Your Entertainment and Reality TV News Source
Incredibly beautiful, the group Árstíðir sung this 800 year old Icelandic Hymn in a German Train Station, amongst some very pleased onlookers. Haunting. Give it a listen and let us know what you think.
“So You Think You Can Dance” doesn’t kick off its latest season here in America for another few weeks, but the Australian adaptation has spurred a dance solo that is sure to go viral. Check it out below and prepare to set aside any laws of science you may know because this is bound to make your jaw drop!
SYTYCD kicks off Season 11 in America on May 28 at 8/7c on Fox!
“Scandal” star Columbus Short has been thrown out of his house and his wife has filed for divorce … after he allegedly put a knife to her throat last week and threatened to kill her and himself.
According to a new restraining order — obtained by TMZ — Short got into it with his wife April 7 at their Chatsworth home, where she claims he came into her room intoxicated with a wine bottle in hand, acted like he was going to hit her with the bottle and then unloaded the wine on her.
Tuere Short claims Columbus then ran to the kitchen for a knife, pinned her to the couch and began choking her. She says he then demanded they play a game he called “Truth or Truth.” He allegedly said if she lied he would stab her in the leg.
She says he then started naming men he believed she was having affairs with. She denied them all but he allegedly then put the knife to her throat and threatened murder/suicide. As she tried escaping she says he slashed her tire.
The restraining order requires Columbus to move out of the house. We’ve learned cops were there today to ensure the peace as he moved out.
Tuere also filed for divorce Tuesday, citing irreconcilable differences and asking for sole custody of their 2-year-old daughter.
In addition to the incident April 7th, Short has been charged with criminal domestic violence and child abuse for allegedly abusing Tuere while their child and his son were in the house. He pled not guilty. And he was arrested for yet another alleged domestic violence incident a few weeks earlier.
It’s interesting … just last month — after the first 2 domestic violence arrests — Columbus and his wife put on a united front at The Grove in L.A.
How fun! The cast of School of Rock, including Jack Black and Miranda Cosgrove got together recently for their 10 year reunion and… performed their hit song “School of Rock” for the crowd. Remember how they looked back then?
Here they are now:
Looks like they had a lot of fun at the get together! Watch the video performance below:
CBS has officially named Stephen Colbert to succeed David Letterman as host of “The Late Show,” handing the reins of its flagship latenight program to a cable host who has found success in attracting young male viewers by playing a character, rather than himself.
According to Variety:
The decision comes about a week after Letterman announced during a taping of his program that he would retire from the program – and the longest tenure as a late night host on broadcast TV – sometime in 2015. In doing so, Letterman will turn the time period over to an entirely new generation of hosts, severing TV’s last link to the days when Johnny Carson dominated the daypart. These days, latenight is a splintered environment, with three broadcast programs as well as wee-hours bastions in place on Viacom’s Comedy Central, Time Warner’s TBS and NBC Universal’s Bravo and E!
When Colbert sits behind the desk of the CBS program, as he is set to do at a currently undetermined date in 2015, he will likely do it with a new presentation – not as the right-wing caricature he plays in his current perch on Comedy Central. CBS said creative elements, producers and even the location of the show will be announced at a later date. “He is not going to play that character,” said Nina Tassler, chairman of CBS Entertainment, in an interview.
And yet, it is Colbert’s inventiveness CBS is likely banking on to help it gain in the ongoing late-night wars. “It has usually been our policy that when you hire the right person, you let them be creative and let them do their job,” said Tassler. “We are extremely excited about what he’s going to bring to the time slot.”
Colbert will be the Eye’s entry into a race that has already started. Both ABC and NBC have already turned their latenight programming over to younger hosts – Jimmy Kimmel for the Alphabet and Jimmy Fallon at the Peacock. Colbert will have to hit the ground running, mastering a broadcast venue that demands mainstream appeal while trying to maintain the current fan base that has made his “Colbert Report” a mainstay for the Viacom-owned network.
