4 posts tagged “tabloid”

Just as I finished writing about Philip Glenister getting his driver off a ticket by acting as Gene Hunt, I surfed over to an article about Canadian actor William Shatner linked from the Daily Mail page I cited earlier:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=565380&in_page_id=1879

   In the 1960s, Shatner wore his Capt Kirk uniform rushing to work and was also stopped. He writes:

I got out of my car, dressed in my uniform. The police officer looked me up and down, frowned and asked: “So where are you going so fast at this time in the morning?”
   I told him the truth: “To my spaceship.”
   He sighed. “OK, go ahead,” he said, before adding the Vulcan blessing: “Live long and prosper.”

   Nothing new under the sun.
   The story is quite good, told in the first person. Shatner recounts his lows and the death of his third wife (after what seems to be the final paragraph talking about the price of his autobiography).

If you thought the story of Amir Massoud Tofangsazan was embarrassing, what if something similar happened to a celebrity?
   Over the last few weeks, the Edison Chen scandal has rocked Hong Kong and even affected the Beijing Olympics.
   Chen, a Canadian-born actor about to make a big US début—already he’s a Pepsi spokesman in Hong Kong—took in his laptop for repair but forgot to take down his home-made porn, which includes 12 female celebrities.
   Just as with Laptop Guy (Thomas Sawyer) in the UK with Amir’s photos in 2006, someone at the computer shop decided they would post the 1,200-plus images and videos on to the ’net.
   If we think the Britney Spears Machine is bad, Hong Kong tabloids make that look like a old world gentlemen’s club.
   PC World offers this analogy: ‘Imagine photos of, say, Matthew McConaughey popping up on the Internet, showing him in various states of undress and sexual acts with, say, Alicia Keys, Kelly Clarkson and Kirsten Dunst.’
   One of the celebs implicated is Gillian Chung, who was supposedly going to perform at the Olympics. Not any more. Prior to this month she had a wholesome image—now she may be more associated with performing and receiving oral sex. (The logical thing now would be to revamp her image as Madonna does regularly, but whether that will go down well in the innocent Cantopop world is another matter.)
   Batgwa summarizes the other celebs:

The biggest female stars implicated were Gillian Chung (鍾欣桐) and Cecilia Cheung (張栢芝).
   Other less well known female celebrities were implicated too, including Bobo Chan (陳文媛), Rachel Ngan (顏穎思), Mandy Chen (陳育嬬), Candice Chan (陳思慧) and Edison’s current girlfriend Vincy Yeung (楊永晴).

   Chen has basically announced, at 27, his retirement from the Hong Kong scene. He might have to: some of the celebs may have Triad connections (there is some gang involvement in Hong Kong moviemaking) and he’s received death threats.
   Cops have arrested nine people so far in connection with the unlawful distribution of the images.
   While Chen is no saint, he deserved his privacy. The poster has essentially brought down the careers of several people. I suppose this is a reminder that when you are in the public eye, you need to take precautions. Putting your own porn on to a disc or a flash drive would be an idea—or simply be a role model and being less promiscuous in relationships and never fear these leaks.
   We may criticize Chen for his behaviour and we certainly should criticize the breach of trust from the shop, but the problem is wider. We need to ask ourselves just where our values are—and the way the Chinese people have reacted shows that they have not fled the free and occupied parts of China.

Hopped over to Magnetix with Monica (assistant) today to find that the good old Observer newspaper has returned to their shelves.
   For ages, Magnetix did not have Pommy newspapers, either the qualities or the tabloids. There was an absence as the qualities began reducing their size, and I have a feeling the importer did not want us regular Kiwis to know that Great Britain no longer had broadsheets. What would happen if we thought their newspapers had all reduced to Euro-sized tabloids and Berliners? Shock! We might think that Britain had joined the Common Market!
   The dailies began disappearing. Then the Sunday papers. As each broadsheet ceased publication in its larger size, there were no more on sale here.
   It was surprising that the Guardian group papers went, too, since they have tended to be at the forefront of good design for many years—first with the Pentagram redesign (someone once said the adoption of Helvetica made it fascist-looking), then with the commissioning of the Guardian family of typefaces from my friends Christian Schwartz (who started in licensing digital type around the same time I did) and Paul Barnes (whom I do not know as well).
   When I wrote an article on The Guardian’s most recent redesign for Desktop in Australia, I had to ask Christian to send me electronic examples, rather than hop down to the local store to buy a copy and scan samples. OK, so I saved myself a bit of money, but there’s still that satisfying feeling being able to see someone’s work in the medium it was intended for.
   Now, bring back The Times—or will the sight of that in tabloid format shock us Kiwis too much?

I tell ya, the more people enter the blogosphere, the more din gets created.
   Take a read of this one for a very good laugh about people for whom humour just seems to go over their heads.

http://www.nzrealitytv.com/2007/05/craig-revel-horwood-continues-to-ruffle.html

   It refers back here, and I think the writer missed the point. Hopefully my comment addresses it.
   For another very strange one (especially for those of you able to read the private posts here), check this one out, from my main blog:

http://www.jackyan.com/blog/2007/04/next-h-by-al-gore.html

Note the comments by the chap, Kindabemused. Those who know the story will understand my need for specifics in my penultimate comment on the page. But surely no normal, reasonable person (or even the officious bystander) could have got the wrong end of the stick with the Trelise Cooper undies comment?
   It’s not like my blog is the New Idea or some weekly magazine. But here we are: netizens creating drama between two people where there is none. I am sure many of us see these phenomena in our blogs.
   I can see how the weeklies make their money—they thrive on manufactured fictions. And it’s not hard to see how they surface and get propagated.
   But are people so sad they do not laugh any more? Is everything such a drama, and so sad in their lives, that they have to generate more of it?
   Where do they live? Auckland?
   Smile. You don’t have to be at Camera House. Smile. Your computer screen won’t break, nor will your mouse.
   Wow, that rhymes. Call me a regular Charlie Chaplin. (Maybe Miss Prozac will now say I am comparing myself to Charlie.)
   Almost seems like a revisit of the Laural Barrett sensationalist story from the Fairfax Press (which served all parties in terms of publicity, but not necessarily long-term effects for The Press), or the Jennifer Siebel attacks.
   The blogosphere is getting strange again, and it’s taking after tabloid journalism.