25 Jul 2014

TV show on Fort Worth mortuary canceled after bodies found

FORT WORTH — A reality TV show focused on the “soul and spice” of the Johnson Family Mortuary has been canceled as a real-life drama unfolds at the east Fort Worth funeral home.

The show, titled Good Grief, was originally scheduled to premiere Wednesday — and then pushed back to early August — on the Lifetime Network.

But then came last week’s startling discovery that eight unattended bodies — seven of them decomposing — had been found inside the mortuary, which was followed by a flurry of accusations, denials and arrests.

It’s game over for The CW‘s new comedies Seed and Backpackers. The smallest network has cancelled and pulled the low-rated comedies after just two airings.

On Seed, a single bartender and sperm donor (Adam Korson) meets offspring that he never knew he had and becomes involved in their lives. The rest of the cast includes Carrie-Lynn Neales, Amanda Brugel, Stephanie Anne Mills, Laura De Carteret, Matt Baram, Vanessa Matsui, Abby Ross, and William Ainscough.

Does the Queen watch Game of Thrones? No. But Cameron bases policy on crime dramas and Biden likes Honey Boo Boo

All hail the golden age of television, in which complex series like The Sopranos and The Wire have been crowned (by some) as the new novels, and the proliferation of DVRs and instant streaming services means we can watch whatever we want, whenever we want. TV is enjoying an unprecedented intellectual moment – even our presidents, prime ministers and monarchs can’t help but admit they tune in.

July 24--Couldn't go to the San Diego Comic-Con? Are you stuck here in New York City like me? That doesn't mean you can't have a comic convention of your own in your home with the help of Netflix.

Movies

'Hellboy' (2004)

"Hellboy" creator Mike Mignola will be at the convention, but you can check out this cinematic adaptation of his magnum opus, courtesy of director Guillermo del Toro, who will also be at the show promoting his new FX series "The Strain." This fun flick stars Ron Perlman as Hellboy, a Nazi-fighting demon.

A group of seniors from living communities across five states are showing that they're never too old to have a light saber duel with Darth Vader, bust ghosts with their proton packs, or go for a bike ride with E.T.

Inspired by a calendar made by a senior living community in Essen, Germany, earlier this year, residents from among the nine Senior Living Communities locations in South Carolina, North Carolina, Indiana, Georgia and Florida decided to make their own calendar recreating iconic movies and television shows. The 18-month calendar features seniors shown in scenes or movie posters from "Star Wars," "E.T.," "The Wizard of Oz," "Charlie's Angels," "Ghostbusters" and more.

Despite bright spots like 'Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,' we've mostly gotten stinkers like 'Sex Tape,' 'Hercules,' 'Transformers: Age of Extinction,' 'Tammy,' and 'A Million Ways to Die in the West'

Hey, Hollywood — just because it’s the dog days doesn’t mean almost every summer movie has to be a dog.

Last year was record-breaking; this year is mind-numbing. Last year we had “Iron Man 3.” This year? “Hercules.” Instead of the fun sequel “Despicable Me 2,” we got the dour sequel “How to Train Your Dragon 2.” Instead of Melissa McCarthy in the surprise hit comedy “The Heat,” we get Melissa McCarthy in “Tammy” — not surprisingly, a flop.

Whether it's the result of a meteor, a fireball, tidal wave or nuclear catastrophe, the Earth has been annihilated on screen hundreds of times over. Here are 10 of the best takes on an eternal theme.

Not with a whimper, but with a bang. Whether it’s the result of a meteor, a fireball, tidal wave or nuclear catastrophe, the Earth has been annihilated on screen hundreds of times over. Sometimes a few survivors battle the elements, marauding bandits or zombies; sometimes, as in the new Australian film These Final Hours, they all know they’re going to die. Welcome to the apocalypse!

A copy of The Expendables 3—the latest in a series of all-star action movies starring major Hollywood figures like Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, and Jason Statham, among others—leaked online Wednesday on various BitTorrent piracy websites. The film has been downloaded nearly 200,000 times since it leaked, according to Variety.

