As a superstar Tom Cruise vaunts his romance with actress Katie Holmes, but Americans are extremely sceptical about whether the feted relationship is true love or an extravagant publicity stunt.
As the Top Gun heart-throb, 42, makes a series of giddy public appearances to proclaim his new love for the 26-year-old actress, fans and media suspect the much-publicized affair has more to do with the upcoming release of two new films starring Cruise and Holmes.
An unscientific poll by People magazine indicated that 63 percent of readers believe the romance is a publicity stunt, while only 37 percent believe the pair are genuinely in love.
PHOTO: AP
"Through all the changes that have swept Hollywood over the years, one thing still endures: strategic love," said a columnist in the New York Times this week.
The coupling of stars to create ballyhoo for a movie, burnish an actor's image, create a name or distract attention from other relationships may not be as common as when the movie studios tightly controlled stars' careers through the 1950s, some publicists and film industry experts assert.
As it happens, Cruise is the star of Steven Spielberg's big-budget War of the Worlds, due for release on June 29, while Holmes, coincidentally, is set to make her big-screen debut in Batman Begins,which opens June 15.
The twice-married Cruise, whose
storied marriage to Australian star Nicole Kidman collapsed in 2001, gave an extraordinary performance as a smitten lover on US television queen Oprah Winfrey's show this week.
In the appearance, an uncharacteristically emotive and exuberant Cruise repeatedly jumped up and down on a sofa, laughed uproariously, threw his hands in the air and yelled: "I'm in love! I'm in love!"
Jackson's latest video
A videotape of the first police interview with Michael Jackson's young accuser can be shown to jurors at his child molestation trial, the judge ruled on Thursday, setting the stage for another face-to-face meeting between the pop star and the 15-year-old boy.
Defense lawyers say if prosecutors show the videotape, in which the boy tells of sexual abuse by Jackson, they will call him back to the witness stand for cross-examination -- along with his mother, a psychologist who interviewed him before police, and the family's then-attorney, Larry Feldman.
Jolie and Pitt didn't do it
Movie sex symbol Angelina Jolie poured cold water on the rumors of a romance with leading man Brad Pitt, telling Marie Claire magazine in an upcoming issue that the two are not intimate. "Absolutely not," the star of the upcoming action flick Mr & Mrs Smith, in which Pitt co-stars, told Marie Claire when asked if she had sex with Pitt.
New American idol
Nearly 30 million viewers tuned in to see country singer Carrie Underwood crowned the latest winner on Fox television's American Idol,capping the most watched season yet for the prime-time talent contest.
The two-hour Idol finale topped the last night of the 2004 to 2005 TV season with 29.4 million viewers overall, including about 15.8 million aged 18 to 49 -- the young-adult audience most coveted by advertisers, Nielsen Media Research reported on Thursday.
Paper, Stiller, Rock
They are old friends who normally praise one another, but when Chris Rock and Ben Stiller don animal hides for their new animated movie Madagascar, the gloves come off. "I don't really admire Ben," said Rock, smiling broadly when asked what he likes best about Stiller's comedy.
Motley Crue fights ban
Motley Crue has sued NBC in Los Angeles federal court, accusing the network of banning the heavy metal band from its television programs to curry favor with federal regulators cracking down on indecency.
Motley Crue, best known for 1980s hits like Girls, Girls, Girls,was banned from appearing on NBC after its lead singer, Vince Neil, used a profanity during a New Year's Eve broadcast of last year on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, according to court papers.
Pavarotti
Italian opera star Luciano Pavarotti will bring his tenor voice to a global anti-poverty campaign, using his concerts in Ireland this week to urge his audiences to back the cause, a UN official said Thursday.
Pavarotti has offered to show, during his concerts Thursday and Saturday, several short films on the Millennium Development Goals "to call on his audiences to take action to reach the targets" of the campaign, said Eveline Herfkens, UN chief Kofi Annan's executive coordinator for the campaign.
The films will also be shown at more than 40 concerts during his global farewell tour this year and next. Pavarotti has been a UN "Messenger of Peace" since 1998.
In 2000, UN members agreed to the Millennium Development Goals of slashing poverty in half by 2015.
"We are the first generation that can end poverty," Herfkens said.
`Star wars' and the pirates
US law enforcers said on Wednesday that they have shut down a computer network that distributed illegal copies of Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith before it appeared in movie theaters. Federal agents executed 10 search warrants and seized the main server computer in a network that allowed people to download nearly 18,000 movies and software programs, including many current releases, the FBI and Homeland Security Department said.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist