Homecoming Queen Dakota Fanning posing with the Homecoming King

At the age of 15, Dakota Fanning is a normal kid. This Charlotte’s Web actress works in movies and when her shooting is over, she’s goes back home to Los Angeles and lives an absolutely ordinary life. While actors at and around her age study at home with tutors coming to them, Fanning prefers going to school. And that is not all. She is also part of the cheer-leading team.

She studies in the Campbell Hall Episcopal High School which is situated in North Hollywood. This high school student is pretty popular in the school too, naturally. So, it might not be surprising for all, that she was named the “Homecoming Queen” this year on friday, the 30th Oct ‘09.

The Viking cheer leader seemed to have a great time performing the cheerleading routine, sources say. When she won the Homecoming award she was elated. It’s really amazing to see someone as famous as she is is having a normal and great teenage life like this.

Dakota is not only in the Pom-Pom brigade, she is active in many other extracurricular activities like horse riding and playing the piano. She started her career in acting from the age of 5 with a Tide commercial. 10 years of a successful career which includes working with some of the greats in the film industry like Mike Myers and Julia Roberts and also leading a normal life, this is extraordinary and also, many might agree, the most coveted life any celeb would love to have. What do you say?

Miley Cyrus on the Last Song Set

Mark Mcleod, a 53 year old man, has been sentenced to probation of 2 years (24 months) against charges of stalking pop singer and actress Miley Cyrus, reports the Associated Press. The report says the the Miley stalker admitted to “resisting the police guards” during the shooting of her film, “The Last Song”, in the coast of Georgia in an island called Tybee. He was reported to have announced himself as being engaged to her. This incident occurred in early August this year. McLeod had been jailed since then while investigations were being done.

The grand jury of the Chatham county of Savannah, on Wednesday, had carefully studied the matter and realized that there was no hard charges against the man. The prosecutors had imposed charges against felony at that time. Later, though, the charges were decreased and McLeod had 2 lesser grave charges to face, one showing misconduct towards the police and second, attempting to stalk the 16 year old star. Defending McLeod, lawyer James Byrne assured that his client was innocent and he would never pose such a kind of threat to Cyrus. The prosecutors quite disagreed to this but still decided to drop the felony charges against McLeod.

On Friday morning, when the court came to session, McLeod admitted to being guilty of the lower charges and he received a sentence of 2 years of probation and an assessment in a mental health facility. He was also ordered to be far from Miley.

An interesting point to see here is that Miley is quite in the center of such psychotic activities around her. A soldier threatening to murder her because he didn’t like her music, a little boy threatening to kill a cat if she doesn’t start tweeting and now this. Is it me or are you thinking too, is this “the last song” or is it another “fly on the wall”?

Michael Jackson's "This Is It"

Sony released “This is it”, a documentary which traced Michael Jackson’s rehearsals for the would-have-been concert, this Wednesday on the 28th of October. The 112 minutes movie showed footage of the time between April and June when Jackson had been rehearsing for the “sold-out concert” which he was going to stage at the O2 Arena in London. The concert sadly never happened, but some intelligent minds and hardcore fans like Director Kenny Ortega and some Sony Pictures executives brought out this idea of the documentary film. The whole behind-the-scenes régale is a treat to every Jackson fan and brings alive the real charisma of Jackson.

The documentary shows the rehearsals held in Los Angeles at the Staples Center and the Forum. Sony paid $60 million to get the rights of the more than 100 hours of footage. Ortega, who had been the creative director for MJ’s Memorial Service, compiled the interviews, backstage extras and rehearsals into a film that a fan recounts was “overflowed with his energy, passion, and dedication”.

Keeping the global Jackson-appeal in mind this documentary was released in 99 countries including Japan, South Africa, Brazil, China, Norway and the U.S. (of course). Fans all around the world got to see their beloved “King of Pop” at the premiere on Tuesday night. Although the film started at an extremely late hour, fans still remained faithful to their Pop-Czar.

