“Back in 1991, Michael Eisner, then Disney chairman, described Hollywood’s future goal as ‘planetised entertainment’. We have now reached that point. This is your guide to the global super-movie, and where it might have left to go.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Life Imitates Art In The Bayreuth-Nikitin-Swastika Tattoo Affair
Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, in which Yevgeny Nikitin was going to sing the title role before news came out that he once had a swastika inked into his chest, “is about a man with a secret, a youthful mistake that he spends a long, long time paying for. … But while the details [of Nikitin’s story] keep altering, their implications are profound for a festival that cannot and should not stop thinking about its past.”
Those Youngsters’ Pop Songs Today Really Do All Sound The Same
“Parents who find their children’s thumping stereos too much to bear will also be comforted to know that it isn’t just the effect of age: modern songs have also grown progressively louder over the past 50 years. … While loudness has steadily increased since the 1950s, the [research] team found that the variety of chords, melodies and types of sound being used by musicians has become ever smaller.”
Screenwriter Frank Pierson, 87
“[He] received an Academy Award nomination for his first screenplay, the western lampoon Cat Ballou, another Oscar nod for his script of the chain-gang drama Cool Hand Luke and then won the Oscar for his bank heist story Dog Day Afternoon.”
Painter Karl Benjamin, 86
He was “a painter of dazzling geometric abstractions who established a national reputation in 1959 as one of four Los Angeles-based Abstract Classicists and created a highly acclaimed body of work that celebrates the glories of color in all its variations.”
‘A Field Guide To North American Blurbs’
Jake Adam York provides a taxonomy, complete with maps and legends.
Handling 23 2000-Pound Dragons In One Production
The stadium show How to Train Your Dragon “is a big, brassy live version of the popular 2010 film based on Cressida Cowell’s books. Backed by DreamWorks with what must have been enough money to buy a small country, it features 23 lifelike dragons that stomp around, blow smoke and fly, all quite convincingly.”
Thou Shalt Not Criticize Thy Fellow Actors On Twitter
Following the first preview performance of Sondheim’s Into the Woods in Central Park, actress Morgan James (of the recently-closed Boradway revival of Godspell) tweeted, “HOW can you **** up Into the Woods?? I fear musicianship is dead in musical theatre. And acting, for that matter. #horrified.” Big mistake.
Man Falls Five Stories To Death At Tate Modern
“The man, in his late 40s, fell 100ft from a balcony at the Members’ Room onto the pavement below. He was declared dead at the scene.”
Can The National Theatre Get A Novel About Autism On Stage?
Playwright Simon Stephens and author Mark Haddon talk about the challenges of adapting The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.