Ja Rule has revealed that he plans to retire from music and concentrate on making movies. The rapper made the announcement on Tuesday at the nomination ceremony for this year's BET Awards.
Ja said that he intends to release his next album, The Last Temptation, and record one final LP before calling it quits. 'I'm going to retire after two more albums and do a lot of films,' he declared.
The Murder Inc rapper is currently negotiating a starring role in the sequel to the blockbuster movie, The Fast And The Furious. Ja is also set to star alongside Steven Seagal in the upcoming action film Half Past Dead. 'They kind of want me to take over the whole lead of the movie,' Ja said. '(The producers want) to make my character the whole basis of the movie.'
In related news, Ja Rule has reunited with his former group, Cash Money Click, to record a new album. CMC Est. In '93 will be released in the US on the 26 November. The crew, which now records under the name CMC, released two singles featuring Rule in the mid-'90s.
Posted by Jen on Friday, May 17, 2002 @ 06:43 p.m.
Not only did Friends welcome a baby girl named Emma to the family Thursday night, but viewers got one more special surprise during the show's May-sweeps season finale.
And no, it's not that Rachel gave birth to a talking baby (wrong show). But it was close: In a cliffhanger setting up the NBC show's ninth and final season, Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) accepted an inadvertent marriage proposal from Joey (Matt LeBlanc).
Nearly 34 million viewers tuned in for the hourlong finale--marking the second-largest Friends audience ever and its biggest draw on a Thursday night. It handily beat the penultimate episode of Survivor: Marquesas, which saw 30-year-old Harlem schoolteacher Sean Rector get booted from the island. His dismissal came after real-estate agent Kathy Vavrick-O'Brien became the swing vote and sided with fatherly Paschal and his devious little sidekick Neleh.
According to preliminary numbers, Friends delivered 33.7 million viewers Thursday. The only larger audience for the series came from its post-Super Bowl special in 1996, which pulled in 52.9 million.
Despite the huge Friends audience, CBS came in a respectable second place, with Survivor nabbing 19.1 million viewers and CSI snagging a time-period-winning 26.4 million at 9 p.m. (In the off chance viewers missed it, CBS has already announced it will rebroadcast the Survivor episode Saturday night at 8 p.m.)
For NBC, the season finale of ER also scored a first-place finish at 10 p.m., drawing 27.6 million viewers.
Thursday night featured plenty of classic TV moments. After proud papa Ross helped deliver the baby, Friends ended with Joey (previously rebuffed by Rachel) picking up a ring from the floor that Ross had dropped. Rachel, mistaking it for a marriage proposal, tearfully accepted.
Over on Nuku Hiva, Survivor contestant Sean battled with fellow tribe members over racial issues when it was assumed he and pal Vecepia were in an alliance together. After a failed attempt at influencing Kathy's vote, Sean was gone.
"I just know that, through it all, it's been a blast," he said in his final words. "I am just a humble young man trying to find my way through the world...God bless America."
Still, Thursday night should be a mere warmup for viewers' TiVos, with Sunday marking one of the most competitive nights of the entire season. That's when CBS pits its Survivor: Marquesas conclusion against Fox's X-Files series finale, NBC's Cosby Show reunion and ABC's The Practice two-hour season wrap-up.
Posted by Jen on Friday, May 17, 2002 @ 06:33 p.m.
Spot Debuts Sunday on CBS' Finale of Survivor: Marquesas
PURCHASE, N.Y., May 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- It's a twist on a great thing, baby! Beginning Sunday, Pepsi Twist will air a new national television commercial as part of a promotional campaign with Austin Powers in Goldmember. The spot debuts May 19 on the finale of Survivor: Marquesas on CBS. New Line Cinema's "Austin Powers in Goldmember" debuts in theatres July 26.
In the commercial, set at a crowded party, Austin Powers discovers that Britney's Pepsi isn't really what it seems -- it's a Pepsi Twist. Carrying his suspicion one step further, he investigates Ms. Spears' identity and uncovers more than he bargained for.
"Moviegoers are looking forward to the new Austin Powers in Goldmember opening July 26th and this commercial will help generate some of the early buzz. We'll run it on big programming -- during May sweeps and during the NBA Playoffs -- giving enormous exposure to both Pepsi Twist and Austin Powers in Goldmember." said Dawn Hudson, senior vice president of strategy and marketing for Pepsi-Cola North America.
After its Survivor debut, the new Pepsi Twist commercial, created by Pepsi's longtime advertising agency, BBDO New York, will air on CBS, FOX, MTV, NBC and other networks. Pepsi Twist's marketing relationship with Austin Powers in Goldmember will also extend to Internet advertising, in-store promotions and an exclusive interactive experience in Simon Property Group malls nationwide.
Available in regular and diet versions, Pepsi Twist rolled out nationally in October 2001 after its initial introduction in the summer of 2000. The brand is available in a wide range of single-serve and take-home packages wherever Pepsi products are sold.
Posted by Jen on Friday, May 17, 2002 @ 06:26 p.m.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Lance Bass of the boy-band 'N Sync (news - web sites) can make teenage hearts go pitter-pat, but the pop singer needed to get his own ticker on a steady beat before he could pursue his dream to soar into Earth orbit.
The 23-year-old performer recently underwent an outpatient "surgical procedure" to correct an irregular heartbeat in order to qualify for a seat aboard a Russian rocket flight to the International Space Station (news - web sites), a spokeswoman said on Thursday.
His heart condition was "not even remotely life-threatening," publicist Jill Fritzo told Reuters. "It's something he had wanted to correct for a long time, but being that he's planning to go into space, it prompted him to move it up a bit."
The procedure, first reported in the magazine Us Weekly, was performed in the United States a couple of weeks ago, she said. She was not aware of the details of the treatment.
Bass, the low voice of the five-member pop group, recently wrapped an 'N Sync tour and was back at the cosmonaut training center in Russia's Star City this week for additional medical tests, Fritzo said.
If Bass passes the battery of tests and qualifies as physically fit for the space shot, he will begin a rigorous training program for a launch this fall from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan.
He hopes to follow in the footsteps of the world's first two space tourists -- American businessman Dennis Tito and South African millionaire Mark Shuttleworth -- for a ride into orbit that reportedly costs $20 million.
Flying into orbit has been a lifelong dream for Bass, who even attended "space camp" as a kid, Fritzo said. The entertainer traveled to Moscow for an initial series of tests in March. If selected, Bass would be a passenger aboard a Soyuz re-supply mission to the International Space Station on a flight that would last seven to eight days, from blastoff to return, said David Krieff, president of Destiny Productions, which is organizing corporate sponsors to pay for the trip.
Krieff said his company also is close to deal on a series of television specials that would track Bass from his medical tests and training through his flight to his return to Earth.
"He's looking great. He's going to pass all the tests," Krieff said, adding he expected Bass to know for sure whether he was cleared for space flight early next week.
Posted by Jen on Friday, May 17, 2002 @ 10:14 a.m.
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