Adam Lambert's new song, "Time for Miracles" is the theme song for disaster-movie '2012.' I'm not sure if I'll watch this film, but I've already pre-ordered his new album.
When I heard his singing at first, I couldn't resist to listening his singing many times. I watch all episodes of American Idol usually, but I had very busy time when last season was airing, so I just recorded them on DVR and watched only Adam's part later. So I actually don't know much about other people singing.
I love music, I listen to music a lot, and I think Adam has beautiful voice and talent, I assume he is definitely one of the most fabulous singers.
I found his death from Darren Hayes's twitter. It was a big shock to me. As of today, they don't release any details of his death though, it is said that he was drinking for eight hours at bar, and got back their place, then fell asleep. It caused him vomit and he choked by them. He was only 33 years old. Their manager, Louis Walsh who is a judge of X Facter, wasn't on the show yesterday, so Simon Cowell who is one of the judges expressed his condolences. I was shocked with Michael Jackson's death, but I wasn't a big fan of him, so I wasn't sad compare to this time. R.I.P... the date of death 10th Oct. 2009.
There's life after Simon Amstell for Never Mind The Buzzcocks – and it's funny We go behind the scenes at the comedy music quiz, where it's all "flowers and unicorns" according to Noel Fielding
Priya Elan / The Guardian, Taking care of Buzzness: guests including Peter Serafinowicz and Newton Faulkner get miked-up backstage at Never Mind The Buzzcocks Photograph: Brian Ritchie/BBC
"How old is he?" asks a twentysomething member of the team. CLICK.
"Oh my god! Born in ... 68... He's well old!" she says scanning a web page. CLICK-CLICK.
"And his real name is Steven? He is so married, too ... Damn. But he doesn't look happy with it does he?" CLICK-CLICK-CLICK.
At the other end of the crowded room, a couple of producers iron out a few bits of the script.
"Is 'Googlebox' a word?"
They are brainstorming names for the former pop star lineup section of the show. This week it's ViX from Fuzzbox and they want names that play on "box".
A few furious scribblings out later, they've got it.
"Graham Box-on," says a producer, proud of his play on Alex James's sometime bandmate. "That's funny isn't it?"
We're here on the set of the third episode of the 23rd series of the panel show. Host Simon Amstell has departed since the last series because he wants "to concentrate on his stand-up" and the powers that be have decided that instead of a permanent replacement, a series of weekly guest hosts will better usher in the programme's new age.
"The thinking behind it was that we wanted to give airtime to some new comic talent who wouldn't otherwise get the chance," says the show's producer, Stuart Mather.
In that vein they've got the likes of stand-ups Jack Whitehall and Rhod Gilbert to fill Amstell's rather large comedy shoes.
"It's also really hard to book pop stars in advance …"
While Mather is keen to play down Amstell's hold on the show, he admits that his Bafta award-nominated tenure changed Buzzcocks forever.
"Our demographic changed with Simon," he says "He showed you could do things in a TV format that you couldn't do before."
There was an outcry when he departed, with posters on web forums wondering how the show would continue without the comic ("I'm done with Buzzcocks," said one), who, as he did on C4's Popworld, made his ability to cut musicians down to size a defining characteristic of the show.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Everyone is chipping in … I think the show is working better' - Noel Fielding ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So how has it changed the on-screen vibe?
"It's like a Mad Hatter's tea party now," Noel Fielding thinks. The Mighty Boosh star is another new element, replacing Bill Bailey as a team captain. "Everyone is chipping in," he says. "And I think that the show is working better for that actually, instead of the focus being on Simon having a go at someone in particular. He's genius at that, but sometimes it makes some of the musicians a bit tense and they don't open up."
Fielding cites last week's appearance by burlesque pop star Paloma Faith as a prime example. "When she started she was a bit weird. But then as the show went on she became funnier and funnier. Everyone ended up loving her," he says. "I don't think she would have been given that chance if Simon was still here."
Still, some of the show's best moments were the ones where Amstell baited the stars. Producer Mather recalls booking a pre-chart success Dappy from N-Dubz after Blue's Lee Ryan had pulled out.
"He was a last-minute booking; we got him the night before the show. Dappy was quite taken aback with Simon going, 'Who the hell are you?', and making fun of his hat, but the tension made for brilliant TV. The second time he came on we played on the fact that in the press he'd said he'd like to spank Simon. He was a bona fide pop star by this point and I just thought, 'We made you!'"
More infamous was Preston and Chantelle-gate: the ex-Ordinary Boy walked off mid-show when Amstell began reading from his then wife's autobiography Living The Dream.
"Hang on," says Mather. He then asks the PR if he's allowed to "talk freely" about the former Celebrity Big Brother contestant ("I don't want Talkback to go mental," he says). He's given the go-ahead.
