Entertainment

Jackie tribute heads to West End

"A spectacular musical based on Michael Jackson's greatest hits is making its way to London's West End."

Thriller Live features more than 80 performers including a gospel choir, children's ballet and West End singers and dancers to reinterpret the singer's most memorable songs.

Producer Adrian Grant has hailed the show a "musical celebration" and says it will help to revive Jackson's status as the King of Pop.

"It's to remind the public that Michael Jackson is still a great artist, and to put his music back out in the public domain," says Mr Grant, who founded the original Michael Jackson British fan club in 1988. "A lot of his music has been covered at the moment and if you go to the nightclubs and a hear a Michael Jackson track, people get up and dance, so he's still very popular."

"We've been doing the annual Michael Jackson tribute since 1991 and it's been getting bigger and bigger each year," he says.

"So we decided that as the show got bigger we would look at a West End production."

The beginning of the show focuses on the singer's Motown years with the Jackson Five before moving onto the infamous Thriller period and his most recent chart moments.

Spectacle

"It's not a story, it's just Michael's hit singles on stage," Mr Grant says.

"It's a song and dance performance, and it's very much like a spectacle of singers and dancers."

As a result, he adds, no-one is faced with the challenge of playing Jackson himself.

"We made it very clear from the very beginning that we couldn't get anybody to play or imitate Michael because we don't think there's anybody that could really do that, and it would become like a parody.

"We have several different singers, with children from the age of eight singing the early stuff.

"We've got a range of different singers interpreting his music, but nobody's actually playing Michael Jackson."

Although the superstar has not been involved in the development of the musical, he gave Mr Grant his blessing, who has already written several authorised books on Jackson's career.So far the one-day musical has generated a buzz around the country and beyond, but it is Mr Grant's hope that it could eventually go on tour.

"The interest has been really good.

We've got people from all over Europe coming, from Germany, Spain, Italy, and all over the UK," he says.

"But we'll see how it goes on the day, get the public's feedback and decide from there what we'd like to do. We've had interest from people who want to take it on the road."

(BBC NEWS)

Tony wins Emmy for best comedy actor

"Monk" star Tony Shalhoub claimed his third prize as best actor in a television comedy for playing an obsessive-compulsive detective while other veteran performers edged out newcomers in the early going at the Emmy Awards last week.

Shalhoub's latest victory for his title role on the second-tier cable channel USA Network was a major upset over presumed front-runner Steve Carell, who was widely expected to win for his role as the clueless boss on NBC's popular workplace satire "The Office."

All four awards in the supporting acting categories went to performers with established careers, three of them past winners and co-stars of shows that have already gone off the air.

Veteran Alan Alda, who sprang to fame as Hawkeye Pierce on the long-running TV classic "M-A-S-H," was named best supporting actor in a drama for his role as a Republican senator running for president on the final season of "The West Wing." The celebrated NBC political drama ended its seven-year NBC run in May.

Alda's victory, the sixth Emmy award of his career, pushed "West Wing" into a tie with the landmark cop show "Hill Street Blues" for the most prime-time Emmys overall, 26, ever amassed by a single drama during its run.

Blythe Danner was named best supporting actress in a drama for her work as the mother on the now-cancelled Showtime cable series "Huff." And Megan Mullally clinched the supporting comedic actress prize for playing the boozy, tart-tongued Karen Walker on "Will & Grace," which bowed off NBC in May after eight years on the air. It was the second Emmy win for both actresses.

Jeremy Piven, who got his big break playing Ellen DeGeneres' brother on "Ellen," was named best supporting actor for his role as a shark-like Hollywood agent on the HBO satire "Entourage."

In an emotional highlight of Sunday's awards, carried live on NBC from the Shrine Auditorium, the once seemingly ageless host of "American Bandstand," Dick Clark, 76, was welcomed to the stage with a standing ovation for a special musical tribute performed by Barry Manilow.

Clark was forced by a stroke in December 2004 to sit out his annual New Year's Eve broadcast from Times Square for the first time since 1972 but returned to preside over the holiday special this past year.

(ChinaDaily.com)

Rolling Stone caught unawares with fag

Keith Richards has survived heroin addiction, brain surgery, a night in jail and assorted excesses during 44 years with the Rolling Stones.

