‘Grey’s Anatomy’ star questions quality of show
By Matthew B. Zeidman
By Matthew B. Zeidman
HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today)
6/12/08 –
Katherine Heigl may have won an Emmy for her role as a model-turned-doctor on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” last year, but this year she wants no part of it.
The actress questioned the quality of the show’s script, while explaining her decision not to seek a nomination.
“I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination,” Heigl, 29, said in a written statement, “and in an effort to maintain the integrity of the academy organization, I withdrew my name from contention.
In addition, I did not want to potentially take away an opportunity from an actress who was given such materials.”
Heigl’s character, Izzie Stevens, spent the recent season (season four) almost exclusively navigating romantic entanglements.
However, season two featured Stevens falling in love with a heart patient and purposely causing his condition to worsen, risking his life, to give him priority for a transplant about to be given to another patient.
The season after dealt with Stevens’ grief over his death, her decision to continue in the medical field, her donation of bone marrow to a young cancer patient she gave up for adoption and her involvement with a married co-worker.
Though “Grey’s Anatomy” has made her a household name, Heigl is an industry veteran, having landed her first starring role in 1994, playing Gérard Depardieu’s headstrong daughter with a penchant for deception in “My Father the Hero.”
Though “Grey’s Anatomy” has made her a household name, Heigl is an industry veteran, having landed her first starring role in 1994, playing Gérard Depardieu’s headstrong daughter with a penchant for deception in “My Father the Hero.”
The following year, she portrayed the resentful niece of Steven Seagal in the action sequel “Under Siege 2: Dark Territory,” and in 1999, she began a three-season stint as one of several aliens with miraculous abilities on The WB’s (and later UPN’s) “Roswell,” where she was joined by “Lost” castaway Emilie de Ravin during season two.
Long-awaited movie will be mix of live action and CGI
PAPA SMURF
By Matthew B. Zeidman
HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 6/11/08 –
Following in the footsteps of another popular cartoon show of the 1980s, “Transformers,”
“The Smurfs” will be adapted into a live-action film full of accompanying CGI animation.
Columbia Pictures announced the project Tuesday and is courting animation veterans David Stem and David Weiss to pen the script.
Beginning as a Belgian comic strip in 1958, “The Smurfs” made the jump to the American small screen in 1981, when Hanna-Barbera produced an animated series for NBC that lasted for 9 years.
The eponymous characters were diminutive blue forest creatures who lived in toadstools, sang merrily and did their best to avoid being eaten by the local scheming wizard and his cat.
The Smurfs were almost exclusively male (only three female villagers were ever introduced in the fictional universe) and enjoyed using the word “Smurf” as a catchall noun, verb, adjective and adverb.
In 2005, a UNICEF commercial aired in Belgium featuring the Smurfs’ village being decimated by warplanes.
The officially sanctioned advertisement was meant to promote the rehabilitation of child soldiers in former Belgian colonies in Africa.
In addition to “Transformers,” other classic cartoon adaptations to mix live action and animation in recent years have included “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” “Fat Albert” and “Space Jam.”
MVP Kobe shows his mettle in final moments of game
By Jeff Freedman
HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today)
6/10/09 —
In defeating the Boston Celtics by a score of 87-81, the Los Angeles Lakers found a way to keep their Championship dreams alive as Game 3 of the NBA Championship Series shifted coasts to Los Angeles.
One thing that seemed to be a sure thing was that Kobe Bryant would score much more than he had on the parquet floor in Boston.
This time he pumped in 19 in the first half and then 7 more in the third quarter.
He would finish the night with 36 points. 
And were it not for a poor night from the free throw stripe, he would easily have had even more.
By contrast, however, both Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom made their first baskets of the game in that quarter, having been held scoreless from the field in the first half.
And despite having the home court advantage, Boston had a free throw advantage in the 3rd quarter as well as the lead at 62-60.
It seemed to be anybody’s game.
Nervous Hollywood luminaries such as Jack Nicholson, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Sylvester Stallone and Eddie Murphy sitting courtside all had their scripts written one way.
Sasha Vujacic, who had picked up his team’s scoring slack all game and Ray Allen traded 3 point shots to being the quarter.
Three minutes into the quarter Paul Pierce picked up his fifth personal foul.
By then the former Inglewood, CA star, who had hated the Celtics as a kid growing up in the shadow of the Lakers then home, the Fabulous Forum, had only scored 2 points on an uncharacteristic 1-10 shooting night.
How much he was missed therefore, can be debated.
With 6:52 left, Kobe hit a wide open 3 pointer, giving the Lakers the lead at 69-68 and the Laker star 30 points for the game.
Derek Fisher came back and hit a pair of free throws and Pierce threw it away, leading to another Kobe trip to the line, where he extended the Laker lead to five.
