email to : seleb2008@yahoo.com
Friday, December 5, 2008
Love Bites: Madonna's A-Rod Moves, a 'Gossip Girl' Hookup?
email to : seleb2008@yahoo.com
Is Madonna planning to kick off 2009 by stepping into the spotlight with Alex Rodriguez? That's the word from the Chicago Sun-Times, which says the Kabbalah-loving confidants, who have recently been spotted in proximity to each other in Miami and Mexico City for her Sticky & Sweet tour, will "go public ... to some degree" at a still-to-be-determined New Year's Eve bash. "She wants to wait until an appropriate interval -- and allow enough time ... like at least a couple of months ... since the divorce became finalized," a source close to the newly ex-Mrs. Guy Ritchie informs the paper. But A-Rod may still be learning how to follow her rules. Madonna, who spent Tuesday reliving her "Evita" heyday by meeting with Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner at the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, where parts of the movie were filmed (she also greeted activist Ingrid Betancourt, who was held hostage by guerillas for six years), was said to be less than pleased when the New York Yankees star responded "very good" when asked by reporters how it felt to be in Mexico City at the same time as the Big M. Meanwhile, the New York Post believes Madonna and A-Rod are "quietly shopping" for high-end real estate in Manhattan. Seems the frozen-faced, bulging-bicepped pop icon and the meaty slugger may be movin' on up to the East Side, where they've been "discreetly looking" at high-end properties, hoping to score one with a coveted garage for added privacy. "Madonna personally came to look at one house a couple of months ago, and Alex has been looking recently," a spy tells the paper. "We're talking about private, double-width mansions in the vicinity of $30 million to $60 million." They're also rumored to be house hunting in the Hamptons, where they reportedly enjoyed a clandestine rendezvous at Jerry Seinfeld's sprawling estate in October. Rodriguez's rep, however, denies he's looking to feather a love nest with Madonna, who has maintained that she and the baseballer are just friends.
©Retna Ltd.
Amy and Blake are spotted in Toronto last year. (©Retna Ltd.)
So, remember earlier this week when Amy Winehouse's rehabbing hubby Blake Fielder-Civil insisted he was living substance-free? He may have been exaggerating a wee bit. Just a month after being sprung from the pokey, he's reportedly heading back behind bars for another year, ostensibly for failing a drug test. But he's not going quietly. The London Sun says he broke out of his rehab facility Tuesday night and made a beeline for the bedside of his disaster zone of a missus, who's been hospitalized since last week for a reported reaction to "medication." "Blake did a runner. He turned up in [the] hospital and hell broke loose -- everyone was totally shocked," a source tells the tab. "He was asking Amy to forgive him. As he was going back inside anyway he felt he didn't have much to lose." Sighs another snitch, "If he had stayed in prison last month rather than taking the rehab option, he was set to be released at the end of this month. He's blown it." Winehouse, who supposedly hadn't seen Fielder-Civil since he was released from prison after serving nearly a year for assault and perverting justice, is rumored to be initiating divorce proceedings. In an interview last week with Britain's News of the World, Blake accepted responsibility for turning the once-promising singer into the drug-ravaged shell she's become and promised to cut her loose for her own good: "Now I have to let her go to save her life. I am not abandoning her. I am doing this out of love. ... If something bad happened to Amy now, I would kill myself without a question."
©WireImage.com
The "Gossip Girl" co-stars hit a New York club earlier this year. (©WireImage.com)
There's nothing like having your personal belongings manhandled, sending your shoes through security and being deprived of personal space and oxygen to put you in the mood for a little lovin'. And so it was for "Gossip Girl" co-stars Ed Westwick and Jessica Szohr, who were reportedly getting frisky at the Dallas airport on Sunday night. A spy tells W that the actor, who plays nostril-flaring Machiavellian teen dandy Chuck Bass, was puckering up with the starlet, who portrays the much-maligned Vanessa, relaying to the mag that it was "definitely on the lips. Not a French kiss, but a smooch definitely. They were being very flirty when people were not paying attention." Seconds an eyewitness to the New York Post, "They were trying to be discreet by stealing kisses near the gate." The pair's coziness apparently continued once they got to their seats in -- horrors! -- coach for the flight to New York. "They were kissing in the aisles," the mole tells the paper, "but once they sat, she read her script and he drank a Heineken." If the hookup talk proves true, Westwick, who was last seen tangling tongues with Drew Barrymore, and Szohr will join castmates Blake Lively and Penn Badgley in the fishing-off-the-company-pier club.
©Retna Ltd.
Justin and Jessica speak at the Last Chance for Change rally in Las Vegas on Oct. 11. (©Retna Ltd.)
Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel enjoyed some cultural pursuits over the Thanksgiving holiday. People reports the squeezes turned up at the Elvis Presley Museum outside the crooner's hometown of Memphis, Tenn. "They had a nice, hourlong visit," says an insider. Later that afternoon, they took their dog for a walk, an outing on which the source apparently tagged along. "Justin went on the fallen leaves by the water," says the snitch, "and Jessica bent over to snap a close-up photo of him." All that Elvis memorabilia and perambulating must have helped them work up an appetite: They wound down the day by joining Timberlake's family for dinner at the local Cheesecake Corner eatery.
