Entertainment.

[Littledragon]

Review: 'Vanity Fair' captivates audience.

CNN) -- William Makepeace Thackeray's classic 19th-century serialized story "Vanity Fair" ends with the words, "Ah! vanitas vanitatum! (vanity of vanities!) Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? Or, having it, is satisfied?"

To put that in today's much blunter vernacular, "Be careful what you wish for, baby, because you just may get it." That is the story of Becky Sharp, the heroine of "Vanity Fair."

Reese Witherspoon, 28 and the mother of two, is all grown up and making a serious bid for a best actress nomination with this role. She turns in a mature and engaging performance as Becky Sharp -- despite the disturbing fact that while her character supposedly ages from her mid-teens into her mid-thirties, her appearance barely changes.

Becky's hairstyles change and her cleavage increases, but overall not much suggests physical aging. But the character does age emotionally, thanks to Witherspoon's carefully layered performance.

Becky is a surprisingly modern --and stunningly ruthless -- character. Witherspoon, who packs a lot of punch in her 5-foot-2-inch frame, manages to provoke sympathy even as she leaves a wake of ruin. She climbs from the lowly position of the daughter of a starving artist and a French chorus girl to the peak of London's high society during the first quarter of the 19th century, only to fall -- and fail -- in a spectacular flameout of public scandal.

Becky's success is all the more impressive given the long-standing and rigid class structures of the time. Yet when it comes right down to it, she did it all the old-fashioned way -- sleeping her way to the top.

The film is directed by Mira Nair, a native of India and former documentary filmmaker, who is best known for her highly praised independent film "Monsoon Wedding" (2001).

It's interesting to note that the author of "Vanity Fair" was born in Calcutta in 1811 and was sent to England at the age of six. Both Nair (who left India to study at Harvard University) and Thackeray have a keen eye for finding and portraying the sharp cultural and socially satirical edges of everyday life.

The film's authenticity sweeps viewers away into another time and place, particularly in the London scenes and at the battle of Waterloo. The audience can almost taste the dirt and grime, sweat and smells of 19th-century London, making it evident that regardless of station -- whether beggar or king -- harsh conditions were a fact of life.

The attention to detail and the eye for color and textures by production designer Maria Djurkovic ("The Hours" and "Billy Elliot") and costume designer Beatrix Aruna Pasztor ("The Fisher King" and "Music Box") are remarkable.

All the supporting players are excellent, including, but not limited to, Bob Hoskins, Gabriel Byrne, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Romola Garai.

The movie is adapted by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes("Gosford Park") along with Matthew Faulk and Mark Skeet, who also serve as associate producers on the film. Adapting this 809-page novel to the screen was no mean feat, but the main plot points and story structure have remained intact.

The result is a highly satisfying period-style soap opera with heaving bosoms, elaborate hairdos and a sweeping look at history.

 

[yudansha]

Unauthorized auction of Statue of Liberty artifacts shut down

JERSEY CITY, N.J. (AP) - A company that acquired artifacts salvaged from renovation of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island did not authorize an online auction of the items, which began last week and ended abruptly Tuesday, the company founder said Thursday.

The items advertised for auction on eBay were 18 25-centimetre metal pieces from the statue's original metal framework erected in 1886, and 25 bricks from the Great Hall, Ellis Island's main immigration-processing building, built in 1916.

The auction sought minimum starting bids of $60,000 for each metal piece and $25,000 a brick. The bidding was to have lasted 10 days but was cut short by the seller Tuesday evening after beginning Friday afternoon, said Chris Donlay, an eBay spokesman.

The Associated Press reported on the auction Monday, quoting Carl Malek, who said he represented Gold Leaf Corp. of Fayetteville, Tenn. On a news release announcing the auction, Malek's name appeared with Four Star Brokers as the contact.

Richard Stocks, Gold Leaf's founder and chief executive officer, said he had preliminary talks about marketing the items with representatives from Four Star. He said they never reached a deal.

"There were no written or even verbal agreements with Gold Leaf or any of the principals," said Walter Wolfe, Gold Leaf's lawyer.

"I think the best light you could shed on this is perhaps they were over-eager, maybe even eagerly looking forward to the potential deal. But they got way ahead of themselves."

Malek did not respond to numerous telephone messages left Wednesday and Thursday.

Stocks and his father, John Stocks, who helped form the company with his son in 1984, said they met with several representatives of Four Star at a hotel in Asheville, N.C., about two months ago. Both men said there was talk of building a museum to house artifacts from the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island but the meeting ended without any definitive plans.

"What I discussed with him was the possibility of them repping (representing) our product line, which we're currently developing," Richard Stocks said.

 

[Littledragon]

Report: Jackson paid 1990 accuser.

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Michael Jackson allegedly staved off a child molestation accusation in 1990 with a $2 million payment to the son of an employee at his Neverland Ranch, according to a television report.

The television news magazine by "Dateline NBC," which reported the payment in a segment to be broadcast Friday night, did not disclose its source of information.

In the segment, retired Santa Barbara County Sheriff Jim Thomas, now an NBC news analyst, said his office investigated Jackson in 1993 in connection with one boy's claim and came upon the second accusation.

The first boy reportedly was paid $15 million to $20 million by Jackson to avoid charges the entertainer thought would damage his career even if proved untrue.

Jackson has denied ever harming any child and is currently fighting charges he molested a boy in 2003.

Jackson's lawyer, Thomas Mesereau Jr., did not immediately return a call Thursday from The Associated Press. Lawyers in the current case are under a strict gag order.

"We always believed there were eight to 10 other children out there," Thomas told "Dateline."

But during interviews, he said, "Many of them said that they had spent time with Michael Jackson. They had spent time in his bedroom, but that nothing had happened. Some wouldn't talk to us at all."

Thomas told the AP the employee's son did not file charges and didn't want to testify "because he was afraid his friends would think he was homosexual."

Thomas has previously discussed the boy's claim, but said he wasn't sure until the Dateline report that Jackson had paid the boy $2 million.

"Dateline" said the settlement contained a clause barring it from being discussed publicly.

Thomas said the 12-year-old accused Jackson of "fondling him through his clothes," which could be the basis of misdemeanor charges. No charges were ever filed.

Both boys who accused Jackson in the 1990s are now in their 20s and are not expected to testify in the current case.

Jackson, 45, has pleaded not guilty to committing a lewd act upon a child, administering an intoxicating agent and conspiring to commit child abduction, false imprisonment and extortion. His trial is set to start January 31, 2005.

 

[Littledragon]

Britney's trash is a fan's treasure.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Britney Spears' fans don't think the pop star's chewed gum is "Toxic" -- they're buying wads of it on eBay.

There are over two dozen auctions of used chewing gum on eBay, each claiming their product has been spit out by the 22-year-old singer. Prices go as high as $14,000, but most are for significantly less.

Though there is no way to verify the authenticity of the various wads, many postings include photos of a small piece of chewed gum, a copy of a ticket stub from the place of finding and a personal story of procurement.

One posting claiming to be the originator of the craze says the gum for sale was spat out in anger by Spears outside her Los Angeles home in early August. A picture of the gum, now going for $26, accompanies the auction.

A seller from London who is asking $53 for a piece of gum obtained at Spears' 2000 Wembley Arena concert, declares: "I have had this item for over three years and am only listing it because of the current interest in Ms. Spears' habit for discarding gum!"

Brian Johnson, 25, of Mississauga, Ontario, had a posting asking for $1,000, claiming: "You could take a DNA test to prove this is the real deal." Though he has since taken down the ad, Johnson told The Associated Press in a recent e-mail that he obtained the gum while working backstage at a Toronto concert in April.

"While I was holding the camera, I saw her spit it out," Johnson said. "I thought it would be funny to bring the gum home and show some of my friends. They got a big laugh out of it."

Why would someone pay money for a piece of used gum? Psychologist Joyce Brothers is reminded of the prices that people paid for the clothes and possessions of President John F. Kennedy and actress Katharine Hepburn.

"People want a piece of someone they like and admire," Brothers told the AP Wednesday. "It's like obtaining somebody's halo."

