Best Actress Winner Jennifer Lawrence Talks Oscar Fall

First the SAG Awards and now the Oscars!? Jennifer Lawrence isn't having the best of luck with her gowns this awards season.

After suffering an unfortunate fall at Sunday night's ceremony while accepting her Best Actress statuette for Silver Linings Playbook, a mortified Lawrence explained to the Academy Awards press room that she had (once again) fallen victim to her elaborate dress.

Pics: The 15 Best Oscar Dresses of All Time

"I tried to walk up stairs in this dress, that's what happened," the humiliated 22-year-old star said of her stumble moments before, laying the blame on her Dior gown's lengthy train. "I think I just stepped on the fabric and they waxed the stairs."

So what was Lawrence thinking when the embarrassing moment played out live to millions around the world?

Related: The Complete Oscars 2013 Winners List

"[I thought about] a bad word that I can't say [on TV]," she laughed, elaborating that the phrase 'starts with an 'F.'"

Read More..

Lawrence floored by Best Actress win; 'Argo,' Daniel Day-Lewis also take home Oscars

Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

Actress Jennifer Lawrence stumbles as she walks on stage to accept the award for best actress in a leading role for "Silver Linings Playbook" during Sunday's Oscars ceremony.

It was the rise and fall and rise of a great young star.

Twenty-two-year-old “Silver Linings Playbook” star Jennifer Lawrence won the Oscar for Best Actress last night — but then took an embarrassing header on her way to accept her statue.

FilmMagic

Daniel Day-Lewis

John Shearer/Invision/AP

Anne Hathaway

Getty Images

Actor-producer-director Ben Affleck, winner of the Best Picture award for "Argo."

Lawrence sprawled on the stage steps at the Dolby Theatre after tripping over her flowing gown. It was another award-show faux pas — after her dress slipped on her way to accept a Screen Actor’s Guild award last month.

“Les Misérables” star Hugh Jackman tried to sprint to the rescue, but the red-faced beauty pulled herself up and made it up the steps.

“That’s really embarrassing,” she said, trying to make a joke of the tumble as she accepted her award. “You guys are just standing up because you feel bad that I fell,” she said to a standing ovation.

PHOTOS: OSCARS RED CARPET LOOKS

'GREAT GATSBY' ON LIST FOR NEXT YEAR'S AWARDS

FIRST LADY REVEALS BEST PICTURE WINNER

BEST ACTRESS BASKS IN GLOW

'ARGO' VICTORY A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

NEUTRAL COLORS ALL THE RAGE ON OSCARS RED CARPET

The 85th Academy Awards’ biggest prize, Best Picture, went to Ben Affleck’s “Argo. The Iran hostage thriller also won Best Adapted Screenplay and Film Editing. Affleck, one of the movie’s producers, had been snubbed in the Best Director category.

As he took the Best Picture award, he was magnanimous.

“You have to work harder than you think you possibly can, and you can’t hold grudges,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life because that’s going to happen,” he added. “All that matters is that you gotta get up.”

In a surprise twist, the Best Picture award was presented to “Argo” by First Lady Michelle Obama, who opened the envelope via satellite from the White House.

“These nine movies took us back in time and all around the world,” she said of the nominees. “They taught us that love can endure against all odds.”

“Lincoln” star Daniel Day-Lewis made history by becoming the first person to win three Best Actor Oscars.

As he accepted the award from Meryl Streep — who won Best Actress last year playing British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher — Day-Lewis turned his acceptance speech into a comedy routine.

“It’s funny, because three years ago, we agreed to do this swap. I had actually been committed to play Margaret Thatcher,” he quipped, adding: “Meryl was [director] Steven’s [Spielberg] first choice for Lincoln . . . I’d like to see that version.”

Ang Lee took home the directing prize for his magical lost-at-sea tale, “Life of Pi.”

The native of Taiwan poked fun at the fakery of Hollywood acceptance speeches. After thanking his lawyer and agent, he bluntly joked, “I have to do that.”

Anne Hathaway took home her first career Oscar last night, winning for Best Supporting Actress in “Les Misérables.”

The award for Best Supporting Actor went to Christoph Waltz for his role as a bounty hunter in the Quentin Tarantino flick “Django Unchained.”

Tarantino later won for Best Original Screenplay.

Oscar had a rare tie last night with “Skyfall” and “Zero Dark Thirty” sharing sound-editing honors. It was the first tie since 1994.

Read More..

Business Plan Challenge Update

Looking for the best doctor for a high-risk pregnancy? How about a school for children with special needs, an architect, a marriage counselor or a lost Labrador?

Five years ago this month, Boo Zamek launched a Coral Gables-based e-newsletter business called JustAskBoo, where its readers, called JABBERS, can post questions seeking referrals and offer recommendations to one another.

