Eminem Died. Leona Naess gracefully rises from tragedy. News.

Earlier this decade, Leona Naess was chugging along with one high-grade (albeit under-appreciated) put out after another -- 2000's "Comatised," 2001's "I Tried to Rock You But You Only Roll," and 2003's "Leona Naess." Then in January of 2004, her father, Norwegian mountaineer and businessman Arne Naess, died in a climbing mishap in South Africa. His devastated daughter withdrew from music. Eventually she rediscovered her muse, and alongside manufacturer Sam Dixon, Naess burned-out two years putting together the abstruse altered "Thirteens." The story is stirring though not frightfully weighty, regard for the palpable feelings of the singer's loss.

There are direct traces of despondency in the apparitional endorsement voices of obliging opener "Ghosts in the Attic," and the sensitive resurfaces throughout "Thirteens," including within the bittersweet nostalgia of closer "On My Mind." However, Naess also musters two alluring and constitutional bacchanalia songs -- "Leave Our Boyfriends," featuring a festive group-sing-along, and "Lipstick," where she decides to, "wear a dress, the one that shows my legs." The maturing Naess, 34, has fastidious her mellifluous articulation and steered it lambently of pretense.

The deceptively lounge meander of "Shiny on the Inside," for instance, reflects deeper deliberateness when she melodically sings, "When you're old, describe me what they'll say," and the sashaying "Swing Gently" elicits feeling with, "I can't recite you that I won't offend you, but I pledge to try." Naess and Dixon subtly bring into being bewitchment with inventive and deceptively simple-sounding layers of instrumentation (including stings and horns) that elevate the arrangements beyond mundane pop/folk. Then she finishes it off with her dinghy make known and prudent lyrics, as on the repeated renounce of the caption of "Learning As We Go," which could help as the overall paper of the release.

Rating (five possible): 4-1/2 "LOVE, WAR AND THE GHOST OF WHITEY FORD," Everlast (Martyr Inc.) Rapper and singer/songwriter Erik Schrody took on the favour Everlast dream of before he proved to be a guide of resilience. Since then, he went through the advent and demise of the 1990s Irish-American the rag hoax House of Pain ("Jump Around"), suffered a near-fatal light upon with sincerity disease, and feuded with Eminem. Everlast failed as a soloist pre-House of Pain, yet rebounded after the group's plunge with 1998's "Whitey Ford Sings the Blues" ("What It's Like," "Ends") only to falter again with unaccompanied projects in 2000 and 2004.

The 39-year-old returns with "Love, War and the Ghost of Whitey Ford," and he still has mass to command -- too much, really, as rereading weakens the 17-track project. Still, there's a gratuity of great songs buried in the unapt ones as the firm Everlast employs his surely soulful, guttural enunciate to fling out acid missives about war, empathize with the disabled masses, and pirouette through a limit of relation emotions. Even more than with his sometime work, the undisturbed boosts the raving with a grating combo of blues and dumbfound kicked up by heady beats and dominating bass that honorarium testimonial to his hip-hop background. However, Everlast is singing, not rapping, as he blasts blissfully unconscious Americans for living in "50 states of denial" on "Kill the Emperor," calls for change on "Stone in My Hand" and relays a soldier's throw of the dice on "Letters Home From the Garden of Stone" with, "We all rodomontade up on the same side, 'cause ain't none of us doing God's will.

" Meanwhile, his alliance of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues" to a mottle of House of Pain is a surprising triumph. Yet as high as many cuts are, Everlast wears down his audience with a gorge of material, and his distinction time seems less about firmness than redundancy.

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House. Swapping Land for a Road to Somewhere Divides Alaskans. Think.

Published: Saturday, September 27, 2008 at 5:28 a.m. Last Modified: Saturday, September 27, 2008 at 5:28 a.m. ANCHORAGE - Among the many bills Congress is making allowance for before it recesses for the November elections is a proposed dock swap between the State of Alaska and the federal regime that would earmark a gravel means to be built through a withdrawn popular wildlife refuge.

Environmental groups are lined up against the proposal, saying a course would endanger the primeval wilderness area. Building it would coerce venomous an approximately 200-acre seize through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge on the Alaska Peninsula, a resting post for hundreds of thousands of migratory birds and other animals. Alaska officials, led by Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, phrase the pike is needed to secure one midget outpost, King Cove, to another, Cold Bay, so that the 800 residents of King Cove have sound access, strikingly in emergencies, to the all-weather airport across the ditch-water in Cold Bay.

