Taeyang of boy band Big Bang will embark on his first world tour starting in Hong Kong in early January.
He will then tour China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, according to his management agency YG Entertainment on Thursday.
Taeyang in June released "Rise," his second regular album and the first in six years.
Taeyang of boy band Big Bang will embark on his first world tour starting in Hong Kong in early January.
He will then tour China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, according to his management agency YG Entertainment on Thursday.
Taeyang in June released "Rise," his second regular album and the first in six years.
Suh Jeong-woo has become the nation's first caddy to earn W100 million in one year as he helped the 19-year-old rookie Kim Hyo-joo win over W1 billion in prize money in a single season for the first time in the Korean Ladies Professional Golf Association.
Caddies are generally paid on a weekly basis during tournaments, and if their player wins the title or makes the top 10, they receive 5-10 percent of the prize money as an incentive.
Suh, 29, said he couldn't imagine that he would earn that much money as a caddy. He is glad but he can't believe it's actually happening, he added.
Suh Jeong-woo Kim earned a total of W1.14 billion in prize money this season with five wins including three major titles on the KLPGA. Whenever she claimed a title, Kim took a photo with Suh as they held up the trophy together in recognition of his contribution.
Communicating frankly with the player is the key, Suh said. When he makes a mistake, he does not hesitate to apologize to the player. If the player makes a mistake, he encourages them to forget about it as soon as possible.
Suh was a weightlifter in high school before he took up golf. He then found it more rewarding to advise other players, putting down his own golf clubs to become a caddy.
"I want to continue this gratifying job as I share the joy and challenges of the player," he said.
Palin, 70, a former member of the Monty Python comedy team, has concentrated his career in the past two decades on making TV travel documentaries such as "Around the World in 80 days" and "Pole to Pole".
Britain's state broadcaster, the BBC, said on Tuesday that Palin was one of the cast members for "The Wipers Times", a 90-minute drama based on the true story of a satirical newspaper produced by soldiers fighting from the trenches from 1916.
The newspaper was started by two soldiers who found a printing press in the bombed-out ruins of Ypres in Belgium and it continued to be produced until the end of the year despite constant bombardment and fighting.
The name of the paper was named after the battlefield mispronunciation of Ypres.
"Just like the original Wipers Times, this new history drama will be filled with jokes, spoofs and amazing examples of courage behind the laughs," Janice Hadlow, controller of BBC Two and BBC Four, said in a statement.
Palin's last acting role was in the comedy film "Fierce Creatures" in 1997 in which he played a retired police officer running a zoo.
His last TV role was in Alan Bleasdale's seven-part drama "GBH" in 1991 in which he played a headmaster intimidated by a militant city council leader.
"The Wipers Times" was written by Ian Hislop, editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye, and scriptwriter Nick Newman and will be shown on BBC2 later this year.
(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, editing by Paul Casciato)
Kim Kardashian enjoys a nice nap in the first photo since giving birth to her baby girl North, which was posted on her younger sister Khloe's Facebook!
Read the whole story at www.justjared.com
London--If you're a chocoholic like me, you're hoping Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will be as delectable as biting into a piece of fudge or a brownie or triple chocolate ice cream.
Sorry, fellow chocolate lovers. Though the musical at Theatre Royal Drury Lane begins with a cunning Quentin Blake animated film on how our favorite food proceeds from bean to bar, the musical adapted from Roald Dahl's children's story by David Greig with songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman is as bad a transformation to the stage as the Tim Minchin-Dennis Kelly treatment of Dahl's Matilda is good. Which means it's very, very bad as contrasted with very, very good.
That's another way of saying that the people responsible for bringing this gargantuan tuner to the public may have thought they could take their own ride on Dahl's coattails, but this time as the coattails pulled away from them, they've been left running desperately after. This isn't to declare that the tons of pounds and dollars poured into it don't have their effect. A friend I ran into on exiting the theater told me his six-year-old son sat through the proceedings with his jaw dropping.
