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Category Archives: Magazine News
Let Me Tell You Who Is Jennifer Lawrence
Who is she? That’s the question that ricocheted around last year’s Sundance Film Festival after Jennifer Lawrence showed up in Winter’s Bone, chillingly raw as a rural teen determined to find her meth-slinging dad and save her family home. Lawrence’s performance, earning her a best-actress Oscar nomination, was both unsentimental and exquisite, nearly convincing us she’d grown up skinning squirrels in the Missouri Ozarks. In fact, since she went without a trace of makeup (except some bloody bruises) and peered out from under a low wool cap, it almost went unnoticed that 20-year-old Lawrence is stunning, with a cherubic, translucent face suggesting a tweeny softness that belies an old-dame brawn and wicked wit rare among Hollywood ingenues.
It was only for her role as the shape-shifting Mystique in this month’s X-Men First Class-naked save for blue body paint-that Lawrence submitted to a twice-a-day training regimen and a high-protein diet that allowed her to sculpt, yet maintain, her curves. “I knew that if I was going to be naked in front of the world, I wanted to look like a woman and not a prepubescent 13-year-old boy,” Lawrence says, adding, “I’m so sick of people thinking that’s what we’re supposed to look like.”
For a gorgeous movie star with the irritating luck to be discovered at 14 while on a spring-break trip to New York City, Lawrence’s lack of pretense is almost unnerving. In interviews, she accompanies self-deprecating punch lines (“Yeah, that’s how I’m gonna sign my name at, like, the doctor’s office-’Oscar nominee Jennifer Lawrence’”) with full-revolution eye rolls, tossing in Dumb and Dumber quotes whenever possible. Growing up in Kentucky, she was raised by a camp-director mom, a construction-company-owner dad, and two older brothers who never made her feel precious. “Being the youngest and the only girl, I think everyone was so worried about me being a brat that they went in the exact opposite direction of treating me like Cinderella,” Lawrence says. “I’d slap my brother on the arm, and he’d throw me down the stairs. I was always like, ‘Can we talk about excessive force, please?’”
Even when Lawrence is playing vulnerable on-screen, she still exudes a formidable, ever-so-subtle defiance. “She finds strength in every moment,” says Anton Yelchin, with whom she stars in both the Jodie Foster–directed dark comedy The Beaver (as a valedictorian with a painful past) and this fall’s Like Crazy (playing a girl whose boyfriend is pining for his ex). “I’ve watched her do two characters that are different, but they both have Jen in them, which is dignified. Even if they’re broken, they’re never weak.”
With her name now occupying space on every director’s short list, Lawrence was recently picked for the lead in The Hunger Games, based on Suzanne Collins’ postapocalyptic trilogy in which two teenagers are forced to fight to the death-the most coveted part for an actress since The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. So it looks like the bullied little sis had better get accustomed to star treatment. “When you’re on set, everybody’s like, ‘Oh, do you need water? Here’s 45 bottles!’ It’s really bizarre,” she says. “I’m still getting used to it. I’m still in wonderland.”
Billboard Mini-Magazine Dedicated To Country Music
Even given the 100 year-plus timeline of Billboard Magazine, there is always room for a little more history. Coming up next week, the magazine plows into more uncharted territory.
Billboard and marketing agency ‘stache media announced today (Dec. 20) the launch of the first-ever Billboard mini-magazine dedicated to country music. This special fan-focused publication will be available exclusively in Target stores nationwide on Tuesday, Dec. 27, for $4.99.
The mini-magazine will feature two collectible covers — one featuring Jason Aldean and the other with The Zac Brown Band. There are 48 pages of artist interviews and reviews, as well as a 2012 fold-out calendar, and an accompanying CD that features artists such as Trace Adkins, Montgomery Gentry, Thompson Square, as well as both Aldean and the Zac Brown Band.
“From ‘The 615,’ Billboard.com’s new country music blog, to the Country charts, Billboard has a deep connection with the country music community, and we’re excited to partner with ‘stache media to expand the brand’s coverage of this genre through this new mini-magazine,” says Lisa Ryan Howard, Publisher of Billboard.
In the past, ‘stache media has partnered with magazines ranging from SPIN, Alternative Press and Revolver for projects. Linking up with Billboard is a good fit, says the group’s SVP of Marketing Tony Bruno. “Because of the brand’s prominence and the credibility of the magazine, we are able to expose the country music scene to an even wider audience,” he says.
The Billboard mini-magazine will be prominently featured in the music section at all Target retail stores nationwide, and are also available at Target.com/billboardcountry. For more information visit Facebook.com/TheDirtRoad where fans also have a chance to win a $1,000 shopping spree at Target and other prizes.