But buyer beware! Some of the auctions are fake. One seller offers a piece of Spears' gum from the 2004 MTV Video Music Awards that "still has her teeth marks in it." Spears didn't attend the event.

The bidding is also often fake. The gum now priced at $14,000 was driven up by one person who bid against himself. Winning bids are mostly closer to $5 to $100.

Chris Donlay, a publicist for eBay, says the veracity of the gum claims isn't the business of the Web site. "As long as it doesn't violate our policies, then it's really between the buyer and the seller."

Whether true or not, more than a few eBayers find the whole thing laughable. One fan offers not Britney's gum, but her own. The auction -- for 1 cent -- reads: "Why waste your money on one of those other super expensive gum auctions when you can get this one here for a steal?" Another offers photos of Spears along with a peach bitten by the seller, who advises, "And remember, please don't spit your gum out. Use a bin or stick it behind your ear."

Still, gum isn't the only Spears' garbage being sold. Also up for auction are a tissue and cigarette butts, making the singer look like quite a litterbug. An allegedly used bath towel and bar of soap, which the seller calls "priceless," are also being auctioned.

And the trend appears to be spreading. There is already a posting selling the gum of another celebrity chewer: Eminem.

 

[yudansha]

Zoo, and the first American...

Israeli lions make new home at Palestinian zoo, in rare act of friendship
By: LAURIE COPANS

QALQILIYA, West Bank (AP) - Three lions born in Israel were transported Sunday through a separation barrier to a Palestinian zoo, in an unusual act of co-operation during four years of deadly violence.

Animal lovers hope the gift from Israel's safari park to a West Bank zoo - meant in part to replace wildlife killed in Israeli army raids - will nurture friendship in troubled times.

The male lions - Nabuko, Grass and Gvir - travelled along a 30-kilometre route that few Israelis and Palestinians are allowed to journey.

Qalqiliya is on the old ceasefire line between Israel and the West Bank, and a high concrete wall separates the town from Israel, protecting a main highway from Palestinian snipers.

Israel says it needs the wall, part of a complex of fences and barriers planned for the entire length of the West Bank, to keep suicide bombers out. Just last week, two bombers infiltrated from an unprotected part of the West Bank and blew up buses, killing 16 Israelis.

But the barrier has further soured relations. Palestinians charge it's a land grab, cutting tens of thousands off from their farmlands and services.

Israelis rarely cross into the West Bank - the army bans such visits - and only a few Palestinians with work permits are allowed through to Israel. That's the tense atmosphere greeting the lions as they were driven across a barrier checkpoint.

The lions came to the zoo in Qalqiliya with an ibex desert goat and two zebras to replace animals that died of tear gas inhalation during a violent demonstration near the zoo.

Only two days before the hostilities broke out in September 2000, veterinarians from the two sides completed a deal including the transfer of animals. On Sunday, four years later, they were finally able to carry it out.

"We cancelled everything because of the intefadeh," or Palestinian uprising, said Sami Khader, veterinarian at the Palestinian zoo. "But our relations never ended. We will not believe they will ever cease."

Neither side has illusions about influencing politicians or militants to end the conflict. The veterinarians said they just hope to give West Bank children an escape from the daily dangers they face from the violence.

"We won't reach a situation of normalization without these types of things," said Motke Levison, 65, the Israeli veterinarian who developed relations with his Palestinian counterparts 18 years ago. "I will contribute my part as I see fit."

When the truck entered Qalqiliya, dozens of cheering school children lined the streets.

"I got out of school to see the new animals," said Omar Ahmad, 12. "I am very happy to see new animals."
_________

Did the First Americans Come From, Er, Australia?

EXETER, England (Reuters) - Anthropologists stepped into a hornets' nest on Monday, revealing research that suggests the original inhabitants of America may in fact have come from what is now known as Australia.

The claim will be extremely unwelcome to today's native Americans who came overland from Siberia and say they were there first.

But Silvia Gonzalez from John Moores University in Liverpool said skeletal evidence pointed strongly to this unpalatable truth and hinted that recovered DNA would corroborate it.

"This is very contentious," Gonzalez, a Mexican, said with a smile at the annual meeting of the British association for the Advancement of Science. "They (native Americans) cannot claim to have been the first people there."

She said there was very strong evidence that the first migration came from Australia via Japan and Polynesia and down the Pacific Coast of America.

Skulls of a people with distinctively long and narrow heads discovered in Mexico and California predated by several thousand years the more rounded features of the skulls of native Americans.

One particularly well preserved skull of a long-face woman had been carbon dated to 12,700 years ago, whereas the oldest accurately dated native American skull was only about 9,000 years old.

"We have extracted her DNA. It is going to be a bomb," she said, declining to give details but adding that the tests carried out so far were being replicated to make sure they were accurate.

She said there were tales from Spanish missionaries of an isolated coastal community of long-face people in Baja California of a completely different race and rituals from other communities in America at the time.

These last survivors were wiped out by diseases imported by the Spanish conquerors, Gonzalez said.

The research is one of 11 different projects in America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East being funded over a four-year period by Britain's Natural Environment Research Council.

The projects, focusing on diet, dating and dispersal of people down the millennia in the face of climate change, aim to rewrite anthropology.

"We want to make headlines from heads," said Professor Clive Gamble of Southampton university. "DNA will give us a completely new map of the world and how we peopled it."

 

[Littledragon]

Box office take is close to $4 billion.

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Summer at movie theaters was a true underdog story for Michael Moore and a gang of dodgeball dimwits, who helped propel Hollywood to another season of record revenue, though the number of moviegoers fell slightly.

Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" became the first documentary to top the $100 million mark, while Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn's goofy comedy "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story" was another surprise $100 million hit.

Teamed with such familiar favorites as "Shrek," "Spider-Man" and "Harry Potter" sequels, "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Dodgeball" helped lift the industry to an all-time summer haul of just under $4 billion from the first weekend in May through Labor Day, according to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

That's up 3 percent from the previous record of $3.9 billion set last summer.

But like summer 2003, higher admission prices meant fewer tickets were sold. Exhibitor Relations estimates moviegoers bought 637.8 million tickets domestically this past summer, down 0.76 percent from 2003.

"What this summer on balance taught us, I think, is people were reasonably satisfied," said Marc Shmuger, vice chairman at Universal Pictures, which had hits with "The Bourne Supremacy" and "Van Helsing" and a flop with "Thunderbirds." "I don't think they were extraordinarily satisfied, but you know what? At the end of the day, reasonably satisfied's not a terrible report card."

The sequels "Shrek 2," "Spider-Man 2" and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" took the win, place and show spots at the box office, with other follow-ups such as "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement" performing well.

"Shrek 2," reuniting the voice cast of Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz and Eddie Murphy, raced past 2003's smash "Finding Nemo" to become the top-grossing animated movie ever at $436.7 million.

The slightly naughty irreverence of "Shrek," along with computer-generated imagery that appeals to tech-savvy audiences, helped broaden the movie's appeal beyond the family audience.

"I think one of the reasons is people have to come to accept CGI as a way of making a movie that's compelling to all ages," as opposed to hand-drawn animation, which can carry the stigma that it's mainly for kids and their moms, said Jim Tharp, head of distribution for DreamWorks, the studio behind the "Shrek" movies. "CGI plays to teens, to dads, to the whole 3-to-93 age group."


Alfred Molina plays "Spider-Man 2's" villain, Dr. Otto Octavius, who becomes Doctor Octopus.
"Spider-Man 2," a reunion for director Sam Raimi and stars Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and James Franco, came up short of the $404 million gross of the 2002 original, but the sequel still made a fortune at $370 million. It should finish a bit ahead of "The Passion of the Christ" as the year's No. 2 hit so far.

Likewise, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" fell shy of the box-office spells weaved by its two predecessors, but the movie's $247 million gross bodes well for the franchise, whose next installment is due out next year.

'Fahrenheit' surprise
Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" was unlike any other summer hit. Its $118 million domestic total was six times that of the previous record holder among feature-length documentaries, Moore's "Bowling for Columbine."

An alternately humorous and horrifying diatribe against President Bush and his actions regarding the Septemberr 11 attacks, "Fahrenheit 9/11" blends Moore's cheeky wit with sobering images from Iraq and interviews with those affected by the war.

