‘True Blood’ season 6 spoilers: Meet a new series regular
So who are we specifically talking about here?
According to a new report from Zap2It, the character we are getting set to meet goes by the name of Nicole, and she is a reasonably normal human being in the she is not a vampire, werewolf, or anything else of a supernatural persuasion. However, she does still have some rather surprising beliefs. For one, she is a part of a liberal group who travels state to state preaching freedom and equality, and while her sense of idealism is admirable, this is also the sort of thing that can land her in hot water if she ticks off the wrong people.
We are sure that Nicole’s travels are going to lead her to Bon Temps during season 6, but just who she will be interacting with for the time being is a little unclear. On the surface, she is a great potential Jason Stackhouse love interest in that he is easily swayed to various causes (as proven in the past), though it would be more interesting to see her travel down a different road and try to get some of the town’s resident vampire population united behind her. After all, shouldn’t everyone be trying to get along a little better now after the Authority disaster that shook down in season 5?
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Watch Alison Brie Dance the Charleston During a Photo Shoot
But someone still needs to teach the ‘Community’ and ‘Mad Men’ actress how to Dougie
While pouting and posing for a photo shoot, Community and Mad Men scene-stealer Alison Brie talked to Nylon TV about her weakness for the Real Housewives series and reveals she’s a little more like her buttoned-up Community character, Annie Edison, than she may appear—at least when it comes to dancing.
“Did you say the Dougie? I don’t know if I really know the Dougie,” she admits. “You know, the Carleston is like, my dance.” Trudy Campbell would be proud.
* I'm a doggie guy but I'll make an exception in case of Alison. Mish all the way as I gazed into those ethereal orbs of sexual repression, forever enraptured in endless pleasure. It'll be fantasy come true if Alison and Zooey Deschanel are paired together in a movie about couple of porn stars-cum-lovers trying to decide if working in the biz is at odds with their deep religious beliefs. Directed by Paul Verhoeven.
All of Alison Brie's Raps
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Kat Clark in “25F”: Tony Jay for Wolf Magazine
Kat Clark of One Management is the focus of a new “day in the life” themed short film for Wolf Magazine. Long legs and blessed with a bubble butt, 21-years old Canadian model Kat Clark is a sight for sore eyes.
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Alpha Dog (2006) : watch the full-movie with Olivia Wilde topless scene before it's taken down
More movies here
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Da Vinci’s Demons
Last month Liz Barry (TheBAY’s photojournalist) and I visited the new Bay film studios situated in the former Visteon site on Fabian Way to see the set and filming of Da Vinci’s Demons.
We wandered among the scenery where parts of the Duomo in Florence have been recreated and had a sneaky peak at Leonardo’s bedroom. As there was an embargo on photography until mid-October we had to hold on until this issue to bring you the exciting news and photos.
Hollywood scriptwriter and director David S Gover, who also wrote the script for the Batman movie Dark Knight Rises and the vampire super-hero film Blade has been shooting this historical fantasy based on Leonardo da Vinci’s life at locations in Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot.We wandered among the scenery where parts of the Duomo in Florence have been recreated and had a sneaky peak at Leonardo’s bedroom. As there was an embargo on photography until mid-October we had to hold on until this issue to bring you the exciting news and photos.
Liz mingled with the cast while they queued for lunch. It made a pretty surreal scene with actors dressed in 15th century costume eating sandwiches and drinking from polystyrene cups.
Later at the Visteon studio we wandered around the workshops where every prop and piece of scenery has been made on site under the guidance of Swansea born production designer Ed Thomas. It was Ed that designed Dr Who and Torchwood and was instrumental in bringing this production to Swansea. The film sets have been created in the old car factory in an extraordinary short space of time. The crew of 20 carpenters and 100 scene builders had just 12 weeks from the time they took possession of the building to the start of filming.
Roy Thomas, owner of the Visteon site which has over 255,000 square foot of studio space is delighted that Starz Entertainment and BBC Worldwide Productions chose Swansea as their location for this production. It has brought £20 million of investment to the area with £750,000 being spent on materials alone. The local economy has been boosted with the increase revenue brought by the use of accommodation, catering and transport.
Swansea Metropolitan University art students spent time at the studios and their work on Da Vinci inspired cartoons have been used to decorate his workshop.
Da Vinci's Demons stars Tom Riley, who has previously appeared in Monroe and Bouquet of Barbed Wire. Riley will play the young Da Vinci in renaissance Florence, with Laura Haddock, from Upstairs Downstairs, who will play Lucrezia Donati, mistress of Lorenzo Medici and lover of Leonardo da Vinci.
Our tour of the studios was fascinating and a real insight into the world of costume drama production.
I hope that this will be the first of many programmes to be made here in Swansea and who knows maybe Bay Studios will one day become a household name like Pinewood or even Universal.
The production will be televised in the spring of next year and we’ll make sure we let you know the date well in advance.
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David Fincher’s House Of Cards Character Portraits
Buried in the code of Netflix’s website were the following character images for David Fincher and Beau Willimon‘s House of Cards do-over, a straight-to-streaming remake of the great UK TV series – or, arguably, a new adaptation of Michael Dobbs original novel.I put the most interesting ones at the top. They can’t be seen “on the face” of Netflix just yet, and they have that kinda-sorta codey thing going on where highlighted letters spell out the “true nature” of the character in the portrait.
The first 13 episodes of House of Cards will be available to stream on Netflix from February 1st.
Kate Mara as Zoe Barnes.
Kevin Spacey as Francis Underwood.
Robin Wright as Claire Underwood.
Corey Stoll as Peter Russo.
Michael Kelly as Doug Stamper.
And now, everybody else.
Kate Mara is just like us pervs
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Shailene Woodley on Mary Elizabeth Winstead in 'Smashed'
SAG Preview: Actors on Actors - Woodley on Winstead
I became so lost in the raw vulnerability of Mary Elizabeth Winstead's acute and accurate portrayal of an alcoholic woman, my mind seemed to forget that I was watching a movie starring an actress instead of observing a dear friend who was fighting personal inner battles. 
Mary paved her road of empowerment with penetrating strength and unabridged vulnerability. She sucked me into Kate's world, a world of messy, difficult, unclear paths that are filled with obstacles and tribulations beyond reason. She did not glamorize AA meetings. She did not victoriously display the perks of abstaining from substances. She did not give me the impression that life gets easier once an individual becomes sober. Rather, she navigated her way through waves of confusion, self-doubt, dependence, separation, honesty, responsibility and courage without ever demanding empathy or compassion from her audience.
I was naturally drawn to root for this woman, to cheer for her triumphs and to cry for her blunders. Mary's performance left me humbled as she carved her way out of a blinding inebriation with forceful perseverance and pure, stripped-down human bravery.
