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    • "Storm and Grace" best thing from Presley since "Suspicious Minds"

      Presley and husband Lockwood pose as they arrive for the world premiere of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1" at Leicester Square in LondonLOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Some thoughts on Lisa Marie Presley: "Too bad she ain't just like her daddy/Oh what a shame/She got no talent of her own/It's just her name." No, that's not our review. That's Presley anticipating (or reviving) some of the conventional/cynical wisdom about her musical career in "Sticks and Stones," a bonus track on the deluxe version of her new album, "Storm & Grace." She even refers to her own possibly hereditary pout: "She looks bad, she looks mad... ...


    • "Tresspassing" gives glimpses into the true Adam Lambert
      LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Well, the upcoming movie adaptation of "Fifty Shades of Grey" has its theme song, if it wants one. "Chokehold," a provocative track from Adam Lambert's second album, sounds tailor-made for the S&M occasion: "Sheets are in a knot... I kinda like the pain... I keep running away from you, but I can't stop breaking the chains." Madam Ana, he's Adam. Lambert may play the submissive in "Chokehold," but through the rest of "Trespassing," he's trying to assert himself in a way that he didn't on his debut album. ...
    • "Dark Shadows": What the critics think of Johnny Depp's latest

      Actor Johnny Depp arrives for the European premiere of Dark Shadows at the Empire, Leicester Square in central LondonLOS ANGELES (TheWrap) - America's top critics are branding "Dark Shadows" frightful for all the wrong reasons. From the Wall Street Journal to the Los Angeles Times, the reviews for the latest collaboration between Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are frosty, with the Warner Bros. film receiving a mediocre 41 percent "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes. ...


    • Review: Willie Nelson's son also rises on "Heroes"
      LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Everyone remembers the most galvanizing moment of this year's Grammys - when the telecast cut to commercial and, over a Chipotle ad, we heard a studio recording of Willie Nelson singing Coldplay's "The Scientist." You can relive that very special Grammy moment (minus the environmentally themed animation and Chipotle logo) at the climax of Nelson's new album, "Heroes," a mostly satisfying grab-bag of celebrity duets, nepotism, odes to wacky weed and interpretations of everyone from Bob Wills to Pearl Jam. ...
    • Review: "Where Do We Go Now?" can't figure out if it's satire

      Mayssa Maghraby arrives at the ''Where Do We Go Now?' premiere during Doha Tribeca Film Festival in DohaLOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Oscar prognosticators were flummoxed when "Where Do We Go Now?" won the audience award at last year's Toronto Film Festival - previous winners like "Slumdog Millionaire" and "The King's Speech" had turned the prize into an Academy Awards bellwether. But this Arabic-language film (with smatterings of Russian and English) didn't exactly fit the mass-market profile of its predecessors. Mainstream audiences heading out to see "Where Do We Go Now?" in its regular release may find themselves similarly confounded, but for entirely different reasons. ...


    • Sissy Spacek on a "fulfilling" career

      Actress Sissy Spacek kneels atop her newly unveiled star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in HollywoodNEW YORK (Reuters) - A faint hint of a Texas accent comes through when Sissy Spacek calls up to talk about her new memoir. Spacek, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of country singer Loretta Lynn in "Coal Miner's Daughter," grew up in a small town, Quitman, Texas, in the 1950s and 1960s, a formative period that imbued her acting roles with "an authentic sense of rural life," in the words of film critic and historian David Thomson. Spacek, whose credits also include "The Help," "Crimes of the Heart," and "Carrie," reflects on her childhood and movie roles in "My Extraordinary Ordinary Life. ...


    • "Girl in Progress" is mother-daughter appropriate
      LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Just in time for Mother's Day, "Girl in Progress" is providing illustrative lessons on how to be the antithesis of an exemplary Mom. The movie's not-so-model single mum eats the last of the cereal and milk before her adolescent daughter comes down for breakfast, is sleeping with a married man and leaves the kid alone overnight while crashing drunk at a new boyfriend's house. She then has the nerve to tell her daughter, "You need to grow up!" In "Girl in Progress," the daughter is trying to do exactly that, way too fast and way too soon for her own good. ...
    • Book Talk: Memory and re-invention with Allison Winn Scotch
      TOKYO (Reuters) - A fear of flying inspired bestselling author Allison Winn Scotch's latest book, centering on a woman who awakes in a hospital with total amnesia, one of two people left alive after a massive plane crash. "The Song Remains the Same" follows Nell Slattery as she tries to piece together her former life even as her nearest and dearest - her husband, mother and sister - all feed her information about who she was in line with their own personal agendas and issues. Scotch spoke with Reuters about her book, identity and who we are without our memories. ...
    • "Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," a sweet, funny fantasy
      LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - From "A Room with a View" to "Enchanted April," it's been a movie truism that British people have to leave Britain if they want to unshackle themselves from their soul-crushing Britishness. And so we have "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," in which a handful of pensioners set off to retire in India, where they learn life lessons, fall in love, and get a second chance at being useful. ...
    • Review: "A Little Bit of Heaven" is a cutesy, cancerous hell
      LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - When "A Little Bit of Heaven" starts unfurling, you can feel the film ticking off the cutesy romantic comedy conventions, one by one: Kate Hudson (check) stars as a free-spirited ad exec (check) who has a gorgeous courtyard apartment (check) in New Orleans, complete with sassy gay neighbor (check) and adorably mush-faced bulldog (check). ...
    • Steve Coll on Exxon Mobil's oil empire

