08/05/2011
Ryan Reynolds Hit By a Drunk Driver as a Teen
Ryan Reynolds may have the body of a superhero now, but 15 years ago the actor was laid up in a hospital bed after getting hit by a drunk driver in his hometown of Vancouver.
"When I was 19 I was drinking," the Green Lantern star told CTV News. "I was at a bar and I had a few drinks and I thought, 'You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to leave my car here, be responsible.' I started to walk home and I was hit by a drunk driver."
The accident left Reynolds in really bad shape, and he was even in a coma for a few days after. Luckily he had his family to stick by him.
"Broke every bone in my left side... I woke up three days later," he remembered. "And I remember my dad sitting there... (with) a vomit tray. And I guess I had been heaving in my unconscious. And nothing says love like painting someone with three-day-old Gin Rummies. Just soaked the man head to toe in my vomit."
Fortunately Reynolds is fully recovered today, and he even manages to have a sense of humor about that fateful night.
The extremely fit actor joked: "Since then, I've been a rickety, broken mess."
Source: http://www.ivillage.com/ryan-reynolds-hit-drunk-driver-teen/1-a-370138
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Evanescence Tour Will Be 'Straight Up Rock'
Amy Lee tells MTV News the band is preparing to end four-year road hiatus with run of 'big energy' shows.
By James Montgomery
Evanescence's Amy Lee
Photo: MTV News
It's been nearly four years since Evanescence wrapped the tour in support of their The Open Door album ... and in the time since, as any fan of the band will tell you, Amy Lee and Co. spent most days doing anything but Evanescence.
Of course, all that has recently changed. Their self-titled comeback album is due in stores October 11, and the snarling first single, "What You Want," is waiting in the wings. Last weekend, they shot a video for the song, and they're gearing up for a massive world tour.
In a way, you could say they're making up for lost time, which has made the past month a rather hectic ride, indeed.
"We haven't started rehearsing [for the tour] yet, actually. ... It's just been a crazy run-around. We did a big photo shoot in L.A. for a couple days and I've been running around doing a lot of press," Lee told MTV News. "We're putting the album art together, getting the mixes done at the same time — I'm carrying my speakers around everywhere with me and, like, setting them up in different hotel rooms."
Evanescence have also been focused on finishing the track list for their album — a process made easier by the fact that they'll also release a deluxe edition that features all 16 recorded tracks — and finalizing the routing for that aforementioned tour. And then it's full-steam ahead ... regardless of whether everyone's ready or not.
"I wish I had more time to prepare," Lee said of the tour set to kick off in October. "No, we're excited to get back out there. All we can do is just run as fast as we can. Everything's just crammed really tight, from the video to the promo to the rehearsal," she added. "I'm ready to get to rehearsal, because I'm starting to feel like, 'OK, we've got dates booked, we haven't practiced yet.' Starting to get a little nervous, but in a good way. ... [We'll] be back in front of the fans, and feeling that energy again. That's going to be good for my brain."
And when Evanescence do return to the road, what can fans expect? Well, a solid dose of the new album, of course, but also plenty of the old hits too. Of course, Lee can sum it all up pretty nicely.
"It's just going to be straight-up rock. Big energy, this album is just a fast-paced rock ride. Is that dumb to say? Fine, make fun of me," she laughed. "We've got three albums now to pull from so, of course, we want to play the new ones but, of course, we're going to play the old ones too. It's going to be a lot."
Are you looking forward to a new album from Evanescence? Tell us in the comments!
Related Videos Related ArtistsSource: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1668421/evanescence-amy-lee-tour.jhtml
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'Cowboys & Aliens': Jon Favreau Talks Creating Creatures
Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro advised director, who aimed to 'maintain some mystery and surprises.'
By Eric Ditzian
Daniel Craig in "Cowboys & Aliens"
Photo: Universal Pictures
How do you surprise someone who's seen it all — aliens who snatch bodies and aliens with dreadlocks and aliens who bloodily birth themselves from your stomach and aliens who phone home and aliens who eat cat food and great big blue aliens with tails they use for sex?
