Monday, April 13, 2009
Castro Meetings for Congressional Black Caucus
(4.7.09) -- Members of the Congressional Black Caucus met with revolutionaries and dictator brothers Fidel and Raul Castro in Communist Cuba.
It has also been reported that President Barack Obama wishes to begin to normalize relations with Cuba and is preparing to amend travel restrictions to the country.
It should also be noted that one of the Castros' Marxist co-revolutionaries, iconic figure Ernesto 'Che' Guevara (a man who is lauded in some leftist circles), was seen on flags in the offices of two Obama campaign volunteers during the 2008 election contest. Read more about those incidences here:
Obama to allow travel, money transfers to Cuba
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama directed his administration Monday to allow unlimited travel and money transfers by Cuban Americans to family in Cuba, and to take other steps to ease U.S. restrictions on the island, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.
The formal announcement was being made at the White House Monday afternoon, during presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs' daily briefing with reporters. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made.
With the changes, Obama aims to lessen Cubans' dependence on the Castro regime, hoping that will lead them to demand progress on political freedoms, the official said. About 1.5 million Americans have relatives on the island nation that turned to communist rule in 1959 when Fidel Castro seized control.
Obama had promised to take these steps as a presidential candidate. It has been known for over a week that he would announce them ahead of his attendance this weekend at a Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.
"There are no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban Americans," Obama said in a campaign speech last May in Miami, the heart of the U.S. Cuban-American community. "It's time to let Cuban Americans see their mothers and fathers, their sisters and brothers. It's time to let Cuban American money make their families less dependent upon the Castro regime."
Other steps taken Monday include expanding the things allowed in gift parcels being sent to Cuba, such as clothes, personal hygiene items, seeds, fishing gear and other personal necessities.
The administration also will begin issuing licenses to allow telecommunications and other companies to provide cell and television services to people on the island, and to allow family members to pay for relatives on Cuba to get those services, the official said.
Last May, former President George W. Bush announced a new policy that people living in the United States could include cell phones in gift parcels sent to Cubans. At the time, Bush aides said that U.S. residents could pay for the cell service attached to phones they send.
However, though American cell phones with service contracts from the U.S. work on some parts of the island, service is not always reliable and depends on the phones' specifications.
Sending money to senior government officials and Communist Party members remains prohibited under Obama's new policy. Restrictions imposed by the Bush administration had limited Cuban travel by Americans to just two weeks every three years. Visits also were confined to immediate family members.
Francisco Hernandez, head of the exile group the Cuban American National Foundation, was once a staunch supporter of travel restrictions but supported Obama's announcement, saying he hopes it will inspire both sides to reconsider long-held positions.
It will help Cubans become more independent of the state "not only in economic terms but in terms of information, and contacts with the outside world," said Hernandez, who was imprisoned by the Cuban government for nearly two years after participating in the 1961 failed Bay of Pigs invasion.
Miami travel agent Tesie Aral said her phone has been ringing nonstop in anticipation of the announcement, with a tenfold increase last Friday alone.
"People were already planning to travel more based on their ability to go every 12 months," said Aral, owner of ABC Charters. "Whether they can travel more frequently than that depends on the economy."
Also in that Miami speech nearly a year ago, Obama promised to depart from what he said had been the path of previous politicians on Cuba policy — "they come down to Miami, they talk tough, they go back to Washington, and nothing changes in Cuba."
"Never, in my lifetime, have the people of Cuba known freedom. Never, in the lives of two generations of Cubans, have the people of Cuba known democracy," he said then. "This is the terrible and tragic status quo that we have known for half a century — of elections that are anything but free or fair; of dissidents locked away in dark prison cells for the crime of speaking the truth. I won't stand for this injustice, you won't stand for this injustice, and together we will stand up for freedom in Cuba."
He also promised to engage in direct diplomacy with Cuba, "without preconditions" but with "careful preparation" and "a clear agenda."
Some lawmakers, backed by business and farm groups seeing new opportunities in Cuba, are advocating wider revisions in the trade and travel bans imposed after Castro came to power in Havana.
But the official said that Obama is keeping the decades-old U.S. trade embargo, arguing that that policy provides leverage to pressure the regime to free all political prisoners as one step toward normalized relations with the U.S.
The formal announcement was being made at the White House Monday afternoon, during presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs' daily briefing with reporters. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made.
