Niea Milwaukee 2009 Again

Iggy Pop mellows but not getting in a box yet

Posted by TerranceV | Entertainment | Posted on May 13th, 2012

PARIS (Reuters) – Punk music pioneer Iggy Pop – famous for onstage mayhem like smearing his sinewy torso with olive oil and diving headfirst into crowds – is mellowing in old age with a solo album of crooning classic covers, half of them in French.

But at 65 years old it’s all part of pushing new boundaries, and making sure he’s not categorized as nothing but a punk icon.

“I don’t want to get in a box. I’ll get in a box when I’m dead,” he said, explaining his decision to defy record companies, who would have preferred he make a punk-rock tribute, and independently record songs by Frank Sinatra and Edith Piaf.

A world away from his own raw standards like “The Passenger” and “I Wanna Be Your Dog”, his new CD “Apres”, released this week, features slow covers of Sinatra’s “Only The Lonely”, Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose” and Beatles hit “Michelle”. Five of the tracks are sung in French.

Pop’s French, which he likes to practice on the staff at the upscale Bristol hotel in Paris, is surprisingly smooth for the man who inspired a generation of badly behaved rockers and still sports long blond hair and wild eyes.

“When I did the stuff that was punky, people were more surprised than with this,” Pop said, sporting his trademark skinny leather pants and a black shirt slashed to the navel to expose his wiry, tanned chest.

“When I was 16, 17, I was listening to Sinatra and Ravel and Debussy and Bo Diddley so it’s kind of all the same to me. I just wanted to do something like this once,” he told reporters, perched incongruously on a pristine chair at the Bristol.

“I wanted to do this before I die.”

PASSING TIME

Even crooning, Pop’s voice is deep, gravelly and just a little bit irreverent. Plus, he says, he doesn’t rule out doing some stage diving if he performs the tracks live.

Born James Osterberg and raised in a trailer park in Michigan, Pop formed groundbreaking rock band The Stooges in 1969. They recorded three albums before breaking up in a haze of drug addiction and Pop, who had already invented the stage dive and raucous antics like smearing peanut butter over his chest mid-gig, launched a solo career.

His 16th solo album, “Apres” is on sale online via private French-based shopping club vente-privee.com after Pop decided to try breaking free from record labels he finds too confining.

“Pretty much they’re just throwing ‘mierda’ at the wall to see what’ll stick,” he says of today’s record executives. “It was just nice to do it this way.”

The French tracks, like Serge Gainsbourg’s lilting “La Javanaise”, follow Pop’s 2009 foray into the French language in his album “Preliminaires”.

French songs often go deeper lyrically than Anglo-American ones, he said, describing the three basic English constructions as essentially: “If you ever leave me I’m going to fucking kill you”, “Oh no, please don’t go” and “Wow look at her ass.”

French music aside, Pop’s tastes today range from 1920s to 1970s jazz and blues through to heavy metal and Jamaican dancehall. Early influences on The Stooges included North African, Tourag and Bedouin music and Lebanese bellydancing.

While he has been back touring with The Stooges since they reunited in 2003, growing older is prompting new experiments.

Asked how he deals with the passing of time, Pop said: “I’m a little edgy about how to use it and whether to waste it. There’s how you spend your time and the manner of your decline and death. I think about that stuff.”

Then there are the accountants, he said, with a wink to his jewel-bedecked Nigerian-Irish wife, Nina Alu, a former flight attendant he’s been with for a decade.

“You get to my age and you have professionals telling you: ‘Now Iggy, the actuarial tables say you may live to be 87′,” he said. “Well how much money do I have to save to be 87 and not work any more? Couldn’t I just spend it all now and die in four years?”

(Reporting By Catherine Bremer, Editing by Jill Serjeant and Bob Tourtellotte)

Kim Kardashian: Stop delaying divorce

Posted by TerranceV | Entertainment | Posted on May 13th, 2012

Kardashian’s attorney Laura Wasser told a judge on Friday that she thinks Kris Humphries’ hurt feelings and media attention are slowing the case. She noted the case has lasted longer than the couple’s 72-day marriage.

Wasser says the case is simple but could get expensive for the professional basketball player if he continues to pursue his claims that the marriage was a fraud.

She says if the case goes to trial, she’ll ask Humphries to pay legal fees.