Movies frequently leak online, but the Expendables 3 scenario is a big deal for two reasons. First of all, it leaked before the movie hit theaters—three weeks before its scheduled premiere, to be exact. And secondly, the quality of the leak is unusually high. The earliest movie leaks are usually “cam” copies, recorded via cameras snuck into screenings, then uploaded online. The Expendables 3 copy, however, is taken from a DVD screener—a format usually produced by the movie’s distributor and given to media figures ahead of theatrical release.

Bring on the cliches

There’s a series of electronic beeps over a Tron soundtrack. The screen is filled with a series of green letters and then a psychedelic interface. This is computer hacking, as told to you by any number of 1980′s computer films, oozing with cheesy perfection.

In this week’s new releases, one of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s last films, “A Most Wanted Man,” is a four-star hit. Emma Stone and Colin Firth star in the romantic-comedy “Magic in the Moonlight.”

★★★★ “A Most Wanted Man” (R) “Although the cast is uniformly fine, Hoffman shines in a role that demands not showmanship, but a kind of complexity and contradiction that can be rendered only through the kind of dull character details that he excelled in, accumulating them from the inside out.” – Michael O’Sullivan

The Justice Department is proposing a new federal rule that would require most movie theaters to provide closed captioning and audio description services for people with hearing and vision disabilities.

Closed movie captioning delivers captions only to the seat of a person who wants to see them. In many theaters, the captions are displayed backwards on the rear wall. The customer inserts into the seat's cup holder a reflective panel on a flexible arm that allows the mirror image of the caption to be seen. The captions are not displayed on the movie screen itself, so they're not seen by most of the audience.

The feature-length documentary film about the unfinished “Superman Lives” film is nearing completion. In an effort to raise the finishing funds for The Death of ‘Superman Lives’: What Happened?, producer/director Jon Schnepp released a full trailer featuring plenty of footage from the original film’s early production, as well as interviews with almost everyone involved in the film, except for its roster of actors.

See video: Nicolas Cage Flies Through the Rapture in God-Awful ‘Left Behind’ Trailer

SAN DIEGO – As the Comic-Con International fan convention got underway here on Wednesday night, it became clear that 2014 is the year of the castle.

Starz built a towering one on the trade-show floor to promote “Outlander,” its coming fantasy series about a time-traveling combat nurse forced to marry a Scottish warrior. ABC erected a squat one in the name of “The Quest,” a new reality show that takes 12 people and plops them into a “Lord of the Rings”-style game.

“What’s with all the castles?” one attendee asked, gesturing toward the stone-walled Legendary Entertainment booth. “I feel like I should be wearing a kilt.”

The movie “Snowpiercer” opened to critical acclaim a few weeks ago, but you might have trouble finding it at a theater near you.

In fact, as Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr has noted, a number of good films have either not been released widely, or disappeared from movie theaters before audiences could discover them.

He shares a few of his recent favorites with Here & Now’s Meghna Chakrabarti, including “The Immigrant,” “Fading Gigolo,” “Land Ho!” and “Edge of Tomorrow.”

The last time I shared a list of my favorite films about the Fourth Estate in 2009, I heard from a lot of people.

Even my esteemed colleague Roger Ebert joined the conversation, questioning me for leaving out two contemporary newspaper movies, Zodiac (2007) and State of Play (2009).

Other readers were just as passionate about favorites of theirs missing from my list, including The Paper (1994), Absence of Malice (1981), Nothing Sacred (1937), The Public Eye (1992), Foreign Correspondent (1940) and two versions of The Front Page (1931 and 1974).

BURBANK, Calif. – The word “originality” is a sensitive one for Kevin Feige.

The ebullient president of Marvel Studios – who endorses the statement, “This is a great time to be a comic book geek” – arguably has more influence on the multiplex marquee than any person alive. And the fact that this contribution consists of various incarnations of The Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America and Thor is where the O-word figures in.

“We think that all of our movies are original in their own way,” says Feige, who has produced movies with a combined $8 billion in box office. “Even if there’s a part three, like Iron Man 3 last year, it’s as original as a part three can be.”

An on-duty Hollywood police officer opened fire at a man Thursday in Miami Gardens — a city several miles from his police territory.