With the changes, Obama aims to lessen Cubans' dependence on the Castro regime, hoping that will lead them to demand progress on political freedoms, the official said. About 1.5 million Americans have relatives on the island nation that turned to communist rule in 1959 when Fidel Castro seized control.
Obama had promised to take these steps as a presidential candidate. It has been known for over a week that he would announce them ahead of his attendance this weekend at a Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.
"There are no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban Americans," Obama said in a campaign speech last May in Miami, the heart of the U.S. Cuban-American community. "It's time to let Cuban Americans see their mothers and fathers, their sisters and brothers. It's time to let Cuban American money make their families less dependent upon the Castro regime."
Other steps taken Monday include expanding the things allowed in gift parcels being sent to Cuba, such as clothes, personal hygiene items, seeds, fishing gear and other personal necessities.
The administration also will begin issuing licenses to allow telecommunications and other companies to provide cell and television services to people on the island, and to allow family members to pay for relatives on Cuba to get those services, the official said.
Last May, former President George W. Bush announced a new policy that people living in the United States could include cell phones in gift parcels sent to Cubans. At the time, Bush aides said that U.S. residents could pay for the cell service attached to phones they send.
However, though American cell phones with service contracts from the U.S. work on some parts of the island, service is not always reliable and depends on the phones' specifications.
Sending money to senior government officials and Communist Party members remains prohibited under Obama's new policy. Restrictions imposed by the Bush administration had limited Cuban travel by Americans to just two weeks every three years. Visits also were confined to immediate family members.
Francisco Hernandez, head of the exile group the Cuban American National Foundation, was once a staunch supporter of travel restrictions but supported Obama's announcement, saying he hopes it will inspire both sides to reconsider long-held positions.
It will help Cubans become more independent of the state "not only in economic terms but in terms of information, and contacts with the outside world," said Hernandez, who was imprisoned by the Cuban government for nearly two years after participating in the 1961 failed Bay of Pigs invasion.
Miami travel agent Tesie Aral said her phone has been ringing nonstop in anticipation of the announcement, with a tenfold increase last Friday alone.
"People were already planning to travel more based on their ability to go every 12 months," said Aral, owner of ABC Charters. "Whether they can travel more frequently than that depends on the economy."
Also in that Miami speech nearly a year ago, Obama promised to depart from what he said had been the path of previous politicians on Cuba policy — "they come down to Miami, they talk tough, they go back to Washington, and nothing changes in Cuba."
"Never, in my lifetime, have the people of Cuba known freedom. Never, in the lives of two generations of Cubans, have the people of Cuba known democracy," he said then. "This is the terrible and tragic status quo that we have known for half a century — of elections that are anything but free or fair; of dissidents locked away in dark prison cells for the crime of speaking the truth. I won't stand for this injustice, you won't stand for this injustice, and together we will stand up for freedom in Cuba."
He also promised to engage in direct diplomacy with Cuba, "without preconditions" but with "careful preparation" and "a clear agenda."
Some lawmakers, backed by business and farm groups seeing new opportunities in Cuba, are advocating wider revisions in the trade and travel bans imposed after Castro came to power in Havana.
But the official said that Obama is keeping the decades-old U.S. trade embargo, arguing that that policy provides leverage to pressure the regime to free all political prisoners as one step toward normalized relations with the U.S.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Analysis: Obama's trip: Big cheers, some results
By JENNIFER LOVEN, AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven,
Ap White House Correspondent
STRASBOURG, France – Stop after stop, crowds are thronging, leaders gushing, headlines blaring. Even a roomful of foreign reporters applauded after President Barack Obama's London news conference.
They love him over here. But are they giving him anything else to take home?
It's a mixed bag: some success, several failures and much still to be determined.
The president hit the halfway point Saturday on a European trip that, by the end, will have him charming and listening (not lecturing) his way through five countries, three international summits, one-on-one meetings with at least 17 leaders, a Buckingham Palace audience, at least seven news conferences, three speeches, two question-and-answer sessions with regular-folk foreigners and three official dinners.
The locals have chased his motorcade, strained across rope lines to shake his hand and gawped at Michelle Obama's sleek, multihued travel wardrobe. Leaders as reserved as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and as competitive — potentially even hostile — as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have raved about his leadership style. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, trying to stave off his own political demise, was delighted to stand beaming at his charismatic guest's side, burbling about "exchanging ideas."