Rajon Rondo converted a Ray Allen miss cutting into the Laker lead, but Gasol came back and tipped in an Odom miss, twice.
Rajon Rondo converted a Ray Allen miss cutting into the Laker lead, but Gasol came back and tipped in an Odom miss, twice.
The Lakers led by seven.
It was a lead that they would not give up, not with their entire season on the line.
The Celtics got as close as four with a little more than three minutes remaining, and then held the Lakers to a wild shot by Gasol that went out of bounds.
Nowhere in the sequence did Kobe touch the ball.
By contrast, the Celtics got the ball into the hands of their big man, Kevin Garnett, who banked one in.
The teams traded misses, and then Kobe passed off the double team to Vujacic, who again hit a three for his 20th point off the bench and then Fisher drove through the lane and converted both from the charity stripe.
Garnett stuffed one in, but Kobe scored on a pull up jumper.
Eddie House came back and converted a three pointer from the corner off a pass from Pierce.
But Kobe came back and scored again, losing Ray Allen in one-on-one coverage.
For all intents and purposes, the game was over.
The Lakers had done what they had to do, win the game at home and get themselves back in the series.
No NBA team, of course, had come back from a 3-0 deficit.
Now the Lakers have hope.
Hope that they can win the next two games Thursday and Sunday at home and then take at least one of the last two in Boston.
It’s a long journey, but the first step has been taken.
There will be no Finals sweep this year, and along with the fans in Los Angeles, the NBA brass is smiling tonight
LBN-BUSINESS INSIDER:
***Belgian Brewer InBev is offering a big payday to shareholders of Anheuser-Busch Cos.
(BUD) (BUD) Inc., but its bid to create the world's largest beer company is already facing a major obstacle - U.S. election-year politics.
***Heavy rains and cool weather in the Midwest are driving up the price of corn, while other commodity prices like oil, soybeans and wheat also jumped on Wednesday.
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE:
Israel is just one of the 23 foreign countries with daily LBN E-Lert readers.
WHO READS THE LBN E-LERT:
Three (3) winners of The Nobel Prize along with approximately 295,000 other "influencers".
LBN-COMMENTARY BY ANGELINA JOLIE:
Pregnancy is great for the sex life.
It just makes you a lot more creative.
So you have fun, and as a woman you're just so round and full.
LBN-HOLLYWOOD INSIDER:
***Judd Apatow has enlisted Eric Bana, Jason Schwartzman and Jonah Hill to join Adam Sandler, Seth Rogan and Leslie Mann in his next directorial effort.
And, he has a title: "Funny People."
LBN-COMMENTARY BY CYNDI LAUPER:
When I was growing up, it did not occur to me that many Americans are still denied full and equal rights --
including the simple right to be who they are and to love whom they choose to love.
LBN-MEDIA INSIDER:
***U.S. advertising expenditures rose just 0.6% for the first quarter of 2008, with newspapers taking the biggest hit, says a new report from TNS Media Intelligence.
Even the healthiest sectors of the media industry showed signs of slowing.
Advertisers are "hesitant about the overall economy."
***Oprah Winfrey is ranked No. 1 on Forbes magazine's Celebrity 100, a power ranking based on both earnings and fame.
Winfrey also topped the list last year.
"Despite weakening television ratings and magazine circulation, she remains one of the most famous faces."
HITCHENS:
"I Might Orgasm In My Trousers" Over Fall Of Bill Clinton:
The famously acid-tongued and brutally insightful Christopher Hitchens proclaimed himself near "orgasm" on Wednesday over the much maligned conduct and exit of Bill Clinton from presidential politics.
"The ex-president revealed to a crucial number of people something that many of us already knew: he is a raging psycho," said the Vanity Fair writer.
"It's very gratifying to see more people catching up to that now."
LBN-OVERHEARD:
***Police have charged a man and a woman in London with supplying drugs to soul diva Amy Winehouse.
The charges stem from a video that appeared to show the singer smoking crack cocaine.
London police say John Blagrove and Cara Burton have been charged with conspiracy to supply cocaine and MDMA, also known as ecstasy.
***Tom Cruise's lawyer is comparing a TV doctor's analysis of the star's mental health to Nazi methods.
In next month's Playboy, Dr. Drew Pinsky, host of VH1's "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew," says:
"A lot of people in the public eye who behave strangely have mental illness we can learn from, and much of it is based on childhood trauma, without a doubt.
Take a guy like Tom Cruise.
Why would somebody be drawn into a cultish kind of environment like Scientology?
To me, that's a function of a very deep emptiness and suggests serious neglect in childhood - maybe some abuse, but mostly neglect."
Cruise's lawyer, Bert Fields, told us: "This unqualified television performer who is obviously just looking for notoriety is so grotesquely unprofessional as to pretend to diagnose Tom and others without ever meeting them.
