Tom Cruise, his fiancee Katie Holmes and his ex-wife Nicole Kidman won dishonor at the annual Golden Razzie awards, an Oscars spoof held a day ahead of the big awards.
Tom Cruise and his pregnant paramour on Saturday scooped the lowest award in the Razzies newest category, "Most Tiresome Tabloid Targets" of 2005, but they had to share their shame with "Oprah Winfrey's Couch," "The Eiffel Tower" and "Tom's Baby."
Cruise, 43, famously announced he was in love with Holmes by jumping on talk show queen
Winfrey's sofa during a broadcast last year, Cruise then proposed to Holmes, 26, atop Paris' Eiffel Tower in June and announced they were expecting in October, all amid a massive glare of tabloid publicity.
Razzie founder John Wilson said the formerly ultra-private Cruise deserved the award because he made a spectacle of himself when he decided to "suddenly propose in front of reporters on the Eiffel Tower and jump up and down like the monkey in Curious George on Oprah Winfrey's couch."
Cruise's Oscar-winning ex, Kidman, shared the Razzie award for the worst screen couple of 2005 with Will Ferrell for their movie version of the 1960s
television show Bewitched.
The gross out romantic comedy Dirty Love, written by and starring former Playboy Playmate Jenny McCarthy, took home the most gold spray-painted statuettes with three at the 26th annual Razzie Awards held in Hollywood.
The blonde bombshell McCarthy won for worst actress and worst screenplay, while her former husband, John Asher, took home worst director dishonors at the mock movie awards.
US comic actor Rob Schneider was disgraced with the award for the worst performance by an actor last year for his slapstick feature Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, while heart-throb Hayden Christensen won worst supporting actor for his role in Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of
the Sith.
Paris Hilton won for worst supporting actress for her role in the camp horror flick House of Wax, while Son of the Mask, a badly thought-out sequel to Jim Carrey's 1994 hit minus the star, was chosen worst remake or sequel.
But none of the shamed stars took the lead from last year's winner Halle Berry and showed up an the ceremony to collect their gold spray-painted plastic raspberries, which organizers say are worth around US$4.97.
"For me this year was one of the worst so it's good for us," said event organizer Chip Dornell.
"The very worst movies are those that you can watch over an over again and see the different cliches each time and never get bored," he said referring to this year's horrors such as Son of the Mask and Dukes of Hazzard.
The proud losers of the Razzies, organized by the tongue-in-cheek Golden Raspberry Foundation, were determined by mailing ballots to about 750 film professionals, film journalists and film fans from 41 states and 15 countries.
Singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen may never see US$9.5
million a court ordered his former business manager to pay after she failed to respond to allegations of stealing from his retirement
savings, Cohen's attorney said last week.
A Superior Court judge granted Cohen, 71, the default judgment against Kelley Lynch in response to a lawsuit alleging she siphoned US$5 million from the musician's personal accounts and investments.
Cohen, known for such reflective songs as Suzanne, may never be able to collect, his attorney, Scott Edelman, said. ``She's hard to get in touch with. I don't know where she lives now, and I don't have a phone number for her,'' Edelman said. ``We don't know what she did with the money. ... But she knows what's going on because she leaves me phone messages at all hours.''
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built