Gossip Boy Chace Crawford Goes Shirtless

As one of the leading male stars on the set of Gossip Girl, Chace takes on the part of Nate Archibald and as expected, perfectly portrays the character's complex role in the elite Manhattan Upper East Side. His charisma and strong presence on screen is irrefutable and fans all over the globe are raving about his every appearance in each episode. Shirtless of fully clothed, for fans, Chace Crawford is still worth the chase.

The 23-year-actor is not entirely new to exposing his body on screen. Having been a model himself, Chace has been experienced in taking his shirt off for shoots and being plunged into hunkdom also entails for him to go bare-chested most of the time. This is especially true for his role in the very racy and risqué show such as Gossip Girl. Among all the male actors in the show, he is almost always the one that zooms in on being shirtless 80% of the time. He is definitely one of the reasons why the teen-oriented show is such a hit among female viewers, teenagers and young professionals alike.

Knowing this, GG production has considered Chace Crawford as a valuable asset to raise the ratings of the show. On a more rhetoric note, his smooth chest, rippled abs and shapely biceps are the show's trump card to allure a higher ranking among female viewership. There was even an episode wherein Chace already refused to take his shirt off for a scene. In an interview, he said that he just didn't see the point of him going bare-chested when the scene doesn't require one.

His looks and rocking body got him into a lot of endorsement deals with fashion labels. In fact, Chace and the rest of the GG cast are already involved in a number of fashion ad campaigns with some of the biggest brands in the world. Recently, there have been rumors of a possible collaboration between him and a famous male fashion brand that once featured big Hollywood hunks such as Edward Furlong, Pierce Brosnan and Patrick Dempsey. However, the said fashion label hasn't confirmed or denied anything about the possible endorsement deal for the actor.

Chace Crawford has already proven himself as one of the hottest young actors of this generation. His stint in GG is a powerful factor that launched his Hollywood career into the stratosphere. However, his acting talents and appealing looks also gave away one and a many reasons to skyrocket his status. Along with this comes his booming popularity. From covers of high-end magazines to posters on the internet, the face of this handsome model/actor/teen idol is everywhere. He's seen frequenting publicized Hollywood red carpet events and gatherings. To top it all off, he has also been dating some of the most beautiful and famous female actresses like Michelle Trachtenberg and singer Carrie Underwood.

Chace Crawford shirtless is a dream, and coupled with the right roles and his seamless acting skills, he becomes a budding Hollywood superstar.

A Computer Engineering student and loves to travel. Reading current news in the internet is one of his past times. Taking pictures of the things around him fully satisfies him. He loves to play badminton and his favorite pets are cats.

Diambil dari:ezinearticles.com

'Twilight': Inside the First Stephenie Meyer Movie

On a March day in Oregon, the sun's as bright as a California morning. That's great news for the locals, but it sucks if you're a vampire. For two weeks, Twilight, the $37 million film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's best-selling novel, has been shooting outside Portland — a location chosen, in part, because the skies are often overcast. Vampires, in Meyer's universe, can go out during the day but have to stay out of direct sunlight. Hence, today's problem. Director Catherine Hardwicke (Lords of Dogtown) has had to scrap an exterior shoot, and, because tomorrow's weather looks annoyingly cheery too, she's been forced to rush into an intense romantic scene between her two young stars. ''We were building a bedroom in 24 hours,'' Hardwicke says later. ''We were just sweating it.''

Fans have been sweating it too. Not since Harry Potter has a book-to-film journey inspired so much enthusiasm — or so much anxiety. The movie will follow the novel closely: Pretty but awkward 17-year-old Bella (Kristen Stewart) moves to a small town in the Pacific Northwest and falls in love with Edward (Robert Pattinson), a heartbreakingly beautiful vampire. Edward also falls for Bella, but his desire for her barely controls his instinct to devour her. It's this combination of passion and danger, of course, that surrounds this teen romance with a halo of epic, doomed love. The girls who have gone crazy for the book have been vivisecting the film's development online. Two girls from the Make-A-Wish Foundation even requested roles as extras. ''You can't make this up,'' Hardwicke says. With a fan base like that, all of Hollywood should have been jousting for the film rights. In fact, the movie almost didn't happen.

