Yiannis Ploutarhos sang in some of the biggest cities in the USA and Canada. All his concerts were sold-out.

“I received much love during my tour and this is a great responsibility for me,” commented the singer.

Ploutarhos travelled to America with his wife, who accompanies him everywhere. “The only time she did not come on tour with me was when she was pregnant for the fifth time,” commented the beloved singer.

As for the Greek crisis, he said that “during the past 30 years, Greek politicians have made terrible mistakes.” He also admitted that many political parties have proposed to him to run as their candidate, but he refused.

“Maybe I don’t have the appropriate education, I don’t know,” he said, “but most of the times, I don’t understand the excessive statements and artificial language of politicians. Besides, I am too spontaneous to become politician.”

Watch the full interview below:

Christina Aloupi referred to the fact that the successful singer, mostly in his early career, left the glamorous world many times, and asked him what made him return. “The answer is easy – my love for singing,” he replied.

Ploutarhos announced his future plans via Greek Reporter. He has already planned to visit Germany and Australia during the next few months and discussed visiting London as well.

Niarchos purchased the two-acre property last year for $12.8 million with the intention of saving it from demolition, according to Curbed LA.

The house had fallen into decay and its former owners started launching the necessary permits to demolish the modern construction and get a better deal out of a clear lot. Thanks to protest rallies and initiatives of local community preservationists, the house was in a Beverly Hills preservation program until Niarchos “stepped in to buy the home,” according to the New York Times.

Built in 1955 and designed by Richard Neutra, one of the most significant architects of modernism, the Kronish House is one of only three Neutra designs built in Beverly Hills.

“Cali” is being produced by Voltage Productions and New School Media and is set to begin shooting towards the end of this summer. The film revolves around a couple from the San Fernando Valley in California who sell a fake “snuff” film for loads of money and run off together. A few years later, the girl (Stewart) must return “from the dead” to save her younger sister.

Producer Zev Foreman says Cassavetes is the “perfect director for this gritty, LA-based story, and will smartly balance the dynamic with a true love story.”

Cassavetes is widely known for directing romance film “The Notebook” as well as the crime flick “Alpha Dog.”

Eva Maria Leonardou has submitted to an important film contest to get funding for a feature length film of a screenplay she has written, “Incarnated.” The 50 finalists will be chosen from all over the world, and will be determined by the number of YouTube Views and Likes as well as overall quality of the competing project. The decision on who those 50 finalists are going to be is currently being made, then public voting will begin. The YouTube audience will determine the top 10 finalists, which will go on to the Venice Film Festival, and the winner will take home $500,000 for the production of the full length film, which will be produced by Ridley Scott’s Production Company.

We spoke with the Greek actress who lives in Los Angeles. Eva Maria has created everything by herself with only $331, one DP, a home digital camera, and 3 lights with no other crew or film equipment. Only the valuable help of her friends and family, as she told Greek Reporter.

“I wrote, directed, produced and acted in this “funding” trailer to get money for the feature length movie. I also did the costume design, production design, sound design and color-correction, all by myself. And on top of all that, I also edited it. And the best part? I had never edited before! I’ve also never been to any film-school; I’m just an actress, who’s in love with the big screen…My first directing attempt was selected among 12,000 other and passed to the second round of Steven Spielberg’s directing contest  ’On the Lot.’”

The trailer:

“Within only a month that it’s been up on YouTube, it’s been doing amazingly well, but we do need more Views and Likes, to make sure we have enough to be seriously considered among the 50 finalists. Whoever wants to support this project, they need to go to the above link asap and (if they do like the trailer of course) to put a Like under the video. Only those who have a Youtube account and possibly a gmail account, can Like the video,” continues Eva Maria.

Viewers will notice the name “Phaistos Disk” and that the company is Minotaur Pictures. The Greek actress talked about her origin that influenced the selection of the company’s name.

