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“Crazy Rich Asians” celebrated its Asian premiere in Singapore on Tuesday night, with local-born stars such as Fiona Xie delighted to be bringing the film home to the city where it was filmed.

“I’m so looking forward for every Singaporean to watch this because Singapore is so beautiful on screen. Everybody (in Hollywood) was like, is this CGI? Does this place really exist?,” Xie, who plays gold digging opera star Kitty Pong, told reporters.

“This is a homecoming!” she said.

The film, the first Hollywood movie in 25 years with an all-Asian cast, is a rare Hollywood showcase of Asian identity and culture, which the filmmakers hope will be enjoyed by moviegoers of all backgrounds.

The romantic comedy about an Asian-American New Yorker who goes to Singapore to meet her boyfriend’s wealthy and tradition-bound family of Chinese descent is based on the 2013 best-selling book of the same name by Kevin Kwan.

The Warner Bros. film directed by Jon M. Chu, launched above expectations, garnering $34 million in just five days.

The film, with a mostly eastern Asian cast, has drawn criticism for not representing Singapore’s multi-ethnic society.

“The film is set in Singapore, where 15 percent of the population are Malay and 7.4 percent are Indian, and none of them are represented in the film except as the background help,” said activist and journalist Kirsten Han on Twitter.

However, others saw it as an opportunity to tell other diverse Singapore stories.

“This movie is going to open more doors for us to tell the world more Singapore stories,” 19 year-old university student, Andrea Raeburn told Reuters at the premiere.

The film’s producer, John Penotti also shared similar sentiments:”We hope this starts a very long-running trend celebrating Asian-focused films that play around the world, that’s exactly the hope for the portrayal of Asians, that’s exactly what is starting to happen. There are many more stories, this is just one,” he said.
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“Crazy Rich Asians” celebrated its Asian premiere in Singapore on Tuesday night, with local-born stars such as Fiona Xie delighted to be bringing the film home to the city where it was filmed.

“I’m so looking forward for every Singaporean to watch this because Singapore is so beautiful on screen. Everybody (in Hollywood) was like, is this CGI? Does this place really exist?,” Xie, who plays gold digging opera star Kitty Pong, told reporters.

“This is a homecoming!” she said.

The film, the first Hollywood movie in 25 years with an all-Asian cast, is a rare Hollywood showcase of Asian identity and culture, which the filmmakers hope will be enjoyed by moviegoers of all backgrounds.

The romantic comedy about an Asian-American New Yorker who goes to Singapore to meet her boyfriend’s wealthy and tradition-bound family of Chinese descent is based on the 2013 best-selling book of the same name by Kevin Kwan.

The Warner Bros. film directed by Jon M. Chu, launched above expectations, garnering $34 million in just five days.

The film, with a mostly eastern Asian cast, has drawn criticism for not representing Singapore’s multi-ethnic society.

“The film is set in Singapore, where 15 percent of the population are Malay and 7.4 percent are Indian, and none of them are represented in the film except as the background help,” said activist and journalist Kirsten Han on Twitter.

However, others saw it as an opportunity to tell other diverse Singapore stories.

“This movie is going to open more doors for us to tell the world more Singapore stories,” 19 year-old university student, Andrea Raeburn told Reuters at the premiere.

The film’s producer, John Penotti also shared similar sentiments:”We hope this starts a very long-running trend celebrating Asian-focused films that play around the world, that’s exactly the hope for the portrayal of Asians, that’s exactly what is starting to happen. There are many more stories, this is just one,” he said.
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The women’s Champions League is beginning to step out of the shadow of its male counterpart with the ultimate aim of being as much of a must-see and commercially-attractive event, a UEFA official told Reuters on Tuesday.

This season’s final in Budapest will be the first time the showpiece, in its current format, will be held in a different city to the men’s Champions League final.

The decision was taken to allow the pinnacle of women’s club football (called soccer in the U.S.) in Europe to have its own spotlight and not be overshadowed by the men’s edition, which is one of the most viewed annual TV events in the world, surpassing the Super Bowl.

The sponsorship and broadcast rights to the women’s final are currently sold by UEFA, with the previous rounds being managed by the clubs themselves.

However, Kayleigh Grieve, marketing manager for women’s football at European soccer’s governing body, said the ultimate aim was to part-centralize the rights-selling process to give the game the platform it deserves.

“We’re looking at that first step of bringing centralization back to the quarter-finals to final and hope that may shape up the process,” Grieve said on the sidelines of the Leaders XX Think Tank, held at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium.

