Jim Carrey fires back at his gun-control critics

By Tim Kenneally

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Jim Carrey, who raised the hackles of the right wing by calling Fox News - or, rather, "Fux News" - a "giant culture fart" and with his criticism of assault rifles, has fired off another round in the debate, calling some of his harsher critics "thugs" and "a minority."

He also says that he doesn't want to infringe on anyone's Second Amendment rights.

Bemoaning the lack of civility he says he's encountered, Carrey writes in a column published Tuesday on the Huffington Post, "It is shocking to see this concerted effort to brutally intimidate anyone who speaks of a compassionate compromise ... These thugs, though menacing, are a minority, but they will have their way if good people don't step forward now and make a difference."

Carrey also emphasized, "NO ONE IS ASKING ANYONE TO GIVE UP THEIR RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS." Instead, he says, he hopes "we can limit" access to weapons that cause "massive devastation to good and innocent people."

"No one is allowed to own a bazooka. In a movie theater an assault rifle with a 100-round drum magazine can cause just as much damage," Carrey writes.

The actor stirred up the gun-control debate last week with his Funny or Die music video "Cold Dead Hand," which criticizes gun-control opponents.

Carrey released a statement later in the week, claiming that he'd seen "Fux News" - presumably, a reference to Fox News Channel - "rant, rave, bare its fangs and viciously slander me because of my stand against large magazines and assault rifles.

"I would take them to task legally if I felt they were worth my time or that anyone with a brain in their head could actually fall for such irresponsible buffoonery. That would gain them far too much attention which is all they really care about," Carrey added while giving the network's commentary attention.

Fox News personality Greg Gutfeld subsequently took a shot at Carrey on "The Five," calling Carrey "washed-up."

"I guess Jimmy thought he couldn't lose a debate to a dead man," Gutfeld said, referring to deceased actor and former NRA president Charlton Heston. "That's what's really funny - he did and now Charlton Heston has a brighter future in films than Jim Carrey."

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Jimmy Fallon to succeed Jay Leno as "Tonight Show" host

By Chris Michaud

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jimmy Fallon will take over from veteran Jay Leno next year as host of the NBC flagship talk program "The Tonight Show," NBC said on Wednesday, bringing a younger feel to the competitive late-night landscape on U.S. television.

Leno, 62, will wrap up what will be 22 years as host of "The Tonight Show" in the spring of 2014 - some seven months before his contract was officially due to end.

Fallon, 38, the current host of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" will "transition into new hosting duties on 'The Tonight Show'" after Leno ends his run, NBC said in a statement.

The network also said it was moving "The Tonight Show" from its Burbank studio, outside Los Angeles, to New York, where it began in 1954.

No specific date was announced, but the change will take place in conjunction with NBC's broadcasts of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, next February.

Wednesday's announcement ended months of speculation and followed a skit on Fallon's show by him and Leno on Monday night in which they played down reports of rivalry and made fun of the rumor mill.

Leno, who was replaced by Conan O'Brien in 2009, only to return a few months later in a public relations debacle for the network, congratulated Fallon.

"I hope you're as lucky as me and hold on to the job until you're the old guy," he said in a statement.

Fallon, who started out on the long-running "Saturday Night Live" comedy show in 1998, said, "I'm really excited to host a show that starts today instead of tomorrow," referring to his current program's post-midnight start time.

"We are purposefully making this change when Jay is number-one, just as Jay replaced Johnny Carson when he was number-one," said Steve Burke, NBCUniversal's CEO.

RATINGS LEADER

"The Tonight Show" has maintained a hold on U.S. popular culture for decades, offering a forum for celebrities to promote their latest ventures and a springboard to fame for many standup comedians.

The program currently leads its three late-night rivals in overall audience, attracting about 3.5 million viewers, compared with about 3 million for CBS rival David Letterman.

But the average age of viewers for Leno and Letterman, 65, is in the mid-50s - higher than the 18-49 demographic preferred by advertisers.

ABC upped the stakes in January by moving Jimmy Kimmel, 45, to the late-night slot in a bid to grab a younger audience. Kimmel's ratings have challenged both Letterman and Leno in the 18-34 age group, while his overall audience is about 2.6 million, according to the most recent Nielsen data.

Kimmel proffered a winking posting via Twitter on Wednesday, saying, "congratulations to my dear, sweet @jimmyfallon - a formidable rival and an incredible lover."

