Angelina Jolie defends Bosnian directorial debut

By John Irish

PARIS | Thu Dec 2, 2010 7:40am EST

PARIS (Reuters) - Hollywood star Angelina Jolie has hit back at criticism of her directorial debut, saying most people back her portrayal of a love story between a Serbian man and Bosnian woman on the eve of the 1992-95 Balkans conflict.

Speaking in Paris ahead of next week's premiere of a very different film -- romantic action comedy "The Tourist" in which she stars with Johnny Depp -- Jolie said her intention had never been to stoke controversy with her movie set in wartime Bosnia.

Bosnian victims of sexual violence during the 1990s have written to the United Nations, for which the Oscar-winning actress is a goodwill ambassador, saying she didn't deserve the position and did not know enough about the ethnic conflict.

"There's one person who has a gripe," Jolie said.

"The absolute majority of the people, population, the cast, prime minister, president have been extremely supportive," she said, adding that 95 percent of the film's cast had lived through the war.

Jolie has described her movie, which is still untitled, as a love story between a Serbian man and a Bosnian Muslim woman on the eve of the 1992-95 war in which 100,000 people died.

The production team has cut back on filming plans in Bosnia, however, moving some scenes from Sarajevo to be shot in Budapest, after a Bosnian minister canceled the filming permit in October, citing incomplete paperwork.

The move came after the minister met with female victims of the Bosnian war who said they objected to details of the plot.

Jolie, who also wrote the screenplay, said she had initially set out to just write to express her frustrations over how long the international community took to intervene in conflicts.

"It kept leaning toward Yugoslavia at the time, I wanted to learn more about it and the people, the more I read and learnt I was drawn to that part of the world," she said.

"I met artists from that part of the world and found they were extraordinary for what they'd gone through, so I wanted to give them a platform."

The "Tomb Raider" star has asked women war victims in a letter to hold judgment until they have seen the film in which she said "there are many twists in the plot that address the sensitive nature of the relationship between the main characters."

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Eminem and R&B singer Bruno Mars lead Grammy nominees

LOS ANGELES | Wed Dec 1, 2010 11:47pm EST

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Rapper Eminem, riding high on the comeback trail after spending several years battling drug addiction, led the field of Grammy contenders on Wednesday with 10 nominations.

The 38-year-old hip-hop star will compete for the three big awards of album, song and record of the year, as well as in a host of rap categories.

Other leading nominees for the major music awards included rising R&B star Bruno Mars with seven nods, while rapper Jay-Z, flamboyant pop star Lady Gaga and country group Lady Antebellum picked up six nominations each.

Canadian teen idol Justin Bieber, mobbed by young girls everywhere as one of the hottest new commodities in the music world, led a strong international field for best new artist. He will compete for the coveted award alongside a compatriot, rapper Drake; two British bands, Florence & The Machine and Mumford & Sons; and American jazz singer Esperanza Spalding.

Winners in all 109 categories will be announced during ceremonies in Los Angeles on February 13.

Rock bands were largely missing from the leading categories, as pop, hip-hop and country artists grabbed the spotlight.

Indie Montreal-based band Arcade Fire will fly the flag for the rock genre in the album of the year race. Its third release, "The Suburbs," will vie for the Grammys' top honor with Eminem's "Recovery," Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now," Lady Gaga's "The Fame Monster" and pop singer Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream."

Songs nominated for record of the year, a category that honors the artist and the producer, were "Nothin' On You," by rapper B.o.B featuring Bruno Mars; "Love The Way You Lie," by Eminem featuring R&B singer Rihanna; "F*** You," by funk singer Cee Lo Green; "Empire State Of Mind," by rapper Jay-Z & R&B singer Alicia Keys; and "Need You Now," by Lady Antebellum.