Varnelson Ceus, 23, has been arrested and is charged with aggravated assault and a hit and run with injuries, WFOR-Ch. 4 reported.

The officer, whose name hasn't been released, was not hurt in the shooting, which happened about 9:45 a.m. in the area of Northwest Third Court and 199th Street.

The new movie is a thriller about an American woman who goes to Kolkata in search of her missing husband. As she gets closer to the truth, she finds herself at the centre of a dangerous conspiracy.

Vidya Balan—starrer ‘Kahaani’ is getting a Hollywood remake with ‘Deity’, an upcoming film directed by Niels Arden Oplev of ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ fame.

Jose Rivera (The Motorcycle Diaries) and Richard Regen (Tehran) have adapted the Sujoy Ghosh—directed 2012 Hindi film.

Last year’s banner summer at the box-office won’t be repeating itself in 2014 as Hollywood looks set to face its worst warm-weather returns in eight years.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, this year’s box-office is set to finish 15-20% below last year’s, marking the highest year-on-year decline in nearly 30 years. Revenues for the 2014 summer season aren’t likely to crack $4-billion, and with just six weeks left until Labour Day, the slump is all but confirmed.

The THR report cites a lack of big-budget blockbusters this season as the reason for the decline, with the release of Fast & Furious 7 bumped to April 2015 and Captain America: Winter Soldier hitting theatres too early to garner moviegoing momentum. The biggest films this summer — X-Men: Days of Future Past, Maleficent and Transformers: Age of Extinction — have all failed to break the $300-million mark, meaning this could be the first summer where a film has not passed that benchmark since 2001. And with no animated family fare, plus the draw of Netflix, 2014 is looking grim.

Vincent Kartheiser of “Mad Men” has listed his Hollywood bungalow at $808,000.

The 603-square-foot micro-home was featured last year in Dwell. At the center of the walled and gated lot of 2,325 square feet is a vintage bungalow that was built in 1912 and has been reworked into an open-concept pied-a-terre.

The modernist pad features a bed that tucks up into the ceiling when not in use. Its redwood headboard can become a desk. Storage closets and a full bathroom sit behind custom shoji-style fiberglass and steel screens.

Zoe Saldana transforms into Ellen Ripley from "Aliens" while Nathan Fillion taps into his inner Captain Kirk and Chris Hardwick goes "Back to the Future" as Marty McFly in THR's tribute to graphic novels, with the help of illustrator and artist Reid Kikuo Johnson.

Zoe Saldana in 'Aliens'

"I grew up in a very science fiction-driven household. … I’m one of the only people who loved Dune," says Zoe Saldana, who was photographed July 18 at Milk Studios in Hollywood.

"We’re trying to show the biggest imaginable phenomenon that exists in the universe," the director said at the tail end of Paramount's Hall H panel on Thursday.

Christopher Nolan made his first ever trek to Comic-Con with a surprise appearance at the tail end of Paramount's Hall H panel to show off his upcoming sci-fi adventure movie Interstellar.

A new trailer for the film, shown at the panel on Thursday, won't be available to the public online for several more weeks.

When the much-anticipated Britney Spears film "Crossroads" hit theaters in 2002, I was 11 years old and prepared at any moment to break out into the music video choreography for a number of the singer's hit singles. Like hordes of other middle schoolers across the nation, I showed up opening night -- pack of girls in tow -- and went nuts for the touching road-trip tale of childhood friendship everlasting. In the weeks that followed, my friends and I sang "I Love Rock 'N' Roll," on the karaoke machine in the basement, contemplated burying our own BFF time capsule, and solidified ourselves as part of the fan base that allowed the film to gross over $61 million worldwide.

TRANSFER GOSSIP

Juventus midfielder Arturo Vidal has dealt a blow to Manchester United by ruling out a switch to Old Trafford. Daily Mail
And Liverpool are now poised to move for the 27-year-old Chile international with a £42.5m bid. Metro
Celtic defender Virgil van Dijk, 23, is keen on a move to Southampton - but the Scottish club want at least £10m for the Dutchman. Daily Mirror
Atletico Madrid have made a fresh approach to sign unsettled Manchester United striker Javier Hernandez, 26. Times (subscription required)

London Theater Proves There’s Nothing So Enticing as Gossip

LONDON — Members of this nation’s ruling class traditionally high-tail it out of town for the country before summer breaks its first sweat. But I had heard that Henry and Anne and Jane and Katherine and all those Thomases (including the inevitable Cromwell) had reversed that tradition and relocated to the city, where they were said to be thriving.

