The Weekly Top 5

1.  The boy who never grew up: Michael Jackson.  Here’s a nice written aftermath of Michael Jackson’s life by Roger Ebert.

2.  MTV’s Five Sequels That Don’t Suck.  In response to the vast negativity Transformers 2 is generating, MTV Movie Blog touches upon five sequels they actually like.  I agree with every one of them except Gremlins 2: The New Batch simply because I haven’t seen it.  But I applaud the MTV Movies Team for choosing great sequels like Toy Story 2 and Before Sunset.  Two of my favorite sequels of all-time.

3.  Oscar Best Picture Near Misses of the Past Decade. So the talk of the Oscar town has been about the decision to expand the Best Picture nominations from 5 to 10.  Seriously?  Doubling the number of nominees?  This got the MTV Movie Blog thinking about what films would’ve made the cut if there were more Best Picture nominees in the past decade.

4.  Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” seems to be back on track.  Universal threw this project on the back-burner for a few years but with a rewrite by Mark Heyman and the lead role to Natalie Portman, who doesn’t want to check out this supernatural thriller about a veteran ballerina?  Come on!  Aronofsky back to the supernatural?!  Let’s see it happen!

5.  Dollhouse and Joss Whedon get help from Reaper creators.  Since CW’s Reaper is canceled, creators Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters have joined the writing staff of Dollhouse.  This is certainly good news for the low-rated, sci-fi show on Fox.  The only problem is that it still has the Friday death slot.  Throw Dollhouse a freakin’ bone!

Bruno landing on Eminem was staged

According to Entertainment Weekly, the incident between Sacha Baren Cohen’s character, Bruno, and Eminem at the MTV Movie Awards on Sunday was all planned.  In case you don’t know what happened, Bruno was soaring above the audience towards the stage to announce the Best Actor award.  When he seemingly had technical difficulties, he plummeted down to the audience and conveniently landed on Eminem with his legs wrapped around the rapper’s head.  Eminem dropped every variable of the F-bomb, which was censored during the telecast, and then stormed out of the show angrily.

If my play-by-play didn’t suffice, check out the clip here.

It really was no surprise that the incident was staged.  That still doesn’t take away how hilarious the skit was.  And leaving you with those brief moments that all of that was actually real was worth it.  But still, the Bruno/Eminem incident wasn’t as awesome as The Lonely Island medley by LeAnn Rimes, Chris Isaak, and Forest Whitaker.  Watch the performance here.

2009 MTV Movie Awards Predictions

So tonight is the 2009 MTV Movie Awards.  I already did a post a while ago talking about how these awards suit the demographic of its viewers and nothing else.  It’s not like these awards are fooling anyone (unless Nicole Kidman actually has her golden popcorn trophy next to her Oscar award).  But hey, MTV is keeping the balance of pure fun and some prestige by nominated Slumdog Millionaire.  Honestly, if these awards were truly a blend of entertainment and excellence, then The Dark Knight should easily walk away with the Best Movie award… but this is MTV.  I think it’s pretty easy to guess what’s going to win tonight.  Here are my predictions.

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Best Movie

Like I just said above, The Dark Knight would make perfect sense to win this award.  Not only was it the second highest-grossing film of all-time, it was critically acclaimed.  Heck, it was a fantastic film and everyone loved it.  The past two winners of this award went to Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, both made a huge amount of dough.

But even though all of this seems to add up to The Dark Knight taking the award, my prediction is the most talked about movie of the year by MTV and its tween and teen viewers: Twilight.  By no means should Twilight be in consideration for Best Movie in any circumstance, but with MTV it’s a given.  The most blogged about topic on the MTV Movie Blog is Twilight.  Do I need another reason?

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Best Male Performance

I’m curious as to why Robert Pattinson (Twilight mega-star) wasn’t nominated in this category.  With him out of the way, that leaves the door wide open for Christian Bale and Shia LaBeouf to snag this award.  Just last year, Will Smith won this award for his performance in I Am Legend.  So while it would make sense for LaBeouf or Bale to win, I’m going with Zac Efron (High School Musical 3).  It’s his finale from the HSM franchise and I think MTV will award him this final token of gratitude for the millions of screaming girls he has attracted.

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Best Female Performance

This is an interesting category.  We have four nominees who can actually act, and then one lone actress who either is either terrible or she just hasn’t reached her potential yet.  That being said, it will be the actress without the talent who will win this award… Kristen Stewart (Twilight).

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Breakthrough Performance – Male

Robert Pattinson.  Winner.  End of story.

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Breakthrough Performance – Female

It’s hard to pick anyone else than Miley Cyrus.  I would’ve picked Vanessa Hudgens or Ashely Tisdale of High School Musical, but they’ll cancel each other out, leaving Hannah Montana to accept her Golden Popcorn trophy.

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Best Comedic Performance

So this category will determine who’s the funniest?  Steve Carell is easily the funniest actor of the nominees, but Get Smart wasn’t much of a comedy.  I’m saying it’ll go down between Anna Faris (The House Bunny) and James Franco (Pineapple Express).  And the winner will be… James Franco.

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Best Villain

Heath Ledger.  Next category…

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Best Fight

This is a stupid category.  I guess I’ll have to stick with the phenomenon that is Twilight.

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Best Kiss

This is an even dumber category.  The two homosexual kisses don’t have a chance.  Again, Twilight will win this category.  K-Stew and Rob-Pat locking lips?  I think a dozen 12-year-old girls just fainted.

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Best WTF Moment

Okay… this is the absolute dumbest category I’ve ever heard.  That being said, if Slumdog Millionaire doesn’t win this award for when little Jamal dives into a pile of crap, then I don’t know what a WTF Moment is.

