Shooting is nearly finished for Burlesque, a contemporary musical that focuses on a neo-burlesque club in Los Angeles, loosely inspired by Bob Fosse’s Cabaret. Entertainment Tonight recently sat down with the cast to get the scoop on what the movie’s about and what it’s like working with the legendary Cher. The film stars a league of notable actors such as Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars, Couples Retreat), Eric Dane (Grey’s Anatomy), Cam Gigandet (Twilight), the now Oscar-nominated Stanley Tucci (The Devil Wears Prada, The Lovely Bones), and Alan Cumming (X-Men 2). That’s not to mention two powerhouse pop divas who co-headline the film, Cher and Christina Aguilera, both of whom will be singing in the film.

Burlesque marks Cher’s first real role in about 10 years, minus a small cameo in 2003’s Stuck On You, and Christina Aguilera’s big screen debut. The movie focuses on a fledgling burlesque club owned by Tess (Cher) in which Nikki (Bell) is the premier dancer. Ali leaves her small midwestern town and heads to L.A. where she discovers the club, and turns everything around for Tess when she’s given a chance to perform and blows everyone away.

It’s been ten years since Aguilera’s debut album and she’s had plenty of opportunities to do films but has held off until now. Unlike contemporaries such as Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Beyonce, after all this time she has yet to appear in any feature films because she was waiting for just the right project. She told Marie Claire in January, “I didn’t want to do something that was easy for me. I’ve actually had my character rewritten to be tougher and a little more spunky.” Aguilera also tells Entertainment Tonight, “I’ve always had tremendous respect for [Cher]. A woman who’s done everything before anyone did it.”

Plenty of pop stars have tried foraying into acting and it didn’t turn out very well. Mariah Carey and Madonna come to mind among many others whose acting projects have become infamous and earned them Razzie nominations. When asked about Christina’s acting chops, Cher had glowing things to say. “I’m shocked, but she’s really good. And the other day we were hamming it up so badly, it was so old — like vaudevillians we might as well have been. And she was keeping up. I mean she was hot. She was really up there. Her game is good.”

Aguilera and Cher recently made an appearance at the Golden Globes to do some early film promotion (Burlesque hits theaters Thanksgiving weekend) which created quite the buzz as both women have been known to do. Certainly Screen Gems is hoping the women will be able to return to the ceremony next January as nominees. With such talented actors and a script by Erin Brockovich scribe Susannah Grant, it isn’t a long shot to predict it just might happen.

Below is the full Entertainment Tonight interview with the cast of Burlesque.

Newsweek has an article on ten black women in North Carolina who are either missing or dead, in what might be a case of a serial killer.  The murders began in 2005, and have received no national attention until now–except not really.

Ten women have been found slain or have been declared missing in Rocky Mount, N.C., in recent years. But the rest of the country hasn’t heard about a possible serial killer stalking the young women in this Southern town of 60,000. The latest victim, Elizabeth Jane Smallwood, was identified on Oct. 12. Why have the Rocky Mount homicides been largely ignored?

It’s impossible to deny that these stories would have received more attention had the victims been middle to upper-middle class suburban white girls, and the article discusses that very issue.

(more…)

Jack Price, the gay man whose bashing by two thugs in Queens, NYC three weeks ago was captured on surveillance video, left the hospital yesterday following six days in a coma, six days on a respirator, and four surgeries. He lost the vision in one eye.

Here he speaks to local news about his attack, which he says he never wants to see the video of, and comments on the allegations that the men beat him because he was soliciting for sex.

And the bigots strike again.  This time they’re after one of our country’s limited excellent public school teachers.

A Southwestern High School English teacher has been suspended after reports he had students in his classes to read an article about homsexuality in the animal kingdom.

Delong is said to have allowed students to read the article “The Gay Animal Kingdom” from the June 7, 2006, edition of Seed magazine. Seed magazine is a science and culture publication.

The article by Jonah Lehrer talks about the research of Joan Roughgarden, a biology professor at Stanford University who said she has documented homosexual societies among the more than 450 animal species.

School district secretary Pat Milner said a special School Board meeting has been set for 6 p.m. Monday at the district office in Piasa to discuss personnel/employee discipline.

God forbid we introduce an article about science in a school!  The community including many of Delong’s former students have rallied around him and have even created a Facebook group in his honor.

This is huge, people! The first pro-gay federal legislation in history! Equality, here we come.

The cast of 5-time Grammy winning pop diva Christina Aguilera’s movie debut Burlesque is shaping up to be a mighty impressive one. So far we have Christina herself, playing a small-town girl from the midwest with a big voice, Cher, the owner of a Los Angeles neo-burlesque club that Christina finds herself in, Veronica Mars‘ Kristen Bell as the rival who Christina knocks off her perch, Twilight’s Cam Giganget–Christina’s love interest, Stanley Tucci–whose role is still unknown, and now today the news has broke that Tony winner for Cabaret Alan Cumming has a part in the film.

