Month: September 2017

To say that Josie Ho has been busy is an understatement.

The Hong Kong singer and actress is putting out new music, touring Asia and has shot a new travel show on TLC.

Together with her indie rock band, Josie and the Uni Boys, Ho is releasing seven new singles on vinyl records, one song at a time. She said her new music is inspired by the psycho thriller film Split starring James McAvoy, about three young girls kidnapped by a man who suffers from a multiple personality disorder. Fittingly, the first single is named Skitzo.

“I believe everyone has at least five personalities, like when you go home and face your parents, your lover, your friends, your colleagues, your boss and like, some PR friends,” Ho explained. “Some people have guilt trips about having different faces, like they feel like they’re two-faced, which I don’t think so. That’s why we need to put this concept out there, so when people really understand our lyrics and our music, I hope everyone feels that ‘We’re OK. We’re all OK. We’re fine.'”

Split might just be the way Ho, 42, feels about her life. The daughter of Macau casino mogul Stanley Ho, Ho defied her parents and refused to join the family business. Instead, she wanted to become an actress and singer.

In 1996, she released her first solo albums and also began acting in films. However, it wasn’t until she played a prostitute in the 2003 movie Naked Ambition that critics began to take her seriously as an actress. For that performance, Ho won the Best Supporting Actress award at the Hong Kong Film Awards. She also attempted to break into Hollywood, gaining a small part in Steven Soderbergh’s movie Contagion about the SARS epidemic. 

This year, Ho is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her band. They will kick off a tour in Tokyo in October, and Ho could hardly contain her excitement.

“I’m going to be able to perform like a Japanese band at their live houses. Those are not just any live houses, those are scared rock ‘n’ roll, hall of fame places. So, I’m really honored to play there,” Ho said.   

After Japan, Josie and the Uni Boys head to China, the Philippines and Taiwan before returning home to Hong Kong next spring.

Until then, fans can catch Ho on TLC, A Taste of Hong Kong with Josie Ho, where she hosts other Asian celebrities in Hong Kong and shows them around town. Her favorite spot in Hong Kong? Surprisingly, the outdoors.

“A lot of countries have outdoor sports as well, but our outdoor sports are only 20 minutes away from the city. So I think we have the upper hand, compared to other cities in Asia. So you can go wakeboarding, take 45 minutes to shower and change, and go to work in central. I think that’s a really important point to tell people,” she said.
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Selena Gomez recently received a kidney transplant from television actress Francia Raisa due her struggle with lupus, the singer revealed Thursday.

Gomez revealed in an Instagram post confirmed by her publicist early Thursday that she has been somewhat out of the spotlight this summer because she was recovering from the procedure. The 25-year-old calls the transplant “what I needed to do for my overall health.”

 

The post didn’t reveal Gomez’s current condition or say where or when the procedure took place. Gomez’s publicist declined to release more information.

Gomez wrote “there aren’t words to describe” how she can thank Raisa, who she says gave “the ultimate gift and sacrifice by donating her kidney.”

“I am incredibly blessed,” she added.

 

The Instagram post includes a picture of Gomez and Raisa holding hands while lying side-by-side in hospital beds and another photo of a scar on Gomez’s abdomen. The 29-year-old Raisa is best known for her role on the ABC Family series “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” Raisa’s publicist didn’t immediately return a request for comment Thursday.

 

Gomez revealed her lupus diagnosis in 2015 and took a break from her career last year to deal with anxiety, panic attacks and depression stemming from her battle with the disease. The disease causes fibrous tissue and inflammation of internal organs, skin rashes and joint pain. It affects women nine times more than men. Organs affected by lupus include the kidneys, heart and lungs.

 

Gomez got her start as a child actress before launching her music career. She appeared on “Barney and Friends” before breaking through as a teen star on the Disney Channel’s “Wizards of Waverly Place.” She has a massive following on social media. Her 126 million followers on Instagram are the most on the platform.

 

 
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CBS’ “60 Minutes,” the newsmagazine that can credit consistency for much of its success as it enters its 50th anniversary year, is about to see a major change with the addition of Oprah Winfrey.

 

Winfrey will debut Sept. 24, reporting on a story about America’s political divisions.

 

It’s a testament to the power of the Sunday-night newsmagazine that it seeks to absorb one of television’s biggest stars into its fabric instead of the other way around. One of the medium’s best-known celebrity interviewers will do some, but will largely work against type in reporting stories, said Jeff Fager, the show’s executive producer.