It wasn't difficult to figure out why. The lavish production numbers are heaved at the audience one on the heels of another, especially in the second act. And to make them hotsy-totsy, set and costume designer Mark Thompson, lighting designer Paul Pyant, sound designer Paul Arditti, video and projection designer Jon Driscoll and puppet and illusion designer Jamie Harrison pull out every stop within reach--and that includes huge dancing squirrels.
Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes--whom you think would know better (look what he did with James Bond and Skyfall, look what he did with The Bridge Project, look what he did with you-name-it)--has put up the extravaganza with apparently little care other than to get those six-year-old jaws dropping. Choreographer Peter Darling--whose work is superb here and in Manhattan with the singing-dancing Matilda children--has merely cribbed from himself.
Of course, cribbing from oneself is fair enough, whereas cribbing from, to name three, Phantom of the Opera (an underground boat ride-a-glide), The Sound of Music (a yodeling number; don't ask why) and Lionel Bart's Oliver) is slightly more shameful. But maybe that's what happens when inspiration is lacking and only an impulse to keep things big and loud prevails.
For those who don't know Dahl's dark tale, lovable, impoverished Charlie Bucket (Jack Costello the night I saw it, who alternates with Tom Klenerman, Isaac Rouse and Louis Suc) idolizes chocolatier Willy Wonka (Douglas Hodge) and longs to win one of the five Golden Tickets wrapped in Wonka's ultra-delicious candy bars. Obtaining it will get him invited into his hero's sanctum and eligible for a mysterious grand prize.
It's no shock when he comes by one, along with four other children who are far more truly revolting than the self-proclaimed revolting children of Matilda. One's obese (I saw Jensen Steele), one's spoiled rotten (I saw Tia Noakes), one chews gum incessantly (I saw Adrianna Bertola) and one watches television (I saw Jay Merman). An equally revolting parent is pushing his or her kid to win Willy Wonka's favor.
Librettist Greig's storytelling, however, is so hapless that he thinks clinging to Dahl's plot is the way to go for the stage. He doesn't seem to grasp that Dahl gets away with things a dramatist can't. For instance, Greig doesn't clarify Willy Wonka's character. What does the man, who's dressed like a circus ringmaster, really think about children, and how is he related to the grizzled old man trailing Charley at the onset of action?
Worse, Greig lets the first act remain a stage wait as the Golden Ticket eludes Charlie--who lives with four twee, bedridden grandparents (Nigel Planer, Roni Page, Billy Boyle, Myra Sands) and two kind but out-of-work parents (Alex Clatworthy, Jack Shaloo). Meanwhile, the four children who get their Golden Ticket earlier are each introduced in obnoxious specialty numbers.
In the second act, with Thompson's sets whirligigging and Driscoll's dizzying projections plastering the walls, good-hearted Charlie and his Grandpa Joe ceaselessly race after Willy Wonka as the revolting parent-child combos do themselves in extravagantly as a result of unappealing character traits like impatience, greed and wrongful senses of entitlement.
And what are Hairspray tunesmiths Shaiman and Wittman contributing to an ostensible money machine that's far more ominous than Willy Wonka's looming monolithic factory? They offer lots of songs in lots of styles--the revolting-children material cuts a wide swath--but nothing memorable. There's definitely a scarcity of anything memorable for Hodge, whose La Cage Aux Folles Albin was brilliant. He's obliged to repeat an anthem called "It Must Be Believed to Be Seen," undoubtedly because someone thinks the upending of the cliche is devilishly clever. It isn't. After the team's disappointing 2011 Catch Me If You Can score, this follow-up doesn't regain much lost ground.
Hardly by the way, the best song in the score is "Pure Imagination" from the 1971 movie and nominated for an Oscar. Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley wrote the sweet ditty and surely deserve program credit. Perhaps they get it, although I looked in vain.
Hodge does a nice job crooning the Bricusse-Newley item while he and Charlie float around in what looks like a plastic cabin and is probably intended to be Dahl's Great Glass Elevator, but it's still not sufficient to float his performance above gallant commitment. Little can be said for any of the other cast members trudging through this swamp, except to congratulate them on giving their all to the disappointing project.
