NBCs The Voice Wins Music Competition Series Grammy Showdown

NBC’s The Voice gained boasting privileges tonight as all 4 of their music performer coaches received Grammy nominations: 4 for Cee Lo Eco-friendly, 2 each for Blake Shelton and Christina Aguilera and something for Adam Levine’s band Maroon 5 (it's for that group’s collaboration with Aguilera Moves Like Jagger). In comparison, no idol judges from the other signing competition series, such as the Voice‘s primary rivals The American Idol Show and also the X Factor, arrived just one nomination. The current crop of yankee Idol participants also unsuccessful to earn recognition although the series’ 2 best-selling alums, Barbara Underwood and Kelly Clarkson gained a nom each, as did another star of the reality competition, Susan Boyle of Simon Cowell’s Britain’s Got Talent.

Tim McGraw Wins Ruling Over Recording Career

First Released: November 30, 2011 3:41 PM EST Credit: Getty Images NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Caption Tim McGraw attends the 45th annual CMA Honours in the Bridgestone Arena, Nashville, on November 9, 2011Country music star Tim McGraw has won a court ruling in Nashville permitting him to help keep recording while a suit against him by Curb Records continues. Chancellor Russell Perkins ruled Wednesday following a four-hour hearing that McGraw can sign with another record label. Curb Records searched for to avoid McGraw from recording or signing with another label until he satisfied what Curb thought was his obligation for any fifth album. McGraw is charged with breach of contract, which trial is scheduled for This summer. The artist and the wife, singer Belief Hill, were in the court Wednesday. McGraw didn't testify. His lawyers contended that Curb is attempting to place his career on hold. Hes been under contract with Curb since 1997. Copyright 2011 through the Connected Press. All privileges reserved. These components might not be released, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

