Daniel J. Stasiewski & Erika Jarvis, a&e editors The Behrend Beacon lurotripf a boring guide to the review by Chris Hewitt Knight Ridder Newspapers What does it say about a movie when the best thing in it gets cut? That's the dilemma with "Eurotrip," in which a side-splitting cameo by Joanna Lumley unspools as an outtake during the closing credits. Lumley isn't in the movie proper, but her role as the unhospitable hostess of a Teutonic youth hostel is funnier than anything else in this cautiously written, charismatically acted gross-out com edy. It's your basic four-friends-on-a road-trip-encounter-romance-and- vomit movie, in which the regurgita tion begins during the opening credits and gets gurging again every five min utes or so. I like the cast of newcomers Upstart cable channel Fuse puts the heat on video giant MTV by Cary Darling Knight Ridder Newspapers The billboards started popping up around Manhattan on May 12. Here was Sally Struthers, getting her beg on, trying to save an endangered spe cies: the music video. "Every Day, thou sands of music videos go unplayed. Please help save music videos," she im plores. "Watch Fuse." One of the billboards - huge, inescap able, like the monolith in 2001 - just hap pened to be right outside the Times Square offices of MTV. Then there were the coffee cups. Two million of them. Handed out around New York, emblazoned with the phrase, "Where's the M in emptee-vee?" And so was born Fuse, the upstart, 9- month-old, New York-based, cable mu sic channel that's starting to pump up the volume and attract a lot of attention, and not just for its smart-aleck ad campaign. According to Crain's, an ad-industry publication, Fuse ended 2003 with a 20 percent gain in subscribers and now is available to 36 million households. A sampling of teen tastes conducted in October by media analyst Jack Myers, who interviewed more than 1,300 teen agers, ranked the network sixth among the 35 broadcast and cable networks in cluded in the study. Among teen girls and all 15- to 18-year-olds, it came in at No. 1. Fuse is already branching out to con cert sponsorship, slapping its name on tours by Staind, Deftones and the current The Jarvis File Another round of 'Sex': Don't put down those cosmopolitians yet, and keep your Manolo Blahniks on. The ladies of "Sex and the City" are in the works to make a movie continuing the lives of Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda. The city of New York will continue to be the star of the movie as the ladies continue - Where they will leave off this Sunday. Second best: Even though Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey are America's sweet hearts of reality television, it seems that Jessica might be the more popular of the two. Jessica's album has outsold Nick's and at the Golden Globes, Nick was asked to move out of the way as the photographers clamored to get Jessica's picture. Jessica has even snagged her own television show where her character will be named, Jessica Sampson. Nick got his own televsion show, too, but after Jessica was already offered one. She's the hotter of the two and now, more than ever, the more popular one. You're fired: If you watch NBC's "The Apprentice" you may notice that Donald Trump does the firing. Turns out in real life this real estate tycoon has never uttered those words before. He has enough money to pay people to do his dirty work. 1. "The Way You Move" Outkast featuring Sleepy Brown 2. "Yeah!" Usher featuring Lil Jon & Ludacris 8. "Here Without You" 3 Doors 3. "Hey Ya!" Outkast Down 4. "Someday" Nickelback 9. "My Immortal" Evanescence s." Toxic" Britney Spears 10. "It's My Life" No Doubt **According to Billboard.com** (particularly the Owen Wilson-esque Jacob Pitts), but the movie doesn't push its outrageousness hard enough to give us that I-can't-believe-I' m-laughing-at that feeling. Nude beaches? Incestuous kissing? Big whoop. Heck, even "Barbershop 2" is more politically incorrect than that. "Eurotrip" is probably about two thirds as funny as "Road Trip," on which it's modeled. It also boasts a primo running gag featuring Matt Damon, and at least the filmmakers had the smarts to include the Lumley scene at the end instead of saving it for the DVD. 2 stars out of 4--Directed by: Jeff Schaffer Rated: R, for tons of frontal nudity and raw language, as well as drug use. SHOULD YOU GO? It's a renter.** Simple Plan/MxPx run. Upcoming is the Crystal Method tour. While Fuse has a long way to go be fore attaining MTV's name recognition and clout - the landmark network is in more than 86 million homes, spinoff MTV 2 is in 50 million homes, and MTVU, on college campuses, was just launched - it has both music fans and music-industry watchers buzzing. "Even though their ratings are a frac tion of MTV's, their audience is ex tremely loyal," says Myers, publisher of the Jack Myers Report and the Teen Me dia Brand Tracker Study. "They've tapped into a market that MTV has ig nored, that is looking for new music." It's all sweet music to the ears of Marc Juris, the man charged with taking a well regarded but obscure video-music chan nel, Much Music USA, an offshoot of the Canadian Much Music videochannel, rebranding it, and getting people to watch it. He's doing that by playing videos and forgoing nonmusic programming, such as "The Osbournes" and "The Real World," which has dominated MTV's schedule in recent years. Beyond that, he made the station interactive: Fans can go online and vote on videos, purchase or sell "stock" in bands, or dedicate videos to significant others and friends. "What I saw was an opportunity to give viewers a true voice in the way the mu sic network would be programmed," says Fuse President Juris. "The. Internet obvi ously has been disruptive in the way busi ness is conducted. But there was a great opportunity to harness that power." 