LOS ANGELES – Superstars Tom Cruise and Jennifer J-Lo Lopez were united in shame Monday when they topped the list of worst actor nominees in Hollywood’s annual spoof of the Oscars, the Razzie Awards.

The pair joined a string of tired remakes and movie sequels led by the comedy adventure “Son of the Mask,” which won eight nods when the 26th annual Razzie shortlist was unveiled a day before Tuesday’s Academy Award nominations.

Cruise picked up a total of three nominations, as worst actor of 2005 in the Steven Spielberg epic “War of the Worlds,” and two in a new category, that of “most tiresome tabloid targets.”

It was a disastrous year for Hollywood, according to the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation, which has dishonoured Hollywood’s good and great for nearly three decades.

The number of bad remakes and sequels “points out Hollywood’s total creative bankruptcy,” it said.

Narrowing the worst picture nominees down to just five films posed an unprecedented challenge, the foundation said, although “Son of the Mask,” a sequel to Jim Carrey’s hit 1994 film “The Mask,” was the clear frontrunner.

“Son” earned nominations for worst picture, worst remake or sequel, worst actor for Jamie Kennedy, worst supporting actors for both Alan Cumming and Bob Hoskins, worst director for Lawrence Gutterman and worst screenplay.

The film was “an 11-years-later sequel sans the star of the original film — or any of its charm,” the Razzie Foundation said.

Also competing for the dubious title of worst movie were the big-screen version of “The Dukes of Hazzard,” hotel heiress Paris Hilton’s horror film “House of Wax,” the sex comedy “Dirty Love,” and the sequel “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.”

Battling Cruise and Kennedy for worst actor Razzie were Rob Schneider, in “Deuce Bigalow;” Will Ferrell, with a double nomination for his work in “Bewitched,” a movie version of a 1960s television show, and for “Kicking and Screaming;” and hunky actor The Rock, who starred in the video game spin-off “Doom.”

Lopez, a Razzie favourite following her “triumph” for 2003’s “Gigli”, is vying for what the foundation called the “di-stink-tion” as worst actress for her part as a beleaguered bride in “Monster-in-Law.”

She is up against two double nominees, starlet Jessica Alba for both “The Fantastic Four” and “Into the Blue,” and Hilary Duff for “Cheaper by the Dozen 2″ and “The Perfect Man.”

Other spotlighted contenders for worst actress were Hollywood socialite Tara Reid, who won dishonour for attempting to play a “genius” anthropologist in “Alone in the Dark,” and former Playboy Playmate Jenny McCarthy in “Dirty Love.”

McCarthy’s “Dirty” co-star, another Playboy girl Carmen Electra, was pegged with a nomination for worst supporting actress.

But she is up against Paris Hilton in “House of Wax,” Tom Cruise’s fianc
e Katie Holmes for “Batman Begins,” singer Ashlee Simpson for “Undiscovered” and her sister Jessica Simpson for “Hazzard”.

Screen icon Burt Reynolds won double nods for worst supporting actor for both “Hazzard” and football comedy “The Longest Yard.”

He faces off against “Son of the Mask’s” Cumming and Hoskins, Hayden Christensen for “Star Wars III” and Eugene Levy for “Cheaper by the Dozen 2″.

Cruise and Holmes were singled out especially for nominations as the most tiresome tabloid targets of 2005, combined together with “Oprah Winfrey’s Couch, The Eiffel Tower and Tom’s Baby” — references to when the two caused a firestorm with their engagement and pregnancy and Cruise made a spectacle of himself by leaping on Winfrey’s sofa during a show as he expressed his love for Holmes.

But the nominations of Hilton, Britney Spears and her new family, the Simpson sisters and Nick Lachey set out tough competition for most tiresome tabloid target.

Worst director candidates are John Asher for “Dirty Love,” Ewe Boll for “Alone in the Dark,” Nora Ephron for “Bewitched” and Gutterman for “Mask.”

The winners of the Razzie dishonours will be announced at a not-so-glittering awards ceremony in Los Angeles on March 4, a day ahead of the annual Academy Awards.

But unlike the Oscar winners, who reap golden statuettes, the unlucky winners of the Razzies seldom show up to claim their gold spray-painted plastic raspberries, which organisers say are worth as much as 4.97 dollars.

- AFP /ls

Channel News Asia

Oleh WANDA IDRIS

Mulan Kwak & Maia Ahmad.

SEMINGGU berada di Malaysia, duo genit negara seberang, Ratu, yang dianggotai oleh Maia Ahmad dan Mulan Kwok nyata gembira dengan penerimaan para peminat di sini.

