Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
Even Rick Springfield is surprised that his latest album — “Venus in Overdrive” — has charted higher than his 1982 breakthrough record “Working Class Dog.” The latter spawned the hit singles “I’ve Done Everything for You,” “Love is Alright Tonite” and, of course, “Jessie’s Girl.” As well known for his singing as his tall, angular good looks, Springfield is back on the road to promote “Venus.”
Paul Feig has made a career out of capturing children’s angst. As the creator of the critically acclaimed but short-lived TV series “Freaks and Geeks,” Feig succinctly captured the lives of teenagers. With Ignatius MacFarland: Frequenaut!, Feig tackles his first children’s book.
Alfre Woodard is Alice Pratt, a modest woman who owns a small, homey diner. Kathy Bates is Charlotte Cartwright, the much-divorced board member of a top corporation founded by one of her husbands. Viewers are asked to suspend their beliefs in reality that this mismatched pair from different socioeconomic, moral, and ethnic backgrounds could have enough in common to put up with each other, much less be best friends. And yet in his homespun way, writer-director Perry–who also has a small role in the film–makes it work.
Filled with intriguing story lines and a smoking hot cast, Dirty Sexy Money focuses on a idealistic attorney wrestling with his father’s death and the family that may be responsible for it. Peter Krause (Six Feet Under) stars as Nick George, whose father was the legal counsel for the Darling family and good friends with patriarch Tripp (Donald Sutherland) and his wife Letitia (Jill Clayburgh).
The second season of Ugly Betty finds the titular heroine juggling the affections of two men, embroiled in ongoing chaos at work, and dealing with some serious drama on the home front. And yes, this truly is a comedy. First there’s the aftermath of Santos’ death at the end of last season just as he and Betty’s sister Hilda (Ana Ortiz) were reconciling. Hilda deals with her grief by befriending a group of senior citizens, while her son (Mark Indelicato) turns from Broadway-loving good boy to leather-wearing bad boy almost overnight.
Born in the United States to Korean parents and raised in Canada — where she calls Vancouver home — Grace Park got the travel bug early. Though concurrent roles on “The Cleaner” and “Battlestar Galactica” — as well as the Canadian series “The Border” — preclude her from taking as many vacations as she’d like, Park says visiting new countries is one of the joys in life she shares with her husband, Phil Kim. India and Brazil hold special places in Park’s heart, but her favorite destination thus far is Italy’s quaint Vernazza.
Emo Philips has fond memories of Chicago. The Downers Grove native may be based in Los Angeles now, but he credits the Windy City for giving him his big break.
Loosely based on the 2001 Korean romantic comedy of the same name, My Sassy Girl follows a young couple that was brought together by unusual circumstances. Charlie (Jesse Bradford, Flags of Our Fathers) finds Jordan (Elisha Cuthbert, 24) drunk and passed out in a subway station. Worried that she’ll be harmed, he makes sure she gets home safely.
The Chicago Carifete celebrated its 13th anniversary Saturday in Hyde Park with music, costumes and a parade. But it was the mouth-watering Caribbean dishes that attracted some of the fest’s most loyal attendees. “We love the food because it tastes really authentic,” says Arlene Levels of Indianapolis, who traveled with three bus loads of foodies for this year’s Carifete. “And it tastes really authentic because the vendors are all from the Caribbean. This isn’t something you can get in a mall.” She and her friends Carla Lewis and Baretta Shannon began their day eating Jamaican beef patties—a dish traditionally made with beef, hot peppers, thyme and paprika stuffed into a doughy pocket.
Margaret Cho knows a thing or two about traveling. After beginning her standup career at 16, she toured the United States nonstop, bringing her unique brand of comedy to venues across the country. At 26, she broke barriers with her short-lived ABC sitcom “All-American Girl,” where she played a fictionalized version of herself. It was the first American television series where all the lead actors were Asian-American. In her standup routines, Cho talks frankly about how producers asked her at times to try to be more — and less — Asian. Now 39, Cho is ready to debut her new VH1 series “The Cho Show.”
For Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), there’s nothing like a good, tension-filled competition to pick his new team of doctors when his old trio of Chase (Jesse Spencer), Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) and Foreman (Omar Epps) leave his fold. Among the 40 newbies vying to earn the coveted spots in the fourth season of House, M.D. are Dr. Lawrence Kutner (Kal Penn, the Harold & Kumar films), Dr. Chris Taub (Peter Jacobson, Transformers) and Dr., uh, Thirteen (Olivia Wilde, The O.C.). Taking a cue from Flavor Flav, House dubs the latter with that nickname simply because he can.
Beautifully filmed and soothingly narrated by Bernard Hill (The Lord of the Rings trilogy), Wild China takes an expansive look at the fourth largest country in the world.
The always-dapper Chris Isaak may slip into his famous mirror-ball suit during Saturday’s show at the Morton Arboretum.
“Sex and Death 101” presents an intriguing premise: If you were given a list of all the people you were destined to sleep with, would you give up what you currently have to fulfill that prophecy?
Janis Ian is back in the news thanks to her provocative memoir “Society’s Child” (Tarcher/Penguin, $26.95). Ian, 57, recounts her life as a teenage prodigy and lets readers get a glimpse of how she came up with her hit songs (“At Seventeen,” “Society’s Child”), the sexual abuse she suffered as a child and her friendship with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.
Four decades before 15-year-old Miley Cyrus caused a media uproar for posing for photographs that implied she was nude, Janis Ian — then also 15 — wrote the critically acclaimed song “Society’s Child.” A thoughtful look at interracial dating, the song was deemed too controversial to play on many radio stations across the country. A few years later, Ian would become a pop star, thanks to her best-known song, “At Seventeen,” which told the universal tale, “Dreams were all they gave for free, to ugly duckling girls like me.”
The third season of “The Hills” is alive with the sound of arguing, crying, and making up (sort of) by the telegenic quartet known as Lauren, Heidi, Whitney and Audrina. Glitzy, fabulous and completely unrealistic, this top-rated MTV reality series thrives on the conceit that pretty girls are jealous of each other when one of them has a boyfriend. But if that boyfriend is Spencer (Heidi’s big-toothed Svengali-in-training), it’s not necessarily jealousy the girls are feeling so much as revulsion.
Programs like “I Love New York” profess to be a legitimate way of finding soulmates for the quasi-celebs. But all they really aim to do is get high enough ratings so that the producers can justify okaying subsequent seasons.
It’s not easy for the child of any celebrity to come out of their parent’s shadow. But Simone — the daughter of the legendary Nina Simone — makes it look effortless. A talented singer in her own right who performed on Broadway in “Rent” and “Aida,” the 46-year-old beauty is nonplussed by the comparisons some critics have made between the songs on her debut album “Simone on Simone” and her mother’s classic recordings.
It has been three decades since Henry Winkler became a pop culture icon, thanks to his scene-stealing portrayal of the Fonz on “Happy Days.” These days, the actor has a whole new generation of fans, thanks to his Hank Zipzer: The World’s Greatest Underachiever series of children’s books. Hank, an irrepressible fourth-grader, deals with dyslexia, bullies and a potential love interest in the latest installment — “The Life of Me: Enter at Your Own Risk” ($5.99, Gosset & Dunlap).