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Posted: 15 Jan 2013 06:00 PM PST

WASHINGTON: Lance Armstrong "came clean" to Oprah Winfrey on his use of banned drugs, the talk show host said on Tuesday, as anticipation built for the telecast of her interview with the shamed cyclist.

Winfrey told "CBS This Morning" that her OWN cable network will broadcast the two-and-a-half-hour interview unedited over two nights from Thursday. Originally, a shorter broadcast was planned for one night only.

"I didn't get all the questions asked, but I think the most important questions and the answers that people around the world have been waiting to hear were answered," Winfrey said.

"I would say he did not come clean in the manner that I expected," she added. "It was surprising to me. I would say that for myself, my team, all of us in the room, we were mesmerized and riveted by some of his answers."

But even before Armstrong's mea culpa had been seen, critics were questioning his choice of forum, saying an interview with Winfrey lacked the rigor of testimony under oath before anti-doping authorities.

"While WADA encourages all athletes to come clean about any doping activities they have been involved with or know about, these details must be passed on to the relevant anti-doping authorities," said David Howman, director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

The Swiss-based International Cycling Union also called for Armstrong to give evidence to its ongoing investigation into widespread doping in the sport it governs.

Legal analysts meanwhile said that the US government could potentially prosecute Armstrong for fraud related to his receiving government sponsorship while riding for the US Postal team from 1998-2004.

"Because he has now admitted he doped, that makes it a lot easier to prove a fraud claim," sports lawyer Brian Socolow told AFP.

The interview was Armstrong's first since he was stripped of his record seven Tour de France titles after the US Anti-Doping Agency, in a 1,000-page report, put him at the heart of the greatest sports doping scandal in history.

For a decade, he had vigorously denied using banned substances to win his way into the history books after battling cancer.

Prior to sitting down with Winfrey on Monday in his hometown of Austin, Texas, the 41-year-old went to the offices of the Livestrong cancer charity he founded and apologized in person to its staff.

Livestrong spokeswoman Rae Bazzarre said Armstrong's apology was "sincere and heartfelt."

Asked if Armstrong had "come clean" to her, Winfrey said she and Armstrong had agreed at the outset not to talk about the content of the interview.

But a source with knowledge of the interview confirmed to AFP that the Texan admitted to Winfrey using banned substances in his career.

Winfrey, speaking from Chicago, said she was mystified as to how the content had leaked.

The 58-year-old star said she asked 112 questions in "the biggest interview I've ever done" and grilled Armstrong so intensely that, during a break at the 100-minute mark, Armstrong asked if their conversation might lighten up.

With a world-class scoop on her hands, Winfrey flew home to Chicago with the video tape in her handbag for fear it might be pirated or leaked if beamed back to the editing room via satellite.

Betsy Andreu, the wife of Armstrong's former teammate Frankie Andreu, has long claimed that she heard Armstrong admit to doping at a 1996 appointment with doctors treating his testicular cancer.

She told ESPN that she didn't know if she'd be able to watch the interview.

A TV confession now, Andreu said, could only be a first step if Armstrong is to repair his reputation in a meaningful way.

"If he really wants a second chance, then he's going to have to tell the truth of everything and stop protecting people, especially the people who helped him get away with it," she said. - AFP

Baffling babes

Posted: 16 Jan 2013 02:11 AM PST

Our bemused guest Spudnik takes a look at Hindi soap operas and wonders why he's so taken with them ... (Psst. It's the ladies.)

MY MUM often "credits" me with getting her hooked on wrestling shows because I used to get her to record WWE RAW way back when it was screened on Thursday evenings. Our VCR timer was wonky, so she would have to manually start the recording and, in the process, became interested in the exploits of Triple H, Chyna, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin and her favourite heel, Vince McMahon.

Well, two can play at that game, Ma ... I'm partially hooked on Hindi soaps and it's all thanks to you.

My Mum started watching the shows on Zee Variasi (Astro Ch 108) some time in 2011. It was just one show at first, Sanskaar Laxmi, about a smart but guileless country girl who married into a wealthy family.

