Rappers, rockers drive Grammy nominations

Kanye West leads the 2012 Grammy field with seven noms.Pop-soul powerhouse Adele collected six Grammy bids, including album of the year for '21,' the year's top-selling title.The Foo Fighters' 'Wasting Light' is in the race for album of the year.Move over, Taylor -- Kanye's in the house.Nominations for the 2012 Grammy Awards give big props to short-fused rapper Kanye West, but pop-country darling Taylor Swift, one of the year's biggest sellers, was shut out of the major categories.Top nods for the Recording Academy's 54th Grammys -- to be telecast live from Staples Center on Feb. 12 -- were announced Wednesday during a one-hour show at Nokia Theater, aired live in the East on CBS for the fourth year running.Leading the list of nominees this year is West, who drew seven nods. Adele, Foo Fighters and Bruno Mars all collected six noms, while Lil Wayne and Skrillex will compete in five categories.Up for album of the year are Adele's "21," Foo Fighters' "Wasting Light," Lady Gaga's "Born This Way," Bruno Mars' "Doo-Wops & Hooligans" and Rihanna's "Loud."Contending for record of the year (presented to the artist, producers, engineers and mixers) are Adele's "Rolling in the Deep," Bon Iver's "Holocene," Mars' "Grenade," Mumford & Sons' "The Cave" and Katy Perry's "Firework."The field for song of the year (a cleffer's award) comprises West's "All of the Lights" (written by Jeff Bhasker, Malik Jones, Warren Trotter and West), "The Cave" (by Ted Dwayne, Ben Lovett, Marcus Mumford and Country Winston), "Grenade" (by Brody Brown, Claude Kelly, Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine, Andrew Wyatt and Mars), "Holocene" (by Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver), and "Rolling in the Deep" (by Adele and Paul Epworth).Best new artist nominees are sibling country act the Band Perry, neo-folkie Bon Iver, rappers J. Cole and Nicki Minaj and dance artist Skrillex.All but one of West's nominations came in genre slots. Conspicuous by its absence in the album of the year category is his hit "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," which entered the chart at No. 1 with a 496,000-unit week last December. His hot-selling 2011 collaboration with Jay-Z, "Watch the Throne," was similarly dissed.While West has rung up 14 Grammy wins since 2005's ceremony, the lippy rapper has never been accorded recognition in any of the major categories, and he has been vocal in his displeasure about that slight.Pop-soul powerhouse Adele (ne Adele Adkins), 2011's breakout superstar, has already found favor among Grammy voters: she reaped two awards at the 2009 ceremony, including best new artist.She's this year's uncontested sales champ: Her sophomore album "21" has sold nearly 4.7 million copies since its release in February, moving more than 100,000 copies per week for the life of its run. It dropped out of the top five on the U.S. album chart for the first time only this week.Sadly, dismissal of Swift's late-2010 smash "Fearless" and its attendant hits in the major categories will rob the 54th Grammys of what could have been a rousing competition between Adele and contemporary pop's other 21-year-old luminary. Swift -- winner of four Grammys in 2010 -- collected three nods, including best country album, in genre categories.The Recording Academy instead decided to shower nominations on Foo Fighters, the alt-rock unit fronted by former Nirvana skin man Dave Grohl. A NARAS favorite, act has won half a dozen Grammys since 2000.Though Lady Gaga only began her recording career three years ago, she already qualifies as a Grammy darling, despite her technical elimination from best new artist consideration two years back.Gaga has five wins to her credit, moving out of the electronic/dance niche into pop terrain at the 2011 awards show with triumphs in the female pop vocal and pop vocal album categories. The predecessors to "Born This Way," her debut "The Fame" and its sequel "The Fame Monster," also collected album of the year nods. "Born" arrived at No. 1 in June behind a 1.1 million-unit sales week.Singer-songwriter-producer Mars -- whose hit "Just the Way You Are" collected a best male pop vocal performance award earlier this year -- makes a prominent showing in the '12 competish with acknowledgement in three of the top slots.Despite country's ongoing sales potency, it received short shrift in this year's major nominations. Swift, trio Lady Antebellum (last year's record of the year and song of the year winner) and rising rock-friendly vocalist Jason Aldean -- the authors of mega-selling sets -- are all glaringly absent from the so-called "general field" of top nominees.On the film and TV side, best compilation soundtrack nominees include "Boardwalk Empire: Volume 1," "Burlesque," "Glee: The Music, Volume 4," "Tangled" and "True Blood: Volume 3."Alexandre Desplat swept up two nominations in the best score soundtrack category, a composer's award, for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 2" and "The King's Speech." Other nods were granted to Clint Mansell ("The Black Swan), Ryan Shore ("The Shrine") and dance-pop duo Daft Punk ("Tron Legacy").Nominated for best song written for visual media are "Born to Be Somebody" (from the Justin Bieber vehicle "Never Say Never," by Diane Warren), "Christmastime is Killing Us" (from "Family Guy," by Ron Jones, Seth MacFarlane and Danny Smith), "I See the Light" (from "Tangled," by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater), "So Long" (from "Winnie the Pooh," by Zooey Deschanel), "Where the River Goes" (from "Footloose," by Zac Brown, Wyatt Durrette, Drew Pearson and Anne Preven) and "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me" (from the Cher-Christina Aguilera pic "Burlesque," also by Warren).Cast recordings of the Tony-winning legit tuner "The Book of Mormon" and revivals of "Anything Goes" and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" will compete for best musical theater album.The 2012 Grammy nominees list is less voluminous than in years past: In April, the Recording Academy pared the number of categories to 78 from 109, eliminating many niche slots and unifying vocal awards in pop, R&B and country. Move sparked an outcry among some performers and a still-pending class-action lawsuit.Material released between Oct. 1, 2010 and Sept. 30, 2011 was eligible for 2012 Grammys consideration.Click here for the complete list of nominees. Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com

