VIDEO: Matt Barkley To Return To USC

The Weeknd, 'Echoes of Silence': New Mixtape Dropping Dec. 21

 

Danielle Da Silva for The Come Up Show, Flickr

UPDATE: The Weeknd's 'Echoes of Silence' was posted online last night for free download at the-weeknd.com.

Following his Polaris Prize-nomination and the critical acclaim surrounding their digital album/mixtape 'House of Balloons,' Toronto alt-R&B act the Weeknd are rumored to be releasing a new recording Dec. 21 called 'Echoes of Silence.'

According to Exclaim, the new nine-track album was previously slated for release this fall. And technically the fall season concludes early Thursday morning so speculation is, the effort will be out in mere hours.

"It's getting close...EOS...," the group posted on their Facebook account late Tuesday, with images of balloons. Prior postings indicated the album "is on the way" and that it was "almost time" for the final part of "The Balloon Trilogy."

Also the Weeknd -- fronted by Abel Tesfaye -- altered their Twitter profile picture to show the album cover for 'Echoes Of Silence,' which features several red balloons with the nine song titles above them. The balloon theme was also part of 2011's 'House of Balloons' -- which featured a nude woman in a bathtub partially hidden by the balloons -- and the subsequent 'Thursday' mixtape.

The tracklist for 'Echoes of Silence' is as follows: 'Initiation,' 'Chaos,' 'Echoes of Silence,' 'Serenity,' 'Atencion,' 'XO,' 'Sleep Paralysis' and 'Witches and Panthers' before concluding with 'Overdose.'

"House of Balloons, Thursday (Take Care), Echoes of Silence..." the description reads on the band's Twitter page.

Although there's no word as to when a tour behind the album would start, the Weeknd previously indicated via Facebook that they will head out on the road once the trilogy is complete. 

  Watch the Weeknd's 'The Knowing' Video

Holiday Sugar Cookie Recipe

 

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Here's another holiday favorite!
Sugar Cookies

• 2½ c. of flour
• 1 tsp. cream of tartar
• ½ tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• ¼ tsp. salt
• 1 egg
• 1½ c. powdered sugar
• 1 c. butter-flavored shortening

Start by beating shortening, powdered sugar, egg and vanilla in a large bowl on low for 30 seconds. Next, mix on high for one minute or until light and fluffy. Scrape the sides of the bowl often. Add the flour, a little at a time, and beat on low for 20-30 seconds after each addition, until mixed well.
Drop batter by teaspoonful, two inches apart, on an ungreased cookie sheet. Next, lightly grease the bottom of a drinking glass, dip in sugar, and then use to flatten the cookies.

Justin Bieber Sering Nongkrong di Playboy Mansion

Justin Bieber (Foto: reuters)

LOS ANGELES- Justin Bieber disebut sering menghabiskan waktunya di Playboy Mansion yang dihuni bos majalah Playboy, Hugh Hefner dan model-model seksi.

"Justin pergi ke Playboy Mansion dan sangat senang berada di sana," kata seorang sumber seperti dikutip Hollywood Life, Kamis (22/12/2011).

Kekasih Selena Gomez itu lebih suka berkunjung ke Playboy Mansion yang berada di Los Angeles. Playboy Mansion merupakan rumah yang ditempati Hugh Hefner dan para model-model seksi Playboy.

Selain dihuni wanita-wanita seksi, Playboy Mansion dianggap tempat yang nyaman untuk nongkrong. Tak heran, sejumlah artis Hollywood sering berkunjung ke sana untuk berpesta atau sekadar nongkrong.

"Ada dua alasan utama kenapa Justin pergi Playboy Mansion. Tempat itu memberinya privasi yang tidak dia dapat dari tempat tongkrongan lain. Dia tidak akan pernah diintai, disadap (paparazzi) selama berada di dalam Playboy Mansion. Justin juga sangat suka tempat bermain games yang ada di sana, dan sering mengajak teman-temannya," tandasnya.(rik)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Adventures of Tintin, and War Horse

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

For viewers unfamiliar with the Swedish original, David Fincher’s ripping remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo should be a knockout. Fincher, a master of uneasy mood and unflinching depravity, is a perfect match for the very raw material of novelist Stieg Larsson’s 2005 bestseller. And while he doesn’t necessarily improve upon director Niels Arden Oplev’s 2009 picture, he amps it up in a major way. In this he’s been well-served by his sharp eye for casting: Rooney Mara, who played the wronged girlfriend at the beginning of Fincher’s The Social Network, here gives a spectacular performance as the psycho-punk computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, and for the length of the movie, at least, she obscures the memory of Noomi Rapace, the actress who so fully inhabited that character in the earlier film.