Humphries’ attorney Marshall Waller says he needs to take depositions of several people before deciding how the case will proceed.

Article continues below

Raaz 3 was tough, says Bipasha Basu

Posted by TerranceV | Entertainment | Posted on May 10th, 2012

Bipasha Basu has finished shooting for Raaz 3. She says though it has been a tough project, her worries were eased by the filmmakers.

"Raaz 3 was a tough film for me but with Vikram [Bhatt] and [Mahesh] Bhatt saab’s correct guidance, I think I have nailed my character! Loved working with Vishesh Films after so long! Felt like home," tweeted the 33-year-old.

Basu last worked with Vishesh Films for 2003′s Jism, and with Vikram Bhatt for 2004′s Aetbaar. In Raaz 3 she is paired with Emraan Hashmi.

"Raaz 3 wrapped! Got spoilt silly post wrap! Team pampered me with all my favourite yum dishes and desserts! Stuffed!! Fab film, fab crew and fab shoot," she added.

Article continues below

Travolta abuse claim ‘baseless’

Posted by TerranceV | Entertainment | Posted on May 9th, 2012

A spokesman for John Travolta has said claims by an unidentified masseur that the actor assaulted him sexually during a massage in January are "baseless".

"John intends to get this case thrown out," his representative continued. "Then he will sue the attorney and plaintiff for malicious prosecution."

The masseur claims Travolta tried to initiate at least one sex act at the Beverly Hills Hotel on 16 January.

The actor's spokesman said the 58-year-old was not in California at the time.

"None of the events claimed in the suit ever occurred," he went on, calling the legal action "a complete fiction and fabrication".

The claims were first made in a March edition of the National Inquirer, a US tabloid renowned for printing salacious gossip-based stories.

The masseur, referred to as John Doe in court papers filed on Friday, is seeking $2m (£1.23m) for assault, sexual battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

He claims the massage was arranged by an anonymous phone caller who picked the masseur up at a streetside location and drove him to the hotel where he was to be paid an hourly rate of $200 (£123).

According to the complaint, Travolta exposed himself and groped the masseur despite the masseur's protests.

The suit claims the actor eventually paid John Doe $800 (£495) after he threatened to call the police.

Travolta was Oscar-nominated for his roles in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction and will be seen later his year in Oliver Stone's new film Savages.

The actor has two children with wife Kelly Preston. Their teenage son Jett died in 2009 during a family holiday in the Bahamas.

The Toure-Raichel Collective: ‘Two Chefs In The Kitchen’

Posted by TerranceV | Entertainment | Posted on May 9th, 2012

Story By: by NPR Staff

Idan Raichel (left) and Vieux Farka Toure’s new collaborative album is The Tel-Aviv Session.

The Toure-Raichel Collective performs live in NPR’s Studio 4A.

Idan Raichel first met Malian guitar luminary Vieux Farka Toure in a chance encounter at an airport in Germany. Raichel, an Israeli pop star and keyboard player, had admired Toure’s work— as well as that of his father, the late Ali Farka Toure — for many years before they crossed paths.

“I just thought it would be amazing to collaborate with him,” Raichel says. “I invited him to play at the opera house in Tel Aviv, and he came with his band for an unforgettable evening.”

Shortly thereafter, the duo met up in a small recording studio for a short jam session.

“By coincidence, we recorded what we played there for three hours. We actually recorded a mix of Malian rhythms mixed with Israeli melodies — all originals, but very influenced from both our cultures,” Raichel says.

That initial jam session was the beginning of a greater collaboration, which is now known as the Toure-Raichel Collective. The duo has recorded a studio album called The Tel Aviv Sessions, which features songs that infuse elements from both of their cultural backgrounds — something that came naturally to the two musicians.

“It was like having two chefs in the kitchen,” Raichel says. “At the end of the day, everyone uses the basics: sugar, or salt, or water. So we went to the basics of both of our cultures and we just let the music flow.”

The Toure-Raichel Collective played songs from its new album, The Tel Aviv Session, live in NPR’s Studio 4A.

I didn’t want to be an actress, Chitrangada Singh says

Posted by TerranceV | Entertainment | Posted on May 7th, 2012

Chitrangada Singh, whose performance in her debut film Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi was acclaimed by critics and audience alike, says even after nine years she is struggling to get over her character of Geeta Rao.

