After months and months and months and months of waiting, Carney has finally released their video for “Love Me Chase Me” and it was definitely worth the wait.

You guys might remember them if you caught them this summer on the road with the Veronicas or Gov’t Mule, OR you might have heard of them after it was announced that Reeve got the role of Spiderman in the Broadway musical being directed by Julie Taymor.  But if this is your first time witnessing their genius then please prepare yourself.  In order to fully understand Carney, blend together Jeff Buckley in the form of lead singer Reeve Carney then add in the music of Zeppelin or Skynard mixed in with some randomness like the Beatles and you have the band who’s sound is extremely hard to pin down.

And yes, that IS Evan Rachel Wood, who will be playing the part of Mary Jane on Broadway, in the video.  Girl is fierce.   Personally I love that in a year when MTV is not playing videos anymore and the art is a dying form, that bands like Carney and singers like Lady Gaga (yes I am comparing the two) are actually concerned with making concept driven videos that appeal to their fans.

But what are your thoughts on the video?  Anyone love it?

Also one more thing: Zane and Reeve have a younger sister, Paris, who also has some incredible music that you can listen to myspace.com/pariscarneymusic CARNEY can be found at myspace.com/carneythe band and Twitter (names: reevecarney, zanecarney, aidenplaysbass, jonnyepcat)

Local Disney and musical-theatre fans alike will be ecstatic to hear that Tony Award-winning musical Disney’s The Lion King will finally be coming to the Vancouver stage in July, 2010.

Broadway Across Canada offerings have been relatively sparse in our city over the past few years and hopefully this announcement signals the beginning of a turnaround in the national touring productions that stop in Vancouver.

Based on the blockbuster 1994 animated film of the same name, The Lion King opened on Broadway in 1997 and promptly won a plethora of honours including six Tony Awards, eight Drama Desk Awards, six Outer Critics Circle Awards, the New York Drama Critics award for Best Musical, the Evening Standard Award for the Theatrical Event of the Year, two Olivier Awards, a Theatre World Award, the Astaire Award for Outstanding Choreography, two Drama League Awards and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album.

Choreography is by Garth Fagan, scenic design by Richard Hudson, costume design by Julie Taymor, and lighting design by Donald Holder.  The Lion King features an adapted book by Roger Allers and Irene Mecchi and a score by Elton John, Tim Rice, Lebo M, Mark Mancina, Jay Rifkin, Julie Taymor and Hans Zimmer.

Broadway Across Canada presents Disney’s The Lion King from July13– August 8, 2010, at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, 600 block Hamilton St, Vancouver. Ticket prices range from $26.50 to $98.50 and go on sale in March of 2010.

Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark is gearing up again this time with a lead actor and producer

It’s official – Reeve Carney, the lead singer of the band Carney, will be playing Peter Parker (ie. Spideman) in the upcoming Broadway mega-spender Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark.

Why cast such an unknown in the lead role? Director Julie Taymor said they wanted a “Peter Parker who could really act and sing, but who still brings a kind of performance that could be new to Broadway audiences. We wanted something a little more authentically rock and roll.”

And to help with that rock and roll vibe, Michael Cohl, a rock concert promoter with ties to the Rolling Stones and U2, is stepping in as lead producer, hoping to stop all the speculation that the show would never make it to opening night.

The show, which is reputed to have spent $52 million to date, will open in 2010 at the Hilton Theatre in New York.

American Idiot will be making its way to Broadway

On November 9, the producers for American Idiot announced Equity Principal Auditions for a Broadway run of the nearly sold-out Berkley Rep production. According to spokesman Michael Hartman, “there is a Broadway future for the show, but at this time no dates or theatre are confirmed.”

RUMOR: Ashlee Simpson may star in Chicago on Broadway

Multiple sources are reporting that Ashlee Simpon-Wentz, the former Melrose Place star, will be playing Roxie Hart in Chicago on Broadway for a six week run this December. Though she did play the role on the West End, her Broadway appearance has not been confirmed by any official sources.

A bittersweet anniversary on Broadway for Shrek

On November 8, the cast of Broadway’s Shrek celebrated one year on Broadway, but the festivities were somewhat bittersweet. The show, which was nominated for 8 Tony Awards, will be closing January 3 after playing 441 performances and 37 previews. The national tour will launch at Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theatre for a limited engagement, running from July 13 – September 5, 2010.

Title battle – Dame Edna’s It’s All About Me vs. Michael Feinstein’s All About Me

I don’t know if you’ve been tracking the hilarious banter between Dame Edna and Michael Feinstein, who have very similarly named shows headed to Broadway this fall. Of the mishap, Edna said “It’s All About Me is my title. While I was saddened to hear that Mr. Feinstein did not heed my sage advice to change the title of his show, I’m overjoyed to hear that he at least took my suggestion to open his show after mine. I’m sure Mrs. Feinstein is very proud of her son.”

