Whitney Houston dead at 48, on eve of Grammys

LOS ANGELES: Grammy-winning pop legend and actress Whitney Houston was found dead Saturday in Beverly Hills, police said. She was 48.

The shock news came as the music industry gathered in Los Angeles for the annual Grammy awards show on Sunday, and a few hours ahead of a traditional pre-Grammys dinner in the hotel where Houston died.

Musicians took to Twitter to pay tribute to the singer, famous for songs including “I Will Always Love You,” who had led a public battle with drugs.

“Heartbroken and in tears over the shocking death of my friend … She will never be forgotten as one of the greatest voices to ever grace the earth,” wrote Mariah Carey.

Police confirmed her death in a brief statement outside the Beverly Hilton hotel, where stars were gathering for an annual pre-Grammys dinner hosted by veteran producer Clive Davis.

“At 3:55 pm, Whitney Houston was pronounced dead at the Beverly Hilton hotel,” said Mark Rosen, a police spokesman.

Rosen said police received an emergency call from someone in her entourage and found Houston on the floor of her room on the hotel’s fourth floor as attempts were being made to resuscitate her.

“There were no obvious signs of criminal intent at this time, and it is being investigated by the Beverly Hills police department,” the police spokesman added.

The cause of death was not immediately known.

A mobile crime laboratory and a number of police cars were stationed outside the hotel, while inside guests watched live television coverage about Houston’s death in the bar and lobby areas.

Condolences poured in on Twitter from shocked fans and from the famous, as
sadness over the news spread through the entertainment world.

“We have lost another legend. Love and prayers to Whitney’s family. She will be missed,” said Christina Aguilera, while Rihanna wrote simply: “No words! Just tears #DearWhitney.”

Grammys organizers the Recording Academy are scrambling to include some kind of tribute to Houston in Sunday’s show at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, according to CNN.

With a ferociously powerful voice and a dazzling range, Houston achieved stardom as a pop-soul singer known as “The Voice” and the “Queen of Pop.”

She also appeared in hit movies like “Waiting to Exhale” and “The Bodyguard.”

From a musical family that included mother Cissy Houston, a gospel star, and Dionne Warwick, her cousin, Whitney Houston started out as a teen model and then made a dazzling segue to music.

Her hits included “How Will I Know,” “Saving all My Love for You,” and “I
Will Always Love You.”

Houston’s trove of six Grammy awards included one for record of the year — for a soaring cover of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” and another for album of the year for “The Bodyguard.”

Houston, who grew up in New Jersey, was also a supporter of the anti-apartheid movement and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, on whose behalf she campaigned during his imprisonment.

She struggled with substance abuse, which took a toll on her health and career.

Houston has sold more than 170 million records worldwide but suffered a major career setback after admitting drug use during an abusive relationship with ex-husband Bobby Brown.

Brown was one of the hottest rhythm and blues singers in the late 1980s and early 90s, but became better known as the husband of Houston and for his frequent brushes with drugs and the law.

The pair, who were divorced in 2007, starred in a television reality series, “Being Bobby Brown,” that featured their marriage, warts and all. They have a daughter Bobbi Kristina.

Brown was detained in Atlanta in 1993 for lewd conduct and for brawling in 1995. He was arrested for drunk driving in 1996 and for alleged battery of Houston in late 2003. (AFP)

Spoof Nazi sci-fi film hits Berlin despite hurdles

BERLIN: Finnish sci-fi spoof “Iron Sky” takes viewers on a wild ride to the dark side of the moon, where Nazis who survived World War Two have built a military base and are planning a “Meteorblitzkrieg” on planet Earth.

Black US astronaut James Washington, on a mission to boost the flagging electoral fortunes of a US president clearly modelled on Sarah Palin, stumbles across the huge Swastika-shaped complex and is captured.

His madcap adventures, set in 2018, see his skin turned white by an Albert Einstein look alike, send him back to Earth where he is greeted as a lunatic and finally to the moon again to try to save the day, and his skin.

The movie has its official world premiere at the Berlin film festival where it screened out of competition on Saturday.

Amidst a typically dark and gritty selection of films at this year’s festival, Iron Sky has been among the most talked about by the thousands of journalists covering the event.

Producer Tero Kaukomaa said a large part of the funding came from “crowd-sourcing” either on the Internet or through selling merchandise to fans.

Of the 7.5 million euro ($9.89 million) budget, almost 1million was raised that way, he said, in turn helping to bring more mainstream investors on board.

