http://madeofstars.com Home of the stars Wed, 20 Aug 2008 02:14:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en
TMZ has learned LeRoi Moore, the sax player in the Dave Matthews Band, has died. He was 46.Moore was seriously injured in an ATV accident June 30 outside Charlottesville. He had a punctured lung and broken ribs. Moore went back into the hospital last...

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]]> http://madeofstars.com/dave-matthews-band-member-dead/ Powerset, the company that was acquired by Microsoft in an attempt to shore up its search, may be more lucrative than originally thought.  According to reports, Microsoft may be tapping Powerset’s technology to improve advertising in search results and in the process, change the way advertising is done. Right now, advertisers bid to display their ads on search results pages containing specific keywords pertaining to the product or service they’re advertising.  For certain, niche products, that’s not so bad — fewer keywords mean more chances of targeting the right audience.  But for larger companies like Dell, which need to worry about countless keywords, the process can be far more taxing.  But Powerset believes that its natural language processing could change the way ads are displayed and enhance the profitability for all parties involved. I think Powerset is totally wrong. If a particular company sells sneakers, they can bid for placement on search results pages pertaining to “sneakers,” “shoes,” “footwear,” “socks,” “feet,” and the company’s and its competitors’ names.  But with natural language processing, as Powerset proposes, that company would need to bid on search concepts where people ostensibly ask for the best kinds of sneakers or where to find sneakers. Powerset’s belief that this new type of ad-placement mechanism is game-changing may be true, but it’s wrong in believing that it would work better for advertisers.  How could it?
Keywords may not be fool-proof and may tend to make things more difficult for advertisers, but we can’t forget that bidding on them works for one reason: it simplifies a process that is extremely hard to gauge.  More often than not, people that search for sneakers will use some of the keywords listed above.  And while they may use others, a company is almost guaranteed that anyone even remotely fond of…]]> http://madeofstars.com/will-natural-language-supplant-keywords-in-advertising/ http://madeofstars.com/jlove-cant-stop-talking-about-her-body/ http://madeofstars.com/tom-cruise-comic-book-hero/ http://madeofstars.com/watching-watchmen-may-be-a-problem/ If you squint your eyes just right and look at a photo of the late comedian Bill Hicks, he kind of resembles a young Russell Crowe (or vice versa). So, it would have been really cool if the Australian actor had played Hicks around ten years ago, when he was still in his 30s. But if we've learned anything from Kevin Spacey and Mike Myers (respectively, star of the Bobby Darin biopic Beyond the Sea and star of an upcoming Keith Moon biopic titled See Me Feel Me), you're never too old to play an icon who died young, and therefore we must accept the fact that at close to 50 years old, Crowe is likely to portray Hicks, who died from cancer at age 32. Fortunately for Crowe, he's good enough that it shouldn't be too hard to believe such a portrayal.

The Oscar-winning actor is quoted in The Sydney Morning Herald saying he's involved with a Hicks bio, "which is going from treatment to draft stage with Kiwi writer Mark Staufer." Never mind that the quote doesn't sound like it was actually spoken by anyone, let alone Crowe, the article is mostly about how the actor is spending time with his family now that Ridley Scott's Nottingham has been postponed. Crowe also references other projects, including an unnamed documentary and the surfing gang movie My Brother's Keeper, based on the documentary Bra Boys, which Crowe narrated. Stuart Beattie, who co-wrote the doc, is currently working on a second draft of its adaptation. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments ]]> http://madeofstars.com/russell-crowe-to-play-bill-hicks/
At the end of July, we shared the poster premiere of The Secret Life of Bees. Now you can check out the trailer for the film above, courtesy of Trailer Addict.

This is the Dakota Fanning-starring film about a young girl haunted by the memory of her late mother. With her caregiver Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson), she runs off to a South Carolina town and is taken in by the Boatwright sisters (Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys, and Sophie Okonedo), who teach her the comforts of beekeeping and honey. Unfortunately, the girl's troubled past, in the form of father Paul Bettany, finds her.

While the poster was a little sappy (or perhaps "honey" is the best word in this case) for my tastes, the trailer has a nice amount of sass mixed into the drama, as well as a great one-breath sentence uttered by Fanning. I think I just might have to see this film, which will hit screens on October 17. What about you? Permalink | Email this | Comments ]]> http://madeofstars.com/honey-of-a-first-trailer-for-secret-life-of-bees/
Actress LisaRaye laughed off questions about a reported tussle between her and her husband Michael Misick, the premier of the Turks and Caicos, but take a gander at these pics.According to Essence.com, the photos show a bruised LisaRaye, taken after...

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LA's newest superhero Manny Ramirez doesn't need a chaperon to introduce him to the local late night scene, because according to fellow Dodger and Hollywood nightclub vet Russell Martin, "He's a grown man ... he can go out on his own."We were under...

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