Word has it that Dahl, who died in 1990, objected to the first film version because it emphasized Willy Wonka over Charlie, as the title change implies. Following much of Dahl's plot, Mendes et al concentrates on Charlie to little avail, while ringmaster Wonka isn't seen, much less believed, until almost the end of act one.
Does any CatCF element rise above the mundane? A song called "Don't Ya Pinch Me, Charlie" with a promising beginning almost does, but just as it feels about to take off into rapturous Song-and-Danceland, it halts jarringly. Then, thanks be, there's the entrance of the Oompa-Loompas. Actually, they're lowered--actors' heads above puppet bodies--on a rainbow-curved set piece, whereupon they mug and tap dance with winning flare. At last, something with the theatrical flavor of a delectable chocolate bonbon.
LONDON (Reuters) - Angelina Jolie made her first public appearance since announcing her double mastectomy on Sunday, joining fiance Brad Pitt on the red carpet in London where she welcomed the debate on women's health that the surgery had sparked.
The Oscar-winning actress has stayed out of the spotlight since announcing her operation in a New York Times column last month, saying the decision was made after finding she carried a gene giving her an 87 percent chance of getting breast cancer.
The 37-year-old mother of six, praised for her courage in publicly announcing her surgery, is now reported to be planning another operation to remove her ovaries as the BRCA1 gene also gives her a 50 percent chance of ovarian cancer.
On the red carpet for the world premiere of Pitt's latest movie, zombie blockbuster "World War Z", Jolie praised her partner as being "a wonderful man and a wonderful father.
"I'm very, very grateful for all the support ... and I have been very happy just to see the discussion of women's health expanded and that means the world to me," she told reporters.
"After losing my mom to these issues, I am very grateful for it," added the American actress, wearing a long black, backless Yves Saint Laurent dress.
Jolie's mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, died from ovarian cancer in 2007 at the age of 56 and her aunt, 61-year-old Debbie Martin, died last week as a result of breast cancer.
Jolie missed her aunt's funeral to accompany Pitt to London for the premiere of "World War Z", an adaptation of Max Brooks' 2006 apocalyptic novel.
Pitt's production company Plan B Entertainment bought the screen rights to the novel about six years ago and it is one of the big box office releases this summer, but it is under pressure to perform before even opening.
It was due to be released late last year but suffered setbacks amid reports that the budget had ballooned above $200 million and Pitt clashed with director Marc Forster.
In "World War Z", Pitt plays United Nations representative Gerry Lane who is enlisted to help stop a zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatening to destroy mankind.
Pitt said he was proud of the film and also of Jolie for her decision to have a mastectomy for the sake of their family and to share that experience.
"When she's faced with a problem - and we have known this was coming for some time - she takes it by the horns," Pitt, 49, also dressed in black, told reporters. "I'm super proud of her. She's a bad ass."
Asked how important it was to have her on the red carpet with him, Pitt said: "It's just more fun to do these things with each other. More fun when she's around and same for her."
"World War Z" marks Pitt's first foray as the star and producer of his own potential franchise.
Pitt said his own children's reaction to the book sparked the project which ultimately was about survival and family.
"The boys love a zombie," he said.
(Writing by Belinda Goldsmith)
RANCHO MIRAGE, California (Reuters) - China's photogenic "first lady" Peng Liyuan played steel drums in Trinidad, strolled hand-in-hand with a coffee farmer's daughter in Costa Rica and snapped pictures with her iPhone in the shadow of Mayan ruins in Mexico.
But the glamorous and popular wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping stepped out of the spotlight for two days in California while her husband held unprecedented informal talks with U.S. President Barack Obama at a lush retreat in the desert on the last leg of a four-country trip.
Peng, a singer who many Chinese say was far more famous than Xi before he became a top leader, has decisively broken the mold of Chinese first wives who have kept an intentionally low profile since the 1970s.
Many in China expected to see more of her in California and hoped that she would have a chance to interact with U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama, potentially adding a fresh dimension to the nascent relationship between their presidential husbands.
But Mrs. Obama's decision to stay in Washington with her daughters rather than meet the Chinese first couple sidelined Peng to some extent.
U.S. officials said it had been made clear to the Chinese side early on that a scheduling conflict would prevent Mrs. Obama from the summit at the Sunnylands estate near Palm Springs.
