Is Norma Khouri’s “proof” that she lived in Jordan during the time she said she was there in her book, a fraud? “As part of what she called her “proof” that she had lived in Jordan from 1973 to 2000, Khouri sent photocopied pages from a passport. However, a source who has seen the material told the Herald that the pages came not from Khouri’s passport, but from her husband, John Toliopoulos’s Greek passport.”
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Khouri To Sue Over Allegations About Her Book
Author Norma Khouri is preparing to sue over claims about the authenticity of her best-selling book Forbidden Love. “Ms Khouri had been overseas collecting evidence to back her book after the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age published damning allegations last month that her so-called memoir of life and hardship in Jordan was a lie.” The book was pulled by publishers after the allegations.
Schwarzenegger Terminates Arts Funding Increase
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed an increase in his state’s arts budget. “Last year, state funding of the California Arts Council, a state agency that gives grants to local groups, fell from $17.5 million to $1 million. Last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used his line item veto power to take out what would have been a $1 million increase in arts funding by the Legislature, leaving the allocation at just over $1 million. The cuts have made the California Arts Council last in the United States in per capita funding.”
The Next Big Thing In Video: HD
The next big thing in video? High-definition DVD’s. “On one side, Sony, along with 12 leading companies in the computer and consumer-electronics industries, is pushing a format called Blu-ray. It has the capacity to hold as much as six times the number of TV shows and movies that a current DVD holds. Blu-ray also promises spellbinding clarity…”
TV: The New “Artistic” Refuge?
While TV networks “wallow in reality-TV and makeover pablum, the “highbrow” end of the medium—HBO, Showtime, etc.—has remade itself as the natural habitat for drama that’s as inventive and daring as many films. TV’s new artistic credibility is making the small screen an alluring alternative for directors, offering freedom from the stresses of financing and distribution that beset any adventurous filmmaker.”
An Off-Broadway Theatre’s Artistic Implosion
For more than 30 years the Cocteau Theatre, a small Off-Broadway company presenting classics in the 140-seat Bouwerie Lane Theater in the East Village, has been a valuable asset of New York theater. Then last week, a sizeable number of the organization’s board (and several actors) resigned in a dispute…
Your Brain On Work – Use It Or Lose It
“A mentally stimulating career may help to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, research suggests. According to a study carried out in the United States, those who develop the debilitating form of dementia are more likely to have had jobs that do not tax the brain. The discovery lends weight to the ‘use it or lose it’ theory.”
Lying Liars And The People Who Can Tell…
“For decades, psychologists have done laboratory experiments in an attempt to describe differences between the behavior of liars and of people telling the truth. Some researchers, however, are now moving away from those controlled conditions and are inching closer to understanding liars in the real world. The researchers are examining whether several behaviors that have emerged as deception signals in lab tests are associated with real-life, high-stake lies.”
More Pop – Now A Beach Boys Musical For Broadway
In the latest pop-music-comes-to-Broadway deal, a musical featuring songs by the Beach Boys – Surf’s up! “Good Vibrations,” a new musical using more than 30 Beach Boys songs – will open on Broadway in January.
Hollywood – Where “Indie” Is Just A Name
What, exactly qualifies a movie as an “indie” movie these days? Some indie movies have big stars. Some are being made by big Hollywood studios? “A good number of companies are doing more of these films with an individual voice and an indie feeling.” So what is indie in a fast-changing landscape?