Guitarist Lenny Kravitz will join Katy Perry on stage at the Super Bowl next month. The pair will perform together at the halftime show during the finale of the American football season on Sunday, February 1, in Glendale, Arizona. Perry is currently on her Prismatic World Tour. Kravitz has sold more than 38 million albums, including last year’s Strut and has several Grammys to his credit. – AP
Sheikh Zayed Book Award nominees announced
Sheikh Zayed Book Award's longlist of nominees for the Arabic culture in other languages category has been unveiled and features six works published in English, three in Spanish and one in Japanese. They are: Arabian-naito to Nihonjin (The Arabian Night and Japanese) by Sugita Hideaki; Leer La Alhambra (Reading Al Hambra) by Jose Miguel and Puerta Vilchez; Los Traductores de árabe del Estado español (Arabic Translators in Spain) by Arias Torres and Feria-García; Teorías sore el amor en la cultura árabe medieval (Theories of love in Arabic Culture in the Middle Ages) by Emilio Tornero; The [European] Other in Medieval Arabic Literature and Culture, Ninth-Twelfth Century AD by Nizar F Hermes; Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860-1950 by Marwa Elshakry; The Arab Nahda: The Making of the Intellectual and Humanist Movement by Abdulrazzak Patel; Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective by Michael Cook; The Cosmic Script: Sacred Geometry and the Science of Arabic Penmanship by Ahmed Moustafa and Stefan Sperl; and Al Jahiz: In Praise of Books by James Montgomery.
Only Jon Hamm was told how Mad Men ends
The notoriously secretive creator of Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, has only told Jon Hamm, who stars as main character Don Draper, how the show would end. The 1960s New York-set advertising-industry drama begins broadcasting its final batch of seven episodes on April 5 in the United States. "I feel very satisfied with a lot of what we did, and I am super proud of the fact that we did not repeat ourselves, which is the tallest order of all of them," Weiner said. He said he was struck by how many Americans turned inward after the tumultuous events of 1968, including the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert F Kennedy, and said that is reflected in the ending of his series. Each of the last seven episodes feels like a finale, he added. Weiner also said he wanted the ending to leave fans satisfied but cautioned that you can't please everyone, and it wouldn't be smart to try. Hamm says the experience of making Mad Men had been "unequivocally wonderful and I'll miss it". – AP
Timing of satire show ‘scary’ says larry Wilmore
Asked how he might find comedy in the weeks after attacks on a satirical magazine in France, Larry Wilmore, host of new US TV satire The Nightly Show, said: "They're starting to kill satirists just as a brother is launching his show. The timing of that is a little bit scary." Wilmore says his show, which begins next Monday, would combine comic observations with a topical panel discussion. The half-hour show, which will air in the US on Comedy Central after The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, is replacing The Colbert Report after Stephen Colbert headed to CBS to replace David Letterman. "It may be comic, it may be provocative," said Wilmore, 53. "Who knows? It will go where it goes." Celebrities will be part of the mix, "but they won't be hawking books and movies," he added. Wilmore was the "senior black correspondent" on The Daily Show, and jumped at the chance to host the new show when Stewart suggested it, surprised at his age to be getting the chance. When it was pointed out that his show will be broadcast for the first time on Martin Luther King Day, Wilmore joked: "I had a dream that a brother needed to work on that day." – AP
Paddington director’s debt to Satyajit Ray
Paddington director Paul King says that he was hugely inspired by legendary Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray's The Apu Trilogy when making the film, and tried to capture Apu's emotions in the animated bear. Based on author Michael Bond's best-selling series of children's stories, Paddington follows the comic misadventures of a young bear with a passion for all things British. "My favourite Indian movies are those of Satyajit Ray," says King. "The Apu Trilogy are some of the greatest films ever made in any language and the journey of Apu was something that [producer] David [Heyman] and I thought about a great deal when we were making our film. I had a big picture of Apu over my desk and looked at it every day. I loved his scruffiness, the glint in his eye, and I tried to capture that in our bear." – IANS
Indie-filmmaker samuel Goldwyn dies at 88