“We also shed light on people who need help in the community,” explains Zamek, whose company won third place in the Miami Herald Business Plan Challenge and took first in the People’s Pick video competition in 2009. “From a JABBER asking for prayers for her 10-year-old daughter who is battling cancer to a woman seeking an egg donation to overcome fertility issues, our readers are always there.”

Today, JustAskBoo’s newsletters in Miami-Dade (north and south editions), Broward and Palm Beach counties, have more than 30,000 subscribers. The company is closing a $200,000 round of financing and is entering a “rapid growth phase,” says Zamek, president of a team of 15 women. With the financing, JustAskBoo intends to ramp up the marketing, including holding more events, to grow subscribers and advertising.

“We want to get to the place where we own our demographic in South Florida — affluent women, mostly moms, the financial decision makers,” says Zamek.

JustAskBoo’s newsletters are free and it makes its money off advertising, classifieds and subscriptions to the “Treasure Chest,” where readers can unlock a trove of archived recommendations — all vetted by editors. “We always use real names. You know who is giving the recommendations. The sources are reliable and local — which is huge,” Zamek says.

Zamek says she expects this growth phase to last about three years, and then the company will assess expansion outside of South Florida. That was the advice of her investors.

Another piece of advice she follows religiously: Print out your business plan, marketing plan and financial projections, put them on your desk and refer to them all the time.

“I love what I do, my investors know that,” Zamek says. “My investors aren’t looking for quick payouts; they know we might sell the business to the right buyer some day. But what we are doing right now is to grow, grow it strong. That’s our goal.”

Editor’s note: Throughout the Business Plan Challenge contest season, we look back on the progress of past winners.

Read More..

Miami Dolphins hopeful on stadium referendum date

The Miami Dolphins are hopeful the Miami-Dade County Commission will approve a May 14 date for a referendum on the $400 rehabilitation of their stadium, time enough to get South Florida in play for Super Bowl 50, a Dolphins spokesman said Saturday.

Spokesman Ric Katz said the language of the proposed referendum has yet to be decided, and ultimately the commission decides the date.

But, he said, “we’d be very happy with” May 14 because “that gives us a week to communicate to the NFL before they make the important decision of Super Bowl 50.”

NFL owners are slated to meet on May 22 to pick the site of the 2016 Super Bowl — seen as a tourist revenue prize for whichever host city gets the 50th anniversary contest.

Mayor Carlos Gimenez met Friday with Dolphins owner Stephen Ross and CEO Mike Dee to discuss the proposed stadium rehabilitation.

From the mayor’s side, there has been no agreement on a date and Gimenez does not plan to bring the proposed May 14 referendum to the commission at this time, said spokeswoman Suzy Trutie.

Friday’s was a “first meeting” at which “many things were discussed,” including the Dolphin’s preference for May 14.

But, “We continue negotiating with the Dolphins with regards to finances.”

One proposed financing plan would increase the bed tax in mainland Miami-Dade by 1 percent and increase the sales tax rebate the team already gets at the stadium in Miami Gardens. Ross had initially offered to pay at least $201 million in his financing plan. But Katz, a Miami publicist representing the team in the stadium campaign, said the two sides were still in negotiation on what the mayor would ask the commission to put to taxpayers in a referendum.

Trutie said the proposed referendum would gauge public opinion on increasing hotel taxes from 6 to 7 percent to fund the stadium renovations.

Of the commission, Katz said, “We do not take them for granted. They have the prerogative.”

Attorney Kendall Coffey did not return calls asking whether the Dolphins had hired him to write the ballot language.

Dolphins lobbyist Marcelo Llorente had said in recent weeks that the team was considering May 7 and 14 as possible referendum dates.

Any activity by the Florida Legislature would likely have to be undertaken before then. The regular session is slated to end May 3.

Miami Herald staff writers Patricia Mazzei and Doug Hanks contributed to this report.

Read More..

Independent Spirit Award Winners 2013

The 2013 Film Independent Spirits Awards were handed out in Santa Monica, CA today and lots of Oscar frontrunners cemented their status by dominating in their categories once more.

