Celebrities Category
Celebrity news & gossip from the world’s showbiz and glamour magazines (OK!, Hello, National Enquirer and more). We read them so you don’t have to, picking the best bits from the showbiz world’s maw and spitting it back at them. Expect lots of sarcasm.
Mariah Carey Spends £28k On Looking After Her Pets
PEOPLE get terribly upset when famous people spend obscene amounts of money on frivolous things. They tut about how much good could be done with all that dough. However, those people are stupid and wrong. Us humans need outrageous and wealthy people.
Imagine a world without Liberace? Imagine who tedious things would be without the tales of Elton John’s private jets?
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Life In The Hollywood Petri Dish: In 1966 Eddie Fisher Married Connie Stevens And Liz Taylor Looked On
ON January 30, 1967, singer Eddie Fisher and actress Connie Stevens (nee Concetta Anna Ingolia) announced their engagement at New York’s Plymouth Theatre.
He wore hair oil. She wore furs.
Eddie was the former TV show called Coke Time.
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Posted: 26th, April 2014 | In: Celebrities, Flashback | Comment
“If He Fires Me, I’ll Thank Him For It”: Five Great Character Moments in the Timothy Dalton James Bond Era
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Posted: 25th, April 2014 | In: Film, Flashback, Key Posts | Comments (6)
Oasis Are Getting Back Together For One Huge Gig
(left to right) Oasis guitarist Gem Archer, Lord Henry Mountcharles and Noel Gallagher officially announcing an open air concert at Slane Castle, which Oasis will headline next summer. Picture date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008.
THERE looks like there’s going to be an invasion of lads in bucket hats with cans of Stella at Glastonbury as the bookies have suspended betting on Oasis headlining Glastonbury after Liam Gallagher tweeted something that appears to suggest a reunion of Oasis.
Gallagher dusted off his favourite typing finger and went on Twitter to individually tweet the letters O-A-S-I-S over the course of a few hours.
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5 Unspeakably Awful Songs of 1980s Horror Cinema
HORROR movies, like any other genre, are products of their time. So, naturally, their soundtracks are going to reflect the popular music of the day. This can be a good thing…. or a devastating handicap when the popular music of the day is disco and breakdancing. Yet, many horror flicks of the 1980s managed to get it right. The soundtrack to Halloween is expertly menacing, as were the soundtracks to Dario Argento’s films (thanks in no small part to Goblin). Perhaps one day we’ll look at the ones that did things right, but today we’re looking at the ones who did things oh so terribly wrong.
Graduation Day (1981)
“Everybody Wants to be the Winner”
I don’t know who sings this opening song, but I can only assume it’s a coked up Leo Sayer. Granted, I’m not a horror movie expert, but I think I’m correct in assuming the opening sequence of a horror film shouldn’t incite peals of mocking laughter. I could be wrong.
Friday the 13th: Part 3 (1982)
Main Titles
An excellent song to breakdance to, I’m sure; however, it seems utterly ridiculous as the opening theme to a slasher movie. The rather disturbing head on a table juxtaposed with a beat-box jam is downright laughable. This would have been right at home as the theme to Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, not a horror movie. I suppose you could make the argument that the Friday the 13th films weren’t exactly serious horror films. Whatever the case, this breakdancing opener is still a laugh.
The House on Sorority Row (1983)
Music by 4 Out Of 5 Doctors
The band in the following video clip is “4 Out of 5 Doctors”, who play several songs throughout the film. When you watch this clip, be sure to pay attention to the part where the 3 girls are checking out a “cute” guy who winks at them – this may very well be cinema’s finest moment.
This dude is sporting what was commonly referred to as the “butt cut”. This scene is just priceless – I want to give this dude a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame!
4 Out of 5 Doctors actually released a few albums, and were Billboard’s “best new band” one month. In an interview with PM Magazine, the band stated their debut record took five years to craft – each day methodically perfecting the ultimate album.
Hmmm…. not quite. They were also the house band in another horror flick, The Boogieman (1980).
Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare (1987)
“We Live To Rock” by Jon Mikl Thor
You’ve heard the phrase “so bad it’s good.” Well, this is “so bad it’s a blight upon all mankind.” Bodybuilder turned heavy-metal train-wreck, Thor, takes metal music to the absolute bottom of the barrel. Picture the worst songs by Quiet Riot, Ratt, and Twisted Sister all rolled into one. Oddly enough, Thor’s music ends up being the only thing remotely horrifying in the entire film.