"I saw the interview in Heat where he said he was wrong to react the way he did to the incident. And then I read that he said, 'I've always been about pop,' and I thought, 'No, you wanted to be a fucking mod!"
Would you have had him on again?
"Well we could have made a joke about it if he came back on but we'd rather have a new comic on the show than him. He was just one joke, really. The thing is, Preston needs the PR more than we do."
Clearly. His single didn't even make the top 100.
"Fuck me!" says Mather, genuinely shocked.
Watching the show being filmed, the absence of Amstell as curly-haired ringmaster has inexorably changed the panel's dynamic. This is mainly thanks to the captains; long-serving Phill Jupitus and new guy Fielding.
They've transformed the slightly tense and caustic atmosphere created by Amstell to one of mild surrealism.
"The chemistry is different to something like Mock the Week," says Fielding. "They are brilliant and skilful but it's a bit aggressive and male; they need some women on there. I'm a token woman anyway. Phill can be aggressive if he wants to, but he doesn't like to. But it was never going to be a bear-pit-type panel show. When shows become a bit 'alpha male' I don't like them. I prefer them when they're all flowers and unicorns." He laughs at the idea: "The ladyboy speaketh …"
Guest host Alex James is surprisingly eloquent. Pre-show he says, "They've made me funny, it's amazing! Despite the fact I'm slipping into Simon's shoes, it's not intimidating. Only because I've got six people writing for me."
Indeed, tonight he puts his previous hosting experiences in the shade. Sadly there's nothing like BBC2's If Music Be The Food Of Love where he played a cheese bass, but there are lots of dairy-centric gags and obscure Blur tracks in the intros round.
Interestingly, the interjections by panelist comics Peter Serafinowicz and Holly Walsh fall a little flat in comparison.
"It doesn't work if you're constantly worrying about getting gags in," says Jupitus.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'I can pinpoint the moment that Chris Moyles crumbled' – Phill Jupitus ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"All the comics who've had a hard time on the show are thinking, 'Must do jokes, must do jokes', instead of interacting. And it's 90% about listening to what the other people are saying."
He cites the example of Chris Moyles, who appeared on the show and slagged it off the next day on his radio show.
"He got me on his show and accused me of having a J-Lo-like fit about chips not arriving from catering, which was a lie. It was ungracious," he says.
"I can pinpoint the moment he crumbled. We were doing the intros round, he wasn't doing well, and Vic Reeves turned around and said to him, 'Chris, do you actually like music at all?" Just because he wasn't funny on the show … he should have just gotten over it."
During the show's two-and-a- half-hour filming session, it's somewhat startling to find that the Buzzcocks' format and stalwart set pieces still work, 22 series and many lineup changes later.
It's still edgy (potentially unbroadcastable gags include ones about Kirsty Wark blacking up, Gordon The Gopher being a prostitute killer, Tom Cruise's sexuality, and "retarded Wombles"). Most importantly, it's enjoyable.
Jupitus believes it's "purely maths" that makes it work. "The show is constantly refreshed because the new faces outnumber the old ones. And we have a great mix of comedy people and pop people. So we get a zeitgeisty mash-up. I said when I began on the first series that I'd still being doing it if it was fun. And it still is."
Ryan Cartwright plays John Hooker, executive assistant to Lane Pryce and a favorite of the secretaries at Sterling Cooper. He talks to AMCtv.com about joining the cast, and whether that accent of his really does open doors.
Q:Did you know much about the show before you joined the cast?
A: I had seen some of the show. I was always taken aback by the acting on it -- everyone on it is so good. Once I got it, I realized how big a show it was. I'd tell my friends, "Oh I got a job on this, I got a job on that." This was the only time when they were like, "Oh wow! ... I'll be watching it anyway."
Q: So how did you come to get the part?
A: It was after pilot season, I had done the rounds and no one was buying what I was selling. They just called me in. It was one audition. I didn't think I'd get it; I thought it'd be a kind of stereotyped handsome Brit that they'd want. But I guess they're a lot smarter -- and luckily I wasn't that.
It was a very quick turnaround. With pilot season, you have to jump through so many hoops, there are so many people in the room, you end up doing four or five auditions. You're just quaking by the end of it. This was just the opposite: "Yup, fine, you're working tomorrow." I had to quickly step up to the plate.
Q: What did you do to prepare?
A: I looked at documentaries and stock footage from the period because they're very specific as to when it was. I didn't want to pollute myself by thinking I'd have heard the later Beatles catalogue. So I listened to some early Dylan, Beatles. I looked at what was going on the British side, the Carnaby Street stuff. I tried to look at the accents, like exactly how clipped it would have been.
