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Descendants, Midnight in Paris win Writers Guild Awards

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:54:43 GMT

LOS ANGELES - US film and television writers gave their top two movie awards on Sunday to romance “Midnight in Paris” and drama “The Descendants” in the final Hollywood guild awards show before next week’s Oscars.

Writer-director Woody Allen won the Writers Guild of America award for best original screenplay with “Midnight in Paris,” his tale of a young writer in Paris who faces questions of love. “The Descendants,” which tells of a man who brings his family together in a time of grief while his cheating wife is hospitalized, earned the WGA trophy for best adapted screenplay for writers Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash.

The awards give both movies a lift in the race for the Oscars, the world’s top film honors, because many guild members also belong to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that gives out the Oscars on February 26.

But the guilds have recognized a variety of films this year, making them an inexact forecaster for Oscar success. Earlier this year, the director and producer guilds put “The Artist” atop their list of best films, but “The Artist” was not eligible for a WGA trophy because it was created by French writers. The Screen Actors Guild singled out the performers of civil rights drama “The Help” for its top honor, best ensemble cast, but the WGA went for “The Descendants” over “The Help” in the WGA’s category for best adapted screenplay.

WGA voters did honor “The Help” writer and director Tate Taylor with a special award recognizing work that embodies the spirit of civil rights and liberties. Backstage, Taylor told reporters the movie’s success at box offices last summer and during the current award season had been “fantastic,” and he called “The Help” a “labor of love.” “It’s my first adaptation, which I think was a blessing because I just went for it,” Taylor said. The WGA also gave out an award to documentary movie “Better This World.”Best TV drama series went to “Breaking Bad,” and the writers of “Modern Family” claimed the prize for TV comedy series. “Homeland” was named best new TV series.

Stephen Colbert returns to his Comedy Central show

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:55:10 GMT

Stephen Colbert returned to his faux news desk Monday, Presidents’ Day, after shutting down the show for two days last week, plunging his network into information lockdown and his fans into mourning.

“Before we start the broadcast tonight, I just want to address my recent absence from the national conversation as the hub around which republic turns,” Colbert said at the top of Monday’s show.

“I can understand why the machinery of this great nation ground to a halt last week when you were denied this,” he said, pointing to himself. “Now I’m sure you felt the same way I do when I’m in room with no mirrors.”

Then he amusedly rattled off some of the rumors that had circulated since he shut down taping of his half-hour program last Wednesday and Thursday (the show does not tape on Fridays):

* Show was canceled by the FCC at the request of the Federal Election Commission because he was about to announce his presidential candidacy. (Wild applause from his studio audience)

* Show canceled because he offended the Catholic church when he compared the pope’s “hat” to a giant prophylactic.

* Colbert in rehab. “Always an attractive option — if they have that for diet Coke,” he said.

“Oh — one more thing. Evidently, having 11 children makes you tough as nails,” Colbert concluded — a reference to his 91-year-old mother, the comic being one of 11 children. Last week, journalists reported that Colbert had abruptly canceled two nights of the show in order to be with his ailing mother, though Comedy Central would only describe the situation as “unforeseen circumstances.”

Minus actual information last week, frantic fans had begun to speculate about the state of Colbert’s health, his family’s health, the mental health of his staff, his SuperPAC, his relationship with the network, and whether the show had been canceled, or he could have been booked for a last-minute trip to Afghanistan.

“The longer it takes to put out news on what’s happening the more scared we all get,” one concerned viewer wrote in the comments section of one Web press report on the sudden cancelation of taping, adding, “Really Hope everything is ok. Thinking positive thoughts.”

People holding tickets for Wednesday’s taping received an e-mail saying, “Due to unforeseen circumstances, we have cancelled our taping for the date of your ticket reservation, February 15, 2012.”

Those who had not checked their e-mails showed up at the studio and were turned away. Viewers who tuned in Wednesday or Thursday nights, expecting to see an original episode, saw reruns instead.

Colbert finally emerged Friday, long enough to thank his followers on Twitter: “My family and I would like to thank everyone who has offered their thoughts and prayers. We are grateful and touched by your concern,” he tweeted late last week — his first Twitter communication since Valentine’s Day.

It was the first time Colbert had scrapped a taping of his late night show since its 2005 unveiling. His companion show, Jon Stewart-hosted “The Daily Show,” has suspended production at the last minute on two occasions during Stewart’s tenure: once when one of his children was born and once when a staff member took his own life.

SMART’s musical show enthralls audience

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:43:38 GMT

KARACHI: Society for Music and Repertory Theater (SMART) organised a luminous music event entitled ‘Harmony’ that featured solo and joint performances by alumni of National Academy of Programming Art (NAPA) and Cultures in Harmony executive director William Harvey. The programme was held the other day at the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs Auditorium.

Demonstrating similarities between Eastern and Western disciplines of music, artists presented fusion between both music disciplines. Participants that indicated the acceptance of rising trends of Eastern and Western music fusion applauded the performances overwhelmingly.

On the occasion, William Harvey enthralled audience while playing violin in a mesmerising manner. He also performed in fusion with local artists Ustad Salamat Hussain on flute, Ustad Bashir Khan on tabla, Ustad Nafees Khan on sitar, Waqas Gulab on tabla, Arsalan Rabbani on piano and vocal artists, including Zulfiqar Ali Shah, Nadir Abbas, Ahsan Shabbir and Farukh A Khan.

Artists performed on various folk Sindhi, Chitrali, Siraiki, English, typical Raag Bhopali and latest Indian songs. The most interesting session of the event was a song sung in English, Chitrali and Siraiki languages. Besides performances, the venue, stage setting and beautiful light arrangements bestowed the programme with a vivacious look.

Talking to Daily Times, Harvey said that he believed that through international language of music not only relations between Pakistan and the United States could be better, but the people of both countries could also be brought nearer by all means, besides mitigating misunderstandings.

He said that it was a great experience for him to join Pakistani musicians for fusion in Eastern and Western music. He hoped that audience had liked their performance, so new faces should be introduced in such type of concerts.

Folk Western Eastern (FEW) band also performed at event. FEW member Syed Zulfiqar Ali Shah said, “We tried to create harmony with western music as music languages have similar meanings. It will help bring people of globe closer.”

Another FEW member Nadir Abbas, who also teaches at NAPA, said that through the performance of Harvey, they came to know how to read and write music. “We learnt Western music manners and young generation is very involved in folksongs.”

It is pertinent to mention here that the same event was held in Edhi Centre to provide some moments of joy among people who lived there.

The Weatherman comedy show to be funded by audience

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:00:10 GMT

The five-episode series, produced by Melbourne-based Dark Heart Productions, is using US website Mobcaster.com to appeal for $72,500 to fund the comedy, about Tony Turpinson, a TV weatherman who undergoes a series of unfortunate events.

Grubb, a television veteran who also starred in A Country Practice, said he couldn't say no to the crowd-funded initiative. "For me, the character in the show is so much fun to play and now the internet has opened up a whole new way of doing things," he said.

Executive producer Lucas Crandles produced a pilot episode using a "shoestring" budget but decided to use the crowd-funding website Mobcaster.com after meeting the website's founders, Noah and Aubrey Levy, at the New York Television Festival.

"Mobcaster said, 'This is exactly the type of thing we are looking for. It's a pilot that needs to be made into series, that can be made low budget, and it is a good product, so we hope we can help you raise it'," Mr Crandles said.

Dark Heart Productions posts some of its programs on YouTube and gains millions of hits. "Television, with its high production costs, used to force people to watch whatever the networks thought was viable," Mr Crandles said. "Really, we don't have to have a huge audience to make TV. We just have a dedicated audience willing to fund what we want to make."

Mobcaster's Aubrey Levy said that building a cult following was key to crowd funding usurping traditional models of TV production. "It seems that there is all this demand for content but often it is choked up a pipeline at a time when audiences are not just watching television content but engaging with it in a way they never have before," Mr Levy said.

He said most TV pilots failed because they were not what the audience wanted but crowd sourcing addressed that. "We're not geographically bound like a TV network. If the show is good and there is an audience for it, whether that audience is in the US or Australia or elsewhere, that's all that matters. We help good content find exposure and get made."

A key part of the Mobcaster model is that a TV program only gets made if the program reaches its funding target within a certain time. If the program fails to reach the target, then donors are not billed for their contribution.

Dark Arts Productions says the model allows the audience to keep creative control "as opposed to networks which might have advertising concerns. Instead, we are delivering the content directly to the people who funded it and wanted it". Grubb is hopeful for The Weatherman but is sceptical about crowd funding ending the dominance of TV networks.

"Baby Boomer Comedy Show"

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:54:30 GMT

RACINE — Racine Theatre Guild’s Comedy Tonight series promises another night of non-stop laughter on Saturday, Feb. 11, when Jan McInnis and Kent Rader bring their “Baby Boomer Comedy Show” to Racine. The show starts at 8 p.m. in the RTG’s auditorium at 2519 Northwestern Ave. (Highway 38).

