Category: Новини

The White Lotus actress Jennifer Coolidge is being celebrated Saturday as the 2023 Woman of the Year by Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Theatricals.

As the oldest theatrical organization in the nation and one of the oldest in the world, since 1951, Hasty Pudding Theatricals has bestowed this award annually on women “who have made lasting and impressive contributions to the world of entertainment.”

Coolidge, who saw a career resurgence following her Emmy-winning turn as Tanya McQuoid-Hunt in the acclaimed HBO series The White Lotus, headlined a parade through the streets of Cambridge Saturday afternoon. Dressed in a leopard print coat and donning a fluffy pink hat, she waved to the crowd that had come out despite unusually frigid temperatures.

Coolidge, who also played Stifler’s sultry mom in American Pie and sage manicurist Paulette in the Legally Blonde movies, grew up in the Boston area. Later in the evening, she will attend a roast where she will be presented with her Pudding Pot award.

“It is an absolute dream for us to honor Jennifer Coolidge as our Woman of the Year on the heels of her recent accolades for The White Lotus,” Producer Sarah Mann said in a statement. “We know our Pudding Pot will look phenomenal alongside her new Golden Globe, and we swear we won’t whisk her away to a palazzo in Palermo!”

Her other film credits include roles in Best In Show, A Mighty Wind and Shotgun Wedding, and she has appeared in multiple television shows, including Seinfeld, 2 Broke Girls and Nip/Tuck.

Previous winners of the Woman of the Year Award include Meryl Streep, Viola Davis and Debbie Reynolds.

On Thursday, award-winning actor and bestselling author Bob Odenkirk was honored as the 2023 Man of the Year. Odenkirk, best known as shady lawyer Saul Goodman on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, received his Pudding Pot award at the celebratory roast ahead of a preview of Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ 174th production, COSMIC RELIEF!
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“Helloooo! Hello the Universe! Whoo!” shouted Jakkaphong “Anne” Jakrajutatip, the latest owner of the Miss Universe contest, from a stage filled with beauty queens.

Jakkaphong, a Thai media tycoon and trans rights activist, bought the parent company, Miss Universe Organization (MUO), last year. She is the first non-American and first transgender woman to own the 7-decade-old pageant, which drew contestants to New Orleans from 83 countries last month.

The competition, launched in 1952, was once co-owned by former U.S. President Donald Trump, who bought it in in 1996 from ITT Corp., then sold it in 2015 to WME/IMG, a talent agency and entertainment company, according to Variety.

In October, Jakkaphong expanded her business, JKN Global Group, headquartered in Samut Prakan, Thailand, by taking over the MUO offices in New York City when she bought the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants for $20 million.

She’s cut a $12.2 million deal with organizers in El Salvador, which will host the Miss Universe competition in 2023 for the first time since 1975.

Jakkaphong saw the Miss Universe platform as a promising asset, one that will help her fulfill her goal of empowering women and promoting feminism by encouraging all women — transgender, married, pregnant, divorced — to enter the contest.

“I was born as a trans woman,” Jakkaphong told VOA’s Thai Service during an exclusive interview in New York last month.

“My life purpose here is to help other people to transform, to lead, to teach and to inspire people,” said the 43-year-old businesswoman educated in Australia who is a celebrity in Thailand. “I need to become the inspiration for a lot of people [like] ‘you don’t give up no matter what and nobody can bring you down once they see you are good.’ ”

Describing herself as having been born “without a golden spoon in my mouth,” Jakkaphong comes from a Thai Chinese upper-middle class family that ran a video rental store, which she inherited before starting her own foreign TV content import business. She founded JKN Global Group in 2013.

Jakkaphong advocates for transgender rights in Thailand through her Life Inspired for Thailand Foundation. Since 2019, the group has campaigned for a draft bill to address transgender rights, including recognizing legal gender title change for people who go through gender reassignment operations. The draft needs more signatures to move forward to the Thai parliament.

Although considered one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly Asian countries, Thailand’s laws do not grant equal rights to members of the LGBTQ+ community in title change and marriage.

Jakkaphong believes the Miss Universe pageant comes with enough influence that it may be able to help change the laws in Thailand and other countries that do not yet provide equal rights to LGBTQ+ people.