 

“She wants to do stories with impact,” he said. “She’s driven by that and so are we. That’s part of why this is such a good fit for her.”

 

Many of the names that made “60 Minutes” great — Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, Don Hewitt — are gone now. But the stopwatch keeps ticking every Sunday at 7 p.m. While everything in media seems to have changed around it, the show’s mix of investigations, news-making interviews, esoteric and entertaining features timed to the length of founding executive producer Hewitt’s attention span remains remarkably unchanged.

 

“It’s a miracle,” correspondent Lesley Stahl said.

 

When she joined in 1991, Hewitt told Stahl that he wanted correspondents to be like actors in a repertory troupe who could play all the roles, and that’s still the philosophy she uses to plan stories she pursues.

 

Gone, too, are the volatile days of throwing coffee cups, shouting matches and feuds, of Wallace peeking at colleagues’ notebooks to steal stories. But it’s still keenly competitive. Newcomer Bill Whitaker told Fager he dreamed of screening a story that his bosses found so perfect it merited no changes. Fager leaned in and told him, “that’s not going to happen.”

 

There’s a different pressure from the daily deadlines of the evening news, Whitaker said. At “60 Minutes,” correspondents have time, talented producers and travel budgets. So they’d better deliver.

 

“Everyone is trying to find an original story, something that breaks news or helps people to understand a big story,” Fager said. “That’s what we do. New people up here realize that’s a higher bar than is set anywhere else.”

 

“People think it’s cutthroat,” he said. “It’s not like that, the way our image would suggest. But it’s a tough place to succeed. Part of how you’re judged is how original your reporting is, and how well you cover a big story.”

 

Scott Pelley, Stahl, Steve Kroft, Whitaker and Anderson Cooper make up the show’s core. Charlie Rose, Winfrey, Sharyn Alfonsi, Lara Logan, David Martin, Norah O’Donnell and Jon Wertheim are among the contributors who also do stories.

 

“There are a lot of people who are contributors who have other jobs, and that has changed the feel of the place,” Kroft said. “I don’t think the show has changed very much on the air.”

 

Fager, who just completed a book on the show to mark the anniversary, talks now about how hard it was to replace Hewitt 15 years ago. Colleagues say his status as an insider at CBS News and “60 Minutes” helped him, along with the absence of an ego-driven need to make changes for change’s sake.

 

His biggest push has been to make the show more on the news. Interviewing former presidential adviser Steve Bannon this past Sunday illustrates the point, and Fager pushed out excerpts of the interview for a few days in advance to make headlines and attract attention. Comments Bannon made about the James Comey firing were posted on the “60 Minutes Overtime” website, which delivers outtakes from the show’s segments, and became so newsworthy Monday that they arguably should have been used in the original piece.

 

The show would often ignore big breaking-news stories in the past, figuring they were told elsewhere. Fager likes to find some element that hasn’t received much attention but can help a viewer better understand the event, citing Kroft’s reporting on the financial crisis a decade ago.

 

“The quality of the show has not dropped off,” Kroft said. “We’ve had good seasons and bad seasons all during the 30 years I’ve been here. I think the show is more timely than it used to be.”

 

Producers watch the ratings, but refuse to test audience preferences with polls.

 

“It’s really risky to do what we do,” Fager said. “It goes against everything the professionals in news organizations believe, that you have to pander, that you have to look for stories that they’re going to want, as opposed to doing stories that are important and figuring out how to do it well.”

 

 “60 Minutes” has made high-profile mistakes; the reliance on a bad source in Logan’s 2014 Benghazi story was a major blemish. If the show has a weakness, it is that story length can simplify some stories too much, said Tom Bettag, a longtime television news producer who now teaches at the University of Maryland.

 

Yet the storytelling and writing put the show far ahead of the competition. Unlike newsmagazines like “Dateline NBC” and ABC’s “20/20” that have chased after trends and lost their identity, “what `60 Minutes’ did was stay consistent to its brand, to its vision, year in and year out,” he said.

 

“60 Minutes” has a rich tradition of principals who hold on to their jobs well past retirement age. The 72-year-old Kroft, who has cut back on stories and recently signed a two-year contract, doesn’t want to be one of them. Stahl, 75, said she wants to continue as long as she can do the job. She went to Fager a few years ago and said she didn’t want to fade on television and would tell him if she could sense herself slipping.

