The woman widely regarded as the “Queen of Mando-pop” is making a long-waited comeback with a limited series of concerts in Beijing and Shanghai in October and November, six years after her last release.
The almost effortlessly cool Faye Wong (王菲) has sold millions of albums and won fans across Asia, with songs ranging from the heart-rending early hit Easily Hurt Woman (容易受傷的女人) to the ersatz, Buddhist-inspired trip-hop of her 2000 album Fable (寓言).
The entertainment pages of Chinese Internet portals were dominated last week by pictures of Wong at a brief Beijing news conference to announce her return, many simply carrying the headline “The Diva Is Back.”
Her popularity shows little sign of fading, with advanced sales for the just 10 concerts of her comeback tour — five each in Beijing and Shanghai — reaching US$2.79 million in only 10 days.
“Is this figure really that accurate?” the typically taciturn Wong asked, in one of her few utterances at the news conference in which she kept the press waiting for three hours and was then on stage for a mere three minutes.
Famous for her icy demeanor, Wong, 40, had more or less withdrawn from the limelight five years ago to concentrate on her charity, set up to help children born with cleft lips and palates, as her second daughter was.
A Beijing native, Wong started out singing syrupy Cantonese love songs in Hong Kong under the English name of Shirley. She has recorded in her native Mandarin almost exclusively since 1994, as well as the odd song in English or Japanese.
Still, there is no word on a new album to follow up 2003’s To Love (將愛).
Wong generates passion bordering on hysteria among fans and manic screaming at her concerts and public appearances.
“She is great, and her songs always touch the deepest places in my heart,” wrote “Love You” on Chinese Web site qq.com.cn.
Wong is known for writing a fair number of her own songs, rare in the fast-moving, bubble-gum world of Chinese-language pop music where artists often put out several albums in one year.
Counting even President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) as a fan, Wong is also famous for her hit Chinese-language covers of tracks by The Cranberries, Tori Amos and the Cocteau Twins.
Outside of Asia, she is perhaps best known for her occasional film roles, including in Wong Kar-wai’s (王家衛) award-winning Chungking Express (重慶森林).
While Wong is returning to the limelight, Ellen DeGeneres has decided to give up her job as a judge on American Idol.
DeGeneres unexpectedly quit the top-rated television singing show last Thursday after just a year in the job, saying it was not the right fit for her.
The popular US talk show host and comedian, whose addition to the panel had largely disappointed viewers, said the workload was more than she expected and she found it hard to hurt the feelings of contestants.
“A couple months ago, I let [TV network] Fox and the American Idol producers know that this didn’t feel like the right fit for me,” DeGeneres said in a statement.
DeGeneres, who signed a five year contract with Idol last year, is the second judge to quit the show this year. Abrasive British judge Simon Cowell left in May to launch his own talent show in late 2011.
A fine judge of “talent” of a different sort, 84 year-old Playboy founder Hugh Hefner embodies the lifestyle of sexual freedom that his men’s magazine has espoused since it was founded in 1953, featuring a nude centerfold of Marilyn Monroe.
Yet, there is another side to the pajama-loving man known around the world by his nickname, Hef. Along with sexual freedom, he has championed civil rights, published stories challenging McCarthyism and the Vietnam War, and backed gay causes and the legalization of marijuana.
The new documentary film, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel, debuted in US theaters on Friday offering audiences this other side of Hefner. He sat down with Reuters in the Playboy mansion to talk about the film.
Q: The documentary addresses the irony of the two sides of you: the carefree life vs the serious political activist. Where is the common ground between the two?
A: “Aren’t they exactly the same? In other words, aren’t the sexual revolution and racial emancipation the same thing? I just think these are areas of our free society that have not been truly free and properly dealt with.”
Q: A lot of people would say “no,” and that your brand of sexual freedom is really just the objectifying of women.
A: “Anybody who thinks we objectify women in a negative sense has a political agenda of their own. It comes right out of our Puritan heritage. The simple truth of the matter is we are two different sexes. We are attracted to one another. That is the basis of civilization. That is what makes the world go around. The notion of the denying the fact that women, in a positive sense, are objects of sexual desire is to simply not deal with reality.”
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