NBC said "Saturday Night Live" and "30 Rock" producer Lorne Michaels would serve as executive producer of the relocated show. It will be broadcast from NBC headquarters in New York's Rockefeller Center.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the state's governor, Andrew Cuomo, welcomed the show's return to New York.

"We couldn't be happier that one of New York's own is bringing the show back to where it started - and where it belongs," Bloomberg said in a statement referring to Fallon's Brooklyn roots.

Carson, who hosted the program from 1962 to 1992, moved the show to Southern California in 1972.

NBC said that programming plans for the 12:35 a.m. time slot now filled by Fallon's show would be announced soon.

NBC is a unit of Comcast Corp, ABC is a unit of Walt Disney Co and CBS is part of CBS Corp.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Peter Cooney)

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Bon Jovi guitarist Sambora leaves tour due to "personal issues"

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bon Jovi's Richie Sambora has dropped out of the current leg of the rock band's tour because of "personal issues," but the guitarist, who has done stints in rehab for problems with alcohol, tweeted fans on Wednesday that he was "well."

"Thank you everyone for your concern," Sambora said on Twitter. "I'm well, but had to stay in LA to take care of a personal matter. Love you all and see you very soon."

Sambora, 53, who spent time in rehab in 2007 and 2011 for alcohol and prescription drug abuse, was not included at Bon Jovi's performance in Calgary, Alberta, on Tuesday and the band said he would miss a run of North America concerts.

"Due to personal issues, Richie Sambora will not be performing on this upcoming leg. All shows will go on as scheduled," said a statement on the band's website on Wednesday, offering no other details or when Sambora might resume performing.

Sambora also missed Bon Jovi's 2011 North American and European tours.

Celebrity website TMZ.com, citing unnamed sources connected to the band, said Sambora's absence was due to long-running tension between the guitarist and singer Jon Bon Jovi.

Bon Jovi is scheduled to perform this week in Edmonton, Alberta, and Winnipeg, Manitoba, and St. Paul, Minnesota, on Sunday.

The "Because We Can" tour's April dates include Los Angeles, Denver, Las Vegas and other cities before international appearances kick off on May 7 in Capetown, South Africa.

The band is set to play in Sweden, Germany, Britain, Spain, Poland and Italy before returning to the United States in July.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; Additional reporting by Eric Kelsey in Los Angeles; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Peter Cooney)

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Conductor Salonen dashes from Frank Zappa to Stravinsky

By Michael Roddy

LONDON (Reuters) - Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen dislikes musical anniversaries but he is celebrating so many this year he failed to notice one - the 20th anniversary of the death of the anarchic American rock innovator Frank Zappa.

It isn't often that "Mothers of Invention" founder Zappa's rock-and-orchestral score for his film "200 Motels" is revived, but Salonen, 54, will conduct it in October with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he served as Music Director from 1992 until 2009, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the orchestra's acoustically exquisite Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The fact that this year also is the 20th anniversary of the 1960s cult rock star's death was something Salonen hadn't realized until it was brought to his attention during a recent interview, but he said he was captivated by the idea of reviving Zappa's complex, multi-faceted piece the minute he saw it.

"I opened the score and the first line I saw was that this town (LA) is 'a sealed tuna sandwich'. I said, 'Okay, you can't say that's not a good match.' I realized this is the LA piece I want to conduct before I die."

From conducting "200 Motels" to Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" might seem a stretch, but not so for Salonen, who will be leading Stravinsky's ground-breaking 1913 masterpiece in the same Paris concert hall only a few days after the evening a century ago that its premiere caused a near riot.

Salonen doesn't much like cultural anniversaries: "Very often these anniversaries, it seems like a duty, we play an awful lot and then after the year is over we've done that." But he's observing none with more relish than "The Rite of Spring".

"The miracle of that piece is the eternal youth of it. It's so fresh it still kicks ass and how many 100-year-old pieces do that? There's such powerful vitality in that music it's almost scary," he said over coffee in London.

"LANDED ON THIS PLANET"

"The thing about 'The Rite of Spring' is that it just landed on this planet, there are no predecessors, there are no models. Stravinsky didn't work off of any models. So it's like a perfect egg that drops."

Lack of models is not something that can be said for the works of another of Salonen's anniversary composers, the Pole Witold Lutoslawski whose birth centenary is this year.

Lutoslawski wrote in the 20th-century modernist idiom, with extreme craftsmanship and polish that sometimes makes his pieces seem a bit distant or, at other times, deeply gloomy.

