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| Name | Ishtar |
|---|---|
| Caption | Theatrical release poster |
| Director | Elaine May |
| Producer | Warren Beatty |
| Writer | Elaine May |
| Starring | Warren BeattyDustin HoffmanIsabelle AdjaniCharles Grodin |
| Music | BahjawaDave Grusin |
| Cinematography | Vittorio Storaro |
| Editing | Richard P. CirincioneWilliam ReynoldsStephen A. Rotter |
| Studio | Columbia Pictures |
| Distributor | Columbia Pictures |
| Released | |
| Runtime | 107 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Budget | $55 million |
| Gross | $14,375,181 |
It also starred Isabelle Adjani and Charles Grodin and was shot by Vittorio Storaro. The songs in the film were written by Paul Williams, with additional input from Hoffman and May.
The motion picture's production, carried out on location in Morocco and in New York City, drew media attention before its release due to its lavish budget and cost overruns, even given its well-paid stars. May and many of the others involved with the project, particularly Beatty, clashed regularly to the point that longstanding friendships suffered. A change in studio management during the post-production phase also led to interpersonal difficulties that affected the film.
The film was a notorious failure at the box office and received horrible reviews, with more expected of the big-name stars involved in it than they managed to deliver on screen. As of 2010, it has yet to be released on DVD in North America, although it has been released in this format in Europe. A U.S. Blu-ray release was scheduled for January 2011, but the release was delayed, but will now be released in May 2011. Ishtar is often cited in film books as having ended May's career.
At a dinner with Beatty and Bert Fields, their agent, May said she would like to do a variant on the Road to... movies of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, set in the Middle East. Her idea would feature Beatty and a costar as a mediocre singer-songwriter duo who would go to Morocco and get caught in the crossfire between the Central Intelligence Agency and a local left-wing guerrilla group. She thought it would be funny to cast Beatty against type as the Hope part, the bumbler of the duo, while the costar, possibly Dustin Hoffman, would play the self-assured ladies' man that Crosby usually took.
Beatty went to Columbia Pictures production head Guy McElwaine, who years before had been his publicist,
Expenses continued to grow. "This was the kind of film where nobody would say 'Sorry, we can't afford that,'" according to Mac Brown, who monitored the budget. When a replacement part was needed for a camera, it was sent over to Morocco with a New York-based location coordinator instead of just being shipped, out of fear it might get lost or held up at customs. The coordinator's airfare and a week's hotel stay were paid for by the production. May preferred that Williams write whole songs, even if she intended to use only a few lines, and then teach them to the stars and have them perform them, necessitating more time and money.
Interpersonal difficulties from Morocco continued in postproduction. May was supposed to direct actors when they looped their lines in a recording studio, but sometimes left the job to Beatty or one of the editors. Most of those absences were in sessions with Adjani, who was required to lower her voice since her character had to pass as a boy for most of the film. This strained her relationship with Beatty even more. implying that Puttnam sandbagged the project by leaking negative anecdotes to the media because of his grudges against Beatty and Hoffman. Ishtar has since become synonymous with "box office flop".
However, not all critics were hostile. Vincent Canby of The New York Times listed it as a runner up to his top films of 1987.
Warren Beatty, who tried to defend the film despite all the severe trouble and misery he went through making it, is quoted as saying "There was almost no review that didn't in the first paragraph deal with the cost of the movie. That was an eye-opener — about the business, and the relationship of the entertainment press to business. Ishtar is a very good, not very big, comedy, made by a brilliant woman. And I think it's funny." Dustin Hoffman, who also tried to defend, stated that he would "do it again in a second."
Luckily, the film's failure didn't affect the friendship between Beatty and Hoffman, who both liked the final cut of the film; Beatty later cast his former Ishtar co-star in the more successful Dick Tracy.
