People: Angela Bassett, Tony Kushner, Obama Girl

And the winner for best music video: "Chocolate Rain." Tay Zonday morphed from an unknown musician to an Internet superstar who got booked on national TV shows after his song "Chocolate Rain" - an amateur clip of his baritone crooning - went viral last year. Now he's among the 12 winners of the second annual YouTube Video Awards, recognizing the top user-created videos of 2007. YouTube users voted on six nominees for each of 12 categories, including music, comedy, and politics. Zonday, 25, said of the awards, "It's the new Emmys." His competition included the singer-songwriter Mia Rose and "the vegetable orchestra," featuring a jam session with a carrot flute and squash drum. Neil Cicierega's video featuring "Harry Potter" hand puppets (and Professor Dumbledore without any clothes on) won for best comedy video. Guillaume Reymond's "Human Tetris" won most creative video. Chris Crocker, who shot to stardom in his video freak-out over Britney Spears's public meltdown, was beat in the commentary category by a clip from Michael Buckley of the popular online show "What the Buck?" slamming his fellow YouTube celebrity Lonelygirl15. The Obama Girl, aka Amber Lee Ettinger, whose "I Got A Crush On Obama" clip has been seen more than 7 million times, did not win in the politics category. The honor went to a serious-minded video, "Stop the Clash of Civilizations," by the global organization avaaz.org.

Brian d'Arcy James will play the title role in "Shrek the Musical," DreamWorks Theatricals and Neal Street Productions announced. The Broadway show, to begin previews in November, will also star Chester Gregory 2nd as Donkey, John Tartaglia as Pinocchio, Sutton Foster as Princess Fiona, Christopher Sieber as Lord Farquaad, and Kecia Lewis-Evans as the Dragon.

The Disney Channel has given the go-ahead to a reality series about the Jonas Brothers, a young pop band with three brothers, Nick, Joe and Kevin, from Wyckoff, New Jersey. The series, to begin this spring, will chronicle the lives of the platinum-selling trio on their current tour, Reuters reported.

Angela Bassett has had good days - becoming a mother to twins, winning a Golden Globe, being nominated for an Academy Award. Then there was a dark morning. "I woke up and the sun wasn't really shining but then it burst through the clouds and it was glorious. Hallelujah!" Bassett exclaimed to the crowd at the ceremony for the 2,358th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Bassett, 49, was joined by her husband Courtney B. Vance, their children and her guests, Forest Whitaker, Laurence Fishburne and Rick Fox, her co-star in the new film "Meet the Browns," out Friday in the United States. Fishburne starred alongside Bassett in 1993's "What's Love Got to Do With It," which landed her an Oscar nomination.

The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis is getting a lot more Tony Kushner into its lineup next season. The Guthrie said it would produce Kushner's musical, "Caroline, or Change," and a collection of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright's short plays as part of its 2008-09 season. The theater announced in autumn that it had commissioned a new Kushner play, tentatively titled "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures." All three productions will be staged in spring 2009.

The American conductor Dennis Russell Davies has been named music director of the Basel Symphony Orchestra in Switzerland, The Associated Press reported. Davies will be filling a position that has been empty since 2006. The appointment begins in the 2009-10 season and will last five years. Davies, 63, has been chief conductor at the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the New York-based American Composers Orchestra, which he helped found. He will retain his position as chief conductor and music director of the Bruckner Orchestra Linz and the Linz Opera in Austria.

Lohan assumes the pose:
Monroe's final sitting

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