Broadway Stars on TV this month

A number of big tars will be appearing on television in the next few months. Check out the list below:

“The View” ABC, daytime

• Wednesday, Nov. 11: Finian’s Rainbow
• Thursday, Nov. 19: John Stamos

“Jimmy Kimmel Live” ABC, late night

• Tuesday, Nov. 17: John Stamos

“The Today Show” NBC, 7AM ET

• Wednesday, Nov. 18: Liza Minnelli

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

26. Bonnie Hammer, president of NBC Universal Cable, which includes the USA Network and the Syfy Channel, is a Boomer. She’s 59, born January, 1950, in New York. Biographical Tidbit: Credited with making Syfy – formerly called Sci Fi – appealing to adults as well as children and teens, Hammer used a series of unlikely science fiction fans for promos, including Jet Li, Venus and Serena Williams, Traci Lords, and Moby.

27. Mark Burnett, the producer who brought reality TV to the US, is a Boomer. He’s 49, born July, 1960, in London, UK. Biographical Tidbit: Burnett joined the British military at age 18 and became a skilled parachuter, serving both in Northern Ireland and in the Falklands War. Before achieving Hollywood success, he worked as a nanny for a wealthy family and sold T-shirts in Venice Beach, California.

28. Robert Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, is a Boomer. He’s 58, born February, 1951, in New York. Biographical Tidbit: Iger is that rare poster child for staying at one company and rising through the ranks. He joined ABC at the age of 22 and became president of the network twenty years later. ABC became part of Disney in 1996.

29. Brian Williams, NBC news anchor, is a Boomer. He’s 50, born May, 1959, in New York. Biographical Tidbit: While attending high school in New Jersey, Williams was a volunteer firefighter from age 16 on. His first paying job was as a busboy at a Perkins Pancake House.

30. Ellen DeGeneres, comedienne and talk-show host, is a Boomer. She is 51, born January, 1958, in Louisiana. Biographical Tidbit: An Early Bloomer, DeGeneres was already the emcee of a popular comedy club in New Orleans just five years out of high school. A year later, at age 24, she was named Showtime’s Funniest Person in America.

Hollywood

31. Pierce Brosnan, former James Bond, is a Boomer. He’s 56, born May, 1953, in County Louth, Ireland. Biographical Tidbit: In his late teens, Brosnan was a circus performer, with fire-eating part of his repertoire. He got his first acting break in a Tennessee Williams play in London’s West End.

32. Bruce Willis, action film hero, is a Boomer. He’s 54, born March, 1955, in Idar-Oberstein, Germany. Biographical Tidbit: Willis’s parents met and were married in Germany, where his Dad, a soldier, was stationed. His Mom is German and was working as a bank clerk. Willis’s first post-high school job in New Jersey, where he was raised, was as a security guard at a nuclear power plant.

33. Demi Moore, accomplished actress, is also a Boomer. She’s 46, born November, 1962, in New Mexico. Biographical Tidbit: Moore’s mother and stepfather changed jobs so often, the family is reported to have lived in forty different homes by the time Demi was a teenager. At age 16, her friend Nastassja Kinski persuaded her to drop out of Fairfax High School and try for a film career.

34. Cheryl Ladd, former Charlie’s Angel and frequent star of made-for-television movies, is a Boomer. She’s 58, born July, 1951, in South Dakota. Biographical Tidbit: Under her former stage name, Cherie Moor, Ladd was a member of the original Josie and the Pussycats, a three-girl “bubblegum pop” singing group of the early 1970s. More recently, enthusiastic golfer Ladd has written a golf book for women.

35. Mel Gibson, actor, director, and producer, is a Boomer. He’s 53, born January, 1956, in New York. Biographical Tidbit: Mel’s first name is really Mel, not Melvin, and his extraordinary middle name is Colm-Cille. Gibson’s Mom, nee Anne Reilly, was born in Ireland, and Saint Mel was a 5th-century Irish saint and founder of her home-county diocese, Ardagh. Colm-Cille, also the name of a saint, is the parish in which Anne Reilly Gibson was born.

36. Cher, actress and singer, is a Boomer. She is 63, born May, 1946, in California. Biographical Tidbit: Cher’s first recorded song, “Ringo, I Love You,” (1964), was released under the pseudonym Bonnie Jo Mason , because its producer, current jailbird Phil Spector, thought her real name, Cherilyn Sarkisian, sounded too foreign. According to reports, one reason the song wasn’t a hit is that DJs thought the contralto might be a homosexual male gushing over Ringo Starr.

37. Danny Glover, actor and controversial political activist, is a Boomer. He, too, is 63, born July, 1946, in California. Biographical Tidbit: While a student at San Francisco State University in the late 1960s, Glover participated in a five-month-long student-led strike, on record as the longest student walkout in American history. Among its results was creation of the first Black Studies department in the US.