Three of those songs -- Eminem's "Love the Way You Lie," Green's "F*** You" and Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now" -- were also cited for song of the year, a songwriter's award. The field was rounded out by "Beg Steal Or Borrow" performed by singer/songwriter Ray LaMontagne, and "The House That Built Me," performed by country singer Miranda Lambert.

EMINEM COMEBACK STRIKES CHORD

Grammy voters love to reward artists making career comebacks, especially if they have overcome an addiction or other personal setbacks along the way, and Eminem fulfills those criteria.

The rapper, whose real name is Marshall Mathers, went almost five years between studio albums. He spent much of his time holed up in his Detroit home battling an addiction to prescription medication, and nearly died of a methadone overdose in 2007.

Eminem returned to the limelight in May 2009 with "Relapse," one of the biggest sellers of the year. It also won two Grammys in January, bringing his career tally to 11.

He returned in June this year with "Recovery," which spawned two chart-topping singles, "Not Afraid" and "Love the Way You Lie." The latter tune revolved around a dysfunctional relationship and struck a chord with women, a demographic hitherto underrepresented among Eminem's fan base. It spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the U.S. Hot 100 chart during the summer.

He has never won the album of the year award, and famously lost the race in 2001 to an unheralded album by veteran rock duo Steely Dan.

Bruno Mars, whose real name is Peter Hernandez, reached the top of the Hot 100 with "Just the Way You Are" in September, days after he was arrested on a cocaine charge in Las Vegas. The song marked his first charting single as a lead artist and it spent four weeks at No. 1. He previously went to No. 1 in May as the featured artist on B.o.B's "Nothin' On You."

( Reporting by Dean Goodman; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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Marshals order Wesley Snipes to start sentence by December 9

ORLANDO, Florida | Wed Dec 1, 2010 7:47pm EST

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - The U.S. Marshals Service has ordered actor Wesley Snipes to report to prison in northwest Pennsylvania no later than noon on December 9 to begin serving a 3-year sentence on tax charges, according to a notice filed in the U.S. District Court in Ocala on Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge William Terrell Hodges later on Wednesday issued an order denying a pending motion by Snipes to remain free while he appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hodges ordered Snipes to surrender himself in accordance with the notice from the U.S. Marshals Service, according to court records.

Snipes has been convicted for willful failure to file federal income tax returns.

The notice tells Snipes to report to Federal Correction Institution McKean in Lewis Run, Pennsylvania.

McKean, 90 miles south of Buffalo, New York, is a medium-security facility for men with an adjacent satellite prison camp for minimum security male inmates, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website.

Snipes' lawyer Daniel Meachum of Atlanta could not be reached immediately for comment.

However, Meachum filed a notice on Wednesday that he will appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal an earlier ruling by Hodges that had rejected Snipes' arguments for a new trial and ordered him to prison.

Snipes was charged in a 2006 indictment with trying to illegally collect a $7.3 million federal tax refund and failing to file tax returns from 2000 to 2005. The indictment included felony tax fraud charges, but Snipes was convicted in 2008 of only three misdemeanor charges of willful failure to file three federal income tax returns.

At his sentencing, prosecutors said Snipes had earned more than $38 million since 1999, but as of that date, had filed no tax returns and paid no taxes. The day of his sentencing, his lawyers brought checks totaling $5 million which they gave to IRS agents during a recess. The lawyers also said Snipes was working to resolve his tax debt in a civil setting.

(Reporting by Barbara Liston; Editing by Jerry Norton)

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Johnny Depp driven "nuts" by French language

By John Irish

PARIS | Wed Dec 1, 2010 3:23pm EST

PARIS (Reuters) - Having trouble with your French conjugations? Struggling to tell masculine from feminine? Fear not. Hollywood's No. 1 francophile, Johnny Depp, is in the same boat.

The 47 year-old star may consider France his spiritual home and have Parisian actress and singer Vanessa Paradis as his companion to help, but like so many before him, the subtleties of the Gallic tongue are proving a little frustrating.

