our movies? You know what I mean, then. I hope you did not find them offensive. Obviously, we had no way of knowing what actual extra-terrestrials would be like, and it is the human tendency to fear the unknown. Plus, it makes for good drama. As it turns out, you guys seem quite decent and nonthreatening. I guess we were wrong!

Good, good, I’m glad you understand. Now, you will probably want to meet our president and the other leaders of Earth, so — pardon me? Well, sure, we can speak about movies for a minute. You do not have anything like that where you come from? Wow. Interesting. Movies are a pretty huge part of our culture. You saw a — yes, that is called a “trailer,” sort of like a long advertisement for a movie, that is right.

For which movie? Machete? OK. Yes, it’s new. The motion picture is just now being shown to people. Um, what did you want to know about it?

“What’s the deal with this movie?”? Is that what you said? No, no, your English is great! Your accent doesn’t even give away which part of the galaxy you are from. I just wanted to be sure I understood you.

Well, um, Machete. The deal with Machete. It’s … OK. So, there used to be places called “grindhouse theaters,” where they would show certain kinds of movies. Usually really violent, really bloody, or really full of sex and nudity. Or some combination. Movies that could not be shown in regular theatres because of their disreputable content.

Hmm? If the movies were disreputable, why did people want to see them? Well, sometimes that is the appeal, you know? Something is forbidden, and that makes it more interesting. Is that just a human thing? Huh.

Anyway, there was a certain market for these movies, and they had play at these grindhouse theaters. This lasted for a few years, and then VCRs made them obsolete because now you could watch whatever you wanted at home.

And then we found this guy called Quentin Tarantino. We’re not sure where he came from. Legend has it he was born in a video store in the San Fernando Valley and raised by a clan of feral projectionists. He started making movies that were full of allusions to other movies, and people really liked that, because when you are watching something it’s fun to be reminded that you have watched other things previously. Then Quentin Tarantino started speaking about how he loved the old grindhouse theaters, and most of his fans were too young to remember them, but that did not stop them from also claiming to have nostalgia for this thing that they had never experienced.

So then, to capitalize on this manufactured love of grindhouse movies, Quentin Tarantino and his buddy Robert Rodriguez made two grindhouse movies of their own. They were called Death Proof and Planet Terror. I’m sorry, I’ve lost you. Yes, the original grindhouse movies were pretty cheap and not particularly well-made, and they played at sleazy theatres in the 1970s. No, no Tarantino and Rodriguez had plenty of money and skill. They just chose to make movies that were in the style of those other movies. And they played at regular motion picture theaters, as a double feature, just like the old days of double features, which, again, most of their fans were too young to remember.

Right. Well, to recreate the grindhouse experience — or, rather, to create it for the first time, since the viewers had never been to a grindhouse — Tarantino and Rodriguez scratched up the prints of their movies to make them look like they were old and battered. They also had some of their friends make trailers for other grindhouse movies, movies that did not exist but that seemed like the kind of movies you would see at a grindhouse. They showed these trailers between Planet Terror and Death Proof.

Yes, exactly. They made advertisements for imaginary movies. And people who saw these trailers said, “Ha, that looks like fun.” One of these trailers was for a motion picture called Machete, which was in the style of movies about cops and bad guys and violence along the border between the United States and Mexico. Machete was very popular, as a fake trailer, so Robert Rodriguez went ahead and made an actual full-length Machete movie. He figured that if something was enjoyable when it was two minutes long, it would probably be 50 times as enjoyable when it was 100 minutes long.

Well, mathematically, yes, that is accurate. That’s not really how human pleasure works, though. I was just making a joke.

So, anyway, they went backwards. Usually you make a motion picture first, THEN you make the trailer as a way of advertising it. In this case, they made a trailer, just for fun, and then decided to expand it into a real movie. The trailer you saw, though, that is not the trailer that started it all. No. The one that started it all was a joke. They made that, then they made a movie, then they made a real trailer for that movie.

What you saw was a trailer for a motion picture that was based on a trailer that was based on a style of motion picture that was not very good that played in a type of theatre 35 years ago.

Ha ha, no, actually, that is NOT the flimsiest premise we have ever had for a movie. I wish! No, they are about to make one called Battleship, based on a children’s game. There have been a few based on amusement-park rides, too. Ha ha, yes, like Ferris Wheel: The Movie. Now you are getting it!

What’s the appeal of Machete? From what I understand, it has a lot of naked breasts, and a lot of gory violence. No, we do not like violence in real life. We abhor it. It makes us sad. We like it in movies, though. It’s pleasing when it’s not real. No, naked breasts are very popular in real life AND in movies. Well, yes, there are other places where people can see naked breasts and violence, if they want to, without someone having to make a motion picture specifically about them. There’s the Internet, for example –

What? You do not know about the Internet? Wow. OK. Well, you see, it’s this series of tubes….

* * * *

Eric D. Snider (website), for one, welcomes our new alien overlords.