In April 2004, Paramount's MTV Films optioned Twilight, but then developed a script that bore little resemblance to it. (It featured night-vision goggles and transformed Bella into a hip track star.) ''They could have put that movie out, called it something else, and no one would have known it was Twilight,'' Meyer says. Fortunately for devout fans of the book, Paramount put the project into turnaround. Then, in 2006, Erik Feig, president of production at Summit Entertainment, tried to make a deal with Meyer. The author had been burned before and resisted. Feig drew up a contract, guaranteeing the writer that the film would be true to her vision, including a promise that ''no vampire character will be depicted with canine or incisor teeth longer or more pronounced than may be found in human beings.'' That did the trick.

Twilight, which will hit theaters on Dec. 12, is no garlic-and-fangs monster tale. It's more Buffy than Nosferatu. Hardwicke, who made her directorial debut with the raw indie hit Thirteen, seemed an ideal match for the material. ''When I read the book, I could almost feel Bella breathing,'' Hardwicke says. She hammered out a script with screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg (Step Up) in six weeks, then faced the daunting task of casting. The wrong choice would throw Twilighters into a tizzy. Hardwicke also wanted to cast an actual teenager to play Bella, which meant finding a teen who could convey Bella's emotional depth and carry an entire film.

Diambil dari:ew.com

Sex and the City 2

Because the first "Sex and the City" movie turned out to be a boxoffice bonanza two years ago, there are a lot of women panting for the sequel, already planning their wardrobe for a girls' night out.

So even if "Sex and the City 2" consisted of nothing but a two-and-a-half hour fashion show, it would draw crowds. But it also has the returning cast members in fine comic form, and it has more cutting-edge humor than the first movie. Critics will carp about the platitudes in the script and about the longueurs in the nearly 2 1/2-hour opus, but for the core audience, there will be no complaints about too much of a good thing. This picture is going to be a smash.

Some of us who enjoyed the outrageous antics showcased in the HBO series created by Darren Star and executed in later years by Michael Patrick King (the writer-director of both films) found the first movie disappointingly bland. Instead of the bracing emphasis on sex, the focus shifted to less scintillating folderol about marriage. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) was jilted at the altar by her true love, Mr. Big (Chris Noth), but snared him in the end. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) also faced a crisis in her marriage but ended up in a clinch with hubby Steve (David Eigenberg). The new movie begins two years later at a wedding -- a gay wedding (in Connecticut). But though the two grooms are pledging their devotion, the gals are learning that marital bliss is more elusive than the first movie implied.

Carrie and Big find themselves at odds over an issue that bedevils many couples: She loves to go out on the town, and he turns out to be a closet TV addict who wants to do nothing more than curl up on the couch watching old movies. Charlotte (Kristin Davis) has achieved her dream life with two children, but the tots turn out to be maddening rather than adorable. Only Samantha (the consistently irresistible Kim Cattrall) remains defiantly single, waging her own personal war against menopause.

These wan domestic squabbles are merely prelude to the movie's major plot development. Samantha is approached by an Arab sheik to devise a PR campaign for his business enterprises, and he offers to fly her and her three gal pals on an all-expenses-paid luxury vacation to Abu Dhabi. (These scenes were filmed in Morocco.) Even in an escapist fantasy, the spectacle of women sinking into this billionaire's paradise at a time of widespread economic hardship initially seems creepy and off-putting. Soon, however, their Arab sojourn takes unexpected turns. First of all, Carrie encounters her old flame, Aidan (John Corbett), at the spice market, but even more importantly, she and her friends run up against the puritanical and misogynistic culture of the Middle East. The rather scathing portrayal of Muslim society no doubt will stir controversy, especially in a frothy summer entertainment, but there's something bracing about the film's saucy political incorrectness. Or is it politically correct? "SATC 2" is at once proudly feminist and blatantly anti-Muslim, which means that it might confound liberal viewers.