Speaking to Reuters ahead of next week's premiere of action-filled, romantic comedy "The Tourist," in which he stars with Oscar winner Angelina Jolie, Depp smiles when asked how his French is coming along.

"Good? I don't know. It's difficult still, the conjugation ... the masculine and feminine thing," he said in French with a hint of an American accent. Then, he added in slang. "It drives me nuts."

Depp met Paradis in 1998 and the couple now divide their time between the Hollywood Hills and a farm in southern France as well as homes near Paris, Manhattan and the Bahamas.

Taking a break from his usual line of eccentric characters, the star of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" film franchise plays an everyday math teacher in "The Tourist," who gets embroiled in a web of deceit spun by Jolie's glamorous character.

For Depp, France gives his life a measure of simplicity which may have easily been taken away in Hollywood by his superstar status.

"France is everything," he said, puffing on a roll-up cigarette. "It's afforded me the idea of a semi-normal life ... There's something magnetic (here), I don't know what it is."

Set in the backdrop of Paris and Venice, "The Tourist" brings Depp and Jolie together on the big screen for the first time. The pair had not previously met.

Jolie, 35, admits that working with Depp has encouraged her to try a little harder to stretch herself as an actress. To illustrate her point, she said that while making "The Tourist" the actors discussed Maleficent, the wicked fairy godmother character in the film version of "Sleeping Beauty."

"I think before working with Johnny, I would have approached it a little more self-consciously, but having met him and watched his work, you get the sense you should try to have as much fun as possible," Jolie said.

Depp doesn't hold back when asked about what sort of roles suit Jolie. Shakespeare's ultimate femme fatale, Lady Macbeth, is one of his suggestions.

And still inspired by the French, he went one further and offered that the decadence and eroticism of French poet Charles Baudelaire was not beyond Jolie's reach.

"She has a depth, great humor, a healthy amount of rage ... she could bring the 'Flowers of Evil' to life," Depp said.

(Reporting by John Irish; editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

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Cirque du Soleil Jackson show to debut October 2011

LOS ANGELES | Wed Nov 3, 2010 3:32pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The new Michael Jackson-themed Cirque du Soleil show will make its debut in Montreal in October 2011, and tour 26 U.S. and Canadian cities for the next eight months, the Canadian acrobatic company said on Wednesday.

Tickets for "The Immortal World Tour" -- described as a "riveting fusion of visuals, dance, music and fantasy that...literally turns his signature moves upside down" -- went on pre-sale on Wednesday for MichaelJackson.com subscribers and Cirque Club members.

The show is one of a handful of commercial ventures backed by the estate of the late "Thriller" singer. A dance videogame called "Michael Jackson: The Experience" goes on sale in North America on November 23, a DVD set of 40 music videos covering his solo artist career is released on November 22, and an album of previously unreleased Jackson songs is in the pipeline.

Cirque du Soleil said the "Immortal" show will feature 60 performers and will take place in a "fantastical realm where we discover Michael's inspirational Giving Tree -- the wellspring of his creativity.

"The secrets of Michael's inner world are unlocked -- his love of music and dance, fairy tale and magic, and the fragile beauty of nature," the circus company said in a statement.

The show will be written and directed by pop music choreographer and director Jamie King, who worked for 12 years as Madonna's creative director. King was also the mastermind behind the Britney Spears 2009 "Circus" world tour and has worked with Celine Dion, Rihanna, and Mariah Carey.

The "Immortal" show will kick off in Montreal on Oct 2, travel to several Canadian cities before making a week long stay in Las Vegas, and then move on to major U.S. cities in 2012.

Profits will be split 50:50 with the Michael Jackson estate, which protects the singer's name and intellectual property and manages Jackson-related business.

Cirque du Soleil is currently performing shows in Las Vegas inspired by the music of Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

Jackson, 50, died suddenly in Los Angeles in June 2009. His personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, is awaiting trial on charges of involuntary manslaughter.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant, editing by Christine Kearney)

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