london

After months of delays the English language Al-Jazeera channel is finally ready to go. Plans call for the new network to broadcast around the clock with 12 hours a day devoted to live news while the other 12 go to interviews, features, and analysis. Like the current Al-Jazeera, the International version will also be headquartered in Doha, Qatar. There will also be newsrooms in London, Washington, and Kuala Lumpur.

The channel's chief competitors will be CNN International and BBC World. As would be expected, Al-Jazeera International will specialize in news from the Middle East and executives promise news with an Arab perspective. No deals have been announced to broadcast the channel in the US, but negotiations are ongoing. The goal for launch is to have the channel available in 30 to 40 million homes worldwide.

British jokester Banksy tampered with hundreds of copies of Paris Hilton's new CD, much to my amusement. He changed the cover art to a topless picture of Paris, but replaced her head with the head of a dog. There's also a sticker advertising the album's hits, including "Why Am I Famous?", "What Have I Done?" and "What Am I For?" He also replaced her CD with one that has 40 minutes of some dance mix by a DJ named 'DM'.

In case you're like me and didn't know who Banksy was but suddenly have respect for him... his real name is Robert Banks and he's a British graffiti/stencil artist whose messages appear throughout London and the world. His stencils on walls, sidewalks, etc. carry political messages. Some notable stencils include him sneaking into the London Zoo in the penguin habitat and painting 'We're bored of fish' on the wall, and he snuck his own art in New York's MOMA, MET, Brooklyn Museum and Museum of Natural History.

If you're a trekkie and find yourself suddenly extremely wealthy and in New York City on October 5, you might want to stop by Christie's auction house to bid on memorabilia from the myriad TV and film versions of Star Trek. The auction, where you can bid on over 1,000 items including Vulcan jewelry and a replica of Kirk's famous chair, is being conducted to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the airing of the first episode of the original series. Right now the items are on display in London, but they'll be making their way to US cities as part of an international tour. People in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Uncasville, CT should click here to see when the items will be beaming into your neck o' the woods.

Gillian Anderson, formerly Agent Dana Scully on The X-Files, has confirmed that she is pregnant with her second child. Back in April, she announced the split from her husband of 16 months and no, he is not the father. The father is her new boyfriend, who has moved in with her a eleven-year-old daughter Piper (who was born during season 2 of The X-Files).

Anderson is currently living in London where she has been doing a lot of theater work. Most recently, she was seen on American television when she played the lead role in PBS' Masterpiece Theatre's production of Bleak House.

Kelly Clarkson just joined the ranks of Madonna and U2. OK, she joined their ranks earlier this year when she won two Emmys Grammys, but now she is also signed on to a concert for HBO. The performance will be recorded at London's Wembley Arena on Feb. 3. The concert will feature her popular hits, Miss Independent, Since You Been Gone, and Breakaway, as well as songs from her new album, which coincidentally comes out in February. The E! announcement doesn't say whether the concert will be aired live or on tape.

This is good news for people like me who are fans of Kelly but are probably too old to feel comfortable at a concert.

(S01E02) Nightmares are an interesting phenomenon. What can seem terrifying while it's playing out in your subconscious loses much of its power once you wake up and try to explain it to someone. In that regard, Nightmares and Dreamscapes was a perfectly apt title for Stephen King's 1993 short story collection. When King is at his best, he's able to make even the most absurd situations seem real and horrific. When those same ideas are fleshed out into a visual medium, however, they become diluted without King etching the images into your mind himself.

This is why so many of King's works suffer when they're translated to the movie or television screen, and why "Crouch End" the second offering of the new series Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King (click here for Keith's review of the premiere episode "Battleground," based on a short story from the Night Shift collection) was more tiresome than terrifying. Also, out of all the short stories the man has written, this wasn't his best one.

I can't even begin to understand how this happened. David Hasselhoff, currently seen on NBC as a judge for the horribly-titled but surprisingly entertaining America's Got Talent, had an accident in a the bathroom of a London gym yesterday that resulted in him having surgery. A spokesperson says Hasselhoff was shaving in the bathroom when he hit his head on a chandelier and glass showered down on him. At least one piece actually severed a tendon on his right arm. Ouch, that's a deep cut. Hasselhoff is already out of surgery and is recovering. Tomorrow, he'll resume filming an ad campaign for British internet company, Pipex.

