Watching New Celebs

Off to spend a long weekend. Be back Monday…

There is still a baby boom phenomenon in Hollywood. As today we learned two more stars are expecting something good the stork will be bringing in a couple of months.

MATT DAMON’s BABY GIRL

Matt Damon and his wife Luciana Barroso  are reportedly pregnant with a baby girl. This is the second child for the couple, who have made the announcement last March. Now that they know the baby’s gender, the couple still have not decided on a name.

“We decided to wait till she’s born, and then we’re going to get a look at her, and we’ll probably keep debating it.I’m so outnumbered down here, its crazy.”  Says Matt Damon.

Matt and Luciana have a one year old daughter named Isabella while Luciana also has a nine year old girl, Alexia with a former partner.

REBECCA ROMJIN and JERRY O’ CONNELL’s TWINS

First time parents Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O’Connell are going to have a handful as they actress is carrying twin babies. The announcement was made yesterday and Rebecca is expected to give birth sometime in the Winter.

The couple is celebrating their one year marriage this month of July.

MARY LYNN RAJSKUB HAS A BOY!

Congratulations to 24’s Chloe, Mary Lynn Rajskub, who just gave birth to a baby boy last Thursday. The baby, named Valentine Anthony is the first born for the actress and her partner Matthew Rolph.

“It was like an episode of 24 with the clock ticking.”  Says Mary Lynn to People Magazine.

The actress is set to return this January on the new season of her show.

Sources: TV Guide, People Magazine, Starpulse

Mandi Perkins is described as a singer and songwriter who is “intensely passionate and charismatic”. Growing up in Toronto, Canda, she began dabbling in music at a very young age. She joined musicals and competitions left and right and also began writing her own music.

In college, she attended UC Berkeley in California graduating With Honors with a degree in English Literature all the while still pursuing her music career. Upon graduation, she moved to Los Angeles to continue with her music, but other aspects of her life didn’t take a back seat. In between a few gigs, Mandi took law and has recently passed the California State Bar.

The release of her first album, Bleeding The Line in August 2007 was by no means an easy project as it was an independent production. Although she did have the support of a few famous people like Ryan Tedder of One Republic, who helped collaborate with her.

Many of Mandi’s songs were featured on MTV shows like Laguna Beach, The Hills and The Real World. As she mostly writes songs reflecting her own life, it was easy for others to stop and listen to her music.

One year following her first album’s release, she is again going to have another album out under a major label this time.

Says Mandi of Alice In No Man’s Land —- “Each song stems from my own personal experiences, the lives of the people closest to me and those I meet along the way. I write songs from my stomach and will take an event that has happened to me immediately following its conclusion and I will stretch it out until it’s at the rawest form. Once I have the emotion explode on paper, I am much more at ease. Songwriting is cathartic for me. I think it’s great to passionately feel, but there is a point when you should make sure you have an outlet, especially when the excess baggage takes control of your life. Hopefully listening to my music will be cathartic for other people.”

Alice in No Man’s Land will be released under Sony BMG on August 5.

Via Mandi’s MySpace

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the Italian born model turned pop icon turned First Lady to France, has just released her album last July 11. And according to Reuters, its enjoying a brisk sales, shooting at the top of the charts only on its first week.

Entitled “Comme si de rien n’etait” (As If Nothing Had Happened), the album has been of great interest to the public not only because of Carla Bruni’s stature as a Paris pop star. The public is keen on whatever she’s doing ever since she married the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, last February, three months after a whirlwind courtship.

Carla Bruni is reported to have written the lyrics to some of her songs. Many of this songs are about her love life, which is why the media has become more obsessed with her and her songs.

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Performing before a large crowd at a charity benefit, Coco Sumner, only 17 years old, is sure making her daddy proud. This young chick’s dad only happens to be none other than the legendary Sting, who is Gordon Sumner in real life.

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The promise of a flourishing career in the American TV landscape seems all lost on Michelle Ryan after her show, the updated version of Bionic Woman, got canceled. But that does not mean you’ll see the last of her on US Television, because Michelle Ryan will be back. She has signed on the BBC production of Merlin, which will air in the UK first, before it comes to NBC one Sunday night this winter.

Details of this special is right after the cut…

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With news of actors leaving and coming back to CSI and its franchise - CSI Miami and CSI New York, I have a hard time keeping up with all the changes. I’m not even an avid viewer of this crime series, all three of them. But seeing that it is the most watched TV program in the world, I should add that, fans of the series should know that two of the three CSI shows are adding new cast members.

First, Kathleen Munroe is joining CSI New York as a recurring character. She will play the role of Samantha Flack, younger sister of Detective Flack (played by Eddie Cahill).

