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New York: A reality show featuring Whitney Houston’s relatives, including daughter Bobbi Kristina and mother Cissy, is in the works.

Houston representative Kristen Foster confirmed the Lifetime show, "The Houston Family Chronicles," on Friday. It will focus on Pat Houston, sister-in-law and manager of the late singer. Pat Houston is also helping care for Whitney Houston’s only child, 19-year-old Bobby Kristina.

The show promises to feature Bobbi Kristina and Cissy, as well as Houston’s cousin Dionne Warwick, gospel singer CeCe Winans and other members of the Houston family. "The tragic loss of Whitney Houston left a void in the hearts of people all over the world, but certainly none more so than her beloved family," said Rob Sharenow, executive vice president of programming at Lifetime, in a statement.

"In this series, the multi-generations of the Houston family will bravely reveal their lives as they bond together to heal, love, and grow."

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In his day — the 1700s — throwing a party was a political act. But 200 years later — in 1972, to be exact — balls are out of style. Women’s lib is in the air, and his movie is loaded with powerful, independent women. The hippies are dropping out. And vampires are an anachronism.

I better admit from the start I never saw Dan Curtis’ spooky “Dark Shadows” soap opera, a curio that ran from 1966 to 1971. The belated blockbuster edition arrives courtesy of director Tim Burton, star Depp and “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” scribe Seth Grahame-Smith, a mash-up monster squad possibly more inclined to camp than Curtis was, and certainly more tickled by the nostalgic “modernity” of the Nixon era.

The fruit of their labors is mostly weirdly amusing — when it’s not just plain bemusing — but hardly the wacky parody the trailers suggest. And it falls well short of satire. The gags are there alright, but so is the soap in roughly equal measure. Always stronger on gothic atmosphere than story, Burton dedicates unwarranted screentime to the Collins’ dull fortunes in the fish canning business (I’m not kidding).

More promisingly, he dishes up tortured romance more or less straight — or as straight as a romantic triangle between an angry witch, a lovelorn vampire and a corpse is ever likely to be — and smuggles at least a smidgeon of heartfelt emotional baggage into the spectacularly dysfunctional dynamics of the Collins clan.

As we know by now, in Burton’s films being a misfit is a mark of distinction. And if Depp’s Barnabas is by his own admission an accursed monster with buckets of blood on his hands, he’s more or less absolved of moral guilt, redeemed by his loyalty, integrity and commitment to the family.

On top of which, Depp is fun.

He’s a vision in monochrome with his pasty complexion, black cape and hair. His elongated fingers weave mesmerizing dainty webs in thin air, and he pounces on each and every syllable of ripe 18th century rhetoric for maximum pomp. But scratch the surface and this turns out to be another arch, hollow turn from an actor who seems to treat his roles like extended party pieces, sniffing out any excuse for vaudeville and hang the consequences.

His Barnabas is the life of the party but impossible to take seriously as a tormented soul. Despite his protestations, there is precious little heat between him and his beloved, Victoria (an intriguingly wan Bella Heathcote).

If you can’t join him, beat him: that seems to be Eva Green’s game, effectively out-vamping Depp as Barnabas’ spurned lover and nemesis, brittle, randy sorceress Angelique. Also preening for attention but given rather less to play is Michelle Pfeiffer — who must have thought she was back in Eastwick — as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the de facto head of the family, Helena Bonham Carter Burton as dypso head-doctor Julia Hoffman and Chloe Grace Moretz as Elizabeth’s very adolescent daughter Caroline. Then there is Alice Cooper as plain old Alice Cooper.

They’re all troupers, but step back a moment, you might feel a bit queasy about a picture that shrugs off multiple murders and vilifies an abused housemaid who rebels against the old European social hierarchies.

Unfortunately, Burton and Depp’s ironic, detached treatment invites just that kind of idle reflection. The architecture looks grand, but the foundations are shaky.

Story By: by Andria Lisle

Donald “Duck” Dunn onstage about 1990.

