In October, Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz will star in a Mike Nichols stage production of Harold Pinter‘s “Betrayal” on Broadway. In these images, you can see the two, alongside Rafe Spall (“Life of Pi,” “Prometheus”), making his Broadway debut, in early rehearsals last month. Nichols is employing the rehearsal method that worked so well in 2012 with his Broadway revival of “Death of a Salesman.” He gathers the actors for a couple weeks of work, then reassembles a few months later for a longer rehearsal period before previews. Nichols says the break provides tremendous insights.
Arctic Monkey’s last two albums – 2009′s dirgy and hard-to-love “Humbug” and 2011′s slightly better “Suck It And See” – were announced with slow, swampy lead singles the band dumped on iTunes the day after they were premiered on the radio. To herald their forthcoming, as-yet-untitled fifth album, they’ve taken this rejection of the normal single-release strategy one step further by simply plonking a brand new song online with little fanfare and allowing fans to purchase it from iTunes immediately. The song in question is “Do I Wanna Know?“, which once again veers away from the frenetic urgency of their early singles in favor of a more creeping, groove-lead crawl.
“The Voice” is a hit. It’s almost single-handedly carrying NBC with its strong ratings and watercooler presence. It’s the first of the endless stream of “American Idol” copycats to finally compete with the reality-TV juggernaut in terms of popularity and relevance, even outdrawing the longtime Goliath in ratings some weeks. But at least in one crucial measure, “The Voice” is not a success: it hasn’t created any stars. And I doubt that last night’s winner, Danielle Bradbery (pictured), is going to break the jinx. I’m afraid I agree with those who say she’s milquetoast mannequin with a pretty voice.
“Hot in Cleveland,” that show that people watch to hear Betty White utter the naughty remarks she was making 40 years ago on “Mary Tyler Moore,” returns with a new batch of episodes tonight. William Shatner guest stars.
Like Kanye, James Franco seems to think he has to be everywhere these days. From museum art installations to directing and starring in various Hollywood features, the 35-year-old actor remains one of the most vocal performers in show business. Enter Tuesday’s “Man of Steel” review. Having recently critiqued Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” for Vice magazine, Franco decided to weigh in on Warner Bros.’ $225 million blockbuster, which he actually liked. “‘Man of Steel’ is great because it delivers everything it should,” he wrote after the film’s London premiere. “It made Superman cool again.” But then he threw in a little bit of kryptonite. In an effort to explain why Hollywood continues to make Read more »
Photographer Jan Kempenaers spent three years trawling the remotest spots of former Yugoslavia to capture these bizarre architectural ‘medals in the countryside’ planted by Tito. Comments The Guardian: ‘Erected in tranquil fields in the middle of nowhere, Spomeniks – which means monuments in Serbo-Croatian – look like alien landings, crop circles or Pink Floyd album covers. At odds with the surrounding farmhouses and hills, their beauty lies in their misaligned locations. Concrete structures lost in natural landscapes, they are conspicuously out of place.’
The Financial Times has published my review of “The Comedy of Errors,” a Public Theater production in Central Park. Bottom line: ‘The clowning does not cut very deep. But none of the recent attempts to intensify the play’s brutality have proved very resonant, so perhaps [the director] and his designers were right to make few demands on Park patrons.’
In October, Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz will star in a Mike Nichols stage production of Harold Pinter‘s “Betrayal” on Broadway. In these images, you can see the two, alongside Rafe Spall (“Life of Pi,” “Prometheus”), making his Broadway debut, in early rehearsals last month. Nichols is employing the rehearsal method that worked so well in 2012 with his Broadway revival of “Death of a Salesman.” He gathers the actors for a couple weeks of work, then reassembles a few months later for a longer rehearsal period before previews. Nichols says the break provides tremendous insights.