      A view of the Exxon Mobil refinery in Baytown, Texas(Reuters) - Exxon Mobil's vast size and massive profits have often put the oil giant in the crosshairs of critics, and its strict adherence to company protocols and philosophy has created an image of the company as impervious to outside pressure. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll's new book "Private Empire: Exxon Mobil and American Power" sought to delve inside the Irving, Texas-based company to see how it thinks and what drives its decisions. The heavily-researched and reported story of the U.S. ...


    • Review: "The Perfect Family" is far from perfect
      LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - As sure as the Pope resides at the Vatican, the Catholic Church won't be organizing busloads of parishioners for fieldtrips to go see "The Perfect Family." That's because this slight satirical comedy has as its center a woman so slavishly devoted to the church that she has worn blinders for years that keep her from seeing that her own family is falling apart. The film's title, "The Perfect Family," is meant to be ironic with a neon yellow highlighter through it. ...
    • Review: "Smash" soundtrack comes up skimpy
      LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - There's an old adage that goes "Leave ‘em wanting more," and although that may not be a specifically Broadway or TV adage, it's been adopted for the "Smash" soundtrack album, which solves the problem of whether to fill the disc up with pop covers or musical-comedy originals by not offering enough of either. Another five-letter S-word would seem to apply: s-k-i-m-p. ...
    • "The Avengers" is a satisfying superhero sandwich

      Wax figures designed to look like characters from the Marvel Entertainment film "The Avengers" are on display at the "Marvel Superhero Experience" at Madame Tussauds wax museum in New YorkLOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Assembling a team of superheroes is no doubt like putting together an all-star cast - you've got to deal with a lot of clashing egos in a small space and make sure that everyone has his or her moment to shine. Writer-director Joss Whedon pulls off both in "The Avengers," an exhilarating ode to what mainstream comics do best. In my childhood (and, admittedly, parts of my adulthood), I read the "Avengers" comics because they were equally concerned with character interactions and the old biff-bam-pow. ...


    • Review: 'Dark Shadows' retread sucks out the fun
      LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - The original idea of a Tim Burton-directed "Dark Shadows" certainly must have seemed like a good one on paper, with the master of mass-market Goth applying his imagination and a Hollywood budget to the infamously on-the-cheap, Dan Curtis-created cult soap opera that ran from 1966 to 1971 on ABC before spawning various film and TV follow-ups. ...
    • Book Talk: Memory and re-invention with Alison Winn Scotch
      TOKYO (Reuters) - A fear of flying inspired bestselling author Alison Winn Scotch's latest book, centering on a woman who awakes in a hospital with total amnesia, one of two people left alive after a massive plane crash. "The Song Remains the Same" follows Nell Slattery as she tries to piece together her former life even as her nearest and dearest - her husband, mother and sister - all feed her information about who she was in line with their own personal agendas and issues. Scotch spoke with Reuters about her book, identity and who we are without our memories. ...
    • Review: Underwood's "Blown Away" is a breeze
      LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - It's a good thing that you can't judge a book by its sleeve art, because Carrie Underwood's fourth album, "Blown Away," arrives this week bearing one of the tackiest country music album covers of all time - a ludicrously airbrushed portrait that dares you not to focus on Underwood's gleaming, Angelina-like right gam while the star gazes into the distance like a fembot on a romance-novel jacket. It's a relief to find the music inside is better... sometimes, much better. ...
    • Review: Harrison's "Early Takes" is beautifully bare
      LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Back in 2003, the surviving Beatles authorized the release of "Let It Be... Naked," an album of remixes that stripped away the most outlandish production flourishes producer Phil Spector had added to the original "Let It Be" album in 1970. In a way, the new George Harrison release "Early Takes, Volume 1" does the same thing for the former Beatle's Spector-produced 1970 solo debut, "All Things Must Pass," as, among other selections, it offers up six songs from that landmark effort in completely unvarnished form. ...
    • Spoofs take steam out of "Fifty Shades of Grey"
      LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Spanking, sex and submission are raking in profits for erotic novel "Fifty Shades of Grey", reinvigorating marriages and sparking anguished debates among feminists, but there has been one unintended result of the novel - laughter. The best-selling book by British writer E.L. James that has taken pop culture by storm also has become ripe for spoofs and parodies, even as Hollywood is agog over who will play the leads in an upcoming movie. ...
    • Johnson biographer Caro says political genius is his subject

      To match story CARO-JOHNSON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Robert Caro has spent almost 40 years writing his monumental prize-winning biography of President Lyndon Johnson, but says it is not the 1960s leader that held his fascination for so long, but how political power works in America. With the long-awaited fourth volume of his Johnson biography "The Passage of Power" due out on Tuesday, Caro said he never wanted to write just about the life of the president who rammed through civil rights and welfare laws that transformed the nation but then was destroyed by the Vietnam War. ...