At 62 he probably thought that his most scandalous days had passed. That was before unadulterated tobacco created a cloud of controversy around the guitarist.

Richards appeared to light and smoke a cigarette on stage during a Stones concert in Glasgow ? an act unlikely to have got him into trouble since his schooldays but which is now illegal in Scotland.

It may have been a characteristic act of rebellion or an understandable lapse of memory, given his age ? but Richards seemed unaware of the ban on smoking in enclosed, public places, which was introduced in March.

Now Glasgow City Council is investigating the alleged incident, at the event at Hampden Park on Friday night. The venue had barred smoking three months before the Scotland-wide ban was introduced. Anyone smoking in an enclosed space, including theatres, sports venues and bus shelters, now faces a o50 fine. A manager of premises who allows others to smoke there can be fined o200.

At the Edinburgh Fringe, the actor Mel Smith has this month been prevented from lighting a cigar in his role as Winston Churchill in the play 'Allegiance.' After Smith threatened to light up anyway, Edinburgh City Council said that the venue, the Assembly Rooms, would be closed were the law to be broken, so Smith instead picked up the cigar and lighter before putting them down again unused.

Neil Rafferty, of the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco (Forest), said that the investigation into Richards was "yet another way in which the smoking ban makes Scotland look ridiculous. A few weeks ago we had Mel Smith being forced to compromise his portrayal of Winston Churchill under a threat of the whole venue being closed down, and now we have Scotland's national stadium under investigation for spurious reasons."

However, Action on Smoking and Health Scotland said that celebrities should not be above the law. Its chief executive, Maureen Moore, said:

"The law in Scotland says where you can and cannot smoke and it's been brought in to protect workers and the public from a class A carcinogen ? passive smoking." If Richards had broken the law, Ms Moore said, "he has to pay the penalty like anyone else."

(Timesonline.co.uk)

Veteran Bollywood director dies

"Leading Indian film-maker Hrishikesh Mukherjee has died in hospital in the western Indian city of Mumbai."

The 84-year-old director, known for his simple stories about Indian middle class people and their relationships, had been ill for some time.

The award-winning film-maker was best known for popular films like Anand, Chupke Chupke and Abhiman.In 2001, Mukherjee was awarded India's biggest film honour, the Dada Saheb Phalke award.

Working in a film industry that has been often panned by critics as one churning out escapist, candy floss entertainment with stories set in foreign locales and actors togged out in outlandish costumes and dancing to Western tunes, Mukherjee was possibly the last of the truly rooted Bollywood directors.

"He was a great director, he was like an elder brother to me. His films were essentially Indian in nature," said legendary singer Lata Mangeshkar.Actor Rajesh Khanna said the director was a "great man who made great films".Hrishikesh Mukherjee began his career in the late 1940s as a film editor in the rundown studios of the eastern city of Calcutta, then home to a flourishing regional film industry.

He eventually moved to Mumbai, where he was an assistant director to legendary filmmaker Bimal Roy on his film Do Bigha Zamin (Two acres of land) in 1953.During a prolific career which spanned four decades, he directed almost 50 films and also wrote a number of his own films.

He directed his last film Jhooth Bole Kauwa Kaate in 1998, returning to the studios after nearly a decade.

(BBC News)

"Invincible" scores touchdown at box office

The new Mark Wahlberg football drama "Invincible" lived up to its immodest name at the weekend box office in North America but overall ticket sales resumed their decline as the lucrative summer moviegoing period drew to a close.

According to studio estimates issued on Sunday, Walt Disney Co.'s true-life underdog tale "Invincible" opened at No. 1 with three-day sales of $17.0 million, in line with the studio's expectations.

Will Ferrell comedy "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" held at a distant No. 2 with $8.0 million in its fourth weekend. Its total rose to $127.7 million.

News Corp.'s late-summer hit "Little Miss Sunshine" jumped four places to No. 3 with $7.5 million as the family comedy added more theaters. Its total rose to $23.0 million after five weeks. Last weekend's champ, the underwhelming camp comedy "Snakes on a Plane," crashed to No. 6 with $6.4 million. Its two-week total stands at $26.6 million.