38. Whoopi Goldberg, comedienne, actress, and talk-show host, is a Boomer. She is 53, born November, 1955, in New York. Biographical Tidbit: Extreme fear of flying has kept Goldberg off airplanes for the past decade or so. She’s traveled via a personal bus – inconvenient for someone who commutes between Los Angeles and New York. In April of this year, she flew to London for the first time, after taking a course for flight-phobics with Virgin Atlantic Airways.

39. Rene Russo, former model and leading lady, is a Boomer. She’s 55, born February, 1954, in California. Biographical Tidbit: Russo was discovered by a modeling scout while attending a Rolling Stones concert. A year later, she was on the cover of Vogue.

40. Brad Pitt, leading man, just squeaks in as a Boomer. He’s 45, born December, 1963, in Oklahoma. Biographical Tidbit: We’ve all heard of Renaissance men. Pitt was a Renaissance teenager at Kickapoo High School in Springfield, Missouri, playing for the golf, swimming, and tennis teams, standing out as a debater, and starring in school musicals. While waiting for his big break in Hollywood, he was a chauffeur and dressed up in a chicken suit for El Pollo Loco.

41. George Clooney, actor and United Nations activist, is a Boomer. He’s 48, born May, 1961, in Kentucky. Biographical Tidbit: In his early teens, Clooney developed Bell’s palsy, a medical condition which partially paralyzes the face. The malady disappeared within a year. But while suffering from it, the future matinee idol’s left eye closed completely, and taunting schoolmates called him “Frankenstein.”

42. Holly Hunter, movie and television star, is a Boomer. She’s 51, born March, 1958, in Georgia. Biographical Tidbit: When she moved to Los Angeles at age 24, Hunter shared a house with a bunch of other Hollywood hopefuls, including director Sam Raimi and future Academy Award winners Frances McDormand and Joel and Ethan Coen.

43. Quentin Tarantino, director, producer, and screenwriter, is a Boomer. He is 46, born March, 1963, in Tennessee. Biographical Tidbit: A fan of such genres as Japanese anime cartoons and Chinese Wuxia martial arts cinema, Tarantino is an extremely popular filmmaker throughout Asia. In 2007, Philippine President Gloria Arroyo presented him with a lifetime achievement award at the Malacanang Palce.

44. Tim Burton, versatile director, is a Boomer. He’s 51, born August, 1958, in California. Biographical Tidbit: A movie-crazy kid who grew up in Burbank, California, Burton’s early idol was actor Vincent Price. His first film, a six-minute short called “Vincent” is a tribute to the horror star, with Price himself providing the narration.

45. Julie Taymor, film, theater, and opera director, is a Boomer. She’s 56, born December, 1952, in Massachusetts. Biographical Tidbit: As a college student, Taymor developed an interest in classical forms of visual performance art. She studied Indonesian topeng masked dance and wayang kulit shadow puppetry, later winning a fellowship to research ancient puppetry forms in Japan.

Business

46. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, is a Boomer. He’s about to turn 54, born October, 1955, in the state of Washington. Biographical Tidbit: While Gates’s early image was more than a tad nerdy, he is said to have been girl-crazy in high school. Already a consultant for a local computer company, the administrators of his Seattle prep school asked him to write the program scheduling students for classes. Gates fixed the code so his own classes were predominantly female.

47. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Inc., is a Boomer. He is also 54, born February, 1955, in California. Biographical Tidbit: Jobs dropped out of Reed College in Oregon after one semester and started saving money for a trip to India, a country which still fascinates him. He made the journey shortly afterwards, telling friends he sought “spiritual enlightenment.” On his return, he adopted Indian clothing, continued to shave his head, and announced that he had converted to Buddhism, a religion he still follows.

48. Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is a Boomer. He’s 55, born December, 1953, in Georgia. Biographical Tidbit: Bernanke grew up in small-town Dillon, South Carolina, where his Mom was a schoolteacher, and his Dad and uncle managed the local pharmacy. During breaks from high school and college, Bernanke waited tables at South of the Border, a popular roadside attraction.

49. Timothy Geithner, US Secretary of the Treasury and former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is a Boomer. He is 48, born August, 1961, in New York. Biographical Tidbit: Because his Dad, Peter, is an international foundation executive, Geithner spent the majority of his childhood outside of the US, living in Zimbabwe, Zambia, India, and Thailand. He speaks a number of languages, including Japanese and Mandarin.

50. Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO of General Electric Company, is a Boomer. He’s 53, born February, 1956, in Ohio. Biographical Tidbit: Immelt’s Dad, Joseph, was an employee of the General Electric aircraft engines division in Cincinnati for 38 years, retiring as a middle manager. During summer breaks from Dartmouth, where he was a tackle on the football team, Immelt worked at a Ford Motor assembly plant.

For the next section of this story, Boomers 51-75, please click here: http://wp.me/pxD3J-1W

To return to the beginning of this story, click here: http://wp.me/pxD3J-1Q

Army Sergeant:  Any reason you shouldn’t be in this man’s Army?
Max: I’m a cross-dressing homosexual pacifist with a spot on my lung.
Army Sergeant: As long as you don’t have flat feet.

