Madonna on the streets of London during filming.  

Madonna is so hands-on with the production of “W.E.” she’s delivering her own furniture to the set. Madge is directing the film, which tracks a young, married New Yorker (Abbie Cornish) who’s obsessed with the story of King Edward VIII’s abdication. “W.E.” started shooting in London in July, and sources said Madonna — who is reportedly financing the picture herself — saved cash by bringing her own furniture from her house across the pond to use on the set. Her rep wouldn’t confirm the furniture move but said she was involved in “all aspects” of the movie. In June, Madonna acknowledged its high cost to Interview: “Once I started casting and planning and working with my production designer, I went, “Oh, [bleep], I wrote a script about a bunch of rich people. That’s going to be great for the budget.” Filming has now moved to New York, particularly around Sotheby’s, where Cornish’s character works.

Source: http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/material_girl_furnishes_movie_SMZ0OTmY50VX8fNl5evSUK

Today from the Seattlepi.com archives, we share articles from April 1985 telling a little-known fact: Madonna started her debut concert tour at Seattle’s Paramount Theater.

Before the April 10 debut, Madonna had played New York clubs and performced with Prince in Los Angeles. But that first performance on a Wednesday night in Seattle was the start of her major concert dates.

Madonna played three shows in Seattle, April 10, 12 and 13. The Beastie Boys were her opening act, but had each song followed by boos. Their 30-minute set got off to a bad start when one declared himself King of the Paramount, and generally made the pro-Madonna audience feel like a swarm of hillbillies, P-I pop music critic Gene Stout wrote in his review.

The Beastie Boys’ performance was more than a year before “License To Ill” was released.

Some fans waited by the Paramount back entrance to greet Madonna, who arrived in a black limousine.

“Dressed in what looked like a Boy George outfit, she looked reluctant, almost scared, and kept her eyes on the ground as she and her small entourage swept past a modest gathering of fans,” Stout wrote.

Madonna started the show with “Dress You Up,” followed with “Holiday,” and ended with “Material Girl,” according to a Wikipedia page about the tour.

Click here to see the 1985 article: http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/library/1985_madonna__clip_-_300_dpi.pdf

Source: http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/archives/219618.asp?from=blog_last3

*** Photo from the personal collection of Scrapple. And a HUGE Thank You to Scrappy.

Don’t get your hopes up. The Lady Gaga rumors never stop and now Gaga fans can add Madonna tour innuendo to the growing list of Lady Gaga headlines. The latest unconfirmed story surrounding Lady Gaga had it that Madonna desperately wants to tour with Lady Gaga in 2011. “Totally not true,” a Rep from Madonna told the website, Gossip Cop.

We take unconfirmed reports with a grain of salt, especially from News of the World, but the story does have fantasy potential at the very least …

The Lady Gaga story had it that an anonymous source revealed that “Madonna is absolutely obsessed with Gaga… and desperately wants to work with her.” Pushing things even more, the source without a name went on to say, ”Basically Gaga can name her price,” to join Madonna on tour.

Well, anyone can make up a story like that when they won’t put their name on it. After Gossip Cop checked the information, a Madonna representative revealed “totally not true.”

Source: http://www.thedeadbolt.com/news/108078/lady_gaga_madonna_tour_news.php

 ***This photo is from Amazing Guy’s personal collection. And a HUGE ‘Thank You’ to AG.

For her work in the Glee episode titled “The Power of Madonna,” Jane Lynch won the Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.

Source: http://www.examiner.com/tv-in-national/2010-emmys-a-really-big-night-for-jane-lynche-of-glee-photos-and-video

there is no truth to a new tour.. or opening artists.. will keep you posted..

6:50 PM Aug 28th via web

Guy Oseary

Source: http://twitter.com/guyoseary

Madonna on the set of W.E. in London (August 29 2010)

Madonna’s unreleased song (Produced by Paul Oakenfold) has leaked. The song was to be used on Celebration.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ8q8WvgdTM&feature=player_embedded

Man claiming to be dad will not see adopted girl.

Pop star Madonna will not allow the Malawian man claiming to be the father of her adopted daughter, Mercy, access to the child.

Five-year-old Mercy was placed with Madonna following a controversial adoption last year. Her mother, a 14-year-old Malawian girl, had died after giving birth in Kavithiwa Village in 2006.

The Sunday Times reported earlier this month that Kambewa, who claims he is Mercy’s biological father, now lives in Durban and works as a waiter.

Although he has given up ever getting her back, he said he was desperate to meet Mercy. He had hoped the superstar would pave the way.

But in a response through her spokesman on Friday, Madonna said that Mercy’s biological mother had been raped and abandoned and no formal paternity claim had ever been made.

She said the father was unknown and that Malawian authorities had advised her not to deal with anyone claiming to be the father.

Kambewa said he had had a relationship with the teenager – the legal age of consent in Malawi is 14 – when he was 22.

He claims that until the adoption furore broke, he had not known the child had survived the birth or had been placed in an orphanage.

