Expecting no more than light chit-chat about ballroom dancing, reporters in Tokyo were startled when actor Richard Gere launched into a condemnation of Europe's plans to lift an arms embargo against China. After promoting his new film, Shall We Dance? in which he co-stars with Jennifer Lopez, Gere grabbed a microphone to denounce plans by the European Union to lift the embargo imposed after China's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1989.
The race-relations comedy Guess Who, starring Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher, debuted atop the US and Canadian weekend box office, according to studio figures released on Monday.
The remake of the Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn and Sidney Poitier civil-rights movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner earned US$21 million to see off the challenge of Sandra Bullock's sequel, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, which opened in second place with US$14.5 million.
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The Ring 2 dropped to third with US$13.8 million followed by the animated movie Robots and family comedy The Pacifier. Hitch was in sixth spot followed by the Bruce Willis thriller Hostage and Ice Princess.
John Travolta's Be Cool was in ninth place with Oscar winner Million Dollar Baby closing out the top 10.
Neopets, the wildly popular children's Web site that lets kids nurture digital pets, is making the move from the Internet to the big screen.
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According to the Hollywood Reporter Warner Bros has closed a deal with Neopets to make CGI-animated features using 50 different pet species from the kids Web site.
The report said that the studio and Neopets have already firmed a concept for the first film and have begun talks with an animation director they would not name.
Created in 1991, NeoPets has a global following of about 25 million members who log on regularly to create and care for their own virtual pets.
PHOTO: AP
Cable channel USA Network has unveiled its remake of the hit 1970s detective series Kojak, which featured actor Telly Savalas as a lollipop-sucking detective, with Ving Rhames, an actor who has appeared in hit movies like Pulp Fiction and Mission: Impossible.
USA Networks hopes its new series will be a hit domestically and around the world with Rhames in the starring role. Rhames, like Savalas, is bald.
The two-hour long premier aired over the weekend and featured the new Kojak on the trail of a serial killer of prostitutes. But although the tough detective eventually got his man, he was less successful in capturing positive reviews. USA Today said the show was "for suckers only," while the Chicago Tribune said the show goes from "bald to worse".
Actress Cameron Diaz, who is on a protracted break from movie making, is keeping in front of the cameras with a new eco-tourism show on MTV.
Trippin', which debuted Monday on the popular music channel, featured Diaz and celebrity friends like rappers DMX and Redman, actresses Eva Mendez and Jessica Alba and pro surfer Kelly Slater as they head to environmentally sensitive spots around the world and seek to discover ways to preserve them.
Orlando Bloom has been tipped to play a young James Bond in a movie series designed to endear the suave British master spy to younger viewers, according to press reports Monday.
The series, which is backed by Miramax and DreamWorks would be based on a new series of young 007 novels which began this year with Silverfin.
In the book set in the 1930s, a teenage James Bond spends a holiday at a remote castle where he soon comes upon a mystery involving killer eels and an arms tycoon conducting dangerous genetic experiments.
In a blow to Michael Jackson's defense, prosecutors in his child molestation trial can introduce evidence of "past sexual offenses" by the pop star involving five young boys, a judge ruled on Monday. The decision by Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville means that jurors will hear testimony about a 1993 case that Jackson settled out of court for about US$23 million.
The artist best known for pickling a shark and slicing up a cow admits he's had some pretty silly ideas over the years. But Damien Hirst, the aging enfant terrible of the British art world, is optimistic that museums will still be showing at least some of his work in 200 years' time.
A vaccine to fight dementia? It turns out there may already be one — shots that prevent painful shingles also appear to protect aging brains. A new study found shingles vaccination cut older adults’ risk of developing dementia over the next seven years by 20 percent. The research, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is part of growing understanding about how many factors influence brain health as we age — and what we can do about it. “It’s a very robust finding,” said lead researcher Pascal Geldsetzer of Stanford University. And “women seem to benefit more,” important as they’re at higher risk of
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
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