"Your first 70 days in office have changed America, and you've changed America's relationship with the world," Brown said enthusiastically.
It turns out Obama even engineered a solution to a dispute over the final communique at the London summit on the global financial crisis, conducting shuttle diplomacy between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chinese President Hu Jintao. He came up with a compromise between the two leaders' opposing positions on offshore tax havens and shepherded each one's signoff. Deal done.
Nearly every day has brought requests for Obama to grace the world with more of his presence.
Almost like dropping rose petals as he goes, the president has been saying yes. With Medvedev, Obama announced he would go to Moscow in July. With Hu, he promised a trip to the Asian powerhouse in the latter half of the year. And Sarkozy finally secured what he wanted — a walk on the beach in Normandy with Obama to mark the June 6 D-Day anniversary.
Europe was oh so ready for a change.
"Anyone else but Bush is better," said Lene Gade, a 43-year-old teacher in Copenhagen. "Obama is bringing the United States back on the friendlyhood track, approaching the rest of the world with a much more open mind."
But what actual achievements does all this admiration put in the new American president's hands to take back home?
For one, he and Medvedev launched talks to further reduce the two biggest nuclear arsenals on the planet.
Those talks — if successful, and this is a big if — could have an even bigger payoff by actually pushing the "reset button" everyone talks about in U.S.-Russia relations and laying the groundwork for cooperation in important areas of disagreement, such as Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program.
The 20-nation global economic summit in London didn't yield what Obama most wanted, big new outlays of stimulus spending by other nations.
European wariness toward rising debt is one reason. There's also a reservoir of anger here toward America that euphoria about the election of the first black man to the U.S. presidency can't erase — as expressed by huge protests in London. Many Europeans blame the recession that's enveloping them on the U.S. — its reckless ways and global dominance.
This resentment and the recession's weakening of the U.S. had Obama confronting multiple and previously unheard-of questions about America's global standing, particularly after Brown declared that "the old Washington consensus is over."
However, Obama managed to keep out of the final communique some potentially problematic items, most notably a global superregulator with authority inside individual nations' financial systems. And on a range of smaller priorities, the agreement among wealthy and developing nations tracked Obama's goals, providing significant boosts to less-well-off countries and tightening regulation over risky financial products and institutions.
While praising the final agreement, Obama delivered a noncommittal bottom-line verdict: "We've got to wait and see."
Here in Strasbourg, the main agenda item was Afghanistan, in Obama's conversations with the French and German leaders and, even more prominently, at Saturday's NATO summit.
And what the U.S. wanted was something much more robust than the vast majority of the 28 nations of the trans-Atlantic alliance, many populated with voters deeply opposed to war engagement, were willing to give.
Time and again, Obama said Europe is in as much danger from al-Qaida extremists developing footholds in Afghanistan and Pakistan as is the United States, and so must contribute to uprooting them. "Europe should not simply expect the United States to shoulder that burden alone," Obama declared.
But only the U.S. and a handful of other countries are engaged in the dangerous fighting in Afghanistan's southern and eastern provinces — and, in a rebuke to Obama's plea, that won't change with the summit.
Still, he declared the meeting a success, with its commitments from allies to send a total of about 5,000 troops to help train the Afghan National Police and Army and to provide short-term election security, even though many will not see combat and none will go to the heavy fighting. "The trainers that we're sending in are no less important than those who are in the south in direct combat with the Taliban," the president said at a NATO-closing news conference. "Keep in mind, that this is not a ceiling for what we're achieving."
Many NATO nations prefer to focus on repairing relations with Russia.
And in fact, Obama's approach to Medvedev on this trip seemed philosophically sympathetic to Europe's.
He tamped down U.S. enthusiasm for a proposed new missile shield on Russia's doorstep in Eastern Europe, a major irritant to Moscow. And he agreed to joint language with Medvedev paying homage to the good that Moscow and Washington could do together in the world, the kind of recognition craved in the prestige-starved Kremlin.
Conservatives back home call this a soft touch that Moscow will only exploit, not honor. But Obama is gambling a new approach, while not "papering over" the many remaining differences, will yield more down the road than the acrimony of recent years.
Obama said everywhere he went that he was in Europe to freshen U.S. diplomacy — to choose pragmatism over ideology and collaboration over giving orders. He gave himself a pretty good grade when asked in London for a performance rating so far on that front. "International polls seem to indicate that you're seeing people more hopeful about America's leadership," he said.
