Miasma & other

Films flounder as Venice festival hits halfway

2008-09-01T18:21:00.001-07:00

VENICE () - Blame it on the Hollywood writers' strike, the weak economy, or just unpatterned bad chance.

Whatever the reason, the 2008 Venice film festival has been described as one of the weakest in recent years, and, as it reaches the halfway stage on Monday, inevitably more hits to light up the main rivalry.

"What the festival has shown is that 2008 is simply a bad class for film," said Jay Weissberg of trade publication Variety.

"The overall printing here is one of disappointment and everybody is desperate for a truly good celluloid in competition."

The annual event on the picturesque Lido waterfront attracts the world's biggest picture stars and most accomplished film makers, and has earned a reputation for kicking cancelled the awards season that culminates in the Oscars.

This year the stars have been thin on the undercoat and there has been little buzz about lead-in performances. More importantly, critics say, the movies on show ingest been in the main poor.

Of the 21 films in the main competition that compete for the coveted Golden Lion at a award ceremony on Saturday, two Japanese entries are in the running for the top prize that has gone to an Asian director for the lowest three years.

Animation master Hayao Miyazaki's version of the "The Little Mermaid" is the favorite so far, showing the 67-year-old has lost none of his energy and imagination.�

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Applegate to continue TV show

2008-08-22T18:22:00.001-07:00

Actress Christina Applegate will keep on shooting her U.S. TV series Samantha Who? as she undergoes reconstructive breast surgery next a double mastectomy.

The 36-year-old principal revealed on Tuesday she had both breasts removed after being diagnosed with cancer last month. Applegate � wHO was minded the all clear following the operation � is now scheduled to undergo reconstructive surgery over the succeeding eight months.

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Mental disability groups protest Ben Stiller film 'Tropic Thunder'

2008-08-12T18:19:00.001-07:00

LOS ANGELES - "Tropic Thunder" is pushing the envelope too far for groups representing the mentally disabled.

Dozens of citizenry from organizations such as the Special Olympics and the American Association of People with Disabilities protested the film industry spoof across the street from the film's Los Angeles premier at Mann's Bruin Theatre on Monday. The protesters held up signs with slogans such as "Call me by my nominate, not by my label" and chanted phrases like "Ban the movie, forbidding the word."

The groups are outraged over scenes featuring the liberal usage of a derogative term used to distinguish the mentally disabled. In the motion-picture show, director and co-star Ben Stiller plays a fame-hungry actor purge in a war motion-picture show who previously had a role as a mentally disabled character named Simple Jack. The DreamWorks cinema, which opens Wednesday, as well stars Robert Downey Jr. and Jack Black.

"When I heard close to it, I felt truly hurt inside," said Special Olympics world-wide messenger Dustin Plunkett. "I cannot believe a author could write something like that. It's the non the way that we want to be portrayed. We possess feelings. We don't like the word retard. We are people. We're hardly like whatsoever other people out on that point. We desire to be ourselves and not be discriminated against."

Andrew J. Imparato, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, said he and other representatives from advocacy groups representing the mentally disabled met with DreamWorks co-chair Stacey Snider and watched a private showing of the film Monday morning. Imparato called the movie "tasteless" and aforementioned it was "offensive start to finish."

"I have a sense of humour," said Imparato. "There were parts of the movie where I laughed, but it seems to me that the moving picture tried in truth hard to go too far and then pull back on everything that was offensive except the issue of people with intellectual disabilities. I only think Ben Stiller and the people involved in this flick just didn't think it was sledding to be offensive."

Following the original complaints from the advocacy groups, DreamWorks pulled some promotional materials, including a site that promoted the film-within-a-film starring Stiller's character which contained the tag origin "Once in that respect was a retard." DreamWorks spokesman Chip Sullivan antecedently said in a statement that "no changes or cuts to the plastic film will be made."

"If you want to pick on people, as the old playground saying goes, pick on hoi polloi your possess size," aforesaid Timothy Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics, wHO is career for a boycott of "Tropic Thunder" along with the other groups. "This population struggles too often with the basics to have to struggle against Hollywood. We're sending a message that this hate speech is no thirster acceptable."

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Pre-Eclampsia May Be Autoimmune Disease

2008-08-06T01:08:00.001-07:00

�Biochemists at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston say they are the first to provide preclinical evidence that pregnancy-induced high blood pressure or pre-eclampsia may be an autoimmune disease. Their research could provide novel diagnostic and therapeutic possibilities for this intractable disease. Findings seem online in Nature Medicine on July 27.

