‘Dancing With the Stars’: Who has the edge in this field? I pick Kyle Massey, Kurt Warner
Here's the new cast of "Dancing With the Stars." ABC/Craig Sjodin
We now have confirmation on the latest celebrities for “Dancing With the Stars.” My, didn’t the grapevine give away most of the names before ABC could announce the performers last night in prime time?
Who looks the strongest to you? “Dirty Dancing” fave Jennifer Grey may launch a thousand references about not putting Baby in the corner, but she seemed awfully ill at ease in the short news conference last night.
The representatives from the reality field — Audrina Patridge of “The Hills” and Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino of “Jersey Shore” — are unknowns as entertainers. Ditto Bristol Palin.
Height could put Rick Fox and David Hasselhoff at a disadvantage in ballroom dancing. Will Michael Bolton, Brandy and Margaret Cho loosen up for this demanding contest? Can they move?
I think Florence Henderson, a longtime entertainer, could display the most ease of the women. She knows how to play to the crowd. She has a fun sense of humor. (Think a less bawdy Cloris Leachman.) And she has a huge fan base: “Brady Bunch” fans, baby boomers and older viewers.
Yet the most promising picks, to me, are former quarterback Kurt Warner and Disney Channel star Kyle Massey. Athletes tend to do well on this show because they have the discipline for the training. And Massey is energetic, enthusiastic and popular among younger viewers.
What do you think? We start learning about them on at 8 p.m. Sept. 20, when the new season begins on WFTV-Ch. 9.
Silence is Still Golden: Women and the Metropolis in Early Chinese Cinema
By Yap Soo Ei, Ji Xing, Nicolai Volland, Yang Lijun, and Paul Pickowicz
Feng Xiaogang’s blockbuster Aftershock is making headlines these days, setting new records at the box office in China. We cannot say yet if the excitement is justified—Aftershock has only just hit the theaters here in Singapore. It is clear, however, that the current cinema craze in China is not at all a new phenomenon. In fact, new releases on the silver screen created similar sensations in Shanghai as early as eighty years ago. And many of these old films continue even today to fascinate. Films by pioneering Chinese directors of the 1920s and 1930s still dazzle, with their opulent sets, the metropolitan glamour of Shanghai, not to speak of their melodramatic stories of love and distress, passion and agony.
At a workshop held at the National University of Singapore in June and July 2010, directed by Paul Pickowicz and chaired by Yang Lijun and Nicolai Volland, we took a closer look at some of these films, gems of China’s silent film era. Although interest in “Golden Age” Chinese cinema has gradually picked up in recent years, many of these films remain little known, as opposed, for instance, to the works of directors from China’s “fifth” and “sixth” generations. Yet after several days of collective movie-watching and intensive discussion, there is little doubt about the richness of this treasure trove of early Chinese films.
Imagine, for example, the following opening shots: The camera zooms in on the supple thighs of a young woman. A few seconds later, you—the viewer—see her charming smile. She is wearing a simple short sleeved shirt, both arms exposed, and clad in shorts with one of the seams torn. In full view now, you are able to admire her slender body. She is in a playful mood. Such are the opening shots of Sun Yu’s 1931 film Wild Rose (Ye meigui), set in an idyllic countryside. But this dream world will not last; misfortune will soon befall the female protagonist and the man she loves. Painful separation seems inevitable. Will the couple eventually reunite? What will lead them back together? Just a hint (spoiler alert!): they both sign up for a vaguely defined “revolution.”
The intertwined themes of romance and revolution have recurred throughout the history of Chinese filmmaking and continue to have remarkable appeal today. Call it cliché, but early Chinese silent-era filmmaking produced a good number of such stories and audiences never tired of them. Neither did we. In the films of the 1930s we viewed, women took center stage—from the innocent Xiao Feng (played effectively by Wang Renmei) in Wild Rose (1931) to the seductress Li Huilan (played nicely by Xue Lingxian), a woman who seeks men for pleasure and money in A Dream in Pink (Fenhongse de meng, 1932, d. Cai Chusheng). The viewer first marvels at how the materialistic “new woman” Zhang Tao (played by the vivacious Li Lili) ultimately repents in the film National Pride (Guo feng, 1935, d. Zhu Shilin), and then feels emotional distress as Xiao Mao (played again by Wang Renmei) loses her only brother to malnutrition in Cai Chusheng’s famous Song of the Fisherman (Yu guang qu, 1935).
