La la: Smurfs movie slammed, goes #1 w/Neil Patrick Harris, Katy Perry

Updated to include more detail regarding critical Smurfs reviews

La la la la la la, the Smurfs Movie is tied for #1 at the box office despite the vast majority of professional reviews being negative, most of which have ranged from the “so bad it’s kind of watchable” to “so bad it’s terrible” kind of critical disdain. So what saved the movie? Two things: one is the real-world presence Neil Patrick Harris. That’s right, the former child actor one seemingly destined to be forever known as Doogie Howser has quietly transformed himself into one of our better actors in his adulthood. The other is the virtual presence of Katy Perry, the voice of Smurfette, who breathes an appropriate amount of ladyness into the lone female Smurf. And that’s a good thing, because the male Smurfs in the movie are just plain annoying.

But if there’s something which works about this movie, it’s probably that viewers can hang in there vicariously through NPH as he finds the Smurf characters to be as annoying as the audience does. It’s a tough day when characters which in their original incarnations were such caricatures that they had stereotypical names more obvious than that of the Seven Dwarfs, and yet these characters have somehow managed to dissolve further into caricature (past the threshold of no return) in their movie incarnations. Oh well. But Neil and Katy to the rescue, because other than that, there’s not much here. Then again, the Smurfs movie benefits from the same scenario as the Transformers movies: parents who want to see the movie just to revisit characters from their own childhood, and kids who are eager to see any kid-oriented movie their parents are willing to take them to. And even after parents and kids alike figured out that the first Transformers movie wasn’t very good, they went back and saw two ever-worsening sequels. Perhaps that’s why the Smurfs movie sequels are already en route; this kind of nostalgia-based double whammy doesn’t need to be good in order to be seen.

Then again,there’s the fact that the primary competition at the box office is called Cowboys and Aliens. That’s the kind of name the studios assign to a movie that’s so bad they know it’s going to bomb and so they give it a ridiculous hail-mary of a name (see Sucker Punch) in the hopes of luring in some folks based on the tacky name alone. An odd move for this particular movie, seeing as how it stars quality actors like Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig, who are usually box office money just by showing up. And on top of that, Cowboys and Aliens has a much higher critical approval rating than its blue-themed rival. Just imagine if they’d instead called it Cowboys and Smurfs.

Katy Perry says husband Russell Brand deported from Japan amidst tour

According to Katy Perry, her husband Russell Brand has been deported from Japan due to “priors from over ten years ago.” Just hours after publicly declaring Japan to be her favorite place in the world via her Twitter account, Perry’s tone turned darker as she revealed that “my husband just got deported from Japan. I am so. sad. I brought him all this way to show him my favorite place.” Despite her displeasure with the situation, Katy made it clear that her California Dreams tour in Japan in support of her smash hit album Teenage Dream will continue, stating that “I [love] my Japanese fans & the show #MUSTGOON no matter the daily aftershocks or husband kidnappings!” Perry has shows in Tokyo on May 23rd and May 24th. For his part, Russell Brand has yet to (as of this posting) address the issue on his own @rustyrockets Twitter account. Meanwhile Perry’s latest hits including Firework, California Gurls, E.T., and Teenage Dream continue to dominate the radio airwaves. Here’s the Beatweek interview with Katy Perry from awhile back.

Katy Perry California Dreams 2011 tour gains Robyn as support

Robyn isn’t technically a California girl, but that hasn’t kept Katy Perry from inviting the Swedish pop star along for twenty U.S. dates on her California Dreams 2011 tour. Katy Perry is touring in support of last year’s mammoth success of an album known as Teenage Dream, which has spawned hit singles including Firework, California Gurls, and the title track. Robyn has seen success with her Body Talk trilogy of releases.

For those Katy Perry fans who want to take a trip into the distant past, here’s our early 2008 interview with her.

