Sunday 7 September 2008

Proms debut holds no fear for the 'Little Mozart'



He has been nicknamed Little Mozart and, at nine-spot years old, has only recently grownup tall enough to turn over the foot pedals of a grand piano.



On Sunday, Marc Yu, from Los Angeles, will make his debut at the Royal Albert Hall as one of the youngest-ever performers to play at the 114-year-old Proms.


"Of form I'm not nervous," said Marc, with a confidence beyond his years. "The bigger the audience, the better I play. I will feel nervous if I'm not well prepared but that's not common. It's exciting and stimulating to be on microscope stage. When I go on the level there's nix more exciting than spirit that yourself, the orchestra and the audience are in total harmony."


Marc practises the pianoforte for up to eight hours a day, merely says he still has time to play in the park with his friends. He dismisses the idea that his pattern schedule is overly demanding. "I like ping-pong, relation jokes, swimming and playing with my friends. Because I am home-schooled I have more time to play when I am at home because I do not have to go to school � unlike other children world Health Organization are confined in shoal for seven-spot hours a day. That's a lot of do work for them."


Marc made his concert debut, on the piano and the cello, at six-spot � the same age as Mozart when he gave his first operation in 1762.


At the Proms, Marc will perform a duo, Schubert's Fantasia in F Minor, with the showy Chinese piano player Lang Lang, who played at the opening observance of the Beijing Olympics. "Lang Lang has forever been my idol," aforementioned Marc. "He is perfect musically and also perfect at getting the audience into the music."


Marc began playing the piano at a friend's birthday party in Los Angeles when he was two. As children american ginseng "Mary Had a Little Lamb", he toddled over to the piano and started tapping out the tune with two fingers. This amazed his Chinese-born mother, Chloe, because it was the first time Marc had ever been near a piano.


Six months later, he gave his number one public recital, playing Beethoven. When he was three, Marc realized he was thinking nigh music more than anyone else his age. Because he could concentrate and hear the logic behind the music, he excelled and apace won interior piano prizes after two years of lessons.


An only child, he credits his 34-year-old female parent for nurturing his talent because she played Beethoven CDs to him when he was in the womb and now acts as his tutor, handler and traveling companion. "If I make a talent from God, it is my mummy who is my angel," he said.


"I try non to think about what a immense responsibility it is," aforesaid Mrs Yu. "I never expected when I was pregnant with Marc that he would be a prodigy. I played music to him before he was born just because I hoped it would help him develop a love of music.


"I am no technical but I believe that it is more parent than nature so children should not be demoralised because they are not born with an obvious talent. It is non easy to become a virtuoso � it takes a lot of operate and dedication." "And sacrifice," interrupts her son cheerfully.


Marc is educated at home by his mother and a tutor to give him the flexibility to move and perform, while allowing him to learn at his have pace. Mrs Yu aforementioned: "What other children learn in eight hours a day he can squeeze into 30 minutes or an hour. This way, he can learn any he is interested in at that moment."


Marc studies music composition at the Colburn School Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, and flies to China for lessons at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Marc aforesaid: "I like playing music because it has a lot of different feelings � expressive, sad, excited and happy. Music is just full of emotions � that's what I love virtually it. I like acting difficult pieces, especially those that my teacher says no to. Practice truly does make perfect."


Marc's performance is at 4pm tomorrow. The concert is sold out but will be live on BBC Radio 3 and BBC4 at 7.30pm.


Other child geniuses from the domain of music


Yehudi Menuhin


The American-born violinist, wHO died in 1999 at 82, was a child prodigy wHO went on to turn one of the 20th century's finest musicians. He debuted in San Francisco at the age of seven and, by 13, had performed in London, Paris and Berlin. Albert Einstein said after earreach him: "Now I know there is a God in heaven."


Jacqueline du Pr�


The English violoncellist who died of multiple sclerosis in 1987 at the age of 42, is i of the greatest-ever players of the instrument. Aged four, du Pr� is said to have heard a violoncello on the radio and asked her mother for "one of those". She had lessons from her mother before studying at the London Violoncello School from the age of five.


Daniel Barenboim


The Israeli pianist and conductor started piano lessons at cinque with his mother, continuing to study with his father Enrique, who remained his but teacher. In 1950, when he was seven, he gave his first formal concert in Buenos Aires.


