Latest news with #TheLoveBug
Korea Herald
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Zico to collaborate with M-flo for 25th year project
Zico, elli to feature Japanese hip-hop alternative group m-flo's new track Artist and producer Zico is set to collaborate with Japanese alternative hip-hop group M-flo in celebration of the group's 25th year. M-flo announced via its official social media Wednesday that the group will release a new track 'Eko Eko' featuring Zico and Japanese singer-songwriter Eill. Describing the collaboration, M-Flo described working with Zico and Eill as 'one-of-a-kind sessions that transcend genre and language.' This collaboration is part of M-flo's 25th debut anniversary 'Loves' series — a signature project for the group. The group debuted in 1999 and rose to fame with numerous hits, including 'Miss You,' 'The Love Bug' and 'Come Again.' Known for teaming up with various artists across genres and nationalities, the 'Loves' series has been a beloved hallmark of M-flo's musical journey. Zico described 'Eko Eko' as a track that people of all ages and tastes can enjoy. 'It's an honor to participate in an album by M-flo, a group I've been a fan of since I first started music. It's truly admirable that they've reached their 25th anniversary as artists.' M-flo commented, 'We put in a lot of time and care communicating to create a song where our synergies could shine. Zico and eill's unique vibes blended naturally, resulting in a 'loves' series track that truly feels like m-flo.' Meanwhile, Zico has been actively involved in various projects this year. In the first half of 2025, he featured on Ash Island's 'It's Okay (Feat. Zico)' and Giriboy's 'My Job is Cool (Feat. Zico, J-Tong).' He also served as the executive producer for rising boy band BoyNextDoor's 4th mini album 'No Genre.' On July 5–6, the singer will hold a solo fan meeting 'Comvenience' at Blue Square Hall in Yongsan-gu, Seoul.
Los Angeles Times
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
What does smelting have to do with Ted Bundy? A lot, argues ‘Murderland' author
The first film I saw in a theater was 'The Love Bug,' Disney's 1969 comedy about a sentient Volkswagen Beetle named Herbie and the motley team who race him to many a checkered flag. Although my memory is hazy, I recall my toddler's delight: a car could think, move and communicate like a real person, even chauffeuring the romantic leads to their honeymoon. Nice Herbie! Or not so nice. A decade later, Stanley Kubrick opened his virtuosic 'The Shining' with fluid tracking shots of the same model of automobile headed toward the Overlook Hotel and a rendezvous with horror. Something had clicked. Caroline Fraser's scorching, seductive 'Murderland' chronicles the serial-killer epidemic that swept the U.S. in the 1970s and '80s, focusing on her native Seattle and neighboring Tacoma, where Ted Bundy was raised. He drove a Beetle, hunting for prey. She underscores the striking associations between VWs and high-yield predators, as if the cars were accomplices, malevolent Herbies dispensing victims efficiently. (Bundy's vehicle is now displayed in a Tennessee museum.) The book's a meld of true crime, memoir and social commentary, but with a mission: to shock readers into a deeper understanding of the American Nightmare, ecological devastation entwined with senseless sadism. 'Murderland' is not for the faint of heart, yet we can't look away: Fraser's writing is that vivid and dynamic. She structures her narrative chronologically, conveyed in present tense, newsreel-style, evoking the Pacific Northwest's woodsy tang and bland suburbia. Fraser came of age on Mercer Island, adjacent to Lake Washington's eastern shore, across a heavily-trafficked pontoon bridge notorious for fatal crashes. Like the Beetle, the dangerous bridge threads throughout 'Murderland,' braiding the author's personal story with those of her cast. A 'Star Trek' geek stuck in a rigid Christian Science family, she loathed her father and longed to escape. In Tacoma, 35 miles to the south, Ted Bundy grew up near the American Smelting and Refining Co., which disgorged obscene levels of lead and arsenic into the air while netting millions for the Guggenheim dynasty before its 1986 closure. Bundy is the book's charismatic centerpiece, a handsome, well-dressed sociopath in shiny patent-leather shoes, flitting from college to college, job to job, corpse to corpse. During the 1970s, he abducted dozens of young women, raping and strangling them on sprees across the country, often engaging in postmortem sex before disposing their bodies. He escaped custody twice in Colorado — once from a courthouse and another time from a jail — before he was finally locked up for good after his brutal attacks on Chi Omega sorority sisters at Florida State University. Fraser depicts his bloody brotherhood with similar flair. Israel Keyes claimed Bundy as a hero. Gary Ridgway, the prolific 'Green River Killer,' inhaled the same Puget Sound toxins. Randy Woodfield trawled I-5 in his 1974 Champagne Edition Beetle. As she observes of Richard Ramirez, Los Angeles' 'Night Stalker': 'He's six foot one, wears black, and never smiles. He has a dead stare, like a shark. He doesn't bathe. He has bad teeth. He's about to go