SNL tonight: Chris Brown gets second act, host Russell Brand in odd spot

Chris Brown, just a year or two after having seemingly ruined his reputation and career permanently, is the musical guest tonight on Saturday Night Live. Who says there are no second acts in American lives? Apparently not SNL, as the singer’s sudden comeback on the charts and radio has landed him on NBC tonight. Meanwhile, comedic actor Russell Brand is the host, which brings up a number of interesting scenarios. First, he just got married to Katy Perry – is there sketch potential there? Will Katy herself make a surprise walk-on? She’s plugging his appearance via her Twitter account, but isn’t giving any hint about whether she might show up. And with Johnny Depp having announced that he’s making another Pirates of the Caribbean movie, even as some have begun to suspect that Depp may have modeled Captain Jack Sparrow on Brand’s public persona, you have to wonder whether Brand – or perhaps even Depp – might go there tonight.

Meanwhile, there’s a more serious potential issue which you have to wonder whether SNL thought through: Russell Brand is hosting. Chris Brown is the musical guest. Brand’s wife Katy Perry and Brown’s ex-girlfriend Rihanna are close friends. By now everyone knows what went down between Brown and Rihanna. We have no interest in invading how Brand and Brown personally feel toward each other, but it’s certainly one of the more situationally odd pairings SNL has come up with. It’s worth noting that unless the musical guest ends up in a sketch, the host and musician have no actual interaction on the show, beyond the host introducing the musical act. We’ll see. Here’s more on Saturday Night Live.

Grammy album of year nods: Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Eminem, Antebellum, Arcade Fire

“There’s no many other fantastic performers and artists that could be in this category,” Katy Perry said when she learned that her new album Teenage Dream had been nominated for Grammy Album of the Year. Lady Gaga, whose The Fame Monster was released late last year, was also nominated. Eminem made the cut for his new album Recovery, Arcade Fire scored for The Suburbs, and another “Lady” also made the nomination list as Lady Antebellum scored for Need You Now.

The pairing of Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, two of the biggest female pop stars of their generation, in the same category in the same year is a quirk of the schedule as their sophomore albums were released nearly a year apart.

SNL tonight: Amy Poehler hosts (again), Katy Perry returns with Elmo

Amy Poehler is hosting Saturday Night Live tonight, and Katy Perry is the musical guest. Wait a minute, didn’t we just do this a few weeks ago? That’s right, SNL tonight is a repeat of the season premiere. It’s not immediately clear why NBC is putting SNL into reruns so early in the new season, but in any case there are some highlights. The most memorable moment of the episode is when Katy Perry appears wearing a rather low-cut Elmo T-shirt in a sketch, aimed at poking fun at the fact that Sesame Street dumped her already-taped appearance with Elmo after outcry from conservatives despite the fact that Katy’s Sesame Street attire was harmless. Her Elmo-themed SNL attire, however, was a little more fun.

Next week Saturday Night Live returns to episodes which are, you know, live, with host Emma Stone and musical guest Kings of Leon. Money says KOL performs their new hit Radioactive, which you immediately spot thanks to its catchy refrain “It’s in the water.” In the mean time, here’s more on tonight’s SNL episode.

Katy Perry: the Beatweek interview

Her new album Teenage Dream just debuted at #1 – here’s what Katy told us back before she had an album at all…

Beatweek classic interview with Katy Perry from June 2008

“Tell me where you’re from,” Katy Perry asks me just after we sit down together at the bar of the Mercury Lounge in New York City, two months before her debut album One Of The Boys is to be released. By the time she’s hit me with a couple of follow-up questions, it’s no matter that I’m the journalist and she’s the one with the number one song on the iTunes pop chart – it’s clear that she is in fact interviewing me and not the other way around. I never do end up figuring out whether it’s simply curiosity on her part or if she’s savvy enough to play upon a journalist’s ego (no pop star ever asks a journalist such humanizing questions during an interview), but either way it seems to do the trick and leaves her coming off as remarkably down to earth for someone who’s been tagged as the next “it girl” by everyone from Madonna to Perez Hilton.

