Pink Floyd's Rick Wright reportedly denied final wish
One of Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright's last wishes was for the group to play at this year's Glastonbury Festival, a request that organizers denied because of logistical issues, according to published reports.
The claim was put forth yesterday by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, who was quoted in London's Guardian newspaper as saying: "One of the last things [Wright] wanted to do, in this last year, was to do a big outdoor festival, such as Glastonbury. We weren't able to do that due for all sorts of strange reasons, which, again, is a sadness."
According to the Guardian report, Glastonbury organizer Emily Eavis responded to Gilmour's comments by telling BBC 6 Music: "We were obviously upset to hear him say that. I think maybe he has been minsinformed by someone that it was some sort of thing about them, but it wasn't at all, it was just purely because we couldn't fit them on anywhere."
Eavis went on to say that Pink Floyd's agents called organizers three weeks before the festival, and that the festival was unable to accomodate their request to play because "we'd already booked three headliners, and there was nothing we could do apart from bump someone off and we've neverdone that before."
"We couldn't just say, 'Sorry, you've now got to play underneath someone because someone bigger has come along," she added.
As reported last month, Wright died at age 65 after a short battle with cancer.
After divorce, Bill Murray looks for renewal
NEW YORK - The deadpan and depressed characters Bill Murray has specialized in portraying as an actor in recent years have always stood in contrast to the life-of-the-party guy he is in real life — whether on a golf course or shuttling people around downtown Stockholm in a golf cart, as he did last year.
But Murray said he identified anew with those characters — like the dour Herman Blume in "Rushmore" — when his wife of nearly 11 years filed for divorce in May. In the papers filed by Jennifer Butler Murray, she alleged that Murray abused her and was addicted to alcohol and marijuana.
"That was devastating," Murray said. "That was the worst thing that ever happened to me in my entire life."
Though the freshness of such a wound would keep many Hollywood stars far away from the press, Murray, 58, came to New York from his home upstate to help publicize "City of Ember," a film opening Friday in which he co-stars along with Saoirse Ronan, the young star of "Atonement," and Tim Robbins.
About a city forged underground because of environmental destruction on the earth's surface, it's a kind of somber, underworld "Jetsons" — and a clear metaphor to contemporary concerns. Murray plays the city's mayor, a lackadaisically corrupt but popular figure.
Though not as substantial as some of Murray's best roles — Bob Harris in "Lost in Translation," Don Johnston in "Broken Flowers," Phil Connors in "Groundhog Day" — it's still a typically lively, self-aware performance; you expect him to wink to the camera at any moment.
The film was shot in Belfast, Ireland, before the divorce, which was made final in June. The months after have been ones of depression for the comedian. The court decided that the couple's four children will live with their mother, while Murray has visitation rights and will pay child support.
In a forthright and emotional conversation, Murray rarely struck a tone of bitterness about the break-up, but rather spoke with watery eyes of a tremendously painful summer trying to reconcile himself to the divorce.
"I was just dead, just broken," he said.
"When you're really in love with someone and this happens — I never had anything like this happen," he said. "It's like your faith in people is destroyed because the person you trusted the most you can no longer trust at all. ... The person you know isn't there anymore."
Murray said his lowest point came a few weeks ago. When friends asked if he wanted to participate in an air show to support the Illinois United Service Organizations (Murray grew up outside Chicago), he accepted the skydiving invitation.
"They asked me on a day I didn't care," said Murray. "I didn't even care if there was a parachute. Of course, by the time I got there I had had a few good days and I thought, `What am I doing?'"
But Murray said he's begun building himself back up, and one of the first steps was coming out to discuss "City of Ember" — and even attend the premiere, "which is a nuisance," he said with characteristic deadpan.
"I've had a great deal of success in life — not just money or fame or anything like that — I just feel like I've done well in many areas of life," said Murray. "I've learned how to live and I think I've learned things about living. It's almost like: `OK, you learned that much, now let's try this. Let's see how you can do if this happens to you.'"
Murray is famously difficult to get in touch with for a film. He doesn't have an agent or a publicist and in the past, filmmakers have had to leave a message on a voice mail, which Murray checked infrequently. He has joked that entire careers have been launched on the parts he's turned down.
"City of Ember" director Gil Kenan ("Monster House") said getting the script to Murray "was not an easy prospect."
"There are so many stories out there, most of them horror stories, about getting (Murray) to work on films or of his on-set demeanor, but I have to say ... he had a real gung-ho attitude," said Kenan.
What drew Murray to the script when he received it was its writer, Caroline Thompson, who adapted Jeane Duprau's book. Murray met Thompson ("Edward Scissorhands") years ago and says "she works on a higher level than the rest."
