17 posts tagged “new york”

Great news! Flight of the Conchords has received three Emmy nods for directing, writing, and original music and lyrics. It didn’t get an Emmy nomination for best comedy series, which I think is a sin.
   Not bad for a show conceived by a bunch of Kiwis, even if it did take American money and HBO to get it off the ground.
   And thank goodness it did—how else would it have become so widely received? I can’t see a TV3- or TVNZ-funded Conchords cracking the US market—it would, like Outrageous Fortune, have been remade at best.
   Good luck to Bret, Jemaine and the others associated with the show.

I thought this was awesome news in that the photographer, Giuliano Bekor, shot regularly for Lucire. From the Lucire ‘Insider’ section.

Giuliano Bekor, whose credits include numerous Lucire shoots, photographed Hayden Panettiere for her 2008 Candie’s print campaign.

Hayden Panettiere will star in Candie’s back to school 2008 television, print and online advertising campaign, according to the company. Hayden, who is known as an award-winning actress, activist and star of NBC’s hit television series Heroes can now add recording artist to her résumé.
   Following last year’s marketing campaign with Grammy-award winning artist Fergie, the new fall TV commercial will be a direct lift from Panettiere’s first music video, ‘Wake Up Call’, which was styled using Candie’s apparel, footwear and accessories.
   This is Panettiere’s second season with the brand.
   To coincide with TV, a print campaign will feature Panettiere in a variety of sexy and sweet vignettes as she playfully poses with a piano, behind a beaded curtain and in a club-like setting among others. The ‘Wake Up Call’ video and the Candie’s commercial were shot in Los Angeles by famed music video director Chris Applebaum and the print campaign was shot by fashion photographer Giuliano Bekor, whose credits include Lucire, and created by the Iconix in-house marketing team.
   Fans can listen to ‘Wake Up Call’ exclusively at www.candies.com and www.kohls.com/inspire (streaming only) beginning today. The single will be available for download on iTunes beginning August 5. The single is being released by Hollywood Records.

Heard over dinner tonight, hosted by Laywood Chan, son of the late and great Dan Chan who passed away on May 18: the story of Judy Chen of Flushing, NY, a mother of two sons serving with the US armed forces, was attacked by a Red Chinese régime-sanctioned thug operating in the United States. Only Republicans Tom Tancredo and Dana Rohrabacher have said anything about it on behalf of Ms Chen, charging that the Red Chinese were behind this attack on an American citizen. Many others have taken place.
   Ms Chen, who escaped Red China after victimization during the Cultural Revolution, asked, ‘Am I in China or America?’
   Ms Chen said that rocks and eggs were also thrown at them by the thugs.
   Why are not more lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum not joining in and pointing out to the Red Chinese that attacks on Americans on their own soil are totally unacceptable?
   And if the charges are true, why is the Red Politburo so fearful and willing to commit a hate crime on someone else’s foreign soil? If the reversed happened it would organize mass protests against that other nation and call for a mass boycott.
   Maybe Americans should be doing just that.
   According to a press release, one of Ms Chen’s sons, LCOM John Lee Caldwell, flew home to see how bad the attack on his mother was.
   LCOM Caldwell is about to go on his second tour in Iraq but took 10 days’ leave to see his mother.
   The release from PR Newswire and the anti-Communist Party Epoch Times (often biased against the Beijing Politburo) alleged, ‘Pro-communist mobs numbering as many as 600 have been a consistent presence in Flushing, New York, since May 17th when they first began intimidating Falun Gong adherents. The attacks on Falun Gong have frequently escalated to violence, and at least seven instigators have been arrested on charges of assault by New York police. The attacks are believed to have been orchestrated by the Chinese Consulate in New York City, as revealed by a telephone recording with Mr. Keyu Peng, the Chinese Consul General, in which he boasts of his involvement.
   ‘The incidents in New York City are part of a larger pattern of coercive intimidation used by Beijing's United Front Work Organization, which is charged with the mission of isolating and destroying dissenting voices on foreign soil—even in the U.S. The ramifications were apparent enough by 2004 as to prompt House Congressional Resolution 304, calling for Beijing to cease its intimidation of Falun Gong adherents on U.S. soil.’
   I am not commenting on the validity of Falun Gong and whether it is a cult or not: the fact remains that an American subject was attacked and if there is a Politburo connection, Americans need to pay careful attention to what foreign governments are committing on their own soil.

More details are emerging about the pilot to the US Life on Mars, this time from New York magazine, which reveals how very close to the original it is (e.g. Sam goes into a record store to figure out how Raimes keeps his victims quiet). Their judgement: the ABC retooling will be a good thing.

