Like BUZZMEDIA, fellow LA media company EQAL is largely all about lending an invisible hand to celebrities on the web. They’ve worked with Tori Spelling, Randy Jackson, Lauren Conrad and now, actor-singer Nick Cannon.

As of Wednesday, Mariah [...]]]>

Like BUZZMEDIA, fellow LA media company EQAL is largely all about lending an invisible hand to celebrities on the web. They’ve worked with Tori Spelling, Randy Jackson, Lauren Conrad and now, actor-singer Nick Cannon.

As of Wednesday, Mariah Carey‘s 30-year-old significant other is editor-in-chief of NickCannon.com, an official website relaunched as a content destination focused on celebrity gossip, news and interviews. FishbowlLA imagines Mr. C will be the sharer of more than one future scoop about Mrs. C. For more information click here Nick Cannon.

Stand-up comedy specials often earn strong ratings on television and sell briskly on DVD, but rarely do they make it to the big screen.

That’s what makes the success of “Kevin Hart: Laugh at My Pain” at the box office this weekend all the more implausible. The film, comprised primarily of footage shot [...]]]>

Stand-up comedy specials often earn strong ratings on television and sell briskly on DVD, but rarely do they make it to the big screen.

That’s what makes the success of “Kevin Hart: Laugh at My Pain” at the box office this weekend all the more implausible. The film, comprised primarily of footage shot during one of the comedian’s shows at the Nokia Theater last February, opened this weekend in 99 theaters and collected $2 million. That amounts to a solid per-theater average of $20,000 for the movie, which played in 25 markets this weekend including Los Angeles, Dallas and Atlanta.

The film was produced for only $750,000 by Jeff Clanagan, chief executive of the independent production company Codeblack Entertainment, which distributed the movie domestically in AMC Theaters.

“We all bet on the back-end to manage the cost,” Clanagan said via telephone Sunday morning. “Laugh at My Pain,” he added, is not merely made up of material from Hart’s stand-up concert. The comedian is also shown visiting his Philadelphia hometown in a brief documentary-style segment, and later acts in a short action clip spoofing the movie “Resevoir Dogs.”

Clanagan said he did not spend a lot of money promoting the movie through traditional marketing channels. He purchased one national advertising spot on “Basketball Wives,” VH1′s highest-rated program, as well as a few others on MTV2 and BET. Hart hosted the BET Awards in June and appeared in a number of vignettes during MTV’s Video Music Awards last month.

The majority of the word-of-mouth about the movie spread on social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, where Hart has more than 2 million followers.

“It’s a lot easier to reach your target audience these days,” Clanagan said. “On Facebook we just asked our fans, ‘Hey, we’re gonna expand the movie, what market are you in?’ And we had 6,000 responses in an hour that showed me, for instance, that we need to go to places like Boston next. We asked fans what key art we should use, and they had a different opinion than what we’d initially chosen — so we changed the art based on that feedback.”

In recent years the few comedy special-based films that have made it to theaters have a mixed track record. “The Original Kings of Comedy” with Cedric the Entertainer made a respectable $38.2 million in 2000, and “Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat” grossed $19.2 million two years later. But just a few years ago, Vince Vaughn’s “Wild West Comedy Show” flopped with a weak $603,984 in 2008.

Meanwhile, “Laugh at My Pain” will expand domestically to 58 additional theaters next weekend.” The film is also being released in East Africa and West Africa through a partnership with Silverbird Cinemas, the sole theater chain servicing countries in that region.

She’s only 17, after all. People’s looks naturally change from 14 to 17.

Her dramatically different appearance has become a focal point of entertainment news shows and sites, but her [...]]]> Ali Lohan plastic surgery rumors abound, but are completely false, her rep insists. Instead, Lohan’s camp says the teen’s body and face are merely aging.

She’s only 17, after all. People’s looks naturally change from 14 to 17.

Her dramatically different appearance has become a focal point of entertainment news shows and sites, but her rep says she did NOT go under the knife.

“Aliana has never had any type of plastic surgery in her life, or ever considered it,” Steve Honig says. “Her success as a model lies with her natural looks.

“She has no interest in changing that. In the past two years, she has gone through a normal teenage growth spurt that has made her taller and slimmer.”

Lindsay Lohan’s younger sister is demonstrably thinner – some might even say she looks like an anorexic waif - but team Lohan says she’s totally healthy.

