Martina McBride has racked up another award, this time honoring the country singer’s small-town roots.
McBride, who was born in Medicine Lodge, Kan., and raised on a dairy farm, received the Kansan of the Year award on Friday from the Native Sons and Daughters of Kansas.
McBride said she remembers her teenage scorn for the Sunflower State, where she started her first band. But growing up in Kansas, she said, “shaped the person who I am today.” After she and her husband moved to Nashville, Tenn., McBride’s career in country took off. In the past 15 years, her 10 albums have sold more than 15 million copies and scored dozens of hit singles.
“We’ve traveled to every state in our land. Now, as a 39-year-old with a much deeper and wiser attitude, I say ‘Kansas is a great place to be from,”‘ she said.
Famed conductor Daniel Barenboim was hospitalized shortly before he was to perform in a Berlin concert marking Mozart’s 250th birthday, but doctors have found no cause for serious concern, a spokeswoman said Saturday.
The 63-year-old felt ill shortly before the concert Friday and went to a hospital on advice of his doctor, said Katharina Henschen, a spokeswoman for the Staatsoper opera house in Berlin.
Henschen said Barenboim was under observation but “nothing serious was found … (and) anything serious can be ruled out for the moment.” She gave no further details.
Barenboim is general music director of the Staatsoper and chief conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Friday’s performance went ahead without Barenboim, with Julien Salemkour conducting.
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Ken Watanabe, the Japanese star of “Memoirs of a Geisha,” is defending the casting of Chinese actresses for the film’s main roles, saying talent is the most important consideration.
The English-language movie has inflamed historical tensions between Japan and China, with critics saying a movie about Japanese culture should have a Japanese actress in the lead.
But Watanabe, who plays a businessman in “Memoirs,” likened the casting choices to using non-Italian singers in an Italian opera.
“Talent is the most important thing. A beautiful soprano. A wonderful tenor. Not your nationality,” Watanabe says in the February edition of the magazine Prestige Hong Kong.
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Ashton Kutcher, best known for his role on “That ’70s Show” and as the husband of Demi Moore, is among a group of investors expected to launch a restaurant in a planned Reno, Nev., hotel-condominium-casino.
The new Dolce restaurant would serve the same Italian cuisine as its Melrose Avenue location in Hollywood, Calif.
Other celebrity investors include Danny Masterson and Wilmer Valderrama, also stars of “That ’70s Show;” Chris Masterson of “Malcolm in the Middle;” and Jamie Kennedy of “The Jamie Kennedy Experiment.”
Grand Sierra Resort officials announced plans in May to buy and convert the Reno Hilton hotel for $150 million.
Moss finds police refuge in paparazzi chase
Kate Moss took refuge in a Paris police station to escape a fleet of paparazzi chasing her car, police said.
About a dozen photographers on scooters and in cars followed the supermodel’s car as she left the Ritz Hotel late Thursday, police said Friday. A friend, Jean-Yves le Fur, was driving.
Moss and le Fur stayed in the police station in western Paris about five minutes, then police blocked off the photographers so they could leave safely. No complaint was filed.
Moss, 31, lost contracts with H&M, Burberry and Chanel after Britain’s Daily Mirror tabloid in September published pictures of her allegedly using cocaine in a London music studio where her then-boyfriend, Pete Doherty, was recording with his group, Babyshambles.