He seems to be spewing the absurdity that all Scientologists are mentally ill.
The last time we heard garbage like this was from Joseph Goebbels."
Add movie reviewer Richard Roeper to the legion of critics blasting Rosie O'Donnell for her wacky conspiracy theory that the original 7 World Trade Center was deliberately blown up by explosives on 9/11.
"She's full of [bleep] and she's giving a platform to some urban legends that will not die," the co-host of "At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper" writes in his new book, "Debunked!"
He adds, "I believe the best way for her to learn [the] truth would be for her to get in touch with some of the firefighters who were at WTC7."
LBN-DID YOU KNOW?
***Every year, kids in North America spend close to half a billion dollars on chewing gum.
***DiVinci invented the parachute in 1515.
***There are 86,400 seconds in day.
***The earth is approx. 6,588,000,000,000,000,000 tons.
LBN-CURRENTLY READING:
Beverly Hills Cosmetic Surgeon, Dr. Robert Kotler, is reading A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, by Vasily Grossman.
LBN-QUOTE:
"Canadians do not have a cast-iron stomach for offensive speech."---JASON GRATL, a lawyer for the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Association of Journalists.
LBN-HISTORY:
On June 12, 1987, during a visit to the divided German city of Berlin, President Ronald Reagan publicly challenged Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."
L B N - - - I N T E R N ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Looking for a summer internship in entertainment PR?
Apply for "the best internship in Hollywood" under Michael Levine, creator of the LBN-Elert himself.
Contact David Goodman at 310-300-0950 ext 230 or email Mlasst@Lcoonline.com.
Producer Timbaland and girlfriend of 2 years/publicist Monique Idlett married this week in his native state of Virginia.
According to UsMagazine reports that the couple exchanged vows in an intimate ceremony on Tuesday in front of a family pastor.
According to UsMagazine reports that the couple exchanged vows in an intimate ceremony on Tuesday in front of a family pastor.
Friends and family will celebrate their marriage too, as bigger wedding in Aruba next week has already been planned.
Timbaland and Idlett got engaged last October and have a seven month old daughter, called Reign.
MJ & BRITNEY- in common?
Life & Style magazine is reporting that Michael Jackson and Christian Audigier will team up for a new line to go with Audigier’s most popular, Ed Hardy, Christian Audigier, and Smet.
Jackson is known for his eccentric style so it will be amusing to see what he brings to the table.
Wacko has already reportedly invested a lot of time and money into the project and is taking it very seriously as a way to revive his career
Audigier has also been recently said to be working on a children’s line with Britney Spears.
And the fact that both Spears and Jackson popped up for Audigier’s 50th birthday party in LA last month might not be a coincidence.
Quote D'jour
The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.
The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.
-Will Rogers
Liz Hur...leyed....gets...fingered?....
Elizabeth Hurley has mastered the elusive art of adjusting sunglasses with a flip of the bird.
With talents like that, it's a wonder her career is in the toilet.
J - Z e e e e e e d . . . . . . . ?
Jigga what?
A guy wants $88 million bucks out of Jay-Z not for a lyric he jacked, or a sample he stole -- but for stealing that ultra-exclusive technique of ... rapping in a low whisper.
We're not kidding:
Mitchell Rose, who tells us he's a boxer/lawyer/rapper, has filed suit in Brooklyn alleging that he created the technique of "whisper rapping."
Rose says that Hova subsequently adopted the technique without properly crediting him --
and now he wants to get paid!
The same Mitchell Rose once wrote a book called "Mike Tyson Tried to Kill My Daddy."
Jay-Z's rep didn't return our call for comment.
Lenny Kravitz.......the designer??????
On Wednesday, The Setai, a luxury hotel/residences in Miami Beach, announced the opening of The Setai Recording Studio, a state-of-the-art digital and analog recording facility created by Kravitz Design Inc
The president of Kravitz Design Inc. is none other than rock man Lenny Kravitz.
Good for him that he has more than music making in him!
The president of Kravitz Design Inc. is none other than rock man Lenny Kravitz.
Good for him that he has more than music making in him!
Kravitz said, "In building The Setai Recording Studio, we brought everything we've learned throughout our careers in performing and recording to create an environment that supports and encourages the making of music."
The 2,500 square foot studio is reportedly outfitted with the industry's premiere equipment for both analog & digital recording.
The recording facility is comprised of two live rooms, a vocal booth, control room, lounge and conference room to accommodate the diverse needs of the film, recording and entertainment industry.
The studio also offers 5.1 high-definition audio and can be utilized for both film and video shoots.
Since its "pre-opening" this spring, Timbaland, Chris Cornell, Mary J. Blige, Jay Z, Wyclef Jean have recorded in the space.
Impressive.
Diversifying is good, y'all!
And "designing" is so metro!
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