Mary paved her road of empowerment with penetrating strength and unabridged vulnerability. She sucked me into Kate's world, a world of messy, difficult, unclear paths that are filled with obstacles and tribulations beyond reason. She did not glamorize AA meetings. She did not victoriously display the perks of abstaining from substances. She did not give me the impression that life gets easier once an individual becomes sober. Rather, she navigated her way through waves of confusion, self-doubt, dependence, separation, honesty, responsibility and courage without ever demanding empathy or compassion from her audience. I was naturally drawn to root for this woman, to cheer for her triumphs and to cry for her blunders. Mary's performance left me humbled as she carved her way out of a blinding inebriation with forceful perseverance and pure, stripped-down human bravery.
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Wild Sex | Trailer
http://www.earth-touch.com/ Let's talk about sex. And not just any old sex. The animal kingdom is a wild place -- and it's got mating habits to match. We're getting it on with kinky rituals, titillating pheromones, post-coital cannibalism, golden showers, orgy marathons and penises that put King Kong to shame. Biologist-with-a-twist Dr Carin Bondar is stripping down to the bare truth of nature's X-rated side.
Carin Bondar is a biologist, writer and science communicator with a PhD in population ecology from the University of British Columbia. Her current writing largely focuses on quirky animal behavior relating to sexual reproduction. Dr. Bondar has appeared in a scientific capacity on various television networks, and her work has been featured online at National Geographic Wild, Jezebel, BoingBoing, Forbes, The Guardian, and The Daily Beast. She is currently a science film and television blogger for Scientific American, and she recently released her first book ‘The Nature of Human Nature’, a light-hearted look at where the human species fits in with the rest of the animal kingdom. Dr. Bondar lives with her husband and 4 young children near Vancouver, BC.
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David Graziano Sells Mob Show To Cinemax
EXCLUSIVE: TV writer David Graziano has set up two drama projects, The Sixth Family at Cinemax produced by Warner Horizon, and Bloodline at NBC, from Peter Berg and Sarah Aubrey’s Film 44 and Universal TV. After working on a string of series, including Southland, Lie To Me, which he co-ran, Terra Nova and Awake, Graziano focused on development this season, resulting in the two sales. He is writing/executive producing both projects.Based on true stories from the streets of South Brooklyn, The Sixth Family drama is about the changing face of organized crime in the wake of 9/11. The project, whose title riffs on New York’s Five Families, the city’s infamous Italian mafia clans, is inspired by some of Graziano’s personal relationships developed over the years with people on both sides of the law stemming back to his youth in his hometown of Brooklyn.
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Sex and the Weight of National History
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| Thokozile Ntshinga, Bongile Mantsai and Hilda Cronje in “Mies Julie,” adapted by the South African playwright Yael Farber. |
EARLY in “Mies Julie,” a South African adaptation of Strindberg’s play, a domestic servant takes a garden fork to the kitchen floor of her boss’s house in a feverish attempt to free her ancestors’ spirits, trapped beneath flagstones that were placed over a burial ground. In moments like this South African history merges with Strindberg’s drama in a production that speaks boldly about that nation today.
“Mies Julie,” adapted and directed by Yael Farber, enthralled critics and audiences at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer when it was presented by the Baxter Theater Center of Cape Town and the South African State Theater. The show drew raves and won several awards, including a coveted Fringe First from the newspaper The Scotsman and the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award.
Ms. Farber, 41, who grew up in Johannesburg, said in a recent interview in New York that Strindberg’s “Miss Julie” drew her attention because she is always interested in texts “that had an extraordinary impact on their society when they were written.” Though Strindberg’s drama “lacks teeth in today’s society,” she said, she was curious how it might work when placed in a different context. “I saw that the spine of the narrative had an extraordinarily potent potential to speak about ownership through the domination of the body,” she said, “and how this dynamic gets unlocked over a single night in one kitchen, in the heat of the kitchen.”
“Mies Julie,” adapted and directed by Yael Farber, enthralled critics and audiences at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer when it was presented by the Baxter Theater Center of Cape Town and the South African State Theater. The show drew raves and won several awards, including a coveted Fringe First from the newspaper The Scotsman and the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award.
Ms. Farber, 41, who grew up in Johannesburg, said in a recent interview in New York that Strindberg’s “Miss Julie” drew her attention because she is always interested in texts “that had an extraordinary impact on their society when they were written.” Though Strindberg’s drama “lacks teeth in today’s society,” she said, she was curious how it might work when placed in a different context. “I saw that the spine of the narrative had an extraordinarily potent potential to speak about ownership through the domination of the body,” she said, “and how this dynamic gets unlocked over a single night in one kitchen, in the heat of the kitchen.”
Ms. Farber will now see how New York audiences respond to her take on Strindberg’s play, about an idle young rich woman who has an affair with her father’s footman. Susan Feldman, the artistic director of St. Ann’s Warehouse, saw “Mies Julie” in Edinburgh and worked quickly to bring the show to New York, where it will run Nov. 8 through Dec. 2 at St. Ann’s new theater in Dumbo, Brooklyn.
Ms. Farber’s adaptation places Strindberg’s tale in contemporary South Africa and features an interracial couple at its heart. The affair between Julie (Hilda Cronje) and a black servant, John (Bongile Mantsai), not only crosses lines of race and class but also is informed by the complex issue of land restitution for South African blacks. In this telling Julie’s family took the land from John’s generations ago, and though there is love between them and a common desire for freedom from their current circumstances, their relationship is intricately, and hopelessly, complicated by the shared history of oppression.
Apartheid ended in 1994, but South Africa in some ways has not changed. “Those who have, still have, and those who didn’t, for the large part, don’t,” Ms. Farber said.
The third main character in Ms. Farber’s adaptation is Christine (Thokozile Ntshinga), John’s mother, who highlights the generations-old economic construct of blacks serving whites on land formerly owned by black families. Christine helped to raise Julie too, and maternal love adds to the Gordian knot of the drama. (In Strindberg the Christine character is John’s girlfriend.)
Ms. Farber’s adaptation places Strindberg’s tale in contemporary South Africa and features an interracial couple at its heart. The affair between Julie (Hilda Cronje) and a black servant, John (Bongile Mantsai), not only crosses lines of race and class but also is informed by the complex issue of land restitution for South African blacks. In this telling Julie’s family took the land from John’s generations ago, and though there is love between them and a common desire for freedom from their current circumstances, their relationship is intricately, and hopelessly, complicated by the shared history of oppression.
Apartheid ended in 1994, but South Africa in some ways has not changed. “Those who have, still have, and those who didn’t, for the large part, don’t,” Ms. Farber said.
The third main character in Ms. Farber’s adaptation is Christine (Thokozile Ntshinga), John’s mother, who highlights the generations-old economic construct of blacks serving whites on land formerly owned by black families. Christine helped to raise Julie too, and maternal love adds to the Gordian knot of the drama. (In Strindberg the Christine character is John’s girlfriend.)
There are no simple solutions in the play, or in South Africa. “The land is an issue that hasn’t been addressed, which means wealth has not been addressed,” Ms. Farber said. “Mies Julie has lived on that land. Her family’s been there for three generations. So I wanted to express the complexity of the issue. Not straight up ‘this should just be given back to people.’ There is an enduring dilemma inside the country about how you create some level of justice.”
Ms. Farber is a third-generation white South African who earned her bachelor’s degree in dramatic art from University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She said she sought a career as an actor before deciding that directing suited her better, and she went on to win awards for it. Though romance brought her to Montreal almost a decade ago, and family and work keep her there today, Ms. Farber still considers South Africa her home.
Ms. Farber is a third-generation white South African who earned her bachelor’s degree in dramatic art from University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She said she sought a career as an actor before deciding that directing suited her better, and she went on to win awards for it. Though romance brought her to Montreal almost a decade ago, and family and work keep her there today, Ms. Farber still considers South Africa her home.
“It’s my identity,” she said. “I don’t know if we ever lose that sense of where home is.”
Perhaps one of the most remarkable aspects of Ms. Farber’s production is that it was done in South Africa at all: It had its premiere in July at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival and then was presented at the Baxter before heading to Edinburgh in August. The bold staging includes nudity and graphic sexual interaction between a white actress and a black actor. In 2012 New York this is hardly outré, but interracial marriage and sexual intercourse across color lines were illegal in South Africa until 1985.
A production of the Strindberg play presented at the Baxter in 1985 was far tamer but included an interracial couple — played by Sandra Prinsloo and John Kani — and their kiss. Ms. Farber said she read letters in the Baxter’s archives written to Ms. Prinsloo, and “the hatred, the bomb threats, the threats of violence: it was really a society of extraordinary fear that manifested itself with such deep suspicion that there was a hatred, a deep hatred.”
When “Mies Julie” was presented in South Africa this year, the reaction was quite different. Ms. Ntshinga, who saw the 1985 production, said by telephone from Cape Town: “People walked out then. This time sometimes people just sit in the theater, and they can’t move. It’s like people are glued onto the seats.”
When “Mies Julie” was presented in South Africa this year, the reaction was quite different. Ms. Ntshinga, who saw the 1985 production, said by telephone from Cape Town: “People walked out then. This time sometimes people just sit in the theater, and they can’t move. It’s like people are glued onto the seats.”
The play challenges its actors, though. Ms. Cronje, also speaking from Cape Town, said that facing her upbringing as a child of apartheid, “as much as I thought I was free,” made her nervous. “But I noted it, and I thought: How can I not embrace this beautiful man in front of me? It’s just skin color. It was hard, but it was beautiful and freeing.”
Although “Mies Julie” has a distinctly South African flavor, it spoke to a wide demographic in Edinburgh. “For any audience outside of South Africa you get some kind of understanding of what the temperature is about this land issue,” Ms. Ntshinga said. “There’s heat. People are not saying much, but people are angry. And it’s not only black people who are angry. White people are angry as well.”
Such questions “belong to all of us,” Ms. Farber said. “Many of the modern nations rest on very subversive and dark histories.”
Although “Mies Julie” has a distinctly South African flavor, it spoke to a wide demographic in Edinburgh. “For any audience outside of South Africa you get some kind of understanding of what the temperature is about this land issue,” Ms. Ntshinga said. “There’s heat. People are not saying much, but people are angry. And it’s not only black people who are angry. White people are angry as well.”
Such questions “belong to all of us,” Ms. Farber said. “Many of the modern nations rest on very subversive and dark histories.”
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| The South African playwright Yael Farber. |
By FELICIA R. LEE
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| Hilda Cronje and Bongile Mantsai, the stars of "Mies Julie," Yael Farber's adaptation of Strindberg's "Miss Julie." |
Written and directed by Yael Farber, this version is set on a lonely South African estate 18 years after the election of Nelson Mandela. Julie (Ms. Cronje) is the daughter of the white farm master; John (Mr. Mantsai) is a black laborer there, and what happens between them on Freedom Day changes their lives.
“There is more erotic heat generated by the play’s two central characters,” Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times, “than in any production in town.”
Ms. Cronje, 28, grew up on her family’s farm in Natal and has worked in television, commercials, film and theater in South Africa. Mr. Mantsai, 31, is an actor, dancer and musical director who grew up in the South African township of Khayamandi. “Mies Julie” had its premiere at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa, this year and is Ms. Cronje and Mr. Mantsai’s first production in this country. They were interviewed together at St. Ann’s in Brooklyn after a recent Sunday matinee, and in a phone conversation. This is an edited and condensed version of the interviews.
Q. Did you two immediately feel chemistry when you met at the audition in Cape Town?
BONGILE MANTSAI When she walked in, I felt the energy. I felt like, wow. Yael had us rehearse a scene where I have to kiss her foot, and she took me aside and told me to challenge her. It was clear she was not afraid to cross boundaries.
HILDA CRONJE At the end of the audition, I felt I had sort of had sex with a stranger. I was thinking, “What just happened to me?” It was this electric thing between the two of us.
Q. How did you then get to know each other? CRONJE We started a dialogue between the two of us without knowing how far we would have to go. He said to me after our first rehearsal he respected me as a woman and an actress. I wondered why he would say that because I thought I was doing really well. I come from a farm, I come from South Africa, I had never worked in a play with a black actor, so for me to cross those lines was a challenge. He’d obviously picked up on something that I was not even aware of. I came to him the next day and said: “I’ve checked it. I’m open. I know to make this work — I’m giving you my soul.”
MANTSAI I tried to build a connection because of the challenges in the material. It was so clever how Yael did it, because we didn’t have much time to think about it. We knew there was a sex scene, but during the last week of rehearsals she started asking people to give us space to try it. It was close to the opening of the show before we got to it, and we didn’t have much time to worry about it.
Q. Do either of you have a partner or spouse, and what do they think of all that sex and violence onstage?
CRONJE I have a fiancé. The first thing he did was introduce himself to Bongile. He didn’t even look at me; it was just “Hi, I’m Hilda’s fiancé.” Then he came back to me and said, “He’s not really that big, you know.” I went, “Whatever.” But yeah, it’s tough. You’re going on a tour with this play, and it’s a process of getting to know yourself more and more.
MANTSAI I do have someone in my life. She likes the work, she respects what I’m doing, but she has cried every time she sees the play. During the sex scenes she covered her head. My father is a pastor, and this process for me has been challenging because I have crossed a lot of boundaries. In the scene where I throw my mother’s Bible on the floor, I was thinking of my mother and how she would feel.