“But certainly broadcast will help us build more of the story of the Champions League because now putting it in a city is one thing, but we essentially drop in a match a year and try and grow an audience for it and we’ve not really told them anything about the lead-up to that and built the interest and built the heroes of the matches, built the star players.

“We essentially want to get in a position where we can do that and that people at least recognize some of the names of the players and some of the clubs.”

A spokesman for UEFA later told Reuters that plans to further centralize the broadcasting rights were an “ideal world scenario” and had not yet been broached with clubs.

Unique sponsors

The 2018 final was held in Kyiv’s Valeriy Lobanovskyi Dynamo Stadium, where Olympique Lyonnais beat VfL Wolfsburg 4-1 to win their third successive Champions League title — two days before Real Madrid achieved that feat in the men’s edition.

The match attendance, however, was 14,237, the lowest for the women’s final for four years.

With a bigger push from sponsors specifically invested in women’s football, Grieve believed that number could see a big increase.

“It’s just about making sure we present the competition as a strong product and bring in unique sponsors to the women’s side,” she said. “So we’ve unbundled that from the men’s side and we’re selling that in its own right.

“The partners previously were just given the women’s rights which meant they hadn’t committed their budgets to it, they hadn’t got anything committed to the activation of the rights so it was just left languishing. They maybe took a few tickets, came to a few games but there was no activation around it.

“So at least this time if they do come on the program, it will be because they specifically paid for it, which means they will specifically activate around it.”

International plans

UEFA oversaw a record-breaking Women’s European Championship last year, hosted and won by the Netherlands, in terms of attendances, TV viewers and online interactions.

Grieve said it was a distinct possibility that future editions of the women’s World Cup or Euros could one day be as big as the respective men’s tournaments.

“I understand the sentiment of it,” she said. “They [FIFA] probably won’t be far off. From what I’ve seen of the predictions of next year’s Women’s World Cup, is that they are going to eclipse a number of men’s competitions — maybe not their own yet, but they are getting there.

“I don’t see why it can’t be as big, especially at a national team competition when you really tap into national pride, national interest and all those stories. … So from a World Cup or Euros perspective, I can see those competitions being massive.”

World soccer body FIFA’s governing council is still pondering proposals for a global women’s nations league and an impatiently-awaited Club World Cup.

With UEFA appointing former world player of the year Nadine Kessler as their first head of women’s football last year, the European body has the chance to lead the way for the women’s game.
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The women’s Champions League is beginning to step out of the shadow of its male counterpart with the ultimate aim of being as much of a must-see and commercially-attractive event, a UEFA official told Reuters on Tuesday.

This season’s final in Budapest will be the first time the showpiece, in its current format, will be held in a different city to the men’s Champions League final.

The decision was taken to allow the pinnacle of women’s club football (called soccer in the U.S.) in Europe to have its own spotlight and not be overshadowed by the men’s edition, which is one of the most viewed annual TV events in the world, surpassing the Super Bowl.

The sponsorship and broadcast rights to the women’s final are currently sold by UEFA, with the previous rounds being managed by the clubs themselves.

However, Kayleigh Grieve, marketing manager for women’s football at European soccer’s governing body, said the ultimate aim was to part-centralize the rights-selling process to give the game the platform it deserves.

“We’re looking at that first step of bringing centralization back to the quarter-finals to final and hope that may shape up the process,” Grieve said on the sidelines of the Leaders XX Think Tank, held at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium.

“But certainly broadcast will help us build more of the story of the Champions League because now putting it in a city is one thing, but we essentially drop in a match a year and try and grow an audience for it and we’ve not really told them anything about the lead-up to that and built the interest and built the heroes of the matches, built the star players.

“We essentially want to get in a position where we can do that and that people at least recognize some of the names of the players and some of the clubs.”

A spokesman for UEFA later told Reuters that plans to further centralize the broadcasting rights were an “ideal world scenario” and had not yet been broached with clubs.

Unique sponsors

The 2018 final was held in Kyiv’s Valeriy Lobanovskyi Dynamo Stadium, where Olympique Lyonnais beat VfL Wolfsburg 4-1 to win their third successive Champions League title — two days before Real Madrid achieved that feat in the men’s edition.

The match attendance, however, was 14,237, the lowest for the women’s final for four years.

With a bigger push from sponsors specifically invested in women’s football, Grieve believed that number could see a big increase.

“It’s just about making sure we present the competition as a strong product and bring in unique sponsors to the women’s side,” she said. “So we’ve unbundled that from the men’s side and we’re selling that in its own right.

