1. By John Carucci
NEW YORK, AP
Taylor Swift shares her feelings
and personal experiences on her
hit records, but the 23-year-old
Grammy winner isn’t worried about
losing intimacy with her fans on a
stadium tour.
“I find that you have to emote a
little bigger, but you can reach all
the way up to the top,” she said.
“Eye contact is important, even if
it’s from 500 yards away.”
Swift said she’s never worried
about the sound being lost in a
massive space. With a few shows
already under her belt, she feels
they’ve gone pretty well.
“Everyone who comes to these
shows seems so engaged,” she said.
“They come to the show. They know
the words. I’m singing the words.
We’re singing them at the same time,
and therein lies the connection. It
goes beyond what size the venue is.”
She recently embarked on her
RED tour of North America. Later
this fall, she’ll perform in Australia
and New Zealand.
Swift, who writes her own songs,
has sold more than 75 million al-
bums. She recently appeared on the
Fox sitcom “New Girl.” And while
she likes acting, she has no plans to
put aside her guitar and pen — un-
less something really impresses her.
“I love to write music. And I love
to put an album together and take
two years to do it and put every-
thing I have into it. (Except) if there
was something, some script that
came along that was so enticing
that I couldn’t walk away from it,
that I became obsessed with that
the way I obsess over music,” she
said. “If you see me commit to a
film, it’s only because I couldn’t fo-
cus on anything else.”
Swift was honored as Fra-
grance Celebrity of the Year at
the Fragrance Awards, presented
Wednesday night at Alice Tully
Hall at Lincoln Center.
“Getting this award is such an
honor,” she said on the red car-
pet before the event.
Swift not worried about connecting with fans
Saturday, June 15, 2013ARTS & LEISURE
The grass and the furious
A boy looks at a GAZ-21 Volga car decorated with grass and parked in the center of Ukrainian capital of Kiev on Thursday, June 13. On the windscreen, the inscription
reads: “Make our loved Kiev green city.”
AP
This Wednesday, June 12 photo released by Starpix shows singer Taylor Swift at
The Fragrance Foundation Awards at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York.
AFP
By Michael Thurston
LOS ANGELES, AFP
Hollywood legends Steven
Spielberg and George Lucas have
sparked a surge of debate in Tin-
seltown after warning that the film
industry is set to implode, amid
soaring budgets and cable TV ri-
valry.
“E.T.” icon Spielberg revealed
that his Oscar-winning political bi-
opic “Lincoln” almost didn’t make
it into theaters last year, while Lu-
cas said the path to release films
in theaters is “getting smaller and
smaller.”
Pricing structures could also
change with, for example, theaters
charging US$25 for the next “Iron
Man” blockbuster but only US$7
for a ticket to see “Lincoln,” or
even a Broadway-style structure,
with much costlier tickets and lon-
ger runs.
There has long been a trend in
the major Hollywood studios to-
wards more sure-fire commercial
hits, either with bankable A-list
stars or blockbuster sequels to al-
ready tried-and-tested franchises.
But the constant introduction of
new technologies, from DVDs to
BluRays to on-demand entertain-
ment, as well as the widespread
illegal peer-to-peer sharing of
movies, have steadily eaten into
the industry’s bottom line.
Speaking at a debate Wednes-
day at the University of Southern
California’s School of Cinematic
Arts, Spielberg said some young
filmmakers’ ideas were often “too
fringe-y for the movies.”
“That’s the big danger, and
there’s eventually going to be an
implosion — or a big meltdown,”
he said, according to the Holly-
wood Reporter.
He added: “You’re at the point
right now where a studio would
rather invest US$250 million in
one film for a real shot at the
brass ring ... than make a whole
bunch of really interesting, deeply
personal” films, he was quoted as
saying.
“There’s going to be an implo-
sion where three or four or maybe
even a half-dozen mega-budget
movies are going to go crashing
into the ground, and that’s going
to change the paradigm,” he said.
“Star Wars” legend Lucas add-
ed: “You’re going to end up with
fewer theaters, bigger theaters
with a lot of nice things. Going
to the movies will cost 50 bucks
or 100 or 150 bucks, like what
Broadway costs today, or a foot-
ball game.”