“My origin is from Crete and specifically from Archanes, in Heraklion County. I was born and raised in Athens, but I feel Crete is my homeland and that is why I named my company this. If with God’s will, everything goes well, we’ll also shoot some scenes at the Heraklion Museum in Crete. My goal is to make the Minoan Civilization known worldwide, through a story, in which I connect the Phaistos Disk with all these scenarios about the Apocalypse, the end of the world and the Age of Aquarius,” she says.

So, what’s the movie about? Eva Maria gave us some further info regarding the plot. “The movie is a supernatural thriller with a very commercial Hollywood structure, fast paced, filled with twists and turns. If everything goes well and this film gets distributed worldwide, it will attract an enormous number of tourists to the island, just like it happened with the Mayan Calendar and Mexico and that entire area of Latin America and this will bring money not only to the island but to Greece in its entirety. From my stay here in the United States, it was with great sadness and shock, that I realized that the Minoan Civilization is not as widely known as one would think and I wanted to try and change that,” says Leonardou.

“Americans are not familiar with it at all. When I mention the name of my company Minotaur, they think I borrowed the name from a character in a videogame! Let alone the Phaistos Disk, which seems to be something that they have never even heard of. Well, it is one of the world’s greatest archaeological mysteries, because it hasn’t been deciphered yet, and it’s time people get to know about it,” she concluded.

During her short time in the city, her privacy was invaded by the paparazzi, which was one of the major reasons she decided to move back to LA.

Jen actually paid $7million for the East Side properties, but accepted a $6.5million offer on both – clearly at her loss – simply because she really wanted to move back to LA.

Currently Jennifer is living in a 8,500 square foot Bel Air estate with Justin Theroux. The plan was to create one large home out of the two apartments in NYC, but unfortunately she never really settled into the area. There was no doubt that Aniston loved them, but her circumstances changed and the space provided wasn’t adequate.

During an interview with an Australian radio show, she claimed, “We tried New York. It was a little rough with the paparazzi. It didn’t feel like the New York I grew up in and knew.”

Rita Wilson (right) live at Troubadour club on May 4th, 2012.

Rita Wilson performed songs from her debut album “AM/FM” at the legendary Troubadour in Los Angeles, surprising the crowd that is used to watching Wilson on the big screen and not singing on stage.

Among Rita’s supportive fans who turned out to see her perform were Antonio Banderas and wife Melanie Griffith, and one of Rita’s close friends, Greek-American actress/writer Nia Vardalos.

Wilson’s recent start in the music business definitely came as a surprise, but her consistency and dedication have put her on the map as a singer and performer. And yes, she does have a great voice!

Although Greek-American Rita Wilson is well-known as an actress (“It’s Complicated,” “Sleepless in Seattle,” “The Good Wife”) and film producer (“My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” “Mamma Mia!”), few may be aware that her early showbiz ambitions were actually musical.

Born and raised in the Hollywood Hills (near the Hollywood Bowl), Wilson harbored dreams of becoming a singer in the 60’s and 70’s after falling in love with The Beatles, The Mamas & the Papas, Janis Joplin, and The Supremes, among others. She even took a part-time job as a ticket-taker at what was then the Universal Amphitheatre as a way to see such popular acts of the day as Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, James Taylor, and The Eagles.

“I would watch these artists on stage and ache from wondering, ‘How can I get up there?’ How can I get to do that? ” Wilson recalls. “I had no idea how. I was a first generation American. We didn’t know anyone in the music industry. Acting and modeling kind of happened to me. I went with the flow because the opportunity was terrific and I could make a living, but I thought you had to play an instrument and be able to write songs to be a singer like so many of the ones I admired.”

Wilson has finally achieved her dream with the Decca Records release of her debut album “AM/FM,” an intimate, elegant, and beautifully sung collection of classics from the ’60s and ’70s that, put together, make up the soundtrack to her life. The album will be on sale on May 8.

You can hear Rita’s album on her facebook page and pre-order it on Amazon.

Maria and Helena Mehalis star as Emma in a new video aiming to showcase the BlackBerry Balance technology, which enables BlackBerry smartphones and tablets to be used for business and personal purposes without compromise.

