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Arts and Entertainment
Sunday 29 March 2009
This week’s Horoscopes
Prince’s 3 concerts in 1 night
New Dolls on the Block
By Taryn Smith
By William Lee Adams
AMERICA – Funk rocker Prince blasted a concert promotion giant for its poor sound equipment as he struggled to perform three concerts in one night at separate venues in Los Angeles. The man who once sang about travelling Around the World in a Day, shuttled among three venues on Saturday at a new downtown entertainment complex operated by AEG Live. But his ambitious promotion for an upcoming album hit a snag soon after he hit the stage at the 7 100-capacity Nokia Theatre. He had problems with the monitors, and constant pleas to the venue’s crew to fix them never had much impact. “This is my celebration. I don’t care what goes wrong,” he said.
AMERICA – Ever since Barbie and her reality-defying curves stepped into the playhouse, parents have complained that dolls promote an unattainable image of beauty. It’s a particularly piquant point for Lexington, South Carolina mother Mary Ann Perry, whose daughter Valerie lives with Down Syndrome. “Dolls represent real people in the imagination of a young person,” Perry says. “I don’t want Valerie to think she has to be conventionally beautiful to be loved.” So when Valerie asked for a doll at Christmas, her mother bypassed buxom Barbie and purchased Elizabeth. Featuring 13 physical characteristics of Down Syndrome, including almond-shaped eyes, low-set ears, a horizontal crease
By Linda Black Aries (March 21-April 19): This week is a 9 – You’re strong, intelligent and lucky now. You have your plan worked out. Launch, with confidence, quickly. This assumes you’re ready. If not, get ready and then do it. Taurus (April 20-May 20): This week is a 5 – Set priorities first; otherwise, you’ll be swamped. Take on more responsibility so you can call the shots. You’re getting stronger by the day. Put yourself in line for a promotion. Gemini (May 21-June 21): This week is a 9 – You practically invented networking. You have more friends than Carter has peanuts. They’ll come to your rescue again. Let them know what you want.
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in her palms and a slightly protruding tongue.” She’s also one of a new breed of dolls targeted at special-needs kids. Parents in the U.S. and Europe are snapping up Down Syndrome dolls, blind babies, paraplegic dolls in wheelchairs and dolls wearing scarves as if undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. “There’s a therapeutic impact,” says Helga Parks, who sells more than 2,000 Down Syndrome and Chemo Friends a year through her online Helga’s European Specialty Toys. Parks believes her products boost a child’s self-esteem by normalizing their condition, and foster understanding among peers: “They take away the fear and sense of alienation for both parties.” Among its hottest items is Tilley, a doll who uses an electric wheelchair.
Cancer (June 22-July 22): This week is a 5 – A controversy arises. Keep your opinions to yourself. Let the others duke it out first, while you consider your options. Include potential fringe benefits. Leo (July 23-Aug. 22): This week is a 9 – Conditions are perfect, but you’d better get into port before nightfall. Complications are brewing and there could be trouble this weekend. Be tucked away in a safe harbor by then.
Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): This week is a 5 – Don’t let somebody else’s problem give you a big headache. Instead, offer your services to someone who’s planningchallenged. Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): This week is a 9 – Launch new projects, make commitments, decide what you want to happen. Visualize yourself 10 years from now, happier than ever. Describe what that looks like and half the battle’s won. Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): This week is a 5 – Looks like you’re making money from your home as well as pouring money into it. Maybe you’re selling old furniture so you can buy some new. Whatever, it works out. Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): This week is a 9 -- Tackle the problem with enthusiasm and energy. The more you learn, the more questions pop to your mind. There doesn’t seem to be an end to it, and this is good. Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20): This week is a 5 -- It should be pretty easy to get what you want under these conditions. Go ahead and say you can do what’s required, even if you know you’ll have to study to keep that promise. You know you will.
Robbie talks Take That reunion ENGLAND – Singer Robbie Williams has said he is ready to rejoin Take That and is being welcomed back by his old bandmates. He told The Mirror newspaper the reunion was “looking more likely by the week”, adding he is in “regular contact” with them. The 35-year-old star quit Take That in 1995. The band split up a year later but reformed as a chart-topping foursome in 2006. He explained both he and the band had put their differences behind them: “We’ve matured now. We’ve have a laugh, and moved on.” “My head’s in the right place so the timing could be right,” he commented.
