There is no doubt in SIMON COWELL’s mind that this year’s “American Idol” finale will be a competition between the two David’s — DAVID ARCHULETA and DAVID COOK — he indicated at a press conference to promote this summer’s “America’s Got Talent,” on which he is the creator/executive producer.

“You’re going to have a real scrap,” he predicts. “The winner will really depend on what song they sing on the night.”

That said, he also admits that “American Idol” is also a popularity contest and that, “David Cook has got the better voice and David Archuleta has got the teen and grandma appeal.”

As for SYESHA MERCADO — the last woman standing, and someone who has consistently been in the bottom two, but has been saved each week — Simon says, “If I was a betting man, I wouldn’t put my money on her. She is a good singer. She is solid. She will be very happy with where she got. For me, I just haven’t had that incredible moment from her yet.”

That just leaves JASON CASTRO, who has had some great moments and, more recently, some not so great. Simon thinks that looks play a big part in Jason’s success: “If he looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, he still wouldn’t be in the competition, would he?” he suggests.

The “American Idol” finale begins on Tuesday, May 20 with the next “American Idol” named on Wednesday, May 21.

James Bond is no longer music to AMY WINEHOUSE’s ears. The “Rehab” singer has deserted sessions to record a potential theme song for the super-spy’s next flick, ‘Quantum of Solace,’ her producer MARK RONSON tells the Associated Press.

The beehive-haired soul singer is “not ready to record any music,” Ronson says, adding that it would take “some miracle of science” for her to complete the work she’d begun on the would-be Bond track.

Mere days ago, Winehouse was released from a London jail and police cautioned her for common assault, stemming from an earlier incident where she allegedly headbutted a fellow bar patron.

The nickname was meant as a joke, a little needle from Marvel Comics mainstay Stan Lee to artist Jack Kirby.

But more than a decade after Kirby’s death, the name still fits: He is “The King.”

Consider some of the heroes Kirby helped create, many of which now pervade pop culture: The Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America.

His distinctive action-packed style became the model for many comic-book artists. When he died in 1994, artist Gary Panter did a two-page spread in The New Yorker as a tribute. Michael Chabon dedicated his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about two comic book creators, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” to Kirby.

Not bad for a guy whose chosen medium was looked down upon for decades.

“Jack … was a brilliant man and an incredibly hard-working man,” said Mark Evanier, author of the new “Kirby: King of Comics” (Abrams), a lavishly illustrated biography of the artist. “He produced an incredible volume of work.”

It’s not surprising that Marvel’s art — and those it influenced — would start to look distinctly Kirby-esque, Marvel artist Herb Trimpe said at a Kirby panel in February.

Kirby was born Jacob Kurtzberg in New York and grew up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where his adventures with gangs would later filter into many of his heroes. In particular, the rough-and-tumble Ben Grimm, also known as the Thing of the Fantastic Four, was a self-caricature, Evanier observes.

After short stints at a newspaper syndicate and as an animator, he ended up at Marvel’s predecessor, Timely Comics, where he and partner Joe Simon created Captain America, a huge hit during World War II.

With Captain America came some of Kirby’s comic book innovations, Evanier says. Comic books, which had started as reprints of newspaper comic strips, had adhered to that form’s look of repetitious boxes. Kirby and Simon used different-sized panels, varying shapes, even full pages.

“They kind of invented things that made comic books different than strips,” Evanier said. They realized they “had the whole page to play with. … They’d take three or four pages for a single action scene.”

Simon and Kirby went to Timely rival DC and then formed their own studio after serving in World War II. The popular genres then were crime and horror comics, and Simon-Kirby created a handful, including the dramatically named “Justice Traps the Guilty.” They also pioneered the romance genre, juxtaposing Kirby’s innately thrilling style with primly dressed women and men in neat suits and sweaters.

But while competitors like E.C. Comics dangled severed heads on their covers, Kirby and Simon opted for a lower key. “They kept it tamer, deliberately,” Evanier said. “Jack didn’t like the gory stuff.”

Ironically, the one area in which Kirby was willing to draw blood, so to speak, was with war comics: The cover of a 1954 title, “The Guys in the Foxhole,” pictures a heavily bandaged soldier writing a letter home, with the obvious aftermath of a battle behind him.

“The Guys in the Foxhole” wasn’t the kind of comic to be approved by the Comics Code Authority, the organization set up to placate authorities railing against the crime and horror comics, and soon it — and dozens of other titles — were out of business.

Kirby bounced around for a few years. Then, back at the company soon to be named Marvel, he and Stan Lee created the Fantastic Four in 1961.

As Evanier writes, the heroic quartet “had uncommon depth and personality” for comic book personalities. That kind of humanity would become the mainstay of the Lee-Kirby work and what many still think of as a golden age of comics created by them and other Marvel talents, including Steve Ditko and John Romita.

Heroes were born one after another: Thor (1962), Spider-Man (1962), Iron Man (1963), the X-Men (1963), Daredevil (1964). In “Kirby: King of Comics,” Evanier notes that from 1962 to 1964 alone, Kirby drew more than 3,000 pages and 285 covers. He was a workhorse, and he was becoming famous, but he wasn’t becoming rich.

“Jack was not a good businessman,” Evanier said. “He didn’t take a week off; he was a Depression-era kid. And he was terrified of not having a weekly paycheck.”

When Evanier met Kirby in 1970 — he served as Kirby’s assistant for two years — “he was as successful as you could be in comics, but he wasn’t particularly well-paid.”

Kirby left Marvel in 1970, not long after the company was sold. (The garrulous Stan Lee, who was assumed by the new owners to be the company’s creative genius, stayed on.) Kirby went to DC for a few years, but the company “didn’t give him much better terms,” Evanier said.

But as new generations discovered comic books, they discovered Jack Kirby, defending him amid the corporate takeovers and boosting his spirits. He got some of his work back — rights issues plagued him — and he never lost his creative power. (However, with great power comes great responsibility: Kirby didn’t drive a car, Evanier said, “because with his mind going, he’d run off the road. Most people’s minds go from A to B to C; Jack’s mind went from A to K to W.”)

Kirby was matter-of-fact about his talent; he loved to draw, and he tried to treat his readers with respect. “I don’t think the average reader believes in fairy tales, and I’ve never given them fairy tales,” Kirby once said. “Yes, I’ve given them fictionalized drama, but this is drama that is enacted by real people.”

Fourteen years after his death, his power continues to radiate.

“When I go to comics conventions, I walk around, and there’s Kirby everywhere,” Evanier said. “And I’m constantly encountering people who tell me what Jack meant to them.”

Though he didn’t leave his widow with a fortune, as he had hoped, he left a reputation as a good man and a great artist.
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He may even, Evanier says, have had a little bit of the superhero about him.

“He took the comic book to a different level,” the author said. “There was a very positive force of energy around him.”

By Todd Leopold
CNN

You might attribute it to 9/11, or simply blame director Joel Schumacher, whose camp take on “Batman” derailed that franchise for several years. But, lately, Hollywood superhero movies have taken themselves awfully seriously.

Robert Downey Jr. plays Tony Stark, a billionaire who remakes himself into “Iron Man.”

Ang Lee, Bryan Singer and Christopher Nolan have produced solemn, almost morbid versions of the Hulk, Superman and Batman, respectively. Even Sam Raimi succumbed to this gravity in the “Spider-Man” trilogy.

Enter Robert Downey Jr., riding to the rescue, a glass of Scotch in his hand and a sardonic smile on his lips. As everyone knows, Downey is not the hero type. Not in his public persona and not on screen either, where his dissipated narcissism has been most often effective in supporting roles (“Zodiac,” “A Scanner Darkly,” “Wonder Boys”).

Downey is one of those actors who likes to doodle in the margins, to ad-lib and fool around, instincts that give Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man” movie an immediate fillip. The star’s bad-boy past becomes part and parcel of the character’s redemption drama: This is where he shows his true mettle.

One of the lesser-known Marvel heroes, Iron Man is basically Batman in a shiny new suit and a more global perspective. Like Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark is a wealthy industrialist, a weapons manufacturer with the means and know-how to create his own impregnable armor (Stan Lee allegedly based him on Howard Hughes). Iron Man made his debut in 1963, when he was captured by the Viet Cong and put to work.
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Forty-five years later the theater of war has shifted to Afghanistan, but the same mechanics are in play. Stark is demonstrating his latest smart bomb — part of the “Freedom” line — when he falls into the hands of a murderous warlord who turns out to have a well-stocked arsenal of Stark hardware. The warlord then demands his own, homemade weapon of mass destruction.

Badly wounded, Stark feigns compliance, but actually hammers out the prototype for a bulletproof jet-suit that he uses to escape.

In the original comics, Stark’s brush with mortality only made him angry; he took the war to the Commies. Favreau’s reconstructed Iron Man is still a human gun, but he’s no longer gung-ho, exactly. He’s more of an aggressive pacifist.

Back in the USA, he announces he’s a changed man, embraces nonviolence and joins a Buddhist commune. OK, I’m kidding, but not by much: He announces that Stark Industries is quitting the arms trade. As the stock plummets, he quietly holes up in his modernist Malibu home to perfect his one-man missile defense system.

True to type, Downey has a ball as the cavalier playboy in the early scenes. This Tony Stark is so much fun to be around we’re almost sorry to see his transformation take place. Or we would be, if not for Downey’s deliciously deft physical performance, which insists that the melding of man and machine is no walk in the park.

However, his business partner, Obadiah Stane (a splendidly bald, bearded Jeff Bridges), is unhappy about the change.

It’s not difficult to guess where this is heading — Marvel stories are all permutations on a handful of stock scenarios — but Favreau doesn’t blow it up any more than he has to. In “Elf” and “Zathura” he showed he could integrate special effects and carry the story, but like Downey, he’s almost always looking for a comic spin.

A scene in which Tony invites his assistant, Pepper Potts (an appealingly valiant Gwyneth Paltrow), to reach into the hole in his chest and fix his battery is a cheeky cocktail of trust, disgust, love, sex, fear and courage (it’s also a key plant for subsequent developments), but above all it plays funny. When a movie is firing on all those cylinders, you know it’s a winner.

The character stuff is so light on its feet that the action scenes seem flat in comparison — the effects are first-rate, but they’re nothing we haven’t seen before, and the climactic showdown is a bit heavy-handed (if satisfyingly crunchy).

Even so, “Iron Man” is a supremely confident, well-tooled entertainment. It’s bound to be the early pace-maker for the oncoming glut of summer blockbusters.

By Tom Charity
Special to CNN

An explosive shindig is set for show very soon with large outdoor festivals beckoning and international festivals to experience!

To get things started, the guys from FREEDOM are bringing you 2 Days of FREEDOM PARTY on the 9th & 10th of May 2008, featuring superstars DJs Tiësto, Ferry Corsten and Cosmic Gate plus Vinn to kick things off at the Admiral Arena, Port Dickson.

This spectacular event will be a great rendition to the masses of hungry dance crowds.

Ticketing

FREEDOM Members
Privilege Sale

1-day Pass – RM78 per ticket *
2-day Pass – RM128 per ticket*

General
Pre-sale
1-day Pass – RM88 per ticket*
2-day Pass – RM153 per ticket*

1-day and 2-day Passes are on sale at the following Axcess Ticket outlets:
• Axcess Ticket Box Office, 1Utama
• Rock Corner, Mid Valley Megamall
• Axcess Office, Jalan Semangat
• Tower Records, KLCC

Cabanas (for groups of 20 pax only)
FREEDOM Platinum – RM303 per ticket*
FREEDOM Gold – RM253 per ticket*
Ticket price includes 2-day Pass, drinks, cabana in exclusive private area, bar service staff, easy access public amenities and 10% discount for drink carton sales.

FREEDOM Platinum and Gold Cabanas are available at:
Scenique Productions Office,
Petaling Jaya. Tel: 03-7781 7302

Door Sale
1-day Pass – RM113 per ticket*

* Ticket price is inclusive of RM3 ticketing charge

Please call the Festival Hotline for more information
Festival Hotline: +603-7781 7302
Ticket Hotline: +603-7711 5000