“I believe that politicians wishing to run as countries’ leaders will raise this [gender title change] issue and will make it happen for us… MUO is the platform that helps urge countries to look at this matter,” she said, adding that she will soon raise the issue with Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha.

“The [Thai] government is occupied with so many things, and of course, we don’t even know [whether] we will have the same government or not. We will have the election coming up,” in May, said Jakkaphong. “But [gender title change] has to happen one day.”

Despite her belief that the pageant is a force for change, Jakkaphong said there’s no talk of politics on stage. “We talk about inspiration. We talk about the power of feminism and that is more important,” she said.

While Jakkaphong acknowledges that “many countries on the stage don’t get along with each other,” the contest is “about a dream of one woman. You cannot stop her dream no matter where she comes from. We cannot block anybody’s dreams, particularly young women’s.”

She sees those dreams as countering the notion that pageants impose rigid standards of beauty on contestants, standards that exclude rather than include, and objectify women.

Some 2.4 million people watched the Miss Universe 2022 final competition on January 14 on the U.S.-based, Spanish-language Telemundo network, according to ustvdb.com. This was the first year the streaming service Roku Channel broadcast the contest. It has yet to disclose viewing numbers.

Nielsen, the company that rates the popularity of American television shows, reported 2.7 million people watched the 2021 competition, a drop from 2019 when 3.8 million people watched the competition. In 2014, the last year of Trump’s involvement, 8.8 million people watched the contest, according to Nielsen.

On the final day of competition, January 14, Jakkaphong said, “We can elevate our women to feel strong enough, good enough, qualified enough, and never be objectified again,” before presenting the Transformational Leadership award to Thai entrant Anna Sueangam-iam, whose family collects garbage for recycling.

In New York Jakkaphong told VOA’s Thai Service that promoting inclusivity while recognizing beauty lets audiences “see the diversity… But the brain and the beauty must come together.”

Miss USA, R’Bonney Gabriel, who on January 14 won the first Miss Universe competition under Jakkaphong’s regime, is a fashion entrepreneur who designs a line of sustainable clothing.

Becoming an inspiration for others is central to the role of beauty queens, said Jakkaphong, adding that the Miss Universe pageant helps promote the message of “becoming the best version of oneself” and “becoming so beautifully confident that you would love to lift up the spirit of other human beings.”

Jakkaphong said the pageant under her ownership will continue to be different from its predecessors.

“This is the new paradigm of the beauty competition, which I don’t see as the beauty competition alone. It’s actually a female platform to raise awareness. Therefore, the whole world can listen to them.”
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Paco Rabanne, the Spanish-born designer known for perfumes sold worldwide and for metallic, space-age fashions, has died, the group that owns his fashion house announced Friday.     

“The House of Paco Rabanne wishes to honor our visionary designer and founder who passed away today at the age of 88. Among the most seminal fashion figures of the 20th century, his legacy will remain,” the statement from beauty and fashion company Puig said.   

Le Telegramme newspaper quoted the mayor of Vannes, David Robo, as saying that Rabanne died at his home in the Brittany region town of Portsall.   

Rabanne’s fashion house shows its collections in Paris and is scheduled to unveil the brand’s latest ready-to-wear designs during the upcoming Feb. 27-March 3 fashion week.   

Rabanne was known as a rebel designer in a career that blossomed with his collaboration with the family-owned Puig, a Spanish company that now also owns other design houses, including Nina Ricci, Jean Paul Gaultier, Caroline Herrera and Dries Van Noten. The company also owns the fragrance brands Byredo and Penhaligon’s.    

“Paco Rabanne made transgression magnetic. Who else could induce fashionable Parisian women (to) clamor for dresses made of plastic and metal? Who but Paco Rabanne could imagine a fragrance called Calandre – the word means ‘automobile grill,’ you know – and turn it into an icon of modern femininity?” the group’s statement said.   

Calandre perfume was launched in 1969, the first product by Puig in Spain, France and the United States, according to the company.   

Born Francisco Rabaneda y Cuervo in 1934, the future designer fled the Spanish Basque country at age 5 during the Spanish Civil War and took the name of Paco Rabanne.     

He studied architecture at Paris’ Beaux Arts Academie before moving to couture, following in the steps of his mother, a couturier in Spain. He said she was jailed at one point for being dressed in a “scandalous” fashion.   