The Pod People (1983)
“Burning Rubber Tires”
Repetitive, woefully generic, and best of all, the lyrics are incomprehensible. This would have been terrible on a record, but this embarrassing mess is being filmed, and the results are beyond cringeworthy. The moment at the end when the supposed rock star signals “It Stinks” has become something of an iconic moment among B-movie nerds. Most of the notoriety of “Hear the Engines Roll Now” is owed to Mystery Science Theatre 3000 who parodied it brilliantly.
For those wanting to read the lyrics (and I’m assuming that’s literally everyone reading this article), here they are in their entirety. You’re welcome.
With a fickle mind we kick the nickel beer
Steady as a goat, we’re flying over trout.
Ghetto down the highway at the speed of light;
All I want to feel now is the wind in my eyes.
Sack of monkeys in my pocket
My sister’s ready to go.Hear the engine roar now
Idiot control now
Hideous control now
Ninny on the road now.
Minnie in control, wheel’s on fire, burning rubber tires.Leer at jelly rolls now
Hiddy let’s it go now
Ninny inches po down
Pityin’ a po’ boy
Hear the engines roar, bees on pie, burning rubber tires.
Posted: 25th, April 2014 | In: Film, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment
1973: Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’ Played At 33 RPM Reveals An Unexpected Secret
IN 1973, Dolly Parton released the song Jolene. It would become a smash hit.
Mark Wigmore gives some background to the great song:
There are several myths and legends about Dolly Parton’s song “Jolene.” It’s been said that the song is about a bank teller who had been flirting with her husband. There’s another story about a ten-year-old girl named Jolene who asked Parton for her autograph after a concert. But the real story is that of Parton striking out on her own after parting ways with her long-time mentor, Porter Wagoner...
Country music singer Porter Wagoner is shown in West Plains, Mo., Sept. 25, 1971.
Jolene was her first single after Dolly made the decision to embark on her solo career. It was released in October of 1973 and reached the number one position on the country charts in the U.S. and Canada in February of ’74. It was also her first song to cross over to the pop charts. “I Will Always Love You” followed suit a few months later. By the middle of 1975, Dolly had five number one hits in a row and a bona fide superstar was born.
American singer Dolly Parton arrived at Heathrow airport to take part in the eighth International Festival of Country Music at Wembley. Date: 16/04/1976
But did you know that when played at 33 RPM, it sounds like this:
Spotter: Fraser Nelson
Posted: 24th, April 2014 | In: Flashback, Music, Strange But True | Comment (1)
Arcade Fire Are Arcane Dire: Guitar Band Takes Swipe At Electronic Music
Arcade Fire performs at the 2014 Coachella Music and Arts Festival on Sunday, April 20, 2014, in Indio, Calif.
THROW a brick into the air and, chances are, you’ll hit someone who likes guitar music who just can’t accept that electronic music is ‘real’.
Even though electronic pop music has been a thing since the ’60s, rock luddites still can’t get their heads around it. It’s just pressing buttons isn’t it? Just like owning a typewriter makes you an amazing novelist.
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Top Gear Race Row: BBC Velly Solly For Calling An Asian Man A Slope
ON Top Gear’s colonialism-in-a car-style trip to Myanmar, Jeremy Clarkson looked at the bridge her and his two sidekicks had built over the River Kwai (did you see what they did there?) and observed the “slope” on it.
The show’s executive producer Andy Wilman says it was a “joke referencing both the build quality of the bridge and the local Asian man who was crossing it”.
He is velly solly for an offence caused. It was all done accidentally on purpose, maybe.
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Posted: 23rd, April 2014 | In: Celebrities, TV & Radio | Comment
The Rise and Fall of Les McKeown and the Bay City Rollers
The Bay City Rollers, 1974. The Press Association Archives.
THE BBC say it’s 60 million while The Guardian wrote that it was 120 million, The Scotsman, no doubt proud of the band’s Scottish roots, guessed 300 million.Whatever the amount was the Bay City Rollers certainly sold a lot of records although they still grumble to this day about how little they saw of the profits. Forty years ago the band was just about to become massive. The lead singer, Les McKeown, who was just eighteen when he joined the band late in 1973, had his name inked onto a million school bags and notebooks. He was the Harry Styles of the day, maybe even more popular – there was less music to go round in those days.
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Posted: 23rd, April 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
Should We Boycott Record Store Day?
AS everyone knows, Record Store Day is to hipsters what Valentine’s Day is to the romantics. It’s enforced fun where naysayers chirp “you shouldn’t need a designated day to show someone you love them/buy records” and generally, everyone is quite annoying about it on both sides of the fence.
Of course, the people who really like RSD are those who love to queue for hours and touts.
Regarding the latter, Paul Weller, complete with his old lady’s haircut, has called for a boycott on the event, after copies of his limited 45 ‘Brand New Toy’ were being sold on eBay for hiked-up prices.