Indicative of the film's contradictory stance is a scene in which the ladies perform a karaoke version of Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" in an Abu Dhabi nightclub. An equally outrageous moment comes when the interlopers are rescued by a bunch of Muslim women who strip off their black robes to reveal the stylish Western outfits they are concealing beneath their discreet garb. These endearingly loopy scenes exhibit the tasteless humor that enlivened the TV series on its best nights.

King's script isn't always well-balanced. Carrie's minor marital problems are given way too much attention, whereas the intriguing dilemmas of Miranda and Charlotte are downplayed. Nixon and Davis do, however, share one marvelous scene in which they vent their dissatisfactions with motherhood. It also is a pleasure to see Cattrall flaunt her sexual imperatives in front of her Arab hosts. Noth and Corbett are so appealing that we can sympathize with Carrie's romantic confusion. Liza Minnelli, Miley Cyrus and Penelope Cruz show up for amusing cameos.

Technical credits are first-rate. Cinematographer John Thomas and production designer Jeremy Conway make the most of the exotic locations. Costume designer Patricia Field's outlandish creations will send many viewers to hog heaven. But it's hard to know what King and editor Michael Berenbaum were smoking when they let the film drag on at least 40 minutes too long. Even with its excesses, Carrie and company's excellent Arabian adventure will leave viewers thinking and arguing as well as swooning over the digs and the rags.

Opens: Thursday, May 27 (Warner Bros.)

Production: New Line, HBO, Village Roadshow Pictures
Cast: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Chris Noth, John Corbett, David Eigenberg, Evan Handler, Willie Garson, Mario Cantone
Director-screenwriter: Michael Patrick King
Producers: Sarah Jessica Parker, Darren Star, John Melfi, Michael Patrick King
Executive producers: Toby Emmerich, Richard Brener, Marcus Viscidi
Director of photography: John Thomas
Production designer: Jeremy Conway
Music: Aaron Zigman
Costume designer: Patricia Field
Editor: Michael Berenbaum
Rated R, 146 minutes

Diambil dari: hollywoodreporter.com

Black Swan

I used to think it’d be impossible to watch a movie about madness and that it’d be portrayed so well that I would nearly lose my own mind during the course of the film. That’s the beauty of Darren Aronofsky’s BLACK SWAN; the slow burn nature of the film lets the psychological breakdown of the main character sneak its way naturally into the brain until it begins to bend and twist reality until you can’t tell the difference and before you know it the credits are rolling. That’s exactly what happened to me and it took me quite some time to gather myself and leave the theater. Aronofsky’s vision of a ballet dancer’s fragile mind is exceedingly brilliant and incredibly haunting.

BLACK SWAN is the story of Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), a quiet ballet dancer obsessed with perfection that is thrust into the lead role of her company’s production of Swan Lake. Her director, Thomas (Vincent Cassel) is confident in her ability to play the white swan because of her shy reclusive personality, but wants to push her into discovering her more seductive and sexy side to portray the role of the black swan. The pressure of the role starts to take its toll even when she tries to befriend her rival Lily (Mila Kunis); until she becomes convinced she wants to take the role from her. Nina’s mental health deteriorates rapidly and threatens to destroy her and everything she’s worked for.

Aronofsky has put together a mentally exhausting psychological nightmare that really tested my own ability to decipher what was real and what wasn’t and I couldn’t have been happier to take the stroll down that path. Through the first half of the film I was a little worried that the payoff in the last acts of the film wouldn’t justify the relatively slow pace at the beginning only to have those doubts be totally shattered. Aronofsky has carried over the look and feel from THE WRESTLER with the handheld camera work that follows the action very closely and has a very grainy looking picture.

