VIEW THIS PAGE Mike Myers comedy
The Love Guru and celebrity socialite Paris Hilton were top of the flops at the 29th Razzie Awards, the annual eve-of-Oscars salute to the very worst of Hollywood.
Myers’ critically panned movie picked up three of the movie industry’s least coveted awards — a gold spray-painted raspberry — which organizers say are worth a whopping US$4.97.
The alleged comedy, about an ice hockey player who enlists the help of a mystic guru to help him turn around his professional and personal fortunes, picked up worst picture, worst actor for Myers and worst screenplay.
“At 88 minutes, The Love Guru would have benefited from a trim of roughly 80 minutes,” was how the New York Post described the film, which the New York Times described as “downright anti-funny.”
Yet Myers was rivaled in the Razzie stakes by celebutante Hilton, who made good on her pledge to seek a lower public profile following her 2007 prison drama by appearing in two movies last year that no-one watched.
Hilton scooped up the worst actress prize for The Hottie and the Nottie, a movie which Britain’s Daily Mirror decried as a movie “of monumental dreadfulness.”
The hotel heiress also scored a rare double, winning the worst supporting actress Razzie for her cameo in Repo: The Genetic Opera, which was condemned variously as “awful, disgusting and insulting” — all in one review.
Hilton also added to her Razzie haul with the worst screen couple dishonor, again for her performance in The Hottie and the Nottie.
Other notable winners on Saturday included former James Bond star Pierce Brosnan, who picked up the worst supporting actor for his performance in ABBA musical Mamma Mia.
Final preparations for the Oscars were being made yesterday, with uplifting drama Slumdog Millionaire poised to romp home in the race for the coveted best picture prize.
The red carpet was being vacuumed and streets surrounding Hollywood’s Kodak Theater were sealed off to the public with the 81st edition of the Academy Awards less than 24 hours away.
The build-up to this year’s ceremony has been dominated by the Bollywood-inspired Slumdog, which has dominated other awards shows and is considered the overwhelming favorite for the best picture statuette.
Rags-to-riches British reality TV star Jade Goody yesterday got married, the latest installment in her very public fight with terminal cancer which has enchanted and unnerved Britons in near equal measure.
Goody, 27, who found fame after appearing in the show Big Brother in 2002, wed fiance Jack Tweed at a country house north of London. Tweed said he would wheel her hospital bed up the aisle if she is too weak to walk.
Her publicist Max Clifford said Saturday evening that she was feeling “unwell” after perhaps “overdoing it” in the last-minute preparations for her wedding, but is expected to be fit enough to go ahead with the wedding.
Their big day — media rights for which have sold for a reported US$1.4) — was organized in the nine days since Tweed proposed in hospital after her terminal diagnosis.
Goody has defended her decision to live out what will likely be her last weeks in the public eye, saying the money she earns will help provide for her two young sons, aged five and four.
“I’ve lived in front of the cameras. And maybe I’ll die in front of them,” the star, who has lost her hair after chemotherapy for cervical cancer, told last week’s News of the World newspaper.
“I know some people don’t like what I’m doing but at this point I really don’t care what other people think. Now, it’s about what I want.”
Amid reports that the boys’ biological father is keen to play a greater role in their lives, Clifford said discussions were ongoing over who would look after Goody’s children.
Goody’s approach has prompted an agonized debate in Britain about the rights and wrongs of such a
public death.
Some commentators admire her fortitude and determination to protect her children.
Others, though, see something ghoulish in the volumes of newsprint devoted to her in recent days.
Police in Los Angeles were investigating Friday the leak of a photo that appeared to show the battered face of pop star Rihanna after an incident involving boyfriend Chris Brown this month.
The celebrity news Web site TMZ.com published the photo of R ’n’ B star Rihanna with a series of clearly visible scratches and bruises.
Singer-songwriter Brown is alleged to have attacked the Barbados-born star after an argument in Los Angeles on Feb. 8 that led to Rihanna canceling a scheduled appearance at the Grammys.
Brown surrendered to police for questioning and was booked on suspicion of making a felony threat before being released on bail.
The Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement Friday that an internal investigation was underway and that anyone found leaking information could be sacked.VIEW THIS PAGE
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