A couple of days ago the writer-director Paul Schrader suggested the idea of a movie-themed hotel. Some kind of flush establishment, he meant, that would offer exact duplicates of famous hotel rooms from classic films — the climatic 2001 hotel suite, The Shining‘s room 237 (pictured), the bare-bones Phoenix hotel room where Marion Crane and Sam Loomis met for a lunch-hour quickie, “cabin” 1 at the Bates Motel, Eve Kendall‘s room at Chicago’s Ambassador East, etc.
Movies: “Hustlers,” with J-Lo and a diverse cast playing empowered strippers, looks like a lot of fun. TV/Streaming: Netflix’s “The Spy,” with Sascha “Borat” Baron Cohen as an undercover Israeli in early 1960s Syria, looks watchable…”Country Music,” Ken Burns’s latest epic for PBS, kicks off on Sunday. Music: Teodor Currentzis is classical music’s latest bad-boy conductor: sample his work here. Books: I can’t stand the bleakness of the series adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” but I’ve just read the follow-up to “Handmaid’s” — “The Testaments” — and I’m happy to report it is a smidgen less bleak. Sports: Thank God there’s Premier League football this weekend — last week I was forced to watch American football! Finally: My dog doesn’t bark angrily except when he sees Trump on a TV screen — I have a smart dog.
When I heard yesterday that Rupert Everett was replacing Eddie Izzard opposite Laurie Metcalf in the Broadway production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” I thought: the only way I’m going is if Rupert plays Martha. I hold out little hope: the Albee estate is notoriously literal in the casting of the play. Albee always maintained that it’s about straight marriage and that if he wanted to write a gay play he’d write a gay play.
He starred in two of my favorite musicals: “A Little Night Music” and “Sweeney Todd.” So it’s nice to report that Len Cariou is starring in a new play in New York this autumn: “Harry Townsend’s Last Stand.” Details here.
