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(04/05/07 4:00am)
On Macy Gray's fourth album and first album in four years, she finds herself trying to make herself a career artist and not just the girl with the unique voice. She has changed record labels, has Will.I.Am from the Black Eyed Peas as the executive producer, a slew of guest singers and a more sophisticated sound. Gray continues to try to change herself to create something special, like her debut smash, On How Life Is. Even though she gets a lot of help from Justin Timberlake, all the changes don't equal greatness. \nStylistically, the album sounds like '70s soul, with its pristine production, strings and synthesizers, but Big falls short on so many levels. Vocally, Gray struggles at times to hit and sustain notes, which is an ugly thing for an artist only on her fourth album. She sounds out of place at times, even with vocal help from Fergie and Nas, and is much more comfortable singing songs that fit her eccentric personality. \nThe album opens up sounding, well, big. "Finally Made Me Happy" is a sophisticated soul tune that climaxes with help from the soaring strings and backup vocals from none other than Natalie Cole. The album moves into two more sophisticated tunes before hitting Big's first great song, "Okay." Timberlake not only sings on "Okay," he also produces it along with a few others, which are the best songs on the record. Timberlake once again proves himself as heir to the pop throne, as he is able to make Gray sound playful and modern. Then there is "Strange Behavior," a song that does a great job at showing just how quirky Gray is. The song is about a woman and her husband who want to kill each other for insurance money. This is, of course, followed by an extremely mediocre "Slowly," but is once again revived by JT with the funky guitar-driven "Get Out." \nThis is the story of the album as it goes from good to bad and then back again repeatedly throughout. Big is an extreme hit-or-miss album, and once again leaves Gray falling short of her debut. She is unable to establish herself as a continuous force and will be left as the quirky, woozy singer with one great album and a few mediocre ones.
(02/20/07 5:00am)
NEW YORK – The six-day siege of angry and disgruntled travelers at JetBlue’s Kennedy airport terminal appeared to ease on Monday as service desks functioned more smoothly and customer calm prevailed despite flight cancellations.\nThe beleaguered company said it was canceling almost a quarter of its flights on Monday but planned to restore full operations on Tuesday, a week after a Valentine’s Day snowstorm created a travel meltdown that virtually paralyzed JetBlue.\nThe service breakdown “was absolutely painful to watch,” David G. Neeleman, the company’s founder and chief executive, said Monday.\nHe said the storm problems led to other problems, including an overwhelmed reservations system and many of the company’s pilots and flight crews being stuck away from where they were needed. The company didn’t have a system in place to track the stranded crews and reroute them, something JetBlue is working to rectify, Neeleman said.\nJetBlue spokesman Sebastian White said that Monday’s cancellations helped make sure all flight crews had legally mandated amounts of rest before flying again, and gave the airline the time to get equipment to the proper places. He said planes were being repositioned on Monday afternoon in order to be ready to go on Tuesday morning.\nWhile JetBlue was making its own analysis, one travel expert suggested the airline had brought the crisis on itself by trying to do the right thing for its passengers despite the wintry weather threat.\n“Most airlines don’t try to operate when there is an ice storm problem – they’ve learned that it’s better to cancel all flights at the outset and then try to get back to normal operations as quickly as possible,” David Stempler, president of the Washington-based, member-supported Air Travelers Association, told The Associated Press on Monday.\nOn Monday morning, Dawn Colonese of New Haven, Conn., arrived at JFK with her husband and two daughters – on their way, they hoped, for a Florida vacation.\nTrying on Sunday to confirm the flight, Colonese said she first got a recorded message saying the system was overloaded; then was disconnected. Finally she was able to record a complaint, and an apologetic airline representative returned her call five hours later.\nEven though the terminal was orderly on Monday, Colonese said that based on what had happened, “I don’t think I would fly with JetBlue again.”\nThe crisis, which centered around the popular cut-rate airline’s New York hub, was old news to some passengers arriving from other cities.\n“It’s not that big a deal,” said Lily Gilbert of Eugene, Ore., who said her flight from Portland to JFK was only slightly delayed.\nSome, like Sarah King, a Connecticut resident returning from Portland, said she didn’t think the weeklong debacle would hurt JetBlue in the long run.