“The partners previously were just given the women’s rights which meant they hadn’t committed their budgets to it, they hadn’t got anything committed to the activation of the rights so it was just left languishing. They maybe took a few tickets, came to a few games but there was no activation around it.

“So at least this time if they do come on the program, it will be because they specifically paid for it, which means they will specifically activate around it.”

International plans

UEFA oversaw a record-breaking Women’s European Championship last year, hosted and won by the Netherlands, in terms of attendances, TV viewers and online interactions.

Grieve said it was a distinct possibility that future editions of the women’s World Cup or Euros could one day be as big as the respective men’s tournaments.

“I understand the sentiment of it,” she said. “They [FIFA] probably won’t be far off. From what I’ve seen of the predictions of next year’s Women’s World Cup, is that they are going to eclipse a number of men’s competitions — maybe not their own yet, but they are getting there.

“I don’t see why it can’t be as big, especially at a national team competition when you really tap into national pride, national interest and all those stories. … So from a World Cup or Euros perspective, I can see those competitions being massive.”

World soccer body FIFA’s governing council is still pondering proposals for a global women’s nations league and an impatiently-awaited Club World Cup.

With UEFA appointing former world player of the year Nadine Kessler as their first head of women’s football last year, the European body has the chance to lead the way for the women’s game.
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Italian actress Asia Argento, an outspoken advocate in the movement against sexual harassment, denied on Tuesday ever having had sexual relations with Jimmy Bennett, an actor who the New York Times reported had accused her of sexual assault.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that Bennett had accused Argento of sexually assaulting him in 2013 when he was 17 and she was 37. Argento agreed to pay him $380,000 after he asked for $3.5 million, the paper said.

“I am deeply shocked and hurt by having read news that is absolutely false. I have never had any sexual relationship with Bennett,” Argento said in an emailed statement distributed by her Italian lawyer.

In her first public comments since the article, Argento said she had been linked to Bennett over several years “by friendship only.”

Representatives for Bennett did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the matter.

A spokesperson for the New York Times told Reuters: “We are confident in the accuracy of our reporting, which was based on verified documents and multiple sources.”

Argento said in her statement that Bennett had “unexpectedly made an exorbitant request of money” to her following her media exposure in the accusations of sexual misconduct against movie producer Harvey Weinstein.

Argento was one of the first women to publicly accuse Weinstein. She told The New Yorker magazine last October that he had raped her during the Cannes festival in 1997 when she was 21. Since that interview, she has become an outspoken advocate in the #MeToo social media movement against sexual harassment.

She said in her statement that she and her then-boyfriend, the culinary television star Anthony Bourdain, had “decided to deal compassionately with Bennett’s demand for help and give it to him.”

“Anthony personally undertook to help Bennett economically, upon the condition that we would no longer suffer any further intrusions in our life,” she added.

Bourdain killed himself in June.

Argento said she would oppose the “false allegations” against her and would assume “all necessary initiatives for my protection before all competent venues.”

 
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Italian actress Asia Argento, an outspoken advocate in the movement against sexual harassment, denied on Tuesday ever having had sexual relations with Jimmy Bennett, an actor who the New York Times reported had accused her of sexual assault.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that Bennett had accused Argento of sexually assaulting him in 2013 when he was 17 and she was 37. Argento agreed to pay him $380,000 after he asked for $3.5 million, the paper said.

“I am deeply shocked and hurt by having read news that is absolutely false. I have never had any sexual relationship with Bennett,” Argento said in an emailed statement distributed by her Italian lawyer.

In her first public comments since the article, Argento said she had been linked to Bennett over several years “by friendship only.”

Representatives for Bennett did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the matter.

A spokesperson for the New York Times told Reuters: “We are confident in the accuracy of our reporting, which was based on verified documents and multiple sources.”

Argento said in her statement that Bennett had “unexpectedly made an exorbitant request of money” to her following her media exposure in the accusations of sexual misconduct against movie producer Harvey Weinstein.

Argento was one of the first women to publicly accuse Weinstein. She told The New Yorker magazine last October that he had raped her during the Cannes festival in 1997 when she was 21. Since that interview, she has become an outspoken advocate in the #MeToo social media movement against sexual harassment.

She said in her statement that she and her then-boyfriend, the culinary television star Anthony Bourdain, had “decided to deal compassionately with Bennett’s demand for help and give it to him.”

“Anthony personally undertook to help Bennett economically, upon the condition that we would no longer suffer any further intrusions in our life,” she added.

Bourdain killed himself in June.

Argento said she would oppose the “false allegations” against her and would assume “all necessary initiatives for my protection before all competent venues.”

 
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