Director Timo Vuorensola said the original idea for the oddball plotline was born in a Finnish sauna “as all good things from Finland usually are”.

He also directed the 2005 picture “Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning”, another sci-fi comedy funded by fans which went onto become a cult hit.

German producer Oliver Damian admitted there had been some resistance within Germany to making a film that made light of the Nazis.

“Over the years we needed to organise financing and we had a lot of obstacles to overcome in Germany because a lot of people were very critical of the project,” he told reporters after a packed press screening.

“We (younger Germans) have a different past and we are fully aware of this. I think you can make a dark comedy (about Nazis). “The film is supposed to be fun. This is important. At the end of the day we found funding partners in Germany and the film will be released here in April so we found people who believed in the project here as well.”

Actor Christopher Kirby, who plays Washington, did not believe it was a genuine script when he was first approached to consider the part. He stars alongside Julia Dietze, who portrays the Nazi ideologue Renate Richter.

Together, the two characters become involved in a life-or-death mission to halt the Nazi onslaught, in particular its secret weapon, the massive Gotterdammerung spaceship.

Meanwhile on Earth, the US president sees an opportunity to stay in the White House for another term.

“It’s wonderful,” she crows. “I’m a war-time president. I thought I was going to have to bomb Australia or something.”

Her response is to dispatch her own secret weapon, the USS George W. Bush spaceship. (Reuters)

Mafioso, murderer, tackle Shakespeare in new film

BERLIN: Drug dealers, a Mafioso and a murderer are cast in the roles of Caesar, Brutus, Cassius and others in “Caesar Must Die,” a docu-drama about inmates at a tough Italian prison who take on a Shakespeare tragedy.

The movie, which has its world premiere at the Berlin film festival on Saturday, was shot at the Rebibbia prison on the outskirts of Rome, some of it in the high security wing.

Directed by veteran Italian film makers Vittorio and Paolo Taviani, “Cesare Deve Morire” might equally be called “Shakespeare can set you free” as prisoners mentally escape the confines of their cells, at least fleetingly.

And Shakespeare’s themes of power, corruption, murder and vengeance in “Julius Caesar” naturally resonate with performers who are serving sentences ranging from 14 years to life.

“They were in their world but at the same time they had lines of Shakespeare which talked about murder and betrayal … about power and bosses, and we thought may be we can include their realities in the play,” Vittorio told reporters in Berlin.

“They lived through personal dramas too and we could link this to the dramatic life of Brutus and Mark Antony, for example, and they were able to put themselves in the shoes of the characters of Shakespeare.”

Caesar Must Die is one of several movies at this year’s Berlin festival which deal with captivity, and judging by warm applause after a press screening, it could prove popular with the critics and judges.

UNHAPPY ENDING

Though billed as a documentary, the film, shot almost entirely in black-and-white, is in fact a drama or a “play around a play.” Even when prisoners depart from Shakespeare’s text there is a script and elements of performance.

Nonetheless, the intensity of the actors, and extensive use of close-up facial shots, communicate the power of the play and bring it alive for modern audiences.

The downside is that when six months of rehearsal and the final show at the prison’s theatre are over, the reality of life behind bars sinks quickly back in.

“Ever since I discovered art, this cell has truly become a prison,” said Cosimo Rega, the inmate who played Cassius, speaking directly into a camera in his cell.

The Taviani brothers, who have been making films together for 50 years and in 1977 won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival for “Padre Padrone,” first got the idea for the film from a friend who attended a staging at the prison.

She told them that the performance of a staging of Dante’s “Inferno” had reduced her to tears. They too attended a play there and saw the potential for a big screen production.

The movie opens with a series of auditions, during which prisoners lay bare their emotions.

“We thought it was important to show the trauma inmates had lived through,” said Vittorio. “They were feeling pain and … it should be taken into account.”

Most of the cast are still behind bars, although former Rebibbia inmate Salvatore Striano was brought back to the prison to play Brutus and is now an actor.

“These men all have to serve their sentences,” Striano said. “They are all guilty of course, but they kind of asked for pardon through this play, they want to live, inside prison.” (Reuters)

Jolie, showing directorial debut, says Afghanistan is next

BERLIN: Angelina Jolie says it was only natural that her directorial debut should tackle some of the toughest issues facing humanity and after wartime Bosnia, Afghanistan is likely to be her next subject.

At the Berlin film festival to present her unflinching drama about rape as a weapon of war, “In the Land of Blood and Honey”, the Hollywood icon-cum-humanitarian told her turn behind the camera was aimed at using cinema as a force for reconciliation.

