Category: Celebrities

KIEV, April 21 (Reuters) – In a popular Ukrainian TV series, comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy played a president who is scrupulously honest and outwits crooked lawmakers and shadowy businessmen who try to stand in his way.  Zelenskiy’s character in the show “Servant of the People” was loved by Ukrainians fed up with how their country had been governed since independence in 1991.  On Sunday, they turned fantasy into reality after voters elected Zelenskiy by a landslide, according to exit polls, thrusting an actor with no prior political experience and few detailed policies into the presidency of a country at war.  Zelenskiy’s sudden rise comes at a time voters around the world have upended the status quo, propelling anti-establishment forces such as U.S. President Donald Trump and Italy’s 5-Star Movement, which was also once led by a comedian, to power.

His victory reflected voters’ frustration with politics as usual. Just 9 percent of Ukrainians trust their national government, the lowest of any electorate in the world, a Gallup poll in March showed.  Critics question Zelenskiy’s political inexperience and he remains something of an unknown quantity for investors who want reassurances that he will accelerate reforms and keep Ukraine in an International Monetary Fund programme.  Zelenskiy’s unorthodox campaign put the incumbent President Petro Poroshenko on the backfoot right from the start.  He announced his bid for the presidency on New Year’s Eve, upstaging Poroshenko who was giving a traditional televised address to the nation.  Eschewing traditional rallies, his campaign relied heavily on quirky social media posts to his millions of online followers, jokey posters, comedy gigs and winking allusions to the fictional president he portrays on screen.

He traded insults and accusations with Poroshenko in tit-for-tat social media videos and the two met in a raucous policy debate in a soccer stadium in Kiev last Friday in front of thousands of their followers.  Back in February, when asked in an interview with Reuters what sets him apart from other candidates, Zelenskiy pointed to his face.  “This. This is a new face. I have never been in politics,” he said.  “I have not deceived people. They identify with me because I am open, I get hurt, I get angry, I get upset. I do not hide my emotions on camera, I do not try to look different. If I’m inexperienced in something, I’m inexperienced. If I don’t know something, I honestly admit it.”  After performing in student theatre, Zelenskiy came to prominence as a team captain in the TV show KVN, where teams compete against each other with jokes and song-and-dance routines. In 2003, his team formed the basis of TV production company Kvartal 95 http://kvartal95.com/en, which makes Servant of the People.

‘SELLING THE DREAM’

In the TV series, Zelenskiy starts out as a humble high school history teacher who becomes president after an expletive-laced tirade about Ukraine’s corrupt political class, secretly filmed by one of his students, goes viral.  Disaffection with how little has changed under Poroshenko has helped fuel Zelenskiy’s popularity, according to Serhiy Leshchenko, an investigative journalist and lawmaker.  “The desire of Ukrainian citizens is to have new faces, to have new politicians ready to reshuffle the whole political class,” he said, comparing the comedian to Trump.  “Both of them are TV stars, and both of them are selling people the dream, so people are ready to accept this dream because they are fed up with the old class of politicians.”  The Maidan protests in 2014 that ousted a Kremlin-friendly president brought hope of change, but Poroshenko’s critics say progress has not come fast enough in a country where corruption remains entrenched, oligarchs amass wealth and influence and poverty levels are among the worst in Europe.  Zelenskiy’s squeaky clean fictitious president is a powerful image, blurring the lines of where his character stops and the real-life politician begins. Even his party is called Servant of the People after the TV series.

IMF DEALS

As his campaign gathered steam, Zelenskiy brought reform-minded former ministers to his team as advisers, providing a measure of reassurance to investors who nevertheless found his answers on policy questions vague at times.  Zelenskiy told Reuters he would not allow Ukraine to default on its debt commitments to the IMF, which has propped up the economy with billions of dollars in loan.  He hopes the country will eventually stop relying on the IMF but, for now, he would not allow Ukraine “to default and spoil the image of our country”.  Asked for his position on whether he would allow household gas prices to rise to market levels, another IMF demand, Zelenskiy was short on specifics. He said Ukraine’s tariffs were the lowest in Europe but still too high for many.  Ironically, given the clean image of his fictional president, Zelenskiy has had to fend off suspicion that in real life he is a puppet of Ihor Kolomoisky, a prominent oligarch whose TV channel airs Zelenskiy’s shows.  Zelenskiy insists his relationship with Kolomoisky is strictly professional. He said he would not, as some fear, hand back ownership of PrivatBank, Ukraine’s largest lender, to Kolomoisky if he becomes president.  As part of an IMF-backed clean-up of Ukraine’s financial system, the government nationalised PrivatBank in 2016 – and later alleged the lender was used for large-scale fraud and money laundering. Kolomoisky called the allegations nonsense and has said the bank was nationalised on spurious grounds.