    • "Pirates" mostly gets the booty
      LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Pirates are right up there with vampires, werewolves and people saying "LOL" out loud on the list of Played-Out Pop Culture Phenomena, but leave it to the folks at Aardman Animation to find the remaining reservoirs of fun in a bunch of seafaring scalawags. Whether you're besotted with peglegs or sick to death of skulls and crossbones, there's a good chance you'll find yourself enchanted by "The Pirates! Band of Misfits. ...
    • Book Talk: 15 cars that shaped American life

      To match story BOOKS-AUTHORS/INGRASSIANEW YORK (Reuters) - Author and journalist Paul Ingrassia is a passionate car buff who covered the automobile industry for more than 25 years, working for the Wall Street Journal and winning both a Pulitzer Prize and Gerald Loeb Award with Joseph B. White in 1993. In his new book, "Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars," Ingrassia, now the deputy editor-in-chief of Reuters, looks at autos such as Henry Ford's Model T, the Chevy Corvette and the Chrysler Minivan and how each uniquely impacted American life. ...


    • Writer worked to make vampires scary again
      TOKYO (Reuters) - What with romance and suave, sensitive characters, vampires weren't scary enough for author David Wellington anymore. So he decided to see if he could bring some terror back to tales about the centuries-old undead creatures. The result was five books starring policewoman Laura Caxton and Justinia Malvern, the ancient vampire she fights, climaxing in the just-released "32 Fangs" - a chilling, sometimes graphic tale of their final, epic battle. ...
    • "The Innocent" soars to top of bestsellers list

      Calico JoeNEW YORK (Reuters) - David Baldacci's latest novel, "The Innocent," shot to the top of Publishers Weekly best-sellers list on Thursday. The list is compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide. Hardcover Fiction Last Week 1. "The Innocent" by David Baldacci (Grand Central, $27.99) - 2. "The Witness" by Nora Roberts (Putnam, $27.95) - 3. "Calico Joe" by John Grisham 1 4. "Unnatural Acts," Stuart Woods (Putnam, $26.95) - 5. "Guilty Wives" by James Patterson & David Ellis (Little, Brown, $27.99) 2 6. ...


    • Book reveals hidden horror of N.Korean labor camps
      LONDON (Reuters) - "Escape From Camp 14" makes for grim reading. Journalist Blaine Harden's account of a young man's life in and escape from a labor camp in secretive North Korea has drawn parallels with the Soviet gulags and Nazi Holocaust. One big difference is that North Korea's political prison camps, holding an estimated 200,000 people and handing out their own brand of extreme cruelty, are still operating. The story of Shin Dong-hyuk combines a thrilling and unique tale of escape with a harrowing memoir of Camp 14, which lies to the northeast of the capital Pyongyang. ...
    • New literary tourism: read it, watch it, live it

      Handout photos shows a woman drawing on a bow beside a stream at DuPont State Recreational Forest(Reuters) - Fans of "The Hunger Games" will soon have a chance to channel the survivalist spirit of the novel's heroine by zip-lining through a North Carolina forest and taking classes in camouflage, archery, making fire and shelter-building. The woodsy, adrenalin-pumping experiences move beyond traditional tourism for fans of books and the movies they inspire, targeting enthusiasts whose passion wants another portal. "We call this fandemonium," said Tammy Hopkins, co-founder of The Hunger Games Fan Tours in Brevard. "These are the super fans. ...


    • "Chimpanzee" presents sanitized jungle
      LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Chimpanzees eat monkeys. That's one of the big takeaways from "Chimpanzee," the latest in the DisneyNature series of documentaries. We don't get to see this happen in a way that would jeopardize the movie's G rating, of course, but between description (by narrator Tim Allen) and implication, we get the general idea. And while that's certainly educational — it's the first thing that's going to come to my mind next time I need to distinguish between the two animals — the movie's coyness about portraying that fact of life pinpoints the general problem with "Chimpanzee. ...
    • Review: "Lucky One" has Sparks, but no charm

      Efron poses at the premiere of "The Lucky One" at the Grauman's Chinese theatre in HollywoodLOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Nicholas Sparks is a brand name. He's the author of mawkish, bestselling romantic novels that Hollywood keeps turning into even worse mawkish, romantic films, several of which have scored at the box office. The list includes "The Notebook," by far the best and most successful of the lot, as well as "Message in a Bottle," "Nights at Rodanthe," "A Walk to Remember," "Dear John" and "The Last Song." The latest novel of his to arrive on the big screen is "The Lucky One. ...


    • Review: "Think Like a Man" an infomercial that clicks
      LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Were you aware that comedian and radio personality Steve Harvey had written a self-help book for women entitled "Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man"? By the end of the new movie "Think Like a Man," you will have no doubt in your mind that Steve Harvey has written a book entitled "Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man." Mainly because the characters in the movie keep talking about Steve Harvey and his book, "Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man." And even Steve Harvey pops up periodically to discuss his book, "Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. ...