It is the women, played by Shanghai’s top film stars, who command the audience’s attention. Not only are their lives inevitably entangled with issues like imperialism, violence, and poverty, but they are able to endure mountains of heartache along the way. The directors—some of the most creative artists in Shanghai’s highly entrepreneurial cultural marketplace—identify a wide array of “modern” women, and dwell on the complexities of the social and personal problems these resilient women faced in their daily lives. The fact that quite a few of these problems—self-sacrifice, marriage, temptation, vanity, and love—remain unresolved in present-day society points to the contemporary relevance of these films. While directors generally proposed reconciliation as the solution to most problems, the viewer is easily touched by the earnest attempt of the male directors to openly discuss the plight of women, especially in Spring in the South (Nanguo zhi chun, 1932, d. Cai Chusheng) and A Dream in Pink. One of our favorite films is Shen Xiling’s Boatman’s Daughter (Chuanjia nü, 1934), a seamless and powerful narrative about modern-style exploitation and violence woven into a quasi-traditional Chinese love story about a boatman’s daughter (played beautifully by Xu Lai) and a laborer.
Despite their immense popularity with audiences in the 1930s, many of these films were criticized by reviewers, including leftists, for “failing to provide further insight or understanding” of such hot-button political issues as spiritual pollution. At our workshop there were lively discussions after each screening about the difficulties of achieving such clear cut ideological indoctrination in commercial entertainment films. Many films (then and now) have unintended consequences. Further, a good film certainly invites more than one mode of interpretation. Does one end up emulating the protagonist Zhang Lan in the film National Pride not because of her lofty moral qualities, but because the part was played by screen legend Ruan Lingyu and this was Ruan’s last film before her tragic suicide at age 24? Films can be both popular and politically compelling for reasons that are largely external to the intentions of a particular director. A challenging problem for contemporary viewers and researchers is figuring out how these films were received by audiences in the 1930s. One suspects, however, that present-day audiences (including scholars!) share some of the sentiments and instincts of actors, directors, and viewers eighty years ago. In short, there is a humanistic dimension to these ignored cultural artifacts. We love these films because there is a bit of “us” in the human dramas that unfold on the screen.
A second theme that caught our attention is the depiction of the big metropolis, that is, “Shanghai modern” and its irresistible allure. Take A Dream in Pink, complete with a street lined with tall trees, an art deco interior, women in bright qipaos dancing in the marbled mansions of the French Concession. Similar images appear on screen in almost all the films we viewed. It seems that many movies from the 1930s were bathing in the glitz and glamour of the modern metropolis.
The city-on-screen, however, is highly paradoxical. Almost invariably the modern metropolis is revealed to be as evil as it is alluring. Underneath its bright and modern veneer is a moral abyss which causes people—the young in particular—to lose their moral bearings and fall into a degraded state. In National Pride, Zhang Lan (whose name, Orchid, implies nobility and virtue) learns that big city culture will destroy young people, while rustic life and self-discipline will purify their minds. Propaganda is a conspicuous component of National Pride, which was produced for the Guomindang’s New Life Movement, but it is interesting to note that the demonization of the modern city is a common theme in Chinese films of the 1930s, including so-called leftist works. In this respect, they resonate (intentional or unintentionally) with cultural traditions that tend to favour the countryside over the city, the rural over the urban. Literature since the late Qing has depicted the prosperity of Shanghai as a symbol of hypocrisy. Ugly and immoral phenomena, including prostitution, deception, and greed, are said to corrode the simple and modest lifestyles of the past.