Lucas said: “I think eventually
the ‘Lincolns’ will go away and
they’re going to be on television.”
“As mine almost was,” Spiel-
berg interjected, physically illus-
trating how near “Lincoln” was to
being released on cable TV chan-
nel HBO. “This close — ask HBO
— this close,” he said.
Lucas added: “We’re talking
‘Lincoln’ and ‘Red Tails’ (a 2012
film which Lucas executive pro-
duced) — we barely got them into
theaters. You’re talking about Ste-
ven Spielberg and George Lucas
can’t get their movie into a the-
ater.”
The trend towards making
“edgier” films for cable TV rather
than theater was highlighted
recently by “Behind the Candela-
bra,” Steven Soderbergh’s biopic
of flamboyant entertainer Lib-
erace, starring Michael Douglas
and Matt Damon.
The film’s gay theme prompted
mainstream Hollywood to shy
away from financing the picture.
As a result, Soderbergh turned
to the U.S. cable TV giant HBO,
meaning it cannot be an Oscar
contender.
Films with budgets of US$250
million are increasingly common,
and a number have failed in re-
cent years, including last year’s
“John Carter,” which led to the
departure of a top Disney boss
and cost the studio some US$200
million.
Hollywood A-lister Will Smith’s
latest movie “After Earth,” with
an estimated budget of US$130
million, flopped badly earlier this
month, making a less-than-stellar
US$27.5 million on its opening
weekend.
Spielberg and Lucas
warn of looming film
industry ‘implosion’
Reuters
Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning
author Barton Gellman is writ-
ing a book on the “rise of the
surveillance-industrial state” after
the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks,
publisher Penguin Press said on
Thursday.
Gellman’s new book, which has
no title or release date yet, will
follow surveillance developments
from California’s Silicon Valley to
the U.S. National Security Agency
headquarters at Ft. Meade, Mary-
land, Penguin said.
The announcement comes a
week after former NSA contrac-
tor Edward Snowden admitted
to leaking information from U.S.
surveillance programs to Britain’s
Guardian newspaper and the
Washington Post, questioning its
legality.
Gellman was a reporter on the
Washington Post story that re-
vealed PRISM, the NSA’s Internet
data collection program.
As a special projects reporter
at The Washington Post, he won
the Pulitzer Prize with Jo Becker
in 2008 for a series about former
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.
Gellman also shared a Pulitzer
Prize in 2002 for national reporting
and is the author of several books,
including the best selling “Angler:
The Cheney Vice Presidency.” He
writes the CounterSpy blog about
digital privacy and security.
Penguin Press is part of Pen-
guin Group, which is owned by
Britain’s Pearson PLC.
Gellman writing book on rise of spy state
NEW YORK, AP
A production company making a
documentary about the song “Happy
Birthday to You” is challenging the
copyright to the famous jingle.
Good Morning To You Productions
Corp., which is working on a film ten-
tatively titled “Happy Birthday,” argues
in a lawsuit filed Thursday that the
song should be “dedicated to public use
and in the public domain.” The com-
pany is seeking monetary damages and
restitution of more than US$5 million
in licensing fees collected by Warner/
Chappell Music Inc. from thousands
of people and groups who’ve paid it
licensing fees.
“More than 120 years after the melody
to which the simple lyrics of ‘Happy
Birthday to You’ is set was first pub-
lished, defendant Warner/Chappell bold-
ly, but wrongfully and unlawfully, insists
that it owns the copyright to ‘Happy
Birthday to You,’” the lawsuit states.
Warner/Chappell, based in Los
Angeles, claims exclusive copyright
to “Happy Birthday to You,” which
Guinness World Records has called
the most famous song in the English
language. The company, whose artists
include Aretha Franklin, Barry Gibb,
Rob Zombie, Madonna and Michael
Jackson, didn’t immediately respond to
a request for comment Thursday.
Good Morning To You Productions
argues that evidence dating to 1893
helps show the song’s copyright ex-
pired around 1921. It says four previ-
ous copyrights to the melody of the
similar-sounding song “Good Morning
to All,” filed in 1893, 1896, 1899 and
1907, have expired or been forfeited.
