Lindsay Lohan ends collaboration with fashion designer Emanuel Ungaro

Hollywood actress Lindsay Lohan's design career has ended after a single collection for Parisian label Emanuel Ungaro, leaving the fashion world divided over whether her work was a disaster or a much-needed bit of fun.

Ungaro designer Estrella Archs, who worked with Lohan on last year's widely panned show of buttock-revealing dresses and strippers' nipple stickers, showed her second Ungaro collection on Monday. She said Lohan had no hand in it.
"You have up and downs and you learn a lot, more from the downs than from the ups," she said when asked about the dire reviews of last year's show with Lohan, who acted as artistic adviser.


"I feel that I have to work, work, work and work ... I've been doing this for a long time, with different people and different houses, and I think this is the best medicine," said Archs, looking close to tears.
Their joint collection has just hit the shops, but Lohan has gone back to buying rather than producing fashion - she was seen at Roberto Cavalli in Milan, and was invited to Dior in Paris, though she came late and missed the show.

Meanwhile Archs has stuck with Ungaro, turning out an autumn/winter collection of jewel-coloured dresses, bustier tops and leopard print trousers.
She can take heart at the fact that retailers have, on the whole, been less vitriolic than critics.

Online boutique net-a-porter.com dropped Ungaro after Lohan's debut, but others have been positive.

"I loved the little short silk dresses that Lindsay and Estrella designed, there were great colours, it was fun, short, sexy," Stephanie Solomon, fashion director at Bloomingdale's, said at the Ungaro show.
"I've been doing this long enough to understand it's not necessarily the press reaction. Ultimately, it's the customers' reaction," said Solomon, who ordered from Lohan's collection.
She predicted that Lohan's style would attract a younger crowd - which was the reason why Ungaro originally hired the actress who is also a model and singer.

sourcehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/7402793/Lindsay-Lohan-ends-collaboration-with-fashion-designer-Emanuel-Ungaro.html

Avatar, King of The Box-Office World Not King of The Awards World

Really, looking back, did "Avatar" even stand a chance?

"Avatar" is still raking in the profits, but failed to produce the critical success that Cameron's previous film, "Titanic," generated 12 years ago. In fact, "Avatar" -- the most financially successful film of all time -- was easily the most mocked film of the evening.

Sure, it was an easy target. No other nominated film featured blue aliens. Oscar co-host Steve Martin participated in a bit where he used bug spray to defend himself against "Avatar's" jellyfish-like creatures. Ben Stiller attempted his best Na'vi impression as a presenter -- oh, that could have been much, much worse.

However much audiences may enjoy the visually stunning imagery in "Avatar," it seems, when it comes to the Oscars, nothing beats real, live human beings.

Los Angeles Times columnist Patrick Goldstein sums up this sentiment by writing, "My suspicion is that academy members still find it difficult to believe that films largely created and sculpted in the computer--whether it's "Avatar" or the long string of brilliant Pixar films -- can be just as worthy and artistic as the old-fashioned live-action ones."

But if anyone was going to defy the big-budget-visual-effects-films-don't-win-Oscars rule, everyone seemed to think it could be James Cameron.

In 1997, James Cameron's other box-office behemoth, "Titanic," accomplished the rare feat of box-office and Oscar dominance. "Titanic" was nominated for a record 14 Academy Awards and won a record 9 awards. "Avatar" only won three of its nine nominations: Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Visual Effects. Cameron's "Titanic" also won those same three awards, plus 6 others, including the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director; "Avatar" lost Best Picture and Best Director to "The Hurt Locker."

"Avatar" had the unfortunate luck -- if you can call a movie that's made over $2.5 billion worldwide "unfortunate" -- of being right smack in the middle of the science fiction genre. A genre that, historically, doesn't win Oscar gold no matter how successful financially. In 1977, "Star Wars" became the most financially successful film of all time but lost the Best Picture Oscar to "Annie Hall." Similarly, in 1982 "E.T." set box-office records but lost the Academy Award to "Ghandi." The closet thing to science fiction to ever win Best Picture would be 2003's "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" -- and even that film series needed three attempts before it finally won.

This year, Cameron was frustrated that his film wasn't taken seriously as an "actor's film." He worked hard in his Oscar campaign to spread the notion that actors acting in front of green screens and using computer generated technology are just as worthy as actors not engulfed by special effects. (Actors make up the largest segment of the voting Academy.) Clearly, the campaign did not go over so well at the Oscars. However unfair it may be, it seems no one likes the idea of being replaced by a machine.

Watch the making of the movie AVATAR