 

“He looked at me and said, ‘No, you won’t. Nobody ever does that.’ And he very kindly offered to do it for me,” she said with a laugh.

 

 

 

 
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South African musician Johnny Clegg, who has had chemotherapy and other treatment for pancreatic cancer, says he feels “fit and strong” as he begins his last international tour.

 

The 64-year-old Clegg told journalists Thursday that he is “dealing with another, parallel world that I live in with my diagnosis” ahead of shows in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia in the coming months. He performs Sept. 20 in Dubai.

 

The tour, scheduled to end in March, is called “The Final Journey.”

 

Clegg blended Western and African musical styles in multi-racial bands during white minority rule in South Africa. His song “Asimbonanga,” meaning “We’ve never seen him” in Zulu, refers to South Africans who grew up under apartheid, when images of then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela were banned.

 

 
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There’s a happy ending for two motherless tiger cubs now at a zoo in California. Faith Lapidus has the story.
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The World Anti-Doping Agency has dismissed all but one of the first 96 Russian doping cases forwarded its way from sports federations acting on information that exposed cheating in the country.

 

The cases stem from an investigation by Richard McLaren, who was tasked with detailing evidence of a scheme to hide doping positives at the Sochi Olympics and beforehand.

 

The 95 dismissed cases, first reported by The New York Times , were described by WADA officials as not containing enough hard evidence to result in solid cases.

 

“It’s absolutely in line with the process, and frankly, it’s nothing unexpected,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli told The Associated Press on Wednesday at meetings of the International Olympic Committee. “The first ones were the quickest to be dealt with, because they’re the ones with the least evidence.”

McLaren uncovered 1,000 potential cases, however, and a WADA spokesperson told AP it is the agency’s understanding that sports federations are considering bringing some of them forward.

Tainted samples missing

 

Niggli cautioned that it will be difficult to pursue some cases, because the Russian scheme involved disposing of tainted samples, and the Russians were not cooperative with McLaren in turning over evidence.

 

“There are a thousand names, and for a number of them, the only thing McLaren’s got is a name on a list,” Niggli said. “If you can prosecute an athlete with a name on a list, perfect. But this is not the reality. There were thousands of samples destroyed in Moscow.”

The revelation of the 95 dropped cases comes with a deadline fast approaching to make a decision on Russia’s participation at next February’s Winter Olympics.

 

Two IOC committees that will decide the matter — one reviewing individual cases and another looking at the overall corruption in Russia — are due to deliver interim reports at the IOC meetings later this week.

270 Russian athletes cleared for Rio 

 

In resolving the case against Russia’s suspended anti-doping agency (RUSADA), WADA has insisted the agency, the country’s Olympic committee and its sports ministry “publically accept the outcomes of the McLaren Investigation.” Track’s governing body put similar conditions in place for the lifting of the track team’s suspension.

 

The IOC, however, has made no such move. More than 270 Russian athletes were cleared to compete in the Summer Games last year in Rio.

“The best we can do to protect clean athletes is to have a really good, solid anti-doping process in Russia,” said WADA president Craig Reedie, who is also a member of the IOC. “That’s our role and our priority. The rest of it, you have to go and ask the IOC.”

IOC president Thomas Bach said the committees are “working hard all the time.”

Russia blames WADA

Meanwhile, Russian officials are showing no signs of acknowledging they ran a state-sponsored doping program.

 

This week, the country’s deputy prime minister, Vitaly Mutko, blamed RUSADA and the former head of the Russian anti-doping lab, Grigory Rodchenkov, for the corruption, and suggested WADA was at fault, too. Rodchenkov lives in hiding in the United States after revealing details of the plot.

 

“We are rearranging the system but it should be rearranged so that WADA could also share responsibility,” Mutko told Russia’s R-Sport news agency. “They should have been responsible for (Rodchenkov) before, as they have issued him a license and given him a work permit. They were in control of him but now the state is blamed for it.”
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This was one of those rare Olympic moments where everyone walked away a winner.

 

Paris for 2024. Los Angeles for 2028. And the International Olympic Committee for transforming an unruly bidding process to lock down its future by choosing not one, but two Summer Olympics hosts at the same time.

 

The IOC put the rubber stamp on a pre-determined conclusion Wednesday, giving Paris the 2024 Games and LA the 2028 Games in a history-making vote.  

