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.
Taiwan, once relegated to the backwaters of international news media and viewed as a subset topic of “greater China,” is now a hot topic. Words associated with Taiwan include “invasion,” “contingency” and, on the more cheerful side, “semiconductors” and “tourism.” It is worth noting that while Taiwanese companies play important roles in the semiconductor industry, there is no such thing as a “Taiwan semiconductor” or a “Taiwan chip.” If crucial suppliers are included, the supply chain is in the thousands and spans the globe. Both of the variants of the so-called “silicon shield” are pure fantasy. There are four primary drivers
The sprawling port city of Kaohsiung seldom wins plaudits for its beauty or architectural history. That said, like any other metropolis of its size, it does have a number of strange or striking buildings. This article describes a few such curiosities, all but one of which I stumbled across by accident. BOMBPROOF HANGARS Just north of Kaohsiung International Airport, hidden among houses and small apartment buildings that look as though they were built between 15 and 30 years ago, are two mysterious bunker-like structures that date from the airport’s establishment as a Japanese base during World War II. Each is just about
Two years ago my wife and I went to Orchid Island off Taitung for a few days vacation. We were shocked to realize that for what it cost us, we could have done a bike vacation in Borneo for a week or two, or taken another trip to the Philippines. Indeed, most of the places we could have gone for that vacation in neighboring countries offer a much better experience than Taiwan at a much lower price. Hence, the recent news showing that tourist visits to Pingtung County’s Kenting, long in decline, reached a 27 year low this summer came
Japan is celebrated for its exceptional levels of customer service. But the behavior of a growing number of customers and clients leaves a lot to be desired. The rise of the abusive consumer has prompted authorities in Tokyo to introduce the country’s first ordinance — a locally approved regulation — to protect service industry staff from kasuhara — the Japanese abbreviated form of “customer harassment.” While the Tokyo ordinance, which will go into effect in April, does not carry penalties, experts hope the move will highlight a growing social problem and, perhaps, encourage people to think twice before taking out their frustrations