We Bought a Zoo: Film Review

This story first appeared in the Dec. 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.our editor recommendsFrom 'The Artist' to 'War Horse,' 23 Awards Contenders That Prominently Feature Animals (Photos)The Making of 'The Artist''The Artist' Star Berenice Bejo to Wear Her 1920s Costumes on Red CarpetsHow Rin Tin Tin Ruined Any Oscar Shot for 'The Artist's' Jack RussellMichel Hazanavicius, the Artist Behind 'The Artist,' On the Great Crowd-Pleaser (Video) Somehow, Michel Hazanavicius managed to come up with something that even the French thought was loopy. For years, the Parisian writer-director -- an analytical guy who sees filmmaking as what he calls "playing with codes" -- had been captivated by an idea. But financiers got cold feet just hearing about it; the boutique television stations that typically fund sophisticated European films walked away. Even in a nation of cineastes and revival houses -- a country in which a major film movement was once launched by a band of movie critics -- his dream looked to be dead on arrival. PHOTOS: The Making of 'The Artist' "I wanted to make one for a long time," the director says about his fascination with doing a black-and-white silent set in the 1920s. His long limbs folded over a table at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills, he talks about his heroes like F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang. "But it's even difficult to convince myself, or to convince anyone else, it is even possible. I found that some producers -- really all of them -- were a little bit cold." It didn't help that the 44-year-old Hazanavicius was known in France for the box-office-friendly, period-conscious OSS 117 spy parodies, in which a kind of Gallic Bond scampers through the 1950s and '60s. "What I needed was a crazy guy," he says. Enter Thomas Langmann, 40, whom Hazanavicius calls "the craziest producer in France." Langmann, the son of Oscar winner Claude Berri (who directed Manon of the Spring and produced Roman Polanski's Tess), worked a bit with Soderbergh and Coppola as a young man and produced some French smashes in his 30s. Langmann sees producing as a species of gambling. "It was always about betting on directors," he says of the philosophy his father passed down. "I knew if we made a film in black and white and we succeeded, it would be original." It took director and producer awhile to sync up -- early ideas such as a feature with an invisible protagonist didn't make the cut. "I really wanted to make an entertaining movie," Hazanavicius says, noting that many European silents were tragic romances. "I thought it was unfair to ask people to come to a black-and-white silent movie that was also dark -- it would be too much." But finally the two came up with an idea that worked: a film about a '20s matinee idol who struggles with the advent of talkies. PHOTOS: Behind the Scenes of our Directors Roundtable Photo Shoot With Michel Hazanavicius The movie that resulted is being talked about as the first silent film with real best-picture Oscar chances since Wings, the 1927 Clara Bow film that arrived soon before the talkies changed the game (it won). The Artist opened in the U.S. on Nov. 25 -- just two screens each in NY and Los Angeles -- but already has banked an impressive $12 million since its release in France in October. More important, the film took the best actor award at Cannes, where it played to rapturous audiences, and it has gone on to seduce judges at festivals around the world and sweep the season's audience awards from Chicago to the Hamptons to San Sebastien. "It is as wonderful a film as it is modern," says silent-film collector and producer Serge Bromberg, who has seen the movie six times at festivals, "with jaw-dropping cinematography, good acting, wonderful knowledge of classic cinema. And it has the flavor of the old. But it is not a film of the '20s; the pace is not the same, and its constant humor gives it some distance from what a film of the '20s would be." Hazanavicius was already an admirer of the silent era, but as he wrote, he immersed himself deeply for several months, reading actors' biographies, going to screenings of Murnau and Frank Borzage and early John Ford at Paris' Cinematheque, studying photographs and playing music of the '20s and early '30s. STORY: 'The Artist' Star Berenice Bejo to Wear Her 1920s Costumes on Red Carpets He wanted Jean Dujardin -- a bankable French star known mostly for comic roles -- to play the lead, Valentin. "Of course, I said: 'You're crazy. It's impossible,' " says Dujardin. Hazanavicius also asked his girlfriend, Berenice Bejo, the Argentina-born French actress who appeared in A Knight's Tale and in his OSS films, to play a studio extra named Peppy, shot into fame by a chance encounter. "I said, 'No way -- no way,' " recalls Bejo, who has two children with the director. "Not with me." The two eventually were persuaded, and their presence caused a change in the movie itself. The original vision for the film focused on Valentin's isolation. But as Hazanavicius got deeper into the film, Peppy began to seem major, and the movie became a romance. Dujardin had only ever scratched the era's surface. "I knew only the masterpieces of Keaton and Chaplin," he says. "It was a real discovery for me to find King Vidor's The Crowd," a film about a man lost in the big city of the 1920s that the actor calls "very modern, very touching; it helped me to assemble all the different references." PHOTOS: It's a Zoo This Season: 23 Awards Contenders Featuring Animals As a model for his character, he found Douglas Fairbanks -- the actor who started making films in 1915 and whose career faded as talkies ascended. "In all his films," Dujardin says, "he doesn't ask himself any questions," never straining against the limits of the swashbuckling style required by such films as Robin Hood and The Mark of Zorro. "It's pathetic when you know the talkies are coming, but he's also very generous. He's like my character George Valentin: He