(09/08/06 3:34am)
NEW YORK -- A miniseries about the events leading to the Sept. 11 attacks is "terribly wrong" and ABC should correct it or not air it, former Clinton administration officials demanded in letters to the head of ABC's parent company.\nFormer Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Clinton Foundation head Bruce Lindsey and Clinton adviser Douglas Band all wrote in the past week to Robert Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Co., to express concern over "The Path to 9/11."\nThe two-part miniseries, scheduled to be broadcast Sunday and Monday, is drawn from interviews and documents including the report of the Sept. 11 commission. ABC has described it as a "dramatization" as opposed to a documentary.\nCalls to ABC seeking comment Thursday were not returned.\nThe letter writers said that the miniseries contained factual errors and that their requests to see it had gone unanswered.\n"The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate, and ABC has a duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely," Lindsey and Band wrote in their letter. "It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known."\nThe letter writers pointed out examples of scenes they had been told were in the miniseries but which they said never happened. Albright objected to a scene that she was told showed her insisting on warning the Pakistani government before an airstrike on Afghanistan and that she was the one who made the warning.\n"The scene as explained to me is false and defamatory," she said.\nBerger objected to a scene that he was told showed him refusing to authorize an attack on Osama bin Laden despite the request from CIA officials. "The fabrication of this scene (of such apparent magnitude) cannot be justified under any reasonable definition of dramatic license," he wrote.\nLindsey and Band objected to advertisements for the miniseries, which they said suggested Clinton wasn't paying enough attention to the threat of terrorism.\n"While ABC is promoting 'The Path to 9/11' as a dramatization of historical fact, in truth it is a fictitious rewriting of history that will be misinterpreted by millions of Americans," they said. "Given your stated obligation to 'get it right,' we urge you to do so by not airing this drama until the egregious factual errors are corrected, an endeavor we could easily assist you with given the opportunity to view the film."\nThe five-hour miniseries is set to run without commercial interruption. Director David Cunningham said it was a massive undertaking, with close to 250 speaking parts, more than 300 sets and a budget of $40 million. Cunningham has said he shot 550 hours of film. Among the actors in it are Harvey Keitel, Patricia Heaton and Donnie Wahlberg.
(02/14/05 4:54am)
NEW YORK -- The stars of Hollywood joined the people of Harlem to bid farewell Saturday to actor and activist Ossie Davis, filling a Manhattan church with laughter and tears as a parade of admirers recalled his integrity, courage and devotion to family.\nFriends, fans and family members crowded into the Riverside Church for the funeral, gazing at a video screen bearing his picture that was hung above an altar.\nHis wife of 56 years, actress Ruby Dee, sat in the front row, near where Davis' coffin stood covered in flowers. Former president Bill Clinton led a contingent of well-known mourners, including Spike Lee, Cornel West, Rachel Robinson and outgoing NAACP president Kweisi Mfume.\n"He would have been a very good president of the United States," Clinton said. "I have only this to say: Like most of you here, he gave more to me than I gave to him."\nEntertainer Harry Belafonte, Davis' friend for six decades, gave the eulogy.\n"It is hard to fathom that we will no longer be able to call on his wisdom, his humor, his loyalty and his moral strength to guide us in the choices that are yet to be made and the battles that are yet to be fought," Belafonte said. "But how fortunate we were to have him as long as we did."\nIt was a fitting send-off for the acclaimed actor and civil rights activist, with rousing music provided by Wynton Marsalis, a poem from Pulitzer Prize winner Maya Angelou and songs from the choir at his alma mater, Howard University. The funeral service lasted more than three hours.\n"Ossie was my hero, and he still is," said Alan Alda, a friend of the family for 44 years. "Ossie was a thing of beauty."