Beatty and May barely spoke for two years afterwards, and friends of hers say she remains slightly bitter about the experience. In one of Gary Larson's The Far Side comic strips, captioned "Hell's Video Store", the entire store is stocked with nothing but copies of the movie Ishtar. Larson later apologized, saying "When I drew the above cartoon, I had not actually seen Ishtar. ... Years later, I saw it on an airplane, and was stunned at what was happening to me: I was actually being entertained. Sure, maybe it's not the greatest film ever made, but my cartoon was way off the mark. There are so many cartoons for which I should probably write an apology, but this is the only one which compels me to do so."
Directors Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright have both gone on record as stating that they liked the film.
On 20th December 2010, Dustin Hoffman appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman alongside Robert De Niro. When Letterman asked De Niro if there are any films in his oeuvre that make him "wince", Hoffman answered that he, "speaks on behalf of De Niro" in saying that he (De Niro) regrets "Ishtar", obviously referring to himself.
Category:1987 films Category:American adventure comedy films Category:1980s comedy films Category:Buddy films Category:Cold War films Category:Columbia Pictures films
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | BoA |
|---|---|
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | 권보아 Kwon Boa |
| Born | November 05, 1986 |
| Origin | Guri, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea |
| Genre | Pop, dance, electropop, electronica, R&B; |
| Occupation | Singer-songwriter, composer, dancer, model, Actress, voice actress, Record producer |
| Years active | 2000–present |
| Label | SM Entertainment (South Korea)Avex Trax (Japan)SM Entertainment USA |
| Associated acts | SM Town, Verbal, M-Flo, Anyband |
| Url |
| Background | solo_singer |
|---|---|
| Hangul | 권보아 |
| Hanja | |
| Rr | Gwon Boa |
| Mr | Kwŏn Poa |
Boa Kwon (, Kwon Boa, born November 5, 1986 is a Korean singer, active in South Korea, Japan, and the United States. Born and raised in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, BoA was discovered by SM Entertainment talent agents when she accompanied her older brother to a talent search. In 2000, after two years of training, she released ID; Peace B, her debut Korean album, under SM Entertainment. Two years later, she released her debut Japanese album, Listen to My Heart, under the Avex label. On October 14, 2008, under SM Entertainment USA, a subdivision of SM Entertainment, BoA debuted in the United States with the single "Eat You Up" and released her debut English-language album, BoA on March 17, 2009.
Influenced by hip hop and R&B; singers such as Nelly and Janet Jackson, many of BoA's songs fall into those genres. As the singer feels she does not "have any talent for writing [songs]", the writing and composition of her songs are handled mostly by her staff; for this reason, she has drawn some criticism. have contributed to her commercial success in South Korea and Japan and her popularity throughout East Asia. She is the only non-Japanese Asian to have two million-selling albums in Japan and is one of only two artists to have six consecutive number-one studio albums on the Oricon charts since her debut. BoA is known as one of the most respected artists in Kpop today.
BoA's second Japanese studio album, Valenti (2003), became her best-selling album, with over 1,249,000 copies sold. In support of the album, BoA launched BoA 1st Live Tour Valenti, her first Japanese concert tour. Later that year, she released two Korean albums, Atlantis Princess and the mini-album Shine We Are!. The former was the fifth-best-selling South Korean record of the year with around 345,000 units sold; the latter sold around 58,000 units and was the fifty-second-best-selling record. Her third Japanese studio album, Love & Honesty (2004) was a musical "change in direction": it contained a rock-dance song ("Rock with You") and "harder" R&B.; Though the album failed to match Valenti in sales, it topped the Oricon chart for two weeks and became RIAJ-certified triple-platinum. In support of the album, BoA held a tour, Live Concert Tour 2004: Love & Honesty. The tour, which started in Saitama and ended in Yokohama, spanned nine performances and attracted approximately 105,000 attendants. Her first compilation album, Best of Soul (2005), however, sold over a million copies, making BoA the first non-Japanese Asian singer to have two million-selling albums in Japan. The album was the beginning of a foray into the Chinese market and contained two songs sung in Mandarin Chinese. Her fifth Korean album, Girls on Top, continued her image change. The album portrayed the singer as more "mature and self-confident" and was a "declaration of war on male chauvinism"; the "bohemian" look of the cover photograph represented "freedom and depth", while music videos and album photographs that portrayed BoA in traditional Korean dress brought the "idea of Korean womanhood" into her music. The album also continued BoA's foray into the Chinese market and, like the previous album, contained Mandarin Chinese songs. The album sold less than the previous album; it was the fourteenth-best-selling record of the year in South Korea with 113,000 units sold.