beserk.' But the archvillain is ASARCO, the mining corporation that dodged regulations, putting profitability over people. Fraser reveals an uncanny pattern of polluting smelters and the men brought up in their shadows, prone to mood swings and erratic tantrums. The science seems speculative until the book's conclusion, where she highlights recent data, explicitly mapping links. Her previous work, 'Prairie Fires,' a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, won the Pulitzer Prize and other accolades. The pivot here is dramatic, a bit of formal experimentation as Fraser shatters the fourth wall, luring us from our comfort zone. While rooted in the New Journalism of Joan Didion and John McPhee, 'Murderland' deploys a mocking tone to draw us in, scattering deadpan jokes among chapters: 'In 1974 there are at least a half a dozen serial killers operating in Washington. Nobody can see the forest for the trees.' Fraser delivers a brimstone sermon worthy of a Baptist preacher at a tent revival, raging at plutocrats who ravage those with less (or nothing at all). Her fury blazes beyond balance sheets and into curated spaces of elites. She singles out Roger W. Straus Jr., tony Manhattan publisher, patron of the arts and grandson of Daniel Guggenheim, whose Tacoma smelter may have scrambled Bundy's brain. She mentions Straus' penchant for ascots and cashmere jackets. She laments the lack of accountability. 'Roger W. Straus Jr. completes the process of whitewashing the family name,' she writes. 'Whatever the Sackler family is trying to do by collecting art and endowing museums, lifting their skirts away from the hundreds of thousands addicted and killed by prescription opioids manufactured and sold by their company — Purdue Pharma — the Guggenheims have already stealthily and handily accomplished.' Has Fraser met a sacred cow she wouldn't skewer? Those beautiful Cézannes and Picassos in the Guggenheim Museum can't paper over the atrocities; the gilded myths of American optimism, our upward mobility and welcoming shores won't mask the demons. 'The furniture of the past is permanent,' she notes. 'The cuckoo clock, the Dutch door, the daylight basement — humble horsemen of the domestic Apocalypse. The VWs, parked in the driveway.' 'Murderland' is a superb and disturbing vivisection of our darkest urges, this summer's premier nonfiction read. Cain is a book critic and the author of a memoir, 'This Boy's Faith: Notes from a Southern Baptist Upbringing.' He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Indianapolis Star
25-05-2025
- Automotive
- Indianapolis Star
Hey you on the red carpet: What's your favorite car in a movie or television show?
IndyStar posed a single question to several celebrities and athletes who walked the Indy 500 red carpet Sunday: What is your favorite car you've seen in a movie or show? Here are some of their answers: Terry Crews (retired NFL player and actor from 'Everybody Hates Chris' and 'Brooklyn Nine-Nine'): Herbie from 'The Love Bug': 'It was cute. It was wonderful. It was for family. It's kind of like me,' Crews said with a laugh. Kathy Ireland (actress; designer; entrepreneur; and model for Sports Illustrated, Vogue; and Cosmopolitan): the magical flying car from 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.' DeForest Buckner (Colts defensive tackle): James Bond's Aston Martins. Kat McNamara (singer and actress known for 'Shadowhunters'): the Mystery Machine from 'Scooby-Doo' and the Millennium Falcon from 'Star Wars.' 'I'm just a big old nerd,' McNamara said. 'Those were the ones that I think were iconic for me growing up as a kid. Full disclosure: When I'm at Comic Con and there's a Mystery Machine or Millennium Falcon, I will go see it and sit in it and hang out.' (Editor's note: People may disagree as to whether the Falcon is a car, but it's race day and we're having fun, so we're counting it.) Matt Barr (actor from 'Hatfields & McCoys' 'Blood & Treasure,' and 'Walker'): the Shelby Cobra from 1995's 'Bad Boys.' 'There's something about those kind of classic cars — there's a danger to them, you know … you just drive and the universe decides what happens,' Barr said. Katie Feeney (social media content creator who has covered major sporting events): the Batmobile. 'I love superheroes, and I love any Marvel … type of movies,' Feeney said. Natalie Grant (Grammy-nominated vocalist who sang the national anthem at the 2025 Indy 500): Herbie from 'The Love Bug.' It was 'cute, felt like it was your friend, felt like it loved you. It was just like, how could you not love it?' Grant said. Ephraim Owens (musician, composer and bandleader from Indianapolis who sang 'America the Beautiful' at the 2025 Indy 500): 'My son would hate me if I didn't say this, but 'Lightning McQueen' wins every time.' Owens said his son loves that McQueen is 'really, really fast and he's funny. And he loves saying 'Ka chow.'' Michael Evans Behling (actor, known for 'All American' who attended Columbus North High School in Indiana): the Batmobile Tumbler from 'The Dark Knight.' 'I love its versatility and the fact that it can blow things up but also go silent,' Behling said. Reggie Wayne (former Colts player and now wide receivers coach): 'Eleanor,' the 1967 Ford Mustang from 'Gone in 60 Seconds'.