We get to know Portman’s character very intimately so there’s very little mystery to her arc as a character, but what we learn about the other characters like Thomas and Lily is just enough to make assumptions but their intentions are always in question and mysterious because we too have to question their motives from the point of view of Nina’s mind. Her descent into madness is perfectly done due to Portman’s terrific performance; her portrayal of a dancer striving for perfection has made her movements on the dance floor so stiff and mechanical that her struggle to ‘let go’ feels strained and maddening. The script isn’t ground breaking but Portman, Kunis and Cassel take the relatively simple script and breath an incredible amount of life into the film. Winona Ryder and Barbara Hershey both have limited roles but perform each of them admirably.

It’d be easy to talk for hours about all the subtle visuals used throughout the film designed to make you question your own mind and rather or not you actually saw something happen. So much of the film is masterfully crafted to make you experience Nina’s mental deterioration right along with her and it works astoundingly well. The music is beautiful and gives the film a very grand operatic feel and other times where it’s very sexy and tense but always rounding out the film perfectly.

I have very few problems with the film aside from not feeling like I fully connected with Nina’s emotional journey. There were times I felt for her character but just not as deeply as I’d of liked, but I did connect fully with her mental struggle which makes it possible to overlook the minor flaws I had with the beginning pacing and my emotional disconnect. Towards the end there were some minor CGI hiccups; all of them very brief but still effective in the way they were used.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think BLACK SWAN stood at the top of 2010′s elite group of films. The truth is that Aronofsky has put together a beautiful piece of cinema that is engaging, powerful and chilling. You’d be hard pressed to find a film that combines so many elements of drama, horror with the beauty of classical cinema wrapped in a psychological thriller. BLACK SWAN is a maddening journey through an exhausting psychological nightmare and it’s never been so delightful to endure.

Diambil dari: moviesonline.ca

Narnia's The Dawn Treader a Fun Family Adventure on the High Seas

Review in a Hurry: One of the best Narnia books arrives onscreen more significantly altered than its predecessors, and unfortunately, panders a little too much to its perceived audience. It's still a fun family adventure, but it could have (and should have) been better.

The Bigger Picture: C.S. Lewis' Narnia books are widely thought to be overt Christian allegories, which they are up to a point: Aslan the lion is Jesus, and The Last Battle is an overly preachy reworking of the Book of Revelation. But it's dismissive to think that that's all he and his books were; he drew heavily from many other mythologies as well (the Roman god Bacchus shows up at one point, and not as a dig at paganism either).

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader as a book was far more patterned on Homer's Odyssey than on anything in the Bible, with returning Pevensie siblings Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley)—and their annoying cousin Eustace (Will Poulter)—joining King Caspian (Ben Barnes) and Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) on a sea journey through magical lands to find seven lost lords.

In the wake of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings becoming successful cinematic franchises by staying reasonably faithful to the text, one would have hoped for a similar outcome here. But after Prince Caspian disappointed (no surprise—the original book is the most disappointing read in the series), it seems Hollywood was granted a license to tinker anew.

So now we have a new villain in the story—a green mist that represents sin and temptation, demanding sacrifices and reanimating images of the White Witch just so Tilda Swinton can class up the joint with another cameo. And we have a new quest that involves collecting seven swords, linking together the disparate islands into a common cause. The best new addition involves some business with a wonderfully disgusting sea serpent, which may be contrived but still looks damn cool.

Yet in creating this coherent narrative, the screenwriters have made the movie into more of a caricature. Subtexts about sin and salvation have become blatant texts, which may please a faith-based audience but turn off the more casual fantasy fan.

There is nonetheless much to recommend the movie. Henley and Keynes are charming as ever, and Poulter's turn as Eustace injects a welcome note of comedic cynicism into the sea of sentimentality. Simon Pegg ably succeeds Eddie Izzard as mouse warrior Reepicheep, Bille Brown's sorcerer Coriakin has a fun performance and a sequence in which Lucy inadvertently wishes her life away is brilliantly disorienting and nightmarish.