"We said from the get-go 'Fahrenheit' was not just informative but also broadly entertaining," said Tom Ortenberg, president of Lions Gate Films, one of the film's distributors. "We've always felt it was the combination of those two things that made it connect with audiences across the country."

Summer regular Will Smith scored another success with "I, Robot," which joined Dennis Quaid's "The Day After Tomorrow," Brad Pitt's "Troy" and M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village" to round out the season's $100 million hit parade.


Michael Moore talks with Lila Lipscomb, who lost a son in Iraq, in "Fahrenheit 9/11."
Other solid earners included Tom Cruise's "Collateral," Will Ferrell's "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" and the teary sleeper "The Notebook."

Summer duds included Halle Berry's "Catwoman," Jackie Chan's "Around the World in 80 Days," Kate Hudson's "Raising Helen" and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's "New York Minute."

Overall, the quality of movies this season proved better than summer 2003, when many moviegoers were disenchanted by a barrage of lackluster sequels, said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations.

"This was a pretty good summer. You had a solid mix of blockbusters, some great documentaries and indie films," Dergarabedian said. "This is what audiences want. They're looking for a choice. If you couldn't find a movie you wanted to see this summer, then you should stop going to see movies."

 

[yudansha]

Started out slow, but then sped up ... still, it was a much more close game this time

KenJen's "Jeopardy!" Streak Continues
By: Sarah Hall

He'll take "Brainiac" for a million-plus, Alex.

Jeopardy! whiz Ken Jennings returned to the game show Monday night after a six-week hiatus to continue his unprecedented winning streak.

So far, he's triumphed in 39 consecutive games and banked $1,331,661, shattering all previous records for the syndicated game show.

Monday's win represented Jennings' lowest cash draw from the game to date—a relatively paltry $10,001 after he incorrectly wagered $21,599 in Final Jeopardy.

But it was enough for Jennings to take the victory, adding his winnings to what is "starting to be a lot of money," according to his mid-show comments.

KenJen, as fans have dubbed the unassuming software engineer from Salt Lake City, has become the stuff of legend for his trivia skills.

On top of the avid media attention Jennings has received, he's inspired several unofficial fan clubs and even has his own drinking game, courtesy of Slate.com. Jeopardrink!: The KenJen Edition operates on the basis that the worse Jennings does, the drunker you get; presumably, players are staying fairly sober.

Thanks to his Jeopardy! streak, the show's ratings have skyrocketed, climbing from an average viewership of 9.6 million in June to 15 million in July, per Nielsen Media Research.

According to TVgameshows.net, Jennings is in fifth place for most money earned on a game show, but the ranking doesn't reflect his playing skills.

"I'm mesmerized by his talent," TVgameshows.net webmaster Steve Beverly told USA Today. "I think it's safe to say that he is the top game show player of all time."

Through it all, Jennings, 30, has remained modest about his uncanny ability to continuously come up with the correct answers. (Framed in the form of a question, natch.)

"I think everyone has a great memory when it comes to the things they really love, and I happen to be curious about a whole lot of things," he explained on the official Jeopardy! message board.

"I can't really tell you why, but I've always been that way. When I meet someone with an unusual job or hobby, I'm always picking their brains for cool things I don't know about their areas of expertise. I also watch a lot of movies. It's amazing what you can learn from movies."

Jennings' Jeopardy! run would not have been possible under the show's now-defunct longtime rule that a contestant had to leave after five straight wins

But at the start of Jeopardy!'s 20th season last fall, the powers that be changed the rules, removing the restriction. Despite KenJen's monumental success, there are no plans to reinstate the rule, according to spokesman Jeff Ritter—if he keeps winning, he'll keep his victor's pedestal.

Jeopardy! will air two more weeks of original episodes, which began taping in August, before going on hiatus again for a special tournament.

In the meantime, KenJen isn't revealing anything about his future on the Jeopardy! set in accordance with the show's strict confidentiality policy .

Despite his winning streak, the game show guru says he knows he's not infallible.

"I keep thinking I'm going to get beat," he told USA Today.

"The law of averages means that one of these days, my number's up. Every day the contestants file in, and I sort of look at them like bullets in a gun. You know — like which one of these people has my name on him or her? And for some weird fluke, it hasn't happened yet. But I think it will."
________

Sounds Like an Idea for a TV Series...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Two German nuns took the law into their own hands and recovered a picture of the Virgin Mary stolen from their Franciscan hospital, police said Tuesday.

The engraving vanished Saturday and Sisters Georgia and Isabella decided not to leave the case just to the police.

"The two nuns took a car and scoured the local area on Sunday morning," said a police spokesman. "They got lucky and found the picture at a flea market."

"When the seller asked for 500 euros they said they would have to ring to get someone to bring the money. Instead they called the police," he said.

The seller is being investigated for handling stolen goods.

 

[Littledragon]

Strength and cunning in a filthy society.

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- As a teenager growing up in India, director Mira Nair spent her days and nights voraciously reading her favorite novel, "Vanity Fair."

Thirty-one years later she's bringing William Makepeace Thackeray's story of Becky Sharp, the cunning and clever social climber, to the big screen.

Perhaps it was destiny -- though the ever-resourceful Sharp would beg to disagree.

But still: "It's an amazing privilege to have been offered this movie because I have loved this book -- no exaggeration -- since I was 16 years old. It's one of those banquets of a book that gives me something new every time I read it," said Nair.

Nair said books by Jane Austen and other 19th-century writers never interested her. Through Sharp, author William Makepeace Thackeray presented a new kind of world, one where women showed strength and resolve.

"The Austen novels [had] young ladies just sitting waiting to be proposed to, for God's sake. Becky had no time for that," said Nair. "She was born on the other side of the tracks, like most of us are, and she had to make her way."

Nair lives her life by similar principles. After leaving her hometown of Bhubaneswar, India, about 300 miles south of Calcutta, she moved to the United States to study film at Harvard. (She now splits her time between New York and Uganda).

After a quick turn in acting, Nair (rhymes with "fire") changed her focus to directing.

Her biggest films to date are 1991's "Mississippi Masala," the story of an Indian family expelled from Uganda when Idi Amin takes power, and "Monsoon Wedding," a tale of relatives trying to prepare for an arranged marriage in India.

Both films brought her critical acclaim and numerous international film awards.

'Carnival-esque quality'
With "Vanity Fair," Nair faced a new set of cinematic challenges. Perhaps the most daunting was the adaptation of Thackeray's 800-page novel, a chore she entrusted to a fellow "Fair" fan, screenwriter Julian Fellowes of "Gosford Park" fame.

"I wanted to convey the whole carnival-esque quality of the world that Thackeray presented to us. How every character had a place and had a nuance and had a contradiction and had a paradox," said Nair. "Thackeray gave us a lot of fuel for that because his characters are vivid, but he had 800 pages to make them vivid!"

The next challenge was finding a location that could support such a large-scale production. After nine months of negotiation the historic city of Bath, England, agreed to let Nair and her team of experts set up camp.

Their first task was turning Bath into early 19th-century London -- the REAL early 19th-century London, not the elegant, steam-cleaned version we're used to seeing in movies.

"What I did ... is try to make the exterior filled with life. [London] was the filthiest, the most cacophonous [city]. It had pigs, it had cows, it had [crap] on the streets," said Nair.

Witherspoon's 'total appeal'

Reese Witherspoon was Nair's top choice to play Becky Sharp.
With script in hand and the location scouted, the final component was casting Becky Sharp -- a no-brainer for Nair.

"[Reese Witherspoon] was the first, and ... only person that I thought who would play it, for many reasons. Number one, an actor who has to play from 17 to 35 and be convincing in both ranges. And two, we all know her extraordinary comic guile and her wit ... but she also has that irresistibility in her, that total appeal," said Nair.

Sharp is often not the most likable of characters. She wants to get to the top of London society and isn't afraid to use all her wit and wiles to get there. When the book came out, her behavior seemed scandalous; nowadays, the character seems more sympathetic because modern audiences are more aware of the constraints of the time.