6. "With You" Jessica Simpson 7. "Slow Jamz" Twista featuring Kayne West and Jamie Foxx ANNIM 4 Friday February . 20, 2004 Like Frodo bearing the ring, Fuse has started to attract the attention of the big boy on the block: MTV. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, MTV parent company Viacom, which report edly has contracts with record companies giving Viacom channels exclusive rights to the labels' videos, lately has been en forcing this provision. That means they have claimed first rights to Radiohead's "There There" and Beyonce Knowles' "Crazy in Love" among others. (MTV de clined to comment for this story.) But Juris is not worried. "That has no real direct impact, because our whole brand is about up-and-coming new mu- sic," he says. Fuse is also seeking audiences that MTV might only address on its niche channels, such as MTV Espanol - chan nels that may not be widely available. Fuse is pursuing the "urban Latino" crowd with a Monday night show, Marcha, dedicated to Latin alternative rock. "I realized thern'was no Latin alterna tive music being aired and there was so much of it out there," says Marcha cre ator/producer Moira Noriega. Tomas Cookman, head of Los Ange les-based Cookman International, which oversees the careers of such popular Latin rock bands as La Ley, Aterciopelados, and the electronica Nortec Collective, is a Fuse fan. "It's more in line with (the bands') natural audiences than going to Miami and doing the (Spanish-language) morning shows," he explains. For all the shots Fuse takes at MTV, **not looking to good this week** rose side of travel search and even with the rumors of new music channels being developed by the Univer sal Music Group (1 A.M.) and the Play boy Channel (H.Y.P.E. TV), Juris says there's enough room for everybody. "MTV is a very different network than we are," he says. "They have different expectations. They're building a large, youth-oriented network. We're building a new music network. We're building a multidimensional music brand. That's a very different model and point of view. "I have a very basic philosophy: If I'm only looking at MTV, MTV 2 or MTVU as my competition, I'm looking at the world with blinders on. Here's the com petition: everything. Video games, DVDs, the online world. A teenager has a lot of things taking that time. It's not about one TV network. It's about the world of choice." So what about those ads, then? In ad dition to Struthers, others have featured Hair Club for Men founder Sy Sperling ("Fuse - looks natural even when wet") and Tammy Faye ("I've seen the light. It was on TV and it has music videos on it. Fuse - No. 1 with Tammy, who is No. 3 with drag queens"). "We just like to have a sense of humor and be playful," Juris explains. "But you know what? The music network ain't playing music and we are. Clearly, it's a competitive point with us. We hear it from record companies and people: You play music. (Until now) there's somehow been broad public acceptance of a music net work not playing music." Just as Bart openly mocks Homer, so } - e `l 7 -1,7 7 7 7 De ) 759 1.. I 2 th Sitv.ct Vrte. l'A 1 . 6502 (XI-i) 456-7260 12-10 Mon-Thurl2- 1 2 Fri -`s,at Fite ritai Siet thntlit >1) Largest Tattoo Shot) On The East. Coast! 15% Off with Student 11 Appointinvilts Av.61.11)1, Welcome to Mooseport": ;ne Hackman, Ray Ramano Confessions of a Teenage .ama Queen": Lindsay ~an, Megan Fox Eurotrip": Michelle •achtenberg, Jacob Pitts FS I. Iwo 4- 10 Sun behrcolls@aol.com Fuse can't resist slamming MTV. Be cause MTV produced the Super Bowl halftime spectacle that included Janet Jackson's nearly full monty, the Fuse folks had to have their say. They issued an "open letter to MTV": Dear Friends at MTV, Every day the entertainment industry is a victim of senseless, brutal wardrobe malfunctions, accidents and outright crimes MTV, we at Fuse are standing with you! Even though we are competitors, we think it's time to put aside our differences and take a stand. Let us not dwell on last Sunday's halftime show - the dated songs, the random crotch grabs and the sense less lip-synching. No. Let's put all that aside and focus on the issue at hand: VELCRO DOES NOT WORK. Many of us here have been victims of wardrobe malfunctions and understand the life-long impact one single costume catastrophe can have. We at Fuse will support you any way we can. We will continue to play music videos every day, all day, day after day after day. We are also willing to donate gener ously to the I.F.D.A.D.A.N.T. (The In stitute for the Development of Advanced Double Adhesive Nipple Tape). Signed in solidarity, Your Friends at Fuse P.S. For what it's worth, we also thought Chicken of the Sea was a chicken-based product. Give die breast a rest. Watch music videos on Fuse. VDR ses on F Matchstick Men" 'Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over' Page 7
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers