So maybe actress Winona Ryder’s not a crackhead after all. Her drug charges were recently dropped (perhaps she agreed to stop popping those pills), but her shoplifting charge still stands. Check out Reuters news network for more info if you want to find out whether the once-thought-to-be innocent Ryder is or is not that angelic cutie pie you saw in Little Women.
Wu-Tang seems to have been hiding out in the subterranean caves of 36 Chambers, concocting their raw hip hop special brew on the low without anyone interfering. RZA, the group’s producer, won’t discuss matters concerning a new release for the Clan. However, he announced that he’s working on an international album, W.A.R.: The World According to RZA, which will feature European artists such as IAM, Saian Supa Crew, Dido, Petter and Xavier Naidoo. “I traveled throughout Europe,” he said, “and there, many countries have grass hip hop because they’re living the same struggle we’re living in one form or another. So I got some of the most prominent artists, gave them some fat beats, and they kicked some banging joints on it. For the first time you could hear hip hop in many languages, like Turkey-who thought that somebody would ever rap in Turkish and be on beat?” There isn’t an official release date for the album yet.
The Columbine tragedy was the basis of inspiration for a documentary called Bowling for Columbine, which examines violence and gun culture in America. The film was shown Saturday at the Starz Denver International Film Festival, and received mixed reactions from the public-some praised the movie for probing deeper into what happened at the high school massacres and pushing the fight for gun control, while others found that it capitalized on the tragic events without any redeeming quality.
Where’s your stand on the debate over war with Iraq? Actor Sean Penn paid for a $56,000 advertisement in the Washington Post last Friday accusing President Bush of propagating war in the minds of Americans and of menacing civil liberties. The ad takes up almost a whole page in the main section of the paper and Penn wrote that “bombing is answered by bombing, mutilation by mutilation, killing by killing.” Referring to Bush, he claimed: “your administration’s deconstruction of civil liberties all contradict the very core of the patriotism you claim.” So, who’s the real patriot: Bush or Penn?