Nair said the best part of casting Witherspoon in such an offbeat role was that it gave her an opportunity to flex her directing muscles.

"I wanted to add something that you've never seen about an actress before and this was my chance, and Reese's chance ... to make her a full-blown sensual woman. And to see also that emotional depth, that real range," said Nair.

The cast includes Gabriel Byrne ("The Usual Suspects") and Jim Broadbent, Academy Award winner for his role in 2001's "Iris."

Nair said all the chaos of writing, scouting and casting is worth it in order to introduce a new "world" to audiences.

"That's the joy I have as a filmmaker, that's what I love to do," said Nair. "I'm very fortunate."

 

[Littledragon]

The time when television eats itself.

NEW YORK (AP) -- This fall's TV shows are only just starting to premiere. But in a scant four months, pilot season will be cranking up, with next fall in its sights.

What is pilot season? "The 120 days between January and April when managers, agents and lawyers try to place actors in new television programs," declares the helpful definition that begins each episode of "Pilot Season," a dead-to-rights show-biz spoof airing this week on cable's Trio.

"Pilot Season" tracks the shifting fortunes of Hollywood hopefuls who want nothing more than to score a role on a sitcom -- or to represent such a cash cow.

It has a razor-sharp cast including Sarah Silverman ("School of Rock"), David Cross ("Arrested Development") and Andy Dick ("Less Than Perfect") as well as Sam Seder (a talk show host on Air America Radio), who is also its director and co-writer. (The first two of the series' six half-hours aired Monday at 9 p.m. EDT, with the remaining episodes rolling out nightly through September 11 and being rerun throughout; check local listings.)

Seder and Silverman play Max and Susan, former sweethearts who made a film together and broke up after it didn't sell. But reflecting the series' too-close-for-comfort authenticity, Seder and Silverman dated in real life and made the 1997 film "Who's the Caboose?" -- then broke up, in part because it didn't sell.

Employing a semi-scripted "mockumentary" style, "Pilot Season" provides a where-are-they-now? look at the many characters from "Who's the Caboose?" -- which followed New Yorkers Max and Susan to Hollywood for their first pilot season way back when. Fittingly, this very funny film gets its belated world premiere on Trio at 9 p.m. Sunday, thus setting the stage for the series that collectively serves as its sequel.

Exes and 'real farmers'
As "Pilot Season" begins, Max, the erstwhile dedicated-to-his-craft performance artist, is aiming to cash in as a personal manager at Big Management Company, thanks to strings his ex pulled for him when Big Management signed her.

Susan, who recklessly passed on a sitcom role eight years ago, is still auditioning for TV but hopes to break into films. (Good thing she has a rich boyfriend these days.) She doesn't have much to do with Max, as she tells the camera on the first episode.

"I know he's on the Earth ... he knows I'm on the Earth," she trills with affected breeziness. "And that's good enough for us."


Among Trio's other shows is "Brilliant, But Canceled," which this season includes 1975's "The Invisible Man."
But it's really not good enough for Max, who still wants Susan back -- as a girlfriend, as a client, as something.

Fortunately, Max has other irons in the fire, mainly Russ Chockley (played by Ross Brockley), a reclusive actor-turned-farmer whose success in commercials for a discount motel chain has the networks clamoring to sign him for a series.

Brought by Max back to Hollywood from Nebraska, Chockley takes a meeting where he's introduced as "a real farmer, if you can believe that."

Learning of his agrarian focus, an NBC executive struggles to relate. "I just had corn in my salad," she volunteers.

Will Max, Chockley and all our other friends in this Darwinian flash dance have a deal in place before pilot season -- and "Pilot Season" -- conclude?

A sly examination of the TV industry (and, more broadly, of human vanities and self-delusion), "Pilot Season" takes the cake as Trio's first original comedy series. Sadly, it may also be the last.

Distribution problems
According to a deal announced recently, DirecTV will continue to carry loads of channels owned by NBC Universal, including NBC, MSNBC, USA and Bravo. But not Trio, which at year's end will vanish into the ether for DirecTV subscribers.

And maybe for everybody else. Trio's loss of DirecTV distribution will instantly dwarf by two-thirds its potential audience, an already scant 20 million viewers -- which could spell its doom.

This would be a premature end for a channel that has forged a whimsically curatorial approach to TV and pop culture, and in the process won favor with such programming as "Brilliant, But Cancelled," which highlights short-lived but noteworthy series from the past.

A new round of "Brilliant, But Cancelled" began Monday at 8 p.m. This time around, the show unearths episodes of "Deadline," "The Invisible Man," the extraordinary 1996-97 mob drama "EZ Streets," the 1990 comedy "Parenthood" (with Leonardo DiCaprio, David Arquette and Thora Birch), and, from 1959-60, "Johnny Staccato," starring John Cassavetes as a Manhattan private eye. (Check listings.)

Trio, which began life in the mid-1990s as a U.S. outlet for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., was acquired in 2000 by media magnate Barry Diller for his Universal Television group, which then became part of Vivendi Universal, which, in turn, merged with NBC last spring to become NBC Universal.

So far NBC Universal has been tight-lipped about Trio's fate, but with the network's DirecTV cutoff looming, its new owner can cite ample reason to throw in the towel. Trio, crushed by the embrace of two media behemoths, could soon find that "Brilliant, But Cancelled" is its own epitaph.

 

[Littledragon]

What matters to Anita Baker.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Inside the offices of her new record label, Anita Baker is getting the full VIP treatment. A celebrity makeup artist works delicately on her face, a photo shoot awaits and staff members attend to her every need -- including that crucial designer dress.

Ah, the benefits of celebrity life. But after spending the past decade toiling away as a doting housewife, attentive mother and dutiful daughter, the R&B chanteuse is finding that getting reacclimated to the spotlight isn't all that easy.

"I've never kind of been one to hang in the light too long. It burns my eyes. I need some shade," says Baker, who released her first album in 10 years, "My Everything," on Tuesday.

"I'm used to getting up at 7, getting breakfast, getting the kids off to school, and doing the mommy thing and the wife thing and the daughter thing," says Baker. "This is pretty self-absorbed and I've gotta kinda turn that faucet back on because that's been turned off for quite a while."

Unlike other artists who fade into the background after disappointing sales or lack of fan interest, the veteran multiplatinum artist -- known for late '80s and early '90s hits such as "Sweet Love," "Been So Long," and "No One in the World" -- turned off the faucet herself when her career was still thriving.

Her 1994 Grammy-winning album, "Rhythm of Love," sold almost two million copies and included hits such as "I Apologize," and in 1995 she wrapped up a successful tour.

"After 'Rhythm of Love,' I went home to recharge, and life just started happening," says Baker, dressed in a black top and pants, hair shorn in her trademark short cut and looking almost the same as a decade ago.

With two infant sons and a husband, Baker was more than happy to relinquish stardom to focus on being a wife and mother.

"My kids started growing up. I tried to leave and go cut the record, and I was like, 'Dang, I can't leave ... I can't leave these babies,' " she says. "I didn't want to be in a situation where other people were raising my sons. We just settled into a very normal, suburban lifestyle, with two kids, a cat and a bird and a mommy and a daddy."

Close to family
But in time, she would also have to attend to two ailing parents -- first her father, who would die of bone cancer, and her mother, who succumbed to Alzheimer's disease. Taking care of them -- not singing -- became her top priority.

"I put my family over my career for the last 10 years, and I didn't intend to, but it just happened that way, and as it started to happen, it was like, this feels right," she says.

Her feelings were confirmed by a failed attempt to record an album during the height of her family difficulties. Atlantic Records executives were pushing her, but her heart wasn't really in it, she says.


"It's impossible to write and produce a record when your parents are dying. I really tried, I really really tried, but it just wouldn't come," she said. "So I got dropped from the label. And again, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

"This was the very first time that I found myself in a position that I could not juggle all the plates in the air, where I could not multitask," she says. "When I was trying to be a songwriter and a record producer and a doctor and a nurse and a daughter and a mommy, my gifts weren't coming. Once I made the decision that I'm going to be here with my mother, the waters parted and the sky cleared."