Having spent a most informative day and night at their rural digs in January, I thought I’d drop in on this attractive, slightly malicious crew for another tasty vivisection of their friends, lovers and rivals. And I have to say that when it comes to dishing the dirt, there’s not a scandalmonger in town who can touch them.

Her Preserve site just debuted; she follows other lifestyle gurus such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Alba, Lauren Conrad, Elizabeth Banks and Alicia Silverstone

Celebrities don’t just want your adoration. They also want to earn your obedience.

Former “Gossip Girl” star Blake Lively, 26, is the latest pretty young thing to rebrand herself as a lifestyle guru, launching her Preserve.us — yes, “preserve us” — website on Monday.

The site follows the much-used pattern of other celebrity lifestyle factories such as Gwyneth Paltrow’s oft-mocked Goop and Alicia Silverstone’s eco-obsessed The Kind Life. Boil each website down and you get three missions: save the world from bad taste and presumed toxins, share the secrets to the perfect life, and expand the use of Mason jars.

Selena Gomez couldn’t escape the paparazzi during her birthday vacation to St. Tropez, and it seems one photographer may have gotten a little too close.

In a video taken on Monday, the singer appears to shove, or at least swat at, a paparazzo who was photographing the star and pal Cara Delevinge as they exited a yacht.

WATCH BELOW

The audio is largely muffled so it’s hard to make out the photog’s comments, but Gomez can be heard demanding “respect.”

As Gossip Cop reported, last week the star’s ex Justin Bieber was ordered to sit for a deposition regarding the former couple’s run-ins with the paparazzi.

FOOTBALL GOSSIP

Celtic defender Virgil van Dijk, 23, is keen on a move to Southampton - but the Scottish club want at least £10m for the Dutchman. Daily Mirror

Rangers manager Ally McCoist is confident injuries picked up on tour by Fraser Aird, Sebastien Faure, Richard Foster and Marius Zaliukas will not lead to long-term absences. Daily Express

Melissa McCarthy is reportedly refusing to attend her cousin Jenny's wedding.

The Tammy star - who is reportedly feuding with the blonde beauty - doesn't want to witness the television host, 41, tie the knot with her fiancé Donnie Wahlberg.

A source told the National Enquirer newspaper: "The cousins were close at one time, but they've grown distant over the past few years."

The cousins fell out after Melissa, 43, allegedly ditched the former Playboy model after her career took off and she sprung into the limelight.

Here are today’s entertainment picks:

v Our Lady of Mount Carmel Festival: Food, music, games highlight the annual event at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, 343 Via Mount Carmel in Youngstown. The festival continues through Sunday.

v St. Demetrios Greek Festival: Greek music, dancers and food highlight the event starting at 4:30 p.m. at St. Demetrios Community Center, 3223 Atlantic St. NE, Warren. The festival continues through Sunday.

v Carlos Jones: The reggae artist plays a free concert from 7 to 9 p.m. at Warren Community Amphitheatre, 321 Mahoning Ave., Warren.

Children’s entertainment is in a mess. This is in no small part due to recent revelations about just what was happening when the stars of earlier generations were producing content.

The high-profile cases of Rolf Harris and Jimmy Savile have troubled the childhood memories of a generation brought up with Jim’ll Fix It and Rolf’s Cartoon Club. Great swathes of content has been disrupted in our collective memory catalogue. But aside from the obvious horror of the crimes committed by these two entertainers, the fallout will prompt us to rethink children’s entertainment in the future.

Buffalo Sabres’ owner Terry Pegula, whose corporate holdings continue to grow, has leased a large portion of the One Seneca Tower’s 31st floor.

Real estate source have confirmed that Pegula Sports & Entertainment has leased just under 20,000-square-feet in the largely vacant downtown Buffalo office building. With the lease, Pegula Sports & Entertainment will be one of the tower’s largest tenants, surpassed only by UBS Financial.

