“In 30 years [as an actor] I don’t think I’ve ever been so close to unemployment. I phoned my agent and said: in March I’m out of work.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Is Cirque Du Soleil Losing Its Touch?
Iris, the company’s Los Angeles show which is closing in January, “isn’t the company’s only high-profile bust. The show joins a list of flops that have tarnished the global Cirque brand in recent years” – including Viva Elvis in Las Vegas, Zaia in Macao (which had been planned, like Iris, for a ten-year run), Zed in Tokyo and the touring show Banana Shpeel.
In Quake-Ravaged Italian Town, Magical Thinking And Little Progress
“That earthquake, in April 2009, killed hundreds and left tens of thousands of L’Aquilans homeless, shuttering the city’s graceful and extensive historic center … Since then Italian officials have kept promising to restore the city to its former self, but fewer than a dozen buildings have so far been repaired … These days, tourists arrive to gawk at the rubble. Ruin porn has become the new local industry.”
Social Scientists Look At Giftgiving
“To be a really successful giver of gifts, a person usually needs to get inside the head of the intended recipient. Unfortunately, psychological studies reveal that givers and receivers have a hard time understanding each other’s mind-sets, which can make for a tricky holiday experience.” (The good news: re-gifting is okay.)
Literature Now Has Its Own Search Engine/Wikipedia/Geek Playpen
“Officially launched in August, Small Demons is the book world’s latest mind game and guilty pleasure … an encyclopedia and ‘Storyverse’ that catalogues names, places, songs, products and other categories for thousands of books.”
Why Won’t They Let Critics See Broadway Glengarry Glen Ross?, Fumes A Critic
Charles Isherwood: “Al Pacino is back on Broadway, or so I hear. I wouldn’t know from firsthand experience. … [It] seems to me that the case of Glengarry is an even more egregious attempt [than Spider-Man] to avoid critical scrutiny for mercenary reasons.”
Turner Prize Goes To Video Artist Elizabeth Price
“On the face of it they are wildly different: ecclesiastical architecture, a 1960s girl band performance and a terrible furniture store blaze that helped change UK fire laws. But Elizabeth Price’s powerful fusion of the three elements to make a 20-minute film seemed to grip audiences and led to her being named winner of the 2012 Turner prize.”
Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty Tops New York Film Critics Circle Awards
“It’s a busy day for pop culture news and a slow-drip day for movie news: All afternoon the New York Film Critics Circle has been revealing its year-end winners on Twitter. For its surprises, at least, the Bagger will say it was worth the wait.”
New Hope For The Troubled Oxford American
This past July, founding editor Marc Smirnoff “was fired after being accused of sexual harassment. Also, he admitted that he gave alcohol to under-age interns. … Four months later the air has cleared a bit. The Oxford American has installed a new editor, Roger D. Hodge, formerly the editor of Harper’s Magazine … But it’s worth pausing to revisit why this quarterly matters, and why so many people, not just in the South, will be paying attention to the changes there.”
Cicely Tyson To Appear On Broadway After 30 Years
The 78-year-old Oscar- and Emmy-winner will play Carrie Watts in a revival of Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful. While it will not ba an all-black cast, all members of the Watts family will be played by African-American actors.