Entertainment News
March 24, 2008SANTA MONICA, Calif. - Tracey Ullman prefers pathetic.
"I don't want to be the pretty girl. I just want to dress up and look terrible on TV," Ullman says of the quirky characters she plays on "Tracey Ullman's State of the Union," her new sketch-comedy series on Showtime (it airs in Canada on Movie Central and The Movie Network).
NEW YORK - Ladies and gentlemen, George Michael is giving North America one more try.
The pop star is gearing up for his first tour of the United States and Canada in 17 years, opening a multi-city "25 Live" tour in San Diego on June 17, Michael announced Monday. The tour is scheduled to wrap in Sunrise, Fla., on Aug. 3,
LONDON - J.K. Rowling said she contemplated suicide as she suffered from depression before her rise to success, according to an interview with a student journalist.
The Harry Potter author said she had suicidal thoughts in her mid-20s when she was a single mother and was struggling to establish a literary career.
Selected home-video releases:
LOS ANGELES - Ginny-Marie Case cannot forget the night she was jarred from her sleep by massive explosions set off by crews filming last summer's blockbuster movie "Transformers."
It was the latest cinematic nightmare that led Case and other residents streaming downtown as part of a population boom to push for tougher limits on filming in the United States' most popular location for movies, TV shows and car commercials.
NEW YORK - Animal Planet's desire to become less warm and fuzzy means exposure to some unaccustomed issues, like danger on the high seas and journalistic fairness.
A network crew returned to port in Australia last week after tagging along on a mission to interfere with a Japanese whaling expedition in the Antarctic. A miniseries about the experience, "Whale Wars," is expected to air this fall.
More than just gimmicky goofballs with a penchant for outlandish costumes, Gnarls Barkley's Cee-Lo Green and DJ Danger Mouse make some of the most deceptively funky songs about maladjusted behaviour and alienation. Their unavoidable 2006 hit, "Crazy" from their brilliant debut disc, "St. Elsewhere," may have sounded like a call to party, but it's really a tension-filled rumination about psychosis.
The duo's equally superb follow-up, "The Odd Couple" doesn't feature a "Crazy"-level supersmash, but they still wed dark emotions with compelling beats. The closest they come to recreating a "Crazy"-like raucous paranoia is "Run (I'm A Natural Disaster)," a '60s mod send up in the vein of Outkast's "Hey Ya," but again with foreboding lyrics: "Run, children, run for your life!" Cee-Lo wails. Meanwhile, "Going On" is another uptempo handclapper that fades out to Cee-Lo's echoing vocals, distorted drum kicks and soaring strings.
Wild nights and early mornings. You hurt, you heal. You fall down, you pick yourself up again.
While these ideas are cliche, they're ample inspiration for Counting Crows on their first disc of new material in nearly five years, "Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings."
Bang, bang, bang on the door, baby. It's The B-52's knocking, and they want you to know they're still around huggin', kissin', dancin' and lovin'. More importantly, they're still creating quirky party music with funky lyrics that make little to no sense and beats that usually only convey one emotion: joy.
"Funplex" is the B-52's first album with all new material since 1992's "Good Stuff." There's nothing complex or all that modern about this collection of 11 songs from the new wave foursome - Fred Schneider, Kate Pierson, Cindy Wilson and Keith Strickland - who famously brought back beehive hairdos in the '80s.
TORONTO - A lucrative distribution deal between Canada's Alliance Films and Hollywood movie maker New Line Cinema will end later this year when the American company shifts into the hands of Warner Bros.
The move will end a longtime relationship between the two companies, which have worked alongside each other for the Canadian distribution of blockbuster franchises such as the "Lord of the Rings" and "Austin Powers" series.
NEW YORK - A lawyer for Grammy-nominated rapper Remy Ma conceded Monday that his client shot a friend she suspected of stealing $3,000 from her but argued the shooting was an accident.
The prosecutor disputed that claim in closing arguments.
WASHINGTON - Democratic Senator Barack Obama plans to chat with the women of ABC's "The View" on Friday, his first visit to the daytime talk show as a presidential candidate.
Republican rival John McCain hopes to share a few jokes on late-night television when he appears on CBS's "Late Show with David Letterman" April 1 - April Fool's Day.
Former Rhode Island Senator. Lincoln Chafee often seemed to be odd man out in Washington.
He was one of the Senate's most liberal Republicans, bucking his party on big issues such as Iraq, tax cuts, abortion and the environment. His reserved, sometimes quirky personality was never a smooth fit in the clubby Senate, where friendships can mean more than political ties in making things happen.
NEW YORK - A starry Samuel Beckett celebration featuring Ralph Fiennes, Barry McGovern and Liam Neeson, will be part of Lincoln Center Festival 08.
The three actors will appear in separate evenings of short works by the Irish playwright.
HOUSTON - Grammy-winning Tejano singer Emilio Navaira may not survive a severe brain injury suffered when his tour bus slammed into traffic barrels on a Houston interstate, his neurosurgeon said Monday.
"There is a chance he may not make it," said Dr. Alex Valadka, director of neurotrauma services at Memorial Hermann in the Texas Medical Center and vice chair of neurosciences at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
NEW YORK - Neil Aspinall, a longtime friend of the Beatles who managed their business enterprises and helped make the group a moneymaking phenomenon decades after they split up, has died. He was 66.
Aspinall's death was announced Monday in a statement from surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, the widows of John Lennon and George Harrison, and the band's Apple Corps Ltd. company.
NEW YORK - "Passing Strange," Broadway's critically acclaimed new rock musical, has a good deal for theatregoers of all ages (not just students) willing to wait until the day of performance - tickets for US$25.
There are catches, of course. The specially priced tickets to the critically acclaimed musical are subject to availability and are limited to two per customer and must be purchased at the box office of the Belasco Theatre, 111 W. 44th St.
To kick off his latest record, Ricky Skaggs rips into the fierce mandolin introduction of "Goin' Back to Old Kentucky" the same way Bill Monroe did when he was busy birthing bluegrass.
Throughout "Honoring the Fathers of Bluegrass," Skaggs and his crack band Kentucky Thunder remain faithful to the original renditions of '40s tunes by Monroe and his "Original Bluegrass Band," which included Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. There are the same keening vocals and the same solos at breakneck speed, only now they're in stereo.