My first reaction is: 'A chandelier in the bathroom? That has to be one nice gym.' My second is: 'What had to happen for his head to make contact with the chandelier? Was it low? Was he jumping?'

Last week, I mentioned that Pamela Anderson was set to pose nude in the window of Stella McCartney's London store to publicize her involvement in PETA, the animal rights group. Well, that little event happened Wednesday night. What, you didn't think she was going to go through with it? Phsaw, I say. You don't know our little Pammie very well, do you?

Anyway, the story goes like this: Pam was hosting the PETA Awards, which were being held at McCartney's store. After giving the last award, she ripped off her dress and posed nude -- except for a flesh-colored G-string, according to this story -- with two other models (who had bikinis on) behind a banner saying "I'd rather have bare skin than wear skin," or something like that. (Really, the slogan could have said "Tony Blair is a git" and no one would have noticed) More pictures of this party can be found here. Another picture of Pam's stunt, showing some weird bruises on her shoulder, can be found here.

[via Netscape]

In other celebrity divorce news, former The X-Files star Gillian Anderson has announced that she is separating from her husband after 16 years months of marriage (an eternity in Hollywood). Her husband, Julian Ozanne (ha! Gillian and Julian!) is a photojournalist and a documentary filmmaker.

Gillian currently lives in London with her daughter, Piper, from a previous marriage. Anderson recently received a BAFTA nomination for her role as Lady Dedlock in the BBC's Bleak House.

This is month old news, but I hadn't seen or heard anything about it. Probably because I had to find it on the Yahoo! UK news site. Apparently there are plans to have the next season of 24 (or parts of it anyway) take place in London. With some of the more recent terrorist activities that have taken place across the pond, the producers of 24 seem to think it would add a nice angle to the next season. I'm not sure how this would work though. It takes what? 7 or 8 hours to fly to London? And that's from the east coast. What if Jack is still in LA? How would Jack get over there before the day runs out? So many questions, but it would be so worth it to see Jack get in a fight with a Beefeater of the royal guard.

I think Paris has a future as one of those Jaywalkers on The Tonight Show. The girl is dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. If you didn't already figure that out from her crap reality show and personal appearances on various talk shows, you really should read some of her spoken word. It's... depressing. TMZ obtained a copy of Hilton's deposition from a lawsuit in which she is accused of spreading lies in gossip magazines about her ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend. Here are a few Paris-isms:

Hey there, X-Files fans! Do you miss Dana Scully? Me too. And Mulder. They may be reuniting sometime in the future, but in the meantime you can get your Gillian Anderson fix soon on PBS. And it may be your last chance to see her in a television series. In interviews for this new six-part, Masterpiece Theatre program called Bleak House, Anderson says she's happy with her career in London as a stage and film actress (she lives there with her husband and daughter, Piper, who is now eleven!). In London, she says, she's considered an actor. She's done a lot of theatre there since leaving The X-Files in 2002. In America, she says, people think of her as a one-hit wonder.

Sometimes TV personalties will disappear from the radar, but that doesn't mean they've gone away. Case in point: Rich Hall, the stand-up comedian who anchored Not Necessarily the News back in the 80s and who invented "sniglets" or "names for things that didn't have names originally." Hall is still going strong, even if your last memory of him was seeing his tie caught in a car window in the movie One Crazy Summer back in 1986. The folks over at TV Party have an interview with the comedian, who spends much of his time in London these days. Apparently they love him over there. Hey, I like you too, man.

Just because Rob Lowe left The West Wing during the fourth season doesn't mean he was made at creator/writer Aaron Sorkin (Lowe wanted more screen time and money and it was on the studio end that things broke down). Now Lowe and Sorkin are reteaming for another version of Sorkin's stage play A Few Good Men. You might remember it from the film version, responsible for every comedian in the world doing a "You can't handle the truth!" impression). Lowe will play the Tom Cruise role. The play opens on August 18 at London's Royal Theater Haymarket.