Fincher was right to go to Sweden to shoot this picture—the film has a Nordic chill that seeps into your bones. Once again we are in Stockholm, where crusading magazine publisher Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) has just lost a libel suit to a corrupt business mogul he had targeted in an exposé. Handing over the reins of the magazine to his colleague and girlfriend, Erika Berger (Robin Wright), Blomkvist just wants to disappear for a while. And on a faraway island off the Swedish coast, an aged industrial titan named Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) has just the place for him to disappear to.

Vanger wants to bring Blomkvist in on an investigative assignment. Ostensibly he’ll be writing a history of the Vanger family, many of whose unpleasant members also reside on the island. Actually, however, this hired outsider will be looking into the disappearance of Henrik’s beloved niece, Harriet, who went missing some 40 years earlier. The old man believes that Harriet was murdered by one of his hateful relatives, who include among their number various drunkards and ex-Nazis. Blomkvist accepts the job, unaware that Salander, who conducted a computer-snooping background check on him for Vanger, is taking a continuing interest in him.

The story is a complicated mystery with lurid Silence of the Lambs-style serial-killer trappings. Like Oplev before him, Fincher is faced in the beginning with the considerable challenge of establishing the many characters in the extensive Vanger clan, and their muddled interrelationships. The director finesses this problem in an amusing way: At one point in Steven Zaillian’s script, Blomkvist tells Henrik, “I’m quickly losing track of who’s who,” and Fincher briskly moves along.

After his misadventures in the piddling Cowboys & Aliens, and even the one-note Bond films, it’s good to have Craig back in top form, demonstrating again what a fine actor he is. And the invaluable Stellan Skarsgård gives one of his subtlest performances as Martin Vanger, a family scion whose air of bland bonhomie can shift without warning into unexpected menace.

But it’s the relentlessly hostile Salander, bristling with piercings and tattoos (she has an intricately inked dragon on her back), whose electrifying presence commands the movie. Even with her dead-black hair swept up into a towering mohawk, she seems too petite to pose much of a threat—until we see her in a furious subway scene, definitively butt-whipping a creep who has unwisely tried to rip off her backpack. The more we learn about this woman—that she was once institutionalized for a horrible crime, that she’s been arrested on narcotics and assault charges, that her life is officially overseen by an odious guardian—the more fascinating she becomes. And she’s brought fully into focus in two of the story’s most famously alarming scenes: a hideous extended rape followed by a rousing return bout of horrific revenge. Mara throws herself into these episodes with fearless commitment, and leaves us wondering what future accomplishments she might not be capable of.             

The movie’s score, by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who won Oscars for their work on The Social Network, is problematic. When it strays from atmospheric electro-pulsings into pounding synth-metal excursions, it seems inappropriate to the story and its setting. (Even though the walloping version of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” with Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs approximating the requisite banshee wails, is admittedly gripping.)

The movie’s most substantial drawback, though, may be that it’s a remake of a film that was already memorably well done. There’s no avoiding the fact that you can only discover this story’s indelible creepiness once. Still, Mara’s incarnation of Lisbeth Salander is singularly thrilling. Those fortunate enough to be making her acquaintance for the first time will want to hold on.

The Adventures of Tintin

It has to be said that Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin represents a new peak in motion-capture artistry. Unlike the 2004 Polar Express, in which we could never shake our awareness of a spectral Tom Hanks imprisoned beneath that glazed digital carapace, the 3D Tintin meticulously blends the smooth surfaces of Pixar-style cartoonery with the complex actions of live performers.

Much credit here must surely go to producer-collaborator Peter Jackson, whose digitally fabricated Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies is the template of excellence in this area. Spielberg and Jackson are both big fans of the Tintin books, and their affectionate enthusiasm is apparent in this very lively distillation. Unfortunately, that liveliness is a problem—it never lets up. And since the movie is a bit too long, and its globe-hopping excitements thus become somewhat repetitive, the picture eventually wears us out.

The story is a classic boys’ adventure drawn from the long-running (1929-1983) comics series by the Belgian writer and illustrator Hergé. Tintin (played here by Jamie Bell) is an avid young newspaper reporter with a quiff of reddish hair perched alertly above his brow and a dog-slash-assistant named Snowy pitching in on his master’s professional investigations. We meet these two in Paris, at an outdoor market where Tintin casually purchases a model ship -- a three-masted man o’ war. When two other parties display an intense interest in buying this item off its new owner, Tintin realizes that something is up. A little research reveals that the model is of an old pirate craft called the Unicorn, which was said to have carried a secret cargo, and that “only a true Haddock” can discover what it was.

This individual turns out to be Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis—Gollum himself), a rum-sodden sailor who is in possession of a second model of the Unicorn. Tintin discovers that both models contain hidden scrolls, keys to the big secret, but before he can cogitate further, he and Haddock and the stalwart Snowy are shanghaied onto a seagoing vessel that has been commandeered by a sinister figure called Sakharine (Daniel Craig). After a long chase sequence the prisoners manage to escape, and soon find themselves in Morocco, with Sakharine in furious pursuit. In due course they come upon a wealthy sheik who is revealed to be the owner of a third model of the mysterious Unicorn.

