Amanda Bynes, the girl who claims she does NOT party, was arrested Thursday night on charges of drug possession (weed), reckless endangerment (throwing a foot long bong from her apartment window which could have smashed on some unsuspecting pedestrian’s HEAD) and tampering with evidence (getting rid of a BONG out of her window)…

The former child star is reportedly now in a holding cell at night court and will most likely get a hearing Friday morning.

Watch the intense footage of a cuffed Amanda in her now infamous blonde wig being transported by the police (above).

If you are unaware of all the DRAMZ that went down at The Biltmore on W. 47th St. last night, then let us inform you…

Read more »

[Video via Splash News.]

Article source: http://perezhilton.com/2013-05-24-selena-gomez-jaden-smith-justin-biebers-friend-dining-in-london

It was an inspired choice. Mr. Nuttall turns out to be chamber music’s Jon Stewart. Like that television comedian, Mr. Nuttall is a creatively daring, physically talented performer who can go goofball in a nanosecond, maintaining a veneer of entertainment while educating his base about serious matters (classical music, as against politics for Mr. Stewart).

Mr. Nuttall, for all his onstage high jinks, is indisputably a violin virtuoso and an extraordinary musician. In his first three seasons as director, while maintaining the high musical standards of the series, he has established a new style of presentation that juxtaposes the ridiculous with the sublime, delves into serious musicology and casually uses technology. In short, he is subtly redefining what a chamber music concert can be.

The chamber series, which takes place in the historic Dock Street Theater, is part of the array of opera, theater, symphonic, jazz and dance performances that make up the Spoleto Festival, which opened on Friday and runs through June 9.

The festival’s general director, Nigel Redden, notes that given Mr. Nuttall’s popularity, the series has maintained ticket sales in “the high 80 percent” of capacity.

“If classical music is going to continue to have a vibrant audience,” Mr. Redden said, “then audiences need to enjoy themselves and also have their ears refreshed. We need to provide the unexpected.”

That unexpected includes not only zany humor but also difficult works by Xenakis, Cage and Pierre Boulez, Mr. Redden said, and “Geoff has brought us all with him because of his enthusiasm.”

“It’s very Geoff,” Mr. Redden added, “to want to please and challenge at the same time.”

In his comedic role, Mr. Nuttall makes the most of his appearance. At 6 feet tall, he is a bit gawky.

“A coiled preying mantis,” is how the longtime festivalgoer and donor Tish Lynn described Mr. Nuttall. “You fear that at any moment a limb could be launched.”

Ms. Lynn recalled hearing Mr. Nuttall first as a guest artist during the Wadsworth era. “Geoff was an audacious, irreverent bad boy,” she said. “Now, as music director, he takes no prisoners.”

Dr. Layton McCurdy, another Charlestonian chamber music devotee, noted that Mr. Nuttall “always has costume issues.”

“There are those weird shirts,” Dr. McCurdy said. “And he used to wear boots half up to his knees.”

And then there is that changeable hair. Mr. Nuttall’s hair has been long, brown and wavy. Dyed bright yellow. Then spiked. Two seasons ago, when he morphed overnight from a shaggy ’60s hippie to a shaved boot-camp recruit, there was a lot of teasing from musicians onstage, from raucous audience members and from Mr. Wadsworth, who still takes in concerts from a box over the stage, offering the occasional snarky comment. The issue of Mr. Nuttall’s hair became so inescapable that the festival’s Web site now features a photomontage of Mr. Nuttall’s various looks over the years.

The visiting artists go along with his quirks and even egg him on, as if he needed it. Among this year’s artists are the cellist Alisa Weilerstein, the Brentano String Quartet, the pianist Pavel Kolesnikov and the St. Lawrence String Quartet, of which Mr. Nuttall is a founding member. Programs typically mix audience favorites by Schubert, Beethoven and Vivaldi with works of lesser-knowns like Johann Friedrich Fasch and Joseph Lanner or the more challenging contemporary fare.