Alright, time for me to do my job and work a few questions in myself. “Both my parents are traveling ministers,” Katy tells me of her upbringing. “I grew up in a very strict kind of religious household, although my family is very funny and infused with humor. A lot of people, especially my boyfriends, when they are about to meet my father they are freaked out because they think oh, he looks like a priest, he has a collar, and he’s gonna say I’m going straight to hell in handbasket. Not true. My dad has tattoos.”

Then comes the revelation. “Before they were into the Jesus movement, my dad was a drug dealer for Timothy Leary and my mom was a pot-smoking debutante from Santa Barbara. I mean they had their days, they just knew that they were at the end of them and they needed God,” she says with a laugh. “They aren’t very conservative but they’re very founded in faith.”

But are they open-minded enough to accept the songs on One Of The Boys, her debut album released today, whose first two hit songs are the equally provocatively-titled UR So Gay and I Kissed a Girl? As she puts it, “Twenty-three years ago when they popped me out, they probably didn’t paint this picture for me. But this is who I am, and so be it.”

As we move down to the other end of the bar to put some space between us and the band that’s just begun its sound-check, the discussion turns to UR So Gay, a song that’s that’s stirred up quite a bit of curiosity if not necessarily controversy. “We never released that song as a single,” she says of the song that first shotgunned her into the public consciousness. “It was just a song on my EP that came out in November of 2007. It was kind of a forewarning of the wrath of Katy Perry that is about to drop.”

Then she states the obvious. “With a title like that, everybody’s like, what the fuck is this song about? So it did get some views, and the label gave us like a couple of pennies to make a music video. They said let’s see if you can make a music video with a dollar, basically. And we were like well fine, let’s go, we’ll try. So we made this music video and we had a million hits in one week on it,” she says of the video which features a barbie doll made up to look suspiciously like a member of an emo band.

“This is a real person but it isn’t necessarily just about him,” she says of the guyliner-wearing target of the song’s lyrics. “It’s a concoction of things I put all into one pot, which was basically taking the piss out of those emo guys who wear the guyliner and use the straight irons and wear their girlfriends’ jeans, which is cool and all but, like, are you sure you’re really straight? No, it’s just funny, it’s like in 2008 it’s so common to have the boyfriend crying on the girlfriend’s shoulder rather than the girlfriend crying on the boyfriend’s shoulder. And I asked myself, where are all those jocks and footballers and and those men of chivalry that existed years ago? Come on, where are you, bro?”

So is she trying to single-handedly kill off the emo scene with this song? “Not necessarily the scene, because I really appreciate the music that comes out of that scene, but like, the fashion that it generates is, to me it’s like the hair band phase of of the 1980′s, that you see these men that look like total drag queens in skin-tight tights and showing their bellies and, like, the biggest hair in the world. I mean at that time everybody thought it was cool as shit and now we look back and we’re like what the fuck?”

Is there any worry that guys who are actually gay might be offended by the song? “I haven’t gotten that, actually, because you know, you listen to the song and you have to hear the whole song to realize the story. I mean there’s so many songs you could just take out bits and pieces of one song and get really offended by it. Because you know, a lot of girls, they come up to me and they say oh my god, thank you so much for writing that. Here’s a picture of my ex-boyfriend in clothes. You wrote this song about him. Thank you.”

“Us girls, you know, we live in a very metrosexual world and sometimes we’re thrown into a pot of boys and we don’t know who’s gay and who’s not. Which is fine cause I have a lot of gay friends and I am a big pro-gay everything, as a person and politically, even though I come from a very fucked household that doesn’t believe so.”