That doesn't necessarily translate to nations bending to U.S. will.
Obama seemed to be saying that his new brand of foreign relations means that's OK, a message that may or may not play so well at home. "All parties have to compromise, and that includes us," he said.
Neither U.S. foreign policy nor that of other nations tends to change all that much when a government shifts to a different party.
And, as, Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, put it, the Obama that came to Europe wasn't exactly what Europeans expected. Instead, he was still in many ways the kind of risk-taking American they thought his election had left behind.
So Obama brought an agenda to Europe, Kagan wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, "with what Europeans regard as some radical and frightening plans for the economy; with a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan that is far more aggressive, militaristic and success-oriented than they would prefer; with ideas about Iran that are welcome (the promise to talk) but also unnerving (the threat to impose more sanctions)." Kagan said a French journalist had told him, "We have all been surprised. He is so ... American!"
Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, said Obama couldn't go home empty-handed — and won't.
"It was better to get perhaps a little less but demonstrate solidarity in trans-Atlantic unity than get a little more at the risk of political discord at a time in which international solidarity is extremely important and in which the U.S. is bending over backward to be perceived around the world as again being a team player," he said.
Still to come, Obama is to outline his nonproliferation strategy, including how he will make good on a campaign promise to rid the world of nuclear weapons, in Prague.
Over two days in Turkey, he'll court the Muslim world that grew to dislike the United States so much over former President George W. Bush's anti-terror policies and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Using proven campaign tactics, he'll hold a wide-ranging discussion with Turkish students as well as young people piped in via video from across Europe and Asia.
"I feel like he needs to do something amazing to be called amazing," said 17-year-old Christian Uwayo of London, pivoting to a key Obama campaign line. "Maybe like 'Yes We Can, beat the recession.' ... Then he'd be my hero."
Ap White House Correspondent
STRASBOURG, France – Stop after stop, crowds are thronging, leaders gushing, headlines blaring. Even a roomful of foreign reporters applauded after President Barack Obama's London news conference.
They love him over here. But are they giving him anything else to take home?
It's a mixed bag: some success, several failures and much still to be determined.
The president hit the halfway point Saturday on a European trip that, by the end, will have him charming and listening (not lecturing) his way through five countries, three international summits, one-on-one meetings with at least 17 leaders, a Buckingham Palace audience, at least seven news conferences, three speeches, two question-and-answer sessions with regular-folk foreigners and three official dinners.
The locals have chased his motorcade, strained across rope lines to shake his hand and gawped at Michelle Obama's sleek, multihued travel wardrobe. Leaders as reserved as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and as competitive — potentially even hostile — as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have raved about his leadership style. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, trying to stave off his own political demise, was delighted to stand beaming at his charismatic guest's side, burbling about "exchanging ideas."
"Your first 70 days in office have changed America, and you've changed America's relationship with the world," Brown said enthusiastically.
It turns out Obama even engineered a solution to a dispute over the final communique at the London summit on the global financial crisis, conducting shuttle diplomacy between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chinese President Hu Jintao. He came up with a compromise between the two leaders' opposing positions on offshore tax havens and shepherded each one's signoff. Deal done.
Nearly every day has brought requests for Obama to grace the world with more of his presence.
Almost like dropping rose petals as he goes, the president has been saying yes. With Medvedev, Obama announced he would go to Moscow in July. With Hu, he promised a trip to the Asian powerhouse in the latter half of the year. And Sarkozy finally secured what he wanted — a walk on the beach in Normandy with Obama to mark the June 6 D-Day anniversary.
Europe was oh so ready for a change.
"Anyone else but Bush is better," said Lene Gade, a 43-year-old teacher in Copenhagen. "Obama is bringing the United States back on the friendlyhood track, approaching the rest of the world with a much more open mind."
But what actual achievements does all this admiration put in the new American president's hands to take back home?
For one, he and Medvedev launched talks to further reduce the two biggest nuclear arsenals on the planet.
Those talks — if successful, and this is a big if — could have an even bigger payoff by actually pushing the "reset button" everyone talks about in U.S.-Russia relations and laying the groundwork for cooperation in important areas of disagreement, such as Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program.
The 20-nation global economic summit in London didn't yield what Obama most wanted, big new outlays of stimulus spending by other nations.