Donald “Duck” Dunn played bass with Booker T. and the MGs, who backed many of the hits Stax Records put out in the 1960s. He was 70 years old when he died Sunday in Tokyo. At the audio link, you can listen to a remembrance of Dunn’s life and career that aired on All Things Considered.

For the third time in a month, the marquee at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music is eulogizing a fallen alumnus: On April 12, it read “R.I.P. Andrew Love.” May 1, it marked the death of wah-wah guitarist Skip Pitts. Today, it pays tribute to Duck Dunn, the bassist who, as a member of Booker T. and the MGs, laid the foundation for so many of the hit records that put Stax on the map.

Although I’ve lived in Memphis since the mid-1980s, I came late to the MGs. I knew Dunn first from The Blues Brothers; despite the fact that I’d heard songs like “In the Midnight Hour” and “Try A Little Tenderness” thousands of times, I was a straggler to the party that is Memphis soul. Anchored by equal parts blues, country, gospel and jazz, Memphis soul music is more fatback than lean, typified as “gutbucket” in comparison with its sophisticated counterparts in Philly or Detroit. Dunn’s finger-poppin’ instrumental oeuvre — created with guitarist Steve Cropper, drummer Al Jackson Jr. and organist Booker T. Jones — led, in a roundabout way, to my career as a freelance music journalist.

Interviewing musicians made for an incredibly fun gig, but it was also nerve-racking to ask tough questions of my idols. Calling Dunn was easy — like talking to a neighbor who just happened to be a living link to the world beyond the microcosm of the Memphis soul scene, a compatriot of The Beatles and Neil Young. Dunn was a source I relied on. We’d talk fishing, then make an easy segue into the topic of the moment: Jerry Wexler, the revival of Stax Records, Otis‘ legacy, or the mysteries of Dylan. When it came to music history, Dunn was the uncomplicated, almost goofy man in the midst of the maelstrom, and he always offered an unfettered point of view.

“The Beatles came to the club we were playing in, the Bag O’Nails in London, and bowed to us,” Dunn remembered with a chuckle when I quizzed him about the Stax-Volt Revue’s triumphant 1967 European tour. “It made me feel like a million dollars, I guess. To tell you the truth, when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, the Dave Clark Five appeared the following week, and I turned to my wife and said, ‘Now there’s a good band.’ She was going crazy over the Beatles, and I didn’t want to like them.”

Simplifying my conversations with Dunn was the fact that he was one of us: a Memphis boy who, even though he had long ago relocated to South Florida, could often be spotted at a table at Pete & Sam’s. He was also my friend Melissa’s uncle, which made him even more accessible. On a higher plane, Dunn’s success as the member of an apolitical, integrated band helped to overcome our city’s troubled past. Thanks in part to the MGs’ grit and grind through the tumultuous ’60s, 30 years later I could happily dance my ass off in a sea of black and white audience members while Melissa’s Uncle Duck bobbed up and down onstage, the neck of his electric bass swaying with the beat.

The last time I talked to Dunn, I was writing liner notes for a reissue project on Packy Axton, who played sax with him in his high school band, The Mar-Keys. For the first time, it was a difficult phone call to make — I was consciously digging up old memories of Axton, an alcoholic who died at the tender age of 32. Dunn was distracted. His wife, June, was undergoing cancer treatment, and he didn’t have time or energy to revisit that chapter of his past. We talked about Melissa, and about which fish were biting, then he gently suggested I try him again in a month. We didn’t reconnect, but June went into remission and Dunn was able to get back on the road, most recently for a stint in Tokyo with Cropper and soul singer Eddie Floyd.

Most Memphians were asleep when Cropper tweeted the bad news from Japan, but by Sunday morning, the city’s musicians were in mourning.

After a monthlong heat wave, the weather had turned unseasonably chilly. Clouds hung low as Marty Speak and Joshua Greenlee, the facilities crew at the Stax Museum, updated the marquee that overlooks the intersection where the MGs once re-enacted the cover photograph of Abbey Road. Friends and fans took to the Internet, posting videos on Facebook and stories on the comments page for the Commercial Appeal obituary that was hastily written.

