Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe
Photo: CBS

With an impressive box-office opening this past weekend, "Precious" proved to be worth all the critical acclaim and excitement brewing around it. The film features standout performances by pop star Mariah Carey, comedian Mo'nique and newcomer Gabourey Sidibe, who plays the title role. Sidibe credits director Lee Daniels for allowing the women to explore their characters.

"It was really, really cool. A lot of things that we said wasn't in the script, and so, like, we had free range," Sidibe said during her appearance on CBS' "Early Show" on Monday. "Mr. Daniels made sure we knew what the scene was about and that we can do whatever we felt like, and so it was really cool. And [Carey] was on her toes and I was on my toes, and it was almost like a fight, like a battle, because we are not friends really in this film at all. It was really cool."

While Carey transformed into a plain social worker for the flick, the usually light-hearted Mo'Nique became every child's worst nightmare. She plays Precious' mom, Mary, who shows no heart while her daughter battles familial abuse, rape, teenage pregnancy and the claustrophobic hopelessness that has invaded her life.

"[Mo'Nique] did such an amazing job," Sidibe said. "She is such a loving person. She is one of the most caring people I have ever met, and when the director said, 'Action,' she became this monster, and as soon as he said, 'Cut,' we would hug and laugh. We would love each other so much more because of the drama between Precious and Mary. It's amazing how those lines never got crossed."

Check out everything we've got on "Precious."

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Gabourey Sidibe in "Precious"
Photo: Lions Gate

This past weekend, moviegoers across the nation had their choice of over 3,600 theaters at which they could catch "A Christmas Carol," the 3-D motion-capture odyssey starring Jim Carrey. At the same time, the indie drama "Precious" screened in just 18 places during its opening weekend. "Christmas Carol" raked in the big bucks — $31 million in total — but "Precious" was arguably the bigger box-office story.

The film raked in $1.8 million dollars, for a per-screen-average of $100,000 — the highest in three years and the 11th best of all time — greatly increasing the chances that it will become the darling of the upcoming awards season.

Starring newcomer Gabourey Sidibe, "Precious" is a brutal story of one girl's horrific struggles with familial abuse, rape, teenage pregnancy and the claustrophobic hopelessness that has invaded her life. Oscar talk has surrounded Sidibe (who plays the title role) and Mo'Nique, who won an acting prize at Sundance for her role as Precious' mother, as well as the film itself, which won the top award at Sundance. That talk now has a popular vote of confidence. Nominations for director (Lee Daniels) and best adapted screenplay (Geoffrey Fletcher) are also distinct possibilities.

"All of us that participated in the movie, we feel so attached to this and so honored to be a part of this, because it really is something that's so strong and different," Mariah Carey, who plays a social worker assigned to Precious' case, said earlier this year. "I think it's really going to enlighten a lot of people."

The $100,000 average for "Precious" was the highest per-screen-average since "Dreamgirls" in 2006 nabbed an average of $126,000 in just three theaters, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. That musical went on to secure eight Oscar nominations and two wins, including a supporting actress nod for Jennifer Hudson. The top per-screen-average in box-office history is held by "The Lion King," which opened in two theaters for a staggering average of $793,000.

Even before this latest bit of good news for "Precious," Sidibe said that her life was already changing. The 16-year-old, who had never been in a movie before, couldn't even imagine what would happen when the film hit theaters. As she told MTV News in August, people she ran into on the street often had a hard time separating her from her character.

"They'll start to talk to me in a more careful tone or be really wary of me," she explained. "They'll want to coddle me or they see me in the street and they'll want to hug me and rub my back and tell me everything will be OK. But it's cool, I like hugging."

Check out everything we've got on "Precious."

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Mariah Carey
Photo: Kevork Djansezian/ Getty Images

There are always plenty of parties in New York on New Year's Eve, but despite the chaos in Times Square, the best shindig is usually at Madison Square Garden. In the past few years, the venue has hosted a high-profile music act to ring in the new year. The spot is typically reserved for jam bands (Phish have hosted legendary marathon shows in the building, while last year's headliner was My Morning Jacket, who jammed their way into 2009), but this year's show will focus on a true superstar: Mariah Carey.

Carey announced that she would be headlining MSG on New Year's Eve via her Twitter and on her Web site on Thursday night.

"Mariah Carey, the #1 most successful female recording artist of all time will be live at New York's famous Madison Square Garden for a special New Year's Eve performance!" the announcement on her site reads. "Join Mariah as she bids farewell to 2009 in superstar style and gets ready to ring in 2010!"