“I’ve written a lot of journals while travelling over 10 years in the conflicts around the world and being frustrated by the lack of intervention,” said the 36-year-old Oscar-winning actress.

“So I went to the region and started to really look at the Bosnian war, but I couldn’t really understand or figure it out, and I felt this is my generation this happened to so I should know this. So I gave myself some education.”

Jolie, who backs a range of causes as a UN goodwill ambassador, said her research inspired her to start writing a screenplay and her partner Brad Pitt encouraged her to show a rough draft to people from all sides of the brutal 1992-1995 war.

But when it came to making the film, she realised she was the only one with both the objective distance and passionate commitment to do the job.

“And this is how I found myself being a director!” she said.

“I knew that there might have been people who were technically more capable than me, but I knew I really, really cared from the bottom of my heart so therefore I felt I should do it.”

She filmed versions of the movie in local languages and English in parallel. (AFP)

Paul McCartney finally gets Walk of Fame star

LOS ANGELES: Fotmer Beatles vocalist, Paul McCartney, finally got his own star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame on Thursday, becoming the last of the four Beatles to get the honor.

“In Liverpool, when we were kids and listening to Buddy Holly and all the other rock and roll greats, I would have never thought the day would come when I’d be getting a star on the Walk of Fame. I thought it was an impossible thing to happen. But here we are today,” McCartney, 69, said.

“I couldn’t have done it without a certain three boys, so I want to say thanks to those guys, John, George and Ringo,” he said.

McCartney’s star was placed outside the Capitol Records building, alongside those of band members John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

The Beatles were given a star as a group in 1998, more than 25 years after they split up. Lennon and Harrison were given their individual stars several years after their deaths in 1980 and 2001 respectively, while Starr got his in 2010.

Hundreds of fans of the Fab Four gathered, clutching memorabilia, to see McCartney honored for his 50-year legacy in the music industry.

Starr was prevented from attending Thursday’s ceremony because of illness, but rocker Neil Young was on hand to pay tribute to McCartney as a singer and songwriter “at the top of his game.”

The Beatles, who hailed from Liverpool, England, became one of the best-selling bands in the world in the 1960s, triggering a wave of Beatlemania for hits like “Love Me Do”, “Yellow Submarine” and “Let it Be”.

“Thanks to all of you, to all the fans around the world, I’d like to send you hugs and kisses on the bottom,” the singer said cheekily, referring to his latest album, “Kisses on the Bottom.”

McCartney will receive the Recording Academy’s MusiCares person of the year award on Friday, and perform at Sunday’s Grammy Awards. (Reuters)

Naomi Watts to play Princess Diana in biopic

LONDON: British-Australian actress Naomi Watts is to play Britain’s Princess Diana in a movie about the late royal’s final two years, filmmakers have announced.

Producers said “Caught in Flight” would focus on a period when Diana, the former wife of heir to the throne Prince Charles, found “true personal happiness” shortly before her death in a 1997 car crash in Paris.

Diana wed Charles in a glittering ceremony in 1981, but the unhappy marriage ended in 1996. Charles wed his long-time companion Camilla Parker-Bowles in 2005.

Watts, who won widespread critical acclaim for her role as Betty Elms in the 2001 psychological thriller “Mulholland Drive”, said it was an honour to be able to play the “iconic role” of the woman known as the “People’s Princess”.

“Princess Diana was loved across the world and I look forward to rising to the challenge of playing her on screen,” said the 44-year-old, who also won an Oscar nomination for her role as a recovering drug addict in “21 Grams”.

The movie about the Princess of Wales, who was just 36 when she died, will be directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, best known for his epic 2004 film “Downfall” about the final days of Hitler. (AFP)

‘Violent’ Madonna stalker escapes from hospital

LOS ANGELES: A man convicted of stalking Madonna and who has “very violent tendencies” has escaped from a psychiatric hospital, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) said Thursday.

Robert Dewey Hoskins, 54, who was convicted in 1996 of stalking Madonna – he once scaled a wall of the star’s Hollywood home and threatened to cut her throat from ear to ear – walked out of hospital last Friday, said a spokesman.

He was jailed for 10 years in 1996, and after his release was transferred to one hospital where he was determined to be a “mentally disturbed offender,” according to police.

Last July, about a year after his release from that hospital, he was arrested again and sent to the Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, southeast of Los Angeles.

Hoskins is highly psychotic when not taking his medication and has very violent tendencies,” said an LAPD statement, asking people to be on the lookout for him. “He could be in the Los Angeles area,” it added.