The danger of the metropolis is often attributed in these films to spiritual pollution—corrupt culture (especially “Western” culture) imported from abroad. Once again, we have a theme that feels very “current.” How to resist this pollution? How does its harm manifest itself? The answers to these questions vividly unfold in such films as A Dream in Pink, where the screen vamp Li Huilan literally “embodies” the attractions and dangers of “Western” culture and ultimately stands in for the metropolis itself. She is independent, fashionable and charming. She never waits for men. She talks about love but never relies on love. At the end of the film, she deserts her lover (who has divorced his lovely wife in favour of the vamp) and leaves with another man. She is a female figure who differs radically from what is often imagined to be the stock “traditional” Chinese woman. Director Cai Chusheng thus poses poignant questions. Is “Western” culture suitable for China? Is a city (like Shanghai) a safe place to be? What is substantial and good in the city? The relationship of city and countryside, and the larger configuration of modern/Western and traditional culture featured prominently in our discussions, as they do in the films. Are the representations of “traditional” and “Western” culture reliable or are they crude, distorting, and manipulative caricatures?
Despite its potentially corrupting influence, the modern city retains its magnetic powers of attraction, a pull that was obviously well understood by the directors and permeates the films. Young women from the rural areas, for example, cannot help being fascinated by the modern, educated ladies on display in such films as Boatman’s Daughter. And in a film like National Pride, which explicitly devalues the city and “Western” culture, extravagant and luxurious city life is omnipresent on screen and seems to undermine the original anti-urban messages. Is this another example of unintended consequences? Similarly, while the countryside might appear idyllic (in Song of the Fisherman and other works), it is almost always shown to contain violent and life-negating elements (in Wild Rose for instance) and other negative forces. This paradox of the city, its allure and glamour alongside its pernicious influences, was clearly one of the powerful riddles that attracted Chinese films audiences of the 1930s. Eighty years later, this attraction has lost little of its allure.
Yap Soo Ei and Ji Xing are graduate students in the Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore (NUS). Nicolai Volland and Yang Lijun teach Chinese Studies at NUS, and Paul Pickowicz is professor of Chinese History at the University of California, San Diego.
Casey Anthony: Judge Belvin Perry sticks to schedule, wins raves
Chief Judge Belvin Perry in court today. Red Huber/Orlando Sentinel
The headline today from today’s status hearing in the Casey Anthony case?
“The trial will take place on the day it has been set,” Jean Casarez said on truTV’s “In Session.” “There’s a lot of work to do, but this judge isn’t budging.”
The panel agreed. Former federal prosecutor Sunny Hostin highlighted two dates: May 9 for jury selection and May 16 for opening statements.
“Ditto,” analyst Mike Brooks said.
Anthony is charged with first-degree murder in the death of her daughter, Caylee.
“In Session” host Vinnie Politan maveled that Judge Belvin Perry was pushing the attorneys. Politan said: “A lot of this may have been prompted by Jose Baez who in the beginning … [said] Judge, it looks like we have only a 50-50 chance we can meet these deadlines.’ ”
Casarez noted that during the hearing the defense filed an amended witness list. The deadline for the list is tomorrow.
A caller from Virginia, Jeanette, raved over Judge Perry. “Judge Perry is wonderful,” she said.
“Absolutely, Jeanette, I second that,” Politan said. “This is a judge who clearly is in charge. He appears, though, to give the attorneys an opportunity to take care of everything themselves. But at the end of the day the buck stops with him.”
Casarez said that Perry gets the respect of both parties but says what will happen. “There’s no arguing with the judge,” she said.
What do you think?
‘Top Chef’ overcomes ‘The Amazing Race’ at the Emmys; Edie Falco, Jim Parsons take comedy awards
The biggest surprise of hour one at the Emmys: “Top Chef” won the reality-competition prize and overcame “The Amazing Race.”
“Race” had won the prize seven years in a row.
Host Jimmy Fallon opened the show with a daffy salute to “Glee” that featured Jon Hamm, Tina Fey, Betty White and the Fox show’s cast. Fallon kept the tone loopy and the show moving. He strummed his guitar to introduce the various segments. The speeches were better than usual.
