Jared Leto Deserves More Credit

Weight gain for "Chapter 27"

Jared Leto, the hunky frontman of rock group, 3o Seconds to Mars, has been apart of the acting scene for some time yet, he doesnt get all the glory that other actos like Tom Cruise and others recieve.

*brief hostory: In 1992, Leto moved to Los Angeles two years later, he landed a role in the TV show My So-Called Life in which he played Jordan Catalano, opposite Claire Danes. After that,show he acted in several films such as How to Make an American Quilt, Girl, Interrupted, Urban Legend, The Thin Red Line, Prefontaine and Fight Club, and more, yet the public was not familiar with his name or face.

Major success came in the form of his potrayal of a heroin addict Harry Goldfarb in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream in the year 2000, that garnered him more critical praise. The same year he portrayed misfortuned yuppie colleague of Christian Bale's Patrick Bateman, in Mary Harron's American Psycho. After that, he returned with David Fincher for Panic Room, then teamed up with Jake Gyllenhaal in James Cox's Highway in 2002, then acted opposite Colin Farrell in Oliver Stone's Alexander, and later with Nicolas Cage in Lord of War.

Requiem For a Dream

In 2008, he gained more than 60 pounds to take on the role of John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman Let. This is a hard feat for a vegetarian. He put on the pounds by eating a carton of melted hagan daz mixed with soy sauce. yum! why did he do it?

“It was nice to do something different and something challenging,” Leto says. “I certainly wouldn’t want to make a film this dark and challenging every time out, but I was excited by the idea that Jarrett had when I sat down and met with him originally. Even with my trepidations at taking on this role, ultimately I thought that I could learn a lot by doing it, so that’s why I ended up saying yes.”

While most reviews for the film so far are pretty negative, Leto deserves way more credit than he is given. A dedicated actor like this deserves to be noticed.

Rock and... Walmart

If you walked into any local Walmart lately, you saw the massive amount of AC/DC merch floating around

On October 20th, Wal-Mart opened a temporary 3,000-square-foot store on Hollywood Boulevard devoted entirely to AC/DC's new album, Black Ice. Like the Eagles successfully did a year ago, AC/DC are selling their record exclusively through Wal-Mart's 3,500 stores, tapping into the chain's marketing might and 200 million annual customers at a time when CD sales dropped 36 percent between 2000 and 2007, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan.


The deal is paying off! Black Ice was on track to sell more than 900,000 copies in its first week at press time, making it the year's second-biggest debut. And Wal-Mart — the nation's number-two music retailer, behind iTunes — has reportedly ordered 2.5 million copies of the record.


Other superstars are making similar deals: Best Buy will release Guns n' Roses' Chinese Democracy on November 23rd and the Police's Certifiable box set on November 11th. (David Gilmour's Live in Gdansk and Elton John's The Red Piano box sets hit shelves earlier in the season.) And Christina Aguilera's Keeps Gettin' Better hits package will come out at Target on November 11th. "You're talking about retailers that can come up with millions of advertising dollars," says Tom Corson, general manager of Aguilera's label, the RCA Music Group. "That can be attractive if you have the right brand and the right artist."

Wal-Mart has special rooms for the band in its stores, selling $11.88 Black Ice CDs — plus the group's catalog, merchandise and an AC/DC version of Rock Band. And in addition to opening temporary AC/DC stores in L.A. and New York's Times Square, Wal-Mart sent black AC/DC ice cream trucks into those cities to hype the disc.

"If you are not going to be a digital band [AC/DC don't allow their music to be sold as downloads], then it behooves you to explore opportunities for an alliance with someone who is powerful in the physical world," says Steve Barnett, co-chairman of the band's label, Columbia Records.

Have some Tissues Ready

"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas", a novel written by Ireland native, John Boyne, has finally been made into a movie. Directed by Mark Herman and produced by David Heyman, this heartfelt film stars Asa Butterfield, David Thewlis and Vera Farmiga... and the music is by James Horner (who also did the soundtrack for Titanic), so you know its going to be good.