European wariness toward rising debt is one reason. There's also a reservoir of anger here toward America that euphoria about the election of the first black man to the U.S. presidency can't erase — as expressed by huge protests in London. Many Europeans blame the recession that's enveloping them on the U.S. — its reckless ways and global dominance.
This resentment and the recession's weakening of the U.S. had Obama confronting multiple and previously unheard-of questions about America's global standing, particularly after Brown declared that "the old Washington consensus is over."
However, Obama managed to keep out of the final communique some potentially problematic items, most notably a global superregulator with authority inside individual nations' financial systems. And on a range of smaller priorities, the agreement among wealthy and developing nations tracked Obama's goals, providing significant boosts to less-well-off countries and tightening regulation over risky financial products and institutions.
While praising the final agreement, Obama delivered a noncommittal bottom-line verdict: "We've got to wait and see."
Here in Strasbourg, the main agenda item was Afghanistan, in Obama's conversations with the French and German leaders and, even more prominently, at Saturday's NATO summit.
And what the U.S. wanted was something much more robust than the vast majority of the 28 nations of the trans-Atlantic alliance, many populated with voters deeply opposed to war engagement, were willing to give.
Time and again, Obama said Europe is in as much danger from al-Qaida extremists developing footholds in Afghanistan and Pakistan as is the United States, and so must contribute to uprooting them. "Europe should not simply expect the United States to shoulder that burden alone," Obama declared.
But only the U.S. and a handful of other countries are engaged in the dangerous fighting in Afghanistan's southern and eastern provinces — and, in a rebuke to Obama's plea, that won't change with the summit.
Still, he declared the meeting a success, with its commitments from allies to send a total of about 5,000 troops to help train the Afghan National Police and Army and to provide short-term election security, even though many will not see combat and none will go to the heavy fighting. "The trainers that we're sending in are no less important than those who are in the south in direct combat with the Taliban," the president said at a NATO-closing news conference. "Keep in mind, that this is not a ceiling for what we're achieving."
Many NATO nations prefer to focus on repairing relations with Russia.
And in fact, Obama's approach to Medvedev on this trip seemed philosophically sympathetic to Europe's.
He tamped down U.S. enthusiasm for a proposed new missile shield on Russia's doorstep in Eastern Europe, a major irritant to Moscow. And he agreed to joint language with Medvedev paying homage to the good that Moscow and Washington could do together in the world, the kind of recognition craved in the prestige-starved Kremlin.
Conservatives back home call this a soft touch that Moscow will only exploit, not honor. But Obama is gambling a new approach, while not "papering over" the many remaining differences, will yield more down the road than the acrimony of recent years.
Obama said everywhere he went that he was in Europe to freshen U.S. diplomacy — to choose pragmatism over ideology and collaboration over giving orders. He gave himself a pretty good grade when asked in London for a performance rating so far on that front. "International polls seem to indicate that you're seeing people more hopeful about America's leadership," he said.
That doesn't necessarily translate to nations bending to U.S. will.
Obama seemed to be saying that his new brand of foreign relations means that's OK, a message that may or may not play so well at home. "All parties have to compromise, and that includes us," he said.
Neither U.S. foreign policy nor that of other nations tends to change all that much when a government shifts to a different party.
And, as, Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, put it, the Obama that came to Europe wasn't exactly what Europeans expected. Instead, he was still in many ways the kind of risk-taking American they thought his election had left behind.
So Obama brought an agenda to Europe, Kagan wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, "with what Europeans regard as some radical and frightening plans for the economy; with a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan that is far more aggressive, militaristic and success-oriented than they would prefer; with ideas about Iran that are welcome (the promise to talk) but also unnerving (the threat to impose more sanctions)." Kagan said a French journalist had told him, "We have all been surprised. He is so ... American!"
Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, said Obama couldn't go home empty-handed — and won't.
"It was better to get perhaps a little less but demonstrate solidarity in trans-Atlantic unity than get a little more at the risk of political discord at a time in which international solidarity is extremely important and in which the U.S. is bending over backward to be perceived around the world as again being a team player," he said.
Still to come, Obama is to outline his nonproliferation strategy, including how he will make good on a campaign promise to rid the world of nuclear weapons, in Prague.