The midweek release of “This is it” earned $7.4 million in U.S. and an additional $12.7 million from around the world. The total grossing in the first day was $20.1 million. This is supposed to be the highest for an October midweek release. For the individual money-scores, U.K. turned out to the highest seller grossing $1.9 million, just a little before France with $1.4 million. The global phenomena can be seen as Japan, Germany and China followed France with $1.2 million, $1.1 million and $730,000 respectively.

These numbers, although, might still turn a sad face for the Sony producers as their sales projections were much higher than this. They had expected a return of $20 million only from the U.S. which was not achieved. It is now to be seen whether the next few weeks will bring in the expected returns of $30 to &50 millions or not.

But, looking at the whole picture, this is a tribute film made for the fans, by the fans, to the fans. Let us just let it remain there and not remunerate them.

What say?

Kate Perry

Kate Perry agrees on twitter. She will be hosting the MTV European Music Awards again this year. “RIGHT! I’m hosting the MTV EUROPE MUSIC AWARDS AGAIN! This time w/MORE outfits, MORE antics! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it eh? YAY!!!” Her excited tweet says. This year the even will be held in Berlin at the O2 World on November 5.

The MTV European Music Awards recognizes the most admired music in Europe in the year. It was held in Liverpool last year which was hosted by Perry. The show saw Perry pulling hilarious tricks and riding on a “giant cherry Chapstick”. Must be because of such a huge success that MTV chose to bring her back again this year. The co-executive producer and SVP of the Talent and Music, MTV Networks International, Bruce Gilmer accepts that Kate Perry was the name that “kept coming back to” them for the hosting of the awards show as the “first choice for this year”.

The American 24 year old country-slash-pop-star-slash-songwriter is overjoyed with the news as her twitter post reveals. Adding to this she is nominated for the Best Music Video for “Waking Up In Vegas” alongside Lady Gaga, Shakira, Beyonce and Leona Lewis. She is all set to do something much bigger this year.

In the past Perry has had quite some good times with MTV EMA. She won the Best New Act award last year and showed the world her “world wide appeal” as praised by Gilmer in her hosting of the event. She now becomes the first star ever to host the MTV European Music Awards for the 2nd consecutive year. This has never happened to MTV EMA in it’s 15 years of the celebration of music.

Looking forward to the awards show? It promises to be bigger, much bigger … how excited are you?

"Fame Kills": Tour by Kanye West and Lady Gaga cancelled

The scheduled tour of Kanye West and Lady Gaga has has an unscheduled demise. This tour was going to start from the 10th of november this year and was dubbed as one of the most remuer’ creating experience among all tours.

The announcement was made in New York on Thursday by Live Nation, who were organizing this event. In the announcement no explanation for the cancellation was given. It was just said that the tickets already bought would be refunded. Those bought on the net or by phone would be refunded on their own, automatically, while the ones bought from a counter could get their money back from the counter they bought from.

“Fame Kills”, as the tour was called was to start at Phoenix, curl 34 places around the US and Canada and end in Dallas on the 24th of January 2010. It is quite strange that the tour announced just two months ago would see such an untimely end.

The Grammy Rap awardee, West doesn’t need anymore humiliations after his spunk (to put it mildly) visit to Taylor Swift on the MTV VMA stage a few weeks ago. That incident did some serious collateral damage to his image. Pretty much like the name of this tour. He killed his fame by busting Swift’s award speech and declaring “Single Ladies” by Beyonce as the “best” video.

From then on, life doesn’t seem to be “sweet dreams” for our 34 year old rap-artist. On “The Jay Leno Show”, last month, West agrees that he had blundered big time and hurt “somebody else”. He wants to take time off and “just analyze” how he woulld be getting “through the rest of this life” and how he could improve himself.

That is some serious thinking dude. Now that your tour is off the hook, it’s the perfect time to mull over everything you want to “analyze”.

Mad Men's Matthew Weiner delivering his winning speech in the Emmy Awards 2009

Teary Winners and Funny Speeches

In the part 2 of the Emmy Coverage we bring you all the winners of the 61st Annual Primetime Emmy Awards 2009.