 

The decision marks the first time the IOC has granted two Summer Olympics at once. It came after a year’s worth of scrambling by IOC president Thomas Bach, who had only the two bidders left for the original prize, 2024, and couldn’t bear to see either lose.

Both cities will host their third Olympics.

 

The Paris Games will come on the 100th anniversary of its last turn — a milestone that would have made the French capital the sentimental favorite had only 2024 been up for grabs.  

 

Los Angeles moved to 2028, and those Olympics will halt a stretch of 32 years without a Summer Games in the United States. In exchange for the compromise, LA will grab an extra $300 million or more that could help offset the uncertainties that lie ahead over an 11-year wait instead of seven.

 

Doing away with the dramatic flair that has accompanied these events in years past, there were no secret ballots and no dramatic reveals to close out the voting.

 

Bach simply asked for a show of hands from the audience, and when dozens shot up from the audience, and nobody raised their hand when he asked for objections, this was deemed a unanimous decision.

 

A ceremony that has long sparked parties in the plazas of winning cities — and crying in those of the losers — produced more muted, but still visible, shows of emotion. Paris bid organizer Tony Estaguent choked up during the presentation before the vote.

 

“You can’t imagine what this means to us. To all of us. It’s so strong,” he said.

Later, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo stood by Bach’s side and dabbed away tears as the vote was announced and the IOC president handed the traditional — but now unneeded — cards to she and LA mayor Eric Garcetti. One read “Paris 2024,” and the other “Los Angeles 2028.”

But there was no real drama. As if to accentuate that, the LA delegation wore sneakers to the presentation.

 

Bid chairman Casey Wasserman said the footwear “reflects who we are, and the unique brand of California-cool that we will bring to the 2028 Games.”

Bach asked the 94 IOC members to allow the real contests to play out at the Olympics themselves and turn the vote into a pure business decision — not a bad idea considering the news still seeping out about a bid scandal involving a Brazilian IOC member’s alleged vote-selling to bring the 2016 Olympics to Rio de Janeiro.

 

 More than that, Bach needed to ensure stability for his brand.

 

The public in many cities, especially those in the Western democracies that have hosted the majority of these games, is no longer eager to approve blank checks for bid committees and governments that have to come up with the millions simply to bid for the Olympics, then billions more to stage them if they win.

 

That reality hit hard when three of the original five bidders for 2024 — Rome, Hamburg, Germany, and Budapest, Hungary — dropped out, and the U.S. Olympic Committee had to pull the plug on its initial candidate, Boston, due to lack of public support.

“This is a solution to an awkward problem,” said longtime IOC member Dick Pound of Canada. “Many of the (candidate) cities are not prepared. They say, ‘Let’s have an Olympics,’ but they haven’t done the background work, checked the finances. But I guess we have to share it and say, ‘Have you done A, B, C, and D?’”

Only two candidates made it to the finish line — Paris and Los Angeles, each with a storied tradition of Olympic hosting and an apparent understanding of Bach’s much-touted reform package, known as Agenda 2020. It seeks to streamline the Games, most notably by eliminating billion-dollar stadiums and infrastructure projects that have been underused, if used at all, once the Olympics leave town.

 

Can they deliver?

 

Paris will have the traditional seven-year time frame to answer that.

 

Only one totally new venue is planned — a swimming and diving arena to be built near the Stade de France, which will serve as the Olympic stadium. Roland Garros, which will host tennis and boxing, will get a privately funded expansion. In all, the projected cost of new venues and upgrades to others is $892 million.

 

To be sure, Paris already has much to work with. Beach volleyball will be played near the Eiffel Tower; cycling will finish at the Arc de Triomphe; equestrian will be held at the Chateau de Versailles. And what would an Olympics be without some water-quality issues? There will be pressure to clean up the River Seine, which is where open-water and triathlon will be held.

 

Los Angeles, meanwhile, will get an extra four years, though the city claims it doesn’t need them. All the sports venues are built, save the under-construction stadium for the NFL’s Rams and Chargers, which will host opening ceremonies. Los Angeles proposed a $5.3 billion budget for 2024 (to be adjusted for 2028) that included infrastructure, operational costs — everything. A big number, indeed, though it must be put into perspective:

 

 Earlier this summer, organizers in Tokyo estimated their cost for the 2020 Games at $12.6 billion. The London Games in 2012 came in at $19 billion.