But that's not at all that Salonen finds when he conducts Lutoslawki's symphonies, all four of which have been reissued in a two-CD set by Sony. He recently concluded a Lutoslawski cycle in London with the Philharmonia Orchestra and will make the case for the composer again in Madrid in May.

"I realized apart from a few pieces that seemed to have kept place in the repertoire many of his pieces have kind of disappeared, including some pieces that I found absolutely powerful and fascinating. So I thought I would use this anniversary in such a way that I could shed light on that repertoire to allow people to hear it again and then, of course, the rest is up to the people."

The importance of connecting with people is something that Salonen, both as a conductor and as a composer, which takes up an increasing amount of his time, says he learned in LA.

He became Music Director in Los Angeles at what he considers a ridiculously young age, running a multi-million-dollar cultural institution in his early 30s and having brought with him what he calls his "suitcase full of European superior knowledge of everything".

"In a European way of thinking...we always focus mostly on the intention of the composer...and very little attention is focused on the actual effects, the interface when the music hits the listener - what is that process, what does it do to me?

"And I realized that perhaps my focus had been soft, instead of being primarily interested in the methods I should be more interested in the actual effect.

"What I learned in LA is you cannot actually separate the mind from the body. It's impossible, and it would be meaningless."

He says that attitude has carried over into his music which at times sounds like it belongs to the "spectral" school of composition, with its intense focus on sound and timbre, but at other times turns lushly romantic and poignant, as in his Violin Concerto, which was recorded by American violinist Leila Josefowicz and won the prestigious University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 2012.

"It has to do with getting older, because I realized...somebody will always conduct concerts, there are a lot of good guys and women who can do it very well...but only I can write my music, nobody else can do it for me," Salonen said.

"If I don't write the music I want to write it's a dramatic loss to me."

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Influential U.S. film critic Roger Ebert dies at 70

By Jill Serjeant

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Roger Ebert, who was the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize and became an unlikely TV star while hosting a movie review show with fellow critic Gene Siskel, died in Chicago on Thursday, two days after he disclosed his cancer had returned.

"It is with a heavy heart we report that legendary film critic Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) has passed away," the Chicago Sun-Times, the newspaper where Ebert, 70, worked for decades, said on Twitter.

"There is a hole that can't be filled. One of the greats has left us," the newspaper added.

Ebert, who was dubbed by Forbes magazine in 2007 as the most powerful pundit in America, was one of the mostly widely read U.S. movie critics, known for more than 40 years of insightful, sometimes sarcastic and often humorous reviews.

"For a generation of Americans - and especially Chicagoans - Roger was the movies," President Barack Obama said in a statement. "When he didn't like a film, he was honest; when he did, he was effusive - capturing the unique power of the movies to take us somewhere magical."

Ebert's reviews appeared in more than 200 newspapers and in 1975 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, the first film critic to do so. But his most visible role was as one of the hosts of a popular television movie review show with Gene Siskel, a reviewer from the rival Chicago Tribune.

The program began airing in the 1970s on a Chicago public television station and eventually ran nationally under various names, including "Siskel & Ebert." The sometimes sparring pair later trademarked their "Two thumbs up!" seal of approval for movies.

After Siskel died in 1999 at age 53 due to complications from surgery for a brain tumor, Ebert teamed with critic Richard Roeper on another movie review show. He later left the program for health reasons.

Ebert lost his ability to speak and eat after surgeries for thyroid and salivary gland cancer in 2002 and 2003 and again in 2006.

But it did not stop him from working.

On Tuesday, Ebert had posted a blog entry saying he was taking a "leave of presence" and scaling back his work after doctors diagnosed his cancer had returned. He said it was discovered by doctors after he fractured his hip in December.

"The 'painful fracture' that made it difficult for me to walk has recently been revealed to be a cancer," Ebert said in the blog posting, giving no further details about the type of cancer or diagnosis.

"I am not going away," he added. "My intent is to continue to write selected reviews ... What's more, I'll be able at last to do what I've always fantasized about doing: reviewing only the movies I want to review."

News of Ebert's death provoked an outpouring of tributes on Twitter.

"A great man. I miss him already," tweeted Roeper, his fellow Sun-Times film critic and TV co-host.

Millions of thumbs up for you," wrote documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, referring to his catchphrase. Comedian Steve Martin tweeted: "Goodbye Roger Ebert, we had fun. The balcony is closed."

