“[T]his Phantom is not the phantom we knew. The ‘poisoned gargoyle who burns in hell’ has clearly taken an anger management course in New York. … Would he whimsically hang the backstage crew or send a chandelier crashing into a crowd? Not any more.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Billington: Seductive Score, Weak Book In Love Never Dies
“I should say that I have no truck with those ghoulish groupies who’ve seen The Phantom of the Opera 852 times and regard any sequel as equivalent to painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa. No masterpiece has been besmirched. But there is a crucial difference between the two shows.”
Brantley: Those Rumors That Phantom Sequel Stinks? True.
“Of course, bad advance word on the Internet has sometimes proved false. (Ever hear of ‘Avatar’?) And I would be delighted to tell you that’s what happened here, especially since ‘Love Never Dies’ is scheduled for Broadway this fall. But how can I, when at every opportunity Mr. Lloyd Webber’s latest sets itself up to be knocked down?”
Congratulations, Hurt Locker; Good Luck Finding Theatres
“Because exhibitors want to discourage studios from releasing films on DVD before they finish playing in theaters, they generally refuse to re-book a movie after it’s available in home entertainment formats. They do occasionally bend that rule,” but few are flexible in the case of best-picture Oscar winner “The Hurt Locker.”
Boston Public Library Branch Rankings To Decide Closures
Among other criteria, “administrators will rank the 26 neighborhood branches by foot traffic, computer use, and how many Web surfers use laptops to log on to Wi-Fi networks. They will count how many programs are offered at each location and tally the number of people who attend storytime and English classes.”
Beyond Hogwarts: Adults Buying YA Books For Themselves
“[I]ncreasingly, adults are reading YA books with no ulterior motives. Attracted by well-written, fast-paced and engaging stories that span the gamut of genres and subjects, such readers have mainstreamed a niche long derided as just for kids.” The trend means that young-adult lit “is one of the few bright spots in an otherwise bleak publishing market.”
Variety Film Critic Todd McCarthy On Being Cut Loose
“I’ve been fiercely and proudly reviewing at full speed since all the [previous] cutbacks. I made sure we had no slippage in our festival coverage and film reviewing, I’ve worked hard in recent times to make sure nothing slipped. The reviews have been the most unchanged part of Variety, period. Forever.”
North Shore Music Theatre To Return With Chestnuts
The new owner of the theatre, “which closed last year after accumulating $10 million in debt,” said that “this first season back is meant to offer stability to a theater that, at one point, was the largest nonprofit theater in the region, with close to 350,000 people attending annually.” The shows will go on with a far smaller house staff.
A Painter-Critic Wishes For A Broader Education
Peter Plagens: “If I had it to do over again, I don’t think I’d want to be an actual subatomic-particle physicist or a bona fide neurosurgeon. But I sure would like to be an abstract painter and art critic who’s fluently bilingual, can comprehend the pages with the funny little symbols on them in the popular science books, is able to rattle off soliloquies by Shakespeare….”
Phantom Sequel Follows Most Popular Musical Ever
“Lloyd Webber says the idea of writing the sequel came to him some 15 years ago, in a conversation with Maria Bjornson, the set designer of the original Phantom. ‘I remember saying to her, “You know, I think it’s slightly unfinished business, because all we do is we just leave a mask on a chair,” and what happened?'”