New 10 of the Month Actress Meryl Streep

When I sat down to think about a woman who exemplifies the meaning of the New 10 for this month�s newsletter, one person kept leaping out at me. I resisted her at first, because she seemed like such an obvious choice. This is a woman who has won so many awards and accolades; she hardly needs another honor at this point in her long and illustrious life! She�s rich, she�s famous, she likely has everything a person could ever want.

And yet, every time I see Meryl Streep, I know � not only is she the �greatest actress of her generation,� she is also the perfect example of a New 10. Which is probably why her name seems so obvious. Think about it. This is a woman who, when you look at her, might prompt an exclamation of �I can�t believe she�s 60!� But then, on the other hand, she is exactly what a 60-year-old woman can be � and is in many cases � in this day and age. She�s beautiful, but not surgically altered. Comfortable with her body, with her age, with herself.

I love watching her act � the way she throws herself into every character really amazes me. But I have to admit, my favorite Meryl Streep movies aren�t the ones where she masters a really difficult accent, or goes back to a long ago time. I really like when she plays a modern, contemporary, �normal� woman. Maybe because I so enjoy seeing the woman she appears to be in real life.

I�ve been watching Ms. Streep make the rounds of the late night talk shows promoting her latest movie, �Julie and Julia.� Looking at women and evaluating them is a large part of what I do. I�m not normally swayed by celebrity � I look for something far deeper than �star quality� in a New 10. And despite all that, I can�t get over how impressed I was with Meryl Streep.

I really enjoyed watching her interviews, because unlike so many celebrities who go on these shows just to promote their movie or their project or tell their funny story, she really seemed to enjoy the process of being interviewed. She actually seemed to enjoy interacting with people, sharing a moment with whoever she was talking to. She seemed to care about what they had to say, about having a real conversation, about being � for lack of a better term � a real human being.

I loved watching her laugh, which was often. I could see that it was real. Her eyes almost teared up. Her face turned red. She doubled over. She seems to be a woman who really enjoys her life and making the most of every moment.

So, as clich� is at may be, I am proud to name Meryl Streep as my New 10 of the Month. As celebrities go, she is one famous face who truly inspires me.
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Orange Celebrity News Round-Up – London Film Festival

It’s been animals galore this week, with beavers, foxes and even pot-bellied piglets elbowing their furry way into the limelight.

On Tuesday, Mel Gibson was spotted ambling around New York City brandishing a beaver of the hand-puppet variety. Turns out he’s midway through filming a movie called, yes, The Beaver with Jodie Foster (of all people) in the director’s chair as well as co-starring with Mel and fluffy friend. What is she thinking?

The following day, cannier-than-you’d-think socialite/clothes horse Paris Hilton
turned up at the snappily-named Fox (no, not yet…) Reality Channel Really Awards in La-La Land. Star Trek-inspired dress aside, the real chatter concerned Paris’s slapdash attitude to pet care, with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) digging in to the heiress for ordering a pot-bellied piglet called Princess Piglette. “As disposable as her friends and fiancés,” is how the Peta activist suggests La Hilton treats her pets. Well, really.

Back in Blighty, the London Film Festival launched in style with Fantastic Mr Fox (ah, there it is!) taking the opening gala spot. George Clooney (the voice of Mr Fox himself) charmed all comers with missus Elisabetta Canalis in tow, while model/author Sophie Dahl rocked up with fiancé Jamie Cullum to raise a glass to the film version her granddad Roald’s book. You will be able to find all the film trailers on Orange.

No four-legged friends at Tatler’s 300th anniversary party, admittedly, but Tara Palmer-Tomkinson did wear an alarmingly see-through dress, which no doubt brought out the animal in some of the men in her vicinity. Grrr!

For all the latest celebrity news,, celebrity photos and celebrity style please visit Orange. You can also check out a wide range of mobile phones and mobile phone deals.
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Can Digital Filmmaking Get The Gold?

The Academy has for long snubbed low-budget films because it felt
that they did not have the lavish production design of let's say
a Titanic or an English Patient. Of course there have been
instances of surprise nominations and wins (i.e. Billy Bob
Thornton won the Oscar for Best Screenplay for Sling Blade) but
generally it has completely overlooked digital filmmaking.