"Rest in Peace, Roger. You were simply the best," wrote "Jaws" actor Richard Dreyfuss on Twitter.

MOVIE BOOKS, SCREENPLAY, COOKBOOK

Born on June 18, 1942, in Urbana, Illinois, south of Chicago, Ebert attended the University of Illinois and was editor of the school newspaper, the Daily Illini. From 1958 until 1966, he worked at the News Gazette in Champaign-Urbana, where he had snagged a job as a sportswriter at the age of 15, then moved to the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967.

Along with film criticism, Ebert authored several books on movies and filmmakers, including 1980's "Werner Herzog: Images at the Horizon," about the famed director, as well as titles like "I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie," in 2000.

He even co-wrote the screenplay for the 1970 film "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

But it was reviewing movies that Ebert loved most and he was prolific at cranking out criticism. In print, his reviews were voluminous and omnivorous, reflecting an encyclopedic knowledge about and appetite for the genre.

He liked to say he would go out of his way to review foreign films, documentaries and little-known independent movies that other critics passed on, and he cranked out hundreds of reviews and essays annually.

Ebert's earlier bouts of cancer cost him his lower jaw. He communicated through notes and a mechanized voice as well as on the Internet, but he could not eat normally and received nutrition through a tube.

"I can remember the taste and smell of everything, even though I can no longer taste or smell," he told a New York Times interviewer in 2010, when Ebert published a cookbook, "The Pot and How to Use It."

"The jokes, gossip, laughs, arguments and shared memories I miss," he wrote of missing out on the talk at table.

(Additional reporting by Eric Kelsey, Bob Tourtellotte, Mike Conlon and Andrew Stern; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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U.S. senators back Tyson pardon bid for boxing champ Johnson

(Reuters) - Two senior U.S. senators welcomed a petition launched by former boxer Mike Tyson to have heavyweight champ Jack Johnson posthumously pardoned by President Barack Obama for race crimes a century ago.

Democratic leader Harry Reid and Republican John McCain, longtime Johnson supporters, joined fellow boxing champions Lennox Lewis and Laila Ali, the daughter of retired boxing legend Muhammad Ali, in backing Tyson's petition on grassroots campaign website Change.org.

The petition says Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion of the world "is long overdue a pardon. Johnson paved the way for black boxers like me."

"Thanks to @MikeTyson for joining effort to pardon Jack Johnson's racially motivated conviction," McCain said on Twitter on Thursday.

"One great boxer standing up for another," Reid tweeted on Wednesday.

Reid and McCain, along with Senator William Cowan and U.S. Representative Peter King, introduced a resolution calling for Johnson's pardon in March. Pardons require presidential approval.

More than 1,400 people have signed the petition since Tyson launched it Wednesday.

Johnson, the world heavyweight champion from 1908 until 1915, was convicted in 1913 for transporting a woman across state lines for immoral purposes. The law, meant to combat prostitution, was often used in the segregation era as a way to punish interracial couples.

Johnson, who was married three times, all to white women, was arrested in 1920 after seven years in exile and spent a year in jail. He died in 1946 at age 68.

At least two previous attempts to get Johnson pardoned have come to nothing in the past 10 years.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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Halle Berry expecting second child, first with Olivier Martinez

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actress Halle Berry is pregnant with her second child, her first with fiance Olivier Martinez, representatives for Berry said on Friday.

Berry's representatives gave no details, but celebrity news website TMZ, citing sources close to the couple, said Berry was about three months pregnant and is expecting a boy.

Berry, 46, has a five-year-old daughter, Nahla, with ex-boyfriend, Canadian model Gabriel Aubry. After a long and acrimonious battle for custody, Berry and Aubry finally reached an agreement in November.

The Oscar-winning "Monster's Ball" star and French actor Martinez, 47, have been engaged since March 2012.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Vicki Allen)

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Fashion designer Lily Pulitzer dies in Florida: company

By Ellen Wulfhorst

(Reuters) - Fashion designer Lilly Pulitzer died on Sunday in Palm Beach, Florida, at age 81, her company said.

Pulitzer was known for her bright, cheerful print shift dresses that were popular with socialites and evoked a lifestyle of affluence in Florida and New York's Hamptons resorts.

Her company, named Lilly Pulitzer, also made children's wear, men's wear and household goods, often based on the same prints and bright colors.