The class-action lawsuit says that
Warner/Chappell claims the exclusive
copyright to the song based on piano
arrangements published in 1935 but
that the copyright applies only to the
piano arraignment and not to the mel-
ody or lyrics.
The film company filed the lawsuit
after having to pay Warner/Chappell
a US$1,500 licensing fee and sign an
agreement to use the song in a scene
— or face a US$150,000 penalty.
‘Happy Birthday to You’ copyright suit filed in NY
By Helen Rowe
PARIS, AFP
He never cracked the U.S. and few
outside the French-speaking world
have heard of him, but at home rocker
Johnny Hallyday is a national treasure
whose 70th birthday on Saturday will
be celebrated in front of 20,000 ador-
ing fans.
Tickets for the concert, due to be
broadcast live on national television,
sold out in less than two hours. A sec-
ond smaller concert scheduled for later
the same day attracted 50,000 applica-
tions for just 800 seats.
Such is his popularity that the ups
and downs of Hallyday’s life have
become a national saga with acres of
newsprint dedicated down the years
to everything from his marriages and
numerous health scares to his tax ar-
rangements and oft-postponed retire-
ment plans.
Often compared to Elvis Presley,
Hallyday has sold more than 110 mil-
lion records and played live to tens of
millions over a five-decade-long career,
but international success has largely
eluded him.
One of his early concerts is famed
for attracting 100,000 young people
to a Paris square in 1963 with scenes
of hysteria similar to the Beatlemania
across the English channel at the same
time.
French music journalist Bertrand Di-
cale described Hallyday as “ridiculous
but sublime” and said his enduring ap-
peal lay in his uniquely French identity.
“Every country has a Johnny Hal-
lyday. Johnny is the embodiment of
something essentially French. He rep-
resents our way of looking at life,” he
told AFP.
“He is the embodiment not of rock ‘n’
roll but of France’s idea of rock ‘n’ roll.
He is rock ‘n’ roll combined with tra-
ditional French variety entertainment
and whatever the melody, whatever the
rhythm, whatever the lyrics, it’s always
very French,” he added.
Saturday’s second concert will be
something of a homecoming for Hally-
day. The Paris theater where he will go
onstage late on Saturday night is just
a few streets from where he was born
Jean-Philippe Smet on June 15, 1943.
But the milestone does not look like-
ly to herald any serious move toward
retirement.
Like his aging British contempo-
raries Tom Jones and Mick Jagger,
Hallyday has no plans to give it all up.
Just six months after the end of a
grueling 65-date tour, Hallyday goes
back on the road from Sunday with
his “Born Rocker Tour” to celebrate
both his 70th and his new album
“L’Attente”. The tour will include 14
concerts in France, Belgium, Austria
and Monaco.
“A few years ago I could not imagine
singing at 70. But now I think I’ll be on
stage at 80,” he was quoted as saying
recently by Le Parisien newspaper.
Not everyone agrees. An opinion poll
this month found that 65 percent of
French people thought he should re-
tire.
But Hallyday remained unmoved,
telling the RTL radio station days later:
“I still think as if I am 20 or 30 years
old. I honestly don’t see the differ-
ence!”
“I am no more tired now when I do
a concert than before. It seems incred-
ible to me that I am 70 in a few days,”
he added.
French music icon Johnny Hallyday still rocks at 70
AFP
French singer Johnny Hallyday performs in Bordeaux, France on June 2.
New Products
Pandora’s new summer
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Danish jewelry brand Panadora has
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Industry News
Cigna and Huashan spread love for
Duanwu Festival
Cigna (康健人壽) and Huashan Social Welfare Foundation
(華山基金會) invited the senior residents from Shen Keng
(深坑) to celebrate Dragon Boat Festival together on June
4, hoping to raise awareness and support for the elders
in the community.
As Taiwan gradually becomes an aging society, Cigna
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For more information, call (02) 2662-7589
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CONSUMERHIGHLIGHTSText:AdrienneShih,EvaChiang,supplementwriters/Photos:courtesyoftheadvertisers