Scientists in the testing ground of Yang Xia, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant prof of biochemistry and molecular biology at the UT Medical School at Houston, provided evidence of the connection by inducing symptoms similar to pre-eclampsia in pregnant mice that had been administered autoantibodies isolated from women with the condition. This proof-of-principle experimentation is called adoptive transfer.

Pre-eclampsia typically occurs in the last trimester of pregnancy and is characterized by a sudden increase in blood pressure sensation, excess protein in the urine and swelling of the men, feet and face. It affects around one in 20 pregnancies and the only cure is

Lou Reed's Berlin - movie review

2008-08-06T00:54:00.001-07:00

As the terms and bylaws that differentiate television and pic continue to erode,
the basic structural differences 'tween the album and the mix magnetic tape have all but
vanished with the tide. The last few years have seen critical attention turn away
from records with broad thematic arcs and toward the simpler idea of a collection of unrelated
songs. One inevitably only to look at the thoroughgoing output of Lil' Wayne bootlegs and
the beguiling popularity of mash-up creative person Greg Gillis (aka Girl Talk) to see that
the parts have progressively become more important than the total in recent years.

Julian Schnabel's engrossing newfangled documentary, Lou Reed's Berlin, is immediately at odds
with this mindset. Schnabel prefaces the film with his have interpretation of Lou
Reed's famous 1973 commercial failure, an record album, as he would have it, about "love's
obscure sisters: jealousy, rage, and loss". In reality, Berlin was the follow-up to
Reed's breakthrough album Transformer, a Bowie-aping glam rock juggernaut. But unlike its widely-loved,
commercially successful forerunner, Berlin made hooey at the cash register and was
received with interracial critical reaction. Today, many of Reed's most impassioned fans reckon
it his shining 60 minutes as a solo artist.

As Schnabel projects his short-film interpretation of the album's heroine Caroline
(played by the filmmaker's wife and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly actress Emmanuelle Seigner)
over the cramped stage, the former Velvet Underground frontman rips through the tunes
with a killer backing band that includes Alice Cooper's axe-man Steve Hunter and
bassist Fernando Saunders, not to mention The Brooklyn Youth Chorus. The set, culled
from Reed's three-night residency at Brooklyn's St. Ann's Warehouse in 2006, too
features backing vocals by Antony Hagerty, of torch songsters Antony and the Johnsons,
and Sharon Jones, the conspicuous soul vocalizer who fronts R&B throwbacks the Dap-Kings. The
camera work, regard of the great Ellen Kuras (the films of Michel Gondry, N
eil Young: Heart of Gold), responds to the lyrical shifts in Reed's songs with a uncanny
swoon of grace. She gets as close as possible to the stoic legend, retreating only
when his peek promises an imminent lashing.

If Lou Reed's Berlin is a warm remembrance of the days when a great album was perpetually
superior to a capital single, it is too a bona fide concert film in a time of filmed
concerts. With the illustrious exceptions of the aforesaid Heart of Gold, Denis Hennelly
and Casey Suchan's staggering Rock the Bells, and, to a lesser extent, Martin Scorcese's
rumbustious Shine a Light, concerts on the big screen have get just that: Directionless
documents of bands playing their hits and nothing much more. Coupled with the thousands
of live clips uploaded to YouTube every week, the rare symbiosis of director and
live act seems all simply extinct. But Schnabel's pic is the real handle, a thoughtfully
prepared and enacted collaboration of visual style and auditory walking on air by 2 artists
world Health Organization, on the outset, await like they don't even have a species in common.

Like whatever good Deluxe Edition, Schnabel ends his film with two cuts not on Berlin: "Candy
Says" from White Light/White Heat and "Rock Minuet," the standout from his swan
birdcall Ecstasy. The former finds Reed getting outright upstaged by Hagerty, who delivers
the song's poetic refrain with such lilting elegance that you nearly learn Reed substantially
up at one point. In the latter sung dynasty, however, it's all crazy, rambling Reed in savage
form, reveling in an elegy for the death of the dangerous NYC. Schnabel and Kuras know
their subject enough to know how to human body him: with space, darkness, and unyielding
cool. The cool, of course, could have been delivered in an all-white bedroom with
stuffed bunnies and posters of High School Musical, as long as Reed was there.

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Portishead: 'We're discussing new LP'

2008-07-08T23:28:00.001-07:00

Adrian Utley has claimed that Portishead are already discussing the follow-up to this year's Third LP.

The guitarist said it is unlikely that the wait for the band's fourth record will be as long as the 11-year gap between their second and third.

"We are thinking a new album," he told the BBC. "That's partly why we're not touring enormously, because in 1998 we toured for a year and a bit and it just crashed us.