Q. Bongile, as someone whose background is mostly in musical theater, how did your prepare for this role, which is a departure for you.
MANTSAI I have always played a couple of roles: I’d be a charming man; I’d be a good guy, a beautiful person. This kind of challenged me. I went to the rural part of the Cape just to look at life on the other side because I’m from the township. I saw a lot of pain. There is something about the farm boys; they know what is happening around the life of the farm, like John. He’s intelligent, he’s clever. He is having the influences from the outside world. He hears the buzz. He is between two worlds.
Q. How did apartheid affect your career as a black person?
Q. Hilda, was it hard for you to like this woman and understand her?
CRONJE Not really. I immediately related to her love of the land, the loneliness in her soul that she was never, ever connected to anything but the land. As deeply as John and his mother feel about it, it’s as deeply as Julie feels about it, it’s the only constant she’s had in her life. I think there is a lot of Julie’s fighting spirit in me, but the brokenness and the loneliness is something I quite easily tapped into just through observation of people in my life.
Q. What has this play meant for your careers?
CRONJE This is definitely my biggest role so far. It’s an honor as a young actress. Last night I saw the entire New York skyline from a Williamsburg rooftop. It shifted my world. I saw how large the world was. I sat there for hours, just looking.
MANTSAI It has been overwhelming and has taken me out of my comfort zone. Because it’s a new space, I feel as though I am blessing it for the other actors who come after us. I am Christian. I pray before I go onstage, I connect in that way.
Q. Has there been any difference in the response of South African audiences and audiences in this country?
CRONJE When the show ends here, it is wrapped in applause. When the show ends in South Africa, there is deathly silence. Until the lights come on, and you would look into the audience, and the audience would be more shattered than we were on the stage. Because these are very intense, very truthful stories, and everyone’s truth is being laid on the table, it’s not as if we are just looking at it from one side.
Reviews:
[1] http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/11/yael-farbers-mies-julie.html
The South African playwright Yael Farber’s “Mies Julie” (at St. Ann’s Warehouse, directed by the author) is an important contribution to the Strindberg-inspired canon—indeed, Farber’s adaptation is the strongest I have ever read, and completely her own. But her beauty as a writer is undermined by her direction, which relies on the same old stomach-churning clichés when it comes to miscegenation. Technically, Farber’s “Mies Julie,” which is set on the Eastern Cape, in Karoo, South Africa, a dust bowl of a place, is not so much an adaptation of Strindberg’s tale of Jean (here named John, and played with virtuoso physicality by Bongile Mantsai), a male servant who aids in Julie’s (Hilda Cronje) ultimate self-destruction, as it is a jumping off point for Farber’s chief interest: how black maleness extracts its revenge against female whiteness.
This concern is as old as “Mandigo,” and can be, to the liberal imagination certainly, an interesting “problem,” but it’s not, really: Farber has taken her script and made pornography. The stage is the kitchen where the majority of the action takes place.
Julie has the upper hand and can control John’s gaze: she’s white, and John still lives with the fear that South Africa has instilled in him, at least historically. His country has degraded blackness and maleness in the past, so what can he know or feel about his future? All he can do for revenge against the shackles of the past is sort of free himself by ravishing Julie. Not once. But twice. Or maybe three times, I can’t remember, since the “shock” value of John rolling down his jumper and then tearing at Julie’s top was so blatant a bid for “drama” that its cheapness was the least of my problems. I was more concerned with Farber’s gradual tearing down of Julie, who ends up being a sacrificial, bloody victim-doll that John gets to throw around, whipping up the “steam,” that causes reviewers to call this production steamy when it’s sort of corny and careless and anti-feminist to boot: why should Julie pay for her whiteness?
[2] http://nymag.com/listings/theater/mies-julie/
[1] http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/11/yael-farbers-mies-julie.html
The South African playwright Yael Farber’s “Mies Julie” (at St. Ann’s Warehouse, directed by the author) is an important contribution to the Strindberg-inspired canon—indeed, Farber’s adaptation is the strongest I have ever read, and completely her own. But her beauty as a writer is undermined by her direction, which relies on the same old stomach-churning clichés when it comes to miscegenation. Technically, Farber’s “Mies Julie,” which is set on the Eastern Cape, in Karoo, South Africa, a dust bowl of a place, is not so much an adaptation of Strindberg’s tale of Jean (here named John, and played with virtuoso physicality by Bongile Mantsai), a male servant who aids in Julie’s (Hilda Cronje) ultimate self-destruction, as it is a jumping off point for Farber’s chief interest: how black maleness extracts its revenge against female whiteness.
This concern is as old as “Mandigo,” and can be, to the liberal imagination certainly, an interesting “problem,” but it’s not, really: Farber has taken her script and made pornography. The stage is the kitchen where the majority of the action takes place.
Julie has the upper hand and can control John’s gaze: she’s white, and John still lives with the fear that South Africa has instilled in him, at least historically. His country has degraded blackness and maleness in the past, so what can he know or feel about his future? All he can do for revenge against the shackles of the past is sort of free himself by ravishing Julie. Not once. But twice. Or maybe three times, I can’t remember, since the “shock” value of John rolling down his jumper and then tearing at Julie’s top was so blatant a bid for “drama” that its cheapness was the least of my problems. I was more concerned with Farber’s gradual tearing down of Julie, who ends up being a sacrificial, bloody victim-doll that John gets to throw around, whipping up the “steam,” that causes reviewers to call this production steamy when it’s sort of corny and careless and anti-feminist to boot: why should Julie pay for her whiteness?
[2] http://nymag.com/listings/theater/mies-julie/
In Yael Farber's graphic, punishing, just-this-side-of-prurient Mies Julie, Strindberg's class-crossed sexual pugilists are transplanted to modern South Africa, where apartheid is history but race and wealth still divide ... and tantalize. Angry, educated black workingman John (Bongile Mantsai) is teased by his white employer's dangerously disconsolate daughter Julie (Hilda Cronje). Julie is just a little older than the post-apartheid era, John just a little older than Julie. They have wanted and hated each other for as long as either can remember. The tables turn, and turn again, and soon these two symbol-engorged hardbodies are ON the table, testing its limits ... and ours. Farber directs and choreographs this acrobatic, sometimes aerobatic carnal combat to the very edge of artsploitation — and then over it, in a bloody cascade.
Farber has cast two distractingly gorgeous human beings as her leads; their otter-lithe, baby-oiled beauty is so frictionless, clothes won’t adhere to them for more than ten minutes at a time. Farber braids them together, tears them apart, and sets them fighting and humping with all the S-and-M provocation Strindberg’s mighty, priapic script demands and then some. (A belated thank-you, Angry Dead Swedes, for helping perfect the modern hate-fuck!)
