(AP Photo)
(AP) – With his carefully tended hair, tight trousers and perfect harmonies, Robin Gibb, along with his brothers Maurice and Barry, defined the disco era.
As part of the Bee Gees – short for the Brothers Gibb – they created dance floor classics like “Stayin Alive,” “Jive Talkin’,” and “Night Fever” that can still get crowds onto a dance floor. The catchy songs, with their falsetto vocals and relentless beat, are familiar pop culture mainstays.
There are more than 6,000 cover versions of the Bee Gees hits, and they are still heard on dance floors and at wedding receptions, birthday parties, and other festive occasions.
Robin Gibb, 62, died Sunday “following his long battle with cancer and intestinal surgery,” his family announced in a statement released by Gibb’s representative Doug Wright. “The family have asked that their privacy is respected at this very difficult time,” it said.
Jackie Chan (AP Photo)
(AP) – Jackie Chan is landing his last punch as an action star, but says he is stepping into retirement having made one of the most important films of his career. The Hong Kong actor told the AP on Friday that his latest film “Chinese Zodiac” will be his last action movie.
Chan, launching the movie at the Cannes Film Festival with co-stars Kwone Sang Woo, Yao Xingtong and Liao Fan, said that people don’t believe him when he says he is going to retire.
“They say ‘no, you’re still young, you can still do it,’ but I have to stop one day.”
The 58-year-old says he is bowing out with “Chinese Zodiac” – in which he plays a fortune hunter, traveling the world trying to track down missing astrological antiques – because it is one of the “most important” films in his career.
Lenny Kravitz, left, and Blake Mycoskie (AP Photo)
(AP) – If it’s got his name on it, Lenny Kravitz says he has been involved in it 100 percent, so when you see his stamp on the new collection of Toms shoes, know the Bahamas beach-meets-modern architecture influence is genuine. “If I’m in, I’m in it all the way,” Kravitz says.
The singer got involved in designing the shoes with Toms founder Blake Mycoskie at the urging of his daughter, Zoe. She was wearing Toms casual slip-ons all the time. She also explained the brand’s larger mission of donating a pair of shoes to someone in need for every pair sold.
Once they met about two years ago, Kravitz says, he and Mycoskie hit it off. They’d like to do together one of the Toms’ “shoe drops,” possibly in Brazil or the Bahamas this summer, squeezing it in between the second leg of Kravitz’s world tour that will take him through Europe and Africa. He also has two movie projects going, including the second installment of “The Hunger Games.”
“The thing a lot of people don’t know about Lenny isn’t just his amazing personal taste in fashion and style, but he also designs wallpaper and furniture, and he sees a bigger picture,” Mycoskie says.
His greatest contribution to the collection is adding prints, Mycoskie says, including one decorated “Let Love Rule,” from his song.
Kravitz says the basic Toms look – fabric shoes that aren’t frilly or overly structured – fits his wardrobe, even if “they remind me a little of the shoes my mom would wear in the `70s.”
He stocks pairs for guests to wear in his homes, where he has a “no street shoe” rule. “No shoes in my house,” he explains. “I like to lay around the floors, and I have nice floor coverings and shags and sheepskins, and I don’t like bringing in things from the outside.”
Kravitz says he aims to create a general vibe, through his clothes, decorating and broader lifestyle choices, to be comfortable, creative, engaging and inviting. And he has no problem looking for the same from passers-by.
“I love people watching. I love observing what people do and how they express themselves,” he says. “It’s inspiring to see what people do and how they twist things to make themselves unique, even if it’s something you would never do.”
But life is full of surprises. He never expected, for instance, to be part of the tween-teen phenomenon “The Hunger Games,” taking on the stylist role of Cinna, who helps Jennifer Lawrence’s character cultivate an image through her clothes.
“I had no idea ‘The Hunger Games’ was so big, I didn’t even know the book. I had been living under my own rock,” he says. “But then I read it, loved it. … It’s interesting to walk down the street and hear girls saying, ‘Oh, that’s Cinna,’ and they have no idea about the music.”
(AP Image)
(AP) – The young CW network is hoping to turn around a year of disappointing ratings by making changes this fall on each of the five nights it broadcasts. The network said Thursday that its new series include a modern take on “Beauty and the Beast,” an action drama “Arrow” based on comic book characters and “The Carrie Diaries,” a prequel to “Sex and the City” about Carrie Bradshaw’s life in the 1980s. “The Carrie Diaries” begins on Monday nights in January after the final season of “Gossip Girl” finishes.
The Nielsen Co. says the CW saw its ratings slip by 17 percent this season and 20 percent among the young women who make up its target audience.
