ENTERTAINMENT TODAY

NEW YORK – 50 Cent is taking a back seat to Eminem.
The rapper says he won’t release his “Before I Self Destruct” CD until Eminem’s album — tentatively titled “Relapse” — sees the light of day.
“Right now I’m on a train, and the Em-choo-choo-car goes first. I think people forgot that I’m actually Eminem’s artist because I’ve had so much success on my own and moved away from it,” the 32-year-old multiplatinum rapper said in an interview Tuesday.
“Because Dre is mixing Em’s album, Em will be completed entirely before we get a chance to finish up the pieces that me and Dre did together (for my album),” he added.
50 may have a long wait. While Eminem’s CD is expected this year, no release date has been set.
But it’s not the first time 50 has pushed back his album. The CD was expected to come out last December but was delayed. Back then, 50 said because elements of it weren’t complete, so he set a March release date.
Right now, Eminem’s got the most buzz musically. His first single, “Crack a Bottle,” which features 50 Cent and Dr. Dre, hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart earlier this month.
The trio recorded the song in Eminem’s hometown, Detroit, and 50 said the collaboration between the rappers is a reflection of their camaraderie, and Dr. Dre’s musical magic.
“(That’s) what happens when I actually work with Dr. Dre. I make great music away from him, but organically something happens when we’re in the same room, and it’s like his influence in different ways and we just make hit music together. ‘In Da Club,’ my biggest record to date, was me and Dre. We have a great relationship so there’s no reason for us to not go back in and make more.”
But 50 Cent fans can still hear new music from the entertainer. His new video game, “50 Cent: Blood On the Sand,” released this week, features 18 exclusive tracks, including one with Swizz Beatz, who composed the score. The rapper says the video game allowed him to tap into his musical vault for previously unreleased material.
“It was an opportunity for me to get to the material that I missed because on every album I over-write (the songs) on the album, and then (there’s) the song you wished you could have put on but you didn’t,” he said. “I had an opportunity to put like five or six of those songs on there and then create the rest of the material for the actual video game.”
“Blood on the Sand” follows 50 and G-Unit as they hunt down a crime gang whose stolen their diamond encrusted skull in a war-torn country. 50 said a visit to Iraq influenced some of the game’s features.
“After performing for the soldiers, you look at the people there and you use your imagination to say, ‘What are they actually feeling? What are they going through?’,” he said. “It was an experience but the game itself, I brought some of those experiences I had in to it and that’s why it looks the way it looks.”
• Unlike the rest of you, probably, I'm still watching Jimmy Fallon's webisode things that are leading up to his taking over Conan's Late Night desk on Monday. And, I gotta say, he's growing on me.
The videos are still not laugh out loud (that's old person talk for LOL, kids and area idiots) funny or anything. They remain oddly muted and affable in a close-to-irritating way. But Fallon is somewhat charming after a time. What makes me think that this slight hint of something will carry over well on his show is that he's particularly good at interacting with other people which, you know, is a handy skill to have when hosting a talk show.
I mean, I usually stopped watching Conan after his gonzo opening sketches had ended—who really cares what catastrophic movie Kate Hudson is promoting—so I am finding it a bit strange that I'm looking forward to interviews... conducted by Jimmy f'ing Fallon. But there's something a little twinkly and wry behind those Pound Puppy eyes of his. I think he'll be good at quietly mocking guests as they giddily dig themselves in deeper and deeper, a la David Letterman. And I am won over to the idea that he really is a nice guy (that point is laid on laboriously thick in the vlog bits), so I don't think it will be snide or crass, the way it can be on Leno sometimes. No, I'm storing up hope that Fallon will be a warm and chuckle-worthy riverboat guide into dreamy sleepland. Conan will provide the genuine funny, it'll be an hour earlier than it usually is, and I won't have to deal with the loud, ham-fisted incompetence of that Carson Daly character.
So yeah. Watch the videos and see if you get what I mean. I'm probably crazy, and it probably doesn't bode well for a show that you have to watch dozens of web videos when you're bored and hungover in order to sorta like its star, but oh well.
• The Obamas picked a dog! And they had Robert Gibbs deliver a press release to the assembled White House press corps announcing that... no, wait, the First Lady just talked to People.
It's a fuzzy, unimportant story that serves only to boost the public perception of the First Family as the most adorable and loving and perfect little family in the nation, so it does certainly belong in People. It's just... slightly disconcerting that Michelle Obama handed the exclusive to them as if the Obamas were J-Lo and Marc. Right?
Here's a sample of a typical family conversation on the matter: "So Sasha says, 'April 1st.' I said, 'April.' She says, 'April 1st.' It's, like, April!," Mrs. Obama recalls. "Got to do it after spring break. You can't get a new dog and then go away for a week."
And what kind of dog will soon be frolicking on the South Lawn? Mrs. Obama says the family is looking for a rescue Portuguese Water dog who is "old enough" and a "match" for the family dynamic.
Well, it's certainly effective image management, to keep the fluffy stories on the fronts of the celebrity glossies every week (George, you came too soon, and were too self-consciously "smart"!). But isn't there a more effective use of Michelle's time and intelligence? Whatever keeps those approval ratings up! Maybe Bobby Jindal should get a dog. Maybe Michael Steele should start calling everyone "dawg."
It is just a more sophisticated version of the image management every president since the dawn of mass media, of course, and the Obamas are obviously better off talking to People than Politico.
Oh, Sasha and Malia keep picking out really dumb names for the dog, like "Frank" and "Moose" (named for Barney Frank and Sarah Palin, respectively). Michelle does not elaborate on her dog-name preferences, but we imagine she's leaning toward "Puppy Seale."