But his appeal to younger viewers is hard to ignore. Viewers of Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report” had a median age of 41.9 in the last seven weeks, according to Nielsen. Meantime, the median age of “Tonight Show” viewers since the Jimmy Fallon-led version has launched is 53.3, while that for viewers of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel” is 55.8. Colbert will have to build his base, however: In the last seven weeks, “Colbert Report” attracted an average of 633,000 viewers between 18 and 49, the demographic most coveted by advertisers, according to Nielsen. Fallon’s “Tonight Show” lured an average of 2 million, while “Kimmel” attracted an average of 852,000 and Letterman’s “Late Show” notched an average of 710,000.
Tassler kept any thoughts what Colbert’s “Late Show” might look like to a minimum. “It’s really important he be given the opportunity to develop and create his show,” she said.
While one might think CBS would have had conversations with various Letterman replacements prior to the current “Late Show” host’s decision last week, Tassler said CBS only reached out to Colbert once the “starting gun” of Letterman’s desire to retire was clear. “One name just stood out above the rest,” said Tassler. She cited his background in the Second City improv comedy troupe and his “extraordinary intellect” as factors in his appeal to CBS executives.
“Stephen Colbert is one of the most inventive and respected forces on television,” said Leslie Moonves, chief executive of CBS, in a prepared statement. “David Letterman’s legacy and accomplishments are an incredible source of pride for all of us here, and today’s announcement speaks to our commitment of upholding what he established for CBS in late night.”
“Simply being a guest on David Letterman’s show has been a highlight of my career,” said Colbert in a statement. “I never dreamed that I would follow in his footsteps, though everyone in late night follows Dave’s lead.”
In a statement, Letterman blessed the succession: “Stephen has always been a real friend to me. I’m very excited for him, and I’m flattered that CBS chose him,” Letterman said. “I also happen to know they wanted another guy with glasses.”
The current incarnation of “The Late Show” is owned and produced by Letterman’s Worldwide Pants production company, but ownership of the show and the name will be CBS’ once the transition is made, Tassler said.
She declined to speak in great detail about the potential future of Craig Ferguson, who has been holding forth at 12:37 a.m. after “The Late Show” since 2005. CBS has been looking at its latenight schedule “one hour at a time,’” Tassler said. “We have a very good relationship with him. He’s our 12:30 guy.” She declined to comment on whether the host would stay with CBS or move on, given the Colbert decision.
According to people familiar with the situation, Ferguson’s discussions with CBS continue and he has not decided whether to stick with his show or leave. The host is supposed to tape two episodes of his show today and is likely to address the issue in the one set to air tonight, these people said. In a tweet, Ferguson congratulated Colbert and said, “Welcome to the CBS funhouse.”
Comedy Central is expected to take some time to devise a replacement for “Colbert Report,” which, given its focus on a character originated by its host, cannot continue. According to a person familar with the situation. a bevy of options are up for consideration, including creating a new program with talent from “The Daily Show,” the 11 p.m. mainstay that precedes “Colbert Report,” giving the slot to “@midnight,” the new program hosted by Chris Hardwick recently launched at 12 a.m.; or something new entirely.
“Comedy Central is proud that the incredibly talented Stephen Colbert has been part of our family for nearly two decades,” the network said in a statement. “We look forward to the next eight months of the ground-breaking Colbert Report and wish Stephen the very best.”
In his perch on Comedy Central, Colbert has proven more willing to embrace advertisers than many of his peers, devoting minutes-long segments to discussions of PepsiCo’s Doritos or Mondelez International’s Wheat Thins. At the same time, he makes fun of the products, and not always in a good-natured way. Will CBS let the practice continue? “That’s a bridge we’ll cross at some later point,” said Tassler.
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So what do you think? Will you watch the new Late Show? Are you happy with the choice? Let us know in the comments below!
Variety.com Author Carmel Dagan:
Mickey Rooney, the pint-sized actor who was one of MGM’s giant box office attractions in the late ’30s and early ’40s, has died, sources confirm. He was 93.
As adept at comedy as drama and an excellent singer and dancer, Rooney was regarded as the consummate entertainer. During a prolific career on stage and screen that spanned eight decades (“I’ve been working all my life, but it seems longer,” he once said), he was nominated for four Academy Awards and received two special Oscars, the Juvenile Award in 1939 (shared with Deanna Durbin) and one in 1983 for his body of work.
