Showing posts with label Arts and entertainment. Show all posts

Sunday, 19 October 2014

‘Batman v Superman:’ Is Jena Malone Playing Female Robin?

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“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” will reportedly feature a female Robin, with actress Jena Malone rumored to be playing Carrie Kelly, according to a local news station in Detroit.

WILX-10 News station reporter Kirk Montgomery spoke with one of the extras at Michigan State University, where a scene involving Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) and Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) was being filmed this week.

“I’ve also learned that the character of Robin is now female,” he said alluding to the film’s top secret script.

Warner Bros. declined to comment.

Malone, who appeared in “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” has been seen on the WB set and recent movie premieres sporting a new red hairdo.

Casting rumors for “Batman v Superman” have been in high demand since director Zack Snyder revealed the project at Comic-Con last year.

The anonymous extra who spoke to WILX faces a hefty fine of $5 million after signing a non-disclosure agreement with Warner Bros.

“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” co-starring Henry Cavill and Gal Gadot, opens March 25, 2016.

Joanne Borgella, Former 'American Idol' Contestant,' Dead at 32

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Joanne Borgella, a singer and model who competed on American Idol in 2008, has died at the age of 32 from Endometrial Cancer.

The news was confirmed by her family on her Facebook page on Saturday (Oct. 18).

"With heavy hearts, we are deeply saddened to announce the passing of our beloved Joanne. On Saturday, October 18, 2014 at 5:45AM, Joanne Borgella Ramirez was called by the Lord to heaven," the post reads. "At an early age, Joanne made a choice to serve and trust the Lord; and since her diagnosis over a year ago, Joanne made a choice to also be a fighter and share her journey with the world. Her faith, courage and strength were unshaken throughout every obstacle she encountered. Although our family is suffering with this great loss, we find comfort in the closeness Joanne shared with the Lord. We know her spirit still shines and will continue to live on in heaven."

Born in Long Island, N.Y., she later moved to Hoboken, N.J. when she appeared on season 7 of AI. After auditioning in Philadelphia, she landed in the top 24.

In addition to American Idol, she also won Mo'Nique's Fat Chance in 2005 when she was named "Miss F.A.T." She was also signed to Wilhelmina Models.

Prior to her death, she kept fans up-to-date on her cancer treatments on her Facebook page. Her last post was on Sept. 23. "Gooooood morning!! We are heading back to radiation for 2 procedures!! God js with us!! I have lots to fill you in on.. The presence of The Lord is here.. Prayers up!!! I love you guys #GodsGotThis #ThePowerofPrayer #Faith #IWillbeCancerFree2014 #JoanneBorgella," she wrote.

Saturday, 18 October 2014

French Dragons in Beijing

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Mechanical installations named "Long Ma" (R) and "The Spider" are operated at a rehearsal of the Long Ma performance in front of the National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest

Friday, 17 October 2014

16 dead in accident at South Korean concert

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(AP) — Sixteen people watching an outdoor pop concert in South Korea fell 20 meters (60 feet) to their deaths Friday when a ventilation grate they were standing on collapsed, officials said.

Photos of the scene in Seongnam, just south of Seoul, showed a deep concrete shaft under the broken grate.

Seongnam city spokesman Kim Nam-jun announced the deaths in a televised briefing and said 11 others were seriously injured.

Fire officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of office rules, said the victims were standing on the grate while watching an outdoor performance by girls' band 4Minute, which is popular across Asia.

About 700 people had gathered to watch the concert, which was part of a local festival. Fire officials said many of the dead and injured appeared to be commuters who stopped to watch the concert after leaving work. Most of the dead were men in their 30s and 40s, while five were women in their 20s and 30s, they said.

Kim said it was believed that the grate collapsed under the weight of the people. Prime Minister Chung Hong-won visited an emergency center in Seongnam and urged officials to focus on helping the victims' families and ensure the injured get proper treatment, Kim said.

A video recorded by someone at the concert that was shown on the YTN television network showed the band continuing to dance for a while in front of a crowd that appeared to be unaware of the accident.

Dozens of people were shown standing next to the ventilation grate, gazing into the dark gaping hole where people had been standing to watch the performance. YTN said the ventilation grate was about 3 to 4 meters (10 to 12 feet) wide. Photos apparently taken at the scene showed that the ventilation grate reached to the shoulders of many passers-by.