Oscars

anybody had a reason to doubt whether Tyler Perry has become one of the most bankable brands in all of movies, be skeptical no longer. The domestic dramedy maestro's latest release, Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail, ran away with a big victory on the typically slow Academy Awards weekend, grossing a hefty $41.1 million, according to early estimates from Media by Numbers.

That opening sum is the biggest of all time for a Tyler Perry film, besting the $30 mil debut of 2006's Madea's Family Reunion. Too, it's the top bow in the history of indie studio Lionsgate, improving upon all the Tyler Perry and Saw flicks that came before it. The movie's per-theater average of $20,236 ranks in the top 40 for all wide openers ever. And, no surprise, Madea Goes to Jail achieved all this success with a solid A CinemaScore grade from a crowd that included mostly older women.

Second place went to Taken, which added another $11.4 mil to its four-week tally, bringing said total to $95.2 mil. Fellow strong holdover Coraline (No. 3) was next with $11 mil. He's Just Not That Into You (No. 4) declined a sharp 56 percent to bank $8.5 mil on its third weekend. And Best Picture favorite Slumdog Millionaire rounded out the top five with $8.1 mil -- a sum that brings its domestic total to $98 mil.

Reigning champ Friday the 13th suffered one of the biggest drops ever, a stunning 81 percent, to finish in sixth place with $7.8 mil. And this weekend's other major new release, the cheerleader comedy Fired Up! (No. 9), grossed a weak-but-expected $6 mil. The film garnered an okay CinemaScore grade of B from a crowd comprised of mostly younger ladies.

Overall, the weekend was up nearly 30 percent over the same frame a year ago, when Vantage Point led the way. Eight of the past nine weekends have improved upon the previous year's grosses.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't take a quick peek at the main Oscar contenders, for whom the box office report is mixed headed into the ceremony. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button leads the way with $124.2 mil. The aforementioned Slumdog Millionaire should clear the $100 mil mark in the next several days, whether it wins the top prize or not. Then it's a big jump down to Milk ($28.2 mil), The Reader ($23.2 mil), and Frost/Nixon ($17.4 mil). And let's not forget multiple nominee The Dark Knight, which may not be up for Best Picture, but did finally become the fourth movie ever to cross the $1 billion mark at the worldwide box office.

ENTERTAINMENT TODAY

The production team behind the Oscars was hoping that choosing Hugh Jackman to host and keeping some presenters shrouded in secrecy would ramp up the show’s ratings. As it turns out, rapper M.I.A. might be the show’s real secret weapon.
According to producers Larry Mark and Bill Condon, they’ll do whatever it takes to have M.I.A., who gave birth to a son Feb. 11, perform “O Saya” from “Slumdog Millionaire,” even if it means having her do it from a bed.
“We are happy to bring some sort of fabulous bed on stage if that means M.I.A. can be there to perform her song,” said Mark and Condon.
In addition to the bedside performance rumors, another possible Oscar myth was making the rounds. According to some well-connected insiders, there was a considerable amount of chatter about a possible appearance by miracle-on-the-Hudson pilot, Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, at the Feb. 22 show. “No, Captain Sullenberger is not a presenter,” the producers said.
Hayden learns nothing from breakup with Milo
Maybe the age difference between Hayden Panettiere, 19, and “Heroes” costar Milo Ventimiglia, 31, was to blame for the recent demise of their year-long relationship. “She’s young and likes the scene,” Us Weekly is reporting. “But that’s not his style.”
That didn’t stop Panettiere from flirting with Gerard Butler, 20 years her senior, at a Victoria’s Secret shindig in New York on Feb. 11, the magazine reports. Wondering how it might all play out on the “Heroes” set? Hopefully without much unscripted drama. “They’re still on friendly terms,” the source said.
‘Project Runway’ shrouds itself in secrecy
The end of Fashion Week looms and thus so does the traditional runway finale for “Project Runway.” The show’s future has been uncertain due to a legal battle between Bravo and Lifetime over rights to the brand, but the entire sixth season has been shot and on Feb. 20, finalists will display their collections for the judges and an audience wholly unfamiliar with the designers. How will the production pull it off?
“You’ll see collections from extremely talented people, but you won’t be able to place the designer with the collection,” Tim Gunn told New York magazine.
Gunn also has some unsolicited advice for Meryl Streep. “I am her biggest fan and I can’t get enough of her. But wearing my fashion hat, I want to say to Meryl Streep, ‘You need to accept responsibility for what you are wearing. I don’t know that you do,’” he said. “The message she’s sending is, ‘I’m too smart for this and it doesn’t matter to me what I’m wearing.’ I want to say to her that it should matter to you.”