 

Traffic could be a problem — it almost always is in LA — but the city will be well along multi-decade, multibillion-dollar transit upgrade by 2028, and those with long memories recall free-flowing highways the last time the Olympics came to town, as locals either left the city or heeded warnings to use public transportation or stay home.

 

Those 1984 Games essentially saved the Olympic movement after a decade of terror, red ink and a boycott sullied the brand and made hosting a burden. The city points to its Olympic legacy to explain a nearly unheard-of 83 percent approval rating in a self-commissioned poll — not an insignificant factor when the IOC picks a place to hold its crown-jewel event.

 

Along with Paris, LA is stepping in again to try to change the conversation about what hosting the Olympics can really be.

 

“It’s a unique opportunity to do two at the same time,” Wasserman said. “Hopefully, it’s an interesting paradigm for the world going forward. We’re two great cities, it’s two great Olympic hosts and it’s going to be two great games.”

 
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Urged on by dozens of stars who turned out to sing, tell stories and plead for support for hurricane victims in a one-hour televised benefit, organizers said more than $44 million was raised Tuesday and donations are still being accepted.

With Stevie Wonder singing “Lean on Me” and Usher and Blake Shelton joining for “Stand By Me,” the message was clear: Americans were being asked to help those whose lives were upended by wind and rain.

Justin Bieber, George Clooney, Barbra Streisand, Al Pacino, Lupita Nyong’o, Jay Leno and dozens of others sat at phone banks to accept donations. Beyonce, Will Smith and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson sent in taped pleas for support during the event, shown on more than a dozen television networks and online simultaneously.

Originally conceived as a benefit for victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas, the “Hand in Hand” telethon was expanded to help people in Florida and the Caribbean devastated in recent days by Irma.

“We’re here to raise money, lift some spirits,” said Jamie Foxx, standing with actor Leonardo DiCaprio. “When tough times hit, this is who we are. We’re compassionate. We’re unstoppable.”

Hollywood talent manager Scooter Braun, who organized the event with Houston rap artist Bun B, said that after the show, all the celebrities manning the phone banks stayed to take more calls. “No one left,” he said. “Everyone just kept answering phones and answering phones and answering phones. People want to give. Like, people want to help. And you don’t have to be a celebrity to do it.”

For many of the stars, the storms hit close to home.

“I have family in Puerto Rico, I have family in Miami. I’ve been on the road. I haven’t been able to be there. So you can imagine how it’s been,” “Despacito” singer Luis Fonsi said after the show, adding that all his family, including his wife and young children in Miami, survived the storm and are safe.

“”Helpless – helpless is an understatement,” Fonsi said of being on tour and unable to be with his family. He noted that his experience paled in comparison to the pain the storms have caused for many.

“You can imagine how frustrating it is to not be able to sort of protect your own family,” he said. “Imagine all of these people that have nothing to do. The videos that you see online. So as an artist, as a singer, I think it’s part of our job, it’s part of our resume, to take time off and come together and do these kind of things.”

The quick-moving show took a form familiar to viewers since a sad template was set in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Celebrities requested donations, told heartwarming survival stories involving people caught in the storm and sang songs. Several organizations will benefit, including the United Way and Save the Children.

Stages in Los Angeles, New York and Nashville, Tennessee, were filled simultaneously, although the night’s final performance – a tribute to Texans by George Strait, Robert Earl Keen, Chris Stapleton, Miranda Lambert and Lyle Lovett – originated from San Antonio.

Fonsi and Tori Kelly sang “Hallelujah” together. Dave Matthews picked his guitar from a studio above New York’s Times Square, and Darius Rucker, Brad Paisley, Demi Lovato and Cece Winans sang the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends.” Wonder, backed by a gospel chorus, opened the show with the Bill Withers classic.

“Natural disasters don’t discriminate,” Beyonce said. “They don’t care if you’re an immigrant, black or white, Hispanic or Asian, Jewish or Muslim, wealthy or poor.” Cher and Oprah Winfrey told the story behind a frequently seen picture of strangers forming a human chain to save someone from flooding in Houston.

Usually competitive network morning personalities Matt Lauer, Norah O’Donnell and Michael Strahan stood before a satellite image of an ominous Irma to describe devastation the storm had caused.

Donations were announced from some deep pockets. Computer maker Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, pledged to match the first $10 million in donations Tuesday. They’ve given a total of $41 million to the Rebuild Texas Fund. Basketball star Chris Paul gave $20,000 and said the NBA Players Association would match donations of up to the same amount given by any NBA player.