5 Creative Ways To Wrap Your Magazine Gift Subscription
Magazine subscription makes great gifts but can be a hard to present to the recipient. But not with these five ideas for cleverly unveiling your gift.
Magazine subscriptions can be one of the toughest gifts to physically present. What exactly do you wrap? You can’t put an email under the tree, but here are five creative ways to present your gift subscription so you still have something to stuff in the stocking or place beneath the pine this year.
1. Show off your style. Use a stylish scarf and a copy of the magazine from your local newsstand. Roll the magazine with the cover facing out, and tie it with the scarf. You can also wrap the rolled scarf and magazine in a wine-bottle gift bag with tissue paper.
2. Stuff a tiny stocking. Pick up a miniature stocking in the Christmas wrapping section at your local discount or gifts store. Print the magazine cover from Magazines.com and attach the image to card stock, trimmed to fit into the stocking. You can always write a thoughtful note announcing your gift on the back of the card.
3. Fits like a glove. Buy a pair of garden or work gloves and some small tools like garden shears, weeding tools, a screwdriver, etc. Then pick up a copy of the magazine you’ve given at your local magazine newsstand. Place the tools together in one glove and roll up the magazine in the other. Use the gloves as the gift bag, or place them into a gift bag surrounded by tissue paper.
4. Spread some holiday spirit. Buy a festive cookie cutter or set of cookie cutters at the store. Print the cover of your gift magazine from Magazines.com and glue it to cardstock. Trim to size and punch a hole in one end. Use twine or ribbon to tie the tag announcing your gift to the cookie cutter, and wrap in a small gift bag.
5. Create a subscription ornament. On a color printer, print the cover of your gift subscription and tape the image to a new ornament. Then, you can hang the ornament on the tree or wrap it up like a present.
Magazine subscriptions are an affordable and much appreciated gift, so be sure to find the best magazines for your friends and loved ones this season. Then, grab some scissors and tape and set to work presenting the gift with your own personal style.
A Growing Trend – Kids and Magazines
Looking for something special for your kids this year? One of the hottest new kid gift ideas this holiday season is a magazine subscription. Magazines, always a staple with adults, have been moving into the children’s markets in droves. Where once there were a couple of magazines aimed at children, there are now dozens to choose from, and they’re aimed at kids in every age group with all sorts of interests.
When I was growing up in the 60s, there was essentially one children’s magazine – Highlights for Children. As you got older, there were a few more choices aimed at teens and very gender specific – if you were a boy, someone was bound to get you a subscription to Boys’ Life, especially if you were a Boy Scout. If you were a girl, you had a wider choice – Seventeen for the “fashionista” (long before the term was coined) and Teen for us “regular girls”. Of course, the biggest category of magazines aimed at teen girls was the fanzines – Tiger Beat and their ilk, featuring interviews with the hot boys and gatefold posters of our favorite boy bands and teen heartthrobs.
Of course, there was Scholastic Magazine, delivered to classrooms around the country for use in education about current events, but that hardly counted because, well, it might as well have been a textbook. Other than that, magazines aimed specifically at the children and youth market were relatively rare – which may account for the longevity of the good children’s magazines – Boys’ Life has been around since 1911, and Highlights for Children almost qualifies for the senior citizen discount.
Over the last twenty years or so, the face of children’s magazines has completely changed. These days, whatever your children’s interests, there’s probably a magazine aimed directly at them. There are magazines for every age group, from six months old on up. The older your children are the wider your choice of magazines is that they might like. The best part about the explosion of magazines aimed at children is that most magazines for children are high quality, with slick production values and very well written and researched articles.
Many of them are adjuncts to an adult version of the same publication – and while you can be certain that the motive for their existence is to serve as a funnel for the adult publication, they are not simply simplified versions with bigger pictures and fewer words. Your younger readers can learn about seasonal crafts and find simple cooking recipes in Your Big backyard, follow their favorite sports teams with Sports Illustrated for Kids and learn about the world at large with National Geographic Kids, or Discovery Girls magazine. Teen girls can now read Cosmo Girl, a slightly bolder cousin to Seventeen and TEEN, that aims to address the issues that girls really care about, even when their parents wish they didn’t
Other new entries into the children’s magazine market are Nickelodeon magazine, complete with interesting facts, celebrity interviews, comics, pull-outs, puzzles, activities, and the inside look into Nick TV. National Wildlife Federation publishes a line of magazines for kids of all ages, including Wild Animal Babies for toddlers, Your Big Backyard for preschoolers through the primary grades and Ranger Rick for kids 7 and up. The publishers of Cricket, aimed at 9 to 14 year olds, also offer BabyBug, a sturdy cardboard magazine just for babies so that now, even the littlest camper in the house has his or her own magazine for reading.