But the CW executives argued that traditional television ratings don’t do them justice, that many of their young viewers are watching their programming through nontraditional means, like video streams and DVR playbacks.
(AP) – Larry King said Thursday that his talk show will resume this summer on the new digital network Ora.TV, earlier than he or the network had anticipated.
The show “Larry King Now” will mark the startup of the network financed by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. Executives had originally intended to launch in the fall. But King said he wanted to “get into the political mix.” The Democratic and Republican national conventions to name presidential nominees are this summer.
King said he expected the format of his show to be similar to “Larry King Live,” which aired on CNN in prime time for 25 years, and he’s retained much of his old production staff. The new show will generally be 30 minutes in length, instead of an hour, although there will be flexibility to go shorter or longer depending on who’s being interviewed, said Jon Housman, Ora.TV’s CEO.
(AP) – “American Idol” finalist Joshua Ledet won’t be belting it out on this season’s final showdown.
The booming 20-year-old vocal powerhouse from Westlake, La., was revealed Thursday to have received the fewest viewer votes on the Fox talent contest, leaving bluesy 21-year-old crooner Phillip Phillips of Leesburg, Ga., and sassy 16-year-old budding diva Jessica Sanchez of San Diego, to compete for the show’s record deal grand prize on next week’s finale.
Ledet had been one of the judges’ favorite finalists, earning more than a dozen standing ovations from the panel for his renditions of such songs as James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” and Bruno Mars’ “Runaway Baby.” However, the gospel singer wasn’t able to win over enough voters. He twice appeared as a low vote getter before Thursday’s dismissal.
Phillips and Sanchez, who sometimes performs as her alter ego “Bebe Chez,” will face off Tuesday, with the 11th season “Idol” champion crowned on Wednesday. Phillips has never found himself at the bottom of the voting spectrum, while Sanchez was due to be eliminated during the finals’ sixth round, but the judges used their one-time-only power to rescue her from elimination.
(AP Photo)
(AP) – Apparently, California Gov. Jerry Brown forgot to rent “The Social Network.”
In an appearance Friday morning on “CBS This Morning,” the California governor said his state is still the land of innovation and even where Facebook was invented.
He added: “Not in Texas, not in Arizona, not in Manhattan and certainly not, you know, under the White House or the Congress.”
But interviewer Charlie Rose pointed out that CEO Mark Zuckerberg and others developed the iconic social network at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.
Brown responded that the Facebook inventors quickly came to California, “where all the other innovative people are.”
The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company began selling stock Friday. Brown and other officials hope it could bring in as much as $2.1 billion in tax revenue for California.
(AP Image)
(AP) – U.S. health officials want all baby boomers to get tested for hepatitis C.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday released draft recommendations calling for all baby boomers to get a one-time blood test for the liver disease. That’s everyone born from 1945 to 1965.
The hepatitis C virus is most commonly spread through sharing needles to inject drugs. Before 1992, it was also spread through blood transfusions.
The CDC says more than 2 million baby boomers are infected. They account for more than three-quarters of all Americans living with the virus. The virus can take decades to cause damage and many people don’t know they are infected.
The testing recommendation is expected to become final later this year.
(AP) – An American woman who adopted a Russian boy and later sent him back to Moscow on a one-way flight has been ordered to pay $150,000 and cough up an additional $1,000 a month in child support.
On Thursday a Bedford County, Tenn., judge said Torry Hansen must begin making the child support payments in June and continue to pay until the boy turns 18. He is nine now.
Hansen sent Artyom Saveliev back to Russia in April 2010 with a letter saying the child was disturbed, violent and she didn’t want him anymore. Afterward the World Association for Children and Parents, the agency that helped Hansen adopt the child, filed a lawsuit seeking child support.
Hansen has since moved to California and has not appeared at any of the hearings.
Chaka Khan (AP Photo)
(AP) – Grammy award-winning singer Chaka Khan will perform a tribute to the late Whitney Houston at the Apollo Theater’s gala and awards ceremony. The historic Harlem theater confirmed Friday that the “I Feel for You” singer will perform in her friend’s memory.
Lionel Richie and the late Etta James will be inducted into the theater’s hall of fame during the June 4 gala. Soul Train creator Don Cornelius and songwriter Nick Ashford will also be honored posthumously.
Richie’s first Apollo appearance was in the early 1970s. The “Hello” singer says he’s thrilled to be chosen for the hall of fame.
James was known for ballads like “At Last.” She performed at the Apollo in 1957 and again in the 1960s.
Past inductees include Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and Aretha Franklin.
© 2012 KFWB Asset Trust / The FCC licensee of Station KFWB is the KFWB License Trust |