Forget about the decades of classic extraterrestrial flicks that stream daily on TV, tablets and desktops. This year alone, movies like "Battle: Los Angeles," "Super 8," "Green Lantern" and "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" have hit the big screen, each trying to deliver not only eye-popping visuals but the post-credits comment between friends, "Damn, dude, have you ever seen something like that?"
The answer, all too often and quite understandably, is, "Yes, yes, I have." That's the challenge "Cowboys & Aliens" director Jon Favreau faced as he sought to bring alien baddies to the Old West for a genre mash-up that hit theaters Friday (July 29). Favreau, though, counts himself lucky that he was able to lean on some of the most-established sci-fi players in Hollywood for help. The cinematic result is a race of aliens that land in a down-on-its-luck mining town, start to kidnap residents and eventually reveal themselves as extraterrestrial superfreaks on par with anything we've seen at the theater in recent years.
Earlier this month in Montana, Favreau talked with MTV News about what makes a great big-screen alien, the special-effects decisions that helped his filmmaking process and the advice Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro gave him along the way. (Beware of spoilers below.)
"When you set out to make a movie like 'Cowboys & Aliens,' if you just play it as one joke for the whole movie, you're in trouble," Favreau explained. "You run out of gas after about the length of an 'SNL' sketch. So we really wanted to find an approach that could bear out a whole story. Part of it was identifying what kind of alien movie to make and what kind of cowboy movie to make."
The answer to the alien question was to reach back to classics of the '70s and '80s, before CG glam overtook practical effects as the preferred method of creating otherworldly creatures. "The alien movies I like the most are the ones I grew up with," he said. "It was the pre-CG, almost verging on horror versions of alien films, like 'Alien,' 'Aliens,' 'Predator' and all the Spielberg stuff, and I include 'Jaws' in that, too. They were all the same kind of movie.
"It was before you had computer effects, so you had to, through lighting and mystery and music, slowly reveal the creature. That technique has some somewhat been lost now, thanks to CGI. Even though we have CGI creatures eventually, we do use animatronics and we do use lighting and all the old techniques to reveal them."
The aliens in "Cowboys" have landed in an Arizona town to mine for gold — a metal as precious to humans as it is to these space travelers. What's truly cool about them is their transformative quality: Their faces move and shift to expose layers below, and their bodies open up to unleash hidden, gooey hands. Gross and fascinating and scary, all at once. That's exactly what Favreau was hoping to accomplish.
" 'Predator' and 'Alien': What was fun about those films is, as you saw the creatures, more and more layers were revealed, whether it was armor coming off with 'Predator' [and] weaponry, or in the case of 'Alien,' with the second set of teeth or the metamorphosis that it did from its egg state to the face-hugger to whatever that larval phase was when it busts out of your chest and finally into the big [creature]," he said. "It's the shape-shifting quality of the aliens that I thought was really cool. We wanted to maintain some mystery and surprises with our creature."
To create those surprises, Favreau not only depended on his team of artists and effects masters, but on Spielberg and del Toro. "[Spielberg] was very involved with certain aspects of it preproduction, and one of those aspects was the alien design, because he's been involved with so many," he said. "And now seeing 'Falling Skies' and seeing 'Super 8,' I see that he was not just involved with his own films, but other films and projects he's been producing and overseeing. He had a lot of specific insight into what things were important.
"And Guillermo del Toro, I also know him, and he's masterful," Favreau added. "He always said you've got to get the silhouette right first and then you got to get the color right and then you got to get the detail right, in that order. He's actually somebody who helped out and came in the editing room. I was showing him our animatronic work, because he's very picky about that stuff, and when I knew it passed his muster, I felt very good."
Check out everything we've got on "Cowboys & Aliens."
For breaking news and previews of the latest comic book movies — updated around the clock — visit SplashPage.MTV.com.