So, whenever I was home and had nothing much to do, I'd watch along to see how Laxmi coped with her loveless marriage, survived the scheming of her idiot husband and his evil aunt, and eventually fell in love with the wicked lady's son.

It was corny and predictable but its simple, smart and charming heroine won us over. Neither of us saw the ending coming – mainly because Zee TV cancelled Sanskaar Laxmi after only a 10-month run because of poor ratings, and wrapped up the storyline in a hurry.

By then Mum had also become interested in another series in the earlier time-slot, because she'd been catching the last few minutes of it before Sanskaar Laxmi. "It's got a wicked mother-in-law in it," she told me.

Heavenly match

So we started tuning in a little earlier to catch Ram Milaye Jodi (which means something like "match made in Heaven", I think), about the misadventures of a well-meaning but exremely kepoh girl named Mona and her clueless husband Anukalp. Eventually, the mother-in-law, Bharati, turned out not to be wicked so much as she was stern, and became quite supportive of silly Mona and her crazy schemes.

Alas, some missteps by the writers – among them, killing off Anukalp and introducing another love interest for Mona, which went completely against the show's "celestially betrothed" premise – saw the series come to a confusing and unsatisfying conclusion.

While waiting for Ram Milaye Jodi to start, we would catch the first few minutes of the show before it. And that one would interest us, too. And then the one before that. Our 8.30pm-9pm Hindi soap viewing slot grew and grew until it started at 6.30pm! (Which is kind of where Mum drew the line, because she didn't want to be hopelessly glued to Zee from 5pm.)

There was also Chotti Bahu (junior bride?) where the heroine was such a devout believer in Krishna that, when her jealous rival "murdered" her, he appeared on Earth to save his devotee's life at the last second and teach her would-be killer a lesson. Wow, how many US soaps can boast of having a god manifest on their show?

Here we go again

Lately, our viewing starts at 6.30pm with Punar Vivaah (remarriage), which is about this kind of unbalanced widower named Yash, who has two young daughters, who marries a "widow" named Aarti who has a young son.

I say "kind of unbalanced" because a long-running plotline had Yash getting extremely angry with his new wife for reasons that went undisclosed by the writers for weeks! (And these are daily Monday-to-Friday shows, okay.)

And all that time, Yash got angrier and angrier until he became almost catatonic. But, once he learned to deal with the source of his anger, he bounced back from his self-induced health problems and went on to defeat the district boxing champion, inspired by a vision of his dead wife after the champ beat him almost half to death. Honest! You can't make this stuff up ... unless you write for Zee, of course.

The big storyline brewing now is the manure-storm that's going to break when Yash finds out that Aarti is not a widow as she claimed, but a divorcee.

Somewhere in time

Next comes Pavita Rishtra. I think it means "pure relationship" but the show could also be called The Time Tunnel. It has time-jumped three times – first, the story took a four-year leap ahead; then 18 years (!); and lately (though we've yet to get those episodes), six months.

Pavitra Rishtra is about two honest and hardworking people, Manav and Archana, who meet and get married and then get split up by a truly wicked mother-in-law (Manav's mother), Savita. They meet again 18 years later when their children (and adopted children) have all grown up with soapy entanglements of their own, thereby allowing both Pavita Rishtra and Pavita Rishtra: The Next Generation to coexist in the same programme. How's that for economy?

Interestingly, while the show has jumped almost a quarter-century ahead from when it started, everyone still looks the same! And so do the cars, mobile phones, fashions, etc. Which all lends credence to my theory that this show is set in an alternate universe where the laws of nature are suspended and technology evolved at an accelerated pace before suddenly stagnating.

The ongoing story (for Malaysian viewers, about five months behind) has Manav and Archana on the verge of finalising their divorce after 18 years of separation. The sudden reappearance of the couple's long-lost son, thought dead all this time, will trigger events that will change everything. I'll keep watching this one whenever I can just to see Savita get her comeuppance.