Across the Universe on IMDB

Still thinking about the New York Times Article “Mind:  When Parent’s ‘I Love You’ Means ‘Do As I Say’, by  Alfie Kohn (published September 14, 2009) now in the context of Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute), by Mozart.  (I saw a dress rehearsal today of the Met’s wonderful production, designed by Julie Taymor.)

The story does not make much sense:  there is the romantic prince hero, Tamino, and the pragmatic everyman hero, Papageno, the conniving, deceptive, alluring, mother, the Queen of the Night, and the wise but endlessly testing father figure-cum-holyman-cum wizard guy (with a very deep voice) Sarastro, and too, the beautiful soprano Pamina who is a bit of a pawn swapped among them.

There is much that is supernatural:  the Queen’s helpers who in Taymor’s production sport oversized (almost Mayan looking) mask faces; the Three Spirits, little boys in underwear with bleached spiked hair and long wispy beards, who ride on a puppeteered flying bird, the birds themselves, dancers with flamingo heads, and ballet-slippered stilts.

There are slaves and betrayals and endless, seemingly arbitrary tests of character, meant (a) to purify the suitors, and (b) to separate the wheat from the chaff—that is, the strong, manly, silent types from chatty pragmatic everymen but more importantly from deceptive wiley women.  Wisdom and love, and some really great robes and headgear, are the prize.

While the story highlights the importance of steadfastness, bravery, self-discipline, the ultimate savior is music.  The power of music is represented by the magic flute given to the princely Tamino (oddly by the bad Queen of the Night), the magic bells or glockenspiel, given to Papageno, the pure songs of the Spirits.  But, overwhelming all of that is the sublime, beautiful music of the opera itself, composed by Mozart towards the end of his life.

This time, watching the opera, looking at the subtitles, trying (a teeny bit) to make sense of the story, I could not help but think of the New York Times article about parental love, and the effects of negative and positive conditioning, particularly, negative conditioning;  described in the article as parental withholding of affection to make children mind.

Die Zauberflote, which, of course, is in German, is a model of positive and negative conditioning (mainly negative).  Love is repeatedly withheld, both by authority figures, and even lovers themselves; punishment is meted out. Papageno, at the opening of the Opera, gets a padlock attached to his lips to teach him not to tell lies;  the Queen of the Night curses her daughter to make her try to kill Sorastro;  Tamino himself, must withhold affection from Pamina to pass his wisdom test;  the wizardly Sorastro says that vengeance does not live in the temple of wisdom, but also orders his bad servant, Monostatos, to get one hundred lashes; Papageno is threatened with a life of bread, water and imprisonment if he doesn’t give his hand to the withered old lady who is the disguised Papagena; Papageno is also nearly struck by lightening for chattering;  and even Tamino’s whole testing regimen is a bit of a punishment, arising from his original distrust of Sarasto and allegiance to the Queen of the Night.

It’s hard to come up with the positive conditioning–it’s mainly there in the form of false promises, I suppose, the promises of the Queen of the Night in particular.  (Praise and offers of rewards which should not be believed.)

In short, the path to love and wisdom and truth winds in and out of punishment, withheld affection, and artful alluring deception.   It’s a path that can only be negotiated through discipline, and with the help, the wondrous, miraculous help, of music.

Okay, it’s a cliché.  (And yes, I did see Amadeus)  But I couldn’t help thinking of the young Mozart, practicing the harpsichord  under the stern eye of his father, then overcoming all obstacles in his path (the crowned heads of Europe, but also that very same father) with the marvelous music he played and created.

In the opera, there is a bit of an exemption from all the discipline for the less high;   Papageno, the everyman, who says he doesn’t need to inhabit the exalted halls of wisdom for happiness, but is content with a glass of wine and a little turtledove wife, has slightly lesser trial.  These are passed by energy, good humor, loyalty, and, of course, the miraculous power of music;  in this case, the magic glockenspiel.

I sure wish I had one.

Saiu mês passado na coluna do Michael Riedel novidades sobre a montagem do musical do Homem-Aranha. Ela estava  (está?) prevista para fevereiro do ano que vem, com direção de Julie Taymor (O Rei Leão) e com músicas do Bono e The Edge. Além da idéia já até então bizarra, vem a melhor parte, uma produção de $45 milhões no meio dessa crise toda…

O musical estava sendo montado no Hilton Theatre (onde teve recentemente Young Frankenstein) até que tiveram que parar por falta de dinheiro dos produtores envolvidos. Em seguida os atores que já haviam sido escolhidos como Evan Rachel Wood para Mary Jane (que recusou alguns filmes por conta do projeto) e Alan Cumming para o Duende Verde foram libertos de seus contratos sem direito a nada enquanto esperam a produção voltar. Uma tentativa desesperadora de tentar salvar o espetáculo foi de trazer produtores veterenos para o projeto, mas, obviamente, eles são muito inteligentes para se meterem no que está se tornando um dos maiores fiascos da história da Broadway.

Taymor tinha em mente um espetáculo grande, cheio de efeitos especiais bem no estilo Cirque du Soleil. Mas uma produção de $45 – onde o espetáculo teria que ficar no mínimo 5 anos em cartaz e com cada um dos 1,700 lugares do teatro preenchidos pra se recuperar isso – é demais e tudo indica que o espetáculo só continuará em sua mente mesmo…

Bono deu uma entrevista a revista Rolling Stones dizendo que o projeto ainda está de pé e ainda adiantou um pouco sobre. Disse que o Peter Parker deles vai além dos quadrinhos/filmes.  Ele será meio largadão, mais timido… E para chamar mais a atenção (se é que isso é possível) criaram uma nova vilã. Hmmmm…

The Edge afirma que o espetáculo é no estilo ópera-rock, e por ser mais operístico, nem estão chamando de musical (wtf?). Agora a melhor parte: o Homem-Aranha em si não tem nenhuma música, somente Peter Parker. Porque segundo ele, “ver um cara coberto numa roupa de borracha belting showtunes seria ridiculo”. Claro, só isso seria ridiculo, né? O fato da tal vilã e do Duende Verde cantarem não… imagina…

The Edge, Julie Taymor e Bono - os idealizadores (do fiasco to be...)

Essa semana novamente na coluna do Michel Riedel tem mais novidades dizendo que Bono não desiste fácil e continua com tudo. Como ele não é burro, não está colocando seu dinheiro na produção, mas está “mexendo seus pauzinhos” e conseguindo que outras pessoas (bem tapadas) o façam. Ano passado haveria um revival de Godspell, que já estava com tudo fechado até que o produtor Adam Epstein estava sem 1 milhão da produção de 4,5 milhões. Nesse caso foi 1 milhão e a produção fechou… Gavin Creel inclusive ia interpretar Jesus, e graças ao próprio, conseguiu logo entrar em Hair! E vale lembrar também Taboo, onde Rosie O’Donnell investiu $10 milhões do seu bolso e simplesmente perdeu tudo… (o que eu adorei, odeio essa gorda escrota e Taboo ainda é o pior musical que eu já assisti na vida!)

Com certeza essa história ainda tem muito o que render… e é por isso que there’s no business like show business. Afinal, te propõe entrenimento dentro e fora dos palcos…

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out... ♫

Vocês sabiam que está sendo produzido para estrear na Broadway um musical do Homem-Aranha? Pois é, acreditem se quiserem. E não é pouca coisa, não. A direção é de Julie Taymor, que criou o maior sucesso da Broadway dos últimos anos, “The Lion King”, e no cinema dirigiu filmes ousados e criativos como “Across the Universe”, “Frida” e “Titus”. As músicas são de ninguém menos que Bono e The Edge (sim, você leu certo, os líderes do U2 brincando de compor um musical). No elenco já estão confirmadas as presenças de Evan Rachel Wood como Mary Jane e Alan Cumming como o vilão Duende Verde. E mesmo com todos esses nomes envolvidos, a produção foi obrigada a parar em meados de agosto, segundo consta por problemas com o fluxo de caixa. De acordo com os produtores tudo está sob controle e a data de estréia (fevereiro de 2010) não mudará. Vamos ver o que acontece.

…and came across this while researching it:

That’s all. Just thought I’d share.

Mother Superior jump the gun,

-Shady

Já viu Frida, né? E Across The Universe? Ambos têm a direção de Julie Taymor, nome forte na Broadway, que entre outros projetos, comandou o musical O Rei Leão, cujo trabalho lhe rendeu dois Tony Awards, prêmio que é considerado o oscar do teatro. Atualmente, Taymor está na megaprodução de Spyder Man, o musical mais caro da Broadway que estreará em 2010.

No cinema, seu último trabalho foi também um musical: ‘Across The Universe’ em 2007, muito bem elaborado tendo como ligação uma estória baseada nas letras das músicas dos Beatles, contemporânea da fase áurea da banda, isto é, década de 1960, só que nos Estados Unidos. Julie Taymor caprichou no visual da moçada e na abordagem de temas importantes da época como a Guerra do Vietnã, a liberdade sexual etc. O filme foi indicado no Oscar de 2008 na categoria Melhor Figurino, mas perdeu para o filme ‘Elisabeth – A Era de Ouro’.

A viagem é tão psicodélica, quanto as próprias músicas da banda, mas não é que o resultado ficou interessante? Contando com uma produção impecável, aliada a interpretações muito interessantes, Across The Universe é um agradável passatempo de um sábado à tarde.

Quem é fã de Beatles então é um prato cheio. Destaco aqui dois momentos altos do filme. O primeiro, o encaixe perfeito da música ‘I Want You’ com o tio Sam convocando os soldados para a Guerra. Veja:

O segundo é a adaptação em forma de apresentação circense da ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite’. Performático:

Apesar de muita gente não gostar de musical, sugiro que assistam Across The Universe, principalmente porque além de bem feito, é bonito e dá para conhecer um pouco mais de Beatles.