“Madonna can say whatever she wants to say, but one day God will fulfil his purpose for me,” he said this week. He declined to comment further.

Madonna’s spokesman, Barbara Charone, said that in three years nobody had made a claim to be the father.

“The extended family members had no knowledge of a father. The village leadership had no knowledge of a father … the mother was raped and left,” said Charone.

She claimed Kambewa had made his paternity claim to a British journalist and nobody else.

“There was a three-week window between the oral arguments (in court) and the decision, when the man could have made his claim. Again nothing.

“Moreover, the Ministry of Gender has recommended that it would be in the child’s best interest not to engage with anyone claiming to be a parent or guardian,” Charone said.

A week ago, another spokesman told the Sunday Times that Malawian authorities had investigated Kambewa’s claim and had ruled he was not the father.

Madonna’s initial bid to adopt Mercy was turned down by a lower court because she had not satisfied a requirement that prospective parents be resident in the country for 18 to 24 months. In her ruling, Judge Esme Chombo said the issue of residence was “the very bedrock of protection that our children need; it must therefore not be tampered with.”

However, the country’s supreme court overturned her ruling, saying Madonna’s charity work in the country made her worthy of adopting a child.

Kambewa reportedly contacted authorities immediately after Madonna’s first bid to adopt Mercy. By the time the supreme court ruled in Madonna’s favour on June 12 last year, Kambewa’s claims had received extensive coverage in the British and local media.

Source:  http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article627641.ece/Madonna-denies-access-to-Mercy

Madonna has been accused of distorting history in a film about Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson by portraying the King as an unlikely sex symbol and the late Queen Mother as a villainous plotter.

Insiders say the pop star’s depiction of the couple at the centre of the 1936 Abdication crisis in W.E., her second film as a director, is overly symp­athetic and largely unrecognisable.

The £18million film, currently being shot in Britain and France and due for release next year, intersperses Edward’s affair with the American divorcee with a love story set in 1998.

In a further Royal controversy, Madonna, 52, has included a ‘friendly’ portrayal of Mohamed Al Fayed, who still insists the Princess of Wales and his son Dodi were murdered by the Royal establishment in 1997.

One source close to the project said: ‘The portrayal is so far removed from reality they’re almost unrecognisable to anyone who knows the facts. The film may work as entertainment but it certainly doesn’t work as history.’

Madonna’s decision to play ‘fast and loose’ with facts has already caused problems.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal she wanted Alastair Bruce, one of the Queen’s Heralds and an Extra Equerry to the Earl and Countess of Wessex, to advise on the film.

After he met the singer, Mr Bruce is believed to have declined because he was uncomfortable with the ‘extreme’ blurring of fact and fiction.

An insider said: ‘Madonna’s Edward is a Latin lover-type, a strong-willed macho figure, more than a match for a determined and outspoken Wallis.

‘But in reality he was rather an effeminate figure who wasn’t a great-looking man. He was always slightly in awe of Wallis.’

The source added: ‘You could say he has become a sort of fantasy figure for Madonna. She is a strong-willed American like Wallis and she has dreamt up the sort of man who could deal with her.’

Madonna is understood to have told British actor James D’Arcy, who plays Edward, to adopt a more confident tone than the real King to film the Abdication speech, in which he announced he would give up the throne to marry ‘the woman I love’.

The move resolved the constitutional crisis of twice-divorced Mrs Simpson having two living ex-husbands. After the Abdication, Edward was created Duke of Windsor by his brother and successor, George VI.

He married Wallis six months later and she became Duchess of Windsor. In the film she is played by Andrea Riseborough, 28, who portrayed the young Margaret Thatcher in the TV drama The Long Walk To Finchley.

The film’s depiction of George VI’s wife Elizabeth is also controversial. The future Queen Mother is said to be the closest thing in it to a villain, with her and her husband portrayed as plotting against the couple.

Madonna was forced to shoot the Windsor Castle scenes in Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire after Buckingham Palace declined to help.

Glamorising the Duke and Duchess further risks provoking uproar because the couple have been accused of having had pro-Nazi tendencies in the late Thirties.

Several big names attached to the project, including Ewan McGregor and Vera Farmiga, George Clooney’s co-star in Up In The Air, also pulled out before filming began.

Margo Stilley, a British actress who was to play Lady Thelma Furness, a mistress of Edward, quit after the cameras started rolling, citing artistic differences with Madonna.

Australian actress Abbie Cornish, 28, stars in W.E. as a woman who immerses herself in the Abdication affair as solace from her own loveless marriage in 1998.

At an auction of items belonging to the Duke and Duchess, she meets and falls in love with a Russian security guard. In one scene, Mr Al Fayed, who owned many of the Duke and Duchess’s former possessions before auctioning them, is shown helping Miss Cornish’s character with her research on the Royal couple.

The ex-Harrods owner’s portrayal will raise questions about the extent of his involvement. In June, Madonna made a surprise appearance at a school fete organised by the Egyptian tycoon for his daughter Camilla.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1307139/Madonna-accused-rewriting-history-Abdication-movie.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeIWtV1p1vs