Announcing Apple’s promise to give $5 million, comic Stephen Colbert quipped said it was coincidentally “also the price of the new iPhone.”

ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, HBO, MTV, BET and Univision were among the networks carrying the program, which was also streamed online.
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American tennis star Serena Williams on Wednesday announced the name and released first pictures of her baby girl, revealing that they had spent a week in the hospital following the Sept. 1 birth in Florida because of unspecified complications.

“Meet Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr.” the former world No. 1 and 23-time Grand Slam champion said in postings on her social media sites that included a video diary of her pregnancy.

Williams, 35, who is engaged to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, said the baby was born Sept. 1 and weighed 6 lbs 14 oz (3.1 kg).

“So we’re leaving the hospital after six days. It’s been a long time.  We had a lot of complications, but look what we got!” Williams said in the video, cradling the baby who has a mass of black hair.

The video showed Williams dancing, hitting tennis balls as her pregnancy progressed, selfies of her expanding belly, and home video of the couple putting together the baby’s crib.

Williams confirmed her pregnancy in April hours after triggering speculation when she accidentally posted a short-lived selfie on social media with the caption: “20 weeks.”

Williams, the world’s highest-paid female athlete, was about two months pregnant when she captured her 23rd grand slam singles title at the Australian Open.

She has not competed since announcing her pregnancy but she told Vogue magazine last month that she intends to defend her title next year in Australia, where the year’s first grand slam will be played from Jan. 15-28.

Reddit was among the first to congratulate the couple on Wednesday.

“Congrats to two of our all-time favorite redditors who just welcomed a new baby Snoo into their family: u/Kn0thing and u/serenawilliams!,” the social news and discussion website posted on Twitter.
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Online bidding is winding down for dozens of items with direct connections to Britain’s late Princess Diana.

Eighty items being sold at auction 20 years after her death in a Paris car crash include articles of clothing, jewelry, signed papers and photographs. There’s even a piece of her wedding cake still stored in a commemorative box.

Boston-based RR Auction is handling the sale, which ends Wednesday evening.

Auction house executive vice president Bobby Livingston says interest in Diana memorabilia remains high because “she still resonates all over the world.” He says the items “give you a little snapshot into this beautiful woman’s life.”

The items include belongings Diana donated to charity months before her death on Aug. 31, 1997.

Bidding began last week.
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The Cambodian Space Project, long on the forefront of a local rock’n’roll revival, is a band making good with their pre-Khmer Rouge Cambodia sound.

The Cambodian-Australian group, kicked off a mini-U.S. tour on Tuesday with a performance at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage. Channthy Kak, 38, also known as Srey Thy, said she was honored to have been invited to perform at the Washington venue, where the band played their original brand of psychedelic rock, before heading to New York City and California. On the West Coast, they’ll rock out in Long Beach, which has the largest Cambodian population in the U.S.

“It is very special that we are invited to perform on a very big stage and in a very big city,” Chanthy said about the Kennedy Center gig. “It is unbelievable.” 

Perhaps more at home among the rice paddies and rural villages of her home province of Prey Veng, Chanthy formed The Cambodian Space Project  after being approached by Julien Poulson, a musician from Australia’s island state of Tasmania, while working as a karaoke singer at a bar in Phnom Penh. Neither of them expected to be on the international scene just eight years after forming.

Video: A Ros Sereysothea song uploaded to YouTube

‘Lost’ Cambodian rock 

Inspired by the great artists of Cambodia’s golden era of the 1960s, the band aims to revive the country’s lost rock’n’roll scene, which was wiped out during the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.

Fans heard original favorites such as “Whiskey Cambodia,” as well as covers of 1960s divas such as Pan Ron and Ros Sereysothea.

American music brought to Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War influenced Cambodia’s music scene in the 1960s. Bands like Baksei Cham Krong, Bayon and Draka introduced Phnom Penh to new sounds, said Seng Dara, a music preservationist.

“They were highly educated artists. Though they were influenced by Western culture, they were able to integrate Western music to be authentically Khmer,” he said. “It’s good to conserve pure Khmer culture, but it’s not very creative.”

As the Vietnam War ended in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge occupied Phnom Penh and erased foreign influences. The regime targeted intellectuals, artists and musicians, destroying documents, cultural records and songs. Citizens identified as the “cultural elite” were sentenced to death during the regime’s four-year rule. An estimated 1.7 million lives were lost.