No word yet on whether or not there will be a public service for Dunn, but it’s more fitting to see him praised in the clubs rather than from a pulpit or a funeral parlor. “I love to play live,” Dunn once told me. “That’s the reason most musicians play. It’s just fun seeing people liking what you do.”

Riteish Deshmukh and Boman Irani have been entertaining viewers with their wit and comic timing as the hosts of the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards for the past four years. But this year, Shahid Kapoor might be taking the mantle away from them.

According to a source, Kapoor is being roped in to anchor the 13th edition of IIFA, to be held in Singapore from June 7-9.

Shah Rukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan are also likely to host certain segments of the ceremony. Both actors are in the run for the best actor in a leading role award for their performances in Don 2: The King Is Back and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, respectively.

The three-day event will see a host of Indian celebrities. It will feature fashion shows and a musical extravaganza, with all celebrations culminating in a glittering awards presentation ceremony.

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Story By: by Milo Miles

Joan Soriano.

Joan Soriano: Tiny Desk Concert

A superb new collection of vintage bachata singles is titled Bachata Roja: Amor y Amargue, and indeed the music itself was originally called amargue — which means “bitterness” — for its slow-moving laments about broken hearts and lonely nights. First recorded at the start of the 1960s, early bachata functioned much like weepy country-Western music in America, popular with Dominican truck drivers and in rural bars. But there was always a restless quality in the style, and soon it moved beyond its roots in Cuban son and bolero ballads to incorporate more dance rhythms.

The Bachata Roja anthology includes songs up to the ’80s, but no matter the date, the selections maintain a potent simplicity and directness, reflecting the downtrodden or celebratory sound of plain lives. One advantage of this lack of clutter is that a few added elements — sweet vocal harmonies, extra percussion or a splash of horns — makes tracks like Ramon Cordero’s “El pajarito” jump out.

Since the ’80s, bachata has blossomed in a manner not unlike salsa in the ’70s. It is now a popular, established style throughout the Caribbean and international capitals like New York. This has not been an entirely beneficial development for the music. Like country music when it went mainstream in the modern era, big-time bachata became facile and larded with glossy sounds. The hit group Aventura too often suggests the latest incarnation of a boy band with some exotic beats and Spanish lyrics.

In a return to the roots of the music, guitarist Joan Soriano has taken the next step and is establishing himself as a bachata neo-traditionalist. He plays amplified guitar and understands the sonic possibilities of the modern instrument. While his accompaniment is never looming and overblown, it’s not folkie-stark, either. Even so, until now, his virtuosity has made him sound rather slick, more studio-bound than his street-corner predecessors. With the new La Familia Soriano, he comes halfway and ends up on the front porch with three singing siblings, brother Fernando and sisters Nelly and Griselda. The comfortable tone of La Familia Soriano and the rotating vocal features help Joan Soriano’s skills on the six-string glisten without being flashy. He has an appealing style, at once declarative and quietly poetic.

But the unquestioned winner on the album is Joan’s duet with Griselda, which delivers all the ease and warmth possible for people who grew up singing together. It turns out the tradition of playing in a musical family is good for the tradition of bachata itself.

Old or new, bachata is here to stay. My feeling is that the strength of the roots will outlast the big stars in the shiny suits.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – When supermodel Linda Evangelista told French billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault in 2006 she was pregnant with his child, he asked her to get an abortion, her attorney charged Thursday on the first day of a child-support trial in Manhattan.

Pinault, 49, who is currently married to actress Salma Hayek, denied that charge but testified he told Evangelista that “if she were to have a child (they) might not have a relationship.”

With that a four-month relationship, in which he said the couple only actually saw each other seven days, came to an end.

“I didn’t even know her very much,” Pinault said during an acrimonious afternoon hearing.

