| Bayou Boogie: Ray Charles tribute really rocks | | Posted Thursday, November 09, 2006 1:36:13 PM by Blog57 Team | | I feel sorry for people who never listen to live music, dont attend festivals or dances, never see a play. So many are just content to spend endless hours on the couch with the remote, complaining about 250 channels and nothing to watch. Dont get me wrong. I enjoy TV as much as the next couch potato. I recently bought a 57-inch, high definition monster that makes me feel the quarterback sacks during LSU games. I love that thing more than my wife. (Just kidding, Beth.) But theres something about watching humans perform on stage that TV cant touch, no matter the size of the screen or millions of pixels in its resolution. Good performers leave you giggly, humming and with a pep in your step that CSI and Brady Bunch re-runs cant match. I left the Heymann Performing Arts Center Tuesday night with that giddy feeling after watching I Cant Stop Loving You, a touring show brought presented by Theater League of Louisiana.... | |
| |
| | | Amin's no king without Washington's majesty | | Posted Saturday, November 04, 2006 7:30:58 PM by Blog57 Team | | All this talk about Forest Whitaker's "certain" Oscar nomination for playing Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland has his co-star, Kerry Washington, thinking. She plays one of Amin's wives in the film. And in 2005, she was Ray Charles' wife in the movie that won Jamie Foxx a best-actor Oscar. "The new rumor around town should be -- and I'm starting it -- 'If you hire Kerry Washington to play your wife, you get an Oscar,'" she says, laughing, adding, "I think Forest is a shoo-in." Washington, named one of Hollywood's "Hot Ten" by Vanity Fair in 2005, an NAACP Image Award-winner for Ray, a born-to-be-flirtatious 29-year-old, plays the wife who betrays Uganda's notorious dictator in The Last King of Scotland. And she does it, in this fictional film, by cheating on Amin with a visiting Scot, played by James McAvoy.... | |
| |
| | | Reawakening the inner child | | Posted Sunday, September 24, 2006 11:07:18 AM by Blog57 Team | | Fantasy author Ray Bradbury believes that we are born with a sleeping child within us. As we grow, discovering the wondrous things of life, portions of that child spring awake. And once fully awakened, the child within us thrives with a "sense of wonder." "But beware," Bradbury warned. "Never allow your sense of wonder to fall asleep lest you miss the best things in life." For 73 years, Malcolm Whyte has never allowed his sense of wonder even to doze slightly. He has always been driven by that awakened child within him, as he passionately collected books, paintings, cartoon art and illustrated children's books. And now, as founder of the Cartoon Art Museum, he wants to share the discoveries he has made, relating them back to the very first awakenings many of us experienced as youngsters.... | |
| |
| | | The Future File | | Posted Friday, August 11, 2006 5:19:18 PM by Blog57 Team | | Tickets will go on sale Sunday at 10 a.m. for I Can't Stop Loving You: The Music of Ray Charles, Sept. 26-Oct. 1 at the Academy of Music. Part of the Kimmel Center's Broadway at the Academy series, the show features an on-stage orchestra, dancers, and six singers in a musical review of Charles' life and music. Tickets: $25-$60. Call 215-731-3333, go to the Kimmel box office, or visit www.kimmelcenter.org. • Corey Feldman is scheduled to appear at Monster-Mania Con, Aug. 25-27 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Cherry Hill,for a Lost Boys cast reunion. Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger) will also appear, as will all the actors who played Jason Voorhees, for a special Friday the 13th tribute. Check out horror film collectibles; autograph and Q&A sessions and movie screenings, too.... | |
| |
| | | Canoe craft | | Posted Sunday, August 06, 2006 3:10:18 PM by Blog57 Team | | BIGFORK, Minn. ? In his dilapidated workshop steeped in cedar sawdust and family history, Ray Boessel frets over his role in keeping a centuries-old craft alive. The craft is building birchbark canoes. On this steamy summer afternoon, Boessel has two in the works. One canoe is still only a few pieces of yellow-hued birch bark laid flat in a frame and sewn together with black spruce roots; nails are never used in a Boessel boat. The other is nearly finished ? a gorgeous, 16-foot Chippewa Old Style, sitting on sawhorses outside the shop, awaiting final inspection for leaks before delivery to Tennessee. Boessel runs his hand over the unfinished canoe. "I felt I had killed the business,'' he says. "I can't say why people aren't buying 'em.... | |
| |
| | | Celebrities dance up a storm in ABC-5 program finals | | Posted Sunday, July 02, 2006 9:03:30 PM by Blog57 Team | | AS WE EXPECTED, JOSHUA Zamora and his dancing partner Janeth won the Wild Card round of ABC-5s Shall We Dance?, and thus got into the shows season finals last Sunday, June 25. They did well in the ultimate dance showdown, but text-voters decided that the winners should be Tirso Cruz III and his dance partner. In second place were Mystika and her partner, followed by Joshua and Janeth, and Desiree del Valle and her dance partner settled for fourth place. On point of actual excellence in performance, our list put the teams of Joshua and Mystika ahead, but the text-votes had the final say, so the point is moot and academic. What was impressive about the season finals was the high level of competition. Gone are the days when celebrity dance competitions meant overweight, lazy and spoiled stars dancing a little and relying mostly on their popularity to get the fans rooting for them.... | |
| |
| |
|
|
