Tuesday 9 September 2008

Director: 'Miley Cyrus is like Madonna'

Director Brett Ratner has claimed that Miley Cyrus was as impressive as Madonna when he worked with her earlier this year.

Ratner helped to create the video for her track '7 Things', which was released from the star's Breakout album in May.

"She reminded me a lot of Madonna," he confirmed. "And I hate saying that, but what I bastardly is that like Madonna, she keister be wall hanging out and laughing, and then you put the camera on her and it's like, 'Holy s***!'"

"It was the hardest video I've ever edited because every moment was great," he continued. "Every moment that she was on camera, she was awing. She's got an incredible quality about her. Her instincts ar great. She has outstanding charisma and personality."

Speaking in June, Cyrus revealed that she is hoping to emulate the Queen of Pop by constantly ever-changing her range of a function over the coming years.



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Saturday 30 August 2008

Uninsured U.S. Residents Will Spend $30B Out-of-Pocket On Health Care This Year, While Receiving $56B In Uncompensated Care, Study Finds


Uninsured U.S. residents will spend about $30 trillion out-of-pocket on health forethought this year, while former parties -- mainly the government -- will spend about $56 billion on uncompensated care for the uninsured, according to a study published online Monday in the journal Health Affairs, the Wall Street Journal reports. The composition, by Jack Hadley of George Mason University and colleagues, plant that government programs -- including Medicare, Medicaid and state and local programs -- pay about 75% , or $42.9 billion, of the amount uninsured individuals are unable to pay for services received. Some physicians and hospitals also donate time or forgo earnings to forethought for low-income residents, and in some cases secret donations cover the costs.

The report defined uncompensated precaution as the difference 'tween the total the uninsured paid and how much health care providers would have received if the patients had been privately insured.

Hadley aforesaid that uncompensated care does not necessarily translate into higher insurance policy premiums for private be after members as some believe, the Journal reports. He said unfunded care testament have a "very small" impact on premiums, adding, "It's more through taxes than private insurance bills."

The report ground that the total additional cost to the wellness system of covering all uninsured U.S. residents in 2008 would be $122.6 billion, driven by the fact that insured people tend to use more wellness care services than the uninsured. Health care spending accounted for 16.3% of gross domestic merchandise in 2007, or around $2.2 trillion, and this circumstances could nearly double in 10 years, according to federal information (Zhang, Wall Street Journal, 8/25).


Free access to the study, prepared for the Kaiser Family Foundation's Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, is uncommitted online.


American Public Media's "Marketplace" on Monday included coverage of the report. The coverage included comments from Hadley (Jablonski, "Marketplace," American Public Media, 8/25).


Reprinted with kind permit from hTTP://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can eyeshot the integral Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, lookup the archives, or sign up for email livery at hypertext transfer protocol://www.kaisernetwork.

Wednesday 20 August 2008

J. Lo's 'Maid' to Become a TV Series




LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - ABC is development a TV series based on the hit Jennifer Lopez quixotic comedy "Maid in Manhattan." (Theo Wargo/WireImage/Getty Images )


Lopez will serve as an executive producer of the hour-long comedy-drama, which has received a pilot commitment. In the 2002 feature of speech, she played a struggling single mother from the Bronx world Health Organization works as a amah at a swanky Manhattan hotel. A rising politician guest (Ralph Fiennes) falls for her after misinterpretation her for a loaded socialite.


"The show is a different maidservant in a different Manhattan," said Chad Hodge, world Health Organization will spell the book for the pilot.


The lead in the TV version will placid be a young Latina from the Bronx working at a Manhattan hotel who tries to make it in the populace. But the series testament focus by and large on her relationships with co-workers.





"While the hotel's business is an obvious part of this world, I'm more interested in the downstairs contribution of 'Upstairs, Downstairs,"' Hodge said, referring to the classic British series.


Lopez, a Bronx native, has been very involved, providing "a fountain of ideas," Hodge said. "She will be very built-in in the pilot and series," he said.


This is the second time that ABC has taken a stab at a series adaptation of "Maid," following a script developed with a different writer during the 2004-05 development season.


"Maid" could be a worthy companion for the network's dramedy "Ugly Betty," which also centers on a hardworking young Latina in New York with big dreams. It, too, was shepherded by a Latina A-lister, Salma Hayek.


Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

Copyright 2008�Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This material crataegus oxycantha not be published, diffuse, rewritten, or redistributed.




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Sunday 10 August 2008

Cleveland Orchestra, con. Pierre Boulez

Cleveland Orchestra, con. Pierre Boulez   
Artist: Cleveland Orchestra, con. Pierre Boulez

   Genre(s): 
Classical
   



Discography:


Rapsodie espagnole   
 Rapsodie espagnole

   Year: 1972   
Tracks: 4


Pavane pour une infante defunte   
 Pavane pour une infante defunte

   Year: 1972   
Tracks: 1


Alborada del gracioso   
 Alborada del gracioso

   Year: 1972   
Tracks: 1




 





S. Grappelli and S. Asmussen

Wednesday 2 July 2008

TV review: Deja vu strikes in Tudors' return

Are we all Tudored-out yet? TV and the movies seem to be hurling more Plantagenets, pontiffs, cardinals and schisms at us than we know what to do with.

There have been two recent Elizabeth I spectaculars, Ray Winstone doing an enviably common Henry VIII, a frightful adaptation of The Other Boleyn Girl, and of course, Sunday's The Tudors, which returned to TV One this week for its second season.

And didn't your heart just sink when you realised that after all those histrionics last season, we're still only up to Anne Boleyn, wife No 2 of six - and he hasn't even married her yet.

It's a safe bet that this admittedly very well made series will again be consigned to the late-night slot as viewers balk at having to sit through the, now almost tiresomely familiar, story yet again.