Sometimes there is madcap music, too. Last year the composer Jon Deak’s clever take on vampire lore, “Lucy and the Count (Love Dreams From Transylvania)” had the violinist Scott St. John sporting a Marilyn Monroe wig and lipstick. The production included smoke, satin capes and a bloodstained moon — and a pause in the music when the musicians turned and smiled to reveal plastic fangs.

“Yes, that was over the top,” Mr. Nuttall admitted, sounding not at all rueful.

Mr. Nuttall, 47, took up the violin at 8, when the family moved from Texas to Canada. His sense of humor did not come from his father, a theoretical physicist (“who never cracked a joke,” he said), but more probably from his childhood collection of Monty Python records.

Mr. Nuttall trained at the Banff Center in Alberta and the University of Toronto. With the St. Lawrence String Quartet, founded in 1989, he began performing at the Spoleto Festival in 1995, and they quickly became regular guests. Since 1999, the quartet has been in residence at Stanford University, where Mr. Nuttall teaches. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife, the violinist Livia Sohn, and their two children.

Even though he totes his iPad onstage, he calls himself a Luddite with 10,000 LPs in his living room.He rarely listens to music on CD, he said, finding that the digitization process removes essential information from the sound, making performances less moving. He is just as demanding of live acoustics, and often mentions the natural reverberation at the Dock Street Theater, where the 33 chamber music concerts (11 programs, each played three times) take place.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/arts/music/geoff-nuttall-the-jon-stewart-of-chamber-music.html?pagewanted=all

Amanda Bynes, the girl who claims she does NOT party, was arrested Thursday night on charges of drug possession (weed), reckless endangerment (throwing a foot long bong from her apartment window which could have smashed on some unsuspecting pedestrian’s HEAD) and tampering with evidence (getting rid of a BONG out of her window)…

The former child star is reportedly now in a holding cell at night court and will most likely get a hearing Friday morning.

Watch the intense footage of a cuffed Amanda in her now infamous blonde wig being transported by the police (above).

If you are unaware of all the DRAMZ that went down at The Biltmore on W. 47th St. last night, then let us inform you…

Read more »

[Video via Splash News.]

Article source: http://perezhilton.com/2013-05-23-nicki-minaj-the-other-woman-set-sighting-beautiful

The 19-year-old pop star is asking for $5 million in damages if guests violate a waiver he’s having everyone who visits his Calabasas home sign, according to TMZ, which obtained a copy of the liability waiver and release form. So, basically, don’t talk about the property or anything that goes on there … ever.

• Also

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• 

  See Taylor Swift’s disgusted reaction to Gomez-Bieber reunion

• 

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• 

  Justin Bieber debuts ‘All Around the World’ music video

Before you jump on the “Bieber is an egomaniac” bandwagon, just know that documents like this are fairly common among celebrities. But perhaps the year’s flurry of bad press for the Biebs finally has the YouTube sensation putting his guard up.

PHOTOS: Justin Bieber in concert

The document will legally bind anyone who shares the goings-on inside his home to confidentiality. That includes “physical health, or the philosophical, spiritual or other views or characteristics of the Released Parties [Bieber], along with any and all photographs, likeness, tapes, films, videos and other recordings,” which are all deemed confidential.

“Under no circumstances will you divulge the details of you entering and being on the Property or engaging in the Activities by any means or through any media whatsoever, including without limitation, through photographs, video, blogging, texting, ‘Tweeting’ or posting any such information on any social media site,” the waiver said.

He’s looking at you Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and all your offshoots. That particular part of the paragraph is underlined in the document. Any publication — books, articles, media, etc. — will require “prior written consent in each instance.”

PHOTOS: Celebrity portraits by The Times

There’s also a clause that limits Bieber’s liability for any physical harm that happens on the property, warning visitors of activities that might be “potentially hazardous and you should not participate unless you are medically able and properly trained.” You know, things like “minor injuries to catastrophic injuries, including death.”

The agreement surfaces just months after photos circulated from a party on the property hosted by his pal Lil Twist — he of paparazzo death infamy. The party took place while the Biebs was on tour in Europe and attendees snapped photos inside the home as they reveled with beer, weed and some other party favors, according to the Daily Mail and TMZ.