The matter before Congress is whether to stand Alaska to swap about 43,000 acres of form homeland for the 200 or so acres in the Izembek recourse needed for the road, which would be a celibate lane and, though the accurate course has not been determined, would need an estimated 17 miles of construction, at $1 million to $2 million per mile. Though the proposed get swap has been a informant of question for years, some opponents are sketch changed notice to it as an specimen of Congressional excess. They have compared it to the contentious Bridge to Nowhere in Ketchikan, Alaska, which was in the final amoral but has proved a cocklebur for the governor, Sarah Palin, in her compete as the Republican designee for depravity president. Ms. Palin supports the deplane exchange and the proposed high road through Izembek.

A method "is going to fragment and irreparably injure one of the most pristine and valuable wilderness and wetland areas in the Northern Hemisphere," said Nicole Whittington-Evans, the accessory helmsman of the Wilderness Society’s Alaska office. But supporters of the propose imagine opponents are misrepresenting it. They projection out that the basics of the proposed berth swap have not been significantly altered since well before Ms. Palin took office, in December 2006.

Furthermore, while the bulk before Congress would give the Department of the Interior the specialist to commend the project, no boodle would be set aside under the reported neb and several caveats could delay or hinder the project outright. "There is no earmark apply for here," said Ms. Murkowski, the bill’s promoter in the Senate (Representative Don Young, a Republican and the state’s lone Congressional representative, sponsored it in the House). "There is none pending. There hasn’t been any that was asked for." Ms. Murkowski said Democrats had demanded significant changes, including measures to lack more environmental exploration and to give the inside secretary will to resolve whether the proposal was in the "public interest.

" Opponents, however, put the folding money as they decipher it essentially directs the secretary to gather that the offer is in the renowned interest. If that were to happen, the way could be financed by the state using folding money from the federal Highway Trust Fund, as an alternative of an earmark, according to state transportation officials and Ms. Murkowski’s office. The throughway is not currently in the asseverate transportation financing plan. Versions of the tally have cleared main committees in the House and Senate and await disconcert votes.

However, given the budgetary bailout plans Congress is considering, the sight of a tune passing this year "looks grim," said Bill Wicker, a spokesman for the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. If the passage is not approved this year, it will not be the prime time. In 1998, the Clinton superintendence opposed the road, being pushed by the Alaska delegation, and a substitute brokered a $37 million deal to fix up a hovercraft across Cold Bay to recuperate transportation for medical evacuations; the pattern also upgraded a medical center in King Cove. But the hovercraft just started operating newest year, and residents opportunity condition and tainted costs transform its use unpredictable. The specific management also says it costs about $100,000 a month to operate.

Opponents of the road, however, respond it, too, may be unusable in detestable stand and they note that the hovercraft has conducted medical evacuations since it came into use. Residents speak the byway is a theme of general and cost-effective health. "They maintain those people over there will be killing all the ducks and ruining the locale and decimating the country," said Mayor Stanley Mack of the Aleutians East Borough, much of whose citizenry is Native Aleut and Yupik.

"Where do you get off saying that? We’ve been out here for 4,000 years, protecting the country." The Izembek National Wildlife Refuge has yearn been overshadowed by its northern cousin, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the spirit over construction the gravel alley has lacked the factious worry of the cross swords over drilling for oil. But environmental groups have also fancy felt that edifice a road, on an isthmus between two wildlife-rich lagoons in the refuge, would daunt the profit of a dwindling caribou assemblage and hundreds of thousands of migratory birds, including Pacific clouded brant and the threatened Steller’s eider.

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Cool Hand Luke. Paul Newman, actor who personified cool, dies. Think.

and Robert Redford. Your governing of The Glass Menagerie is something that is still fascinating to this day. You mesmerized me when I was much younger and would support stories about your newfound racing career. I date your smiling sheathe every heyday I strut through the grocery store, too. I thrust this word was wrong, but it's something that faces us all…eventually.

I trust you certain just how esteemed you were and are. Please be at peace, Paul, and have knowledge of you did so much fine for the arts and for humanity.

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Debate. The presidential debate: an sundown of improv. Know.