The announcement doesn't include any information about opening acts or special guests, though it promises that Mariah will perform hits, including her latest singles, "Obsessed" and "H.A.T.E.U.," and other songs from Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel.

This Monday tickets will go on sale for members of her Honey B. Fly fan club, who also have the opportunity to enter to win a pair of front-row tickets. For the rest of the public, tickets will be available next Saturday, November 14.

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Mariah Carey
Photo: CNN

Mariah Carey has long talked about her struggle for acceptance as a child of a mixed-race couple. But on Wednesday, Carey revealed that in addition to that burden, she has also once been the victim of emotional and mental abuse, revealing that she felt trapped in a relationship in which she felt no means of escape.

"Abuse has several categories, emotionally, mentally, in other ways," Carey told CNN's "Larry King Live" on Wednesday night. "I just think you get into a situation, and you feel locked in — if your situation is similar to one of the situations I've been in, which I won't harp on. ... For me, to really get out, it was difficult because there was a connection that was not only a marriage but a business thing, where the person was in control of my life."

Carey, 40, did not reveal the name of the person she was discussing, but speculation has landed on former husband and label boss Tommy Mottola, whom she married in a lavish ceremony in 1993 and divorced five years later. Carey has alluded in previous interviews to her feelings that Mottola was a controlling and restrictive presence in her life.

When asked if she knew Rihanna, Carey said she did and sympathized with the young singer over her assault in February at the hands of former boyfriend Chris Brown. "I was very sequestered, as you know, when I first started out, and if I were just allowed to be young and with a young boyfriend who's also a star and you know, you're working and you're both — I don't know what goes on," she said. "I wasn't really allowed out of the house, so I can't imagine what she went through."

King asked Carey why it was hard to get out of the relationship in which she was allegedly being emotionally and mentally abused. "Well, it's scary," she answered. "If someone — I mean, there's other things and other times in my life and things that I will eventually talk about when I write my book. And people that have — like, nobody in my family or anything like that, but just certain things that also make me identify with 'Precious,' the movie."

Carey also faced the inevitable pregnancy questions and said that with a packed schedule of promoting both the film — which has garnered the singer her best acting notices to date — and her Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel album, a child with new husband Nick Cannon is not currently in the offing.

"Right now? I'm going to take a swig of my scotch and let you know," she joked when King asked her if she was currently pregnant. "[Being pregnant] would be the happiest thing in my life, but what I'm saying is right now with this movie coming out, with the next few singles from the album and those things that I'm doing, I need to focus on that because I cannot do the having-a-child thing halfway. I wouldn't be just like, 'Oh, I'm having a child, yay! Let me get a nanny so I can give her the baby. Take the kid.' That doesn't work me. I don't believe in that."

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Nick Cannon
Photo: MTV News

Nick Cannon supports his superstar wife Mariah Carey in all of her endeavors. And watching his normally glamorous wife portray a plain-looking counselor in the upcoming movie "Precious" moved Cannon to tears.

"I mean, the performance was phenomenal — clearly one of the best," he told MTV News on the red carpet for the film's Los Angeles premiere. Cannon accompanied wife Carey, who stars in the flick alongside comedian Mo'Nique and newcomer Gabourey Sidibe, to the premiere. "I love her every look, always."

As for the film's serious tone, he says that it was hard for Carey to come home at night after telling the story of a teenage girl dealing with incest and pregnancy. "Every person can take something away from this. It was a heavy role — to come down from that you have to stop yourself," he explained. "And stop yourself again."

Cannon admits that even though he's seen the film numerous times already, he still gets weepy whenever he watches it. "I didn't read the script, but the movie made me cry," he said. "I think it's, like, my fifth time. It gets better every time."

Back in February, Carey spoke to MTV News about the movie, gushing that she was "just honored to be a part of it. It's really something that's so strong and different and I think that it's really going to enlighten a lot of people and help a lot of people."

Check out everything we've got on "Precious."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

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Paramore's Hayley Williams
Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/ Getty Images

Paramore shouldn't feel too bad that they were just barely beat out for a #1 debut by one of pop's all-time classic divas: They beat out a mega-selling modern diva — and notched their best first week ever in the process.

