LOS ANGELES: John Travolta said he has been feeling terrible over his much-ridiculed Oscars mangling of singer Idina Menzel’s name — but concluded she would want him to “Let it Go.”
The actor triggered a storm of online mockery — including an app to “Travoltify” your own name — after mispronouncing the star’s name as he introduced her performance of the Oscar-winning song “Let it Go” from Disney hit “Frozen.”
The “Grease” and “Saturday Night Fever” star inexplicably called her “the wickedly talented, one and only ... Adele Dazeem,” at the 86th Academy Awards on Sunday.
“I’ve been beating myself up all day,” Travolta said in a statement released by his publicist. “Then I thought...what would Idina Menzel say, She’d say, Let it go, let it go!“
“Idina is incredibly talented and I am so happy ‘Frozen’ took home two Oscars Sunday night!” he added. “Frozen” won best animated feature, while “Let it Go” won best original song.
As well as a tsunami of ridicule on social media, including an “Adele Dazeem Name Generator” app to suggest how Travolta would introduce you — his embarrassing flub also provided publicity puffs for a couple of shows featuring Menzel.
Broadway show “If/Then,” in which she stars, tweeted a picture of her Monday captioned “You know her name! Idina Menzel stars in ‘If/Then’ on Broadway, March 5.”
Online video service Netflix meanwhile quoted Travolta’s name flub to promote its streaming of the 2005 film adaptation in which Menzel reprised her role in the Broadway musical “Rent.”
Travolta ‘beating self up’ over Oscar name mangle
Travolta ‘beating self up’ over Oscar name mangle
France returns colonial-era ‘talking drum’ to Ivory Coast
- The drum is to be exhibited permanently in a new museum being built in Ivory Coast’s commercial capital Abidjan
PARIS: France on Friday handed over a “talking drum” looted by colonial troops from Ivory Coast in 1916 in the latest repatriation of stolen artefacts.
The Djidji Ayokwe drum, more than three meters (10 feet) long and weighing 430 kilos (950 pounds) was used by the Ebrie tribe to transmit messages.
It is one of hundreds of objects France is preparing to send back to Africa, with the efforts set to be accelerated by the passing of a new law to authorize mass repatriations.
“All of Ivory Coast is ready to welcome it,” Ivory Coast Culture Minister Francoise Remarck said at a ceremony in Paris with her French counterpart Rachida Dati.
Remarck added that she was “extremely moved” by the “return of this symbol” that is “finally coming back to its homeland.”
The drum is to be exhibited permanently in a new museum being built in Ivory Coast’s commercial capital Abidjan.
France has been flooded with restitution demands from former colonies such as Algeria, Mali and Benin.
Its national museums hold tens of thousands of artworks and other prized artefacts that were seized or purchased during the colonial era.
European nations are slowly moving to return a limited number of looted artefacts in a bid to build bridges with their former colonies.