©Tom Meinelt/Jackson Lee/Splash
Balthazar and Sienna take a walk through New York on Oct. 25. (©Tom Meinelt/Jackson Lee/Splash)
Balthazar Getty had much to be thankful for over the holiday: namely, his continued tabloid relevance after reportedly reuniting with Sienna Miller, whom he was rumored to have briefly parted ways with last month (by the by, her rep denies they ever split). The two were spotted in London a few days back, and the Daily Mirror purports that the semifamous starlet has ordered the equally fame-challenged actor to do his darndest to woo her. "She's told him it's time they got back to basics and started taking things more slowly," says a source. "That means nice meals out, romantic dinner dates -- wholesome stuff that they can enjoy together." All of which, we presume, requires them to wear shirts, something they didn't bother to do when they first went public in July with a make-out session on a boat in Italy. Another alleged reconciliation provision: Getty's estranged wife, Rosetta, with whom he has four kids, is a verboten topic, although the tattoo of her name over his heart likely makes that a moot point. "Sienna and Balthazar have an unwritten rule that he is not to mention his wife by name," asserts the mole. "They are simply trying to move on with their lives as a couple and make a fresh start." But does that new beginning include trying to work together? The London Sun claims the derided duo is unwisely hoping to find a movie in which to co-star. "Her advisers are warning [her] how unpopular that would be," an insider tells the tab. "People haven't taken to them as a pair due to the way they got together. They fear people will find it a bit too sickly -- and as though they are rubbing his wife's face in it. But Sienna insists it could be movie gold and is looking for a script." Because if there's one thing Miller is known for, it's mining movie gold. Oh, wait ...
©Retna Ltd.
Kate Moss and Jamie Hince are spotted at Heathrow Airport in London on Oct. 30. (©Retna Ltd.)
Kate Moss and her rocker boyfriend Jamie Hince might want to ask Santa to bring them a pair of helmets and some gift certificates for couples counseling. The London Daily Mail claims the worse-for-wear supermodel was overheard at a recent soiree explaining that she and her beau were left with banged-up faces -- she had a cut on her cheek; he was sporting a black eye -- after getting into a tussle over where to celebrate in the birth of the baby Jesus. "We had a fight yesterday about what to do for Christmas. We had a bit of a scuffle and I was wearing a chunky ring, which caught him right in the eye," Moss is quoted as saying (see the pics here). "It's all OK now, though. We fight and we have our ups and downs -- like anyone, really."
Is Madonna planning to kick off 2009 by stepping into the spotlight with Alex Rodriguez? That's the word from the Chicago Sun-Times, which says the Kabbalah-loving confidants, who have recently been spotted in proximity to each other in Miami and Mexico City for her Sticky & Sweet tour, will "go public ... to some degree" at a still-to-be-determined New Year's Eve bash. "She wants to wait until an appropriate interval -- and allow enough time ... like at least a couple of months ... since the divorce became finalized," a source close to the newly ex-Mrs. Guy Ritchie informs the paper. But A-Rod may still be learning how to follow her rules. Madonna, who spent Tuesday reliving her "Evita" heyday by meeting with Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner at the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, where parts of the movie were filmed (she also greeted activist Ingrid Betancourt, who was held hostage by guerillas for six years), was said to be less than pleased when the New York Yankees star responded "very good" when asked by reporters how it felt to be in Mexico City at the same time as the Big M. Meanwhile, the New York Post believes Madonna and A-Rod are "quietly shopping" for high-end real estate in Manhattan. Seems the frozen-faced, bulging-bicepped pop icon and the meaty slugger may be movin' on up to the East Side, where they've been "discreetly looking" at high-end properties, hoping to score one with a coveted garage for added privacy. "Madonna personally came to look at one house a couple of months ago, and Alex has been looking recently," a spy tells the paper. "We're talking about private, double-width mansions in the vicinity of $30 million to $60 million." They're also rumored to be house hunting in the Hamptons, where they reportedly enjoyed a clandestine rendezvous at Jerry Seinfeld's sprawling estate in October. Rodriguez's rep, however, denies he's looking to feather a love nest with Madonna, who has maintained that she and the baseballer are just friends.
©Retna Ltd.
Amy and Blake are spotted in Toronto last year. (©Retna Ltd.)
So, remember earlier this week when Amy Winehouse's rehabbing hubby Blake Fielder-Civil insisted he was living substance-free? He may have been exaggerating a wee bit. Just a month after being sprung from the pokey, he's reportedly heading back behind bars for another year, ostensibly for failing a drug test. But he's not going quietly. The London Sun says he broke out of his rehab facility Tuesday night and made a beeline for the bedside of his disaster zone of a missus, who's been hospitalized since last week for a reported reaction to "medication." "Blake did a runner. He turned up in [the] hospital and hell broke loose -- everyone was totally shocked," a source tells the tab. "He was asking Amy to forgive him. As he was going back inside anyway he felt he didn't have much to lose." Sighs another snitch, "If he had stayed in prison last month rather than taking the rehab option, he was set to be released at the end of this month. He's blown it." Winehouse, who supposedly hadn't seen Fielder-Civil since he was released from prison after serving nearly a year for assault and perverting justice, is rumored to be initiating divorce proceedings. In an interview last week with Britain's News of the World, Blake accepted responsibility for turning the once-promising singer into the drug-ravaged shell she's become and promised to cut her loose for her own good: "Now I have to let her go to save her life. I am not abandoning her. I am doing this out of love. ... If something bad happened to Amy now, I would kill myself without a question."