The winning started with the Best Supporting Actress, Comedy which was given to Kristin Chenoweth, for the ABC cancelled show “Pushing Daisies”, who came on stage and gave the winning speech howling away. She thanked Emmy for giving this award to a show that is over. She also made it clear that she was unemployed and wanted to work in shows like “Mad Men”, “30 Rock” and “The Office”.

The next award went to Two and half Men supporting actor Jon Cryer who was overjoyed with the win. Emotionally he declared that before winning the award he thought that award ceremonies were “shallow tokens of momentary popularity” but now he believed that “they are the only true measure of a person’s worth as a human being”. Personal comment: Talk about every person who didn’t win! Feeling sorry for Harris actually!

Toni Collete (”United States of Tara”) and Alec Baldwin (”30 Rock”) were adjudged the Best Leading Actress and Actor for a Comedy show. Rob Lowe who was on stage to give away the award to the Best Leading Man got to play the supporting role in Alex Baldwin’s gag – “I’d trade this (award) to look like him (Lowe)”!

“The Office” won the Best Directing, Comedy (Jeffrey Blitz). The Best Guest Stars, Comedy were taken away by Tina Fey and Justin Timberlake for Saturday Night Live. Best Writing award went to the episode “Reunion” of “30 Rock” (Matt Hubbarb). 30 Rock also won the award for the Outstanding Comedy Series.

In the Reality category, the Best Reality Show host was given to Jeff Probst for “Survivor”. He gave a little speech which ended with a nice moral – “The adventure you are ready for is the one you get. You only live once, go for it!”. The Best Reality Competition Show went to “The Amazing Race” which was it’s 7th consecutive time.

In the Miniseries category, Little Dorritt swept away maximum awards – Best Miniseries, Director (Dearbhal Walsh) and Writer (Andrew Davis). The Best TV movie was won by Grey Gardens, that also got their hands on the Best Lead Actress (Jessica Lange), Supporting Actor (Ken Howard). In her speech Jessica Lange thanked quite a few people among which included co-star Drew Barrymore who laughed and cried and applauded for her down from her seat in the audience. Brendan Gleeson won the Best Actor in this category for his role of Winston Churchill in “Into the Storm” and the Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashil took away the award for the Best Supporting Actress for “House of Saddam”.

Finally coming to the Drama catergory, the Best Leading Actress, Drama was won by Glenn Close (again!!) for the show “Damages”. Close was close to tears accepting the award and says that this character (of a hard-hitting lawyer) is “the character of my lifetime”.

Bryan Cranston won the Best Actor award for his role in “Breaking Bad” on AMC.

The show’s last award for the Best Drama Series was given to 2 times winner “Mad Men” of the private channel AMC. Accepting the award, creator Matthew Weiner stated that he must be the “only person in the room with complete creative freedom”.

Neil Patrick Harris - the host of the Emmy Awards 2009

The biggest TV awards night held in the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles saw a string of awards being given to the deserving members of the television world. Among the winners there were many who were being awarded the second or third time in a row and some were total surprises.

The 61st Annual Primetime Emmy Awards 2009 was hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, who was also nominated for the Best Supporting Comic Actor for his role in “How I Met Your Mother”. He brought to stage a mix of hilarity and drama.

Beginning with the song “Put Down The Remote”, that highlighted the shows in the last season, the large gathering of celebrities that also included notable names like Drew Barrymore and Tom Hanks, was treated to a line of teary eyed winners and laugh-out-loud speeches.

The Emmy gives out awards for the 4 major genres of television – Comedy, Reality, Variety and Drama. For the past few years the ratings for this event have seen a new low. So, the organizers pulled every trick from the book to attract viewers from all over the world. CBS aired the show live and CBS’s online address http://tv.com hosted and are still hosting a number of polls.

The evening was dotted with beautiful dresses, witty quips, emotional moments and a beautiful dance by the Dancing With the Stars duo Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Karina Smirnoff.

Read the next part (The Emmy Coverage – Part 2) to know about the Teary Winners and the Funny Speeches in the Emmy Awards this year.

Kim and Kourtney Kardashian in the Red Carpet of Emmy Awards 2009

Kim Kardashian got an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction scare at the Emmy Awards this year. She buzzed on twitter while freaking out about the zip popping out.

