The coveted 2011 MTV Video Music Awards (VMA) nomination list is finally out. Kanye West was the top male nominee with seven nods, while Bruno Mars came in second with four. Katy Perry knocks the ball out of the park with nine nominations for a string of hits including Teenage Dream and Firework.
The awards ceremony is scheduled for Aug. 28.
British singer Adele, whose album 21 is the top-selling record worldwide this year, earned seven nominations, all for her single Rolling in the Deep. Meanwhile, last year’s champion Lady Gaga only passed with three nods for Born This Way and Judas.
But the pop princess has her fingers in other pies. Baidu, China’s most powerful Internet search engine, has agreed to pay record labels to offer songs by artists including Gaga, Beyonce and Frank Sinatra after six years of controversy over piracy. The deal supposedly paves the way for Baidu to ease concerns that led a US trade representative to dub the Chinese company a notorious market for helping to sustain piracy. Select record labels will now be paid by the world’s largest Internet market, where almost all music downloads are estimated to be illegal.
That probably wasn’t the most exciting thought on Beyonce’s mind this week, though. The singer and actress, whose solo album 4 debuted at No. 1 on pop charts after its release last month, has landed the main role in the Clint Eastwood remake of the film A Star Is Born. Beyonce, who calls this “the biggest opportunity of [her] life,” says she is thrilled to have been cast for the role previously played by Hollywood icons Barbara Streisand and Judy Garland.
Unfortunately, not everyone is ascending the ladder of success. Heiress Paris Hilton, 30, who has been a reality TV mogul for 15 years, may finally be on the decline. If you suggest this to her like ABC News journalist Dan Harris did, however, she would probably walk out on you.
Hilton, whose new reality show The World According to Paris has been receiving low ratings since its debut on cable channel Oxygen early last month, temporarily abandoned an interview with Harris after he compared her to fellow reality star Kim Kardashian and asked whether she worries that her moment has passed.
Speaking of has-beens, actress and singer Lindsay Lohan is in trouble (again). Lohan, 25, whose career as a budding child star has been derailed since 2007 by drug and alcohol abuse problems and multiple trips to jail, has been slapped with a US$1 million assault lawsuit by a former employee of a California rehab center. Lohan is also rumored to have troubles paying for private counseling, which was a part of her sentence for stealing a gold necklace in January.
It’s rough out there in the Wild West, and not even teens are safe: The youngest son of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver is recovering in a hospital after a boogie-boarding accident at a Malibu beach, a family statement said on Friday.
Christopher Schwarzenegger, 13, “is a brave boy and is expected to make a full recovery,” the statement said.
The teen suffered a collapsed lung and broken bones. Shriver was composed when she alerted emergency workers in a phone call — apparently from the beach — at about 12:20pm on July 17.
He “can’t move off the beach — maybe like ... broken ribs or something like that,” Shriver told a Los Angeles County Fire Department operator, according to a recording released by the department.
“He’s having trouble breathing,” she told the operator.
Two of his siblings tweeted about their 13-year-old brother: Sister Katherine says “he’s a tough little guy and getting better,” and brother Patrick says “keep praying.”
In related news, Arnie indicated in a recent court filing that he does not want to pay Shriver spousal support or attorney fees as the couple ends their 25-year marriage.
The dispute may have little impact on the divorce, since the former Hollywood couple is expected to reach a confidential, out-of-court settlement.
Schwarzenegger’s filing on Wednesday differed little from Shriver’s initial petition for divorce, which was filed on July 1. Both seek joint custody of their sons.
Neither indicated exactly when they separated, although they announced in May they were estranged and Schwarzenegger later admitted he fathered a child with a member of his household staff.
The former couple does not have a prenuptial agreement, according to their filings. That means Shriver would be entitled to half of Schwarzenegger’s assets under California law, although the exact terms were expected to be set through private mediation.
Schwarzenegger would also be expected to provide financial support for his children. In other celebrity divorces, those sums have totaled tens of thousands of dollars a month.
Any agreement reached by Schwarzenegger and Shriver would become public only if there is a later dispute over its terms, or they opt to handle their divorce through a Superior Court judge.
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
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
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your