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Posted: 23rd, April 2014 | In: Music, The Consumer | Comment
The Five Most Underrated Slasher Films of the 1980s
FOLLOWING the incredible box-office and critical success of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), the slasher film quickly became the go-to-format for up-and-coming horror filmmakers in the 1980s. These films had titles like Happy Birthday to Me (1981) and My Bloody Valentine (1981), and most of them concerned bloody massacres on holidays.
Although critics denigrated these slasher films as “dead teenager movies” or “knife-kill” films and slammed their apparent sense of misogyny, and formulaic story lines, the slasher craze of the epoch actually produced a number of great and memorable horror films.
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Posted: 23rd, April 2014 | In: Film, Flashback, Key Posts | Comments (3)
Peaches Geldof: The Caring Sun Trails Its Long Lens On Her Grieving Husband And Sister
PEACHES Geldof has died. Her funeral has been held. So. What now for the paparazzi’s long lens?
Why, how about a picture of her widow and his sister-in-law out for a walk? No fewer than two journalists – MATT WILKINSON and ANDY HALLS – are there to look at the photo and tell readers:
GRIEVING Thomas Cohen walks with his arm round sister-in-law Tiger Lily yesterday — 24 hours after his wife Peaches was cremated. Musician Tom, 23, was comforted by Peaches’ half-sister as they paused at a duck pond
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Posted: 23rd, April 2014 | In: Celebrities | Comment
The Eight-Track Miracle: 8 Reasons It Failed
WHEN eight-track tapes hit the shelves in the latter part of the Sixties, it was seen as a godsend. All of a sudden, you could listen to your music collection in your car, or out-and-about with the new boom-boxes. There were even rumors it would completely replace the vinyl record. Yet, just over a decade later, the humble cassette tape was able to drive it to extinction. Its heyday lasted from 1968-1975, and by 1980 the poor eight-track was in history’s dustbin, a sort-of laughable derelict from the Seventies.
So what happened? Here are 8 reasons for its untimely demise.
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Posted: 23rd, April 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music, Technology | Comments (9)
Steve Jobs Biopic Stars Danny Boyle and Leo DiCaprio
Personal computer pioneer Steve Jobs of NeXT Computer Inc., shows off his NeXTstation color computer to the press at the NeXT facility in Redwood City, Calif., on April 4, 1991. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
EVER looked at Steve Jobs and thought: “There’s a guy I’d like to watch a film about!” Imagine the thrills and spills as Jobs goes to the bank to get a loan! Gasp as Jobs does some soldering on a motherboard! Swoon as he buys 30,000 black turtle neck sweaters!
Good news! Danny Boyle and Leonardo DiCaprio could well be working together on a biopic of the Apple Honcho.
The film will be based on the biography by Walter Isaacson about Jobs, which was released in 2011. It follows on from the film ‘Jobs’, which starred Ashton Kutcher, which no-one watched.
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Posted: 22nd, April 2014 | In: Celebrities, Technology | Comment
The Libertines Reuniting ‘To Pay Off Smack Debts’, Probably
Pete Doherty (left) and Carl Barat of The Libertines performing on the Main Stage, at the Reading Festival, held at Richfield Avenue.
Picture date: Friday August 27, 2010.
SYPHILITIC grot-rockers, The Libertines, could well be making a comeback, which is great news for all those awful humans who live in a permanent state of mildew and have brown teeth and own nothing but four tattoos and a book of tedious soul-searching poetry.
How do we know about this comeback?
Well, Arch Bozo Carl Barât has pretty much said so. Rumours kicked off after suet-faced lightbulb-headed Pete Doherty gave an interview, where he said that he had been approached with an offer to reunite the band for a live show.
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Peaches Geldof: Psst! Wanna See A Dead Celebrity?
PEACHES Geldof was buried today. The Guardian has a feature called:
Peaches Geldof’s funeral – in picture : Stars from the world of show business attend the service at St Mary Magdalene and St Lawrence church in Kent
That’s a bit tabloid, isn’t it? We love the tabloids here at Anorak. But the Guardian doesn’t.
This is the Guardian that said the tabloids harassed Geldof, the women one of its writers called a “bottomless chasm of misplaced arrogance”. Another Guardian writer said:
Frankly, there’s every chance she will find a way to turn even this latest incident into gold, and a forthcoming issue of Hello! will carry an interview of her that tap dances round “the misunderstanding everyone is talking about”, while allowing her to pose up again with her children in exchange for a few quid. If so, we must doff our hats to the Britannia of idiocy, and observe that she should really be on coins – the unapologetic face of some apocalypse-baiting modern currency. Call it Twitcoins, and pile in today.
