Jennifer Lopez will be able to call on her newly acquired parenting skills for her latest film role, where she plays a professional thief posing as a nanny, it was reported on Tuesday.
Daily Variety reported that "7" has confirmed bagging a lead role in romantic comedy The Governess, her second movie project since giving birth to twins earlier this year.
The 39-year-old music and acting diva will play a robber planning a bank heist who pretends to be a nanny for children of a wealthy widower, the report said. Filming gets underway later this year.
Lopez, whose last film was 2006's El Cantante, is already working on another project, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, due for release in 2009.
This year's Venice film festival showcasing new offerings by the Coen Brothers, Takeshi Kitano and Hayao Miyasaki, will be dedicated to the late Egyptian director Youssef Chahine, organizers said on Tuesday.
The central figure in post-war Arab cinema, Chahine died Sunday aged 82 after spending several weeks in a coma.
"The 65th Mostra will be dedicated to Youssef Chahine, a unique filmmaker: who else could have succeeded in mixing the philosopher Averroes with Fred Astaire? That's what cinema should be about," festival director Marco Muller told a press conference in Rome.
The film to which he was referring, Destiny, which won the Cannes film festival's 50th anniversary award in 1997, is set in 12th-century Andalusia, with the Arab philosopher Averroes, a harbinger of the Enlightenment, as its dancing hero.
Egyptian screen stars were among around 1,500 mourners who gathered at a Cairo church on Monday to bid farewell to Chahine.
Hundreds of celebrities and officials were crammed into the Roman Catholic Church of the Resurrection, with hundreds more gathered outside as the controversial director's coffin was carried in, draped in the Egyptian flag.
His protege and colleague Khaled Youssef, who co-directed Chahine's latest film Chaos in 2007, was among the pall bearers.
The congregation included many of the biggest stars of Egyptian cinema - for decades the Arab world's most popular - alongside officials from the ruling National Democratic Party which was often targeted in Chahine's films.
Representatives from other parties across the political spectrum were also in attendance, along with dozens of journalists.
Japanese directors Kitano, with Achilles and the Tortoise, and Miyasaki, with his animated feature Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, are among the favorites for the festival's coveted Golden Lion award.
Other strong runners include US director Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke, and French filmmaker Barbet Schroeder's thriller The Beast in the Shadows.
The festival opens on Aug. 27 with an out-of-competition world premiere for Joel and Ethan Coen's Burn After Reading, which unites perennial Coen favorite George Clooney with John Malkovich, Brad Pitt and Oscar-winning Scottish actress Tilda Swinton.
Australia has hired filmmaker Baz Luhrmann to make ads touting the nation as a tourist destination after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd labeled the previous campaign a "disaster.''
Luhrmann, director of the upcoming film Australia starring Nicole Kidman, will use footage from the movie in television ads running in Europe, Asia and North America starting in October until the middle of next year.
"These are challenging times for the tourism industry and I hope this campaign will motivate people around the world to visit Australia,'' said Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson.
The earlier campaign highlighted the nation's beaches and indigenous culture in television ads that finished with a bikini-clad model asking viewers "Where the Bloody Hell Are You?'' The campaign was a "rolled-gold disaster,'' Rudd said in June.
Behind a car repair business on a nondescript Thai street are the cherished pets of a rising TikTok animal influencer: two lions and a 200-kilogram lion-tiger hybrid called “Big George.” Lion ownership is legal in Thailand, and Tharnuwarht Plengkemratch is an enthusiastic advocate, posting updates on his feline companions to nearly three million followers. “They’re playful and affectionate, just like dogs or cats,” he said from inside their cage complex at his home in the northern city of Chiang Mai. Thailand’s captive lion population has exploded in recent years, with nearly 500 registered in zoos, breeding farms, petting cafes and homes. Experts warn the
The unexpected collapse of the recall campaigns is being viewed through many lenses, most of them skewed and self-absorbed. The international media unsurprisingly focuses on what they perceive as the message that Taiwanese voters were sending in the failure of the mass recall, especially to China, the US and to friendly Western nations. This made some sense prior to early last month. One of the main arguments used by recall campaigners for recalling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers was that they were too pro-China, and by extension not to be trusted with defending the nation. Also by extension, that argument could be
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The centuries-old fiery Chinese spirit baijiu (白酒), long associated with business dinners, is being reshaped to appeal to younger generations as its makers adapt to changing times. Mostly distilled from sorghum, the clear but pungent liquor contains as much as 60 percent alcohol. It’s the usual choice for toasts of gan bei (乾杯), the Chinese expression for bottoms up, and raucous drinking games. “If you like to drink spirits and you’ve never had baijiu, it’s kind of like eating noodles but you’ve never had spaghetti,” said Jim Boyce, a Canadian writer and wine expert who founded World Baijiu Day a decade
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