The collapse came as South Korea is still struggling with the aftermath of a ferry disaster in April that left more than 300 people dead or missing.

For a time, the sinking jolted South Korea into thinking about safety issues that had been almost universally overlooked as the country rose from poverty and war to an Asian power.

The tragedy exposed regulatory failures that appear to have allowed the ferry Sewol to set off with far more cargo than it could safely carry. Family members say miscommunications and delays during rescue efforts doomed their loved ones.

Analysts say many safety problems in the country stem from little regulation, light punishment for violators and wide ignorance about safety in general — and a tendency to value economic advancement over all else.

Sunday, 12 October 2014

How the Man Booker short-list contenders shape up

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(Reuters) - The winner of the 2014 Man Booker Prize, considered one of the world's most prestigious literary awards, will be announced on Tuesday in London. Here are capsule reviews by Reuters correspondents of the six short-listed contenders.

"J" - HOWARD JACOBSON

Howard Jacobson’s “J” shifts from the contemporary London Jewish world of “The Finkler Question”, which won the Booker Prize in 2010, to a dystopian setting around 60 years in the future. But the questions of identity and assimilation remain.

Ailinn Solomons and Kevern “Coco” Cohen are having a slightly on-off love affair in the bleak coastal town of Port Reuben. Kevern was brought up there but has never felt at home in a place where men are routinely violent to their women, and the only entertainment is to get drunk in the “Friendly Fisherman.” At home, he has carried on his father’s puzzling habit of putting two fingers across his lips whenever he says the letter ‘J’.

Ailinn is an orphan from another part of this country, where everyone has surnames like theirs or with endings like –kind or –berg, and the population, lacking in culture or much sign of industry, is required to say sorry for "what happened, if it happened". It seems like the two of them are destined to be together. Or is that just part of somebody else’s plan?

It’s a slow-burning novel, with some brutal humor as an escape from a landscape of ugliness and despair, in which secondary characters have few redeeming qualities. But the plot gains twists as the story progresses, and it’s not all grim – Jacobson captures tenderness and love too, alongside a dissection of the feelings that lead to hatred.

(Carolyn Cohn, Insurance and Fund Management Correspondent)

"THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH" - RICHARD FLANAGAN

In "The Narrow Road to the Deep North," the Australian novelist Richard Flanagan takes up the familiar story of Allied prisoners of war building the Siam-Burma railway line during World War Two.

His protagonist is Dorrigo Evans, a doctor and a soldier in the Australian army who is taken prisoner on Java, presumably in 1942. Pinning down exactly what happens when in the novel can be difficult, because Flanagan chops up his narrative and hops back and forth in time. Consequently, he often tells us effects before he shows us their causes, which can be entertaining in a Quentin Tarantino film but is annoying in a novel.

The disjointed narrative is mostly notable for what it doesn't include: the surrender by the Allied troops, any fighting they might have done before surrendering, most of the actual work on the railway and the end of the war, for example. It also skips over Evans's marriage after the war, the birth of his children or their names or sexes. It doesn't even give us much detail about the most important event of Evans's pre-war life, a brief affair with Amy, unloving wife of Evans's uncle.

Flanagan's work is a self-consciously "literary" novel that has no plot to speak of. Its characters are sketched only in outline and we are more often told how they feel about something than shown how they acted while it was happening.

(Larry King, Desk Editor)

"HOW TO BE BOTH" - ALI SMITH

Ali Smith’s “How to be Both” contains the twin stories of George and Francescho, one a teenager of the 1960s, the other a young artist in 15th century Ferrara, joined by a single thread that spans the centuries. The story is cleverly divided into two parts, both titled “One”, that can be read in either order. The chapter devoted to painter Francescho del Cossa bursts into a rushing stream of consciousness, that gradually catches its breath and slows into punctuated prose, as his memories become more lucid and fall into place.

Del Cossa existed. The son of a stone carver, much of his work at Ferrara in northern Italy has been destroyed and his main surviving works are frescoes painted after 1470. In Smith’s narrative, he must balance his public identity, with his private – that of a girl disguised as a boy to pursue a life in art.