"From my perspective, he's in a place where he's more open to things than he may have been in the past," said Kenan. "There's a lot in him. We've seen aspects of that on the screen now that he's had a career, but I actually feel like there's a lot more there that hasn't been seen."
Two years ago, Murray said he had taken to Jay-Z's idea of "retirement," meaning people might generally consider him out of the game but he could nevertheless continue to work here and there.
After the divorce, though, he's rallying to dedicate himself more fully.
"I've just come out of a sort of doldrums and I feel like I want to go," he said. "I want to work. I want to get going. I want to do a few things at once. I really want to connect with other people that are going that way and `Let's go'... I want to bounce off like a pinball. Like a pinball, I want to bounce off bumpers that are positive. I want to bounce off people that are positive and hope that'll make me more positive and give me momentum."
Earlier this year, Murray shot his third film with Jim Jarmusch, a thriller filmed in Spain titled "The Limits of Control." He also worked again with Wes Anderson ("Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums") doing a voice for the animated "The Fantastic Mr. Fox."
His "City of Ember" co-star Robbins, who directed Murray in his 1999 film "Cradle Will Rock," recently asked him to be in his latest directorial effort. Said Murray: "I'll throw in."
The writers of "The Office" have been hired to pen a "Ghostbusters III," which Murray thinks could offer a fresh take on the films, the second of which he (and many others) found disappointing.
"If I could get through this in a powerful way, I feel that I have even more potential to do something," said Murray. "I think I'd be working on a higher level. It'd be great to achieve, to do the art that I thought I was always capable of — something that really, really affects people and grabs them and makes them feel and become alive."
"I've tried to lighten it for people. I know how hard it is," said Murray. "There's a lot of goodwill out there for what I've done. And I didn't really appreciate it so much before. I really appreciate it now."
David Cronenberg circling Ludlum thriller
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - David Cronenberg is making his first foray into the big-budget action arena.
The Canadian filmmaker is negotiating to direct "The Matarese Circle," a political thriller that has Denzel Washington attached.
The MGM project is derived from a Robert Ludlum conspiracy novel. In the 1979 book, two rival intelligence agents, one American, one Soviet, find themselves working together to ferret out and vanquish members of a mysterious group of criminals called the Matarese that has infiltrated the highest levels of American government. Ludlum published a sequel to "Circle," "The Matarese Countdown," in 1997, but the studio did not acquire the rights to it.
MGM hopes "The Matarese Circle" will beget a franchise, in much the same way as the "Bourne" trilogy, also derived from Ludlum novels, grossed $945 million theatrically worldwide. A fourth Bourne film is in development at Universal with returning director Paul Greengrass.
Several other Ludlum properties are in development at Paramount ("The Chancellor Manuscript") and Universal ("The Sigma Protocol"). And Summit Entertainment is developing a remake of Ludlum's early work, "The Osterman Weekend," which Sam Peckinpah turned into a film in 1983.
Famed for such edgy releases as "The Fly" and "Crash," Cronenberg most recently directed the Oscar-nominated films "A History of Violence" and "Eastern Promises." The opera he adapted from his remake of "The Fly" opened in September at the Los Angeles Opera.
Esquire crowns Halle Berry 'Sexiest Woman Alive'
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Halle Berry may be a mommy of a certain age, but the men's magazine Esquire says the Oscar-winning actress is still the Sexiest Woman Alive.
In an article posted on Tuesday on the magazine's website (www.esquire.com), Berry poses in a parody of a 2000 cover photograph of former U.S. President Bill Clinton, and writes about what she thinks of winning Esquire's annual honor for the first time.
"Well, I don't know exactly what it means but being 42 and having just had a baby, I think I'll take it," Berry wrote.
Esquire said it dressed Berry in a racier version of Clinton's suit jacket and blue tie to recreate an iconic cover for its 75th anniversary celebration.
Berry starred last year in the movie "Things We Lost in the Fire" and is due to star next year in "Frankie and Alice," a film about a woman with multiple personality disorder.
In the Esquire article, Berry describes things she finds sexy. It turns out that spaghetti and wine are major turn-ons.
"Sexy is not about wearing sexy clothes or shaking your booty until you damn near get hip dysplasia; it's about knowing that sexiness is a state of mind -- a comfortable state of being," she said.
Berry won an Oscar in 2002 for her role in the movie "Monster's Ball." She played the wife of an executed murderer who becomes romantically involved with a guard at the prison where her husband had been held.
With the Oscar win, Berry became the first black woman to take home an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Berry gave birth in March to a baby girl. The father is Berry's partner, French-Canadian model Gabriel Aubry, 32.
