Month: September 2017

Michael Phelps wondered if watching others compete at the world championships would pique his desire for another comeback.

Nope.

Phelps said Tuesday he has “no desire” to return to competitive swimming, but he is eager to stay involved with the sport and cheer on those who follow in his enormous wake.

In an interview with The Associated Press while promoting a healthy pet food campaign, Phelps said he is excited about having his second child and building a life beyond swimming.

“For me, it’s about being happy where I am and happy where my family is,” Phelps said. “We have more goals we want to accomplish outside the sport.”

It was around this time four years ago when Phelps got serious about ending his first retirement, but he now seems content with his decision to step away again after the Rio Olympics.

His wife, Nicole, is about four months pregnant. The couple already have a 16-month-old son, Boomer.

“I’ve got no desire — no desire — to come back,” the 32-year-old Phelps said flatly.

Phelps has attended a handful of swimming meets since the Rio Games, where the winningest athlete in Olympic history added to his already massive career haul by claiming five gold medals plus a silver. A few months ago, he conceded to the AP that he wasn’t sure how he would feel about a possible comeback after watching the worlds in Budapest, Hungary.

“We’ll see if I get that itch,” he said in April.

Turns out, it had no impact.

Phelps said the second-biggest meet after the Olympics “truly didn’t kick anything off or spike any more interest in coming out of retirement again.”

He is excited to follow the development of his heir apparent, Caeleb Dressel, who emerged as the sport’s newest star by winning seven gold medals at Budapest.

The 21-year-old Floridian joined Phelps and Mark Spitz as the only swimmers to accomplish that feat at a major international meet.

“I’m happy Caeleb decided to go off this year instead of last year,” quipped Phelps, who won 23 golds and 28 medals overall in his Olympic career. “I’m kind of happy to see him swimming so well when I’m not there.”

While he still travels extensively for his many sponsors, Phelps said he’s much more involved in his wife’s second pregnancy than he was before Boomer’s birth, when he was consumed by full-scale training for the Olympics.

“It’s definitely different going through it again,” he said.

Boomer, meanwhile, is a chip off the old block.

“He skipped the walking part and went right to running,” Phelps said, chuckling. “He just scoots around the house. It’s funny when we get him in the pool. He basically just splashes around the whole time. He’s literally nonstop. As soon as he wakes up from a nap or his night’s sleep, he’s just go, go, go. There’s no time for slow moving in our family. He likes to go fast. I guess that’s a good thing.”

Boomer is even starting to show some good form in the pool. His mom and Phelps’ longtime coach, Bob Bowman, have detected a bit of the stroke that was his father’s strongest.

“Nicole and Bob both say he’s got a good butterfly technique that he’s working on,” Phelps said. “I guess he’s seen his dad doing it a couple of times and kind of picks it up. He’s also now in a stage where it’s like all five senses are coming together. He feels everything, recognizes everything. It’s really fun to watch, as a dad, just watching these transitions in his life.”

In his latest business endeavor, Phelps is spearheading a marketing campaign for Nulo Pet Food, which he describes as a healthy alternative for dogs and cats. He’s an investor in the company and accompanied in ads by his French bulldogs, Juno and Legend.

“Our bodies are like a high-performance car. You have to make sure you’re putting the correct fuel in your body,” Phelps said. “We obviously treat our pets like human beings. I’d like my animals to be fed in the right way, with good nutrition and healthy foods. If we can do that with a company that’s putting good, natural ingredients into a pet food, it makes sense for me with what I’m doing in my own life. It’s something that goes hand in hand.”

With Dressel and Katie Ledecky now leading the American team, the U.S. is expected to remain the world’s dominant swimming country heading into the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Even without Phelps.

“It’s time to kind of move on,” he said, “and watch other people come into their own.”
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Actress Jamie Lee Curtis will reprise her role as the resilient protagonist in 2018’s Halloween, Universal Pictures says, 40 years after she made her movie debut in the original horror movie of the same name and became Hollywood’s “scream queen.”

The studio said Friday that Curtis, 58, will again play Laurie Strode, the baby sitter who faced the deadly masked serial killer Michael Myers in John Carpenter’s 1978 horror Halloween. The 2018 film will see Curtis’ Strode face “her final confrontation” with Myers, Comcast Corp.-owned Universal said.

Carpenter will return to executive produce and consult on the new film.

Halloween has become one of Hollywood’s most famous slasher film franchises, with nine sequels and reboots over the years, the last being Rob Zombie’s 2009 Halloween II.

Curtis’ last appearance in the franchise was in 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection, in which her character was killed.

