Britney Scores Redemption—And Three Moonmen—At VMAs

The following italicized article is from www.eonline.com:

In the end, all that buzz for the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards was more or less for naught.

Britney Spears showed up. Michael Jackson did not. Russell Brand did, though if the early reactions of bloggers and Jordin Sparks are any indication, he may wish he hadn't come tomorrow's more formal reviews of his emceeing skills.

And in between the edgy banter and star-studded performances, a few awards were even handed out along the way.

Most of which seemed to go to Spears, the night's official comeback kid.

"Thank you so much," she said, taking the stage at the show's start to a standing ovation from the much more pared-down than usual audience.

"Thank you for all the love. I'm here tonight to celebrate a very important birthday, the 25th anniversary of the VMAs."

While the pop star clearly made good on her promise to open the VMAs—doing so in seemingly record time and on the briefest of cue card-reading technicalities—she did not end up performing at the awards bash, but did manage to score redemption in another way, taking home her first ever Moonmen.

A spiffed and toned up Spears bagged three awards in total over the course of the night, winning Best Female Video, Best Pop Video and the top prize of the night, Video of the Year, for her single, "Piece of Me."

"I first wanna thank God for blessing me like this," she said of her first win, before dedicating the award to her fans. "This is for you."

She was equally succinct in her Video of the Year award acceptance speech.

"Wow. I'm in shock right now. I was not expecting this!"

To kick off the show, Spears appeared in a pretaped segment with Superbad's super randy Jonah Hill, who, as coincidence would have it, is next set to costar alongside host Brand in a sequel to Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Source: E! Online