George, in her leaking bedroom in Cambridge, is struggling to come to terms with the sudden death of her mother months before, alongside her bereft father and a younger brother. Her story flits between the present day and the memories of a trip to Ferrara with her art-loving mother. The book describes itself as a literary double-take, in which present and past, fact and fiction, appearance and reality, life and death swirl around each other. Time, space, perspective and even gender overlap and multiple realities intertwine to form the fabric of a vibrant, engaging story.

(Amanda Cooper, Editor, Global Markets Forum)

"TO RISE AGAIN AT A DECENT HOUR" - JOSHUA FERRIS

Can you choose your spiritual path? Or are you chosen for it? Is doubt more powerful than belief? Joshua Ferris's tight, theological thriller "To Rise Again at a Decent Hour" mulls a number of these fundamental questions. It answers one, unequivocally: Yes, it is certainly better to floss.

For all his neuroses and ill-advised escapades, Dr Paul O'Rourke can be trusted on this point of preventative care. The 40-year-old obsessive baseball fan, on whom Ferris centers his novel, is a Manhattan dentist. He makes lots of money from his posh practice, but something is missing. Prematurely curmudgeonly, O'Rourke is a man forever on the outside looking in. An avowed atheist, he craves acceptance and belonging and bizarrely seeks it through an over-enthusiastic embracing of girlfriends' religions. First the Catholic Santacroces, then Connie Plotz and her large Jewish family.

When, still giddy with anesthetic, a man O'Rourke has treated lurches from the building, leaving the dentist with the parting news that he too is an "Ulm" – a member of an underground group whose history can be traced back to the early Israelites - the book teeters over the edge of the rollercoaster.

After 40 years of searching for belonging, O’Rourke’s people have come to reclaim him, and what follows is a fireman's hose of hysteria, identity theft, paralyzing rejection of 21st century technology, and dynamic interplay between the workers at the surgery. Meandering and lengthy detail on the history of the "Ulms" and the "Amalekites" touch the brakes on Ferris's narrative, but the author's gift for characterization and crackling dialogue override this.

(Ossian Shine, Global Editor: Sport, Lifestyle and Entertainment)

"WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY BESIDE OURSELVES" - KAREN JOY FOWLER

"Skip the beginning," the weary father of the talkative protagonist of Karen Joy Fowler's "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves" advises. "Start in the middle." And she does, beginning this haunting, often whimsical narrative 17 years after the event on which the book hinges - the disappearance of her sister and companion, Fern. Other reviewers have warned of spoilers, and spoiler risk is high indeed. There is a twist - a very good one - on page 77.

But the book is about more than the intriguing reveal (about which this reviewer, at least, will keep silent). Rosemary Cooke, the protagonist and engaging narrator of the tale, is the daughter of an Indiana University professor who brings his work home, filling the farmhouse with experiments, blackboards and graduate students. Part-inspired, no doubt, by Fowler's own father, a psychologist at the same university who, she says, "ran rats through mazes".

It ends, perhaps predictably, in tears. The biggest experiment of all is abruptly terminated. "One day, every word I said was data, and carefully recorded for further study and discussion. The next, I was just a little girl, strange in her way, but of no scientific interest to anyone," she writes.

Fowler, a writer of fantasy and science fiction who impressed readers with "The Jane Austen Book Club", turns out a heartbreaking tale of loss, grief and dysfunctional family, reminiscent of Jonathan Franzen or Joyce Carol Oates. And without adopting the preaching tone of other authors' efforts - think J.M. Coetzee's "Elizabeth Costello" - Fowler writes what is one of the most touching discussions in recent times of animal rights, animal intelligence and the questionable ethics of experimental psychology. It is a book that is about so much more than an exercise in nurture versus nature.

(Clara Ferreira Marques, Mining and Steel Correspondent)

"THE LIVES OF OTHERS" - NEEL MUKHERJEE

Set in Calcutta in the late 1960s, "The Lives of Others" is the story of the Ghosh family whose head, Prafullanath, owns paper mills in the city. Mukherjee describes in extraordinary and vivid detail the relationships between the various family members who live on different floors of their house.

Arranged marriages, births, deaths, fierce personal rivalries and resentment are stitched together with great skill as the family unravels amid a changing society. The eldest grandson, Supratik, morally horrified by the lives of the countless starving people in the country, leaves home to join the CPI(M), Communist Party of India. His letters about his experiences form one thread of the book.

Mukherjee brings this world to life with beautifully crafted prose, describing the weather, trees, jewelry and buildings in intricate detail. Food is a recurring theme while scenes of brutal torture, rotting flesh, blood and sickness provide a shocking backdrop to the story.

Thursday, 2 October 2014

Netflix signs Adam Sandler to four-film deal

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(AP) — In its bid to upend the movie business the way it has television, Netflix has secured one of the big screen's biggest box-office draws and most irreverent comedic talents.

Adam Sandler has signed a four-film deal with Netflix, the streaming service announced early Tuesday. The actor will star in and produce each feature, all of which will premiere exclusively on Netflix.

"When these fine people came to me with an offer to make four movies for them, I immediately said yes for one reason and one reason only: Netflix rhymes with wet chicks," Sandler said in a statement. "Let the streaming begin!"

Netflix declined to say how much it was paying Sandler. But the streaming giant has a history of reaching deep into its pocket to lure big-name talent. To land "House of Cards," with director David Fincher and star Kevin Spacey, Netflix reportedly spent $100 million for the show's first two seasons.

On Tuesday, Netflix signaled its long-planned entry into original movies, announcing that it will stream a sequel to 2000's Oscar-winning "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" — one of the most lucrative foreign language releases ever. The sequel, produced by the Weinstein Co., will open in August 2015 simultaneously in Imax theaters and on Netflix.

Sandler is one of Hollywood's most reliable draws, with films that have collectively grossed more than $2.4 billion domestically. But his track record has recently been rocky. His last film, the romantic comedy "Blended," with Drew Barrymore, sputtered with a meager haul just $46.3 million for Warner Bros.

Ted Sarandos, chief content officer for Netflix, said Sandler's films are regularly among the most-viewed by Netflix members.

"People love Adam's films on Netflix and often watch them again and again," Sarandos said. "His appeal spans across viewers of all ages. Everybody has a favorite movie, everyone has a favorite line, not just in the US but all over the world."

Sandler's international appeal fits Netflix's global aspirations. The company has been rapidly expanding overseas, most recently in Europe, and is now available in nearly 50 countries.

The four features, which are currently planned without any theatrical release component, are expected to be comedies. Those are the kind of movies Sandler-starring that rate highly on Netflix. Among Netflix's Sandler titles available for streaming are "Happy Gilmore" and "Click."

The first movie in the deal, to be jointly developed between Netflix and Sandler's Happy Madison Productions, could come as early as late 2015.

Netflix's plans with "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend" have already upset the movie industry's traditional patterns. The nation's three largest exhibitors — AMC, Regal and Cinemark — quickly refused to carry it on their screens.

"We will not participate in an experiment where you can see the same product on screens varying from three stories tall to 3 inches wide on a smartphone," Regal spokesman Russ Nunley said.

But many analysts see the disruption caused by Netflix's entry into original movies, in an era of ever-proliferating screens, as an overdue challenge to Hollywood's carefully controlled theatrical model.

"This is just the start of what Netflix is going to do," said Rich Greenfield, media analyst for BTIG Research. "Stay tuned. This is the beginning."

UK royals issue warning over Prince George pics

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(AP) — Prince William and his wife Kate have threatened to take legal action against a photographer they say has been monitoring their toddler son Prince George.

The couple's Kensington Palace office said Thursday the royals had "taken legal steps to ask that an individual ceases harassing and following both Prince George and his nanny as they go about their ordinary daily lives."

In a statement, the palace said the unnamed photographer was suspected of "placing Prince George under surveillance."

The statement was issued after the Evening Standard newspaper reported that a photographer had tried to take pictures of the prince in London's Battersea Park.

William and Kate, who are expecting their second child, want to spare their children intense press coverage.

Fourteen-month-old George is third in line to the throne. The statement said that the royal couple "understand the particular public role that Prince George will one day inherit, but, while he is young, he must be permitted to lead as ordinary a life as possible."

William's late mother, Princess Diana, was pursued by photographers for years before her death in a Paris car crash in 1997. Many believe the pursuing paparazzi were a contributing factor to the accident.

The British media now operate under an agreement to leave members of the royal family alone when they are children in return for regular scheduled photo shoots.

In 2012, a French magazine angered the palace by publishing photos of Kate sunbathing topless.