The stylized movement Farber employs is one part Cirque, two parts Kink, and it ultimately overwhelms the mental chess match.
[3] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323894704578115052027735108.html
Farber has cast two distractingly gorgeous human beings as her leads; their otter-lithe, baby-oiled beauty is so frictionless, clothes won’t adhere to them for more than ten minutes at a time. Farber braids them together, tears them apart, and sets them fighting and humping with all the S-and-M provocation Strindberg’s mighty, priapic script demands and then some. (A belated thank-you, Angry Dead Swedes, for helping perfect the modern hate-fuck!)
The stylized movement Farber employs is one part Cirque, two parts Kink, and it ultimately overwhelms the mental chess match.
[3] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323894704578115052027735108.html
Where Strindberg's original script is full of allegory, off-stage action and buttoned-up emotions coming to the surface, Ms. Farber's production asserts frank, undressed language and delivers graphic depictions of sex and violence.
[4] http://newyorktheatrereview.blogspot.com/2012/11/olivia-jane-smith-on-mies-julie-at-st.html
For anyone not familiar with the play (and who can’t already read, like the writing on the wall, the roots breaking through the floor), I don’t want to unpack all its punches, though even if I did, they would still hit both heart and gut. I will say that the production is one of the most effectively, and harrowingly graphic I have ever seen. As Julie and John, Hilda Cronje and Bongile Mantsai are voraciously physical; they dance their roles as much as act them. Both move like tigers, stalking and lunging at their prey. But thanks to Farber’s deft hand as director, their power comes just as much from moments of silence and stillness. Sometimes, before the consummation that sends everything into freefall, there are brief moments when they simply look at each other, that are every bit as communicative as the peak of their carnage.
[5] http://www.backstage.com/review/ny-theater/off-broadway/mies-julie-august-strindberg-st-anns-warehouse/
The production, which comes from the Baxter Theatre Centre at the University of Cape Town and was a hit at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, is high voltage. Hilda Cronje, in the title role, and Bongile Mantsai, as John, give astoundingly brave performances that crackle with energy while taking you deep into the characters. They make the rapidly shifting moods of their combat and longing totally believable. While Strindberg’s play has their lovemaking take place offstage, Farber keeps it all onstage, and it’s enacted with a breathtaking explosion of ecstasy and savagery. Equally powerful is Thoko Ntshinga as Christine, a woman reluctant to veer from the old patterns of life yet painfully aware what those old ways have cost her.
[6] http://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/reviews/11-2012/mies-julie_63736.html
Julie (Hilda Cronje), the daughter of the farm's owner, has recently been dumped by her fiance and is in a particularly destructive mood. She wants to break tradition and dance with the black squatters who have taken up residency on her father's land on the eve of Freedom Day (commemorating the election of Nelson Mandela 18 years prior).
But her main goal is to get the attention of John (Bongile Mantsai), her father's favorite black servant, because she wants to screw him. What follows is a tempestuous dance between Julie and John rife with sexual frustration and racial animosity. At one point, as Julie commands John to kiss her foot (lifting her leg and exposing her vagina to him in the process), she asks him, "Do you feel free?"
[4] http://newyorktheatrereview.blogspot.com/2012/11/olivia-jane-smith-on-mies-julie-at-st.html
For anyone not familiar with the play (and who can’t already read, like the writing on the wall, the roots breaking through the floor), I don’t want to unpack all its punches, though even if I did, they would still hit both heart and gut. I will say that the production is one of the most effectively, and harrowingly graphic I have ever seen. As Julie and John, Hilda Cronje and Bongile Mantsai are voraciously physical; they dance their roles as much as act them. Both move like tigers, stalking and lunging at their prey. But thanks to Farber’s deft hand as director, their power comes just as much from moments of silence and stillness. Sometimes, before the consummation that sends everything into freefall, there are brief moments when they simply look at each other, that are every bit as communicative as the peak of their carnage.
[5] http://www.backstage.com/review/ny-theater/off-broadway/mies-julie-august-strindberg-st-anns-warehouse/
The production, which comes from the Baxter Theatre Centre at the University of Cape Town and was a hit at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, is high voltage. Hilda Cronje, in the title role, and Bongile Mantsai, as John, give astoundingly brave performances that crackle with energy while taking you deep into the characters. They make the rapidly shifting moods of their combat and longing totally believable. While Strindberg’s play has their lovemaking take place offstage, Farber keeps it all onstage, and it’s enacted with a breathtaking explosion of ecstasy and savagery. Equally powerful is Thoko Ntshinga as Christine, a woman reluctant to veer from the old patterns of life yet painfully aware what those old ways have cost her.
[6] http://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/reviews/11-2012/mies-julie_63736.html
Julie (Hilda Cronje), the daughter of the farm's owner, has recently been dumped by her fiance and is in a particularly destructive mood. She wants to break tradition and dance with the black squatters who have taken up residency on her father's land on the eve of Freedom Day (commemorating the election of Nelson Mandela 18 years prior).
But her main goal is to get the attention of John (Bongile Mantsai), her father's favorite black servant, because she wants to screw him. What follows is a tempestuous dance between Julie and John rife with sexual frustration and racial animosity. At one point, as Julie commands John to kiss her foot (lifting her leg and exposing her vagina to him in the process), she asks him, "Do you feel free?"
[7] http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-11-14/theater/mies-julie-south-africa-meets-strindberg/
A furious pessimism on that score rages over the Mies Julie that the company brings to the new St. Ann’s Warehouse on Jay Street in DUMBO. While there are adaptations of classics that explore an age-old theme in a contemporary context, in director Yael Farber’s rewrite of August Strindberg’s fallen woman, place and time are so far removed from the original’s that theme had to be jettisoned outright. Gone are the preoccupations with female virginity and honor. Here, race is the main character in a merciless commentary on the injustices of South African society. And sex—violent and visceral—is its unapologetic companion.
[8] http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/the-best-strindberg-youre-going-to-get/Content?oid=2279884
The thing about Miss Julie is that there needs to be a profound sexual chemistry between the two lead actors; if that isn’t there, the play just doesn't work. Mantsai and Cronje fearlessly approach their roles through movement, using every square inch of the stage as John and Julie wage their war on each other, and this makes for powerful, stark, and elemental stage imagery. Just based on their dance-like movements, Mies Julie is first-class theater staked on the commitment of these two actors, who get about as physical as two people can possibly get on stage; every move they make is loaded with the threat of sexual and emotional eruption.
[9] http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20364394_20647319,00.html
Judging by the sex, John is the one in control. Also, a word on that: Just because it's on the table doesn't mean it's spontaneous and seductive; it's raw and graphic and definitely NC-17. And, at the risk of sounding prudish, it's where I think Farber's version goes a bit too far. The intensely violent nature of the sex — and the ensuing grisly punishment — almost eclipses the passionate interplay between Cronje and Mantsai. (No spoilers here: It's no secret that things end badly in Strindberg's original Miss Julie.) The most memorable image from this production should be their beautifully entwined bodies — not a rusty farming implement.
[10] http://www.culturebot.net/2012/11/15081/mies-julie-at-st-anns-warehouse/
Written and directed by Yael Farber, Mies Julie certainly strives to generate some of the shock that the original must have had in its time: everything alluded to in Strindberg’s text, from sex to suicide, happens in full view of the audience in this version. This is one of the problems with the play—it goes from smoldering innuendos to kitchen table sex to suicide, leaving little to the imagination, all within the span of 90 minutes. It doesn’t help that the production relies on enough fake blood to do Hollywood proud.
[11] http://www.stageandcinema.com/2012/11/17/mies-julie/
The strength of Farber’s adaptation and direction is its unabashed physicality. The production is visceral and often uncomfortable, featuring nudity, graphic sexuality and violence – although never gratuitously.
Cronje owns the space as Mies Julie, lounging at the table provocatively with her long legs elegantly draped across the tabletop. “Niemand sal aan my raak nie. (No one will touch me.) My pa will shoot the black man in the head that puts his hands on me. Then he’ll shoot me. Told me that once when I was little. That was my bedtime story,” Julie teases John, who worries about taking a seat at the table, let along sharing a glass of wine with the salacious lady. By the midpoint of the show, power dynamics have shifted; Mantsai’s John physically dominates Mies Julie, raping her atop that very table – although this sexual encounter is layered with a forbidden mutual desire. This interracial intimate act has shocking repercussions far beyond the bounds of the personal.
A furious pessimism on that score rages over the Mies Julie that the company brings to the new St. Ann’s Warehouse on Jay Street in DUMBO. While there are adaptations of classics that explore an age-old theme in a contemporary context, in director Yael Farber’s rewrite of August Strindberg’s fallen woman, place and time are so far removed from the original’s that theme had to be jettisoned outright. Gone are the preoccupations with female virginity and honor. Here, race is the main character in a merciless commentary on the injustices of South African society. And sex—violent and visceral—is its unapologetic companion.
[8] http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/the-best-strindberg-youre-going-to-get/Content?oid=2279884
The thing about Miss Julie is that there needs to be a profound sexual chemistry between the two lead actors; if that isn’t there, the play just doesn't work. Mantsai and Cronje fearlessly approach their roles through movement, using every square inch of the stage as John and Julie wage their war on each other, and this makes for powerful, stark, and elemental stage imagery. Just based on their dance-like movements, Mies Julie is first-class theater staked on the commitment of these two actors, who get about as physical as two people can possibly get on stage; every move they make is loaded with the threat of sexual and emotional eruption.
[9] http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20364394_20647319,00.html
Judging by the sex, John is the one in control. Also, a word on that: Just because it's on the table doesn't mean it's spontaneous and seductive; it's raw and graphic and definitely NC-17. And, at the risk of sounding prudish, it's where I think Farber's version goes a bit too far. The intensely violent nature of the sex — and the ensuing grisly punishment — almost eclipses the passionate interplay between Cronje and Mantsai. (No spoilers here: It's no secret that things end badly in Strindberg's original Miss Julie.) The most memorable image from this production should be their beautifully entwined bodies — not a rusty farming implement.
[10] http://www.culturebot.net/2012/11/15081/mies-julie-at-st-anns-warehouse/
Written and directed by Yael Farber, Mies Julie certainly strives to generate some of the shock that the original must have had in its time: everything alluded to in Strindberg’s text, from sex to suicide, happens in full view of the audience in this version. This is one of the problems with the play—it goes from smoldering innuendos to kitchen table sex to suicide, leaving little to the imagination, all within the span of 90 minutes. It doesn’t help that the production relies on enough fake blood to do Hollywood proud.
[11] http://www.stageandcinema.com/2012/11/17/mies-julie/
The strength of Farber’s adaptation and direction is its unabashed physicality. The production is visceral and often uncomfortable, featuring nudity, graphic sexuality and violence – although never gratuitously.
Cronje owns the space as Mies Julie, lounging at the table provocatively with her long legs elegantly draped across the tabletop. “Niemand sal aan my raak nie. (No one will touch me.) My pa will shoot the black man in the head that puts his hands on me. Then he’ll shoot me. Told me that once when I was little. That was my bedtime story,” Julie teases John, who worries about taking a seat at the table, let along sharing a glass of wine with the salacious lady. By the midpoint of the show, power dynamics have shifted; Mantsai’s John physically dominates Mies Julie, raping her atop that very table – although this sexual encounter is layered with a forbidden mutual desire. This interracial intimate act has shocking repercussions far beyond the bounds of the personal.
[12] http://www.yoursoapbox.co.za/show/mies-julie/
Bongile Mantsai (John) and Hilda Cronje (Julie) have the far more grueling roles and their performances, while full of potential, are marred by several issues. They both have good moments but really need to continue exploring their characters to evolve them into full and powerful figures. At the moment you can still see all the cogs turning. Mantsai has no problem showing John’s anger and frustration, but his performance lacks tenderness and as a result his character arc is severely limited. Cronje’s Julie lacks status and initially she relies on bitchiness rather than her power or sexuality, which inadvertently makes the character seem weak throughout. In a play about power struggles, that can’t happen. She also needs to watch a tendency to fall into unnatural speech patterns and an imposed actor walk.
Rather than creating real tension between them, Farber relies on moving quickly toward the next explosive moment. The play reaches a certain level of hysteria quite quickly and just stays there till the end without respite. Rather than being shocking or affecting, the violence and nudity is all rather placed and choreographed and therefore also begins to feel unnecessary.
I wasn’t surprised to see a handful of people jump to their feet to applaud the production. With all the heavy issues, the crying and screaming, the violence, nudity and sex scenes, it feels like you may have seen something really brave and ground-breaking. But spend some time questioning the choices and motivations and it may feel like you’ve been fooled by smoke and mirrors.
Please note that Mies Julie carries an age restriction of 18 due to nudity.
[13] http://m.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/?articleId=6455290
Yael Farber's 90-minute adaptation of August Strindberg's Miss Julie, set in the Karoo, is nothing but mesmeric and relentless as it looks at the effects of apartheid on modern South Africa.
But the audience giggled incessantly, and sometimes broke into raucous laughter at the most inopportune moments and during poignant dialogue on stage.
This left the cast, and indeed Farber, bemused. The Canadian-based director had come home to see the show at the start of its month-long run in Pretoria.
"Yes, South Africans are very different," Farber said backstage.
"When we had the show internationally, and especially in Scotland [as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival] there was literally one scene only during which the audience laughs, and for the rest of the time you could hear a pin drop.
"The only time you would hear noise again was at the end, when we got standing ovations.
"Tonight, the audience seemed almost jovial - I don't know whether that was embarrassment or what," Farber said.
Strong language and intense scenes of a sexual nature (and even a bit of nudity) in the play seemed to make the audience squirm in their seats.
Bongile Mantsai (John) and Hilda Cronje (Julie) have the far more grueling roles and their performances, while full of potential, are marred by several issues. They both have good moments but really need to continue exploring their characters to evolve them into full and powerful figures. At the moment you can still see all the cogs turning. Mantsai has no problem showing John’s anger and frustration, but his performance lacks tenderness and as a result his character arc is severely limited. Cronje’s Julie lacks status and initially she relies on bitchiness rather than her power or sexuality, which inadvertently makes the character seem weak throughout. In a play about power struggles, that can’t happen. She also needs to watch a tendency to fall into unnatural speech patterns and an imposed actor walk.
Rather than creating real tension between them, Farber relies on moving quickly toward the next explosive moment. The play reaches a certain level of hysteria quite quickly and just stays there till the end without respite. Rather than being shocking or affecting, the violence and nudity is all rather placed and choreographed and therefore also begins to feel unnecessary.
I wasn’t surprised to see a handful of people jump to their feet to applaud the production. With all the heavy issues, the crying and screaming, the violence, nudity and sex scenes, it feels like you may have seen something really brave and ground-breaking. But spend some time questioning the choices and motivations and it may feel like you’ve been fooled by smoke and mirrors.
Please note that Mies Julie carries an age restriction of 18 due to nudity.
[13] http://m.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/?articleId=6455290
Yael Farber's 90-minute adaptation of August Strindberg's Miss Julie, set in the Karoo, is nothing but mesmeric and relentless as it looks at the effects of apartheid on modern South Africa.
But the audience giggled incessantly, and sometimes broke into raucous laughter at the most inopportune moments and during poignant dialogue on stage.
This left the cast, and indeed Farber, bemused. The Canadian-based director had come home to see the show at the start of its month-long run in Pretoria.
"Yes, South Africans are very different," Farber said backstage.
"When we had the show internationally, and especially in Scotland [as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival] there was literally one scene only during which the audience laughs, and for the rest of the time you could hear a pin drop.
"The only time you would hear noise again was at the end, when we got standing ovations.
"Tonight, the audience seemed almost jovial - I don't know whether that was embarrassment or what," Farber said.
Strong language and intense scenes of a sexual nature (and even a bit of nudity) in the play seemed to make the audience squirm in their seats.
Hilda CronjeYear of Birth 3 September 1984
Accents British, Cockney, American, French, Cape coloured, Austalian, Afrikaans
Languages Afrikaans, English, Basic Zulu
Nationality South African
Eyes Brown
Hair Brown
Height 159cm
Skills Horse-Riding, Tight-Rope walking, Air stunts, Gymnastics, Singing, Writer, Director
 |
| with her fiance |
* Ms.Hilda Cronje brings back memories (bittersweet) of my ex-wife. My old lady was a cross between Lena Dunham and Hilda. Broad-shouldered, perky tits and twinkle in her eyes. The best part of any marriage is the early years when fucking trumps everything including financial worries and immediate future.
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Mexican beauty queen killed in shootout
The body of Maria Susana Flores Gamez was found Saturday lying near an assault rifle on a rural road in a mountainous area of the drug-plagued state of Sinaloa, the chief state prosecutor said Monday. It was unclear if she had used the weapon.
"She was with the gang of criminals, but we cannot say whether she participated in the shootout," state prosecutor Marco Antonio Higuera said. "That's what we're going to have to investigate."
The slender, 5-foot-7-inch brunette was voted the 2012 Woman of Sinaloa in a beauty pageant in February. In June, the model competed with other seven contestants for the more prestigious state beauty contest, Our Beauty Sinaloa, but didn't win. The Our Beauty state winners compete for the Miss Mexico title, whose holder represents the country in the international Miss Universe.
Higuera said Flores Gamez was traveling in one of the vehicles that engaged soldiers in an hours-long chase and running gun battle on Saturday near her native city of Guamuchil in the state of Sinaloa, home to Mexico's most powerful drug cartel. Higuera said two other members of the drug gang were killed and four were detained.
The shootout began when the gunmen opened fire on a Mexican army patrol. Soldiers gave chase and cornered the gang at a safe house in the town of Mocorito. The other men escaped, and the gunbattle continued along a nearby roadway, where the gang's vehicles were eventually stopped. Six vehicles, drugs and weapons were seized following the confrontation.
It was at least the third instance in which a beauty queen or pageant contestants have been linked to Mexico's violent drug gangs, a theme so common it was the subject of a critically acclaimed 2011 movie.
In "Miss Bala," Mexico's official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of this year's Academy Awards, a young woman competing for Miss Baja California becomes an unwilling participant in a drug-running ring, finally getting arrested for deeds she was forced into performing.
In real life, former Miss Sinaloa Laura Zuniga was stripped of her 2008 crown in the Hispanoamerican Queen pageant after she was detained on suspicion of drug and weapons violations. She was later released without charges.
Zuniga was detained in western Mexico in late 2010 along with seven men, some of them suspected drug traffickers. Authorities found a large stash of weapons, ammunition and $53,300 with them inside a vehicle.
In 2011, a Colombian former model and pageant contestant was detained along with Jose Jorge Balderas, an accused drug trafficker and suspect in the 2010 bar shooting of Salvador Cabanas, a former star for Paraguay's national football team and Mexico's Club America. She was also later released.
Higuera said Flores Gamez's body has been turned over to relatives for burial.
"This is a sad situation," Higuera told a local radio station. She had been enrolled in media courses at a local university, and had been modeling and in pageants since at least 2009.
Javier Valdez, the author of a 2009 book about narco ties to beauty pageants entitled "Miss Narco," said "this is a recurrent story."
"There is a relationship, sometimes pleasant and sometimes tragic, between organized crime and the beauty queens, the pageants, the beauty industry itself," Valdez said.
"It is a question of privilege, power, money, but also a question of need," said Valdez. "For a lot of these young women, it is easy to get involved with organized crime, in a country that doesn't offer many opportunities for young people."
Sometimes drug traffickers seek out beauty queens, but sometimes the models themselves look for narco boyfriends, Valdez said.
"I once wrote about a girl I knew of who was desperate to get a narco boyfriend," he said. "She practically took out a classified ad saying 'Looking for a Narco'."
The stories seldom end well. In the best of cases, a beautiful woman with a tear-stained face is marched before the press in handcuffs. In the worst of cases, they simply disappear.
"They are disposable objects, the lowest link in the chain of criminal organizations, the young men recruited as gunmen and the pretty young women who are tossed away in two or three years, or are turned into police or killed," Valdez said.
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Lesbians will marry your boyfriends
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Grading the Newest Sex Scandal Teacher
New York – A former Walton High School teacher is arrested after having sexual relationships with two students. The victims were 16 years old at the time. In police statements, both victims say the relationship started when Stephanie Fletcher , 28, of Walton, started texting them. The relationship became physical when she offered to help tutor them privately after school. “She was telling me that every question I got right we could do something,” one victim describes. Fletcher was the high school’s biology teacher at the time; she has since resigned. According to police statements, most of the sexual contact happened outside of school. But there were some instances during study halls and class breaks, and in the high school parking lot. Both victims say Fletcher texted them naked and half-clothed photos of herself, and often performed oral sex on them… One victim adds in his statement to police that he felt like he was getting failing marks in another one of his classes due to a relationship Fletcher was having with a teacher at Walton High School. Stephanie Fletcher has been married to Kirk Fletcher, of Walton since 2010.
This might be the greatest advancement in education of our lifetimes. American schools are lagging way behind the rest of the world in the Sciences. And what better way to close the gap than to incentivize kids to do better by offering them what our teachers do better than anyone? Sex. Stephanie Fletcher is onto something here. Get an answer right, see a boob. Get another one, touch a vagina. A B on a quiz gets you classroom oral. An A gets you laid. She wins. The kids win. America wins. If nothing else, we’ll kick the rest of the world’s ass in Biology.
The Grades:
Looks: Steph looks a little like a McPoyle, though definitely a distant relative. A better looking cousin or something. And while I usually like crazy eyes in these teachers, hers are weirdly offset, like a flounder. Or a Picasso. I’m not saying I wouldn’t take a classroom hummer from her. Just that she’s not one of the greats. Grade: B-
Moral Compass/Bad Judgment: What’s not to love? Mrs. Fletcher here is what the NFL scouts would call a “high motor” player. Multiple kids. A love triangle with another teacher. Nudes. Sex in one kid’s house. Sex in another kid’s sister’s house. Classroom sex. Study hall sex. Parking lot. She’s relentless. The drive and determination to play for me anytime. Grade: A
Intangibles: It sounds like her marriage to Kirk is going great so far. Also, you don’t suppose either of these kids would know enough to call her “Fletch”? Or that they ever used the line “Why don’t we go lay on the bed and I’ll fill you in?” Grade: A
Overall: B.
[Thanks to @ClarenceWhorley] Have information about a hot female teacher having sex with her students? Preferably with pictures? Help make the world safe for Teacher Sex Scandals by Tweeting me @jerrythornton1.
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Porn Star Kendall Karson : Interview With A Porn Star
* very pretty Ms. Karson parents are both missionaries. She is (that I know of) the third adult performer in couple of years to come from same background as the curvy girl from San Diego who appeared on Backroom Casting Couch and another working intermittently in the biz with prominent arm tats (her old folks rather incredulously still in dark about daughter's real profession).
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Sex tape used to bribe Chinese official goes viral
By ALEXA OLESEN
Associated Press
BEIJING (AP) - A 5-year-old sex tape of an 18-year-old woman allegedly hired by developers to sleep with a city official is causing yet another scandal for China's ruling Communists in the city formerly led by fallen politician Bo Xilai. The 50-something official, Lei Zhengfu, was fired from his position as district party secretary after the video, an apparent extortion attempt, went viral earlier this month and his jowly, pop-eyed mug became the butt of numerous Internet caricatures. But the scandal may still be growing, as a whistleblowing former journalist says he may release similar tapes of more city officials soon.
The party is already reeling from the scandal that triggered Bo's purge and further battered the party's reputation in the public mind. Chongqing, the city that he ran, has been depicted by prosecutors and state media as rife with cover-ups, abuse of power and corruption. Bo's wife was convicted of murdering a British businessman, and Bo himself faces allegations of corruption and obstruction of justice in the murder case.
News of the sex tape, which was apparently shot in 2007 but only leaked this month, comes as China's newly installed leadership ramps up anti-corruption efforts as it deals with a steady stream of bribery and graft cases that it fears has undermined its authority.
The tape exploded on the Chinese Internet Nov. 20 when screenshots of it were uploaded by a Beijing-based former journalist Zhu Ruifeng to his Hong Kong-registered website, an independent online clearing house for corruption allegations.
The lurid images, apparently taken secretly from a bedside table, show Lei having sex with a woman. Zhu told The Associated Press that the woman, whose face is not visible in the screen grabs, was hired by a construction company to sleep with Lei in return for construction contracts. The company later tried to use the tape to extort more business from Lei, he said.
Zhu says he obtained the video from someone inside the Chongqing Public Security Bureau who gave it on condition of anonymity. He said he was also given tapes implicating five other Chongqing officials but is trying to verify their content before releasing them.
Zhu said that after the blackmail attempt, Lei reported the case to Chongqing officials sometime around 2009, which led to the construction boss being jailed for a year on unrelated charges and the woman being detained for a month.
Xinhua reported Monday that Chongqing's corruption watchdog had pledged a thorough investigation of Lei, who was dismissed Friday, but said it had yet to formally receive a report about the allegations against Lei or the footage.
The China Daily in an editorial Tuesday said the case showed that the "Internet is worth being embraced by the country's corruption busters as a close ally."
It also called for greater transparency in handling this and other cases, and listed a few of the lingering questions that the salacious case has thrown up.
"Strangely, the mistress was once detained and the contractor jailed for blackmailing Lei," it said. "What had happened? ... These are crucial questions waiting to be answered."
With a younger set of incoming leaders announced this month in Beijing, the government is keen to show that those in power are worthy of their posts and that wrongdoers will be weeded out. In his first remarks to the press after being appointed as the new Communist Party chief, Xi Jinping vowed to tackle corruption.
The party's corruption watchdog underlined its zero-tolerance for graft on Monday.
"There is no place for corrupt figures to hide away within the party," the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a statement quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency.
Many Chinese, however, are cynical about the allegations against high-profile party members and that they signal a true crackdown on corruption. Many think Bo was no more or less dirty than the average Chinese politician and that he was deposed not for his behavior but because he was on the losing end of factional power struggle.
Xiao Weilong, 30, an insurance salesman in Beijing, bemoaned how "ordinary people can't do anything about" cases such as Lei's.
"These sorts of abnormal things have become the norm, and we don't have any say," he said Tuesday.
Zhu, the journalist who broke the Lei story, said the fact that his website had not been blocked despite the allegations it outlined was a possible sign that the government is more serious than in the past getting tough on corruption.
"Possibly what we are seeing is that the new leaders are perhaps taking steps toward enforcing the constitution, a sliver of a new dawn," he said.
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