"I don’t know if I have … managed to make people forget Geeta Rao and remember another character that I have played," she said on Monday.

"I am still kind of struggling to get over it and make people remember me by something else that I have played. I think it’s still the most special one," added the actress, who has also featured in Sorry Bhai, Yeh Saali Zindagi and Desi Boyz.

Singh, who took a break after her first film to start a family with golfer-husband Jyoti Randhawa, says being an actress was never her ambition.

Article continues below

No such thing as too many Bollywood weddings, say Bittoo Boss makers

Posted by TerranceV | Entertainment | Posted on May 4th, 2012

In Bollywood, a big fat Punjabi wedding is one of the big screen’s favourite traditions. Considered the formula for a sure-fire hit, a sweeping romance is deemed incomplete without a colourful, lavish wedding. But has the perfect Petri dish for heroes to showcase their dancing and singing talents, for the lead pair to whisper sweet nothings or to introduce the battalion of noisy, annoying relatives in one swipe reached its saturation point? No, say the makers of Bittoo Boss, with relative newbies Pulkit Samrat and Amitha Pathak; they are confident that wedding weariness is an urban myth.

"In today’s times, marriages are the only surviving festivals remaining in India," said Supavitra Babul, the director of the film.

“
In today’s times, marriages are the only surviving festivals remaining in India

Bittoo Boss director Supavitra Babul

"With the economic growth taking over everything else, festivals like Holi and Diwali are not celebrated with the same fervour and spirit like weddings. And personally, weddings form such a perfect milieu — you will always cherish the rituals, the ladies’ sangeet [singing ceremony prior to the nuptials] and the memories it brings along," he adds.

Enter Bittoo Boss, a comedy about a Delhi-based videographer who covers weddings. But the big question remains whether the audience is tired of watching syrupy orchestrated Punjabi weddings. The glut is led by hits including Diwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Hum Aapke Hai Kaun, Vivah and Monsoon Wedding. More recently, Band Baaja Baarat, a tale about a pair of Delhi-based wedding planners, did wedding-centric sagas proud with its engaging story-telling.

Article continues below

Bobby Vee reveals he has Alzheimer’s disease

Posted by TerranceV | Entertainment | Posted on May 3rd, 2012

St. Paul: Former 1960s teen pop idol Bobby Vee says he’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

The 69-year-old, born Robert Velline in Fargo, N.D., says on his website that he was diagnosed last year. Vee was catapulted to stardom after the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and JP "Big Bopper" Richardson in a 1959 plane crash en route to Moorhead, Minn.

Vee and his friends filled in for the trio at the Moorhead performance and soon after that he recorded his first single, "Suzie Baby," for Soma Records in Minneapolis.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press (http://bit.ly/Jzm8cX ) says Vee’s wife of 48 years, Karen Velline, is also dealing with health issues. She’s on a waiting list for a lung transplant.

Article continues below

I didn’t want to be an actress, Chitrangada Singh says

Posted by TerranceV | Entertainment | Posted on May 3rd, 2012

Chitrangada Singh, whose performance in her debut film Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi was acclaimed by critics and audience alike, says even after nine years she is struggling to get over her character of Geeta Rao.

"I don’t know if I have … managed to make people forget Geeta Rao and remember another character that I have played," she said on Monday.

"I am still kind of struggling to get over it and make people remember me by something else that I have played. I think it’s still the most special one," added the actress, who has also featured in Sorry Bhai, Yeh Saali Zindagi and Desi Boyz.

Singh, who took a break after her first film to start a family with golfer-husband Jyoti Randhawa, says being an actress was never her ambition.

Article continues below

Dolly Ahluwalia has her day

Posted by TerranceV | Entertainment | Posted on May 3rd, 2012

Vicky Donor has been getting rave reviews ever since its release, with a scene where Ahluwalia is shown sharing a drink with her onscreen mother-in-law played by Kamlesh Gill becoming the most talked about act of the film.

Ahluwalia admits there were apprehensions about whether the drinking sessions would go down well with the audience.

"But to our good fortune, our bonding, including the drinking, has been appreciated."

About Gill, Ahluwalia fondly said: "We really came to care about one another. We’re now bonded beyond just the film. She is like a real mum. I’ve known Ayushmann Khurrana and Yami Gautam from the time I was in Chandigarh. So, we all felt like a part of the family."

Article continues below