In the commercial, Maria and Helena portray two sides of Emma – “Work Emma” and “Personal Emma.”

It was not the first time the Greek sisters have acted together. At the age of 4, they landed their first national commercial, later becoming members of the Screen Actors Guild. A few years ago, they both guest starred on Season 3 of “Gossip Girl.”

The Greek-American sisters have become well known in the online world and have an extremely popular music channel on youtube where they sing as the music band HelenaMaria.

HelenaMaria is an American indie pop-rock group. Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Helena and Maria grew up in a self described “free-spirited” environment promoting artistic expression. Since the age of 4, they took classical piano lessons and sang in their church choir.

Earlier this year, the Greek duo released a music video titled “Knock-Out.”

Still from "Street Spectacles," a documentary shot in Greece which premieres during the 7th See Fest

The 7th annual South East European Film Festival, proud recipient of the prestigious grant from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, will take place this year from May 3-7 at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles and UCLA.

Commonly known as the SEE Fest, the festival presents films that explore religious, ethnic and cultural crossroads of South East Europe – from Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey and more. With over 30 features, documentaries, and shorts, the festival gives a glimpse into the Balkan region, its troubled history, and its cultural diversity

Sotiris Kappos, the director of “Street Spectacles,” a documentary produced in Greece, will premiere in this year’s SEE festival on Saturday, May 5.

“In modern Greece, a different kind of theatre exists on the streets below the famous Acropolis and its historic theaters, with mime artists, acrobats, magicians, and puppeteers mingling with passersby. The immediacy of such setting, and responses from engaged to indifferent from the ‘audience’ lead the filmmaker to explore the reasons that make artists choose to perform in street ‘spectacles’ and ultimately to that most essential of artistic questions: Can I survive on my art?”

Founded in 2012, the South East European Film Festival in Los Angeles has pioneered the concept of regional, cross-border programming with issue-driven films that tell a larger story about the Balkans and South East Europe, where borders of all kinds are fluid and porous just as often as poisonous. With an overarching goal of presenting multiple points of view, the festival unlocks the delicate doors into human existence and concerns of our time.

Highlights of this year’s festival include Romanian romantic comedy “Hello? How Are You?,” about a husband and wife whose marital fatigue leads them to a dating site with unforeseen consequences; Swiss-German-Bulgarian “Balkan Melodie,” about Marcel and Catherine Cellier who travelled behind the Iron Curtain to record the now-famous folk music in Eastern Europe including the Romanian pan flute virtuoso Gheorghe Zamfir and the legendary Bulgarian female vocal choir “Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares,” both of whom achieved world fame with the help of the Celliers; animated sensation “Five Minutes Each” from Serbian expats in Canada, a metaphorical story about the constant struggle of the artist to reach those five minutes of limelight; droll Slovenian short “The Visit,” which packs a punch in 8 powerful minutes about a father-son relationship in a long-term care situation with a twist; documentary parable “Coffee Futures” from Turkey that shows just how much a talented filmmaker can glean from an age-old tradition of telling fortunes from a coffee cup; and a special presentation of short films from the Vienna-based documentary  archive “Centropa” on the culture and history of Sephardic Jews and their relationship with Orthodox, Muslim, and Catholic neighbors in the turbulent 20th century.

To learn more, or to purchase tickets, please visit www.seefilmla.org.

The film revolves around four suburban friends who decide to start up a phone-sex line to make money. One of them, Nia Vardalos, is a serial marrier, while another one is a recently dumped wife. The other two are a 40-year-old virgin and a stalled executive, who are among the wanna-be businesswomen.

The four friends suffer from an economic downturn, which is why they came up with the strange but lucrative idea. The problem is none of them ever worked in the sex industry, so they hire a hooker to act as their advisor.

Sandra Oh, Emily Watson and Melora Hardin will also star in the film, which will be directed by Peter Hewitt, best known for the movies “Garfield” and “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.”

The film will be shot in Winnipeg in June and July and the producers, Su Armstrong and Brian Rosen, plan to screen it at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013.