Samuel Goldwyn, Jr, a champion of the independent film movement and son of one of the founding fathers of Hollywood cinema, has died. He was 88. Goldwyn's son, Peter, told the Los Angeles Times his father died on Friday. Goldwyn produced low-budget hits including Mystic Pizza starring Julia Roberts and Cotton Comes to Harlem in the 1970s and 1980s. His company was one of the largest indie-film makers, and in 1986, he said his goal was to appeal to sophisticated movie lovers. As a producer, he was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award in 2004 for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. His final credit was for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty in 2013. Goldwyn's father was one of the founders of Paramount Studios and his production company became part of one Hollywood's largest studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. – AP
No place for Breaking Bad stars in prequel... yet
Walter White and Jesse Pinkman definitely won't be making any cameo appearances on the first season of the Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul. But that doesn't mean the characters, played by Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, won't pop up in the future, the show's co-creator Peter Gould said on Saturday. Better Call Saul is set six years before the events of the award-winning Breaking Bad and is based around small-time lawyer Saul Goodman, played by Bob Odenkirk, who will one day represent teacher-turned-drug dealer Walter White. Gould said he and Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan wanted to let Better Call Saul stand on its own. So, said Gilligan, if any of the big characters from the original show appear, it would have to feel natural to the story. "If it feels like a stunt, then those of us in the writer's room will have done something wrong," Gilligan said. "Every time I come into the office in this show, [I ask] has Walter White called yet?" Odenkirk joked. "Jesse would be in middle school." The show debuts on February 8 in the US, with the second episode airing the following day. – AP
Hollywood stars gather for tea party
A host of actors, including Keira Knightley, Eddie Redmayne, Ethan Hawke, Felicity Jones and Patricia Arquette, sipped tea together on Saturday as awards season began with a cup of tea before last night's Golden Globe awards. They were at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts' annual pre-Globes tea party at the Four Seasons Hotel, along with Marion Cotillard, Dominic West, Anna Kendrick, Steve Carell, Game of Thrones star Kit Harrington and Into the Woods star James Corden. "I love this event," said Gerald McRaney, a star of House of Cards, a contender for best TV drama series. "It's casual. It's not the big, pressurised thing. You sit, you have a cuppa, and that's it." The stars also had a chance to try leatherworking thanks to British fashion brand Mulberry and Boyhood star Hawke made a pair of personalised bracelets. His co-star, Arquette, meanwhile, said she wishes she was still working on the film, which was filmed over the course of 12 years. "I missed the process before we stopped," she said. "I told [best director nominee] Richard [Linklater], 'This isn't a 12-year movie. This is a movie that wraps when I die'." – AP
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is getting his own sitcom
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is getting his own sitcom, alongside former "30 Rock" actor Jack McBrayer.
Adult Swim, the late-night, adult-orientated arm of the Cartoon Network, said Saturday it will broadcast The Jack and Triumph Show starting February 20. McBrayer plays a grown-up child star of a Lassie type show with Triumph, the puppet created by former Conan O'Brien writer Robert Smigel, as his washed-up canine companion.
Smigel hides behind chairs and other furniture on the sitcom set to “play” Triumph, the Don Rickles-type puppet that first emerged on O’Brien’s late-night NBC show in 1997.
McBrayer, who played the cheerful, innocent intern on 30 Rock, once appeared on an O'Brien segment being insulted by Triumph and it turned out to be one of the puppet's most successful segments, Smigel said.
The idea of a sitcom “seemed insane, but somehow with Jack it turned out to be attractive,” Smigel said at a television meeting on Saturday.
McBrayer wryly noted that his acting range lent itself well “to smile real big and be terrified by Triumph’s antics.”
Smigel said he's tried to keep Triumph fresh as a character by not overusing him through the years, making the sitcom possible. He said several networks expressed interest in the idea, but the Turner-owned Adult Swim committed to 20 episodes without a pilot.
Following a round of insults lobbed at an audience of TV critics, Smigel retired Triumph to a plastic Old Navy bag.
“I usually alternate between Old Navy and Duane Reade,” Smigel said. “It’s really all he deserves.” – AP
