It was a super stylish night in Sydney on March 31! From Paris Hilton to Ashlee Simpson, they were some of the famous faces that put their passions for fashion on full-display at the launch of Marquee Nightclub at The … Continue reading
One week from today, the annual Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival kicks off in Indio, CA. The heat hasn’t deterred some of our favorite celebrities from showing up for the musical fun in years past and the 2012 action should be no different. Before we head to the desert to bring you the latest on Coachella bands, stars, parties, and festival style let’s take a look back at all the famous faces that have popped up in the crowd. Also, check out our top ten reasons to get excited for Coachella as we gear up for the big weekend!
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Surviving “The Hunger Games” is no easy feat. It requires discipline, killer instinct, and extreme fitness. I’m pleased to tell you that Amy Wilkinson, Hollywood Crush editor and friend of Movies Blog, has all three of those elements in spades. She also has a fourth key ingredient: willingness to thoroughly embarrass herself on camera for [...]
‘It’s not a fairy tale. That’s what we loved about the books,’ John Paul White tells MTV News about movie’s music.
By Jocelyn Vena, with additional reporting by Matt Elias
The Civil Wars
Photo: MTV News
To accompany the highly anticipated theatrical release of “The Hunger Games” this week, the movie’s soundtrack, The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 and Beyond, also hits the streets.
Featuring a wide-ranging list of musicians including Neko Case, Arcade Fire, Maroon 5 and Kid Cudi, the album’s themes and sounds pay homage to the story’s subject matter of rebellion and war, as well as the film’s setting in a dystopian version of the Appalachian Mountains, thanks to lots of twangy guitars and a handful of country ballads.
One of the soundtrack’s most frequent contributors, the Civil Wars, spoke to MTV News about the opportunity to appear on the film’s album. They not only are on its breakout single with Taylor Swift “Safe & Sound,” (Swift also recorded another track, “Eyes Open”), but their own song “Kingdom Come” also appears on the soundtrack. Both of their tracks are dark, slow and lamenting, and neither member of the Civil Wars could have realized how big the franchise was until they hopped on board.
“I don’t know to this extent [that we thought it was going to be big], but it seemed perfectly primed to fill the next gap,” John Paul White told MTV News. “And what excited me about it was it wasn’t your typical young adult romance. There was some dark underlying things to it, some pretty heavy situations. I just fell for the plot and it was obvious why other people did too. I think it actually earns it [and all the attention]. I don’t think we knew the size of it until doing this and realized how rabid people are for this first release.”
For their work with Swift on “Safe,” they knew they wanted to draw out a darker side of the normally optimistic singer.
“We had all read all the books and we were all fans of all the books and I think we knew with us being a part of the equation that it was probably going to be a little darker than she normally does, which she was fully a part of the idea,” White explained.
“The books are not the cheeriest. It’s not a fairy tale. That’s what we loved about the books,” he continued. “We talked about characters we liked and relationships that we dug, but it all kept leading back to some sort of lullaby. But we didn’t want you to know who’s talking to who. There’s probably four different relationships in the books that can fit that theme. Even if you’ve never read the books, you can make it have some sort of parallel in your life as well, and that was the priority for us.”
And when it came to their solo contribution, Civil Wars’ other half, Joy Williams, explained that they didn’t stray too far from that philosophy. “T-Bone [Burnett] called us up … we both jumped on [the opportunity] having been aware of the book. Out came this sort of, in my opinion, it sounds like this quiet survival song and almost this mantra you sing over to yourself. I’m excited about [the song and the soundtrack] and excited about the company [we keep on it]. I think the soundtrack’s going to be really solid and we’re just stoked to be a part of it.”
For fans wanting to hear the eclectic mix of tunes that made the final cut on the album, the music website Rdio is offering tributes the chance to listen to it for free. The T-Bone Burnett-produced soundtrack is also now available in stores.
Check out everything we’ve got on “The Hunger Games.”
For breaking news and previews of the latest comic book movies — updated around the clock — visit SplashPage.MTV.com.
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Campaign aims to bring African militia leader Joseph Kony to justice for war crimes and for enlisting children as soldiers.
By Gil Kaufman
<P>A campaign to stop the nearly 30-year, brutal rule of African militia leader Joseph Kony became a viral sensation this week. <a href="http://kony2012.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com" target="_blank">"Kony 2012,"</a> started by the group Invisible Children, aims to make Kony's face so famous that authorities will finally be able to arrest him and try him for his crimes. </P><P> </P><P>A 30-minute <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc" target="_blank">documentary</a> released on Monday is one of the keys to the campaign, and as of Thursday it had gotten more than 26 million views. The video details the atrocities carried out by Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army. The campaign appears to be working, as at one point on Wednesday, Invisible Children and #stopkony were trending higher on Twitter than Peyton Manning or the new iPad. </P><P> </P><P>Since 1987, human rights officials say Kony has forcefully abducted more than 60,000 children to be soldiers in his army and reportedly raped, mutilated and killed civilians in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan and displaced more than 2 million people. The leader is wanted for committing atrocities by the International Criminal Court and is being hunted down by 100 U.S. Special Forces advisers and local troops in four Central African nations, according to the <a href="http://bit.ly/AyrDyz"><I>Associated Press.</I></a> </P><P> </P><P>Kony 2012 is an effort to capture Kony and disarm the LRA before a reported window of opportunity closes. One way it plans to do that is by encouraging users to directly message a variety of stars to make use of their Twitter ubiquity to get the word out. Among those listed on the site are: Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Angelina Jolie, Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, Jay-Z, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Ryan Seacrest and Ellen DeGeneres, along with a number of major policymakers. </P><P> </P><P>When users click on the celebs' photos, a tweet pops up that reads: Help us end #LRA violence. Visit kony2012.com to find out why and how. @timtebow Join us for #KONY2012. </P><P> </P><P><a href="http://act.mtv.com/posts/invisible-children-video-joseph-kony/">Get More on Invisible Children at ACT.MTV.com.</a></p>
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The cause of Whitney Houston‘s death has officially been ruled accidental drowning, but that hasn’t stopped the rumor mill from continuing to turn. The coroner’s report says that Houston also had cocaine (which she used "immediately prior to her collapse") and prescription drugs present in her system and suffered from heart disease at the time of her death, and now one of Houston’s family members is trying to pin the troubled singer’s demise on boyfriend Ray J.
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