An Australian newspaper mocked Russell Crowe for smoking and shoveling down a fatty meal during a recent bike ride, so the notoriously salty actor set out to prove he is still in gladiator shape — by challenging the paper’s gossip columnist to a duel by bicycle.
Crowe, who has been photographed looking slimmer in recent months, was apparently none too pleased by a column published in Sydney’s the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday entitled “Smokes and fatty foods the fitness regime for Rusty.” The paper mocked Crowe after he was photographed pausing during a recent bike ride with his personal trainer to puff on a cigarette and chow down on three tacos and a soft drink.
In a story published on Friday, the paper said Crowe’s spokesman called up gossip columnist Annette Sharp the next day and said, “Get on your bike. Russell wants you to go riding with him. Are you ready to die?” Sharp accepted the challenge and the pair met a dawn for a 20km ride through the city. Video of the race shows Sharp struggling to keep up while Crowe zooms along unfazed.
At one point, Sharp fell off her bike.
Still, Crowe gave Sharp some credit, telling her she was a better biker than Australian director Baz Luhrmann. “You’re twice the man Baz is,” he said.
Crowe’s manager Grant Vandenberg had no comment. “I think everything’s been said in the paper,” he said.
Much ink is being spilled in a war of words over a “remake” of the 1992 Harvey Keitel film Bad Lieutenant.
Actor Nicolas Cage plays a deranged, drug-addicted detective in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, re-visiting the corrupt cop role made famous by Keitel 17 years ago.
Despite the similarity in title to Abel Ferrara’s cult classic Bad Lieutenant, and Ferrara’s obvious displeasure at the idea of a remake, Cage and German director Werner Herzog say their movie is not connected.
“It would be unfair to compare the two movies,” Cage said in an interview in Venice, where the picture is in competition at the annual film festival.
“Harvey’s trajectory is really dealing with guilt and all of that, and perhaps fits more into that [Judeo-Christian] program, so to me it’s a completely different story and a different cop,” added the 45-year-old, who won a best actor Oscar for playing an alcoholic in Leaving Las Vegas.
“This is a New Orleans cop, it takes place in New Orleans, it’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, it’s not Bad Lieutenant.”
Ferrara has criticized the idea of a remake, and was quoted in the media as saying: “I wish these people die in hell.”
Former supermodel Stephanie Seymour, who has been in relationship hell recently, has come to a closed-door agreement with a security guard who was accused of shoving her into a door at her Connecticut home.
Seymour got into a dispute with guard Joseph Babnik in June when he was watching the Greenwich estate of her estranged husband, billionaire newsprint magnate Peter Brant.
Babnik told police Seymour had taken documents from him and he was trying to get them back. The former New York City police officer was arrested and given a misdemeanor summons on a disorderly conduct charge.
But the state’s attorney on Friday declined to prosecute the case. The charge will be dismissed in a year if Babnik stays out of trouble.
Not many actresses get a career-changing chance at 68. For Julia McKenzie, already a successful stage and TV performer, it came when she was chosen as British television’s new Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s famous amateur detective. The new series, first broadcast on the commercial ITV channel yesterday, has already been shown in the US, Canada and Ireland, underlining the international appeal of one of Christie’s best-loved creations.
At home, though, critical attention is likely to be at its most intense, with McKenzie seeking to fill the shoes of previous popular interpreters like Margaret Rutherford, Joan Hickson and, most recently, Geraldine McEwan.
“It’s the prize,” McKenzie said of her high-profile role.
“And to come at this time in my career, which normally is tailing off,” she said in a recent interview. “I would have retired, I think, because I don’t want to end up saying ‘The carriage awaits.’”
Actor Tom Selleck has been awarded more than US$187,000 after a California jury found the actor was duped into buying a lame horse.
Selleck —Selleck is best known for his role on TV’s Magnum, P.I. in the 1980s — accused equestrian Dolores Cuenca of trying to pass off a show horse with a medical condition as fit to ride in competitions.
The defense had argued that Selleck didn’t check the veterinarian records of the 10-year-old Zorro.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
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