The case drew widespread attention last year after it was reported Evangelista was seeking as much as $46,000 a month in child support.

Her attorney William Beslow said that figure was inaccurate, while acknowledging that the unspecified sum she would be seeking is “substantial.”

Beslow contends Pinault is worth more than $3 billion. Pinault’s attorney, David Aronson, calculated that Evangelista’s annual income averaged $1.8 million for the four years leading up to her filing for support in 2010.

“Is Mr. Pinault a comfortable person of substantial means?” Aronson asked in opening arguments. “The answer is yes. But Ms. Evangelista is also a person of substantial means.”

Evangelista, 46, gave birth to a son, Augustin, now 5, and supported him for the first several years of his life. She decided to take Pinault to court after private child-support negotiations failed and her multi-year contract as a spokesmodel for L’Oreal Paris cosmetics ended in 2010, Beslow said.

One of the modeling world’s most recognizable faces, Evangelista arrived about 15 minutes late to court wearing a black skirt, a floral-patterned blouse, beige stiletto pumps and a grim expression. She barely glanced at Pinault as the trial got underway.

During opening arguments, both lawyers sought to portray their clients as victims of each other’s public relations smear campaigns.

Pinault testified he first received a child support request from Evangelista in 2007.

“I asked, ‘What do you have in mind?’, he said. “I received a demand. It was not reasonable, I made a counterproposal.”

He said the next time he heard from Evangelista was 2010, when she filed the support case.

Augustin is Evangelista’s only child. Pinault has two children from a previous marriage, and a third child by Hayek.

The trial is expected to last several days, after which a surrogate judge will decide on the amount of child support due to Evangelista. Either side may appeal that ruling to a family court judge.

(Editing by Paul Thomasch and Xavier Briand)

<span class="articleLocation”>(Reuters) – Subscribers to Dish Network Corp could lose TV shows such as “Mad Men and “The Walking Dead” as a result of a dispute between the satellite TV company and AMC Networks Inc over programming fees and a 4-year-old lawsuit.

Dish spokesman Bob Toevs said in a statement on Friday that the satellite provider had decided to drop the channels IFC, Sundance, WE and the AMC Network’s flagship AMC channel when its contract expires in June.

AMC first said that Dish planned to drop its programming in a statement on Friday related to a 4-year-old breach-of-contract lawsuit that a subsidiary of AMC Networks, called VOOM HD, had brought against Dish. VOOM HD is seeking more than $2.5 billion in damages against Dish for improperly terminating a 15-year contract in 2008, according to a statement by AMC Networks spokeswoman Georgia Juvelis.

The case is set to go to trial in the New York State Supreme Court after the judge denied Dish’s pretrial appeal against a claim it had destroyed evidence in the case.

Dish responded that the VOOM litigation is a separate matter from carriage fees, saying it fairly ended its agreement with the AMC Networks unit, which had not delivered the content it had promised.

Dish said that AMC was charging too much for its programming and that it also drew low ratings. It said customers could watch AMC’s programming on the Internet, on Netflix or Amazon.com. AMC licenses older seasons of its shows to Netflix and Amazon.com, but not its current seasons.

Meanwhile, AMC said on Friday that “The Walking Dead” was the No. 1 scripted drama with Dish subscribers in the most recent quarter, according to Nielsen Media Research.

As AMC evolves from a sleepy backwater cable channel for old movies to a home for premium TV shows, cable and satellite operators have braced themselves for an increase in subscriber fees by the New York-based company.

AMC executives have said they expect to triple the fees they charge carriers to 75 cents per subscriber over the next four to five years with various partners.

AMC raising its affiliate fees for its increasingly popular networks brings its own challenges.

Cable operator Suddenlink Communications pushed back this month, warning customers AMC was demanding up to a 100 percent increase in fees over the length of its current contract.

The dispute was resolved with the operator – which boasts 1 million subscribers – but not before it got nasty, according to one senior executive. Disputes with larger distributors such as Dish, which has some 14 million subscribers, are bound to be even more complicated.