Lohan’s growth “has slightly changed the composure of her face, all of which is typical of what happens to kids in their mid to late teens,” Honig says.

“It’s what people refer to as the awkward stage. Ali is growing up; that’s all.”

CTVNews.ca Staff

Watching just nine minutes of fast-paced cartoons, such as the perennial children’s favourite “SpongeBob SquarePants,” can cause short-term attention problems in preschoolers, new research suggests.

For the study, psychologists studied 60 four-year-olds. Each was randomly assigned to watch either “a fast-paced cartoon featuring an animated kitchen sponge,” that is: “SpongeBob”; the [...]]]>

CTVNews.ca Staff

Watching just nine minutes of fast-paced cartoons, such as the perennial children’s favourite “SpongeBob SquarePants,” can cause short-term attention problems in preschoolers, new research suggests.

For the study, psychologists studied 60 four-year-olds. Each was randomly assigned to watch either “a fast-paced cartoon featuring an animated kitchen sponge,” that is: “SpongeBob”; the slower-paced PBS cartoon “Caillou”; or nine minutes of colouring with paper and crayons.

Immediately after the nine-minute assignments, the children took mental function tests. The tests measured the kids’ ability to problem-solve, to remember what they had been told and to follow rules.

Another test measured self-control and ability to delay gratification by measuring how long the kids could wait before eating snacks presented when a researcher left the room.

Those who had watched “SpongeBob” did measurably worse than the drawing group in all the tests. Yet there was no difference between the drawing group and the kids who watched “Caillou.”

For example, in the delay gratification test with the snacks, the kids in the “SpongeBob” group could wait only about two-and-a-half minutes on average, versus at least four minutes for the other two groups.

The results appear in the journal Pediatrics.

It’s long been suspected that TV-watching can lead to attention problems in young children over the long term, but this new study suggests there may be more immediate problems that can occur — even after just a few minutes of viewing.

It also suggests that parents should be concerned not just with just how much television their children watch, but what they’re watching.

The study’s lead author, University of Virginia psychology professor Angeline Lillard, believes the study shows that young children are compromised in their ability to learn and use self-control immediately after watching fast-paced shows.

She offered a couple of explanations for why children might experience short-term problems.

The first is that the fast pacing (with frequent scene changes and characters that are constantly in motion), and the fantasy aspect of the shows (with characters doing things that make no sense in the real world), may disrupt young children’s ability to concentrate immediately afterward.

It’s also possible that kids are unconsciously adopting the characteristics of the unfocused and frenetic characters.

Lillard notes similar problems have been noticed in kids who watched other fast-paced cartoon programming; not just “SpongeBob.”

“I wouldn’t advise watching such shows on the way to school or any time they’re expected to pay attention and learn,” she told The Associated Press.

Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a child development specialist at Seattle Children’s Hospital who wrote an editorial accompanying the study, notes the research has some “notable weaknesses,” including a small sample size of just 60 children.

He also notes the study didn’t look at how long the behavioural effects of the fast-paced shows lasted. Nor is it clear whether older children might be affected the same way.

Despite the flaws, Christakis says the study offers some important insights.

“This is a small study but it is important one because if it is true that there is a link between TV viewing and intellectual capacity in children, it is concerning,” he told CTV News.

He said the study also showed that what children watch is as important as how much they watch.

“I was the type of programming that actually made a difference the fast paced cartoon was associated with deficits in attention, the slow paced was not and this I think is critical for parents and, for that matter, educators and researchers to realize,” he added.

But a spokesperson for Nickelodeon, which produces “SpongeBob,” disputes the findings. David Bittler notes that “SpongeBob SquarePants” is aimed at 6- to 11-year-olds, not 4-year-olds. He also notes that most of the kids in the study group were white and from middle-class or wealthy families.

“Having 60 non-diverse kids, who are not part of the show’s targeted (audience), watch nine minutes of programming is questionable methodology and could not possibly provide the basis for any valid findings that parents could trust,” he told The Associated Press.

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Dont Snooze this Saturday unless you are prepared to loose. We hope to see you at the Baldwin Hills mall from 11am-5pm! Lets get back into that school mode!

Domino’s is definitely NOT going to the moon anytime, especially with it costing over 1.6 trillion dollars to operate. However their Japanese branch is coming up with designs for the future moon based Domino’s.

MTV is giving all the night owls the best moments from the VMA’s. Watch and reminisce on your favorite VMA moments up until Sunday Aug. 28th 2011!