The Other Boleyn Girl was so fresh in our minds that during last Sunday night's episode we'd have all cried out, "Oh, the shirt scene again!"

While exclamations of, "Oh-oh, there's the court musician, look out!" will have gone up and down the country. Too, too much of a good - but not that good - thing.

For those who only dimly remember their Jean Plaidy novels from childhood, they're all a useful catchup on how and why church and state skirmished bloodily centuries ago.

The best part of this series is the passion and steeliness with which the clergy and politicians are played.

Jeremy Northam is asterling Thomas More, and James Frain, a man born with a casting-couch villain's face, is the best, subtlest Thomas Cromwell in recent memory.

Past versions have had the pair crabbed and desiccated, and well into middle age. It's refreshing to see virile, early- middle-aged blokes in the role. After all, how do we know they weren't?

And if you can top Peter O'Toole as the Pope, I'd like to know with whom.

Maria Doyle Kennedy as Catherine of Aragon gave an unusually touching portrayal, whereas this Anne Boleyn - played by Natalie Dormer with a snub-snouted smugness that's really quite slappable - is presented not as the usually high- spirited young girl whose head is fatally turned, but as a selfish, spoilt brat who has it coming to her.

The great tedium of most of the new adaptations of this fascinating corner of history is that they seem to compete to see who can cram the most bonking in between each ad break.

Certainly, from our modern appreciation of such matters, Henry VIII's story was all about bonking - inasmuch as it took his fancy and led, or failed to lead to begetting.

The politics arose almost exclusively from Henry's appetites. But here he is portrayed adamantly as a fetching lover, which seems presumptuous in the extreme.

From his conduct outside the bedchamber, wouldn't you take him for rather a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am sort of guy?

The love scenes, veering from the steamy to the candle-flickeringly romantic, have been rather sickening.

Though not nearly as sickening as the summary justice of the era.

This Sunday's punishment of the cook who - paid by plotters - poisoned half the clergy, was graphically portrayed in a series of screams as he was lowered slowly into boiling water. Hideous, but pertinent to be reminded of the routine cruelty of the era.

Alas and alack, if they ever get as far as Anne of Cleves, most of us will be happily ensconced in Prime's great fun Mad Men by then.

Earlier on Sunday, at 7.30pm, TV2's new gameshow, Dare to Win debuted. It should, under the Fair Trading Act, be called Dare To Make A Prize Prat Of Yourself On TV In Order To Win A Prize It Would Be Much Easier To Just Buy For Yourself Down At Harvey Norman.

But that's not a very snappy title.

Having sat through the gurning and squeaking of four women going to ridiculous lengths - like memorising 50 Star Wars characters - just to win a TV set or new oven each, this reviewer was incredulous.

How can a TV set or a new oven be worth wasting all that brain power and energy over? Let alone on national TV in front of one's peers, who acquire such goods the normal way, with a credit card or on HP.

The week these women spent wearing silly wigs and giggling - a lot - while learning to tell their Wookies from their Yodas might have been used to cram basic Mandarin, or read all of War and Peace.

Even a week spent clearing out the garage would have been preferable to this utterly pointless humiliation.

Dare to Win actually makes those earlier game shows, in which people accepted dares to eat bush insects and jump out of helicopters, seem quite civilised and dignified.

And as the recession deepens, contestants may be induced to make dolts of themselves for mere car stereos and the odd kitchen whiz, so the producers of this rubbish can make insulting TV for even less money.

A nastily consoling thought is that if anyone had offered up such nonsense as entertainment in Henry Tudor's court, he'd have had the water at a nice rolling boil by now.





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Sunday 22 June 2008

'Star Trek's' George Takei gets marriage licence to wed his gay partner








WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. - Actor George Takei, known for his role in the science fiction TV series "Star Trek" is preparing to wed his gay partner of 21 years.

The 71-year-old actor, who played Sulu in the series, was the first to pay $70 early Tuesday for a marriage licence in West Hollywood.

Takei was jubilant, saying "it's going to be the only day like this in our lives, and it is the only day like this in the history of America."

Takei will marry 54-year-old Brad Altman in September at the Japanese National Museum in Los Angeles. The marriage licence is good for 90 days.

Takei told reporters and the crowd outside the West Hollywood city auditorium Tuesday "may equality live long and prosper," echoing the phrase used in the television series.










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Sunday 15 June 2008

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's drummer leaves band

The drummer from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club has left the band for the second time in the group's history.

Nick Jago, who has allegedly suffered from drug problems in the past, posted a blog on the band's website stating he has departed.

He said: "Just had dinner with Rob and Pete and, well, I'm not in the band anymore. They are going into rehearsals tomorrow with Leah, she just finished touring with The Raveonettes and is super nice and cool. They presented it to me like they need a break, I took it as I am fired again and to be honest with you I respect their decision."

Jago added: "I don't make it easy for them, I hope to be able to play with them again in the future as a reunion as there is really no bad feeling other than we all wanna be happy and right now we are not. Maybe playing drums for BRMC all the time is not my calling and there is something else I'm supposed to do. We will see. I�m sorry to all the fans and know that the drums are in good hands with Leah."

His band mates, Peter Hayes and Robert Levon Been, also released a statement.

They said Jago's departure didn't mean he wouldn't return.

The statement said: "Peter and I would like to clarify a few things from our perspective. It's true, Nick wont be joining us for the upcoming European tour, but it's not true that he is fired. We just feel Nick needs time to sort out exactly what he wants right
now. His heart and all his energy and attention is on his own solo project and he needs to see that through."

The pair concluded: "We welcome his singing and songwriting in BRMC, but his focus, at least at the present time, is on doing his own thing and we wish him the best. He is our brother, our musical partner, and we love him dearly and look forward to playing with him again in the future."