\nBurt Reynolds, his co-star on the television show "Evening Shade," recalled Davis as a friend who could make everything seem right. "I want so badly someday to have his dignity, a little of it anyway," Reynolds said.\nDavis died Feb. 4 in a hotel room in Miami Beach, Fla., where the 87-year-old actor was working on a film. During his lengthy career, Davis worked as an actor, writer, director and producer, while giving equal time to the civil rights struggle.\nEarlier, Dee listened as their seven grandchildren offered memories of Davis, ending with a poem that their grandparents often performed together. Daughter Hasna Muhammad, inviting mourners to join their family, pulled out a camera to take a picture of the congregation.\nThe lights in the church were then dimmed for a slide show of Davis and his family, with musical accompaniment by his son-in-law. The crowd burst into applause at the end of the presentation.\nAttallah Shabazz, the daughter of slain activist Malcolm X, recalled from the pulpit the famous eulogy delivered by Davis at her father's funeral.\n"Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its finest hopes," she said, quoting the man she knew as Uncle Ossie. "Ditto."\nNinety minutes before the noon service began, a line stretching several blocks had formed outside the church, filled with children, parents and grandparents. For the residents of Harlem, it was a chance to say goodbye to a friend and neighborhood fixture.\n"For as long as I can remember, all you had to do is drop the name Ossie on people, and the knew you were talking about Ossie Davis," said businessman and family friend Earl Graves. "It's easy to believe there was only one Ossie who lived in Harlem"
(10/02/03 6:52am)
NEW YORK -- "El Greco," the first American retrospective on the famous painter in more than 20 years, opens at the Met Tuesday and runs through Jan. 11.\nPablo Picasso admired him, as did Henri Matisse. Jackson Pollock considered him one of his favorite artists. But it wasn't always that way. When Domenikos Theotokopoulos, better known to posterity as "El Greco," was creating his vibrant, brilliantly hued religious paintings in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, his work was seen as extravagant, far from the more realistic style then in vogue.\n"The art of the 17th century is ... the art of naturalism," said Keith Christiansen, one of the curators of a new retrospective on the artist opening next week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "El Greco's art is an anti-naturalist art. There was no bridge for the understanding of it."\nIt wasn't until generations later that El Greco (Spanish for "The Greek") was recognized for his originality and intensity. Since then, he has been considered a genius who found the spiritual essence of his subjects.\nBorn in Crete in 1541, El Greco worked as a religious icon painter before moving to Italy in 1567 and then to Spain in 1576. He died there in 1614, in his early 70s.\nOrganized by the Met and the National Gallery in London and composed of about 70 works from institutions around the world, the exhibition emphasizes works from the end of El Greco's career. That's when his colors became most vibrant, his figures most stylized.\n"In terms of religious painting, it is a search for the spiritual as opposed to the material," said David Davies, an El Greco scholar who is guest curator of the exhibit.\n"I want to show El Greco at his best ... His development shows how he continually explored new ideas to seek the essence of the subject," Davies said.\nTwo of the works, "The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception" and a version of "The Adoration of the Shepherds," have never been seen outside Spain.\n"The Adoration," a 10-foot-tall work El Greco painted for his own tomb, is a prime example of his style. A tiny infant Jesus lies on a white cloth, and the light radiating from him brightens the whole image. Around him are numerous worshippers, bodies stretched out and elongated.\nAside from the later works, another highlight of the exhibit is the placement of some canvases next to others that have the same subject but were done by El Greco in another year or even decade. By putting the paintings next to each other, viewers can see changes over time, Christiansen said.