Budapest Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Budapest Times
Tragedies, triumphs of a life off and on stage and screen
It's a bit of a relief to read in British actor David Tomlinson's autobiography his recognition that he was known for 'my dimwitted upper-class twit performances' – a relief because if you had asked us here at The Budapest Times to describe Tomlinson, we would have been tempted to say, 'You know, that bloke who often used to play dimwitted upper-class twits in films', but we certainly would have hesitated to do so, for risk of 1) causing offence to the family, and 2) failing to recognise a career wider than that. So, if Tomlinson was self-aware enough, good for him, and us, and if we think back to British films of his peak period in the 1940s-1970s we can do so without guilt, because you'd have to agree that he and Ian Carmichael had basically cornered the market when it came to topping casting directors' lists of candidates to fill the parts of dimwitted upper-class twits. Tomlinson made 50 films and we haven't seen a whole lot of them, partly because he seems to be primarily remembered for three roles in Walt Disney films, and this is the sort of soppy family fare that we tend to avoid. He made a big name for himself in Disney's huge hit 'Mary Poppins' (1964), appearing as Glynis Johns' husband and singing 'Let's Go Fly a Kite'. His other two successes in the Disney trio were 'The Love Bug' in 1968 and 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks' in 1971. But rather we prefer to think of him in 'The Wooden Horse' (1950) tunnelling out of Stalag Luft III, a German POW camp for officers. Also, he was one of the 'Three Men in a Boat' (1956), based on Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 novel (a book we love) containing non-stop twittishness not just from Tomlinson, as Jerome, but from all three bods. Another was 'The Chiltern Hundreds' (1949), in which Tomlinson was again a trademark genial high-born ass, playing Tony, Viscout Pym, the son of a lord who becomes a Labour candidate for Member of Parliament, and we've also seen him in two of the four old-fashioned but enjoyable Huggetts films, 'Here Come the Huggetts' in 1948 and 'Vote for Huggett' in 1949. Jack Warner, later of 'Dixon of Dock Green' TV fame, and Kathleen Harrison starred in these family-friendly British efforts, with a young Petula Clark. Such films give a fair idea of the Tomlinson niche. However, as he points out he did play a wide range of characters, from heroes and amiable silly asses to dignified old gentlemen. For good measure, he was even a wicked villain, dying with a bullet in his chest in the back of a plane, the only time, as far as he could recall, when he wasn't basically a 'nice guy'. And he had a solid stage craeer too, often filming during the day and working in the theatre at night. With a growing family of four sons he was rather keen on money, and one of the boys was autistic, presenting considerable problems. Here, good people helped cope. Actors usually lead very fascinating lives, engrossing to we in the common herd, and Tomlinson's memories are entertaining for sure. Here are encounters to satisfy any cinephile, with Anthony Asquith, Ralph Richardson, Robert Morley, Errol Flynn, Peter Sellers, Walt Disney, Vanessa Redgrave, Noël Coward and other luminaries. Also King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and later the Princess Royal, plus adventures on foreign lands with good times in Hollywood and bad times witnessing the appalling apartheid of South Africa. Whether its people were black or white, they were good to Tomlinson. David Cecil MacAlister Tomlinson was born on May 7, 1917 in Henley-on-Thames and died aged 83 on June 24, 2000 in King Edward VII's Hospital, London, after a stroke. It was a joke of his that he wanted the words 'David Tomlinson, an actor of genius, irresistible to women' on his headstone. (He was buried in the grounds of his home in Buckinghamshire, wording unknown.) The autobiography was published in 1990 and is now available again in a new edition from Dean Street Press, a publisher 'devoted to uncovering and revitalizing good books'. Tomlinson's is well worthy of such attention. From his earliest remembered family days to the world of films it is a winner, with unusual tales nicely told. Some would make good plots. These don't come much odder than that of Tomlinson's father Clarence, an outwardly respectable solicitor but given to rages at home. He horrified even himself when once he burned