“”FASHION EMERGENCY! My zipper on my gown just all popped & broke on my way 2 Emmy’s! My stylist is meeting me there but I’m FREAKING OUT!!!” tweeted Kim in panic. But the situation was soon rescued by brave soldiers of the fashion world with threads and needles. The tailor present in the green room saved the dress from totally tearing away.

Kim then tweets – “… Ok tailor & stylist on site! They will have to sew my dress on me! DEEP BREATH! … Almost done sewing. …”. And then she appeared in the ivory white one shoulder asymmetrical outfit which looked totally like she was born in it. Hail the wonders of the sew and tuck!

Dress malfunction are not new news, but the way these incidents are occurring, it is alarming. Good that these events have a tailor on the venue.

Anyways, moving on with the Kim-Watch, she didn’t give any interviews on the red carpet! Now is that weird or what? The girl who features in hollywood gossip now and then. Got somethin’ to hide, missy?

Anyways, maybe she doesn’t want to answer another question about her sister Khloe who is going to take her wedding vows soon.

Her other sister, Kourtney Kardashian was around though. With Kim on the red carpet she looked divine in a steel-grey flowing gown from BCBG which accentuated her seven-month pregnant body. She did give a little interview to E! saying “It’s challenging but I still try to be fashionable.” Damn right, she does look beautiful with her hair down and pretty eyes.

N Sync feat MJ on the 2001 VMA

Sunday, September the 13th, will be the night for this year’s MTV Video Music Awards. This year is being dubbed as the year for paying reverence to the Icon of popular music – Michael Jackson. Janet Jackson will be paying tribute to her brother on stage. Some sources also say of a possible gala celebration of MJ’s music by a group of artists.

MJ himself had had his share of amazing times in the awards show in the early years. In 1984 he won the awards for the Best Choreography and the Viewer’s Choice Award for “Thriller”. His performances in 1995 with Slash with the guitar and in 2001, the pop-n’-lock-meets-moonwalk with N Sync were some of the best VMA performances.

Although not much is revealed about the rendition by Janet, but it can be said it would be something immensely special. Hence, a word of advice … be ready to have tears in your eyes.

There will also be other performances by music artists like Kate Perry, Taylor Swift, Pink, Green Day, Muse’, Beyonce’ etc. This might not be in the form of tribute though.

Screenshot of Janet and MJ in the Music Video - Scream

“To you Michael is an icon, to us Michael is family and he will forever live in all of our hearts”, with these few words Janet Jackson displayed her affections for the King of Pop at the BET awards. Michael Jackson’s kid sister, Janet has been trying to cope with the tragic loss of her brother since his death on the 25th of June this year. Her old habit of emotional eating and drowning herself into work is in continuance. She says in a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar’s Laura Brown, that she was doing okay, but it is difficult to believe that he has passed away. The issue with her interview will be coming out in October.

In this interview she reveals delicate details about her relationship with her brother who is 7 years older to her. They were close and she would take care of him during their younger days. “I would shop for him, I would wash his clothes and cleaned his room” affectionately remembers Janet. His habits and quirks are still fresh in her mind. MJ’s fascination to shiny clothes, his “corny” sense of humor, his laughing till he started to cry … everything is fondly registered in her brain. She even recalls his habit of wearing his penny loafers even when they had “huge holes in the bottom”!

Remembering the time they had made the music video “Scream” together, she says “We had so much fun back then. We used to organize our days together”. The video is one of the cutest sibling music video ever. The last time they met was during a family dinner and that day “Dunk” had “laughed so hard that he cried”. That is what Janet calls MJ with love. During the whole interview she used present tense for her brother and then apologized for doing so.

Now that he is not around, Janet Jackson discloses that they are getting through this “as a family”. She is proud of Paris, Prince and Blanket, Michael’s kids, who are showing a brave attitude towards this onerous situation. They are being taken care of by their grandmother Katherine Jackson. Sources say that they would be home schooled now.

Life has definitely changed for the Jackson family. But “the family love will keep them going”, as Janet says for the children. The family love will surely keep them all going.

God Bless the family.