Lang Lang


The flamboyant piano player, 26, is treated like a stone star in his native China. He began having lessons at the age of trey and just two years later won the Shenyang Piano Competition.












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Thursday 28 August 2008

Pillow that can wipe out wrinkles

LONDON: Forget splashing thousands on
anti-wrinkle creams or Botox injections, for a group of researchers has
developed a pillow that can atomic number 26 out the ugly looking for lines. What�s more,
the pillow canful wipe proscribed crow's feet.



Boffins experience developed a copper
oxide pillow font, with tests showing those who victimised it for four weeks had fewer
lines and wrinkles than those victimization conventional bedding material. Clinical trials were
carried out on 57 volunteers for quaternion weeks, with the volunteers either given an
anti-wrinkle pillow, which feels no different for normal textile, or a similar
established pillow.



By the trial's end, those sleeping on the pig
pillows were statistically more likely to have less wrinkles. Jeffrey Gabbay,
owner of Cupron, which manufactured the copper medical dressings to develop the
pillow case, said: "The surgeon doing our wound-healing trial remarked how an
increase in collagen was helping to heal wounds."



"We wondered if it
might work on fixing wrinkles and lines on the face. So we had some copper woven
pillows made up and noticed that over a few years of fabrication on a cooper pillow
lines on the face started to soften," the Telegraph quoted him, as saying. He
added: "It has been the most fantastical discovery. The fabric... is best at
ironing out the finer lines."


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Monday 18 August 2008

Giving peace some play: Protest music marches back onto pop charts

DALLAS � Jamie Laurie, one of two frontmen for the suddenly successful alt-rock/rap kit Flobots, is onstage at a crammed Pontiac Garage, the littler room at the House of Blues, explaining his choice of neckwear: an American flag.



"It's not approximately blind nationalism or desecrating the flag," says Laurie, who likewise goes by the more than lyrical nominate Jonny 5. He then quotes the late poet Langston Hughes' "Let America Be America Again" and says it's all about the America of the future.



"We ar building a movement!" he shouts.



Such sloganeering might be easily laid-off as stone 'n' twine bravado, merely the Denver-based Flobots are doing something that hasn't been seen in a while: bringing overtly political, message-oriented music back onto the Top 40. Their outwardly offbeat "Handlebars" single � with its lyrics warning of guided missiles, political assassinations and nuclear holocaust � has just broken through that threshold. Flobots' full-length album, "Fight With Tools," has already hit the Top 15 on the albums chart.



"Handlebars" stands out at a time when pop wireless reverberates to the teen-scream shenanigans of Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers, the post-crunk club grooves of Flo Rida and Lil Wayne, and all things "American Idol."



From listening to pop out radio, few would know that the United States is involved in iI wars and a heatedly contested presidential election, or that economical worries abound. The nigh pressing issuing on Katy Perry's mind seems to be telling everyone "I Kissed a Girl," the song that has dominated contemporary-hit airwaves this summer.



Where's the beef?



It's a far cry from the recent 1960s and early '70s, when Top 40 made room for explicit social-issue songs from both ends of the political spectrum, ranging from Edwin Starr's "War" and the Guess Who's "American Woman" to Barry Sadler's "Ballad of the Green Berets" and Gordon Sinclair's "The Americans."



In the '80s, the Clash climbed into the Top 10 with a pinch at a Middle Eastern crackdown on rock 'n' roll ("Rock the Casbah"), and U2's Martin Luther King Jr. tribute, "Pride (In the Name of Love)," went Top 40.



Aside from such post-9/11 tunes as Alan Jackson's "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)" and Paul McCartney's "Freedom" in 2001, and Toby Keith's 2002 fist-pumper, "Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue (The Angry American)," not a great deal else dealing with our jittery life and times has crossed over to mainstream pop success.



It's an omission that many citizenry have noticed: "Radio serves you meat loaf, and you know there's steak back in the kitchen," observes socially conscious rapper Scott Johnson, wHO has a haunting unreleased track, "The Messenger," about a soldier whose duty is to tell families their loved ones take died in Iraq. "But no one wants to bring the steak out."



Of course, the question becomes whether there's anyone out there making steak and, if so, whether there's consumer demand for it in a world of sugarcoated pop. Some hoi polloi aren't so sure.



"The scale of the casualties of the war, as annihilating as they are today, was greater back then [in Vietnam]," says Jeffrey Hyson, history professor and pop-culture reviewer at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. "Plus, there was a draft. Young people, and so and nowadays, are consumers of popular music, and there would have been more urgency [back then] about stream events. And that would be felt in the kind of music they'd be demanding."



He points to the failure of any of the Iraq-themed Hollywood movies to find an audience. "[People] want to be able-bodied to escape when they go into a picture show theater, put on their ear buds or pick up a trash novel. Were the stakes higher, it wouldn't be as easy to simply escape, and you might see more willingness to engage things that address the state of the world."



Can't touch this



Others suggest that shifts in radio-station ownership in the '90s let narrowed musical choice and shaped attender demand for material that's not sledding to rock'n'roll the gravy holder. Longtime North Texas DJ Redbeard, host of the nationally syndicated "In the Studio" show, believes one and only effect of broadcast deregulating � which lifted the cap on the number of stations of the Cross one caller could own � has been to put more emphasis on the bottom line.



"It causes radio to become more than of a mirror sort of than a leader," he says. "So when something comes down the pike musically that smacks of controversy � and that may brag either way politically and might move people to feel or react � that's considered a risk. And, with shareholders, danger is a bad word."



Redbeard says there's even an unofficial idiom to identify a station's passing on a birdcall that raises too many red flags. "In my business, there's a term called 'being Dixie Chick-ed,' " he says, referring to the tumult over Dixie Chick Natalie Maines' 2003 statement that she was "ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." Many wireless stations dropped the group from their playlists.



Stephen Brackett, the co-frontman of Flobots who likewise goes by the make Brer Rabbit, says radiocommunication initially didn't want to touch "Handlebars." "Every single radio place that we gave 'Handlebars' to, their initial reaction was, 'Oh, hell no.' "



At Current TV, the cable station co-owned by Al Gore that explores the lines 'tween pop culture, politics and social activism, music programming vice chief Executive Deanna Cohen says she's having an opposite problem: For a coming election-related special, she's having trouble finding artists who appeal to Current's 18-34 demographic and wHO openly support John McCain.



"Even if some artists might support the war or McCain, it would be an unpopular decision to say so, and that translates into what you're seeing in music right now � a lot of fear," she says.



Make room for the message



Yet for all of that, political music continues to be made, even if it doesn't cross o'er to pop radio. Neil Young's 2006 album, "Living With War," was a scathing verbal assault on the Bush administration, piece in the same year, Springsteen recorded a protection to pioneering protest vocaliser Pete Seeger with "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions." Green Day's best-selling 2004 "American Idiot" disk also had social themes. Yoko Ono's dance remix of John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" is now No. 1 on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart.



Foo Fighters won a Grammy and other herald for last year's "The Pretender," which got widespread airplay. Frontman Dave Grohl has only when alluded to the meaning of the song, only it's commonly viewed as a condemnation of the Bush administration.



Punk bands from NOFX to Sick of It All have recorded anti-war tracks, and "conscious hip-hop" � whose to the highest degree popular exponents are Kanye West and Common � has delved into politics. In fact, the super political unexampled disc from rapper Nas � formally untitled because he precious to call it a racial epithet but bowlegged to pressure to modification it � crashed into Billboard's Top 200 record album chart last week at No. 1, selling more than cc,000 copies in its first week.



Certainly, the Internet and digital distribution make it easier for people to get their music heard, with or without radio. And some intend there could be a sea change happening.



"I hear it all the time on a consumer level � a lot of people are getting federal Reserve up with the type of medicine being played," says Larry Griffin Jr., better known as Symbolic One, or S1, the rapper/producer of the North Texas conscious hip-hop radical % Fruit Project. "It's all the same."



Flobots' Brackett says pipeline and a growing fan base in the band's native Colorado persuaded spooky stations to try "Handlebars." (No doubt, it helped that the band had signed to Universal.)



"They played the strain once, and they'd get a flood of speech sound calls," he says. "[The stations] are still later on ratings, only there ar songs that will come through and will alter what's acceptable and force the boundaries. ... I'd be very surprised if we didn't embark on seeing more than of this."