Over two days in Turkey, he'll court the Muslim world that grew to dislike the United States so much over former President George W. Bush's anti-terror policies and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Using proven campaign tactics, he'll hold a wide-ranging discussion with Turkish students as well as young people piped in via video from across Europe and Asia.
"I feel like he needs to do something amazing to be called amazing," said 17-year-old Christian Uwayo of London, pivoting to a key Obama campaign line. "Maybe like 'Yes We Can, beat the recession.' ... Then he'd be my hero."
Thursday, March 26, 2009
'Three Stooges' coming together at MGM
MGM and the Farrelly brothers are finally slapping together their high-profile cast for "The Three Stooges," a comedy project the filmmakers have been developing for years. Sean Penn is set to play Larry, and Jim Carrey is in negotiations to play Curly. Benicio del Toro is a rumored possibility for the brothers' taciturn leader, Moe.
The studio is looking to start production in the fall for a 2010 release slot.
The project was originally set up at Columbia, which produced the 1930s Stooges shorts. C3 Entertainment Inc., which holds the licensing rights to the Stooges brand, then sold the feature rights to Warner Bros. in 2001 for the Farrellys to write and produce the movie. Eventually, Warner Bros. let the rights lapse and MGM's Mary Parent scooped them up along with the Farrellys' continuing participation.
Peter and Bobby Farrelly wrote the script, which Bobby has referenced as "Dumb, Dumber & Dumbest," and will produce with Bradley Thomas and Charlie Wessler. Earl and Robert Benjamin of C3 will executive produce.
The film is not a biopic but a fictional treatment that maintains the Stooges' gleeful slap schtick updated for a modern milieu.
Originally constructed as four separate shorts, the feature screenplay has since been streamlined into a single narrative. Included in the story line is an opening that shows the Stooges as kids in an orphanage, a device that will require some "Benjamin Button"-style visual trickery to place the adult actors' heads on child actors' bodies.
The Stooges maintain remarkably global brand recognition, and their shorts, films and cartoons are still broadcast in 30 countries. The Farrelly brothers' latest comedy "The Heartbreak Kid" grossed $124 million worldwide.
Penn is repped by CAA, Carrey by CAA and the Miller Co.
The studio is looking to start production in the fall for a 2010 release slot.
The project was originally set up at Columbia, which produced the 1930s Stooges shorts. C3 Entertainment Inc., which holds the licensing rights to the Stooges brand, then sold the feature rights to Warner Bros. in 2001 for the Farrellys to write and produce the movie. Eventually, Warner Bros. let the rights lapse and MGM's Mary Parent scooped them up along with the Farrellys' continuing participation.
Peter and Bobby Farrelly wrote the script, which Bobby has referenced as "Dumb, Dumber & Dumbest," and will produce with Bradley Thomas and Charlie Wessler. Earl and Robert Benjamin of C3 will executive produce.
The film is not a biopic but a fictional treatment that maintains the Stooges' gleeful slap schtick updated for a modern milieu.
Originally constructed as four separate shorts, the feature screenplay has since been streamlined into a single narrative. Included in the story line is an opening that shows the Stooges as kids in an orphanage, a device that will require some "Benjamin Button"-style visual trickery to place the adult actors' heads on child actors' bodies.
The Stooges maintain remarkably global brand recognition, and their shorts, films and cartoons are still broadcast in 30 countries. The Farrelly brothers' latest comedy "The Heartbreak Kid" grossed $124 million worldwide.
Penn is repped by CAA, Carrey by CAA and the Miller Co.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Former maid sues Kobe and Vanessa
SANTA ANA, Calif. - Kobe Bryant’s former housekeeper is suing the NBA star and his wife, contending she was “harassed and humiliated,” denied health insurance and forced to quit because of “intolerable” working conditions.
In one instance, Maria Jimenez says Bryant’s wife ordered her to put her hand in a container of dog waste to retrieve the price tag of a blouse.
Jimenez filed suit Friday in Orange County Superior Court. She says in court papers that Vanessa Bryant “badgered, harassed and humiliated” her in front of Bryant, the couple’s children and others. She said the couple failed to provide health coverage, as promised when she was hired. She said she didn’t learn she didn’t have it until she became ill and sought medical attention.
The action seeks unspecified general, punitive and special damages, as well as back pay and overtime Jimenez says she is owed. The lawsuit was first reported by tmz.com.
Rob Pelinka, agent for the Los Angeles Lakers star, did not immediately return a call.