Universal said the 2018 film “carves a new path from the events in the landmark 1978 film,” suggesting that it will ignore the events in the 2002 film.
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Representatives for Taylor Swift on Tuesday rejected a copyright infringement lawsuit filed on Monday by two songwriters over Swift’s hit song “Shake It Off” as a “ridiculous claim.”

Songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler said in a lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court in Los Angeles that Swift’s song used the phrase “players, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate,” that they had coined for a 2001 song “Playas Gon’ Play” by R&B girl group 3LW.

Swift’s lyric from her 2014 hit “Shake It Off” is: “the players gonna play, play, play, play, play, and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.”

“This is a ridiculous claim and nothing more than a money grab,” Swift’s representatives said in a statement. “The law is simple and clear. They do not have a case.”

Hall and Butler are seeking unspecified damages and a jury trial.

Hall, a songwriter and producer for artists such as Justin Bieber and Maroon 5, and Butler, who has worked with artists such as Backstreet Boys and Luther Vandross, claimed that the combination of playas or players with hatas or haters was unique to its use in 3LW’s “Playas Gon’ Play.”

“In 2001 it was completely original and unique. Indeed, the combination had not been used in popular culture prior,” the lawsuit said.

Hall and Butler said the phrase accounts for about 20 percent of the lyrics of “Shake It Off.” They claimed that Swift and her team “undoubtedly had access to ‘Playas Gon’ Play'” before writing and releasing her song.

“Defendant Swift has admitted that she watched MTV’s TRL which promoted ‘Playas Gon’ Play,'” the lawsuit said.

It said “Playas Gon’ Play” debuted at No. 7 on MTV’s Total Request Live in March 2001 and that 3LW’s debut album sold more than 1 million copies.
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FIFA president Gianni Infantino wants the next edition of the Women’s World Cup to draw a billion TV viewers across the world.

Infantino, who attended the official launch of the tournament that will be organized in France in 2019, said on Tuesday that the previous edition in Canada in 2015 was watched by 750 million viewers.

Speaking alongside French federation president Noel Le Graet and French Sports Minister Laura Flessel, Infantino said “our goal is to reach one billion in France in 2019.”

The tournament, which will run from June 7 to July 7, will gather 24 teams in six groups.

France will kick off the event at Parc des Princes in Paris, with the semifinals and finals in Lyon.

“It will be magnificent,” Infantino said. “France is a great football nation for both men and women.”
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The Native American celebration known as a pow wow is typically a day-long event of singing, dancing, socializing and playing traditional games. The Narragansett tribe word “pow wow,” means “spiritual leader.” But in popular American culture it has come to mean any gathering of Native Americans, though such use is considered offensive. As VOA Russian’s Maxim Moskalkov reports from a recent public pow wow, the events attract many who are interested in indigenous cultures and communities.
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Lady Gaga on Monday called off the European leg of her world tour, saying she was suffering from severe physical pain and was seeking medical treatment.

The “Born This Way” singer, 31, who says she suffers from fibromyalgia, also canceled an appearance at a music festival in Rio de Janeiro last week and posted pictures of herself in a hospital with a drip on her arm.

She said on her social media accounts on Monday she was disappointed at comments from people online that “suggest that I’m being dramatic, making this up, or playing the victim to get out of touring. If you knew me, you would know this couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“I have always been honest about my physical and mental health struggles,” Gaga added. “It is complicated and difficult to explain, and we are trying to figure it out.

“As I get stronger and when I feel ready, I will tell my story in more depth, and plan to take this on strongly so I can not only raise awareness, but expand research for others who suffer as I do, so I can help make a difference,” the singer added.

Fibromyalgia is a musculoskeletal pain disorder, often accompanied by fatigue and mood issues, that can be triggered by physical trauma or psychological stress.

Gaga’s European tour to promote her latest album “Joanne” was due to start on Sept. 21 in Barcelona, Spain, and continue for six weeks. The dates have been postponed until 2018.

“She plans to spend the next seven weeks proactively working with her doctors to heal from this and past traumas that still affect her daily life, and result in severe physical pain in her body,” promoters Live Nation said in a statement.

The singer was hospitalized in 2013 for a hip injury, and a new documentary, “Lady Gaga: Five Foot Two,” documents her struggles with chronic pain.
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The Emmy statuette depicts a winged woman, and this year’s Emmy telecast celebrated a TV season in which women, as never before, were able to soar.

Strong roles about strong women abounded. And they were rewarded. The winning drama series and limited series (”The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Big Little Lies,” respectively) focused on issues of women — rather than defaulting to the male point of view — as a vivid way to explore the human condition. “Veep,” which stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the former president of the U.S., won best comedy series.