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Ken Jennings rose to fame after an unprecedented run on Jeopardy 15 years ago: Over the course of 74 episodes, he won a total of roughly $2.5 million.  Recently, a contestant named James Holzhauer has been working toward Jennings’s record at an astonishing pace. After the Friday-evening broadcast of the quiz program, Holzhauer had won about $850,000 over just 12 episodes. If he keeps up that rate, he’ll reach $2.5 million in less than half the time it took Jennings to do so.

Before Holzhauer went on the show, the most money earned in a single episode of Jeopardy was $77,000. During his 12-episode streak, he’s beaten that total not once, but five times, and has set a new record of $131,127. Holzhauer’s success has been attributed not just to his deep trivia knowledge, but also to his aggressive style of play—he homes in on high-value tiles that might contain Daily Doubles, and then often bets enormous sums when he finds them—and his unmatched buzzer-pressing reflexes.

Whatever his method, Holzhauer is far exceeding the show’s average single-day winnings, which a Jeopardy fan website calculated to be $19,980. With his sometimes six-figure daily prizes, how much damage is Holzhauer doing to the show’s finances?

“Every game show has a prize budget,” says Bob Boden, a former head of programming at Game Show Network who has worked on dozens of shows there and elsewhere, including Family Feud. “Typically, for a long-running show the prize budget is determined by way of averages of what has been won in the past.” Large deviations from such averages can strain these prize budgets. “James’s performance, I’m sure, is causing grief for an accountant somewhere,” says Boden, who’s now an executive at the production company Entertainment Studios.

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HOLLYWOOD, CA—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was pumped to attend a taping of The Price Is Right in Hollywood this week. The special guest introduced herself as a U.S. representative and rising star of the Democratic Party. Things got interesting when the game began and every time it was her turn to estimate the price of an item her answer was “free.  Items included a set of Italian leather handbags, an all expenses paid trip to the Bahamas, and a brand new 2019 BMW 330i, at all of which Ocasio-Cortez shouted, “FREE!”

When host Drew Carey asked if Ocasio-Cortez understood the game’s rules, she told Carey not to cat-call her and then responded, “Don’t hate me cause you ain’t me.”  She went on to guess that diamond earrings, a set of jet skis, and even a giant pile of cash were all free. Carey unveiled a package containing world-class healthcare and she said, “Definitely free.” She was at one point puzzled by a stack of croissants but eventually guessed that they also were free.  Cortez was never able to advance to the game proper, and as the credits rolled she appeared visibly upset. A hot mic picked up comments she made in frustration, claiming that the game was rigged by capitalism and that “everybody knows giant piles of money are free, that’s like basic economics 101”.

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Clint Eastwood is circling to next direct The Ballad Of Richard Jewell, and has been in discussions with Disney/Fox drama based on the life of a security guard whose life was turned upside down in a moment after it was leaked by law enforcement to a reporter that Jewell was a possible suspect in the Olympic Park bombing during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. From the moment he was outed by an article written by an overzealous reporter at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Jewell went from hero to one of the most hated men in America.

Jewell discovered a suspicious backpack in the Olympics compound, cleared the area and saved lives that day, but after he was falsely accused he became a pariah. The project, based on the Vanity Fair article The Ballad Of Richard Jewell was originally set at 20th Century Fox.  Even though the FBI cleared Jewell as a suspect three months later, the true American hero never fully got his reputation back or his confidence in himself, and his health was forever damaged. Jewell, who later became a police officer, died in 2007 of a heart attack at the age of 44.  The film will be produced by Appian Way’s DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson, Hill and Kevin Misher, the latter of whom brought in the article. Misher Films’ Andy Berman also will have a producing role. Mike Ireland is overseeing for Fox.