Besides "Invincible," three other new releases entered the fray, not that many people noticed. The Oktoberfest comedy "Beerfest" guzzled $6.5 million, tying at No. 4 with the college comedy "Accepted.

"The retro hip-hop musical "Idlewild," starring the members of Grammy-winning duo OutKast," opened at No. 9 with $5.9 million. And the adaptation of the children's book "How To Eat Fried Worms" opened at No. 11 with an unappetizing $4.1 million.

Tracking firm Exhibitor Relations said the top 12 films earned $83.9 million, the third consecutive week-on-week decline. But sales were up four percent from the year-ago period, when the hit comedy "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" was tops for a second round with $16 million.

(Reuters)

US politics 'obsessed' with ads

Finding cash to fund TV commercials is "the only thing that matters in American politics now", former US Vice-President Al Gore has said.

"The person who has the most money to run the most ads usually wins," he told the Edinburgh TV Festival.It was "astonishing" that the average American devoted nearly five hours a day to TV viewing, he added.And Mr Gore asserted the internet was making TV more accessible and letting people join a "multi-way conversation".

He called this an important move because people could find and distribute information, and then watch as it was judged by others in terms of quality. Mr Gore has become an environmental campaigner, and is in Edinburgh partly to promote his film and book, An Inconvenient Truth, which address the climate change crisis.

He is also president of CurrentTV, a channel that champions the work of "amateur" programme-makers who may be making names for themselves online.

* In my country, the average American watches television for four hours and 39 minutes a day.

Astonishing, really * Al Gore

About 30% of his station's output originates in this way but that this was likely to increase in the future, he added.On the subject of the expenditure of political parties, Mr Gore, a Democrat, said: "Two days ago, I was at an event helping to raise money for a candidate of my political party, running for governor in one of our most populous states.

"I asked the question of him: 'What percentage of your campaign budget, between now and election day in November, will be spent on television commercials?'

"The answer was 80%," he told an audience of several hundred media industry figures on the final day of the festival.

"In my country, the average American watches television for four hours and 39 minutes a day. Astonishing, really."That's why candidates spend 80% of their money on advertising campaigns.

"TV commercials lasting 30 seconds were "not thoughtful statements of policy" but were "usually emotive" and "well-tested" on focus groups, he said.

And he claimed the power of modern advertising had led to the ability to create demand for products "artificially".

(BBC News)

Cruise lowering the tone

Tom Cruise has always been a refreshingly undemanding presence on screen. Some actors are themselves the smouldering heart of the action: they hold something back, and make you come looking for it. Cruise, however, is pure energy: a shiny, reflective surface that bounces out light, illuminating the action around him.

All of this should have made Mission Impossible III ? or, as its makers insist on describing it, Mi:III, a title almost as tiresome to write as it is to read ? the typical Cruise race-against-time romp.

In theory, members of the audience should have been able to make top-up visits to the refreshment kiosk at any point during the film and return to find Cruise doing exactly the same as he was when they left: either climbing up a wall, dressed in flattering but non-kinky black leather; or embarking on one of his trademarked clenched-fist runs through a busy foreign shopping precinct.

But for me, M:i:III marked a turning point in my ability to set my brain to Cruise control. There was Tom, in the familiar round-neck T-shirt, with those glittering pixie eyes and that thick blue vein winding its way through the swollen crests of his pumped-up biceps, and all of a sudden I didn't buy any of it.

He wasn't an agent of the IMF ? the Impossible Mission Force, rather than the International Monetary Fund, in case you were wondering ? charged with finding a wotsit from somewhere in China, or perhaps France, and blowing it up, or giving it to someone else, aided only by his girlfriend, or possibly some other woman with excellent breasts: he was a creepy, vertically-challenge d, sofa-jumping member of a cult that believes traumatic memories are implanted by alien dictatorships with names like the Helatrobus.

It's hard to believe now that it was only in 2004 that Cruise was ranked fifth in the annual Harris poll, in which Americans are asked to name their favourite movie stars.

Later that year, Cruise dumped his publicist, the highly-skilled Pat Kingsley, and replaced her with his sister, Lee Anne DeVette, a fellow Scientologist. DeVette gave fans a glimpse of the real Tom, and he hasn't been in the Harris poll's top 10 since.

(The Domion Post)