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Friday 8 August 2008

Jay-Z Hails Tour 'my Best Ever'

Rap hotshot JAY-Z has hailed his controversial European tour his best roadshow ever.
The 99 Problems hitmaker stirred up media controversy by including a performance at British rock festival Glastonbury in his trek about the continent.
But Jay-Z insists he conquered Europe.
He tells Rolling Stone, "The statement they made before I got onstage (at Glastonbury) was 'come out and if you're brilliant, you're brilliant and if you're crap, you're crap'. And I came up and I delivered on it. And as far as the rest of Europe, I'm organism very honest, I really had the best

Tuesday 1 July 2008

Luis Segura

Luis Segura   
Artist: Luis Segura

   Genre(s): 
Latin: Dance
   



Discography:


Bachata   
 Bachata

   Year:    
Tracks: 3




Nicknamed "The Father of the Bachata," Dominican isaac Merrit Singer Luis Segura is one of the most long-suffering bachateros, with an broad vocation that includes releases for labels like JN, Kubaney, and Platano, which released 1999's La Razon De Mi Vida and 2000's Frente A Frente: Luis Segura Vs. Raulin Rodriguez and Cosas de la Vida.





Masacre

Thursday 19 June 2008

Blessed In Sin

Blessed In Sin   
Artist: Blessed In Sin

   Genre(s): 
Metal: Death,Black
   



Discography:


Par Le Sang Du Christ (Opus Luciferi)   
 Par Le Sang Du Christ (Opus Luciferi)

   Year: 2001   
Tracks: 10




 





Egyptian director Youssef Chahine reported in coma after brain hemorrhage

Tuesday 10 June 2008

Irma Thomas to sing on "Extreme Makeover"

Irma Thomas is the featured musical guest on the two-hour season finale of ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" on May 18. The show documents the rebuilding of a home in Westwego and Noah's Ark Missionary Baptist Church on Saratoga Street....

Wednesday 4 June 2008

Oscar winner Paul Scofield dies, 86

The Oscar-winning actor Paul Scofield has died. He was 86.
His agent said he died peacefully yesterday in a hospital near his home in Sussex.
He had been diagnosed with leukaemia.
One of Britain's greatest stage actors, Paul Scofield won the Oscar for his portrayal of Thomas More in 'A Man for All Seasons'; his other screen credits included 'Quiz Show', 'King Lear' and 'The Train'.

Friday 30 May 2008

Witherspoon set to marry Jake Gyllenhaal?

Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal are set to marry, according to reports.
Gyllenhaal reportedly proposed to Witherspoon during the couple's vacation in Rome last October.
However, Witherspoon, who won an Oscar for her appearance in 'Walk The Line', is said to have initially declined his offer so soon after her split from Ryan Phillippe.
Now the San Francisco Chronicle is reporteding that she has said 'yes' after consulting with close friends.
The newspaper qotes a friend of the actress as saying: "Not only were they (her friends) crazy about Jake, they could see he was absolutely nuts about her. But you've got to understand - Reese is a one-man woman who hates playing the field.
"When Jake proposed in Rome, he knew Reese needed time, and didn't really expect her to say 'yes' right away. He just wanted her to know that he was serious about their relationship - serious enough to make her his wife."
Witherspoon ended her eight-year marriage to Phillippe with divorce last year.

Tuesday 27 May 2008

Indiana Jones - Fascinating Fact 5338

The new INDIANA JONES movie is expected to make $168 million (GBP84 million) at the box office in its first five days on release. The film hits cinemas on 22 May (08).




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Eve and Sean Paul

Eve and Sean Paul   
Artist: Eve and Sean Paul

   Genre(s): 
Rap: Hip-Hop
   



Discography:


Give It To You   
 Give It To You

   Year: 2007   
Tracks: 3




 






'Jones' nabs $126 mil opening weekend

Five-day cume estimated at $151 mil





Paramount's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" has dug up an estimated $126 million since its opening at 12:01 a.m. Thursday.


That includes an estimated $101 million in Friday-Sunday coin, which followed a first-day Thursday gross of $25 million. Par also projected a $25 million haul for Monday, which would give the first Indy sequel in 19 years a five-day cume of $151 million.