Jimenez wasn’t fired but her lawyer said she was wrongly discharged because Bryant’s wife made it impossible for her to continue working at the couple’s Orange County home.
“She quit but because the working conditions were intolerable,” attorney William Vogeler said Wednesday. “We allege it was a violation of labor laws that protect people from working in unhealthy situations.”
In court papers, Jimenez says she went to work for the Bryants in September 2007 and left in March 2008. Almost immediately upon starting work, “Vanessa began a continuing pattern of verbally abusing and demeaning her.” Jimenez said she was called lazy, slow, dumb, a liar and was cursed and screamed at.
After Jimenez told Kobe Bryant she wanted to quit he talked her out of it and elicited an apology from his wife, court papers said. But then, she said, the abuse began again.
According to the papers, Vanessa Bryant screamed at Jimenez for putting an expensive blouse in the Bryants’ clothes washer. “Then Vanessa demanded that Maria put her hand in a bag of dog feces to retrieve the price tag for the blouse.”
Although she gave notice, Jimenez said, Vanessa Bryant demanded that she work until her next pay day to cover the $690 cost of the blouse. Jimenez said she did.
http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/29881441/
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Lucky Number: Naturally 7 and the return of the beatbox
From the Paris subway to London's annual celebration of middle-of-the-road family entertainment, the Royal Variety Performance, NATURALLY 7 took hip hop's fifth element - beatboxing - to more places last year than the mouth-made-music had reached in the previous 20. As the New York-based group finally embark on a major label career, STEVE YATES asks them about defying industry trends, winning over unlikely crowds, and standing in the shadows of Doug E, Biz and Rahzel.
Two different routes to stardom:
Embark on a worldwide tour with a supper-club jazz singer, crash through the planet’s breakfast TV shows and receive the ultimate accolade of mainstream acceptability - an appearance on the UK’s Royal Variety Performance in front of HRH Prince Charles. Or, hit the underground armed only with your voices and a video camera, record a song that leaves rush hour commuters awestruck, upload the resulting video and watch it become a worldwide internet phenomenon.
One is a vision of pop hell; the other couldn’t be more hip hop if you strapped lino to its back and spray cans to its hands; especially since the song with which you stormed the Paris Metro was a reworking of In the Air Tonight by perennial hip hop fave Phil Collins (no hating at the back there) featuring beatboxing, rapping and a lyric about a street murder.
But a vocal group from New York have travelled both roads. Naturally 7, the church-reared septet who’ve spent the last year-and-a-bit warming up Michael Bublé’s audience, aren’t quite your textbook definition of keeping it real, with their a cappella singing and omni-instrumental beatboxing. But, at their core, they’re still hip hop, connecting the doo wop street culture of the ‘50s with its modern equivalent. Ask them about their influences and Biz Markie and Doug E Fresh are writ as large as The Drifters or Frankie Lymon.
"Those two things [hip hop and doo wop] are very close to us," says N'glish, aka Roger Thomas, the group’s founder, the day before their RVP slot. "That a cappella way of guys getting together and singing, that’s very close to hip hop because in every classroom there’d be kids banging on a table, someone rapping over it and kids trying to figure out how to do different sounds on top of that."
While N'glish is every bit the spokesman, there’s little sense of rivalry in the group. They dress and talk in the manner you’d expect of seven hip hop-loving New York men, but for two noticeable omissions - they don’t swear, and they don’t talk over each other (a consequence, presumably, of their church upbringing), at least until rehearsal time when all is a whirr of ideas and conflicting opinions. Originally designed as a singing group, Naturally 7 evolved into something unique when Roger realised his brother Warren’s beatboxing skills could spice up the traditional vocal mix. Bit by bit they allocated other ‘instruments’ - ‘guitarist’ Jamal Reed, ‘bass player’ Marcus "Hops" Davis, a ‘brass section’, and not forgetting Rod Eldridge, the ‘DJ’ - until their style, which they call Vocal Play, was complete.
Naturally 7 make the music with their mouths and, at times, the result is extraordinary. Feel It (their Collins interpretation) blends gut-wrenching soul with a looped groove and a gospel theme that goes way beyond its source material. Wall of Sound has a jazz group’s flair for individual improvisation while staying collectively on-message. Touring the world with Bublé may have left them with a few too many crowd-pleasing covers in their repertoire (Broken Wings,Bridge Over Troubled Water), but they have enough quality originals to avoid the polite pigeonhole traditionally accorded a cappella acts.