Women also made inroads behind the camera, with Lena Waithe winning best comedy writer Emmy for “Master of None.” She’s the first woman winner ever in that category.

For many of the winners as well as many fans who were cheering them on, the Emmycast unfolded as a bracing rebuttal at a time when surveys continue to expose unfair representation by women in Hollywood.

“Let’s hope that this is the beginning of something even better in our country and the world,” said Louis-Dreyfus, savoring her record-breaking sixth win as Selina Meyer on “Veep.” “I think the world would be a better place if more women were in charge.”

“We’ve made incredible progress, obviously,” said Elisabeth Moss, who won the best actress Emmy for her starring role in “The Handmaid’s Tale” as one of the few fertile women left in a world ruled by a totalitarian regime that treats women as property.

But she added, “There’s still a lot of work to be done. There are still meetings you walk into and wonder if they say ‘no’ because it’s a show by or about a women.”

The answer, Moss said, is “not only women in front of the camera but it’s women behind the camera.”

“Feud: Bette and Joan,” starring Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange in a robust saga of clashing queens of the silver screen, was a promising entry in the Limited Series category.

But “Feud” was edged out by another woman-centric drama, “Big Little Lies,” which followed a group of mothers who each have secrets threatening to crash down upon her. The series collected eight Emmys also including best actress (Nicole Kidman), best supporting actress (Laura Dern) and best supporting actor Alexander Skarsgard, who, in accepting his trophy, thanked his colleagues for letting him be “one of the girls.”

Indeed, two of the series’ executive producers were Kidman and her co-star Reese Witherspoon.

Backstage, Witherspoon voiced delight that “we created four roles for women, and all got nominated.”

The characters those women portrayed “were complicated. They were complex,” she noted. “They were good and bad.”

“What was so wonderful,” said Kidman, “is that we had so many people, men and women of different ages, watching the show that went far beyond what we expected. As much as it was about women, it was for everyone.”

In accepting her Emmy as one of the series’ producers, Kidman implored the industry to create “more great roles for women, please.”

But Witherspoon pointed out that “it’s great to be the architect of your own destiny, and create material for yourself and . so many roles for women — award-winning roles. It turns out we know how to do it for ourselves!”
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Canada-born designer Erdem Moralioglu has turned the Old Selfridges Hotel into a glamorous speakeasy for his London Fashion Week show.

With classics “Stormy Monday” and “My Funny Valentine” playing, the fashion house named Erdem on Monday displayed glamorous, full-length evening gowns with full-length gloves and sparkly accessories.

Many had floral themes and remarkable detailing, adding to the show’s exuberance and opulence.

While many designers are showing more and more skin, Erdem opts for a subtle celebration of feminine beauty. There were some sheer and lacy outfits, but most were more modest, with either high necklines or sweetheart ones.

The effect was entrancing. Nostalgia was in the air – the program featured a photograph of Queen Elizabeth II meeting Duke Ellington in 1958.

London Fashion week continues later Monday with Christopher Kane, and others.
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The Tottori sand dunes, on Japan’s west coast, attract some two million visitors a year. Many come to see the huge sand sculptures created for an annual exhibit hosted by the Tottori Sand Museum, the world’s first indoor sand museum. With the recurring theme of Touring the World in Sand, previous exhibitions featured iconic images from Africa, southeast Asia, Italy and Russia, among other locales. This year, for its 10th exhibit, Tottori had sand artists explore American history and culture. Faiza Elmasry tells us how. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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Martin McDonaugh’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” took the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award on Sunday, an early bell-weather for Hollywood’s coming awards season.

Piers Handling, chief executive and director of the festival, announced the awards for the 42nd annual Toronto festival.

The People’s Choice Award, voted on by festival audiences, went to the British playwright’s third feature film, which stars Frances McDormand as a mother who goes to war with police in her town after her daughter’s murder.

“As much as we had a lovely time in Canada, and as much it seemed like the audiences had a good time, too, you never really know if a story that’s as heartfelt but also as outrageous and funny and unusual as ours has really connected to, you know, real people,” said McDonaugh (“In Bruges,” “Seven Psychopaths,”) said in a statement. “So it’s brilliant to hear that it has.”

Not since 2007’s “Eastern Promises” has a Toronto People’s Choice winner failed to score an Academy Awards best-picture nomination. Many People’s Choice winners have also gone on to win the Academy Awards’ top honor, including “12 Years a Slave,” “The King’s Speech” and “Slumdog Millionaire.”