©WireImage.com
The "Gossip Girl" co-stars hit a New York club earlier this year. (©WireImage.com)
There's nothing like having your personal belongings manhandled, sending your shoes through security and being deprived of personal space and oxygen to put you in the mood for a little lovin'. And so it was for "Gossip Girl" co-stars Ed Westwick and Jessica Szohr, who were reportedly getting frisky at the Dallas airport on Sunday night. A spy tells W that the actor, who plays nostril-flaring Machiavellian teen dandy Chuck Bass, was puckering up with the starlet, who portrays the much-maligned Vanessa, relaying to the mag that it was "definitely on the lips. Not a French kiss, but a smooch definitely. They were being very flirty when people were not paying attention." Seconds an eyewitness to the New York Post, "They were trying to be discreet by stealing kisses near the gate." The pair's coziness apparently continued once they got to their seats in -- horrors! -- coach for the flight to New York. "They were kissing in the aisles," the mole tells the paper, "but once they sat, she read her script and he drank a Heineken." If the hookup talk proves true, Westwick, who was last seen tangling tongues with Drew Barrymore, and Szohr will join castmates Blake Lively and Penn Badgley in the fishing-off-the-company-pier club.
©Retna Ltd.
Justin and Jessica speak at the Last Chance for Change rally in Las Vegas on Oct. 11. (©Retna Ltd.)
Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel enjoyed some cultural pursuits over the Thanksgiving holiday. People reports the squeezes turned up at the Elvis Presley Museum outside the crooner's hometown of Memphis, Tenn. "They had a nice, hourlong visit," says an insider. Later that afternoon, they took their dog for a walk, an outing on which the source apparently tagged along. "Justin went on the fallen leaves by the water," says the snitch, "and Jessica bent over to snap a close-up photo of him." All that Elvis memorabilia and perambulating must have helped them work up an appetite: They wound down the day by joining Timberlake's family for dinner at the local Cheesecake Corner eatery.
©Tom Meinelt/Jackson Lee/Splash
Balthazar and Sienna take a walk through New York on Oct. 25. (©Tom Meinelt/Jackson Lee/Splash)
Balthazar Getty had much to be thankful for over the holiday: namely, his continued tabloid relevance after reportedly reuniting with Sienna Miller, whom he was rumored to have briefly parted ways with last month (by the by, her rep denies they ever split). The two were spotted in London a few days back, and the Daily Mirror purports that the semifamous starlet has ordered the equally fame-challenged actor to do his darndest to woo her. "She's told him it's time they got back to basics and started taking things more slowly," says a source. "That means nice meals out, romantic dinner dates -- wholesome stuff that they can enjoy together." All of which, we presume, requires them to wear shirts, something they didn't bother to do when they first went public in July with a make-out session on a boat in Italy. Another alleged reconciliation provision: Getty's estranged wife, Rosetta, with whom he has four kids, is a verboten topic, although the tattoo of her name over his heart likely makes that a moot point. "Sienna and Balthazar have an unwritten rule that he is not to mention his wife by name," asserts the mole. "They are simply trying to move on with their lives as a couple and make a fresh start." But does that new beginning include trying to work together? The London Sun claims the derided duo is unwisely hoping to find a movie in which to co-star. "Her advisers are warning [her] how unpopular that would be," an insider tells the tab. "People haven't taken to them as a pair due to the way they got together. They fear people will find it a bit too sickly -- and as though they are rubbing his wife's face in it. But Sienna insists it could be movie gold and is looking for a script." Because if there's one thing Miller is known for, it's mining movie gold. Oh, wait ...
©Retna Ltd.
Kate Moss and Jamie Hince are spotted at Heathrow Airport in London on Oct. 30. (©Retna Ltd.)
Kate Moss and her rocker boyfriend Jamie Hince might want to ask Santa to bring them a pair of helmets and some gift certificates for couples counseling. The London Daily Mail claims the worse-for-wear supermodel was overheard at a recent soiree explaining that she and her beau were left with banged-up faces -- she had a cut on her cheek; he was sporting a black eye -- after getting into a tussle over where to celebrate in the birth of the baby Jesus. "We had a fight yesterday about what to do for Christmas. We had a bit of a scuffle and I was wearing a chunky ring, which caught him right in the eye," Moss is quoted as saying (see the pics here). "It's all OK now, though. We fight and we have our ups and downs -- like anyone, really."
De La Hoya's the champ of cross promotion
email to : seleb2008@yahoo.com
LAS VEGAS - He's asking $54.95 to see him fight Manny Pacquiao on pay per view. Still, Oscar De La Hoya feels your pain.
"We know it's a tough economy," he said.
Here, then, was the Golden Boy's prescription for cost-effective pay-per-viewing: Get a twelve pack of the right beer for you and your friends. Next, get a bottle of the right tequila. Finally, to modulate your buzz, grab a can of the right energy drink.
Never mind the aggregate cost of these beverages. Disregard the potential hazard involved with imbibing alcohol and caffeine — that you may very well miss the fight's thrilling moments (and I think there will be some) while in the bathroom. The recommended drinks were among the corporate sponsors for Saturday night's fight between Pacquiao, the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, and De La Hoya, the most bankable. Apparently, each purchase corresponds to a partial rebate on the pay-per-view fee.
Buy them all, said De La Hoya, and "you're practically going to get the fight for free."
He was smiling when he said all this, grinning in that way only the Golden Boy can. And why not? De La Hoya was engaged in boxing's most venerable tradition: hustling. Don King was a hustler. Bob Arum, too. No one bats an eye. But hearing Oscar pitch so brazenly in the final press conference at the MGM Grand, I couldn't help but resent it. And I wasn't alone.