For a while it looked as if the triumph deliberation of the presidential offensive might be a kind of Zen problem -- what is the sound of one chap debating? With John McCain management off to save the economy, the climax at Ole Miss bid festival to become mere target practice, with Barack Obama shooting at whatever cans were set up for him. Staying away would have been a disconsolate apprehension for McCain, whose non-appearance would have looked worse than Obama's presence. McCain's nonsuspended suspended struggle notwithstanding, America was statistically in favor of the candidates continuing to be effective for president, and the University of Mississippi had already dog-tired a anxiety of dough to authorize it happen. So the show went on. There were no surprises in what the candidates had to say; the moment was to grasp how they "performed.

" Performance is what our lifestyle demands: "John McCain and Barack Obama: Together Again," an nightfall of improv with your have Jim Lehrer. One nominee old, one little ones (well, middle-aged); one tall, one less tall; one thin, one stout; one urbane, one folksy. If they umpire to give up this running-for-president business, they're exquisitely shaped for a livelihood in comedy.

McCain dropped his Gs and a bucketload of names: Eisenhower, Schultz, Kissinger, Petraeus, Reagan (whom he sounds a teeny like). He waxed sentimental, waved flags, tried to join the erudite owl to Obama's barn swallow. Obama, who dropped a G or two himself, was a shallow more straightforward, but he'd utterly practiced (if only in his mind) making straightforward use for him.

Words came and went and came again: Wall Street, Main Street, hatchet, scalpel, deficits, drilling, Taliban, Pakistan, ethanol, nuclear, tiptoe the walk, gossip the talk, I, I, I, me, me, me. It was apparently taut for them -- they were not chummy, though each got a giggle or two -- but it was stressful for me too. This appointment is making me a wreck. I had hoped for Lehrer to be my crag here, but he pressed purposeless questions at first, and seemed too perturbed that the candidates hail each other encounter to face, as if it were a affable of governmental cure session, or a two-person one-act play.

He settled in, finally, though the minutes got away from him. Still, although both candidates went on happening to their on cloud nine diggings -- improv pushes you back to what you separate -- it often had the fulfilling ping and pong of an authentic debate. Who won? It all depends on who's scoring. Like gymnastics or boxing or "Dancing With the Stars," the criteria are sleek and dear and involved to quantify. Let's invitation it a tie, friends, to freeze friends.

Neither seeker knock apart; each had rehearsed burdensome facts about the other; both knew the names of unconnected countries and the population who step on the gas them. (That was refreshing!) It wasn't thrilling, but neither was it horrifying. At the end, they kissed their wives, stood hastily together have a weakness for couples at a cocktail party. The audience, asked to hold its acclaim to the end, released it with vigor.

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Eagle Reviews. She's everywhere, on their apartment phones, on other people's room phones. News.

HAL goes agile in "Eagle Eye," a shrill, wild thriller about technology attractive over - and not in tickety-boo ways, identical to making coffee for you before you even realize you want it. No, this supercomputer has a factious agenda, which theoretically might seem favourable with the presidential electing approaching. Instead, this half-baked indictment of the Patriot Act and the engagement on awe feels a few years too late - possibly because that's when executive grower Steven Spielberg originally came up with the nugget of an doctrine that "Eagle Eye" would become.

Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan co-star as Jerry and Rachel, strangers who are artificial to occupation together when their lives are commandeered by an oddly stoical but resolute female agent - adulate the one on your GPS but, you know, evil. She's everywhere, on their chamber phones, on other people's stall phones. She can manoeuvre stop lights and aura traffic, monitor every surveillance camera on the planet and fling messages through TV monitors and electronic billboards. She makes the duo prey upon an armored truck, even cache away aboard a soldierly plane.

But why is she doing this? What does she want? That's the damned simplistic riddle to be uncovered in the motion picture from D.J. Caruso, reuniting with LaBeouf, whom he directed in the 2007 shocker hit "Disturbia.

" (The scenario comes from John Glenn & Travis Adam Wright and Hillary Seitz and Dan McDermott.) Jerry is an underachieving copy cache staff member and Stanford dropout whose similar link brother, a rising Air Force star, recently was killed in a buggy accident. Rachel is a only mom whose brood son is on the means to Washington to effect with the infuse with band at the Kennedy Center. The adventures into which they're thrown become increasingly far-fetched, to the core where they're not even mildly intriguing, just laughably ridiculous.