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Chuck Konzelman, director of the Pure Flix movie “Unplanned,” revealed to Congress this week that nearly 100 abortion clinic workers have sought to leave their jobs after seeing the pro-life film.  During his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Konzelman said 94 clinic workers have approached former Planned Parenthood executive Abby Johnson’s nonprofit, And Then There Were None, according to Pure Flix Insider.

“One percent of the abortion workers in the United States, after getting one look at them being portrayed on film,” he said, “have decided to change their lives … and what they do for a living.”  The Pure Flix filmmaker was on Capitol Hill to speak on a panel regarding Twitter’s alleged censorship of “Unplanned.” On its opening weekend in late March, the social media platform temporarily suspended the film’s promotional account.  “Unplanned” chronicles Johnson’s eight-year career at Planned Parenthood and her conversion to the pro-life movement after she watched a doctor perform an abortion via ultrasound.

Ashley Bratcher, the actor who portrays Johnson in the faith-based movie, tweeted Thursday she receives messages “every single day” from people whose lives — and minds — were changed after seeing “Unplanned.”  The movie beat box-office expectations for its opening weekend, bringing in $6.1 million — more than doubling forecasted earnings.

Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie now officially single Los Angeles, April 14 (IANS) Over two years after filing for divorce, actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are legally single now. According to court documents obtained by The Blast, a judge accepted their request for bifurcation, which means they can be legally

“I’m pretty optimistic about the ability for this thing to work. Particularly when you make it accessible because of the content we’re putting on, because of the user interface and because of the price,” CEO Bob Iger told CNBC’s David Faber in an interview Thursday.  Shares of Disney surged 11.5% on Friday, its best single day of trading since May 2009. Netflix shares traded lower by 4.5%.

Disney+ will roll out in the U.S. on November 12, and within the next two years, the platform will be available “in nearly all major regions of the world.” The pricing on the ad-free service is surprisingly low — $6.99 per month and $69.99 annually (or $5.83 per month). That’s lower than Netflix, which raised prices on its standard plan from $10.99 to $12.99 per month. Netflix’s basic plan is $8.99 a month.

“Disney surprised on the upside at its investor meeting yesterday, providing more financial disclosure and revealing a more content rich streaming service than previously expected,” J.P. Morgan analyst Alexia Quadrani said in a note to investors. “In addition, management provided a target for Disney+ of 60m-90m subscribers by F2024, on the higher end of our expectations, which we believe were already above consensus.”

Disney+ will also have multiple movies and TV series that are exclusive to the service. Those include several series from Marvel and Star Wars. Disney said it expects it will spend about $1 billion in 2020 on original content for the platform and $2 billion by 2024.

Disney’s stock closed at $116.60 a share on Thursday.

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Victoria’s Secret model, Taylor Hill, shared several Instagram photos today where she posed in front of spring flowers. Unlike many celebrities that have flocked to the Palm Springs area for the Coachella Music Festival, Taylor is enjoying herself in New York City. She was photographed in front of what looked like cherry blossoms. The first series of photos showed her with her hair in a casual top bun, as she rocked an oversized, black Pink Floyd shirt. The shirt featured the iconic album cover art for “Dark Side of the Moon.” A second series of Instagram photos showed Hill in the same outfit, except this time, she wore her hair down. The photos of her closer up revealed that she was wearing minimal makeup along with hoop earrings. Her Instagram Stories revealed that she was enjoying the sights in Central Park. And four days ago, Hill posted an Instagram update saying goodbye to Paris, France. She looked chic in a white button-up shirt that she wore under an oversized, furry jacket. Taylor wore pink lipstick along with peach eyeshadow. The city skyline was visible in the background, and fans clearly showed their love for the model by liking the photos over 445,000 times. A post shared by Taylor Hill (@taylor_hill) on Apr 13, 2019 at 4:49pm PDT But traveling to different countries can have its downsides too, as Hill posted an Instagram video of herself dealing with the tortures of jet lag. She appeared to be makeup free, and pursed her lips as she pondered whether she was actually tired or not. But being a model means traveling is a must, and the more sought-after of a model you are, the more you end up traveling. She previously shared her traveling skincare tips with Harper’s Bazaar Arabia . Loading… “My favourite is Energie de Vie from Lancôme. It smells amazing and it is super lightweight. Creams that are too heavy cause breakouts for me. I really like it because it has a day cream, toning water, a night mask, everything. I just stick to that because it’s easy.” With that being said, Hill elaborated that “The way I take care of myself is a lifestyle. I try to exercise and make sure that I sleep, and drink a lot of water, and wash my face twice a day… all the little things you can do to ensure that you can maintain a crazy life.” And her self-care routine is obviously a great one, as the model looks fantastic in all of her social media posts, with or without makeup.