Now, at 35, near the end of his outrageously profitable fighting career, De La Hoya remains a curious case. Call him a sell-out, if you must, but then you're also obligated to acknowledge him as a savior. It's difficult to overstate how much the sport owes him. It's not too much to say he kept the fight game alive.
It was De La Hoya who enabled boxing to move beyond its relentlessly morbid fascination with Mike Tyson. It was De La Hoya who provided the juice in an age completely bereft of heavyweight excitement. What's more, his Golden Boy promotional company represents an extraordinary accomplishment. A fighter as a promoter? In the not so distant past, the notion was laughable.
And yet, I'm still not sure about Oscar. I should like him more than I do. But even after all these years, I never quite know what's real, and what's a corporate tie-in.
Consider the statue unveiled the other day at the Staples Center. Magic Johnson has a statue there. Wayne Gretzky, too. Jerry West does not. Nor does Kareem. Or Wilt. But now De La Hoya makes three. The strange part is, Oscar has fought but once in the Staples Center. It was a decision he lost to Shane Mosley back in 2000. In fact, though De La Hoya likes to be known as "the Pride of East L.A.", he's fought only twice in Los Angeles since 1994. The other occasion was his lackluster decision over Stevie Forbes last May at the Home Depot Center in Carson.
The Home Depot Center and Staples are owned and operated by the same company, AEG. As coincidence would have it, that would be the same AEG that has a stake in Golden Boy Promotions.
The basis for the big bronze figure is not rooted in sentiment. It's corporate synergy and strategy.
There's too much transparent public relations. For instance, at the press conference, Oscar's people — including the parade of Mexican champions he claimed as his supporters — wore shirts or jackets endorsing The Ring. For those who don't know, the magazine is now owned by Golden Boy.
Then there's Angelo Dundee, the Hall of Fame trainer brought in to "work with" De La Hoya. Even Dundee — who showed up at De La Hoya's camp in Big Bear just in time for the big media day last month — admitted "I didn't do any homework." What Dundee could teach Oscar at that point, under those conditions, is anyone's guess ...
I've long thought De La Hoya's finest moment was beating Ike Quartey — going on 10 years now, the night he knocked down a fearsome puncher in the final round. It had real merit, though no one seems to recall the fight. Rather, if De La Hoya's career were to end tomorrow people would recall his bout with Floyd Mayweather.
The promotion was great. Mayweather-De La Hoya is considered a watershed event in the pay-per-view industry. At 2.4 million buys, it easily set an all-time record.
But you can't measure fights merely by financials. (Hey, you don't hear anyone talk about the numbers for Ali-Frazier or Hagler-Hearns). The truth is, as a fight, Mayweather-De La Hoya sucked, lacking for both for action and drama.
I'm not arguing that Saturday night with Pacquiao will be a dog. Actually, I expect it to be pretty good, full of action. But it's not the best fight out there, either. That would be De La Hoya against Antonio Margarito or Miguel Cotto, natural 147 pounders.
De La Hoya is only behaving rationally, as any businessman should. Margarito and Cotto represent considerably more danger and much less money. Pacquiao may be a great fighter, with an immense following. But only one of his 50 fights has been above 130 pounds.
You figure that the Golden Boy (both the fighter and his namesake promotional company) selected an opponent based on a finely calibrated cost-benefit analysis. It's about risk and reward. It's about profit points. It's about cross-promotion. It's like being in the beverage business.
LAS VEGAS - He's asking $54.95 to see him fight Manny Pacquiao on pay per view. Still, Oscar De La Hoya feels your pain.
"We know it's a tough economy," he said.
Here, then, was the Golden Boy's prescription for cost-effective pay-per-viewing: Get a twelve pack of the right beer for you and your friends. Next, get a bottle of the right tequila. Finally, to modulate your buzz, grab a can of the right energy drink.
Never mind the aggregate cost of these beverages. Disregard the potential hazard involved with imbibing alcohol and caffeine — that you may very well miss the fight's thrilling moments (and I think there will be some) while in the bathroom. The recommended drinks were among the corporate sponsors for Saturday night's fight between Pacquiao, the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, and De La Hoya, the most bankable. Apparently, each purchase corresponds to a partial rebate on the pay-per-view fee.
Buy them all, said De La Hoya, and "you're practically going to get the fight for free."
He was smiling when he said all this, grinning in that way only the Golden Boy can. And why not? De La Hoya was engaged in boxing's most venerable tradition: hustling. Don King was a hustler. Bob Arum, too. No one bats an eye. But hearing Oscar pitch so brazenly in the final press conference at the MGM Grand, I couldn't help but resent it. And I wasn't alone.
Now, at 35, near the end of his outrageously profitable fighting career, De La Hoya remains a curious case. Call him a sell-out, if you must, but then you're also obligated to acknowledge him as a savior. It's difficult to overstate how much the sport owes him. It's not too much to say he kept the fight game alive.
It was De La Hoya who enabled boxing to move beyond its relentlessly morbid fascination with Mike Tyson. It was De La Hoya who provided the juice in an age completely bereft of heavyweight excitement. What's more, his Golden Boy promotional company represents an extraordinary accomplishment. A fighter as a promoter? In the not so distant past, the notion was laughable.
And yet, I'm still not sure about Oscar. I should like him more than I do. But even after all these years, I never quite know what's real, and what's a corporate tie-in.