Cambodian Space Project takes off

Chanthy says the inspiration for song comes either from the heart or the head, and the songs of the 1960s “are very deep in the heart.” 

“When I started writing my own songs, I didn’t have a mentor,” she recalled. “But what I experience, see and feel, which can be easily forgotten, I put into words, I put it into a song so that it will always be meaningful and remembered.” 

Chanthy dropped out of elementary school with only basic reading and writing skills, and that has made communicating with composers her greatest challenge. 

“I don’t know melody. I don’t know the ‘do, re, mi’ things,” she said. “We use body language. I raise my hands up, they play the high keys, and as I put my hands down they play lower keys.” 

Her musical idol is Pan Ron, who became a national star in Cambodia in the mid-60s when she teamed up with Sinn Sisamouth. She is believed to have been executed during the final days of the Khmer Rouge regime.

“Her songs are sexy. Her laugh and sense of humor and her voice are beautiful. Ros Serey Sothea also had a golden voice. But Pan Ron, you know, it’s just like me. We only fit with rock and roll because we’re a funny kind of person. Not sentimental. I’m very playful,” Chanthy said.

Her mother was the best singer in her town, Prey Veng, Chanthy said, and she recalls how her father often listened to music on the radio.

At 19, Chanthy moved to Phnom Penh to look for work. After almost being duped into working in a brothel, she tried her hand at everything from construction to owning a souvenir store – until the beat freed her soul.

“Rock’n’roll is the type of music genre that helps people get relief and become happy,” she said. “It helps them get out of painful feelings because of its humble and funny lyrics.” 

Rock revival

The Cambodian Space Project was the subject of a feature-length film, Not Easy Rock’n’Roll, which premiered in 2015. 

Director Marc Eberle said the film’s recent screening on BBC World was “a great way to bring Cambodian culture to the world. In many countries in South America, Africa and across Asia, the story resonates well with the audience.”

Along with The Cambodian Space Project, the Los Angeles-based group Dengue Fever pursues a similar mission to preserve and innovate in the Cambodian music scene.

Jimmy Kiss, a rising Cambodian pop-rock musician, says he is impressed by the current state of Cambodian rock’n’roll. He disagrees with those who say it is stuck in the past.

“The only difference between musicians in the past and the musicians in the present is how people value the music,” he said. “There are so many talented musicians out there nowadays. The thing is that people in the past valued musicians more than people do now.” 
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Andy Serkis, perhaps best-known for his role as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, intentionally avoided a somber tone in his directorial debut Breathe, he said Tuesday.

The film, which had its world premiere Monday night in Toronto, is inspired by the parents of producer Jonathan Cavendish, Robin and Diana (played by Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy), who defied medical convention after Robin was paralyzed by polio in his 20s and later blazed a trail as disability rights advocates.

“We took license, and I took license with elevating it and slightly lifting it,” Serkis said at a news conference following the premiere where it received three standing ovations, including one for the real-life Diana who was in attendance.

Early reviewers have been more critical, however, comparing the film unfavorably to The Theory of Everything, a biopic about Stephen Hawking for which Eddie Redmayne won an Oscar in 2015.

“This is very much a crude copy, its noble intentions hobbled by a trite script, flat characters and a relentlessly saccharine tone that eventually starts to grate,” a reviewer at the Hollywood Reporter wrote.

The pair are portrayed falling in love in an idyllic English countryside scene at the opening before honeymooning in Kenya and discovering they are expecting a child, Jonathan, just before Robin’s early-onset polio hits.

They later enlist a friend to create the first battery-powered mobile respirator mounted on a wheelchair, then push for them to be made widely available to those with polio.

“The essence of Robin and Diana was not drab in any sense, it was not murky or gray or somber, it was bright, they burned bright,” said Serkis, who also drew a personal connection to the film. His father was a doctor, his mother taught disabled children, and his sister has multiple sclerosis.

“This is a template of how any human being can deal with suffering, struggle and limitation,” actor Garfield said on the red carpet, later saying it was “strangely enjoyable” to play a character unable to control his body beyond facial expressions.

The Toronto International Film Festival is seen as an important stop for filmmakers showcasing their work in the long Hollywood awards season that culminates with the Oscars in March.

Serkis has also directed a Jungle Book film currently in post-production. Following its Toronto debut, Breathe will open next month’s London Film Festival before a broader October release.
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