Also clattering through this populous adventure are a pair of bumbling Interpol flatfeet named Thompson and Thomson (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost), an artistic pickpocket named Silk (Toby Jones), a brace of Portuguese aviators, and an imposing Italian opera star named Bianca Castafiore, the “Milanese Nightingale” (Kim Stengel). That’s a lot of people, and all, I’m afraid, with a lot to do.

9 Tips Menghilangkan Jerawat

Dalam artikel ini, saya akan memberikan beberapa cara menghilangkan jerawat yang mudah untuk anda ikuti. Saya menyadari bahwa wajah adalah pesona setiap insan, baik itu pria atau wanita. Hal yang pertama kali diperhatikan jika kita bertemu seseorang adalah wajah. oleh karena itu kita wajib menjaga kebersihan wajah kita. Jika di wajah kita muncul yang namanya jerawat, pasti akan mengganggu sekali terhadap penampilan kita…khususnya bagi wanita yang selalu peduli akan kecantikan.



Jerawat akan lebih menyiksa lagi karena sering muncul pada masa pubertas yang katanya sebagian besar orang adalah masa yang paling indah, masa2 pacaran. bagaimana kita bisa punya pacar jika wajah kita merupakan sarang jerawat? Pasti sulit sekali bukan? Berikut ini tips yang akan membuat jerawat anda hilang dan tidak akan mengganggu penampilan anda lagi :
1. Mencuci wajah 2 kali sehari
Tips menghilangkan jerawat yang pertama adalah dengan cara mencuci wajah 2 kali sehari. Mencuci wajah 2 kali sehari akan membantu menghilangkan minyak di permukaan kulit kita. Jika kita jarang membersihkannya, maka bakteri penyebab jerawat akan hidup subur di wajah kita. Namun ingat..jangan mencuci wajah apalagi menggosok wajah secara berlebihan karena malah akan meningkatkan produksi minyak sobaceous yang dapat menyebabkan masalah kulit pada wajah. Cucilah wajah 2 kali sehari dengan menggunakan sabun yang lembut.
2. Sesuaikan kosmetik dengan jenis kulit anda
Jika kulit anda berminyak maka gunakanlah kosmetik untuk kulit berminyak, jika kosmetik yang anda gunakan tidak sesuai dengan jenis kulit anda..jerawat akan segera mendatangi kulit wajah anda. Jadi berhati-hatilah dalam memilih kosmetik.
3. sebisa mungkin hindari kosmetik yang berminyak.
secara alami wajah kita akan menmproduksi minyak, bahkan kulit kering sekalipun. Jadi sebisa mungkin hindarilah hindarilah menggunakan kosmetik yang berlebihan karena minyak dan debu akan menjadi media bakteri penyebab jerawat untuk bermukim di wajah kita.
4. Keringkan wajah kita dengan handuk yang bersih setelah cuci muka atau mandi, karena bakteri juga menyukai tempat yang lembab dan hangat.
5. Minum air putih
Hampir 70% kulit kita terdiri dari air, dengan minum air minimal 2 liter sehari, maka kulit kita akan selalu fit dan sehat.
6. gunakan pelembab kulit
Menggunakan pelembab akan membantu menyehatkan kulit kita, terutama dari kulit kering dan pecah2. Namun pelembab disini bukan berarti pelembab yang berminyak..sekarang sudah banyak produk kosmetik yang berbahan dasar air.
7. selalu pastikan kulit anda bersih sebelum tidur.
Selalu cuci muka anda sebelum tidur agar kulit beregenerasi dengan baik.
8. Sering-seringlah makan sayur dan buah.
sayur2an mengandung banyak vitamin yang menyehatkan kulit kita. Perbanyaklah makan sayur atau buah, terutama yang mengandung vitamin E. Dengan kulit yang sehat, maka jerawat akan sukar untuk tumbuh dan berkembang.
9. Tidur yang cukup dan teratur.
Kulit juga sama seperti kita, butuh istirahat. Jadi biasakanlah untuk tidur yang cukup dan teratur. Karena saat kita tidur, kulit akan beregenerasi dan membuang racun2 yang berbahaya sehingga saat kita bangun keesokan harinya kulit kita akan kebali segar.
9 cara menghilangkan jerawat diatas merupakan tips menghilangkan jerawat yang sangat mudah untuk diikuti. Jika anda melakukannya dengan teratur dan disiplin, bukan tidak mungkin jerawat di wajah anda akan berangsur-angsur hilang..dan wajah anda menjadi mulus lagi serta bebas jerawat. Semoga tips menghilangkan jerawat ini bermanfaat bagi anda.