Archive for April, 2007

(WENN)

The head of the British Army has confirmed that Prince Harry's off to the front line in Iraq . Maybe his redheaded sexy will be enough to end the fighting. Yeah, I just said that.

Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt said the decision would be kept under review, but he hoped his statement would end media speculation on Harry's deployment.

"I would urge that the somewhat frenzied media activity surrounding this particular story should cease in the interests of the overall security of all our people deployed in Iraq," Dannatt said.

Clarence House, Prince Charles' London office, would not comment on the statement.

Harry, a 22-year-old second lieutenant, is a tank commander trained to lead a 12-man team in four armored reconnaissance vehicles. If deployed, he would become the first royal to serve in a war zone since his uncle, Prince Andrew, flew as a helicopter pilot in Britain's conflict with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982.

I know there's thousands of men and women who are risking their lives everyday in a war zone so why should we focus on one royal guy? Well, because this is a gossip blog, and he's famous and a redhead and a right sexy beast. And he gets in fights with the paps when they photograph him out with someone other than his chick. None of those reasons hold any water whatsoever, but it's Monday, and everyone's aware that war sucks, and might as well make the most of it by reporting on sexy people.

The news that dominated the week for Apple had little to do with technology rumors, but dollar signs with Apple posting its most profitable quarter ever (by the by, Amazon had good financial news as well). It seems the release of Windows Vista didn’t make too much of a dent in sales of Macs, with a 30 percent increase in sales over the same quarter in 2006 (which raised the Mac’s market share one percentage point to 5 percent–Dell’s still #1 at 28 percent). Apple also shipped 10.5 million iPods during this time period.

But there were other tidbits to be gleaned during the week for Apple fanboys/girls:

• There might be a downside to all the success, as Electronista reports that Apple is pushing Samsung, one of its main flash memory suppliers, to the breaking point in order to cover all iPod and iPhone models for the second half of the year.
• Hot on the heels of Earth Day, Trillium Asset Management investment, an investment group that specializes in socially responsible investments, has submitted a resolution to be voted on at the May 10 annual meeting to remove hazardous chemicals from Apple products. AppleInsider has more:
  

  The investment firm rekindled accusations that Apple has stalled on its commitments to environmental progress and urged that it scrap brominated flame retardants (BFCs) and polyvinyl chloride plastic (PVC), either of which can leak dangerous chemicals in the wrong circumstances.

  Such substances can be especially volatile in developing nations, where attempts to cannibalize the better components of junked PCs frequently triggers their release into the environment. Continuing to use these materials without a "reasonable" timetable to eventually scrap them is both irresponsible and hypocritical, Trillian proclaimed.

  One problem: the Apple board of directors (which includes Al Gore) has said that it opposes the resolution, arguing that it already has adequate environmental standards.

• In last week’s edition of Bites, we noted some hopes (especially from the ranks of music industry bigwigs) for an iTunes music subscription service. Well, Steve Jobs tried to throw some water on that notion: "Never say never, but customers don’t seem to be interested in [subscriptions]. The subscription model has failed so far." Christopher Breen at Playlistmag throws water back, ticking off reasons why he likes subscription music services. And Ars Technica postulates that a subscription service would actually be a regressive move in light of Jobs’ recent anti-DRM campaign.
• One of the secret features of Mac OS X Leopard surfaced this week in iChat Theater, which enables you to remotely walk through a Keynote presentation or broadcast a photo slideshow, video, or audio during an iChat conference.
• Barbecue season is right around the corner, and George Foreman’s got your back while you’re firing up some baby back ribs with his new iGrill–which combines a barbie with a speaker dock in the base. Ars Technica has some of the details:
  

  It has a 200-square-inch cooking area, which is comparable to a small gas or charcoal grill, and it’s a bit bigger than typical George Foreman grills. In terms of speakers, it comes with a 10-watt sound system, an amplifier, and the usual 3.5mm audio jack. You can hook any iPod, Zune, or other player up to the iGrill, and although 10 watts isn’t a whole lot of power, it should be enough to give you something to rock out to when you’re cooking or have a few friends over.

• Feeling the need to bling out your iPod? You can now get an iPod Video or iPod nano in 24 karat hardened mirror gold. Based on current conversion rates (they’re available from a UK storefront), an 80 GB iPod for $818 or a 4 GB nano for $596. However, TUAW notes that the fronts aren’t gold-plated.