Even with the Pegula lease, the 851,000-square-foot, 38-story building remains less than 10 percent leased.

“We needed more space and there just isn’t a lot of space in our building (First Niagara Center) or the HarborCenter,” said Michael Gilbert, Buffalo Sabres’ spokesman.

Akshay Kumar is going all the way to promote his upcoming film 'Entertainment', as he feels entertainment is a necessity of life.

During a unique promotional event held in Mumbai, Akshay recorded a live song for the film and made his fans sing along.

ALSO READ: Akshay Kumar's alleged love affairs
The actor dedicated the song to world entertainment, and said, "Everyone needs entertainment. Be it us or people in Canada and America, entertainment is everywhere. Cricket is famous in India, but so is entertainment. It is a industry worth million of rupees. Entertainment is the only way to cheer people up. There are many hardships and sorrows in life, and we can only keep ourselves happy through entertainment. So, I thought of dedicating this song to world entertainment."

Mumbai: Acclaimed filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar, who has started rolling the cameras for his next movie "Calendar Girls", is hoping he offers purposeful entertainment to film aficionados.

"Thanks everyone for d messages & wishes on #CalendarGirls. The endeavor's always to provide meaningful entertainment. Will keep you posted," Bhandarkar tweeted Thursday.

The filmmaker, who has earned name and fame with Bollywood movies such as "Page 3", "Corporate" and "Fashion", canned the first shot for "Calendar Girls" Wednesday.

To publicize entertainment events, submit the event name, time and location in writing or by e-mail. The deadline for submissions is noon on Tuesday to run the following Thursday in the entertainment section. All items must include the name and phone number of the person submitting the information. No events will be accepted by telephone. Notices may be sent to Lifestyle Entertainment Calendar, Columbus Telegram, P.O. Box 648, Columbus, NE 68602 or e-mail to col.clerk@lee.net.

Friday, July 25

Platte River Art Gallery — 10 a.m.-5 p.m., lower level of the Columbus Public Library.

Platte County Museum — 1-4 p.m. or by appointment, 2916 16th St. Admission is $3 for adults, under 14 admitted free if accompanied by an adult.

Karaoke — 8:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m. at Westbrook Lanes by “All That Entertainment.”

MUMBAI: Last Tuesday, All India Bakchod, a firm of comedians and impressionists, used its Facebook page to invite applications for internships in Mumbai. A written, sample piece of humour was compulsory with every application.

"Despite advising candidates to sleep over their work and not be in haste, we got 480 applications in the first two days," says co-founder of the company Tanmay Bhat. The firm had got 1,200 applications nationally during an earlier hiring drive in March.

Although positions usually start as interns and barely 4-5 get absorbed, young India seems undeterred. Stand-up comedian and actor Vir Das is a founder of Weirdass Comedy. The Viral Fever, another Mumbai-based company, got 37 lakh views on YouTube for its satire on elections. TVF has a 40-45 member team working on videos. Biswapati Sarkar, creative director, says the firm prefers to concentrate only on the online video format. "We need technicians, editors and get 40 job applications a day from smaller towns and even neighbouring countries," Sarkar adds.

Maggots from a dead pigeon fell from the ceiling of a club on to audience members during a comedy performance.

The dead bird was in an air conditioning unit at Jongleurs Comedy Club at Oceana in Nottingham.

Sean Denton, who felt maggots fall on his head and arm, said audience members were "disgusted" and many walked out.

The club's operators have apologised but said no one had complained on the night and most of the audience "enjoyed the evening".

A movie inspired by the subversive tactics the communities of the Coromandel Peninsula employed to thwart the plans of gold mining companies in the 1980s is about to hit screens around the country.

And filming The Z-Nail Gang proved as much a grass-roots endeavour as the events its story is based on.

New Zealand cinema has a long tradition of telling tales with irreverent or anti-establishment themes and, producer Kylie DellaBarca Steel said, the intention was to produce a tale that could be compared with the likes of Goodbye Pork Pie and Came a Hot Friday.

"The initial seed to the project was planted with writer/director Anton Steel on a snowboarding trip with a close friend who grew up in the Coromandel," she said. "On the drive down to the mountain this friend regaled stories of Santa suited raids, prospectors and police halted by "Z-nailed" tyres and New Zealand flags planted in concrete in toilets."

IF you have ever felt a twinge of antipathy towards a parent, spare a thought for poor, beleaguered Arthur Beare whose mother has held him an emotional hostage for his entire adult life.

In a flurry of excitement, nostalgia and laughter, Maggie and Arthur Beare are back in the house — literally — in this newly minted, stage version of Mother and Son, Geoffrey Atherden’s acerbic, 1980s sitcom.

These two much-loved characters are reincarnated live on stage by Noeline Brown (Maggie) and Darren Gilshenan (Arthur), whose consummate comic skills do justice to these treasured characters originally brought to life by Ruth Cracknell and Garry McDonald.

Atherden’s intimate family comedy, directed by Roger Hodgman, is naturalistic, identification theatre with characters that are still relevant in 2014 and dialogue that is sharp-witted and well observed.

★ James Adomian (Tuesday and Wednesday) A master of impressions, Mr. Adomian headlines two nights of stand-up at Carolines on Broadway. In an article in The New York Times, Jason Zinoman wrote that Mr. Adomian “has a low-boiling energy onstage — confident, jaunty but not aggressive — and his set features solidly constructed, verbally playful jokes enlivened by an uncanny ability to channel a subway crowd or a larger-than-life character.” Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.; Wednesday at 9 p.m., Carolines, 1626 Broadway, at 49th Street, Manhattan, 212-757-4100, carolines.com; $20, with a two-drink minimum; V.I.P. packages, $33.25 and $90.50. (Elise Czajkowski)

This article is part of an exclusive Parade.com series featuring the stars of the Venetian Las Vegas comedy series Lipshtick: The Perfect Shade of Stand Up.

Comedian Loni Love is one of the busiest women in the business. A co-host of Fox’s The Real, she is a frequent guest DJ on The Ellen Show, and a daytime and late-night TV favorite. She’s offered up commentary on VH1′s I Love The ’70s, I Love The ’80s, AND I Love The ’90s, proving that she has a hilarious opinion on just about every piece of pop culture. So I was thrilled when the comedy star recently joined me for the 200th episode of my podcast Whine At 9 to talk about women in comedy and her unusual journey to stand up success.

Brendan O'Carroll's comedy about a working-class Dublin woman and her tribe is more funny peculiar than funny ha-ha, but in some strange way you have to admire it, and him.

Reviewer rating: Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars
Reader rating: Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars (8 votes)

Genre:   Comedy
Running time   :95 min
Director:    Ben Kellett
Screen writer: Brendan O'Carroll
Actors: Brendan O'Carroll, Jennifer Gibney, Eilish O'Carroll , Danny O'Carroll, Fiona O'Carroll, Paddy Houlihan
OFLC rating: M
Year:    2014
Language: English

Over the past two decades the mouthy Dublin matriarch Agnes Brown (or Browne) has appeared in books, plays, and radio shows, as well as a 1999 movie starring and directed by no less than Anjelica Huston. But what really launched her into the stratosphere was the BBC sitcom Mrs Brown’s Boys, which saw creator-star Brendan O’Carroll trotting about in full pantomime-dame mode like a sack of potatoes in a dress (or like Tyler Perry as Madea, the character’s African-American equivalent).

One artist has decided to combat the plague of Photoshopped celebrity looks by going in the oppose direction—depicting our favorite stars as if they looked more like us.

These days, Photoshop is almost synonymous with celebrity. Nearly every magazine and advertisement sharpens, brightens, smoothes, and slims the famous figures that grace their glossy covers and mega-sized billboards. The problem has gotten so bad that there’s even a bill before Congress to stem the flow of fake photos. But what happens when you do the opposite? Artist Danny Evans decided to explore that through a series of photos that made celebrities more like the rest of us…sans makeup, perfectly styled hair, and airbrushed skin.