Want a great night of comedy that you can relate to? Baby-boomer comedians McInnis and Rader take on familiar topics — family, kids, work, do-it-yourself projects, dieting, aging — and they do it with clean humor that’s been a hit at thousands of appearances over a combined 30 years. McInnis was featured in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post as one of the top convention comedians. To her, life is all about “finding the funny.” She’s performed everywhere from Wolf Trap to the Mayo Clinic.

Rader plays in comedy clubs from New York City to Seattle, won the 2007 Branson Comedy Festival, and is heard on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” and Sirius satellite radio. He’s also authored a book on stress reduction titled “Let It Go, Just Let It Go.”Sponsor Tri City Bank plans to make the evening even more fun with trivia questions and other nostalgia, and will be conducting raffles for cash and gift cards, with proceeds benefitting the Racine Theatre Guild.

Paul McCartney to stream free live show on iTunes

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:29:05 GMT

Paul McCartney will throw a free iTunes concert listening party for his fans this week to mark the release of "Kisses on the Bottom," his new album of American jazz and big band standards.

The show will take place Thursday (2/9) at 7 p.m. PST at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles, where much of the new album was recorded. Fans can tune into the show by accessing iTunes on their PCs or Macintosh computers.

The free streaming concert will showcase the "Bottom" material live for the first time, and will feature McCartney backed up by Diana Krall and her band, who also appear on the album.

Recorded throughout 2011 at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles, New York City and London with the help of Grammy Award-winning producer Tommy LiPuma, the album contains 12 classic songs and two original tracks, "My Valentine" and "Only Our Hearts," featuring special guests Eric Clapton and Stevie Wonder, respectively.

"It was important for me to keep away from the more obvious song choices," McCartney explained in a press release. "So many of the classic standards will be unfamiliar to some people. I hope they are in for a pleasant surprise."

Björk Unveils "Biophilia" Live Show in NYC, Showcasing the "Scientific Art of Music, and How Limitless It Can Be," Says NPR

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:46:10 GMT

Björk launched her month-long, ten-show Biophilia residency in New York City with a performance Friday night at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, New York City’s only hands-on science and technology museum. Five more shows at the unique venue in Flushing Meadows, Corona Park, are ahead, including one tonight, with four shows to follow at Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan later this month and into March.

The intimate shows are performed in the round, with no audience member more than a few yards from the stage, and feature a set of custom-made musical instruments, the award-winning Icelandic female choir Graduale Nobili, musicians Manu Delagu and Zeena Parkins, and visuals from the Biophilia Apps with app developer Max Weisel performing on stage. In addition to the live performances, Björk will collaborate with the New York Hall of Science on a three-week-long Biophilia education series featuring interactive science and music workshops for middle-school children.

"Björk told a journalist recently that she'd always wanted to be a music teacher," recounts NPR's Will Hermes. "And so she was, in her own dazzling style, during the first show of a six-night residency at the New York Hall of Science."

Even with all of the fantastical, high-tech instruments developed for the project, "the music's core was still that most lo-tech of instruments, the human voice," says Hermes in a review of the show for NPR's All Songs Considered blog, describing Björk as "the sun around which all revolved ... Using little besides a simple microphone, she was a physics class on two legs, sculpting vowels into fanciful shapes, and vividly animating Biophilia's song metaphors, which connect the human heart to the universe beyond."

The New York Biophilia shows, Hermes concludes, are " a lesson in the scientific art of music, and how limitless it can be."

Rolling Stone's David Fricke finds the Hall of Science to be a fitting venue for this special show, "effective and moving, even more immersive than the Biophilia show I saw in Reykjavik last fall. Surrounded by a future-now production of exotic invented instruments ... Björk created a dazzling compact world of heated passions and excited science heightened by the tall black space overhead and an outer ring of darkness that seemed to gently press the in-the-round audience (under 700) against the tiny stage, almost into the show."

Fricke describes the album that inspired the show as "a record about harmony and turmoil, Björk's equation of human passions with the glory, peace and violence found in nature." He too notes that even within the context of the surroundings and the custom-made instruments created for the project, "her voice is still the most powerful instrument and teaching gift in her reach. Unearthly in its range and force, yet absolutely natural and frank in its ardor and hope, it is the vital human tissue connecting everything else."

Fuse reviewer William Goodman describes the set as "jaw-dropping" and the choice of venue "a genius stroke of appropriateness," explaining that "Bjork’s new album, Biophilia, is her most imaginative and ambitious yet, marrying science, music and technology into a hands-on educational experience."