Madonna testified at Hoskins’ trial in 1996 that she had recurring nightmares since seeing the homeless drifter near her home in April 1995.

Her bodyguard told her Hoskins claimed “he was there to take me away that I was supposed to be his wife, that if he couldn’t have me, he was going to slice my throat from ear to ear,” she said.

Hoskins returned to her Hollywood Hills estate the next month, at a time when the singer was in Florida, scaled the perimeter wall, jumped into her pool before being shot twice by a guard. (AFP)

Brad Pitt moves from onscreen to behind-the-scene

LOS ANGELES: Never content to be just another Hollywood hunk, Brad Pitt these days is not just one of America’s most bankable film stars but also a sought-after and influential movie producer.

Pitt and his life partner Angelina Jolie are Hollywood’s gilded first couple, a fixture on the Big Screen and on the awards’ show red carpet circuit.

The actor, 48, starred in the critically acclaimed “Moneyball” which has earned him a best actor Oscar nomination at this year’s awards, as well as in the art film “The Tree of Life.”

But these days, it is Pitt’s work as a producer that most sets his heart racing. The actor, who says he is a “perfectionist” when it comes to his work, is on a mission to make sure that quality films, not just mindless trifles, get made in Hollywood.

In “Moneyball” Pitt played the role of Billy Beane, a baseball manager who used a quirky but effective statistics-based approach to spotting on-field talent.

Pitt relished his Oscar-nominated role in the film, but said he may have gotten even more satisfaction as its producer.

The critically important behind-the-scenes-player on all films is responsible for hiring the director, overseeing the budget, coordinating the film’s post-production and other indispensable tasks.

“Any movie you see here today wouldn’t have made it to the screen, unless you had someone with the idea that this would make a good movie and then the fortitude and luck to push it through. Each one of these movies took some heavy lifting,” Pitt told.

“That’s why I enjoy the producing side so much,” he said. (AFP)

Chris Brown returns to Grammys; Rihanna also to perform

LOS ANGELES: Chris Brown will perform at this Sunday’s Grammy Awards for the first time since beating his then girlfriend Rihanna in 2009 on the eve of the music industry’s biggest night, which threatened to derail his music career.

Rihanna also is among the stars performing live at the event, and rumors have flown among fans and celebrity watchers in recent weeks that the pair may be secretly dating again — speculation Brown’s representatives have dismissed.

Grammy organizers said on Tuesday that Brown, who has three nominations including best R&B singer for his album “F.A.M.E.”, had been added to the line-up for the February 12 awards show in Los Angeles.

They said Brown will join Foo Fighters, Lil Wayne, David Guetta and deadmau 5 for a performance highlighting dance and electronica music for the first time on the Grammy Awards show stage.

Organizers said last month that Rihanna, who has four nominations including album of the year for “Loud”, will sing with Coldplay on the Grammy stage.

Brown, 22, has skipped the Grammys since launching a violent attack on Rihanna in 2009, leaving her battered and bruised and Brown in the custody of police.

Brown publicly apologized, admitted to criminal assault in court. A judge sentenced him to five years probation, six months community service and anger management counseling. But his clean-cut image took a major blow.

Rihanna’s career on the other hand soared, and she scored hits with songs like “Man Down” and “Love the Way You Lie”, which dealt with violence against women.

The pair appeared to have gone their separate ways but in recent months, speculation buzzed that they had reunited after they were spotted at the same Los Angeles nightclub and put out a series of cryptic messages on Twitter.

But Brown’s spokesman said in January that Brown and Rihanna were “just friends”. (Reuters)

Kylie calls police over Twitter ‘weirdo’ threat

Report Daily News

SYDNEY: Australian pop star Kylie Minogue has alerted police to an online stalker – “deluded weirdo” issuing threats over Twitter, she wrote on the micro-blogging site on Tuesday.

The diminutive singer told her more than one million followers on the site that she adored her supporters, but one among them was not her ‘lover’ – her nickname for her fans.

“I love 1,033,861 of you LOVERS, but 1 is not a lover, just a deluded weirdo making threat #andthatdoesnotmakeyouspecial So..police alerted,” she tweeted Tuesday.

The announcement prompted a groundswell of support for the 43-year-old on the social networking site, with fans vowing to protect her and offering support.

“I hope whoever’s threatening @kylieminogue knows there’s more than 1,000,000 of us ready to jump to her defence,” wrote one.

Former television soap star Minogue this year celebrates 25 years in the music business since her hit debut single “Locomotion” was released in 1987. (AFP)

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