Actor Russell Crowe stormed out of a BBC radio interview on Thursday after suggestions that he had made the quintessentially British legend Robin Hood sound Irish in his latest movie. New Zealand-born Crowe, who was raised in Australia, has been the target of criticism in the British media for his accent in the Robin Hood action adventure movie, which opened last week with its world premiere held at the Cannes film festival.
Another actor who could do with some accent training is Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson as she is set to star in a biopic of former South African president Nelson Mandela’s ex-wife Winnie, whose lawyers have already contacted the film’s makers threatening to block it. Winnie, which also features Terrence Howard as Nelson Mandela and is based on a book by Anne Marie du Preez Bezdrob, starts shooting in South Africa on May 31 and could be ready for theaters by spring next year.
KISS bassist Gene Simmons on Friday denied brushing up against a make-up artist and “grinding” against her, saying his codpiece-style stage costume made that impossible. Simmons’ legal team filed court papers in Los Angeles asking a judge to declare that accuser Victoria Jackson has suffered no harm from the star of costume rock and reality television.
The Rolling Stones are revisiting their creative heights by releasing one of their greatest albums with 10 extra tracks, and reminiscing about their chaotic days in a grainy new documentary. The British rockers have remastered Exile on Main Street, a 1972 double album that boasts such concert favorites as Tumbling Dice and Rocks Off. It comes out tomorrow in the US, and today everywhere else.
The new documentary, Stones in Exile, released on June 22, offers snapshots and voice-overs of current and former band members and friends from the time when the group left Britain and its crippling income taxes for France, and recorded in the dank basement of Keith Richards’ French villa.
The period was rich with old material that was easily salvaged and turned into new songs, Mick Jagger and Richards said in New York last week.
“We forgot about them,” Richards said, laughing about why the band had waited so long to dig up the material.
Stones in Exile is more than an hour long, using old black-and-white footage and photographs from French music photographer Dominique Tarle, whose visit to the villa one afternoon turned into a six-month stay.
He, and others including Richards’ old girlfriend Anita Pallenberg, former bassist Bill Wyman and producer Marshall Chess, recall the days where they drank whiskey and recorded in the basement with a mobile recording truck parked outside and parties raging above.
Richards and Jagger, both 66, downplayed legendary tales of drugs, sex and setting the house on fire.
“The first thing on your mind was the songs and the music, everything else was like gravy,” said Richards, who was also consumed at the time with a heroin addiction.
“Writing songs in the afternoon, recording them in the evening , you had no time for debauchery, even me,” he joked. “You had your breakfast, you had your dope.”
Richards did recall some memorable moments. After an entire night of recording, “whoever was left standing” would often jump in his speedboat and “zoom” past Monte Carlo and “go to Italy for breakfast, just for the fun of it,” he said. “I don’t know how we didn’t sink.”
Despite the recession, top models are raking in millions of
US dollars, with Brazilian Gisele Bundchen, German Heidi Klum and Briton Kate Moss the biggest earners.
Bundchen, the 29-year-old beauty who is married to US football player Tom Brady is the world’s highest-paid model, making US$25 million last year, according to forbes.com.
Klum, the 36-year-old mother of four and host of the television show Project Runway, came in second with US$16 million in earnings, followed by fashionista Moss, also 36, who made US$9 million, through modeling campaigns and the launch of her own fashion line and a new fragrance.
It is the second year the same three models topped the list, which is largely because of a risk-averse fashion industry that was not looking for new faces in the unstable economic climate, said Steve Bertoni, of Forbes.
“These are the tried and true supermodels of the last decade ... the household names of the industry,” Bertoni said.
The list represents earnings made from June 2009 to July 2010.
When nature calls, Masana Izawa has followed the same routine for more than 50 years: heading out to the woods in Japan, dropping his pants and doing as bears do. “We survive by eating other living things. But you can give faeces back to nature so that organisms in the soil can decompose them,” the 74-year-old said. “This means you are giving life back. What could be a more sublime act?” “Fundo-shi” (“poop-soil master”) Izawa is something of a celebrity in Japan, publishing books, delivering lectures and appearing in a documentary. People flock to his “Poopland” and centuries-old wooden “Fundo-an” (“poop-soil house”) in
Jan 13 to Jan 19 Yang Jen-huang (楊仁煌) recalls being slapped by his father when he asked about their Sakizaya heritage, telling him to never mention it otherwise they’ll be killed. “Only then did I start learning about the Karewan Incident,” he tells Mayaw Kilang in “The social culture and ethnic identification of the Sakizaya” (撒奇萊雅族的社會文化與民族認定). “Many of our elders are reluctant to call themselves Sakizaya, and are accustomed to living in Amis (Pangcah) society. Therefore, it’s up to the younger generation to push for official recognition, because there’s still a taboo with the older people.” Although the Sakizaya became Taiwan’s 13th
For anyone on board the train looking out the window, it must have been a strange sight. The same foreigner stood outside waving at them four different times within ten minutes, three times on the left and once on the right, his face getting redder and sweatier each time. At this unique location, it’s actually possible to beat the train up the mountain on foot, though only with extreme effort. For the average hiker, the Dulishan Trail is still a great place to get some exercise and see the train — at least once — as it makes its way
Earlier this month, a Hong Kong ship, Shunxin-39, was identified as the ship that had cut telecom cables on the seabed north of Keelung. The ship, owned out of Hong Kong and variously described as registered in Cameroon (as Shunxin-39) and Tanzania (as Xinshun-39), was originally People’s Republic of China (PRC)-flagged, but changed registries in 2024, according to Maritime Executive magazine. The Financial Times published tracking data for the ship showing it crossing a number of undersea cables off northern Taiwan over the course of several days. The intent was clear. Shunxin-39, which according to the Taiwan Coast Guard was crewed
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