Though the band's third album, Brand New Eyes, will bow at #2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart next week, after selling 175,000 copies, they can rest easy knowing that they were just a nose behind legend Barbra Streisand, whose album of jazz standards, Love Is the Answer, snagged the top spot with sales of 180,000. The feat, Babs' ninth #1 album, gives her at least one top debut in each of the past five decades.

The news was not as good for Mariah Carey, whose Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel (168,000) sold considerably less in its first week than her last album, E=MC2 (463,000), according to figures provided by Nielsen SoundScan.

With eight new contenders, next week's top 10 got. Rockers Breaking Benjamin hit #4 with Dear Agony (134,000), followed by revived grunge icons Alice in Chains, whose first new album in almost 15 years, Black Gives Way to Blue, debuts at #5 (126,000). Madonna's final effort for Warner Bros., the greatest hits album Celebration, isn't much of a cause for one, landing at #7 on sales of just 72,000, tailed by country singer Miranda Lambert's Revolution (#8, 66,000). Kiss and Tell, from "Wizards of Waverly Place" star Selena Gomez (and her band, the Scene), is less than 75 copies behind at #9.

The only holdovers from last week are Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3, which slips four spots to #6, as sales dipped 34 percent to 89,000, and Pearl Jam, who fall nine to #10 with Backspacer, shedding 69 percent of their first-week business (58,000).

Just outside the top 10 there is plenty of action as well, including a #12 bow for eyeliner rockers AFI with Crash Love (52,000) and a #15 bid from the Adult Swim metal band Dethlok's Dethalbum II (45,000). The Rick Rubin-produced folk duo Avett Brothers are just behind with I and Love and You (40,000).

Ghostface Killah's Ghostdini: The Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City materializes at #28 on soft sales of 19,000, while hyped English prog trio Muse continue to slide down the charts in their third week, dropping 15 more spots to #25 with The Resistance (24,000). Alt-rock supergroup Monsters of Folk sag 30 spots to #45 with their self-titled debut (13,000, down 58 percent), and Brand New got old quickly, as their album Daisy has wilted, plunging 38 slots to #44 (14,000, down 70 percent) in its second week.

The Karen O-led soundtrack to Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are" comes in at #36 (16,000), and former Mazzy Star singer Hope Sandoval quietly creeps into the #160 spot with Through the Devil Softly (3,000).

The top 10 should get shaken up again next week, with debuts from smooth crooner Michael Bublé, Toby Keith, Kiss and the Backstreet Boys.

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Mariah Carey performs on NBC's "Today"
Photo: Bryan Bedder/ Getty Images

Fans filled Rockefeller Plaza early Friday morning (October 2) to catch a glimpse of Mariah Carey stopping by the "Today" show to talk about her latest album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, and performed a four-song set.

Beginning the show with an early classic — "Make It Happen," off of Emotions — the singer embraced the crowd's lively energy early in the morning. Dressed in a black leather trench coat and accessorized with a glittery microphone, Carey paced the stage, holding fans' hands as she performed the 1991 track.

Of course, Mariah also performed her two latest singles. She was hoisted in the air by dancers for "Obsessed" and accompanied by a church choir for her Foreigner cover, "I Wanna Know What Love Is."

Between songs, Carey talked about the album's title with host Meredith Vieira. "Everybody's imperfect, and we try to be the best we can but you know, it's tough," she explained. "And 'memoirs' is just the fact that I write, and I've been writing poems since I was a little girl. I write lyrics and songs. It's a little bit about reflecting on life."

Carey later told MTV News about the wide range of emotions fans will experience through the album's songs. "I put a lot of myself into it," she said. "I think that people can expect a whole lot of different stuff. There are some songs that are just funny with jokes. They're upbeat as well as uptempo. They make you laugh, and you can also dance to them and enjoy them. And then there's ballads — some of them are just really sad, but they have a little bit of an edgier element to them. Then there's those big ballads."

One of the "big ballads" the singer may have been referenced could be The-Dream-produced "H.A.T.E.U.," which concluded the mini-concert on "Today."

Mariah also took the opportunity to tell MTV News about her role in the upcoming film, "Precious," which opens December 3.

When director Lee Daniels approached her to play Mrs. Weiss, Carey said he told her, "You're going have to get really ugly and you're going have to do this and that. We're going strip you down in every way."

And despite the character's lack of sex appeal and makeup, she signed onto the project. "I said, 'Cool,' because I felt like it was something that I sort of needed to do, and I love the book so much, so I thought it would be a really nice thing," Carey explained.