“She’s a bad girl,” explains exec producer Pam Veasey. “She’s trouble. It’s a great dynamic.” Veasey reveals that the role was originally going to be small, but then they met Munroe and “she was so his sister and so authentically New York and so wonderfully young and beautiful and shifty and dangerous that we were like, ‘Oh my God, this is a great opportunity.’ It adds a great human element to Eddie’s character, and [her presence] will touch a lot of other people, including A.J. and Stella.” | Ausiello

Kathleen Munroe was in the cast of Beautiful People, which ran for only one season two or three years ago. She has also appeared in several TV shows like Moonlight, Supernatural, Dresden Files and Cold Case.

And joining another CSI franchise - CSI Miami-  is Megalyn Echikunwoke, who will now be the show’s new corononer since Khandi Alexander left the series last season. Among Megalyn’s TV credentials — she was a regular on The 4400 and like Kathleen, she also guest starred on Supernatural, as well as plenty of other series like Veronica Mars, That 70’s Show, What I Like About You, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and most notably as Pres. Palmer’s daughter, Nicole, in the first season of 24.  She looks rather young to be a doctor-coroner, don’t you think?

Olga Kurylenko, born Olga Konstantinovna Kurylenko in Ukraine last November 14, 1979, is a model and an actress who is no stranger to hardships and poverty. She was raised by her grandparents and lived in a tiny flat with her cousins, as her mother struggled to provide for her future, working as an art teacher. Yet, inspite this, Olga has managed to study piano and ballet at a very young age.

By the time Olga was thirteen, an agent has spotted her with her mother at a Moscow subway station and convinced her to become a model. And after a series of training, Olga was ready to move to Paris and signed on to a modeling agency at the age of 16. At a young age of 18 years old, Olga has, by then already made cover in various magazines like Vogue, Elle and Marie Claire. She went on to be the image model for the Bebe clothing line and cosmetic giants like Clarins and Helena Rubinstein.

In the late 90’s Olga decided to shift from modeling to acting and went to different acting agencies but it wasn’t until in 2005 when her acting career took off via the Diane Bertrand film, L’ Annulaire. As a screen siren, Olga’s beauty and mesmerizing features did not go unnoticed with the male population. She then starred in a few more films like Le Serpent and Paris, Je T’aime with Elijah Wood. Both films were released in 2006. Her first Hollywood break was via the film adaptation of the video game franchise, Hitman with Timothy Olyphant.

But her biggest break would have to be bagging the newest Bond girl tag via the latest James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace with Daniel Craig. The movie will be released in November of this year.

Watch this video of Olga talking about all her role of a lifetime and the stunts she has to do for the film:

I had just finished watching Wanted a couple of days ago. The movie, of course starred Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman and James McAvoy… who is fast becoming one familiar celebrity. Although, I didn’t quite enjoy the film contrary to reviews which were mostly positive.  And I couldn’t picture James McAvoy as a real action hero…yet. I just don’t see it in him.

Although, yes the guy’s quite a good actor and I would love to see more of his work. I’m going to be watching his other movie, Penelope, a little later (with Christina Ricci and Reese Weatherspoon) and I think I’d love that better than Wanted.

I first learned of James McAvoy as he was starting out in Hollywood, via Spielberg’s mini-series Band of Brothers. He wasn’t even in the story much and his character even died. But he left a lasting impact on me, one that would prompt me google him up and check on where else I can see him in.

Born in Scotland, James McAvoy, got another break in Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune, and then later in the epic movie, The Chronicles of Narnia. But his celebrity status rose to greater heights in the Atonement, earning him prestigious acting nominations such as the BAFTA, the European Film Award and the Golden Globes.

He will be next seen on the upcoming film, The Last Station, a story about the famous writer Leo Tolstoy. It is a movie he did alongside his wife, Anne Marie Duff. James McAvoy is also rumored to  be playing the role of young Bilbo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings prequel, The Hobbit.

With these quality projects on hand for him, it’s pretty clear this Scottish lad is very much wanted in Hollywood these days.

I caught Little Miss Sunshine on cable TV early this week and wondered what’s been going on with Paul Dano’s career. He was touted as one of Eentertainment Weekly’s successful people under 30 years old, but I don’t remember seeing him in anything else after films like LMS and There Will  Be Blood (which earned him a BAFTA Best Supporting Award Nomination).

So what has this celebrity been up to? What projects are lined up for him?

It seems most of what he’s been doing are independent film productions, like Explicit Ills, released in March of this year at the South by Southwest Film Festivals. That movie, a love story about drug dependents, won the festival’s Audience Award and Cinematography.