ENTERTAINMENT TODAY POLITICAL VIEW

It’s astounding to me that the Republican party can complain with a straight face that they aren’t getting enough input into the stimulus package (or any other Obama Administration agenda items). If think every Democrat who appears on TV (both of them) should do nothing but remind America how things worked in D.C. a few short years ago when the Republicans held a slimmer lead :
Congress’s majority parties have always dominated legislative action, but they typically have given the minority some voice — even if it has amounted to little more than a floor vote on a sure-to-lose alternative bill, or conference committee recommendations destined to be rejected along party lines. Often, majority party leaders have made enough concessions to attract a few votes from across the aisle, withstand some intra-party defections and tout a piece of legislation as “bipartisan.” (The conference on the original Medicare bill in 1965, when Democrats controlled the White House and Congress, included Republicans. Roughly half of all House and Senate Republicans voted for the final legislation.)
Recently, however, GOP leaders have largely dispensed with such niceties. Senate Republicans rewrote a massive (and still-pending) energy bill with zero Democratic participation. And top House and Senate Republicans negotiated the complex Medicare bill with only two conciliation-minded Democrats — Sens. John Breaux (La.) and Max Baucus (Mont.) — in the room. (When some House Democrats barged in one day, Thomas, the Ways and Means chairman, halted the meeting until they left.)
. . .
These hardball techniques underscore a paradox of current U.S. politics: The electorate is almost evenly divided, but federal policymaking is increasingly one-sided. With only the narrowest of House and Senate margins, Republican leaders are deploying scorched-earth, compromise-be-damned tactics, as if they ruled the nation 80-20, not 51-49. Rather than building broader consensus, they have decided they can’t afford centrist compromises that might attract some Democratic support but lose even more votes from the GOP conservative wing.
. . .
Whereas House Republicans berated Democratic speaker Jim Wright in 1987 for extending a roll call — normally 15 minutes — by 10 more minutes, Hastert last month obliterated that record in order to cajole and badger enough colleagues into backing the Medicare bill. Sometimes the leaders’ partisanship seems almost cartoonish, as when Thomas summoned Capitol police to evict Democrats from a quiet meeting room. (The cops refused.)
Lest we pretend that the Republicans in Congress are sincere about their opposition to the tax-and-spend (get a new line, guys) nature of the stimulus bill, let me remind you of what the GOP did when they controlled every branch of the federal government :
[Former Treasury Secretary Paul] O’Neill had been preaching that a fiscal crisis was looming and more tax cuts would exacerbate it. But others in the White House saw a chance to capitalize on the historic Republican congressional gains in the 2002 elections. Surely, Cheney would not be so smug. He would hear O’Neill out. In an economic meeting in the Vice President’s office, O’Neill started pitching, describing how the numbers showed that growing budget deficits threatened the economy. Cheney cut him off. “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,” he said. O’Neill was too dumbfounded to respond. Cheney continued: “We won the midterms. This is our due.”
To sum up the last eight years, we’ve had one-party rule in Washington D.C. which had “fiscal conservatives” feeling entitled to spend taxpayer money like drunken sailors (which exacerbated the very fiscal crisis that the current Congress is trying to address). When the minority party tried to insert themselves in the legislative process, they were not only shunned completely, but the GOP leadership would shut down meetings until they left, hold open votes for hours until they got the results they wanted, and would actually call the police to have Democrats removed from meetings. Where the HELL do these guys get off complaining about partisanship?
This quote from the first article serves as a prescient coda on the hyper partisan Bush years:
Nearly half the electorate — people who chose Democrats to represent them in Congress — are, to an increasing degree, disenfranchised. Their representatives aren’t simply outvoted on the House and Senate floors, they’re not even present when key legislation is discussed and refined. The pendulum always swings back eventually, though, and should the White House and Congress shift hands, this year’s brutal and partisan practices may ensure a retaliatory cycle in which each aggrieved party feels compelled to wreak vengeance, lest it be viewed as wimpish.
Even GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona recently warned: “The Republicans had better hope that the Democrats never regain the majority.”
Much to the chagrin of many on the left, Barack Obama is actually sincere about reaching across the aisle. He has added Republicans to his cabinet, made multiple efforts to include Republican leaders in the legislative process, and has made it clear that he wants to work in a bipartisan manner. If the Republican leaders want more, they can piss off. They’re getting a much better deal than Democrats ever got (nobody has called the cops yet). The GOP got their asses handed to them two election cycles in a row. The American people have soundly rejected the last eight years of Republican domination.
We won. This is our due.

ENTERTAINMENT TODAY

Chris Brown is 19 and clueless. You can’t feel sorry for him exactly, he doesn’t know anything. Still: over the weekend he apparently hired Paris Hilton’s spin doctor, Mike Sitrick, to try and dig his way out of his huge mess with girlfriend Rihanna.
The Hilton-Sitrick connection makes a little sense since I told you last week that my sources insist it was Paris who inadvertently instigated the fight between Brown and Rihanna on the eve of the Grammy Awards.
If it’s a coincidence it’s a big one that Hilton, who texted Brown and set off the fight that left Rihanna bruised and beaten, now has recommended the flack to save Brown’s neck. Sitrick had to step in and fix the mess left by Hilton’s earlier press agent Elliot Mintz when she was getting sprung from jail.
Brown is so clueless he couldn’t know that Sitrick is universally disliked by the press. He’ll win Brown no points in public. On top of that, the statement Strick issued for Brown regarding this whole incident is pretty lame. Rihanna’s name isn’t mentioned once. But Brown takes the press and bloggers to task, accusing them of making things up.
But that’s Sitrick’s way. And it may be that Sitrick was the only flack who would take Brown’s money. I know one press agency that turned him down cold. There were probably others. Flacks don’t generally have consciences, but if they represent well known women who’ve taken stands against domestic abuse, there’s no way they can represent Chris Brown.
Rihanna certainly won’t be amused when she realizes how Brown selected his new crisis counselor. But maybe that will strengthen her resolve to move on without the 19 year old dancer singer, and not take him back.

ENTERTAINMENT TODAY

Friday the 13th movie!
Friday the 13th movies have been a mixed bag in the past, but this remake of sorts delivers the red meat fans are craving, figuratively and literally. Oh, and the latest iteration of hockey-masked slasher Jason Voorhees (Derek Mears) is a backwoods marijuana grower who'll kill you and your friends if you dare to touch his stash. Seriously. The Bigger Picture: Yeah, it sounds a little silly on paper—the Jason of old seemed to have a vendetta against drug users—but it fits with the changing times. Today's J-man is more libertarian than puritan, as one of his neighbors even warns tourists that he just wants to be left alone. So just don't steal his drugs, and don't flaunt your libertine lifestyle in has face, by having singer/UFC ring girl Willa Ford go waterskiing topless on his lake or something. Those really aren't tough rules to follow, but somehow the stupid yet beautiful youngsters who come around the old Camp Crystal Lake just can't help themselves from trespassing.For old-school fans: Yes, Jason's mother (Nana Visitor) is shown as the original camp killer in a flashback to 1980, and yes, Jason wears a sack on his head before finding the hockey mask. It's perhaps a little unnecessary to show us a junior hockey trophy in his childhood home—this deformed lunk really won grade-school hockey tournaments prior to his apparent drowning? And that's why he feels affection for the mask? Too much information. Still, you can't go wrong with a Friday the 13th movie if you follow a few simple rules: Creative kills? Check. Gratuitous sex scenes? Check, including one that we actually get to see from beginning to end without Jason interrupting. Large amounts of drugs and alcohol? Check (suggested drinking game for the DVD: drink whenever anyone onscreen does). Best of all, Jason's back to being an angry predator, following the depressive Ken Kirzinger emo-Jason who fought Freddy Krueger (in 2003's Freddy vs. Jason) and never should have won. Mears has a good shot at challenging previous champ Kane Hodder in fans' hearts. This may be the first Friday that's actually more explicit with the sex than the gore—not that there's no blood, but director Marcus Nispel would much rather linger on a naked teenager than a mutilated corpse.

Entertainment Today

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