It wasn't until Baker's mother died in 2002 that she decided to pick up the microphone again. She wasn't looking to record an album -- she just wanted to perform, to prevent grief from absorbing her.

Her longtime agent, Jody Wenig, remembers when she decided to return to the stage. "She called me, I didn't call her. I didn't believe her," laughs Wenig, who had tried to lure Baker back to the concert arena for years.

Baker's first concert was a low-key affair at Westbury Music Fair in Long Island, N.Y. A nervous Baker didn't know quite what to expect. She had put on a few pounds and didn't have a glamorous look or any new material.

"I was not ready. I was right out of my living room and on to the stage," she says. "But the thing that I found out in doing that first show, even having 15 extra pounds and having mommy hair, was that with my audience, it ain't about my body, and it wasn't about my hair. It was about my music, and that's what I learned that night, and I'll take that with me for the rest of my career."

The one-night gig became a nationwide tour, which Baker likened to "a family reunion." Once she knew she had an audience, she began plotting her return to the recording studio.

"We came back into the business via our fan base. Our fan base showed the industry that we're still a marketable commodity, and that's all the industry cares about," Baker says.

'She's singing differently'
She decided to sign with the esteemed jazz label Blue Note in part because they agreed to let her own her master recordings, a rarity for artists. They were also receptive to her recording a jazz album, but only after she delivered a "classic Anita Baker" disc first.

Baker admits she conceived of a jazz album comeback at first because she worried there was no place for her in today's music scene, where artists approaching 30 are considered over the hill.

"I felt that there were would be no audience for me in the pop world or in the new urban world, so I was going to go to one of my other strengths," she says.

Baker has been pleasantly surprised to find out she was wrong. The title track and first single from the album is already a top 30 hit on the Billboard Hot R&B-Hip-Hop singles chart.

Like her past albums, "My Everything" contains her signature elegant R&B ballads. But longtime producer and collaborator Barry Eastmond says there's a new side as well.

"She's singing differently -- the songs are going to have a different point of view," he says. "It's always going to be love songs, but it can be love in a different way, now that she's older and she's a mom now."

And for Baker, one of the biggest lessons of her time off has been discovering different sides of herself -- and learning that they are just as enriching, or perhaps more so, than singing.

"For years I thought that (singing) was all I could do, and it's like 'God, if I'm not singing, I'm worthless. I attached my self-worth to that,' " she says. "But I've come to find in the time that I spent way from the business I am valid outside of the business. I'm a good mother, I'm a good wife, I'm a good daughter ... I'm a whole person."

 

[yudansha]

Ali Calls for U.S. Boxing Commission

By: FREDERIC J. FROMMER

WASHINGTON - Boxing great Muhammad Ali asked Congress on Thursday to create a U.S. Boxing Commission, saying oversight by the federal government is needed to protect boxers from exploitation and injury.

Ali's testimony before a congressional panel was read by his wife, Lonnie Ali, because he suffers from Parkinson's disease (news - web sites). As she spoke, he sat in a seat next to her, trembling — one of the symptoms of Parkinson's.

"Reform measures are unlikely to succeed," Ali said, "unless a U.S. Boxing Commission is created with authority to oversee a sport that still attracts a disproportionate number of unsavory elements that prey upon the hopes and dreams of young athletes."

Legislation authored by Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., would create a three-person commission — appointed by the president — to license boxers, managers, promoters and sanctioning organizations. It would impose uniform health and safety standards, establish a centralized medical registry and provide uniform ranking criteria and contractual guidelines. The bill has passed the Senate but no action on it is expected in the House this year.

In 1996, Congress established minimum health and safety standards for professional boxing, which were expanded by the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act of 2000.

But Ali said more work was needed, citing a 2003 Government Accountability Office study which found that inconsistent regulation by state commissions led to permanent and sometimes fatal injuries, economic exploitation of boxers and corruption.

"There are still disturbing indications that federal, state and tribal enforcement of boxing laws has been spotty and in some respects, nonexistent," Ali told the stargazed members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's trade and consumer protection subcommittee.

The subcommittee chairman, Rep. Cliff Stearns (news, bio, voting record), R-Fla., said it was probably too late to win House passage, but that he would try to move it through the committee in 2005.

Ali, who did not speak at the hearing, signed autographs for several congressional staffers and even a few lawmakers after his testimony.

Robert E. Mack, general counsel for the World Boxing Association, one of the sport's sanctioning bodies, called the legislation too broad.

Mack, who was also representing the International Boxing Federation, said states already have sufficient authority to regulate the sport and to make sure there are adequate medical safeguards.

However, Bruce Spizler, a lawyer for the Association of Boxing Commissioners, which represents state and tribal boxing commissions, said that his organization has no authority to force any kind of minimum state standards.

A U.S. Boxing Commission is needed to impose such standards, he told the subcommittee.

Association of Boxing Commissioners: http://www.abcboxing.com/
World Boxing Association: http://www.wbaonline.com/
International Boxing Federation: http://www.ibamensboxing.com/

 

[Littledragon]

Sketches of the apocalypse.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Art Spiegelman thinks of September 11, and dreams.

He dreams of the dying Twin Towers as shimmery, collapsing bones.

He dreams of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden standing across a table from each other, one holding a scimitar, the other a gun.

And he dreams that the ghosts of Happy Hooligan and Little Nemo and Krazy Kat and the Katzenjammer Kids -- all the old, classic comic strip characters -- have been freed from their defunct Newspaper Row homes by the World Trade Center collapse, only to find themselves lost in 21st-century reality.

He dreams and he draws, and his drawings are dreams -- or nightmares: colliding planes and buildings, searching for his daughter, preparing for war, comic strip characters darting in the ruins. His work, originally done for the German newspaper Die Zeit, has now been collected into a new book, "In the Shadow of No Towers" (Pantheon).

He wasn't going to write about September 11 -- at least, not in these terms, he says in an interview at his studio in Manhattan's SoHo district.

"I thought all I was going to do was capture what happened to me that day," he says. "My goal was to show what I'd seen directly ... and contrast that with [the] media reality."

The project was going to be in comic form, he knew that, a change from the magazine covers he'd been doing for years. "I know I wasn't able to think coherently, and comics are a way I've been able in the past to put my thoughts in order, literally put them in boxes," he says. The main character in the pages was Spiegelman, sometimes drawn realistically, other times not.

But the other figures -- the old comic strip characters from the early 1900s golden age -- found their way into his work. "I was given a page [by Die Zeit] about the size of [a] USA Today [broadsheet] to work on. ... I'm sure the large-size pages had something to do with channeling these old characters," he says. "It was a net big enough to catch them."

'Melted-down state'
Spiegelman sits at a table, wearing a vest pinned with an upside-down peace button, and smokes one cigarette after another. His walls, where they aren't blocked by neatly jammed bookcases, are covered with posters and strips and memorabilia: an ad for a Chris Ware exhibit, an Ernie Bushmiller "Nancy," an old "Gasoline Alley," children's drawings, a nine-year-old Spanish calendar saved for its artwork.

This isn't the first time Spiegelman has taken on serious issues in the graphic-art format. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for his two-volume work "Maus," a graphic novel about the Holocaust that pictured the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats.

He was also the driving force behind Raw magazine, one of the most important alt-comic 'zines, and has been drawing covers for The New Yorker magazine for more than a decade -- including the one that memorialized September 11, which consisted of the Twin Towers in a glossy black against a dull black background. (The cover, with the comic strip characters overlaid, also fronts "In the Shadow of No Towers.")


Art Spiegelman
Spiegelman's first pages for Die Zeit stuck with his recollections of the attack leavened by ironies, such as a reference to the soon-to-open Arnold Schwarzenegger movie of the time "Collateral Damage" and the eerie contrast between the real event and pop-culture one-offs such as a Topps "Mars Attacks" card from the early '60s.

But Spiegelman's distress -- he describes himself as being in a "melted-down state" -- soon gave way to anger.