Comedy actress Edie Falco of “Nurse Jackie” was stunned by her victory. Best line: “I’m not funny.”
Comedy actor Jim Parsons of “The Big Bang Theory” thanked the writers for his character. His best line: To the audience, he said, “Thank all of you. Some of you apparently voted for me. That was very sweet. Thank you”
Supporting comedy actress Jane Lynch of “Glee” described her victory as “outlandish,” but it was widely expected. Her best line: “I want to say to the cast. I love you, you’re young and you’re wonderful, you’re fresh-faced. When I’m not seething with jealousy, I’m so proud of you.”
Supporting comedy actor Eric Stonestreet of “Modern Family” beat two co-stars for the prize. His best line: ”I’m the product of supportive parents,” he said, adding that he would give the statuette to his parents. “This is going home with you so you can wake up every day and go to bed every night and see what you made possible for myself.”
“Modern Family” won for comedy writing; honorees Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd spoofed the Old Spice commercial. “Glee” won for comedy director Ryan Murphy, who saluted his teachers and arts education.
Caylee Anthony: George and Cindy Anthony donate shoes, but not Caylee’s
Caylee Anthony
George and Cindy Anthony stopped by a shoe drive today and made a donation – but not the one that made headlines earlier this week.
“According to the director of this nonprofit, the Anthonys dropped off six pairs of shoes and a bag socks,” WESH-Ch. 2’s Jeff Lennox reported tonight. “At first it was believed those shoes were Caylee Anthony’s, but the director actually says these shoes were brand new.”
Cindy Anthony had said, via an e-mail to WKMG-Ch. 6, that she would give the charity some of her dead granddaughter’s shoes.
The charity, Children of Love Foundation, is sending all the shoes collected today to 22 orphans in Honduras.
WKMG’s Louis Bolden reported that the charity didn’t want the Anthonys volunteering at the event. “They hope the Anthonys’ last-minute involvement won’t hurt future donations,” Bolden said.
WKMG and WESH offered footage of the Anthonys arriving at the shoe drive and talking to others.
WESH also reminded viewers there will be a status hearing Monday in the case against Casey Anthony, the daughter of George and Cindy Anthony. She is charged with first-degree murder in the death of her daughter, Caylee. Anthony is not expected at the hearing.
Casey Anthony: Will George and Cindy Anthony stay away from spotlight?
Cindy and George Anthony appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" in June.
Could the media tours of George and Cindy Anthony be over?
The couple’s new attorneys “said today they’re going to try to keep the Anthonys away from the public spotlight as much as possible,” WFTV-Ch. 9 anchor Bob Opsahl said tonight.
The Lippman Law Offices, which recently helped the Anthonys save their home from foreclosure, took over the couple’s representation after Brad Conway stepped down. Conway had replaced Mark NeJame, who complained that the couple wouldn’t follow his advice.
George and Cindy Anthony are the parents of Casey Anthony, who is charged with first-degree murder in the death of her daughter, Caylee. George and Cindy have demonstrated a bewildering tendency to keep popping up on national programs.
WFTV’s short report on the attorneys was a follow-up on Cindy’s announcement that she planned to donate Caylee’s shoes to a charity. But that news surprised and stunned the charity’s founder. Cindy’s offer resulted in threats and negative publicity for the charity.
The Lippman Law Offices issued a release today saying that “excessive exposure in the news media adds undue burdens on the court.” The law firm said it will not engage in speculation or offer opinions.
UCF student wins big on ‘The Price Is Right’
Tonie Hairston is stunned by her good showing on "The Price Is Right." Monty Brinton/CBS
University of Central Florida student Tonie Hairston went to the head of the class on Friday’s “Price Is Right.”
She won $45,324 worth of merchandise on a back-to-schoool episode of the CBS game show.
Hairston, 19, is a sophomore majoring in elementary education. She credits her family — and prayer — for her stellar showing. Her mom won a Corvette and a trip to Paris three years ago on “The Price Is Right.” After Hairston’s grandmother died, the family found a video version of “Price” in her closet.