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Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon
Photo: Chris Jackson/ Getty Images

Don't let the cuff links fool you!

Nick Cannon may sport tailored suits as the host of "America's Got Talent," but the prime-time entertainer isn't a made-for-TV drone, especially when it comes to defending his wife, Mariah Carey, from Eminem.

In the new issue of In Touch Weekly, Cannon takes a hard-line stance against the Relapse rapper.

Em and MC have been tossing barbs at each other for a couple years now. The words turned more hurtful this year, however, when Carey's "Obsessed" seemingly mocked Slim Shady, and the rapper responded with "The Warning," a scathing freestyle threat targeting the singer.

"Oh gee, is that supposed to be me in the video with the goatee?/ Wow, Mariah, didn't expect ya to go balls out/ B----, shut the f--- up before I put all those phone calls out/ You made to my house/ When you was wild 'n' out/ Before Nick, when you was on my di--," Eminem rapped on the track.

Cannon and Em have exchanged both taunts and apologies, as well, but it seems like Mr. Mariah isn't keen on letting up this time. Not until he and Eminem have a talk, according to Cannon. In the tabloid interview, Cannon even boasts that the rapper should be thankful the two haven't bumped into each other yet — a far cry from the biblical tweets Cannon previously wrote when responding to Em.

"[Eminem is] lucky I haven't run into him yet," Cannon warned, his toughest challenge to Em so far. "I'm supposed to protect my woman if someone can be so heinous and disrespectful. Until we speak, I don't respect him as a man. He and I need to have an old-school sit-down."

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Mariah Carey
Photo: MTV News

Mariah Carey insists that her new album of heartbreak and betrayal, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, has nothing to do with her relationship with husband Nick Cannon. But she also maintains that her hubby does not deserve sole credit for her second single, a cover of Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is," despite some rumored suggestions to the contrary.

"Nick says that he suggested it," Carey told MTV News, referring to comments she'd made in an earlier radio interview. "He says that it was his idea."

Cannon was still a toddler when Foreigner's single dropped in 1984, while Carey was six short years away from releasing her self-titled debut album. The couple's 11-year age difference probably means they had differing first impressions of the '80s pop hit. And now it seems they definitely have conflicting recollections of how this newest version of the song came to be.

At most, Carey said, Cannon deserves only partial credit. "You know what it is?" she explained. "We're also friends, and so we talk about things. We talk about music, we talk about videos. There's nothing that we don't really have in common in a lot of ways. So yes, we did have a conversation about the Foreigner song, but I will not say that it was completely his idea. Sorry! I love you, Nick, but I'm not saying that!"

During the interview, Carey also addressed the case of the album's missing songs. Carey had worked with heavyweight producers Timbaland and Jermaine Dupri on a number of tracks, none of which made it onto Memoirs. The songstress assured fans, however, that they'll soon get a chance to give everything a listen.

"They're not on the album, but we have a special something planned that [record exec] L.A. Reid would be very angry with me if I discussed right now on MTV," she teased. "But for the fans, there will be more than one Timbaland track and at least one J.D. track."

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Mariah Carey
Photo: MTV News

Sixteen months after her last studio album debuted in the top spot on the Billboard 200, Mariah Carey returned Tuesday (September 29) with Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, her first disc since she and Nick Cannon tied the knot in the spring of 2008. Though the multiplatinum songstress seems to have found domestic bliss in her own life, her new album is filled with slow jams and poppy dance tunes about unhealthy relationships, broken hearts and infidelity.

But Mimi isn't worried that any of her fans will make the mistake of thinking these new songs reflect the current state of her love life or that her marriage might be on the rocks. "If they think that, they haven't seen either one of us on an interview," Carey told MTV News. "And I doubt that!"

Rather than reflecting this latest phase of happy coupledom, Carey said the autobiographical elements of the new album extend back to the earliest years of her life. "I'm always writing things down," she explained. "I've been doing that since I was 6 years old. [In Memoirs], I'm kind of looking at my life and going, 'That was a stupid thing to do. Let me write about it.' I remember this, 'Oh, I wrote about this, let me finish the song.' "

Co-producing much of the album with industry heavyweights Tricky and The-Dream allowed the 39-year-old Carey to return to this decades-in-the-making material. "I really enjoyed working with them because I felt like they, in a way, just by collaborating with me, allowed me the freedom to express myself in a way that I may not have felt empowered enough to do in the past," she said.

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