Nota: 9.0/10.

There are so few ladies directing feature films that I feel an obligation to watch in homage to my sister’s future career as a filmmaker.  Of late, there have been Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe, Kathyrn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, and now it seems Jane Campion has a wonderful film to be released in mid-September (the 18th, I believe) called Bright Star which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.

BRIGHT STAR, WOULD I WERE STEDFAST

By John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon in death.

1819

(courtesy of http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/BrightStar.html)

Click here for an interview with the director, Jane Campion was on WNYC’S Leonard Lopate show on September 15, 2009.

Thankfully, I refer not to the True Spider-Man.  Our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man who lives in our hearts will never die.  And I’m sure the Marvel Comics Spider-Man will persist as long as there is such a thing as Marvel Comics.  And most importantly to me, the Raimi-Maguire-Dunst Spider-Man looks slated to take its fourth chapter on the silver screen in two summers if IMDB is correct, which makes me, as an enormous fan of the entire film series ecstatic.  I’ve dreaded the prospect of either Raimi, Maguire, or Dunst not returning.  The ways they brought to life the ethos and mythos of Spider-Man has been too perfect for their collaboration to end before it absolutely has to.

So, fortunately, the Spider-Mans who matter most are all happily alive and webslinging.  But the unholy abomination that was to be the Spider-Man musical, helmed by hack extraordinaire Julie Taymore (the director behind the soulless formulaic lunacy of the incredibly disappointing Across The Universe) and scored by that most bloated, bombastic, self-absorbed band of one-trick pony sellouts U2 looks to have been crushed dead under its own gargantuan pretentious weight.

And I sigh hugely with relief at the news.

(via Shane Rutkowski at The Daily Shane)

Your Thoughts?

The Spider-Man musical is in trouble. It’s definitely suffering financial woes and if you ask Land of Punt, it’s in an artistic free-fall as well.

Rolling Stone has reported that the production released various contracted crew members due to decreases in cash-flow and increases in costs.

Reports indicate that in order for the musical to break even it will have to sell out the theater for five consecutive years—that’s Wicked and Jersey Boys type of success.

Regardless, the show must go on. Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark is scheduled to debut Feb. 25, 2010. Spider-Man tickets are on sale now.

Artistically, the show’s composers, Bono and The Edge from the Irish rock band U2, are circling the wagons and doing damage control.

Edge: “We don’t really like musicals. Most musicals are really pants. They’re really not very cool.”

While that’s insulting to fans of the genre, like LOP, it’s probably true. Next To Normal is cool but it pales in comparison to the cool of Joshua Tree or Rattle and Hum.

Of course Edge said what he said to squash critics who are laughing at this idea of a singing web slinger.

Edge: “It is much more like opera than a straight musical. We’re actually not calling it a musical for that reason because we don’t want to put people off.”

What The Edge is trying to do is stop people from smirking when they hear phrase “Spider-Man musical.” He thinks “Spider-Man: The Opera” sounds more noble and sophisticated. He’s wrong. It doesn’t make the project appear substantial, it makes him appear like a pompous ass.

“Opera” connotes a lofty, artistic musical experience while “musical” evokes jazz hands.

Besides that implication, opera and musical are nearly synonymous terms and their basic differences are rather moot.

One of the historical factors that generally separate the two genres, spoken words, exists in both genres. For example, Jesus Christ Superstar has no dialogue and the opera Die Zauberflöte has spoken dialogue. So there!

There’s been a lot of ridiculous musicals but you can say the same about opera, i.e. opera buffa.

The Edge: “We made one rule for ourselves though that we would never have Spider-Man singing. A guy singing in tights can’t happen.”

Actually The Edge, guys sings in tights all the time. That’s kinda of the definition of musical theater.

Keeping Spider-Man out of the upbeat number that starts Act II has nothing to do with The Edge’s gallant artistic expression. It’s has to do with execution.

The show can’t have Spider-Man sing because his mouth is covered. Since his mouth is covered the actor inside the suit couldn’t sing the song. Since the actor inside the suit can’t sing the song he would have to pantomime to someone singing the song off-stage. The audience won’t buy it.

Bono: “Our Peter Parker is much more…not Kurt Cobain, but a kind of slacker, a more kind of shy sort of guy.”

Here Bono tries to associate the musical with someone “cool” like Kurt Cobain. Maybe he’s describing the character. We hope he’s not suggesting someone like Cobain will be portraying the role of Peter Parker because they just won’t work.

If Bono wanted to endear this musical to Broadway fans he would have mentioned names like Gavin Creel, Lin-Manuel Miranda or Aaron Tveit. Yet, he doesn’t care about Broadway fans. His goal is to lure his own fan base who think this is a crazy idea.

Speaking of crazy get a load of this:

Bono: “[Evan Rachel Wood is] the greatest actor of her generation, she’s the one to watch. She happens to sing like a bird, it’s like a true voice.”