France Honors Lenny Kravitz With Finest Award

First Launched: November 30, 2011 6:29 PM EST Credit: Getty Images PARIS, France -- Caption Lenny Kravitz works at Terminal 5 in NY City on August 31, 2011 France has paid out tribute to Grammy champion Lenny Kravitz having its finest award, the Legion of Recognition. Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand recognized the 47-year-old singer-songwriter inside a Paris ceremony on Wednesday, telling him you freed yourself in the obstacles between black and white-colored appear. Kravitz told The Connected Press he got his first large burglary a 1989 music festival inside the western French capital of scotland - Rennes that transformed his career overnight. He mentioned Yes, it appears just like a mythic nonetheless it is true. Kravitz was produced with a black mother and white-colored father, and also the latest album, Black and White-colored America, occupies interracial issues particularly what his parents acquainted with sixties NY. Copyright 2011 with the Connected Press. All rights reserved. These elements is probably not launched, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Lasseter guarantees credit is spread

John Lasseter can get the Albert R. Broccoli Award for Worldwide Contribution to Shot Entertainment within the Britannia Honours.For an individual responsible more than $10 billion in worldwide box office, John Lasseter is quick to deflect the borrowed funds.InchFrequently, the truth is management structures where it seems like the important body's towards the top,In . states Lasseter, chief creative officer for Pixar and Wally Disney Animation Art galleries. "The philosophy (Disney-Pixar prexy) Erection dysfunction Catmull which i've is the oarsmen deep inside the ship are the key people, and that we exist to make sure they stay devoted to the studio as well as the work."As someone who aided row Disney through among its deeper periods, only to be overlooked when he tried to suggest recommendations for making the movies better (his idea: use personal computers to help in animation), Lasseter has justification to empower his team."Let me tell you, they are much more comfortable and creatively satisfied after they appear similar to their creativity influences film," according to him. "I've labored in movies where I've put my existence bloodstream inside it and attended the premiere or crew party, as well as the movie is mediocre at best, which i figured, 'Well that was an overall total total waste of time.'?"This year, Lasseter directed Pixar's twelfth feature, "Cars 2," which put a secret-agent spin round the auto-toon franchise -- fitting, then, that Lasseter medicine first to find the Britannia Award (for worldwide contribution to shot entertainment) named after Jason Bourne producer Albert R. Broccoli. Ultimately, Lasseter demands his strategy behind Pixar's incredible winning streak is easy: "It comes down lower to setting everyone else up for fulfillment,In . according to him.Britannia Honours 2011Bard barbs inspire teensHonoreesDavid Yates Helena Bonham Carter Warren Beatty Ben Stiller John Lasseter Contact Peter Debruge at peter.debruge@variety.com