Check out all the winners below:

Best Feature

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Bernie

Keep the Lights On

Moonrise Kingdom

Silver Linings Playbook

BEST FEMALE LEAD

Linda Cardellini, Return

Emayatzy Corinealdi, Middle of Nowhere

Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Smashed

BEST MALE LEAD

Jack Black, Bernie

Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook

John Hawkes, The Sessions

Thure Lindhardt, Keep the Lights On

Matthew McConaughey, Killer Joe

Wendell Pierce, Four

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE

Rosemarie DeWitt, Your Sister's Sister

Ann Dowd, Compliance

Helen Hunt, The Sessions

Brit Marling, Sound of My Voice

Lorraine Toussaint, Middle of Nowhere

BEST SUPPORTING MALE

Matthew McConaughey, Magic Mike

David Oyelowo, Middle of Nowhere

Michael Pena, End of Watch

Sam Rockwell, Seven Psychopaths

Bruce Willis, Moonrise Kingdom

BEST DIRECTOR

Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom

Julia Loktev, The Loneliest Planet

David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook

Ira Sachs, Keep the Lights On

Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild

BEST SCREENPLAY

Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola, Moonrise Kingdom

Zoe Kazan, Ruby Sparks

Martin McDonagh, Seven Psychopaths

David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook

Ira Sachs, Keep the Lights On

For the full list of winners, click here.

Read More..

Crowds gather for Pope Benedict XVI's final Sunday blessing

Getty Images

Pope Benedict XVI delivers his last Angelus Blessing from the window of his private apartment to thousands of pilgrims gathered in Saint Peter's Square Sunday.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI has given his pontificate's final Sunday blessing from his studio window to the cheers of tens of thousands of people in St. Peter's Square.

Benedict says even though he's retiring on Thursday from the papacy, the first pope in 600 years to do so, he's "not abandoning the church." Instead he says he'll serve the church with the same dedication he has till now, but will do so in a way "more suitable to my age and my strength." Benedict, 85, will spend his last years in prayer, meditation and seclusion in a monastery on Vatican City's grounds.

He has one more public appearance, at his weekly audience on Wednesday in the square.

Read More..

The faces of Florida’s Medicaid system

MEDICAID

MiamiHerald.com/healthcare

The tea party governor now says he wants to expand Medicaid. The Republican Legislature isn’t so sure.

Hanging in the balance?

Access to healthcare for 1 million or more poor Floridians.

Billions of dollars in federal money.

The state budget, which already pumps $21 billion a year into care.

Florida’s Medicaid system today serves more than 3 million people, about one in every six Floridians. The decision whether to expand the system by a full third will be made by men and women in suits in Tallahassee’s mural-filled chambers this spring.

But the impact is elsewhere, in children’s hospitals in Tampa and Miami, in doctors’ offices in New Port Richey and in the home of a woman who recently lost her full-time teaching job.

The Suddenly uninsured

This was not how she envisioned her 60s.

Jean Vincent dreamed of turning her five-bedroom home into a bed and breakfast. She painted murals on walls, created mosaics on floors and let her imagination guide the interior decorating. There is a “garden” room, a “bamboo” room and a “canopy” room.

In 2010, Vincent lost her full-time job teaching in Citra north of Ocala. Her mother became sick with cancer and needed around-the-clock care before dying in August. Then, doctors began prescribing Vincent costly medications to treat osteoporosis and early-onset diabetes.

“I started getting a little behind with my mortgage,” said Vincent, 61. “All of a sudden, I found out I had to have an emergency retina eye surgery.”

Today, Vincent is searching for roommates to move into her home and help pay the bills. She begs Gainesville’s Sante Fe Community College and City College to schedule her for as many classes as she can handle as an adjunct geography professor; this semester’s four is the most she’s ever had.

But her biggest worry? Not having comprehensive healthcare.

Vincent — who is too young for Medicare — is enrolled in CHOICES, a health services program the Alachua County government created for the uninsured. It covers preventative care like her flu shots and helps with her drug therapy. But if Vincent ever got so sick she needed to go to the hospital, she’d be on her own.

Under current Florida law, adults with no dependents are not eligible to participate in Medicaid no matter how little they make. Vincent’s four children are all grown, which means even as her income has dwindled she can’t become eligible for the health insurance program run jointly by the federal and state governments.

If Florida decides to expand the Medicaid system, people in Vincent’s position for the first time could be covered.

The expansion would allow any single adult making about $16,000 a year eligible for Medicaid.

On the matter, Vincent has become an activist. She joined with patient rights group Florida CHAIN and traveled to Tallahassee to lobby lawmakers.

“When I gave my testimony, that’s all I wanted them to do was see there were people out there that weren’t just trying to take advantage of the system,” she said.

This summer, she expects to only be assigned one class at Sante Fe. That will provide about $2,000 for her to live on for three months. Meanwhile, her retirement dreams are put on hold.

Read More..

Miami police union challenges officer’s firing for fatal shooting

The Fraternal Order of Police filed a lawsuit against the city of Miami on Friday, asserting that an officer who fatally shot an unarmed motorist in 2011 was improperly fired from the police department.

Officer Reynaldo Goyos shot and killed Travis McNeil as he sat in a car at a Little Haiti intersection. It was one of a string of seven deadly shootings of black men in the inner city by Miami police officers in 2010 and 2011.

