asianculturalfestival.org

Published April 6th, 2013 – 08:00 GMT via SyndiGate.info

He might have a legion of screaming female fans but Egyptian heartthrob, Ahmed Ezz, says he still can’t find that perfect woman to settle down with.

After rumors that he had run off with a woman outside his home country (for shame!), the actor has spoken to Sayidaty magazine to confirm that he is still a bachelor.

According to Ahmed, the right women just don’t seem to cross his path, although he has some strict criteria for a future wife. Ladies: if you’re listening! 

He’s after a woman from a caring family who is down to earth but willing to put up with his starry lifestyle. They also need to love kids, as he wants at least four when he finally goes down the aisle.

And unlike some other stars, the Egyptian hottie says he won’t be leaving his home town anytime soon, so he’ll be looking for an Egyptian woman to settle down with.

Comedy actress Miranda Hart is one of the celebrity stars lined up for this year's Hay Festival.

Hart will join the annual get-together of authors, politicians and celebrities at the festival in Powys, starting in May.

Spy novelist John le Carre and American journalist Carl Bernstein will also appear.

The event will mark the Iraq war's 10th anniversary and closer to home honour poet RS Thomas, born 100 years ago.

This year's literary event in Hay-on-Wye is the 26th to be staged in the border town, famous for its second hand book shops. It will run from 23 May to 2 June.

In the past it has attracted former US presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, as well as the former vice-president Al Gore.

This year award-winning American journalist Carl Bernstein, who broke the Watergate scandal in the Washington Post in 1972, will reflect on the Barack Obama administration and the American anniversaries of Gettysburg (150th), the Vietnam war (40th) and President John F Kennedy's assassination (50th).

The 10th anniversary of the war in Iraq will be marked by a lecture from Swedish politician and diplomat Hans Blix.

The UN weapons inspector led the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq between 2000 and 2003 but none were discovered.

The festival's closing day will feature a talk from Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams who gained the honour for her international campaign to ban landmines.

Former Beirut hostage John McCarthy will speak about his travels through Israel and Palestine and Paul Theroux on a journey alone through Africa.

The recently retired Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, a familiar figure at the literary festival, will also participate.

Call the Midwife star Miranda Hart will talk about her work in comedy and drama, with fellow actors Robert Lindsay, Rupert Everett and Hugh Dennis also making festival appearances.

John le Carre, the creator of George Smiley, will make his debut at the festival and appearing in a first for Hay – a double length interview.

Other authors include Sebastian Faulks, Lionel Shriver, Caitlin Moran, Irvine Welsh, Howard Jacobson, Thomas Keneally, William McIlvanney and Alexander McCall Smith.

The festival will also feature the first public interview with the winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize, three days after the announcement.

There will also be events reflecting on the centenary of the birth of Welsh poet RS Thomas, along with the bicentenary of Jane Austen.

Music will include a UK premiere of a new opera by Philip Glass, imagining the final years of Walt Disney's life. Live performances include Christy Moore, Cerys Matthews, KT Tunstall, Manu Dibango and Hugh Cornwell.

There will also be stand-up comedy from Dara Ó Briain, Alan Davies, Phill Jupitus and Ed Byrne.

Story By: Ask Me Another

All eyes are on the players in this final round, led by puzzle guru Art Chung. Play along, and try to guess the words, phrases or proper nouns in which “i” is the only vowel. “I, I,” Captain!

Story By: Ask Me Another

Have you ever heard of a “Milli Vanilli Chilly Willy”? It’s when the cartoon penguin dresses up like a pair of disgraced lip-synchers. It also demonstrates that this game, led by puzzle guy Greg Pliska, is all about rhyming phrases.

Steven Spielberg is to give life to a screenplay by Stanley Kubrick about Napoleon, which was scrapped by the late film maker in the 1970s.

He told French TV network Canal+ he would make a TV miniseries – not a film – about the life of the French Emperor.

The Lincoln director previously collaborated with Kubrick on 2001's A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

The science fiction drama was conceived by Kubrick in the 1970s and later written and directed by Spielberg.

Regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Kubrick directed groundbreaking films including 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, Dr Strangelove and Eyes Wide Shut, his last film before his death in 1999.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, he was "devoted" to the research involved in the biopic about Napoleon, spending years exploring the French emperor's life in detail.

A Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibit highlighting Kubrick's work displayed a 1971 draft letter to studio executives, telling them: "It's impossible to tell you what I'm going to do except to say that I expect to make the best movie ever made."

It also highlighted an offer letter he wrote to Austrian actor Oskar Werner for the title role in the film and a "very polite hand-written inability letter" from Audrey Hepburn, in which she said she had decided not to work for a while, but asked if he would consider her "again sometime".

The Hollywood Reporter said Spielberg would develop Napoleon in conjunction with Kubrick's family.

"The late filmmaker is famed for his obsessive perfectionism, so his estate should find comfort working in the able hands of Spielberg," it said.

Robertson was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer just last week while being treated for pneumonia at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, California, Susan Robertson said. He died Tuesday.

“He always said he lived two or three lifetimes,” she said. “He was in Hollywood when it was great.”

People we’ve lost in 2013: The lives they lived

Councillors have approved plans for the Star of Caledonia public artwork, marking the Scotland-England border at Gretna.

Mr Balmond's design was selected as the preferred option for the site in July 2011.

The Gretna Landmark Trust is currently in talks with a range of organisations and individuals to raise the funds.

Last year, Creative Scotland awarded the project development funding in order to work up a bid for £1m support from the arts body.

The proposed design stands approximately 130ft (40m) high, which is twice as tall as the Angel of the North near Gateshead.

It will be lit by LEDs at the tips of the structure, but the council has asked for more detail on how much light they will emit as a condition of approval.

The project's creative director, Mr Jencks, said: "Crossing the border to Scotland, across the River Sark, is now a passage obscured under a bridge by cars travelling at speed.

"Instead of marking this with motorway signs, we are using a landform and sculpture that pulls together the adjacent site, the distant hills and the Solway.

"Nestled into the curving mound and springing from it is Cecil Balmond's whirling creation.

"In one sense, it is a scintillating piece of calligraphy seen against the sky which will signify various meanings as you approach it."

Gretna Landmark Trust chairman Alasdair Houston said it was a "remarkable" opportunity for a country to "herald its border".

"The star is a timeless work, which for 365 days a year will be a bold and confident statement of Scotland's innovation and energy," he said.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said alcohol and prescription drug abuse forced him into rehab last year after sessions when he would black out and have no memory of what he had done.

“I couldn’t predict where I was going to end up at the end of the night,” Armstrong, 41, the lead vocalist and songwriter for the California punk rock band told Rolling Stone magazine in an interview.

“I’d wake up in a strange house on a couch. I wouldn’t remember how. It was a complete blackout,” he said, opening up about years of addiction to drink and prescription drugs.

Green Day canceled their fall tour last year and postponed other dates after Armstrong entered treatment for what was described at the time only as “substance abuse.”

Armstrong said he decided finally to seek help after an onstage rant at the IHeartRadio music festival in Las Vegas in September 2012, where he angrily smashed his guitar after being told the band needed to wrap up their time on stage.

Referring to the Las Vegas incident, Armstrong said “I remember tiny things.”

“The next morning, I woke up. I asked (my wife) Adrienne, “How bad was it?” She said, “It’s bad.” I called my manager. He said, “You’re getting on a plane, going back to Oakland and going into rehab immediately,” the singer told the magazine in an advance excerpt released on Tuesday.

The band said in December that it would return to the road in March and Armstrong thanked fans for their support.

Green Day, formed in the late 1980s, has sold more than 65 million records worldwide, won five Grammys and produced hit albums such as 1994′s “Dookie,” and 2004′s “American Idiot.”

They are due to kick off their tour in Chicago on March 28.

Armstrong’s full interview with Rolling Stone will be available on U.S. newsstands on Friday.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Eric Walsh)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Will Ferrell will be honored by MTV at its 2013 movie awards show in April for his work in television and film comedy, the cable television network said on Wednesday.

The actor and comedian, who spent years on the TV show “Saturday Night Live” and appeared in the films “Anchorman” and “Elf,” will receive MTV’s first Comedic Genius Award.

“Over the course of his extraordinary, 17-plus-year career, he has entertained audiences across the globe with an impressive array of laugh-out-loud performances on air, online and in films,” Stephen Friedman, MTV’s president, said in a statement.

Ferrell will receive the award at the April 14 show from the Sony Pictures Studios Lot in Culver City, California.

(Reporting by Noreen O’Donnell; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Eric Beech)