"Unfortunately what happened was that the hijacking of the planes got hijacked by the gang that's invaded New York [for the Republican convention], and I was forced to have to go there," he says. He describes the pages as "journal entries" done "while waiting for the apocalypse." (See another graphic from "No Towers." )

'Secret messages from the past'
Not every reviewer has approved. Newsweek liked the book, but Time panned it, saying that Spiegelman's drawing comparisons between U.S. figures, terrorists and comic strip characters like Ignatz Mouse, for example, was pushing things too far.

For Spiegelman, however, the comic strip characters bound the work together -- and connected it to the present. Indeed, the second half of "In the Shadow of No Towers" consists of the comic strips themselves, as they appeared on Sundays in 1902 or 1906 or 1911, with no comment beyond an introduction by Spiegelman.

"I'm trying to find a reason to make this a book, because [my work was] just pages, pages made while waiting to blow up," he says. "And I realized that ... the content [of the comic strips] seems to echo the present. Even though [they] were never meant to be here, it was like secret messages from the past were coming forward."

The comics are eerily resonant. In one, the hobo Happy Hooligan dresses as an Arab and hits a camel with a rifle. In another, the Yellow Kid stands at the end of a line of children being "mustered" for war. And another shows an oversized Little Nemo -- four or five stories high -- fleeing a metropolis being squashed by a friend.

For Spiegelman, even with their haunting qualities, the comics were like old friends. While other New Yorkers were turning to W.H. Auden's poem "September 1, 1939" -- "We must love one another or die" -- Spiegelman was immersing himself in the everyday solace of ancient Sunday funnies.

"When you look at these comics you're almost eavesdropping on some working stiff's daily life and he just happens to be a genius," he says. "['Little Nemo in Slumberland' artist] Winsor McCay was not making this thinking that, in 2010, the heirs of the planet will look back and see what genius once roamed the city."

And, he adds, there's something comforting in the transience of the world -- and the willingness of the world, particularly his New York world, to let eras live on top of one another.

"I can't reduce it to a sound bite, but [the work] has various resonances for me, and those include the nature of the ephemeral and the eternal -- what it is to have something that was never meant to last, like a newspaper, and something meant to last forever, like the pyramids or the World Trade Center towers... ," he says. "That the city is a kind of collage of past and present. ... Insisting on the happy ending of 'No Towers' existing probably somewhere in 1901 instead of 2010 is part of the way I was able to find this as a book."

 

[Littledragon]

New York Fashion Week in stride.

NEW YORK (AP) -- New York Fashion Week began with Kenneth Cole, Perry Ellis and Tracy Reese showing their softer sides in clothes that appeared ready for next year's vacation.

Even anti-establishment label Imitation of Christ followed the relaxed trend when it came to actual garments, but, of course, the show was anything but the norm.

The collective palette at the Bryant Park tents in midtown Manhattan Wednesday was largely muted tangerine, lime green and ocean blue, with black, white and neutrals that are meant to be the user-friendly mix-and-match pieces.

Some 80 shows were scheduled during the week, including Carolina Herrera, Bill Blass, Nicole Miller and Tommy Hilfiger on Thursday, and Vera Wang, Monique Lhuillier, Cynthia Rowley and Zac Posen on Friday's schedule.

Heavy rain didn't deter the fashion faithful as Cole opened the eight days of spring 2005 previews with his signature pop culture-laced video, including references to a certain pop star's wardrobe malfunction and Donald Trump's hit NBC reality show, "The Apprentice." But instead of making a partisan political statement, which he's done in the past, this message simply encouraged everyone to get out and vote.

"November 2 is not a dress rehearsal," Cole said.

Meanwhile, his runway show offered editors, retailers and fashion fans (actor Alan Cumming among them) a leisurely look with strapless dresses with flattering vertical panels and boning, crisp motor pants with zipper details and gauzy sweaters for women, and cotton canvas suits and white jeans for men.

Patrick Robinson, designer of Perry Ellis' women's line, said he wanted to capture "the new romance" that can be found in feminine, more modest clothes. It looked like he used the Victorian era for inspiration when he created a cream satin brocade pinched-waist jacket over a white dress with flowing ruffles and a light green cummerbund.

"After wearing tweed and camel hair all winter, I wanted to offer women something light, delicate and pretty," he told The Associated Press.

Robinson said that as he was putting the collection together, he noticed there were very few prints, but instead of adding bold or geometric patterns that would work against his theme, he opted for textured brocade and jacquard fabrics to add richness to the garments.

Jerry Kaye, Perry Ellis' menswear designer, took a more country-club approach as he put models in peak-lapel suits in navy with pique button-down shirts, and white trousers and jeans with lime-and-navy V-neck sweaters.

Designer Tracy Reese concentrated on spring coats with open collars and swinging hems, and dresses perfect for cocktails in the garden. Her prints had names such as "garden of Eden" and "weeping willow," and her "peacock" print was just that: a stunning fan of blue, green and some black.

She offered one unusual silhouette, something she called a "cummerbund cami," essentially a tank top with a high-waisted belt and a panel that hung in front from the waist to the bottom of the shirt.

The most wearable pieces from Imitation of Christ were cotton T-shirt versions of Greek goddess dresses, worn with warrior-style sandals that are part of IOC designer Tara Subkoff's new line for Easy Spirit. Some dresses had rope-style belts that made a nice touch.

However, the runway show, which attracted Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gretchen Mol and Subkoff's pal Chloe Sevigny, seemed endless. And Imitation of Christ, finally showing at the tents that serve as Fashion Week Central, couldn't pass up a chance to make a political statement to such a large audience -- the presentation began with male models in military-style garments marching in almost complete darkness in front of pictures of the war in Iraq.

Stylish women don't want to give up their pencil skirts and dark denim jeans when they're pregnant, and thanks to the looks presented at Liz Lang's runway show, they don't have to.

Maternity designer Lang led off the second day of New York Fashion Week Thursday. Lang's fern-print baby doll dress and swinging coral georgette dress fit right into the soft look presented Wednesday.

 

[Littledragon]

Halle Barry On Prince!

Date: Sept 9, 2004
Source: InStyle
________________________________________________________________

I just read what someone was talking about Halle praising Prince in InStyle magazine and there it was. The interviewer asked Halle who is sexier Sade or Sting and Halle says neither--the sexiest singer is Prince. He is sex in boots.

I have wanted to know about this for the longest and maybe you guys could post something if you know it. I have always wondered if Prince admires Halle as well as an actress. I wonder if he respects her work and if he has seen any of her movies. I know he sees a movie or two, but I mean her films. I wish the two would meet at some afterparty or some gathering and take a picture together. It was already great for Halle to say the great things she said about Prince on BET.com discussing Purple Rain and then in Instyle. It would be even greater if he would say the same things about her.

 

[yudansha]

Sticks and stones

Nicole Kidman has been on the receiving end of countless rumours regarding her slender frame, but this time she's hitting back at what she calls "absurd" claims that she's suffering from the bone disease osteoporosis.

Last week, the National Enquirer alleged Nicole was suffering from the debilitating condition and blamed her hectic lifestyle and recent split from Lenny Kravitz for affecting her health.

Her publicist Catherine Olim said the reports were "complete nonsense" and that the 37-year-old star is "in terrific shape."

"I haven't had tests for anything," Kidman explains to the London Daily Mail. The slim star also insists she hasn't lost any weight -- despite recent photos of her looking stick-thin.

She added: "I've always been thin. Yet the same story keeps getting more and more absurd. It's amusing that, with everything else that's going on in the world, people are concerned about my weight. But guess what? I've always been like this -- ever since I studied ballet as a girl."

But not everyone is buying the ballet defense.

Outspoken rock matriarch Sharon Osbourne launched a tirade against Kidman on English television calling her a "skinny cow" who needs a "bloody good meal."

Ouch!

Nicole, meanwhile, is rocking the gondola at the Venice Film Festival where veteran actress Lauren Bacall, 79, has labelled her Birth co-star a "beginner" after a journalist described Kidman as a "legend." "She's not a legend. She's a beginner... she can't be a legend at whatever age she is," Bacall barked.

All this bad mouthing just goes to show that being thin, young and rich in Hollywood is both a blessing and burden. Fortunately, Nicole is also talented.

 

[Littledragon]

Prince tops Grammy possibles.

