Entertaining Posts

Sunday, June 26, 2011

All eyes on Beyonce as muddy Glastonbury nears end

PILTON, England | Sun Jun 26, 2011 9:35am EDT

PILTON, England (Reuters) - Pop star Beyonce takes the main stage at Glastonbury on Sunday as the closing act, hoping to repeat husband Jay-Z's success in 2008 and help a huge crowd banish thoughts of mud and the long trip home.

Around 180,000 people crammed on to Worthy Farm in picturesque southwest England for three days of music and fun at one of the world's biggest music festivals. The abiding memory for many this year will be the mud.

Heavy rain on Friday and before turned the 900 acre site into a giant bog, but it failed to dampen the mood among music lovers who came to see a bewildering choice of hundreds of acts across dozens of stages.

"We managed to survive in the most adverse conditions," said festival founder Michael Eavis. "We are survivors, after 41 years," he told reporters.

The sunshine broke out on Sunday and bikinis replaced raincoats as the festival geared up for its Sunday night climax.

Jay-Z headlined in 2008, causing controversy among some of British rock's biggest names who said hip-hop had no place at the revered event. But the performer silenced his critics and rap is now a major part of the Glastonbury schedule.

Fans speculated that Jay-Z might join Beyonce on stage and that she may also reunite with members of her former band Destiny's Child.

Eavis was briefly distracted by questions about the death of a senior member of Britain's ruling Conservative Party, who was found in a luxury accommodation area on Sunday morning.

He did not name the deceased, but British media said he was Christopher Shale, chairman of West Oxfordshire Conservative Association. Initial reports gave the cause of death as a heart attack, but Eavis said he understood it was suicide.

U2 PROTEST GRABS HEADLINES

Friday night's headliners U2 impressed critics with a string of their greatest hits performed in the driving rain.

A small pressure group called Art Uncut inflated a large balloon with the words "U Pay Tax 2?" in protest against the band's decision several years ago to relocate its operations from Ireland to the Netherlands for tax purposes.

Campaigners complained of rough handling by security guards who forced them to take the balloon down, but Eavis shrugged off the criticism, saying the story had been exaggerated.

"It was only one balloon," he said. "It was all churned up as being a huge thing, but it wasn't at all."

"We didn't want to upset anyone," he said, adding that U2 lead singer Bono had been aware of the protest. "It was all done very, very gently."

Coldplay played the main Pyramid stage slot on Saturday, watched by tens of thousands of people as they worked their way through a set of songs old and new.

Pulp were surprise guests on the smaller The Park stage, and drew a record crowd there of around 30,000. London rapper Tinie Tempah was one of the most popular performers this year, as were the Chemical Brothers, blues veteran B.B. King and Elbow.

Glastonbury has grown from a humble gathering of 1,500 people on Eavis's dairy farm in 1970, each paying one pound ($1.60) and receiving free milk, to a giant celebration of music costing 195 pounds for a basic ticket.

There will be no festival in 2012, but Eavis said he already had three major acts lined up for 2013.

(Editing by Jan Harvey)

Saturday, June 25, 2011

U2 pass festival test, critics say, despite tax row

By Mike Collett-White

PILTON, England | Sat Jun 25, 2011 9:05am EDT

PILTON, England (Reuters) - Irish rockers U2 pulled it off with their Glastonbury music festival debut, critics said on Saturday, but the fallout from a protest over the band's tax status continued to rumble.

Bono and co. raced through U2 classics like "Mysterious Ways," "Where the Streets Have No Name" and "Pride" late on Friday on the main Pyramid stage, generally satisfying a crowd of tens of thousands of rain-lashed listeners.

The band admitted beforehand that the rare festival outing was a step away from the comfort zone of their record-breaking 360 Degree tour, and not everyone at Glastonbury was convinced they were the right opening night choice.

U2 had been due to play Glastonbury, one of the world's largest and most prestigious music festivals, in 2010, but an injury to Bono's back forced them to pull out.

"On unfamiliar ground, they reach for that fierce hunger and it's that sense of urgency - even a hint of nerves - rather than triumphalism that makes this such a charged and memorable set," wrote Dorian Lynskey in the Guardian.

Nick Hasted of The Independent gave a more mixed assessment.

"For all his songs' over-reaching grasps at wonder, Bono remains an uncharismatic performer, a great rock star by profession, not nature," he said.

Protesters angry about the group's decision to move operations from Ireland to the Netherlands for tax purposes raised a large inflatable with the words "U Pay Tax 2."

The balloon was forcibly removed, causing a brief scuffle, but witnesses said the incident was relatively minor and went unnoticed by most of the crowd.

COLDPLAY, BEYONCE TO COME

U2 passed the baton to Coldplay, the main act on Saturday night, although as ever there was a huge choice of alternatives from Spliff Richard and Alfred Lord Telecom performing in Bella's Field to Glasvegas on the John Peel stage.

London rapper Tinie Tempah is in action on Saturday, as are Elbow, Friendly Fires and Chemical Brothers.

Reviews landed for many of Friday's key performances that included festival favorites Radiohead and legendary blues guitarist B.B. King who still had what it took at the age of 85.

The closing headline act on Sunday night is Beyonce, following in the footsteps of her husband Jay-Z who won over the Glastonbury doubters with a rousing set in 2008.

Paul Simon appears a few hours earlier on the Pyramid stage, while Kaiser Chiefs and Queens of the Stone Age are on the Other Stage on Sunday.

The abiding memory for many of the festival's 150,000 paying customers will be the mud, caused by heavy rain this week.