Melihat respons yang diterima itu, kata Ratu, mustahil mereka tidak kembali lagi ke negara ini, lebih-lebih lagi album terbaru mereka (yang pertama bersama Mulan) akan dipasarkan Mac ini di Indonesia.

“Tentu kami mahu berkongsi rasa bersama peminat di Malaysia. Justeru, kami berharap kami bisa datang lagi. Apalagi album ini album bersama kami yang pertama,” kata Maia yang hadir di negara ini dalam rangka promosi album kompilasi Ratu & Friends yang memuatkan dua buah lagu baru, Teman Tapi Mesra dan Di Dadaku Ada Kamu. Menerusi album itu Maia memperkenalkan Mulan sebagai anggota baru duo tersebut.

Sebelum ini Ratu dianggotai oleh Maia dan Pinkan Mambo dan mereka berdua telah menghasilkan sebuah album berjudul Bersama pada 2003.

Bertemu duo itu di stesen radio Red fm sewaktu menjadi tetamu Carta Baik Banget baru-baru ini, Maia berkata:

“Kami gembira dengan penerimaan peminat di sini. Mungkin kerana lagu-lagu kami berbeza, justeru ia senang diterima.

“Sememangnya mendengar lagu-lagu yang diputarkan di radio Malaysia, kami dapati irama kebanyakan lagu hampir sama.

“Tidak banyak lagu yang menampilkan kelainan kecuali lagu-lagu R&B, rap oleh penyanyi seperti Too Phat, Sheila Majid, Ning Baizura dan Syafinaz.

“Lalu, kami fikir mungkin dengan kehadiran lagu-lagu kami, mudah-mudahan kami dapat memberikan variasi kepada pendengar muzik di sini.”

Teruja

Maia dan Mulan juga berharap syarikat rakaman SonyBmg Music Entertainment dapat memasarkan album mereka di negara ini.

Biarpun album tersebut yang diterbitkan oleh Maia hanya akan dipasarkan Mac depan dan masih belum bertajuk, duo itu kini sudah memulakan perancangan promosinya.

Dengan single pertama berjudul Lelaki Buaya Darat, kata mereka, rangka promosi album itu bakal bermula akhir Januari ini sehingga Mei nanti.

“Sekembalinya kami ke Jakarta, kami sibuk pula dengan tour sembilan kota di Indonesia. Nyatanya kami teruja dengan album ini kerana variasi lagunya lebih banyak dan pelbagai,” kata mereka.

Bercerita tentang kehadiran mereka di negara ini, Mulan yang pertama kali berkunjung ke negara ini mengakui menyenangi Malaysia kerana suasananya yang dianggap romantik.

“Malaysia juga bersih dan kesesakan lalu lintasnya tidak seteruk Jakarta. Senang sekali berada di sini.

“Paling seronok tentunya dapat bershopping. Sayang sekali saya tidak punya kesempatan berkunjung ke Ikea. Hanya sempat ke KLCC, MidValley dan One Utama,” kata Mulan sambil ketawa.

Mulan berbeza dengan Maia yang sudah kerap hadir ke negara ini khususnya menemani suaminya, Ahmad Dhani dan kumpulan Dewa mengadakan promosi dan konsert. Maia merupakan salah seorang penyanyi latar kepada kumpulan Dewa.

Maia mengetahui mengenai Carta Baik Banget yang dikendalikan oleh deejay KC Ismail sejak 2002 melalui Dewa.

“Kami rasa sungguh bertuah kerana lagu Teman Tapi Mesra mendapat sambutan daripada penggemar dan kini sudah berada dalam carta selama 16 minggu,” kata Maia.

Sementara itu, deejay Red fm, KC Ismail memberitahu, irama lagu Teman Tapi Mesra yang rancak membuatkan lagu itu senang diterima di negara ini.

Lagu tersebut pernah menduduki tangga teratas carta selama beberapa minggu pada akhir tahun lalu.

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Mahapatra’s songs of the soil

ADITI DE

Random Descent, Jayanta Mahapatra, Third Eye Communications, 2005, Rs. 145.

JAYANTA MAHAPATRA’S poetry soars above the Oriya soil he is rooted in. Its flights take wing as his personal concerns meld into public issues, as family history underlines universal angst, through images that are sudden and stunning in their impact. No matter, then, that his international reputation has been compared to that of Wordsworth.

