It's not only summer break for real-life students, it's also vacation time for the pupils of "Degrassi." And this season, the series is trying something new as fans of the long-running teen soap will head off to all parts of the globe with the show's characters.

The new season kicked off last week, giving an early taste of all the ups and downs the crew will be going through during the steamy summer months. Everyone's leaving to various places, like Paris and New York City, as well as more rustic spots like summer camp.

Stars Luke Bilyk and Munro Chambers recently stopped by MTV News to chat about the show's fresh format. "I think it's something new for 'Degrassi' because we've never really seen this before," Chambers said. "We've done university before, around season eight, but 'Degrassi' [has] never seen what's happened in the summer, except like a special. So I think it's something exciting for the fans to see in the first seven or eight episodes."

Bilyk added, "It's not like a special like what you said. Sometimes you have like a spring-break special or 'Degrassi' goes to Manhattan or Hollywood, just following a certain amount of four or five characters going on a trip. This is actually summer — they get to go on a trip, and you get to see the whole school experience before they even come back to Degrassi."

With so much guaranteed to happen as the season unfolds, Bilyk admitted that there's bound to be some signature "Degrassi" drama and plot twists that will certainly ...

SAN DIEGO-- After years of waiting for the next movie from the director of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and "Children of Men" Alfonso Cuarón, we are just months away from "

When Cuarón stopped by MTV Comic-Con Live, he offered fans a better idea of what a "Sandra Bullock stranded in space" movie will be like. Based on the "Gravity" trailer, perhaps the easiest comparison in mainstream film that people can make is to Tom Hanks in "Castaway," but as Cuarón explain, "Gravity" will be much more suspenseful.

PHILADELPHIA — Demi Lovato can now add another accolade to her long list of accomplishments: director.

On Wednesday, the singer premiered the video for her patriotic pop song the second single from her latest album, Demi.

The video, which she co-directed alongside Ryan Pallotta, follows the tale of a young couple, — played by "Friday Night Lights" actress Aimee Teegarden and "90210" actor Dustin Milligan — whose classic American romance starts off innocent and pure, but is shortly put to the test as Milligan's character is sent off to war.

When MTV News recently caught up with Lovato, whose "Heart Attack" clip is nominated for Best Female Video at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, she revealed that the idea for has been long in the works.

The 2013 MTV Video Music Awards: Complete List of Nominees!

"I was listening to it, and that's what came to mind. There was no reason, it was just something in my mind while I was listening to the song," Lovato said backstage at Philadelphia's Pop-Tarts Crazy Good Summer concert. "And I knew it was going to be my next single from my album and this is what I do: If I know what my next single is, I'm immediately thinking of the concept. I wanted it to look like a short film."

With its cinematic look and in-depth story line, many Lovatics might have been surprised that Lovato — who acts as a soundtrack to their love story, appearing only in performance shots — didn't cast herself as the leading lady.

"I ...

Among all of rap's glitz and glamour, Ace Hood exhibits a blue-collar ethic. Sure, he wears gold chains and a diamond-encrusted watch, which has made headlines itself, even if for all the wrong reasons. There is even his "new Buggati." But when you strip away the decoration, Ace Hood may be the hardest-working rapper out, and his latest, Trials & Tribulations, stands as his testament.

"It's a groundbreaking year for Ace Hood and I think this album, now that it's out, everybody understands who Ace Hood is now," Ace's mentor and We the Best CEO DJ Khaled told MTV News. "It might've took four or five [albums] to give him his respect, but now you respect him and now he's a problem. He's gonna be one of the best in the game, and I won't take no talk back about."

Trials is Ace's fourth LP and his first under the all-powerful YMCMB umbrella. His 2008 debut Gutta was unassuming and came and went, while most rap fans barely batted an eye. There have been standout singles like "Cash Flow," the Chris Brown-assisted "Body 2 Body" and, of course, "Hustle Hard," but on T&T, Ace brings his biggest hit ("Bugatti") and his most complete work.

The title track sets the tone as the South Florida rapper lays out all of his hardships. From the deaths of his grandmother and his baby daughter to his mother, who is "dodging heart attacks," Hood doesn't hold back. "I'm a walking testimony and I mean just what I say/ Looked my daughter in her eyes right ...

There's one reason Macklemore & Ryan Lewis started making videos: to get to the VMAs. Well, thanks to three #1 hits and their three amazing videos, the Seattle duo are not only invited to the August 25 show at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, they're tied with Justin Timberlake for the most nominations!

