In Living Color and Saturday Night Live alumnus David Alan Grier plays a not-ready-for-prime-time anchorman – plus other characters, including Maya Angelou – in Comedy Central’s parody show Chocolate News.
Tag: 10.15.08
Granta to Launch in Italy and Spain
Rizzoli and the new Duomo Ediciones “will release their own local language editions of Granta under license from the magazine’s head office in London starting in 2009.” (The renowned literary journal already publishes an edition in Brazil.)
Artist Miles Richmond, 85
An English painter and teacher “for whom imagination linked the philosopher’s view with the painter’s.”
To This We’ve Come: TV Guide Sold for $1
“How much is TV Guide magazine worth in a morphing media business and molten credit markets? Try $1. […] The cover price, by way of comparison, is $2.99.”
Vladimir & Estragon Headed Back To Broadway
“Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin are in talks to star in Samuel Beckett’s modern classic,” Waiting For Godot, in a Broadway revival set to open in 2009. “The revival will slip in just under the wire of the April 30 Tony Award cutoff date, setting the stage for what could be a fiercely contested race for Best Actor in a Play.”
Historical Fiction Author Peter Vansittart, 88
“Peter Vansittart, the English writer who breathed new life into the historical novel by mingling myth with modernity, and by injecting 20th-century preoccupations into historical settings as various as Roman Britain, medieval France and 16th-century Germany, died on Oct. 4, in Ipswich, Suffolk.”
Kenneth Branagh Steps Down from Jude Law Hamlet
“Kenneth Branagh will no longer direct Jude Law in his West End production of Hamlet next year, the Donmar Warehouse has announced.”
The Spaghetti Western Orchestra
Yes, that’s what it’s called. Five musicians and 100 instruments (including nail clippers and corn flakes) in music from Ennio Morricone’s scores to the likes of A Fistful of Dollars and Once Upon a Time in the West. The band plays Toronto this weekend and then begins a tour of the US.
Former Network Exec Shakes Up Public TV Flagship
Neal Shapiro, the new CEO of New York’s WNET, has launched a three-hour Sunday arts show, revamped Saturday night movie programming, and begun an original evening broadcast of international news. Is he bringing in energy and innovation, or rushing ahead without regard for consequences?
Shreveport Symphony Cancels Season Opener
The Louisiana orchestra has canceled this Saturday’s opening night concert “due to what the board is calling an ‘illegal strike’ by the musicians.” The walkout, which began Oct. 2, is over the change of the orchestra’s 24 full-time musicians to freelance pay-per-service status.