Prince tops Grammy possibles

http://www.calendarlive.c...e-channels

September 12, 2004

POP EYE

Prince tops Grammy possibles

His may be the most intriguing name surfacing in the early handicapping of the Grammys.

By Steve Hochman, Special to The Times

Prince almost stole the show as a performer at the Grammy Awards this year. Can he steal it again in the 47th edition of the prestigious music honors Feb. 13 at Staples Center — but this time as an award winner?

His may be the most intriguing name surfacing in the early handicapping of the Grammys as the Sept. 30 cutoff for eligible releases approaches.


Longtime Grammy insiders and observers surveyed by Pop Eye consider Prince's "Musicology" to be among the favorites for album of the year consideration. The album was the centerpiece of an amazing comeback that included a new accessibility and one of the year's most successful concert tours.

Noah Callahan-Bever, senior editor of Vibe magazine, said Prince is likely to get attention "for delivering the kind of record people wanted him to make and for having launched the campaign on the Grammy show … which can't hurt."

The album of the year nominees list could be dominated by African American urban music stars to an unprecedented extent, with R&B singer Usher's "Confessions," dominant rap rookie Kanye West's "College Dropout" and 2001 multi-Grammy-winner Alicia Keys' "Diary of Alicia Keys" among the top choices of those surveyed.

Singer Norah Jones — the queen of the 2002 Grammys with best album and new artist among the awards won for her debut album, "Come Away With Me" — may have the best chance of crashing the urban party, though support for her current album, "Feels Like Home," seems relatively lukewarm at this point.

"If it comes to pass that hip-hop and urban albums dominate the album of the year category, all you can say is it's a long time coming," says Joe Levy, deputy managing editor of Rolling Stone magazine. "Artistically it's the most important music and commercially one of the dominant musics for well over a decade. And it's music where new talent is constantly emerging and pushing the boundaries."

There's even a chance that Prince could get a nomination and not be the senior R&B figure on the album ballot. There's strong sentiment for Ray Charles, who died in June and whose duets album "Genius Loves Company" came out in August — though the general feeling is that the record is not strong enough to gather the level of support that went to Warren Zevon's posthumous "The Wind" last year.

No clear choice

Predicting nominations has become complicated in recent years, with the final selections in the top awards categories now made by a blue-ribbon panel, choosing from the 20 entries receiving the most votes from the general Recording Academy membership.

That gives an almost-anything-can-happen spin to the process, as when Radiohead's "OK Computer" got a 1998 album nomination when the English group was basically a hipster favorite rather than a mainstream name.

This year, though, there doesn't seem to be an obvious candidate to fill that role.

"There wasn't a Radiohead or Coldplay or White Stripes," says Vibe's Callahan-Bever. "There was nothing going on."

Franz Ferdinand is one band that could move into that slot, but the Scottish post-punk revivalists seem a longshot for album consideration, though a strong bet for a best new artist nomination. Other leading candidates in that category include the bands Maroon 5 and Los Lonely Boys, as well as country newcomer Gretchen Wilson and rapper West.

Both West and Usher have made great strides in reaching beyond the urban markets, but neither seems to have quite the cross-cultural appeal that swept OutKast to its album win for last year's "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below."

"Usher has a really good chance," says Alan Light, editor in chief of Tracks magazine and a former editor of Rolling Stone, Spin and Vibe. "He's put a decent career under his belt, getting strong on stage."

The tepid support for Jones is a bit of a surprise, considering that her second album has sold very well, if not quite to the phenomenal level of the debut.

"I expect it's the same picture that it was for her tour this summer — scale down," says Rolling Stone's Levy. "She had to scale down the size of venues. I think she'll scale down on Grammy nominations. But she makes intimate records, so it's fine for her to scale down."

Loretta Lynn's "Van Lear Rose," which saw the country veteran in a dynamic collaboration with Jack White of the White Stripes, seemed a strong candidate when it came out. But while the album received tremendous attention, it never built much momentum in mainstream consciousness.

Rounding out the field

Other names expected to get serious consideration include Black Eyed Peas, Jill Scott, Van Hunt, the Beastie Boys, the Shins and Modest Mouse. The last could wind up being this year's Shelby Lynne, who was best new artist in 2000 after eligibility rules were changed to allow consideration of artists who had made a leap from relative obscurity to mainstream recognition.

Modest Mouse has been making records for more than a decade, but is only now enjoying its first mainstream hit with its current album "Good News for People Who Love Bad News" and single "Float On."

 

[Littledragon]

The DC comics universe as tragedy.

Superman kicked the bucket a few years ago but was back in no time soaring through the skies. Batman's sidekick Robin also bit the dust once. Capes fall and refill again, a new story begins, and crimefighting goes on ...

So after that, what's the worst thing that could happen to a fantastical crusader?

A seven-part DC Comics series has become a best seller by answering that question with a brutal premise: kill off a hero's wife.

That is the central story of "Identity Crisis," now reaching its fourth installment, that puts Batman, Superman, the Flash, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow and other notable characters through an emotional hell.

The story line has electrified comics readers by immersing the Man of Steel, the Caped Crusader and their fellow good guys in pain, guilt, anger, fear and realistic violence and consequences.

Could these icons of righteousness sometimes commit horrible wrongs in pursuit of good? Comics fans either adore "Identity Crisis," or consider it heresy. Either way, it's the No. 1 comic in the world right now.

"If nobody really cared, that's an insult to us," said "Identity Crisis" artist Rags Morales. "If they hate it, that's great. If they love it, that's great. But if they're like 'Ehhh ... So what? No big deal.' Those are the ones that would bother us."

The story begins with a well-known woman from the DC Comics universe -- someone who didn't have any special powers -- being raped and murdered: Sue Dibny, wife of Ralph Dibny, who comic book lovers know as the Elongated Man from the Justice League.

Nobody is safe: not Ma and Pa Kent, not ex-wives, not even the non-powerful acquaintances of villains are free from the serial killer's wrath.

A few of the world's most notable superheroes may have indirectly had a hand in Mrs. Dibny's demise, or unjustly punished the wrong suspect -- and find themselves agonizing over the responsibility.

A villain who wants to destroy the world is one thing -- but "Identity Crisis" writer Brad Meltzer said a single realistic death, in all its brutality, could have more resonance in his story as the consequences unfold in front of the reader.

"This is not an adventure. It's a tragedy," said Meltzer, the best-selling novelist of thrillers such as "The Millionaires" and "The Zero Game" and the co-creator of the new TV drama "Jack & Bobby." (See story on "Jack & Bobby.") "It is taking the heroes and testing everything about them, putting them in difficulties and seeing if they come out the same way."

The fourth installment of "Identity Crisis" is due in stores next week. The first installment, which came out at the beginning of summer, is sold out, and just a handful of the first books remain in stores.

Both the appeal and the outrage of "Identity Crisis" is the way it alters the characters' lore. It would be one thing to kill off the Elongated Man. It's another to keep him alive -- so grief-stricken that he literally cannot hold his body together when he breaks down.

DC editors say any future story featuring the Elongated Man would have to reflect his newfound suffering. Similarly, the morally questionable investigative methods of Hawkman, the Green Arrow and the Flash in "Identity Crisis" will reverberate throughout their own respective comic books.

"It has long-term ramifications for the next two years of storytelling, and we've already laid out one year," said Dan DiDio, the DC Comics editor who's overseeing "Identity Crisis." "It's a tonal shift. It's an attitude and expectation. The DC universe is a very optimistic place. It's a place you want to be living in. It's a place where you know they're building to a better future. They just have to work harder to get to that better future now, which is more reflective of the times we live in."

The first issue featured all the major characters arrayed around a coffin, with Superman at the center. The final installment will feature Batman on the cover.

Both of the stoic characters have tears in their eyes -- not the usual dramatic pose of a hero.

Some comics fans are livid over the story. Morales said he has heard rumors about editors punching walls after reading the "Identity Crisis" script and other writers and artists who have threatened never to work with DC again, although few have come out publicly.

DiDio said most internal comics people who are angry are waiting until the end of the series to cast judgment.

Comics readers haven't been as restrained. The popularity of the books speaks for itself.

But there are strong detractors.