Most known probably for his roles in X2: X-Men United, Spice World, Spy Kids, Cumming is actually quite an accomplished actor with great roles in smaller films like Urbania, Investigating Sex, and Suffering Man’s Charity, as well as a ton of great theater work.  One role in particular, his critically acclaimed run as the MC in the 1998 revival of Cabaret won him a Tony award.

In an interview with Sirius XM radio’s Live On Broadway on Wednesday morning Cumming revealed that he’ll be starring in the film as well as singing a song for the soundtrack with Cher and Christina Aguilera.

Cumming and Bell have already worked together on a musical project in a movie called Reefer Madness from 2005.

Julianne Hough of Dancing With The Stars fame has also been confirmed as being a part of the cast, playing Christina’s pregnant friend.

The film is set to be released around Thanksgiving of 2010.

After the terrible tragedy of her mother, brother, and nephew being murdered earlier this year, getting married, and having her first child, it seems as if Academy Award and Grammy winner Jennifer Hudson is ready to get back on the horse and get herself in front of the big screen again.

Roger Friedman over at the Hollywood Reporter gives the scoop:

Hudson is now rumored to be in talks for an indie biopic about South African leader Winnie Mandela. Winnie was a winner during her years as wife of Nelson Mandela during his 27-years of illegal incarceration. But in later years she lost her way, getting into legal trouble and becoming a pariah. She and Mandela have been divorced for some time.

The word is that either the terrific Derek Luke or actor Idris Elba might be up for the part of Nelson Mandela. Details are still sketchy.

Apparently this isn’t the first film about Winnie, Sophie Okenedo played her recently in a BBC film.

I loved Hudson in Dreamgirls; despite what many say I think her actual acting was quite good as well as the singing. She was kind of just there in the Sex and the City movie but that movie itself was a hot mess and so was her character. I did however, like her a lot in The Secret Life of Bees, which if you haven’t seen was a great movie. So I’ll be looking forward to seeing Jennifer stretch her acting muscle and take on a more challenging role.

Two gay dads in a town called Bowmanville in Ontario are very proud of their 11 year old son James Gibson-Jones who after only two years of studying ballet has been snatched up by the National Ballet of Canada.

Thomas Jones and Rob Gibson are acutely aware that they are setting themselves up for a barrage of “nature versus nurture” jokes whenever they tell people their son is a budding ballet prodigy.

He began dabbling in dance at the urging of teachers and family friends in Bowmanville, who sensed an affinity for rhythm and performance in the charismatic 11-year-old with the “classic Billy Elliot build.”

Both parents Rob and Thomas are prepared for the jokes people will make about the son of two gay men turning out to be a ballerina. They don’t seem to care, and neither does James.

(more…)

Chocolate hottie Mehcad Brooks whom you may recognize from HBO’s True Blood or from season two of Desperate Housewives reveals in an interview with Honey Magazine that he refuses to get married until gay people have the same right.

Do you consider yourself the marrying kind? Do you want that?
I haven’t even gotten that far. But yeah, I want a wife, I want kids. The whole thing. But I’m also not even concerned with marrying somebody until it’s legal for everybody to get married. And what I mean by that is the whole Prop 8 thing.

Why is that cause so important to you?
I find it really offensive. I just find it really problematic when you start throwing people’s rights away. Until we get our gay brothers and sisters back into a realm of consciousness that everyone else is in, it’s just not right. A woman who’s getting married — it’s probably going to be a gay man who made her dress, and a gay man who’s doing her hair and makeup, but he can’t get married. How messed up is that?

His next project is a film by X-Files creator Chris Carter called Fencewalkers, which for whatever reason still has no plot description listed.

Now I’m off to finally watch the True Blood finale!

By now I’m sure everyone’s heard the news, beloved actor and 80s dance icon Patrick Swayze has succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 57.

His publicist, Annett Wolf, told The Associated Press in Los Angeles that Mr. Swayze died with family at his side. Mr. Swayze’s cancer was diagnosed in January 2008. Six months after that, he had already outlived his prognosis and was filmed at an airport, smiling at photographers and calling himself, only half-facetiously, “a miracle dude.” He even went through with plans to star in “The Beast,” a new drama series for A&E, and filmed a complete season while undergoing treatment. Mr. Swayze insisted on continuing with the series. “How do you nurture a positive attitude when all the statistics say you’re a dead man?” he said to Bill Carter of The New York Times last October. “You go to work.”

My favorite Swayze films were definitely To Wong Foo, Ghost, and Dirty Dancing.  I had a professor in college who worked as a local news reporter and he said of all the celebrities he’d interviewed Patrick was the absolute nicest one.

We’ll miss you Sam Wheat!

Months ago when reports were swirling of Patrick being near death, Whoopi Goldberg declared on The View that she owed her Oscar to him.