Hilary Duff is onto the paparazzi's moves, and she's got a surefire trick to throw them off. The singer/actress said in an interview featured in the December/January issue of Jane that she has a tactic to duck photographers trying to capture her in a tough moment with her boyfriend, Good Charlotte's Joel Madden: "If we're out someplace, we could totally be fighting, but we'll be looking at each other like this," Duff explained, reportedly flashing a big smile, "because there's a camera right there. Then we end up forgetting we're in a fight, because we're laughing since it's not a real thing to do, and we're both such real people." Real people who listen to music you may not expect, Duff insisted. "I love the Faint. If they would do a song for me, I would blow a fuse." ...

Reprise Records will re-release early Green Day material December 19. The band's 1,039/ Smoothed Out Slappy Hours and Kerplunk! were originally issued on Lookout! Records, and then reissued by that same label in 2004, but Green Day removed the LPs from the Lookout catalog last year after allegations that the band was owed royalties. ... AFI, Trent Reznor, Rise Against and Hellogoodbye have been named winners of the Libby Awards, a new honor put on by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. ("Libby" is short for "liberation.") AFI won Best Vegetarian Band, Rise Against's "Ready to Fall" earned them Best Animal Rights Song of 2006 and Nine Inch Nails frontman Reznor was honored as the Best New Fur Foe. Runners-up included Silverstein, Motion City Soundtrack and NOFX. ...

We're just months away from seeing exactly how "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" translates from book to the big screen (Feast your eyes on the film trailer right here), and now the young wizard's fifth adventure is about to go interactive. The "Order of the Phoenix" video game, scheduled for a July release, will allow players to explore Hogwarts and control multiple characters, including Harry, Sirius Black and Dumbledore. The game is currently being developed by Electronic Arts and will be released for the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 2 and 3, Xbox 360 and Windows PC. ...

Capitol/Priority is commemorating the 20th anniversary of hip-hop pioneers N.W.A, with The Best of N.W.A: The Strength of Street Knowledge, due December 26. A deluxe version of the 17-song retrospective CD comes with a bonus DVD featuring previously unreleased interviews with Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and Eazy-E. In other N.W.A news, nine songs by the act will debut as ringtones on December 12. ... Lil Scrappy's "G's Up TV," a weekly show recounting the rapper's journey to music from the streets, launched Tuesday at GsUpTV.com. In addition to Scrappy's firsthand accounts of his life and career, the series features skits -- including a cognac tasting with Lil Jon -- and celebrity guests such as Three 6 Mafia, Young Buck and Jamie Kennedy. The series will run through December 5 release, when his debut LP, Bred 2 Die, Born 2 Live, drops. ...

Angelina Jolie made an unannounced visit to Cambodia on Wednesday (November 22), The Associated Press reports. The actress, who adopted her son Maddox from the country, spoke with government officials about the $1.3 million nature-conservation project she is funding there. ... The advice may be too late for Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson, but Will Smith is sharing his secret to keeping a celebrity marriage alive: "Divorce cannot be an option," he revealed in the current issue of Reader's Digest. Smith explained that he quit his marriage to first wife, Sheree Smith, when he "could have fixed it" -- and he said he won't make that mistake again with Jada Pinkett Smith. "With Jada, I stood up in front of God and my family and friends and said, 'Till death do us part.' So there are two possible outcomes: We are going to be together till death or I am dead." ...

After separate jaunts opening for Killswitch Engage and Dragonforce, piping-hot Massachusetts metallers All That Remains will head out for their first headlining track in support of this year's The Fall of Ideals. The band is hoping to have a permanent drummer by the time it kicks off the North American trek, slated for late January. ... Bayside -- the New York band that lost a drummer in a van accident while on tour with Hawthorne Heights earlier this year -- have assembled a short December trek with Junior Varsity and others called the Holiday Havoc Tour. The outing begins December 3 in New Haven, Connecticut, and winds down December 11 in New York. Bayside's junior album is due February 6. ... Pop punks Cartel will hit the road next year with Cobra Starship, Boys Like Girls, Permanent Me and Quietdrive. The 19-date trek kicks off February 7 in Carrboro, New York, and makes stops in Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Dallas, San Diego, Las Vegas and Seattle before winding down March 9 in Milwaukee. ...

This Christmas, Pink Floyd's David Gilmour will release three live tracks that he's dedicated to former bandmember and friend, the late Syd Barrett -- who died this summer of pancreatic cancer. An acoustic cover of Barrett's "Dark Globe" and two new versions of Floyd's "Arnold Layne" will be available for download through Gilmour's Web site beginning December 25. ... Reunited New Jersey hardcore pioneers Lifetime will release their first studio album in more than 10 years on February 26 through Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz's Decaydance/ Fueled by Ramen label. The self-titled outing will boast 11 tracks in all, but no song titles have been revealed yet. Lifetime plan to spend much of next year on the road touring in support of the disc. ... Influential Delta blues musician Robert Lockwood Jr. died Tuesday of respiratory failure in Cleveland. The Grammy-nominated singer/guitarist and W.C. Handy Award winner was 91.