Consider the statue unveiled the other day at the Staples Center. Magic Johnson has a statue there. Wayne Gretzky, too. Jerry West does not. Nor does Kareem. Or Wilt. But now De La Hoya makes three. The strange part is, Oscar has fought but once in the Staples Center. It was a decision he lost to Shane Mosley back in 2000. In fact, though De La Hoya likes to be known as "the Pride of East L.A.", he's fought only twice in Los Angeles since 1994. The other occasion was his lackluster decision over Stevie Forbes last May at the Home Depot Center in Carson.
The Home Depot Center and Staples are owned and operated by the same company, AEG. As coincidence would have it, that would be the same AEG that has a stake in Golden Boy Promotions.
The basis for the big bronze figure is not rooted in sentiment. It's corporate synergy and strategy.
There's too much transparent public relations. For instance, at the press conference, Oscar's people — including the parade of Mexican champions he claimed as his supporters — wore shirts or jackets endorsing The Ring. For those who don't know, the magazine is now owned by Golden Boy.
Then there's Angelo Dundee, the Hall of Fame trainer brought in to "work with" De La Hoya. Even Dundee — who showed up at De La Hoya's camp in Big Bear just in time for the big media day last month — admitted "I didn't do any homework." What Dundee could teach Oscar at that point, under those conditions, is anyone's guess ...
I've long thought De La Hoya's finest moment was beating Ike Quartey — going on 10 years now, the night he knocked down a fearsome puncher in the final round. It had real merit, though no one seems to recall the fight. Rather, if De La Hoya's career were to end tomorrow people would recall his bout with Floyd Mayweather.
The promotion was great. Mayweather-De La Hoya is considered a watershed event in the pay-per-view industry. At 2.4 million buys, it easily set an all-time record.
But you can't measure fights merely by financials. (Hey, you don't hear anyone talk about the numbers for Ali-Frazier or Hagler-Hearns). The truth is, as a fight, Mayweather-De La Hoya sucked, lacking for both for action and drama.
I'm not arguing that Saturday night with Pacquiao will be a dog. Actually, I expect it to be pretty good, full of action. But it's not the best fight out there, either. That would be De La Hoya against Antonio Margarito or Miguel Cotto, natural 147 pounders.
De La Hoya is only behaving rationally, as any businessman should. Margarito and Cotto represent considerably more danger and much less money. Pacquiao may be a great fighter, with an immense following. But only one of his 50 fights has been above 130 pounds.
You figure that the Golden Boy (both the fighter and his namesake promotional company) selected an opponent based on a finely calibrated cost-benefit analysis. It's about risk and reward. It's about profit points. It's about cross-promotion. It's like being in the beverage business.
The 10 Best Books of 2008
email to : seleb2008@yahoo.com
FICTION
DANGEROUS LAUGHTER
Thirteen Stories
By Steven Millhauser.
Alfred A. Knopf, $24.
In his first collection in five years, a master fabulist in the tradition of Poe and Nabokov invents spookily plausible parallel universes in which the deepest human emotions and yearnings are transformed into their monstrous opposites. Millhauser is especially attuned to the purgatory of adolescence. In the title story, teenagers attend sinister “laugh parties”; in another, a mysteriously afflicted girl hides in the darkness of her attic bedroom. Time and again these parables revive the possibility that “under this world there is another, waiting to be born.” (Excerpt)
A MERCY
By Toni Morrison.
Alfred A. Knopf, $23.95.
The fate of a slave child abandoned by her mother animates this allusive novel — part Faulknerian puzzle, part dream-song — about orphaned women who form an eccentric household in late-17th-century America. Morrison’s farmers and rum traders, masters and slaves, indentured whites and captive Native Americans live side by side, often in violent conflict, in a lawless, ripe American Eden that is both a haven and a prison — an emerging nation whose identity is rooted equally in Old World superstitions and New World appetites and fears. (First Chapter)
NETHERLAND
By Joseph O’Neill.
Pantheon Books, $23.95.
O’Neill’s seductive ode to New York — a city that even in bad times stubbornly clings to its belief “in its salvific worth” — is narrated by a Dutch financier whose privileged Manhattan existence is upended by the events of Sept. 11, 2001. When his wife departs for London with their small son, he stays behind, finding camaraderie in the unexpectedly buoyant world of immigrant cricket players, most of them West Indians and South Asians, including an entrepreneur with Gatsby-size aspirations. (First Chapter)
2666
By Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Natasha Wimmer.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, cloth and paper, $30.
Bolaño, the prodigious Chilean writer who died at age 50 in 2003, has posthumously risen, like a figure in one of his own splendid creations, to the summit of modern fiction. This latest work, first published in Spanish in 2004, is a mega- and meta-detective novel with strong hints of apocalyptic foreboding. It contains five separate narratives, each pursuing a different story with a cast of beguiling characters — European literary scholars, an African-American journalist and more — whose lives converge in a Mexican border town where hundreds of young women have been brutally murdered. (Excerpt)
UNACCUSTOMED EARTH
By Jhumpa Lahiri.
Alfred A. Knopf, $25.
There is much cultural news in these precisely observed studies of modern-day Bengali-Americans — many of them Ivy-league strivers ensconced in prosperous suburbs who can’t quite overcome the tug of traditions nurtured in Calcutta. With quiet artistry and tender sympathy, Lahiri creates an impressive range of vivid characters — young and old, male and female, self-knowing and self-deluding — in engrossing stories that replenish the classic themes of domestic realism: loneliness, estrangement and family discord. (Excerpt)
NONFICTION
THE DARK SIDE
The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals
By Jane Mayer.
Doubleday, $27.50.
