kudos (64 posts)

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All roads lead to Calle 13.

The Puerto Rican hip-hop duo went 5-for-5 at the 10th Latin Grammy Awards, held tonight at Mandalay Bay Events Center on the Las Vegas Strip.

Along with their second straight win for Best Urban Music Album, Calle 13's René "Residente" Joglar and Eduardo "Visitante" Cabra picked up golden gramophones for Album of the Year, for Los De Atrás Vienen Conmigo, Record of the Year, Best Alternative Song and Best Short Form Music Video.

"To all the people who make music in this moment of independent music, to hell with record labels!" Residente said in accepting the alternative song honor for "No Hay Nadie Como Tu. "This is the moment for those of us who make real music."

An inspirational sentiment, indeed.

Calle 13 also brought the house down with salsa star Rubén Blades on their hit song "La Perla," backed by performers from Cirque du Soleil's Mystère.

Enrique Iglesias, who promised a bilingual album for his next studio effort, presented the 2009 Person of the Year Award to Mexican artist Juan Gabriel. Alicia Keys broke out her musical Spanish for her duet with Alejandro Sanz on "Looking for Paradise." Eva Longoria was also a presenter.

For the complete list of winners, go to LatinGrammy.com.

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Check out the goings-on across the pond in our 2009 MTV Europe Music Awards gallery.

ANDERSON/VILA/bauergriffin.com

Matt Damon is adding to his mantle.

He's only 38 but the thespian has just been tapped to receive his first lifetime achievement honor, the American Cinematheque Award.

According to Variety, Damon has agreed to accept the award in person, leading ABC to schedule the kudocast for primetime. AMC previously hosted the event the past four years.

Not a bad draw if we may say so.

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Talk about a guitar hero.

Bob Bogle, cofounder and lead guitarist of the Ventures whose riffs on hits like "Walk Don't Run" and "Perfidia" definied surf rock, died Sunday at 75.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer was hospitalized after falling ill over the weekend, per Washington's News Tribune of Tacoma. He had reportedly been suffering from non-Hodgkins lymphoma, which forced him to quit the band he founded five decades ago with Bob Wilson.

"Even though you know it's gonna happen, when it does it's like a bomb dropping on you," Wilson told the paper.

Bogle did manage to see his band enshrined in the Rock Hall in 2008 after recording indelible instrumentals that included versions of "Hawaii Five-O," "Pipeline" and the Pulp Fiction staple "Surf Rider," and selling more than 100 million records.

"If you listen to 'Walk, Don't Run' and 'Perfidia,' the lead guitar is just totally unique," said Wilson of his longtime mate. "He used that vibrator bar—they call it a whammy bar—and he used it like nobody else.

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Greed has definitely been good for Michael Douglas.

The Wall Street star was feted in grand style last night, receiving the 37th AFI Life Achievement Award at a tribute attended by longtime pals Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Kathleen Turner, Oliver Stone, along with former costars Tobey Maguire, Benicio Del Toro, Sharon Stone, Martin Sheen and Matthew McConaughey.

Douglas, 64, beamed as friends old and new shared favorite stories of the Oscar-winning actor-producer amid clips of his greatest hits.

"I've had so many of my high moments and so many of my fine moments with you," said Nicholson, recalling their work together on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which Douglas produced.

The evening featured a moving appearance his legendary father, Kirk Douglas, and a couple of musical numbers, including wife Catherine Zeta-Jones in a show-stopping rendition of "One" from A Chorus Line (Douglas starred in the film version) and a surprise performance by Bob Dylan, whose music graced the soundtrack of Douglas's 2000 film Wonder Boys.

Upon accepting his prize, Douglas thanked his parents for his "acting DNA" and gave a shout-out to his The Streets of San Francisco costar and mentor, Karl Malden, who in a videotaped message likened Douglas to an "adopted son."

"I'll be his adopted son anytime," Douglas replied.

The tribute will air July 19 on TV Land.

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, Donato Sardella/Getty Images, Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Today's D.C. VIP: the Dutchess.

Black Eyes Peas’ frontlady Fergie is leading an all-star bill today at the White House's traditional Easter Egg Roll, the first one hosted by President Barack Obama and his family.

The annual event, expected to draw nearly 30,000, kicked off this morning with hundreds of children scouring the South Lawn looking for eggs. The Fergalicious one sang the national anthem after the president welcomed guests with a primer on the Egg Roll's history.

Fergie is set to grace the stage again later in the day as part of a free concert that will also feature Ziggy Marley, kiddie rockers SteveSongs and Imagination Movers, Jessica Jarrell and The Electric Company and the DC Youth Orchestra and Greenbelt SITY Stars.

Several celebs are also scheduled to join first lady Michelle Obama to read passages from children's tales on the storytime stage, including Home Alone bad guy Daniel Stern, Babe's James Cromwell and Mr. Fergie, Transformers star Josh Duhamel.

The event, which is being simulcast online at the White House website, concludes at 5 p.m. ET.

United States Postal Service

Monty Burns, eat your heart out.