David's hand with a domestic iron, to teach the boy, aged about 8, a lesson after he had turned it on. But most incredibly he somehow managed to successfully juggle two entirely separate families for decades. He told his wife Florence and four children in Folkestone that for work purposes he needed to stay at his London club on weekdays, while actually living with his mistress and their seven – seven! – illegitimate children. The subterfuge was eventually uncovered when David's brother Peter was on his way to Heathrow on a double-decker airport bus that stopped unexpectedly in Chiswick, whereupon Peter found himself gazing through a top-deck window at his father sitting up in bed in a strange house drinking tea. In fact his wife had known of her husband's double life for 60 years because during the First World War in France he was writing to both women but once put the letters in the wrong envelopes. She never mentioned it until, 86 years old, she was on her death bed. 'The marriage was important to her,' Tomlinson writes. The only time her husband was truly kind to her was whenever she was ill, so she made a point of being frequently ill and had, the son believes, two or even three unnecessary operations. Tomlinson says his childhood was plagued by the tensions and friction when his father was home. He and his three brothers were used to his arrival in Folkestone on Friday night and departure on Monday morning. 'If truth be told, we were quite pleased to see him go,' Tomlinson tells. The family was frightened of this unpredictable man. The boy enjoyed the pleasures of Folkestone. There were horses, gas lights, Punch and Judy, cinema and a rollerskating rink. He was 10 when he decided to be an actor after visiting the Pleasure Gardens Theatre. Do they really get paid for doing that, he wondered? He couldn't believe anything could be quite so wonderful. 'I decided then and there that it must be better than working and I have never altered my view.' The young man had a a stammer but was determined to overcome it and his father's opposition. He scoured London for theatrical jobs then joined the Grenadier Guards, which was a big mistake so he bought himself out after 16 months. A period as dogsbody in repertory helped equip him for his first professional, but non-speaking, appearance in 1936. The film director Anthony Asquith saw him in a play and signed him, rescuing him from dispiriting provincial tours with often drunken colleagues and cold and uncomfortable theatrical boarding-houses, and an unsuccessful spell selling vacuum cleaners. In the Second World War he was a Royal Air Force flying instructor, surviving a crash after blacking out in a Tiger Moth. There was the appalling tragedy of a first marriage in 1943 to a beautiful American widow who threw herself out of a 15th-floor window in New York, together with her two little boys. He was in England with the RAF. In 1953 Tomlinson married Audrey Freeman and theirs was a long and happy union, remaining together for nearly 50 years and raising the four boys. At first he had a stammer but overame it with tenacity and determination. Courage was the vital factor to succeed in acting, he says. Succeed he did and the memories of a full career are here to enjoy.
NBC News
13-04-2025
- Entertainment
- NBC News
'Dazed and Confused' actor Nicky Katt dies at 54
Actor Nicky Katt, best known for roles in popular indie film 'Dazed and Confused' and show 'Boston Public,' has died at 54. Katt's death was confirmed by his attorney, John Sloss, though no other details were disclosed. A native of South Dakota, Katt was born on May 11, 1970. He started acting at an early age, with credited roles in series 'ChiPs,' 'Code Red,' 'Herbie, The Love Bug,' 'Voyagers!' and other shows throughout the 1980s. In 1993, Katt landed the role of Clint Bruno in the classic coming-of-age film 'Dazed and Confused,' which follows a group of Austin, Texas, teenagers celebrating their last day of school in May 1976. He starred alongside Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck and Parker Posey. At the turn of the century, Katt played Harry Senate in 'Boston Public,' a series that followed the professional and private lives of faculty members at a Boston high school. The cast included Chi McBride, Anthony Heald, Loretta Devine and Michael Rapaport. Katt's other on-screen appearances included 'Rules of Engagement,' 'School of Rock,' 'King of the Hill,' 'Sin City,' 'Monk' and 'Law and Order.' The last role he was credited with was on the show 'Casual' in 2018.
