Can it get any worse for Hollywood's favorite tabloid couple?
In the same week that Jennifer Lopez confirmed that she had ended her stormy, high-profile engagement to Ben Affleck, Gigli -- the movie that sparked their off-screen romance -- gets the uncertain honor of leading the pack in nominations for the awards that celebrate the very worst of the American movie industry's annual output.
The nominations for the Golden Raspberry or Razzie awards for 2003, announced yesterday, included nine for Gigli, a mob comedy starring Affleck and Lopez that critics hated and audiences spurned.
The Cat in the Hat, a sometimes risque riff on the children's classic by Dr. Seuss, was just behind with eight Razzie nominations, including worst actor for Mike Myers for a performance award organizers called a "fur-ball hocking desecration."
Lopez and Affleck met on the set of Gigli in late 2001 and were engaged in November 2002.
Last September, the couple called off their supposedly secret wedding just days before it was to take place, citing a media invasion of their privacy.
The pair, who became known collectively as "Bennifer," have been seen together in public in the months since, although there have been widespread rumors that they were splitting up.
A spokesman for Lopez said that the actress-singer had ended her engagement to Affleck.
Lopez may be the front runner as last year's worst actress, but other star-crossed screen lovers also had a rough ride with critics and the Razzie judges.
Angelina Jolie, who chases romance to geopolitical hot spots in Beyond Borders, also scored a nomination, along with Kelly Clarkson who chases fellow American Idol Justin Guarini through an antic-filled Miami spring break in From Justin to Kelly.
Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz grabbed a dual dishonor with worst-actress nods for their high-kicking, crime-fighting return in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.
Sylvester Stallone, an evil, video-game mastermind set on global domination in Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, took his 30th Razzie nomination, more than any actor in the history of the awards, which spoof the Oscars, Hollywood's highest honors.
This year's Razzies will be given out on Feb. 28, a day before the Academy Awards.
The Razzie awards, which were launched in 1980 by writer John Wilson, offer winners a spray-painted raspberry atop a nest of Super 8 film although most awards go unclaimed by honorees.
Recently the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and its Mini-Me partner in the legislature, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), have been arguing that construction of chip fabs in the US by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is little more than stripping Taiwan of its assets. For example, KMT Legislative Caucus First Deputy Secretary-General Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) in January said that “This is not ‘reciprocal cooperation’ ... but a substantial hollowing out of our country.” Similarly, former TPP Chair Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) contended it constitutes “selling Taiwan out to the United States.” The two pro-China parties are proposing a bill that
March 9 to March 15 “This land produced no horses,” Qing Dynasty envoy Yu Yung-ho (郁永河) observed when he visited Taiwan in 1697. He didn’t mean that there were no horses at all; it was just difficult to transport them across the sea and raise them in the hot and humid climate. “Although 10,000 soldiers were stationed here, the camps had fewer than 1,000 horses,” Yu added. Starting from the Dutch in the 1600s, each foreign regime brought horses to Taiwan. But they remained rare animals, typically only owned by the government or
It starts out as a heartwarming clip. A young girl, clearly delighted to be in Tokyo, beams as she makes a peace sign to the camera. Seconds later, she is shoved to the ground from behind by a woman wearing a surgical mask. The assailant doesn’t skip a beat, striding out of shot of the clip filmed by the girl’s mother. This was no accidental clash of shoulders in a crowded place, but one of the most visible examples of a spate of butsukari otoko — “bumping man” — shoving incidents in Japan that experts attribute to a combination of gender
Last month, media outlets including the BBC World Service and Bloomberg reported that China’s greenhouse gas emissions are currently flat or falling, and that the economic giant appears to be on course to comfortably meet Beijing’s stated goal that total emissions will peak no later than 2030. China is by far and away the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, generating more carbon dioxide than the US and the EU combined. As the BBC pointed out in their Feb. 12 report, “what happens in China literally could change the world’s weather.” Any drop in total emissions is good news, of course. By
RSS