"When we started making music videos, it's always the goal is to get a VMA nomination — it's really to take home a Moonman," Macklemore told MTV News on Wednesday, just hours after he found out about the pair's six nominations
.

"Once the song ['Thrift Shop'] started doing better, it was like, 'Maybe we might actually get a nomination, maybe that might happen,'" he said. Well, it happened, with their massive hit up for the coveted Video of the Year and it's equally huge follow-up, 
 landing nods for Best Hip Hop Video, Best Cinematography, Best Direction and Best Editing.

The latter is a wide-screen epic that took 16 days to shoot and found them hopping across six continents, where they starred alongside camels, got chased by wolves, mushed on dogsleds, partied on a clipper ship and planted their flag all over the globe. Mack and Lewis also got recognized in the Best Video with a Social Message for their equality anthem 


Even after all their success, the fiercely independent Macklemore said he was really not expecting all that VMA love. "[We were] hoping for it and the news came in today that we got nominated six times, tied with JT," he said. ...

Earl Sweatshirt will finally drop his debut album, Doris, on August 20, and when that date rolls around, the Odd Future rapper would like fans and critics to finally stop blabbing about his personal life and instead focus on the music.

"I just want it to be out so there can be conversation about sh-- other [than my life]," Earl told MTV News. "So there can be music conversation as opposed to life conversation, which has been going since I've been home."

The 19-year-old is referring to the time he spent at the Samoan boarding school Coral Reef Academy a couple years back, which became public knowledge when Complex published an investigative report pinpointing his location, to the dismay of his family and even his "big brother" Tyler, the Creator, who publicly lashed out at the outlet at the time.

"Most of the sh-- that I get, and that I've gotten in my entire career, has been based on sh-- that's going on in my life and not music stuff," he added. "So when the album comes out, it'll give everyone 15 songs to talk about."

Earl most recently addressed the media fiasco on "Chum," rapping, "I know you're happy now/ Craven and these Complex f--- n---as done track me down/ Just to be the guys that did it, like I like attention/ ... Supposed to be grateful, right/ Like thanks so much, you made my life/ Harder and the ties between my mama are strained and tightened."

The topic will certainly be broached in some capacity on other tracks as well. ...

Just how many times can one family come under attack from vengeful ghosts?

September's "Insidious: Chapter 2" returns us to the spirit-plagued Lambert family, who might have survived their first encounter in 2010's surprise horror hit "Insidious," but find something worse has followed them back into the land of the living. The "Saw" writing/directing team of Leigh Whannell and James Wan return to the "kitchen sink" storytelling that made the first film so successful with fans three years ago, and this time out, they're building a franchise around the dark things that reside in The Further, a sort of netherworld that allows the filmmakers to pack in more mythology around things that go "bump" (and worse) in the night.

Set immediately in the aftermath of the first film, "Insidious: Chapter 2" sees parents Renai and Josh Lambert (Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson) slowly discovering that their ghost problem might have something to do with a buried secret in Josh's past. If you've seen (and loved) any of the "Saw" films, you'll appreciate the way Whannell and Wan have layered in more backstory into the sequel — but it wasn't all part of some master plan from the start.

Speaking with MTV in L.A., screenwriter Whannell explained that the first film's franchise potential was the furthest thing from their mind, and that each film they make is done somewhat by the seat of their pants. Director Wan has another haunted-house thriller out this week, the based-on-true-events "The Conjuring," and like "Insidious: Chapter 2," that film works ...

It may be harder to find the new issue of Rolling Stone at your local chain pharmacy or quickie mart this week. After concerns were raised about the magazine's decision to put the now-infamous selfie of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokar Tsarnaev on the its cover to illustrate the story titled "The Bomber: How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster," a number of major retailers have announced that they won't carry the issue.

7-Eleven joined the list of boycotters on Thursday (July 18), which already includes CVS, Walgreens, Kmart and Rite Aid. The New England-based Tedeschi Food Shops also said it would not carry the issue. Before it was posted online, the article's author, Janet Reitman — who reported the piece over two months and spoke to childhood and high school friends, neighbors and law enforcement sources — wrote, "It's kind of astonishing. No one has even read it yet!"

Much of the controversy has focused not on the content of the piece, but rather on the decision to put Tsarnaev on the cover, in what many have said is a pose that seems to glamorize him and make him look like a pop star. The same image has also appeared in the New York Times and other media over the past few months. The magazine, which has long mixed music journalism with world affairs and political coverage, has released a statement defending its decision to feature Tsarnaev.

"Our hearts go out to the victims of ...