British director Ken Russell dies

LONDON -- Ken Russell, an iconoclastic British director whose daring films blended music, sex and violence in a potent brew seemingly drawn straight from his subconscious, has died at age 84. Russell died in a hospital on Sunday following a series of strokes, his son Alex Verney-Elliott said Monday. "My father died peacefully," Verney-Elliott said. "He died with a smile on his face." Russell was a fiercely original director whose vision occasionally brought mainstream success, but often tested the patience of audiences and critics. He had one of his biggest hits in 1969 with "Women in Love," based on the book by D.H. Lawrence, which earned Academy Award nominations for the director and for writer Larry Kramer, and a "Best Actress" Oscar for the star, Glenda Jackson. It included one of the decade's most famous scenes -- a nude wrestling bout between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed. Reed said at the time that the director was "starting to go crazy." "Before that he was a sane, likable TV director," Reed said. "Now he's an insane, likable film director." Born in the English port of Southampton in 1927, Russell was attracted by the romance of the sea and attended Pangbourne Nautical College before joining the Merchant Navy at 17 as a junior crew member on a cargo ship bound for the Pacific. He became seasick, soon realized he hated naval life and was discharged after a nervous breakdown. Desperate to avoid joining the family's shoe business, he studied ballet and tried his hand at acting before accepting he was not much good at either. He then studied photography, for which he did have a talent, and became a fashion photographer before being hired to work on BBC arts programs, including profiles of the poet John Betjeman, comedian Spike Milligan and playwright Shelagh Delaney. "When there were no more live artists left, we turned to making somewhat longer films about dead artists such as Prokofiev," Russell once said. These quickly evolved from conventional documentaries into something more interesting. "At first we were only allowed to use still photographs and newsreel footage of these subjects, but eventually we sneaked in the odd hand playing the piano (in 'Prokofiev') and the odd back walking through a door," Russell said. "By the time a couple of years had gone by, those boring little factual accounts of the artists had evolved into evocative films of an hour or more which used real actors to impersonate the historical figures." Music played a central role in many of Russell's films, including "The Music Lovers" in 1970 -- about Tchaikovsky -- and 1975's "Lisztomania," which starred Roger Daltrey of The Who as 19th-century heartthrob Franz Liszt. "The Boy Friend," a 1971 homage to 1930s Hollywood musicals starring supermodel Twiggy, and Russell's 1975 adaptation of The Who's psychedelic rock opera "Tommy," were musicals of a different sort, both marked by the director's characteristic visual excess. Russell's darker side was rarely far away. "Dante's Inferno," a 1967 movie about the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, played up the differences between Rossetti's idealized view of his wife and her reality as a drug addict. Russell was even more provocative in his 1970 film "The Dance of the Seven Veils: A Comic Strip in Seven Episodes." It presented the composer Richard Strauss as a crypto-Nazi, and showed him conducting Rosenkavalier waltzes while SS men tortured a Jew. "The Devils," a 1971 film starring Vanessa Redgrave as a 17th-century nun in the grip of demonic possession, was heavily cut for its U.S. release and is due to be released on DVD in Britain for the first time in 2012. Russell told The Associated Press in 1987 that he found such censorship "so tedious and boring." He called the American print of "The Devils" ''just a butchered nonsense." Critics were often unimpressed by Russell's work. Alexander Walker called him a master of "the porno-biography which is not quite pornography but is far from being biography." Pauline Kael said his films "cheapen everything they touch." But admirers luxuriated in his Gothic sensibility -- on display once again in "Gothic," a 1987 film about the genesis of Mary Shelley's horror tale "Frankenstein" replete with such hallucinatory visuals as breasts with eyes and mouths spewing cockroaches. Russell said his depiction of a drug-addled Percy Bysshe Shelley was an accurate depiction of the time. "Everyone in England in the 19th century was on a permanent trip. He must have been stoned out of his mind for years," Russell said. "I know I am." Russell's fascination with changing mental states also surfaced in 1980 film "Altered States," a rare Hollywood foray for him, starring William Hurt as a scientist experimenting with hallucinogens. It was poorly received. Later films included the comic horror thriller "The Lair of the White Worm" in 1989, which gave an atypical early role to Hugh Grant as a vampire worm-battling lord of the manor. Russell also directed operas and made the video for Elton John's "Nikita." Married four times, Russell is survived by his wife Elise Tribble and his children. Funeral details were not immediately announced. Contact the Variety newsroom at news@variety.com

15 Movie Subjects to Dispute with your family This Thanksgiving

Ah, Thanksgiving. A period of time for gathering while using fam, eating chicken, and strongly disagreeing with Aunt Sue in regards to the validity of Attacking Youthful Boys’s paternity suit together with a cornucopia of other assorted popular culture-related subjects while passing across the cranberry sauce. We’re here to help ensure people awkward lulls in conversation don’t devolve into interrogations for your actual personal existence with 15 movie-related subjects to keep the relatives squawking, bickering, and talking about… no less than ‘til the pumpkin cake. 1. Can Justin Timberlake act? (You understand, that kid within the Jesse Duck Club. No, a different one.) 2. Shouldn’t Clint Eastwood, y’know, retire? 3. Ryan Gosling versus. Bradley Cooper. Who’s the greater sexy guy alive? 4. Who want to watch Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving over dessert? 5. Why Cookie Rocket? 6. Why Adam Sandler? 7. Who was simply last generation’s Rachelle Lefervre? 8. Fun game: “Someone will have to pay me $__ to find out Year’s Eve.” At this point you go! 9. Lindsay Lohan. Discuss. 10. Ough Gervais as Oscar host. Yay or nay? (Or, who??) 11. Who's the best choice inside the Oscars’ Best Actress category this year? 12. Can everybody start to see the Girl While using Dragon Tattoo together this Christmas? Pleeeeeease? 13. Which Muppet is regarded as the attractive, ultimately? (Jason Segel does not count.) 14. Who'll matter longer: Daniel Radcliffe or Emma Watson? 15. Can it be still awesome to like George Clooney? 16. BONUS: “Hey Grandmother, did ya hear what continues within the finish in the new Twilight?” Happy Thanksgiving, Movieliners! Follow Julie Burns on Twitter. Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter. Follow Louis Virtel on Twitter. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.

'Separation' wins Asia-Off-shoreline award

GOLD COAST -- Iranian helmer Asghar Farhadi's "A Separation" needed the most effective kudos within the fifth annual Asia-Off-shoreline Screen Honours round the Gold Coast on Thursday evening. Pic, of a lady who seeks to go away her husband, and Iran, for just about any better existence, has received an aspiration run this year, while using Golden Bear within the Berlinale as well as the Sydney Film Prize within the Sydney Film Festival in June. "The interesting point personally is the reply to the film in Iran and across the world was similar plus it found me the parallels, despite their culture and distance, tend to be more compared to versions," mentioned Farhadi, accepting his award. Farhadi was one of the primary visitors in the inaugural MPA APSA Screen Fund, started this season with the Film Assn. of America and APSA to hands out four lots of $A25,000 ($24,317) gold gold coin. "Once I received the fund, greater than with the cash, it had been vital personally that non-Persian sound system understood the thought of my script," Farhadi told Variety. "It absolutely was furthermore a kind of encouragement for the fund the cash they gave for just about any script can produce a film which will win the most effective film award." The individuals who win in the 2011 MPA APSA gold gold coin were also introduced: Shawkat Amin Korki (Iraq/Kurdistan) for his project "Recollections on Stone," Peyman Moadi, from Iran, for "People Days," Iranian-born Swedish filmmaker Maryam Ebrahimi for your docu "Burqas In JailInch and Pryas Gupta (India) for "The Cricket Tree." Farhadi's advice for the new visitors was, "Disregard the money, still develop improve your tales." Also within the APSAs, "Not such a long time ago in Anatolia" from Nuri Bilge Ceylan got three kudos round the evening, including helmer for Ceylan, cinematography for Gokhan Tiryaki and jury grand prize for your pic's producer Zeynep Ozbatur Atakan. The most effective actor kudos was won by Chinese thesp Wang Baoqiang for "Hello! Shu Xian Sheng" (Mr Tree), because the actress kudos visited Nadezhda Markina from Russia on her behalf role in "Elena." The jury also gave the ensemble cast of Egyptian pic "Cairo 678" a greater commendation pic occupies the taboo problem of sexual harassment in Egypt. Greater than 500 site visitors from 19 different nations attended the honours. Contact the number newsroom at news@variety.com

The Lounging Game Exclusive Start Searching: Sutton's Vehicle Is Discovered Without Her

Blair Redford, Alexandra Chando, Christian Alexander Gets The Lounging Game's Sutton Mercer disappeared? ABC Family sets return dates for Pretty Little Liars, Lounging Game plus much more When the ABC Family series left off, Sutton (Alexandra Chando) returned to town to reclaim her existence, before she could out her imposter twin Emma, she and her vehicle went plunging in to a lake. Inside our exclusive consider first the growing season premiere, Ethan (Blair Redford), Emma and Thayer (Christian Alexander) wait since the submerged vehicle is discovered -- while not Sutton. Will Ethan and Emma tell the truth? Can they trust Thayer being quietly? And may Sutton arrive? Exclusive: Charisma Contractor can get in round the Lounging Game The Lounging Game returns Monday, Jan. 2 at 9/8c on ABC Family.