French first lady Carla Bruni Sarkozy will jam live with Paul McCartney and Metallica on British television next month in support of her new album Comme si de rien n’etait, which will be sold internationally under the title Simply.
The erstwhile supermodel — who married French President Nicolas Sarkozy in February — will appear on Later ... with Jools Holland on BBC television when it starts a new series on Sept.16.
The late-night show traditionally starts with piano-playing Holland and his guests jamming together.
Bruni, who recently featured on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine in the US and Britain, will perform “a song or two from her recently released third album,” the BBC said in a statement.
While France’s first lady prepares to charm British music lovers, troubled star Amy Winehouse continues to spread anger and frustration. Winehouse pulled out of the Rock en Seine festival outside Paris after falling ill at home, the singer’s spokesman said Saturday as the furious organizers vowed to sue.
Rock en Seine had to scrap the headline gig at two hours’ notice and has now threatened legal action against the 24-year-old. It is the second year in a row that the British soul singer has pulled out of the festival.
Some 25,000 concertgoers were waiting for the singer to appear on stage in Saint-Cloud outside the French capital.
“Amy Winehouse should have arrived on the site early Friday evening. We were told by her agent at 8pm that she wasn’t coming,” Rock en Seine said in a statement, adding there was “no explanation of the exact reasons for her absence.”
The Grammy Award-winning star, who is fighting drug and alcohol problems, has suffered a string of health scares since apparently being caught smoking crack cocaine in footage released by The Sun newspaper in January.
Another pop legend who is not looking his best these days is singer Michael Jackson, who turned 50 on Friday. He is now a mere shadow of the superstar once known as the “King of Pop” whose records thrilled millions before his bizarre personal life eclipsed his musical brilliance.
Unlike Madonna’s 50th birthday bash and launch of another world tour earlier this month, the singer who wishes he was Peter Pan appears to have no special celebrations planned and a much-touted musical comeback has so far come to nothing.
A semi-recluse since his harrowing 2005 trial and acquittal on child sex abuse charges, Jackson has been living out of the spotlight for the past few months.
In a telephone interview with ABC television program Good Morning America, Jackson said he will “just have a little cake with my children and watch some cartoons,” and he added that he feels “very wise and sage, but at the same time very young.”
Recent pictures of Jackson in Las Vegas showed him dressed in pajamas and slippers, and one had him sitting in a wheelchair, wearing a surgical mask.
Long-time Jackson family friend and lawyer Brian Oxman said the singer sometimes used the wheelchair to get around unobserved. “It is not an indication of any health problems. It is an effort to be unseen,” he said.
In other news, British artist Sam Taylor-Wood is to direct a film recounting the early years of former Beatle John Lennon, the trade magazine Screen International said on its Web site Friday.
Nowhere Boy charts the influence Lennon’s aunt and mother played on the youngster’s life and his first steps towards becoming a superstar.
Shooting is to begin in March 2009 in Lennon’s home town of Liverpool.
Taylor-Wood, whose debut short film Love You More was nominated for a prize at this year’s Cannes festival, said she was delighted to be involved in the film.
“I knew ... this was the film I had been looking to direct following Love You More,” she said. “The women in John’s early life truly shaped who he became and the strengths and weaknesses of their relationships are central to this film.”
A contemporary artist whose works include videos and photography, Taylor-Wood was nominated for Britain’s renowned Turner prize in 1997.
A jumbo operation is moving 20 elephants across the breadth of India to the mammoth private zoo set up by the son of Asia’s richest man, adjoining a sprawling oil refinery. The elephants have been “freed from the exploitative logging industry,” according to the Vantara Animal Rescue Centre, run by Anant Ambani, son of the billionaire head of Reliance Industries Mukesh Ambani, a close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The sheer scale of the self-declared “world’s biggest wild animal rescue center” has raised eyebrows — including more than 50 bears, 160 tigers, 200 lions, 250 leopards and 900 crocodiles, according to
They were four years old, 15 or only seven months when they were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald and Ravensbruck. Some were born there. Somehow they survived, began their lives again and had children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren themselves. Now in the evening of their lives, some 40 survivors of the Nazi camps tell their story as the world marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the death camps. In 15 countries, from Israel to Poland, Russia to Argentina, Canada to South Africa, they spoke of victory over absolute evil. Some spoke publicly for the first
Due to the Lunar New Year holiday, from Sunday, Jan. 26, through Sunday, Feb. 2, there will be no Features pages. The paper returns to its usual format on Monday, Feb. 3, when Features will also be resumed. Kung Hsi Fa Tsai!
When 17-year-old Lin Shih (林石) crossed the Taiwan Strait in 1746 with a group of settlers, he could hardly have known the magnitude of wealth and influence his family would later amass on the island, or that one day tourists would be walking through the home of his descendants in central Taiwan. He might also have been surprised to see the family home located in Wufeng District (霧峰) of Taichung, as Lin initially settled further north in what is now Dali District (大里). However, after the Qing executed him for his alleged participation in the Lin Shuang-Wen Rebellion (林爽文事件), his grandsons were
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