One of Katy’s early backers has been Perez Hilton, the openly gay celebrity blogger who’s been promoting her music at every turn and appeared alongside her on the Carson Daly show. “He’s definitely just one of those guys that has that ability to throw something up on the internet and it’s like boom, you know? The reaction is instant in very large numbers. So he’s cool.”
When I was given an advance copy of One Of The Boys, I was immediately curious to hear what Katy’s cover version of the Jill Sobule classic “I Kissed a Girl” sounded like, only to quickly realize that it’s not a cover song at all. Aside from the title lyric, the two songs don’t share so much as a single line or note. “The fourteen and fifteen year old girls don’t know who Jill Sobule is, but I’m sure Jill Sobule is gonna make some money this year in iTunes,” Katy says of the fact that the two songs share the same name. “I was thinking about should I name it, like, ‘Cherry Chapstick’ or something? And I was just like no, it is what it is.”

While Sobule’s I Kissed A Girl was cheeky and folksy, Katy’s is a brash tale set to a club beat, offering up the simple summation “I kissed a girl and I liked it.” While the song has shot to the top of the iTunes pop charts in advance of the album’s release, it runs the danger of being ultimately shown up by another potential single entitled Waking Up In Vegas, the sunny track that immediately follows it on the album. Another catchy track, Hot N Cold, has disco overtones. With each song on the album having its own style, where are the influences coming from?

While comparisons have been drawn that have matched Katy’s music against everyone from Avril Lavigne to Pink, she’s turned to quite different sources of inspiration. “I wanted to channel the essence of what Freddie Mercury, basically. To me he was just an amazing songwriter, always told a story,” she says of the late Queen frontman. “The way he talked to his audience, his audience was his friends. It’s not like, I mean these pop stars need to get over themselves. These girl pop stars are just amazing, I mean I feel like sometimes a lot of them are so afraid to make a move or say anything about their lives. I guess maybe I wear my heart on my sleeve right now because I haven’t had any reason to hide it.”

Now that the album has been released, summer beckons and the Warped Tour has come calling. “When I first got the call that said I was gonna do it, I was like oh my god, I’m so scared because I’ve had friends that have been on it and after they get off of that tour they’re physically exhausted, emotionally and mentally exhausted. I mean they need to go detox somewhere. So I know that it’s going to be strenuous but I’ve been gearing up for it.”

Seeing as how One Of The Boys is likely to debut in the iTunes top five today, I walked away from our interview impressed by just how down to earth and accessible Katy Perry is in real life. But at the same time I suspect she’s not one to be messed with. Or as she puts it, “Just don’t dump me, I’ll write a song about you and the whole world’s gonna fucking sing along.”

Learn more at KatyPerry.com • iTunes • Twitter • Facebook

Beatweek Magazine issue #81: Shontelle, NFL Madden 11 for iPhone, Tamar Kaprelian, Katy Perry

New in the 81st issue of Beatweek Magazine:

• Cover story interview with Shontelle, who discusses current hit single Impossible, new hit Perfect Nightmare, and her upcoming album No Gravity

• hands on Madden NFL 11 for iPhone and iPod touch

• interview singer-songwriter Tamar Kaprelian

• reviews of new cases for iPhone 4 and iPad

• classic interview with Katy Perry

Read this issue now

Subscribe for free

New Katy Perry single pushes her previous album back up the charts

Despite the release of its title track this week, Katy Perry’s new album Teenage Dream won’t be available for another month. But with Teenage Dream (the single) and California Gurls currently battling each other for singles chart dominance in iTunes, another Perry release has also unexpectedly found its way up the digital charts: her debut album One Of The Boys, released back in summer 2008, has suddenly climbed to the number five position overall on the iTunes album charts. The resurgence of Katy’s earlier work, which featured songs such as “Hot n Cold” and “Waking Up In Vegas” is also no doubt being helped by its temporary price reduction to $6.99. But if Perry’s cache is such that her now two-year-old debut album can climb all the way back up to number five, it leaves little doubt that Teenage Dream (the album) will easily debut at number one overall when it’s released on August 24th.