The movie tells the strory of an eight year-old boy named Bruno, the sheltered son of a Nazi officer whose promotion takes the family from their nice and comfortable home in Berlin to a pretty much deserted area where the lonely boy finds nothing to do and no one else to play with. Boredom and compelles him to curiosity. He ignores his mothers instructions not to explore the back garden and heads for the backyard anyway. He finds a "farm"(which is really Auschwitz) and sits outside of the fence. There he meets Shmuel, a boy his own age who lives a behind the barbed wire fence. Bruno's encounter with the boy in the striped pajamas leads him from innocence to an awareness of the adult world.

The author commented that he chose to tell the story through the eight year old boy in oder to take own a unique perspective full of innocence and how easily it can be shattered.

The film was shot in Budapest between April and June 2007 and was released on September 12, 2008 in Ireland and the UK, on September 17, 2008 in China and Japan, on October 3, 2008 in Finland and on November 7, 2008 in USA.

You can go see this movie at your Local Ritz Theatre

The History of All Hallows Eve

The term Halloween is shortened from All Hallows' Even (both "even" and "eve" are abbreviations of "evening", but "Halloween" gets its "n" from "even"). It is the eve of "All Hallows' Day", which is now also known as All Saints' Day. It was a day of religious festivities in various northern European Pagan traditions, until Popes Gregory III and Gregory IV moved the old Christian feast of All Saints' Day from May 13 (which had itself been the date of a pagan holiday, the Feast of the Lemures) to November 1. In the ninth century, the Church measured the day as starting at sunset, in accordance with the Florentine calendar. Although All Saints' Day is now considered to occur one day after Halloween, the two holidays were, at that time, celebrated on the same day. Liturgically, the Church traditionally celebrated that day as the Vigil of All Saints, and, until 1970, a day of fasting as well. Like other vigils, it was celebrated on the previous day if it fell on a Sunday, although secular celebrations of the holiday remained on the 31st. The Vigil was suppressed in 1955, but was later restored in the post-Vatican II calendar. Interesting fact-The term “trick or treat,” first appeared in print around 1939. Because the holiday comes in the wake of the annual apple harvest, candy apples (also known as toffee, caramel, or taffy apples) are a common Halloween treat made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, sometimes followed by rolling them in nuts.

At one point, candy apples were commonly given to children, but the practice rapidly waned in the wake of widespread rumors that some individuals were embedding items like pins and razor blades in the apples along with dipping them in poison (yum!) While there is evidence of such incidents,[19] they are quite rare and have never resulted in serious injury. Nonetheless, many parents assumed that such heinous practices were rampant. At the peak of the hysteria, some hospitals offered free x-rays of children's Halloween hauls in order to find evidence of tampering. Virtually all of the few known candy poisoning incidents involved parents who poisoned their own children's candy, and there have been occasional reports of children putting needles in their own (and other children's) candy in need of a bit of attention

Buh Bye Elephants

Over the summer, 52-year old female African elephant, Petal, passed away at the Philadelphia Zoo, making her the oldest African elephant in an American zoo, and a resident of the Philadelphia Zoo for more than a half-century. The elephant was one of three African elephants scheduled to be moved to a new preserve outside Pittsburgh.

The death did not affect the transfer of the two remaining elephants to the Pittsburgh Zoo's International Conservation Center, which took place not too long ago.

The Philadelphia Zoo decided in 2006 to close its elephant exhibit rather than try to raise money for upgraded quarters. It concluded it was in the best interests of the elephants to move them to other environments.

I went to the Philly zoo today, and let me tell you, it its a very depressing sight to see the once lively elephant exhibit now empty.

Do you think elephants should be kept in zoos?

Alice is Back.

the new Alice

A new twist on a classic disnery movie, Alice in Wonderland, is set to be realeased sometime in 2010, directed by no other than Tim Burton.

The storyline behind the new flick is Alice is now 19 and not interested in marrying a rich guy. Instead she falls back down the rabbit hole. She intervenes on behalf of the White Queen to regain the crown, falls in love with the Mad Hatter...and decides to return home with her newfound courage. Sound spretty scandolous.

