Newspaper

ATM robbers in Palmdale sought by deputies

Daily NewsPosted: 09/04/2010 03:30:39 PM PDTUpdated: 09/04/2010 04:12:23 PM PDT Palmdale deputies are looking for two men who may have been...

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RM90,000 to restore Gone With The Wind gowns

FANS of Gone With The Wind obviously do give a damn about Scarlett O'Hara's extravagant dresses with a US museum appeal for funds to restore gowns from the 1939 movie meeting its target in three weeks. The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin, which acquires and preserves cultural materials,...

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From Dracula to hero

Do vampires suck or rock? In recent times, they have indeed risen to rock-star status! CULTURES around the world have stories about fanged figures that drink blood, including the Malay pontianak and Mexican chupacabra, but it is the Western portrayal of the vampire that has gained global fame. The evolution of the bloodsucker from horrific Count Dracula to the romantic Edward Cullen is traced here: 15th century Born in 1431 in Romania, Vlad Dracula was the respected ruler of a province called Wallachia. A warlord who had to repel several attacks by invaders, he punished his...

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A trio of doubles

Chicago had not always been the slushy balladeers they are known to be. ARGUABLY the most enjoyable interview I've had in my career was over a decade ago, with Chicago keyboardist Robert Lamm. Even though it was the late 1990s, Lamm spoke enthusiastically about the American pop-rock group's founding period in the mid-1960s, and revealed that the hippie idealism, left-wing politics and love for literature had never left him. He seemed to almost lament the group's immense success which had taken it away from its roots. When I first became a hardcore music fan in the mid-1980s, it was quite a common thing to be told: "I know these guys are doing bland pop now but you should check out the...

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A new chapter in Cheryl’s life

The publication of Serves You Right, Cheryl Lee's first book, is realised after more than a year of painstaking planning and effort. WHEN a young woman has a semi-autobiographical pictorial book out with the off-the-wall and tongue-in-cheek title of Serves You Right, you know she is full of self-assurance, if not attitude and chutzpah. Audacious and vivacious, Cheryl Lee possesses an utterly refreshing sense of humour and a carefree spirit that see her projecting herself on the cover of her book with a headful of long wild curls and her tongue sticking out. No less scorching is the blurb of the book published in Chinese: "Because she is hot and spicy, and if you can't handle hot and spicy,...

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C.J.

C.J. is a columnist in the Star Tribune's Twin Cities section. Her column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Recent content from C.J. LOS ANGELES - Mendes Napoli, the former KSTP-TV veep and news director turned on-air talent agency owner, is living large in California. Sep 4, 2010 Lady Gaga reportedly made a low-key arrival at CorePower Yoga that turned predictably skimpy when she lounged around in public in her panties....

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Murder! Incest! Cannibalism!: Why 1976 was a year of TV excess

What a long journey it's been from then to now - from the deferential and stuffy British television of the 1950s to the current TV landscape, where people swear as easily as they breathe, characters do drugs as freely as they once puffed on Player's cigarettes, and discuss sex in the sort of detail once confined to the top shelf at the newsagent's - they even have sex sometimes, when they forget the cameras are watching (thank you, Big Brother). Mary Whitehouse fought a sustained rearguard action, but the forces of permissiveness had the tide of history in their favour, and if one 12-month period had to be chosen to represent the opening of the floodgates over what was deemed permissible to...

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British films prove a hit at Venice

The titans of cinema dominated the 67th Venice Film Festival yesterday, but they were looking over their shoulders at a phalanx of British film-making talent. Venice has so far been dominated by Hollywood's big hitters - Sofia Coppola with Somewhere, Natalie Portman with Black Swan and Quentin Tarantino, who is leading the competition jury. Yesterday it was the turn of old stagers. Martin Scorsese unveiled his documentary about Elia Kazan, one of...

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Certified Copy, Abbas Kiarostami, 106 mins, (12A)

Set in Tuscany, Certified Copy is a comedy of manners starring a French actress and an English opera singer, with dialogue in English, French and Italian. It isn't what you expect from Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, but then, he has a habit of defying expectations: his last film, Shirin, was entirely composed of close-ups of women's faces. In Certified Copy, Kiarostami - working outside Iran for the first time - seems to have opted for something rather safer: a polished Italian art film. But Certified Copy isn't quite what it seems - although I won't overwork that turn of phrase, given that the film makes slightly heavy weather of the importance of not trusting appearances. The film is...

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Dinner for Schmucks, Jay Roach, 113 mins, (12A)The Switch, Josh Gordon and Will Speck, 101 …

Making fun of the disadvantaged is a fool's game. Lars von Trier came a cropper when he mocked physically handicapped people in The Idiots; the claim that it was a satire whose characters were the ones being crass, not their director, fell on deaf ears. One film that pulled off the challenge was Francis Veber's Le dîner de cons, a French comedy that had a fair handle on the nuances of its diabolical scenario. But as its title attests, the American remake Dinner for Schmucks certainly does not. A group of Los Angeles financiers...

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