Rabanne sold accessories to well-known designers before launching his own collection.   

He titled the first collection presented under his own name “12 unwearable dresses in contemporary materials.” His innovative outfits were made of various kinds of metal, including his famous use of mail, the chain-like material associated with Medieval knights.   

Coco Chanel reportedly called Rabanne “the metallurgist of fashion.”   

“My colleagues tell me I am not a couturier but an artisan, and it’s true that I’m an artisan. … I work with my hands,” he said in an interview in the 1970s.   

In an interview given when he was 43, and now held in France’s National Audiovisual Institute, Rabanne explained his radical fashion philosophy: “I think fashion is prophetic. Fashion announces the future.” He added that women were harbingers of what lies on the horizon.   

“When hair balloons, regimes fall,” Rabanne said. “When hair is smooth, all is well.”   

The president of the Association of Fashion Designers of Spain, Modesto Lomba, said Rabanne “left an absolute mark on the passage of time. Let’s not forget that he was Spanish and that he triumphed inside and outside Spain.”
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Acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has been released on bail after starting a hunger strike protesting his almost seven-month detention, supporters said Friday. 

The director had been arrested months before the current anti-regime protests erupted, but his imprisonment became a symbol of the plight of artists speaking out against the authorities. 

Panahi was released from Tehran’s Evin prison “two days after starting his hunger strike for freedom,” the U.S.-based Center for Human Rights in Iran said on Twitter, while Iran’s reformist Shargh newspaper posted an image of Panahi jubilantly embracing a supporter. 

His wife, Tahereh Saeedi, posted a picture on Instagram of Panahi being driven from prison in a vehicle. 

The prize-winning director was arrested in July and went on a dry hunger strike Wednesday to protest his continued detention. 

“Mr. Panahi was temporarily released from Evin prison with the efforts of his family, respected lawyers and representatives of the cinema,” Iran’s House of Cinema, which groups together industry professionals, said in a statement. 

The announcement that Panahi was going on a dry hunger strike sparked a wave of concern around the world about the director, who has won prizes at all of Europe’s top three film festivals. 

“Today, like many people trapped in Iran, I have no choice but to protest against this inhumane behavior with my dearest possession — my life,” Panahi had said in the statement published by his wife. 

“I will remain in this state until perhaps my lifeless body is freed from prison,” he said. 

Relief and joy 

Panahi, 62, was arrested July 11 and had been due to serve a six-year sentence handed down in 2010 after his conviction for “propaganda against the system.” 

On October 15, the Supreme Court quashed the conviction and ordered a retrial, raising hopes among his legal team that he could be released, but he remained in prison. 

Panahi won a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2000 for his film “The Circle.” In 2015, he won the Golden Bear in Berlin for “Taxi Tehran,” and in 2018, he won the best screenplay prize at Cannes for “Three Faces.” 

Panahi’s latest film, “No Bears,” which like much of his recent work stars the director himself, was screened at the 2022 Venice Film Festival when the director was already behind bars. It won the Special Jury Prize. 

“It is extraordinary, a relief, a total joy. We express our gratitude to all those who mobilized yesterday,” his French distributor, producer Michele Halberstadt, told AFP. 

“His next fight is to have the cancellation of his sentence officially recognized. He’s outside, he’s free, and this is already great.” 

Panahi’s July arrest came after he attended a court hearing for fellow film director Mohammad Rasoulof, who had been detained a few days earlier. 

Rasoulof was released from prison January 7 after being granted a two-week furlough for health reasons and is still believed to be outside jail. 

Cinema figures have been among the thousands of people arrested by Iran in its crackdown on the protests sparked by the September 16 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code for women. 

Star actor Taraneh Alidoosti, who had published images of herself without wearing the Islamic headscarf, was among those detained, although she was released in early January after being held for almost three weeks. 
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Inspired by the lifesaving medical attention Damar Hamlin received on the field during a game last month, the NFL and American Heart Association will provide free CPR education in Arizona throughout Super Bowl week as part of the NFL Experience at the Phoenix Convention Center.

Hamlin, the 24-year-old Buffalo Bills defensive back, needed to be resuscitated after making a tackle in a game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Bills assistant athletic trainer Denny Kellington performed CPR on Hamlin on the field.