If box-office returns are sufficient for The Silver Chair to be made, let's have more of that kind of thing. Less Acts of the Apostles, more Orpheus.

The 180—a Second Opinion: The post-conversion 3-D may be substantially better than Clash of the Titans or The Last Airbender, but it's still irrelevant.

Diambil dari: eonline.com

Rapunzel

The story begins with a couple who desperately wanted a child. When the wife finally became pregnant she spied just over the wall behind their home the most succulent rampion (an herb). She pined for it day and night to the point where she made herself sick. As all good husbands do when tending to their pregnant wives and their strange cravings he scaled the wall and tried to steal the rampion.

The property that he was trespassing on was that of a hermit witch, she of course caught the husband in the act. He pleaded for his life so hard that the witch gave him an ultimatum; either leave now with out the rampion or take it to his wife but when his child was born she would be taken from them and put into the custody of the witch. The husband more worried about his wife’s well being chose to take the rampion. When the child was born the witch appeared in the room and confiscated the child, placing her in a tower with no way in except for one lone window at the very top.


The actual story of Rapunzel told in full is not necessarily a story that would comfort a child before sleep, let alone pass the censorship rules for children’s stories.
The child was named Rapunzel and she grew very beautiful. Her hair was something that would make any woman jealous, it was long and the color of spun gold. Everyday the witch came to visit Rapunzel. She would come to the tower and call up “Rapunzel, Rapunzel let down your hair!” Rapunzel would do what as the witch requested. As luck would have it a prince was riding his horse through the forest and heard what had occurred and watched as the witch climbed up the mane of hair to a beautiful girl who resided at the top of the tower. After the witch had left the prince decided to try and climb up to see this beautiful girl.

After climbing up the two began to talk, building a friendship. The prince came to see her everyday after the witch had left. Rapunzel grew closer to the prince, eventually loosing her virginity to him. The witch knew nothing of these rendezvous until one day during her visit with Rapunzel she was asked very innocently “Why don’t my cloths fit me anymore?” it was then that the witch realized what Rapunzel had been doing so she cut off all of Rapunzel’s hair and sent her to a different tower in the dessert far from any civilization.


The prince not knowing the danger that was laid before him went to the tower to see his beloved but found the witch there waiting for him. After a struggle the prince fell out of the tower into a bed of thorns that gouged out his eyes so that he could no longer see. He wondered the forest for years blind.

In the meantime Rapunzel lived in the desert, her hair grew back and she gave birth to a set of twins. The prince eventually made his way out of the forest and into the desert. While there he heard Rapunzel singing and went towards the voice. When he found her she fell on him weeping tears of grief, these tears healed his eyes and allowed him to see again. He rescued his family and brought them back to his castle to live happily ever after.

Diambil dari: suite101.com

Justin Bieber on His Musical Inspirations, His Fans, and Trying to Be a Regular Kid

New York, N.Y.— “I’m crazy, I’m nuts,” Justin Bieber tells Vanity Fair contributing editor Lisa Robinson. “Just the way my brain works. I’m not normal. I think differently—my mind is always racing. I’m just … nuts. But I think the best [musicians] probably are.” Robinson reports that Bieber considers the “best” to be the Beatles, Michael Jackson, and Tupac. “Music is music, and I’m definitely influenced by Michael Jackson and Boyz II Men and people who were black artists—that’s what I like. But I like their voices and I like how they entertain—it’s not about what color they are.”

“Michael [Jackson] was able to reach audiences from young to old; he never limited himself,” Bieber says of the King of Pop, of whom he has a sticker on his bedroom mirror in his tour bus. “He was so broad, everybody loved him, and that’s what my goal is—to basically make people happy, to inspire them, and to have everyone root for me.”