Forecasters have predicted warmer, sunnier weather on Saturday and Sunday, when Glastonbury closes, but it is unlikely to be enough to dry out the shin-deep mud.

Turned into a giant camping site most years, Britain's most famous music festival is now in its fifth decade.

The event has grown from a humble gathering of 1,500 people on Michael Eavis's Worthy Farm in 1970, each paying one pound ($1.60) and receiving free milk, to a giant celebration of music costing 195 pounds for a basic ticket.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Friday, June 24, 2011

"Columbo" actor Peter Falk dead at 83

By Bob Tourtellotte

LOS ANGELES | Fri Jun 24, 2011 2:42pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Peter Falk, an Emmy winning actor who played the absent-minded but shrewd police detective Columbo on hit 1970s television show "Columbo," has died, a family attorney said on Friday.

"Peter Falk, 83 year-old Academy Award nominee and star of television series, Columbo, died peacefully at his Beverly Hills home in the evening of June 23, 2011," said a statement issued by the attorney.

Like many actors of his generation, Falk began his career on the stage, honing his craft in school, community theater and off Broadway. By the late 1950s he began to star in Broadway productions, and soon made his move to Hollywood.

Falk's breakout film role came with 1960's "Murder, Inc." in the supporting part of a killer among a gang of thugs, but it was his performance on the opposite side of the law -- as police lieutenant Columbo -- that earned Falk superstardom.

As a child, Falk's right eye had been surgically removed due to a malignant tumor, and it was replaced with a glass eye. That handicap became, perhaps, the actor's major asset and physical trademark as the star of "Columbo" because it only enhanced the detective's image as a disheveled and oddball crime sleuth.

But the homicide-chasing cop's probing questions always caused the murderer to reveal his true self and Columbo caught the villain. The show became a smash hit after its debut in 1971. It continued playing on TV for many years and even spawned several TV movies later in the actor's life.

Falk is survived by his wife, Shera, of 34 years and two daughters from a previous marriage.

(Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis and Steve Gorman, Editing by Sandra Maler)

Hang on Snooki. MTV denies recasting "Jersey Shore"

LOS ANGELES | Fri Jun 24, 2011 3:05pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Cable network MTV on Friday denied reports it was planning to recast Snooki, The Situation and other young stars of its hit reality show "Jersey Shore" about hard partying Italian-Americans.

The debut episode of the show's fourth season, which was shot in Florence, Italy, will air on August 4.

But on Friday, celebrity news outlets TMZ and US Weekly reported, based on anonymous sources, that MTV will recast the show after the stars finish shooting season five, in a reported cost-cutting measure.

MTV quickly denied the reports.

"We love the present cast and their summer adventures have just begun," an MTV spokesperson said in a statement. "We currently have no plans to recast the show."

"Jersey Shore" made an immediate splash when it debuted in 2009 and went on to become a U.S. pop culture phenomenon and MTV's biggest ever series. Last season was watched by some 7.9 million U.S. viewers a week.

The show stars Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, Jenni "Jwoww" Farley -- all of whom have negotiated spin-off deals for other projects. They are known for all-night parties, sexual conquests and sometimes jaw-dropping antics.

The mostly Italian-American cast was transplanted to Florence, Italy, for season four.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis: Editing by Jill Serjeant)

Judge bans parties while Lindsay Lohan on house arrest

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES | Fri Jun 24, 2011 10:21am EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actress Lindsay Lohan failed an alcohol test while under house arrest in Los Angeles, a judge ruled on Thursday, but she did not violate her probation and will face no punishment.

But Los Angeles Superior Court judge Stephanie Sautner banned an emotional Lohan from holding parties as she nears the end of an expected 35 days of home confinement for stealing a necklace.

Lohan, 24, who is serving time at home for the January theft, had been summoned to court on Thursday for a hearing on whether she violated her probation in a 2007 case by failing an alcohol test last week.

Celebrity website TMZ said the "Mean Girls" actress threw a noisy barbecue party for friends at her house last week.

Media reports had speculated that Lohan, who has been in and out of jail and rehab for much of the past four years, could be immediately sent back behind bars.

But Sautner said that a court order in Lohan's 2007 drunk driving and cocaine possession case stipulated that the actress no longer had to undergo tests for drugs or alcohol.

Lohan was sentenced in May to four months jail and 480 hours of community service after pleading no contest to jewelry theft. She was given a shorter term of house arrest because of jail overcrowding and because she is a nonviolent offender.

Sautner told Lohan that for the rest of her house arrest, due to end on June 29, she could not have more than one friend or relative over to her home in the California beach resort of Venice.

"DON'T DO STUPID THINGS"

"Don't give people reason to hate you. Don't do stupid things that fly in the spirit of the court's order," she told an emotional Lohan, whose attorney comforted her by putting her arm around the actress.

"You know I sentenced you to jail. You know I didn't sentence you to house arrest, and what do you do? You have barbecues at your house so your neighbors are writing letters about you," Sautner told her.

The judge at one point asked Lohan, "Do you want to get on with your life? Tell me."

"I do," Lohan said, in the only time the actress spoke during the hearing.

Sautner expressed displeasure at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's decision to allow Lohan to serve her sentence at home but the judge said it was out of her hands.

Speaking to reporters after Thursday's hearing, her lawyer Shawn Holley said the actress has done nothing wrong.

"I feel like you are disappointed to hear that, but she did everything right this time," Holley said.

Lohan's once promising Hollywood career has been derailed because of drug and alcohol addiction and repeated run-ins with the law. However she is due to start filming a movie about New York crime boss John Gotti later this year with co-stars John Travolta and Al Pacino.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Jill Serjeant)