BoA's fifth Japanese studio album, Made in Twenty (20) (2007), continued her transition from a "teenage girl" image to a more mature image. The album, which contained R&B; and dance songs as well as ballads, debuted at the top of the weekly Oricon charts, making the album her sixth in a row to do so. She began using a personal computer for composing one of the songs ("No More Make Me Sick"). On March 31, 2007, she launched a nationwide tour of Japan in support of the album. The tour, which sold about 70,000 tickets, was, according to BoA, "the biggest concert" she had ever given. Two tracks from the singles of Made in Twenty (20) were used as theme songs; "Your Color", from the single "" (2006), was used as the ending theme song for the Japanese release of the Xbox 360 game Ninety-Nine Nights. "Key of Heart", from the single "Key of Heart / Dotch" (2006), was the ending theme for the Japanese release of the movie Over the Hedge. She also released an English version of "Key of Heart", which was only available on the first press edition of the single. Later in 2007, Anycall (a Samsung brand) signed BoA, Xiah (of TVXQ), Tablo (of Epik High), and jazz pianist Jin Bora onto "Anyband", a band created specifically to promote Anycall. The band released only one single, "AnyBand".
With her sixth Japanese album, The Face (2008), BoA took more creative control over her music. At this time, BoA was influenced by electro-pop. Lyrically, BoA focused mainly on love, though "Be with You." (2008) was about a person's relationship with his dog. The album debuted at the top of the weekly Oricon charts, making BoA one of only two artists in Japan to have six consecutive studio albums top the Oricon weekly charts (the other is Ayumi Hamasaki, who has eight consecutive number-one albums).
BoA released a triple-A-side single on February 18, 2009, "Eien/Universe/Believe in Love". On the same day, the Ravex single "Believe in Love" was released, featuring vocals by BoA. Her second compilation album, Best & USA was released on March 18. The album will be released in a two-disc or one-disc edition. The former will contain one disc with Japanese songs and one with her debut American album; the latter contains fourteen Japanese songs and two songs from her American debut album. BoA's self-titled English album was released on March 17. BoA headlined as a performer for the San Francisco Pride Festival on June 28, 2009 alongside Solange Knowles and The Cliks. She debuted her next single "Energetic", performing it for the first time in public. She also performed "Eat You Up" and "I Did It for Love."
On August 31, SM USA released BoA Deluxe, the repackaged version of her debut English album. The album contained two new tracks and the radio edit version of "Energetic". After the release of BoA Deluxe, BoA went back to the Japanese market releasing a new single entitled "Bump Bump!" (October 2009), which features label-mate Verbal from M-Flo. Following the release of "Bump Bump!", BoA released "" (December 2009) and she held a Christmas concert in December. Her seventh Japanese album, Identity was released on February 10, 2010.
On July 21, 2010, Avex released "Woo Weekend" single, whose lead song that was used to promote Disney on Ice's 25th Anniversary in Japan
BoA's official Korean website was updated July 23, 2010 announcing that her comeback sixth Korean album entitled Hurricane Venus. Hurricane Venus was released on August 5, 2010 and promoted with two official videos of the songs "Game" and "Hurricane Venus", which were also released as the albums singles. Hurricane Venus was released on August 5, 2010 and debuted at No.1, where it stayed for 2 weeks. The two singles, "Game" and "Hurricane Venus" charted at No.6 and No.1 respectively.
It was recently announced that Hurricane Venus would be repackaged with two new songs and a completely redesigned physical copy, under the name of Copy & Paste. The repackaged version was released on September 27, 2010.