What they didn’t have, until recently, was an American record deal. Despite doing some 250 shows back home, they were initially signed to a German label. "We were quite disappointed that our fellow Americans - I’m talking about the label executives - didn’t get it so fast," admits Roger (who, with his brother, was born in Manchester, England but raised from his pre-teens in New York), "because the kids got it right away. It’s taken everyone else a little while to catch up."
"It was so different," explains Rod. "If it hasn’t been tried and proven a lot of execs are too scared to touch it. What is it? How do we market it? That’s why our first CD was called What Is It? The German label said, ‘Wow, you make hip-pop cool.’"
"Now you speak to a record executive, he asks, ‘who’s your audience?’" N'glish adds. "The kids - I mean real kids - love it because you’re doing sounds and that’s exciting to them. The silverheads, people who are over 55, love it because you’re bringing back harmonies from the doo wop era. And the people in the middle love it because they’re looking for something a bit different. So you’re pretty much saying your music is for everybody - and that is a no-no," he laughs.
While they fell foul of the US industry’s rigid niche-mongering, they also eluded the trap set for most hip hop artists who don’t practise one of the only two elements the music marketplace recognises, rapping and DJ-ing. Just as graf painters or breakdancers are rarely more than a sideshow to the main event, so beatboxers have struggled to transcend the esoteric nature of their art and turn talent into box office. Scratch and Rahzel delivered fine records for limited returns, while the likes of Kenny Muhammad and Kid Beyond (who Naturally 7 cite as dazzling beatboxers) generally give recording studios a wide berth. So why would anyone sign an act that needs to be seen in the flesh to really be appreciated?
"The record company guy is changing," says N'glish. "He’s a little different from five years ago. That guy is now going, ‘We really need real artists, we need live shows, something we can put our hands into on that side.’ That’s why we think our time has come. People who are true performers will rise again, you can betcha bottom pound."
Naturally 7’s harmonising opens the way to an audience closed off to orthodox beatboxers, but it also represents something genuinely fresh: a multi-faceted option for an art form that’s always previously been about one man and his trick box. Rahzel’s ability to sing and beatbox simultaneously takes the viewer’s breath away (if not his), but its musicality is necessarily restricted. As N'glish says, "What most people in the hip hop community ask us is why is there no one else out there doing a group. It’s easy to be that solo artist like Rahzel doing a bunch of these things - Rod’s pretty much in that category, he’s doing the beats and stuff - but you take it to the next level as soon as you add a second person. This is why we don’t worry about other people doing what we’re doing: it’s really hard."
That it is. While HIPHOP.COM watches, they work on an interlude to the rhythm of Special Ed’s I Got It Made; the 20-second end product is arrived at only afrter several minutes of frantic rehearsal, and you need only marvel at the layers of a track like Wall of Sound to realise the depths of their mastery. The group may have their roots in street corner improvisation, but the deliberation and professionalism put into it is from somewhere else entirely. The Paris Metro video works precisely because the meticulous delivery is in such stark contrast to the setting, a collision of everyday experience and perfect production values. The guerrilla gig idea wasn’t met with unanimous enthusiasm, but despite fears about not being heard above the noise of the train and being pelted with tomatoes (Hops) or being sworn at by irate Parisians (Jamal: "I’m from New York and New Yorkers are somewhat angry. I thought with Paris being another big city..."), the performance concluded with an instant fan base and a YouTube hit-in-waiting.
N'glish recalls, "When we first came to England, the YouTube video worked for us - ‘Those are the seven guys from the train’ - it went everywhere before us." And in return, Naturally 7 are now taking the fine art of beatboxing to places it can only have dreamt of reaching.
"The Grey People" Chapter I - Voices of Despair
ABOUT:
Nick Stratum (Nathan Allen Pinard) and Greg White (Faires Rivers) are two normal employees of Pathopens Industries who discover terrorists inside the world largest Fusion Reactor...capable of destroying all life on earth on the planet if in the hands of the wrong people....
Starring
Nathan Allen Pinard
J.L. Jeremiah
Faires Rivers
Bentuttle90
Pookashells
JohnnyEx
Annabelle Bay
D.L. Watson
Ubernewbie
Music by D.L. Watson
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