   

  

   

• Are you a restaurant-going Seattleite? The Food Seattle iPod Guide lets you search for new gastronomic experiences by cuisine, neighborhood, and price from your iPod.
• Dashboard widget of the week: The latest version of the iStat Pro widget was released this week, and it enables you to monitor everything that’s going on with your Mac at just a glance–from CPU load to temperature and fan usage to the applications that are taking up the most processing bandwidth. It mimics much of the info you’ll find in the Activity Monitor, but it places all the info in one pane and it’s always available via the Dashboard.

–Agen G.N. Schmitz

Despite recent reports of trouble in Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones' marriage, the couple looked quite happy at Michael Douglas' charity tournament. The couple held hands and shared a kiss for the cameras hoping to put an end to the rumors. Michael Douglas has pretty much retired from filmmaking, while Catherine Zeta Jones just finished work on "No Reservations" with Aaron Eckhart.

Celebrity guests joining the host and his 37-year-old wife at the Rancho Palos Verdes, California, sports benefit included Samuel L Jackson, The Departed actor Mark Wahlberg, Sin City's Heather Locklear and former Charlie's Angel Cheryl Ladd.

(Flynet)

Many more photos (Catherine Zeta Jones, Michael Douglas, Heather Locklear, Haley Joel Osment, Mark Wahlberg, Alice Cooper, Klye McLachlan, Samuel L. Jackson, Cheryl Ladd) from the Michael Douglas celebrity golf tournament after the jump.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck announced that she was with child today on "The View" . A child who will hopefully be as Christlike as she is.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck told the world today that she's three months pregnant -- which would bring her little baby Republican into the world just nearly in time to fill Rosie O'Donnell's Birkenstocks.

It was all smiles and confetti between E and her elders on "The View" this morning, when Hasselbeck proclaimed the happy news about her second baby, though Barbara Walters admitted that she nearly plotzed when Elisabeth told her she had something to say, following on the heels of Rosie's exit announcement last week.

Did Babwa really say "plotzed?" That's cute. I'm sure Elisabeth isn't as clueless and evil as I make her out to be. But every time I've seen footage of her crying over some issue that she's totally wrong about, I wished the island had claimed her when she was on "Survivor".

Filed under: Drama, Music & Musicals, Paramount, DVD Reviews

I haven’t seen Dreamgirls since its release last Christmas, but after sitting down to watch the DVD, which is arriving in stores tomorrow, I pretty much stand by my original opinion — that the film is a solid B+ as a musical, but didn’t exactly have the dramatic heft or originality to be in consideration for the Oscar. Looks like the Academy agreed with me. For those who still haven’t seen it, Dreamgirls follows a trio of 60s singers, modeled on The Supremes, as they climb to the top, then fracture over love, money and fame, and then attempt to find success on their own. There are memorable songs, including Jennifer Hudson’s signature “I Am Telling You I Am Not Going,” and Beyonce Knowles’ “Listen” towards the end of the film, and the film finds an interesting way to blend musical numbers together with the traditional style of movie musicals. If you are swept up in the story, you might not even notice the moment when that wall is broken and the actors start communicating to each other through songs instead of words.

Fans will be happy to know that the DVD is no slouch — it’s two discs, packed with a number of behind-the-scenes featurettes, a whole slate of extended and alternate scenes and some more interesting things that you rarely see. My favorite one a series of ‘pre-visualization sequences’ which means enhanced storyboards that are played in a slide-show sequence along with what I think is an early reading of the script pages. It serves as sort of an animated forerunner to the eventual scene that will be shot, and was probably extremely helpful to the director in setting up some of the musical sequences. In addition to the storyboard-style presentations — and htere are several of them — there are also dress rehearsals included, with stand-ins doing the singing and dancing. Some of these sequences even combine the rehearsal with the storyboard sequence, like the one for the “Cadillac Car” number. After watching that one, it seems like most of the hard work of this film was done before the actors even stepped on stage.

Continue reading DVD Review: Dreamgirls

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• In case you missed last night's episode of "The Amazing Race" I won't ruin it for you, but all I have to say is that there won't be any more one liners like this," Oh my God, the Teletubbies go to war," in the season finale.
• The "Charm School" gals are working on commandment number four "Thou shalt work with what thou are working with." Which needless to say, isn't a lot.
• Paint gets thrown on Jude during this weeks episode of "Instant Star."
• "Numb3rs" was even more confusing than usual this week.
• We are introduced to the straight closet on "Ugly Betty."

Catch up on your TV viewing at Recapist.