Mayer’s meticulously reported descent into the depths of President Bush’s antiterrorist policies peels away the layers of legal and bureaucratic maneuvering that gave us Guantánamo Bay, “extraordinary rendition,” “enhanced” interrogation methods, “black sites,” warrantless domestic surveillance and all the rest. But Mayer also describes the efforts ofunsung heroes, tucked deep inside the administration, who risked their careers in the struggle to balance the rule of law against the need to meet a threat unlike any other in the nation’s history.
THE FOREVER WAR
By Dexter Filkins.
Alfred A. Knopf, $25.
The New York Times correspondent, whose tours of duty have taken him from Afghanistan in 1998 to Iraq during the American intervention, captures a decade of armed struggle in harrowingly detailed vignettes. Whether interviewing jihadists in Kabul, accompanying marines on risky patrols in Falluja or visiting grieving families in Baghdad, Filkins makes us see, with almost hallucinogenic immediacy, the true human meaning and consequences of the “war on terror.” (First Chapter)
NOTHING TO BE FRIGHTENED OF
By Julian Barnes.
Alfred A. Knopf, $24.95.
This absorbing memoir traces Barnes’s progress from atheism (at age 20) to agnosticism (at 60) and examines the problem of religion not by rehashing the familiar quarrel between science and mystery, but rather by weighing the timeless questions of mortality and aging. Barnes distills his own experiences — and those of his parents and brother — in polished and wise sentences that recall the writing of Montaigne, Flaubert and the other French masters he includes in his discussion. (First Chapter)
THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING
Death and the American Civil War
By Drew Gilpin Faust.
Alfred A. Knopf, $27.95.
In this powerful book, Faust, the president of Harvard, explores the legacy, or legacies, of the “harvest of death” sown and reaped by the Civil War. In the space of four years, 620,000 Americans died in uniform, roughly the same number as those lost in all the nation’s combined wars from the Revolution through Korea. This doesn’t include the thousands of civilians killed in epidemics, guerrilla raids and draft riots. The collective trauma created “a newly centralized nation-state,” Faust writes, but it also established “sacrifice and its memorialization as the ground on which North and South would ultimately reunite.” (First Chapter)
THE WORLD IS WHAT IT IS
The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul
By Patrick French.
Alfred A. Knopf, $30.
The most surprising word in this biography is “authorized.” Naipaul, the greatest of all postcolonial authors, cooperated fully with French, opening up a huge cache of private letters and diaries and supplementing the revelations they disclosed with remarkably candid interviews. It was a brave, and wise, decision. French, a first-rate biographer, has a novelist’s command of story and character, and he patiently connects his subject’s brilliant oeuvre with the disturbing facts of an unruly life. (First Chapter)
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FICTION
DANGEROUS LAUGHTER
Thirteen Stories
By Steven Millhauser.
Alfred A. Knopf, $24.
In his first collection in five years, a master fabulist in the tradition of Poe and Nabokov invents spookily plausible parallel universes in which the deepest human emotions and yearnings are transformed into their monstrous opposites. Millhauser is especially attuned to the purgatory of adolescence. In the title story, teenagers attend sinister “laugh parties”; in another, a mysteriously afflicted girl hides in the darkness of her attic bedroom. Time and again these parables revive the possibility that “under this world there is another, waiting to be born.” (Excerpt)
A MERCY
By Toni Morrison.
Alfred A. Knopf, $23.95.
The fate of a slave child abandoned by her mother animates this allusive novel — part Faulknerian puzzle, part dream-song — about orphaned women who form an eccentric household in late-17th-century America. Morrison’s farmers and rum traders, masters and slaves, indentured whites and captive Native Americans live side by side, often in violent conflict, in a lawless, ripe American Eden that is both a haven and a prison — an emerging nation whose identity is rooted equally in Old World superstitions and New World appetites and fears. (First Chapter)
NETHERLAND
By Joseph O’Neill.
Pantheon Books, $23.95.
O’Neill’s seductive ode to New York — a city that even in bad times stubbornly clings to its belief “in its salvific worth” — is narrated by a Dutch financier whose privileged Manhattan existence is upended by the events of Sept. 11, 2001. When his wife departs for London with their small son, he stays behind, finding camaraderie in the unexpectedly buoyant world of immigrant cricket players, most of them West Indians and South Asians, including an entrepreneur with Gatsby-size aspirations. (First Chapter)
2666
By Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Natasha Wimmer.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, cloth and paper, $30.
Bolaño, the prodigious Chilean writer who died at age 50 in 2003, has posthumously risen, like a figure in one of his own splendid creations, to the summit of modern fiction. This latest work, first published in Spanish in 2004, is a mega- and meta-detective novel with strong hints of apocalyptic foreboding. It contains five separate narratives, each pursuing a different story with a cast of beguiling characters — European literary scholars, an African-American journalist and more — whose lives converge in a Mexican border town where hundreds of young women have been brutally murdered. (Excerpt)
UNACCUSTOMED EARTH
By Jhumpa Lahiri.
Alfred A. Knopf, $25.
There is much cultural news in these precisely observed studies of modern-day Bengali-Americans — many of them Ivy-league strivers ensconced in prosperous suburbs who can’t quite overcome the tug of traditions nurtured in Calcutta. With quiet artistry and tender sympathy, Lahiri creates an impressive range of vivid characters — young and old, male and female, self-knowing and self-deluding — in engrossing stories that replenish the classic themes of domestic realism: loneliness, estrangement and family discord. (Excerpt)
NONFICTION
THE DARK SIDE
The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals
By Jane Mayer.