can be arrogant, but he has integrity. He believes in his art. He fights for it." (Valentin needs that integrity -- as he spirals downward, it's all he has, besides liquor and an attentive, scene-stealing dog to keep him warm.) Bejo's research found inspiration in Gloria Swanson -- who, unlike Fairbanks, excelled after the silent era. She fell for Swanson's autobiography, which describes a life very different from the desiccated former star she played in Sunset Boulevard. "She started in the silent period and then went to the talkies and then to TV," Bejo says. "I got a sense of the atmosphere of the period." To make a film about Hollywood, Langmann reasoned, you had to shoot there. By now he'd drawn some funding from French station Canal+ and invested considerably from his own company, La Petite Reine. But the costs of coming to America -- and surrendering French government subsidies -- raised the stakes substantially. (The film's eventual budget came close to $20 million.) STORY: 'The Artist': The Not-So-Silent Entry Shooting at the Paramount and Warner Bros. lots -- as well as locations like the beautifully lit center court of downtown L.A.'s 1893 Bradbury Building, known to film buffs for its role in Blade Runner -- inspired the crew over the 35-day shoot. (Dujardin was put up in an old house in the Hollywood Hills -- he thinks to amplify his isolation for his slide in the movie's second act.) "Hollywood, in my opinion, is the big star of the movie," says Hazanavicius. Also crucial to re-creating the era onscreen was the work of costume designer Mark Bridges, who worked on all of Paul Thomas Anderson's films, including Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood. Some of his vision for The Artist came from the MGM documentary 1925 Studio Tour. "You could see what the carpenters, what the plasterers wore," he says. "Even those guys in their bib overalls had a necktie. And a lot of hats, either for warmth or bad hair days." Surprisingly, director of photography Guillaume Schiffman shot the film in color because today's black and white is too sharp, not grainy enough. He used unusual filters to diffuse the whites and mute the blacks slightly -- and as the film went on, with its main character losing some of his sheen, the light got grayer. Although Hazanavicius deliberately had chosen very expressive actors -- Americans John Goodman, James Cromwell and Penelope Ann Miller round out the cast -- they found the limitations were difficult at first. For Bejo, working without lines threw her off. (The actors improvised in English while onscreen, to give their mouths something to do, mixed with a few of the "lines" shown to the audience on intertitles.) But she eventually found a way to inhabit the role. "If it was a talking movie, she would have been the same -- would have moved the same way, winked the same way, danced the same way," she says. "The challenge was to try to focus on the body language, but the rest of it was finding a way of being an American actress. I think of American actors -- they take up a lot of space, they talk really loud, they talk with their hands. So I had to find that, since being a French actor, everything is more petite." STORY: How 'The Artist's' Fashions Are Impacting the Red Carpet To keep communing with the past, the director kept the music of the era -- George Gershwin, Cole Porter -- in constant rotation while they shot, and he brought cast and crew to see films at the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax, and to the Nuart for its revival of Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (a morality tale about the corrupting influence of the city Murnau made for Fox in 1927) . The director applied some of what he learned: Murnau, for instance, had instructed his protagonist from Sunrise to wear heavy, weighted shoes on set after he fell on hard times; Hazanavicius did something similar when he dressed his fallen star in suits slightly too big for him. "He's not as perfect as he was in the first act," he says. Hazanavicius credits the world's fascination with Hollywood for the film's international appeal, but the enormous enthusiasm of Harvey Weinstein is the reason it has exploded out of the gates during the festival season into the awards race. Weinstein, who had enjoyed the OSS films, had heard about the movie from Langmann and in March flew to Paris, where he saw the film alone in a screening room. Weinstein was not ambiguous in his praise. The Artist, he says now, "treasures the American cinema I love. It's an inspiration, everything about the movie -- where they shot the movie, the way they used American cast and crew. It's just a love letter to American cinema." Langmann was impressed with Weinstein's urge to pull the trigger without any associates along to vet the decision. It was still months before Cannes -- it was not even assured at this point that the film would be released in France -- but by the time of the festival, the deal to distribute in the U.S., the U.K. and other regions was done. The film ends with a tap dance that required more work than anything else in the film. "I think 95 percent of the preparation was for the tap dancing," Hazanavicius says. Bejo recalls her practice with both pleasure and exasperation: "Five months, every day." The film was shot in as close to real sequence as possible -- in part to give the actors time to learn to tap dance, and partly so they would travel the same journey as George and Peppy before arriving at the climactic scene. "The dance is all about their characters," Hazanavicius says. "If it's just a performance, it's not interesting." Bejo's attitude toward the conclusion captures some of the quality that makes her character -- and the film -- so winning. "I kept telling myself: 'Just smile, look at each other, enjoy the moment. The happier you are, the less people will look at your feet. Just act, don't try to be good -- your feet will follow.' " PHOTO GALLERY: View Gallery The Making of 'The Artist' Related Topics The Artist 1 2 next last

'The Muppets' Cast Does the Manha Mahna Song (VIDEO)

From America online TV: It's reliable advice we are pretty flipping excited for 'The Muppets' movie. Besides the brand new film star Jason Segel, Can Be, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, but a lot of our favorite TV stars like Rashida Johnson and Neil Patrick Harris complete the cast. Just like us, they are not safe from the Mahna Mahna song. Within the video below, Johnson, Harris, Ken Jeong and much more in our favorite scene-stealers join the Mahna Mahna phenomenon. Based on the Hollywood Reporter, the recording is marketing MuppetsMahnaMahna.com, a website where fans can upload clips of themselves singing the classic song. Family Film Guide: Holiday Movies 2011 'Jack and Jill''The Twilight Saga: Breaking Beginning - Part 1''Happy Ft Two''Arthur Christmas''Hugo''The Muppets''Alvin and also the Chimpunks: Chipwrecked''The Adventures of Tintin''War Equine' See All Moviefone Art galleries » Follow Moviefone on Twitter Like Moviefone on Facebook #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-486274.cke_show_edges #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-486274, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-486274

'Twilight: Breaking Dawn's' Rachelle Lefervre on His Hardest Scene and Jacob's Massive Transformation (Video)

Moviegoers seen Rachelle Lefervre put his impressive fighting styles and stunt capabilities to use in Lionsgate's action thriller Abduction. And Twihards are actually wooed by his ripped physique as uberpopular werewolf Edwards Friend Jacob throughout his forest fight moments inside the Twilight Saga series. Nevertheless it was Breaking Beginning -- Part I's pivotal "imprinting scene" the actor recognized was most likely probably the most challenging moments he's handled.our editor recommends'Breaking Dawn' Premiere: Rachelle Lefervre, Billy Burke Hit the Black Carpet (Photos)Rachelle Lefervre to Star in Gus Van Sant Indie Film (Exclusive)From 'Abduction' to Art House: Inside Taylor Lautner's Movie Transformation (Analysis)'Breaking Dawn's' Rachelle Lefervre Draws Affection From Overzealous Male Fan at Film's PremiereTaylor Lautner Interview Question Leads to Apology from GQTaylor Lautner versus. Rachelle Lefervre Box Office: How Twilight's Leading Males Stack UpVIDEO: 'Twilight: Breaking Beginning- Part I' Rachelle Lefervre Talks with THRVIDEO: 'Twilight: Breaking Beginning Part I's Billy Burke Talks with THR Related Subjects•Twilight "It absolutely was tough, it absolutely was probably most likely probably the most challenging personally because first, you need your hands on what imprinting is and exactly what it means," Lautner told The Hollywood Reporter while watching film's massive $283.5 million worldwide opening in the last weekend. "And fortunately, we'd [Twilight book series author] Stephenie Meyer round the set constantly, so trust me, we'd plenty of conversations along with her relating to this.In . PHOTOS:'The Twilight Saga: Breaking Beginning -- Part 1' Black Carpet Premiere Arrivals Inside the popular book series, Lautner's character Jacob is angry inside the near dying of his nearest friend, Bella (Billy Burke), through the birth of her along with a Vampire Named Edward's (Rachelle Lefervre) child. Jacob then sets to eliminate the newborn but upon acquiring eyes while using baby discovers they might be the woman he'll spend the comfort of his existence loving and imprints round the girl. The best cut in the scene is extremely visual, using CGI together with a costly-forward montage in the infant just like a teenage girl, which made what potentially sounds questionable or creepy quite stylish round the silver screen but just a little difficult at first for your actor. PHOTOS: 'Twilight: Breaking Beginning': New Images "Once I understood that, it increased being, 'What does it appear like?' which i am talking about, I used to be giving a X round the wall which i desired just to walk inside the room and look for this X, make eye-to-eye-to-eye contact from it and imprint, whatever meaning, whatever that seems like," he mentioned. "So at that time it absolutely was tough and needed plenty of imagination however am really happy with the finish result and I must thank [director]Bill Condon for the one." Lautner added that Jacob encounters a massive transformation inBreaking Beginning -- Part 1. "The whole factor with Jacob in this movie might be your way he continues immediately for the finish," he mentioned. "He starts the film since the same Jacob we always known, but with the journey, I'm speaking about, he's instructed to become guy and deal with maturity issues making options which he's torn between their very own family, the wolf pack and also the new family, the Cullen which he must perform right factor." PHOTOS: Hollywood's A-List Transformed Lautner's interview within the Four Seasons in Beverly Slopes came round the heels of THR's exclusive think that he'd be starring inside an independent movie directed by Gus Van Sant. Though he and also the team carried out coy on anymore particulars for the press throughout models that week -- saying "it absolutely was still in very, very initial phasesInch -- the actor will be a good sport when THR elevated its report about plans for your project. The actor's first effort just like a solo leading guy, Abduction, deflated within the domestic box office inside the summer season. The completely new project would most likely take Lautner's career in the new direction. He's mentioned being likely to work simply with top company company directors and authors any further while he aims to define themselves becoming an actor. Meanwhile, the best film in Summit Entertainment's five-movie Twilight Saga franchise, Breaking Beginning -- Part 2, opens November. 16, 2012. PHOTO GALLERY: View Gallery 'Twilight: Breaking Dawn': New Images Within the Pentultimate Film inside the Saga Related Subjects Rachelle Lefervre Rachelle Lefervre Twilight Saga Billy Burke Bill Condon