Once tallies are in for the entire Memorial Day frame through Monday, the iconic adventure sequel will be measured against marks such as the $151.1 million tally posted by last year's "Spider-Man 3" in a best-ever weekend opening.


"Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith" enjoyed the highest-grossing first five days of any picture before or since, registering $172.8 million after debuting on a Thursday before a non-holiday weekend in May 2005.


Data service Nielsen EDI recognizes only three- and four-day opening weekends, including holiday-lengthened sessions. So for the record books, "Skull" will have its Friday-Monday total stacked up against opening-weekend bows topped by the Spidey sequel.


Produced by Lucasfilm and distributed by Par, "Skull" bowed Thursday with grosses ranking well down on a list of best opening days topped by "Spider-Man 3," which featured a first-day Friday gross of $59.8 million.


"Sith" is still the best-ever Thursday opener, with $50 million in first-day boxoffice.


The Indy sequel registered an estimated $37 million on Saturday, the first session offering the opportunity to fatten "Skull" grosses with robust family business. Par estimated its Sunday haul at $33 million.


Elsewhere Sunday, Disney was projecting a Friday-Sunday gross of $23 million for its family-fantasy sequel "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian." Disney didn't project a Monday gross for the pic.


The Friday-Sunday tally represented a 58% drop from the opening weekend for "Prince Caspian." The Walden Media co-production, which is expected to finish in second place through Monday, toted a 10-day cume of $91.1 million through Sunday.


And in the frame's bonze-medal position, the Par-distributed Marvel pic "Iron Man" produced an estimated three-day haul of $20.1 million and an estimated $25.6 million through Monday. The holiday-bolstered coin would yield a cume of $257.8 million for "Iron Man," by far 2008's best-grossing movie to date.



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Scarlett Johansson - Johansson Album Bombs With Critics

Actress-turned-singer SCARLETT JOHANSSON's debut album has received a series of scathing reviews from music critics, who have branded the star's recordings "fussy and forgettable".

The Lost In Translation star released her LP Anywhere I Lay My Head, a collection of Tom Waits covers, this week (begs19May08).

But several reviews of the 40-minute-long disc have been lukewarm, with commentators reserving their harshest criticism for Johansson's vocal abilities.

U.S. magazine Rolling Stone, which gave Johansson a mediocre 2.5 stars out of five, complains, "Johansson's voice is unremarkable and her pitch sometimes unsteady; she's a faintly goth Marilyn Manson lost in a sonic fog."

Entertainment Weekly were also less than complimentary, giving the project an average "C" grade and remarking that her "expressionless voice" was concealed "deeply in the druggy ambiance".

The album, released on Rhino Records, contains 10 Waits covers with the exception of one original composition co-written by 23-year-old Johansson and TV On The Radio guitarist/keyboardist David Andrew Sitek. Rocker David Bowie contributes backing vocals on two of the tracks.




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Madonna happy to be "guinea pig" in adoption case

CANNES, France (Reuters) - American singer Madonna said on Thursday she was happy to be a "guinea pig" in a case she hopes could ease adoptions from Malawi, where an AIDS epidemic has orphaned more than 1 million children.


The southern African country's High Court is considering whether Madonna can adopt an infant boy.


A report by Malawi's Human Rights Commission says the adoption could be illegal because it does not conform with international conventions and procedures under the country's law.


Madonna, presenting a documentary on the plight of children in Malawi at the Cannes film festival, said the controversy had been difficult to deal with but she was happy to be involved in a move that might allow more children to be adopted.


"Up until this time there wasn't an adoption law, so consequently I'm sort of the template or the role model, so to speak, for future adoptions," she told a news conference.


"Hopefully after we get through this adoption it will be easier for other people to adopt children and I'm happy to be the guinea pig," she said.


But critics say she has been allowed to get around laws that prevent non-residents adopting children.


Madonna's film "I Am Because We Are" recounts the story behind her efforts to adopt David, a boy whose mother died in childbirth in Malawi, said she had tried to look at the controversy in a positive light. 