Echoing his fellow reviewers sentiments, Goodman, after praising the venue for its "surprisingly pristine" sound, finds: "Most impressive, though, was Bjork’s voice—she gets older, but those pipes sound just the same."

It was a concert the reviewer would not soon forget. "When it was over," he concludes, "it was evident that one of those special, unforgettable concert moments had just occurred."

'The Chaser' team making comedy show for Seven Network

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:35:10 GMT

Three members of The Chaser team have revealed that they are filming a new TV series. Julian Morrow, Andrew Hansen and Craig Reucassel from the comedy troupe - who have often caused outrage with their stunts on The ABC over the past ten years - are now working on a Seven Network comedy panel show called The Unbelievable Truth.

Reucassel is believed to be hosting the series, while Hansen and Morrow will head panels of guest comedians including Shane Jacobson, Kitty Flanagan and Tom Gleeson.

Reucassel told the Herald Sun that the new show is unlikely to cause the same stir that The Chaser did, saying: "I don't think this show will get us on the front page of the newspaper but, then again, we've got there before without even trying - so you never know."He also told The Age that moving to commercial television is a risk, but one that they're willing to take.

"If, three weeks in, it gets pulled because it's not getting ratings," he said, "that's when you experience the commerciality of it."Reucassel also revealed that The Chaser team will still "be doing more at The ABC" throughout 2012 than ever before.

Comedy show sailing to town

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:49:19 GMT

A "BRACINGLY physical tragic comedy" featuring six actors, five chairs, one table and an ocean is coming to Kent. Bound will appear at the Gulbenkian Theatre in Canterbury tonightfrom 7.45pm. Tickets cost £13.

A spokesman for the venue said: " Bound follows the story of six trawler men from the South West Devon fishing port of Brixham as they embark on one final voyage. "Compelled by the threat of bankruptcy, fishing trawler The Violet and its mismatched crew are forced out into treacherous weather.

"In the claustrophobic confines of the trawler and the pressure of a failing haul, the men's relationships are put under strain causing an emotional storm almost as dangerous as the sea its self. "Battling the forces of nature, each others egos, and their 'lives' ashore, will they lose more than a way of life?" The Times said it was "bursting with fresh talent", while The Guardian described it as a "beautifully thought-out piece of work… performed with real dynamism".

Music Show launch for Godley app

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:02:31 GMT

A music creation app developed with Kevin Godley of 10CC and Godley and Creme, will be launched at the Music Show in Dublin next month.

WholeWorldBand, an interactive tool for iPhone 4/4s and iPad2 created by Kevin Godley and development veteran Andy Wood (Hypergallery, Cubic Motion) lets you create music with other musicians and music fans around the world in both sound and video. It will be showcased at this year’s Music Show which takes place in RDS, Dublin from 25th-26th February.

Kevin Godley and Andy Wood will demonstrate the new music-sharing, revenue-generating app for the first time at the show and it will then be available to download from the iTunes store from March 2012.

A number of major artists including The Edge, Ronnie Wood, Gavin Friday, Gemma Hayes, Cathy Davey, Mik Pyro (Republic of Loose) and Liam Ó Maonlaí (Hot House Flowers) are currently creating performances for WholeWorldBand and will be uploading new or collaborating on existing tracks in the near future.

Musicians and music fans from all over the world will be able to contribute and combine a selection of video performances, including their own, from the WholeWorldBand library to create their own favourite band line-up. And they will also have the opportunity to earn money from their performance.

Kevin Godley said “WholeWorldBand is a revolutionary new online music tool that provides a new platform for distribution while offering the opportunity of new revenue streams for up and coming and established musicians and bands and, in fact, anyone.”

The app allows you to originate a track or add yourself to performances by well-known artists and bands by playing along with them, or substituting yourself for any member of a band. WholeWorldBand lets musicians record and film while playing or singing along to any track on the menu using the microphone and cameras on their iPhone or iPad then upload a unique mix of yourself plus other users to Facebook and YouTube etc.

In WholeWorldBand, musicians can upload their own original tracks and earn money when other users download and share them. The more performances that are downloaded, the more musicians can earn.

"It's fantastic that The Music Show is the first place that people will get to see this great project in action," said Niall Stokes editor at Music Show organiser, Hot Press. "Kevin Godley is a real visionary – exactly the kind of ambitious genius to carry off something special like the WholeWorldBand idea. And he has found the perfect partner for his grand scheme in Andy Wood, who founded Hypergallery, a portal where you can buy all the great cover artwork. Between them, they have created an app that has amazing long term potential. People will see just how much at The Music Show. It is a really exciting development that we're proud to be part of."