(09/29/03 6:52am)
Althea Gibson, a sports pioneer who broke the color barrier in tennis in the 1950s as the first black player to win Wimbledon and the U.S. national title, died Sunday. She was 76.\nGibson, seriously ill for several years, died of respiratory failure at a hospital in East Orange, N.J., after spending two days in the intensive care ward, said Fran Gray, a longtime friend who co-founded the Althea Gibson Foundation.\n"Her contribution to the civil rights movement was done with her tennis racket," Gray said.\nGibson was the first black player to compete in the U.S. championships, in 1950, and at Wimbledon, in 1951. She won both Wimbledon and the U.S. championships in 1957 and 1958, the French Open in 1956, and three doubles titles at Wimbledon (1956-58).\n"Who could have imagined? Who could have thought?" Gibson said in 1988 as she presented her Wimbledon trophies to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.\n"Here stands before you a Negro woman, raised in Harlem, who went on to become a tennis player ... and finally wind up being a world champion, in fact, the first black woman champion of this world," she said.\nThe eldest of five children, Gibson was a self-described "born athlete" who broke racial barriers, not only in tennis but also in pro golf.\nNo other black woman won the U.S. national tennis title until Serena Williams in 1999 or won Wimbledon until Venus Williams in 2000.\nWhen Venus won her first Wimbledon title, she reflected on Gibson's achievements.\n"It had to be hard because people were unable to see past color," Williams said. "Still, these days it's hardly any different because you have to realize it has only been 40 years. How can you change years and centuries of being biased in 40 years? So realistically, not too much has changed."\nGibson was born Aug. 25, 1927, in Silver, S.C., and lived in East Orange for most of the last 30 years. Her foundation, based in Newark, was created to help urban youth develop their skills in tennis and golf.\nGibson picked up tennis while growing up in New York, slapping rubber balls off a brick wall. She then met Fred Johnson, a one-armed tennis coach who taught her to play.\nGibson won her first tournament at 15, becoming the New York State black girls' singles tennis champion. Boxer Sugar Ray Robinson helped pay for her travels.\nShe spent her high school years in Wilmington, N.C., where Dr. R.W. Johnson took her into his family's home and let her play on his grass court. Dr. E.A. Eaton coached her there, and Gibson later credited him with helping her cultivate the grace and dignity she needed on and off the court.\n"No one would say anything to me because of the way I carried myself," Gibson said. "Tennis was a game for ladies and gentlemen, and I conducted myself in that manner."\nShe attended Florida A&M on a tennis and basketball scholarship and then began her ascent in the American Tennis Association, founded in 1916 for black players.\nIn 1950, she was the first black competitor to play in the National Grass Court Tennis Championships, the precursor of today's U.S. Open, coming within a point of beating Wimbledon champion Louise Brough.\nShe broke the racial barrier at Wimbledon the following year, but disappointment at losing nearly caused her to give up the game for the Army in 1955. She applied for a commission, but Gibson's coach talked her out of it.\nA year later, she blossomed during a nine-month tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department, winning 14 tournaments and reaching the finals of the other three she entered. She also captured her first women's doubles championship at Wimbledon.\nAlthough beaten at Wimbledon in the singles and losing in the final round at the U.S. championship in New York, she was on top of her game and in 1957 began a two-year run as champion of the top two tournaments in tennis.\n "She was a great champion and great person. We had a good relationship -- she was always there for me even when I was a nobody," Martina Navratilova said Sunday in Leipzig, Germany, where she won her 172nd career doubles title.\n "Her life was very difficult, but she broke down a lot of barriers and doors and made it easier for a lot of us."\n Gibson was The Associated Press' Female Athlete of the Year in 1957 and 1958. Following her 1957 Wimbledon victory, she was given a ticker-tape parade in New York City and an official welcome at City Hall.\nGibson retired from the game soon after her 1958 Wimbledon and U.S. titles because there was no prize money and few lucrative endorsements. It wasn't until 1968, the start of the Open era, that the major tournaments paid pro players -- the U.S. Open now offers $1 million to the singles champions.\nRecently, Gibson, Gray and others collaborated on a book, "Born to Win: The Althea Gibson Story," to be published next year.\nGibson was inducted into numerous halls of fame, including the International Tennis Hall of Fame. In 1975, she became state commissioner of athletics in New Jersey, a job she held for 10 years. She then served on the state athletics control board until 1988 and the governor's council on physical fitness until 1992.\nGibson was married twice; husbands William Darben and Sidney Llewellyn are deceased. Gibson didn't have children, Gray said.