“It’s hard to really balance myself. A regular kid, if he catches the flu, he just gets to go home,” Bieber says of the challenges of trying to be a regular teenager. “But I can’t do that…. Everything is important. But, you know, my sanity is important, too. Even if I’m angry, I’ll just put a smile on my face and fake it. I don’t often fake it—what’s me is me….I know I have to give up a lot of myself, or a lot of a private life.”

Robinson talks to one person who has the most access to Bieber’s “private life” these days, his bodyguard Kenny Hamilton. “I feel like I’ve become an expert at covert operations,” says Hamilton about “friends” (girls) who sneak in to visit Justin on the mandatory one to three days off a week that he gets to just “be a kid.”

Robinson reports that Bieber says he wants to go to the moon, to outer space, but only when it’s 100 percent safe—or maybe just 90 percent—and that he hated school, is tutored on the road, doesn’t read much, but has the best-seller Rich Dad Poor Dad on his tour bus because Will Smith told him to read it. Robinson also reports that he sometimes suffers from insomnia, “I just turn over all night and think. My mind races,” he says. “I think about all the things I didn’t have time to think about during the day—like family and God and things that should be more important but you don’t have time to think about, because you just get caught up [in everything else] during the day.”

Such as the legions of screaming girls. Bieber tells Robinson that he knows girls scream for him because he’s Justin Bieber, but he thinks they might also scream for him because he’s cute. “Not trying to be arrogant, but if I walked down the street and a girl saw me, she might take a look back because maybe I’m good-looking, right?”


Bieber admits to Robinson that he’s O.K. with having a predominantly female fan base. “For younger guys, it’s like [they think] they’re not cool if they come to my concert. That’ll [change], I think; it’ll happen, maybe when I’m 18. But meanwhile all their girlfriends are coming to watch me.” Bieber is also aware that despite his success not everyone will be his biggest fan. “Of course, I think that people are just waiting for that time when I make a mistake and they’re gonna jump on it….There’s gonna be haters,” Bieber tells Robinson. “I know I’m not going to make a life-changing bad decision, as some people have. I’ve seen it happen too many times. I could be my own worst enemy, but I don’t want to mess this up.”

Robinson talks to Bieber’s mom, Pattie Mallette, about her son’s start as an Internet sensation. “I put up a little video on YouTube [under the name “kidrauhl”] for Grandma and some relatives to see, and the next thing we knew, all these strangers were clicking onto it, probably because they recognized the song.” Then, Mallette recalls, “it was ‘Oh look, honey, you have a hundred views.’ Then ‘Oh wow, a thousand views.’… Next thing we knew, thousands and thousands of views. But it never once occurred to me that there would be a music career out of this.”


Mallette also tells Robinson that, after a personal encounter with God, she believes that she and Justin have been put on earth to bring light and inspiration to the world. But Mallette is wary of show business and its potential consequences: “We don’t have yes-men around him. I don’t want him being a diva.”

Robinson also speaks with Bieber’s close friend and mentor, A-list musician Usher. “You could immediately tell that this [was] a kid who has style—he’s a hip kid,” Usher says of Bieber, who he says is like his “little brother.” “It was the antithesis of Disney and Nickelodeon.” A supporter from the beginning, Usher brought Bieber to Island/Def Jam executive L. A. Reid. “I knew what L.A. was gonna do—the same thing he did to me. Let’s bring in employees and we want to see how he reacts to women.”

“I see myself just growing. I didn’t know that any of this was really possible,” Bieber tells Robinson of his future. “I grew up in a really small town with not a lot of money, and I liked singing, but it was just something that was a hobby. As I get into it more, I want to grow as an artist, as an entertainer, and basically perfect my craft. I want to be the best that I can be.”

He’s not the only one who didn’t see his fame coming. When asked if he ever envisioned this level of fame for his grandson, Bieber’s grandfather Bruce Dale responds, “No. Never. He was supposed to be a hockey player.”

The February issue of Vanity Fair is available on newsstands in New York and L.A. on Thursday, January 6, and nationally and on the iPad on Tuesday, January 11.

Diambil dari: vanityfair.com