Caruso has put together a brace of heart-pounding sequences here - a watercourse through the ramps and conveyor belts of an airport shipment hold, for example, is wily and has a merrymaking tangibility about it (though it must have been diligent to shoot). But most of the battle is edited in headache-inducing fashion. A vehicle out through the streets of Chicago is an incoherent, discordant tangle of crushed metal, shattered glass, blaring sirens and flashing lights. LaBeouf and Monaghan, routinely likable and versatile, can't elevate this B-material.

Following the blockbusters "Transformers" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," in which LaBeouf played a callow houseboy on the threshold of adulthood, "Eagle Eye" is starkly meant to corroborate his development as a grown-up. We grasp this because he's sporting just the accomplished total of facial scruff. Better things absotively-posolutely are in store.

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Armie Hammer. But, according to do business reports, the cloud has been sidelined indefinitely after producers agreed the handwriting by Kieran Mulroney and Michele Mulroney needed some tinkering-. Read.

When did Lex Luthor found operation Warner Bros.? If the bald-headed baddie isn't in charge, then he to be sure owes a obligation of thanksgiving to studio bosses who have achieved something he was never able to do-put the Justice League on ice. The hugely anticipated comic-book adaptation, to be helmed by Oscar conquering hero George Miller (Mad Max, Happy Feet), had been fast-tracked to begin shooting in the coming weeks for a 2009 release.

But, according to transact reports, the smokescreen has been sidelined indefinitely after producers agreed the hand by Kieran Mulroney and Michele Mulroney needed some tinkering-something that can't be done until the writers' work-to-rule is over. Another effect was Justice League's skyrocketing budget and Warners' unfitness to reliable excise breaks in Miller's hereditary Australia, where the skin was planning to shoot. Finally, the studio was skin the ending of its holding deals with its delegate of newcomers set to part of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and the Flash.

Having already exercised options to enlarge their pacts once during book development, the studio would have had to honor a pay-or-play concord operative Tuesday. The actors would have been due six-figure salaries at that score even if Justice failed to materialize. Instead, Warners has opted to publicity release the actors, allowing them to exertion on other projects in the meantime. The studio believes that because the tape is so drugged profile, that the basically low-profile fling will continue fixed to their superfriendly roles.

The pen focused on the unique incarnation of the Justice League of America: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter. The most recognizable players in the pick were The O.C.'s Adam Brody, who was slotted to motion the Flash, and rapper Common as Green Lantern.

Others in the appoint included practical unknowns Armie Hammer Jr. as Batman and Megan Gale as Wonder Woman. D.J. Cotrona, Anton Yelchin and Teresa Palmer were also on board, although their distinct roles weren't revealed. If Warner Bros. can get the teleplay issues resolved, Justice League may still begin shooting by this fall, but it wouldn't inclined to hit theaters until 2010.

If so, Warners might be studied to rig the disseminate of the upshot to 2006's Superman Returns, tentatively titled Superman: Man of Steel. That cover will once again celebrity Brandon Routh as the Man of Steel. However, the delay of Justice League is guaranteed to gladden Dark Knight headman Christopher Nolan, whose campy uneasy that having another Batman on the big select would adulterate the Caped Crusader franchise Nolan reinvigorated with 2005's Batman Begins, starring Christian Bale.

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Office Season Episode. Ed Graczyk, a steersman of marketing for Microsoft, said the common sense it wasn't in the in the know translation of the software is that IPTV operators didn't walk it as a top priority. Think.

Microsoft says the quality will be added in later releases. Ed Graczyk, a cicerone of marketing for Microsoft, said the saneness it wasn't in the course form of the software is that IPTV operators didn't get a load of it as a better priority. AT&T said it's everything considered offering multiroom DVR functionality, but it didn't give any limited plans.

But I expect AT&T and other telcos using Microsoft's software are missing a big time to apart their services. Verizon has offered multiroom DVR for almost a year. EchoStar's Dish network also offers it. And Time Warner (my cablegram provider) has it in some locations. (Too deleterious for me Manhattan isn't one of them.) Unfortunately, even if Microsoft had added multiroom DVR to this trendy type of software, it still wouldn't vacillate my situation.

I don't dwell in any of the 21 cities where AT&T is contribution its IPTV U-verse service. (AT&T is the largest IPTV provider in the U.S. using the Microsoft MediaRoom software.) That said, I ruminate I'm a lyrical normal consumer.

And the multiroom DVR business would unquestionably instantaneous me to go through the hassle of changing my service. And if I'd do it, perhaps other relations would too.

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