He also appeared on series and TV and in made for television movies, one of which, “Bill,” the touching story of a mentally challenged man, won him an Emmy. He was Emmy nominated three other times. And for “Sugar Babies,” a musical revue in which he starred with Ann Miller, he was nominated for a Tony in 1980.
Both in his professional and personal life Rooney withstood many peaks and valleys. He was married eight times and filed for bankruptcy in 1962, having gone through the $12 million he had earned. And until middle age, he was never able to quite cast off his popularity as a juvenile. Nonetheless, Rooney’s highs more than compensated for his lows. Via his “Andy Hardy” series of films, the five-foot-three Rooney came to embody the virtues of small-town American boyhood. Those films and a series of musicals in which he co-starred with Judy Garland made him the nation’s biggest box office attraction for three years running.
Born Joseph Yule Jr. in Brooklyn, Rooney made his stage debut at age 15 months in his family’s vaudeville act, Yule and Carter, as a midget in a tuxedo. His first film role in the silent “Not to Be Trusted” also found him playing a midget. Even as a child he demonstrated the ability to be a consummate clown and to move audiences with his sentimental renditions of songs like “Pal of My Cradle Days.” After his parent’s divorce, his mother Nell answered an ad placed by cartoonist Fontaine Fox, who was looking for a child actor to play the comicstrip character Mickey McGuire in a series of silent comedy shorts. Rooney appeared in almost 80 episodes of the popular serial, which continued to be churned out by Standard Film Corp. until 1932. His mother wanted to legally change his name to McGuire, but when Fox objected, she chose Rooney instead.
As a teenager, Rooney appeared in many popular films including Tom Mix Western “My Pal the King” and, memorably, as Puck in Max Reinhardt’s 1935 adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In 1934, MGM signed him to a week-to-week contract; his first success was playing Clark Gable as a boy in “Manhattan Melodrama.” He slowly climbed up the star ladder, appearing in an adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah Wilderness” and in “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” “Captains Courageous” and “Boy’s Town,” the latter two alongside Spencer Tracy.
But it was “A Family Affair,” a B-movie adaptation of the minor Broadway play “Skidding,” that first brought the world the Hardy family and its irrepressible son Andy, “the perfect composite of everybody’s kid brother,” according to critic Frank S. Nugent. With the surprise success of “A Family Affair,” the Hardy family, which included Lewis Stone (replacing Lionel Barrymore) as Judge Hardy and Spring Byington as his wife, embarked on a 15-film series of adventures in Americana. As star of one of the most successful series in film history, Rooney was earning $150,000 a year before his 20th birthday. In 1939, he was voted a special Oscar by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences.
The following year he was nominated for best actor in the film musical version of “Babes in Arms” with Judy Garland. “Mickey Rooney can act the legs off a centipede,” wrote the critic for the Sunday Times in London. It was the first of several memorable pairings with Garland including “Strike Up the Band,” “Babes on Broadway” and “Girl Crazy.”
His performance in the 1943 version of William Saroyan’s “The Human Comedy” brought a second nomination, and he played his first adult role opposite Elizabeth Taylor in “National Velvet.”
From 1944-46, Rooney served in the U.S. Army in the Jeep Theater, travelling 150,000 miles entertaining the troops and acting as a radio personality on the American Forces Network.
But after the war, Rooney’s attempt to make the transition from overaged teenager to full-fledged adult was rocky at best. MGM tried to give him a new image, casting him as a boxer in “Killer McCoy”; the musical version of “Ah Wilderness,” called “Summer Holiday,” also failed to please. The very qualities that had made him an appealing child star now began to grate. His energetic cockiness seemed forced and egotistical in an adult. The vaudeville-style humor and sentimentality were deemed annoying and precious by post-war audiences.
After settling his contract with MGM in a dispute over not being cast in the all-star war drama “Battleground,” Rooney made nightclub appearances as he rebuilt his career. His freelance movie assignments, such as “Quicksand,” sank without a trace. Only “The Bold and the Brave,” a WWII drama that brought him a third Oscar nomination, met with any success. The final Andy Hardy drama, 1958’s “Andy Hardy Comes Home,” found him as a successful lawyer and new head of the family. It was the final and least successful film in the series.