A children’s TV show starring Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and other Disney characters demonstrates that socialism can’t claim the moral high ground over capitalism, a business school professor argues.  Jason Brennan, a professor of strategy, economics, ethics, and public policy at McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, spoke on the topic of “Fake Socialism vs. Real Capitalism” at The Heritage Foundation.  “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,” a computer-animated series that originally aired from 2006 to 2016, reveals that capitalism is better for more of us than socialism is, Brennan said during the April 4 event.  The show, which focuses on problem-solving and now airs on the Disney XD channel, features Mickey and other characters who operate in a “robustly capitalist” society, he said:

Brennan’s book “Why Not Capitalism?” is a response to “Why Not Socialism?” by G.A. Cohen.  Brennan’s book argues that socialism does not have a monopoly on morality.  “Capitalism has been a tremendous achievement over the past century,” Brennan said. “In the beginning of the 20th century, 95% of people [in the world] lived in extreme poverty and now it’s down to about 10% percent.”  He summed up the socialist vision with these words: “If only we were good, we would be socialist.”  “Socialism commands the moral high ground over capitalism, even though capitalism works,” Brennan said.  However, he contended, if people were perfect, capitalism still would be the preferred system.

“For me, the problem is the level of virtue, it’s not the institution themselves,” Brennan said, whose lecture was part of a Heritage speakers series called “Free Markets: The Ethical Economic Choice.”  “If you prefer socialism with angels to capitalism with normal people, that doesn’t tell us whether it’s the angels that [are] doing the work or the socialism,” Brennan said.  Some people believe socialism is morally better because of  assumptions they make about the nature of markets, he said.  They say “moral market societies and market transitions are inherently repugnant,” and “the kind of relationship you have with somebody when you buy something from them is in itself kind of foul and disgusting.”  Brennan’s argument had an impact on Therese Antonio, a Virginia resident who attended the event.  “We’re all flawed individuals, including the socialist,” Antonio told The Daily Signal. “And once I really began to really look at what flaws are like, I can see how socialism would fall short because we do not live in a perfect world.”

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Chip and Joanna Gaines will return to television, but not with just one series – they will have their own cable network.

Slated to launch in the summer of 2020, the Gaines’ new network is being developed by Discovery.

As CBN News reported in November, the Gaines, both devout Christians, inadvertently announced their return to television during an appearance on NBC‘s The Tonight Show.

Citing their non-disclosure agreement, Chip said, “And it said quote-unquote you can tell your mother, but that’s it. So Mom, I just wanted to make a quick announcement.  We are coming back to television. You’re going to see the kids grow up. You’ll get to see us with obviously a six-month delay like the rest of the world. We’re excited to be back.”

In an exclusive interview with USA Today published Wednesday, the “Fixer Upper” stars spoke about their new series which will be the anchor for their new network.

“The difference moving forward is Jo and I are going to be able to tell more of our life stories,” Chip told the newspaper. “And so, as opposed to it being a very narrow vein in our universe, which is obviously construction and design and the things we do for a living, for us we feel like there’s a more holistic story to be told here, and that’s what we’re going to focus on.”

Inspired by their quarterly Magnolia Journal, the couple decided they wanted to do other things on television to reach more people.

“We loved this idea of connecting with people in a different way,” Joanna says, “telling other people’s stories, curating content. It felt to us a lot like what we do love with the magazine, but on a different playing field.”

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