But the U.S. first lady did make a gesture.
"Mrs. Obama wrote a letter to Madame Peng welcoming her to the United States. The First Lady said she regretted missing her this weekend but hopes to have the chance to visit China and meet Madame Peng sometime soon," a White House official said.
Still, Michelle Obama's absence set the Chinese blogosphere and some Chinese media outlets alight with speculation, anger, pride and more than a few jokes.
It was an "arrogant show of fear of inferiority" which caused Michelle Obama not to meet Peng, and an insult to the Chinese people, an opinion piece carried by the semi-official China News Service said. The article appeared to have later been removed from the service's website but it was widely circulated on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblog.
'DISRESPECT AND RUDENESS'
"Even if Xi's wife doesn't care, many Chinese believe this is a show of disrespect and rudeness towards the Chinese leader," it said.
Michelle Obama has had cordial interactions with other foreign leaders' wives who have visited the White House as well as with those she has met abroad. But lacking any major diplomatic role in the administration, she has shown few signs of forging close personal bonds with her foreign counterparts.
On Weibo, several commentators took their own stabs as to why Michelle avoided California.
"She was afraid of Mama Peng's charm. How shameful that the aura of the First Lady of the world's superpower can't beat that of the First Lady of developing China," wrote a user with the handle Chiki_Wang.
Another wrote: "Michelle decided to hide before being humbled. She was afraid that after dinner the two couples would sing karaoke and so she said she needed to be with her daughters - one of the most common excuses, even in China."
Peng stepped into the limelight in her new role as first lady in March, the same month that Xi became president, when she accompanied him to Russia and Africa. She became an instant internet sensation back home.
Images of her wearing a fashionable, made-in-China wardrobe have been popular back home - a parallel she shares with Michelle Obama, who Vogue magazine said in its April cover story had "inspired a modern definition of effortless American chic."
Chinese first wives have occasionally appeared in photographs when traveling abroad with their husbands. Most have appeared frumpy and awkward, though, and none of Peng's predecessors stretching back to the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 could be described as glamorous.
All have kept a low profile because of the experience of Jiang Qing, the widow of the founder of Communist China, Mao Zedong. Jiang was the leader of the "Gang of Four" that wielded supreme power during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. She was given a suspended death sentence in 1981 for the deaths of tens of thousands during that period of chaos.
By contrast, Peng's easy, casual and fun demeanor were on full display once again on the earlier leg of Xi's trip, which took in Trinidad, Costa Rica and Mexico. She has also been trying out her English, which sources with ties to the leadership told Reuters she has been learning.
In California, Palm Springs' local newspaper, the Desert Sun, snapped photos of her visiting the Palm Springs Art Museum on Friday afternoon. Almost no other media were present.
And Peng joined Obama and Xi for tea on Saturday before the Chinese first couple departed, U.S. national security adviser Thomas Donilon said. It lasted about a half hour.
(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick in RANCHO MIRAGE and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Alistair Bell and Eric Walsh)
LONDON (Reuters) - Angelina Jolie made her first public appearance since announcing her double mastectomy on Sunday, joining fiance Brad Pitt on the red carpet in London where she welcomed the debate on women's health that the surgery had sparked.
The Oscar-winning actress has stayed out of the spotlight since announcing her operation in a New York Times column last month, saying the decision was made after finding she carried a gene giving her an 87 percent chance of getting breast cancer.
The 37-year-old mother of six, praised for her courage in publicly announcing her surgery, is now reported to be planning another operation to remove her ovaries as the BRCA1 gene also gives her a 50 percent chance of ovarian cancer.
On the red carpet for the world premiere of Pitt's latest movie, zombie blockbuster "World War Z", Jolie praised her partner as being "a wonderful man and a wonderful father.
"I'm very, very grateful for all the support ... and I have been very happy just to see the discussion of women's health expanded and that means the world to me," she told reporters.
"After losing my mom to these issues, I am very grateful for it," added the American actress, wearing a long black, backless Yves Saint Laurent dress.