The “Beauty and the Beat” singer paid $6.5 million for the 7-bedroom, French-style property, which once belonged to Eddie Murphy’s ex-wife, in 2012. It is set on 1.4 acres in a gated community and boasts a 10,000-square-foot main house and includes a library, private movie theater with stadium seating, wet bar, wine cellar and a pond.

PHOTOS: Justin Bieber in concert

Maybe the Biebs is just trying to protect himself, but you know what they say about parties with too many rules … they’re kind of lame. Especially if you can never talk about them again.

ALSO:

Pauly D debuts new hair, good-bye blowout!

Kim Kardashian hits Paris for final vacation before giving birth

Miranda Kerr’s wardrobe malfunction bares much of the model

nardine.saad@latimes.com

Follow Ministry of Gossip @LATcelebs.

PHOTOS AND MORE:

Article source: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/gossip/la-et-mg-justin-bieber-may-sue-guests-parties-nondisclosure-agreement-20130522,0,6770096.story

LOS ANGELES –  Google’s new music service offers a lot of eye candy to go with the tunes. The song selection of around 18 million tracks is comparable to popular services such as Spotify and Rhapsody, and a myriad of playlists curated along different genres provides a big playground for music lovers.

The All Access service represents Google’s attempt to grab a bigger piece of the digital music market as more people stream songs over mobile phones. Such services are also meant to further wed smartphone users to Google’s Android operating system, where the search leader makes money from advertising and transactions on its digital content store, Google Play.

For a monthly fee, All Access lets you listen to as much music as you want over an Internet connection. You can also download songs onto mobile devices for smooth playback later when you don’t have cellphone or Wi-Fi access.

It’s worth a try for the discounted monthly rate of $8 if you sign up by the end of June. Those who sign up later will pay $10 a month, the same amount charged by the main competitors, Spotify and Rhapsody. Either way, you get the first month free and can cancel at any time. All Access works on the free Google Play Music app for Android devices and over Web browsers on computers — but not on the iPhone. (Spotify and Rhapsody work on both Android and the iPhone).

Visually, the app that I tested on Google’s Nexus 4 smartphone is engaging. Iterating on the list-heavy layouts of its competitors, Google Play Music jazzes up the interface by adding plenty of big artist photos along with little animations, including bouncing equalizer bars and screen-size cover art that moves slowly back and forth when a song is playing.

Some of the touch features require a pixie-like dexterity, though. It’s one downside to this solid entrant to the world of unlimited music streaming.

You can re-order songs that are in your queue on the fly — something not offered by either Spotify or Rhapsody. But this takes gripping a very thin digital handle to the left of a song title and sliding it up or down. Because it’s much thinner than the thumb I’m using to grip it, I ended up playing songs that I only wanted to move, or deleting them from the queue by accident (which takes a swipe right or left).

The options icon on each song title (three dots stacked on top of each other) is also tiny and caused frequent mis-taps. This means a lot of accidentally playing songs and mistakenly erasing queues that I had spent time creating.

I wasn’t that impressed by the service’s recommendations, although perhaps it’s because I haven’t used it that much. It recommended artists “like Madonna” even though I don’t really listen to the Material Girl. The top recommendations were the same ones I saw onstage during Google’s official unveiling of All Access last week. Digging a little deeper revealed recommendations for other works by artists whose songs I already own, like Sara Bareilles or Maroon 5. But I could have looked that up on my own.

Where the service starts to get interesting is in its radio function. Like other Internet radio plans, it takes some traits of a particular song and finds others like it somehow. Doing this with Reggie Watts’ comedic beat-box tune “(bleep) (bleep) Stack,” I discovered the song fits within a kind of sub-genre of humorous rappers, after it played Flight of the Conchords’ “Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros,” and MC Chris’ “I Want Candy.” I gave these songs a digital thumbs up, which marks them in a playlist so I can find them later.