Berry has been married and divorced twice. Her first marriage was to baseball player David Justice. She adopted the daughter of her second husband, musician Eric Benet, but the couple broke up in 2003.
Sarah McLachlan open in 'Closer'
It's been a rocky year for Sarah McLachlan.
In a recent Billboard interview supporting her new compilation Closer: The Best of Sarah McLachlan, which comes out today, the singer revealed that she and her husband of 11 years (and longtime drummer) Ashwin Sood split up.
Refusing to get into details, she termed the situation as "pretty gross."
So when asked how she would describe 2008 so far, McLachlan briefly hesitates.
"Lumpy," she says. "But you know with wonderful moments. It's been a really great year too."
And while putting a proverbial glass-half-full outlook on her current life, the two new songs included on Closer seem to somewhat delve into that pain and upheaval, especially the single U Want Me 2.
"When I'm feeling highly emotional I tend to think about things a lot," she says. "When I'm happy I don't tend to analyze it because you'll find fault pretty quickly. At the same time, most of my songs I've written about after the fact as opposed to being in them (in the moment). I've always felt I needed a little bit of objectivity before I could see things clearly.
"With the two recent songs, I sort of bucked that trend and have gone into how I feel and I'm going to write about it right now. Sometimes I feel like I need some space from things. Other times I haven't even known these things existed and something else triggers it. I absolutely write from personal experience but also with every song there's other people's experiences put in there."
After releasing a special deluxe edition of her 1993 album Fumbling Towards Ecstasy earlier this year, McLachlan set about deciding what songs would end up on Closer. But it wasn't as easy as one might suspect.
"There are the obvious choices and favourites, but unfortunately I got halfway through my list and I looked down and I had 35 songs," she says.
'MAKE IT A DOUBLE CD'
"So I had to whittle them down. I said to my manager, 'Please let it be a double CD.' They said no they weren't going to do that so that's why there's a deluxe version."
Although McLachlan, 40, wrote two new songs and finished a third for Closer, she's yet to begin work on a new and proper studio album, the followup to 2003's Afterglow. She hopes to "buckle down and get to it" sometime in January with a release date nowhere close to being nailed down.
"Not at the pace I work," she says when asked if it will be out next year. "I have two small children and it's a luxury that I'm thankful for every day.
"I can go, 'You know I'm going to take two years to put this out.' And in that time I'm going to work at a pace that makes sense for me -- that I can still be the mother that I want to be. It's wonderful to be able to make that choice, to feel okay and be financially stable."
McLachlan is only doing a few promotional appearances in support of Closer the rest of the year. She's also performing with sitar master Ravi Shankar at Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall Oct. 18 as part of a special benefit concert for Youth Empowerment Canada.
Just don't expect a world tour in support of the next studio album.
"Not the way I used to tour, not with two children," she says. "My eldest is in Grade 1 now and she really enjoys her routine and structure. It's really a challenge to take her out of that and make her happy. My number one priority is the kids. If they're happy I'm happy.
"I'm out the door at 8 a.m. taking the kids to school and picking her up at 2:30 and I have a little bit of time with her before she has to get into her homework and her piano practise. Then I make dinner and put her to bed, go to bed and pass out at nine o'clock."
While 2008 has had its turmoil, McLachlan is spending these days literally building from the ground up.
"I'm in the process of building a house so I've got lots of decisions in planning and doing all the interior design for that," she says. "It's daunting. I spent 12 hours looking at stone slabs in Seattle yesterday which my head is still spinning from."
Martin memoirs slamming Chrétien leaked ahead of election
About a week before the federal election, a Quebec newspaper has published leaked excerpts from former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin's memoirs detailing his bitter rivalry with Jean Chrétien.
Martin’s autobiography,Hell or High Water, is expected to arrive in bookstores in three weeks, but Le Devoir obtained one of the book's final drafts and published its contents on Monday.
The revelations from Martin, who reportedly has counselled Stéphane Dion during the campaign, are likely to challenge the Liberal leader's assertion that his party is united heading into the Oct. 14 vote.
The paper reports that Martin’s book details his childhood, his climb to the top job at Canada Steamship Lines, his years in politics, and how he and Chrétien disliked each other right to the end.
According to the paper, Martin devotes several chapters to his bid to take over leadership of the party from Chrétien and the two years he served as prime minister, in which he accuses Chrétien of putting their rivalry ahead of the good of the party.
Chrétien’s changes to party financing rules and the way he managed the sponsorship scandal also seriously hurt the Liberal brand, Martin is quoted as writing.
Martin also writes the collateral damage victim of the war between the two men is Dion, as the Liberal party in Quebec is but a shadow of its former self.
Sponsorship report a 'time-bomb'
Martin goes on to write that one of Chrétien’s most inexplicable decisions was to cap donations to political parties at $5,000, which he said hurt a party that was used to generous donations from banks and larger corporations.
Martin also writes that he was furious at Chrétien for proroguing Parliament in November 2003, thus delaying the "time-bomb" of the auditor general’s report into the federal sponsorship program until he took over the leadership of the party.
That meant Chrétien avoided having to deal with the sponsorship scandal and left it squarely in Martin’s hands, he writes. If Chrétien had accepted the report while still in office, that would have shown a sense of responsibility and would have protected the future of his party, Martin wrote.
"We ended up losing the communications battle on the sponsorship question. Honestly, I don't know if it could have been won," the paper quotes him as writing.
But Martin writes he has no regrets doing his national "mad as hell" tour in calling for an inquiry into the sponsorship program.
Zaccardelli slammed income trust probe's handling
Martin also offers scathing words for former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli over the Mounties announcing a probe was being launched into the former Liberal government's handling of an income trust taxation decision in the middle of the 2006 federal election.
Some analysts have said news of the investigation contributed to the defeat of Martin's Liberals at the hands of Stephen Harper's Conservatives in January 2006. In the end, the Mounties charged a senior civil servant in the Finance Department with breach of trust.
Martin writes that the only question is whether Zaccardelli's action "can be explained by ineptness or whether it was a premeditated malicious act.
"In my view, no one can be that inept," he writes.
Earlier this year, the Mounties' complaints chair said he found no evidence to suggest Zaccardelli deliberately meddled in the last election, although the former commissioner refused to co-operate with the complaints body or shed any light to his motives for releasing sensitive information during the campaign.
Zaccardelli resigned in late 2006 after admitting he gave misleading testimony to a House of Commons committee into the deportation and imprisonment of Maher Arar.
Shyamalan Mulls Unbreakable Sequel
M. Night Shyamalan said he is considering working on a sequel to his hit Unbreakable, a superhero tale about a man (Bruce Willis) who finds that he is impervious to harm and is called to become a savior.
"I'm a strange creature," the writer/director said in a conference call with reporters last week. "When Unbreakable came out, I was like, 'God, man I'm so excited.' I thought [it] was like comic books. No one has really done comic books like this: reality-based comic books. I really think this is a metaphor for things that people can go crazy over."
Though the film was eventually a hit, the initial reaction was mixed. "When the reaction was mixed, kind of a disappointment, I was pettily hurt, and I was like, 'God, I took so many incredible risks and things like that,'" Shyamalan said.
Because of that, Shyamalan's excitement about a sequel to the movie was muted. "I felt really hurt, and I couldn't bring myself to write," he said. "It's literally like a relationship I have with the audience. ... And then, over the years, as it just grew and grew and grew, and people were like, 'You know, I really like that. That's actually my favorite movie, and I watch that all the time,' and on and on. I'll be on the street, and some kid will run across traffic with it in his backpack--he just is carrying it in his backpack--and he'll be running [saying], 'I can't believe it's you!' Will you sign my Unbreakable DVD?' And quoting the thing and all that stuff."
As a result, Shyamalan said that the sequel idea now haunts him. "How bizarre," he said. "I want to write it right now, but I want to write it for the right reasons. I want a story to pop into my head that is organic and expressive of who I am. You know, these are all kind of journals of where I am emotionally, so it's kind of hard. I'm kind of trying to go back to the journal that existed in 1999 for me. But I know me: As soon as I give up on it is when the idea will come to me. It's just I need to go into therapy; I guess that's the end of that answer to this."
Cop drama "Life on Mars" a trip
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - "Life on Mars," a British cop show with a twist, has had two extreme makeovers.
The first time, producer David E. Kelley set it in Los Angeles. The second time, a new team of producers relocated the show to New York. Through it all, only Jason O'Mara, who plays Detective Sam Tyler, survived.
In the case of ABC's "Life on Mars," what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Tax incentives aside, the show truly belongs in New York. Also, not only is O'Mara able to carry the drama, but the new cast members are, without exception, well-chosen.
For those who missed the original when it played on BBC America, the show is about a police officer (Tyler) who is hit by a car while chasing down the guy who abducted his work and romantic partner, Maya (guest star Lisa Bonet). The next thing he knows, he is back in 1973. He's still a cop, but nothing -- from fashion to technology -- is the same.
In the British version, Tyler is convinced he is insane, in a coma or time-traveling. The American version spells out other options but deliberately refrains from becoming enmeshed in the science fiction aspect of the story. Tyler does not go back and forth, and no consideration is given to theories about the future impact of his actions in the past.