While Random Descent, (based on a Sylvia Plath phrase) enhances Mahapatra’s literary standing, his reputation deserves a much more individual reckoning. For he emerges as an essential son of the soil, where he taught physics for long years until he took to poetic expression at 40. Maturity steeps his perceptions, both political and personal, unrelenting rawness marks his metaphors.

His poetry is tough to grapple with. It seethes, churns and brings the reader face to face with his/her own reality. That is why this poet of despair seems more accessible when read a poem at a time, allowing for reflection, for breathing spaces, between each.

Potent lines

Bestial home-truths, yoked to an Orissa landscape that grapples with starvation round the year, find echoes in Mahapatra’s potent lines. So does the irony of contemporary icons like Madhuri Dixit in our sceptical time.

It is in coming to terms with humanity’s saddest plaints, with not knowing despite glaring headlines, that Mahapatra proves his poetic mettle. For he forges his lines in steel wrought with veins of blood, evoking a grandfather who embraced Christianity at 16 during the Orissa famine of 1866.

Bilingual Mahapatra, equally at home in Oriya and English, consciously ignores facile options, experiences couched in the pop idiom, or even the languorous sringara of a Jayadeva. Not for him the staccato beat of a long-march drummer, the time-tested patterns of literary usage, or conventions moulting with overuse.

He invents his own potent vocabulary, his own forms, in sync with the consciously political themes he chooses as his metier. For instance, a Mahapatra poem that echoes in memory after the first reading is couched in a prose pattern, “Thinking Light: Clutching at Straws”. A random sampling reads: “What can I tell you, Jembati? What can I fear? Is there anything to tell you that’s true? Your God, for instance, who you thought had brought you ecstasy once? Do you still believe in a god who has further plans for you? Lying there waiting for it to happen, watching yourself become a stranger in your own head… ”

Raw power

This is not the stuff of easy-reading encounters, of anthologised voices made for transience. Mahapatra’s poetry is rough-hewn, diamond-edged, meant to last the long stretch. Reading through any poem in Random Descent proves beyond doubt that this is a poet of our times, straddling the urban-rural divide, at home within his own skin, his storm-tossed life. Yet he uses raw word power as a redefining tool to gouge poetry out of poverty, metaphors out of soul-searing situations.

No wonder The New Yorker, The Times Literary Supplement and The Sewanee Review have saluted his talent by publishing Mahapatra. Like his earlier work, Random Descent leaves the English reader with an unfulfilled wish. To read the poet in Oriya, to gauge his potency on home soil.

Hindu On Net

Dino comes of age!

With three films lined up, Dino Morea is back in the reckoning, says ANUJ KUMAR

HAPPY DAYS Dino Morea assures people will get to see him in a variety of roles soon Photo: S. Subramanium

With Fight Club and Aksar releasing shortly, Dino Morea is back in news. “No I have three. Holiday is also expected in February,” says an excited Dino.

Having a strong female fan following, the “Musu Musu Aati” boy has been knocking at the doors of box office for quite sometime but has only a stray Raaz to show for in the report card. And now suddenly there seems to be a problem of plenty? “No, for all three are different subjects. While Fight Club and Holiday are youth-oriented, with Aksar I am taking the next step. It is a mature love story involving a couple. It is full of suspense.”

Interestingly, the music of all three films is doing well on the charts but Dino is using “Aashian Ban Gaya” of Holiday as the ring tone. “The music is quite close to my heart and has been doing well in Mumbai. In fact, the film is quite different from the usual youth films. In spite of being shot entirely in Goa, and despite being a Pooja Bhatt film has been passed without a single cut,” points out Dino. Talking about the storyline, Dino says he is playing a dance teacher in the film. “I love dancing and in the film I got to do Latino dance. The film revolves around a family which comes to Goa for holiday and the two daughters fell for this dancer, played by me.”

College memories

In Fight Club, where he runs the club, he says he got to do lot of action. “It brought back the memories of college days in Bangalore. I was a decent guy but once pushed to corner, I used to give it all.”

Dino, who started as a model and made to cover pages of fashion magazines when he won the Gladrags Manhunt Contest, says the clich
d model-can-act question should not be asked any more for now many models have proved their worth. However, Dino has hardly seen the limelight. Bipasha Basu walked away with all the credit in Raaz and the rest – Gunaah, Sssshhh, Ishq Hai Tumse – just managed to keep him in circulation. A good looking guy out to have some fun, nothing more, nothing less. “Bipasha was the main protagonist in Raaz, so the credit of success was bound to go to her. But the film did make me somebody from an absolute nobody. I don’t think that the industry keeps on giving me soft roles going by my looks. I did an intense role in Rakth, and also got appreciation. But if the director goofs up with the film as a whole, it’s not my fault.” Hope Anant Mahadevan and Vikram Chopra won’t let him down in the coming days.