Google Play Music attempts to do something that Samsung’s Music Hub did before it. Music Hub, which launched last July on Samsung’s Galaxy S III phone, blended four things: a music store, an online storage service, unlimited song streaming and an Internet radio player.

Google’s app does all those things. In addition, because it comes as an update to the existing Google Play Music app, it preserved the music I took the trouble of uploading to my Google Music storage space prior to the revamp.

When Google first launched its music store in November 2011, it merely sold songs or albums a la carte. But it offered users free online storage for up to 20,000 songs, including ones they had bought at other stores such as Apple’s iTunes.

Starting last December, Google’s uploader software added the ability to scan your hard drive for songs and match them with songs Google already has on its servers. That way, you have to upload only the songs Google didn’t recognize. With that, your personal library of owned songs still exists, but the sense of ownership has blurred.

With All Access, you still see your library of owned songs in a place called My Library on the Google Play Music app. A lot of that music is stored online, or in the cloud, and requires an Internet connection to listen to. But you can “pin” a song to download a copy for offline listening, something that Google Play Music and other cloud lockers had offered already.

You can toggle the view in My Library to see everything you can access in the cloud, or just the stuff you can access on the device without a cellular or Wi-Fi connection. If you start running out of space, you basically “unpin” the song to free up the memory, even though your ownership still exists in the cloud.

All Access also allows you to “pin” songs you don’t own. Copies will get downloaded for offline play. Or you can mark songs as favorites by adding them to My Library in the cloud. But because those favorites are stored in the same place as songs you actually own, your sense of ownership will suffer a hit. You might not know which is which until the All Access songs disappear should you ever stop paying the monthly fee.

You can share songs from the app to the Google Plus social network, but there’s no Facebook integration as is the case with Spotify and Rhapsody. It also doesn’t integrate with Twitter’s new (hash)music service, the way Rdio and Spotify do quite well.

Google’s new music service covers the fundamentals of unlimited on-demand music with Google-like solid execution. And with the radio function running on Google’s vaunted ability to tweak algorithms, it adds a healthy dose of serendipity to the mix, turning up songs and artists I wouldn’t have discovered on my own.

That puts it at least on an equal footing with streaming services that have come before it and will persuade some subscribers of those services to switch. Although you need an Android phone to use All Access fully, I don’t believe that in itself will get Apple fans to drop their iPhones. But it’s one more nice thing Android has going for it.

Article source: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/05/23/review-google-music-plan-solid-serendipitous/

Article source: http://www.vulture.com/2013/05/ciara-nicki-minaj-im-out.html

The ‘Bad Romance’ singer was cast as La Chameleón in the violent film after meeting actor Danny Trejo at the Shamrock Social Club tattoo parlour in Los Angeles.

Gaga told Trejo she’d like to work with the film’s director, Rodriguez, and then all it took was a call from Trejo to Rodriguez on behalf of Gaga, E! news reports.

The film, which also stars Mel Gibson, Jessica Alba, Alexa Vega, Sofía Vergara and Charlie Sheen as the US president, sees the US government recruit Machete (Trejo) to battle his way through Mexico in order to take down an arms dealer who looks to launch a weapon into space.

‘Machete Kills’ is a sequel to Rodriguez’s 2010 ‘Machete’, which began as a fake B-movie trailer in Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 ‘Grindhouse’.

News of Gaga’s involvement in the film was first broken by Rodriguez, who wrote on Twitter:

@Rodriguez


Robert Rodriguez

And shortly afterwards Gaga confirmed her film debut by tweeting:

@ladygaga


Lady Gaga

@ladygaga


Lady Gaga

Gaga’s character poster, showing her sporting short blond hair, holding a smoking gun with a full white wolf wrapped around her body, hints at the type of role she is playing:

Watch the trailer above.

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Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/05/23/lady-gaga-machete-kills-trailer_n_3325130.html

Leak investigation, meet Bieber fever.

A national security official in the Obama Administration has emailed the good folks at Lawfare to defend the idea that Fox News correspondent James Rosen broke federal law while reporting.