Giddy girls are gold

After that comes a show I kind of like, Sapne Suhane Ladakpan Ke (the sweet dreams of adolescence), about a big-city girl named Gunjan who comes to live with her aunt and cousin Rachna in a small town after her mother passes away.

I like the way the two likeable leads have grown close after their initial difficulties in getting along, and the various story arcs and subplots have actually developed along less hysterical and preposterous lines than some of their compatriots on Zee. Please keep it that way, people.

Something that's killed many a Hindi soap for us is that, whenever the writers feel that they need to propel the story along a bit faster, they make someone in the cast behave completely out of character, or turn him/her into either a villain or a complete moron. It's early days yet for Sapne Suhane Ladakpan Ke, so we've got our fingers crossed.

It's very dark in here

Phir Subah Hogi comes on at 8pm, and my Mum likes this, but it is not my favourite one in the belt because ... it's so depressing!

It could well be Zee's most "socially conscious" series as it showcases the plight of a caste whose women who are treated as playthings by the rich upper caste in their district.

It depicted this situation rather well in the early episodes, but then came along its tale of forbidden love, with one of these girls falling for an older man from the "upper crust", and things soon got all tangled up.

This dude turned out to be a rotten sort, and the story takes a wilder turn when his nephew also falls in love with the girl.

Maybe I shouldn't strike this one off my list yet because things have started to get interesting, with Kritika Desai (Bharati from Ram Milaye Jodi) showing up as ... well, the clan matriarch here, too.

Good grief

This brings us to Hitler Didi (tyrannical sister) which started out showing us the struggles of Indira Sharma (the quite fetching Rati Pandey) as she sacrificed everything to support her mother, useless brother, man-crazy sister, constantly hungry sister-in-law, and loving nephew after her father Inder left the family for a younger woman.

After finding love and overcoming all kinds of soap-opera hardships (and a few variations on the theme), Indira ... died. Yes, the writers killed the heroine and then had the story take an eight-year leap forward.

Indira's rebellious young daughter runs away from home and is taken in by a policewoman in another city – a woman who is the spitting image of Indira! Only in the more recent episodes airing in India (major spoiler alert) it has been revealed that ... Indira is still alive!

She's regressed to eight years of age, mentally. I guess being cremated on a funeral pyre will do that to you (the writers will probably ignore that part of Indira's "death scene"). It also makes me wonder if the same thing happened to the writers when they were trying to come up with new plot twists. The regression, not the cremation.

Hitler Didi has unfortunately become so intolerably silly that we've dropped it from our viewing belt. Which means the TV is mine again after 8.30pm on weeknights! I kind of miss Rati, though. Hurry up and start making sense again, Hitler Didi!

Family fun

The Zee soaps (I've only covered half the lineup) do like to do one thing: every once in a while, the ongoing plot will come to a sudden stop to make way for a huge crossover episode with the principal cast of several other series dropping in.

It could be a wedding, an anniversary or birthday, an engagement or (in the case of Pavita Rishtra) everyone suddenly showing up at the airport and getting in each other's way. Sometimes, cameo appearances are done to promote upcoming shows. For example, in one episode of Pavita Rishtra, Rachna and Gunjan from Sapne Suhane Ladakpan Ke showed up to help out Manav and Archana's stranded daughters ... just to let viewers know that their show was starting up soon.

If there's one common theme in these shows it can be summed up as "the old and the dutiful" wherein the drama (and comedy) arises from the conflict between the very traditional elders and the dutiful younger generation who feel bound to please the old folks but want to do certain things their way too.

These Hindi soaps are fun at times, engrossing at others, annoying a bit too frequently. Ultimately, they are best taken in small doses because, to adapt the motto of a certain wall-crawling superhero, with great exposure comes great incredulity.

Tune in, or out

Posted: 16 Jan 2013 12:56 AM PST

Spoilers, over-played trailers and mindless entertainment – much of last week's TV offering was bland.

IT'S only mid-January yet so much has happened ... at least where local television is concerned. The long-awaited new seasons of Downton Abbey and Suits are finally on (Diva, Astro Ch 702), while a new MasterChef US (Star World, Astro Ch 711) winner was just crowned last Sunday.