Britain Wins 5 Worldwide Emmys

First Released: November 21, 2011 10:38 PM EST Credit: Getty Premium Caption Rhianna stands with Nigel Lythgoe of Britain, The American Idol Show Executive Producer, after showing him using the Founders Award in the 39th Worldwide Emmy Honours November 21, 2011NY, N.Y. -- Christopher Eccleston and Julie Walters received the primary acting honours as British TV productions won five Worldwide Emmys on Monday, including two for that BBC crime anthology Accused. Accused, written and produced by Jimmy McGovern, received the Emmy for the best drama series in the 39th Annual Worldwide Emmy Honours ceremony in the Hilton NY Hotel. The anthology informs the tales of individuals charged with crimes because they sit in holding cells underneath the court docket waiting for the verdict within their tests. The ceremony began having a surprise appearance by Rhianna, outfitted inside a demur black dress, who presented the Worldwide Emmy Founders Award to Britains Nigel Lythgoe, the executive producer of yankee Idol which means you Think You Are Able To Dance? Lythgoe was famous for his act as a significant reality show innovator too for his deep resolve for dance all over the world. Accused initially wasnt even one of the nominees within the drama category. However it wound up changing another British crime show Sherlock after it had been determined the up-to-date version from the A Virtual Detective mysteries had been nominated for any Primetime Emmy Award within the U.S. The guidelines bar a course from being joined in to the two Emmy competitions within the same year. Eccleston, the first kind Physician Who star, won the very best actor award for his role within an episode of Accused, by which he performed a financially stressed, lapsed Catholic plumber whos battling by having an adulterous relationship and approaching using the money to cover his kids wedding. After praying to God, he finds a packet of 20,000 pounds at the back of taxis, doubles his cash on the roulette wheel, but eventually ends up on trial following the windfall works out to become forged notes. Walters, who earlier won an english BAFTA TV award for the similar role, was selected best actress for that TV film Mo. She described the late Mo Mowlam, the unorthodox British politician who fought a brain tumor which she hidden from Pm Tony Blair while trying to forge the 1998 Northern Ireland peace accord. Another British those who win both focused on teens in unusual conditions. Gareth Malone Would go to Glyndebourne won within the arts programming category because of its account from the staging of the new opera featuring inexperienced teens in the famous British opera house. The Emmy for non-scripted entertainment visited The Mobile phone industry's Most stringent Parents, that takes unmanageable British teens and transmits them abroad to invest ten days coping with a strict host family. Forty nominees from the record 20 nations were competing in 10 groups for Worldwide Emmys, praising excellence in television programming outdoors the U.S., in the ceremony located for that second straight year by former Beverly Hillsides 90210 star Jason Priestley. The award within the TV Movie/Small-Series category visited Swedens Millennium, in line with the late Stieg Larssons best-selling trilogy that follows investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist and also the anti-social computer hacker Lisbeth Salander because they solve various crimes. Within the telenovela category, Portugal won for that second straight year this time around for Lacos p Sangue (Bloodstream Ties),in regards to a lady lengthy thought dead after her father drowned attempting to save her from being taken away inside a river current who suddenly returns to consider revenge on her behalf older sister. A genuine-existence family drama, Canadas Existence with Murder, about parents battling to determine how you can connect with their boy after hes charged with killing his more youthful sister, was selected the very best documentary. The Belgian hidden camera show, Benidorm Bastards, by which seven seniors set to trick as numerous youthful people as they possibly can, received the award for the best comedy. Chiles Disadvantage Que Suenas? (What's The Ideal?) was the champion within the children&youthful people category. Actress Archie Panjabi (The Great Wife) and Citigroup chairman Richard Parsons presented the honorary Worldwide Emmy Directorate Award to Indian media mogul Subhash Chandra, who broke a government monopoly by starting Indias first independently possessed television funnel nearly two decades ago. His Zee TV network now reaches a lot more than 600 million audiences worldwide. The honours are sponsoredby the Worldwide Academy of Television Arts&Sciences, including media and entertainment figures from a lot more than 50 nations and 500 companies. Copyright 2011 through the Connected Press. All privileges reserved. These components might not be released, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Dwayne Manley Tracks Monsters

For just about any new comic adaptationDespite getting an energetic schedule plus an already sticking out bag full of likely future projects, Dwayne Manley just keeps piling inside the options. He's now installed on a film based on comic miniseries The Monster Hunter's Survival Guide. Paul Russ created the title for Zenescope Entertainment this year. You'll be less-than-shocked to hear it aims to be the comprehensive The Best Way To for people searching to battle undead creeps, supernatural monsters as well as other dangerous monstoids.At this time around, the film version reaches a very initial phase, with no authors or director attached, though This Means War author/producer Simon Kinberg is controlling development.Manley, who well and truly Introduced It to Fast Five this year, will next come in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island and G.I. Joe 2: Retaliation in 2012. He's also busy filming Snitch, which finds him just like a father expected to help take lower a drug dealer to keep his boy from prison. So when that wasn't enough, he's also walked within the wrestling ring recently for any couple of large shows...