“My sister and I started playing to see how good we were,” Hairston said.
Pretty good, I’d say.
In the final showcase, she collected a laptop computer, a TV, a mini fridge, a $1,000 gift card and a PT Cruiser. She guessed the showcase was $22,000 — its actual value was $23,442.
How did she come so close?
“I prayed, I really prayed,” Hairston said. “I was watching my mom [in the studio audience]. My mom was saying $24,000. I said $22,000 to be on the safe side.”
How was it being on the game show?
“I loved it,” she said. “I was very nervous, but I had a great time. I jumped around.”
Wouldn’t you?
“The Price Is Right” airs at 11 a.m. weekdays on WKMG-Ch. 6.
An Interview with Deanna Fei, Author of A Thread of Sky
Deanna Fei is author of A Thread of Sky (Penguin Press, 2010), a novel about three generations of women in a Chinese American family. Here, she talks with recent UC Irvine graduate Mengfei Chen.
Mengfei Chen: What were some of your inspirations in writing the book? How did it begin? What experiences informed your writing?
Deanna Fei: A Thread of Sky is the story of a family of Chinese American women who reunite for a tour of their ancestral home. It was inspired by a trip through China’s “must-sees” that I embarked on ten years ago with my mother, my sisters, my aunt and my grandmother — six strong-willed, complicated women herded together for two weeks on a package tour. I was struck by the dramatic possibilities of this set-up, as well as the questions it raised about home and identity, culture and authenticity, travel and migration, history and memory. The tour took place at the end of a year I’d spent studying Chinese at Beijing Normal University. I’d thought I was ready to move on to the next stage of my life: teaching in New York, studying creative writing. But a few years later, I hadn’t stopped thinking about that tour. I started scribbling notes, and the characters began taking on lives of their own, completely apart from their real-life counterparts, and soon I was writing a novel.
I knew that in order to write about my characters’ travels through China with the necessary depth and immediacy, I needed to return. This time, I went back on a Fulbright Grant, intending to stay for another year, researching contemporary Chinese history and soaking up modern life in Shanghai while making periodic trips to the cities on my characters’ itinerary. I became so immersed in my research and writing that my stay eventually stretched to three years, during which my understanding of China continually evolved — and I expect it always will.
MC: One of the major themes in the novel is feminism in Chinese history. Why did you want to write about this topic? How did you do your research (sources, etc)? Did you learn anything surprising?
DF: Though they might not call themselves feminists, all six women in the novel are fiercely independent and have strived to make a difference in the world around them. Until this tour take shape, the American-born daughters of this family have always thought of these traits as being tied to their Westernization, but now they begin to trace it back to their grandmother and the story of feminism in China.
Their grandmother was once a leader of the Chinese feminist movement who garnered comparisons to such historical heroines as Hua Mulan and Qiu Jin. In my research, I read accounts of their lives as well as contemporary portraits of female leaders such as those in Wang Zheng’s Women in the Chinese Enlightenment and Xie Bingying’s A Woman Soldier’s Own Story.
What fascinated me was how an entire movement, a brand of feminism that many argue started earlier and spread wider than its American counterpart, had become obscured in history. In China, the conventional narrative is that feminism began with Communist liberation, when in fact a generation of activists had made huge inroads back in the 20s. Meanwhile, Westerners tend to see themselves as the standard-bearers of progress, particularly in terms of women’s rights. I wanted to explore the life story of a woman whose contributions to modern China had been erased, even as she still carries the cause in her bones.
MC: How does history, personal and cultural, playing a role in the lives of your characters?
DF: In various ways, my characters have seen themselves as somewhat untethered to history, whether by dint of being exiles, immigrants, or American-born. Yet they are all haunted by it, in the form of war wounds, family secrets, genetics or simply sensing its shadow. In China, history just is; an ordinary person doesn’t have to study it or return to it in order to feel it. But for the family in my novel, it’s only when they embark on this tour that they begin to comprehend how their lives play out against the intersections of political and family history, Chinese and American history, that have shaped their present.