Well, actually, that one's rather old news. Season three of MasterChef US ended in the United States in September, so if you regularly follow entertainment stories and updates, you would've probably known who won way back when. It's a bit of a downer since the biggest appeal of reality-based game shows like that is in not knowing who will win.

Spoilers like that are unavoidable, though, because of how fast and wide information is shared these days. The fact that some of these programmes are only screened in Malaysia many months after their original broadcast adds to that dilemma.

Thankfully, popular shows like American Idol – which kicks off this week on Star World and 8TV with season 12 – are more or less screened on the same day as in the United States. "Seasoned" fans would already know how to refrain from checking entertainment news feeds or websites until after they watch the show on local TV.

Speaking of American Idol, does anyone really still watch it? Can anybody even remember all 11 winners of American Idols past? Judging from last season's less-than-impressive viewer ratings, it appears the show is gettin' old.

The introduction of new judges Nicky Minaj, Mariah Carey and Keith Urban was supposed to make things more interesting but instead, based on the seemingly annoying promotional trailers featuring Minaj and Carey that were shown over and over again last week, American Idol is beginning to look a lot like a bore.

Two other reality-based shows that premiered recently were The Choice (Star World) and the new season (#11) of How Do I Look? (Diva) hosted by Jeannie Mai, the woman who randomly kept giving style and makeup advice on TV last year (segments which inspired one of 2012's frequently asked TV questions – who is Jeannie Mai?).

How Do I Look? is a show originally hosted by English soap star Finola Hughes that had been screened on Malaysian TV for quite some time, but never got much attention. Hughes' version was quite outdated; the set seemed to be something that was left behind from the 1980s.

However, the concept of the show was great: Each week, a "fashion victim" comes on the show with two of her (so far there hasn't been a male participant) friends or relatives. They are joined by a professional stylist who will then not only help the victim trash her old clothes, but give her a brand new wardrobe, too.

How Do I Look? now looks a lot snazzier with a new production set and slightly improved concept. Mai's hosting skills are also much better than Hughes'. It's a really fun show to watch, especially if the "victim" is someone with a fashion sense so wild, it borders on crazy!

Meanwhile, The Choice is a dating game that uses the same format as that other reality-based show, The Voice. In this show, instead of choosing the best singer, the "judges" – four single celebrities, usually male – pick their own teams of three possible dates. Out of these three choices, each celebrity must then choose one contestant they are most interested in going out with.

Based on the promotional trailers which were also played to death last week, the "celebrities" include restaurateur and TV chef Rocco DiSpirito, rapper Romeo, singer Joe Jonas, Jersey Shore's Pauly D and former American Idol winner Taylor Hicks. In one of the trailers, Hicks more or less says that he's a catch because he has a harmonica in his back pocket. Seriously? That's your game, Hicks?

The show premiered in the United States some time last year and there are only six episodes listed; there is no word on whether or not it has been cancelled, although there are petitions to stop it from continuing.

For something more inspiring, try and catch the programme Jump Shipp (8TV). The show was aired here in the middle of last year, but is currently on repeat transmission, right after Razif Hashim's entertaining second season of Best In The World (also a repeat).

Jump Shipp is hosted by Josh Shipp, an American teenage behaviour expert. Each week, a person is featured who is suffering from "quarter-life crisis" – whether it involves career, health, finance, personal life, or what-have-you.

Shipp helps the "guests" see what could happen if they took a different path by encouraging them to take risks, be more confident or to simply take that crucial first step in improving their lives. Last week's episode saw a woman who wanted to join the circus, but got stuck working at a casino in Las Vegas.

While we're on the subject of Las Vegas (well, kind of), is CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (AXN) still interesting? Tune in to the Season 13 premiere on Feb 6 and Tweet us what you think (@MyStarTwo).

Check out our TV Highlights page daily for these and other interesting programmes.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Selasa, 15 Januari 2013

The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio

The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio

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Selasa, 15 Januari 2013

The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio

The Star Online: Entertainment: TV &amp; Radio

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The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio