Charles Askegard, former New York City Ballet star and co-founder of the brand-new company: “It’s ballet plain and simple. Of course there’s nothing plain or simple about what we do.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Hildegard Of Bingen To Be Named Saint And Doctor Of The Church
Pope Benedict XVI has announced that the 12th-century Benedictine nun – a composer, writer, philosopher, medical practitioner and latter-day feminist/New Age icon – will be recognized as a saint and Doctor of the Church in September 2012.
Fayetteville, NC’s Art Museum To Dissolve
“Board members for the Fayetteville Museum of Art plan to quietly dissolve their 40-year-old organization as early as this week, an official said Monday.”
Hollywood’s Weinstein Brothers Developing Their First Stage Musical
“The Weinstein Company, heavyweight producers in Hollywood, is moving ahead with development of its first stage musical, Finding Neverland, after staged readings of the script and score in London last week that executives deemed a success.”
Rambert Dance Company Gets Grant To Preserve Its Archives
“One of the UK’s oldest dance companies has been awarded £360,000 to preserve and display a century’s worth of costumes and film archive. The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant means Rambert Dance Company can display its historical collection when it re-locates to London’s South Bank in 2013.”
James Franco’s Yale Lit Professor Speaks (Yes, James Did All The Work)
“[On a movie set,] when you’re the star, you end up just sitting around a lot. … So when you see James’s character with his arm trapped under a rock in 127 Hours, what you don’t see is that there was an assigned reading under the rock with it.”
Kim Jong-Il’s Obsession With Cinema
The “Dear Leader” was crazy (as it were) for movies: he wrote a treatise on socialist filmmaking, produced many fiction films and documentaries, and micro-managed the rest of North Korea’s film industry, right down to costumes and make-up. Yet Kim himself was a fan of mainstream Hollywood action movies and Ealing comedies.
Kim Jong Il’s Favorite Film Director And Movie Star (He Had Them Kidnapped)
Shin Sang-Ok “is a film director of legendary stature in his native country – the Orson Welles of South Korea. … He and his wife, the well-known actress Choi Eun Hee, were among Seoul’s celebrity set.” Then the “Dear Leader” had them captured and brought to Pyongyang to remake North Korea’s film industry. Among their creations: a Communist Godzilla.
Explaining The Singing Christmas Tree
“[It] has become a tradition in the modern evangelical megachurch: the Singing Christmas Tree. In these productions, church choirs perform a musical celebration while standing inside an enormous Christmas tree platform that reaches to the ceiling, often accompanied by extravagant light shows, dancing church members, and sometimes even fireworks.”
Lisbeth Salander Is Not Pippi Longstocking, No Matter What Stieg Larsson Said
“Over the past year much has been made of Larsson explicitly writing Lisbeth, with her tattoos, trauma and propensity for violent wrath, as the grown up version of Pippi Longstocking … This isn’t what [Pippi creator Astrid] Lindgren intended.” (Besides, Lisbeth doesn’t have the right socks. Or hair.)