Life on Mars US

US Life on Mars looks like it’s in some sort of Hollywood hell, because of all the back-room deals that have gone on. The only new drama from ABC TV in the US this fall, there’s a lot riding on it. The pilot was already made, but now the network wants to tinker. David E. Kelley, who wrote the adaptation and executive-produced it, has departed. In fact, there’s talk of scrapping the pilot and starting from scratch, shifting the story from Los Angeles to New York. Somehow it’s all got to work out before the series débuts.
   Scott Collins of the Los Angeles Times tries to summarize what has been going on and it looks like a mess. One excerpt:

The network and producers are talking about tossing out the pilot and starting over. Or not; maybe they’ll just tweak a few details. Some of the actors might get canned. Not necessarily, though. One thing we know for sure: Over the last few days, the decision was made to move the series out of Los Angeles—in both its setting and its production—to shoot on location in New York City, giving it a very different look.

   What I thought was funny was that the network felt Kelley departed too much from the original.
   I do agree that New York is a better venue for the show; I always felt Seattle would have suited the theme more. But if they are retooling the show before the première, they had better work fast.

9-11 parking stub

Despite the shock of 9-11, which happened in New Zealand on September 12, 2001 thanks to the time difference (why don’t we insist on calling it 12-9?), I still had to attend the breakfast for the first day of the Wellington Fashion Festival for Lucire. And, that morning, I had to pay for car parking.
   I had used this parking ticket to write on—the back has a note to my father—and when he lent me a suit to wear to Dan’s funeral today, I found this item.
   It brought back a lot of memories and a lot of worries that morning—a friend of mine working for Verizon used to get off at the WTC stop on the subway. I rushed back to the office to see if I could get through to New York, found out everyone was alive, then hung up so other services could use the phone.
   I watched a lot of plans go up in smoke that day—I had intended to return to NYC in October 2001, funnily enough with one intention of checking out the World Trade Center’s observation deck.

I’m sorry to hear about Gov Eliot Spitzer of New York. I remember dealing with him when he was New York State Attorney-General and he was a good guy. He’d get on to emails, was quick to respond, and really wanted to serve the public.
   While I don’t agree with his seeking a prostitute—something that is legal here in New Zealand, incidentally—Gov Spitzer has done the right thing with his resignation, effective Monday. I do hope, however, he can repair the rift in his family that is no doubt there, and that he will still be able to contribute positively to a state which I believe he genuinely loves.

Before I begin, I should note that this story does not have a response from the Clintons directly, but it makes very disturbing viewing. As Peter Paul says in the first part, the case against the Clintons is proceeding, dealing with a massive election fraud, but there is nothing in the media about it. At the end of Part One, Mr Paul shows a video that demonstrates Mrs Clinton was in full knowledge of the campaign contributions that were raised for her by him and his organization.
   Equal Justice Foundation of America, which presents the documentary, calls the incident ‘most shocking expose on the blatant corruption surrounding Hillary Clinton. Includes exclusive home videos of Hillary to expose the illegalities that elected Hillary to the Senate and the obstructions of justice that keep her there.’ One commentator believes that Sen. Clinton has committed a felony punishable by five years’ jail time.
   Let us say this is not beyond the realm of imagination and needs to be considered fairly.

[Cross-posted] John Jones, Stephen Ciuccoli, Kristina Foreman, Amanda Dorcil and Ashleigh Berry are at New York Fashion Week for Lucire, and we’ll be bringing you coverage in the print edition later in 2008. Meanwhile, we’ve managed to get our hands on the videos of the opening, featuring Lipstick Jungle’s Brooke Shields, her co-stars Kim Raver and Lindsay Price, at Bryant Park. Also present was the ever-supportive Fern Mallis, IMG Fashion’s senior vice-president, and Mercedes-Benz marketing VP Stephen Cannon.

When I was a kid new to Wellington, there was a complex called Cubacade, in which there were numerous shops. If you kept walking through Cubacade, you would wind up in an office block called the World Trade Center, complete with American spelling.
   I learned—though this may be apocryphal—that the New York Port Authority got upset and the building later was renamed the Wellington Trade Centre. When I did contract work in that building in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was generally called by its later name.
   These days, Cubacade has given way to Left Bank, though the office block remains. I believe it’s now Ivivi House, though there remains one sign of its original name. In front of the Ghuznee Street car park entrance, the original name can still be seen: World Trade Center.
   In fact, if you Google World Trade Center Cubacade, you can still find numerous references, so evidently some people were still using the original name(s) during the internet era.
   Unlike some of my friends in Stockholm, who rushed downtown when they heard that a plane had hit the World Trade Center (yes, they have one, too), no one here rushed to Victoria Street to check if the 12-storey office building was burning.

World Trade Center south entrance