Katy Perry reveals Teenage Dream album artwork: it’s a Will Cotton painting

Katy Perry has revealed the album artwork for her upcoming sophomore album Teenage Dream, and it turns out to be a Will Cotton painting which she revealed today at a New York City studio. The portrait, pictured at left, features Perry lying in the clouds and not wearing a whole lot. Katy explained why she chose this particular artist to paint her album cover: “The day I found Will Cotton, I knew I wanted to live in his cinematic cotton candy world. A fantastically art-directed music video and one piece of timeless album artwork later, I can proudly say I am more than a fan. Will has been a sweetheart every step of the way and always open to collaborative ideas. I’m so happy to have discovered his candy-land, and so excited about our creative future together.” Teenage Dream is due out August 24th.

Katy Perry performs surprise concert in New York City today

Katy Perry has revealed she’s performing an unannounced live concert today in New York City on 46th and Broadway within the hour. The secret show comes as the singer prepares to debut the music video for California Gurls tomorrow. Perry has revealed no further details about her surprise performance today beyond the fact that it’ll be a “pop up” show.

Katy Perry torn between USA and England in World Cup soccer match

Katy Perry admitted to finding herself torn today as the World Cup Soccer game played out between the U.S. and England, as she’s an American engaged to marry a Briton. After declaring that she was “so divided right now” during the game, she later tweeted that she was pleased with the fact that the game ended in a tie, declaring “Everybody wins! I like that!” She also pointed out that the streets of London were empty during the game. Perry is set to release the music video for her current single California Gurls before too long, while fiance Russell Brand is currently starring in the movie Get Him To The Greek.

Katy Perry will host 2010 Teen Choice awards on FOX

Katy Perry, fresh off a performance on one awards show, is set to be the ringleader for another. The pop star will host Teen Choice 2010, whose surfboard awards will air on the FOX Network on August 9th. The news comes just days after Perry rode a flying surfboard during the introduction to her live performance of California Gurls on the MTV Movie Awards, which represented the live debut of the song, her first single from forthcoming album Teenage Dream, whose own release date is currently set for August 24th. Of the hosting gig, Katy Perry tweeted “tune in to watch the shenanigans go off!”

Katy Perry brings California Gurls to MTV awards ahead video premiere

Katy Perry promised a spectacle for her live performance of California Gurls on tonight’s MTV Movie Awards, and she delivered with a performance which saw her arriving on a floating surfboard, a guest turn from Snoop Dogg, and scantily clad backing dancers galore. The live debut of the song comes as California Gurls hits radio and in advance of the expected August release of her sophomore album Teenage Dream. While there were no truly over the top moments in Katy Perry’s performance, it was the most musically valid component of the music network’s movie awards and will likely catapult Perry’s song even further into the summer 2010 driver’s seat while perhaps igniting an east coast – west coast (friendly, mind you) rivalry among pop stars after all. Now we just have to wait for the California Gurls music video to arrive (hint: the above screen capture is from the video).

Katy Perry Califoria Gurls new video is whipped cream alicous

Katy Perry, you’ve come a long way since I first sat down with you in New York City back in early 2008 when no one yet knew who you were but you knew you were going to be famous anyway. You’ve written the soundtrack for summer 2010 with California Gurls, and now you’ve launched a music video that will have people talking about it all summer, and not just because Snoop Dogg makes a cameo. In some kind of twisted pastel candyland setting, the video is deliciously artificially cheesy – and that part at the end of the preview where there’s some kind of whipped cream shooting out of cannons attached to your boobs? I really don’t know what to say about that, except that none of your success over the past couple of years has surprised me. You had this plan for world domination all along, even when we were sitting there doing that interview in that NYC bar years ago and you were about as famous as me, didn’t you?

You can watch all thirty seconds of the California Gurls preview right here.