It is confirmed that Johnny Depp is set to play the Mad Hatter and the part of Alice will be played by a young Australian actress by the name of Mia Wasikowska. The movie will be a mix of live action and CGI. The movie is currently being filmed in Cornall, England.

Hottest Concerts of the Summer

When school let out for the summer, many students went to the beach or to foreign locations to have a good time, but those who stayed in the area got to experience some of the most exciting concerts of the summer.
The Popped! Music Festival kicked off the summer of music on June 20th at the Trocadero Theatre in Philadelphia for it's first day and had its last day of the festival on Sunday the 22nd at the World Cafe. Indie bands such as Mates of State, Crystal Castles, The Ting Tings, and Vampire Weekend headlined this unique festival.
From June 27th till the 29th The School of Rock Festival took place at the Electric Factory and Festival Pier, also in Philadelphia. This special festival not only featured big name acts such as DEVO, Dropkick Murphys, and Less Than Jake, but it also featured some students who attend West that are involved in the Cherry Hill School of Rock, founded by Paul Green. Local Irish punk rock band, Smiting Shillelagh, with senior Dan Noar on the flute and accordion, played to a crowd of devoted fans at the SOR Fest on the 3rd day.
“We started our own festival" Paul Green said " so that every kid that goes to one of our schools, every year, has an opportunity to get on a bus and play a rock festival.”
In July, Linkin Park turned up the heat by bringing their fifth year of the Projekt Revolution tour to Camden's Tweeter Center on the 19th. Former Soundgarden and Audioslave front man Chris Cornell, graced the main stage along with The Bravery, Busta Rhymes, Ashes Divide, and of course, the star of the show- Linkin Park. The Revolution stage was headlined by Atreyu, 10 Years, fiery Ohio natives Hawthorne Heights, and Armor For Sleep. With Projekt Revolution 2008, Linkin Park made sure a dollar from every ticket sold went towards Music for Relief to support disaster relief and reduce global warming.
The much anticipated Warped Tour 08 hit the Tweeter six days after Projekt Revolution. The tour's diverse lineup included Katy Perry, Angels & Airwaves, Shwayze, All Time Low, Cobra Starship, Gym Class Heroes, Bring Me the Horizon, Set Your Goals, Family Force 5, and Relient K, along with live skateboarding and BMX . Thousands of screaming and sweaty fans from the South Jersey Area and beyond attended the all day event and most got to meet their favorite bands before and after their thirty minute set.

DJ AM And Travis Barker Critically Injured In Plane Crash

On Friday the 19th, former Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and DJ AM were critically injured in a plane crash in Columbia, South Carolina. The crash killed four other passengers.

Lexington County Deputy Coroner Brian Setree confirmed that the victims were Barker's assistant, Chris Baker, 29, Barker's security guard, Charles Still, 25, the plane's pilot, Sarah Lemmon, 31, and her co-pilot, James Bland, 52.
Barker and AM had just performed at a free T-Mobile-sponsored show, along with Perry Farrell and headliner Gavin DeGraw.

AM and Barker were transported to a hospital in Columbia following the crash. They were transferred to the Still Center after.
According to TMZ.com, Barker sustained burns from the waist down, while AM suffered facial burns. UsMagazine.com said that AM was in a doctor-induced coma and will undergo skin grafts.

On Saturday afternoon, members of both men's families reportedly traveled to Georgia to be with them.
The plane, which never left the ground, overran the runway, struck an antenna array and several lights, and began sending up sparks. It skidded off the end of the runway, through a perimeter fence separating the airfield from a nearby roadway, and then crossed the roadway, coming to a stop on an embankment. The plane caught fire on impact. Douglas said two passengers — who were later confirmed to be AM and Barker — escaped the aircraft while it was on the ground, while the other two passengers and crew members died in the crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed these details during a press conference, which was held shortly after 11:30 a.m. Saturday.
An eyewitness told NBC a news affiliate that he saw a fireball crossing the road near the airport and then realized it was a plane. He saw jet fuel shoot out across the roadway and then saw two men, who were both on fire, patting each other down to extinguish the flames.

so, what are Travis' tattoos going to look like when he recovers? :/