Prior to the October 22, 2010 article on BoAjjang, the report of an upcomming BoA dance film, centered in NYC, surfaced on a BoA fanpage. It detailed the same info as the October 22nd report. BoAjjang was also member of this fanpage.
On October 22, 2010, it was reported by BoA fansite, BoAjjang, that BoA is currently preparing for a currently unnamed U.S. dance film directed by Save the Last Dance screenwriter Duane Adler. The article also went on to state that she would release a new Japanese single before the years end, with a plan to return to the American market in 2011.
On November 24, 2010, Avex Entertainment, as well as SM Entertainment Japan, released a statement about the renewal of contracts of SM artists signed to Avex.
On December 8, 2010, Avex also released a digital single, "I See Me", for a commercial that promotes new Audio Technica headphones in Japan.
BoA lists hip hop as her main musical influence, though she also enjoys R&B.; Her favorite musicians are Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Nelly, Britney Spears, Brian McKnight, Justin Timberlake, Pink, and Jay-Z; as a result, much of BoA's music is either dance pop or R&B.; Because she also sings ballads, she is often compared to fellow Japanese singers Ayumi Hamasaki and Hikaru Utada. Her debut album, ID; Peace B, contained urban pop, "slickly produced" ballads, and "upbeat dance tunes". As her career went on, she began experimenting with different styles: Valenti contained mostly ballads; Love and Honesty was an experiment with "harder" R&B; and rock music.
Because the composition and writing of BoA's songs is handled mostly by her staff, BoA has been criticized as being a "manufactured pop star". In response to such criticism, BoA said that "if one person were to force their own will on something, then things that should have gone right could easily go wrong" and that she is "not all that unhappy with the expression that [she is] a manufactured star. In a way, that is true. Because SM Entertainment created the environment and all the surrounding conditions, [she is] able to be successful in the way [she is] now." Other artists she has collaborated with are Soul'd Out, Dabo, Verbal (of M-Flo), Rah-D, Seamo, TVXQ, Yutaka Furakawa (of the band Doping Panda), and Crystal Kay (for her single ). American rock band Weezer covered "Meri Kuri" on the Japanese version of their album Weezer (The Red Album).
BoA is a "top artist" in South Korea and Japan; her popularity in the latter is attributed to her linguistic skills (she speaks and records in Japanese, Korean, and English) and a Japanese interest in Korean pop culture started in the early 2000s when the two countries began promoting cultural exchanges. BoA's popularity extends throughout East Asia; she has fans in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. She has expressed plans to enter a global market; she stated in an interview, "I will [...] get recognition in the U.S. and Europe to become a world-renowned Diva." In June 2006, the music video of her Korean song "My Name" became the first music video ever shown on MTV K, an MTV music channel directed at Korean Americans.
Because of her wide appeal, BoA has appeared in advertisements for many brands. Among the brands she has promoted are Olympus, Nike, L'Oréal, Japanese cosmetic company Kosé, Skechers, Audio-Technica, and GM Daewoo. Four of her songs have been used as themes. "Every Heart: Minna no Kimochi" was used as the ending theme for the anime InuYasha; "Beside You: Boku o Yobu Koe" was used as the opening theme for the anime Monkey Typhoon; "Key of Heart" was the theme song for the Japanese release of Over the Hedge; and "Your Color" was the theme song of the video game Ninety-Nine Nights. Her widespread popularity has also made her a "cultural ambassador"; she has represented South Korea in inter-Asian musical events and has appeared in an Oxford University Press-published English-language textbook.
;English studio albums
;Japanese studio albums
;Compilation albums
;Remix albums
Category:1986 births Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:Avex Trax artists Category:Child singers Category:English-language singers Category:Japanese-language singers Category:K-pop singers Category:Living people Category:Korean Mandopop singers Category:People from Gyeonggi-do Category:SM Town Category:South Korean dancers Category:South Korean female singers Category:South Korean pop singers Category:South Korean Roman Catholics Category:South Korean singer-songwriters Category:World Music Awards winners
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