Wood may have a great voice and she maybe a great actor but to proclaim her the greatest actor of her generation is too far-fetched to even entertain. It’s not hyperbole it’s nonsense and it makes Bono look foolish.

Bono: “We’ve got a new villain, it’s a girl. It’s a very extraordinary role. We’ve taken it to a much more dizzy place than you’d expect. We’ve got big tunes. We’re very proud of it.”

They haven’t announced the villain yet which leads us to believe they haven’t figure her out yet. They better hurry this thing premieres in six months.

They may very well be proud of their work but if they came up with one great U2 song, or even one mediocre U2 song, they sure as hell aren’t going to waste it on this dung heap.

What odd about U2’s damage control is the director of this musical is Julie Taymor. She’s the first woman to win a Tony for directing a musical. The musical she won that award for is the hugely successful The Lion King, the exact type of theatre The Edge thinks is “uncool”.

It’s clear that Bono and The Edge are reeling, this project is in free fall, and their reputation is taking a huge hit.

Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939

Anjulie is a Canadian pop artist who absorbed M.I.A. and Santigold’s style into her wardrobe.  But, at the same time, people are comparing her to Nelly Furtado, even though parts of her album definitely sound like Corinne Bailey Rae and Norah Jones (by the way, where have they been?!).  Regardless, I really like her music video.  In junior high, I wanted to make music videos, and every now and then I have a flashback to those moments.  So, as you can imagine, when I saw Anjulie’s “Boom” I became a little wistful.  It’s such a creative music video.  Granted, I think music videos are a really interesting format for budding filmmakers.  Because the time limit is much shorter so one can get away with making a video that looks like a moving Frida Kahlo painting.  I think that’s why Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe received such mixed reviews.  To view a two hour and thirteen minute of such visual splendor might be a little much for those who aren’t accustomed or trained to deconstruct such layered imagery.  It’s just a bit intense and perhaps, too academic in an artsy-fartsy kind of way.  Here, Anjulie paid homage to the rich visual history of her Latina background in the video with the Western landscapes, the warm lighting, Dali-esque skies, and Frida Kahlo symbolism.  It felt like Isabel Allende’s Daughter of Fortune and the I thought of Nelly Furtado’s flamenco dress in her video for “Turn off the Light,” the wonderful 21 missions of California that unites all of California’s fourth graders (poor Indians! I’m so sorry, but my ancestors did a good job). Our frontier past with its wide open skies combined the common history of being colonized by the Spanish through the entire Americas influences artists from the Iberian Peninsula, the Caribbean, Western, Central, and South Americas is pervasive through “low art” music videos to Western literature to “high art” like Kahlo and Dali.  I hope Anjulie keeps plugging away with the magic realism in her future videos – she can give us transplants a little taste of home because it’s disorienting not being in California which has more common with the Western Hemisphere than the East. 

Now, I’m going to go watch a Western.

Mon dieu, y’all!  Did you hear the news today about Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the Spider-Man musical that was to be directed by Julie Taymor and has songs written by Bono and the Edge?  It’s simply terrible:

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!  Not an indefinite hiatus!  Damn you, recession!   You’re ruining EVERYTHING.

The New York Post has the details:

Last week, production crews at both the Hilton Theatre and the scene shop where the show was being built were put on “hiatus” because the producers ran out of money. Assistants in the scene shop “ran to the bank to cash their checks because they weren’t sure they’d clear,” a source says.

Now comes word that the actors have been released from their contracts, with no incentive (i.e., money) to hang around waiting for the production to get back on track.

While I’m rather certain Shmarker will be deeply disappointed by this news, I personally can’t say that I’m that sad.  Or even surprised.

I guess I’m bummed about this because it means that it’ll likely be ages before we ever see the Spider-Man musical, and that’s suggesting that there’s still a chance it’ll at some point make its debut; and as a rabid U2 fan I am very curious to hear Bono and the Edge take a stab at musical theater, but I frankly  kinda don’t care.

The fact of the matter is that you can’t be shocked by this news when the budget is something as completely insane as $45 million dollars.  The Post piece mentions that this would take five years of sold-out shows to recoup the costs.  I’m no Suze Orman, but I’m quite sure that, financially speaking, that’s a bad idea.

Added to that, I’m rather confused that the producers have run out of money given that Marvel Comics and half of U2 are involved.  If you believe in your work so much, why not pony it up and see if its a success?  Marvel is responsible for the cinematic-dreck-that’s-still-sadly-box-office-gold that is X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, so it’s not as though they’re particularly hurting.  And U2 just launched an epic tour at the beginning of this summer that I’m quite sure is doing bank.  $45 millon may be $45 million, but I’m pretty certain they could self-finance the Spider-Man musical if they really were determined to make it happen.