Freddy Fender

Freddy Fender   
Artist: Freddy Fender

   Genre(s): 
Country
   Rock
   Reggae
   Other
   



Discography:


Unforgettable Classics   
 Unforgettable Classics

   Year: 2006   
Tracks: 19


Uforglemmelige Klassikere   
 Uforglemmelige Klassikere

   Year: 2006   
Tracks: 19


The Great Freddy Fender   
 The Great Freddy Fender

   Year: 2004   
Tracks: 14


Baldemar Huerta: El Rey Del Tex - Mex   
 Baldemar Huerta: El Rey Del Tex - Mex

   Year: 2004   
Tracks: 20




Freddy Fender was one of the few Hispanic stars in country music, a vocaliser and ballad maker whose lick was defined largely by its hard Latin sensibility. Born Baldemar Huerta to a family of migrant laborers in San Benito, TX, on June 4, 1937, Fender began playing guitar early in his childhood. After falling out of school at the age of 16 to join the Marine Corps, he released his number one Spanish-language recordings under his tending constitute in 1958.


Patch his initial sides were successful with listeners in Texas and Mexico, in 1959 he decided to adopt his stage refer, along with a stronger rockabilly feel, in order to attract "gringo" audiences. The following class, he released the self-penned "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights," his to the highest degree successful single still. But in May of 1960, Fender was convicted of cannabis sativa possession, and was sentenced to little Phoebe years in Louisiana's ill-famed Angola State Prison (the same correctional installation which once held vapors legend Leadbelly). After helping trey eld, he was paroled thanks to the efforts of Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis, on the term that upon Fender's release he ride out away from the pestiferous influences of the music scene. After his parole all over, Fender tested to reignite his vocation, merely with the exception of a few unconnected nightspot gigs in the New Orleans country, he ground small success, and finally returned to San Benito.


In Texas, he spent several eld working as an auto mechanic, and fifty-fifty returned to school to pursue a arcdegree in sociology. In 1974, he met Huey P. Meaux, the proprietor of the Houston-based Crazy Cajun tag; after agreeing on a recording deal, it was Meaux wHO convinced Fender to manoeuvre in the direction of country & western spell maintaining his music's Hispanic roots. After Fender's number one Meaux-produced single, "In front the Next Teardrop Falls," failed to attract the attention of a major label, it was released on Crazy Cajun; in the number one weeks of 1975, the birdcall hit the peak of both the country and protrude charts, and Fender became an overnight whizz. For the follow-up, he re-recorded his early single, "Otiose Days and Wasted Nights," and jaggy his minute unbent routine one country hit. Before the year complete, he had released in time another chart-topper in "Secluded Love," and also issued deuce LPs, Since I Met You Baby and a self-titled exertion.


Passim the oddment of the '70s, Fender's success continued, to the highest degree notably with the number deuce single "Living It Down" in 1976. That same year, he released two more albums, Your Cheatin' Heart and Rock candy 'N' Country. In 1977, he also issued a holiday record, Merry Christmas/Feliz Navidad. As the eighties dawned, however, his popularity began slipping; after his final chart hit, 1983's "Chokin' Kind," he focused on an acting life history, highlighted by an appearance in the 1988 Robert Redford film The Milagro Beanfield War. He remained largely silent as a musician until 1990, when he formed the Tex-Mex supergroup Texas Tornados with Doug Sahm, Flaco Jimenez, and Augie Meyers. After trey albums, the group disbanded, and Fender again resumed his solo life history.






Colin Farrell - Farrell Gets A Break In Potential Slander Battle

The former telephone sex worker who announced she was "waging a war on COLIN FARRELL" after he filed a restraining order against her has taken pity on the actor and agreed to leave him alone - until he gets healthy.

Dessarae Bradford, who unsuccessfully sued the Irish star for harassment twice, has released a song and a book detailing her alleged fling with Farrell.

But Bradford, who has also lashed out at Farrell in TV interviews, is keen to give the Irish actor a break after seeing new photographs of him looking gaunt and ill.

In a statement to WENN, she says, "I am curtailing my slander, libel, and defamation lawsuit that I am prepared to file against him, until he becomes healthy and fit to stand trial - or the matter gets settled beforehand." Farrell recently sparked fears for his health after he appeared at a press conference looking alarmingly gaunt - but he insists he's merely shedding weight for a film role.

The 31 year old shocked reporters when he showed up to promote his upcoming movie Triage - in which he plays a war reporter in 1990s Bosnia - during a trip to Spain.




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