Katy Perry Califoria Gurls music video is whipped cream alicous

Katy Perry, you’ve come a long way since I first sat down with you in New York City back in early 2008 when no one yet knew who you were but you knew you were going to be famous anyway. You’ve written the soundtrack for summer 2010 with California Gurls, and now you’ve launched a music video that will have people talking about it all summer, and not just because Snoop Dogg makes a cameo. In some kind of twisted pastel candyland setting, the video is deliciously artificially cheesy – and that part at the end of the preview where there’s some kind of whipped cream shooting out of cannons attached to your boobs? I really don’t know what to say about that, except that none of your success over the past couple of years has surprised me. You had this plan for world domination all along, even when we were sitting there doing that interview in that NYC bar years ago and you were about as famous as me, didn’t you?

You can watch all thirty seconds of the California Gurls preview right here.

MTV Movie Awards: Katy Perry reveals her and Russell Brand’s seats

Katy Perry has revealed a bit of the seating arrangements for the upcoming MTV Movie Awards, including where she and fiance Russell Brand will be sitting (next to each other, naturally). Katy’s TwitPic of the seat-filler posters reveals that Betty White will be sitting directly behind the couple, along with someone else we can’t quite make out. In posing next to the photos of Brand and herself, Katy jokingly referred to it as a “threesome.” Perry is expected to perform her new hit single “California Gurls” during the live broadcast of the 2010 MTV Movie Awards, which air Sunday night on both MTV and VH1, a performance which she promises will involve “popsicle melting g-g-g-urls.”

Lee DeWyze U2 Beautiful Day debuts in iTunes behind just Katy Perry

Lee DeWyze’s first post-Idol single has been released in iTunes, and it’s already soaring up the pop singles chart. Lee’s studio rendition of Beautiful Day, the U2 song which he performed on Idol this Tuesday night, is now selling for $1.29 after having been available as a pre-order earlier in the day. So far the song has been rated by 760 purchasers for an average of four and a half stars out of five. The DeWyze single has debuted at number on the iTunes pop chart, behind only Katy Perry’s California Gurls. Interestingly, Lee’s “winner single” had been getting significantly outsold by Crystal’s single earlier today when they were both available as unnamed pre-orders, but now that both songs have been released, Lee’s song is significantly outselling Crystal’s song. In any case, Lee’s song is right here and Crystal’s song is right here.

Katy Perry posts phone number on Twitter

Katy Perry posted a phone number on Twitter today, encouraging her 2.5 milling followers to call the number “for a good time.” Much to the dismay of some fans who dialed the number, “818 679 8425″ is in fact not Katy’s own phone number, as instead it goes straight to the voicemail of someone named Vic. It’s not clear whether she’s pranking a friend, or if the number is part of some kind of setup, but the frequency with which the phone number is being retweeted (and presumably called) means that Vic, whoever he is, likely has quite a number of voicemails waiting for him. Katy hasn’t tweeted another word since posting the number; perhaps an explanation will come later. The 818 area code is located in the San Fernando Valley, just north of Los Angeles, and includes locales like Burbank and Universal Studios. Your guess is as good as ours.

Update: Katy has since removed the phone number and subsequently tweeted “Heheh. Don’t mess with the scorpio,” apparently referring to herself as the “scorpio” as her October 25th birthday does fall under the scorpio astrological sign.

Justin Bieber told to eat his veggies by Katy Perry

Justin Bieber has landed in the hometown of The Beatles as part of his current worldwide promotional tour. And after tweeting from Liverpool that “fast food always hits the spot,” the sixteen year old quickly found himself publicly scolded by fellow pop star Katy Perry for now eating healthily enough, quipping “eat your spinach young man,” as the twenty-five year old Perry referred to herself as Bieber’s “adopted mother.” Perry then toyed with Adam Lambert’s praise of “camp” productions such as Glee and Rocky Horror, suggesting that “camp” was also “place for youth to express themselves and experience others in the woods.”

Justin is headed to Wales, Katy is gearing up for the release of her California Gurls video, and Adam is setting up Glam Nation.

Any earth shattering news here? Nope. But it’s a Saturday morning and at the moment there’s no real news happening in the entertainment industry.

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