Part of the pleasure of watching is seeing how much things have changed in a relatively short time. Tyler grabs for his cell phone, asks for his computer and orders a Diet Coke, all to no avail. On a TV screen, William Conrad plays "Cannon." In the streets, wide collars and stripes are everywhere.
Equally stunning are the social attitudes of the day. The commander of Tyler's precinct, Lt. Gene Hunt (Harvey Keitel), has no patience for warrants or Miranda rights. The only woman in the precinct, Annie (Gretchen Mol), tolerates the nickname "No Nuts" to blaze a trail for future female cops.
The premiere mostly sets everything in motion, particularly the relationships between Tyler and the others on the force. The script, from Josh Applebaum, Andre Nemec and Scott Rosenberg, is true to the spirit of the original and exciting enough to make you swallow the premise and beg for more.
If it holds its own against the final season of NBC's "ER," "Mars" might be orbiting the schedule for years.
China state TV to air 50-part Bruce Lee biography
BEIJING - Bruce Lee is getting a belated hero's welcome in China, with the country's state broadcaster set to air a 50-part prime-time series on the late kung fu star.
Lee became a chest-thumping source of nationalistic pride to Chinese around the world with his characters who defended the Chinese against oppressors in a series of movies in the early 1970s. But his influence wasn't felt immediately in China, which was then a closed communist country.
Lee's films started surfacing in China on video in the 1980s — years after his death in 1973 from swelling of the brain.
China's official China Central Television hopes to fill the void with the exhaustive 50 million Chinese yuan (US$7.3 million) biography, "The Legend of Bruce Lee" — the country's first movie or TV series on the actor, according to producer Yu Shengli.
Shot in China, Hong Kong, Macau, the U.S., Italy and Thailand over nine months, the series, starting Sunday in prime-time, will air daily on the CCTV's flagship channel, with two episodes airing consecutively every night in a two-hour slot.
Unlike past films about Lee, "The Legend of Bruce Lee" is unusually detailed in tracing Lee's life, from his teenage years in Hong Kong to his move to the U.S., where he studied and taught martial arts, to his movie career and early death at 32, the Hong Kong actor who plays Lee told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.
"We've only seen the glorious side of Bruce Lee — he comes out all guns blazing, his films are entertaining. But very few people know what injuries he suffered and what grievances he suffered," Danny Chan said, noting the series even reveals that Lee was afraid of cockroaches.
The 33-year-old actor, whose best known work is Stephen Chow's "Kung Fu Hustle" and "Shaolin Soccer," makes up for his lack of star power with his uncanny resemblance to Lee with his thick eyebrows and slender body.
Lee's message of Chinese strength in movies like "The Chinese Connection" and "Return of the Dragon" also matches that of the Chinese government.
"Lee had strength, agility, pride, intelligence, not to mention charisma to burn, which coupled with the pro-Chinese rhetoric in his films have made him a potent symbol for the powerful new China that is now rising," said Michael Berry, a professor in contemporary Chinese cultural studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
"He wrote the word 'kung fu' into English dictionaries. He made people aware of China," CCTV official Zhang Xiaohai said at a news conference Tuesday.
Lee is shown bursting with Chinese pride in a trailer shown at the news conference, bellowing "I am Chinese" to spectators after defeating a foreign opponent.
In an apparent effort to boost racial pride, the series was originally scheduled to be aired before the Beijing Olympics in August, but was pushed back in keeping with the period of mourning for the deadly earthquake in China's central Sichuan province on May 12, which killed 70,000 people.
The series was authorized by the Lee family. Producer Yu said Lee's daughter, Shannon Lee Keasler, approved the script and is credited as an executive producer. It's unclear, however, how Lee himself, who spent his time in the U.S. and then-British colony Hong Kong, felt about the communist Chinese regime. The Lee family didn't respond to requests for comment from the AP sent through intermediaries.
Berry said China is also catching up on pop culture that it missed when it was a closed country, such as kung fu films, noting the emergence of martial arts epics in recent years. When Lee died in 1973, China was still in the middle of the ultra-leftist Cultural Revolution, when millions of people suspected of opposing the communist government were persecuted.
Top young director Jia Zhangke told the AP he was one of the Chinese youngsters that belatedly found out about Lee by watching his movies on tape in the early 1980s at "video-watching parlors," which he describes as "a room with 15 or 20 chairs."
"I really liked them. He fights with great style. Boys like violence. There is nationalism in his movies — he's always fighting foreigners. I was very happy watching the movies," he said.