Next in line are the following films, which are all going to run next year: The Good Heart - a drama he is currently filming with Brian Cox; Where the Wild Things Are - Spike Jones’ adaptation of a classic children’s story; and Gigantic - which will bring him together with Zooey Deschanel. He is also rumored to be in the cast of Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz).

Last month, Lifetime aired one of his earlier movies which played like the male equivalent of Juno, in Too Young To Be A Dad. Did anyone catch that TV movie?  This was sometime in 2002 when Paul was still in his teens but his depth as an actor is already noticeable.

Apart from movies, Paul is active on the stage and in Broadway productions, although it isn’t clear if he’s in any productions lately.

Today is the release of the book written by Madonna’s estranged brother, Christopher Ciccone, entitled Life With My Sister Madonna.

The brother is currently enjoying a different kind of celebrity status because of the book he wrote promises to be “detrimental” to the famed superstar, with very intimate tidbits about her struggle with marriage, how she handles her career as a cutthroat businesswoman, how much of the superstar’s reputation as a bitch is actually true and to whom Madonna lost her virginity. Sources say the book is “extremely graphic and devastating”.

News of this tell-all book has been running on dailies, news agencies and gossip pages for several weeks now, with ABC even picking up an excerpt from it.

“Madonna’s insomnia only became apparent to me when we were living together in downtown Manhattan at the start of her career. Whenever I woke up during the night, she would be in the living room, perched on white futon, which—no matter how many times we washed the floor—was always dirty. She was usually dressed in a white oversize men’s T-shirt, baggy, white cowboy-print sweats, sucking Hot Tamales, her favorite cinnamon-flavored candies, and reading poetry—often Anne Sexton whose lines sometimes inspired her lyrics. Or the diaries of Anais Nin, who along with Joan of Arc, is one of her heroines. Anything to get her through those long, hot airless Manhattan nights, nights when her mind didn’t switch off, when fantastical candy-colored visions of her future sparkled in her brain. Unbridled desire for fame and fortune, you see, is incompatible with sleep.”

The siblings had a falling out several years ago, allegedly in connection to Madonna’s relationship with Guy Ritchie, and the book was written without his sister’s knowledge, of course.

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Most people have heard by now — Angelina Jolie has just given birth to twins over the weekend. The new parents six times over, Brad and Angelina, have named them after family members.

The baby boy is Knox Leon, named after Brad’s father while the baby girl is Vivienne Marcheline, named after Jolie’s deceased mother (Marcheline), who the actress and her family lost recently to cancer.

Knox Leon is slightly heavier than his twin sister at 2.28 kg; Marcheline is 2.27 kg.

The twins were born in a heavily guarded private hospital in Nice, France under C-Section the couple has planned for ahead of time.

The couple’s doctor Michel Sussmann says, “The parents and the babies are in excellent health. Everything is fine.They were very happy”. Brad was in the room the whole time, assisting with the birth.

After the birth, the mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, signed the twins’ birth certificate at the hospital (as photographed) and talked to the press hovering the vicinity. “I congratulate the happy parents, the most famous couple in the world, who have chosen our city for this happy event … The newborns are, history will not forget it, real Nicois, citizens of Nice.”

The couple’s other kids Maddox, Pax, Zahara and Shiloh have all been flown to France and are staying at a villa since June.

There is no doubt these are the newest celebrities born today. Even before they came to the world, their images are already worth millions of dollars. News reports say that the couple have sold the rights to the twins’ first photograph to a US publication still unnamed for $11 Million. But the couple intends to donate the proceeds of this to charity.

Technorati Tags: Angelina Jolie,Brad Pitt,Knox Leon,Vivienne Marcheline

I’ve only recently started watching Attack of the Show, this program on cable network G4 catering to techno-philes. Aside from how informative it is, I quite enjoy the liveliness of the program; it’s funny and entertaining. I’m very smitten by its co-hosts Olivia Munn, who easily stands out because of her striking features. I either thought she was a native Hawaiian or Siberian (Eskimo). But she’s half Chinese and half Caucasian…really, really pretty.

Olivia Munn has been hosting Attack of the Show for more than two years now.  

I found out is going to be in a movie really soon, one with Rob Schneider — Big Stan, and another, a horror flick, Insanitarium. Which means, she will soon be recognizable not only to tech geeks watching her show on G4, but among the mainstream audience as well.

So, everyone, watch out for this lady.

In the meantime, check her out in this clip from Attack of the Show:

Big Brother Season 10 is opening its door to a diverse cast this summer with two older house guests, two Black Americans and one Asian American…which doesn’t normally happen on the show. Will they keep that popular summer house interesting? For the next three months, these people much talked about by fans of Reality TV.

The House Guests: