NEW YORK (AP) – Tucker Carlson of MSNBC and talk-show host Jerry Springer will be among the celebrities competing on the third season of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.”
The new season of the show – which pairs 11 competitors of sometimes dubious celebrity and varying skill with professional dancer-partners – premieres Sept. 12 (8 p.m. EDT), the network announced Monday.
Also heading to the dance floor: Vivica A. Fox, Harry Hamlin, Joe Lawrence, Mario Lopez, Sara Evans, Willa Ford, Monique Coleman, former beauty queen Shanna Moakler and three-time Super Bowl champion Emmitt Smith. Hamlin’s wife, Lisa Rinna, competed last season.
This season, the celebrity and professional dance pairs will perform choreographed Latin and traditional ballroom routines to popular live music.
Len Goodman, Bruno Tonioli and Carrie Ann Inaba will return to judge the performances, ABC said.
Scores from the judges and the voting public will be combined, and the couple with the lowest score will be eliminated during a results show the following evening.
The winner receives the “Dancing With the Stars” mirror ball trophy.
MADRID, Spain (AP) – The Rolling Stones canceled a concert in the northern city of Valladolid after Mick Jagger was ordered by his doctor to rest his voice.
Jagger developed laryngitis over the weekend, the Stones said in a statement on their Web site.
The British rockers had sold 37,000 tickets for Monday night’s appearance at the city’s Zorilla soccer stadium, said Carmen Carnero, a spokeswoman for the show’s promoter.
Their concert will likely not be rescheduled, Carnero said.
“I am very sorry to be canceling this show,” Jagger, 63, said in a statement. “I always love playing in Spain, but unfortunately I have no other choice and I apologize to everyone who bought tickets for tonight.”
The Stones are scheduled to play Wednesday in El Ejido, in southern Spain, as part of their “A Bigger Bang” world tour.
They were forced to postpone the start of the European leg of the tour after Keith Richards suffered a head injury in a fall from a tree while vacationing in Fiji in April.
NEW YORK (AP) – Spike Lee says he wasn’t prepared for the devastation he saw in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
“It looked like what I assume Hiroshima looked like after World War II,” the 49-year-old director told Newsweek for its Aug. 21 issue. He was interviewed about “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,” his upcoming documentary for HBO.
Lee was in Venice, Italy, for a film festival when Katrina hit, and visited the scene of the devastation a month later.
“I just couldn’t believe this was happening right now in America,” Lee said. “It was one of those moments where you know someone will ask you years from now, “Where were you when Katrina happened?”‘
HONG KONG (AP) – Zhang Ziyi didn’t act like a prima donna on the set of a recent Chinese movie despite her newfound Hollywood fame, agreeing to shave her eyebrows for the role and even serving homemade soup to the crew, the film’s director said.
“Before we worked together, I might have thought, “Oh, Zhang Ziyi, a big star, it won’t be easy to work with her,”‘ Feng Xiaogang, who cast Zhang in his upcoming film, “The Banquet,” told The Associated Press on Sunday.
“But when the work got underway, I asked her to shave her eyebrows. She did it. During filming, she was very thoughtful. When she saw people in cinematography and the art department were working hard, she’d make soup and bring it to them,” Feng recalled.
“Our collaboration was especially happy,” he said.
Feng said Zhang was sad when she had to leave “The Banquet” to promote the film “Memoirs of a Geisha” in the U.S., and had been eager to get back to the set.
Zhang shot to international fame after appearing in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” She has also starred in “Rush Hour 2.”
NEW YORK (AP) – Nora Ephron says at least one thing gets easier when you’re older: choosing a spouse.
The 65-year-old author of a new book on aging, “I Feel Bad About My Neck,” who has been married to writer Nicholas Pileggi for almost 20 years, said the “third time’s the charm” in her marriage.
“I don’t think I could have stayed married to anybody that I married at 25 or 26. I wish I could have. That’s probably one of the things that, if you’re lucky, does get better when you get older,” she told Time magazine for its Aug. 21 issue. “You get a slightly better sense of who you are, and you learn something from mistakes.
“But I don’t mean to say anything positive about old age, you understand. That just slipped out of my mouth.”
Ephron, the writer of “When Harry Met Sally” and director of “You’ve Got Mail,” also says most people look younger today than in earlier generations because of hair dye.
“In the big cities now, people don’t go gray,” she said.
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