Goyos was cleared of criminal wrongdoing by prosecutors in 2012. But he was terminated last month after the department’s Firearms Review Board concluded that the shooting was unjustified.

The police union lawsuit claims that the board violated state open-government laws by failing to open its meetings to the public.

Goyos “was improperly terminated by the city of Miami Police Department by a review board that violates the law,” union President Javier Ortiz wrote in a statement.

The lawsuit contends that Goyos should be reinstated.

City Attorney Julie O. Bru declined to discuss the specifics of the case. “We reviewed the allegations, and the city maintains that the board has operated consistent with the requirements of law,” she said.

Read More..

Diogo Morgado as Jesus in 'The Bible'

Producer Mark Burnett and his wife Roma Downey are bringing The Bible to television with an epic, 10-hour, five-part miniseries, and ET's Nancy O'Dell is with the man who portrays Jesus, Diogo Morgado, and the actor who embodies St. Peter, Darwin Shaw.

Pics: Adorable Tots: Celebs and Their Cute Kids!

"Jesus is definitely the most complete and complex figure of mankind; he's just someone who belongs to millions and billions of families all around the world," says Portuguese star Morgado, a religious man himself. "Just [given] the chance [to play him], I'm like, 'Okay, I'm going to try to just give an example of my Jesus.'"

Premiering Sunday, March 3 at 8 p.m. on History, The Bible brings to life some of the more well-known tales from the ancient tome from Genesis through Revelation, including David and Goliath, Noah's Ark, the Exodus, Daniel in the Lion's Den and the crucifixion/resurrection of Jesus. Shot in Morocco, the series is narrated by Emmy winner Keith David with a musical score by Oscar winner Hans Zimmer, also stars Downey as Mother Mary and includes Paul Brightwell, Greg Hicks, Sebastian Knapp, Amber Rose Revah, Greg Hicks and Simon Kunz.

Related: First Look at Russell Crowe as 'Noah' 

Watch the video for the actors' take on tackling such iconic figures – and see the amusing moment after Nancy sneezes in front of Morgado!

Read More..

Einhorn wins round against Apple

Your move, Tim Cook.

Apple was dealt a major blow in its battle with David Einhorn, when a judge sided with the hedge-fund manager and blocked Apple from moving ahead with a shareholder vote on a controversial proposal.

Manhattan federal judge Richard Sullivan yesterday granted Einhorn’s bid to stop Apple from lumping several measures together as one proposal at its annual shareholder meeting next week.

Part of Apple’s proposal would have required shareholder approval for the company to issue preferred stock — a move that several large investors believe to be shareholder-friendly and good corporate governance — but which Einhorn opposes.

REUTERS

KO! Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn (pictured) scored a decisive blow against Apple CEO Tim Cook when a federal judge granted Einhorn’s bid to block an upcoming shareholder vote.

The founder of $8 billion hedge fund Greenlight Capital has been lobbying the iPhone maker to return some of its $137 billion cash hoard to investors in the form of preferred stock or — as he calls them “iPrefs.”

As part of his campaign, Einhorn sued Apple earlier this month to block the proposal. He argued that Apple violated the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rules against “bundling,” which deprives shareholders of the right to vote on each issue separately.

In a 16-page ruling, Sullivan agreed with Einhorn, saying Apple cannot proceed with the proposal at next week’s shareholder meeting.

Apple yesterday said it was “disappointed” with the court’s ruling and that it would pull the proposal from next week’s meeting as a result.

The stock closed up 1.06 percent, to $450.81.

“This is a significant win for all Apple shareholders and for good corporate governance,” Greenlight Capital said in a statement. “We are pleased the court has recognized that Apple’s proxy is not compliant with the SEC’s rules.”

Before the proposal was blocked on technical grounds, Einhorn had been urging fellow shareholders to vote against it as a “referendum” on his effort to get Apple to distribute some of its cash to investors.

The hedge-fund manager is calling for the tech giant to issue preferred stock that pays dividends of 4 percent.

At a recent investor conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook called the idea “creative” and said he would consider it.

While Einhorn scored a legal win, some shareholders criticize him, saying that he is standing in the way of corporate governance.

“Our position is that Apple should re-introduce the measures as soon as it makes sense,” said Bill Dempsey of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, which also owns Apple stock.

Earlier this week, the foundation, which also invests in Greenlight through a fund of funds, sent a letter to Einhorn asking him to back off his campaign to block the proposal.

By depriving them of a vote on preferred stock, “you undermine shareholders’ rights, to no end whatsoever,” the letter said.

Also siding with Apple is the $253 billion California Public Employees Retirement System.

kwhitehouse@nypost.com

Read More..