Hindu On Net

Of rivalry and metamorphosis

Three talented actors on the film “In Her Shoes,” the female-focussed drama that has won critical acclaim.

DRAMA: Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette in In Her Shoes.

A drama about sibling rivalry and bonding, “In Her Shoes” has Toni Collette as the frumpy, older sister Rose Feller, Cameron Diaz (Maggie) as the attractive younger one and Shirley MacLaine as their estranged grandmother Ella Hirsch. Based on a novel, the film is directed by Curtis Hanson.

MacLaine, Diaz and Collette talk about their involvement in the venture. Excerpts:

Shirley MacLaine on the realism of the script

Well, I realised it was a comedy/drama, and I was thrilled that Cameron was playing Maggie Feller. And Toni, who’s just a superb actress was playing the alter-ego sister, Rose. And what had happened in the family was very intriguing to me, and authentic. So that when I read a script, because I’ve read so many of them, it all dependson whether it rings true or not, and this rang true.

On the challenges of the role

When you’re my age, and you’ve played so many parts, you have to be very careful not to get into tricks and things that you know have worked for you previously. I’ve never played a part like this. That can be a little threatening and terrifying, because it’s so quiet. Because it’s authentically subtle.

On her character

She doesn’t really like to confront her own feelings, or her sense of being shut out, or her years of wondering what would it have been like if she had known her grandchildren. Her husband died some years ago.

She’s on her own, helping other people, but not really tending to herself. So she has a kind of glossed over fa‧ade. I haven’t done one like that since “The Apartment.”

On Director Curtis Hanson

He is completely focussed. He only lives for what’s happening that day. I’ve often wondered what he’s like after midnight, but he’s probably somewhere cutting, or … something to do with the film. He is so detailed, probably one of the most detailed directors I’ve ever worked with.

Cameron Diaz on her character’s (Maggie Feller) desperate behaviour

She is a fearful person when we first meet her. She is desperate, she is terrified, and everything that she does is because of that, and as we watch her we see that she grows into somebody that is more confident and understanding of herself and understanding of what her actions mean to the rest of the world.

On Director Curtis Hanson

Curtis Hanson, he is a dream

in everyway. First, he’s such a beautiful person, he’s so kind and thoughtful, and courteous, and completely, focused and direct, and as a director he knows everything that he wants, but he is such a great collaborator as well. He’s very open and he listens, and he’s very thoughtful about what you say.

On the metaphors in the movie title

Maggie always wants to be in Rose’s shoes and [vice versa] … people always want to know what it’s like to walk in other people shoes. Rose has it so easy, she has the apartment, the car and the job… all things that are totally unattainable for Maggie, because Maggie doesn’t have the skill to do it yet. Or the confidence.

On her character adopting new behaviour

She’s at a point in her life where she’s realises all those things are running dry… she’s going to have to adopt a different way of living and relating to the world, and to the people who love her…

On her character being selfish

She is just a selfish little brat and you actually get to watch her grow up and change… all the things she does, she does out of fear.

Toni Collette on her character’s shoe collection

Not only is Rose a workaholic, she’s a shoe-aholic… [she has] the most extensive shoe collection. And, I guess for her, being overweight, she can’t treat herself with food… [or] clothes. And they become a kind of metaphor for her I guess.

She’s got them in her cupboard, some are still in their boxes, and she’s kind of just got them on display a bit behind closed doors, and it’s like these beautiful items that are untouched and yet may be worn out one day. And it’s kind of like her.

On Maggie pushing Rose to her limits

I guess Rose is at the end of her tether in terms of Maggie’s behaviour. Both of them really don’t have any friends. They really only have each other. And I guess when this collapse happens within their relationship, they have to look at who they are and who they would like to be, and put some effort into it. And in doing so, they learn a lot about themselves and each other and grow a little happier.

On Curtis Hanson

Curtis is the best director I’ve ever worked with, and he’s a lovely person. He sees everything so clearly. He’s so perceptive…

I don’t think I’ve ever felt more trusted or trusted a director more.

On the movie

It’s about people re-evaluating their lives and realising what’s important. [And] for a lot of people, that comes down to family and relationships in the community in which you live and how you connect with the people who are important to you.

It’s just so real, and so funny and so normal and so moving, it’s everything. And that’s what life is like, so, I think that’s what makes it special.

(Courtsey: Warner Bros)

Hindu On Net