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08/04/2011
Kanye West And Jay-Z's Watch The Throne Is 'An Event'
Hip-hop experts and artists weigh in on the highly anticipated joint album.
By Rob Markman
Kanye West and Jay-Z
Photo: WireImage
Jay-Z and Kanye West's Watch the Throne is shaping up to be the most eagerly anticipated album of the year. With that anticipation comes much speculation. Fans, critics and even other rappers themselves are all looking forward to the LP's August 8 release date, trying to predict the impact and outcome of the rap mash-up.
"It should be some big records on there; it's Jay-Z and Kanye West," Jadakiss told MTV News.
Relative rap newcomer Wiz Khalifa also had high hopes, considering the solo legacies Hov and Yeezy have already laid out for themselves. "These are two people who have made great music in the past together, but [also] on their own, so coming together is gonna be an awesome thing," he said. "It can only mean well for hip-hop."
A collaboration of this magnitude yields grand expectations, and while he doesn't doubt their individual greatness, Vibe Editor in Chief Jermaine Hall reminds fans that the Throne are only human. "The expectations are almost unrealistic to match," he said before comparing the duo's artistic plight to that of the late King of Pop. "It seems like Jay and 'Ye could've came up with the second coming of 'Thriller' and people would've been like, 'Yo, that Vincent Price monologue is wack.' It's just impossible to meet those expectations."
Vibe editorial director Datwon Thomas believes that Watch the Throne will meet the hype, mostly because the duo will find inspiration in each other. "One of the things that we've always seen from Jay-Z is the fact that he's always mentioned that he needs inspiration, that he needs a little bit of competition," Thomas said. "Now he's helped groom one of the biggest hip-hop artists of all time and he has him in his own camp."
Elliott Wilson, founder of hip-hop blog Rap Radar, thinks rap needs more collaboration, and in the past few years, too much attention has been paid to soloists. "You know what's lost in hip-hop is the group dynamic," he said before using the Throne's latest single to illustrate his point. "The reason I love 'Otis' a lot is it's so traditional, but yet innovative in a lot of ways. I think the tradition is MC back and forth, pass the mic."
"They got good chemistry already," Styles P said. "That's all it really takes is the good chemistry and the good work ethic and the effort that they've been putting in, but they've been working together for years now, so that shouldn't really be too much of a problem on their own. It's really how the egos blend — that's what I wanna see."
In 2002, Jay-Z dropped Best of Both Worlds with R&B star R. Kelly, but after Kells' personal and legal drama relating to his alleged sex tape with a minor began to surface, Hov backed away from the project. The two reconvened in 2004 on an LP called Unfinished Business, but during that album's subsequent tour, things went awry and the run collapsed. With Kanye and Jay planning a WTT tour, many are wondering how long can they co-exist.
"Are they gonna start fighting over stage lights?" Wilson joked. Thomas doesn't think so; he has faith that if things do get out of hand, there are enough strong personal relationships between the two artists' camps that they will be able to curtail any drama. "If egos start to spark, at the same time, there are enough people to understand that this is a momentous occasion and you can't mess this up," he said.
Jay himself denounced any notion of drama earlier this week when he appeared on New York's Hot 97 and spoke with radio host Angie Martinez, saying the two had a brotherly relationship.
Whatever the case, anticipation for Watch the Throne is at an all-time high. With only days left until it is released on iTunes, fans are clamoring for a listen, wondering just what Jay-Z and Kanye West will bring to the table. Wilson believes that's the way things should be and fans should enjoy the moment. "We love events. That's why the Internet culture is built off of it," he said, "And this lives up to the hype of being an event."
Watch the Throne Week is on! Check in with MTV News every day until Wednesday for exclusive content surrounding the release of Jay-Z and Kanye West's eagerly anticipated LP.
Related Videos Related Photos Related ArtistsSource: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1668441/jay-z-kanye-west-watch-the-throne-experts.jhtml