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Posted: 21st, April 2014 | In: Celebrities | Comment
Letters To The Editor: ‘JUSTIN BIEBER IS ON THE CROSS HE IS THE MESSIAH RESURRECT HIM’
ONE THING the internet cannot yet do that newspapers can is field hand-written letters sent through the post. Andrew Potter, editor of The Ottawa Citizen, tweeted this letter hew received from a reader who says:
“JUSTIN BIEBER IS ON THE CROSS HE IS THE MESSIAH RESURRECT HIM
PRINT THIS”
Odd, indeed. When Anorak has worked for the Press, the best letters have been the ones that reuse letters from the paper – cut out and pasted onto card.
Posted: 18th, April 2014 | In: Celebrities | Comment
Man Claims He’s Allergic To Kim Kardashian: Makes His Palms Sweat
THE headline of this piece could’ve been ‘Stupid Man Invents Thing To Get In The Papers’, but alas, we’ll deal with the hand we’ve been given.
Mike Amess has claimed that he’s allergic to Kim Kardashian. Of course, Kim Kardashian is the prime target in the world for people who want to knock someone without having to actually think of someone worthy of being a target.
Yes. Kim Kardashian is actually alright and hugely misunderstood, but that’s another article.
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Posted: 18th, April 2014 | In: Celebrities, Strange But True | Comment
1978: Kellie Everts Was The Miss Nude Universe Who Became God’s Stripper
IN 1978, the Associated Press met Kellie Everts, the Miss Nude Universe who became as a striptease artist performing on a Washington stage because “God told her to quiet her job as a social worker and return to the stage to perform her strip act”.
The woman born Rasa von Werder was stripping for Jesus.
And isn’t stripping another kind of social work?
(via)
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Posted: 18th, April 2014 | In: Celebrities, Flashback | Comment
Gabriel García Márquez 1927-2014
RIP Gabriel García Márquez, 1927-2014:
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Posted: 17th, April 2014 | In: Books, Celebrities, Reviews | Comment
Damon Albarn and Noel Gallagher To Make A Record Together?
THE animosity circus that was Britpop, with everyone trying to outdo each other by saying “we’re the best band in the world” and slating other bands was fun for 10 minutes. When bands like Scotland’s The Gyres started calling themselves the best band in the world, everything got a bit claggy.
However, one rivalry really caught everyone’s attention – Oasis versus Blur.
On one hand, you had the distanced Damon Albarn and his gaggle of middle-class artists, sidestepping the High Street to look at the way people lived. It was songs about lottery winners, girls who worked the check-outs, shipping forecasts and having sex with the telly on. On the other, you had Oasis – a gang of lads from some crap street, hungry for success and writing songs about having the best night out ever and immortality.
Everything about the rivalry worked, even though both bands were indebted to the same period of ’60s music (Oasis were aping The Beatles’ ‘Rain’ and noisy Freakbeat records, while Blur took a Ray Davies and ‘Penny Lane’ approach). Is was lads off the estate versus those that listened in school.
Many snide remarks were thrown back and forth and it was equally useful for both bands as the press and marketing teams gobbled it all up. It all came to the fore with Country House versus Roll With It. Both bands, in their own way won and, the ultimate loser was the record buying public as, once the fuss had died down, they realised they’d got suck into buying some subpar records.
However, they’ve all grown up now. Damon Albarn is a music magpie with a variety of collaborations and projects under his belt, while Noel Gallagher left Oasis, leaving Liam to tour with Beady Eye, the world’s best Oasis tribute act. Gone are the jibes wishing AIDS on each other. Damon and Noel, the statesmen of their respective camps, have grown to like each other away from all the din.
Albarn has, for a while now, talked of the times he bumped into Noel and, after a tentative start, they’ve grown to like each other. Now, in 2014, it looks like an album with them both is on the cards.
Damon revealed that making an album with Noel Gallagher is a “distinct possibility” and that the pair have discussed the idea “at least once”.
“I still see Noel from time to time. We text a bit,” Albarn says. When asked if the pair would be making a record together, he said: “I can imagine that being a very distinct possibility at some point in the future. But, as yet we haven’t really talked about it, although…”
“OK we have a little bit. We’re talking. It’s not anything to get excited about yet. I mean, he’s doing his thing. He’s finishing a new record. I’ve got my record coming out, but the principle of us making music together is something…you know, it would be fair to say, we have discussed it at least once.”
And if you missed it, Damon and Noel played on-stage together last year at the Royal Albert Hall for a Teenage Cancer Trust gig.
Could be a good LP, if they work it out.
Posted: 16th, April 2014 | In: Music, Reviews | Comment (1)