Q: You've joined a cast famous for their camaraderie. How have you been getting along with them?
A: They hate me. As soon as they say "Cut," I have to leave the set. No, they're lovely.
Q: Not calling you Moneypenny, I hope?
A: They wouldn't dare. A lot of the guys play Call of Duty 4, the Xbox game. A lot of the time, we just talk about that. What are the best guns, where are the best hiding places.
Q: You've been on other shows before both in U.S. and U.K. Has the experience been different from the other series work you've done?
A: The only newness is the reception is a lot larger here. There's a lot more advertising. It's also a helluva good show. There are not many shows as good in America, or in England. With regards to day-to-day, I've found that as with most of the best jobs I've done, it's a nice, calm set. No tension, no jostling. Everyone's really mellow.
Q: The ladies of Sterling Cooper swoon over your accent. Have you found that to be true in real life?
A: Of course! I always say Los Angeles is the place where British people come to exceed their worth. It's quite true of everything: The British accent does open doors.
Q: Do you have a favorite moment from the previous two seasons?
A: I remember there was one bit I really liked. Between Peggy and Pete. It's just one little scene where they're in the office and he was talking how he'd like a wife to bring a bloody steak and cook it for him. That was something, but also the moment after, you follow Peggy reeling from that, and she had to buy herself something to eat. I love those sort of quiet moments, when things calm down and you get to actually know the people. In most shows, they'd cut those off-moments because they think the action has stopped.
Q: Do you read reviews, or follow what the legions of fans have been saying?
A: Only generally, if I catch something in the paper or online. I don't delve too deep into reviews. I saw clips of the Times Square party and I noticed lots of friends using a Mad Men avatar.
Most people know Michael Urie in his role of Marc, editrix Vanessa Williams's bitchy assistant on Ugly Betty. But Urie is also an accomplished stage actor, and he's showing off his theatrical chops right now in The Temperamentals, Jon Marans's moving, often hilarious play about the Mattachine Society, a gay-male activist group born in the closeted atmosphere of the early fifties. The show features Urie as Rudi Gernreich, an early founder of the group who left before he could be outed to become a fashion designer so influential he made the cover of Time in 1967. Urie spoke to us about his character's future on Betty and why he's so private about certain issues.
What are you up to today?
Well, it's raining and my dog won't poop or pee in the rain, so generally what happens is, we both get drenched, then the second we walk indoors, shit just starts flying out of her ass. She's a Brussels Griffon. Her name is Sprouts. Her full name is Dame Lady Colonel Brussels Sprouts the First. She's a colonel because she fought in the dog-cat revolution of aught-four.
So she's a highly decorated vet?
She's a very decorated vet but we don't use the word V-E-T, because that means something else.
So who is your character to you?
He's an activist but also an artist, and oftentimes, artists have to be activists with their work rather than with their actions, and ultimately that's what he becomes. He paved the way for [fashion] flamboyancy of all kinds, and although he was never out publicly, he was a huge influence on the community and on freeing yourself. But this is also a love story, about how Harry and Rudi start in one place and, by the end of the play, are in very different places.
In the context of this play, it's almost impossible not to ask
you about your own sexuality. You've never really publicly declared it, but on your own website, you identify yourself as "a member of the LGBT community" and say that organizations that help people with HIV/AIDS or people who are LGBT are "A-Number 1 in my book!" So what's the deal?
Well, that's my M.O. I'm interested in keeping — you know, actors have to be able to do lots of different things, and while I'd say there's an ongoing theme [to the parts I play], I'm also not interested in having any real publicity about who I am and what my private life is and things like that. I'm an actor and I don't want to be a [fill-in-the-] blank actor.
Do you really think that saying "I'm gay" would stop you from getting an array of roles?
That's not really the point. By using publicity to say something like that, it could become a person's M.O, and I'm not interested in that. I really think this article should be about The Temperamentals. I understand where you're coming from and why you think this is important and that this is a play about being true to yourself. But artists and activists are not quite the same thing, and I feel like support can come from lots of different ways.
Do you get sick of reporters asking you about this?
They don't ask about it as much as you might think. Actually, it's been a long time since anyone asked it. I don't think it's really newsworthy if the gay guy from Ugly Betty is gay or not.
So, speaking of the world of Betty, it looks like Marc's career at Mode hangs in the balance on the upcoming season, with Betty having beat him out for that editor position.
Well, that's something that's great about TV. Characters change, but over the course of years. My character started off being a one-line bitchy gay assistant, and now we see he has career ambitions and love and affection for other people. I have a feeling there's going to be some serious rivalry between Marc and Betty this season. I've always thought of Ugly Betty as classical theater. The stakes are very high.