“La La Land” last year took Toronto’s big prize but Damien Chazelle’s musical ultimately lost to “Moonlight” for best picture.

Fox Searchlight will release “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” on Nov. 10.

This year’s runner up went to Craig Gillespie’s Tonya Harding tale “I, Tonya,” starring Margot Robbie as the former Olympic ice skater. In one of the festival’s biggest sales, “I, Tonya” was acquired by Neon and 30West for $5 million.

The second runner up was “Call Me By Your Name,” Luca Guadagnino’s Italy-set coming-of-age story.

That film, which also drew raves at the Sundance Film Festival earlier in the year, is due for release Nov. 24 from Sony Pictures Classics.
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The critically acclaimed “The Handmaid’s Tale” won the prize for best drama television series at the 69th annual Emmy awards Sunday night in Hollywood. Its star, Elizabeth Moss, who portrayed one of the few fertile women left in a world ruled by a totalitarian regime, won the award for best lead actress in a drama series.

The best dramatic actor award went to Sterling K. Brown, one of the stars of the hit series “This is Us.”  Brown thanked his television family, saying they were the best white adopted family a black actor could have.

Last year, Brown won an Emmy for his portrayal of O.J. Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden in the FX series “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.”

The best comedy series nod went to “Veep,” a show about a fictional U.S. politician.  It was the third win in a row for the HBO series. 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, “Veep”‘s star,  won the best comedy actress Emmy, her sixth consecutive win.

Nicole Kidman won the best actress in a limited series Emmy for her role as an abused wife in HBO’s “Big Little Lies.”

Upon accepting her trophy, she said the series had shined a light on domestic violence, “a complicated insidious disease.”  

The best supporting actress for comedy award was given to Kate McKinnon, from “Saturday Night Live.” It was her second win for her role in the late-night weekly comedy institution.

The 42-year-old series also won for best variety show.

Colbert on Trump

Comic Stephen Colbert was this year’s Emmys host. He peppered his opening monologue with numerous jokes about President Donald Trump, and recalled the president’s angry comment in the past that he had never won for hosting his former TV series, “Celebrity Apprentice.”

Colbert teased the Emmy audience, telling them Trump never would have run for the White House if he had scored the top award in U.S. television. And in a reference to the vote turnout last November, when Trump won the presidency despite getting nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, Colbert said that, unlike the presidential race, Emmys go to the winners of the popular vote.

The president’s former spokesman, Sean Spicer, made a surprise appearance, rolling out on to the stage on a motorized version of the White House podium.

Spicer pronounced this year’s show the most-watched Emmy telecast in history, lampooning his own discredited assertion of a record audience for Trump’s inauguration in Washington eight months ago.

Familiar names and a surprise familiar face were some of the highlights of the awards show.  

Veteran actress Cecily Tyson, a star of the landmark mini-series “Roots,” resplendent in a red gown, had trouble reading the introduction to the limited series award, but like the trooper she is, she finally pulled it off to present the Emmy to “Big Little Lies.”

Veteran actor John Lithgow won his sixth Emmy Sunday, this time as best supporting actor for playing Winston Churchill in the Netflix series the “The Crown.”

Another veteran performer, Laura Dern, won her first Emmy as best supporting actress in a TV movie or limited series for “Big Little Lies.”
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American television’s biggest stars are walking the red carpet Sunday in Los Angeles, posing for photos and interviews before the 69th annual Emmy awards presentation.

Late-night talk show personality Stephen Colbert will host the award show, which is sure to get political this year.  Colbert, who’s Late Show often pokes fun at President Donald Trump and his administration, said “the biggest television star of the last year was Donald Trump” during an interview last week.

Additionally, comedy show Saturday Night Live, which regained popularity during the past year by imitating various politicians, is up for a number of awards.  Melissa McCarthy, who portrayed former White House press secretary Sean Spicer on the show, was named the best guest actress in a comedy in last week’s Creative Arts Emmy ceremony.

The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian story that many have said is a reflection of modern times, has been nominated for best drama, along with Better Call Saul and House of Cards and newcomers This Is Us, The Crown, Stranger Things, and Westworld.

Nominated for best comedy are Veep, Master of None, Atlanta, black-ish, Silicon Valley, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Modern Family.

The Primetime Emmy awards have been held each year since 1949 to recognize members of the U.S. television industry.  This year’s ceremony has a record number of African-American nominees, with 12 black actors up for best and supporting actor awards.

This year also includes a record number of nominated shows exclusively shown on streaming platforms such as Netflix and Hulu.
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