MC: Much of A Thread of Sky is set in China, yet it’s also about Chinese Americans. What are some of the issues that you consider to be important for Chinese Americans of your generation?
DF: Whereas previous generations tended either to seek acceptance as assimilated Americans or to hold onto their Chinese identity as primary, I think my generation is eager to build a culture of our own. We’re truly Chinese American — not just Chinese or just American — and we don’t feel limited by the category. We might identify more broadly as Asian Americans, Americans of color, transnational Chinese or all of the above. Whatever the case, we seek to gain a lot more representation in “American” arts, politics, media and more.
MC: There is a growing appetite for writing on China. Is there anything that you think fiction about China offers readers that non-fiction or academic writing does not?
DF: That’s an excellent question. I’ve relied on plenty of wonderful nonfiction and academic writing to deepen my own understanding of China, but fiction definitely has its place. China often tempts Westerners to make sweeping, oversimplified statements — for instance, Chinese culture is repressive, or materialistic or all about saving face. Sometimes this happens precisely because China is a place of such vastness and complexity that it’s easier to make such statements than to convey true understanding; sometimes it’s plain ignorance. Either way, when you combine this impulse with the fact that nonfiction and academic writing are often aimed at arriving at a definitive answer, at some inarguable conclusion, there’s considerable potential for misunderstanding.
Fiction, by contrast, is aimed at exploration, not explanation. It’s the province of nuance and contradiction. A good novel gives a sense of expansion, of a broadening and deepening view, but it also acknowledges that some things remain beyond our grasp. In this way, fiction can sometimes offer readers a truer perspective of China than other forms of writing.
That, at least, is my hope.
Casey Anthony: Shaken charity organizer getting threats
Caylee Anthony
Could more little children suffer because of the Caylee Anthony story?
That’s a horrifying thought, but consider the latest TV reports in the Casey Anthony saga.
Cindy Anthony’s offer to donate granddaughter Caylee’s shoes to the Children of Love Foundation has sparked a furor against the charity, WFTV-Ch. 9 explained tonight.
The charity’s founder, Doris Patalano, ”was in tears over this today,” WFTV’s Kathi Belich reported. “She wouldn’t talk to us on camera.”
Callers are threatening to protest the charity’s shoe drive this weekend, Belich reported. But the charity has a partner in St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Oviedo and has a long record of helping children in Central and South America.
Patalano ”said Cindy offered to help with the shoe drive Saturday but never mentioned donating Caylee’s shoes,” Belich added.
Cindy announced her decision to donate the shoes in an e-mail to WKMG-Ch. 6.
Any bad publicity for a charity can be devastating news in hard times, and Belich illustrated that point by talking to the House of Hope, which can’t make its next payroll.
Cindy Anthony’s new lawyers told Belich they were preparing a news release about the issue.
Cindy’s daughter, Casey Anthony, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Caylee.
In other Anthony news, former Casey Anthony boyfriend Tony Lazzaro has asked Judge Belvin Perry to quash the defense team’s efforts to get more of his phone records, WESH-Ch. 2 reported.
‘Dancing With the Stars’: Are you ready for David Hasselhoff? Which celebrities do you want?
David Hasselhoff promoted his autobiography in Berlin today in this AP Photo by Markus Schreiber.
David Hasselhoff will be a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars,” Us Weekly reports.
But ABC isn’t commenting. The Disney-owned network won’t announce the celebrities until Monday during “Bachelor Pad,” which airs from 8 to 10 p.m. on WFTV-Ch. 9.
Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino of “Jersey Shore” is also taking part, RadarOnline.com reports.
The other names being tossed about include Emmy winner Kirstie Alley, singer Michael Bolton, Audrina Patridge of “The Hills” and former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman. Aikman would be following the example of former Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson, who is taking part in “Survivor” this coming season.
The rumor mill seems split on whether “Bachelorette” Ali Fedotowsky will be dancing. Would that be such a wise choice after Jake Pavelka participated last season?