Doubleday, $27.50.
Mayer’s meticulously reported descent into the depths of President Bush’s antiterrorist policies peels away the layers of legal and bureaucratic maneuvering that gave us Guantánamo Bay, “extraordinary rendition,” “enhanced” interrogation methods, “black sites,” warrantless domestic surveillance and all the rest. But Mayer also describes the efforts ofunsung heroes, tucked deep inside the administration, who risked their careers in the struggle to balance the rule of law against the need to meet a threat unlike any other in the nation’s history.
THE FOREVER WAR
By Dexter Filkins.
Alfred A. Knopf, $25.
The New York Times correspondent, whose tours of duty have taken him from Afghanistan in 1998 to Iraq during the American intervention, captures a decade of armed struggle in harrowingly detailed vignettes. Whether interviewing jihadists in Kabul, accompanying marines on risky patrols in Falluja or visiting grieving families in Baghdad, Filkins makes us see, with almost hallucinogenic immediacy, the true human meaning and consequences of the “war on terror.” (First Chapter)
NOTHING TO BE FRIGHTENED OF
By Julian Barnes.
Alfred A. Knopf, $24.95.
This absorbing memoir traces Barnes’s progress from atheism (at age 20) to agnosticism (at 60) and examines the problem of religion not by rehashing the familiar quarrel between science and mystery, but rather by weighing the timeless questions of mortality and aging. Barnes distills his own experiences — and those of his parents and brother — in polished and wise sentences that recall the writing of Montaigne, Flaubert and the other French masters he includes in his discussion. (First Chapter)
THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING
Death and the American Civil War
By Drew Gilpin Faust.
Alfred A. Knopf, $27.95.
In this powerful book, Faust, the president of Harvard, explores the legacy, or legacies, of the “harvest of death” sown and reaped by the Civil War. In the space of four years, 620,000 Americans died in uniform, roughly the same number as those lost in all the nation’s combined wars from the Revolution through Korea. This doesn’t include the thousands of civilians killed in epidemics, guerrilla raids and draft riots. The collective trauma created “a newly centralized nation-state,” Faust writes, but it also established “sacrifice and its memorialization as the ground on which North and South would ultimately reunite.” (First Chapter)
THE WORLD IS WHAT IT IS
The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul
By Patrick French.
Alfred A. Knopf, $30.
The most surprising word in this biography is “authorized.” Naipaul, the greatest of all postcolonial authors, cooperated fully with French, opening up a huge cache of private letters and diaries and supplementing the revelations they disclosed with remarkably candid interviews. It was a brave, and wise, decision. French, a first-rate biographer, has a novelist’s command of story and character, and he patiently connects his subject’s brilliant oeuvre with the disturbing facts of an unruly life. (First Chapter)
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America Ferrera
email to : seleb2008@yahoo.com
Full Biography
From All Movie Guide: Few aspiring actresses could ever hope to experience the early career success of Ugly Betty starlet America Ferrera. In the scant four years after earning a Sundance Jury Award, an Independent Spirit Award nomination, and a Young Artist Award nomination for her role as a first-generation Mexican-American girl teetering on the cusp of womanhood for Real Women Have Curves, the hardworking actress rose quickly through the ranks to become one of television's brightest young stars.
A Los Angeles native and the youngest of six siblings born to Honduran parents, Ferrera was raised by her mother in Woodland Hills, CA. Though at first hesitant to pursue a career on camera, the natural-born actress and high school valedictorian displayed an instinctive talent on the stage that seemed to signal she had found her true calling. It was during this time that Ferrera began working as a waitress to fund her classes and pay for headshots, and shortly thereafter she made her screen debut as a cheerleader in the Disney Channel feature Gotta Kick It Up! (2002). Later, while attending summer theater camp at Northwestern University, Ferrera taped an audition for Real Women Have Curves; after six auditions, she was ecstatic to learn that she had been cast as first-generation American Ana Garcia. It was the perfect role for the emerging actress, as she too was among the first of her family to be born in America.
In the following two years, Ferrera appeared in a number of film and television projects while studying International Relations and Theater at the University of Southern California, with high-profile roles in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Lords of Dogtown helping to form a solid foundation for an enduring career. Roles in the addiction drama 3:52 and the working-class drama Steel City were quick to follow, and in 2006 Ferrera became a small-screen sensation with her role as an unattractive secretary working for a popular fashion magazine in ABC's Ugly Betty.
An Americanized remake of the popular Columbian comedy drama Yo Soy Betty, la Fea, Ugly Betty was produced by screen star Salma Hayek and became an immediate hit with viewers. When the Golden Globes were handed out in early 2007, young star Ferrera was visibly thrilled to be bestowed with a Best Actress award for her work on the series. She also won a the Screen Actors Guild Award for Female Actor in a Comedy Series shortly thereafter. That same year, Ferrera would expand her resumé to include the role of producer for the dramatic crime thriller Towards Darkness -- in which she also starred as a girl who shares a sensitive relationship with a young kidnapping victim. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Education
Institution - El Camino Real High School
Location - Woodland Hills, CA
Institution - Northwestern University
Location - Chicago, IL
Year range - 2002
Institution - University of Southern California
Location - Los Angeles, CA
Major - international relations, theater
Year range - 2003
Institution - George Ellery Hale Middle School
Location - Woodland Hills, CA
Full Biography
From All Movie Guide: Few aspiring actresses could ever hope to experience the early career success of Ugly Betty starlet America Ferrera. In the scant four years after earning a Sundance Jury Award, an Independent Spirit Award nomination, and a Young Artist Award nomination for her role as a first-generation Mexican-American girl teetering on the cusp of womanhood for Real Women Have Curves, the hardworking actress rose quickly through the ranks to become one of television's brightest young stars.