In 2006, when Paris Hilton was at the pinnacle of pop culture, Evans “was getting frustrated with seeing all of these over-Photoshopped images of celebrities,” he told The Daily Beast. He wasn’t the only one to notice their widespread presence.

Having body insecurities seems to be a constant struggle for men and women of all ages. On a recent episode of E!'s new series Botched, Dr. Terry Dubrow and Dr. Paul Nassif decided to not perform surgery on one patient. After admitting she struggled with severe body dysmorphic disorder, they wanted her to feel better inside, before they altered her outside.

Body Dysmorphia is defined as "a body-image disorder characterized by persistent and intrusive preoccupations with an imagined or slight defect in one's appearance." In other words, when people with body dysmorphia look in the mirror, they don't see what everyone around them sees.

Some of the world’s best known celebrities, including Michael Douglas, Cate Blanchett, Susan Sarandon and Michael Caine, have signed a petition calling for a ban on mega-cruise ships from entering parts of historic Venice.

Over 60 international luminaries from the world of art, architecture and film are alleging that huge luxury liners sailing through the fragile channels are damaging historic treasures like St. Mark’s Square and the Guidecca Canal, reports The Telegraph.

The document was sent to Matteo Renzi, Italy’s prime minister and Dario Franceschini, the heritage minister.

Noel Cruz spends most of his life with dolls. He is a doll repaint artist, and an extraordinary one at that.

In fact Cruz, who is based in the U.S., is one of the most versatile and distinguished repaint artists in the doll community, and is most recognized for his character and celebrity based dolls. He has loved drawing and painting characters from his favorite TV shows since childhood, especially Lindsay Wagner as Jaime Sommers aka The Bionic Woman.

It wasn't until Cruz first encountered a repainted doll on eBay.com, thanks to his doll collecting wife, that he thought, "Hey, I could do this too!" And now he's one of the best in the doll painting community.

Plus Fabolous, Big Sean and more on deck for EBC America game at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Kendrick Lamar, Wale, French Montana, Big Sean and Fabolous will face off this Sunday (July 27) for the EBC America Celebrity Basketball Challenge at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Power 105.1's The Breakfast Club will host the charity game featuring four celebrity-coached teams from four major cities around the U.S., each trying to prove that their city has the best ball players.

Madonna won't be the only celebrity parent of a University of Michigan student this fall.

Benno Batali, the eldest son of celebrity chef Mario Batali, confirmed through an email to The Ann Arbor News that he is enrolled as an undergraduate student at the College of Literature, Science and the Arts.

The 17-year-old Benno Batali earned a bit of celebrity status of his own by following in the footsteps of his famous father. He and his brother Leo released a 112-page book of recipes called The Batali Brothers Cookbook in May 2013.

Zoe Saldana and her husband Marco Perego are said to be delighted they will welcome two children into the world later this year, several sources told E! News.

One insider added: "She's thrilled!"

The 36-year old actress is said to be around three months pregnant.

A source said recently: "Zoe is about three months pregnant. But she will only announce the news when she's ready.

"Zoe has always wanted a big family, and Marco's on board too!"

Move over, Kim Kardashian. Poverty is ready for its close-up.

In a provocative campaign that pokes fun at our culture's obsession with celebrities, WoodGreen Community Services in Canada places struggling single mothers on the covers of glossy magazine mock-ups. The standard tabloid teases are replaced with headlines such as "Tanya Tries To Avoid Eviction" and "25 Things She Can't Afford."

But the best skewering is aimed at TV's gossip shows. A spot-on parody (watch above) makes the same women the subjects of two chirping hosts. No reality stars or spoiled singers in this segment.

"What if we cared about those living in poverty as much as we care about celebrities?" the organization asks. At the end of the clip, viewers can click to hear the real stories of five single mothers.

She may have started out as Jenny from the block, but at this point in her career, it’s simply being referred to as Jenny’s block.

Jennifer Lopez has been in the industry for decades, and today she’s celebrating her 44th birthday.

Here are some things you might not have known about the Latina superstar.

Most often referred to as J-Lo
She used to run track at the national level, and when she found the time, even competed in gymnastic and softball competitions around the country.
She’s been married three times in her life.
She has two kids from her third marriage to Latin singer Marc Anthony.

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