Names and faces

John Travolta has apologized to Tony Award winner Idina Menzel for mangling the pronunciation of her name during the Oscars telecast, saying he’d been “beating myself up” over it. On Sunday night’s Academy Awards show, Travolta took the stage and introduced Menzel, but he seemed to say “Adele Dazeem” instead. An estimated 43 million people were watching, and social-media users have been mocking him relentlessly since, especially because he attended rehearsals. Menzel, who played Maureen Johnson in Rent onstage and on screen and Elphaba in Wicked, seemed unperturbed by the flub as she sang “Let It Go” from the animated film Frozen. Travolta said in a statement Tuesday: “I’ve been beating myself up all day. Then I thought … what would Idina Menzel say? She’d say, ‘Let it go, let it go!’ Idina is incredibly talented and I am so happy ‘Frozen’ took home two Oscars Sunday night!” A Twitter account with the handle adeladazeem went up immediately after the mistake and has almost 20,000 followers. On Facebook, a Travolta-fier Name Generator, which butchers any name typed in, became immensely popular. Menzel next stars in the new Broadway musical If/Then, which reunites the creative forces behind Next to Normal - music by Tom Kitt, story by Brian Yorkey and direction by Michael Greif. Menzel plays a woman who, on the verge of turning 40, moves to New York with the hope of a new life.

Conan O’Brien will soon be serving up buckets of golden popcorn. O’Brien announced Tuesday on his TBS talk show, Conan, that he’s hosting this year’s MTV Movie Awards. The annual celebration that honors winners with trophies shaped like buckets of popcorn is scheduled for April 13 at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles. “After eight years of intense negotiations, I am honored to announce I am hosting MTV’s second most prestigious awards show,” the comedian joked in a statement. It marks the first time O’Brien has hosted the MTV Movie Awards. He hosted the Primetime Emmy Awards in 2002 and 2006. Past hosts of the MTV Movie Awards include Jimmy Fallon, Aziz Ansari, Russell Brand, Rebel Wilson and Sarah Silverman.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 03/06/2014

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