Will.i.am, of Black Eyed Peas fame, was so inspired by a speech given by White House hopeful Barack Obama that he turned it into a music video entitled Yes We Can, words repeated in a speech the candidate gave in New Hampshire.
The video opens with a black-and-white shot of Will before cutting to a shot of actress Scarlett Johansson, as an acoustic guitar is strummed in the background.
As the song and speech continue, images of Obama are juxtaposed or share the screen with shots of celebrities including basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, jazz great Herbie Hancock, model-turned-actress Amber Valletta and Johansson.
PHOTO: AP
The video ends with the word “hope” morphing into “vote.”
The video and song were made in “a matter of two days,” and can be played or downloaded for free on the Internet.
Actress Kirsten Dunst has become the latest celebrity to enter rehab, a source close to the Spider-Man and Marie Antoinette star said.
Dunst, 25, has checked into the exclusive Cirque Lodge Center in Utah, People reported, the same facility that housed starlet Lindsay Lohan last year and where actress Eva Mendes is currently being treated.
People cited a source as saying that Dunst had entered rehab after the pleas of friends.
“She’s not doing well,” the source says. “People were pushing her to go in there but there was no intervention ... It’s good she’s getting herself help.”
Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney is to pay his former wife Heather Mills US$107 million in the highest divorce settlement Britain has ever seen, according to the British Daily Mail.
The 65-year-old musician had promised his wife the money in return for her silence on their marriage, the paper said referring to sources close to Mills and McCartney.
The two parties had also agreed to share custody of their four-year-old daughter Beatrice, it was said. The little girl was to stay with Mills, while McCartney would be allowed to see his daughter any time and take her home every other weekend.
Despite the record settlement sum for Mills, the total cost of the divorce, including lawyer’s fees, amounted to only 7 percent of McCartney’s fortune, the paper said.
Only a few days ago, British media reported Mills had been planning to reveal embarrassing details from the couple’s marriage during next week’s court hearing if a settlement could not be reached beforehand.
People’s all-star, pre-Grammy concert with Timbaland ended with a resounding crash when the superproducer and rapper delivered a foul-mouthed tirade against the magazine because some of his friends were apparently left outside the venue: “Next time I have one of my homeboys in line, let that (expletive) in!” Timbaland shouted as the event wound down after 2am Saturday, adding that he was a “peoples’ person.” “I don’t like to see my people turned around for some (expletive) magazine ... (expletive) y’all!” After his tirade ended, he walked offstage with music blasting.
People magazine did not have an official comment but a source close to the celebrity weekly said they were perplexed as to why Timbaland was upset and that they considered the event a success.
Mediation talks collapsed between Tim Burton and his ex-girlfriend Lisa Marie, who claims she was cheated out of her rights to assets that the director promised her during their nearly decade-long relationship, attorneys said.
The legal fight is now scheduled to play out before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Harold Cherness on Aug. 12.
In December 2006, Marie sued Burton, saying he promised her that they would “combine their efforts and earnings and would share equally any and all” accumulated property. The lawsuit also claimed that Burton said he would financially support her for the rest of her life.
According to court papers filed by Burton’s lawyer, the director gave Marie US$5 million to sign a contract releasing him from any further claims to his assets. He maintained that if she wanted to rescind the contract, she was obligated to return the money.
A Superior Court commissioner gave Britney Spears’ father the power to fire the singer’s business manager, according to documents.
Commissioner Reva Goetz also ordered Howard Grossman to turn over “all documents, records and assets relating to Britney Spears” to James Spears, who is the court appointed conservator of his daughter and her estate.
Goetz issued her decision Friday after an emergency closed-door hearing requested a day earlier by James Spears. Grossman showed up at the hearing, but he and others were ordered to leave the courtroom.
Meanwhile, attorneys who have represented Spears in her child custody battle with ex-husband Kevin Federline filed papers to withdraw from that case.
A swimsuit left at a Swedish pool by Australian movie star Nicole Kidman was sold on Saturday at auction to buy cows for poor families in India.
“The swimsuit went to the highest bidder for 16,200 kronor (US$2,500). That’s enough to buy nine cows,” the suit’s previous owner Zlatko Nedanovski, 32, said.
Kidman, a keen swimmer, forgot the suit at a pool she had reserved for her personal use in the southwestern town of Vaenersborg during a 2002 stay in Sweden to shoot Lars von Trier’s Dogville.
Bids for the swimsuit had come from all over the world, Nedanovski said, but it finally went to 49-year-old Bengt Olsen from Trollheattan, Sweden, just south of Vaenersborg.
Taiwanese chip-making giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) plans to invest a whopping US$100 billion in the US, after US President Donald Trump threatened to slap tariffs on overseas-made chips. TSMC is the world’s biggest maker of the critical technology that has become the lifeblood of the global economy. This week’s announcement takes the total amount TSMC has pledged to invest in the US to US$165 billion, which the company says is the “largest single foreign direct investment in US history.” It follows Trump’s accusations that Taiwan stole the US chip industry and his threats to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent
On a hillside overlooking Taichung are the remains of a village that never was. Half-formed houses abandoned by investors are slowly succumbing to the elements. Empty, save for the occasional explorer. Taiwan is full of these places. Factories, malls, hospitals, amusement parks, breweries, housing — all facing an unplanned but inevitable obsolescence. Urbex, short for urban exploration, is the practice of exploring and often photographing abandoned and derelict buildings. Many urban explorers choose not to disclose the locations of the sites, as a way of preserving the structures and preventing vandalism or looting. For artist and professor at NTNU and Taipei
March 10 to March 16 Although it failed to become popular, March of the Black Cats (烏貓進行曲) was the first Taiwanese record to have “pop song” printed on the label. Released in March 1929 under Eagle Records, a subsidiary of the Japanese-owned Columbia Records, the Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) lyrics followed the traditional seven characters per verse of Taiwanese opera, but the instrumentation was Western, performed by Eagle’s in-house orchestra. The singer was entertainer Chiu-chan (秋蟾). In fact, a cover of a Xiamen folk song by Chiu-chan released around the same time, Plum Widow Missing Her Husband (雪梅思君), enjoyed more
Last week Elbridge Colby, US President Donald Trump’s nominee for under secretary of defense for policy, a key advisory position, said in his Senate confirmation hearing that Taiwan defense spending should be 10 percent of GDP “at least something in that ballpark, really focused on their defense.” He added: “So we need to properly incentivize them.” Much commentary focused on the 10 percent figure, and rightly so. Colby is not wrong in one respect — Taiwan does need to spend more. But the steady escalation in the proportion of GDP from 3 percent to 5 percent to 10 percent that advocates
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