"None of us wanted to see each other for a while after that."

He continued: "We got together the other night discussing stuff and getting a bit of a plan together. We're all gonna be doing stuff. We've finished our touring for this album for this year because of things that we want to do."

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Abdul defends her major gaffe on Idol

2008-07-08T14:13:00.001-07:00

'American Idol' judge Paula Abdul has tried to explain her blunder on the latest live show of the talent contest.
Following a procedural change the judges were asked to comment on the contestants' performances in the first half of the show, instead of waiting until they had heard both performances from each contestant as usual.
Abdul reportedly looked very confused when asked for her opinion on the performances she had seen. She then slated Jason Castro's second song, although he had not even performed it yet.
The comments caused upset fans to log on to online messageboards and accuse Abdul of being unfair to Castro. Some even claimed that the judges' comments were scripted in advance of the performances.
However, Abdul later joined 'American Idol' host Ryan Seacrest on his radio show to explain her mistake, saying that she was confused by the change of format.
She claimed that she got "lost on (her) notes" during the live show.
Producer Cecile Frot-Coutaz said: "The judges occasionally watch the rehearsals, which they've acknowledged before in various press interviews, as well as on-air during the broadcast."
She continued: "While this gives them an idea of what the contestants are going to perform that night, it does not influence their comments for the actual broadcast performance."
"Paula's comments were based on her acknowledgment that she had seen a small portion of the rehearsal. The judges do not use 'rehearsal notes'", said Frot-Coutaz.
She added: "Besides, the judges only give opinions. It's America who decides (who is eliminated)."

Cinema Bizarre

2008-07-08T14:11:00.003-07:00

Artist: Cinema Bizarre

   Genre(s):
Pop

Discography:

Final Attraction

Year: 2007
Tracks: 14

With a sound that mixes glam, tike, and new undulation -- summation the haircuts to equalise -- Germany's Cinema Bizarre came on the picture in 2007 with the plaintive strike "Lovesongs (They Kill Me)." Bandmembers Kiro, Strify, and Yu in the beginning met in 2005 at the anime convention Animagic, held yearly in Berlin. They were all musicians, so forming a stripe seemed the instinctive thing to do. They became Cinema Bizarre by adding members Luminor and Shin and adopting an high-strung, gothic see that was divine by the aureate Visual Kei picture in Japan. Their debut record album, Final Attraction, was released in October of 2007 on the Island mark.

Hombres G

2008-07-08T14:11:00.001-07:00

Artist: Hombres G

   Genre(s):
Rock

Discography:

10

Year: 2007
Tracks: 10

Spanish pop/rock quaternary Hombres G was formed by ex-los Residuos guitarist Daniel Mezquita, drummer Javier Molina, and singer/bassist David Summers, presently united by guitar player Rafael Gutierrez. The band's nominate was based on an American movie called G-Men. Hombres G made its unrecorded debut at Madrid's Rockola, recording a demo called Milagro En El Congo in 1984. They presently signed up to the main label Twins to seduce their debut record album, featuring a tricky strain called "Devuelveme A Mi Chica," which became their first base hit. In 1986, La Cagaste...Burt Lancaster was released, followed by a South American turn. Hombres G disbanded later issuing their seventh album, La Historia Del Bikini, in 1992 but reunited tenner long time by and by for an outside teaser tour for their 2003 release, Ano Que Vivimos Peligrosamente.

Ruben D'Hers

Bruce Lee home might serve as a museum

2008-07-08T14:09:00.000-07:00

HONG KONG -- A mansion that once belonged to Kung Fu legend Bruce Lee in Hong Kong might be preserved as a museum, giving belated recognition to one of the city's most famous sons, local media reported Thursday.

Charley Pride

2008-07-08T14:07:00.001-07:00

Artist: Charley Pride

   Genre(s):
Country

Discography:


Country Legends

   Year: 2000
Tracks: 16


You're My Jamaica

   Year: 1979
Tracks: 10


Sweet Country

   Year:
Tracks: 10


Burgers And Fries

   Year:
Tracks: 10


16 Top Tracks

   Year:
Tracks: 16

Witness says R. Kelly, girl were in sex tape

Alio Die and Jack or Jive

2008-07-08T14:06:00.001-07:00

Artist: Alio Die and Jack or Jive

   Genre(s):
Rock

Discography:

Mei-Jyu

Year: 2005
Tracks: 9

Miasma

2008-07-08T14:02:00.001-07:00

Artist: Miasma

   Genre(s):
Ambient

Discography:

Miasma Emit 1195

Year: 1995
Tracks: 8

Chris Conway