In their defense, it was almost impossible for Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman to actually play their instruments at Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony, because of the frigid weather, but it turns out that Ma, Perlman and the other two musicians who accompanied them at Tuesday’s event were performing in sync with a recording of John Williams’ commemorative arrangement.
What’s a former secretary of state to do once her time in the White House runs out? In Condoleezza Rice’s case, the next step in the “reinvention and evolution” of her professional life involves signing on at the William Morris Agency, according to Variety.
Well, the Academy has spoken, picking this year’s Oscar nominees, and they couldn’t be safer or more boring ... except for those categories in which “Milk” figures in somewhere. At least that’s what the San Francisco Chronicle’s completely unimpressed critic Mick LaSalle thinks.
If Sunday’s concert extravaganza, featuring such boldfaced musical acts as U2 (channeling U2 from 25 years ago), Stevie Wonder and Mary J. Blige, didn’t provide enough glitz for one inaugural bash, several dozen of their celebrity peers are following the spotlight to Washington, D.C., to join in the festivities.
A photograph of an American soldier cradling a mortally wounded Iraqi girl in his arms has become the source of potential trouble for Michael Moore. Apparently without photographer Michael Yon’s permission to use the picture, the filmmaker featured the image on his Web site in a way that Yon found objectionable.
Barack Obama has been known to roll with the celebrity set (paging Oprah Winfrey), so perhaps it’s only fitting that his inaugural festivities will begin on Sunday with a show at the Lincoln Memorial replete with boldfaced names and HBO at the ready to showcase the event.
Marvel Comics enjoyed quite a moment of free publicity last year when the Barack Obama camp released a list of previously little-known factoids about the candidate mentioning that he collected “Spider-Man” comics in his youth, and now the comic company is giving the president-elect a creative show of gratitude.
“The President Is Coming,” an Indian mockumentary opening this weekend in the subcontinent, tells the story of six contestants fighting for “the greatest prize”—a chance to shake the hand of George W. Bush. Needless to say, it’s a comedy.
Americans have always preferred Laura Bush to her husband, and now Scribner, an imprint of a division of a subsidiary of Sumner Redstone’s National Amusements, is hoping to capitalize on that appeal with an “intimate” new memoir set for 2010 release. There’s no telling how much the better Bush is getting paid, but “millions” is a safe bet. Update after the jump.
The fluidity of memory aside, this is getting a little strange: Following in the footsteps of James Frey, Misha Defonseca and Margaret Seltzer, yet another “memoirist,” Herman Rosenblat, has admitted that his supposedly true story, “Angel at the Fence,” is a bit lacking in the truth department.
The theater world lost one of its brightest lights on Christmas Eve with the death of playwright Harold Pinter. The 78-year-old British Nobel Prize winner, whose best-known plays included “The Homecoming” and “The Birthday Party,” succumbed to throat cancer on Wednesday.
When the global economy takes a serious plunge (i.e., like right now), one would think that such frivolities as facial fillers and Botox would be the first to go from the regimens of even the most image-conscious among us.
The good news for embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich in this report is that a Chicago artist is using the governor’s likeness as inspiration for his latest painting.
Someone call Dan Brown: French painting experts have discovered faint drawings on the back of Da Vinci’s painting “The Virgin and Child With St. Anne” at Paris’ Louvre Museum, including a sketch of a skull. Intrigue abounds!
Here’s a news bite that could have written itself a few weeks, if not months, ago: Barack Obama is Time’s 2008 Person of the Year. Even the magazine’s editorial staff members knew that the choice would hardly shock anyone, but they allowed themselves to be swept along by the tides of history—or perhaps inevitability.
Whereas during boom times not so long ago, the über-loaded were all about having it and flaunting it, some among their ranks are now feeling the need to tone down their spending habits, if only for the sake of appearances.
Long before Madonna, Dita Von Teese or any number of aspiring sirens squeezed into their first corsets, there was proto-vixen Bettie Page, who brought her own racy sensibility to the art of pinup photography in the 1950s.
Despite widespread acclaim and gushing praise from some tough critics, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association largely overlooked Gus Van Sant’s “Milk” in choosing this year’s Golden Globe nominees, although Sean Penn is among the HFPA’s picks for best actor.
After making a movie about President Bush, what’s “W.” director Oliver Stone to do next? Why, he’ll make a documentary about that repeat Bush taunter from Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, of course!
The financial crisis has hit the tote bag set: National Public Radio is cutting two shows and 7 percent of its work force, thanks to $23 million in red ink. Non-pledging fans of “Day to Day” and “News & Notes” have only themselves—and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act—to blame.
Having been one of President George W. Bush’s most vocal celebrity critics in recent years, it must have been strange for Barbra Streisand to find herself smiling and embracing the lame duck last Sunday at the White House.
Looks like Bill O’Reilly is preparing for the Obama era—he says he’s been working too many hours. Whatever the reason, the Fox News heavy is giving up his syndicated radio show to focus his energies on “The O’Reilly Factor.”
O.J. Simpson’s fame in the football and film arenas was eclipsed by his nationally polarizing murder trial in 1995. On Friday, he was back in court in Las Vegas facing kidnapping and burglary charges, but the outcome was not in his favor this time.
Of all the items we might have expected would rank high on outgoing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s wish list of things she’d like to do before leaving office, playing Brahms in a private concert for Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II wouldn’t have been one of them.
It seems the British have found a way to cope with the global economic crisis. A survey by the Terrence Higgins Trust, a UK AIDS charity, found that sex is the most popular free activity in the empire, beating out window shopping and going to a museum.
Why Obama’s Strategy Won’t Succeed