Rooney also tried directing, helming 1951’s “My True Story,” with Helen Walker as a jewel thief, and 1960’s “The Private Lives of Adam and Eve,” a complex comedy in which he also starred.
He experienced somewhat more success in television: He was nominated for Emmys for dramatic work on “Playhouse 90” effort “The Comedian,” considered a classic of golden-era television, and “Eddie” on “Alcoa Theatre.”He also appeared, less felicitously, in the mid-’50s series “The Mickey Rooney Show: Hey, Mulligan” on NBC and “Mickey,” which ran for a few months on ABC in 1964-65.
But in 1962, after filing for bankruptcy (the money had dwindled through his many divorces and because of his fondness for betting on “the ponies”), he embarked on a career as a character actor in films including “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “Requiem for a Heavyweight” and “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.” His controversial “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” role as Mr. Yunioshi, a buck-toothed broadly comic caricature of a Japanese man, did not draw much ire when the film was first released but has since been condemned as racist.
Off the bigscreen, he toured the country on a double bill with singer Bobby Van and in summer stock.
In 1963, he appeared as the very first guest on “The Judy Garland Show” upon Garland’s insistence. And he appeared occasionally during the ’60s on comedy/variety shows such as “The Dean Martin Comedy Hour,” “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” and “The Carol Burnett Show.” He guested on “Hollywood Squares” in 13 episodes between 1969 and 1976, and made 15 appearances on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” from 1970-73.
Norman Lear considered him for role of Archie Bunker, but Rooney rejected the project just as Jackie Gleason had. Perhaps he felt the role of Santa Claus fit him better: Rooney did the voices for four Christmas TV animated/stop action specials over the years. He played Santa in “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” (1970), “The Year Without a Santa Claus” (1974), “Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July” (1979) and “A Miser Brothers’ Christmas” (2008) and also played St. Nick in a 1982 episode of “The Love Boat.”
In later years, Rooney continued to work hard and sometimes found notable success. He received an Oscar nomination for supporting actor in 1980 for “The Black Stallion.” He won an Emmy for “Bill” in 1982 and drew an Emmy nom for reprising the role in another CBS telepic two years later.
In addition to his success in the musical “Sugar Babies,” he made popular stage appearances in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and on Broadway in “The Will Rogers Follies.”
In 1982 he starred in a short-lived sitcom, “One of the Boys,” with Dana Carvey and Nathan Lane. He guested on “The Golden Girls” in 1988, on “Murder, She Wrote” in 1993 and on “ER” in 1998; he starred in “The New Adventures of the Black Stallion,” based on the film, for 57 episodes from 1990-93.
As he approached and then surpassed his 90th birthday, he labored on, appearing in 2006 in “Night at the Museum” and in 2011 in “The Muppets” feature, among several other films.
In 1993 he published autobiography “Life Is Too Short”; the next year he came out with a novel, Hollywood murder mystery “The Search for Sonny Skies.”
Rooney had battled the major studios and the Screen Actors Guild seeking TV residuals for his screen appearances before 1960 without success. In 2011 he revealed he had suffered another form of victimization. He was granted a temporary restraining order against his stepson, who was accused of withholding food and medicine and interfering in Rooney’s personal finances, which was subsequently replaced by a confidential agreement.
In March 2011 he testified before a special Senate committee considering legislation to curb abuses of senior citizens.
Rooney voyaged, as a special guest, as part of the TCM Classic Cruise in January 2013.
Rooney was married eight times, first and most famously to his MGM co-star Ava Gardner.
Son Tim Rooney died in 2006.
Mickey Rooney is survived by wife Jan Chamberlin, a singer he married in 1978; son Mickey Rooney Jr. from his marriage to singer Betty Jane Rase; son Theodore Michael Rooney from his marriage to actress Martha Vickers; daughters Kelly Ann Rooney, Kerry Rooney and Kimmy Sue Rooney and son Michael Joseph Rooney from his marriage to Barbara Ann Thomason; and daughter Jonelle Rooney and adopted son Jimmy Rooney from his marriage to Carolyn Hockett.
Why don’t things like this ever happen when I’m on an airplane? Check out this video of the “The Lion King” cast from Australia as they perform “Circle of Life” to airplane passengers.