A Los Angeles native and the youngest of six siblings born to Honduran parents, Ferrera was raised by her mother in Woodland Hills, CA. Though at first hesitant to pursue a career on camera, the natural-born actress and high school valedictorian displayed an instinctive talent on the stage that seemed to signal she had found her true calling. It was during this time that Ferrera began working as a waitress to fund her classes and pay for headshots, and shortly thereafter she made her screen debut as a cheerleader in the Disney Channel feature Gotta Kick It Up! (2002). Later, while attending summer theater camp at Northwestern University, Ferrera taped an audition for Real Women Have Curves; after six auditions, she was ecstatic to learn that she had been cast as first-generation American Ana Garcia. It was the perfect role for the emerging actress, as she too was among the first of her family to be born in America.
In the following two years, Ferrera appeared in a number of film and television projects while studying International Relations and Theater at the University of Southern California, with high-profile roles in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Lords of Dogtown helping to form a solid foundation for an enduring career. Roles in the addiction drama 3:52 and the working-class drama Steel City were quick to follow, and in 2006 Ferrera became a small-screen sensation with her role as an unattractive secretary working for a popular fashion magazine in ABC's Ugly Betty.
An Americanized remake of the popular Columbian comedy drama Yo Soy Betty, la Fea, Ugly Betty was produced by screen star Salma Hayek and became an immediate hit with viewers. When the Golden Globes were handed out in early 2007, young star Ferrera was visibly thrilled to be bestowed with a Best Actress award for her work on the series. She also won a the Screen Actors Guild Award for Female Actor in a Comedy Series shortly thereafter. That same year, Ferrera would expand her resumé to include the role of producer for the dramatic crime thriller Towards Darkness -- in which she also starred as a girl who shares a sensitive relationship with a young kidnapping victim. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Education
Institution - El Camino Real High School
Location - Woodland Hills, CA
Institution - Northwestern University
Location - Chicago, IL
Year range - 2002
Institution - University of Southern California
Location - Los Angeles, CA
Major - international relations, theater
Year range - 2003
Institution - George Ellery Hale Middle School
Location - Woodland Hills, CA
Lindsay Lohan
email to : seleb2008@yahoo.com
Full Biography
From All Movie Guide: Child actress Lindsay Lohan was already an experienced performer when she made her feature debut in the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap. Born in New York City, Lohan began modeling at age three. After appearing in numerous TV commercials, Lohan moved to series TV with a role on the soap operaAnother World from 1996 to 1997. Cast as The Parent Trap's scheming twin sisters after a six month search for just the right girl, Lohan succeeded in filling Hayley Mills' shoes, winning over audiences with her pert charm as both the Californian Hallie and the British-raised Annie. She subsequently starred in the Disney TV film Life-Size (2000). Subsequently cast in actress Bette Midler's short-lived sitcom Bette, Lohan took a turn as a teenage gossip columnist (Get a Clue[2002]) before turning up in yet another remake of a Disney classic, Freaky Friday (2003). Stepping into the shoes formerly filled by Jodie Foster, Lohan and co-star Jamie Lee Curtis brought a winning, new chemistry to the film that made it a sleeper summer hit.
Lohan kicked off 2004 with her first big starring vehicle, the comedy Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. Met with mixed reviews and modest box-office receipts, the film didn't cross over from the teen audience the way Friday did. Only a mere two months later, Lohan proved she could carry a film. The Tina Fey-penned Mean Girls debuted at number one, recouping its budget and then some in its first week of release. The spotlight on the then-16-year-old Lohan changed almost overnight, as she quickly became a tabloid fixture: speculation on her body, her nightclubbing, her string of high-profile boyfriends, her incarcerated father, and her feuds with a variety of other young female celebrities became inescapable. Perhaps predictably, 2004 also saw Lohan branch out into the world of pop music with the album Speak; the supposedly confessional -- and similarly undistinguished -- A Little More Personal followed in 2005.
All of the hullabaloo seemed to have little effect on her work, as she starred in Herbie: Fully Loaded for Disney -- suffering a bout of "exhaustion" on set -- before graduating to more adult fare with Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion. Playing a morose poetess, the young actress ably held her own against Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin when the film opened in 2006; around that time, her first shot at a "grown-up" romantic comedy, Just My Luck, opened to little notice from the public or critics.
Undaunted, Lohan set to work on another grande-dame comedy, Georgia Rule, in which she played a wayward, risk-taking teenage girl who is hauled off to live with her stern grandmother (Jane Fonda) for the summer. Perhaps fittingly, Lohan's own tardy behavior on the Georgia Rule set prompted a very public memo from the film's backers, who claimed her late-night partying was endangering the shoot; a short stay in rehab followed in early 2007. For all the publicity generated by Lohan's wild-child routine, Georgia Rule tanked when it opened in May of that year, although many critics preferred Lohan's performance over those of her histrionic co-stars Jane Fonda and Felicity Huffman. The actress' R-rated summer blitz continued with the thriller I Know Who Killed Me, just as her work in the widely panned Mark David Chapman biopic Chapter 27 made the festival rounds. This trifecta of flops was complemented by an increasingly erratic public image, as she found herself involved in two DUI arrests within two months' time that same summer. Both prompted stays in rehab, as well as mammoth media attention. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
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