(Reporting By Liana B. Baker)

Published May 5th, 2012 – 19:35 GMT

Ahlam the Emirati singer, has come out with a new look, not for the first time, appearing on the Dubai show “Tratata” looking slimmer after a visible amount of weight loss. She looked markedly different from the ‘before version’ when she last appeared to us on “Arab Idol” as one of the judges.  Just months ago, she appeared fuller-figured on our Arab Idol-tuned-in TV screens.

Ahlam faced a lot of negative criticism while starring in Arab Idol about her weight gain, especially the area around her stomach.  She was advised to wear more appropriate loser-fitting clothes that hid all her bulges instead of wearing tight fitting items as the infamous camel toe trousers.

Still, a good sport, the Emirati singer assured us that she’d enjoyed a wonderful experience as a judge on Arab Idol, expressing that it was an important step in her career. As testimony to her gracious celebrity character, she also announced that she would indeed be hosting the second season of the show, contrary to rumors earlier that she was pulling out.

In a report in the Saudi newspaper “Al Youm”, Ahlam admitted that she was attacked on several social media networks for her work on the show, believing the reason for this vicious scorn storm had something to do with her being the only person from the Gulf on the show. She pointed out that a lot of people from her home and wider Gulf region supported her with against these unjustified attacks, but thankfully she chose to not listen or pay heed to their criticism and hatred.

What do you think of all the negative press poured on Ahlam since Arab Idol? Do you think this had something to do with this weight loss

A forger who created up to 1,000 bogus paintings – selling many to unsuspecting buyers – has been jailed for two years.

William 'Billy' Mumford, 63, copied artists including Sayed Haider Raza, Welsh landscape painter Kyffin Williams and surrealist John Tunnard.

Mumford, of East Preston, West Sussex, was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court.

He had earlier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud over the five-year scam.

The plot was identified in 2009 after police were contacted by a London auction house which had been offered an unusually high number of paintings purporting to be by Maqbool Fida Husain – called "the Picasso of India".

When they raided Mumford's home they found hundreds of paintings and false instruments.

Also discovered were gallery stamps, ink pads and Victorian paper used to create a false provenance to dupe art experts.

A band of co-conspirators placed the works for sale on Ebay and at auction houses throughout the UK, receiving a 20% cut, the police spokesman explained.

Some of the works ended up being sold on as genuine several times for up to £30,000, with police believing hundreds remain in circulation.

Det Con Michelle Roycroft, formerly of the arts and antiques unit, said: "This complicated case highlights the pitfalls of buying works of art from online auction sites.

"These paintings, listed as 'unknown', came with elaborate false provenance that drew buyers into bidding for the items.

"This, together with William Mumford's execution of the paintings and the attention to detail fooled hundreds of people both in the UK and worldwide with victims in France, USA and Canada."

A police spokesman gave the following sentences for Mumford's co-conspirators:

On May 4, Nadeem Bibby, John Bakhos, Imad Dahleh, Miltiadis Kyvernitis, Rami Lakkis and Jay Jahed of Anuryzm will play at the Flash Forum in Abu Dhabi, ahead of US metal stars Avenged Sevenfold (AX7). But don’t expect the Dubai-based rock group to play second fiddle — they say being a support act is an important role in any concert.

"It adds more atmosphere and entertainment for the evening, plus without an opening act, the audience is missing out on half an hour’s worth of music," says Dahleh, the band’s drummer. "People need to enjoy a concert and get comfortable as the night progresses, plus it’s a great way to discover new bands."

Such as themselves. The band have one album out and lead singer Bibby and lead guitarist and composer John Bakhos are now working on new material, and the support gig to AX7 is a way to share their sound.

The band is "big sound, big music, big performance", says Kyvernitis, Anuryzm’s rhythm guitarist. "We absolutely enjoy what we do on stage and we make it a point to pass on that energy to the crowd and fans."

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