Culturite

The vampire romance “Twilight” drained the box office in its opening weekend, taking in $70.6 million.

Summit Entertainment announced today that the studio is officially moving forward with the production of NEW MOON, the second installment of its filmed franchise TWILIGHT, the action-packed, modern day vampire love story. The movie will be based on the second novel in author Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series titled, New Moon. The first movie in the TWILIGHT franchise, the self-titled TWILIGHT, arrived in theaters this weekend to sold-out showings.

No Doubt announced they would be coming back next year to play some gigs with the aid of some strange form of fake IM chat window on nodoubt.com.

Gwen Stefani says (We read it so you won’t have to):

“I think we should go out now, I don’t think we should wait. Pack up the babies and get a bunch of nannies. So fun! Would be so spiriting to get out there and play all those songs again.

I think that if we go on tour, it will inspire us to write. I need to see the fans out there.”

Jack Bauer is back.  For lots of 24 fans, that will be enough.  Others, without giving Jack and 24: Redemption a chance, will toss it away as a typical, tired 24 story.  Even though 24 hasn’t been on FOX for nearly two years, after perusing some reviews of Redemption, it’s clear that a great many critics are still bitter over the poor outing that was 24’s season 6.  That’s fine – 24 should have to re-earn the trust of the audience.  But, what can you expect out of a two-hour TV movie like 24: Redemption?  I can’t imagine it’s much more that the 24 team has actually delivered with Redemption, a solid, workman-like tale of Jack Bauer in the fictional African nation of Sangala.  Jack Bauer is Jack Bauer in 24: Redemption – heroic, sacrificial, bad ass. If that isn’t enticement enough, you probably shouldn’t be watching 24 in the first place.

Redemption does set some nice, bouncy balls rolling for January: A vicious Sangala warlord (the Candyman himself, Tony Todd) is leading a coup funded by an American businessman-terrorist (Jon Voight). The President-elect of the United States, Allison Taylor (all hail Tony winner Cherry Jones!), has a son (Eric Lively) who may be targeted by that shady businessman. A preview for season 7 dishes up several more shocking developments, the least surprising being that Jack doesn’t squirm long in front of that subcommittee before he’s back out, exacting muscular justice. Considering 24’s new season will roll out with a very different administration sitting in the real White House, we’ll see if Jack’s interrogation techniques feel old-school or just very outdated.

A newspaper published by China’s ruling Communist Party is blasting the latest Guns N’ Roses album as an attack on the Chinese nation.

Delayed since recording began in 1994, “Chinese Democracy” hit stores in the U.S. on Sunday, although it is unlikely to be sold legally in China, where censors maintain tight control over films, music and publications.

In an article Monday headlined “American band releases album venomously attacking China,” the Global Times said unidentified Chinese Internet users had described the album as part of a plot by some in the West to “grasp and control the world using democracy as a pawn.”

The album “turns its spear point on China,” the article said.

Songs from the album could be heard on Internet sites such as YouTube and the band’s MySpace page on Monday and it was not immediately possible to tell whether China’s Internet monitors were seeking to block access to it.

Monitors use content filters that highlight and sometimes block messages containing words such as democracy. That prompted some Internet users to combine English and Chinese characters in their postings about the album to skirt such monitoring.

China approves only limited numbers of foreign films and recordings for distribution each year, partly due to political concerns but also to protect domestic producers.

It was a day that was supposed to be more fun than Christmas, Hanukkah, and International Talk Like a Pirate Day combined, but as millions of jubilant Americans returned home from Best Buy with copies of Guns N’ Roses’ much-anticipated new album yesterday and tried to log on to drpepper.com to claim their free bottle of soda, they got only disappointment. Despite repeated promises from its manufacturer to furnish every man, woman, and child in America (Slash and Buckethead excepted) with a coupon for a complimentary Dr. Pepper on the day of Chinese Democracy’s release, the Website for the popular tooth-rotting beverage became overwhelmed with demand, resulting in error messages, unloaded pages, and widespread sadness. Was it intentional sabotage on the part of a company that didn’t want to follow through with an expensive promotion? Or just general Web-based incompetence? Axl worked really hard to make this happen, but the day was ruined (we see they’ve actually extended the promotion until 6 p.m. today — and we still can’t download our coupon).

Chris Brown was the big winner at last night’s American Music Awards, taking home three pointy trophies including Artist of the Year. Kanye West was also victorious, winning Favorite Male Rap/Hip-Hop Artist and Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Album for Graduation. For someone who always complains when he doesn’t win an award, West is making it a tradition of giving away the awards he actually does win, with West telling the crowd, “And I want to give this award to [Lil] Wayne, for this year. If it was last year, this would have been my award.” West also ranted during another acceptance speech “We’re going to push this music to the point where it was like in the ’60s, in the ’70s, where you talk about Led Zeppelin and Hendrix and the Beatles. We will be the new Beatles, the new Hendrix,” and capped his big night with a performance of 808s & Heartbreak’s “Heartless.”