That said, I think this hiatus is the perfect opportunity for Passengers (the U2+Brian Eno concept band of the mid-’90s) to reform and record an album called Turn Off the Dark.  The songs are all there, and all we need are Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, Jr. (as well as Brian Eno) to flesh things out into something spectacular.  Seriously, it could be the second coming of Zooropa.  If nothing else, it’s Original Soundtracks 2. I know I want it.

Seriously.  Chorus Lines on the Horizon.  It could happen, so let’s make it happen.

And much love to Brynn for sending me the story.

Let me set the stage for you.  It’s early 1999 and you’re Garth Brooks, the top-selling country artist of all time.  You’ve shattered every record in the books and are universally considered the greatest showman country music has ever known.  In your spare time, you’ve written a movie screenplay about a tortured artist named Chris Gaines and eventually Paramount signs up to make the movie with your music serving as the soundtrack.

Maybe the decision gets made in a boardroom, or maybe you wanted it this way all along, but someone somewhere decides that you will embark on a massive marketing campaign, donning the persona of your main character in real life, performing and granting interviews as Chris Gaines.  You even make a pre-soundtrack to the movie–ostensibly Gaines’ greatest hits–in which you sing R&B-flavored acousto-pop that thoroughly confuses and alienates your audience.

Now folks, my point here isn’t to castigate Brooks, who sang at many of my high-school pony-kegger field parties.  Hindsight’s always 20/20 and it’s easy to look back ten years later and rake the guy over the coals for the decision that in many ways killed his career as a top-tier artist.   The point here is that there was a time in early 1999 that everyone involved with this project thought it was a good idea. Before the media confusion, I imagine that the buzz around the Brooks camp was about his groundbreaking new direction.  I expect that his handlers and confidants figured he could be as huge in  pop music as he was in country music.  It wasn’t until later that these same people were proved completely and utterly wrong.

Why is this Brooks/Gaines discussion relevant?  Well, there’s another idea of similar caliber floating around out there that has actually begun the process of actualizing:  Spider-Man, Turn Off The Dark.  I expect you’re familiar with it, but if not take a moment and go here to get caught up to speed.

Great, glad you’re back.  Apparently, the production company in charge of this travesty-in-the-making just announced that work is suspended due to severe cost overages and an “unexpected cash flow problem.”  Let’s step back and mull on this, shall we?  First, someone either at Sony (who owns the film rights to Spider-Man) or at Marvel Comics had to have given voice to the thought that there just might be a market for the web-slinger in musical theatre.  Instead of getting laughed out of the room, others must have stopped what they were doing, put on a serious face and said “Hmmmm…”  Then a group of very gullible people scraped together over $40 million to get the production started.

Thus another Gaines-ian idea is born.  And apparently, it has plowed forward with Juggernaut-like intensity by bringing on Tony award-winning Julie Taymor to do directing, Bono and the Edge to do music and Evan Rachel Wood and Alan Cumming to do acting.  Folks, these are some heavyweights that should virtually guarantee the project’s success.  But ultimately they won’t, because the flaw is as much in the concept as in the execution.

In that way, this week’s halting of production could be a blessing rather than a curse.  Here’s to hoping that the bigwigs at Sony and Marvel realize that there probably are better ways to spend millions of dollars (Ant-Man movie anyone?).  Let’s cross our fingers that Bono and The Edge begin to understand that after 1997’s Pop and the lackluster success of their past two albums, they need all the musical credibility they can get right now.  Maybe, just maybe, this little break in the action could lead to the prevention of an unmitigated disaster.  If it doesn’t, however, maybe that’s just a signal that the time is right for a true off-Broadway treatment of my Manimal, Come Grab My Tail burlesque review.

I heard this news coming on a few months back through various back channels, but the announcement is official: the Spider-Man musical is on hold due to lack of funds.  They’re calling it an “unexpected cash flow problem,” and while you want to take the producers at their word, it’s hard to claim that problem is unexpected when you’re talking about $40 million that needs to flow.

There’s not much I can add that Riedel hasn’t already (almost joyously) made public: the lead producers aren’t experienced, Taymore wants to go bigger and bigger (and from what I hear, it’s big and amazing — what they’re doing to the theater is literally ground-breaking {keep in mind, I’m one of those people who use the word literally correctly} and wildly expensive), the budget is spiraling wildly upward, the Turn Off The Dark sub-title is not helping anyone.  It’s problem after problem, and the economics seem to make very little sense, even in the long-term (again, I don’t have real insider information, but from what I’ve heard, let’s say the path to making that $40 million back on Broadway seems to be, at best, virtually impossible).  Folks can’t wait to call it a disaster, and it very well could be.

Título original:Frida

Site Oficial: www.miramax.com/frida
Dica da Heidi.
Viveu como um dia Diego recomendou a ela:
“Pega da vida tudo o que ela te der,
sempre que te interesse e possa dar certo.”

Nesse Blog um lindo post sobre o filme e sobre Frida:
A Beleza de Todas as Coisas

Mais sobre Frida:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJYAg36n19I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE-UjfdIGEY