Many industry professionals believe that we have finally come
to a point where world cinema will change that. More and more
filmmakers have now access to digital filmmaking equipment,
thanks mainly to the 24P feature on most cameras that create
a film look from the previous 30frames per second.

Super Size Me that was a major hit on the American Film Market
was shot on digital and it came as no surprise when it was
nominated for an Oscar for best documentary. Another film that
was completely shot on digital for the low-budget of 500k, was
Open Water.

Chris Kentis, the writer-director of the film had previously made
Grind with Amanda Peet decided to pull his resources together and
film this film in the middle of the ocean. The grainy look of the
Panasonic DVX-100 added an interesting realistic quality to the
film because it does give off the feeling of it being a
documentary.

When the two main characters are stranded in the middle of the
ocean, the viewer slowly drifts into thinking it is really
happening and the camera that was once used to film the two on
vacation has been turned against them to film the horrific
experience.

These films are more easily picked up by distributors because
they have a documentary feel to them, but would a conventional
narrative have the same easy access to theatres if it were shot
on a digital camera?

There are new technologies that are coming out such as the new
High Definition cameras like the f-900 that allow filmmakers to
work without all the restrictions implemented by film. George
Lucas was the first to shoot digitally all three of his Star Wars
prequels including the latest Revenge of the Sith. After him,
Michael Mann shot Collateral with Tom Cruise using digital
intermediate to add the depth of field that is so great in film.

Machiavelli Hangman, thought to be the major independent hit of
2006, was also shot on a High Definition Camera with some digital intermediate. Despite
Machiavelli Hangman's
low-budget and digital format, many believe that it may be the
first ever film shot on a digital camera to be nominated for
the best picture awards.

There will be a great change in cinema when digital filmmaking
becomes more acceptable in Hollywood standards. This will mean
less focus on politics and power and more focus on diversified
talent and material.
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A Romantic Comedy That Works With a Couple of 60+ Senior Citizens

Something's Gotta Give - 2 Stars (Average)

Something's Gotta Give is a romantic comedy without substance that works because of Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton.

The story line involves Harry (Nicholson) as a senior citizen that never dates any woman over 30 until he meets and falls in love with Erica (Keaton). Erica, another senior citizen, meets Harry at her Hamptons beach house and discovers that Harry is dating her daughter Marin (Amanda Peet) and about to bed her.

Harry's romantic weekend with Marin is marred by some chest pains and Erica reluctantly agrees to help nurse him back to health. Once Harry and Erica are alone together, Harry develops an interest in Erica. When Harry's young doctor starts to pursue Erica, Harry must make a commitment or lose his chance at happiness.

Something's Gotta Give is almost a piece of cake for Nicholson and Keaton. Nicholson has 12 Oscar nominations and 3 Best Actor awards for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Terms of Endearment and As Good As It Gets while Keaton has 4 Oscar nominations and a Best Actress award for Annie Hall.

Who else do you know besides Jack Nicholson that has been nominated for an Oscar in five different decades? Nicholson has also won 7 Best Actor Golden Globe awards and has been a John F. Kennedy Center Honors recipient.

Jack Nicholson does make the people around him perform better. The evidence comes when you realize that every time Nicholson has won a Best Actor Oscar his film partner has won a Best Actress Oscar.

Louise Fletcher won the Oscar for Best Actress in One Flew Over the Cuckoo' s Nest, Shirley MacLaine won for Terms of Endearment and Helen Hunt won for As Good As It Gets.

Keaton was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress in Something's Gotta Give, won a Golden Globe, added two other lesser Best Actress awards, and picked up another two nominations. Nicholson earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor.

Keaton is one the few actresses at age 60 who has been able to partner with bankable leading men. She pulls it off because she has her own sense of style and grace, not an Audrey Hepburn or Jackie Kennedy, but certainly someone to notice.

I found myself wanting to bond with Keaton. She seems to have found the secret to staying young, alive and attractive while Nicholson at 69 and counting appears his age and has not benefited from the passage of time. Keaton is one fine looking 60-year-old woman.

Also in the cast are Keanu Reeves, Paul Michael Glaser, Amanda Peet and Frances McDormand and some lesser lights.