11.21.2006

Although he bombed at the World Music Awards last week, Michael Jackson is going to give another celebration a try. The singer will go to Japan for a December 19 Christmas celebration that is also commemorating the upcoming 25th anniversary of the release of Thriller. "I look forward to visiting Japan again, and greeting my fans and friends," Jackson said in a statement. ...

Jay-Z recently joined forces with another New York heavyweight -- New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez -- for a celebrity-poker tournament that benefited their respective charities, the A-Rod Family Foundation and Shawn Carter Scholarship Foundation. The tourney, which raised a half-million dollars, was held at Jay's 40/40 Club in Manhattan and also counted Nelly, Cedric the Entertainer and baseball vets Cal Ripken, Gary Sheffield and Mariano Rivera among the players. ...

Alicia Keys' new Web site launched Tuesday (November 21), and one of the features on the way is a book club. "I always loved the way Oprah did that," she told MTV News. "To do that with my style and the books I like to read would be really fly." Keys plans to start the group with "The Temple of My Familiar," a novel by Alice Walker. "She is insane, in the best way, when it comes to writing. There's something about a book that engages you, when you become enraptured in the whole thing like it's your life and you're yelling at the book." Keys also plans to recommend the W.E.B. DuBois novel "The Souls of Black Folk," which she just finished recently. "I love to read. It makes you write better, and I just want to open that conversation up, to talk about many things, many styles." ...

Green Day have teamed up with the Natural Resources Defense Council for the Move America Beyond Oil campaign. "People are sick of our oil addiction and feel like nobody is doing anything about it," frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said in a statement. "Our message is that it's OK, and very rebellious, to take on that responsibility." Visitors to GreenDayNRDC.com can access a tool to send text messages directly to lawmakers and corporate leaders to demand change. ... Rock the Bells is about to get a little bit louder. The hip-hop festival's first world tour will now include Ghostface Killah, Pharoahe Monch and EPMD, in addition to previously announced acts Redman and Raekwon. The jaunt begins Tuesday in Washington, D.C. ...

Smashing Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin has updated fans of the reunited rockers on the progress of their comeback album in a post on the Pumpkins' MySpace page. "We are moving along nicely in the studio," the drummer wrote. "[Frontman Billy Corgan] pulled off a magnificent guitar symphony last night and it is still ringing in my ears this morning. Eight guitars resonating in one big harmonic handshake. ... Today we will be working on vocals and solos. Tomorrow, who knows?" The Pumpkins' forthcoming LP, which is being produced by Roy Thomas Baker (Queen, the Cars), is slated for release next year. While Corgan and Chamberlin are back on board, it remains unclear who else will be in the resuscitated band. ... Come 2007, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival will be a year older and a day longer. The now-three-day fest will take place April 27-29 in Indio, California. ...

It's a good thing the "Borat" movie is making so much cash, because the lawsuits just keep coming. The latest is from two residents of Glod, Romania, who claim they were tricked into participating in the movie and were depicted as thieves, racists and "simpletons," according to a $30 million suit against 20th Century Fox and the filmmakers that alleges fraud and civil-rights violations. The Los Angeles Times reports that the suit, filed in New York federal district court by Nicolae Todorache and Spridom Ciorebea, claims the pair fall into a group protected by the laws of the U.S. and the United Nations and that, unlike the others depicted in the satirical film, they don't speak or read English. Also Monday, Fox hit back at a pair of fraternity members who sued over their depiction in the movie, calling the lawsuit a "fatuous" attempt to thwart free speech, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "Plaintiffs may claim that they were tricked 'into making fools out of themselves' and becoming 'unsuspecting players' in the movie 'Borat,' " the studio said. "They never contend ... that bigoted and misogynistic statements were put into their mouths." A temporary restraining order against the film's continued distribution was denied November 9 and a hearing is set for December 7 to take up the students' subsequent request for a preliminary injunction. ...

Three fresh tunes from the revived Blind Melon have been posted online at the band's Web site. The cuts, called "Make a Difference," "For My Friends" and "Harmful Belly," are the first new songs the group has written since the death of frontman Shannon Hoon more than a decade ago. They're also the first ones Blind Melon have worked on with new singer Travis Warren, formerly of Rain Fur Rent. ... Hopesfall have entered Vu Du Studios in Freeport, New York, with producer Mike Watts (As Cities Burn, As Tall as Lions) to start tracking the follow-up to 2004's A Types. The band has been writing material for about a year and say there's been a serious progression in its sound. ...

Bloggers across the country were popping corks on Monday after a California Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Internet users and providers can't be held liable for posting defamatory material written by someone else. "The prospect of blanket immunity for those who intentionally redistribute defamatory statements on the Internet has disturbing implications," wrote Justice Carol Corrigan, adding that immunity, however, "serves to protect online freedom of expression and to encourage self-regulation." The ruling, supported by such heavy hitters as Google and Yahoo!, upholds the Internet's status as a forum for free speech. "The reason the Internet is such a tremendous forum for free speech is it provides the opportunity to exchange and debate ideas and to pass along what someone else had to say," Ann Brick, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who took part in the case, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "That would all stop if the liability rules were different."