Archive for October 9th, 2008
Lil’ Kim Sued By Record Label for $2 Million
Rapper Lil’ Kim is back in a lil’ legal trouble: this time she’s being sued by her record label for failing to deliver finished tracks as part of her current recording contract.
And who gets their label to spend $12k a month on a house in addition to their home? Oh right, rappers.
Raunchy rapper Lil’ Kim won’t be recording a new album until she can clear up a lawsuit filed by her record label.
In a lawsuit filed earlier this week, record label Brookland Media claims the Grammy-winner hasn’t delivered the tracks she promised after the company spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on recordings and equipment. The label also claims it spent $12,000 per month to rent a house near Lil’ Kim’s New Jersey home.
Tags: New York | Culture | Music | New Jersey | Celebrity | rapper | United States | legal | Lil Kim | lil kim sued
GNR Sets Release Date for ‘Chinese Democracy’
At long, long last, the wildly-anticipated Guns N’ Roses album Chinese Democracy, which has been more than ten years in the making, will finally see the light of day when it is officially released on November 23, 2008.
And, yes, the album will be sold exclusively through that most elite and credible of music retailers: Best Buy.
More than a decade after its conception, Guns N’ Roses’ “Chinese Democracy” will finally see the light of day before year’s end, sources close to the situation confirms to Billboard. As first reported here, the set will be a Best Buy exclusive and will be available Sunday, Nov. 23, rather than the usual Tuesday.
Tags: Culture | Music | band | gnr | Best Buy | album | Guns N Roses | Chinese Democracy | gnr chinese democracy | guns n roses chinese democracy | chinese democracy release date
Charlize Theron to Pay Millions for Wearing a Watch
A warning to celebrities worthy of promoting fine products: be wary of the endorsement deals you sign.
And loathe be the one who would wear more than one watch.
Actress Charlize Theron is being forced to pay millions for wearing a timepiece from a brand other than the one with whom she had signed an exclusive endorsement deal.
For shame!
Charlize Theron will have to pay – perhaps eight figures – for wearing the wrong watch, a Manhattan judge has ruled.
Watchmaker Raymond Weil has already won summary judgment in a federal civil complaint that Theron broke their deal by failing to exclusively wear the pricey timekeeper in public.
Theron and her production company, Denver & Delilah Films Inc., were listed as defendants. The “Monster” star begged out of penalties, but US District Court Judge Colleen McMahon denied the Oscar winner.
“It is obvious that Theron cannot be dismissed . . . she was not an unwary agent,” McMahon wrote, noting that Theron’s initials appeared 10 times on the 10-page contract the actress broke.
Damages will be awarded at a jury trial. The watchmaker is seeking $20 million.
Tags: Culture | hollywood | Celebrity | watch | product | Charlize Theron | endorsement deal | raymond weil
French Writer J.M.G. Le Clézio Wins Nobel Prize for Literature
French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio has become the 14th French writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
On Thursday the Swedish Academy announced that Le Clézio had been awarded the $1.43 million prize.
Amid debate over purported bias against American writers, the Swedish Academy on Thursday awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for literature to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, a cosmopolitan French novelist, children’s author and essayist regarded by some French readers as one of the country’s greatest living writers.
An academy official called him a “citizen of the world”, reflecting a canon of work depicted by the academy as distilled from experience in Mexico, Central America and North Africa and suffused with a quest for lost culture and new spiritual realities.
In its citation, the prize committee in Stockholm called him an “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.” The prize, won last year by the British author Doris Lessing, was worth $1.43 million.
“I am very moved, very touched. It’s a great honor for me,” Le Clézio told Swedish public radio.
He was the 14th French writer to win the prize since it was created in 1901. Previous French winners include Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and André Gide.
Tags: France | Culture | Literature | author | books | writer | Sweden | FRENCH | Nobel Prize | Nobel Prize for Literature | Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio | j.m.g. le clezio | swedish academy
SNL Goes Live With Thursday Night Specials
As NowPublic member mchawk reported Thursday, Sarah Palin may go head-to-head with Tina Fey on an upcoming episode of Saturday Night Live.
But while we wait for that momentous comedic occasion to occur, we’ll have the opportunity to catch more SNL on a night other than Saturday.
Tonight, the first of three prime time specials will air, hosted by Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler, and dubbed humourously as “Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday“.
Saturday Night Live is about to reap the whirlwind of the U.S. presidential campaign with the first of three prime time half-hour specials, Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday – a This Hour Has 22 Minutes-style newscast, delivered by “Weekend Update” faux news anchors Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler. Weekend Update Thursday will air live in the eastern time zone, and “live on tape,” as Larry Sanders used to say, elsewhere.
Last weekend, Saturday Night Live polled 48 per cent above its year-ago telecast. SNL jumped 23 per cent in the polls in just one week – the kind of bump candidates in the middle of an election campaign can only dream about.
More to the point, last weekend’s SNL, hosted by Anne Hathaway and featuring a parody of last week’s vice-presidential debate between Gov. Sarah Palin (R- Alaska) and Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware), was the most sharply written, best performed SNL of the season so far – bucking the usual trend of back-to-back SNL shows growing lamer as the season progresses.
These are heady, momentous days in prime time television, with crucial national elections galvanizing popular opinion. The Biden-Palin debate drew 70 million viewers in the U.S. last week, and nearly two million in Canada – astonishing numbers in a TV landscape where even the most-watched program on TV is lucky if it can break the 20-million barrier. Weekend Update Thursday is just the latest manifestation of a cultural and social phenomenon.
Tags: Culture | TV | comedy | NBC | snl | Saturday Night Live | Amy Poehler | Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday | seth meyers