Jolie's mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, died from ovarian cancer in 2007 at the age of 56 and her aunt, 61-year-old Debbie Martin, died last week as a result of breast cancer.
Jolie missed her aunt's funeral to accompany Pitt to London for the premiere of "World War Z", an adaptation of Max Brooks' 2006 apocalyptic novel.
Pitt's production company Plan B Entertainment bought the screen rights to the novel about six years ago and it is one of the big box office releases this summer, but it is under pressure to perform before even opening.
It was due to be released late last year but suffered setbacks amid reports that the budget had ballooned above $200 million and Pitt clashed with director Marc Forster.
In "World War Z", Pitt plays United Nations representative Gerry Lane who is enlisted to help stop a zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatening to destroy mankind.
Pitt said he was proud of the film and also of Jolie for her decision to have a mastectomy for the sake of their family and to share that experience.
"When she's faced with a problem - and we have known this was coming for some time - she takes it by the horns," Pitt, 49, also dressed in black, told reporters. "I'm super proud of her. She's a bad ass."
Asked how important it was to have her on the red carpet with him, Pitt said: "It's just more fun to do these things with each other. More fun when she's around and same for her."
"World War Z" marks Pitt's first foray as the star and producer of his own potential franchise.
Pitt said his own children's reaction to the book sparked the project which ultimately was about survival and family.
"The boys love a zombie," he said.
(Writing by Belinda Goldsmith)
The simple, but elegant garment created by Hollywood costume designer Helen Rose for the then 18-year-old Taylor is an oyster shell-colored, floor-length satin gown with a fine silk gauze off-the-shoulder illusion neckline.
The dress, which was a gift from MGM film studios, has a top estimate of 50,000 pounds ($75,300). Rose also designed Grace Kelly's wedding dress for her marriage to the Prince of Monaco.
By the time Taylor married Hilton she was already a veteran actress and was just a year away from her Oscar-nominated performance in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's "A Place in the Sun".
The A-list of old Hollywood - Greer Garson, Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Esther Williams, and Van Johnson - were among the many stars who came to congratulate the bride.
The star of "Cleopatra" surpassed Michael Jackson as the highest-earning deceased celebrity in a survey released by Forbes in October 2012, with her estate pulling in $210 million, much of it from a 2011 auction of jewels, costumes and art work.
The auction of Taylor's jewels took in $116 million, more than double the record for a single collection, and set new marks for pearls, colorless diamonds and Indian jewels.
Taylor, who died in 2011 at the age of 79, was married eight times, twice to actor Richard Burton, and had a career spanning seven decades.
She first gained fame in 1944's "National Velvet" at age 12, and was nominated for five Oscars, winning best actress for "Butterfield 8" (1960) and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), which also starred Burton.
(Reporting by Paul Casciato; Editing by Michael Roddy)
The simple, but elegant garment created by Hollywood costume designer Helen Rose for the then 18-year-old Taylor is an oyster shell-colored, floor-length satin gown with a fine silk gauze off-the-shoulder illusion neckline.
The dress, which was a gift from MGM film studios, has a top estimate of 50,000 pounds ($75,300). Rose also designed Grace Kelly's wedding dress for her marriage to the Prince of Monaco.
By the time Taylor married Hilton she was already a veteran actress and was just a year away from her Oscar-nominated performance in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's "A Place in the Sun".
The A-list of old Hollywood - Greer Garson, Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Esther Williams, and Van Johnson - were among the many stars who came to congratulate the bride.
The star of "Cleopatra" surpassed Michael Jackson as the highest-earning deceased celebrity in a survey released by Forbes in October 2012, with her estate pulling in $210 million, much of it from a 2011 auction of jewels, costumes and art work.
The auction of Taylor's jewels took in $116 million, more than double the record for a single collection, and set new marks for pearls, colorless diamonds and Indian jewels.
Taylor, who died in 2011 at the age of 79, was married eight times, twice to actor Richard Burton, and had a career spanning seven decades.
She first gained fame in 1944's "National Velvet" at age 12, and was nominated for five Oscars, winning best actress for "Butterfield 8" (1960) and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), which also starred Burton.
(Reporting by Paul Casciato; Editing by Michael Roddy)