"Early this morning, Lilly Pulitzer Rousseau passed away peacefully in Palm Beach, surrounded by family and loved ones," her company said in a statement posted on Facebook. "Lilly has been a true inspiration to us and we will miss her.

"Lilly was a true original who has brought together generations through her bright and happy mark on the world," the statement said.

It did not disclose a cause of death.

Pulitzer's designs were born when she was running a juice stand in Florida and had a sleeveless dress made from colorful printed cotton to hide the juice stains, according to the company website.

She had eloped at age 21 with publishing heir Peter Pulitzer and moved to Palm Beach, "in the shadow of Peter's citrus groves," from New York City, it said. The couple later divorced.

The classic shift dress gained international attention when first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, a former classmate of Pulitzer's, was photographed wearing one of her dresses on vacation, it said.

Her company declared bankruptcy in 1984 but was relaunched in 1992.

She and Pulitzer had three children, according to People magazine. Her second husband was hotelier Enrique Rousseau who died in 1993, according to People.

(Editing by Sandra Maler)

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Chilean poet Neruda's body exhumed in murder probe

By Rodrigo Garrido

ISLA NEGRA, Chile (Reuters) - The body of Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, dead nearly four decades, was exhumed on Monday after his former driver said the poet was poisoned under Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship.

Neruda, famed for his passionate love poems and staunch communist views, is presumed to have died from prostate cancer on September 23, 1973.

But Manuel Araya, who was Neruda's chauffer during the ailing writer's last few months, says agents of the dictatorship took advantage of his illness to inject poison into his stomach while he was bedridden at the Santa Maria clinic in Santiago.

"We're hoping for a positive result because Neruda was assassinated. Pinochet made an error when he ordered Neruda be killed," said Araya. Results are expected in coming months.

Neruda was a supporter of socialist President Salvador Allende, who was toppled in a military coup on September 11, 1973, nearly two weeks before the poet's death at age 69. Around 3,000 people are thought to have been killed by the brutal 17-year-long dictatorship that ensued.

Neruda was buried in his coastal home of Isla Negra beside his third wife, Matilde Urrutia.

His remains will be brought to Santiago for analysis. Some samples could be sent to laboratories abroad.

Ricardo Eliecer Neftali Reyes Basoalto, better known by his pen name Pablo Neruda, was a larger-than-life fixture in Chile's literary and political scene.

While best known for his collection "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair," published in 1924, Neruda was also an important political activist during a turbulent time in Chile.

He organized a ship to bring about 2,000 Spanish refugees fleeing the civil war there to Chile in 1939, campaigned for Allende and was ambassador to France during the socialist's presidency.

The Andean country's intelligentsia frequently congregated in Isla Negra, as well as in his Santiago home "La Chascona" - so named for his then-mistress Urrutia's messy red hair - and La Sebastiana, his ship-themed home in the port town of Valparaiso.

Democratically elected Allende committed suicide in the presidential palace as it was under attack by the military, experts confirmed last year, amid accusations he had been murdered during the coup.

Chilean courts are also investigating the death of ex-President Eduardo Frei Montalva, who is presumed to have died in 1982 of an infection after a hernia operation. Some say he was poisoned by Pinochet's agents.

(Reporting By Rodrigo Garrido; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Eric Beech)

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Streep voices admiration for "Iron Lady" she played in film

LONDON (Reuters) - Actress Meryl Streep, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in the 2011 film "The Iron Lady", praised the former British prime minister on Monday as a pioneer for the role of women in politics.

Britain's first and only female political leader died on Monday, aged 87, after suffering a stroke.

Streep, 63, described Thatcher as a trailblazer, "willingly or unwillingly", for female political leaders. "To me she was a figure of awe for her personal strength and grit," the American actress said in a statement.

"To have given women and girls around the world reason to supplant fantasies of being princesses with a different dream: the real-life option of leading their nation; this was groundbreaking and admirable."

Streep paid tribute to Thatcher for rising to the position of prime minister from her upbringing as a grocer's daughter on the back of her own hard work.

The multi-Oscar-winning actress acknowledged that the right-wing Thatcher divided opinion. But Streep said Thatcher deserved credit for standing by her convictions despite the "special hatred and ridicule, unprecedented in my opinion, leveled in our time at a public figure who was not a mass murderer".

Streep said she was honored to try to imagine Thatcher's late life journey in playing her in "Iron Lady" but only really had a "glancing understanding" of Thatcher's struggles.

"I wish to convey my respectful condolences to her family and many friends," she said.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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