“Tonight, Canadian viewers of CBC’s How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? find out which young woman has won the televised competition to play Maria von Trapp in the Toronto production of The Sound of Music… Of course, the end of the show is just the beginning of the hard work for the successful “Maria,””
Tag: 07.28.08
Rapping, Bollywood Style
“Hollywood and Bollywood have been flirting with new partnerships, from deals with Reliance Big Entertainment, an Indian production company, to Sylvester Stallone’s scheduled appearance in a Bollywood movie.” But is India ready for Snoop Dogg and the world of American hip-hop?
Toni Morrison Gets Her Bench By The Road
“Toni Morrison has said that her acclaimed novel “Beloved,” which features the ghost of a baby killed by her enslaved black mother, came out of the need for a literature to commemorate slaves and their history.” She once famously said that there was no memorial, no “bench by the road,” to mark slavery’s place in American history. There is now.
Little House Musical Takes Off In Minneapolis
“The characters and stories of Little House on the Prairie have delighted readers and television viewers for generations, but now they are being put to a test not unlike a cruel Midwestern winter: Will they thrive in the forbidding world of new American musicals?”
Youssef Chahine, 82
“Egyptian film director Youssef Chahine has died in Cairo aged 82, four weeks after suffering a brain haemorrhage. One of Arab cinema’s most admired figures, he made his first film in 1950 and tackled authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism in his work.”
Reembracing Vinyl
Discounting the old saw that the moment a newspaper writes an article about something being cool, it is no longer cool, it does seem as if vinyl records are making a serious comeback among young music fans. “Big-box stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart, online suppliers like MusicDirect and Needle Doctor, and even the pop-culture retailer Urban Outfitters stock turntables, many with built-in USB ports.”
The New Bayreuth? Looks Like The Old Bayreuth
“Swastika banners unfurl over the stage, Nazi SS officers goose step in formation. It has been awhile since Bayreuth looked like this. Scattered boos from the audience augment the score of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal. A new era is dawning at Bayreuth’s annual Wagner festival. And parts of it look unnervingly like the old one.”
The Upside Of Down Times
“It’s no surprise pop singers, artists and storytellers chronicle economic downturns. Happy feet only carry you so far even in boom years–trouble is interesting, goes an old fiction-writing saw… Various artists through the years, right up to recent days, have left a record of hard times, through various decades.”
Lightning Strikes Tanglewood Patron
A man was struck by lightning at the Boston Symphony’s summer home in the Berkshire mountains this weekend as he waited to see the Orchestra of St. Luke’s perform. “Officials closed the grounds to newcomers and asked patrons to wait out the storm in the shelter of the Shed.”
Online Literacy: Just As Important As The Old Kind?
The debate over online reading, and whether it actually represents a step away from overall literacy, may be missing the point, says Paul Wallis. “You may have to become an expert at filtering out garbage. Intellectual development, however, is far more complex, particularly for younger people whose brains are still wiring themselves up.”