“Being able to deliver care in emergency situations is not just important at sporting events, but in all walks of life,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement.

People who visit the mobile training unit will receive hands-only CPR training from experts and receive CPR information that can be shared in their communities. Also, the American Heart Association is working with Hamlin and his #3forHeart CPR Challenge, a social media initiative that encourages people to learn CPR, donate money to support CPR research, education and training, and share the word with others.

“Coming out of the events from last month with Damar Hamlin on the field and the remarkable work that the emergency responders performed, we thought about what opportunities existed for us to share some of the learnings that came from that experience more broadly, which is part of our responsibility throughout the world of football and maybe the world of sports,” NFL executive Jeff Miller told The Associated Press.

“There’s a long history of the NFL trying to share learnings on the health and safety side from what we experienced at the NFL level, whether that be about concussions, concussion education or about emergency action plans. We take as an obligation to share what we’ve learned and highlight some of the best health and safety approaches that we can with other levels of sport,” Miller added.

Anna Isaacson, the NFL’s vice president of social responsibility, said the league approached the American Heart Association and the American Red Cross with a simple question: “What can we do here? We saw one life saved. How can we save many more?”

“The world was watching,” Isaacson told The AP. “I think that while we face challenges, we use these moments to try to make a positive impact.”

In addition to free CPR training in Arizona, the league throughout February is raising money to support CPR education and youth sports safety efforts across the country.

These include a Super Bowl 50/50 raffle open to Arizona residents and fans attending the game at State Farm Stadium. The winner of the raffle will receive half of the jackpot total from raffle ticket sales; the other half will benefit the NFL Foundation to support CPR-related initiatives, including through the American Heart Association, the Red Cross and their local affiliates.

“Only one out of three high schools has full-time access to an athletic trainer and only about another third even have part-time access to one,” Miller said. “That’s a huge gap in sports and in sports medicine that the league, over a period of time with partners like AHA and others, is going to hopefully try to rectify or address at least a little bit.”
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An Iranian director who was arrested last summer, weeks before his latest film was released to widespread acclaim, has gone on a hunger strike to protest his continued detention amid more than four months of anti-government protests.

Jafar Panahi, whose films have thrilled critics and won numerous international prizes, issued a statement saying he would refuse food or medicine starting Wednesday “in protest against the extra-legal and inhumane behavior of the judicial and security apparatus.”

He’s among a number of Iranian artists, sports figures and other celebrities who have been detained after speaking out against Iran’s theocracy. Such arrests have become increasingly frequent since nationwide protests broke out in September over the death of a young woman in police custody.

Panahi, 62, was sentenced to six years in prison in 2011 on charges of producing anti-government propaganda, but the sentence was never carried out. Banned from both travel and filmmaking, he continued to make underground films that were released abroad to great acclaim.

He was arrested in July when he went to the Tehran prosecutor’s office to inquire about the arrests of two other Iranian filmmakers. A judge later ruled that he must serve the earlier sentence.

His latest film, “No Bears,” in which he plays a fictionalized version of himself while making a film along the Iran-Turkey border, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, a week before the protests began. The New York Times and The Associated Press named it one of the top 10 films of the year, and film critic Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times called it 2022’s best movie.

The protests erupted after Mahsa Amini, 22, died while being held by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating the country’s strict Islamic dress code. The demonstrations rapidly escalated into calls for the overthrow of Iran’s ruling clerics, a major challenge to their four-decade rule.

On Wednesday, around 100 people took part in a protest in the western Iranian city of Abdanan, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported. It said that five “rioters” suffered minor injuries when security forces intervened and that 10 people were arrested, without providing further details.

Iran heavily restricts media access to demonstrations and periodically shuts down the internet, making it difficult to confirm specific incidents or gauge the scale of the ongoing protests.

At least 527 protesters have been killed and more than 19,500 people have been detained since the demonstrations began, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that has closely monitored the unrest. Iranian authorities have not released official figures on deaths or arrests.

Taraneh Alidoosti, the star of Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning 2016 film, “The Salesman,” was arrested in December after taking to social media to criticize the crackdown on protests. She was released three weeks later on bail.
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