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Best Song From a Movie

Umm… here’s a no-brainer.  Hmm… Twilight + Paramore = Best Song Golden Popcorn.  Fact.

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Well there you have it.  I haven’t watched one minute of MTV in the past year but it’s hard to ignore the impact MTV has in the entertainment world with its teen audience.  If none of my predictions are correct, I could care less.  But hey, I’m confident that I’ll get at least seven of the eleven categories right.  Because c’mon… this is MTV we’re talking about.  I heard just recently they’ve started to play music on the channel again.  That would be like ESPN never broadcasting sports.  As you can guess, I’m not very fond of MTV.

MTV Movie Awards gain credibility?

Not even close.  But at least they’re still trying.  Nominated for The Best Movie of the Year are:  The Dark Knight, High School Musical 3: Senior Year, Iron Man, Slumdog Millionaire, and Twilight.  The one thing all these movies have in common was they made a lot of money.  Honestly, I’m surprised that Slumdog Millionaire even got nominated.  I mean, wouldn’t a movie like Hancock or Tropic Thunder be a better fit for an MTV Movie Award than the Oscar-sweeping Slumdog Millionaire?  Or is MTV trying to gain some credibility?

But wait a second, the MTV Movie Awards have had some very credible winners in the past.  Movies like Titanic, Gladiator, and all three Lord of the Rings films are past winners of the award show’s Best Movie of the Year.  So should the MTV Movie Awards be taken seriously?

Not by a long shot.

It seems as though that the formula for the nominees of Best Movie is this:  Take some of the most popular, money grabbing films of the entire year + the biggest box office grossing movie from the five Best Picture Oscar nominees, and you get your MTV Movie Award nominees for Best Movie.  Here are some past nominees:

2008 – Transformers (winner), Superbad, Juno, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, and I Am Legend.

2007 – Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s  Chest (winner), 300, Blades of Glory, Borat, and Little Miss Sunshine.

2005 – Napoleon Dynamite (winner and also an MTV production… do I smell conspiracy?), Kill Bill Vol. 2, The Incredibles, Spider-Man 2, Ray.

As you can see, each year had one Oscar Best Picture nominated film: Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, and Ray respectively.  I do have to admit that out of the summer blockbusters MTV chooses for their nominees, they do pick some good ones.  This year’s nominees include The Dark Knight and Iron Man, two of the best super-hero films in history.  And of course what many people considered a snub for The Dark Knight to be left out of Oscar’s Best Picture race… MTV had no problem nominating it.

While there is absolutely no chance that Slumdog Millionaire wins the MTV Movie Award for Best Picture (it’s going to be The Dark Knight), they still get some props for nominating Oscar-caliber films.  The real crime of the MTV Movie Awards lies in their acting awards.  Come on now… Will Smith won best actor for I Am Legend?  Kirsten Dunst won best actress for Spider-Man?  Eminem for 8 Mile???  Something’s got to give.

But for what it’s worth, MTV puts on a show for tweens and teens everywhere.  So there will surely be millions tuning into MTV on Sunday, May 31st for the 18th annual MTV Movie Awards, hosted by SNL’s Andy Samberg.

Official Paramore Video from ‘Twilight’

 

Here’s a link to the MTV Movies Blog that is carrying the official release of the Paramore music video “Decode” from the Twilight soundtrack.

http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2008/11/03/watch-paramores-twilight-music-video-decode/

 

From one of the biggest current bands, this video only boosts Twilight’s insane anticipation.  And it’s a very smart move because both attract the same demographic.  There’s no doubt the vampire-romance of Twilight is going to be highly successful.  Hell, I’ve never read a single word from a Stephenie Meyer novel and I’m stoked for this movie.  But as for the song, “Decode” isn’t that good.  It probably would’ve been on the cutting board to both Paramore’s albums.  It’s not a typical Paramore song, but I guess that’s why it’s a Twilight soundtrack song… though that doesn’t mean the song can’t be good.  Example:  Dashboard Confessional’s “Vindicated” from Spider-Man 2.  That was the movie’s official song and still fit in with DC’s sound and style, and was pretty damn awesome.  But there’s no doubt this will make teen girls scream their lungs out for their excitement that their favorite band, Paramore, is being featured on their favorite book-into-movie, Twilight.

News Briefs

 
Here are a few stories I found interesting around the entertainment world…

 

It has been reported that Total Request Live will have its last show in November, ending a 10-year run for the audience-involved, top ten music video countdown.  The most famous face behind TRL was Carson Daly, who is now behind a desk during his late late late night talk show that I assume no one watches.  Well, I didn’t even know that TRL still existed.  I went through my TRL phase in middle and high school with one distinct memory from the show:  When Tom Green’s “Bum Bum Song” reached #1 on the countdown, and that very day he retired the song.  That was awesome.

http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2008/09/trl-ending.html

 

Billboard reports that Metallica’s latest album, Death Magnetic, will open with week-one sales of approximately 450,000 to 500,000 copies… which is good enough for Metallica’s fifth consecutive chart-topping debut.  I don’t know how I feel about these hard-rockers, now way past their prime, trying to relive their fame and fortune in a completely different age of music… but hey, I applaud their ambition.

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003849975

 

Amy Poehler is leaving Saturday Night Live after this season.  She’s expecting her first child with Will Arnett (Arrested Development) and says she wants to focus on family.  Poehler is best known for her hilarious impersonations of Hillary Clinton on SNL.

http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2008/09/16/2008-09-16_amy_poehler_leaving_saturday_night_live_.html

 

Have you checked this out?  You can now watch feature films and TV shows for free on IMDB!  Yeah, awesome, right?  Here’s the article:  http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1531826820080916