(07/14/03 1:12am)
NEW YORK -- It could have been worse. A lot worse.\nBudget cuts for museums, concert halls and other cultural institutions in the city were serious, but not as serious as anticipated, officials said.\nThe city's Department of Cultural Affairs funding was down by $1.6 million over a year ago, forcing some popular sights to shorten their hours of operation. But the amount when the fiscal year began July 1 was higher than the $94 million cut initially proposed in April.\n"The original cuts that were proposed were a disaster ... All things being equal, we came out of this budget cycle OK," said Karen Brooks Hopkins, president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music.\nHopkins is also chairwoman of the Cultural Institutions Group, a consortium of 34 city-funded institutions on city-owned property.\nKate Levin, the cultural affairs commissioner, said the city was able to stave off more severe cuts because of financial aid from the state and federal governments.\nHopkins and other officials said the financial picture is far from rosy.\n"It can't get any tighter. We don't want the budget to be cut any further than it has been already," said Ron Kavanaugh, spokesman for the Bronx Museum of the Arts.\nThe Department of Cultural Affairs' budget is $118.8 million for the fiscal year that began July 1, down from $120.4 million in the previous year. The reductions come on top of cuts made last year, Hopkins said.\nThe Brooklyn Museum of Art will be closed for two weeks in August, for the first time in about a decade, to curb expenses. The American Museum of the Moving Image in Queens is cutting back on the days it's open. Other museums have postponed exhibits or are taking their time in filling positions.\n"Everybody is implementing a version of the disaster plan," Hopkins said. "Measures will still be taken."\nOrganizations are looking ahead with some concern, hoping that a budget review in November won't result in funds being stripped. They are heartened by Mayor Michael Bloomberg's personal dedication to the arts, as well as other city officials who seem to recognize their importance.\n"I am cautiously optimistic ... that these numbers will stick," said Rochelle Slovin, director of the American Museum of the Moving Image.\nBecause the cuts weren't as deep as feared, she said her museum will be able to continue its education programming in the fall, and she'll be able to hire a new director of education.\nGiven the state of the economy, Levin said, "to be able to be a steady funder is really quite an extraordinary achievement"
(02/13/03 4:32am)
NEW YORK -- A hip-hop network founded by music impresario Russell Simmons Tuesday called off a planned boycott of Pepsi products, saying it had reached an agreement with the soft drink giant.\nThe Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, which had threatened the boycott after Pepsi pulled an ad featuring rapper Ludacris, said the deal calls for Pepsi to make a multimillion-dollar donation over several years to the rapper's foundation.\nHowever, Pepsi spokesman Larry Jabbonsky denied Tuesday night that the company had agreed to donate money to the foundation. He said Pepsi hadn't decided "how and to whom funding will be allocated."\n"We are in the process of putting this relationship together," Jabbonsky said.\nEarlier Tuesday, Jabbonsky had said Pepsi and Hip-Hop Network had "come to an agreement where the common ground is young people," but declined to provide any specifics.\nHip-Hop Network spokeswoman Jody Miller said the agreement was reached Monday night but that some details were still being worked out.\n"We are in a negotiating process," she said. "I think both parties want this to be a successful conclusion and the start of something positive."\nPepsi pulled the ad featuring Ludacris in August, a day after Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly ran a segment criticizing the company for using the rapper and criticizing some of his lyrics.\nLudacris is on the Def Jam label, which Simmons founded. His 2001 album "Word of Mouf" includes the song "Move Bitch," one of his biggest hits.\nLast week, Simmons threatened a boycott of Pepsi and its subsidiaries to begin Wednesday unless the company ran the ad and donated $5 million to Ludacris' foundation.\nThere was no indication the ad would be placed back on the air. Neither Pepsi nor the Hip-Hop Network would comment on the ad's status.