Something's Gotta Give could have been better if writer/director Nancy Meyers was not so involved. It was not her directing but her writing that did her in.

How a young Marin (Amanda Peet) could be attracted to a man old enough to be her grandfather is beyond my comprehension and the comprehension of many young women in America, especially when the man of choice is Nicholson in this role.

It is very difficult to be both the writer and director of a film and many that have tried have not benefited from the effort.

Meyers (average rating) joins a not-so-exclusive club of fellow writer/directors who have fallen short, including Thomas Bezucha (average rating) for The Family Stone, Michael McGowan (average rating) for Saint Ralph, Jared Hess (terrible rating) for Napoleon Dynamite, Robert Rodriguez (terrible rating) for Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and Paul Thomas Anderson (terrible rating) for Punch-Drunk Love. The worst of the worst was Punch-Drunk Love.

Meyers would do well to study carefully the effort of Tim McCanlies (excellent rating) in Secondhand Lions. McCanlies does pull off the dual responsibility of being a writer/director and tells a fabulous story. Another notable performance was by James L. Brooks (good rating) for Spanglish.

Jack Nicholson does have a rep for a quickie. He is on Maxim's "Top 10 Living Legends of Sex" list with an alleged 2,000 women that he has apparently slept with; if true, the vast majority of these must have come when he was younger and on top of his game.

Some of these sex partner numbers seem ridiculous. If Nicholson slept with a different woman every night, it would take him roughly five-and-half-years to get the job done.

Somehow, I doubt he was quite that active, especially since he enjoyed a 17-year relationship with Anjelica Huston who left him when Rebecca Broussard had become pregnant with Nicholson's child. He had two children with Broussard.

Some still claim that Nicholson really did bed that many women and managed to do so by being very discreet. One thing is for sure, he certainly would not need to do a tell-all book to generate income as he is already a millionaire many times over.
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Lady Gaga Biography

When Lady Gaga (or Lady Gagga to some) was a mini girl, she would descant along on her tiny plastic band recorder to Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper chart hits and get twirled in the air in daddy's love to the pitch of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. The nervy child would jitterbug everywhere the table at adorned Upper West Side lunchroom using the breadsticks as a rod. And, she would naively greet a new live-in in nihility but her birthday threads.

It's no curiosity that light girl from a favorable Italian New York issue, turned into the flaunter, multi-talented singer-songwriter with a splash for dramatics that she is instant: Lady Gaga.

Lady Gaga frame a place name for herself on the Lower East Side nightstick display with the mephitic dance-pop reception song "Beautiful Dirty Rich," and deserted, ostentatious, and ofttimes tongue-in-cheek "shock art" carrying out where Gaga - who scheme and makes alive with of her degree outfits -- would strip bottomward to her hand-crafted burning pants and trunks top, rich cans of hairspray on sea of flames, and drive a positure as a disco ball lowered from the planchement to the symphonious accentof A Clockwork Orange.

Lady Gaga aka Lady Gagga cut her surname from Queen's song "Radio Gaga" and who cites lodge star girlfriends, Peggy Bundy, and Donatella Versace as her mode painted image.

That duty might sound tall, but flirt with the artist: Gaga is the young lady who at age 4 learned upright piano by hearing. By age 13, she had written her initial piano ditty. At 14, she played ajar mike nights at clubs that as New York's the Bitter End by eventide and was teased for her far out, oddball style by her Convent of the Sacred Heart School (the Manhattan nonpublic school Nicky and Paris Hilton attended) classmates by astronomical day. At age 17, she mature was one of 20 baby in the world to get prior recognition to Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Signed by her 20th name day and writing songs for other talents (such as the Pussycat Dolls, and has been asked to bang out for a series of Interscope artists) sooner her coming out party album was even released, Lady Gaga has earned the ethical to orbit for the sky.

It's been a while after all a topical pop artist has made her way in the music manufactory the old-fashioned/hay roots way by paying her dues with sagging swatter gigs and self-promotion. This is lone rising pop star who hasn't been plunk from a facsimile casting call, lug into a acclaimed family, won a reality TV singing contest, or emerged from a teen cable TV sitcom.
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