Certain to make the rest of Springfield's denizens jealous, the U.S. Postal Service today unveiled 44-cent first-class stamps of The Simpsons. The collection will be released nationwide on May 7.

"This is the biggest and most adhesive honor The Simpsons has ever received," said show mastermind Matt Groening, who conceived the original artwork for the stamps.

In honor of the Fox animated series' 20th season, there are four commemorative designs, each with a different portrait of four-fingered family:  a dazed/crazed Homer, a worried Marge, a cow-causing Bart, a smiling Lisa and PO'd-looking Maggie.

(Sorry, Santa's Little Helper and Snowball II, no stamps for you).

The Postal Service has launced a Simpsons-themed site at www.usps.com/simpsons with special products and a poll asking fans to vote for their favorite stamp.

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The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor goes to the darndest comedians.

It will be the Bill Cosby show when the 12th such honor is handed out Oct. 26 at the John F. Kenny Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., where a bevy of funnymen and women will gather to solute the pioneering comic who went from standup and I Spy to No. 1 TV dad and Jell-O Pudding pusher.

"I would like to apologize to Mr. Twain for falling asleep hundreds of times, but he should understand that I was only four," Cosby, recounting how his mother tried to read him Tom Sawyer and other Twain classics as a kid, said in acceptance.

The 71-year-old Cosby, already a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 1998 and a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002 for his body of work in entertainment and social activism, is in fine company. Richard Pryor received the inaugural Twain prize in 1998 and past recipients have included Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin, Lorne Michaels and George Carlin, who was feted posthumously last year.

AP Photo/Joel Ryan

Even if Mickey Rourke goes the distance and wins an Oscar tomorrow night, what more can he possibly say?

Not that he'd exactly been holding back at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs, but the 56-year-old comeback kid outdid himself Saturday while accepting the trophy for Best Male Lead at the 2009 Film Independent's Spirit Awards, where his star vehicle, The Wrestler, won a leading three honors, including Best Feature and Best Cinematography.

Part paean to Eric Roberts ("the f---kin' man"), part elegy for his dog Loki, part ramble and all tailor-made for pay cable, Rourke's speech at the notoriously quirky beachside kudosfest either scared the crap out of the Motion Picture Academy or, as The Wrestler director Darren Aronofsky noted backstage, could prove to be the best possible thing for the Oscar's declining ratings.

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Stephen Vaughan/Warner Bros. Entertainment, Fox Searchlight, The Weinstein Company

Yeah, yeah...the list of winners from the upcoming 81st Annual Academy Awards appears to have been leaked.

A document listing each Oscar category—with the name of a winner beside it—that appears to have been signed by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Sid Ganis has been making the Internet rounds, thereby spoiling...absolutely nothing.

"The document is a complete fraud," Academy spokeswoman Leslie Unger tells E! News in response to the purported award-season leakage.

"PricewaterhouseCoopers is still counting the ballots and there are only two people there who will know the complete list of winners in advance of the envelopes being opened during the ceremony," Unger said. "The Academy's president is not advised of the winners in advance and no such list is created."

Not that we needed a prankster—or a crystal ball, for that matter—to tell us Slumdog Millionaire is going to win Best Picture on Sunday.

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Jennifer Hudson's ascension to stardom has been honored pretty much every step of the way.

The Oscar winner was somewhat anachronistically named Outstanding New Artist Thursday at the 40th NAACP Image Awards, which honors achievements by people of color in film, television, music and literature—and which happened to this year be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the election of the United States' first black president.

Let's just say, it was quite the proud kudosfest.

"Now don't start me to crying again, y'all," a visibly touched Hudson, who won her first Image Award for acting two years ago, told the standing ovation-prone audience. "Oh my God, it always feels like home coming here. Thank you all so much for all of your amazing support."

Hudson, who came into the evening with a leading seven nominations, walked away with a leading three individual trophies, including Outstanding Album for her self-titled debut and Duo, Group or Collaboration for her duet with Fantasia on "I'm His Only Woman."

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When the 51st Annual Grammy Awards paused to hand out actual awards, a lot of them went to Alison Krauss and Robert Plant.

The duo from opposite sides of the musical tracks continued to prove that risks are worth taking as they collected a leading three awards at Sunday's performance-packed ceremony, including Album of the Year for their debut collaboration, Raising Sand, and Record of the Year for "Please Read the Letter," en route to notching five Grammys overall.

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Ishika Mohan/Fox Searchlight

Slumdog Millionaire could be looking to share the wealth.

The producers of the recent U.K.-U.S. transplant Secret Millionaire are looking to capitalize on the Oscar hopeful's international success with Secret Slumdog Millionaire, a spinoff reality series, according to British media reports.

In the American version of the show, which premiered on Fox in December, quantifiably rich people go undercover in economically deprived neighborhoods, get acquainted with members of the community and and ultimately hand out $100,000 at the end of each episode.

The Indian version would transfer the action to Mumbai, the impoverished, bustling city that provides the setting for Slumdog Millionaire, which has already received criticism that it's portrayal of Mumbai and its people is too one-dimensional.

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