Kristy Hinze weds Jim Clark
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): This week is a 5 – Put everything into order, both down and across. Focus on the details, and the puzzle falls into place. Stick to your plan and you’ll be successful. Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): This week is a 9 – You generally fall for the wild, adventurous type. You’re not that outrageous yourself, but you do find it quite attractive. Somebody like that is driving you crazy now. Settle down and start making plans.
Williams is ready to rejoin the group. Pic: supplied
This year’s Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus pairs elephants with Bollywood dancers.
Pic: James Estrin
Circus flies over troubles with greatest of ease By Glenn Collins AMERICA – Five minutes into each performance of “Zing Zang Zoom,” the new magical menagerie from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, an 8,500-pound elephant named Asia seems to vanish abruptly in a grand illusion. Is it possible this disappearing act presages the future of the circus itself? The down economy has taken its toll on working-class families, the traditional core audience of Ringling, a showbusiness perennial that offended circus purists by abandoning its classic three rings three years ago. And competitors, both nouveau and non, have proliferated, from Cirque du Soleil to New York’s Big Apple Circus.
Furthermore when Ringling’s 139th edition arrives Thursday at Madison Square Garden, audiences will be leafleted by animal-welfare protesters following a six-week trial in federal court where the circus answered charges that it mistreats the very symbol of the show: its elephants. And even the traditional opening-night postperformance gala has been canceled for the first time in decades. Big Bertha, as circus folk call Ringling, is under siege as never before. Kenneth Feld, the company’s 60-yearold producer, dismissed any idea that Ringling is no longer the Greatest Show on Earth. “We have survived – and thrived – through every upheaval, every world war, every election, every economic crisis, and even 9/11,” he said.
“And now we are the nation’s entertainment security blanket.” Experts say the show could benefit from the economic meltdown. “The circus is recession-proof – or at least, Ringling is,” said William B. Hall, a 75-year-old circus producer in Churchville, Pa., who has observed it since the 1950s. “It’s about escape and family.” “For many families now a trip to Disney World is out of the question, but a drive to Ringling can give the kids a vacation for an afternoon,” said Thomas J. Crangle, an event-marketing consultant. The recession has benefited the circus in other ways: excess railroad capacity and the oil-price collapse have been boons to Mr. Feld’s enormous global transportation operations, including both its mile-long circus trains.
AUSTRALIA – Supermodel Kristy Hinze, 28, tied the knot with billionaire Netscape founder Jim Clark, 65, over the weekend. The two “wanted a quiet location with no press,” a pal said, so they picked the Rosewood Little Dix Bay resort on Virgin Gorda across from Richard Branson’s Necker Island. Guests like Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts were ferried between the two resorts and Jimmy Buffett performed at the reception. The newlyweds stayed on Clark’s Athena, the high-tech, 289-foot three-masted schooner that’s the largest private sailing yacht in the world.
Jim Clark, 64 and Kristy Hinze, 28. Pic: Supplied
As Rights Clash on YouTube, Some Music Vanishes By Tim Arango AMERICA – In early December, Juliet Weybret, a high school sophomore and aspiring rock star from Lodi, Calif., recorded a video of herself playing the piano and singing “Winter Wonderland,” and she posted it on YouTube. Weeks later, she received an e-mail message from YouTube: her video was being removed “as a result of a thirdparty notification by the Warner Music Group,” which owns the copyright to the Christmas carol.
Hers is not an isolated case. Countless other amateurs have been ensnared in a dispute between Warner Music and YouTube, which is owned by Google. The conflict centers on how much Warner should be paid for the use of its copyrighted works but has grown to include other material produced by amateurs that may also run afoul of copyright law. “Thousands of videos disappeared,” said Fred von Lohmann, staff lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet civil liberties group that asked
affected YouTube users to contact it. “Either they turned off the audio, or they pulled the video.” A spokesman for Warner Music said that YouTube’s system for identifying copyrighted material does not distinguish between professionally made music videos and amateur material that may include copyrighted works. “We and our artists share the user community’s frustration when content is unavailable. YouTube generates revenues from content posted by fans, which typically requires licenses from
rights holders. Under the current process, we make YouTube aware of WMG content. Their content ID tool then takes down all unlicensed tracks, regardless of how they are used,” said Will Tanous, a spokesman for Warner Music. The question for the two sides is, who will users blame — YouTube or the record label, in this case Warner? “I feel like the public’s perception of the record labels is so hostile that YouTube will be able to deflect any complaints,” said Phil Leigh, a new media analyst.