Consider the analogy he or she uses:

The Department of Justice did not claim that the Fox News
reporter in the Stephen Jin-Woo Kim case committed a crime merely by
publishing classified information. According to the Government’s filing… the reporter in question actively asked people with access
to classified information to break the law by providing him classified
information he could publish. He used false names and “dead drop” email
accounts to do so. In other words, he wasn’t someone to whom a
whistleblower came to disclose information; he was actively asking
people to violate the law, and enabling them to do so. Remember, there’s
no doubt that–assuming Mr. Kim is the guilty party–he violated the law
if he disclosed properly classified information to a reporter.

Let’s look at an analogy. If a reporter finds Justin Bieber’s private
diary on the street and publishes it, that’s journalism (of a sort).
But if she pays someone to break into Bieber’s house to steal the diary,
hasn’t she has aided and abetted, or conspired in, a crime, even if her
intent is to get material to publish? That’s exactly what the
Government says happened here–a reporter soliciting, and aiding and
abetting criminal activity.

I’d like to fix the analogy so that it better reflects the ethical issues at play.

First off, the reporter doesn’t pay someone to break into Bieber’s house. Instead, he pays someone who is already permitted access to the diary, but sworn to secrecy — an assistant who scans its pages into digital format for storage — to leak. That alone would still be wrong, of course.

But we aren’t through.

In the more accurate analogy, Bieber’s job involves wielding extraordinary power on behalf of all Americans; everything he writes in his diary is work-for-hire and bankrolled by the American people, who own it; he has sporadically abused his authority in the past; and recent abuses were only discovered when his assistant passed US Weekly a series of diary pages detailing the pop star’s illegal spying on Americans, his systematic torture of foreigners, and his security detail’s lethal attack on paparazzi! Also, Bieber’s job contract with Americans specifically notes that reporters are to help keep him accountable, and that no one can abridge their freedom to do so.

If all that were factored into the analogy, then it wouldn’t be misleading to compare the behavior of Rosen to a reporter who paid someone to steal away pages from Justin Bieber’s diary.

None of which is to say that Rosen’s judgment comes off particularly well in this case…

Article source: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/05/is-reporting-on-state-secrets-like-stealing-justin-biebers-diary/276109/

“I’ve always worked with very little, but didn’t let that stop me from trying to make big things. A lot of that has to do with just not having the opportunity to have much stuff,” says Bischoff, who lived with his parents and older brother on a sailboat just 12 feet at its widest and 37 feet from bow to stern.

There is a delightful juxtaposition between Bischoff’s minimalist upbringing and home life and his lush, orchestrated music, which he builds one voice at a time. For his most recent album Composed, Bischoff traveled to each musician’s home, recorded each individually and then put all the pieces together on his laptop.

“That’s about as minimal as you can go,” Bischoff says with a laugh.

Bischoff has worked with a wide range of musicians and bands, including experimental pop group The Dead Science, the dark rock project Xiu Xiu, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne and singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer. In 2012, he and the Wordless Music Orchestra performed a sold-out concert to open the Ecstatic Music Festival; this coming weekend, he’ll perform at the Pacific Northwest’s Sasquatch! Music Festival at the Gorge Amphitheater.

“To get the chance to play chamber music in this environment is really exciting,” says Bischoff, who’ll perform along with a string quartet, clarinet, bass and two percussionists (one is his older brother, Korum Bischoff). “We will be playing a mixture of stuff from Composed and some newer work, some of which I debuted at Lincoln Center with yMusic Ensemble late last year. One of my goals is to keep bringing chamber music to different venues. Coming from a rock background, I often forget that playing this kind of music in a rock club or rock festival is strange. I just feel like I am playing in a band, whether I am with an orchestra or a rock band.”

Credits

• Video: Kim Nowacki
• Music: Tracks from Jherek Bischoff’s Scores: Composed Instrumentals appear courtesy of Brassland
• Special Thanks: Erica Farnsworth, Matt Beyer

Article source: http://www.npr.org/event/music/185780540/jherek-bischoff-on-q2-musics-spaces