One recent posting on a DC fan Internet chat-room read: "Much as I loathe 'Identity Crisis,' I don't see that it's worth quitting DC over. The best way to combat the creeping 'Identity Crisis' syndrome in the DC universe is to do good comics that point the company in another direction."

DiDio understands the reaction, noting that the story line "in some way shatters the perception of the icons as they existed in a more pure time."

"But the newer readers, or the people looking for much stronger and multilayered storytelling, are embracing it," he added. "This book has generated no apathy, that's for sure."

In some ways, this is also a response to the popularity of rival Marvel Comics, which has such characters as Spider-Man and the Hulk, whose appeal comes from battles with personal woes as well as supervillains.

DiDio didn't want to go the "trouble with girlfriends" route, but he recognized that DC needed more emotional depth.

"I had the belief that our characters, being superheroes and cast in heroic roles, really have to be forced to examine what their desires and motivations are to be heroes. Why do they have that need to put their lives at risk above the lives of their own family?"

Meltzer said he pitched the story with the death of the Elongated Man's wife becoming secondary as the books progress.

"I said forget the death of the character, we're going to test every character in the DC universe. We're going to test what they believe, what they stand for, we're going to test whether Superman is as good as we think he is. We're going to test whether Batman is, too. Yes, it will be in the context of this murder, but we'll get so much more out of it."

Meltzer has been the focus of ire from the disgruntled fans, and adulation from those who love "Identity Crisis." He said it's inevitable that characters evolve as they pass from writer to writer and artist to artist over the years.

"The most beautiful thing about comic books as a medium," he said, "is the tapestry of interpretation."

 

[Clement3000]

Resident Evil Number 1 and the box office, also the best movie I have ever seen in my entire life, hands down.
*********************************************************

The autumn box office season continued at its very slow pace this box office this weekend, with one exception. Screen Gems’ Resident Evil: Apocalypse got off to a great start on Friday, but the rest of the pack continued to fade into obscurity as moviegoers waited for better choices. Maybe they are waiting for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, whose marketing seemed to have more penetration this week than either of the weekend openers.

September has never been a great month to open a film. The top opener remains late-September release Sweet Home Alabama at $35.7 million, with the original Rush Hour still holding onto second at $33 million. Until this weekend, third place was Once Upon A Time in Mexico – last year’s September champ – at only $23.4 million. A couple of films set for release in September have a shot at being number one for September, including the aforementioned Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and this weekend’s Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

The number one film this weekend is Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the latest horror sequel for a film that may not have needed it from Screen Gems (the other being Anacondas). The greenlight on this one was a smart move – Resident Evil: Apocalypse grossed a stunning $23.7 million from 3,284 venues this weekend. It had a venue average of $7,216, which compares very favorably compared to the original’s opening weekend take of $17.7 million and venue average of $7,004. The Resident Evil sequel becomes Screen Gems' biggest opener ever, beating last September’s Underworld, which opened to $21.8 million. It's also the biggest opening ever for star Milla Jovavich, whose biggest openings so far were The Fifth Element ($17 million, which with inflation adjusts to about $22.3 million) and obviously Resident Evil ($17.7 million).

As Kim Hollis reported yesterday, Resident Evil: Apocalypse got out of the gate with a bang on Friday, grossing a reported $9.3 million. It wilted somewhat over the weekend, as the rabid fans of the original and the video game came out in droves Friday night. The film ended the frame with a weekend multiplier (Weekend gross divided by Friday gross) of 2.54, a number so low it's almost exclusively reserved for horror and sci-fi sequels and Steven Seagal movies. Screen Gems won’t care. The production budget was reportedly $50 million ($17 million more than the original), a number that it should be able to reach domestically, even with the almost guaranteed big drop it will see next weekend.

Finishing well back in second is New Line’s Cellular. The Kim Basinger action flick grossed a moderate $10.6 million over the weekend from 2,749 venues. The studio missed a good opportunity to open this film bigger, but a lack of marketing kept it down, and it carried a venue average of only $3,855. Cellular was written by Larry Cohen, whose last (and pretty much only) hit on his resume was Fox’s Phone Booth, which has a very similar plot to that of Cellular. Fox was luckier with Phone Booth; it opened to $15 million and ended up with $46.6 million domestically, and $51.3 from overseas receipts. New Line and Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment will be lucky to get $35 million out of this one.

The rest of the top ten was relegated to the cheap seats this weekend, as the performance of the Labor Day Weekend really rears its ugly head. Third goes to teen comedy phenom Without a Paddle. Sometimes you have to be smart, and sometimes you have to be lucky. Paramount and De Line Pictures certainly got lucky with Without a Paddle, as the comedy has managed to stay in the top three for four consecutive weekends, albeit not over the busiest part of any season. This time out, WAP grossed only $4.6 million; however, that gross has brought the film's total up to $45.6 million. It dropped softly again this weekend, losing only 35% compared to last weekend. Made for only $19 million, this is one of the few successes for Paramount over the last year. Four new films are coming next weekend, so I hope it enjoyed its time near the top as it will be going downstream next weekend without… well, without a paddle.

Fourth this weekend goes to two-weekend champ Hero, which finally got passed by leggy teen flick Without a Paddle. Hero grossed $4.4 million in its third frame, dropping a big 50% from its three-day take of $8.8 million last weekend. Miramax added 83 venues this weekend, bringing Hero’s venue count up to 2,175 – it had a venue average of $2,032. Miramax has already unveiled the DVD release date for the epic movie – November 30 – only three months after its theatrical street date. DVD revenues will pad the film’s current domestic gross of $41.7 million.

Sitting in fifth this weekend is The Princess Diaries 2, which rose on Saturday to make the top ten, after not making the list at all on Friday. TPD2 grossed $2.9 million this weekend, down 47% from last weekend. The Anne Hathaway starrer has now pulled in $89.3 million against a production budget of $40 million.

Sixth goes to the other Screen Gems title in the top ten - Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid. Anacondas is another film that has no right still being in the top ten. In its third weekend, the snake sequel grossed $2.9 million, down a massive 55% from last weekend’s three-day take. The film, made for $25 million, had now grossed $27.7 million.

Vanity Fair lands in seventh after Focus Features neglected to add theatres to the film’s platform release. Despite only adding three venues to the film’s count (now at 1,054) Vanity Fair still performed admirably, dropping 43% from last weekend’s three-day take, grossing $2.8 million. The costume drama actually moved up the chart from eighth to seventh, and now has a running total of $11.2 million. It will have a slow rollout internationally beginning in Australia towards the end of September.

Eighth goes to Collateral, the Tom Cruise movie people are still seeing due to a new crop of questionable choices. Collateral grossed $2.7 million this weekend, dropping 46% from the previous frame. Its total has now hit $92.7 million.

After 13 weeks of not making the top ten list, Napoleon Dynamite finally takes a top tier spot at the weekend box office. After playing in limited release for over three months, Napoleon grossed $2.7 million this weekend. Fox Searchlight is the studio behind this little film, made for only $400,000. This arthouse powerhouse has now grossed $30.4 million, making it one of the most successful films of the summer.

Tenth this weekend is Paparazzi, last weekend’s top debut earner in the crappy crop of new films. Paparazzi grossed only $2.6 million this weekend, down a huge 58% from last weekend. The Icon Productions film has now grossed $11.8 million against a production budget of $20 million.

Overall this weekend, box office paled in comparison with last year’s totals. In the 36th weekend last year, the top ten grossed about $71 million and was led by Once Upon a Time in Mexico at $23.4 million. This year, the top ten came in at $59.8 million, well back of totals from a year ago.

 

[yudansha]

I haven't seen it yet...

Parts of Resident Evil were shot in Toronto (the commercials show T.O.'s city hall ... that cool looking rounded building structure...).

Hero was the number 1 movie in Canada for quite some time! (just like it says - 2 weeks)

 

[Littledragon]

Good For Jet.

Parts of Resident Evil were shot in Toronto (the commercials show T.O.'s city hall ... that cool looking rounded building structure...).

Hero was the number 1 movie in Canada for quite some time! (just like it says - 2 weeks)

Thats great news for Jet! He really deserves it!